The City Mouse in the Country

 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 ban lab grown m

  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.   The reason is because of population density.

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 co

Even though we are nearly two weeks away from the New Year, I've decided to try and write what has traditionally been the last post of the year now.  For me it's always been a brief review of what I've covered, accomplished and achieved in the past year.   Like the above meme says....I made it through. Maybe it's due to seasonal depression, maybe it's due to my writing this blog for slightly over three years and my audience is still in the hundreds, not the thousands like previous blogs have been but I think this blog may be coming to an end. Although the low readership that I have could be due to the blogging platform I use, which is neither supported by nor promoted by Google anymore.  However I love the ease and simplicity of this particular platform and see no reason to change it at this time. This lack of comments and low readership are making me wonder if it's worth it.  Plus, if I'm being honest with myself, this blog has lacked focus as I seem to be

 First off, I don't write fiction.   However it occurred to me that what I've been writing about lately is difficult to get our heads around.  Climate change is really happening in today's world, and at the risk of hyperbole, it really is end of the world type stuff. I needed to find a way to break it down to the indivdual level.   That thinking, and some natural curiosity about the New Madrid fault lin e got me thinking about how easily things could go bad for a society if a series of natural disasters hit in rapid succession.    Thanks to this writing prompt, something started to form in my head.   Please keep in mind that this is the first draft and it deals more with the themes I'm hoping to explore.   It does not have a current title. So without wasting time...here we go. The world, at least as most people understood it, ended on a rather ordinary Tuesday afternoon.    I remember it was a perfectly ordinary day. Before we can talk about what we built, what we

I've started and stopped this article several times now as I assessed my mental state over the last couple of weeks.  However I did not publish anything because all the previous drafts made me think that I was whining. Part of that "whining" was deciding to leave my job as of September 5, 2023.  It's easy to blame someone else, and the company I left does have some serious issues that they simply are not addressing, but the final responsibility for leaving is mine.  I just felt like I had nothing to contribute nor was the company addressing my needs and wants.    Money really isn't everything. I quickly interviewed for several jobs, but in the end decided to take something "completely different" for a bit.  I can always go back into insurance and banking...but my needs and priorities have changed.   In fact, I was offered a "Green" job with an energy company that really excited me.  However when I stopped and thought about what I would be doin

A few days ago we had a series of very hot days, where the record for the hottest day was set and then broken the very next day.  Here in the United States we have various parts of the country that are under Heat Domes and other weather conditions have resulted in temperatures in the triple digits. One of the reasons that my wife and I moved to the country was to avoid increasing heat and humidity that we were experiencing in Florida.  However in moving to the country we bought a home that did not have central air or heat.  We were lucky enough to adapt to both extremes in a variety of ways and have adopted many of the concepts discussed here.  I have covered the topic of staying warm without central heat before in this blog and decided that I should talk about staying cool without central air this time around.  As the temperature rises in the future it's going to affect how we work, play, eat and even the decisions that we make .  It's also going to affect the most disenfran

  Where I live in Western Pennsylvania was mostly spared the worst of the soot and smoky skies caused by the recent Canadian wild fires.   However it still managed to blanket most of the North East in some of the worst air quality we've ever had . In some ways it was a taste of our near future. It's just one more thing that is piling up on the scale leading to an eventual tipping point.   It's not all doom and gloom of course...but it is mostly doom as study after study after study are all pointing to a difficult and deadly future. Now...that being said I'm still an optimist about the future.   I don't believe we are going to prevent "the worst" from occurring.   I do believe however that we can do what we can to at least delay the worst of it.  We are still going to have to deal with global warming and all the consequences it brings; from submerged coastlines to super storms to the forced mass migration of people. Delaying the worst of it gives us time to

Life can be stressful here in modern America.  Sadly we have become a country where a parent may worry that they will never see their child again as they board that school bus or go out with friends.  Not to mention the additional stress of worrying about our countries direction; and the direction of the planet, as a whole. We live in trying times, but worrying about the future all the time is only a recipe for sleepless nights and ulcers.  We all need that proverbial margarita by the pool sometimes.  In many ways I looked forward to taking the past week off and traveling to Niagara Falls and upstate New York with my wife. It has been nearly 30 years since either of us had been to the Falls, and on the way up we passed solar farm after solar farm and more than a few windmills generating power, we even passed a hydroelectric plant.   Green power is the future and in a way my heart sung that so much renewable power was being generated. However I also thought about the gas that we were bu