Sunday poem and pictures - Fairy Wands

Lately I've run out of poems that I know. I could easily repeat my favorites such as "Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manley Hopkins. I don't get bored with them but others might. So, I've been hunting for new poems in the past couple of weeks. I'll look for a theme and Google it - like last week was Father's day but all I could find were silly Hallmark rhymes.

This week I am posting pics of the Fairy Wand lily so I thought I'd look for poems that mentioned fairy wands. I figured I'd find a couple by Shakespeare - probably from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" but the first two that I found which mentioned fairy wands were both about war. Here they are:

Home in War-Time

by Sydney Dobell (1824–74)

SHE turn’d the fair page with her fairer hand—
More fair and frail than it was wont to be—
O’er each remember’d thing he lov’d to see
She linger’d, and as with a fairy’s wand
Enchanted it to order. Oft she fann’d
New motes into the sun; and as a bee
Sings thro’ a brake of bells, so murmur’d she,
And so her patient love did understand
The reliquary room. Upon the sill
She fed his favorite bird. “Ah, Robin, sing!
He loves thee.” Then she touches a sweet string
Of soft recall, and towards the Eastern hill
Smiles all her soul—for him who cannot hear
The raven croaking at his carrion ear.

And this one was doubly poignant as yesterday was the anniversary of the end of the Civil War:

Music in Camp

By John Randolph Thompson

TWO armies covered hill and plain,
Where Rappahannock’s waters
Ran deeply crimsoned with the stain
Of battle’s recent slaughters.

The summer clouds lay pitched like tents
In meads of heavenly azure;
And each dread gun of the elements
Slept in its hid embrasure.

The breeze so softly blew it made
No forest leaf to quiver,
And the smoke of the random cannonade
Rolled slowly from the river.

And now, where circling hills looked down
With cannon grimly planted,
O’er listless camp and silent town
The golden sunset slanted.

When on the fervid air there came
A strain—now rich, now tender;
The music seemed itself aflame
With day’s departing splendor.

A Federal band, which, eve and morn,
Played measures brave and nimble,
Had just struck up, with flute and horn
And lively clash of cymbal.

Down flocked the soldiers to the banks,
Till, margined by its pebbles,
One wooded shore was blue with “Yanks,”
And one was gray with “Rebels.”

Then all was still, and then the band,
With movement light and tricksy,
Made stream and forest, hill and strand,
Reverberate with “Dixie.”

The conscious stream with burnished glow
Went proudly o’er its pebbles,
But thrilled throughout its deepest flow
With yelling of the Rebels.

Again a pause, and then again
The trumpets pealed sonorous,
And “Yankee Doodle” was the strain
To which the shore gave chorus.

The laughing ripple shoreward flew,
To kiss the shining pebbles;
Loud shrieked the swarming Boys in Blue
Defiance to the Rebels.

And yet once more the bugles sang
Above the stormy riot;
No shout upon the evening rang—
There reigned a holy quiet.

The sad, slow stream its noiseless flood
Poured o’er the glistening pebbles;
All silent now the Yankees stood,
And silent stood the Rebels.

No unresponsive soul had heard
That plaintive note’s appealing,
So deeply “Home, Sweet Home” had stirred
The hidden founts of feeling.

Or Blue or Gray, the soldier sees,
As by the wand of fairy,
The cottage ’neath the live-oak trees,
The cabin by the prairie.

Or cold or warm, his native skies
Bend in their beauty o’er him;
Seen through the tear-mist in his eyes,
His loved ones stand before him.

As fades the iris after rain
In April’s tearful weather,
The vision vanished, as the strain
And daylight died together.

But memory, waked by music’s art,
Expressed in simplest numbers,
Subdued the sternest Yankee’s heart,
Made light the Rebel’s slumbers.

And fair the form of music shines,
That bright, celestial creature,
Who still, mid war’s embattled lines,
Gave this one touch of Nature.

And here are the pics of the Fairy Wand lily. It's botanical name is dierama. It has another common name - Angel's Fishing-rod. I tried growing these in California but was not successful. Most South African lilies come from the west coast of the Cape of Good Hope which, like California, gets all of its rain in winter. Dierama (like the watsonia which I posted last week) comes from the east coast of South Africa which gets most of its rain in summer. All those that I have planted since I moved here have done well probably because southwest Oregon gets some summer rain unlike California.

