Can animals tell time?
Sure — just not the way that we do
A day is a real thing
The morning sun comes in low this time of year. Across the field, the tall grass, yellowing as winter approaches, is limp with moisture. When wet, the leaves of madrones and hemlocks and firs appear to be a slightly deeper green. Drops of water are suspended just so, in architectural arrays, jewels which capture the sun and scatter it.
It’s spider season in the Pacific Northwest. And of all the myriad species here, it is the orb-weavers which enchant, building their perfect webs out in the open. Their webs are subtle when dry, subtle enough to catch insects large and small, nearly invisible. But now, when wet? They are art. Kaleidoscopes and mandelbrots, geometry made of silk and water and light. And then, they are gone.
The days become shorter. As they do, they become cooler as well. In this part of the world, the rains will soon begin in earnest, a segue from the perfect blue skies of …
Sick of It All
‘I existed like a stone, a plant, a microbe'
Ginger can negate the nausea of existence, a phenomenon chronicled by French philosopher-novelist J.P. Sartre
It’s anti-inflammatory, antifungal, antimicrobial, antidiabetic, antispasmodic, antihypertensive, anti-hyperlipidemic, anti-tumor, and analgesic. It also fractures flatulence.
“Things are bad! Things are very bad: I have it, the filth, the Nausea,” Antoine Roquentin, the dyspeptic protagonist of Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel, Nausea, writes in his diary. “And this time it is new: it caught me in a café,” he continues, “I dropped to a seat, I no longer knew where I was; I saw the colours spin slowly around me, I wanted to vomit. And since that time, the Nausea has not left me, it holds me.” Has anyone ever needed ginger, the nausea remedy I’m going to tell you about, more than Antoine Roquentin? I mean, aside from pretty much every person in America these past four years.
Let me explain. Roquentin, the French philosopher’s alter ego, is a young writer at work on a biography of a minor eighteenth-century French diplomat, the Marquis de Rollebon. He’s also the proverbial man at loose ends: ambling around, loafing in cafés, hate-watching strangers while contending with …
A Hurricane in Georgia
Helene Made Some Memories Here, Too
Rip-Roarin’ Gal Leaves Path of evastation Through Georgia Before ipping North
Buy batteries, ice, propane camp-stove canisters, charcoal, and lighter fluid
I can sleep through anything, so the first I knew of the storm was my wife waking me up around 3 or 4 AM on Friday morning, the 27th of September. Our old feist dog was whining and panting hard, in panic mode under the bed. The wind was howling and it was pouring sheets of rain. The power was off, so I retrieved my flashlight to comfort the dog. We had no idea what was really happening outside. No one was worried. No one was prepared. My preparation consisted of dropping the umbrella on the patio table, to account for wind. The only significant damage I could remember from a hurricane, outside of isolated tornadoes, was when Hugo came through in 1989 and caused significant treefall in some areas.
I live in the first planned suburban neighborhood in Aiken, South Carolina, and it is a large development. It is the kind of neighborhood where investors and hedge funds love to buy up homes to create …
