06 July 2009

Bright petals in sun

G1
Rose at Fuller Gardens, North Hampton

We visited the garden on Friday when the sun came out. All photos by my daughter Laura.

G2

Gardens should be like lovely, well-shaped girls: all curves, secret corners, unexpected deviations, seductive surprises and then still more curves. - H.E. Bates

G3

I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck. - Emma Goldman

G4

The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life. - Jean Giraudoux

G5

Plants cry their gratitude for the sun in green joy. - Astrid Alauda

G6

How can one help shivering with delight when one's hot fingers close around the stem of a live flower, cool from the shade and stiff with newborn vigor! - Colette

G7

Perfumes are the feelings of flowers. - Heinrich Heine

G8

'Tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes!
- William Wordsworth

G9

Earth laughs in flowers. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

G10

Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination. - Mrs. C.W. Earle

G12

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay

North Hampton's Fuller Gardens: Almost a secret

G13

Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw. - Henry David Thoreau

05 July 2009

You can have summer now

Sand rest
Rye Beach

I declare today to be Real Summer, finally. Forecast is for Sunny and hi of 81.

Sweep up the remains of the Reconnaissance Plane novelty spiraling fireworks, made in Hunan, China (Warning: Emits Showers of Sparks) and get on with it. Real Summer that is.

But before we hit the beach, let's peruse the local news...

1 in 30 million odds, that's cool. Just over the border in York, Maine, two rare orange lobsters are on view.

Do you have that upper crust dining-in-a-Portsmouth-restaurant look? You could be in a movie tomorrow. Film director looking for extras for Portsmouth scenes.

No surprise, local farmers have had enough rain. This article details just what goes wrong when the sun don't shine.

If the weather doesn't turn 180 degrees within the next 10 or so days a good number of the farmers and growers I spoke to will have lost their crops.

We visited a local blueberry farm yesterday for the official opening first day of blueberry season. There are still many more green berries than blue and I'd wait a week or two to go pick, but we did get about a quart among four people.

In other NH farm news, an adolescent moose has jumped the fence to hang with the cows (with video).

"She was lonely and she would come up to them and then a whole pack of Holsteins would chase her away," Minot said. "She'd just keep coming back and they've learned to at least co-exist."

Buzz up, I'm working on a Sunday story about local beekeepers. Do you keep bees in the Seacoast? Why? What's it like? What are the challenges and benefits?

04 July 2009

Independence Day

Phantom
Fireworks store in Seabrook, NH

Happy Fourth of July!

Where liberty dwells, there is my country.
- Benjamin Franklin

State to town: Give back the beach? Just kidding.

N.H. rescinds plan for state parks
Says it never intended to offload beaches like Jenness, North Hampton

"Based on substantial public feedback, I have decided to withdraw the first draft of the ... plan," said George Bald, commissioner of the Department of Resources and Economic Development, in a press release issued Thursday evening. "There was an impression in this draft plan that a potential strategy would be to divest ourselves of properties.

Impression? More like statement.

The plan's list of 10 potential alternative strategies included external transfer to municipalities, nonprofits or other organizations that provide public access, disposal through the Cooperative Land Management Program process and decommissioning.

But, no. They were just teasing.

With the potential for both North Hampton and Jenness state beaches to be cut loose by the state, the towns of North Hampton and Rye each expressed interest in taking over the parks.

They'll just keep on with the crappy, half-assed, no-trash-can operation they currently run.

"The state park system is an integral component of what makes New Hampshire special for its residents and visitors," Bald said. "It is critical that we take the time now to be strategic in our thinking to ensure that these wonderful assets are available for our children and grandchildren to enjoy well into the future."

Blah. Blah. Blah.

More: Plan to eliminate state parks is shelved

Draft park reassessment nixed

"The intention was never to dispose of state land," Bald said.

The plan did list management options that included decommissioning or transferring ownership to another state agency, a municipality or a nonprofit. But Bald said some of that language was inconsistent with the intent of the strategic plan.

I suspect part of the "intent" was to draw attention to the fact that parks want more money, so they drew up an eye-catching list. And now that the state budget is all wrapped up, "the intention was never to dispose of state land."

