Reflections of an Old-Timey Hermit
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(This chunk of 30-inch concrete culvert was probably rolled off a construction barge and into the bay as surplus at some point in the past. In the meantime it's been colonised by a wealth of sea life, including most conspicuously at least two species of starfish. The community is located well below mean low tide, and only fully exposed at minus 4. I'll bet it's a great visit at high tide, with…
A museum is an exhibition of things that aren't broken yet. They're interesting to us because they've made it this far, and we're holding our breath to see how much longer they'll exist. (Photo of Imperial War Museum, London – specialising in exhibits that had even longer odds of reaching our time than most – courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)
(Last week I posted a photo of feathers mysteriously left by an extremely fastidious predator. Just a few days later I found, 50 yards away, the above remains. So whatever left the feathers seems only to have plucked its prey on that log before transporting it to a less exposed position to eat. Still no skull, but most of the other bones are here. So though the exact culprit remains unidentified,…
This is a meme that's been going around. Or rather, it's an artist's re-rendering of some AI slop that turned up in my social media. Nothing makes my day like humans scraping AI content. I move we erect huge art centres that suck the electricity out of whole towns so legions of Homo sapiens can adversely possess mountains of AI data and use it to dominate the world. Hey, folks: it's unethical to…
(A few days ago I was walking around a crumbling, overgrown abandoned farm near my house when I happened on a mass of feathers piled on a fallen tree trunk. Even more intriguing: no sign of their owner. No bones, no flesh, not even blood. Just a nearly complete, completely empty, suit of feathers. I can't think of a local predator that surgical, though my experience in such forensics is far from…
Here meet we again, at the end of another July, and I still haven't dropped the annual list of rock groups. (For the uninitiated, the meaning of that incoherent statement will be found here .) So I'm going to let the embedded link above do the heavy lifting and dive right into this year's harvest. Rock Groups Waiting to Happen, 2026 Hellbender Arrow Stork The Socks (nerd rock) The Gorn…
(Here's this year's teeshirt . I suspect fellow meditators will get it.)
"If you find life is whizzing by you, move away from the urinals." Me, channelling Bashō . (Photo of Jin dynasty chamber pot courtesy of David Straub and Zhangjiagang Museum.)
(I found this great horned owl [Bubo virginianus] tail feather on the trail a few weeks ago. Note its frayed tip in the close-up below. Flight feathers of all members of order Strigiformes – the owls – have this kind of tip, which softens their aerodynamic slip, resulting in their owners' famously silent flight. Great horned owls are native to the Americas, where they are present through virtually…
It's always illuminating to hear from Chinese teachers and students. We tend to forget that Zen is a mispronunciation of Chàn, a practice model that originated in China. Over the centuries, given the vicissitudes of history, Chàn faded mostly away as an active denomination, but a 19th century restoration movement has steadily gained ground. My own admiration for Chàn – historical and current – is…
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