Without Lifting A Finger



A zoo (short for zoological garden or zoological park and also called an animal park or menagerie ) is a facility in which animals are housed within enclosures, displayed to the public, and in which they may also breed. The term "zoological garden" refers to zoology , the study of animals, a term deriving from the Greek zōon (ζῷον, 'animal') and lógos (λóγος, 'study'). The abbreviation "zoo" was first used of the London Zoological Gardens , which was opened for scientific study in 1828 and to the public in 1857. [1] The number of major animal collections open to the public around the world now exceeds to 1,000, around 80 percent of them are in cities. [2] In the United States of America alone, zoos are visited by over 180 million people annually. * The Zoological Society of London was founded in 1826 by Stamford Raffles and established the London Zoo in Regent's Park two years later in 1828. [15] At its founding, it was...

At this moment I do not remember anything that interested me except a sick monkey,--a very large monkey, and elderly he seemed to be. His keeper brought him some sweetened apple and water, and some tea; for the monkey had quite lost his appetite, and refused all ordinary diet. He came, however, quite eagerly, and smelt of the tea and apple, the keeper exhorting him very tenderly to eat. But the poor monkey shook his head slowly, and with the most pitiable expression, at the same time extending his hand to take the keeper's, as if claiming his sympathy and friendship. By and by the keeper (who is rather a surly fellow) essayed harsher measures, and insisted that the monkey should eat what had been brought for him, and hereupon ensued somewhat of a struggle, and the tea was overturned upon the straw of the bed. Then the keeper scolded him, and, seizing him by one arm, drew him out of his little bedroom into the larger cage, upon which the wronged monkey began a loud, dissonant, rep...

I question whether any part of the world looks so beautiful as England-- this part of England, at least--on a fine summer morning. It makes one think the more cheerfully of human life to see such a bright universal verdure; such sweet, rural, peaceful, flower-bordered cottages,--not cottages of gentility, but dwellings of the laboring poor; such nice villas along the roadside, so tastefully contrived for comfort and beauty, and adorned more and more, year after year, with the care and after-thought of people who mean to live in them a great while, and feel as if their children might live in them also, and so they plant trees to overshadow their walks, and train ivy and all beautiful vines up against their walls, and thus live for the future in another sense than we Americans do. And the climate helps them out, and makes everything moist, and green, and full of tender life, instead of dry and arid, as human life and vegetable life is so apt to be with us. Certainly, England can prese...

The fancy glasses (borrowed) showed the "reality," while the phone camera (I was told ex post facto that I shouldn't have) showed another. * 

    

In the evening, just before eight o'clock, I took a walk alone, by a road which goes up the hill, back of our hotel, and which I supposed might be the road to the town of Windermere. But it went up higher and higher, and for the mile or two that it led me along, winding up, I saw no traces of a town; but at last it turned into a valley between two high ridges, leading quite away from the lake, within view of which the town of Windermere is situated. It was a very lonely road, though as smooth, hard, and well kept as any thoroughfare in the suburbs of a city; hardly a dwelling on either side, except one, half barn, half farm-house, and one gentleman's gateway, near the beginning of the road, and another more than a mile above. At, two or three points there were stone barns, which are here built with great solidity. At one place there was a painted board, announcing that a field of five acres was to be sold, and referring those desirous of purchasing to a solicitor in London. T...

April 7th.--I dined at Mr. J. P. Heywood's on Thursday, and met there Mr. and Mrs. ------ of Smithell's Hall. The Hall is an old edifice of some five hundred years, and Mrs. ------ says there is a bloody footstep at the foot of the great staircase. The tradition is that a certain martyr, in Bloody Mary's time, being examined before the occupant of the Hall, and committed to prison, stamped his foot, in earnest protest against the injustice with which he was treated. Blood issued from his foot, which slid along the stone pavement, leaving a long footmark, printed in blood. And there it has remained ever since, in spite of the scrubbings of all succeeding generations. Mrs. ------ spoke of it with much solemnity, real or affected. She says that they now cover the bloody impress with a carpet, being unable to remove it. In the History of Lancashire, which I looked at last night, there is quite a different account,--according to which the footstep is not a bloody one, but is a...

