Asakiyume mita

What if flowers faded to feathers and caught the frost in their old age?



Yesterday I played secretary at a meeting. As usual, I doodled..



Vi Hart has a new math doodling video, about the twelve days of Christmath. She points out that in the twelve-days-of-Christmas song, the gifts can be divided into three categories: birds (partridge, turtledoves, French hens, calling birds, geese, swans), humans (maids, ladies, lords, pipers, drummers), and an anomaly (golden rings). wakanomori says, "It makes you think it must all be about the anomaly."

Wakanomori found an anomaly in the town newspaper--a legal notice that shouts out "STORY!"

( To any unknown or unascertained heirs, successors, assigns, devisees, and/or legal representatives... )

There's more--about what the heirs, successors, assigns, etc. have to do to contest Ms. Keedy's claim--but I thought the part I just quoted was ... impressive. So Mr. Bronner died, leaving, apparently, no heirs, and Ms Keedy lived in his house for twenty years after that, and now, by virtue of that fact, she wants title to the property.

My questions are--what is a devisee? And how do you live both peaceably and notoriously in a place? And adversely? [ETA: never mind--I found the answers]

Last but not least, I got a calendar from Bread and Puppets. Each month is a woodblock print and a line from a hymn in the Sacred Harp. This month's line is, Lo, what a glorious sight appears. Glorious, like frosted feather flowers?

The words have faded away, or else this sign was simply written in lichen. “Can you read lichen?” I asked the open field. There were crows to the left and a hawk to the right; no one answered. I took a photo and was about to move on when a round-faced, wide-eyed boy came running up, glancing behind him as he ran. He slipped between and beneath the briar canes and halted, panting, beside me. He was followed by a long-legged, red-haired girl, who cleared the briars with a leap. The boy shrank against me, and the girl laughed.

“The sign says ‘Danger,’” whispered the boy.

“Oh, it does not,” the girl said scornfully. “The sign once said ‘No trespassing’; people put it here. But the wind and the rain scoured away that old message, and the lichens grew—they graffitied right across it—and they’re saying, ‘The one who speaks of trespass commits the act.’” The girl paused a moment, then remarked, “The things that spring up out of the earth are always stronger than things made by human hands. The lichens aren’t saying that, but it’s true.”

A freight train whistle wailed; I could hear the sound of the engine.

“The lichens say ‘Danger! Here be dragons!” the boy said, shivering, and then he dashed toward the tracks and across them, zigzagging, and as he did, he turned into a rabbit.

“I’m still coming for you,” the girl said, running her tongue along her lips, and then she gave chase, becoming, as she crossed the tracks, a fox. And then the dragon came, scaly black, and roaring.