12/19/24

 Thursday, December 19, 2024

D+44

1946 War broke out in Indochina as Ho Chi Minh attacked the French in Hanoi

1971 Stanley Kubrick's cult classic "A Clockwork Orange" based on the book by Anthony Burgess premiered

1988 Unexploded WW II bomb found in Frankfurt, Germany - 5,000 evacuated

In bed    Fell asleep on the recliner around 8, woke up and went to bed around 9:30, awake at 2:30, and up at 2:50. 

Prednisone, day 219, 7.5 mg., day 34.  Prednisone at 4:45 with banana bread.  Other meds at 6:15.  

Bird behavior.  We are supposed to receive between 3 and 5 inches of snow today and tonight.  I went out this morning to fill our sunflower/safflower tube which was only about 2/3rds full.  While I was filling it, a red-breasted nuthatch landed on the shepherd's crook not more than 12 inches from my face.  Then she flew to the nearby suet cake and kept looking at me.  When I said 'good morning,' she flew away.  I have wondered if our neighboring birds are aware of my filling the feeders as I do so.  They seem to flock to them soon after I leave.  I see that now, after perhaps 15 to 20 minutes away from it, the sunflower/safflower tube is already down 20%.  A couple of goldfinches are working on the niger tube while the s/s tube is busy with house finches and sparrows and the ever-hungry chickadees. . .   By 2 o'clock, about one inch of snow has fallen and the s/s tube is half-consumed. 

A. E. Housman

Good creatures, do you love your lives

  And have you ears for sense?

Here is a knife like other knives,

  That cost me eighteen pence.

I need but stick it in my heart

  And down will come the sky,

And earth's foundations will depart

  And all you folk will die.