From
1964, "We'll Sing in the Sunshine" written and sung by Canadian Gale
Garnett. She won the 1965 Grammy for Best Folk recording. The story
line is unusual for its time-practically proto-feminist-a woman choosing
who she will spend time with, who she will love. She warmly explains the situation and either the man accepts or doesn't-no skin off her teeth. Curiously, she is following the advice of her Daddy-was he being overly protective towards his daughter or suggesting a realistic alternative?
We'll sing in the sunshine We'll laugh every day We'll sing in the sunshine And I'll be on my way
I will never love you The cost of love's too dear But though I'll never love you I'll stay with you one year
And we will sing in the sunshine We'll laugh every day We'll sing in the sunshine And I'll be on my way
I'll sing to you each morning I'll kiss you every night But darlin', don't cling to me I'll soon be out of sight
But we can sing in the sunshine We'll laugh every day We'll sing in the sunshine And I'll be on my way
My daddy he once told me Hey, don't you love you any man Just take what they can give you And give but what you can
And you can sing in the sunshine We'll laugh every day We'll sing in the sunshine And you'll be on your way
And when our year has ended And I have gone away You'll often speak about you And this is what you'll say
We sang in the sunshine You know we laughed every day We sang in the sunshine Then you went on you way
A year later in 1965, came this fine example of teen angst by the Shangri-Las reflecting the attitudes of the times. Bad girl, ran away from home to be with some guy and broke her mama's heart. That's the price of sin, girl! The type of thing the current Christian mullahs would applaud and are working hard for the country to go back to.
I'm gonna hide If she don't leave me alone I'm gonna run away (don't) 'Cause you can never go home anymore
Listen Does this sound familiar? You wake up every morning Go to school every day Spend your nights on the corner Just passing time away Your life is so lonely Like a child without a toy Then a miracle, a boy And that's called "glad"
Now my mom is a good mom And she loves me with all her heart But she said I was too young to be in love And the boy and I would have to part And no matter how I ranted and raved I screamed, I pleaded, I cried She told me, it was not really love But only my girlish pride And that's called "bad" (Never go home anymore)
Now if that's happened to you, don't let this I packed my clothes and left home that night Though she begged me to stay I was sure I was right And you know something funny? I forgot that boy right away Instead I remember being tucked in bed And hearing my mama say (Hush, little baby, don't you cry) (Mama won't go away)
Mama! (And you can never go home anymore) Mama! No, I can never go home anymore
Do you ever get that feeling? You wanna kiss and hug her? Do it now, tell her you love her Don't do to your mom what I did to mine She grew so lonely and in the end Angels picked her for a friend (never) And I can never go home (never) anymore And that's called "sad"
After the Equinox snow, we had typical post-storm weather-chilly, but bright and sunny:
At the Diner, Big Woody and Stubbs:
Nutkin stopped by for a face full of snow looking for seeds:
By the following Monday, the snow was gone.
3/26: a blustery day with rain showers, high winds and threats of t-storms that did not materialize. Temps were in the lo-60's until the front with storms moved through and dropped nearly ten degrees. Once the rain stopped, his Lordship went outside to survey his realm.
3/26-27-I noticed that another pair of Sand Hills were grazing in the Farm Bureau field. Same pair from a few weeks ago or perhaps the pair from past years? They grazed for hours both days making me think that they had recently arrived after a long flight. I haven't seen them since.
3/28-Beautiful sunny day with temps in the low 40's. For the first time saw a goldfinch at the feeder. Some from MI stay, others head South. He looks to be in the middle of molting.
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3/27: Punxsutawney Groundhog Club Inner Circle of Pennsylvania announced that Phil and his partner Phyllis are proud parents of two little ones. These are the first babies the club has had in over a century. In fact, they had not realized Phyllis was preggers! Congrats to all!
