Mom's on the Roof

Although BP originally stated that the spill amounted to 42,000 gallons of oil a day, the company later agreed with the U.S. Coast Guard's figure of 210,000 gallons a day. The nonprofit SkyTruth, which specializes in analyzing satellite and aerial data, also warns that the spill may be releasing as much as 850,000 gallons a day 

It is with a deep repugnance toward the forces at work in America today that I will watch the spectacle unfold on the coast of Louisiana. I suspect it will be worse than we have been led to believe, if my experience with TVA's Coal Waste disaster is any precedent.

In a repeat of the tactics that played out immediately after the December 22, 2008 collapse of the TVA ash storage mountain, when the disaster turned out to be at least three times as large as originally reported with far greater economic impact, the oil platform explosion turns out to be five times greater than we were told and will have devastating environmental and economic impact on the coastal communities of at least four states.


Up until now all environmental disasters have been compared to the Exxon Valdez. Exxon is still battling in court to prevent having to pay for all of the damage caused as a result of its short sighted cost avoidance and lack of supervision of a toxic cargo in an area where that cargo could cause terrible consequences if released into the environment. The names have changed but the situation is the same. BP Oil, in an all too corporate typical move, decided to save big money by not installing a proper remote cutoff valve on a wellhead the lies nearly a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. Hey...What could go wrong? When future environmental disasters are compared to the BP platform explosion of 2010, everyone will know what could go wrong.


So let's complete the Bill Maher quote:


"Every asshole who ever chanted 'Drill Baby Drill' should have to report to the Gulf Coast today for cleanup duty."

And now this:

A confidential government report on the unfolding spill disaster in the Gulf makes clear the Coast Guard now fears the well could become an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf.

"The following is not public," reads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Emergency Response document dated April 28. "Two additional release points were found today in the tangled riser. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought."

An order of magnitude means 10 times as great. That would equal one Valdez disaster every 5 days. Get ready.

More on the story and some really scary pictures

Nest

A wild turkey mom has decided to nest just off our new trail.

Morning After the Storm

I suppose it's on to Blackberry Winter after this...

The Sunday Reader

From the book within Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World":

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies -- all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth. Ultimately it is by means of doublethink that the Party has been able -- and may, for all we know, continue to be able for thousands of years -- to arrest the course of history.

And from the chapter on war...

The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.

Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931. It is frighteningly analogous to today's events in the context where a Bush administration official stated that torture works because they saw it on the TV show, 24.

If you haven't read the book I have a present for you. Take it in pieces.

View from the Top

We've been working on the trails in Whites Creek Gorge and now have a rough in all the way to the rock overlook. The hill on the right is in Rhea County and is the backside of Walden Ridge as seen from Roane County. 

I guess this could also count as a bird blogging shot since it's looking down at a turkey vulture. Several of them flew right up to me as I sat on the rock. They were close enough that I could see their eyes but my little hiking camera couldn't make the shot work. More shots along the trail later. 

This bud's for you...a creekside azalea is about to bloom. There's still time for you to come out and take a walk with us.

This rock lies under the pedestal. We think it looks like a fossil of a dinosaur skull. 

This crossvine has climbed 50 feet up the rock wall of the cliff just to reach the sunlight so it could bloom. I have to admire its spirit. This picture is an act of danger by the photog, just so's you know.

We'll be hiking this trail often with friends.

Earth Day

Why I am an environmentalist...

I see two futures and I don't want the one that comes to pass to be this one...

So to rewrite Saint Marley just a bit...

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds.
Have no fear for alternative energy,
'Cause all of them can save our time.

How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look? Ooh!
Some say it's just a part of it:
We've got to fulfil de book.


Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom? -
'Cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs;

Go outside and enjoy what there is of our natural earth. I really do believe that we could live well on this planet without destroying it and ourselves. So as we are assailed this 40th Earth Day with the paid for words of the deniers who serve those who profit from destruction, let us take heart in a few more words from saint Bob.... 

Let them all pass all their dirty remarks (One Love)
There is one question I'd really like to ask (One Heart)
Is there a place for the hopeless sinner
Who has hurt all mankind just to save his own?

Let's get together to fight this Holy Armageddon (One Love)
So when the Man comes there will be no no doom (One Song)

PEACE AND LOVE, YALL!

Steve

Red Shouldered Hawks

The nesting pair cross the gorge from our house are back at it. I don't have a lens long enough to get a decent picture so you'll have to go here to see what they look like and read up on them. The male was sitting at the very top of  pine tree all fluffed out this morning. He looked like a big ball of rufous feathers until I got out the larger binoculars. The fun part will be when the young fledge in a few weeks. I hope we can be here when the fun starts.

Check out the best pictures of a Red Shouldered Hawk ever!

Spring on the Creek

Last year's babies are this year's acrobats in the air above Whites Creek. We have two sets of eagle twins still hanging around while Mom and Dad care for the current crop of nestling(s?). The leaves have come out and we can't see into the nest any more. We'll have to wait until they fledge or I get the rim trail completed to the west overlook. At the rate I'm going right now this year's crop of eaglets will be making their own nests before I get it done. I have roughed in the Pedestal Rock trail to link up to the rock house and then around to the big overlook. I promise pictures later this week.

For now here are some more warning signs of Spring...
This red salamander got dug up Saturday morning when we were planting tulips. His chin color only has a hint of black so I assume he's fairly young and his stomach spots were the Whites Creek red color instead of the black ones typical of the species.

This Tiger Swallowtail appreciates this flame azalea just as much as I do. These are spectacular native plants. 

Ah Spring!

Hard Work

Gardening is hard. Hard work, I tell you. Plants have been in the ground since yesterday and I still don't have any tomatoes.

