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🔴 DIRECT – Alerte à la bombe au siège de LFI (La France Insoumise) évacué à Paris
https://www.youtube.com/live/-bvgCX-sFYcSuivez en direct la situation devant le siège de La France Insoumise (LFI) à Paris évacué suite à une alerte à la bombe ce mercredi 18 février au matin.
#alertealabombe #alerte #urgent #LFI #lafranceinsoumise #franceinsoumise #melenchon #politique #gauche #france #paris #Actualités #Info #Informations #Direct #EnDirect #CLPRESS
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København: the thread about the mysterious disappearance of an enigmatic, Leith-built sailing ship
This beautiful ship is the København. She plied the world’s oceans training young men and boys to become sailors, moving cargoes from port to port until one day, some seven years after leaving her builders in Leith, she disappeared and was never seen or heard from ever again. Her fate remains a mystery to this day.
Final fitting out in dry dock at Leith, dated 1921. This was probably to give her bottom a final inspection and coat of paint before handing over to her owners, as described in the Edinburgh Evening News in September of that year. © Edinburgh City LibrariesDespite appearances, the København was a creation of the 20th century; a five-masted Danish sailing barque and one of the largest sailing vessels ever built. Her primary duty was the training of officer cadets for the merchant marine. There is a tradition in a number of European countries, continued to this day, of carrying out such maritime education on purpose-built sailing vessels. To help pay her running costs she also served as a general cargo ship, long after steam had displaced sail as the primary motive power at sea. The early history of this ship is slightly confusing. She was part of an order for the Leith yard of Ramage and Ferguson by A/S Det Ostasiatiske Kompagni (the East Asiatic Company) of Copenhagen in 1913 for three large sailing barques with auxiliary motor power. This particular København, yard number 242, was to have have four masts but war intervened before she could be completed. After lying incomplete for 2 years her hull was purchased by the British Admiralty in 1916 and quickly completed as an oil storage hulk, named Black Dragon and towed to Gibraltar. Sold in 1922 to the Shell oil company, she remained in service there until 1960.
The modelmakers loft at Ramage and Fergusons in 1906. The three vessels being worked on are all large steam yachts of the type the yard was renowned for. © Edinburgh City LibrariesAfter the war Det Ostasiatiske Kompagni ordered a replacement ship of the same name from Ramage and Ferguson. This new København – yard number 256 – would have not four but five masts, displaced 3,960 tons gross, was 130m long (426½ feet), 15m wide (49⅓ feet) and had a draught of 8.2m (27 feet). Those masts were nearly 58 metres tall (190 feet) and could spread 5,200 square metres (56,000 square feet) of American cotton sails. For times when the wind was lacking or for manoeuvring in harbour she had a 4-cylinder, 650hp diesel engine specially imported from Denmark which could propel her at 6 knots. She could carry 5,200 deadweight tons of cargo or 8,100 cubic metres (288,500 cubic feet) of grain. On account of her size and towering masts she gathered much local attention; taking a walk to observe progress became the done thing to do about the burgh. She was launched – mastless – on March 24th 1921, watched by a large crowd that had assembled to see her huge white hull slide into the dock basin.
The launch of the second København, contemporary newspaper photograph from the Daily RecordThe Great Dane, as the British press came to call her, was the largest sailing vessel ever built in the United Kingdom (excluding Brunel’s sail-assisted steamship Great Eastern. Two other Clyde-built ships were marginally longer, but København had a greater displacement.) She was the last of only seven 5-masted barques that have ever been built and ranks in the top 20 largest sailing ships – by length and displacement – ever built.
After launch and fitting out at Leith Docks, 1921. The masts are stepped but there remains much work to be done © Edinburgh City LibrariesShe was fitted with a generator to power electric lighting throughout and a wireless (radio) set with a 400 mile range. Her regular complement was 26 officers and men along with somewhere between 45 and 60 cadets, aged between 14 and 20. In addition to her master, her crew included 4 mates, a doctor, 2 engineers, 3 cooks, 2 boatswains, a carpenter, a sailmaker and a wireless operator. At the the rear – the “poop” – of the ship, was her main saloon, captain’s and officers quarters, staterooms, wireless room and infirmary. The rest of the crew and the cadets were accommodated in a deckhouse amidships. At her figurehead she had a sculpture of the 12th century Danish warrior bishop and founding father of the nation, Absalon.
Close-up detail of the proud figurehead of Absalon on the prowShe left Leith for her trials in the Firth of Forth on September 28th 1921 under the command of Commander Niels Juel-Brockdorff of the Royal Danish Navy. Again large crowds assembled to watch the spectacle; it took four tugs to tow her out from the shipyard stern first before turning her around so that she could begin to move under her own power.
The København was brought carefully down the harbour, and the spectators had an opportunity of seeing to great advantage the graceful lines of the ship, its fine figurehead, and other decorative effects. Flags were fluttering gaily from the mastheads, and altogether an exceedingly pretty picture was presented as it passed down between the piers, its size contrasting strikingly with that of the attendant tugs.
Report on the departure in The Scotsman, 29th September 1921After trials she headed straight to sea and on to a welcome in her home port of Copenhagen before embarking on a circumnavigation of the globe during which time she sailed 38,326 miles, not returning home until 7th November the following year. The ship was now gone from Edinburgh and Leith, but not forgotten. For the next few months one of the most popular shows at the Synod Hall on Castle Terrace starred the København as a feature in Poole’s Myriorama; a panoramic picture and special effect show.
Painting of the København at sea by Peder Christian Pedersen. CC-by-SA 4.0 HesekielIn October 1925 she came close to catastrophe when she caught fire in the English Channel en route for Melbourne from Danzig with a cargo of timber. The fire started in the cabins at the rear of the ship, destroying much of her fine wooden fittings, but she was able to to put safely into Plymouth. After repairs she was able to carry her load to Australia without further ado. In 1927, en route from Liverpool to Chile via the Panama Canal, she lost a propeller blade on the Pacific coast of South America and had to put into Calloa in Peru to repair.
København in dry dock in Australia, photo from the Edwardes Collection of the State Library of South AustraliaOn September 21st 1928, the ship departed the Danish port of Nørresundby under the command of Captain Hans Anderson carrying a shipload of chalk and cement for Argentina. It would prove to be her final departure from home. Arriving safely in Buenos Aires on November 17th 1928, she then waited in that port for 4 weeks for an onward cargo for Australia. None was forthcoming and so the captain decided to leave empty for Melbourne, where he could load with wheat, and departed on December 14th. Depending on the source there were either 60 or 70 souls aboard, including 45 cadets, on a trip that was expected to take around 45 days. Eight days later she passed the Norwegian steamer William Blumer some 900 miles to the west of the islands of Tristan da Cunha and the two ships exchanged signals, København indicated that all was well and the cadets were preparing to celebrate Christmas as they passed south of the Cape of Good Hope. This proved to be the last time she was ever seen or heard from ever again.
The last voyage of the København (approximate) showing the route east from the River Plate, across the South Atlantic and southern Indian Ocean to Australia.However there was no immediate cause for concern. Captain Anderson had a reputation for taking a “minimalist” approach to using his radio and sailing journeys could easily take far longer than scheduled if the winds were unfavourable. Thus when København did not arrive in Melbourne on schedule nobody raised any alarm. By February 1929, the East Asiatic Company was sufficiently concerned to begin making enquiries with Lloyd’s of London for any information concerning their now long overdue vessel, but it was not until early April 1929 that they finally raised the alarm. The British Admiralty were approached for assistance and the search and rescue operation which now followed has been called “the longest, farthest reaching and most costly in the history of maritime service“. The Admiralty spread the word amongst British shipping and arranged for the Liverpool firm of Alfred Holt and Company to diverted their steamer Deucalion from Cape Town to make a search of potential landfall in southern latitudes on which the missing Dane could either have become bound or wrecked upon. These were the remote Price Edward Islands, the Crozet Islands and Kerguellen. The Admiralty also lent an experienced navigator, a high-powered wireless set and two operators to man it. The East Asiatic Company dispatched their own motor vessel, Mexico, to make her own search.
København , photo from the Edwardes Collection of the State Library of South AustraliaIn May, news was received from the searching steamer Halesius out of Tristan da Cunha that an English preacher on that island, Philip Lindsay, claimed that he and others on the island had sighted, on January 21st, a five masted sailing ship with a white band round its hull approaching the islands. This apparition came from the south and her first two masts were seen to be broken. It then disappeared from their view towards a part of the island that was inaccessible. Objects were later found washed up on the shore but they could not conclusively be proved to have come from København. Lindsay told The Times:
The sea was rough for our boats and we could do nothing but watch her gradually crawl past and run inside the reefs to the west of the island. She was certainly in distress. She was using only one small jib [sail], and her stern was very low in the water. I estimated that she was within a quarter mile of the shore when we last saw her.
Philip Lindsay, eyewitnessThe Halesius made a search of the rocky and unpopulated Gough Island to the south of Tristan, but found nothing and so carried on her way. The master of Halesius put his ship into Montevideo on June 22nd and caused a minor sensation when he was quoted by the press as having found the ship’s wreckage. He had, however, made no such claim and it was a reporting error that had mixed up facts. On the same day it was announced that the Australian steamer Junee, in Sydney, and the Norwegian motor ship Lars Risdahl, in Cape Town, had both been chartered by the East Asiatic Company to carry on the search in the Southern Ocean. They were also diverting the Mexico to Tristan to make a thorough investigation of her own, just in case.
The Halesius in her former guise as the Lord Cromer in 1912, whose sensational attribution to have located the København was unfounded. © National Museums Liverpool MCR/39/17The intensive search continued for the next two and a half months. The Mexico returned to Cape Town in the middle of July and her master spoke to the London Daily News. He told the reporter that it was his belief that the ship had washed up on the lonely desert coast of southwestern Africa and that he was refuelling before heading off on that particular search course. Every coastline and grid square was combed before the company reluctantly called off the operation on September 9th 1929, some nine months after the København had last been seen. She was officially declared missing by Lloyd’s of London on January 1st 1930. But as hope dwindled, interest in the disappearance was if anything even more widespread with the passing of time and lack of evidence.
Various theories for her imagined loss were advanced. Had she collided with ice floes and been abandoned by her crew? But ice was unlikely to have been encountered if she had passed Tristan da Cunha, so had she become lost and icebound in the Southern Ocean? Some said that the observers on Tristan were mistaken; they had not seen the København at all. No, the much more rational explanation was that they had seen the renowned South Atlantic ghost ship, the Phanton Barque. Did the København capsize in a sudden squall under her immense spread of canvas due to the lack of a heavy cargo in her hold to provide a low centre-of-gravity? This would certainly have given no time for lifeboats to be launched. Others said the ship had simply been swallowed by the ocean, it was well known amongst mariners who had sailed in the Southern Seas just how the mountainous seas and roaring winds could do such a thing. Yet others thought she would still be afloat, drifting aimlessly in the oceans, “a plaything of wind and current, a toy of unmerciful Neptune“, just waiting to be discovered.
Public interest inevitably began to wane but in April 1934 a Captain Soderlund, of the Finnish-flagged grain ship Lawhill which had just arrived in Adelaide, told newspapers that he had sighted wreckage from the København floating in the Great Australian Bight but had failed to retrieve it. Then in September 1934 the New York Times reported that a message in a bottle that had been picked up by a whaling ship on the Bonvel Islands. The message reputed that the ship had been blown into the Antarctic and the crew and boys put ashore on the ice, to watch their ship be driven by the winds to her destruction. It quickly transpired that the “diary” entries found in the bottle were copied out of a Spanish novel by a Danish journalist who passed them off as genuine.
We know our boys are dead, but it is terrible not to know how and why and where the tragedy happened. Perhaps, too, there are some who cherish a faint hope against their better judgement that some day they will come back
A statement from the parents of the lost cadets, reported in the Daily Herald, October 4th 1934On 11th December 1934 the Belfast Telegraph reported that a Norwegian yacht, the Ho Ho, and her four man crew had arrived in Montevideo after a year long voyage across the Atlantic to search up and down the coast of South America for any signs of the København. Only three days earlier it had been announced that Ramage & Ferguson had gone into voluntary liquidation after years of financial suffering in first the post-war shipbuilding recession and then the Great Depression. One of the last ships completed by them had been the Mercator, a three-masted sail training ship for the Belgian government.
Denmark still has a national sailing training ship, the Georg Stage. Somewhat appropriately, this 1935-built ship visited Leith Docks in April 2022 and tied up alongside Ocean Terminal: a shopping centre built on the site of the Ramage & Ferguson yard.
Georg Stage arriving at Leith in April 2022, with the former royal yacht Britannia and Ocean Terminal in the background © SelfNote to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.Explore Threadinburgh by map:
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret -
The thread about John Paul Jones; the Scottish-American “pirate” who tried to capture Edinburgh and Leith but lived to tell the tale
This thread was originally written and published in December 2019.
It was on a day like this, 240 years ago, with a west wind howling up the Firth of Forth, rattling the window panes and lifting the roof tiles, that Edinburgh and Leith were saved from sacking by the fledgling United States Navy. The year was 1779 and it was the middle of the War of Independence when a squadron of American ships of war appeared in the Firth. Their objective; to disrupt shipping, spread panic and “raise a contribution” to the American war effort of two hundred thousand pounds from the wallets of the good folk of Edinburgh and Leith. These ships were the 36-gun Bon Homme Richard, the 32-gun Pallas and the 12-gun Vengeance and in command was one John Paul Jones. To the Americans a great hero, a father to their naval service:
John Paul Jones by Charles Wilson PealeTo the British, a common pirate. Of course, they would say that, because he beat them at their own game, rattled the establishment to its core and made the mighty Royal Navy look rather impotent.
“Paul Jones the Pirate”, a contemporary British caricatureSo who was John Paul Jones? For a start, he wasn’t born as John Paul Jones or an American, he was actually from Kirkcudbrightshire. He was born in 1747 as plain John Paul to John Paul (senior), a gardener and Jean Mcduff. In 1760, John junior was apprenticed to a sea captain in Whitehaven and took to the seven seas on the merchant ship Friendship. He sailed the Atlantic trade route, mainly between Britain and the colony of Virginia where his older brother was settled.
