Wherever You Are, Earth Hour Begins at 8:30 PM

EARTH HOUR:

Uniting people to protect the planet

Sometimes Saintly Nick

suggests

Just Mishmash

Snuddle


The word that I created last week -- snuddle -- is now in the Urban Dictionary:

Adopt a Cat

Alex and I are very serious about Adopt a Cat Month. At this time of the year the shelters are overflowing with very young kittens who face a furure of being adopted or being "put down" -- Lord! You do not know how much a hate that phrase.

If ytou can't adopt a cat, would you considering contributing to a No KIll Animal Shelter? ou can find a No Kill shelter in you area at nokillnetwork.org.


CPAP

After all of these months of sleepless nights, I finally have my replacement CPAP machine:

BP Cartoons

The following politcal cartoons aren't meant to be funny. They are very serious. Much too serious.

You may want to read this article in  the Atlanta Examiner online:
How to Help Turtles, Birds, and Fish

Earth Day 40

It's a Wonderful World

Louis Armstrong

Today is the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day. It doesn't seem it has been that long! Baxck in 1970 I was a newly commissioned U.S. army officer, a newly wed, and celebrating the First Earth Day, even though I wasn't sure what I was celebrating.

Back in 1970 I think that I was aware of polution, both the air and the ground kinds. I knew what air polution was because, for the first ten years of my life, I lived in the West End of Louisville and had to endure the horrible smell of what people living there called carbite, a chemical released into the air that was a by-product of calcium carbide manufacturing.  The reason the folks who lived near the duPont chemical plant called it car-bite is because the lime in the air ate the paint off of cars. I wonder what it did to our lungs?

I was aware of ground polutiion because I was an avid reader of the Walt Kelly's comic strip Pogo. Pogo's famous observation about the litter filling the swamp that was his home made an impact on me as a teenager -- and the words still do:

I was not aware of the problems of climate change, or conservation and biodiversity, or recycling, or of a lot more core issues. In fact, I am still learning about those issues.

Therefore, today I celebrate the earth. The more I understand about how the planet upon which I live and share with so many others has been and is being exploited for the profit of a few greedy human beings, the more angry I become. The more I come to understand this planet upon which I live and share with so many others, the more impressed and thankful I become.

Hear me, four quarters of the earth -- a relative I am! Give me the strength to walk the soft earth. Give me the eyes to see and the strength to understand, that I may be like you. With your power only can I face the winds. Great Spirit...all over the earth the faces of living things are all alike. With tenderness have these come up out of the ground. Look upon these faces of children without number and with children in their arms, that they may face the winds and walk the good road to the day of quiet. This is my prayer' hear me! ~ Black Elk, of the Oglata Sioux Nation

AMEN!

On Being an Activist

You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea. ~ Medgar Evers

I have been a social and political activist since I was 17 years old. My activism began on the evening of June 12, 1963, while I was at a church camp at Lincoln State Park in Indiana. I can be specific about the date because it was the day that civil rights activist Medgar Evers was assassinated.

That evening we built a large bonfire around which all of the campers and staff sat in a circle. A couple of the staff had gone to a local town to buy marshmellows for toasting. While they were away from the camp (which had no radios or TVs), they learned of the murder of Mr. Evers, who was shot down in the driveway of his home in Mississippi. They announced the news to all of us who were sitting around the camp fire.

I did not know anything about Medgar Evers. All I knew of the Civil Rights movement came from watching TV and reading newspapers. At the church camp, however, several of the staff had been directly involved in the Civil Rights movement. They were all seminary students. Two of the staff knew, and had worked with, Medgar Evers.They shared their memories of him along with stories of their involvement in the Civil Rights movement. Other seminary students also shared the stories of their work for civil rights. I soon found that I had tears in my eyes and a commitment in my heart.

I became a social activist that night as we all held hands around that fire and sang Go Down Moses and We Shall Overcome.

Through the years I have marched with other activists, spoken words of justice and peace, organized and chaired organizations, written letters and articles, and made telephone calls. Today my health prevents me from doing much that I did in the past. However, I can still write letters and articles and make phone calls to Congress. And, I can blog.

In the next two months there are two opportunities for activist bloggers to join together regarding (1) climate change and (2) world peace. I invite you to follow the links below and join me in taking action.

