trying to escape, and as you know, this is no world for escapists
The Rabbits Who Caused All the Trouble
Within the memory of the youngest child there was a family of rabbits who lived near a pack of wolves. The wolves announced that they did not like the way the rabbits were living. (The wolves were crazy about the way they themselves were living, because it was the only way to live.) One night several wolves were killed in an earthquake and this was blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that rabbits pound on the ground with their hind legs and cause earthquakes. On another night one of the wolves was killed by a bolt of lightning and this was also blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that lettuce-eaters cause lightning. The wolves threatened to civilize the rabbits if they didn’t behave, and the rabbits decided to run away to a desert island. But the other animals, who lived at a great distance, shamed them, saying, “You must stay where you are and be brave. This is no world for escapists. If the wolves attack you, we will come to your aid, in all probability.” So the rabbits continued to live near the wolves and one day there was a terrible flood which drowned a great many wolves. This was blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that carrot-nibblers with long ears cause floods. The wolves descended on the rabbits, for their own good, and imprisoned them in a dark cave, for their own protection.
When nothing was heard about the rabbits for some weeks, the other animals demanded to know what had happened to them. The wolves replied that the rabbits had been eaten and since they had been eaten the affair was a purely internal matter. But the other animals warned that they might possibly unite against the wolves unless some reason was given for the destruction of the rabbits. So the wolves gave them one. “They were trying to escape,” said the wolves, “and, as you know, this is no world for escapists.”
Moral: Run, don’t walk, to the nearest desert island
By James Thurber as published in The Thurber Carnival, Random House, New York, NY, 1957
to reawaken keep ourselves awake by dawn’s expectations
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do.
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.
Henry David Thoreau in the book, Walden, from the Oxford University Press Edition, Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, 1997.
Nope, not going to tell the joke.
I’ll just tell you the punch line.
“Ralph, what are you doing OUT there?”
The joke is about Ralph Waldo Emerson, another of these three barreled named fellers that populated New England literature, talking to Henry David Thoreau (see) about being in jail.
Most folks, I think, have heard of Thoreau but I am pretty sure they don’t know why anymore.
With a little agitation of folks memories, they might just remember that Thoreau went to jail.
But I am pretty sure they don’t know why.
Back in the day, citizens had to pay a poll tax for the right to vote and whether they voted or not, the tax had to be paid.
At the time the United States of America was at war with Mexico over Texas which, as an independent country was looking to ban slavery so them fellers in the US Government who came from the south and who didn’t want a new, none slave holding country on the border, decided the United States should take Texas in as a State, a slave holding State and to do so, Mexico had to be warred off.
Anyway, Mr. Thoreau was against the war and any war at that, so he refused to pay his poll tax and spent the night in jail.
The people of the town of Concord were pretty upset that such a public defiance was taking place in their town so the folks who had some influence got on the case of Mr. Emerson who was famous for being famous and saying famous things before anyone else said them and Mr. Emerson went down to the jail and asked Mr. Thoreau, “Henry, what are doing in there?”
I have already told you Mr. Thoreau’s response.
It got me to thinking, all these folks with a burr up their butt about something that they don’t like that they US Government has done or is doing.
Well Sir, if they are so mad and so sure of their protest, let them stop paying their taxes.
As Mr. Thoreau might say, “I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. “
Set let them folks make a conscious endeavor to elevate their argument not through news sound bites and social media posts but in defiance of the government by not paying taxes.
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh sure.
Somehow, I don’t think this is what Mr. Thoreau meant when he wrote these thoughts down.
But that is where I am today I guess.
Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
with an intimate protective privacy both cool and sweet-smelling
Attempting, in a recent issue of Mushroom: The Journal of Wild Mushrooming, to explain his compatriots’ obsession with gathering wild mushrooms, Alexander (“Sasha”) Viazmensky tells how, during the peak of the season, Russians drive their cars right off the roads into the forests, in single-minded determination to cover as much ground as possible. This image has its downside—from the perspective of both the ecologist and the foot-borne mushroom gatherer—but from a distance it also has a certain perverse, surrealistic charm: black-beetle Soviet automobiles, like a swarm of 1948 DeSotos, their headlights glowing in the murk, weaving between the tree trunks of a forest that extends as far as the eye can see.
This image also captures something of what the landscape of western Russia is like: immense—and immensely flat. Its forests dwarf the imagination without themselves being all that impressive, for the ground is often damp, the soil poor, and the trees aspen, pine, and birch. They provide the Russian wanderer not with dramatic vistas or a sense of savage charm, but with an intimate, protective privacy — healingly cool and sweet-smelling. Boris Pasternak spoke for all native Russians when he wrote: “Included in the saintly order of pines/We become immortal for a while.”
From Outlaw Cook by John Thorne (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994).
If you have never read a cookbook for the writing instead of the recipes, any of John Thorne’s 4 cookbooks are a great place to start.
The recipes are also worth the time.
Over the years I have formed the theory that a good cookbook needs to have at least one good recipe.
And there are many many bad cook books out there.
Outlaw Cook has at least three recipes that I remember fondly with my stomach.
The Gingerbread Recipe, easy and served warm with ice cream so it melts into the cake is what Gingerbread is supposed to taste like.
The lemon ice cream is so easy and so refreshing you will wonder why you don’t make it every week.
The chocolate cake recipe is so simple.
Its formula is 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 -2 and bake.
