My headcanon is that the anonymous letter they’re responding to was actually sent in by Lily.

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anonsally:

de-profundis-url:

Freddy Honeychurch’s musical talents.

I love this scene. (Obligatory reblog of Freddy’s floppy hair.)

It really is a great scene. The mother-son dynamic, these two peripheral characters having this moment to comment on the main action, to briefly be stars of their own story, is wonderful.

And I would say that even if I weren’t in a mutual-follow relationship with someone obsessed over young Freddy’s portrayer’s entire oeuvre.

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dendroica:

The sun sets on the savannah after six days of constant rain – creating a radiant pink cloud above a small herd of giraffe in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. Picture: Michael Poliza/Barcroft India (via Pictures of the day: 16 April 2014 – Telegraph)

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berta-fly:

OMG Michael!!!

The next episode is titled “Drag Racing”.

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puppy383:

Sky & its reflection on the water

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scienceyoucanlove:

Rachel Louise Carson

Born: May 27, 1907
in Springdale, Pennsylvania

Died: April 14, 1964 
in Silver Spring, Maryland

Rachel Carson, writer, scientist, and ecologist, grew up simply in the rural river town of Springdale, Pennsylvania. Her mother bequeathed to her a life-long love of nature and the living world that Rachel expressed first as a writer and later as a student of marine biology. Carson graduated from Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham College) in 1929, studied at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, and received her MA in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932.

She was hired by the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries to write radio scripts during the Depression and supplemented her income writing feature articles on natural history for the Baltimore Sun. She began a fifteen-year career in the federal service as a scientist and editor in 1936 and rose to become Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

She wrote pamphlets on conservation and natural resources and edited scientific articles, but in her free time turned her government research into lyric prose, first as an article “Undersea” (1937, for the Atlantic Monthly), and then in a book,Under the Sea-wind (1941). In 1952 she published her prize-winning study of the ocean, The Sea Around Us, which was followed by The Edge of the Sea in 1955. These books constituted a biography of the ocean and made Carson famous as a naturalist and science writer for the public. Carson resigned from government service in 1952 to devote herself to her writing.

She wrote several other articles designed to teach people about the wonder and beauty of the living world, including “Help Your Child to Wonder,” (1956) and “Our Ever-Changing Shore” (1957), and planned another book on the ecology of life. Embedded within all of Carson’s writing was the view that human beings were but one part of nature distinguished primarily by their power to alter it, in some cases irreversibly.

Disturbed by the profligate use of synthetic chemical pesticides after World War II, Carson reluctantly changed her focus in order to warn the public about the long term effects of misusing pesticides. In Silent Spring (1962) she challenged the practices of agricultural scientists and the government, and called for a change in the way humankind viewed the natural world.

Carson was attacked by the chemical industry and some in government as an alarmist, but courageously spoke out to remind us that we are a vulnerable part of the natural world subject to the same damage as the rest of the ecosystem. Testifying before Congress in 1963, Carson called for new policies to protect human health and the environment. Rachel Carson died in 1964 after a long battle against breast cancer. Her witness for the beauty and integrity of life continues to inspire new generations to protect the living world and all its creatures.

Biographical entry courtesy of Carson biographer © Linda Lear, 1998, author ofRachel Carson: Witness for Nature (1997).

text source

learn more 

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despairoftranslators:

The older I get, the more I acknowledge the role chance plays — and has always played — in the events of my life. Even leaving aside the accidents of birth and privilege (which I’m sure John has in mind here, since the video is in preparation for his book-club discussion of Behind the Beautiful Forevers), my life has been transformed many times by accidents: illness, job loss, plummeting economies, pregnancy loss, death. [Having children vastly expands the number of possible accidents that can completely change your life. :-)] It’s humbling to accept the many, many ways in which what happens to us is outside our control.

And I’ve struggled fiercely with this question of “deserving.” I think it’s a VERY deeply held cultural belief for Americans that hard work pays off — financially, socially, professionally. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps! Earn your way to a better life! As a younger person, I wanted to believe that if I worked hard, made good choices, was smart enough and “good” enough, I’d achieve my dreams. That’s a helpful thing for a young person to believe. But it often comes bundled with this reverse notion: that if you don’t achieve a major goal, or if your life is transformed or derailed in painful ways, that you’ve done something wrong. Made some mistake along the way. Didn’t believe hard enough; didn’t work hard enough. Weren’t “good” enough. Didn’t deserve it. I mean, if you ASKED me if I thought that, I’d say no, that’s ridiculous. But in my heart of hearts, that voice remained.

