The green, green grass of home

The last time that I tried marijuana, Richard Nixon was still in the White House . Even though I owned a “bong”, and tried a few joints from time to time, my experience with the stuff was pretty much the same as the experience that Bill Clinton had when he was at Oxford. He tried it a few times, and found it a lot less satisfying than the occasional beer, so he gave it up.

Marijuana has had a long history in our country, and it’s absolutely true that our 1st and 3rd Presidents grew it on their farms. 11 of our Presidents (including Barack Obama) have been documented as using it at some point.

Due to the fact that the marijuana plant can be put to a wide variety of uses, its cultivation was encouraged during WWII.

During World War II, domestic hemp production became crucial when the Japanese cut off Asian supplies to the U.S. American farmers who grew hemp were even exempt from military duty. A 1942 U.S. Department of Agriculture film called "Hemp For Victory" extolled the agricultural might of hemp and called for hundreds of thousands of acres to be planted for the war effort.

Although Richard Nixon was no fan of marijuana, and was actually the President who started “the war on drugs”, it’s fun to imagine how much marijuana would have been grown by farmers during the Vietnam War if they had been exempt from military duty (as they were n WWII).

Marijuana has become decidedly more “mainstream” since my college days, and medical marijuana is now available in 18 states. 16 states have decriminalized marijuana use, and the vast majority of the rest of the states have classified possession of small quantities as a misdemeanor. Both Colorado and Washington State have gone one step further, and have made recreational use of marijuana fully legal.

Modern day restrictions on the use of marijuana can be traced back to 1930, when a man named Harry Anslinger was appointed as the first commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a position that he held for 32 years.

Anslinger’s laws against marijuana were firmly rooted in prejudices against Mexican immigrants and African-Americans, who were associated with marijuana use at the time. Without a shred of evidence, he once stated his opinion that “most marijuana users were Negroes, Hispanics, jazz musicians and entertainers, and marijuana use by white women makes them want to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and others. It is a drug that causes insanity, criminality, and death - the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind”.

In view of the fact that he held the title of “drug czar” for 32 years, it’s not surprising that our official policy on marijuana has been mis-guided for a lot of years. If you think that the prejudices against Mexican immigrants and African-Americans died with Anslinger in 1975, you’ve been watching entirely too much FOX “news”, since the right wing hysteria against illegal immigrants (most recently young children from Central America) and the passage of restrictive voter ID laws in a number of states are proof that his prejudices are still with us today.

On July 26, the New York Times started running what they call “High Time: and Editorial Series on Marijuana Legislation”. Most of the articles can be viewed by typing “high time” in the search bar on the New York Times online website. The New York Times board’s reason for running the series can best be summed up in their closing paragraph on July 26:

“We believe this is a big issue for the country - not because we think everyone should be smoking pot, but because while you were reading this blog post, there’s a good chance that, somewhere in this country, a young man - probably an African-American man - was arrested on a marijuana violation. Even if he is spared a prison term, that arrest is likely to severely harm, if not ruin, his life.“

This morning’s Chicago Tribune published a series of pictures that were taken during the Prohibition Era, which was another grand experiment in preventing people from getting what they want. The net result was that we spent a lot of money enforcing an unpopular law, we wasted an awful lot of beer, and the government made Al Capone a very rich man.

Not all drugs that are currently considered illegal should be legalized, of course, but the recent trends regarding marijuana indicate that commons sense regarding the drug are becoming a lot more common. As it stands now, the “was on drugs” costs our government $51 billion a year, and at least some of that money could be spent on far better uses. For starters, some of it could be used to repair our crumbling infrastructure, which the American Society of Civil Engineers has consistently awarded a rating of “D”. According to the same group of engineers, America’s highways are now ranked 19th in the world, and are actually worse than the roads found in the African country of Namibia.

If all 50 states followed the lead of Washington and Colorado, and legalized recreational use of marijuana, the tax revenue from marijuana sales (if taxed at rates similar to those imposed on alcohol and tobacco) would generate $46.7 billion a year. By coincidence, the budget shortfall in Fiscal Year 2013 for all 50 states was $55 billion. In my opinion, it makes far more sense to close state budget deficits by legalizing recreational marijuana than it does to cut the pensions of policemen, firemen, and teachers.

