Save the environment (05/18/2024)

We were informed in one of the recent issues of the Washington Post that the sea level is rising faster than predicted all along the Atlantic and Mexican Gulf coasts. There are regions where the level has gone up 6 or more inches, or for my metric fans, 15 cm. Amazing to think that this occurred during the past 15 years, or less than a generation.

You probably know (from reading some of my past writings) that I have been very concerned about our global environment and argued that we are stealing from the future of our next of kin. In my posts of the past 11 years, I have 5 posts with the key word environment, 52 with environmental, 5 with environmental justice, 60 with global warming, and 39 with climate change. Some of the posts will have multiple keywords, and there will be some overlap. For example, I am sure that I will be using all these keywords for this post. I probably have missed using these keywords in some of my posts. But so be it. I have now published 545 or more posts in this blog, since 2013. This means that more than 10% of my posts somehow deal with environmental issues including global warning, or at least use one of these keywords associated with them.

Why do I harp so much on this issue? I am 70 years old, and I have no idea how much longer I will live. I will be long dead, by the time the shit hits the fan, so to speak. Our financial advisor makes me live till 94 in her calculations. May I only be so lucky or maybe unlucky. It would be fine with me if I could live till that ripe-old age and maintain some mobility and not suffer much mental decline. It would be nice to see any potential future grandchildren. Living till 94 would make the oldest grandchild a maximum of 23 when I die. Boy my daughter better hurry up. No pressure though. I am a strong believer that families should have no more than two children and admire those who stay childless by choice. One of the causes of the environmental decline is the overpopulation of this earth or exceedance of the earth’s carrying capacity as first proposed by Malthus. Malthus determined that the earth could only handle a certain number of people. If he was correct, it means that we need to reduce the overall birthrate on earth. I wrote about this <here>. However, on the other hand, I also read that we need more young folks if I want to keep enjoying my social security. We are in a pickle, aren’t we?

So, what small things am I doing to protect the environment?

1. 1. We bought a hybrid vehicle. Our car does not have the best gas mileage, but it makes us feel good. Our other car has better highway mileage, and we can now be selective about which vehicle we use for a certain trip. Yes, we have the van, which is a gas guzzler, but I wonder what was better for the environment, flying across the country for two or driving? If you read this and know the answer, leave me a comment.
2. We pick up our dog poop when we take them for a walk. This helps in keeping the nutrients out of the Chesapeake Bay, and hopefully helps the environment.
3. In addition, we tend not to fertilize our yard, except my bonsai trees. However, that should not cause a lot of runoff. Fertilizers I have includes some powdered Miracle Growth for my trees and bonemeal. We use compost, both stuff we produce ourselves and some storebought compost. Pesticides and herbicides are not available at our home. I even chase off any lawn maintenance or bug control salesperson from our property.
4. Our yard has a lot of trees, and we call people that cut the trees in their yard: tree murderers. I call it tree genocide.
5. In retirement, I am starting to grow our own food again, and I have just seeded a pollinator garden.
6. We are slowly weaning ourselves from the use of plastics. The most recent thing we did was to trash our plastic cutting boards and some of the plastic storage containers.
7. I am involved in the environmental committee of our UU church, or what is called the “Green Sanctuary” committee. We donate a lot to environmental groups as well.
8. Lastly, and I am sure I can think of more items, we try to eat organic and semi-healthy. We are not vegetarians, but we are aware of the food additives and the danger of highly processed foods. When I have time, I try to bake our own bread, which has much less unpronounceable additive in it than storebought bread.

No, we are not perfect, but at least we try to leave something for future generations to enjoy. Where can we improve what we currently do to preserve the earth for future generations? Let me know!

This cartoon shows what I am afraid of (so I stole it).  Conservatives seem to harp about deficit and money but appear not to give a damn about the environment!

Stormwater, the early years (7/10/2023)

In a previous post I mentioned that I once had the ambition to write a book on stormwater and erosion and sediment control (and I may still do it). This idea was a natural outflow of the job I did pre-retirement. The following post is part of an introductory section that I wrote for the book. Ince I lifted from a chapter, I have changed it a little to make it a narrative for you all to follow and understand. I left the literature citations out, feel free to contact me, if you are interested in them. So here I go:

Very early, North American settlement history may have followed similar patterns as were encountered in Europe of the Middle Ages. The settling population in North America initially concentrated in towns and villages for mutual protection from outlaws and native Indian population. This is evident by some of the older larger urban centers on the east coast. In addition, large tracts of land were deforested very early on in settlement history for the use of timber (building materials) and the growth of cash crops, in particular tobacco. A 17th century document in the historic town of Williamsburg describes that climbers of the church spire in town (or what is now Colonial Williamsburg) were able to see the York River to the north and the James River to the south, a feat that is impossible nowadays because of the regrowth of the forest in the area. The peninsula appeared to have completely deforested, mostly for the growing of tobacco at that time.

The cartographer Lewis Evans observed the same thing when he reported in 1750 about the deforestation and conversion to agriculture land that had already greatly altered the hydrology and clarity of streams and creeks in the Piedmont of Northern Virginia:

"When the country was cover'd with Woods, and the Swamps with brush, the rain that fell was detained by these interruptions, and so had time to insinuate into the Earth, and contribute to the springs and runs. But now the country is clear'd, the rain as fast as it falls is hurried into the rivers, and washes away the earth and soil of our Naked Fields."

 

The reports by Evans were only the beginning. Human caused accelerated erosion increased steadily as is shown in a recent study by Kemp et al (2020) who conclude that European settlement of North America during the past century has resulted in the movement in as much sediment that natural processes can move in 700 to 3000 years. They estimated that geologic sediment production which had been relatively stable for the past 40,000 years increased 10-fold as a result of European settlement and the rapid expansion of agriculture and river modification seen throughout the continent.

So, what are currently the main sources of sediment the waterways in more developed nations? It was reported that while agriculture practices generate considerable amounts of sediment by way of erosion; we now estimate that areas cleared for construction are able to generate the equivalent of many decades of sediment in one year compared to agricultural uses (let me know if you are interested in the source). Research determined that construction can yield 140,000 tons of sediment per square mile per year, compared to 1000 tons from agriculture land and up to 500 tons from forested land in the Piedmont area of Maryland. In other words, construction is a major contributor producing 140 times more sediment than agriculture land per unit area (for example per acre or hectare). However, , there is so much more land being used for agriculture than actively being disturbed by construction activities.

On an interesting note, while sediment production increased at least 10-fold over historical times in North America during the last century, it was also observed that during the same period it seemed that less sediment reached the ocean. This was caused by the retention of the sediment by reservoirs that were constructed by human. Reservoirs served for the storage of drinking water and water for energy generation and irrigation. It has been estimated that a total of 1.4 ± 0.3 metric tons of sediment per year is retained by reservoirs world-wide. Siltation of these reservoirs will eventually greatly reduce the capacity, function, and usefulness of these structures. It appears that Indonesian rivers were a rare exception and that they deliver more sediment to the coastal areas than other rivers that they surveyed.

Here I’ll step away from my book chapter. I saw similar issues in Nepal where the land or better fertile soil was being carried away by runoff. The main reason was deforestation for agriculture. We often joked that a new island was being formed off the coast of Bangladesh. This island was formed from the sediment being carried by the rivers coming out of Nepal. The results in Nepal were the drying out of springs and dropping groundwater table, a phenomenon seen throughout areas that are being deforested.

