November 2023
- Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
- Everything is F#cked: A Book About Hope by Mark Manson
- Rain of Gold by Victor Villaseñor
- Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis by Michael Mann
Trails walked:
- Hall Ranch near Lyons (November 2nd)
- Coffintop Mountain near Lyons (November 7th)
- Lumpy Ridge Loop near Estes Park (November 14th)
Song(s) of the month – Dolly Parton rocks!
- Stairway to Heaven (with Lizzo on flute)
- What's Up (with Linda Perry)
- Heartbreaker (with Pat Benatar)
- Let It Be (with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr)
- Free Bird (with Lynyrd Skynyrd)
Scientist Spotlight – Hasan Ibn al-Haytham, medieval mathematician, astronomer, and physicist
November Summary:
If you've read this blog before, you know that November is my favorite month. Not only was I born during this month, but it contains Thanksgiving which is my favorite holiday by far. No gifts, no pretend characters, no fireworks, no religions (well, other than football). Just food, family, and friends. When we lived in Phoenix there was one other reason to love November: the weather finally turns from hot to nice. Here in Colorado, we got our first big snowstorm on Thanksgiving night this year. We had 25 people over for dinner, many of them young families with kids (friends of our son and daughter-in-law). It took me back to 30 years ago when we had little kids running around every year at Thanksgiving from all of OUR friends and their kids. Life is truly a circle as the great Joni Mitchell wrote. The food selection was as eclectic as always: deep fried turkey, red chile enchiladas, pulled pork with peach habanero sauce, amazing salads, stuffing NOT from a box, and so many pies. My sister-in-law's green bean casserole even made an appearance without her! It's a lot of work to put on a big party like that, but no great things ever come to be without a bit of hard work. I miss all the people that used to come to our Phoenix Thanksgivings; some of them have passed away and some aren't able to travel. But we're meeting new friends and keeping our big Thanksgiving tradition alive.
I wanted to say something to all the young families that were gathered, but I didn't find the right opportunity and frankly I wasn't sure if the message would have been a bit too dark for the occasion. So here's what I would have said:
I'm thankful for everyone that has come to celebrate the world's best holiday. As I look at all you young parents of young children I know that the decision to bring a child into this world comes with a lot more hand-wringing than it once did. At least it does for critical-thinking parents. But I'm thankful that you all made the decision to do so. Because I look around and see that you are all thoughtful and caring people who will raise thoughtful and caring kids. My 3-year-old grandson told me that when he grows up he wants to be a superhero. Well, we're gonna need a lot of superheroes in this world to get it back on track. Wars, dictators, climate change, and political dissention are threatening to unmoor us and set us adrift. With your help, the kids I see in this room will be the ones to change all of this. Raise your kids to be the superheroes we need. No pressure. Enjoy your turkey.
Oh, by the way, Covid is still around. Much of my family contracted it after the holiday. Stay healthy out there.
In an unusual move, all four books I read this month were non fiction. From the Osage murders in 1920s Oklahoma, to a psychology/philosophy book about hope, to Mexican immigrants from Pancho Villa's war, to a look at climate change on Earth since its existence. My rambling was cut short by Thanksgiving and some babysitting of sick grandkids, but I was still able to ramble around in the foothills near Lyons and Estes Park. Enjoy!
Scientist Spotlight: Hasan Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) - medieval mathematician, astronomer, and physicist
Alhazen was a prolific scientist during the Islamic Golden Age and his work on optics was cited by Newton, Kepler, and Galileo. Considered the father of modern optics, he was the first to correctly explain the science of vision (prior to his discovery, people thought rays were emitted from our eyes in order to see). He was a pioneer of the scientific method 500 years before the Renaissance, and some have called him the first true scientist. Here is what Alhazen said about science, so many years before the scientific method was defined:
“Therefore, the seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. The duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and ... attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency.”
That’s pretty much the Scientific Method. In addition to his groundbreaking work in optics, he delved into astronomy, mathematics, psychology, philosophy, engineering, and theology. Only 55 of his written works survive of over 200 that have been attributed to him. It’s been said that he was the first great physicist since Archimedes, who preceded him by 1,200 years! In a 2014 episode of Cosmos titled Hiding in the Light, Neil DeGrasse Tyson highlighted Alhazen’s work.
