Cats in Art: Louison and Raminou (Valadon)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I'm using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi.

This is part 4 of 7 of a multiweek study of the cat art of Suzanne Valadon. A French painter (1865-1838), she had quite the interesting life (summarized from Wikipedia):

Suzanne Valadon became a circus acrobat at the age of fifteen, but a year later, a fall from a trapeze ended that career. In Paris, she pursued her interest in art, first working as a model for artists, observing and learning their techniques, before becoming a noted painter herself. She modelled for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (who gave her painting lessons) and Pierre-Auguste Renoir....Valadon frequented the bars and taverns of Paris along with her fellow painters, and she was Toulouse-Lautrec's subject in his oil painting The Hangover....Valadon painted still lifes, portraits, flowers, and landscapes that are noted for their strong composition and vibrant colors. She was, however, best known for her candid female nudes. A perfectionist, she worked on some of her oil paintings for up to 13 years before showing them....A free spirit, she wore a corsage of carrots, kept a goat at her studio to "eat up her bad drawings", and fed caviar (rather than fish) to her "good Catholic" cats on Fridays....Both an asteroid (6937 Valadon) and a crater on Venus are named in her honor.

Image credit Wikipaintings, Louison and Raminou, 1920, Suzanne Valadon, oil on canvas, held in private collection.

 

As I promised last week, I proudly present to you all the cat called Raminou.  It is extremely rare for a painter to use a cat's name in the title of her work, so my hat is off to Suzanne Valadon.  Nearly a hundred years ago she broke the cat naming barrier in art (although I seem to recall another named cat, much earlier, but a short search of my archives turned up nothing...gotta dig deeper).

 

Raminou is one big cat, thoroughly covering Louison's lap above and looking like he is about to slide off.  Louison herself looks a bit askance at Raminou, like she is thinking "What's this cat doing on my lap?"  And Raminou looks a bit unsteady, as though he is pondering the age-old cat problem of stay or bolt.

 

I think the issue was decided in favor of "bolt" immediately after this modeling session.

 

 

De-Extinction: A Do Over?

[the dodo, image credit here]

I can't help but view this a good news.  Via thejournal:

Scientists want to bring 22 animals back from extinction

Last weeked at a TEDx conference in Washington DC sponsored by National Geographic, scientists met to discuss which animals should be brought back from extinction. They also discussed the how, why and ethics of doing so.

 

They called it ‘de-extinction‘.
 

A cover story for this month’s National Geographic explains how de-extinction rests on a relatively simple premise: it involves taking old DNA samples, reassembling them into a full genome which is then injected into embryonic cells which have had their own DNA taken out, and then finding a suitable living surrogate to give birth.

 

The Washington Post reports that ten years ago, a team of scientists from France and Spain almost brought back an extinct wild goat – but it only lived for 10 minutes. It raises a host of issues, including how scientists can get a good enough sample of DNA from the extinct animal – and whether or not they should. There are a few guidelines for which ancient species are considered, and sadly, dinosaurs are so long dead they aren’t in the picture. Their DNA has long ago degraded, so researchers are fairly sure that Jurassic Park will never happen.

I realize that many will probably disagree, but the chance to restore that which was lost through the actions and short-sightedness of humans is worthwhile.  As human population pressures increase, extinctions will inevitably rise, so this technique may well work hand-in-glove with other species survival strategies.

The list of 22 includes critters that appeal to me, particularly the dodo, passenger pigeon, and the ivory-billed woodpecker.

 

A Mean Little Run, Again

Yesterday I headed over to my Clay Hill 5 Miler, that I previously blogged about here.

It remains a Mean Little Run, for what I previously wrote was true again:

...you go up a lengthy hill, not high, but long and rolling, with a couple of false summits along the way. I know the route well, so am not faked out by the false summits, it’s just that the hill seemingly rolls on and on and on. Then the road heads into the woods—what my kids call a “slinky road,” completely shaded, with the trees almost touching overhead. That part is pleasant…until another long uphill, again with a couple false summits to demoralize you.

The actual length of these 2 hills, and their height, are not really very significant, but just seem to be.
 

For whatever reason, this run has it in for me.  So that's why I keep going back.  I'm a bit stubborn about stuff like that.

 

A Slight Problem for Easter...and Ultrarunning

 

[image credit here]

 

Uh-oh. 

 

With a small horde of small relatives descending upon the bride and me on Saturday for our extended family Easter celebration, I hope that the powers that be can provide a suitable substitute in time.

 

As for Ultrarunning, rabbits and squirrels are the most common roadkills I see in my local road runs.  Possums are probably a close third.

 

The most interesting roadkill I ever saw was in Texas.  While on a business trip I made an unfortunate choice of routes to get from Texarkana to see the Red River.  I was running along a 4-lane highway that had an adequate but not very generous shoulder, and the incessant lumber trucks were making me crazy.

 

So I opted to run along the adjacent railroad tracks.  There between the tracks I saw a roadkilled armadillo--the first armadillo I had ever seen, dead or alive, outside a zoo.  I figured that this must have been one dumb critter and one dumb species to have been killed by a train.

 

 

For You Night Runners

Nope, not a how-to on headlamps or flashlights or route-finding.