The cottage in which John Paul was born in 1747, now the John Paul Jones Cottage Museum. Pic © johnpauljonesmuseum.comFor quite a few years John kept this up, working his way up the ranks to First Mate by 1768. At this point fate begins to intervene and steer his life on a new course. In Jamaica, he decides to abandon his ship and work his passage back to Scotland. Once home, he finds a new ship – the appropriately named John – and is taken on as lower mate. When the master and leading mates unexpectedly die of fever, he takes command and brings the ship and her cargo safely home. In gratitude, the owners raise him to master. So at the tender age of 23, John finds himself a ship’s master with 10 years experience under his belt; life has worked out well for him. But then some things start to go wrong. On only his seconnd voyage as master he has someone flogged for insubordination. This was a very common and non-noteworthy act for the time, sailors were kept in check with fairly equal proportions of corporal punishment, alcohol and the promise of the occasional pay packet.
But the flogged man has connections back in Scotland and when he died (from Yellow Fever), the blame for his death is laid at the feet of John. As a young captain from a humble family he has little influence himself over matters once he’s off his ship and finds himself thrown in the Tolbooth of Kirkcudbright to await his fate. But clearly he is not without any friends as he is bailed and given some quiet advice to get far away from Kirkcudbright before the law has its way. This was sensible advice, which was followed.
“The Old Tolbooth, Kirkcudbright” by Charles Oppenheimer © Manchester Art GalleryAs a result he quickly leaves Scotland for England and finds a new ship, the Betsy, and spends 18 successful months toing and froing in the Caribbean, before once again clashing with a subordinate crewmember. This time, he allegedly runs the man through with a sword in an argument over pay. He would claim this was self defence, but having fled from the law before he must have realised that he couldn’t go back and face any more music the music and so headed north to the Virginia colony in about 1772. He finds that his brother has died and so takes takes over his affairs there.
John Paul Jones. Quick, perhaps too quick, with his sword.Perhaps it is to cover his tracks that in Virginia he changes his name to John Paul Jones, with American folk legend suggesting that it was in honour of statesman Willie Jones. JPJ takes to his new home and when war breaks out with Britian he signs up to fight for his adopted homeland against that of his birth. Whether this was opportunism or patriotism is not clear but in 1775 he is part of the newly formed Continental Navy. As an experienced sailor and officer, JPJ’s potential is recognised by founding father Richard Henry Lee and he is appointed First Lieutenant of the frigate Alfred. Like most US ships of this time it’s a converted merchantman, but the line between smaller naval and civilian ships at this time was rather blurry so it was not that uncommon.
“Continental Ship Alfred“, W. Nowland Van Powell, 1974It is apparently JPJ who had the honour of hoisting the Grand Union Flag – the first national flag of the United States, on a US ship, for the first time. He and the Alfred sail to the Caribbean and raid Nassau, but after this this point he takes a demotion to a smaller ship, the sloop Providence, as a step on the ladder to commanding a frigate of his own.
Providence, flying the Grand Old Union Flag. W. Nowland Van Powell, 1974Long story short, JPJ rapidly impresses his superiors with a combination of skill, aggression and good luck. By 1778 he is in charge of the new frigate Ranger. On February 14th, on the Ranger, he took a salute from a French naval squadron under La Motte Picquet in the Robuste at Quiberon Bay, the first official recognition of the young American state by a foreign government.
“First Recognition of the American Flag by a Foreign Government”, Edward Moran, 1898He is now sent to take the war to the British on the other side of the Atlantic but finds that his crew – and in particular his officers – are completely lacking, unwilling to take risks or to follow his orders. A raid on the sloop HMS Drake fails due to poor seamanship. A raid on Whitehaven, his old home port, fails due to a combination of poor weather and an uncooperative crew who decided to visit the pub instead of set fire to the shipping in the harbour.
“Launching of the White Haven Raid” by Charles Waterhouse © National Museum of the Marine CorpsJPJ next hatches a plot to kidnap the Earl of Selkirk for ransom from St. Mary’s Isle, but this scheme is foiled as the Earl is away; the Americans are instead cordially entertained by the Earl’s wife before leaving after helping themselves to some silverwear. (JPJ would later buy the loot back, at his own expense, and return it to the Selkirks).
“John Paul Jones seizing the silver plate of Lady Selkirk”, his crew depicted as pirates. A print from 1903.The effect on British morale and general public alarm was much significant. Here were American rebels acting with impunity, not just in British waters but also on the land! It was a national scandal. But the reality was that his raiding around the Solway proved fruitless and resulted in a crew who were restless from the lack of prize money. And so JPJ sails the Ranger back across the Irish Sea and finally catches up with his previous quarry, the sloop HMS Drake, off of Carrickfergus. A roughly equal fight on paper, he deploys a ruse to get the initial jump on Drake before bettering her with skilful gunnery. Five of the British crew, including their captain and the first lieutenant, were killed in the fight and after an hour the Drake surrendered. This was another national scandal for the Royal Navy in home waters at the hands of the young man from Kirkcudbright.
The surrender of the Drake, from “The Boys of 1812 and Other Heroes” by James Soley, 1887.JPJ has Drake sailed to Brest to be sold to the French as a prize. This was finally a great victory for him and the Continental Navy, but there was much acrimony between captain, second in command Lt. Simpson (who he tries and fails to have court-martialled) and the crew. In France, JPJ is given a bigger ship, the merchantman Duc de Duras, which has been gifted to the US Navy by a sympathiser. On conversion to a 40-gun warship he has her named Bonhomme Richard after Ben Franklin, who used the pseudonym “Poor Richard” to publish his almanac in Paris
Bonne Homme Richard in 1779 by F. MullerJPJ assembles a little fleet and prepares for war in Lorient in June 1779 but is forced back from his initial cruise by bad weather and in need of repairs. A second attempt is made in August; Bonhomme Richard, Pallas and Vengeance are accompanied by the French naval cutter Le Cerf and two privateers, Monsieur and Granville. Monsieur falls out with JPJ only days out of port and leaves the fleet – falling out with his subordinates is quickly becoming something of a hallmark for JPJ’s expeditions. But this time the Royal Navy are better prepared and locate and attempt to chase the Americans. He is able to lead them on a merry dance around the north of Scotland before shaking the pursuers off. On his way, despite ongoing squabbles with other officers, he is able to take 16 merchant ships as prizes.
And so it was on the 16th September 1779 that there is great alarm on both banks of the Forth when John Paul Jones and his three remaining ships (the others had returned to France by this time with the prizes), appeared in the Forth intent on sailing up it and doing as they pleased.
Looking down the Forth towards Inchkeith in the distance in 1791, by David Allan.A panic spreads through Edinburgh and Leith. The moneyed classes secure their goods and flee the city for their estates. The banks are locked up, the garrison barricade themselves in Edinburgh Castle, the church bells are rung and “neither a carriage nor a horse [was] to be seen“. Leith’s fortifications, the great Marian walls and the Cromwellian citadel are decrepit, having been partially slighted and then left to the elements and those intent on pilfering the masonry for building material. A more fundamental problem is that they were never designed to offer defence from seaward, but from landward. But the enterprising folk of Leith try to mount a defence of sorts as best they can. Three spare old cannon were retrieved from the Naval Victualling Yard on Constitution Street and manhandled along to the walls of the Citadel.
The remains of the citadel do at least provide something of a raised firing platform to cover the mouth of the harbour, but this battery was “extremely perilous to those who worked it“. Edinburgh sent down a couple more old cannon and gunners from the castle and these were posted near Newhaven with small arms were handed out to the Incorporated Trades of Leith. With this meagre defence, the town battened down the hatches and awaited its fate.
But the folk of Kirkcaldy, on the opposite shore of the Forth, take an alternative approach to defence. They follow their minister, the Reverend Robert Shirra, down to the sea and begin to pray for almighty intervention.
The Reverend Robert Shirra by George Watson. © Kirkcaldy GalleriesNow deer Lord, dinna ye think it a shame for ye to send this vile piret to rob our folk o Kirkcaldy; for ye ken they’re puir enow already, and hae naething to spaire
Shirra’s sermon against John Paul Jones (translated, “Now dear Lord, don’t you think it a shame for you to send this vile pirate to rob our folk of Kirkcaldy; for you know they are poor enough already and have nothing to spare”)And would you know the almighty happened to be listening? For no sooner had Kirkcaldy prayed for salvation than, in the words of John Paul Jones, “a very severe gale of wind came on, and being directly contrary obliged me to bear away after having in vain endeavoured for some time to withstand its violence“.
“Inchkeith on the Forth in a Fresh Gale”. Ships in Leith Roads would shelter in the lee of the island from a gale. John Gabriel Stedman, 1781. CC-by-SA National Galleries ScotlandAs the wind blew up, JPJ’s ships were not yet in the shelter of Leith Roads in the lee of Inchkeith island where they could ride out the storm, so despite being “in a cannon’s shot of the town” they were obliged to follow the wind back out to sea. In the process, the ship Friendship they had taken in prize was lost. The little fleet was blown straight out of the Firth and down the east coast. Edinburgh, Leith and Kirkcaldy have been saved!
A week later the Royal Navy finally encounters JPJ off Flamborough Head when he runs into a convoy of merchant ships under their protection and a somewhat scrappy and confused battle takes place. In the course of the action, the Bonhomme Richard is damaged so heavily that she will sink the next day, but JPJ in return manages to capture the British flagship HMS Serapis and takes her instead.
The Battle of Flamborough Head by Richard Paton, 1780. HMS Serapis is in the foreground with “Bonhomme Richard” behind.The outcome of the battle is still hotly debated; JPJ and the Americans can claim another embarrassing Royal Navy scalp, in sight of British soil and once again they have failed to stop JPJ. But the merchant convoy – the real prize – has slipped away unharmed. However that is a somewhat hollow strategic victory for the Royal Navy. Once Again, the Americans press have their hero and the British their villain.
John Paul Jones the Hero.John Paul Jones the CorsairHeroes and Villains; Two different portraits of John Paul Jones at Flamborough Head.After the battle, JPJ wants to head for France, but his subordinates insist they follow orders and head for the neutral Dutch island of Texel in the United Provinces. A tricky diplomatic incident ensues as they have lost the Continental Navy’s flags when Bonhomme Richard went down, and couldn’t fly the Royal Navy’s ensigns from the Serapis and so were technically operating under no flag. This allowes the British to claim that they were pirates. So, based on only a written description, (“colors should be white, red, and blue alternately to thirteen… [with a] blue field with thirteen stars… in the canton“) JPJ had his men run up a new – and rather unconventional – Continental Navy flag. The Dutch dutifully checked that the flag matched the description (they were very unlikely to know what the flag of an American warship should look like as they’d probably never seen one) and entered it with a sketch in their records to make it official.
The “John Paul Jones” or “Serapis” Flag.With its 8-pointed stars and irregular groupings of red/white/blue tricolour stripes, the “Serapis flag” is unique, the true work of a sailor handy with needle and thread and not someone versed in the rigid conventions of vexilology. John Paul Jones’ wacky flag was enough to save him from international charges of piracy and now takes pride of place on the coat of arms of the US warships that have taken his name.
Coat of Arms of the US Navy Destroyer John Paul Jones, featuring the “Serapis Flag” on the left and a likeness of JPJBack in Leith, plans were immediately drawn up for a new artillery fort to protect the port and the city of Edinburgh behind from the sea. These were drawn up by local celebrated architect James Craig – who laid out Edinburgh first New Town – despite him having no background in military engineering. The fort and the land on which it was built were provided “at the expense of the citizens of Edinburgh and Leith“. It was a fairly straightforward defensive structure, a half-moon battery of cannon facing out to sea, protected by a perimeter ditch, low masonry wall and a large earthen glacis heaped up infront of it to seeward. To the landward there is were a pair of blockhouse corner bastions to protect it from rear assaults. The Fort’s battery of guns covered the navigable channel of the approach to the Port of Leith.
One of Craig’s original drawings. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of ScotlandSo there you have it, the tale of the lad from Kirkcudbrightshire that the Royal Navy couldn’t sink, who tried to capture the Earl of Selkirk, who put the willies up the good folk of Edinburgh and Leith, who rocked the vexilogical world but who could not overcome a Kirk minister and the weather. Oh, and how this modern street on the site of Leith Fort got its name:
John Paul Jones View, Leith Fort council housing. © SelfNote to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.Explore Threadinburgh by map:
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If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.
NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret -
Je passe du tout au tout en terme de musique, mais si vous aimez le #stoner, le #Heavy, le #Psych et toute la période plutôt heavy de black sabbath par exemple, The Necromancers viennent de #Poitiers et c'est incroyable en live (dans un volcan). Leurs 3 albums sont aussi des perles dans le genre.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOEo9JP_DQo
Vous n'êtes pas obliger de vénérer Satan par contre.
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D'ailleurs, dans une moindre mesure, je pense que j'adore toujours faire de la magie avec des ordinateurs. Je suis fascinée par tout ce qui devient "vivant" (une application, un effet spécial dans un film, un dessin) grâce à des bidouillages.
Je crois que ça a toujours été ça ma passion, mon "intérêt spécifique" ad vitam : faire de la magie. (Putain, je m'auto-analyse en live 😆)Bref, faites de la magie. Retrouvez cet état de "faire", non pas pour réussir, mais pour "faire", simplement. C'est tout ce que je peux vous conseiller :)
Même à 40, 50 ans. Faites de la magie.Voilà :)
Tendresse & mochi ^^
#dev #afterEffects #StoryOfMyLife -
Kyriakos Ksimitiris vive! / Kyriakos Ksimitiris lives!
Disgraça, sábado, 15 de novembro às 18:00 GMT
Kyriakos Ksimitiris vive!
Angariação de fundos para companheiras anarquistas presas pelo estado grego no “caso de Ambelokipi” (Atenas)
Conversa com intervenção de companheira presa + Jantar + Concertos
A 31 de Outubro de 2024 explodia um apartamento em Ambelokipi, Atenas.
No decorrer do manuseamento de material explosivo, Kyriakos Ksymitiris, militante anarquista com uma longa e abrangente história de luta, perdia a sua vida e Marianna Manoura, também anarquista e sua companheira, ficaria gravemente ferida, sendo posteriormente hospitalizada e transportada para a prisão feminina de Korydallos, onde é mantida até hoje.
Este acontecimento despoletou uma “caça às bruxas” por parte do aparelho estatal e judicial grego, intensificando a perseguição já existente ao movimento anarquista e aos que nele participam. Vários outros e outras camaradas acabaram presas ao longo do mês que se seguiu, com base em provas inexistentes ou ténues no melhor dos casos, todos acusados ao abrigo do artigo 187A, que criminaliza ou agrava qualquer ato de luta ou camaradagem sob a grande bandeira da “luta ao terrorismo”. Os seus nomes são Dimitra, Dimitris, Nikos Romanos e A.K., e todos permanecem presos até hoje, aguardando julgamento.
