Because nothing else needs to be said...

Pluto is a dog

Leading astronomers have declared Pluto is no longer a planet, downsizing the solar system from nine planets to eight. That's just goofy. And Micky and Donald are just comics, right? I know Pluto is a planet because I helped my son make his shadowbox for science class and distinctly remember tying the little planet to the top of the shoebox.

But seriously, Pluto has been downgraded. Now science books will have to be re-written. Although, Patricia Tombaugh, the 93-year-old widow of Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh took the news in stride saying "It's disappointing in a way, and confusing." She feels her late husband would have understood the decision. But I still feel a bit sad for it. Dwarfs just don't get no respect.

And what about all the astrology books? My chart says that Pluto was aligned in the sign of Virgo. As Pluto's orbit is so very slow it takes fourteen years to move from one sign to another, therefore it can be representative of a whole generation.

"Pluto in Virgo lasted from 1956 to 1971. By contrast with the Pluto in Leo generation (1939 to 1956, and some in 1957 and 1958), which made riots on the campus, Pluto in Virgo people are more concerned with work and health, preferring to be active in the background rather than being in the spotlight." Am I to infer that this is no longer the case?

And, just watch, as soon as they print all those new textbooks, some great scientist will find the true link to proving Darwin was right all along. We really are stardust.

M m m My Sharona

Apparently, it's not easy to make a song about Sharon. The only other song that I can recall where the leading subject was my own namesake was "Spiders and Snakes" Jim Stafford's I Ain't Sharin' Sharon. So when the Knack came out with My Sharona way back in *gasp* 1979, I thought it was pretty cool. And so it is with sadness that I read today of the death of Bruce Gary, the drummer on My Sharona.

My Sharona is a great pop-song the kind you can't get out of your head for days. And its driving drum beat is largely the cause.

Gary also worked with such musical legends as George Harrison, Steven Stills and Bob Dylan, as well as Jack Bruce, Rod Stewart, Sheryl Crow, Yoko Ono and Harry Nilsson.

As stated on his website, Bruce was one of rock 'n' roll's preeminent drummers for more than three decades.

Chasing Rainbows

Galen Rowell is my favourite photographer. He would have been 66 today, if his life had not been tragically cut short in an airplane crash in August 2002.

My first introduction to his artwork was through the SRF calendar which I've used every year for over a decade. The more I learn about him only causes me to admire him even more as a human being.

He was an accomplished mountain climber who made his first roped climbs in Yosemite Valley at the tender age of sixteen. And over the course of his lifetime climbed mountains in Alaska, Africa and the Himalayas. Photography was not just how he made his livelihood it was a means to share his love for the beauty of the wild places on Earth. He excelled at both.

He won the Ansel Adams Award in 1984 and has been called the Ansel Adams of colour photography.

He said "My first thought is always of light."






He was also a hot-rod mechanic, who had a propensity for putting pedal to metal and is rumoured to have set a land speed record driving from Yosemite to Berkeley California in 90 minutes.

As importantly as anything else, he was an avid environmentalist who served on the Board of Directors of at least a dozen major environmental organisations protecting everything from wildlife in general to Yosemite Park to an endangered race of bighorn sheep, to youth education in the wilderness, and a number of other subjects.

In 2001 he and his wife Barbara Cushman Rowell opened Mountain Light Gallery in Bishop California. In addition to the gallery and giftshop, it hosts photographers' workshops as well as publishing and licensing businesses.

Naked Ladies

One of my favourite things about August is that the Naked Ladies come out. That would be Amaryllis Belladonna of the Liliaceae or Lily family, commonly called Naked Ladies for the lovely pink shade of colour in the trumpet shaped flower and their slender stems. They appear seemingly overnight along fence rows and driveways in early August. Belladonna is Latin for Beautiful Lady. It is also poisonous.

JANMASHTAMI

The birthday of Krishna is celebrated according to the Indian lunar calendar. It falls on the eighth day of the waning moon between mid-August and mid-September.

"He who perceives Me everywhere and beholds everything in Me never loses sight of Me, nor do I ever lose sight of him.

That yogi stays forever in Me, who, anchored in divine unity whatever his mode of existence, realizes Me as pervading all beings.

O Arjuna, the best type of yogi is he who feels for others, whether in grief or pleasure, even as he feels for himself." --Bhagavan Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita

Shiva’s Prowess~ Maurya Simon

There are ecstatic rituals every do-good deity knows;
there are myriad ways to flout, grin, and pose,

so that even virgins undulate like struck water -
but no one, states the Puranas, will ever master

a fraction of the multi-million postures Shiva savors.
His sacred prowess is cause for my wonder -

coming from a god who smells like burnt grass,
who wears two cobras coiled around his biceps -

what strange fires must smolder beneath his skin,
and what an appetite to quench, when he is smitten;

for he’s a being whose gaze unleashes rivers, an ocean
of desire, a lover whose smile’s a danger zone,

whose touch awakens sunken leviathans to rise
up like fountains from their former lives.

Eight million ways to move, make love, to take
a woman out of her body and soul, and bring her back -

postures whirling like tornados, brief as eclipses,
ceremonial as a rain dance; movements slick

as oiled arias, kisses inspiring drugged trances;
his tongue a glistening shrine, his teeth avalanches,

his mouth hewn from the deepest hole in space,
his breath a meadow of mint, a web of spindrift,

his wide neck taut with cords of rolling muscles,
his chest an orchestra, his heart a ship’s hull,

his arms huge sea nets, opposing shores,
his belly an island forested in ripe mangoes,

his penis a gourd into which the universe flows,
and his entry like the moment of death -