This photo got my hackles up: somebody RAKING THE BEACH at Jenness. We'd love that a few times a summer at North Hampton.

I'd like to know how much money the state takes out of the meters at North Hampton, and a list of what they do and when at our beach.

03 July 2009

July 3

IMG_5090
Koi in the Japanese garden at Fuller Gardens (photo by Laura)

Sun came out today. Guests are visiting - my father and stepmother. Men went fishing and women walked 4 or 5 miles by the ocean, then visited the 100's of roses at Fuller Gardens by the sea, then scouted out a local vineyard in South Hampton.

Sipping a tasty Traminette just now, which seems is an American version of gewurtztraminer. Slightly sweet and floral, with a hint of (I'm not kidding) roses.

For dinner we had clam chowder and a thunderstorm.

Wet

Edge
Yesterday in the rain, North Beach

02 July 2009

What's the story?

I dreamed I picked up a newspaper and saw my name in a byline and this was the first sentence I had written:

Dear reader: this is one helluva story.

And then I woke up.

Deluge

The real life story around here continues to be RAIN. Torrential downpours and a high near 61 degrees today. Did I mention the thunderstorms, patchy fog and flash flood watch?

Yesterday, our first truly sunny day was forecast to be Saturday but this morning I discovered, with a deep feeling of misery, the Natty Weather Service has changed it to Sunday. Chance of showers and thunderstorms Independence Day, with a patriotic high of 76.

It's just one of those moments in life where you say, "I can't take it any more," but then you do take more of it because you don't have a choice. Your endurance is limitless. It ends only when you do. You can and will take it, probably for a lot longer.

And anyway, it's the weather. Weather is one of those very few things you really absolutely can't do anything about. Which is why it's okay to bitch about it. If you bitch about stuff you can do something about, then you're just bitching.

I spy

Last night in bed before sleep I was reading news and essays on my laptop while keeping an eye on my daughter Anna's flight from Boston to Toronto via FlightAware.com. That is really fun, to watch little planes creeping across the virtual sky, except for when there is a glitch in the software and the plane icon disappears for a few minutes, in an area of thunderstorms near Buffalo.

Her little American Eagle flight reappeared and landed safely in Toronto, just in time to finish celebrating Canada Day with her boyfriend. Presumably. We haven't heard from her yet. But she'll get around to waking up and checking in with Facebook or her mom's blog and give us a call.

With you is where you can't take it

Yesterday, across the street, a house and all its contents were auctioned off.

Our neighbor, old Ed - the guy who taught us when we moved here 11 years ago to "Ed" our windows in summer by opening not just the bottom sash but the top to let the hot air out - died suddenly one night a few days after Christmas.

Three wives, divorced or dead, and no kids, and no relatives he got along with, and plenty of people he decided to dislike for one reason or another, my husband and another guy neighbor were really the only people he associated with on a semi-regular basis (except for those three years Ed refused to talk to all of us), including watching every New England Patriots' football game at his house, over cheese and crackers.

Ed was a curmudgeon and a misogynist and he left his estate - a small house chock full of idiosyncratic odds and ends - to several non-profits including, reportedly, a battered women's shelter.

We all process our feelings differently (I process by writing, and bitching) and my husband's way was to come home yesterday with boxes full of Ed's old crap. But I know: one woman's crap is another man's interesting and possibly useful old tools, gadgets, block and tackle, antique lanterns, and pilsener glasses with a Polish eagle crest. At least most of it went out to his man cave, the old garage/ shop by the pond.

"They just auctioned off a guy's whole life over there," said my husband, maudlinly, after I said something irritable about the new (old) candle holders now haunting our mantlepiece.

Yes. If stuff is a life.

01 July 2009

Forecast: rain

Thor_by_Johannes_Gehrts
"Thor" (1901) by Johannes Gehrts. Thor crashes through the heavens wielding the lightning-sparking hammer Mjöllnir, the gloves Járngreipr, and the belt Megingjörð. Thor rides his chariot, pulled by the goats Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr.

For Seacoast residents on yet another day of drizzle, showers, patchy dense fog and chance of thunderstorms: a handy list of Sky and Weather gods.

