Crocus Bloom And Bird Twitter

I have a feeling that it must be spring time. A few days ago Bea came in telling me that she had discovered the first blue Crocus under the apple tree. Meanwhile the blue ones got company by some white crocus. And if that isn’t calling for a spring time feel than how about the  bird twitter right above the Crocus in the apple tree. American Gold Finches, Juncos, Blue Jays, Doves, Warblers, Downy Woodpeckers, and even Cardinals are gathering here reminding us that it is time to start thinking of seeding tomatoes and other veggies. And look, the neighbours are out there in their garden. While Bea is busying herself with watching birds and caring for her numerous surviving winter plants like her geraniums, I am out there with rake and shovel cleaning up my wood splitting mess. We also have a brush pile to deal with and the “dealing” means we have to burn it in small portions. It’s dry now and just a little bit of gas poured cautiously over the twigs will start the fire. It’s just a wonderful quiet day and ”No wind” is great for having a small fire in the back yard. Looking around across the deep-blue bay I marvel again about how beautiful it is here. Our paradise.

The Curious History of the White House Easter Egg Roll

Egg rolls were a big part of Easter for many nineteenth-century families. Played with hard-boiled eggs that have been decorated for Easter, players push their egg along down a hill, trying to be the first to reach the bottom. The best-known egg roll is probably the one held on the White House’s South Lawn each year. The Easter Egg Roll is today the largest annual public event held at the White House. Its thousands of participants are chosen by lottery. In the 1870s, everyone wanted to participate. Before they rolled eggs on the South Lawn, children from Washington rolled eggs down the steep slopes of Capitol Hill. According to newspaper articles, writes History.com, the first public event happened in 1872. By 1876, “foot traffic from hordes of children and their families during an egg roll caused so much damage to the Congressional grounds that legislators were forced to pass the Turf Protection Law to prevent further damage.” The law was to take effect in 1877, according to the Clinton White House. But that year, Easter Monday was marked by pouring rain, keeping children inside during the egg roll in any case. The next year—so the story goes—President Rutherford B. Hayes was accosted by a group of children who “inquired about the possibilities of egg rolling on the South Lawn of the White House.” As the White House Historical Association notes, private egg rolling events may have been held at the White House as far back as Lincoln's administration. But this was the moment White House egg rolling went public. Hayes, in the second year of his presidency, acceded to their demands, and the White House has hosted an egg-rolling event most years since. The photograph at the top of this story, taken in 1898 by female photojournalist Frances Benjamin Johnston, is one of two images showing both black and white children participating in the egg roll during the late nineteenth century. “Black children were allowed to attend the White House’s annual Easter egg-rolling ceremony,” writes author Clarence Lusane in The Black History of the White House. “Permitting black children to integrate with white children on the White House premises one day a year was acceptable, even though such mingling was illegal in many places throughout the South at the time, including libraries and schools.” According to Elizabeth Bumiller for The New York Times, even that small concession eventually faded, and by 1953, “Mamie Eisenhower asked why black children were looking through the gates at the white children rolling eggs inside.” She insisted that black children be included the following year, Bushmiller writes. In the intervening years, black families also found another Easter egg rolling event that they felt welcome at: the National Zoo’s egg roll, which takes place on the Lion-Tiger Hill, writes Megan Gambino for Smithsonian.  Both the National Zoo's event and the White House's will take place this Easter.

Trump Is Giving The World Whiplash.

