‘september is like a quiet day after a whole week of wind.’
*mildred walker
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furstenberg park, ann arbor, mi, usa
A Dolly Parton-inspired corn maze in Grand Rapids that was planned before her death
has been given new meaning as a memorial to the late American icon ahead of its opening today.
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Michiganders will have a chance to celebrate her legacy while getting a little lost along the way. In America, a corn field can become a memorial fit for a queen. Here, 6½ acres cut into a maze form the contours of Dolly Parton’s face.People from all over are expected to flock to the maze and find their way through the Queen of Country’s big hair, musical notes, acoustic guitar, and her signature symbol, a fluttering butterfly.
The maze will give thousands of families a place to go to spend time together this fall through the first week of November, but also to mourn and feel a little closer to Parton, a luminary who left a legacy of music, homespun sense, and good deeds.
“Dolly Parton’s story and what she stood for really resonates with a lot of America,” Allan Robinette, 34, told the Free Press. His family owns the farm, where the maze is and is awestruck by the interest. “It doesn’t matter who you are, you feel what she’s done is downright inspirational.”
When Parton died last week, Americans couldn’t help but take a moment to think about all the ways she had been part of their lives for decades even if they had never met her or been a fan, as a part of their lives through her music and cultural influence.
Ford CEO Jim Farley, saw the news of her death flash across his phone while in a meeting with other auto company executives, the Free Press reported. The group took a moment to paused the conversation to reminisce about Parton.
An annual fall attraction at Robinette’s Apple Haus and Winery, the maze features a different design each year.The more than a century-old farm sells apples, peaches, cider, treats, and wine.This year, the maze was intended to be an homage to Parton. But, since the 80-year-old’s death, it has turned into something more.
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‘the song is ended but the melody lingers on.’
-irving berlin
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source credits detroit free press, the gander, usa today network
olive and pete the cat, actively ignoring me
using their selective hearing skills
when i call their names
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Why do cats ignore humans?
Cats pretend not to hear you on purpose. They clock your voice instantly, they just weigh whether responding is worth it. Nine times out of ten, it isn’t.
They can hear a can opening from halfway across the house, and yet sometimes they don’t even twitch an ear when you call them from the other end of the couch. Are they ignoring you? Yes, they sure are!
Science confirms they hear you perfectly-they are just actively choosing to ignore you.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo conducted a study and determined the following:
Science:
Why They Ignore You;
Your cat certainly understands you when you call them-they are simply choosing not to respond.
Only 10 % of cats who recognize your voice will choose to do anything about it.
”if cats could talk, they wouldn’t.’
-nan porter
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source credit:
Atsuko Saito and Kazutaka Shinozuka, University of Tokyo
“Vocal recognition of owners by domestic cats (Felis catus)”Animal Cognition: 2013
art credit: gary larson, the far side
(not me, or my teeth, but i loved his toothy grin)
i read an article about the top tips and habits that dentists wish we’d stop doing to our teeth
it began with the list of the usual suspects:
brushing too hard, skipping floss, drinking sugary and acidic drinks, all day grazing…
and then
the last ones, which were a bit more alarming and that i didn’t know were a habit for some:
Using your teeth as tools – Your teeth are built for chewing food (not ice) and that’s it. This may sound redundant to some, but you really should not be using them to open bottles or tear into packaging as it can crack or fracture a tooth (sometimes deep enough to reach the nerve and push you into root canal territory). Keep a real bottle opener on your keychain and scissors nearby instead of using your teeth as a tool.
DIY your own dental work –Filing your own teeth with a nail file, getting “veneers” from anyone who isn’t a licensed dentist or whitening with baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, or charcoal can cause permanent damage — chemical burns, brutal sensitivity, a thrown-off bite, and enamel erosion all won’t revert back.
Taking your advice from social media – Influencers may sound sure, but most of them don’t back their tips with evidence. A hack that’s fine for one mouth can absolutely wreck another mouth. Before you try a viral dental trend, please ask an actual dentist.
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Full disclosure: one of my daughters did make ‘braces’ for herself out of open paper clips because she was jealous of her older sister getting braces (until she really did need ‘real braces’ a year later and was no longer jealous), this may have fallen under the DIY dental work warning above.
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*jos’we do have a zeal for laughter in most situation, give or take a dentist.
-joseph heller, american author of catch 22
driving down the track
leading to my granddaughter’s house
we met one of her pet chickens
mr. rooster
who had made the choice
to just stand
in the middle of the road
not inclined nor heading
toward one side or the other
no way to go around him
we had to wait it out
he was
playing chicken with us
we waited some more
he finally got bored
proved his point
moved to one side
with each of us thinking
we had won.
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‘the chicken did not cross the road. the road passed beneath the chicken.’
-albert einstein
Yayoi Kusama, an icon, rebel and visionary, passed away this week
10 interesting facts about Yauoi Kusama
Kusama was an avant-garde artist who died at the age of 97. She worked across painting, installation, and sculpture, and has covered rooms, trees, and buildings with her iconic imagery. Kusama started painting her famous polka-dotted sculptures in the 50s which put her problems into perspective. “I wanted to examine the single dot that was my own life. One polka dot: a single particle among billions,” she said.
