Monday, September 20
Sunday, September 19
Caucasian Born
I visited New York City a while back to spend some time with a relative and walking out of the LaGuardia airport, I asked a passerby what was the time that was on his watch and his reponse was: "What do I look like a frigging clock?"
New York City has never been the same to me as a result of that encounter... perhaps, he was having a bad day or perhaps that was just his personality or perhaps he noticed my southern accent... none of it matters anymore but it bothered me a the time and as I recall I just ignored his comments...
I have never encountered someone like that below the Virginia/North Carolina border... which is why I am a Southern Boy (as the song goes) which is underscored by the fact of being born in North Carolina several decades ago.
I am Caucasian Born and would not have it anyother way and not because I am white and you may or may not be... but because I am who I am and I don't apologize for being who I am... nor do I want to be anyone else... alhough, at one time I wanted to be an architect.
I don't fly the Confederate Flag from the back of my pickup truck because I don't own a pickup truck and never plan to own a pickup truck, although there was a time when I considered buying a cheap pickup to carry our kayaks... but, we sold them several years ago.
I don't chew tobacco, smoke, or drink alcohol although I have been known to drink a glass or two of red wine at dinner or to be sociable... I don't own a firearm and don't plan to ever own a firearm but I am not opposed to others owning firearms... which is the same as having an abortion... this is fine with me as well, although I would never have one.
I am a Vietnam Era Veteran but do not believe in WARS, especially those being waged outside our borders... I became a veteran because I could not find suitable employment back them if I did not have my military obligation out of the way... otherwise, I would have moved to Canada... and, I am glad I did not do that, because it is frigging cold up there.
I am not lazy but I do not go out of my way to find work, especially the kind of work that involves manual labor... however, there was a time that I walked around the community with a sledge hammer and wedges offering to split wood for free.
I am not bald but my hair is thinning out or falling out but it is not all gone yet and I will never shave my head to offset the fact that I am losing my hair... nor will I grow a beard to prove that I am still a macho male even though I can no longer get an erection...
Life winds itself around your legs like a snake wraps itself around its prey, squeezing the life out of it, until dead, so it can be eaten... however, once we die, I am not sure if anything or anyone will eat us unless it is the heavens into which we will dissipate.
My spirituality is obviously rooted in the various mythologies and philosophies of several religions that have evolved over the centuries in the hopes of explaining why we were given life and what is our purpose outside of eating, defecating, fornicating, fighting, and dying. Life's legacy is always death.
The interesting thing about mythologies is that from one side of our earth to the other side of our earth is thousands of miles and yet all these mythologies have similiar stories... how is this possible? There was no such thing as air travel back then...
That will blow a bit of uncertainty up your ass...
Returning Elk
Today, every one of those species has disappeared from the Southern Appalachian landscape — hastened along the way by the arrival of European settlers, new diseases, and new hunting and farming practices that dramatically reshaped the region’s flora and fauna.
Among the largest and most conspicuous species lost to human activity were eastern elk, a regional subspecies that vanished in the 1800s.
Among the largest and most conspicuous species lost to human activity were eastern elk, a regional subspecies that vanished in the 1800s.
But now, thanks to an ambitious project launched 20 years ago in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the resonant bugling calls of elk can be heard echoing across North Carolina’s Cataloochee Valley.
“The great pie in the sky would be to have one large, contiguous population throughout the East Coast again,” said Wildlife Biologist Joseph Yarkovich. “But that’s still way, way down the road.”
Yarkovich has spent much of his career with the National Park Service working to ensure the success of the elk’s reintroduction to the Smokies, mostly on the North Carolina side of the national park.
“The great pie in the sky would be to have one large, contiguous population throughout the East Coast again,” said Wildlife Biologist Joseph Yarkovich. “But that’s still way, way down the road.”
Yarkovich has spent much of his career with the National Park Service working to ensure the success of the elk’s reintroduction to the Smokies, mostly on the North Carolina side of the national park.
After two decades of accumulating small wins, the park service is now looking to make the new herd more resilient and improve standard practices for tracking and managing reintroduced wildlife. READ MORE
Oldest Known Forest
The fossilized web of a 385-million-year-old root network has scientists reimagining what the world's first forests might once have looked like.
The picture they have painted couldn't be more different to what now sits in its place. Near the small town of Cairo in upstate New York, under an old highway department quarry, scientists have reconstructed the remains of what was a mighty and mature old-growth forest – home to at least three of the world's earliest tree-like plants.
Some of these initial tree 'wannabes' (known as cladoxylopsids) would have looked like large stalks of celery, shooting 10 meters (32 feet) into the sky. Others resembled pine trees, but with hairy, fern-like fronds for leaves (Archaeopteris). The third long-lost plant would have taken after the palm tree, with a bulbous base and canopy of fern-like branches (Eospermatopteris).
Seven parallel cross-sections of the Cairo site have researchers thinking these primordial trees were quite old and large. As such, they were not packed densely together, but were relatively scattered across a floodplain that ebbed and flowed with the seasons.
Dry periods were a regular part of the cycle, and yet the Cairo forest, which traced the Catskill river, seemed to host primitive trees we once thought could only survive in swamps or river deltas. These tree-like plants belong to the genus Eospermatopteris, and they look sort of like tall ferns standing on bulbous stumps.
Because these towering plants have shallow roots that don't branch, they probably didn't cope well in drier conditions - so their presence in the ancient floodplains of Cairo is confusing. READ MORE
The Golden Question
After months of careful planning, you figured out how to turn your side hustle into a full-fledged business--and you built up the courage to do so. So, you handed in your resignation.
Immediately, your boss tries to convince you to stay, promising a huge raise.
- It's tempting.
