Viral (Philip Larkin: Myxomatosis)

October 9, 2014, 5:48 am

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Releasing the Myxoma Virus for Rabbits. Rabbits were introduced to Australia by early European settlers, and by the 20th century has become a plague. They ravaged the country, destroying pastures, crops and native species. In the early 1930s Dame Jean Macnamara (and others) called for the importation of the myxoma virus as a means of control. Lionel Bull, Chief of the CSIR Division of Animal Health and Nutrition, released the first infected rabbits on 16 November, 1937 on Wardang Island, South Australia. By the 1950s the deadly virus had caused an epidemic and killed off much of the wild rabbit population: photographer unknown, 1937 via CSIRO (Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization)

Caught in the centre of a soundless field

While hot inexplicable hours go by

What trap is this? Where were its teeth concealed?

You seem to ask.

.....I make a sharp reply,

Then clean my stick. I’m glad I can’t explain

Just in what jaws you were to suppurate:

You may have thought things would come right again

If you could only keep quite still and wait.

 

Philip Larkin (1922-1985): Myxomatosis, 1954, from The Less Deceived, 1955

Myxomatosis is a highly infectious viral disease affecting rabbits, characterized by fever, swelling of the mucous membranes, and presence of myxomata (an acellular slime mould). It was first observed in Uruguay in the late 19th century, effectively developed for rabbit population control in the twentieth century in Australia, and soon spread to Europe.  An epidemic of myxomatosis killed millions of rabbits in England in 1953. In that initial outbreak rabbits lacking immune resistance to the disease typically succumbed within forty-eight hours. One of the most visible symptoms noted in affected rabbits was a crippling lethargy.

 

Rabbits around a waterhole at the myxomatosis trial enclosure on Wardang Island: photographer unknown, 1938 (National Archives of Australia

Experimental laboratory, Sherwood: photo by Lands Department, Survey Office, Cartographic Branch, Photographic Section, c. 1952 (Queensland State Archives)



Myxomatosis kit, Sherwood: photo by Lands Department, Survey Office, Cartographic Branch, Photographic Section, c. 1951 (Queensland State Archives)

Myxomatosis experiment, Sherwood: photo by Lands Department, Survey Office, Cartographic Branch, Photographic Section, c. 1952 (Queensland State Archives)



Myxomatosis experiment, Sherwood: photo by Lands Department, Survey Office, Cartographic Branch, Photographic Section, c. 1952 (Queensland State Archives)



Myxomatosis experiment, Sherwood: photo by Lands Department, Survey Office, Cartographic Branch, Photographic Section, c. 1952 (Queensland State Archives)



Myxomatosis experiment, Sherwood: photo by Lands Department, Survey Office, Cartographic Branch, Photographic Section, c. 1952 (Queensland State Archives)



Myxomatosis experiment, Sherwood: photo by Lands Department, Survey Office, Cartographic Branch, Photographic Section, c. 1952 (Queensland State Archives)


A baby rabbit
With eyes full of pus
This is the work
Of scientific us

-- Spike Milligan (1918-2002)




Myxomatose op Voorne. Een konijn door de ziekte aangetast: photo by Winfried Walta / Anefo, 10 October 1963 (Dutch National Archives, The Hague, Fotocollectie Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau [ANeFo], 1945-1989)

Scientists with personal protective equipment (PPE) testing samples from animals collected in Zaire for the Ebola virus: photo by Ethleen Lloyd / Centers for Disease Control, 1995 (Centers for Disease Control /U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)

But would things come right again if you could only keep quite still and wait?

Waterloo, Sierra Leone: Women faints as another reacts while volunteers (unseen) take away the body of a woman who died of Ebola: photo by Florian Placheur/AFP/Getty Images via the Guardian, 7 October 2014

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Pablo Neruda: I want to talk with the pigs

October 10, 2014, 1:02 am

≫ Next: Philip Larkin: The Beats: A Few Simple Words

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Alte Schweinerasse im Hessenpark der Waldweide: photo by Karsten11, 1 May 2009

 

What do pigs make of the dawn?
They lack canticles, but they sustain it, 
With their great pink bodies,
With their hard little hooves
They buoy it up.

Pigs hold up the dawn.

Birds dine on the night.

And in the morning the world is deserted
And the spiders are sleeping, and men
Also, and dogs, and the wind.
The pigs grunt, and dawn breaks.

I want to talk with the pigs.

 The only free pig in Iowa: photo by Philip Capper, 24 March 2005

Qué piensa el cerdo de la aurora?
No cantan pero la sostienen
con sus grandes cuerpos rosados,
con sus pequeñas patas duras.

Los cerdos sostienen la aurora.

Los pájaros se comen la noche.

Y en la mañana está desierto
el mundo: duermen las arañas,
los hombres, los perros, el viento:
los cerdos gruñen, y amanece.

Quiero conversar con los cerdos.

Pablo Neruda (1904-1873): Qué piensa el cerdo de la aurora? from Bestiario (Bestiary), in Estravagario, 1958; English by TC

 

 

 Pigs are believed to be as intelligent as 3-year-old children and at least as intelligent as dogs, capable of learning hand signals corresponding to words, and understanding complex relationships: photo by Mercy for Animals, 25 April 2011

Pigs are social animals and prefer to live in family groups or herds of up to 10 individuals: photo by Mercy for Animals, 25 April 2011

Pig, SASHA Farm Sanctuary, Manchester, Michigan: photo by Mercy for Animals, 29 May 2010

Pig, SASHA Farm Sanctuary, Manchester, Michigan: photo by Mercy for Animals, 29 May 2010

Pigs, SASHA Farm Sanctuary, Manchester, Michigan: photo by Mercy for Animals, 29 May 2010

Karmic blast from past

I once knew a poet whose custom was to begin the day with a breakfast of bacon. One morning I was visiting him while the bacon strips were sizzling away on the frying pan in the next room. Moments later, the stove exploded.

 

-- Fulano Tal

Farrowing, wide view. The farrowing crates confine the sows so tightly that they can only take one step backwards or forward: photo by Mercy for Animals, November 2009

Farrowing, lame. This injured sow, with the word "lame" sprayed on her back, was left to suffer in a tiny crate: photo by Mercy for Animals, November 

Farrowing, manure. Manure coats the inside of the farrowing crate: photo by Mercy for Animals, November 2009

Injuries, torn face 2. The face of this piglet was nearly torn off: photo by Mercy for Animals, November 2009

Death Piglet Crate. A dead piglet lies on the floor of a farrowing crate: photo by Mercy for Animals, November 2009

Gassing 1. Rather than being treated by a veterinarian, sick or injured piglets are killed in the gassing chamber: photo by Mercy for Animals, November 2009

 

Death Pile. In factory farming environments, premature death is all too common: photo by Mercy for Animals, November 2009

Death Bucket. Piles of piglets’ bodies are a visual testament to the cruel and violent nature of pork production: photo by Mercy for Animals, November 2009

Death Hall. Dead animals litter the factory farm sheds: photo by Mercy for Animals, November 2009

 

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 16 May 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 14 May 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 13 May 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 13 May 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 14 May 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 14 May 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 16 May 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 23 May 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 28 May 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 1 June 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 2 June 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 2 June 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 2 June 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 6 June 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 13 May 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 23 May 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 27 May 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 27 May 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 30 May 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 30 May 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 30 May 2011

Untitled [Animal cruelty at Iowa Select Farms]: photo by Mercy for Animals, 13 May 2011

A domestic sow and her piglet: photo by Scott Bauer, 2007 (U.S. Department of Agriculture)

Philip Larkin: The Beats: A Few Simple Words

October 11, 2014, 12:17 pm

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 "One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple." -- #Jack Kerouac: image by Kam Bain @kam_bain, 15 October 2013

Now one must clear one’s mind of cant and admit, firstly, that everyone is free to live as he likes as far as society will let him; secondly, that other people besides Angel Dan Davies enjoy poetry, jazz and sex; and thirdly that, appalling as it would be to have Itchy Dave Gelden coming in one’s door ‘fidgeting and scratching his crotch’ (‘Hi, what’s cookin’? Are we gonna blow some poetry, maybe?’), he would probably be no worse than a guardee subaltern talking about Buck House, or your father-in-law telling you how his new golf clubs cost more but aren’t as good as his old ones. Other people are Hell (I have never seen why Sartre should have been praised for inverting and falsifying this truism), and the self-important spongers of Venice no more so than the rest. But Mr Lipton’s point is that they are a lot less so.

Philip Larkin (1922-1985): Carnival in Venice (excerpt), a review of Lawrence Lipton: The Holy Barbarians, in The Spectator, 1960, reprinted in Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces, 1955-1982, 1983

Philip Larkin and friend, 1964: photo courtesy of The Estate of Philip Larkin 

for Aram Saroyan

Wislawa Szymborska: Hatred (It almost makes you have to look away)

October 12, 2014, 1:52 am

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St John Altarpiece (detail): Rogier van der Weyden, 1455-60, oil on oak panel (Staatliche Museen, Berlin)

See how efficient it still is,
how it keeps itself in shape --
our century's hatred.
How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles.
How easily it pounces, tracks us down.

It's not like other feelings.
At once both older and younger.
It gives birth itself to the reasons
that give it life.
When it sleeps, it's never eternal rest.
And sleeplessness won't sap its strength; it feeds it.

One religion or another --
whatever gets it ready, in position.
One fatherland or another --
whatever helps it get a running start.
Justice also works well at the outset
until hate gets its own momentum going.
Hatred. Hatred.
Its face twisted in grimace
of erotic ecstasy.

The Last Judgment (detail): Rogier van der Weyden, 1446-52, oil on wood (Musée de l'Hôtel Dieu, Beaune) 

Oh these other feelings,
listless weaklings.
Since when does brotherhood
draw crowds?
Has compassion
ever finished first?
Does doubt ever really rouse the rabble?
Only hatred's got just what it takes.

Gifted, diligent, hard-working.
Need we mention all the songs it has composed?
All the pages it has added to our history books?
All the human carpets it has spread
over countless city squares and football fields?

The Last Judgment (detail): Rogier van der Weyden, 1446-52, oil on wood (Musée de l'Hôtel Dieu, Beaune)

Let's face it:
it knows how to make beauty.
The splendid fires' glow in midnight skies.
Magnificent bursting bombs in rosy dawns.
You can't deny the inspiring pathos of ruins
and a certain bawdy humor to be found
in the sturdy column jutting from their midst.

Hatred is a master of contrast:
between explosions and dead quiet,
red blood and white snow.
Above all it never tires
of its leitmotif -- impeccable executioner
towering over his soiled victim.

It's always ready for new challenges.
If it has to wait a while, it will.
They say it's blind. Blind?
It's got a sniper's keen sight
and gazes unflinchingly at the future
as only it can.

Wislawa Szymborska: Hatred, translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak in View with a Grain of Sand, 1995

St John Altarpiece (right panel): Rogier van der Weyden, 1455-60, oil on oak panel, 77 x 48 cm (Staatliche Museen, Berlin)

Wharf

October 13, 2014, 2:27 am

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Biohazard drum out front of apartment complex. A nurse who lived here tested positive for #ebola: image via Chris Graczyk 13@PhotogChris, 12 October 2014

Under the streetlight, a haze

bugs aswirl

souls swarming on the shore of the river

of the underworld

Blame game begins in US medical community after nurse infected with #Ebola: image via RT America @ RT_America, 12 October 2014

OMS: Mortes por #ebola superam 4 mil: photo by EPA via BBC Brasil @bbcbrasil, 10 October 2014

Stretching It

October 14, 2014, 1:00 am

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Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) stretching in his enclosure, Zurich Zoo: photo by Tamako the Tiger, 1 November 2013

When you are having a philosophical conversation with someone and they are not able to think outside the box... you'd like to encourage them to think about it.

He's rounding second. Time slows down. Everything seems so far away. The image on the screen is frozen.

"Stretch it out!"

"A face only covers a skull awhile, so stretch that skull cover and smile!"

"Get two!"

This is by some called, the ghost of wit, delighting to ambulate after the death of its body.

And to say the truth, there seems to be no part of knowledge in fewer hands, than that of discerning when to have done.

