Changing the title

Dawn

Dusk


This post has grabbed the attention of a spammer so maybe if I change it I can stop it, or I might have to repost the pix altogether if I want to keep it.

Does He Think He's Next on the Menu?

Last night I had broiled lamb chops for dinner. The kids don't like lamb, so this was a rare indulgence on my part.

Towards the end of my meal, I noticed the dog, Peko, standing at the edge of the kitchen watching me. He had excellent house manners when he arrived here from the shelter-I have spoiled him and frequently give him a bite of whatever I am eating. He really only begs from me as a result.

At any rate, I took a bit of lamb and held it in my outstretched hand. He sniffed it and backed away rolling his eyes as if it was poison.

So I took one of the kids' leftover bites of chicken breast and tossed it to him. He automatically caught it, and then spit it out and sniffed it thoroughly before eating it.

After I finished eating, I joined everyone in the living room and the dog was acting very peculiar. When we first brought him home he would ask permission to get on the couch-now he usually tries to nab the best spot first. Last night, however, he sort of cowered on the floor and had to be coaxed up by the Firebird.

The dog now had our full attention.

We have goats, and Peko will charge the fence and bark viciously at them and get reprimanded. I noticed when my first male goats started to mature they smelled a lot like lamb chops, so much so that it used to instigate a Pavlov reflex in me. (I have fortuneately outgrown that trait)

So, what was going on with the dog? I had to wash my hands, soak the broiler pan, wipe the table, wash my face, and still he backed away at the odor of lamb on my breath.

Did he think I had eaten one of our group?

Did he have a bad experience with his previous family by snagging lamb off the table and then was taken to the shelter?

If it was the former, I think I might turn vegetarian again despite my love of lamb-with a little rosemary and garlic, please.

Emergency

Yesterday I was leaving a local store, and heard a sound of something heavy hitting the ground and a cry of pain. I looked up and saw an elderly gentleman prone on the ground. Apparently he had tripped over the parking cub.

I ran up to him and saw his hand to his forehead, which was bleeding profusely. His wife reached his side, and I asked her if she had some tissues in the car, which I had to repeat several times.

Finally she understood, and I ran to her car and grabbed the tissues and directed her to press them to his head, and then she asked for ice, which I think she had to ask ME for several times as well.

I rushed into store and asked a clerk in the entry, and said quickly what had happened and she grabbed a bag of ice and handed it to me and I ran back out.

The the wife said she needed a wet cloth, so I ransacked my laundry ( I was enroute to the laundramat) for a clean washcloth and grabbed a jug of water out of the car. I poured the water on the cloth and handed to her and said she might not need the ice since the water was freezing after being in the car all night. I told her not to dab (she kept dabbing) and to apply pressure but her husband gasped at the cold cloth and she switched back to the tissues.


About this time another bystander was using a cell phone to call 911, relaying info and again said to apply pressure and asked the man's age (82).

I saw the man groping his bloody hand and saw a baseball-type hat with various pins about veterans on it, and a semi-crumpled instant lottery ticket. Not knowing which he was reaching for, I pushed both close to him.

The 911 caller was asking for blankets-I said I had none and took my coat off and covered him. Then the wife said she might have something in her trunk, and I found a pillow and change of mens's clothes there, including a canvas coat and scarf, which I brought back with the pillow which we put under his head and I covered his shoulders with the coat and told her to put the scarf on his head.

There was also a roll of paper towels which I tore some off and handed to her.

Someone provided two blankets; I reclaimed my coat and tried to tuck the blankets around him as best I could. We had a hard frost the night before and it was about 40 F out.

At this point a small crowd was gathering and I thought the best thing for me to do was to leave, since the man was conscious and I started to feel like I wouldn't want someone standing there staring at me waiting for the ambulance.

I went down the road to the laundramat and a workman there had apparently seen me since he asked if the ambulance had arrived yet.

A few minutes later the ambulance went by headed towards the store.

