Tag: climate change

Thursday’s Theme Music

I stepped onto the chilly back patio with the cats this morning. They looked around for intruders or prey, and I looked up. Sunshine was outlining our trees’ gold and red leaves against a blue sky that didn’t have a hair of a cloud showing.

Today is Thursday, October 28, 2021. Sunrise came at 7:39AM and sunset is due at 6:10 PM. Clear skies will have an impact as we’ll hope from our current 53 degrees F all the way up to 74. No wind is blowing. All this is a brief respite from more rain expected. We’ll take the rain, although it does slam places that suffered wildfire damage, often causing heavy erosion and landslides.

I was reading about the Netherlands today in an article titled, “When will the Netherlands disappear?”. While many right wing political parties around the world, including the GOP in the U.S., the Dutch are undertaking serious measures to mitigate the rising seas and the loss of land. The sad assessment explains the many ways that the world is changing from a warming atmosphere to melting ice caps to encroaching seas and, with the lowlands of the Netherlands, the disappearance of a land and nation. But let’s keep pretending it ain’t happening, because you know, money. Which is the bottom line of the GOP argument: it would cause money to cope with climate change, eat into profits, and diminish executive bonuses. Meanwhile, we’ll build sea walls, as they’re doing in Florida, even though the feted dikes of Netherland show that sea walls can only do so much.

Naturally, money spoke to my mental Alexa, who ordered a recall of “Moneytalks” by AC/DC from 1991 to the morning mental music stream. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed by the situation, and get the vax and booster when you can. Here’s the music. There’s my coffee. We good. Cheers

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It’s the Sun, Stupid

Okay, boys and girls. Gather ’round. Time for another rant.

An older friend related a story. He was assembled with his fishing club to hear a futurist speak. The first subject was global warming and climate change. The futurist announced, “It’s the sun, stupid.” That was the whole of the discussion about global warming and climate change.

Yes, it’s the sun, stupid. Has nothing to do with atmosphere. Nor methane gases being released. Conveyor belt effects on ocean currents. Nothing to do with anything humans are doing.

No, it’s the sun, stupid. Why is the planet warming? It’s the sun, stupid. The sun warms the planet. Well, should other aspects of that be addressed? Like, why exactly is the sun warming the planet so much? Why are ocean currents destabilizing? Is there any relationship with the jet stream changing, and all the extreme weather events, the growing, deepening droughts, the record, soaring, high temperatures? Or what of the wildfires and bushfires, like the ones that devastated Australia, the western U.S., and now parts of Europe? No? This is all just the sun?

These issues weren’t raised. While not a close friend, I’m aware of his political views. He pooh-poohs Black Lives Matter. Dismisses other social justice and equality issues. Laments the changes we’re seeing in our society. Wants to return to ‘the old values’. He’s older than me. Entrenched in his beliefs. Fortified by Fox News and other conservatives. I know these things from previous encounters. I know that he doesn’t think much of climate change or global warming. It’s the sun.

Stupid.

End of rant.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Smoke blankets us. A heat dome squat over us. 102 to 114 F today. COVID-19 in our county are at their highest levels ever. Kind of puts me in the mood for “Eve of Destruction”. Too heavy handed, don’t you think? Would be like taking a howitzer to a mosquito.

Sorry, haven’t had my coffee yet. Feeling tetchy. Today is Wednesday, August 11, 2021. Sunrise came on at 6:14 AM. Sunset will be at 8:17 PM. The sunsets, watched from being windows and a smoky haze, are beautiful in their own red, hellish way. The sun glows a nuclear red. As it sets behind the hills, the red glow spreads across the sky, painting the parched, brown land in bright red tones. We could have called yesterday Redday instead of Tuesday. Yeah, not subtle. Our air quality sits at 256, the purple zone, which is very unhealthy. Advisories have been issued: it’s super hot, so don’t go outside. And it’s smoky and the air is unhealthy, so also don’t go outside. Keep your doors and windows closed. And if you do go in somewhere, wear a mask. Also, wear one outside.

