Category Archives: environment

Before We Were What We Are

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For most of us, particularly those in mid-Missouri, the Lake of the Ozarks and all of its allure has always been here.  It’s hard to imagine when the Osage River wound through the valleys of the ancient mountains and when generations of people lived and died along its banks.  One long-ago summer night while going door-to-door selling encyclopedias in Columbia I knocked on the door of a man who had been a riverboat pilot on the Osage at a time when he could take his boat all the way to Warsaw.  It was the only door I knocked on that night because of the stories he told me. It’s a shame the young encyclopedia salesmen didn’t carry a recorder in those days.

(Actually, there wasn’t such a thing as a portable recorder, at least not one that could record a couple of hours of storytelling back then.)

Let’s go farther back, to 1931, and a time when Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor best known for Mount Rushmore, came to Jefferson City to testify in the lawsuit of the Snyder family against Union Electric.  The Snyder family owned Ha Ha Tonka, now a state park, and they charged UE had damaged the intrinsic beauty of their property to the tune of one-million dollars by building Bagnell Dam and backing up Osage River water into their area.

(Kansas City businessman Robert M. Snyder had fallen in love with the location early in the 20th Century and built the mansion. He never got to see if finished because be became one of Missouri’s first traffic fatalities, in 1906.)

Borglum came to Missouri to testify on behalf of the Snyder estate.  “My first impression of Ha Ha Tonka was that it was more like some of the ancient estates in England than anything I had seen in this country…I don’t know anything that has the dramatic possibilities and the permanent beauty that this place has,” he said when he arrived. He said the “very soul” of the place had been materially decreased by the lake.

“Gutzon Borglum, famous sculptor and connoisseur of beauty, sees a future for America’s Ozarks that is more promising than the wildest dreams of this alluring region’s inhabitants,” reported R. H. Slighton for the Jefferson City Daily Capital News on December 6.  “The people of the Ozarks, he believes, have inherited a blessing from the hand of the Creator that possesses a fabulous value.  The world as yet knows little of it, he believes, but once it is brought to their realization, and the need for what the Ozarks give increases the events that follow, he feels, will be amazing.”

Borglum “gazed out of his hotel window here one misty, wet day last week and peered into the future,” said the article.  And this is what he saw—or foresaw.

He spoke slowly, deliberately, carefully and precise.  We live in an amazing age. I can sit in my room and speak to New York, Chicago, Portland, any city in the country. I do it almost every day. What could be more amazing?  A few years ago I was driving across the country down into the Southwest. I asked along the way where the Ozarks were. ‘Oh, they’re off down that way,’ people would tell me. ‘Off there somewhere’ but no one seemed to know just where.  At. St.Louis they told me I would have to follow the highway and go around them.” 

He foresaw a time when the Ozarks would be what people were looking for.  And highways would take them there.

Where is it going? It is going away from the tenements and smoky cities.

When I started the Rushmore Memorial project in the Black Hills, I selected for my home a place about twenty-five miles from where my work would be. I did it unconsciously despite the fact that I knew I would be making from two to three tips almost every day. Now, what does that mean? With hard surfaced roads the trip is only a matter of a few minutes with an automobile. In the Ozarks, it will be the same. 

The time will come when people will be living within a fifty-mile radius of Jefferson City and drive in every day to their place of business. That time is not far off.

He thought the skyscraper was out of date. He thought people would tire of crowded cities and seek out quieter places such as the Ozarks.  He knew that “common earth, rocks, trees, and grass,” as Slighton put it, might be worth billions to the city dweller seeking relief from the dirt, smoke, and noise.  He used New York’s Central Park as an example.

Why won’t they sell it?  Because it is worth more to the people of New York City as a place just to walk through in the evening when their day’s work is done.  Borglum recalled a man the previous summer caught with a half-gallon bucket full of Central Park soil leaving the park. He told the judge he needed it for a flower in his penthouse apartment, an argument Borglum used to emphasize the human longing for an out-of-doors. Good roads, he argued, would provide an answer for that longing.

The Snyders lost their lawsuit.  Their great mansion in Camden County became a lodge where visitors could look out over the misty Ozark mountains on the other side of the dammed Osage River.  The house was gutted by a fire in 1942, its stone walls still standing reminiscent of Europe’s bombed-out churches after the Second World War.  It took three-quarters of a century before the state finally made Ha Ha Tonka a state park.

“Already the backwoods stage of the hill country is passing,” wrote Slighton in 1931.     

It’s what the whole world wants.

And what would “the whole world” do when it got to the Ozarks?  “Mr. Borglum believes the Ozarks are ideal for private estates and that before so very long they will be springing up with their private stock of game comparable to the old estates in England,” said Slighton.

We thought that mix of foreshadowing and philosophizing would be interesting to consider these nine decades later.

Forty years or so after Borglum granted that interview in the Jefferson City hotel room, one of the most passionate writers about the need to seek the out-of-doors, Edward Abbey, said in his book Desert Solitaire, “Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.” But then he noted the contradiction of people seeking that “necessity” when he continued: “A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.”

The hard surface roads have, indeed, taken the city folks to the Ozarks in search of something basic that cannot be satisfied by the city life. But let us hope there always will be places in the Ozarks where roads don’t need to go.

(Photo Credits: Missouri State Parks, 417 Magazine (color aerial view), National Park Service–Borglum, in light suit, with son Lincoln, in tram inspecting George Washington, Edward Abbey at Arches National Monument)

The Power Under Our Feet

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If you think fossil fuels are the only way to power our lives, you need to go to Iceland. If Iceland doesn’t tickle your fancy (and don’t underestimate Iceland on this score; it’s surprising.), go to Texas.

If you think windmills should be forbidden because they kill birds, that nuclear power should be abolished because it leaves behind tons of dangerous waste, that electric-powered vehicles are actually uneconomical because it costs a lot of gas, oil, and coal for power plants to generate full  battery charges, that the use of oil, gas, and coal shorten lives, that water cannot turn enough turbines to light our cities—-you need to go to Iceland.  Or Texas.

Iceland first. We learned about this on a trip there just before the pandemic set in. We were attracted by the opportunity to see the northern lights.

And we did on a really cold night (we went in November).  Our guide—we called him “Fred” because we would have dislocated our jaws trying to pronounce name—took this one.

A 2020 study, the latest study we have seen, shows at least 90% of all homes in Iceland are NOT heated by nuclear, wind, or fossil fuel-generated power.  That study shows, in fact, that 99.94% of electricity generated in Iceland was geothermal or hydro-generated. Underground hot water and the water that powers the great waterfalls, in fact, provided 99.94% of all electricity generated in Iceland that year. And more than 70% of the total energy used in that country came from geothermal sources. The country wants to be carbon neutral by 2040.

Iceland has a lot of waterfalls—a lot!

Many of them are spectacular and they flow year-around. Why? Because glaciers melt from the bottom up in Iceland, even as winter puts down several feet of snow on top of them every year. The result is a lot of hydropower generation.

