This quotation from a book J and I are currently reading is directed at Yorkshire friends who will, I hope, instinctively know the lady in the last sentence. For everyone else, even those poor souls who do not know where Yorkshire is, I am sure that you will be amused. The book [...]
I am not a person who appreciates, or usually understands, poetry beyond Ogden Nash and the Horatio on the Bridge sort of thing. But there are exceptions. Many friends and readers of this journal will have noted that I enjoy wildlifing on my "patch", which is to say I like to go [...]
I have just experienced one of those biological “well I never” moments that makes biology such a fascinating pursuit. This I have to share with you. In a book I am reading (details at the end) I found the following. Quote: "Another example … is the unusual bathroom behaviour of sloths. Three-toed sloths [...]
Saving the planet, one electron at a time About six weeks ago now, we got rid of our very low mileage (kilometrage?) Honda Civic with only 16,500km on the clock after four years driving in exchange for a spiffy all-electric cross-over Hyundai Kona. We get 460km out of a battery full of electrons [...]
White Poppies There has been much in the Canadian press this week about the 215 bodies found at a former indigenous residential school in the west of the country. Last week the Israelis and the Palestinians were hurling rockets at each other and the beastliness of the Chinese in Xinjiang province doesn’t [...]
Terry Pratchett wrote a wonderful book under the title of “Wintersmith” that mentioned the essential role of the annual silent performance of the Dark Morris in ensuring that winter arrives as it should. I was reminded today, the winter solstice, of this tradition and, as a former morris dancer/musician myself felt the need [...]
I’m just getting into a collection of essays ("Vesper Flights" - Helen Macdonald) by a Historian of Science at Cambridge. I was struck by this paragraph from her introduction. "What science does is what I would like more literature to do too: show us that we are living in an exquisitely complicated [...]
I happened, thanks to the internet, upon this article from the London Review of Books that I felt was worth sharing with my friends, many of whom will understand. I am a huge user and fan of all that the internet has brought us, I don't yearn to go back to blotchy pens [...]
Common Experience 2020 A couple of days ago, a friend in England posted this short piece on her Facebook page. She got it from a friend who had it from a friend and we have no idea who composed it. But it is so clever, and so apposite, I felt it was [...]
So that's where it came from! J brought to my attention the following short poem by Longfellow. It is quite striking just how many clichés and common sayings we all know he managed to pack into these few lines. I have highlighted a few examples in bold. Actually, it's good stuff. read on. [...]