Things that resonate with me... @beach-combr - Tumblr Blog

The Basics

Fiftyish, happily married scientist. This page is an admittedly odd mish-mash of social and political leanings, things I find funny or beautiful or meaningful, and various stuff I find sexy and exciting (obviously, I have a moderate-level femdom/male sub tendency). As such, it's not entirely SFW. Please be 18+ and keep hands and feet inside the ride until it comes to a complete stop.

importantcatpics

beach-combr

I made the mistake of commenting on an post about international politics, and now my feed is full of dreary propaganda and angry partisans. So I give you... a cat in a job site safety vest. Hopefully a steady stream of cute cat memes will follow.

Gilchrist Blue Springs- this one is a bit of a road trip, but it was worth the drive!

#florida springs

herpsandbirds

Reddish Egret (Egretta rufescens), courtship display, family Ardeidae, order Pelicaniformes, FL, USA

L - normal morph, R - white morph

photograph by Wanda Phillips Nichols

Florida still has some wild places.

#big cypress national preserve

A denizen of Loop Road... I love it out there.

#florida wildlife

Looking forward to this in a few weeks

Sorry -Not sorry

I like the sentiment enough that this one needed a re-blog. :)

amnhnyc

If you’ve visited the Museum, you’re certainly familiar with today’s Fossil Friday feature: the Barosaurus and Allosaurus in the Rotunda! Rising 50 ft (15 m) above the ground, it’s the world’s tallest freestanding dinosaur mount.How does the huge skeleton of Barosaurus—whose name means “heavy reptile”—stay up? The Barosaurus is built from casts of real bone since fossils are too heavy to support in this way. The original fossils are housed in the Museum’s collections! Spot these dinosaurs and more at the Museum. Plan your visit.

Photo: D. Finnin / © AMNH

davidhudson

Happy 100th, David Attenborough.

In 1955 with his son Robert and a coatimundi.

thelovelymazza6

What a lovely picture of our national treasure! 😘

beach-combr

Look at that... yet another good example of non-toxic masculinity.

The Good Old Stuff

I've recently gotten a classic Florida one-two punch. First, the emotional malaise that always comes from driving through depressing miles of old pineland, scrub, and cattle country that has recently been obliterated under the locust-like horde of bulldozers that leave white-flight 'paradise' gated communities in their wake as a blight on the landscape that will never heal. I'm old enough to perceive clearly that we already ruined most of the Atlantic coast and are now hard at work doing exactly the same on the gulf side, at least until sea level rise finally puts a brake on something that zoning and good sense has never been able to slow. Then, on top of that, we have our august Attorney General somehow logically torturing surrogacy (and maybe adoption, too) into 'slavery' because apparently the idea of gays raising children is terrifying enough to the state government that the mere possibility of it is somehow unconstitutional (cue Inigo Montoya: you keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means). Frankly, it's enough to make me start thinking fondly about other places... but then here comes John McDonald, speaking via Travis McGee as if 1982 was today, with thoughts much like my own: "There would be a time again when I would canoe down the Withlacoochee, adrift in a slow current, seeing the morning mist rising at the base of limestone buttes, seeing the sudden heart-stopping dip and wheel of a flight of birds of incredible whiteness. On an unknown day down the road ahead, I would see that slow slide of the gator down the mudbank into the pond, see his eye knobs watching me... ...I would be wading and spincasting a pass at dawn, in an intense, windless silence, and suddenly hear the loud hissy gasp of a porpoise coming up for air just a few feet behind me, startling me out of my wits, and see his benign, enigmatic smile as he sounded again. Wild orchids, gnarls of cypress knees, circlets of sun slanting down onto green marsh water... angelfish, batting the eyelashes, moving coy and elusive beneath the sea fans, the full, constant, mind-warping, roaring whistling scream of full hurricane. Tacky though it may be, its fate uncertain, too much of its destiny in the hands of men whose sole thought is grab the money and run... it is still my place in the world." That was from Cinnamon Skin, a paperback pulp mystery novel from nearly fifty years ago. Damn... that man could **write**.

#John MacDonald #Travis McGee #Damned good writing

clinging-to-decency

mariacallous

A lifesaving injection given at birth to prevent severe bleeding has become collateral damage of the anti-vaccine movement.

beach-combr

I'd like to come up with some more sympathetic explanation for this, but all I've got is that people are absolute idiots. This borders on criminal child neglect.