Sage grouse don’t vote. If they did vote, they’d have a difficult time picking between Democrats and Republicans on their own life and death issues.
Of course, there aren’t enough sage grouse to make much of a difference on election day. That’s the problem.
Courting sage grouse - Photo from Gail Patricelli, University of California - Davis
Last week the U.S. Department of the Interior released a decision on the fate of the sage grouse: Near enough to extinction to merit protection under the Endangered Species Act, but too far down the list of endangered plants and animals to merit action on anything at the moment.
That means that the vanishing habitats of the little, magnificent bird, can be crushed by trucks making tracks across westerns prairies, deserts and mountains searching for oil.
Exxon-Mobil 1, Sage Grouse 0. One might must hope that’s an early game score, and not the population counts.
Reporting from Washington — The Interior Department declared Friday that an iconic Western bird deserves federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, but declined to offer that protection immediately — a split decision that will allow oil and gas drilling to continue across large swaths of the mountainous West.
The department issued a so-called “warranted but precluded” designation for the greater sage grouse, meaning that the bird merits protection but won’t receive it for now because other species are a higher priority.
My childhood was marked by rapidly plummeting bird populations all around us. Stopping the use of DDT benefited some of them, the Endangered Species Act benefited others. Conservation efforts of groups like Ducks Unlimited and the Audubon Society saved others, and helped all of them. While I lived near a great river, a view of a heron, egret or crane is not what I recall from my childhood. Our children know the birds well.
Land birds, like turkeys, are even more rare. Turkeys, mostly in eastern forested areas, at least well out of the Mountain West, made dramatic recoveries with massive aid from state game commissions. I recall one column from the Washington Post’s recently retired hunting and outdoors columnist, Angus Phillips, in which he confessed that with the aid of professional guides paid from the paper’s expense accounts, in more than 15 years of hunting he had heard, but never seen, a wild turkey. This was two weeks after we had come upon a flock just off the side of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, the first I’d ever seen.
I remembered Phillips’ confession a few months later as I sat in the cold, at dawn, in a field at the Land Between the Lakes preserve of the Tennessee Valley Authority with other staff and members of the President’s Commission on Americans Outdoors, when a guide summoned seven magnificent, lustful wild turkey toms to race across a field toward the lustful hen sounds the guide made with a part of a birth control diaphragm as a calling device.
In my years tramping the west for fun, in the months camping with the Scouts, in the professional tramping with the Air Pollution Lab and the Senate and the Utah Wilderness Commission, and just for fun, I’ve never seen a sage grouse.
Whether my children get such an opportunity, and their children, is a decision for the moment left to private interests, especially private groups with a financial stake in trampling out the nestings where the youth of grouse are grown.
Exxon-Mobil, will you and your colleagues go easy on the grouse, please?
More:
You will enjoy Phillips’ last column, even if you are not a lover of the outdoors. I was happy to see that he no longer complains of never having seen a turkey. He’s also hunted grouse, successfully — though, perhaps not sage grouse. One of the things that makes a great newspaper like the Washington Post a great newspaper, is the assignment of fine and curious writers like Phillips to beats that may appear to be backwaters to too many. Who succeeded him at the Post?
Western Watersheds, a Wyoming-based group that advocates protection of mountain watersheds in the west, filed a supplement to their 2006 federal suit in Boise, Idaho, to contest part of the decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Story from the San Jose Mercury-News. More from the Idaho Statesman.
Three earthquakes in a week do not make a swarm. Interesting that the last post on an earthquake in Oklahoma drew earthquake conspiratorialists and “skeptics.” Too many people distrust all science and sources of information these days.
Here’s the dirt on Oklahoma’s shaking in the last week, from the U.S. Geological Service site:
Earthquake List for Map Centered at 36°N, 97°W
Update time = Sat Mar 6 18:00:02 UTC 2010
Here are the earthquakes in the Map Centered at 36°N, 97°W area, most recent at the top.
(Some early events may be obscured by later ones.)
Click on the underlined portion of an earthquake record in the list below for more information.
This isn’t unusual at all, of course. I think many people just don’t understand that earthquakes happen all the time, but they usually get crowded out of the newspaper because no one really cares.
