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Creek Jots 2012-02-18

by fred on February 18, 2012

Rhodesian Ridgeback

Image via Wikipedia

â–¶ So we are told to expect our first real winter event of the season tomorrow–a phenomenon that usually occurs the first week of December. So whatever punch we get, it comes late in the fight. Even so, it complicates things–especially the uncertainties of Ann’s leaving for work at 5 am Monday morning, no matter what.

But we’ve been down this slushy road before, and there won’t be so very many more, perhaps, with the possibility of working less a hope now viewable on the distant horizon.

▶ I’m happy to tell you how proud we were of Gandy at yesterday’s first puppy class that included a precious 11 wk old Malamute, a 14 week old wary German Shepherd, a clueless unbridled Beagle, and Gandy the mostly Rhodesian Ridgeback (or at least that is my appraisal of her mixed lineage.) She was composed, confident, engaged and friendly and as obedient as could be expected in a room full of strange dogs and people, and with a leash on her neck. Her behaviour continues to improve and more and more, she is lovable and pleasant to be around. What a drastic change from just two weeks ago, when we were not sure she would be with us long before we gave her another chance at finding the right fit. It didn’t seem like we were it. But now, I think we’ll make a go of it.

â–¶ So: I had the notion a few months back to write a kind of memoir told around the relationships with our dogs–the three labs going back to 1981, and Gandy going forward. But then when it looked like Gandy’s tale was going to come to a near-term and a very sad ending, the story idea died. Now, with a happy ending and the ongoing adventure that her story should turn out to be, maybe I’ll dive back into it–at least until gardening season pulls me down into the soil again.

â–¶ Can I go to TWO conferences this year on the Goose Creek Press account? The Society of Environmental Journalists conference is in Lubbock Texas in October. The Hindman (KY) Settlement School’s Appalachian Writers conference is in late July. Both will require me to be away the better part of a week and cost from $800 to $1500. They serve very different needs and bring me into contact with very different populations of thinkers and writers. Affording both would require I become far more aggressive about self-promotion; that I develope additional products for sale (that sounds so mercenary); and that I get serious about paying my way–with some combo of photography, writing, speaking. I don’t see the light there at this point, but I’m willing to look harder.

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Mountaintop Removal and Fracking: Keeping the Electricity Fairy Alive

by fred on February 16, 2012

These could be some the healthiest places in the country, but...

A few of you might have read the post the other day about the widespread stress upon many aspects of daily life for whales. The stress was produced by the incessant drum of engines overhead, the din of nonsense noise that cut one whale off from family and the pack and made finding food more difficult. Stress is under-appreciated as a cause of physical and emotional and mental damage. Add to that more tangible stressors of increased danger, pollution and habitat destruction, and illness and other impoverishments are likely to show a high correlation.

Many of us who live in what otherwise would be considered healthy settings suffer without knowing it the damage of air pollution, city traffic and airport noise, sirens, visual clutter and ugliness and risk of violence. But even so, there are some in our country who are dying young and living sick because of the noise, pollution and danger–every minute of every day stresses of where they live, because they see, here, smell and feel the rumbling under their feet as their communities are detonated, and their streams disappear under rubble that once was their mountain.

We can’t say we didn’t know the high cost of electricity produced from mountaintop removal coal practices. I challenge you to click at least three of the drop-down map overlays produced by ilovemountains.org. The human costs include birth defect, poverty, cancer, respiratory disease and life expectancy. The stress-poverty-wellbeing clusters around mountaintop removal practices, if inflicted by an enemy, would be considered torture.

But the risk of this publicly-sanctioned corporate hegemony does not stop at the edges of Appalachia, and it is not limited to strip mining the tops off mountains.

Fracking Industry Colludes With Pennsylvania Legislature to Create Dangerous New Law | Truthout

If you can read this description of how hydrologic fracturing or FRACKING is being illegally imposed on the people of Pennsylvania and not have your blood pressure rise, then maybe your susceptibility to stress and outrage has grown complacent, and your indignity fatigue is working in your favor while Rome burns.

Many still don’t understand the imperative to make the very hard decision to end the age of fossil fuels before it ends us. The Industry does not want us to do the hard thing or the right thing but the thing we’ve always done that’s always been good for their stockholders. The choice is ours.

From the Mountains to the Boardrooms, Activists call on Duke to Quit Coal

Related articles
Wall Street Backs Away From Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining, Says Rainforest Action Network (prweb.com) Is Arch Coal About to Mine Historic Blair Mountain? (itsgettinghotinhere.org) Surface mining opponents rally at Ky. Capitol (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
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Floyd’s Land’s Sake 2012

by fred on February 15, 2012

There will be lots of demonstration-learning this year at Land's Sake

I’ve been tending other blogs this morning, getting ready for this year’s Earth Day event which, starting last year, is dubbed “Land’s Sake” and this year, is subtitled Field Forest and Farm.

