Step it up?

So I've been getting emails about Step It Up 2007. A "National Day of Climate Action" where we try to get presidential candidates to discuss their environmental policy in public, all on the same day (Nov. 3). The most local event to me is in Concord, MA.

So far, only 3 Presidential hopefuls have said they will attend one of the many events: Senator John McCain, John Edwards & Representative Dennis Kucinich.

In reading McCain's website about his "environmental policy", his language struck me as a bit odd. Exactly HOW MANY buzz words can you fit into a statement about environmental policy that says nothing relevant at all? This is how it reads: "buzz word", "republican buzz word" and "liberal bad buzz word" He ends up saying essentially nothing relevant at all. Nothing says "I don't have a CLUE" like what he wrote. I kind of feel ill having read that. It was certainly a waste of my time.

As a friend said: "I read this and my mind just goes blank. It doesn't want to deal with processing it. I just can't...."

And McCain is one of the guys who agreed to go! Ugh.

Up until this point, I hadn't ruled anyone but Mitt Romney out - Romney is a tool and he tried his hardest to destroy our state. Not to mention that Mitt can't figure out what he believes in, let alone tell anyone else why they should believe in him.

I don't have the heart to research what Edwards & Kucinich have to say about the matter at this point...

But I have to admit. I did invite Sen. Clinton (as did 280 or so other people). I actually like what she had to say about the environment. It made me a bit hopeful. She seems to be following my line of thought that all we need is a sort of 'alternative energy arms-type race' with her "Apollo-like Program dedicated to achieving energy independence" (THAT is going to require a better name, and more detail, I think, which is why I invited her... "Green Arms Race" would be better than that). My biggest hope? She'll take it to the next level, create a cabinet position regarding the issue, and appoint Gore to that position... And then maybe somebody will actually get something done.

Voting Day! (updated)

For those of us who are in whatever congressional district (5th?) has a vacant seat in congress, today is voting day. And while I don't necessarily care, I know I should. I'll vote anyway.

Roland S. Martin (whoever that guy is) has posted a brilliant article on CNN's website. It should have been called "you should care, damnit - otherwise you're an idiot". Downside: nowhere in there does he mention the climate & energy issues facing us. But it's a start. Mr. Martin has a radio show on WVON - an AM talk radio station in Chicago - from 6-9 a.m. Monday thru Friday. They stream via internet. I think I'll give a listen next week (apparently, he's out this week). He might just have a clue. And people with a clue are somewhat hard to find.

UPDATE: got this email from the Town this evening after the polls closed:

STATE ELECTION Special 10/12/2007

Total voting: 844
Total registered voters: 3056
Percent voting: 27.6%

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS

Jim Ogonowski 382
Nicola S. Tsongas 404
Kurt Hayes 40
Patrick O. Murphy 12
Kevin J. Thompson 6
Blanks 0
Write-ins 0

That means that 27.6% of the people in my town voted. My husband & I consisted of 0.1% of the total vote. That just seems WRONG.

Come on, people, they had FREE CANDY there! And there was certainly no line...

I heart...the Vatican? Wow.

I'm not a fan of religion. All it does is lead to war, to putting people into an "us vs. them" mentality, and causes all sorts of fanatics to hurt each other, often times taking along us innocent bystanders with them. Think about it- every major war in history was either based on religion or egged on by it (or religion was used as a veil for political dominance aspirations). Based on this long standing belief of mine, I was very surprised by a story that I heard on NPR this morning.

The Vatican is trying to go carbon neutral (the Pope hopes to install solar cells & preserve forests -do they have forests in the Vatican, or does he want to go with a carbon offset?). Pope Benedict XVI held a conference on global warming. The catholic church is listening to scientists. This is the same church that spawned the inquisition! But maybe there is hope yet.

"The Vatican considers global warming a pressing issue — in part because there is evidence that man is contributing to the problem, and in part because the effects will be felt most intensely by the poor."

This statement says a lot. A) The Catholic Church leaders are listening to science instead of persecuting the scientists. Think about that for a minute. B) The Catholic Church is stepping where leaders of some developed countries couldn't be bothered - to save those people on the so called margins of society - the poor. The Church recognizes this as a big social issue, a global social issue, (complete with real evidence) and not some theoretical discussion. The Catholic Church is saying that this is real, and needs attention.

I never, EVER thought that the Catholic Church would be more progressive than the President of the United States. Bushy should be ashamed of himself - he was one upped by the Catholic Church - an institution with a very poor track record when it comes to science.

