The Frogs Have More Fun...

Flowers



"All the names I know from nurse:
Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,
Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.

Fairy places, Fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny trees for tiny dames.
- These must all be Fairy names !"

(from Child's Garden of Verses
by R.L. Stevenson)


"Anyone can write a short-story.
A bad one, I mean."

(R.L. Stevenson)
----------------

"Science without conscience is the Soul's perdition."
- Francois Rabelais, Pantagruel
- Acc to/above is citated from: Medical Apartheid. The dark history of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, by Harriet A. Washington (Doubleday ; 2006 ; p. 1.)

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"In the high society of the first half of the century, marriage, despite it's bestowal status upon the wife, was the most absurdity. Marriage, conferring instanteous rank or money, ... lost most of its prestige and moment right after the wedding. ...By the end of the century, spurred by Rousseau's moralistic Nouvelle Hèloíse, a contrary cult, that of virtue, arose. After 1770 conjugal and maternal love became not merely admissible, but, for some, moral imperatives. ...

[...]
...Rousseau, who sought for himself the crown of morality in ostensibly defending marriage, presents in his Nouvelle Hèloíse the most enticing and extended defense of illicit love ever penned. The root of the problem is that as the century progressed sensibility became confused with morality: passionate feeling, if expressed in a highly civilized mode with grace and nuance, makes us forgive the Rousseau of The Confessions, for example, his pettiness, his jealousies, his betrayals. This moral-amoral byplay, present already in the novels of Richardson, was to be more intense as the century unfolded."
-
Madelyn Gutwirth : Madame De Staèl, Novelist. The emergence of the Artist as Woman (10,15.)

;
"...As the social contract seems tame in comparison with war, so fucking and sucking come to seem merely nice, and therefore unexciting. ... To be 'nice', as to be civilized, means being alienated from this savage experience - which is entirely staged. [...] The rituals of domination and enslavement being more and more practiced, the art that is more and more devoted to rendering their themes, are perhaps only a logical extension of an affluent society's tendency to turn every part of people's lives into a taste, a choice; to invite them to regard their very lives as a (life) style." - Susan Sontag , on 'Fascinating Fascism' (-74; p 103;104-5 at Under the sign of Saturn)
; "Anyone who cannot give an account to oneself of the past three thousand years remains in darkness, without experience, living from day to day." (Goethe) - as cited by Sontag (on same compile; p. 137.)

;
"It is widely accepted that we are now living in the 'Anthropocene', a new geological epoch in which the Earth's ecosystems and climate are being fundamentally altered by the activities of humans. I loathe the term, but I can't deny that it's appropriate."
; (Goulson), Silent Earth : Averting the Insect Apocalypse (2021; p 47.)
;
"It is sometimes said that humanity is at war with nature, but the word 'war' implies a two-way conflict. Our chemical onslaught on nature is more akin to genocide. It is small wonder that our wildlife is in decline."
; (Goulson, 2021 ; 118.)
;
----------------
"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." (Voltaire)
- Citated from; (Joy, Melanie), Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows : An Introduction to Carnism(2010; p. 95.)
;

"In the presence of the monster, you have eyes and ears for nothing else."
; (Flora Tristan) : London Journal of Flora Tristan: the Aristocracy and the Working Class of England ; 1842-edit. (tr: 1982. ; p. 71.)

;
"Every minority invokes justice, and justice is liberty.
A party can be judged of only by the doctrine which
it professes when it is the strongest."
Mdme de Staêl
(on) 'Consideration sur le Révolution de la Francaise' [1818]


11/19/09

Intermission (III.) / Anniversary 100th post



Celebrating mildly this important land-mark (the 100th post) on the paths of the MuleSkinner Blog, the cake is prepared and served (however, since we have no time for celebrations, this post is instead cooked of folk-tales and wonders of the nature...)


...Our butterfly-series now completed, we nevertheless devote a few lines for them here. Species is considered to be one of the most cold resistant in the world (or indeed it's larvae which overwinter). It's the Scarce Copper (L.Virgaeuris). In butterfly's populations of the most northern area (which reaches beyond the Arctic circle - probably quite northern range for a butterfly), the larvae has capability to produce glycerine/or, glucose (apparently, the same compound as used in the cars as fuel antifreezer). A single larvae produces amounts of over one third from it's own weight permitting then the survival through most extreme winter colds. In the spring when the warms arrive the liquid disappears from it's body systems and later metamorphosis takes place. (It also is common at some mountain ranges on other areas, whether these also have developed same method for overwintering wasn't mentioned...seems less probable, somehow)
...and perhaps it's not even sole example of that kind, but anyway pretty exceptional and not the less surprising than anything we find from these natural wonders...

----



The (folk-) story part is actually good old tales from the Brer Rabbitt. (Whether the story's really folk-tales or has been invented by some artist at Walt's firm I have no idea, 'cause I only have it at the old W.D. children book series. But it's named as Brer Rabbit and his Friends in the original book.)

In this ordinary story, the Brer rabbitt fools with the Fox and the Bear as he usually does (Fox and Bear, as usually, try to catch him for the dinner). However, they have the idea for to make a rabbit replica from glue and when the (Brer) rabbitt then meets his 'double', he gets angry because that is not answering his compliments. Soon after, from hitting the doll, all his limbs and finally the whole rabbitt is stuck with the glue. Fox and the bear think they've finally catched Brer Rabbitt...but as usual it all ends well for the rabbitt, since being clever he soon tricks them to throw him for the brier (bushes), where he lives.


(Having not familiarized myself with rabbit lifes and ecology, I've always wondered if it's just in the fairy-tale that the rabbit is homing in the briers? Or do some of those actually inhabit the bushes? Of course, that's rather secondary of importance; in the story seems like he does. (picture below) (W.G.)



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