Atlantis

Atlantis

WH AUDEN


Being set on the idea

Of getting to Atlantis,

You have discovered of course

Only the Ship of Fools is

Making the voyage this year,

As gales of abnormal force

Are predicted, and that you

Must therefore be ready to

Behave absurdly enough

To pass for one of The Boys,

At least appearing to love

Hard liquor, horseplay and noise.

Should storms, as may well happen,

Drive you to anchor a week

In some old harbour-city

Of Ionia, then speak

With her witty sholars, men

Who have proved there cannot be

Such a place as Atlantis:

Learn their logic, but notice

How its subtlety betrays

Their enormous simple grief;

Thus they shall teach you the ways

To doubt that you may believe.

If, later, you run aground

Among the headlands of Thrace,

Where with torches all night long

A naked barbaric race

Leaps frenziedly to the sound

Of conch and dissonant gong:

On that stony savage shore

Strip off your clothes and dance, for

Unless you are capable

Of forgetting completely

About Atlantis, you will

Never finish your journey.

Again, should you come to gay

Carthage or Corinth, take part

In their endless gaiety;

And if in some bar a tart,

As she strokes your hair, should say

"This is Atlantis, dearie,"

Listen with attentiveness

To her life-story: unless

You become acquainted now

With each refuge that tries to

Counterfeit Atlantis, how

Will you recognise the true?

Assuming you beach at last

Near Atlantis, and begin

That terrible trek inland

Through squalid woods and frozen

Thundras where all are soon lost;

If, forsaken then, you stand,

Dismissal everywhere,

Stone and now, silence and air,

O remember the great dead

And honour the fate you are,

Travelling and tormented,

Dialectic and bizarre.

Stagger onward rejoicing;

And even then if, perhaps

Having actually got

To the last col, you collapse

With all Atlantis shining

Below you yet you cannot

Descend, you should still be proud

Even to have been allowed

Just to peep at Atlantis

In a poetic vision:

Give thanks and lie down in peace,

Having seen your salvation.

All the little household gods

Have started crying, but say

Good-bye now, and put to sea.

Farewell, my dear, farewell: may

Hermes, master of the roads,

And the four dwarf Kabiri,

Protect and serve you always;

And may the Ancient of Days

Provide for all you must do

His invisible guidance,

Lifting up, dear, upon you

The light of His countenance.

WH Auden

'Under Which Lyre'

W.H. Auden

Under Which Lyre

A Reactionary Tract for the Times

Ares at last has quit the field,
The bloodstains on the bushes yield
To seeping showers,
And in their convalescent state
The fractured towns associate
With summer flowers.

Encamped upon the college plain
Raw veterans already train
As freshman forces;
Instructors with sarcastic tongue
Shepherd the battle-weary young
Through basic courses.

Among bewildering appliances
For mastering the arts and sciences
They stroll or run,
And nerves that steeled themselves to slaughter
Are shot to pieces by the shorter
Poems of Donne.

Professors back from secret missions
Resume their proper eruditions,
Though some regret it;
They liked their dictaphones a lot,
T hey met some big wheels, and do not
Let you forget it.

But Zeus' inscrutable decree
Permits the will-to-disagree
To be pandemic,
Ordains that vaudeville shall preach
And every commencement speech
Be a polemic.

Let Ares doze, that other war
Is instantly declared once more
’Twixt those who follow
Precocious Hermes all the way
And those who without qualms obey
Pompous Apollo.

Brutal like all Olympic games,
Though fought with smiles and Christian names
And less dramatic,
This dialectic strife between
The civil gods is just as mean,
And more fanatic.

What high immortals do in mirth
Is life and death on Middle Earth;
Their a-historic
Antipathy forever gripes
All ages and somatic types,
The sophomoric

Who face the future’s darkest hints
With giggles or with prairie squints
As stout as Cortez,
And those who like myself turn pale
As we approach with ragged sail
The fattening forties.

The sons of Hermes love to play
And only do their best when they
Are told they oughtn’t;
Apollo’s children never shrink
From boring jobs but have to think
Their work important.