A stretch. That's what it was always going to be.

Arctic Fox (Vulpes lagopus) stretching, Cincinnati Zoo: photo by Mark Dumont, 27 December 2013

"It's only the sixth. Why are you standing up?"
 

"All those other guys are doing it."
 

There were no promises. Things would happen as they happened.

I never expected to get thrown out at third.

By the way, have I told you? I am trying an experiment very frequent among recent authors, which is to write upon nothing, and when the subject is utterly exhausted, to let the pen, locked within the withered, knobbly digits, still move on, leaving its litter of semi-legible marks scattered across the virgin snows of the notebook page.

I didn't lie, either, I was only stretching the truth.I didn't know the guy had a gun for an arm.

#Ferguson protesters now marching around stadium upper level with hands up: photo via Benjamin Boyd @benjaminhboyd, 13 October 2014

Storm damage at The Orchards Belleville [Illinois]; photo by David Carson @PDJP, 13 October 2014

From inside police van on my way to processing. This is what democracy looks like in America circa 2014: photo via Rev. Alvin Herring @Alvin4Community, 13 October 2014


WOW! Waterspout this Saturday that prompted a prompted tornado warning in Pierce County, Washington: photo by Teresa Cox via Mark Tarello @mark_tarello, 11 October 2014

After the Whirlwind

October 15, 2014, 3:16 pm

≫ Next: Rainer Maria Rilke: Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes -- she was already lost

≪ Previous: Stretching It

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Parkour In Gaza War Zone: image via Dr. Belal Dabour - Gaza @Belalmd12, 3 October 2014

School girls do morning exercises in their damaged school during the first day of school in #Gaza @ahmedrawhi1: image via Dr Belal Dabour - Gaza @Belalmd12, 14 September 2014

A boat filled with Palestinian and Syrian immigrants sank and immigrants drowned near Alexandria, #Egypt, reports of numerous Gazans dead: image via Dr Belal Dabour - Gaza @Belalmd12, 13 September 2014

 
Mosque after bombing in Shijaia neighborhood: image via Dr Belal Dabour - Gaza @Belalmd12, 1 September 2014



Existence is resistance and survival is victory. Gaza has decided it has won: image via Dr Belal Dabour - Gaza @Belalmd12, 29 August 2014

Palestinian students attend the second day of school in a quarter of the Shujaiya neighborhood east of Gaza City: photo by Anne Paq / Actve Stills, 15 September. 2014

 
A Palestinian woman inspects her house which was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike during this summer’s seven-week offensive in the east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip: photo by Abed Rahim Khatib / APA images, 13 September 2014

Palestinians inspect their farmland east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, near the boundary with Israel. The land was damaged during Israel’s massive summer assault on Gaza: photo by Abed Rahim Khatib / APA images, 2 September 2014
 

#UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says the destruction in #Gaza is “beyond description": image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 14 October 2014

Ban Ki-Moon: Gaza is a source of shame to the international community

UN chief visits under tight security to view destruction from the 50-day conflict and demand justice for shelling of UN facilities

Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem and Hazem Balousha in Gaza, The Guardian, Tuesday 14 October

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, described the destruction in Gaza from the recent conflict with Israel as “beyond description” and a source of “shame to the international community” as he visited the war-devastated coastal strip on Tuesday.

“I am here with a heavy heart,” Ban told a press conference. “The destruction which I have seen coming here is beyond description,” he added.

Ban said the damage was far worse than what he had seen after the previous conflict –- Operation Cast Lead –- that took place in 2008-09.

The UN chief was driven through the ruins of Gaza City’s Shuja’iya neighbourhood and visited a school in nearby Jabaliya refugee camp, scenes of some of the heaviest Israeli shelling in this summer’s conflict.

Two classrooms at the UN school were hit by shells, killing at least 14 people sheltering there. Relatives of the dead held up posters showing their loved ones, while waiting to catch a glimpse of the UN head.

Ban saved his strongest language for the deaths of about 500 children during the war. “I met so many of the beautiful children of Gaza. More than 500 were killed in the fighting -– many more were wounded. What did they do wrong? Being born in Gaza is not a crime.”

The war is still in #Gaza kids' minds and thoughts. The drawing by a child I met today in beach refugee camp: image via Hazem Balousha @HaZeMi, 20 September 2014

School year has started today in #Gaza after 3 weeks of delay due to the impacts of 50 days war: image via Hazem Balousha @HaZeMi, 13 September 2014

Mobile temporary houses for displaced Palestinians in Khuzaa, east of Khan Younis #Gaza: image via Hazem Balousha @HaZeMi, 13 September 2014

Very cool beach in #Gaza, but the politics is boiling: image via Hazem Balousha @HaZeMi, 10 September 2014

Eid in #GazaChildren play, enjoy & celebrate amongst the rubble, surrounding their homes, schools, land and rights!: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 15 September 2014

Eid in #GazaChildren play, enjoy & celebrate amongst the rubble, surrounding their homes, schools, land and rights!: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 15 September 2014

Eid in #GazaChildren play, enjoy & celebrate amongst the rubble, surrounding their homes, schools, land and rights!: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 15 September 2014

Barely hold my tears when he was telling me how scared he was when gunboats targeted them & killed his relatives #Gaza: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 3 October 2010

Do you remember him from that day? Working on psychological therapy for him and other kids With Almezan Loving them!: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 3 October 2014

During our psychological therapy for the children, we asked them to point where they are still feeling pain the result was...: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 23 September 2014

During our psychological therapy for the children, we asked them to point where they are still feeling pain the result was...: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 23 September 2014



During our psychological therapy for the children, we asked them to point where they are still feeling pain the result was...: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 23 September 2014

Fighting for survival at #Gaza's zoo attacked by #Israel. 86 animals died and 20 survived the deadly attacks. @Alraypsen: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 22 September 2014

Fighting for survival at #Gaza's zoo attacked by #Israel. 86 animals died and 20 survived the deadly attacks. @Alraypsen: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 22 September 2014

Fighting for survival at #Gaza's zoo attacked by #Israel. 86 animals died and 20 survived the deadly attacks. @Alraypsen: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 22 September 2014

Fighting for survival at #Gaza's zoo attacked by #Israel. 86 animals died and 20 survived the deadly attacks. @Alraypsen: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 22 September 2014

Sunset in #Gaza...: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 12 September 2014

 #UNRWA school buildings, every 5th building in #Gaza is now a shelter for 63K+ displaced people: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 12 September 2014

A boy walks on the debris of his family's bombed house in #Gaza: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 7 September 2014

Despite ceasefire, the number of displaced in Gaza is rising again: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 5 September 2014

When school starts in #Gaza students will miss their friends beside them as they were killed during the aggression: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 2 September 2014

 Even kindergartens in #Gaza were targeted during the last #Israeli aggression #FreePalestine: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 7 September 2014

Killed in #Gaza: 1 principal, 4 teachers and 2 guards at UN schools; 22 Education Ministry employees: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 7 September 2014



This is what schools in #Gaza look like #FreePalestine: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 5 September 2014

Good morning from #Gaza 1 in 4 (475k) are displaced 338k are taking shelter in schools 100k are homeless: image via Dr Bassel Abu Warda @DrBaselAbuwarda via @UNICEFPalestine, 28 August 2014

School started in Gaza vs School in Israel: Don't all children deserve the same chances of a future?@ayaztaj1 #Gaza: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 15 September 2014

School started in Gaza vs School in Israel: Don't all children deserve the same chances of a future?@ayaztaj1 #Gaza: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 15 September 2014



School started in Gaza vs School in Israel: Don't all children deserve the same chances of a future?@ayaztaj1 #Gaza: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 15 September 2014

Remember her? injured during the aggression on #Gaza Now she is fully recovered AT LEAST PHYSICALLY and attending school: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 15 September 2014

 This is what schools look like in #Gaza now: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 15 September 2014

This is what schools look like in #Gaza now: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 15 September 2014

First day at school in #Gaza children crying as it's the first time for them without their family and friends being around: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 14 September 2014



First day at school in #Gaza children crying as it's the first time for them without their family and friends being around: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 14 September 2014

First day at school in #Gaza children crying as it's the first time for them without their family and friends being around: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 14 September 2014

45 kids have left #Gaza without any companions (no parents, no relatives) to receive treatment in #Germany Pray for them: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 9 September 2014

 Don't be afraid/disgusted This isn't movie effects. This is what Israel has done to #Gaza's kids. THIS BROKE MY HEART: image via Dr Bassel AbuWarda @DrBaselAbuwarda, 9 September 2014

Rainer Maria Rilke: Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes -- she was already lost

October 17, 2014, 2:12 am

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The daughter of an Ebola victim grieves, Monrovia, Liberia: photo by Marcos DiPaola / Nur Photo / Rex  via The Guardian, 16 October 2014

Sie war schon aufgelöst wie langes Haar
und hingegeben wie gefallner Regen
und ausgeteilt wie hundertfacher Vorrat.
 
Sie war schon Wurzel.
 
Und als plötzlich jäh
der Gott sie anhielt und mit Schmerz im Ausruf
die Worte sprach: Er hat sich umgewendet -,
begriff sie nichts und sagte leise: Wer?
 
Fern aber, dunkel vor dem klaren Ausgang,
stand irgend jemand, dessen Angesicht
nicht zu erkennen war. Er stand und sah,
wie auf dem Streifen eines Wiesenpfades
mit trauervollem Blick der Gott der Botschaft
sich schweigend wandte, der Gestalt zu folgen,
die schon zurückging dieses selben Weges
den Schritt beschränkt von langen Leichenbändern,
unsicher, sanft und ohne Ungeduld.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926): Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes, 1904, aus Neue Gedichte (1907) 

Mercy Kennedy, 9, cries, a day after her mother died of Ebola. She was among a cluster of residents in Monrovia, Liberia, that included Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man admitted to a Dallas as the first Ebola case in the United States: photo by Jerome Delay / Associated Press, 2 October 2014

 Mercy Kennedy, 9, cries as she learns her mother has died, outside her home in Monrovia, Liberia. Kennedy's mother was taken away by an ambulance to an Ebola ward the day before: photo by Jerome Delay / Associated Press, 2 October 2014

The shoes of a suspected Ebola patient are seen after being cordoned off with stones by local residents in Freetown, Sierra Leone: photo by Michael Duff / Associated Press, 24 September 2014

Monrovia, Liberia. A woman throws a handful of soil towards the body of her sister as Ebola burial team members take her for cremation: photo by John Moore/Getty Images via the Guardian, 13 October 2014

She was already loosened like long hair,
poured out like fallen rain,
shared like a limitless supply.

She was already root.

And when, abruptly,
the god put out his hand to stop her, saying,
with sorrow in his voice: He has turned around--, 
she could not understand, and softly answered
Who?

