Clips

Pelicans, Belted Kingfishers and Ospreys all love this tree

Some days the ideas don't come fast and furious so i surf the net looking for trends that affect humanity. On St. Croix the Hovensa closing is the main topic of conversation and will create unknown opportunities for years to come; we still have far to go before we feel the real effects. i'm avoiding writing about it because i've taken a position of wait and see. So on to other things that can also impact us and our environment.

There's a hint of a rainbow wayyyyy back in that cloud

Hawksbills and Greens...of the ten tagged in August at Buck Island National Park eight are still sending out signals whoo hoo. The map at seaturtle.org shows all of them remaining in the Caribbean between Puerto Rico and down as far as Antigua. They slowly meandered away from St. Croix with some going north and others heading south. It will be interesting to see if they come back and when.  i'm always checking the turtles at Cane Bay and so far none of ours have been tagged.

Hawksbill at Cane Bay

Hope the Whimbrel...that bird is freaking amazing and she is ours. Hope lives here from September to May at Great Pond on the south shore until she takes off to migrate north to her breeding grounds close to the eastern Alaskan border. She flies non-stop from here to Virginia where she fuels up and continues the trek north and west. She has had a monitor on her for three seasons and is one of the few Whimbrels still transmitting data to scientists. She has proven that Great Pond is an extremely sensitive wetland area and needs protecting.

Great Pond where Hope hangs out

New York Attorney General Eric Schnierderman will be co-chairing an investigation into risky mortgage packaging and the abusive lending that lead to the housing bubble that crashed our economy. This was a long time in coming and it is just a start but maybe some where down the road those that took advantage of inexperienced buyers will be brought to justice.

Customs House

Newt Gingrich is experiencing a revival of sorts. This summer his rising star bit the dust when his campaign staff bolted. i think most of us thought he was finished but he stayed in the game. Now he has won South Carolina and is trying to win Florida...apparently his schtick is redemption, he has seen the light and changed his ways. i think Gingrich is a professional con man and if conservatives can believe that he has repented of his ways and he becomes their nominee for President of the United States then they will prove to the world that they really can be led like a cow to slaughter.

Beliefs...it is easier to believe and not question than it is to question.

According to Michael Shermer “Men and women, indistinctly, have the same tendency to believe weird things. What changes is the type of weird thing. Women believe more in mediums, spiritualists, fortunetellers, witchcraft, amulets, alternative medicine and healers. Men prefer to believe in the paranormal, pseudoscience, creationism and UFOs.”

Saturday Market at La Reine

Jails are a business and we are number one in the world for incarceration. A New Yorker article by Adam Gopnik, "The Caging of America," shockingly notes:

"Over all, there are now more people under "correctional supervision" in America - more than six million - than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height."

The toll on minorities is devastating because a lot of poor black and white men were incarcerated for non-violent crimes:

For a great many poor people in America, particularly poor black men, prison is a destination that braids through an ordinary life, much as high school and college do for rich white ones. More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some time in their lives. Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today - perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system - in prison, on probation, or on parole - than were in slavery then.

Gopnik is appalled: "The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life."

And here's my two cents on that issue...when jails became a business the need for customers increased. Without customers there can be no profit so the fact that we are the number one jailers in the world does not surprise me.

Until next week, see ya.