Climatic Dust

Interesting article on understanding a mote of climate change - How soil shatters like glass, and what that means for climate change.

Autumn Chant

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Now the autumn shudders
In the rose's root.
Far and wide the ladders
Lean among the fruit.

Now the autumn clambers
Up the trellised frame,
And the rose remembers
The dust from which it came.

Rose Hips

Brighter than the blossom
On the rose's bough
Sits the wizened orange,
Bitter berry now;

Beauty never slumbers;
All is in her name;
But the rose remembers
The dust from which it came.

Happy Equinox!

Dusty Skies Lyrics

by Cindy Walker (recorded by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys)

Dusty skies I can't see nothing in sight
Good old Dan you'll have to guide me right
If we lose our way the cattle will stray
And we’ll lose them all tonight
Cause all of the grass and water's gone
We'll have to keep the cattle moving on

Tommy Duncan

Sand blowing I just can't breathe in this air
I thought it would soon be clear and fair
But dust storms played hell with land and folks as well
Got to be moving somewhere
Hate to leave the old ranch so bare
I've got to be moving somewhere

Get along doggies we're moving off of this range
I never thought as how I'd make the change
The blue skies have failed so we're on our last trail
Underneath these dusty skies
These ain't tears in my eyes
Just sand from these dusty skies

Its been reported that Tommy Duncan, singer for Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, cried the first time he sang these lyrics.

Rain Dust

Dusty, organic, artificial, mineral, radioactive, calcium, acid, lead, toxic, particles and molecules of dirt in drops
Wind blown from deserts, volcanoes, power plants, automobile emissions, fossil fuels, agricultural crops, droughts, or other cosmic, galactic, and terrestrial sources

Picked up in the Sahara sands, Africa, Mars, China, Asia, Arabia, and other locales
Colored in red, yellow, white, brown, ashen gray, blood, blue, black, green, and more
Suspended as nuclei seeding rain, ice, snow, or other atmospheric aerosols
In storm clouds with lightning, soot, mud, gas, microbes, thunder, and other debris
Particles of condensation entrain pollutants in micro-physical climates of air defeating control or suppression
Alien to our understanding and threatening to our lives

Harvest Dust

"The true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched." - Henry David Thoreau

Also, from a nice poem for this theme - Kentucky Harvest by John T Banasiewicz Jr:

"Haze of brown harvest dust flying high
Changing the bright color of the sky"

And from a poem with a different feel - Harvest Song by Jean Toomer:

"My eyes are caked with dust of oatfields at harvest-time.
I am a blind man who stares across the hills, seeking
stack'd fields of other harvesters."



Finally, from a poem fitting the overall theme of this blog nicely - Dust by C. K. Williams:

"Last, hovering dust of the harvest, brief
as the half-instant hitch in the flight
of the hawk, as the poplets of light
through the leaves of the bronzing maples.

I feel pressed to mention that googling this post's title, Harvest Dust, will bring up many links to articles on the impacts of various types of harvest dust on the lives of field workers and others. Having been partly raised in a farming area, this did not surprise me, but it may be news to many of you who don't share my upbringing.

Dust in the Wind

Kansas (1977) by Kerry Livgren

I close my eyes
only for a moment
and the moment's gone
all my dreams
pass before my eyes a curiosity
dust in the wind
all we are is dust in the wind

Same old song
just a drop of water
in the endless sea
all we do
crumbles to the ground
though we refuse to see
dust in the wind
all we are is dust in the wind

Now, don't hang on
nothing lasts forever
but the earth and sky
it slips away

And all your money
won't another minute buy

Dust in the wind
all we are is dust in the wind
dust in the wind
everything is dust in the wind

Summer Dust

The unseasonably cool temperatures around Central Texas have fled, replaced by triple-digit highs. Summer has arrived, but more humid than usual. The grasses are dying. The dust is rising. A few gentle blossoms remain for our comfort.

"The good die first, and they whose hearts are dry as summer dust, burn to the socket."
-- William Wordsworth

"No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book."
-- Ellen Glasgow

"The wide stare stared itself out for one while; the Sun went down in a red, green, golden glory; the stars came out in the heavens, and the fire-flies mimicked them in the lower air, as men may feebly imitate the goodness of a better order of beings; the long dusty roads and the interminable plains were in repose--and so deep a hush was on the sea, that it scarcely whispered of the time when it shall give up its dead."
-- Charles Dickens

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death."
-- William Shakespeare

"The gentian's bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun."
-- Helen Hunt Jackson

Dust Bowl

"The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it." - John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5

"No cracked earth, no blistering sun, no burning wind, no grasshoppers are a permanent match for the indomitable American farmers and stockmen and their wives and children, who have carried on through desperate days and inspire us with their self-reliance, their tenacity and their courage." - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Stardust

Did you know you can usually be positively identified by only 3 pieces of information? Your birth date, gender, and zip code are typically enough for experienced data analysts to pinpoint everything about you. But, its still harder to identify a planet circling any other solar system than ours, so you should feel at perfect ease. Right?


Photos courtesy of NASA Hubble Project - click for larger image.

Swimming in a Sea of Time

To or fro' cross rippling waters
Back or forth 'twixt wrack and ruin
Fract or join the mundane stories
Lose or gain some precious truths
Fall or climb with speed and sloth
Death or life the ports of call

Dust to Dust

Brazen fallen heros never praise their foes
Callow living victors often speak their woes
Many storied legends come from lurid bards
How then shall we sift through fortune's cards?