As far back as the Vikings, people have taken warm baths and washed their clothes in warm water even on the coldest days because of geothermal water-–water heated by the volcanic activity that created Iceland thousands of years ago and continues to alter its size today.

The number one use of geothermal heat in 2020 was space heating, then heating swimming pools, melting snow, fish farming, industry, and greenhouses (This is the Fridheimar     greenhouse that covers about 2.7 acres that uses pure  glacier water heated in a thermal pool to grow eighteen percent of the tomatoes used by the country—370 tons of them a year—on 20-foot high, or more, tomato vines throughout which about 1200 peaceful bumbleees maintain pollination, each of them capable of pollinating 2,000 flowers a day. The incredible tomato soup and bread for lunch are to die for.)

The Capital of Reykjavick, where about sixty percent of the country’s people live, has clear streets and sidewalks on snowy days because those streets and sidewalks are heated.  Water ranging from 100-300 degrees centigrade heats homes and is then diverted under the streets and sidewalks at 30 degrees centigrade (about 86 of our Fahrenheit degrees).

This issue has been highlighted by recent news coverage of some volcanoes that have become active in recent months. Some of the coverage has focused on the closure of the Blue Lagoon, the country’s most popular tourist attraction.  We were there.  And we floated in the geothermal waters.  The only way we could have drowned was by turning over and having somebody sit on us.

The lagoon’s water is a mixture of freshwater discharged from the Svartsengi Power Station and seawater.

Iceland didn’t officially recognize the power beneath national feet until about fifty years ago.  That’s when energy price inequities forced the national government to address the issue.   Orkustofnun, the National Energy Authority, recommended increased use of hydro and geothermal power to stabilize energy costs.  The Arab Oil Embargo that created an energy and economic crisis throughout the world led the Icelandic government to speed up its adoption of geothermal alternatives.

You might think that’s great for Iceland but the only significant place for geothermal activity here is Yellowstone National Park.  You are wrong. Take a look at this map of geothermal resources prepared by the Southern Methodist University  Geothermal Laboratory.

Texas might not look so hot in this map but it is a hotbed of geothermal energy development. The state well-known for its oil industry, says writer Saul Eblin for The Hill, is poised to dominate what boosters hope will be America’s next great energy boom: a push to tap the heat of the subterrnean earth for electricity and industry.”  He says Texas “is fueling a boom in startups that seek to take the issue nationally.

In March, he says, solar generation in Texas “eclipsed coal both in terms of power generation and market share.  Texas also has more utility-scale wind and solar capacity than any other state” although California still leads in rooftop solar power generation.

Last year, the Texas legislature passed four bills with only one “no” vote that will create new opportunities for geothermal drilling. Eblin says eleven of the nation’s 27 geothermal startups last year were in Texas and the momentum is building.

A few days ago, he reports, Bedrock Energy had a display at a commercial real estate company in Austin showing a new geothermal-powered heatng and cooling system. A few days earlier, Quaise, a drilling company, filed for a permit from state regulators to start field-testing drills that use high-powered radio waves to drill through dense rock. A company in Houston called Dervo, is building a 400-megawatt facility in Utah and the military is looking at geothermal source of electricity. Sage Geosystems soon will start using a fracked well to store renewable energy, a big step toward its goal of producing a reliable source of geothermal energy.

There are those who laugh at the electrification of America, particularly the growing emphasis on electric vehcles, claiming that the production fo electricity still requires fossil fuels and windmills and solar farms are nice but they limit use of land increasingly needed for food production.

But the heated water beneath our feet leapfrogs those arguments.  The SMU map indicates Missouri can produce 50-60 Milliwatts per square meter from underground water. One watt equals one millon milliwatts. Our calculation says Missouri has 180,540,000 square meters.  If we understand the math, that means 9,027,000,000-10,832,400,000 watts of geothermal power generation is beneath our feet.

If we do our math correctly, our largest utility, Ameren, generates 10,000 megawatts a year in Missouri, or about 10,000,000 watts per year.

Whether geothermal generation is an alternative for Ameren, we don’t know. But the company came under new federal pressure recently with the adoption of EPA new rules requiring coal-fired power plants to have new carbon pollution controls. The Post-Dispatch has reported more than half of Ameren’s power is generated by coal. Only Texas generates more power with coal. And Ameren’s Labadie plant in Franklin county is the number two power plant producer in the country.

So it appears we have enough thermal energy under our feet to generate as much as Ameren produces from all of its power plants, whether fossil or nuclear fueled in a year.  And Missouri isn’t even close to the geothermal potential other states who not only can serve their customers well but can export energy to other parts of the country, including to Missouri.

We have mentioned in earlier posts, one advantage to studying journalism in college was that no math courses were required.  If we have misunderstood these calculations, we welcome corrections.

Even if we are wrong, the experience of Iceland and elsewhere as well as the growing experience in Texas shows there is non-fossil energy enough beneath our feet to keep our lights on and to fuel our commerce indefinitely. But energy is politicized here. The fossil fuel industry slings a lot of money around in Washington and on campaign trails.  The Greenies, however, are making progress, incremental though it might be.

We might not be able to operate our cars on water but they can operate on the electricity generated by water, steaming hot water.  A 500-mile affordable electric car is growing closer.  But if we want to see the reality of a society powered by non-fossil fuels, Iceland is a flight of only five hours from Chicago O’Hare Airport. Take a coat, even in summer. It’s pretty far north.

Iceland as a country is one big ground source heat pump, north to south, east to west.

Super hot water beneath OUR feet is something to think about even here in relatively cool Missouri.

(Photo Credit: Bob Priddy)

 

Could we survive yesterday?

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Someone asked me the other day, “If you could go back 150 years, what would be the first things you would notice?”

It took me about two seconds to come up with an answer—because I’ve sometimes thought it would be interesting to be able to go back as an invisible observer of the past.

“Color,” I said. “And smells.”

“And the water would kill us.”

The images with which we are most familiar are all one-dimensional and black and white.  Take that picture of great-great-grandfather and grandmother and imagine what a shock it would be to meet them on the street, in three dimensions, their flesh the same color as yours, eyes (perhaps) the same color as yours, hair—-well it might be the same color but it also might be pretty greasy with the men and not particularly clean with the women.

And they likely would have an odor about them, especially if you met them at this time of year.  Stale sweat for one.  Showers were unknown in most homes (indoor plumbing of any kind). Bathtubs were not as well-used as our tubs and showers are now.  Underarm deodorant was nonexistent.  Mum was the first underarm deodorant, and it didn’t come along until 1888, a paste applied under the arms, by hand.  Deodorant, not anti-perspirant.

Underwear probably went a few days before changing.

In those days, if everybody stank, nobody stank.