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it’s mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
It’s clear that the contrarians don’t have much experience in heavy documentation. If you follow the links they provide, you quickly get to the paper provided by the tourist industry noting their precautions to prevent contamination, provided to meet a request by scientists from the Australian team, and based on information well vetted to the point that it includes substantial excerpts from what appears to be a peer-reviewed journal on the types of solutions suitable for decontaminating foreign boots in the Antarctic (Polar Record, vol. 41, no. 216, Jan. 2005, p. 39-45; it is actually the official journal of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge, UK). There is astounding and commendable attention to detail, much more than the contrarians can grok, it appears.
More troubling to the Boy Scout in me is the contrarians’ contempt for what is, really, Leave No Trace Camping carried to an Antarctic tourist stop. This is part of the environment protection credo of the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and it is sound policy that everyone should be teaching their children.
What is wrong with that? Why do the contrarians mock wise policies? Why do they make false claims against what amounts to good Scouting?
Contratians disapprove of the ethics of environmental stewardship?
One implicit complaint is that the footnote does not provide evidence of damage from climate change, in the Antarctic. It’s clear that the critics have not followed the footnote path to see why the boot cleaning poster and directive were issued, nor to see what is the research or official government action that prompted the tourist companies to implement the procedure.
It appears in a section of the IPCC reports on effects of warming on industries in affected areas. Only two industries are noted in the Antarctic, fishing and tourism. After establishing the increased chance of problem organisms, including micro-organisms, showing up in Arctic and Antarctic areas as the areas warm, and after noting two plagues that killed penguins recently, from micro-organisms, the IPCC paper notes that concern to prevent such tragedies have so far required only boot decontamination, and it offers a link to the flyer provided by an Antarctic tour operators group.
Got that? To show that the tour operators are affected, IPCC cited the flyer put out by the tour operators showing how and why they were changing their operations. It’s a minor, almost trivial point.
At no point did IPCC’s report claim this procedure as evidence of warming, or the effects of warming. So the claims of the contrarians and denialists are completely off base, as they’d recognize except for their own shouting for the lynching of science to proceed.
Criticism of IPCC for noting the good stewardship techniques used in the Antarctic comprises more political smear than scientific enlightenment, by a huge factor. Voodoo science from the contrarians begets voodoo criticism.
Contrarians lack wisdom in posing this complaint of theirs. This is one more point IPCC got right, factually and ethically. IPCC should be commended for that.
Wall of Shame (update added on February 7)
Outlets that cite the boot reference, falsely or stupidly, as some sort of flaw in the IPCC report, and thereby demonstrate malevolent intentions, and not scientific (“malice” for you Times v. Sullivan fans):
As of January 26, 2010 9:00 AM MST there have been 1,360 located earthquakes in the recent Yellowstone National Park swarm. The swarm began January 17, 2010 around 1:00 PM MST about 10 miles (16 km) northwest of the Old Faithful area on the northwestern edge of Yellowstone Caldera. Swarms have occurred in this area several times over the past two decades.
There have been 11 events with a magnitude larger than 3, 101 events of magnitude 2 to 3, and 1248 events with a magnitude less than 2. The largest events so far have been a pair of earthquakes of magnitude 3.7 and 3.8 that occurred after 11 PM MST on January 20, 2010.
The first event of magnitude 3.7 occurred at 11:01 PM MST and was shortly followed by a magnitude 3.8 event at 11:16 PM. Both shocks were located around 9 miles to the southeast of West Yellowstone, MT and about 10 miles to the northwest of Old Faithful, WY. Both events were felt throughout the park and in surrounding communities in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.
Ground deformations in the Yellowstone Caldera, from satellite photos, in 2005 - Geology.com image (This isn't really directly related to the earthquake swarm, but it's a cool image.)
Update, March 12, 2011: This post has been mighty popular over the last week. Can someone tell me, in comments, whether this post was linked to by another site? Why the popularity all of a sudden — even before the Japan earthquake and tsunami? Please do!
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
YELLOWSTONE VOLCANO OBSERVATORY INFORMATION STATEMENT
Thursday, January 21, 2010 2:26 PM MST (Thursday, January 21, 2010 2126 UTC)
Yellowstone Volcano
44°25’48” N 110°40’12” W, Summit Elevation 9203 ft (2805 m)
Current Volcano Alert Level: NORMAL
Current Aviation Color Code: GREEN
The earthquake swarm on the northwest edge of Yellowstone Caldera that began on January 17, 2010 continues.