By Frida Ghitis (CNN) During more than a year of campaigning Trump staked out positions that sowed wide anxiety, threatening to upend decades of US strategy, policy and protocol, in favor of what he claimed would be his innovative, commonsense businessman's approach. But now, less than three months into his presidency, Trump has begun a head-snapping series of reversals. His new ideas have not survived the first contact with reality. Now, he announces changes of mind after meeting with world leaders or after hearing of shocking events on television. Policies on Syria, China, NATO, Russia, all seem to be turning into precisely the opposite of what candidate Trump had vowed. The President would like us to think this is the reasonable behavior of a man imbued with great leadership talents, capable of responding to changing circumstances; a brilliant navigator, tacking at the right moment, or trimming the sails to make the most of shifting winds. That explanation, however, misses the facts. What we are seeing is an erratic foreign policy, anchored by shallow thinking. It alarms US allies and dangerously destabilizes the rest of the world. (In some areas, however, Trump is still sticking with his muscular foreign policy stance, as in the use of the biggest nonnuclear bomb in America's arsenal, dropped in Afghanistan on Thursday.) But Trump is changing his mind because he hadn't thought very carefully about his earlier positions, so the reasoning behind them can collapse after the evening news or after a conversation with a world leader. We can only hope he -- or his wiser aides -- is giving more careful thought to the new approach before it becomes US policy There is, however, one considerable bit of good news in the most recent installments of Jekyll and Hyde Trump. Most of the changes we have seen in the past few days reflect the abandonment of campaign pledges that were absurd from the start. There is a chance that Trump is discovering the world as it really is. This will come as a harsh blow to those who believed his "America First" pledges to stay out of international conflicts and smash the existing global order enough to vote for him last November. Back then, Trump questioned America's relationship with NATO, dismissing as "obsolete" the alliance that has been the bedrock of global stability since World War II. He accused China of "raping," US consumers with its trade policies and said that he would designate Beijing as a currency manipulator "on day one." He vowed to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, also on day one of his administration. He said he would improve relations with Russia, aligning with Moscow to jointly combat ISIS in Syria, while staying out of the rest of that conflict. "Wouldn't it be nice if we got along with Russia," he declared, as if nobody else had ever thought of that; as if no one else had tried; as if fundamental policy disagreements did not lie at the heart of bilateral tensions. And so, to review, here is the latest in the about-faces Trump has made in his world view: Syria is the first and most shocking of all. Trump, who now calls Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a "butcher" and "an animal," had tweeted while Obama was President that getting involved in Syria would be "stupid." As candidate he promised to only fight ISIS. Russia fights ISIS and Assad fights ISIS, he said, suggesting Putin and Assad could be Washington's allies -- even disagreeing with Mike Pence when his running mate said military action against Assad might be in the cards. But then, after a chemical attack on Syrian children blamed on Assad, a visibly moved Trump announced "my attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much." In a press conference the day after the chemical attack, Trump boasted that he is "a very flexible person." Only days earlier, administration officials had suggested Trump was prepared to let Assad stay in power. Now Trump has discarded his stance on the most complex geopolitical conflict in the world today, deciding to bomb. "I don't have one specific way, and if the world changes ... I do change and I am flexible and I am proud of that flexibility." The President wanted us to believe this is nothing more than the reasonable behavior of a pragmatic leader. Flexibility is normally a commendable trait, the mark of the nonzealot. If circumstances change, it makes sense to adjust. But, as in practically all the cases in which Trump is backing away from his earlier stance, nothing has changed. It is as if Trump did not know of Assad's viciousness. The Syrian regime has been using chemical weapons, barrel bombs and mass starvation of civilians. Some 500,000 have died. That is not new. Just this week, after meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump reversed course on two more fundamental campaign positions. NATO, he said, is "no longer obsolete." Nothing had changed about NATO. Trump claimed the alliance started fighting terrorism because of his pressure, but that is patently false. NATO has fought in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda. And China? After a good meeting with Xi, Trump has decided China is no longer raping US consumers. And how about that pledge to move the US embassy to Jerusalem? That was supposed to happen immediately after inauguration. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Corker, said he thought Trump was ready to move the embassy at 12:01 p.m. on January 20, immediately after being sworn in. But then, Trump discovered it was all a little more complicated than he thought. He's getting "a greater sense of some of the complexities that exist," Corker said. Trump seemed to campaign on a premise that everyone else is a fool. Only he, he claimed, had what it takes to correct it all. It turns out his brilliant ideas were nothing but shallow talking points, good enough to trigger roars of applause at his massive rallies. Some of the course corrections, particularly regarding NATO, are a welcome change. But the sight of a President who changes his mind with such ease over the most consequential issues of our time is deeply disturbing.