Song(s) of the month: Dolly Parton rocks!
Alhazen was a prolific scientist during the Islamic Golden Age and his work on optics was cited by Newton, Kepler, and Galileo. Considered the father of modern optics, he was the first to correctly explain the science of vision (prior to his discovery, people thought rays were emitted from our eyes in order to see). He was a pioneer of the scientific method 500 years before the Renaissance, and some have called him the first true scientist. Here is what Alhazen said about science, so many years before the scientific method was defined:
“Therefore, the seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. The duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and ... attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency.”
That’s pretty much the Scientific Method. In addition to his groundbreaking work in optics, he delved into astronomy, mathematics, psychology, philosophy, engineering, and theology. Only 55 of his written works survive of over 200 that have been attributed to him. It’s been said that he was the first great physicist since Archimedes, who preceded him by 1,200 years! In a 2014 episode of Cosmos titled Hiding in the Light, Neil DeGrasse Tyson highlighted Alhazen’s work.
Back in my May 2023 blog I highlighted Dolly Parton as my musical artist. See that blog post for more on this incredible woman. In that post, one of the songs I highlighted was an original rock song she wrote for a rock and roll covers album that was coming out later in the year. Well that album came out and....it's incredible. The album's title is Rockstar and it was just released this past month. At the age of 77, Dolly has released her first rock album filled with 30 great rock songs, 9 of them written by Parton. I enjoyed listening to her piercing Tennessee twang interpret some of these classic rock songs. In addition to the songs below, she sings songs with Elton John, Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Joan Jett, Debbie Harry, Emmylou Harris, and Melissa Ethridge among others. Here are five of them that I particularly liked:
Stairway to Heaven (with Lizzo on flute) - Dolly actually covered this song on one of her bluegrass (!) albums in 2002, Halos and Horns. Robert Plant was thrilled when she asked to cover the song because he believes it's a spiritual song that would suit her voice perfectly, and during the "fast" part of the song on the Halos and Horns version, Parton employed a church choir to rev it up a bit. The version on Rockstar is closer to the original Led Zeppelin version with the great guitar licks but with Lizzo's flute adding a little Jethro Tull vibe. Too bad Jimmy Page and Robert Plant weren't able to join her on this version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL1pBDjVkpg
What's Up (with Linda Perry) - Perry was lead singer in the group 4 Non Blondes who had a breakthrough hit with this song in 1992. Dolly brings it back to life in this video with Perry on guitar and backup vocals. Great song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ruw0_o-tWzk
Heartbreaker (with Pat Benatar) - She and Pat Benatar slay on this version of the Benatar classic. As a bonus, Neil Giraldo, who is Benatar's husband and has been her guitarist for years is on lead guitar! Turn up the volume!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClStJE3gOz8
Let It Be (with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr) - Leave it to Dolly Parton to get the remaining Beatles together. I know, they just released a "new" John Lennon song recently, but frankly, that song just didn't do it for me. But Let It Be is an all time classic. And it doesn't lose a thing in this version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXW-p4nKdDA&list=RDdXW-p4nKdDA&start_radio=1
Freebird (with Lynyrd Skynyrd) - When I was listening to this song on YouTube, the comment that first popped up was this:
"So many tears, I couldn't stop crying, it was so beautiful and Ronnie and Gary and OMG I am 15 years old again and I can taste the Jack Daniels and smell the weed and feel the wind blowing in my hair as we are screaming down the highway in my friends Camaro with Freebird blasting through the Jensen Triax even louder than the wind and the engine - Freedom as there hasn't been since!"
