Consider the lilies of the valley

The common names of plants sometimes tell a lot about a plant, and sometimes they just offer subtle hints, and sometimes they may even lead one astray. In Thompson Ethnobotany, by Nancy Turner and others, the roots of the twisted stalk (Streptopus amplexifolius, a close relative of the lily-of-the-valley) are described as “very poisonouos” and the fruits as “not eaten”.

I was in Alaska teaching a class of 3rd graders about plants. I was waiting for my group to assemble prior to a hike. One little Tlingit tyke was sitting down with some twisted stalks piled in his lap. “Hey George, want some cucumber plant? Tastes just like cucumber.”

twisted-stalk

I was instantly rebuffed by the term “cucumber plant”, which seemed an irresponsible name for a poisonous plant. Read on

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From Bowies to Quercus

I am informed that my first word was “Bowies” which meant flowers. That should give some indication of how I got where I am today, which is to say botanically oriented. Actually there was a long lag period between bowies and the point where I used Latin names for plants.

The first Latin name I knew for a plant was Quercus, the oak. Quercus came into my head during a round trip across the country from Baltimore to the west coast and back, just in time to start graduate school. Edith rode with me on that trip in a Chevy Camper Special. On the way back we traveled through Canada. Read on

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Around and around

 

Alpine buckwheat

Ancient and furrowed, sturdy and strong, navels set fast, deep in the ground

High in the mountains,
Close to the sky,
Are clearings on ledges,
With whispery traces …

The Wee folk were merry.
Singing and dancing,
Traced on the ground,
‘Round a post set with flowers … Read on

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Nigh on fifty year’n

Cabin on the lake

A lakeside idyll

When I was just a tadpole I was giv’ to understand,
That in order for a gentleman to give a girl his hand,
He’d have to be up on his books, his rhymin’ and his diction,
As it’s well known, what lacks in fact, is made up best in fiction.

So in order to insure that I would not in marriage err,
My Daddy early on explained in what I must take care:
Not muscles, clothes or riches, son, will get you off the hook,
If you ever dare imply that your wife’s not the world’s best cook.

And furthermore your life will be a damned sight better off,
If you compliment her choice of clothes, and drapes and tablecloth.
In short, your neck will go a long way towards avoiding getting wrung,
If you polish up your verbitage and exercise your tongue.

Well, I gussied up my speech and got a special kind of twang,
So that upon my words the gals would liter-ally hang,
And I seriously began to charm the lady I liked best,
And got her all in awe and let the preacher do the rest..

And when I got her home I sat her down inside the kitchen,
Just to let her know that I was boss and she must listen.
She smiled and started talkin’ ’bout her life ‘n’ this ‘n’ that,
And she whiled away the afternoon with pleasantries and chat.

And then she launched into a rather lengthy diatribe,
On relatives and friends whose private lives she must describe,
And this went on about a week or two I guess,
And the subject changed to mothers and to premenstrual stress.

“But…,” was all that I could manage in the middle of her ode,
And that reminded her of all the lovers she had knowed.
And on she went undaunted, while I poured myself a dose,
And that’s the way it’s been for nigh on fifty year’n I ‘spose.

I resolved that I’d get even ere my final days had passed,
And when I upon my deathbed lay, I saw my chance at last,
She asked me, what about the will, and I finally replied,
“I left it to the deaf school”. And then I up and died.

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Pesticide Flavoring Ingredients

Spice up bland organic foods with savory pesticides. Get these six great recipes and your family will be begging you.

Are you a chemophobe with an irrational fear of chemicals? Or are you a chemophile who craves the flavor of pesticides and preservatives in food?

Despite misinformation campaigns waged by chemophobic do-goody-goods, chemophiles know that pesticides have yummy smells and flavors that can enhance your dining experience. So why not embrace them instead of shunning them?

“Oh, No!” you say?  You may not know it, but many of our prized groceries owe their subtle tastes to the food scientist who skillfully blends the pesticide ingredients to create a balanced flavor in your food supply.

In order to maintain a wholesome diet, you may need to amend an all-organic foods diet with additional nutrients that can only be provided by pesticides. Luckily, the ready availability of pesticides in food makes them the ideal dinner combination to spice up organic food diets. Check your food labels. If the label says 100% organic, you may not be getting all the pesticide vitamins you need for a healthy, happy lifestyle.

We all become accustomed to certain flavors and aromas over time. Food tastes and smells lie at the core of our personalities because they are remembered in the hypothalamus, which regulates emotions and behaviors such as hunger and thirst.

Common table salt is probably the best example of a preservative that contributes to the taste and smell of foods. But salt doesn’t just taste good; it is essential for survival. We should dispel the notion that all chemicals are bad. Take the taste of corned beef hash – it would be bland indeed if it weren’t made with saltpeter, a chemical.

