Primroses and turkeys

I think we're entering a dark, ugly period of American history.   I hope I'm wrong, but it feels like the roller coaster left the station and there's no going back.  Fasten your seat belts.  In Seattle these days, there's a background miasma of gloom and anxiety.  It's probably not like that in other parts of the country, but I'm glad we live here.

The bottom line is nothing changes because human nature never changes. Just pick up a history book.

OK. Enough politics for one post.

All the more reason to notice the small gifts each new day brings.  Like the first primroses outside the grocery store.  Or a flock of happy heritage turkeys running around at a feed store on Vashon Island.

They were so beautiful and loaded with personality!  I'd rather eat crackers for Thanksgiving than dispatch one.  These fortunate, fancy birds are completely unlike the poor top-heavy creatures waddling around by the millions on factory farms. 

Everyone knows the myth of Benjamin Franklin preferring the wild turkey over the bald eagle for national bird, despite being "a little vain and silly." 

"For in Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America. Eagles have been found in all Countries, but the Turkey was peculiar to ours, the first of the Species seen in Europe being brought to France by the Jesuits from Canada, and serv’d up at the Wedding Table of Charles the ninth. He is besides, tho’ a little vain and silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.”

Nice scenery

Gary Cooper

1930's

John Wayne

1930's 

Steve McQueen and Yule Brenner

Magnificent Seven, 1960

Can scruffy young Hollywood actors come close to these old movie stars? Whoa, those guys were real hunks.

We watched the new Magnificent Seven movie on DVD this weekend.  Skip it, unless you like non-stop violence. Unlike the original, the remake is light on character development and heavy on the "action."

The cast is politically correct, almost to the point of silliness. The Indian of course is a bow and arrow sharpshooter, etc. etc.   John said the only stereotype missing was The Funny Gay Guy, which actually might have helped the movie along. 

Apparently Steve McQueen was notoriously difficult to work with on the set. Filming the Magnificent Seven, he learned to cock his shotgun with one hand in a flashy way, and insisted on doing it even when Yule Brenner complained that McQueen was stealing his scenes. He was.  No one was cooler than Steve McQueen.

Part of the pleasure of watching fine old westerns is location cinematography. True Grit was filmed in Oray Country during fall aspen season when the Colorado mountains are breathtakingly beautiful.

All the outdoor scenes in the original Magnificent Seven movie were filmed in Arizona and northern Mexico.

Maybe people don't notice these things anymore, but in the new movie the backdrop keeps changing from scene to scene.  On minute you're in a place like Monument Valley, then open prairie, then green hills, then desert, then a rushing river. Discombobulating, but why travel to real locations when it can be computer generated?

Wise

Happy the Man

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
     He who can call today his own:
     He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.

     Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

John Dryden,
1631-1700

Look up

The starlings are starting to gather in big noisy flocks in the maple tree.  They are very social birds, and it sounds like a chaotic discussion up there with everyone talking at once.  This must be the "gettin' to know you" period before mating season. You sometimes hear a similar racket coming from the middle school classrooms across the street.

About 60 starling were released in New York's Central Park in 1890 by small group of well-intentioned  folks determined to introduce all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare.  There are now an estimated 150 million Starlings in America. English house sparrows were another gift that keeps on giving. Heaven only knows how many of those call America home.

I've never been lucky enough to see a starling murmuration, when the flock forms this fantastic acrobatic mass before roosting.  Scientists don't fully understand how the birds do this.  It's easy for a starling to turn when its neighbor turns, but what mechanisms allow it to happen almost simultaneously in two birds separated by hundreds of feet and hundreds of other birds?

That remains to be discovered.

Fairyland of Science

Of all the scary things we're seeing this week, the denial of established science might be the scariest?

From Time Magazine:

The White House website purged all mentions of climate from the site-- all mentions but one, that is, if you consider a promise to eliminate the "harmful and unnecessary" Climate Action Plan.  Soon after, scientists and other employees of the EPA and USDA were told not to speak to the public, and the EPA was told to take down its climate change page. 

The return of these anti-science attitudes to the highest levels of government has been accompanied by a return, somewhat surprisingly, of a familiar, infuriating refrain (from politicians.) “I am not a climate scientist expert." 

This administration might ram through an agenda pretending truths do not exist, but hope lies with our scientists mobilizing and speaking out.  If anyone listens.  If anyone still cares.

"Look at Mother Nature on the run..."

Neil Young
After the Gold Rush

What we think we become

Geography of the Forehead

Everyone thinks the brain is so complicated,
but let’s look at the facts. The frontal lobe,
for example, is located in the front! And
the temporal lobe is where the clock is.
What could be simpler?

The hippocampal fissure is where big, dumb
thoughts camp, while at the Fissure of Rolando
dark-skinned men with one gold earring lie
around the fire and play guitars.

The superior frontal convolution is where
a lot of really nice houses are set back off
a twisty road, while the inferior frontal
convolution is a kind of trailer park, regularly
leveled by brainstorms.

The area of Broca is pretty much off limits.
And if you know Broca, you know why.

Ron Koerte