Twins born in a San Diego hospital will forever share different birthdays: one baby was born in the final minute of New Year’s Eve, while the other debuted in the first minutes of New Year’s Day.
Source: San Diego Twins Born in Different Years
I like this. It is cute. And I decided to put it here because it’s a great example of analog versus digital. Think about it. Have fun
Bob
Source: Elon Musk: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is ready to fire again
Wooooooohooooooo!
The open source community was stunned this week to learn that Ian Murdock, the “ian” in Linux distribution Debian, has died at the age of 42.
Source: Open-source community mourns Debian creator Ian Murdock
There is nothing more permaculture than open source software! I don’t believe that Permaculture is about going back 50 years and I do believe that technology can drag us out of our hole. And certainly open source is the future.
Open source software is about living _with_ the world, and with the community, to its very core!
We all have different strengths and while I don’t know personally of Ian Murdock’s belief system, I think the Permaculture community should include him as a founding member. :-)
Ian Murdock I salute you.
Bob
Many of you in reading this little blog know that I don’t tend to pull punches with organizations that I feel aren’t living up to their promises. I have been critical of the Friends of the Madrona Marsh I have been critical of Paul Wheaton, and with large permaculture websites whose goal it seems to me is to sell things (in some cases snake oil) and not actively promote many of the basic permaculture ideas about not killing everything on the face of the planet. I have been critical of big chemical companies, Monsanto, genetically modified organisms, cigarette companies, and even the readers of my own blog.
I have worked for Deer Park in Escondido, and a couple of months ago had a situation where the pond water became very toxic. It killed all the small aquatic organisms I had been working to establish.
This was the third time in so many years that something toxic was added to the pond. In the first two cases it was obviously an algaecide as the algae immediately took on a sickly green color and certain sensitive Daphne species were wiped out. In those situations I recommended that they do water changes and keep the water off their landscaping because algaecides are known carcinogens. I also cautioned them that the kids playing in the water would allow the pond water to air dry on their skin which would concentrate the carcinogens in the water on their skin.
This time it did not look like an algaecide. I took water samples and ran biological assays with a variety of different organisms and it killed all of them. Even killing insect nymphs. The toxin may have been an insecticide used on landscaping in the general area of the pond or come in with landscaping mulch. But it’s a big pond ( thousands of gallons) which means an awful lot of toxin got in there.
One of the difficulties with identifying any sort of toxin is that you can’t test for something you don’t know what it is. It could have been neem oil it could have been a variety of things and it would be pointless to spend tens of thousands of dollars to try to test for 100 different compounds. Regardless, I pointed out that the water had become toxic enough to kill insects and literally a week later they put up a sign “Bee Friendly Garden”. WTF.
I was upset not only because I had been exposed, but because bees regularly drink (see WTF above) and dragonfly larvae, and hundreds of different aquatic organisms making up an entire ecology had been killed.
But, I have dealt with situations like this before. People put crazy things in their ponds. And it might not have been avoidable. Yet this time when I tried to talk to them, the response I got was less than concerned. Which bothers me even more then the fact that there was a problem.
That an organization that has children regularly dabbling around in their pond (see pictures below) would respond to “something toxic has gotten into the water” with we will think about it is not the best response. IMO.
Not what can we do. Or, what is your suggestion. My friend Diane Kennedy talked me out of terminating the client.
So I gave them a recommendation to set the filtration system external to the pond so that if something like that happens again that at least the system can be shut down to save the biological systems. And of course being a big organization they can’t decide. Not good.
What do they care for more?: A nice landscaped area that they can put up signs that don’t tell the truth or the children?
So the head guy comes to me yesterday and says that “the Friends of Deer Park have lost their confidence in me.” And my response probably surprised him a bit because I said “Oh good”.
My friends, I have terminated more clients than have terminated me. I believe in putting your money where your mouth is and I believe that there are a variety of people out there that do not deserve my abilities or in this case want them. And there are too many who do and will.
