dog days...

i'm hangin' wiv em homies...


...rompin' in em park

but i'll be doggone...


if you steal my bark!

to bee or not to bee

Popular ice cream flavors such as Rocky Road and Cherry Vanilla may be in danger thanks to the mysterious disappearance of honeybees. That has led to a major ice cream brand’s first journey to Capitol Hill in order to protect its sweet treats.

Häagen-Dazs’s flavors are heavily dependent on all-natural ingredients that can only be produced from bee pollination. Overall, 30 of the popular brand’s 73 ice creams, frozen yogurts and sorbets use such ingredients.

Therefore, the ice cream producer is sending its executives to Washington to testify before a House Agriculture subcommittee, calling for more funds into research for the mysterious vanishing bees, otherwise known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

“It is an issue that is far broader than Häagen-Dazs as an ice cream brand. It is an issue we all should care about because it affects what we eat,” said Katty Pien, brand director for the ice cream company. Pien has a point: About a third of the nation’s food, such as fruits, nuts and vegetables, are produced by bee pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The honeybee trade is valued at about $15 billion annually.

Losses in honeybees are not uncommon, but bees failing to return to the hive and the rapid depletion of their colonies, credited to CCD, have worried beekeepers. Overall, there is an estimated 35 percent decline in bee colonies for 2008 thus far. Plus, the price of honey has trended upwards since 1998 and was more than a dollar per pound in 2007, according to USDA.

The cause of CCD is not known, though researchers have offered a number of theories, from parasites to chemical contamination. Even the stress of traveling as hives are shipped across the country may cause the disorder. Beekeepers in 35 states have been affected.

Mark Brady, president of the American Honey Producers Association , believes CCD may come from a new strain of disease. “Once the bees are infected with it, it just shortens their lifespan. Where there once [were] these big, strong colonies, it’s just not the case anymore,” said Brady, himself a beekeeper who operates about 8,000 colonies in Texas, California and Nebraska.

Several hearings have been held in both the House and Senate since last year. Legislation has also passed Congress. Measures were introduced by Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) in 2007. Language from those bills was added to this year’s Farm Bill. One provision would authorize $100 million over five years for research into CCD. Another would encourage farmers to plant flowering plants, such as alfalfa and clover — thus increasing the habitat for pollinating honeybees — by offering incentives under the legislation’s conservation program.

Häagen-Dazs has also done its part. The ice cream company has already contributed $150,000 to Penn State University and another $100,000 to UC Davis for CCD research. The company plans to issue more research grants in the future.

In addition, all flavors that could be affected by the honeybee disappearance are being labeled with a new logo to promote awareness of the problem. Häagen-Dazs has also developed a new flavor, Vanilla Honeybee, to advocate for the cause.

method to the madness....

'I just sit down and write, and I don't think. And the characters just do it. Sometimes they won't, and that's a bad day. . . . I assume if I keep myself open and don't take myself too seriously, they'll keep talking. I live for those unexpected moments. I don't really know when they will come out -- I just know what I want to say. . . . Control so you can lose control -- that's what writing is. Disciplined control. If you can sustain that for ten pages, you're lucky.'

-- Eduardo Machado

DIRECTIVE

Back out of all this now too much for us,

Back in a time made simple by the loss

Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off

Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,

There is a house that is no more a house

Upon a farm that is no more a farm

And in a town that is no more a town.

The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you

Who only has at heart your getting lost,

May seem as if it should have been a quarry –

Great monolithic knees the former town

Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.

And there's a story in a book about it:

Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels

The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,

The chisel work of an enormous Glacier

That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.

You must not mind a certain coolness from him

Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.

Nor need you mind the serial ordeal

Of being watched from forty cellar holes

As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.

As for the woods' excitement over you

That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,

Charge that to upstart inexperience.

Where were they all not twenty years ago?

They think too much of having shaded out

A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.

Make yourself up a cheering song of how

Someone's road home from work this once was,

Who may be just ahead of you on foot

Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.

The height of the adventure is the height

Of country where two village cultures faded

Into each other. Both of them are lost.

And if you're lost enough to find yourself

By now, pull in your ladder road behind you

And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.

Then make yourself at home. The only field

Now left's no bigger than a harness gall.

First there's the children's house of make-believe,

Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,

The playthings in the playhouse of the children.

Weep for what little things could make them glad.

Then for the house that is no more a house,

But only a belilaced cellar hole,

Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.

This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.

Your destination and your destiny's

A brook that was the water of the house,

Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,

Too lofty and original to rage.

(We know the valley streams that when aroused

Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)

I have kept hidden in the instep arch

Of an old cedar at the waterside

A broken drinking goblet like the Grail

Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,

So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.

(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)

Here are your waters and your watering place.

Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

-- By Robert Frost

the road not taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval, 1920.

eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd." –
Alexander Pope

transience

The reputation which the world bestows
is like the wind, that shifts now here now there,
its name changed with the quarter whence it blows.
Dante Alighieri 1265-1321: Divina Commedia 'Purgatorio'

Like that of leaves is a generation of men.
Homer 8th century bc: The Iliad

He who binds to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity's sunrise.
William Blake 1757-1827: MS Note-Book

Look thy last on all things lovely,
Every hour.
Walter de la Mare 1873-1956: 'Fare Well' (1918)



tran·sient /ˈtrænʃənt, -ʒənt, -ziənt/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[tran-shuhnt, -zhuhnt, -zee-uhnt]
–adjective
1. not lasting, enduring, or permanent; transitory: "the transient beauty of youth"
2. passing with time; existing briefly; temporary: transient authority.
3. staying only a short time: the transient guests at a hotel.
4. Philosophy. transeunt.
–noun
5. a person or thing that is transient, esp. a temporary guest, boarder, laborer, or the like.
6. Mathematics.
a. a function that tends to zero as the independent variable tends to infinity.
b. a solution, esp. of a differential equation, having this property.
7. Physics.
a. a nonperiodic signal of short duration.
b. a decaying signal, wave, or oscillation.
8. Electricity. a sudden pulse of voltage or current.

—Synonyms 2. fleeting, flitting, flying, fugitive, evanescent.

I shall be released...

They say ev'rything can be replaced,
Yet ev'ry distance is not near.
So I remember ev'ry face
Of ev'ry man who put me here.
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now,
I shall be released.

They say ev'ry man needs protection,
They say ev'ry man must fall.
Yet I swear I see my reflection
Some place so high above this wall.
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now,
I shall be released.

Standing next to me in this lonely crowd,
Is a man who swears he's not to blame.
All day long I hear him shout so loud,
Crying out that he was framed.
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now,
I shall be released.