What that leaves, of course, is astronomy (one of my favs).  From where else but Bad Astronomy, we learn more about the constellation Orion.  First a macro view of the familiar constellation (in this view, turned on its side):

 

 

 Then a close up of the middle star of his dagger (the smaller 3-star-row pointing down to the right in image above:

 

The Orion Nebula (also called M42) is one of the most recognizable objects in the entire sky. The middle “star” in Orion’s dagger hanging below his belt, this cloud of gas and dust is so bright that even from more than 13 quadrillion kilometers (8 thousand trillion miles) away it’s easily visible to the naked eye.

It’s a vast sprawling complex of interstellar material, lit by the fierce energy of stars born within. It’s amazing through a small telescope, stunning through a big one, and gorgeous in pictures…but then adjectives seem a little dingy and small when trying to describe the view in the infrared....Jaw-dropping? Mind-blowing? I can’t come up with a hyphen-dashing word appropriate for this. It’s chillingly beautiful.

I've previously blogged about Orion here, and the fascination I have with the star Sirius.  Now I gotta check out the middle star of Orion's dagger.

So many things to check out and learn about, and so little time.

 

 

 

NASCAR--Not a Sport--But a Good Model...and Ultrarunning

Saw this at Boing Boing, and it seems like a good idea.

I've never quite understood how giving cash to a candidate or to a political office holder is not bribery...or how the recipient is not subtly or overtly swayed to then vote for the donor's interests rather than the constituent.

So I grudgingly give credit to the NASCAR model (even though it, along with golf, are not real sports).  Boing Boing requests readers sign a White House petition to require Congress to wear outfits with their "sponsors" logos displayed in patch form, in a size commensurate with the amount of donations:

The idea of forcing Congresscritters to wear NASCAR-style coveralls with the logos of their financial backers has been bandied about before, but here it is in official White House petition form.

Since most politicians' campaigns are largely funded by wealthy companies and individuals, it would give voters a better sense of who the candidate they are voting for is actually representing if the company's logo, or individual's name, was prominently displayed upon the candidate's clothing at all public appearances and campaign events. Once elected, the candidate would be required to continue to wear those "sponsor's" names during all official duties and visits to constituents. The size of a logo or name would vary with the size of a donation. For example, a $1 million dollar contribution would warrant a patch of about 4" by 8" on the chest, while a free meal from a lobbyist would be represented by a quarter-sized button. Individual donations under $1000 are exempt.
 

So...click over to Boing Boing for a link to the White House petition.  If they 100,000 signatures the White House must formally address the issue.  They'll reject the idea, of course, but at least a point will have been made.  And who knows, maybe the idea will take off and gain some true national traction?

Oh, and Ultrarunning?  It's tough to make a connection, but Nature of course comes to mind in the guise of, say, fracking or gutting of National Parks budgets.  We may well need the White House petition venue to address some pressing environmental issue that will affect us.

 

"Wars are Bad"

A succinct post from Duncan Black, reproduced here in its short and sweet entirety.  Because I can't improve upon a single word.

Wars Are Bad

And if for some reason the people who run the United States feel the need to start one, it means they've failed. It means they should all resign in shame and let someone else clean up their mess. This country has immense power - military, economic, political - and if you can't use the latter two, along with the implicit threat of the first one, to make war unnecessary then you've fucked up and it's time to go home.
 

Cats in Art: Cat Lying in Front of a Bouquet of Flowers (Valadon)

Oops--this post went out unfinished.  Here's the rest of the post....

++++++++++++++++

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I'm using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi.

This is part 3 of 7 of a multiweek study of the cat art of Suzanne Valadon. A French painter (1865-1838), she had quite the interesting life (summarized from Wikipedia):

Suzanne Valadon became a circus acrobat at the age of fifteen, but a year later, a fall from a trapeze ended that career. In Paris, she pursued her interest in art, first working as a model for artists, observing and learning their techniques, before becoming a noted painter herself. She modelled for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (who gave her painting lessons) and Pierre-Auguste Renoir....Valadon frequented the bars and taverns of Paris along with her fellow painters, and she was Toulouse-Lautrec's subject in his oil painting The Hangover....Valadon painted still lifes, portraits, flowers, and landscapes that are noted for their strong composition and vibrant colors. She was, however, best known for her candid female nudes. A perfectionist, she worked on some of her oil paintings for up to 13 years before showing them....A free spirit, she wore a corsage of carrots, kept a goat at her studio to "eat up her bad drawings", and fed caviar (rather than fish) to her "good Catholic" cats on Fridays....Both an asteroid (6937 Valadon) and a crater on Venus are named in her honor.

 

Image credit The Atheneum, Cat Lying in Front of a Bouquet of Flowers, 26" x 14", Suzanne Valadon, 1919, held in private collection.

 

 

I just love the earnest, engaged expression on the cat's face.  And as we will see next week, I strongly suspect that this subject is none other than Raminou.  Raminou isn't identified by name in the title of this painting, but he is named in the titles of a couple others of Valadon's later works.

 

Regardless, a timeless image that really captures the essence of the personality of the cat.

 

 

 

 

Apologists for the Iraq War, Part 2

And this cartoon fits nicely with yesterday's post.  This cartoon is from September 11, 2002, six months before the war started.

Click to enlarge, then ESC to return:

Credit to Tom Tomorrow, who is still cartooning after all these years.  I wonder why his head has not yet exploded from all the sheer stupidity he sees and draws about.

 

Apologists for the Iraq War

Here we are on the 10-year anniversary of the U.S. attacking Iraq over alleged weapons of mass destruction.