The new parents in their digs located in the zoo at the Punxsutawney Memorial Library
3/29: Beautiful yet chilly day
Mr. Bun doing some preening
Mr. & Mrs. Goldfinch enjoying Mr. Birch's seed pods, the most recent seasonal menu item at the Diner
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C has always sung to her cats and Buddy is no exception. The other night, she was in the kitchen and Bud came in from patrol and was waiting patiently by his food dish for service. She created new lyrics to "Please Mr. Postman" substituting waiting for a letter with waiting for pate. This segued into an adaptation of Oklahoma's Ado Annie's lament to "I'm A Cat Who Cain't Say No" (to pate). The lad loves his grub and his mum.
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It's mating season for brown hares in the UK and many lads are jousting for their lady's honour:
Adam Olliver
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The collective noun for a gathering of flamingos is "flamboyance".
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Holy Week in Spain features Catholic religious brotherhoods and fraternities performing penance processions on the streets of nearly every Spanish town and city during this time immediately before Easter. These displays have their origins in the Middle Ages although most date to the 17th-18th Century. In some towns, the parade is loud and glamorous with music, drumming, statues and crosses while others are silent, sombre and solemn.
For many Americans, the sight of these robes and hats immediately remind us of our native Ku Klux Klan, an organization associated with violence, racism, hatred and ironically, virulently anti-Catholic.
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Fun name for casserole: rumbledethumps. This is comfort food from Scotland-a mixture of cabbage, onion, potatoes, butter and cheese. A close relative of English bubble and squeak and Irish colcannon.
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Classic Rodney Dangerfield joke:
I went to a place that said it was topless and bottomless but when I got inside, no one was there.
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As seen on TV: a toenail fungus cure claiming to be a biblical remedy. Oy.
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Disturbing critters:
Horned lizard who shoots toxic blood from its eyeballs
Star-nosed mole
Cyclops camel and goat
World's largest crocodile in captivity. From Australia, meet Cassius-estimated to be 111 years old, 18 feet long and 2200 pounds.
Caters News Agency
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Who doesn't like belly rubs?: A diver was cleaning the viewing glass in an aquarium believed to be in France. A zebra shark cozied up and asked for a belly rub. The diver complied (one usually does with sharks). I thought I'd make a silly meme out of the encounter.
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Drone footage from the Maldives captures image of man on paddleboard with large manta ray.
Ishan
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A cattle rancher in NC trained horse to protect him from Mama cow when he needs to tend to calf. Otherwise, Mama would continually charge him. Good boy!
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Roy R. Funch
Researchers have discovered a gigantic complex of 200 million regularly spaced termite mounds in northeastern Brazil, which may be up to 4,000 years old and covers an area about the size of Great Britain.
It is described as “the greatest known example of ecosystem engineering by a single insect species”. Stephen Martin of the University of Salford in the U.K. is a co-author of the study wrote "It’s incredible that, in this day and age, you can find
an ‘unknown’ biological wonder of this sheer size and age still
existing, with the occupants still present"
While people living in the region knew of the termite mounds, few
outsiders did. The expanse of the construction was hidden by scrubby
forest known as caatinga unique to that part of Brazil. They’d only really come into view by “outsiders,” including scientists,
when some of the lands were cleared for pasture in recent decades.
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This is the Airbus A300 nicknamed Beluga, a specialized wide-bodied aircraft used to transport aircraft parts and outsized cargo. It was first flown in 1995 and replaced in the 2010's with a larger successor. Odd looking aircraft.
Head on view
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Meet Mr. Andean Cock-of-the-Rock, aka Tunki, the national bird of Peru.
David Monroy Rengifo
Snazzy dresser! Hey ladies!
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A meme from China although some linguistic sites think it began with someone starting out in English then attempted to back-translate into Chinese with disastrous results as the Chinese here is untranslatable. Regardless, it's a charming idea.
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I noticed that our crab apple tree has been picked clean in the past month. Must be those hungry, hungry robins.
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The 2011 Smithville MS EF5 tornado packing 205+mph winds created astonishing damage. Here, the winds lifted a roof up, sucked out the curtains then dropped the roof back down leaving the fabric flapping in the breeze.
