Currently: 73°

Dewpoint: 72°	Wind: NE 3 MPH
Humidity: 97%	Pressure: 29.98 in Hg
Average: High 90° Low 72° Record: High 101° (1978) Low 60° (1955)
Today’s Sunrise: 6:20AM Today’s Sunset: 8:23PM (14:03 hours of sunlight)

The forecast is calling for seasonal highs and lows for the day so life goes on in an average sort of way…Even though the house is closed up to keep the humidity down, you can still here the morning chorus outside.

Last night I walked out to the edge of the meadow (semi-domesticated field, my backyard, see picture in the header), and folks, it was dark out there. The sky was just hazy enough to dampen the reflected night lighting and the stars above so only a few of the brighter stars shown through. Without the normal competition they looked much brighter than normal.

I caught the link to this story at Inhabitat but the link didn’t work so here’s their link to Yahoo News.

HONG KONG (AFP) – Money raised from a Hong Kong government levy to be placed on the use of polluting plastic bags will be used to fund green education programmes, the environment chief said Tuesday.

A charge of 50 Hong Kong cents will be imposed on every plastic bag issued by some shops from the end of next year.

The bags are considered harmful to the environment as they take so long to decompose when trashed. The levy is aimed at reducing the number used each year.

Now I know that sounds like a good idea…But (you knew there would be a but, didn’t you), wouldn’t you accomplish more by just teaching the damn sackers to put more than one or two items in a bag? Tis a pet peeve of mine tis true, but come on folks, if your bags are so thin you can’t load them, don’t buy the damn things. It seems that with most sackers now you are going to get fifteen bags to haul home the same amount of purchases that used to travel home in two paper bags. But don’t ask for paper or they look at you like you are crazy and then they load them just like the plastic. When I shop at the local produce store at the farm here in town (and no everything you buy there isn’t grown there, but a lot is) they manage to get 20 to 30 pounds of produce in just a couple of bags…Go figure.

Source: Plastic bag levy to pay for green education in Hong Kong – Yahoo! News

Oh well, times a running and I’ve “got mail”…

Garrison brings us this summertime offering from Nikki Giovanni.

Knoxville, Tennessee

I always like summer
best
you can eat fresh corn
from daddy’s garden
and okra
and greens
and cabbage
and lots of
barbecue
and buttermilk and homemade ice-cream
at the church picnic

Wander on over and read the rest at The Writer’s Almanac.

Well it’s time to run.