You may now begin your prayers, beseechings, sacrifices, chants, weeping, wailing and rending of raincoats.

Playlist: Music during rain

30 June 2009

Weather: not so hot

Wetgull
Gull at North Hampton Beach

Still too cold, dark and wet for this time of year. Showers in the forecast, with a chance of thunderstorms. Slugs, ants, aphids, fruit flies, rot, algae, weeds, mold and mildew.

"That's it. I'm mowing the lawn anyway," said Husband.

Rain forces NH group to declare ’clothesline emergency’

CONCORD, N.H. — It’s been so rainy in the Northeast that a New Hampshire-based group advocating clotheslines in place of electric dryers to save energy has declared a "clothesline emergency."

To deal with the wet weather, Project Laundry List is asking people to use indoor drying racks — unless they’re at risk for a mold problem. If that doesn’t work, the nonprofit group recommends heading to coin-operated laundries, which generally use gas dryers.

The group says this is its first clothesline emergency in its 15-year history.

Also, due to excessive rain fueling the growth of bacteria, you could get Lou Gehrig's disease from swimming in NH lakes... but don't worry too much about it says NH DES, because they test the waters frequently and post warnings if necessary.

In Manchester, NH, 2.5 inches of rain fell in an hour last night and storm drains couldn't keep up.

For early July, Accuweather says: Not Hot.

1,000 pages in the middle of the night

Francis Cianfrocca: Cap and Trade: It’s The Corruption, Stupid!

But a funny thing happened on the way to the floor of the House. The Waxman-Markey Act went through an array of very significant changes. For one thing, about 85% of the emissions permits will not be auctioned off in the early years of the law’s operation. Instead, they will be gifted to politically-favored businesses, in states and districts with lawmakers critical to the bill’s passage. Farmers and certain electric utilities will particularly benefit.

This amounts to an outsized transfer of wealth from the taxpayers to private industrial interests. Why is such a thing being allowed with nary a word of debate or public outrage?

and...

Instead, I think Waxman-Markey has been distorted far beyond its original objectives. It’s also become a cesspool of special-interest giveaways to rival anything that Congress has ever passed. Who knows what its real impact on the economy will be over time?

And who wrote the thing in the first place? There are over a thousand pages in there. It’s bigger than the national-health act. Waxman and Markey didn’t write it themselves, in their evening free-time, sitting together over cigars and single-malts, with American Idol running on the TV in the corner.

If it’s like most of what Congress imposes on us, the drafting process was supervised by committee staffers, with a lot of input from the special interests that will be affected by it. Much of the cap-and-trade national energy tax law was likely written by lobbyists.

There’s a lot more to this moment in history than the presence of an historic economic crisis, which in Rahm Emanuel’s deeply obnoxious words must not be wasted. It’s also a moment in which there is essentially no significant opposition in Congress. Because of electoral setbacks, self-inflicted wounds and existential uncertainty, the Republicans will have no impact whatsoever on what happens with cap-and-trade.

It’s stupefying that Congressional Democrats feel confident enough to try to push through a spectacular transformation of the US economy and of global trade, in the dark of night. There’s no way to tell how likely it is that the bill will pass either the House or the Senate. Because there’s been no public debate, there’s no sense for how the public wants its representatives to vote.

Is this hubris? Maybe. But there’s obviously more to it. The current rare moment, which combines an urgent economic crisis with a complete lack of political opposition, will not last. It’s not wise to expect that voters will allow Congress to be so radically left-wing after the mid-term elections. And Senators and Representatives will spend all of next year trying to get re-elected. That’s why, as Rahm Emanuel and Henry Waxman know, it’s now or never.

This is the wrong way to make law. If Waxman-Markey is enacted, the United States and the world will be regretting unforeseen consequences for decades to come. This is a law that can only be passed while the public’s attention is being overloaded with debate on other subjects.

The reek of special interests stealing from us hangs over cap-and-trade like clouds of poisonous fumes. Every American should be disgusted. It’s not a bad time to remember just exactly why some people oppose the big, activist government which has come back into vogue: It’s The Corruption, Stupid!”


