Exceptional heat in the South A sizzling June heat wave set record high temperatures across much of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and the Florida Panhandle on Sunday. The high temperature at Houston, Texas hit 105 degrees, the warmest temperature ever recorded in the month of June (old record: 104 degrees…
Hector Thunderstorm Project from Murray Fredericks on Vimeo.Camera Murray Fredericks Editing Lindi Harrison Original Sound Tommy Shutzinger This time-lapse assembly is part of the Hector Thunderstorm Project being produced in northern Australia. The first exhibition of stills from the project are on exhibition in Melbourne at Arc 1 Gallery from…
Houston's temperature reached 100 degrees on Thursday, setting two records. It marks a record high for the day — the prior record was 97. It also marks the earliest date the city's temperature reached the century mark. Before Thursday, Houston had hit 100 degrees on June 10, said Paul Lewis,…
I took my new toy out with me this morning to see how well it would work in the early morning light...Seemed to do pretty good all things considered.
Kaspa & Fiona have taken over my blog for today, because they need our help. They are both on a mission to help the world connect with the world through writing. They are also getting married on Saturday the 18th of June. For their fantasy wedding present, they are asking…
Reflect on the fact that we have just this one life. Stay with this thought for as long as you can bear. What is important to you? What do you want to do about it? Quotes How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. ~Annie…
Sitting out every morning this spring with my coffee mug I have been entertained by the Eastern Bluebirds that have made their home in m y backyard. As I have become acquainted with these beautiful birds for the very first time this year I was surprised at how quickly their song has…
Quite a while ago. The temperature yesterday in my backyard hit 95°. The US Drought Map has us at the highest level of drought they differentiate. The good news for the state of Texas yesterday was that the storms causing so much damage across the country in the last week managed to…
I have fallen into the habit of grabbing my morning coffee and heading outside to sit and enjoy the mornings. It's a big difference from the way I used to start my mornings...Online and checking in on my virtual world. Sitting out has made me more contemplative, I almost said meditative…
Instead of an "energy industry," I see a resource addiction that saps money and preserves self-destructive expectations. I see, instead of food and education "industries," an obesity epidemic and a debt-driven education crisis. Instead of a pharmaceutical industry, I see a new set of mental and physical discontents, like rates…
Now they keep telling us it's not the strong winds, it's not the heavy rains...It's the lighter than normal rain that is playing havoc with the grid. The brief rains that rolled through parts of the Houston area Wednesday didn't put much of a dent in local drought conditions but…
That I walked on this road of blogging for the first time that took. It was the beginning of a dream. A dream that has branched and grown in ways I could never have foreseen. That first blog post was on a Blogger hosted blog at North Carolina Mountain Dreams.…
When I was "retired" in late 2008 I really didn't retire. I continued to try and occupy my days with a "job". So it was that I began to build a online "publishing empire" aimed at the Appalachian Mountains that had captured my dreams. The beginnings had been there before…
I have found myself spending much more time outside the past few weeks. Moving Trees It all started as I began to study my backyard to figure out where I wanted to move a couple of apple trees to. They had to be moved or cut down. Now, where we…
Anyone with a garden in Houston knows just how stingy the skies have been this spring. According to the Houston/Galveston National Weather Service office, the period from mid-February to April 17 has been the driest in Houston climate records dating back to 1850. The .91 inch total beat out 1925's…
Today is Earth Day. A celebration of our Mother the Earth sometimes known as Gaea. My plan to celebrate the day is to spend a big part of it outside in my backyard. The dewberries are ripening and make a tart mouthful as I wander around. The mockingbirds are serenading all who stop and listen.…
April 21, 1836...This is the day most Texans celebrate as Texas Independence Day even though that day is officially March 2nd when the Texas Declaration of Independence was signed at Washington0on-the-Brazos. To some historians, the April 21, 1836, engagement between the ragtag 900-man Texian army and the more formally trained…
"The idea that all this can be reduced to money — that doctors are just people selling services to consumers of health care — is, well, sickening. And the prevalence of this kind of language is a sign that something has gone very wrong not just with this discussion, but…
I decided to take a lunch run across the river a week or so ago. After eating my sack lunch with another eastern bluebird I wandered over to the nature trail...This is one of the shots I captured...
... columnist and former GOP presidential aide Pete Wehner notes, "now that he finds himself intellectually outmatched by Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, and in a precarious situation when it comes to his re-election, Obama is dropping his past civility sermons down the memory hole. - Mean streak:…
As a major drought settles in on the state of Texas, the main problem with all of last years tea party campaign rhetoric about secession comes home to roost. When you wake up and find that you have already had 7,800 fires burn more than 2,400 square miles of your state and…
For a few years I have refrained in many instances from commenting on the political debate in this country. But the budget discussion this year is beginning to get my need to comment going again. Here is the straw that broke this uncommon, for me, silence... Here are two numbers to keep in…
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Continuing the conversation from earlier in the month... Forget about May flowers, Houston needs April showers to break a severe drought. The latest report from the U.S. Drought Monitor shows 95 percent of Texas now in a drought, including Harris County. For the first time this year, a large chunk…
Time is a luxury you don’t have, until you wake up one morning and realize you have misplaced your life.- Phyllis Theroux on Keeping a Journal - Kindle Blog.
The "efficiency" of globalization is nothing but a cross-your-fingers fantasy.- Jim Hightower | JAPAN'S EARTHQUAKE JOLTS SHREVEPORT.
The fate of wild salmon and a panic over power plants that no longer answer to human commands would not seem to be interlinked. But they are, in the belief that the parts of the world that have been fouled, or found lacking, can be engineered to our standards —…
Reading Mark Bittman's blog this morning I saw this lead-in to a link I had to follow: Here’s the thing. A lot of stuff isn’t directly about food, but TB – that’s tuberculosis – is becoming, has become, antibiotic-resistant. And a lot of antibiotic resistance may be because there are…
General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010. The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2…