Yes, the masks are making a comeback in Oregon. Not surprising. With ICUs filled and people being turned away, sixty employees of one local hospital are also COVID-19 positive. Not a fun month, August, 2021. Started out with a lot of promise and hope. Most of that’s been swallowed by heat, smoke, and COVID-19. Meanwhile, after the IPCC’s devastating report on climate change, WaPo has an opinion piece on why we shouldn’t give in to climate despair. Which of the other despairs should we give into?

All this leaves me feeling a little grungy this morning. Alice in Chains brings “Down In A Hole” (1992) to the mental concert.

Down in a hole and I don’t know if I can be saved
See my heart I decorate it like a grave
Oh, you don’t understand who they thought I was supposed to be
Look at me now I’m a man who won’t let himself be

Down in a hole, feeling so small
Down in a hole, losing my soul
I’d like to fly
But my wings have been so denied

h/t AZLyrics.com

That’s good car music, hey? Stay positive. Test negative. Wear a mask. Get the vax. Here is the music. That is all. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

I’m a pop child, you know? Born in ’56 in the United States in a lower middle-class household and living mostly in suburbs, I grew up as television and radio matured. When Mom cleaned house, she turned on her records and sang with them. Throughout the years, I heard her with Patsy Cline, Pat Boone, Johnny Cash and Johnny Rivers, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Chubby Checkers, Louis Armstrong, Tammy Lynette, Ray Charles, Johnny Mathis, Barbra Steisand, the Ink Spots and Four Platters, to list the ones that jump casually to mind.

Then there was big sis. Two years older than moi, she started listening to the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Dave Clark Five, Herman’s Hermits, Simon and Garfunkel, and Grand Funk Railroad. Boys, interested in this attractive young woman and usually a year or two older than her, brought more music in, like the Spencer Davis Group, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and David Bowie.

The radio was always on in the car, and I received small transistor radios from Japan as birthday gifts. AM radio gave me some bubble gum pop like the Osmonds, the Archies, and the Jackson Five, along with Elvis Presley, Glen Campbell, Don McLean, Steppenwolf, and the Temptations. We had the Bee Gees, the Rolling Stones, and The Who. Television brought along Ricky Nelson, the Monkees, and all manner of performers via variety shows like Ed Sullivan, Hullabaloo and American Bandstand. Movies got into it. Friends introduced me to Sly and the Family Stone and Three Dog Night.

I explored on my own as I aged, discovering Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Cream, ZZ Top, Mountain, Captain Beefheart, the Moody Blues, early Electric Light Orchestra before they became ELO. More performers came onto the scene, like Elton John.

That’s just a little taste. Music was everywhere then, as it is now, always on, part of the foreground and the background, part of the scene, a topic of conversation. All of this is just on the pop and rock side. Beyond it there was country and western, soul, rhythms and blues, and the blues, and all the offshoots and variations. Beyond the United States were vast seas of music to be found in other countries and continents. Concerts gave us destination. Dancing gave us dates.

Music enriched existence. Oddly, all this came from a 1977 Paul Simon song, “Slip Slidin’ Away”. Time has fled through the year. Whether it’s because the days are less structured or because the usual placeholders of American culture have been disrupted, it seems like time has accelerated. Here it is, already more than halfway through the tenth month of the year. Just two more months and ten days to 2020 remains before we’re kissing it’s ass good-bye and saying hello to 2021.

Yet, we have an open-ended agenda at this point. COVID-19 has disrupted normalcy. The U.S. elections are due. We’re into the thirty-first named storm of the ‘hurricane season’. Climatologists are predicting wilder, more violent, and less predictable weather. With all that’s happening, water and food security for many of the world’s creatures are being jeopardized.

So, you might see why I’m thinking of “Slip Slidin’ Away” might have slipped into my thinking. Opportunities, time, and hope seem to be slip slidin’ away. Some might claim that sanity and peace are, too.

Certainly, it feels to me, probably because where I am in life, the days seem like they’re slip slidin’ away.

Here’s the song. Yeah, it’s a repeat. Used it back in August, 2018. Wear a mask please. And as they once said to the point it became nauseating, have a nice day.

