Resting Hare

“Resting Hare” (bronze finish garden sculpture) by Brian Hollingworth.

British artist Brian Hollingworth has specialized in hare sculpture for many years. His love of hares came from observing and sketching them in their natural habitat.

Writes Hollingworth: “Hares, in ancient times, were believed to be the embodiment of Epona, the Goddess of the Moon. This was because they were observed during autumn and winter months to sit and stare at the moon, trying to see their own image. When spring came, the spirit of Epona had entered them and manifest itself in the wild dancing, chasing and boxing of the Mad March Hare. The Ojibwe tribe of the Western Great Lakes, Minnesota and North Dakota, consider the hare to have been the first teacher of animals and plants, and founder of the art of decoration.”

Morning Light VIII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Epitaph on a Hare

Epitaph on a Hare

By William Cowper

(Written March, 1783. Published in The Gentleman’s Magazine,
Dec., 1784; afterwards in 1800. A copy is in the British Museum.)

Here lies, who, hound did ne’er pursue,
Nor swifter greyhound follow,
Whose foot ne’er tainted the morning dew,
Nor ear heard huntsman’s halloo;

Old Tiney, surliest of his kind,
Who nursed with tender care,
And to domestic bounds confined,
Was still a wild-Jack-hare.

Thought duly from my hand he took
His pittance every night,
He did it with a jealous look
And, when he could, would bite.

His diet was of wheaten bread,
and milk, and oats, and straw;
Thistles, or lettuces instead,
with sand to scour his maw.

On twigs of hawthorn he regaled,
On pippin’s russet peel,
And when his juicy salads failed,
Sliced carrots pleased him well.

A Turkey carpet was his lawn,
Whereon he loved to bound,
To skip and gambol like a fawn,
And swing his rump around.

His frisking was at evening hours,
For then he lost his fear,
But most before approaching showers
Or when a storm drew near.

Eight years and five round-rolling moons
He thus saw steal away,
Dozing out all his idle noons,
And every night at play.

I kept him for his humour’s sake,
For he would oft beguile
My heart of thoughts that made it ache,
And force me to a smile.

But now beneath his walnut shade
He finds his long last home,
And waits, in snug concealment laid,
Till gentler Puss shall come.

He, still more aged feels the shocks,
From which no care can save,
And partner once of Tiney’s box,
Must soon partake his grave.

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From the website of the Cowper and Newton Museum:

On his return to Orchard Side [Cowper] was glad “of anything that would engage my attention without fatiguing it”. Some neighbour’s children had a leveret of which they grew tired. Cowper was offered this and two others. In a letter dated 28th May 1784 Cowper describes the arrangements he made for his pets.

Immediately commencing carpentry, I built them houses to sleep in; each had a separate apartment so contrived that their ordure would pass through the bottom of it; an earthenware pan placed under each received whatsoever fell, which duly emptied and washed thus kept sweet and clean. In the daytime they had the range of the hall, and at night retired to his own bed, never intruding into that of another . . .

A memorandum found among Cowper’s papers dated 9th March 1786 records the last of his three hares.

This day died poor Puss, aged eleven years and eleven months. She died between twelve and one, at noon, of old age, and apparently without pain.


Image: “Brown Hare” by Susan Shimeld.

Gay Identity

One blogsite I particularly like to visit on a regular basis is D. Stephen Heersink’s Gay Species.

Heersink is an excellent (and prolific) writer. His posts are erudite and insightful without being dry or lacking in humanity and humor. If you’re not familiar with his blog, then it’s one that the Leveret highly recommends you get to know.

As a teaser, here’s an excerpt from Heersink’s October 2006 reflection on gay identity – a reflection inspired by his reading of Gregory Woods’ A History of Gay Literature.

Enjoy!