- You start having second thoughts.
- What should you do?
It requires asking myself what I like to call, the 'golden question.'
The golden question
The golden question is actually five questions in one, and goes like this: When you need to make a decision under emotional circumstances, ask yourself:
How will I feel about this in:
- a day?
- a week?
- a month?
- a year?
- 5 years?
When it comes to higher level executive functions (such as the capacity to plan, organize, and exercise self-control), we typically engage the frontal lobe(s), the largest part of the brain. But when we feel some type of emotional threat, another part of the brain known as the amygdala "hijacks" the brain, often resulting in a fight, flight, or freeze response.
Emotional hijacks can be useful in certain situations. But they can lead us to say or things we regret.
Here's where the golden question comes in.
By forcing yourself to see how this decision will affect your future, you switch back from using your amygdala and re-engage your frontal lobe. READ MORE
Saturday, September 18
Saturday Morning in the Valley
A Little History...
The Tennessee Valley is the drainage basin of the Tennessee River and is largely within the U.S. state of Tennessee. It stretches from southwest Kentucky to north Alabama and from northeast Mississippi to the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina. The border of the valley is known as the Tennessee Valley Divide. The Tennessee Valley contributes greatly to the formation of Tennessee's legally recognized Grand Divisions.
East Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee defined in state law. Geographically and socioculturally distinct, it comprises approximately the eastern third of the U.S. state of Tennessee. East Tennessee consists of 33 counties, 30 located within the Eastern Time Zone and three counties in the Central Time Zone, namely Bledsoe, Cumberland, and Marion.
East Tennessee is entirely located within the Appalachian Mountains, although the landforms range from densely forested 6,000-foot (1,800 m) mountains to broad river valleys. The region contains the major cities of Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee's third and fourth largest cities, respectively, and the Tri-Cities, the state's sixth largest population center.
I have lived in East tn since 1990 when i left the piedmont of north carolina to move over here to pursue a career path with the community college system. I soon discovered that my sinuses did not like this area and after 30 years they have never changed their mind; in fact, they are more pissed off now than ever before as my aging body excaserbates the situation.
However, the eastern part of the tennessee valley is almost an ideal place to live and play... but not necessarilyy work as the wages and salaries are lower than the natioinal average... but the cost of living is also lower than the national average as well... so i all works out.
Life in east tennessee is more than comfortable and the weather is more han moderate... there is minimal violence, no BLM crap and if crt is around, then it is well hidden. People still drive around with confederate flags on the back of their pickups and it is not uncommon to see people walking around with handguns in holsters on their hips. baptists are all over the place trying to convince you to become born again whatever the hell that means...
Backporch Reflections
The first day of the weekend starts on Saturday but some feel that the weekend for them begins as soon as they leave work friday afternoon... and, I remember feeling like that a time or two myself...
Humidity lingers around my body like wet clothes, infiltrating my head and sinuses with congestion and yet I remain outside to get a little bit of fresh air no matter how unbearable it may be for me... the sound of a train horn off in the distance... the dripping of rain off the leaves of trees... the muted chirping of birds sharing thoughts of the day... a lone rabbit crouches in a shallow gully as a light blue sky (some people refer to as Carolina Blue) pushes the dingy clouds off to the side.
The smell of fresh cut grass is camoflauged by the humid rain and the puddles of rain unable to be perked by the hard ground. Lights in nearby houses have all been extinguised, using only the light-of-day to navigate their movements inside. Ripples of water from the pump push across the surface of our above ground pool that was just vacuumed out yesterday.
A five year old photograph was sent to me by email... of my siblings and their spouses... it's a keeper, I informed the sender, asking who had taken it... as if that old memory was as recent as the email... we live and die by our questions... about that of which we do not know or remember... it was a silly question at best.
Not a thought of politics has flowed through my mind in the last two hours... I should feel blessed not to be disturbed by it all... there is no light at the end of the tunnel because there is no tunnel through which we must pass... unless we can assume that life is a tunnel of time so-to-speak but at the end of that tunnel is supposed darkness... the darkness of not being alive... and yet, our universe is full of darkness as well which has never been perceived or misconstrued as a tunnel.
Cancel Culture
The report by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni found that the rapid shift to Zoom-type learning preceded a new wave of bullying by participants who cut and paste comments they didn’t like into social media posts, in some cases leading to firings, bullying, and shaming.
In one noted case, a Georgetown University professor was fired for stating that black students tend to cluster near the bottom of her classes. In another, the report said that “Marquette University even threatened to rescind an admissions offer to a student because she posted a video to TikTok expressing support for President Trump.”
The report, shared with Secrets prior to its release later today, warned that free speech is being threatened by the new and selective social media shaming that comes with online learning.
“The lifeblood of the liberal arts is debate, dialectic, inquiry, and challenge,” said Michael Poliakoff, the president of ACTA, a nonprofit organization that promotes academic freedom.
“In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic that has threatened the strength and even the survival of so many institutions, online education moved to the fore. We have seen that it can bless us with access to a vibrant exchange of ideas, but it also has the potential to eliminate the opportunity for growth of character and intellect,” he told us.
Over 44 pages, the report showed examples of the "canceling" of speech on campus and the muting of those who don’t want to be shamed for speaking their mind.
“Why is the crisis getting worse? Simple: Self-censorship is a perfectly reasonable reaction when students and faculty are being investigated, harassed, or punished for their speech,” it said in comparing the reactions to a “public stoning.”
What’s more, the report found that rules put in place to protect free speech are being junked because institutions are too afraid that their reputation might be hurt by a rogue comment.
The group also provided survey data to accompany its guide, titled “Building a Culture of Free Expression in the Online Classroom” READ MORE
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