Ever since the below zero weather left us, we've had a string of monotonous, grey, foggy, wet, overcast days. It brings the Macpherson side out in me, yearning for Sligo, a peat fire and a dram of Jameson in hand. As a Michigander, this long stretch of unchanging weather is counter to our mantra of having a change every three days or so. After that, we tend to get cranky.
A colleague of C's has a light therapy lamp in her office and offered it for anyone to use when she is gone. The demand by her friends to the main office to give them access grew to the point where the Department Chair went out and bought one and set it up in the Department common area. That, is a thoughtful and wise action by a manager and my hat's off to her.
$40 bucks from Amazon.
Meanwhile, the inch of snow we received yesterday is already gone as well as the pond in the Back 40. Rumor has it that Friday afternoon the sun will return and hang around for a few days. Mild temps in the lo-40's. What a pleasant change from this:
Diner news: well, the coons are up and they are hungry, perpetrating nightly attacks on the feeder.
I guess we'll have to begin bringing it in every evening again. Sigh.
Big Woody has returned and Nutkin is now a regular. With warmer weather, I imagine the skunks will be up soon. Stubbs, Freddie and the Jays receive daily peanuts.
Stubbs
Buddy was dismayed to see the white stuff again (we feel you, bro) and was a tad pesky about going in and out. With milder temps and things drying out, he will be able to spend more time patrolling the realm.
I see hawks frequently when I drive I-496, perched on top of the light poles. I wondered how very scary it would be if they were substantially larger than life. Yikes!
The January thaw is upon us and for the first time in what seems like weeks, the Big Light in Sky (BLS) is gracing us with what meteorologists term "bright overcast". For days, we have had a dreary mix of heavy fog, on and off rain with temps in the 30's. Between the snowmelt and 1.5" of rain over four days, we have a pond in the back 40.
I noticed a few days ago that no birds were stopping by-it was strictly squirrels including Nutkin.
I discovered that this guy turned out to be a bully, chasing the much larger squirrels away from the Diner. I asked Stubbs what this was about and he replied small squirrel syndrome.
As for the decline in bird customers, I suspected the seed in the feeder had gone off. The bottom third went from being frozen to thawing into a seedy goop. I dumped everything on the ground, cleaned and filled it back up with fresh seed. By the afternoon, the regulars had returned led by the chickadees, sparrows and purple finches.
Several evenings ago, we finished watching a film and were going through our heading to bed routine when I returned to the darkened room and saw a big Doe at the Diner. She was eating with her front legs splayed like a giraffe. She caught a glimpse of my movement and skedaddled. Shortly afterward, I saw three does on the berm moving West to East back to their woods.
We had cleaned out the frig and arranged a buffet including some arugula, hoping the buns would enjoy some fresh greens. Nope. It continues to confound C that historically, the wild buns will not imbibe humangrown produce. We wonder if this aversion points to their Better Living & Survival Guide which clearly warns about being tempted by something new. Stick with what you know!
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The algorithms have figured out that I am an old boy so my YT feed is packed with Medicare ads. Generally they are bland until this one appeared. Well! Nothing like some blatant, old school sex sells advertising. I wonder if this would cause Speaker Johnson's pornwarn app on his phone to ping.
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Speaking of S*E*X...
New Guinea is home to 38 of 43 known species of bird of paradise. Each has evolved their own idiosyncratic performance to attract the girls. It's like some giant collection of Broadway actors trying to outdo each other on the stage: some are dancers, some are singers others combine into song and dance routines.
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This is what I'm talkin' about! From 1989, The Beastie Boys "Hey Ladies".
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Fun fact: during the moose rutting season, males will use their antlers to scent areas hoping to attract females and ward off suitors. It is also thought that this adds adornment to their rack-females judge worthy mates by their size (yeah, sorry fellows-size matters in this culture). If you want an edge over the other schmucks, well, spice up your rack with some grasses. Some like the shaggy, bad boy look with grass hanging over their eyes. Others prefer a more curated look: a few strategic weeds hanging off one antler, like a single earring.
