Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Something/Someone Old
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For this week, I tried to find out what the world's oldest non-extinct bird species is. I found out it's debatable and there's a lot of pontificating about it.

So I picked one of my favorite birds: the sandhill crane.

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I'm finding it difficult to find out whether the cranes I see every year are migratory from another place than Florida, or if they're members of the year-round Florida contingent. I'm guessing the former, because we regularly see them in the winter, and not much the rest of the year. But there are Floridian sandhills that stay in the state year-round; there's a similar population in Cuba.

When you can live in climates as different as Cuba and Nebraska, you have a pretty flexible species. Maybe that's why they're ten million years old.

Nature got it right with the cranes. They have been around since the Eocene, which ended 34 million years ago. They are among the world’s oldest living birds and one of the planet’s most successful life-forms, having outlasted millions of species (99 percent of species that ever existed are now extinct). The particularly successful sandhill crane of North America has not changed appreciably in ten million years. There are 15 Gruidae species, and in all the human cultures that experience the birds, they are revered.

Neolithic peoples in Turkey in 6500 B.C. imitated the dances of cranes as part of marriage rituals. Dance is one thing cranes are credited by many societies with giving us. Another is language, perhaps because they are so vocal and a single crane’s calls, amplified by its saxophone-shaped trachea—the windpipe in its long neck—can carry a mile. And unlike geese, with their disciplined, purposeful vees, cranes fly in loose, drifting, chimeric lines that are constantly, kaleidoscopically coming apart and forming, the ancient Greeks imagined, many letters. Crane hieroglyphs were applied to the Temples of Karnak 4,000 years ago.

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For a while, a fossil found in Florida's Macasphalt Shell Pit (which I'd never heard of before, but apparently is located near Sarasota) was considered the oldest sandhill crane fossil, clocking in at 2.5 million years old, but a ten-million-year-old fossil was found in the Ashfall Fossil Beds in NE Nebraska. It's not precisely the sandhill, but the closely related Crown Crane, but a lot of people believe it's a close enough relation to consider the sandhill 10 million years old.

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What's even cooler is that apparently the cranes have stuck to the same feeding and watering holes--and nesting sites--for all that time. They apparently fell in love with the Nebraska River about when it was invented, and have never changed their minds about it. The Florida fossil shows that they've also been around here for millions of years.

Here's some images of them on Paynes' Prairie, just south of my home. They migrate there in great flocks every year (what I don't know is if they're coming from NE Florida, where apparently some live year-round, or points north. I'm guessing the latter):

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And this is their call:

Something New
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Saraciea Fennel and Noelle Santos just created a new book festival in the Bronx.

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Last Saturday, the Bronx Book Festival ended a years-long drought of public literary activity. I'm phrasing this carefully, in order not to suggest that nobody reads or writes in the Bronx. Noelle Santos, the vendor for the event, is about to open the first "general interest" bookstore in the Bronx since Barnes and Noble closed its Bronx location in 2016. That's right, an entire borough of New York has been a bookstore desert since 2016. Ms. Santos "insists that the festival and her forthcoming shop will reveal rather than originate an already burgeoning literary scene...`This festival and The Lit. Bar are important because we need to create intellectual visibility in the Bronx,” said Ms. Santos. “We have it here. We have intellectuals in the Bronx,' she explained, but she hopes the two initiatives will bring books and literature to the fore."

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It's horrifying to me to imagine a space inhabited by 1.5 million people without a single "general interest" bookstore (does that mean there *are* specific interest bookstores in the area?) Regardless, it's horrifying. Yet it's also oddly encouraging, in the same way that the massive Friends of the Library Book Sale was for me last month: we readers are difficult to discourage. Like crab grass, we keep creeping back in, even when everything conspires to eradicate us.

Something Borrowed
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Apparently we borrowed the second-best part of the Constitution from a seventeenth-century Frenchman.

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Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, born in 1689, died in 1755, invented the idea of checks and balances and the separation of powers. Not only was this idea elegant, but it also was taken up enthusiastically by more people than American colonists; it is fundamental to many constitutions worldwide. Our Founding Fathers were more than usually enthusiastic:

Political scientist Donald Lutz found that Montesquieu was the most frequently quoted authority on government and politics in colonial pre-revolutionary British America, cited more by the American founders than any source except for the Bible.[9]

The fact that Madison liked his work so much gives me slight pause, because I think James Madison was basically a snake, but, then, Madison and I have agreed once or twice before, mainly on issues fundamental to the functioning of civilization. (We both like libraries).