Last year, I was on the town square in Springfield, Illinois and I noticed a sign on one of the historic buildings denoting it as the former home of the Corneau and Diller Drug Store. The sign said the store had been opened in 1849 by Roland W. Diller and Charles S. Corneau, who installed a big wood stove circled by chairs, making the pace a popular place for mento gather and swap stories or discuss events of the day including politics, a subject that was appealing to Abraham Lincoln, whose law office was a short walk away.

Wife Mary purchased toiletries there “such as bear’s oil, ox, marrow, ‘French Chalk’ for her complexion, a patent hairdressing called ‘Zylobalsam,’ and ‘Mrs. Allen’s Restorative.”

It continues: “Because daily bathing was not yet customary, the Lincolns—like most other people—bought cologne by the quart!”

Visitors to the Steamboat Arabia Museum in Kansas City can purchase 1856 French Perfume.  It’s not the real stuff that was found when the boat was excavated but it is a reproduction.  The museum sent a bottle of some of the real stuff to a laboratory in New York that did a chemical analysis and reproduced the perfume.

It’s strong stuff.  But for hundreds of years, perfume often was not the olfactory decoration and attraction that it is today; it was a masking agent sometimes poured on and sometimes used to soak kerchiefs that were kept up the sleeves and used to waft away some personal unpleasantness of a companion.

So color and odor would be the first things to jolt us if we went back 150 years.

But the smells would not be confined to the people you meet on the streets.  The streets themselves would be pretty rank.

The New York Almanack published an article a couple of years ago observing that the city had 150,000 to 200,000 horses, each of which produced “up to 30 pounds of manure per day and a quart of urine…over 100,000 tons a year (not to mention around 10 million gallons of urine.”

“By the end of the 19th century, vacant lots around New York City housed manure piles that reached 40 or 60 feet high. It was estimated that in a few decades, every street would have manure piled up to third story levels.”

Jefferson City’s streets didn’t produce that much manure and urine.  But New  York’s problems were the problems of every city in the country, including the capital city.

The manure on the dirt streets (such as High Street in Jefferson City) attracted flies by the thousands, millions.  New York once estimated that three-billion flies were hatched from street poop every day.  They were disease carriers. The dust from the streets and the dried manure mingled in the air, was inhaled and worn on the clothing.

And when it rained in the summer or when the show thawed in the winter, the streets turned into a gluey muck that was tracked into every business and home in town—except for the ones that required footwear to be removed before or upon entering—at which point socks that weren’t changed daily added their own atmosphere to life.

These conditions led to the rise in some communities of a new institution—the country club.  People needed a place in the country where they could breathe clean air, at least for a day or two.  Golf courses and horse-racing tracks developed outside of towns.

Missouri Governor Herbert Hadley, who suffered from a lung disease—pleurisy—bought a farm west of town and several prominent residents gathered one weekend for a big barn raising and cabin-building.  Later, a nine-hole golf course was created and thus was born the Jefferson City Country Club.

Sanitary sewer systems were rare. Homes had outhouses, often not far from the well that provided the house with water.

If we went back 150 years and took a drink of the water of the day, we probably would choke on the taste and if we dank a little too much, we might just die of a water-borne disease.  Even with natural immunity that residents of those times developed, the average life expectancy in the United States in 1880 was 40, a good part of it because of high infant mortality and primitive obstetrics that led to high mortality rates for women giving birth.

We forget how tough, how strong, our ancestors had to be to survive in such an environment.  The Missouri State Penitentiary kept a log of every Confederate prisoner it took in.  The average prisoner was 5-feet-7 and weighed 140 pounds.  Women prisoners averaged 4-feet-11.

Imagine wearing a wool uniform, marching ten or 20 miles a day carrying a heavy rifle and a 50-pound backpack, eating unrefrigerated rations and drinking whatever water you could find, even if it was downstream from a cattle farm.

The good old days weren’t very good.  The problem with going back to them is that we might not live long enough to return.

 

Junking Up the Place

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We were chatting with our minister, Dr. Michel Dunn, at breakfast in the Capitol restaurant last Thursday morning about the upcoming Earth Day weekend and a new program at our church that aims to reduce our carbon footprint—-another one of those phrases that is fingernails on the blackboard to some folks (even those who think a tree needs a good hug sometimes).

We talked about how mankind has an outstanding record of trashing its surroundings.

We once did a story at the Missourinet about how much it costs the Highway Department to pick up roadside trash in which we said the department spent the equivalent one year of the costs of building a two-lane highway between Jefferson City and Columbia.

One thing led to another in our conversation and we talked about our bigger surroundings—how much junk there is circling the earth. It’s gotten to the point that anybody launching a satellite or a crewed spacecraft has to calculate where the junk is and try to fit the flight within it.  And we’ve heard some stories about the space station getting hit.  Space.com recently reported that as of last December, the ISS has made course corrections to avoid satellite and other debris 32 times since 1999.

The European Space Agency reported, as of March 27:

Number of rocket launches since the start of the space age in 1957:

About 6380 (excluding failures)

Number of satellites these rocket launches have placed into Earth orbit:

About 15430*

Number of these still in space:

About 10290

Number of these still functioning:

About 7500

Number of debris objects regularly tracked by Space Surveillance Networks and maintained in their catalogue:

About 33010

Estimated number of break-ups, explosions, collisions, or anomalous events resulting in fragmentation:

More than 640

Total mass of all space objects in Earth orbit:

More than 10800 tonnes

Not all objects are tracked and catalogued. The number of debris objects estimated based on statistical models to be in orbit (MASTER-8, future population 2021)

36500 space debris objects greater than 10 cm
1000000 space debris objects from greater than 1 cm to 10 cm
130 million space debris objects from greater than 1 mm to 1 cm

How big is that:  Our calculator shows 10 centimeters is about 3.9 inches. Doesn’t seem very big but when it’s whizzing along at 17,500 mph it can cause serious damage.

Some of this stuff eventually will lose enough momentum to burn up as it hurtles out of orbit. But more seems to be going up than seems to becoming down.

*We checked the United Nation’s Office of Objects Launched Into Outer Space  yesterday (Sunday the 23rd) and it was counting 15,442 objects that had been launched into outer space.

And this is just stuff flying around in near earth.

Twelve Americans walked on the moon 1969-1972.  The Atlantic magazine reported in its December 19, 2012 issue that almost 400,000 pounds of human-made material was littering the moon, including these items left behind by the six Apollo landings:

Some of these items were left as tributes. Others were left because the landing capsule didn’t need extra weight as it headed back to the command module and, eventually, back home. The two golf balls were taken to the Moon by Alan Shepherd on Apollo 14. He had the head of six iron golf club modified so it could fit on one of the lunar digging shovels. He hit the two balls, the second of which he said, tongue-in-cheek, went “miles and miles and miles.”  NACA later scanned the film and determined the balls actually traveled about 24 yards and about 40 yards.

Writer Megan Garber also noted various craft were crashed into the moon intentionally, or landed on the moon with no way to get back—more than 70, and that was more than a decade ago.

