by demure

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  41 (mostly) weekly posts
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The Year in Review:

2014.11.23: The Knowledge, London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test, Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS (rp galen op)

2014.12.21: My Vassar College Faculty ID Makes Everything OK - Gawker

2014.12.28: When the Sky Explained Everything - Nautilus

2015.01.11: The Wreck of the Kulluk - The New York Times / Deca

2015.01.18: Our Hottest Year, Our Cold Indifference - The New Yorker

2015.01.25: The Library of Babel - J. Borges

2015.02.08:

A Letter in October

Ted Kooser

  Dawn comes later and later now,   
  and I, who only a month ago
  could sit with coffee every morning   
  watching the light walk down the hill   
  to the edge of the pond and place   
  a doe there, shyly drinking,

  then see the light step out upon   
  the water, sowing reflections   
  to either side—a garden
  of trees that grew as if by magic—
  now see no more than my face,   
  mirrored by darkness, pale and odd,

  startled by time. While I slept,   
  night in its thick winter jacket   
  bridled the doe with a twist
  of wet leaves and led her away,
  then brought its black horse with harness   
  that creaked like a cricket, and turned

  the water garden under. I woke,   
  and at the waiting window found   
  the curtains open to my open face;   
  beyond me, darkness. And I,
  who only wished to keep looking out,   
  must now keep looking in.

2015.05.17: The Data That Threatened to Break Physics - Nautilus

2015.05.31: Wave Goodbye: Following John Muir's footsteps through California's high country - Postcard, Harper's Magazine

2015.06.07: To Save California, Read Dune - Nautilus

2015.09.06: The Most Northern Place - the story of Thule, Greenland {hubski discussion}

2015.09.27: The Arc of the Sun: Chasing history in the great South African Pigeon Race - Atavist

2015.10.04: The plot against student newspapers - The Atlantic

2015.10.18: A Brief History of the End of the Comments - WIRED{hubski link insomniasexx}

2015.10.25:

    The Mockingbird
    by Mary Oliver

    All summer
    the mockingbird
    in his pearl-gray coat
    and his white-windowed sings

    flies
    from the hedge to the top of the pine
    and begins to sing, but it’s neither
    lilting nor lovely,

    for he is the thief of other sound–
    whistles and truck brakes and dry hinges
    plus all the songs
    of other birds in his neighborhood;

    mimicking and elaborating,
    he sings with humbor and bravado,
    so I have to wait a long time
    for the softer voice of his own life

    to come through.  He begins
    by giving up all his usual flutter
    and settling down on the pine’s forelock
    then looking around

    as though to make sure he’s alone;
    then he slaps each wing against his breast,
    where his heart is,
    and copying nothing, begins

    easing into it
    as though it was not half so easy
    as rollicking,
    as though his subject now

    was his true self,
    which of course was as dark and secret
    as anyone else’s,
    and it was too hard–

    perhaps you understand–
    to speak or to sing it
    to anything or anyone
    but the sky.

Here’s to another year! Thanks for stopping by.