If you listen carefully to the song made famous by Tom Jones (which describes a man awaiting execution) , you’ll realize that “Green Green Grass of Home” is not exactly what you’d call a happy song. However, if current legal trends on marijuana continue, the “green, green grass of home” CAN have a happy ending.

Tom Jones sings

The man on the moon

The moon landing occurred 45 years ago today. Like a few other events that I’ve experienced in my lifetime (the Kennedy assassination, the 9/11 attack, and the airing of the last episode of M*A*S*H*) I know exactly where I was, and who I was with, when I heard the news.

If you’d like to relive a bit of the excitement from that day, you can watch the “moon walk” on You Tube - if you can spare the hour or so that it takes to watch it:

the moonwalk - before Michael Jackson

The early days of space travel were fraught with danger, and not all of the astronauts that went into space came back alive. However, for the ones who made it into space and back again, the views were pretty nice.

The musical group R.E.M. released a song titled “Man on the Moon” in 1992. Lyrically, the song is a tribute to the performer Andy Kaufman with numerous references to Kaufman's career including Elvis impersonation, wrestling, and the film My Breakfast with Blassie. The song's title and chorus refer to the moon landing conspiracy theories as an oblique allusion to rumors that Kaufman's 1984 death was faked. It’s a fun song to listen to (click on the link below) even though the lyrics themselves really don’t make sense.

if you believe they put a man on the moon

In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, roughly 20% of the American population believe that the moon landings were faked. One of the chief proponents of the moon landing “hoax” theory is a Nashville taxi driver named Bart Sibrel. He’s filmed two documentaries on the subject, and has produced two other related videos. He also participated in a FOX (but, of course) television network special titled, “Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?.”

Although Neil Armstrong was the first person to land on the moon, “Buzz” Aldrin was right behind him. The photo shown below is a shot of Aldrin saluting the American flag:

Over the years, Sibrel has tried to interview the “moon landing” astronauts, but they have all refused to to meet with him. He eventually lured Buzz Aldrin to a hotel in Beverly Hills in 2002 under false pretenses, and he finally got exactly what he deserved:

a sock in the jaw

Bart Sibrel probably won’t just go away anytime soon, but the popularity of his theory, and of FOX “news” in general, proves (once again) the wisdom of the phrase that is widely attributed to P.T. Barnum:

“there’s a sucker born every minute”.

A dream come true

When we were kids, we all had fantastic dreams of what we wanted to be when we grew up. Some of us wanted to be cowboys, others astronauts, others policemen, and a few wanted to be firemen. (For the record, I never wanted to be a used car salesman, but spent a good many years doing exactly that.)

This morning, Sharon and I went to the annual pancake breakfast at the local fire station. We went, in part, because it’s a great pancake breakfast, but we also decided to go to show our support for the guys who helped put out the Slide Rock fire in Sedona at the end of May.

As we were leaving, an antique fire truck looking very much looking like the one pictured below pulled up in back of the firehouse, and the fireman at the helm was giving FREE RIDES. How could we resist?

Sharon and I happened to be at the back of the line when the vehicle pulled up, which meant that the two of us got to sit up front with the driver, who let us sound the siren and pull on the ah-ooo-gah horn. I used my phone to capture a video and a few still pictures of us sitting in the cab, and I’ll probably store them on my phone for a long, long time.

Both of us agreed that it was LOT of fun, and made us feel like kids again.

One thing for sure, though, is that pancake breakfasts will never be the same again!

Why Peter, Paul, and Mary are still relevant today

The history of El Salvador is long and complicated, and dates back to pre-Columbian times, when the population existed on the eastern edges of the Mayan Empire. The first Europeans landed in the country in 1522, and the country remained under Spanish control until 1821, when it received independence from Spain.

Life in El Salvador in the 20th Century was marked by a series of coups and much political instability. A few years prior to the start of the (highly illegal) Iran-Contra scandal, the United States decided to get involved in the politics of El Salvador, and threw its support to one of the military juntas vying for power. Notes from the Wikipedia article about El Salvador under “the October 1979 coup d’etat” provide more details, but the reality is that our “assistance” led to the start of the Salvadoran Civil War, which lasted from 1980 to 1992.

