Above you have the Skokie River exactly 1.12 miles from where I am sitting in Carol’s rented apartment. Not much of a river, but I don’t name these things. We are having a heat wave. Temperatures are in the 40s and even low 50s F and I am again able to go for walks in reasonable comfort. After writing this entry, I will walk today in the other direction to the lake.
I know that at least a few of you have followed the Hilton Head Eagle Cam.
https://www.hhilandtrust.org/eagle-cam
That is the link, but there is nothing more to see. Last week the two eaglets fell from the nest to the ground. They were rescued and taken to a clinic, but have since died. The cause is not yet known. Avian flu is suspected. I did not witness the fall, but I did see on Sunday one of the adult eagles standing in the nest presumably trying to figure out what had happened. The nest has been empty whenever I have checked it since.
I regret the deaths of the eaglets, but nature is harsh. I expect the parent eagles have already moved on. I regret even more some of the deplorably sentimental comments made on the site. One is “God has two new angels.”
I don’t usually read comments but the explanation of what happened to the eaglets was published in them.
I put ‘artists’ in apostrophes because while both of the men I will mention are called artists, I consider one merely a con man, that is Andy Warhol.
Warhol journal entries frequently appear in THE ASSASSIN’S CLOAK. They uniformly reveal a supercilious, superficial life concerned completely with who gets invited or not invited to what party and who is seen with whom. Here a typical entry: I had a lot of dates, but decided to stay home and dye my eyebrows. Greatness, indeed.
The other is an anecdote about a real artrist from an article about Theodore Roosevelt: But the country agrees with Viscount Bryce, who said Roosevelt was the greatest president since Washington (prompting a Roosevelt friend to recall Whistler’s remark when told he was the greatest painter since Velazquez: “Why drag Velasquez into it?”)
If the Ukraine War turns nuclear as some fear, I am toast. You probably are too unless you live somewhere remote. I have friends who are presently traveling in their van in Mexico’s avocado country and unless quacamole is an essential war material, I think they are safe. New Zealand’s Bay of Islands is also looking increasingly desirable. However, here in Lake Forest we are only a few miles from the Great Lakes Naval Station and in Hilton Head we are only about seven miles from the Parris Island Marine Recruit Depot. Google says that Russia has 5,977 nuclear warheads. I expect they can spare two for those targets.
As I noted last week, I am struck by how repeatedly in the short recorded history of our species one man gains the power to kill thousands, then millions, and perhaps now billions. Now that’s progress. We call ourselves homo sapiens. The Latin is ‘wise or knowing man’. A cosmic joke.
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