PRESS RELEASE FROM YVO PARTNER UNIVERSITY OF UTAH SEISMOGRAPH STATIONS
Released: January 21, 2010 2:00PM MST
This release is a continuation of information updates building upon our two previous press releases on the ongoing earthquake swarm on the west side of Yellowstone National Park. The University of Utah Seismograph Stations reports that a pair of earthquakes of magnitude 3.7 and 3.8 occurred in the evening of January 20, 2010 in Yellowstone National Park.
The first event of magnitude 3.7 occurred at 11:01 PM and was shortly followed by a magnitude 3.8 event at 11:16 PM. Both shocks were located around 9 miles to the southeast of West Yellowstone, MT and about 10 miles to the northwest of Old Faithful, WY. Both events were felt throughout the park and in surrounding communities in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.
These two earthquakes are part of an ongoing swarm in Yellowstone National Park that began January 17, 2010 (1:00 PM MST). The largest earthquake in the swarm as of 12 PM, January 21, 2010, was a magnitude 3.8. There have been 901 located earthquakes in the swarm of magnitude 0.5 to 3.8. This includes 8 events of magnitude larger than 3, with 68 events of magnitude 2 to 3, and 825 events of magnitude less than 2. There have been multiple personal reports of ground shaking from observations inside the Park and in surrounding areas for some of the larger events (for felt reports, please visit http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/dyfi/). Earthquake swarms are relatively common in Yellowstone.
The swarm earthquakes are likely the result of slip on pre-existing faults rather than underground movement of magma. Currently there is no indication of premonitory volcanic or hydrothermal activity, but ongoing observations and analyses will continue to evaluate these different sources.
Seismic information on the earthquake can be viewed at the University of Utah Seismograph Stations: http://www.seis.utah.edu/.
Anyone who has felt earthquakes in the swarm are encouraged to fill out a form on the USGS Community Felt reports web site: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/dyfi/.
This press release was prepared by the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory partners of the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Utah, and the National Park Service: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/
—
The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO) is a partnership of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Yellowstone National Park, and University of Utah to strengthen the long-term monitoring of volcanic and earthquake unrest in the Yellowstone National Park region. Yellowstone is the site of the largest and most diverse collection of natural thermal features in the world and the first National Park. YVO is one of the five USGS Volcano Observatories that monitor volcanoes within the United States for science and public safety.
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Peter Cervelli, Acting Scientist-in-Charge, USGS
pcervelli@usgs.gov (650) 329-5188
The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO) was created as a partnership among the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Yellowstone National Park, and University of Utah to strengthen the long-term monitoring of volcanic and earthquake unrest in the Yellowstone National Park region. Yellowstone is the site of the largest and most diverse collection of natural thermal features in the world and the first National Park. YVO is one of the five USGS Volcano Observatories that monitor volcanoes within the United States for science and public safety.
Outside of the Yellowstone and Intermountain areas, students will probably ask about 2012. Tell them the Mayans didn’t know anything about Old Faithful.
Here’s a paranoia site –– commenters wonder if the nation is planning for what to do if that corner of Wyoming heads for the Moon, as if there were anything that could be planned for
Shake a little news to the rest of the world:
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Ultraviolet image of the Andromeda Galaxy, first known to be a galaxy by Edwin Hubble on December 30, 1924 - Galaxy Evolution Explorer image courtesy NASA
On December 30, 1924, Edwin Hubble announced he’d discovered other galaxies in distant space. Though it may not have been so clear at the time, it meant that, as a galaxy, we are not alone in the universe (whether we are alone as intelligent life is a separate question). It also meant that the universe is much, much bigger than most people had dared to imagine.
Hubble was the guy who showed us the universe is not only bigger than we imagined, it’s probably much bigger and much more fantastic than we can imagine. Hubble is the guy who opened our imaginations to the vastness of all creation.
How does one celebrate Hubble Day? Here are some suggestions:
Easier than Christmas cards: Send a thank-you note to your junior high school science teacher, or whoever it was who inspired your interest in science. Mrs. Hedburg, Mrs. Andrews, Elizabeth K. Driggs, Herbert Gilbert, Mr. Willis, and Stephen McNeal, thank you.
