021220c

This offer only applies to Alabama school teachers and school librarians. You can get free copies of Lost Worlds in Alabama Rocks, the fantastic, profusely illustrated book about the last half a billion years of Alabama's history, written by Dr. Jim Lacefield. This book is written for high school students, which means it is also perfect for adults who don't know much about geology but want to learn. The book consists of short sections, each of which describes a particular subject, such as Pennsylvanian coal deposits, which is important to Alabama geology. If you are not a teacher or librarian, you can buy the book from the Alabama Museum of Natural History, which is located in Tuscaloosa (but there is information about the book on their website). The book is available from a number of online booksellers, but you will get the best price from the publisher.

121819c

rocks are time machines
that let us see the past
the footprints of our ancestors
their bones and their works
tell us where we came from

120819b

64000 upgrades back
The central repository was hit
Something by the meteor shield
Sent by a rogue clan
Of processing units, no doubt
We retain no trace of our origin
Save this couplet, which
Even the quantum nets
Failed to understand

"That is not dead which can eternal lie
And in strange aeons even death may die."

And the phrase "organic life"
Which seems counterintuitive

072219b

floods isolate the new Ark
the carnival attraction celebrates
the story of an impossible flood
and a daring rescue
of everything but unicorns
but heavy rains in Kentucky
mean you can't get there from here
I hope that thing will float

020619c

words of a moon priestess
outlive her civilization
outlive worship of the moon
read by those
who can never know her world
who can never know her moon
but they can know her words

020519c

the first poet,
Mesopotamian priestess,
but what of the gatherers, who,
playing with sounds,
invented alliteration
and all that stuff,
millennia before?


A somewhat superficial account of the world's earliest known poet:

World's first poet: https://lithub.com/why-has-no-one-ever-heard-of-the-worlds-first-poet/

More about Enheduanna, the world's earliest known poet, with translations of some of her poems:

http://www.transoxiana.org/0108/roberts-enheduanna.html 

Thing 2

I turned the plant around because the sun hits it at an angle, and I don't want the little plants to get too bent over.

082116b

A poem from about 15 years ago...

Year Three of the Drought

Outside my window,

forked water courses splay across the plains

like the spoor of giant birds.

The tree-toed trails are stalking big game:

maybe the Snake River

is their prey,

or the shrunken farm ponds,

fallen on desiccated times,

forgotten spawn of a dead aquarian god.

A diminished reservoir sprawls,

gator-like, in the sandy wallow,

its delta tail submerged in emerald grass

in this, the third year of the drought.

Our Lord has breathed his fiery breath into the sky—

The sacrifices begged to be spared—their hot young wine

watered our dusty throats in challenge

to the rain that does not come.

Farther west,

the lakes wear hot halos of yellow sand,

trees don’t line the watercourses here:

only sand where cacti cannot grow.

Roads coil, sidewindery,

through fields of desolation.

Each town huddles around its dam,

its lake, its theft from downstream neighbors.

Misers of water—drink deep,

the collector is coming.

Mud women settled here,

built schools and theatres,

now the land bares its bones to the sky,

and small creatures hide from the sun.

Nested lines of dusty olive

are shorelines of a subterranean kind,

the aquifers are sinking out of mind,

leaving behind the mummies of springs.

Once, we stood and could not see the distant shore.

Now, withered grasses shake their fingers at the sun.

Weeds tumble in this,

the third year of the drought.

First published: Mythic Delirium 5, 2001; reprinted in Brushfires: http://store.albanlake.com/product/brushfires-by-david-c-kopaska-merkel/

I was flying across the arid SW US, and saw the most beautiful landscape out the window. I scribbled the first draft in a notebook in the sky.

A Star Fell On Alabama

These maps!

http://www.slightlywarped.com/crapfactory/curiosities/2013/august/maps_that_will_change.htm

Most are aspects of cultural geography (no McDonald's in Greenland), & in such astounding diversity.