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Bayard

Bayard's Journal
Bayard's Journal
July 16, 2020

Food for Thought

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Imagine you were born in 1900.

When you're 14, World War I begins and ends when you're 18 with 22 million dead.

Soon the Spanish Flu appears, killing 50 million people. And you're alive, 20 years old.

When you're 29 you survive the global economic crisis with the collapse of New York Stock Exchange, causing inflation, unemployment and famine.

When you're 33 years old the nazis come to power.

When you're 39, World War II begins and ends when you're 45 years old with a 60 million dead. In the Holocaust 6 million Jews die.

At 52, Korean War begins. At 64, Vietnam War begins and ends when you're 75.

A child born in 1985 thinks his grandparents have no idea how difficult life is.

Today we have all the comforts in a new world, amid a new #pandemic. But we complain because we need to wear masks. We complain because we must stay confined to our homes where we have food, electricity, water, wifi, Netflix! None of that existed back in the day. But humanity survived those circumstances and never lost their joy of living.

July 16, 2020

I'm still in raccoon mode....



Love that last little guy, where mom's saying--if you don't get in here right now I'm gonna kick your ass!

Obviously, they're right in someone's backyard. Same problem we're having.
July 15, 2020

In Public Lands is the Preservation of the Republic



ON JUNE 30, 1864, Abraham Lincoln sat at his worktable, with its view of the half-finished Washington Monument and the Potomac River, and went through his daily routine of paperwork and correspondence. There were many issues to occupy the president's mind. The Union army had recently been walloped in the Battle of the Wilderness, Congress was debating a sweeping Reconstruction Act, and he had just dismissed his conniving treasury secretary. Among the minor matters on Lincoln's desk was a bill that Congress had just passed with scant debate, the Yosemite Park Act. The law promised to preserve for common enjoyment "the 'Cleft' or 'Gorge' in the Granite Peak of the Sierra Nevada Mountains … known as the Yosemite Valley" along with the "Mariposa Big Tree Grove" of sequoias. Some 38,000 acres would be "held for public use, resort, and recreation … inalienable for all time." The president put his pen to paper and brought into being the first landscape-scale public park in history.

It wasn't until the Civil War was over that anyone understood the significance of what had happened. The first person to figure it out was Frederick Law Olmsted, the architect of New York City's Central Park. Olmsted had been appointed the chair of the Yosemite Commission, which Congress had created to manage the new park. In August 1865, Olmsted and the other commissioners met in Yosemite Valley, where, at a campsite close to the base of Yosemite Falls, he read aloud his draft report about how best to steward the place. The report—most of which was a celebration of the benefits of time in nature—included one of the first arguments of the public lands ideal. Olmsted said that the wealthy had always seized for themselves the best places: "The enjoyment of the choicest natural scenes in the country and the means of recreation connected with them is thus a monopoly, in a very peculiar manner, of a very few, very rich people." It was the duty of a republican government, he argued, to safeguard some natural treasures for the benefit of all: "For the same reason that the water of rivers should be guarded against private appropriation . . . portions of natural scenery may therefore properly [be] guarded and cared for by government . . . [to be] laid open to the use of the people." Olmsted marveled that such an accomplishment had occurred "during one of the darkest hours" in the country's history.

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2020-4-july-august/feature/public-lands-preservation-republic?utm_source=insider&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

A long read, but well worth it.
July 15, 2020

Big Win for Greater Yellowstone Grizzlies




Great news in the long battle to protect the still-vulnerable Greater Yellowstone grizzly bear population! Last Wednesday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Montana District Court’s 2018 opinion that reinstated Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for the Yellowstone region’s grizzly bear population, rejecting arguments for removal of protections by federal and state agencies and hunting organizations.The decision spares grizzly bears from plans for trophy hunts in the states of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana outside the boundaries of the national parks. Approximately 700 grizzly bears live in and around Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks in the three states.

Earthjustice, representing the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity and National Parks Conservation Association, successfully argued for restoring protections to Yellowstone grizzly bears, after they were delisted in 2017. Many Tribal Nations consider the grizzly bear a sacred relative, and have long worked to protect the great bear. A coalition of 17 Tribal Nations and individuals were the lead plaintiffs in the litigation to restore ESA protections for the sacred grizzly bear.
“The grizzly is foundational to many Indigenous cultures,” said Rain Bear Stands Last, who assisted plaintiffs with the lawsuit and is the executive director of the Global Indigenous Council, a body of Indigenous tribes from around the world. “Had the decision gone against tribes,” he said, ”it would have set a devastating precedent.”

On July 8, the Ninth Circuit sided with Tribes and conservationists that the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) had not adequately addressed the impacts of delisting the Yellowstone grizzly bear population on the other grizzly bear populations in the lower 48. The three-judge panel also found that the USFWS acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” regarding the long-term threat to the Yellowstone grizzly population due to its isolation; and violated the ESA in basing its arguments for removal of protections on “political pressure by the states rather than having been based on the best scientific and commercial data.” With this victory on the appeal, grizzly bears in the Yellowstone region will remain protected.

We are thrilled with the court's decision. Given the rapid pace of the extinction and climate crises, now is not the time to remove critical safeguards that will ensure Yellowstone's irreplaceable grizzlies stay on the road to recovery.
“This is a tremendous victory for those who care about Yellowstone and its grizzly bears,” said Tim Preso, Earthjustice attorney. “The court rightfully rejected the misguided proposal to subject Yellowstone grizzlies to trophy hunting for the first time in 40 years. The grizzly is an icon of our remaining wildness at a time when our wilderness is shrinking and our wildlife is under assault.”

https://www.sierraclub.org/articles/2020/07/big-win-for-greater-yellowstone-grizzlies?utm_source=insider&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter
July 13, 2020

Marie Curie died of aplastic anaemia on 4 July 1934,



Marie Curie died of aplastic anaemia on 4 July 1934, a result of years of exposure to radiation through her work. Even today her laboratory notebook from 1899-1902, is radioactive and will be for 1,500 years.



Curie dedicated her life to science. She was the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize, the first person to be awarded twice and is still the only person to receive the prize in two different scientific fields.

https://aziza-physics.com/en/marie-curie-died-of-aplastic-anaemia-on-4-july-1934-a-result-of-years-of-exposure-to-radiation-through-her-work-even-today-her-laboratory-notebook-from-1899-1902-is-radioactive-and-will-be-for-150/

Radioactive for 1,500 years.....mind-blowing.


July 9, 2020

Denture Dog!

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