And now they will hire someone who won’t monitor water toxicity, won’t be _able_ to monitor water toxicity, won’t care about monitoring the biological activity of the water. And the groups of kids will come back and be exposed and be in 10-20 years no one will ever be able to prove what gave them a neurological issue or skin cancer or….
And Friends of Deer Park, I cannot understand how you think that it’s good Buddhist behavior to expose people to toxins so that you can have a nice looking area, and make money on people coming to your property. And put up signs like “Bee Friendly Garden” when it’s anything but. But I am also very sure that you’re very comfortable in the fact that you are good Buddhists and good stewards of the earth.
And how an organization that claims to be Buddhist can rationalize exposing children to carcinogens is beyond me.
I am standing near downtown Los Angeles and sent the following to another client who responded with pleasure that they were so blessed.
I have just been fortunate enough to be standing here and watching a little Bushtit pick bugs off the vine along one of the walls down by the pond. Just before that I heard a Pacific Chorus frog singing in the bushes.
It is becoming their breeding season and I expect to have tadpoles in some of the features again this year. You have dragonfly larvae in many of the features which will emerge next year. Thank you!, thank you all! for working with me to have a non-toxic wildlife node so near downtown LA. Have a wonderful new year.
Bob
I am blessed that the majority of my clients are getting it.
http://www.vegetariat.com/2015/12/plant-guild-5-mining-plants/
Now for a little comfrey prosthelytizing: Comfrey keeps coming back when chopped, so it is often grown around fruit producing trees to be chopped and dropped as a main fertilizer. Its leaves are so high in nutrition that they are a compost activator, an excellent hen and livestock food (dried it has 26% protein), and have been heavily used in traditional medicine. Also called Knitbone, the roots contain allantoin, a substance also found in mother’s milk, which among other benefits helps heal bone
I almost put goop down these holes and then I said to myself, you know they are not doing any damage here. It may be a jumping off point to attack my trees 20 30 feet away but right here, right now, it’s not a problem.
I claim that I am willing to share so let’s do it. I don’t need to beat up on the gophers now, simply because I can. I almost feel sorry for putting goo down their holes because it is so easy for me and so annoying for them.
I can’t imagine how it would be to come home and find my living room full of goop. I do feel sorry for them. And the incredible thing about this new system is that I _can_ feel sorry for them. And I can redirect them instead of killing them. But the bald eagle circling the other day I guess is a bigger worry than a little bit of goop in a new expansion project :-)
Peace to everyone and please try to live with the world instead of against it.
Bob http://www.PuraVidaAquatic.com
http://www.vegetariat.com/2015/12/plant-guild-4-nitrogen-fixing-plants/
[Quote]
It would be pompous for us to believe that plants, which began about 450 million years ago on Earth, just fiddled around until their true keepers (humans) came along and evolved enough to produce chemical nitrogen to dump onto their roots.
[EndQuote]
Oh how true, how true!
Bob
http://www.PuraVidaAquatic.com
This morning I was out checking the orchard. I was putting some vegetable goop down gopher holes (old, fermented, mushy okra is God’s gift as a gopher deterrent) and happened to look up… and saw exactly why I work so hard at not poisoning the gophers.
I was so excited to see this beautiful bird. A belated solstice/ holiday present.
Bob
http://www.PuraVidaAquatic.com
>http://netnebraska.org/article/news/989947/cheaper-easier-monitoring-could-hasten-water-clean br>
[quote] Decades-old systems of field tiling, which drain fields of excess water, keep crops from drowning. But they also concentrate nutrients in water flowing across the Midwest and into the Mississippi River. That’s contributed to a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, an oxygen-starved area where marine critters die.br>
[endquote]
You know, BP did not cause the destruction of the Gulf of Mexico. We did. Think about it!. But this is why I say technology can drag us out of the hole that we are digging for ourselves.
Bob
