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| Mr. Red Bird feeding his mate out back. Aww, good lad! |
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| From The Guardian, photography took portrait of a squirrel who came up on his bench, stole a brownie out of his pack and proceeded to enjoyed it in front of him. Cheeky! |
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| Our Rolla on a very wet day. |
After she left her husband, she stayed at her sister's while they were on vacation. She fasted and found particular refuge sitting and staring at one of their roses bushes in a sunny section in the backyard. She saw visions and heard voices as she focused upon the rose's thorns and HIS suffering merged with her own as she processed years of abuse.
One never knew how the night would go at the restaurant when the chef turned up high.
The wind was feeling needy so he blew and blew in order to get attention.
They had taken magic mushrooms while in college. Roberto remarked to a mutual friend: "it was really windy out yesterday. Raoul must have been going crazy."
Editor's note: items one and four are factual.
About 3 years ago, Mr Maple had a severe vertical split on his main trunk. In an attempt to save him, I began to wrap the wound with weed block fabric to help keep out insects and try to hold him together. Each Spring, I would change the wrap. This year, to my great surprise, pleasure and relief, I discovered he had sealed his wound. For an explanation of how trees treat wounds, here is an extract from a Northern Woodlands Magazine article by Michael Snyder:
In order to survive, trees must overcome their injuries. But technically they don’t heal their wounds, at least not the way that human and animal bodies repair, restore, or replace damaged cells or tissue. Trees are built in layers of cells that are bound by rigid walls in a modular, compartmented way. This structure dictates their wound response.
During each annual growth period, trees build their trunks and branches outward from a layer of actively dividing cells. Increments of new wood are added in a cone shape, enveloping the previous year’s smaller, cone-shaped increment. Picture stacked traffic pylons. Thus, trees grow ever upward and outward, in front of themselves, both in length and in girth.
When a cell is damaged, a tree cannot go back and fix or replace it. But it can limit the damage from any given injury by containing it and excommunicating it from the rest of the still-growing tree. The trick is in sealing, not healing. The focus is on resisting the spread of damage – especially infections of bacteria and fungi and the decay they cause – by isolating the wound and then growing beyond it.
Trees close wounds in two separate processes that create both chemical and physical boundaries around the damaged cells. First, they produce what is sometimes called a reaction zone, altering the chemistry of the existing wood surrounding a wound and making it inhospitable to decay organisms. Then, they build a barrier zone to compartmentalize the injured tissue with new tissue called “callus” or “wound wood” growing outward. If all goes according to plan, the callus growth covers and seals the wound and allows new uncontaminated wood to grow over and beyond it.
They were sold out of a little roadside diner owned by Miss Jackson's aunt and was blessed with plenty of parking off a paved road. Miss Jackson grew up a few miles away on a sharecropper's plot and orchard. She learned cooking from her aunt as her mother had passed when she was 8. Her father never was part of her life.
She was a quiet yet easy-going girl and her aunt soon recognized that Miss Jackson had a special talent for making pies. What started as helping out family in their business became a full-time job. Miss Jackson never did anything else. There was a brief marriage, she had fallen for a local fellow and they were deeply in love. But, it did not last. They both wanted children but all attempts ended in miscarriage. After the third one, the doctors told her that she would never produce a child. This news ended the marriage as the most prominent goal of her husband as a man, was to produce offspring, especially a male, to carry on the family name. He loved her but he had to have his needs met and left her. It broke her heart and she never remarried and for the rest of her life she was known as Miss Jackson.
Her pies became famous and she made them for 64 years. Folks of all kinds came from all over to sample a slice. Even the most hardcore racists could not resist. They would slink in, eyes averted in shame, feeling the hard stares that met them, murmuring their order. Miss Jackson never gave them a cross word or look as she took their order at the counter and while her usual smile was present, her eyes betrayed a momentary hardness in recognition of these people who had mistreated hers for generations.
Miss Jackson died at age 84 having spent her life making pies. The pies were her creations, her children, that she lovingly made by hand, nourishing her community by giving them, no matter how hard times were, a few moments of earthly bliss.
She continued making pies in heaven where contrary to uninformed ideas, those denizens could retain corporeal form and enjoy food and drink. It was A and D day, short for Angels and Deities. A large pavilion had been set up and the angels, with their wings politely tucked in, sat at long tables enjoying a slice of pie. All wore sunglasses since ole Yahweh, in his shining brilliance had stopped by for a slice and wandered back to his office. Miss Jackson leaned against a pillar, eating a slice, listening to one of her favorite sounds, the clacking of silverware on plates and the contented sighs. Jesus, with his sunglasses on his forehead, walked up to her after finishing his slice to thank her for her efforts as He was endlessly thoughtful and polite. "Oh baby" Miss Jackson replied, motioning to her face, "you have crumbs on your beard." Jesus laughed, his brown eyes radiant, brushed them away. "Perhaps I was saving them for later" he replied with a wink.
Pawel Kuczynski is a Polish graphic artist whose work is often featured on the cover of wprost (Directly), a Polish language weekly news magazine founded in 1982.
