Noted in Passing: Trying out my new Bathbubbles lure
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assassin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-torture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man’s forehead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Comments on this entry are closed.
What. In the Sam Hill. Is that?!?
Great. I stopped swimming in the ocean because of “Jaws”. I was stopped from swimming in the Nile because of Schistosomiasis. I cannot swim in the Amazon because of Piranha. I did not dare swim in the rivers of Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica because of crocodiles. I could not swim in Andean lakes because they are too damn cold. I do not swim in public pools because a certain type of folk urinate in them.
Now you tell me I cannot swim in some random lazy stream because that bestial leviathan will be swimming alongside me?
That was a Wels catfish. They’re native to Eastern Europe and invasive in Western Europe. They’re not in the United States, yet……
oh, so it’s castin’ fer minners y’talkin’ about…
If that’s the one he caught, I’d hate like Hell to see the one that got away. 😳
4 foot long?
maybe 30 lbs?
Beats four I’d reckon; five foot+.
…after all, this is a fish story.
“It’s a Wels Catfish…”. As the story goes, the first guy to hook one stood up in his boat and was hollering : “Well, SH*T!!” but he fell in the water and got eaten before he could get it out.
Starting at 2:09
https://youtu.be/UaEC-lWSlmI
Aggie
I believe another name for this fish is “sheatfish”.
-so, dang close to the truth.
Here’s the embed- sorry for the first post-
Fish on!
Is there also a Elca catfish?
Who caught who?
Excellent info on this fish, including recipe’s here:
https://tastycraze.com/n7-57885-Wels_Catfish
I’ve never seen a catfish yet that wasn’t a notorious predator and killer. I caught one that weighed in the vicinity of 12 lbs earlier in the year on a 5 wt Sage fly rod using one of my own shrimp imitators and he hit it like a freight train. It took 20 minutes or more to land him and I paid my respects by frying his ass the next evening.
After some time in jungles, I am a firm believer in giant animals. Also, here in eastern WA some giants exist.
I could never find the trigger on a fishing pole and so I skipped that sport.
Mike Austin, you forgot to mention river sharks in Costa Rica. They actually have those because the Rio San Juan is sea water. I once saw a 15′ croc on a tributary of that river. Also, a giant scorpion whose tail was as big around as a beer can. He gave me the shivers.
Just for ghost– here is a video of the wels catfish that live in the cooling ponds around what’s left of the Chernobyl power plant. The narrator says that the catfish at 0:24 is 2 m or 6′ long, and that it’s not mutated– the catfish in these ponds can grow to be humongous because they have no predators. Tourists are not allowed to fish in the ponds, but they can feed bread to the catfish– who get heavy as well as long. This one could weigh as much as 120 pounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cEj8R5m3AI&ab_channel=bionerd23
I’m thinking that Hunter Biden would make an excellent dinner for the Chernobyl catfish.
Anybody know if he landed the cat? Pole didn’t look up to the job.
We have a pool. It’s three ft deep, I blow it up! We spend 50.00 yearly for a new one. Wife’s still fit and good looking. Likes to tan in the privacy of our back yard.
95 plus, is a ball buster above 4200 ft.
I’d like to see Hannah Baron tackle that one! (ok, maybe not. Be careful Hannah!)
Most fishing poles are @6-1/2′ – 7′, so as a reference, taking into account distance from camera…it’s feeking bigger than you think.
Show of hands who’d get in water with that fell’a.
BTW, Those baits with the spinning tail are called whopper ploppers…the chicoms are now marketing knock offs available even on amazon of course.
Actually Dave, there is a company that makes baby duck lures from a hard plastic. I live on a large lake and I have fished several but I’ve never had a fish make a pass at it. They have little duck looking feet on spindles that churn the water during a retrieve but I think the lure would be more realistic if it was made from a softer plastic.
Dear Casey Klahn:
You are so right.
I had a run in with those sharks while on one of my solo backpacking journeys to Corcovado National Park on the Osa Peninsula. I was attempting to cross three rivers in six hours along a beach that lead to La Sirena ranger station. The problem was that each river emptied into the ocean; and besides they were very saline as the sea would rush in as the tide came in. During high tide they were impassable, so I had to time it just right to safely cross each river. I almost made it.
When I got to the third river, it was already beginning to swell as high tide was in full sway. I decided to attempt a crossing. Bad idea. I was scarcely 20 feet across when the bottom of the river fell away and found myself in about 30 feet of water, backpack and all. To my horror I was surrounded by a bunch of those damned sharks.
To this day I have no idea how I made it back to the safety of the riverbank. Truly God was watching over this fool.
Six hours later when the tide was completely out, I crossed safely.
As for scorpions: Once I got to La Sirena ranger station, I set up camp and went to bargain with the rangers for some rice and beans. As I was chatting with one on the outside of the station I felt a thud on my hat. I looked down at the ground to find that a large yellow scorpion and fallen off the station’s roof, landed on my hat and then to the ground. On its back were dozens of baby scorpions clinging to their mother. The ranger looked at me and said, “That was close!” Yes it was.