RT
Scratches to Sketches
Saturday, 28 January 2012
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
Monday, 23 January 2012
Saturday, 21 January 2012
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
Protecting Rare Species - the Five-lined Skink
The following is a quickly composed a letter on the subject, hence the typos!
There is a very real possibility, almost certainty, of five-lined skinks living in the nearby dunes of Southcott Pines of Lambton Shores and so your letter came as a welcome heads up on its protection. Although I have not seen a skink, I believe that for several hours last summer I photographed typical trails leading across and up into the dunes not far from the path used for access to Lake Huron, nearby. I was of the earlier mind that it was the trail of a small snake, but, it did not match what to suspect and concluded it was a form of lizard because a tiny footfalls, thereto, a skink does make more sense to me.
I encourage you in your efforts to inform people. It is wonderful news that there is the possibility of an endangered species in our locale, and also places a very heavy onus upon us to succeed in protecting it's habitat.
I can really say....wow! wow! Yes, yes, yes! We do need to protect this habitat. I am so pleased that you are on the ball with this and I would / do offer to help get the message out. As a child, I enjoyed so much the older habitats in this region that were conducive to the populations of struggling species. At little lake, we used to see billions of tadpoles one week followed by billions of tiny frogs, followed by billions of snakes.
It matters little that we brought the snakes and frogs back into town and released them into the gardens of neighbours. Little lake is no longer a habitat, except in memory. we have collectively succeeded in killing off what our children need to see and enjoy. our region has been reduced from a bountiful area to a struggling area in so many ways. it's not about working with existing economics, but I am afraid, against a host of economic signals that are false and misleading development. No wonder people are so destructive!
if you have a powerpoint / keynote presentation or film, I would be very interested in using it to help inform people about what to look out for and ways that we can make our community five-lined skink friendly. This is of utmost importance to me and I do hope that you will be able to provide me with some information that you have, or local Ontario research.
I have often thought that the University of Western Ontario should have an environmental department located in Grand Bend where they could study environmental, botanical and biological issues. Much of the proposed development by developers of housing in this area is misguided and needs urgent regulation. Legislation needs to be written that will help reverse the major mistakes while giving a qualitative uplift to the natural resources that we share our space with.
For example, residents in this area, which includes the farming community, need to reverse practices such as ploughing and drainage which have transformed the area from one of the most beautiful natural spots in north america into a wasteland of failed potentials for natural resource and space use. It really does need urgent research from the scientists at Western or elsewhere.
It is so unfortunate that there is no Ontario school of international renown looking at these issues. This I am told by European experts!
I firmly believe that people, flora and fauna can live together to maximize yield of food for human and natural use, but we are terribly terribly ignorant of what to do. Your people need to help us on this. If you give us information we can create a nature friendly habitat area that humans and all living creatures can enjoy and sustain.
Farmers need to be shown how to grow crops that make them independently wealthy and able to resist the absolutely enormous profits to be had by devastating this beautiful landscape with homogenous cropping and factory like attitudes towards food production.
If we remain ignorant and unresponsive to the needs for restraining deadly forms of commericial development outside existing locations, we will see this area and all its flora and fauna disappear. We need help!
We need legistation that sees past the almighty dollar and profit and puts water back into our small lakes and allows our streams to bend naturally. We need people to have access to paths and trails that help the human spirit as well as protecting flora and fauna. So much in Ontario is rectalinear like the thinking that insists on homogenous grassing and farming.
Also, I ask whether you can forward this message on to the relevant parties who might help. Would your government be prepared to assist the Association for Tropical Agriculture survive and enable it to grow in directions that build friendly environments for all the world's endangered species. There is a huge need for retired experts to share their expertise about what to do to get our province back into Carolinian growth mode. Many of them are in tropical agriculture and we could share with them our effort to work together to increase food production yields, eliminate the mindset towards homogenity of natural environments.
We are seeing the Irish potatoe famine issues emerge from / with profit oriented farming technologies that redicule the independent small holder and give excessive advantage to large commercial enterprises that have turned Ontario farmers into a seventeeth century putting out economic system that will destroy our natural habitat further. Will we repeat the destruction of the past and lose everything of value in allowing the spread of forms of habitat racism / genocide?
