Ten Threatened Rivers

  • Grand Canyon National Park (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)

An environmental group says some of America’s
rivers are endangered by people using too much water.
Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

An environmental group says some of America’s
rivers are endangered by people using too much water.
Lester Graham reports:

Each year the group American Rivers lists ten rivers that are at risk because of
upcoming decisions. Rebecca Wodder is the president of the group. She says several of the rivers face a common problem.

“Of the ten rivers, six of them are threatened by the same issue and that is excessive
water withdrawals.”

Most of the because of expanding populations, one because of agricultural irrigation.
Using too much water from a river endangers fish and water supplies downstream.

The rivers on the list include the Catawba-Wateree in the Carolinas, Rogue River in
Oregon, the Poudre in Colorado, the St. Lawrence River connecting the Great Lakes to
the Atlantic Ocean, the Minnesota River, St. Johns in Florida, the Gila in Arizona and New
Mexico, the Allagash Wilderness Waterway in Maine, the Niobrara in Wyoming, and the
Pearl River in Mississippi and Louisiana.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Report: West Warming Fast

  • The Colorado River in the Eastern end of the Grand Canyon National Park, below Desert View Overlook (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)

A report from environmentalists concludes the
American West is getting hotter faster than the rest of
the globe. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A report from environmentalists concludes the
American West is getting hotter faster than the rest of
the globe. Lester Graham reports:

Now, this report was not peer reviewed, but The Natural Resources Defense Council and the
Rocky Mountain Climate Organization insist the data show it’s gotten hotter in the West
when you compare the last five years to the global average during the last century.

Theo Spencer is with the NRDC. He says water is always important in the West, and
this climate change is causing problems.

“The Colorado River Basin, which provides water for about 30 million people in the West, the temperature over the past 5 years increased 2.2 degrees. So that’s 120% more than the rest of the globe.”

The report says the Colorado is in a record drought – and that affects Denver,
Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Feasting on Backyard Weeds

  • Peter Gail holds his favorite weed: the spinach-like lamb's quarters.

Your barbeque grill isn’t the only place to find food in your backyard. There are lots of plants out there to eat, but most of us call
them weeds. The GLRC’s Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Your barbeque grill isn’t the only place to find food in your backyard.
There are lots of plants out there to eat, but most of us call
them weeds. The GLRC’s Julie Grant reports:


Peter Gail of Cleveland loves food. He’s got a lot of meat on his bones.


“Gee, you can’t get me to stop. I start eating this stuff and I can’t stop. It’s terrible, it’s terrible, it’s addictive (laughs).”


But his favorite foods grow right in his backyard, and probably yours. Gail is what’s
known as an ethno-botanist. He’s on a mission to teach more people about how to eat the
plants growing all around their houses. His latest converts are a troop of boy scouts:


“My grandson was one of the boys in this Boy Scout troop. And when I got over to his
house three days after we got back from scout camp, he grabbed the bag, the plastic bag
of weeds that his mother weeded out of the yard that day and dragged it over to me on the
patio and said find the edible plants in here and show me them.”


Gail says the yard becomes more exciting to most kids when they can sit down and
munch. His own love of the backyard snack started when he was just a boy. His family
faced some tough times. They were saved by a common weed known as lamb’s quarters.


“My dad died and left the family with no money. A friend told my mother we could live
off lamb’s quarters. For six months we went out and every day my brother and I would
gather the young tops of lamb’s quarters and then bring them into the house and my
mother would make them into every kind of spinach dish imaginable, until she learned
how to make a living. And then after that she still, we still liked the plant so we still ate it a lot.”


These days you could pay a lot for lamb’s quarters in a gourmet food store. They’re sold
as Belgium spinach. Or, Gail says, you could just take a quick look around your yard.


Today we’re walking around a backyard in suburban Cleveland. We find lamb’s quarters
at the base of a tree. Some say you can recognize the leaves because they look like the
hindquarters of a lamb. Gail thinks they look more like the silhouette of a Christmas tree:


“You’ll notice it has, when you’re looking down on it, it looks like somebody spilled a
little bit of talcum powder on the very top. It has that little dusting of white that is right on the top and on the underside of the leaves you see the same dusting, but taste one leaf, taste a leaf of that.”


And it does taste like spinach, but the USDA reports it’s even more nutritious than
Popeye’s favorite treat.


“It doesn’t take any cooking. It can be eaten raw, or it can be cooked. It will interfere, if you eat too much raw, with the assimilation of both iron and calcium, so you usually want to cook it. It makes a great addition to omelets, great cooked green, great quiches. Any recipe you use spinach in, you can use lamb’s quarters.”