Apparently, the church has decided that while the bible does say that man has dominance over the earth that "God" created, humans have to take responsibility of the earth as it's stewards on behalf of "God", and to clean up the mess we have made of "God's" creation. I could dance little circles up and down Main Street for this idea. I'm willing to ignore the other issues with this statement (umm...creationism?) in order to support the church in their attempt to practice stewardship.

Additionally, the NPR story mentioned above depicts how church leaders are trying to tell their followers that hurricanes & Volacanos aren't the will of God. It's not God's fault, it's ours. At this point, you might be falling off your chair. I'll wait.

cool imagery

Update on the NW Passage: This is a pretty cool satellite image of the Northwest Passage from mid-September, with major landmarks depicted. I suggest you take some time to poke around the EO Natural Hazards website (NASA) - there are some just plain cool images on there, and they are really sharp.

For instance, here is a satellite image of hail damaged crops in Montana back in June. Apparently, the hail stripped the leaves off of the vegetation, resulting in a loss of 'green' areas as seen from space. And this image shows just how overly green Texas is because of it's over abundant rain & flooding this year - and it also depicts drought conditions in Oklahoma to the northeast.


In reading today's Boston Globe, I came across an article that discussed some insurance companies not renewing homeowners policies along the coast of Massachusetts. One woman who lives in East Boston was featured in the article - she can't even see the ocean from her house. I'm thinking here that maybe the homeowner & the author of the article are missing the bigger picture... Yes, the insurance companies are trying to limit their liabilty, and yes, it sucks to loose your insurance. BUT, you've got to wonder why... there has got to be some hard science & good reasoning behind why the insurance companies aren't willing to take on some policies. "Blocks" away from the ocean is not going to help much with a drastic sea level rise. I don't think it's just the increase in storm frequency & intensity that has them worried, but it also has something to do with projected (and unprojected) sea level rises. At a 2 meter sea level rise, East Boston starts to look a little soggy - at 7 meters, it looks largely underwater (this map goes up to 14 meters).

Pea Tendrils

We woke up this morning, had our cup of coffee, and got ourselves to the farmer's market in Harvard, MA for the first time. We've been meaning to go for weeks, but the stars haven't aligned for us to make it yet (stupid house maintenance - we slacked off on the house all spring & summer to train for the PMC, and alas, the house has started falling down just in time for winter).

We discovered pea tendrils for sale at the farmer's market. I had no idea you could eat the pea GREENS. And to think, when I grow peas, I just let that stuff de-compose in place (no hassle compost). Shows you how much I have to learn. At any rate, we sauteed the greens/tendrils up with garlic, onion & olive oil in a the stir fry pan. Very tasty.

We also had a surprise visit from our pal who lives in California - it just happened to be his birthday. Just when I was despairing that we lived so far out in the sticks that no one ever came to see us, this guy from the left coast gives us a call, and shows up for lunch. It was great. We had great weather & it was a beautiful day. And instead of hearing 'you guys live in the middle of no where' we heard 'wow- this is BEAUTIFUL' - a very nice change. I think the foliage & sunshine helps...

What else? we caved in & turned the heat on. We had a huge condensation problem last night - and its in the 50s in our bedroom, so I guess it's time. Bummer though. This winter is supposed to be brutal on the heating oil bills.

As soon as the red sox hurry up & win, I'm going to bed.... 'night!

It begins?

Water wars are a-brewing... Georgia's Governor has asked the Army Corps of Engineers to reduce the water flow from Georgia to Florida & Alabama...

Water wars have not been uncommon in the west, but it seems highly unusual to me to have this occurring other parts of the country.

Oct . 15th Bloggers Unite!

Monday is apparently a new internet holiday - Blogging for the environment day. Bloggers Unite!

I dunno. This idea seems a little too cute for me... It's like the virtual world/environmental version of Valentines Day - a holiday invented purely to get other people sucked into buying something because they are "supposed to"... only in this case, no one is buying, but dedicating a day to virtual lip service. I can see why it's appealing to get the whole blogosphere focused on one issue on one day, but most of the blogs I read are environmental minded anyway... If the average Joe joins in, THEN I'll impressed. I guess I'm happy that it's on blogger.com's main page prior to the even though. Will people join in? Who knows. At least it's not a waste of paper or anything :-) There is nothing to lose I suppose.

Atlanta, GA: Lake Lanier provides 1/3 of Georgia resident's water supply (including Atlanta), and Atlanta's Department of Watershed Management says there is enough water left in the lake to provide 121 days worth of water. They are begging people to conserve water. Litterally.

The long range forecast for the area is calling for their drought to continue into December.