I’ll end here, there are many posts where I discuss some of these items as well. Just look in the keywords for the words like stormwater, erosion, sediment, erosion and sediment control, runoff reduction and alike. If you like or enjoy what I wrote here, let me know and I’ll pull some additional material out of my writing.

Our daughter was in New Delhi, India these past few weeks and sent me this newspaper shot.  They had 6" (126 mm) of rain in the afternoon and it flooded the town.  Can you imagine all the impervious area in such a large city, it created havoc.

Schismogenesis (1/17/2022)

First a note, writing has been a bit more difficult these past few weeks. I broke my wrist, and typing is difficult (my way of breaking in the New Year). Even reading with one hand is tiring. So, I’ll be slowing down these two months but not stopping.

In all my reading, I learned a new word: “Schismogenesis.” The definition of schismogenesis is the creation of division. Interestingly, it was mentioned in a book I am reading where the authors are talking about things that went on in the 1700 and 1800s. But let me get back to the word. In sociolinguistics, a field I know absolutely nothing about, schismogenesis is defined as creating a split in a mutually aggravating way. Wow, isn’t that than the word that encapsule everything that the past year, maybe two, if not the past five years were all about?

How to explain schismogenesis. Let’s assume we are neighbors, and we compare our like and dislike of certain colors. I like blue and you like red. After a friendly discussion of our color preference the discussion gets that heated that we start accusing each other by the political parties that these colors represent, although the discussion was never started out that way, neither did we ever shared our political believe before. It got that bad that it eventually got to communist vs. fascist. The next day you paint the side of your house that faces me red and guess what? I paint my house blue. That is schismogenesis, a simple disagreement gone bad. 

In essence this is the story of our current political climate. We have gotten so polarized that no middle ground is possible. It is democrat against republican, red against blue, liberal against conservative. No compromise is possible any longer. It is disgusting and distressing. We can discuss who is to blame; and I am sure there we go again. In my liberal view it is the red-haired wannabe dictator/loser of the last elections. However, on his side, it is probably us the election stealers. Get the message? We need to ger back to civility and compromise and recognize schismogenisis when it is staring us in the face.

The proof is in the green cast.  I purposely choose a green one in solidarity with the environment and enxpress my concern about climate warming and the future direction that my state (Virginia) seems to be going in. 

Living in the moment (12/19/2021)

Each year, around this time of the year I seem to write a post where I review what happened in the world and in my life during the past year. I gave 2020 the proverbial middle finger for contributing COVID, my house arrest and tRump at his best. But what did 2021 bring us, or do I even want to write about it?

It is my understanding that the Buddhist are very strong believers of living in the moment. Living in the moment or not dwelling over the past and not being anxious over the future.

Dwelling over the past. My thesaurus tells me that the word dwell also means inhabit or live. This will age me, but it reminds me of one of my favorite Jethro Tull albums and associated tune “Living in the Past.” Part of the lyrics go like this:

Now there's revolution
But they don't know
What they're fighting
Let us close our eyes
Outside their lives
Go on much faster
Oh, we won't give in
We'll keep living in the past
Oh, we won't give in
Let's go living in the past
Oh no, no, we won't give in
Let's go living in the past

Damn, here I go again on a tangent, don’t I? Not really, the Album Living in the Past came out in 1969 and this part of the lyrics can apply to the much of the January 6th insurrection we saw. Those folks did not know what they were fighting for, and I am sure they still do not! They think they did, but was that really what was behind it all? A red-haired wannabe dictator who only cares about himself and maybe his rich cronies as long as they adore him, otherwise he’ll throw them under the bus. He somehow was able to whip up the masses with some popular ideas, but he doesn’t give a damn about them. The perfect demagogue, Mussolini, Stalin, Castro, etc. all in one person.

So yes, maybe it is better for me to live in the past, the times before we lost our innocence, and the country elected this red-haired wannabe dictator? Or should I focus on living in the moment? Boy what a conundrum.

This past year I have been very anxious about the future, my aging, and our environmental future as you can conclude from my blog posts. So, what remains? Yes, I better live in the moment, otherwise I’ll turn into a complete wreck!

But no, we can learn from the past and come to terms with it. I am still trying to do that in my personal life at times, although I think it is working most of the time. Regarding the future, I still need to plan, maybe try to lose those few pounds, my 2022 travel and teaching schedule, eventual retirement, and yes keep fighting for the environment and future generations. I wrote a post about bonsai work and how it is all based on long range planning (actually it was a political post, turned bonsai post, but as regular readers you know how my strange mind twists). So, living in the moment does not mean just sitting here staring at my belly button a.k.a. my computer. I want to try to make every moment count and live life to the fullest; enjoy it.

So maybe my next post will be a yearend review, although maybe not; I think I did a pretty good job at it here today.

I took this photo mid-November of my desk (top).  It is iconic for the year, I suppose.  Working from home and some of my (tropical) plants, inside for the winter months.  It is definitely not my Richmond office; they don't allow live plants there.

What does the word environment mean to you? (12/14/2021)

What comes to mind when you hear the word environment? That was a question I read in a periodical I get called Yes! Yes! calls itself “Journalism for People Building a Better World.” It is a very provocative and informative magazine, and I enjoy it. The question what the word environment means to you was partially answered in the magazine, and I thought it was worth spending some time on here in my blog, since I often write about the environment, environmental protection, and environmental justice.

The Oxford Dictionary defines environment in two ways:

1. The surroundings or conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives or operates.
2. The natural world, as a whole or in a particular geographical area, especially as affected by human activity.

From a biological viewpoint, some define environment as follows:

1. The uninhabitable portion of the environment
2. Uninhabited part, and
3. Inhabited part of the environment

Those darn biologists again! They know how to ruin a good thing and make something uninhabitable. But I guess they (we) are correct, places like the lava flow in Tenerife or Iceland are still part of the environment and are pretty darn uninhabitable. It just makes it sounds so clinical.

I guess, I could just copy what is written in the article since I assume that not many of you read the magazine, but that would be plagiarism, now wouldn’t it? Still, to paraphrase what Breanna Draxler wrote in her article, she writes it should not (only) be the charismatic things around us like the National Parks, the majestic peaks, and the beautiful forest. However, it should also the mundane including the soil, our air, things around our home, our workplace, and schools. We should understand how we are interconnected with each other, with the planet and everything living on it. Wow that is a Unitarian principle if I have ever heard of one.

The article then goes into environmental justice and makes the argument that wherever the environment is under assault, the local inhabitants will be under assault as well. It always seems that these inhabitants will mostly be minorities, especially women and children.

Why is it that when I start writing, things go where I did not intent it to go? This time I only read the introduction to Ms. Draxler’s article, and I thought it would make a great post: wondering what the word environment means to me. So, let’s see if I can bring it back to there. What does it all mean to me? As someone who is acutely aware of my surroundings, I like to “forest bathe”, meditate, observe and study nature, my environment is all around me, wherever I am and go. As I mentioned before, winter walks are my way of examining the canopy of trees in search of a design for the perfect bonsai. So yes, I consider myself acutely aware of my environment.

At the same time, I recognize the larger environment and often write about global warming. Right now, I am upset that our republican governor elect is either bowing to his own or to the conservative belief or bias and wants to dial back regulations that fight global warming and sea-level rise. The only thing I can think is “here we go again”. Let’s fight whatever progress we have made for future generations for short-term gain, and who really gives a damn how our kids and grandkids will suffer? Our generation’s legacy be damned!

