Mostly-private nattering

After an impressive snowy late-winter, today is the first time I've seen chipmunks on the back deck. Robins and redwinged blackbirds were seen during the last few days.

We're eagerly watching the weather for Frog Migration Day, i.e. the first warm rainy night, when the frogs try to cross the road and we go out and help them not get smushed by cars. There's a whole group doing it in Acton and Littleton! Up here, it's mostly just me and maybe Phil and a neighbor this year. I don't care about looking silly, it feels good to save frogs, last year I helped about 50 of them! Anyway, that should happen in the next week or two. Right now there is still ice on the water.

Also watching for Peeper Day. soon!

As FB gets less enticing except for public announcements and where the parties are, real thoughts should go here and/or to Diaspora. Trying to migrate my brain over thisaway.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gobikey/4568069317/
By Sarah Pierce. 1) Gorgeous! 2) Curvy lines are hard to cut.

Blessed be His Savoriness.

I noticed the japanese knotweed is poking its first leaves up on the bike path. (In town is earlier than out here where there is no sign of it yet.) I expect this week it will be up to the first harvestable shoots, especially after this rain and then the warm snap we're supposed to get. If i were in town right after work either monday or thursday, or maybe friday- anyone want to meet me in Davis for a short workshop?

Short form: why these are good to eat, and how to not let them spread.
Directions: If you just want to go see an example, walk from the Davis Sq T down the bike path to almost where it crosses Willow. Look along the fence to your left. Last year's plant is the old dried stems that look a bit reddish and segmented like bamboo, with a bit of a zigzag wiggly look. At their feet are new 2-inch or so heart-shaped dark red leaves, maybe by now growing up on hollow green-red stems that look a bit like asparagus. Read this before harvesting.

Thanks to the amazing and wonderful Threespeed, i now have this to appreciate and repost: Orestes pursued by the Furries

frobzwiththingz just rented us "Who killed the electric car?" ... hm, wow. Ok, so i know very little about all this stuff compared with say, *hobbit, and i should probably ask him about it all, but, thought-provoking documentary!

I had no idea GM had a practical plug-in electric car on the roads in the Nineties, and then killed the program and basically hushed it all up. I'd always sort of wondered what those 6 or so charging stations were doing in the Alewife parking garage... . I already knew GM and the petroleum interests intentionally killed the electric streetcars... which used to transport commuters between EVEN MY NEIGHBORHOOD and downtown Boston. Apparently the government found them guilty of criminal conspiracy over that in 1947 but let them go with a token fine. Again, PBS but can't find good writeup online yet... . Or that there was a battery that allowed it to go 100 miles or more on a charge, that GM bought the patent on, and then sold it to Chevron, which buried it. Hm.

Ovshinsky is brilliant. He's the one who invented the battery, and is busy making that thin film solar panel stuff now! (which phil says the first 3 years production of has all been bought by Germany...) Hm, i'm assuming better batteries may be out by now, but if not... is it possible to seize the patent by eminent domain, and then lease it to all comers? "National security", baby...

Hm, so advice to the new Administration:
-Pass a new zero emissions vehicle mandate.
-Make producing plug-in electrics a condition of GM's survival as a company
-Build that big solar farm in the Southwestern desert and use it to power the electric grid
-Forget the hydrogen fuel cell stupidity already

other links: Plug In America ... The Hype About Hydrogen" ... and, SQUEEEE! ah, but the price for a handmade conversion... *sigh

Yay, the band! and at 1:30 and 2:30 you get a glimpse of me in a tree, dressed as a bird.

Bird!

On a table in front of someone's house... with an old wooden box for cash. Sometimes i love my neighborhood.