Related by antithesis,
A compromise between us is
Impossible;
Respect perhaps but friendship never:
Falstaff the fool confronts forever
The prig Prince Hal.

If he would leave the self alone,
Apollo’s welcome to the throne,
Fasces and falcons;
He loves to rule, has always done it;
The earth would soon, did Hermes run it,
Be like the Balkans.

But jealous of our god of dreams,
His common-sense in secret schemes
To rule the heart;
Unable to invent the lyre,
Creates with simulated fire
Official art.

And when he occupies a college,
Truth is replaced by Useful Knowledge;
He pays particular
Attention to Commercial Thought,
Public Relations, Hygiene, Sport,
In his curricula.

Athletic, extrovert and crude,
For him, to work in solitude
Is the offence,
The goal a populous Nirvana:
His shield bears this device: Mens sana
Qui mal y pense.

Today his arms, we must confess,
From Right to Left have met success,
His banners wave
From Yale to Princeton, and the news
From Broadway to the Book Reviews
Is very grave.

His radio Homers all day long
In over-Whitmanated song
That does not scan,
With adjectives laid end to end,
Extol the doughnut and commend
The Common Man.

His, too, each homely lyric thing
On sport or spousal love or spring
Or dogs or dusters,
Invented by some court-house bard
For recitation by the yard
In filibusters.

To him ascend the prize orations
And sets of fugal variations
On some folk-ballad,
While dietitians sacrifice
A glass of prune-juice or a nice
Marsh-mallow salad.

Charged with his compound of sensational
Sex plus some undenominational
Religious matter,
Enormous novels by co-eds
Rain down on our defenceless heads
Till our teeth chatter.

In fake Hermetic uniforms
Behind our battle-line, in swarms
That keep alighting,
His existentialists declare
That they are in complete despair,
Yet go on writing.

No matter; He shall be defied;
White Aphrodite is on our side:
What though his threat
To organize us grow more critical?
Zeus willing, we, the unpolitical,
Shall beat him yet.

Lone scholars, sniping from the walls
Of learned periodicals,
Our facts defend,
Our intellectual marines,
Landing in little magazines
Capture a trend.

By night our student Underground
At cocktail parties whisper round
From ear to ear;
Fat figures in the public eye
Collapse next morning, ambushed by
Some witty sneer.

In our morale must lie our strength:
So, that we may behold at length
Routed Apollo’s
Battalions melt away like fog,
Keep well the Hermetic Decalogue,
Which runs as follows:—

Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases,
Thou shalt not write thy doctor’s thesis
On education,
Thou shalt not worship projects nor
Shalt thou or thine bow down before
Administration.

Thou shalt not answer questionnaires
Or quizzes upon World-Affairs,
Nor with compliance
Take any test. Thou shalt not sit
With statisticians nor commit
A social science.

Thou shalt not be on friendly terms
With guys in advertising firms,
Nor speak with such
As read the Bible for its prose,
Nor, above all, make love to those
Who wash too much.

Thou shalt not live within thy means
Nor on plain water and raw greens.
If thou must choose
Between the chances, choose the odd;
Read The New Yorker, trust in God;
And take short views.

W. H. Auden

Godly V. Godless..... buy me a cuckoo clock Lucrezia

video at bottom...

& how could (godless?) amazon.com, in this economy, with their profit soaring do this to me: "Please note that the price of The Aeneid has increased from $26.40 to $30.40 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. "

NOW:_________________________________

http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=gqchf08syrq7qfcxqfzjh9d949ndm2k2

The Chronicle of Higher Education

January 30, 2009

Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 55, Issue 21, Page B4


CONSIDER THIS
The Virtues of Godlessness
The least religious nations are also the most healthy and successful

By PHIL ZUCKERMAN

The world seems more religious than ever these days.