I've also heard from a friend that parts of North Carolina is running out of water as well.

Don't think global warming is all that bad? Think about this: droughts are forecast to become greater in frequency & duration due to climate change. We just don't know exactly where this will happen. Some areas will become wetter & cooler. Others warmer & drier. We don't really know where the line will fall in the U.S., but if global warming exists, then this sort of scenario that we are seeing in the SE United States right now is likely to play out again and again. I'm not saying that the current droughts are indicative of global warming - I'm just pointing out that as bad as it is now, it's likely to get a lot worse & become more widespread.

And so...

On Tuesday, I went into MIT for a symposium on earth revolutions (i.e., climate change). At some point the taped & edited version be up on the internet, and I'll come back an add the link. It was very interesting, and I got more out of it than I thought I would. I had to blow off my studio session to do it, but that's OK. Opportunities such as that don't present themselves often. It was free & open to the public, so I had little to lose.

There were some pretty reputable people at this symposium. We are headed down a really scary road if we don't do some very, very quickly. I'm seriously hoping that 2007 turns out to be the year that we all wake up.

For instance, the whole opening of the Northwest passage thing. NOBODY was predicting this would happen. No model's were forecasting it - it caught everyone by surprise. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), which incidentally was awarded half of the Nobel Peace Prize today, certainly didn't forecast it. Here's a nifty little graph that overlays this year's arctic sea ice loss with IPCC's forecasted sea ice loss (complete with ranges, and the average loss rate). This should be really, really scary. Nobody saw this coming so soon. And with the loss of the albedo effect (sea ice is white, white reflects light & thus heat, which keeps the arctic cool, preventing the oceans from warming at an accelerated rate, which impacts the entire global climate), then you SHOULD be loosing sleep at night.

It's not easy. There is more information out there than you can sort through, and it's frequently confusing & conflicting. But the ONE strategy that seems to be the most sound, and the most all-encompassing is to buy local whenever you possibly can. The less stuff that you buy that has to be shipped in, the better off you'll be. This goes beyond "buy American" (which means little - my subaru was built in the midwest, but aren't a lot of american cars now built in Mexico where labor is cheaper?)

Besides... buying local helps your neighbor. It keeps him in business. It keeps money in your community, and you can directly see who benefits. It keeps your neighbor employeed. It keeps their mortgage paid, their house lived in.

For instance: I decided I wanted a turkey pot pie yesterday. Turns out that the turkey farm 5 min up the road sells more than Thanksgiving Turkey's. In 15 minutes, I had gone to the store, picked up not only a frozen turkey pot pie, but also a turkey meatloaf for later use, come home & put them in my freezer. I know where those turkey's came from, and where that meat was processed - and I trust it. Meanwhile, ConAgra was fighting to avoid a recall on their chicken pot pies, even though 139 people in 30 states have gotten salmonella poising from them. I did a quick spreadsheet yesterday using recall notices on the USDA website. To date, over 22 MILLION pounds of meat have been recalled this year. That's just WRONG.

The silly season is coming. My mother & my sister are already bugging us about what we want. I'm going to try to see whether I can do the whole christmas gift thing by buying local. I'll let you know how it goes.

Eventually, our entire lifestyles are going to change drastically over time. We can deny it, or we can make it for the better, and make it ours. It's kind of like the difference between aging gracefully or repeatedly getting costly & drastic plastic surgery and continuously dying your hair/mustache/eyebrows...

I have a lot of changing to do. My lightbulbs were all changed years ago. It's not enough. I garden, I compost, I recycle. But it's not enough. There is always one more step to take, one more small thing I can do. So we'll try doing Christmas gifts local. It's a start.

Firefighter

Recently, 2 firefighters in Boston died while fighting a fire. This week, their autopsy reports were leaked to the media because traces of cocaine were found in one of the firefighter's system, and the other firefighter had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.10, where in Massachusetts the legal limit is 0.08.

Now, everyone is upset about the reports being leaked, and there is an official investigation in the works. From the families points of view, I can understand why you'd be upset - they lost their husbands/fathers and now these results come to light. I can't imagine the suffering that they were going through before these results were released, and now they have to deal with this too? It's awful.

BUT - the fact that the mayor, and the firefighters union seems to be MORE upset about the leaking of the reports than the content of the reports seems a little suspicious. They said that they are reviewing drug testing procedures, but no one has said "they have a clean record, they've always tested negative" - I wonder if they had been tested at all? It just seems...odd.

