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Did You Have Breakfast Today?

I usually don’t carry the title of an article I read into the title of my blog post, but this one was so right-on I had to use it. Did you have breakfast today? This is not a question of dietary management; it has to do with the health of our global populations.

The question brings a focus to whether in our warming climate our global food supply will be able to continue to provide the people of Earth with the food/calories they need in their daily lives. An article at the website “The Cool Down” (TCD) addresses this question and may be found at, New data uncovers dire situation about global food production: ‘Like everyone on the planet giving up breakfast’. The article discusses the findings of a recent study on issues of food production on our planet Earth where the global temperatures – and the global population – are both rising. As crop-lands fail under the pressure of global warming, food production will fall. It will be as the title states in part, “Like everyone on the planet giving up breakfast.”

I have written blog posts about the reality of global warming several times and have sent letters to recent presidents about whether we are planning for a climate that is not in-tune with our current world view. There is a high probability of disastrous events in our future if we do not make significant changes in how we address global warming. We need a plan for adaptations that will address regional changes in climate and the ability to successfully raise crops.

I believe we have a global food crisis brewing, and we need to act now to prepare for it. The signs of the crisis have been seen for several decades, but the ‘leaders’ of the world are slow to recognize it or to work to find global solutions. To help understand the root of global warming and the coming crisis, I have written several times about the Keeling Curve in past blog posts – as well as in letters to the White House. My past blogs that speak to the Keeling Curve can be read in; “CO2 – the Keeling Curve,” February 15, 2019; “Sweeping the Sky,” September 27, 2019; and “Open Letter to ‘Climate Change Activists’ who Disfigure Public Art,” September 7, 2024.

Briefly, the Keeling Curve is based on the work of Dr. Charles D. Keeling. In 1956 Dr. Keeling began a program to measure atmospheric gases, including Carbon Dioxide (CO2), at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii. As these observations are plotted over time, they show an increasing level of CO2 with each passing year. The graph below, known as the Keeling Curve, shows this increase over time. Please note the rise following the Industrial Revolution and the dramatic increase following World War II. If you wonder about the saw-toothed edge of the curve, that is an indication of the rise in CO2 in the winter months when the leaves are off the trees and are not converting CO2 into Oxygen (O2). The downward slope of each “tooth” indicates the activity of the trees and other plants in the growing seasons of spring and summer as they remove CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it into O2. The curve shows that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increases – goes every upward – with each passing year. The more CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere, the more global warming increases through a “greenhouse effect.”.

Using ice core data to establish the historical concentrations of atmospheric gases in the years and centuries before Keeling’s work, the curve can be extended back in time – in this instance back to before the Industrial Revolution.

These studies indicate without a doubt that the generation of CO2 gas – especially by burning coal to support and drive the industrial revolution – and its release into the atmosphere has had a terrific effect on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The CO2 as well as other gases such as methane have caused the atmosphere to block heat capture from the Sun from being able to be reflected out into space and escaping from the Earth’s atmosphere. This inability for heat to escape into space causes a continual heating of the planet.

The CO2 and other gases are known a “greenhouse gases,” because they create a “greenhouse Earth” affect. It is like living in a glass-walled and glass-roofed greenhouse in which the heat of the Sun is captured and cannot escape. The purpose of a greenhouse is to maintain a warm environment inside the greenhouse which allows plants to survive and grow when it is too cold for them outside. But our “greenhouse Earth” benefit growth of crops for our hungry and growing population.

Ocean warming is also driven by the increase of atmospheric CO2 which drives increasing global temperatures. As we all know as the temperature of water rises, so does the evaporation rate from the water’s surface. This increase in evaporation increases the amount of moisture in the atmosphere which in turn retains more heat/unstable air which aids the generation of more and larger storms over the ocean.

The effect of our warming oceans also brings a rise in sea level since as the ocean’s are heated, the water of the oceans expands. This causes a rise in the sea-level which is evident along ocean beaches and marshes as well as in coastal ports and coastal rivers.

The salt water of the oceans and bays not only rises vertically in elevation but it also pushes out horizontally from the shallow near-shore ocean basin and pushes its way into coastal regions, where the salt water mingles with and displaces the coastal ground water.

Where you see the ‘ghost forests” of dead trees behind the beach the intrusion of saltwater is often the cause. A brief article on the concern about ghost forests may be found at Ghost forests haunt Atlantic Coast | US Forest Service.

In addition to this intrusion, coastal water tables – and many other water tables throughout the United States – are being sucked down by deep wells for agriculture, industry, and homes, all of which extract the ancient fresh ground-water. As the water tables are being drawn down by these wells, the wells have to be forced deeper sucking out more and more of the ancient waters. In areas where the surface of the Earth is no longer well supported as the groundwater is drawn further and further down, the surface layers shrink in elevation as the surface relaxes and compresses. A recent article on what is happening in the cradle of agriculture and civilization in the south of Turkey indicates that without the support of groundwater massive sinks holes can erupt in the landscape, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/28/i-live-in-constant-fear-surge-in-giant-sinkholes-threatens-turkeys-farmers

There is also an opposite effect as the Earth slowly rebounds upwards. This has been happening since the last great ice age. When the vast ice sheets and miles thick glaciers melted away and their terrific weight was removed from the Earth’s surface, the elasticity of the Earth’s crust allows it to slowly rise as it readjusts to the missing weight.