October 15, 2009
Blog Action Day 2009: Registration & Information

November 5, 2009
The Peace Globe Gallery

My 2009 Peace Globe

It Ain't Always Easy to Be Green

Only a mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf. ~ Aldo Leopold

Being Green isn't as easy as some folks make it out to be. For example, yesterday I tried four times to post the following to Facebook without success:

America's wolves were nearly eradicated in the 20th century. Now, after a remarkable recovery in parts of the country, our wolves are once again in serious danger. Wolf hunting seasons started today in Idaho and will begin in Montana September 15th. Please help save our wolves.

At first I thought it was a normal screw-up on the part of Facebook; however, after being able to make two other posts with links, I have come to believe that Facebook is blocking the link to the Campaign to Save America's Wolves.

Admittedly, this greenish campaign is politically charged. As I understand some of the politics...

• On March 6th, 2009, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar approved the Bush Administration's plan to eliminate Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in Idaho and Montana -- a decision that could lead to the deaths of more than 1,000 wolves.
• In Alaska, actions by former governor Sarah Palin have led to more than 1,000 wolves being killed by aerial gunning since 2003; state officials are pushing to kill even more wolves this year using aerial gunning, poison gas and snares.
• In the Southwest, misinformation and anti-wolf sentiment runs high, with the few remaining wolves in Arizona and New Mexico at risk of extinction. With only four breeding pairs of Mexican wolves left in the wild, we need sensible, science-based wolf management to ensure the “lobo” will survive -- and thrive -- in the wilds of the Southwest.

I admit that I have only recently joined the Save the Wolves campaign. I was initially drawn to the wonderful creatures by programs I saw on TV. After some rather extensive Internet research, I made the decision to become personally involved. The impact of video below had on me was important in my decision:

If you are will to take action to save America's wolves, you may begin my clicking HERE.

Thanks.

What More Can I Say?

This is Absurd!

Gingrich eyes possible White House run in 2012

This Is All I Shall Say About Today:




No Longer in Danger?

Wolf Group by John Naito

They are being killed...even nursing mothers and their cubs! Please tell the Interior Secretary, Please Put Wolves Back on the Endangered Species List. Click HERE.

Bunny Sightings
I spotted my rabbit house guest three times on Tuesday. He looks bigger, hops just as fast, and has now moved into the guest bedroom. Rather appropriate, I suppose.


Computer Repair
I now know more about sound devices, device managers, intallation and re-installation, etc., than I ever wanted to know and and I still don't have audio on my computer!

Young Abe plus My Last Doctor Visit

Emulating young Abe Lincoln

The story is that Abe Lincoln was a self-educated man. Having been born into relative poverty, he had little time to study during daylight hours when he was spending his time earning enough to survive. Nighttime was another story. Young Abe would spend his evenings reading—reading by fire light!

This evening I shall be following Abe’s evening pursuit. For an hour beginning at 8:30 p.m., Alex and I shall turn off all of our artificial sources of light and light a candle or two. I plan to remain in my lift chair, reading as did young Abe Lincoln, by candlelight. I already have the chair and the candle prepared for this evening’s event:

As I celebrate Earth Hour, I shall be very careful to keep my nose-hose and the oxygen that it contains away from the flame of the candle!

More about Earth Hour

Thursday’s trip to the doctor…

…went extremely well. Thanks to a comment made to my Thursday post, I called the doctor’s office, confirmed its location, and the location of the building’s parking lot. I ended up parking in a parking spot that was almost directly in front of the building’s main entrance.

I learned during this trip that it is most probably the overly large size of my wheelchair that keeps it from going through doorways. Tasha was able to maneuver me and the chair through the entranceway of the building, but I had to get out of the chair and walk through every other entrance way while Tasha folded the chair in half to get it through. Since this appointment was at Louisville’s Jewish Hospital Complex, I am fairly certain it is my chair that is the problem and not the size of the doorways. The facilities of the Jewish Hospital complex are the best in the city and I’m sure they do not install small doorways.

The results of the visit to the doctor were wonderful! I am no longer concerned about a potentially serious physical condition that has been of concern to me for almost a year! This doc’s (a second opinion) judgment confirmed the other’s doc’s opinion and I am OK and in need of no treatment!

Vote YES for Our Earth

Saturday brings us to another Earth Hour: an opportunity to vote yes for the earth and no for global warming.