To me environment includes all that and the people around me, my family and friends, you all who read my blog posts, my students, neighbors, foes, even my enemies, or shall I call them the folks I do not really like that much or get along with. That part of the environment is important. I once wrote a post on the difference between being alone and being lonely. As an introvert, I like being alone at times but being lonely without community or folks in my environment is not good.

In conclusion then, for me, the word environment encompasses everything, the whole, the web of our and my existence, as well the minutia everything and everybody around me. I need to cherish it and them, respect them, love them, take care of them; because they are all I have and all I can leave as legacy for future generations. They (you) contribute to who I am.

This photograph symbolizes what I am trying to tell you all here.  I walk by this scene probably at least once a day, if not more.  The perfect embrace of two different tree species: a loblolly pine and a maple.  If they can do it, humankind can do it, and fight for the environment on all different scales.

 

Why do I write? (11/23/2021)

Why do I write, or more specifically, why do I write my blog? I am not sure where I heard something similar asked the other day, either on the radio from someone on why they make music or maybe it was on XM. I know this is a subject I have visited before <here>, and it is the number one post on my site. I am still not completely sure; so I question why do we do what we are doing for a hobby or work? Do I want the attention, “preach” my (liberal or environmental) believes (now that is different from my previous blog post)? It sometimes seems that I act too much like a fool, make fun of situations, don’t take things seriously. Whenever a serious situation presents itself, I may even have a difficult time being serious or handling it in a serious matter.

Wow, this first paragraph was not where I wanted to go at all with this post today. So back up.

My posts are mostly serious, I hope. But who do I write them for? Myself, or who do I phantom my audience to be, you, who reads my ramblings? I started out my public persona behind a microphone on a radio station: KGLP FM, Gallup Public Radio. I remember it like yesterday. We built the radio station and the first minute it went on the air (I think it was 1992), Frank, who was hired as station manager by the Community College signed in and stuck the microphone in front of my face and said: “say something Jan.” The rest was history, I was hooked. Soon I had three daily radio programs for at least a year (a classical afternoon show, the Frank and Jan “All things reconsidered” show, and an evening jazz show). When Frank left, I temporarily took over as station manager for a half year or so before we left Gallup for a “real” job in Cincinnati. I missed being on the radio ever since.

Talking into a microphone to an anonymous audience was comforting. Friends listened of course, but others did not know me, and I did not know them. I could be whatever and whomever I wanted to be. Sometimes I feel this blog is the natural continuation of my short radio career, which I absolutely enjoyed so much. Very few friends know that I blog, and I really do not advertise my writing. You are one of the lucky ones if you happen to find it, read it, or even follow me. Lucky maybe exaggerated, but you get the drift. I am the lucky one if you read it!

This graph shows you where my readers came from over the years.  I started my blog on June 23, 2013.  Just over 67% of my readers were from the US.  The Indonesian readership was 0.9%.  After that, the numbers were too small to show on the graph.  I always seemed to get a lot of Russian hits whenever I mentioned tRump. 

At the time KGLP was a volunteer radio station and I did not earn a dime being assistant and later as temporary fill-in, full-time manager. It was a labor of love. I raced to the station when the station went down to fix things. In a way that is how I run this blog; I don’t make a damn penny on this blog. Yes, I know, I have complained about it at times and threatened that I will start putting adds on my blog in the hope to make a few pennies with my rambling. And there comes the point, I sometimes question who the heck do I write this thing for?

Was the radio thing and now this blog just one big ego thing, one big form of self-gratification? Am I just doing this for me? Am I just a big, fucking egocentric dick and should I just stop all this nonsense? What am I contributing to society? Am I wasting my valuable time sitting with my laptop on my lap hammering these worthless letters on the keyboard? I really don’t know.

I have written two sermons to share with folks in our UU congregation, hopefully partially educating, being empathetic, spiritual and a team player. The radio was a cheap thrill, but also something I did for the community. Both these things and other volunteer work I do, I do with the excuse that I want to give back to the community that is willing to put up with me. Maybe that is a good excuse: With this blog I am trying to give back to the world community that is willing to put up with me. Ha, ha, ha. I told you I can be funny, cynical at times.

So why am I really doing this? It is a form of diary, I guess. It started out as a daily photo blog and quickly turned into something more. I wanted to educate folks about what was dear to me, sailing, plants, nature, the environment. Then came my work, the teaching, my bonsai, and just simple life’s observations. Finally, this all was followed by politics; and there was the rabbit hole! Especially with the election of tRump. When writing about politics I was trying to challenge the right wing, the proud babies and alike. See if I could get their goat. But no, they are too interested in their own little dumb shortsighted chatrooms than to read the hopefully slightly more broadminded intellectual blog that I write.

So why do I put myself out there? I still don’t know. I don’t want or need the attention, but then like everyone else, I do check the number of hits I get on this blog, and the likes I get on my Instagram and Facebook posts. So maybe it is for self-gratification. However, I hope that some of my readers learn some thing and walk away from my posts having picked up something valuable or entertaining. However, probably not from anything I wrote in this particular post. I just had to do some public soul searching and reminiscing, but hopefully this post stimulated that in you as well.

The AMOC is going amok (8/10/2021)

This week we learn that global warming may have some real strange bedfellows. Ice age anyone? Unbelievable, now I have to concede to some of the conservative pundits who were telling us that the climate is all cyclical, and we were due for an ice age and not for warming out of control. Where did I or all these doomsday prognosticators go wrong? Here I wrote a whole post on how things were not cyclical, but we were trapped in a death spiral. No, now we are learning that the movie “The day after tomorrow” may actually be spot on.

This was a scene from this past winter, but can you just imagine walking in the woods on August 10, in coastal Virginia and experiencing this.  Yes, I have been in a snowstorm in Wyoming on July 3rd, but that was at high elevation.

What changed? Well, it is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) that seems to be getting screwed up. Now what the hell is he talking about? The AMOC going amok?

Very simply put the gulf stream is part of AMOC, a circulation of ocean currents that brings warmer waters to the northern hemisphere and the temperate climate to western Europe.  Part of the AMOC is a colder flow back over the ocean floor. Cold water is heavier and where the warm and the cold meet (for instance the Labrador Straights) it provides great fish habitat.

This past week two papers were published, one by a climate scientist (Niklas Boers) and one by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research who both claim that the circulation is weakening, slowing down or may actually stopping. This may actually happen abruptly, or more likely by the end of this century (no one is sure yet). The result should be the end of warm temperate weather in Europe and North America. North America and Europe will likely experience an ice age like in the movie; maybe not overnight but fairly rapidly. In addition, there will be droughts in these areas and in west Africa and because the current actually pulls water away from the east coast of the U.S. there will be extra sea level rise. Exciting isn’t it!

But why is this happening?

Therein lies the 10-million-dollar question isn’t it. The cause is global warming. While that may seem crazy, but all that ice and melting (cold) freshwater runoff (read too much runoff and caused by global warming) from the melting Greenland glaciers that enters the ocean is essentially interrupting, weakening, blocking the AMOC. Somewhat like a feedback loop, it may actually usher in a new ice age. While the other ice ages may have been caused by the earth’s shift on its axis, this may be caused indirectly by humankind.

