Coffee Muses

Dog Days Of Summer

Gary Boyd — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:17:17 +0000

I have found myself swamped with a lack of umph these past few weeks. The heat and humidity of a SE Texas August has me spending all of my time just trying to stay cool…

I have been stuck in a procrastinating mode for days and days and days. I watch the radar images on my computer screen as the thunderstorms of summer just miss watering the grass in my yard by portions of a mile…Lightning flashes, thunder rolls across the land, the cool breezes of the cloud-tops drop the temperature by 10 degrees or more…But the rains don’t fall…here.

I find myself getting lost in fiction. Fantasy novels, sci-fi, historical fiction, mysteries, suspense…it doesn’t matter what kind of fiction. Day after day, after checking the mail (and email) it’s nose buried in book (or eBook)…I am beginning to understand the call of a Kindle.

My summer this year is a return to the summers of my youth. A glass of ice tea, a good book, and a place in the shade (or if the temps are closing in on the century mark…an easy chair in the AC) and I’m good to stay. It is really hard to get excited about much of anything outdoors when the breezes don’t blow and the sun shines down from a cloudless sky as the temperatures move north of ninety day after day. Even the sky seems baked almost colorless.

One day turns into two, two days become a week…then a month…time slips by and you don’t know where the days have gone. Hazed over in heat and dust…Each day marked by another alert on the weather site… Ozone Watch Issued…Heat Advisory…At least there are no more mosquitoes…

Even the dogs are spending the days under the house. Sometimes they don’t even seem to have the energy to come out to bark at the UPS driver as he makes his delivery. If only Sherry had enough time off for a mountain run…Then life would be good…

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Oh Baby, It Is Hot Out

Gary Boyd — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 21:43:49 +0000

Every time one of us would walk outside today we would come back in and moan about how hot it is outside…Little did we realize.

We did a run to wally-mart earlier today and the thermometer in the Subaru said the parking lot was registering 104° as we left at 1pm…

The image above was from the current readings at 4:30pm.

Everyone stay cool and stay healthy.

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Natalie Merchant was on WNYC Soundcheck

Gary Boyd — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 19:32:46 +0000

Every time I hear this lady sing I wonder where I was all her life…Have a listen.

I am…Again

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Bill McKibben and The Moral Math of Climate Change [Speaking of Faith® from APM]

Gary Boyd — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 14:45:52 +0000

This hour, with Bill McKibben, we seek perspective, both factual and moral, on human responsibility in a changing natural world. McKibben wrote The End of Nature, the first book on climate change for a general readership, in 1989. “Only in the disappearance of nature as we have known it,” he warned, “may we finally realize how essential it has been to human civilization.” Yet it’s hard to know how to orient our minds and our lives to a sweeping scenario like this and to the constantly accelerating data on global warning that comes at us daily. So we’ll seek foundational knowledge we can trust that Bill McKibben has gathered in two decades of being ahead of this curve, and we’ll explore the evolution of his moral imagination and his action from a focus on personal responsibility to a sense that what might save the planet would also renew the skill of neighborliness and the meaning of human community.
From American Public Media this is Speaking of Faith, public radio’s conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. Today, Bill McKibben on “The Moral Math of Climate Change.”

And so begins this weeks podcast of Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippet. If you have any interest in Climate Change you really should listen to the show. Krista and Bill hold a conversation about the history of Bill’s involvement and the history of the climate change “movement”.

An interesting part of the conversation revolved around Farmers’ Markets…

Mr. McKibben: But the real reason that’s so interesting that we like farmers’ markets, I think, turns out to be they’re different. Parasociologists followed shoppers first through the supermarket, then through the farmers’ market. Everybody’s been to the supermarket. You know how it works. You walk in, you fall into a light fluorescent trance. You visit the stations of the cross around the perimeter of the supermarket. You emerge with your items. That’s it. When they followed people around the farmers’ market, they were having, on average, 10 times as many conversations per visit. OK?
Cheap fossil fuel, you know, heated the planet. It made us rich. But it also, maybe most profoundly, made us the first kind of our species who’ve had no practical need of our neighbors for anything. We tell ourselves, you know, what a great chic thing we’ve invented, the farmers’ market.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Mr. McKibben: In fact, that’s how all human beings shopped for food until 50 years ago and 80 percent of the planet still does.
Ms. Tippett: Still does, yeah.
Mr. McKibben: No wonder it feels good. I mean, this is what we’re built for.
via Transcript.

If you have never listened to the show before you might want to check it out. Over the years they have put out some really thought provoking shows, most of which you download to your favorite mp3 player.

via Bill McKibben and The Moral Math of Climate Change [Speaking of Faith® from APM].

This Summer Is Stranger Than Most

Gary Boyd — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 18:12:43 +0000

Down here on the Texas Gulf Coast summer this year has been stranger than most we’ve seen lately.

Most years, at lest here lately, by early August the predominate color around these parts has gone from green to browns. Usually as the heat of summer sears everything into dormancy the grass quits growing and leaves begin to fall. It is usually only after a tropical weather system blows by that the rains fall.

This year we have had more than the usual rainfall spread out over a longer period of time than has been normal since the early 1970′s. This has kept ground moist longer into summer than we normally see.

But the heat hasn’t held off…All week we have been seeing heat indexes above 100. Yesterday, we hit a high of 96° with a humidity reading of 98% just up the road. Today at 1pm we are just pushing 90° on the thermometer outside my kitchen window while the station down the road is reporting 94.5°. The weather prognosticators seem to like this statement this week…Heat advisory in effect until 7 PM CDT this evening…

A heat warning has been issued for the second consecutive day as scorching, sticky heat grips the Houston region.
Temperatures are forecast to be in the upper 90s, and moistness streaming ashore from the Gulf of Mexico will help the heat index soar to near 110 degrees today.
Little or no rain is forecast in Houston.
via Houstonians warned again of dangers of scorching heat | Houston & Texas News | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle.

But at least, when I look out the window, the grass is still green.