No dia 15 de Novembro, 1 ano e 15 dias depois de Kyriakos cair, deixando todo um legado de luta e solidariedade consigo, iremos reunir no CSA Disgraça (Rua Penha de França 217B, Lx) para falar (com intervenção das companheiras presas Marianna e Dimitra) sobre o legado de Kyriakos, o processo judicial que o movimento enfrenta, entre outras coisas. Esta conversa será seguida de um jantar (vegano) e concertos, numa angariação de fundos para ajudar com os custos legais das companheiras presas pelo estado grego.
Programa:
18 horas – Conversa
20 horas – Jantar (cachorros quentes veganos)
21 horas – Concertos:
XangaiH – punk da Baixa da Banheira +
3416 – d-beat crust punk fontanelense +
AniMalxs - freestyle anarkorap +
skoupidostef – hip hop experimental antinacionalista (em grego)
Para ler mais sobre a questão recomendamos:
- o texto de Marianna M. “O que dá sentido à vida dá sentido à morte”, escrito a partir da prisão e disponível em https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1638297/
- e o texto do Jornal MAPA no contexto do aniversário da morte de Kyriakos https://www.jornalmapa.pt/2025/11/03/em-memoria-do-anarquista-kyriakos-nas-ruas-de-atenas/English
Kyriakos Ksimitiris lives!
Fundraising for anarchist comrades imprisoned by the Greek state in the “Ambelokipi case” (Athens)
Talk with intervention by imprisoned comrade + Dinner + Concerts
On October 31, 2024, an apartment exploded in Ambelokipi, Athens.
While handling explosive material, Kyriakos Ksymitiris, an anarchist militant with a long and extensive history of struggle, lost his life and Marianna Manoura, also an anarchist and his partner, was seriously injured, subsequently hospitalized and transported to the Korydallos women's prison, where she remains to this day.
This event triggered a “witch hunt” by the Greek state and judicial apparatus, intensifying the already existing persecution of the anarchist movement and those who participate in it. Several other comrades were arrested over the following month, based on non-existent or weak evidence at best, all charged under Article 187A, which criminalizes or aggravates any act of struggle or comradeship under the broad banner of the “fight against terrorism”. Their names are Dimitra, Dimitris, Nikos Romanos and A.K., and all of them remain in jail to this day, waiting for trial.
On November 15, one year and 15 days after Kyriakos fell, leaving behind a legacy of struggle and solidarity, we will gather at CSA Disgraça (Rua Penha de França 217B, Lx) to talk (with a contribution from the imprisoned comrades Marianna and Dimitra) about Kyriakos' legacy, the legal proceedings facing the movement, among other things. This conversation will be followed by a (vegan) dinner and concerts, in a fundraiser to help with the legal costs of the comrades imprisoned by the Greek state.
Program:
6 p.m. – Conversation
8 p.m. – Dinner (vegan hot dogs)
9 p.m. – Concerts:
XangaiH – punk from Baixa da Banheira +
3416 – d-beat crust punk from Fontanela +
AniMalxs - freestyle anarkorap +
skoupidostef – experimental anti-nationalist hip hop (in Greek)
To read more about the issue, we recommend:
- Marianna M.'s text “What gives meaning to life gives meaning to death,” written from prison and available at https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1634932/
- and the text from Jornal MAPA in the context of the anniversary of Kyriakos' death https://www.jornalmapa.pt/2025/11/03/em-memoria-do-anarquista-kyriakos-nas-ruas-de-atenas/
https://eventos.coletivos.org/event/kyriakos-ksimitiris-vive-kyriakos-ksimitiris-lives-1
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🧵 They live in our fluids like fish in the ocean, they breath in our lung or even leave our body. Your tiny bodymates are bacteria, archaea, fungi, protists and viruses.
The figures vary, but you probably consist of just as many non-human cells as human cells! And neither can or wants to live without the other. Your skin is a planet for such a tiny alien: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/season-01-ep-03-sitting-with-your-body-mates/id1630784381?i=1000581150332What could be better for combating human #hubris than recognising
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Real Spring?
Caution: Wordiness ahead.
Minneapolis hit a record breaking 78F/ 26C Saturday. Our first 70F/ 21C day of the year generally happens around April 7th. Over the last two years, the first 70-degree reading has come early—March 14 last year and March 3 in 2024. The 2024 date of March 3 was the earliest recorded 70-degree reading for the Twin Cities. Saturday’s record breaking temperature comes after we had 8.9 inches/ 22.6 cm of snow Saturday night to Sunday, a low temperature Monday night of 1F/ -17C, and another inch/ 2.5 cm of snow on Tuesday. March in Minnesota is generally a roller coaster, but not quite this whiplash-y. The temperature today has moderated back closer to “normal” and will continue for the rest of the week between 40F/4.4C to 50F/ 10C with a 60F/ 15.5C burp at the end of the week.
The sap is running in the maples and tapped trees I see around town are filling up their bags like nobody’s business. I expect Melody Silver Maple in the front garden will soon be blooming. The witch hazel is blooming. Saturday we pruned the apple trees and their buds are already swelling. I noticed the perennial walking onions and the bunching onions are already sending up green shoots. I’ll be able to start adding some to meals next week at this rate.
It appears that real spring has finally sprung. The animals think so too. I seem to be interrupting rabbit meetups every morning on my way to work, sending them scattering. I seriously doubt this will have an impact on the rabbit population, but who knows? I also keep finding stuff squirrels have commandeered for fluffing their nests stuck on perennial stems in the garden–gobs of leaves, fake grass, fiber fill stuffing, candy wrappers.
The robins are trilling and the males are arguing over territory, the cardinals are singing to their mates, and the wild turkeys in the city are flocking with the males becoming extra aggressive. On my bike commute home from work recently I had to save a school bus that was having a standoff with a turkey in the middle of an intersection. The turkey was pecking at the bus and completely undisturbed by the driver honking the horn. I slowly and carefully biked up to the turkey and herded him off the road. James has also been herding turkeys off the road on his bike commutes. They are unfazed by the traffic jams they cause. I find it absolutely hilarious.
Saturday was the Rebel Gardeners seed swap. It was a good turnout. I brought a bunch of seeds and other folks brought seeds too, and someone who is a Master Gardener brought a lot of commercial seed packets that must have been donated. I was very good and only came home with a seed packet of turnips. I was tempted by beans–I love growing beans!–but I refrained because I am filled up with bean varieties right now. The folks who organized the group talked a bit about plans going forward, the food shelves we will be donating to, efforts various people with connections are making to get donated wood for newer gardeners to build raised beds, compost and mulch donations, how we can help each other out during the summer with garden care when folks go out of town as well as skill and knowledge sharing.
A couple people in the group are experienced hydroponics growers and after some discussion about it I’m thinking of maybe setting up something for growing greens indoors during the winter. But we’ll see if I end up having the time and willingness to go through the effort of setting that all up when October arrives. Sure would be nice to have fresh homegrown greens in winter though.
The catalog for the Friends School Plant sale I attend every May went live midweek. I downloaded the PDF and thought, I’ll wait until the weekend to look through it. Yes, I am that delusional sometimes. It wasn’t even a full hour after downloading that I opened the document “just to peek.” A bunch of highlighted plants later, I managed to pull myself away until the next day when I made it to the end of the catalog.
Inflation has come for the garden. Plants that used to cost $2.50 – $3 are now $4, and the “comes in a pack” where you get 4 or 6 plants that used to be $4 – $5 are now $6 to $7. The price for shrubs and trees has skyrocketed. Even so, the prices are still less than at a commercial nursery and they don’t sell any neonic plants. But also, I’m glad I don’t need many plants this year. Want is another matter. But wants are much easier to talk myself out of.
ICE
ICE is still here abducting people but it seems a bit less dire, or maybe I’m just used to this now as a new normal. Kids are still terrified to go to school for fear their parents won’t be there when they get home. Adults are still terrified of going to work for fear that they will be abducted. Mutual aid work continues as we all try to heal from the trauma. Saturday James and I went to a Maker and Baker neighborhood fundraiser where proceeds will go towards helping people in my neighborhood pay their rent. I came away with a cute new sticker for my water bottle, a new pair of earrings, and an awesome postcard. The fundraiser last month took in $6,000 and yesterday raised an additional $5,000. There will probably be another one next month, so I’m putting on my thinking cap for something I might be able to donate. Maybe a loaf of sourdough bread or some extra garden seedlings.
In case you haven’t been following Minnesota news since we dropped out of the headlines when the surge “ended,” remember Liam, the cute little 5-year-old boy in the blue bunny hat who was used as bait to detain his dad? They were both then sent to Texas until a judge ordered they be released and returned to Minnesota. Well, the Department of Homeland Security filed to have their case expedited, and the other day an immigration judge ended the family’s asylum claims. The family’s lawyers are appealing, but it could take months or years for it all to be resolved. I am not certain whether they will be allowed to remain in the United States during the appeal, or if they will be forced to return to Ecuador. Trump has repeatedly said ICE is only looking for the worst of the worst, the criminals and bad people. I am not sure how the Ramos family qualifies as criminals and bad people. Maybe Trump finds blue bunny hats triggering?
In other news, it turns out that the world’s deadliest sharks are only one-third as deadly to Minnesotans in 2026 as ICE. It’s a serious but also funny article in which I learned that with all of our shark-free fresh water lakes, a good many Minnesotans are still mildly afraid of sharks. Personally, I’m not worried about sharks in the lakes, it’s the silty mud and lake weeds that freak me out.
Meanwhile in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, of whom I am not a fan but who turns out to be from Minneapolis, has an op-ed piece (gift link) in which he talks about what the federal government has done here, the damage it has caused, and the peaceful resistance that stood up and forced the federal government to back down (a little). He suggests, in spite of the horrible title of the piece, that the response of the people of Minnesota needs to be exported to the rest of the country. The lesson Friedman wants to export is the understanding that governments and institutions will not save us, but solidarity and community will. Quite rich coming from a man who was an advocate of the Iraq War and who believes in unregulated trade.
Speaking of the community response to being invaded by the federal government, the people of the Twin Cities were awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award this last week. It is an award created by the Kennedy family and given by the JFK Library to honor those who have demonstrated political courage and conscience at personal or professional risk. We apparently tied with Jerome Powell for the award. The award ceremony is in May. Is the whole Twin Cities invited to the ceremony? And who gets to show off the award? I suspect the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul will attend and then thumb wrestle over in whose City Hall the plaque will be displayed.
Books and Libraries
I’m totaling vibing with Jo Walton’s recent essay at The Reactor about how she reads sixteen books at once I don’t use an e-reader and my number is lower, but I currently have twelve books on the go. It is, as she calls it, “a lovely reading symphony.” The way I read my multiple books is a bit different than Walton’s method. I have five main reads I cycle through and then the rest are ones I pick up in odd moments or when I need a breather from my main reads.
The main reads depend on location and day of the week. So I have a book I read only at work during my lunch break. This might be fiction or nonfiction. I have a book that James reads to me while I am doing a strength workout lifting weights and doing pushups and lunges on Tuesdays and Saturdays. We are reading our way through all of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. We’ve read all the books with the witches as the main story and are one and a half books away from being complete with all the Night Watch books.
Generally Monday and Wednesday nights I get to read for about 45-minutes in bed before going to sleep. These are usually novel nights unless I’m reading a nonfiction book I really like or have to return to the library soon. Tuesday nights after neighborhood foot patrol and my strength workout I read nonfiction in bed before going to sleep. Thursday nights I don’t get to read because I’m at sangha and not home until after 9 and go right to bed. Fridays are either movie/TV show and popcorn night or meeting with my Beloved Community Circle, so generally no reading. Daytime Saturdays and Sunday I read whatever strikes my fancy, which could be one of my main reads or one of the other books I have going. At night on both those days I usually get a nice chunk of reading in bed before sleep time and generally devote half the time to a novel and half to nonfiction. Almost every night I read a poem and will also read poetry in those “I have 10 minutes” moments between other activities.
This way there is something I always want to read no matter my mood and ability to focus. I’ve been reading like this for so long, I can’t remember the last time I read just one book with no others in progress. I sometimes worry the multiple books in progress are a result of a short attention span brought on by too much digital media, but when I think back through my reading history, I’ve been reading like this since university in pre-internet days.
I couldn’t read like this if it weren’t for public libraries. When James and I moved to Minnesota back in the mid-1990s, within a day or two of arriving, we found the public library and got library cards even before we went to the DMV to get new driver’s licenses. Priorities! And back when libraries had more money and were open until 9 on a Friday night, we used to go to the library as a regular date night. Nerds!
All this to say, anyone who loves reading or libraries should be extremely concerned about HR 7661, the “Stop Sexualization of Children Act. This is a bill introduced into Congress that will ban all “sexually oriented” children’s books from any institution that receives federal education funding. “Sexually oriented” includes all things LGBTQi+ as well as “lewd and lascivious dancing. Cue Footloose theme song
https://youtu.be/e-OG0EyJyV8?si=js2DvWk6_f5NhxF3
Books and libraries matter more than ever in these times of growing authoritarianism. I listened to a fantastic Movement Memos podcast conversation this morning on Why Libraries Matter in a Fascist Moment. As one of the guests said, “If we lose this as a public good and as a free public service, we will have lost everything.”
One of the best ways to support your library? Use it!
#censorship #fascism #Footloose #FriendsSchoolPlantSale #HR7661 #hydroponics #ICE #JoWalton #Libraries #ProfilesInCourageAward #recordBreakingWarmth #seedSwap #snow #spring #turkeys -
Real Spring?
Caution: Wordiness ahead.
Minneapolis hit a record breaking 78F/ 26C Saturday. Our first 70F/ 21C day of the year generally happens around April 7th. Over the last two years, the first 70-degree reading has come early—March 14 last year and March 3 in 2024. The 2024 date of March 3 was the earliest recorded 70-degree reading for the Twin Cities. Saturday’s record breaking temperature comes after we had 8.9 inches/ 22.6 cm of snow Saturday night to Sunday, a low temperature Monday night of 1F/ -17C, and another inch/ 2.5 cm of snow on Tuesday. March in Minnesota is generally a roller coaster, but not quite this whiplash-y. The temperature today has moderated back closer to “normal” and will continue for the rest of the week between 40F/4.4C to 50F/ 10C with a 60F/ 15.5C burp at the end of the week.
