Everything you wanted to know about mosses in a free ebook, written in a style understandable by laypeople: Bryophyte Ecology by Janice Glime et al. I’m especially enjoying the chapters about the other organisms that live in mosses (tardigrades! slime molds!) and bryophyte phenology. Maybe it’s more than you really want to know about mosses, but hey, it’s a free book by a working scientist about a really cool taxon of organisms.
Tortoise and a man named Tela
Another story for liberal religious kids. This one is from the Yoruba tradition. While this story has a mythological elements — it tells how Tortoise got the joints in its shell — it is also a morality tale. Tortoise is another animal trickster figure who is featured in many stories — sometimes he gets the better of others, but sometimes, as in this story, his greed gets the better of him. Another Yoruba story about Tortoise.
Once there was a shortage of food throughout the land. Àjàpá the Tortoise, who was a very sensible animal, was friendly with a man named Tela. Tortoise was sick with hunger, because he didn’t know where he could get food. But Tela knew where he could get food. Now and again Tela went to this place, and got food and ate it there.
At last Tortoise said to Tela, “You look well-fed, but I get nothing to eat. You are my friend, yet you never show me where you get food.”
“I thought of taking you,” said Tela, “but I know you to be very clever. I fear that you will go to my place without my permission. Because of that, I have not told you.”
Tortoise kept asking, though, and at last Tela promised to take him to the place. When they got to the place, Tortoise saw it was just a rock. But Tela sang:
“This rock must open because I, Prince Tela, the owner of the house have come!”
Then the rock opened and Tela and Tortoise went inside. They found plenty of food, and they ate until they were full. After they had finished, they left the place, each going to his own home.
The next day Tela was away from home. So Tortoise went all around the countryside, inviting all the people to come to Tela’s place to get food. When everyone arrived at the place, Tortoise sang:
“This rock must open because I, Prince Tela, the owner of the house have come!”
The rock did not know that it was not Tela who sang, but Tortoise. So the rock opened, all the animals went inside, and they finished all the food in the store.
When they had finished eating, Tortoise said, “I will be the last to go.” But just as Tortoise was leaving, the rock closed and trapped him, half in and half out.
Just then, Tela felt hungry. When he got to the rock, he saw the head of Tortoise sticking. Tela said, “How is it that I find you here? When I brought you here the day before yesterday you promised you would not come, but now you have come, and from all the footprints in the dirt it looks like you brought friends with you.”
But Tortoise was in pain, and said only, “Get me out and don’t talk.” Tela, being hungry, commenced to sing:
“This rock must open because I, Prince Tela, the owner of the house have come!”
Just as before, the rock opened. Now Tela was very hungry, and because of the food he thought lay before him, did not stop to talk with Tortoise. But when Tela went in, he saw that all was eaten, and nothing was left.
Tela was so angry that he caught Tortoise up and was about to crush him. “Have patience and I will tell you all,” said Tortoise, and he told the entire story. And Tortoise added, “I have to admit that there is something that always makes me tell things I ought not to tell.”
“I have no time for this sort of thing,” said angry, hungry Tela. He dropped Tortoise on the rock and smashed his shell all to pieces.
Then the big ants and other insects gathered round, and tried to put Tortoise together again. They did the best they could, but they could not mend his back properly. So it is that the joints where the insects mended the Tortoise show on his back to this day.
Source
John Parkinson, “Yoruba Folk-Lore,” African Affairs, vol. VIII, no. XXX, January 1909, pp. 180-181 doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a098993
For a different version of this story, see ?gb??n ju agbára on The Yoruba blog.
Tortoise and Elephant
Another story for liberal religious kids, this time from the Yoruba people.
Tortoise one day told the other animals that he would ride Elephant, the way humans ride horses. But all the other animals said: “No, you can’t ride Elephant.”
Tortoise said, “Well, I will make a bet with you that I will ride Elephant into town.”
All the other animals agreed to the bet.
Tortoise went into the forest and met Elephant. He said, “Elephant, all the animals say you are too fat and too big to go into town.”
Hearing this, Elephant grew angry. He said, “The animals are fools. I do not go into town because I would rather stay in the forest. Besides, I do not know which path leads to town.”
“Oh, if that’s all,” said Tortoise, “you can come with me. I will show you the path that leads to town, and you can put all the other animals to shame.”
So Elephant followed along, and when they were near to town, Tortoise said: “Oh, Elephant, I am tired. Will you kindly allow me to get on your back?”
“Of course,” said Elephant. He knelt down, and Tortoise climbed up on his back. Then they continued along the path to town.
Then Tortoise said, “Elephant, you need to put on a good show when you get to town. So when I scratch your back, run. When I knock my head against your back, run faster. Then you will impress all the other animals.”
Elephant agreed that this sounded like a good idea.
When they came near the town, Tortoise scratched Elephant’s back. Elephant began to run. Next, Tortoise knocked Elephant’s back with his head. Elephant ran even faster.