A prophet is never honored in his own country, however, and Montesquieu's work The Spirit of the Laws was as unpopular in France as it was embraced in every other corner of Europe and its colonies; both supporters and opponents of the current French regime hated it.

Well, it wasn't embraced in every corner of Europe; the Vatican didn't like it at all.

It kind of speaks well for a book when the Pope bans it.

On the other hand, he believed in primogeniture. White European thinkers of the 18th century make my head hurt.

But there you have it; we borrowed the second-best part of the Constitution from a French judge who was an advocate of hereditary aristocracy.

The best part of the Constitution, of course, is the Bill of Rights, which almost didn't make it in.

Something Blue
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I've been saving this one for a while.

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I held back from using this as Something Blue, partly because it's obvious, but more because honestly, I don't like it that much, and I feel simultaneously like a fool and a jerk for not liking it that much.

I do think it's cool that he captured the fact that stars move and that light is not static. And, obviously, I love the color blue. Still, I just don't like the painting much. To be fair, Van Gogh in general is not my favorite artist. But if I had to pick one of his works to hang on my wall, it would probably be one of his paintings of fields, maybe one of the ones with sunflowers, rather than "Starry Night."

How are you all doing this morning?

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Lookout's picture

We visit the cranes most years. Big flocks congregate in the Wheeler wildlife refuge and near Dayton TN at the Hiawassee Wildlife refuge. -

Hiwassee Refuge has the largest winter flock of Sandhill Cranes in the southeast United States outside of Florida. From the Observation Platform, visitors can view Sandhill Cranes and an occasional endangered Whooping Crane from November through February. Peak numbers of cranes occur in January.

Their populations are on the upswing...

Sandhill crane numbers are increasing at Wheeler NWR. Prior to 1997, Sandhill cranes occurred in small numbers on the refuge. In 1997, 26 Sandhill cranes were observed and by 2002 the number wintering on the refuge had increased to almost 400. In 2012/2013 the number peaked at 12,000.

As to Starry Starry Night, I find Don McLean's song as moving as the painting. I like this adaptation with Walter Anderson's work displayed with the song...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_s1v94tCj0 (5 min)

Have a good one everybody.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

The Aspie Corner's picture

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

enhydra lutris's picture

@The Aspie Corner
big insurance and big pharma as being without a public option, drug price negotiation, and drug importation and re-importation. Now that it has been further crippled, prominent Dems are starting to campaign on adding a public option and price negotiation to make it sound like they have a health plan without addressing single-payer.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

@enhydra lutris healthcare" according to her Candidate Statement in the Official Voter Information Guide. I am guessing by the title, it's official. lol I used to think the ACA was pretty good too, it helped a lot of people but now they are screwed again on affordability, and digital health records are shite, and BigPharma still dictates medication as the next generations get mowed down by all kinds of crazy concoctions. wah

Here's a screenshot I took today while poking around the Federal Election Commission website for Our Revolution data (there is none there):
difiloanScreenshot_2018-05-23_06-29-10.jpg
Finances running low? If you're Dianne Feinstein just loan yourself another five million dollars why not? Legal! I wonder how much interest she charges herself the campaign for that jumbo.

linky to screeny data: www.fec.gov/data/receipts
cesspool dive

Does anyone else get hit with a symbolic hammer from their local rags every d-diddly-day?
Sonoma County to seek half-year extension on controversial septic system changes

It’s not clear when the State Water Resources Control Board might make a decision about the county’s extension request once it’s filed, but Wick said in an interview he has “really good confidence” the board will grant its blessing.

“We have one of the best programs in the state. We’re only seeking to improve it,” he said. “I would hope that we’ll be granted the time to complete that process.”

California lawmakers passed legislation 18 years ago directing the state water board to adopt statewide permitting and operation standards for septic systems, which didn’t happen until 2012. Sonoma County supervisors then in 2016 agreed to move forward with creating a more customized set of local standards, given the region’s diverse geography and soil types.