The sap is running in the maples and tapped trees I see around town are filling up their bags like nobody’s business. I expect Melody Silver Maple in the front garden will soon be blooming. The witch hazel is blooming. Saturday we pruned the apple trees and their buds are already swelling. I noticed the perennial walking onions and the bunching onions are already sending up green shoots. I’ll be able to start adding some to meals next week at this rate.
It appears that real spring has finally sprung. The animals think so too. I seem to be interrupting rabbit meetups every morning on my way to work, sending them scattering. I seriously doubt this will have an impact on the rabbit population, but who knows? I also keep finding stuff squirrels have commandeered for fluffing their nests stuck on perennial stems in the garden–gobs of leaves, fake grass, fiber fill stuffing, candy wrappers.
The robins are trilling and the males are arguing over territory, the cardinals are singing to their mates, and the wild turkeys in the city are flocking with the males becoming extra aggressive. On my bike commute home from work recently I had to save a school bus that was having a standoff with a turkey in the middle of an intersection. The turkey was pecking at the bus and completely undisturbed by the driver honking the horn. I slowly and carefully biked up to the turkey and herded him off the road. James has also been herding turkeys off the road on his bike commutes. They are unfazed by the traffic jams they cause. I find it absolutely hilarious.
Saturday was the Rebel Gardeners seed swap. It was a good turnout. I brought a bunch of seeds and other folks brought seeds too, and someone who is a Master Gardener brought a lot of commercial seed packets that must have been donated. I was very good and only came home with a seed packet of turnips. I was tempted by beans–I love growing beans!–but I refrained because I am filled up with bean varieties right now. The folks who organized the group talked a bit about plans going forward, the food shelves we will be donating to, efforts various people with connections are making to get donated wood for newer gardeners to build raised beds, compost and mulch donations, how we can help each other out during the summer with garden care when folks go out of town as well as skill and knowledge sharing.
A couple people in the group are experienced hydroponics growers and after some discussion about it I’m thinking of maybe setting up something for growing greens indoors during the winter. But we’ll see if I end up having the time and willingness to go through the effort of setting that all up when October arrives. Sure would be nice to have fresh homegrown greens in winter though.
The catalog for the Friends School Plant sale I attend every May went live midweek. I downloaded the PDF and thought, I’ll wait until the weekend to look through it. Yes, I am that delusional sometimes. It wasn’t even a full hour after downloading that I opened the document “just to peek.” A bunch of highlighted plants later, I managed to pull myself away until the next day when I made it to the end of the catalog.
Inflation has come for the garden. Plants that used to cost $2.50 – $3 are now $4, and the “comes in a pack” where you get 4 or 6 plants that used to be $4 – $5 are now $6 to $7. The price for shrubs and trees has skyrocketed. Even so, the prices are still less than at a commercial nursery and they don’t sell any neonic plants. But also, I’m glad I don’t need many plants this year. Want is another matter. But wants are much easier to talk myself out of.
ICE
ICE is still here abducting people but it seems a bit less dire, or maybe I’m just used to this now as a new normal. Kids are still terrified to go to school for fear their parents won’t be there when they get home. Adults are still terrified of going to work for fear that they will be abducted. Mutual aid work continues as we all try to heal from the trauma. Saturday James and I went to a Maker and Baker neighborhood fundraiser where proceeds will go towards helping people in my neighborhood pay their rent. I came away with a cute new sticker for my water bottle, a new pair of earrings, and an awesome postcard. The fundraiser last month took in $6,000 and yesterday raised an additional $5,000. There will probably be another one next month, so I’m putting on my thinking cap for something I might be able to donate. Maybe a loaf of sourdough bread or some extra garden seedlings.
In case you haven’t been following Minnesota news since we dropped out of the headlines when the surge “ended,” remember Liam, the cute little 5-year-old boy in the blue bunny hat who was used as bait to detain his dad? They were both then sent to Texas until a judge ordered they be released and returned to Minnesota. Well, the Department of Homeland Security filed to have their case expedited, and the other day an immigration judge ended the family’s asylum claims. The family’s lawyers are appealing, but it could take months or years for it all to be resolved. I am not certain whether they will be allowed to remain in the United States during the appeal, or if they will be forced to return to Ecuador. Trump has repeatedly said ICE is only looking for the worst of the worst, the criminals and bad people. I am not sure how the Ramos family qualifies as criminals and bad people. Maybe Trump finds blue bunny hats triggering?
In other news, it turns out that the world’s deadliest sharks are only one-third as deadly to Minnesotans in 2026 as ICE. It’s a serious but also funny article in which I learned that with all of our shark-free fresh water lakes, a good many Minnesotans are still mildly afraid of sharks. Personally, I’m not worried about sharks in the lakes, it’s the silty mud and lake weeds that freak me out.
Meanwhile in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, of whom I am not a fan but who turns out to be from Minneapolis, has an op-ed piece (gift link) in which he talks about what the federal government has done here, the damage it has caused, and the peaceful resistance that stood up and forced the federal government to back down (a little). He suggests, in spite of the horrible title of the piece, that the response of the people of Minnesota needs to be exported to the rest of the country. The lesson Friedman wants to export is the understanding that governments and institutions will not save us, but solidarity and community will. Quite rich coming from a man who was an advocate of the Iraq War and who believes in unregulated trade.
Speaking of the community response to being invaded by the federal government, the people of the Twin Cities were awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award this last week. It is an award created by the Kennedy family and given by the JFK Library to honor those who have demonstrated political courage and conscience at personal or professional risk. We apparently tied with Jerome Powell for the award. The award ceremony is in May. Is the whole Twin Cities invited to the ceremony? And who gets to show off the award? I suspect the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul will attend and then thumb wrestle over in whose City Hall the plaque will be displayed.
Books and Libraries
I’m totaling vibing with Jo Walton’s recent essay at The Reactor about how she reads sixteen books at once I don’t use an e-reader and my number is lower, but I currently have twelve books on the go. It is, as she calls it, “a lovely reading symphony.” The way I read my multiple books is a bit different than Walton’s method. I have five main reads I cycle through and then the rest are ones I pick up in odd moments or when I need a breather from my main reads.
The main reads depend on location and day of the week. So I have a book I read only at work during my lunch break. This might be fiction or nonfiction. I have a book that James reads to me while I am doing a strength workout lifting weights and doing pushups and lunges on Tuesdays and Saturdays. We are reading our way through all of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. We’ve read all the books with the witches as the main story and are one and a half books away from being complete with all the Night Watch books.
Generally Monday and Wednesday nights I get to read for about 45-minutes in bed before going to sleep. These are usually novel nights unless I’m reading a nonfiction book I really like or have to return to the library soon. Tuesday nights after neighborhood foot patrol and my strength workout I read nonfiction in bed before going to sleep. Thursday nights I don’t get to read because I’m at sangha and not home until after 9 and go right to bed. Fridays are either movie/TV show and popcorn night or meeting with my Beloved Community Circle, so generally no reading. Daytime Saturdays and Sunday I read whatever strikes my fancy, which could be one of my main reads or one of the other books I have going. At night on both those days I usually get a nice chunk of reading in bed before sleep time and generally devote half the time to a novel and half to nonfiction. Almost every night I read a poem and will also read poetry in those “I have 10 minutes” moments between other activities.
This way there is something I always want to read no matter my mood and ability to focus. I’ve been reading like this for so long, I can’t remember the last time I read just one book with no others in progress. I sometimes worry the multiple books in progress are a result of a short attention span brought on by too much digital media, but when I think back through my reading history, I’ve been reading like this since university in pre-internet days.
I couldn’t read like this if it weren’t for public libraries. When James and I moved to Minnesota back in the mid-1990s, within a day or two of arriving, we found the public library and got library cards even before we went to the DMV to get new driver’s licenses. Priorities! And back when libraries had more money and were open until 9 on a Friday night, we used to go to the library as a regular date night. Nerds!
All this to say, anyone who loves reading or libraries should be extremely concerned about HR 7661, the “Stop Sexualization of Children Act. This is a bill introduced into Congress that will ban all “sexually oriented” children’s books from any institution that receives federal education funding. “Sexually oriented” includes all things LGBTQi+ as well as “lewd and lascivious dancing. Cue Footloose theme song
https://youtu.be/e-OG0EyJyV8?si=js2DvWk6_f5NhxF3
Books and libraries matter more than ever in these times of growing authoritarianism. I listened to a fantastic Movement Memos podcast conversation this morning on Why Libraries Matter in a Fascist Moment. As one of the guests said, “If we lose this as a public good and as a free public service, we will have lost everything.”
One of the best ways to support your library? Use it!
#censorship #fascism #Footloose #FriendsSchoolPlantSale #HR7661 #hydroponics #ICE #JoWalton #Libraries #ProfilesInCourageAward #recordBreakingWarmth #seedSwap #snow #spring #turkeys -
Real Spring?
Caution: Wordiness ahead.
Minneapolis hit a record breaking 78F/ 26C Saturday. Our first 70F/ 21C day of the year generally happens around April 7th. Over the last two years, the first 70-degree reading has come early—March 14 last year and March 3 in 2024. The 2024 date of March 3 was the earliest recorded 70-degree reading for the Twin Cities. Saturday’s record breaking temperature comes after we had 8.9 inches/ 22.6 cm of snow Saturday night to Sunday, a low temperature Monday night of 1F/ -17C, and another inch/ 2.5 cm of snow on Tuesday. March in Minnesota is generally a roller coaster, but not quite this whiplash-y. The temperature today has moderated back closer to “normal” and will continue for the rest of the week between 40F/4.4C to 50F/ 10C with a 60F/ 15.5C burp at the end of the week.
The sap is running in the maples and tapped trees I see around town are filling up their bags like nobody’s business. I expect Melody Silver Maple in the front garden will soon be blooming. The witch hazel is blooming. Saturday we pruned the apple trees and their buds are already swelling. I noticed the perennial walking onions and the bunching onions are already sending up green shoots. I’ll be able to start adding some to meals next week at this rate.
It appears that real spring has finally sprung. The animals think so too. I seem to be interrupting rabbit meetups every morning on my way to work, sending them scattering. I seriously doubt this will have an impact on the rabbit population, but who knows? I also keep finding stuff squirrels have commandeered for fluffing their nests stuck on perennial stems in the garden–gobs of leaves, fake grass, fiber fill stuffing, candy wrappers.
The robins are trilling and the males are arguing over territory, the cardinals are singing to their mates, and the wild turkeys in the city are flocking with the males becoming extra aggressive. On my bike commute home from work recently I had to save a school bus that was having a standoff with a turkey in the middle of an intersection. The turkey was pecking at the bus and completely undisturbed by the driver honking the horn. I slowly and carefully biked up to the turkey and herded him off the road. James has also been herding turkeys off the road on his bike commutes. They are unfazed by the traffic jams they cause. I find it absolutely hilarious.
Saturday was the Rebel Gardeners seed swap. It was a good turnout. I brought a bunch of seeds and other folks brought seeds too, and someone who is a Master Gardener brought a lot of commercial seed packets that must have been donated. I was very good and only came home with a seed packet of turnips. I was tempted by beans–I love growing beans!–but I refrained because I am filled up with bean varieties right now. The folks who organized the group talked a bit about plans going forward, the food shelves we will be donating to, efforts various people with connections are making to get donated wood for newer gardeners to build raised beds, compost and mulch donations, how we can help each other out during the summer with garden care when folks go out of town as well as skill and knowledge sharing.
A couple people in the group are experienced hydroponics growers and after some discussion about it I’m thinking of maybe setting up something for growing greens indoors during the winter. But we’ll see if I end up having the time and willingness to go through the effort of setting that all up when October arrives. Sure would be nice to have fresh homegrown greens in winter though.
The catalog for the Friends School Plant sale I attend every May went live midweek. I downloaded the PDF and thought, I’ll wait until the weekend to look through it. Yes, I am that delusional sometimes. It wasn’t even a full hour after downloading that I opened the document “just to peek.” A bunch of highlighted plants later, I managed to pull myself away until the next day when I made it to the end of the catalog.
Inflation has come for the garden. Plants that used to cost $2.50 – $3 are now $4, and the “comes in a pack” where you get 4 or 6 plants that used to be $4 – $5 are now $6 to $7. The price for shrubs and trees has skyrocketed. Even so, the prices are still less than at a commercial nursery and they don’t sell any neonic plants. But also, I’m glad I don’t need many plants this year. Want is another matter. But wants are much easier to talk myself out of.
ICE
ICE is still here abducting people but it seems a bit less dire, or maybe I’m just used to this now as a new normal. Kids are still terrified to go to school for fear their parents won’t be there when they get home. Adults are still terrified of going to work for fear that they will be abducted. Mutual aid work continues as we all try to heal from the trauma. Saturday James and I went to a Maker and Baker neighborhood fundraiser where proceeds will go towards helping people in my neighborhood pay their rent. I came away with a cute new sticker for my water bottle, a new pair of earrings, and an awesome postcard. The fundraiser last month took in $6,000 and yesterday raised an additional $5,000. There will probably be another one next month, so I’m putting on my thinking cap for something I might be able to donate. Maybe a loaf of sourdough bread or some extra garden seedlings.
In case you haven’t been following Minnesota news since we dropped out of the headlines when the surge “ended,” remember Liam, the cute little 5-year-old boy in the blue bunny hat who was used as bait to detain his dad? They were both then sent to Texas until a judge ordered they be released and returned to Minnesota. Well, the Department of Homeland Security filed to have their case expedited, and the other day an immigration judge ended the family’s asylum claims. The family’s lawyers are appealing, but it could take months or years for it all to be resolved. I am not certain whether they will be allowed to remain in the United States during the appeal, or if they will be forced to return to Ecuador. Trump has repeatedly said ICE is only looking for the worst of the worst, the criminals and bad people. I am not sure how the Ramos family qualifies as criminals and bad people. Maybe Trump finds blue bunny hats triggering?
In other news, it turns out that the world’s deadliest sharks are only one-third as deadly to Minnesotans in 2026 as ICE. It’s a serious but also funny article in which I learned that with all of our shark-free fresh water lakes, a good many Minnesotans are still mildly afraid of sharks. Personally, I’m not worried about sharks in the lakes, it’s the silty mud and lake weeds that freak me out.
