OMG! Just received an e mail from Lisa!!
"I haven't gotten the actual magazine yet b/c it wasn't on the newsstands
> this past weekend yet -- but Tyler is on the front cover! This is the
> online article."
>
>
http://emusician.com/interviews/tyler-bates-movie-music-maestro/
@Stradee,
another cat picture
..............................
sitting with my grand-dad who is holding MORITZ - moritz was the "king of the yard" even though there were other cats bigger than him , the other cats somehow seemed to acknowledge him as the king - and get out of his way .
on sunday mornings when the yard was usually quiet , moritz would leave his assigned post and inspect the whole property - lifting his leg here and there to make sure the other cats understood : "the king was here ! " .
he would usually stop at our house briefly to accept a treat - if he felt like it - but wander back to his assigned post in one of the warehouses .
even though there were plenty of dead rats , mice , birds around , the cats never seemed to touch carrion . i assume that they knew that there was always fresh food and milk to be had at their assigned stations .
the "mother cat" always seemed to make sure that the kittens learned what to eat and what to leave alone .
hbg
click-click !
and spring has arrived - finally !
had to take a picture .
@sumac,
Good to see the photos, articles and stories.
I'm definitely getting a lot of good memories in this thread. hamburger told me some of these stories when I was a weeBeth. Interesting to hear them again 40 <cough> + years later.
@Stradee,
That's pretty exciting stuff Stradee!
~~~
The WildClickers have supported 2,931,059.6 square feet!
Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 222,222.1 square feet.
American Prairie habitat supported: 68,868.9 square feet.
Rainforest habitat supported: 2,639,968.6 square feet.
~~~
sumac, as usual I'm catching up on your articles a few days late ... but I do catch up
@ehBeth,
Interesting pics and stories, hbg. Thanks.
Big storm coming here tonight and tomorrow night.
@ehBeth,
We're really happy for Tyler and his bro Ed.
Good guys.
hb, neat kitten n' people photos and stories. Thanks
Spring is definitely here, storms and all. Dan, stay safe.
Temps warmer today. Hurray!
Have a great day WildClickers
http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
Clicked.
Wonderful stories and pics. Love the idea of the cats policing the area, and the king of the cats. It is so good to see/hear of critters doing their jobs in conjunction with other critters.
And here are two of the requisite stories from me:
Clean water, mountaintop removal, and note the author
Hope in the Mountains
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009; A15
Yesterday was a great day for the people of Appalachia and for all of America. In a bold departure from Bush-era energy policy, the Obama administration suspended a coal company's permit to dump debris from its proposed mountaintop mining operation into a West Virginia valley and stream. In addition, the administration promised to carefully review upward of 200 such permits awaiting approval by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
With yesterday's action, President Obama has signaled his intention to save this region. His moratorium on these permits will allow the administration to develop a sensible long-term approach to dealing with this catastrophic method of coal extraction.
I join hundreds of Appalachia's embattled communities in applauding this news. Having flown over the coalfields of Appalachia and walked her ridges, valleys and hollows, I know that this land cannot withstand more abuse. Mountaintop-removal coal mining is the greatest environmental tragedy ever to befall our nation. This radical form of strip mining has already flattened the tops of 500 mountains, buried 2,000 miles of streams, devastated our country's oldest and most diverse temperate forests, and blighted landscapes famous for their history and beauty. Using giant earthmovers and millions of tons of explosives, coal moguls have eviscerated communities, destroyed homes, and uprooted and sickened families with coal and rock dust, and with blasting, flooding and poisoned water, all while providing far fewer jobs than does traditional underground mining.
The backlog of permit applications has been building since Appalachian groups won a federal injunction against the worst forms of mountaintop removal in March 2007. But the floodgates opened on Feb. 13 when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond overturned that injunction. Since then, the Corps has been working overtime to oblige impatient coal barons by quickly issuing the pending permits. Each such permit amounts to a death sentence for streams, mountains and communities. Taken together, these pending permits threatened to lay waste to nearly 60,000 acres of mountain landscape, destroy 400 valleys and bury more than 200 miles of streams.
The Corps already had issued a dozen permits before the White House stepped in, and coal companies have begun destroying some of these sites. The bulldozers are poised for action on the rest. Typical of these is Ison Rock Ridge, a proposed 1,230-acre mine in southwest Virginia that would blow up several peaks and threaten a half-dozen communities, including the small town of Appalachia.
