Sunny Cottage Dining Room.

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James Norton in War and Peace

if the ocean can calm itself so can you. we are both salt water mixed with air       - meditation

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war & peace

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How To See Fairies. Charles Van Sandwyk. Vancouver: Fairy Press, [1992]. First edition, first printing. Original French flaps.

“So often when I sleep at night my dreams are overladen with vision of the fairy folk, led by a tiny maiden. They dance upon my furrowed brow till I have all but woken, and this is what they say to me, in words so softly spoken. ‘If you are up at the dead of night or just before the dawn, then you might see the fairy folk aplaying on the lawn.’”

Sancho I, king of Leon in the north of Spain, was overthrown by rebel nobels in 958 CE. In what is likely a never-before-and-never again accusation in history, the nobles accused Sancho of being unable to rule because he was too fat. His grandmother, Queen Toda Aznar of Navarra, sought help from the Muslim caliphate Cordoba in southern Spain. Again, extremely oddly, Queen Toda asked for two things: military aid to regain the throne, and medicinal aid to “cure” her grandson’s morbid obesity. Jewish physician Hisdai ibn Shaprut put ex-king Sancho on a strict diet. Once he was slim enough to ride a horse properly, Sancho reclaimed his throne with Muslim troops’ aid. (The portrait above is probably based on his post-diet look.) In short: a king was deposed because he was too fat, and got his throne back because he lost enough weight! Truth is stranger than fiction.

How Many Species Share Our Planet?

The answer: we have NO IDEA. Most taxonomists think that we have not even begun to discover all the species that live on Earth.  After nearly 250 years of organized study and exploration, and the finding of over 15,000 new living beings each year, taxonomists are still uncomfortable giving concrete estimates. And they are the experts! What makes counting species so hard?

Scientists have identified and named nearly 8.7 million species, but that number is constantly challenged by scientists presenting new methods and models for estimating how many more we have to find. Statistical models are the most inexact of sciences. And scientists are proposing new models for estimating the number of species every year, each with wildly different numbers.

But it’s not just statistics. One of the biggest reasons we do not know how many species share our planet is that 99 percent of all potential living space is under the ocean, and we humans have explored less than 10 percent of it.

When Mankind Was Young. F. Britten Austin. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page and Co. 1927. First edition. Original dust jacket. 

Collection of linked stories set in prehistoric times. “Druid rite when a human sacrifice was made, or at the festival where the fairest pair of lovers was offered to the savage god in the Spring to insure bountiful crops.”

A woman like that spreads happiness wherever she goes. You’re a lucky dog, Andrei!

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