Meanwhile in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, of whom I am not a fan but who turns out to be from Minneapolis, has an op-ed piece (gift link) in which he talks about what the federal government has done here, the damage it has caused, and the peaceful resistance that stood up and forced the federal government to back down (a little). He suggests, in spite of the horrible title of the piece, that the response of the people of Minnesota needs to be exported to the rest of the country. The lesson Friedman wants to export is the understanding that governments and institutions will not save us, but solidarity and community will. Quite rich coming from a man who was an advocate of the Iraq War and who believes in unregulated trade.
Speaking of the community response to being invaded by the federal government, the people of the Twin Cities were awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award this last week. It is an award created by the Kennedy family and given by the JFK Library to honor those who have demonstrated political courage and conscience at personal or professional risk. We apparently tied with Jerome Powell for the award. The award ceremony is in May. Is the whole Twin Cities invited to the ceremony? And who gets to show off the award? I suspect the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul will attend and then thumb wrestle over in whose City Hall the plaque will be displayed.
Books and Libraries
I’m totaling vibing with Jo Walton’s recent essay at The Reactor about how she reads sixteen books at once I don’t use an e-reader and my number is lower, but I currently have twelve books on the go. It is, as she calls it, “a lovely reading symphony.” The way I read my multiple books is a bit different than Walton’s method. I have five main reads I cycle through and then the rest are ones I pick up in odd moments or when I need a breather from my main reads.
The main reads depend on location and day of the week. So I have a book I read only at work during my lunch break. This might be fiction or nonfiction. I have a book that James reads to me while I am doing a strength workout lifting weights and doing pushups and lunges on Tuesdays and Saturdays. We are reading our way through all of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. We’ve read all the books with the witches as the main story and are one and a half books away from being complete with all the Night Watch books.
Generally Monday and Wednesday nights I get to read for about 45-minutes in bed before going to sleep. These are usually novel nights unless I’m reading a nonfiction book I really like or have to return to the library soon. Tuesday nights after neighborhood foot patrol and my strength workout I read nonfiction in bed before going to sleep. Thursday nights I don’t get to read because I’m at sangha and not home until after 9 and go right to bed. Fridays are either movie/TV show and popcorn night or meeting with my Beloved Community Circle, so generally no reading. Daytime Saturdays and Sunday I read whatever strikes my fancy, which could be one of my main reads or one of the other books I have going. At night on both those days I usually get a nice chunk of reading in bed before sleep time and generally devote half the time to a novel and half to nonfiction. Almost every night I read a poem and will also read poetry in those “I have 10 minutes” moments between other activities.
This way there is something I always want to read no matter my mood and ability to focus. I’ve been reading like this for so long, I can’t remember the last time I read just one book with no others in progress. I sometimes worry the multiple books in progress are a result of a short attention span brought on by too much digital media, but when I think back through my reading history, I’ve been reading like this since university in pre-internet days.
I couldn’t read like this if it weren’t for public libraries. When James and I moved to Minnesota back in the mid-1990s, within a day or two of arriving, we found the public library and got library cards even before we went to the DMV to get new driver’s licenses. Priorities! And back when libraries had more money and were open until 9 on a Friday night, we used to go to the library as a regular date night. Nerds!
All this to say, anyone who loves reading or libraries should be extremely concerned about HR 7661, the “Stop Sexualization of Children Act. This is a bill introduced into Congress that will ban all “sexually oriented” children’s books from any institution that receives federal education funding. “Sexually oriented” includes all things LGBTQi+ as well as “lewd and lascivious dancing. Cue Footloose theme song
https://youtu.be/e-OG0EyJyV8?si=js2DvWk6_f5NhxF3
Books and libraries matter more than ever in these times of growing authoritarianism. I listened to a fantastic Movement Memos podcast conversation this morning on Why Libraries Matter in a Fascist Moment. As one of the guests said, “If we lose this as a public good and as a free public service, we will have lost everything.”
One of the best ways to support your library? Use it!
#censorship #fascism #Footloose #FriendsSchoolPlantSale #HR7661 #hydroponics #ICE #JoWalton #Libraries #ProfilesInCourageAward #recordBreakingWarmth #seedSwap #snow #spring #turkeys -
Real Spring?
Caution: Wordiness ahead.
Minneapolis hit a record breaking 78F/ 26C Saturday. Our first 70F/ 21C day of the year generally happens around April 7th. Over the last two years, the first 70-degree reading has come early—March 14 last year and March 3 in 2024. The 2024 date of March 3 was the earliest recorded 70-degree reading for the Twin Cities. Saturday’s record breaking temperature comes after we had 8.9 inches/ 22.6 cm of snow Saturday night to Sunday, a low temperature Monday night of 1F/ -17C, and another inch/ 2.5 cm of snow on Tuesday. March in Minnesota is generally a roller coaster, but not quite this whiplash-y. The temperature today has moderated back closer to “normal” and will continue for the rest of the week between 40F/4.4C to 50F/ 10C with a 60F/ 15.5C burp at the end of the week.
The sap is running in the maples and tapped trees I see around town are filling up their bags like nobody’s business. I expect Melody Silver Maple in the front garden will soon be blooming. The witch hazel is blooming. Saturday we pruned the apple trees and their buds are already swelling. I noticed the perennial walking onions and the bunching onions are already sending up green shoots. I’ll be able to start adding some to meals next week at this rate.
It appears that real spring has finally sprung. The animals think so too. I seem to be interrupting rabbit meetups every morning on my way to work, sending them scattering. I seriously doubt this will have an impact on the rabbit population, but who knows? I also keep finding stuff squirrels have commandeered for fluffing their nests stuck on perennial stems in the garden–gobs of leaves, fake grass, fiber fill stuffing, candy wrappers.
The robins are trilling and the males are arguing over territory, the cardinals are singing to their mates, and the wild turkeys in the city are flocking with the males becoming extra aggressive. On my bike commute home from work recently I had to save a school bus that was having a standoff with a turkey in the middle of an intersection. The turkey was pecking at the bus and completely undisturbed by the driver honking the horn. I slowly and carefully biked up to the turkey and herded him off the road. James has also been herding turkeys off the road on his bike commutes. They are unfazed by the traffic jams they cause. I find it absolutely hilarious.
Saturday was the Rebel Gardeners seed swap. It was a good turnout. I brought a bunch of seeds and other folks brought seeds too, and someone who is a Master Gardener brought a lot of commercial seed packets that must have been donated. I was very good and only came home with a seed packet of turnips. I was tempted by beans–I love growing beans!–but I refrained because I am filled up with bean varieties right now. The folks who organized the group talked a bit about plans going forward, the food shelves we will be donating to, efforts various people with connections are making to get donated wood for newer gardeners to build raised beds, compost and mulch donations, how we can help each other out during the summer with garden care when folks go out of town as well as skill and knowledge sharing.
A couple people in the group are experienced hydroponics growers and after some discussion about it I’m thinking of maybe setting up something for growing greens indoors during the winter. But we’ll see if I end up having the time and willingness to go through the effort of setting that all up when October arrives. Sure would be nice to have fresh homegrown greens in winter though.
The catalog for the Friends School Plant sale I attend every May went live midweek. I downloaded the PDF and thought, I’ll wait until the weekend to look through it. Yes, I am that delusional sometimes. It wasn’t even a full hour after downloading that I opened the document “just to peek.” A bunch of highlighted plants later, I managed to pull myself away until the next day when I made it to the end of the catalog.
Inflation has come for the garden. Plants that used to cost $2.50 – $3 are now $4, and the “comes in a pack” where you get 4 or 6 plants that used to be $4 – $5 are now $6 to $7. The price for shrubs and trees has skyrocketed. Even so, the prices are still less than at a commercial nursery and they don’t sell any neonic plants. But also, I’m glad I don’t need many plants this year. Want is another matter. But wants are much easier to talk myself out of.
ICE
ICE is still here abducting people but it seems a bit less dire, or maybe I’m just used to this now as a new normal. Kids are still terrified to go to school for fear their parents won’t be there when they get home. Adults are still terrified of going to work for fear that they will be abducted. Mutual aid work continues as we all try to heal from the trauma. Saturday James and I went to a Maker and Baker neighborhood fundraiser where proceeds will go towards helping people in my neighborhood pay their rent. I came away with a cute new sticker for my water bottle, a new pair of earrings, and an awesome postcard. The fundraiser last month took in $6,000 and yesterday raised an additional $5,000. There will probably be another one next month, so I’m putting on my thinking cap for something I might be able to donate. Maybe a loaf of sourdough bread or some extra garden seedlings.
In case you haven’t been following Minnesota news since we dropped out of the headlines when the surge “ended,” remember Liam, the cute little 5-year-old boy in the blue bunny hat who was used as bait to detain his dad? They were both then sent to Texas until a judge ordered they be released and returned to Minnesota. Well, the Department of Homeland Security filed to have their case expedited, and the other day an immigration judge ended the family’s asylum claims. The family’s lawyers are appealing, but it could take months or years for it all to be resolved. I am not certain whether they will be allowed to remain in the United States during the appeal, or if they will be forced to return to Ecuador. Trump has repeatedly said ICE is only looking for the worst of the worst, the criminals and bad people. I am not sure how the Ramos family qualifies as criminals and bad people. Maybe Trump finds blue bunny hats triggering?
In other news, it turns out that the world’s deadliest sharks are only one-third as deadly to Minnesotans in 2026 as ICE. It’s a serious but also funny article in which I learned that with all of our shark-free fresh water lakes, a good many Minnesotans are still mildly afraid of sharks. Personally, I’m not worried about sharks in the lakes, it’s the silty mud and lake weeds that freak me out.
Meanwhile in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, of whom I am not a fan but who turns out to be from Minneapolis, has an op-ed piece (gift link) in which he talks about what the federal government has done here, the damage it has caused, and the peaceful resistance that stood up and forced the federal government to back down (a little). He suggests, in spite of the horrible title of the piece, that the response of the people of Minnesota needs to be exported to the rest of the country. The lesson Friedman wants to export is the understanding that governments and institutions will not save us, but solidarity and community will. Quite rich coming from a man who was an advocate of the Iraq War and who believes in unregulated trade.
Speaking of the community response to being invaded by the federal government, the people of the Twin Cities were awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award this last week. It is an award created by the Kennedy family and given by the JFK Library to honor those who have demonstrated political courage and conscience at personal or professional risk. We apparently tied with Jerome Powell for the award. The award ceremony is in May. Is the whole Twin Cities invited to the ceremony? And who gets to show off the award? I suspect the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul will attend and then thumb wrestle over in whose City Hall the plaque will be displayed.
Books and Libraries
I’m totaling vibing with Jo Walton’s recent essay at The Reactor about how she reads sixteen books at once I don’t use an e-reader and my number is lower, but I currently have twelve books on the go. It is, as she calls it, “a lovely reading symphony.” The way I read my multiple books is a bit different than Walton’s method. I have five main reads I cycle through and then the rest are ones I pick up in odd moments or when I need a breather from my main reads.
The main reads depend on location and day of the week. So I have a book I read only at work during my lunch break. This might be fiction or nonfiction. I have a book that James reads to me while I am doing a strength workout lifting weights and doing pushups and lunges on Tuesdays and Saturdays. We are reading our way through all of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. We’ve read all the books with the witches as the main story and are one and a half books away from being complete with all the Night Watch books.
Generally Monday and Wednesday nights I get to read for about 45-minutes in bed before going to sleep. These are usually novel nights unless I’m reading a nonfiction book I really like or have to return to the library soon. Tuesday nights after neighborhood foot patrol and my strength workout I read nonfiction in bed before going to sleep. Thursday nights I don’t get to read because I’m at sangha and not home until after 9 and go right to bed. Fridays are either movie/TV show and popcorn night or meeting with my Beloved Community Circle, so generally no reading. Daytime Saturdays and Sunday I read whatever strikes my fancy, which could be one of my main reads or one of the other books I have going. At night on both those days I usually get a nice chunk of reading in bed before sleep time and generally devote half the time to a novel and half to nonfiction. Almost every night I read a poem and will also read poetry in those “I have 10 minutes” moments between other activities.
This way there is something I always want to read no matter my mood and ability to focus. I’ve been reading like this for so long, I can’t remember the last time I read just one book with no others in progress. I sometimes worry the multiple books in progress are a result of a short attention span brought on by too much digital media, but when I think back through my reading history, I’ve been reading like this since university in pre-internet days.
I couldn’t read like this if it weren’t for public libraries. When James and I moved to Minnesota back in the mid-1990s, within a day or two of arriving, we found the public library and got library cards even before we went to the DMV to get new driver’s licenses. Priorities! And back when libraries had more money and were open until 9 on a Friday night, we used to go to the library as a regular date night. Nerds!
All this to say, anyone who loves reading or libraries should be extremely concerned about HR 7661, the “Stop Sexualization of Children Act. This is a bill introduced into Congress that will ban all “sexually oriented” children’s books from any institution that receives federal education funding. “Sexually oriented” includes all things LGBTQi+ as well as “lewd and lascivious dancing. Cue Footloose theme song
https://youtu.be/e-OG0EyJyV8?si=js2DvWk6_f5NhxF3
Books and libraries matter more than ever in these times of growing authoritarianism. I listened to a fantastic Movement Memos podcast conversation this morning on Why Libraries Matter in a Fascist Moment. As one of the guests said, “If we lose this as a public good and as a free public service, we will have lost everything.”
One of the best ways to support your library? Use it!
#censorship #fascism #Footloose #FriendsSchoolPlantSale #HR7661 #hydroponics #ICE #JoWalton #Libraries #ProfilesInCourageAward #recordBreakingWarmth #seedSwap #snow #spring #turkeys -
Bon... C'est décidé, vendredi prochain (le16/01) je serai à la #soberparty nantaise, à la fois pour soutenir la démarche mais surtout parce que j'aime la fête et que j'aime danser !! Si ça vous dit, les places sont à prendre ici : https://shotgun.live/en/events/hight-on-dry
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25% Off!
❤️
This month is our marriage anniversary and I’d thought that I would give shoppers a discount on my markup prices at FineArtAmerica in celebration of the event!
The discount is taken from the money that I would be paid for the sale. For example, if FAA has an item for $11 and I want to be paid something for the sale of that item, I would increase the price of that item by $4. The 25% discount code would be $1 off from the item price. In the world of PODs, it is company price plus artist royalty which equals the customer price.
If you would like to do the math on the discount of any item (other then prints; it’s a different chart starting at $10), I have my markup around 50% of the base price. Let’s look at the discounted purchase price if an item costs $34: $34 times .50 equals $17. $17 times .25 equals $4.25. The discount is $4.25 for that item. Then we take, $34. minus $4.25 equals $29.75. The price you would pay for that item, before taxes and shipping, would be $29.75.
