Here is the White House press release from 2 days ago about attempts to prevent arctic drilling.
I am gladly accepting bets how long it will take (starting at inauguration) to circumvent the supposedly irreversible decision to protect parts of the arctic. Or I could just be optimistic and declare that 2016 was not a complete write-off…
Here are some gorgeous creatures that love the cold and depend on healthy oceans for their food supply.
Or a sufficient snowpack….
It sort of feels inappropriate to write about zoo animals at a time when this election concluded the way it did and the rest of world is a place of violence and heartbreak as well. Nontheless, I am in agreement with Grace Paley: Let us go forth with fear and courage and rage to save the world. And if that includes having a few moments of pleasure looking at extraordinary beings, so be it.
Here are facts you always wanted to know about giraffes 
Baby Giraffes can stand within half an hour and after only 10 hours can actually run alongside their family. (Just think of how much that saves your back when not carrying offspring around for 3 years….)
Giraffes spend most of their lives standing up; they even sleep and give birth standing up. I guess folding those legs requires too much effort….)
Giraffes only spend between 10 minutes and two hours asleep per day. They have one of the shortest sleep requirements of any mammal. (That is something I envy, needing between 9-10 hours to be an approximately tolerable human being in the morning…)
I think mascara ads should use giraffes, personally.
And none of their spots are ever alike:
The late 1800s and early 1900s saw an emerging literary category specifically for adolescent girls in Germany. The particular schema – and I know because I was raised on these books, some 70 years later, – dealt with an adventurous, contrarian girl who would be sent off to aunts or boarding school where she was “domesticated,” leaving occasional outbursts of natural temperament to be enjoyed by her future husband smiling benevolently on his darling wife, marriage being the end-game. Marriage, after learning to be obedient and quiet. Hm.
They all had titles of pet names with the diminutive “chen” (little one) attached – Backfischchens Leiden und Freuden, Trotzköpfchen, Nesthäkchen. (The first from 1860 refers to the name given to tweens, literally baked fish, not yet out of the oven; the second one from the 1900s means defiant head and the third refers to the last born in a family, the little addendum to the nest. )
The only way these young girls could experience adventure was to marry a colonialist, travel to East Africa, domesticate the natives in turn and report about the hardship with the climate, the tribes, the husbands at war. (There was also a whole adult literature of young women publishing their diaries encouraging others to come to Africa and help make the colonies strong….) The racist crap that was inherent in these young adult novels slipped by unnoticed and buried deep. The very fact that this was the only approved way to get out of the stifling republic as a girl was echoed by the fact that these books found millions of readers and were published in 48 editions or more. The equivalent for boys were adventure stories like “From Kairo To Kapstadt” or some such, where the boys were encouraged to seek service in the colonies as the ticket to large animal hunting (and promoting the glory of the Reich). Which brings me to Rhinos – hunting a crash of rhinos was the highlight of these adventure stories for this 9 year old…. never mind I had never seen one.
They can weigh up to six tons and run between 30 and 40 miles per hour – inconceivably fast. The white and the black rhino are threatened with extinction due to poaching for their desired horns. Both, by the way, are grey and differentiated really by their lip shape. The wide mouth of one, weit in Africaans, was mistranslated as white, thus the name.
Save the rhino.org says:
“Relative to their large body size, rhinoceros have small brains. But this doesn’t mean they are stupid.”
They also say:
“Black rhinos fight each other and have the highest rate of death among mammals in fights among the same species. Fifty percent of males and 30% of females die from these intra-species fights.
I’d call that pretty stupid……
I did eventually make it to Africa, unmarried no less, but only the North – never saw a rhino outside a zoo.
Last week I treated myself to a glorious afternoon at the zoo, sans dogs, or any other obligations, just my camera and I. It was cold, but hadn’t snowed yet, and the animals were lively. Some learned person and I shared the same pace and frequently ended up standing in front of the same enclosure. He told me some astonishing facts about the animals, which in turn led to my decision to devote this week to tidbits of zoology.
The photos are from last Tuesday as well as several other previous visits. One reason I like to go to the zoo so often has to do with the fact that it is a place that provides an escape from lily-white Portland. You get to mingle and talk to people you would otherwise have little occasion to meet, and everyone is in a good mood because of the beauty of the surround. I always learn something, or feel more connected.
And here are some elephant facts that I, in my ignorance, found surprising. Mostly gleaned from here:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/14-fun-facts-about-elephants-14572816/
Females can get pregnant up to the age of 5o and a pregnancy lasts 22 months. Oy.
