We Are Stardust

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”  — Carl Sagan, Cosmos

The Trump Death Clock

Trump’s sand has run through the hour glass, and the beginning of the end is around the corner.

Yes, his health is shot, with visible lesions and carbuncles. 

His vanity hair medication can no longer be taken, because it interferes with his dementia medication. 

He’s taken numerous basic cognitive tests of the kind given to Alzheimer patients, which he thinks are IQ tests, which means he’s failing on both axis.

He has progressive heart failure, and has likely suffered at least one small stroke. 

He falls asleep in televised cabinet meetings, and his mind is so shot he cannot answer a simple question, tell a cogent story, or parse and string four related sentences together.  

But none of that is the end I am talking about.

Trump’s end is the end of the primary season.

Once the GOP primaries are over, Trump has no more cards to use. 

This is his last hand at his last game. 

Once the primaries are over, Trump can no longer credibly threaten or reward opponents or sycophants in his own party.

And his own party sees the end — both Trump’s, and their own if they continue to tie themselves to the mast of this sinking ship.

The writing on the wall in not hard to see; independents have run screaming from Trump, and even rural farmers are abandoning him as overseas markets disappear and fertilizer prices spike. 

The public cannot unsee the war, the gas prices, the jaw-dropping grocery store inflation, and levels of self-dealing and blatant economic and political corruption unseen since the days of Nero.

The GOP has become the pedophile protection party, the party willing to burn the Constitution and steal scores of billions from the wallets of taxpayers.

Epstein’s pedophilia and Trump’s protection of it , the crazy vanity projects, and the naked billion-dollar sell-outs to the Saudis, Israelis, and Russians are not hard to understand. 

Even low-information voters get that something is terribly, terribly wrong.

Even those who are proudly and defiantly racist, homophobic, and misogynist are embarrassed about the child raping, the 34 felony convictions, the tax frauds, and the billion dollar treasury thefts and foreign and corporate bribes.

Trump has pardoned serial murderers and the biggest drug dealers in the world.

It’s all too much, and it feels like nothing ever seen in anyone’s lifetime.

The shit show can no longer be ignored, denied, or papered over.

And the end of the primaries is right around the corner.

That’s means the end for Trump.

And Trump knows it.  He cannot afford to lose five votes in the House or Senate.

His end game now is simply to rob and run.  He now has no other agenda.

Never Fascist

Can You Hear Me Now?

Dunning-Kruger Economics

“When Brits are asked how wealthy the United Kingdom is compared with the United States, most believe the country still ranks near the top. In reality, the U.K. is poorer than every single U.S. state—something that comes as a shock to many when they learn the truth.” >> Source

Bald Eagle Chicks Still In the Nest

Giant Canada Geese

Baby Canada Geese are out in force.

When I was born, the giant Canada goose was declared extinct, but a small population in Rochester, Minnesota was rediscovered by biologists in 1962, and can now be found all over the US, Europe, and even New Zealand.

Adult Peregrine Falcon Babysitting

Fledging Peregrine Falcons This Morning

Out on the Bicycle Today

Out on the bicycle today for the first time in two months (one month post surgery).  It felt great, and the weather was beyond perfect.

Canada Geese, all with young, seemed to be everywhere. The water in the canal was up, which no doubt attracted the geese, even as it discouraged the wading birds like Great Blue Herons.

Digging and kayaking are now back on the menu.

Most Dogs Love Lure Coursing

As organized gambling at greyhound tracks has gone the way of the Dodo and Sonny Bono, backyard and open-field lure coursing has grown in popularity.

How does lure coursing work?

Quiet well, actually.

The first lure-coursing machines were made from bicycle wheels with string wound on the rims, and a small rabbit pelt pulled through the grass.

The Big Leap Forward came when the hand crank was replaced with the starter engine off a truck.

The second big leap forward came when pulleys were attached to stakes set in the field, so that the string could be operated as a continuous zig-zag loop over a large area.

Here was mechanical "open-field coursing" in which nothing died, and a disabling rip from barbed wire was never going to be a worry. 

Perfect!

I remember seeing one of the first modern lure-coursing rigs being operated in the very early 1980s, and trying it out with two of my terriers back then. It turns out that a white fluttering plastic bag is about all that is needed to get a dog -- almost any dog -- running like the wind.

The code explodes, and that’s as true for terriers and Basenjis as it is for Whippets and Greyhounds, 

Today, lure coursing rigs are not only used by a wide arrays of dog enthusiasts, but also by zoos giving exercise to Cheetahs and Wild Dogs (as well as a bit of entertainment for visitors). Modified lure coursing rigs have also been used to exercise large hawks and eagles in wildlife parks and sanctuaries.

AKC Finances Are Sliding Into the Toilet

From the July 2025 AKC Board Minutes:

Ted Phillips, Chief Financial Officer, presented interim unaudited financial statements as of May 31, 2025.

▪️On year-to-date revenues of $38.7 million the organization sustained a net operating loss of $1.7 million as compared to the same period of the prior year that resulted in net operating Income of $4 million.

▪️Operating revenues are lower than budget by $5.2 million or 12% and lower than prior year by $2.5 million or 6%. 

