what may or may not be hard reality

I'm studying for my Evolution 301 final, and I meant to make a ranting post about how people who deny science and evolution frighten me more than... pretty much anything else. There are a great many things in the worl that disturb, distress, sadden, anger, shock me, etc etc etc, but there are few things that outright frighten me the way powerful people who deny the things that I trust to be the foundation of all life on this planet do. And the fact that I know of no comprehensive way to argue for it, the fact that any argument I make can be met with the same and just a switch of the words, that I'm sure they feel exactly the same way about me, that's the most frightening part of all. That if you can have it presented to you, proof by proof, and still not understand it to be (relative*) truth, that that makes me paralyzingly frightened for the future of the human race.

*Futuyma Evolution 2nd ed. p. 13-14, Ethics, Religion, and Evolution and Evolution as Fact and Theory

Disclaimer: I'm a Christian. A very liberal Christian, but a Christian just the same. So is my mother, who is a research biologist. I see no conflict of interest.

However, the thinking scientific feminist part of my brain was railroaded by this video and the primal part of my brain took over and is flailing incoherently at its hawtness.

According to tradition, on the first of May you're supposed to take yourself outside for a grand picnic. As it happened, rain was pouring down all of yesterday, so we postponed it for today instead. But here are some pictures - most from today, some from previous days.

( some artistic attempts at leaf buds, clouds and birds, and a crocus or two for good measure )

...and the surrounding area. I spent today outside with the camera. I need a spring-themed LJ layout.

( Lots of croci under here, the occasional artsy pine, and a bumblebee )

At some point this spring we forgot a bag of potatoes in the fridge, and then when we rediscovered them they were well on their way to walking out of there by their own powers. Shrugging, we threw them into an empty corner of the herb garden, and voilá! 3 months later we could actually harvest potatoes... quite cool!

( A few pictures under here! )

Here are a bunch of pictures of random pretty views seen around Norway. Some taken on the coast, most taken from the car.

( Prettiest country on earth... )

Since the puffins seemed to be what excited most people, here are a ton of puffin pictures.

( Seriously, a whole lot of puffins under here. )

A few hours ago I stood on an old stone bridge from 1750 or thereabout, watching as the fast-flowing muddy river ripped a huge thick block of ice into tiny shreds against the bridge pillars, making the 250-year-old stone bridge shudder beneath my feet with the impact. Across the dam above the bridge the still bare birch trees were reflected in the open waters, backlit by the soft pink sky of the newly set sun.

Now I'm sitting on a wood bench in a smelly locker room leaning against the brick wall, waiting for my father to finish his night race. Outside the cloudless sky is sucking all the warmth of the day out of the air, and brittle new ice is crunching on the edges of the small puddles.

Either way; suck it winter! Spring will crush you in the end.

This is what I found beneath my mailbox this morning!! Yay!! I saw the first spring flowers about a week ago (up until then we've had snow, the ground-covering kind, not the 'small patches on northern slopes' kind), along south-facing walls of other people's houses, but my flower-bed is a little exposed, so it takes a few extra days. Of course, the pile of snow that has accumulated at the circle at the end of the street from snowplows through the winter is still there, but it's significantly smaller now. Spring is so here. Finally.



( A couple more under here. )

Two measly hours, I go away for, and suddenly there's like half a dozen new 'backstage at the Emmys'-clips (get your head out of the way, they're *kissing* behind you!!) up on Ellen's website, and another very random one of her trying out dance moves in her kitchen next to Portia who has curlers in her hair, and then the one on YouTube where she appears somewhat drunk and is dancing with one of her writers at an afterparty that I don't know if I should be freaked out or insanely amused by. A little bit of both, I think. All of it prompting ten thousand new posts on the forum to read up on.

However, there's nothing like walking through my yard when it's been raining all day, and everything is lush and green and wet and has that incredible smell of green. Mmmmmmmm........

Also, there's nothing like the soft cracks of soft-shelled snails under my bare feet, in a completely different way. *shudder* But I've reconciled with that; if I'd worn shoes, the snails would still be crushed, but I wouldn't have felt the soft grass the other 10 steps.

Midsummer's Eve tomorrow. Goodbye Summer, Hello Winter Depression.