RT
Ontario and the Environment ... Rare species and Commercial Development in Lambton Shores
The following is a quickly composed a letter on the subject, hence the typos!
There is a very real possibility, almost certainty, of five-lined skinks living in the nearby dunes of Southcott Pines of Lambton Shores and so your letter came as a welcome heads up on its protection. Although I have not seen a skink, I believe that for several hours last summer I photographed typical trails leading across and up into the dunes not far from the path used for access to Lake Huron, nearby. I was of the earlier mind that it was the trail of a small snake, but, it did not match what to suspect and concluded it was a form of lizard because a tiny footfalls, thereto, a skink does make more sense to me.
I encourage you in your efforts to inform people. It is wonderful news that there is the possibility of an endangered species in our locale, and also places a very heavy onus upon us to succeed in protecting it's habitat.
I can really say....wow! wow! Yes, yes, yes! We do need to protect this habitat. I am so pleased that you are on the ball with this and I would / do offer to help get the message out. As a child, I enjoyed so much the older habitats in this region that were conducive to the populations of struggling species. At little lake, we used to see billions of tadpoles one week followed by billions of tiny frogs, followed by billions of snakes.
It matters little that we brought the snakes and frogs back into town and released them into the gardens of neighbours. Little lake is no longer a habitat, except in memory. we have collectively succeeded in killing off what our children need to see and enjoy. our region has been reduced from a bountiful area to a struggling area in so many ways. it's not about working with existing economics, but I am afraid, against a host of economic signals that are false and misleading development. No wonder people are so destructive!
if you have a powerpoint / keynote presentation or film, I would be very interested in using it to help inform people about what to look out for and ways that we can make our community five-lined skink friendly. This is of utmost importance to me and I do hope that you will be able to provide me with some information that you have, or local Ontario research.
I have often thought that the University of Western Ontario should have an environmental department located in Grand Bend where they could study environmental, botanical and biological issues. Much of the proposed development by developers of housing in this area is misguided and needs urgent regulation. Legislation needs to be written that will help reverse the major mistakes while giving a qualitative uplift to the natural resources that we share our space with.
For example, residents in this area, which includes the farming community, need to reverse practices such as ploughing and drainage which have transformed the area from one of the most beautiful natural spots in north america into a wasteland of failed potentials for natural resource and space use. It really does need urgent research from the scientists at Western or elsewhere.
It is so unfortunate that there is no Ontario school of international renown looking at these issues. This I am told by European experts!
I firmly believe that people, flora and fauna can live together to maximize yield of food for human and natural use, but we are terribly terribly ignorant of what to do. Your people need to help us on this. If you give us information we can create a nature friendly habitat area that humans and all living creatures can enjoy and sustain.
Farmers need to be shown how to grow crops that make them independently wealthy and able to resist the absolutely enormous profits to be had by devastating this beautiful landscape with homogenous cropping and factory like attitudes towards food production.
If we remain ignorant and unresponsive to the needs for restraining deadly forms of commericial development outside existing locations, we will see this area and all its flora and fauna disappear. We need help!
We need legistation that sees past the almighty dollar and profit and puts water back into our small lakes and allows our streams to bend naturally. We need people to have access to paths and trails that help the human spirit as well as protecting flora and fauna. So much in Ontario is rectalinear like the thinking that insists on homogenous grassing and farming.
Also, I ask whether you can forward this message on to the relevant parties who might help. Would your government be prepared to assist the Association for Tropical Agriculture survive and enable it to grow in directions that build friendly environments for all the world's endangered species. There is a huge need for retired experts to share their expertise about what to do to get our province back into Carolinian growth mode. Many of them are in tropical agriculture and we could share with them our effort to work together to increase food production yields, eliminate the mindset towards homogenity of natural environments.
We are seeing the Irish potatoe famine issues emerge from / with profit oriented farming technologies that redicule the independent small holder and give excessive advantage to large commercial enterprises that have turned Ontario farmers into a seventeeth century putting out economic system that will destroy our natural habitat further. Will we repeat the destruction of the past and lose everything of value in allowing the spread of forms of habitat racism / genocide?
RT
Friday, 13 January 2012
Sunday, 8 January 2012
Anti-sprawl development to the fore in Calgary - The Globe and Mail
Would that more thought artistically about land use!
