Saturday: 27 June 2009
Unfortunate Science Fiction Book Covers [General] -
Wayne - wayne@sparkleberrysprings.com @ 08:30:19
In the comments to a previous post, Bev and I had some fun talking about science fiction book cover art. Really, there can be no more garish examples, unless it’s the gothic romance genre. We laughed about the flesh and tentacles art of the pulp fiction pre-1960, and you really must visit this site to fully appreciate it. I seem not to have collected any of these.
But I have collected a coupla thousand paperback science fiction books over 40 years, and I figured I could surely find some stinkers.
A few of these here fall into the category of “what could the artist have been thinking,” but at least half are honest efforts, though they may have little to do with the book’s content. (A couple of them fall into the “what could *I* have been thinking” category.) I think the explanation for the disconnect between a cover and the content lies in the publisher’s choice, and some publishing companies were more egregious this way. There was a tendency to simply find a cheap image and slap it on the cover, regardless of any relevance. Likely some publishers simply didn’t think it was important for cover art to be relevant to the contents of a book.
The cover art of the 30s through the 50s was mostly of the pulp magazines, with some novels thrown in for fun. They tended to be rather over the top, and correspondingly fun. I don’t have either of these books, I just found them while surfing for bad cover art.
Left, sure glad I wasn’t in Iceland on Wednesday. Right, “this can happen to you,” note doggie making good its escape. Hilariously awful - no good can come of this. I’m not sure what the green fluttery thing is.
The 1960s and 70s brought us some truly appalling cover art that makes you yearn for the extravagantly awful pulp covers of the earlier several decades. In keeping with the psychedelic nature of the times, many covers were a mishmash of odd impressionism that had little or nothing to do with the content of the book. Or perhaps they did - much of the New Wave science fiction writing of the time proved to be just as bad as the bewildering cover art promised. While I seem to have never reaquired a particular stinker that I lent out, I think these will convey the impression.
Left, not a bad book actually but garish psychodelia, yes. Right, way too much art. I need dramamine.
More from the 60s-70s: if you look closely, you will see connections between the cover art of this printing, and the stories within the three Foundation books. But the style is consistently grotesque - you have to give it that.
From about the same period, on the left, an example of - what, photorealism? Looks like a ripoff from Star Trek, note “the evil planet.” Take a plastic model and lay it on a surface next to a crumpled ball of aluminum foil. Photograph and blur. On the right we have an example of total ambiguity. Whatever it was intended to convey certainly doesn’t connect with the story within the pages of the book.
Another feature of the times was painful symmetry, as shown by the cover on the left. Again, there’s no obvious connection to the story. I enjoyed the book on the right, but the art is rather clumsily metaphorical.
What’s not to like about a 33-book serial, written faithfully over a quarter of century? Our hero is trying to get back to the planet of his birth, the mythical earth. The basic structure of each book was formulaic: a hint from the previous book starts off the events of the next one. Adventure follows. Disappointment. Clue! Despite all this, the books were surprisingly varied otherwise, and I hear the author is coming out with a new one after a long hiatus.
On the left, a common theme: heroic male and fleshy female. This was #1, and though other cover art shows up on the internet for this book, this particular one does not. I could well have an original printing, here. The cover on the right is in the cartoonish category. I think this one was #10 in the series. The subject of the cover, by the way, is male.
One of the classic science fiction novels, made into an unfortunately clunky though highly promoted film, is “When Worlds Collide.” There must be a zillion different book covers for this one, but I particularly like the ones below. Notice the odd resemblance. Now what’s that all about?
After “When Worlds Collide,” what could be more natural than “After Worlds Collide?” Not without its good points, the permeating racism is jarring.
I actually think the left selection is fairly cool, so let’s balance that out by the utter banality of the cover on the right. Yawn!
So there you have it. When I started collecting these, I anticipated writing witheringly about them. But as I looked through them, I couldn’t really do that. In most cases, the artist is certainly not dishonest, though he or she may be incompetent. I’d bet that the artist may not have even anticipated that the work would be used for a book cover. And the writer certainly has little control here. If there’s any responsibility for boring art, tiresome style, or lack of relevance, I think we must lay it at the feet of the publisher.
But I have collected a coupla thousand paperback science fiction books over 40 years, and I figured I could surely find some stinkers.
A few of these here fall into the category of “what could the artist have been thinking,” but at least half are honest efforts, though they may have little to do with the book’s content. (A couple of them fall into the “what could *I* have been thinking” category.) I think the explanation for the disconnect between a cover and the content lies in the publisher’s choice, and some publishing companies were more egregious this way. There was a tendency to simply find a cheap image and slap it on the cover, regardless of any relevance. Likely some publishers simply didn’t think it was important for cover art to be relevant to the contents of a book.
The cover art of the 30s through the 50s was mostly of the pulp magazines, with some novels thrown in for fun. They tended to be rather over the top, and correspondingly fun. I don’t have either of these books, I just found them while surfing for bad cover art.
Left, sure glad I wasn’t in Iceland on Wednesday. Right, “this can happen to you,” note doggie making good its escape. Hilariously awful - no good can come of this. I’m not sure what the green fluttery thing is.
The 1960s and 70s brought us some truly appalling cover art that makes you yearn for the extravagantly awful pulp covers of the earlier several decades. In keeping with the psychedelic nature of the times, many covers were a mishmash of odd impressionism that had little or nothing to do with the content of the book. Or perhaps they did - much of the New Wave science fiction writing of the time proved to be just as bad as the bewildering cover art promised. While I seem to have never reaquired a particular stinker that I lent out, I think these will convey the impression.
Left, not a bad book actually but garish psychodelia, yes. Right, way too much art. I need dramamine.
More from the 60s-70s: if you look closely, you will see connections between the cover art of this printing, and the stories within the three Foundation books. But the style is consistently grotesque - you have to give it that.
From about the same period, on the left, an example of - what, photorealism? Looks like a ripoff from Star Trek, note “the evil planet.” Take a plastic model and lay it on a surface next to a crumpled ball of aluminum foil. Photograph and blur. On the right we have an example of total ambiguity. Whatever it was intended to convey certainly doesn’t connect with the story within the pages of the book.
Another feature of the times was painful symmetry, as shown by the cover on the left. Again, there’s no obvious connection to the story. I enjoyed the book on the right, but the art is rather clumsily metaphorical.
What’s not to like about a 33-book serial, written faithfully over a quarter of century? Our hero is trying to get back to the planet of his birth, the mythical earth. The basic structure of each book was formulaic: a hint from the previous book starts off the events of the next one. Adventure follows. Disappointment. Clue! Despite all this, the books were surprisingly varied otherwise, and I hear the author is coming out with a new one after a long hiatus.
On the left, a common theme: heroic male and fleshy female. This was #1, and though other cover art shows up on the internet for this book, this particular one does not. I could well have an original printing, here. The cover on the right is in the cartoonish category. I think this one was #10 in the series. The subject of the cover, by the way, is male.
 | Let’s continue the heroic male/fleshy female theme. “His big one,” as it says right there at the top. Well, there can be no doubt about that, can there? Vaguely in line with the story, if only because the hero behaves pretty much like he’s depicted here. I really can’t believe I bought this one - it must have been the writer. Sort of like this, which we’ll keep real tiny:  |
One of the classic science fiction novels, made into an unfortunately clunky though highly promoted film, is “When Worlds Collide.” There must be a zillion different book covers for this one, but I particularly like the ones below. Notice the odd resemblance. Now what’s that all about?
After “When Worlds Collide,” what could be more natural than “After Worlds Collide?” Not without its good points, the permeating racism is jarring.
I actually think the left selection is fairly cool, so let’s balance that out by the utter banality of the cover on the right. Yawn!
So there you have it. When I started collecting these, I anticipated writing witheringly about them. But as I looked through them, I couldn’t really do that. In most cases, the artist is certainly not dishonest, though he or she may be incompetent. I’d bet that the artist may not have even anticipated that the work would be used for a book cover. And the writer certainly has little control here. If there’s any responsibility for boring art, tiresome style, or lack of relevance, I think we must lay it at the feet of the publisher.
Saturday: 20 June 2009
A few weeks ago I reviewed some books united by a common theme, but different authors. Here are two books that are united by the virtue of loosely linked themes and a common author, Ursula K. Le Guin. This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned her work - that would have been back at the end of 2004 (could that really be post #45, preceding a glut of more than 1500?), for "The Lathe of Heaven".
“The Lathe of Heaven” doesn’t fit into the universe that Le Guin created to explore her fascination with human cultures. That book deals with the consequences of someone whose dreams change reality retroactively. The following two books, probably the best known, are among a half dozen others that explore the Hainish universe. It is hard to put all this together, because Le Guin seldom comes right out in the open to present you with the larger picture. Most of the backdrop is delivered in tidbits in dialog between characters. However it’s probably not a SPOILER to summarize it:
In Le Guin’s creation, the Hainish are our ancestors, and they’ve had a culture that has a history encompassing a million years. Not only are they our ancestors, they’re the ancestors of at least 83 now subspecies on as many worlds, established as colonies hundreds of thousands of years ago. Hain has had boom and bust cycles, and several hundred thousand years ago during one of those boom periods the Hainish colonized dozens of star systems, including our own Earth. Then they retreated, leaving at least eight-odd planets with their colonies to survive on their own, adapt, and develop their own cultures. Our own world is one of these, and the half-dozen works by Le Guin explore the rediscovery of some of these worlds, the union of the rediscovered called the Ekumen, and of course gives her the opportunity to do what she does best - figuring things out - and us the opportunity to enjoy her efforts thoroughly.
A couple of other details that are important - star travel still takes years, by NAFAL, “nearly as fast as light.” Somehow in their million years of civilization the Hainish never got around to developing FTL, “faster than light.” However, there is the ansible, one of Le Guin’s clever creations, a kind of “radio” that allows instantaneous communication between any two points, and we’ll want to remember this. Earth, rediscovered centuries in the past and for you and me some centuries in the future, is a devastated world, essentially rescued by the altruistic and guilt-ridden Hainish. Nonetheless the Earth humans, the Terrans, take an important, though usually very peripheral role in Le Guin’s stories.
Although it comes late in the chronology of the books, "The Left Hand of Darkness" (1969) is the first one I’ll deal with.
It takes place on the newly rediscovered world of Gethen, also called Winter. As befits the name, the planet is in the midst of a hundred thousand years of a glacial period. The adaptations that have evolved to survive the cold are not the strangest though - the inhabitants are androgynes, neither male nor female. Five sixths of the time they have no sex, and then for a few days an individual will go into “kemmer,” or what we know as estrus. If paired, one of the pair will become female and the other male.
The Envoy from the Ekumen, Genly Ai, has spent decades in travelling to Gethen, and his mission is to establish a possible consulate with the 83 planets of the Ekumen. He’s having a lot of trouble in the rambunctious Kingdom of Karhide, ruled by a king who is not only paranoid, but also recently pregnant. In some despair over his inability to communicate, the Envoy makes his way over the icy sea to the other nation on this planet, the Commensals of Orgoreyn.
The Orgota are culturally diametrically opposed to the Karhide, though there has never been war between the two, a likely consequence of androgyny. The Orgota are clearly an ultimate realization of what we (or at least some of us) know as the Soviet state, with children brought up by the state after the first year, completely apart from their parents, whom they never know. The control of communications and social order by the state is absolute. Karhide, in contrast, is analogous to the western democracies, although it takes our Envoy quite a while to realize this, seduced as he is by the comfortable order of the Orgota after the chaos of the Karhidish.
One, and maybe even the most, important part of the story is in the complicated relationship that develops between the male Envoy, and one particular androgyne, as they flee across the terrible glaciers in an effort to make their way back to Karhide. (And look! You can see them fleeing in that second cover art above.) And interspersed throughout are what amount to short stories that all Gethenians know as the backbone of their history.
