Normally Margaret Steinfels starts this off, but the fireflies are early in Michigan this year. Just a few last night. They usually peak around July 4. Hopefully mosquito spraying has not decimated them.
Nature observations are an
anodyne to the political idiocy. No matter how bad humans mess up, the creatures do their creature thing and the moon and stars continue their predictable phases.
God has given us a beautiful world to live in that offers perspective and restoration.
Back in NYC at the moment...so no fireflies. Glad Michigan has been lit up.
ReplyDeleteMichigan is always lit up on a Saturday night. But not in the way you mean.
DeleteFlorida life as usual. Zika mosquitoes are back. Also chickungunga or however you spell it, Eastern equine encephalitis, dengue fever, etc. Another summer in Paradise.
ReplyDeleteI don't have to move to FL, Tom. Thanks to the CO2, FL is moving to PA.
DeleteInteresting Florida fact that may influence you, Stanley. It is still not a done deal, but an advisory committee to the City of Miami has recommended the city buy out homeowners, remove their homes and allow their areas to flood, as they suddenly do now when high tides and full moons coincide. Miami is not on the ocean. The newly flood-prone areas are along the Miami River, which backs up on a regular basis since the arrival of the CO2 that state officials are forbidden to mention.
DeleteSeriously, would anyone miss Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus if they went extinct?
DeleteNot me, but the bats would, and I love my bats, so ...
DeleteI've still never seen a firefly. Maybe they don't live out west. I have a pic of my cat Vicky and one of the baby possums here.
ReplyDeleteTom, it is becoming more like that here in California too, now that climate change is making it hotter and this year also rainier .... more bugs and more diseases.
Crystal, there are four snakes in the U.S. with venom that can kill humans, and all four live here. You, however, have one of the last areas in the world where the Black Death (plague) is still alive (?), near San Francisco. We can't top that. Yet.
DeleteYay - I win (I think) ;)
DeleteVicki has a little mat to sleep on! Baby possums are cute. We have a lot of bunnies.
DeleteTom, what are the four snakes? You also have all those mega-pythons in the Everglades now that can strangle and eat people, no? Some guy at work was telling about game wardens that found a mandated down there. Or it could be just this guy at work who gets stories half right.
DeleteMandated = man-eater.
DeleteJean, we have coral snakes. Very bad. They can only bite small things, like fingers, but I was told in the Army that if they do, cut it off. Also pit vipers, rattlesnakes (including the eastern diamondback) and cottonmouth moccasins. The pythons are non-native. There is a nice bounty on them if you want to go hunting. I don't know of any man-eaters, but the pythons seem eager to take on alligators, who can get pretty big.
DeleteOn the other hand, we have anhingas who are beautiful black and silver birds that can swim completely under water. You don't have them in Michigan.
We have Missasauga rattlers. They jury's out on whether they can actually kill you. We don't have birds that swim underwater, but we do have a lot of other fine water birds, it being the Great Lakes state and all.
DeleteHave only seen one firefly here yet, and he was in the house. I was hoping the cats wouldn't catch him, it wouldn't do either them or the bug any good.
ReplyDeleteJean, you are right about the beautiful world. We get so focused on the bad stuff that we forget to notice the beautiful things. Such as blooming catalpa trees. It only lasts for a few days, but so pretty. Glad they bloomed before the 75 mph straight winds we had last night.
Thanks for your message. I noticed the catalpas taking Raber to work this morning. We had one of those trees as a kid. I always thought the flowers looked like popcorn. Picking up the pods was a drag, though.
DeleteYou didn't smoke those pods? Forbidden activity behind the garage.
DeleteMargaret, what did you think of "The Hidden Life of Trees"? Our library had it, so I am reading it now. Interesting, but a bit anthropomorphic. Who knew trees had a communal life, and had a symbiotic thing going with fungi? Makes me feel badly for our Bradford pear which was damaged in the wind storm last night, and may have to be taken out.
ReplyDeleteI am still reading "The Hidden Life of Trees." --Slowly. Not sure why. Maybe I find it a bit improbable.
DeleteAnd yet, there is something fascinating about the author, German, a forester, who oversees (or did; is he retired?) a national forest. He speaks of old growth forests as the AI example of what he's writing about. His description of their lives, their connections, the process of "becoming a tree," or not (I think he says somewhere most tree seeds never grow, because the competition for light and water is so great). He makes me consider that trees in some sense have a "social" life, connections to fungi, the sun, wind, and neighboring trees.