I think our insistence on “deserving” is also a shield — a way of protecting ourselves from the fearful reality of how little control we have. When I was working on a production of David Lindsay-Abaire’s amazing play Good People, I read Michael Patrick MacDonald’s memoir All Souls: A Family Story from Southie. He says: 

My sister’s boyfriend was murdered in the hallway of our housing project. The neighborhood attitude when something like that would happen — the neighborhood attitude would be: “Good riddance, because he was no good anyway.” That kind of attitude about a lot of the deaths in the neighborhood was a way for people who hadn’t been through those things to feel safe. Like, “That kind of thing isn’t going to happen to me. That only happens to bad people.”

I’m trying hard to let down my shield. To let go of “deserving.” To accept the painful accidents, chance events, and unforseen failures in my own life. To see them not as an excuse to stop working hard, fighting to change the world, or struggling to make my dreams a reality, but instead as a reminder that I have no excuse to be smug. That I have a human responsibility to open my heart to fear, to be kind, to fight for others as well as myself. To see myself as a part of a larger world of human beings. And to see all of those human beings, as JG says, ”no matter [their] circumstances, are valuable and rare and deserving of love.”

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gandalf1202:

John Singer Sargent – The Rialto, Venice [1911] on Flickr.

[Philadelphia Museum of Art – Oil on canvas, 55.9 x 92.1 cm]

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Book Review: The Gentle Subversive | Bug Girl’s Blog

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rhamphotheca:

The Townsend’s Warbler (Setophaga townsendi) is one of the more rare migrants passing through the Texas during this spring migration. This beautiful male stopped over on South Padre Island this past weekend.This is usually a more Westerly warbler, and isn’t seen in Texas very often.

Photo capture by Donna McCown

(via: Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival)

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Rachel Carson and her cat, Moppet. I learned from the Google doodle that she would have been 107 today (well, tomorrow where I live).

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clavisa:

fremui:

Kissing in the Rain ep. 11

Audrey Porter and Henry Mancuso

I enjoy how her face literally lights up at certain points. 

I noticed and enjoyed that too. My favorite (so far) of the second chapter.

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englishsnow:

AnnMarieBone

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humanoidhistory:

Happy birthday to the Hubble Space Telescope. On April 24, 1990, shuttle mission STS-31 saw Discovery launch the telescope successfully into its planned orbit. After some early trouble with mirrors and some daring fix-it missions, Hubble has turned out to be one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. Call that hyperbole if you like, but the more I’ve learned about the Hubble Space Telescope — through the telescope, I should say — the more I stand in awe. (NASA/HubbleSite/APOD)

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biomedicalephemera:

Greenland Whale [Bowhead Whale – Balaena mysticetus] Breaching

The slow speed, shallow dives, and multi-unit groups that characterize bowhead whales made them a prime choice for whalers. Turns out, they aren’t huge fans of being harpooned. Whaling was one of the deadliest professions straight through to the early 20th century, because of events like this. Even if the whale was eventually subdued and slaughtered, it was often at the cost of multiple lives due to hypothermia, drowning, or blunt trauma.

Harpoon points found in whales that had been freshly killed or beached in the past three decades have shown that bowheads are probably the longest-lived mammals. In 2007, an ivory spear, produced just as the US was headed into its Civil War, was discovered deep in the blubber of a bowhead hunted by the Inupiat of Canada. The fact that she survived suggested that she was, at the least, a young adult at the time, and amino acid racimization of her corneal tissue showed that she was between 150 and 155 years of age, and she is likely 50 years younger than the oldest bowheads ever discovered.

The Naturalists Library, Vol VII: Mammalia. Sir William Jardine, 1843.

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allosauropteryx:

OH MY GOD, TEACOCKS!  :O

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anonsally:

llamapunk:

What is this? Birdy mid-fluff?

I assume that this is one of the students at either Parulidae Junior High or Petroicidae Elementary School on Halloween, in costume as a baby penguin. The costume, however, is so good that I am unable to identify the student. lies?

It’s a juvenile of some sort. I’m getting a swallow vibe; maybe a fledgling tree swallow? It’s certainly cute with that fluffy collar.

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fashionaryhand:

Creative Fashionary sketches by Grace Ciao

Grace is a fashion illustrator from Singapore. She draws inspiration from everything around her. Her favourite materials are watercolours and flowers. Here are her amazing Fashionary sketches inspired by flowers!

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professor-sweetpea:

ralphthemouth:

lady—hulk:

It just keeps…… getting. …. better

batman,…. stahp what the hell are… BATMAN

I’m weirdly fascinated by his shoe rack.

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