The second book is "The Dispossessed" (1974), and though Le Guin wrote it after, actually occurs before the events of “The Left Hand of Darkness.” Here the story is not told from the point of view of an Envoy - it’s from the perspective of the physicist Shevek, who is an inhabitant of the inhospitable, barely liveable, desert planet Anarres. Anarres is one of a double planet system, and the other, larger planet is the mother planet, the lush and beautiful world Urras. Nearly two centuries before, the followers of the female philosopher Odo, essentially an anarchist, were allowed exile to follow their own path on the inhospitable moon, Anarres. Shevek is the descendent of those people, and this is his story.
We don’t have androgyny here, though the Anarresti and Urrasti are a subspecies physically and genetically distinct from us Terrans. Urras is a reflection of our own Earth, with the Soviet Union, the United States, and even a Third World representative clearly depicted. Anarres, with its anarchic culture, has no parallel. Shevek, our hero on Anarres where most of the story takes place, is about to discover that nothing about these cultures is what it appears, and that’s why the subtitle is “An Ambiguous Utopia.”
As in “The Left Hand of Darkness,” "The Dispossessed" is interspersed with flashbacks from Shevek’s childhood and upbringing, and gives us an understanding of the implications of an anarchic culture - what its ideals are, and where Shevek begins to understand that it fails. The synthetic language of the Anarresti, Pravik, has no possessives. For instance, in a revealing scene between Shevek and his daughter, she offers him her handkerchief. But her language only allows her to say “You can share the handkerchief I use.”
The main plot here revolves around Shevek, and his development of a once-in-a-million-year idea, the General Temporal Theory - he is a physicist of the caliber of an Einstein. (The “ansible” I mentioned earlier, allowing instantaneous communication between vast distances, turns out to be a spinoff of this theory, with suggestions that faster than light travel will also result.) Shevek’s conundrum - who does he share this with? His own people, the Anarresti, who seem not to care? The greedy, materialistic Urrasti of the mother planet, who covet it? Ultimately he decides on a third way, which is informed by the unselfishness of his upbringing.
Ursula Le Guin’s novels always carry an undercurrent of sadness to them - bittersweet because they are such good stories and by no means bummers. Earth humans, Terrans, occupy very little space in her stories as a culture but we do get a glimpse of what has happened to us. We are a failed culture, redeemed by the kindly Hainish and certainly active in the society of the Ekumen but undeniably ghosts.
Everyone who has read “The Dispossessed,” and likes it (and that seems to be most readers), comes away with a different part of the book that affected them deeply. Here’s my own, and I don’t think this is a SPOILER, because it doesn’t reveal anything of the resolution of “The Dispossessed.” It is, in fact, quite peripheral to the main story, and certainly not the only moving passage. But it does come at the end and so you may want to skip it. The quotes below are also much longer than what I’ve ever quoted from a book, and that may be inappropriate, I’m just a little pensive about it. We’ll just have to see. The passage affected me hugely when I was in college 35 years ago, and it still does. The written language may not be elegant but the clash of perception as to what constitutes Paradise and Hell is.
It’s a conversation between Shevek and the Ambassador from Earth, Keng. Shevek, who has now long experienced his own anarchic, idealistically unselfish desert world of exiles, Anarres, as well as for a brief time the lush and beautiful but materialistic mother planet Urras observes that for him Urras is hell:
Ambassador Keng responds:
And then Ambassador Keng from the Earth lets us know how she *really* feels:
“The Lathe of Heaven” doesn’t fit into the universe that Le Guin created to explore her fascination with human cultures. That book deals with the consequences of someone whose dreams change reality retroactively. The following two books, probably the best known, are among a half dozen others that explore the Hainish universe. It is hard to put all this together, because Le Guin seldom comes right out in the open to present you with the larger picture. Most of the backdrop is delivered in tidbits in dialog between characters. However it’s probably not a SPOILER to summarize it:
In Le Guin’s creation, the Hainish are our ancestors, and they’ve had a culture that has a history encompassing a million years. Not only are they our ancestors, they’re the ancestors of at least 83 now subspecies on as many worlds, established as colonies hundreds of thousands of years ago. Hain has had boom and bust cycles, and several hundred thousand years ago during one of those boom periods the Hainish colonized dozens of star systems, including our own Earth. Then they retreated, leaving at least eight-odd planets with their colonies to survive on their own, adapt, and develop their own cultures. Our own world is one of these, and the half-dozen works by Le Guin explore the rediscovery of some of these worlds, the union of the rediscovered called the Ekumen, and of course gives her the opportunity to do what she does best - figuring things out - and us the opportunity to enjoy her efforts thoroughly.
A couple of other details that are important - star travel still takes years, by NAFAL, “nearly as fast as light.” Somehow in their million years of civilization the Hainish never got around to developing FTL, “faster than light.” However, there is the ansible, one of Le Guin’s clever creations, a kind of “radio” that allows instantaneous communication between any two points, and we’ll want to remember this. Earth, rediscovered centuries in the past and for you and me some centuries in the future, is a devastated world, essentially rescued by the altruistic and guilt-ridden Hainish. Nonetheless the Earth humans, the Terrans, take an important, though usually very peripheral role in Le Guin’s stories.
Although it comes late in the chronology of the books, "The Left Hand of Darkness" (1969) is the first one I’ll deal with.
It takes place on the newly rediscovered world of Gethen, also called Winter. As befits the name, the planet is in the midst of a hundred thousand years of a glacial period. The adaptations that have evolved to survive the cold are not the strangest though - the inhabitants are androgynes, neither male nor female. Five sixths of the time they have no sex, and then for a few days an individual will go into “kemmer,” or what we know as estrus. If paired, one of the pair will become female and the other male.
The Envoy from the Ekumen, Genly Ai, has spent decades in travelling to Gethen, and his mission is to establish a possible consulate with the 83 planets of the Ekumen. He’s having a lot of trouble in the rambunctious Kingdom of Karhide, ruled by a king who is not only paranoid, but also recently pregnant. In some despair over his inability to communicate, the Envoy makes his way over the icy sea to the other nation on this planet, the Commensals of Orgoreyn.
The Orgota are culturally diametrically opposed to the Karhide, though there has never been war between the two, a likely consequence of androgyny. The Orgota are clearly an ultimate realization of what we (or at least some of us) know as the Soviet state, with children brought up by the state after the first year, completely apart from their parents, whom they never know. The control of communications and social order by the state is absolute. Karhide, in contrast, is analogous to the western democracies, although it takes our Envoy quite a while to realize this, seduced as he is by the comfortable order of the Orgota after the chaos of the Karhidish.
One, and maybe even the most, important part of the story is in the complicated relationship that develops between the male Envoy, and one particular androgyne, as they flee across the terrible glaciers in an effort to make their way back to Karhide. (And look! You can see them fleeing in that second cover art above.) And interspersed throughout are what amount to short stories that all Gethenians know as the backbone of their history.
The second book is "The Dispossessed" (1974), and though Le Guin wrote it after, actually occurs before the events of “The Left Hand of Darkness.” Here the story is not told from the point of view of an Envoy - it’s from the perspective of the physicist Shevek, who is an inhabitant of the inhospitable, barely liveable, desert planet Anarres. Anarres is one of a double planet system, and the other, larger planet is the mother planet, the lush and beautiful world Urras. Nearly two centuries before, the followers of the female philosopher Odo, essentially an anarchist, were allowed exile to follow their own path on the inhospitable moon, Anarres. Shevek is the descendent of those people, and this is his story.
We don’t have androgyny here, though the Anarresti and Urrasti are a subspecies physically and genetically distinct from us Terrans. Urras is a reflection of our own Earth, with the Soviet Union, the United States, and even a Third World representative clearly depicted. Anarres, with its anarchic culture, has no parallel. Shevek, our hero on Anarres where most of the story takes place, is about to discover that nothing about these cultures is what it appears, and that’s why the subtitle is “An Ambiguous Utopia.”
As in “The Left Hand of Darkness,” "The Dispossessed" is interspersed with flashbacks from Shevek’s childhood and upbringing, and gives us an understanding of the implications of an anarchic culture - what its ideals are, and where Shevek begins to understand that it fails. The synthetic language of the Anarresti, Pravik, has no possessives. For instance, in a revealing scene between Shevek and his daughter, she offers him her handkerchief. But her language only allows her to say “You can share the handkerchief I use.”
The main plot here revolves around Shevek, and his development of a once-in-a-million-year idea, the General Temporal Theory - he is a physicist of the caliber of an Einstein. (The “ansible” I mentioned earlier, allowing instantaneous communication between vast distances, turns out to be a spinoff of this theory, with suggestions that faster than light travel will also result.) Shevek’s conundrum - who does he share this with? His own people, the Anarresti, who seem not to care? The greedy, materialistic Urrasti of the mother planet, who covet it? Ultimately he decides on a third way, which is informed by the unselfishness of his upbringing.
Ursula Le Guin’s novels always carry an undercurrent of sadness to them - bittersweet because they are such good stories and by no means bummers. Earth humans, Terrans, occupy very little space in her stories as a culture but we do get a glimpse of what has happened to us. We are a failed culture, redeemed by the kindly Hainish and certainly active in the society of the Ekumen but undeniably ghosts.
Everyone who has read “The Dispossessed,” and likes it (and that seems to be most readers), comes away with a different part of the book that affected them deeply. Here’s my own, and I don’t think this is a SPOILER, because it doesn’t reveal anything of the resolution of “The Dispossessed.” It is, in fact, quite peripheral to the main story, and certainly not the only moving passage. But it does come at the end and so you may want to skip it. The quotes below are also much longer than what I’ve ever quoted from a book, and that may be inappropriate, I’m just a little pensive about it. We’ll just have to see. The passage affected me hugely when I was in college 35 years ago, and it still does. The written language may not be elegant but the clash of perception as to what constitutes Paradise and Hell is.
It’s a conversation between Shevek and the Ambassador from Earth, Keng. Shevek, who has now long experienced his own anarchic, idealistically unselfish desert world of exiles, Anarres, as well as for a brief time the lush and beautiful but materialistic mother planet Urras observes that for him Urras is hell:
...there is nothing that we Anarresti need! We left with empty hands, a hundred and seventy years ago, and we were right. We took nothing. Because there is nothing here [Urras] but States and their weapons, the rich and their lies, and the poor and their misery. There is no way to act rightly, with a clear heart, on Urras. There is nothing you can do that profit does not enter into, and the fear of loss, and the wish for power. You cannot say good morning without knowing which of you is ‘superior’ to the other, or trying to prove it. You cannot act like a brother to other people, you must manipulate them, or command them, or obey them, or trick them. You cannot touch another person, yet they will not leave you alone. There is no freedom. It is a box - Urras is a box, a package, with all the beautiful wrapping of blue sky and meadows and forests and great cities. And you open the box, and what is inside it? A black cellar full of dust, and a dead man. A man whose hand was shot off because he held it out to others. I have been in Hell at last. Desar was right; it is Urras; Hell is Urras.
Ambassador Keng responds:
We are both aliens here, Shevek... I from much farther away in space and time. Yet I begin to think that I am much less alien to Urras than you are... Let me tell you how this world seems to me. To me, and to all my fellow Terrans who have seen the planet, Urras is the kindliest, most various, most beautiful of all the inhabited worlds. It is the world that comes as close as any could to Paradise...
I know it’s full of evils, full of human injustice, greed, folly, waste. But it is also full of good, of beauty, vitality, and achievement. It is what a world should be! It is alive, tremendously alive - alive, despite all its evils, with hope. Is that not true?
And then Ambassador Keng from the Earth lets us know how she *really* feels:
Now, you man from a world I cannot even imagine, you who see my Paradise as Hell, will you ask what my world must be like?
My world, my Earth, is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and gobbled and fought until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we destroyed our world first. There are no forests left on my Earth. The air is grey, the sky is grey, it is always hot. It is habitable, it is still habitable, but not as this world is. This is a living world, a harmony. Mine is a discord. You Odonians chose a desert; we Terrans made a desert.... We survive there, as you do. People are tough! There are nearly a half billion of us now. Once there were nine billion. You can see the old cities still everywhere. The bones and bricks go to dust, but the little pieces of plastic never do - they never adapt either. We failed as a species, as a social species. We are here now, dealing as equals with other human societies on other worlds, only because of the charity of the Hainish. They came; they brought us help. They built ships and gave them to us, so we could leave our ruined world. They treat us gently, charitably, as the strong man treats the sick one...
