PHX

I head off for a conference in Phoenix today. Three-days, two-bags and a set of complete travel arrangements isn't a bad way to start the occasional work week.

So I dusted off my luggage, shed my coat at the airport, and kissed the faces of my nearests and dearests.

Ignite 3

Have you heard about these Ignite Lincoln events? 

Last month the group asked local residents what they are doing to make Lincoln a little more interesting. The challenge is: they only have five minutes to share their idea. 

Tonight's speakers have been announced and fire things up around 7pm at the Bourbon Theatre (1415 O Street).  

* Steve Ramos—“Pinball: A Game Of Skill” 

* Shane and Sunny Dwyer—“Great Pictures With Any Camera” 

* Jane Garrity—“The Startup Visa: Helping The World’s Entrepreneurs Create American Jobs” 

* Calvin Pappas—“Silicon Valley To The Silicon Prairie” 

* Julie Beno—“The Secret Life Of Librarians” 

* Steve Maly—“Get Real” 

* Jordan Pascale—“The Evolution Of Reporting” 

* Shauna Groenewold—“And They Lived Happily Ever After” 

* Tanner O’Dell—“Attraction of Awkwardness” 

* Shane Farritor—“Becoming More Creative” 

* Brenda Ealey—“Intellectual Freedom” 

* Hope Edwards—“Serve To Lead” 

* Collin Caneva—“Turning A Headwind Into A Tailwind” 

* Brent C. Wilson—“A Foster Family’s Tale” 

* John Coffey—“Nebraska Sucks!” 

* The Colonel Mustard—“Modern Representations of Expressionism: In Freedom of Thought and State of Being” 

The event is general admission and free. Doors open at 6:30pm

Bold Behavior

I've never been the boldest person I know. It's not that I can't put myself out there I just don't find the occasion to do so all that often. I'm more deliberate than I am impulsive, really. Last year, though, I applied for a very occasional, part-time, online writing gig.

What did I have to lose, right? It's not like I was giving up my day-job, or at risk of foreclosure one way or another. The best case scenario would task me with writing more often and give that writing a sense of purpose. The worst that could happen was the editors saying, "No, thanks" to my resume.

And "No, thanks" is what they said, essentially, in the nicest rejection letter I've ever received. I've been shy about mentioning the whole deal. Not because I'm embarrassed so much as because the story doesn't fit the "bold move, big reward" narrative. 

But I'm a believer that taking risks makes the outcome less important. Sometimes bold behavior throws open the possibilities of this life in a way being scared or reclusive closes them off. Opening yourself up to the possibilities is its own reward.

Viola Lessons

See that crack in the lower right? Yep. Ouch. I suppose N got a music lesson of another sort: carry the viola with both hands.

Cabin Fever

N attends the Before & After Program at Prescott. Every year we're tasked with saving wrapping paper, ribbons and bows from our winter holidays for the annual Indoor Snowball Fight.

No snow involved, just wrapping paper. The whole thing resembles family therapy, mixed thoroughly with cabin fever, and drenched in near mayhem!

Stereotypes Are Awesome

Thanks, B.

Keystone

The Obama administration denied a permit for TransCanada’s Keystone XL oil pipeline yesterday. The administration says it needs more time to review a new pipeline route that avoids ecologically sensitive areas of Nebraska.

With all the political posturing around the Keystone XL pipeline, it's a bit like the forest through the trees, and hard to hear the issue past the soundbites. 

I think environmentalists miss the boat when they put an all-or-nothing bid on the pipeline permit. For environmentalists to claim victory over the Keystone XL permit sets ups a false political and environmental end-game. Once the sandhills and groundwater issues in Nebraska get sorted out, denial of this pipeline permit doesn't land the United States any closer to a carbon neutral future.

Republicans similarly miss the boat when they read this permit denial as a signal of the administration's disinterest in creating jobs. The State Department said in a report to Congress yesterday that the pipeline would create 5,000 to 6,000 construction jobs during the two years needed to build the project, based on labor expenses TransCanada included in its application.

That's a lot of good paying jobs to leave on the administration's table. I was unsurprised to learn that administration extended the invitation, and TransCanada quickly accepted the opportunity to reapply with the new route.

The Keystone XL routing process is farther along than any of the alternatives. My guess is TransCanada will squawk, complain, and ultimately build the pipeline along the new, more environmentally sensitive route. The aquifer and sandhills will be better protected, the US construction jobs will be created, the tarsands will feed a global oil market, and the TransCanada investors will make a whole lot of cash.

The need for tarsands oil is too great, Canada's bid for "superpower" status in global oil markets too resolute to abandon the project all together. The latest round of siting review hasn't scared away companies in need of the XL pipeline.

TransCanada's CEO, Russ Girling, told investors Thursday that "[d]espite the delays in permitting, I guess what I'd tell you is that the interest in this project continues to grow."

