As a child On the way to school My pants were painted With daubs of yellow As I walked through Fields of nodding flowers I’m not sure how it all came on…this feeling of loss. I was thinking how as a child, my friends and I would hike across a grassy prairie [...]
Not too many years ago, a French company after comparing satellite images said that Washington state had cut relatively more forest than had been cleared in the Amazonian rain forest. This came at a time when alarms were being spread around the world concerning the rate at which the rainforests of that area were disappearing. Weyerhaeuser (“the tree growing company”) responded indignantly by [...]
There was an article in the paper a few days ago talking about how the common birds of Washington State are diminishing drastically in numbers. Today they took the American Bald Eagle off the endangered species list, but unfortunately many of these common birds don’t have the glamour nor do they occupy public awareness as does the magnificent [...]
Everybody is familiar with the pervasive bigotry and racism that has so long run like a dark strain of feculence through so many societies. Today, in our society at least, most of us join together in condemning these destructive attitudes that have caused so much pain, suffering and death. We do this despite the fact [...]
For many years I have admired this incredible stand of Western Redcedar beside the road that I travel. Almost daily I rested my eyes upon the lush beauty of this thick growth of evergreens which appeared to form an impenetrable wall along the road. It was dark beneath the trees in the few places that I could [...]
I am left handed, my mother was left handed, and her mother was left handed; beyond that I am unsure. Lefties have always been not only passively discriminated against but also actively. My grandmother was forced to only use her right hand in school and ever after did so when she wrote. A friend of mine [...]
Sometimes in an effort to understand something, I’ll read about it and make an outline for myself which helps me to grasp the main ideas. I’ve been reading about the Y chromosome, and about some of the implications of recent research about this gender determining chromosome. You may already know that sex in humans is [...]
Ever wonder why some organisms occur on all or almost all the southern continents? Paleontologists noticed that a certain plant fossil, Glossopteris, was found in rock deposits (Permian-Triassic) of Africa, South America, Anarctica, Australia and India. This led some to believe that there was once a large southern land mass that was eventually named Gonwana after the district in [...]
This (June 16) is one of my long days beginning just after 6 am and ending in a couple more hours around 2 am. I’m trying an experiment by not putting a heading for this entry yet. Yesterday I tried to add to a previous entry that had a heading and got error messages about the [...]
Why do my thoughts keep returning to Hotel Angela? Why do I long to return to this little funky hotel on that muddy street in Bocas del Toro, Panama? Perhaps it is because of it’s remarkable owner, Claudio, who will bend over backwards to help you in any way possible; perhaps it was the clean and [...]