BLAM! Sit on their asses for twelve years doing absolutely nothing... well at least someone got paid. "Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown".

too much

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It's a small painting, and it looked like Vincent was painting with a tube that's how I saw it. Big gooping gobs that somehow did not fuck up the picture but added a new dimension of color interpretation, it drew me in. It was like standing in the middle of NYC (at the MoMA) and looking through a window. Or a mirror. heh It is my second favorite next to Dali's Persistence of Memory. thanks
Edit: couldn't resist pasting this part of the history:

Vincent van Gogh painted Starry Night in 1889 during his stay at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.[...] While he suffered from the occasional relapse into paranoia and fits - officially he had been diagnosed with epileptic fits - it seemed his mental health was recovering.

Unfortunately, he relapsed. He began to suffer hallucination and have thoughts of suicide as he plunged into depression.[...] Even though each building is clearly outlined in black, the yellow and white of the stars and the moon stand out against the sky, drawing the eyes to the sky. They are the big attention grabber of the painting.

Big attention grabber? lol "nothing to see here, move along" lol
--reality check
I had a big one after reviewing c99s "new and refined super-duper, non-partisan, all-weather list of demands to lob at people who propose to represent us": https://caucus99percent.com/content/demands-second-pass

Well no wonder ker-plunk is the sound I keep hearing, I'm not paying attention except to wtf is right in front of me. Searching and seeking others who actually give a fuck about shelter and sanitation first and foremost, the landscape is bleak. There is nothing on my ballot to vote for, nada, it's all bullshit. Collapsifornia is real.
Large Santa Rosa homeless camp along public trail to be cleared at end of May

“This sweeping people, it’s not solving anything,” said Nick O’Brien, 48, who has been staying along the trail. “It’s not addressing anything.”

Another camp resident, Liliana Lopez, 24, said she was unaware of next week’s scheduled evictions. She said she could not go to a homeless shelter because she suffers from depression and anxiety that make it unbearable.

“If there were real places to stay, you wouldn’t see so many people out here,” she said.

The Stasi was out last night arresting some poor woman across the street for who knows what. I don't know because I don't understand Spanish, but I do understand when someone is crying for help and scared to death. So of course I went outside and watched. Sure enough the crying stopped, and after a while they dragged her in to the back of the pig wagon. Then a fire truck showed up, to make sure all the public logs are covered now they had a witness. Fucking pigs who cooperate with ICE, that is what they are. The Cloverdale eXperience: Commentary: Suspicious activity

Like shit in the ditch with all the rest, I am just waiting to get scraped off the bottom of the landlord's shoes whenever he feels like it why not. "That's the system". Then the cops will do whatever they want to me, including homicide, because they can. Why wouldn't they? not normal

good luck

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@eyo The truth is, we all are

Like shit in the ditch with all the rest, I am just waiting to get scraped off the bottom of the landlord's shoes whenever he feels like it why not.

Those of us who are lucky enough to have enough money to be homeowners/landowners, will, if we're not 100-millionaires, get scraped off much later. But what a lot of people don't want to understand that is that privilege provides comfort, but not power. Which means that the bosses can come for you too. They just don't do it first, second, or third. A lot of poorer (and darker-skinned) people to go through before they come for me.

Good night and good luck.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal 2018 mid-terms, where is the hope? "Times up, you're next!" Obviously I have no hope for myself, but what about other c99ers? I am not counting on Q to bring enlightenment, I'm pretty sure their answer is "die faster granny!

Our Revolution was created to perpetuate the plutocracy, or whatever being ruled by a two-party system that only represents unelected wealthy assholes on top is called. I guess if Clintons do get hit with a wet noodle by the DoJ, it won't stop the count madness. Nothing has changed, as far as I can tell.
UNCOUNTED: The True Story of the California Primary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5ugmNoanx8

In an extensive mini-documentary by Michelle Boley and Taylor Gill and produced by TYT and Rogue Kite Productions, we tell you the true story of what happened leading up too and after the California Democratic Primary.

