Bear attack on bird feeder

About 10 pm on the night of the last full moon, I was awakened by thumping sounds. Checking it out, I sighted a black bear leaving the balcony. I tossed a black cat but the bear was already gone. The birdhouse could be bent back into shape. It has survived three bear attacks and countless skirmishes by squirrels. Chickadees the only birds at the feeder this week, they are dainty eaters.

Snowshoes

Being as how it was the first snow of the season, I fashioned a pair of snow shoes in the traditional style.

15 EEEE

They fit fine in the morning, but by supper time they had shrunk so’s I could hardly get them off my feet.

9-1/2 B

I’ve Been All Around This World

Hang me, oh, hang me and I’ll be dead and gone
 Hang me, oh, hang me and I’ll be dead and gone
 I wouldn’t mind the hanging Lord it’s laying in jail so long boys
 I’ve been all around this world
 

 Working on the new railroad, mud up to my knees
 Working on the new railroad, mud up to my knees
 Working for John Henry, and he’s mighty hard to please
 Been all around this world
 

 Went up on the mountain, there I took my stand
 Went up on the mountain, there I took my stand
 Rifle on my shoulder, six shooter in my hand
 Been all around this world
 

 Lulu, oh Lulu, come and open that door
 Lulu, oh Lulu, come and open that door
 Before I have to open it with my old forty-four
 Been all around this world
 

 Mama and papa and baby sister makes three
 Mama and papa and baby sister makes three
 Take me down to the gallows boys that’s the last they’ll see of me
 Been all around this world
 

 Now if you meet a rich girl, boys, send her down the line
 Now if you meet a rich girl, boys, send her down the line
 If you meet a poor girl, bet she’s a friend of mine
 Been all around this world

The Undertaking

by John Donne

I HAVE done one braver thing

      Than all the Worthies did ; 

And yet a braver thence doth spring, 

      Which is, to keep that hid.

It were but madness now to impart 

      The skill of specular stone, 

When he, which can have learn’d the art 

      To cut it, can find none.

So, if I now should utter this, 

      Others—because no more 

Such stuff to work upon, there is—

      Would love but as before.

But he who loveliness within 

      Hath found, all outward loathes, 

For he who color loves, and skin, 

      Loves but their oldest clothes.

If, as I have, you also do 

      Virtue in woman see,

And dare love that, and say so too, 

      And forget the He and She ;

And if this love, though placèd so, 

      From profane men you hide, 

Which will no faith on this bestow, 

      Or, if they do, deride ;

Then you have done a braver thing 

      Than all the Worthies did ; 

And a braver thence will spring, 

      Which is, to keep that hid.

It’s that time

That time he rescued her from the Hairy Ainu in the far north, by sheer force of personality. And that time the pope broke wind, when the first man was executed for jaywalking. That time the last of the Mohicans got her wings clipped, half way to the next life.

I started to feel

I started to feel like I was burning a lot of calories. That’s the way it seemed.

Just a hot-head, a hopped-up juggernaut of the gods almighty, one toke over the line, drunk on power, powered on drink, down the hatch and devil take the hindmost.

Don’t take Moses’ word for it, for he was a little teched. And a ways down the line, his evil god died. He didn’t die laughing, like the other gods. Had his foot in his mouth, as we say here on earth.

Crown of Grass

No crown indeed has been a higher honour than the crown of grass among the rewards for glorious deeds given by the sovereign people, lords of the earth. Jewelled crowns, golden crowns, crowns for scaling enemy ramparts or walls, or for boarding men-of-war, the civic crown for saving the life of a citizen, the triumph crown—these were instituted later than this grass crown, and all differ from it greatly, in distinction as in character. All the others have been given by individuals and personally by generals and commanders to their soldiers, or occasionally to their colleagues, or have been decreed in triumphs by a Senate freed from the anxiety of war and by a people enjoying peace; the grass crown has never been conferred except upon the leader of a forlorn hope, being voted only by the whole army and only to him who rescued it. The other crowns have been conferred by commanders, this alone on a commander by his soldiers. The same crown is called the siege crown when a whole camp has been relieved and saved from awful destruction. But if the civic crown is deemed a glorious and hallowed distinction because the life has been saved of only one and even maybe the lowliest citizen, what, pray, ought to be thought of the preservation of a whole army by the courage of one man? This crown used to be made from green grass pulled up from the site where the besieged men had been relieved by some one. For in old times it was the most solemn token of defeat for the conquered to present grass to their conquerors, for to do so meant that they withdrew from their land, from the very soil that nurtured them and even from means of burial. This custom, I know, exists even today among the Germans.

Pliny 22 4