I visited an old friend in Europe last March. I talked about the Olympic Peninsula and he was impressed with the cougars and orcas and bears. “We don’t have any large predators here.” Well, only humans.
They used to, though. This is from a local museum: a bear skeleton from about 7000 BC from the country. A very big bear fossil. There were other fossil predators including a wolf like creature.
So this is the succession where he lives: humans living after the bears.
The hills don’t look that colossal, do they? But this is taken zoomed in from the Olympic Peninsula and the hills are on Vancouver Island. Here is one not zoomed:
It was a colossally low tide and we were hunting fossils. Fossil clams, fossil snails and stories of fossil dinosaur bones.
The problem With Intelligent Design Is those old bones Those dinosaurs
Also that of 10,000 dreams of creation One would be right And the followers of all the others Consigned to hell If so, I go gladly, clutching Dinosaur bones to my chest And will enjoy the diversity Not the narrow heaven with a narrow Small-minded deity
But is evolution right?
Well, I think it’s on the right track
But wholly done and all correct?
After all, think how often Medicine has been wrong Think of tobacco and vioxx Think of Galen, over 2000 years ago Thinking that evil humors built up in the uterus Causing hysteria External pelvic massage was the cure For over 2000 years For old maids, widows and nuns Who had no male to cleave unto Massage was a treatment into the early 1900s And now we wonder about prozac too
Evolution is an evolving science
I think of when my son was four And he watched “Jurassic Park” Against my wishes Because I thought it was too violent He studied it carefully many times
One day he asked me, anxiously, “Mom, is DNA real?” To check that it wasn’t another of those Santa stories I was able to reassure him Yes, I think DNA is real He was pleased
A few days later he announced That when he grows up He wants to be a plant and animal scientist Extract DNA from amber And grow those dinosaurs
A laudable ambition For any four year old
If God left the dinosaur bones Around to fool us And they never lived She has a nasty sense of humor And my son and I will not forgive
Fossil snail. I found this on one of the Olympic Peninsula beaches. It’s gender is also pretty mysterious, at least to me. I think it’s too late for DNA testing.
This is a beach but not the ocean. We were on Chesapeake Bay, the Western shore, three days ago.
For Memorial Day, this takes me back to my paternal grandparents’ house, on Topsail Island in North Carolina. The two small black items are fossilized shark’s teeth. As the water erodes the shore, the fossils wash up. My grandparents walked the beach every day and as kids we learned to hunt and spot the shark’s teeth. The white tooth has been replaced by black stone. They are shiny and that curved pointed shape stands out with practice.
My skills returned on the Bay beach. We found other fossils: a fossil dolphin tooth, fossil coral, fossilized bone and wood. The sand and sky and foliage and shells are so different from my Pacific Northwest beaches.
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - Flüchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflüchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
KO Rural Mad As Hell Blog 
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