All these interacting systems and events determine where and how fast the relationship of the water’s surface and the land (farms and people’s homes) are impacted by the rising sea-level that is brought on by global warming.

The general warming of Earth encourages spring to come earlier in some areas. There may be more rain – or less rain – in certain areas. This in turn changes the growing season of crops.

An example of the issues for a species in a time of climate change can be seen in the case of a lack of abundance of caterpillars for Pied Flycatchers in southern Britian during the bird’s nesting season. A brief article may be found at Hungry birds as climate change drives food ‘mismatch’ | ScienceDaily.

As spring comes earlier under the influence of climate change/global warming “leaves and caterpillars emerge earlier.” However, the Pied Flycatcher is a migratory bird and does not arrive to their nesting and breeding sites until the new spring is well underway. This is a “mis-match” between the emergence of the caterpillars which are a main source of food for the hatchlings. The change disrupts the pattern of mating and raising of new broods of young flycatchers. In order to continue their current cycle (is it millennia old?) the flycatchers will need to evolve and change their migratory and breeding patterns and return to their breeding area sooner in order to be able to find the large quantities of caterpillars they need to feed their young. The article quotes Dr. Karl Evans of the University of Sheffield; “Our work suggests that as springs warm [earlier] in the future less food is likely to be available for the chicks of insectivorous woodland birds unless evolution changes their timing of breeding.”

At the beginning of this blog post I mentioned an article on crop production which is the impetus of this post. This “The Cool Down” article addressed a recent study on the ability to cultivate six different grain crops raised in many locations around the world. The article also takes into account the adaptations to deter the impacts of global warming which are being used by farmers around the world.

The study was prepared by The Climate Impact Lab at the University of Chicago and published in Nature in June 2025. It is ‘open-access’ article and may be found online at, Impacts of climate change on global agriculture accounting for adaptation | Nature.

The study presents a picture of what could happen to the world’s ability to produce adequate agriculture to feed the 10 billion people (an increase of 2 billion from today) expected to live on Earth by the turn of the century. An interesting article on world population growth by the Pew Research Center can be found at 5 facts about how the world’s population is expected to change by 2100 | Pew Research Center.

Back to the question at the beginning of this blog post; Did you have breakfast today? This can be extended to a question of ability. Were you able to find breakfast today?

As the Earth continues to warm, just as there is an impact on the food for the Pied Flycatcher, there will be an impact on the ability of humanity to feed itself. Throughout the rest of this century the impact of global warming will cause growing-regions for the six studied food staples to move further and further toward the poles.

The study indicates that by the year 2100 the current fertile growing-regions in the middle of North America will likely have lost nearly 30 to 40% of their ability to produce crops. These growing areas will no longer be able to support the bountiful harvest they do today. The areas which will gain a stronger ability for wheat will migrate further north into the Tibetan Plateau, Northeast China, Mongolia, and Scandinavia – as well as the southern tip of South America.. The map of wheat production presented with the study provides a good example.

The study not only considers the factor of climate change but it also includes factors related to adaptation by farmers and their states and nations to maintain sufficient crop yield under global warming. But this is not equal across the Earth. Richer countries and populations can afford the research and development for ways to maintain – or even improve – crop yield.

But there is a bit of the flip-side as well. The breadbasket of North America has been fertile with sufficient water and a good growing season – so the states and countries and the framers have not been forced to seek or implement adaptations for climate change. The study presented in the Nature article presents a case where lack of preparation for adaptations lead to significant crop failure by the end of this century.

Finding and implementing adaptations to climate change will depend on the position of the government of those countries and whether they understand the coming change. If the presented prediction holds true, the breadbasket of North America will no longer produce the bumper crops that feed the world. High production areas will have shifted to other countries.

Yes, it is like the grasshopper and the ants. Sometimes the ants take pity on the grasshopper – and sometimes they do not.

I am not asking you to believe that the global warming road on which we find ourselves is human caused (I believe it is) – but I am asking you to understand that since the industrial revolution Carbon Dioxide (CO2) levels have been increasing. CO2 and other “greenhouse gases’ are trapping heat that would otherwise have been reflected off the earth and into space, and so the Earth – our home – where we get all our food – is warming and is changing our ability to grow crops as we have for thousands of years. This warming is happening right now and will continue to increase. We must ask ourselves what does this ongoing and increasing change do to the food supply for all the world’s people?

Then we must act.

UPDATE II – Neoliner Origin

This picture from a webcam at the Baltimore, Maryland harbor shows Neoliner Origin being welcomed and led into port by the seagulls. The seagulls are shown in the yellow circles. Others have disappeared behind the ship.

This article is an UPDATE to two previous articless having to do with using wind power on modern ocean-going cargo ships. The first article was posted on October 1, 2018 (Cylindrical Sails) and a First UPDATE to that article was posted September 18, 2020 (UPDate – Sails from Sweden).

The discussion in this Second UPDate article celebrates the arrival of a wind powered “Roll On – Roll Off” (Ro-Ro) vessel that arrived in the Port of Baltimore on 30 October 2025.

In line with the concept of an UPDate, a future discussion of the cylindrical sail concept may be found on The Maritime Page that may be found at https://maritimepage.com/rotor-sails-on-ships/. As discussed in that article the concept of cylindrical and rotating sails has been around since 1920. The concept continues to be studied and numerous ships have been fitted with cylindrical sails in the past two decades.

