respublica

Wowser Spring made its appearance today

Hour by hour the flowering trees filled with blooms. Amazing. 79 degrees here in St. Louis today and all of nature celebrated.

Ferdie's glad to see the flowers and maybe a rabbit hiding underneath

The Magnolia outside of Wyneken Hall is my favorite and is just getting started, the purple color just across the top today.

Tulip tree at the Walther Arch. 

We ran into some of the students grilling outside of I Dorm

They were grilling venison. 

And three used the nice weather to study outdoors

Don't know exactly what those small blue flowers covering the grass are, but they sure are pretty.

The Gore Effect

I realize this is not fair, but it honestly never ceases to make me laugh. Just a bit.. So often where Al Gore goes to speak on this topic, the weather is as wintry as it can get thus the term, The Gore Effect.

In DC, the House of Representatives' Science, Space and Technology Committee has postponed its environmental subcommittee hearing scheduled for today on Global Warming due to a major snowstorm.

Kids today

We so often read that today's kids don't know how to play outside or occupy themselves beyond Wii or computer games. Well, at Concordia Seminary, the children of our students do know how to play and be creative outside just like we used to do. One of the things large groups of our kids do is go to where all the parts of felled trees are placed and make forts. All sorts of forts. Over the weekend another fort was constructed, this time as a shelter for small animals to protect them from weather and Hawks and other predators.

And maybe as a shelter for themselves

Things I never thought to worry about but now do

Florida man swallowed by sinkhole under his bedroom.

Story from DC-What are the chances of a horse meat scandal in the US?

Sustainability in the city of St. Louis

Mayor Slay is campaigning for re-election and like many campaigns, platforms begin to get muddled near the end. It's nearing the end because the only competition he has is in the primary, there's no way he loses in the general even if he has an opponent. Anyway he unveiled his sustainability plan for St. Louis yesterday which includes things that basically redefine the meaning of sustainability.

He's taken "sustainability's" traditional efforts for clean air, water, the saving of energy and natural resources and lumped every single liberal agenda item he could think of into it. Obesity, homelessness, diversity, and reducing crime. The only sustainable thing he listed was a desire to have 1000 trees planted.

All worthy goals, but certainly not falling under the umbrella of sustainability. If he'd mentioned wanting a ban on plastic bags, that would be sustainability. He wants to fight obesity which is great but we probably know what's coming: a ban on foods he thinks we shouldn't be eating or drinking.

A dog in the brush, 3 guys with a chipper and chainsaw, one boss

We had a big tree taken down in our front yard and for a week or so the limbs and branches stayed put on the ground because the snow and rain came. Today 3 seminary students-David, Kevin and Matt along with their boss-Gayle, came with the chipper. They started early and finished very quickly. Very efficiently done. Our students learn fast and well.

But, during the week the limbs laid on the lawn the brush became a shelter for rabbits and birds which in turn caught Ferdie's eye every time he went out the door. As the limbs decreased, Ferdie's interest in what was underneath increased.

There's the pile the day the tree was taken down.

And then today

Ferdie watched as the guys started chipping

It wasn't long before he decided he better check on those rabbits 

Deeper and deeper he went

He never found even one rabbit or bird, they'd all headed for the hills

Meanwhile the chainsaw got cranked up to cut the bigger limbs and trunks into firewood.

Gayle called a meeting to go over how to proceed.

With Lutherans, there is always discussion

Gayle points something out to Kevin and then

Cut them down to size he sure did.

It has gotten much colder as the day has gone on. Nice job!

 

U.S. to air drop toxic mice

What could possibly go wrong?

"Guam—Dead mice laced with painkillers are about to rain down on Guam's jungle canopy. They are scientists' prescription for a headache that has caused the tiny U.S. territory misery for more than 60 years: the brown tree snake."

Beware of your reusable grocery bags

It's become a mantra in many cities and among average shoppers in recent years: Ban or stop using those nasty plastic grocery bags because they harm the environment. Use the fabric bags with various logos on them to tote your food home. We'll all feel better if we do this.

Well, maybe we won't be feeling better because:

"There is evidence (however) that reusable grocery bags, a common substitute for plastic bags, contain potentially harmful bacteria. We examine emergency room admissions related to these bacteria in the wake of the San Francisco ban. We find ER visits spiked when the ban went into effect. Relative to other counties, ER admissions increase by at least one fourth, and deaths exhibit a similar increase."

No area municipality bans the plastic grocery bags in the St. Louis area that I know of but before any city officials do consider banning them, they may want to do some investigating. When you think about it, which we really haven't, it seems obvious food bacteria would be in those permanent bags as so many fresh foods often leak from their packaging and co mingle with other foods. Then you take that bag out a few days later and set new food in the germy bag.

And I just bought a new bag to take along to the store. :(

Please use other door

Clayton is a city which takes good environmental practices very seriously having implemented just about every municipal green idea that has come along. The sign on the door of the Center of Clayton, the exercise/pool/community room place, asks that you not use the automatic door opener unless absolutely necessary. Please manually open the other door.

I have never seen this sort of notice anywhere else.

Now we need to worry about coffee

Man these climate scientists will say anything to get things to go their way. Now some computer model is predicting the end of coffee plants which in turn will mean the end of coffee. "The study, from the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, United Kingdom, is suggesting that Arabica coffee trees could go extinct. Arabica coffee accounts for 70% of the worlds coffee consumption."

Malarky.