Well, I was also 15 years old when this song first came out and I had a Camaro and, well, this guy might have been in my car. Just sayin'. Ronnie van Zandt's widow agreed to allow Dolly to use her husband's vocals in the song and as good as Dolly is, it's not Freebird without Ronnie's vocals which kick in at the 3:30 mark. Epic rock anthem, light your bic lighter (not your phone flashlight).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ObjWKVviL8
I saw the book as separated into three sections. The first section describes the people living in this area of Oklahoma; the Osage, the white people that intermarried with them, and the bankers, lawyers, and politicians who tried to take advantage of the situation. It then went on to describe a series of murders and suspicious deaths which could never be solved. The second section describes how the FBI came into existence and how Tom White, whom J Edgar Hoover selected to investigate the Osage murders, proceeded to punish the perpetrators. At the time, there were around 20 suspicious deaths or murders to investigate. White eventually prosecutes some men and sends them to prison for what they did (the trial scenes in the book were terrific); everyone thought that the story had ended (so did I). But then the last section details the author’s efforts to uncover some of the other mysteries of that time. He goes on to discover that there were likely hundreds of these deaths (not 20) and that several high-ranking officials at the time were complicit. None of them were ever prosecuted. So, the Reign of Terror actually lasted much longer and had many more casualties than were reported at the time.
It's a tragic and gripping story. Here are some lines:
In May, when coyotes howl beneath an unnervingly large moon, taller plants, such as spiderworts and black-eyed Susans, begin to creep over the tinier blooms, stealing their light and water. The necks of the smaller flowers break and their petals flutter away, and before long they are buried underground. This is why the Osage Indians refer to May as the time of the flower-killing moon.
Louis F. Burns, an Osage historian, wrote that after oil was discovered, the tribe had been “set adrift in a strange world,” adding, “There was nothing familiar to clutch and stay afloat in the world of white man’s wealth.”
The Osage had been assured by the U.S. government that their Kansas territory would remain their home forever, but before long they were under siege from settlers. Among them was the family of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who later wrote Little House on the Prairie based on her experiences.
many Osage, including Lizzie and Anna, were deemed “incompetent,” and were forced to have a local white guardian overseeing and authorizing all of their spending, down to the toothpaste they purchased at the corner store.
A reporter from Harper’s Monthly Magazine wrote, “Where will it end? Every time a new well is drilled the Indians are that much richer.” The reporter added, “The Osage Indians are becoming so rich that something will have to be done about it.”
The world’s richest people per capita were becoming the world’s most murdered.
Tulsa Tribune wrote about the trial. “Here are well-groomed businessmen, contesting standing room with roustabouts. There are society women sitting side by side with Indian squaws in gaudy blankets. Cowboys in broad brimmed hats and Osage chiefs in beaded garb drink in the testimony. Schoolgirls crane forward in their seats to hear it. All the cosmopolitan population of the world’s richest spot—the Kingdom of the Osage—crowd to catch the drama of blood and gold.” (Sounds like a Tom Russell song)
A local historian later ventured that the Osage murder trials received more media coverage than the previous year’s Scopes “monkey trial,” in Tennessee, regarding the legality of teaching evolution in a state-funded school.
After a long pause, she said, “There were a lot more murders during the Reign of Terror than people know about. A lot more.”
“This land is saturated with blood,” Webb said. For a moment, she fell silent, and we could hear the leaves of the blackjacks rattling restlessly in the wind. Then she repeated what God told Cain after he killed Abel: “The blood cries out from the ground.”
I had planned a loop hike which was one of the first hikes I did when we moved to Colorado, combining the Nighthawk, Nelson, and Bitterbrush trails. However, on this day the Nighthawk and Nelson trails were closed due to muddy conditions (see what I mean about Colorado weather?). I managed to still get in a 10 mile walk by going off trail at the end of the Bitterbrush trail to connect to a maintenance dirt road. That dirt road, which I believe was labeled Fire Road #1, traverses Hall Ranch and Button Rock Preserve from highway 7 all the way to Ralph Price Reservoir. I followed the road as it passed by the old Nelson cabin and then to its high point about a mile and a half southwest of the cabin where I was greeted with wonderful views of the snow-capped Rockies. I saw dozens of deer and prairie dogs today. They likely thrive and are unafraid of humans due to the no-dog policy up here. There were very few hikers and bikers, probably because of all the trail closures. It’s a nice walk, but I still need to find that yearly early November go-to walk. Any suggestions are appreciated!
