Armageddon Update

(Stick with it; he puts things together well, and the Armageddon part isn’t all of it.)

The “Chatty Chicken”

Plain Chachalaca

2Fer Poetry on Saturday

Click on the titles to read more about each poet, and their poem.

Wooden Window Frames Luci Tapahonso

The morning sun streams through the little kitchen’s
wooden panes; its luminescence tempts me to forego coffee.
But I don’t. The dark coffee scent melds with the birds’
chirping along the hidden acacia. Then, a small bird
alights on the cross of the wooden clothesline.
Its tiny head turns from side to side, then as if sensing me,
it gazes at me through a window square.
We ponder each other, then remember our manners,
and it flies off into the clean, cold air.

My Kiowa friends say a visit from a bird
is the spirit of a departed loved one.
I think again of Marie, my friend, my comadre –
the many feast days, powwows, and trips we shared.
We cruised down Taos’s one main street,
and rushed to Smith’s grocery for last-minute necessities,
or Walmart for the white cylinder candles for wakes.
We hauled huge, bulging bags to the town dump.

Oh, sister, this entire town brims with memories
of our long sisterhood, since our early twenties
when we were young mothers,
but that was in the last century.

This quiet casita is surrounded by tall stands
of elm and cottonwood trees, their bare, brown
branches stark against the deep, blue sky.

Every other week, snow falls in thin waves
onto the flat ochre houses
that seem anchored to the ground.
Outside of these thick adobe walls, a stillness settles upon everything.
As memories drift all around, I gather ingredients for a stew,
scents of coffee and toast linger around the arched doorway,
and the warm air in the kitchen lightens the chopping of vegetables.
Soon, the windowpanes are damp from the simmering stew.

All there is now, is to wait, sip coffee, and watch the snow
fall in layers on the roofs, trees, fences, and cars.

I am in a serene cocoon of memories.
All our conversations and laughter are silent now.
Somewhere north of here, dogs bark playfully,
probably romping in the fresh snow.
Just up the road at the pueblo, your family gathers.
They replenish the fire, stir pots of red chile
and place potato salad and platters
of sliced oven bread on the table.

Untitled Lance Henson

Here is a place where nothing can die
Darkness that lives beneath the leaves

We bring our nights there without knowing
We bring our fear there before the singing begins
We bring our silent names there hoping we are forgiven

We bring our hands there scented of a river

We bring our prayers that hide and watch us
The landscape where we have held the loose feathers
Of a fallen bird

And awakened in the land of the unseen

Here is a place where nothing can die …

This stretchy lithium-ion battery is self-healing

November 28, 2024 Ellen Phiddian

Stretchy, self-healing lithium-ion batteries could be a viable power source for wearable mobile phones, soft robotics, and electronic skin, according to a new study.

The researchers have made small, stretching batteries that can power an LED light – but they say their work is shows “high promise” for building future stretchable and wearable electronics.

They’ve published their work in Supramolecular Materials.

While there are dozens of research prototypes for stretchable, flexible, and self-healing batteries, it’s not always as easy to combine the properties.

Lithium-ion batteries that are stretchable – that is, capable of lengthening or squeezing and then returning to its original shape – and self-healing have been particularly difficult to make.

“Our work provides a novel and viable strategy for the design of stretchable and self-healable energy storage devices, showing high promise for the application in stretchable and wearable electronics,” says senior author Professor Xiaokong Liu, a researcher at Jilin University, China.

Liu and colleagues made their battery out of long polymer molecules, connected to each other with nitrogen-carbon bonds called imine bonds.

These polymers could both bind the positive and negative electrodes of the battery together, and act as electrolytes, which allow charged particles to move between the electrodes.

Battery schematic — Inside the self-healing lithium-ion battery: polymers can both connect the electrodes, and let the battery stretch and fix itself. Credit: Z. Li et al

The researchers used the polymers to build a tiny lithium-ion battery, using both lithium iron phosphate and lithium-titanate electrodes.

“Our achievement lies in the construction of a lithium-ion battery with all-in-one configuration, wherein the electrolyte and electrodes can be fused together at the interface through the exchange of the dynamic imine bonds existing in both the electrolyte and electrodes,” says Liu.

The battery could still provide power while being stretched, and after being cut in half and healed back together.

“This work provides a novel and viable strategy for the design of stretchable and self-healable energy storage devices,” write the researchers in their paper.

Peace & Justice History for 11/30

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november30

Fun, beautiful

Maybe the other way around. Dance, dance! I don’t know a lot of Dua Lipa’s work, but I really, really like the work that I’ve seen and heard of hers. She’s quite talented, and has a neat attitude, too-