Rural development mis-steps (12/19/2022)

I suspected already that my end of year post would not be the last. The reason was that Christmas weekend the nighttime temperatures were going to dip to 18 or so degrees Fahrenheit or almost -8 degrees centigrade. I figured that was probably worth a post on my greenhouse performance and bonsais.

Little did I realize that our Governor would get me riled up in the meantime. I have started to call him tRumpkin; however, his real name of course is Younkin. So, what has Younkin (a.k.a. tRumpkin) been up to this past week to get me back to writing a political post again?

For one, tRumpkin is proposing stricter abortion rules in his new budget. All my readers know that even as a full-blooded male, I am fearlessly in favor of women’s right, and very pro-choice, or better in favor of allowing women to choose what to do to their own body. As you can see in this paragraph, I have written many posts on it and if you like to read more opinions of mine check these out. I will not go into it any further here.

There was another thing that our governor who seems to be completely out of touch with reality wants to do. According to tRumpkin and his Homebuilders’ Association cronies, there seems to be a shortage of affordable housing. Actually, I can somewhat agree with them this far. But now comes where we diverge. In his ultimate stupidity (he thinks it is wisdom) tRumpkin wants to ask/mandate the counties, cities, towns to open their rural areas to smaller lot sizes and thus allow denser development in these areas.

Rural areas around us typically allow lot sized of 3 acres (about 1.2 hectare) or larger. This would allow for the location of a septic system since these rural areas are typically not serviced by public sewer. Moreover, these large lots usually support larger homes that are built by more affluent folks, we often tend to call them MacMansions since they all tend to look somewhat alike or cookie cutter. I am sure that all these richer folks in their four- and five-bedroom homes will welcome a neighborhood with half or quarter acre lots and low to middle income folks nearby. Oh, and maybe some townhouses anyone and a dollar general which is the only place some of these folks can only afford to shop? I am not being disparaging, condescending, or facetious, but I can predict their reaction: “not in my back yard (NIMBY).” Younkin lives on a private 30 acre horse farm in Great Falls, Fairfax County, Virginia. I am sure he will subdivide his land and make it available for the construction of low-income housing.

In addition to this tRumpkin proposed to make all this development a bit easier by relaxing the wetland and other environmental regulations. He saw this one correctly, I teach in my classes that all the easy-to-develop land has already been taken, and the remaining land has issues. It either has horrible soils and cannot infiltrate water and is unsuitable for septic and stormwater management, or is a wetland, you name it, it has issues. So, let’s build these lower income neighborhoods in or near wetland areas or other marginal areas. Wetland areas flood more frequently, who cares a little mold won’t kill them, and if they get sick, that is what we have the emergency rooms for or the 24 hour clinics down in the strip malls. The folks in the MacMansions live high and dry and if something happens to them, God forbid, they have insurance, and the government will bail them out.

Furthermore, let’s not talk about paving over nature in the age of climate change, biodiversity loss, and other environmental disasters (boy, I already wrote about this in 2015). Let’s all migrate to the countryside and pave it over. tRumpkin’s proposal is going to make this all worse. Abandon the inner-city, instead of redeveloping it and making it more livable. More livable inner cities like in Europe would attract younger folks from all walks of life as well as lower income folks. This would work, as long as we make them livable and erase the food deserts that exist in many of our inner cities.

No, Governor Glenn Younkin you are out of touch with reality while living your sheltered life on your 30-acre horse farm. I am sorry, but you are not a man of the people, you are a conservative elite who has never worked a decent job in his life. I want to bet that you do not even know the price of a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread or a bale of hay for your horses.

This red oak grows in the Colonial Battlefield National Park.  It is one of the stately trees grows in a grove.  It is actually one of the smaller ones, but what impressed me on the morning I took this picture was the shadows on the trunk that shows the live veins which are a sign of advanced age or development.  Thank goodness, Glenn Younkin's proposals cannot harm this grove; however, if it depends on him, these trees would go to the lumber mill or worse the paper plant and the area would become another subdivision.