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| Scenery near the trailhead |
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| One of several deer along the way |
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| Nelson Ranch |
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| First view of Longs Peak |
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| Nice views near at the southwest edge of Hall Ranch |
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| Pretty scene |
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| Rock formations near a prescribed burn |
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| Rock emperor |
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| Trail art |
On the author’s website he introduces himself as follows: “…I write life advice that is science-based, pragmatic, and non-bullsh!tty—a.k.a., life advice that doesn’t suck. Some people say I’m an idiot. Other people say I saved their life. Read on and decide for yourself.” That’s a pretty fair and honest assessment from what I read in this highly entertaining and enlightening book. In 2021 I read two books that I loved but were really dense and hard to grasp: Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman and The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. Manson takes many of the ideas from these books (among others) and puts them into layman’s terms; or really, I should say longshoreman’s terms because as the book title indicates he doesn’t hesitate to use colorful words when he’s trying to make a point. This may turn off some people, but I found it kind of refreshing. I’m sure that academic philosophers and psychologists are horrified by this guy, but honestly, I think he understands these topics as well as the academics and he certainly is able to explain them in more understandable terms.
One of the many, mostly positive, reviews I read of this book said that it was, “one of those rare books that is thought-provoking while being hilarious, and inspiring while being bleak.” That is a pretty apt description. You will learn a lot about psychology and philosophy and may even come to understand yourself, your relationships, and the world, a bit better. Manson starts out by explaining how each of us has both a Thinking Brain and a Feeling Brain inside of us, which explains all the good and bad things that have ever happened in our life. It parallels Kahneman’s Fast (Feeling) and Slow (Thinking) theories of how our brains work. Once you have this basic understanding, he then goes on to explain how religion, politics, relationships, philosophy, war, and artificial intelligence play on these two parts of our brain. He addresses the fact that technology has made life on earth so much “better” than it was for the thousands of years prior (we don’t die at 30 anymore, plagues don’t kill half the population anymore, far fewer people starve to death, etc.). But then he asks, so why does it feel like everything is so terrible? Why is there so much depression and suicide? He explains exactly why, and Plato and Nietzsche both predicted it.
There are highly entertaining sections on a parallel universe Isaac Newton who invents the Laws of Emotion, a step-by-step instruction manual on how to create your own religion (brilliant), the fascinating true story of Witold Pilecki (maybe the bravest human ever), an explainer on why toddlers and adolescents act the way they do, and an interesting take on Artificial Intelligence. It’s a wild ride that will not only make you laugh out loud but will get you to seriously ponder your life and the future. Here are some lines:
being heroic is the ability to conjure hope where there is none.
Basically, we are the safest and most prosperous humans in the history of the world, yet we are feeling more hopeless than ever before. The better things get, the more we seem to despair. It’s the paradox of progress. And perhaps it can be summed up in one startling fact: the wealthier and safer the place you live, the more likely you are to commit suicide.
To build and maintain hope, we need three things: a sense of control, a belief in the value of something, and a community.
While your Thinking Brain is calculating payment schedules on your credit card statement, your Feeling Brain wants to sell everything and run away to Tahiti.
intellectually understanding how to change your behavior doesn’t change your behavior. (Trust me, I’ve read like twelve books on nutrition and am still chomping on a burrito as I write this.)
we look back and wonder how we ever spent so much time caring about such a silly, trivial thing, why we wasted so much energy on issues and causes that didn’t matter. These pangs of regret or embarrassment are good; they signify growth. They are the product of our achieving our hopes.
If we’re given a bunch of stuff without earning it (participation trophies and grade inflation and gold medals for coming in ninth place), we (falsely) come to believe ourselves inherently superior to what we actually are. We therefore develop a deluded version of high self-worth, or, as it’s more commonly known, being an a$$hole.
Every individual will blind herself to her own flaws while seeking out the glaring flaws of others. Welcome to Earth. Enjoy your stay.