They live in matriarchic groups of 15 or so, young males leave at age 12 or so.
They can get sunburn, which is why they always spray dust or chips on their back.
They hate ants. No wonder, if I imagine fire ants crawling up my trunk. This, of course, is clever evolution; acacia trees that are hosts to ants will thus provide leaves for other species to eat….
And here is the winner: the closest relative to elephants on earth is this: the rock hyrax.
Field day for a palm reader – the underside of the foot: 
The link below brings you to Ursula LeGuin’s latest blog, a long, thought-provoking reflection on the election.
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Blog2016.html#119Election
For today’s quote, here is an excerpt that points to the power of water.
“I know what I want. I want to live with courage, with compassion, in patience, in peace.
The way of the warrior fully admits only the first of these, and wholly denies the last.
The way of the water admits them all.
The flow of a river is a model for me of courage that can keep me going — carry me through the bad places, the bad times. A courage that is compliant by choice and uses force only when compelled, always seeking the best way, the easiest way, but if not finding any easy way still, always, going on.
The cup of water that gives itself to thirst is a model for me of the compassion that gives itself freely. Water is generous, tolerant, does not hold itself apart, lets itself be used by any need. Water goes, as Lao Tzu says, to the lowest places, vile places, accepts contamination, accepts foulness, and yet comes through again always as itself, pure, cleansed, and cleansing.
Running water and the sea are models for me of patience: their easy, steady obedience to necessity, to the pull of the moon in the sea-tides and the pull of the earth always downward; the immense power of that obedience.”
Of course, I cannot agree with the sentiment that water will always come out pure and cleansed again – that is what the protest at Standing Rock is all about. But the other reflections speak to me.
Shaking like a leaf? Not these folks!
My father was a slave and my people died to build this country, and I’m going to stay right here and have a part of it, just like you. And no fascist-minded people like you will drive me from it. Is that clear?
Paul Robeson (1898-1976)
testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, June 12, 1956
That… man… says women can’t have as much rights as man, cause Christ wasn’t a woman. Where did your Christ come from? . . . From God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with him.
Sojourner Truth (1797?-1883)
speech at the Woman’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851
I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or rat in a trap. I had already determined to sell my life as dearly as possible if attacked. I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would even up the score a little bit.
Ida B. Wells (1862-1931)
Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells (published posthumously, 1970)
What’s shaking, chiefy baby?
Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993)
customary greeting to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, quoted by Michael D. Davis and Hunter R. Clark in Thurgood Marshall: Warrior at the Bar, Rebel on the Bench (1992)
The dictionary tells me that “connect the dots” can be used as a metaphor to illustrate an ability (or inability) to associate one idea with another, to find the “big picture”, or salient feature, in a mass of data.
One of the most famous quotes in this regard came from Steve Jobs, who claimed: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path.”
I want to do the opposite this week – instead of focussing on the big picture, I want to draw attention to the little details, particularly as they exist in nature, where they are often overlooked. Random dots, beautifully configured in my eyes. And non-randomly linked to insights by various thinkers.
Happy Thanksgiving from me and the Swedish Chef. He holds a special place in the heart of this household simply because I used to try and imitate him to the unending mirth of my progeny. And not because I was successful at it, either….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-OFXUaMIv8
I am grateful for my family, my friends, the readers of my blog, all those who fight for our water rights, our civil rights, our constitution; and I am grateful for the fact that we have food on the table which is not true for everyone.
Why would I possibly think about poison? Could it be those poisonous voices spewing their brew of racism, anti-semitism, sexism and bigotry?
Why do I possibly think about mushroom clouds? Could it be those voices bent on war and domination?
Antidote urgently needed. So today we focus on comfort food – and here is a delicious instruction for mushroom soup (though you should not pick the ones show in the photographs….)
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/mushroom-soup-231145
Guten Appetit!
We started the week with a poem and we’ll end it with one by the same author. I read this one as an inescapable call to action, to plunge into resistance; unfathomable, indeed, that it’s needed in this country at this time.
Here is a spreadsheet that could be helpful for calling your representatives and other types of action:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1h1TAErnqRmad04_stKyw0W_qGYB_G1d6iYLzeB4Knqo/htmlview
Island where all becomes clear.
Solid ground beneath your feet.
The only roads are those that offer access.
Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.
The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.
The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.
The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.
If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.
Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.
On the right a cave where Meaning lies.
On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.
Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.
For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.
As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.
Into unfathomable life.
By Wislawa Szymborska
From “A large number”, 1976
Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
Copyright © Wislawa Szymborska, S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
