Sink sank sunk (sibilant).

(There, that didn't take very long.)                                                                       Up, Down.                        Earth Day 

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Contents:   Bathetic, Joanna Macy, Internet, Lot, Jim Hansen, Peter Sale, FAO Food Price Index, Uakti, Straight Talk?  Anima, 'Vantage #11.

I did remember Kateri Tekakwitha on the 17th and am looking towards the full moon on the 25th. Two quick word games: alma/lama Portuguese for soul/mud; and the familiar god/dog (Good dog).

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Much of this post is lugubrious & mewling self-pity - that's just the way things are - but there have been two positive & enlightening developments come on the radar recently, three actually ...

Positive Earth Day indications:

1) The 2013 Goldman Environmental Prize recipients. Notable as well because of the well organized website. Discovered via The Guardian: Azzam Alwash wins Goldman prize.

 

2) A report from Real Climate: Thin Ice — the movie; the movie website: Thin Ice; and the film itself on Vimeo (1 hour 13 minutes). An Earth Day gift from the climate scientists to all - and giving gifts on important occasions is a good habit to cultivate. A little optimistic for me, but not too much.

 

3) 10 key points for becoming a more compassionate activist, part of the Occupy the Economy handbook by Judy Rebick & Velcrow Ripper.

 

Let's make it 4) The Toronto Climate Action Network (TCAN) schedule is beginning to be fuller - obviously more used. This could be the best news of all. Congratulations to the organizers.

 

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Pathos at least allows for compassion, bathos not so much. Caved in a limited way on day 5; day 6 back at it lookin' like nothin' ever happened. Smoking is a death-wish; simple as that.

For many months the dominant mantra here has been 'Sorry' (also an s-word). Oh yeah, the Tourette's is still 'Oh Fuck! Oh Fuck!' and so on ... 'Fuckin' Bitch!' as the stumbling dropsy gets to the point of ridiculousness and I have to laugh; but the centre core of the boil has been and is unworthiness. Distinguishing guilt and shame is a useful and in some ways rewarding meditation - but in the end they collapse & conflate into a totally unacceptable self-pity (notwithstanding the absurdity of the positive thinking ideology - which is anyway refudiated by 'the conditions that prevail' [Thank you Sarah Palin & Jimmy Durante.]).

The last good word was from Gabor Maté (talk about a quick study). He said, "You have some work to do," or something like that - but the means he suggested have proven beyond reach and it's back to wazizname, Berger? ... in Hair singin' "I'm falling through a hole in the flag."

From an optimistic New Year's Day and Lucky '13 - the year we turned it around!; through Forward On Climate and The spell has been broken!; to stupid & ineffective activist emails - finally getting a hit and freaked out ditching it; and so inspired by Naomi Klein's "... plan to heal the planet that also heals our broken selves ...", incubating, waiting with bated breath, and at the first positive sign ... on the verge of ditching that too. Bathetic. Sinking. 

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What to think about Joanna Macy?

Read the bumph on Wikipedia ... an old lady, early 80's, Buddhist, lives by selling her books looks like ... dunno?

Ram Dass hit Montreal in 67 or 68, not a buddhist grant you; and later on, José Datrino, Profeta de Gentileza, a christian but still; and more recently our own k-k-Canadian Gabor Maté, definitely a buddhist and a very VERY clever fellow; ... but with experience over time my support for the messages of gurus wise or otherwise has changed. Not to mention Iron John, Jesus, (I am thinking of Tom T. Hall and 'Everything From Jesus To Jack Daniels' but I can't find it on YouTube).

So I have a look at her website and near the top somewhere it says, "... including despair work ..." and I am basically hooked.

At least deeply enough to take the next (tentative) step. And yet I am left wondering if at the end of the day I will find that it is me who should be giving the workshops on what to do about despair? 

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Trying to get a feel for where the Internet is and isn't. This is where much of the modern life is lived: fossicking about on an information compost pile. Not difficult to view it as a disease, an epidemic even. That these images correspond to consumption patterns - close to the root of the 'problem' in other words - is no surprise. The good part is that it can (and will) so quickly and easily vanish: In a moment; in the twinkling of an eye; at the last trump; like the morning dew; like smoke. Just pull the plug; or cancel the phone.

[Similes and metaphors from First Corinthians 15:52 & Hosea 13:3. I use these references only because they prove the ubiquity of Launcelot Andrewes' (and his colleagues of course) figurative language. Without the KJV gentle reader, English might require more ... salt.]

