A Panda-rific Time! Which means sitting around eating bamboo, I guess.

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Photo #433: Panda PandaLocation Taken: National Zoo, Washington DC
Time Taken: March 2010

Panda!

Pandapandapandapanda!

Ok, so maybe I don’t really get the panda-mania that much. I mean, sure, it’s solidly in the “cute animals” side of things, and sure, the fact that an animal that comes from omnivorous roots now eats only one plant period is kinda interesting, but you know, there’s a lot of other fantastic animals out there.

Like sharks! I like sharks! They’re REALLY nifty, much more fascinating than pandas! Did you know that most shark species have to keep moving at all times to keep water flowing over their gills, but nurse sharks can pump water through their mouth to keep breathing while stationary?! Did you know some shark species give birth to live young while others lay eggs?! Did you know the goblin shark lives in very high pressures and can actually snap its jaw forward to ambush prey swimming by?! Did you know there’s a shark called the Tasseled Wobbegong that looks a whole lot like a fancy fringed carpet?!

Aren’t sharks FAR more interesting than the pampered prudes that are pandas?!

Hug a shark today!

Well, ok, not literally. It might eat you, unless it’s a whale shark. Those are filter-feeders, just like whales!

  

The Beauty of Brown?

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Photo #432: Bare TreesLocation Taken: Ithaca, New York
Time Taken: March 2010

Sometimes it feels like I just can’t be satisfied. A few months ago the bare trees and branches were irritating, with the world covered in monotonous browns and grays. I longed for the leaves to come back to get some color back in the world again.

Now, the trees are bursting with green, and life in all its glory is showing itself. And I want the bare trees back again. When the trees are bare, the temperature tends to be cooler and far more pleasant to me than the brain-rotting heat of summer. And yet, I know that if they were bare, I’d be longing for green once again.

So perhaps it’s not the seasons that need to change, but my location. I mean, if I was in a cooler area with coniferous trees, well, it’d be cold AND green! The best of both options!

  

I Dream of Towering Peaks and Horns Sounding On High

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Photo #431: Epic MountainsLocation Taken: Just East of Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
Time Taken: October 2012

It’s Balticon weekend, so I’ve been spending my days listening to very intelligent people talk about all sorts of fascinating topics, from managing a wordpress blog (expect a few changes soonish) to full out theoretical physics. My brain’s a little overloaded from it all, and there’s still one more day to go!

But one of the first things I did was hit the Dealer’s Room and check out all the fascinating things on sale. And, for the third year in a row, I bought a few CDs of Filk Music.

Now, that’s not a misspelling of folk. Well, technically it is, since that’s where the term came from, but it has taken on a life of its own. As the Wikipedia page on the subject says, it’s a bit tough to define. It’s a musical tradition that has grown out of the Science Fiction and Fantasy fandom found at conventions like Balticon. It’s got some traits in common with folk, and traditional medieval (and other era) songs are often sung along the modern music, but it also occasionally pulls from all sorts of other musical styles and weaves them in. But it’s the subject matter that makes me love the genre. Rather than the classic mainstream topics of love, sex, and courtship with occasional hardship of life mixed in, Filk pulls from all aspects of life, and beyond. Stories of adventure, war, cats, architecture, and truck-driving vampires are all quite acceptable. As are songs pulling from books and movies (usually science fiction and fantasy stories, given where the genre formed), showing just what made those tales so powerful to the readers.

It’s music that makes me dream grand dreams, think deep thoughts, and yearn for more than I have.

Which is why when I saw two new CDs from two of my favorite filkers, I snatched them right up.

The first one is Horsetamer, by Julia Ecklar. If you want to listen to the whole thing right from the publisher, here, it’s available for preview right there. And oh my, the horns! Such marvelous instrumental work! And such strong lyrics! *swoons*

The second one is Avalon is Risen, by Leslie Fish. By pure coincidence, it’s also produced by Prometheus Music, so you can listen to it as well. I’ve only just started listening to it, and well, I need to get this blog up, but so far it’s excellent. Not as epic as Horsetamer, but quite good in its own right.

Both of them are making my brain spin with story fragments and dreams of epic landscapes, full of mountains and high-growing trees. Luckily I have some pictures with that sort of landscape, so I can share that right away. We’ll see if the story fragments ever grow into anything larger.

  

The Metaphors of Life

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Photo #430: Lone TreeLocation Taken: Montana
Time Taken: October 2012

There’s just something about this tree that speaks to my soul.

At first glance, it might be the fact that it is a lone tree, surviving far from the distant line of trees along a distant river. It’s in a glorious landscape, too. There’s probably all sorts of metaphors about standing on your own and making your own way in there.

But then, if you look a little closer, you spot that the grass right by the tree is mowed. This tree did not grow here on its own. This was right by a rest area, and they had a few small trees scattered around as part of the landscaping. None of them were that big, but then the rest area itself looked like it hadn’t been there too long.

So maybe the metaphors should be more along the lines of false success, of arrogantly presenting yourself as doing it all on your own when you were given everything.

But I’m more fond of a different set.

After all, this tree IS alone, and it had no input in how it came to be there. Sure, it isn’t the best area for a tree to grow (else natural trees would be there), and sure, it probably has to be watered and pampered some to survive, but it is managing to thrive in its odd conditions. Perhaps the metaphor is that no matter how alone we seem, and how much we may think that we did it on our own, there’s other people helping and guiding you in their own small ways.

Which really is the best of the possible metaphors, I’d say.

  

By The Light of the Lantern

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Photo #429: Butterfly LanternLocation Taken: Baddeck, Nova Scotia
Time Taken: July 2012

I was getting rather worried yesterday that I wouldn’t get my post up in time. I’d come home at around 9 pm, with a full three hours to write the post and get it up. I seem to do best with that touch of time pressure in keeping this blog updated.

But as I stepped out of the car, there was a peculiar somewhat electric sound and all the streetlights flickered and went out. As did every single other thing connected to the electrical grid. The only lighting was the occasional distant lightning from the storm that had caused the power outage.

Well, and a few solar-powered garden lights, and the usual light pollution present in this highly populated area that makes it quite bright enough to get around without hurting yourself on any cloudy night. But that’s besides the point.

But well, no electricity meant no internet, not to mention no computer to write my post on. And it was after closing hours for the library, which is my backup for when I can’t use our home internet for whatever reason. I had to use that option just under two weeks ago, when a different power outage fried the box connecting our computers to the ISP’s network.

So I sat around in the dark, with only a lantern as light. I played on my aging Nintendo DS for a bit, but both of the shoulder buttons weren’t working consistently, and they were essential for the game I was playing, so I quit in frustration after an hour.

Then I pulled out one of the books I’d picked up at the library when I was there to update my blog during the earlier outage, turned the lantern to just bright enough to read by, and read away, trying not to worry too much.

And then the silence was broken by my fan turning back on, and the lights in the hallway turned on, and I rushed to the computer, turned it on, and quickly wrote my post. I wanted to get it up before the electricity decided to go out again, for it was still raining quite nicely with occasional distant flashes in the sky.

Perhaps I should have more of a buffer, but well, this way seems to work well for me so far. I may run right up to the deadline and occasionally over, but I’ve gotten it up every day until now. And including now, since I still have 20 minutes left before my deadline. That’s plenty of time, right?