Pokey LaFarge :: Central Time

The Root of All Things

It’s Mother’s Day, so let me talk about one of the two people that made me.

My mother was a steady, sensible rock my entire life. She was a constant life-long learner, perpetually curious, always reading, brave, tough when she had to be, and nobody's fool. 

She grew up as a single child in a small town in Kansas, went to Syria the day she got married, and traveled everywhere worth going to, from Petra to Zimbabwe, from Machu Pichu to Japan, from Paris to Mexico, from Mali to Peru, from Germany to Libya, from Turkey to Canada, from California to Lebanon, from Norway to Iran. She knew about the world because she had been in it, double-drenched in wonder.

Through it all she raised two kids who now have kids of their own, and as a teacher for over 40 years, she taught an army of school kids about insects and life cycles, patterns, and history, native cultures, and great story.  

My mom could bait a hook, build you bookshelves, raise a brood of chickens, make a lemon meringue pie, and haggle her way through an Arab bazaar earning respect in every stall.

And was she a terrierwoman?  Only for more than 80 years, first with Trouble, then Scoot, Stuff I, Stuff II, Pearl, and finally Darwin.

I am my mother's son, and damn proud of it.

On her 88th birthday, with her memory starting to slip like soup through a fork, I wrote her a letter, knowing that anything I said would slip away in a day or two, but knowing the paper could make it fresh every day.

——————————

 Dear Mom, 

Happy Birthday! 

It’s *not* hard to put into words how grateful I am for your lifelong love and nurturing. It’s a simple fact that without your calm and steady strength, I would have fallen off the planet long ago. 

Most of what I truly treasure — the things that give me deep joy — are values and appreciations fostered by you at an early age. 

You never thought a fascination with butterflies and beetles was the slightest bit strange. Indeed, you shared it with us and instilled it in us, showing us how to make nets from coat-hanger wire, broom handles, and old pillowcases, and ether jars with cotton balls and coffee filters. Fifty years later, and I still have my beetle collection, now supplemented by other collections of skulls and antlers, rocks and fossils. I am my mother’s child. 

Did anyone else’s mother make butterfly and praying mantis cages out of window-wire netting curled into cylinders and anchored into cake pans filled with plaster of Paris at the bottom, with another cake tin at the top to serve as a lid? Mine did, and as a consequence, I have spent over 5 decades in hedgerows marveling at chrysalis and cocoon, carrion beetles and horn worms. There is a world of wonder to be found in a strip of abandoned field, if only you will look. 

I grew up with hundreds of chicken eggs, carefully marked “X” and “O” on opposite sides with a pencil so they could be hand rotated several times a day over a 21-day hatching cycle by your consistent and punctual hand. A lightbulb provided heat and a water pan provided humidity, but the hard lessons about the vagaries and vicissitudes of life came from infertile eggs and from the poor unfortunates with imperfect yolk absorption who were quickly attacked and killed by their chirping and rapacious brethren. Mother Nature is not for sissies, and she always bats last. 

I have spent many decades with terriers, a seed first planted by you when you brought back a $5 black and white runt acquired from the back of a pet store on Pennsylvania Avenue. Scoot traveled from DC to Morocco, and Kansas to Algeria to Arlington before eventually settling under a marble headstone in the backyard of 1712 19th Street. All the other terriers that have followed — Stuff (1 and 2), Pearl, Darwin, Barney, Trooper, Sailor, Gideon, Haddie, Misto, and Moxie — are the fruit of that slip of a dog that you planted in our hearts. 

Above all, you showed us that if you pulled on any one thing, you would find it was connected to everything else. Travels in Europe and North Africa were a dizzying parade of dates and invasions, but the essential message was that everything had a past and few things were entirely self-made. The Romans had been everywhere, and the Moors had marched through Spain and even into Rome. History was about connections, same as the life cycles of plants and animals were connected to each other. It was a very big Life Lesson Plan. 

Through it all was your good cheer and natural modesty. Captive to kids, and raised in an era when the full potential of extraordinary women were given few outlets, you became a constant life learner who taught generations of children — including your own — how to fit together the dizzying parts of an ever-changing world. 

Truthfully, it’s been quite a life. The day after you got married you flew to Damascus, Syria and from there you saw and lived in Isfahan, Iran; Beirut, Lebanon; Salisbury, Rhodesia; Bamako, Mali; Tunis, Tunisia, Tangier, Morocco, and Algiers, Algeria. You visited (and dragged your ungrateful kids) to every major cathedral in Europe, motored up the Alps and through Norway and Sweden, took ferries from Spain to North Africa and from Libya to Sicily. You have been down the Amazon and up Machu Pichu, seen the Louvre in Paris and the first albino gorilla in Barcelona. You have been to Petra and Pompeii, the Calgary Stampede and the dripping forests of the Pacific Northwest. You studied Turkish rugs and taught yourself French, wore a jellaba to buy groceries from market women, and tried to make Christmas Trees for the kids in countries without Christmas Trees of any kind. Richard Halliburton was a piker compared to you! 