The animals, when they saw this, were frightened. They went into their houses, but they looked out of their windows. And Tortoise called out to them: “Did I not say I would ride to town the way humans ride horses?”
“What do you mean that you ride me like humans ride horses?” said Elephant, growing angry.
“I am only praising you,” said Tortoise.
But Elephant saw the other animals laughing, and grew more angry. “I will throw you down on the hard stones here, and break you to pieces,” he cried.
“Yes, yes, that is right,” said Tortoise. “Throw me down here. That will be all right. Then I shall not be hurt. If you really wanted to kill me, you would carry me to a swamp. If you threw me in a swamp, I would die at once, for the mud and water would drown me.”
So Elephant ran to the swamp, and threw Tortoise into the mud. Then Elephant stretched out his foot to kick Tortoise, but Tortoise dived in the muddy water, and came up in another place.
The other animals were there, looking on, and Tortoise called out to them, “Did I not say I would ride Elephant the way humans ride horses?”
When Elephant found that he could not catch Tortoise, he ran back to the forest. There he said to the other elephants, “Do you know what Tortoise has done to me?” And he told the other elephants the story.
But the other elephants only said, “You were a fool to carry Tortoise to town.”
Since then Elephant has not come to town any more.
Source: Alfred Burdon Ellis, The Yoruba-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa : their religion, manners, customs, laws, language, etc : with an appendix containing a comparison of the Tshi, Gã, ?we, and Yoruba languages (London: Chapman and Hall, 1894).
Even more copyright free hymns
I found four more copyright-free hymns that I’d been meaning to upload: “Yielding and Simple,” a Shaker song; “Trouble in Mind,” the blues and jazz standard; “Hold On,” also known at “Keep Your Hands on the Plow”; and “Rise Up O Flame,” which I once thought might be protected by copyright but am now convinced in public domain.
You can find them on this webpage. Descriptions below the jump.
That webpage is static HTML, by the way, which I code by hand in the text editor Atom. Thank goodness this is the last of the hymns I have which are ready to post. Writing static HTML takes up too much time, time that I’d rather spend creating content (e.g., writing actual posts for this blog). This bout of hand-coding proved to be especially time-consuming because Filezilla, free open-source software which I use to upload the HTML to the server, suddenly stopped talking to the server. I spent half a day troubleshooting, until I finally gave up and purchased Transmit, another FTP application. However, static HTML is more resistant to attacks by malicious hackers, and requires less energy consumption to render — so I suppose writing static HTML is worth it in the long run.
Continue reading “Even more copyright free hymns”More copyright-free hymns
This week someone contacted me about the copyright-free hymns I’ve posted online. This prompted me to look in my files, where I discovered I had another ten hymns ready to upload. Those ten new hymns are now online here. I’ll include info about these hymns below the jump.
Four of the newly-uploaded hymns are patriotic hymns. Unitarian Universalist hymnals used to include patriotic songs, but that ended with the 1993 gray hymnal. This was a short-sighted policy. Today, U.S. religious conservatives wrap themselves in the mantle of patriotism and maintain that theirs is the only patriotism. Well, Unitarians and Universalists were key players in the founding of the United States, and we need to reclaim that part of our heritage so that we can inject our own religious vies into contemporary political discourse — our views being that the U.S. is a democracy (not an autocracy) and is not a Christian country; that our country is founded on the separation of religion and the state; and that the revolution continues through our ongoing efforts to make sure all persons are treated as equals. With the approach of the 250th anniversary of the singing of the Declaration of Independence, it’s time for us to show our patriotism again. I’ve uploaded America, My Country ‘Tis of Thee, and The New Patriot, all taken from pre-1993 UU hymnals. I also uploaded Chester, a patriotic song actually written during the Revolution — it’s of limited use, but can be useful for Massachusetts congregations that recognize Patriots Day.
The other six hymns include African American spirituals, a hymn allegedly by Rabindranath Tagore, a South African song, etc. After you read the descriptions below, look for the songs on my music website.
Continue reading “More copyright-free hymns”It came from a plant press
Back in early March, I wrote about how to make a cheap pocket plant press, showing a Common Snowdrop (Galanthus Nivalis) in the press. I finally got around to mounting the prseed plant, and here’s what the finished product looks like:
I used polyvinyl acetate (PVA) glue (Elmer’s Glue) to mount the pressed-and-dried plant onto a piece of cardstock. PVA glue dries fairly clear, is reasonably non-acidic and flexible, will fill small gaps, and is cheap, making it a good choice for gluing dried plants to a base.
If you’re mounting a plant for an herbarium, you’d include the whole plant, roots and all. But I’m doing this for fun, so I didn’t include the roots. I mounted the plant with a bit of the stem extending off the cardstock. Then when the glue dried, I used a sharp knife to trim the stems at the edge of the card. Notice how I glued the petals down so that the inner parts of the flower are visible.
