Poetry Sunday: The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Yes, I know I have featured this poem here before, but it is a particular favorite of mine, so you'll have to forgive me for featuring it again. It is, of course, one of Robert Frost's most famous and beloved poems. The message it imparts is familiar to anyone who has ever had to make a hard choice. In other words, everyone. Don't we all wonder what would have happened if we had chosen differently - if we had taken that other road?

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

This week in birds - #612

(Note to readers: If you are unable to access any of the links below, I encourage you search Google on the subject and find a link that is available to you.)

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment: 

This is a Plain Chachalaca that I photographed on a visit to the Rio Grande Valley a few years ago. The Chachalaca is primarily a resident of Eastern Mexico and Central America but it does stray north into southernmost Texas where I saw it. It is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week.

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Bird flu is abroad in the land once again, with several cases having been reported in California.

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If countries do not curb production of plastic, the world may not be able to handle the volume of plastic waste within ten years.

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Scientists are studying the flight of hummingbirds in order to help them design robots for drone warfare. That just seems wrong. 

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Ancient footprints discovered in Kenya indicate that two of our related species probably shared the same habitat and may have interacted. 

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Whale sharks are the largest fish found on our planet but their size does not protect them from predation by killer whales.

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Wisdom, a Laysan Albatross, is the oldest known banded bird in the wild, aged at least 74 years. She has a new mate and has returned to her nest and laid an egg which the mate is now incubating. 

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Drones and artificial intelligence have helped researchers discover more Nazca lines in the Peruvian desert. The discoveries have doubled the number of known geoglyphs in the area.

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In the 1960s, the Bald Eagle was driven perilously close to extinction in the country where it is the "national bird." But, with a little help from its friends, it has come all the way back.

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In Massachusetts, where wetlands were once turned into cranberry bogs, there is a move afoot to restore the wetlands. 

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It turns out one can learn quite a lot from dinosaur poop. Well, if you are a paleontologist you can.

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This is the fossilized skull of an amphibian that lived more than 230 million years ago on the land of the Eastern Shoshone tribe. The tribe gave it a name in their language. It is the Ninumbeehan dookoodukah.

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What a good idea this is! Across the country, cemeteries are rewilding, becoming homes for native plants, wildflowers, and animals.

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Finally, here are photos of the week in wildlife.

Happy Thanksgiving!

To all my faithful readers, one of the things I am most thankful for is you! 

Poetry Sunday: Tired by Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes was an American poet and social activist of the twentieth century. He was a leader of the Harlem Renaissance and an innovator of a literary art form called "jazz poetry." Here is a very short poem of his that looks unflinchingly at the state of his world and, in its own way, is a succinct call to action to change things. Somehow it seems quite fitting for our time as well. (And, yes, I think I know those worms that are "eating at the rind.") 

Tired

by Langston Hughes

I am so tired of waiting,
Aren't you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two-
And see what worms are eating
At the rind.

This week in birds - #611

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment: 

The ever-present and ever-curious Carolina Wren, one of my favorite backyard birds.

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President Biden visited the Brazilian rainforest on Sunday to emphasize the importance of taking action on climate change.

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A "harbinger of doom"? A third oarfish has washed up on a beach in California.

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Climate talks continue among the world's nations but the rich and poor are finding it hard to agree. Azerbaijan, the host of the talks, is getting a backlash over its support of fossil fuels. 

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Sadly, the effort to save the endangered Northern Spotted Owl in the Pacific Northwest involves the killing of their more successful competitors, the Barred Owl.

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Around Los Angeles, mountain lions are learning to coexist with their human neighbors - mostly by avoiding them.

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Atmospheric river storms are getting bigger because of climate change and are wreaking havoc along the West Coast.

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A frozen 35,000-year-old saber-toothed kitten has been found in Siberian, giving scientists a chance to study the differences between it and modern baby lions.

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Giraffes, the tallest of land animals, are soon to be added to the list of endangered species.

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In Washington, the Yakama Nation is helping to restore the Pacific lamprey.

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Also in Washington, gophers are becoming ecological heroes.

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EagleCams have become very popular with Nature lovers in recent years. A new one in Minnesota follows the lives of this pair, seen at their snow-covered nest.  

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Following the removal of four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River, salmon have returned to the area.

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The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is this lovely resident of the tundra and grasslands, the Lapland Longspur. 

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Here is an appreciation of the Kookaburra.

