Darby Strong

Playing point. Delivering the rock.

Memorializing War

CBS evening news reports tonight that space is running out at Arlington National Cemetery. The two-minute segment, brought to you as a Memorial Day feature, focused on the sacrifices made by our dead American soldiers, with high honors bestowed as lots of Arlington dirt.


The Seed of Human Race by Yangzi Sima

To me, the field of over 260,000 white crosses represent valuable lives lost due to lies told and perpetuated in order to benefit the rich and make them richer. We should be considering WHY our space is running out at our national cemetery reserved for slain soldiers, instead of where we will place them 20 years from now when they will not have the option to share this sacrosanct dirt.

When war was honorable, as in, the leaders of nations were on the frontlines with the masses – white or black, educated or disenfranchised – perhaps a ceremonial plot in which to lay our dead together as one had more meaning. If we care to honor our young men and women today, best to not honor them to death.

The Thing(s) About Crocodilians

As promised, Gus and his gator kind have a fascinating existence and history. From Diane Ackerman’s The Moon By Whale Light:

Crocodilians, birds, and dinosaurs had a common origin about 230 million years ago, in the Mesozoic Era. Today, there are 3 groups of crocodilians: crocodiles, alligators, and caimans/gharials. But it is easy to confuse the three main types of corcodilians… Here are some rules of thumb: Alligators have round snouts, wheras crocodiles have pointed, triangular snouts. Alligators’ nostrils have a space between them and look like an open V that doesn’t meet at the bottom (wheras crocodiles’ nostrils are closer together). Alligators have much less agressive personalities. If you can see both upper and bottom teeth, it’s probably a crocodile; but alligators have more teeth (eighty) than crocodiles do (seventy). Gharials are mild-mannered, fish-eating crocodilians with long, slender, graceful snouts and sometimes, a big knob right at the end. And caimans look like alligators but have short, blunt noses. Within the order of crocodilians, there are about twenty-nine different forms.”

In order to “sex” an alligator, one must check out the slit under its tail, called the cloaca, a cavity in which the sex organ lies. Males have penises and females clitorises. Gus could be Gracilia, but I won’t personally be researching such a thing.

Gus the Gator

Finally, Gus has come for a visit. I took this picture right out our back door today, and it is the first time I have seen Gus in our lagoon. I have been hearing about him since I moved here, and am excited to finally meet him. More on Gus and his kind later…