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My favorite Englishmen and women, delivering musico-political commentary since 1985, almost as long as Gwen and I have been married, maybe longer. This band is a "one-hit wonder" for their 1997 song "Tubthumping", which was introduced to me by daughter Jessica, who was 13 or 14 at the time. It's easily their least political song, basically a drinking chant. By the time I heard the original, I was already familiar with the Capitol Steps parody of it called "My pants go down, but they come up again; you're never gonna keep me down", sung by "Bill Clinton." Great tune, but there are many others and to my ear, no two are alike (though there is a lot of brass). Lou Watts' amazingly distinctive voice is subdued on Tubthumping but threads all their music. Lately they've been doing some great harmonies and acoustics, almost a capella at times. But be prepared for some edginess! You can visit their site where they have at least a dozen downloads and streaming videos available. And they are on MySpace..."

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Here's a very special woodcut scan that came up as Wikipedia picture of the day today, reminding me of Japan and what a very special place it is. On my first trip there, I was incredibly fortunate to be treated to a stunning clear air view over the city of Tokyo with Mt. Fuji beyond, and beyond it, the brilliant setting sun. I came back from that trip with a copy of this woodcut in hand. You can see all of Hosukai's 36 views of Fuji at this link. It does not seem that Hosukai ever depicted Fuji with the sun behind it, but perhaps that's because Japan is the "land of the rising sun". Fuji is of obviously a volcano that has greatly influenced Japan and inspired its artists for a long time. Click to enlarge...

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Here's a thanksgiving sentiment from Abraham Lincoln, given by a favorite commentator on the web, Chet Raymo , whose sister Anne created some nifty graphics for the occasion.

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It's a Clannad night, so let's salute the "Clan å Donegal", a family of outstanding musicians from northwest Ireland who began singing traditional Irish folk music (lyrics in Gaelic) in a small pub, and ended up at the Grammys in Hollywood. And while they were at that, sister Enya made an even bigger name for herself singing New Age themes. Gwen made a gift of Clannad's "Landmarks" CD to Tom, and he was immediately entranced. He traced them back to their roots with another CD, and then Gwen and Tom ran square into Ciaran Brennan, the guy with the perpetual hat and ringleader of the Band, in a bar in a small town near Glendalough, where he lives and kinda dominates the bar scene there. He was smashed and kinda taken with Gwen, and a lot of fun to hang out with, especially since he was buying drinks. Pretty soon we were kinda smashed, too!

You can download some sample music at the link given at top right, or click here to download Toms favorite mp3. If you want to see how the lyrics translate, have a look here.

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And the winner for the month of October is... the photo of Opportunity standing at the edge of a large crater on Mars, snapped by the Mars Reconaissance Observer spacecraft orbiting overhead. One robot has photographed another robot, on another world. If this intrigues you, you might be interested in a book by James P Hogan: "Code of the Lifemaker" which makes a good story out of the adventures of robots far away from home.

Click to enlarge image...
And then there was of course John Updike's now 1000 day old poem about Opportunity and Spirit (scroll down)

DUET ON MARS
by John Updike

Said Spirit to Opportunity,
"I'm feeling rather frail,
With too much in my memory,
Plus barrels of e-mail."

Responded Opportunity,
"My bounce was not so bad,
But now they send me out to see
These dreary rocks, bedad!"

"It's cold up here, and rather red,"
Sighed Spirit. "I feel faint."
Good Opportunity then said,
"Crawl on, without complaint!

"This planet needs our shovels' bite
And treadmarks in the dust
To tell if life and hematite
Pervade its arid crust."

"There's life, by all the stars above,
On Mars--it's you and I!"
Blithe Spirit cried. "Let's rove, my love,
And meet before we die!"

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Choo-choo train enthusiasts, unite! I couldn't resist this one. It's a mechanic's wonder, called Walschert's Motion, for it's inventor, no doubt.