Think about it. Everything on earth is made of chemicals. Our future depends on having an abundant supply of safe chemicals in our food supply.

So next time you hear some flabby environmentalist poo-pooing the chemicals in our food supply, tell them that they should get a life and learn to appreciate salt and learn the value of chemicals and pesticides for enhancing food flavors.

You may not realize that moms prefer chemical additives in their orange juice. During processing, chemical flavor packets are added to the orange juice. Scientific studies confirm that this juice is preferred by moms over untreated OJ.

To understand the inherent preference for certain smells, we have only to look at look at children. Kids don’t have the hatred of chemicals that their parents hammered into them.

I can well remember standing behind our old jalopy, telling my mom that I thought the exhaust smelled good as she yanked me away by the collar. In those days, the only gasoline additive was tasteless, odorless lead, and this allowed the aromatic hydrocarbons to fully express their rich aroma. Also in those days, we hadn’t yet hit the bottom of the oil barrel where all the high-sulfur oil now comes from. Have you noticed that cars today smell like rotten eggs? Yes, those were truly the good old days.

When I lived on Okinawa we could also go to the PX and buy tall green cans of DDT made for the army. To us kids, these cans were fun toys to spray around the house, until my mom took them away from us. The ingredients were basically just raw DDT with a little freon propellant. Now I wouldn’t recommend DDT as a food but it just shows that our smell preferences are hammered into us by our moms – we are not born with this unnatural hatred of pesticides, that is the cause of so much misunderstanding in our world today.

And I fondly remember the fun of running through the piquant fog as the DDT trucks went by twice a day at Ishikawa Beach in Okinawa. The aroma was complex and it was probably enhanced by the mild stimulant effect of all the volatile petrochemicals used to make up the carriers and surfactants. And even though DDT has been banned, the fond memories still come rushing back every time the county spray trucks drive by.

Nowadays I get my kicks from those little flavor packets they put into meats. You know, the antioxidants BHA and BHT. They lend a musky flavor to fish and meats that is quite distinctive. After using them for a while, meat just isn’t as good without them.

In addition, the beauty of using pesticides as flavoring ingredients is that they are already in your food, and for this we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to genetic engineering.

If you care about the flavor of your food, then maybe you should think more about how pesticides and preservatives contribute to the flavor and aroma of foods.

So don’t say “Oh, No!” to pesticides any more. Say “Oh, Boy!” to the taste of pesticide. Just imagine a future where pesticides are no longer restricted by our oversized bureaucracy of government regulators.

Try these great new pesticide food combos

  • Tomatoes Tordon! – Tomato dishes from Italian pasta to Mexican salsa can benefit from this herbicidal condiment. You’ll be crying “More! More!”
  • Phenoxylate Fudge - A new crop of phenoxylate herbicides has being genetically engineered into chocolate with an incredible taste sensation based on scientific flavor principles. And phenoxylates can also help prevent diarrhea.
  • Chicken tamales smothered in Atrazine sauce – Atrazine, the wonder pesticide, is now available in rainbow colors. Your guests will be wondering, was it the sauce or was it the chicken?
  • Woundup Nutmeg Nougats – These chewy morsels contain the sweetener ambidextrose that was sought after by the ancient Mayas. In addition to being a mild stimulant, ambidextrose is genetically engineered into the flour molecules so that they taste 10,000 times better than natural sugar, and in addition ambidextrose contains important cleansing ingredients that brighten and whiten your teeth!
  • Rolled Latex Dormant Spray Meat Rub – Liven up food textures. Learn how the right bad things can help perk up your dinners.
  • Death Burgers – one taste could be your last!  These make great dinners and lunches for the terminally ill, since they contain pure 2,4 -D in every bite!!!

These and other great pesticide recipes can be yours when you subscribe to Xenophile, the organization of the Pesticide Flavoring Industry.

You’d better hurry, too. Soon it will be too late.  Time is running out for those in the industry and these chemicals may not be around for future generations to savor.

- This article was written by a chemist. We want to help you control your food supply.

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Long ride on a big yellow bus

Some come slowly to the realization of where they are in their time. By that I am referring to having a sense of who you are and what you stand for, a sense people tend to have for others but not for themselves. This sense develops over a lifetime with age and experience.

The year was 1969 and I was sixteen. Outside of a prosaic life of school and idle summers at the lake, the world was experiencing Woodstock, love-ins, peace marches, and music the likes of which had never been heard before. But I watched 1969 go sailing by without me on the boat. And I cursed my time for being born too late.

school bus

For me, you are either on the bus or under the bus.

Read on

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Over Silver Glance and the Long Sky Cold

by Tony Smith

snowy view of sun on the mountains

Tony's snowy view of winter sun on the distant mountains.

