these roads have beautiful hips:and so on.
ochroid railings, low and sturdy;
nothing like the floppy-eared,
directionless steel i'm used to--
punctuated with concrete blocks
and Midwestern cities. no, to be
a runner in these hills must require
a conversation with this railing,
appearing and disappearing quietly,
modestly hugging you away from
the adirondacks, their hoary birches
and vagrant ponds insatiable.
It’s been done by many other creatures, tens of thousands of other species, by male and female representatives of every taxonomic twig on the great tree of life. Sexual promiscuity is rampant throughout nature, and true faithfulness a fond fantasy. Oh, there are plenty of animals in which males and females team up to raise young, as we do, that form “pair bonds” of impressive endurance and apparent mutual affection, spending hours reaffirming their partnership by snuggling together like prairie voles or singing hooty, doo-wop love songs like gibbons, or dancing goofily like blue-footed boobies.
[...]
Even the “oldest profession”...is old news. Nonhuman beings have been shown to pay for sex, too. Reporting in the journal Animal Behaviour, researchers from Adam Mickiewicz University and the University of South Bohemia described transactions among great grey shrikes, elegant raptorlike birds with silver capes, white bellies and black tails that, like 90 percent of bird species, form pair bonds to breed. A male shrike provisions his mate with so-called nuptial gifts: rodents, lizards, small birds or large insects that he impales on sticks. But when the male shrike hankers after extracurricular sex, he will offer a would-be mistress an even bigger kebab than the ones he gives to his wife — for the richer the offering, the researchers found, the greater the chance that the female will agree to a fly-by-night fling.
[...]
Commonplace though adultery may be, and as avidly as animals engage in it when given the opportunity, nobody seems to approve of it in others, and humans are hardly the only species that will rise up in outrage against wantonness real or perceived. Most female baboons have lost half an ear here, a swatch of pelt there, to the jealous fury of their much larger and toothier mates. Among scarab beetles, males and females generally pair up to start a family, jointly gathering dung and rolling and patting it into the rich brood balls in which the female deposits her fertilized eggs. The male may on occasion try to attract an extra female or two — but he does so at his peril. In one experiment with postmatrimonial scarabs, the female beetle was kept tethered in the vicinity of her mate, who quickly seized the opportunity to pheromonally broadcast for fresh faces. Upon being released from bondage, the female dashed over and knocked the male flat on his back. “She’d roll him right into the ball of dung,” Dr. Barash said, “which seemed altogether appropriate.”
The glory of the Grove is legend at all of Ole Miss’s rival schools in the Southeastern Conference and beyond. It is the mother and mistress of outdoor ritual mayhem.so after two years with the teacher corps, and now a couple of months employed by the university of mississippi through the william winter institute, i figure it's due time that i check out this grove thing. ole miss was playing florida, and as the couz is a floridian, he came over to oxford from marks and at a bar on the square we watched the surprisingly close game. since it was an early afternoon kickoff - 11:30 - the grove was active both pre- and post-, and we wandered to campus afterwards; a family from marks had a tent somewhere in the mess - we were determined to find it and say hello.As Charles R. Frederick Jr., a folklorist at the University of Indiana, characterized it in his dissertation on the Ole Miss tailgating event, the call to “come on out Saturday and look us up” in the Grove is as basic, and born to a spot, as a human bond can get. And it is as deep as the root of a tree.
It is also as fresh and green as a leaf.
“I love it,” Molly Aiken, 19, a sophomore at Ole Miss, said on Saturday under a tent, under the trees, a party roar rising and dissipating into the whisper of a warm, humid wind above. “There’s no place like it.”
Ms. Aiken, who is from Chattanooga, Tenn., said of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, “I went to U.T. this past weekend, for the U.T.-Florida game, and I was, like, this just doesn’t compare.”
Ole Miss’s stadium accommodates 60,580 people, and devotees of the Grove argue that the Grove accommodates more. It is every kind of party you can describe, at once: cocktail party, dinner party, tailgate picnic party, fraternity and sorority rush, family reunion, political handgrab, gala and networking party-hearty — what might have inspired Willie Morris, one of Mississippi’s favorite sons, to declare Mississippi not a state, but a club."
guy 1: hey.(it continues in this vein for a second)
me: hey.
guy 1: are you wearing that t-shirt as a joke?
me: nope; it's not a joke.
guy 2: well, i think you're sorry sack of shit.
me: i'm sorry you feel that way.
guy 1: man, you've got to get your priorities straight.
me: my priorities are straight; i taught public high school in jackson for two years - i care about my kids and i care about their education.
guy 2: well, i'm going to have to ask you to leave this tent.(it continues in this vein for a bit. the guys never get out of their seats or raise their voices enough to cause a scene - southern gentlemen that they are.)
me: are you kidding?
guy 2: no; just get the hell out of here.
me: this is public land, and a public forum. i am an employee of the university, and i certainly have the right to stand here and to wear this shirt.
guy 2: just fucking leave.
guy 1: hey man, just walk away.
who in the hell are we, indeed.A boy in white shorts and a polo shirt stepped out onto the Walk of Champions, the brick path where the Rebels would make their ceremonial march through the Grove on their way to the stadium the next day.
“Are you READY?!” he called to the trees, prompting the Ole Miss cheer.
“HELLLLL YES! DAAAAMN RIGHT!” the trees yelled back. “Hotty Toddy gosh almighty who in the hell are we? Flim flam bim bam, OLE MISS by damn! WUUUUUUUUUUUUU!”