The end result is attractive, and even though it’s scientifically useless, I’m happy to have it for my own reference. I’m thinking of making a somewhat larger cheap pocket plant press — maybe 4 x 6 inches (10 x 15cm) — for slightly larger flowers.
As always, don’t collect plants unless you have permission to do so. These days, written permission is typically required for collecting on most federal lands (including national parks, Forest Service land, and often even BLM land), on many state lands, on nearly all wildlife sanctuaries, etc. — don’t collect unless you’re sure you’re allowed to do so. If it’s in your back yard or you know the landowner personally, you should be fine. PLUS, never collect rare or endangered plants, and never collect more than about 5% of a given species in a given location. The only exception would be invasive plants — e.g., here in Massachusetts, go ahead and collect all the Purple Loosestrife, Yellow Iris, Rosa Multiflora, etc., that you want.
Eclipse
In order to watch the solar eclipse this afternoon, I set up binoculars on a tripod next to the Parish House at First Parish of Cohasset. This is the same set-up I used to project the transit of Venus back in 2012. Here’s what it looked like:
I used an old pair of inexpensive binoculars, so the image quality wasn’t perfect. But the image was good enough that we could see at least one sunspot. The size of the projected image was about 4 inches across.
The eclipse reached about 92% of maximum here in Cohasset. Some high thin clouds passed over, but they weren’t thick enough to block the sun. As the eclipse progressed, it didn’t get dark, but the light was dim enough to make it feel like dusk. Some robins started singing their evening song. The air grew noticeably cooler.
I took photos showing most of the progress of the eclipse, and assembled them into an animated GIF. Two notes about this GIF: First, the amount of time each image of the GIF is displayed is proportional to the amount of time elapsed between photos. Second, the GIF shows the image as projected; but the projection was inverted from what we saw through the protective glasses. Also, notice the chromatic aberration when the eclipse is at the maximum, presumably from refraction.
Half a dozen people from First Parish came over to the Parish house to watch the eclipse. Everyone else had a pair of those protective glasses. It was fun to be able to view the eclipse both through the glasses and with the projection. Hosetly, we probably did more talking than looking at the eclipse. We kept inviting random passers-by to join us. A parent with a couple of preschool-aged kids came over, and it was interesting to see that they were too young to understand what a projection was, or really even to understand what they were seeing through the protective glasses.
See also my post on the 2017 solar eclipse.
Updates on this website
I’ve been updating my main website this week, which has left me very little time to write blog posts. I’ll get back to blogging more regularly next week….
In addition to a few minor updates, there are two big updates:
Stories for liberal religious kids are now here, all in one place.
Copyright-free hymns have been moved here, to my music website.
New book by UU poet
Award-winning Unitarian Universalist poet Everett Hoagland has just published The Music: New and Selected Poems, 1973-2023.
I use his American Book Award-winning collection The Ways as readings in worship services all the time. But that’s a small book, so I’m looking forward to seeing this more substantial collection.
Better web search?
Google’s search results just keep getting worse. These days, do a search through Google and you’re likely to wind up with tons of websites with content written by AI, websites designed to be the top search result on Google merely so it can sell you something. And that’s after you sort through dozens of ads, which are so cleverly concealed that sometimes you click on them even when you don’t mean to.
I now use DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine. DuckDuckGo is slightly better than Google. DuckDuckGo doesn’t steal my data, while Google rapaciously steals my data so they can monetize me. And DuckDuckGo makes it slightly easier to separate the ads from the actual search results.
But I keep wishing there were an alternative engine. And — now there is.
Kagi is a fairly new search engine company (founded 2018) that works on a subscription model. So right away, no more ads. And their privacy policy appears to be as good as that of DuckDuckGo. Those two things alone mean Kagi has a leg up compared to Google.
A review of Kagi on Stack Diary from last September reveals that Kagi is a modestly good search engine. According to the reviewer, Kagi’s image search works better than Google’s. Kagi seems to be slightly less likely to return websites that are pure click bait. On the other hand, Google crawls the web thousands of times a day, so Google still has an edge.
But — Kagi allows you to customize your search results. Let’s say you’re searching for reviews of a household appliance. You know that the Good Housekeeping website contains fake reviews and is not worth looking at. With Google, Good Housekeeping is always going to appear in your search results. Using Kagi, you can Block Good Housekeeping so that it never appears in your search results. Or you can Lower it in your search results, so it’s still there but buried further down in the results. Kagi has what its developers call Lenses that allow you to state which websites you trust or don’t trust. The power to customize your search results means you’re not at the mercy of a search algorithm that you can no longer trust.
I’m thinking about subscribing to Kagi. But before I do, I’m trying to find people who are already subscribers, to see what they think. I’m posting this on the off change that someone who reads this is using Kagi, and is willing to share their experience….