It's not like these guys are sitting in an office all day, not hurting anyone. They had jobs that required the use of heavy machinery, and they were directly responsible for public safety. Their job required on the spot smart decisions at a moment's notice. How would you feel if you were in a horrible car accident, and the guy that came to pull you out of your twisted car smelled of alcohol? Would you trust any instructions he gave you? Would you trust that person to try to revive your spouse, or use the jaws of life while your kid was inside a car? What about their coworkers? Firefighters have to depend on each other for their lives. You HAVE to know that the people you work with are able to do their job and do it well - it's a matter of life & death.

It's very unfortunate. I feel very badly that at least one of these guys made a bad decision, and ended up paying for it with his life, and dragging his family into hell in the process. It's sad to see, and I wish it hadn't happened. But at the same time, maybe we need to look at WHY it happened & how to prevent rather than critizing the media for bringing it to light. Maybe they should be focusing on how to prevent this from happening again, rather than prosecuting the people who leaked the story. These guys are paid with public funds - shouldn't we know when they are abusing controlled substances while on the job, and when they may be impairing the safety of those people who pay their bills?

While writing this, an incident from August comes to mind. We went to a pub in the town next to us - there was one very drunk and beligerent guy yelling, starting fights stumbling around. He was wearing a firefighter's t-shirt (like some of the guys in this picture), as were all his buddies (and the apparently very young-ish girl with him - she was at least 10 years younger than him, barely old enough to even be IN a bar). It was only 5 p.m. - and someone called the police about this guy. The police basically showed up, told him to knock it off & settle down (it looks like they knew him on a first-name basis) and then the police left. They didn't even make him leave the bar, let alone take him into protective custody. This guy was completely lit up. He smelled like alcohol, he was slurring his speech, he was litterally stumbling drunk. His friends were holding him up. AND he was itching for a fight - taking on the very people who were trying to help him.

I'm not saying that all fire fighters are bad - on the contrary. I know some very good people who are firefighters. However, it's like every other job: there are good people & bad people. Unfortunately, though, the few bad apples have a lot of responsibility for public safety and it just seems like a bad mix.

do it yourself!

I've just found instructions for a do-it-yourself solar hot water heater. It sounds like something that could be right up my alley. I've been looking for a way to wash the dogs outside without making poor Kuma shiver to death (whether its irrational Kuma-fear or a reaction to near-freezing well water, I'm not sure). The best part? The instructions say it'll cost $5. Thats WAY cheaper than paying a plumber to put a hot water spigot on the outside of my house, which may or may not be "legal".

The Northwest Passage exists after all!

The fabled Northwest Passage DOES exist. Or at least as of early September of this year it did. All those explorers were just early!

The BBC reported on Sept. 21, 2007 that the NW passage is open, and we might see an ice free arctic by 2040. The scariest part of this article is that in it someone says "yay, now we can get to more oil"...

Alternative estimates for an ice-free summer arctic range from 2015, 2023, 2040 to the end of the century. Corresponding sea level rise? somewhere between 1m (now considered outdated, after this summer's melting) and 25m. Or 80m, depending on where you look.

At what point do we all sit down, stare at each other and say "Oh CRAP!" ? Take a look at this google map. Look up where you live, and where your friends & family live....

Here's an interesting article regarding one reason why maybe we haven't heard an appropriate alarm about this: when scientists raise a big red flag, their funding gets cut off. Damn. Makes it hard to do any research that way.

As of 2005, NASA says that sea level has risen 16mm. Not that much. Read the above article though. I can't find any sea level data more recent than 2005. I'd love to get my hands on that.

The National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) posts updates every few days regarding the shifts of sea ice/melting of sea ice. It changes THAT quickly that they update surface area figures & such every few days. Amazing. Here is their "melting season wrap-up" for this past summer - published yesterday. They detail the NW passage, and also note that the date of lowest ice extent in the year is getting later every year. And the winter re-building is shorter & not as extensive.

Apparently all these changes are already impacting the indigenous cultures in the arctic. They use the sea ice to travel & hunt. If there is less of it, they have to completely alter how they survive, and it's already happening. The Polar Bears are being impacted, and I imagine seals are also being impacted.

I've just been told all this is on the front page of the NY Times....

Irony

Has anyone noticed the irony of fighting a war to spread democracy while our own constitutional rights are being eroded, and our 'checks & balances' system is becoming a 'blank check' system?

It just seems odd to me.

It also seems odd to me that nobody cares. Or says anything.

Another month passes...

