Thoughts
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Friday Read | Disconnecting & Social Media
Why is the US So Susceptible to Social Media Distortion? via the New Yorker. Sarah from the Pantsuit Politics podcast mentioned this article in their episode today–and it is a good episode to listen to because they talk about this issue as well as a variety of other pertinent topics from this week. As I read this article it reminded me of the pre-social media email forwarding/chain emails that used to be so prevalent—this was how memes and ‘fake news’ was shared back in the day. It just morphed into a larger platform with social media. I have thought time and time again how glad I was to have been…
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Life Lately | October 2017
+In My Head I was folding laundry last night and had queued up my Jefferson Airplane station on Pandora and Buffalo Springfield came on with For What It’s Worth and as I was listening to the lyrics I thought, man, you could easily just transport that to the last couple of years and it would easily apply to current times. I guess Beyoncé is our protest music these days? +Watching I may have binged season 2 of Stranger Things last weekend. And it was still just as good as season 1 and incredibly high on the 80s nostalgia. I recommend a good binge—it’s only 9 episodes so it doesn’t feel…
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Life Lately | September 2017
+In My Head It rained earlier this week, the first time since Harvey. I think all of Houston twitched for a little bit. A few people I am friends with or follow online, one of them had their house flooded for over a week, weren’t so happy about the rain. I actually hadn’t driven beyond Tomball down to the south of us in these last several weeks so I hadn’t seen anything flood related other than what was around here and it was minimal compared to what happened in Harris county. I drove to Baytown last week to do some field work and saw several piles of trash that were…
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Happy September!
Let’s pretend this is a pretty fall vignette of Seminole pumpkins that I harvested freshly from the garden. In reality this is still a rather pretty fall vignette but all three of these pumpkins are rotting thanks to the floodwaters from Harvey. Instead of enjoying these fruits later this fall and winter I now have plenty of seeds to grow more vines next summer! The bright side, I guess?? There are still three pumpkins out there that looked like they might make it through but only time will tell. On Tuesday I thought many things might pull through but by Wednesday it was clear that was laughable and I ripped…
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Harvey Update
1000+ yr old Big Tree at Goose Island State Park near #RockportTx survived #Harvey2017. Some younger trees down pic.twitter.com/qqQAopQ2N2 — Texas State Parks (@TPWDparks) August 27, 2017 One glimmer of good news in this mess that is Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey—the Goose Island Oak survived! I have not been able to find any information on the Zachary Taylor oak but based on the footage I’ve seen around Rockport, I’m betting that tree is on the ground. I know Houston has kind of taken over the news with the flooding but Rockport and the immediate vicnity was hit very hard. It’s rather upsetting for me because, like many other Texans, it has…
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A Little of This, A Little of That
We’re sitting here wrapping up our second day of storm watch. At least today, overnight and earlier this morning, there was something to talk about regarding the storm. Yesterday was spent in complete wait and see mode. No, the hurricane wasn’t making landfall anywhere near us but the outer bands were sending everyone into a tizzy in regards to flooding. The continued forecasts of the storm meandering around the coast and central Texas for the next week has amplified flooding concerns and so most people are all hibernating in their house. Last night we got out to run to the grocery store. We didn’t necessarily need anything on our list…
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Stay Safe Goose Island Oak
Hurricane Harvey is poised to slam into Rockport and the surrounding vicinity pretty heavily so I send good thoughts to The Big Tree at Goose Island State Park this weekend. Chris reminded me that the hurricane in its 1000+ years has seen plenty of hurricanes but still, it could use some good thoughts. Probably more in need of good thoughts is the Zachary Taylor Oak in Rockport. It was looking a bit worse for the wear when we visited in 2015. Here in NW Houston we’ve prepared for what we can. While we may have some tropical storm winds at first the big problem will of course, be flooding. The…
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A Golden Evening
I find myself longing for hikes and camping these days. Most everyone else not in the humid south is out enjoying hikes and adventures and here we are sweltering in Texas, hibernating indoors during the afternoons. This is fine, I enjoy letting Forest play upstairs for awhile as I read a book or do some chores. I peer outside the windows at the garden or pond, often falling into a daydream. It looks enticing to get out there but the heat has a way of making us cranky. I’ve actually been enjoying getting a run in at lunch twice a week with the searing sun beating down—the only thing I…
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A Summer Sunday
Every morning after I wake up I realize that I get to have coffee. And on weekends I realize I get to have it while sitting on the couch, relaxing. It’s such a small delight but it is one that makes me very happy. For the moment the house is quiet as Forest and Chris are on the porch working on a leaky faucet. There’s a rosy wolf snail crawling on the siding on the porch and someone is chainsawing across the pond. Last night’s thunderstorms are gone and we’ve got a warm and sunny morning gracing our day. Today I’m hoping for no rain so that I can do…
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Sunday Reads
Ahhh, good morning! I’m sitting here watching, over the screen of my laptop, a cartoon called DinoTrux on Netflix—a toddler’s idea of the perfect cartoon—dinosaurs turned into trucks, what’s not to like? Although, we *have* watched Toy Story 3 a gazillion times over the last week, so maybe that’s the perfect cartoon? Anyway, I’ve got a great mug of coffee and am finally able to lounge and relax away my mornings over the weekend. Here are a few interesting tidbits I’ve read this week. Let’s start off with a couple of tweets! THIS ???????? IS ???????? NOT ???????? A ???????? FUCKING ???????? MONARCHY ???????? https://t.co/Vg85LGcaLd — Sarah Lerner (@SarahLerner) July…