A loyal bird

Year round we have the pleasant company of the humble Junco (Junco hyemalis.)

They are a common North American bird, nesting in a well-hidden location on the ground or low in a shrub or tree. Can you find two Juncos in our Crabapple?

Juncos forage on the ground, mainly eating insects and seeds. I

I'm guessing in winter, it's pretty much seeds, exclusively, especially ones put out by Charmaine. Sometimes they can't wait for seeds to fall to the ground and go up to the feeder, especially on Storm of the Century days like today.

This Old Jade

Commonly known as jade plant, friendship tree or Money Plant, Crassula ovata is an evergreen succulent native to South Africa where the environmental conditions are dry with little rainfall.

Charmaine has had this huge plant (or a relative of it) for as long as I've known her. It takes a knockin' and keeps on rockin'.

The plant itself can be identified by it's thick grey branches and smooth, rounded and fleshy jade-colored leaves that grow in opposing pairs along the branches.

In the summer time it lives out on the back patio, mostly in the shade. In the winter it comes indoors to the four season room.

Here's a growing tip: Jades require a normal watering when the soil is dry in the summer, and very little water in the winter. Overwatering will cause them to lose their leaves and eventually the stem will rot away. It is best to keep them on a 10 - 20 day cycle in the summer, and even less (up to a month dry) in the winter. Letting the soil dry between waterings is essential for a healthy and happy jade. They are also very easy to propagate into small plants to give as gifts.

Our old Jade reminds me a little bit of John McCain, taking a beating, almost having his campaign collapse, then coming back stronger than ever. I can hear you loyal readers saying, "John McCain? Why are you talking about him?" Because the right wing talkers (led by Rush,) hate him. They think he's too liberal for the conservative movement.

A win for McCain is a win for the Democrats. Go get em' Johnny!

Signs of Spring

Saturday was Groundhog Day, and Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, meaning 6 more weeks of Winter, but that's out East. Around here it was overcast, so no shadow, and an early appearance for the green season.

Another sure sign of Spring is the sprouting of the Paperwhite Narcissus (Narcissus Tazetta) bulbs in the kitchen.

Along with being a visual beauty, the scent, not unlike an Easter Lily, is wonderful, too.

Another harbinger of Spring is a deficit-laden Federal budget, presented by the White House. This year we're running another $410 billion in the Red. Nice job Republican Party. Aren't you supposed to be the fiscal conservatives and promoters of smaller government? It's about time to let someone else manage our feed trough for a while.

Shovel Smart

One of the more common causes of back injuries during the winter months is snow removal. Using the wrong body mechanics when shoveling snow can put undue stress on the spine and lead to muscle strains, falls, or more serious back injuries.
The following snow removal tips can help you to avoid low back injuries and pain during what's left of our snowy winter season.


Pick the right snow shovel. An ergonomic design can help take some of the effort out of your snow removal chores. A shovel with a curved handle or an adjustable handle length will minimize painful bending, requiring you to bend your knees only slightly and arch your back very slightly while keeping the shovel blade on the ground.

• Warm up thoroughly. (does anybody really do this? Cold, tight muscles are more prone to injury than warmed up, flexible muscles.
• Pace yourself, removing small amounts of snow frequently is less strenuous than removing a large pile at once.
• Whenever possible, push the snow to one side rather than lifting it. When lifting the snow shovel is necessary, make sure to use ergonomic lifting techniques:
  Always face the object you intend to lift
  Bend at the hips, not the low back, and push the chest out
• Bend your knees and lift with your leg muscles, keeping your back straight
  Grip the shovel with one hand as close to the blade as comfortably possible and the other hand on the handle
• Avoid twisting the back to move your object to its new location – always pivot your whole body to face the new direction
• Walk to the new location to deposit the item rather than reaching or tossing
• When gripping the shovel, keep your hands about 12 inches apart to provide greater stability and minimize the chances of injuring your low back
  If possible, stop shoveling – use a snow blower instead

Now we're talking! When used correctly, a snow blower can put less stress on your low back than shoveling. Make sure to use the power of your legs to push the snow blower while keeping your back straight and knees bent.
For more you can go to spine-health.com

All of these shoveling techniques can also be used to dig through all the rhetoric in the Presidential candidate debates.

