It was a dreary, wet day. I dumped out all the old seed and filled with new in the feeder. Other treats are raisin cinnamon bread, near empty jar of peanut butter filled with apple butter. Stubbs, Freddie and Big Woody are imbibing. Not shown are the chickadees.
Later, his Lordship stopped by with his holiday greeting. Wary of predators (who wants to be a meal on Jule Eve?), the crowd vanished.
For 10 minutes, the wane sun made an appearance
We dined at quarter past 5. Chicken pot pies with barmbrack (Irish fruit bread) for dessert.
Two chicken pot pies covered with puff pastry and a loaf of barmbrack.
In deep dusk, when shapes are barely recognizable, a strangely colored cat stopped by the Diner, checking out the peanut butter jar. After it left, two does visited the Diner, eating the old sunflower seeds I had put down.
From 2019-a non-Disney animated feature that offers an alternative origin story of Santa Claus. Set in 19th Century Norway, a rich man fed up with his lazy, spoiled son decides to give him one final chance to redeem himself: become the postman for a very Northern community, post 6,000 letters and he will be allowed to come home. Failing this mission, the son will be cut off forever from the family and fortune. It takes the young man some time but he finally figures out that he has been set up: this community is a slum version of Whoville. There is no joy, in fact most of the residents belong to one of two families who have feuded for ages. Acts of violence are commonplace. There is no school for children and hence the set up: most folks are illiterate so not much letter writing goes on. But, the new postman plugs on and one day, deep in the forest, he encounters an old gentleman, a former toymaker...
Despite not coming from the Disney studios, this film bears the hallmarks of one. The characters are theatrically over the top with easily recognizable archetypes, I guess so many age groups can grasp the plot. Probably most dismaying was the inclusion of some broadwayesque pop song number that also serves as a marketing identifier, one of my major pet peeves with this genre. At least they kept this down to the minimum. I can barely watch some films, like Aladdin, Lion King, where every 20 minutes the characters break into some big song and dance routine. Just effin' shoot me. At least it provides me with a break to go get a refill or take a whizz.
Having grinched about this, I can heartedly effuse about the animation: fabulous. Hand-drawn, the colors they used for the early morning, late afternoon scenes of yellow and lavender are just gorgeous and spot on. We enjoyed how the writers wove in all the Santa's tale basics: how he got his sleigh, reindeer, toy making, flying at night to make deliveries etal. There are several references to the Dr. Seuss tale as well. We also enjoyed the unusual inclusion of the Saami, the indigenous, reindeer raising people of the far North of Norway. In the end, it's a proper Christmas story, of redemption (available for all), joy and acts of giving, where gifts are sometimes more than simply an item.
Meet Uroplatus phantasticus, the satanic leaf-tailed gecko, eyelash leaf-tailed gecko or the phantastic leaf-tailed gecko, is a species of gecko indigenous to the island of Madagascar.
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In Southern folklore, a cardinal in the yard is viewed as a dead relative stopping by for a visit.
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The Great Famine in Ireland (1845-52) resulted in at least a million deaths and wholesale emigration. Even today, the population is less than it was before the famine by around 1.8 million people.
Portrait of Bridget O'Donnell and her two children from the Illustrated London News, December 22, 1849.
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I learned a new word: vexillologist-one who undertakes a scholarly investigation of flags. It's only been around since the late '50's. I came across it in an article concerning the new state flag for Minnesota.
The star represents the North Star and refers back to a star on the floor of the State Capitol building as well as the State motto: Star of The North; the dark blue refers to the state's nickname-Land of 10,000 lakes; the light blue represents the Mississippi River whose headwaters begin in the state. Two clever design features: you cannot fly it upside down (a favorite in political discourse as a symbol of dire distress); if you turn it on its side, you have the North Star hovering over the Mississippi.
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On December 11, NASA conducted an experiment. From one of their spacecraft 19 million miles from Earth, they sent a ultra-high definition streaming video. Lasting 15 seconds, it featured Taters, an orange tabby belonging to an art director at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). It was a successful effort, advancing optical communications for future human missions beyond Earth's orbit. Well done Taters!
When
I heard about this, I thought about it being intercepted by some aliens
who think that these creatures are the only inhabitants on the planet. Flash forward to their first visit here, armed with something that projects a light beam that could be used as a communication device or a weapon.
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Meanwhile, I read that cats are banned from Svalbard Island featured in my November 13 post. It is the northernmost human settlement. The reason to protect the unique and fragile Arctic ecosystem. Cats, when introduced to environments where they are not native, can pose a significant threat to local wildlife, namely birds.
