Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Misc.

The "Dust Bowl" Documentary on PBS was worth watching.  Lots of messages there, but mainly one that humans caused it by destructive farming techniques.  They kept themselves in denial for a long time but finally owned up to the responsibility.  I wonder if the fossil fuel boys could ever do that.  One timely segment in the series was the plague of jack rabbits that destroyed everything that was green in the dust bowl because of the eradication of coyotes. Maybe these 'macho' coyote hunters might think about that a little before killing for joy again.

John Fleck had a good and scary article on our drought in the Journal today.  I can actually remember those dust storms we had here in the 1950s that were caused by the drought.  And now they are saying the current one we are experiencing when added to climate change will be the worst in recorded history.

I also remember back in the 50's when our family doctor would visit our home when some one was ill.  Well, my surgeon who lives nearby came over on Sunday evening on his bicycle so he could check out my new knee.  I was supposed to see him in a couple of weeks but he will be gone all of December getting his own hip surgery.  He called before hand to see if he could bring us the last of his tomatoes from his garden.  What a great guy.  Worthy of a Rockwell painting.  He said I was progressing well.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm glad to hear things are progressing well. I guess the second one will go even easier now that you've been through it once. And know to go easy on the polka dancing.

I've read that most of our water goes to agriculture. I've also read our irrigation methods are wasteful of water. I know people study this kind of thing, I assume the people who own that valuable agricultural land have political power, I know there are less wasteful ways to irrigate, I assume there would be a lot of investment needed to look into how to deal with it and to deal with it. Sounds like someone, government, could be spearheading a coordinated effort to adapt to drought.