Details are just coming together but the vendors from last year have been notified and invited back. Plus, this year, sales will be allowed for those earthcare-related products and services for vendors who apply and quality. Also vendors on a first-request basis will have the opportunity to speak to small groups on topics related to their products, services or expertise, either in small groups at their table station or from designated speaking areas that may include microphone and AV projection plus seating for 20-30 listeners.

Last year’s event was super–very well attended and with much energy and enthusiasm, even though we had flooding rains all day long.

Please check back to the web site at floyd-landsake.blogspot.com/ from time to time as the Land’s Sake 2012 program takes shape!

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Our Acoustic Litter: The Whale Poop Story

by fred on February 14, 2012

I love everything about this sad story.  [both links via NPR ]

amy Whale, breaching, Stellwagen Bank National...

Image via Wikipedia

It tells volumes about how the world works—the parts we know, and the far greater parts we don’t know. If we comprehended how complex and beautifully integrated and orderly this place was, our heads would explode.

Featured prominently: labrador retrievers, for their incredible sense of smell. This comes to me as no surprise, after living with three of them. We’ve watched our labs running at full tilt in one direction, only to veer suddenly 90 degrees and 50 yards and commence excavation right on top of a mole. The sense of smell seems somehow akin to radar.

So the fact that a lab at the prow of a moving boat can sniff out whale poop underwater should seem about right. Even so, it is remarkable what these animals can sense, and how they can be taught to alert us of bombs, bodies, injured humans in bombed buildings and whale feces—simply by offering the right reward. In the case of the whale sniffers, it was a chance to play with the dog’s favorite toy—a simple ball.

Then, there is the before-and-after part of this story—an opportunity that arose from an undisputed global tragedy of September 11, 2001. Before that date, the whale poop sampling was underway. It sounds gross, but there is a treasure of information about individual animal diets and nutrition and growth, and population migrations and and general ecology.

What these scientists discovered was a change in one of the substances they had been measuring in the fecal samples located by the dog and collected by (hopefully well paid) divers. That substance was probably cortisol, described in this story as a “stress hormone.â€

Before 911 it was high. In the days immediately following that terrorist attack, when shipping and overflights dropped to practically nothing, the right whales’ stress hormone levels fell significantly. The likely cause was the reduction in noise levels. Imagine:

To keep in contact with a baby, a mate, the pod; to locate food; to avoid collision with ships and underwater obstacles, and to maintain group order, these animals rely on sound. Before 911, that was like trying to whisper critical conversation at a cocktail party.

After, suddenly, they had their world back, free from what our world has inflicted on them. It doesn’t draw blood, it seems innocuous enough, and it makes not a bit of difference in your or my day to day living. it is simply the collateral noise of human economics at work.

It is part of the Anthropocene: the epoch in which every biome and habitat on the face of the planet is touched—and too often marred—by both what we do and the mindless ways we do it.

Acoustic interference and consequent stress represents a significant impact and harm to an entire class of animals—the cetaceans in general—that we can not deny as one more injury to voiceless—but far from silent—fellow creatures.

 

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Canine Cargo Conundrum

by fred on February 13, 2012

By Thursday, hopefully and maybe with a little help from my dog-toting friends, I’ll come up with a solution on how to best carry a pet in the car for their safety and the driver’s and passengers’.

The full size crate (something like 36 long, 28 tall and 24″ wide) will not fit in the back seat OR the hatch of the Subaru. If it were ROUNDED it might fit in the very back, but the opening would be on the end that is not accessible with the create in side-ways.

I’ve seen the harnesses that are like seatbelts for dogs, but give them access to the upholstery, seatbelts and other delicious items. Gandy is getting better about not chewing off-limits kinds of things, but still, why put such temptation in her way?

She is quite happy in the crate we’ve been using in the car all along, but she has also barely fitting, and growing so fast, I fear I might leave her in it at the beginning of a meeting in town and come back two hours later and find she has grown so much that I have to call the fire department to use the Jaws of Life to extricate her from her ship-in-a-bottle pen.

I can’t find many options in the Christiansburg-Blacksburg area. The Tractor store now in Christiansburg is very low in inventory of everything (we suspect they will close shop entirely soon) and Target, Lowes, Home Depot and K-mart don’t show me much in our future dog’s size .

Ideas, anyone?

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Monday Creek Jots 2012-02-13

by fred on February 13, 2012

The original saw the haze, the PS work showed the layers of distant color

Dear me, what kind of week is this going to be, wordsharing-wise, when at the top of my list of things that have attracted my attention is a RECIPE: how to make fat-free potato chips in the microwave. Oh yes, it just occurred to me I have not had breakfast!

But even beyond that, it’s going to be snippets and links today–maybe this week–while I make time between Gandy-naps to get something done with more substantial projects. (The pup, BTW, is continuing to show remarkable maturity with some of our problem behaviors. Keep your fingers crossed (and out of her mouth for the time being, just to play it safe.)

There was a time back in 2003-4 when I was frequently referred to as the “Bug Man of the Blogosphere” because I confessed and often illustrated my fascination with all things invertebrate. Just this week, I discovered the Xerces Society for the study and preservation (not in alcohol or formaldehyde necessarily) of inverts. Check it out.

