Awwww. From a collection of kitty pictures forwarded to me by a friend.

Here's a tweet from last night after the Oscar ceremony was over. Made me laugh. The tweeter was no one I knew.

"If Best Picture went to something that Americans actually saw, and were actually moved by, it would go to some YouTube cat video."

Waxing crescent is my favorite moon phase.

From: earthsky.org

"At this moon phase, the Earth, moon and sun are located nearly on a line in space. If they were more precisely on a line, as they are at new moon, we wouldn’t see the moon. The moon would travel across the sky during the day, lost in the sun’s glare.

"But a waxing crescent moon is far enough away from that Earth-sun line to be visible near the sun’s glare – that is, in the west after sunset. This moon phase is seen one day to several days after new moon. On these days, the moon rises one hour to several hours behind the sun and follows the sun across the sky during the day. When the sun sets, and the sky darkens, the moon pops into view in the western sky."

Ever wonder why Wonder Bread became so popular? Neither did I. But this article tells a great, long story about the topic.

Here.

My environment versus THE environment. Sucked into the maw of the Dark Mountain Project.

My environment is good. Early crocuses, hellebores, and snowdrops are all abloom. (I included the picture at the bottom just to show the color of my dining room walls.)

For the last few years I've really wanted to understand a little bit of the science of global weirding, energy sources, and all that kind of thing. So I've been reading lots of books and articles. I still don't feel like I really understand anything yet, or that I can support any decisions about anything yet -- like the Keystone oil pipeline.

Last week I read this article -- "Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist" -- in a magazine, new to me, called Orion. I read all 200+ comments too, and they were almost as interesting as the article itself. For now, I'm totally smitten with what the author Paul Kingsnorth says, and maybe I'll also be smitten with his project called Dark Mountain. I've just started reading about it; it's a lot to take in. Here's a summary:

From this interview with Paul Kingsnorth:
Dark Mountain is not about ‘giving up’ or wallowing in doom or anything like that. Some people think it is, but they’re the ones who haven’t been paying attention. Dark Mountain is a process. First you give up on the unrealistic ambitions of both the mainstream growth narrative and the mainstream green narrative – creating a “sustainable” consumer democracy for nine billion people, stopping climate change, making capitalism nice and all the rest of the utopian stuff. You give up on that and then you can move on. You embrace what we might call radical honesty, and you look at what is possible and what’s not, and you see your true place in the world and in history…We call this the “hope beyond hope.” First you get real. Then you give up. Then you are re-inspired.’

How can I not?

In an email today the owner of the dinnerware writes, in part:

"just wondering if you've made any decisions ....

"I could go $375 for everything which is only 20% of the actual cost and less than the 4 serving pieces alone."

I think I'm going to.
Not totally sure yet.

Thanks for all the great comments and suggestions and opinions and votes. I just knew I'd get good feedback.

A word from The Wise. "Love them back, you ingrates."

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Even more dinnerware.

A lot of these are getting out of my price range but aren't they pretty?

Found scribbled on a folder on my desk.

I don't know where I saw this phrase but it obviously impressed me because I wrote it down on a folder. (I'm always finding notes to myself that I've written in the most inconvenient places.) I suspect that it was used in Christopher Hitchens's autobiography "Hitch 22," which I raved about a few months ago. It sounds like a phrase he would have used. "Quisling" is a relatively new word, but I offer it to my readers as a possible name to call someone you loathe. I hope the word takes on a broader meaning over time. For example, "that Newt Gingrich is such a embittered quisling." Even if you don't know what it means it sounds bad, right?

Speaking of plates...

For my birthday my friend Anne gave me this beautiful red platter and the delights it holds. The red plate is in honor of our many talks about food and dieting (and this interesting little factoid she recently came across). The chocolate is in honor of...well, does chocolate need a reason to exist? And the shells: Oh those shells! She lives above the Calvert Cliffs, in Calvert County MD. When she takes walks on the shoreline she finds these amazing shells, many of which have been buried in the cliffs for thousands of years. Like that large scallop shell. Also in the grouping are barnacles, a moon shell, and I can't remember the names of the others but maybe she'll chime in.

Thanks again Anne!

More dinnerware.

Fungus?

This looks like a shelf fungus but it's very hard, like wood. I guess it's possible that a fungus could get that hard. I might have to saw it off the limb to study it.

Dinnerware. Can't decide. Too many choices.

We have horrible dinnerware. Bits and pieces of old sets, some really, really cheap, some very, very old, some in-between. So I'm treating my family to a new set of dishes and I'm not going to do what I usually do. Buy something cheap, easy, and dull. Here are a few of the patterns I'm thinking about.

The other day I had a light-bulb moment and said "craigslist!" Sure enough there were a good number of dishes that would have been acceptable. And there was one that I had actually been looking at. Villeroy and Boch Switch 3 -- the blue and green ones in the top picture. I can get a ton of pieces (place settings for 8, plus lots of serving dishes) for about 1/4 of the cost of buying that pattern new. And I suspect that I can negotiate the price even lower.

One possible problem is that my dining room is a very intense color: kind of like brick red. And those blue and green dishes might not look so great in such a room. Or does it matter? (oh I know that it doesn't really matter matter the way, say, nuclear power matters...I mean would most people ignore the clash? I know I would. Do I care if most people notice? What's the worst they can say or think?)

I'm terrible at making these kinds of decisions. It's one reason we only have horrible, horrible dishes.

60? How about 70?

Georgette loves watching the Westminster Dog Show.

More shelf, or bracket, fungi.

There are all these interesting words you find when looking up stuff about fungi. Like "clades" and "conks." And this: "Other examples of bracket fungi include the sulphur shelf, birch bracket, dryad's saddle, artist's conk, and turkey tail."

I like this particular specimen because it grew on a stump created by the beavers when they lived in the pond next door. See the pointy top? Beaver-gnawing did that.

One more day.

Today is the last day I can sing this song. Tomorrow I turn 65. Feels like I'm getting ready to jump over a small but deep stream to The Other Side.

These cards are real snorters.

What a ride! If you love rock and roll this book is a must-read.

You don't have to love the Rolling Stones to like this book, but you do have to love rock and roll.

Caricatures on playing cards circa 1996.

These bad photos (I could have done better but I didn't feel like it) are of the Newt card from a deck I found while sorting through some junk. I'm not sure I get the joke. I get that the "L" and "R" are for Left and Right (right?) and I see the arrows pointing up. Is the joke that Newt will take either a leftish or a rightish position depending on which end is up??

Amazing birds -- heads that rotate 270 degrees!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I didn't see this owl but this video sucked me in. If you view it be forewarned that Brian Williams introduces the story AND before you even get to him, and the part about the snowy owls, you'll have to see a tedious 30-second commercial. Like the one I got featuring a cartoon blue bear who shows us the deep pleasure he gets upon sitting down after using such-and-such toilet paper. Have you seen those commercials? What's with all the graphic talk about bathroom habits?

I got the picture from the nyt and the video from nbc. Can they sue me? Or is this what they call "fair use"?