And they call it the 'last' trump because?     :-)

[Best of a bad lot: the top image is in fact a 'heat map' of the 2007-2011 malware infections by DNSChanger from Team Cymru; and the other is from Carna Botnet Internet Census 2012; all very sketchy.] 

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Lot:   A long and complicated story; but a natural to consider in the context of collapse. Wikipedia sums it up pretty well; or go straight to Genesis, chapters 11 to 19 (both the flight from Sodom and his son's begettings are in 19).

Rendered almost incomprehensible with dangling questions: Why did he offer his daughters to the thugs? Why did his wife look back? How did he not catch on to his daughter's wiles? (to list just a few). 

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Jim Hansen:   The last news was: Climate Maverick to Retire From NASA (published April 1 but no joke). He knows how to organize a website coherently; witness his blog. There is a mailing list - what a pleasure to receive regular emails from himself. The latest is this: Making Things Clearer: Exaggeration, Jumping the Gun, and The Venus Syndrome (.pdf). I read it several times. The first time I kept thinking "he is 72 and a prostate cancer survivor, maybe he's tired too?" He ends it with "I am running out of steam for this present communication," and I am looking at the ghostly photograph that accompanied the retirement article.

But on second reading I decide I must be projecting.

He mentions an upcoming paper, 'Climate Sensitivity, Sea Level, and Atmospheric CO2' - advance information is here: abstract & download (pdf). 

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Peter Sale:   I have praised his book here a number of times (1, 2, 3) and make comments on his blog which he permits. And I have roots in Huntsville. I thought ... I'll go up there and listen to him on Earth Day! So last week I put up a blurb about it. It is true that I am feeling generally like a leper ... but I go anyway, a pleasant bus ride with a driver who stops to show us the flooding in Bracebridge, a motel overnight ...

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Grant you it snowed in Huntsville on Saturday morning, but I think very few turned out primarily because of a lack of publicity. The town forgave its fee for the venue but I'll bet single malt that the powers-that-be really want no part of such things. The nexus of inadequacy falls to Rebecca Francis, the 'Sustainability Coordinator' (to be shared with the organizing committee no doubt). I will send them an email - if anyone responds I will publish it here. Tony Clement didn't show up (no surprise there though he is the local MP and could have) - an email to him as well then and ditto on a reply.

Peter is a good speaker; personable, charming and a professional - he prepares, thoroughly. Relating the global issue to the Friends of the Muskoka Watershed (and here is their blog) complete with some well-explained science on the local situation is canny and effective. Two big ideas fall out of Saturday's experience for me:

1) The planet can support about two billion folks; there are now over seven billion; something's gonna give and it probably won't be pleasant (even if you are watching it from a relatively safe haven like Muskoka).

2) There is no guaranteed reward for righteousness. This is a big step forward from religious notions of a magically equivalent payback - Karma and the like; and a reason to get serious sooner rather than later, There are no reserved or VIP seats in the Elysian Fields and no reward-miles on the spiritual credit card - we must (all) get our thumbs out while there is still time. 

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[A friend tells me that it does no good telling people like Rebecca "You blew it!" My friend is probably right, but for now it is the way I know - except to say "Nothing personal. Maybe you will learn from this and do better next time if there is one."]

Not enough publicity; no control of the AV equipment; no video record (that I know of) ...

That said - there is one very positive thing that can be said of the organizing committee: they may just all be church-goers and do it habitually, or maybe it was simply because of the low attendance - but - there were lots of greeters, and no shortage of opportunities for conversation with them. If they didn't all know what 350 represents, there was lots of room to explain. This 'greeting' is an essential activity and one that is often overlooked. Regardless of attendance, the vital results of any such event are the quality and strength of whatever relations are established. We are "l'armée des étoiles jetées dans le ciel" (Jacques et Raïssa Maritain).

A-and there was excellent coffee and lots of half&half if you like it creamy made by two women from Soul Sistas restaurant (thanks again - and who says soul sistas can't be white?).

There is a strong connection apparently with Transition Huntsville (and also here). 

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FAO numbers edging up at last:   The FAO Food Price Index is up a few points after a suspiciously long flat spot.

Two articles from John Vidal: How a warming world is a threat to our food supplies, and Millions face starvation as world warms.