Thursday: 15 January 2009
It’s probably no news to anyone from the Rockies east that we’re in for a few days of intense cold. The low temperatures are expected to go below 10 degF Friday night, and it’s not likely to climb above freezing from tonight until Saturday afternoon. (I know, that’s not very severe for most, but you will be amused to hear that I overheard a couple of students last night asking if the university would shut down. Ummm, no.)
I’ve been having fun for the last month reading the maps produced by various prediction models, and hoping for snow, of course. It’s not going to happen for us here in Athens, I’m afraid. We’ll get the cold but we won’t get the moisture.
Figures like the ones below are generated by current conditions inputs into prediction models which go by names like NAM, and Eta, and GFS.
Unisys Weather has a great collection of prediction model presentations. On the front page you’ll get a current surface map of conditions, but the real treat is on the left sidebar where you can choose a prediction model. Clicking on any of these present you with a page and a header like this:
The “model” line shows the prediction models available. In this case I used GFSx, the long-range prediction model. It shows maps that display predictions up to ten days in advance, in 12 hour incremements (the “time” line above). The “plot” line shows you the predictions at various air pressures, or heights above sea level.
Learning to read these is something of an art, and it helps if you combine the pretty pictures while reading the “scientific weather discussion” issued by the National Weather Service. You can find these on weather sites such as Weather Underground. All they’re doing there is interpreting the same prediction plots you see below, with a lot of jargon that sometimes doesn’t make sense until you look at the pictures at the same time.
Here’s a very relevant series of screen shots for 12Z Friday, which is 7AM Friday, EST. The first one is surface air pressure and precipitation predictions. I’ve placed a red circle over north Georgia, and it shows no hint of precipitation in the colored blobs. This isn’t too surprising since we just about under a high pressure dome, and that usually tells us there isn’t going to be any precipitation. However there is at least a small purple cloud of precipitation expected over the Great Lakes area, about 0.1 inches expected over 12 hours, which amounts to an inch of snow given the upper atmosphere conditions in the next few figures.
The second plot shows the “1000 mb temperatures”. 1000 mb is approximately surface pressure, so these are the temperatures at the surface. The enormous tongue of deep blue to violet tells much of the story of extreme cold over the next few days. It extends to the Gulf Coast where the light blue suggests surface temperatures right around freezing. For us, a deeper blue suggests -8 degC. And for the Great Lakes region looks like -16C to -28C.
The next plot is of wind speed and temperatures for 850 mb air pressures, corresponding to about a mile up, more or less. This is good to know since when temperatures are below freezing in combination with precipitation, there’s likely to be snow or ice. Our temperatures are likely to be in the -12C to -16C range but with no precipitation, no snow
. Great Lakes area is deep red, which suggests -26C to -28C a mile up.
The last figure here is at 300 mb, and that’s 5 or 6 miles up - the level of the jet stream. The jet stream is responsible for moving all that cold air southward, and places under it often experience stormy weather as well. Normally it stays well north of us, but occasionally it dips down and when it does we get the cold air and turbulence that means wind and sometimes storm. The colors here depict wind speed, and the nice yellows and oranges show a strong jet stream over us and to our north. We’re expecting strong winds today and tonight as the jet stream moves over us and the cold air begins to arrive.
Glancing through some of the later predictions, the 7.5 day prediction shows warm wet weather for Arizona a week from today, and cold wet weather, maybe even snow, for northern California. A day later, Friday Jan 23, much of that precipitation ends up in the central plains states, along with cold temperatures. By a week from Saturday, that wet weather arrives here, along with temperatures that may be sufficient to produce snow!
Of course, as I discovered a couple of weeks ago, looking ahead that far carries a penalty, since the extended models can change quite a bit over a few days. The GFSx model around Jan 1 showed deep cold weather combined with precipitation, predicted for the weekend of Jan 10. But as the days went by, the model showed less and less cold penetration from the north. We got the precipitation, but it stayed warm. No snow.
I’ve been having fun for the last month reading the maps produced by various prediction models, and hoping for snow, of course. It’s not going to happen for us here in Athens, I’m afraid. We’ll get the cold but we won’t get the moisture.
Figures like the ones below are generated by current conditions inputs into prediction models which go by names like NAM, and Eta, and GFS.
Unisys Weather has a great collection of prediction model presentations. On the front page you’ll get a current surface map of conditions, but the real treat is on the left sidebar where you can choose a prediction model. Clicking on any of these present you with a page and a header like this:
The “model” line shows the prediction models available. In this case I used GFSx, the long-range prediction model. It shows maps that display predictions up to ten days in advance, in 12 hour incremements (the “time” line above). The “plot” line shows you the predictions at various air pressures, or heights above sea level.
Learning to read these is something of an art, and it helps if you combine the pretty pictures while reading the “scientific weather discussion” issued by the National Weather Service. You can find these on weather sites such as Weather Underground. All they’re doing there is interpreting the same prediction plots you see below, with a lot of jargon that sometimes doesn’t make sense until you look at the pictures at the same time.
Here’s a very relevant series of screen shots for 12Z Friday, which is 7AM Friday, EST. The first one is surface air pressure and precipitation predictions. I’ve placed a red circle over north Georgia, and it shows no hint of precipitation in the colored blobs. This isn’t too surprising since we just about under a high pressure dome, and that usually tells us there isn’t going to be any precipitation. However there is at least a small purple cloud of precipitation expected over the Great Lakes area, about 0.1 inches expected over 12 hours, which amounts to an inch of snow given the upper atmosphere conditions in the next few figures.
The second plot shows the “1000 mb temperatures”. 1000 mb is approximately surface pressure, so these are the temperatures at the surface. The enormous tongue of deep blue to violet tells much of the story of extreme cold over the next few days. It extends to the Gulf Coast where the light blue suggests surface temperatures right around freezing. For us, a deeper blue suggests -8 degC. And for the Great Lakes region looks like -16C to -28C.
The next plot is of wind speed and temperatures for 850 mb air pressures, corresponding to about a mile up, more or less. This is good to know since when temperatures are below freezing in combination with precipitation, there’s likely to be snow or ice. Our temperatures are likely to be in the -12C to -16C range but with no precipitation, no snow
. Great Lakes area is deep red, which suggests -26C to -28C a mile up.The last figure here is at 300 mb, and that’s 5 or 6 miles up - the level of the jet stream. The jet stream is responsible for moving all that cold air southward, and places under it often experience stormy weather as well. Normally it stays well north of us, but occasionally it dips down and when it does we get the cold air and turbulence that means wind and sometimes storm. The colors here depict wind speed, and the nice yellows and oranges show a strong jet stream over us and to our north. We’re expecting strong winds today and tonight as the jet stream moves over us and the cold air begins to arrive.
Glancing through some of the later predictions, the 7.5 day prediction shows warm wet weather for Arizona a week from today, and cold wet weather, maybe even snow, for northern California. A day later, Friday Jan 23, much of that precipitation ends up in the central plains states, along with cold temperatures. By a week from Saturday, that wet weather arrives here, along with temperatures that may be sufficient to produce snow!
Of course, as I discovered a couple of weeks ago, looking ahead that far carries a penalty, since the extended models can change quite a bit over a few days. The GFSx model around Jan 1 showed deep cold weather combined with precipitation, predicted for the weekend of Jan 10. But as the days went by, the model showed less and less cold penetration from the north. We got the precipitation, but it stayed warm. No snow.
Saturday: 6 September 2008
There was much despair, for me, in listening to the Republican National Convention, but as I drove home from work, late Wednesday night, the nadir came in Rudy Guiliani’s speech. At one point he evoked the term “community organizer”, and the audience replied BOOOOOOOOOO.
It didn’t stop there. Governor Palin, the now-nominee for vice president, did the same thing.
It was a shock - the new “nigger”, the new “homo”, the new “fear”, and utterly reprehensible. I thought of Martin Luther King and Susan B. Anthony, both of whom fit the egregious label of “community organizers”, and like nothing else realized how low the Republican Party has come. Hell, throw in Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi if you’d like - they’re worth a Republican BOOOOOOOO or two. Not to mention a few hundred thousand others. We actually seem comfortable with sneering at those who work for their communities.
Sarah Palin, who played with this to her advantage too, should take careful note, especially given her religion and her alleged abuse of power in “troopergate” as Governor of Alaska. Here is a meme that has so quickly taken root that I can no longer find the source:
When I was a kid, I read an account of Jane Addams, who, despite her handicaps, became one of those nasty community organizers, helped to clean up the slums of Chicago, and was the first American female recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1931. It was so important to me that I recall it now 40 years later. It may well have motivated me unconciously to become a member of the community and to work with it.
Google “community organizers”, and you find not only half a million hits, but a great deal of outrage in this latest attempt by the Republican Party to make us all afraid. Any who volunteer and give their time to better their communities should be deeply offended by Guiliani and Palin, and by extension, McCain, who clearly must have approved this message.
A community organizer has very often given up the possibility of a high paying job after years of expensive education that could have otherwise provide him or her with a high income. To reject this in favor of doing their community a service is an act of selflessness that provides an indicator of character that we would hope would apply to a US President. Or a First Lady, for that matter.
Not all of us are heiresses who can afford to wear $300,000 dresses, nor are we married to them, nor do we have access to their private jets to get us around the country. Think about it.
Those who sneer at community organizers, community service, and volunteers, provide me with all the evidence I need that they have no character at all. We’ve had enough examples of those who have failed as US presidents with no history of community concerns in their background - the current incumbent is one of them, and where has he taken us?
It’s hard to think of an act of derision that would better indicate those without character. Beware - those who would do this will come back to haunt you. They’re the sort who will harrass city librarians to ban books, which may seem small to you but to me is all revealing.
On Thursday night we had our Wolfskin Volunteer Fire Department business meeting. Several folks independently brought up the excoriation of “community organizers”, along with their own outrage. If I thought I might be too sensitive or off the mark, hearing that in a county as red as ours told me I wasn’t. I was heartened by that.
It didn’t stop there. Governor Palin, the now-nominee for vice president, did the same thing.
It was a shock - the new “nigger”, the new “homo”, the new “fear”, and utterly reprehensible. I thought of Martin Luther King and Susan B. Anthony, both of whom fit the egregious label of “community organizers”, and like nothing else realized how low the Republican Party has come. Hell, throw in Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi if you’d like - they’re worth a Republican BOOOOOOOO or two. Not to mention a few hundred thousand others. We actually seem comfortable with sneering at those who work for their communities.
Sarah Palin, who played with this to her advantage too, should take careful note, especially given her religion and her alleged abuse of power in “troopergate” as Governor of Alaska. Here is a meme that has so quickly taken root that I can no longer find the source:
Jesus was a community organizer, and Pontius Pilate was a governor.
When I was a kid, I read an account of Jane Addams, who, despite her handicaps, became one of those nasty community organizers, helped to clean up the slums of Chicago, and was the first American female recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1931. It was so important to me that I recall it now 40 years later. It may well have motivated me unconciously to become a member of the community and to work with it.
Google “community organizers”, and you find not only half a million hits, but a great deal of outrage in this latest attempt by the Republican Party to make us all afraid. Any who volunteer and give their time to better their communities should be deeply offended by Guiliani and Palin, and by extension, McCain, who clearly must have approved this message.
A community organizer has very often given up the possibility of a high paying job after years of expensive education that could have otherwise provide him or her with a high income. To reject this in favor of doing their community a service is an act of selflessness that provides an indicator of character that we would hope would apply to a US President. Or a First Lady, for that matter.
Not all of us are heiresses who can afford to wear $300,000 dresses, nor are we married to them, nor do we have access to their private jets to get us around the country. Think about it.
Those who sneer at community organizers, community service, and volunteers, provide me with all the evidence I need that they have no character at all. We’ve had enough examples of those who have failed as US presidents with no history of community concerns in their background - the current incumbent is one of them, and where has he taken us?