▪️Registration revenues from litters and dogs total $14 million trailing budget by 18% and prior year by 7%. 

▪️Recording & event service fees, title recognition fees and event applications fees total $7.2 million are lower than budget by 5% and similar to prior year. 

▪️Advertising, sponsorship and royalties total $7.2 million are lower than budget by 14% and prior year by 13%.

▪️Operating expenses total $40.4 million and are lower than budget by $2.4 million or 6%, but higher than prior year by $3 million or 8%.

See >> https://www.akc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Board-Minutes-July-2025-FINAL-PUBLISHED.pdf?

As of January 2026:

“Net Operating Loss is $5.9 million primarily due to lower registration revenue, excluding investment income of $3.2 million. Operating revenues total $83 million, led by registration (litter and dogs) totaling $28.8 million. Operating expenses total $85.8 million.”

See >> https://www.akc.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Board-Minutes-January-2026-FINAL-PUBLISHED.pdf

The System Is Designed to Fail

▪️The system was built by the lowest bidder.

▪️The system is based on quarterly economics and personal incentives rather than lifetime economics and group costs.

▪️The system assumes present dollars is the most important metric.

▪️The system did not budget for maintenance.

▪️The system was cut back until immediate failure, then they added just a bit to avoid immediate failure.

▪️The system was built under the control of white men, ensuring little or no creative input from 93 percent of the world's population. 

▪️The system was built without appreciation of the cost of system failure.

▪️The system does not account for widespread human foibles like greed, willful ignorance, bigotry, and sloth.

▪️The system is immunized against corrective accountability.

▪️The system assumes present conditions will last forever.

Failure of the system is part of the plan; it’s Step One in selling you a “new and improved” system.

The Phony War on Drugs

In 1994, former Nixon aide and Watergate co-conspirator John Ehrlichman proudly told writer Dan Baum that racial control and discrimination was in fact the purpose of the war on drugs.

“At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. ‘You want to know what this was really all about?’ he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. ‘The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.’”

Billy Strings :: Taking Water

Double-crested Cormorant On the Creek

Cormorants generally prefer the big river. They are common there.  This is the first one I’ve seen one on this creek.

Biking Again

Out and about on bikes after two months off. 

Black-crowned Night Heron

Black-crowned Night Heron along the creek.  Notice the long thin white feather coming off the head.  Styling!

Baby Falcons About to Fledge

First baby Peregrine Falcon chick to start leaving the nest this year. I think there are three chicks, though I’ve only seen two at one time so far.

Peregrines at the Nest

Adult Peregrine Falcon flying off her observation perch over the nest.  

The nest was formerly a Raven nest, but the falcons have taken it over for the last four years. Two years ago, the Ravens tried to come back, but the Falcons had other ideas.

In the second picture, you can see one of the three chicks poking its head out of the nest.

Blue Jay Way

An interesting bird along the creek this morning. It was an “off” Blue Jay …. and then both parents showed up to feed it. Oddity explained!

An English Working Cocker

This is what an English WORKING COCKER looks like.  

None like him, before or since. 

Trump Is Their Man

Three Seasons on the Driveway

The Mystery of a Globe

I was once in a remote section of the Tasili N'Ajer in southern Algeria, when a Turaeg wanted to examine my fancy Tissot watch. I took it off, and it disappeared into a sea of hands before coming back a minute later. 

“Ca marche avec essence?" I was asked. Did the watch run on gasoline? They assumed the wind up part popped off to fill it up.

Before And After

Mushrooms Coming Up

As expected, 7 days of rain has driven up a flush of various kinds of mushrooms.

The first one is the Elegant Stinkhorn fungus (Mutinus elegans).  It is also called the "dog penis" mushroom. It takes buckets of rain to drive these up, and they do not last long.

The ones below might be Wine Cap mushrooms gone a bit long.  The last picture is definitely Wine Caps.

Blue and Gray, Green and Red

Monocacy Civil War battlefield, Maryland. just down the road a few miles. Every inch of Virginia and Maryland was soaked in blood and I hunt where the dead have fallen. I do not wonder why the soil is red.

Will This Work?

I have a wonderfully vocal, but problematic, Carolina Wren nesting about the house. 

Her first nest (successful) was in the front door wreath, which curtailed front door exit and entry for several weeks.

Last week, I noticed her inside the open garage, carrying pine needles in her beak.  She couldn’t possibly be nesting in there with dogs and the paint cans and me knocking about with tools and trash bags, could she?

She could.

My wife found the rather enormous nest, built almost overnight, in the box of microfiber cloth used for furniture and general cleaning.

Today, with the garage door open, the wren was back — very vocal and quite disturbed that her nest was in the same location, but no longer in the deep protective box.

Something had to give, and I decided to be firm but helpful.

I cut down an Almond Milk jug, cut a few drainage holes into the bottom, spray-painted it a dull green, and wired it into the fork of a small tree at the entrance to the garage — the very tree this very loud wren uses, every day, to serenade.  I then shoved the over-large nest inside, doing as best I could to preserve the round bowl inside. 

It was a tight fit, but that’s how Carolina Wrens like it.

Will the wren see her repositioned nest in the new location?  

I have high hopes.