A majority of Americans now say the war was a mistake, and those in charge at the time are mostly making noises about how they had some private doubts but the country got swept along.

In a great post she called "If Only Someone Had Said Something," about the despicable Paul Wolfowitz, Allison Hantschel makes some sadly true points about these guys in general, of whom PW is but one example:

And yet imagine if you had spoken out, as you are now so bravely doing in an attempt to keep food on your table. Imagine if you had said you know, this guy is kind of an assclown, and we’re rushing into war on the basis of his say-so, and who the fuck knows if it’s going to work. Imagine that.

I mean, we probably would have gone to war anyway. And you’d have been scorned, of course, and treated like a filthy hippie. AS WAS EVERYBODY ELSE WHO WAS FUCKING RIGHT. You might have been kicked out of the best restaurants and all the good parties. You might have missed some meals. Might have been forced to take a temp job in some congressional district office somewhere.

And now you wouldn’t be forced to go around talking about how you knew all along that this was a terrible idea, as if this makes it better that you didn’t speak up.

Everything was just fine, when everything was just fine. Now that it’s universally acknowledged to have been a colossal clusterfuck, it was always going to be that way and nobody listened to you about the right way to do it. Yet I am wracking my brain for the memory of the op-ed piece or blistering speech Paul Wolfowitz gave warning of dire consequences if we didn’t listen to his plan instead of the president’s.

These people all act like there was nothing they could do. Nothing they could do to stop the war. And maybe they couldn’t have stopped it, but they could have done plenty. They chose not to.
 

I maintain that the only fitting punishment for these war criminals--for that's what they were and are--would be to perform community service for the rest of their lives, in VA hospitals, emptying bedpans and performing personal care for the maimed veterans that they created.

 

Mail Carrier Cats...and Ultrarunning

[image and article credit--where else but Boing Boing?]

I for one think it's about time my kitties started earning their keep.  The data from 1877 is as relevant today as it was 136 years ago.  This is an idea whose time has clearly come:

A variety of animals have been used to deliver mail over the years, from camels and dogs to horses and pigeons. But cats? According to a 19th century article in the New York Times, around 1877 the Belgian Society for the Elevation of the Domestic Cat tested 37 cats for the task by taking them far from the city of Liege where they "promptly proceeded to 'scat.'" Within 24 hours, they had all returned home.

This result has greatly encouraged the society, and it is proposed to establish at an early day a regular system of cat communication between Liege and the neighboring villages. Messages are to be fastened in water-proof bags around the necks of the animals, and it is believed that, unless the criminal class of dogs undertakes to waylay and rob the mail-cats, the messages will be delivered with rapidity and safety.
 

The fact that we do not now have this service means only one thing: just as the 1877 investigators feared, a criminal class of dogs must have undertaken to waylay and rob the mail-cats.

Maybe if the NRA armed cats and encouraged them to stand their ground....?

The link to Ultrarunning is this: I have certainly have had some bad encounters with dogs over the years, but never a confrontation with a cat.  Just another side benefit of the plan.

 

The Stuebenville Rape Case...and Ultrarunning

Many people have been following the case in Stuebenville, WV, where two teenage football stars were just found guilty of raping a 16-year old girl.  The case involved alcohol, posting nude photos on the Internet, a culture of conspiracy to excuse and cover up, ruined lives, etc.  All in all, a sad case.  You can read more about the details here if you wish.

But one of the saddest upshots of the case is how it highlights what many feminist writers have been calling a culture of rape and how society treats this crime in a different manner than other crimes.

A great example is Echidne's blog and her posts of 19 March and 17 March.  She provides the following summary graphic, which illustrates the culture of rape skewed to focus more on the "ruined lives" of the football players than the assaulted young lady.  And an observation:

...think whether such things would be reported about someone who got his wallet stolen while inebriated, or about his hypothetical young attackers.

Let me repeat that in italics so you can appreciate the skewed viewpoint:

...think whether such things would be reported about someone who got his wallet stolen while inebriated, or about his hypothetical young attackers.

 

Here's a more detailed discussion by Echidne of the subtle and not-so-subtle aspects of rape culture:

 

But note that the rape didn't somehow grab these young men or force them to act in a certain way. They did it. Just as young men sometimes commit burglaries or robberies. A rape is a crime. But the way CNN approached it was qualitatively different from how they would cover the sentencing of a teenager who, say, robbed a bank. We would not then hear how a young life is ruined and so on.

I can see no reason for the difference except for something which must be called a rape culture. A rape is not deemed a serious enough crime for the punishment the two young men received, despite the fact that the actual punishment ranged from one to two years; not a terribly heavy sentence.

Indeed, underneath this treatment squirms something truly nasty: The idea that these school athletes shouldn't have been taken to court at all, that the crime they committed cannot justify the sentence they were given. That they should have been forgiven for the greater good. Which does not apparently include rape victims.

I also get that CNN wants to pull all the emotional strings it can, for the sake of those viewership figures, and because the victim is unavailable those emotions must be obtained in other ways. But something really is wrong when we are asked to extend our sympathies to those found guilty with only a fleeting comment about the victim's life, too, having been severely damaged if not ruined, and that in the hands of the two football players, not as a consequence of the crime they themselves committed.

