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An information campaign that’s transmitted into Russia is needed.
Yes, this is an environmental web page, but today I’m writing about the war in Ukraine and about the need to conduct an information campaign directed toward Russians—because a prolonged Ukraine War could cause us to lose the Climate War. Information Campaign Needed to Change Russian Minds A public relations campaign directed at the everyday…
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Washington State: doing the work that’s needed.
Theodore Roosevelt said, “It’s not the critic who counts.” I admire Washington State’s governor and legislators because, rather than just gripe, they work the solutions to problems. Governor Jay Inslee’s Press Update (from press@updates.gov.wa.gov) of 10 Mar. 2023 reports on what action his office and the Washington State legislature have taken recently towards making our…
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Youth Climate and Conservation Rally, Olympia, WA
On 13 January 2023 (Friday), from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.[MRM note: It’s about climate action, renewable energy, dams, salmon, and orcas.]⸺ source: WYORCA’s announcement at https://saveourwildsalmon.salsalabs.org/YouthRallyOlympiaJan13/index.html (accessed 7 Jan. 2023). Old and Young Folks at Olympia on 30 Jan. 2020
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Saving Life on Earth
Catrin Einhorn, “Nearly Every Country Signs On to a Sweeping Deal to Protect Nature,” The New York Times, 19 Dec. 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/climate/biodiversity-cop15-montreal-30×30.html? My comments: For nature and for us, this is huge: the COP 15, 2022 UN Biodiversity Conference agreement in Montreal. Can we stop the sixth extinction—the deterioration of the biosphere that we live…
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Close to God in his nature: the joy of creation
John Muir’s inspiration, joy, and rhapsody while in nature are evident in his experience at a glacier in Alaska: “Standing here, with facts so fresh and telling and held up so vividly before us, every seeing observer, not to say geologist, must readily apprehend the earth-sculpturing, landscape-making action of flowing ice. And here, too, one…
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Flower power: color in the winter
photo by John Williams in the article “The Dandy Dandelion,” from the fall issue of Salish Magazine Do you need some wintertime color? How about the common dandelion? They’re not out now, but dandelions and other flowers in the Pacific Northwest have been captured in exquisite pictures and knowledgeable prose (and poetry) for the fall…
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The Importance of Small
Cast on, bind off—the words a knitter uses when starting and finishing a knitting project. Michelle Obama, in her book The Light We Carry, in one of the chapters tells us of the importance and the peace of being absorbed in the small, and of the satisfaction of doing and completing small tasks. She writes…
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Collapse of the Local Free Press: Stopgap Legislation Urgently Needed
Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen writes that our democracy has become fragile, and that “the major fault lines are evidenced by significant inequity in education, health care, public safety, wealth, and age.” He alerts us to an even more serious threat—a threat to the means by which we know about, respond to, and deal with…
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“This life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.”
— Said by the gun-runner character Jackie Brown in the book by George Higgins, The Friends of Eddy Coyle (1970). For us to stay smart, our communities need a vigorous, healthy, local free press. See my synopsis of the 2021 year-end message from the publisher of The Seattle Times, about saving the country’s local free…
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Candidates Endorsed by the Seattle Times Editorial Board
The final election endorsements for Washington State mid-term elections are in. See them at “Editorial board endorsements for Nov. 8,” The Seattle Times, 6 Nov. 2022, Print, D3, or online at https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/seattle-times-editorial-board-endorsements-nov-8-2022-general-election/ The Seattle Times interviews candidates and then endorses some. To read the endorsements and the full editorials (the why for the endorsements) for…
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Humans Probably Will Not Go Extinct
Reading and writing about the climate crisis means to follow a changing narrative, as climate change is now happening fast and brutally, and humanity’s climate-action response has, consequently, changed dramatically in the last few years. Though we still use mostly fossil fuels, our direction has decidedly switched to one of renewable fuels and other measures…
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Face to face with God . . . in his nature
In the quiet of nature, we find ourselves face to face with God’s love of life and variety of life, his cycles of life and death and life again, the immensity of his time and space, and with the wonders and wisdom by which he created the universe. At the seashore, on a mountaintop, in…
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Messy in Nature
It’s messy sometimes, writing while in nature. I’ve sand on my shorts and sand on the bike bag that I’m using as a writing surface. Rain drizzle smears the lines on wide-ruled notebook paper as my pen attempts to scribble this morning’s thoughts. Words don’t appear on wet paper, so I skip a few lines…
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The weather is weird.
