Only one day left

What do you think?  How will we remember 2012, this year of extremes...?

Will we remember hurricane Sandy? (Answer: yes, definitely.)



Will we remember the nor'easter named Athena, that arrived a few days after Sandy? (Answer: probably not, we have a lot of early snowstorms these days...)


Will we remember the crazy election with Romney vs. Obama, and all the money that was wasted on political ads instead of putting to good use for a better world?



Will I remember the year I started growing weeds on purpose? (Maybe not, but others might.)


My Agent Orange Hot Sauce with habaneros and carrots?  Yes, that is among the best ever made in this house.  A memory that has to be repeated next year, and this is probably the spiciest hot sauce I have made.


I do know what I will remember:

The robin chicks in our garden:


The poison hemlock that decided to grow in my raised bed (which is pretty funny since I just decided to learn more about weeds):


Seeing the original fossil of Tiktaalik, the missing link between lake-living amphibians and terrestrial tetrapods:


Feeling strangely 'at home' in a tiny town in Vermont, a place that reminded me so much of the good parts of rural Sweden.


I also think this was the year when the climate change opinion changed; I can feel it in the air, in the media, among my neighbors.  Nobody is arguing about the weather becoming wetter, windier, drier, stranger anymore.  Not here. Not after blooming flowers in January, snowstorms in April, drought and 'the-sky-just-opened'-rain showers in August, the superstorm/hurricane Sandy and then the snowstorms after that.  The weather just is crazy, and you can see it with your own eyes.

Time to face the facts and do something about it, people. And don't rebuild where it will flood again...  Do you think the stone age people rebuilt when the land rise changed the coastlines?  No, they were smart, they moved. It doesn't work to be stubborn when nature's forces are against you. How will we adapt?  (And for the record, all but 0.17% of scientific reports agree, the current climate change is caused by the human species. That debate is over.  Now it is time to decide what do to.)


So, taking a census of the year, what were the highlights?  

Well, I saw a lot of things that was interesting: Ground Zero, the abandoned railroad terminal at Liberty State Park, Washington Monument, Edison Labs, the green mountains of Vermont (injured after hurricane Irene), shapes at Grounds of Sculpture, a rare pink gentian, Ken Hamilton's models, crocodiles and leafcutter ants in Costa Rica, the rescued SAAB museum, and Ai Wei Wei's exhibit in Stockholm. I also made some things I am proud of, like this scarf and about 70 jars of canned food.

But the highlights must have been all the good food we made from mostly locally grown meat and vegetables, eating fresh tomatoes from the reinvigorated and redesigned kitchen garden with blue highlights, teaching fun classes with great students and co-teachers on really interesting subjects (evolution can never be a boring subject), seeing my relatives in Sweden, learning about weeds that are beautiful and neglected, getting an art quilt by Erin Wilson, that the cats survived another year outside (even during Sandy), and getting AREA off to art college.

2012 was also the year where I gave in and got an iPhone, despite my severe reservations and horror at other people's addiction to this piece of technology. Honestly, I think it can be a good thing, but you have to learn to turn it off, and set all signals and notifications but the phone calls to silent. There is nothing more annoying than someone that has a phone on vibrate or buzz while doing other things so they and you (and the people around you) get interrupted all the time.  And don't take it to bed (as if I ever would do that... my phone lives in another room.) I wanted the GPS and a way to get news during the next storm that hits us, since all power and internet will be out again then for days, I am sure. Another day I will rant about Facebook etc., don't you worry.  As my brother says about me, 'you are certainly not an early adopter'. :)

And the people, art, and books this year that have had the most influence on how I think and what I do, are probably the author Cheryl Strayed (book reviews will come!), Anu Tuominen's art (the blogpost about her is here), and the book The War of Art (half of which is good about procrastination and getting things done, while the rest is mumbo-jumbo about spiritual inspiration). 

And with that - Happy New Year, Happy 2013!, with a photo taken exactly a year ago in the forests around here.  This is the fruit of a tulip tree, Liriodendron tulipifera.

"pics, or it didn't happen" - snow storm in October in NJ, USA

These photos are from a week ago, last Sunday.  What a weekend.  Snowstorm, no power, in the middle of a gorgeous autumn. The peppers were rescued from the garden on Saturday morning, by Saturday afternoon everything was white and you could hear crashing trees and branches everywhere around you. Sunday morning we woke up to blue sky, sunshine, and wintry glistening snow, and a giant mess.  Power was restored Monday, which was sooner than I expected based on all the tree damage.  Our roads to our house were also opened on Monday afternoon, when the trees and power lines had been fixed. Our gasoline generator made sure we had power for the well, furnace, and fridge and freezers.

