Bees knees

Do you like honey as much a I do? 

And do you worry about the future of agriculture and most plants that rely upon these (and other) pollinators?

I was pleased to read that bees are the most important species on our planet. (By an article by the Science Times HERE.)

But then I read the next paragraph...

The bees have been declared the most important living beings on this planet, the Earthwatch Institute concluded in the last meeting of the Royal Geographical Society of London. However, according to wildlife experts and scientists, the bees have joined the endangered species long list.

The recent studies show a dramatic decline of the bees' number as almost 90 percent of the bee population has disappeared in the last few years. The uncontrolled use of pesticides, deforestation or lack of flowers are the main reasons for their extinction.

And the authors continue with this...

After all, Albert Einstein's say about bees has never been truer. "If the bees disappear, humans would have 4 years to live," the famous physicist said. 

I'll let you read the rest of the article at the link above.  And there's a cartoon about the demise of bees that's been happening for over a decade.

My teaset which I sold, displayed at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts in 2015

I had a vegan friend who would not eat honey because of the industrial agricultural methods of harvesting honey which she thought were abusive to animals. She also would not wear any animal products.

But that was her preferences. Mine are to continue to have honey in my tea, and sometimes even my coffee, and on buttered bread or biscuits, or flavoring so many lovely baked goods. But more than that, I hope they survive for all the plants to be pollinated.

What do people think that scientists really think?

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo from the International Space Station on Tuesday morning, Sept. 2, 2014. 

"87 Percent of Americans Unaware There's Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

By Pam Wright

July 11 2017 10:00 AM EDT

weather.com

  LINK TO ARTICLE

This short article on FaceBook caught my eye a few days ago. Most people do know that Climate Change is real, and human caused, but do not attribute this to knowledge of science apparently.

"The annual survey of 1,266 adults compiled in May and June failed to note that it is actually 97 percent of climate scientists that concur that human-caused global warming is happening. 

The most common but incorrect response from the survey was that there is a 50 percent consensus among the scientific community that global warming is real and human-caused. One in four responded that they did not know."

These statistics are so convoluted that I'm not sure what the substance of the article really is. The author reports that...

"According to the report published last week by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, only 13 percent of Americans were able to correctly identify that more than 90 percent of all climate scientists have concluded that climate change is real.

And in conclusion she gives a quote from the actual surveyors...

"Public misunderstanding of the scientific consensus – which has been found in each of our surveys since 2008 – has significant consequences," the researchers note in the Yale-GMU report.

"Other research has identified public understanding of the scientific consensus as an important 'gateway belief' that influences other important beliefs," the researchers said, including the beliefs that global warming is happening, is human caused, is a serious problem and is solvable.

Researchers also noted that this lack of understanding hinders support for action. 

On the other hand, seven in 10 Americans do believe climate change is happening, which nearly matches the highest level (71 percent) recorded since the survey began 2008. Over half of Americans (58 percent) believe global warming is mostly human-caused — the highest number recorded since the survey began — while 30 percent say it is mostly a natural occurrence.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.

That boxed disclaimer by the Weather Company (who posted this and probably paid for it on FaceBook) certainly makes one smile. IBM owns the Weather Company.

My conclusion is that it's good to have people know that scientists know something...and it's also interesting to pick through these statistics and find that only 30 percent of those surveyed (were they college students, I wonder) think global warming (not the phrase climate change) is a naturally caused occurrence.

Food for thought.

Concerts at the Light Center

My good friend Annelinde Metzner (aka Linda) gave a piano concert and poetry reading last Sunday.  Some friends decided that would be a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon, and I gladly came too.  .

I was glad to arrive early, and walk around the exterior of the Geodesic dome, and find the labyrinth with my friends.  We didn't stay to do the whole meditative exercise of walking it.  I loved seeing the old beautiful trees in the woods here on Highway 9 on the other side of the continental divide.  I don't think it was quite in Bat Cave, the next town due south of us, but it was close!