Regarding the sails being developed by Swedish company Wallenius Marine and Danish company KNUD E. HANSEN in the First UPDATE, they are reinforcing their position in sustainable shipping with the development of the Sleipner RoRo. The Sleipner RoRo may be fitted with “wing sails,” which are rigid aerodynamic sails.

This Second UPDate could have been written as a stand-alone article on the maiden transatlantic voyage of the Neoliner Origin, but I feel it is an UPDate to the original article regarding the concept of wind power for ocean-going cargo vessels.

The Neoliner Origin is a 5,300-ton sailing roll-on/roll-off (Ro-Ro) cargo ship especially fitted for carrying cars. It was commissioned by Neoliner, a French company and was designed by the French naval architecture firm, MAURIC. It is a medium-sized ocean going vessel, and is discussed by M. Jean Zannotini, the CEO of Neoliner in an interview which may be found at https://youtu.be/dUdaBnJ58jI . The interview also contains a description of the vessel and its purpose in combating global-warming which is driving climate change. The design of the Neoliner Origin reduces the emissions of it transatlantic voyage by 80% to 90% from a typical voyage for delivery of cars and machinery. Ocean shipping moves the vast majority of goods manufactured from the country of origin to markets around the world. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) ocean shipping is responsible for 3% of the global greenhouse gas emissions.

Neoliner Origin’s propulsion is provided by two sets of sails mounted on two 90-meter (295 feet) masts. There is 3,000 square meters (more than 32,000 square feet) of total sail area. The ship’s speed under sail is 16 knots (more than 18 miles per hour). A ‘knot’ is the nautical term (nautical mile per hour) for the speed of a vessel. A knot is approximately equivalent to 1.2 miles per hour. It is noted that ocean cargo ships have an average speed of 18-20 knots.

The masts can be lowered/tilted (with sails furled as pictured in video) to less than half their height to enable the ship to pass under bridges as it enters and leaves ports. While in port the ship uses a diesel-electric hybrid propulsion system for maneuvering. This same diesel-electric hybrid system may be used if the sails are damaged during crossings. This was the case on the Neoliner Origin’s maiden voyage to North America and Baltimore as a storm at sea damaged the aft sails.

The following websites were visited and were utilized in the development of this article.

The picture used in this article may be found at https://youtu.be/7emUPVzVBTE; it is a screen-shot at approximately 1:15 minutes into the video. The video was taken/provided by StreamTimeLIVE.

The Old Wagon Roads

There is a place where I like to hike in summer and winter. It is about 20 miles outside of Washington, DC. The trails of the Manassas National Battlefield Park cross through woods and span creeks and wander over old farms. In summer on the anniversaries of the two battles the heat rises up out of the land like a steam rises from a kettle.

The Battle of First Manassas, the first major battle of the American War Between the States was fought on these grounds during the heat and humidity of high summer, July 21, 1861. Thirteen months later during the following summer the two armies met on the same ground in the Second Battle of Manassas, August 28–30, 1862. Summer can be fierce in this part of Virginia. The men who fought in the two battles not only struggled against each other; they also struggled against heat exhaustion under the brutal sun. The battles were bloody affairs fought with cannon and bayonet and musket and rifle. There were more than 20,000 men wounded in the two battles; 3,711 whom died. Many of the wounded lost arms and legs and would never fight again. Others were less severely wounded and would continue the struggle over the next several years.

Before the war, before the cannons’ roar, before the screams of horses and men, these were quiet farms and wood lots. This is where generations had lived enjoying the rolling hills and the cool streams which rose from springs deep in the woods. The people were born and lived and died on these farms. Most people never traveled more than a few miles from their homes. I imagine that the seven-mile trip to the railroad junction in Manassas was as far as many may have gone. Or perhaps they traveled the ten miles to the Chapmam-Beverly Mill at Thoroughfare gap. That mill provided food stuff for troops during the Civil War as well as during the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War I and World War II.

The farmers and their families worked hard on these lands. The land and the farms consumed their entire lives. The cemeteries that remain today include the Hooe family cemetery, the Carter family cemetery, and the Ball family cemetery. I am sure there are many unmarked graves throughout the area.

Families lived at Hazel Plain and at Brawner Farm during the war and saw the troops of the two opposing armies rush through their yards in the Second Battle of Manassas. The land around the Henry house saw some of the fiercest parts of the First Battle of Manassas pass by their very windows and up on the high hill where the Robinson House once stood.

In the woods around the farms and the barnyards the sound of the two battles echoed and faded among the trees. Today those echos can be heard by those who listen. There are sounds that are trapped in the woods and secrets too. Deep in the woods are trees that once saw soldiers from both sides of the conflict march into battle. The trees stand tall and strong against the years and spread their canopy high and wide. Several of these trees were once marked as ‘Witness Trees’, but the plaques have been removed or stolen. Standing in the shade of the Poplars in summer you might hear the rush of feet as the companies of men run towards the sounds of the battle. By the numerous creeks that thread through the area the huge Sycamore trees stand with their roots pressed deep into the moist soil. These trees also saw the fight. When the wind blows through their branches you can hear them telling each other of what they saw or what their ‘grand-trees’ parents told them.

All these wooded lots and farms and fields were connected by the lives of the people of the area and at one time by footpaths and wagon roads. Some of those paths and roads were turned into macadam roads and then paved highway and then maybe into Interstate Highways. Many of the paths were abandoned and became grown over.