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Other than two men finding erotic pleasures in each other, I’m not sure what a gay identity or a gay sensibility actually entails. Even the actual sexual practices between two men are not sufficiently standard to claim anything more than mutual eroticism in the broadest possible terms is defining of “gay.” And I’m rather insistent of this most basic feature. The erotic interests of “gay” men are not endless, mind you, but nor are they universal. Without going into extreme detail, suffice it that some gay men kiss and some do not. If something as basic as kissing is not a gay universal, then I cannot insist anything more sexual is either. From this vantage, all that is common is a male's attraction for another male, the individual dynamics taking each where each wants to go.

On another front, however, there does seem to be one universal gay sensibility that seems unquestioned and without parallel. Indeed, the absence of male aggression and fighting among gay men is rather extraordinary when juxtaposed against men in general. This is not to say that gay men won’t or don’t fight back, go to the rescue of someone being assaulted, or don’t slap a lover in an extreme situation. . . . But unlike the straight men who killed Matthew Shepard out of some perverse pleasure of exerting they’re own sense of masculinity, or who delight in lynching minorities who appear different from themselves, or fly into a jealous rage over another male’s casual look at another male’s woman, gay men are not prone to engage in violence, mayhem, or endangerment for the sheer pleasure of chest-beating masculinity to prove they are masculine. Maybe they don’t care, or perhaps they have no need to prove their masculinity to others. Whatever the reason, it is a well-documented fact that gay men do not engage in violence for its own sake like straight males.

I’ll add another gay sensibility that may not be universal, but seems pretty ubiquitous none the same. Gay men are neat. Not “personality” neat (although I think that is true), but decorum neat, tidy neat, well-organized, and civil. I’ve never been in another gay man’s dwelling where a typical “male mess” is found. Some straights think gay proclivity towards neatness, order, and hygiene (and if so disposed, toward aesthetics) is stereotypical of gay men, and I think they’re right. Most gay men are hospitable and generous in ways that straight men haven’t the slightest clue. We wash our dishes after using them, wash our clothes after wearing them, and make our beds even though no one else will know or care. We seem to extend an offering of hospitality no matter what. In other words, gay men are generally clean and orderly, and we take pride in our hospitality. If it weren’t for women and gay men, our world would be so disordered, so topsy-turvy, so on the sly, that no one would take any of us seriously. Straight men need women to calm their hyper-agitation to respectable speeds. Gay men seem to come already predisposed.

But before I go into total self-appreciation, other than homoeroticism, non-aggression, and orderliness, I’d be hard pressed to define or categorize gay men any more precisely. Oh sure, we seem to have our fair share of drama and a petulant reaction to suppression, frequently personalizing some extrinsic feature as a personal assault on our dignities, but, hey, after so much hostility by people we don’t know, much less care to know, who want to rehabilitate us in their image, cure us of our afflictions, rescue us from hell, or tell us our natural inclinations are unnatural (450 species to the contrary notwithstanding), we often get testy when we’re told we can’t or won’t be loved, because God, Yahweh, or Allah disapproves. To this day, some men are still threatened by our appreciation of male beauty, the depreciation of our same-sex love, our courage to be “different,” however or whatever form that takes, but the truth is that as every person is different, as every person seeks fulfillment, as everyone hopes for that extraordinary person who will complement us, whatever our unique individual differences, and they are legion, we will not become what we are not.

Admittedly, we’re still finding out what it means to be “gay,” whatever that may mean, but what we won’t tolerate are others’ intolerance of our difference or in exploring what it might mean for each of us as unique individuals to be unique. Maybe “gay identity” is only an illusion, but the delusions hoisted on us to conform to some mythical stereotype of the abstract man according to religious bigots, is an even greater illusion. The current environment of hostility and hate and enmity notwithstanding, we won’t forfeit our freedom to become what others want us to be. If Walt Whitman could be honest, gay, and an unabashed democrat in favor of human pluralism, the courage to be, as Paul Tillich once wrote, is the only courage to have.

To read Heersink’s reflection on gay identity in its entirety, click here.


