Julia Likes Frogs

My father was in the Air Force for the Vietnam War, stationed in Juno, Alaska. He was a very handsome man, with a huge smile. I always adored the silver edging on his teeth, a testament to a hard life as a farm boy who'd had no childhood to speak of. Two years ago, he needed hip surgery on both hips. He was told he couldn't get it until he got all his imperfect teeth pulled out.  He was left with four. Now, my father's face isn't the same. The lower lids of his eyes droop, his face is caved in some, and he is shy about going out in public. Given that he lives in the far reaches of Northern Minnesota, his Disability payments from a hard life of literally back breaking work sometimes falls short of covering his heating. He receives assistance for an insufficient amount of food.  The man can't afford dentures, let alone the implants that would restore his face and sense of pride, and the VA says there's no money to help him. The hip surgery w

Flying makes greenhouse gasses. Whether water vapor or just standard schmutz is the worst of them I don't know, but both of them contribute to the dirty and impermeable bubble we're creating around the planet. And sometimes they work together. As with all clouds, first you've got your little particle of dust, then you've got the humidity glomming onto it ( here's a snapshot post on how clouds are formed). But what's so bad about clouds?  Have you ever noticed that cloudy nights are often warmer? It isn't simply that heat makes clouds form – it's also that clouds trap heat from escaping at night. “A Penn State study compared regions of the United States where contrails tended to form more strongly with areas where they didn’t. The more contrail-heavy the area, the less the variation between daytime highs and nighttime lows tended to be.” ( Global News ) There's some debate about the cloud effect, but none at all about the stinky emission eff