Do The Math Tour

This Saturday Bill McKibben and 350.org stop in Omaha as part of an interactive-speaking tour, titled "Do The Math," which essentially jumpstarts the next wave of environmental action on climate change.

Tickets are $10 each. Doors open at six, lecture starts at 7pm. C'mon over to the Joslyn Art Museum and check it out.

Veggie Tacos

I thought I'd check out the Thursday Taco deal from Pepe's on my way home. Fifty-cent tacos sold as they last. You in?

Winter Swim

We ate dinner early. With daylight cut short and the winter night feeling especially long, we ate dinner early.
Hot lasagne, steaming from the oven.  It was good. 

Then the dishes all rinsed and set, tidily, in the sink. 

Homework done. 

We went swimming.
The pool was heated to perfection.
Practically had the place to ourselves so we splashed around and played more than we swam really.
Laughed and sang in loud voices.
Suddenly the dark night didn't feel so long.
The cold weather didn't feel like it was closing in. 

Tomorrow morning I'll wake up and my skin will still smell of chlorine.

Thanksgiving Fieldwork

I'm a frequent viewer of this GOOD community website. It serves some visceral need I have for community action and good news.
 

Today it offered another from it's monthly assignment series Field Work which, this time, asks people to photograph the aftermath of your Thanksgiving meal. 

I think of the way my aunt Jinx (our Thanksgiving hostess) is banished from her own kitchen while the rest of us clean pots and pans. Or the way my family goes bowling each Thanksgiving after the dishes are done. 

Whatever your Thanksgiving tradition, I hope you'll consider photographing its aftermath and uploading the image to their twitter feed or Instagram @GOOD with the hashtag #Pictureshow. 

Keystone XL

One-hundred ninety-four miles of the Keystone XL pipeline route runs through Nebraska. I was combing through the preliminary report from Nebraska’s Department of Environmental Quality. 

Environmental Quality was tasked, by the Nebraska Legislature, with evaluating the environmental, economic, social and other impacts of the proposed pipeline; determining if the rerouted alignment avoids the sandhills; and providing the opportunity for public review and comment on the pipeline route. 

The final public hearing is scheduled in Albion, Nebraska on December 4th, 2012. In order to assess the impacts I’ve pulled out some of the pipeline numbers: 

• 9 Nebraska Counties 
• 63 acres of wetlands (various types) 
• 163 waterbody crossings 
• 6 major watersheds
• Approximately 1,500 acres of combined ag, grass and rangeland habitat 
• 270 construction related jobs created 
• 110 annual jobs created 
• $37,200 average annual income for pipeline construction laborers
• $31.4 million infusion to the Nebraska economy from construction 
• $278 million in economic benefit to Nebraska from construction 
• 24 hour SCADA monitoring of pipeline for any indication of spills 
• 20 miles the maximum distance between Main Line Valves (MLVs) which can be manually or remotely closed in order to isolate leaks. Additional MLVs located at pump stations, major river crossings and upstream of any sensitive waterbodies. 
• 50 year lifespan of pipeline operations

Leonid Meteor Shower, 2012

Stolen from Facebook. Thanks, J.

Occasionally the Leonid meteor shower could be better described as a meteor storm. Thousands of meteors per hour can shoot across the sky. Grab a blanket,  your warm gloves and check it out.

America Recycles Day

75% of Nebraska's landfill waste could have been recycled.
Enough said.

Moments That Surprised Me

• My mother asked for help in buying tickets from an online scalper to last night’s Bruce Springsteen concert. 
• Paying the registration fee for next week’s tennis tournament. 
• The Final Jeopardy question which referenced, by name, my favorite used bookstore on the planet. 
• My running pace picked up over the past year. 
• That hole that was dug out from the side of my house is all patched up.
• Last Sunday I hosted a lovely gathering of my occasional soup clubbers. 
• A question I posed to Google responds: Loverboy. Yep, Loverboy. The band. 
• There is a long list of arguable points to justify why oatmeal cookies make the perfect breakfast. 
•  A group of ten year olds tasked me with putting the Fonz into context. 
• I’ve been reading Outside Magazine recently. Live Bravely.
• British Petroleum agreed to plead guilty to a series of fourteen criminal charges and pay $4.5 billion in fines and penalties for the fatalities associated with the Deep Horizons drill rig explosion two years.