How you have managed to do it all and raise two kids and still laugh with ease is a model for the rest of us. I cannot imagine what diaper duty in Lebanon and Rhodesia was like, or how you managed to get us through chicken pox in Tunis, or the airport pretty much anywhere. I don’t think we were bad kids, but we were surely embarrassing, and no doubt loud, expensive, and inconvenient. I was trouble and terror from the start — a Caesarian section in Rhodesia in 1959. I apologize now and forever, and I know that was not the last of it. I have adult kids of my own now, and know the job never ends, thank God. 

There simply are not enough words to encompass all you have been to me. Above all, thank you for loving Carolyn and the kids and passing on all that is good to them as well. Your love and care has watered a lot of roots, not just my own. 

XXX OOO

Patrick

Overnight At the Vets Is Often a Scam

My dogs have all been spayed or neutered and picked up on the same day.

I insist on it, or go elsewhere.

Why?  

Simple:  a vet requiring an overnight stay for a scheduled healthy dog surgery is just bill-padding.  

About 90 percent of the time, dogs left overnight at the vet are being left without a human attendant of any kind. Instead, they are left in a strange kennel room with strange smells and often with strange noises. 

Why would I pay for no care and added stress on my dog, especially when that overnight stay can tack $1,000 more on to the bill?

In 2015, New Jersey passed “Betsy's Law” which requires veterinarians and animal hospitals to inform pet owners in writing if they do not have staff present for 24-hour monitoring. 

Research cited in the development of "Betsy's Law," found roughly 90 percent of veterinary offices and animal hospitals in the state did *not* provide 24-hour, on-site, overnight supervision for pets.

Two Baby Barred Owls In the Nest Box

Impatients Going In

THE POT BY THE MUDROOM entrance has a cast iron terrier perpetually going to ground. Every year, I plant impatients around it, and then watch it get swallowed up in the riot of color that follows.

Down 40 Pounds

Happy 100th Birthday, Sir David Attenborough

Sir David Attenborough turns 100 today!

It turns out the famous nature documentary-maker gets hate mail from Christians.

Why am I not surprised?

From The Guardian:

“Sir David Attenborough has revealed that he receives hate mail from viewers for failing to credit God in his documentaries. In an interview with this week's Radio Times about his latest documentary, on Charles Darwin and natural selection, the broadcaster said: ‘They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance.’

“Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give ‘credit’ to God, Attenborough added: ‘They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.’

“Attenborough went further in his opposition to creationism, saying it was ‘terrible’ when it was taught alongside evolution as an alternative perspective. ‘It's like saying that two and two equals four, but if you wish to believe it, it could also be five ... Evolution is not a theory; it is a fact, every bit as much as the historical fact that William the Conqueror landed in 1066.’”

https://youtu.be/KBeEqNKiSx8?si=2lBFni85dYbhfotM

Baby Barred Owls In the Nest Box

Thrilled at this. The box is right behind my shed, and about 30 feet from the hives.

The box was built in the late fall of 2023, and I believe this is the third year we’ve had chicks.

Box construction >> https://shorturl.at/sYZzf

A Ted Turner Appreciation.

Ted Turner has slipped the veil, and is now on the Other Side.  

Few people were as tough or tenacious as Ted Turner, and I can think of none as visionary.

Turner was a powerful and influential conservationist who understood that human population growth was the driver of destruction.

He was a population radical (as am I) who believed it was essential that the status of women be rapidly improved (through education, law, and economic empowerment), and that women be given affordable access to every tool in the family planning box. 

Ted thought there wasn’t a moment to waste. He was right.

Ted thought Earth might do fine with three billion people or so (the population of the globe in 1960), but not many more. I do not disagree.

Ted Turner cut a check for $1 billion to create the United Nations Foundation (equal to over $2 billion today) created the Captain Planet TV show for kids, and acquired millions of acres in the US to protect while demonstrating that economic utility was not antithetical to conservation.  And did Turner promote conservation hunting, as well as ranching on his vast US western land holdings?  Damn right he did, and no one has done it better.

Oh…. and Ted Turner also created CNN.

There’s lots of other stuff.  He owned the Atlanta Braves, as well as the largest Bison herd in the world (50,000 head).

He famously dated and married Jane Fonda, and though they divorced after 10 years, they were affectionate friends to the end.

And, of course, Ted sailed.  