Fairy Wands grow in the Drakensberg mountains of Natal/kwaZulu. Dierama ranges from almost white through pale pink to almost purple. The flowers are born on long thin delicate "wands" up to four feet long.

We used to pick them and play all sorts of games with them as kids. They could be magic wands or sometimes whips or weapons like swords - depending on our imaginations. We made do as we didn't have toys in those days.

Yesterday the realtors who sold us this place, a husband and wife team who have become good friends of ours, came for dinner. They came a couple of hours early so we could show them the garden and all the other improvements we've been working on. They were amazed at how well the watsonias and dieramas have taken.

The top two pics are of dierama in their native setting, the Drakensberg.

Circumcision in South Africa

Not all South African tribes do male circumcision. The amaZulu, with whom I grew up, do not. The amaXhosa do circumcise their males in adolescence. The boys are "initiated" into manhood through circumcision as a group once a year by the Sangoma - witchdoctor/shaman.

They do not use standard aseptic surgical techniques or even basic hygienic methods or anesthesia or drugs of any kind and there is a 15% mortality rate because of infections or shock from blood loss. There have been times when nearly all of the group of initiates have died of septicemia - blood-poisoning. I remember when this happened once and it was traced back to the use of a rusty piece of metal - namely the lid from a tin can.

Females are not circumcised except in the Islamic cultures of supra-equatorial Africa.

Related link: Male Circumcision in Africa.

More chicken coop chronicles

I finally decided to execute Cecil, the Rhode Island red rooster aka Zarqawi, when I saw him raping one of the white Leghorn hens, Bettie. She was screaming like she was being murdered. I knew for sure that he had injured her and that was unacceptable as she and her sister, Alphie, were the best egg-layers. Sure enough Bettie started drooping and looking sick.

So we executed Cecil last Friday and Bettie died on Saturday morning. The autopsy on Bettie revealed that Cecil had crushed an egg in her oviduct which had pierced it and caused peritonitis. She died of septic shock three days after her injury. The fact that the dogs would not eat her cadaver confirmed that she had died of sepsis or blood-poisoning. We moved Alphie in with the rest of the flock where Bertie, the bantam rooster keeps a wary eye on her lest she harm any of his harem - below.















Recently we discovered that two of the barred Plymouth Rock "pullets" were really roosters. I named them Dumb and Dumber and removed them from the flock because they were attacking the hens. They are now on Death Row awaiting execution - below.















Meanwhile not all is death and destruction at Robin's Wood. There have also been a lot of births. The bantam hens have hatched 42 bantam chicks. We did not plan for this but, unbeknown to us, the bantam hens were hiding their eggs and brooding in secret. Most of them have hatched successfully and Turandot, the best brood hen, is sitting on the last 8 eggs. The chicks have arrived in waves of about ten a week. First they go into the incubator in the guest bedroom and then, when they fledge, they're put in the hamster cage - below.















Once they are fully fledged, they are put in a specially sectioned off area of the chicken coop which they share with Turandot and Maria Callas, the singing black hen who is a replacement for the two "pullets" that turned out to be roosters and is too small to intergrate with the main flock as they attack her. Here she is with the first batch of bantam fledglings - below.















Before the fledglings were moved from the hamster cage to the chicken coop, I used to bring Buntie, the runt of the Buff Rock pullets, in to sleep with Maria at night so she had someone to cuddle with. (Chickens like to cuddle at night to keep warm.) Maria and Buntie - below.















But Buntie started attacking the bantam fledglings so, last night, Maria had to cuddle with Bertie Junior - below.












Bertie Jr takes after his father, Bertie Wooster the bantam rooster, and his mother Goldie Hawn, who is a vicious bitch of the first order. Obviously Bertie Jr will have to be eaten when he is about 6 weeks old - as will all of the bantam roosters. About half the fledglings are cockerels so we will have to eat nearly two dozen bantam roosters. They will be too young to pluck and will have to be skinned so I am looking for recipes for roasting skinless chicken as I don't like fried chicken. The only one that I know of is to wrap small skinless game-fowl in bacon strips to keep in the moisture - but my Jew genes make me not like eating pig - chaza.