It would sure be an interesting scenario to think about, I am not sure if scientists really know if this will really happen and if so, how severe it would be. It is just fascinating and scarry at the same time to see and think about what is happening now that we humans are influencing the natural world as opposed of being part of the natural world. There are so many things happening around us presently that never happened before, at least not at such a large scale like the floods, hurricanes and wildfires.

20 to 7-year storms (7/30/2021)

There was a report in one of the professional publications that I read that predicts that what we call in our profession 20-year storms are shifting and becoming 7-year storms. Now that is an interesting concept that I teach in my classes on stormwater, in particular in the class entitled “Where the Water Goes.” The class has a subtitle Hydrology for ESC and SW Inspectors. ESC stands for Erosion and Sediment Control and SW for Stormwater.

So, what does a x-year (24-hour) storm means and what do these values mean? I tell my students that those famous 100-year storms do not occur only once every 100 year. I remember well that in 2003 we had two 100-year storms in one week, followed the next week by hurricane Isabel, which dumped another 100-year storm in our area. As you can imagine that September the ephemeral ponds behind our home were full to the brim, a thing that usually only occurs in February. They are usually dry in the month of September. Those two 100-year storms in a row actually created a major issue during Isabel; the soil was saturated, and the trees were extremely unstable because of this. Trees were falling all over the place during the hurricane. I lost 13 trees in my back yard that day.

In a simple explanation, I tell my students that the concept of so many year storms is based on statistics. For example, a 100-year storm tells us that the storm has a likelihood of 1% (or 100%/100) of occurring any day of the year. A 20-year storm has a chance of occurring 5% (100%/20) any day of the year, and so on. Somehow, NOAA or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, could not find a better name for this phenomenon than calling it a so-many-year storm. In particular, since if it occurred today, it has the same probability of occurring again tomorrow. So, although rare what happened in 2003 having three 100 year storms in two weeks, it was statistically explainable.

So, I looked at the data for my home. A 20-year 24-hour storm at my home dumps around 6.5 inches of rain or 165 mm in those 24 hours, according to NOAA. In the good old days, a 7-year storm drops 5 inches or 127 mm in the same 24 hours. In other words, as a result of climate change the 7-year storm at my home would increase 1.5 inches or almost 40 mm of rain. Surprise, this is something we are all experiencing, thunderstorms are increasingly getting stronger and more severe.

I realize this is only an example for one place, but in the past weeks we have seen similar examples in Germany, Belgium, Arizona, and China just to name a few where we are seeing that storms are getting increasingly severe and dumping more water. Naturally this is not helped by all the development around us and the imperviousness that we are creating in our watersheds. It all means more runoff and flooding. The problem on top of this is the imperviousness that we appear to have created and are increasingly creating in neighborhoods of disadvantaged racial minority groups.

Some of these things going on with our climate and our earth are most likely very difficult to reverse. We will have to learn to live with them and adapt to them. That is part of the job I do professionally. I am part of a group that teaches stormwater management. We teach designers, developers, and regulators that it is best to try to infiltrate all that stormwater, by minimizing the impervious areas such as parking lots and roads. We also tell them that they need to preserve the soil, not compact it, so that water can infiltrate. Plant trees and shrubs, minimize lawns. Trees and shrubs intercept rain in their canopies and often only 40% of the rain makes it down to the ground. Are my students listening? Some, few are. But we keep working on them. But we don’t get discouraged, it is the right thing to do.

This is a picture I took a few years ago of a rain garden/bioretention area in Charlottesville, Virginia.  We teach students that the placement of ponds like these help with the infiltration and cleanup of stormwater and hopefully reduce the flooding danger.

Bugs (7/24/2021)

I currently have Japanese beetles in my bonsai, white fly, wooly aphids, and potato leaf hoppers, just to name a few. Pesticides that wipe out all of them will also kill the beneficial ones like spiders, so I rather patiently pick them off then get out the killer chemicals. Actually, I can shake off the Japanese beetles, relocate the caterpillars, and often use a strong spray of water on the other bugs. I seldomly use soapy water and on a rare occasion some neem oil. I’m sorry if I sound like a broken record, but I am somewhat obsessed about the idea living with as few pesticides around the house as possible since we have bees in the back yard.  In addition, learning about environmental estrogens and alike has gotten me even more against the use of chemicals. Watching people fighting bugs all around us, sometimes with little success, I am afraid that it will wipe out the useful ones such as the honeybees and other important pollinators.

Parts of one of my Siberian elm have been completely denuded by caterpillars.  These elms seem to be favored by leaf eating bugs. 

I am trying to let my crape myrtle trees grow to thicken up the trunk.  But this year the Japanese beetles had a different idea.  I need to go out every morning and shake the bushes.

It is interesting trying to compare the human species to bugs roaming the earth. You have good ones, and you have detrimental ones. Pesticides are somewhat like the natural disasters that might could wipe out humans indiscriminately whether these humans are good the earth or bad. This begs the question, does nature really care we are here? In other words, do we humans really matter? Interesting question, isn’t it? Are we just one of the many bugs on the face of this earth that are annoying her? So, is she sending hurricanes, floods, wildfires, earthquakes, you name it in an effort to exterminate this terrible bug that annoys her? Are they natures soapy water or fly swatter?

It has been quite a week, hasn’t it? Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands flooded. Oregon, California and parts of western Canada are burning. Moreover, they are suffering in sweltering heat. We on the East Coast are breathing in the polluted air from the wildfires. Japan, where the Olympic games have started has a heatwave, and we are predicted to have another one here in the U.S.A. next week. Covid-19 is still difficult to get under control, although this is probably mostly caused by human stubbornness, plain stupidity of some of the bugs (I mean humans), and misinformation. But as I mentioned before, the earth, nature, is angry.

I intent this to be a short post, most of you know where I am coming from. I do not want to bore you. However, I do think it is important to register the flooding in Europe and the wildfires in the west in this post. Yes, it is in the news, but experiencing the smoke here in the east and feeling it in our breathing is really amazing. It is a great example of how interconnected this world is and it shows that what we do here might affect someone else in another place. Something intelligent bugs like bees and ants that live in large colonies have figured out a long time ago.

Our beloved earth (7/16/2021)

In a recent post I asked the question if the earth loved us. This was not an original question, but something that was asked in a book I am reading. Now, I read multiple books at the same time, and in my last post I mentioned reading about the need for humans on this earth. In the same book, Wendell Berry introduced the term beloved country when he writes about taking care of the earth and the environment, so maybe I need to start calling it beloved earth, although I am probably not as spiritual as Mr. Berry.

I realize when I would be doing that, I would not very original; however, my heart is in the right place and I am giving credit where it is due. In an other quote by Mr. Berry he writes:

The standard – the physical, intellectual, political, ecological, economic, and spiritual health of this country – cannot be too high; it will be as high, simply, as we have the love, the vision, and the courage to make it.

I honestly think we can and should substitute the word earth for the word country and the sentence would and should read exactly the same. We should expect the highest physical, intellectual, ecological, environmental, economic, and spiritual ethics from every person on this earth if want to save some semblance of what we have right now for future generations. Surprise, surprise, we can only do this by truly loving this earth, our or your beloved earth.

You can just imagine how disturbed I was when I saw on a church billboard in a county just north of us a notice that read something like (I am paraphrasing here): “Join in us to prepare for what is to come next, since life here on earth is so horrible.” In other words, life sucks here on earth, join our church to get ready for heaven. Those folks do not get it; they only have one life! Let’s make heaven here on earth.

