Friday, November 13, 2009

What a mess! And what good news!

I've been trying to fix my RSS subscription feed to update (and email too I guess, I don't know!!) and I think I finally got it done. So for those of you who weren't getting updates, sorry! You should be getting them now. If not, try re-subscribing. Let me know if that doesn't work. Hopefully it will.


Every time I think I have this whole blogging thing down, everything changes. My site just changed today. No one said a word, why do they do that? As time goes by, I'm less and less adaptable to technology changes, though once upon a time, I was Julie on the Spot as a fixer, navigator and implementer of lots of techy type systems. Simplifying my life has not included keeping up with the mad whirl going on behind the curtains...and that includes blogs. So hopefully you will walk along with me, as I'm not heading fast to any destination (I guess you sort of know that already if you've hung around here much).

Thanks for your patience! Free Range Friday will show up sometime later. I'm just a hop, skip and a jump from putting it all together...really.



OH!! good news! The brown pelican is now off the endangered list! The reason that the peli's, bald eagles, peregrine falcons (and whooping cranes, though they are still on the endangered list) are making a comeback is largely because DDT - deep in the food chain of these creatures, weakened the egg shells, in turn lowering the survival rate - was banned...in 1972, thus helping the recovery of these species. 

So...when you get discouraged about how long change takes sometimes, remember that river of time, how long it has taken to strengthen the fragility of an eggshell. And go back farther, to how long it took to get Congress to ban DDT, that chemical whorehouse money maker Remember sometimes, after a long struggle, the right thing happens. A world without pelicans? Without bald eagles?? Without peregrine falcons?  It was worth the fight. It still is. Remember the birds.

Another person mentioned the other day about changing our bumper stickers to say 'Enjoy What's Left' rather than Save What's Left. I understand the weariness, the overwhelming feeling of being tired, seeing defeat, laying down our wispy shields of righteous hope and belief against heavy pocketed forces of destructive greed. I want to. I just can't. Not yet.


Peregrine falcon


credit: unknown

And if you've ever (or never!) seen a whooping crane dance...
you'll want them to stay around as well


7 comments:

  1. When did 'save' and 'enjoy' become mutually exclusive? I have enjoyed watching several species return from the brink. Given our collective short memory and consumptive culture, I vote we keep the bumper stickers just as they are, even after the 'old fogey' shots are fired across the bow. You go, MJ!

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  2. No...this is from a very good person...much more in reference to endangered Culebra than endangered species.

    Yes, there are the ones you mean too, but this wasn't one of them! Luckily.

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  3. hey, just curious -- Doug, did you just call MJ an old fogey????

    i vote for Save. it's proactive. well, Enjoy is too, but Save is what we need to do to Enjoy.

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  4. Laurie...Nope. Just like I grew weary of hearing my elders tell me about the depression, I'm sure the next generation think we exaggerate about the fragility of things like today's plentiful(?!?) raptors. And as you and I both know, a day without enjoying our Mother's spectacular show is a day wasted! I deny fogeyism. It's Geezerhood for me!

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  5. Yay with the RSS thingy, among other good news in your post! I thought it was Big Brother locking me out. "They" won't let me access your blog, but I can get to it through Google RSS. You know, until they catch me at that. Still can't comment from work . . . but I'm sure that's them, not you.

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  6. It was a stupid techy thing...glad some guy figured it out and passed along explicit, simple directions to fix it!
    And of course it's *them* - it's always *them*!

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