Althouse: In the Autumn Woods Café...

October 26, 2010

In the Autumn Woods Café...

... you can exhibit your subtle complexities.

32 comments:

Titus said...: I am really not a fan of porn. It's too predictable and not real.; 10/26/10, 10:40 PM
traditionalguy said...: The sound of an entire forest of soft falling dry leaves always amazes me. Trees must have clocks built in that order them to abandon all leaves in hopes of reborn leaves later. And the trees never argue, unlike the sons of men.; 10/26/10, 10:48 PM
Bob Ellison said...: The trees around me shed their leaves each year around this time. Maple, walnut, sycamore. But my arborist tells me the area was originally filled with pines. I don't know trees, but the trees around here seem to shed their leaves at the right time to avoid the big winds that tend to blow trees down.; 10/26/10, 11:10 PM
BJM said...: Very nice, very Elliot Porter-ish.

@traditionalguy

Today I sat under old growth oaks in the late afternoon sunlight listening to falling leaves...after the first autumn rains is best time of the year...the smell of the wet woods is wonderful.

The spell was broken by our Springer rolling in wet leaves, herding quail and annoying squirrels busy burying the last of the acorns. Dogs really know how to live in the moment.; 10/26/10, 11:24 PM
Wince said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/26/10, 11:25 PM
Wince said...: Chip's revelation aside, "the thing speaks for itself..."

A founding member of ELO has been killed in a freak accident when a giant hay bale rolled out of a field and landed on his van...

It is believed a farmer was working on a tractor in the field shortly before the incident.
Inspector Andy Hamilton said his officers were investigating the cause of the tragedy.

He said: 'We are liaising with the heath and safety people and gathering evidence from the scene of the accident and the field. 'The van came into contact with a very large bale of hay.'

He added that officers had spoken to the farmer who owns the field and will be talking to him again shortly.

A modern example of the classic application of the res ipsa loquitur doctrine.

Res ipsa loquitur, "the thing speaks for itself," an important form of circumstantial evidence, may be relevant to a plaintiff's efforts to establish the defendant's unreasonable conduct. In most negligence cases, the plaintiff specifies what the defendant allegedly did unreasonably. Res ipsa loquitur is most important and has its greatest impact in cases where the plaintiff is unable to make specific allegations about what the defendant did wrong.

The case of Byrne v. Boadle [2 H. & C. 722, 159 Eng. Rep. 299 (Exch. 1863)], in which the plaintiff was seriously injured when a barrel of flour fell on him, is credited with adding “res ipsa loquitur” to the legal lexicon. In Byrne, neither the plaintiff nor any of the witnesses testified as to anything done by the defendant that could have led to the barrel falling. Yet the court allowed the case to proceed because of the nature of the harm-causing event and the defendant's relationship to it. Since Byrne, courts and commentators have refined the doctrine and its proof requirements.

The conditions traditionally required for the application of res ipsa loquitur are: “an accident that normally does not happen without negligence; exclusive control of the instrumentality by the defendant; and absence of voluntary action or contribution by the plaintiff.” In order for the plaintiff to have the benefit of res ipsa loquitur, she must convince the jury that each of these factors more likely than not exists.

[Bumped]; 10/26/10, 11:40 PM
MamaM said...: This week I hung on our walls two Robert Kipniss lithographs scavenged from my mom's estate sale.

Your pictures tonight with the trees in the foreground and the softness behind remind me of his work, with the added beauty of color. I'm especially enjoying the two small areas of grass green in each, along with the center of red leaves in the top one and mauve/purple atmosphere in the second.

Fall eye-candy.; 10/26/10, 11:57 PM
Fred4Pres said...: I feel like reading some Robert Frost.; 10/26/10, 11:59 PM
BJM said...: *Snert*...when I refresh the main page, I see the giraffe!; 10/27/10, 1:07 AM
Peter Hoh said...: Nice composition.

I love how a little rain brings out the darkness of the trunks.

The defiant patches of green grass hold out against the inevitable onset of winter.; 10/27/10, 1:50 AM
The Dude said...: People frequently overstate the age of old trees. A large red oak blew over, I sawed up some of the pieces, and many people stopped by to tell me that the tree had to be 400 years old. I counted the rings at the stump - it was 112 years old. Huge, sure, but red oaks do grow large around here.

Old growth forests are very rare. I have never been to the only one here on the east coast, it is quite remote, even though I live in the same state. But old trees are something to behold, especially when they are in a forest.

Leaves are starting to fall around here, interestingly enough, one walnut of mine is holding onto its leaves much longer than usual. Usually it loses its leaves in August, but here it is almost November and it has more leaves than the other walnuts in my yard. Trees - where would we be without them?; 10/27/10, 5:31 AM
Clyde said...: One of my favorite childhood memories is of my mother reading bedtime stories to my younger brothers and me.

I happened to be chatting the other day with a friend and she mentioned that her kitten was crying at the door to go outside, but that she had smelled skunk out there and didn't want him going out and having a "wildlife encounter." Then she asked if we have armadillos down here in Florida (we do), which caused me to reference Rudyard Kipling's "The Beginning of the Armadillos."

