Sunday, March 19, 2017
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
April 11 - PIGEONS
PIGEONS: The Fascinating Saga of the World’s Most Revered and Reviled Bird by Andrew D. Blechman
They've been worshipped as fertility goddesses, and used as symbols of peace. Domesticated since the dawn of man, they've been used as crucial communicators in war by every major historical superpower from ancient Egypt to America and are credited with saving thousands of lives. A pigeon delivered the results of the first Olympics in 776 B.C. and a pigeon first brought the news of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo more than 2,500 years later. Charles Darwin relied heavily upon pigeons to help formulate and support his theory of evolution. Yet pigeons are reviled today as "rats of the sky" without just cause. How did we come to misunderstand one of mankind's most helpful and steadfast companions?
Author Andrew Blechman traveled across America and Europe to meet with pigeon fanciers and pigeon haters in a quest to chronicle the pigeon's transformation from beloved friend to feathered outlaw. Starting with a Brooklyn man's quest to win The Main Event (the pigeon world's equivalent of the Kentucky Derby), Andrew attends a pigeon breeders convention dedicated to breeding the perfect bird and also participates in a pigeon shoot where participants pay $150 to shoot live pigeons. From tracking down Mike Tyson, the nation's most famous pigeon lover, to spending time with Queen Elizabeth's Royal Pigeon Handler in England, and shedding light on a radical "pro-pigeon underground" in New York City, Pigeons tells for the first time the remarkable story behind this seemingly unremarkable bird.
They've been worshipped as fertility goddesses, and used as symbols of peace. Domesticated since the dawn of man, they've been used as crucial communicators in war by every major historical superpower from ancient Egypt to America and are credited with saving thousands of lives. A pigeon delivered the results of the first Olympics in 776 B.C. and a pigeon first brought the news of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo more than 2,500 years later. Charles Darwin relied heavily upon pigeons to help formulate and support his theory of evolution. Yet pigeons are reviled today as "rats of the sky" without just cause. How did we come to misunderstand one of mankind's most helpful and steadfast companions?
Author Andrew Blechman traveled across America and Europe to meet with pigeon fanciers and pigeon haters in a quest to chronicle the pigeon's transformation from beloved friend to feathered outlaw. Starting with a Brooklyn man's quest to win The Main Event (the pigeon world's equivalent of the Kentucky Derby), Andrew attends a pigeon breeders convention dedicated to breeding the perfect bird and also participates in a pigeon shoot where participants pay $150 to shoot live pigeons. From tracking down Mike Tyson, the nation's most famous pigeon lover, to spending time with Queen Elizabeth's Royal Pigeon Handler in England, and shedding light on a radical "pro-pigeon underground" in New York City, Pigeons tells for the first time the remarkable story behind this seemingly unremarkable bird.
Monday, March 13, 2017
Thursday, March 9, 2017
Tuesday, March 14: Grayson - The Whale
10:00 Grayson by Lynne Cox
Grayson is Lynne Cox's first book since Swimming to Antarctica ("Riveting"- Sports Illustrated; "Pitch-perfect" - Outside). In it she tells the story of a miraculous ocean encounter that happened to her when she was seventeen and in training for a big swim (she had already swum the English Channel, twice, and the Catalina Channel).It was the dark of early morning; Lynne was in 55-degree water as smooth as black ice, two hundred yards offshore, outside the wave break. She was swimming her last half-mile back to the pier before heading home for breakfast when she became aware that something was swimming with her. The ocean was charged with energy as if a squall was moving in; thousands of baby anchovy darted through the water like lit sparklers, trying to evade something larger. Whatever it was, it felt large enough to be a white shark coursing beneath her body.
It wasn't a shark. It became clear that it was a baby gray whale-following alongside Lynne for a mile or so. Lynne had been swimming for more than an hour; she needed to get out of the water to rest, but she realized that if she did, the young calf would follow her onto shore and die from collapsed lungs.
The baby whale-eighteen feet long!-was migrating on a three-month trek to its feeding grounds in the Bering Sea, an eight-thousand-mile journey. It would have to be carried on its mother's back for much of that distance, and was dependent on its mother's milk for food-baby whales drink up to fifty gallons of milk a day. If Lynne didn't find the mother whale, the baby would suffer from dehydration and starve to death.
Something so enormous-the mother whale was fifty feet long-suddenly seemed very small in the vast Pacific Ocean. How could Lynne possibly find her?
This is the story-part mystery, part magical tale-of what happened
12:00 The Whale
Narrated by Ryan Reynolds, The Whale is the true story of a young killer whale, an orca nicknamed Luna, who makes friends with people after he gets separated from his family on the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. As rambunctious and surprising as a visitor from another planet, Luna endears himself to humans with his determination to make contact, which leads to laughter, conflict and unexpected consequencesSunday, March 5, 2017
Spectacular ‘Super Bloom’ Is Just Days Away In This California Desert
It’s about to transform into a sea of purple, yellow and white.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/california-desert-wildflowers-bloom_us_58bb0fc6e4b0b9989417ffcb?r47pjlp4dzkja714i&
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