April 9
March 11
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| March 5 "Crown" | |
Northern star, aurora borealis
Paint the night with your ethereal glow
Pure sky, divine radiance
Silent magic, glinting softly
Clarity
Come and encompass me, oh
Clarity
It's springtime in this winter of blueness
The night sky is brightened by your light
Pink and violet emanations
Perfectly clear, rays that heal
It's springtime in this winter of blueness
The night sky is brightened by your light
Pink and violet emanations
Perfectly clear, rays that heal
Clarity
Come and encompass me, oh
Clarity
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| Joana Choumali "The Return of the Swallows" 2021 mixed media |
From her latest exhibition, this Ivory Coast artist journals her grief after her mother passed from COVID. The children here are wearing white, symbolizing mourning in their culture. The swallows, returning in Spring, a sign of new beginnings.
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| Cover of the gold record with playback instructions | |
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| $9.95 |
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| Cat butt magnets-6 pack- $12.99 |
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| Aaron Smith |
When April began to paint the sky?
From "The Blue Jay"
by Susan Hartley Swett
1860-1907
This morning:
Yesterday, C received one of those FB memory things on her feed from a year ago. It was a photo of her next to a magnolia tree in back of Bessey Hall holding a bloom. One year ago at this very time. Damn mother nature person!*
*another translation gem I came across on YouTube.
Meanwhile, over the past weekend:
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| Frank Lukasseck |
With mammals, the number of nipples for Moms generally correspond to the average size of litters topping out at the maximum under normal circumstances. For humans the average is one child with a max of two. Naturally occurring triplets are relatively rare at 1 in 10,000 pregnancies. Nipples are generally in even numbers except for Mom possums who have 13: 12 in a circle with one in the middle. Possums can give birth to litters as large as 20 but unless the bee-sized babies manage to latch on to a teat, they will be lost.
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| Joseph Lister |
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| James Garfield |
On July 2, 1881, President James Garfield was shot twice at a Washington, DC railway station by Charles Guiteau who had hoped to gain federal office but was deemed unqualified.
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| Charles Guiteau |
Sure enough, the digital exam of Garfield's wound introduced bacteria which became septic and finally, 80 days later, killed him.
Guiteau, a lawyer, mounted a novel defense in part stating that he didn't kill the President, the doctors did. He was executed the following year.
It took another decade and linkage to the discoveries of Louis Pasteur for Lister's methods to be embraced and used in Western medicine.
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| A former resident | |
A few weeks ago, we saw Chuck around his usual Apartment 1 and a few days later, nosing around the raised beds with a smaller Chuck which could have been child or wifey. We weren't thrilled to see them as Chuck can be quite destructive and will result in his trapping and relocation. We haven't seen either since and caused us to wonder where they went. Well, our question has been answered.
It was discovered that a message was claw-scratched into the wood skids that form the walls of the apartment. It warns other Chucks who are looking for a home:
DON'T STAY HERE
OUR KIND ARE NOT WELCOME
HOOMAN WILL TRAP AND DEPORT
We'd like to thank Molls for this discovery and translation. Our little Grey, upon hearing our discussion, fearlessly entered Apartment 1, saw the message and related it to us. As Bin pointed out, all other species on the planet understand one another except for us. We're just a bunch of dummies.
We'll see if this deterrent works in the future.
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| David Hockney "Arrival of Spring" 2011 |
I'm so looking forward to this! (click for larger, glorious view)
She didn't mind his drinking for she drank as well. What angered and hurt her were his continuing infidelities. Enraged and spiteful, she began waiting until he got home and passed out before going into the bathroom to pee on his toothbrush.
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In his obit, the family left little doubt about what happened to their 16 year old son when they wrote that he "decided to leave this life way too soon."
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A wife overheard: My husband is like
Amazon-I write down a request for something on the frig white board and
within a day or so, it magically appears.
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Found at a garage sale: a pair of baby shoes with note "brand new, never worn."
Editors note: all stories here are factual.
What a surprise yesterday to see this guy in the birch! I saw one early in the year. They are quite prevalent in East Lansing and on campus. I see them on the Lansing East Side and occasionally on the West Side. We've seen them probably 3-4 times in the past 10 years we have lived here. But never in the birch. Of course, he/she gave a shot at shimmying down the feeder wire but was unsuccessful. We're wondering how Rolla and Co will react.
Having cut cable 15 years ago, I have been blissfully ignorant (for the most part) of changes in TV advertisement. Now, many YouTube pieces have ads and it seems they have broken the taboo about using the F bomb. While not coming out and actually using the dreaded word, there can be no doubt what they allude to.
Sigh. But as C points out, the F-bomb is practically everywhere. After all, our last First Lady declared in a secretly taped conversation: “You know, who gives a fuck about Christmas stuff and decoration?”. Awww, poor baby.
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| My favorite vase from childhood. It's actually a pitcher but my mother used it for flowers. On the front, there is a relief of a Viking ship which sent me researching Vikings, ships, history. | |
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| Last weekend's snow. | |
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| After the snow melted, a pond in the Back 40. |
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| Christopher Griffin | |
Since then, the homeowner had been in a lengthy battle with the city which wanted to remove it. His son said his father built the shark without permission partially as a protest against the city dictating what art the public should see. Now, the city has given the shark protected status in a move ignoring the message of it's late creator.
The genesis of the project came when one night Mr. Heine was awakened by American warplanes flying over his house. The next morning, he learned that they were on their way to bomb Tripoli in retaliation against the Libyans who were sponsoring terrorists attacks on American troops.
Mr. Heine's son said that with this anti-war, anti-nuclear protest, his father wanted to give the viewers an idea of the shock when a bomb smashes into their house.
