Meanwhile - I see my video of Mr. Greitens (Former Missouri Gov. and now Senate candidate) announcing RINO hunting season has been blocked. Simply outrageous!
After stopping in Kentucky, my visit with my youngest daughter in Cincinnati was a fun time to recall some family favorite music.
These are two of the later (and younger) guys to play parts in our favorite musical - Les Mis.
Played in an informal venue and with different instrumentation - but always good. These two also do a great job with "Empty Chairs at Emptry Tables" also from Les Mis.
Beautiful lily, Nina! Was it hard work achieving those school colors?
Thanks for sharing the duos, Dave. I love the way these two amazing singers interact as friends as they blow you away with the blend of their voices and talent.
By this time of year our neighborhood is usually visited by many newborn mule deer fawns, exploring, frolicking and nesting in the sunny and shaded areas of Rockrimmon. It is an annual event that I always enjoy capturing in photographs.
But this year is different. For reasons unknown to me I have seen but one doe with her twin fawns. I suspected that this might be the case as this past spring I saw no pregnant does wandering through our yard. My wife, Janet, suggested that they might be spending more time in the foothills west of us since there has been significant vegetation growth there since the Waldo Canyon Fire of 2012. Hopefully, that is the case.
I know of no disease outbreaks so far that would contribute to low birthrates in our deer population nor any increase of predators that would have had an impact. The past winter was one of our drier ones and that could have played a role.
The deer population in Clintonville has been expolding in the past 5-7 years. Just in the past two months, I have nearly missed hitting a deer on two separate occasions driving home on Calumet between E.N. Broadway and Clinton Heights. They are frequenty photographed in a Ville backyard and posted on FB,
They love those verdant Clintonville ravines and I have seen them roaming about on some of my trips back to Columbus. But they do tend to wander away and will be found in yards and other open places. There are some cute videos on YouTube (some filmed here in Rockrimmon https://www.youtube.com › watch?v=N2lm2e_29f4 ) of fawns being lifted out of window wells and returned to their mommas.
There is an article in the July issue of National Geographic about "urban wildlife" and it's effect on both humans and the animals. It mostly focuses on coyotes in Chicago but touches on other species and how they have adapted to city living as well as being killed from automobile encounters. Some coyotes there have even learned to cross streets only on green lights!
In our neighborhood most residents are very cautious and aware that deer can run out into the streets at any time of the year, day or night. Fortunately, collisions have been rare. One must be especially cautious of well-armed antlered bucks during the rutting season.
Although New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the nation (with Rhode Island a close second), much of the state is rolling and rural. I l live in a small town (Pennington - population 2000) in one of those ”rural” areas and deer in our area are utterly out of control. I have deer in my backyard virtually every day and at times I’ve seen groups of more than a dozen. I try to garden but the deer wipe out most of the flowers and vegetables I like to grow. Nina's red and gold daylily wouldn't stand a chance nor do crocuses, tulips, hostas, black-eyed Susans, purple coneflowers, mums, or tomatoes.
We see deer regularly on the town streets and every few years in the surrounding township there’s a (human) fatality when a car hits a deer and the deer comes over the hood and through the windshield, or the driver swerves and hits a tree or telephone pole.
I’ve been active in a local open space preservation group for the past 35 years and we recently did a very sophisticated deer population survey (including using drones and IR cameras) and found that in our one square mile town the population is typically about 100 deer (that’s 100 deer per square mile). In the surrounding more rural Hopewell Township, the population density is pretty much the same. In other words, the deer do just as well living with humans as they do in the “wild”.
Our local forests are not regenerating as the deer devour all the tree saplings. I hate to be a downer, but each year our tree-hugging preservation group recruits hunters to hunt on our preserves and we require them to report on their harvest. If they don’t kill enough deer, we recruit different hunters the next year.
As long as we’re talking about my adopted hometown of Pennington, NJ, I have a “local girl makes good” story. Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified today at the Jan. 6 committee hearings is from Pennington and graduated from Hopewell Valley Central High (a mile from where I live, the school my three kids graduated from, and where my wife Carol taught for seven years when we first moved here in the early 70’s).
For a 25 year old, I thought she was incredibly poised while giving damning testimony against her former bosses. So I guess I forgive her just a bit for her bad judgment in choosing to work for this crew (Ted Cruz, Mark Meadows, and ultimately Trump) in the first place.
Some have characterized these hearings as a partisan witchhunt. The partisan charge is undeniably true as virtually all the sworn (and damning) testimony has been by Trump’s own people.
I’m not sure why Cassidy (apparently at the last minute) agreed to testify publicly. But as thanks for doing the right thing I wonder how many hundreds (thousands?) of death threats she’ll get.
