What has been, will be again,
What has been done, will be done again,
There is nothing new under the sun.
King Solomon 

In the year of 1995 a massive week long storm slammed into the west coast of North America. The Pacific Northwest lost power for days at a time, but being prepared for such things the residents hunkered down and rode it out. Further south in Sunny California the storm came and went without much fuss, Certainly not enough to halt the release of "Clueless" a film that was never meant to win an Oscar but that had surprisingly deep roots. Any literally afficandio, dragged unwillingly into the theater to "enjoy" the 90's summer fluff, would have recognized the photography scene among the Gulf War references and the Simpsons jokes. This was Jane Austen's "Emma" retold with a nearly vapid but well meaning Beverly Hills girl in the titular character spot. It was an old story, retold point for point, but dressed up in a modern situation. 
This is hardly a new literary development, after all there are only 7 or 8 or possibly 12 origonal stories. 
Nathaniel Hawthorne, the nineteenth century genius behind "The Scarlet Letter"  made something of a living off of this. All authors do in one way or another but he was rather blunt about it when he took up the task of updating the old Greek and Roman legends for the local schoolchildren. While this endeavor has become more popular of late it was a bit revolutionary back before the Civil War and the author felt the need to defend himself in the preface of his "A Wonder Book". 

"He [Hawthorne] does not, therefore, plead guilty to a sacrilege, in having sometimes shaped anew , as his fancy dictated, the forms that have been hallowed by an antiquity of two or three thousand years. No epoch of time can claim a copyright in these immortal fables. They seem never to have been made; and certainly, so long as  man exists, then can never perish' but by their indestructibility itself, they are legitimate subjects for every age to clothe with its own garniture of manners and sentiment, and to imbue with its own morality."

Given how critical agriculture, especially the domestication of grains, has been to every culture that ever made it past the grass hut stage it is no stretch of the imagination to posit that grains (also know as cereals) are equally important to other species. Grains or grain products are also edible to a range of body types, including herbivores, granivores, insectivores, and even hard core predators.  A rolling field of grain then becomes a perfect point of intellectual and physical meeting for two members of different species. Both can look around and say, "I know what this place is. I know what it is for, I can move on from here." 
On the other hand there is another, perhaps darker side to the cereal grains. Plants are not passive in their ecology by any means. They fight every second of every day for their place and the short nature of grasses means that trees, shrubs, and even most herbaceous weeds can out compete them. Left to their own competition the grasses would be  quickly pushed to near extinction. But they have made themselves critical to the dominant animal species. Not just humans, but beavers, elephants, and other species have been known to alter their environments to favor grasses. Now these humble cereals dominated a massive swath of the fertile surface of the Earth. So are we really cultivating this plant? Or are the cereals cultivating us? 
Something for writers to remember on #NationalCerealDay.

Here is a bird to write a story around. This little guy is your average crow type bird that can and will eat about anything. But they are single beakedly responsible for planting some of the rarest forests in the world. 

You know that thing? The one where you hear something (you think) for the first time, and then suddenly it starts cropping up everywhere? 
Well that thing has a name, The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is widely recognized and plays a large role in the work of such literary heavyweights as Agatha Christie. Her mystery "The Pale Horse" starts with an instances of this. 
This author just had an interesting instance of Badder-Meinhof. The 1850's book "The House of Seven Gables" by Nathaniel Hawthorne was, unsurprisingly, full of words that were unfamiliar to the modern twenty-first century reader. As the book is read a list of such words is soon compiled. The meaning of some must be look up in a dictionary and the definition checked for timeliness. Some can be deduced by context and such was grimalkin. From the fact that this oddity startled a mouse and lurked about the garden it was clearly a cat of some sort. Further investigation revealed that it was denoted something mysterious, like a witch. 
Alas this word came near the end of the book and the author had to seek out another. Having only a few moments left before the library closed the best option was to pluck one of the bright novels displayed by the librarians at the top of the stairs. The selection was as different from the previous book as it could be. It set in the future of the publishing date, while 'Seven Gables' was set hundreds of years before it publishing date. The new book was about superheros of inhuman strength the old book was entirely about the frailties of the human nature. The new book was anchored solidly in the physical and scientific while the old drifted from one metaphysical fancy to the next. And yet these two very different books had a similar scene. The female lead, a morally strong and physical hale young woman of small proportions bends over to examine a cat.
The old book used the word grimalkin to create an air of mystic mystery while the new named the cat Greymalkin (an alternate spelling) to create an atmosphere of plain normality and domesticity. An interesting bit of synchronicity. 

According to the internet today is #WorldBookDay. Why the world needs a special day for books I am not sure. Books really are an everyday thing in my mind. However this is one author who is not going to complain. How will I celebrate this august occasion? Going to the local library of course. 

What was it about the mid to late 1800's? Was force was at work in the air? This strange air that had only just begun to feel the singing of man made electricity in its stirrings? What was it that produced prophets in an age that had begun to spurn spiritualism?  These men and women hid their revelations in the tawdry pages of penny novels and between the pages of cheap magazines and even so received little recompense in their time. 
One is know to many as such a prophet. Jules Verne predicted skyscrapers, submersible warfare, Neil Armstrong's footprints, and much more. There is another author, just as well know perhaps, but not so often recognized for his scientifically prophetic bent. He is know to many for his scathing indictment of hypocrisy and social injustice in his book "The Scarlet Letter".
By the time Jules Verne was born  Nathaniel Hawthorn was already an odd young man; college educated and living a strangely solitary ten year period of his life. But despite this lag in age, and and ocean between them,  both authors began their visionary writing careers in 1850. While Verne, born into the scientific revolution in the forward looking nation of France, focused on the physical and technological, Hawthorn, who grew to age surrounded by the mysteries of New England, focused on the personal and sociological. Vern predicted the tech, Hawthorn predicted what people would do with it. 
How so? Here is an excerpt from Hawthorn's "The House of Seven Gables" 

"An almost spiritual medium, like the electric telegraph, should be consecrated to high, deep, joyful, and holy missions. Lovers, day by day - hour by hour, if so often moved to do it - might send their heartthrobs form Maine to Florida, with some such words as these: 'I love you forever!' 'My heart runs over with love!' 'I love you more than I can!' and again at the next message. "I have lived an hour longer, and love you twice as much!' " 

Does any of this sound familiar? 
Or rather look familiar? 
​

Jules Verne predicted the Apollo mission. 
Nathaniel Hawthorne predicted text messaging and exactly what it would be used for. 

Pluck a daffodil 
In honor of #StDavid'sDay
Don't ask why just do.

Do the syllables 
In a #hashtag count for the 
Haiku Syllables? 

Does five, seven, and 
Five include the pound sign that
Calls the attention?

Tarry not on such
Contemplations too long on
#StDavids bright Day

The Daffodils are
Waiting for you outside. A
Drop of golden sun.