E-Waste Mega Dump - Ghana

Ever wonder what happened to that old computer you threw out or left at a dump?  Read on:
https://ghana.for91days.com/agbogbloshie/?fbclid=IwAR3JH5OeBaZJNcdTYD5McapMMLS1g1bwEnRbOWpIljMumkv1E7BI8hE0QQs

Northern Flicker

Spotted a Northern Flicker through our back window today. https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/northern-flicker

Greta Thunberg: truth to power

Incredibly powerful speech at the UN Climate Action Summit yesterday. Greta – you can thank us Baby Boomers - the most self-centered, self-seeking, self-interested, self-absorbed generation – for the climate mess we've inherited today.

Al Gore: Climate crisis is the battle of our time, and we can win

 

https://www.algore.com/

 

https://www.algore.com/news/the-climate-crisis-is-the-battle-of-our-time-and-we-can-win 

Fighting climate change

On Global Climate Strike Friday, environmental activists Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot's new short film about fighting climate change:

Birds disappearing from North America

There are 2.9 billion fewer birds in the U.S. and Canada now than 50 years ago, a new study found. A steep decline that stunned researchers.  https://www.npr.org/2019/09/19/762090471/north-america-has-lost-3-billion-birds-scientists-say

Jacqueline Larma/AP

Vertical Farming

Aster

My garden statue (Diana the Huntress) surrounded by late summer aster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aster_(genus)

Photos: Marge Ishmael

Fine Time/Kacey Musgraves

Full Moon on Friday the 13th

Moonrise over Lake Michigan.

Photo: Marge Ishmael

Cormorant

Saw this cormorant in a local lagoon today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cormorant

Photo: Marge Ishmael

Jonathan Franzen: climate apocalypse inevitable?

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending

The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it... according to this controversial essay by Jonathan Franzen.

The Great Gatsby

One of my favorite books (The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald) set in the flamboyant and excessive Roaring Twenties, was made into a movie in 2013 with two of my favorite actors (Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan) and a great song by Lana Del Rey.

Quotes from The Great Gatsby:

“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”

“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” 

"It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”  

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” 

“They’re a rotten crowd’, I shouted across the lawn. ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”  

World's population could be 11 billion by 2100

United Nations population statistics show the world's population peaking at 11 billion by the end of this century...but who really knows?  https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2019.html

Herons, cormorant

Photos from Thursday's nature walk:

Photos: Marge Ishmael

Doctors prescribing nature

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-doctors-are-increasingly-prescribing-nature?fbclid=IwAR2SinclIzEzPW8PfBQH7xjvwaIu-CJdoIHGMMY3RNdTobbInhctqNDdln0

Late summer wild flowers

We have lots of late summer golden rod and Queen Anne's lace in our yard. Some people classify them as weeds but I prefer to think of them as wild flowers.

Photos: Marge Ishmael

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daucus_carota 

https://www.chicagobotanic.org/plantinfo/goldenrod 

Labor Day/Working Class Hero

It's Labor Day here in the United States and this song by John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band still seems relevant.