I saw him only twice, both times in dockside Annapolis bars in the late 1970s. I was building sailboats back then, 20 miles away in the middle of exhausted Maryland tobacco fields, and one of my housemates was an Australian professional sailor. His girlfriend worked at the bar, and so I knew Ted frequented the establishment.  

Back then Ted could *drink*.  

I was no slouch in this department myself, but Ted was in another weight class. I quit drinking in 1981. Ted hung up his spurs in 2011. I was young and dumb, and he was lucky; once a cucumber becomes a pickle, there’s no going back.

Back in 2015, I referenced Ted Turner, in passing, as one of the things the South could lay claim to, and with considerable pride.

That’s still true.

Ted Turner was far from perfect, but he was most definitely one of the very good ones.

And guess what? 

Among Ted’s many accomplishments is that he and Warren Buffett and Bill Gates founded “The Giving Pledge,” in which they and other billionaires and millionaires promise to give their vast fortunes to charity.

As of October 2025, The Giving Pledge had more than 250 signatories from 30 countries, with a total of US $600 billion promised.

Ted may be gone, but I assure you his Legacy will be eternal.

Sail on Ted.

“Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.”

HP Lovecraft on American Republicans

"As for the Republicans — how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical 'American heritage'...) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead." —HP Lovecraft in a letter to Donalad Wandrei, November 8, 1936

Chicago Transit Authority :: I’m a Man

Legal Mass Murder, Every day

“There are many ways to kill. You can stab someone in the guts, take their bread away, not heal someone from disease, put someone in a bad living space, work someone to death, drive them to suicide, lead someone to war etc. Only a few of these are prohibited in our state.” - Bertolt Brecht

Example:  The Lancet medical has issued a peer-reviewed study that project that global US aid cuts could lead to at least 9.l4 million additional deaths by 2030, if the current funding trend continues. About 2.5 million of those deaths are projected to be children under the age of 5.

A Universe at My Feet

Masterpieces of Stick Craftsmanship

Raif Kiiips is a stick maker who consistently produces jaw-dropping works of affordable world-class art.

Talent run riot. 

To commission a stick >> https://raifkillips.com/?

Eagle Hunter H-R Recruitment Ad

The best recruitment ad I’ve ever seen, features a Kazakh Eagle Hunter and a powerful message.  ⬇️⬇️⬇️

.

▪️Kazakhstan's per capita GDP is over $15,000, surpassing Russia and China to lead among post-Soviet states outside of the Baltics.

▪️Annual per capita GDP growth was 3.46% in 2024, with long-term projections suggesting an approximately 29% increase by 2030, driven by oil, metal, grain, and PEOPLE LIKE THIS RECRUITER.

Milo’s First Mountain

San Francisco, Age 3

2.77 miles, 823 foot elevation gain, 1 hour 5 minutes.

Of Course There Are Dogs In Heaven

Cartoon by Ellis Rosen >> https://ellisrosen.com/

The Fox Did Not Kill a Cow!

I pulled this calf leg and joint out of the entrance to this fox den at this time eight or nine years ago. The mole was at the entrance to another hole nearby.

No, the fox did not kill a calf! This was most likely a still born calf that was dumped by the farmer (most farms have a location they dump the downers and the entrails).

The picture is posted, hopefully as a curative, for those fools who think fox are killing large numbers of sheep. For over 20 years, I have been offering a cash reward for anyone, anywhere, who can provide a video of a fix killing a sheep. Dogs? Lots of that, but no fox. Want that easy money? Come and get it!

This hole was at the bottom of a 15-foot gully drop, with a connecting hole at top. The den was dug by groundhogs, and I have taken a few from this location over the last decade or so. 

Not a great location for a dog unless it is small and can go all the way through.

This day, of course, the sette was left alone; I don’t dig on natal dens with kits inside.

A Wee Man Project is Waiting

Milo, my oldest wee grandson, is interested in bees, all on his own, and I got this picture today and smiled.  

No planning, and it comes together.

You see, I have a small 5-frame Nuclear Hive (nuc) kit he can easily assemble with just a little help, and then paint as he sees fit, when he visits.  I will then populate it with bees and send pictures to him telling him about his hive, his Queen, his workers, the type of trees and flowers, the bee predators, the bee diseases, and old Mamma Owl that nests in a box 30 feet away and 23 feet up an oak tree.

I can almost certainly write him a children’s book about nature, with him at the center, that might outlive us both.

Below, is what two 5-frame Nuc Hives looks like, painted up bright.

Austin Runs His First Marathon!

His time was 3:37, and he's signed up for two more marathons towards the end if the year. 

