Vera’s Weblog

Yesterday, I had a half-hour opportunity to observe the city seagulls in action. True, it was in the Burger King parking lot and that’s probably not the best place to get a good picture of natural behavior, but if the wild gulls are anywhere close to their citified relatives in meanness, I don’t want to be anywhere close to them no matter where.

This one below alternated between screaming its demands for a handout at me and driving off other gulls viciously:

For someone who’s relatively non-judgmental about wildlife (unless you’re talking mosquitoes, ticks, or spiders), I had a surprisingly negative reaction to these birds. I guess I’ve just been spoiled by all my pretty little backyard birds. There are some mean ones in that bunch too, but nothing like those gulls.

Still, they’re stunning in flight, so I guess I’ll try and get some pics of that sooner or later. There’s very little room for personal distaste for the particular subject when you’re a documentation and photography addict - that’s why I have photos of ticks, mosquitoes, spiders, and now seagulls. It’s kinda sick, really, but what the heck. If it’s out there, it gets photographed. I can’t help it :o)

I just finished a wonderful book called “The Sea Around Us” by Rachel L. Carson. It’s a beautifully written, stunningly objective and timeless book and it covers just about everything one could possibly want to know about the sea: the beginnings, the workings of it, marine life, navigation, the effects of it on the whole world - and its role as the global thermostat.

The book was written in 1950 when “global warming” was still far from being born as a catchy term and political tool. The author wasn’t caught up in pop science or the pollution du jour, as we tend to be in our modern thinking that’s ruled by our midget-sized attention spans and our need to pinpoint and eliminate right now what’s messing with our Wednesday. She based her chapter about The Global Thermostat on centuries and decades worth of findings by all sorts of people in all sorts of places, and wouldn’t you know it, her account is still accepted as valid scientific knowledge today. If I was a rabid promoter of the global-warming-by-pollution idea, this would drive me batty.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all against pollution and I think the ozone layer should be left whole without a hole for at least another 563,000,000 years and it’d be nice if we could live on this planet without trying to turn it into hot mash as fast as we can. But back in 1950, and even way before that, a good many people knew that it doesn’t take a few million Fords to mess with our climate.

Carson refers to Otto Petterson, a Swedish oceanographer, whose observations and research in the Gulmarfiord in the Baltic led to an ‘extraordinarily interesting document’, written in 1912 and titled “Climatic Variations In Historic And Prehistoric Time.” It all has to do with distinct layers of water, immense submarine tide waves, moon tides, sun tides, and herring. Actually, the herring situation was a result of the other stuff, but it illustrates how normal, cyclic, sea-caused climate changes can make a region or country filthy rich in the Middle Ages and then toss them back into economic oblivion a few centuries later.

It goes beyond the herring come and gone in the Baltic. Petterson also linked other ’startling and unusual occurrences’ in the world of nature to these centuries of great tides. Polar ice blocked much of the North Atlantic. The coasts of the North Sea and the Baltic were laid waste by violent storm floods. The winters were of ‘unexampled severity’ and in consequence of the climatic rigors political and economic catastrophes occurred all over the populated regions of the earth (more on that below.) Based on scientific, historic, and literary evidence, he states that the world’s most recent period of maximum tides, and most rigorous climate, occurred about 1433, its effect being felt, however, for several centuries before and after that year. The minimum tidal effect prevailed about A.D. 550, and it will occur again about the year 2400.

So, how does a bit of extra cold ‘n stormy weather up north affect countries thousands of miles away? It’s fascinating, really. As part of those northern climatic rigors of the 1300s and 1400s, the Baltic actually froze over, which shifted the course of storms originating in the low pressure belt south of Iceland. In southern Europe, as a result, there were unusual storms, crop failures, famine, and distress. Not saying that the people back then did what we’re so fond of doing now, but people in distress (be it starvation or unaffordability of gas guzzlers) like to blame the government, so ta-dah, there’s political unrest.