Across the Middle East, fervent forms of Islam are growing more popular and more politically active. Muslim nations that were somewhat secularized 40 years ago — like Lebanon and Iran — are now teeming with fundamentalism. In Turkey and Egypt, increasing numbers of women are turning to the veil as an overt manifestation of reinvigorated religious commitment. But it isn't just in the Muslim world that religion is thriving. From Brazil to El Salvador, Protestant evangelicalism is spreading with great success, instilling a spirited, holy zeal throughout Latin America. Pentecostalism is proliferating, too — vigorously — and not only throughout Latin America, but in Africa and even, to a lesser extent, China. And many nations of the former Soviet Union, which had atheism imposed upon them for decades, have emerged from the communist era with their faith not only intact, but strong and vibrant. Here in the United States, religion is definitely alive and well. In terms of church attendance and belief in God, Jesus, and the Bible, religion in the United States is stronger and more robust than in most other developed democracies.

In sum, from Nebraska to Nepal, from Georgia to Guatemala, and from Utah to Uganda, humans all over the globe are vigorously praising various deities; regularly attending services at churches, temples, and mosques; persistently studying sacred texts; dutifully performing holy rites; energetically carrying out spiritual rituals; soberly defending the world from sin; piously fasting; and enthusiastically praying and then praying some more, singing, praising, and loving this or that savior, prophet, or God.

But that is not occurring everywhere. I am referring to two nations in particular, Denmark and Sweden, which are probably the least religious countries in the world, and possibly in the history of the world. Amidst all this vibrant global piety — atop the vast swelling sea of sacredness — Denmark and Sweden float along like small, content, durable dinghies of secular life, where most people are nonreligious and don't worship Jesus or Vishnu, don't revere sacred texts, don't pray, and don't give much credence to the essential dogmas of the world's great faiths.

In clean and green Scandinavia, few people speak of God, few people spend much time thinking about theological matters, and although their media in recent years has done an unusually large amount of reporting on religion, even that is offered as an attempt to grapple with and make sense of a strange foreign phenomenon out there in the wider world that refuses to disappear, a phenomenon that takes on such dire significance for everyone — except, well, for Danes and Swedes.

What are societies like when faith in God is minimal, church attendance is drastically low, and religion is a distinctly muted and marginal aspect of everyday life?

Many people assume that religion is what keeps people moral, that a society without God would be hell on earth: rampant with immorality, full of evil, and teeming with depravity. But that doesn't seem to be the case for Scandinavians in those two countries. Although they may have relatively high rates of petty crime and burglary, and although these crime rates have been on the rise in recent decades, their overall rates of violent crime — including murder, aggravated assault, and rape — are among the lowest on earth. Yet the majority of Danes and Swedes do not believe that God is "up there," keeping diligent tabs on their behavior, slating the good for heaven and the wicked for hell. Most Danes and Swedes don't believe that sin permeates the world, and that only Jesus, the Son of God, who died for their sins, can serve as a remedy. In fact, most Danes and Swedes don't even believe in the notion of "sin."

So the typical Dane or Swede doesn't believe all that much in God. And simultaneously, they don't commit much murder. But aren't they a dour, depressed lot, all the same? Not according to Ruut Veenhoven, professor emeritus of social conditions for human happiness at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Veenhoven is a leading authority on worldwide levels of happiness from country to country. He recently ranked 91 nations on an international happiness scale, basing his research on cumulative scores from numerous worldwide surveys. According to his calculations, the country that leads the globe — ranking No. 1 in terms of its residents' overall level of happiness — is little, peaceful, and relatively godless Denmark.

The connection between religion — or the lack thereof — and societal health is admittedly complex. It is difficult to definitively establish that secularism is always good for society and religion always bad. However, the often posited opposite claim is equally difficult to substantiate: that secularism is always bad for a society and religion always good. To be sure, in some instances, religion can be a strong and positive ingredient in establishing societal health, prosperity, and well-being. And when considering what factors contribute to the making of a good society, religion can be a positive force.

