During my recent drive between Illinois and North Carolina, I was pumping gas when I happened to see the following decal pasted on the face of the gas pump. The disclosure read like so much gobbledy-gook, as if purposely designed to be confusing or meaningless. It made me suspicious enough to snap a photo of it so that I could research it later: I was astounded by what my research uncovered. According to a study undertaken by the Oversight and Government Reform Committee of the House of Representatives in June 2007, the oil industry has known for 100 years that gasoline expands with temperature. As it warms, gasoline expands by volume but not by weight or energy content. Since the 1920′s, the oil industry has adjusted wholesale transactions to a 60 degree Fahrenheit standard when measuring gasoline. But in most cases, the oil industry does not adjust for temperature in retail sales to consumers in the U.S. As a result, when the temperature of gasoline rises above 60 degrees, Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, artist and University of San Francisco professor Richard Kamler organized the “Seeing Peace Billboard Project,” where ten artists from around the world were invited to imagine peace on a billboard-size scale. The result is ten very unique billboards placed around the city of San Francisco for all to see. It is Kamler’s profound hope and belief that, through the visual aid of the billboards, people will begin to imagine what peace looks like, and he is convinced that without this step, we will never get there. The following video features Kamler speaking about his project against a video backdrop of the various billboards:

After watching the video I was reminded of a book I read a few years ago by author Gregg Braden, titled “The Isaiah Effect, Decoding the Lost Science Of Prayer and Prophecy,” in which the author discusses the Great Isaiah Scroll, one of the 25,000 fragments of papyrus, parchment, and hammered copper known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Nearly one thousand years older Read the rest of this entry »

It’s 11 PM and I’ve just returned home from visiting a friend. Tonight, as always, when I turned down the narrow dirt road leading to my house I was struck by the ethereal nighttime look and feel of the Maritime Forest. The road is not much more than a path, barely wide enough for two cars to pass in most places. There are no street lights here – indeed there are only five houses in this secluded part of the Outer Banks – and coming home after dark requires high beams, which not only light up the road, but illuminate the thick canopy of trees that intertwine and overhang the road. The experience is more like moving through a living, breathing tunnel than driving down a road and I am suddenly swept away by the memory of my very first night in this house.

It was July of 2004. That night, I also came home late, and I remember thinking how spooky it was driving down that long, secluded road after dark. There had been a heavy rain that evening and I dodged mud puddles in the road as the trees overhead splashed big, fat drops on my windshield. I wound my way up the unfamiliar Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the home stretch for me. I’ve sold my home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina and it’s due to close this coming Friday. Although all the big items have already been packed up and placed in storage, there was still food in the house, since I occasionally returned to the Outer Banks during the 18 months it was listed for sale. Yesterday I decided it was time to tackle the pantry and refrigerator. I sorted the food into three groups:

1. Items that I would take back to Sarasota with me, like rice and dried beans
2. Non-perishable items that were still good but that I did not want to bring to Sarasota (these were destined for the local food bank)
3. Perishable items and non-perishable items that are out-of-date and must be thrown out

When I finished sorting, I grabbed a big black plastic trash bag and began loading it up with all the stuff to be thrown away. It was an uncomplicated task that let my mind wander, and I began thinking about a video I had watched that very morning at the coffee shop. It was a feature about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area of the ocean twice the size of Texas that is overloaded with floating trash. Located 500 miles off the coast of California, midway between the U.S. and Japan, this ocean patch is known as the north Pacific gyre, more commonly called the horse latitudes by sailors, who avoided the area at all costs for fear of being becalmed.

This ocean realm is created by a huge mountain of air that is heated at the equator and then descends in a gentle clockwise rotation as it approaches the North Pole. The winds produce circular ocean currents that spiral into a center, carrying with it the debris of civilization, some of it having floated around the Pacific Rim for as long as 12 years before Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I went golfing with my sister, Nancy, and my niece, Kelly. And by that, I mean I rode in the golf cart while they golfed. For a Monday afternoon, the course was especially busy. Just as the foursome in front of us teed off, Nancy realized she was missing her nine iron and went back to the car to find it. As Kelly and I were waiting for the foursome to finish off from the fairway, a single male golfer with golf bag slung over his shoulder walked up to our cart, looked at Kelly, and challenged, “Are you playing alone?” When she explained that we had another golfer in our party, he reluctantly left, griping about having to wait in line to play.