It may not seem like much of a discount, but on some more expensive products, like yoga mats, it is a savings that I can offer shoppers. Feel free to pass the discount code around. And remember Mother’s Day is coming up! And if you can, take this opportunity to do pre-holiday or any birthday shopping that you may have this year.
The 25% discount code is FTRNUK. The code is valid from 01 April to 25 April 2026. Shop at:
kimberly-tilley.pixels.com❤️
If you are interested in knowing, I have been with my husband since February of 1999. We had spent much time away from each other as he enlisted into the Air Force and left shortly after graduating from High School. A couple of times we had lived separately for two years, and six months at a time, and so many random weeks. My first week on base, I was alone because he was sent to another country!
If you were wondering how do people with no money travel, this was how. We were in the area and took day trips. Me taking up my art was a great way to explore whilst the kids were young. But now we are focused on fixing up our home and do not travel like we used to. Plus civilians do not get time off like the military do! ☹️ I cannot wait until we have enough line of credit to fix up the exterior, because it will be the last of the work and then I know that we will have free time to hike again! (🤞mobility issues.)
🥳 Here’s to many more decades with my husband!
❤️
#animals #art #bags #bees #birds #blackAndWhite #butterflies #cards #code #coupon #discount #fineartamerica #flowers #garden #giftShop #landscape #monochrome #mugs #nature #notebooks #ornaments #outdoors #photographs #posters #sale #shopSmallBusiness #stickers #supportWomenInBusiness #totes #travel #trees #wallArt #wildlife #yoga -
25% Off!
❤️
This month is our marriage anniversary and I’d thought that I would give shoppers a discount on my markup prices at FineArtAmerica in celebration of the event!
The discount is taken from the money that I would be paid for the sale. For example, if FAA has an item for $11 and I want to be paid something for the sale of that item, I would increase the price of that item by $4. The 25% discount code would be $1 off from the item price. In the world of PODs, it is company price plus artist royalty which equals the customer price.
If you would like to do the math on the discount of any item (other then prints; it’s a different chart starting at $10), I have my markup around 50% of the base price. Let’s look at the discounted purchase price if an item costs $34: $34 times .50 equals $17. $17 times .25 equals $4.25. The discount is $4.25 for that item. Then we take, $34. minus $4.25 equals $29.75. The price you would pay for that item, before taxes and shipping, would be $29.75.
It may not seem like much of a discount, but on some more expensive products, like yoga mats, it is a savings that I can offer shoppers. Feel free to pass the discount code around. And remember Mother’s Day is coming up! And if you can, take this opportunity to do pre-holiday or any birthday shopping that you may have this year.
The 25% discount code is FTRNUK. The code is valid from 01 April to 25 April 2026. Shop at:
kimberly-tilley.pixels.com❤️
If you are interested in knowing, I have been with my husband since February of 1999. We had spent much time away from each other as he enlisted into the Air Force and left shortly after graduating from High School. A couple of times we had lived separately for two years, and six months at a time, and so many random weeks. My first week on base, I was alone because he was sent to another country!
If you were wondering how do people with no money travel, this was how. We were in the area and took day trips. Me taking up my art was a great way to explore whilst the kids were young. But now we are focused on fixing up our home and do not travel like we used to. Plus civilians do not get time off like the military do! ☹️ I cannot wait until we have enough line of credit to fix up the exterior, because it will be the last of the work and then I know that we will have free time to hike again! (🤞mobility issues.)
🥳 Here’s to many more decades with my husband!
❤️
#animals #art #bags #bees #birds #blackAndWhite #butterflies #cards #code #coupon #discount #fineartamerica #flowers #garden #giftShop #landscape #monochrome #mugs #nature #notebooks #ornaments #outdoors #photographs #posters #sale #shopSmallBusiness #stickers #supportWomenInBusiness #totes #travel #trees #wallArt #wildlife #yoga -
25% Off!
❤️
This month is our marriage anniversary and I’d thought that I would give shoppers a discount on my markup prices at FineArtAmerica in celebration of the event!
The discount is taken from the money that I would be paid for the sale. For example, if FAA has an item for $11 and I want to be paid something for the sale of that item, I would increase the price of that item by $4. The 25% discount code would be $1 off from the item price. In the world of PODs, it is company price plus artist royalty which equals the customer price.
If you would like to do the math on the discount of any item (other then prints; it’s a different chart starting at $10), I have my markup around 50% of the base price. Let’s look at the discounted purchase price if an item costs $34: $34 times .50 equals $17. $17 times .25 equals $4.25. The discount is $4.25 for that item. Then we take, $34. minus $4.25 equals $29.75. The price you would pay for that item, before taxes and shipping, would be $29.75.
It may not seem like much of a discount, but on some more expensive products, like yoga mats, it is a savings that I can offer shoppers. Feel free to pass the discount code around. And remember Mother’s Day is coming up! And if you can, take this opportunity to do pre-holiday or any birthday shopping that you may have this year.
The 25% discount code is FTRNUK. The code is valid from 01 April to 25 April 2026. Shop at:
kimberly-tilley.pixels.com❤️
If you are interested in knowing, I have been with my husband since February of 1999. We had spent much time away from each other as he enlisted into the Air Force and left shortly after graduating from High School. A couple of times we had lived separately for two years, and six months at a time, and so many random weeks. My first week on base, I was alone because he was sent to another country!
If you were wondering how do people with no money travel, this was how. We were in the area and took day trips. Me taking up my art was a great way to explore whilst the kids were young. But now we are focused on fixing up our home and do not travel like we used to. Plus civilians do not get time off like the military do! ☹️ I cannot wait until we have enough line of credit to fix up the exterior, because it will be the last of the work and then I know that we will have free time to hike again! (🤞mobility issues.)
🥳 Here’s to many more decades with my husband!
❤️
#animals #art #bags #bees #birds #blackAndWhite #butterflies #cards #code #coupon #discount #fineartamerica #flowers #garden #giftShop #landscape #monochrome #mugs #nature #notebooks #ornaments #outdoors #photographs #posters #sale #shopSmallBusiness #stickers #supportWomenInBusiness #totes #travel #trees #wallArt #wildlife #yoga -
25% Off!
❤️
This month is our marriage anniversary and I’d thought that I would give shoppers a discount on my markup prices at FineArtAmerica in celebration of the event!
The discount is taken from the money that I would be paid for the sale. For example, if FAA has an item for $11 and I want to be paid something for the sale of that item, I would increase the price of that item by $4. The 25% discount code would be $1 off from the item price. In the world of PODs, it is company price plus artist royalty which equals the customer price.
If you would like to do the math on the discount of any item (other then prints; it’s a different chart starting at $10), I have my markup around 50% of the base price. Let’s look at the discounted purchase price if an item costs $34: $34 times .50 equals $17. $17 times .25 equals $4.25. The discount is $4.25 for that item. Then we take, $34. minus $4.25 equals $29.75. The price you would pay for that item, before taxes and shipping, would be $29.75.
It may not seem like much of a discount, but on some more expensive products, like yoga mats, it is a savings that I can offer shoppers. Feel free to pass the discount code around. And remember Mother’s Day is coming up! And if you can, take this opportunity to do pre-holiday or any birthday shopping that you may have this year.
The 25% discount code is FTRNUK. The code is valid from 01 April to 25 April 2026. Shop at:
kimberly-tilley.pixels.com❤️
If you are interested in knowing, I have been with my husband since February of 1999. We had spent much time away from each other as he enlisted into the Air Force and left shortly after graduating from High School. A couple of times we had lived separately for two years, and six months at a time, and so many random weeks. My first week on base, I was alone because he was sent to another country!
If you were wondering how do people with no money travel, this was how. We were in the area and took day trips. Me taking up my art was a great way to explore whilst the kids were young. But now we are focused on fixing up our home and do not travel like we used to. Plus civilians do not get time off like the military do! ☹️ I cannot wait until we have enough line of credit to fix up the exterior, because it will be the last of the work and then I know that we will have free time to hike again! (🤞mobility issues.)
🥳 Here’s to many more decades with my husband!
❤️
#animals #art #bags #bees #birds #blackAndWhite #butterflies #cards #code #coupon #discount #fineartamerica #flowers #garden #giftShop #landscape #monochrome #mugs #nature #notebooks #ornaments #outdoors #photographs #posters #sale #shopSmallBusiness #stickers #supportWomenInBusiness #totes #travel #trees #wallArt #wildlife #yoga -
25% Off!
❤️
This month is our marriage anniversary and I’d thought that I would give shoppers a discount on my markup prices at FineArtAmerica in celebration of the event!
The discount is taken from the money that I would be paid for the sale. For example, if FAA has an item for $11 and I want to be paid something for the sale of that item, I would increase the price of that item by $4. The 25% discount code would be $1 off from the item price. In the world of PODs, it is company price plus artist royalty which equals the customer price.
If you would like to do the math on the discount of any item (other then prints; it’s a different chart starting at $10), I have my markup around 50% of the base price. Let’s look at the discounted purchase price if an item costs $34: $34 times .50 equals $17. $17 times .25 equals $4.25. The discount is $4.25 for that item. Then we take, $34. minus $4.25 equals $29.75. The price you would pay for that item, before taxes and shipping, would be $29.75.
It may not seem like much of a discount, but on some more expensive products, like yoga mats, it is a savings that I can offer shoppers. Feel free to pass the discount code around. And remember Mother’s Day is coming up! And if you can, take this opportunity to do pre-holiday or any birthday shopping that you may have this year.
The 25% discount code is FTRNUK. The code is valid from 01 April to 25 April 2026. Shop at:
kimberly-tilley.pixels.com❤️
If you are interested in knowing, I have been with my husband since February of 1999. We had spent much time away from each other as he enlisted into the Air Force and left shortly after graduating from High School. A couple of times we had lived separately for two years, and six months at a time, and so many random weeks. My first week on base, I was alone because he was sent to another country!
If you were wondering how do people with no money travel, this was how. We were in the area and took day trips. Me taking up my art was a great way to explore whilst the kids were young. But now we are focused on fixing up our home and do not travel like we used to. Plus civilians do not get time off like the military do! ☹️ I cannot wait until we have enough line of credit to fix up the exterior, because it will be the last of the work and then I know that we will have free time to hike again! (🤞mobility issues.)
🥳 Here’s to many more decades with my husband!
❤️
#animals #art #bags #bees #birds #blackAndWhite #butterflies #cards #code #coupon #discount #fineartamerica #flowers #garden #giftShop #landscape #monochrome #mugs #nature #notebooks #ornaments #outdoors #photographs #posters #sale #shopSmallBusiness #stickers #supportWomenInBusiness #totes #travel #trees #wallArt #wildlife #yoga -
AirPods Pro 3 : la traduction en direct arrive… mais pas en Europe
https://mac4ever.com/191718
#Mac4Ever #AirPodsPro3 #LiveTranslation -
Capped Langur Trachypithecus pileatus
Capped Langur Trachypithecus pileatus
IUCN Red List Status: Vulnerable
Location: India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar
This species inhabits subtropical and tropical dry forests, primarily in the foothills and highlands south of the Brahmaputra River and across fragmented patches in northeastern South Asia.
The capped #langur (Trachypithecus pileatus) is a graceful and beautiful leaf #monkey found across northeastern #India, #Bhutan, #Bangladesh, and #Myanmar. Sadly, they are listed as #Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List due to rapid population declines from #deforestation, logging, agriculture, and the devastating impacts of #palmoil plantations. Once widespread, their numbers have nearly halved in some regions like Assam due to the accelerating loss of native forest cover. Directly threatened by palm oil and monoculture expansion, this species is now confined to small, isolated forest fragments. Take action every time you shop and #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife
In the forests of #Bangladesh 🇧🇩 and northern #India 🇮🇳 lives a remarkable #primate with soulful hazel eyes 🐵🐒 on the verge of #extinction from #palmoil #deforestation. Help the Capped #Langur and #Boycottpalmoil 🌴🔥🚫 #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2026/01/11/capped-langur-trachypithecus-pileatus/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterThe intelligent and social Capped #Langur 🙉🐒🐵 is under pressure from #palmoil #deforestation and hunting in #India 🇮🇳 Troops are interbreeding with Phayre’s #langurs to survive. Fight for them and #Boycottpalmoil 🌴☠️❌ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2026/01/11/capped-langur-trachypithecus-pileatus/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterAppearance & Behaviour
With their black-tufted crown, pale fur, and soulful eyes, capped langurs are among the most visually distinctive primates in the Eastern Himalayas. Their fur ranges from silver-grey to golden orange, with darker limbs and a black cap that gives them their name. They move gracefully through the canopy, rarely descending to the forest floor except for play or social grooming.
Capped langurs live in unimale, multifemale groups with sizes ranging from 8 to 15 individuals. They spend most of their time feeding (up to 67%) or resting (up to 40%), engaging in complex social grooming and vocal communication. Daily movements range from 320–800 metres across fragmented habitats of 21–64 hectares. Grooming is an important social activity, with females often taking turns in allomothering behaviour.
Threats
Palm oil, teak and rubber monoculture plantations
The spread of oil palm and other monoculture crops such as teak and rubber is destroying the capped langur’s native forests at an alarming rate. These industrial plantations eliminate the diverse tree species that capped langurs rely on for food and shelter, leaving them with little to survive on. Once a landscape is cleared and replaced with palm oil or other single crops, it becomes a green desert devoid of biodiversity, pushing the species closer to extinction. In regions like Assam and Bangladesh, palm oil is a major driver of habitat fragmentation and degradation, especially in forest corridors that once connected populations.
Timber deforestation
Widespread illegal logging, often fuelled by demand for timber and firewood, is rapidly eroding the capped langur’s habitat. Fruiting and lodging trees that are vital to their survival are cut down, leaving forests patchy and disconnected. As their home ranges shrink, capped langur groups are forced into smaller fragments, increasing their vulnerability to predators, food shortages, and inbreeding. In some areas, this pressure has led to local extinctions or the collapse of entire populations.
Slash-and-burn agriculture
Slash-and-burn agriculture destroys habitat for capped langurs and often brings them into closer contact with human settlements, increasing conflict and risk of hunting or roadkill. Forest recovery from this can take decades—time the capped langur simply doesn’t have.