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The nation's northernmost town is in the dark now and won't see the sun again until January 22.

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How to protect vulnerable Monarch butterflies, seen here congregating on their wintering grounds in Mexico, remains a difficult question.

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New research has uncovered 4,000-year-old canals on the Yucatan peninsula that were in use even before the Maya occupied the area. 

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Margaret Renkl ponders what we can do, individually and collectively, to help save what is left of Nature.

The Chippies are back!

I looked out my office window on this bright cloudless autumn day and what did I see at my front yard bird feeder?

Chipping Sparrows!

Several were on the feeder and on the ground under the feeder.

Chipping Sparrows are among my favorite winter visitors and are a clear indication that winter is indeed coming.

One of the first species of birds that I learned to identify was back to help usher in the change of seasons, having fled the cold and snow of the north that make survival tougher for small birds like sparrows. 

Winter may not be very wintry here close to the Gulf Coast but as long as the Chippies keep coming back each year I'll know that such a season - the Chipping Sparrow season - does indeed exist!

I stole these...

...but they pretty much sum up my thinking.

 ...and...

Yeah, right!

Playground by Richard Powers: A review

I must confess up front that I had a very hard time with this book. I read it during and just after this month's election and I was distracted, finding it hard to think about anything other than the election and the enormous blunder that the voters in this country have just made. So, I can't say I really gave the book the attention that it deserved and now find it hard to comment on what I read. But I'll give a try.

The setting of the book is the French Polynesian island of Makatea. It is a tiny atoll in the middle of the Pacific and at the time that the book's action takes place its people are considering a life-changing proposal for their island home. We experience the story through the eyes of four people on the island.

First is Evie Beaulieu who, as a twelve-year-old, tested one of the world's first aqualungs under the eyes of her father in their backyard swimming pool. It was the start of her love affair with the ocean and she now spends her life submerging herself into the depths of that ocean to study the ecology and the creatures there.

Second are friends Rafi Young and Todd Keane. As teenagers the two attended an elite Chicago high school where they bonded over playing board games. Rafi went on to be mesmerized by the world of literature while Todd became an entrepreneur whose work will lead to a major breakthrough in artificial intelligence.  

Finally, there is Ina Aroita who grew up on naval bases across the Pacific and for whom art was her way of seeing and dealing with the world.

Makatea was once a main source of phosphorous which helped to fertilize crops and feed the world. Now it has been chosen for a new project that will send floating, autonomous cities out onto the open sea. But before that can happen, the island's citizens must vote on whether they will allow their home to used in this way. If they refuse to greenlight the project then the seasteaders will have to come up with another plan.

Richard Powers' descriptions of Makatea and its people are awe-inducing and made it really hard to put the book down. The result was that I zipped right through the 389 page tome. His writing is beautiful as he explores themes of technology and its impact on the environment and how it all influences humanity. After reading The Overstory, a rare five-star read for me, and Bewilderment, a four-star read, I was expecting quite a lot from Powers' latest book. I was not disappointed.

Poetry Sunday: My November Guest by Robert Frost

November is, in fact, one of my favorite months of the year, possibly because it contains my favorite holiday of the year, Thanksgiving. But also there is something about the weather of November. Summer's heat is finally gone from the Gulf Coast and on most days it is quite pleasant to be outside. I enjoy the misty moisty days of November. It is pleasant to sit on my patio and watch as new birds show up in the backyard almost every day. The birds that were "gone away" from Frost's Northeast are now our winter visitors; my "November guests," are arriving.

My November Guest

by Robert Frost

My sorrow, when she’s here with me,
  Thinks these dark days of autumn rain

Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
     She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
     She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted grey
     Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
     The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
     And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
     The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.  

This week in birds - #610

 A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

Dark-eyed Junco photographed at the Chihuahua Nature Center in Alpine, Texas a few years ago. I haven't seen one here yet this autumn but they should be arriving soon.

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(Note to readers: If you are unable to access any of the links I've provided, I suggest you do a search on the subject and connect to a link to which you do have access.) 

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The Leonid meteor shower will be at its peak this weekend. The light of a near-full Supermoon, the Beaver Moon, may interfere with viewers on Earth being able to see it. 

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Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are on track to set a new record this year.

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A group of leading climate policy experts says that future climate summits should only be held in countries that show support for climate action.

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But do those summits actually have any effect? A new report indicates that a major climate goal is farther out of reach than ever.