And what about the victim and our sympathies for her? Will she be perfectly fine tomorrow morning? Did CNN report that her mother earlier told how her daughter stays in her room, doesn't want to go to school and cries herself to sleep, night after night? That her daughter feels alone, except for her family, and ostracized?

 

As a male, unless I consciously think about it, I never have to be concerned about my personal safety when I do my running excursions into the backcountry.  It's simply not a risk I must worry about...unlike my female counterparts.  But as a husband, father and grandfather, it has to be on my radar screen, because I'm concerned about the safety of my loved ones when it comes to this topic of rape. 

 

Part of that concern must now necessarily focus on how society views the crime, because that's obviously part of the problem (I've previously blogged about rape a couple times, here and here).

 

The Pope...and Ultrarunning

I get why the Catholic Church (1.2 billion members) and its new pope are a big deal in the world. 

But I can't help but nod in agreement when I read the following (this was First Draft quoting Simon Hoggart).  Bolding is mine, for emphasis:

We used to say de mortuis nil nisi bonum (don't speak ill of the dead), but that's all changed with warts-and-all obituaries. Now we are incredibly nice instead about people who've just been promoted. Take the new pope. He seems to be an astonishing man of parts. Questions have been raised about his relationship with the vile Argentinian junta, but at the same time he is a plain-living revolutionary, having come from outside the Vatican curia, bringing a breath of modest fresh air from the new world. Yet nothing will change. He is against contraception, abortion, divorce, gay marriage and female priests. It's as if Lenin arrived at the Finland station in St Petersburg, announcing, "Comrades, I bring thrilling news! Things are going to carry on much as before!"
 

The link to Ultrarunning?  Just a simple analogy.  There have been uncounted discussions over the years on the Ultra List and other places about runners who complain about a particular race director's rules.  But the bottom line is that the race director gets to make the rules for their race.  Duh! 

If you don't like those rules, you either work to get them changed, or take your entry fee elsewhere, literally voting with your feet to run a different race.  

So it is with the Catholic Church.  The policies above are incompatible with my belief system, so I'm not a Catholic.  It's not that hard.  But despite the fact that the new pope seems likely to pursue policies that reflect genuine concern for the downtrodden and for nature--both good things--the point of the article quoted above is that no matter how kindly or good a man Pope Francis is, he still presides over a very conservative entity that does not recognize the full agency of women.  And for me that's the ultimate dealbreaker.

 

Snowmen of the Steppes...and Ultrarunning

A family of snowmen makes its way slowly across the frozen, windswept steppes of southern Pennsylvania....

[photo by Mister Tristan, the 5-year-old human being, not the blog]

Despite the imminent arrival of spring in 2 days, that's only a calendar construct.  Winter retains its grip here for a while at least.

Which reminds me that I am looking forward to a snow run later today.  Although it's just a short local run, anytime the landscape is white--even if only an inch of snow--I run with a smile on my face.  Backcountry running in snow is even better!

 

Cats in Art: Two Cats (Valadon)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I'm using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi.

This is part 2 of 7 of a multiweek study of the cat art of Suzanne Valadon. A French painter (1865-1838), she had quite the interesting life (summarized from Wikipedia):

Suzanne Valadon became a circus acrobat at the age of fifteen, but a year later, a fall from a trapeze ended that career. In Paris, she pursued her interest in art, first working as a model for artists, observing and learning their techniques, before becoming a noted painter herself. She modelled for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (who gave her painting lessons) and Pierre-Auguste Renoir....Valadon frequented the bars and taverns of Paris along with her fellow painters, and she was Toulouse-Lautrec's subject in his oil painting The Hangover....Valadon painted still lifes, portraits, flowers, and landscapes that are noted for their strong composition and vibrant colors. She was, however, best known for her candid female nudes. A perfectionist, she worked on some of her oil paintings for up to 13 years before showing them....A free spirit, she wore a corsage of carrots, kept a goat at her studio to "eat up her bad drawings", and fed caviar (rather than fish) to her "good Catholic" cats on Fridays....Both an asteroid (6937 Valadon) and a crater on Venus are named in her honor.

Image credit Wikipaintings, Two Cats, 1918, Suzanne Valadon, oil on canvas, held in private collection.

This painting was not in Zuffi's book, so I'll have to be the art critic here.  I guess the thought I have is that Valadon captures so very well the notion of cats being buddies.  In this case, it's being buddies with another cat; in subsequent weeks we'll see paintings of cats being buddies with people.

I think that when cats snuggle up, whether with another cat or with one of their people, they unconsciously embody the words from the Edgar Allen Poe poem, Annabel Lee:

     And this maiden she lived with no other thought
     Than to love and be loved by me

 

Glimpse of a Fox...and Ultrarunning

[sighted in my backyard...photo by Gary]

I love me some critters when I'm out running, and this one was a nice find (please disregard the fact that it is actually a lawn ornament).

Far from being rare, the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is quite common here in southern Pennsylvania, and I frequently see them in the local farm fields or woodlots near the road.  You can read more at National Geographic.

However, the backcountry is a different story, as foxes are definitely not creatures of the deep woods.  They like edges, boundaries, and mixed terrain, and enjoy a carnivorous diet.  Red foxes are largely nocturnal in habit but are often about during the days.

The mandatory connection to Ultrarunning?  Red foxes are reputedly quite clever.  This is demonstrated by the fact that they always wink at me whenever I see one while out running.