I saw a poem today. It made me really really sad that I don't write poetry and can do it justice. I was standing on a small wooden bridge in the middle of the forest, above a lazy stream that was closer to a series of puddles in this dry season. The sun was shining, penetrating the foliage with rays visible in the still, hazy air, thick with pollen, flies, dried bark fragments, and dust. A few birds had braved the heat and were singing sleepily. On the surface of the muddy impenetrable water various species of tiny pond skaters were playing, rhythmic rings chasing each other across the otherwise mirror-like surface. And in the very middle of this utterly peaceful and drowsy tableau, a series of brief, erratic rings on the water surface, an errant moth struggling in vain against the water, the rings visible for just a moment before radiating and disappearing against the muddy bank,  leaving behind a world irrevocably changed, but at sight no different from a few seconds ago, blurring Nature's lines between life and death into invisibility.

Fall is here. I've been denying it for the longest time, even as I've casually inserted the word 'fall' in references to present day ever since Midsummer's, but I've not really believed it, it's only been an expression of my half empty seasonal world view. It's been raining pretty persistently the last weeks (finally! just a couple weeks late to save the harvest...) but it's still been summer. The chill in the air has been easily blamed on the rain, because when the sun came out it was still warm. Today the sun is shining brightly from a sky across which is scattered a careful number of white fluffy clouds, and a brisk breeze is blowing through the threes, on which the leaves are still strong and lushly green. From my window only the red berries of the rowan are heralding fall's imminent arrival, but to all appearances it is still summer.

Until you step outside. When the rains finally let up it is there, in the crispness of the air, in the long shadows on the ground from the wrong directions, the grass beneath my bare feet know it, still moist even as the sun warms it, the birds, the smell from the fruit trees. In the first ripe plum I ate today. Juicy and sweet, the skin still with a hint of sour (two wonderful minutes until my allergies kicked in). I've lost track of time over the summer. Fall term began today at the university, but are the children back in school yet? I don't know. There are things I should be doing, people I should talk to, jobs I should be looking for, but until I stepped outside today I didn't fully realize that the time had come to begin the process.

I hate and love this time of year. The beginning of something new, a new year, time to set the mind to work, plug the clock back in the wall, breathe the fragrant fall air and watch the apples ripen, the colours deepen, the sky grow higher. And yet it's the last soft warmth in the air, the last weeks days hours when it's even bearable to be outside, suddenly gone is the heat, and the light, and the effortless blend of air that kept windows and doors wide open day and through the night. It's only been gone a moment, and I already miss it. So gradual is the change that there is no sensory memory of it ever being there, the body doesn't comprehend how it was possible to stand on the balcony at 2am wearing only a thin night gown, watching the light creep through the garden, left is only the intellectual knowledge that it didn't use to be like this. The same intellectual knowledge I have to rely on to believe that the light will return, eventually, even as my eyes staring into the darkness can not recall what it was like to gaze upon it.

Ok, so I will admit that walking home in the middle of the night through the forest, with everything silent and a gentle snow fall, and newly fallen snow soft under my feet is utterly charming. I even had the obnoxiously picturesque experience of seeing a roe deer cross my path not 15 meters in front of me. Another positive aspect to winter is that the street-lights actually work. I remember back in August when it was just starting to get dark at night, every 3rd light or so would be broken because they hadn't been used for 3 months. Now I saw only one single broken light during the entire walk home.

( M&G and I watched Troy tonight. (warning - the wee spoiler and some negative comments) ) I read this wonderful parody of the movie, once, somewhere on LJ, I think. There isn't anyone on my flist who would happen to know of it and where I can find it?

Then I watched Cagney & Lacey again... I know I said I wouldn't. What is it with cop shows in NYC that make them so damn fractured? NYPD Blue is the same way, they always sound so strained, and the dialogue is quick, fractured and they all always sound ready to jump out of their skin. Anyway; Chris is kinda pretty, Mary Beth is annoying, but they smiled at each other and hugged at the end of tonight's ep, so there's definitely a pairing there. We'll see what comes of it.

Off to celebrate my aunt's birthday this weekend. I'll be checking in, but I won't be online much. C ya!