The human rights violations that we caused during that civil war stirred outrage in a singing trio that we’re all familiar with, and they released a song titled “El Salvador” in 1982. It turned out to be one of the most controversial songs that they had ever recorded, and caused them to be booed at some of their concerts in the mid to late 1980’s. Group member Mary Travers traveled to El Salvador in 1983, and was appalled at “the terrorism, rapes, and murders” that our country was paying for.

The song itself is a nice tune, and can be heard by clicking on the link below:

El Salvador song

If you're comfortable with working with multiple Windows at the same time, and would like to follow along with the song, the lyrics are posted below:

There's a sunny little country south of Mexico

Where the winds are gentle and the waters flow

But breezes aren't the only things that blow

in El Salvador



If you took the little lady for a moonlight drive

Odds are still good you'd come back alive

But everyone is innocent until they arrive

in El Salvador



If the rebels take a bus on the grand highway

The government destroys a village miles away

The man on the radio says 'now we'll play South of the Border'

And in the morning the natives say,

We're happy you have lived another day

Last night a thousand more passed away

in El Salvador



There's a television crew here from ABC

Filming Rio Lempa and the refugees

Calling murdered children the 'tragedy'

of El Salvador



Before the government cameras 20 feet away

Another man is asking for continued aid

Food and medicine and hand grenades

for El Salvador



There's a thump, a rumble, and the buildings sway

A soldier fires the acid spray

The public address system starts to play South of the Border

You run for cover and hide your eyes

You hear the screams from paradise

They've fallen further than you realize

in El Salvador



Just like Poland is 'protected' by her Russian friends

The junta is 'assisted' by Americans

And if 60 million dollars seems too much to spend

in El Salvador



They say for half a billion they could do it right

Bomb all day, burn all night

Until there's not a living thing upright

in El Salvador



They'll continue training troops in the USA

And watch the nuns that got away

And teach the military bands to play South of the Border

And kill the people to set them free

Who put this price on their liberty?

Don't you think it's time to leave El Salvador?



Since the civil war in El Salvador ended more than 20 years ago, most of us have forgotten all about our neighbor in Central America, but recent events have brought the country very much back in focus in recent months, and have reignited yet another “culture war” between the liberals and the conservatives in our country. In the past 8 months, 47,000 unaccompanied migrant children have crossed into the United States, and the vast majority of them have come from the Central American countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Their arrival has swamped immigration centers in Texas, which has caused a fairly large number of them to be diverted to Arizona.

Their reasons for coming here are clear, since all three countries are plagued with gang and drug violence. Honduras now has the highest murder rate in the entire world, at 90.4 homicides per 100,000 or population. El Salvador is #4, at 41.2 per 100,000, and Guatemala is #5, with 39.9 murders per 100,000.

What's less clear is the fact that the massive influx of refuges is, in large part, OUR FAULT. The Inter-American Convention against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Materials was ratified by 31 of the 34 nations in the Organization of American States in 1997. Although Canada, Jamaica, and the United States signed the treaty, none of them have ratified the treaty as of today's date. President Obama has asked the Senate, once again, to ratify the treaty, but no action has been taken as of yet. Since 70% of the weapons seized by Mexican authorities were made in America, and a similar percentage of the weapons in Central America come from the same source, it's fairly obvious that our ratification of the treaty would have resulted in lower crime rates in the three countries involved, which would result in far fewer refugees being forced to flee their home country.

The United States has maintained an aggressive deportation program since Barack Obama’s election in 2008, and we deported 409, 849 in 2012. Although 59% of the undocumented migrants are from Mexico, the Pew Hispanic center announced in April of 2012 that net migration from Mexico to the United States is now actually negative. From 2005 to 2010, 1.4 million Mexicans immigrated to the United States. In the same time period, slightly MORE than that number went the other day, due to REDUCED job opportunities in the United States, and INCREASED opportunities in Mexico.

The ultra conservative faction of our society (the group that keeps trying to impeach Barack Obama for a variety of imagined offenses) feels that the flood of children from Central America to the United States is “an invasion”.

In full recognition of the fact that simply sending the children back to their country of origin would likely be a death sentence, the Border Patrol is providing basic shelter to the children until they can be sent to juvenile detention centers around the country. Once there, efforts are made to release them to relatives in the United States, on the condition that they cooperate with deportation proceedings.

