Category: blogging

SoCS: two degrees

Two degrees Celsius is the threshold between what is considered impactful but manageable global warming and catastrophic global warming. Climate scientists will tell you it isn’t that clearcut. We are already seeing major impacts at only one degree-ish. At two degrees, we may get major feedback loops happening, like the melting of permafrost and the release of methane hydrates from northern seas and oceans which would accelerate warming further.

Two degrees C. has been translated into 350 ppm carbon dioxide. We have now topped 400 at times in the atmospheric readings on the Big Island of Hawai’i – I think it is Mauna Kea, but it could be Mauna Loa – and the levels keep rising.

What is disturbing me even more is that global atmospheric methane, after a long period of stability, began rising in 2007. Methane is more short-lived in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, but is a much more powerful greenhouse gas – 86 times more powerful in a twenty year context and 106 times more powerful in a decade. Given that our timeframe to get global warming under control is now very short, methane in the atmosphere is particularly troubling as it has such a strong effect in the immediate future.

So, why do I hear the word degrees and immediately go into my global warming spiel?  I write about this a lot, as an offshoot of my commentary on the dangers of shale oil/gas aka unconventional fossil fuels aka fracking.  I have spent countless hours writing and researching and commenting on these topics.  It started as a personal thing as my state, New York, is currently under a moratorium, while our neighbor state Pennsylvania is drilling extensively. And I live in a border town.

I could literally write about this for hours, but I will spare you. I apologize if I was unclear at all in this post. It’s the whole stream of consciousness thing – no fact-checking or editing allowed…

This is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays.  This week’s prompt was “degree/degrees.”  Join us! Read how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2014/10/24/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-october-2514/


Badge by Doobster @Mindful Digressions

One-Liner Wednesday: Julia makes it sound simple.

“Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.”
– Julia Child

Please join in Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Details here:  http://lindaghill.com/2014/10/22/one-liner-wednesday-one-filament-short-of-a-lightbulb/

Mind? What mind?

The top of JC's mind, or at least, the top of JC's head
The top of JC’s mind, or at least, the top of JC’s head

I’m up in the middle of the night again. Theoretically, I could write a post from the backlog of things I have queued in my head or draft folder, but I don’t have enough sustained focus to do so. Instead, what follows will be (part of) the swirl that constitutes the “top” of my mind at the moment.

* I wonder if I will get my pre-election open letter to Governor Cuomo written before the election. It would be about the fracking moratorium, of course, the emerging science, the threat we feel here of being a sacrifice zone, the need to chuck the current outdated and corrupt draft SGEIS, etc.

* Ebola.  Seriously, people in the US, get a grip!  Other than a few dozen people, your chance of exposure to ebola is non-existent.  If you want to do something useful for your health, get a flu shot – and catch up on any other immunization you might need.  Millions of people have died from flu complications around the world over the years.  It is easy to catch and transmit. Flu vaccine works partly by having lots of people immunized, creating herd immunity to help protect people who can’t be immunized and the percentage of people who will develop flu despite being immunized, who will generally have milder cases because they were immunized than if they had not been.

* So much war and violence.  I don’t actually know if I could write a post about this.  People are – and should be – so much better than this by now.

* The confusing muddle of the synod of the family and evangelization, which will be continuing at least for another year.

* The comfort that the beauty of a glorious Northeast foliage season has been in these past few weeks of dashing about on caretaking duty.

* The rest of my planned follow-up to Smith Alumnae Chorus event posts.

* More chapters to My (Feminist) Story.

* Poetry, which is the one thing I have committed to making progress on, despite the swirl going on in my head.  Truthfully, I’m not doing everything I had intended to with it, but I have made all three meetings of the poetry critique group I have joined and where I have found welcome, help, and acceptance, begun the five-week fall semester of Binghamton Poetry Project, and may even attend, though probably not read at, my first ever open mic next week.  I don’t have the time to do the research I need to figure out submissions, I owe a thoughtful email to a poet friend, and I wish that I had time/brain to write and edit more, but I am giving myself a pat on the back for making some progress.