                Far away,
dark before the shining exit-gates,
someone or other stood, whose features were
unrecognizable. He stood and saw
how, on the strip of road among the meadows,
with a mournful look, the god of messages
silently turned to follow the small figure
already walking back along the path,
her steps constricted by the trailing graveclothes,
uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926): from Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes, 1904, in New Poems (1907), translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell 

 

A police officer patrols an empty street in Freetown during a three-day, nationwide curfew in Sierra Leone. Health workers were going door to door, educating about Ebola and looking for patients: photo by Tanya Bindra / European Pressphoto Agency, 27 September 2014

 Bystanders listen to a street preacher calling on people to raise their hands and "Wave Ebola Bye Bye" in Monrovia, Liberia: photo by Jerome Delay / Associated Press, 27 September 2014

Doctors Without Borders staff wearing protective suits burn waste at the organization's  Donka Ebola management centre in Conakry, Guinea. Waste material is incinerated every night to prevent infection, since no object that cannot be chlorinated is allowed to leave the medical facility's high risk zone. Conakry, the first major city to be affected by the Ebola outbreak, is currently seeing a massive spike in cases. Doctors Without Borders says it is now caring for more than 120 patients in its two facilities in Guinea. The Donka Ebola management centre, situated inside the Ministry of Health hospital complex in Conakry, has been particularly badly affected. The facility admitted 22 patients in one day (6 October), 18 of them coming from the Coyah region, 50 kilometres east of Conakry.: photo by Julien Rey / Courtesy Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders, 9 October 1014

  Member of a Red Cross burial team, Monrovia, Liberia: photo by Marcos DiPaola / Nur Photo / Rex  via The Guardian, 16 October 2014

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Out of Africa: Gorilla Happiness, while there's still time

October 19, 2014, 5:01 pm

≫ Next: Sophocles: Oedipus the King: On the shore of the god of evening (The chorus prays for deliverance from the epidemic)

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 Western Lowland Gorilla brothers Kesho and Alf are reunited at Longleat Safari Park, Wiltshire, after three years apart. Native to central Africa, Western Lowland Gorillas are threatened by hunting and the Ebola virus. The surviving population is classified as "Critically Endangered" on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: photo by Ian Turner/BNPS, 16 August 2012

Kesho, age 13, and Alf, age 9, were born at Dublin Zoo, but separated when Kesho was sent to London Zoo to take part in a breeding program. When he proved infertile, it was decided to reunite the animals: photo by Ian Turner/BNPS, 16 August 2012

Longleat keeper Mark Tye: "The keepers from Dublin weren't entirely sure the brothers would even know each other, but the moment they met you could just see the recognition in their eyes...": photo by Ian Turner/BNPS, 16 August 2012



"...We had been slightly concerned how they would react to each other and whether the big brother could put up with little Alf's playfulness...": photo by Ian Turner/BNPS, 16 August 2012

"However they have formed a really tight bond in just a few weeks...": photo by Ian Turner/BNPS, 16 August 2012

"...Kesho is actually incredibly tolerant; allowing both Alf and six-year-old Evindi to jump all over him.": photo by Ian Turner/BNPS, 16 August 2012

"What you're seeing is exactly what you think you're seeing. Two intelligent social mammals, who were separate, are pleased to see each other again and play together. It is gorilla joy, being reunited with someone you used to have good times with and now you can again, so it's gorilla happiness.": photo by Ian Turner/BNPS, 16 August 2012

Insights into human evolution from the gorilla genome sequence

Humans share many elements of their anatomy and physiology with both gorillas and chimpanzees, and our similarity to these species was emphasized by Darwin and Huxley in the first evolutionary accounts of human origins. Molecular studies confirmed that we are closer to the African apes than to orang-utans, and on average closer to chimpanzees than gorillas. Subsequent analyses have explored functional differences between the great apes and their relevance to human evolution, assisted recently by reference genome sequences for chimpanzee and orang-utan.

Gorillas are humans’ closest living relatives after chimpanzees, and are of comparable importance for the study of human origins and evolution. Here we present the assembly and analysis of a genome sequence for the western lowland gorilla, and compare the whole genomes of all extant great ape genera. We propose a synthesis of genetic and fossil evidence consistent with placing the human–chimpanzee and human–chimpanzee–gorilla speciation events at approximately 6 and 10 million years ago. In 30% of the genome, gorilla is closer to human or chimpanzee than the latter are to each other; this is rarer around coding genes, indicating pervasive selection throughout great ape evolution, and has functional consequences in gene expression. A comparison of protein coding genes reveals approximately 500 genes showing accelerated evolution on each of the gorilla, human and chimpanzee lineages, and evidence for parallel acceleration, particularly of genes involved in hearing.

Insights into human evolution from the gorilla genome sequence (from Introduction and Abstract): Aylwyn Scally et al., Nature 883, 8 March 2012

The first full genome analysis has revealed that 30% of gorillas' genetic makeup is closer to human or chimpanzee than the latter are to each other: photo by Luanne Cadd via The Guardian, 7 March 2012

Gorilla genome analysis reveals new human links
First full sequence of gorilla genome shows 96% share with humans, with close parallels in sensory perception and hearing: Alok Jha, science correspondent, The Guardian, 7 March 2012

Humans and gorillas last shared a common ancestor 10 million years ago, according to an analysis of the first full sequence of the gorilla genome. The gorilla is the last of the living great apes –- humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans -– to have its complete genetic sequence catalogued.

Scientists, led by researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, also found that 15% of the gorilla's genome is closer between humans and gorillas than it is between humans and chimpanzees, our closest animal relative. The genomes of all three species are, in any case, highly similar: humans and chimpanzees share more than 98% of their genes, while humans and gorillas share more than 96%.

The genetic sequence was taken from a female western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) named Kamilah and published in Nature.

An initial analysis also showed similarities in genes involved in sensory perception and hearing, and brain development showed accelerated evolution in all three species. Genes associated with proteins that harden up skin were also particularly active in gorillas -– which goes some way to explaining the large, tough knuckle pads on gorillas' hands.

"Gorillas are an interesting animal in their own right but the main reason they are of particular interest is because of their evolutionary closeness to us," said Aylwyn Scally, an author of the research from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. "They're our second-closest evolutionary cousins after chimpanzees and knowing the content of the gorilla genome enables us to say quite a lot about an important period in human evolution when we were diverging from chimpanzees."

Comparing the sequences of humans, chimpanzees and gorillas has enabled scientists to put a more accurate clock on when the three species split from their last common ancestors. It was traditionally thought that the emergence of new species (known as "speciation") happens at a relatively localised point in time but emerging evidence suggests that this is not necessarily the case, that species split over an extended period. 

Studying the gorilla genome suggests that the divergence of gorillas from the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees happened around 10 million years ago. Humans and chimpanzees last shared a common ancestor around 6 million years ago. Eastern and western gorillas split some time in the last million years.

First-time mother Mjukuu, a western lowland gorilla with her newly born male baby –- the first gorilla to be born there in 20 years -– resting on straw in an enclosure at the London zoo: photo by Iona Stewart/AP via the Guardian, 29 October 2010

One curious find was the evolution of genes associated with hearing, which seem very similar between humans and gorillas. "Scientists had suggested that the rapid evolution of human hearing genes was linked to the evolution of language," said Chris Tyler-Smith, senior author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. "Our results cast doubt on this, as hearing genes have evolved in gorillas at a similar rate to those in humans."

Scally adds that it could well be that there has been a parallel acceleration in these genes for two entirely different reasons –- that human hearing has developed because of speech and gorilla hearing has developed to serve an entirely different, but as-yet-unknown, purpose.

The researchers said that studying the gorilla genome would shed light on a time when apes were fighting for survival across the world.

"There's an interesting background story of great ape evolution," says Scally. "The common ancestor of all four great apes was sometime back in 15 to 20 million years ago. At that time, it seems to have been a nice time to have been an ape -– it was a golden age -– a lot of the world was just right for the kind of environment for apes to live in. Since that time, the story has been of fragmentation and extinction –- most of the great ape species that have existed have gone. Today, all the non-human apes are really endangered populations, they're living in forest refuges and population numbers are quite low. Humans look like an exception to that -– we're all over the world now and live in places where you could never have had a primate beforehand."

Today, gorillas are classified as critically endangered and populations have plummeted to below 100,000 individuals in recent decades due to poaching and disease. They are restricted to equatorial forests in countries including Cameroon, Central African Republic, Gabon, Nigeria, Republic of Congo and Angola.

"As well as teaching us about human evolution, the study of great apes connects us to a time when our existence was more tenuous," say the researchers in Nature. "And in doing so, highlights the importance of protecting and conserving these remarkable species."

 
Fourteen months after his arrival at the park, Alf stunned keepers when he scaled a 40-foot oak tree in search of acorns: photo by BNPS, 23 October 2013

After foraging around in the grass at the foot of the oak tree, Alf gazes skywards at the bounty of acorns hanging above his head: photo by BNPS, 23 October 2013
 

He carefully tests each branch to check if it can bear his 17-stone weight: photo by BNPS, 23 October 2013
 

  Looking on from far below as he climbed, Alf's bemused older brothers Evindi, seven, and 14-year-old silverback Kesho kept their feet firmly rooted to the ground. Keeper Mark Tye: "Alf has always been the more adventurous of the brothers and he also seems to be the most fearless. We’re not entirely sure why he felt the need to climb up quite so high to collect the acorns as there were plenty lying on the ground but perhaps he was looking for a bit of peace and quiet and knew the others weren’t going to join him. Although the branches look quite delicate, Alf is a very smart gorilla and he carefully tested them before venturing out along them.": photo by BNPS, 23 October 2013
 

 Alf's perseverance rewarded with a feast of autumnal acorns. A park spokesman: "Naturally gorillas forage for their food, for whatever is around, be it nuts or fruit. They are good climbers but don't normally climb that high. Alf clearly has a head for heights. He is a bit of a daredevil.": photo by BNPS, 23 October 2013

 

Perched  high in the tree, Alf tucks into his well-earned snack: photo by BNPS, 23 October 2013

Ebola Outbreak Killed 5000 Gorillas: Magdalena Bernejo, José Domingo Rodriguez-Teijeiro, Alex Barroso, Carlos Vilà, Peter D. Walsh, Science 314, 8 December 2006 (Abstract)
 

Over the past decade, the Zaire strain of Ebola virus (ZEBOV) has repeatedly emerged in Gabon and Congo. Each human outbreak has been accompanied by reports of gorilla and chimpanzee carcasses in neighboring forests, but both the extent of ape mortality and the causal role of ZEBOV have been hotly debated. Here, we present data suggesting that in 2002 and 2003 ZEBOV killed about 5000 gorillas in our study area. The lag between neighboring gorilla groups in mortality onset was close to the ZEBOV disease cycle length, evidence that group-to-group transmission has amplified gorilla die-offs.

Over the past decade, the Zaire strain of Ebola virus (ZEBOV) has emerged repeatedly in Gabon and Congo. During each human outbreak, carcasses of western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have been found in neighboring forests. Opinions have differed as to the conservation implications. Were these isolated mortality events of limited impact? Was ZEBOV even the cause? Or, were they part of a massive die-off that threatens the very survival of these species? Here, we report observations made at the Lossi Sanctuary in northwest Republic of Congo, where ZEBOV was the confirmed cause of ape die-offs in 2002 and 2003. Our results strongly support the massive die-off scenario, with gorilla mortality rates of 90 to 95% indicated both by observations on 238 gorillas in known social groups and by nest surveys covering almost 5000 km². ZEBOV killed about 5000 gorillas in our study area alone.

Starting in 1995, we habituated gorillas to our presence, and by 2002 we had identified 10 social groups with 143 individuals. In late 2001 and early 2002, human outbreaks of ZEBOV had flared up along the Gabon-Congo border. In June 2002, a gorilla carcass was found 15 km west of the sanctuary. By October, gorilla and chimpanzee carcasses began appearing inside the sanctuary. In the next 4 months, we found 32 carcasses. Twelve of the carcasses were assayed for ZEBOV, and 9 tested positive. From October 2002 to January 2003, 91% (130/143) of the individually known gorillas in our study groups had disappeared.

In June 2003, one fresh carcass appeared south of the sanctuary. In September, we identified seven new social groups with home ranges straddling and to the east of the two rivers and monitored their sleeping nests on a biweekly basis. Then in October carcasses again appeared within the sanctuary. Ten carcasses were found in the following 3 months. From October 2003 to January 2004, Ebola spread sequentially from north to south, killing 91 of the 95 individuals (95.8%) in the newly monitored groups. One remarkable feature of this spread was that the onset of ZEBOV deaths in each group was predicted by the number of home ranges separating it from the first group to experience deaths. In particular, the estimated time lag between deaths in successive groups (11.2 days) was very similar to the typical length of the ZEBOV disease cycle of about 12 days. Assuming deaths were caused by spillover from a north-south reservoir epizootic did not fit the mortality pattern well. This implies that recent ape die-offs may not have been caused only by massive spillover from a reservoir host. Rather, group-to-group transmission may have also played a role in amplifying outbreaks, as transmission within gorilla groups apparently has.

Peter D. Walsh with friend: photo via Peter D. Walsh@ApesInc, 2014

Peter D. Walsh @ApesInc - Jul 30

In the last thirty years Ebola has killed at least 10 times as many gorillas as humans

Peter D. Walsh with friend: photo via Peter D. Walsh@ApesInc, 2014

Peter D. Walsh @ApesInc - Oct 17

Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project advocates vaccinating wild gorillas against #Ebola. Wish I had thought of that first! Oh, yeah. I did...