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Friday Fragments

  1. People tell me how skinny I’ve become. Interesting, because I weigh just seven pounds less than two years ago. What I’ve pieced together, based on history and what doctors told me, is that my prostrate gland had become severely enlarged. It blocked my bladder, eventually causing a medical emergency because I couldn’t void myself. My little old one- hundred ml bladder had eleven hundred ml of piss in it, according to the staff when I arrived that morning in the ER. According to my doc when he recounted it later, I was grossly distended. So, no, it wasn’t weight; I was full of piss. Once that was all relieved, and my prostate has shrunk some, my organs are no longer displaced, and no longer have an abdomen that sticks out like a car bumper.
  2. You can read about my 2019 troubles in Peckerville here.
  3. My prostate/bladder experience reaffirmed the need to not look at everyone through the same lenses. They may look overweight, but it could be something else completely.
  4. I’m also looking at my food differently. I used to consider sugars, fat, and content whenever I made a food selection. We’ve moved sharply toward organic and natural food in the past fifteen years. I was diagnosed with high blood pressure (hypertension) last year. I’m on meds for it. I now check sodium content in food and keep it down. I’m staggered by how much sodium is used in modern processed food. It’s eye opening, and not in a good way. The Trader Joe’s foods that I used to enjoy are completely unacceptable.
  5. Speaking of looking at things differently, the neighbor’s cat was almost done in by a car the other day, right before my eyes. Mimi, a gorgeous little grey and white kitty, was sitting on the curb across the street. A pedestrian was chatting with her. He later said, though, another cat was distracting Mimi. A car came rushing up the street. Mimi decided then to cross.
  6. Cats don’t view the world as we do. They have a harder time discerning a car forty feet away, traveling at a speed of thirty miles per hour, coming at them.
  7. The car brakes to a halt with a sharp screech of tires. Mimi appears safe. She streaks home. All are concerned. I knock on the neighbor’s door and tell her what happened and where Mimi went. I haven’t seen Mimi or neighbor since. It worries me, but I think if something bad happened, my neighbor would come and tell me. That’s how she is.
  8. We were out shopping Tuesday. Had to renew the car registration in Medford, so we thought we’d shop and gas up the car at the same time. All went well but I realized, I don’t really miss people during this pandemic/stay-at-home era. I miss my routines. Yes, I miss having beers with friends or going dancing, and traveling, but it’s not about missing the people as much as doing things other than what I’m doing. I’ve always known I’m not a social person. I don’t know how much of this to assign to what, personality wise. In other words, how much is due to my genetic makeup, and how much of it is a socialization thingy?
  9. We’re seriously processing moving out of state, probably heading east. Well, come on, we live in Oregon; we can’t go south to California. Going north to Washington has been addressed, but it doesn’t seem feasible.
  10. Looking at house photos online to fill in an idea of what housing would be like, I’m fascinated by the difference in home décor between the Pacific northwest, and Ohio/Pennsylvania, where we’re looking. We’ve always been aware of the differences in clothing fashion between different parts of the country. There are also usually differences attributable to age and economic straits. And, visiting family, yes, I’ve also noticed it when I visit their homes. So much viewing, I suppose, has driven the disparity more deeply into me.
  11. The other thing is about how housing styles have changed through the decades. Back in the forties, fifties, and sixties, (I don’t know about other decades, because I don’t see houses from other times), homes seemed to mostly form follow function. Small box houses. Little character is evidenced outside. The yards are large, the rooms are small, especially bathrooms.
  12. Later, though, the houses grow more and more about exterior style. While the boxes were efficient but less attractive, the newer houses become more inefficient in their interiors, with lots of wasted space or strange spaces. Yards are smaller, though all of the yards on the listings I check are larger than the yards out here. I have several friends who are retired or practicing architects. I’d love to talk to them about evolving house designs. One was on the forefront of tiny houses and sustainable living, so I really want to get her take.
  13. We have three firm rules for our new place, wherever we settle. One, no mortgages. Paying in cash limits our choices (we don’t want to sink all of our cash into a house, right?), but we don’t want a mortgage. Two, no HOAs. They’ve burned us twice; never again. I think they’re one of the more ridiculous modern contrivances. Three, we need a little space. We just don’t like living on top of other people. When we first move back, we will be renting, of course. We’ve done this before. Although we haven’t moved in fourteen years, I was in the military for twenty years, as was my father before me. I’ve moved a lot during my lifetime.
  14. I’m pretty convinced we need to move. Not looking forward to it, but… But years of smoky summers and droughts, water restrictions, and wildfires have worn us down. Sad, because Ashland, Oregon, and the region are beautiful and wonderful in multiple ways. The negatives, though, have just added up. Given the trends of the previous ten years and the forecasts and models, we only see it getting worse.