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Roach merch: available now! The god bless the usa bible with handwritten chorus to the Lee Greenwood song and his signature! Only $59.99! The perfect Easter gift! Operators are standing by, suckers!
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Highway in Dubai after sandstorm.
Irenaeus Herok
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The Falkirk Wheel: opened in 2002, this is a world's only rotating boat lift in Tamfourhill, Falkirk, central Scotland. It connects the Forth & Clyde Canal with the Union Canal, replacing the original 11 locks at the canal junctions.
Sean Mack
Time lapse showing how it works.
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Feats of strength! 250+ Amish men and others pick up barn and move it!
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The Kuiper Belt is a doughnut-shaped region of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. NASA launched New Horizons in 2006 and became the first spacecraft to explore Pluto up close, flying by the dwarf
planet and its moons in 2015. After a nine-year journey, New Horizons
also passed its second major science target, reaching the Kuiper Belt
object Arrokoth in 2019, the most distant object ever explored up close.
Composite photo from data from New Horizons. NASA/JPL
Arrokoth is a word that means "sky" in the Powhatan/Algonquian language.
STM Kargu is a small portable rotary wing loitering munition produced in Turkey by STM
(Savunma Teknolojileri Mühendislik ve Ticaret A.Ş.) that has been designed for asymmetric warfare or counter-insurgency.
It can be carried by a single personnel in both autonomous and manual
modes. KARGU can be effectively used against static or moving targets
through its real-time image processing
capabilities and machine learning algorithms embedded on the platform.
The system consists of the rotary wing attack drone and ground control
unit.
In 2020 a Kargu 2 Drone hunted down and attacked a human target in Libya,
according to a report from the UN Security Council’s Panel of Experts
on Libya, published in March 2021. This may have been the first time an autonomous killer robot
armed with lethal weaponry attacked human beings. The capability of
Kargu 2 to attack targets autonomously has however never been
demonstrated by the company. Commercials demonstrating Kargu 2's
capabilities have shown a human operator selecting the targets and
engaging the attack mode, while the drone is only responsible to perform
the attack dive on the pre-selected target.
Even if Turkey and STM deny what happened in 2020, what is clear is the potential capability of such systems which of course, Ai industry will try and improve upon.
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A mermaid motif railing in the village of Portmeirion (see 3/17 post) came from a Sailor's Home in Liverpool, England. Curious, this connection between human and myth, that for such men, away from land for extended periods of time, a proxy female was created. In some cultures, the mermaid signifies life and fertility within the
ocean. In others, she embodies the destructive nature of the water,
luring sailors to their deaths — serving as an omen for storms, unruly
seas and disaster.
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The other day, I was watching a creature feature "It Came From Under The Sea" from 1955. Ray Harryhausen created the creature special effects using his stop motion model animation which became quite famous in movies such at Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Clash of the Titans (1981).
Now, this was produced by Sam Katzman who specialized in super low budget films with a wide range of content including serials, monster flicks, westerns and teen-orientated featuring crime and rock n' roll. What I found curious were some of the messaging in this film.
The female lead is a whip-smart Harvard Professor who is acknowledged to be one of the major authorities in Marine Biology. Clearly an ambitious, career-minder woman, she hits a giant wall of male chauvinism with the military liaison officer. Modern audiences would be aghast at his egregious sexual harassment yet the professor doesn't always roll over. Throughout the film, she makes rather subversive (for the times) statements: she is anti-draft (the Korean War is still quite fresh in American minds); anti-nukes specifically H-bomb tests in the Pacific (these tests created the monster) as well as environmental concerns; her older mentor lectures the officer on how smart women are and how he has mistreated the professor-she then steps up and lists his crimes against her. At least the officer takes it with some grace. Sadly, the progressive thrust is almost nearly cancelled, for within a minute of her scolding, the creature makes an appearance and she is screaming her head off and clinging to the menfolk.