Due to the fact that the flood of children from Central America is a REGIONAL problem, and not just a United States problem, President Obama spoke with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Thursday of this week, and Vice President Joe Biden met with Central American leaders in Guatemala on Friday to discuss ways to handle the situation. On Tuesday of this week, Congress increased funding so that the Department of Health and Human Services would be able to provide temporary food and shelter for the estimated 130,000 minors that are expected to arrive here in the next year.

As always, the issue of how to deal with illegal immigrants to our country is a thorny issue, one we’ve been plagued with for a long time. For now, immigration reform of any kind is unlikely until after the mid-term elections, but COULD happen during the last two years of Obama’s Presidency IF the right combination of people get elected in November. In the interim, Paul Stookey traveled to Dallas just last week to address that very issue.

For many years, Peter, Paul, and Mary were concerned with social issues, and essentially became a milder version of the protest songs of Pete Seeger. Although Mary Travers passed away in 2009, both Paul Stookey and Peter Yarrow (both 76 years old) continue to perform today. Neither of them could possibly have imagined that the humanitarian crisis that they sang about in 1982 would still exist today. The closing line of their song was “don’t you think it’s time we leave El Salvador?“. Ultimately, we did, but now we have a new problem.

El Salvador has come to us.

Love on the rocks

New Mexico calls itself “the Land of Enchantment”, but it’s clear that my new home state of Arizona also has plenty of magic, and it’s not limited to the Grand Canyon, which is the 2nd most visited National Park in America (the Great Smoky Mountains are #1)

The first time that I saw Sedona, the sight of all those magnificent red rocks literally took my breath away. Since that first visit in 1998, we’ve been back to Sedona numerous times, due to the fact that the town has PLENTY of things to do and LOTS of gorgeous sights to see.

My favorite place in Sedona, though, is a local church that I’ve been to more times than I can count. Officially, it’s called the Chapel of the Holy Cross, and it’s owned by the Diocese of Phoenix. A local Catholic parish, St. John Vianney, maintains the property.

The chapel was commissioned by local rancher and sculptor Marguerite Brunswig Staude, who had been inspired in 1932 by the newly constructed Empire State Building to build a church that incorporated a cross in its design. After an attempt to do so in Europe (with the help of the noted architect Frank Lloyd Wright), was aborted due to the outbreak of World War II, she decided to build the church in her native region.

It literally took an act of Congress (thanks to the late Senator Barry Goldwater) to get a special use permit to build the chapel on land of the Coconino National Forest. The chapel first opened its doors in 1956, and won an Award of Honor from the American Institute of Architects the following year. It has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the Department of the Interior, and is landmark #19 of the City of Sedona.

The chapel gets thousands of visitors each month. If you page through the guest book just inside the front door, you’ll notice that visitors come here from all over the world, and it’s not unusual to see visitors from China mixed in with visitors from virtually every state in America. On our most recent visit, on June 7, we met 2 couples from Canada, but we also learned something about the chapel that I previously had been unaware of, and it’s related to love.

Marguerite Staude had the chapel build as a memorial to her parents, who were devout Catholics. As a result, it makes it one of the most dramatic show of love of parents that you’ll see anywhere.

Rather than limit the beauty of the place just to Catholics, Marguerite Staude declared that no services could be held at the chapel. It was, and is, still a place for people of all faiths to pray and reflect and find God through the beauty of art. Marguerite created a Madonna sculpture for the Chapel, and she created the Stations of the Cross of rough antique nails, Another stone carved sculpture, of the head of Jesus, sits to the rear of the Chapel. Until her death in 1988, Marguerite received letters from all over the world from visitors who had marveled at the beauty of the Chapel and the surrounding area, proof that she had achieved her goal to build a place that would "send the spirit onward."

As we were leaving the chapel last Saturday, a group of people standing near the entrance started clapping. We quickly learned that a couple standing outside the entrance, on the right side, had just become engaged. We congratulated Thomas and Ashley as we left, and I suddenly realized that their story needed to be told. According to one of the on site volunteers, there have been LOTS of couples that have become engaged on the grounds of the chapel. Although I have no way of proving it, I suspect that an awful lot of marriages that started out as “love on the rocks” are still going strong today.