As a 40 year old dome, the building has many problems, and they are currently raising the funds to build a new one.  It will happen fairly soon I think, as this is a favorite non-denominational spiritual meeting place.

I love Linda's energy, full of enthusiasm for the Divine Feminine.  She also leads the choir for my church, and is scheduled to give another concert "The Feminine Faces of God" with other performers next Sunday at the same location.  The last time she gave that concert, it was sold out, and in another venue here in Black Mountain.  Tickets are available HERE.

Today's Quote:
Excerpt from The Vine Basket, by Annelinde Metzner

I come for the wind.
At the high edge of Craggy Mountain I stand,
leaning in and rocking back as the wind rolls upward,
tender jewelweed and high nettles all around,
high ridges beyond and beyond.
Today on the mountain, looking west,
away from words and clash of minds,
away from the confounded jangle of yay or nay,
of human will forever at odds,
the wind rises miles and miles up the hollow.
I stand with no questions, with only my self.

Wildlife in the neighborhood

Does Father Robin pitch in to help feed the little ones? I don't know. Do you?

 Pointing the camera toward the geraniums, I saw a robin fly up under the eave of the nearby building...and there was a nest there.

My limited Nikon with somewhat telephoto lens, when leaned against my porch post, gave me these shots.  Sorry they are a bit dark, or lacking details.  But there are at least 2 babies, with their eyes not yet opened...and she was busy feeding them.

Teaching teachers

In my life I've taught pottery, watercolor, sketching, goddess history, and some computer uses.  I admire especially those who teach teachers how to teach.  I worked in prevention of substance abuse by teaching some teachers and school counselors how to teach a curriculum or two back in the 80s...and that's the extent of my efforts to teach how to teach.

So I'll just share some photos that were on line by my teacher in sculpting clay, Nan Smith of the University of Florida.  She didn't post these when I got my BFA in ceramics (I don't think there was FaceBook in 1983).  Thanks, Nan, for all the fun and mistakes and corrections and supportive critiques!

Sharing with Sepia Saturday this week!

A favorite author - Louise Penny

One of my favorite authors in the last few years has been Louise Penny.  I just read her last book, and another is due to come out soon.

Inspector Gamache seems such a deep character, surrounded by many family and friends, and always dealing with some political police difficulties...but Louise Penny manages to give philosophical strains throughout her challenging murders.

Fiction fun for summer - if you like murder mysteries

I've been playing light and silly with many murder mysteries...and Janet Evanovich's series have been most fun.  When I'm overly stressed, there is yet another one of these to enjoy about Stephanie Plum and her trials and romantic interests, but especially about her sidekick, Lula. I haven't gone into any of her other series of books.

Charles Todd is another author who I've followed,   A Duty to the Dead  was the first of his series with Bess Crawford, nurse during WW I.  I was glad to finally check it out after months on hold since I read all the others in the series.  I've also read some of his Inspector Ian Rutledge novels lately: The Red Door and Racing the Devil.

Other authors I generally will read and enjoy most of the time include James Patterson, Michael Connolly, John Grisham, James Lee Burke and Lee Child.

And another light reading author was Lilian Jackson Braun's "the Cat Who..." series.  I started listening to these as audio books when I used to commute to work in the 90s from Jacksonville to St. Augustine FL (1 hour each way.)

My spring/summer reads

These are digital books I downloaded free from our library system.  Many of them I listened to also as audio books.

The latest that I enjoyed was Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.  I started it in Feb. and had others I was also reading, so didn't get finished in the 14 days of check-out time. So I put it on hold and finally got to finish it last week.  I highly recommend the audio version, with the Nigerian accents, as performed by Adjoa Andoh. It was 17 hours of listening pleasure. I also enjoyed Adichie's novel We Should All Be Feminists earlier this year..

I tried reading Anne Hillerman but didn't have much interest in a coming of age novel Cave of Bones...nor Rock with Wings which I'd read already in the past.  I still like her father's work best.