Alex and I are turning off our lights. How about you?

What a Wonderful World ~ Louis Armstrong

REMEMBER EARTH HOUR: Lights Out for One Hour Tonight (8:00 – 9:00 PM)

See this AP report about Earth Hour that has already taken place today in Asia.

Too much Joe and Mariah; California Needs a Visit by Tess

Away out here they have a name for rain and wind and fire.
The rain is Tess, the fire's Joe and they call the wind Mariah.

The morning the news reports that almost 270,000 acres of southern California have burned since last weekend. In San Diego County alone, seven separate fires spurred the evacuation of 300,000 people—ten percent of the county's population. It seems that Joe is taking his toll.

Of course, Mariah is also doing her part. The desert winds stoked destructive wildfires and sent Joe blazing and skipping around so that he was much more difficult to contain.

For those who think of southern California in terms of celebrities, a bit of research this morning informed me that a ranch belonging to Sean Penn burned Sunday; properties owned by David Geffen, Barbra Streisand, Pierce Brosnan, James Cameron, Mel Gibson Olivia Newton John, Mark Hamill, and David Duchovny are threatened.

I suppose southern California could use some of the fire quenching power of Tess. Unfortunately, she isn’t in the southern California forecast.

And so I pray for rain, as well as the safety of the folks in California, especially the firefighters and those folks whose homes are threatened or who have already been burned out.

Tess, who we’ve seen for too little of here in Kentucky this year, has been visiting Louisville for the past 24 hours and the weather gurus predict that she’ll be visiting us through the end of this week.

Tess, Tess, go away

Of course, I am thankful for the rains. But, I am now being regularly harassed by Alex because, as I have written many times in this blog, he has an aversion to water. Even as I have been writing this blog, the furball has, as I reported in the post Rain, rain go away, been repeating his “I want to go outside” dance:

By the time Alex finished his breakfast and I was drinking my first cup of coffee, the boom of the thunder had diminished. Alex—as is his habit—stuck his claws into my leg to get my attention and meandered toward the front door. I followed him and opened the red door to the sight and sound of the rain. I stepped out onto the porch, but Alex backed up away from the threshold. As a cat, he has an aversion to water in any form—including rain.

So I came back into the house, turned on my computer, and began writing this blog. A few minutes later, Alex again used his claws—this time on my thigh—to get my attention. I jumped up and asked my feline master, “Now what do you want?” He strolled out of my library, through the kitchen, to the hallway that leads to the back of the house, and stopped by the back door.

“Alex, it is raining in the back yard, too,” I told him.

Of course, being the cat that he is, he didn’t believe me until I opened the door and he saw and heard the rain falling upon the deck. Alex looked up at me and, like my friend who had lived in Arizona, seemed to meow, “I hate the rain.” ~ Nick’s Bytes, March 6, 2006

Update from CNN

• More than a half million people have been ordered from San Diego County homes today.
• More than 1,300 homes have been reduced to ashes.
• The fires still threaten more than 56,000 homes.
• At least two deaths have been attributed to the fires.

H-E-A-T

I told myself I wasn’t going to complain about the weather. Right! I also told myself about forty years ago that before I retired I would own (1) a Mont Blanc fountain pen, (2) a Rolex timepiece, and (2) a Jaguar motor vehicle. Of those three, uh, goals, I only own the first (and least expensive).

Of course, all of that was back in my youthful materialistic stage. I wonder: as an American can I really ever escape materialism and remain in this society? As the King sang to Anna in The King and I, ‘Tis a puzzlement.

OK, back to my subject: HEAT!

Here in Louisville (as in many other parts of the northern hemisphere) we are under a severe heat warning that may last another week or longer. It is almost midnight here and the outside temperature remains over 90 F and inside my house it is almost the same. The high temps in the coming days are forecast to be near or above 100 F.

Because of the heat, neither Alex nor I have been very active today. We both are seeking ways to cool off (sorry I can show no photos of me; Alex has yet to learn to use the camera):

The best photograph of our trying to stay cool may never be taken. It would be one of me in a cold water filled bathtub, relaxing and trying to read book, with Alex curled up on my chest napping. He has done this four times in the past four days and now follows me every time I go into the bathroom on the chance that I may again climb into the tub.

