Roosters Unite (5/26/2024)

People finally moved into the house two doors down from us, and they have a rooster. While our county allows you to have chickens, roosters are not allowed. They also have ducks, which seems to be illegal as well by our county's ordinance. I do not understand the logic behind all these rules, but why question the wisdom of our county's leadership since they clearly exhibit that they have very little. They spend millions on building a new “law enforcement” building or palace, but do not seem to care one bit about education here in York County, Virginia.

I realize now that this is not what I intended to write about in this essay, but it must be said. My wife and I have been following the saga of our local school board. It seems that members were elected to the board under falls pretexts of being apolitical. However, that changed the minute they were elected, and they started to push an ultra conservative agenda which in the long run would hurt our children. One member used to be a substitute teacher in our school system but was fired for incompetence. Now she knows how to run the entire public school system (or take political revenge?).

Let's get back to the subject at hand: the rooster. It crows or cockle-doddle-does incessantly. This reminds me of the rooster we had in Uganda, we called him “Turkey” or "Turk."  I realize that the name exposes my inert cynicism or playfulness, but our rooster was something else. Being in Uganda my wife had no full-time job to do; we were in our mid-twenties and so we amassed a menagerie of animals. We eventually had two dogs, at least seven chickens, our rooster, at least three goats, and an East African crested crane. We also took care or two horses. Later in Nepal we had a load of chickens, our two dogs and a cat we had brought from Utah. The dogs and cat traveled the world with us and after returning to Europe and the U.S.A., they ended up going to Yemen with us for our next assignment. I do not remember having chickens in Yemen. I guess you could say that we scaled down with age.

But more about Turk, our rooster. Turkey ruled the roost. We relented when some locals wanted to sell us a baby crane. We really did not believe in taming local wildlife, but otherwise it might have become a crane stew or a hyena snack. So, we bought it and raised it. Turk was the boss and quickly established a pecking order with our crane who was at least five time larger than our dominant rooster. The crane and the rooster also had fun with our dogs. The crane easily jumped over our German Sheppard when he charged them, and this became a game. Turk would chase the dogs all over the yard.

The funniest thing with the rooster was his love of opera. You need to know that my wife is a huge opera fan and was, even at the ripe old age of 23. We had a stereo with us, with records and Donna would often put on an opera record. Turkey would run in the house, the minute that the music started playing, and he just stood there still, did not move and listened. When the music was over, he would shake and ruffle his feathers like any good rooster would do and walk out. We always had our home wide open and at times, the horses would come in to beg for a banana, or the kid goats would jump all over the furniture. Uganda wasn't that buggy, although we both got malaria and Donna became quite ill. But I hope you can imagine why the crowing of a rooster two houses from here would take me back to a time almost 46 years ago.

Ladies and Cranes, here is Turkey, our rooster from Uganda

One of my favorite pictures of the time, Donna and Buddha our German Shepard pup.

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!

The Colorado Plateau (5/2/2024)

If you are somewhat of a regular, you know I always have a few books open, and yes I need to update my reading list on this blog. Currently, I am reading Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. While this is a required reading as I describe <here>, I am getting a lot of enjoyment out of it. Abbey is a radical; he was on the FBI watch list, and I just read that he wanted to grind up all the domestic dogs into hamburger and feed it to the coyotes. He was hoping that this might change the tune of coyotes and make them more pleasurable to listen to. I have heard many coyotes in the Chihuahua of southern New Mexico during the field work that I was doing for my Ph.D. On top of that we have seen and heard them in the woods behind our home here in suburban Virginia. I dare to differ with Abbey in that I actually enjoy their shenanigans and howling.

Abbey's description of the landscape in the Moab area hits me in the guts. I spent time in the area in 1980 and 1981 to do field work for my Masters. His description of the landscape is amazing: the Henry Mountains, Dead Horse Mesa, the La Sal mountains, the towns of Hanksville, Blanding and Moab, the Bear’s Ears, and of course Arches National Park. My research plots of the time were in the Henry Mountains, near Fry Canyon, in the mountains near Monticello (between Blanding and Moab), and near Green River. 

I realize now that I might as well have spent time on some of the mines Abbey wrote about but were abandoned when I spent time there in 1980. Abbey wrote about uranium prospecting in his book, and I was working on the results of all that work.  As I am sure, a lot of you are aware of, uranium was used to generate energy and for more sinister reasons such as blowing up things and killing millions with one small bomb.  Southeastern Utah and the Moab area is littered with mine shafts dug into the cliff sides and piles of waste materials that were dumped below those holes. These dump sites were bare, and we were doing research on the revegetation of these piles. 