Some Delta flight to Sacramento. Not a great pic but not bad -- through an airplane window, darkly. Also, at least it appeared to be the case in the original: haze or smoke. Makes sense with all the fires up that way this summer. Anyway, I played with them a bit and got the results below. Half Dome is in the top middle, El Capitan is in the bottom middle. *         [From: A. Z-Swihart] 

I think I neglected to record that I saw Miss Martineau a few weeks since. She is a large, robust, elderly woman, and plainly dressed; but withal she has so kind, cheerful, and intelligent a face that she is pleasanter to look at than most beauties. Her hair is of a decided gray, and she does not shrink from calling herself old. She is the most continual talker I ever heard; it is really like the babbling of a brook, and very lively and sensible too; and all the while she talks, she moves the bowl of her ear-trumpet from one auditor to another, so that it becomes quite an organ of intelligence and sympathy between her and yourself. The ear-trumpet seems a sensible part of her, like the antennae of some insects. If you have any little remark to make, you drop it in; and she helps you to make remarks by this delicate little appeal of the trumpet, as she slightly directs it towards you; and if you have nothing to say, the appeal is not strong enough to embarrass you. All her talk was ab...

      

Coffee with a friend who's lost his phone. Solo walk. Ode to a Green Urn (cats are poets too) and a few other trinkets. School hasn't started but it's already so palpable it's invading my dreams ... *                 

Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a-hunting For fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, And white owl's feather! Down along the rocky shore Some make their home, They live on crispy pancakes Of yellow tide-foam; Some in the reeds Of the black mountain lake, With frogs for their watch-dogs, All night awake. High on the hill-top The old King sits; He is now so old and gray He's nigh lost his wits. With a bridge of white mist Columbkill he crosses, On his stately journeys From Slieveleague to Rosses; Or going up with music On cold starry nights To sup with the Queen Of the gay Northern Lights. They stole little Bridget For seven years long; When she came down again Her friends were all gone. They took her lightly back, Between the night and morrow, They thought that she was fast asleep, But she was dead with sorrow. They have kept her ever since Deep within the lak...

Don't have the time or energy to follow up all the leads Hawthorne has been sending my way via his foreign journals (he was the American Consul in Liverpool for a few years), but this one was worthwhile because it led to "The Faeries." Kiddish perhaps by contemporary standards, but something I imagine the young Yeats swallowed whole. *** William Allingham (19 March 1824 – 18 November 1889) was an Irish poet, diarist and editor. He wrote several volumes of lyric verse, and his poem 'The Faeries' was much anthologised; but he is better known for his posthumously published Diary , [1] in which he records his lively encounters with Tennyson, Carlyle and other writers and artists. His wife, Helen Allingham , was a well-known water-colorist and illustrator. [From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Allingham  ]

I am sorry for them, though it is by no means a sorrow without hope. Since the matter has gone so far, there seems to be no way but to go on winning victories, and establishing peace and a truer union in another generation, at the expense, probably, of greater trouble, in the present one, than any other people ever voluntarily suffered. We woo the South "as the Lion wooes his bride;" it is a rough courtship, but perhaps love and a quiet household may come of it at last. Or, if we stop short of that blessed consummation, heaven was heaven still, as Milton sings, after Lucifer and a third part of the angels had seceded from its golden palaces,--and perhaps all the more heavenly, because so many gloomy brows, and soured, vindictive hearts, had gone to plot ineffectual schemes of mischief elsewhere. [We regret the innuendo in the concluding sentence. The war can never be allowed to terminate, except in the complete triumph of Northern principles. We hold the event in our own ...

We saw at Willard's many who had thus found out for themselves, that, when Nature gives a young man no other utilizable faculty, she must be understood as intending him for a soldier. The bulk of the army had moved out of Washington before we reached the city; yet it seemed to me that at least two thirds of the guests and idlers at the hotel were one or another token of the military profession. ***    

The "clip" and letter fragment are from the following website: http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/franklin-pierce-discovers-the-body-of-nathaniel-hawthorne/ * The two friends left Boston together and traveled to Pierce’s home in Concord, N.H., and traveled to Dixville Notch once the weather was good enough. On May 18, 1864, they were returning through Plymouth. They turned in at the Pemigewasset Hotel, where Hawthorne took a nap, ate a bit of food and drank a cup of tea before going to bed. Pierce, in a letter four years later, described what happened next: Passing from his room to my own, leaving the door open and so placing the lamp that its direct rays would not fall upon him and yet enable me to see distinctly from my bed, I betook myself to rest too, a little after ten o'clock. But I awoke before twelve, and noticed that he was lying in a perfectly natural position, like a child, with his right hand under his cheek. That noble brow and face struck me as...