The natural world has always been changed by civilization and the deer problem is a perfect example. Wildlife management programs on various levels deal with these kinds of problems but are never perfect.
In all ecosystems including forests and open areas, the carrying capacity ("k-factor") of any species is determined by many things such as weather, food supplies, predators and other elements. It would appear that in the case of your city and the neighboring county a new k-factor for the deer population has - at least temporarily - been established. I do not know what kind of predators (not including motor vehicles!) you have in your area to help control the deer population. Gardens of flowers and vegetables, trash, mice, rats, pets and other sources of food contribute to the emergence of wildlife into our urban living areas.
Living with wildlife is becoming more widespread and lots of people enjoy it, but in many cities it has become more of a nuisence and a danger than a pleasure.
I, for one, cannot imagine not having wildlife visiting our yard here in Colorado. And we don't have a garden.
By the way, my record was 22 deer napping in our backyard a few summers ago!
I have been busy trying to dry the waves of crokodile tears I shed for the last two days over the video of the brutal "attack" on Rudi in the grocery store.
... "like a shot in the back",
I'm sure you've all seen the store cam video by now. Lucky, if he wasn't such a "healthy 78 year-old I would'a fallen and cracked my skull".
Getting back to the spellbinding roll I was on with Les Mis music, here is a version of another of my favorite songs from the play - "One Day More". This is not an earlier "East End" cast, nor is it a later "Broadway" cast. I think maybe it's a lesser known mis-cast version.
I have just introrduced you to the Marsh Family of England. They are sort of an addiction of mine. They started during the early pandemeic lockdowns and just kept going. They have dozens - (I think) - of these clever spoofs. You might also enjoy "Under Pressure" (Queen or David Bowie) and "All the Prices Have Gone Up" - a Meat Loaf parody. They also do Elton John and so on, and so on.
* I almost forgopt another favorite - "Totally Fixed Where We Are" (Total Eclipse of the Heart)
(BTW - "takeaway" is British for "carry-out" or "home delivery", and cook them "tea" means cook them dinner)
Families still shattered a year after LAPD fireworks explosion
One year ago, the Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad botched the detonation of a fireworks cache discovered in South Los Angeles. The resulting blast injured 17 people and badly damaged many homes. More than 80 residents were displaced.
Displaced residents moved to the luxury Level Hotel downtown — where the city rented out rooms on the taxpayers’ dime. These were only meant to be a stopgap. But for many, that hasn’t been the case.
Today, 18 families still reside at the Level, according to city officials. As of April, the city’s hotel bill ran to $1.4 million. More recent invoices for the rooms have yet to be tabulated.
T
The ruling appeared to curtail the agency’s ability to regulate the energy sector, limiting it to measures like emission controls at individual power plants and, unless Congress acts, ruling out more ambitious approaches like a cap-and-trade system at a time when experts are issuing increasingly dire warnings about the quickening pace of global warming.
The implications of the ruling could extend well beyond environmental policy and further signal that the court’s newly expanded conservative majority is deeply skeptical of the power of administrative agencies to address major issues facing the nation and the planet.
That skepticism has been evident in recent decisions arising from the coronavirus pandemic. The court ruled, for instance, that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was not authorized to impose a moratorium on evictions and that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was powerless to tell large employers to have their workers be vaccinated or undergo frequent testing.
The question before the justices in the new case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 20-1530, was whether the Clean Air Act allowed the E.P.A. to issue sweeping regulations across the power sector. More broadly, the court was asked to address whether Congress must “speak with particular clarity when it authorizes executive agencies to address major political and economic questions.
The court has called this inquiry the “major questions doctrine.”
Last year, on the last full day of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, a federal appeals court in Washington struck down his administration’s plan to relax restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The Trump administration said the Clean Air Act unambiguously limited the measures the agency could use to those “that can be put into operation at a building, structure, facility or installation.”
A divided three-judge panel of the court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, ruled that the Trump administration’s plan, called the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, was based on a “fundamental misconstruction” of the relevant law, prompted by a “tortured series of misreadings.”
“The E.P.A. has ample discretion in carrying out its mandate,” the decision concluded. “But it may not shirk its responsibility by imagining new limitations that the plain language of the statute does not clearly require.”
The panel did not reinstate a 2015 Obama-era regulation, the Clean Power Plan, which would have forced utilities to move away from coal and toward renewable energy to reduce emissions. But it rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to replace that rule with what critics said was a toothless one.
The appeals court’s ruling also cleared the way for the Biden administration to issue stronger restrictions.
The Obama-era plan had aimed to cut emissions from the power sector by 32 percent by 2030 compared with 2005 levels. To do so, it instructed every state to draft plans to eliminate carbon emissions from power plants by phasing out coal and increasing the generation of renewable energy.