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The president-elect of this country has selected the governor of North Dakota, a man whose ties to the fossil fuel industry run deep, to be the Secretary of the Interior. Environmental groups are appalled.

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Moreover, a former Republican representative from New York has been named to be director of the Environmental Protection Agency, but, based on the man's record, it seems quite unlikely that he's being asked to "protect" the environment. Indeed the plan seems to be to gut climate rules.

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This country is in a drought and it would take a major rainfall to reverse the conditions.

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Retired National Institute of Health research chimpanzees will be moved to a sanctuary in Louisiana. And in more retired chimpanzee news, animals that had been featured in films, music videos, and commercials are learning to live among their own kind at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago.

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The universe is expanding but to what ultimate end? Cosmologists want to know.

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And back here on Earth, 2024 is set to be the hottest year on record.

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Plankton, the backbone of the oceanic ecosystem, are struggling to survive in Earth's warming seas.

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The right-wing president of Argentina is considering pulling his country out of the Paris climate agreement.

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The wary and elusive LeConte's Sparrow is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week. It is a bird of wet prairies and grasslands in Canada and upper midwestern states and migrates short distances to (mostly) the south-central United States for winter.

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The Mekong giant salmon carp had been feared to be extinct since no one had seen it since 2005, but, happily, it turns out that rumors of its extinction were premature.

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This is Hutan, a 17-year-old siamang gibbon housed at ZooTampa in Florida and she is holding her baby who was born on October 27. Siamang gibbons are endangered and any new baby is cause for celebration.

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And this Emperor Penguin has gone where (apparently) no Emperor had gone before. It turned up on a beach near the coastal town of Denmark, Australia, more than 2000 miles form its normal habitat.

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Hurricane Helene devastated forests in North Carolina.

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You might not expect to find bees and their keepers in New York City but you would be wrong. Apparently they live quite happily among the high-rises there.

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Did Voyager 2 witness an unusual solar event as it zipped past Uranus forty years ago?

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Why is Australia still permitting logging in parks that are meant to become a koala preserve? 

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A creature from the deep ocean has finally been identified twenty-five years after its discovery as a sea slug.

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Are you in need of a "Panic Abatement Plan" after the recent election? Margaret Renkl has advice.

Guide Me Home by Attica Locke: A review

This is the third and apparently final entry in Attica Locke's "Highway 59" series. The action takes place in East Texas (Lufkin) and Houston, areas that I'm somewhat familiar with, having lived here for many years. Locke obviously knows the area well also and her descriptions of places and people are right on.

The main character in the novels is Texas Ranger Darren Mathews. In this instance, Darren is facing early retirement and a potential indictment for actions he has taken. On the plus side, he has finally met a woman that he loves and is planning on remaking his life with her in his beloved farmhouse. But then his peace is shattered by a visit from his estranged mother.

His mother is a cleaner at a sorority house at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches. She tells Darren that one of the members of the sorority - the only Black member - is missing. Darren is not sure he can trust his mother's story but he feels compelled to investigate. However, when he talks to the sorority members they all insist that the Black member, Sera, is not missing at all.

As Darren investigates and learns more about Sera's family and her hometown, things do not add up. Even though he gets no backup from local law enforcement or the Rangers, he is convinced that his mother, whom he has never trusted, may in fact be on to something and that an innocent young woman's life may depend on him getting this right. All he wants is finally to live in peace but he'll find no peace if it turns out that Sera is actually in danger and he did nothing.

Locke skillfully weaves East Texas history and politics into her story and it all rings true. She also gives us the fuller story of Darren's background and his years of growing up with the uncles who raised him which more fully explains his fraught relationship with his mother. 

While this book could potentially be read as a standalone, I don't recommend it. To get the full effect you really need to read the series from the beginning: Bluebird, Bluebird and Heaven, My Home. You'll be glad you did. 
 

Poetry Sunday: Invitation by Mary Oliver

I came across this Mary Oliver poem last week and it reminded me that the goldfinches should be arriving soon. We usually get them around the first of December, sometimes a little earlier. I look forward to their arrival and I will always find time in my "busy and important days" to watch them just as Mary Oliver would have, for "it is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in a broken world..." And it is always a serious thing while alive to be appreciative of all the beauty that Nature provides to soothe our weary and dispirited souls.

Invitation

by Mary Oliver

Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy

and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude –
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.

