A Song When Hope Dims: Pete Seeger and The Napalm Ladies

by WarrenS

I think I was twelve when my parents gave me a new Pete Seeger lp.  They knew I loved his music; I’d listened over and over to "We Shall Overcome: The Carnegie Hall Concert" and knew most of the songs, or at least their lyrics, by heart.  I’d memorized most of the songs on the "Children’s Concert at Town Hall," and forty years later I can get a good laugh from any kid by singing "Where have you been all the day long, Henry my boy?" with its gross, lugubrious "greeeeeeeeen and yeller" chorus.

But this was a new disc, and I’m quite sure my folks just went into the store and grabbed something off the shelf.  After all, Pete had a lot of albums, and they were all pretty much the same, right?

Well, actually, no.

continued at Daily Kos....

Dawn Chorus: Fall in New England

by juliewolf

I love living in Vermont.  Our birds aren't as exotic as the Southwestern Species, and we don't commonly get the coastal excitement that they do over in NH and MA, but we get birds that are adaptable to the cold.  Fall in Vermont is especially interesting because we get boreal birds passing through as well as some occasional surprises.  One surprise happened to me just the other day in the form of this Barred Owl

                               

I didn't photograph it for long, but apparently it's been hanging out in this one spot, not far from my house (I could walk there without too much hassle), for months.  

Below the fold, I'll share some of our other local Fall birds, as well as a fairly major surprise/life bird.

continued at Daily Kos....

Daily bigjac Poetry Slam

by bigjacbigjacbigjac

This is one of my favorite Bible passages, Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3:

verse 18:
I said in mine heart
concerning the estate
of the sons of men,
that God might manifest them,
and that they might see
that they themselves are beasts.
verse 19:
For that which befalleth
the sons of men
befalleth beasts;
even one thing befalleth them:
as the one dieth,
so dieth the other;
yea,
they all have one breath;
so that a man hath no preeminence
above a beast:
for all is vanity.
verse 20:
All go unto one place;
all are of the dust,
and all turn to dust
again.

So, did you realize that the Bible supports Darwin?

Here is a link, in case you want to read the whole chapter:

Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3

continued at Daily Kos....

Dawn Chorus Birdblog: (Your) Best Bird Moments

by matching mole

Dawn Chorus hasn't appeared yet this AM.  Here is a fill-in diary.  If lineatus' diary appears I can take this down.

People reading this diary are here because they love birds.  Presumably you, dear reader, spend time observing our feathered friends be it from your kitchen window, in your neighborhood park, on vacation at a national park, or on the far side of the world.  During your bird watching hours you have had at least a few (hopefully many) experiences that were a bit above the rest.  Experiences that struck you strongly enough that, even if only for a moment, the world slipped away and the only thing left was the bird(s) in front of you.  I’d like to hear the stories of those moments.  I’ll start with a few of my own.

continued at Daily Kos....

Everybody Knows

by Crashing Vor

Everybody knows the boat is leaking.
Everybody knows that the captain lied.

A few people have asked me recently why I've stopped writing about The Hell, why issues other than the petro pus from the Macondo well have crept into my posts of late.

I figure it's mostly because I'm dumb. There are people way smarter than I who can tell you whatever you need to know about all that, and the consensus from the smarter people is clear: It's over. Move on.

continued at Daily Kos....

Two Hundred. Two Hundred and One....

by WarrenS

I had an idea one day in December.  The new year was coming up, and I wondered if I had what it took to sustain a daily discipline that wasn't about practicing music or doing the dishes (not that I necessarily do those every day, nowadays, but...).

For a few years I had been following the news about climate change.  JohnnyRook was the person who woke me up.  Reading his diaries and learning about him was transformative.  Unfortunately, it seemed to transform me at first into a pretty gloomy guy, because all I ever saw was politicians squandering opportunities and media figures abandoning their responsibilities, while the scientific evidence mounted higher and higher.

Understand: I am the child of scientists.  While I am by profession a musician, I know enough about science to know that when scientists say something like, "Well, we have observed significant correlations between atmospheric CO2 and increased global mean temperature," in a soft, calm, slightly hesitant voice, what they are doing is screaming is "HOLY SHIT!!! EVERYBODY!!! WAKE THE F**K UP!!! NOW!!!"  That is, phrases like "significant correlation" and "robust" are scientists' way of shouting.

continued at Daily Kos....