Nearly all our trees got severe damage, with the most damage on the maples, lilacs, and Metaseqouia (dawn redwood).  There were branches down over our driveway, mailbox, truck, deck, and walkways...  Most of these photos are from the day after, which felt like a crisp day in February, not October...

Conclusion, it did happen: More photos here.

Acid Rain stamp from 1986 in Sweden. Around this time I was active in a non-profit youth organization in Sweden and we inventoried the acid rain damage on spruces in our neighborhood as well as taped up protest posters against the acid rain falling over Sweden. A lot of the acid rain was created by German industries, but some was from within Sweden as well.  I remember well how we biked around taping posters at intersections without trying to get noticed by anybody (=police mostly) at 5 AM.  I don't think our parents knew, or if they did, they let us do it.  Nothing ever happened, no police car ever showed up... but the acid rain threat was real, and the forests were dying.  It is better now, because of better cleaning of exhausts from energy and other industrial plants. Oh, and of course the cars made a lot of acid rain.  Somehow it feels like we are fighting a bigger threat today, bigger and more omnipresent and more hard to grasp - global climate change. Back in the 80s, things were simpler, at least for us teenagers.

Media in Manhattan should think before they talk

I find it very disturbing that those people that think this storm was 'not so bad' and that the government 'cried wolf' and 'over-warned' people, seems to be the ones that are sitting in a high-ground area and never lost power (such as Manhattan).  Guys, look around you, outside of your immediate comfort zone. In the media, both Swedish and American, there has been several articles saying this or quoting people saying just that.

I bet these are not the people that are volunteer firefighters trying to get a sick 7-month old to a hospital in the middle of the storm, or a friendly neighbor that comes over at 4 AM to get a second sump pump going in someone's basement.  No, these are people complaining that they bought too much bread and water because of the warnings.  Guys, grow up. Be real.

Millstone River, had record flooding at Blackwells Mills, the highest EVER recorded, at 21.24 feet (about 7 m) over normal. This is the river I have to cross to get to work... might take some days before the bridges are open. Manville downriver is evacuated and flooded. Bound Brook is horribly flooded. Things are bad and crazy out there, and New Yorkers complain that they bought too many batteries?

Note that of the last six major floods, three has been in the last five years.  We are getting more rain than ever. This is the effects of climate change.  Less than a week ago, we had record rainfall... the list will not stop, it will get worse.

(1) 21.01 ft on 09/17/1999
(2) 19.24 ft on 04/16/2007
(3) 18.68 ft on 08/28/1971
(4) 16.84 ft on 07/15/1975
(5) 16.15 ft on 03/14/2010

300 000 households in New Jersey have no power back yet. We were just lucky to get it back so soon. (Actually, it is even more people without power.  And part of a highway is now in a River. And so on, read more here. )

Brattleboro and many other towns in Vermont are under water. That is a street down there, under the brown guck. Our favorite stores in Brattleboro are under water, as is historic Hotel Latchis, you can see their brick building in the distance.

So, if you managed through the storm OK, that is great, but do not complain that you were warned too much. Next time your house might be hit by a tree, your stuff might be under muddy waters, or you might be out of power for days.  You never know. You might just have been lucky this time.  Nature is more powerful than you.

Here is a summary of the media coverage and destruction caused by hurricane Irene, showing that in fact it was really bad, whatever media and unaffected people say.  Maybe not bad not for some pampered and grumpy city people in New York, but for the rest of us. Here is a quote from the same article:

"On average, hurricanes that make landfall in the United States as Category 1 storms have produced about $600 million in economic damage. The losses from Irene look as though they’ll be something like 25 times that. In terms of the amount of economic damage it caused, in fact, Irene is much more like a typical Category 3 hurricane than a weak Category 1."

Wet August Day

It is raining in Sweden and in New Jersey, and at least here on the Sourlands it is still raining. All old rain amount records broke yesterday on the east coast of North America.  But so far we have been lucky here at home.  No major flood in the basement, and only the driveway is ruined from running water that has eroded channels in the gravel. My usual way to work is underwater because the Millstone River is flooding, but the trains are running (I hear the locomotives' whistles) and no electricity is out.  The rain just fell from the sky, persistent and strong but without any other big weather.

So, yesterday, August 14, 2011, we got 4.67 inches (118 mm!) of rain in one day. (link to more info)

Or, in other words:  

"nearly twice the normal monthly rainfall was delivered (to New York City) in one day"
(Link to Accuweather.com source)

Addition:  Of course this was the day I also started to dry tomatoes in the new dehydrator.  Maybe not the best day.  It is taking much longer than planned. 

