The h2g2 Post: 15.06.20

Created Apr 14, 2020 | Updated Jun 14, 2020

A crest bearing the legend The H2G2 Post

Posted: 15^th June 2020

Days of Wonder

New Greenhouse with Anti-Zombie Sign by FWR

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow…

All things counter, original, spare, strange…

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Remember in the Scottish Play, when Macduff says, 'Such welcome and unwelcome things at once 'tis hard to reconcile'? No? (Sorry, I don't have a quote from Game of Thrones.) Well, I do, and that's about how I feel these days. Good things happen: we find out that all over the planet, people want to work together to improve things. Then something bad: the Covid-19 virus is still among us, and getting together to topple statues might just be a bad idea. Sort of. Good news: it's a banner year for flowers and other living things, except (bad news) there's still that virus, and we really need to be careful how we go about enjoying all this lovely sunshine. And so we struggle on.

Are we being relentlessly irrelevant by continuing to show you the birds, bugs, and flowers from our backyards? We are not. We are being 'counter, original, spare' and 'strange', just like that weird poet Gerard Manley Hopkins said. (We haven't come up with a movie script for 'The Wreck of the Deutschland' yet, but give us time.) What we're doing, friends, is what we always do: bearing witness to time and place in our own voices and in our own ways. Yes: on today, as on every other day since at least the Paleolithic, somebody did something reprehensible. And yes, we need to do something about it. Today, too, as on every other day since human time began, the sun rose. A bird sang. We saw something that made us pause and think.

Pausing and thinking? Basically a good idea. Want to build better humans? Start with self.

End of sermon.

This week, we have wonderful discoveries. People have been looking, recording, finding out, building, doing, and…er, thinking. They've got Stuff to share.
Black and White Tap by SashaQ

The birds are still large and in charge. (Don't worry, more bugs next week!) Enjoy the sights and sounds. Also try the quizzes and test your knowledge of birds on two continents. Yeah, we know Willem always wins. But he knows all of them.
There's a science fiction story by Tavaron. Well, it's nature. And it's somebody's backyard…
Awix reviews a new science fiction movie. Available on your streaming video.
Science experiments! To try at home, to admire from a distance, accidental discoveries and observations to ponder over. Oh, and some geese to caption.
Beauty of the kind to make Gerard Manley Hopkins gush: dappled and pied, found, accidental, backyard variety, homegrown. Celebrate FWR's zombie-proof greenhouse. He's figured out what the plants were, folks. When FWR does something, he goes all the way. See how tall his tulips are. (He measured.)
Sight and sound and imagination: contributors have looked up, down, inside, outside, and all around. Don't miss any of these moments.
If you are reading in Pliny, notice the tadpole video below. If you aren't, click here to watch Mrs Hoggett's frogs and froglets.

Yes, there will be more next week. Yes, do send your videos, photos, cartoons, stories, poems, essays and observations to us at the Post. (See address below.) And have a good week on this turning globe – no matter what happens next.