* At some point, I really will get some of my Hawai’i photos – from May! – in shape to post FB albums and to re-post blog entries with some photos added.  I hope to do this before our next visit to the Islands…

* Spiritual matters.  There is so much going on  – experiences with our elder and younger generations, a recent parish mission, studying Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond, missing contact with my spiritual mentor/companion and other friends with whom I can share soul-conversation.

* An update to my empty nest post.  Something along the lines of when the sandwich generation goes open-face…

Maybe I should attempt some more sleep before dawn.  Or attack the mounds of mail that arrived this week…  At least I attended vigil Mass yesterday so I don’t need to drive about and try to be attentive for church this morning.  And B. promised to make us a nice Sunday breakfast this morning.

SoCS: sad shape

It’s actually Friday and I just read the prompt which is the word “shape”.  I figured I needed to write now, because my time is very unpredictable these days, so here we go.

My mother-in-law is in sad shape. I don’t know if that is a term that people are using now or not. I remember hearing it when I was growing up.

A backache she woke up with on Sept. 7 tuned out to be from a compression fracture of her L1 vertebra. By the time we got to the neurosurgeon and they did an MRI, the vertebra had collapsed. She spent two days in the hospital in order to have a procedure where they inject bone cement to stabilize the bone fragments. If the procedure had been done when it was still a compression fracture, they would have put balloons in and injected the cement to stabilize and shore up that vertebra, but once it is collapsed, it isn’t possible to retain the function. Also, the chance for fast pain relief would have been much better.

As it is, progress is very slow. She is on strong pain meds and does best when she is lying down, except that she needs to be up and about to get stronger so that she can start physical therapy and build her core muscles and leg muscles so that she can function and perform daily tasks.  Unfortunately, she didn’t have a big appetite before and this has reduced her to not having an appetite at all, so she has lost weight. It’s all turned into a muddle of meds and side effects and one thing making another thing harder to do.

As you might expect, my spouse and I have been up there a lot and have been bringing her to appointments and running errands and talking to the health professionals and trying to get her to eat and helping with laundry and bringing in the mail and so forth.

This afternoon, I kind of hit the wall. I can’t tell the whole story – privacy and such – but I do think that I may finally have gotten her to realize that she has to be the one to actually make up her mind to get better.  She has to stop saying “I know I need to eat and drink more” and actually do it, instead of making excuses. If she doesn’t, she isn’t going to maintain her weight, much less gain what she needs to. She has to want to get stronger and make up her mind to do it, instead of putting energy into self-pity.

We can’t do this for her. She has to do it for herself.

I am exhausted by it all and really wanted to have a good cry about it, but couldn’t quite manage it.  The eyes watering while cutting up some onions to make ham and scalloped potatoes for dinner doesn’t count.  Maybe later…

This post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. Join us! Find out more about it here:  http://lindaghill.com/2014/10/17/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-october-1814/

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Badge by Doobster @Mindful Digressions

One-Liner Wednesdays: e. e. cummings quote

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
~ e. e. cummings, whose birthday was yesterday

Please join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays!  Details here:  http://lindaghill.com/2014/10/15/one-liner-wednesday-amusing-nonsense/

Blog fail times two

After working through most of the aftermath of my parents’ medical misadventures in August, I had the foolish idea that I could make plans for the fall.  The problem wasn’t making the plans as much as executing them…

In the rule of things happening in sets of three, the third member of our family’s elder generation has had medical issues which have necessitated major time commitments and the further jettisoning of things from my already pared down but still lengthy to-do list.

I had signed up for Blogging 101, reasoning that, even though I have been blogging for a year, I still struggle with some of the mechanics of blogging and could use some help. While I managed to do a few assignments the first couple of weeks, I haven’t had time to even look at the site since then, so Blog Fail #1.

Yesterday, I read the email and pingbacks that Some Kernels of Truth had nominated me for the “One Lovely Blog” Award with a touching paragraph about Top of JC’s Mind.  I am so honored and humbled, but I know that I can’t do justice to fulfilling the requirements of acceptance.  Blog Fail #2.

While a large part of these failures is lack of time, the larger problem is lack of brain power.  Even when I can get online time, my mind is running through medical information and planning practicalities for the coming days.