Mr. Berry argues in his book about the need to more tightly integrate the sciences and the humanities in order to achieve this. I hope that many of you have noticed by now, that I am a huge proponent of that. I do not want to call myself a philosopher scientist/naturalist, but I have argued for a long time that biologist or ecologists would make great economist and the other way around (maybe). I am a strong believer in the parsimony of nature and now of the mutuality and maybe even empathy, all things being studied by certain branches of the humanities. But I digress. I want to make this a short post, since I wanted to get this of my chest that I love the earth and I still hope she loves me.

Earlier this summer, when the temperatures were still cool in the morning, I loved to go on extended hikes in the national park near my home and explore the sites.  Sites that not many people get to see; off the beaten path.  It is nice to be out on solitude and meditate out there, away from the crowds.  

(a quick post script:

1. While writing this, the door bell rang, and a young, well dressed gentleman was at the door trying to sell pesticide treatments for my yard to me.  Poor guy, I lost it!  Another person who has no regard for mother earth, he probably goes to church and complains how bad it is here on earth and how he looks forward to going to heaven.
2. I purposely did not write about the current disaster in Europe, including my home country of the Netherlands.  Is this think mother earth is getting angry and the love hate relationship is really showing lately, but I write that in the blog post I reference above.)

Do we need humans? (7/12/2021)

Why do we need ticks in this world, or mosquitos? Those have been questions asked of me at times. Why do we need these vermin in our lives? They are all parts of the web of life, that is usually my answer. They serve as food for some other creature; the have a place. But then what are people for? This is a question asked in an old book by Wendell Berry that I am currently reading.

My argument has always been that the world will keep rotating on its axis around the sun, whether there are humans on it or not. Cockroaches will probably still be there whether people are there or not. I agree, some folks have created beautiful art: Bach, Rembrandt, Vermeer, van Gogh, Picasso, Saint Saens, Mahler, just to name a few, and we would not have that or miss it.  If humans disappear from one moment to another, some animals and plants will suffer. Cows that have been bread to get milked twice a day will most likely die from mastitis; house plants will not get watered; neither will my bonsai. Our household pets and some other domesticated animals may survive, who knows. I always argued (not in my blog) that the earth might actually be better off without humans or when they vanished. I would expect that the world would eventually heal itself. I think this is partially visible in the Chernobyl area that was abandoned after the nuclear disaster. But do we as the highest animal in the food chain serve as food for some other creature?

On the other hand, Mr. Berry argues in his book that humans (or people) are needed for work (read the economy) and to protect the environment. This is a very idealistic view of humanity; still I walk through the neighborhood with my wife and watch her picking up discarded cigarette butts, plastic bottle and other trash from the street while I pick up the dog poop. To think we live in a middleclass neighborhood with well-educated folks who should know better. Daily, you can watch folks throw stuff out of their car windows, or things blowing out of their truck bed. In my estimation, maybe 15% of Mr. Berry’s folks are actively working on protecting the environment, another 15% are status quo, and the rest don’t give a damn. I hope I am wrong in this estimate.

I realize that I am very pessimistic; however, if we want to improve my glum view of society and follow Mr. Berry’s ideals of working on the environment, we need to work on people first. How would we do that apart from working on ourselves?

First, I think we need to step away from the words global and world. We need to start using the word earth! In my opinion earth would engender a closer connection with the self; global and world does not affect us directly.  As I argued before we need to find or develop a more accessible environmental language.

Secondly, the conservative movements have been very successful in pushing an economic agenda and telling us that deficit spending means that we are putting future generations at risk. Actually, nothing is riskier to future generations than environmental annihilation. This will happen with global warming (or should we call it the irreversible warming of the earth?). In a previous post <click here> I wrote about an argument about the cyclical nature of our climate that some will throw at me.

Thirdly, I am a lover of trees. Honestly, I think they are the best way to lock up atmospheric carbon, modify are local climate (both micro and macro climate), stabilize the soil, and provide essential habitat for a great many critters (a.k.a. diversity). Nothing gets me angrier than folks in my neighborhood needlessly cutting trees. I just finished Suzanne Simard’s book “Finding the Mother Tree.” It is an amazing read, something I always expected to find; however, she has articulated it very well.

Who would ever miss these tinny guys?  When walking in the woods this past weekend (after the area was drenched by the rains from tropical storm Elsa) I saw these small mushrooms less than 1 inch or 2 cm sitting under this root.  On a Virginia Mushroom group on Facebook someone identified these as being in the chanterelle group of mushrooms.  Chanterelles are mycorrhizae, and that is what Suzanne Simard's book is all about: the interconnected web underground that connects the trees with each other and the mutual support they give each other by way of this web.  In other words even this small insignificant mushroom which is the fruiting body of the mycorrhizae is sorely needed for the whole of the ecosystem to function correctly. 

Lastly, but probably most importantly, we need to lead by example. We need to do what is right, what is right for the environment, for future generations! This is what I have been trying to do with my teaching and my blog. I just wish that I could reach more folks with my activities. But I am not sure on how to turn it in to a vlog or a video blog or a podcast for right now. For one, from my end there is a lack of resources and a place to post all this, but also a way to get an audience. Right now, I have at somewhere around 150 to 300 readers (hits) per month even though I only have been publishing three lousy article per month lately. Again, if any of you readers have an ideas or suggestion, I am all ears. Furthermore, I am more than willing to write a guest column appear on your podcast or vlog. Finally, if any of you would like to publish one of your thoughts on my blog, I am open to considering that as well. But for sure let’s keep working on educating the masses.

A New Car! (06/03/2021)

Sitting at the car dealer waiting for a few things to be done to the new vehicle we bought feeling again that we probably have been had and paid too much. Why does one always have that feeling, when buying a car or buying a home, you feel like you just paid too much?

We needed to buy a different vehicle. The one we replaced was a 2001 Honda CRV, one of those with the tire on the back and a picnic table in the trunk. The tire in the back actually had a wren nesting in it and I am sorry but the brood went once a week for a day to the office and grocery shopping at times. It makes you wonder if the eggs were still viable when we discovered them. That CRV had 270,000 or so miles on it. The other car we own is a Honda Accord from 2007 with 330,000 miles on it. So you can see, we do not have a terribly reliable vehicle for extended road trips. On top of that, the newspaper reported on the skyrocketing car rental prices, so that did not seem to be an option either.

And here it happened. My 94 year-old father-in-law was at the dentist to have a tooth extracted and when he got back into his car, yes he still drives, he started bleeding profusely. He is not very ambulatory and called the dentist on his phone. The dentist came running out to the car and fixed him up, not before my father-in-law had blood all over himself. As a result, he did not feel well enough to drive and my wife needed to go out to get him in her 20 year-old CRV. On the way home her car broke down, a hose broke. It was a rare 90-degree (30+ degree Celsius) spring day. Here my father-in-law gets out of the car in the parking lot of a grocery store covered in blood with my wife standing next to her. The only thing missing is a big butcher knife or a hatched.

I realize that buying a new car is foolish. You lose value the minute you drive it off the lot and that is it. We understand that. However, we tend to maintain our cars and keep them for a long time. Since our return to the U.S. from our overseas assignments we have owned a Honda Civic 4WD wagon, which one stayed with us for 15 years; a Toyota Pickup with we had for 25 years, and the two vehicles about which I have been writing above, 20 and 14 years, respectively. We tend to drive until they fall apart. At least we know who drives them and takes care of them. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not, but we think so.