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Totally gonzo vid from Muppet's Swedish Chef making popcorn shrimp and microwaving popcorn resulting in total chaos.
"Popcorn" is a synthesized instrumental written and originally
recorded by Gershon Kingsley in 1968. A 1972 cover version by Stan Free,
recording under the name Hot Butter, was a Top 10 hit in the United
States and Europe.
Warning: earworm alert!
I remember, unfortunately, this song which caused a near involuntary and immediate urge to change the radio station. Gawd.
A cicada from Brood X in 2021 next to the shed exoskeleton from which it emerged.
From the NYT:
This spring, for the first time since
1803, two cicada groups known as Brood XIX, or the Great Southern Brood,
and Brood XIII, or the Northern Illinois Brood, are set to appear at
the same time, in what is known as a dual emergence.
The
last time the Northern Illinois Brood’s 17-year cycle aligned with the
Great Southern Brood’s 13-year period, Thomas Jefferson was president.
After this spring, it’ll be another 221 years before the broods, which
are geographically adjacent, appear together again.
They will appear late April in roughly 16 Midwest and Southeast states. This dual emergence will bring around 1 trillion cicadas appearing in these areas. They live around a month and it is noteworthy that during the 1990 singular emergence in Illinois, people used snow shovels to clear the insect carcasses from sidewalks and driveways. Entomologists suggest that folks should consider this as free fertilizer for their plants.
Gene Kritsky, Mount St. Joseph University
Brood XIII is shown by blue dots, and Brood XIX is shown with red dots.
Not only does the Satin Bowerbird build elaborate nests, they collect piles of blue colored swag in order to impress the girls.
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The other day I saw Paczki for sale in the markets. What??!! I thought. Already?? Welp, Ash Wednesday is only a month away so let's get a running start with these gut bombs where ONE can typically contain 300-450 calories with 15-25 grams of fat. I am not a big fan-one and done for the season. I like raspberry the best. And old school with powdered sugar on top. Meijer does their version with granulated. Ick.
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We haven't gotten much more snow lately but it has been bitterly cold. We had a couple of -4° overnight temps with daytime highs barely getting into the teens. January thaw is coming this week with 30's and rain. Fireplace nights have been a welcomed event.
Most days Freddie and Stubbs have been out and about. I've been surprised by the lack of birds at the feeder as I would have thought that they would be fueling up all day. In the evening, our pair of rabbits stop by The Diner and they seem to be exhibiting mating behavior. It's confusing: from what I have read, adults, even siblings generally don't hang out together. Yet this pair have, starting when they were little last Spring, growing into adulthood in the Summer. So, is this a different pair? Plus, it's a tad early for mating which in these parts begins in February. Are they working on their moves, lol? Cuing up:
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Buddy has adjusted well to the new routine, thank goodness. And, he uses the portal when he doesn't have a doorman. He's been such a good lad and not awakened Mom during the night so she can rest. When he does go out during the day, I keep an eye on the clock and give him a holler after 10 minutes. He comes right in-he's no dummy. We understand his need to keep an eye on his realm. I shoveled and kept swept some paths on the deck so he can sit on bare wood.
DHS on duty.
Nice and comfy in the library in a nice spot of sun.
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Fabulous vid from 1971 Sesame Street "That's About The Size of It".
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Linen, made from the fibers of the flax plant, is one of the oldest textiles made by humans dating back up to 30,000 years ago. Linen was used in ancient civilizations including Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt and is mentioned in the Bible.
I was YT surfing the other day and came across a primer on linen making, from seed to cloth, from a gentleman in the UK. Yikes! Insanely labor intensive-I would never want to do it yet fascinating to watch. Lots of familiar terms associated with the process such as distaff which is a tool used in spinning. The day after Epiphany, is known as Distaff Day when the holiday feasting had ended and women went back to their usual work. For men, the Monday after Epiphany was known as Plough Monday, when men returned to work in the fields.