It’s hard to think of an act of derision that would better indicate those without character. Beware - those who would do this will come back to haunt you. They’re the sort who will harrass city librarians to ban books, which may seem small to you but to me is all revealing.
On Thursday night we had our Wolfskin Volunteer Fire Department business meeting. Several folks independently brought up the excoriation of “community organizers”, along with their own outrage. If I thought I might be too sensitive or off the mark, hearing that in a county as red as ours told me I wasn’t. I was heartened by that.
Wednesday: 2 May 2007
Dark Fishfly, and a Couple of Other Things [General] -
Wayne - wayne@sparkleberrysprings.com @ 08:51:00
I finished my Bioblitz excel sheets and handed them in today. I feel like I’m revisiting my past as a student 
, but maybe it’s because it’s finals week here.
I was most annoyed to be majorly through with my post this morning and have the monitor die on me. I suppose it didn’t lose the post, but because I couldn’t see anything, the post eventually got lost as I tested things. It’s the monitor, all right, and for a large flatscreen monitor well cared for and plugged into voltage suppressors, it shouldn’t have died at less than three years of age. It’s just a throwaway though, right?
Today is much the same as yesterday - temps in the 90s, F, but supposedly will get cooler tomorrow and through the weekend. We might even have rain Thu-Fri, but it’s a small chance. April saw 1.6 inches of rain, a third of what we should have had, and the year so far has delivered about 2/3 of the normal amount, that on top of last year’s drought.
Yesterday, walking along SBS Creek, I caught sight of a weakly fluttering insect that eventually plastered itself on the underside of a low hanging branch:
That brings to mind a post I ran into by Josh Rosenau, of Thoughts From Kansas. I don’t much follow Scienceblogs, as they seem to self-promote quite well and will neither notice nor miss any links from me, but I do read TFK regularly.
This particular post is an answer to a 5-question blog meme, but Josh’s answers include certainly the nicest and clearest descriptions of niches and habitat occupation that I’ve seen anywhere. And as a bonus, you get his ideas on strategies for ecological conservation, which center on habitat conservation. This is in some contrast to species conservation, and he makes the good argument that you can try to conserve endangered species, but where will they go if you don’t make a higher priority of conserving habitat?
And then, as if by magic, I ran across a notice of this fellow: Ted Scambos. There’s a rather lengthy but informative article about him that makes the essential points, but do as I did and google him. I’m getting the feeling that he’s NOAA’s equivalent of Jim Hansen.
Scambos is a glaciologist specializing in Antarctica, but has tight connections with a colleague specializing in the Arctic. What is especially convincing to me is that a couple of years ago, Scambos was, not a climate skeptic - he could see that vast changes were occuring in the Antarctic and witnessed the collapse of the Larson Ice Shelf a couple of years ago. Rather he demurred at guessing at the cause, but he’s convinced now.
And he feels that the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, has greatly underestimated the rate of change. Rather than the 2050 date given by the IPCC, he predicts that the Arctic will be ice free during the summer by 2020. This is an enormously important thing, if it happens. It means that during the time of summer when reflection from Arctic summer ice would reduce heat entrapment, well, that will no longer happen. Besides the ecological considerations, the Arctic Ocean will become an absorber of heat, rather than the reflector, and in just a bit more than a decade.
In the last year or two I’ve been getting the uncomfortable feeling that changes are occuring much more rapidly than we’ve been led to believe. And I don’t just listen and read opinions from experts and naysayers - I actually download data and analyze it for myself, as much as I am competent to do. Watch for Scambos - there are several NPR interviews in the last couple of years.
Watch too, for Scambos to be pilloried by the Bush Administration much as Jim Hansen has been. We can’t hold the US totally responsible for what’s happening with climate, but we can hold it responsible for punishing governmental scientists who have spoken out, and for placing roadblocks in the way of finding solutions for the last six years. This Administration has been a complete disaster in every sense of the word, and it might just be too late to compensate for its monumental mistakes.
Is it too much to hope that Americans will think next time, before they vote?
, but maybe it’s because it’s finals week here.I was most annoyed to be majorly through with my post this morning and have the monitor die on me. I suppose it didn’t lose the post, but because I couldn’t see anything, the post eventually got lost as I tested things. It’s the monitor, all right, and for a large flatscreen monitor well cared for and plugged into voltage suppressors, it shouldn’t have died at less than three years of age. It’s just a throwaway though, right?
Today is much the same as yesterday - temps in the 90s, F, but supposedly will get cooler tomorrow and through the weekend. We might even have rain Thu-Fri, but it’s a small chance. April saw 1.6 inches of rain, a third of what we should have had, and the year so far has delivered about 2/3 of the normal amount, that on top of last year’s drought.
Yesterday, walking along SBS Creek, I caught sight of a weakly fluttering insect that eventually plastered itself on the underside of a low hanging branch:
 | I was pleased to be reminded immediately of this post, of a Summer Fishfly, and immediately went to that family in Bugguide. And it appears to be a Dark Fishfly, probably Nigronia serricorus. That species has a similar relation, N. fasciatus, that is a bioindicator in the sense that it is only found in areas that exhibit very pure water. Whether this is true of N. serricorus isn’t clear. I was happy with the find, though! |
That brings to mind a post I ran into by Josh Rosenau, of Thoughts From Kansas. I don’t much follow Scienceblogs, as they seem to self-promote quite well and will neither notice nor miss any links from me, but I do read TFK regularly.
This particular post is an answer to a 5-question blog meme, but Josh’s answers include certainly the nicest and clearest descriptions of niches and habitat occupation that I’ve seen anywhere. And as a bonus, you get his ideas on strategies for ecological conservation, which center on habitat conservation. This is in some contrast to species conservation, and he makes the good argument that you can try to conserve endangered species, but where will they go if you don’t make a higher priority of conserving habitat?
And then, as if by magic, I ran across a notice of this fellow: Ted Scambos. There’s a rather lengthy but informative article about him that makes the essential points, but do as I did and google him. I’m getting the feeling that he’s NOAA’s equivalent of Jim Hansen.
Scambos is a glaciologist specializing in Antarctica, but has tight connections with a colleague specializing in the Arctic. What is especially convincing to me is that a couple of years ago, Scambos was, not a climate skeptic - he could see that vast changes were occuring in the Antarctic and witnessed the collapse of the Larson Ice Shelf a couple of years ago. Rather he demurred at guessing at the cause, but he’s convinced now.
And he feels that the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, has greatly underestimated the rate of change. Rather than the 2050 date given by the IPCC, he predicts that the Arctic will be ice free during the summer by 2020. This is an enormously important thing, if it happens. It means that during the time of summer when reflection from Arctic summer ice would reduce heat entrapment, well, that will no longer happen. Besides the ecological considerations, the Arctic Ocean will become an absorber of heat, rather than the reflector, and in just a bit more than a decade.
In the last year or two I’ve been getting the uncomfortable feeling that changes are occuring much more rapidly than we’ve been led to believe. And I don’t just listen and read opinions from experts and naysayers - I actually download data and analyze it for myself, as much as I am competent to do. Watch for Scambos - there are several NPR interviews in the last couple of years.
Watch too, for Scambos to be pilloried by the Bush Administration much as Jim Hansen has been. We can’t hold the US totally responsible for what’s happening with climate, but we can hold it responsible for punishing governmental scientists who have spoken out, and for placing roadblocks in the way of finding solutions for the last six years. This Administration has been a complete disaster in every sense of the word, and it might just be too late to compensate for its monumental mistakes.
Is it too much to hope that Americans will think next time, before they vote?
Thursday: 21 September 2006
The Blog Meme: An interesting meme, unique among those which are uninteresting to me. I picked this up from several blogs, and it’s certainly appealing for the “me me me” aspect, but perhaps the nicest thing was that it was entirely voluntary to do so, rather than feeling obliged because someone listed me among five as a victim. And in keeping with this idea, no one will be pegged here and anyone can take it and run. That’s really what memes are: ideas that intrigue enough to be propagated, without coercion.
I’ve mutated the meme of course, as I always do, and there are more mutations at the end, but this one should come at the beginning (mutations bolded):
What is the mission of your blog?
Whatever I’m interested in. Maybe I should even say what I’m interested in that most others are not, necessarily, or perhaps have never considered.
90% of this is what others have come to see as “on topic”, things in the woods that I see, photograph, and add to my increasing set of observations of the organisms I see on my 40 acres of property, as well as what I think of these. In most cases these are things I knew nothing about before, but that I have learned about from reading, from investigating, and from the folks who see what I post and know more than I do. But there’s more to what interests me that falls into the other 10%. Science fiction, movies, books, climate, paleontology, tectonics, astronomy, computer programming, photography, and even personal matters, and (probably to the consternation of some readers) I will write about all of these.
And now the formal meme:
Are you satisfied with your blog’s content and look?
Yes. I change its look infrequently. Last time I made a change it was a color scheme to make people feel warmer in the winter. I didn’t follow it up this summer with a color change to make people feel cooler in the summer, so I hope no one sweated more as a consequence. It’s simple, no advertisements (as if), and it shows what I want to show, and nothing that someone else wants me to show. I admit I’m a pill about advertising.
Does your family know about your blog?
Sure. My parents read it fairly regularly, and enjoy the photographs. My sisters will read it if I prompt them, and at least with one, when she’s slumming with me on the phone. I enjoy that my family reads the blog, although I definitely constrain my writing (to some extent) to respect their sensibilities, which are really no different from anyone else’s.
Do you feel embarrassed to let your friends know about your blog, or do you consider it a private thing?
On the contrary. All my friends know about the blog. What they do with that information is their prerogative. Only one reads it regularly and he’s a sweetie. He even comments. He’s fully informed of my activities and must be the astonishing revealer of information when others ask how Glenn and Wayne are doing. Another friend would read it enthusastically but he’s not computer literate. Some of my other friends claim to read it but I have statcounter. I know better. Friends often comment (to me) that they don’t know what’s up with me, that we haven’t gotten together in so long (as you know, I’m a fairly insular individual even with my friends) but the barebones info is always available on the blog, ready and waiting for friends to see and inquire about, except most never do, because they never read the blog. Gracious, they’d know ever so much about me if they did. Embarrassment? Perish the thought.
Has blogging brought about positive changes for you?
No doubt. It’s provided me an incentive for disciplining myself to write on a regular basis, something I hope will someday lead to bigger things, and a venue for documenting the things that are important to me. The array of things that interest me turns out to be multitudinous.
Do you only read blogs of those who comment on your blog, or do you also like to find new blogs?
I read many blogs which have little or no idea of my existence. It’s no problem.
What are your thoughts on commenting? Is it important to you that people leave comments?
See below for the mutation. I very much enjoy comments, otherwise I’d just turn them off and write in a vacuum. But for the foreseeable future, I would still continue to write on a near-daily and sometimes twice-daily basis if there were no comments, and this is occasionally the case with some of my drier posts. Much of this is documentary for my very specific purposes and I don’t expect others to take note of my obsessions in commentary.
Does your visitor counter matter to you?
Well, I have installed StatCounter, so that’s a tacit admission that I’m curious, of course. I only present the “unique count” which amounts to 100-200 per day, rather than the “total count” (which includes multiple page hits and which sometimes inflates the count by a factor of 10). The “regular visitors count” is generally 20-30 per day, a count that has been consistent for about a year. So you can see that I have analyzed this and that it must interest me. However I haven’t taken any particular steps to increase the count, so while it interests me, it doesn’t matter.
Do you try to imagine what fellow bloggers look like?
Of course. These aren’t just virtual people on the other side of the screen. They’re real people. I’ve even met some of them.
Do you think there is a benefit to blogging?
Gracious, yes. I very often go back to the 719 previous posts of the last 2+ years as a source of information, because that’s the mission - documentation of the changes on our 40 acres, and the observations from year to year, and what I might think about that. Aside from the mission, it’s brought me into contact with a number of folks who I feel a definite affection for. And I enjoy going back to the most frivolous posts (for an egregious example) that I’ve completely forgotten about and re-reading them.