Adult Silverback Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla): photo by Raul654, 2005

Gorilla gorilla ssp. gorilla: from The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (P.D. Walsh et al., 19 October 2014)

There are two primary drivers of rapid western lowland gorilla decline: commercial hunting and the Ebola virus. Until the early 1980s, the interior of western lowland gorilla range included a series of vast, road-less blocks of forest where hunting access was extremely difficult and gorilla densities were high. Since then improvements in transportation infrastructure, devaluation of the regional currency, declining oil stocks, and timber depletion in other tropical regions have led to an explosion in mechanized logging. Regional timber production nearly doubled between 1991 and 2000 (Minnemeyer et al. 2002). Vast tracts of previously inaccessible forest have recently been penetrated by logging roads, which provide commercial hunters ready access to remote areas with high ape densities, and to markets. Logging vehicles are also used to transport bushmeat, and logging employees eat more bushmeat than do local villagers. The gorillas’ very low reproductive rates (3% maximum observed rate of population increase, Steklis and Gerald-Steklis 2001) mean that even low levels of hunting are enough to cause population decline. Consequently, the logging boom has caused a rapid crash in gorilla numbers. For example, Gabon experienced an estimated 56% decline in ape abundance from 1983 to 2000, most of which was attributed to hunting (Walsh et al. 2005). Given that Gabon is the least heavily human populated country in the region, hunting impact is likely as high or higher in other range states. The threat posed by logging promises to continue and even intensify in the foreseeable future. Rates of timber production in the region are increasing (Minnemeyer et al. 2002), in the case of Gabon exponentially. Profits in the industry are derived largely through exploitation of previously unlogged areas rather than sustainable harvesting in older concessions. The current trajectory predicts that the last remaining tracts of inaccessible forest will be opened to logging in the next 10 to 20 years. The second major driver of rapid gorilla decline is disease, specifically the Ebola virus. Since the early 1990s, Ebola has caused a series of massive gorilla and chimpanzee die-offs in remote forest blocks at the heart of their range. Outbreaks were first noted in 1994 in the Minkébé forest block of northern Gabon (Huijbregts et al. 2003). Before Ebola’s arrival, what is now Minkébé National Park held what was probably the second largest protected gorilla and chimpanzee population in the world. In 1996 Ebola emerged in the Lopé Reserve (now National Park) in central Gabon, in 2001 in the Mwagné forest block of eastern Gabon, in 2002 to 2003 in the adjoining Lossi forest block of north-west Congo, and in 2003 to 2005 in the Odzala National Park in north-west Congo. The Ivindo forest block of central Gabon was not monitored during the outbreak period, but it lies directly adjacent to the 1996 human outbreak zone around Booué and recent observations suggest an ape die-off there too. Both phylogenetic analyses of the Ebola virus genome and analyses of the spatio-temporal pattern of outbreaks in humans and wild apes (Walsh et al. 2005, Lahm et al. 2006) suggest that these outbreaks were not isolated events but part of a spreading epizootic of Ebola in its reservoir host (probably bats, Leroy et al. 2005). Moving at about 40 to 45 km/year, this epizootic has for the last decade spread in an east/north-easterly direction across the region. Although continued spread is not guaranteed, the epizootic’s past spread rate has been highly consistent, making it possible to accurately predict the timing of the Odzala die-off well before it occurred (Walsh et al. 2003, 2005). During Ebola outbreaks, gorilla mortality rates have been extremely high. During three different outbreaks at two different study sites, individually known social groups containing almost 600 gorillas were monitored. In all three outbreaks about 95% of known individuals died (Caillaud et al. 2006, Bermejo et al. 2007). Higher survival rates amongst solitary individuals suggest that most of the remaining 5% may be individuals who were never infected rather than resistant survivors (Caillaud et al. 2006). Nest surveys at four different sites exhibit an “all or none” pattern of Ebola impact. Areas of 10,000 km² or more showing 95% declines in abundance transition abruptly into areas with little or no mortality (Bermejo et al. 2007, WCS and Government of Congo MEF unpublished data). These low ape densities are not reasonably attributed to hunting pressure as most of the remote survey zones had high ape densities just a few years before the declines were detected and because densities of other preferred target species (e.g., elephants and duiker) were still high after the Ebola outbreaks (Walsh et al. 2003, Bermejo et al. 2007). The proportion of habitat in the 95% mortality class varied amongst outbreak sites, from little or none at Lopé to the entire Mwagné survey zone. In Odzala National Park, which held what were by far the largest protected populations of gorillas and chimpanzees in the world, the outbreak zone covered about 58% of the park. In the Lossi and Odzala zones, extensive survey data allowed a fairly precise mapping of outbreak and non-outbreak zones. Therefore, the number presented for these two zones is based on the proportion of the survey zone in each outbreak class (Outbrk vs. NonOutbrk) and the assumption of 95% mortality in outbreak areas. This approach was not possible for the Mwagné and Minkébé sites where virtually the entire populations were wiped out, or for the Ivindo site where survey intensity was not high enough to precisely map outbreak and non-outbreak zones. For these sites, nest encounter rates for surveys conducted before Ebola emergence are compared with nest encounter rates after Ebola emergence (Pre-Ebola vs. Post-Ebola). No attempt was made to estimate % decline for Lopé because it was the only zone to be logged before Ebola arrival and the only area in which a substantial proportion of the survey zone has experienced high rates of hunting. This makes it difficult to discriminate Ebola impact from hunting impact. Therefore, for the purposes of this analysis, Ebola is assumed to have had zero impact at Lopé. Estimated declines in gorilla abundance for the five zones for which estimates have been made range from 56% at Odzala to more than 95% at Mwagné and Minkébé. When decline rates are averaged across all six zones (with the contribution of each zone weighted by its surface area) the mean decline is 74% . The assumption of zero impact at Lopé has a conservative effect on this mean value. These six protected areas account for 45% of the total protected area habitat (67,250 km²) in which significant western lowland gorilla populations were found before Ebola emergence. If we assume that all major protected areas had the same pre-Ebola density, this implies that 33% of the total protected area population of western lowland gorilla (100*(0.45*0.26+0.55*1) = 33%) has been killed by Ebola just over the last 13 to 14 years. This estimate is highly conservative in that pre-Ebola density estimates for protected areas with Ebola impact were typically much higher than for protected areas without recorded Ebola impact. If the Ebola epizootic continues at the same rate and trajectory, it could reach most of the remaining protected areas with large populations of western lowland gorillas within the next 5 to 10 years... Walsh, P.D., Tutin, C.E.G., Baillie, J.E.M., Maisels, F., Stokes, E.J. & Gatti, S. 2008. Gorilla gorilla ssp. gorilla. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2014.2, 19 October 2014.

Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), Republic of the Congo: photo by Pierre Fidenci, September 2008

Western Lowland Gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), Odzala-Kokoua National Park, Republic of the Congo: photo © Céline Genton, 2009 via LiveScience, 18 June 2012

Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla): photo © Richard Carroll / WWF-US  via WWF

Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla): photo © Martin Harvey / WWF-Canon via WWF

Sophocles: Oedipus the King: On the shore of the god of evening (The chorus prays for deliverance from the epidemic)

October 21, 2014, 1:07 am

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#Ebola what get when 2b people live on < $2/day, wantonly destroy #rainforest as eat bushmeat, nations wage perma-war: image via Rainforest News @El_Rainforest, 19 October 2014

Chorus

Now our afflictions have no end,

Now all our stricken host lies down

And no man fights off death with his mind,

The noble plowman bears no grain,

And groaning mothers cannot bear --

See, how our lives like birds take wing,

Like sparks that fly when a fire soars,

To the shore of the god of evening.

The plague burns on, it is pitiless

Though pallid children laden with death

Lie unwept in the stony ways,

And old grey women by every path

Flock to the strand about the altars

There to strike their breasts and cry

Worship of Phoibos in wailing prayers:

Be kind, God's golden child!

There are no swords in this attack by fire,

No shields, but we are ringed with cries.

Send the besieger plunging from our homes

Into the vast sea-room of the Atlantic

Or into the waves that foam eastward of Thrace --

For the day ravages what the night spares --

Destroy our enemy, lord of the thunder!

Let him be riven by lightning from heaven!

Phoibos Apollo, stretch the sun's bowstring,

That golden cord, until it sing for us,

Flashing arrows in heaven!

................................Artemis, Huntress,

Race with flaring lights upon our mountains!

O scarlet god, O golden-banded brow,

O Theban Bacchos in a swarm of Maenads, 

......................................................[enter Oedipus]

Whirl upon Death, that all the Undying hate!

Come with blinding torches, come in joy!

Sophocles (497/496 BCE-winter 406/5 BCE): Oedipus Tyrannus (premiered c. 229 BCE), ll. 169-215, translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, in Sophocles, Oedipus Rex: An English Version (1951)

#Ebola Is Ecosystem Collapse, Need More Doctors & Quarantined Hospital Beds NOW. Alternatives to 2 billion w/ $1.50/day as 300 people as much wealth as half of planet: image via Ebola Newsfeed @El_Ebola, 19 October 2014

A lethal zoonotic epidemic that raged through Athens in 430 BC, recorded by Thucydides as occurring not long before the time that Sophocles’ work appeared, and in the work displaced by the dramatist to Thebes, seems to have provided the historical basis of the "plague theme" which serves as a backscreen for plot development in the play.

#Ebola is brutal reminder consequences ignoring scientific truths ecology, public health, poverty, over-population: image via Rainforest News @El_Rainforest, 19 October 2014

Faced with the devastating outbreak -- from the symptoms described or hinted at in the poetic drama the disease seems to be a form of cattle zoonosis, hemorrhagic in nature, highly contagious, and with an extremely high mortality rate -- Oedipus, true to the pattern of a responsible head of state, appears to react quickly enough.

Global biosphere collapses and dies as perma-war, inequity, #rainforest loss & over-population lead to #Ebola & death: image via Rainforest News @El_Rainforest, 19 October 2014

We learn through his opening dialogue with the priest that he has already dispatched his brother-in-law Creon to the oracle at Delphi to request a deliverance plan.

 #Ebola yet another indicator of biosphere collapse as overpopulation, poverty, war & inequity overrun last ecosystems: image via Rainforest News @El_Rainforest, 19 October 2014

The oracle discloses that the epidemic is the result of a "miasma" -- a sweeping religious/cultural/environmental pollution or contamination.

Expect more #Ebola type crises as #poverty, #war, #climate, #deforestation overwhelm biosphere: image via Rainforest News @El_Rainforest, 19 October 2014

On orders of the god Apollo the miasma must be removed from Thebes, says the oracle.

Inequity contributes to #Ebola. Alternatives to 2 billion w/ $1.50/day as 300 people as much wealth as half of planet: image via Rainforest News @El_Rainforest, 19 October 2014 

The Chorus mistakenly supposes that the evil at the root of the epidemic is coming from Ares, the god of war, who's always working the room. 

W Africa population 317 million people growing 2.35% annually has destroyed 90% forests causing poverty, war & #Ebola: image via Sustainable Ag NewsRainforest News @El_SustianAg, 20 October 2014

Searching further for the source of contamination, Oedipus turns to the blind prophet Tiresias, who reveals to him that he himself is the source -- Patient Zero, in today's epidemiological terminology.

  Global emergency #Ebola infections W Africa double every 20 days, kills 70% infected. Threat global #pandemic is real: image via EcoInternet @EcoInternet, 20 October 2014

Is not the night restless for them?