We have been talking about going more environmentally friendly, and I told my wife that my next car would be a Tesla. The compromise was a CRV hybrid. I am happy to say that the first tank of gas is about half-way done and the gas millage is 38 miles to the gallon or more than 16 kilometers per liter. Not bad at all. We really wanted something that used less gas, but my wife was still weary of all electric. However, the time will come that we will make that switch.

The new and the old; left to right.  Of course with the old and the young in the middle.

So here I am sitting at the dealer having a roof rack installed, and having a little buyer’s remorse or should I call it just wondering if we have been had; paid too much. I am still not sure why car sales folks do this to you, but darn that feeling. However, I am sure that 10 or 15 years from now we will not remember this, maybe only when looking back at this blog post. I am sure we will have fun with this vehicle while being a little protective of the environment.

The need for a fractal society (and this is not what you think it means) (5/29/2021)

I got a new subscription to a periodical with the interesting name “YES.” The subtitle is: “Journalism for people building a better world.” It looked interesting when I got the advertisement, and now reading the second issue, I dare say it has not disappointed me. I like it.

The first issue we got was all about plastics, the harm it does, sustainability clothing, microplastics, etc. I received the earlier issue which deals with the Ecological Civilization. While that is more utopian, from what I read, it may probably be the only way we can save our earth from spiraling down the proverbial celestial drain.

Reading the article by Jeremy Lent in Yes reminded me of an argument I have tried to make a long time. Many of you know I am a physiological plant ecologist by training. That is a lot of expensive words for someone who tries to explain why and how plants grow a certain way at that particular spot in nature. At times, we also call ourselves stress physiologists. Now the argument I make is that there is order in nature, while a lot of my non-biology friends tell me that I am nuts, and they see chaos. I even try to argue there is a form of mathematical order to it.

Now a fellow bonsai grower, Nigel, Saunders, puts it really well on his YouTube channel. I believe Nigel used to work as a graphic designer and he is a keen observer of nature and trees. In other words, you do not need to have a Ph.D. in physiological plant ecology; anyway, that may even be a handicap. I have seen more biologists that cannot keep a house plant alive. But back to our collective observations.

Nigel designs his trees going from one branch that splits into two, which then each split into two, which then again, each split into two, and so on (now here are your fractals). You also, according to Nigel have to make the length of the branches progressively shorter; actually half the length (fractals again). This is a very common rule in bonsai which Nigel discusses well on his videos. Others talk about it as well, but again he is a great teacher and a keen observer. Now, I tell the same thing to my friends. Other observations are that canopies usually do not touch and branches do not sprout from the inside of a curve. I have also always maintained that when a tree does this the total circumference, diameter or volume of the two branches can hardly be larger than the original from which it split into the two above (fractals anyone), otherwise there would be a deficit, and not enough water could flow to the top of the canopy.

Like Nigel, I have been fascinated by trees, their bark and canopy.  Feel free to look through my labels of trees, roots and bonsai to see what I have written about them.  Here is a good example of how canopies do not touch.

Now here comes Mr. Lent who argues that in an ecological civilization we need a fractal organization. He argues that what Nigel or I are talking about are in fact a form of fractal organization of trees in in a larger form of nature. He says we see it everywhere in life, not only in trees, but in rivers, coastlines, in our lungs, our blood vessels, you name it. In ecology he argues it may go from microscopic cells to organisms, species, ecosystems, and the entire living earth. It is very much like what I describe in my last post about the book I am reading: “Finding the Mother Tree;” were it not for the microscopic mycorrhizae the forest would not thrive.

For humankind this would mean that the health of entire world would depend on the health of every individual living in it. Regardless of scale, whether it is humanity as a whole, a country, town, a community or a family unit, the same would be for the wellbeing of those folks; they depend on the environment around them, their health, happiness, income, of themselves and that of everybody near them. In other words, we cannot think of the whole without considering all the parts and make sure they are ok.

Some of you may claim that this is bordering on socialism or worse communism. Is taking care of your neighbors and wanting them to be as well as you, socialism? No, in a fractal society it is empathy and self-preservation and the preservation of this earth for future generations.

Stream buffers (5/17/2021)

In a recent opinion piece in the “Bay Journal” an online weekly “news” paper, Beth McGee from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation writes that of the Bay States it appears that only Maryland is somewhat meeting its requirement of reforesting its stream buffers. Virginia is a distant second (33%) and Pennsylvania seems to have only met 20% of its assigned goal. Stream buffer planting seems to conflict with the agriculture use of the land and nibble away at the acreages of land that can be cultivated or grazed. In other words, it is difficult to promote or enforce.

In a way, it is all understandable. An acre of land used for crops might just be what a farmer needs to make a profit; although if that is what does it, he or she should probably be in a different business. On the other hand, for land developers, an extra acre could result in one or two more residential lots. This would raise the company’s profit margin on the project. Conversely, for a commercial site it would mean more parking and therefore a larger footprint of the industrial or commercial project.

However, little do folks realize what buffer zones do and what they contribute to the environment. So, let’s take it apart. As I mention in my classes, I will try to keep it simple; I am sure there are many more facets to this, but here are some of the important points.

I want to start with the environment. Trees in general are much more efficient in sequestering carbon and thus cleaning the air than agriculture land and pasture. I teach my students in one of my classes that the net primary production or the amount of carbon (CO2) fixed by agriculture and pastureland is between 600 to 650 grams per square meter per year, a forested buffer can produce between 700 when it is young to 1200 grams per square meter per year when it has matured. In other words, a mature buffer can capture almost double the amount of CO2 than a pasture or agriculture field. I don’t have hard numbers for subdivisions and industrial areas, but you can imagine that they capture even less carbon than agriculture fields.

Now let us look at the runoff from all these areas. Forested areas have a higher infiltration rate than agriculture land, pastures, or lawns. Moreover, all the leaf litter will help filter some of the water, and these buffers are generally not fertilized and often not sprayed with herbicides and insecticides. In other words, streams surrounded by wooded buffers receive less polluted runoff. Note that I do not mention the word less or more runoff. These streams will most likely receive less runoff. The water will infiltrate and be taken up by the trees and other plants and used for photosynthesis and transpiration. However, some of this infiltrated water will make its way to the stream in a much slower fashion. It will flow through the soil as opposed of over the soil, being filtered even more. In addition the water will be released more slowly to the streams, thus reducing the chance of flash floods during and just after a rainstorm. Concluding, forested buffers keep the water levels in streams more stable and keep the water in streams cleaner. Finally, trees may actually shade the stream, keeping the water in the stream cooler, which is healthier for all the creatures living in the stream.

A second point, organic farmers know that hedgerows along agriculture fields are very important. Hedgerows provide nesting sites for birds, and birds eat bugs, bugs that harm crops. Wildflowers in these hedgerows attract pollinators and maybe even predator insects, again something that is very useful for your crops. Hedgerows may actually reduce wind damage. In other words, a wooded edge along your field or between the field and the creek may bestow you an advantage.

Developers, you too should encourage stream buffers. People whose home borders the woods and look out on the woods usually pay a premium for their home. These buffers can be used for recreation by putting in walking paths, again increasing property values. When used correctly, buffers can often be used in stormwater calculations and used to offset the need for large stormwater facilities, saving acreage elsewhere. I have seen instances where we were able to change our underground piping for stormwater from large concrete pipes to smaller plastic pipes, saving the client thousands of developing dollars.

