Author: Don

White in April

Yoshino cherry

While the crypto-British Okame cherry at the botanical garden was badly damaged by the freeze in February, the Yoshino cherry did fine. The deciduous magnolias were also untouched by the cold.

Magnolia stellata “Royal Star”

There are more pictures here

Two-thirds of spring

These are the three signs of spring in Kansas: ants in the house; lawnmowers; and, tornado warnings. I spotted the first ant a few days ago. Today, Sunday morning, at 8:40, two guys attacked the yard next door with edger, blower and lawn mower. All we need now is a real tornado, and spring will be fully here.

Literary footnote

I might have saved this for a second of February one of these years. However Theodore Dalrymple mentioned it in a recent column, so I’ll post it now.

The Latest Decalogue

By Arthur Hugh Clough

Thou shalt have one God only; who
Would be at the expense of two?
No graven images may be
Worshipp’d, except the currency:
Swear not at all; for, for thy curse
Thine enemy is none the worse:
At church on Sunday to attend
Will serve to keep the world thy friend:
Honour thy parents; that is, all
From whom advancement may befall:
Thou shalt not kill; but need’st not strive
Officiously to keep alive:
Do not adultery commit;
Advantage rarely comes of it:
Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
When it’s so lucrative to cheat:
Bear not false witness; let the lie
Have time on its own wings to fly:
Thou shalt not covet; but tradition
Approves all forms of competition.

360° of Geldingadalir

Here’s an interactive panorama of the little new Icelandic volcano. It’s best in the full-screen view.

Can you walk on lava? Sometimes:

You can walk on some lava flows, after the surface has cooled enough. Apparently, while doing so you can feel the lava flow underneath you, and can be rising while it piles up. Your extremely sturdy shoes will still melt – don’t be tardy. On a lava flow like this, the surface is liquid enough for you to loose your balance. You won’t sink (lava is dense) so your body might still be retrievable.

Update: Here’s a 3-D model you can play with.

Bulletin from Reykjanes

Credit: Sól­ný Páls­dótt­ir

It’s begun. There’s a webcam here. (See below for better views.)

(Picture from here.)

Update: Another webcam here. (See below for better views.)

See the comments at the Volcano Café post for further news, pictures and videos.

Update II: Today’s quote, from marinecreature in the café comments: “What an adorable little mini-volcano.”

Both the webcams linked above now show very little but grey, but there are better ones linked to in the comments thread. Try this one.

Update III:

Update IV nn: The view from a drone:

The view from 1984

I’ve been browsing around in Marc Aramini’s Between Light and Shadow: An Exploration of the Fiction of Gene Wolfe, 1951 to 1986. In his discussion of Free Live Free, he quotes a couple of passages that have gained force in the years since the year the novel was published. I thought I’d put them here, a bit more fully.

A history of America, delivered by a man in a duffel coat near the end of the story:

“Our country was founded on the principle of the destruction of the wild by the civilized. Let me … go back thirty thousand years before Christ, when the ancestors of the Indians crossed what are now the Bering Straits to occupy what some people have called an empty land. Those Indians represented civilization. The beavers felled trees and built lodges, but the Indians killed the beavers and skinned them.

Barnes said, “Then the whites came and skinned the Indians.”

“Precisely. But the frontiersmen who destroyed the Indians and their culture were destroyed themselves, with their culture, by the settlers who followed. Those settlers lost their farms to the banks, and the banks sold them to companies who have brought the advantages of corporate existence—immortality and amorality—to agriculture.

“In the cities, the same thing occurred. The early city of independent shops and restaurants is properly being displaced by one of the chain outlets, so that progressively greater control is exercised. Perhaps none of you have ever understood before why they are called that—chain outlets….

“You see the progress? The old stores had to sell things their customers wanted. As they’re eliminated, the need for their type of slavery is eliminated, too, and the chains can sell whatever they want. Their customers have to buy it because there is nothing else to buy. I ask you, all of you—how often have you gone into W. T. Grant’s and found there was nothing at all you wanted?”

