The Disappearing Northern Spotted Owl - A Metaphor for Intelligence in the U.S.

For a variety of reasons, completely unrelated to conservation or wildlife, I needed to find the habitat of the infamously endangered Northern Spotted Owl. A Google search turned up some lovely pictures and a link to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service page for the Strix occidentalis caurina. This page didn't give any clear indication of the bird's range or habitat, but there were several USFWS links on the page: An Environmental Alternatives Analysis for a 4(d) Rule for the Northern Spotted Owl; Northwest Forest Plan; and the most promising - Find out where you can find this species on or near a National Wildlife Refuge.

All of these links are dead. All you'll get from these FWS pages is "page cannot be found - Alert 404."

So, in addition to removing critical information about womens' health care on the NHS website and redacting the history of the civil rights movement from the Lincoln Memorial, the Bush Administration is continuing to implement its policy of censorship and disinformation. It's a national shame that this president perpetually hides behind "executive privilege" whenever he is asked to explain even the most mundane decisions, but that his administration seeks to deny public access to any information that runs contrary to its agenda is criminal.

We have allowed ourselves to be silenced. We have allowed ourselves to be blindfolded. We shouldn't be surprised when the world turns a deaf ear to our voice.

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I may be crazy, but it's worth $60

Much to my surprise, there is yet another version of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings. Howard Shore has released:The Fellowship of the Ring - The Complete Soundtrack.

This is truly a complete soundtrack - not just excerpts from the theatrical release, but all three hours of music that was composed for the film. I find this incredibly amazing, when the extended version of the movie ran just shy of three and a half hours. Which, if my math is correct, means that there was only twenty minutes in the entire movie without music.

One of the things that I loved about the entire soundtrack for the LoTR trilogy is the use of musical oxymorons to heighten the emotional impact of the story. A great example of this is the music for the Arwen's race against the Nazgûl ("Flight to the Ford" in the original soundtrack release, now part of "Give up the Halfling"). The scene is clearly very tense and action-filled, but the music is gentle and soaring. This juxtaposition only heightens our horror of what would happen if the Black Riders caught Arwen and Frodo.

I remember thinking, when I first saw the extended version of the entire Lord of the Rings that it was a real pity that some of the best parts of a truly excellent soundtrack were not included on the released CD - the dirge that Eowyn sings at her brother's funeral in The Two Towers, and the song that accompanied the scene, The Healing of Eowyn, in The Return of the King (come to think of it, a great many of Eowyn's scenes were cut from the theatrical releases - the Dream, her conversation with Aragorn on the way to Helm's Deep, a significant part of her battle scenes on the Fields of Pelennor). Now, I'll just have to wait about two years for the rest of the music - a recent Newsday article noted that the complete soundtracks for the other two movies will be available by the end of 2007.

It is amazing how much I've spent on these movies - $27 total for movie tickets, $20 for the theatrical release DVD of FoTR, $20 for the theatrical release DVD of The Return of The King (I didn't get the one for The Two Towers), $9.99 for the downloaded version of the soundtrack to RoTK from iTunes, $50 for the boxed set of the three theatrical release soundtracks, $75 for the boxed set of the platinum versions of the films, and now $60 for the FoTR complete sound track. That's $262 without including the $120 I will spend for the other two complete soundtracks to be released.

What am I, NUTS????????

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Every child should have a dog...

Every child should have a dog. Having a pet, particularly a dog, makes a child's life a lot easier in so many respects. A dog is a confidant who will never tell your secrets, a friend who wouldn't judge you, and a someone who is always happy to see you.

My sisters and I had the best dog in the world, our golden retriver, Taffy. There was no other dog in the world as smart, as gentle, as loving as Taffy. No matter what we did to her, she loved us unconditionally. When I was a little girl, and didn't really know that I shouldn't cut the doggie's toenails, Taffy bore my obviously painful manicure without a whimper (I can't say the same for the spanking I got for it, though). She loved to romp with us in the backyard - and as you can see from this old photo, the kiddie pool was a welcome watering hole after our exertions.

There is a blond joke about golden retrievers: "What do you call a blond with an IQ over 125? A golden retreiver!" Taffy was very smart, and I am not just saying that because she was mine. When I was 7, my family took a vacation to Disney World and we had to put Taffy in a boarding kennel. Dad, naturally, was working up until the last minute, so Mom had to drop Taffy off. We got home on a Friday, so Dad was able to pick Taffy up (Mom probably was doing laundry). She was so happy to see us, and for nearly two weeks, she refused to even look at my mother, barely deigning to let her take her out for a walk. She wouldn't even accept a dog biscuit from her hand. It took major bribes to restore her good will.

Taffy died from canine leukemia when I was 10, and over 30 years later, I still tear up at the thought of her loss. I've had other dogs, all of which I've loved without hesitation or reservation, but Taffy has the strongest hold on my memory.

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More on memories

I found this poem in the New Yorker a few months back, and it made me terribly sad. Not only about what I will leave behind, but who will feel the loss of me. I think this is one of the reasons why humans are compelled to reproduce - to become immortal by memory.

The Resurrection of the Dead

We are buried below with everything we did
with our tears and our laughs
We have made storerooms of history out of it all,
galleries of the past, and treasure houses,
buildings and walls and endless stairs of iron and marble
in the cellars of time.
We will not take anything with us.
Even plundering kings, they all left something here.
Lovers and conquerors, happy and sad,
they all left something here, a sign, a house,
like a man who seeks to return to a beloved place
and purposely forgets a book, a basket, a pair of glasses,
so that he will have an excuse to come back to the beloved place.
In the same way we leave things we here.
In the same way the dead leave us.


by Yehudi Amichai

Translated from the Hebrew by Leon Weiseltier

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First Post - Memories

I was scrolling through my iTunes this morning, and came across a playlist containing recordings I had imported from audio cassettes made of performances of the State University of New York at Albany University Chorale during 1983 and 1984. At one point in my life, I had a decent (if not terribly powerful) voice and enjoyed singing. I joined the Chorale in my first semester at Albany, and sang Carl Orff's popular Carmina Burana song cycle. Our leader, David Janower, was nothing if not ambitious, and we were a pretty talented group.

I remember how excited I was about that performance - and how important it was to have a tape made of it. I "borrowed" my sister's compact tape recorder (a pretty decent unit that I think I still have somewhere) and spent about $10.00 on a Memorex 120 minute audio tape. Since we were performing the whole piece, which ran about 61 minutes, without intermission, I needed a tape long enough to record it in one shot.

It is amazing how readily the memory of that first performance came back to me - even how the percussionist knocked over the cymbals during the first notes of "O, Fortuna". For an "open" group (no auditions required), we were pretty professional, and didn't miss a beat. Unfortunately, the recording missed the first few notes (and the crash) - the O, Fortuna got lost in the few seconds of lead-in, and the recording begins with "velut luna, status variabilis".

Carmina Burana remains one of my favorite pieces of music, I have several recordings of it, and I must say that this amateur performance (accompanied only by a piano and a percussionist) holds it's own musically. Our intonation and diction were excellent, it comes through even on a 22 year old monaural recording.

Listening to this old recording brings me back to a point in my life where I was just beginning to feel comfortable with myself. I was 17 years old, and I knew I'd never be popular or a party girl, but I was making friends and having a pretty good time. I can see where that girl was heading though - double-loading classes, too many hours in the library, being too quick to get on to the next achievement and not enough time having fun.

I'd like to go back for an hour and sit down with my 17 year old self and tell her to slow down and savor those years - they aren't going to come again.

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