Wrote Petterson: “All these ancient records of climatic variations seem to be an indication that cyclic changes in the oceanic circulation and in the conditions of the Atlantic had occurred, as no geologic alteration that could influence the climate has occurred for the past six or seven centuries.”

Wrote Carson: “Now in our lifetime we’re witnessing a startling alteration of climate [...]. It is now established beyond question that a definite change in the arctic climate set in about 1900, that it became astonishingly marked about 1930, and that it is now spreading into sub-arctic and temperate regions. The frigid top of the world is very clearly warming up.”

I could add here another long thingy about changes in North Atlantic and Arctic Sea navigation, but I think I made my point… there was none of our modern-day pollution in our modern-day amounts around when the Swedish had their Middle Ages herring heyday or the 700 B.C. trade routes for amber changed or the wolves walked across the Baltic on ice. Or when southern birds started showing up in Greenland 90 years ago.

Global warming, yeah, it’s happenin’. But any politician who’s promising to put a stop to it is blowing thin Wednesday air :o)

One day it’s 62 degrees and sunny, the next day there’s ice on the ground and the temperature never crawls above 32. Up and down, green and white, cold and hot, yes and no - hm. It is NOT my kind of thing!! I seem to have the hardest time with this flip-flopping around, physically and mentally both.

Change can be painful… literally.

Between last weekend’s storm -

…and the current storm which follows a partial thaw -

…I nabbed the year’s first mosquito in the kitchen yesterday:

Nights have been between 28 degrees and freezing, days have been between 28 and 42 degrees. I think it’s safe to say that mosquitoes will hatch in semi-frozen ice water, fly into your home, and find you unerringly when you do dishes. In a way, they’re outstanding creatures… pity this one got smashed for being so outstanding :o)

It’s not a good thing to do. In politics, it usually falls under “special interest” and, as often as not, backfires sooner or later. I don’t think it’s smart to get caught up in anything of that nature, no matter how small one’s involvement in or attachment to it may be.

We all know news reports of big take-downs in which the hapless or not so hapless cry out that dey wuz jus doin wut dey wuz told to. And we all have heard about what is likely to happen to whistleblowers. Doing what one is told to do, even if it’s wrong, is no good. Whistleblowing and taking a stand against one’s fellows and superiors is no good either, though it may be worth the hassle (and possible danger) if it’s about something truly important. What IS good is that there’s nothing particularly wrong with removing oneself from an environment or activities with which one is uncomfortable.

I do realize that this isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds when the environment is where one’s bread and butter comes from. Giving up a job, especially a well-paying one or an interesting one, isn’t something to do on a lark. I just wonder how many people “wisely” keep their mouths shut and live and work in uneasy circumstances just so they don’t make any waves that might rock the boat and threaten their jobs. It seems like a dreadful way to spend half of one’s life.

Me, I prefer to keep my life simple. I prefer to keep anything non-simple away from me. After all, God knows that there’s plenty and then some that has to be dealt with, and there’s just no sense in allowing any non-essential troubles to sap what little energy I have. I like to keep duty separate from personal interests, and wouldn’t you know it, I’m lucky enough to be able to do just that without undue hardship. I am free to hand over my files, clean out my desk, say buh-bye with a smile and be on my merry way to uninvolved friendliness.

And no, I’d never make it in politics :o) But that’s hardly a loss for politics or for me.

“Cats don’t like snow”. Ha. Here’s Crackerjack having a good old time:

There’s nothing down in that hole, by the way. It’s nothing but a clean boot print. But Jack loves to explore holes and he likes snow, so in he dives!

Winter is winning - for now. It’s still snowing this morning, but only very lightly. Look what wet snow and lots of freezing wind can do with a roof:

Ain’t it purty? Very flouncy. It’s a pretty impressive piece of natural engineering too, making fluff-frozen water stick out in a 2-foot-wide sheet like that and make it stand up to more snow weight on top and the forces of blowing wind. Kewl… very, very kewl.