A D-Day tribute

Even though it’s been 70 years since the Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy, there are still 1.7 million Americans living today who served in World War II. Of the more than 16,000,000 people who served in that conflict, over 400,000 were killed, and nearly 700,000 were wounded. By the year 2036, the VA estimates that all of the World War II veterans will be gone.

Most of us have seen “Saving Private Ryan” , one of the six movies produced that were devoted either entirely or largely to the D-Day invasion. All of them pay tribute to the brave guys who participated in “Operation Overlord”, but it’s already been 13 years since the most recent production, Band of Brothers, was released.

Although the vets who served in World War II deserve our respect, so do the men and women who have donned the uniform since that time. One of the best tributes to our servicemen and women that I've seen doesn‘t need any words to convey our gratitude, and is worth watching:

a tribute to our soldiers

If you’d like to thank Food City for producing this ad (I used one of the 2 stores in Tucson as a reference point), their contact information is listed below:

contact Food City

There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight

The song posted at the link below came to mind the other day due to an event that has been occurring in our area this week:

the 1958 version of an OLD song

The first clue that I had that something was amiss came at a little after noon on Wednesday, when Sharon stopped by the high school where I was working in order to bring me home. As it turns out, a small campfire had grown out of control near Slide Rock State Park north of Sedona on the afternoon of the 20th, and by noon the next day, fire department officials had declared a “pre-evacuation order” for the subdivision that we live in. After attending an informational meeting at the local fire station, we rushed home and packed up our important papers, some pictures, some clothing, our cat, and my trusty computer, and by 4:00, we were heading east to spend the night at a friend’s house in Doney Park.

Due to the rugged terrain near Sedona, (see picture below) putting firemen on the ground to fight the fire was difficult, which led to a rapid escalation in the size of the fire. At the break of dawn on the 21st, the fire had consumed 450 acres. By the time the sun set later on in the day, the fire had spread to 4500 acres, and by the morning of the 24th, it had consumed 10,000 acres. Fire officials estimate that by the time the fire is finally extinguished, 25,000 acres will have been burned.

To date, 20 separate fire departments from around the state have rushed to the area in order to fight the fire. If you looked hard enough, you could probably find the guy pictured below among the 900 firemen on the ground.

Due to the fact that the fire suppression techniques on the north end of the blaze had largely eliminated the possibility that the fire would reach our house, we moved back home again on the afternoon of the 22nd.

As is true with most fires, the mess that we now have in Sedona was caused by humans. Last week’s fires in San Diego were caused by an arsonist, who has since been arrested. By the time the 10 separate blazes had been extinguished, 10,000 acres had been burned, causing more than $20,000,000 in damage and at least one death.

Arizona and California, incidentally, are 2 of the 7 states in America that are literally running out of water.

Even without direct involvement in the fires, though, the human race is INDIRECTLY responsible for the increasing severity of the fires that occur every year in our country. Not everyone is a believer in global warming (more on that later) but the 40 years of data from the link below strongly suggest that it’s the reason that fires have been getting more dangerous every year.

fun fire facts

For nearly all of the last 30 years, the NUMBER of fires has been remarkably consistent, ranging from 50,000 to roughly 80,000 in most years. What HAS changed is the average size of the fires, in terms of acres burned.

In 1973, the average fire consumed 16 areas.

In 1983, the average fire size was 72 acres.

In 1993, the average fire had dropped to 30 acres, but increased to an average of 51 acres the following year.

In 2003, average fire size had increased to 62 acres, but by 2012 (the most recent year available) the average fire size was 137 acres.

Whether you believe in global warming or not is (obviously) dependent on the news sources that you rely on for your information. Most people would regard NASA to be a credible source of information about climate change due to the fact that the organizations has “eyes in the sky” at all times. According to NASA, the main cause of the current global warming trend is the human expansion of the “greenhouse effect”, and their opinion is shared by the United Nations, whose Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (comprised of 1300 independent experts from countries around the world) has concluded that there’s more than a 90% probability that human activities over the last 250 years have warmed the planet.