Back in the deep parts of the woods there are old paths that did not become something else. These paths and old roads tied farm to farm and family to family. They might have trees growing up in them now, but generations of farm boys and girls traveled to and from farmsteads to carry their produce to market, to go courting, to marry. They walked or perhaps rode on horseback, but the trail they made into the wilderness and back was defined by the width of the wagon wheels. Years upon years of bare and booted feet, horses’ hooves, and cloven feet of huge oxen, wore and cut the path down. Rain carved the broken earth away. In each year came more feet and hooves and wagon wheels to cut the wagon-road deeper into the soil and forest floor.

And then it stopped. The farmers used other roads. The houses were abandoned and fell from their stone foundations and rotted away. After all left, trees grew up in the road and died, and other trees grew.

Now the wagon-road, though deep and wide, is still only a shadow in time of its former self. Covered by leaves and snow in winter and by shade and undergrowth in summer, the wagon-road is known only by those who walk deep into the woods away from the paved path. These wanderers stand in the old road and as they imagine the creak of harness, the rub of the wheels on axle, the song of the driver, the march of the company of soldiers going to war, the step of the lone solder returning home, and the laughter of the people, they are hearing the stories of those who traveled the old wagon-roads. The wanderers listen carefully and with respect, and the sounds and voices come to them of the friends and families who walked these paths long ago. They hear the stories that the wagon-road can tell them.

WHALE FALLEN

My Posting:

I enjoy writing my posts for Stone Fig which most often relate to the time I have spent outside in the woods and hiking mountain trails and desert paths. Some posts are based on an article I have read – usually with some additional research. For those articles I always give a citation of sorts and if possible a weblink if anyone wants to read further.

For this post, Whale Fallen, I have decided to copy the text of a New York Times article. I do this because I think it is a wonderful article, and of course I give the New York Times and its writers credit for their work.

If the New York Times or any of its staff are offended, I apologize and hope they will forgive me. I do not gain any monetary value from using their work – but I do gain positive value in knowing I am sharing a moving article about life in the oceans with my readers. The article is well-written and concerns a gray whale calf, one of the gentle giants of the great deep.

Many of the comments to the article deal with how sad some readers felt at the death of the grey whale calf. They wrote of its loneliness as it searched for its mother. They wrote of the likely frantic search by its mother when she became separated from her calf. Other commentors spoke to “the circle of life.” I believe “Joe” of Tucson, Arizona captured all of the comments in saying, “You were not really alone little giant- we are all connected and I hope you found some sense of peace and love in your final surrendering to nature and we will join you soon.”

I hope my readers enjoy reading the article as much as I did. It is not just the water we see when we look at the ocean; it is the myriad lives and stories that are taking place within the Ocean Home.

The New York Times Article:
Article copied from The New York Times/Science (online)
Published April 30, 2025Updated May 1, 2025, 2:05 p.m. ET
Under Science/Trilobites: Unearthing fascinating morsels of science.
Text by Sruthi Gurudev
Photographs by Jules Jacobs
(I have modified one of the photographs as my lead-in to my posting.)

A Diver Visited a Fallen Whale. When He Returned, It Was Gone.

A sunken calf’s disappearance created a mystery in murky waters near San Diego.
How does an 18-foot-long, 2,000-pound carcass just disappear?
That question has puzzled some divers and photographers who regularly plunge into the waters off San Diego.

It started earlier this year when Doug Bonhaus took advantage of some calm weather to scuba dive in Scripps Canyon. As he descended, a hulking mass took shape below him.

There, at an exceptionally shallow 115 feet, lay the body of a baby gray whale.

Whale falls are usually not seen by human divers. Typically, they are discovered by remotely operated vehicles at depths exceeding 3,000 feet.

Local marine biologists had a guess as to the gray whale calf’s origins. An animal that matched what was found on the seafloor had been spotted swimming near La Jolla Shores, desperately searching for its mother. During its final hours, it was seen approaching boats, as though asking for help that wasn’t coming.

Because it was the first time in memory that a fall was so accessible to people, other divers quickly made their way to the site. Among them was Jules Jacobs, an underwater photojournalist who has written for The New York Times about his explorations.

At that point in late January, the carcass’s resting place was a trough in the canyon that required pinpoint precision to reach. So Mr. Jacobs steeled himself for a dangerous and mentally taxing dive.

Navigating the crepuscular gloom with a team of five other divers, the dive lights suddenly illuminated what he was looking for: the mottled-skinned, emaciated calf. The calf’s eyes had already succumbed to the elements; it seemed locked into an expression of sorrow.

“It’s humbling to dive a whale fall where the tail alone is as big as your body,” Mr. Jacobs said.

Mr. Jacobs planned additional dives to observe the animal. On his second visit a week later, a chunk of the animal’s tail was missing, likely the work of scavenger sharks like the seven gill or the mako.

After a surge of spring storms, Mr. Jacobs descended into freezing blackness for the third time in late February. Gripping his camera gear so tightly his knuckles turned white, he waited for the decaying animal to appear.

What he found was only the barren seabed.

The calf was gone.

Gray whales, which can grow to around 45 feet in adulthood, have a migration that is the one of the longest of any mammal. It starts in the balmy seas of Baja California and extends to feeding grounds in the high latitudes of the Arctic Oceans. The calf and its missing mother were most likely headed north before they were separated. During this phase of the journey, they would have been at their most vulnerable, with the mother not having eaten for six months.

