Diary (December 19, 2020)
Online diary of Karl Jones for Saturday December 19, 2020.
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Diary
Gallery
A Maze of Stars by John Brunner - front cover.
Western Interior Seaway during the mid-Cretaceous (approximately 100 million years ago).
Barbara McAfee: I am happy for your move to Wisconsin.
I live in Ely now, since September 2019, having fled the Metro for Northlands, my personal Hejira to the ancestral Iron Range ...
I tell you straight — this place has earth power, the rock exerts a force on me, like people talk about Sedona Arizona ... nothing can touch me here: I stand at the center of all things in the calm eye of the storm that is the world. As recently as two years ago I could not have guessed that I would live in a small town and love it. As recently as twenty years ago I would have ridiculed the idea.
Yet here I am in my beloved adopted home town. It had to be the *right* small town, of course. I found Ely by visiting twenty some other towns and saying "No, no, not this either, nor here" — while Ely remained on the the list, and the shorter the list became, the more Ely revealed reasons to stay.
Not once — literally not even one time — have I felt the least shadow of doubt. Not once have I wondered if it was a mistake. I occasionally regret distress I caused several people in the process.
And, once in a blue moon I feel homesickness for my beloved Minneapolis of old, my childhood Minneapolis, the Minneapolis of the Foshay Tower through, say, the Walker Sculpture Garden.
(I once make an *intimately close-up solo tour* of the CherrySpoon sculpture at an *inappropriate hour*. Remind me some time to tell that story.)
But no, I don't miss the city. Every day I wake up and love Ely, where I own the cutest little house, and an art gallery that I couldn't open this summer due to Covid and the future of which is uncertain.
Oh, my life is an adventure, no question, more like a safari than a computer program. Wouldn't have it any other way.
- Comment @ Facebook
The Oswald and the JFK
Mouse and Lobster
Vertebrates rule!
Mush, invertebrate! Mush!
Until, at last, fatigued and hungry, we arrive at the cookpot, already boiling with anticipation.
- Post @ Twitter
Compare Frog and Scorpion
See also Frog Scorpion Raptor:
- Scorpion stings Frog
- Raptor eats Scorpion
- Frog poisons Raptor
Spoonerism
Mersey Beat, Mercy Street
Strange Blue
She's a swatch of color in electric blue ...
Compare Tiresian blue, and see also Impossible color.
A Long Tail's Median
It's Been a Long Tail's Median
The Beatification of Pelham 1-2-3
The Beatification of Pelham 1-2-3
Marvin Mullingspice
GLUMCO
Rocky Goldberg
Candlematter
Candlemas ... Candlemass ... Candlematter
Compare Red matter.
Ely soliloquy
I have seen things on Sheridan Street which prairie-dwellers cannot imagine ... vehicles of every size and weight class, travelling West to East, two thirds of the way up the Terrible Slope, slowing, skewing, unable to continue, their wheels spinning in despair ...
A Maze of Stars
"A Maze of Stars" by John Brunner (1991)
My prison is the universe,
a maze of stars my cage.
I bear an unremitting curse:
My prison is the universe.
No mercy may my doom reverse
nor pleas my plight assuage
My prison is the universe -
a maze of stars, my cage.
- A Maze of Stars @ Wikipedia
Western Interior Seaway
The Western Interior Seaway (also called the Cretaceous Seaway, the Niobraran Sea, the North American Inland Sea, and the Western Interior Sea) was a large inland sea that existed during the mid- to late Cretaceous period as well as the very early Paleogene, splitting the continent of North America into two landmasses, Laramidia to the west and Appalachia to the east. The ancient sea stretched from the Gulf of Mexico and through the middle of the modern-day countries of the United States and Canada, meeting with the Arctic Ocean to the north. At its largest, it was 2,500 feet (760 m) deep, 600 miles (970 km) wide and over 2,000 miles (3,200 km) long.
- Western Interior Seaway @ Wikipedia
- Marine transgression
Ammolite
Ammolite is an opal-like organic gemstone found primarily along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains of North America. It is made of the fossilized shells of ammonites, which in turn are composed primarily of aragonite, the same mineral contained in nacre, with a microstructure inherited from the shell. It is one of few biogenic gemstones; others include amber and pearl.1 In 1981, ammolite was given official gemstone status by the World Jewellery Confederation (CIBJO), the same year commercial mining of ammolite began. It was designated the official gemstone of the City of Lethbridge, Alberta in 2007.[2][3]
Ammolite is also known as aapoak (Kainah for "small, crawling stone"), gem ammonite, calcentine, and Korite. The latter is a trade name given to the gemstone by the Alberta-based mining company Korite. Marcel Charbonneau and his business partner Mike Berisoff were the first to create commercial doublets of the gem in 1967. They went on to form Ammolite Minerals Ltd.
- Ammolite @ Wikipedia
Egg Mountain site
Egg Mountain was discovered in 1977 by Marion Brandvold, owner of the Trex Agate Rock Shop in Bynum, Montana, who discovered the bones of juvenile dinosaurs at this site. It is a colonial nesting site on the Willow Creek Anticline in the Two Medicine Formation that is famous for its fossil eggs of Maiasaura, which demonstrated for the first time that at least some dinosaurs cared for their young. The eggs were arranged in dug-out earthen nests, each nest about a parent's body length from the next, and baby dinosaurs were also found with skeletons too cartilaginous for them to walk - similar to those of altricial (helpless) baby birds. The parent(s) must then have brought food to the young, and there is plant matter in the nests that may be evidence of either this or for incubation of the eggs. Maiasaura also grew extremely fast, at rates comparable to modern birds. Skeletons of Orodromeus and skeletons and eggs of Troodon were also found at Egg Mountain.
- Two Medicine Formation @ Wikipedia
Briallen Hopper
Briallen Hopper is an American writer and literature scholar.
She is the author of the collection Hard to Love: Essays and Confessions.
- Briallen Hopper @ Wikipedia