There’s a reason that all the major religions in the world have a history of sending missionaries to the poorest and most destitute corners of the globe: starving people will believe anything if it will keep them fed.
The average human from two thousand years ago experienced about as much economic growth in his lifetime as we experience in six months today.
The scientific revolution eroded the dominance of spiritual religions and made way for the dominance of ideological religions.
A friend of mine once described parenthood as “basically just following around a kid for a couple decades and making sure he doesn’t accidentally kill himself—and you’d be amazed how many ways a kid can find to accidentally kill himself.”
You must love someone without expecting anything in return; otherwise it’s not truly love. You must respect someone without expecting anything in return; otherwise you don’t truly respect him. You must speak honestly without expecting a pat on the back or a high-five or a gold star next to your name; otherwise you aren’t truly being honest.
Don’t hope for a better life. Simply be a better life.
Einstein would go on to revolutionize physics multiple times, escape the Nazis, warn the United States of the oncoming necessity (and danger) of nuclear weapons, and be the subject of a very famous photo in which he’s sticking out his tongue. But today, we also know him for the many excellent internet quotes that he never actually said.
Democracy can exist only when you are willing to tolerate views that oppose your own, when you’re willing to give up some things you might want for the sake of a safe and healthy community, when you’re willing to compromise and accept that sometimes things don’t go your way. Put another way: democracy requires a citizenry of strong maturity and character.
AI will reach a point where its intelligence outstrips ours by so much that we will no longer comprehend what it’s doing. Cars will pick us up for reasons we don’t understand and take us to locations we didn’t know existed. We will unexpectedly receive medications for health issues we didn’t know we suffered from. It’s possible that our kids will switch schools, we will change jobs, economic policies will abruptly shift, governments will rewrite their constitutions—and none of us will comprehend the full reasons why.
As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it, “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”
Whenever I see a news story about college kids freaking out over a campus speaker they don’t like and equating offensive speech with trauma, I wonder what Witold Pilecki would have thought. Google him.
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| Heading to that rise in the middle |
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| Lots of big animals being eaten by other big animals |
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| This was the gnarly off-trail section |
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| Up on top looking east towards my house |
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| Trail art |
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| Trail art |
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| Ralph Price Reservoir with Longs Peak upper left and Twin Sisters upper middle |
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| I've been down in there on previous hikes |
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| Nice framed shot of Longs Peak |
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| Ralph Price Reservoir which provides water to Longmont residents |
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| That log has a hiker hat shape on it... |
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| ET's heavier-set younger brother |
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| Dead tree pointing towards the most amazing view |
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| Remnants of an old cabin |
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| North St. Vrain Creek |
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| Started and ended here |
I have to say that I really enjoyed spending a few hours with the two families described in this book. It reads like an oral history of several interconnected stories. Knowing that the author wasn’t able to read until the age of 20 goes a long way to explain why this is. He grew up listening to his parents and grandparents tell the remarkable stories of their lives in Mexico during the revolution; and of their harrowing travels to the United States to escape the war with its collateral rape and pillage of small communities by both sides. And once they get to the US it’s a story of resilience against racism during the depression, scraping by for every penny and scrap of food in order to feed their families. The two grandmothers, Doña Margarita and Doña Guadalupe were the two anchors of the family, using their strength of will and innate intelligence to help their respective families survive. Here are some lines:
The mine came to be officially known as La Lluvia de Oro, “The Rain of Gold.” And thousands of poor Mexican people came to the box canyon hoping to get work.
It had been another good day; they’d gotten food to fill their bellies and they were still alive.
..there came the sun, la cobija de los pobres, the blanket of the poor.
Lupe and her sisters were always told to keep away from the Americans; they were as bad as the gachupines, meaning the Spaniards.
(the baby) never cried, listening to her heartbeat, the same music that he’d heard from inside the womb. No, he was quiet, content, doing what nature had taught him to do since prehistoric times: to keep quiet so the coyotes and other predators wouldn’t find them.