Green Thursday: Litterbugs in Space

While a mid-sized metal screw hitting your windshield might result in a ding and some annoyance on I-94, the same fragment traveling at 22,000 miles per hour could produce a “catastrophic incident” if it blasted through the windshield of an orbiting space shuttle.

While we "go green" on the surface, a few hundred miles up a new kind of pollution is becoming a growing problem beyond the confines of atmospheric climate change. 4 million pounds of orbiting, human-made space junk is orbiting above us!

It would seem amazing that only three recorded major collisions have occurred since 1991. According to NASA, about 8,900 objects are “officially” tracked by U.S. surveillance assets.
The latest celestial road-rage accident took place in November of last year when the remains of an old Soviet-era navigation satellite toasted NASA’s upper atmosphere research satellite. The Soviet satellite had itself been the victim of an earlier space collision when it was inexplicably blasted into fragments by an unknown object in 1981.

Not much we can do about the stuff up there, but very soon, it's going to impact on us down here, literally.

A large US Air Force spy satellite is dead and expected to fall out of orbit and impact the earth's surface in late February or early March. Although it's classified, the satellite is believed to be about 13 to 16.5 feet long, and weighs up to 10,000 pounds. Currently its at about 173 miles altitude and dropping at a rate of 1,640 feet per day. The satellite won't begin its visible reentry into the atmosphere until it's only 59 miles above the surface, after which it will take only about 30 minutes until impact.

The satellite was launched in December 2006 but suffered a complete computer failure, lost power and can't be controlled. It is so large and heavy that some parts of it likely won't burn up during reentry and will probably hit the earth's surface, and all the projections put it making contact somewhere on North America. Oh, one more little detail, it also contains some hazardous materials. Can't tell you what they are, because that's classified, too.

Each Green Thursday, we post information vital to the survival of the planet.

Are you READY for the CRASH?

It's going to happen, and you never know when. 6% of all PCs will suffer an episode of data loss in any given year.

It could be a home disaster
or some pirated software from a "friend"

Maybe a fire. After the shock wears off, how will you get your personal computer data back? Tax records, all the digital photos, documents, spreadsheets, powerpoints could all be lost.

Charmaine came home from a trip to the bank safe deposit box last week and told me; "Our last computer backup CDs say 2006." I hate backing up the box. It takes a long time, then because we have so much data, it has to be spread over several disks, which means messing with WinZip, then making a trip to the bank. I'm not even sure if we did have a catastophe that I could wrangle all the data off those disks.

My brother put me on to Mozy, an online service that automatically keeps a backup of your computer. I get unlimited storage for just $5 a month! (I'm not getting paid to endorse this product) If you have less than 2 gigs of stuff, they don't charge you at all. My backup is 3.9 gigs. Who knew I had that much stuff!

Both political parties lost a backup candidate today. John Edwards and Rudy Guliani hung up their ambitions to be President. Rudy was the darling of right-wing talk radio. It'll be interesting to see who they throw their support to now. It doesn't quite seem fair that unless your state is early in the primary process, you don't get a real choice.

That was Close!

Early this morning (12:33 am) the asteroid 2007-tu24 passed within 334,000 miles of Earth early this morning. That's about one-and-a-half times the distance of Earth to the moon."


Radar images (above) showed 2007-tu24 to be about 600 feet wide. Scientists at NASA said it was "the closest approach by a known asteroid of this size or larger until 2027. Of course, the big collision headed our way may not even be known about, yet. This one was just discovered last October, and we know about maybe half of the objects like this in Earth-crossing orbits.


Here's a cheery little video about what could have happened. Let's just hope that it doesn't happen during the next year, Lord knows what kind of draconian actions and rights-stripping legislation the neo-cons from Cheneyland would come up with.