Unfortunately, the leading cable channel in America is FOX “news”, whose viewers are subjected to a constant stream of climate change denial, and a recent headline helps to explain why. On April 9, FOX published an article with the headline “UN finding on climate change is just a bunch of hot air, new report claims”. Even though the article pointed out that the report had been published by the conservative (and unreliable) Heartland Institute, and actually referenced the UN report in the article, a large percentage of the audience is likely to simply stop at the headline, and read no further.

Believe it or not, there ARE news sources that are even goofier than FOX. The ultra conservative Personal Liberty Digest believes that "the theory of man made global warming is based on spurious science, phony statistics, and outright lies".

Sadly, the remedy for improving our climate is a political one, and it’s going to be very difficult to achieve, largely due to the fact that the 113th Congress is officially the worst Congress in the last 40 years.

The House Science, Space, and Technology Committee has spent more time holding hearings (15) on the existence of extraterrestrial life than on the repercussions of climate change (2 hearings). The chairman of the committee, Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, has a long track record of climate change denial, and several committee members have similar attitudes. Committee member James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin has called climate change “a massive international scientific fraud” and committee member Paul Broun of Georgia, a young Earth creationist, believes that the world was created in six days as we know them.

Other House committees that are responsible for addressing U.S energy and environmental issues have been equally negligent. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has held only one hearing on climate change, and the House Natural Resources Committee has yet to take up the issue in the 113th Congress.

On top of all that, on Thursday of this week, 227 Republicans (and 4 Democrats) in the House of Representatives voted for an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would prevent the Pentagon from spending money to carry out the policy recommendations from the National Climate Assessment report that was released by the Obama administration earlier this month, or from several United Nations reports on climate change and sustainability. Although the amendment is unlikely to survive, it’s a clear indication of the mindset of an awful lot of people in Congress.

In case you’re wondering, the United States Department of Defense is one of the largest single consumers of energy in the entire world, and it’s responsible for 93% of all U.S. Government fuel consumption. The new solar panels that were installed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base earlier this year are a step in the right direction (they’ll save an estimated $500,000 a year in energy costs) , but the Defense Department still has a long ways to go. Fortunately, the military is smarter than the members of Congress. According to retired Air Force General Donald Hoffman, "it is not possible to discuss the future of national and international security without addressing climate change". As further proof of the intelligence of our Armed Services, our Navy has actually figured out a way to turn seawater into fuel.

I’m normally not one to tell people how to vote, but it’s pretty clear (to me, at least) that we need to elect as many Democrats as possible in both 2014 and 2016 in order to protect our country’s interests.

The President had tried, without success, to move a climate change bill through Congress in his first term, and such legislation would now stand no chance of getting past the resistance of Republican lawmakers who question the science of climate change. As a result, Mr. Obama is taking a controversial step - he is using his executive authority under the 1970 Clean Air Act to issue an E.P.A. regulation taking aim at coal-fired power plants, the nation’s largest source of carbon pollution. Ironically, the "cap and trade" program that would pay for the costs of the new pollution controls were put into place at the state level at least 5 years ago by two Republican governors, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Arnold Schwarznegger of California.

Despite predictions that the new regulations will kill the coal industry, the coal plant in Homer City, Pennsylvania, is proof that pollutants can be reduced substantially without causing the loss of jobs or the closure of coal plants. Currently one of the dirtiest coal plants in the country, within a few years the plant will have reduced sulfur dioxide pollution to a level 80% below its current production, with no loss of jobs or increases in electrical bills.

The United States currently gets 37% of its electricity from coal, the leading source of electrical generation. In contrast, China gets 69% of its electricity from coal, which leads to air quality like that in the picture below.

Not all Republicans are bad (unless you’re talking about the Tea Party), but there simply aren’t enough of them that are concerned about climate change. Of the 107 Republicans currently running for Senate, only one of them (Jim Rubens of New Hampshire) has declared that global warming exists, and that it is caused by human activity. The vast majority of the other 106 either ignored the issue entirely, or listed the reasons that they oppose environmental regulations more broadly.

The fight to stop the wildfire just south of our house is likely to continue for another 2 to 3 weeks, but the fight to save our planet is gong to be a never ending story, and it’s up to all of us to make sure that it has a happy ending.

Be sure to vote in November.