Tu-whit, tu-who: Cute Overdose

I try to avoid {cough::ack::ahem} posting stuff that I find CUTE but... La Bonne et Belle Bianca actually snorted her morning shot of Tamarind Pok Pok Som up through that babalicious bulbous nose of hers as she was cruising videos at the morning table -- a habit which we cannot seem to break, to which we are as hostages held, to wit, to woo.*


But really, this is pretty darned CUTE.









*Kathryn Miles has a beautiful blog called "To Wit, To Woo: The Silence of Owls" within the intriguing Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments.  Okay, so I guess "blog" is the wrong designation.  Try:  Series of pleasant articles.  Anyway, she's something.  Check this out:

Kathryn Miles is the editor-in-chief of Hawk & Handsaw: The Journal of Creative Sustainability; she also serves as director of the environmental writing program at Unity College. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Ecotone, PMLA, and Best American Essays. Most recently, she is the author of Adventures With Ari: A Puppy, a Leash, and Our Year Outdoors (Skyhorse/W.W. Norton). You can find her at www.kathryn-miles.com.


Unfortunately, she opens with H.D. Thoreau:

I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognised. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. All day the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp ... but now a dismal and fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of Nature there.
   — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

In my right now, feed me "I rejoice..." and I go all Ash Wednesday and TSE on you, more likely to be thinking, parenthetically, "(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)" than about her barred owl in the ash tree.  And just forget "to wit, to woo"!

*More on wit and wooing:


WINTER. [Love's Labor's Lost, Shakespeare]

When icicles hang by the wall
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail
And Tom bears logs into the hall
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit;
Tu-whoo, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow
And coughing drowns the parson's saw
And birds sit brooding in the snow
And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit;
Tu-whoo, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.