Considering the teen target audience, all this makes for a subversive, leftist, anti-patriarchal thrust that is mind-blowing for the times and it is amazing it got past the censors. After all, while this is just after the McCarthy era, Hollywood blacklists were building strength. In the end, the producers covered their ass-the prof ends up marrying the officer.
One of my takeaways is to reflect on how slow cultural change can take. This film was made nearly 70 years ago-a long time for the living-but a blink in the expanse of history. What our heroine experiences both personally and professionally is still prevalent today.
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Modern life: finding one of those "do not eat" packets inserted with something I intend to eat.
A provider's patient portal doesn't work very well and staff is too busy to monitor thus frustrating the ability for a patient to communicate with provider.
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Quintessential Red Green opening-Red resolves a laziness issue concerning picking up fallen apples in his orchard by duct taping a jai lai scoop to his car tire. Drive over apples which are flung at high speed outta sight, outta mind.
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We are all related: the genetic difference between human to human, no matter race or ethnicity, is only 0.1%.
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Click to enlarge
Still from David Breashears film Storm Over Everest, documenting the 1996 disaster in which 8 climbers perished. He died on March 14, 2024.
Depicted is the start of the final push for the summit that began 11 pm-Midnight. The goal was to summit around 1pm and return. A traffic jam due to the exhaustive effects of high altitude on the human body set back the timetable by at least 2 hours. A violent, rapidly forming storm with 80 mph winds and snow caught them in the open on the return trek resulting death for some and severe frostbite for others.
While some were able to hunker down in a group, one man made it to the final base camp tents by himself. Exhausted by climbing for 12 hours but managing to find the tents in very low visibility, the man then was confronted by the sheer loneliness of his plight. Alone, with his senses obliterated by the roar of howling wind, he felt his body being pushed around within the confines of the tent. He recounts that this was the most terrifying moment of his life. It is no wonder that the sherpas have folktales about mountain gods who seem capricious and deadly.
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3/22-early Spring snow-we got around 3" of v wet snow. Temps hovering around freezing. It has snowed all day.
Buddy went out for a few minutes. He ignored the paths I cleared for him and went into the snow instead. No prissy paws today! But of course, this meant he would get toweled and treated when he came in. His mama didn't raise no fool.
Old Man Winter showing that he still has strength. He did a similar thing last year around 3/18.
Uluru is a large sandstone monolith located near the center of Australia. It is the world's largest single rock. Its stats:
500 million years old; 2.2 miles long, 1.2 miles wide, 5.8 miles around base, extends an estimated 1.5 miles into the ground. It rises 1141 feet about the surrounding area, 2831 feet above sea level.
Its mass attracts thunderstorms and the resulting rainfall creates a unique ecosystem around the rock.
Humans have been in Australia for 50,000-65,000 years. It has been estimated that they have lived in the area for 10,000. Uluru holds great cultural significance for the Aṉangu people, the traditional inhabitants of the area. Their creation story holds that Earth began as a flat, featureless place and out of the earth arose beings with the ability to move between human and animal form. As they traveled through the world, they created everything we see today. This period of creation is called by the Aṉangu as "the time of dreaming" and they believe that their land is still inhabited by the spirits of dozens of these ancestral creator beings.
Europeans first sighted Uluru in 1873 during a surveying mission and was named Ayers rock in in honor of the Chief Secretary of South Australia Sir Henry Ayers. In 1985, the Australian government returned ownership of
Uluru to the local people, with a condition that the
Aṉangu would lease it back to the National Parks and Wildlife agency for
99 years and that it would be jointly managed. In 1993, the government agreed to a dual name Ayers Rock/Uluru but reversed the order in 2002 to Uluru/Ayers Rock. Uluru became a UNESCO world heritage site in 1987.
The first day of astronomical Spring arrives cold (30°) with a bitter wind. We're in a wintry pattern for a few days with rumors of nighttime lows flirting with the teens.
Yesterday we had on and off snow showers that melted by the afternoon. There were a couple of graupel showers and the landscape looked covered by small styrofoam pellets:
What is graupel?
Have a good Spring and let's hope it warms up soon.
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