Now, back to all of that stuff in orbit.  Not all of it us junk.  A growing amount is satellites.  Of late, the biggest (worst?) contributor is SpaceX with its Starlink satellite system.  It wants to have at least 12,000 operational satellites in low earth orbit soon and has applied for approval of—get this—30,000 more. It claims these satellites have the means to move out of the way of things. Space.com reports that SpaceX  already had about 4,000 satellites up.

Jonathan McDowell with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told Space.com in February, “It’s going to like an interstate highway at rush hour in a snowstorm with everyone driving too fast except that there are multiple interstate highways crossing each other with no stoplights.” as Starlink keeps shooting up satellites, joined with OneWeb and Amazon Kuiper.

Trash above.  Trash below.  We produce it by the ton. Earth day reminds us we can find some better ways to do some things.  At least, a little bit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Leaves

Minnie and Max and I were out on the porch a few days ago enjoying a delicious fall day. 70 degrees. No breeze. Sunny.  The sounds of fall around us—birds, an internet cable crew digging through the rocky hillcrest on which we live (we have just enough topsoil to provide room for the roots of grass and for the moles to have a playground), the garbage truck going by—-

All of us were napping. One of us would un-doze long enough to read a few pages of a whodunit that had been brought to the porch.  The others would be instantly alerted by a squirrel dashing along a tree limb or a bird.

But mostly I thought of the leaves. The leaves on the tree or the bush just outside the porch had turned a triumphant yellow and others in the neighborhood were turning red or orange or variations of brown and yellow. I thought of how much I love them.   And how much I shall miss them when the trees turn to skeletons against the gray skies of December and January in particular.

I can’t wait to see the soft glow of green begin to appear each spring and the promise it brings of warmth, and of leaves.

I am a three-season person.

Have you ever noticed in winter how rare it is to look up?

Winter is the time to cast our eyes down for there is nothing of beauty to be seen by looking up.  We look down because we often must watch our step.  We look down because winter makes us feel down.  We look down because there is no color in the world that draws us to look up.

But spring comes and we look expectantly for that green glow and when it grow into the deep green of spring leaves, our eyes are drawn up for there is beauty around us again.  No longer do we look down and in looking down become lost in ourselves.

Leaves do that to us.   They shade us on the hottest days of summer.  They comfort us with their rustling in the breeze.  Within them there is life—scampering creatures and singing birds.

The best days of our lives are the days when we have leaves.

But then they begin to turn and we begin to sit in our glider swing on the porch, Minnie dozing in the chair across the porch, Max in a sun spot, and we ponder the green leaves suddenly turned yellow just outside and we admire the beauty in the world and realize how much we shall miss them when they are gone—that in four or six weeks, they will be crisp and dry and brown on the ground, the joy of their presence turned to a burden to be removed or burned.

Leaves seem to be central to our spirit. Minnie, Max, and I shall sit with them as often as possible as they take their—-their leave.

These are the days of goodbye from our leaves, the bittersweet season, a season to reminisce—as lyricist Johnny Mercer wrote;

The falling leaves
Drift by my window
The autumn leaves
Of red and gold
I see your lips
The summer kisses
The sunburned hands
I used to hold

Since you went away
The days grow long
And soon I’ll hear
Old winter’s song
But I miss you most of all, my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall

Since you went away
The days grow long
And soon I’ll hear
Old winter’s song
But I miss you most of all, my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall

Yes, I miss you most of all, my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall.

 (For the record, the tune was by Joseph Kosma, who composed it in 1945)

In a few weeks, Minnie and Max and I will retreat back inside the house.  It will be warm in there because of the furnace and because of the presence of the other person who lives there with us.

—and helps us get through the days of the downward look until once again the magic of leaves returns and we look up again and find renewed beauty.

The Future of Water (update)

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We seldom update one of these posts, and even less often do we do it immediately.  Had we posted on this topic today instead of yesterday we would have changed some information. But here’s an important update that underlines the point we made.

The Corps of Engineers announced yesterday that it was implementing drought conservation measures on the Missouri River.  June runoff from rain (very little) and snowmelt (much reduced) was just 52% of the average amount. The Corps has updated its forecast for upper basin runoff to finally be 60% of average.

It says this will be the tenth driest year in the upper basin since 1898.  Water storage in upstream reservoirs is expected to decline further.  That means less water coming downstream for all of the purposes defined by federal river law.

This doesn’t mean we who live in cities that rely on the river for our water will have to stop watering lawns, wash dishes once a week and clothes once a month and ourselves only on Saturday nights using the same water for everybody in the family (as many of our pioneer ancestors did).  But it adds further weight to yesterday’s discussion.

There isn’t “water, water everywhere” in more and more places.

The Future of Water

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A good part of Missouri has gotten an excessive drenching in the past few days.  But we—and perhaps you—have friends to the west who are being baked well-done by record heat and who are watching forests burn and water reservoir levels drop and disappear.

We might think we are glad we don’t have their problems—although our monsoon week is hardly without problems of its own.

For several years, Nancy and I enjoyed going to the Four Corners area for a week each fall to do archaeological work on or near the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, adjacent to Mesa Verde National Park. We first recorded rock art from the days of the Anasazi (a Pueblo word meaning “ancient enemies”—we don’t know what those people who lived in the area until the 1200s called themselves because they left no written language). Although popular telling of their story has it that they just suddenly disappeared 750 years ago or so, archaeologists and anthropologists think they know where their descendants are, and they have developed some theories on why they fled the Four Corners area.

It’s thought they are the ancestors of the present Hopi people. One of the factors—the final straw—leading to their departure from the Four Corners area is believed to have been a 45-year drought that left them without the food and other resources needed to survive.

All of this has been brought to mind by recent reports that Lake Mead, which is behind Hoover Dam, has declined to its lowest level ever because of a drought that is now in its 22nd year. The condition is critical for 25-million people including the cities of Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego, Phoenix, and Tucson.  The lake has hit a record low, down 140 feet since 2000, creating the bathtub ring you can see in recent pictures. One-hundred-forty feet is about the height of the Statue of Liberty from base to torch tip.

Some states already have imposed water rationing and they expect to tighten restrictions as conditions worsen. Agriculture is in dire straits. Adding to the awful conditions is the rise in major fires in forests that haven’t seen protective rain for years.

It’s hard to understand that green and verdant Missouri faces some water shortages of our own. Today.  Right now.  And stewardship of our water will become more critical as our population increases, as agriculture is under increased pressure to produce more and more food in an increasingly populous world, and as our economy grows.

The Department of Natural Resources 2020 update to its Missouri Water Resources Plan warns, “Although Missouri is fortunate to have rich water resources, localized shortages do exist because of the distance from adequate supplies, insufficient infrastructure or storage, water quality constraints, and other limiting factors. In many areas, surface water supplies are subject to seasonal fluctuations; supplies are frequently at their lowest when demand is the highest.”