Here in the United States, for example, religious ideals often serve as a beneficial counterbalance against the cutthroat brand of individualism that can be so rampant and dominating. Religious congregations in America serve as community centers, counseling providers, and day-care sites. And a significant amount of research has shown that moderately religious Americans report greater subjective well-being and life satisfaction, greater marital satisfaction, better family cohesion, and fewer symptoms of depression than the nonreligious. Historically, a proliferation of religious devotion, faith in God, and reliance on the Bible has sometimes been a determining factor in establishing schools for children, creating universities, building hospitals for the sick and homes for the homeless, taking care of orphans and the elderly, resisting oppression, establishing law and order, and developing democracy.

In other instances, however, religion may not have such positive societal effects. It can often be one of the main sources of tension, violence, poverty, oppression, inequality, and disorder in a given society. A quick perusal of the state of the world will reveal that widespread faith in God or strong religious sentiment in a given country does not necessarily ensure societal health. After all, many of the most religious and faithful nations on earth are simultaneously among the most dangerous and destitute. Conversely, a widespread lack of faith in God or very low levels of religiosity in a given country does not necessarily spell societal ruin. The fact is, the majority of the most irreligious democracies are among the most prosperous and successful nations on earth.

Just to be perfectly clear here: I am not arguing that the admirably high level of societal health in Scandinavia is directly caused by the low levels of religiosity. Although one could certainly make such a case — arguing that a minimal focus on God and the afterlife, and a stronger focus on solving problems of daily life in a rational, secular manner have led to positive, successful societal outcomes in Scandinavia — that is not the argument I wish to develop here. Rather, I simply wish to soberly counter the widely touted assertion that without religion, society is doomed.

If you can smell my ax starting to grind here, your nostrils are in good working order. The claim that without religion, society is doomed deserves to be challenged because, aside from being poor social science, it is a highly political claim that is regularly promulgated by some of America's most popular and most influential Christian conservatives. Those individuals do not represent or speak for the majority of believers in America, but together they do constitute a formidable and uniquely zealous chorus that reaches the hearts and minds of millions of people on a regular basis.

I am referring, for instance, to Pat Robertson, the successful televangelist and founder of the Christian Coalition, who regularly condemns secularism. And Ann Coulter, the Christian conservative media pundit, who has written in one of her best-selling books that societies that fail to grasp God's significance are headed toward slavery, genocide, and bestiality, and that when Darwinian/evolutionary theory is widely accepted in a given society, all morality is abandoned. Conservative pundit William J. Bennett has argued that "the only reliable answer" for combating societal ills is widespread religious faith, and that without religion, a society is without "the best and most reliable means to reinforce the good" in social life and human relations.

Conservative Christian Americans aren't the only ones who broadcast this perspective. Keith Ward, a professor of theology at the University of Oxford, has recently argued that societies that lack strong religious beliefs are essentially immoral, unfree, and irrational. He claims that any nonreligious society without a strong belief in God is a society "beyond morality ... and freedom" and ultimately predicated upon "the denial of human dignity." John D. Caputo, a professor of religion and humanities at Syracuse University, has declared that people who are without religion and who do not love God are nothing more than selfish louts, thereby implying that a society with a preponderance of irreligious people would be a fairly loveless, miserable place.

Belief in God may certainly give emotional and psychological comfort to the individual believer — especially in times of pain, sadness, or uncertainty — and history has clearly shown that religious involvement and faith in God can often motivate individuals or cultures to promote justice and healthy societal development. But the fact still remains that it is not the most religious nations in our world today, but rather the most secular, that have been able to create the most civil, just, safe, equitable, humane, and prosperous societies. Denmark and Sweden stand out as shining examples. The German think tank the Hans-Böckler Stiftung recently ranked nations in terms of their success at establishing social justice within their societies; Denmark and Sweden, two of the least-religious nations in the world, tied for first.

It is a great socioreligious irony — for lack of a better term — that when we consider the fundamental values and moral imperatives contained within the world's great religions, such as caring for the sick, the infirm, the elderly, the poor, the orphaned, the vulnerable; practicing mercy, charity, and goodwill toward one's fellow human beings; and fostering generosity, humility, honesty, and communal concern over individual egotism — those traditionally religious values are most successfully established, institutionalized, and put into practice at the societal level in the most irreligious nations in the world today.