Lester Brown is on the case: New Era of Food Scarcity Echoes Collapsed Civilizations, and as usual he has it nicely pinned. Unless we mobilize in a way equivalent to the American effort following Pearl Harbour we're done here. 

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Uakti:   Can you really criticise music? Does it work at all? Yes and no: everyone knows about what you mean when you say to someone who likes The Beatles, "I like the Stones," but exactly & precisely not so much. Here's an unrelated story on related issues.

It looks like Águas da Amazônia was the high point. I got curious about them (naturally). They've been at it a long time. Either you are an integrante/member or not, so it was unusually difficult to find the names and pictures of the two women involved (they are not 'members' apparently). They have moved on to Beatles renditions as a main effort recently - the Beatles are always big in Brasil - which I could not be bothered to listen to; before that it was 'Oiapok Xui' which is a slangy way of saying Oiapoque ao Chui/'sea to sea' so I listened, Forró de Larra (?!) ... forgettable. Maybe it's like writing in an invented language: Russel Hoban pulls it off in Riddley Walker but it often presents lame.

So then: the seminal moments between Uakti and Philip Glass must have been something to behold. Águas is so very strong.

These pictures come from Expo Guanajuato in Mexico taken by Sylvio Coutinho sometime (can't find a date anywhere, late 90s or early oughts I am guessing).

Some details on Wikipedia, and more on their own website (where the pictures are numerous but too small for me to see very well).                         Maybe try listening to this & this again. 

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One way of looking at it is my compulsive (what passes for) honesty; that: a) I never learned how to play politely anyway; b) I am lazy and it is easier (especially as memories fade); c) playing it straight has some advantages when you are young and it can become a habit; d) every one says honesty is the best policy though they may not mean it; and e) it has become a tiny keyhole-full of light in the murk to believe that straight talk can make a difference. ... And f) I guess - just don't care much anymore.

"I seen pretty people disappear like smoke."

But what do you do when almost no one will talk to you anymore? When the conversations all dwindle to silence. What happens then painted bird? I guess I'll just have to go along and ... find out.

"I dreamed about you, baby. It was just the other night. Most of you was naked, ah but some of you was light. The sands of time were falling from your fingers and your thumb and you were waiting for the miracle, for the miracle to come." 

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If my imagination moves towards beautiful young women it is not (only) because I am a dirty old man gentle reader. Mostly I am just old and harmless and these forays have led me (over the years since 2005) to a doorway and towards an anima I didn't know I had.

These photographs (I tried to buy rights but got no reply so some are watermarked) come from Araquém Alcântara via Terra:
In the lecture I posted the link to a while ago David Suzuki talks about a UN resolution proposed by Bhutan: "The purpose of government is not economic growth and more stuff. The purpose of government is to make sure that people are well and happy." The photographs of this girl look something like wellness and happiness (and security) to me.

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And oh yes: the Internet does not know itself. This may be its largest and determining deficit. 

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Walking along in the spring sunshine came to me Alzheimer's

'Vantage #11: as memory fades the continual mental background chatter fades too and experience becomes more sensual, or more immediately so at least: visual, auditory, olfactory, the delightful touch of the air (to the extent that the receptors still work).

"I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet."

Here LISTEN! to this, turn up the volume, and keep in mind that it is called Águas da Amazônia - maybe it will move you.

Be well. 

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And a few cartoons that simply had to be here. 

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Down.

People can always tell.

(No, they can't.)
Up, Down, A bit more ... 

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Contents: Drought/FAO/Climate Dice, Tiny Stories, Grant Hadwin, Marten Scheffer, 20 Trillion, Ovid/Phaeton.

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Fact is, things can be faked up pretty well, quite convincingly.

And there is a wide range of techniques - Photoshop is just one among many. A better statement might be, "Sometimes people can tell if they care to," but even in those marginal cases confidence is reduced, even for those who were actually 'there'. Memory is mutable too.

Somewhere Bob Dylan said ... yeah, here it is: "technology to wipe out truth is now available. not everybody can afford it but it's available."

[World Gone Wrong liner notes on the 'Discover' tab here. Instructive to read the whole thing carefully and see more of how his mind works - as if (for example) this technology he mentions were directed at or destined for a mass market, or as if ability to pay were a factor in its uptake. Threading the needle in a sense.] 