I stole these pics from Chas. You can read his Farm Report here.

Sunday poem and pictures

I could not find a decent Father's Day poem so I'll just post that hoary old favorite by some sensible but anonymous author:

My Father

When I was:

Four years old: My daddy can do anything.
Five years old: My daddy knows a whole lot.
Six years old: My dad is smarter than your dad.
Eight years old: My dad doesn't know exactly everything.
Ten years old: In the olden days, when my dad grew up, things were sure different.
Twelve years old: Oh, well, naturally, Dad doesn't know anything about that. He is too old to remember his childhood.
Fourteen years old: Don't pay any attention to my dad. He is so old-fashioned.
Twenty-one years old: Him? My Lord, he's hopelessly out of date.
Twenty-five years old: Dad knows about it, but then he should, because he has been around so long.
Thirty years old: Maybe we should ask Dad what he thinks. After all, he's had a lot of experience.
Thirty-five years old: I'm not doing a single thing until I talk to Dad.
Forty years old: I wonder how Dad would have handled it. He was so wise.
Fifty years old: I'd give anything if Dad were here now so I could talk this over with him. Too bad I didn't appreciate how smart he was. I could have learned a lot from him.

The watsonia is another South African lily (related to gladiolus) which thrives in the West Coast climate. I brought my watsonia bulbs from San Francisco when I moved here and planted them around the edge of the lawn and just let them grow informally as they keep multiplying and end up forming huge clumps.

The top two pics are of watsonias growing wild in South Africa. The next two pics are of the bulbs that I planted in my garden here in Oregon. The next three pics are close-ups of the white and pink versions which occur naturally and the last pic is of all the different colored hybrids which are now available.

Terrorist beheaded

Cecil Rhodes (whom I renamed Zarqawi just before beheading him) was executed at 10am on June 16th - about 15 minutes ago. He is now hanging on the clothesline bleeding out prior to being stripped of his beautiful coppery feathers, paraded naked through the barnyard into the fridge and finally put into the oven.

As some of you know, Cecil - er, Zarqawi - was condemned to death last month for terrorising people, raping hens, murdering newborn chicks and general mischief and mayhem. I kept giving him a reprieve because he was so beautiful; standing over 2 feet tall, with the strut of a ghetto gangster and a crow that could be heard a mile away.

But he was hell on the rest of the fowl population. The two white leghorns who are our best egg-layers had been raped so often that they had no feathers on their backs and were completely terrorised into quivering neurotics. I thought of letting him run loose in the barnyard but, after realizing that he would eat my asparagus, terrorize the cats and kill my two darling defenseless chihuahuas, I finally signed the death warrant.

Chas and Andy were pleased because they hated him. Cecil/Zarqawi had attacked both of them many times. He never attacked me but used to do break-dancing for me instead and bump endearingly up against my leg. I loved him but he was a problem. Rest in peace, Cecil.

The War on Jihadism

We call this war "The War on Terrorism" but it's not a war against generic terrorism. The only non-Islamic terrorists that we have had to deal with in the USA uptil now have been home-grown nuts like the Unibomber and McVeigh. We don't have to fight a war against lone loons but we do have to fight a war against fanatical Islamic Jihadists. So, from now on I will be referring to our current war as "The War on Jihadism" not as the "The War on Terrorism."

Yesterday the Pentagon announced that there have now been 2,500 American casualties in Iraq - combat deaths and 528 from non-combat operations over the 3+ years of the war. Those deaths are the price we pay to rid ourselves of the greatest threat to western civilization since Nazism and Communism.

Last Wednesday, Fits, posted on his blog, "Shooting the Messenger," an article from the Marine Corps News, "Remembering the Battle of Belleau Wood."

Between June 1 and June 26 in 1918, 2,289 American troops (including over 1,900 Marines) lost their lives at Belleau Wood - in just one battle lasting 3+ weeks not 3+ years.

Here is a list of American casualties in all of our wars.

