My New Sermon (7/11/2022)

This past Sunday I gave a new sermon at our UU church.  It was almost impromptu, I was asked three weeks ago if I could do one based on rain.  Since I teach about stormwater, I though "what the heck."   I am not sure who ordered it, but it rained almost the entire weekend and we had stormwater galore.  

Without further ado, here follows the sermon.  I ad-libbed a bit, but kept to the outline (note the English, and grammar, etc. might not be the best).

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I have a question for everybody.

Do you sing in the shower?

or,

Do you talk to yourself in the shower out loud, have conversations with yourself?

No, don’t worry, I will not ask your partner, or your pet if you actually do that and if you sing, if you can hold a tune.

There was a time in our life that when we took a shower, we had the keep our mouths closed; our lips tightly closely together, so that the shower water could not accidentally enter our mouth. We brushed our teeth with either bottled water or water that was boiled, filtered and then treated with iodine. Our vegetables were soaked for 20 minutes in water loaded with iodine and despite all that my wife Donna got amoebic dysentery twice. “One more time” she was told, “and you will be permanently sent home to the U.S.”

Where the heck was this? Where were we?

Well, it was in Nepal, 40 years ago. Because of the overall sanitary situation at the time all waterways, streams, creeks, wells, and even springs were severely contaminated with all kinds of diseases. Water was unsafe.

We always learn that beer making was an essential part of living in the Middle Ages in Europe. Water was not safe to drink back then and the process of making, what was in those days low alcohol beer, was a way of sterilizing water and making it a safe every day or all day beverage.

Looking from space we are reminded of one of my favorite UU hymens: “Our Blue Boat Home.” The earth looks like a blue marble, showing that it is covered by oceans. Actually, the blue we can is only about 5.8% of all the water available on this earth. 94% is locked up in rock and unavailable to us, while the remaining 6% is theoretically available to us. The problem is that 5.8% is salt water and essentially undrinkable because of the salinity. There is 1.5% freshwater which is locked up in the atmosphere, soil, groundwater, glaciers, wetlands, plants, animals, rivers, lakes and streams. It is estimated that a grand total of 0.0014% of the water on earth is potentially available for human consumption. Let that sink in a bit. And that is where I come in.

Currently, I work for the State of Virginia in the Stormwater Program as a trainer in adult education. I train folks to play nice with their stormwater. One of the main issues is that once rainwater becomes runoff and enters the streams and rivers, it can easily enter saltwater and in essence become useless to us land dwellers, at least to us living here in the Tidewater. Oh, I am not saying that the animals and plants that live in the tidal areas of the Chesapeake don’t benefit from some of the runoff, but what we are seeing is that the runoff often takes a lot of stuff with it. As I tell my students the runoff is usually cloudy with sediment and sediment does not travel alone. With it you get nutrients, animal and human wastes, cigarette butts, plastics, pesticides, motor oil, dirty diapers, used tires, and all kinds of other contaminants. According to the Bible, humans were given dominion over the earth, so is this what it means? Think about that. I prefer our 7th principle that tells me that I am an equal part of the interdependent web of existence. We need to take care of the earth and that is what I try to teach.

Now the problem is that the runoff from our land is increasing. For one, our storms are getting larger as a result of global warming. Secondly, we are building more homes, mini-malls, roads, parking lots, sidewalks, you name it. All these areas are impervious to rainwater and when it rains the water needs to go somewhere, it becomes runoff. Over time we have created more runoff. Finally, forests, areas with trees and shrubs, or wildflower areas are infiltration champions. On the other hand, lawns are not. They create even more runoff. In addition, people put more fertilizer and pesticides on lawns. In other words, you can guess what the result has been over the past 70 years, more runoff and more contaminated runoff, less infiltration into the soil and a lowering of the water table. Water needed for trees, shrubs, ephemeral ponds, and shallow irrigation wells.