Nine months later to the day that the meteorite kissed the earth, a female child was born to Doña Guadalupe and Don Victor. Rosa named the newborn child Guadalupe, the miracle child, in honor of her beloved dead husband, whose immortal soul had been saved by a burning child.
She was proud, she was strong, she was intelligent, she didn’t like violence and respected life. She was a woman that a man could build a home with to last ten generations! She was the woman that he’d been searching for ever since he could remember.
..smart ideas are a dime a dozen, unless you figure out all the thousands of little details that give life to an idea so that the idea can survive.
The pool hall was the center of life of the barrio for the young men…the church was the lifeline for the women.
“You lied, you used every form of trickery that we’ve learned since Eve tempted Adam, and Maria told Joseph that God had visited her.”
Always keep close to the truth, mi hijito, so in case you’re caught ankle-deep in your own caca, you can crawl out.
Remember, you’re only half grown. You haven’t married, or had children, so there’s much you can’t comprehend.
Papa, aren’t you afraid? Of what? Of death? Of course not. To fear death is to insult life!
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| One of the owls on Twin Owls climbing wall |
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| Nice views at the start, along the Black Canyon trail |
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| The buck stopped here |
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| Some snow up high |
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| Snow melt making the trail hard to cross |
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| Gem Lake |
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| Creepy eye rock |
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| Sun heading down behind the Rockies... |
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| ...creating some nice rock coloring |
Here are some other, less complex lines from the book:
human civilizations have existed for only about 6000 or so years, 0.0001 percent of Earth’s history—a fleeting moment in geological time.
When plants and animals die, their organic remains find their way into soils or muddy swamp bottoms. The geological process of sedimentation works its magic. They become buried in layers of rock and dirt. Over millions of years, heat and pressure from Earth’s crust decomposes these organisms into what we know as coal. It took Gaia more than a hundred million years to bury this carbon. Today, we’re unburying it and putting it back into the atmosphere over a timeframe of a hundred years, a million times faster.
the deadliest extinction event took place at the end of the Permian period, roughly 250 million years ago. It is referred to in the scientific community as the Permian-Triassic (or P-T for short) extinction, but because an estimated ninety percent of all Permian species disappeared from the face of the planet, it has earned a nickname: the Great Dying.
In 1987, the international agreement known as the Montreal Protocol—which was signed by then U.S. president Ronald Reagan—banned the environment-damaging chemicals (CFCs). Though we’re not thoroughly out of the woods yet, some observers have defensibly classified the ozone hole as an example of “when the world actually solved an environmental crisis.”
We are threatened with a catastrophe of our own making. And the primary challenge we face isn’t the immutable laws of astrophysics. It’s political will.
Decarbonizing our civilization now remains task number one, and it can be accomplished with existing renewable energy and storage technology, efficiency measures, and smart grid technology. We currently lack only the political will, not the know-how, to accomplish this task.
The hockey stick tells a simple story. You don’t have to understand the complexities and intricacies of Earth’s climate system to understand what this graph is telling us: that we are perturbing our planet’s climate in a profound way...The warming spike that we are experiencing is unprecedented in the history of human civilization. The hockey stick communicates this simple truth in a stark and unforgiving manner.
Recent studies suggest that we are now experiencing as many as five million deaths a year from heat stress and other dangerous weather extremes. Add in the additional four million deaths a year from air pollution generated by fossil fuel burning, and that’s nine million. In one year, the combined deaths are nearly twice the total recorded number of deaths worldwide from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dangerous climate change cannot be avoided. It’s already here. So, it’s a matter of how bad we’re willing to let it get.
The IPCC estimates as much as fourteen percent of species could be lost at 1.5°C (2.7°F) warming and eighteen percent at 2°C (3.6°F)... the number climbs to twenty-nine percent at 3°C (5.4°F), thirty-nine percent at 4°C (7.2°F), and forty-eight percent at 5°C (9°F).
If we build upon the actions that have already been taken, decarbonize the machinery of our civilization in the years and decades ahead, we can preserve our fragile moment. That’s what our review of climates past and present convincingly tells us. So let that be our rallying call and our mission.
Until next time, happy reading and rambling!