Recommended Off-site Links:
The Gay Species
Androphilia (Heersink’s other weblog).

Morning Light VII

Subject and photographer unknown.

Minotaur with Hare

The following is excepted from the website of the University of British Columbia (UBC) Botanical Garden.

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The “Minotaur with Hare” by UK artist Sophie Ryder is on display at UBC Botanical Garden for 18 months as part of the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale: Open Spaces 2005/2006. Weighing 800kg and measuring 2.7m (7') tall, the minotaur will overlook a soon-to-be-constructed traditional turf maze, representing the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.

The story of the Minotaur as told by the classical authors is one of heroism and tragedy. The wife of King Minos of Crete, Pasiphae, was cursed by the god Poseidon with zoophilia, causing her to mate with a bull. Of this union came forth the ghastly Minotaur. The legendary craftsman Daedalus built a labyrinth to house the Minotaur and King Minos exacted a periodic tribute of seven virgins and seven young men from nearby Athens to be given to the Minotaur.

Theseus, son of the King of Athens, resolved to end this practice by offering himself as part of the tribute. Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, fell in love with Theseus and gave him a magic sword to kill the Minotaur and a thread to help him find his way out of the labyrinth. The deed done, Theseus and Ariadne fled Crete together, although Theseus shortly after callously abandoned Ariadne on the island of Naxos.

There was a final tragic act to this tale. Theseus’ father had asked him to change his black sails for white if he remained alive so his safe return could be witnessed from afar. Distracted by the hullabaloo in Crete, Theseus forgot his promise. Thinking his son dead, his father threw himself to his death over the cliffs of Cape Sounion.

In this artwork by Sophie Ryder, the story of the Minotaur is given a non-classical twist as the Minotaur is shown holding a hare, a symbol of swiftness and vulnerability, to contrast with the menacing bulk of the Minotaur itself.

The Goddess Ostara

The beautiful artwork above and the following excerpt are from the website of artist Mickie Mueller.

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The Goddess Ostara’s (Eostre’s) celebration day can vary from the spring equinox (circa March 21) to the first full moon after the equinox. She is the Anglo-Saxon/Germanic Goddess of new beginnings, fertility, hope and renewal. Her symbols include the hare, colored eggs, and spring flowers. In older times celebrants wore brand new clothing to celebrate her festival.

Does this all sound familiar? It should. The symbolism and even the name of Ostaras/Eostre’s festival were adopted by the Christian celebration of Easter which also celebrates renewal and rebirth. One should note, that the holiday of Easter moves every year. It always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox.

Ostara is an interesting Goddess because she is considered a Maiden Goddess but instead of a new crescent, uses full moon energy. This makes sense if we consider that she is the Goddess who fires up all the growth in the spring. Physics teaches us that an object at rest, tends to stay at rest, it takes more energy to begin momentum than continue it. Consider the seed sleeping beneath the earth or the bud tightly wrapped on a tree branch. It’s like when the alarm goes off while you are snug under your blankets; the hardest part is just getting up and moving, and it takes a lot of energy to get started. That may explain a Maiden with full moon energy.

This dynamic Lady of spring has also had the female hormone Estrogen named after her. Bursting full of the power of femininity as well as regeneration, she takes the relay of life firmly in hand as the Crone has passed it to her from the underworld. As we note the sprouts, buds and blossoms bursting forth from the deep dark earth, take a moment to thank Ostara.


Image: “Goddess Ostara” by Mickie Mueller (11x14 acrylic and Berol Prismacolor pencils on Illustration board).

White Hare Over Water

“White Hare Over Water” by Catherine Hyde.

Writes Hyde: “Over the past few years I have become increasingly obsessed with the tension between meeting points and journeys: land and water – river and sea – twilight and moonrise - night and dawn – high tide and low tide.

“Drawing on symbolism derived from Greek, Norse, European and Welsh myth, I use the archetypal stag, hare and fish as emblems of wildness, fertility and permanence. Their movements through the paintings act as vehicles that bind the elements together.