With the exception of James City County, Williamsburg, Smithfield and Isle of White, most of us rely on water that has been pumped to or collected in reservoirs around us. The counties that I just mentioned have to pump their drinking water out of the ground. Their water comes from a very deep layer or aquifer that is difficult to replenish. Water has to flow underground all the way from Richmond area and that may take centuries. I am sure you can imagine that reducing the infiltration in that area does not help. But we have an additional problem on top of that. Our water table or aquifer is broken, busted, kaput. This was caused by a meteor many moons ago that was big enough to create the Hampton Roads, the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, but not large enough to create mass extinctions. As a result, salty sea water can flow back up the aquifer if it is not replenished upstream, and herein lies an additional problem. It is not because of all the pumping and decreased infiltration I just spoke about! All those folks that depend on groundwater in our area are in trouble.

What can be done about this? For one, the Hampton Roads Sewer District is starting to pump treated sewer water back into the ground to replenish what we pump out and thus slow down what is called saltwater intrusion. Don’t worry. They claim it is safe, the treated sewage is sterile.

As part of my job I am working with designers, builders, locality officials, and home owners in handling stormwater where it is generated, on the property. Letting in infiltrate instead of sticking it in a roadside ditch or a pipe and sending it to a creek. This means less lawns, more rain gardens, bio-retention, permeable pavement, grass swales, you name it; infiltration is the name of the game.

Once runoff hits the creek, we lack the ability to clean up the water just like we cannot turn water into wine or into beer. We are no miracle workers. We need to start at the source, where it originates. We teach folks that they have to keep pollutants out of the water, in particular mud or what we call sediment. That is why I tell folks: Sediment does not travel alone, and we require things like those orange sediment fences and other measures around building sites, state-wide. I teach that and pollution prevention on a job site. All in an effort to keep runoff clean and infiltrate as much water as possible.

So what can you do?

Let’s think and talk about it.

1. In your yard

2. With the water that falls on your roof

3. With your vehicles

4. Your dog

5. When you play

A construction site down the street from my home.  Another Dairy Queen!  These are the guys that I teach or the guys that are inspected by folks I teach.

Abingdon or Hotels 11. (6/10/2022)

My latest trip was uneventful for a change. No mass murder, no start of a new war, it was boring, or at least nothing to be glued to the TV for. Although, I think there was a shooting at a hospital in Oklahoma, but that one received only minor attention after what happened in Uvalde, Texas. Not that it should become so common place that I should call it uneventful; however, the media hardly covered it because the atrocities in the small Texas town and the screw ups by the police and the Governor still dominated the news.

Enough, I want to step away from that for a change of pace. This past week brought me to Abingdon, a town in Washington County, in southwest Virginia, approximately 10 miles from the Tennessee border. Now if you think that this is the far end of Virginia, think again. Some of my students had to drive an hour and a half form the farthest tip of Virginia, near the Cumberland Gap area in Lee County. To think that when I left Abingdon Friday morning at 8:30 to return home I had to travel 8 hours. This included lunch and switching out my state car for my personal vehicle in Richmond.

Knowing that my retirement age is approaching, I have been inviting one of my colleagues to join me and co-teach my classes with me, or at least attend them and learn. My regular compatriot grew up in Abingdon, so he was thrilled to join. Although his mom (as he calls her) still lives there and he visits her regularly, it was funny to see that I had to show him where all the good restaurants were for lunch and dinner, or even where the town’s microbrewery was (darn they changed the location of the entrance and the tasting room). I like to treat myself to an ice cream from Dairy Queen after class, and I had to show him where that was (near the turn to mom’s place). We spent three nights in town and had fun together on two of them. One of the evenings he visited mom and I spent time on my own. That evening it rained, but not hard enough to prevent me from walking from my motel room via the Creeper Trail to one of my favorite restaurants in town (128 Pecan).