The Drive Home

Midwestern Buddhism

My friend, D, simplifies the teachings of the Dalai Lama for me:

a. Don't be a douche-bag. 

b. Being a douche-bag will get you nowhere. 

c. Be nice. 

d.Thank the douche-bags in your life for helping you to choose not to be like them.

Books & Blankets

It has been those nights where nobody has felt quite right. That groggy feeling left over at the end of long weekend, or the same sensation that comes with the beginning of a feverish cold. Within these four walls we were early to bed with books and blankets.

Moons of Juipter

http://withfriendship.com/user/sathvi/galilean-moons.php

I spied an image, like this, of the four Galilean Moons of Jupiter from our backyard telescope tonight.

It made me feel small, and properly situated in the universe.

Devil Sent the Rain

Last year I had the best-ever brush with greatness experience while listening to National Public Radio.

From my end of things the scene resembled any random Sunday. I was in the kitchen washing dishes when I turned on the radio. I was standing at the sink, sporting some hot-pink-dish-gloves by the way, trying to keep my hair from falling into my eyes, and tuned into an author interview on NPR. Tom Piazza had published Devil Sent the Rain Music and Writing in Desperate America and was being interviewed as part of a publicity circuit. 

Tom was part of the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop at the same time as I was part of the undergraduate workshop wannabes. And, as commonly occurs, all of the underclass writers knew and admired the members of the graduate workshop. I met Tom, maybe, three times. We talked about music. He was curious about my dad's radio show, and extensive vinyl record collection. 

So I was standing in my kitchen, last year, half listening to this interview and half sorting through the where and the when of things in a mental box labelled "Tom Piazza" in my brain. And the interview pierced the mental cobwebs with this: "[i]t's not just about beautiful sentences. It's not just about catchy song hooks. But it's about something deeper. And it is about the reaching from one individual out to another individual."

I looked up from the dish soap to imagine him talking about this book with a friend in a crowded restaurant. One of those noisy rooms I would be too embarrassed to cross. A moment I wouldn't want to interrupt. But imagined him glancing around, for just a second, wondering why that blonde in the corner looked so familiar?

I winked at the blank wall above my kitchen sink, and I wished Tom Piazza well.

Coal Supply

The demise of coal available for electrical generation from Central Appalachia runs deeper than the series of environmental regulations coming down the pike.

Production in coal has fallen according to recent reports due, in part, to federal rules but also an expanding global market and the depletion of the Central Appalachia's most recoverable deposits. 

The coal companies concur, saying that development could migrate to regions with more accessible reserves and a lower extraction cost. It's easy to use the EPA as a talking point punching bag, but the industry keeps mum about the dwindling coal supply in a region that has been extensively mined. What little coal is left in Central Appalachia is difficult to extract, the mining process is more labor intensive and ultimately less profitable. 

“Based on historical trend, most of the supply reduction is likely to be permanent,” says Arch Coal in a quarterly assessment. “The 2008-2010 drop is shaping up to be the largest fall-off in production yet,” in reference to Central Appalachia. 

The highest levels of unemployment and lowest levels of income for the Appalachian region tend to occur in areas with the greatest amount of mining. Indeed, counties that produce the most coal in Appalachia often are the poorest in the nation. Consider Kentucky, where the coal industry generated a total of almost $528 million in tax revenue in 2006, yet ended up costing the state $642 million in subsidies that same year—a net deficit of $115 million.In Virginia, the seven coal-producing counties pump out more than 40 million tons of coal a year, but they remain among the poorest counties in the state. 

Although Appalachian coal operators like to blame environmentalists or overzealous federal regulators for the industry's decline, they should spend less time flinging blame toward Washington D.C. and more appropriately send it west to the Powder River Basin of Wyoming where coal seams are closer to the surface and easier, less costly to extract.

Short of mountain-top removal or other forms of surface mining in Central Appalachia, I would be surprised to see the production numbers rebound. Since most coal fired generation is configured for a specific type of coal, I would be similarly surprised if coal-fired generation dependent on lignite coal didn't ramp downward.

Game On

This winter we purchased a table-tennis set that can be mounted in the dining room. The first time we played, N looked across the table at her oponent (me) and fiercely said "bring it". 

Well, at that point, someone else was going to have to throw their game and salvage my kid's self esteem. 

I know I'm her mom. I know I should have been proud of her for being so bold. And I was proud of her. I swelled with pride, actually, and then I brought it.

Before Forty

Why that is New Year’s Resolutions never grab for the low hanging fruit? I’m thinking we miss the opportunity to set easily achieved goals. 

We could resolve to watch more television in the New Year, for example, or eat more junk food, or to be cranky and irritable come tax season. Instead we resolve to do difficult things like lose weight or save more. 

I’m in the 'difficult resolution' camp this year I suppose. At the stroke of midnight I resolved to participate in one of the marathon races in the redwood forests of California . So, in one fell swoop, I've managed to resolve to exercise and save more.