 

When It's Time to Die...and Ultrarunning

Via Alternet, a very thought-provoking article.

You know, don't you, that you are gonna die.  So will I.  So will everyone we know.  I reason that the only sane way to approach that finality is to try to learn a bit from those who have journeyed closer to that point than I have.

 

5 Top Regrets People Have At the End of Their Lives | Alternet

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives.

She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called  Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called  The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. "When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently," she says, "common themes surfaced again and again."

Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:
 

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

"This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it."

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

"This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence."

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

"Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others.

As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result."

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

"Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying."

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

"This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again."

 

 

And my dying wish, through the lens of Ultrarunning?  Likely when it's quitting time, I'll wish I would have run more with people.  Not run more, or run less, but to have spent more time with other runners.  Sure, you've got that whole "loneliness of the long-distance runner" thingy going, and it has its appeal.  But the older I get, the more I appreciate and want the companionability of companions.

 

Hey, wait--I could do that now.

 

 

The Weather and Backcountry Gear

I find myself paying an inordinate amount of attention to the weather forecast before I go for a run.  I suppose there's nothing intrinsically wrong with using the technologies that are available to us, to make our lives easier/safer/better etc,

But I wonder how people used to get by...but I know the answer.  They prepared for various contingencies, for the worst conditions that they reasonably could expect to encounter.  And then rode it out.

So when I head into the backcountry, I always, always, check the detailed weather forecast.  You'd be nuts not to.  I carry a bit of extra food, just in case, and have often been very grateful I had it along.  Ditto for water. 

The one item of gear that I always carry in the backcountry--but have never yet used--is a space blanket (a giveaway from some marathon finish line many years back), a candle, and some waterproof matches.  The matches are to light the candle, which may be the only way to get a fire started if conditions are wet.  The fire and the space blanket, of course, are for the contingency of being unable to get out under one's own power, before dark (or getting dangerously chilled).

Anyway, back to the weather and a relevant quotation from The Writer's Almanac, always a good read, from 1 March 2013:

Snow is falling west of here. The mountains have more than a
foot of it. I see the early morning sky dark as night. I won't lis-
ten to the weather report. I'll let the question of snow hang.
Answers only dull the senses. Even answers that are right often
make what they explain uninteresting. In nature the answers
are always changing. Rain to snow, for instance. Nature can
let the mysterious things alone—wet leaves plastered to tree
trunks, the intricate design of fish guts. The way we don't fall
off the earth at night when we look up at the North Star. The
way we know this may not always be so. The way our dizziness
makes us grab the long grass, hanging by our fingertips on the
edge of infinity.

 

"Report from the West" by Tom Hennen, from Darkness Sticks to Everything. © Copper Canyon Press, 2013.

Self-Awareness, Humility...and Ultrarunning

Via Mike the Mad Biologist, who directs us to Freddie de Boer...wherein we learn the definition of humility:

…no one is remotely as impressed with you as you are with yourself. No one else mistakes your time for a precious commodity. Self-regard does not make you important, nor does a chronic overestimation of your own value actually make you valuable. You are not the cosmos. Most of the people around you are laughing at you, all the time. They are right to laugh, because you have violated a basic social compact. You believe that what you want and value is more important than what others want and value. In fact, no one thinks much about what you want at all. Some of the best advice you can give: remember that the minute you leave a room, no one is thinking about you.
 

One thing I can say for Ultrarunners: we are the embodiment of humility.  Chalk it up to introversion, withdrawal to spend hours on the trails alone, all that introspection seemingly resulting in heightened self-awareness...whatever, we are a self-effacing lot. 

I have only ever met a couple Ultrarunners who seemed arrogant.  This went way beyond "it's not bragging if you can do it" acknowledgement that we can in fact run vast distances. 

On the other side of the arrogance scale, at my first ultra ever, the Catoctin Trail Races (in Maryland, in 1994, I think) I ran into none otehr than David Horton, who once held the Appalachian Trail thru-running record of 52 days for the 2,181 mile trail, back in 1991).  We were enjoying some post-race food at the same picnic table, and I introduced myself to him, not knowing who he was.

Of course, when I heard his name, I blurted out something like "I've seen your name in print a couple times!", to which David replied: "Yeah, if you pay somebody enough money they'll print anything."

 

Another Golf Ball...and a Frightening Theory

This one was found by Mister Tristan (the 5-year old human being, not the blog) as we took a short stroll along the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks about half a mile from my home:

 

 

As is the case with nearly all of my previous golf-ball-find reporting, this one was not near any homes and certainly nowhere near any golf course.

 

The ubiquitousness of finding golf balls in unlikely places now leads me to consider some formerly outlandish theories.  I'm beginning to suspect that they are alien eggs, prepositioned, awaiting a hidden signal, and when they all hatch en masse there will be hell to pay for mankind.

 

My last installment of golf ball find coverage was here.  And it was less than 2 weeks ago.  The alien apocalypse may be nearer than we think.

 

 

Aldo Leopold: A Name You SHOULD Know

[image credit here]

I recently ran across a notification from the Also Leopold Foundation, here, that had established the weekend of 1-3 March 2013 as Aldo Leopold Weekend in Wisconsin.

Well, not being from Wisconsin, I missed it, but the notion is so worthwhile--setting aside a weekend a year to celebrate the life of, and to promote the philosophy of, arguably the most influential ecologist in U.S. history.