Gray whale populations follow a boom-and-bust cycle, with numbers crashing and then recovering, and sometimes up to a quarter of the population lost in a few years.

For about six years, however, the population has failed to rebound as it did during previous die-offs. Scientists attribute this decline to climate change, which accelerates Arctic warming and disrupts the gray whale’s prey. Ship strikes and entanglements in fishing lines aggravate losses to starvation.

“We’re unlikely to return to a world that can support 25,000 gray whales anytime soon,” said Joshua Stewart, an assistant professor at the Oregon State University Marine Mammal Institute. Dr. Stewart expects to see many more whales dying on the West Coast.

Still, in the normal course of events, the death of a whale does not always signify an end. Instead, it catalyzes new beginnings.

A riot of life blooms from a whale carcass, even a calf’s. The flesh nourishes scavengers, the bones are colonized by microbes and worms and the curved vertebrae form new highways for a rapidly developing reef.

“A whale fall is a real bonanza and may provide as much food as normally reaches the sediment beneath it in 200 years,” said Craig Smith, professor emeritus of oceanography at the University of Hawaii. “Ironically, we know more about whale-fall communities in the deep sea than in shallow water.”

A whale decays in three ecologically distinct stages. First come the scavengers — sharks, crabs, hagfish — which tear into the soft tissue. Then, along come the worms in “huge, writhing masses in the organic-rich ooze surrounding the carcass,” Dr. Smith said. This can last seven years in what scientists call the enrichment-opportunist stage.

Finally, bacteria deep within the bones produce hydrogen sulfide, fueling the chemosynthetic bacteria on the surface of the bones and those living symbiotically inside animal hosts. This stage can last decades, with more than 200 marine species thriving on a single whale fall.

But this infant whale and its carcass had vanished. Had something or someone made off with it, preventing that life-sustaining whale fall from continuing?

Gregory Rouse, a marine biology professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, believes the explanation is less mysterious. During whale falls, he said, decomposition in the body cavity generates gas, which can cause the carcass to rise again after initially sinking, and float before eventually settling on the bottom.

Strong winds and pulsing currents likely swept the body deeper into the canyon, which descends as far as 1,600 feet down.

“This animal would’ve grown into a titan, but its life was snuffed out in infancy,” Mr. Jacobs said.

But where it lies quietly in the darkness, new life may proliferate and prosper.

The link at which the New Tork Time article may be found is: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/science/whale-carcass-san-diego.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20250501&instance_id=153663&nl=the-morning®i_id=107935160&segment_id=197084&user_id=29ef4a3aa4e70bb456fa536f5bec4e19 . Here you will see the heading for the article and find an opportunity to subscribe to the New York Times.

The Gate

I am glad that spring hiking season is finally here. To get out into the woods and fields for hikes changes my viewpoint and always boosts my spirits.

When I go out to my favorite trails it is not always to “go the distance” on one of my well-worn trails in the Virigina hardwood forests. I might only have a spot in mind that is calling me; a favorite tree beside the trail, or a stream that burbles out of the stoney mountain side. Whatever my goal I often stop on the trail and listen to the wind in the upper branches of the trees. Or I will stop to follow a flash of color and try to pick a bird out among the budding branches.

I think of these spots as places that have more clarity in my mind than the surrounding area. However, a passer-by on the trail might glance over at me – and wonder what I am looking at, what has caught my eye. It might be a small flowering tree. It might be a rotted log festooned with fungi.

In each season I have spots that I like to visit. In the spring that spot is no further than 20 steps from the parking lot. There is a pear tree standing next to the farm gate. It is a European Pear (Pyrus communis), a common variety in farmyards of the east and south. The original seedlings had been brought by settlers from their plots in crowded, ancient Europe to be planted on their farms and gardens in the massive and open American continent.

My grandfather had a stand of three trees on his farm for his delight and that of his grandchildren. The memory of those trees and the hard, sweet fruit is brought back by this solitary pear next to the gate.

Each year in the spring I hope to see white blossoms thick on the branches. Each summer I stand in the shade of the tree as I lean on the gate after my hike in the deeper woods. Every fall – in November – I look up into its branches seeking a pear with green speckled skin that I might dislodge with my walking stick. I will wipe it off and enjoy – but that is in the fall. Now it is spring, and I have come out to see this pear tree.

What am I looking for? Is it my younger days, when everyone was here? Was it my grandfather standing and reaching up into his pear tree to pluck a fruit? The pear hung tightly to its branch – like a dried red oak leaf hangs onto its limb through the harshest winter winds.

I see it again, the branch bends slightly as my grandfather pulls on the pear. The pear comes loose, and my grandfather’s hand recoils to his chest as the branch yields its prize. The branch in its turn springs back towards the upper branches of the tree – perhaps glad to release its fruit to the hand that tends the tree. The other pears bobble on their perch. They are not yet quite ripe. When ripe they will fall to the ground and be discovered by wasps that will surprise and scare a little boy.

This spring the pear tree is thick with blossoms. Ladies and their children stand under the tree to have their picture taken among the masses of white blossoms. Birds on their way back north or further up the mountain pause in the branches and rest before rising to continue their journey. Perhaps these same birds will rest on that same branch when they head south for winter – and then perhaps a last pear will still cling to its branch – afraid of the fall – and give a welcome meal to the birds before they rise again and continue south.