Rearrange your Christmas/Hanukkah/Eid/KWANZAA lights in the shape of the Andromeda Galaxy — or in the shape of any of the great photos from the Hubble Telescope (Andromeda Galaxy pictured above; Hubble images here)
A few of the images from the Hubble Telescope
Go visit your local science museum; take your kids along – borrow somebody else’s kids if you have to (take them along, too)
Spend two hours in your local library, just looking through the books on astronomy and the universe
Anybody got a good recipe for a cocktail called “The Hubble?” “The Andromeda?” Put it in the comments, please
In 1924, he announced the discovery of a Cepheid, or variable star, in the Andromeda Nebulae. Since the work of Henrietta Leavitt had made it possible to calculate the distance to Cepheids, he calculated that this Cepheid was much further away than anyone had thought and that therefore the nebulae was not a gaseous cloud inside our galaxy, like so many nebulae, but in fact, a galaxy of stars just like the Milky Way. Only much further away. Until now, people believed that the only thing existing outside the Milky Way were the Magellanic Clouds. The Universe was much bigger than had been previously presumed.
Later Hubble noted that the universe demonstrates a “red-shift phenomenon.” The universe is expanding. This led to the idea of an initial expansion event, and the theory eventually known as Big Bang.
Hubble’s life offered several surprises, and firsts:
Hubble was a tall, elegant, athletic, man who at age 30 had an undergraduate degree in astronomy and mathematics, a legal degree as a Rhodes scholar, followed by a PhD in astronomy. He was an attorney in Kentucky (joined its bar in 1913), and had served in WWI, rising to the rank of major. He was bored with law and decided to go back to his studies in astronomy.
In 1919 he began to work at Mt. Wilson Observatory in California, where he would work for the rest of his life. . . .
Hubble wanted to classify the galaxies according to their content, distance, shape, and brightness patterns, and in his observations he made another momentous discovery: By observing redshifts in the light wavelengths emitted by the galaxies, he saw that galaxies were moving away from each other at a rate constant to the distance between them (Hubble’s Law). The further away they were, the faster they receded. This led to the calculation of the point where the expansion began, and confirmation of the big bang theory. Hubble calculated it to be about 2 billion years ago, but more recent estimates have revised that to 20 billion years ago.
An active anti-fascist, Hubble wanted to joined the armed forces again during World War II, but was convinced he could contribute more as a scientist on the homefront. When the 200-inch telescope was completed on Mt. Palomar, Hubble was given the honor of first use. He died in 1953.
“Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.”
(Does anyone have a suitable citation for that video? Where did it come from? Who produced it? Is there more somewhere?)
Happy Hubble Day! Look up!
Resources:
Journey to Palomar site (production currently being broadcast on PBS affiliates – wonderful story of George Ellery Hale and the origins of modern astronomy at Palomar; that’s where Hubble worked)
The PBSG renewed the conclusion from previous meetings that the greatest challenge to conservation of polar bears is ecological change in the Arctic resulting from climatic warming. Declines in the extent of the sea ice have accelerated since the last meeting of the group in 2005, with unprecedented sea ice retreats in 2007 and 2008. The PBSG confirmed its earlier conclusion that unabated global warming will ultimately threaten polar bears everywhere.
The PBSG also recognized that threats to polar bears will occur at different rates and times across their range although warming induced habitat degradation and loss are already negatively affecting polar bears in some parts of their range. Subpopulations of polar bears face different combinations of human threats. The PBSG recommends that jurisdictions take into account the variation in threats facing polar bears.
The PBSG noted polar bears suffer health effects from persistent pollutants. At the same time, climate change appears to be altering the pathways by which such pollutants enter ecosystems. The PBSG encourages international efforts to evaluate interactions between climate change and pollutants.
The PBSG endorses efforts to develop non-invasive means of population assessment, and continues to encourage jurisdictions to incorporate capture and radio tracking programs into their national monitoring efforts. The members also recognized that aboriginal people are both uniquely positioned to observe wildlife and changes in the environment, and their knowledge is essential for effective management.
Is that emblematic of the state climate “skeptics” are in these days, that a dull recitation of the facts is “sarcasm?” “Don’t confuse us with the facts,” they seem to be saying. And, if they really think they’re making headway with stolen e-mails, why are they so crabby?
More politics than science, more bluster than discussion.
This cartoon scares them, too. Maybe they know something’s up:
Chris Riddell cartoon, December 20, 2009, The Observer
As I sit with officials from the Texas Education Agency and the Dallas ISD discussing what goes on in our classrooms, I often reflect that the drive to testing frequently pushes education out of the classroom.