Growing Up in Urban America

One of the things I like about Jonathan Kellerman’s novels is that inevitably they get me thinking. For example, the following is excerpted from his 2006 novel, Gone. The narrator is the central character, psychologist Alex Delaware.

Back when I treated children, I routinely took histories from parents and learned what family life could be like in L.A. People packing up and moving every year or two, the surrender to impulse, the death of domestic ritual.

Many of the parents I saw lived in sun-baked tracts with no other kids nearby and spent hours each day being bused to and from beige corrals that claimed to be schools. Long electronic nights were bleached by cathode and dump-thumped by the current angry music. Bedroom windows looked out to hazy miles of neighborhoods that couldn’t really be called that.

Lots of imaginary friends in L.A. That, I supposed, was inevitable. It’s a company town and the product is fantasy.

The city kills grass with red carpets, worships fame for its own sake, demolishes landmarks with glee because the high-stakes game is reinvention. Show up at your favorite restaurant and you’re likely to find a sign trumpeting failure and the windows covered with brown paper. Phone a friend and get a disconnected number.

No Forwarding. It could be the municipal motto.

You can be gone in L.A. for a long time before anyone considers it a problem.

~Jonathan Kellerman, Gone, 2006 pp. 5-6.

After I read those lines, I reread them. Then I started thinking.

Even though Kellerman’s protagonist, Alex Delaware, is focusing on life in Los Angeles, the situation isn’t much different in other U.S. cities. Lots of children live in neighborhoods where there are no other kids nearby. My street is one of those. Other than a couple of us old foggies, most of the residents here are relatively young and, if they have children, the children are also very young. That means that in the neighborhood there are perhaps a half-dozen kids who are school age—and that includes kindergarten. When school is not in session, I have no idea where these children go to find other kids.

Of course, maybe the kids don’t seek other kids. Perhaps they spend the days and nights watching TV or playing video games or surfing the net. Perhaps their friends are all somewhere in cyberspace, which is a down-side to our Internet technology for both children and many adults.

Go to favorite restaurant and find a sign trumpeting failure—or, as I did, just am empty lot? It happens all the time, even in mid-sized cities such as Louisville. But I have already written about that, at least about the disappearing fast food joints.

When Alex Delaware reflects that L.A. is a “company town,” I must admit that I never thought about that. Lots of cities are “company towns.” Sometimes the power is shared between two or more companies, but often the nature of the city and its residents is set by the largest employer in town.

And what about calling a friend and finding that they no longer exist? I have done that more than once and in more than one city. I’ll admit that moving around a lot has added to that losing contact with friends. But, then, our increasing mobility is one of our society’s strongpoints, too. Right?

Back to kids growing up in urban American society. I am most happy my sons are grown. I am less happy that my grandchildren are experiencing life in this rat-race of a society. I am most concerned about future generations as we seem to become less and less stable and more and more strangers to each other.

Heat Wave

Southern Europe is sizzling in a heat wave: with highs in Greece of 115 F (46.1 C); in Romania of 105 F (40.6 C); in Italy of 113 F (45.0 C); and in Turkey, where a man my age collapsed on a beach and died from the heat, temperatures topped 111 F (43.9 C).

In Canada, temperatures today were forecast to hit about 112 F (44.4 C), and one the electric company recommended that folks conserve energy by: (1) Using fans instead of air conditioners; (2) Using a clothesline to dry clothing; (3) Setting pool heater thermostats back one degree; (4) Washing laundry in cold water; and (5) Unplugging secondary fridges.

For the continental United States, the temperatures in most of the southern half are in the 90s F (30s C), except for around the Mexican border from Texas to Arizona, where the temperatures reach as high as 111 F (43.9 C).

So it seems that much of the world, especially the northern hemisphere, is in a heat wave, very hot and exhibiting all of those related elements such as droughts (Australia, parts of Europe, Africa, and the United States are suffering from some of the worst droughts in memory), wild fires (thousands of acres are now burning in California and North Carolina), and heat related illnesses.

So I have asked myself, Is all of this a foretaste of what global warming will mean for the world’s future? The information I have found in researching my question varies. Some claim that global warming is responsible for the wild fires now burning in the western United States. Jim Laver, director of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center, says that the heat is part of the normal cycle and has nothing to do with global warming. The Washington Post reports that global warming is responsible for this heat wave.