She'd never heard of it, or any of the other Just So Stories, published back in 1902 and one of Mom's favorites to read to us, and a source of favorite family in-jokes like "Won't Painted Jaguar be surprised?"

Well, a quick Bing search found them all online. My friend ended up getting a couple of different versions of them at her library, one with the original illustrations and one with more modern pictures. She kept telling me how delightful she finds them. And so, on the off chance that you may not have read them, here is the link to the online version:

Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling; 10/27/10, 5:41 AM
Unknown said...: Very pretty, interesting counterpoint of the stark limbs and the points of color.

Madame, WI must have the greenest grass this side of Ireland.

Titus said...

I am really not a fan of porn. It's too predictable and not real.

Not real???? You mean all women don't have 48 inch busts where the breasts look like somebody shoved a couple of boulders under their skin?

I don't know how I can go on living...; 10/27/10, 5:58 AM
jayne_cobb said...: The coworker which I have talked about recently (the Birther/Truther/JFK/Moon landing/LSD guy) is planning on going to the the Jon Stewart Rally.

He has stated that given its proximity to Halloween he intends to wear a costume. He is apparently going as a demonic Uncle Sam.; 10/27/10, 6:41 AM
KCFleming said...: The trees,
tired of discussing politics
shed their best arguments
to the ground

Ideas once green
soon blazed orange and red
then, withered and brown,
just blew away
or dissolved underfoot

Even mighty oaks
believe themselves to be
quite exempt from influence
but they are usually the slaves
of some defunct forester; 10/27/10, 6:47 AM
Rialby said...: Anybody have an opinion on that thing that happened at the Rand Paul event the other day?; 10/27/10, 7:27 AM
AllenS said...: West central WI wind/storm update:

Last afternoon I had a 55 gallon barrel full of thin scrap steel blown over. Power was off from 7:45 to 8:30 pm. Haven't been outside yet, but I notice a covering of snow on the windshield of the car. The wind blew hard, very hard last night. More of the same today, I guess.; 10/27/10, 7:31 AM
KCFleming said...: Re: wind storm.

Unlike Neil Young, I couldn't live inside a tepee.

Northern man don't need him around anyhow.; 10/27/10, 7:38 AM
Original Mike said...: Watch out deer. Your cover is blown.; 10/27/10, 8:09 AM
Fred4Pres said...: Old growth big trees are something to behold. There are a few remnants on the east coast, but very few.

Out west there are more.

Talking about old trees, I just watched Vertigo last night (thanks to Professor Glenn's hawking the Amazon one day sale on Hitchcock movies). Kim Novak gets all fixated on the tree section in Muir Woods.

Kim and Jimmy and Hitchcock are all gone, but those trees are still pretty much the same in that grove.; 10/27/10, 8:45 AM
jayne_cobb said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/27/10, 8:49 AM
Original Mike said...: There are several old growth forests in the upper midwest. Porcupine Mountains, Sylvania, and areas in the Boundary Waters/Quietco. I have visited them many times. I adore them.; 10/27/10, 8:52 AM
Rialby said...: I was kidding...; 10/27/10, 8:55 AM
jayne_cobb said...: Sorry, I am an idiot.; 10/27/10, 8:59 AM
Michael said...: We had to have a big, really big, oak taken down this spring. It was huge about 120 years old and showing rot at the base. It might have lasted another decade or two but a bad East wind could have put it in the bed with me and my wife so we sadly elected to remove it. Now when there is a big wind we sit on the screened porch off the bedroom and watch the forest heave back and forth and the top of the giant tulip poplar quiver. We are no longer afraid.; 10/27/10, 9:09 AM
Fred4Pres said...: This is hilarious.; 10/27/10, 9:21 AM
frak said...: Grouse.; 10/27/10, 10:02 AM
Peter Hoh said...: There was a small stand of old-growth white pines and hemlocks just outside Cornwall, Connecticut. I saw them in 1987, a couple years before a tornado did some serious damage.; 10/27/10, 10:04 AM
MamaM said...: We had a huge oak on our creek bank come down last year. We thought it was going to be the wind that took it out, but it turned out to be a week of rain. Aside from a whooshing sigh and some cracking of branches the giant fell quickly and quietly in the dark of night, landing with the trunk in the creek bed. We took off the branches but left the trunk with no way to lever it out.

Wind, Water and Fire are symbols often used to describe the dynamic power of the Spirit of God.

Science has come far in understanding, monitoring and utilizing these three forces, but is still a babe in the woods when it comes to taming and controlling them.; 10/27/10, 11:12 AM
Michael said...: frak: Grouse??!! Indeed. Soon coming. Gnarled apple and downed timber, briers and heart stopping whirrs. Grouse.; 10/27/10, 11:28 AM
BJM said...: @Fred4

The Muir Woods Cafe makes the best grilled cheese evah! It comes with a bowl of excellent tomato soup to sip or dip. Try it next time you're in Marin.; 10/27/10, 1:47 PM
Deborah M. said...: Fred, I don't believe Novak is dead, if that's waht you were saying. She was recently diagnosed with breast cancer at age 77 but is expected to recover.

Vertigo is a complex film. One of my favorites.; 10/27/10, 8:53 PM