Winter’s First Green is Gold

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”

My daffodils are sticking their heads up, the ones in full sun are ahead of the ones on the shady side–I hope the predicted snow doesn’t kill them off. The crocuses have also gotten themselves in gear–but I think the squirrels ate most of them.

I was out on Chagrin River Road yesterday. That’s one of my favourite drives, particularly when there are no speeding morons on the road. Ohio is showing the effects of a lack of large predators. I saw many groups of whitetail deer, numbering in total about 17. There was also a large group of wild turkeys. I don’t drive on that road as often as I used to, but twenty years ago I never saw deer in those quantities and never saw turkeys at all.

The spring peepers were quite vocal, too. This is some of the best time of year, as the leaves aren’t out yet, just in the buds, so you can still see the bones of the land, and you can see the animals and birds.

My Lights Are On

I’m a big believer in technology. Today is “Earth Hour” when one is supposed (I don’t know who came up with this idea) to turn off the lights to raise people’s consiousness about global warming. This is like a blast from the past for me. My college was very big on events to raise consiousness, but light on actually DOING anything. The event I remember the most was a protest in front of Burger King because Burger King bought environmentally unfriendly fish (or the Exxon Valdez, I forget which) and the protesters bought their lunches at Burger King.

I’ll bet they all got sneezeburgers, but it perfectly illustrated the point. I encourage mindfulness and stewardship. I pour scorn on, as a local philosopher said “I really fucking hate sanctimonious do-nothing “I CAAAAAAAARE” stunts designed to stroke egos without actually accomplishing anything or requiring effort.”

I’m also in love with LabRat.

Sappy Cat Blogging

Murphy the Great

LabRat Believes

Sometimes I wonder why I bother to blog at all. Go READ:

Diversity

Hat tip, Brigid.

(The longer I think about politics, diverse it gets)

He’s Right

Carteach is.  Key graphs:

I think blogging is doing more to connect an interrelated world than anything else ever did. Millions of people have learned to write… to create images… and to communicate in ways never before seen. It’s pulling the whole world together, slowly, and in ways that must deeply concern those who thrive on conflict and secrecy.

Witness the way Christopher Dodd is having his whole political career reexamined in light of his personal involvement in every recent financial debacle. Look too how the great Barry O can’t manage to hide a single mistake he makes, even with the press in the tank for him.

With the internet, and blogging, people can TALK to each other… a LOT of people…. EVERY where . That’s an amazing change from ages past. It’s an incredible good for the people, and an insidious threat to politicians and authority. For them, it must seem like being a cockroach in a gymnasium full of people armed with flashlights and long sticks.

Smart people with the ability to communicate. It’s a wonderful thing. When time was, the ability to read could get you out of jail (Benefit of the Clergy). The printing press, literacy, and the ability to read have done more to de-centralize power than people realize (Bibles written in the language of the people were a tremendous affront against the established power structure)

Funny thing is, I tremendously enjoyed Between Silk and Cyanide, a memoir of a WWII code maker. All the difficulties in communicating between Occupied Europe and London. Now, the average person has better communications and better communications security than governments did in the 1940’s.

In Which I Get a Get Well Card

Digger

A wombat, a dead god, a most peculiar epic.  Digger.  LabRat at Atomic Nerds introduced me to this webcomic.  It’s worth a look, and a place in the time-wasters.  Gee, thanks a bunch, LabRat, it wasn’t like I had anything better to do…

1,000

XCKD is bang on, as per usual.  Or, if you want it musically, here’s a blast from PBS in the nineties: with One Million is Big, One Billion is Bigger

My Car Got Ransacked

Last night.  In my driveway.  I am annoyed.  They took the folding money in the  ashtray–$2.00, big whoop.  They left the folding knives and the inexpensive binoculars, and they even opened the hood.  I think they were trying to get the battery (which is impossible to find) or they were trying to hot-wire it.

Aside from the mess, the monetary loss is minimal.  But I am very angry about the invasion of my personal space.     It was intrusive and obnoxious.  Someone took a turn by the high school too rapidly last night, and flipped their car.  I wonder if it was related.