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There is drought in the American midwest, and closer to home in Southern Ontario too, and the corn farmers (ask yourself to what degree they are farmers, even ®-®-Roundup-Ready™ corn needs rain) are crying (to their crop insurers).

A few years ago I began to follow the FAO Food Price Index - it seemed like a natural, and the UN agency that makes it up, that is one guy in that agency, Abdolreza Abbassian, seemed credible. At the time you could put your name on an email list and be informed as the numbers were updated.

There seems to have been some bureaucratic turbulence in the meantime. Now the best images you can scrape up (here) are what I am showing (and no more emails, you go grab 'em on your own nickle):


That tiny text at the bottom of the graph says, "The real price index is the nominal price index deflated by the World Bank Manufactures Unit Value Index (MUV)." So, the first curve is that 'nominal' means real, and 'real' means cooked, OK. But looking into what this MUV is gets complicated. One view (from Andrew Dorward, here) is that, "The use of such price indices leads to historically low global estimates of current real food prices when the latter are not, in fact, low in historical terms for lower-income groups in low-income countries."

There is even a questioning apparently of the fact that food prices are rising at all (?) in 'real' terms that is. Maybe I am not smart enough to figgure these numbers out, but if people are starving and migrating in their millions then by some measure or other food prices are going up.

Anyway, I am kinda expecting the gradual decline since February 2011 to soon reverse, possibly dramatically, possibly in the next few months. (If I am still doing this I will report ... if I remember.) The pundits seem to agree: US corn belt crisis threatens to drive up global inflation, and Lester Brown: The world is closer to a food crisis than most people realise..

There is a kind of perspective in headlines,

1974: In Midwest, Drought Worsens.
1988: Drought Causing Worry in Midwest and Southeast.
2005: Drought Threatens Crops & Shuts River in Midwest.
2012: Widespread Drought Is Likely to Worsen.

But headlines are misleading - at best they relate to a limited time spectrum and of course they are intended to be sold so they are trumped up.

For real perspective you have to go to statistics & probablilities (interpreted by someone you trust): Perceptions of Climate Change: The New Climate Dice by James Hansen (whom I trust), Makiko Sato, and Reto Ruedy. The report is undated but recent, 2012, April or May looks like. And it is difficult stuff to read, even more difficult to understand, you probably will not take the time ...

Don't trust Paul Krugman (because he continues to shill for growth) but on this he seems to have it right: Loading the Climate Dice. 

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[It is humbling to be of no use or ornament, not to children, not to loved ones & friends, not to any possible action to jam up the environmental thing.

There is the standard bourgeois guff: "... it is the cycle of life. Children grow up and are ungrateful. They in turn have children who grow up and are ungrateful. On and on it goes," (this from an Ann Landers kinda guy, David Eddie, in the Globe). Bollocks of course.

But nevermind, humility is good however you come by it. (Easy for me to say eh?) So I went looking for perspective - for details on eskimo old folks just wandering off onto the ice floes - but, after going through several anthropological works that claimed to know ... it could be an urban myth for all I learned. Too bad, I am sure my friend Shaumiga knew but I never asked him and now he's gone.

At first these tiny stories seemed to be a way forward, or just a way ... of being, but they are increasingly difficult. Oh Well.



So ... second verse about the same as the first, version 2:]

 

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Keeping Faith:    They arrive for an unexpected visit. He is busy with school and young children, other things. She is beyond control already. At 3AM they are there together, pinning her to the mattress, laughing. She is smiling quizzically, an old lady with no idea who these two men are holding her in bed. Getting into his car to leave the next day his father looks a question at him. He does not want to understand and so, doesn't.

His friend, blood brother, is dying in a hospital somewhere far away. He calls on the telephone, begging him to come for a last visit. He is on his way to court over the kids. He doesn't have rent money. He says no and hangs up. He understands very well. He re-reads the letter, "If I had a ladder that would reach into the hole you are in I would climb down it to help you."

His father dies just before his birthday. He calls the day before, and again on the day - no answer - he must be down with the family for a party. A week or so later he is found in his bed, badly decomposed but peacefully arranged (according to reports). They only find him when they do because he is scheduled into a detox and a secretary calls when he doesn't show up. Someone talks him out of viewing the body at the morgue - "It is quite unpleasant. A very hot time of year." - callous dissembling upon mistakes (which are no mistake) and there is no end to it.

{266}

 

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Carnal:    A few of the sweet brown girls still write sometimes, even regularly. Maybe he did something right then because it has been years since he sent any money. Maybe he still is. Something he can only guess at may be going on.

