Author: David Holcomb

  • The Name of the Rose

    • This is not what everyone thinks of when they hear the word “rose”, but that’s what it is, all right: depending on where you live, it’s the baby rose, rambler rose, Japanese rose, or seven-sisters rose. Got all that?

    Years ago, while living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, my partner and I made the acquaintance of a gentleman who was considered throughout the neighborhood to be a gardener of some skill. When we finally received an invitation to venture past the ten-foot privacy fencing into his little slice of paradise, we jumped at the chance to see what a Florida garden was supposed to look like.

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  • The Metamorphosis of Narcissus

    • Portrait of the artist as a young moustache. As his career took off, his personal grooming took over.

    Today, May 11, is the anniversary of the birth of painter Salvador Domènec Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol — better known to most of us as Salvador Dalí.  Had he lived, he would be 108 years old today, an accomplishment that he might have celebrated in some way involving camels, scuba gear, an IBM Selectric typewriter, and oregano.

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  • Wild Kingdom.

    Wilbur Mills (D, Arkansas) and Fanne Fox: Ah, those were the days: the men were dogs, and the exotic dancers were splashing around in the Tidal Basin. Nobody could be trusted, but somehow they got some really big things done.

    I’ve always considered myself something of a political animal, but I think this time I’ve wandered into the wrong zoo.

    I admit that there’s a tendency, at my age, to find all kinds of unfavorable comparisons between life today and in my youth: the movies are not as exciting, the music is not as original, the tomatoes are not as tomato-ey — and the politicians I see today all seem to have come right out of the same factory somewhere on the outskirts of Shanghai.

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  • Foxed

    • The Gray Fox, Urocyon cinereoargenteus, which means “Silvery-Ash Colored Dog with a Tail”. The Red Fox, on the other hand, is Vulpes vulpes, which means “Fox-Fox”. There must have been a committee.

    The foxes are at it again.

    It’s hard to believe something that doesn’t come from the fifth planet of Arcturus could make such a strange assortment of noises. Rattling, choking, yipping, barking, whining, screeching — It’s like my family at dinner when I was fifteen.

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  • Household Gods

    • Oh, yes. It even has a name.

    Somewhere back in the mid 1970’s my mother decided to attend night classes at our local junior college. I encouraged this ambition in the hope (futile, as it turned out) that she would get it out of her system before I graduated high school, as I was not altogether thrilled at the idea of finally starting college only to find my mother already there. Since I had recently acquired (on the second try) a shiny new driver’s licence, it became my job to drive her the mile or so from our home to the campus a couple of nights a week.

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  • Everybody’s a Critic

    • You can’t hide. The truth will find you sooner or later.

    “Um, excuse me: did you know your zipper was undone?”

    In a recent post in this blog I made some comments critical of the Obama administration’s policies toward official transparency and truthfulness in government, comments which have been interpreted as negative toward the administration as a whole. Yes, my observations were critical, but as we move into the silliness and bombast of this year’s general election, I think it’s very important to remember just what “critical” really means.

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  • Tattletale

    • They just don’t want to hear it.

    When I was a little boy, I quickly learned to stay abreast of the list of dos and don’ts that my parents maintained: as in Socrates’ conception of virtue, the rules might evolve from one day to the next, but the requirement to observe them did not.

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  • Ticking like a Time Bomb.

    • They’re not pretty, they’re not useful, and they outnumber us.

    I like to consider myself tolerant of other living things, even those I find a bit unpleasant, like houseflies and pomeranians, but there are limits to my generosity. Ticks fall somewhere on the far side of those limits.

    Ticks are arachnids, related to mites (and very distantly to my friends, the spiders). There are actually three distinct families of ticks, but only one, the “hard ticks” or Ixodidae (from a Greek word meaning “sticky”), feed on humans and their animals.

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  • A Rose is a Rose is a Rose.

    It has been pointed out to me that I seem to take a lot of pictures of flowers. Although there is no shortage of more active wildlife here in Winslow, I just don’t have the reflexes to get that perfect shot of a group of deer galloping away at thirty miles an hour, or a pileated woodpecker darting from tree to tree, or a fox or barred owl crossing my path an hour after sunset. So, yes, I photograph a lot of flowers. They don’t run away, they don’t bite, and they’re not likely to kick me in the head.

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  • Impossible Things.

    Sure. It could’ve happened that way.

    This weekend marks the traditional anniversary of the founding of Rome in 753 BC. Like so many historically important events, we know it happened, but the devil, it seems, is in the details.

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