Farther into the study we are told, “On average, the 6.1 million people and numerous businesses in Missouri consume 3.2 billion gallons of water each day. Of that demand, 78 percent is supplied by groundwater, while the remaining 22 percent is supplied by surface water.”  Three fourths of our water comes from under our feet.

We often heard testimony in legislative committee hearings on the dangers of agricultural runoff or industrial pollution going into our streams and rivers, our surface waters. A major concern, yes.  But that’s only one-fifth of the water we use or think we need to use.

Studies indicate our population will rise to about seven-and-a-half million people by 2060, well within the lifetimes of some who read these entries—them or their children—putting more pressure on water, a finite resource.  The report suggests a number of policies and practices that need to be started now in anticipation of that growth.

We need to do more than read about them. Our generation has to start something that later generations can continue to meet Missouri’s water needs.

The greatest pressure on our water supply is agricultural irrigation—65% of our water withdrawals go to farming. Major water systems (that provide us with water to drink, to bathe in, to do our dishes, and flush our toilets) are another 25%.

The study says the agricultural counties of Butler, Dunklin, New Madrid, Pemiscot, and Stoddard Counties—all in the southeast corner of the state—are projected to have the greatest growth in demand in the next four decades. High demand also is expected as our metropolitan areas become more metropolitan.

DNR says the state “generally has plentiful water sources.”  Now, it does. But the report also says, “many supply-related challenges exist.”

Much of the groundwater originating from bedrock aquifers in northern and west-central Missouri is highly mineralized and unsuitable for most uses. In northwestern Missouri, precipitation is generally the lowest in the state, and the lack of surface water availability during prolonged droughts can result in water shortages. Timing is also important in determining the availability of water, since peak demands often coincide with the driest times of the year and multiyear droughts can lower aquifers and drain reservoirs that typically provide ample supply. Even when available, the quality of the water may not be suitable for all intended uses without treatment.

We already are facing a critical problem in dealing with our water supplies. The DNR report says, “More than half of the state’s community public water systems became active prior to 1960, meaning that without repair or replacement original water pipes, mains, and equipment are nearing or exceeding their average expected lifespan…Many small drinking water utilities have indicated that they lack the funding not only to proactively manage infrastructure needs, but also to meet current water quality standards and adequately address water losses.”

At the other end of the process (to coin a phrase): “Similar to drinking water infrastructure in Missouri, a significant portion of wastewater infrastructure may be approaching the end of its expected life.”

Need an immediate reminder of how precious Missouri’s water supply is and how carefully we must use it and prepare for its future use is no farther away than the greatest of our rivers?

This past April 7, the Missouri River Basin Water Management Division for the Corps of Engineers noted the snowfall in the upper basin had been poor.  “We expect upper basin runoff to be below average,” said Division Chief John Remus. The Corps thinks the snowmelt runoff into upstream reservoirs to be 83% of the annual average this year.

Water is going to become more precious.  You and I might not notice it.  But our grandchildren could.  We aren’t going to turn into the Southwest by the end of the week.  But we have to understand that the way we use water today can’t be the way our next generations will use it.  And we need to prepare for those times.

Unlike the ancient pueblo peoples of the Colorado plateau in the 12th and 13th Centuries, we won’t have anyplace to go when the great drought hits us.

If you want to read the entire 2020 Missouri Water Resources Plan you can find it at:

https://dnr.mo.gov/mowaterplan/docs/2020-mo-water-resources-plan-highlights.pdf

A good man, a statesman

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We usually are silent in this space on Tuesdays but today we must note the passing of former state legislator Wayne Goode.  His kind has been missing from our General Assembly far too long.  Wayne was from St. Louis and St. Louis County. He and John T. Russell (who died several years ago) served 42 years in the House and the Senate. Only Senator Michael Kinney, who represented St. Louis for 56 years served longer.

He died Saturday of leukemia. He was 83. He was one of the finest people I knew in four decades as a reporter at the Capitol.

Wayne is a prime exhibit in discussing the evils of term limits.  Last year, the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis presented him with its highest honor, The Thomas Jefferson Award.  I was asked to talk about him.

Some people, it seems, are born for public service and if there ever was one of those people it is Wayne Goode. I will not even try to list all of the boards and commissions on which Wayne has served. 

Wayne always was one of the “white hats” in the general assembly.  In today’s sometimes irrational political world there would be critics who would say he was just a darling of the left wing fake news media, I suppose.  But they’d be wrong.

Wayne wasn’t very good at political rhetoric.  But he was great at common sense, sound reasoning, and persuasive credibility.  People listened when he talked. 

I remember him especially from his work in shaping state budgets.  Until he came along, the state budget was pretty much written by the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.  But Wayne got the job and decided that if there was a committee, the committee should do the work and state officials as well as common citizens should participate.  There were some folks in the Capitol who didn’t know what to make of that process at first, but the process is still used today. 

He co-sponsored a resolution to have Missouri ratify the Equal Rights Amendment….only to see the Speaker of the House and the Majority Floor leader introduce one, too…..The leadership resolution went to a committee where the chairman refused to hold a hearing and the Speaker refused to put the hammer down and get one…and the issue died that year.  After that, Phyllis Schlafly was in the way and the best chance of Missouri to ratify the ERA was lost.

His love of the outdoors led him to observe great damage was being done to it in the post-war industrial age…which led him to sponsor a hazardous waste bill that was the first major environmental cleanup legislation to pass.  We are grateful for that in our household because my wife, Nancy, worked for many years in the Department of Natural Resources Hazardous waste section.  I think she still has her big green boots in which she clomped around hazardous waste sites.  There is no truth to the rumor that the boots were black before she started clomping around.  

He got a bill passed that ended the legal dumping of hazardous wastes down wells. 

But one thing he could not stop was the construction of the Callaway Nuclear Plant.  I remember hearing Wayne and some other legislative colleagues protesting the plant’s construction.  Wayne and three other House colleagues proposed legislation that would have put some strict controls on nuclear plants. The issue made it to a statewide ballot. Union Electric outspent Wayne and Kay Drey and the legislators behind the bill by 3-million dollars to 100-thousand dollars; voters said no, big time, to the anti-plant proposal in 1984 and Callaway was built.  I saw an article a few years ago where Wayne admitted the plant was being operated about as well as a nuclear plant can be operated….although the industry still lacks a final solution to its nuclear waste problem.

It was his legislation, of course, that led to the creation of the University of Missouri at St. Louis, for which there is a statue of him on the campus. It’s a good statue. It captures Wayne fully engaged in straightening out a colleague on the bill Wayne holds in his hand. 

(Wayne, on the right, poses with sculptor Jay Hall Carpenter and Carpenter’s statue of Goode on the UMSL Campus. UMSL)

There is nothing angry about the debate that is portrayed in this statue. In fact, Wayne is enjoying himself.  There is a joy of earnest discussion. There is no animosity. No posturing. This is the Wayne Goode I remember.  It is an example of what collegial lawmaking should be. Unfortunately it also is a contrast to what too much of our lawmaking has become. 