Mixed with formal need, jeopardy and tragedy, there is a bit of news, a fact or two, snapshots, births, marriages. Maybe they love as well as they are able. 'Ninguém pertence pra ninguém' (no one belongs to anyone) they say with a smile, and show such kindness in the face of it. Naturally he tries to imagine it is better than 'able', more. Sometimes he almost succeeds.

His mother often waits up for him when he is out late, wanting to talk. She believes an odd kind of metaphysics, connections that can not possibly break simply because they are carnal, happened - not ever. A country girl.

It is 45°, summertime in the tropics. Mango juice and sweat drips from their elbows and chins. They make moqueca de peixe and some of the mango goes into it along with coconut milk, onions, hot red peppers, tomatoes. The samba radio plays loud. Kids run around. Teenagers are sent out for more cold beer. Old ladies, not so old, are smiling and giggling. Everyone is happy.

{219}

 

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Speaking of Photoshop - that first one is suspect eh?

The obvious question which no one answers (to my satisfaction) is, "How does it grow if it is not green?" I think the answer is that it is not 'golden' at all but yellowish-green, and there are yellowish-green chlorophyll pigments that support photosynthesis.


A discussion here (except that biochemistry is not mentioned).

So, Picea sitchensis 'Bentham's Sunlight' or Picea sitchensis 'Aurea' as you like. And Grant Hadwin was off his meds, paranoid schizophrenic etc., mad, a 'madman', a 'tree murderer' - which I can not quite believe: the action was rational enough, well executed, just not how most people wanted to see, and he certainly appears to have been on his way back to face the music.

John Vaillant knows pretty well who he is: a journalist supporting his family. The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed is superficial and exaggerated but it is competently researched (Bella Coola does indeed line up with the tip of Haida Gwaii, I didn't think so), boring, tedious, quite often downright silly. Not my cup-of-tea then - it risked being flung at the wall a number of times - but I hope he made a pant-full on it sure I do, though I may pass on the next one.

He does discuss the biology, even referring to Grant Scott's thesis on the subject (which I doubt he laid eyes on) - but in such a way as explains very little to me (my fault I'm sure).

About the same time, mid-1990's, I go up onto the mid coast, Ocean Falls, build a kayak intending to paddle off into the sunset, and then chicken out and become Fire Chief instead. Go figgure.

The next fall, or maybe two years later, a younger guy 35 or so shows up in a kayak from Bella Coola. In the spring he chickens out too and disappears back to the lower mainland. Not a movement then, but an eddy perhaps.

Grant Hadwin's escapades are a topic of conversation in the town - mostly a sort of grim red-neck gladness that he has done the decent thing and died.

I wish I'd known him. His bugaboo was 'university-trained professionals' mine is bureaucrats ... same difference.

There is not much source material to be easily found on the Internet, only the two photographs I have shown. John Vaillant & Sacha Snow (there are lots of images of these guys everywhere) substitute their brands for Hadwin's - a palimpsest as Pynchon might call it - and whoever Grant Hadwin actually was becomes more and more obscured. 

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Here, this is interesting: Searching for Clues to Calamity.    'Clues' - I like the sound of that.

Clue #1: Marten Scheffer at Wageningen University (in the Netherlands), and a 2009 book Critical Transitions in Nature and Society published by Princeton. $60, too rich for my budget, and no take-out-able copies at the library.

An impressive Table of Contents, and a (very spotty) .pdf of Chapter 1 Introduction (a VERY spotty .pdf indeed, I will transfer it after a while).

Clue #2: A-and Tim Lenton at University of Exeter, but his 2°C or not 2°C? That is the climate question in Nature (2011) after considerable hedgeing, doesn't get around to answering the question ... so mark him down as a potential supporter of geoengineering and move on. He foresaw the collapse of the Indian summer monsoon within a year in 2008 and it is not quite gone yet is it?

One out of two ain't bad. Ai ai ai, even the second-hand copies at Abe's are forty bucks ... maybe I will pony up, feels like a place to go after Jared Diamond & Joseph Tainter.

I have a little bell hanging in the open window (arranged not to ring too often). The sound of it is sweet but often just reminds me how long I have been stuck here in this Magus' waiting room ...

Be well. 

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£13tn (20⁺tn$US at today's rate) says the Guardian on Saturday, mebbe more!