Now I have seen the blossoms in the pear tree. I have felt the wind that tumbles a myriad of petals from thousands of white blossoms. I have heard the birds high up on the hidden branches. I know that the tree is lasting and may bear fruit in the fall.

Now I look forward to a spring and summer of hikes and wanderings that will end when the birds fly south as the wind blows cold under the tree and I lean on the gate and enjoy a hard speckled pear.

This pear tree is a place of beauty and comfort and memory.

The Moon and the Persimmon Tree

This weekend when I walked out into the fields, I found that the persimmon tree was almost bare of leaves. The fall rains and winds of the last week had carried them away.

However, the hardiest of the fruits still hang onto the branches. The others, already fallen, lie tempting but inedible, in the meadow grass around the base of the tree.

I often wonder if the ‘possums and raccoons – or maybe even the deer – can eat them in this state?

I am sure they don’t mind that they have been lying on the ground, but for my palette the fruits are unripe – and will turn my mouth inside out. I think “astringent” is the term.

The tannins in the unripe fruit cause the skin cells in your mouth to contract – and your entire mouth starts to “pucker.” This is not as in pucker your lips to kiss someone, but an uncomfortable drying sensation in your mouth. You know right away that this is something you do not want to eat again.

But after the first hard frost the fruit is able to ripen. My Father told me so – after I had tasted my first one from the ground. On that cold morning, I will hurry out to the ridge and stand under this tree – or another I know of – and try to reach the fruit – ripened by the frost – and savor its sweet fall nectar.

It tastes like pumpkin but lighter – and more (as Euell Gibbons might have said) ‘woodsy’.

I always make my first bite just a bit of a nibble – in case it is still un-ripe.

CAUTIONS

1.There are four large and bitter seeds in the fruit.. I usually eat the fruit by gently drawing the flesh out of the fruit and spitting out the seeds. I would not advise just popping them in your mouth.

2.Another ‘Caution’ is that if you somehow force yourself to eat a large amount of unripe persimmons, it can form a hard vegetable mass (a Bezoar ‘stone’) in your stomach that will be difficult, if not impossible, to pass through the rest of your digestive system.

The persimmons certainly have a true fall taste to them. I believe they have all the flavors of the rest of the harvest captured in each of the small fruits.

My wife and I have gathered persimmons before, and once we had enough to make some cookies from them. However, the seeds and the skins do make it somewhat difficult to get the flesh out of the fruit and into the mix. But it was worth it, as they were delicious.

One of these days when I am sitting in a brewery (I have picked out the one I will tell) I will recommend they make a seasonal fall beer out of the Virginia Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) – not the foreign ones that can be bought in the supermarket. (Actually, I have never tried those.)

I think a beverage made from hand-gathered fruits, after the first hard frost, from the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, would make an excellent and refreshing drink. And it could have a label calling out its heritage – a ‘possumwood beer. Perhaps that name for the tree in North Carolina tells me what animal enjoys the fruit.

Back to my walk across the fields in the fall.

The afternoon was getting on, and I turned towards home. I would come back and look up into these branches again. I also know that further along there are smaller trees with a history of ‘fruiting.’ After the hard frost comes it will be easy to pick a smooth, round, orange reward from the lower branches. The skin will be wrinkled and dusty after the hard frost. I will turn it over in my hand several times to enjoy the feel and the texture. Then I will pull it open and enjoy not just its flavor, but also the visual as I stand on the edge of a field, on the side of a hill, with the fall colors of the Blue Ridge beyond me.

The cool night air of fall wraps itself around me as I walk home under the clear twilight sky of Virginia. The early moon hangs under the branches of the Persimmon tree. The moon light is washed out by the last of the setting sun. The persimmons, in this celestial light, glow with a promise. Now I only have to wait – and then return.

Open Letter to “Climate Change Activists” who Disfigure Public Art

What you are doing is not “action;” it is destruction! Why have you decided to be a destructionist – as well as a thief of other people’s hard earned time?

I hope it’s not because you want your picture in the news. That’s too bad, because no one watches the news except for old fogies like me.

I will tell you why you are flopping around looking for something to destroy. It’s because you are scared to the depths of your being that we (humanity) are screwing the world up. We are poisoning the air. We are poisoning the oceans. We are ruining climate patterns and the flow of the oceans. We have made the world unlivable for some species – and maybe even ourselves.

Lesson One. The way to win a revolution is to bring more people over to your side.

If your basic thought is that there is no art on a dead planet, why then would you destroy art? Your current actions tells everyone that you are giving up – that our Planet is already dead. Destruction has become your goal.

Well, I say you are wrong. Our planet is not dead. Our Planet is definitely in serious trouble – and we are the only species that can stop it.

Your process should not be to destroy things of social value. Stop that nonsense. Do not destroy art. Do not steal the joy people get from humanity’s art. That makes no sense.

Your path should be one that calls people to action. It should be a path that informs them. It should be a path that encourages people to do what they can to stop the destruction of our Planet which is happening all around us.

Do not delude yourself that just because people are mad at you that you are having the right effect.

Lesson Two. Making people mad at you will not make them join your revolution.

Most likely the people who enjoy going to museums and seeing great art – and sometimes not so great art – (but it’s still art) – those people are probably more on your side (i.e., to save our Planet) than the people who do not/could not care about going to see the art. In other words, you are attacking the very people that you want to have on your side and working with you.

