CSU's 100 Views of Climate Change looks at the subject from all angles

Until John Calderazzo showed me his web site, I didn't know that there were 100 views of climate change.

That's the name of his site, 100 Views of Climate Change. It's an official Colorado State University site, one among hundreds at this place that started its life as Colorado A&M -- the big white Aggie "A" still lurks on the mountain above town.

John teaches in the CSU creative writing program which is part of the English Department. He is a writer of creative nonfiction which, put simply, means that he uses fiction writing techniques in his published books and articles and essays about volcanoes, rain forests, watersheds, etc. He takes his facts as seriously as he takes his technique. His book on volcanoes is fascinating. He once taught in China and had written extensively about Asia. Recently, he climbed his first big mountain, a 19,000-footer in Mexico. Pretty good for a guy who won't see 60 again.

I had a chance to visit with John when he was in Cheyenne for the Literary Connection put on by LCCC. He served as my first adviser when I went to CSU in 1988 as a thirty-something corporate dropout. We had a lot in common, including Florida roots, and he was only a few years older than me. We worked on several free-lance writing projects together. It's always good to see an old friend.

As is true with many Boomers in their sixties, John is not sitting in his office counting paper clips and marking off the days until retirement on a wall calendar. Well, he may be doing that but he's also bringing the climate change debate to CSU, Fort Collins, Colorado's Front Range and the Rocky Mountain West. He and his wife, Sue Ellen Campbell, are doing this together. Sue Ellen is also a published writer, professor and environmentalist. The duo has seen first-hand the depredations of climate change. They have written extensively on the subject.

When it was time to do something about it, they thought that they might as well start close to home. So many scientists at this university. Climatologists, soil biologists, ecologists, bioethicists, agronomists, water hydrologists and so on. And sometimes, to translate the work of these scientists, in come the artists, writers and performers.

No reputable scientist disputes the fact that global climate change is a real thing. However, the topic of "global climate change" sparks as many storms as a spring Rocky Mountain low pressure system. Policies that address climate change would affect almost all the ways that we've done business in the West for 100 years. They would affect coal mining, oil and gas drilling, coal-fired plants, transportation, infrastructure, home construction, and almost any other topic you could think of. Just the term "climate change" sends Wyoming Republicans into a tizzy. It's likely they work in the energy industry. It's certain that much of their election war chests come from EnCana and Peabody, etc. Many of their constituents work in the energy industry and make better money doing that than they would in almost any other endeavor. Local business groups and chambers of commerce welcome energy companies and energy jobs. The mayor of Gillette was just in Washington, D.C., telling a congressional committee to send more energy jobs his way.

So, it's not surprising that any hint of doing something about climate change causes berserkity to break out all over.

Chris Drury: "Carbon Sink: What Goes
Around Comes Around"

Here's a recent case in point from Wyoming's lone four-year university. A very talented artist, Chris Drury from the U.K., designed and installed a public art work on the UW campus. It's entitled 'Carbon Sink: What Goes Around Comes Around." It's made of real Wyoming coal and real beetle-killed trees from Wyoming forests. The burning of one of these things -- coal -- undoubtedly caused the warming planet which led to the pine bark beetle surviving winters which led to the killing of the trees. All of the parts will eventually return to the earth from whence they came, which is one of the messages of the piece. A giant circle of coal and wood spinning across a university lawn on its way back to the source. This also is our fate. The fate of humankind, of course, will be determined by the way we treat the planet.

Here's how the project was described on the UW Art Museum blog:

Chris Drury's Carbon Sink: What Goes Around Comes Around places beetle-kill pine and coal -- both natural resources in Wyoming -- in a formal structure derived from a mushroom spore, twisting into a vortex to suggest the natural process of decay, decomposition, and transformation.  Typical of the artist's work, who routinely connects natural phenomena from the macrocosmic to the microcosmic, the whirling deep, dark, and beautiful reflective properties of the coal play off the raw wood that has been charred so the materials merge at the center.

Some Wyomingites were not amused (snippets from stories about the installation from both the New York Times and The Guardian via Inhabitat): 

The coal industry immediately took offense: “They get millions of dollars in royalties from oil, gas and coal to run the university, and then they put up a monument attacking me, demonizing the industry,” stated Marion Loomis, the director of the Wyoming Mining Association.  

Two legislators also jumped into the fray -- Republican Representative Tom Lubnau and Gregg Blikre from Cambell County, site of the massive Powder River Basin coal mine. 

“While I would never tinker with the University of Wyoming budget – I’m a great supporter of the University of Wyoming – every now and then you have to use these opportunities to educate some of the folks at the University of Wyoming about where their paychecks come from,” stated Lubnau.

