The World Is On Fire!

It seems that way when you step out your front door and see this:

It is fire season in Utah. This "Gun Range Fire" completely destroyed three homes up by Cheese Park (Twin Hollows) and damaged several others in the night. We were three blocks West of the evacuation zone but two blocks into the "soft" zone where they wanted no one but residents.

The fire started in the middle of the night. No cause has yet been announced. There were weather warnings about dry thunderstorms and winds last night that could have started fires.

My Declaration of Retirement

There is a tradition in retiring from our office of federal employees for the U.S. Department of the Interior (National Parks, Indian Affairs, Fish & Wildlife, Public Land Management, Reclamation (western water dams and management), Geological Survey, etc.) to send of a farewell email to All-Employees. They are usually friendly little good-byes with the occasional long diatribe of political sentiment pent-up in the "non-political" civil service until that day of release.

Mine was this:

That was a last-minute and appropriate replacement for my diatribe. I thought it best to save that for this blog. My post-departure comments are in [ ],  i.e., brackets. Here goes:

"The Ancient Yew" or "Otzi, We Barely Yew Thee"

My photo of one of the yews at St. Mary's Cusop, Herefordshire on the border with Wales.

Many people come to the yew tree with preconceived notions. Modern-day Druids want to believe the yews in British churchyards are from pre-Christian origins as they "return" to the ancient practices that were mostly made up by the Romans in their anti-Celt cultural wars. The author of the yew book* before last tried to convince the reader and perhaps himself that the British yews were all planted in churchyards by the Normans, or maybe the Saxons at a stretch.

My latest dive into yew lore is The Ancient Yew: A History of Taxus Baccata, by Robert Bevan-Jones (Oxbow Books, Oxford 2017). The author is amazing in his comprehensive assembly of the evidence. I think it is all there as well as can be gathered. There are extensive, footnoted sources. However, the writing style is a bit jumpy as is the presentation of the evidence. Bevan-Jones is strongest in his theme that the churchyard yews are "at least" 1500 years old which places them right at the time of the establishment of Christianity in Britain by the Celtic Saints. He first discusses the botanical challenges of the strange growth patterns of the tree and then presents the best estimates by charts and graphs to support his Celtic-Saint-planting theory.

But then came the Iceman. In the final chapter, "Yew: an Archaeological Perspective" (which perhaps should have come earlier at least in a chronological sense):

The Day Spring by Henry Vaughan, Silurist

On this Easter morn, I share another poem by my distant cousin, Henry Vaughan.

I Can't Fix America

Very few people read me. Fewer are convinced by me. That doesn't change the facts that America is corrupt at the top with the trump criminal conspiracy, down through the greedy hordes who want more by denying others, and the hypocrisy of the religious right that deals with the devil to promote its agenda.

Politics may have to do with out me for a while as I concentrate on other things. The fires of progressive rebellion still smolder in me. But with apathy, hypocrisy, and corruption all around, I will shrug off the latest tweets and news of the day and go with my new GIF:

The Daffodils Are Out!

Finally!

It is a wet Spring after late snow and we're only a month or so late for St. David's Day (Dydd Dewi Sant). Now I have the opportunity to share a poem I've been saving along with my dozens, if unfortunately not thousands, of daffodils:

Religion, Superstition, and Rationality in Scotland

Book Report: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (1824)

Flag of Presbyterian Covenanters, National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh

It's great to find a literary classic that I hadn't known before. Reading all I can devour about Scotland helps me be a better tour guide. This one intrigued me as it was listed as an odd book, a religious-psychological thriller that had served as inspiration to another Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, in writing Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It has sword fights, murder, mayhem, and a couple of strange games of tennis. What's not to like?