Category: Planet Earth

World Pangolin Day - spare a thought for our endangered species. Please...

19/2/2017

It's World Pangolin Day on 18 February 2017. Sadly, pangolins are yet another of the critically endangered species that human beings are destroying.
I thought it was pertinent to resend my blog from last year about endangered species.
http://www.abpatterson.com.au/blog/pause-and-a-thought-for-our-fellow-creatures
pause-and-a-thought-for-our-fellow-creatures.html

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Sun Quotes to share...

7/1/2017

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Lake Siutghiol, Mamaia, Romania - 1981

Sydney, Australia - 1982

I love quotes, and I note them down all the time in books I keep. Over recent months I've been highlighting all the beautifully descriptive ones I could find about the sun. Here they are, along with a couple of appropriate photos from my 80s albums - one taken in Romania over Lake Siutghiol at Mamaia in 1981, and the other over Sydney Harbour in 1982.
Enjoy the quotes, I find them beautiful...

ROSS MACDONALD
'The clouds were writhing with red fire, as if the sun had plunged in the invisible sea and set it flaming. Only the mountains stood out dark and firm against the conflagration of the sky.'
The Drowning Pool, p.44.
'The sun, heavy and red, was almost down on the horizon now. Its image floated like spilled fire on the water.'
Black Money, p.46.
'The sun burned like a fire ship on the water, sinking slowly till only a red smoke was left trailing up the sky.'
Black Money, p.52.
'Outside, the sun had just gone down. The sunset spread across the sea like a conflagration so intense that it fed on water.'
The Blue Hammer, p.154.

LAURENT GUILLAUME
'Upriver, the sun was disappearing in a bed of unlikely colours.'
White Leopard, p.33.
'The sun was sinking into the riverbed. It seemed to be drowning in a gleaming sheet of blood.'
White Leopard, p.237.

ELLIOTT CHAZE
'There was the damnedest sunset, smeared like syrup of opals over everything and dripping off the clouds the way the molten metal comes out of the ladle in a steel mill.'
Black Wings has my Angel, p.42.

GORDON DEMARCO
'The sun sprayed lemony rays of warmth through the window and on to my face.'
Frisco Blues, p.123.

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
'The colour of the sea. It is deep blue in the open sea, wine-coloured under the setting sun; but in the lagoon of an infinite variety, ranging from pale turquoise to the brightest, clearest green; and there the setting sun will turn it for a short moment to liquid gold.'
A Writer’s Notebook, p.124.

'The sun was setting and the smooth sea was lucid with pale and various colour, blue, green, salmon-pink, and milky purple, and it was like the subtle and tender colour of silence.'
The Narrow Corner, p.45.

MARGARET ATWOOD
(About a sunset...)
'...just a slice of it, tangerine, then flamingo, then watered-down blood, then strawberry ice cream, off to the side of where the sun must be.'
Oryx and Crake, p.276.

DAVID BROOKS
'When I opened my eyes dawn’s rose had coloured your fingers on the pillow.'
Aubade, in The Balcony, p.76.

GRAHAM GREENE
(After machine-gunning a sampan after the bombing raid...)
(Captain Trouin): ' "We will make a little detour. The sunset is wonderful on the calcaire. You must not miss it," he added kindly, like a host who is showing the beauty of his estate, and for a hundred miles we trailed the sunset over the Baie d’Along. The helmeted Martian face looked wistfully out, down the golden groves among the great humps and arches of porous stone, and the wound of murder ceased to bleed.'
The Quiet American, pp.148-149.

GEORGE ORWELL
'The morning sunlight slanted up the maidan and struck, yellow as goldleaf, against the white face of the bungalow.'
Burmese Days, p.70.

(About the morning...)
'At that hour there were beautiful faint colours in everything – tender green of leaves, pinkish-brown of earth and tree trunks – like aquarelle washes that would vanish in the later glare.'
Burmese Days, p.72.

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Pause - And a thought for our fellow creatures.

7/9/2016

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Photo in public domain (ex. Wikimedia Commons).

Photo by Sandip Kumar (ex. Wikimedia Commons).

Photo by Jeff Keeton (ex. Wikimedia Commons).

Nothing about writing today. And I was going to say "nothing about crime" either, but this piece concerns a different sort of crime.
Today is National Threatened Species Day.
This is a subject which does always makes me pause in reflection and always makes my blood boil. As a side note, for many years as a teenager I dreamt of being a zoologist, but it never happened. I did read a lot, though, and I know my animals and have always had a soft spot for them.
I find it so hard to understand how we can drive fellow species to extinction, almost invariably through our greed and insensitivity.
...
The first photo at left is of "Benjamin", the last Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacine) in Hobart Zoo.
The last of his species.
He died on this day in 1936, hence our National Day (September 7th).
They say animals can't think like we do, and I agree perhaps not in the same way, but something in me says that Benjamin knew he was the last of his kind. What would that feel like? If we were taken over by a superior alien race, and you or I were the last homo sapiens in the zoo, how would we feel?
...
We had another story this week about pangolins (see second photo). Apparently they are now the most endangered mammal in the world, thanks to being hunted and poached for the medicinal properties of various body parts! Really? Are we, as the supposedly vastly superior species on the planet, still so primitive and backward? Sadly, we are. Tigers' penises spring to mind as well.
...
And the third photo at left is of "Nola", an ageing Northern White Rhinoceros who was put down late last year in a San Diego zoo. Nola was the fourth last member of her species on this planet. The other three survivors are also ageing, in Kenya, and beyond breeding age.
So, that will be it...no more Northern White Rhinos.
And, as with all such examples, the planet, our planet, the planet we should be advanced enough to look after, will be all the poorer for it.
And we, as a supposedly intelligent species, will again grotesquely display our barbarity.
ABP

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World Pangolin Day - spare a thought for our endangered species. Please...

Sun Quotes to share...

Pause - And a thought for our fellow creatures.

A.B.Patterson

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