Have a good day. Wear your masks, please. Be safe. Cheers

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Winter

I don’t know what’s going on with Winter. He’s just not the same. I worried for several weeks that he was sick or injured because I saw so little of him.

Then, suddenly, here he was again, acting sooo crazy, to employ a retro-phrase. He was randomly tossing snow around, piling it up on one mountain and ignoring the rest. Sometimes it snowed when the sun was out. He seemed to be mocking forecasts. If they called for heavy snow, he gave us light rain. When no snow was forecast, he dumped a bucket on us. Everyone was asking, “WTF, Winter? What’s wrong with you?”

I’m beginning to suspect that Winter’s been replaced, and that we’re seeing a new Winter impart. I wonder about who took the job. Since Winter has always been an old white man, have they decided to modernize and replace him with a woman? They could have also decided to stay with a male but surrendered to the youth movement, because, you know, demographics. Maybe they decided to break out complete and replace old man Winter with a young, black woman.

The other part of this speculation is whether one Winter is responsible for the entire world, or has Winter been reorganized, with a Winter assigned to countries or geographical areas.

I don’t know. It could be those things or something else that I haven’t thought of. All I know is that old man Winter doesn’t seem like the guy I used to know.

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Whine #7,635,499,117,006

Sometimes I think, TGFC. Yes, thank God for coffee, a.k.a., thank God for caffeine. Coffee helps me cope when the friggin’ world seems determined to be the pebble in my shoe.

First, the wildfire smoke has returned. Grrr. Yes, the smoke isn’t as bad as the actual fire, nor the many accidents, disasters and true nightmares that others are enduring, you know, like being a refugee without a home — or country, any longer — or being torn away from your family and sent to another place, or raped or shot. I’m far from starving or being financially insecure. That’s why this is a whine.

Second, the bloody Internet connection is sooo…damnnn…slooowww…tooo…day….

I was at home first experiencing this. What the hell? Who knows, at that point. But now, in the coffee shop, it’s OMG time. Task Manager and all the security apps said there’s nothing wrong here. I tend to blame Google Chrome. Hasn’t been working right since that update.

Again, not big stuff, first world complaints.

Which took me back to Dr. Dinardo’s post, “Shifting From Anxiety to Excitement”. Her salient point:

Did you know that fear and excitement share the same set of neurotransmitters, including dopamine, glutamate, and acetylcholine.

  • Opposite emotions. Identical neurotransmitters.
  • Same neural activity. Different cognitive appraisal.

And the best way to shift from performance anxiety to excitement is to say one sentence on repeat.

Her information can be applied to multiple situations. It’s about changing your  reactions, right? So, as I walked, I worked on changing from feeling negative toward something on the spectrum’s positive side. While doing that, I thought about how Dr. Dinardo’s point is directed toward the first world. Her focus is on helping her students. The lessons can be applied to others (like me), but imagining myself leaving one of the world’s war-torn, disease-ravaged countries without any idea of where I’m going, it would be difficult for me to try to change my cognitive appraisal to be more upbeat.

It’s not a slam against Dr. Dinardo (although some might think, that sure read like a slam). It’s a slam against the world and the many ways that suffering is forced upon others, how slowly change takes place, and how impermanent it often seems. It’s a slam against people who think, let’s go back twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, one hundred years, to when times were simpler and life was easier. I consider that simplistic, narrow, and short-sighted, perhaps as simplistic, narrow, and short-sighted as my whining about the wildfire smoke and a slow Internet.

Yes, I understand that I’m simplifying cognitive appraisal and its mechanism. Hey, I’m only on my second cuppa. I’d need one or two more cups of coffee to go into it more thoughtfully.

