Kiss The Holocene Epoch Goodbye

The Holocene is the 11,700 years of stable environmental weather since the last major glacial epoch (ice age), in other words, now. But since the industrial revolution, humans have contributed huge amounts of carbon emissions that have sped up the timeline to our extinction as a viable species on Earth. “Habitat destruction, pollution, and other factors are causing an ongoing mass extinction of plant and animal species; according to some projections, 20% of all plant and animal species on Earth will be extinct within the next 25 years” – University of CA Museum of Paleontology. At the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009, the only agreement 167 of the major polluting countries in the world would sign was to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. Today we have measured the rise in global temperature at 0.8 degrees Celsius. That means we are almost halfway to the maximum rise considered to be survivable. And we are running out of time. The companies lobbying hardest to avoid any restrictions on their ability to make profits from polluting our atmosphere will not survive when oceans rise, drought greatly reduces our food supply, water becomes more expensive than gasoline, and our human species can no longer survive in such a hostile environment. Those companies will have to be nationalized and their corporate wealth spent creating a safe place for humans to live on a dying planet.

I’m just sayin’…

A New "Best Friend"?

We adopted a puppy in May of this year that had been left on the side of the road to fend for herself. I was told that an older couple stopped their car, put her out, and drove away. I will not judge them although I can think of many other and more humane ways to surrender a pet one cannot keep. This puppy is about 8 months old and may be what I call a chi-weenie-meow. That is...part chihuahua and part dachshund, with a cat-like attitude. An employee at the veterinarian we used for Pica, our "best-friend" for 17.5 years, called us while we were on a short get-away in Gulfport, MS and New Orleans, LA to ask if we would be interested in adopting again. That Thursday after we got back, I went over to meet this skinny little hybrid. She had been cleaned up, sported a pink collar and pink nail polish. She was chihuahua-like with the curled tail and enormous ears, dachshund-like with a long snout, longer body and beady little eyes, and she arched her back cat-like while looking at me as if to say "Wha's up, human?". I decided to let my husband meet her. If she didn't bite him and he agreed, we would take her home. It wasn't love at first sight for either of us. She was hyper, nipped my fingers and toes and clothes, howled instead of barking, jumped tall buildings in a single bound, and ate her food in courses instead of all-at-one-time. In other words, she was NOT like Pica. But I saw something in those mischievous narrow-lidded eyes. I decided to exaggerate the distinction between this odd little red-coated rescue dog and my black-coated Pica by naming her something totally different and foreign. I had lived in Japan for 3.5 years and remembered the Japanese word for "little". But there was no English spelling to match so I phonetically spelled her new name...Chee-Sy, (pronounced chee-sigh). I registered her with my former Pet Insurance company (VPI in Brea, CA) and got her all her shots, had her spayed, bought her a crate, a harness for walks, and a name tag with our phone numbers on it. Since we adopted her in May she has learned to play fetch and return the fetched item to me, is (cross-fingers) potty-trained, sleeps with us throughout the night, has become my alarm clock although I cannot re-set her timer for later than 5:50am, watches TV, barks at zip-lock bags, eats sweet-gum balls and mulch, patrols the back yard for trespassing squirrels, and occasionally requires a bath after rolling in something foul-smelling. It is very hard not to compare Chee-Sy to Pica whenever she does something or looks like or sounds like Pica. We even catch ourselves calling her Pica or some of Pica's nicknames at times, but she is a very different dog and that's a good thing! The comparisons are comforting and the differences are entertaining. She is becoming my new "best friend" which means I am coming close to the end of my grieving for Pica. I will have moments when I remember my "first best friend" and I will be sad but the sadness fades. Chee-Sy, with all her special personality traits, is filling the hole in my heart where Pica once lived and is becoming my "new best friend".