Dry July and August

Beth and I rode our bikes on a bike path on the Seneca resevation in southern New York on Monday,Sept 1st, where the Little Valley Creek had dried up upstream of the Allegheny River. Along that path we also passed a large mudpuddle that was filled with hundreds of fish that had been isolated from a main pond. Today I returned to that place and found road access about a mile away, so I walked in with a net and bucket and rescued several dozen fish to the deeper water. I was surprised to find large catfish gasping for oxygen among the smaller sunfish, and caught whatever I could to take to safety. Near the puddle was a great blue heron that had found easy picking among the trapped fish, so Nature's seeming 'cruelty' can be a blessing for another species. As a human being I followed my impulse to help, knowing that droughts are a natural pheneomenon, but also that they are being exacerbated by human climate change. UPDATE: I returned to the puddle today,Sept.9th, where what remained was a muddy pool about three inches deep and six by four feet wide. All but a few sunfish had been eaten by herons and raccoons, yet to my surprise four catfish ranging from 6 to 10 inches were still alive. I netted them and perhaps 3 smaller fish along with two dozen tadpoles and transferred them to the larger pond. With no rain predicted for the upcoming week, the few fish and remaining tadpoles will die.

We had a nice visit with daughter in law Barb and granddaughter Renley this past weekend, visiting the Phipps conservatory and the aviary in Pittsburgh. The city-about a 2 1/2 hour drive south for us- is one of the more picturesque in the nation I think, located at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, which together form the Ohio river. The Ohio eventually enters the Mississippi in Illinois. I do not possess a smart phone, but am thankful that Beth does when traveling, for the contorted turns needed to navigate through Pittsburgh are much easier with GPS. Otherwise I prefer paper maps; there is something satisfying about holding an Atlas and being able to trace ones progress and destination with a glance. The picture was taken by Barb near the top of the 'incline', a cable car offering this view from a nearby ridge.

Ukraine

There was a fundraiser in Warren last night at the woman's club, attended by a few dozen people, many whom have been helping Ukraine since the beginning of the war. The pictures include local Piper and Ogla from Poland, Myself and Iwona from Poland and Beth and Lena from Ukraine. The following synopsis describes what has been going on here and there: >>Matt McKissock, a resident of Warren County, was moved by the destruction in Ukraine and wanted to contribute to relief efforts... He co-founded the Ukraine Relief Initiative, a group aimed at assisting Ukrainian refugees in Poland. Warren community members have also been supporting Ukrainian refugees through a community center in Krakow, Poland, demonstrating a global impact... A Warren-based non-profit called WARRN has been established to support refugees settling in the area, including Ukrainians. This organization assists with matters like plane tickets, transportation, English classes, and housing.<< Local business owner Piper was one of the first to accompany McKissock to Poland and has been there 8 times since. She was the woman who influenced Beth and me to become involved. When they arrived in Poland, the Warren people went from not having any plan other than the desire to help, to purchasing a building in Krakow and establishing a community center.That refuge offers food and other needed supplies, language classes, sports programs and other forms of support for the thousands of war refugees who fled, and continue to flee Ukraine. Olga from Poland and Ukrainian refugee Lena help run the center and fund raise, Iwona is a research psychologist who provides counseling in Krakow and is researching how a grass roots organization from Warren continues to flourish when many other aid groups from 2022 have disappeared. The answer to that question seems to be a committed empathy and determination to do what is right regardless of an American government that has lost it's moral compass. Together people from both here, Ukraine and Poland have been able to offer hope to the displaced Ukrainians-many of them elderly-who literally have nothing to return to. No home, no families, no money. Poland is not their home and many return anyway, but until the war ends their future is uncertain. The center gives mostly women a place to recover and gain back their confidence and hope and skills to move into a better life when the war finally does end. Most Ukrainian men are not permitted to leave the country, and most would not leave even if allowed, preferring to defend their soil against Russia and Putin-described accurately by the late John McCain as a murdurous mafia posing as a country...The family that Beth and I are sponsoring were refugees in Krakow at the beginning of the war, having fled Bucha where the Russians were massacring civilians. The mother and two children returned to be with their husband and stayed with grandparents in Moshchun for some months, but that house was bombed. Aid groups then provided a modular house for the family while the grandparents stayed in their partially repaired home. We continue to send money monthly and recently bought a boiler system so that they may heat the house. Moshchun and nearby Kyiv endure almost nightly drone strikes. The Ukraine Relief Initiative here in Warren continues to accept donations, and a Facebook page provides more information.

