A titan passes

News blues

A day late and a dollar short: Earth Day – missed it! It shows up on calendars in SA but holds with no ceremony nor receives official recognition.
In the US, Earth Day is a big thing – well, not big enough for a day off work and certainly not big enough to do anything serious about addressing our slowly suffocating planet or climate change….
(FYI: Wednesday is Freedom Day in South Africa and, yes, it’s a public holiday. Grocery stores will remain open, all other stores and offices closed.) 

Editor's note: This is a special cartoon Gary drew for Earth Day 1990,
as part of a project in which many cartoonists participated to bring
more awareness to the state of the environment.
© The Far Side,  Gary Larsen

***

Back in California, George Baxter Humphreys passed away. His obituary presents details about the man and his life that I never knew, but I knew him as a gift – knowledgeable, courageous, curious, generous with his knowledge and time, and dedicated to both educating residents and ensuring our town was as safe from toxic contamination as is possible under the circumstances. I also knew him as a gifted and patient watercolorist and artist. 
George served on the town’s Restoration Advisory Board from its inception in 1997 until now. 

A RAB  is designed to act as the local citizenry’s oversight group that ensures – as far as possible – the clean up and removal of toxic contamination, In our case, the clean up and removal of toxic contamination produced by decades of military and navy activities.

George fulfilled his role as RAB president, co-president, community member and as informal outside educator. I visited his home several times on RAB business, learned a lot from him, and was impressed and amused at his RAB filing system: boxes and boxes containing years of RAB documents piled up in his large kitchen and his small office.
Past posts on RAB and RAB activities:
Plus ça change… 
Play ball! 
Consequences 

Most impressive about George, vis a vis The RAB, was his activist heart. IMHO, it is unusual for someone with his professional education and background to engage with exposing systemic wrongs. He was a mainstream (white) man who questioned US Navy personnel about their assertions regarding health and safety measures – or the lack thereof – as they “cleaned up the base.” Many times US Navy personnel and contractors modified their assertions and their clean up actions based on George's professional feedback.

We’ll miss you, George. Thank you for your service.

Stung

News blues

According to researchers, including immunologist Nicole Doria-Rose and colleagues at the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,

Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine protects people for at least six months and likely longer – even against new variants. 

Protection against the Delta variant, now dominant across the US, barely waned, the National Institutes of Health-led team found. The team will continue to look for evidence of protection beyond six months. “High levels of binding antibodies recognizing all tested variants, including B.1.351 (Beta) and B.1.617.2 (Delta), were maintained in all subjects over this time period.”

Great for those who took the Moderna jab (including my son who works in a medical facility)… not so great for others, such as, well, for example, me. I guess I’ll be back in line again soon, baring my arm for another jab. 

Thanks the gods I have that option…. Thank you, scientists, immunologists, and, yes, Dr Fauci!

***

Ed Yong, staff writer at The Atlantic Monthly, has consistently turned out some of the best writing on the pandemic and coronavirus. His most recent piece, “How the Pandemic Ends Now,” is another excellent source of (non-politicized) information.
Read it >> 

Healthy planet, anyone?

First, a photographic reminder of the beauty of our planet >> 
Then, how We the People wreak havoc on that same planet – and how nature tries to respond:

Plastic bottles dominate waste in the ocean, with an estimated 1m of them reaching the sea every minute. The biggest culprit is polyethylene terephthalate (Pet) bottles.
A recent study found two bacteria capable of breaking down Pet – or, as the headlines put it, “eating plastic”. Known as Thioclava sp. BHET1 and Bacillus sp. BHET2, the bacteria were isolated in a laboratory – but they were discovered in the ocean.

Read “…the ‘plastisphere’: the synthetic ecosystem evolving at sea” >>

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

 I’d noticed the browning and shriveling of outer perimeters of the river’s vegetative islands of burgeoning hyacinth and other invasive plants. I suspected that some state department – Fish and wildlife? Regional water board? California State Parks Division of Boating and Waterways? All the above – were spraying herbicides again.
My suspicion proved correct when I captured this shot yesterday morning: herbicides being sprayed along the levee wall across from my houseboat.
While that’s not unusual, it boggles my mind that, knowing what “we” know about chemicals in our environment, “we” continue to choose this chemical way of addressing the problem.

Ironically, having expressed my distrust of environmental contaminants passed off to the public as “of no significance”, today I sprayed a pesticide advertised as “safe around people and pets” at residents of a wasp nest.
I’d repaired and repainted sections of wood trim and was nailing it back into place on the boat when several fierce wasps shot out from under the trim and stung my bare hands. Unlike bees, wasps live to sting again, and again, so I skedaddled – fast - and slammed shut the screen doors behind me.
Spiders, wasps, and similar bugs have staked out hunting and nesting territory on the houseboat. Not a problem. I’m not fearful of bugs. Indeed, I’ve built their presence into my life even as I enjoy my early morning ritual circumnavigating the boat with feather duster to remove the overnight crop of spider webs.
Through the closed window I watched several wasps aggressively patrol the area. They appeared to mean mean business.
I retrieved a can of “safe” insect spray that a friend had left on the boat and, carefully, aimed the spray nozzle in the direction of the hidden nest.
Naturally, the wasps became more agitated.
Since then, I've remained shut up in my hot and stuffy houseboat and given up my plan to finish the trim during daylight. Perhaps tonight, when the wasps are cozily tucked into their nest, I’ll sneak up and spray them. After all, as poet John Lyly wrote, “The rules of fair play do not apply in love and war.”

 
Continuing the topic of environmental contamination, after two years away in South Africa, yesterday evening I participated in an online board meeting as a member of a community overseeing the federally mandated clean up of toxic waste of former Naval Air Station Alameda. 

I’ve participated in this enterprise – the Restoration Advisory Board, RAB - since about 2003, taken great pleasure in doing so, and learned a massive amount about environmental contamination and the effort required to clean it up.
RABs are common around the nation. Many, many contaminated sites, from military bases to private and public businesses, have CERCLA (Superfund) site clean up overseen by community members.
Our community’s cleanup consists of a 2,806-acre area once a Navy installation located on the San Francisco Bay. Solid wastes generated at the site were disposed of in two on-base landfills as well as many sites with unanticipated chemical spills. All liquid industrial wastewaters generated at the site prior to 1974 were discharged untreated into a manmade lagoon and local inner harbor. 

Since this base closed in 1997, about $1 billion has been spent on clean up and rehabilitation. And this NAS is only one of at least four similar sites, all former military bases on San Francisco Bay.
It was good to be back on the board. Moreover, with mixed emotion, we bade farewell to one member who’d been part of the planning of the base closure since 1995. Bert’s about to celebrate his 100th year of life – 26 years of which were spent serving on the RAB - and he’s decided to cut back on his many community serving activities.
Thanks for your many faithful years, Bert!