Half Full or Half Empty (11/18/2022)

Is the glass half full or half empty, that is something I sometimes ask myself. Regular readers of my blog probably know that I can be either a pessimist or an optimist or maybe both, at times. A friend of mine who read some of my posts called them scarry (I think). Now, he is a foreigner, as I am, so maybe he meant ominous. Honestly, I don’t intent my posts to be negative, as such. A lot of them are biographical, telling you readers about my past or my current life. Some of my posts tell you about my thinking and quite a few about my political and environmental leanings. They are not intended to upset you (maybe except for one or two); however, the teacher in me wants to challenge you, my readers to critical thinking at times. Yes, I would not mind persuade you to change your minds, my way.

As I mentioned just now, I encourage critical thinking, not necessarily my thinking. However, what has been upsetting me most, is folks that just accept everything that is being handed to them on a platter, or told to them without questioning it, investigating it, and just taking it as the new truth. This is what I started seeing with a lot during the past 5 years of the conservative MAGA folks. While a lot of us progressives will take everything that folks tell us with a grain of salt, even if it is from the mainstream media, our political leaders, or even our churches, it seems that the MAGA folks close themselves off from all alternative thinking. The latest example is the Arizona republican candidate for Governor Mrs. Kari Lake, who told the press she would only accept the election when they were in her favor.

So, why am on this soap box today? My recent posts have been so non-political, so non-controversial. Why now. The elections are over anyway. The big red wave did not happen. It seems that most election deniers were denied elected offices by the public. Voters voted with their brains. The glass was half full after all. My wife saw the glass as half empty going into November, I predicted it would not be that bad. Did I win? Who cares? Often, I needed to remind my wife that this was not the end of the world we are living in, but we need to fight, our way. That it would all come out OK and it did! The elections are behind us. Or are they?

One of the principles from my Unitarian Church tells me, I am free to independently search for my own truth and meaning. This applies to religion, society, and life in general, as long as it does not hurt anyone else. To me this applies to everything in my life. I am seeing that the American electorate did the same thing, they did not sheepishly follow the directions of the red-haired biggest looser who seems to want to try to lose again.

I agree, this year started out poorly (or the glass emptied) with the Supreme Court decision on abortion. We were all angry. In my wife’s eyes this was the end of the world. I agreed it was terrible, I demonstrated with her and agreed we needed to do something about it and work to defeat the conservatives. She is a woman, who was much more affected by that decision than I as a guy; I understand that. I wrote a couple of posts about it, we sent money to political candidates, and the Planned Parenthood. We made an informed decision to do these things without being encouraged or almost forced to do so. We did not roll over because our politicians or religious leaders told us to do so. I am neither an optimist, nor a pessimist. Am I a realist? I don’t even know that. In the past I was a pessimist for sure, most of my life. Old age is mellowing me. Maybe I’ve become a fatalist, but then I do believe we can change our fate, instead of just sitting back an taking it as it comes. That is what I try to do here and in life in general, and in my job; all in the hope that I create a few extra critical thinkers before I leave this earth. I try to do that overtly in my classes, in my sermons, in my interactions with people and here in my blog posts. Because that is what we need to do to make a better world, and this is the only way I think I can make a contribution to that.

A mushroom?  How does this fit in with what I wrote in this post.  A mushroom is the fruiting body of thousands of mold threads that are growing underground and that we cannot see, When the time is just right (the right temperature and humidity), all the hyphae get together and decide to for a mushroom to have "mold sex."  They do very well on their own without sexual breeding, but this mixes the chromosomes which is good for future evolution etc.  To me it shows the importance of the unseen, the undercurrent, being able to subtlety work on blogs like this hoping to come to fruition and help change the world a little bit.

Cannibalism 101 (5/16/2022)

The hope was high that with the election of President Biden the political climate would calm down and for one we could hang up our protest or marching shoes and become ordinary citizens again. Boy, were we proven wrong. In addition to this weekend’s pro-choice rally, we came home to the news of another mass shooting by a white supremacist.

During the rule of the short fingered dictator named tRump, we joined the Women’s march in Washington; a mothers for gun control march in Williamsburg; the March for Science in Norfolk; and a march against Global Warming in Newport News. However, when it came out that the Supreme Court might want to decide against the expressed will (or opinion) of something like over 60% of the US public on abortion, we started digging in our closet for our marching shoes. It was time to attend the rally planned for May 14 in Williamsburg.

Just sitting here with a few random thoughts about politics, abortion, the rally, and in general what has been going on, but not necessarily in that order.