Does criticism of your blog annoy you?
Negative or positive criticism, it really doesn’t matter. My blog is largely non-controversial (who can complain about my opinion of tree-ear mushrooms?). No one has ever criticized negatively. The folks who read this blog are very gracious. There has been some positive criticism in some technical things, which I’ve addressed to the extent I’m technically able. I’m afraid I’m my most critical critic. No, it doesn’t annoy me.
Are there any types of blogs you avoid?
Vapid blogs? It doesn’t take long to avoid them. I’m not interested in mainstream culture, so if that’s the case, then out they go. I would expect no less from those uninterested in what I have to say.
Political blogs? Unlike most responders I’ve read to this meme I do read certain political blogs, even some conservative ones, and with gusto. Political blogs don’t depress me, although sometimes they’re tiresome. Very tiresome. They go on and on. After a couple of years of reading, and developing the ability to discriminate between information and opinion in this venue, I’ve come to realize that there are quite a few political blogs that offer me more timely, more accurate, and in retrospect, more reliable information than the mainstream media. The mainstream media have increasingly offered us less and less timely, and increasingly inadequate information. They lag behind by weeks or more and do a much inferior job of offering details on impending events. Goodbye mainstream dinosaurs, you were good for nothing years ago and now there’s something better. No, I have no problem with reading the more remarkable of polical blogs - they’re a welcome change.
And since I love to mutate memes, here’s a few new questions:
When did you start your blog and how has it changed since you started it?
July 2004. The mission has not changed, however, early on I was slightly more inclined to let loose and post on political matters, in an in-your-face way. There are some terrible things going on that just appall and infuriate me. But it’s really not my style to engage in this manner. Robin of the Dharma Bums and I talked about this through email and she said something interesting to me: people come to their blog expecting a certain thing and politics isn’t it. And she is right, and there’s no doubt that I respect my readers. So I have ramped that down quite a bit over two plus years, but at the same time I’ve watched how gracefully she and Roger make their points, without being in-your-face, and have tried to emulate. There are things that are important, but they can be soft-pedaled. Once in awhile I get out of control.
Do you respond to comments?
Oh yes. I understand that if you’re a political blog with hundreds of comments, this is impossible and in any event the commenters take control and entertain themselves without the blogger’s input. But I’m a blogger with an average of ten comments a post, and I’ve really no excuse for not paying attention to those who take the time to read what I write and respond. Otherwise I’d just turn my comments off, invite email instead, and watch how few people take me up on the alternative. I modestly evaluate that people respond, not just because they something to add, but also because they enjoy the interaction. Let’s face it: on a blog my size, commenters seldom read each other’s comments without some encouragement from me, the blogger. Since they interact amongst themselves infrequently, it’s clear they enjoy the interaction with me, the blogger. To ignore my commenters would be rude.
This is a delicate topic and one that I know others don’t agree with, but I do know others who do understand what I’m talking about.
If I have 30 comments listed, probably 10-15 are my own responses to the comments. Anyone who takes the time to make a comment gets a response that I hope is as substantive as what they offered. My parents taught me this, although at a time when there were no blogs (or computers for that matter), that when someone pays you attention, acknowledges you, then you respond, not just graciously whether in agreement or disagreement, but with substance commensurate to that that they took the time to offer. I can’t help but think that to do otherwise is rude. At first I thought graciousness might be a Southern peculiarity, but no. The evidence against that is overwhelmingly to the contrary, and the evidence comes from all over the world. It has nothing to do with regionalism.
As a corollary, I must say that when I comment substantively on another blog (and when I comment substantively, I do mean with substance, as opposed to a throwaway), and am ignored, I gradually get discouraged and sooner or later, stop commenting regularly. (Doesn’t mean I stop reading that blog though!)
I’ve mutated the meme of course, as I always do, and there are more mutations at the end, but this one should come at the beginning (mutations bolded):
What is the mission of your blog?
Whatever I’m interested in. Maybe I should even say what I’m interested in that most others are not, necessarily, or perhaps have never considered.
90% of this is what others have come to see as “on topic”, things in the woods that I see, photograph, and add to my increasing set of observations of the organisms I see on my 40 acres of property, as well as what I think of these. In most cases these are things I knew nothing about before, but that I have learned about from reading, from investigating, and from the folks who see what I post and know more than I do. But there’s more to what interests me that falls into the other 10%. Science fiction, movies, books, climate, paleontology, tectonics, astronomy, computer programming, photography, and even personal matters, and (probably to the consternation of some readers) I will write about all of these.
And now the formal meme:
Are you satisfied with your blog’s content and look?
Yes. I change its look infrequently. Last time I made a change it was a color scheme to make people feel warmer in the winter. I didn’t follow it up this summer with a color change to make people feel cooler in the summer, so I hope no one sweated more as a consequence. It’s simple, no advertisements (as if), and it shows what I want to show, and nothing that someone else wants me to show. I admit I’m a pill about advertising.
Does your family know about your blog?
Sure. My parents read it fairly regularly, and enjoy the photographs. My sisters will read it if I prompt them, and at least with one, when she’s slumming with me on the phone. I enjoy that my family reads the blog, although I definitely constrain my writing (to some extent) to respect their sensibilities, which are really no different from anyone else’s.
Do you feel embarrassed to let your friends know about your blog, or do you consider it a private thing?
On the contrary. All my friends know about the blog. What they do with that information is their prerogative. Only one reads it regularly and he’s a sweetie. He even comments. He’s fully informed of my activities and must be the astonishing revealer of information when others ask how Glenn and Wayne are doing. Another friend would read it enthusastically but he’s not computer literate. Some of my other friends claim to read it but I have statcounter. I know better. Friends often comment (to me) that they don’t know what’s up with me, that we haven’t gotten together in so long (as you know, I’m a fairly insular individual even with my friends) but the barebones info is always available on the blog, ready and waiting for friends to see and inquire about, except most never do, because they never read the blog. Gracious, they’d know ever so much about me if they did. Embarrassment? Perish the thought.
Has blogging brought about positive changes for you?
No doubt. It’s provided me an incentive for disciplining myself to write on a regular basis, something I hope will someday lead to bigger things, and a venue for documenting the things that are important to me. The array of things that interest me turns out to be multitudinous.
Do you only read blogs of those who comment on your blog, or do you also like to find new blogs?
I read many blogs which have little or no idea of my existence. It’s no problem.
What are your thoughts on commenting? Is it important to you that people leave comments?
See below for the mutation. I very much enjoy comments, otherwise I’d just turn them off and write in a vacuum. But for the foreseeable future, I would still continue to write on a near-daily and sometimes twice-daily basis if there were no comments, and this is occasionally the case with some of my drier posts. Much of this is documentary for my very specific purposes and I don’t expect others to take note of my obsessions in commentary.
Does your visitor counter matter to you?
Well, I have installed StatCounter, so that’s a tacit admission that I’m curious, of course. I only present the “unique count” which amounts to 100-200 per day, rather than the “total count” (which includes multiple page hits and which sometimes inflates the count by a factor of 10). The “regular visitors count” is generally 20-30 per day, a count that has been consistent for about a year. So you can see that I have analyzed this and that it must interest me. However I haven’t taken any particular steps to increase the count, so while it interests me, it doesn’t matter.
Do you try to imagine what fellow bloggers look like?
Of course. These aren’t just virtual people on the other side of the screen. They’re real people. I’ve even met some of them.
Do you think there is a benefit to blogging?
Gracious, yes. I very often go back to the 719 previous posts of the last 2+ years as a source of information, because that’s the mission - documentation of the changes on our 40 acres, and the observations from year to year, and what I might think about that. Aside from the mission, it’s brought me into contact with a number of folks who I feel a definite affection for. And I enjoy going back to the most frivolous posts (for an egregious example) that I’ve completely forgotten about and re-reading them.
Does criticism of your blog annoy you?
Negative or positive criticism, it really doesn’t matter. My blog is largely non-controversial (who can complain about my opinion of tree-ear mushrooms?). No one has ever criticized negatively. The folks who read this blog are very gracious. There has been some positive criticism in some technical things, which I’ve addressed to the extent I’m technically able. I’m afraid I’m my most critical critic. No, it doesn’t annoy me.
Are there any types of blogs you avoid?
Vapid blogs? It doesn’t take long to avoid them. I’m not interested in mainstream culture, so if that’s the case, then out they go. I would expect no less from those uninterested in what I have to say.
Political blogs? Unlike most responders I’ve read to this meme I do read certain political blogs, even some conservative ones, and with gusto. Political blogs don’t depress me, although sometimes they’re tiresome. Very tiresome. They go on and on. After a couple of years of reading, and developing the ability to discriminate between information and opinion in this venue, I’ve come to realize that there are quite a few political blogs that offer me more timely, more accurate, and in retrospect, more reliable information than the mainstream media. The mainstream media have increasingly offered us less and less timely, and increasingly inadequate information. They lag behind by weeks or more and do a much inferior job of offering details on impending events. Goodbye mainstream dinosaurs, you were good for nothing years ago and now there’s something better. No, I have no problem with reading the more remarkable of polical blogs - they’re a welcome change.
And since I love to mutate memes, here’s a few new questions:
When did you start your blog and how has it changed since you started it?
July 2004. The mission has not changed, however, early on I was slightly more inclined to let loose and post on political matters, in an in-your-face way. There are some terrible things going on that just appall and infuriate me. But it’s really not my style to engage in this manner. Robin of the Dharma Bums and I talked about this through email and she said something interesting to me: people come to their blog expecting a certain thing and politics isn’t it. And she is right, and there’s no doubt that I respect my readers. So I have ramped that down quite a bit over two plus years, but at the same time I’ve watched how gracefully she and Roger make their points, without being in-your-face, and have tried to emulate. There are things that are important, but they can be soft-pedaled. Once in awhile I get out of control.
Do you respond to comments?
Oh yes. I understand that if you’re a political blog with hundreds of comments, this is impossible and in any event the commenters take control and entertain themselves without the blogger’s input. But I’m a blogger with an average of ten comments a post, and I’ve really no excuse for not paying attention to those who take the time to read what I write and respond. Otherwise I’d just turn my comments off, invite email instead, and watch how few people take me up on the alternative. I modestly evaluate that people respond, not just because they something to add, but also because they enjoy the interaction. Let’s face it: on a blog my size, commenters seldom read each other’s comments without some encouragement from me, the blogger. Since they interact amongst themselves infrequently, it’s clear they enjoy the interaction with me, the blogger. To ignore my commenters would be rude.
This is a delicate topic and one that I know others don’t agree with, but I do know others who do understand what I’m talking about.
If I have 30 comments listed, probably 10-15 are my own responses to the comments. Anyone who takes the time to make a comment gets a response that I hope is as substantive as what they offered. My parents taught me this, although at a time when there were no blogs (or computers for that matter), that when someone pays you attention, acknowledges you, then you respond, not just graciously whether in agreement or disagreement, but with substance commensurate to that that they took the time to offer. I can’t help but think that to do otherwise is rude. At first I thought graciousness might be a Southern peculiarity, but no. The evidence against that is overwhelmingly to the contrary, and the evidence comes from all over the world. It has nothing to do with regionalism.
As a corollary, I must say that when I comment substantively on another blog (and when I comment substantively, I do mean with substance, as opposed to a throwaway), and am ignored, I gradually get discouraged and sooner or later, stop commenting regularly. (Doesn’t mean I stop reading that blog though!)
Friday: 12 May 2006
Wednesday it was 70 degrees and 80% humidity - I took an hour walk and came back sweating like a pig. (Yes, I know, you Floridians - it will be 90-100 degrees here soon enough). But yesterday a front had moved through. It was the same 70 degrees but 40% humidity and it felt wonderful! Breezy, cool, and I didn’t pop a sweat the entire 3 hours out. It was what I think of as hawk-call weather.
Today is going to be much the same, and everyone was so good yesterday that we should take a field trip instead of going to class. (Well, almost everyone.
)
I’ll just add to the post during the course of the day, confounding and irritating the RSS feed as I go. We can call it liveblogging, with a time delay. You don’t have to wear yourselves out commenting (of COURSE they’re always appreciated), just enjoy.