“I am constantly trying to convey the landscape in a state of suspension – the moment between the rise and fall of a wave – in order to reveal the profound connection between man and Nature.”

Morning Light VI

Tales of Evolution

The following is excerpted from the website of the Hare Preservation Trust.

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Hares and their relatives, the rabbits and pikas, comprise the zoological order Lagomorpha. Modern biochemical evidence suggests the lagomorphs have been a distinct lineage for around 90 million years. Since the dinosaurs became extinct around 65 million years ago it is possible that hare-like creatures were scurrying about the feet of the giant reptiles for 25 million years.

The evolution of the lagomorphs was greatly influenced by the rise to dominance of grasses among the flowering plants during the Oligocene and Miocene periods between 35 and 5 million years ago. Vast tracts of prairie land developed in Asia during those times and the lagomorphs evolved to take advantage of this abundant food supply. The caecum, an offshoot of the gut and well developed in lagomorphs, acts as a fermentation chamber to break down the large amounts of cellulose which grasses contain.

The brown hare evolved in continental Europe, but probably did not radiate northwards before Britain was cut off from the mainland by the formation of the English Channel around 7,500 years ago. If that was so, then the mountain hare is our only native hare species. The brown hare was probably introduced by the Romans around 2,000 years ago.


Image: Darin Smith.

Darting Hare

The US practice at the 2006 Ryder Cup in County Kildare, Ireland, is briefly interrupted as a hare darts across the sixth green with Phil Mickelson in mock pursuit.

Source: BBC World News.

Ball[s] Sports

The following article was recently published on EurekAlert.com.

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Over One-third of Former American Football Players
had Sexual Relations with Men, Study Says

A study of former high-school American Football players has found that more than a third said they had had sexual relations with other men.

In his study of homosexuality among sportsmen in the US, sociologist Dr Eric Anderson found that 19 in a sample of 47 had taken part in acts intended to sexually arouse other men, ranging from kissing to mutual masturbation and oral sex.

The 47 men, aged 18-23, were all American Football players who previously played at the high school (secondary school) level but had failed to be picked for their university’s team and were now cheerleaders instead. They were at various universities from the American south, Mid-West, west and north west.

Dr Anderson, now of the University of Bath, UK, said the study showed that society’s increasing open-mindedness about homosexuality and decreasing stigma concerning sexual activity with other men had allowed sportsmen to speak more openly about these sexual activities. He found that this sex came in the form of two men and one woman, as well as just two men alone.

He said that the sexual acts described differed from acts of ‘hazing’ or team-bonding that often include pretend-homosexual acts.

“The evidence supports my assertion that homophobia is on the rapid decline among male teamsport athletes in North America at all levels of play,” he writes in his study, entitled “Being Masculine is Not About Whom You Sleep With: Heterosexual Athletes Contesting Masculinity and the One-Time Rule of Homosexuality.”


. . . Dr Anderson was the first openly gay male high school sports coach in the US. He left coaching after one of his students was assaulted because it was assumed that he was gay. Dr Anderson is now working in the field of sport sociology at the University of Bath, and is the author of In the Game: Gay Athletes and the Cult of Masculinity.

“Men have traditionally been reluctant to do anything associated with homosexuality because they feared being perceived gay,” he said. “There has been pressure on them to conform to the notion that being male is about having traditionally masculine traits, in terms of dress, behaviours and sexual activities.

“But as more men are open about their varieties of sexuality, it becomes less stigmatized to be gay or to have sex with men. It is increasingly not a problem to act in otherwise non-traditional ways.

“I see this in other areas of my research too, including how men behave in straight nightclubs, where I find that university-aged men dance as much with each other than with women, and how heterosexual men are increasingly free to wear clothing styles or colours that once were taboo for them.

“This isn’t something that would have happened ten or twenty years ago. Times are changing and they are changing rapidly for men of this age.”

To read this article in its entirety, click here.