This week in birds - #609

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment: 

This magnificent bird is the American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week. It is the Zone-tailed Hawk, a resident of the American Southwest, Central America, right down into South America. The bird's status is threatened by habitat loss.

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Drought conditions now cover as much as 87 percent of the United States. Moreover, severe drought has put at risk nearly half a million children in the Amazon region. The drought is also a threat to the Panama Canal as well as to the entire country of Panama. 

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With all of that as a background, this year's U.N. climate summit has been taking place. Meanwhile, the U.N. Secretary-General warns that we are still underestimating the threat of catastrophic climate breakdown and ecosystem collapse. 

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A new agreement would shift some of the profits from the use of genetic information to help pay for global conservation efforts.

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It will not come as a surprise that 2024 is virtually certain to become the hottest year on record.

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Chemists believe they have now solved the mystery of these white blobs that have been washing up on Canadian beaches.

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And another mystery - why methane in the atmosphere is rising - may have been solved as well.

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The world's climate leaders are facing the catastrophe of the United States shifting away from the focus on clean energy to a policy of "drill, baby, drill" following our recent election.

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Papua New Guinea has come to believe that climate summits do not produce any results and has pulled out of the Cop29. Could other countries follow?

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A Cornish monument has been determined to date from the middle Neolithic period, some 5,000 to 5,500 years ago.

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Scientists are still learning new information from genetic material recovered from the victims of the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii in 79 A.D. 

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Plastic pollution is having an effect on all of Earth's processes.

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President Biden has moved to try to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling. We can only hope that the protections he puts in place will remain once he leaves office.

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The government of Saudi Arabia(!) has stated that the degradation of Earth's soils and landscapes is a threat to human life and needs to be addressed urgently.

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As leaves begin to change color and fall, here is the year's journey that they have taken.

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Forty-three rhesus monkeys escaped from a research facility in South Carolina this week.

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Who's that bird? This is an easy one for any North American birder.

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The global climate crisis ultimately means extinction, something we should never forget. 

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I guess we should be glad that the giant "terror birds" of the Middle Miocene epoch are no longer around.

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Still more ruins of Mayan cities are being found in Mexico and Central America, proving that the Mayan civilization was even more widespread than once believed.

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Here's the Week in Wildlife from The Guardian.

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A cloned ferret has given birth in Virginia, offering hope for another way to aid endangered species.

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This Emperor Penguin is pictured on an Australian beach, 2,000 miles from where one would expect to find it.

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I think Santa Fe has the right idea; maybe we all need our personal Zozobra to burn.

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And finally, here's Haggis.

Haggis is the utterly adorable pygmy hippopotamus born at the Edinburg, Scotland Zoo last week.

Margaret Renkl wants you to vote to save the planet

What she said: 

The Future of the Planet Hangs on This Vote

I've voted already. I've done all I can do. Now I can only wait... 

Remembering "Like Water for Chocolate" by Laura Esquivel

I just read in The Washington Post that there is a new television series based on Laura Esquivel's debut novel, Like Water for Chocolate, which I read and reviewed in February 2018. I remembered that I had liked the book but wanted to see what exactly I had to say about it back then. Here is that review:

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel: A review

February 27, 2018

This (mostly) delightful little book had languished in my reading queue for quite a while. Time to move it on up and tick that box.

This was the writer's debut novel, first published in 1989, and it has enjoyed continuing popularity over the years.

The story takes place at the turn of the 20th century in Mexico. Rebellion and revolution are abroad in the land. Pancho Villa and his army of followers have captured the imagination of many, while the government's army pushes back against them.

The Garza family with its three daughters, Rosaura, Gertrudis, and Tita, live quietly on their ancestral lands outside a small village near the border with the U.S. The daughters pursue their own paths in life, but as we and they learn Tita's path has been preordained for her. The family tradition is that the youngest daughter is not allowed to marry and that she must devote herself to caring for her parents in their old age. In this case, there is only one parent, Mama Elena, since the father had died years before. Mama Elena is the family dictator, a formidable force to be reckoned with.

Inevitably, Tita falls in love with a young man named Pedro and he asks for her hand in marriage. He is informed that Tita cannot marry because of her destiny as caretaker of her mother. He is instead offered the sister Rosaura as a wife. In the end, Pedro agrees to that marriage because he believes it will at least allow him to be close to his beloved.

