The Verizon Big Coal Alliance

Hope #Verizon customers are speaking out to their phone company about its environmental misdeeds >> http://tr.im/BGbt. This is an old story but has Verizon changed? This needs to be continually voiced until Verizon ceases their support of mountain top removal by the coal companies and their friends stop destorying mountains >> http://tr.im/CmMT.

Verizon sponsors climate-change-denying mountaintop-removal rally? | Grist

NRDC: No More Mountaintop Removal

∆≈/∆±

Arrow-headed Flatworm

An arrow-headed flatworm/planaria found by Suzy and I in a nearby park yesterday.


Spanish 25 escudos coin for scale.

It certainly is not as long as this one Freda and I found in the same park two years ago.


About ten inches in length.

An interesting animal.

∆≈/∆±

New Twitter Avatar

Now for something completely different. This photo is the closest thing I have to a high school senior picture.


Check out the suit and tie. That's how one traveled in those days.

Our family moved to Kano, Nigeria the summer before my senior year. I completed my last year in high school through correspondence studies while living in Kano. It was a blast. I may have missed all the senior year activities but I would not trade it for the time I spent in Kano. What could be better than to spend a year in a totally foreign culture at such an impressionable age.

Given Nigeria was a former British colony, still with close ties to the mother country, and The Beatles were in the middle of their career, it was a teenager's paradise. We, there were six kids about the same age, would listen to "Pick of the Pops" on the Beeb (BBC) and get the latest news about music in England. Each week we would go into town and check out the latest British record releases at the Kingsway department store. At Christmas, the English kids came home from school in England and brought with them the brand new "Beatles For Sale" LP. Did I mention heaven?

The photo was taken on a Seine River cruise in Paris. I was on my way back to the States to attend university. I have the fondest memories of that year. One of the most wonderful years of my life.

∆≈/∆±

Bloomin' Rebloomers

We are excited. Two of our rebloomer iris are reblooming, even if Suzy sat on one and broke the stalk. The growers said they have yet to have this happen on their farm for this variety. Not the dog sitting part.


A reblooming "Midnight Caller".

Will be getting ready to plant our newly arrived iris in several weeks.

∆≈/∆±

"Paul Robeson" Heirloom

We enjoyed our first "Paul Robeson" heirloom tomato today. It was very yummy.


Heirloom, the only way to go.

∆≈/∆±

LibriVox Podcasts

Recently I have listened to #podcasts from LibriVox on my #iPodTouch... "Princess of Mars"-Edgar Rice Burroughs, "Gulliver's Travels"-Jonathan Swift, "An Antarctic Adventure"-Jules Verne, "Captains Courageous"- Rudyard Kipling, "Captain Blood"-Rafael Sabatini, "Murders of the Rue Morgue"-Edgar Allan Poe, "The Daffodil Murder" by Edgar Wallace. Just began "Allen Quartermain"-H. Rider Haggard. Try it. You can follow #Librivox at @librivox on Twitter.

∆≈/∆±

Not That Common

Clouds in July. A strange site in this neck of the woods.




Something on the way.

∆≈/∆±

Books of June

June was a busy month for reading. I finished four books: "Friends in High Places" and "Fatal Remedies", by Donna Leon, "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton and Frederick Forsyth's "The Afghan". Donna Leon's books follow Commissario Guido Brunetti as he fights crime and the customs of Venice. "State of Fear" concerns itself with the opposing forces of global warming/climate change as Crichton challenges us to question who we can believe. The workings of al Qaeda are explored in Forsyth's "The Afghan". June was an interesting and educational month thanks to these very enjoyable and readable titles.

∆≈/∆±

Mink and Otters

Until the other day, we had not seen any signs of mammal activity at the Watson Hollow pond. One morning we observed what looked like a mink swim out of the cattails and across the pond. That was exciting.


Mink running along the bank of the Watson Hollow pond. 2008

We have not seen any otters at Watson Hollow going on two summers. Watson Hollow was dredged about 18 months ago and that may have something to do with the change in wildlife activity here.


Approximately nine otters enjoying the waters of a Watson
Hollow pond one week after a fire blackened an adjoining field.
Interestingly, the otters' toilet area was not burned. 16 Aug 2007

Nature is not static and changes will always occur but it seems we tend to get upset when those changes happen during our lifetime.

∆≈/∆±

Grass Fire

We had a grass fire about 3/4 of a mile from us this afternoon. We just happened to have turned on the television to check the weather when we heard the report of the fire. Like moths to the flame we drove over to see what was going on. By the time we got there the fire crews were in a mop up operation.



The video shows that several homes here in Trilogy at Rio Vista were in some danger. The golf course grounds crew turned on the irrigation system to help quell the flames before more damage was done.

Thanks to several city and volunteer fire departments for a job well done. They included the Rio Vista Fire Department, the Montezuma Fire District and the Isleton Fire Department.

Let's keep the summer fire free.

∆≈/∆±