The City Mouse in the Country

What you see is the front end of my previous car.   I spoke about buying it just a little over three years ago in an article that I called  Buyer's Remorse .  At the time I lamented having to buy a car in short period of time, due to an engine blowing up, and not being happy overall with my choices. At the time I was hoping to move into a hybrid or even an electric car.   I was not happy with the results as I felt that I got pushed into buying a used Toyota for cash. The other reason I was not happy was because the research I was doing into hybrid and electric cars was not showing much promise at that time.  Electric cars simply did not have the infostructure needed to make buying one worth while.  Three years ago charging stations were few and far between and I am happy to report that several gas stations near me now include several electric car charging ports in addition to the traditional gas pumps.  I take that as a positive. My current j...

I consider myself a smart and well read man, so up until recently I was surprised that I had never heart the the the concept of "This Inevitable Ruin" before.  It's an idea or concept that downfall and destruction is unavoidable.   That chaos is an unchangeable outcome no matter what actions we take.   That what ever victory we obtain will have a high psychological and moral price, and may be short lived.    As my own family, friends, and readers face an unknown future on so many fronts I wonder if  such "Inevitable Ruin" awaits us?  If it awaits our country or even our world? I am not a nihilist  but the concept has been ringing in my ears lately as we seem to careen from one crisis - be it personal, economic, local, state wide, natural or global.   This article has started and stopped many times, yet I can't seem to get it right.  I even played around with an AI program to see if it would help focus my thoughts, it did n...

** The majority of this column was written nearly two years ago, however for a lot of reasons, has been updated and ready for publication now.** Recently a friend of mine and I were talking about some changes in our area.  We have had three solar farms built recently and there is talk about a wind farm. She brought up how wind turbines are responsible for killing birds.  That's a known fact that everyone can agree to, however exactly how many birds and what to do about the bird strikes is up for debate.   This conversation tells us a bit about the type of people we want to be.  We are going to have to make trade offs in the future and we need to determine what those tradeoffs will be.   Wind turbine's are constructed in a location that meets certain criteria to meet it's full effectiveness.   What happens if location X is also the breeding ground of a nearly extinct bird?  Can they still breed if the tower, or solar panel or geothermal ...

In 1906, Alfred Henry Lewis stated, “ There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy. ” His observation has been echoed by people ever since and changed a bit over time, but has remained a stark warning. Only anarchy the way most people think of it rarely occurs.  We have found that people are more likely to band together when their communities face some sort of disaster, be it from war, plague or natural disaster.   We are all too familiar with pictures and videos of communities digging through the rubble of bombed buildings searching for survivors...but how many of us remember the moments during the Covid epidemic of people singing from their balconies?   When you have a community; people will always help people.  Despite these bleak times the things that make us human - our compassion - will see us through. Recently my life changed due to issues with a car .  While, in the scheme of things it was a minor crisis it did make me think if things coul...

Without getting into much detail, I was sitting in a doctor's office  recently waiting on my appointment browsing through "Bon Appetit" magazine.  There was a recipe that caught my eye, which at the time of this writing; I have not tried.   I'll be sure to include the recipe for Tomato Roasted Onions with Paprika on the recipe links page of this blog.  What caught my attention was not only were they using onion as the main dish, but the ease and simplicity of it as well.  It also feeds into something that I've been thinking about recently (pun intended).  That is the very real threat of food scarcity in the near future due to climate change. We are only a super storm or a drought away from disaster and a few years ago some food and other items disappeared off the shelves due to COVID.  Costs for other foods skyrocketed and came down slowly over time.   This food scarcity issue was mostly a temporary one, but it did serve as a wake up call f...

 I was on a bit of a side quest a few days ago and ended up eating dinner by myself at a cute 1950's style diner, complete with the music and red plastic chairs of the period.  I entered and had already resigned myself to a chicken or meat dinner; so imagine my surprise when I was able to order a vegetarian meal.   That's something that I've been trying to do for some time because I know that when I order a vegan/vegetarian dinner at a restaurant; I 'm doing my part to make these items a little bit more accessible to others, as well as helping my overall health and reducing my carbon footprint just a tiny bit more. The waitress and I started chatting about this and she stated she wanted to try more plant based items.  I mentioned one of my favorite companies Quorn .  Either due to luck or more likely the all powerful algorithm; what showed up in my news feed at the diner was that Ron DeSantis, current governor of Florida, was in the process of trying to ba...