It rains and pours sometimes

Today's Quote:

For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is to let it rain.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Summer Reading

 I've been enjoying some poetry lately, and this compilation of a lot of poets, as well as interviews with Bill Moyers...well, let's just say it's a heavy book, so I sit at a table to read a few pages daily.

 I've been so happy to have this Mary Oliver book of her poetry.

 A completely different view of the world, but also great to learn and enjoy!

 After reading this, I'm now loaning it to friends.  There were a few weeks that I put it aside, as not being that interesting. Then I was determined to find out about her views of being First Lady...and that part was definitely worth getting to.  Some are saying this is the best autobiography to come out. I am not sure, but I'm glad to have read it.

 When this came out in the 70s, I got so angry reading it, that I never finished it.  Her radical feminism was beyond me.  I will re-read it soon, to see how I feel about it today. the language information is still in my memory.

These are all non-fiction. But believe me, I'm reading quite a few fictions as well...but usually not a paper copy, rather a digital one.  And I actually prefer having audio books these days.  So I can give you those in a list tomorrow.

Thanks to my good friend (who reads more than I do!) Teresa, who gives me good advice or loans me some of her books. We are both fans of used book stores!

Interdependence Day

Joy Harjo recites her poem "Grace"

"Grace" by Joy Harjo

                         For Darlene Wind and James Welch

I think of Wind and her wild ways the year we had nothing to lose and lost it anyway in the cursed country of the fox. We still talk about that winter, how the cold froze imaginary buffalo on the stuffed horizon of snowbanks. The haunting voices of the starved and mutilated broke fences, crashed our thermostat dreams, and we couldn't stand it one more time. So once again we lost a winter in stubborn memory, walked through cheap apartment walls, skated through fields of ghosts into a town that never wanted us, in the epic search for grace. 

Like Coyote, like Rabbit, we could not contain our terror and clowned our way through a season of false midnights. We had to swallow that town with laughter, so it would go down easy as honey. And one morning as the sun struggled to break ice, and our dreams had found us with coffee and pancakes in a truck stop along Highway 80, we found grace.

I could say grace was a woman with time on her hands, or a white buffalo escaped from memory. But in that dingy light it was a promise of balance. We once again understood the talk of animals, and spring was lean and hungry with the hope of children and corn. 

I would like to say, with grace, we picked ourselves up and walked into the spring thaw. We didn't; the next season was worse. You went home to Leech Lake to work with the tribe and I went south. And, Wind, I am still crazy. I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people. We have seen it. 

Our US Poet Laureate

Cousin Adam Stevens and wife Lucinda Hansford Stevens posed in front of their Hayesville, Oregon home. Lucinda was daughter of Mary Polly Hansford Gilmore, whose 2 daughters and husbands went on the 1849 California Gold Rush, but one and her family died in Sweetwater, WY (not yet a state) and the other made it to Oregon.
Great Aunt Mary Polly Hansford was one of those who died in Sweetwater in the cholera epidemic.  Her sister was my three times great grandmother, Nancy Hansford Williams, who stayed in Missouri.  Her son, my G G Grandfather William T. Williams served in the Union Army in 1865, and then moved to Texas between 1866 and 1880.

The Hansford family may have lived on this land in Kentucky before they moved west to Missouri.

I don't know where this is, but it reminds me of how the weather, and now we know the climate changes, affect all our lives.

Declaration of Independence error

Thanks to a fellow blogger for sharing this...
Declaration of Independence punctuation error

I hope you take the 3-4 minutes to look at this YouTube presentation.

Thanks Ronni Bennett!

Sunday morning joys

It's Sunday morning.

I've had my first cup of coffee on the balcony, reading some emails and news on the mini-iPad. But blogs don't come up there (though I did purchase a blog app, it's basically trash.) The petunias don't like the heat, but are surviving in the shade.  The Spirit House right below them offers good energies to the universe.

I'm listening to Bobby Darin (Here) at Time Goes By's Sunday "Elder Music."

St. John's Wort is an anti-depressant, and for now, just enjoying its blooms makes me feel joyful.