Something's wrong here

Sunday morning (before today's thaw,) the Mourning Doves (Zenaida macroura) found it hard to get a drink out the heated bird bath. Instead, they were skating across the surface, like drunk pilots.

The circuit breaker for the outdoor outlet had tripped in the cold, so in an hour or so, problem solved.

There's also something wrong in Washington, DC, but luckily, it'll be gone in less than a year. As the President prepares for his final State of the Union address, here's a great list of 99 things that are worse now, than at the beginning of the "W" years. Here's a couple examples:

Problem: Staggering National DebtAfter declining significantly during the 1990s, the combination of expensive Bush tax cuts and reckless spending pushed the national debt from $5.7 trillion in 2001 to $9.2 trillion in 2008.

Problem: Iraq Reconstruction in ShamblesDespite spending $488 billion (so far) on the Iraq war, many of the U.S.-led reconstruction projects in Iraq, fraught with corruption, security problems, and inept contractors, have been abandoned, delayed or poorly constructed.

Problem: No Health InsuranceThere were 47 million Americans living without health insurance in 2006; that’s 8.6 million more uninsured than there were in 2000.

Problem: Sticking Poor Countries with the BillCountless reports have said that poor, developing nations will bear the brunt—think: drought, famine, floods, and disease—of climate change. Yet, at the recent climate change talks in Bali, U.S. delegates tried to block a proposal that would require rich nations to do more to help poor nations fight global warming.

Have you had your Blue Juice today?

This time of year, it's nearly impossible to navigate on the roads without constantly rinsing the salt spray off the windshield, and that takes Blue Juice.

At the gas station, I had to do a double take on the price! $2.99 a gallon! The upgrade Purple stuff was another buck more. It turns out that there's a world-wide shortage of methanol, the ingredient that keeps it from freezing in your car, and helps it to evaporate off the windshield.

Is it too late to get President Bush and the neo-cons to come up with a plan to invade the nation responsible for this debacle? We wouldn't have far to go, it's Canada. The Vancouver-based company that makes much of the world's methanol -- the main ingredient in windshield washer fluid -- has had to curtail production in Chile. The company is having trouble getting natural gas, another key ingredient, from neighbouring Argentina because the country has imposed a hefty export tax. Prices of $6.00 a gallon could be a reality very soon. Time to stock up, a lot.

Green Thursday: Green Wine

Who doesn't love a glass of wine? Unfortunately, most wineries use chemical pesticides that have a negative effect on the land, and nearby waterways, plus can leave traces of the stuff in the wine itself.

Some vineyards have adopted eco-friendly growing methods that can result in fewer sulfites for those who are allergic, and some are processed without animal byproducts, which makes true vegans happy.

click HERE for a list of domestic wines that are following these policies, and what to look for on the label as others join the Green Wine movement.

Wine also has a high fuel cost associated with it. Because of the large, heavy glass bottles in which it's packaged, the average domestic case of wine consumes more than a gallon of gasoline to reach its final destination, with chilled white wine consuming even more energy as it sits in refrigerators awaiting purchase. Wines imported into the US up the energy bill even further. Wine in a box would be a better way to go.

Every Green Thursday we post information on how you can help the planet.

Flat as a Pancake

The only thing better than pancakes, are "All You Can Eat Pancakes!" The secret to perfect pancakes on this equipment is that box with the crank on it. One turn drops 4 blobs of just the right amount of batter onto the grill. It slides along on an oiled track for fast action.

The next trick is to know when to turn 'em, then when they're done. It's best to leave this to the professionals....
...from Henneberry Pancakes. I caught them in action at the Waukesha Janboree.

Voila! The finished product.

Flatter than a pancake are the President's approval ratings. The latest ABC/Washington Post poll released showed "W" for the first time below 33 percent approval.

"Just 32 percent of Americans now approve of the way Bush is handling his job, while 66 percent disapprove," the poll says. "Bush's work on the economy has likewise reached a new low. And he shows no gain on Iraq; despite reduced violence there, 64 percent say the war was not worth fighting."

The poll further shows that 77 percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track."

How much longer? Just check out the Bush countdown clock in the column to the left.