I've joked when talking about the book that I think the author is a neo-Druid..there is something spiritual in his thinking and worshipful in his outlook. Remember St. Boniface is said to have axed the Oak worshiped by the Saxon Druids!!! I doubt they all died off or converted.
My book group was extremely enthused about "Lab Girl" by Hope Jahren...a paleobotanist. Her tales are much more scientific than Peter Wohlleben"s (Hidden Life), but she conveys a sense of the spiritual about "her trees."
Not to devolve into pedantry, but there were probably no Druid Saxons. Druidism was the religion of the Brythonic and Celtic people in GB before the Anglo-Saxon invasion. However four trees were important to the Saxons--oak, yew, ash, and birch-- enshrined in the Runic Poem. https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Rune_poems
DeleteInsulting Druids and non-Roman Christians was a favorite pastime of St. Augustine of Canterbury. There's a story about him and an oak tree, too. In Bede, I think.
It's late. Paging through "The Barbarian Conversion" by Ronald Fletcher, from whence I once wrote a paragraph or two about all of this. Get back to you tomorrow.
DeleteReply soon! I always get a little frisson of anticipation when people have info about my beloved Anglo-Saxons! All this knowledge is rapidly becoming irrelevant to Our Young People except as source material for fantasy works. A colleague and I were talking about how Old English has dropped from college curricula and that when we die, there will be very few living people to continue the reading and research.
DeleteWere there no Druid Saxons?
DeleteHere is my memory of this. The Saxons of Anglo-Saxons were "Germans" from Saxony, the northwest corner of "Germany." Boniface came from Selsey (Southeastern coast of England 716) to the court of Charles Martel, king of the Franks in Frisia. At the end of his life Boniface went North to Saxony to bring Christianity once again. I doubt he chopped the Oak tree but he was killed, it is said, by a blow to the head from wandering marauders.
Druids were a "priestly" class among the Brits, Celts, and Saxons. I'm going to venture that the Saxons in Saxony and those in England are the same people and that the one brought its culture, religion and practices from Saxony to England (East Anglia???).
Of course, in these centuries there was no England, Germany, Ireland, etc. This part of the world was fluid with most of its population having migrated from East to West, including the Celts who have left artifacts and burial grounds in Hungary and Portugal (or so the signs say).
Does the Saxon Gospel fit with the Anglo-Saxon curriculum. I have Boniface and the Saxon Gospel in the same synapses, hence they both popped up. But I see the Saxon Gospel was probably created after Boniface's death.
DeleteI know we don't trust wiki but here is an account that sounds like something I read in a real book:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliand
Really pedantic: There being no Germany in those days, Frisia was what is now the Netherlands, which of course, also didn't exist.
DeleteA tiny map that says so, ca. 716.
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DeleteTrying the tiny map link again:
Deletehttps://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F2%2F23%2FFrisia_716-la.svg%2F225px-Frisia_716-la.svg.png&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FFrisia&docid=O5TUQwCNIwnNUM&tbnid=xjpCupebpbi3oM%3A&vet=1&w=225&h=232&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim
Boniface did fell an Oak:
Delete"Pagans 'not yet cleansed' were first encountered at Geismar, where there was a sacred oak tree. It is possible that there may have been there 'a pagan shrine of more than local significance.' In a brave act of public Christian assertion Boniface felled the oak. At the sight of this extraordinary spectacle the heathens who had been cursing ceased to revile and bega, on the contrary, to believe and bless the Lord."
Richard Fletcher, "The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity.
But were they Druids? Doesn't say.
Well ... There is the Frank's Casket, a small Anglo-Saxon box that has runes all around it. It depicts the myth of Wieland (Germanic) as well as the adoration of the Magi, who are wearing antlered hoods like Celtic Druids.
DeleteBut Druidic symbols on Anglo-Saxon artefacts in England is pretty nonexistent, as far as I know. There are some some common sacred symbols among Germanic/Norse people and British/Gallic Druids (ravens, certain trees, springs), but they were different pagan religions and cultures.
Donar's Oak that St. Winfrith (Boniface) chopped down was sacred to Thor, who was in the Germanic pantheon.