University students will benefit for years to come because of the Senator Wayne Goode Scholars Program.  Goode Scholars, they’re called.  The recognitions are handled though the University’s Scholars and Fellowship program.  It’s a shame that the Wayne Good Scholars Program isn’t considered a fellowship…..because students happy to win one of those could be called Jolly Goode Fellows.

I saw Wayne in the pose frozen by that statue many times, never outwardly angry, never flustered, always knowing legislation better, sometimes, than the sponsors.  I never saw him try to slip something into a bill secretly.  I also never saw him stand still as long as he has since being cast in bronze. Wayne likes to be in motion—whether it’s hiking or riding a bike or going about doing—good(e).          

I was curious the other day and looked back at some of the people Wayne served with in the House and Senate. I dug out the Blue Book—the official state manual that has not always been blue. The list gives an idea of the eras that he spanned in his 42 years in the Missouri legislature.

When Wayne began serving in the House, Theodore McNeal was a State Senator from St. Louis, the first African-American state senator. The first African-American to serve in the House, Walthall Moore of St. Louis, served in the 1920s, BG (Before Goode)

Senator Michael Kinney was still there, the man who served 56 years in the Senate, the only man in the history of Missouri who served more years than Wayne in the legislature. Kinney had succeeded his brother who had died in 1912, toward the end of his second term.  So that part of St. Louis was represented by these two brothers for 64 years. Thomas was serving in the Senate when the Capitol burned in 1911 and Mike served in the temporary capitol while the present building was going up. 

The Kinney family, incidentally, apparently believed in naming children after Biblical figures…Michael and Thomas.  Thomas’ nickname also was Biblical—Snake. 

Here are some of the other people Wayne served with during his time in the House:

William C. Phelps, Melvin Carnahan, James Spainhower, James Conway, Harold Volkmer, John Buechner, Wendell Bailey, E. Thomas Coleman, Karen McCarthy, Alan Wheat, Betty Hearnes, Claire McCaskill, William Webster, Todd Akin, and Robert Holden.

In the Senate, he served alongside Patsy Danner, Roger Wilson, Jeremiah Nixon, William L. Clay Junior, Sam Graves, Joe Maxwell, Peter Kinder, and Steve Ehlmann. 

There were hundreds of others but the ones I’ve just mentioned have special distinctions.

Ten of these folks became members of the United States House of Representatives—Harold Volkmer,  Tom Coleman, Jack Buechner, Wendell Bailey, Karen McCarthy, Todd Akin, Alan Wheat, Pat Danner, William Lacy Clay, and Sam Graves. 

One, Claire McCaskill, became a U. S. Senator—after she had been state auditor.

There were four who became governors: Mel Carnahan, Jay Nixon, Roger Wilson, and Bob Holden.

Betty Hearnes was a first lady when Wayne showed up in Jefferson City and later became the only former First Lady to serve in the legislature.

Five of these names were Lieutenant Governor—Mel Carnahan, Fulltime Bill Phelps, Peter Kinder, Roger Wilson, and Joe Maxwell.

Three were state treasurers: Carnahan, Bob Holden, and Jim Spainhower.

Two served as Attorney General—Jay Nixon and Bill Webster.

James F. Conway became Mayor of St. Louis.

And Steve Ehlmann runs St. Charles County government. 

What I can’t figure out is why we are here tonight.

We’re honoring the guy who went nowhere—except to Jefferson City and back…and to Jefferson City and back….and to Jefferson and back…for 42 years.  

Wayne, you coulda been somebody!  

But for some reason, it’s you, a man of low ambition, that we’re honoring tonight..   

However, this stay-at-home, low-ambition guy is, I think, the only one of the 24 people I have just mentioned who has a statue of himself. That’s pretty special.  Not even James S. Rollins, who is considered the “father” of the whole University system has a statue.  A bust, but not a statue. 

Wayne served in a far different Senate and a far different House during his 42 years.  There were filibusters every now and then but they weren’t the self-serving filibusters that we see so much today.  Filibusters in Wayne’s time, were often funny, and often had a purpose of forcing two sides to find some middle ground that would let the Senate move ahead.  Today, in the days of supermajorities, filibusters aren’t funny; they’re often futile efforts by a weak minority; and quite often are not just ways to force two sides to work out a troublesome issue.  They’re unfunny and they’re boring. I know.  I was there for many of them and found laughter helped stay awake. 

A few weeks ago I asked some capitol staffers who remain from the Goode Old Days to share some thoughts about Wayne.  Most talked about how hard he worked—and in the process how hard he sometimes worked THEM.   One comment that I enjoyed was that Wayne was always careful with what he ate during legislative sessions.  I was told that he didn’t like potatoes…and often had rice with his meals.  

You might have noticed potatoes were not on our plates tonight.

I planned to bring Wayne a gift from Jefferson City tonight.  I suspect, Wayne, you’re not a fan of bumper stickers and it wouldn’t fit on your bicycle anyway. But I wanted you to have this bumper sticker that says “Eat More Rice. Potatoes Make Your Butt Big.”  But the one I have that I was going to give you is in a box that I have filed too far away.  Be watching for it in the mail, though.   

In his closing years in the General Assembly, Wayne was increasingly concerned about term limits and the loss of institutional memory that they would cause—among other concerns.  In the years since their adoption we have seen his fears of term limits—and similar fears voiced by many others who have served in the legislature—come true. 

I watched it happen from the House Press Gallery and from the press table on the Senate floor. I can tell you from personal experience all of the negatives we were warned about have come true…and there are darned few positives. 

There are three portraits that hang in the Senate Lounge at the state capitol.  One is Senator Kinney.  Another is Senator A. Clifford Jones who was from Ladue and was known for his humor, his tight-fistedness (he didn’t like spending money to redecorate his office, for example), and for not suffering fools gladly during debate.  The third is Senator Richard Webster, who was the last Republican Speaker of the House before Catherine Hanaway arrived, and who became one of the most powerful men in state government as the minority leader in the Senate.

I have suggested, always to deaf ears, that two more portraits should be in that Lounge—two men who served in the legislature together for 42 years.  One is a strong-conservative Republican from the city of Lebanon, in southwest Missouri, John T. Russell, and the other is Wayne Goode, a strong-liberal Democrat.   I don’t recall, as I mentioned earlier, ever hearing Wayne raise his voice. I heard him speak firmly at times, but I don’t remember that he ever showed a temper.  Russell was different.  He had a resonant voice and there were times—brief ones—when he could thunder.

The legislative session in the year that Republicans took control of the Senate, began with some vacancies, leaving Republicans and Democrat with the same numbers.   For a few weeks there were co-presidents pro tem, for example.  And for a short time, Wayne Goode—the dedicate liberal—was the co-chairman of the Senate appropriations committee with John T. Russell, the dedicated conservative.  