I’ve read — and I’m dubious about projecting these things — that climate change will eventually affect our coffee supply. I’m dubious because projections are based on the known, and there often turns out to be many things that aren’t known that affect the projections. I’m also hopeful that a woman or man will arise, unite us, and say, “Enough with this shit. It’s time for a change,” and manage to rally everyone around them to change the world for the better for all, and save coffee.

It’s probably a naive hope. Meanwhile, I have coffee, time, a secure place, and a working computer. I’ll take advantage of the here and now, at least how it applies to me.

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The Beer Warning

Beer and I get along well. We go together like pizza and beer, ice cream and pie, or coffee and pastries.

The other day, we had a warning about climate change and chocolate. Each week brings another story about global warming and the increasing seriousness.

Earlier this year – 2018 – came a story about rare poisonous sea snakes being discovered in California, coming north with warming waters.

Before that, of course, were stories and warnings of wild weather swings with rapid temperature extremes, blizzard hurricanes and increasing wildfires. Before then, climate change warnings were about melting ice caps, rising sea levels, and coastal flooding that threaten cities like New York and Miami.

But a segment of population says, “Nope, climate change, and all that’s attributed to it is fake science, or a hoax, or a conspiracy, or blah, blah, blah.”

Today, a warning from Montana, where malt hops are grown. They’re not faring well there, and climate change is blamed.

Without malt hops, we’re going to have some problems with beer production. Hopefully, more will now start paying attention. The Guardian puts it in perspective in this article, from 2015.

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During the Eclipse

I don’t know if I was the first to think it. How could I know? I didn’t tell anyone what I was thinking. It was too damn crazy. There were probably others who likewise noticed, but kept it to themselves. Because, what could we do?

When I began thinking it, I don’t know. I didn’t mark the date. Like the economy, or a war, it took a few months to get a true and complete sense of what was transpiring.

It began with people telling about miraculous recoveries from cancer, and other diseases and injuries on Facebook. Those stories swept across the media as newspapers and television networks noticed. Reporters hunting the stories found bigger stories, even as hospitals and government agencies added other elements.

People weren’t dying. Gunshot and stabbing victims recovered. So did people who overdosed. Burns healed. Drowning victims took sudden new breaths, startling everyone. Diseases went into remission. Those who needed assistance from machines, nurses, caregivers, and doctors were able to push them aside, walking, chewing, and wiping their own asses, without others’ help. Memories, speech, and motor control returned. Their vision and minds sharpened.

So many thought it a miracle, a proof of some God’s love. Meanwhile, the planet’s average temperatures jumped. Hurricanes and cyclones destroyed cities, but nobody died. Glaciers melted. The sea levels rose, as did the heat, shriveling crops. America’s Midwest dried up, becoming another dust bowl. Water grew scarce and precious. Unemployment climbed, because there was less need for taking care of the sick, dying, and dead. People cried and screamed in hungry pain. Animals were killed. Fights over food and water broke out. Then came the riots.

I was sure I knew what had happened. Sometime during the cover given by the eclipse, others invaded Earth. They were wiping us out by accelerating our climate change, and keeping us alive even as we starved. It was a soft invasion. They didn’t want us dead, just weak, so they could enslave us.

Guessing that’s what was happening, I’d taken quiet actions to make things as pleasant as possible for my family in our remaining days. There was no way to kill ourselves; there was no way to die. All we could do was wait.

After eleven months, Nate Silver published results. August 21, 2017, was day zero. That was the last day anyone had died. We should all remember that date, when we meet our new masters. I’m sure they’ll introduce themselves by giving us food.

And we’ll be so grateful, we’ll do what they want.

 

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Not His Problem

Icebergs breaking off and rising sea levels…they weren’t his problem. Seas rise. That was their problem. Their own fault, for buying land on the coast and building a house there. Their own fault, the fools.

Like building a place where you know there’s an earthquake, or volcano. Only a fool does that.

No, his problem was the dust. It was going to be another hot, dry, and dusty year with not enough water to bring grow the crops. The water levels were down everywhere.

That was his problem.

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