The Lighter Side Of...(EDITED)

Today is Earth Day!

I’m sorry I did not post sooner, but hopefully you have checked with your local environmental groups to find out what clean ups or other activities are happening in your neighborhood. Perhaps today you can just take a look at the Earth Day website and find out what ongoing programs you might give a Saturday to sometime this month or sometime this year even.

Nature Conservancy also has a page for volunteer opportunities

Or you can Adopt an Acre of Rainforest.

Or “adopt” a wolf, sea otter or tiger, amoung others…

I’m also going to give Ward Burton’s group a plug because they do interesting work.

You can also plant a tree.

Or go back into the woods or a park near your home and pick up trash.

And of course, RECYCLE!

(And if you happen to be at a track this weekend, look and see if they have a recycling program and if they don’t, ask them why the hell not. I’ve been up in those stands after a race is over. Between that and the parking lot, the number of recyclable cans and bottles would take up an obscene amount in a landfill.)

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church,
I keep it staying at Home -
With a bobolink for a Chorister,
And an Orchard, for a Dome. ~ Emily Dickenson

*O.K. one of my cats in playing in the hall. It is cheering to see an otherwise stately species leaping at shadows and intensely hunting a rattle. Espcially when they are fluffy...*

“To pay homage to beauty is to admire Nature; to admire Nature is to worship God” ~ Unknown

EDIT:

Storm in North Carolina

I love this place. I love watching the storm come on. After living in a desert for 20 years, a common east coast summer thunderstorm is quite a treat. I love the way the light changes and the wind blows randomly. I love the distant rumbling and the gentle rain that precedes the deluge and wild cracks of thunder and lightening overhead as if the sky were ripping itself apart. I love watching the gusts blow sheets of rain across the parking lot and the torrent pouring through the leaves of the trees. I love going out in them. A summer shower feels great, I remember playing in them as a child. Hell, if I lived in house as opposed to an apartment complex, I might run out there in my skivvies.

Don't ask what it is about women and rainstorms, I don't know.

My Neighbors

I finally broke down and bought a guide to figure out the demographics of the clientele at my birdfeeder.

The most regular customers are House Finches. Juncos used to come by all the time, but they’ve moved north for the summer. We also get Chipping Sparrows and Chickadees (though come to think of it I haven't seen any in a while, they might have migrated too). We have a small flock (around a dozen) of Boat Tailed Grackles and two pairs of Mourning Doves that come by everyday. Our celebrity guests include a mated pair of Cardinals and a pair of Blue Jays. I've also seen Mockingbrids, Robins and Brown Thrashers about, but not at my feeder. I know there are probably more, such as the mysterious visitor that stops by occasionally around 6 am and makes a noise I can only describe as being analogous to a sonar ping, but those are the only ones I have seen clearly enough to identify.

Before the storm blew in I was out in the woods behind my building this morning picking up trash (yes, I do put my money where my mouth is) and I found we had a dogwood back there, quite lovely. We also have a blooming set of briar along the forest edge. I think it may be blackberries. I hope so. Yum!

“In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.” ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Hunting Again

As is usual when I shoot my mouth off, I started thinking about it later. :D

Now, I know there are women who enjoy hunting and are quite good at it, I’m not knocking them in anyway. Nor am I trying to romanticize hunting for those that drag their ass out of bed at an ungodly hour to wear camouflage jumpsuits and bright orange vests to go shoot at things. I’m speaking in terms of archetypal behaviors and concepts here.

Human beings have walked this earth for 200,000 years. We’ve only been farming for the last 7,000 or so of them and only living in cities for the last 5,000. This means we spent about 192,0000 years as H/G. Hunter - Gatherers. That's a lot of time/genetic programming. Men hunted and women gathered. There are some examples in the anthropological record of women being more involved in animal food procurement, but most of that is concentrated in fishing peoples such as Indians of North Western America. The fact is you can’t go running after bison and mastodons with a baby. Gathering is a safe food procurement activity for someone who is lugging kids around. So it’s kind of no wonder when we read of the old Gods, the divine masculine is a hunter. That’s the way men provided.

(Of course, anthropologists have found the majority of food a H/G society eats is gathered as opposed to the more sporadically successful hunting...)

;)

:D

Yes, there are Goddess, like Diana and Artemis, who cross over and represent the masculine aspect all women have inside them, just as Dionysius represents the feminine aspect all men have inside of them, but when you get down in the really primal Gods, the really old ones, the Hunters are male. In fact one of the prevailing theories is that some of the paintings in the great caves of such places as Lascaux and Chauvet were used as sympathetic magik for men before the hunt.

So perhaps people, like myself, who don’t participate in hunting need to view it in terms of a ritualized behavior reenacting hundreds of millennia of human history. Getting in touch with their Paleolithic roots, as it were. :)

Yes, I know I think too much.

Yes, I know I'm wierd.

That of course is responsible hunting, which is the majority of hunters. I still think people who engage in canned hunts need the cage, random cattle prods, y’know…and Bubba drankin’ and shootin’ needs a swift kick in the groin. You wouldn't get drunk to use a chain saw, why the hell would you get drunk to use a gun.

The Kip Report

Well, I woke up yesterday morning with a sore throat and a cough (someone tell me again how quitting smoking was supposed to be a big boon for my health?), nothing major but it's just no fun running around sounding like Kathleeen Turner when you have no one to sound like Kathleeen Turner to.


Fortunately since there was no class Friday I could stay in. Unfortunately, that means I probably will be home tonight listening to the race on MRN.

Actually, this season has been in interesting experience in what being a sports fan back in the 1930’s and 1940’s must have been like. You get more background info on a radio program, but you have to really engage the imagination to visualize what happened. This is especially difficult in auto racing because A. so much is happening at once and B. often what happens on the track is up to interpretation (except perhaps to the drivers…perhaps). If you can’t actually see what happened, it’s hard to have an opinion about any of the “he ran over me” arguments so I am really, really ready for NBC to take over broadcast duties. :D

I see NASCAR was thinking of penalizing Nicole the Biffette for being an attention whore. Well, given that Jeffy Pop got fined 10K for shoving Kenseth after a race and no one said boo about it, why not?

I’m being sarcastic. Jeffy-pops fine is as ridiculous as Nicole’s fine would have been. Yes, both of them were being weenies, but Jeez Brian, it’s a sport, not “1984”.

I see Elliott has been tapped to test tires at Indy. With the limited testing this year it sounds good to me! Hey, every little bit helps. I’m also voting to get him into the All Star. Vote early, vote often!

Dale, nice interview on Nextel Wake-Up Call. :)

Best of luck to Dale, Elliott and Mark and their crews tonight!

I have finals all though next week, so everyone wish me luck!