This was written by Tony Smith while he was living next door to me in a one-room picker’s cabin in the Eastern Washington Cascades near Winthrop. It describes how 5-year old Tony first came to realize that winter can be long and hard. Yacolt is in SE Washington, and Bonneville is southeast of there. Silver Glance is a remote wilderness area a long way further east and south, in Utah. Tony passed away in about 2010. He was a fire lookout and philosopher. Perhaps reminding him of the Long Sky Cold, here is a picture of the view outside Tony’s window.

Over Silver Glance and the Long Sky Cold

by Tony Smith

Grampa said they’d better kill that hog
And take the heifer to Yacolt.
My grandmother said, “hum”, but she was looking south -
waiting for the light from Bonneville.

Read on

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Swift, Quiet

Swift as a raindrop darkness fell,
Cold as a frog’s tongue the stream slid ‘round a stone.
The northern lights were excited.
Two deer quietly kissed the water.

Cooney headwaters

Cooney headwaters

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On the edge

Along the rim rock,
The crickets,
Sing from the mud cracks.

Wandering footsteps,
At night,
Follow the music.

Close by,
At night,
The edge lies silent.

rimrock

On the edge.

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To impress the sky

I have breathed the clear air of the mountains.
Where mosses creep among the roots,
Where willows guard the pebbly rivulets,
Where each tiny grain is set with care.
Glistening tiaras to impress the sky.

I went on past many cirques,
Their walls of snow and spacious murals,
Shining down on azure lakes.
Sparkles dancing off their sides.
The blue sky amused with clouds of cotton.

I went on past jutting spires and melting tongues of ice.
Where the world lay below me distant and weary.
I sat by the shore of a tiny lake and dropped in a hook,
And pulled out one funny fish from the bottomless deep,
Would you believe – its flesh was the color of blood.

bottomless lake

Bottomless.

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Tristan and Isolde

Eilean Donan Castle in Scotland

Song Of Isolde – Lyrics by Eliza Gilkyson

Wake up, wake up Tristan,
Our bed of leaves and sand is cold,
I fell asleep here in your arms,
More than a thousand years ago.
———————–

The tragic love story of Tristan and Isolde has been told and retold many different ways. In my version of the story, the love potion and the poisoned wine remind us that love and fate are two faces of the same universal force.

This story began in England during the reign of King Arthur, when a prince by the name of Drust was born in Ireland. During his birth, his mother died, and so Drust became known as Tristan, from the word tristesse, meaning sorrow.

Read on

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Poor fen

Since the Okanogan country is so big, our botany class could usually plan alternative field trips to avoid unpredictable bad weather, sideskirt road detours or just head for the best displays of flowers on that particular day. But one day the entire region was blanketed in wildfire smoke that had blown in from the next county.

smoky okanogan

No alternatives to the smoke.

There were no alternates to our planned hike to a wetland. And so the class went to a bog in a deep valley near the Pasayten Wilderness.

Well, it really wasn’t a bog.  It was a poor fen, which is a bit of minutiae that nobody but a wetland scientist would care squat about. Read on

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If hurricanes were fun

If hurricanes were lots of fun,
And snow was dew and moon was sun,
I’d wish you happy gales today,
We’d shovel mist then sleep away.

If sun was moon and dew was snow,
We’d wake to find the world we know,
Where winter lingers for a while,
And you can thrill me with your smile.

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The Fuzzy Muse

Of all the ways to show sincere
Lending of an open ear,
None compare with quiet noises,
Shared with spirits of the toyses. Read on

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Quest for the Golden Hare

In 1979 Kit Williams created a jewel encrusted 18-carat golden hare, as the prize for whoever followed a riddle to its hidden location.

Read on

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Affordable Transportation

Cars. They’re cheap, efficient transportation, but damn the insurance is a pain and those flim-flam safety inspections make buying one a major ordeal.

A better idea for owning cars is this: Just buy a car every two weeks and use it 14 days temporary tags. No inspection, no insurance, no safety. Just drive it fourteen days and then throw it away and buy another. A disposo-mobile can be had in any major city for 100 bucks. So you can drive for $2600 a year. Just thought you ought to know about that.

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a moonwort by any how cow

A botany student heard that some sensitive plants growing in a headwater seep were holding up a timber sale, and wished that he might see them. Another botanist told him where these plants, called Victorin’s grape-ferns, could be found. He visited the spot where the plants were growing on an isolated lens of serpentine soil, and wanted to know what their scientific name was.

Fortunately, he had a botanical flora in which to match the name to the appearance of the plant. Unfortunately, no names matched the pictures in the flora. Read on

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The Incandescent Man

It is always important to make a good first impression.

In the mid-1990s, I met my best friend and partner while living on a ramshackle old farm that the locals called the “ruins”. This farm needed all manner of chores to keep it from falling down, from daily irrigation to constant fixing.