Dust of Snow
by Robert Frost

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

I've always heard that no two snowflakes are alike, and now there's a scientist that proves it. Ken Libbrecht peers into a microscope to study how snow crystals are formed and ponders the age-old question of why no two snowflakes are alike.

The guy is a total geek, astrophysicist and chairman of the physics department at the California Institute of Technology. If you want to delve further into the topic, he's founded a website SnowCrystals.com. It has become popular with snowflake enthusiasts, science teachers, mathematicians who want to model snowflakes, and the U.S. Postal Service, which turned one of his wintry images into a stamp.

Here's a shot of all those different hexagonal crystals piling up in the LipsYard driveway this morning.

No two candidates for President are alike, and the subset diminished by one today as former "Law and Order" star Fred Thompson withdrew from the Republican primary. (Not to mention the prospect of a really hot First Lady.)

I can see it now, "Tonight, on a very special 'Law and Order,' D.A. Arthur Branch wakes up and says he just had the wierdest dream, that he had run for President of the United States."

Actually, I think I've had dreams that have lasted longer than Fred's run. Maybe he just saw the writing on the wall; that no matter who gets the GOP nomination doesn't stand a chance and decided to cut his losses.

Packer Prayer

This would have been a much better post had the Packers won, but the prose is so good, I'm running it anyways. I picked up this little ditty from a friend who is a Packer fanatic (she's NOT pictured above.)

Packer Prayer

Our Favre,

Who art in Lambeau,

Hallowed be thine arm.

The bowl will come,

It will be won

In Phoenix as it is in Lambeau.

Give us this Sunday

Our weekly win,

And give us many touchdown passes,

But do not let others pass against us.

Lead us not into frustration,

But deliver us to the valley of the sun.

For thine is the MVP, the best of the NFC,

and the glory of the Cheeseheads,

now and forever.

AMEN

I guess it's time for those who care about this stuff to pack up their cheeseheads, car flags, and "lucky" underwear until next season, when we'll have to come up with some new lines for SuperBowl 43 in Tampa, just a short 377 days away. We're also going to have to get used to the fact that other things are going on in the world, and we just might see them on the local news. Pesky storeis that won't go away about the economy, Iraq, global warming, etc...

The Power of Favre

What if Brett Favre declared in a news conference; "I wish you crazy fans would spend as much time worrying about your kids' schools as you do my overpaid team."

What if Brett Favre said; "I'm shocked that we're not doing more about this global warming thing."

or "It's time to turn this country around, I'm supporting Barack Obama for President."
(That would be better than Oprah!)

Instead, we change the time of everything and anything happening during the big game, church included. Heaven forbid that a concert or theater performance would go on when the boys are on the sacred tundra of Lambeau. Forget about local TV or Radio news, it's all Packers all the time. It'll be March before we hear about anything that doesn't involve them.

Unstuck by an old friend

Last night, coming home late from a night of singing with Midwest Vocal Express, I couldn't get the door from the garage to latch. The little thingy-doodle wasn't springing out and catching on the plate in the jamb.

Time to get an old friend to help out...

...with a shot of WD40 through the bendy red straw. Developed in1953 to protect the outer skin of the Atlas rocket from rust and corrosion, the proper formulation was achieved on the "40th" attempt. "WD" was long thought to stand for "War Department," but in reality means "Water Displacement." Find out more than you would ever want to know about WD40 HERE.

WD40 has worked its magic again, and now the door stays latched. It could have been problematic (and noisy) once our alarm system was set, if the door had slipped open.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is like President Bush's WD40. While he stayed in the relative safety of Saudi Arabia, Condi arrived in Baghdad with no advance notice, and immediately went into talks with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Rice was trying to build on progress made and encourage further reconciliation.

Its a Miracle

I was going to update you on the progress of my newspaper carrier delivery on Wednesday, but the results have been so stunning, I couldn't wait!

Since installing the large green plastic box on the front of my house, the location of the 'Front Porch,' my requested delivery target, is no longer a mystery. She has found the sweet spot every day since installation last week!