I re-read Leopold's classic A Sand County Almanac every year and it's time I did it for 2013 (first I must finish a re-read of an Arthur C. Clark sci-fi classic, Rendezvous With Rama).  But in honor of Leopold and to spread the word, I have a big trail overseers meeting at the end of the month for the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club.  I plan to donate 5 copies as door prizes.

Anyway, here's why the work and writing of Also Leopold are important.  And why, as an ultrarunner and a lover of the backcountry you SHOULD know his work.  The following from 2009 was my first post ever here at Mister Tristan (the blog, not the 5-year old human being).  Enjoy!

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Tuesday, December 22, 2009

A Sand County Almanac

This is my inaugural post for this new blog, Mister Tristan.

Like a recurring pilgrimage, I have just completed my annual re-reading of the ecological classic, "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold. My initial reading was prompted some years ago by a college biology professor who recommended it. I became hooked, and for each of the last 30+ years, Leopold, who has been in his grave for 60years, speaks to me and touches me with new and different insights into the nature of things wild and free. I now see Leopold's writings in a way which he never anticipated, but would certainly have approved of--from an ultrarunner's slant.
I continually examine my motives for endurance running (since I spend so much time doing it), and have for some time held the belief that we as a "civilized" species are now so far removed from the moment-by-moment struggle for survival that formerly ruled virtually every waking minute, that we now create for ourselves various means to simulate that intensity. I presume we do this because of some deep-seated need to experience life on the edge, to grab for that gusto and intensity. Thus I run ultras, to physically and mentally go to the edge and see what I can learn there about myself. And I like best to do this running in areas that are preferably wild and remote because there I somehow feel more connected. Simplistic, perhaps, but I suspect not far off the mark for many of us.

The tie-in with Leopold? Here are a couple nuggets: "Physical combat for the means of subsistence was, for unnumbered centuries, an economic fact. When it disappeared as such, a sound instinct led us to preserve it in the form of athletic sports and games...reviving, in play, a drama formerly inherent in daily life." Also, writing about outdoor recreation: "Recreation is valuable in proportion to the degree to which it differs from and contrasts with workaday life."

And on wilderness, Leopold wrote: "Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important; it is such who prate of empires, political or economic, that will last a thousand years. It is only the scholar who appreciates that all history consists of successive excursions from a single starting point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values. It is only the scholar who understands why the raw wilderness gives definition and meaning to the human enterprise."

Anyone who values the notions of wilderness, solitude, self-reliance, and of communion with nature that many of us ultrarunners seek, as we use the backcountry as a route to our psyches or souls, should check out Leopold's book. It's commonly available in paperback in bookstores in the Natural History section.

 

 

Cats in Art: Study of a Cat (Valadon)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I'm using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi.

This is part 1 of 7 of a multiweek study of the cat art of Suzanne Valadon.  A French painter (1865-1838), she had quite the interesting life (summarized from Wikipedia):

Suzanne Valadon became a circus acrobat at the age of fifteen, but a year later, a fall from a trapeze ended that career. In Paris, she pursued her interest in art, first working as a model for artists, observing and learning their techniques, before becoming a noted painter herself. She modelled for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (who gave her painting lessons) and Pierre-Auguste Renoir....Valadon frequented the bars and taverns of Paris along with her fellow painters, and she was Toulouse-Lautrec's subject in his oil painting The Hangover....Valadon painted still lifes, portraits, flowers, and landscapes that are noted for their strong composition and vibrant colors. She was, however, best known for her candid female nudes. A perfectionist, she worked on some of her oil paintings for up to 13 years before showing them....A free spirit, she wore a corsage of carrots, kept a goat at her studio to "eat up her bad drawings", and fed caviar (rather than fish) to her "good Catholic" cats on Fridays....Both an asteroid (6937 Valadon) and a crater on Venus are named in her honor.

 

Image credit Wikipaintings, Study of a Cat, 1918, Suzanne Valadon, oil on canvas, held in private collection.

 

Zuffi's sparse comment:

 

A late 19th and early 20th century painter, Valadon portrays the cat in a plain, linear style that emphasizes the simple ordinariness of the scene.

 

I really like this cat, just hanging out, not necessarily needing or wanting anything, who appears to be equally ready to be petted, or to get active if the right opportunity presented itself.  This particular feline seems imperturbable and simply happy to be a housecat.  I particularly like the juxtaposition of the arch of the cat's back with the series of arches of the three slats comprising the back of the chair.

 

The bride commented that it was odd that a cat would even deign to be bothered to pose for a painting.

 

But the bottom line is that Valadon's simple, even elegant, painting captures so very well the essence of the cat.

 

By the way, the chair upon which the kitty is perched is very reminiscent of another chair, made famous by Van Gogh.  Or these two chairs, also by Van Gogh.  Except Vincent--in his madness, I suppose--neglected to include any cats in his paintings.

 

 

Where I Run: Norfolk Southern Railroad

The railroad line across the fields from my house is a major north-south regional line linking Harrisburg, PA to Hagerstown, MD and thence to points south.

Most lines have mile markers along them.  This one is of note because the newer marker (the 60 sign on a tall post) still has the old marker (the white pyramid) immediately adjacent.

