Butterflies.

 

Monarch butterfly gets caught in abandoned spider web.  I have a couple of very sizable webs hung off my eaves.  After a couple of days of steady rain the spiders, big ones, abandoned the webs, I have not seen the spiders in several days.  But the webs are still up and this big Monarch butterfly got caught in one.  He fluttered and flittered and yanked himself around for a long time.  He must have been successful, I just looked for him and he was gone.  Good luck butterfly.  You are gonna need it this time of year.

Feathers in their bonnets

 The British are doing a great procession bringing Queen Elizabeth's body to Edinburgh Cathedral.  The Scottish honor guard is  wearing feathers in their bonnets.  First time I have ever seen what the old cliche looks like in real life.

Spider Webbery.

A spider spinning a web needs something to anchor the web to.  In nature a tree branch with a fork in it, that yields two branches maybe a foot apart works well.  A lot of other spiders have to make do with less.  I see them jumping off my eaves, trailing a thread of silk.  The lucky ones land on my deck railing, the unlucky ones just get blown away. Even the lucky ones are not that lucky.  It is a good ten feet from my eaves to the deck railing.  I never see the spiders climbing back up to spin a second thread. They need two anchor threads to keep the web spread out.  I don’t think spiders can see from my eaves to my deck railing.  I think they are just casting themselves to the winds, hoping for the best.   

9-11 21 years later.

 I was at work, at Analog Devices, that morning.  Someone came running thru the lab, crying out that New York had been bombed.  So I took the lab TV set; we had one because we were doing video compression work and we needed the TV to se if video looked good after being compressed and then decompressed.  I set the TV up out in the hall, on rabbit ears and it pulled in the major networks who were covering nothing besides 9-11.  Everybody on our floor of Analog Devices gathered around the TV, no one spoke.  We saw the World Trade center get hit and later collapse.  New York’s first responders ran into the stricken building to save people.  Many of them died when the building fell.

   Over the next couple of days everyone put an American flag, on a flag pole, on their cars or pickup trucks.  

Political TV ads get rough.

 The New Hampshire primary is Tuesday (the 13^th) only three days away.  Anyone who has a TV ad is running it now, before the primary.  Ads after the primary are wasted.  I had WMUR on this morning.  It was wall to wall political ads.  Some of them were attack ads, aimed at candidates some one did not like.  Accusations of corruption, ballot box tampering, pay offs, fingers in the till were right out there, front and center.  Tuesday’s results will be interesting. 

I am voting for Chuck Morse for Senate, Chris Sununu for governor, and I don’t know who for US rep.

Condolences on Queen Elizabeth's Death

 Condolences to the royal family, condolences to all the subjects of the queen, condolences to all who loved and admired her world wide.  I am old enough to remember when she ascended to the throne, and the impressive parade the British threw to commemorate the event.  I am extremely sorry to hear of her death. 

Sean Bean’s best role. Sharpe’s Rifles

The year is something like 1813, the place is Spain.  Sir Arthur Wellesley (later to become the Duke of Wellington) is leading a British army into Spain to drive out Napoleon’s army, and younger brother who has usurped the Spanish crown. Wellesley sets out for his morning exercise, a horse ride, with his dog coming along.  Suddenly troop of French cavalry appear and take after Wellesley.  At the last minute Sergeant Richard Sharpe appears on the scene, rifle in hand.  His first shot takes out the leading French rider, some quick hand-to-hand work rifle to sword takes care of the second, and a very quick reload takes out the last.  For saving his life, Wellesley promotes Sharpe to lieutenant on the spot.   

    Sean Bean is slender (something he lost by Game of Thrones years) in a snappy black rifleman’s uniform, a crack shot, a deadly fist fighter, an irrestible ladies man, just the right touch of a British accent.  It’s a series, 14 separate episodes, each episode an hour long.  Well filmed, excellent sound, all the dialog is understandable.  It’s been out for a while; I got it from the Melrose public library maybe 15 years ago.