One of my favorite education blogs, the Living Classroom, comes out of a the West Seattle Community School where, many days — perhaps most days — education goes on in wonderful ways. No test could ever capture the progress made.
Asher and his amazing squid, The Living Classroom, West Seattle Community School
It’s pretty colorful, even for a squid, but I’ll wager the kid now knows more about squids than most Texas ninth grade biology students. Of course, sewing squids is not among the list of Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. What Asher now knows . . . such learning would have to be smuggled into a Texas classroom.
When education is outlawed, only outlaws will have education.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Meteors from the Leonid shower could have been good viewing — generally, as I predicted, it was not spectacular. At least BBC said so.
But if you can make the time, it’s almost always profitable — psychologically and spiritually — to look up at the sky.
Some who did look up got great photographs of the not-spectacular views.
"A fireball seems to shoot right through a house in Grafton, Ontario. Malcolm Park captured the image as he was setting up to photograph meteors on Monday night." (MSNBC caption)
If this isn’t spectacular, can you imagine what would be?
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Space.com’s story on tonight’s Leonid meteor shower doesn’t encourage me to stay up, or get up to watch (tomorrow morning’s meteor shower, really). A “strong show,” but not spectacular numbers, and our living so close to Dallas will help obscure much of what would be visible normally.
The first cloud of comet dust was released from the nucleus of Tempel-Tuttle back in the year 1567. North America will be turned toward the constellation Leo when these particles begin pelting the upper layers of our atmosphere, some 80 to 100 miles (130 to 160 km.) above us. Earth’s encounter with the comet dust is going to be brief – possibly no more than several hours long.
Unfortunately, we won’t be going directly through the center of cloud, but rather skim through its outer edge on Nov. 17, chiefly between about 4:30 and 10:30 GMT. As a consequence, the meteor rate is not expected to get much higher than 20 or 30 per hour (on average about one meteor sighting every two or three minutes). Still, this is about two to three times the normal Leonid rate.
At the beginning of this window, it will still be dark across Europe and western Africa with Leo high up in the southeast sky, but within an hour the sky will be brightening as sunrise approaches, soon putting an end to meteor watching.
North Americans – especially those living near and along the Atlantic Seaboard – will be able to watch for Leonids from after 1 a.m. local time right on until the first light of dawn, which comes soon after 5 a.m. local time.
I’ll wager more people will be up watching the new movie 2012 about a wholly fictional collision with Earth than will watch the real collisions from parts of an old comet (Tempel-Tuttle).
A composite, all-sky image of the 2008 Leonid outburst over Colorado. Credit: Chris Peterson, Cloudbait Observatory. (NASA) This is a composite image of 141 meteors collected over four evenings, November 16-19 UT. Because the images were collected over many hours, the radiant of the shower is spread out. The Moon was present during the peak activity period each night, so only bright meteors have been recorded. The Moon has been removed from the composite image. (Cloudbait)
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Clearly the writer can’t didn’t read a map, or figure distances, and knows nothing knew little about the migratory habits of mosquitoes. Stopping the spraying of DDT in Arkansas didn’t stop the use or manufacture of DDT in Africa nor Asia, anywhere. Nor did mosquitoes not killed in America fly to Africa to infect kids. Someone who has decided to rail against wise science probably isn’t interested much in the facts, though.
DDT has never been banned in Africa, nor Asia. Today, China and India together manufacture thousands of tons of DDT for use around the world.
Odd — in the nations where DDT was banned (for use on agriculture, never to fight malaria), malaria is eradicated or all but eradicated. In those nations where DDT is still legal, still manufactured, and still used in great quantities, malaria runs rampant.
Perhaps a lack of DDT doesn’t have anything to do with the spread of malaria.
There are very few, if any, serious malaria fighters asking for DDT. Improved medical care is the basis for beating malaria in humans. Malaria is a parasite that must live for part of its life cycle in mosquitoes, and for part of its life cycle in humans. If your goal is to wipe out malaria, you could do it more effectively by wiping out the humans that harbor the parasite. That would be stupid and cruel, and very expensive.
Fortunately, DDT is not a powerful acute poison to use against the mammals where malaria breeds. Perhaps unfortunately, it’s no panacea against malaria, either.