The Clean Power Plan never came into effect. The Supreme Court blocked it in 2016, effectively ruling that states did not have to comply with the measure until a barrage of lawsuits from conservative states and the coal industry had been resolved. That ruling, followed by changes in the court’s membership that have moved it to the right, has made environmental groups wary of what the court might do in cases on climate change.
To be honest, I do not know, but I have some thoughts.
The last two winters have been quite dry. More people with dogs have moved into the neighborhood and deer do not like dogs. There seems to be more coyotes in Rockrimmon than in the past (does anyone like coyotes?). One of the large open valley-like tracts of land in the area is (literally) being filled in with dirt in order to build a retirement community. All of these things could contribute to the deer moving west to the recovering vegitation of the foothills.
One must also consider internal deer physiologic problems that could affect the fecundity/fertility of the species. The deer I have seen look healthy so that is probably not a factor.
If I get a chance I may stop by the DOW office and see if the wildlife people have any knowledge of the decreased polulation or its cause.
Drifting away from the recent topic......I posted this a few years ago to my FB page and it appeared today on my memories feed.
In the past month three persons I know passed away. The 26 year old son of long-time family friends committed suicide, the wife of a very dear friend who was in her mid 50's and has been battling cancer for 4 1/2 years passed away, as well as the 50 year old son of a longtime friend from my dentistry days who succumbed to a very aggressive form of leukemia.
I know each one of us has endured illness, suffering, loss....what are we to make of the purpose behind such sorrows? One of the most comforting words I have read on this question is contained in the following words of this blogger: (forgive me for its length)
The Pieta is my favorite sculpture.
A few years ago I dreamed that I was holding Jesus in my arms after He was taken down from the cross. It felt so real. I felt the weight of Jesus’ dead body in my arms. I felt His blood and saw His wounds. I felt the painful and deep sadness of what it must have felt like in our Blessed Mother's heart to mourn the death of her Son and hold Him in her arms. It was a heart-wrenching pain like no other - the pain of losing your child. I can only imagine the love she had for Jesus, and the agonizing, deep sorrow she must have felt in her heart.
My dream made me think about suffering – and why does God allow bad things to happen to good people. Why do our loved ones have to die, and why is there so much suffering in the world?
Think about this – if God (remember Jesus is God) allowed His own mother to suffer, why not us? God, being God, could have prevented Mary from suffering, but He didn’t.
Why didn't He?
There IS meaning in suffering, though we may not fully understand the meaning of it during our lifetime.
Nobody is immune from suffering.
If you are human, you will suffer. If you love, you will suffer. Your suffering could be physical, spiritual, emotional, or financial. Regardless of what kind it is, we will all experience suffering during our lifetime. It is an essential component of human life.
Be grateful for everything – even the crosses in your life. They are all a grace. God will always take your suffering and bring some kind of good out of them, though you may never see the numerous effects of this grace in your lifetime. It may be that because of what you are going through someone else is praying more, loving more, or turning back to God.
There would be no Easter, without Good Friday. No resurrection without the crucifixion.
God is outside of time, and His love for us is eternal. We may not always understand His plan for our lives, but He knew us before we were born, and chose us to live at this particular time in history. He has a plan for our lives, and as Christians we are supposed to pick up our cross and follow Him.
As hard as life can be at times, we need to not despair, but to remain hopeful, and Trust in His divine holy will.
Michelangelo at age 24, sculpted the Pietà from a single block of marble. It is the only one he ever signed. What he hoped to convey in the Pieta was what the term really meant: pity, sorrow. The Pieta is a representation of the horrific nature of Jesus’ crucifixion, and the reality of a mother losing her child. The death of Christ is essential to Christian doctrine and the juxtaposition of Christ’s human and divine nature is alive in the Pieta. The Christian community can relate to The Pieta on many levels, both in their walks of faith as well as their family relationships.
It is said that he had been criticized for having portrayed the Virgin Mary as too young since she actually must have been around 45-50 years old when Jesus died. He answered that he did so deliberately because the effects of time could not mar the virginal features of this, the most blessed of women. He also said that he was thinking of his own mother’s face, for he was only five when she died: the mother’s face is a symbol of eternal youth.
Jesus and our Blessed Mother both showed us how to suffer, and they are both with us in our pain down here on earth.
During these hard times look at the cross, or meditate on this sculpture. Our earthly journey toward Heaven is filled with both great joy and great suffering. At times the pain can be excruciating and unbearable, but know you are not alone. God has a plan for your life, you are here during these times for a reason, and He will not abandon you.
Pray for strength and the grace to embrace your cross and know that God loves you, that our Blessed Mother understands your pain, and they are both helping you carry your cross, giving you comfort, love, grace and strength along the way.