Baseline: I don’t know what to believe or what to expect! I just know that, at the moment, the temperature outside my house is 88 F (31.1 C), the coolest it has been here since noon, and the temperature inside my house is 84 F (28.9 C), which is much too warm for either Alex or me.

P.S: To convert temperatures from Fahrenheit to Celsius or Celsius to Fahrenheit for this post, I used this neat (and free) Temperature Converter that I found on the net.

Cooling Off at 2:00 in the Morning

After spending almost the entire day in bed with two fans blowing on me and sucking up oxygen from my oxygen compressor through my C-PAP in an attempt to breath and keep cool in a house in which the inside temperature rose to close to 90 F, now at 2:00 a.m. I find myself sitting in my library. (Damn! That was a long sentence! Just call me “Sir Walter Scott!”)

My front door is standing open and next to me, between the open door and my desk, is a floor fan blowing that cool (79 F) outside air inside. I finally located an air conditioner repair person who is available: next Friday! In the meantime we’ll just have to keep cool and keep breathing the best we can.

At the moment (and ever since I opened the front door) Alex, the cat who owns me, is stretched out on the front porch, sleeping (I think). He has wandered in a couple of times and demanded that I feed him (for the 4^th time today) his favorite cat food, which is supposedly no longer a part of his diet. However, since he no longer has the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (and I am a push over) Alex gets his favorite packages of Friskies along with his vet-prescribed dry food. Can you guess which he prefers?

Skipping Spring

Spring Along Louisville's Water Front

If I am not mistaken the offical beginning of Summer is still a week away: the Summer Solstice (here in the Northern Hemisphere) is June 21^st. Thus, I should feel as though we are moving toward the end of Spring. But it ain’t so, my friend! At least, here in Louisville, it ain’t so.

A few days ago a drug store clerk said to me, “This year we skipped Spring.” I must agree with here. We had about of week of Spring-like temperatures: highs in the 60s or low 70s (F). For the remainder of Spring 2007 the highs have been in the high 80s and 90s, with the lows never dropping below our normal Spring highs. Combined with the lack of rain we’re experiencing. I have felt as if I am experiencing a foretaste of the fires of Hell.

In a previous post, I wrote of the pollution than can hang over Louisville and the Ohio River Valley. It continues, with pollution warnings and alert being issued for every afternoon, which the temperature reaches its highest. It seems that the only thing that will clear out the pollution and allergens in the air is rain—and none is forecast for at least the next week.

The heat and air pollution have impacted me personally in several ways. With the air conditioning in my house and car being kaput, I have found breathing to be very difficult. Thus, I have spent most of the afternoons using my C-PAP and oxygen compressor. I look forward each morning to when the temperatures reach their lows, which isn’t usually until after 3:00 a.m. That’s when I get up and remove the C-PAP and oxygen compressor mask. I take a couple of puffs on the Combivent inhaler and try to do something, like live. However, by early afternoon, the heat in the house (the temperature in the house at now at 9:00 p.m. is 88 F; outside it is 91 F) is so bad that I climb back in bed, on which I have two fans blowing, and breath using the C-PAP and oxygen compressor.

The heat and pollution have affected Alex’s life style, too. He has been demanding to go out side at night and in the wee hours of the morning, when the temperatures are cooler and the air contamination is less. When I am in bed, he still leaps up beside me and snuggles against my body. I tickle him beneath his chinny chin chin and Alex purrs. However, evidently the heat generated by my body adds to his discomfort. If he is on my left side, which has been the norm since he was a very small kitten, my body blocks the cooling wind of the fans from him. If he moves to my right side, those same winds apparently ruffle his fur too much and so he leaps off the bed to the floor where he curls and sleeps.

If you get the drift of this post, the weather has been damned bad for both man and beast. And Summer hasn’t even officially arrived yet! My own experiences have raised my concern for folks like me with breathing problems who are not blessed with a CPAP and oxygen compressor. I do not know how they are surviving.

This brings twos additional concerns to my mind: air pollution and global warming, which are, from what I have read, intrinsically connected. Perhaps I’ll share my thoughts about those in a later post. Now I need to upload this one and perhaps join Alex outside, where my computer tells me the temperature has dropped to 86 F, which is cooler than inside my house.