There’s a lot more than just lamb’s quarters in the yard to eat. This time of year, Peter Gail also recommends sautiing the buds or petals from orange and yellow daylilies. He’s also a big fan of dandelions. He suggests looking for the young, tender leaves because they’re less bitter. Gail says he believes dandelions were brought to America by Italian
immigrants. They’re used in lots of Italian recipes:


“80 percent of the things we call weeds were vegetables brought here by immigrants.
That’s one of the reasons most of the things we call weeds in our backyards aren’t
indigenous plants. They aren’t plants that were from America. They’re plants that are
from Europe and Asia and from South America.”


Gail says over time those traditional foods escaped from gardens into the wild. After
World War II, things changed. Most people started buying food at the grocery store and foraging became unpopular. He says only the poor searched the yard for food:


“One by one, as generations went by, the kids didn’t learn as much the second generation,
the third generation they knew nothing. And by the time we reach where we are now,
almost everybody can walk right by the most nutritious plant going, the most commonly eaten
plant back in the 30s and 40s, and not even have a clue what it is.”


Gail is trying to change that. He wants people to become reacquainted with these plants
so we don’t recklessly destroy them. He travels around the country giving workshops,
taking people on neighborhood forages, and teaching cooking classes. Gail believes we
might need these plants again someday.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Hybrid Car Ownership Drives People Together

Some hybrid car owners are starting clubs to socialize and to learn how to squeeze even more miles per gallon out of their fuel-efficient vehicles. The number of hybrid owners is still small enough that the owners feel a little “special.” The GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Some hybrid car owners are starting clubs to socialize and to learn
how to squeeze even more miles per gallon out of their fuel-efficient
vehicles. The number of hybrid owners is still small enough that the
owners feel a little “special.” The GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Bradley Fons says he already thought about the environment a lot before he
purchased a used hybrid car three years ago. He bought a Honda Insight:


“…And I kind of figured out how to drive it to get the best mileage but there
was no support, no help out there at that point to assist me.”


Eventually, Fons found a group of hybrid owners who helped him answer
some questions about the car.


(Sound of group meeting)


But this year, with some help from his family, Fons has done one better: he’s
organized a hybrid owners club.


(Marie Fons) “…And put your name on one of these little things, for a door prize. I know, work, work, work, work, work. Here, you guys want to work on the
door prize thing?”


Bradley Fons’ wife, Marie, is helping about two dozen people check in. This
is the first meeting of the hybrid owners group. They get to know each
other by their name, their city, and the kind of hybrid they drive:


“I’m Kathy Moody from Racine and I have a ’05 Prius.”


“I’m Bill Vaness from Waukesha and I ride in my wife’s ’03 Prius (laughs).”


(Group member) “At least you’re honest.”


“My name is Sherrie Schneider, I’m from Bristol and I have an ’06 Civic. Picked it up about a month ago and I’m here to learn a lot ’cause I don’t know how to get the mileage you all
are getting but I’m going to learn (laughs).”


And so Bradley and Marie Fons go into teaching mode, offering encouragement and advice about how to get the most miles per gallon from the cars. The hybrid of gas engine and electric batteries usually cost more to buy more than similarly sized conventional cars. So the new owners are anxious about getting the best mileage possible.


Bradley Fons preaches patience. He says for new vehicles, owners have to work through
the car’s several thousand mile break-in period before they get the kind of gas
efficiency the cars can reach:


“So if you’re getting in the forties, ya know, high 40, mid 40, to low 50s in
a Prius and it’s new, don’t worry about it, ya know. It’ll come.”


Fons says some of these cars will get miles-per-gallon in the 60s and 70s. Then there are
the controversial people who’ve become what’s known as “hyper-milers,” getting 80 or 90
miles per gallon through various means that even the hyper-milers concede aren’t
completely safe.


Fons introduces Wayne Gerdes, who tells how to steer a hybrid
in the air draft right behind 18-wheel trucks:


“Hopefully you’ll understand that this close in, is this one car to one and a half second
back, that’s a dangerous area. I don’t recommend anybody doing it, but you’re gonna find
your fuel economy going through the roof on that.”


The hybrid owners club that the Fons family has organized also takes club
members out in hybrids for some lessons on the road:


“So we’ll go down, ya know, another set of streets.”


Bradley Fons sits in the front passenger seat of a Toyota hybrid. He’s
teaching a club member named Bill a driving method called the “pulse-and-
glide.” Basically, it involves only occasionally tapping the gas pedal and coasting
a lot, so that neither the car’s motor or electric battery system is operating much.


When pulse-and-glide is done right, a monitor on the dashboard reports a surge in
fuel efficiency. After some difficulty, Fons helps Bill get the hang of it:


“All right, foot totally off. Now just on a little, there you are. You’re in it, hold it,


(Bill) “Do you take your foot off when you’re in there, though?”


“No, you have to leave pressure on it. Boy, that was the longest glide you did (laughs)!”