We stayed at the new Holiday Inn Express, which was great. Rooms were new, clean and up-to-date. It is in a newly developed area next to sports fields that are connected to the Creeper. I saw them develop the area two and a half years ago (pre-COVID) and thought it would become a sub-division of some sort. One of the evenings, my compadre and I had fun trying to figure out the post development hydrology and stormwater management of this and a site downstream from this site. It seemed messy and kind of screwed up. It is difficult, at times, to leave your work in the office at the end of the day, isn’t it?

My nice, updated room at the Holiday Inn Express.  The view was something to be desired, but OK.

Restaurants we visited were Bella’s Pizza and the Hardware Store (BBQ) favorites of both of us (both definitely get a high 3.8 or 4 stars out of 5). Lunch was at some Mexican joint (ok) and Milano’s. Both lunch spots were new introductions to our Abingdon native and he (we) liked Milano's that much (also a 3.8 for sure) that he swore that he needed to bring mom to Milano’s for dinner when he is back in town. 128 Pecan has been a favorite of mine for a long time, and it did not disappoint me again on this trip (4.2 stars out of 5).

Then the piece de resistance: Wolf Hill Brewery. While they moved to a new taproom two years ago, I found that the atmosphere of the old funky place had disappeared. This tasting room is clean, sophisticated and dull in my eyes. But the beer remained the same and is still good. Their hours appear different and they lost their taco food-truck, one of the things I was looking forward to. A COVID casualty according to the lady behind the bar. Naturally, we got there right before trivia started, so the place filled up and I never had a chance to sample a second beer. We just wanted to get out of there before the noise started. Oh well.

I realize that this has become a travel log, so a little more. After Wolf Hill Brewery and dinner at the Hardware Store my friend decided to show me the sights around town. It was not what a warm blooded guy had secretly hoped for (just kidding); regular readers know that I am a sucker for nature. However, in the back of the training room were four (cheesy) paintings of a mill and he had recognized it as the mill at White Mill, just 4 miles west of downtown. During dinner, the server told us that grits served by the restaurant were milled by the mill which had recently been restored. This had triggered my friends need to show me the mill in real life and off we went. A nice country drive later we visited the mill and got to walk around it, look at nature and take a few photographs. On the way back we observed a grove of dead trees and speculated why this happened; a subject we brought back the next day in class: flooding caused by beavers, herbicide drift, who knows?

Common Ninebark blooming just below the mill at White Mill, VA

Just a bench at White Mill, VA

The mill and White Mill, VA.  I took the photo from the bench above.

Altogether, I had a good week. At times it is nice to have company on my travels. Other times, being an introvert it is nice to travel alone. But I did enjoy the company this time around. For sure it was nice to have a fellow driver behind the wheel. I am getting older and I noticed it when I got home, I was beat.

My excuses to those of you who were looking for more depth, politics, philosophy or whatever in this post. At times it is good to be light hearted and write an account of my travels; a diary of sorts. The original objective of my blog was a photo blog and an account of my travels through Virginia. Moreover, I can’t be a philosopher every day.

Hotels 10. More beer and Manassas (5/26/2022)

What was going to be an uneventful or even a somewhat boring training trip to Manassas turned out to be another trip where the news and therefor the television was dominated by a horrendous news story. Not long ago it was the Russian invasion of Ukraine; however, that was completely pushed out of the headlines and the news was dominated by the massacre in Uvalde, Texas and the stupid Republicans who immediately tried to close ranks and started politicizing it and calling for more guns on the street and turning schools into fortresses instead of places of learning. While at night in my room I usually watch HGTV or the Food Channel, or maybe one of my bonsai YouTubes, this time I could not switch away from the news about the carnage, really not learning much more, but just getting everything repeated over and over and over.