Tita is a gifted cook, and, learning that she will not be able to marry, she immerses herself in the art of cooking. Cooking eases her emotional pain.

The book is divided into twelve chapters, one for each month of the year, but the months occur over a period of some twenty years. The passage of time is not always evident at first - only on a deeper reading of the chapter. Each chapter begins with one of Tita's unique recipes and her discussion of how to prepare it. My daughter told me when she read this book she was seized throughout with the urge to cook.

In the fullness of time, running water and electricity arrive in the area. Children are born and grow. People move on or die. Tita's mood changes affect the food she prepares, sometimes to the detriment of those who consume it. She continues to suffer emotionally and eventually has a kind of breakdown. Then, she meets a wonderful man, a widowed doctor, who wants to marry her. But her heart still belongs to Pedro, who by this time has proved himself to be something of a jerk, in my opinion.

Esquivel's employment of magical realism in the telling of this story adds to the charm and the interest of what could otherwise have been a rather ordinary romance novel. She mixes the ingredients of her novel as a cook would mix the ingredients in a recipe and the result is a tasty dish.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars    

Poetry Sunday: The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe

When I first learned to love poetry as a high school student, I was especially enamored of the sonnets of Shakespeare and the poems of Christopher Marlowe. This was one of my favorites then and it remains so. 

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

by Christopher Marlowe

Come live with me and be my love, 

And we will all the pleasures prove, 

That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields, 

Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the Rocks, 

Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks,

By shallow Rivers to whose falls 

Melodious birds sing Madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of Roses 

And a thousand fragrant posies, 

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle

Embroidered all with leaves of Myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool 

Which from our pretty Lambs we pull;

Fair lined slippers for the cold, 

With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and Ivy buds, 

With Coral clasps and Amber studs:

And if these pleasures may thee move, 

Come live with me, and be my love.

The Shepherds' Swains shall dance and sing

For thy delight each May-morning:

If these delights thy mind may move, 

Then live with me, and be my love.

This week in birds - #608

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment:

I'm not adept at spider identification but I believe this is some kind of Argiope - possibly Argiope aurantia(?). Correct me if you know better. Whatever it is, I think it's beautiful. I believe I'll call her Charlotte.

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The planet-heating pollution of Earth's atmosphere hit its highest level in human history last year. And climate change is making extreme weather events even more deadly. 

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Scientists have documented Earth's climate over the last 485 million years, revealing a history of wild shifts and hotter temperatures than had previously been believed.

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An aim of the COP 16 conference is to have the nations create a unified pledge on climate and biodiversity.

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COP 16 created the "Tropical Forest Forever Facility," an innovative new fund to help tropical nations conserve their native forests. 

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Have you heard of the Doomsday Plant Vault? It is a storage facility in Norway meant to be humanity's last resort and it has recently received more than 30,000 samples to preserve. 

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Tadpoles the size of dogs? Based on a 161 million-year-old fossil, that seems to have once been the case.

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"Beeple" are master gardeners who collect bees for study and they are helping to transform our knowledge of these essential insects.

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There are less than 400 northern right whales left in Earth's seas and only about 70 of them are mothers. Can they save their species? 

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The cicadas of the late Jurassic Period were quite different from the ones we know today and, of course, there is an evolutionary reason for that.  

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It turns out there is quite a lot we can learn from bat guano.

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The American Bird Conservancy's Bird of the Week is actually something of a favorite of mine. It's the Black Vulture. Whenever I am in my yard, I can observe them patrolling the skies over the neighborhood, looking for their next meal. They are often in the company of their cousin, the Turkey Vulture. These two, along with the Crested Caracara, help to keep our streets and byways clean of carrion. 

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The mountainous Ulu Masen Ecosystem of Indonesia is home to a rich variety of animal life and it needs protection to ensure its survival.

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Gardeners in Kentucky have taken the idea of Little Free Libraries a step further by providing free fruit and vegetables that anyone can take. You could call them "Little Free Grocery Stores."

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How do animals understand death and dying?

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Moths are fascinating critters and an essential part of a healthy ecosystem.

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Sadly, the United States is lagging behind in the effort to negotiate a plan to save and protect Nature.

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Crows are very brainy birds and that large brain remembers things for a long time which means that they can hold grudges for wrongs done to them in the past. (Shades of Hitchcock's The Birds, one of my favorite movies!)

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Racing homing pigeons was once a very popular pastime and it lives on even today.