In a valiant effort to hold back destruction, the Appalachia Town Council, citing its responsibility for the "health, safety, welfare, and properties" of its residents, recently passed an ordinance prohibiting coal mining within the town limits without approval from the council. But that ordinance lacks the power to override the Army Corps of Engineers' permit. And while the Obama administration order will reverse the Bush-era policies and stop the pillaging elsewhere, the town of Appalachia remains imperiled.
The White House should now enlarge its moratorium to commute Appalachia's death sentence by suspending the dozen permits already issued. The Environmental Protection Agency should then embark on a rulemaking effort to restore a critical part of the Clean Water Act that was weakened by industry henchmen recruited to powerful positions in the Bush administration. Former industry lobbyists working as agency heads and department deputies issued the so-called "fill rule" to remove 30-year-old laws barring coal companies from dumping mining waste into streams. This step cleared the way for mountaintop removal, which within a few years could flatten an area of the Appalachians the size of Delaware. This change must be reversed to restore the original intent of the Clean Water Act and prevent mining companies from using our streams and rivers as dumps.
The Obama administration's decision to suspend these permits and take a fresh look at mountaintop removal is consistent with Obama's commitment to science, justice and transparency in government and his respect for America's history and values. The people of Appalachia, Va., and the other towns across the coalfields have been praying that Barack Obama's promise of change will be kept. Thanks to yesterday's decision, hope, not mining waste, is filling the valleys and hollows of Appalachia.
National park and wilderness creation
March 25, 2009
Editorial
A Bill Whose Time Has Come
Maybe, just maybe, with a little nudge from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House Democrats, Congress will at last push a historic omnibus public lands bill over the finish line, perhaps as early as Wednesday.
The bill establishes three new national park units and protects more than 1,000 miles of “wild and scenic” rivers and streams from development. But what makes it a memorable piece of legislation are provisions giving permanent wilderness status " the highest layer of protection the law can confer " to two million acres of public land in nine states ranging from California and Oregon to Virginia.
This would be the largest addition to the nation’s store of protected wilderness " now about 107 million acres " since 1994.
The bill has broad bipartisan support in Congress and the country at large. But after surviving a threatened filibuster in the Senate in January, it failed by two votes in the House " partly for complex parliamentary reasons and partly because some House members felt that not all of the measure’s moving parts (the bill is really 160 smaller bills wrapped into one big one) had been properly vetted in committee.
This is a defect that afflicts many omnibus bills. It is also true, however, that every single provision in the bill is the product of long and intense negotiations stretching back years on the state and local level " the product, that is, of consensus.
The measure is now back in the House after a second trip through the Senate. It has been improved each step of the way. Its most controversial provision " for a road through a wildlife refuge in Alaska " has been revised for the better; it now gives the secretary of the interior the power to veto the road if he feels it would cause excessive environmental damage.
The House should honor all this work, as well as the country’s need for protected open space, by approving this worthy measure.
@sumac,
The WildClickers have supported 2,931,141.1 square feet!
Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 222,259.1 square feet.
American Prairie habitat supported: 68,868.9 square feet.
Rainforest habitat supported: 2,640,013.0 square feet.
Clicked, but no fascinating articles today.
@sumac,
The WildClickers have supported 116,693.2 square feet!
Marine Wetlands habitat supported: 58,193.0 square feet.
American Prairie habitat supported: 1,442.7 square feet.
Rainforest habitat supported: 57,057.5 square feet.
~~~
You don't always have to offer fascinating articles, sumac. An interesting memory of your adventures would be nice as well!
Planted a bush, an elm tree today.
Sun scheduled for tomorrow.
The click clunked.
@alex240101,
Here's a funny for you - I've been planting Black Walnut trees........ As if I'm going to live long enough to see them big. It's fun to do anyway.
@danon5,
Hey Danon5, that is great....You'll be smiling down on the person who picks one up off the ground, cracks it open, and finds a purplish, black ink type substance on his hand. Lasts a week.
I've done some interesting things in my life, like scuba diving off of Cozumel, skydiving, climbing Mayan pyramids, but nothing as adventurous as Danon's recollections.
EVOLUTION: Recovering from Stress
Laura M. Zahn
The evolutionary consequences of the overfishing of fish populations are generally not known, although there is evidence suggesting that fish are becoming smaller, especially in the most intensively targeted fisheries. Conover et al. harvested large fish from a captive Atlantic silverside population for five generations, followed by five generations without harvesting. They found that the population rebounded once culling had stopped, but that full recovery was estimated to take at least 12 generations. Hence, evolutionary changes due to selection on genetically determined traits, such as body size, are potentially reversible if the selective pressure is removed. -- LMZ
Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. B 276, 10.1098/rspb.2009.0003 (2009).
@sumac,
Clicked and still doing spring cleanup.