Pride and My Response to the Baptists, in language they might understand...

“The Southern Baptist Convention overwhelmingly voted to call for the overturning of the Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage.” >It is difficult to comprehend how a religion that purports to represent God could endorse the discrimination and prejudice which the above vote indicates. Apparently neither you nor your congregation truly understand the tolerant, inclusive compassion that defines spiritual love and enlightenment. Your emphasis on sexual acts rather than the love and respect shared between homosexuals is not what the bible emphasizes. Your complete trust in ancient texts written by middle eastern males during a time of patriarchy rather than following the spirit of love within each of us is also questionable. In truth, homosexuality is common within God's creations: “ While the exact reasons for homosexual behavior in animals are still being studied, scientists believe it can play a role in social bonding, strengthening relationships, and even co-parenting. Dolphins, bonobos, lions, giraffes, and sheep are known for same-sex sexual behavior. Some male sheep exhibit a lifelong preference for other males. Penguins, albatrosses, and flamingos have been observed engaging in homosexual behaviors, including pair-bonding. Squid, snails, fruit flies, and roundworms also exhibit same-sex sexual behavior. Same-sex interactions have also been documented in reptiles like garter snakes and amphibians like the American toad. The prevalence of homosexual behavior in the animal kingdom challenges traditional views of sexuality and challenges the notion that it is unnatural." As the Creator of all things and the giver of free will to humans, Love is the reason we are here. Compassion for humanity and other life forms is why we are here. To spread joy and acceptance rather than hate and division are why we are here. Lofty goals which your beliefs do not embrace, no matter how you attempt to justify them with biblical references. The separation of church and state exists for the precise purpose of preventing the bigotry of some religious beliefs. The government does not force you to believe in or practice homosexuality, it seeks to protect gay relationships with the same legal protections that heterosexual marriage entails. In fact, one wonders why some ‘Christian’ businesses seek to exclude serving homosexuals, but do not ask a customer if they beat their wives or abuse their children. Please re -examine the origins of your views and endorse a more inclusive, holistic interpretation of the Bible that includes All of God's wondrous Creations.< -W. Jacobs

Insect Decline

"In 2019, researchers found that almost a third of US birds – about 3 billion – had disappeared from the skies since the 1970s. The losses, however, were not evenly distributed: those birds that ate insects as their main food had declined by 2.9 billion. Those that didn’t depend on insects had actually gained, increasing by 26 million. More recent research from the US found a decline in three-quarters of nearly 500 bird species studied – with the steepest downward trend in stronghold areas, where they once thrived. In Puerto Rico’s Luquillo rainforest, scientists in 2018 mapped how the loss of insects set other dominoes falling: as bugs declined, so too did the populations of lizards, frogs and birds. Their disappearance, they wrote, had triggered “a bottom-up trophic cascade and consequent collapse of the forest" >>I have written about the insect decline in earlier posts,a decline which rises by a few percentage points each year, worldwide. Climate change, pesticides, habitat loss and other factors are catching up to us, which is why I say alarmist things such as humanity will not survive beyond 2100. Insects are not in the forefront of peoples attention, except when buying traps and chemicals to kill them, but they are crucial to the ecosystem. I am old enough to remember Pennsylvania fields filled with thousands of insects and species that simply do not exist anymore. Gone in fifty years. Worldwide. Everywhere. To believe that this can continue without major repercussions is ignorant denial. I have no solution other than to try not to needlessly kill...Although I have seen a few honeybees and 'sweat' bees and flies and bumblebees, they are very much reduced over last year-possibly because of the wet, cool spring. Tiger Swallowtails,fritillary butterflies,cabbage butterflies,and Blackwing damselflies do not appear to have suffered. One comparatively rare insect that I am thankful is still on the flowers is the hummingbird moth, which

I managed to photograph today.

