Xcentric Diffractions

Commentary

And We All Fall Down

The old dump truck struggled to make it up the grade. Long before it arrived I could hear it straining to maintain forward progress and not stall out on the slope, tires slipping on the gravel. The diesel engine growled, and the clutch complained, clanking from the pain of downshifting.

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Commentary

One Ringy Dingy, Two Ringy Dingy

"Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?" – with apologies to Ernestine Two hundred thousand unsubscribers are not wrong. The saga of the contested Trump-Putin phone call demonstrates that Jeff Bezos has done more harm to the reporters at The Washington Post than all the cancellations

Nature

A Grand Design

“Tickets, please. Tickets? Tickets, please!” “Umm, I have it right here ... just a minute … Umm … Ah! Here you go.” Right ascension 09h 55m 33.2s Declination +69° 3′ 55″ “Oh! Bode’s Galaxy! Lovely this time of year. Sit back. Relax. We should be there before you know it.” “Thanks,

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I Don't Get No Respect!

Ok, at the urging of my dear friends, I read the latest opinion piece by David Brooks in The New York Times. Now, I love y’all dearly, so I will be frank. And, as you know, I’m in an angry mood. Take that into account. I respect your

Nature

With Warmth the Twinkling Lights

Charles Messier was a comet geek. Perhaps the greatest of the 18th century. From 1760 to 1801, he is credited with discovering, or co-discovering, at least 20 comets. His observatory? The Hôtel de Cluny in downtown Paris, now the Musée national du Moyen Âge. Today, Messier is best known, not

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Commentary

Why I Canceled My Subscription to The Washington Post

On Friday I canceled my subscription to The Washington Post. Since then, as each WaPo newsletter has arrived in my inbox, I have unsubscribed as well. And here’s why. I have been hard on the news and commentary media this year. And that includes The WaPo, The NY Times,

Better Than the Alternative

I finally got my updated Covid-19 vaccination yesterday. My previous shot was just, oh, the month before yesterday. Maybe. I don’t remember. It turns out I was playing roulette. You recall those paper cards we all carried around back in the dark ages? The ones that listed all our

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Audio

It Doesn't Have to Be This Way

The Scene CNN reports: "There have been at least 50 school shootings in the United States so far this year, as of September 19 [2024]. Thirteen were on college campuses, and 37 were on K-12 school grounds. The incidents left 24 people dead and at least 66 other victims

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Commentary

The Average of Garbage is Garbage

I only had one nerve left, and the Washington Post had to grab it and twist. Grab it, with the headline “Harris’s rise in the polls has stalled, while Trump holds steady.” And then twist, with the most tortured, misleading data analysis I’ve read in a long time.

Garden

The Great Squash-Up

“One of these things is not like the others” OK, that’s a trick header. Sort of like over-thinking an SAT logic question on the exam. It is supposed to read, “One of these squash is not like the others.” The coffee mug is just there for context. And caffeine.

Environment

Global Warming Close to Home

Climate. Just like weather: everyone is talking about it. But unlike weather, civilizations have been doing something about it – none to the good – ever since the industrial revolution. Since 1850, world-wide annual emissions of greenhouse gases have increased over 12-fold, trapping additional heat, and steadily warming the planet. Weather is

Humor

Emergency Landing

The discovery was not altogether unexpected. I have often entered the summer squash forest, sometimes seemingly lost for weeks at a time. It is cooler there, under the shade of the towering scalloped canopy, and moist. The ground is soft and covered in leaf litter, empty tubular stems broken and

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Nature

The Night Watchmen

The woods here are relatively young. Young in tree time, in any case. Their ancestors were felled long ago, cleared to make way for pasture. The rusty relics of barbed-wire fencing still wind through the forest floor marking old property boundaries, paddocks, and hay fields. Once strung to contain livestock,

Garden

No Poppy Asked for This

Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. -- John McCrae, "In Flanders Fields" There are

Humor

Man Kicks Bison While Drunk

There is an appalling headline in The Washington Post this morning! What is our world coming to? First South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem brags about murdering puppies and goats. And now there is this guy, who goes around kicking drunk bison. The first rule of outdoor adventure: Never kick a

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Nature

Chasing a Second Blackout

It was always likely to be cloudy. We knew that going in. According to the climatology odds, we had only a 1-in-3 chance of clear skies for viewing the eclipse. And the Thousand Islands region in early April? Well, if it wasn’t freezing cold and raining, at least it

Commentary

King of the Wild Frontier

So, there it was, pushed onto the "New" email listing on my phone: From: Member.Services@DisneyAccount.com Subject: New Sign-in To Your Account Great! Another scam! I don’t have a “Disney Account.” There-what-the-fore, I could not have been the “Sign-in” to said non-existent account. -=-=

Humor

Stoned Grounds

Nothing will get you revved up and ready to go in the morning quite like a coffee bean-sized igneous rock jammed in the burr grinder. Several wrenches, crowbars, and pinched fingers later, all is well that ends well.

Garden

Winter Carrots

Last fall I wrote about the “Carrot Cabana” I set up to protect our little carrot seedlings from the scalding summer sun, which stalks the skies here in August. Well, it was worth it. This mid-winter, with snow on the ground (itself a rare thing in these times), I can

Humor

Organic Salt

How do you make organic sea salt anyway? And why is “Sea Salt” in quotations? Is it really almond salt?

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Commentary

Illegal Immigration by the Numbers

Nature

Winter Solstice Bonfire

Cold but calm. The moon waxing gibbous. A pretty nice excuse for a winter solstice bonfire. We toasted the season with a bottle of Blenheim Farm Red, sculpted a big pile of old wooden lawn furniture, and blessed the sacrificial offering. “To the gods of international supply chains!” But the

Nature

Hope

The mice and voles and chipmunks rule supreme in this kingdom. By their numbers. They are keen to recycle by chewing through the plastic covering on all the wires in the big tin spa that sits mostly parked. Ignorant, they, of the monstrous cost to the slow two-legged creature which

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Technology

Kicking the Tires on Generative Artificial Intelligence

Garden

Thanksgiving Thanks

The American Thanksgiving myth of my youth focused on “The Harvest”. Like the blessing of a large harvest of potatoes from the garden. Enough to live through the winter. Enough to give away. But the harvest allegory encompassed the wider sphere of blessings. I knew it then and I certainly