Posts

What's Your Beef?

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     To those who may have read earlier posts of mine, you know that every now and I then I veer off track and vent, almost out of necessity as if I've become an old-time steam locomotive about to derail.  It doesn't happen often but every now and then, it just does.  And you also know that once all that steam is let out, all is calm for awhile and everyone reading can sort of breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that whatever topic bothered me would fade away enough to let me get back to whatever the title subject was of the post, which in this case is truly about cows and beef.  However, speaking of cattle, here's my real beef (here goes, so skip by this rant or bravely read on) -- this whole Iran "war" and the alleged threat of its nuclear enrichment program : wasn't it Trump himself who pulled the US  out  of the agreed nuclear agreement with Iran back in 2018, one in which members of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) were allowed f...
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Storm Clouds Coming

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          In many ways I chide myself for not knowing more about clouds, although this post isn't really about that since I've written about clouds in earlier posts.  Still, is it cirrus or circus, cumulus or columbus?  Strata something, but I can only think of those classic guitars.  But once outside, I look up quite often, that "picture show for free thing," the clouds changing as often as the sunrises or sunsets. Some days the skies are stunningly spectacular, and on other days they are almost blank, as if having all been called back inside after recess at school.  I mention storm clouds in the title because we did have our first storm in a long time, my state in the West being in that megadrought and all.  And with the storm came snow which snarled streets and had plow operators work overtime; but the snow also brought a sigh of relief to everyone.  Spring was truly acting as if it were around the corner with some tulip and daff...
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(plas)Ticked Off

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     Finally, this overdue post on plastics arrives.  I had started writing it months ago but other things came up: reflections, politics, cleaning up, laziness.  All that, and I think I must add the almost-depressing state of what is happening in our world and how much we seem to be in denial.  Not only in the wars and the income inequality, but in the sheer number of us and our urge to be somewhere,  whether for fun or work.  And so we drive, or fly, or cruise, and we check our workstations or laptops or phones, and we want information, and quickly.  And now AI.  All of that means power, and water, and often war, because we're running out of what we have.  So we burn all sorts of junk to make that power --from coal to nuclear to plastics (more petroleum)-- and we wonder why or how the planet could be re-entering a phase of changing climate...surely it isn't us, because we're doing our best: driving electric cars and scooters and b...
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Chthonic

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     What on Earth?  Or what on the under-earth?  Not only was I being introduced to new words ( chthonic /coeval?) but also to new visions of life and music, even the cardiac blues (actual condition, that: postoperative cardiac depression).  Not that it affects me mind you, that cardiac stuff (knock wood), but those blues are well known in surgical circles.  To make matters more complicated, the author who underwent the procedure wrote this: I entered the literature when they touched my heart and changed the prosody of my body.  Wait, the what?  So I looked the word up and found this definition in Wikipedia :  Often, prosody specifically refers to such elements, known as suprasegmentals when they extend across more than one phonetic segment.  Well, that explains a lot (not)...     That cardiac surgery was but one story in an issue of the New York Review , with others topics including music and art criticism.  One art...
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