a well-regulated militia

American society, despite ample evidence to the contrary that more stringent gun-control laws curb violent shootings, is unwilling and incapable of reform and would rather indulge an illusory and contingent freedom and risk the unavoidable horror that is bundled into the selective reading of the intent of their Founding Fathers rather than take the stance that is apparently the tougher of the two—though those who’ve lost a family member, neighbour or a teacher probably have an easier time of deciding. Those directly affected by these tragedies, and they surely have great ripples across millions of lives, certainly deserve our emotional support and help tending to immediate needs—but for those of us digesting this all too frequent occurrence, we must needs be willing to confront something darker and also to know (not accept) that it is doomed to happen all over again.
This isn’t a taunt or challenge: America has perfected the script and there’s no deviation in its reading. Myriad chances for change have presented themselves and at times when there was far greater political will and political prowess, but the people of America choose again and again to embrace the message that surrendering a modicum on the right to bear arms represents run-away erosion on their liberties. Upbringing and the founding mythology plays an out-sized role in this self-destructive tendency, but so too does the gun industry and their lobbyists. Not that it changes anything, here is a directory of the congress men and women who accepted campaign donations from the National Rifle Association, legislated accordingly and now offer their thoughts and prayers in return.  The other uncomfortable truth we need to confront is how the event is not ultimately classified by its toll or audacity but by whether the shooter, perpetrator is white and has a name that doesn’t betray too much of a foreign origin. Rather than terrorism, it’s mental disease (which strikes me as something very harsh to intimate to anyone who is already suffering a lot of distress) and prosecuted accordingly—whereas, if the crimes are presented by someone with brown skin, it’s another point to the argument that we need to be able to defend ourselves from those who hate our way of life. It’s the latter conceit that’s among America’s most successful exports lately, and while fortunately the world is not willing to liberalise its weapon-laws down to American levels (a prominent German gun manufacturer has in fact pledged to stop selling munitions to corrupt regimes) real danger remains that we will start believing in the veracity of America’s underlying narrative and justification rather than reconciling it for what it is: the driving force behind this puerile, perennial display of helplessness to feel more secure in one’s own complicities and prejudices.

pound-foolish

We were certainly not disappoint at the lengths that the internet went to admonish us that this recently cinematic release was not the first adaptation of Steven King’s It and the 1990 television mini-series featured none other than accomplished stage and screen actor Tim Curry as the creepy, shape-shifting clown Pennywise. I’ll leave it to viewers to decide who played the role better.

estelada

Although some seventy percent of the voting populace in Catalunya were in favour of holding a referendum on the matter of its secession from the Kingdom of Spain, prior to the police brutality and voter-suppression that occurred at the ballot-stations in Barcelona, Girona and a few other locations (prominent places surely but hardly not blocking all of them), the people were split on the issue with only some forty percent unconditionally voting for independence.
Spain’s central government maintains it is illegal and unconstitutional for a constituent region to declare its autonomy—and it is the government’s right and arguably its responsibility to try to kept its soverign borders intact and cohesive, like those currently strategizing over what a Kurdish homeland might mean for Iraq and Turkey (or for that matter, what the experience might be for the first US state to remove itself from the Union) or how the creatures of Brexit’s court rallied around Catalunya’s right to self-determination, but its violent response to stop voting altogether reportedly translated to an incredible outcome of over ninety percent—perhaps that show of might smacked too much like the totalitarian regime of Francisco Franco that came to an end a scant four decades ago. What do you think? In the aftermath of the plebiscite and the violence that marred it, Catalunya’s leadership have since softened the rhetoric of an immediate withdrawal and amid all this chaos it’s impossible to predict how things will progress moving forward.

deciduous

We were rather taken with this stunning ensemble of trees turning from green to gold with red-accented vines in a parking lot near home—there’s happily quite a spectacle to see with the changing of the seasons but sometimes there’s the most contrast when it’s removed from the forest a bit. The chloroplasts in plants would be optimised for absorbing light across all spectra should leaves be black and while there’s a wide range in colouration, botanists aren’t sure exactly why most vegetation is green and not a darker shade. I wondered if the changing colours was just the onset of shedding them, the parts dying—or whether the process weren’t something more poetic, like the death of a star with the different phases and outcome it goes through as its energy sources dwindle.
I don’t think one can quite bear out that metaphor but it turns out that it’s a gross over-simplification to say that trees shed their leaves because of the cost of maintaining a green mantle during the winter months outweighs the photosynthetic benefits. The chemical responsible for the yellow and orange hues is always present in the leaves but is masked by renewed chlorophyll during the growing season.
The chemicals responsible for purples and reds are produced at the end of summer and slowly become a part of the tree’s complexion. Brown is the absence of pigment altogether.
Trees undergo this transformation to prevent water loss primarily and in certain climes to stave off freezing of extremities but there’s a whole host of other reasons including foiling the camouflage of herbivores, avoiding infestation, advertising its seeds and berries and to even stunt the growth of close neighbours. The clusters of dead leaves that remain attached and aren’t dropped, called marcescent, are even kept around by design as in the Spring they are a store of nutrients and they mask growing buds and ensure that any animal foraging for these new shoots gets a nasty taste for the effort.

a poet and didn’t know it

Our sincere gratitude to Nag on the Lake for introducing us to the rather remarkable troubadour known as Poetweet that will cull one’s Twitter feed for lyrical snippets and combine them into one of three poetic forms. We were really impressed with the eye-rhyme that it found amongst our twiterpation, pairing fascist with Zeitgeist or “a send away service for souvenirs” with “and their houses in dire need of repairs,” but I think we write about too many non-sequitir things to get an authentic couplet—and that gave us an idea. Granted Dear Leader is a sub-literate sophist and a general menace to language in any capacity, Poetweet was nonetheless also willing to take the dotard’s handle and make him sound a bit like a bard. Give it a try yourself at the links above.