On this page the following entries were made in the “December, 2009” time-frame.
Archive for “December, 2009”
Still recovering
I was feeling quite a bit better when, a few weeks ago, I found myself again in pain. Listen, I sent those spirochetes packing. I no longer had Lyme Disease, but the damage that it did to my neck and shoulder bones and joints has caused me great pain. This go-round I seem to have lost full use of my left arm. After a few weeks (and using up all my sick time) I started the slow climb back to full health. If you are reading this and you have Lyme Disease, be of good cheer. Don’t let the online… Read more »
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The Mari Lwyd and New Year
Mari Lwyd , Horse of the Frost, Star-horse and White Horse of the Sea, is carried to us.
[…..]
Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.
A knock of the sands on the glass of the grave,
A knock on the sands of the shore,
A knock of the horse’s head of the wave,
A beggar’s knock on the door.
A knock of a moth and the pane of light,
In the beat of the blood a knock.
Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.
The sands in the glass, the shrinking sands,
And the picklock, picklock, picklock, hands.
Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.…
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No easy answers to urban deer question
By LARRY KLINE Independent Record | Posted: Thursday, December 31, 2009 12:00 am
The whip-crack of the bolt gun sounding throughout Helena’s hills as city police killed 200 deer last fall and winter hardly signaled the start of the Capital City’s struggles with a growing population of urbanized mule deer — nor did they mark an end.
Last season’s twin pilot projects and this winter’s work — the cops will put down another 200 deer across the city — were only the start of the story’s next chapter. And to understand the controversy over Helena’s loved and hated hoofed denizens, one must… Read more »
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Education under fire
EVE BYRON Independent Record | Posted: Thursday, December 31, 2009 12:00 am
Editor’s note: Today continues a weeklong look at the most significant changes in Helena in the past decade. Coming tomorrow: the fall of Asarco and the rise of Carroll College football.
On July 25, 2000, Bob Drake stood in a field off Canyon Ferry Road, head bowed, in a circle with about 40 other exhausted people — accountants, engineers and fence builders who pick up hoses and shovels when paged to respond to fires.
Smoke and embers swirled around them, along with their emotions. They were entering the third day of… Read more »
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Wolves now firmly established, but debate still lingers
By EVE BYRON Independent Record | Posted: Thursday, December 31, 2009 12:00 am
During the past decade, gray wolves in Montana evolved from the protected to the prey.
For Ed Bangs, 2009’s first-ever wolf hunting season in Montana and Idaho proved that the federal Endangered Species Act works. As one of those instrumental in their reintroduction in the Northern Rockies in 1995, Bangs viewed the season as evidence that those wolves have advanced from a species threatened with extinction due to poisoning and trapping in the early 1900s to a predator whose numbers are so abundant that they need culling through hunting,… Read more »
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Beetle kill changes face of Helena Forest
By LARRY KLINE Independent Record | Posted: Thursday, December 31, 2009 12:00 am
The most startling visible change to our landscape in the past decade is the rapid death of the pines. Lodgepoles and ponderosas alike have been destroyed in a seemingly inexorable onslaught by a tiny bug called the bark beetle.
The industrious little borer has turned the needles red on millions of acres of land throughout the Western United States and Canada. The most recent preliminary federal estimate is that some 5 million acres of Montana forests have been affected by the infestation, up about 2 million acres from last… Read more »
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Three Golden Heads in the Well
This version from English Folk and Fairy Tales, by Joseph Jacobs. There is a slightly longer version in the Norton Collection. Is the king of Colchester Cunobelinus – later popularized as Old King Cole? It is interesting that the quest narrative, usually the part of a young male, is here undertaken by a female. Who are these fairies of the well? Or rather well spirits being not uncommon in faerie lore, why are there three of them? The story is referred to in some verses by George Peele in his play The Old Wive’s Tale (1595). These are discussed HERE
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LONG…
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On the blue–and green–religion of Avatar
Let’s get the negatives out of the way first. The movie pits good against evil in a tired old storyline that has less subtlety than a spaghetti western. The postcolonial spin on the tale is that here the indigenous people are so exotic and pure they can make you cringe—especially their religious rituals, which are about as complex as “Kumbayah.”
But I forgive these foibles for what the movie does so well. It’s simply beautiful. Breathtaking. Stunning. Especially if you see it in 3-D. (Don’t even consider anything else.) The natural world of the movie is a cornucopia of delights painted… Read more »
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Mabinog’s Liturgy
Nativity with Beasts and Shepherds
(Dum Medium Silentium Tenerent Omnia)
drypoint, 1928, on wove paper
drypoint, 1928, on wove paper
by David Jones
*
In the middle silences of this night’s course the blackthorn blows white on Orcop Hill.
They do say that on this night
in the warm byres
shippons, hoggots and out-barns of Britain
in the closes and the pannage-runs and on the sweet lawns of Britain
the breathing animals-all
do kneel.
Some may say as on this night
the narrow grey-rib wolves
from the dark virgin wolds and indigenous thickets of Britain,
though very hungry and already over the fosse, kneel content on the shelving berm.
If these are but grannies’ tales
maybe that on…
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Winter Solstice
It is now the marker of time marks time
When light shifts in the dark
Upon itself and ebb turns back
To flow as the land lies stark
When light shifts in the dark
Upon itself and ebb turns back
To flow as the land lies stark
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