Less than 1% of the United States population has completed a marathon in their lifetime. Austin is 38, been running only a year, and his time makes him faster than 87.5 percent of all runners of his age and sex. Pretty damn impressive!

I Have Passed My “Sell By” Date

The good news is that “life expectancies at birth” are period data, not cohort data, which means they are as meaningless as “expiration dates” on canned foods.

The current life expectancy for my nationality, race, and gender is now 76.5 years, but that too is an underestimate, as it does not reflect the fact that I do not smoke (still the cause of 480,000 deaths a year in the US), do not drink alcohol (the cause of well over 170,000 deaths a year in the US), and do not use any pain or mood control drugs (the cause of well over 90,000 deaths a year in the US). Add in the fact that I do not engage in any “Darwin Award” activities other than running the occasional chainsaw, and I’ve probably got a few years ahead of me.

Boston, 1940

King Charles Gives a History Lesson

King Charles’ quip that “if it wasn’t for the British, Americans would be speaking French,” was a humorous nod to the French and Indian wars fought against British colonists.  

Of course it went right over the head of Trump, and most Americans, who are quite convinced the world was created the day they were born, and will disappear the day they die.

Most Americans do not know, or have not considered the fact that the United States was assembled from four European colonies “owned” by England, France, Spain, and Russia.

Land that was bought for cash includes the Louisiana Purchase (bought ON THIS DAY in 1803 from France for $15 million, or about 3 cents per acre), and Alaska (bought from the Russia Empire in 1867 for $7.2 million or about 2 cents per acre).

Lands acquired through war and treaty includes lands owned by Britain and Spain.  

The first map shown here greatly under-represents the Spanish claims, which extended up to Oregon (82nd parallel) under the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, and also much farther north and east (even into Canada).  

Basically all of the land that was NOT Oregon and Washington State was claimed by Spain (aka “New Spain”) right up to the line of the Louisiana Purchase.

France “owned” the land we now call “The Louisiana Purchase (then called “New France”) up until the secret 1762 Treaty of Fontainebleau, where France ceded Louisiana to Spain to prevent it from falling to Britain.

The land that became the Louisiana Purchase was owned by Spain (Spanish Louisiana, see third map) up to 1801, when it was sold or traded back to France (Napoleon) after the defeat of France by the British in the French-Indian Wars.  

Within a few years, the cash-strapped Napoleon decided to sell the Louisiana Purchase to the U.S., after it became clear France did not have the forces to hold it against the British, the native tribes, or the United States.

So far as I can tell, the only part of the US that has *never* been a claimed Europen colony is Oregon and Washington State.

Spain lost “New Spain” in 1821 when Mexico won independence.

Spain and Mexico’s claims shrunk considerably under the “Mexican Cession” which was forced by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which officially ended the Mexican–American War of 1846–1848.

The Mexican–American War, of course, was sparked by American illegal aliens entering Mexico and subsequently creating “The Republic of Texas” in order to create and maintain chattel slavery in their newly-claimed “independent” territory. 

The cry “Remember the Alamo” is, in fact, the first secessionist cry of what was soon to become the U.S. Civil War, which was **entirely** about slavery, as can be seen by reading the Articles of Secession written by the leaders of the Confederate States themselves.

The defeat of Mexico in the Mexican-American War, monumentalized by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, gave the United States control of the area that is now Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona, as well as parts of Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming.  Up until then, this was all land claimed by Mexico.

The Spanish–American War of 1898, between Spain and the United States, resulted in the U.S. acquiring sovereignty over Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, and establishing a protectorate over Cuba.

The First Tree Huggers

The first “tree huggers” were 294 men and 69 women belonging to the Bishnois branch of Hinduism, who, in 1730, died while trying to protect the trees in their village from being turned into the raw material for a palace. The villagers literally clung to the trees while being slaughtered by foresters in what is known today as the Khejarli massacre, but their actions worked, leading the Maharaja of Marwar to prohibit the cutting of trees in any Bishnoi village. Today those villages are a wooded oasis in the Thar Desert of western India

There’s No Winning the Rat Race

Cartoon by Ellis Rosen>> https://ellisrosen.com/

The Best Mussolini Is a Dead Mussolini

On April 28, 1945, Benito Mussolini and Clara Petacci (his mistress) were removed from a house and driven to the small village of Giulino di Mezzegra on the shores of Lake Como. They were ordered to stand in front of a stone wall at the entrance to Villa Belmonte where both were executed by machine gun fire.

On April 29, 1945, the bodies of Mussolini, Petacci, and three other executed fascists were loaded into a van and moved south to Milan. At 3:00 a.m., the corpses were dumped on the ground in the old Piazzale Loreto.

After being kicked and spat upon, the bodies were hung upside down from the roof of a service station and stoned from below by civilians.