October 22, 2014, 3:03 am

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Kofr Qadom, West Bank. A Palestinian boy throws stones at an armoured wheel loader of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) during clashes following a protest against the nearby Jewish settlement of Qadomem: photo by Abed Omar Qusini / Reuters via The Guardian, 17 October 2014

It is for you to be, or not to be,
It is for you to create, or not to create.
All existential questions, behind your shadow, are a farce,
And the universe is your small notebook, and you are its creator.
So write in it the paradise of genesis,
Or do not write it,
You, you are the question.
What do you want?
As you march from a legend, to a legend?
A flag?
What good have flags ever done?
Have they ever protected a city from the shrapnel of a bomb?
What do you want?
A newspaper?
Would the papers ever hatch a bird, or weave a grain?
What do you want?
Police?
Do the police know where the small earth will get impregnated from the coming winds?
What do you want?
Sovereignty over ashes?
While you are the master of our soul; the master of our ever-changing existence?
So leave,
For the place is not yours, nor are the garbage thrones.
You are the freedom of creation,
You are the creator of the roads,
And you are the anti-thesis of this era.
And leave,
Poor, like a prayer,
Barefoot, like a river in the path of rocks,
And delayed, like a clove. You, you are the question.
 
So leave to yourself,
For you are larger than people’s countries,
Larger than the space of the guillotine.
So leave to yourself,
Resigned to the wisdom of your heart,
Shrugging off the big cities, and the drawn sky,
And building an earth under your hand’s palm — a tent, an idea, or a grain.
So head to Golgotha,
And climb with me,
To return to the homeless soul its beginning.
What do you want?
For you are the master of our soul,
The master of our ever-changing existence.
You are the master of the ember,
The master of the flame.
How large the revolution,
How narrow the journey,
How grand the idea,
How small the state!

Mahmoud Darwish: from Madeeh al-Thill al-‘Aaly (In Praise of the High Shadow), 1982, translation via Saifedean Ammous, The Electronic Intifada, 12 August 2008

Jerusalem. A Palestinian woman blocked from entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque holds a Qu’ran at a protest against Jews entering the compound for the week-long Jewish holiday of Sukkot: photo by Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images via the Guardian, 13 October 2014

Night Chorus

Is not the night restless for them?
Smoke detectors and burglar alarms go off without reason
The taped voice unwinds in the widow's backyard
No one bothers to look up from his work

Elijah will return, the Jews believe
The Anti-Christ condemn
The Messiah judge
The dead, the wicked and the good will be distinguished

Elijah will return, the Jews believe

Please God and be saved

I am afraid for myself

Elijah will return, the Jews believe

The Anti-Christ --
Even he rejoices and is in his element

Night Chorus, from the end of Act One of the opera The Death of Klinghoffer: libretto by Alice Goodman, 1991

Settlers take over two buildings in East Jerusalem's Silwan :photoviaThe Alternative Information Center, 20 October 2014

Settlers take over two buildings in East Jerusalem's Silwan: Elizabeth Austwick, The Alternative Information Center, 20 October 2014

 

A group of armed settlers invaded two buildings in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan at 2 a.m Monday morning, thus doubling the number of Israeli settlers now living in the centre of the neighbourhood. This morning's invasion comes just twenty days after he settlers took over 23 additional apartments in Silwan. Local residents fear a process of 'Hebronisation', in which a small number of settlers scattered across Silwan and protected by the police and security forces could begin to control the movement, services and freedoms in the neighbourhood, leading to high levels of tension, violence and further Palestinian displacement.

The apartments in the two buildings were empty except for one, where the resident refused to leave his home and remains there.

The Silwan-based news agency Silwanic reports that the owners of the buildings, Salah Rajabi and Omran al-Qawasmi, sold their properties to Shams ed-Deen Qawasmi, who is belived to be involved in underground deals with settler groups.

Silwanic notes that settlement groups, in cooperation with the Israeli government, are trying to fully control all buildings in Silwan's centre using claims such as “state land” and the Absentee Property Law, while a few individuals have sold their residences to settlers.

However, even if the houses were obtained through monetary purchase, this transaction and following occupation are illegal given East Jerusalem's current status. The new settlements in Silwan, as well as all Israeli settlements within the territories occupied by Israel during the 1967 Middle East war, are illegal and blatantly violate Chapter 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, regardless of the way the properties were acquired. 

These recent developments are part of an Israeli policy to judaize East Jerusalem and further displace the indigenous Palestinian population.

Ateret Cohanim, the organization said to be behind the recent purchase of the two buildings in Silwan, openly expresses its wish to create a Jewish majority in East Jerusalem.

Whilst Israeli President Reuven Rivlin stated that “It is our right to insist on building around Jerusalem, but it is our obligation to make sure that the decision is made by the authorities. Our capital city cannot be built ​​by stealth apartments in the dead of night”, he said, thus condemning the covertness of the settlers' actions but not the act itself.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, some 200,000 Israeli settlers now reside in settlements in East Jerusalem, partly fueling recent unrest in the city.

Daud Abdul Razzaq Siyam, a resident of Silwan, states that the settlement and attendant armed security in the centre of the neighbourhood will likely cause clashes and unrest. Further to this it could also lead to restrictions on public space and freedom of movement.

Silwan residents are angry and have held several meetings to discuss how to challenge the recent occupations. Yet with Israeli government complicity and active support of the settlers actions, as well as continued Israeli impunity in the international sphere, Israel's cleansing of the Palestinian population from East Jerusalem continues.

Palestinian property taken over by settlers in East Jerusalem's Silwan: photo via The Alternative Information Center, 20 October 2014

More Jewish Settlers move Into East Jerusalem Neighborhood: Isabel Kershner, New York Times, 21 October 2014

JERUSALEM — Jewish settlers moved under armed guard into two buildings in the predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan early Monday, weeks after the Obama administration denounced an earlier influx of settlers to the area as “provocative.”

The latest acquisitions were facilitated by Ateret Cohanim, a nongovernmental organization that establishes educational institutions and settles Jews in predominantly Arab areas in and around the Old City of Jerusalem. Its goal is to prevent any future political division of the territory, which Israel conquered from Jordan in 1967 then annexed in a move that was never internationally recognized.

Adnan Husseini, the Palestinian Authority governor of the Jerusalem district, described the overnight entry of settlers as “shocking,” and said the deal to purchase the properties was being investigated.

Silwan, where several hundred Jews now live among about 50,000 Palestinians, has been a target for Jewish settler organizations since the late 1980s. Located on the slopes just south of the Old City walls, it sits in the shadow of the Al Aksa Mosque, revered by Muslims, and is also the site of the ruins of what is believed to be the City of David, an ancient Jewish landmark. Most of the world considers the area illegally occupied by Israel, and the Palestinians covet it as part of the capital of a future state.

Daniel Luria, the executive director of Ateret Cohanim, said a company registered overseas called Kudram purchased the two buildings with funds from “a group of Jewish investors from Israel and around the world,” while Ateret Cohanim provided guidance and help taking possession of the sites.

“They paid more than appropriate money,” Mr. Luria said.

Mr. Luria noted that the buildings were in an area of Silwan that was once home to a community of Yemenite Jews from the 1880s until the 1930s. For the time being, the two buildings are primarily occupied by guards, yeshiva students and workmen, but Mr. Luria said the plan was for nine families to move in.

In late September, another settler organization, Elad, facilitated the acquisition of 25 apartments in six locations around the City of David archaeological site, which it also runs. It said those homes were purchased by another overseas company, Kendall Finance. Elad said in a statement that it had nothing to do with the acquisition of the latest two buildings. Kendall Finance and Kudram are represented by the same Jerusalem lawyer, Avi Segal.

The Wadi Hilweh Information Center, run by grass-roots Palestinian activists in Silwan, said the two Palestinian families who previously lived in the buildings had vacated them four months ago and appeared to have sold the properties to a Palestinian man who acted as a broker for the settler organization.

The entry of settlers in late September set off an open row between the White House and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who said he was “baffled” by the notion that Jews should be barred from living wherever they wanted in Jerusalem.

 

Palestinian property taken over by settlers in East Jerusalem's Silwan: photo via The Alternative Information Center, 20 October 2014

 

 

Palestinian property taken over by settlers in East Jerusalem's Silwan: photo via The Alternative Information Center, 20 October 2014

 

Palestinian property taken over by settlers in East Jerusalem's Silwan: photo via The Alternative Information Center, 20 October 2014

 

Palestinian property taken over by settlers in East Jerusalem's Silwan: photo via The Alternative Information Center, 20 October 2014


After the performance of John Adams' opera The Death of Klinghoffer, a protester was restrained by police for yelling at opera goers: photo by Hiroko Masuike / The New York Times, 20 October 2014

 

@NYDailyNews : #Klinghoffer opera "an apologia for terrorism set to music": image via JCRC of New York @JCRC, 20 October 2014

Librettist Alice Goodman on the writing -- and aftermath -- of The Death of Klinghoffer

"It was made more difficult, if you like, because my parents were still alive -– very strong people with strong opinions. My family is observant and I had a proper Jewish upbringing and education.

"The Judaism I was raised in was strongly Zionist. It had two foci almost –- the Shoah and the State of Israel, and they were related in the same way the crucifixion is related to the resurrection in Christianity. Even when I was a child, I didn't totally buy that. I didn't buy the State of Israel being the recompense for the murder of European Jewry, recompense not being quite the right word, of course. The word one wants would be more like apotheosis or elevation.

"I remember a film of a little man who'd been put in a vacuum chamber with a window so scientists could observe what would happen to him when the air was withdrawn. The whole film was shown to us as children and the look on his face is something I will never forget. Our very traumatised junior rabbi quoted afterwards the song that begins, 'Cast out your wrath upon the nations that know ye not.' In Hebrew it is, 'Cast out your wrath upon the goyim,' which is what he said. My infantile brain thought, 'No, that's not the right answer.' That thought is the thing that's brought me here. And it has to do with Klinghoffer as well.

"I mean into holy orders, into the rectory in Fulbourn. It had nothing to do with writing Klinghoffer really, but I was converted about halfway through writing it. It was really difficult. If you're Jewish, Christianity is an apostasy. If my family had been more traditional, they would have said a kaddish over me. But they didn't.

"I couldn't get work after Klinghoffer. I was uncommissionable."

 

Alice Goodman, quoted in Stuart Jeffries: Alice Goodman: The furore that finished me, The Guardian, 29 January 2012

The front page of today's NY Times arts section. #Klinghoffer: image via Sean Panikkar @seanpannikar, 19 October 2014


 

Protestors in rental wheelchairs demonstrating against the performance of The Death of Klinghoffer: photo by Hiroko Masuike / The New York Times, 20 October 2014

Wheelchair protestors in front of @LincolnCenter score @metopera #klinghoffer opening night #superconductor: image via Paul Pelkonen @ppelkonen, 20 October 2014

 

#Klinghoffer protest. This is as close as security would allow me to get: image via Zerbinetta @ZerbinettasBlog, 20 October 2014

 

 

Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani joined protesters outside the opera house on Monday. The opera The Death of Klinghoffer, he said, presented “a distorted view of history”: photo by Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times, 20 October 2014

Rudy, sporting Rick Perry glasses, speaking out against the Met Opra #Klinghoffer outside the Lincoln Center: image via Jacob Kornbluh @jacobkornbluh, 20 October 2014

 

The Death of Klinghoffer, considered a masterpiece by many, is a target of criticism by detractors who maintain that, by giving voice to the grievances of the hijackers, it justifies or celebrates their actions. Some also say that the opera is anti-Semitic: photo by Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times, 20 October 2014

Scale

October 23, 2014, 12:29 am

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scale: photo by erin w, from photographs from a white space, 25 October 2012

entering winter, narrowing

scale -- strait is the gate

the light a notch slender

aperture carved out of dark

now coming, overarching

A New Life

October 24, 2014, 3:47 am

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Melilla, Morocco. African migrants sit atop a border fence as Spanish civil guard officers in riot gear try to turn them back during an attempt to cross into Spanish territories: photo by Jesus Blasco de Avellaneda/Reuters via the Guardian, 22 October 2014

Hassan, of noble blood and proud demeanour

the most respected man of the village

came back to Berkane from the factory job

in Belgium

bruised and bloodied, after going through the little house

of customs at Melilla.

 

The Africa of now --

La Vita Nuova

neither farther nor closer

than one long jump

over the fence

into the cemetery.

 

The Africa of fifty years ago --

autostop and go. The getting there had
more of water in it

than rock, then more of wood

and sand and mud

than stone: whiteness,

the jawbone of a goat

lying in the dust along the side

of the road; more track than road,

corkscrewing through the mountains the long way

southward, over the trade route,
across and along the river of rivers

 

from the old Maghrib town

whose fallen chieftain said, departing,

The mountains are my bones,

Oum Rabia is my limit --

Oum Er-Rbia, the mother of spring --

And the plain my prey.

