Taxidermy

Saw an interesting lecture today by a writer/cultural historian named Rachel Poliquin about the history of taxidermy and its legacy in contemporary art.  She’s curated an exhibit that just opened in Vancouver, where the museum has had sitting in its basement a collection of old taxidermy that no one wanted to see for 50 years.  [...]

Bass fishing with pink Barbie rod

I was very into fishing here on the pond in Maine from about age 9-14 or so.  Partly because it was the only way to have any time to myself, I’m sure.  As I recall it, there was a lot of dedication and work expended per fish in those days.  I was always fussing about [...]

Silk moths

I parent-taught at the preschool for three mornings in the last 10 days or so.  We had to do five this semester total, I was doing three, and I just saved them all for the end, partly so most of them could be during the week after classes end, and partly b/c I like to [...]

Hunting for Toads

Jack invited us out to his house to look for toads.  The toads are going crazy out there.  We brought a little terrarium and immediately stumbled upon two on the way to the house.  I announced, “I’ll get him, I’m good at catching frogs;” got between him and the big puddle; slowly, slowly brought my [...]

Pony, Moth, Kitten, Mouse

Two new stories.
Iris, a touching tale of the overcoming of cross-species prejudice and divisions:
One day there was a little mouse.  And the mousie once found a cat.  And the cat said that it wanted to be the mousie’s friend.  So they went to the park.  And they went on the slides for a long time.  [...]

Full of Kitten

I read an interesting book this week by a political theorist named Jane Bennett called The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics.  It’s basically an argument against the Weberian theory that modern life is characterized above all by “disenchantment.”  One of the categories of modern “enchantment” she considers concerns what she calls cross- [...]

Neko Case “People Got a Lotta Nerve”

Neko Case is offering a free download of the first single, “People Got a Lotta Nerve,” from her new album (Middle Cyclone, due out March 3), and her record label is donating $5 to Best Friends Animal Society for every blog that re-posts it.  So, I am doing so: you can download the song [...]

Battery-operated Guinea Pig Unfortunately Does Not Poop

There’s this one detail from the NY Times article “Our Love Affair With Shopping Malls is on the Rocks” that Sarah and I were laughing about because it seemed such a sadly apt emblem for the U.S. economy.
The economic crisis has caused shoppers to go into an essentials-only mode. But the mall has never trafficked [...]

Bad Parenting moment #1016

Celie was trying to sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and couldn’t remember all the words.  I couldn’t either, so I found a couple video versions of it on Youtube.  I left for 5 minutes and came back to find C&I watching Pokemon cartoon footage of creatures hitting one another in the face to a [...]

More Animal Slaughter in the Wizard of Oz

Just had to write again about the amazing emphasis on animal slaughter in The Wizard of Oz.  It’s practically like Tintin in the Congo (in which the jungle animal body count increases steadily throughout).
Here are a few scenes from the climactic Chapter 12, “The Search for the Wicked Witch,” as she sends out waves of [...]