Month: July 2019

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Ramblings At Small (vs. At Large)

  • Math. An accomplishment of vision. Art and math and science are all bridges between the human and the divine, beauty a means of access to grace. Mathematics, Simone Weil wrote, “is first, before all, a sort of mystical poem composed by God himself.”
  • I don’t know much math, certainly not higher math, but I have always felt that shiver of acknowledgement when thinking of the room that belongs to Pure Mathematics, the thoughts that would cause the mind to wheel and gallop and explode there. Generating enlightenment. A spiritual experience.
  • Lizzy Fig is on the patio wearing her lovely new do of a lion cut. She is still so tiny though not the wee one I was afraid of stepping on. Her current concern is the catching of bugs. I believe that is an occupation of note. To be so engrossed is the gift we long for.
  • Once again last night I was at university in my dreams. Ah! So now it occurs to me why I was thinking of math today. In the dream I was in a math class for a test. Interesting—the first ex was sitting next to me and we were both taking the test tho we had not been in the class together. Of course I had forgotten there was an assignment and test due and did not study at all. I knew nothing. And yet, when it came time to do the work I opened my booklet to discover the layout of many forms that I had begun. All I had to do was draw the line between them individually. I understood that I understood even tho I did not currently have the knowledge with me.
  • Perhaps math is such that it is because that’s what made the Universe.
  • I read somewhere that the things or occupations at an expert level that will drive men insane are philosophy, chess, and mathematics. My brother suggested we add astronomy to that. All of course enlist the search for Truth.
  • I’ve just now come back from an hours long trip around the bend of various articles and pages saved—the trip that begins with looking up a single thought and ends up with riding a monster tail. I do love monsters.
    • 42
  • P.S. I’m going to check into:
As Posted On Amazon
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Ohio

Because I lived so long in Michigan I thought of Ohio as a midwestern little sister. One in competition with football, baseball, and countryside. I don’t know how things stack up anymore.

Rob Blair Photography

Sunrise over Lake Erie yesterday morning at Beulah Beach in Vermillion, Ohio.

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Treason And Dates

It seems incredible to me that Angela Davis is to be honored as an inductee in the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Incredible not because it isn’t deserved, but because wasn’t it just yesterday—?

In the late 1960s and early 70s, to say the name Angela Davis meant to picture a beautiful Black woman in a full afro with right arm extended and a closed fist giving the power salute of Black Panthers. She was the powerful voice and vision for activists of feminism and equality during the Civil Rights movement.

If you look up Davis on Google or any other search engine, you will find her described as a former Communist, Activist, and Black Panther supporter. Communist at least until the 1990s when she officially left the Party. In 1970 she purchased guns and supplied them to her own personal security guards. The guards then—as members of the Black Panthers—used those guns in an armed take-over of a courtroom in California. Four people were killed during the takeover and kidnapping, including a judge. The deaths occurred during a chase by government agents.

As a result of the deaths, Angela became a fugitive wanted by the FBI. At that time J. Edgar Hoover listed Davis on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List; she was the third woman and the 309th person to be listed.

She was eventually captured, imprisoned, tried, then found Not Guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and kidnapping. The question of course became one of prior knowledge and intent, to say nothing of the originating point of the bullets that caused the deaths.

Although she was found not guilty at the trial she was dogged by accusations and negative press for years. California Governor Ronald Reagan in 1969 attempted to have her barred from teaching at any California university, given that she was an avowed Communist. He was not successful then or later when Angela went on to become a professor and scholar at UCLA, California. She was and is a continuing voice for feminism and civil rights, and an author of serious merit.

Others to be inducted to the Hall of Fame include attorney and activist Gloria Allred, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Native American lawyer and professor Sarah Deer, actress and activist Jane Fonda, United States Air Force officer Nicole Malachowski, former member of U.S. Congress Louise Slaughter, composer Laurie Spiegel, biologist Flossie Wong-Staal, and artist/activist Rose O’Neill.

I list the others not just for honors earned, but to note the inclusion of Jane Fonda. Why? She too was accused of treason by an enraged public during the Vietnam war.

A picture of Jane Fonda on a Ho Chi Minh tank. A photo of Angela Davis with the Black Panthers in a power salute and in defense of the Soledad Brothers. Both led and inspired protests for and against themselves. The country was divided and loud then, just as now. Both were accused of treason.

Davis went from an incarceration of over a year—initially in solitary confinement—before she was granted bail. She was America’s Most Wanted criminal. Now she’s a professor emeritus and a Hall of Fame honoree.

It was Cardinal Richelieu who is credited with the saying: Treason is just a matter of dates. Indeed.


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Meanwhile, In Other News

Hearing a word from the wasp, or two or two thousand of the little darlings.

From an article in the HuffPost: In most years, the winter freeze kills off many colonies. But that doesn’t always happen ― and when a colony survives the winter, a super nest can form.

“The queens are the only ones who have an antifreeze compound in their blood,” Charles Ray, an entomologist with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, told The New York Times.

He said climate change is one reason for the survival of so many colonies:

So normally, a surviving queen will have to start a colony from scratch in the spring. With our climate becoming warmer, there might be multiple surviving queens producing more than 20,000 eggs each.

  • Posted in HuffPo

Did you know that with each wasp sting you develop more of an allergy to them, not less? Unfortunately many people believe you would be building up an immunity. Not so. Just the opposite.

In the end, maybe it’s the bees that will get us, not the birds—Alfred Hitchcock’s film was close. And what a horror film that could make.

In case you’d like to know more, here’s a site that will tell you how to avoid them once they are spotted. #Wasps#Summer#WaspStings#YellowJackets#Hornets