 

The women and girls went down

to the river, to wash their clothes

on the rocks. The clothes
bright yellow

and red, the river so

swiftly flowing.

 

Inside the hostel

the Arab girls

showed their faces

drank Coca Cola

and asked

Aimez-vous les Rolling Stones?

Migrants try to scale the border fences at Melilla unsuccessfully, with 150 getting stuck on one of the three fences or in the gaps between on 18 June: photo by Sergi Camara via The Guardian, 19 June 2014

Spanish Guardia Civil surround the migrants: photo by Sergi Camara via The Guardian, 19 June 2014

The triple-fenced border line separating Morocco from the Spanish enclave of the city of Melilla: photo by Sergi Camara via The Guardian, 19 June 2014

Barry Taylor: Listen Closely

October 26, 2014, 2:27 pm

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 Rain (27): photo by Abbas Kiarostami, 2007 (Purdy Hicks Gallery, London)

I sit on a cold stone,

tired, and watch her walk

– ‘just a short way’ –

on, between leafless trees,

down the narrowing lines

of the lane’s grey verges,

into the shadowed fold

of the gathering hills

and the evening, my eye,

her figure, wavering

at the vanishing point.

She is turning there

to nothing; I am sitting

still, and learning

the sound

the world will make

without her.

Rain: photo by Abbas Kiarostami, 2005 (Purdy Hicks Gallery, London)

Rain (23): photo by Abbas Kiarostami, 2007 (Purdy Hicks Gallery, London)

Eyes should be washed, we should see things in another way. ...

Words should be washed.  

Word itself should be the wind, word itself should be the rain.
...-- Sohrab Sepehri: from The Footsteps of Water, 1965

The Forgotten

October 27, 2014, 8:22 am

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A Palestinian man walks through a neighbourhood destroyed during the 50-day Israeli offensive in Gaza: photo by Mahmud Hams/AFP via The Guardian, 25 October 2014

When all's taken

and nothing given
on the social margins
and night's falling

the sky darkening

into memory

the year turning

the fires coming out

earlier

 across the water

traffic crawling

beyond the bay bridge

through the clouds

the lit up stadium

a bright electric worm

 Palestinian boys stand near a fire in their home which was destroyed during the Israeli offensive in the Shejaiya neighbourhood of Gaza: photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP via The Guardian 18 October 2014

 A Palestinian boy looks out of his family’s house that witnesses said was badly damaged during the recent Israeli offensive: photo by Mohammed Salem/Reuters via The Guardian 18 October 2014

---

Elephant Memories

October 28, 2014, 3:46 am

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An orphaned baby elephant basks in a mud puddle at the David Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage in the national park of Nairobi, Kenya: photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters via The Guardian, 25 October 2014

Elephant Slaughter

Elephants killed by poachers in Tsavo East national park: photo by David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust via The Guardian, 29 April 2014

Four calves among six elephants killed in Kenyan national park
Poachers chopped tusks off three of the elephants, and hacked the face off one juvenile in Tsavo East national park

Adam Vaughn, The Guardian, 29 April 2014

Six elephants were killed by poachers in a Kenyan national park last week, including four calves, one of which was so young it did not have tusks. Three suspects have since been arrested.

The incident in Tsavo East national park on Thursday, described by conservationists as demonstrating the "inhumanity" of the illegal wildlife trade, is part of a wider wave of animal deaths in Africa, driven primarily by demand for ivory and rhino horn from south-east Asia. More than 60 elephants have been killed in Kenya alone this year.

All of the of six elephants had been shot, with two adult females having their tusks hacked out. Rangers found one calf still alive by its mother, which was later put down. Two of the juveniles were left with their four-inch tusks, one did not have tusks yet and the fourth had its face hacked off and the ivory taken.

Four elephant calves were killed in the attack at Tsavo East national park in Kenya: photo by David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust via The Guardian, 29 April 2014

Officials from the Kenya Wildlife Service said three suspects were arrested on Saturday following a tracking operation by air and ground, during which rangers came under "heavy fire" from the poaching gang. The suspects were due in court on Monday.

Ivory is believed to be worth around $2,000 on the black market, which led to around 22,000 African elephants being killed in 2012. More than 40 countries met in February in London to agree to tackle the global illegal wildlife trade, which is estimated to be worth billions of pounds a year.

Rob Brandford, director of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which works in the park, said: “Yet again we are confronted by the graphic reality of a murdered family of elephants –- six members gunned down to fuel the insatiable demand for ivory that is primarily driven by countries in the far east. The greed and ignorance for life is astounding."

An aerial survey of the Tsavo East national park this year found it is home to around 11,000 elephants.

Elephant Rescue

David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust / Kenyan Wildlife Service Mobile Veterinary Unit attempt an elephant rescue in the field: photo by David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, 24 October 2014

A Comprehensive Report from the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust / Kenyan Wildlife Service Mobile Veterinary Units, 24 October 2014

During the July to September 3-month reporting period the DSWT in partnership with the Kenya Wildlife Service and their four dedicated KWS field veterinary officers, treated 103 wildlife cases. 

 

David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust / Kenyan Wildlife Service Mobile Veterinary Unit conduct an elephant rescue in the field: photo by David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, 24 October 2014

The majority of these cases treated by the Tsavo, Mara, Meru or Amboseli Veterinary Units included elephants; and out of 65 elephants treated overall, 18 were treated for poisoned arrow wounds, 13 for spear wounds, 5 for bullet wounds and 5 for snare injuries, whilst other cases included post-mortems, natural causes and non-medical cases.

 

David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust / Kenyan Wildlife Service Mobile Veterinary Unit treat a wounded elephant in the field: photo by David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, 24 October 2014

Other wildlife cases involved lions, black and white rhinos, buffalos and a number of other species. Out of all of these emergency operations 73% of the treatments had a successful outcome, whilst 18% of the cases were sadly reached too late to save.

Too late to be saved? David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust / Kenyan Wildlife Service Mobile Veterinary Unit conducting an elephant rescue in the field: photo by David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, 24 October 2014

Those 4% of cases given a poor prognosis have been monitored by all parties involved in the operation, with one of the Mobile Veterinary Units close at hand should a follow up treatment be needed.  Above and beyond these permanent mobile veterinary operations the DSWT/KWS Sky Vet program has also been active in supporting the field units when cases reported are unable to be attended.

 

(via DSWT)

Orphaned baby elephants at the David Sheldrick elephant orphanage, Nairobi national park, Kenya: photo by Simon Maina/AFP via The Guardian, 12 August  2014

Charles Siebert: Elephant orphans

The plight of elephants has become so dire that their greatest enemy -- humans -- is also their only hope, a topsy-turvy reality that moved a woman named Daphne Sheldrick to establish the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust's [Nairobi] Nursery -- an orphan-elephant rescue and rehabilitation center -- back in 1987. Sheldrick is fourth-generation Kenya-born and has spent the better part of her life tending wild animals. Her husband was David Sheldrick, the renowned naturalist and founding warden of Tsavo East National Park who died of a heart attack in 1977. She's reared abandoned baby buffalo, dik-diks, impalas, zebras, warthogs, and black rhinos, among others, but no creature has beguiled her more than elephants.

Spend enough time around elephants and it's difficult not to anthropomorphize their behavior. "Elephants are very human animals," says Sheldrick, sitting one afternoon on the back porch of her house at the edge of the nursery grounds, the wide, acacia-dotted plains of Nairobi National Park sprawling in the distance. "Their emotions are exactly the same as ours. They've lost their families, have seen their mothers slaughtered, and they come here filled with aggression -- devastated, broken, and grieving. They suffer from nightmares and sleeplessness."

Dedicated keepers at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust's Nairobi Elephant Nursery in Kenya protect baby Shukuru from the cold and rain, and the risk of pneumonia, with a custom-made raincoat: photo by Michael Nichols via National Geographic, September 2011

What makes this particular moment in the fraught history of elephant-human relations so remarkable is that the long-accrued anecdotal evidence of the elephant's extraordinary intelligence is being borne out by science. Studies show that structures in the elephant brain are strikingly similar to those in humans. MRI scans of an elephant's brain suggest a large hippocampus, the component in the mammalian brain linked to memory and an important part of its limbic system, which is involved in processing emotions. The elephant brain has also been shown to possess an abundance of the specialized neurons known as spindle cells, which are thought to be associated with self-awareness, empathy, and social awareness in humans. Elephants have even passed the mirror test of self-recognition, something only humans, and some great apes and dolphins, had been known to do.

 Even orphaned babies out for their morning walk from the nursery seem to understand the complex structure of elephant society. Here the oldest orphans lie down to invite the younger ones to play on top of them: photo by Michael Nichols via National Geographic, September 2011

 

This common neurobiology has prompted some scientists to explore whether young elephants that have experienced assaults on their psyches may be exhibiting signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), just like orphaned children in the wake of war or genocide. Gay Bradshaw, a psychologist and the director of the Kerulos Center in Oregon, has brought the latest insights from human neuroscience and psychology to bear on startling field observations of elephant behavior. She suspects that some threatened elephant populations might be suffering from chronic stress and trauma brought on by human encroachment and killing.

Before the international ivory trade ban in 1989, poaching took a steep toll on many elephant populations and in some instances significantly altered their social structure because poachers tended to target older elephants. Field biologists found that the number of older matriarchs, female caregivers, and bulls in vulnerable groups had fallen drastically. In Uganda, for instance, one study reported that many females between the ages of 15 and 25 had no close family members whatsoever.

 

Elephant Babies, David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Elephant Orphanage, Nairobi, Kenya. I visited the orphanage last year and experienced the joy of watching the elephants play and bond with one another. I saw an opportunity in this group to capture the beauty of these babies in a montage of texture, shape, and monochromatic colors: photo and caption by Susan Pierson via National Geographic, November 2014

 

In the decades since the ban, some populations have stabilized, though most elephants remain threatened by human encroachment. As poaching has flared up in the past five years in the Congo Basin and large swaths of central and eastern Africa, many elephant families there have lost most of their adult females. Where such social upheaval exists, calves are being raised by ever more inexperienced females. An increasing number of young orphaned elephants, many of which have witnessed the death of a parent through culling or at the hands of poachers, are coming of age in the absence of the traditional support system. "The loss of older elephants," says Bradshaw, "and the extreme psychological and physical trauma of witnessing the massacres of their family members interferes with a young elephant's normal development."

Too young and fragile to be integrated with the other orphans, two-week-old Wasin was swaddled in a blanket, its heft and warmth a poor substitute for her slain mother. Weeks later Wasin abruptly died of unknown causes: photo by Michael Nichols via National Geographic, September 2011

Bradshaw speculates that this early trauma, combined with the breakdown in social structure, may account for some instances of aberrant elephant behavior that have been reported by field biologists. Between 1992 and 1997, for example, young male elephants in Pilanesberg Game Reserve in South Africa killed more than 40 rhinoceroses -- an unusual level of aggression -- and in some cases had attempted to mount them. The young elephants were adolescent males that had witnessed their families being shot in cullings at Kruger National Park -- sanctioned killings to keep elephant populations under control. At that time it was common practice for such orphaned elephant babies to be tethered to the bodies of their dead relatives until they could be rounded up for translocation to new territories. Once moved to Pilanesberg, the orphans matured without the support of any adult males. "Young males often follow older, sexually active males around," says veteran field biologist Joyce Poole, "appearing to study what they do. These youngsters had no such role models."

What a scared orphan elephant needs more than anything is other elephants. The process of becoming socialized begins as soon as the worst injuries heal: photo by Michael Nichols via National Geographic, September 2011

For Allan Schore, an expert on human trauma disorders at UCLA who has co-authored papers with Bradshaw, the behavior of these elephants conforms to a diagnosis of PTSD in humans. "A large body of research shows that the neurobiological mechanisms of attachment are found in many mammals, including humans and elephants," he explains. "The emotional relationship between the mother and her offspring impacts the wiring of the infants' developing brain. When early experiences are traumatic, there is a thinning down of the developing brain circuits, especially in areas that process emotional information and regulate stress. That means less resilience and an enduring deficit in aggression regulation, social communication, and empathy."