1. There were probably 3 to 400 folks at the rally this Saturday. I was disappointed by the number, but encouraged by the number of vehicles driving by that gave their thumbs up and honked in approval. There were approximately 4 or 5 Jesus freaks across the street as counter protesters. One was very vocal, with a bull horn and at times offensive, yelling things like “your body, my choice.” We tried to drown out his yelling and it worked well at times.
2. There were a great number of signs, some were fairly regular and some were clever. I am posting the best one here which read, “If abortion is murder, a blow job is cannibalism!” Now that gives you something to think about, although as a biologist it does not make complete sense. Sperm and eggs are 1N and you combine them to fertilize the egg and make an embryo, which is 2N, oh well.
3. Outlawing any form of abortion would mean murdering women including my wife, who had an ectopic or tubal pregnancy. These type of pregnancies are often fatal to the women and definitely nonviable.
4. When she lived in Cuba, my wife’s grandmother preformed two self-abortions with the famous coat hangers, sometime in the late 1930s and early 1940s. It makes you wonder how many other grandmothers did the same.
5. I am wondering if by chance the only judge whose mind could be changed by all the protest is judge Kavanaugh. He seems to be the least religiously principled; however, he was the most severely bitten by the liberals and this may be his sweet spot to get even with them. We will see, won’t we? I really hope I can write a post where I write “I told you so.”
6. One thing that occurred to me again was that we liberals need to become less tolerant and more extreme! I once mentioned that in our Unitarian Church as well. The Unitarians have a principle which talks about “the inherent dignity of every person” (Principle 1) and the “Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregation” (Principle 3). I am getting to the point of wondering whether we need to become more in your face and stronger instead of accepting and tolerant of everyone. I believe there are people that have no dignity! This was somewhat acknowledged by an editorial I read in the Washington Post this Sunday. The right wing in our society goes around shooting up black grocery stores, and then calls for more guns and blames Antifa or Biden for all this. No, the blame rests with the Republican politicians, pundits and talk show hosts who pay lip service to these folks, whip them up, whether it is about abortion, racism, or the word du jour cancel culture. They need to be canceled out.

My favorite sign for the protest rally in Williamsburg.  This lady was so darn serious and standing very close to the Jesus freak with his bullhorn!  

Sorry guys, just some random thoughts. Maybe some more happier writings later on, where I can talk about my bonsai, my nature walks, and happy feelings. Hopefully you get a chuckle from the picture. Till soon.

Women are to be bred! (5/8/2022)

Women are to be bred! Women have been put on earth to make babies and that is it! Good news, men; stack up on the Viagra that is what appears to be coming down from the Supreme Court. Women, when and if you are of a fertile age, get on you back and open wide.

Oops, hold on, maybe stack up on those pills so you can go a few times in one evening but that will be it for a few years. Soon, sex will only be for procreation. Only those few times a year when your woman is fertile, because soon sex will only be for procreation and not for fun; only to make babies. God forbid when she gets pregnant when it is not wanted, what do you do then? So, for the rest of the year, you better take pills that suppress your sexual drive or needs and she better takes some too. You can take those Viagras once a month to get her pregnant and once it hits, that’s it! When you have enough kids you might as well have them cut off; sterilization does not reduce the sex drive (I am told). One solution would be polygamy!

Oh well, if you have been following the news, you know what I am referring to. The Supreme Court seems to be on the cusp to give the right to make abortion illegal, or in other words take the rights away from women (and their men and doctors) to decide that it might be wise not to continue a pregnancy at times. It is insane.

If this all comes to pass, some states will make all types of pregnancy termination illegal. Word is that the state of Louisiana wants to make and pregnancy termination a crime. My wife and my sister both had tubal pregnancies. These pregnancies would have killed them if they were not terminated. In fact, my wife almost died, and my sister’s ex husband tried to stop the termination of the pregnancy. Even these types of terminations would be illegal in some states which would result in the death of the mother and the already non-viable fetus.

You get the idea, this is ridiculous. Therefore, in this very brief post, I just want to log my dismay with the news and hope you all do not take it laying down!

I borrowed this picture from the editorial page of the Washington Post (if the Post or author of the cartoon reads my blog and does not want me to publish it let me know and I will remove it).  However; it speaks to everything I and my blog believe in!