I posted the following yesterday to twitter: “I hate it for class Amphibia that a GOP candidate has besmirched their good name. But if he went back to Newton, there goes a good cookie. I got a reply from a fellow twit stating that the Austin Lounge Lizards had taken that theme and turned into a song, “Gingrich the Newt” – YouTube

Lastly, for now, we have some efforts underway across the county to create “edible landscapes” and one of the native fruit trees that has gotten some attention (and some orders already on hand and ready to plant when the ground thaws) is Pawpaw. Ever had one? Some say it’s an acquired taste, and they have to be picked at just the right time. But would you know one if you saw it, so you could pick it up and put it in a basket? (Did I just lose you?) Here’s how The Salt at NPR describes it.

The image, in the absence of anything from my camera other than puppy poses, is from my daughter’s new Nikon P500. She takes the pix, I work with them in Photoshop–a lazy photographer’s way of enjoying new views. Click for a larger view.

 

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Peaks and Troughs: Alpha-Beta Canine Relations

by fred on February 10, 2012

I apologize to those who have heard enough about our trials and tribulations, our thrills of victory, or the more-common agonies of defeat in the attempt to rear this not-a-labrador-retriever puppy into a beast we want to have with us for the duration of her life.

Wednesday was a new low. She’s behaved worse, but not since we had made the leap of faith that she would, indeed, fit in. To have her revert to her wolfish ways was a sad disappointment, and we wondered aloud once again if we should see if she might fit better in another setting that the Humane Society might help us find.

Then today, Friday, she has been the perfect dog. After our hello greeting when she woke up at 530, I let her out, and she came in and nested on the love seat while, for the first morning since she came here on December 18, I actually got something done! She stirred when Ann got up, and did not venture to pull at her robe or her slippers. Gandy ate her breakfast, and came back to nap on the loveseat, and I got even more work done. Now, we’ve just come back from our first of a half-dozen walks of the day that you see in this boring video, and she’s asleep on the couch again. We wondered if she were ill, but her nose is cold and wet, and she shows no symptoms other than a bizarre NICENESS.

[ http://www.youtube.com/embed/99RH1FknBvs?fs=1

What happened between her Wednesday trough and Friday’s peak performance? And does any of this action on our part account for her transformation? We don’t know, but these two things took place yesterday.

1) Ann finally asserted her dominance, and went from being number three in this small pack to being number two. She finally boldly and loudly defended her space without resorting to bribery and pay-offs or acting afraid of the dog. The dog acknowledged her place, with no doubts this time. She got it and accepted her new #3 position.

2) And I did to Gandy what I had to do with Tsuga, who was surly and snippy too at 4 months: Interrupting a snappy episode, I literally laid down over him firmly but without causing pain, and held his muzzle and thwarted his every attempt to move for a full minute until he relented. After that, miraculously, he never again tried to take the alpha male role. Gandy, too, seems to have “gotten it” and at least today, has been the dog we hoped and prayed she could be.

But it ain’t over yet by a long shot.

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At (or Past) Our Peak

by fred on February 9, 2012

Dusk in Middle Earth

Dusk in Middle Earth (Photo credit: fred1st)

Given, that we are up against physical restraints and limits globally in a way never before seen until the Anthropocene–the geological epoch of mankind’s impact on every biome on Earth–it seems clear to some and a hoax to others that we cannot continue to do business as usual.

We still have choices with regard to some of these “boundaries”, while some have already been transgressed, and for those, it will be our children, generations hence, who will have to bring them back into balance and sustainable limits if life of any reasonable quality is to go on.

This Bloomberg site aggregates stories of a number of issues related to tipping points and how to deal with them.

I see this is as a first stop in an essay I’d love to pull together that ends with the fact that economics students are beginning to reject neoclassical economics; that the idea of “triple bottom line” economics is gaining traction; and that eco-economics is one of the heterodox economic models finally looming prominently in our rethink of tomorrow’s world. There is hope for our species, yet–in spite of having pushed far to close to the edge of the cliff.

Bear in mind that, though the Anthropocene can mean that man’s activities will have significant impact every living system on Earth, it also means that our species has ahead of it an incredible opportunity to change the world for good. Poised at the peak, a boulder can roll either way. Our generation will decide which.

Related articles
Peak oil bashing – Feb 7 (energybulletin.net) The Next World Crisis: Peak Coffee? (outsidethebeltway.com)
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Say (No) Cheese!

February 8, 2012

Cutting the cheese (sic) will be easy for us–especially the wife. With no small disgust, she picks and pulls the excess from pizzas, salads, sandwiches and any other order where she specifically requests NO CHEESE and they put on anyway, thinking the customer could not possibly want to pass up an opportunity to pack in [...]

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Tapping the Ancient Waters of Vostok

February 7, 2012

If you’re a biology watcher like I am, watch this: (from Scientific American) Russian scientists, who have patiently suffered the most brutal temperatures on the planet, will soon reach their payoff–the “roof” of a massive underground freshwater lake left undisturbed for perhaps 20 million years. The risk seems great to me that we might infect [...]

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