Loaction: from northbound U.S. Rt 11 about 3 miles north of Greencastle, PA, turn right onto the Clay Hill Road.  Go about 1/2 mile; pass under the railroad overpass; immediately turn right onto Friendship Village Road and pull off on the right.  Walk over towards the tracks and the grain elevators beyond.  The mile marker is easily seen, close to the RR overpass and beside the grain elevators.

 

 

Closer up for more detail.  The old "60" mark is still faintly visible on the white iron post:

 

But the real interesting thing to me per the photo below is the detail on the top of the old white marker: an arrow pointing towards the tracks.  The post is made of iron and is about 4' tall.  Undoubtedly the newer post is "better" (i.e., easier to see, longer lasting, cheaper, whatever) but it just doesn't have the charm of the old post.

Back in the day craftspeople did aesthetic things--art, if you will--to enhance otherwise functional objects.  Just because it was pleasing to the eye and soul...or just because.  It's pretty much a lost concept now with the total focus of business strictly on the bottom line.

 

[all photos by Gary]

 

 

Just Call Me Vlad...and Ultrarunning

I was tired of snowmen toppling over--and who isn't these days?--so I decided a support was in order:

Yes, that's a stake pounded straight down through the snowman's head...all the way into the ground.  Gruesome work.


However, a smart little hat to hide the unpleasantness, and he should stand for some days now:

Unlike this guy from a couple weeks ago, rest his soul, who had not been impaled:

[all photos by Gary]

 

 

The roads are clear after Wednesday's storm, and the big question is whether or not to break out the shorts for today's local run as the temps soar above 40F.

 

 

More Guns vs. Butter

Via CNBC on 7 Feb, then Secretary of Defense Leon Paneta warns we may become a second-rate power:

Looming across-the-board budget cuts present the U.S. military with the most significant readiness crisis in more than a decade and quick action is needed to avoid the spending reductions, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned during testimony Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

If the billions of dollars in cuts are allowed to stand, Panetta said, he would have to throw the country's national defense strategy "out the window,"and the United States would no longer be a first-rate power. "This will badly damage our national defense and compromise our ability to respond to crises in a dangerous world," Panetta said.

Panetta said that the department understood that it needed to do its part to help deal with the federal deficit and has been working to adjust its plans to deal with the lower spending levels. But adding sequestration on top of that creates an untenable situation, he said.

As "time went on and the erosion that would take place in our capabilities, instead of being a first-rate power in the world, we'd turn into a second-rate power," Panetta told the committee. "That would be the result of sequester."

Let's examine this claim, shall we?  Mr. Panetta did not define "second rate," so I will propose an operational definition of being second place on the planet in military spending, rather than the first place we hold currently.

First this chart, courtesy of Wikipedia, sourced to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI):

So if I read this right, for the United States of America to become a "second rate" power, we could whack our $711 billion annual budget for Defense all the way down to say, $118 billion, thereby just sneaking in under China's $119 billion annual expenditure.

For purposes of perspective, our $711 billion annual defense expenditure outranks the spending of the next 14 countries on the list--China, Russia, United Kingdom, France, Japan, India, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Brazil, Italy, South Korea, Australia, Canada, and Turkey--combined.  COMBINED!

What is the magnitude of the sequester's defense cuts that had Panetta's hair on fire?  From the same CNBC story:

The Pentagon faces a $42.7 billion budget cut in the seven months starting in March and ending in September. The reductions through sequestration would be in addition to a $487 billion cut in defense spending over the next ten years mandated by the Budget Control Act passed in 2011.
 

So Defense could absorb more than 13 sequester-level cuts without us becoming "second rate." 

I'm sorry, but I fail to see the urgency here.  I say we go ahead and whack Defense down to a reasonable level--say to about half of what it is now, I'm not greedy--and use that approximately $350 billion saved to fully fund Medicare and Social Security. 

How's that for some sensible priorities, Mr. Panetta...and Mr. Obama?

 

Another Reason To Go On Living...and Ultrarunning

Via TPM LiveWire come the following news:

The National Rifle Association will serve as the title sponsor for a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race in April, the Associated Press reported.

Under the one-year agreement, the race scheduled to be held April 13 at the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas will be known as the "NRA 500."

Double whammy here.  Not only do we have a non-sport masquerading as a sport, we have a sociopathic corporate sponsor.  One that would rather consider the death of children a sad but necessary price of maintaining the freedom to possess any type of weapon you damn well choose.  And when rational people want to have an informed discussion about gun safety, the NRA fans the flames of fear and hysteria.

This obviously is a hot-button issue for me.  I'm sure that many Ultrarunners are safe and responsible gun owners, and I don't want to alienate those folks.  But to cast your lot with the NRA is over the top, in my humble opinion.

 

How to Wear Your 2-Bottle Waist Pack

 

 

 

[image credit IMDb]

Behind Richard Boone's left hand one can partially see the buckle of his gun belt, clearly riding below his regular belt.  That low-slung, on-the-hip location was where I thought the best place was to wear my 2-bottle waist pack.

I was wrong, but your mileage may vary.  Read on.

In our Appalachian Trail run of a couple weeks ago, one of our group, sorta new to trail running, was trying out his new twin-bottle waist pack.  I don't know the brand, but it was a typical pack, with a pair of bottles flanking a central pack compartment into which you could stuff some food, a camera, a couple gadgets, etc.

His pack was flapping noisily with every step and I could well imagine that there was a chafe, somewhere, well underway.