Once the clothes were in the dryer I went back to the store and the only thing left at the scene was some ice against the building , and my jug of water. Except when I got out of the car, I noticed blood drying where the gentleman had lain, so I emptied the jug on the spot and watched two rivers of water tinged in blood snake away under my car.

Midday

Kornelijus Platelis
A light wind ripples through the wild poppy
Blossoms, brushes across my face
With the fragrance of drying straw, reminding me
Of love's promises in the shade of blooming lindens.
The clouds are like tangled bodies
On pale blue sheets...
I asked suddenly:
Midday, where is your essence?
And it answered me: in this grass among blossoming
Wild poppies in the skull of a sitting man,
In that skull are many gray cells, in those
Cells – many words, among those words – one
Which is my essence, but no one
Knows it: not that man nor I.
translated by Jonas Zdanys

The Urge To LIve

Alis Balbierius


The urge to live is an ocean.
The lunar force which hauls flooding and ebbing.
Speed of sunlight which goes right through the brain.
Love and sex alike are each only a small part of that overall urge.
The urge to create. The urge to love and to hate. The urge to exist.
To exist as world, as universe, as an ant or H2O molecule.
The urge to live of those who really are alive is the urge to take in
more than has been allotted.

Translated by Vyt Bakaitis

War

The only television news I receive is CBS. Usually I watch the local news and then World news for an hour every evening. This week I am boycotting the World News.

The focus is propaganda about Afghanistan. CBS is determined to convince their viewing public that Afghanistan is a terrible, dangerous place and we need more troops there.

Let me just ask a question. If we had foreign troops on our soil, kicking in our doors and confiscating our guns, hauling our men away for detention, would we not fight back? Wouldn't we be holding militia style training camps to blast them off the face of the earth, if not our roadways?

In between these special reports in Afghanistan, Katie Couric apparently had an aneurysm and let slip some news about Chicago. Chicago, Illinois, right here in the States. Video was shown of a classroom of children beating a 16 year old classmate to death.

Figures were thrown about: now, my recall is not what is used to be, so I may be off on some of these numbers, but I am close.

60 children died in Chicago this year from violence. 600 injured. The governments response? 32 million dollars to shadow 1200 children to and from school.

That's just Chicago. If this was happening in a foreign country that had some economic value to us, we would be up in arms. Less than 100 US troops were killed in Afghanistan during active conflict last year, yet the same number of children killed in Chicago does not warrant the deployment of the National Guard?

No, they're too busy pulling up opium plants in Afghanistan.

Gotta to keep the street price of narcotics up there, supply and demand and all that...after all, the FDA limits US drugs companies on the amount of narcotics they can produce annually-every January chronic pain sufferers have to hop from pharmacy to pharmacy trying to find one that hasn't sold their annual quota yet...

Better send some more troops to pull poppies; the drug companies need to make some more money.

Everyone Loves Meow Mix

I heard a thump on the back door this evening and looked out and saw the big fat skunk voraciously wolfing down Meow Mix and feral black kitty on the end of the deck looking alarmed. Then the skunk charged black kitty and the cat fled. The skunk returned to the cat dish.

I cracked open the door and told the skunk to leave, and was greeted by the end of the skunk no one wants to see up close. The underneath of the huge fluffy tail and a very pink anus aimed directly at myself in the open doorway less than a foot away.

White Kitty appeared and the skunk challenged him.

Enough was enough. I recalled my response to the skunk last fall, and grabbed a pitcher full of cold water and opened the door and tossed the water, and quickly shut the door and looked out the window.

The skunk, alarmed, jumped and FELL off the deck. Only about a two foot drop. Then it stood up and stalked off, tail high, shaking itself vigorously. Oh, if only my camera hadn't been in the car!!! I laughed until tears came. That skunk was so mad, stomping away with a HUGE upraised tail, shaking off the water.

No, it didn't spray. It was too busy getting the heck away from another gush of water.

