Enjoy this run-down on Ten Huge Prehistoric Cats. That’s an American lion in the pic. Someone tries to rob the wrong Denny’s in Houston. Anthropologists at the NY Times discover the use of man camps for construction and operation of projects in remote areas of the West. Many of the projects I’m involved with permitting …
Month: November 2011
Apology on Poems
I was just looking at the last two poems I put into posts and just wanted to apologize for the hash Blogger makes of my attempts at formatting. I don’t seem to be able to do a lot more than get the line breaks and stanzas correct. I assure you the words are all there.
Poem
The Windhover To Christ our Lord I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his ridingOf the rolling level underneath him steady air, and stridingHigh there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wingIn his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on …
Hot Links
This piece on dinosaur feathers preserved in amber came out in September, but I just now stumbled across it. Pretty amazing photo gallery. Anthropologists from the NY Times Style section have discovered that portable generators can become status symbols in certain primitive societies – such as their own during a power outage. This story tells …
Bronze Artifact from Prehistoric Site in Alaska
The Associated Press has this report on a cast bronze artifact discovered this summer during the excavation of a prehistoric Eskimo site on the Seward Peninsula of Alaska. This article isn’t written very clearly, but it appears that the artifact was found in fill outside of, or possibly below, a prehistoric house that was being …
Huevos
One of our colleagues at work lives in an even more rural part of Douglas County than we do. In an effort to keep her agricultural property tax rate, last summer she started raising chickens and goats. The goats are milk goats and we haven’t seen anything from them yet. However, we are glad to …
Buzzard Roost
After posting the Robinson Jeffers poem Vulture earlier in the week, I remembered some pictures I took early this year. Back in January we were doing some field work in the desert near Blythe, California. In town one morning, I saw about 30-40 turkey vultures using a large eucalyptus tree as a roost. The temperature …
Sporting Miscellany
As the Peculiars are here with grandbaby Eli I shall continue my slackerish blog- sloth for a bit more, but I have harvested a number of cool images to share. So with no further ado: Colonel Charles Askins was a more ambiguous character than the other Golden Age gunwriters; he once described himself as a …
Hot Links
This rather amazing photo comes from an article describing rhino translocations in South Africa using helicopters. From one of the pictures it looks like they are just using a Huey to do this – I would have thought it would have required a stouter helo. It’s too soon to tell how the ouster of Kadafi …
Poem
Vulture I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillsideAbove the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheelinghigh up in heaven,And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbitnarrowing,I understood thenThat I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight-feathersWhistle above me and make …