Read about our big trip last year…..
Clare and I Go To Paris, France, and Utrecht, Netherlands, In 2023
Category: Commentary
Happy Thanksgiving
We give You thanks, most gracious God,
for the beauty of earth and sky and sea;
for the richness of mountains, plains, and rivers;
for the songs of birds and the loveliness of flowers.
We praise You for these good gifts…
Grant that we may continue to grow
in our grateful enjoyment of Your abundant creation, to the honor and glory of Your name,
now and forever. ~ Book of Common Prayer
Clare and I wish you a blessed Thanksgiving hoping that you have quality time with family and good friends. We are so grateful for the love and fellowship of our families, friends, and church who support us unconditionally. We are grateful for our jobs, our good health, and our comfortable home. We thank God for all his great love, compassion, grace, mercy, and provision.
God Bless,
Clare and Scott
Oh Donny Boy, Oh Donny Boy, Show Me the Money!
From this article in the Washington Post dated May 24, 2019:
“In all, American families will pay an additional $767 a year for everyday items following the latest round of tariffs, according to a report by the Trade Partnership, a Washington-based research and consulting firm. If the Trump administration extends that tax to all remaining Chinese imports, that figure could go up to about $2,389 a year for the average household.”J.C. Penney and Kohl’s have failed their most loyal customers: Middle-aged moms
we can see the potential affects of Trump’s trade war on us all. Trump punishes China and I see a loss of nearly $2400 a year? Trump offers up $27 billion dollars in relief to farmers and U.S. Agricultural Secretary Sonny Perdue, no conflict of interest there, says:
“The package we’re announcing today ensures that farmers do not bear the brunt of unfair retaliatory tariffs imposed by China and other trading partners,”Trade impasse: Trump pledges $16B to farmers; markets slump
The latest bailout comes atop $11 billion in aid Trump provided farmers last year. And Donny boy says:
“We will ensure our farmers get the relief they need and very, very quickly,”Trade impasse: Trump pledges $16B to farmers; markets slump
How about showing the rest of us the money Mr. President?
Flooding in Iran in April
Pave Paradise and Put Up More Data Centers
It griefs me to see how much the area by my office has changed. My office is in a data center in a complex of four buildings, nearby is what was once the Verizon HQ which has a few large building, and Amazon has data centers in the area. As of this time last year, there were 6.5 million square feet, about 107 acres, of data center floor space in my area, which is Ashburn, VA, one of the wealthiest areas of the country w/ very high property values. The fact that there are so many data centers here already makes it cheaper to build more data centers in the area. With the property values as they are, the fact that companies can afford to host data centers here means they must be making a good profit though one of the reasons they do build here is because we have some of the cheapest electricity in the country. Why that would be I don’t know.
As Ed can attest to, there was a fair amount of undeveloped land in the area….not virgin forest by any stretch of the imagination but there were maybe 500 acres of unused land. As I watch day by day and month by month, construction (or destruction) vehicles, rip up the trees and bushes to clear the land to build more data centers. It was particularly unsettling to watch, as I sat at a stop light near my office, the destruction of some very lovely flowering trees. More than likely, that section of land will be cleared by the end of this coming week.
I don’t understand why we need all these data centers. What is all this data for? Where is it coming from…besides Facebook? What good is all this data? Can it really make life better for humanity? I doubt it. And what about the damage to the environment. We’ll see more erosion, convert less carbon dioxide to oxygen, diminish habitat for God’s creatures, and certainly not improve the views. It takes power to run all these computers in the data centers. Then it takes power to cool down the computers in the data centers. As of last year, there was 676 megawatts of commissioned power for data center use in Ashburn.
I don’t know what that means really or how it translates into say… powering homes. I am still trying to figure that one out. I do know that it seems like a waste of resources. As regards that data, I am not keeping my personally created files out there in someone’s data center so whatever all this is for, it isn’t benefiting me. Given that, is it really benefiting that many of us that is worth the expense and resources. I would venture to say no.
Blizzard 2016 – Woodmere Drive, Centreville, VA
We got a pretty good accumulation. We’ve been apartment bound since Friday afternoon. Diana must be restless…she is on my balcony making a snowman! Ski areas in the mid-Atlantic got at least 30″ which is about what we got here. Ski areas in Vermont like Killington and Mount Snow got nothing which doesn’t bode well for Sessions in the Snow in early March.
Got Gloves or Mittens?
I saw an advertisement for those packages that you rip open to expose the interior to air so it heats up to warm your hands or other body parts as desired. Really?
The FAQs say the innards are all natural and biodegradable. I don’t know about the packaging but I am going to say it probably isn’t readily biodegradable. Even if it is, what the hell ever happened to gloves and mittens?
Another Visit to Great Dismal Swamp
I went to Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) today with the intention of bicycling the Washington Ditch Trail to Lake Drummond, which is about 9 miles round trip, having lunch and returning. Unfortunately I got in about 2.5 miles where I reached part of the trail that was very low, grassy, and muddy. The water on both sides of the trail was very high and had obviously washed over the trail often this spring. I didn’t look forward to doing, on my hybrid bike, 4 miles of mud and soggy grass so I turned back.
I ended up going over to the Park HQ to see if they had updated their stock of T-shirts since the birding events there two weeks ago but they had not done so. While there I walked the short trail that I was introduced to when taking walk with a group lead by a woman who worked at Black Water NWR in Maryland. Thanks to that experience, I was able to locate two Northern Flickers, three or more Red-headed Woodpeckers gadding about, and a lone Screech Owl. I saw and heard either a Eastern Phoebe or a Peewee…I can’t remember what the song was now. I heard a Bobwhite but could never locate it. Thanks to a couple I talked to there I heard a Yellow-billed Cuckoo and then saw one but didn’t realize it until I looked it up later in my bird book which I had left at home.
This couple commented about the fact that I was bravely wearing shorts in snake country. They had heard and seen earlier, in the day, a five foot Timber Rattler when they were setting up to take a picture from their car. The guy had a couple of interesting stories about snake encounters including one in which a friend of his had gotten a Timber Rattler caught up in the spokes of his bicycle while riding in Great Dismal and one about a friend of his shooting holes in his boat while trying to subdue a Water Moccasin.
Unfortunately, I returned home on the east side of the refuge and that ended up taking me almost two hours and forty minutes which, after the only twenty-five minute drive down, there made for an awful lot of driving to get in about an hour of exercise and recreation.
Any Thoughts On Sweetwater Brewing Company Beers?
I got a six-pack of Sweetwater Brewery 420 Extra Pale Ale on the weekend, much to my chagrin. I am choking them down one day at a time. The label says the beer is a West Coast style pale ale with a strong hoppy finish. I beg to differ. This is one of the blandest pale ales I have ever had. In fact I might refer to it as the Coors Light of micro-brews. How appropriate that it is brewed in Georgia…redneck central.
Trapped In a Tree
I had a dream last night that I was trapped in a tree by a beaver. Do I need to say more? Damn! Fucking beaver had some serious claws. Is that normal?