Hunting and the illegal pet trade
Capped langurs are hunted for their meat, pelts, and for sale in the illegal pet trade. In many tribal and rural areas of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and Manipur, they are still targeted despite legal protections. Their pelts are used to make traditional knife sheaths, and infants are often captured after killing their mothers, then sold as pets. This exploitation causes severe suffering and has a devastating impact on group structures, leading to long-term population decline.
Roads cut into rainforests for mines and tea plantations
As forests are cut into smaller patches for roads, mining, tea plantations, and settlements, capped langur populations become increasingly isolated. Small, disconnected populations face higher risks of inbreeding, loss of genetic diversity, and eventual extinction. In some regions, such as Tinsukia and Sonitpur, populations have already disappeared due to this fragmentation. The collapse of corridors also disrupts daily movement, feeding patterns, and access to mates—placing enormous stress on surviving individuals.
Hybridisation with other species
Due to the rapid degradation of natural habitats, capped langurs are increasingly forming mixed-species groups with the closely related Phayre’s langur (Trachypithecus phayrei). Recent studies in northeast Bangladesh confirm genetically that hybridisation is occurring, which could result in the eventual cyto-nuclear extinction of the capped langur lineage. Although hybridisation can happen naturally, in this case it is being driven by human-induced fragmentation, forcing species into overlapping territories with fewer options for mates. This phenomenon is both a symptom and a driver of their decline, complicating conservation efforts.
Mining, infrastructure, and political conflict
Open-cast coal mining, limestone extraction, and petroleum exploration have all contributed to the destruction of capped langur habitat across Assam and Nagaland. Infrastructure projects, such as highways and border fences, not only destroy habitat directly but also block animal movements and isolate populations. In border regions, armed conflict and territorial skirmishes have already extirpated capped langurs from several reserves, such as the Nambhur and Rengma forests. Weak law enforcement allows habitat destruction to continue unchecked in many regions.
Geographic Range
Capped langurs are found in northeastern India (Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, and Tripura), Bhutan, northwestern Myanmar, and northeastern and central Bangladesh. They occur at elevations from 10 to 3,000 metres across hill forests, riverine reserves, and protected areas. However, their range is now severely fragmented by human development, with some populations disappearing from former strongholds due to mining, conflict, and agricultural encroachment.
Diet
Primarily folivorous, the capped langur’s diet includes mature and young leaves, petioles, seeds, flowers, bamboo shoots, bark, and occasionally caterpillars. They forage on more than 43 plant species, with favourites including banyan (Ficus benghalensis), sacred fig (Ficus religiosa), Terminalia bellerica, and Mallotus philippensis. Seasonal availability influences their feeding patterns, but they consistently prefer fruiting and flowering trees.
Mating and Reproduction
Breeding usually occurs in the dry season, with birthing concentrated between late December and May. The gestation period lasts about 200 days, and the interbirth interval is approximately two years. Only parous females participate in allomothering, allowing new mothers time to forage and recover, a behaviour rare among langurs and considered a form of altruism.
FAQs
How many capped langurs are left in the wild?
Exact numbers are uncertain, but estimates suggest the population in Assam has declined from 39,000 in 1989 to approximately 18,600 between 2008 and 2014 (Choudhury, 2014). This halving reflects habitat loss and increasing fragmentation, particularly in Upper Assam and the Barak Valley.
What is the average lifespan of a capped langur?
While data is limited, langurs of this genus generally live 20–25 years in the wild. Captive lifespans may extend slightly due to the absence of predators and constant food supply, though such conditions often lead to stress.
Why are capped langurs under threat?
Their decline is due to relentless deforestation, palm oil and monoculture plantations, illegal logging, and road-building. Slash-and-burn agriculture and mining also play a major role. Capped langurs are hunted in some regions for meat, pelts, and as pets, particularly in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and Nagaland.
Do capped langurs make good pets?
Absolutely not. Capped langurs are intelligent, social beings that rely on complex forest habitats and close-knit family groups. Removing them from the wild fuels extinction and causes immense trauma. Many die during illegal capture and transport. Keeping them as pets is a selfish act that destroys lives. If you care about capped langurs, never support the exotic pet trade!
What are the major conservation challenges for capped langurs?
The biggest issues are hybridisation with other primate species, habitat fragmentation, palm oil expansion, and human-wildlife conflict. The 2018 study in Satchari National Park found that local attitudes toward conservation vary by occupation, education, and gender, which means education and outreach are crucial. A big challenge is the rise in hybridisation with sympatric Phayre’s langurs, driven by habitat degradation—this poses long-term genetic risks (Ahmed et al., 2024).
Take Action!
Capped langurs are vanishing before our eyes, driven to the brink by out-of-control palm oil expansion, deforestation, and development. You can help save them.
Refuse to buy products made with palm oil. Support indigenous-led conservation in northeast India and the Eastern Himalayas. Demand governments halt the destruction of old-growth forests and restore wildlife corridors. Spread awareness and challenge the illegal wildlife trade. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife #Vegan #BoycottMeat
Support the Capped Langur by going vegan and boycotting palm oil in the supermarket, it’s the #Boycott4Wildlife
Support the conservation of this species
This animal has no protections in place. Read about other forgotten species here. Create art to support this forgotten animal or raise awareness about them by sharing this post and using the #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife hashtags on social media. Also you can boycott palm oil in the supermarket.
Further Information
Ahmed, T., Hasan, S., Nath, S., Biswas, S., et al. (2024). Mixed-Species Groups and Genetically Confirmed Hybridization Between Sympatric Phayre’s Langur (Trachypithecus phayrei) and Capped Langur (T. pileatus) in Northeast Bangladesh. International Journal of Primatology, 46(1), 210–228. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-024-00459-x
Das, J., Chetry, D., Choudhury, A.U., & Bleisch, W. (2020). Trachypithecus pileatus (errata version published in 2021). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020: e.T22041A196580469. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-3.RLTS.T22041A196580469.en
Hasan, M.A.U., & Neha, S.A. (2018). Group size, composition and conservation challenges of capped langur (Trachypithecus pileatus) in Satchari National Park, Bangladesh. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339550399
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Capped langur. Retrieved April 6, 2025, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capped_langur
How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?
Take Action in Five Ways
1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.
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Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings
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The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert
How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy
3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.
https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20
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4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.
5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here
Pledge your supportLearn about other animals endangered by palm oil and other agriculture
Global South America S.E. Asia India Africa West Papua & PNGMountain Tapir Tapirus pinchaque
Frill-Necked Lizard Chlamydosaurus kingii
Grey Crowned Crane Balearica regulorum
Ecuadorean Viscacha Lagidium ahuacaense
Learn about “sustainable” palm oil greenwashing
Read more about RSPO greenwashing
Lying Fake labels Indigenous Land-grabbing Human rights abuses Deforestation Human health hazardsA 2019 World Health Organisation (WHO) report into the palm oil industry and RSPO finds extensive greenwashing of palm oil deforestation and the murder of endangered animals (i.e. biodiversity loss)
Read more#animals #Assam #Bangladesh #Bantrophyhunting #Bhutan #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottMeat #BoycottPalmOil #CappedLangurTrachypithecusPileatus #deforestation #extinction #ForgottenAnimals #humanWildlifeConflict #hunting #illegalPetTrade #India #langur #Langurs #mining #monkey #monkeys #Myanmar #PalmOil #palmOilDeforestation #palmoil #PhayreSLeafMonkeyTrachypithecusPhayrei #poaching #Primate #vegan #vulnerable #VulnerableSpecies
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Is It From the Birds? Stephen Sondheim Asked the Right Question About Music and Then Preferred Not to Hear the Answer
In November of 1997, Stephen Sondheim sat in his Manhattan townhouse with Mark Eden Horowitz, a senior music specialist from the Library of Congress, and said something extraordinary. Not extraordinary in the way that most Sondheim quotes are extraordinary, which is to say technically precise and laced with a craftsman’s impatience for imprecision. Extraordinary because it was none of those things. It was, instead, the sound of a man who had spent his entire adult life inside music admitting that the existence of music itself was something he could not explain.
A Concordance for Future Scholars
The moment circulates now as a sixty-second clip on social media, stripped of its original context, which was a three-day filmed interview session in which Horowitz, with Sondheim’s manuscripts spread before them, asked the composer to walk through his compositional process show by show. The interviews were intended as a concordance for future scholars. They were the opposite of a talk-show appearance. No audience. No applause. No performance. Just Sondheim, seated alone, head slightly bowed, speaking to the table as much as to Horowitz, working something out in real time.
View this post on Instagram
A transcript of the interview clip follows.
Music is a magical art. I don’t know how the human mind ever got to it, because everything else is somehow representational and literal, including painting, but not music. How did that happen? Is it from the birds? What is that from? How do we make music? I can understand vaguely how man learned to speak, because he had to communicate things, but what is this? How did man learn to whistle?
I mean, you know, how do we, and where does the 12-tone scale come from? And blah, blah, blah. And I’m ill-educated this way, so you could probably answer, but it seems to me miraculous. To me, it’s as mysterious as astrology, but unlike astrology, completely believable.
That final line is perfectly constructed. The setup is slow, exploratory, uncharacteristically loose in its syntax, and the payoff lands with the timing of a man who has spent fifty years placing stress on the right syllable. He knows where the laugh is, even in a room with one other person and a camera crew. The performance of the punchline does not cancel the sincerity of the question, though. Both things are happening at once: Sondheim is bewildered, and he is shaping his bewilderment into a deliverable thought. That is what writers do. It does not make the bewilderment false.
Auditory Cheesecake
The question Sondheim is asking is real. It is also old. Darwin raised it in The Descent of Man in 1871, speculating that music might have preceded language as a mechanism for sexual selection, the way birdsong functions in mate attraction. That hypothesis has never been conclusively confirmed or refuted. In the century and a half since, the evolutionary origins of music have generated an extraordinary volume of competing theories and almost no consensus.
Steven Pinker, the cognitive psychologist, famously dismissed music in 1997 (the same year Sondheim was speaking to Horowitz) as “auditory cheesecake,” a byproduct of neural systems that evolved for language processing, spatial reasoning, and emotional regulation. Music, in Pinker’s account, is a pleasure technology that exploits pre-existing cognitive architecture without having been selected for independently. It is, in his framing, an accident of evolution that happens to feel important.
That position was immediately and rightly challenged. The ethnomusicologist John Blacking had argued decades earlier that music-making is a universal human competence, not a specialized talent, and that its presence in every known human culture suggests something more than parasitic exploitation of other cognitive systems. Aniruddh Patel, working at the intersection of neuroscience and music cognition, demonstrated that music and language share neural resources but are not identical processes, and that musical training reshapes the brain in ways that pure language exposure does not. If music were merely cheesecake, it would not leave structural traces in neural architecture.
More recent work has proposed that music is adaptive in its own right: it facilitates infant bonding (lullabies are cross-culturally universal), it coordinates group movement (work songs, military cadence, ritual drumming), it signals coalition membership, and it regulates emotion in ways that have direct survival implications. The anthropologist Joseph Jordania has argued that early hominid group singing and rhythmic movement served a defensive function, producing a coordinated display that deterred predators. Whether or not one accepts that specific mechanism, the broader point stands: music does things in human social life that are not easily explained as side effects of language processing.
So when Sondheim asks “How did that happen? Is it from the birds?” he is asking a question to which the honest scientific answer, even now, is: we do not know for certain. The question is legitimate. What is less legitimate is the framework he wraps around it.
The Option of Representation
“Everything else is somehow representational and literal, including painting, but not music.”
This is wrong, and it is wrong in a way that a man of Sondheim’s cultural literacy should have caught. Painting is not inherently representational. The entire history of abstraction in visual art, stretching from Kandinsky’s first non-objective watercolors in 1910 through Mondrian’s grids, Rothko’s color fields, Agnes Martin’s trembling pencil lines, and the whole of Abstract Expressionism, demonstrates that painting can operate on precisely the same non-referential plane that Sondheim claims is unique to music. When you stand in front of a Rothko and feel something move in your chest, you are not decoding a representation. You are responding to organized color, proportion, and scale in a way that is structurally identical to responding to organized sound. Neither the painting nor the chord “means” anything in the propositional sense. Both produce experience without reference.
Sondheim, who loved puzzles and who approached problems with a logician’s temperament, is drawing a boundary here that does not hold. His category error is instructive, though, because it reveals what he actually means. He does not really mean that painting is always literal. He means that painting can be literal, that it has the option of representation, and that this option gives it an explicable origin story: early humans needed to record what they saw, so they drew on cave walls. Language has a similar origin story: early humans needed to coordinate hunting and warn each other of danger, so they developed vocalizations that referred to things in the shared environment. Music, in Sondheim’s framing, has no such origin story. It does not point at anything. It does not carry survival-critical information. It simply exists, and everyone responds to it, and nobody knows why.
This version of the argument has problems, too. Language is not purely functional. If language existed only to communicate propositional content, poetry would not exist. Lullabies would not exist. Glossolalia would not exist. The musical qualities of speech itself (prosody, rhythm, pitch contour, the rise at the end of a question, the drop at the end of a declaration) are not informational features. They are expressive features, and they sit on a continuum with music rather than on the opposite side of a clean divide. The boundary between speech and song is blurry in practice, and several researchers (including the musicologist Steven Brown) have proposed that music and language descended from a common proto-expressive system that only later differentiated into separate streams. If that model is correct, then Sondheim’s framing of language-as-communication versus music-as-mystery is not a real opposition. It is a retrospective illusion created by looking at two branches of the same tree and asking why one of them has leaves.
You Cannot Fact-Check a Melody
Strip away the sloppy premises, though, and something solid remains. Music’s relationship to meaning is unlike language’s relationship to meaning, and this asymmetry is a structural feature of the two systems, not a romantic invention of composers protecting their guild secrets.
A sentence can be true or false. “The cat is on the mat” is either an accurate description of a state of affairs or it is not. A chord cannot be true or false. A C minor triad is not making a claim about the world. It is not referring to anything outside itself. You cannot fact-check a melody. Music operates in a domain where the very concept of reference, which is foundational to how language generates meaning, does not apply.
Music produces meaning anyway. Not propositional meaning, not the kind that can be paraphrased or translated into another form without loss, but experiential meaning: the sense that something has been communicated, that you have understood something that was not said. When the bassoon opens Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in that strained high register, you feel physical unease. When Sondheim’s own score for Sweeney Todd drops that Bernard Herrmann chord into the orchestration, the audience’s bodies register dread before their minds process the harmonic information. These are real effects with real neurological substrates. The amygdala responds to certain dissonant intervals. Rhythmic entrainment synchronizes motor cortex activity across listeners. The dopaminergic system fires in anticipation of harmonic resolution. The mechanisms are increasingly describable. The description does not dissolve the mystery, because knowing that dopamine is released when a suspended chord resolves does not explain why organized sound produces subjective experience in the first place. It only pushes the question back one level.