' CUCKOOLAND-Where The Rich Own The Truth'

That's the title of a book by Tom Burgis who details some of the ways that money and corruption determine how the world really works. The people who complain of a 'deep state' have a point, unfortunately their ignorance or willful blindness ignore the complicity of the very people they support, so not much will change until people start to value truth over ideology. Here is a quote from the final chapter titled 'Reality'- "Many people want to believe in Mohamed Amersi. And in Boris Johnson and in Donald Trump. Hearts beating in Vladimir Putin's troops chests fill with zeal as they march to save their Ukranian cousins from the genocidal fascists of Kyiv. When they liberate Mariupol, Putin declares it an "ancient Russian city', ready for enfolding back into the motherland. His evidence-the 'well known' fact that Peter the Great, the emperor whose image hung in the St.Petersburg deputy mayor's office thirty years ago, founded his first naval flotilla there-is fiction. But the hearts still stir. But even when the heart doesn't stir-the head knows what it's best for your head to believe. A free society works only when reality itself is free. When the stories by which we live are composed by the many, challenged and tested and adjusted and debated, not imposed by the few. What we are witnessing is the privatization of reality. The advent of generative artificial intelligence, distributed through social media, is hastening what's been called epistemological bankruptcy.The point at which we'll be unable to tell whether any of the information we encounter is authentic or not. For something like two centuries-since Darwin, we might say-the pursuit of the truth grew steadily more democratic. Now we risk a return to feudal reality, where the word of the strong, of the rich, is gospel. If that happens, we won't know what we don't know. Like the cuckoo and poor bird it fools, their power derives from others ignorance. Ignorance that we, like those dupes, can be so keen to embrace, if it seems to make our lives a little easier. Surely that's why our parliaments,our courts,our media, scientific inquiry, and freedom of speech have evolved; as ways to uphold objective truth against the dupe in each of us, the liar in each of us. They are meant to guard against those who would seize reality by force, or try to buy it. That these institutions are themselves being captured, being sold, is ominous for the truth" So...we are at a critical moment in humanity's survival. Not just the survival of democracy, but the future of the planet as special interests are able to control the directions we travel through whatever means they desire. The human population is too large now, it's influence too inescapable, it's means for destruction too powerful to ignore the effects of what we do. Truth and science and the moral virtues could define our future rather than the failures of human ego, but our History does not bode well when Artificial Intelligence and it's flaws seem destined to accelerate the spread of misinformation. Perhaps Nature will send an asteroid to make us not to blame for our own demise, but I am not so confident in my fellow citizens as I once was...

Minister Creek...(click to enlarge...)

Climbed Minister Creek trail today, a strenuous uphill that I am thankful I am still able to do, although a little slower than in years past. The trail is very muddy because of the wet spring and the clay soil,requiring waterproof shoes, but the view on top is one of the few within these dense woods. The blowdown from a decade ago is still evident, where chainsaws have cleared the path while leaving the logs where they had fallen. The picture shows only a small portion of hundreds of yards of wind toppled damage. Further on Nature shows it's resiliency in the picture of the sapling having sprouted in dirt on top of the boulder. It slowly has secured a tenacious hold as its roots have grown down the sides. In a deadstand woodpeckers have tunneled into the heartwood in search of insects; possibly chipmunks or other creatures will use the holes as living quarters.