RT
Saturday, 7 January 2012
Friday, 6 January 2012
Thursday, 5 January 2012
Tuesday, 3 January 2012
Nyack Sketch Log: Pickwick Book Shop
A story and a picture!
http://www.nyacknewsandviews.com/2011/12/bb_pickwick20111219/
The bookstor that has a special gift for its customers.
RT
Friday, 30 December 2011
H3N2v: How a New Swine Flu Virus Could Complicate Influenza Season | Healthland | TIME.com
If you don't think you need to take precautions. Think again!
RT
Thursday, 29 December 2011
Wednesday, 28 December 2011
Tuesday, 27 December 2011
Sunday, 25 December 2011
BBC E-mail: £16 computer gets close to launch
I saw this story on the BBC News app.....
** £16 computer gets close to launch **
The eagerly anticipated Raspberry Pi home computer is very close to going into full scale production.
< http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16316439 >
** Disclaimer **
The BBC is not responsible for the content of this e-mail, and anything written in this e-mail does not necessarily reflect the BBC's views or opinions. Please note that neither the e-mail address nor name of the sender have been verified.
RT
Saturday, 24 December 2011
All the talk about end of the Euro rings very false
Fact is that the Euro has been too strong for too long. It is its success rather than its failure that has been its undoing. What region can go on and on with an overvalued currency. Fact is, a drop in the Euro is what is needed rather than a breakup.
A strong Euro value expectation led and to overborrowing. A weaker Euro would be very good and a very natural outcome of excessive strength. The real problem remains with the glut of US dollars that bid up the Euro and brought so many bad sources of credit to Europe.
No! The dollar not the Euro remains the main problem if not seen as the issue of the day. Don't take your eyes off dollar weakness and the lack of soundness that remains within the US economy.
Why Germany's grumbling over the debt crisis rings a little false - The Globe and Mail
RT
Friday, 23 December 2011
Thursday, 22 December 2011
Wednesday, 21 December 2011
Tuesday, 20 December 2011
Wednesday, 14 December 2011
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
For Syrian Dissidents Abroad, Even Exile Isn't Safe - TIME
Sad!
Can the world intervene?
Maybe, it's time. Time for this outmoded regime to recognise it has big limitations. People will remember the atrocities for a very long time, and there will be trials for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2102131,00.html?xid=newsletter-daily
RT
Monday, 12 December 2011
Wednesday, 7 December 2011
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Tuesday, 29 November 2011
Sunday, 27 November 2011
Friday, 25 November 2011
Thursday, 24 November 2011
Gardening future for Sarnia as it grows a revolutionary new film festival - The Sarnia Observer - Ontario, CA
Wonderful story of concern for a community. Boy eager to establish gardening and sustainable food effort that would transform South Western Ontario. Wow! Wow! And Wow!
http://www.theobserver.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3382198
RT
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
Saturday, 19 November 2011
Friday, 18 November 2011
Tourism in Germany – travel, breaks, holidays
Great site! Just use map to visit other local sites in English or German language.
RT
Reconstructions
Josy / Teresa / Jim / Doug / Johns! (whoever is Minister) / Norman!
I attach a comment that I sent to Jim Southcott this morning.
We live in an extraordinary place Aux Sables with an extraordinary past! It's amazing to witness the richness that still remains. I say still remains because I believe sincerely that current practices of farming, commercialization, and residential development are destroying it very fast, too fast.
For part of my own history I worked with some of the worlds finest engineers at Rendall, Palmer and Tritton, who built the real London Bridge and the Thames Barrier that protects London, England from flooding at High tides off the North Sea. Much of their time was spent understanding water flows coming out of rivers and the effects these have on sands, beaches and natural life, along with counterflows off lakes, seas and oceans. My contribution was to examine and understand the economics of a watershed area.
The Aux Sables watershed and conduit needs to be better understood and researched. I am truly saddened by what could be the permanent loss of natural habitat through crazy ideas about what is good and bad for people neglecting the total picture.
..........just a thought, but it would be productive to grow a region in its totality rather than piece meal with a load of crap implantation disfiguring it and uglifying what nature is striving to build against the unrelenting forces of human ignorance!
We see from the clip below how the Federal Government is funding efforts to develop agricultural practices that are an attempt to make Ontario farmers competitive.
