Art & Poem

There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate.
The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;"
And the white rose weeps, "She is late;"
The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear;"
And the lily whispers, "I wait."

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Maud, (Part 1, XXII, 10)

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Warmer Arctic spells colder winters. 'Unicorn' whales do scientists favor by taking Arctic temp
It's no secret that the proverbial canary in the climate change mine is the Arctic. As National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) administrator Jane Lubchenco noted when her organization launched its annual Arctic Report Card last week,“To quote one of my NOAA colleagues, ‘whatever is going to happen in the rest of the world happens first, and to the greatest extent, in the Arctic.’”

But, even as the Arctic warms, seemingly irrevocably, it is still a formidable environment in which to operate, particularly in the winter. The coasts of Greenland, in particular, act as pathways for ice from the Arctic Ocean, as a result of which winter research expeditions can require icebreaking vessels that cost millions of dollars to charter.

Consequently, in some areas, such as Baffin Bay, a large area between northeast Canada and southwest Greenland, winter data have been scarce -- or, in the words of Mike Steele of the University of Washington, "there was this gigantic, embarrassing hole."

Narwhal_satellite That hole is now being filled - thanks to narwhals, medium-size whales, endemic to the Arctic, known as unicorns of the seas because of the single, spiralling tusk found in males.  read more »

We Are Made One with What We Touch and See
by Oscar Wilde

We are resolved into the supreme air,
We are made one with what we touch and see,
With our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair,
With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree
Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range
The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

With beat of systole and of diastole
One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart,
And mighty waves of single Being roll
From nerve-less germ to man, for we are part
Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,
One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill. . . .

One sacrament are consecrate, the earth
Not we alone hath passions hymeneal,
The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth
At daybreak know a pleasure not less real
Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood
We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good. . . .

Is the light vanished from our golden sun,
Or is this daedal-fashioned earth less fair,
That we are nature's heritors, and one
With every pulse of life that beats the air?
Rather new suns across the sky shall pass,
New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass.

And we two lovers shall not sit afar,
Critics of nature, but the joyous sea
Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star
Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be
Part of the mighty universal whole,
And through all Aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!

We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be
One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years
Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,
The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!

May all World War II veterans and victims rest in peace.

(June 20, 2010) Edith Shain, the nurse in Alfred Eisenstead's famous Victory over Japan Day In Times Square photo, died in Los Angeles. She was 91.

Photos courtesy of Alfred Eisenstaedt / Getty

Original Source: hollywoodmemoir.com