Phil Zuckerman is an associate professor of sociology at Pitzer College. This essay is adapted from his book Society Without God (New York University Press, 2008).


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 55, Issue 21, Page B4


_____+++

In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. (Graham Greene, THE THIRD MAN) at the end of the clip, Hello Orson!:

if the movies say it its true, so sayeth Ronnie R.

----

today, a stuck TRUCK

Our street has yet to be plowed, and the snow stopped falling 2 days ago.....

ice is growing!

Soup for lunch?

Fine Dining with Bacon

The Bacon Explosion is a rolled concoction that can be baked or cooked in a smoker

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/dining/28bacon.html?_r=1&ref=dining

article about it below the recipe:

January 28, 2009

Recipe
Bacon Explosion

Adapted from Jason Day and Aaron Chronister

Time: About 3 hours


2 pounds thick-cut sliced bacon

1 1/2 pounds Italian sausage, casings removed

3 tablespoons barbecue rub

3/4 cup barbecue sauce.



1. Using 10 slices of bacon, weave a square lattice like that on top of a pie: first, place 5 bacon slices side by side on a large sheet of aluminum foil, parallel to one another, sides touching. Place another strip of bacon on one end, perpendicular to the other strips. Fold first, third and fifth bacon strips back over this new strip, then place another strip next to it, parallel to it. Unfold first, third and fifth strips; fold back second and fourth strips. Repeat with remaining bacon until all 10 strips are tightly woven.

2. Preheat oven to 225 degrees or light a fire in an outdoor smoker. Place remaining bacon in a frying pan and cook until crisp. As it cooks, sprinkle bacon weave with 1 tablespoon barbecue rub. Evenly spread sausage on top of bacon lattice, pressing to outer edges.

3. Crumble fried bacon into bite-size pieces. Sprinkle on top of sausage. Drizzle with 1/2 cup barbecue sauce and sprinkle with another tablespoon barbecue rub.

4. Very carefully separate front edge of sausage layer from bacon weave and begin rolling sausage away from you. Bacon weave should stay where it was, flat. Press sausage roll to remove any air pockets and pinch together seams and ends.

5. Roll sausage toward you, this time with bacon weave, until it is completely wrapped. Turn it so seam faces down. Roll should be about 2 to 3 inches thick. Sprinkle with remaining barbecue rub.

6. Place roll on a baking sheet in oven or in smoker. Cook until internal temperature reaches 165 degrees on a meat thermometer, about 1 hour for each inch of thickness. When done, glaze roll with more sauce. To serve, slice into 1/4- to- 1/2-inch rounds.

Yield: 10 or more servings.



+++

NYT

January 28, 2009
Take Bacon. Add Sausage. Blog.
By DAMON DARLIN

FOR a nation seeking unity, a recipe has swept the Internet that seems to unite conservatives and liberals, gun owners and foodies, carnivores and ... well, not vegetarians and health fanatics.

Certainly not the vegetarians and health fanatics.

This recipe is the Bacon Explosion, modestly called by its inventors “the BBQ Sausage Recipe of all Recipes.” The instructions for constructing this massive torpedo-shaped amalgamation of two pounds of bacon woven through and around two pounds of sausage and slathered in barbecue sauce first appeared last month on the Web site of a team of Kansas City competition barbecuers. They say a diverse collection of well over 16,000 Web sites have linked to the recipe, celebrating, or sometimes scolding, its excessiveness. A fresh audience could be ready to discover it on Super Bowl Sunday.

Where once homegrown recipes were disseminated in Ann Landers columns or Junior League cookbooks, new media have changed — and greatly accelerated — the path to popularity. Few recipes have cruised down this path as fast or as far as the Bacon Explosion, and this turns out to be no accident. One of its inventors works as an Internet marketer, and had a sophisticated understanding of how the latest tools of promotion could be applied to a four-pound roll of pork.

