Not my bird.
I will be brief tonight probably. Please check out my new Substack page that focuses on Paleontology and imaginary recipes for things like Trilobites, Ammonites and other extinct (and some not so extinct if they were alive back then as well as today). Anyone who subscribes will get the posts and have access to the archives. Paid Subscribers will support my efforts and have the ability to comment, telling everyone about their own paleontological experiences or imaginary fantasies or even theories or anything paleontological.
See https://thepaleogenediet.substack.com
I love the title! The Paleogene ended 23.03 million years ago (ma) and began when the asteroid killed the dinosaurs. Everyone knows about the Paleo Diet and some know about Genes and Genetics. My Substack will be about neither, except while pranking. Its just a great play on words. If it was about how the Paleo Diet affects one’s DNA (kind of in the same way that COVID vaccines change our DNA lol) I would have named it the “The PaleoGene Diet”. I simply don’t want to write yet another relatively worthless and poorly researched tome about healthy food and the mysteries of how any diet relates to one’s chromosomal makeup. Life is too short to write just any cookbook. This idea of a fossil cookbook is something my wife Nancy and I have been discussing ever since we fell in love in 1987.
I am going to tweak the new Substack page first thing in the morning and make sure everything is working. Then start writing a post giving some background and where I plan to proceed. This could be fun!
Welcome to Daylight Savings Time. Putin’s War has been big in the news and big in my mind - especially his threats about his nuclear arsenal. Seriously? There are some pundits who said that he wouldn’t go that far. I imagine there were pundits back in the 1930s who similarly predicted that Poland wouldn’t be invaded. Much of the globe survived that war and eventually thrived. After a nuclear exchange between the superpowers, there will be nobody around to exclaim “Well Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!” Maybe the rats and cockroaches.
Last night I joked on Facebook that Mr. Putin has decided to move the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ahead one hour, going from Standard Time to Daylight Savings Time. That was less and less funny today as the shelling got closer and closer to the Polish border. Last I heard was that any breach of that border - even if accidental - will require a NATO response. Note that the clock is actually set only 100 seconds before midnight. It reminds me of the scene in Independence Day where Jeff Goldbloom opens his laptop and sees the timer go to 0:00. He looks up and says “Time’s Up”.
Otherwise the day was okay. I have started watching and commenting on John Avarosis’s YouTube live stream. He has the absolutely best distillation of the news about the war that I have seen. This weekend he was a bit distracted by the transition from doing this entirely on TikTok until Russian Trolls got him banned (claiming his reporting and commentary as “hate speech”) to a multi-platform stream simultaneously on YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, Instagram, Twitter and a few other platforms. In a day or two he will be back to his full performance. Here is is YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnAravosisDC/featured His next live stream will occur tomorrow at 7PM Eastern Daylight Time, 4PM Pacific Daylight Time.
Nancy and I then took a cold walk at Point No Point. We saw a small flock of Brants in the water. Afterwards some of the usual puttering on Sunday. One of the local woodturners came by and helped himself to a few pieces of the cherry tree we cut down. I am setting aside a few for myself and hoping all of the larger pieces get turned into bowls and other turnery. Its a great thing to see this tree used for this, instead of just firewood.
Lots of writings and emails today - a great talk with one of my earlier Folk Flute clients who is next in line for a keyed flute. The former Assistant Principal Flutist of the Chicago Symphony contacted me bout his Laurent Glass Flute from 1819 that plays excellently. Nancy made Pumpkin Pie and I discovered my Conglomerate and Eggs recipe and suddenly hatched my cookbook. My body says its about midnight and the clock says its almost 1AM. I will read HeatherCox Richardson’s latest and go to bed.