Book Reading List - 2024

• Meditations: A New Translation - Author: Marcus Aurelius, Translator: Gregory Hays
• Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors - Author: Stephen E. Ambrose
• The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300 - 1850 - Author: Brian Fagan
• Thank You for Your Servitude - Author: Mark Leibovich
• Birding While Indian: A Mixed Blood Memoir - Author: Thomas C. Gannon
• The Wizard and the Prophet - Author: Charles C. Mann
• A Sand County Almanac - And Sketches Here and There - Author: Aldo Leopold
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus - Author: Charles C. Mann

Happy Earth Day! - Shanty Song

EARTH DAY SEA SHANTY
(Verse 1)
Come gather ‘round, ye mates so true,
With hearts as vast as ocean’s blue,
For today we sing, with joy and mirth,
A shanty for our dear old Earth!
(Chorus)
Our Earth, so fair and bright,
A beacon in the darkest night.
With every step, with every sway,
We honor Earth this special day.
(Verse 2)
From mountain peak to valley low,
From rivers wide to fields that grow,
We raise our voices, strong and clear,
To celebrate our home so dear.
(Chorus)
Our Earth, so fair and bright,
A beacon in the darkest night.
With every step, with every sway,
We honor Earth this special day.
(Verse 3)
On Earth Day’s morn, the sun does rise,
Painting hues across the skies.
The birds they sing, the trees they sway,
In homage to this wondrous day.
(Chorus)
Our Earth, so fair and bright,
A beacon in the darkest night.
With every step, with every sway,
We honor Earth this special day.
(Verse 4)
Reduce, reuse, recycle too,
Care for the Earth in all we do,
Ride your bike, plant a tree,
For the future and posterity.
(Chorus)
Our Earth, so fair and bright,
A beacon in the darkest night.
With every step, with every sway,
We honor Earth this special day.
(Outro)
So, raise your voices, raise them high,
For Earth Day’s call, it fills the sky.
With hope and love, we’ll pave the way,
To honor Earth, come what may.

Note: Shanty created via ChatGPT & Image created via Copilot AI).

Spring! - Limerick

On spring's first day, with sun shining bright,

Sunflowers and tulips take flight. 

Their colors so bold, 

As the world they unfold, 

In nature's magnificent light

Note: Limerick was created using ChatGPT and image was created using Copilot

Hike - Rodney Falls & Pool of WInds

Hiked with friends to Rodney Falls and Pool of Winds on the Hamilton Mountain trail. According to the trailhead sign, the hike to Rodney Falls is a moderately difficult hike of only about 1.25 miles. The Pool of Winds lies at the foot of Rodney Falls where there's a small natural viewing area that makes it possible to look into the narrow opening where the pool is. 

The water falling into the pool pushes the air out of a narrow opening resulting in a rush of wind; hence the name, "Pool of Winds". The water then cascades down a long slope sounding similar to a jet airplane taking off. Both Rodney Falls and Pool of Winds are awesome and well worth the hike. Going on a weekday worked out

nice since the trail is quite popular and can get crowded. The trail was a bit muddy in places with a down tree in one spot. Otherwise, easy peasy. 

Happy Lunar New Year 2024

February 10, 2024 marked the first day of the Chinese New Year and Year of the Dragon. The Chinese New Year, also known as the Lunar New Year is China's most important festival. I don't normally celebrate the Chinese New Year but this year decided to check out the celebrations at the Lan Su Chinese Garden in Portland, Oregon. Portland has some pretty cool gardens and I'd have to say, Lan Su Chinese Garden is one of the coolest. This was my fourth time visiting the garden and first time during the Chinese New Year celebration. Some of the highlights included -

• Large-scale lanterns including pandas and dragons
• Newly remodeled Chinese teahouse
• Live music played on a two-stringed Chinese Erhu
• Lion dances (missed this one)

Things I Learned On This Day (#TILOTD) –

• Lan Su Chinese Garden "is a walled Chinese garden enclosing a full city block, roughly 40,000 square feet (4,000 m2) in the Chinatown area of the Old Town Chinatown neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, United States. The garden is influenced by many of the famous classical gardens in Suzhou."  
• The Chinese New Year, is based on the Chinese calendar and uses a 12-year cycle of animal signs to represent each Chinese year. The twelve animals that represent each year of the Chinese zodiac are: the Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig, in that order. The animals are associated with various characteristics, such as luck, wealth, and good fortune. After every 12 years, the Zodiac Animals in the Chinese Calendar repeat themselves with a new Element each year. This amalgamation of twelve animals with five different elements goes on for a period of 60 years, creating 60 unique combinations.
• 
  I was born in the year of the dragon! 
  

Book Review - 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Title - 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Author: Charles C. Mann 
Date Read: January 2024
Rating: 👍👍👍👍👍

Review: Fantastic book. This book as well as its sequel, 1493, should be required reading for anyone who wants to truly understand America (Northern, Central and Southern). I highly recommend his book.

Description (Audible): Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus' landing had crossed the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago; existed mainly in small nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas were, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last 30 years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong.

In a book that startles and persuades, Mann reveals how a new generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques came to previously unheard-of conclusions. Among them:
In 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe.
Certain cities - such as Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital - were far greater in population than any contemporary European city. Furthermore, Tenochtitlán, unlike any capital in Europe at that time, had running water, beautiful botanical gardens, and immaculately clean streets.
The earliest cities in the Western Hemisphere were thriving before the Egyptians built the great pyramids.
Pre-Columbian Indians in Mexico developed corn by a breeding process so sophisticated that the journal Science recently described it as "man's first, and perhaps the greatest, feat of genetic engineering".
Amazonian Indians learned how to farm the rain forest without destroying it - a process scientists are studying today in the hope of regaining this lost knowledge.
Native Americans transformed their land so completely that Europeans arrived in a hemisphere already massively "landscaped" by human beings. Mann sheds clarifying light on the methods used to arrive at these new visions of the pre-Columbian Americas and how they have affected our understanding of our history and our thinking about the environment. His book is an exciting and learned account of scientific inquiry and revelation.

Book Review - A Sand County Almanac

Title - A Sand County Almanac - And Sketches Here and There

Author: Aldo Leopold 
Date Read: January 2024
Rating: 👍👍👍👍👍

Review: This is my second time reading this book. I first read it many years ago and it's one of the reasons I became interested in nature.This is a classic book that should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in nature and environmental literature.

Description (Audible): A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with an outspoken and highly ethical regard for America's relationship to the land. As the forerunner to such important books as Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, and Robert Finch's The Primal Place, this classic work remains as relevant today as it was more than 70 years ago.

Happy New Year 2024 - Limerick

Good bye 2023

Hello new possibilities

This year let’s see

If we can possibly

Make this new year HAPPY!