Let’s have dessert first. I always wanted to do that.
What can you see in this picture?
How about now?
I’ve mentioned Barred Owls (Strix varia)before, oddly enough almost exactly one year ago to the day, and then this past January, where there is a sound file available. We hear the occasional Great Horned Owl and very seldom a Screech Owl. Barred owls are the kings of the forest here.
I was doing some photography of the shorthusk field when I saw out of the corner of my eye, the flicker of this fellow landing, noiselessly of course, in a tree 50 feet away. He was very definitely interested in what I, a mere plebe, was doing in his territory, and peered down at me haughtily for three minutes before flying off without a sound.
Added 8am ————————
Our next stop on this field trip is actually the last one yesterday, but I’m telling this story.
I’m supposed to do the ten beautiful birds meme. Including the barred owl above, I’d list ruby-throat hummingbirds, great blue heron, chickadees, titmouse, and brown-headed nuthatches, all of which I’ve photographed however ineptly (but I’m workin on it, I’m workin on it). OK, that’s six. Add to it the ones I haven’t photographed - pileated woodpeckers (and you’d better go see Thingfish’s fantastic photos earlier this week, since I ain’t never gonna achieve that kind of shot!), indigo buntings, and our redtailed hawks, and that’s nine.
Number ten: Great Crested Flycatchers. They’re back. For the last month I’ve been hearing their piercing “phwEEP! phwEEP!” as they rock getting the nest in order. Such a work ethic as you see in phoebes and flycatchers is hard to top. Late dusk, yesterday afternoon, this one was eyeing cedar chips as fashionable accessories for the casa. (No, he’s not showing his great crest, but it’s there.)
This is our second year for great crested flycatchers. I saw them maybe once or twice in earlier years, but they always moved on. Now they want to stay. Welcome!
12:30pm ———-
Fall’s the time for all box turtles to be prancing about, sowing their spring oats, but this time of year they’re concentrated on eating.
It’s always a little bitty shock to be scanning the ground, seeing the usual stuff, and suddenly there’s something new. Closer to Goulding Creek, I came across this young lady hiding underneath the bedstraws. She was very shy, so this is the only pic I got before she went into her shell.
It was Swampy who briefed me on ways to sex a turtle, last November. Besides not having red eyes, this one has a flat plastron, no concavity. I’m guessing from counting the scutes that she’s 17 or 18 years old. Her shell was in pretty poor shape. Perhaps a tomboy.
On April 22, I had encountered, but did not blog, another box turtle, this time a male, out for a jaunt on a wet spring day. If you compare his picture to the link to last fall’s box turtle, it’s clear they’re different, though about the same age.
Look at that nice dent in his plastron (Thanks, Swampy!). Completely different from the female. This one looks a couple years younger than the female above, but his shell is in much better shape.
They’ll probably still be roaming Sparkleberry Springs 20 years from now.
2pm———–
Mark speaks of habitually looking up, rather than down. Looking up is something I’ve had to learn, but I’d not have seen the barred owl otherwise.
Here’s a fellow, on the way up from Goulding Creek (and again I’m out of order) who spends a lot of time looking up.
I’m convinced it’s a robber fly (female?). He or she was resting on a broad leaf and entirely resistant to being disturbed. The body shape and red knees (elbows?) suggest it’s a Machimus notatus, but it could be some other species. Love the red elbows.
Whoever it is, it’s looking for some big juicy tasty insect to fly by, and then that victim is history.
4pm ————
The final entry, I think, until Sunday (probably). Who knows?
Last June, I posted a pic of Calopteryx maculata - Black-winged Damselfly, or Ebony Jewelwing, but it was in the shade and not nearly as vivid as in real life.
This male (I think) was resting on an Allium flower just above Goulding Creek. Although damselflies, unlike dragonflies, keep their wings folded instead of straight out when at rest, he was periodically opening and closing them.
They’re still vicious killers as adults and kids, though!
Today is going to be much the same, and everyone was so good yesterday that we should take a field trip instead of going to class. (Well, almost everyone.
)I’ll just add to the post during the course of the day, confounding and irritating the RSS feed as I go. We can call it liveblogging, with a time delay. You don’t have to wear yourselves out commenting (of COURSE they’re always appreciated), just enjoy.
Let’s have dessert first. I always wanted to do that.
What can you see in this picture?
How about now?
I’ve mentioned Barred Owls (Strix varia)before, oddly enough almost exactly one year ago to the day, and then this past January, where there is a sound file available. We hear the occasional Great Horned Owl and very seldom a Screech Owl. Barred owls are the kings of the forest here.
I was doing some photography of the shorthusk field when I saw out of the corner of my eye, the flicker of this fellow landing, noiselessly of course, in a tree 50 feet away. He was very definitely interested in what I, a mere plebe, was doing in his territory, and peered down at me haughtily for three minutes before flying off without a sound.
Added 8am ————————
Our next stop on this field trip is actually the last one yesterday, but I’m telling this story.
I’m supposed to do the ten beautiful birds meme. Including the barred owl above, I’d list ruby-throat hummingbirds, great blue heron, chickadees, titmouse, and brown-headed nuthatches, all of which I’ve photographed however ineptly (but I’m workin on it, I’m workin on it). OK, that’s six. Add to it the ones I haven’t photographed - pileated woodpeckers (and you’d better go see Thingfish’s fantastic photos earlier this week, since I ain’t never gonna achieve that kind of shot!), indigo buntings, and our redtailed hawks, and that’s nine.
Number ten: Great Crested Flycatchers. They’re back. For the last month I’ve been hearing their piercing “phwEEP! phwEEP!” as they rock getting the nest in order. Such a work ethic as you see in phoebes and flycatchers is hard to top. Late dusk, yesterday afternoon, this one was eyeing cedar chips as fashionable accessories for the casa. (No, he’s not showing his great crest, but it’s there.)
This is our second year for great crested flycatchers. I saw them maybe once or twice in earlier years, but they always moved on. Now they want to stay. Welcome!
12:30pm ———-
Fall’s the time for all box turtles to be prancing about, sowing their spring oats, but this time of year they’re concentrated on eating.
It’s always a little bitty shock to be scanning the ground, seeing the usual stuff, and suddenly there’s something new. Closer to Goulding Creek, I came across this young lady hiding underneath the bedstraws. She was very shy, so this is the only pic I got before she went into her shell.
It was Swampy who briefed me on ways to sex a turtle, last November. Besides not having red eyes, this one has a flat plastron, no concavity. I’m guessing from counting the scutes that she’s 17 or 18 years old. Her shell was in pretty poor shape. Perhaps a tomboy.
On April 22, I had encountered, but did not blog, another box turtle, this time a male, out for a jaunt on a wet spring day. If you compare his picture to the link to last fall’s box turtle, it’s clear they’re different, though about the same age.
Look at that nice dent in his plastron (Thanks, Swampy!). Completely different from the female. This one looks a couple years younger than the female above, but his shell is in much better shape.
They’ll probably still be roaming Sparkleberry Springs 20 years from now.
2pm———–
Mark speaks of habitually looking up, rather than down. Looking up is something I’ve had to learn, but I’d not have seen the barred owl otherwise.
Here’s a fellow, on the way up from Goulding Creek (and again I’m out of order) who spends a lot of time looking up.
I’m convinced it’s a robber fly (female?). He or she was resting on a broad leaf and entirely resistant to being disturbed. The body shape and red knees (elbows?) suggest it’s a Machimus notatus, but it could be some other species. Love the red elbows.
Whoever it is, it’s looking for some big juicy tasty insect to fly by, and then that victim is history.
4pm ————
The final entry, I think, until Sunday (probably). Who knows?
Last June, I posted a pic of Calopteryx maculata - Black-winged Damselfly, or Ebony Jewelwing, but it was in the shade and not nearly as vivid as in real life.
This male (I think) was resting on an Allium flower just above Goulding Creek. Although damselflies, unlike dragonflies, keep their wings folded instead of straight out when at rest, he was periodically opening and closing them.
They’re still vicious killers as adults and kids, though!
Sunday: 9 April 2006
Pablo’s comment made me decide to rename this post and to pass the meme along to anyone who cares to to mention the point at which there appears to be a major transition between winter and spring. It may be that there is no transition where you are, or that it takes a different form for you than it does for me. I’d like to hear about it.
(Unlike other memes that everyone knows the answer to immediately, this one will sweep the world over a lengthy period of time, or at least I’d like to think so , so you’ll have to put it on the back burner until it happens!)
Here, every year, there’s a single day at some point when emerging spring seems to do a quantum leap into major greenery. I’ve been noting for at least a month the signs of emerging spring, but it was yesterday, April 8, that I walked out and was overwhelmed with greenery. *Everything* was greener, bigger, and denser than the day before. The grasses seem to have spread exponentially, a good many perennials seem to have popped out overnight, and suddenly many species of trees have opened their buds and expanded their leaves. (Walnuts are the exception - the first to lose their leaves in the fall and the last to put them out in the spring.)
For the last few months we’ve enjoyed being able to see through the winter branches the lines of three ridges that run in one direction or another surrounding the house. No more.
And down in the long hollow that runs south to north along Sparkleberrysprings Creek, direct line of sight has dwindled from hundreds of feet through the previously bare branches of dogwoods, redbuds, and azaleas down to a scant 100 feet or less through the leafy undergrowth. The upper canopy is filling out and soon the entire hollow will be engulfed in shade.
The second set of massive storms in a week more or less missed us, again. We got rain, and distant thunder, but nothing torrential and no particular wind and weren’t even under tornado watch. The major focus seems to have passed through central and south Georgia. However - 52 tornados estimated on Friday and Saturday, and Tennessee got hit again.
(Unlike other memes that everyone knows the answer to immediately, this one will sweep the world over a lengthy period of time, or at least I’d like to think so
, so you’ll have to put it on the back burner until it happens!)Here, every year, there’s a single day at some point when emerging spring seems to do a quantum leap into major greenery. I’ve been noting for at least a month the signs of emerging spring, but it was yesterday, April 8, that I walked out and was overwhelmed with greenery. *Everything* was greener, bigger, and denser than the day before. The grasses seem to have spread exponentially, a good many perennials seem to have popped out overnight, and suddenly many species of trees have opened their buds and expanded their leaves. (Walnuts are the exception - the first to lose their leaves in the fall and the last to put them out in the spring.)
For the last few months we’ve enjoyed being able to see through the winter branches the lines of three ridges that run in one direction or another surrounding the house. No more.
And down in the long hollow that runs south to north along Sparkleberrysprings Creek, direct line of sight has dwindled from hundreds of feet through the previously bare branches of dogwoods, redbuds, and azaleas down to a scant 100 feet or less through the leafy undergrowth. The upper canopy is filling out and soon the entire hollow will be engulfed in shade.
The second set of massive storms in a week more or less missed us, again. We got rain, and distant thunder, but nothing torrential and no particular wind and weren’t even under tornado watch. The major focus seems to have passed through central and south Georgia. However - 52 tornados estimated on Friday and Saturday, and Tennessee got hit again.
Monday: 13 February 2006
Floridacracker has an entertaining new game for us to play - the soil non-meme. This is too good for me to pass up and mutate to my pleasure.
I actually have six sites planned, but this is the first one - Sparkleberrysprings Creek, down where the oak fell. Since it had already done such a good job of creating a hole, and since FC doesn’t want us to hurt ourselves, I just shaved off a foot or so of soil from outside the crater left behind:
There are people who practically keel over in shock when they see our soil, although this isn’t as red as it can get by any means. This is probably half clay, a third sand, and a sixth organic material; as befits its location at the bottom of a hollow a couple of feet away from a creek prone to some flooding.
No half-worms, sliced by the shovel, no ant nests, not a whole lot to indicate tunneling, but then this is the winter. There is a bit of a smear of darker blue soil, which might be an indication of anaerobic conditions. It’s pretty boring and homogeneous, really, although you do see a rock at the bottom left, just to liven things up.