Enough! On a more pleasant note, it had been approximately two and a half year since I visited Manassas. Since the training venue was in Gainesville, I should have probably stayed there; however, that area is ultramodern with mostly chain restaurants stuck in strip malls and an ultra-modern town center where I was already getting lunch these two days. So why stay there? But instead of staying at the Holiday Inn Express, where by the way, I did some of my more creative thinking and writing <here> (I actually wrote that post while staying at the Holiday Inn Express), I opted for the Hilton Garden Inn. Honestly, the hotel was great. I had absolutely no complaints about it. It had the regular post-COVID things like the restaurant was closed on Monday evening, but I generally do not eat in the hotels I stay in, so that was not a big thing; no bed making and waste basket emptying between days; and the worse no coffee pod refurbishing. So I went down to the reception desk to ask more coffee pods and they did not have any! I am an addict, I need my coffee at night, otherwise I wake up with a headache. Finally, the breakfast was buffet style and fairly mediocre. I would still rate it 4.5 out of 5 stars.

A different hotel view this time, but still inspired by the Hopper exhibit.

The part of Manassas I stayed in had changed a bit. It appeared that some restaurants had permanently closed. The Giant Supermarket seemed to have closed its doors as well. It also looked like the Mexican (or Latin American) restaurants had proliferated. While during past visits I frequented these establishments <here>, I somehow avoided them this trip. I wanted something different.

Being somewhat of a microbrewery connoisseur or reviewer lately (see my Wytheville posting), I wanted to go that route. My usual issue is that most of my visits fall on Monday and Tuesday evening and a lot of microbreweries are not open on those days. Googling microbreweries I came up with a few in the area and man, was I happy that 2Silos was closed on Mondays. I just went to look for kicks, but this place is a miniature Disney land or something and absolutely not my style. It is commercial, has not funky vibe and if you are really into the microbrew scene I recommend that you avoid this place like the plague (or is it COVID). I ended up at Heritage Brewing Co. just outside downtown Manassas, and it was love at first sight. Then I tasted the beer and I was hooked. They make some good hooch. Good enough for me to return the second day. Tell you the truth, the staff was nice and personable too, and that helps. Definitely a 4.8 out of 5 stars from me here. I am not sure why I am holding back the 0.2, but as they say, only Allah is perfect, and that dude doesn’t even drink alcohol, I am told.

Heritage Brewing Co. is a must visit when you are into microbrews and in Manassas.  Absolutely worth a visit!

Dinner both evenings was an experience. The first evening I ate at a fish place. Here I was hoping for a nice healthy fish meal at “Long time no Sea” which appeared to be a chain specializing in some kind of seafood bake. It wasn’t bad, but not what I expected, 2.5 stars out of 5. The second evening; however, dinner was at Vera, an Ethiopian restaurant. I was in heaven, lamb stew, injira, and eating with your hands. Great flavors; 4.3 out of 5.

My injira with lamb stew.  I had already taken my first few bites, hence the nibbled appearance of the injira.

Concluding, except for all the news, not a bad visit, I enjoyed myself. Teaching was good, great students, good beer, decent food, and a very nice hotel room.

Why I can no longer be a Christian (5/24/2022)

So, we have another mass shooting today. Uvalde, Texas will be etched on our collective minds forever. Innocent children gunned down by a deranged gun man (kid). A few years ago, governors Abbott challenged the Texas citizens to buy more guns, so they were not second on the list of states in the country in weapon’s purchases.

The common thread here seems to be that conservatives send thoughts and prayers, protect the right to right to own and carry guns, call for the death penalty for the killer, and then want to arm teachers or encourage folks to buy more guns. After the El Paso killing carrying guns in Texas was made easier and hence, no surprise Uvalde is next.

This is where I am flummoxed. While being pro-gun and pro death penalty, and somehow being ok in condemning fellow citizens and kids to death, these Christians are vehemently against abortions. They, seem to want to bring to the world, but then they don’t give a shit that they get gunned down in schools, at Walmart, at a church or anywhere else. We’ll just send these innocent lives our thoughts and prayers and murder the killers. Sanctity of life, only the unborn, after that they turn them into fodder to be gun downed in schools and ger our thoughts and prayers; so Christian, my ass!

Sorry, I can’t stand it any longer, these Christian hypocrites. How can they be pro-death penalty, anti-gun control, and obey the commandments?

I am done being a Christian.

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.