I offered the suggestion that I have had good luck cinching my pack at the thinnest part of my waist, as opposed to low like a gunslinger's gun belt.

I previously posted on this topic, where I wrote the following, still true today:

Well, it was only a short distance run with my spanking new waist pack before I realized that the pack and bottles bounced all over the place. I finally devised the solution that the pack could not ride like Paladin's gunbelt. It had to ride several inches higher, actually around the smallest part of my waist. There I cinched it down as tightly as needed to preclude the dreaded bounce.

It took only a little getting used to, and with the right amount of cinching—up to but not past the point of uncomfortability—I could run bounce-free. And what’s more, the actual weight carried did not seem burdensome. It was like it (almost) wasn’t there.

 

Post script confession: I fully admit my man crush on Richard Boone as Paladin in Have Gun Will Travel, a 1950s TV western that I find to still be quite relevant today.  Besides the post quoted above, I've also blogged about Have Gun Will Travel here, here, here and here.

 

Good News: A Very Dead Pine Marten...and Ultrarunning

[image credit BBC Nature]

A quick blurb in the March/April 2013 issue of Sierra, the official magazine of the Sierra Club, tells us:

The pine marten, thought for 40 years to be extinct in much of Great Britain, is proved to still exist after one is killed by a car in Wales.

So I went to Google to read more, and find out that apparently there have been many recent reports of sightings for the past several years (indicating the Sierra Club news is kinda dated).  Makes me think of cougar sightings here in the northeast. 

To clarify, apparently a population of martens in Scotland is well known, but the critter was thought to be extinct in Wales and England.

Regardless, any time a species thought to be locally or regionally extinct turns out to be alive and well, that indeed is a cause for celebration.  Especially when the critter in question looks like an adorable cross between a cat and a fox.

FYI, the European pine marten is Martes martes; the one in North America is Martes americana, shown below.

[image credit Nature Conservancy]

 

These critters have been occasionally seen in mountains of my local area.  My Ultrarunning life would be complete if I'd chance upon one in the backcountry. 

 

Up to now the most exotic animals I've encountered are bears (several times), a beaver, and once, a bobcat.

 

 

Cats in Art:Last Supper (Ghirlandaio)

Life is interfering--reposting from 6 March 2011:

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From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I'm using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi.

Last week I put up another version of the Last Supper, by Huguet. In this image by Domenico Ghirlandaio, the cat in the foreground is a bit smaller and less prominent, but much closer to Christ.

Image and comment credits here. Last Supper: Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494, fresco, 1480, held by Museu Di San Marco, Refectory, Florence, Italy.

With customary ease, Ghirlandaio fills the lunettes with large trees and birds in flight against a bright sky whose light is reflected onto the right-hand wall where an open window frames a perching peacock. The rest is in shadow. Two flower-displays complete the frame which encloses the space. A cat, waiting patiently for a hoped-for scrap of meat, lends a touch of intimacy and domesticity that is rarely lacking in Ghirlandaio.

So...over 500 years ago, Ghirlandaio paints a fresco that still exists today, and in it captures so well the "touch of intimacy and domesticity" that is the embodiment of cats.

The Thinking of a Right Wing Authoritarian

Via They Gave Us a Republic (24 Feb), an interesting consideration of the reasons behind the apparent disconnect in some conservative thinking:

Political Class Exhibits GOP's Insanity
 

Boehner's office, says Chait, has been sending around a Charles Krauthammer column that urges Republicans to cheerfully embrace the budget sequester because it offers the best chance they will have in quite awhile to enact "meaningful" deficit reduction.

By promoting that idea, the Speaker's office is therefore sending two, contradictory messages, says Chait. The first is that Republicans won't compromise at all, "not even offering any of the tax reform they've been dangling for months, not even in exchange for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, to replace the sequester." After all, writes Krauthammer, if Republicans do nothing they get $1.2 trillion in cuts and so they should "get them while you can."

Yet at the same time, Boehner says the President needs show leadership to prevent a sequester that would be "horrible," "devastating" and, if it comes to pass, "all Obama's fault!"

There is a name for this kind of behavior. Professor Robert Altemeyer, who for the past four decades has been studying political extremism from a psychological and cognitive perspective, says one attribute of what he calls the "right wing authoritarian" mindset is that authoritarian ideas "are poorly integrated with one another."

It's as if, says Altemeyer, each idea is stored in a separate file that can be called up and used whenever the authoritarian wants even though he has other ideas, stored in different files that "basically contradict it."

All of us are inconsistent in our thinking," says Altemeyer, "but authoritarians can stupify you with the inconsistency of their ideas."

Take, for example, conservatives who believe we live in an "exceptional" country because it guarantees freedom of speech yet who nevertheless equates patriotism with "My country, love it or leave it."

"When your ideas live independent lives from one another it is pretty easy to use double standards in your judgments," says Altemeyer. "You simply call up the idea that will justify (afterwards) what you've decided to do."
 

The post in question was about spending, deficits, etc., but the greater theme of the logical disconnect in thinking is what resonated with me.  For example, my in-laws are full beneficiaries of Social Security and Medicare...yet they are lockstep devotees of the Republican Party...whose aims are to cut those programs to spend more on Defense.

I would think the older you get, the more you'd come down on the "butter" side of the old "guns and butter" equation.  Yet here the in-laws are, voting against their own self-interest, because Fox News is fair and balanced.  Or something.