Author Archives: floegel

“It’s Just Death”

It’s August and blight is upon us.  The tomatoes have early blight, which is bad, but can be controlled by cutting away the blighted parts of the plant and not (!) composting them.  We put them in plastic bags and send them to the landfill. Late blight is worse, usually taking out the whole plant […]

Buy Honey Now

If you just want the bottom line, you can stop reading.  The headline said it all.  If you like honey and want to keep eating it, buy it now before the price goes up. I attended the summer meeting of the Vermont Beekeepers Association Saturday and the main topic of conversation: no honey.  No one’s […]

Drowned in a Bathtub

The heat has broken in Vermont; it’s perfect summer day.  Maybe I should be outside, instead of merely sitting near the window, but I’m supposed to be working.  I’m not working either. I was working, but then I kept seeing the news about the stock market.  I was going to write about something else today, […]

Two Australians

Two Australians in England in trouble.  One’s all over the recent news, one was all over the news six months ago, now keeping a low profile.  Neither man’s issues have been resolved. Guessing?  Rupert Murdoch, of course, and Julian Assange.  The Australians (Mr. Murdoch is now a US citizen) both left their homeland far behind […]

HD5

Last Wednesday, 13 July 2011, was HD5 or Hansen Day Five.  It marked the fifth anniversary of James Hansen’s 2006 essay in the New York Review of Books, in which he wrote: “…we have at most ten years—not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse […]

Who Lost Venezuela?

What kind of cancer do you think Hugo Chavez has?  He mysteriously disappeared into Cuba for three weeks last month, then suddenly appeared looking drawn and haggard but announcing the success of cancer surgery.  He did not say where the cancer was.  Now he’s talking about chemo and radiation. Using the medical license bestowed by […]

Neighborhood Giant

Last Friday was Canada Day, which commemorates the 1867 unification of three British colonies – Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and “Canada” (Quebec and Ontario) – into one kingdom, as part of the United Kingdom. Canada did not achieve full separation from the UK until 1982. I was in Washington Friday and although I vaguely knew […]