1 Box of Chocolate Cake mix/
1 Box of Chocolate Pudding Mix
1 package of Chocolate Chips.
1 16ox tub of Sour Cream
2 Eggs.
Mix.
Pour into bundt pan.
Bake at 350 for a hour, maybe an hour and 10 minutes.
You will never make another chocolate cake.
But you can also make a lemon version by using lemon everything and white chocolate chips.
I invented that.
All three recipes will leave you with an intimate, protective privacy — healingly cool and sweet-smelling.
fresh and fair come back hang over pasture and road lowland grasses rise
From the poem, Uplands as published in Chicago Poems by Carl Sandburg (Henry Holt and Company, 1916).
Wonder as of old things Fresh and fair come back Hangs over pasture and road. Lush in the lowland grasses rise And upland beckons to upland. The great strong hills are humble.
According to National Wildlife Federation Website, The Southern Live Oak “…Unlike most oak trees, which are deciduous, southern live oaks are nearly evergreen. They replace their leaves over a short period of several weeks in the spring.
Southern live oaks are fast-growing trees, but their growth rate slows with age. They may reach close to their maximum trunk diameter within 70 years. The oldest live oaks in the country are estimated to be between several hundred to more than a thousand years old.”
Wonder of old things.
Fresh and fair come back.
You can walk under them in the Spring time and your feet rustle in the fresh fallen leaves of the same Spring time along the Spanish Moss Trail in Beaufort County, South Carolina.
The trail is a rails-to-trails project that follows a track of a small South Carolina Railroad line through the salt marshes and live oaks of the South Carolina Low Country.
complications of envenomization from … a gila monster
I joke that I grew up in a family where I was told that Woody Hayes, the evil football coach at Ohio State, was under my bed and if I got up in the middle of the night, Woody would grab me and take me to Columbus.
That isn’t exactly true.
I was never told anything was under my bed when I was a kid.
I knew.
Gila Monsters were under my bed.
I knew Gila Monsters were under my bed and if I got out, they would get me.
For some reason, when I was growing up, the scariest thing for me in all of nature (after that thing on the wing in the Twilight Zone) were Gila Monsters.
And I have no idea why.
But I have an theory, an idea.
The reason I was scared of Gila Monsters was the TV show, The Wonderful World of Color from Walt Disney Studios.
It was on TV every Sunday night back in the day when 1) church started at 7PM and us little kids got to stay home (there was much politicking amongst my older brothers and sisters to ‘babysit’ and get of going to church) and 2) there were only three TV channels so we always, always watched The Wonderful World of Color.
“Color is on” or “It’s time for color!” we would yell and for the next hour, Mr. Disney would take us all over the world with shows about the Vienna Boys Choir or back in time with Davy Crockett.
One the regular stops would be the Natural World as amateur filmmakers around the world, the people who had the patience to film a prairie dog farm or make stop action films of flowers blooming, would send their film clips to Disney and Disney would crop all these clips together, add music and captivating narration and The Living Desert came to life on our TVs.
A Gila Monster from the actual Living Desert Preview by Disney Studios
One Living Desert episode had a short segment on the Gila Monster and the video was so scary it was burned in my brain.
The even paced, deep narration emphasized the awfulness of the Gila Monster and the terribleness of being bit by one.
I doubt I slept that night as somehow I knew, there were Gila Monsters under my bed.
The were probably every where.
The next day at Crestview Elementary in Grand Rapids, where I went school, what was the major topic of conversation?
Monday morning in the hallways at school, at recess and in class we all talked about Gila Monsters.
Because there were only three channels, everyone in my class watched the same show.
Out on the play ground, We all looked for likely places Gila Monsters could be hiding.
I wouldn’t go in the concrete barrels on the playground for weeks and never ever felt comfortable playing in the sandbox.
Those of us who could talk with authority on the subject (anyone who might have been to the Southwest United States or someone whose Dad might have been the desert) would assert that there was no more terrible way to die than to die from a Gila Monster bite.
These shows would get repeated and the conversations would be repeated and over the years it was Gila Monster dread that kept me from walks in the woods or from turning over rocks.
The funny part is that I don’t know that it was unique to me or my school but, much like Davy Crockett, it may have a national phenomena as Gila Monsters even got featured in a Charlie Brown comic strip in 1966.
Gila Monster Phobia doesn’t turn up in the google but …
Ms. Ortiz writes that: Mr. Ward endured a four-minute-long bite by the lizard to his right hand on the night of Feb. 12, the report said. He lapsed in and out of consciousness for about two hours before seeking medical attention, the report said.
Paramedics found Mr. Ward in a bed, minimally responsive and “in apparent severe distress,” the report said. He was taken to a hospital, where he was put on life support and “continued to decline throughout his hospitalization.”
“Minimally responsive and “in apparent severe distress” sounds pretty bad to me.
“Continued to decline throughout his hospitalization.” sounds even worse.
It was all my nightmares come true.
Then I read:
Kevin Torregrosa, the curator of herpetology at the Bronx Zoo, said that it’s rare to be bitten by a Gila monster and that “it’s also incredibly rare to die from one.”
“This is certainly the first one that I have firsthand knowledge of in my career,” he said on Saturday.
The Associated Press reported that it was believed to be the first death from a Gila monster bite in the United States in almost a century.
It was believed to be the first death from a Gila monster bite in the United States in almost a century.
No Haiku For You 