 My research involved the revegetation of uranium mine-spoils. Uranium and its mining features heavily in Desert Solitaire. In the 1940s, 50s and 60s uranium was in huge demand; areas in Ontario Canada and in the Canyon lands had some the largest deposits of that mineral in North America.  At the time Blanding had a uranium enrichment plant.  I also worked on a site of another uranium enrichment plant in the Red Desert of Wyoming, just north of Green River, UT and Rawlings, WY.  That plant had a large herd of wild horses nearby and it was always fun watching them gallop through the area.   

One of my favorite experiences was my work near Fry Canyon. The canyon was aptly named, it was scorching hot in July. My thermometer read 110 degrees. It had the typical desert vegetation of juniper, salt bush, galleta grass, Indian rice grass and I remember seeing mallows, sunflowers and cacti. We had our two dogs with us and during the day they slept under the truck I was driving. We had to drive up a dirt road in the canyon and arrived at my plot after maybe a half hour to forty-five minutes off-road driving. Camping there was fun as well. Just nice to be out so remote in the desert with no extraneous sounds or lights. It is something that the folks I follow on YouTube (my guilty pleasure) that live in vans out West often do. I remember wondering about cougars, poisonous snakes, scorpions and coyotes.

In 1980 we showed my parents around the Four Corners Region when they visited from the Netherlands, and we took them to Moab, Arches and Dead Horse Mesa. What still amazes me was that during our visit to Dead Horse Point, we were standing and looking at the Colorado River, when a car drove up and two Dutch ladies stepped out, speaking Dutch. At that point there were five citizens of the Netherlands and only one American on the point. Quite a coincidence. One of my favorite memories is that after the meeting we decided to drive down a dirt road to the Colorado River. My wife Donna walked in front of the car (an old AMC Pacer) to move all the big rocks out of the way, make sure we would not bottom out or slide down the ravine.

As I mentioned before, we returned to the area in 1992 and it was great to see it again. I was more of desert rat by then, after getting my Ph.D. and subsequently having lived on the Colorado Plateau in Gallup. Abbey's description of the Navajo, the people, the nation and the treatment of the people was very familiar as well; I spent 3 years working with and around the Navajos. I describe our recent visit to Gallup and the region <here>.

Anyway, these are some of the things that I am reminded of when I read Abbeys book. While he is an interesting writer with great observations, his book can be tedious at times because of the run-on sentences and the difficult words. This is something I try to avoid in my lousy writing, but Abbey is a master. I found one sentence that is an entire paragraph long and in print was something like ten printed lines in the book. Moreover, I had to use a dictionary to look up some of the words he uses. But he was radical; while most of the time I agree with him, I would not dare to put some of it in print. He had guts and called it out.

I hope it was somewhat interesting and motivates you to pick up this interesting book.

September 24, 2024, my return to the desert of the Colorado Plateau.

I am older than I have ever been (04/21/2024)

I am 70 years old, going on 71, the oldest I have ever been, at least when you do not believe in reincarnation. Otherwise in a previous life I could have been a turtle, elephant or some other creature that outlives humans. That is of course also assuming that these animals did not meet an untimely death as the result of poachers or worse some millionaire schmuck who killed me on safari.

Crap, I am not getting any younger, just older and older, but as the cliché goes, “it beats the alternative.” A lot of elderly like me joke about it, like “hey, I woke up this morning, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” or “I checked the obituaries this morning and I wasn't in it.” But seriously, I am at the point that the obituaries of celebrities are my favorite part in the newspaper. I want to see how old they were when they died and what the cause was of their demise.

Our church has what are called fellowship circles, where a group of six to eight folks get together and exchange their feeling over a specific topic. It is meant to be personal and a way of getting to know each other a bit better and create friendships. Since it is a Unitarian Church, the character of God is never brought up; we don’t pray or talk about religion, maybe with the exception of bashing it. Believers in God, Christ, Allah, Buddha, humanists and even atheists are all welcome in the Unitarian Church.