  I am not that creative of a person.  Yes, I write and have written some fiction and such but I have more of an analytic mind.  I like to deal with facts, numbers and hard data.  The conclusions that I've reached are driven by columns of pluses and minuses. I'm not going to lie, much of my belief system and philosophical views are based on rational and scientific thinking.   Most, if not all of the the work that I've done all my life was driven by data and information.  When you understand what the data tells you, it affects your world view in a lot of different ways. For example, data from the FBI and other sources state that the most violent city in America is not Chicago or New York; but the tiny city of Bessemer, Alabama.  For a city of only 26,000 people, the chance of you being a victim of a violent crime is 1 in 30.    In a place like New York city, the chances of you being a victim of a violent crime is only 1 in 192. ...

I'm slowly but surely becoming more of a vegetarian.  I find myself ordering plant based dishes whenever possible when eating out.  I've packed myself plant based dishes for lunch. If I'm on my own for dinner I've been known to have some veggie pizza or plant based seafood from time to time.  I don't mind tofu, lentils and chickpeas and even have some falafel and saitan in my freezer although I've no idea what to do with the latter.  I'm sure I'll figure it out.     I've made paneer and used it as a meat substitute .   My diet started to change for several reasons, but reducing my carbon footprint was certainly one of those reasons.  While I'm sure this is going to upset some people, animal welfare really didn't play that much of a role into my decision to go flexatarian . So the question becomes; if I believe in plant based diets and it's ability to reduce my overall impact on this planet.  Why in the hell did I buy one half of a c...

It hasn't been reported much by the national news here in the States; that COP 28, or the 28th meeting of the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Climate Change Conference is currently being held in Dubai, a major oil producing country (more on that in a bit).  It is open to  " Business leaders, young people, climate scientists, Indigenous Peoples, journalists, and various other experts and stakeholders" in the future of our planet.   It's meeting in a variety of ways current ongoing from November 30 through the 12 of December this year.  So as I'm writing this it's still ongoing and already simplifying complex and complimented decisions, creating empty promises, possibly committing or planning to commit fraud and full of controversy. It's been a failure on the environmental front for a variety of reasons. The idea of COP28 is a simple one according to the UN ; it is to allow the major players and countries in the world to...

As I write this the temperature is climbing.  We have a window or two open, knowing that soon enough we will be shutting up the house for the next three months or so we can protect ourselves and our cats against the onslaught of winter.   Our wood stove burned overnight to take the chill out of the air and I found myself buying new boots and gloves and driving home with the windows down. This is the nature of autumn in Western Pennsylvania and as I sip on my pumpkin flavored coffee, I cannot help but praise the fruit of the season, and yes it is a fruit, the simple pumpkin. A few things are still growing in our garden, the last of the herbs and tomatoes...a stray pepper or two that needs to be picked.  Yet I find myself interested in growing pumpkins next year after realizing their potential and that they are high in nutritional value.   It's easy to forget in our modern world just how easy we have it as compared to our great grandparents and their grandparents....

The original post that inspired this piece was removed by the moderators of the Solarpunk subreddit.   In a nutshell it was a comment about how many in the Solarpunk community are simply not grounded in reality.    Or at least that was the way I interpreted it.   The original poster could have simply been trolling the group, but before I get into the meat of this opinion piece I need to take a moment and introduce those that are unsure of what Solarpunk is to some of the concepts of it. Solarpunk is a literary and artistic movement primarily but has grown into a movement that strives for the integration of community, technology and nature.  It's a hopeful future that imagines renewable energy as our primary sources of power; this includes geothermal , wave energy and other sources as well as solar and wind power.   What I love about the movement is that it encourages action through a variety of means and understands that change, real change, requires...

 Generally speaking I don't trust the government when it comes to climate.  Here in America we basically have an Oligarchy - where a few rich asssholes are more concerned with maintaining their own power than doing what is best for the country overall.   This has not given me much hope for the future.  In fact, I've reached the conclusion that we simply will not be able to relay on the government going forward.  I'm not a doomsayer but the government at the highest levels simply isn't functioning the way it should and because of that it's simply not going to be able to handle the environmental and other climate related challenges in the future - such as massive immigration caused by failing crops.  Due to their age, most of our leaders are living in a world that no longer exists. So, why does President Biden's American Climate Corps pigued my interest? Two reasons really, it is an understanding that we have to do something sooner than later.  Wel...