The Bacon Explosion was born shortly before Christmas in Roeland Park, Kan., in Jason Day’s kitchen. He and Aaron Chronister, who anchor a barbecue team called Burnt Finger BBQ, were discussing a challenge from a bacon lover they received on their Twitter text-messaging service: What could the barbecuers do with bacon?

At the same time, Mr. Chronister wanted to get attention for their Web site, BBQAddicts.com. More traffic would bring in more advertising income, which they needed to fund a hobby that can cost thousands of dollars.

Mr. Day, a systems administrator who has been barbecuing since college, suggested doing something with a pile of sausage. “It’s a variation of what’s called a fattie in the barbecue community,” Mr. Day said. “But we took it to the extreme.”

He bought about $20 worth of bacon and Italian sausage from a local meat market. As it lay on the counter, he thought of weaving strips of raw bacon into a mat. The two spackled the bacon mat with a layer of sausage, covered that with a crunchy layer of cooked bacon, and rolled it up tight.

They then stuck the roll — containing at least 5,000 calories and 500 grams of fat — in the Good-One Open Range backyard smoker that they use for practice. (In competitions, they use a custom-built smoker designed by the third member of the team, Bryant Gish, who was not present at the creation of the Bacon Explosion.)

Mr. Day said his wife laughed the whole time. “She’s very supportive of my hobby,” he said.

The two men posted their adventure on their Web site two days before Christmas. On Christmas Day, traffic on the site spiked to more than 27,000 visitors.

Mr. Chronister explained that the Bacon Explosion “got so much traction on the Web because it seems so over the top.” But Mr. Chronister, an Internet marketer from Kansas City, Mo., did what he could to help it along. He first used Twitter to send short text messages about the recipe to his 1,200 Twitter followers, many of them fellow Internet marketers with extensive social networks. He also posted links on social networking sites. “I used a lot of my connections to get it out there and to push it,” he said.

The Bacon Explosion posting has since been viewed about 390,000 times. It first found a following among barbecue fans, but quickly spread to sites run by outdoor enthusiasts, off-roaders and hunters. (Several proposed venison-sausage versions.) It also got mentions on the Web site of Air America, the liberal radio network, and National Review, the conservative magazine. Jonah Goldberg at NationalReview.com wrote, “There must be a reason one reader after another sends me this every couple hours.” Conservatives4palin.com linked, too.

So did regular people. A man from Wooster, Ohio, wrote that friends had served it at a bon voyage party before his 10-day trip to Israel, where he expected bacon to be in short supply. “It wasn’t planned as a send-off for me to Israel, but with all of the pork involved it sure seemed like it,” he wrote.

About 30 people sent in pictures of their Explosions. One sent a video of the log catching fire on a grill.

Mr. Day said that whether it is cooked in an oven or in a smoker, the rendered fat from the bacon keeps the sausage juicy. But in the smoker, he said, the smoke heightens the flavor of the meats.

Nick Pummell, a barbecue hobbyist in Las Vegas, learned of the recipe from Mr. Chronister’s Twittering. He made his first Explosion on Christmas Day, when he and a group of friends also had a more traditional turkey. “This was kind of the dessert part,” he said. “You need to call 911 after you are done. It was awesome.”

Mr. Chronister said the main propellant behind the Bacon Explosion’s spread was a Web service called StumbleUpon, which steers Web users toward content they are likely to find interesting. Readers tell the service about their professional interests or hobbies, and it serves up sites to match them. More than 7 million people worldwide use the service in an attempt to duplicate serendipity, the company says.

Mr. Chronister intended to send the post to StumbleUpon, but one of his readers beat him to it. It appeared on the front page of StumbleUpon for three days, which further increased traffic.

Mr. Chronister also littered his site with icons for Digg, Del.icio.us and other sites in which readers vote on posts or Web pages they like, helping to spread the word. “Alright this is going on Digg,” a commenter wrote minutes after the Explosion was posted. “Already there,” someone else answered.

Some have claimed that the Bacon Explosion is derivative. A writer known as the Headless Blogger posted a similar roll of sausage and bacon in mid-December. Mr. Chronister and Mr. Day do not claim to have invented the concept.