You get the idea; wooded stream buffers are really not as bad as they are made out to be. They are environmentally important, and landowners can use them to their advantage.

On a final word, naturally I am biased and over-simplifying here. Regular readers know, I write a lot about trees, stormwater, the environment, etc. In fact, the half-acre lot that our home is on is almost completely wooded, to the extent that I can hardly grow a lawn, or barely have enough sun to grow my bonsai trees. I often rail against and complain about the folks in my neighborhood who cut most or all their trees. The current book I am reading is about trees: Suzanne Simard’s book: “Finding the Mother Tree, Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.” In other words, I am a tree hugger as I describe in this post and I will keep fighting for them, I honestly know this is one important way to save the earth for future generations.

Our back yard.  We have been laying gravel paths this spring.  Partially so that we don't drag in muddy feet but also in the hope to keep the chiggers and ticks at bay.  As I mentioned before I hate picking up leaves.

Short-term vs. long-term gain (2/17/2021)

This past week we had an impeachment trial of the inciting chief also known as the ex-president. There were a lot of GOP senators (and house members before them) who acquitted him. Not necessarily because he was not guilty for inciting a riot or worse an insurrection, but because of some bizarre technicality. At least that is the way they saw it. It seems that this might be for their short-term gain, avoiding pissing off the weirdo, very vocal tRump supporters, the Q-anon, proud boys, neo-Nazis, oath-keepers, and alike. However, will it help them, their party, or the country in the long run? I doubt it. Yes, the seven senators that voted to convict are getting crap at home, and so is Liz Cheney, but they had character, they called it out the way it was. These folks that voted to acquit will always be known, branded, for what they did, as spineless, characterless cowards who threw away the constitution and became complicit to a murder, invertebrate republicans. They threw away potential long-term gain for some short-term political gain. Will it be worth it? We’ll see!

I stole this one from a friend's post on Facebook.  I have no idea where she got it.  If it is copy righted let me know and I will give credit for it for sue, but this really shows what I mean.

And here I promised I would try to stay away from politics in the new year. Wow that did not last very long, did it? “Short-term vs. long-term gain.” It applies to daily life; in all decision, we make. What triggered that thought? It was partially the decision by the GOP senators, but I was reminded for a large part by a bonsai video blog (vlog) that I follow. All these events brought me back to my teaching, my motivation, and my graduate studies, which all have to do with long-term gain and where I am right now. Not that it always worked out, but I am in a good place.

I have been watching a vlog by Nigel Saunders called “the Bonsai Zone.” Nigel does clip and growth bonsai, meaning he hardly ever wires his trees. He has two famous sayings: “Here I go,” and “It does not look like much right now, but in ten or fifteen years from now it will look great.” Nigel looks long-term ; everything he does is for long-term gain. I figure that Nigel may be my age, or at most maybe 10 or so years younger. But he is definitely no spring chicken, he is retired, and his optimism and outlook for the future has no boundaries. I love his enthusiasm, his sometimes-non-conformity, and pure fun he has in all thing’s life. I see that a lot with Bonsai guys. Peter Chan from Herons Bonsai in England who is in his 80s is the same. It must have to do something with trees or plants. It sustains these professionals and gives them a long-term vision, a will to live, to plan for a future, far away.

I nurse some tropical trees right next to my teleworking station.  Note the grow light that I have above my trees.  I ordered it after Nigel got the same one from a fan and unpacked it on his show and liked it.  He still has it behind him on almost every video he shoots this season.  In addition I think it helps me with my seasonal affected disorder (if I have that). 

During my classroom teaching and in particular when I teach my “Plants for Erosion and Sediment Control and Stormwater Professionals” class, I tell folks why I am a plant biologist instead of an animal or other type of biologist. One of the major reasons, I explain, is that if we animals do not like what nature throws at us, we can go inside, or in case of (real?) animals we can crawl under a rock, migrate, hibernate, you name it. Conversely, a plant just must stand there and take it all in, have a strategy to survive or die.

I graduated with a specialty in plant physiological ecology. This study explains why and how a plant reacts and deals with its environment. I particularly liked what was called stress physiology. I guess that this is probably why I like growing bonsai so much; you are stressing your plants somewhat, to develop a miniature version of the real tree.

I tell my students and I know that I have mentioned it once or twice here in my blog, biologists would make great economist. During my bachelor’s studies, my highest grades were in economics. Why is that you may ask. As Darwin put it, the natural world is all about “Survival of the fittest” or as I like to call it parsimony, or how to do things the most efficient. How do you achieve that? Mostly by thinking ahead, long range. If you do not, someone is going to outcompete you and you will be evolutionary history. Surprise, surprise, plants, in particular, are really good at this. Us animals, and yes, I count humans as animals, are more opportunistic and more reactionary. They can shoot from the hip, be more impulsive and think more short term.

Both behaviors have their advantage. Slow and steady has worked really well in the plant kingdom. Some plants are still here since the beginning of evolutionary time, many are not. I actually work with a few in my collection, like the dawn redwood and the gingko biloba. Animals have evolved. Maybe except for roaches and horseshoe crabs there are not many species that we know of who have outlived evolutionary time.

This all may change with climate change. We know that animals can move with the shifting climates, while many plants cannot and either must adapt, evolve, or simply die (become extinct). Many researchers are speculating about what will happen to ecosystems that are on the margins. For us stress physiologists it is an exciting time. It is a shame that I choose a different path in my career some 30 years ago, and am out of the loop. But so be it. My choice was short-term (financial) gain over the long-term intellectual. As I mentioned we all come to forks in the road of life and at times we must choose, not knowing whether deciding for short-term gain is better than choosing a path that may deliver long-term gain but is difficult to envision at the time. I choose mine, and I’m OK with it. I wonder if those politicians will be.

I am a tree hugger (1/23/2021)

Of all the environmental news and stories that came out last year there was one that has stayed with me. Regular readers know that I am a huge student and lover of trees. OK, you can even call me a tree hugger! When I walk in the woods there is nothing better than petting the occasional tree with my bare hands, or just laying my hands on the trunk and enjoying my connection with the wood, the tree, and by way of its vascular and root system with the earth; the entire world around me. 

In winter, I enjoy looking up in the canopy of trees and look at the branching.  This helps me in my studies for the development of my bonsai, but also just the enjoyment of the simple beauty and majesty. 

But that is not necessarily what I want to write about today. In the department that we work, we have bi-monthly climate change webinars, and sometime mid-2020 we had a talk by Dr. Jeremy Hoffman climatologist from the Virginia Science Museum in Richmond about how urban treescapes modified the urban climate. More specifically, he had studied how city sections where minorities live had fewer trees and parks then Caucasian neighborhoods. These African American neighborhoods were much warmer during the summer which resulted in heat related 911 (or emergency/ambulance) calls. Now here I was looking at the year end review in the New York Times and they showed to 10 most important articles of 2020 and there it was, an article on this specific research. Here is the link to this article. They did another article about it earlier.

While I promised not to bother you all about politics in my blogs as much as I have done in the past 4 years, the issue in Richmond and many other large cities goes back many years. It is known as environmental justice. Environmental justice is very closely aligned with racism and economic justice, where the poor and minorities were delt the short end of the stick. They lived closer to the pollution generating area; the areas that were cheaper to live in; across the tracks as it is called. They could not afford high rent, health care, the electricity to cool or heat their homes. There you have it, heat related illnesses because of the lack of trees in the summer, including asthma because trees also scrub the air.