Read more here: Chris Drury’s “Carbon Sink” Art Installation Strikes Nerve of Wyoming Coal Industry Carbon Sink by Chris Drury – Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World 

As it turns out, it was a tempest in a teapot. No coal-crazed Republican legislators attacked the UW Art Museum budget. But we'll have many more of these. Some will be a lot more serious.

Chris Drury is obviously a thoughtful man in search of meaningful discussion of a big subject.

Maybe UW needs a dose of 100 Views of Climate Change. CSU is right down the road...

Monday morning gardening: Ripe strawberry alert!

My Victory Garden was almost defeated this year.

I began the season with high hopes. Despite the late start to summer (or perhaps because of it) my lettuce leafed out early and grew wildly into the heat of July. Spinach too. My third-season strawberries yielded many ripe fruits. Nothing like getting up in the morning and grabbing a few garden strawberries to much on or add to pancakes. I'm getting a new crop mow that cooler September weather has arrived. I snacked on a few new ripe ones this morning.

Only half of my strawberries survived the back-to-back hailstorms. Ditto for my tomatoes, squash and bean plants. Terrible to see the damage that a golf-ball-sized hailstone can do to a green leaf. Rips it to shreds. I was late getting home that mid-July day and only had time to cover the plants closest to the porch before I got pelted. Like getting smacked in the arm with an errant drive by an old duffer. After 15 minutes, there were thousands of ice balls in my yard. Young green tomatoes mixed in with the ice white. Would have been pretty if not so sad.

I was so busy with the garden that I didn't even think about my car and my roof. They both need replacing. 

Another hailstorm arrived a week later, right in the middle of our annual Frontier Days celebration. The nerve!  This one brought pea-sized hail, which wouldn't have been too bad, but it brought a lot of it. The storm that kept on giving. Again I covered the plants closest to the house but couldn't reach the rest of my pole beans and pumpkin plants. 

I did end up with a few servings of green beans and crookneck squash. I may get a few more squash if the frost holds off. I've only had a few vine-ripened tomatoes but I will have a bunch of green ones to ripen inside. Not quite the same, but they'll be good for a few salads and the football chili of October and November.

What's the lesson here?

I looked out my office window and spied a strawberry I missed during this morning's rounds. I am rising from my chair right now to go outside and eat said ripe fruit. It is red and inviting. 

Garden hit by hail? Mine was. Get your fresh produce at the WY Fresh Market

Wyoming Fresh Market is open from 3-6:30 p.m. Tuesdays at the Historic Depot Plaza in Cheyenne.

Here are some highlights:

• Farm-Fresh Local Produce, Meats, and Eggs


• Colorado Tree Fruits


• Gourmet Pastas from Denver


• Fresh, Local Baked Goods, Honey, and Jams


• Tortillas, Chips, and Salsas


• Live Plants, Bedding, Perennials, House Plants


• Hand-crafted, Natural Body Care Products


• Local Artisans and Crafts


• Children's Activities and Musicians to be scheduled


• Dinner on the Plaza - BBQ and more


• Info at http://www.wyomingfarmersmarkets.org/ or call Verena Booth at 307-637-8048.

Not nice to fool Mother Nature -- or the Internet

On Monday, I was musing about my garden and telling you folks out home about my wonderful high plains strawberries. I ended the post with this: "Now if we can just keep the hail at bay..."

You know what happened on Tuesday. A torrent of golfball-sized hail destroyed gardens and roofs and cars. Nobody hurt, thank goodness.

Except for the strawberries. They were shredded. I have a few plants with leaves and blossoms remaining. I plucked a half-dozen ripe fruits from the wreckage. As I surveyed the carnage, I thought about how it's not nice to fool Mother Nature. Or tempt her with a hail challenge.

Maybe it was the Internet's fault. Perhaps we have underestimated its power.

From now on, this blog will only spell out things like h-a-i-l and t-o-r-n-a-d-o.

After the drought comes the deluge

DAN CEPEDA Star-Tribune:  Vicky Marlow takes snapshots of the swollen North Platte River near the whitewater park in Casper on Friday afternoon. The river has risen past its highest point last year, according to experts, and is expected to keep rising.

I spent most of my day working in the yard. Normally on May 28, I would have applied a healthy dose of sunscreen. I am a freckle-faced Celt, prone to sunburn and skin cancer. However, the sun made only a brief appearance in Cheyenne today. No sunscreen required. The rest of the day was cloudy and, as I was grilling salmon for dinner, the rains came. We're not getting cataclysmic storms, just steady rains. The mountains continue to get snow and, when the thaw does come, we're going to have some bitchin' floods.