Why did African malaria fighters stop using DDT in the middle 1960s? Mosquitoes had become resistant and immune to DDT.
Ronald Reagan once said for every serious problem there is a solution that is simple, easy, and wrong. DDT is that simple, easy and wrong solution for malaria.
Why is this man so bigoted Let’s hope it’s ignorance of the issue and not bigotry against brown beings that he thinks leads anyone to think the brown pelican should have been sacrificed, and that he thinks brown Africans are too stupid to figure out how to fight malaria with DDT, if DDT would in fact save them? [See Mr. Leap’s comment below. Not stupid at all, he just didn’t have the facts. Great to find someone willing to admit error. Clearly, I was wrong assuming he knew better — see edits throughout the post. It’s actually pleasant to discover one was wrong in a case like this.]
Rachel Carson was right: We should have restricted the use of DDT to save wild populations of animals, and to have preserved its efficacy for fighting malaria in carefully planned and delivered programs to fight malaria and other insect-borne diseases around the world. Carson proposed we use integrated pest management (IPM) to fight disease, and this is the program and process Africans and Asians have turned to over the past decade as other slap-dash methods of fighting disease faltered.
In diverting attention from improving medical care to fight malaria, to a hopeless campaign to reintroduce DDT where it would not work the miracle claimed, edwinleap.com favors too many people favor malaria over the kids in reality. Odd position for a health professional to take, and we can be relatively certain that he’s responding to political hackery, and not basing his views on any sound science or history.
The brown pelicans‘ migration from the Endangered Species List pays high tribute to Rachel Carson’s views on saving life in the wild, and verification once again that she was right. Perhaps its time more people paid attention to her accurate and effective ideas about how to fight human disease, without trying to poison all of Africa.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
This photo caught me a bit off guard, bringing back wonderful memories.
Bill and Christian explore outdoors, photographed by Gina – Gina, age 36, Bill, age 64, Christian, age 1 – 3rd place photo, 2009 Rachel Carson Sense of Wonder art contest – EPA
Gina, the photographer, described the photo:
My father has been a good role model to me as I grew up with plenty of time outdoors. The red plaid shirt became a sort of symbol, and it was an honor to get a matching shirt myself when I was in college. Now, at just one year old, my son is continuing the tradition of wearing the red and black shirt outdoors. It was fun to photograph the two together in our rural wooded backyard, and helped illustrate that my father can continue to pass along his sense of wonder and love of the outdoors to my son, his first grandchild.
My father, Paul Darrell, wore an old jacket for my entire life — a once-fuzzy buffalo plaid red-and-black woolen jacket. No one in the family can remember a time he didn’t have it. The jacket was probably at least 30 years old when I was born. He wore it when it was bitter cold — one story was that when it was well below zero one wintry morning in Burley, Idaho, it was the only coat he wore to walk to his furniture and appliance store to make sure the pipes hadn’t frozen, a walk of about a mile each way. It was too cold to start the car.
After he moved to Utah it was his usual gardening and yard-work coat on cold mornings. I know he took it on a few campouts with my Scout troop, and I’ll wager it went along on camping trips with my older brothers and sister 20 years before that. I remember my father sitting warm in that jacket on cold mornings around the campfire.
We had a peach tree in the back yard in Pleasant Grove, Utah. Frosts would come on those mountain slopes when the peaches were just ripened. I have memories of my father picking peaches in the jacket. He’d slice the peaches for our breakfast. No peach has ever been sweeter or more flavorful (but I keep searching). I remember my father in his buffalo plaid jacket, his arms full of ripe, cold peaches, coming through the kitchen door, and the smile on his face.
The red buffalo plaid coat was so much a symbol of my father that, at his death in 1988, it was one of those objects we nearly fought over. My niece Tamara ended up with it.
I have one, now. It’s a good L. L. Bean version, with the wool much thicker than my father’s well-worn version. After 20 years it still looks new, compared to his. I suspect it always will. It could never be warmer than his.
Special tip of the old scrub brush to Dr. Pamela Bumsted.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Did you ever wonder what it’s like to work in the kitchen of a zoo? Kate has the lowdown.
From Urban Primate: "Just to see the scope of what's stored there, in one hand Allyson is holding meatballs. In the other, whole frozen birds . . . complete with feathers."
The photos from that post alone would make a good PowerPoint for some biology class, or a discussion of animals in an elementary class.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 