Skip to main content

Disney, you have misled me

From all those movies, animated or otherwise, I developed the notion that the huge vines on which Tarzan and others swing are just thicker versions of juicy green ivy runners. Not so. Vines which grow that big are woody — they look like small tree trunks, except that they run in all directions, not exclusively vertical. They’re often woven; the result of small, still green and juicy vines interweaving.

There’s always something interesting to see and something new to learn in the rainforest.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Whose death matters?

In June of 2024, a man was just riding his bike to work. Early in the morning when traffic should be low to nonexistent. Wearing a helmet and a reflective vest.  A racing driver lost control and plowed him over.  Anyone who bikes in this city was grieved and outraged.  This stretch of roadway is designated as a bike route. There's a little green sign with a bicycle icon to tell you that. The wide road that invites speeding certainly doesn't. How does a person even drive 159 km/hr on a sleepy residential street within city limits? (Because the street is too damn wide.) For about as long as it has existed, the cycling advocacy organization has identified this stretch of roadway as a route in critical need of remediation to make it safer.  So, within a week, temporary safety measures had been rolled out. Reduced speed limit signs were erected, poly posts narrowed the roadway and speed cameras made sure folks took it seriously.  Ha ha ha ha ha ha. No. 20, 40,...

Celebration

Is all this celebrating really necessary? Certainly, there can be value in acknowledging when we've done something well. But every occasion seems to be a celebration lately and it's starting to make me feel uncomfortable. Thus, Dick Benner's comments in the Canadian Mennonite on the proceedings at Mennonite World Conference jumped out at me. Katherine Johnson, assistant general secretary for the Lutheran World Federation, represented 68 million Lutherans worldwide. She claimed that while Lutherans were “proud of their theological distinctives,” they would not be “celebrating” their 500th birthday in 2017 due to the divisiveness of the Reformation. Their goal is to help shape the church for the 21st century, she said. A thought for Mennonite Brethren who are gearing up to celebrate 150 years in January. Our theological distinctives include some morsels of truth we may have understood better than others, but they are still far from beginning to comprehend Truth. There is...

Bike 19

It's Earth Day today. It's a day, not to worship creation, but to pay mind to it, and in so doing, to worship the creator. So, says Sarah Pulliam Bailey , was the intention of Earth Day's originator. I confess I'm not doing anything special for the day. I take pride -- perhaps too much -- in the "eco-morality" of the normal things I do. That morality, sense of self-righteousness, is not the reason for my choices. Instead, it's a conviction that it is, in fact, worship when I climb on my bike; dig paper out of the recycling bin or stock used envelopes for reuse; dissect a teabag so the paper tab goes in recycling, the bag into compost, and only the string into the garbage; use my thrift store dishes; even when I carpool with someone else. The little bits of inconvenience that I subject myself to in order to reduce waste are intended for the sake of the Creator. The attitude is not always worshipful; on my way home today, I was once again muttering i...