More on the future, or the lack of it...

In today's New York Times, opinionator Thomas L. Friedman is writing about the unrest in the world, from burning London, arabic uprisings, Tea Party craziness, to unhappy people.  What is going on here, really? He writes:

"There are multiple and different reasons for these explosions, but to the extent they might have a common denominator I think it can be found in one of the slogans of Israel’s middle-class uprising: “We are fighting for an accessible future.” Across the world, a lot of middle- and lower-middle-class people now feel that the “future” is out of their grasp, and they are letting their leaders know it." 

Read it all here, it is very interesting and I think he hits on several important points on what is going on and why we are all so frustrated, especially the younger generations.

A happy, fulfilled and easy future is maybe out of our grasp. At least it is easy to feel trapped, helpless, and frustrated over all the things that seems to get worse and worse when you look forward in time. And more and more people feel like this.  Here in America, for the first time ever, the children born today are predicted to live shorter lives than their parents (mostly due to diabetes and similar epidemic diseases), but most on people's minds are not health, but jobs, homes, food, and simply "how to get a good life".  Young people can't afford homes.  There aren't enough jobs.  Who cares about how much taxes you have to pay when you can't even get a job?  (The tea party seem to have forgotten about that angle of things.).

And when the future seems uncertain, with climate change, stock markets roller coasting, and untrustworthy politicians, those on top that have more hang on to it more, and those that have less feel desperate and loose more.  What do you think, readers of the blog?

 

And here above is something else to ponder... (text borrowed from the internet)

Ponderings about now and the future

Here are some thoughts I wrote down while flying on a plane recently just after reading about the last ever NASA shuttle mission taking off...  (Update and clarification - the quoted text is what I wrote myself that day on a scrap of paper, so I am quoting myself.)

"Nobody dares to think big anymore, to dream about the future of mankind.  There is no more manned space exploration, no more belief in world peace and prosperity.

Instead we hunker down, focus on our families and homes, and we distrust politicians, government, and the future.  We can pickles, grow vegetables, save money, are happy to have any kind of job at all, and become more and more disillusioned with how the world works.

We mentally run away from the scary reality of joblessness, climate and weather disasters, the latest reports of food-borne illnesses or worldly disasters by focusing on the small and the personal - update Facebook, take a photo and post it on Flickr, and write about our kids on our blogs.  Or follow 'reality' shows on TV as entertainment, shows that are as far removed from reality as you can get.  

You want a reality show?  Follow a newly graduated PhD trying to get a job.  Or a person trying to communicate with a mortgage broker or customer service rep from GE. Or survive a several day blackout during an ice storm in New Jersey, without electricity, internet, or cell phones.  Most people would despair.   

People use their iphones and other smart internet-connected toys as teddy bears and security blankets to feel relevant, safe and comfortable, but this is so far from the real truth as you can get. This need for false connectedness is like a drug that make you waste your time and not be part of the real reality.

People are desperate, disillusioned, depressed, degraded and (sometimes) deranged. Nobody, except the fools and the overoptimistic, believes that the future is better than now.  And now is not really good in the world."

So, what do we do about this?  How do we make the world a better place?  I hear people all the time say: "There is nothing we can do", "The politicians will never change anything".   But we have to do something or we are just giving up, right?  But what?  The first step is to recognize problems and then to talk about them and then do something about them.  But do what?  I don't know.  I live in a country where the common sense doesn't seem welcome among politicians anymore.

Note - the text above are about general people, not about any particular persons or families.   I am describing the realities I see, not criticizing anybody for feeling a certain way. Believe me, I understand the despairs. But maybe our motto should be "Get real" or "Be real".  That would be a good thing.

Standing with the feet in the water

ocean poles in rain, originally uploaded by Vilseskogen.

Pier poles in Portland (Maine, USA) with seaweed, and in the rain. This photo was taken the day after the hottest day ever recorded in Portland, when it was about 102 degrees (that is about 39 degrees Celsius). We had fled New Jersey to get away from the heat, but this year it didn't work. 

Ponderings on utopias

When I grew up I remember seeing the movie Shangri-La on TV one Sunday afternoon, and I loved it.  A hidden valley, far away in the Himalayas, a paradise away from everything else, isolated and self-sufficient. Last night PP showed me an old movie by Lewis Mumford called 'The City", which shows another kind of utopia - a village where workers live in nice houses without industrialization's horrors and pollution. It is worth watching, and you can find it here, in the Prelinger Archives of ephemeral films.