By and by there was a little stir on the staircase and in the passage-way, and in lounged a tall, loose-jointed figure, of an exaggerated Yankee port and demeanor, whom (as being about the homeliest man I ever saw, yet by no means repulsive or disagreeable) it was impossible not to recognize as Uncle Abe. * Unquestionably, Western man though he be, and Kentuckian by birth, President Lincoln is the essential representative of all Yankees, and the veritable specimen, physically, of what the world seems determined to regard as our characteristic qualities. * This suggestion gave Uncle Abe rather a delicate task in his reply, because, slight as the matter seemed, it apparently called for some declaration, or intimation, or faint foreshadowing of policy in reference to the conduct of the war, and the final treatment of the Rebels. But the President's Yankee aptness and not-to-be-caughtness stood him in good stead, and he jerked or wiggled himself out of the dilemma with a...

Knocking at a rough, temporary door, we thrust a card beneath; and in a minute or two it was opened by a person in his shirt-sleeves, a middle-aged figure, neither tall nor short, of Teutonic build and aspect, with an ample beard of a ruddy tinge and chestnut hair. He looked at us, in the first place, with keen and somewhat guarded eyes, as if it were not his practice to vouchsafe any great warmth of greeting, except upon sure ground of observation. Soon, however, his look grew kindly and genial (not that it had ever been in the least degree repulsive, but only reserved), and Leutze allowed us to gaze at the cartoon of his great fresco, and talked about it unaffectedly, as only a man of true genius can speak of his own works. Meanwhile the noble design spoke for itself upon the wall. A sketch in color, which we saw afterwards, helped us to form some distant and flickering notion of what the picture will be, a few months hence, when these bare outlines, already so rich in thought and...

Will the time ever come again, in America, when we may live half a score of years without once seeing the likeness of a soldier, except it be in the festal march of a company on its summer tour? Not in this generation, I fear, nor in the next, nor till the Millennium; and even that blessed epoch, as the prophecies seem to intimate, will advance to the sound of the trumpet.

  [From Wikipedia] 

Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (May 24, 1816 – July 18, 1868) was a German American history painter best known for his painting Washington Crossing the Delaware . He is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting . New York City and Washington D.C. In 1859, Leutze returned to the United States and opened a studio in New York City. [2] He divided his time between New York City and Washington, D.C. [9] In 1859, he painted a portrait of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney which hangs in the Harvard Law School . In a 1992 opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia described the portrait of Taney, made two years after Taney's infamous decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford , as showing Taney "in black, sitting in a shadowed red armchair, left hand resting upon a pad of paper in his lap, right hand hanging limply, almost lifelessly, beside the inner arm of the chair. He sits facing the viewer and staring straight out. There seems to be on his face, and in his deep-set eyes, an expression of...

My Bucks. Walked before the sun and consort heat came out. One friend left me and another popped up along the Lagoon. A few lines from Hawthorne re the Civil War and his visiting of the USS Monitor, mostly in the golf course john. Once I finished my business (carefully), Tolstoy walked in for his. Home again, I had Mr. Hawk waiting for me. I suggested he get out of the puddle and he jumped to the fence. As I passed he jumped to the tree. Anyway ... *         

Tried two other Melville novels (couldn't get into them). Will attempt The Whale (read some of it years ago but never finished) some other day. Moved to Hawthorne: Travel Journals and a few short stories that supposedly zoom in on the sin-factor. * Travel Journals: From one of Hawthorne's visits to St. Peter's (I remember this mosaic): To-day I walked out along the Pincian Hill. . . . . As the clouds still threatened rain, I deemed it my safest course to go to St. Peter's for refuge. Heavy and dull as the day was, the effect of this great world of a church was still brilliant in the interior, as if it had a sunshine of its own, as well as its own temperature; and, by and by, the sunshine of the outward world came through the windows, hundreds of feet aloft, and fell upon the beautiful inlaid pavement. . . . . Against a pillar, on one side of the nave, is a mosaic copy of Raphael's Transfiguration, fitly framed within a great arch of gorgeous marble; and, no ...

        

By the time we got there only two were left: Charlie & His Bro. The bro was very lethargic and, apparently, the runt. Charlie was full of life, not to mention a brindle, and so we made our choice. Nowadays, from time to time, we question our choice. :) * 

      

      

Almost lost my phone on this one. Charlie jerks and phone goes flying. (I guess the protector did its job.) * 

Let's slow it down: UK style. Of course these little guys (a trend in some parts of Long Beach) are nothing like what you deal with in the UK or Ireland. Whatever works. Or keeps people employed. *