You are alienating them. You are an embarrassment to them, and they are not going to join you.

Put your energy into helping all people – art lovers – art admirers – artists – people who have heard of the art piece – people who have not heard of the art piece – people who don’t feel they have time for art – help all of them to understand what they can do to reduce their personal negative impact on our Planet.

Stop tearing down, and start building up.

Pull back from the edge of anarchy – develop a positive action plan – and help everyone understand what they can do.

I would bet that you will have a better effect on changing minds that way rather than by your telling people that what they care about (or don’t care about) can be ruined (even if it is temporarily). You only look like dolts.

DBD = Don’t Be a Dolt

Your fear makes you blindly lash out. What is the difference between you (who steals from someone the enjoyment of viewing a work of art), and a person who takes a can of spray paint to a national park? There is none. To hell with your platitudes and ‘reasons’ of why you did it. The results are the same. You are stealing from someone the joy of being in the presence of something beautiful.

I totally get you want to protect the national beauty of our Planet and its ability to support life. I spent my entire professional career doing that.

How do you do it? One person at a time. You have to explain it to them.

I bet that when your image flashes on TV with the damage you have done to someone else’s day – no one is watching. They got up to get a drink of water. Your actions are just like a television advertisement for children’s cereal – I don’t need to watch it.

So what are you to do with your feelings, with your anger – with your fear?

Do something beneficial with your time. Start communicating with people. Tell them about the Keeling Curve and what it shows. Stand outside the art gallery and give them a card with information that will actually inform them of what is happening – or what they can do in their own lives to help defend our Planet. Your action will inform them and help them get involved.

· You – and they – can change how they live – can change how they treat their neighborhood as well as their Planet.

· You – and they – can write an article about a company that is working to make a change to help save our Planet.

· You – and they – can write a letter to a politician.

· You – and they – can support the companies and politicians that are trying to make a difference in our culture of destruction.

The change will happen one person at a time. It will happen at a national level only when the governments (read as ‘politicians’) are pushed to make a change – or we change the politicians.

And I will say that for the vast majority of people, all you are doing right now is just pissing them off.

Stop making people mad – and make them glad that they can make a difference.

HELP THEM UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY CAN DO.

Stop destroying our national treasures – and stop stealing our joy. Think of helping rather than getting your picture on TV.

Stop wasting your time plotting destruction – and start building.

AI Image produced using Meta AI by the author specifically for this article.

Thank you, Dave.

My enjoyment of looking up into the night sky began when I was six years old. It was in the early 1950s and my family lived in Newport, Rhode Island. On any clear night you could look up and see the Milky Way spread across the sky. My Dad taught us the names of the stars and the constellations. Most every summer night my brother and I would go outside and look up at the stars. We would tell each other tales of maybe someday getting to them.

During these halcyon days a solar eclipse was due. It was going to be a partial eclipse. From what my Dad told us I was very excited. But my Dad warned me not to look directly at the sun. He told me that it would ruin my eyes.

There were no special sun glasses to wear back then. I think my Dad just knew that we needed to protect our eyes. Perhaps we also heard it on the radio. (We did not have a TV back then. Not many people did.) Public wisdom was to use a stack of film negatives (who has those now?) or to use a candle to smoke a small pane of glass. (the 1950s were a more inventive, but less safe time).

I remember going out into the back yard with a stack of negatives and a piece of glass I had smoked with a candle flame. I remember looking through them both, but the sun was so bright that I had to turn my gaze away. I saw nothing of a solar eclipse, partial or otherwise.

The next partial eclipse I remember trying to observe was in the 1960s. At that time we lived in Morocco. I was 14 years old, but technology had not advanced for me. I was still trying to view the eclipse with negatives and smoked glass. Plus, a friend of mine had an old welder’s mask and we tried that too. We climbed up on the home oil tank and from there climbed over the parapet onto the flat roof of my house. I had already found my way to the roof when I installed a wire antenna for my radio kit.

I will say that the 1960s were not much safer than the 1950s.

I had bought a Newtonian telescope from Sears in the 1980s. I used it to get a better look at the moon and the planets and occasionally a comet. I made a portable, helio-viewer that I could mount over my Newtonian telescope to view sunspots, eclipses, and transits. With this set up I could take pictures of the projection of the sun on the screen I constructed.

The eclipses I have seen in the 2000s have been with better equipment and not viewed from roof tops.

But for April 2024 eclipse I decided to enjoy it without my viewer and screen. I would just look up at it with my new Eclipse viewing glasses. The ones I have are made by Celestron, and I have great faith in them. I sat on one of the patio rocking chairs, put on my special glasses, and looked right up at the sun.

And I could see it without a stack of negatives, or a piece of smoked glass, or a welder’s mask. I could watch the sun being eclipsed while looking right at it.

As I sat in my rocking chair I could hear my father’s voice, “Son, don’t look directly at it.” – and I would turn my head away for a while.

Me – at last – directly viewing a solar eclipse (thanks to my fantastic Eclipse viewing glasses).

A friend of mine, Dave, was kind enough to send me the lead picture in this post. The picture of the April 2024 Solar Eclipse was taken through his telescope. It was shot from his home outside Chicago. Thank you, Dave for sending it to me.

A New Roof

It is a rather low hill, but I navigate my car up the steep one-lane road. I am driving up to one of the trails in the Manassas National Battlefield Park. It has been several years since I have been out to this particular area of the Park. The last time was before Covid.