It still amazes me to see in this neighborhood where I live, how eager newcomers are to cut the trees in their yards around their homes (even today I could hear the whining of the chainsaws), in the pursuit of, I am not sure what. More sun, the perfect lawn, more exposure and heat in the summer, more wind, and even lower temperatures in winter? Yes, having a yard full of trees is a pain. We have a lot of leaves in fall and no sun any longer for a decent vegetable garden, and my bonsais. I previously wrote about my gripe over the eagerness that some of the folks here have about leaf disposal and tree killing. 

This tree had split in two exposing this inner wood.  It shows that vascular system that connects the upper part of the tree (and me when I touch the tree) with the earth.  I just love the vein pattern.

But even planting a young tree or a smaller species in place of the old majestic one they just nuked really does not help. A lawn or a young, small tree are so much less efficient in fixing carbon out of the air and thus reducing CO2 than large mature trees. In addition, my bike and car both have a temperature gauge on them, and we can see the difference when we go from our yard down to the primary school less than a mile away, which has absolutely no tree around it. In summer, the temperatures are easily 5 or more degrees higher than in my wooded front yard. In winter, when the thermometer reads 32 degrees (or freezing), the windshields of my cars may not need scraping while the neighbor’s cars are frosted over.

Concluding trees are not only good for the soul, but they also help in moderating the microclimate around your home, they are good for the climate as a whole, and they provide great habitat for all kinds of critters, be it up there or in the fallen leaves. In other words, become a tree hugger.

The end of an error? (1/21/2021)

 Well, we finally got rid of the red faced dictator today (this was written yesterday).  It felt good.  We celebrated with binge watching, champagne, and pizza.  The little dictator snuck out off town like a defeated looser.  Good riddance and let the healing begin.

Us toasting to the swearing in of the new president.  Folks have asked me what happened to my mask.  I had just given the champagne glasses to the wife and her father and returned to put the bottle in the fridge.  On my way back from the fridge I had take a sip when my wife asked me to come over for a selfie.  I forgot to pull my mask back up.  Sorry no overt message here!  (Photo by my wife).

Yes, I understand that these are no healing words that I just typed.  I am sorry, I should be kinder.  I promise that I will, start trying in my next post, or just a little later in this one.  But it feels so good to get rid of this liar, this narcissist, this con-man; I can go on.  It is just such a shame that there are still so many people that believe him and blindly follow him.  I was listening to a podcast from the New York Times yesterday called "the Daily" where they talked about the Trump followers and what they think and would do now.  In interviews some mentioned succession.  Others mentioned that when they saw strangers they now wondered whether they were Republican or Democrats.  Truthfully, I have wondered that sometimes as well, especially at the beginning of COVID when you saw people without face masks.  I wrote about it here, although that was more about their preexisting conditions.

So yes I sincerely hope we can, as Biden put it, start living like neighbors and not like enemies or adversaries.  Neighbors can have their differences but can talk it out and come to a compromise. 

Well, where to go from here.  I promise that in future my blogs will return to "normal" or to what I have always intended for this blog: a reflection of me; my travels (through the state) when that starts again; my photography (I will soon be getting a new Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, which should be loads of fun ... a 160 MP camera); my bonsai, my love of nature and the environment; and finally my love of teaching and training.  I will most likely sprinkle an occasional gripe about politics in there, especially when it impacts these loves or other personal things, but I promise I will try to get of my political soap box.  

But damn, that champagne tasted good. 

Water (12/29/2020)

It was Rachel Carson who wrote: “The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place.” Who am I to disagree? Having lived and grown up in the vicinity of the sea from my third through my sixteenth birthday and spending almost every day in it, I fully agree with her. I even have photographs of me as an infant at the shore of Lake Tanzania (or Lake Tanganyika as it was called in those days) one of the largest natural lakes in Africa. Technically that was not a sea, but you cannot see the opposite shore. Even later in Holland between my 16th and 22nd birthday, I was never far away from the water (those Dutch canals) or ocean. For the past 20 years I have lived on the Chesapeake Bay and have the almost daily illusion that when I am in Yorktown and look east, I actually have an unobstructed view of the Atlantic Ocean and thus can look all the way to Portugal or thereabouts. As a sailor I know I am wrong, because leaving Yorktown at the 90-degree compass bearing I would sail straight into Cape Charles on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, and never make it to the actual ocean.

This photograph was taken in August 2020 in Yorktown looking east!  Portugal I see you! (not).  But you get the picture, that is why I like living here. 

I often wonder what my attraction to the ocean or water is? I always blamed some form of claustrophobia, like the need to see the horizon. In fact, I grew up being able to see the horizon. On a clear day we could literally see the coast of Venezuela from our home some 60 kilometers (40 miles) away. Accounting for the curvature of the earth we actually saw the peaks of the coastal mountain range. This was especially spectacular at night, when the mountains got hit by thunderstorms and you could see the lightning. Pretty cool for us living on a more desert like island. But even in the Netherlands where I moved when I was 16, you can easily get to places where you can look to infinity.  Holland or the western part of the Netherlands, where I lived, is as flat as a pancake, and you can see for miles, even when not standing on a shore. 

The most miserable place I ever lived was Durham, North Carolina (sorry guys). This was probably because we lived in a rental and because we knew that it was only for three months. We lived there in the mid 1980s next to a racist who would stand in his front yard with a gin and tonic at 10 am complaining to me about those n...... But to me it was also because I could never get my bearings; too many trees, no horizon, I felt closed in. I really never knew where I was. Nepal, Yemen, Uganda all gave me a chance to look as far as I wanted.

Even living in New Mexico where I did not have to deal with claustrophobia. There were no trees in the desert, or when there were I could look around them and look far.  I absolutely loved it. But still, getting to the big lake called Elephant Bute in the Rio Grande was something spectacular to me. Open water! I wrote three posts about our visit to Newfoundland, and boy there again, the coastal areas were a delight. Oh, and coastal Scotland but then the single malt really helped too in my love affair with that country and its coast. 

Maybe, except for the single malt, what do all these experiences have in common? Water, oceans, lakes, and horizons. What does it tell you or me about me? I really do not know. That my body is comprised of something like 70 or 80% H2O? That I, like every regular human being, need to drink 8 glasses of water to survive or at least be healthy. Maybe that that like every one of you I have evolved from some lifeform that originally lived in water, especially that interface between water and shore? Getting back to Ms. Carson, that interface between ocean and land is beautiful and sometimes frightening. The area where the waves crash the algae, seaweed, oysters, crabs, etc. In evolutionary times those first creatures that ventured out of the waves onto the shores (plants, animals, etc.) to see if they could survive there. 

The horizon probably signifies my wander lust.  Not that I am any way like them, but I am sure that is what attracted the great explorers like Columbus, Cook or even Darwin.  They had the urge the discover what was over the horizon; new things to see, to experience.   More and more do I havve the need to see what is over the horizon and I cannot believe that I live in this house for more than 20 years.  Here I am couped up in it for almost a year thanks to COVID-19. I need to study these feeling and the deeper reasons behind them a bit more. 

One thing I do know is that we need to take care of our water. Water, clean water is so essential to us all, and it seems that we are forgetting this. On my daily walks I still see piles of dog shit around that people refuse to pick up. I observe litter all over the place. A lot of this, if not all of it, will be ending up in our surface water and pollute it. We need to take care of our water folks; it is all that we have. This is the only planet that we have, that our kids have and our grandkids.