Hike On! Chasing the Sky in Sequoia National Park

by RLMiller

No politics today.  I spent the weekend in Sequoia National Park (SEKI to the National Park Service), had adventures, took pix, came home, blogged about it.

Sequoia is a huge park, but the NPS has chosen to focus visitor activities on one charismatic megaflora: the General Sherman tree.  People ride shuttle buses to see one tree, turn around, shrug, say If you've seen one redwood, you've seen 'em all, and ride the shuttle bus back to their cars.  Maybe they also ride another shuttle to take the half-mile hike up Moro Rock for the view.  I've seen that tree and that view.  I want to touch the sky above the trees.

continued at Daily Kos....

Scenes from a whale watch

by juliewolf

To start, a note: all these are thumbnails, pointing to photos over twice their size (just click on them to visit my web site).

Fair warning: I'm not going to include a lot of comments about the trip.  I just want to say that this is something I very much needed and I'm glad we made it, despite the universe's attempts to thwart us (I had to call Newburyport Whale Watch to ask them to wait for us, since we were delayed by traffic and construction).

After the other photos, I've got a couple comments, some personal, some political.

continued at Daily Kos....

Why Can't U.S. Wind Power be like this? [Update]

by tergenev

I'm not a wind industry financier, as is Jerome a Paris . .I'm just a fan of sustainable energy. I have been for 30 years. I tend to follow the news on these things. And while I like the way things are going in terms of the adoption of new energy generation technologies, particularly wind, I see a story such as the one reported today in WindPower Monthly, and I find it quite irritating. The city of Yumen in the northwest Chinese Gansu Province, has announced that they will be constructing a 500MW wind farm next month, and they will use nothing but Chinese built turbines. Why are the Chinese able to do that, but something so straightforward, so direct, to spur the U.S. industry is seemingly impossible?

continued at Daily Kos....

Dawn Chorus: Vermont's "Northeast Kingdom"

by juliewolf

Crossposted to Vermont's Green Mountain Daily

Birding and camping in Northern Vermont this month took us through Island Pond, Victory Basin and a part of the Sylvio Conte refuge network.  We had good sightings of birds, butterflies and even one fairly cool sighting of a young bull moose.

continued at Daily Kos....

BP: Wounding My Mother, Wounding Pachamama

by davidseth

It begins as helplessness.  Nothing more, nothing less.  I watch as oil spews from BP's well into the Gulf of Mexico, killing sea life, destroying the ocean, ruining the breeding grounds near the shore.  The Gulf of Mexico is becoming a vast petroleum gumbo garnished with oil soaked sea birds and drowned turtles.  I watch this.  I wish that all of the wise men and women of the world could find a solution, could stop the flow.  But as the time elapses, and the failures to stem the flow mount up, it should be obvious to me.  There may be no solution.  At least not for the foreseeable future.  And by then, by then what even BP is calling a "catastrophe" will be that much more enormous.  That much more irremediable.  The leak will have killed much of the Gulf of Mexico, and unchecked, it will continue to kill as the currents carry its devastation farther and farther away. Please join me on this voyage.  

continued at Daily Kos....

Dawn Chorus: Of Warblers and Weekends

by juliewolf

Warblers are small, fast moving birds, which can be very hard to identify, but when you are lucky with them, it's pretty awesome. [as I prep this piece, there are chimney swifts flying around the house, mocking me with their speed.  Warblers may be fast, but chimney swifts are insane] This prairie warbler is one such bird.  I've only seen prairies a few times in my life, and about half those times were in one specific location.  Kennebunk Plains, in Kennebunk, ME.  They show up in other places, but I mostly find them at this one spot.  They're not hard to identify: notice the white on the tail.  When they fly,it's like a yellow dark-eyed junco.  And notice the facial lines: like someone took the letter "P" and faced it down.  If you remember those two pieces of information, you'll know Prairie warblers from a lot of others. Today's dawn chorus will talk about warblers, warbler IDs and pretty much anything else I want to talk about :)

continued at Daily Kos....

The Difference

by Crashing Vor

No, I don't think it's Obama's Katrina.  I don't think it's anybody's. You can talk about massive, preventable engineering failures, irreversible changes in culture, corporate greed, government impotence, whatever.  There is one glaring difference between what happened 2005 and today:  we could do something about it.

continued at Daily Kos....