46 posts tagged with "nature"

Amongst its many admirable principles, where does one find environmental concerns in the Bahá'í Faith? So I wondered, early on my journey on this religious path. Recently, in honor of Faith Climate Action Week, several friends and I reflected on this question.

Our conversation opened with a brief meditation on this passage of praise for God, who is recognized through all the natural wonders:

“… whatever I behold I readily discover that it maketh Thee known unto me, and it remindeth me of Thy signs, and of Thy tokens, and of Thy testimonies. By Thy glory! Every time I lift up mine eyes unto Thy heaven, I call to mind Thy highness and Thy loftiness, and Thine incomparable glory and greatness; and every time I turn my gaze to Thine earth, I am made to recognize the evidences of Thy power and the tokens of Thy bounty. And when I behold the sea, I find that it speaketh to me of Thy majesty, and of the potency of Thy might, and of Thy sovereignty and Thy grandeur. And at whatever time I contemplate the mountains, I am led to discover the ensigns of Thy victory and the standards of Thine omnipotence.”

Bahá'u'lláh, Prayers and Meditations by Bahá’u’lláh, CLXXVI

Another backyard success: breeding habitat for the Gulf fritillary butterfly. This medium-sized orange butterfly, while less famous than the Monarch for which it is sometimes mistaken, is a beautiful part of our landscape. Like the Monarch, its caterpillars can only eat from one type of plant ("passionflower") and they have a long-distance migration: across the Gulf of Mexico to southern Florida.

This purple passionflower in these photos only bloomed once or twice this summer, but one or more adult females clearly knew what was what and laid some eggs. I have counted as many as 8 visible caterpillars/pupae of multiple sizes at once (including the one trapped by a spider), and there were probably more that were hiding under leaves and around stems.

• More info on the Gulf fritillary
• View more photos of our passionflower and its denizens

The Yellow-rumped Warblers and Dark-eyed Juncos have been back and enjoying our back yard for several weeks now. This year, the warblers have decided to trust our bird bath - we've frequently seen them drinking and bathing over the past several weeks. While the Blue Jays have still been coming round, and we've had several sightings of Orange-crowned Warbler and Ruby-Crowned Kinglet this fall, I hadn't seen a Bewick's Wren in quite some time. Thus I was delighted to see this guy a few days ago. The light isn't very good, and the window is a bit dirty, but the ID is clear.

On Friday, the flood waters were fully receded on the Elm Fork of the Trinity River. With only a trace of rain on Saturday, I noticed on Sunday afternoon that the Elm Fork had returned to a flood warning. The Army Corps must have released water from one of the upstream lakes again. Quickly airing-up my tires, I raced down to Sam Houston Park in the hope of crossing the recently revealed causeway and seeing whom I could find on the levee-side of the lake. Alas, I was already too late. But the hour spent at the tantalizingly-small open (to bikers & peds) part of Sam Houston was well worth it the ride.

Back in the '90s, I remember my parents saying that it was less expensive to inspect their cars in Plano, in Collin County, than a few miles further south in Dallas County - because of the additional emissions inspections required in the latter. I never would have imagined that 20 years later, ten DFW counties are now in non-attainment for smog-producing ozone pollution - and we still have no plan to solve the problem.

Just looking at the smog, we all know it can't be good for any of us. The American Lung Association has a good article on the health effects of ozone pollution. Moreover, studies have shown that air pollution in general has a disproportionate impact on Latino and African-American communities.

Twenty-something years ago, not long after the Exxon Valdez disaster, I wrote a research paper on solar power for my middle school Earth science class. I've been trying to lower my consumption, and looking forward to rooftop solar, ever since. The wait is finally over.

Well, almost. The panels are on the roof, but now I have 4-6 weeks to wait until the electric grid company (Oncor) comes out to inspect.

Who did this? Who would leave such mighty poo below my bell pepper? Our fence is too tight for rabbits...

The Elm Fork of the Trinity River has returned to its secondary banks at last and the Sam Houston Trail Park on the Campión Trail is once again accessible, after two months of flooding. Riding my bike there today, I managed to get a few good photos, which are posted on Google Photos. First six in the gallery are from last fall, but the rest are from today.

A social media challenge was posed, #PlasticFreeJuly: try to avoid plastic in the month of July. Taken literally, many of us would be unable to read the challenge, without the plastic of our corrective lenses. Perhaps someone, somewhere, still makes glasses from melted, ground, sand. I shudder to think of the weight required to correct my own poor vision this way.

But there is a deeper truth: the gauntlet was delivered through a medium whose human-tangible representation beamed out through melted sand, encased in plastic, with circuits embedded in plastic. Perhaps someone, somewhere, manufactures computers using naught but metals, sand, and rubber insulation. With vacuum tubes.

A disturbing thing happened at Earth Day Texas - racists and nativists showed up masquerading as environmentalists. A tweet from the Southern Poverty Law Center alerted me that anti-immigrant groups with white supremacist ties would be out at Earth Day Texas. Seeing one of their (unmanned) booths was, therefore, not a surprise. But being verbally accosted at my own booth was.