But I have an excuse - I was on vacation for a few weeks. It was fun, and I have almost no pictures to prove it. We went to Hawaii to visit family and then to the Bay Area to visit a friend. We had a good time, and really enjoyed California. We got to borrow a friends convertable Audi TT while we were there, did some hiking, went sailing in San Francisco Bay, went hiking in Yosemite, went for a motorcycle ride (then learned how to ride the damn thing - so now, if I find myself trapped in an action movie, I can take off on a motorbike to escape the evil villians), went kayaking and a wonderful bonfire on a beach in Santa Cruz. I wonder if I can live in a place with no seasons... The Bay Area was beautiful, and it seemed to fit us well. AND K's company has an office there that I think he could probably transfer to in a little while.

Hawaii was good, but mostly family oriented. Jet Blue lost my luggage for 5 days. On a direct flight that I was 4 hours early for - go figure. So I ended up having to drag all my in-laws around Kauai looking for underwear & a bikini. What's more fun than the degradation of bikini shopping? Doing it with an audience... They were very nice & understanding about it, but it was a pain in the butt to have to do all that (and time consuming. I felt really bad about that). Kauai was beautiful - we went snorkelling (I saw an morey eel and got a little freaked out) and stayed in a beautiful condo in Princeville, which just happened to have a view towards Hanalei, AND which just happened to include a perfect sunset. My in-laws also surprised me by buying me a ukelele of my choosing for my birthday. Wa-HOO! (I was planning on getting one for myself anyway).

I will be going back someday. Carry-on only.

I took these photos with my iPhone. Before the price dropped...






Sunset in Princeville.

















Where we went snorkelling, just beneath the condo.













Sunset on the plane out of Hawaii. I took a LOT of these out of sheer bordem.










I have a few more to post, but I've got to get going at the moment...back to the darkroom...

Pun

Here's a really funny pun sent to me by a friend:

"Gandhi walked barefoot almost everywhere, so he had very caloused feet. he also ate very little, which made him frail, and because of his odd diet, he had bad breath. This made him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis."

So I spent part of the night sleeping on the back deck. No, I wasn't in trouble - I was there by choice. The height of the perseid meteor shower. We saw many meteors, but it started to cloud over around 1 am, at the supposed peak, so we went inside. I was up again at 330 to check (still cloudy) and by the time I got up at 6, it was raining. Damn.

But I did get to see some. And it was a beautiful night for sleeping outside. Maybe I'll do it again tonight.

And - Bonus - just found out that there is a total lunar eclipse when we will be in Cali. sounds like a good time to go find a dark spot to spend a night.

Apple Addict

I've become an apple addict. I finally got my iphone, and spent the rest of the day on saturday sighing and saying 'i'm so happy', much to the amusement of my husband. Its very handy to have the internet in your pocket. It feels kind of magical, in a harry potter sort of way. You need to look something up? I have the wiki in my pocket! email in my pocket. news, weather, in my pocket. i don't think i'll have to text much anymore - send an email, its free & unlimited!

you can't get every website. but you can get most. things that run on java wont load (security feature) - so, for instance, I can't look at property values on zillow.com (I tried).

the camera isn't so hot in low-light or if the subject (or you) is moving. but its OK. I'll live.

Oh, I dearly wish I had bought that apple & AMD stock back when apple first came out with itunes.... i thought of it but didn't in the interest of diversification. but i should have, diversification be damned. ugh.

I don't feel sorry for this guy...

So, as I was reading on CNN, there is a guy in Texas (where else?!!) that is suing 1-800-flowers for sending a thank you note for his order to his house. The problem is, those roses weren't for his wife, and she's now trying to divorce him (for the 2nd time).

Morale of the story? You're not divorced until you're actually divorced. And until you're actually divorced, maybe you shouldn't be sending other women flowers...

I dunno. I just find this very funny. And I hope the woman wins her bundle o' money... Instinct...gotta stick with your instinct...

uh-oh, things a-changin'

"Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay."

~ Robert Frost

I've been frequently reminded of this poem this week. Fall is coming. Its getting lighter later day by day, and its now dark by the time I eat dinner. The flowers are dying, the crickets are loud, and the apples are bright green orbs in the orchards. The fall-only farmstand opened this week. And the light just looks autumn.

I don't know if I am ready for this.

Maybe it's been happening all along, and I'm now just noticing that life is moving on now that I've surfaced after the PMC - but it suddenly feels like we should be eating roasts, and butternut squash ravioli, and picking out pumpkins.

I can't believe another summer is almost over.

cool timeline

So while looking for something else, I ran across this cool little timeline - now they just have to update all the events to link to wikipedia & I'll be happy...