When Republicans won enough of the special elections to take the majority in the Senate, Russell became the stand-alone chairman.  But he and Wayne, as the ranking minority member, worked together on the state budget, respecting the experience and the knowledge and the shared legislative history that each brought to the process. 

To those of us who watched them, they represented the best that government can be.  Two men of widely-different political loyalties showed what statesmanship means.  We lost both of them at the same time because of term limits.  Both served the people in Jefferson City for 42 years—not just THEIR people, but THE people.  

In 1892, Maine Congressman Thomas B. Reed, who also served three terms as Speaker of the House, received a letter from a citizen who asked him, “What is a Statesman?”  Reed wrote back, “A statesman is a successful politician who is dead.”

Harry Truman embroidered that comment in 1958, after he’d been promoted back to private citizenship, as he liked to say, by saying, “A statesman is a politician who’s been dead ten or fifteen years.”  

But both Thomas B. Reed and Harry S Truman were wrong.  Politicians can be statesmen in their lifetimes….and we have living proof with us tonight of the goodness that comes from that living statesmanship. 

Term limits robbed the legislature of the influence of people such as Wayne Goode.  Time now has robbed all of us of this good man.

Dr. Crane appreciated being alive

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(In these times of sickness we might find ourselves dwelling on the things that we miss more than we spend time dwelling on the things we don’t realize we have. When conditions might prompt otherwise repressed thoughts of our mortality, it can be better for us to dwell on the day we are given.  To do so, Dr. Frank Crane suggests, makes us something we might prefer NOT to think we are—)

THE SENSUALIST

Do you know, said my old friend Miss Dean, professor of English literature in Blank College, and about the last person in the world you would accuse of being gross, she being a typical highbrow, blue-stocking, and all that sort of thing—Do you know, she said, that the older I grow the more I am getting to be a sensualist?

I am duly shocked, I replied, but suppose of course you intended to shock me so as to bring out some unusual truth. So go ahead.

What I mean is that I am more and more inclining to the belief that we do not emphasize enough the sheer delight of merely being alive. If we would oftener take stock of our little satisfactions, the unnoticed sensations of pleasure that we habitually slur over and take for granted, we would increase the average of our contentment.

I got to thinking this morning of how many things there are in my daily experiences that are agreeable.  I was amazed at how many ways there are in which Nature contrives to make me feel good.

For instance, to begin at the beginning of the day, I like to get up.  I dearly love the first minutes of being awake. To stretch my limbs and shake off sleep, to roll out of bed and put my nose out of the window and drink in the fresh early air, and see the young sunlight, not yet glaring and hot, but full of the promise of life, a sweet light and soft, and to see the trees seeming so glad and virile—oh! It’s great!

And then I like my bath. I like to get all my clothes off and enjoy the touch of the air on my skin as if I were an animal.  We are all animals, but it does us good to go back healthily to animality some time during the day—touch, like Atlas, our mother Earth and the elemental air and light from which come our tides of strength.

I love a good souse in the water. I love the feel of the towel when I rub dry. I like dressing. Putting on clothes with me is always an interesting ceremony.  From lacing my shoes to coming my hair, it is more than a routine—it is a ritual.

I love breakfast.  Thank goodness, I have an appetite. I don’t eat much, but I love to eat.  And when I think of all the living creatures upon the earth, oxen and sheep, birds and horses and fishes, that share with me this delight of taking food, I have a sense of intimate communion with the universe.

Why do some people speak contemptuously of eating?  To me it’s wonderful to think of the infinite ministries of matter to our spirits by way of the palate. Eggs and butter, fish, flesh and fowl, grains and fruits, honey, cream, and, best and most angelic of all—water!  What are those all but Nature’s children vying with each other to please their human guest?

Then there are a thousand other things I like. I like the sun, and to sit in the shade, to walk, and to rest afterward. I like colors, the reds, browns, and blacks of my books, the green of my blotter, the yellow of my pencil, the blue of my rug, and all the other numberless shades, with their blendings and contrasts, that make up the vast orchestra of color continually playing for my benefit.

I like breathing.  Did you ever stop to think how delicious air is?

I like the thousand and one things that we usually refer to as boresome. I like to have my hands manicured. I like to ride on the trolley-car. I like my favorite rocking chair. I like my pen and my pad of paper, and to see words grow under my hand. I like a good novel. I like a good road and a hedge and a clump of bushes. I like to ride in a taxicab through the crowded streets. I like to look at multitudes. And I like to be alone.

I like walls and pavements. I like new gloves and nice underwear. I like, oh! Passionately, a new hat and a gown fresh from the maker. I like for a man to talk to me as if I interested him. I like little children. I like old folks. I like big husky workmen lifting loads. I like people who get excited over purely intellectual problems. I like to make money and to spend it. I like to see young people in love. I like a church, and a theatre, and bridge, and a roomful of chat and laughter. I like jokes, and music, and soldiers marching.

I fear I am a hopeless sensualist. For Stevenson’s jingle grows on me:

“The world is so full of a number of things

I’m sure we should all be happy as kings.”

A Ground-Source Heat Pump Nation

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It’s early afternoon on top of the Langjokull glacier (Langjokull means “long glacier” so I’m being a little redundant here perhaps) in the Highlands of Iceland. The ice is about 1,900 feet thick below us as we stand on the second largest ice cap on an island named for ice. We are about five hundred feet short of being a mile high.

And we are standing on top of two volcanic systems. But we’re relatively safe. There have only been thirty-two eruptions in the past ten-thousand years. We do not think when there might be a thirty-third.

This is a land of fire and ice, of long dark nights and long bright days, of heat and snow, of Northern Lights in the winter and whales and Puffins in the summer. It is a country the size of New York with a population equaling that of Anaheim, California. About 266,000 of the country’s 360,000 people live in one town, Reykjavik.

Iceland has about 130 volcanoes, about thirty of which are considered active. Glaciers melt from the bottom here because of the warmth of the ground. The water is pure and cold and it spills over dozens of waterfalls and careens through canyons carved through the volcanic rock laid down through thousands of years of eruptions.

In some places it’s boiling hot and there are geysers. Visitors are cautioned to stay on walkways lest they break through the thin crust and encounter boiling water. More than ninety percent of the homes in Iceland are heated with geothermal water heated by the underground magma that is part of the ecosystem of this fascinating country, an entire country that is, in effect, a ground source heat pump.

In other places, steam from geothermal sources generates electricity that provides lights to much of the island.

Heat and cold. Light and dark. The darkness of winter is setting in fast in Iceland. During our visit, we could make out outlines of mountains on the horizon about 9:15 a.m. and it was fully light by ten.   But by three o’clock we were headed back to our hotel because darkness was coming on fast.

Christmas lights go up early in November and they stay until February, not because Iceland celebrates Christmas for four months but because the people NEED THE LIGHT.