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Here's my pick from the past month (or two) of pictures of the day. I'm currently watching these pictures from the Astronomy POD site , the Earth Science POD site, National Geographic, and the Wikipedia POD, and recently, I had this Heliophysics POD site pointed out to me.

This photo is unusual in its blending of aurora with clouds and stars, all over a reflecting body of water. Though it isn't the most spectacular aurora photo by a long shot, the combination, with a photographer and his tripod, really gets to me. How do you like it?

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Just arrived back from 10 days in Beijing, China. Lots of impressions, but the Great Wall is perhaps foremost among them. It is almost beyond words, hence the photo! The crowds of tourists and native Chinese there on a weekend choke the passageways through the watchtowers.

Beijing is, as advertised, the capital of a country that is coming on strong as an economic powerhouse. There are zillions of cars, most of them less than a few years old, and many of them German luxury cars. There are enough of them for continuous traffic jams, even as one arrives on a Tuesday evening at 8pm. They are trying to run the bicycles and tricycles off the road, but dedicated bicycle lanes still exist in the downtown, and the country roads are choked with them.

I stayed in a hotel built in the 50's for Russian engineers visiting the Beijing Institute of Technology. Now it is an international hotel with folks from everywhere coming for a scientific conference in a country that is well on its way to becoming a space powerhouse as well.

Still, all the suberb chinese food you can eat at a nice restaurant will only set you back about $11, and the taxi ride to the airport (45-60 min) is only about $8. Western prices are limited to gasoline ($3/gallon) and certain tourist areas.

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Gwen has put out hummingbird feeders, and we've had a few of them around after just a week of waiting. They are breathtaking, so this thought for the day is pretty apropros.

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I Think Continually of Those
~ Stephen Spender

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious is never to forget
The delight of the blood drawn from ancient springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth;
Never to deny its pleasure in the simple morning light,
Nor its grave evening demand for love;
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass,
And by the streamers of white cloud,
And whispers of wind in the listening sky;
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun, they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

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So I'm soliciting the help of all family members to build a Moore_Fowler family group page. I've put some photos there, and posted a message to demonstrate how it works. Please join up when you get your invitation, and then bring your thoughts, photos, and other stuff to post on the page. You can even set up your own personal page there if you like. Click the photo below, or link at top left to go there...

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Any skydivers out there will really appreciate this one! At the site linked to the image below, you can download two different movies, one with all sky camera and instrument panel, the other with a more human-oriented view like that in the picture. You'll be treated to the experience of parachuting onto Saturn's moon Titan, starting from the Cassini spacecraft. It's really quite exhiliarating, with 4 hours of time compressed into 10 minutes or so. The ground comes up pretty fast at the end with that much speedup of the movie! But don't be alarmed; the landing is soft...

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Joel Achenbach today features a rumination on his old Carl Sagan file (click picture; note to Richard Thompson: dish antenna should point back toward Earth!), found during an office move. He decides to save it, after pondering what Carl would think of the world today. See also the comic featured at the bottom of the right navigation column here. NASA has a new challenge today with which Carl would have identified strongly, a mission for humans to visit Mars. We have already learned enough about Mars to know that it may well have been lush with water and possibly life, early in the evolution of the solar system. But we also know enough to realize it is no place for humans at present, though there may be artifacts of incalculable scientific value there. But Carl was always out in front, and as the Voyager spacecraft he so lovingly tended leave our solar system, Carl has probably set his sights on possible life out there where new planets are being discovered weekly...

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I think we already have a best picture from April 2006. Here's a very clever shot by photographer Stefan Seip, from the recent eclipse, as seen in Turkey. Click the picture to get a full size version at the APOD site where it appeared.

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Here's my pick for picture of the month from March. It reminds me of the Chesapeake Bay, though the scene is actually in eastern PA, at the Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area. The birds are snow geese that we see all over Maryland as well. Nice spring sunrise...

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On Saturday, April 1st, thousands of citizens all over the planet will unite to push for an end to our addiction to oil - a dependence that threatens our environment, our economy, our health, and leads us into war and conflict around the world. Join the fun and take action to break our oil addiction! Register your action, find an action near you to join, search for actions around North America, and find action ideas here. Also, learn what you can do to wean yourself from fossil fuels, or at least reduce consumption of them here.