American Revolution (1775–1783) 4,435

War of 1812 (1812–1815) 2,260

Indian Wars (approx. 1817–1898) 1,000

Mexican War (1846–1848) 1,733
Other deaths in service (nontheater) 11,550

Civil War (1861–1865) (Union) 140,414
Other deaths in service (nontheater) (Union) 224,097

Battle deaths (Conf.) 74,524
Other deaths in service (nontheater) (Conf.) 59,2972

Spanish-American War (1898–1902) 385
Other deaths in service (nontheater) 2,061

World War I (1917–1918) 53,402
Other deaths in service (nontheater) 63,114

World War II (1940–1945) 291,557
Other deaths in service (nontheater) 113,842

Korean War (1950–1953) 33,741
Other deaths in service (theater) 2,827
Other deaths in service (nontheater) 17,730

Vietnam War (1964–1975) 47,410
Other deaths in service (theater) 10,789
Other deaths in service (nontheater) 32,000

Gulf War (1990–1991) 147
Other deaths in service (theater) 382
Other deaths in service (nontheater) 1,565

America's Wars Total 651,008
Other deaths in service (theater) 13,998
Other deaths in service (nontheater) 525,256

Last Wednesday Condi Rice addressed the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting:

We in America are blessed with lives of tremendous liberty: the freedom to govern ourselves and elect our leaders; the freedom to own property; the freedom to educate our children, our boys and our girls; and of course the freedom to think as we please and to worship as we wish. America embodies these liberties but America does not own these liberties. We stand for ideals that are greater than ourselves and we go into the world not to plunder but to protect, not to subjugate but to liberate, not as masters of others but as servants of freedom.

Our world needs America's leadership now more than ever.

You can read her whole speech here.

"Self esteem"

Yesterday I phoned the agency that I use to find tenants for my rental properties. I use the agency because I prefer to keep a polite distance between me and my tenants. The agency does the credit and criminal background checks and draws up the lease. It's worth paying them to do that.

Anyway a strange woman answered the phone. She was nice and perky so I forgave her for not introducing herself when answering the phone. One of the things I always insist on in business is that you say who you are immediately when you answer the phone. Everyone in my restaurant was trained to answer the phone thus: "Joubert's Restaurant. This is Pat (or whoever.) How may I help you?"

This is the conversation that I had this afternoon:

Miss Perky Pie: Rental Management Services.

Me: Good afternoon. This is Patrick Conlon from Robin's Wood Rentals. Could you please send me an application in the mail.

Miss Perky: Application?

Me: Yes. I need to fill one out for one of my apartments that is coming vacant.

Miss Perky: Which apartment building?

Me: My building on X Street.

Miss Perky: And who did you say you are?

Me: I'm Pat. Who are you?

Miss Perky: What?

Me: Listen, Miss Perky, (no I didn't really call her that) you haven't told me your name. You sound like you are very young and maybe no one taught you that you must always introduce yourself on the phone especially in business. What's your name?

Miss Perky: Michelle.

I could hear her bristling - getting defensive.

Me: I'll tell you what. I'll just give you my phone number and please ask Regina to call me. Okay?

Miss Perky: She's on another phone.

Me: I know because I just called her on her cell phone and it was busy. That's why I want to leave my number so she can call me back when she isn't busy. Okay?

Miss Perky: You don't have to be rude.

Me: Rude? Michelle, I am not being rude. Yes, this conversation is awkward. I'm being practical and businesslike. Any awkwardness that has occurred since you first answered the phone could have been avoided if you had introduced yourself when you answered the phone.

The only reason why I even bothered to spend time trying to educate Miss Perky was because she sounded like a sweet kid with potential.

The owner of this agency, a friend of mine, Barbara, was recently killed in a freak auto accident. She was my age and ran the business professionally. Her daughter has inherited the business and is letting things slide. Barbara would have trained her receptionist to answer the phone correctly.

Eventually Regina called me back. Regina is only 24 but is one of my "adopted" kids. By that I mean that I like her a lot and have taken her under my wing because she is smart, dresses beautifully, has impeccable manners and is all spit and polish. She's the kind of kid that I want to give a leg up.

Tonight, during dinner, I told Chas and Andy about my conversation with Miss Perky.

Chas said she was like that because of the "self esteem" nonsense that they teach in schools nowadays. It makes today's kids get their egos out of proportion and they end up defensive and thin-skinned.

