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Sunday, April 24, 2011

Delhi

Author Sam Miller sees ring roads as carotid arteries in his book Delhi- Adventures in a Megacity. Yesterday I saw a medium sized white, narrow oval plate with a navy blue ribbon through the slits in the plate that was neatly tied in the ribbon like the pink lacing through the white holds in this unhappy man's neck.

Poet Foxy

In Literature Alive, The Golden Touch story of Midas's daughter turning into statue is Nathaniel Hawthorne's spin.

Raisin in the sun movie

My Last Duchess

esculent in There was a child went forth


Like this stack of Bremen Town musicians, yesterday while looking for a gift I found a stack of a pig on a something on a cow.

Fox in The Little Prince of Antoine de saint Exupery is a poet.

New

Luke Johnson

I think I saw Two tailed swallow tail today. Must be the trees around.

Dik Dik looks like an alien or he/she seen an alien.

Brocket Deer

Calamian Deer

What business?

An inmate tells that he is in A business. When asked about it, he says he is not in the A business. He is not even in the B or C or D business. Reminded me of Billy Collins
Bread and the Knife poem

Friday, April 22, 2011

Menippus

His work nekyia or necromancy.
There once lived a woman who tried to kill her neighbors baby is scary fairy tales.
I liked the 'Incident at Sokolniki' story. Even dead people seem to need the last rite done well that they are haunted by the lack of observance of the rite.

References

Comparing mom's multi tasking to a thousand armed Guanyin in Years of Red Dust- stories of Shanghai by Qiu Xiaolong
The stories are such that you read them in one go.

All the Chinese proverbs and sayings fit in right well except for two references of River styx and Furies.

A guest comparing his family crab dinner to the one in
Dream of the Red Chamber

Legend of white snake

Walls have ears. Indians and Chinese too have this saying.

Chinese have Five Evils. Different from Sikh'sFive Evils.

poet Bai Juyi

Hark to the Lark

Bald Coot and Screaming Loon even though compiled in a question answer format, it is not academic, thanks to the informal tone of the Niall Edworthy

Tube noses
Fieldfare
Dovekie

The book is about birds and what they eat(or what we should or should not feed them), where they live and all the other things they do. He degrades them in the beginning to put them on the pedestal after the introduction.

I have read a Q&A book on birds before that didnt sustain my readership for too long. Compared with that, this book is an eye candy with accurate, lyric and funny illustrations. Its an ear candy too with the poems in it. My favourie is Dixon Lanier Merrit's poem in which he rhymes pelican with '(his bill can hold more than his)belican' and '(But i'm damned if I see how the) helican'.

If you are a beginner, you will learn a lot about how the birds 'flying' rules all of its other activities - molting, what organs it can or cannot have. For a bird with scavenging habits, you cannot have feathers on your neck. The most amazing fact to know for me was the duration of day that it takes to make an egg. Again its the need to fly for food. Bird mommy gets no maternity leave. That they discard their nitrogen in a way very differet from mammals which again goes back to how it cant bloat itself so that it can fly. Dusting. Anting and many other phenomenon.

If you have not done birdwatching before, theres a how to.

With so much going on about air controllers caught sleeping while on duty, a patrol crane with a stone held in its feet might have a way out for waking when you fall asleep.

When the author describes how the birds drink water, from what I have seen or remember, I think they posess a soaking ability. I will have to watch more keenly and look for them to hold their head back to gulp it down.

If you are not a beginner, still there are many new things that will you make you wonder about the bird world. That swifts cant walk very well like other birds, having chosen the fast life. The technique of Albatroses and others with their tubenoses that desalinate might help us too. If you knew all this about birds, there are still many quotes, poems and anecdotes to enjoy. The best i like is by Emily Dickinson - 'I hope you love birds,too. It is economical. It saves going to Heaven'.


I have added a new item to my wish list. To watch a mass migration.


Beauty brains

Marisa Silver

Grosgrain in Alone with you
Toby is found reading Pnin