Actually, Iceland celebrates Christmas for about two weeks, beginning December 23 and running through Epiphany on January 6 with traditional events linked back to ancient Norse customs and figures such as the thirteen Yule Lads.

The lads are trolls, children of Gryla, a part-troll and part animal who lives in the mountains with her husband and the black Christmas Cat. At Christmas time she and her family come down out of the mountains looking for children who’ve been more naughty than nice. She likes to boil them in her cauldron while the boys go around visiting the homes of children.

Icelandic Christmas custom has children putting a shoe in their bedroom windows each evening for the thirteen days before Christmas. Each night, one of the lads comes by and leave small gifts—candy is always popular—for the good little girls and boys. But the child who has been a pain in the neck that day can wake up the next morning and find a rotten potato in the shoe.

The Yule Cat prowls the countryside and eats people who haven’t received any new clothing before Christmas Eve.

Those of us who live in the less harsh but soft and more temperate and light world of Missouri have a fat old man in a red suit who flies around with the help of reindeer.

The country has an officially established church, a state church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Some folks will attend holiday services at Hallgrimskirkja, the church of Hallgrimur Petursson, a seventeenth-century poet and clergyman (although that’s a statue of Leif Ericson in front of the church instead of Pastor Petursson). This modern church is the largest church in the country and at 244 feet is one of the tallest buildings in all of Iceland.

 

 

 

 

 

Simplicity is its beauty. Workers started building it in 1946 and did not complete it until 1986. The original design was for a building not as tall as this one. But it grew in design when the Church of Iceland insisted on a spire that would be higher than the cathedral of Iceland’s Catholic Church.

Yes, we saw the Northern Lights.

Our cameras saw them better than our eyes did. To our eyes, the lights were barely visible. But our digital cameras with slow shutter speeds captured the lights and (if you look closely) the Big Dipper. We had gone out on a Northern Lights tour in a boat the previous night but they didn’t materialize. The second night, we took a bus an hour into the dark interior of the island. We were on the verge of giving up when the first slight glitter caught our attention.

But on our boat trip we did see a light—Yoko Ono’s Imagine Peace Light that is turned on during the winter for various periods.

This year, she went to Reykjavik to turn it on in honor of husband John Lennon’s 79th birthday, October 9. It will be turned off for the season on March 27. “Remember, each one of us has the power to change the world,” she wrote in a message in October. “Power works in mysterious ways. We don’t have to do much. Visualize the domino effect and just start thinking PEACE…

It’s Time of Action.

The Action is PEACE.

Think PEACE, act PEACE, Spread PEACE.

PEACE is power!”

It was late at night when I took that picture and I’m surprised it turned out as well as it did. It looks lighter than it was because of the slow shutter speed. And we were riding on a boat. Actually there are fifteen searchlights that form the column. The stone monument housing the lights features “Imagine Peace” in two-dozen languages.

Now—back to the glacier, back to where we started. Standing on a glacier is one thing. Going inside one is something else. But we did.

With sixty feet of ice over hour heads and hundreds of feet of ice and volcanoes beneath our feet we explored the interior. The tunnel was designed by a geophysicist and snakes through the glacier far enough that the trip through takes about an hour. We were given spikes that we stretched over our boots; some of our group had toe-warmers that they inserted inside their boots but it wasn’t all that bad (we thought), especially as long as we kept moving. In fact, it was warmer inside the glacier than it was outside.

There are some rooms carved into the ice, including a chapel where weddings are held from time to time, not something we could ever anticipate doing because of the hassle, if nothing else. Plus, we observed, who wants to start a marriage with a frigid spouse?

In the middle of our tour, one of our group was startled by the ringing of his cell phone. Somebody from Jefferson City was calling.   We’re sixty feet underneath the top of a glacier in Iceland, for goodness sakes, and a cell phone still found him.

The geology that shapes the island and the people who live there and the environment in which they choose to live produces some amazing lifestyle developments (at least amazing to us).

This is the biggest greenhouse we have ever seen, at Freoheimar. And it’s only one in a complex that covers about 1.25 acres that grows tomatoes and cucumbers and has restaurant facilities scattered throughout the vine-growing area. A computerized climate-control system takes care of temperature, humidity, lighting and carbon dioxide. Geothermal water heats the greenhouses. Pure cold water irrigates the plants. Plants are protected from pests by biological controls and bumblebees that care nothing about humans help pollinate the plants.

We’re not sure how tall the plants are—more than fifteen feet, we suspect. Visitors can have tomato soup and home-made bread for lunch. And, oh, is it good soup! And the bread is to die for. Each of us tasted a little tomato and this consumer who tolerates tomatoes on hamburgers tried one. Very low acidic content. It was almost sweet.

And the plastic container that these folks market their small tomatoes in: After the purchaser has eaten all the tomatoes, the container can be held under hot water and it disappears.

Iceland, where people live on volcanic lava rather than good rich (or not so rich) dirt could teach us Americans a lot about efficient, low-waste, natural living.

Two or three final things: Remember we mentioned the Christmas lights going up early and staying up late because people in long winter-dark time need light? How about this gas station/car wash?

Gas was costing about nine dollars (US) a gallon there. But people don’t drive little bitty cars. In fact, Iceland has an amazing variety of cars available from Skodas made in Czechoslovakia to Volkswagens from Germany and Jaguars from England, Subarus from Japan, and Fords from the United States, among others.

The Icelandic language is very old. It has no dialects. Old Icelandic is a derivation of Old Norse. The oldest written documents in Iceland date to about 1100 CE. Most modern Icelanders can read those documents because their language has been so unchanged. The Icelandic alphabet is based on the 12th Century First Grammatical. It also has six letters our alphabet doesn’t have.

Reykjavik also is the home of the only museum of its kind in the world. You’ll have to go to Google Images to see more about it. I cannot imagine the public reaction in most of this country if somebody opened a museum like it here. I did take some pictures of it (although I didn’t have time to get any farther inside than the gift shop—and some of the gifts would have made interesting objects on the airport luggage security cameras). Actually, it’s called The Iceland Phallological Museum but it’s best known by its sign.

Almost all of the land and sea mammals found in Iceland are represented. Including, uh, Homo Sapiens. In all, there are 282 specimens from 93 different species of animal. Should anyone want to create one of these museums in this country, we suggest locating it in Olean, the Miller County town of about 125 or so souls who have held an  annual Testicle Festival, which we understand has moved to another town.

So, we went to Iceland a couple of weeks ago. And we found it intriguing for several reasons. It’s about six hours from Chicago if you are so unfortunate as to want to leave from O’Hare International.

It was kind of an anniversary celebration for us. A week after Nancy and I got back and got the unpacking and the laundry mostly done, we celebrated our 52nd wedding anniversary.

Would we go back?  We have other places on our list but a maybe a summer visit when the whales and the Puffins are there…..