We decided to guarantee that we have another frost by putting about half our seedlings out three weeks early.  We'll see if we get homegrown tomatoes any sooner this way. Everything was late last year, but we're counting on global warming to be good to the garden this time.

Cheers!

I guess it's no secret that I love water. This little cascade was just the right flow to keep me staring into it and getting lost.

Closer...

RARE

RARE is a new photo book by Joel Sartore. Some of the photos were taken at Conservation Fisheries.


RARE from Joel Sartore on Vimeo.

Easter Turkey

A beautiful 20+  pound gobbler goes into the freezer. Wild turkeys might be the most beautiful ugly thing I know of. They certainly taste better than those store bought things.

Pedestal Rock

We've been working on our trails around the gorge. We cleared the route from the waterfall on Ford Branch up to what we call "Pedestal Rock". This is from the west side as the trail approaches it.

This is looking back at it from the east. The pedestal holds up a massive rock that has cracked away from the sandstone cliff. I tell myself not to walk under it every time I go there but I always do.

This is standing under the tabletop looking up at the crack. It's a massive chunk of sandstone supported by a crumbling pillar of a sedimentary pile of rocks that looks like it could go at any time.

The micro habitat on the rock faces support an interesting group of plants that I don't see other places. The cliff just above this is the last pitch to the Plateau and has a wonderful colony round leaf catch fly, a carnivorous plant related to Fire Pink.  

This is an old shot of the pedestal and the cliff above it taken from the far ridge.

Friday Funny

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
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From our "Global Warming is a Hoax" Department

Globally, this was the warmest December, January, and February ever recorded:

Fish Ark

From the new National Geographic Magazine:

"You keep the last fish in an ark because you never know when a river might come back," Shute went on. "If the Pigeon could, any river can. They'll have to drag me out kicking and screaming before I give up." 

I'm proud to be associated with CFI (Conservation Fisheries Inc) in the small way I am. They do work that is good for the world. We've had them out to Whites Creek Gorge for each of the last two years and are planning for this years WhitesCreekPalooza and as soon as we get a firm date we'll post it. In the mean time why don't we show them some love with a small monetary token of our appreciation?

Visit their site

 Pat Rakes photo taken at last year's WhitesCreekPalooza

Blue Boy

Last summer I put up an old bluebird house I had in the garage and forgot about it. It is on the far side of the arboretum I put up on the deck so it isn't seen from the house. It suddenly dawned on me this morning as to why this guy and his mate are hanging around the deck after they've eaten all the farkleberries. They are setting up house. 

"I Have Been to the Mountain--top Removal... And It's the Devil!"

I am a total fan of the Reverend Billy Talen and his Stop the Shop-Ocolypse movement. He's morphed from a one man performance artist into the envy of itinerant revival preachers everywhere, with his excellent choir, seven piece band, and hair reaching toward heaven so high that he has moved to reduced  its environmental impact by embracing green hair care.

Stunning my follicles into submission has been a consumer habit I’ve endured and my live-in wife has put up with the spray of effluent evil in our home as well. So this is time for a confession from the pastor who has these poisons in him, and who has cast-off the spraycans, famously unrecyclable. Suddenly I’m sitting here wondering how it was possible that I let this happen for so long? The sin is habituated, a programmed part of my inertia of desire. I’m maintaining my brand, and I beg for forgiveness – and I will change this immediately. I’ll never buy another White Rain or Aquanet as long as I live. Amen? ---Rev 

Now Rev. Billy turns toward something close to my heart and home and which promises to bring the aware among us to our feet shouting Hallelujah!

Have we been to the mountain-top? 

Did we do all we could do?

JP Morgan rains down rock

Exploding loans from the Devil came due...

 Well Reverend Billy shouts out to us, "I have BEEN to the mountain-top...And it is the Devil!"

Can I get an AMEN!

Amen!

I am thinking that Billy Talen is actually a genius crusader with schtick. For extra credit you should read this absolutely straight post by Reverend Billy.

Peace, Brothers and Sisters,

Steve

Bonus musical interlude...

All I know is that I have covered my web cam

I'll flip the cover off when I am Skype-ing my son in New Zealand or on conference calls. Other than that...

These people ought to serve some time. I don't care what their motives were.

The T-shirt

Say What? Say Who?

In the wake of another mind numbingly stupid comment from my ex-senator Fred Thompson on how "Glo-Warm" is the fault of some lost notes by a climate scientist, I thought I would share these visionary words from someone we all know:

addressing climate change will require massive investments in innovation aimed at creating the “energy miracles” needed to develop zero-carbon energy sources.

Finding carbon-free energy sources that will provide affordable power for people around the globe is a complex and difficult issue.

There is a six hour course called Earth’s Changing Climate, also by Richard Wolfson, that I recommend to people who want to learn about the science of climate change.

I spoke...about moving to zero-carbon energy, and our need to reduce CO2 emissions 80% by 2050. The talk was called Innovating to Zero...

Yeah my old buddy Al Gore is a climate change advocate and hero...Only these quotes are not from Al Gore. They are from this guy...

Bill Gates

Did Bill Gates Just Give the Most Important Climate Speech of the Year?

Happy Birthday Uppity Women

The 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870. It states that the, "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

The women's movement had strongly supported the abolishment of slavery but split with the abolitionists movement when it supported dropping women's rights from that amendment.

It would be 50 more years before women would get their amendment allowing them to vote.

Susan B. Anthony died before the 19th Amendment was ratified. She wrote several thoughts that are often quoted today...

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.

I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.

If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.

Happy Birthday Susan B. Anthony  (Feb 15, 1820 - March 13, 1906)! You're looking pretty good for 190 years.

Cheers,

Steve