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Here's a nugget of knowledge I learned: the campfire classic Kumbaya is a African American spiritual song asking god to Come By Here. The dialect is Gullah, found along the Atlantic seaboard coasts of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. It is a mixture of dialects from plantation owners 18th century English, Scotch and Irish from lower class servants and a variety of African tribal languages.
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Ball and Chain was written in the early '60's by Big Mama Thornton and made famous with Janis Joplin's electrifying rendition at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. In this vid from 1970, Thornton is backed by Buddy Guy's Blues Band. Mercy!
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NASA released this month new photos of Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun. Uranus is unique among the planets for orbiting on its side—with an
axial tilt of about 98 degrees, it hosts the most extreme seasons in our
solar system. When one Uranian pole is facing the sun, the other is
shrouded in a cold, dark, 21-year-long winter.
Uranus and its neighborhood. The planet is looks like Saturn tipped on its side. Depending on our orbits, Uranus is 1.5-2 billion miles from Earth.
Uranus, its rings and moons.
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The curious thing about yeast is that it is yet another living thing our species uses for food.
What we see
At the microscopic level
When the yeast get warm water and some food to eat (in the form of
sugar), they will become active. And as they eat the sugar and break it
down for food, they release carbon dioxide-which helps rise our bread. Yeast is actually a type of fungus related to mushrooms. The type of yeast used for baking is usually Saccharomyces cerevisiae,
but it is one of more than 1,000 species of yeast. Our own bodies
actually have plenty of yeast species that live peacefully alongside
(and inside) us.
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Devo imposters acting out Whip It song to hawk new Doritos dips in which they exhort the public to Dip It. Oi vey!
Here's The Real Thing in it's gloriously surreal splendor.
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All our cats hung out around the tree and Buddy is no exception. I wonder what attracts them? The pine aroma reminds them of the great outdoors?
Not far from my brother’s home in Tucson, AZ is the Winterhaven neighborhood. Over the past 74 years, for two weeks during the Christmas holiday, they host the Winterhaven Festival of Lights. Every night between 6pm-10pm, you can walk or take a hayride through the streets and view the spectacular lights and decorations that homeowners have adorned their properties. Even the mature Aleppo pines are strung with lights. Aside from the wagon rides, no vehicle traffic is allowed. One parks in adjacent neighborhoods and hikes in. It is truly a festive event.
Not everyone in the neighborhood is enamored with the event. It’s curious to see, amongst the house after house fully decked out, there is a dark house unadorned. Perhaps they go elsewhere for the holidays. Or maybe, there lives The Holiday Curmudgeon. Invariably an old boy who does not interact with his neighbors and has no family other than his ever-suffering pooch. He loathes this time of year especially all the commotion. “And then! Oh, the noise! Oh, the noise! Noise! Noise! Noise! There’s one thing I hate! All the NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!” he growls at his dog quoting a famous grinch. He is quite thankful for his headphones to watch YouTube in his drape-darkened study and eat his Stouffer’s pot pie in peace.
One of the most charming part of Winterhaven is the Wishing Tree. In 2000, a 7th grader resident was given a homework assignment: are people as materialistic and self-absorbed as the press implies? The family had a large tree in their front yard so the family devised a plan-have strips of paper available for folks to write their wishes and these strips would be looped together and dangled from the tree. The first year brought over 2000 wishes with 73% wishing for others more than themselves. The top five wishes were peace, love, happiness, health and to have a merry Christmas. They now average 18,000 wishes per year.
My first experience was during their early years. I was spending the holidays with my family (my parents lived in Tucson as well at the time) following the death of my first wife. No one had mentioned the tree, I had simply come across it while walking the neighborhood. Near the tree was a young man in formal attire playing Bach on a cello, his top hat on the ground for tips. I wrote a wish and added it to the chain. A zephyr stirred the linked papers, sending the wishes skyward. Sometimes wishes come true-mine did seven years later.
I was walking the property today when I came across this:
The warm weather has inspired one of the young forsythias to bloom. Certainly a sign of the El Nino winter as well as the overall warming. As I posted earlier, we are now in zone 6a on the USDA plant hardiness map. Will this become the new holiday symbol? The Solstice/Christmas etal forsythia?
Happy Solstice to all-we're on the road to Spring!
12/18-Snow! Started in the morning and continued on and off all day.
The next morning was frosty:
Later in the day, the Redbirds came to the Diner:
In
the past couple of months, I have seen a second male join Mr & Mrs.
Not sure if it's a child or sibling. Here, he is going on tip toes
stretching to get some premium seed!
