The Nature of Things

As the Great Texas Drought continues unabated, many Texans are facing another horror arising from the drought.   Wildfires are raging right across the state and more than 1,000 homes have been lost.  More importantly, at least two young lives, a mother and her baby, have been lost. The worst of the fires have been in the Hill Country around Austin, but here where I live in Southeast Texas, we are being touched by the flames as well .  Montgomery County (where I live) and adjoining Grimes and Waller Counties have been hit by big fires in the last couple of days.  The fires were made worse by the strong winds that we received as a result of Tropical Storm Lee.  All we got was the wind - no rain. Although climate scientists continually warn that we should not ascribe any single weather event to the phenomenon of global warming, it is very difficult not to conclude that our more than year-long drought is not at least exacerbated, if not entirely caused, by the hea...

Well, I guess I won't be looking at my 401k for awhile.  Wouldn't want to depress myself even further by knowing exactly how poor I've suddenly become.  Not that it was unexpected, of course.  After the debacle of recent weeks, financial markets all over the world were already collapsing in panic.  We probably haven't seen the end of it yet. And still our spineless and clueless politicians refuse to do anything positive to actually turn the situation around.  They are in an endless cycle of name-calling and blaming each other.  The Republicans' sole aim now is to defeat Barack Obama next year and if the economy of the country has to be destroyed to do that, well then, that is acceptable collateral damage.  The Democrats, on the other hand, as led by Obama, still seem deluded that bi-partisanship and working together to solve problems is actually possible.  When your opponent has no other goal than your total destruction, it isn't. Meanwhile, back...

Remember Hurricane Katrina? Remember the response of certain evangelical Christians - most notably Pat Robertson - to that terrible storm? Robertson and his ilk gloated that Katrina was God's wrath made visible. God hated New Orleans and America because of our so-called soft-pedaling of homosexuality, among other sins, and so hundreds of innocent people - children, women, and men - had to suffer horrible deaths and a great city had to be virtually destroyed to appease an angry God. As far as I am aware, the same characters who denounced New Orleans as it was drowning have had little to say about the state of Texas that is now frying. It seems to me, though, that if God can send a flood to drown New Orleans, He could probably take the water away from Texas and let it parch in the hot, drying sun and the relentless wind that has been blowing here for weeks now. Virtually all of the state is now officially in drought . Some of us are already in what is termed an "exceptional...

I was perusing the science pages of The New York Times as I do every week when I came across a story about a drought in China and a resultant rise in the price of food. As I read the story, it brought to mind similar stories that I have read in recent months. There have been a number of crop failures because of extreme weather conditions right around the world. Climate scientists have warned repeatedly that the frequency of these extreme weather conditions is likely to increase as the earth continues to warm. They might as well be shouting into a hurricane. People simply are not listening. Perhaps when a loaf of bread goes for $100, it might finally get their attention. There have already been food riots in various countries around the world. The current uprising in Egypt has been fueled, in part, by the fact that food has become more scarce and expensive and people are unable to feed their families. What will happen when that circustance becomes fact in this country? Most li...

Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu! Groweþ sed and bloweþ med And springþ þe wde nu, Sing cuccu! - Middle English lyrics of English folk song Summer has come in, Loudly sing, Cuckoo! The seed grows and the meadow blooms And the wood springs anew, Sing, Cuckoo! - Modern English translation of lyrics The calendar may still say it is spring, but when the temperature is in the upper 90s and the humidity is close to the same, I'd say that summer has definitely "come in". For several days now, my area has enjoyed(?) those conditions and there is no doubt in my mind that summer is definitely here. Even the cuckoo agrees. The Yellow-billed Cuckoo has been present here for some weeks now and I hear its quirky calls high in the trees often throughout the day. This is the bird that, as a child, I knew as the "rain crow". This solitary and secretive bird was a well-known visitor to our woods in summer. Its call was said to presage the coming of rain. As farm peopl...