As I approach the top of the hill, I blow my horn several times. The road goes up and over a ‘blind’ crest, and you cannot see any oncoming traffic until you are both cresting the rise from opposite directions. I want to give anyone coming towards me ample warning.

In the times I have been out here, I have only met one other car at the crest, and it was a close call. So I always blow my horn two or three times as my car climbs to the top.

No other car was coming, but as I drive down the far side I can see there is a car parked in the area of the trailhead. I am surprised to see it and wonder if I will meet the other hikers on the trail. As it was late in the day I know I might as they may be on their way back to their car.

I park my car, and as I get out I am met by the singing of the woodland birds. I recognized the Cardinal easily. I also pick out the Rufus-sided Towee as he calls out ‘drink-your-tea’. The other bird’s songs add to my enjoyment. Several trails go from the parking area out into the open fields that the current contract farmers cut for hay during the year. The first crop of tall grasses has not come up yet, and the broad paths across the fields lay open up to and beyond the location of the ‘lost-and-now-gone’ Portici farm house.

I stand for a moment in the shade of the trees which are just beginning to leaf. As I look up into the afternoon sky a spring breeze ruffles the red and green leaflets that have popped on the oaks and beech trees that cover the area. In the canopy I can see the shadows and shapes of the birds flying among the trees.

As I look towards the fields I am surprised to see the long-cut lumber of a new roof.

What could have been built here and why?

Just beyond the split rail fence and the tangle of vines at the edge of the trees is a small structure. I see the long boards rising above the peak of the roof. The structure is a chinked-log structure which would have been common for rural farm structures until the early 1900s.

To tell the truth during my days as a surveyor in North Carolina I would often come across old log structures out in the woods. They were generally storage sheds for an old and now-disappeared farm. One or two were old tobacco drying barns.

Given the location of this structure, I believe it is supposed to be a re-creation of an era “Spring House.” A Spring House was a small building that was built over or close to a spring of water that bubbled up from the ground. There are a lot of springs in this area of Virginia. The springs often rise as ‘artesian springs’ due to a natural dip of the land below the ground-water level or a “seep” on the side of a hill. In the Spring House the farmer and his family would dig a shallow pit (1 to 2 feet deep) and line it with stone.

Water would collect in the pit and was then allowed to flow out and down the hill to a stream. This would allow the pit to always be full of water. The water just having come out of the ground would be cold, and it would keep the inside of the small structure nice and cool. The farmer would build a shelf of stones in the pit so he and his family could put jugs and jars of milk and cheese and other foods in there to keep it cool and fresh. They might also have built wooden shelves on the walls for preserved fruit and vegetables. The family may have hung meat in the Spring House so it would last longer. It was like a refrigerator.

I am glad to find this new addition to the farming history of the Manassas Battlefield. The Park continues to develop the full story of the men and women who lived there and were witness to the terrible events of two Civil War battles.

The old cemeteries, foundations, trash pits, ponds, old farm equipment (after the Civil War) speak to this farming history. And there are old farm roads – wagon-width – deep in some of the woods.

I start my evening walk toward the old farm cemetery. The sun will set soon. I see the other walkers coming down one of the other paths and heading back to their car. I give them a wave and start my walk up the hill to the cemetery. If they waved back, I did not see them.

A Green Turn

When I pulled this picture out from the stack I thought of where it was and then chuckled.

I was looking at a Green Turn. There is a Green Heron, a Great Blue, and a Yellow Warbler, but there is no Green Tern. Although I know a pond not far from this picture of Chinn Ridge where in Summer I can see a Green Heron fly over. He is as much russet and brown as green. He is an exciting bird, although not as big as the Great Blue Heron.

Here on Chinn Ridge, at the Manassas National Battlefield Park, the path takes a decided turn.

The path goes in straight stretches through low lying areas along the top of the ridge There are Paw-Paw trees (Asimina triloba) to be found in the area of scrub trees, their roots climbing over exposed stone. But as the path slopes gently upward toward a high point on it crest, the understory clears and the large, more magnificent trees reach upward. The Oaks and Tulip Poplars compete as they reach for the sun and their leaves form a shady canopy high over the path.

This picture was taken on a calm, grey Spring day as the trees were first leafing against the sky. Today , in mid-September, the sun streams out of the cloudless sky but underneath as I walk the turn in the path I am shaded by the thick green canopy high overhead. Today is the hottest day of the year. The temperature is 97degrees, and the humidity pushes it higher.

It will only be a short walk today. I may reach this half-mile point in the woods or I might turn back before then. But if I reach this green turn, I know I will feel that I am in a familiar place. I have walked out of the ordinary into a place that is super-ordinary. When I look into the woods, it is open, but in the distance as the ridge falls away it is dark. The leaves move in the slight breeze, and I can see shapes far below me. They move among the trunks of the younger hardwoods, but they seem to stop and linger behind the trunks of the older giants. I know from other walks that where the bottom stream flows there are Sycamores, and the Sun’s reflection is glaring off the stream as it ripples and flows into the far woods and towards the Bay and on down to the ocean.

The water that the stream carries has flowed in and around the roots of the Oak and the Poplar and the Ash and past the Paw-Paw and down beyond the Sycamores.

Soon in the Fall the Paw-Paw ‘apples’ will be mottled and ripe, and I will take one, and say thank you, and turn back to a more real but less green world.