And:

“The Indians used to be Americans—that’s what an American was. Then the trappers were Americans, the Americans of their day. Then the farmers, with their buggies and plow horses and white clapboard houses. Even today when you look at a picture of Uncle Sam, you’re seeing what those farmers were like dressed up to go to the county fair. Only farmers aren’t real Americans any more. Neither are Indians. Poor bastards of Indians aren’t even foreigners, and we like foreigners more than Americans, because foreigners are the Americans of the future. The trappers are gone, and pretty soon you’ll be gone too.”

After further provocation, one of his audience responds:

“… I am a gypsy and a princess. And a dupe, because you have made me one. But I will speak for the Indians too, because they were nomads when they were shaped by their own thoughts and not by yours, and we are nomads now, who will remain so though you will slay us….

“You have overcome us, but you have not conquered us. To conquer us you must beat us fairly, and you have not beaten us fairly, and so you have struck us to the ground, but you have not won. To conquer us, you must have dignity too, and for that reason you have not conquered us. A man may flee from a wasp and be stung by the wasp, but he has not been conquered by the wasp; it remains an insect and he is still a man. You deck yourselves like fools and chatter and hop like apes, and your princes marry whores. That is why even those you have crushed to dust will not call you master, and none will ever call you master until you meet a nation more foolish than yourselves.”

Earlier in the book the gypsy does some “catoptromancy.” She explains, “… what I have done is the verso of necromancy; I summoned the spirits of the unborn to reveal the future.” According to her,

“The greatest event of the coming decade will be the quadrumvirate. Four leaders, unknown today, shall unite to take political, financial, artistic, and judicial power. They shall create a revolution in thought. Many who are now rulers shall be imprisoned or exiled. Many who are now powerless shall rise to places of great authority. The rich shall be made poor, and the poor rich. Old crimes, now concealed, shall be made public, and their perpetrators given to the people as to a pride of lions. The four shall be hated and idolized, but their rule will not end within the period specified by my prediction.”

It’s time for the quadrumvirate to reveal itself.

How thoughtful…

… of the earth to make sure I got up in time this morning despite the clocks all being wrong.

Update:

This makes four quakes in one day, a record for me. (The red dot is the one I felt a few minutes ago, not the one listed in red.)

Update II: It’s not stopping. There were two more this Monday morning. This isn’t exactly an Icelandic level of seismic activity, but it’s not like Kansas, either.

March blues

I got out to the botanical garden yesterday for the first time since November. There wasn’t much in bloom — no surprise, considering that it was -16°F just over three weeks ago. Most of the plants there seemed to have weathered the freakish freeze okay, though the winter jasmine, which would ordinarily be a mass of yellow at this time, was just a bunch of twigs. I was able to find a little bit of color here and there.

I was irritated to discover that the garden had installed numerous inspirational/motivational signs throughout a couple of sections. They’re unattractive and distracting, and they will obstruct the view as the gardens return to life. I also intensely resent being preached at. They had better be gone next time I visit.

There are more pictures here.

Update: I made another trip out there, and this time I did find a bit of yellow jasmine.

But only a few blossoms, not the usual hundreds and hundreds.

Brush up your Icelandic

Todays’s word is Þráinsskjaldarhraun: “Þráins shields lava field.”

Things are heating up on the Reykjanes peninsula in Iceland.

Update: while you’re waiting, you can spend some quality time with Etna:

Update II: Today’s useful phrase: “gently exploding.”

Eruptions in south-west Iceland are of a fluid rock type called basalt. This results in slow-moving streams of lava fed from gently exploding craters and cones.

Spring has sprung …

… or has it? The tornado sirens were howling a few minutes ago, and the phone just blared a “severe weather” warning. Here’s the radar:

Another view:

See the storm? Neither do I. It’s not officially spring until the first real tornado warning, so it’s still technically winter here.

Today’s word

Schleppoisie, noun.

When [Tom] Wolfe lets his own point of view peep through, it isn’t always pleasant to behold. His hatred for the high and vacuous celebrity culture is undisguised; his Olympian amusement at the nouveau riche has long been known. But what is surprising in his novel is to find him looking down his nose, as in the examples cited here, at the lower-middle class, or (as Marx neglected to call them) the schleppoisie.