Actually this resolution crosses off two line items from my sometime-before-turning-forty life list. And it's a good idea to double-up on that list. I have just a smidge over one year left. 

The marathon (or the half) is a goal that either explains itself or else  falls under the wildly ambitious category and can't be demystified. 

Visiting the redwoods, though, draws from my long standing romantic obsession with trees. I think everybody has a landscape they’re drawn toward. A particular skyline that conjures some sense of feeling centered or well. Some people are pulled toward city-scapes, others have an affinity for white sandy beaches. There is the sort of person that can’t stray too far from the mountains, but I’m a misty morning in the forest sort of a person. 

Last year N & I enjoyed reading Wild Trees by Richard Preston at bedtime. After a particularly lovely section of text where Preston describes the redwood tree canopy N nuzzled into her pillow and said: 

"You want to go there sometime, don't you?" 

"I do. Very much." 

"I can hear that," she said, "in the way your voice sounds soft with all the words." 

The Fat One

Image Credit: http://io9.com/astronomy/

The El Gordo star cluster sat silently at a seven billion light year distance from it's debut at today's meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas.

Not to brag or anything but El Gordo, which means 'The Fat One' in Spanish "...is the most massive, the hottest, and gives off the most X-rays of any cluster found so far at this distance or beyond," says Rutgers astronomer Felipe Menanteau. 

Star clusters or star clouds are groups of stars and this one results from the collision of two smaller clusters several million years ago. El Gordo tips the the scales at two quadrillion times the mass of the sun. A large portion of its mass is in the form of dark matter, an invisible material that pervades the universe. It appears the collision of these two smaller clusters, the genesis event for El Gordo, results in a larger body with the constant pull of normal matter away from its dark counterpart.

Gift Receipt

I was standing in a return line at Target last week. A long line of big, orange carts and people holding gift receipts. I'd left my purse in my car so I couldn't fidget with my phone or blow big, obnoxious bubbles with chewing gum or anything. To abandon my spot in line would bump me back another sixty minutes or so, so I just stood still and waited a long time. 

I thought of those Christmas Shopping headlines I'll read in the check-out lane of the grocer: Parents Start Fist Fight Over The Last Tickle-Me-Elmo. The headlines are a less understandable version of consumer crush than the General Admission Who concert of 1979. 

From what I understand the consumer instinct is sort of forward surge. I heard once that people don't usually get trampled. The movement is vertical. The crowd crushes someone rather than knocking them to the ground. The image is less panic stricken. The victim is lifted off of the ground, possibly the object of desire is within sight, and they’re asphyxiated while standing vertical. 

There is a constant ache we feed with the things we want. We want something, we get it, we want something else. There isn’t an end to it. There is a dull rumble in the pit of your stomach, an unsatisfied center that wants more. 

The preponderance of what we do, what we buy, what we want is with the conviction it will help us feel accomplished or alive. We have glimpses of those feelings. Flickers of it in quiet moments.  But the sensation can't be purchased, so we keep moving to find it. 

With that thought the queue of orange carts moved two-steps forward. I smoothed out my gift receipt. I was the next in line. 

Long Ago & Far Away

Happy 40th, C.

Blinking At My Feet

About a month ago I got a call from a head-hunter.  It was one of those out-of-the-blue experiences. I felt a little like the freckled wallflower of a girl in the corner at the Junior High gym being asked to dance.

There was some swoony feeling of flattery from the impressive listing he made of my resume. The job sounded interesting. Under the right circumstances, it was a something I could imagine being good at.

So we danced a little. Me and this head-hunter. Somebody I had never met before. But he asked and I said OK. 

Three interviews later the music stopped. He gave me a polite wink, told me thank-you, and that I was lovely, and walked away with the noise. So I'm blinking at my feet and clearing my head a little to get reoriented.

Subtlety by Tanya Davis

With What You Have

Thank you, Theodore Roosevelt.

New Year Revelations

• A 20 hr short-weekend getaway excursion could, and to my mind should, require 4 sets of foot apparel. 
• $15 will purchase 14 packs of gum. 
• When N tugs on my arm and asks if she can go and get some gum, I should ask more detailed questions. 
• The sight of all that gum in one’s possession will inspire a sort of hero worship from anyone under the age of thirteen. 
• The indoor playground at Mahoney State Park has no weight, size, or age restrictions. And, yes, the net ladder and the punching bag maze are just as much fun as you’d imagine. 
• I had no idea there was something called the ~suicide dive~ that a grown man could do off the high board at Larsen Pool. It was both hilarious and impressive. 
• My blog needs to split in two. Last year I started posting a series of environmental and industry issue blogs. I wanted to form a writing habit that was focused on issues without being snarky. I’ll need to separate the issue focused write ups out from my more personal posts. 
• Getting your first “tiger” toast at the Landis assemblage to ring in the New Year is a pretty darned good deal.

My Soundtrack

Regina Spektor takes first prize in the all around competition.