As the three of us cranky old curmudgeons were bemoaning the modern world, I suddenly realized that actually all this "self esteem" crap that they teach in schools nowadays is actually the opposite. I mean it's phony self esteem. Real self esteem comes from real inner strength not screwy group therapy sessions. No amount of repeating the mantra, "I am special" will achieve that. You have to BE special, accomplish something.

A neighbor of mine, Tony, who owns ten acres about two miles away which she has turned into a wholesale plant nursery, used to be a school teacher in California. She stopped teaching in the 80s when they introduced the "Goal System." The "Goal System" is based on the Soviet education system introduced in Russia in the 1960s.

I have tried to find out more about this on the internet but cannot find anything about it but, according to Tony, it is designed to destroy pupils' individuality and replace it with a group-think mentality. I take what Tony says with a pinch of salt because she, like many of my born-again Christian neighbors, believes that the world was created 4,000 years ago and that dinosaurs existed in the Garden of Eden. However, her condemnation of public schooling cannot be dimissed.

Yes, most of my neighbors home-school their kids and they are the finest young men and women you could wish to meet. For a start, they have all grown up with vicious chickens and other farm animals and seen nature in all its glory and horror. They are realistic, practical and trained for survival.

The nonsensical "self esteem" crap that they teach in public schools doesn't help kids to survive and succeed. In fact it brainwashes them into thinking of themselves as victims entitled to emotionally manipulate and blackmail people into "respecting" them.

I ended up feeling sorry for Miss Perky and all the other poor kids who have been misled by public schooling. They actually don't have any self esteem at all. It has been erased and their individuality, their uniqueness has been replaced with a Borg mentality.

Singing black hen

I know all my tens of thousands of readers (oh, all right - I'm lying - I mean ten) all come here to read about polemics, politics, world affairs and controversial current events and often just find fowl language.

Two months ago we bought a dozen pullets (female chicks) from the local farm supply store. Pullets cost two bucks a pop whereas unsexed chicks (what is known as a "straight run" in the fowl industry) only cost a buck a pop but you might end up with roosters who don't lay eggs, behead their babies and rape all the hens they can lay their vicious terrorist claws on.

"Straight runs" are not a bad investment when you consider that those nasty antibiotic-fed, hormone-ridden things sold in supermarkets cost at least $5 a corpse and the recently demised cockerels, the Three Stooges, were fresh, flavorsome and very tender served with baked potatoes, runner beans, gravy and a nice Oregon Pinot Grigio.













But, if you want workers who produce eggs, then you don't want cockerels; you want hens - so you pay the extra buck to have them sexed. The farm supply store guarantees that their "pullets" are 90% female. Well, two of our pullets turned out to be cockerels and have now taken the place of the Three Stooges on death row. We have called them Dumb and Dumber. Hopefully they will be as tasty as the Three Stooges a month or so from now.

Today we told the farm supply store that two out of twelve of their supposed "female chicks" were useless males - okay - semi-useless. They decided to give us another pullet to make up for the discrepancy. Andy came back from the farm store with a pullet in a cardboard box - a little black pullet crossed between a Plymouth Rock and a Rhode Island Red.

I put the little black hen in the rabbit cage that I keep in my office for when I bring our two chihuahuas to work. (They are monsters that were rescued from fates worse than death - but that's a whole nother story. I never liked little dogs till I got them and I still don't - except these are special. Don't argue - you KNOW they are. I said so!)

So what does this damned little hen start doing? Singing. That's what! There I am sitting at my desk paying bills when I hear this trilling and warbling like Maria Callas on LSD. I've got two canaries rescued from a homeless "bag lady" (and that's a whole nother story too) who sing better than Caruso when they try but mostly end up imitating the cell-phone but this little hen started singing like a diva at La Scala.

We brought her home and put her in the chicken-run with the other pullets who immediately attacked her like Velociraptors on crack cocaine. Yes, they are racists and don't like black hens - believe me! Would I lie to you? So Maria Callas ended up in the spare canary cage by herself in the guest bedroom.

Then the oddest thing happened. At first she got her tits in a tangle everytime I touched her but by now she was getting used to being handled and, every time I tickled her titties - er rubbed her breast - she purred. Yes - purred! Okay it was more like a little trill than a purr - you know like the Tribbles in Star Trek - only cuter.