But they do vigorously defend their method. When one commenter dared to suggest that the two hours in the smoker could be slashed to a mere 30 minutes if the roll was first cooked in a microwave oven, Mr. Chronister snapped back. “Microwave??? Seriously? First, the proteins in the meats will bind around 140 degrees, so putting it on the smoker after that is pointless as it won’t absorb any smoke flavor,” he responded on his site. “This requires patience and some attention. It’s not McDonald’s.”

almost EPIC!! Snowyyy January 2009, night and day . . . sun, moon, snow, ice,

The UNIVERSITY is closed today, those great minds are hibernating. So a little extra time to catch up, and whats the most catchable? the weather.

The moon on January 11th, 2009


The SUN rising on January 16th.



Squirrels today, January 29th:

Just when think those dumb animals out in this weather, this (January 29th):

From the guest bedroom, these dangling ice stalagtites circule the house, but at night look way cool. Double click the sunrise and you can see them there too.

The mailman was stuck, January 9th.

Ah, what is the temperature in Palm Springs? and Can I figure how to post pics to facebook?

Thank the gods Demeter made that deal and Persephone will soon return ( see: http://www.theoi.com/Khthonios/Persephone.html ) wonder if that is an APA compliant citation?

-----

Squirrels blamed for blaze at Tory Lord's cottage

first the great acorn shortage, now they are on gearing up with napalm and attacking....



Squirrels blamed for blaze at Tory Lord's cottage

POSTED: 08/01/2009
(Jan 8, 2009)

A fire that ripped through a Victorian cottage owned by former Tory cabinet minister Lord Mayhew was started by squirrels, he has said.Lord Patrick Mayhew, 79, who served as Attorney General under Margaret Thatcher between 1987 and 1992 and as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland under John Major between 1992 and 1997, said he hoped the cottage could be saved after Wednesday's blaze.Lord Mayhew was knighted in 1983 and elevated to the House of Lords in 1997.The fire destroyed 90 per cent of the roof and the entire first floor of the cottage in Cranbrook. It is believed the rodents chewed through electrical cables in the roof.The 1890-built cottage is rented out to tenants, and an insurance assessor is to inspect the property and see if it can be saved.Four fire crews, some with breathing apparatus, were at the scene from12.39pm and the last firefighters left at 7.51pm.No-one was injured in the fire.

ACORN SHORTAGE in midwest - and I ran out of compressed corn!

poor things, maybe they can get in on the bailout???

There was a joke on SNL's Weekend UPdate, I checked, its true: ACORN SHORTAGE!!

from USA TODAY

Two squirrels frolic on a sidewalk in Alexandria, Va. Acorns have become rare this season in the Midwest, some parts of the Northeast and as far west as California, botanists and forestry experts say.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2009-01-15-acorns_N.htm

USA TODAY

January 15, 2009

Squirrels scrounge for acorns across USA

By Tim Evans, USA TODAY

Add squirrels to investment bankers, 401k accounts and the Detroit Lions on the list of recent big losers.
Acorns, their chief food source, have become rare this season in the Midwest, some parts of the Northeast and as far west as California, botanists and forestry experts say.

The small or non-existent acorn crops reported in many parts of the USA, though unexpected, reflect a natural cycle, they say, and pose no reason for concern — unless you are a squirrel.

"I've heard from people all over the country with mixed reports on the size of the crop in different areas," said Rod Simmons, a botanist with the city of Alexandria, Va., where acorns have been in short supply this winter. Simmons said it appears oak trees produced small crops or no acorns in many parts of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states. He said he also has heard similar reports from people in parts of California, Kansas, Indiana, Texas, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Kentucky.

"A number of parts of the country are quite short on acorns, but there are other areas where they are plentiful," said Alan Whittemore, a research botanist at the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C.

Although there are theories, definitive explanations are hard to come by. "With nature, we like to categorize things — people like to understand complex things," said Scott Haulton, a forestry expert with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. "But nature throws us curveballs."