Very little is known for sure about Druidism because they didn't write stuff down, and all the info and stories were restricted to bards and priests. Like Masonic orders. But what is known indicates that the pantheon, heroes, divining practices, and sacrifices among Druids were different from Anglo-Saxon or Germanic paganism.
Once the Anglo-Saxon conversions started (Irish church in the north of England and Roman church in the southeast), you see a Celtic influence in Anglo-Saxon manuscript art, such as the books produced in Lindisfarne, founded by St. Aidan, an Irishman
Willibald's life of St. Boniface is a famous piece of Anglo-Saxon writing. Fordham University, bless them, has all this stuff on line. http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/willibald-boniface.asp
There is no mention of Druids, just pagans. And, of course, the exciting tension between Boniface and his nemesis, Radbod, the pagan king of Frisia. The Anglo-Saxons loved their hero-saints, Guthlac, a warrior turned pacifist a notable exception.
Yes, Boniface, as an English/Anglo-Saxon, was a missionary in various parts of what is now Germany and the Low Countries, so he was kind of going back to his ancestral home, two or three hundred years after they had settled in England.
None of this has anything to do with fireflies.
And what about the neo-Druids?
DeleteFireflies: it's still pretty chilly here and out there in the countryside; I think (and hope) they will be a bit late. But like your territory, there high point is usually around the fourth..
Trees are so much more interesting than most of us know. They do have a communal life and are able to warn each other through chemical signal when a grove is beginning to be eaten upon - then the other trees can release butter tasting stuff into their leaves to deter the predators ... How Plants Secretly Talk to Each Other
ReplyDeleteWohlleben and Jahren both write about "tree talk."
DeleteI first read about plants communicating in Michael Crichton's The Lost World ... dinosaurs :) He always manages to get a lot of science into his novels.
DeleteCrystal, have you heard this elegy to a tree? Loreena McKennitt's rendition of Bonny Portmore
DeleteThese are the lyrics
Oh yes ... because it's kind of the theme song to the Highlander movies/tv show :)
DeleteTom, I know that Miami is having "nuisance flooding" problems. I beloeve they're building a huge pumping system to relieve the problem for a couple decades. Problem with FL is not only sea level rise caused by thermal expansion of the oceans and runoff from land ice, but also the slowing of the gulf stream which may also be caused by climate change.
ReplyDeleteStanley -- That's Miami BEACH, on the ocean, rebuilding the pumping system. It's also raising its roads. No climate change going on officially in Florida. It's just a sinking city on a barrier island with an abundance of caution. But the neighborhood abandonment plan is for Miami, which is on the Intracoastal but not an island.
ReplyDeleteHere in the west we're experiencing very bad erosion of the coastline in California because of climate change, El Niño events, and drought.
DeleteThen you won't want to read TC Boyle's Friend of the Earth.
DeleteThanks for the clarification, Tom. I also have read that the mayors of the southern FL cities accept climate change science, as opposed to Governor Rick Scott.
ReplyDeleteThat's true. There are even smoky, dark places in Tallahassee, the capital, where people who know the password can gather to discuss climate change while the people upstairs pretend it's just a pizza parlor. But the governor is, um, getting ready to run for the Senate.
DeleteAm reading Bernd Heinrich's Ravens in Winter. Ravens certainly DO talk to each other. They also like to talk to themselves.
ReplyDeleteParent ravens They chuck the teenagers out of the nest. Pairs live in fixed territory, while the teenagers roam around in big dumb packs for three or four years sharing food, doing dances, making out, and performing feats of skill to impress potential mates before setting down.
It pretty much sounds like college to me.
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ReplyDeleteBirds are like us or we're like them. I think most animals and we are alike, or so the recent scientific studies seem to show - they also lie and cheat and worry about the future and laugh .... rats like being tickled and giggle it up
ReplyDeleteA recent raven study (I may have mentioned on another thread), shows that ravens will shun humans who reneg on a deal for at least a month. They know your face, they know you're a crook.
DeleteI'm always fascinated by cat research. They're such undependable research subjects that you can't say anything for sure about them except that they really don't care about human research.
DeleteIt's official, the fireflies are here. Maybe they were here all along, just not lit up. It was 98 degrees yesterday, then we had a brief, intense thunderstorm in the evening. Afterwards I looked out the window, and they were twinkling away. Guess they like moist heat.
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