An orphan lies down for a post-feeding nap at the Nairobi nursery. Elephants, among the most intelligent creatures on Earth, may have no future without our help: photo by Michael Nichols via National Geographic, September 2011

One effort to repair the torn fabric of an elephant group lends further support to the idea that early trauma and a lack of role models can lead to aggression: After Joyce Poole suggested that park rangers in South Africa introduce six older bull elephants into Pilanesberg's population of about 85 elephants, the aberrant behavior of the marauding adolescent males -- and their premature hormonal changes -- abruptly stopped.

Elephants enjoy their midday ablutions near the Voi stockades in Tsavo National Park. Daily mud baths are key to elephant hygiene, offering them effective sun protection while also cleansing their skin of bugs and ticks: photo by Michael Nichols via National Geographic, September 2011

If elephants can wound like us, they can heal like us as well, perhaps more readily. With humans acting as stand-ins for their mothers, along with the help of the other nursery elephants, the majority of the orphans that survive recover to become fully functional wild elephants again. To date, Sheldrick's nursery has successfully raised more than a hundred orphan elephants. They have returned to the wild in wary, halting, half measures at first, having become "homo-pachyderms," caught between a deep devotion to their human caregivers and the irresistible call of their true selves.

 

excerpt from: Orphans No More: After the trauma of attack and loss comes healing -- and a richer understanding of the emotions and intelligence of elephants
Charles Siebert, National Geographic, September 2011

A team of elephant carers loads a young animal onto a stretcher so it can be taken by plane to the orphanage: photo courtesy David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust via The Guardian, 12 August  2014
 

  Malnourished and wounded, this orphaned baby elephant receives emergency treatment  at the scene of the rescue: photo courtesy David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust via The Guardian, 12 August  2014

An elephant with a leg wound is prepared for an X-ray: photo courtesy David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust via The Guardian, 12 August  2014
 

 A team transports an elephant in northern Kenya. They will undertake a rescue when elephants are orphaned by poaching, habitat destruction and human conflict; they are often malnourished, dehydrated and weak and can have a multitude of injuries caused by bullets, snares, machetes and even spears: photo courtesy David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust via The Guardian, 12 August  2014

Natumi, four weeks old, being walked by keepers. The first few weeks after a rescue are critical. Many orphans arrive extremely weak, emaciated and in a state of shock: photo by Gerry Ellis / Corbis via The Guardian, 12 August  2014
 

Wasin is approximately two weeks old. Carers replicate an orphaned elephant’s lost family with a human equivalent, providing 24-hour care. This includes regular milk feeds, travelling with them as a group during the day and sleeping in a stable with them at night to provide reassurance: photo by Michael Nichols/National Geographic via The Guardian, 12 August  2014

Wasin is approximately two weeks old. For the youngest of rescues, blankets serve to mimic a mother elephant’s undercarriage during milk feeds. Several young elephants will not feed without their blankets which provide a sense of security and comfort: photo by Michael Nichols/National Geographic The Guardian, 12 August  2014

Depending on where an orphaned elephant is found, an aeroplane usually needs to be chartered to move the elephant to the nursery: photo courtesy David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust via The Guardian, 12 August  2014
 

An rescued elephant’s trunk. Trapped in a man-made well, this orphan had been attacked by predators during the night before it was spotted and rescued: photo courtesy David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust via The Guardian, 12 August  2014

Aerial surveillance ensures herds with calves can be better protected against poaching activities, and any lone elephant calves can be spotted and rescued: photo courtesy David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust via The Guardian, 12 August  2014
 

This year the charity has rescued six orphaned elephants. Director Rob Brandford said: “In 2003, we rescued 11 orphans. Last year we rescued 48 orphans, an unusually high number and the majority victims of poaching, but even that number is likely only a fraction of those out there.”: photo courtesy David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust via The Guardian, 12 August  2014
 

Two-month-old orphaned baby elephant Ajabu is given a dust-bath in the red earth after being fed milk from a bottle by a keeper: photo by Ben Curtis / APvia The Guardian, 12 August  2014

 
Orphaned baby elephants play. For elephants that have witnessed their mothers being killed, the company of other elephants and being able to play is one part of essential to overcoming trauma: photo by Simon Maina/AFP via The Guardian, 12 August  2014
 

Orphans Edie and Imenti play: photo by Gerry Ellis / Corbis  via The Guardian, 12 August  2014

Relocation (the new ABCs)

October 30, 2014, 12:12 am

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Navotas, Philippines. A woman reads a book outside her house, located on top of a cemetery: photo by Ezra Acayan / NurPhoto / REX via The Guardian, 28 October 2014

You might be able to move upstairs for a while

but just because they are still filed down there waiting patiently in their quiet cement boxes

don't think you can set yourself above them

forever

 

Santa Anita, Iztacalco: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 1 June 2013

 Durango: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 26 April 2012

Accident scene, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 20 January 2014



Freetown, Sierra Leone. A man suffering from Ebola lies on the floor outside a house in Port Loko Community. Ebola is now hitting the western edges of the country, where the capital is located, with dozens of people falling sick each day, the government said: photo by Michael Duff / AP via The Guardian, 22 October 2014

 

 

People gather around the body of a person suspected to have died from the Ebola virus, covered in leaves as it lies on the street in Freetown, Sierra Leone: photo by Tanya Bindra / Associated Press via Business Insider, 17 October 2014

 

Execution, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 8 March 2014

 

Life is amazing (Mexico City): photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 7 March 2014

Murder victim, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 26 March 2014

 Execution victim, Valle de Chalco: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 10 March 2014

Execution victim, Tlalnepantla: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 6 March 2014

Murder victim, Iztapalapa: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 18 July 2013

 The world's most wanted drug kingpin, Joaquin Loera Guzman, known as El Chapo, is captured, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 22 February 2014

Accident scene, Iztapalapa: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 26 September 2013

 

Accident scene, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 17 July 2013

 

Fatal accident scene, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres (rastamaniaco), 11 October 2013

 

Struggle to fight #Ebola: people in #SierraLeone slums very poor w/ little access to clean water & sanitation: image via Helen Clark @HelenClark_UNDP, 11 October 2014

 

Challenges of poverty #EbolaResponse in #Freetown slums. Hygiene food, water, @UNDP fights on all fronts: image via Mila Rosenthal @RosenthalMila, 11 October 2014

Could saving West Africa's forests have prevented #Ebola? Industrial kimberlite diamond pit mine in Sierra Leone, West Africa owned by Koidu holdings, one of a number of international mining companies who have come to Sierra Leone in search of diamonds. Mining is among major factors driving deforestation of the region. The result: virus, bats and people have had more opportunities to meet: photo by David Levene for the Guardian via World Economic Forum @wef, 10 October 2014

Here's What It's Like To Live In An African City Plagued By Ebola...#Freetown: photo by Michael Duff / AP via Booyah!! @kijanafulani, 19 October 2014

 

A few people are seen during a three-day lockdown to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus, in Freetown, Sierra Leone: photo by Michael Duff / AP via Business Insider, 17 October 2014

 

Sierra Leone is a very friendly, very sociable place but that is changing. People are living by the ABC rule: Avoid Bodily Contact. Nobody shakes hands or touches anymore. There is definitely a different atmosphere. It’s a lot quieter. People are definitely changing their behaviour.

Business Insider, 17 October 2014

#Ebola safe burial team working to remove & inter dead bodies of ppl suspected to have died of Ebola in #Sierra Leone: image via WHO @WHO, 7 October 2014

#Ebola safe burial team working to remove & inter dead bodies of ppl suspected to have died of Ebola in #Sierra Leone: image via WHO @WHO, 7 October 2014

#Ebola safe burial team working to remove & inter dead bodies of ppl suspected to have died of Ebola in #Sierra Leone: image via WHO @WHO, 7 October 2014

 

 

#Ebola safe burial team working to remove & inter dead bodies of ppl suspected to have died of Ebola in #Sierra Leone: image via WHO @WHO, 7 October 2014

 #Ebola dead unburied as grave-diggers strike in Sierra Leone: image via RT @RT_com, 8 October 2014

#EbolaSL The only #Ebola cemetery at #Tokpombu (for #Kenema district) is full: image via Cédric Moro @Moro_Cedric, 9 October 2014



Freetown, Sierra Leone. Volunteers arrive to pick up bodies. They get $100 a week as compensation for their high-risk work: photo by Florian Plaucheur / AFP via The Guardian, 10 October 2014

 

Anger in Sierra Leone after body of #Ebola victim left on street for two days: image by Reuters via BBC News (World) @BBCWorld, 15 October 2014

Residents watch as health workers, not in picture, take samples from the body of a person suspected of dying from the Ebola virus as it lies on the street covered in leaves in Freetown, Sierra Leone: photo by Tanya Bindra / Associated Press via Business Insider, 17 October 2014

 #ebola graves: unmarked in cleared forest. Whole families. No-one to mourn them. Heartbreaking. #Sierra Leone: image via DrJavid Abdel @thisfoolj, 7 October 2014

State police sent to home of Maine #Ebola nurse under forced isolation: image via KGW News @KGWNews, 29 October 2014

I'm lucky - 1 last temp check at Lungi airport & I can leave #Sierraleone - but what about the 6 million who can't?: image via Natasha Lewer @natashalewer, 26 October 2014

Red State Scream Preview (A Period Haunting)

October 31, 2014, 4:24 am

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A bleak living room complete with an old television set and armchair, abandoned house, Ohio: photo by Jonny Joo via The Guardian, 17 October 2014


No, man, it's cool, really, No worries. Still only top of the third. The cable guy is on the way over right now. Going to be a good night, I can feel it. We're going to own these guys.

Chicago, Illinois. Halloween masks on sale at Fantasy Costumes: photo by Scott Olson via The Guardian, 29 October 2014

It's a HEALTHY world (she said) nothing LAME asked to be brought into it then you can't stand It NOTHING'S just dead FISH SMELLS lost eyes a lot of smashed President KING more than just the present moment's intermittent or latent shape-shifting OH NO the continuous micro-slaughter

the SHE President personifies a piece of the planet in shreds now the universe itself existed as a dream of itself back in the age of ME in the underworld mask shtick whatever works just feeling funny a little bit about being a grownup

and loving people who are adorers out of antiquity nor anyone's body or brain for long but this line works and remembers every past action of yours and anyone's trivial why in the container and burn your tender crocodile tears in the obsidian vagenda of your POWER your SOUL

Wallops Island, Virginia. An unmanned rocket owned by Orbital Sciences Corporation explodes just seconds after launch, on what was to be a resupply mission to the International Space Station: photo by Steve Alexander / AFP via The Guardian, 29 October 2014

and all that dross bogus TREAT-BAG CULT VOID underworld of adorer followers in no space a BROken WINdow little man crushed instead of a SELF a bottle of WINdex blue spray WITH THE FINGER OF NO MAN extant in the AEROSOL YOUNIVERSE supposing every past action of yours and anyone's trivial why were you alive wanting everything to gratify HALF and astound the other my I want ADORER TIC kicking in your BROken WINdow O ver and O ver a TICKing trick no treat the easy after the hard the painful the history after the math the reverb of the primal the inner the outer as my SHELF en LARGEs you can fit MORE BOOKS (serious) Hey, man, I know you! You're a carpenter if I were you I'd be aSHAMED (where are my tools) I AM TRYING TO TELL YOU YOUR FACE CHANGED in the night 2.0 I reach out feel around in the dark later left elbow purple bruise lights out haunted not answering door no one CRAZY enough to risk appearing to feel my disease It will get you and it's never what you think it will be It will get you and it's never what you think it will be no MEN will decide (JOKE)

 

VariousBalineseTopeng (dancemasks), TamanMiniIndonesiaIndah, Jakarta: photo by GunawanKartapranata, 2009

There is an unconscious propriety in the way in which, in all European languages, the word person is commonly used to denote a human being. The real meaning of persona is a mask, such as actors were accustomed to wear on the ancient stage; and it is quite true that no one shows himself as he is, but wears his mask and plays his part. Indeed, the whole of our social arrangements may be likened to a perpetual comedy; and this is why a man who is worth anything finds society so insipid, while a blockhead is quite at home in it.

