Global Environment, Nature, The Universe,

observations and thoughts

by Carol Gamel



Friday, May 31, 2002

Another clipping for myself - An Indian herb, guggul, works to lower cholesterol. To learn more, visit www.peoplespharmacy.org.

Oh, I can feel my thoughts getting organized. The bin is filling up!
The joke of the family is that my sister and myself are turning into our mother. This is GOOD, except for her idiosynchronsies (?where is spell check?) like clipping newspaper articles. My God, I keep cutting out articles that I think Cindy would or should like to read. Help! At least I'm not piling these clippings up on my desk - - - yet. A great selling point for Blogger.com - I can just put the link into my blog and it will be preserved longer than I'll ever need it.

Like St Petersburg Times Nuclear Waste article, good journalism that everybody should read. Worrywarts like myself think about nuclear waste problems and wonder why we aren't more aggressively looking for alternatives to nuclear power so that we don't have to deal with the waste issues. Whatever happened to SOLAR energy? If you read this article you will learn that some Florida power plants are going to run out of storage space as early as 2005. Our great government is funding a storage facility in Nevada but none of the state or local governments are going to want the dangerous materials shipped through their communities. Not to mention other obvious concerns such as hijacking and terrorism. Think about it!

One clipped article now can go into the bin.

Friday, May 24, 2002

Wednesday we escaped from St Petersburg and drove South. The objective was to visit the Audobon Society's Corkscrew Sanctuary which is located just north of Naples. www.audubon.org/local/sanctuary/corkscrew/

But nothing is simple in our lives. First we stopped at Southeastern Guidedogs for a tour of their facilities and a love session with the puppies. The place is amazing. Very professionally managed! They breed and train guide dogs for the blind. Their training program is very thorough for both the dogs and the people. The recipient must stay at the facility for almost four weeks to bond with their new dog and learn the guiding techniques themselves. The organization makes certain that the dog is specifically trained for its master's new environment (riding trains or buses, etc) and enables a new level of independence for the blind. Everything revolves around a loving atmosphere for the dogs - from playtime for puppies to finding a comfortable retirement scenario.

After the long time spent at the kennels, we drove and drove and drove. The choice of going down US41 instead of the Interstate was not good. But after getting lost we finally found Corkscrew Sanctuary around 5:00 PM.

What a perfect time of day to walk their boardwalk. A nice cool breeze with lots of shade was just what we needed. The Audobon Society has invested a large amount of money into the building and the boardwalk at Corkscrew. They have ensure as little encroachment on the environment as possible yet made it most pleasant. The walk is about 2.5 miles and at first it was a bit disappointing. We have more birds at home that we saw in the park! But then we spotted an immature Bald Eagle. Nothing can take away the thrill of seeing that beautiful bird. Thank goodness we took the binoculars. Unfortunately, we had no camera.

The other thrill was seeing alligators in their natural habitat. Fantastic! We watched one gator in particular waiting for him to gobble up an immature Ibis - he got a fish instead.

Corkscrew Sanctuary is a beautiful park but it needs more land. Developers and miners are everywhere in that vicinity. I wonder how the Everglades Restoration will affect that area. Gotta find out!

Saturday, May 18, 2002

A day late, but not sorry. Last night Fred and I went to the beach to see the planets lined up with the moon. Saturn was the first to pop out followed by Venus. We had a hard time deciding what we were supposed to be looking at -the stars seemed so bright. And when we got home and looked at the diagram of the sky in the newspaper, I wondered how there could be such a difference in one day. I explained it away by saying the moon was larger and brighter and may be hiding one of the planets. Oh well, now I am looking up at the blue sky and thinking about what lays beyond it that we can't see.

I just deleted a paragraph I wrote on Arafat and Israel. I feel like I am only seeing the blue sky and am missing all the depth behind that layer. There is so much history, so many stories, so much misery, and so much hate. I wish it weren't so. It's not a comfortable feeling knowing that people hate me simply because I'm an Amercian. But they do. I can't change that - not in my lifetime. Our cultures are too separate. But that doesn't mean I give up nor do do I expect anybody to quit.

What I'd like to see are common goals for the world - rid ourselves of famine, fight disease, protect our environment, invest in education, etc. Every nation needs to be striving towards these goals for the benefit of their people. It sickens me to see greed take away the opportunity for progress. But we lack the leadership. We don't have team effort. We have politics instead. I think they can't see the forest for the trees.



Wednesday, May 15, 2002

The Latin music has just stopped. Must be time for the news. Local news first, then national. I tried to get PBS News Hour going but found it extremely "unexciting" the other day. Is it always that way? I'd love more in-depth news but that doesn't mean - "put me to sleep". Maybe it was just a slow day for J. Lehrer.

I'll be telling you about the birds and sea turtles when I come back with more postings. The thrill of last week was seeing a Bald Eagle for 2 days in a row. Beautiful!

My crow's nest is high above Tampa Bay. I get to see the birds from above and sometimes at eye level. What a thrill.

I'm off to cook up an easy Strouganoff dinner. Take care.

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