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Out of the blue, a friend sent this incredible panorama of Paris at night. I can only show a small fraction of it here, so go have a look at the complete item. The download takes a while even at broadband rates, and then you have to scroll your browser display about 15000 pixels. If you like this, it is probably worth a visit to the photographer's site.

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Welcome back to the Panhala archive. Panhala was offline owing to copyright issues for a few weeks, but is back now. Panhala is a labor of love for Joe Riley. This is the very first item by Mary Oliver to appear in the archive, called "The Journey." Click the picture, and enjoy.

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"A pagan heart and a Christian soul feed the roots of the Irish nature. The Macnas theater group celebrates pre-Christian culture during a festival in Athenry. But Roman Catholicism is decidedly paramount, especially in western precincts like Dingle, where girls step from St. Mary's Church into a blustery Sunday in May following their first Communion." -- From "Ireland on Fast Forward," September 1994, National Geographic magazine.

WORTH A TRIP: The March National Geographic assesses the state of the Celts, long ago shoved to Western Europe's edges, territories "generous only in rock and bog." But there is a kind of romantic defiance in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall, where vandals scratch out the English side of bilingual highway signs (the same thing happens to French in Celtic Brittany). "Celts refuse to vanish"; indeed, they even attract "Celts of the spirit" from other cultures with poetry, music and the rebelliousness of Europe's "beautiful losers"...

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This scene from the St. Patrick's day parade in Cork, with a company of kilted bagpipers, reminds us that St. Patrick came to Ireland from Wales, where he lived prior to being kidnapped into the slave trade in Ireland. There he learned the gaelic language and religion of the druids. Later, he escaped to a monastery in Auxerre of the Bourgogne in France, before returning to Ireland as a Christian missionary. Patrick followed the Celtic links between the peoples of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, Cornwall, Brittany, and Galicia. Let's raise a toast to Padraigh as the first pan-celtic uniter!

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Whitney has posted her first personal web page (that we know of). It features a photo of Gwen and Roxie looking the other way on Mt. Chocorua in NH, back in 2004, if I recollect correctly. Click the photo or the link at the top right, to go there...

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Since Panhala went offline, perhaps I'll content myself with posting a favorite picture of the day, of the month (or so). Congratulations this month go to Bob Fowler, who took the prize winning shot below at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, and won four tickets for next year's festival! I've also installed a cropped version as one of the banner photos. Have you noticed that a different random image of Maryland comes up in the banner each time time you reload this page?

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Happpy Valentine's day! Factoid of the day: The Greeting Card Association estimates that, world-wide, approximately one billion valentine cards are sent each year, making the day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year behind Christmas. The association also estimates that women purchase approximately 85 percent of all valentines. This particular valentine appears on the sheer cliffs of El Capitan at Yosemite National Park, where Gwen and Tom spent their leadup to Valentine's day this year...

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Happpy groundhog day! Did you know that the iPod figures were shadows? Well...

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Welcome to the Panhala archive, where fresh poetry appears every few days, with gorgeous imagery and musical accompanyment. The plan is to pick my favorite each month and post the image here as a link ot the poetry. Click the picture, and enjoy.

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Click reload to see a random sample of other pictures of the day. We've been addicted to the webshots.com site for 5-6 years, where they do their level best to sell you pictures and related goodies and lure you to store your pictures on their site. This month I found a nifty piece of software for both Macs and PCs that downloads and organizes pictures of the day from three free sites: National Geographic, Astronomy POD, and Earth Science POD. The photos are more diverse than you might think, and one even finds a lot of wildlife on the NG site. Click on the image to go to the download site.

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Wishing you all a Happy New Year! Come by and try our southern new year's tradition of black eyed peas and cabbage greens! (click the image for more)

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Wishing you all the holidays of your dreams! Try clicking the following two comics for links to related materials.

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