Google photos messes up dates sometimes so now I have a rat from the year 5720 and a toad from the year 601
Hydrophane Opal - Ethiopia
Hydrophane Opal looses color and changes clarity when exposed to large amounts of water.
âThey call us now, before they drop the bombs. The phone rings and someone who knows my first name calls and says in perfect Arabic âThis is David.â And in my stupor of sonic booms and glass-shattering symphonies still smashing around in my head I think, Do I know any Davids in Gaza? They call us now to say Run. You have 58 seconds from the end of this message. Your house is next. They think of it as some kind of war-time courtesy. It doesnât matter that there is nowhere to run to. It means nothing that the borders are closed and your papers are worthless and mark you only for a life sentence in this prison by the sea and the alleyways are narrow and there are more human lives packed one against the other more than any other place on earth Just run. We arenât trying to kill you. It doesnât matter that you canât call us back to tell us the people we claim to want arenât in your house that thereâs no one here except you and your children who were cheering for Argentina sharing the last loaf of bread for this week counting candles left in case the power goes out. It doesnât matter that you have children. You live in the wrong place and now is your chance to run to nowhere. It doesnât matter that 58 seconds isnât long enough to find your wedding album or your sonâs favorite blanket or your daughterâs almost completed college application or your shoes or to gather everyone in the house. It doesnât matter what you had planned. It doesnât matter who you are. Prove youâre human. Prove you stand on two legs. Run.â
â
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, Running Orders                      Â
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/143255/running-orders
Guido Crepax
Aspicilia filiformis
God I love that the description I found for this lichen as âcreeping.â Creeping suggests movementâand considering how sloowwwly lichens grow, it might just be the slowest creep ever. A. filiformis grows in terete, filiform lobes in tangled mats on detritus, soil, and old grass mounds. The surface is brown, gray-green or olivaceous, turning black toward the forked lobe tips (described as looking like little snake tongues which is so precious). Apothecia are rare and small, with a flat or slightly sunken dark reddish-brown or black disc. So far, this creepy, snakey pal has only been found in shrub-steppe and grassland habitats in the western U.S. One of my favorite ecosystems! Unassuming but teaming with a wealth of highly adapted life forms! Like A. filiformis, who I have probably seen before and just assumed they were a dead tumbleweed or something. Oops, sorry pal.Â
images: source | source
info: source
Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Untitled, San Francisco, from the series âCalifornian Wildflowersâ, 2014
ig: katewas_
Hannah Shakespeare at Ryan Lo, Spring 2016