After I finally stopped giggling (is this an evil side to my persona, or too much bugs bunny as a child?), I went out to the car for my camera. White Kitty was right at the door, purring and sooo happy I chased that skunk away for him! Black kitty was hiding under the deck (he is afraid of white kitty), meowing and meowing.

I put some more dry food out, some under the deck for black kitty, and went in to finish frosting the Firebird's birthday cake.

Just as we were headed upstairs for the night, I looked out and saw this raccoon in the cat bowl. I called the saplings to see and grabbed my camera. I cracked open the door for the second pic. I cropped it strangely, because the raccoon is standing on our "NO GEESE!" sign which we prop on that broken chimney tile to keep the geese from sitting and pooping on the deck all day.





When I shut the door with a soft click, the raccoon fled. Must have sounded like a gunbolt sliding into place. A raccoon was in the chicken pen a week or two ago, so although they look cute, they are not welcome around here!!

A neighbor joked I must have forgotten to put the bowl of cat food out that night and it was hungry. Hmmmm.

Well, once the raccoon ran off, I looked out in a bit and there was black kitty with his face in the bowl.

*edit*
while I was waiting for my coon pix to upload (I am on dialup, snooze), I heard a thump at the back door and went downstairs and saw ANOTHER skunk-this one much smaller than the first at the cat bowl.

I went upstairs, grabbed the cam, opened the door and took a pic. I guess I should have had it on macro setting, since I was holding the cam very close to the skunk's bottom. And hiding behind the door.



Then I repeated the water pitcher trick, and the skunk went the other way with a very wet tail. I didn't laugh this time and felt sort of bad, but hey, it's just water...and it's not too cold out tonight.

Happy Birthday to our Firebird

Tree1009

RECIPROCAL INVITATION TO THE DANCE.

I had a dancing dream last night. Great dream until the duck hunters blasting away woke me up. Good thing there's no hunting on Sunday. :D

THE INDIFFERENT.

COME to the dance with me, come with me, fair one!

Dances a feast-day like this may well crown.
If thou my sweetheart art not, thou canst be so,

But if thou wilt not, we still will dance on.
Come to the dance with me, come with me, fair one!

Dances a feast-day like this may well crown.

THE TENDER.

Loved one, without thee, what then would all feast be?

Sweet one, without thee, what then were the dance?
If thou my sweetheart wert not, I would dance not.

If thou art still so, all life is one feast.
Loved one, without thee, what then would all feasts be?

Sweet one, without thee, what then were the dance?

THE INDIFFERENT.

Let them but love, then, and leave us the dancing!

Languishing love cannot bear the glad dance.
Let us whirl round in the waltz's gay measure,

And let them steal to the dim-lighted wood.
Let them but love, then, and leave us the dancing!

Languishing love cannot bear the glad dance.

THE TENDER.

Let them whirl round, then, and leave us to wander!

Wand'ring to love is a heavenly dance.
Cupid, the near one, o'erhears their deriding,

Vengeance takes suddenly, vengeance takes soon.
Let them whirl round, then, and leave us to wander!

Wand'ring to love is a heavenly dance.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Oldest "Human" Skeleton Found--Disproves "Missing Link

Jamie Shreeve
Science editor, National Geographic magazine
Updated 6:44 p.m. ET, October 1, 2009

Move over, Lucy. And kiss the missing link goodbye.

Scientists today announced the discovery of the oldest fossil skeleton of a human ancestor. The find reveals that our forebears underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution more than a million years before Lucy, the iconic early human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago.

The centerpiece of a treasure trove of new fossils, the skeleton—assigned to a species called Ardipithecus ramidus—belonged to a small-brained, 110-pound (50-kilogram) female nicknamed "Ardi." (See pictures of Ardipithecus ramidus.)

The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin's time, that a chimpanzee-like missing link—resembling something between humans and today's apes—would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. Indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior—long used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors—is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091001-ardipithecus-ramidus-ardi-oldest-human-skeleton-fossils.html

Mammatus Clouds

Tree1009