Just watered the potted plants on front porch and tiny balcony. With temperatures in high 80s every afternoon, the little plants are thirsty. But I'm fortunate to live in the shade of huge maples on the south side, so the apartment doesn't get too hot. In the morning I open it up to the breeze through the trees until the temp goes over 75...it's 80 outside now at 11 am. I have sympathy for the great European heat wave, as well as other places people are suffering.

And then a fellow potter-blogger posted yesterday morning that Lake Michigan is flooding in Chicago due to all their rain. (Gary Jackson)

As I post and type here on my old Toshiba laptop, I'm inhaling 2 medications through the nebulizer...the pump means I have to turn up the music a bit.  It is to help my Bronchiectasis coughing, which continues daily to just be there, neither too stressful nor going away, which is what chronic conditions do, day after day, month after month.

I will keep on doing my small efforts to diminish one-use plastic in my life...by carrying and washing my own metal utensils to the lunch program 5 days a week. Every other week there's recycling collected here (separate from the garbage pick-up.)

Today I've got my mind on publishing the newly formatted newsletter for the church which I'm editing (with help of other more talented people). I am not at church this morning, which means I'll receive my spiritual inspiration from meditation instead of a group of people gathered to share song and praise to their own ideas of spirituality (or none.)  How Unitarian Universalism works as a community of such diversity is always amazing.  Something to do with love and caring for justice.

And tomorrow is my ex-husband's (father of my two oldest sons) eightieth birthday. . I find that amazing, and quite an accomplishment. We endure. We survive.  We're lucky perhaps. As his younger son said on the phone last night, "It sure beats the alternative."  I'm a bit miffed that he (young 52 year old son) hadn't done anything to remember his Dad's achievement yet.  He probably looked on line quickly when we hung up (an interesting anachronism) and sent something to him for tomorrow's delivery.

And I love seeing how the little succulents from Marty and Barbara's wedding are growing and thriving in the sunshine and heat. I think I need to make more "succulent" flower pots! I just made some orchid ones, with holes on the sides as part of their design for the roots to breath.  I'm glad to have chatted with you this morning, it brought me an inspiration to create!

Poetry by our US Poet Laureate

An American Sunrise
by Joy Harjo

We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves. We

were surfacing the edge of our ancestors’ fights, and ready to strike.

It was difficult to lose days in the Indian bar if you were straight.

Easy if you played pool and drank to remember to forget. We

made plans to be professional — and did. And some of us could sing

so we drummed a fire-lit pathway up to those starry stars. Sin

was invented by the Christians, as was the Devil, we sang. We

were the heathens, but needed to be saved from them — thin

chance. We knew we were all related in this story, a little gin

will clarify the dark and make us all feel like dancing. We

had something to do with the origins of blues and jazz

I argued with a Pueblo as I filled the jukebox with dimes in June,

forty years later and we still want justice. We are still America. We

know the rumors of our demise. We spit them out. They die

soon.

Or listen to her recite it herself An American Sunrise recited by Joy Harjo

Gone Fishing

I've shared these 2 photos before, among the few that were rescued from a fire my Rogers family (grandparents) had in Fort Worth, TX in the 1920s. 

Annie Lou Rogers Wilson was my grandfather's little sister, both of them raised by an aunt and uncle most of their childhoods.  But their mother moved from Walker County TX where they had been born, and lived the rest of her life in Galveston TX.  And at times the children are listed on census records living with her, like the 1900 Galveston Census.  Annie Lou would have been 25 in 1904. She didn't marry until 1906.

 10-30-1904 Annie Lou's Skiff - I'm pretty sure there was also a sailboat attached to this dingy.

10-30-1904 on Hannah's Reef Galveston Bay.

These gentlemen seem to have a fair catch of fish on display themselves, don't they? I don't see anyone resembling a woman who could have been Annie Lou.

For Sepia Saturday this week, we've got a nudge to go out on a boat, or sit by the water, and perhaps catch some dinner as lovely looking as their gentleman has.

I shall be purchasing some salmon at the Tailgate Market this morning, shipped in from Canada.