The Nature of Things

Or perhaps I should say, "The martin IS here." So far, I've seen only one. I've been scanning the skies for weeks, whenever I'm outside, looking for the first Purple Martin of the year and checking the scout reports online to see where they have been reported. They've been all around me, according to those reports, for weeks, but there was no sighting of them over my yard. Then, this morning, I was outside in my backyard puttering around when my ear caught a familiar sound. I looked up just in time to see him as he swept by the martin mansion on his blue-black wings. He didn't stop this time, but at least I know that he knows it's there. So, the question now is, will I have martins nesting in that mansion this spring? Last spring, we put up this new house after removing the old ones we had had for many years, the ones in which many, many generations of martins had begun life. The birds completely snubbed the new and improved housing. Not a sing...

I am reading the first in the Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo . I'm finding it virtually unputdownable. It's that good. The book was originally published in Larsson's native Sweden in 2005 and the buzz about it started soon thereafter. I've had it on my wish list for reading for quite some time now and finally I'm acting on that wish. Do you know about Stieg Larsson? He was a Swedish journalist and activist, a crusader against racism and right-wing fanatics. He lived under constant threat of violence and death from those that he opposed. He started writing the Millenium Trilogy mostly for his own amusement and had not attempted to have it published. He finally delivered the three completed novels to the publisher shortly before his death from a massive heart attack in November 2004. He was only 50 years old. He had mapped out plans for additional books in the series, a total of ten in all. Now, of course, we'll never ...

Have you been watching the Olympics? I confess I haven't watched a single minute of the games and I really don't have any great interest in them, except that I would like to see Canada win a lot of medals. I mean, after all, it is their backyard, and it seems only neighborly that we should wish our good neighbor well. The only parts of the Olympics that I have seen are the promos that are shown when I happen to be watching other shows on television. About 99% of the promos that I have seen have been for curling, leading me to the conclusion that this must be the most important game in the winter Olympics. Now, I know nothing about curling , but judging from the promos, it involves teams sweeping a big ol' shiny stone across ice with a broom, attempting to guide it toward a target designated on the ice. It seems to be extremely popular already in some parts of the world. The icy parts, I would guess. There appears to be what I would consider to be an inordinate amount o...

It was one of those absolutely perfect late winter days here today. Golden sunshine splashed over everything with temperatures in the 50s, but what really cinched the perfection of the day for me was the bluebirds. Several years ago, I had bluebirds nesting in my yard, but then there got to be a cat problem in the neighborhood and since I was at work all day and unable to keep an eye on the bluebird boxes, I took them down. I didn't want to provide snacks for predators. Since then, the predator problem has abated and I've put my bluebird boxes back up, but several years have gone by and no bluebirds have nested there. Sometimes chickadees or wrens have nested in the boxes but no bluebirds. This winter, though, there have been lots of bluebirds around, singing their little red, white and blue hearts out and that has given me hope that THIS MIGHT BE THE YEAR! A few days ago when I saw a male bluebird actually inspecting one of the houses, I was ecstatic. Today we put up the...

Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal. - George Will There is very little space in this world where I could find common ground with George Will, but I have to admit, the man does have a feel for the game of baseball. He's absolutely right. Not all games are created equal, and baseball just happens to be the best game ever invented by a human. People who think of baseball as dull are simply dull people. There is so much going on in a game at any one time that there is just no way to follow it all. There's the way the outfielders are positioned, the way the infielders get set for each pitch, the way the pitcher "plays" the umpire, trying to get him to call the strikes the pitcher wants. There's the way baserunners try to fool fielders and the way fielders attempt to "deke" baserunners. And strategy always depends on who's up to bat next and next...

When I run across the same idea from two different respected sources in the same day, I have to figure that the universe is trying to tell me something. First, this morning, I read Leonard Pitts' column . Pitts was decrying the fact that, as he stated it, we have become "a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic. alienated from even objective truth." We are not persuaded by facts and by objective evidence. We reject any evidence that conflicts with our own preconceived ideas. We believe what we want to believe and anything that does not validate our beliefs is automatically rejected. The sad thing is that a people who reject critical thinking and who refuse to consider any alternative evidence or ideas are doomed. Just because you refuse to believe that a brick wall is a brick wall does not make the wall cease to exist, as you will discover when you walk into it. That column gave me quite a bit to think about, and then, this afternoon, I happened ...

I don't even know how to begin to say anything sensible about this state legislator from Virginia : State Delegate Bob Marshall of Manassas says disabled children are God's punishment to women who have aborted their first pregnancy. He made that statement Thursday at a press conference to oppose state funding for Planned Parenthood. "The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children," said Marshall, a Republican. "In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There's a special punishment Christians would suggest." So children that are born with disabilities are God's punishment on the mother. And then there was this statement by a member of the House of Representatives from Iowa: Steve King To Conservatives: 'Implode' IRS Offices ...