Alan Van Antwerp, past president of the Northern Nut Growers Association, said acorns are plentiful in the area near his home in the northern part of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Don Cobb, another association member from Waterloo, N.Y., said the crop in central New York has been "very, very heavy."

Where there are shortages, Whittemore said, it is likely the result of weather conditions. Some varieties of oak trees take two years to produce acorns, while others generate a crop every year, so the conditions that affected the current crop could go back two years.

Cold weather in the late spring can damage buds, Whittemore explained, and heavy rains during the critical late-spring pollination window can contribute to smaller crops. Summer droughts also take a toll, while fall storms can blow acorns from trees before they mature, he said.

"An oak tree can live 300 years, so one year is no big deal for them," Whittemore said.

"I've seen nothing yet to say this is anything but a normal cycle, part of the random nature of Mother Nature," said arborist Guy Sternberg of Petersburg, Ill., a founding member and vice president of the International Oak Society, a non-profit group that brings together oak enthusiasts from around the world.

Evans reports for the Indianapolis Star. Contributing: Will Higgins, Indianapolis Star.

a few lines from John Barth's TOGA PARTY

recent/current reading quote:


. . . Over the past year or two, though, as he’d approached and then attained the three-quarter mark, he had by his own acknowledgment become rather stick-in the-muddish, not so much depressed by the prospect of imminent old age as subdued by it, de-zested, his get up and go all but gotten up and gone, as he had observed to be the case with others at his age and stage (though by no means all) among their limited social acquaintance.



Toga Party, John Barth, a short story in THE DEVELOPMENT (2008)

again, a first, first thing I have read by John Barth.

a few lines from John Barth's TOGA PARTY

recent/current reading quote:


. . . Over the past year or two, though, as he’d approached and then attained the three-quarter mark, he had by his own acknowledgment become rather stick-in the-muddish, not so much depressed by the prospect of imminent old age as subdued by it, de-zested, his get up and go all but gotten up and gone, as he had observed to be the case with others at his age and stage (though by no means all) among their limited social acquaintance.



Toga Party, John Barth, a short story in THE DEVELOPMENT (2008)

again, a first, first thing I have read by John Barth.

aerogarden lettuce crop

the aerogarden harvest has begun!

a hanfull of lettuce, halved cherry tomatoes, chopped onion, and some cucumber made for a fresh salad, particulary wonderful in light of the freezing temps....

Volsunga Sava

Volsunga saga
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The Völsunga saga is a legendary saga, a late 13th century Icelandic prose rendition of the origin and decline of the Volsung clan (including the story of Sigurd and Brynhild and destruction of the Burgundians). It is largely based on epic poetry. The earliest known representation of this tradition is in pictoral form as the Ramsund carving, Sweden, which was created c. 1000 AD.
The matter is considerably older, however, and it is loosely based on real events in Central Europe during the 5th century and the 6th century.

The Middle High German epic poem Nibelungenlied is based largely on the old stories, which were commonly known in all of the Germanic lands from the early Middle Ages on, but reworks the material into a courtly medieval setting.

A story based on the Volsunga Saga was written by Melvin Burgess, called Bloodtide. Many of the features in the original saga make an appearance, with a few differences in characters, settings and story. In fact, there are many fantasy books that have drawn from this material and many that have retold the original story in a romantic adaptation, such as The Wolf and the Raven by Diana L. Paxson. One of the most notable adaptations is Richard Wagner's operatic suite, the Ring Cycle.

Fitzgerald's Benjamin Button

http://nvinnyc.com/files/The%20Curious%20Case%20of%20Benjamin%20Button.pdf

the full text of Benjamin Button, as a PDF its far more readable than a screen after screen web read.

the best gift, almost live from New York.

New York City Ceramic Coffee Cup: "We are happy to serve you"

Paul got this for me for Christmas! the least expensive gift and the best!

as a stand in for "Live From New York!" this ceramic knock-off of a greek diner cup -- a momento of NYC -- it just cannot be beat:
its really excellent.

The Christmas Tree blinking, dim to bright and blinking.....

play it and watch, new lights (target on sale last AFTER christmas blinks 8 ways!)