041720

Given the amazing ability of the octopus,
to change its colors,
to hide in plain sight,
when all of the fish are gone,
when the land is brown,
and the last whale has been eaten,
how will we know
whether octopi have gone, too?

In the streets of New York,
under 80 feet of water,
mailboxes and fire hydrants
may get up and walk about,
prying open cans of tuna,
to get the very last fish.

012920b

5th avenue
tumbleweeds belie the rumor
where's that sea?

081319c

new New York
on the shores of Lake Superior
can't flood us now

022819b

Flute marks on Ordovician deep-water flysch, upstate New York, coin for scale.

021719b

Chelle took the Vegan
slug Ambassador to the beach 
I miss New York

041418c

digital Sue

remembers the taste of lox

real New York bagels

Three hour tour

They called this Manhattan, the guide said. Reputedly once sold for 24 bitcoins, at its height it was worth trillions. To the left you can see a few skyscrapers poking above the waves.

2 new book reviews

Christopher, Adam, 2012, Empire State, Angry Robot books, ISBN 978-0-85766-193-7.

The Empire State is an alternate New York City. It is a lot like New York, with superheroes, and without the rest of the world, and the story all takes place during Prohibition. Oh, and the people who live there think it's the entire world. Everything is gritty, dark, but kind of cool, at least until detective Rad Bradley discovers a deadly secret.

I really loved this book. The writing is great, and the complicated plot unfolds with the inevitability of sunset. Things start strange and get weirder, more frightening, and also more and more fun. Fun, that is, until Bradley, and the readers, start to see what is coming down the pike. Soon, you can’t put it down.

If you like science fiction, fantasy, and murder mysteries rolled into one, you really should read this book. PS: this is part of a series, but stands alone.

----------

Cotterill, Colin, 2016, I Shot the Buddha, Soho press, ISBN 978-1-61695-722-3.

This is the latest offering in a wonderful series about retired coroner Siri Paiboun. Paiboun lives a sometimes precarious existence in Laos with his wife Mme. Daeng. I have to admit that I don't know how accurate the book's portrayal of life in Laos is, but it feels authentic.

This is a murder mystery, set in a world in which magic most definitely works. Most people in the story don't believe in it, but it's real, and the protagonist is in it up to his eyeballs.

Paiboun and his wife have never been able to turn away strays and other misfits looking for a home. One day, a Buddhist monk they have taken under their wing rides out on his bicycle and never returns. Paiboun goes looking for him. Paiboun is dogged and smart, but between government agents and supernatural beings, not to mention just plain crooks, he's going to need all of his skills and wit stay alive, much less to find out what happened to the missing monk.

I could not help getting deeply involved with the characters and it was hard to put the book down. I recommend it to anybody who likes murder mysteries, especially if you like stories about magic. One of the best things about this book is that, if you fall in love with it, there are a lot more waiting for you. I have read two books in the series now, and I plan to find the rest of them soon.

071416b

The assault on the NYC subway grid proved the concept. It forced gothamites to buy locally.

Unconformity

Peter Hoffman points out the boundary between the Devonian Rondout Formation (above) and the Ordovician Normanskill (below). 1987 fieldtrip led by Anderson and Goodwin, upstate New York.

A fossil reef

A solid mass of finger shaped fossil corals composing a reef, Devonian of upstate New York. The reef is the size of a small hill; this is a very small part of it.

Sole Man

Professor Lai Zhiyun points to sole marks, specifically flute casts, on the underside of an upturned bed of Ordovician deepwater flysch. Upstate New York.

They were like sponges

This is an overturned silicified stromatoporoid in the Devonian Manlius Limestone in upstate New York. The stromatoporoid is not the little black thing at the end of the finger; it is the blobby object in the middle of the field of view. Stromatoporoids have been extinct for hundreds of millions of years, but they appear to have been a lot like sponges. They lived in warm shallow water, couldn't move around, and were structurally very simple. This one had some bad luck one day. Something, perhaps a storm, turned it upside down and it got buried in mud. Later, it was partly turned to silica (the major component in glass and the most abundant mineral near the Earth's surface). The silica is the lighter yellowish squiggly stuff inside the stromatoporoid.

Breaking Rock

Actually, this rock broke back in the Devonian Period. The white stuff is gypsum, which filled the spaces among the pieces of shattered rock, forming a new fabric and creating an altered rock that is called breccia. The light gray layer underneath is much older. It is Ordovician, and the surface in between represents an immense amount of time. This kind of surface is called an unconformity.

091513

In praise of spiders


yellow and black bars
say: don't fuck with New York
(not that our plethora of garden spiders
will see NYC, but they know the feeling)
if Rick Perry was a hexapod
they'd make short shrift, I can tell you.

the bay tree, the rose bush, cannas,
railing, window, another window,
porch posts, rose of sharon,
each has she who zips it till the
blunder bus hits the web
then bam!
all she wrote,
till it's egg-sacking time.

I ain't afeared, but I ain't
measured in grams
blind to their snazzy threads
basically a living juice box

and I don't do the wing thing.