As I left church this Sunday, I spoke to an eighty-year-old man who has lived his life on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, and he commented, “The weather is weird.” I’ve heard similar sayings from folks who’ve lived for decades in my neighborhood. They say that rain and wind usually start by September, and…
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More Election News: Debates and endorsements by The Seattle Times
Please see https://mrmconservation.com/legislation-politics-and-democracy/
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“Go Where the Good Is” and “Learn How to Be Useful”
“Go where the good is” and “Learn how to be useful”: simple phrases that, when enacted upon, have enormous consequences.[note: This is a re-post (with some edits) from a blog page that I once administered. It was originally posted 21 May 2021.] Last night, I told my son Pat that I was proud of him.…
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Washington State’s election season is upon us.
Our awareness, knowledge, involvement, and votes during the political process determine whether our environment and nature are conserved. Please see the political endorsements for Washington State candidates made by The Seattle Times and others at https://mrmconservation.com/legislation-politics-and-democracy/
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Creation theology: the truths we learn.
God created the heavens and the Earth, or more specifically, through his spirit he molded all the planets, stars, and the life they sustain, using energy, elements, and physical laws of the universe. He engineered the cosmos through gravity, atomic forces, chemical and genetic relationships, and more. We now know that Earth is 4.5 billion…
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A richer, fuller history of Little Big Horn
I submitted the following in the comments section of the E.J. Dionne article that is referenced below: When I first visited the Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument years ago, I learned mostly about Lt. Col. George Custer and his several hundred soldiers—with a mention of Chief Sitting Bull and of Indians. When I toured…
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Man, I needed the recent climate-action headlines.
When I was a child, my family often vacationed at Lake Powell and camped near Bullfrog Marina. What a long lake it was—120 miles long. It’s incredible to see the NASA photos showing how much of it has dried up. In the past decade, I’ve experienced summers of smoke, heat, and drought in the western…
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God’s Wisdom in Nature
God, in his wisdom and through the millennia, has evolved and woven together a rich web of creatures and plants that sustains and propagates life and the variety of life that he obviously (because he made so much of it) loves. We’re blessed to be able to explore, understand, appreciate, and care for (when we…
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We Dance poem
Recently, the Feb 9-12, 2023 Sweetheart Jamboree in Bellevue, Washington was announced (website at http://www.sweetheartjamboree.com/), which brought to mind the wonderful experience I had at the 2022 Jamboree and the beautiful experiences that my wife and I have had with ballroom dance through different phases of life. In the following poem (which was posted to…
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Trees—on Joyce Kilmer’s Day
Trees, trees, and more trees“Trees, trees and more trees,” was Golden Gate Park Supervisor John McLaren’s motto when he helped design the shaded, pleasant, walkable, and popular Lithia Park in Ashland, Oregon. Trees, we know (besides making our neighborhoods cooler and more pleasant), are part of the solution to the climate crisis. Only God can…
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America doesn’t, and then it does
America doesn’t, and then it does—it’s often our history. As my blog post of 25 July “America Surrenders on Climate Change” (accessible at https://mrmconservation.com/2022/07/25/america-surrenders-on-climate-change/) related, America’s Congress had given up on passing climate legislation . . . but then it put forth big climate legislation. If passed, this legislation will remake America as a clean…
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America Surrenders on Climate Change
24 July 2022 Jon Talton, “Surrender on Climate Change Bakes Catastrophe Into the Planet’s Cake,” The Seattle Times, 24 July 2022, Print, C5 and C10; 22 July 2022, Web, https://www.seattletimes.com/business/surrender-on-climate-change-bakes-catastrophe-in-the-planets-cake/ My synopsis of this article: President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, with its many climate-action initiatives, would have launched the United States on a…
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God’s nature advocacy
God’s nature advocacy: The application by people of faith of their talents toward Earth stewardship. Just as we serve God in discipleship, caring for the poor and afflicted, pastoring, singing, cooking for the congregation, volunteering in church projects, supporting youth, and the myriad other ways that God has made possible for us to express his…
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Candidates endorsed by The Seattle Times
The Seattle Times endorsements were published in the 17 July 2022 (Sunday) issue on p. D3 and can be accessed at https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/seattle-times-editorial-board-endorsements-aug-2-2022-primary/ (e-published 8 July 2022 and updated 21 July 2022). My Comments:I’m glad I live where a free and healthy press still exists and where newspapers publish their recommendations on which candidates to vote…
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Two Left Feet
“I can’t dance. I have no rhythm. I have two left feet. I learned some ballroom dance in high school and just stumbled through it.” Welcome to the world of those who are not dancing, but also to the world of those who once didn’t dance, but now are. All of us dancers started as…
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If I were to die this year
If I were to die this year, what would I like for me to have been doing? Or to put it in more of a do it, present-tense way: What should I strive to do this year? Background: On 13 June 2022, I learned from my stress echocardiogram and my history that I have stable…
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What is Love?
Last night I was asked by my wife what is love? This is the bedrock definition (and desire) of love that I know of, and that I rely upon—whether I’m in the highs or lows of life. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.…
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