Climate Reality

Thanks, Al.

Click here and check it out. A 24-hour global webcast focused on Climate Change. A collective conversation about how to push back against the global agenda fighting the most critical threat this planet may ever face.

Rrrribbitt

Photo Credit: ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star

I'm headed off to the first of a series of FrogWatch trainings tonight. 

Frogs and toads are indicator species on the health of an environment. Perhaps because they live "on the edge" between water and land, and have semi-permeable skin, frogs and toads are very sensitive to pollution and other environmental changes. They're also rapid responders to climate change. 

Worldwide amphibian and frog species are declining in number so FrogWatch sets out to monitor their populations. I'm told that the most effective way to track changes in frog and toad populations is to listen for their calls during mating season in the springtime.

I'll spend this winter coming up to speed on wetland ecology, amphibian behavior, and...that's right...being able to identify frog calls. Next year I'll go out to a local pond twice a week, just after sunset, track and upload a description of what I hear.

Soft Fascination

I've spent this year purposefully living outside more often.

Less time in front of glowing screens. Less of my brain preoccupied with synchronized calendars and overly-ambitious-to-do list. I wanted to do more. I wanted to worry less. Spend more time with dirty fingernails, less time inside my head. 

So I spent this year outside noticing tree stands and moonlight, leaf veins and fireflies. I watched pine needles fall into ponds. I sat and listened to night noises.

Leafing through a magazine yesterday I found the name for this habit. It's called soft fascination. That washed clean feeling that comes from noticing something like rainfall or a sunset. Something too lovely, too awe-inspiring for your brain to get caught up with whatever else is going on.

The quieting effect that being outside had on my brain. Strangely enough, I found it was entirely disconnected from my life's circumstance. Good day, bad day, feeling fabulous or a failure I found that if I noticed enough of the world that lives and breathes with or without me just being outside had virtually the same effect. I felt small or still and particularly well placed.

Butterfly's Day Out

A yellow butterfly flitted around my sandalled feet today. 

It was as though she was lonely. 

Like she wanted me to play chase-me games across the grass.

This late in the year, the weather so warm, it's as if we were living outside on borrowed time. 

I giggled and chased after her a little while. 

My feet rushed with all of the sweet feelings I have for this particular song.

Last Saturday's Hike

Fontenelle Forest - Fall Back

Good Riddance

Just as I was feeling threadbare with this election cycle my kid took an interest in politics. 

She stirred up dinner table conversations about the Presidential contest, Natural Resource District Board races, state legislative seats, stormwater bond issues State Supreme Court appointments. Unsurprisingly she had questions and offered up opinions about all of it.

We were talking last night about the tipping point of this particular election cycle. Past the 2012 General Election pollsters will no longer be able to group “minority voters”. There’s a particular distaste I’ve had for the sentimental media message that Governor Romney offers up the last campaign of its sort. That there won’t be a Presidential candidate that unabashedly courts white voters to the exclusion of other groups. 

I’m not the least bit nostalgic about it.

My hope is that the strategy and message employed by Governor Romney is retired due to natural causes. Less a matter of demographics and voting blocks. More a reflection of this campaign's stance on climate, immigration, women's health, and the 47% of Americans...

The white voter campaign strategy offers the weaker argument, the dimmer future, the narrower alternative.

We clinked glasses around my dinner table last night upon the occasion of this 'last campaign of it's sort' and said: Good riddance.

Indoor Cloud

Photo Credit: Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk

As a life long cloud gazer I was awestruck to find out about the indoor cloud creations of Dutch artist Berndnut Smilde earlier this year. 

Take some detailed readings of a room's temperature and humidity, add fog from a smoke machine, some back-lighting, no small amount of magic and...poof...indoor cloud. 

It dissipates after just a few moments.

I get a lift from knowing certain things are out there in this world. That they exist. They're part of the same space we walk around in. This indoor cloud was like that for me.

Person You Hide

Thanks, D.