 

Arthur Schopenhauer: Psychological Observations, from Studies in Pessimism in Parerga und Paralipomena, 1851 (translated by Thomas Bailey Saunders)

 

The powers of the dead are only strong when the lights are out* (*joke)

nights like this I become afraid of the darkness in my heart #halloween: image via Drew Patrick @drewpatrick143, 30 October 2014

The moon to the left of me
is a part of my thoughts
is a part of me is me

one never does that

in the night I am real
in the night I am real

The moon to the left of me
is a part of my thoughts
is a part of me is me

Wherever is the wind
is a part of my thoughts
is a part of me is me

In the night I am real

 
*

Forever is the wind
to the left of me
is a part of my thoughts
is a part of me is me

I don't want my
fangs too long

If you have ghosts
then you have everything

 
--Roky Erickson: from If you have ghosts

... behind the mask, nights like this: all the clocks have stopped, am I real, am I alive?

Detroit, Michigan. Several dead bodies were found in the cellar of this former high-class brothel: photo by Seph Lawless via the Guardian, 30 October 2014

and all that dross bogus TREAT-BAG CULT VOID underworld of adorer

followers in no space a BROken WINdow little man crushed
instead of a SELF a bottle of WINdex blue spray WITH THE FINGER OF NO MAN
extant in the AEROSOL YOUNIVERSE supposing every past action of yours
and anyone's trivial why were you alive wanting everything to gratify HALF
and astound the other my I want ADORER TIC kicking in your BROken
WINdow O ver and O ver a TICKing trick no treat the easy after the hard
the painful the history after the math the reverb of the primal the inner
the outer as my SHELF en LARGEs you can fit MORE BOOKS (serious) Hey, man, I know you!
You're a carpenter if I were you I'd be aSHAMED (where are my tools)
I AM TRYING TO TELL YOU YOUR FACE CHANGED in the night 2.0
I reach out feel around in the dark later left elbow purple bruise lights
out haunted not answering door no one CRAZY enough to risk appearing
to feel my disease It will get you and it's never what you think it will be
It will get you and it's never what you think it will be no MEN will decide (JOKE)

 

 

Michigan Central Station: photo by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, from The Ruins of Detroit (Steidl), 2010



Melted clock, Cass Technical High School: photo by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, from The Ruins of Detroit (Steidl), 2010



Room 1504, Lee Plaza Hotel: photo by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, from The Ruins of Detroit (Steidl), 2010

Packard Motors Plant: photo by YvesMarchand and RomainMeffre, from TheRuins of Detroit(Steidl), 2010

I Am Alive: graffiti at "The Ridges", aka Athens Lunatic Asylum (formerly Athens State Hospital, in operation 1874-1993), Athens, Ohio: photo by Tyler McSheehy (ShockMeAwake), 9 June 2013

SementeryoMoments (If you have ghosts)

 

The Ridges: Lin Hall Underground. Graffiti found in the tunnels under main building at "The Ridges", aka Athens Lunatic Asylum (formerly Athens State Hospital, in operation 1874-1993), Athens, Ohio: photo by stimply, 12 May 2009

The "Ridges" cemetery, former Ohio State Asylum for the Insane, (operated 1874-1993), Athens, Ohio.This cemetery at the Ridges in Athens was used until 1913 as a final resting place for deceased patients of the Athens Lunatic Asylum whose families failed to claim their bodies. Grave sites were mostly numbered, though a few bear names.The "Ridges" cemetery gravestones were laid out in straight lines, with the exception of the northeast corner of the cemetery where you will find a circle of graves. The cemeteries were vulnerable to vandals for many years. Some believe witches created the circle to hold seances inside of it, others speculate that it was a prank by college students: photo by Todd Bender (holysniki), 9 November 2008

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. An abandoned mansion: photo by Seph Lawless via the Guardian, 30 October 2014

 

Full moon rising above "The Ridges" (former Athens Lunatic Asylum, Athens, Ohio): photo by Mdombroski, 18 January 2079



Houston, Texas. A former bed and breakfast where a number of people are said to have been killed: photo by Seph Lawless via the Guardian, 30 October 2014

Full moon above "The Ridges" (former Athens Lunatic Asylum, Athens, Ohio): photo by Mdombroski, 18 January 2079

 
Cyrus shock ... On Saturday night after Alexander Wang's spring '15 show, the designer held a top-secret after party at a Brooklyn warehouse, where he and his friends had pretty wild time, including Miley Cyrus, wearing nothing but nipple covers!: photo by AKM-GSI / Splash News, 8 September 2014

 
Cyrus shock ... On Saturday night after Alexander Wang's spring '15 show, the designer held a top-secret after party at a Brooklyn warehouse, where he and his friends had pretty wild time, including Miley Cyrus, wearing nothing but nipple covers!: photo by AKM-GSI / Splash News, 8 September 2014

Mapapatingala ka nalang sa sobrang taas ng puntod ng bibisitahin mo #SementeryoMoments: image via kaka @Wizkhalifa, 30 October 2014

and all that dross bogus TREAT-BAG CULT VOID underworld of adorer

followers in no space a BROken WINdow little man crushed
instead of a SELF a bottle of WINdex blue spray WITH THE FINGER OF NO MAN
extant in the AEROSOL YOUNIVERSE supposing every past action of yours
and anyone's trivial why were you alive wanting everything to gratify HALF
and astound the other my I want ADORER TIC kicking in your BROken
WINdow O ver and O ver a TICKing trick no treat the easy after the hard
the painful the history after the math the reverb of the primal the inner
the outer as my SHELF en LARGEs you can fit MORE BOOKS (serious) Hey, man, I know you!
You're a carpenter if I were you I'd be aSHAMED (where are my tools)
I AM TRYING TO TELL YOU YOUR FACE CHANGED in the night 2.0
I reach out feel around in the dark later left elbow purple bruise lights
out haunted not answering door no one CRAZY enough to risk appearing
to feel my disease It will get you and it's never what you think it will be
It will get you and it's never what you think it will be no MEN will decide (JOKE)

Toledo, Ohio. Locals suspected the owner practised witchcraft: photo by Seph Lawless via the Guardian, 30 October 2014

and still no sign of the damn cable guy... 

 

RCA Victor. "We got to move these color TVs..." Keeler, California: photo by JodyMiller, 31 March 2014 

... unless... wait... could this be him?

 

Noctilucent Night by @MikkoLagerstedt #Halloween: image via 500px 500@px, 30 October 2014

Tilt

November 1, 2014, 1:45 am

≫ Next: No one to rock the cradle (Nazim Hikmet: You must live with great seriousness, like a squirrel)

≪ Previous: Red State Scream Preview (A Period Haunting)

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A Free Syrian Army fighter takes up position as he points his weapon through a hole in a bedroom wall in Deir al-Zor, eastern Syria. A reminder of ordinary daily life before the civil war: photo by Khalil Ashawi / Reuters via The Guardian, 12 November 2013

The wicked bone chill that wafted through the attic rafters with the passage across the airspace of the psychomimetic conferencing witch

left its toll in immunosuppressive deficits all across the board but life goes

on even when tipped sideways, just that the angle of viewing's skewed

so that the giant white dog with the bright teeth and long wet red tongue in the airless horror

dream keeps lunging from different directions, slavering and snarling, and when you turn to the young

the last hope we have against it

is to cause everything large to instantly become infinitely small

 

This fun use of a tilt-shift lens gives a miniature feel to the people passing a giant sculpture of a dog at the Parkview Green shopping centre in Beijing, China: photo by Diego Azubel / EPA via The Guardian, 12 November 2013



A boy plays with an AK-47 rifle owned by his father in Azaz, a small town north of Aleppo: photo by Goran Tomasevic / Reuters via The Guardian, 8 August 2012

Atrium, Parkview Green Shopping Mall, Beijing: photo via Chiara's Coffee Table, 29 January 2014

 

Parkview Green Shopping Mall mascot: image courtesy Parkview Green, 2014

#inkwell #fangcaodi #beijing #igersdaily #igersbeijing [Beijing Parkview Green Shopping Mall Atrium Giant Dog]: image via sangshuduo @sangshuduo, 5 May 2013

No one to rock the cradle (Nazim Hikmet: You must live with great seriousness, like a squirrel)

November 2, 2014, 3:01 am

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≪ Previous: Tilt

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A cradle left behind by Syrian Kurdish refugees lies at the border near Suruc. Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkish troops could be used to help establish a secure zone in Syria, if there was an international agreement to set up such a haven for refugees fleeing Islamic State fighters: photo by Murad Sezer / Reuters via The Guardian, 4 October 2014

Living is no laughing matter:
...you must live with great seriousness
......like a squirrel, for example --
   I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
......I mean living must be your whole occupation.

Squirrel: photo by Prof Alex O Chevtchenko, 22 December 2012



Cape Ground Squirrels (Xerus inauris), near Solitaire in the Namib desert, Namibia: photo by Hans Hillewaert, 2007

Common squirrel in oak leaves. Protective coloration allows it to merge with the oak leaves. Kharkov Forest Park, Ukraine: photo by Dennis Markov, 9 May 2007

Grey squirrel searching for nuts. 'These shots are from a university project based on squirrels. The photos are displaying a grey squirrel's caching behaviour. I set up a remote timer and baited the area with nuts, and waited for the squirrels to come. Once the squirrels were consistent and knew where the food was, I made it a little harder for them to retrieve the nuts. This meant that they had to dig for it, and therefore mimic the caching behaviour. So even though they were digging up the nuts instead of burying them for the winter, the same motion was recorded': photo by Mark Fox/Mammal Society Photographer of the Year Competition 2013 via The Guardian 5 March 2013

 A squirrel defends its food against a pigeon after snowfall in central park in Minsk, Belarus: photo by Sergei Grits / Associated Press, 2012

Living is no laughing matter:
.....you must take it seriously,
.....so much so and to such a degree
   that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
                                            your back to the wall,
 or else in a laboratory
.....in your white coat and safety glasses,
.....you can die for people --
   even for people whose faces you’ve never seen,
   even though you know living
.....is the most real, the most beautiful thing.

An olive tree, Bi'lin, West Bank: photo by elena martinez, 12 June 2009

Olive trees (Olea europaea ssp. europaea), Corfu, Greece: photo by Cezanne, 16 July 2003

Olive trees on Thassos, Greece: photo by Peter Pakandl, 7 September 2006

 I mean, you must take living so seriously
   that even at seventy, for example, you’ll plant olive trees --
   and not for your children, either,
   but because although you fear death you don’t believe it,
   because living, I mean, weighs heavier.

Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963): from OnLiving, in Poems of Nazim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk, 1994

 On the border between Syria and Turkey: here, a Syrian Kurdish woman waits with her daughter at the southeastern town of Suruc. Kurdish fighters backed by US-led air strikes were locked in fierce fighting to prevent the besieged border town of Ain al-Arab from falling to Islamic State fighters: photo by Bulent Kilic / AFP via The Guardian, 4 October 2014

 
A Palestinian boy practises his parkour skills near the ruins of houses, which witnesses said were destroyed during the seven-week Israeli offensive, in Gaza: photo by Mohammed Salem / Reuters via The Guardian, 4 October 2014

Manchester United’s Robin van Persie celebrates at Old Trafford after scoring against West Ham United: photo by Jon Super / AP via The Guardian, 27 September 2014

Enner Valencia of West Ham United is fouled by Manchester City’s Vincent Kompany during the Premier League match at Upton Park in London: photo by Tom Jenkins for The Observer, 25 October 2014

 
A Free Syrian Army fighter walks through a hole in the wall inside a damaged building on the frontline of Aleppo’s Al-Ezaa neighbourhood: photo by Hosam Katan/Reuters via The Guardian, 1 November 2014

 Did they just Micro Nuke #Syria? #kobani FYI Thermobarics are red. Neutron bombs use aluminum casings & are white: image via Malice Magic @malicemagic, 27 October 2014