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Eager YT algorithms: I was surfing and watched a show with tomato growing tips. Upon completion and clicking Home, my feed was flooded with home and garden stuff. Wow. Including: what do you do with the veggies that you have grown? Yep, cooking shows!
The snow on 1/7 gave our wild neighbors a strong warning: snows a comin' and you better fuel up. The next day, The Diner did a brisk business with most every species of daytime feather and fur stopped in.
Morning snow on 1/9
Morning of 1/10-I noticed a group of blackbirds in the Back 40
There seemed to be more birds to the West so I looked out the garage-side door:
Yikes! a visitation by hundreds of European starlings. More were curled around out front and in the crab apple tree. They were quite loud. They hung out for about 10 minutes until for some reason they rose together, murmurated in the sky above the parking lot just over the berm. Many lit in the pines before moving on.
The storm arrived late in the afternoon of the 12th. The Diner was deserted.
Buddy was like a kitten, tossing bits of snow into the air and chasing it.
C and I were quite concerned about Buddy and his insistence to go outside for long periods at night. We knew extremely cold weather was coming so we decided to set aside our anxiety about wild critter invasion and re-installed the portal. We had noticed in the past couple of weeks that he was going up to the portal window, seemingly looking for it. Once installed, Bud and I revived our old game of me urging him "go, Buddy, go" as he galloped in from 15 ft away, up the boxes and out the portal with Dad assisting by holding the flap open. One night, C had assisted him, went back to bed only to be awakened by mewing outsider her door. The big scamp had come in by himself! This pretty much answered our suspicion that our Lordship has the upper-class attitude: why have servants if you don't use them? (Prince Chuck reportedly summoned a servant to his office to put a piece of paper into to waste basket-one that Chuck had managed to miss).
This eased out minds considerably. Bud, like most cats, prefers routine. He likes to go out and make sure things are good in the realm. Now, he can do his thing and Mom sleeps better.
Butterfly bush out bathroom window
Crab Apple tree from my office window
By 7 pm the storm was in full force with wind-driven snow
We received 3-4" of snow, thankfully far less than the 6-8" that was predicted the day before. The Diner was busy the next morning.
The arctic air began to swing in by late afternoon. The next morning it was +2° with -17° wc. As Bin would say-colder than mouse titties. I was up early to shovel my neighbor Benny's drive and ramp-his ailing wife has medical folk stopping by every morning. We received little snow-it was mainly wind drifts. I didn't bother with our drive but I cleared paths on the deck for Buddy and put out seed at The Diner.
By 10am, it was bright, cold and sunny-so typical of a Michigan January.
Bud went out a couple of times, the first for 5 minutes. Just hung out on the deck and kept his eyes on the sparrow raucous caucus in the burning bush. Came in for a snack and wanted back out. This time for 10 minutes-I called and he came galloping back in. Sigh. It was +5° outside. But he does seem to sense that this is no weather to be out for hours. We are keeping our fingers crossed.
The mating dance of the colorful Temminck's tragopan, a pheasant found found across the mountains of far northeast India, central China, far northern Myanmar and northwestern Tonkin.
A 180 cf glacial deposit wedged in a crevice 3200 feet above the fjord below. Yikes!
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I've been watching on YT vids made by adventurers who scour GoogleEarth for non-natural formations out West, hoping to find unknown structures built by the Anasazi (or Ancient Puebloans, as they are increasingly called) from 700-1150 ce. Once found, they hike out into some of the most remote regions of AZ, NM, UT, CO to visit and document their findings. Many use drones to augment the experience and it helps: some sites are located tucked into cliffs which can barely be reached. The drones also help give the viewer a wider picture of the location.
The presenters vary wildly, some lean towards the scientific, many are amateurs and within this group you can have some goofy bros adding silly post-production graphics and sounds and those who are templating reality TV shows, a staple in our popular culture since the 1990's. Drama!