Well, I have news for farmers in Ontario. Ploughing fields, spreading chemicals from out west on local soils, using Monsanto seeds, and using high energy farm machinery are not truly productive practices in producing food in ways that are sustainable. They are not even close to being best practice. So what are the farmers and researchers doing to really get to grips with what ails this community in its totality?
RT
Attached email!
Jim!
You have touched my emotions!
Just to say how much I enjoyed the field trip and appreciate your taking an interest in my feeding on the past events and materials making up the residue of perceptions about local history!
The story Sherwood Fox weaves in his writing about Aux Sables is of extraordinary value both to those reconstructing mental images of what went before in human terms, but also what made this area so valuable in living natural resources and such a variety of entities we really ought to attempt bring back in meaningful ways. We all know about dead natural resources, but here is a great Tribute to what was once a living home and centre for sustainable resources, one that we should all try to regrow as a living region of extraordinary life and living support systems.
I shudder to think of all that has been killed off that gave support to such a rich habitat of so many creatures, flora and fauna. Our ancestors were unaware of how far the threads of destructive influence would be carried by their children. New beginnings and understandings are needed to reintroduce threads of life and support that can build a richer balance between human and natural strivings to live and to inherit strengths from earlier roots.
So much in my agricultural science lessons should be killed off and replaced with new understandings, much of which we need to sponsor ourselves and provide a basis for emerging life.
My friends call me 'RT'! Arthur
PS
I love the name Sherwood Fox. I conjures up so many positive images including Robin!
Twitter: @wuhlax
Government of Canada Invests in Green Agriculture Technology
October 13, 2011
Canadian farmers will benefit from a partnership among the Government of Canada, industry and universities across Canada to enhance producer profitability through green agriculture technologies. Today, Parliamentary Secretary Pierre Lemieux, on behalf of Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, announced an investment of nearly $4 million for the University of Guelph to study and develop on-farm tools to help farmers mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and remain competitive in the global marketplace. The announcement was made at the Guelph Turfgrass Institute on October 13.
"Canada's agriculture industry plays a vital role in keeping our economy strong," said Mr. Lemieux. "This research will lead to new tools and practices to help farmers protect the environment and grow their business."
The University of Guelph will use the investment to conduct two separate projects, both based in OAC's School of Environmental Sciences. Prof. Claudia Wagner-Riddle focuses on livestock and crop production systems in the dairy sector, examining new and refined management practices and improved feeding strategies, resulting in better economic returns and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Profs. Andy Gordon and Naresh Thevathasan focus on agroforestry, looking specifically at tree-based intercropping, a European agricultural practice that incorporates trees into cultivated areas to both reduce emissions and increase a farm's profit potential.
"These two projects will go a long way towards helping Canada develop important greenhouse gas mitigation strategies, benefiting farmers and reducing impacts on the environment," said Kevin Hall, University of Guelph's Vice-President (Research). "Partnerships such as the two we are celebrating today are central to our mission of creating new knowledge and value for society. The University of Guelph has a long history of working with government and industry to translate research knowledge into new technologies, products and services."
Funding for this project is through the Agricultural Greenhouse Gases Program (AAGP), a five-year, $27-million initiative that focuses on the development of on-farm greenhouse gas mitigation technologies. The AGGP represents Canada's initial contribution to the Global Research Alliance, an international network of more than 30 member-countries that will coordinate and increase agricultural research on greenhouse gas mitigation and make new mitigation technologies and beneficial management practices available to farmers. For more information on the Global Research Alliance, visit http://www.globalresearchalliance.org/
Thursday, 17 November 2011
The Unwanted Rise of Neo-nazi Sub-culture
It's something to monitor closely!
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News
RT
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
New book on wheat goes against the grain
It's now a fuel and not a food. Time to grow vegetables on the prairies! http://www.vancouversun.com/life/book+wheat+goes+against+grain/5704519/story....
RT
RT
New book on wheat goes against the grain
It's now a fuel and not a food. Time to grow vegetables on the prairies!
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/book+wheat+goes+against+grain/5704519/story.html
RT
Sunday, 13 November 2011
Saturday, 12 November 2011
Friday, 11 November 2011
Saturday, 29 October 2011
Friday, 28 October 2011
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
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