If ever you've raised quail, you know that they trill and sing. Have I got a cross between a quail and a chicken? She's very small for her age and very pretty so I wouldn't be surprised.

Of course, being a Republican capitalist pig, I already have big plans for Maria Callas. I can just see her name in lights down at the WalMart parking lot in the local town. I'll bill her as "Maria Callas the Singing Chicken of Southern Oregon" and make millions! I'm just hoping she can sing Puccini arias and Bach cantatas without having to get drunk first. Maybe she can imitate Engelbert Humperdink in the shower like me.

This is ridiculous. I mean I've heard tales of singing chickens before but I've never met one in person. I'm wondering if Peace Moonbeam and Scooter have done some horrible commie pothead juju on me to make me vegetarian. Next thing I'll be singing "Kumbaya" in duet with Maria Callas and eating tofu and bean sprouts and kissing Cindy Sheehan on the lips. Oh the horror! I'd rather kiss a chicken's asshole - at least they lay eggs.

Sunday poem and pics

My favorite hymn is "Jesu, joy of man's desiring." The original words were written in German by Martin Janus and Bach wrote the music. The most popular English translation is that of Robert Bridges.

My second favorite hymn is "Sheep may safely graze." The music (Cantata #208) was also composed by Bach. You can hear it here.

Right now I won't get into my third favorite hymn, "A New Jerusalem," a musical setting of William Blake's ecstatic poem.

But hands down my favorite is "Jesu." It is the acme of Christian faith and devotion both in the words and the music. (I have a MIDI of "Jesu" but I don't know to upload audio files to blogger. Okay I'm a 'puter-dumbo.)

It is a song of God-praising. God-praising evokes ecstasy. Ecstasy elicits gratitude. Gratitude reveals "the Kingdom of God within." How lucky we are; or should I say graced, blessed and adored by God. At least that's what I've seen - that God adores his creation and that his creatures adore Him and need to sing his praises. The most natural thing in the world is to praise our Creator and to long to know, love and serve Him. In practical terms of course we have to keep it secret - if you go around singing God's praises all day long, you'll be labelled nuts. But I can say this on a blog - thank Goodness.

Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring

Jesu, joy of man’s desiring,
Holy wisdom, love most bright;
Drawn by Thee, our souls aspiring
Soar to uncreated light.

Word of God, our flesh that fashioned,
With the fire of life impassioned,
Striving still to truth unknown,
Soaring, dying round Thy throne.

Through the way where hope is guiding,
Hark, what peaceful music rings;
Where the flock, in Thee confiding,
Drink of joy from deathless springs.

Theirs is beauty’s fairest pleasure;
Theirs is wisdom’s holiest treasure.
Thou dost ever lead Thine own
In the love of joys unknown.

Not even the pics of flowers which follow can match that. The longing for earthly beauty can never come close to the yearning to know God.

These are pics of gladiolus which is a native South African plant. Did you now that one quarter of all garden ornamental plants come from South Africa?

The gladiolus was originally cultivated and hybridized by the Dutch 250 years ago. It is a member of the iris family and therefore extremely genetically malleable and there are as many hybrids of the gladiolus as there are of the iris.

I have so many pics of glads that I have decided to just post the small ones. From top to bottom: the hybrid which everyone in Europe and the US knows as gladiolus followed by a pic of the simple white wildflower from which all modern garden hybrids originate and nine other pics of the hundreds of original South African wildflowers/weeds from which the hybrids arose. The last ten pics are of highly developed hybrids.

The wild glads have small flowers - usually only about an inch across. I used to have one little glad that had insignificant little green flowers but had the perfume of divine nectar.

The hybrids sometimes have flowers which are as big as my hand. I am not a great devotee of glad hybrids probably because I grew up with the wild ones. The wild glads are small and often easily overlooked growing among the grass and weeds on the veld but once you have stopped to study a wild gladiolus, you will find that the hybrids have a fluffy and superficial beauty - a man-made beauty - whereas the wild glads are an embodiment of God's ecstatic bountifulness and unpredictability.


















Wild glads:

































































































































































Hybrid glads: