How it started

 


My mother encouraging me in my earliest nature adventures. Happy Mother's Day, Mom! Thanks for all the love and support over the years.

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Autumn Elm

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You can live a long time in one place and still make discoveries. Yesterday's discovery was just how many American elms there are around here. American elms used to be common as they were the preferred tree for city planting in the 19th century due to their shape and color. And they are beautiful trees, large, majestic, everything a tree should be. I assumed for quite a while that elms were pretty much a threatened species  well on their way to being extinct thanks to Dutch elm disease which ravaged the population. Dutch elm disease and the monocultivation of elms is Exhibit A in why diversity of planting is a good thing. Diversity provides built in resistance. I was both surprised and pleased to discover about a year ago that on the grounds of the science center where I work there were not one but two large elms. Outside my window. That I looked at every day. I just assumed they were cottonwoods, the other large, beautiful majestic tree in my ecosystem. It wasn't till
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Monday Musing #1

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When I started this #SummerOfClimateAction challenge in which I attempt to follow the calls to action as made by How to Save a Planet, I thought I would listen to a few podcasts, email a congressional representative or two, maybe finally commit to composting. You know, stuff like that. Week One: Spark Tank started off with a bang. The topic was electricity storage on the electrical grid and as it happens, my city utility also sent out a communication that related to storage on the electrical grid but left out any mention of climate change (See Climate Change Is Still Worse ). So, yes, I did end up emailing truth to power, calling upon them to "acknowledge the impact of climate change and communicate its relevance in regards to city matters." I'll just say that sending an email through a contact-me box to a representative in far off Washington DC is one thing and emailing your local officials who recognize you in the grocery store is entirely different. Another outcome, I
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#SummerOfClimateAction

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  The Supreme Court was off the hook last two weeks of June. I'm sure your social media feeds were filled with memes too. Oddly enough, my social media did not have much about West Virginia vs EPA, the SCOTUS ruling which said that the EPA did not have the authority from Congress to regulate cap and trade or generation switching (i.e. requiring power plants to switch to non-fossil fuels). This despite the fact that both the majority opinion and the dissent acknowledge that climate change presents a well known danger 1 . The answer, of course, is to elect a different Congress that would grant the EPA such authority. Right now and for the foreseeable future, I'm a single issue voter. Climate change is an intersectional issue meaning that other issues like voting rights and women's rights also walk over to climate so I'm more nuanced than it first appears but yeah, I'm here for the climate. If you want me to support something, it needs to move the needle, even if indi
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