Month: April 2020

The Roundup

Iowa Burr Oak By David Jacobi

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) “is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. BHL is revolutionizing global research by providing free, worldwide access to knowledge about life on Earth.” They provide access to “hundreds of thousands of volumes, comprising over 58 million pages, from the 15th-21st centuries.”

Here is a brief biography of poet John McCrae, which contains a link to his most famous poem.

Science.gov “makes it possible for users to search over 60 databases, over 2,200 websites, and over 200 million pages of authoritative federal science information in many formats, including full-text documents, citations, scientific data supporting federally funded research, and multimedia.”

Frugal Village is a “frugal living community with emphasis on debt reduction, consuming less, recycling and helping each other bridge the gaps for a sustainable future.”

Again Moon to Sun

Sunset Behind The Hill By David Jacobi

I close the door

On the full moon

It hangs in the night sky

Like a dream not remembered

I look out the window

As it travels and sings

Glowing there

A reminder of past nights

The evening moves on

As does the grey orb

Filling me with yearning

Shining down tenderness

I am transfixed

Until the first rays

Of the yellow replacement

Sun rise, moon forgotten

2019 By David Jacobi

A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains

A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains

A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird (1831-1904) is a book that began as a series of letters. Isabella was prompted to travel to improve her health, and she made stops in the United States, Australia and Hawaii, writing books about her travels. By 1873 she was in the US again exploring the Territory of Colorado, sending letters to her sister back home in England describing her adventures in the mountains. The letters were latter edited and assembled as A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains. The book gives the reader a glimpse of life in the sparsely populated area and descriptions of the beautiful scenery as she travels by horseback through the mountains. One of the main characters she meets is “Mountain Jim” Nugent, a local hunter, trapper and “desperado.” She is both morally repulsed and intellectually attracted to the drunken mountain man who can converse with her intelligently on any subject. There may have also been a physical attraction as well, as she writes, “He has large grey-blue eyes, deeply set, with well-marked eyebrows, a handsome aquiline nose and a very handsome mouth.” She arrived in the mountains in autumn of 1873 and made her 800 mile journey by horseback into the early winter, lodging with various locals, who she describes along with the magnificent terrain. A fun and fascinating tour of the mountains and the people who lived in them at the tail end of the old west.

Spring Shuffles Along

Spring willows on our acreage

A few hundred yards to the north of our acreage runs a strip of Highway 20, the longest road in the United States. Lucinda Williams has an album titled “The Ghosts of Highway 20”, using the highway as metaphor for memory. Traffic moves along on 20 unabated, day and night, despite the pandemic. If the wind is from the north we can hear it, but if it is from the south we can only see it. The robins are mating, hunting worms and singing down the sun at dusk. A pheasant will squawk now and then in the distance. A few weeks ago Shelly was driving around dawn and spied two glowing eyes off to the side of the road. When she slowed down to get a better look it was a fox. All of our white willow trees have leafed out while the other trees still have buds. The farmers have begun discing the surrounding fields, and our road has been busy with pickup trucks and tractors coming and going. We had a high of 81 degrees one day last week and a few days ago it was half that and now we are expecting snow, freezing rain and high winds on Easter Sunday. Old Man Winter is trying to come back but he will loose, more and more.

Website Review: Knewz

Knewz

For the last few months I have been checking out a new site for news updates. Unlike the Drudge Report this site organizes by topic. From their About page: “Easy to use and free, Knewz offers a constantly updated menu of stories from a spectrum of substantive sources. We link directly to publishers’ sites, fully supporting the work of journalists. We honor original reporting, favoring genuine scoops over crass clickbait. Most important, we provide a range of perspectives in the stories we showcase, from publications large and small, liberal and conservative, niche and general, located in all 50 states.”

Zucchini Lasagna

Zucchini Lasagna

My wife is on the Keto diet, which puts me on a semi-Keto diet. That means trying lots of new recipes, most of which have been pretty tasty. This one substitutes zucchini for the pasta in lasagna.

Ingredients:

1 pound Italian sausage, cooked and drained

1 jar spaghetti sauce

1 15 ounce container Ricotta cheese

2 eggs

16 ounce bag of shredded cheese

2 medium zucchini, sliced lengthwise with a vegetable peeler

Parmesan cheese

Mix the first five ingredients together. In a greased 13 X 9 baking dish alternate layers of the mix and the strips of zucchini, as you would if using lasagna noodles. Top with a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese. Bake at 375 degrees for 35 to 45 minutes.