 

 

Celebrate National Poetry Month before it's too late!

Dust and Ashes

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” - Berthold Auerbach

"You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.” - Maya Angelou

"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” - Pablo Picasso

"Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten” - Neil Gaiman

"Excuse my dust” - Dorothy Parker

Mountains to Stones to Dust

"With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope." - Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior, from "I have a dream" speech delivered 28 August 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." - Picasso

"I have no other view than to promote the public good, and am unambitious of honors not founded in the approbation of my Country." - George Washington, General - Continental Army, January 1778, Valley Forge, PA in a leeter to Congress

"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." - Oscar Wilde

"Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water." - Zen koan

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein

"Chance favors the prepared mind." - Louis Pasteur

"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom."-- Albert Einstein

"Drive thy business or it will drive thee." - Benjamin Franklin

Motes in the Data Stream

First, I must say that many of my job experiences have touched on the data collection and analysis issues presented so well in a recent book called The Numerati by Stephen Baker. Whether you are technically-minded or a technophobe, Steve presents a very interesting read on an aspect of technology that has been growing exponentially for years.

Yes, big brothers or sisters are watching you, though not always in the ways you may expect or fear. In most cases, you are not being singled out for attention, but are being constantly assigned to peer groups, tribes, or market segments using statistically determined information collected about you, your family, your household, or anything else that can help a marketer target you with significant offers or options that generate revenue for the marketer's organization. More insidious uses are also implied by these techniques when used for industrial espionage. worker monitoring, political campaigning, or national security. I won't elaborate further- Steve Baker has already covered these and other uses of advanced data mining and modeling in his book. If interested, buy it and read it.

Some key technologies have made all of these manipulative approaches possible. These technologies continue to evolve. The Internet, clusters of servers, analytical databases and tools that crunch huge volumes of data, massively parallel computing, business intelligence, data warehousing, social networking, analytical customer relationship management, and on-line commerce are just a few worth mentioning. One of the points I find interesting is that all of these technologies were designed or developed to address other needs-mostly internal management requirements of large corporations or the statistical requirements of researchers. But now, very bright people, Baker's Numerati, are figuring out other applications that could use technology to manipulate micro and macro behaviors of people and groups of people.

Perhaps we should take a hard look at these outcomes before they truly result in some Orwellian or worse dystopia. As did Oppenheimer and his fellows, we may be releasing a very large and unwholesome genie from the bottle. Or possibly we already released it.

Cinders of Transcendance

"In this production of the classic fairy tale by Austin Lyric Opera, Cinderella is transported to the magical land of 1930's Hollywood musicals. One thing hasn't changed, though - and that's the timeless beauty of Gioachino Rossini's transcendent score."

Someone writing the above copy for tonight's KLRU PBS broadcast of Cinderella may have been a little over the top, or even out of this world, in their choice of "transcendent" as an aesthetic judgement for Rossini's music. Though not as well known or popular as the current ALO production of Rigoletto, La Cenerontola is indeed a classic fairy tale that fits well inside the semi-mythical setting of Hollywood's movie musicals. I also believe some of this score to be great and timeless music, but the quote made me think about why the opera itself is so apt to a drastic change in its presentation. This line of thought led me into the realms of philosophy, including some forks into epistemology, rationalism, psychology, and some of the other branches of the tree of knowledge.

"To say of something which is that it is not, or to say of something which is not that it is, is false. However, to say of something which is that it is, or of something which is not that it is not, is true." - Aristotle

First, I have been accused of being both skeptic and optimist--a combination that may complement the rationalist label I would most often apply to myself. Seeking the truth of a proposition using logic seems to me the best approach, though as I've grown older the issues of belief and ethics have impinged ever more heavily on my deliberations.

The Cinderella story embodied in this opera presents archetypical characters that occur often in folklore, literature, and other forms of storytelling throughout the history and pre-history of humans. The heroine may even be an epitome of the Magical/Innocent Child Survival personality archetype classified by Jung. Cinderella, like Candide, is faced with aspects of "the problem of evil" in "the best of all possible worlds" embodied in the behavior of her fellow characters. With even superficial review, traits of other archetypes known as the Devil, Angel, Knight, Kingmaker, Child Hero, Professor, or Kindly Mentor quickly emerge from this libretto. And, as dictated by our expectations of an ideal ending for these stock characters, the good people are rewarded with "living happily ever after" while the bad get their just deserts.

Okay, I know that's a lot of over-simplification. But I think it sets the Cinderella story squarely where it belongs in the context of this adaptation. A classic story with characters immediately identifiable to the audience is relatively easy to recast in time and space, especially from a mythical kingdom into a mythical Hollywood. Best of all, our heroine transcends all adversity singing gorgeous music.

"True philosophy must at all costs be idealistic; indeed, it must be so merely to be honest." - Shopenhauer

Dust of Centuries

"In God we trust, all others bring data." - W. Edwards Deming

"Trust no one, not even yourself." - Josef Stalin

"In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." - Thomas Jefferson

"America is always becoming." - Walt Whitman

"I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for our victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit." - President John F. Kennedy

"I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one...And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice." - Theodore Parker

"I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"a liberal man is too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel." - Robert Frost

"If I can't dance, it's not my revolution" - Emma Goldman

"intellectual activity consists mainly of various kinds of search." - Alan Turing