12/20-sunny and cold-snow nearly gone. Turkey Bros visited the Diner:
DHS kept an eye on them-thankfully at a discreet distance.
I was watching a doc on the Soviet program sending landers to Venus. A very tough planet to explore, it is shrouded in a nasty, dense atmosphere of nearly all carbon dioxide, making visuals impossible. Eventually, radars helped map out the surface. Trying to get a vehicle on the surface is just as hard-surface temps average nearly 900° F and the atmospheric pressure is roughly equivalent to that found at 3,000 feet underwater on Earth. Basically, if the vehicle doesn't melt first, it's crushed. The Soviets learned from their failures and built landers to somewhat survive for a bit of time. In 1982, Venera 13 managed to hang on for 127 minutes, long enough to send back color photographs of the Venusian surface.
There was a section featuring the first recording of sound from another planet. At that precise moment, the doc was interrupted by a Taco Bell commercial! You bastards! What one heard after recovering from the overly loud exhortations to eat lousy "mexican" food, was a slight whisper of wind. Kinda ruined the moment.
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Since 2013 when it landed, American Mars Rover Curiosity has been exploring the three mile high Mt. Sharp, located within the 96 mile wide Gale Crater. Such dogged devotion to the task at hand-10 years climbing the same mountain!
Curiosity selfie courtesy NASA
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Objects in our solar system shown in size comparison:
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A show on Prime offered a chance to buy an entire season. I clicked on buy and was met with this message:
PURCHASE SUCCESSFUL
Your will shall decide your destiny
Hmm I thought this is weird. Are the Prime AIs getting philosophical or does it have to do with what I just purchased?
So, I googled the phrase. What I bought was the newer version of Anne of Green Gables titled Anne with an E. Turns out that phrase is a tagline for the series AND a quote from Jane Eyre, another famous orphan. Natch. Still, curiously clever of the programmers to do this.
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Bud snoozing in his blue basket in the closet in my study. He will often come and hang out when I am working on the blog, reading the newspapers or after Mom shagged him off her lap because her legs had numbed. The basket used to be Molls' and evidently, her faint scent did not deter Buddy. It's about a size too small for him-he really has to curl up to fit. Typical of cats, he needs the door open to keep his eye on things to feel secure plus the added bonus of being amongst Dad's clothes containing his scent.
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Buddy has been a real LuvBud this past week with both of us. Perhaps when he saw the tree, it marked some passage of time, reminding him of his first days with us last year. Counting his blessings, these affectionate displays of being close to us are his way of saying thanks.
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Simon Tofield
When you said you were going to be busy for a bit but would feed me, I didn't expect that feeding me came after rinsing out the soup tins.
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Title misread: How to survive a tornado in shorts.
Huh? Oh, that's #shorts! Gotcha!
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Talking Heads from 1988-ironic, witty and in some ways, a cautionary flip side of Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi. Be careful for what you ask for, warns the narrator-there can be unexpected consequences. He is pretty bummed, it turns out-happy (I guess) that the environment is healthier yet sick of eating nuts and berries, yearning for a Big Mac meal.
Here we stand
Like an Adam and an Eve
Waterfalls
The Garden of Eden
Two fools in love
So beautiful and strong
The birds in the trees
Are smiling upon them
From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline
Where, where have they gone?
Now, it's nothing but flowers
There was a factory
Now there are mountains and rivers
You got it, you got it
We caught a rattlesnake
Now we got something for dinner
We got it, we got it
There was a shopping mall
Now it's all covered with flowers
You've got it, you've got it
If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower
You've got it, you've got it
Years ago
I was an angry young man
And I'd pretend
That I was a billboard
Standing tall
By the side of the road
I fell in love
With a beautiful highway
This used to be real estate
Now it's only fields and trees
Where, where is the town
Now, it's nothing but flowers
The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we'd start over
But I guess I was wrong
Once there were parking lots
Now it's a peaceful oasis
You've got it, you've got it
This was a Pizza Hut
Now it's all covered with daisies
You got it, you got it
I miss the honky tonks,
Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens
You got it, you got it
And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
You got it, you got it
I dream of cherry pies,
Candy bars, and chocolate chip cookies
You got it, you got it
We used to microwave
Now we just eat nuts and berries
You got it, you got it
This was a discount store,
Now it's turned into a cornfield
You've got it, you've got it
Don't leave me stranded here
I can't get used to this lifestyle
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Still from The Specials vid Ghost Town 1981
Buzzed, driving around town late at night with yur buds. One has his head out the window.