My circle is held in the afternoon and as a logical result it consists of retired folks, everyone is in their late sixties and seventies. The topic of the day this past week was spring and reawakening of nature after the winter torpor. Maybe not surprising, but when my wife asked me when I got home how the meeting was, my answer was that we discussed old age, mortality, and our anxiety about getting older. It was somewhat amazing how we got there, but it seems that I am not the only one struggling with the impending decline. Now here they say that human bonds, friendships and fellowship are the prerequisite to living longer. I hope that talking about death contributes to aging gracefully and gives us a few more extra quality years.

This week we also met a neighbor of ours at a party at one of our local breweries. We had not seen her in some time, and she let us know why. Her husband, a retired NASA scientist was diagnosed of coming down with Alzheimer. He is in his mid-70s and they have been at neurologists trying to find a way of slowing down the decline. Another (male) friend was there and he told me he has osteoporosis. He is 75 years-old, very skinny and a retired NASA scientist. I read somewhere that the 70-ies are supposed to be the “go-go” years, the 80-ies the “slow-go” years, while at your 90th birthday you enter the “no-go” decade. I better get going, I've got nine more years of fun ahead of me.

This old man and his wife!

Desert and Walden (3/22/2024)

Last week I signed up for a workshop with Clay Jenkinson that will be held at a resort in Idaho in early January next year. I will need to fly into Missoula, MT and it is somewhat interesting to tell folks it is in Idaho, because it feels like it is in Montana. The workshop is a discussion of two books, somewhat like a book club. We will be discussing Theroux's “Walden" and Abbey's “Desert Solitaire.” Interestingly, I have both books and have read parts of both of them. While it is still nine months or more away, I started re-reading Desert Solitaire.

Desert Solitaire discusses Abbey's time working for the National Park Service at what is now Arches National Park. I spent time in the Moab, Canyon Lands area in 1980 and 81 during my graduate studies at Utah State University. We returned as tourists in 1991 when we lived in Gallup, NM. By training, I am an arid land (or desert) ecologist, or even better a plant-ecophysiologist or stress physiologist. Abbey's book is hitting close to home when he details the plants, animals and sights in the Moab area. His environmental views also align with mine, and I even think his cynicism. Naturally things have changed since the time he was there. I remember well that we felt terribly intimidated by the buff young mountain bikers during our 1991 visit, so we decided to just go for a hike in Arches and not rent bikes (and make fools of ourselves).

While reading Abbey's book I wondered about my desert experiences. Where have I seen them, encountered them and spent time in them? My first real encounter with a desert was that morning we woke up in the airplane that took us to our new job in Uganda. This was in 1978 and we were flying over the Sahara. I was in awe. Later in life I have set foot in what looked like a desert in the Turkana area of north-western Kenya; I spent a lot of time in the Four Corners Region of the US; on the dry Tibetan Plateau of Nepal; in the deserts of Yemen; Egypt; and in the Chihuahua in southern New Mexico. I also spent time in the Great Basin, the Sonoran and Mojave deserts of the U.S. I grew up on the Island of Curacao and lived there for 13 years and this island was pretty dry as well. The island was covered by cacti. This might explain my love for the desert.

One of these days I will try to describe some of my experiences in all these deserts. For right now I’ll start with some generalities about why I have this love for the desert. As I mentioned, I grew up in the Caribbean, and from my bedroom on the island I grew up on I could see for miles. I could see the main land of Venezuela on a clear day, and at night we often saw the lightning on the mainland. With every lightning bold you could see an outline of the mountains sixty some mile away. I often tell people that I need to see the horizon, or at least be able to see for miles and miles. The desert allows that. While as I am sure you are aware of, I love trees and forests; however, I need to get away from that and broaden my view. During our recent trip through the Dakotas I was in heaven as well, driving through the more arid short grass prairie and again being able to see the horizon.

Being an ecologist, desert survival of plants, animals and even people fascinate me. This is what I call stress physiology. Even when I was working on my bachelor’s degree in the Netherlands in pasture ecology and agriculture, I was spell bound by an article in (forgive me) the Readers Digest about reforestation in the Moroccan desert. I fascinated me so much that I requested a book by Evenari entitled “Negev the challenge of the desert.” The book detailed traditional (Bedouin) and modern ways of living and surviving in the desert. I read the book from cover to cover. This was before my Sahara flyover. Anyway, stay tuned and I'll write more some about my desert experience another day.

The high Arizona desert.   We are looking back at the mountain above Flagstaff.   I took this picture in September during our trip across country.