Now here’s the mutation:
I carved back another couple gallons worth of soil from the entire foot or so of depth, and carted it off in a bucket. I dumped it in a somewhat similar environment - shady and moist, close to the house. Spread it out and after the next rain will cover it over with a thin layer of mulch to keep it moist.
Over the years and years plants drop their seed, and others come in by various means - water, animals, wind. If conditions aren’t quite right, they don’t germinate and get covered up. Many are still alive, just waiting for Wayne to come along and liberate them. This is called a seed bank, and it’s a considerable resource of seed for germination after major disturbance - fire, erosion, or human disturbance.
Since FC was so thoughtful as to offer us all this inspiration in February, it means that there will be a couple of months of environmental change to really get these seed going! So in the next few months I’ll be watching this and five other little plots that I have planned out.
I actually have six sites planned, but this is the first one - Sparkleberrysprings Creek, down where the oak fell. Since it had already done such a good job of creating a hole, and since FC doesn’t want us to hurt ourselves, I just shaved off a foot or so of soil from outside the crater left behind:
There are people who practically keel over in shock when they see our soil, although this isn’t as red as it can get by any means. This is probably half clay, a third sand, and a sixth organic material; as befits its location at the bottom of a hollow a couple of feet away from a creek prone to some flooding.
No half-worms, sliced by the shovel, no ant nests, not a whole lot to indicate tunneling, but then this is the winter. There is a bit of a smear of darker blue soil, which might be an indication of anaerobic conditions. It’s pretty boring and homogeneous, really, although you do see a rock at the bottom left, just to liven things up.
Now here’s the mutation:
I carved back another couple gallons worth of soil from the entire foot or so of depth, and carted it off in a bucket. I dumped it in a somewhat similar environment - shady and moist, close to the house. Spread it out and after the next rain will cover it over with a thin layer of mulch to keep it moist.
Over the years and years plants drop their seed, and others come in by various means - water, animals, wind. If conditions aren’t quite right, they don’t germinate and get covered up. Many are still alive, just waiting for Wayne to come along and liberate them. This is called a seed bank, and it’s a considerable resource of seed for germination after major disturbance - fire, erosion, or human disturbance.
Since FC was so thoughtful as to offer us all this inspiration in February, it means that there will be a couple of months of environmental change to really get these seed going! So in the next few months I’ll be watching this and five other little plots that I have planned out.
Saturday: 4 February 2006
Or, “The Watershed Meme”.
I can’t seem to let well enough alone, and that satellite photo in the previous post really sucked. Microsoft’s Terraserver has much better aerials now - these are from 1999, so you see I really have to post them.
Everyone who reads this consider yourselves tagged with this meme: aerial shots, and Your Watershed.
Let’s go from the large scale in. Fairly self-explanatory. We live at the end of a cul-de-sac. The house is actually visible, sort of, in the last photo in this series, at the end of the red line. Lake Oglethorpe is to the upper right, and you can imagine my walk along Goulding Creek, the heavy blue line. Red lines are roads. Yellow lines are our property boundaries.
A medium scale:
And the smallest scale - there are three other houses in this pic, but I thought maybe I wouldn’t circle them. The fainter blue line is Sparkleberry Springs Creek.
I can’t seem to let well enough alone, and that satellite photo in the previous post really sucked. Microsoft’s Terraserver has much better aerials now - these are from 1999, so you see I really have to post them.
Everyone who reads this consider yourselves tagged with this meme: aerial shots, and Your Watershed.
Let’s go from the large scale in. Fairly self-explanatory. We live at the end of a cul-de-sac. The house is actually visible, sort of, in the last photo in this series, at the end of the red line. Lake Oglethorpe is to the upper right, and you can imagine my walk along Goulding Creek, the heavy blue line. Red lines are roads. Yellow lines are our property boundaries.
A medium scale:
And the smallest scale - there are three other houses in this pic, but I thought maybe I wouldn’t circle them. The fainter blue line is Sparkleberry Springs Creek.
Saturday: 14 January 2006
OK, FC, I’ll play. I feel like a curmudgeon, but then I AM a curmudgeon.
Four Jobs You’ve Had In Your Life:
1. Gopher in President Stanley Marshall’s office, FSU ca. 1974
2. Cook
3. Research and tutoring
4. What do you mean by “jobs”?
Four Movies You Could Watch Over and Over:
Just four? Over and over?
Four Places You Have Lived:
Just four?
1. Hot Springs, AR (age 4-11)
2. Tucker, GA (age 11-13)
3. Gainesville, GA (age 13-15)
4. Tallahassee, FL (age 15-22)
5. Athens, GA, to present except for a period of six months
6. Oslo, Norway (1988-1989, and yes I did vote, and it only snowed once. Warmest winter on record.)
Four TV Shows You Love To Watch:
No steenkin TV here for just about 30 years.
Four Places You Have Been On Vacation:
Vacations?
Four Websites You Visit Daily:
No way. Assume I visit you all.
Four Of Your Favorite Foods:
1. Pizza!
2. Killer Beef Stroganoff
3. Glenn’s Chicken and Rice
4. Mother’s Peanut Brittle
Four Places You’d Rather Be:
Why would I want to be anywhere else?
Four Albums You Can’t Live Without:
Such drama.
Silence. And when I get tired of that, a bunch of stuff, but all I could Live Without.
Four To Pass It On To:
No, I don’t think so. Consider this to be reproductive isolation.
Four Jobs You’ve Had In Your Life:
1. Gopher in President Stanley Marshall’s office, FSU ca. 1974
2. Cook
3. Research and tutoring
4. What do you mean by “jobs”?
Four Movies You Could Watch Over and Over:
Just four? Over and over?
Four Places You Have Lived:
Just four?
1. Hot Springs, AR (age 4-11)
2. Tucker, GA (age 11-13)
3. Gainesville, GA (age 13-15)
4. Tallahassee, FL (age 15-22)
5. Athens, GA, to present except for a period of six months
6. Oslo, Norway (1988-1989, and yes I did vote, and it only snowed once. Warmest winter on record.)
Four TV Shows You Love To Watch:
No steenkin TV here for just about 30 years.
Four Places You Have Been On Vacation:
Vacations?
Four Websites You Visit Daily:
No way. Assume I visit you all.
Four Of Your Favorite Foods:
1. Pizza!
2. Killer Beef Stroganoff
3. Glenn’s Chicken and Rice
4. Mother’s Peanut Brittle
Four Places You’d Rather Be:
Why would I want to be anywhere else?
Four Albums You Can’t Live Without:
Such drama.
Silence. And when I get tired of that, a bunch of stuff, but all I could Live Without.
Four To Pass It On To:
No, I don’t think so. Consider this to be reproductive isolation.
Friday: 23 December 2005
Mr. Phila at Bouphonia broke my solitude by tagging me with this infernal meme. I said I’d never do this again, but when Phila says “frog” I hop. So to expose myself as the philistine I am, here it is:
Seven Things To Do Before I Die
1. Get my will up to date.
2. Clean the john.
3. Change my underwear.
4. Plant a bunch of trees.
5. Get that immortality treatment.
6. Notify everyone.
7. Trip to the Moon, or maybe Mars!
Seven Things I Cannot Do
1. Be bored.
2. See a certain color of pink without vomiting.
3. Enter into a romantic relationship with Karl Rove.
4. Vote Republican.
5. Stop buying books (yes, I’ll keep Phila’s here)
6. Park in handicap spaces
7. Butcher a deer (this hasn’t actually been tested yet)
Seven Things That Attract Me to...Blogging
1. Dispensing wisdom
2. Fame
3. Guilt
4. The Excitement of Living on the Edge
5. Wondering if my best friend in the 4th grade will ever see it. Or how about that guy in high school I was so smitten with?
6. Being put under illegal surveillance by a dozen conflicting government agencies that don’t communicate with each other (yes, I’ll keep Phila’s here too).
7. Cats
Seven Things I Say Most Often
1. “There’s a cattie!”
2. “She’s the best cattie!”
3. “Pronounce it with authority and no one will question you.”
4. “Tomorrow I’ll.....”
5. “They’re just a bunch of overworked adjectives!”
6. “It’s all in the book if you just read it.”
7. “Gene! No! NO! Who do you think you are?”
Seven Books That I Love
In order of my life, my own modification, because who can resist mutating a meme? Some entries no longer apply. Many entries left out, especially the erudite sophistocated entries that would qualify me as a genius.
1. Age 8: 365 Bedtime Stories - Nan Gilbert (today I’d like to rewrite these in a Stephen King sort of way).
2. Age 10: The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet - Eleanor Cameron
3. Age 12: Rocket to Limbo - Alan E. Nourse
4. Age 15: A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
5. Age 20: 'Salem’s Lot - Stephen King (might as well put all of SK’s work here)
6. Age 35: The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
7. Contemporary: Biodiversity - E.O. Wilson
Seven Movies That I Watch Over and Over Again
Only the fun movies here.
1. Groundhog Day
2. 12 Monkeys
3. Star Wars IV: A New Hope (and its successor, and that’s it)
4. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
5. Beetlejuice
6. Dark City
7. Any Harry Potter movie
I said I wouldn’t tag anyone for these things, but I’m nothing if not inconsistent. Here’s some who are far more clever than I, and others who are just victims
1. Glenn Galau, to see if it ever happens.
2. Florida Cracker, because, who isn’t curious about FC’s sentiments? Besides, he’s famous now!
3. Our Pablo, because he loves off-topic posts.
4. Walter, because he scored a 5 on the Ecological Footprint Quiz.
5. Jenn, because I’m curious.
6. Brian, because he’s a cheap but worthwhile thrill.
7. MarkH at Biomes Blog, because, well, he’s cool.
8. And if only Mark in Rome had a webpage I’d tag him faster than you could say “squat”.
Seven Things To Do Before I Die
1. Get my will up to date.
2. Clean the john.
3. Change my underwear.
4. Plant a bunch of trees.
5. Get that immortality treatment.
6. Notify everyone.
7. Trip to the Moon, or maybe Mars!
Seven Things I Cannot Do
1. Be bored.
2. See a certain color of pink without vomiting.
3. Enter into a romantic relationship with Karl Rove.
4. Vote Republican.
5. Stop buying books (yes, I’ll keep Phila’s here)
6. Park in handicap spaces
7. Butcher a deer (this hasn’t actually been tested yet)
Seven Things That Attract Me to...Blogging
1. Dispensing wisdom
2. Fame
3. Guilt
4. The Excitement of Living on the Edge
5. Wondering if my best friend in the 4th grade will ever see it. Or how about that guy in high school I was so smitten with?
6. Being put under illegal surveillance by a dozen conflicting government agencies that don’t communicate with each other (yes, I’ll keep Phila’s here too).
7. Cats
Seven Things I Say Most Often
1. “There’s a cattie!”
2. “She’s the best cattie!”
3. “Pronounce it with authority and no one will question you.”
4. “Tomorrow I’ll.....”
5. “They’re just a bunch of overworked adjectives!”
6. “It’s all in the book if you just read it.”
7. “Gene! No! NO! Who do you think you are?”
Seven Books That I Love
In order of my life, my own modification, because who can resist mutating a meme? Some entries no longer apply. Many entries left out, especially the erudite sophistocated entries that would qualify me as a genius.
1. Age 8: 365 Bedtime Stories - Nan Gilbert (today I’d like to rewrite these in a Stephen King sort of way).
2. Age 10: The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet - Eleanor Cameron
3. Age 12: Rocket to Limbo - Alan E. Nourse
4. Age 15: A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
5. Age 20: 'Salem’s Lot - Stephen King (might as well put all of SK’s work here)
6. Age 35: The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
7. Contemporary: Biodiversity - E.O. Wilson
Seven Movies That I Watch Over and Over Again
Only the fun movies here.