Do You Love Spiders?

Chances are your answer is negative. Mine would be too. Having been a traveler to the desert South West most of us have seen tarantulas. If you think that these look frightening then you would be much more scared by meeting the below pictured creature.                          A fluffy lookin’ softball of a spider This cute looking spider is the size of a softball and was discovered in a Mexican cave. Researchers at the San Diego Natural History Museum, along with experts from Mexico and Brazil, have described the new species of large cave-dwelling spider, the Sierra Cacachilas wandering spider (Califorctenus cacachilensis). Related to the notoriously venomous Brazilian wandering spider (Phoneutria fera), the Sierra Cacachilas wandering spider was first discovered on a collaborative research expedition in 2013 into a small mountain range outside of La Paz in Baja California Sur, Mexico. Four years later, after careful documentation and peer-review, the species and genus was deemed new to science and the discovery was published in Zootaxa  on March 2, 2017.   The Discovery                            “The first evidence we found of this species was a shed exoskeleton in the cracks of a rock overhang,” said Jim Berrian, field entomologist at the San Diego Natural History Museum and one of the authors describing the new species. “The exoskeleton was abnormally big and I could tell by the eye pattern that it was in a group of spiders, wandering spiders from the Family Ctenidae, with very few species in Baja California Sur.” Knowing that wandering spiders are often nocturnal, Berrian and colleagues returned to the same area that evening to find the first living specimen of Califorctenus cacachilensis. “I knew the spider was unusual, but needed to get Dr. Maria Luisa Jimenez to look at it to make sure,” remarked Berrian. Dr. Maria Luisa Jimenez, a researcher at Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste and foremost expert on the spiders of Baja California Sur, was on route to join Berrian and colleagues as part of the expedition to the Sierra Cacachilas. “When I saw these spiders for the first time, I was very impressed by their size,” said Jimenez. “In all my experience over the years collecting spiders on the peninsula, I had never seen a spider this large. I suspected that something new was waiting to be described.”   Is it Venomous?              Califorctenus cacachilensis is in the same group of spiders (Family Ctenidae) as the notoriously highly venomous Brazilian wandering spider. “Almost all spiders are venomous, but very few are dangerous to humans,” said Berrian. “I got bit while handling a live specimen of Califorctenus cacachilensis and I’m still alive. We haven’t analyzed the toxicity of the venom, but most wandering spiders are not as dangerous as the Brazilian wandering spider.”   What is a New Genus?           The Sierra Cacachilas wandering spider is so different from other related species that the authors of this study determined that they needed create an entirely new category for it, the genus Califorctenus. “We made the case for this by comparing many species of wandering spiders from around the world and creating a phylogeny for the group,” said Dr. Daniele Polotow a researcher at University of Campinas in Brazil and expert on wandering spiders. Scientific names reflect the distance of the relationship in the “evolutionary tree of life.” For example, humans are a species called Homo sapiens, and belong to a genus called Homo. Other primates, like chimpanzees in the genus Pan and gorillas in the genus Gorilla, are in a totally separate genera. Similarly, Califorctenus cacachilensis is so different that a new group had to be created for it. An Age of Discovery and Collaboration                             Most insects and spiders on the planet have yet to be discovered. There are about 1.1 million species of insects and spiders on the planet that scientists have given names, but most researchers estimate that there are two to five million that remain undescribed. Focusing on southern California and the peninsula of Baja California, the San Diego Natural History Museum continues to invest in research, discovery, and conservation while focusing on binational collaboration. Coauthored by two Mexicans, a Brazilian, and an American researcher, the study combines multiple lines of expertise to make the case that this spider is not only a new species, but represents also a new genus. “This study is a perfect example of the importance of international collaboration and the type of research we do,” said Judy Gradwohl, president and CEO at the San Diego Natural History Museum.