One of the guys did something I found interesting: filling in a gap of commentary as he's trekking up a wash, he gave a shout out to his fans, specifically those who are "homebound". I thought: I bet there are enough presenters to each to have a fan base, clubs and chatrooms. They produce enough content to space them out, sending notifications to their fans so they can tune in and not miss out. A curious and frankly worthy niche to fill for those who can't go out for a variety of reasons. And these programs are soooo much better, in my opinion, than the mind rot of talk shows and HGTV. No getting caught up in the marital drama of a young couple scrapping over the color of carpeting in their flip house. You can get out of the house to somewhere you have never been and never will visit. And, you have a community of other fans in chatrooms. I belonged to a garden club for a few years-it was enjoyable and something to look forward to.
Imagine the routine for some in a facility: watch one of these shows with your meal as the meds kick in. By the time it finishes you are dozing. Repeat twice more per day.
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Our local rag, The Lansing State Journal, said that December 2023 was the second warmest in the 125 years of record keeping. The warmest was in 2015 and it is worthy to note that year was also during an El Nino event.
I've been tracking rainfall at our house since 2019. A pattern has emerged: every other year shows a deficit vs normal average. 2024, if this pattern holds should show a deficit as well. However, El Nino may change this. The venerated Old Farmer's Almanac predicts a hot and wet summer for us. Stay tuned!
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You can tell heavy Cheeto-eaters by their orange-stained fingers. Like betel nut addicts with their black and red teeth, the blue-eyed Fremen exposed to the spice melange and cranberry-stained lips of the Mentats from Dune.
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Tanzlinden Trees of Germany
The Tanzlinden of Peesten, Germany
From Atlas Obscura: At the center of many German
villages, it used to be common to find a old linden tree with a sturdy
trunk and large, spreading branches. Often, these are called
“Tanzlinden”—dance lindens—and they served as a gathering place and were
frequently the site of celebrations.
Some German villages, though, had dance lindens where people actually danced among the branches.
A true Tanzlinde had a sort of special treehouse built around
its trunk. The branches of the tree were guided horizontally, so that
they could serve as the base of a dance platform. (The branches wouldn’t
hold the entire weight of the platform, though.) The branches might
also be trained to create leafy walls to surround the platform. At
certain festivals, the townspeople would gather on the platform, a band
would play, and they could spend days dancing.
There are few tree-borne dancing platforms left in Germany
today, but in Franconia, there are three Tanzlinden connected by a bike
trail. Limmersdorf’s tree is the oldest; believed to be planted in 1686,
it’s been in continuous use as a dance tree for centuries.
Andreas Zehnsdorf
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Fun geography facts:
-The Amazon River has no bridges that span across the entire width of the river.
-Sri Lanka was connected by a land bridge to the Indian subcontinent until 1480 CE when cyclones washed it away. What remains are a chain of limestone shoals, some sticking above the surface which hinder navigation.
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Sin Eaters-from Wiki:
a person who consumes a ritual meal in order to spiritually take on the
sins of a deceased person. The food was believed to absorb the sins of a
recently dead person, thus absolving the soul
of the person. Sin-eaters, as a consequence, carried the sins of all
people whose sins they had eaten; they were usually feared and shunned.
It is most commonly associated with Scotland, Ireland, Wales and English
counties bordering Wales.
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Epiphany-1/6
Mr. Frazier Fir still looking magnificent. It was my family tradition to leave the tree up to at least Epiphany and we do as well. I will put away the holiday decorations on Monday.
Buddy getting snuggles in front of the fire. His typical routine: hang out with Dad on the couch until Mom comes in after yoga, then get premium belly rubs from her by the hearth
Mr. Red Bird is often our last customer at The Diner-makes sense with his bright plumage, greyed in the falling light-giving him increased security from predators.
Long a fav of mine-idosyncratic, bold and oh, so New York. I first heard this song when it came out sitting at my family's kitchen table. We had a small transistor radio that we listened to especially when Mom was working in the kitchen. This song was so unique compared to what was out there in '72 and the lyrics...certainly caused her to simultaneously raise an eyebrow and smile. I was such an innocent, I don't think I fully grasped the song until I was older.
