Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
I took the photo on a glorious autumn morning almost exactly one year ago – 10.26 am, 29 October 2019, Labahe, Sichuan, China.
In Scotland, more than half a century earlier, Robin Williamson wrote my favourite autumn song.
Allegedly, October Song was the first song he ever wrote, as a teenager.
One CommentAsia’s wild asses are different from Africa’s, and larger too.
All but one kind are generally reckoned subspecies of Equus hemionus, the Asiatic wild ass or onager.
Pictured above and below is the khur or Indian wild ass, Equus hemionus khur.
Once widespread, in large numbers, khur now only number several thousand individuals, most of them in the Little Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, western India.
Comments closedInarguably, much of it is perplexing.
Arguably, however, it often reveals the actual nature of what is now routinely described – by those not under its yoke – as an “authoritarian” regime.
”Totalitarian” is, I think, a more accurate descriptor.
Comments closed…or just a “wicked” sense of humour from a graffitist on the “roof of the world”?
Comments closedRed Pandas are their genus’s only (two) species; further, they are the only living members of their family, Ailuridae.
They are only very distantly related to Giant Pandas.
Giant Pandas are bears, members of the Ursidae family.
Red Pandas are more closely related to weasels, skunks and raccoons, as fellow members of the superfamily, Musteloidea.
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It is a great pleasure to encounter a non-gloating, happy person – one who appears comfortable in their own skin, who requires “no particular reason” to be happy, who radiates contentment, is fully alive, and not “on guard”.
Such encounters do not require a common language, nor any words to be spoken.
Typically, no commercial transaction is involved, no contest, no “big event”…
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Pikas are the Tibetan Plateau’s most numerous mammals.
The pictured individual was still alive, just…
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Could Sir Mick and his fellow Rolling Stones really be so dangerous, still?
…and who knew that they lurked within a nature Reserve in China?
Lock up your pandas!
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Ugly Beauty is a composition by Thelonious Monk.
Received notions, prejudices and phobias can prevent people from seeing or hearing clearly.
Less so posthumously, but very much so during his lifetime, many just did not “get” Monk’s music – for reasons not hugely dissimilar to those which can blind people to an arachnid’s or a reptile’s beauty.
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Today’s song with words is a lovely celebration of daybreak on “the spine of England”.
Its image comes from “the roof of the world”, where even flat, “low” places are several thousand metres higher than England’s Pennine Hills.
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