‘more and more, i think about the role of the arts, and as an artist,
i think that it’s important that I share the love and peace.’
-Yayoi Kusama
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source credits:galerie, chelsea werner-gatzky
hummingbird moth (Strawberry Clearwing) on an american germander plant
enjoying a visit to my daughter’s native garden
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Hummingbird moths have been seen as a lucky omen. Lore has it that a swarm of the moths was seen flying across the English Channel on D-Day, the day of the Normandy landings in WWII.
One of the sweetest insect visitors in a garden is the hummingbird moth. They fly and move just like hummingbirds. Like them, they can remain suspended in the air in front of a flower while they unfurl their tongues and insert them in flowers to sip their nectar. They even emit an audible hum like hummingbirds. Often people notice what they think is a tiny hummingbird fleeting around the flowers and are shocked when someone explains to them that what they just saw was not a bird but a moth.
Hummingbird moths are rather plump; the tip of their tail opens into a fan. Their wings are covered by scales; some species lose many of the scales from patches on their wings, so are called clearwing hummingbird moths. They are tiny and have a body length of 1-2 inches and a wingspan of 1.5-2.5 inches. Like most moths they have a very long tongue which they carry rolled under their chins and that they use to reach the nectar of long-necked flowers. Such nectar is inaccessible to many other flower visitors, so it seems that these flowers prefer long tongued pollinators and try to keep the others away.
—
moth-ku
sweet hummingbird moths
flying beauties flitting wings
may just be fairies
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bk
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photo credit: oldest daughter, HP
source credits: *Phillip Prichard, University of Georgia, U.S. Forest Service, Discovery Journal, Native Suburbia
*Phillip Prichard, is a Paulding UGA Extension Master Gardener, Master Birder, and a UGA Master Naturalist, who teaches horticulture, sustainable landscaping, and environmentally friendly gardening practices using unbiased, research-based information from the University of Georgia.
“Now the night I graduated from Sevier County High School, back in 1964, we were all asked to stand up and talk about what we were going to do with the rest of our lives. And everybody had a different story. And when it came my time I stood right up there. I said I’m going to Nashville and I’m going to be a star. Well the whole place laughed out loud. And I was so embarrassed, cause I thought, ‘How odd. Why is everybody laughing? ‘Cause that is what I’m going to do.’ But as bad as I felt at that moment and as embarrassed as I was, it did not shake me from my dreams. So I guess I showed them, huh?”
– From her 2009 University of Tennessee, Knoxville commencement speech
Dolly Parton, 8 years old (tallest, front center) with her family
Some of the country’s first park rangers were Buffalo Soldiers, African Americans who served in all-Black U.S. Army regiments starting in 1866. When Yellowstone and several other national parks were being established near the end of the century, the Department of the Interior quickly realized they needed protection.
So the U.S. Army stepped in as park rangers for Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks between 1891 and 1913, and the 24th Infantry became the first regiment of Buffalo Soldiers to take on the role when they began serving at Yosemite in 1899. In 1903, Captain Charles Young, the highest-ranking African American U.S. Army officer at the time, also became the first African American to be named the acting superintendent of Sequoia National Park.
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‘There is nothing so American as our national parks.
The scenery and the wildlife are native. The fundamental idea behind the parks is native.
It is, in brief, that the country belongs to the people,
that it is in process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us.
The parks stand as the outward symbol of the great human principle.’
-Franklin D. Roosevelt
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photo credit: National Park Service, Buffalo Soldiers
Thomas Moran painting – Yellowstone Park
source credit: History Magazine, National Geographic
Neanderthals Wore Makeup
Tens of thousands of years before skin care routines started popping up on social media, Neanderthals – our supposedly brutish, decidedly unglamorous evolutionary cousins – were wearing makeup and even jewelry. This discovery was made by archaeologists working in Spain who excavated oyster shells covered in an”attention-grabbing” colored pigment. The pigment was made of minerals including hematite, charcoal, lepidocrocite, and pyrite, which gave it a shimmering, glitter-like appearance that the researchers believe was also used on the body due to its cosmetic effect. The oyster shells were found with holes cut in them, suggesting they might have been worn as necklaces. The University of Bristol’s João Zilhão, who led the study, described the makeup to NPR as “something that people wear in order to convey what they are… in a world where you have a complex network of relations” – a means of self-expression rarely associated with Neanderthals. The shells which were 50,000 years old, wouldn’t look entirely out of place today.
By the Numbers
Neanderthals had larger brains than us.
Despite the common stereotype, their brains were larger than ours. Measured by endocranial volume, the space inside the skull,) their brain size was an average of 1,410 cm³ (~6 cups) compared to Homo sapiens’ 1,350 cm³ (5.7 cups). Bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better, however, as their brains were proportional to their bodies (which were denser and more muscular than ours) and supported their larger eyes, which helped them see in the low-light environments where they thrived.
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‘i like to imagine that the Neanderthals were all really good artists.’
-jim drain
*jim drain is an American textile artist who creates vibrantly colored mixed-media works that incorporate a range of materials such as fabric scraps, machine knit-patterns, found objects, and printed ephemera.
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source credits: gary larson, far side cartoon, university of bristol, npr, historynews, michael nordine
I didn't have my glasses on.... 