On the blog 3 years ago
On the blog 2 years ago
On the blog 1 year ago
Tweets seen
[“A wild donkey in the Arizona desert will dig a well six feet deep with its front hooves, and for half a century the United States government has been shooting it as a threat to the desert.
August on a dry wash in the Sonoran. The creek has been gone since May. The sand is hot enough to cook on and every animal for miles is standing in what shade it can find, waiting for a rain that is not coming. A burro walks down the wash, stops at a bend for no reason anyone else can see, puts its head down and smells. Then it starts digging. Front feet, one after the other, like a dog after a bone, until it is in up to its shoulders and the bottom of the hole goes dark and wet.
It drinks and walks off.
Within the hour there is a queue. Mule deer. Javelina. A bobcat. A scrub jay standing on the rim. In 2021 a biologist called Erick Lundgren published the count in Science: 59 species of vertebrate drinking at donkey wells, 64% more species than at the dry stretches of the same streams, and in the driest months the donkeys were raising the amount of open water in the desert by 300% on average and by up to 1,450%. When the wells were abandoned, cottonwood and willow seedlings came up in them. The donkey had been planting the riverbank.
Asked about his methodology, the donkey had another drink and left.
When a beaver builds a pond, a film crew is sent. When a donkey digs a well, the Park Service sends a marksman. The burros came up from Mexico with the Spanish and the prospectors, carried the ore out of every mine in the West, and were turned loose when the mines closed. Then they were reclassified. In 1979 the National Park Service planned to shoot all 577 in the Grand Canyon. A writer called Cleveland Amory raised more than $500,000 and lifted 582 of them out by helicopter, slung underneath, the most expensive taxi ride a donkey has ever taken. Death Valley shot 400 between 1987 and 1994.
Lundgren said that when he started, people did not think a donkey digging a hole was worthy of scientific attention.
The animal was listed as a threat to the desert’s water.
It was the one bringing the water up.
Fifty-nine species knew.
The ones with the rifles had never sat by the hole.”]
Our animal friends.
A world without them will be a better world.
Huckabee is an agent of influence for the Israeli state.
Take away Zelensky’s ricebowl.
Talking point
Suddenly rather topical, a blog post from a decade ago:
See also:
[“Arakchi: The people of our region are just as tired of Israel’s deception as the Americans. The Iranian Foreign Minister stated:
The President of the United States has now clearly realized that the vast majority of Americans have a very negative view of Israel. However, it is noteworthy that he still seems not to understand the reasons for this.
It is clear that Americans are tired of Israel deceiving American administrations and dragging them into endless wars. Their patience has run out. The patience of the people in our region has also run out.”
I wonder whether Trump will pardon Ghislaine Maxwell at the end of his term. Not unlikely, in my opinion.
Yesterday, Remembrance Sunday at the cenotaph.
https://x.com/JamesMelville/status/2119397853059481877?a=BZ-LFtL3n2ewhOhWWhY&s=19
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Yesterday, Remembrance Sunday at the cenotaph.
https://x.com/JamesMelville/status/2119397853059481877?a=BZ-LFtL3n2ewhOhWWhY&s=19
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Rupert Brooke
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.
There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England’s, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
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Rupert Brooke
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.
There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England’s, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
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Tommy Atkins
I strolled along a country lane, It was nice and fresh from yesterday’s rain, I hadn’t been this way before, I was eager to see what lay in store.
It was altogether quite a pleasant scene, There were muddy prints where the deer had been, And the birds were singing their songs of praise, When an old church yard caught my gaze.
The sign said built in 1483, I decided to go in to see what I could see, Lots of gravestones from centuries gone by, Very hard to read but I thought I’d try, Many families it seems were buried together, So they could rest with each other for ever and ever, Some died as children and some lived to be old, I’m sure some had fascinating tales to be told.
Then I came across a small headstone that was all alone,Young Tommy Atkins who had died far from home, In a field in France in 1916, The inscription said he was just 17. Loving son and brother it read, ,I couldn’t make out the next words it said, The last part said for King and country he died, And I’m sure many people for Tommy had cried.
I wondered how many graves like this there were, Thousand and thousands and thousands I’m sure, Young men cut down before they could live their dream, What a terrible waste of a life this had been.
Tommy taught me a valuable lesson that day, And I knelt beside him and began to pray, I decided the troubles and worries I had, Were quite insignificant and not at all bad, And I would relish each second I had left on this earth, And live my life to its fullest worth,And should I catch myself feeling unhappy and sad, I’ll remember the lifeTommy never had.
Mark Stanton
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