Yesterday: https://ourrevolution.com/press/former-senator-nina-turner-weighs-her-wo...

blah blah blah

ka-ching! Tad Devine stars in "Our Brand is Crisis" with James Carville, which is not something to be proud of, or associate with ever again. Ask Eva Morales what he thinks about those guys, I'd like to know what he'd say about them and that 2002 election. "Same shit, different day."?

peace

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@eyo I don't know, because I tore up my voter registration card this year.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@eyo I didn't know Starry Night was on a small canvas.

When you don't see things in person, you lose all that.

I spent years before I realized that Georgia O'Keefe's flowers--at least some of them--were meant to be seen as a series.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

enhydra lutris's picture

crane migration; from Siberia and Alaska down to the central valley. One of their gathering places is a wetlands on the Mokelumne River, just north of Lodi.

Other than the clarity of the included town scene, Starry Starry Night reminds me of many a foggy foggy night, especially out in the central valley, including out around Lodi.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Made it just under the wire (it is still, technically, morning where I am). Smile

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

orlbucfan's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal They are beautiful, graceful critters. LOL. We have a bunch of the small white ones around here. Not a bird expert as to whether they're herons or cranes? They are definitely adapting to urban life. I have never been a big one on van Gogh either. He was a brilliant artist but everyone's taste is subjective. Rec'd!!

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Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@orlbucfan This is a good site for birding...

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Sandhill_Crane/id

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

detroitmechworks's picture

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/sports/nfl-anthem-kneeling.html

Yup, enough Disrespecting the MIC.

Gladiators are to show proper respect for the Emperor.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@detroitmechworks One of the reasons I don't watch the NFL anymore.

Disgusting how they parade the corpse of my former culture around. Not that it was all that great to begin with, but this is gross.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Anja Geitz's picture

was during my first trip to Paris. I was on break from school and was studying art history. But if I were completely honest about my experience there, I'd have to admit to being especially sentimental about the artist himself. His terrible struggles with mental illness filtered the way I viewed his canvases. It was as if Van Gogh transformed his afflicted view of the world into an elegy of light, color, texture, movement, beauty, and darkness. His brushwork seemed both fragile and dramatic to me at the same time; breathing, almost; reaching out across time long after he died; viscerally alive on the canvas.

I often feel sentimental about certain pieces of classical music too. It's embarrassing really. To stand there in front of a Van Gogh exhibit inside the Musee D'Orsay, quietly weeping.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Anja Geitz There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to be embarrassed about. It's great that he moves you that deeply.

I, too, have a deep sympathy for Van Gogh as a man, having had my own struggles with depression.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Anja Geitz's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

Strange thing about that journey of self discovery, I serendipitously turned it into a gain that has actually impacted my life in the most unexpected ways. Funny how that works, eh?

Btw, I ran across a quote from Ursula LeGuin that I've been meaning to post. Her take on this is wonderfully astute and I admire her for making it. You've really sparked my curiosity about her writing. Smile

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Lily O Lady's picture

@Anja Geitz

that I hadn’t seen before. I had the same reaction to his Almond Trees that I viewed for the first time at the High Museum in Atlanta. Starry Night, which I love, was there as well, but I had seen it before and the impact was less. There is something about meeting a Van Gogh painting for the first time.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

Anja Geitz's picture

@Lily O Lady

There is something about meeting a Van Gogh painting for the first time

the experience of viewing his artwork in person. It's more a dialogue, really, isn't it? A silent but potent connection between you and the artist's work.

Some artists have that effect on you, and some don't. Van Gogh, for me, was able to take an ordinary chair and render it poignantly unordinary.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Lookout's picture

...is a lovely animated film in the style of his paintings.
http://lovingvincent.com/

Here's the 1 min trailer
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47h6pQ6StCk]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_Vincent

The film suggest his suicide wasn't a suicide.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Anja Geitz's picture

@Lookout

Thanks for the link!

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

mhagle's picture

Art, music, poetry . . . are all so subjective. I love Starry Night because of how it makes me feel . . . and I can't explain that either. In the late 90s when I was a junior high computer teacher, I had art on my walls. Walmart was selling framed prints at $3 each, so I had Starry Night, some Monet, Ansel Adams - I don't remember what else. It gave a nice feel to the room.

And I love your info about cranes. My first teaching job in '79 was near Omaha and we went to that wildlife refuge where the cranes hang out. Been a long time since I have seen one. Now I want to see them again.

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo