Beth's Everything Blog

Sinuses bothering you? Got allergies? The warmer it gets, the worse you’re going to feel. For global warming nonbelievers, maybe this should be a final wake up call. Scientists vow that climate change is real. Higher concentrations of CO₂ in the atmosphere mean speedier plant growth. Warmer temperatures mean earlier allergy season. Last year, spring arrived 14 days earlier than 20 years ago. This year, our daffodils bloomed in February.

I’m an avowed believer in global warming, but Bob Lutz, former vice president of General Motors, isn’t. Last week on Bill Maher’s show he said he bought a house in the Florida Keys. He thinks it was Al Gore who predicted “it’s supposed to be under water – three years ago.” I guess if you’re rich enough, and famous enough, and old enough (Bob Lutz is 80), you can gamble like that, but here are the scientific facts, (and if you can’t believe science, what can you believe?)

Last year, the average global temperature was 14.52 Celsius (58 degrees Fahrenheit). According to NASA scientists, this was the 9th warmest year in 132 years, with each decade getting hotter. It was also the second wettest year on record. While some places had too much rain, others didn’t get enough causing 10 billion dollars worth of damage in the United States alone.

Scientists believe global warming is the cause of trouble in spots like Syria-Turkey and India-Pakistan due to major food and water shortages and dislocation of large numbers of people.  I hope the United States Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas which trains a lot of our military leaders, is taking notice.

Is it already too late to halt the onset of global warming?  Some people debunk the whole thing. (see Bob Lutz above) Others like John Holdren, a climate expert at Harvard, says it has already happened and makes more sense to learn to live with its consequences. According to him, “We basically have three choices—mitigation, adaption and suffering. We’re going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be. The more mitigation we do, the less adaption will be required and the less suffering there will be.”

So-you sinus and allergy suffers-it’s best you not take any long walks this spring or in the springs to come. Stock up on tissues and plan to do a lot of reading, a good thing for my Write Brain Trust ebook group.

Republican candidates for President of the United States

Rick Santorum

Last  Sunday Santorum told Meet The Press host David Gregory that separation of church and state was “not the founders’ vision.”

Santorum also said he  “almost threw up” after reading JFK’s 1960 speech in which he declared his commitment to the separation of church and state.

And here are a few more things  Rick Santorum has said.

He blamed “radical feminists” for forcing women to work, and questioned the need for two-working-parent households. He has compared homosexuality to incest and polygamy and suggested that Boston liberals were to blame for the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. (Tell that to the boys abused for years by a priest or priests in Kansas City.)

Newt Gingrich

”I have two grandchildren — Maggie is 11, Robert is 9. I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”

Mitt Romney

“Look, I was pro-choice. I am pro-life. You can go back to YouTube and look at what I said in 1994. I never said I was pro-choice, but my position was effectively pro-choice. I changed my position. And I get tired of people that are holier-than-thou because they’ve been pro-life longer than I have.”

Who are these guys?Where do they come from? One has to wonder; Are they the best we can do?

This amendment to our constitution is so important that the writers made it # 1. If you are an American citizen, your life depends on it.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Maybe the candidates should read it too.

THAT THING IS WALKING!

Theo Jansen? You say you have never heard of him? Yes you might have seen his work but not connected an artist’s name to it. Jansen is a Dutch artist working in Delft and he is what is known as a single name artist in Europe. Everyone refers to him simply as Theo, pronounced Tayo. For the past 22 years he has been constructing animals that can walk on the beach powered only by the wind. The works are known as Strandbeests or “beach animals” in Dutch. The best description of them is that they are many legged creatures that seem as at home on a beach as crabs or sandpipers. They seem to fit in perfectly next to the waves and the sky as the wind makes them dance. The primary art medium that Theo uses is an aggregation of stiff plastic tubes although he also uses plywood and batwing like sails. The plastic tubes are well known in Holland because all electric wiring must be enclosed in them.

Theo’s creatures have never been brought to America but there are plans to bring the work to New York. His fans have been working with the Netherlands Consul General director of art, architecture and design. The work has received extraordinary press on You Tube where it has had four million hits. In it his beests run and walk along the beach as though they were high stepping colts out for a prance. His first recognition came from a flying saucer he created in 1980. This was plastic sheeting filled with helium on a light frame which he launched over Delft. The device emitted outer space beeps and terrorized and astounded all of Delft in a performance akin to Orson Welles 1939 War of the Worlds. The piece looked and behaved as a flying saucer might with the powerful winds making it hover and then dart in and out of the clouds. The saucer then vanished in the direction of Belgium. All kinds of fears filled the citizens of Delft and Theo’s fame was established.

Theo studied physics at the university level but he is uncertain as to whether he is an artist, a sculptor, or an engineer. Theo is extremely handsome with long white hair and deep blue eyes. At 63 he is a striking figure and this certainly adds to his celebrity. All of the works continue their existence in videos that show them being created and then striking out across the beaches with their creator in full view. The strandbeests continue their celebrations in videos that record their travels. One art critic has noted that he is really a landscape artist whose works celebrate and point up to the viewer the classical dune, sea, and sky of Holland. The works are intricate and amazing and have been exhibited in Munich, London, Taipei, Madrid, Tokyo and Seoul in art museums and science centers. Theo states that he could care less in which of these places his work appears.

Theo is ambitious; he is attempting to create works that are beautiful but also depict the actual fact that the seas are rising. Holland is the lowland that has been created by dikes; it will be the land most likely to disappear first should climate change continue. Perhaps this is his commentary on the future. In a way the beests are almost wild new kinds of windmills where nature and technology and warnings meet. People who have gathered to watch an installation in Holland have been astounded and it is regularly commented upon when they laugh and shout “That thing is walking!”

The thought of sending you a photograph entered our mind, but you really must see the strandbeests moving and walking across the sands. And so for this reason we suggest that you google you tube — Theo Jansen Strandbeests and see them for yourselves. Just remember you heard it here first! =

Have you heard of CAFO? It stands for Confined-Animal-Feeding-Operation.

Some years ago, our farm neighbor gave us a call. His sow had farrowed  and she didn’t have enough teats to feed all her brood. Would we like the runt? Our then twelve year old daughter went wild with excitement. Of course she wanted the piglet. So on a moment’s notice, we went into the agribusiness even though we knew nothing about raising pigs.

Lynn named the baby Trefa, a take off on the Yiddish word tref which means unclean. At the time we thought it was pretty funny. We kept the pig on the screened-in porch and nursed her from a bottle every four hours. It was during the school year, and no one was home during the day to feed Trefa, so Lynn took her to school and left her in the nurse’s office. Each student nurse assistant got to give the piglet a bottle. In the next few weeks everything about her grew very fast. The school principal, who up until then had been very indulgent, call and said Trefa couldn’t come to school anymore.

After a few days at home, we totally understood why. Trefa’s back porch stank. Everything within twenty yards of her stank. Suddenly, we no longer thought her name was so funny.

In the past few years, worldwide demand for pork has risen almost 50%. Understandably, Kansas with its vast amount of land mass used for agriculture, would like to be part of the solution. The question is: can agribusinesses raise huge numbers of animals in a humane way while protecting the environment and the workers who care for them?

And why has Governor Brownback already opposed an Environmental Protection Agency law that would require Confined-Animal-Feeding-Operations (CAFOs) to report directly to the EPA?

Seaboard Farms, located in Johnson County, Kansas has recently obtained approval to build a Confined-Animal-Feeding-Operation (CAFO) that will house 264,000 hogs in Greeley County, Kansas located just east of Colorado and north of Oklahoma. It will be the second largest such operation in the country.

As to Treifa, we took her back to the country and returned her to our farmer friend. But if one little pig can produce so much odor (and that which causes the odor), imagine what 264,000 Trefa’s will do. I’m just saying . . .

If there was ever any doubt that women have power, it ended with the Susan B. Komen debacle. For years, we’ve run in races and worn pink, but when we discovered the SBK foundation had clay (and political) feet, we rebelled. All that time we thought we were supporting the fight against breast cancer, but when Karen Handel joined the board with her own political agenda, she changed the dynamics. It should remain as a good lesson for Susan B. Komen’s sister, Executive Director Nancy Brinker.

What is it with men and power? We’re still hearing about President Kennedy, this time from some sixty year old woman who claims she was a nineteen year old Whitehouse aide when he had his way with her. Men say it’s testosterone. Women say it’s self-indulgence. (Calista. Beware. Isn’t that how you got Newt?) I’m sick to death of the rankling in Washington, tired of congressman and senators acting like two year olds, hate the ugly speeches, nasty tirades, gross commercials. (Have you heard Randall Terry’s? Ugh!)

Think what we could do if we backed our own candidate for president. We’re too late for 2012, but how about 2016? Yes, yes. I know. We missed our chance with Hillary, but she came with so much heavy baggage (Bill). And I know just the person:

ELIZABETH WARREN.

President Obama wanted her to head up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: main job  . . “police credit lenders and prevent consumers from unwittingly signing up for risky loans.”  The Republicans, scared of this brilliant, charming, honest, knowledgeable woman, blocked her nomination. She would have been perfect, but the Repubs don’t want anyone protecting us consumers. (The office still has no director and we still have no protection.)

Elizabeth’s qualifications are awesome. She is a chief advocate for banking reform. Emily’s List and a National Nurses Union are already backing her. Read about her at this website or one of the hundreds of others you’ll find on your browser.

Meanwhile,  she is running for Teddy Kennedy’s old senate seat in Massachusetts against Scott Brown, who modeled and posed nude for the centerfold of Cosmopolitan Magazine in the 1980′s to make money toward paying for his Boston College law degree. While a state senator, he voted for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and opposed the repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. More importantly, his election to the U.S. Senate tipped the delicate balance of the Senate, though he has done little else.

Women in Massachusetts, unite. Get out and campaign for Elizabeth. The rest of us will help by sending donations to her campaign. She is someone who will make you proud, and she will make a perfect first woman President of The United States of America.