What struck me after seeing this movie is that there aren't any utopias anymore.  We can't realistically dream about paradise islands where you can live away from the rest of the world.  Everything is connected, affected, even if you want to be isolated.  Every hidden valley, little town, or tropical island is affected by the global climate change, atmospheric pollution, radiation, and trash and toxins thrown into the sea, groundwater, or rivers. Over you satellites are watching you or give you connectivity to anywhere else in the world.  All economies are linked, and what happens at Wall Street or in Asia's stock markets affect a country and village across the world.

So, the idea of Utopia has changed.  Now we wish for small Utopian things, like affordable health care for all, toys without lead, and cleaner streets, while in the past you could dare to think big and dream away... I think this creates a kind of hopelessness and apathy in the new generations - it is much harder to change anything, the problems are big, global, and enormous.  Even if you plan a small better village locally, you run into global and national problems and forces, since so much is controlled at a higher level, not locally anymore.  Here in New Jersey, there used to be several local villages (like Roosevelt) built and based on Utopian ideas of fairness, sharing, and ethics.  Now they are all just regular places like any other (with a few exceptions, like Free Acres).

Who even wishes for World Peace anymore?  I do, but who really works for it?  No big masses of people...  I think the whole world view has changed since the hopeful 1960s, and gone downhill since then.  The only way to change global things is for all of us to work together in all countries, and that seems pretty much impossible, sometimes even within just one country (US for example). Sad and depressing, unfortunately.  Now the only real Utopias are new planets somewhere out there in the universe.

Maybe Utopia is just an impossibility, because humans are too selfish and competitive, and that all goes back to evolution and competition over scarce resources for survival?  Still, I like the thought of better places for all...

Links for more information (to avoid the breaking up of your reading* I put these at the end)
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Where does the stuff go?
Utopia
Prelinger Archives: Lewis Mumford: "The City"
Shangri-La
Free Acres, New Jersey : Roosevelt, NJ

* Researchers have showed that reading online text with a lot of links in it breaks up the thought process and you get distracted and don't learn and think so much.  At each hyperlink in the text your brain thinks "should I click on this or not", and you loose your thought and memories of what you just read.  So even if you don't click on the link, you are affected, without knowing it. So, links at the end on this post.  (Link to more about this here and here.)

Saved (made..) in Sweden- needles and pins

In my sewing stool (above) I found these envelopes and sewing things. They are from our relatives.

Swedish paper clips, scientific needles in a War Pack, pins (knappnålar), needles








Inside this envelope are the tiniest needles I have ever seen. I doubt I could use them. I wonder if it is because metal was expensive by the time of WW II. I´m guessing they could well be from an earlier war as well.

Some like it hot, but it is not me....

"According to State Climatologist David Robinson of Rutgers University,
New Jersey is experiencing its warmest summer (June-August) on record
since weather data has been kept starting in 1895. This followed the
warmest spring on record. Every month since March has ranked in the top
10 of all time for heat, with August ranked 10th, July ranked 2nd and
June as the first hottest month in the past 105 years. At the same time,
below average rainfall has accompanied the heat. The preliminary average
for summer precipitation stands at 8.35 inches statewide, making it the
10th driest summer of all time and the driest summer since 1966."
Summary: Dried and brown.

Bits and pieces

Maybe life in Earth started between thin sheets of mica ('glimmer' in Swedish).  I remember pulling thin sheets of muscovite (muskovit) mica apart at some of the old mines we visited when we were kids, thinking they were like layered bendable glass. I was told that in previous times people had used mica as 'windows' on their woodstoves for that reason, but I am not sure if it is true.  Scientists don't know if the mica theory is true either, but it is certainly a fascinating hypothesis that the first cells developed between thin mica layers. Read more here...

This is what global warming looks like. = now. (the link is to a pdf, check out the map on the second page.  Scary.)  And today's climate is getting more and more similar to Ordovician climates.

In the beginning, we were all wanderers... (Carl Sagan tribute)

What if...

If an asteroid hit Earth, it might look like this (with Pink Floyd):

Yesterday

It happened one strange October in 2008. A day after the temperature had been over 20 degrees (75 F), we woke up one morning to snow and storm. The Halloween pumpkins froze, branches broke while I was watching on giant trees because of the heavy wet ice-snow that stuck to the leaves that were still on them, I had to rescue the last chilipeppers in the garden, and we kept our fingers crossed that the power would not go out since our new woodstove is not installed yet. Now it is a day after and we still have snow here on the Owl Mountain, but not as much. Very strange weather. Global warming is causing global weather chaos.

Happy day!

Al Gore is getting the Nobel Peace Prize. Thank you Norway!!!
While you are enjoying these news, you can also enjoy these links:

Supreme Court declares Bush is the peace price winner, not Gore!

Al Gore is the coolest ever