Holly came from Miami, F.L.A. Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A. Plucked her eyebrows on the way Shaved her legs and then he was a she
She says, "Hey, babe Take a walk on the wild side" Said, "Hey, honey Take a walk on the wild side"
Candy came from out on the Island In the back room she was everybody's darling But she never lost her head Even when she was giving head
She says, "Hey, babe Take a walk on the wild side" Said, "Hey, babe Take a walk on the wild side"
And the colored girls go "Doo do doo do doo do do doo..."
Little Joe never once gave it away Everybody had to pay and pay A hustle here and a hustle there New York City's the place
Where they said, "Hey, babe Take a walk on the wild side" I said, "Hey, Joe Take a walk on the wild side"
Sugar Plum Fairy came and hit the streets Looking for soul food and a place to eat Went to the Apollo You should've seen them go, go, go
They said, "Hey, sugar Take a walk on the wild side" I said, "Hey, babe Take a walk on the wild side", alright Huh
Jackie is just speeding away Thought she was James Dean for a day Then I guess she had to crash Valium would have helped that bash
She said, "Hey, babe Take a walk on the wild side" I said, "Hey, honey Take a walk on the wild side"
And the colored girls say "Doo do doo do doo do do doo..."
Fun fact: The baritone saxophone solo played over the fadeout of the song is performed by Ronnie Ross, who had taught David Bowie to play the saxophone during Bowie's childhood. Bowie helped produce the album "Transformer" that contains this track.
A song from 1970 covered in 1988 by the Cowboy Junkies. While Reed's original and subsequent versions were rockers, I always preferred this one with its softinsinuation of being under the influence. Is Jane a metaphor for a drug or a person? The euphoria of either or both is proclaimed in the soaring fourth verse.
Anyone who's ever had a heart Wouldn't turn around and break it And anyone who's ever played a part Wouldn't turn around and hate it
Sweet Jane, sweet Jane Oh, sweet, sweet Jane
You're waiting for Jimmy down in the alley You were waiting there for him to come back home You're waiting down on the corner And thinking of ways to get back home
Sweet Jane, sweet Jane Ah, sweet, sweet Jane
Anyone who's ever had a dream Anyone who's ever played a part Anyone who's ever been lonely And anyone who's ever split apart
Sweet Jane, sweet Jane Oh, sweet, sweet Jane
Heavenly wine and roses Seem to whisper to me when you smile Heavenly wine and roses Seem to whisper to me when you smile
Happy New Year everyone! We were treated with some light flurries after dark last night and a visit to The Diner by Blossom and a smaller possom-mate, sibling, offspring. I made a simple supper-empanadas with a romesco dipping sauce.
These bad boys turned out well-C's were filled with a chopped mixture of mushrooms, olives, onion, garlic, thyme and cumin; mine had pulled pork (non-BBQ) and onion,garlic, thyme and cumin. The romesco was almond based rather than hazelnut. The empanada dough or discs I bought pre-made Goya brand from a Mexican market and I would recommend going this route rather than making the dough by hand. Cuts an enormous amount of time which helps because filling these is a wee bit tedious-a tablespoon of filling, folding, forking the edges shut, brushing with vegan egg wash. BTW-Just Eggs works very well as a substitute and makes very tasty scrambled eggs, too. The empanadas were filling, full of flavors-something fancy-schmancyish for the holidays.
For a non-alcoholic sub for bubbly, we tried one from Freixenet, a well-known brand from Spain. We were both pleasantly surprised: requisite bubbles and decent crisp wine flavors with a clean finish. I hoped that this old house (since 1861) would do a good job and I was not disappointed. Plus, it made sense to have a Spanish wine considering the meal.
Not only were we celebrating the coming of a new year, we were also observing our first year anniversary with our Buddy.
Such a good boy!
We wish all a happy, healthy New Year and courage in a year that potentially could be monumental for not only our country but the entire world.