Nothing in Wikipedia on James S. Henry (yet) but this from a blurb for his book: "... is an economist, lawyer, and investigative journalist who has published in the New Republic, the New York Times, the Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, the Nation, Fortune, and the Wall Street Journal. Henry is an honors graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law School. He was one of the original 'Nader's Raiders' and has also worked for McKinsey & Co. (chief economist) and IBM/Lotus Development (vice president of strategy). He has two children. He lives in New York City and Sag Harbor, NY." By 1990 he was already out of McKinsey & Company according to this from the NYT of that time.

The book, The Blood Bankers: tales from the global underground economy, 2003, is at the library, one copy, but not in circulation, and no cheap copies at Abe's - I may have to make a trip to the reference library.

One on-line crit tells me it is 'haphazard, badly organized, and poorly edited' (?) so ... Ah! Here it is at Google Books, the whole introduction (less diagrams), it doesn't seem haphazard or poorly edited to me (?).

The Tax Justice Network (website here) advertises the report here, but all I can get is this press release or summary or whatever it is. The haphazard & poorly edited criticism sticks this time. The Guardian report says "released exclusively to the Observer." so maybe that's it

Nothing much in the big business papers that I can see yet either.

On Sunday the BBC (I guess it was released exclusively to them as well) present John Whiting, the Tax Director for the UK government's Office of Tax Simplification (good thing his name isn't Simon), and he expresses some lame & predictable quibbles.

But I am quite sure it is all true. We've been VOIKed! When I was a consultant it was a rite of passage to earn enough to be able to hire an accountant and a lawyer (both of them sleazy) to help you hide it from the tax man. The government squandered it just as effectively, but it was more fun to squander it yourself.

Occupy Wall Street is on the case.
 


Ovid's Metamorphoses are a rich vein indeed. The line I quoted before, "Foole, thou thy Mother trusts in things vnknowne; and of a Father boasts that's not thy owne," is directed at Phaeton, towards the end of Book I before his catastrophic run as sun.

There are as many translators as feathers on a duck, and no really legible copies anywhere that I can find. I know this thoughtless current well: "I want it upon my shelf, but read it? To the point of knowing its flow? Not likely." I used to buy books and just walk around with them under my arm. And now that I finally begin to read - it should come as no surprise that the tools have been devalued and devolved.

One of them, J.J. Howard, says in his introduction, "The translator confides his attempt to render the beauties of Ovid more accessible to English readers, and to chasten the prurience of his ideas and his language, so as to fit his writings for more general perusal."

Two versions of the end of Europa and the Bull:

Agenor's daughter looks with wondering eye On the kind beast; nor dares aat first draw nigh To touch him, though so placid he appears. But soon emboldened she forgets her fears, And gives him flowers to taste. Presaging bliss On her white hands he lays a gentle kiss, And rapt with pleasure scarcely can endure To check his onset and mate triumph sure. Now he desports upon the grassy plain, And now, returning to the shore again, He rolls upon the sand and lets her press Her hands upon him in a soft caress And round his horns fresh rosy garlands cast, Until she climbs upon his back at last, Unwitting whom she rides. Then from the strand Slowly the god moves out and leaves the land And soon, the shallows past, speeds on his way Across deep ocean carrying his prey. One hand upon his back, one on his horn She rests and trembling from the land is borne; While as she leaves her native shore behind Her filmy tunic flutters in the wind. Frederick Adam Wright, 1869-1946.

The beast, Agenor's daughter doth admire, So wondrous beautifull, so void of ire. Though such, at first shee his approach did dread, Yet forthwith toucht; and then with flowres him fed. The Louer joyes: till he his hopes might feast, He kist her hands; ah, scarce deferres the rest! Now, on the springing grasse, he frisks and playes: His sides now on the golden sands he layes. Her feare subdu'd, shee strokes his proffered brest: Her Virgin-hands his hornes with garlands drest. The royall Maid, who now no courage lackt, Ascends the Bull, not knowing whom shee backt. He, to the Sea approaching, by degrees First dips therein his hoofes, anon his knees; Then, rushing forward, beares away the prize. Shee shreeks, and to the shore reuerts her eyes: One hand his horne, the other held behind; Her lighter garments swelling with the wind. George Sandys, 1577-1644.

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In Swedish: fin fint, god gott goda, bra - good good, good good good, good. 

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Down.