Rep. Fred Upton: The Great Climate Tax

Rich Karlgaard: Waxman-Markey flunks math

ACES up her sleeve

Representatives would have had all of nine hours to study the text, assuming they went without sleep. The manager's amendment made even that impossible, because you had roughly 1,200 pages of text -- containing, at last count, 397 new government regulations and 1,090 new economic mandates -- followed by over 300 pages of text with no index that amended the previous legislation on paragraph by paragraph basis. 

Economy-killing climate policies and a trade war — together at last!

If the U.S. only adopts Waxman-Markey, global warming would be reduced by a grand total of 0.2ºF by 2100. This is too small to even detect, because global temperatures bounce around by about this amount every year. For those who like to think more near-term, the amount of warming prevented by 2050 would be 0.07 of a degree.

The Economic Impact of the Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade Bill

If you look at the total cost of Waxman-Markey, it works out to an average of $2,979 annually from 2012-2035 for a household of four.

Is the Economic Pain Justified by the Environmental Gain?


Democracy in action: vital new legislation passed, but none knows what it is!

The House passed important new legislation on June 26.  The subject was climate change, but it will affect America in a million impossible to anticipate ways. Of course, Congress does not care.  They have not bothered to read the bill, all 1,092 pages, nor has there been any serious studies to anticipate its consequences.  Two years of research and modeling might not suffice to understand its likely effects on the vast, complex US economy.

Nor, of course, has the field of climate science received the funding and staffing required to provide a basis for trillion-dollar impacts on the US economy.  It’s as if the Apollo project was conducted out of a garage in Palo Alto, CA.

On the House floor

David Brooks

On cap and trade, the House chairmen took a relatively clean though politically difficult idea — auctioning off pollution permits — and they transformed it into a morass of corporate giveaways that make the stimulus bill look parsimonious. Permits would now be given to well-connected companies. Utilities and agribusiness would be rolling in government-generated profits. Thousands of goodies were thrown into the 1,201-page bill to win votes.

The bill passed the House, but would it actually reduce emissions? It’s impossible to know. It contains so many complex market interventions that only a fantasist could confidently predict its effects. A few years ago the European Union passed a cap-and-trade system, but because it was so shot through with special interest caveats, emissions actually rose.


No climate debate? Yes, there is

Climate Debate Daily: Calls to Action and Dissenting Voices

Let's Do Something - Anything

I'm sure you've heard a lot of smart and compassionate folks tell you lately, doing something—anything!—is better than doing nothing.

So the House did something. It passed a "cap and trade" bill that would ration energy, destroy productive jobs, levy the largest tax increase in United States history and, for kicks, penalize foreign trade partners who fail to engage in comparable economic suicide.

Now, assuming there are no speed-reading clairvoyants in the House, no one who voted for the 1,200-page bill—plus the 300-page amendment dropped the morning of the vote—possibly could have read it.

And any scum-sucking scoundrel who points out that "doing nothing" already includes spending billions on renewable energies and living under thousands of regulations is, as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman shrewdly noted, a traitor to humankind.

Speaking of doing nothing: Though it has the potential to stagnate the economy, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, according to the Environmental Protection Agency itself, would not create any reductions in emissions by 2020. The piddling impact of the bill is documented across the ideological spectrum.

The Costs of the Cap-and-Trade Bill

In fact, the bill proposes a massive and highly regressive tax on the U.S. economy, and could potentially cause not only extensive business failures, unemployment and privation within our borders, but starvation among poorer populations elsewhere.

29 June 2009

Surf music

 
White



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Ventures' guitarist Bob Bogle was instrumental in hit 'Walk Don't Run'

One of the purest, cleanest sounds of rock music and rock radio departed last Sunday with the death of Bob Bogle, co-founder and longtime signature guitarist of the Ventures. He was 75.

From Stephen Stills to John Fogerty and George Harrison, generations of rock guitarists grew up listening to the likes of "Walk Don't Run," a No. 2 national hit on the radio in 1960 and still a summer standard on the beaches and the radio.

28 June 2009

Blue shorts

Evening beach
Friday evening, near the Rye Beach Club

Also seen: Summer Evenings

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