Sondheim’s question, the one underneath his stated question, was not really “where does the 12-tone scale come from?” That question has a technical answer. The equal temperament system is a mathematical compromise that divides the octave into twelve logarithmically equal intervals to permit modulation between keys, and it became standard in Western music through a series of practical and aesthetic decisions between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. His actual question was: why does organized sound produce emotion in the absence of reference? Why do human beings, across every culture and every period of recorded history, take vibrations in the air and arrange them into patterns that make other human beings feel things?
That question remains open. The evolutionary accounts explain why music might be useful, but they do not explain why it feels the way it feels. The neuroscientific accounts map the brain activity that corresponds to musical experience, but they do not explain why that brain activity is accompanied by subjective experience at all, which is the hard problem of consciousness wearing a musical costume. The acoustic accounts describe the physics of the overtone series and the mathematical relationships between frequencies, but they do not explain why a minor third sounds sad to Western ears, or whether it sounds sad to ears trained in other tonal systems, or what “sounding sad” even means at the level of physical vibration.
The Puzzle Without a Solution
Sondheim was not, I think, being coy when he asked these questions. He was not performing the standard artist-as-mystic routine, in which the creator claims special access to forces that ordinary mortals cannot comprehend. He spent his entire career attacking that posture. He told interviewers that his college professor Robert Barrow had cured him of the belief that inspiration descended from above, that the revelation of understanding what a leading tone does and what a diatonic scale is had shown him that composition was “something worked out,” not something received. He called art “an attempt to bring order out of chaos” and compared songwriting to solving crossword puzzles. No one in the history of American musical theater was more committed to demystifying the process of making music.
That history is what makes this moment so unusual. Here is a man who demystified everything about how music is made, admitting that the bare fact of music’s existence remains mysterious to him. He cracked every local puzzle. He understood voice leading, harmonic substitution, the precise relationship between syllabic stress and melodic contour, the dramaturgical function of a vamp, the architecture of a twelve-bar modulation. He knew how to build the thing. He did not know why the thing existed to be built.
And he had been asking, in one form or another, for over thirty years. “How did man learn to whistle?” is not an idle example. In 1964, Sondheim opened Anyone Can Whistle with a song built on the same question, given to a character named Fay Apple who cannot do the thing everyone else finds natural. “Anyone can whistle, that’s what they say, easy,” the lyric begins, and then turns: “So someone tell me why can’t I?” The song is not about whistling. It is about the gap between capacities that appear universal and the lived experience of finding them impossible. Fay cannot let go, cannot be spontaneous, cannot perform the act that “anyone” supposedly can. In 1964, Sondheim wrote that question as dramatic psychology, embedded in a character’s specific anguish. In 1997, sitting with Horowitz, the character is gone, the dramatic frame is gone, and the question has become his own. He is no longer writing through someone else. He is asking it as himself, without the protective apparatus of fiction. The altitude has changed: Fay Apple’s question was why she, individually, could not access something innate; Sondheim’s 1997 question is why the innate thing exists at all. But it is the same bewilderment, carried forward three decades, stripped of costume and orchestration.
The “blah, blah, blah” is the tell. That is not Sondheim’s diction. He was a man who chose every word with a jeweler’s attention to weight and setting. Here, the precision abandons him. He is gesturing toward a set of questions he knows he cannot pursue with the rigor he would demand of himself. He is waving off his own inquiry, not out of boredom, but because he recognizes that he lacks the equipment to follow it. “I’m ill-educated this way, so you could probably answer” is simultaneously self-deprecating and self-protective: it acknowledges the gap in his knowledge while declining to fill it. He does not want the answer. He wants the question to remain a question. The inexplicability of music flatters the art form he gave his life to, and the alternative, a fully mechanistic explanation of music as an emergent property of neural computation and evolutionary pressure, would feel reductive to him even if it were true.
That preference for mystery over explanation is recognizable in many brilliant practitioners. A carpenter who builds flawless joints does not need to understand the molecular structure of wood. A poet who writes devastating lines does not need a theory of phonaesthetics. Sondheim composed at the highest level for more than half a century, and his inability to explain why music exists did not impair his ability to make it. The question was, for him, an object of wonder rather than a research problem. He held it up to the light, turned it over, admired its opacity, and set it back down.
The rest of us are allowed to pick it up again.
#aesthetic #art #birds #blah #lyrics #meaning #music #musicals #painting #performance #rothko #scales #sondheim #theatre #whistle #writing -
ATASSIA Synth-o-Matic vol.9
ExCentrale, sabato 28 marzo alle ore 22:00 CET
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ｓｙｎｔｈ－ｏ－ｍａｔｉｃ _ ｖｏｌ．9
❯❯❯ NO DJ, ONLY LIVE ELECTRONIC&TECHNO!❮❮❮
__________LIVE SET- WORKSHOP - ART________
Dove? ExCentrale - Bologna
-via di corticella 129-
///food&beverage a prezzi popolari\\\
◾️𝟮𝟴 𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗭𝗢 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲, 𝗦𝗬𝗡𝗧𝗛-𝗢-𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗖 , il festival dedicato alla musica techno/elettronica e arte visiva, senza dj.
◾️Una 9° edizione super, tra grandi ritorni e nuovi artisti 🔥 !!
❯❯❯ 𝗦𝗔𝗕𝗔𝗧𝗢 𝟮𝟴 𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗭𝗢
❯❯ START 22:00!
(Ingresso sottoscrizione artistica 6€ a sostegno del progetto e artisti che attraversano exCentrale - no tessera)
🔥LINEUP🔥
❯ 𝗣𝗛𝗢𝗢𝗞𝗔
❯ 𝗦𝗔𝗟𝗩𝗔𝗧𝗢𝗥𝗘 𝗙𝗢𝗚𝗟𝗜𝗔
❯ 𝗠𝗔𝗫 𝗩𝗜𝗖𝗜𝗡𝗘𝗟𝗟𝗜
❯ 𝗖𝗟𝗨𝗕𝟰𝟬𝟰
❯ 𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗧𝗘𝗢 𝗜𝗡𝗜
❯ 𝗔𝗟𝗚𝗢𝗥𝗜𝗧𝗛𝗠 (live generative techno)
❯❯❯ 𝗔𝗧𝗔𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗔 ❮❮❮
❯❯ L'atassia è un disturbo neurologico caratterizzato dalla perdita di coordinazione muscolare volontaria, che rende difficoltoso camminare, parlare, deglutire e compiere movimenti precisi, a causa di un danno al cervelletto o ai nervi periferici. Non è una malattia in sé, ma un sintomo di varie condizioni, spesso progressive, che influenzano equilibrio, postura e linguaggio. In questo momento storico, dove libertà, informazione, cultura e pace vengono condannate al totale scollegamento tra loro, con attacchi sempre piu' violenti ,tra repressione e fake news, che portano l'umanità a non riuscire piu' a capire, a coordinarsi, a vedere un futuro sereno. Un momento storico che porta sempre piu' a difficoltà comportamentali, emotive e relazionali , generando fraintendimenti, portando all'isolamento, alla solitudine.. Una gravissima "atassia sociale" da cui dobbiamo difenderci.
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Soirée de soutien au Carnaval populaire de la Guill' 2026
Théâtre de l’Elysée, samedi 13 décembre à 18:00 UTC+1
🎉 Youhou, c’est la soirée de soutien au Carnaval Populaire de la Guill’ ! 🎉
La 2e édition se prépare tranquillement (mais sûrement !) et cette année à nouveau, on remet ça joyeusement : un projet artistique qui se suit sur toute l’année, avec plusieurs ateliers pour fabriquer masques, costumes et marionnettes, ouverts à tout·es ! Oui oui, toi aussi tu peux venir créer des créatures fabuleuses avec nous !
Et comme ce n’est pas un carnaval sans un peu de magie (et quelques p’tits sous pour acheter du super matos), on vous propose de faire la fête ensemble avant d’hiberner sous nos poils de bête, en attendant de ressortir flamboyant·es au printemps 🌺✨
Pour ça, on vous mijote une fiesta aux petits oignons (sans chaudes larmes hihihi).
📅 Quand ?
Le 13/12 (évidemment !) à partir de 18h.
📍 Où ?
Au Théâtre de l’Elysée, 14 rue Basse-Combalot.
🎭 Au programme :
🎥 18h30 — Projection du documentaire “Des Feux & des Rois” de Ilias Jaoui (1h de voyage en plein cœur de l'édition précédente!)
🎟 Une tombola carnavalesque pleine de surprises
🎶 De la musique klezmer en live avec le Quintet Ariane (préparez vos hanches, ça va swinguer !)
💿 Un DJ set zinzin pour faire vibrer vos popotins jusqu’au bout de la nuit
💸 Entrée libre avec caisse de soutien : si tu veux boire, manger, danser, participer à la tombola ou simplement aider le carnaval à rayonner dans le quartier, pense à prendre du cash !
Viens, ramène tes ami·es, et surtout : prépare-toi à une soirée bien barrée et complètement joyeuse ! 🎭🔥
https://agenda.villemorte.fr/event/soiree-de-soutien-au-carnaval-populaire-de-la-guill-2026
-
Soirée de soutien au Carnaval populaire de la Guill' 2026
Théâtre de l’Elysée, samedi 13 décembre à 18:00 UTC+1
🎉 Youhou, c’est la soirée de soutien au Carnaval Populaire de la Guill’ ! 🎉
La 2e édition se prépare tranquillement (mais sûrement !) et cette année à nouveau, on remet ça joyeusement : un projet artistique qui se suit sur toute l’année, avec plusieurs ateliers pour fabriquer masques, costumes et marionnettes, ouverts à tout·es ! Oui oui, toi aussi tu peux venir créer des créatures fabuleuses avec nous !
Et comme ce n’est pas un carnaval sans un peu de magie (et quelques p’tits sous pour acheter du super matos), on vous propose de faire la fête ensemble avant d’hiberner sous nos poils de bête, en attendant de ressortir flamboyant·es au printemps 🌺✨
Pour ça, on vous mijote une fiesta aux petits oignons (sans chaudes larmes hihihi).
📅 Quand ?
Le 13/12 (évidemment !) à partir de 18h.
📍 Où ?
Au Théâtre de l’Elysée, 14 rue Basse-Combalot.
🎭 Au programme :
🎥 18h30 — Projection du documentaire “Des Feux & des Rois” de Ilias Jaoui (1h de voyage en plein cœur de l'édition précédente!)
🎟 Une tombola carnavalesque pleine de surprises
🎶 De la musique klezmer en live avec le Ariane Quartet (préparez vos hanches, ça va swinguer !)
💿 Un DJ set zinzin pour faire vibrer vos popotins jusqu’au bout de la nuit
💸 Entrée libre avec caisse de soutien : si tu veux boire, manger, danser, participer à la tombola ou simplement aider le carnaval à rayonner dans le quartier, pense à prendre du cash !
Viens, ramène tes ami·es, et surtout : prépare-toi à une soirée bien barrée et complètement joyeuse ! 🎭🔥
https://agenda.villemorte.fr/event/soiree-de-soutien-au-carnaval-populaire-de-la-guill-2026
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🔴 #A7Radio > #Sport > #WWERAW ✅
https://a7productions.blogspot.com/p/7-radio-100-mix.html📌 #WWE - Reigns entre pour sa cérémonie ⭐️
✳️ Jimmy l'accompagne quand Jey parle avec Fatu pour le dissuader de venir.
Mais Fatu attaque la Bloodline, le Champion se venge, mais se fait detruire une nouvelle fois Reigns.
Ce n'est pas terminé !#Catch #Wrestling #Tv #Highlights #Live #Sports #Results #Debrief #Resume
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🔴 #A7Radio > #Sport > #WWERAW ✅
https://a7productions.blogspot.com/p/7-radio-100-mix.html📌 #WWE - Reigns entre pour sa cérémonie ⭐️
✳️ Jimmy l'accompagne quand Jey parle avec Fatu pour le dissuader de venir.
Mais Fatu attaque la Bloodline, le Champion se venge, mais se fait detruire une nouvelle fois Reigns.
Ce n'est pas terminé !#Catch #Wrestling #Tv #Highlights #Live #Sports #Results #Debrief #Resume
-
🔴 #A7Radio > #Sport > #WWERAW ✅
https://a7productions.blogspot.com/p/7-radio-100-mix.html📌 #WWE - Reigns entre pour sa cérémonie ⭐️
✳️ Jimmy l'accompagne quand Jey parle avec Fatu pour le dissuader de venir.
Mais Fatu attaque la Bloodline, le Champion se venge, mais se fait detruire une nouvelle fois Reigns.
Ce n'est pas terminé !#Catch #Wrestling #Tv #Highlights #Live #Sports #Results #Debrief #Resume
-
🔴 #A7Radio > #Sport > #WWERAW ✅
https://a7productions.blogspot.com/p/7-radio-100-mix.html📌 #WWE - Reigns entre pour sa cérémonie ⭐️
✳️ Jimmy l'accompagne quand Jey parle avec Fatu pour le dissuader de venir.
Mais Fatu attaque la Bloodline, le Champion se venge, mais se fait detruire une nouvelle fois Reigns.
Ce n'est pas terminé !#Catch #Wrestling #Tv #Highlights #Live #Sports #Results #Debrief #Resume
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🔴 #A7Radio > #Sport > #WWERAW ✅
https://a7productions.blogspot.com/p/7-radio-100-mix.html📌 #WWE - DOminik défend son titre AAA ⭐️
✳️ Balor s'est occupé de JDM. Il sera tout seul cette fois contre Grande Americano Original.
Match plutôt bon, mais résultat attendu.#Catch #Wrestling #Tv #Highlights #Live #Sports #Results #Debrief #Resume
-
🔴 #A7Radio > #Sport > #WWERAW ✅
https://a7productions.blogspot.com/p/7-radio-100-mix.html📌 #WWE - DOminik défend son titre AAA ⭐️
✳️ Balor s'est occupé de JDM. Il sera tout seul cette fois contre Grande Americano Original.
Match plutôt bon, mais résultat attendu.#Catch #Wrestling #Tv #Highlights #Live #Sports #Results #Debrief #Resume