We were soon on our way. The first hole was a short, quick play. At the second tee, Nancy sliced to the right and landed in the creek. She reached for another ball and as she bent to set it on the tee, we heard yelling from behind us on the first green. The same guy who had veritably accosted Kelly was waving his arms and yelling at us.

“What’s his problem?” I asked. “Oh, we’re probably not going fast enough for him,” Nancy explained. “I can just hear him groaning about having to play behind a couple of women.” But of course, he kept yelling. This guy obviously does not know my sister. Or me, for that matter. Because neither one of us take a lot of crap from anyone. Instead of finishing her shot, Nancy waved Kelly over to tee up, jumped in our cart, and raced back to confront the guy.

“Sir, is there a problem?” she asked icily. Read the rest of this entry »

Since arriving in Illinois, Dad and I have been sick with the flu. He got it the day after I arrived. I got it two days later, just as he was recovering. It’s a darn good thing we didn’t get it simultaneously because even two bathroom just would not have been enough. My family keeps saying things like, “What a shame that you have to spend your vacation being sick.” But frankly, I came to Illinois to visit my Dad and it makes little difference to me, as long as I get to spend time with him. So I just wanted to say, “I love you Dad, and hope you have a great Father’s Day.”

I eat a lot of yogurt. I stick to organic brands, my favorite being Stonyfield Farm, and I have always wondered why their containers are made from #5 plastic, which is not recyclable, rather than #2 plastic, which IS recyclable. Recently, I decided to investigate and discovered that the issue is not as simple as I thought. Aware that the manufacturing of million of cups annually has an enormous impact on the environment, Stonyfield Farm began examining their packaging issues in the mid-80′s. Although they initially assumed hat the most important criteria was recyclability, Stonyfield discovered that it is just one of the issues that must be considered when looking at the impact of packaging on our environment.

Stonyfield compared the various packaging options available to them, using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a tool that determines the cradle-to-grave environmental impact of a product from its manufacture and use, through its re-use, recycling and/or disposal. After examining their options (including glass, poly-coated paper, and plastic), they chose Read the rest of this entry »

During the last two months I have been trying to find out why I am being charged erroneous ATM fees by my bank. Last month my statement showed a “foreign ATM transaction fee,” which normally would result if I had withdrawn money using an ATM that was not owned by my bank. When I insisted that I had only withdrawn funds from ATM’s owned by my bank, they researched the fee and told me it was levied when I used my debit card to pay my AT&T cell phone bill online. Even though my bank graciously agreed to refund the fee, I was determined to make sure it didn’t happen again. I logged in to my online account with AT&T and read over all their policies regarding the fees they charge for various payment methods. Of the online payment options, their website states:

We accept the following forms of payment: * ATM debit cards – STAR, Pulse, ACCEL, NYCE * Credit/debit cards – Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover Network, Diners Club

There is no other distinction made between credit and debit cards and no notice that any fees will be levied if a debit card is used. I assumed it was a one-time mistake.

This month I again used my debit card to pay my AT&T cell phone bill online. Two days later, the monthly phone bill showed up on my bank statement, along with yet another “foreign ATM transaction fee.” This time I called AT&T. Since the customer service rep that I reached was unable to answer my question, she accelerated my issue to the supervisory level and then Read the rest of this entry »

I left the Outer Banks yesterday, bound for Illinois to spend the week of Father’s Day with my Dad and the rest of my family. I had intended to start the trip at dawn, but as I turned off my road and headed for the Bypass, I was confronted by the biggest, reddest ball of sun that I have ever seen, and I had to divert to one of the beach accesses to take a photo: The sun’s color was most likely the result of dense smoke from the wildfire on the mainland that is still drifting over the Outer Banks. In the event that anyone thinks this smoke is a minor matter, I turned around from the spot where I took the photo of the sun and aimed down the parking lot to the street beyond. What you see is NOT fog; it is smoke: Visibility at 7 a.m. on this otherwise clear day was limited to less than a city block. It is hard to grasp the extent of the problem until the fire and its resultant smoke is viewed from space, as in this satellite image Read the rest of this entry »