1. Groundhog Day
2. 12 Monkeys
3. Star Wars IV: A New Hope (and its successor, and that’s it)
4. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
5. Beetlejuice
6. Dark City
7. Any Harry Potter movie
I said I wouldn’t tag anyone for these things, but I’m nothing if not inconsistent. Here’s some who are far more clever than I, and others who are just victims
1. Glenn Galau, to see if it ever happens.
2. Florida Cracker, because, who isn’t curious about FC’s sentiments? Besides, he’s famous now!
3. Our Pablo, because he loves off-topic posts.
4. Walter, because he scored a 5 on the Ecological Footprint Quiz.
5. Jenn, because I’m curious.
6. Brian, because he’s a cheap but worthwhile thrill.
7. MarkH at Biomes Blog, because, well, he’s cool.
8. And if only Mark in Rome had a webpage I’d tag him faster than you could say “squat”.
Wednesday: 5 October 2005
....comes Tammy. Just two more named tropical storms and we’ll be going through the alphabet again, starting with Alpha. Nah, no such thing as global warming.
Tammy won’t likely attain hurricane status. It’s disorganized and won’t be over water long. How odd where it formed though. What it is doing is producing tornados, heavy rain, and wind as it’s moving over the southeast Georgia coast.
Here’s its projected path; the red arrow (well, it used to be red, now it looks brown), as above, shows our location. The consensus is close to the yellow line.
Life is interesting. We do need the rain. I see no likely problems.
Tammy won’t likely attain hurricane status. It’s disorganized and won’t be over water long. How odd where it formed though. What it is doing is producing tornados, heavy rain, and wind as it’s moving over the southeast Georgia coast.
Here’s its projected path; the red arrow (well, it used to be red, now it looks brown), as above, shows our location. The consensus is close to the yellow line.
Life is interesting. We do need the rain. I see no likely problems.
Monday: 6 June 2005
The environment here selected against the last book meme, perhaps because it was situational and couldn’t survive the lack of answers. This one, transmitted by Philalethes at Bouphonia has survived in a mutated form but with diminished reproductive capability. SparkleberrySprings is now a book meme predator and will destroy and consume any future ones that venture here.
Number of books I own:
Somewhere around 2000. After years of stacking them and boxing them, we built a room for them, along with shelves for them to stand on. My short shameless confession is that I’m a science fiction lover and I’ve been collecting since I was 15 and able to spend money.
Last book I bought (Well, that would be books bought; I can’t buy just one):
Margaret Atwood’s “Alias Grace” and “The Blind Assassin”. (Margaret Atwood gives me the chills. Although I wouldn’t have thought it five years ago, Margaret Atwood’s “Handmaid’s Tale” comes creepily close to our reality today.)
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s “Crimes against Nature”. (Anytime you need an anti-corporate-fascism booster.)
Annie Dillard’s “The Living”. (Somehow I missed AD during my earlier life. I’m really glad I found her.)
DJ Borrer’s “Field Guide to Insects”. ('cause I gotta know.)
Stephen King’s Dark Tower 6 ("Song of Susannah") and DT7: ("The Dark Tower"). (Sue me. I love Stephen King.)
Peter Nelson’s “Home Tree Home: Principles of Treehouse Construction and Other Tall Tales”. (Did I tell you I wanted to build a treehouse?)
Thomas Eisner’s “For Love of Insects”. (I heard him interviewed on NPR; he struck me as my hero type - someone with a pure passion that has driven his life.)
Last book I read (for the first time):
Annie Dillard: “Three by Annie Dillard” ("Pilgrim at Tinker Creek", “An American Childhood”, "The Writing Life".)
Oops - a mutation: Comfort Reading (I read a lot of books over and over. When I was sick in April and didn’t want to put forth the effort, I reread a number of books):
Kim Stanley Robinson’s trilogy: “Red Mars”, "Green Mars", and “Blue Mars”. (The terraforming of Mars, and the shennanigans of the First One Hundred.)
Dan Simmons' tetralogy: “Hyperion”, "The Fall of Hyperion", “Endymion”, and “The Rise of Endymion”. (Too difficult to describe in a single sentence.)
Five books that mean a lot to me (How do I choose? And in what manner do they mean something to me? Oh well, here’s a somewhat representative sample covering several reasons.)
Edward O. Wilson’s “The Diversity of Life” (For some light, biology reading by a fellow with a golden pen, EO Wilson is the choice. Another personal hero.)
Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” (I’m not sure where we’d be without her; without someone like her I fear for where we’re going.)
Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” (People had been after me to read her for years; this is simply a marvelous example of why you don’t have to be a scientist to know how to observe.)
John Wyndham’s “The Midwich Cuckoos” (Of all the science fiction writers, John Wyndham delights me the most with his dry wit.)
Carl Sagan’s “Contact”,
Ursula K. Leguin’s “The Dispossessed”, or
Gregory Benford’s “Timescape”.
(Can’t make up my mind, but each of these climaxed to a point that affected me emotionally and deeply. Note that Carl Sagan’s book and the movie differ in too many significant points. Surely CS was spinning in his grave at the movie’s dedication: “For Carl”.)
As I said, this meme has diminished reproductive capability, but the lucky new recipients are:
Thingfish23 at The Taming of the Band-Aid
Mark at The Biomes Blog
Backslider’s Wine
Henry’s Webiocosm Blog
Tom at Tree Trends
They are free to further inflict the meme, kill the meme, or let the meme die of starvation.
Number of books I own:
Somewhere around 2000. After years of stacking them and boxing them, we built a room for them, along with shelves for them to stand on. My short shameless confession is that I’m a science fiction lover and I’ve been collecting since I was 15 and able to spend money.
Last book I bought (Well, that would be books bought; I can’t buy just one):
Last book I read (for the first time):
Annie Dillard: “Three by Annie Dillard” ("Pilgrim at Tinker Creek", “An American Childhood”, "The Writing Life".)
Oops - a mutation: Comfort Reading (I read a lot of books over and over. When I was sick in April and didn’t want to put forth the effort, I reread a number of books):
Five books that mean a lot to me (How do I choose? And in what manner do they mean something to me? Oh well, here’s a somewhat representative sample covering several reasons.)
Ursula K. Leguin’s “The Dispossessed”, or
Gregory Benford’s “Timescape”.
(Can’t make up my mind, but each of these climaxed to a point that affected me emotionally and deeply. Note that Carl Sagan’s book and the movie differ in too many significant points. Surely CS was spinning in his grave at the movie’s dedication: “For Carl”.)
As I said, this meme has diminished reproductive capability, but the lucky new recipients are:
Thingfish23 at The Taming of the Band-Aid
Mark at The Biomes Blog
Backslider’s Wine
Henry’s Webiocosm Blog
Tom at Tree Trends
They are free to further inflict the meme, kill the meme, or let the meme die of starvation.
Sunday: 24 April 2005
This isn’t something I do a lot, so bear with me - I’ll feel better afterwards. Pent-up frustration, a backburnered book meme that I’ll probably never fill out despite the horrible bad luck that will come to me, a memorable (they all are) repost by Philalethes at Bouphonia, a reminder by Eric at TIA of how the wolves conspire to slaughter the sheep, and then the chance encounter through Biomes Blog with one of the authors who certainly would have been on that meme had I filled it out have conspired to offer you this little homily today. I suppose it was the last straw that broke the camel’s back.
Kurt Vonnegut has entertained me for most of my life. I first encountered him at the age of ten with “Welcome to the Monkey House”. I didn’t understand it all then, of course, but I could appreciate the lyrical style and understand the main premises of the stories. Over the years, everything he’s written has served as a source of comfort reading. I’ve never been disappointed in his style or craven wit. I know he’ll end up in heaven someday. Here’s two excerpts from a speech given, oddly for me, since I was struck breathlessly when I visited it as the epitome of public universities, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in late 2003. Go and read the whole thing.
and most darkly, this:
Today, two days after the 35th Earth Day that no one noticed (and is that the saddest lament there could be, that the mainstream media has correctly estimated that Americans just don’t give a shit anymore?), five months after the (re-)election of what I must refer to as the head wolf, and just a scant day after the Army declared that no one was responsible for Abu Graid, I’d like to point out that the wolves aren’t just at the door, they’re well inside the house, and I’m sorry to have to say that people I love and care about helped to let them in. Tonight we will have the thoroughly unpleasant notion of the ranking member of the Senate enthusiastically invoking the packs to pull apart all the children not of their faith. I’m also sorry to point out that not only are they full of wolves, but your houses are burning down at the same time. Those people born without a conscience, the wolves a fairly large number of you put in office, they don’t care.
I promise I won’t do this for at least another few months.
ADDENDUM: Something that should have been a part of this post. Yesterday I ran across Meteor Blades' diary entry on Earth day. I felt right about what he had to say, but what really got me was the naked earnestness of the comments. Well worth going through.
Kurt Vonnegut has entertained me for most of my life. I first encountered him at the age of ten with “Welcome to the Monkey House”. I didn’t understand it all then, of course, but I could appreciate the lyrical style and understand the main premises of the stories. Over the years, everything he’s written has served as a source of comfort reading. I’ve never been disappointed in his style or craven wit. I know he’ll end up in heaven someday. Here’s two excerpts from a speech given, oddly for me, since I was struck breathlessly when I visited it as the epitome of public universities, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in late 2003. Go and read the whole thing.
It must be kind of spooky to be a student or teacher in a university as great as this one, with its libraries and laboratories and lecture halls, while knowing it is within the borders of a nation where wisdom, reason, knowledge and truth no longer apply...
and most darkly, this:
Some people are born deaf, some are born blind or whatever, and this book is about congenitally defective human beings of a sort who are making this whole country and many other parts of the planet go completely haywire nowadays. These are people born without consciences. They know full well the pain their actions may cause others to feel but do not care. They cannot care. They came into this world with a screw loose, and now they’re taking charge of everything. They appear to be great leaders because they are so decisive. Do this! Do that! What makes them so decisive is that they do not care and cannot care what happens next...
Today, two days after the 35th Earth Day that no one noticed (and is that the saddest lament there could be, that the mainstream media has correctly estimated that Americans just don’t give a shit anymore?), five months after the (re-)election of what I must refer to as the head wolf, and just a scant day after the Army declared that no one was responsible for Abu Graid, I’d like to point out that the wolves aren’t just at the door, they’re well inside the house, and I’m sorry to have to say that people I love and care about helped to let them in. Tonight we will have the thoroughly unpleasant notion of the ranking member of the Senate enthusiastically invoking the packs to pull apart all the children not of their faith. I’m also sorry to point out that not only are they full of wolves, but your houses are burning down at the same time. Those people born without a conscience, the wolves a fairly large number of you put in office, they don’t care.
I promise I won’t do this for at least another few months.
ADDENDUM: Something that should have been a part of this post. Yesterday I ran across Meteor Blades' diary entry on Earth day. I felt right about what he had to say, but what really got me was the naked earnestness of the comments. Well worth going through.
Sunday: 30 January 2005
Just a few mementos of our excursion into winter, the perfect excuse for a fire in the fireplace, a bottle or two of wine, lounging on the futons with the catties, and shunning the roads. Our northern friends will scorn us for our timidity, but hey, you take it where you find it. It’s a rare occasion, this incursion of a moist airmass up from the Gulf at the same time that a cold Arctic airmass is moving south; normally we just get temperatures slightly above freezing, controlled there by the release of latent heat anytime liquid water attempts to turn to ice. No fun that.
This time though the temps did drop below freezing. This isn’t snow. This is ice. About a half inch of it, along the roads, on the trees, and on the power lines. It’s probably just luck that has kept us in power (so far), given the numerous weak links along the chain. Outside it’s a cacophany of breaking branches, the occasional falling tree, and crashing ice as the temperature goes a little above freezing.
Above left, a porch no sane cat would traverse; above right, maple flower buds encased. Below left, river birches drooping under the weight and below right, firewood.
This time though the temps did drop below freezing. This isn’t snow. This is ice. About a half inch of it, along the roads, on the trees, and on the power lines. It’s probably just luck that has kept us in power (so far), given the numerous weak links along the chain. Outside it’s a cacophany of breaking branches, the occasional falling tree, and crashing ice as the temperature goes a little above freezing.
Above left, a porch no sane cat would traverse; above right, maple flower buds encased. Below left, river birches drooping under the weight and below right, firewood.