I was careful when I first got to know my new friend not to display my typical hurry up and relax attitude. She was a person of refinement and grace, which I did my best to respect in all matters. She had been dropped into a homespun life where spring and fall were compressed into frenetic weeks of planting and harvest. Life was a race against the onslaught of nature, who was bent on freezing our crops and pelting us with hell and high water.  Read on

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Blinded by milk science

When I was a kid living in Tokyo, I almost started an international incident by asking for a glass of milk at a traditional Japanese dinner. Several of my hosts quickly left the table and were gone for a long time. You would have thought I asked for a glass of blood. Now I understand that most Japanese think cows milk is revolting. Read on

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Throwing Darwin Under the Bus

Now there is Evolution by Accident?

This is a great concept that may open a few people’s minds a bit. Particularly scientists. It is a sign that scientists are finally getting beyond Darwinian dogma in their publications.

The F-pilus (or sex pilus) is a stellar example of this process from the microbial world.

There are these two bacteria, see, one “male” (F+) and one “female” (F-). You can tell them apart because one has a pilus (a microbial penis). The pilus is basically a stick of DNA with some genes. I know you don’t believe me, so here is a picture from a microscope:

Two bacteria exchanging sexual favors

F+ microbes have a special purpose in life that F- do not.

Read on

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What-the-font

What do you do when someone whines to you that your documents look like music sheets?

When communicating over the internet, your fonts may not appear the same at the other end. The best solution is not to use a font at all. Better than best, you can choose to selectively piss off a section of the receiving public. Here are six communication workarounds for sending content over the internet: Read on

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Where have all the soldiers gone?

Let’s start thinking ahead about post-war reconstruction. What will we do with our returning vets? My first answer is that, in America, we don’t “do” returning vets. But even if we did, we wouldn’t know what to do.

I say, let’s build a society that Americans can live in. Donate your old Winnebago to a homeless person and skip the European vacation this year. Stop being so selfish, all you yuppies, and take a break from counting your money for a change.

Here is a wandering account of a vet who almost waited too long to open his heart to the people who finally heard him. Read on

Posted in Liberty, Equality, Sorority, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

What the Blogosphere Wants – David Pollard

David Pollard figured this out and put it on his blog. You might want to keep a copy of this list.

WHAT THE BLOGOSPHERE WANTS MORE OF

Blog readers want to see more:

1. original research, surveys etc.
2. original, well-crafted fiction
3. great finds: resources, blogs, essays, artistic works
4. news not found anywhere else
5. category killers: aggregators that capture the best of many blogs/feeds, so they need not be read individually
6. clever, concise political opinion (most readers prefer these consistent with their own views)
7. benchmarks, quantitative analysis
8. personal stories, experiences, lessons learned
9. first-hand accounts
10. live reports from events
11. insight: leading-edge thinking & novel perspectives
12. short educational pieces
13. relevant “aha” graphics
14. great photos
15. useful tools and checklists
16. précis (summaries), reviews and other time-savers
17. fun stuff: quizzes, self-evaluations, other interactive content

Blog writers want to see more:

1. constructive criticism, reaction, feedback
2. ‘thank you’ comments, and why readers liked their post
3. requests for future posts on specific subjects
4. foundation articles: posts that writers can build on, on their own blogs
5. reading lists/aggregations of material on specific, leading-edge subjects that writers can use as resource material
6. wonderful examples of writing of a particular genre, that they can learn from
7. comments that engender lively discussion
8. guidance on how to write in the strange world of weblogs

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Drupal versus everybody. A CMS Software review

Blogs and Content management Systems

The year 2008 is the year of roll-your-own blogs. A year ago there were a couple dozen software packages for creating your own blog or content management system (CMS). Today there are hundreds of them. This review was written to help winnow down the choices.

Factors driving this revolution are competition between the open source and the pay-to-play community, adoption of open source CMS solutions by business and industry, and development of programs and CMS alternatives in other countries besides the one owned by Mr. Big in Redmond, Washington.

The climate of this software explosion resembles the way computer brands proliferated before the big shakedown. Once upon a time there were dozens of different computer manufacturers, but then came the big shakedown and they all died except Apple/Mac and maybe Compaq. Eventually Dell and Gateway rose from the ashes, at least until the death of Gateway. I predict a similar shakedown for CMS programs. Read on

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CMS explosion: Killer apps

(But we just don’t call them killer apps any more).

As the clock rolled around 2008, the web exploded with new internet software offerings in the Content Management System (CMS) category. These packages create a platform for web designers, developers and authors to collaborate in the creation of a web site. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call CMS applications the killer app of the moment, driving the cyber world toward new uncharted territory. Everyone has discovered that they simply cannot live without one. Read on

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