Gov. Mead has dispatched the Wyoming National Guard to flood-prone areas of the state, which includes all but my own Laramie County, land of little rain and small creeks. Our local waterway is Dry Creek, which gives you some idea of how little water we usually have. All I can say about Dry Creek is that it is a bit less dry than normal, but not exactly a raging torrent.

On the other hand, the North Platte in Saratoga and Casper and the Laramie River in Laramie are out of their banks. The Popo Agie and the Snake are flooding, as is the Belle Fourche. You've got to hand it to us -- we have some sweet names for our creeks/rivers.

Last spring, I was in Lander as the Popo Agie roared through town, undercutting foundations of riverside homes and roiling over its banks. On the reservation, water was over the roads and more was expected. Much more is expected this year.

We have it pretty good compared to our fellow Americans in Mississippi and Louisiana. Still, our neighbors that serve in the National Guard will not be barbecuing but will be on alert this weekend, prepared to sandbag and rescue as the need arises. Think of them on Memorial Day. Think of them as you pay your taxes. Think of them the next time you criticize government employees.

Joplin, MO, not so far away from Cheyenne, WY

Joplin, Missouri, is about the same size as Cheyenne, Wyoming.

If a tornado wiped out one-third of Cheyenne and killed 132 residents, we would come together to take care of one another -- no doubt about that. Disasters bring out the best in people. A few days ago, I watched on CBS as neighbors and first responders worked together in the rain to search for an 80-year-old woman. They removed the rubble of the two-story home all the way to the basement. No sign of the elderly woman.

We are usually not asked to go to such lengths to help our neighbors. We will, if needed.

Meanwhile, we can send donations to the Red Cross:

The Red Cross depends on financial donations to help in times of disaster. Those who want to help people affected by disasters like tornadoes, floods and wildfires, as well as countless crises at home and around the world, can make a donation to support American Red Cross Disaster Relief. This gift enables the Red Cross to prepare for and provide shelter, food, emotional support and other assistance in response to disasters. Visit www.redcross.org or call 1-800-RED-CROSS; people can also text the word “REDCROSS” to 90999 to make a $10 donation. Contributions may also be sent to local American Red Cross chapters or to the American Red Cross, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, DC 20013.

Whopper storm as seen from outer space

Big storm as seen from GOES-13 via NOAA: I'm down there somewhere, off to the left (as usual).

Blizzards can be hazardous for mayors

A blizzard sweeps through southeastern Wyoming. Not much snow but lots of wind and cold. A piker compared to other big snowstorms from my 32 years on the High Plains.

Blizzards arrive at inopportune times. New York City is having a tough time cleaning up after the recent Christmas blizzard of 2010. Mayor Bloomberg has been apologizing for the city’s response. No announcement yet on his resignation, or that of his public works department. The New Jersey governor has been vacationing at Disney World for the past week. He's keeping in touch by phone, said a spokesman. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell railed about "wusses" or "wussies" who couldn't make it to a snowy stadium Sunday for the Philadelphia Eagles and Minnesota Vikings match-up. The game was postponed until Tuesday.

I recall the 1982 Christmas Eve blizzard in Denver. Two-plus feet of snow in 24 hours. I was a freelancer working from home back then. Chris was at work. She rode the bus downtown that snowy Christmas Eve morning. Her bank was open, as were many other businesses. By noon, most were closing so their employees had a chance to get home. Chris caught a bus which got stuck in a drift after traveling a few blocks. Luckily, a coworker happened by and gave her a ride. It took them about an hour to drive the two miles to our apartment. We spent most of the evening watching local TV reports about "The Blizzard of the Century."

Christmas Day, I rose early and helped people shovel out of their houses and apartments. My wife slept in. No point – getting anywhere was impossible. My car was snowbound for a week. City plows attempted to clear one lane in each direction on the main streets. Side streets were left to the tried-and-true solar melting method.

We lived between City Park and Colfax Ave. I needed to turn in an article downtown. No e-mails or faxes. So I went to Colfax to catch a bus. A mountain of snow clogged the street’s center line and traffic was backed up going and coming. I started to walk. Each time the No. 15 bus caught up with me, I contemplated jumping on. But I kept moving and the bus did not. I delivered my story and got home by dark. The streets were still clogged. Buses still crawled Colfax.

I finally dug out my car in time for a New Year's Eve party at my sister Eileen's apartment. Main streets were clear but side streets had snow ruts as deep as the historic wagon ruts on the Oregon Trail. I made it to the party (Chris was sick) and we all had wonderful blizzard tales to tell over mass quantities of beer.

Denver Mayor Bill McNichols did lose the next election in May 1983 because of his inept handling of the blizzard. This also happened once in Chicago, if I remember correctly. Maybe it’s happened elsewhere. Epic snowstorms provide headaches for politicians but many useful and entertaining stories for the rest of us.