I would urge you to click on the links above and check out the truly lovely Some Kernels of Truth and all of the listed links.  It will be at least partial redemption of Blog Fail #2.

JC

SoCS: Simple

I could really go for some simplicity right now. I haven’t been able to devote much time to what I had intended to be a simple daily schedule becuase life has been complicated by my mother-in-law’s backache which over the course of a month became a diagnosis of a compressed vertebra which then collapsed and then got treated with an injection of bone cement which entailed an unexpected two night hospital stay. We just brought her home yeaterday and spent the rest of the day there. We will be heading back up shortly with some ginger creams that my husband is baking becuase we are trying to give her tempting things to eat to help gain back the weight she lost while dealing with the back pain. She is pretty lightweight to start with, so Ensure Plus and as many calorie dense things as we can come up with are in order, as her appetite is also tiny.

Maybe this is simplicity though. Take care of what has been presented to us this day. Drop everything else.

Simple.

This is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Join us! .http://lindaghill.com/2014/10/10/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-october-1114/

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Babge by Doobster@Mindful Digressions

One-Liner Wednesday – Ziglar quote

“Among the things you can give and still keep are your word, a smile, and a grateful heart.”
– Zig Ziglar

This part of Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday. Join us!  http://lindaghill.com/2014/10/08/one-liner-wednesday-dangerous-driving/

SoCS: Find the time

This week’s prompt is “find.”

As I write this, it is not Saturday, but Friday morning. My first thought in reading the prompt was how am I going to find the time to do this and I figured if I didn’t plunge in now, it was not going to get done, so here I am, with the washer running a load of towels, dashing this off before I go back to what I am trying to do today, which is catch up with some of my electronic life, especially my overflowing inbox. 516 emails to deal with, at this second. No doubt it will be more by the time I hit save and schedule.

People who read my blog may recall that my parents had simultaneous health crises this summer.  What I haven’t been blogging about is more recent life complications. I am happy to say that my parents, after losing most of August to recovery, are mostly back to their routines and doing well.  I spent the first part of September battling a GI thing, but recovered in time to prep for and participate in the Alice Parker tribute at Smith, which I wrote about here and here.

Within hours of my return from Northampton, we got word that my mother-in-law has a lumbar compression fracture due to osteoporosis. The time since then has been a blur of appointments, errands, transport duty, trying to get her to eat and use her medications properly, and rest, and not twist or bend or try to do things that put strain on the back, like changing the bedsheets or picking up the paper from the stoop.  There is also a lot of mental energy going to figuring out the next steps, which may include having a neurosurgeon inject a cementing substance into the collapsed vertebra, but first we have to get through an MRI and another consult appointment next week.  And a caucus with my brother-in-law, her elder son, who is a physician but who is several hundred miles away.

Meanwhile, I have been able to carve out some time yesterday and today to tackle the backlog on my computer.  It’s impossible to get to everything, so I am trying to jettison everything I can bear to, while still attempting to create at least a shadow of my presence here at Top of JC’s Mind, through my personal correspondence, and for my Facebook friends.  There are at least half a dozen blog posts that I have in my head that I need to find time to get worked out on screen, unless I suddenly become a stream of consciousness blogger.  No, that would be a bad idea. Forgoing editing once a week is one thing.  All the time?  Shudder…

And, as you read this on Saturday, I will be “celebrating” my birthday. Under the circumstances, original plans have been pared down and even those are vague, pending seeing how today goes for my mother-in-law and what she is like in the morning.  At this point, I’m hoping to be able to at least have dinner out with enough notice that we can wrangle an early dinner reservation at a fine dining type of place.  If push comes to shove, we can go impromptu, even if it means picking up a wood-fired brick-oven pizza and eating it with my husband at the kitchen table. Maybe we can put a candle in it….

519 emails…

socs-badgeBadge by Doobster @Mindful Digressions

This post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays.  Please join us!  Visit http://lindaghill.com/2014/10/03/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-october-414/ to find out how.

One Liner Wednesday: Mark Twain quote

“Kindness is a language that the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”
– Mark Twain

Join in Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday:  http://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/10/01/one-liner-wednesday-swingin/