I don't have to put on shoes to retrieve the paper from the base of the driveway, heck, I wouldn't have to wear much at all, just open the front door, and grab it.

This has been one of those nagging problems that wouldn't go away, with a daily reminder with my "walk of shame" down the driveway. I've already tacked on the automatic monthly tip I promised to my EZ Pay account.

This sense of accomplishment is short-lived, as all the other annoyances will now take a giant scissor-step toward the front of the line.

President Bush has a similar list of annoyances: Iraq, Iran, a recession at home, ignoring subpoenas for what he considers state secrets... He thought a trip to the Middle East to bring the Israelis and Palestinians together would make his list shorter, but it seems no one took him seriously, especially Saudi Arabia, who purchased $20 billion worth of advanced technology weaponry from the "Peace-maker."

Green Thursday: Stop The Junk Mail

Journal Sentinel columnist Jim Stingl's report that in 2007, Capitol One Credit Card sent him nearly 6 pounds of unsolicited junk mail, got me looking into our recycling bin, which is filling up as I write with paper I never bought, never used, and never wanted. The junk mail pours in.

Catalogs, credit card offers, deals on wheels, you name it, print it up, and it's in our mailbox.
According to the Native Forest Network guide to stopping junk mail, 100 million trees are ground up each year to make junk mail. That's got to make some kind of contribution to global warming!

All in the interests of our economy—right?—except that 44 percent of junk mail gets trashed without ever being opened. Together with other types of paper and paperboard waste, the junk mail adds up to 40% of the solid waste in our landfills.

So here’s what you can do to stop the tree killing:
1. All the junk mail, including that with plastic windows in the envelopes, goes in the recycling bin.

2. Get your name off the credit card and insurance offer lists by going to the credit bureaus’ centralized service for opting out.
3. Spent a dollar, just one, to sign onto the Direct Marketing Association’s Mail Preference Service, which, in theory, will reduce your junk mail by 75%.
4. Call the 800 number on the catalogs and asking them to take you off their lists.

Every Green Thursday we post something to help save our planet.

Special Delivery

In the middle of last year, our loyal, and very capable newspaper delivery person gave up her route. For years, the daily rag was dutifully placed on our front porch, in the rack under the mailbox. Her replacement announced the change by throwing the paper, in a pink plastic bag, at the base of the driveway. An enclosed note informed us that because of safety concerns and lack of lighting, the paper would only make it as far as she could fling it out the window of her car.

I've called the newspaper's "Delivery Concerns Line" countless times, e-mailed from the "Customer Service" area of their website, and left messages on the local distribution center machine. They all promised a change, still, every morning, the paper is, sadly, at the base of the driveway.

Our new carrier did manage to risk her safety at Christmas, getting out of her car in our suburban neighborhood (triggering the motion sensor lights for the driveway and sidewalk,) and putting the paper, along with her appeal for a year-end bonus, ON THE FRONT PORCH. My first idea was to put some cash in a pink bag, and tell her she'd find it somewhere near our driveway. My second idea was to write her a letter with the proposal that if she could get the paper to the porch, I would re-instate her generous monthly tip. I went with option #2.

This morning the paper was on the porch(!) along with a green rural route box (pictured above) and a metal stake. A handwritten note told me to put up the box where I wanted the paper to be delivered so there wouldn't be any confusion. Apparently "on the front porch" isn't specific enough. Time to get out the tools!


One of my favorites is the Post Pounder that Charmaine's dad crafted from a piece of pipe, with a solid cap welded on one end. Just slip over the post of your choice and pound away. It's quite hefty, and got the job done quickly.

An 'L' bracket attaches to the post, and the box slips onto that.

Voila! This is where I will expect the paper to be every day. It's such a competitive media market, why would my carrier think I want to pad all the way down my driveway every morning to get the news, when I can just turn on the radio, TV, or computer, already in my house? Besides, on rainy or snowy mornings, those others aren't soaked and un-usable.

Not to be cynical, but my guess is the paper will never make it to the box. Watch for the results of the first week next Wednesday.