It’s moments like these that make Bradley Fons glad he and his family are helping to
spread the hybrid car message. But Fons sees an opportunity for members of his club to
go outside the group and become pro-hybrid activists:


“Hoping dealers get more hybrid cars, working for candidates that push alternative fuels,
sustainable energy, anything that can be done…because at this point in time it hasn’t been
coming from the government. They’ve done some, but our group doesn’t feel they’ve done
enough.”


Fons says politicians should listen to hybrid owners and hybrid clubs, because they’re
offering part of the solution to America’s oil addiction.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach

Related Links

Coaster Brook Trout an Endangered Species?

A group of private landowners recently asked for help from the federal government to stop what they say is a threat to a rare fish in the region. The GLRC’s Gretchen Millich reports:

Transcript

A group of private landowners recently asked for help from the federal
government to stop what they say is a threat to a rare fish in the region.
The GLRC’s Gretchen Millich reports:


The Huron Mountain Club, along with the Sierra Club, claims a
proposed mine in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula would pollute the only
remaining spawning grounds of the Coaster Brook Trout. They’ve asked
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to declare the Coaster Brook Trout
endangered.


Peter Dykema is a spokesperson for the Huron Mountain Club. He says
the fish was once abundant, but now spawns in only one stream.


“150 years ago, it was one of the most celebrated game fish in America.
It is one of the most beautiful animals you’d ever see and we believe it
will be possible to restore that fish, if not to its original abundance to
considerably greater abundance than we now have.”


Kennecott Eagle Minerals Company wants to dig for nickel and copper
underneath the Coaster Brook Trout’s spawning grounds. Dykema says
an endangered listing would require the company to make sure their
mining activities don’t harm the fish.


For GLRC, this is Gretchen Millich.

Related Links

Ford Motor Shifts Gears?

The head of the Ford Motor Company is petitioning President Bush to convene a summit on U.S. energy policy and the role automakers should play. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Quinn Klinefelter has more:

Transcript

The head of the Ford Motor Company is petitioning President Bush to convene a summit on U.S. energy policy and the role automakers should play. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Quinn Klinefelter has more:


For much of the past decade, the auto industry has successfully lobbied Congress and the Administration against raising fuel economy standards which, automakers say, would force them ro raise prices.


Now, however, Ford Motor Company Chairman Bill Ford Jr. is requesting that the President hold a summit to discuss improving fuel mileage and limiting America’s dependence on oil.


Ford recently announced that roughly half of the models it offers would be available in hybrid form or other more economical versions by 2010. Ford supported the Bush Administration’s Energy Policy Act, but company officials say the country is in the midst of an energy crisis and the President must do more to help consumers.


White House officials say the President is considering the proposal.


For the GLRC, I’m Quinn Kleinfelter.

Related Links

Tourists Drawn to A-Bomb Historic Sites

  • These three monks walked 1600 miles from San Francisco to the Trinity Test Site. They came "full circle" to extinguish a flame kindled by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima that had destroyed their Buddhist shrine. Keigaku Muchu is in the center. (Photo by Paul Adams)

Sixty years ago the first nuclear weapon was tested in the New Mexico
desert. A month later two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. It brought
World War II to a swift end. There are tourists who are interested in the
history of these weapons of mass destruction. They find the historical
sites of the atomic age are hard to get to and still controversial. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Ann Colihan reports:

Transcript

Sixty years ago, the first nuclear weapon was tested in the New Mexico desert, ushering in the dawn of the atomic age. A month later, two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. It brought World War II to a swift end. There are tourists who are interested in the history of weapons of mass destruction. They might find the historical sites of the atomic age are hard to get to and still controversial. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Ann Colihan reports:


(Sound of monks chanting)


Keigaku Muchu is a Buddhist monk. Since the atomic bombs were dropped in 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese monks have walked back and forth between these two cities with a lantern that was lit by a flame captured from the smoldering ruins of their shrine, which had been destroyed.


In Zen Buddhism, sixty years is considered a sacred cycle. So this summer, they took a new pilgrimage to the Trinity Site in New Mexico. That’s where the atomic bomb was first tested. They wanted to close the cycle from where the atomic destruction started to where it ended in Japan. Keigaku says his journey helped him join spiritually to countless supporters who never want atomic weapons used again.


“So if people in northern America want to come physically to the Trinity site, that’s great too. But if they can’t come, they can be connected. I can connect with them spiritually.”


The monks were not alone on their 1600-mile overland trek from San Francisco in searing desert heat to the Trinity site. This walk was organized by Matt Taylor, co-executive director of the Global Nuclear Disarmament Fund. He says the walk has multiple missions.


“The main thing we’re trying to achieve is bringing the atomic claim that has been kindled from the ashes of Hiroshima back to the trinity site where it began, closing a sixty-year cycle.”


The Trinity test site is located on the White Sands Missile Range. The military holds an open house at the Trinity test site just two days per year. Jim Eckles is a spokesperson for the missile range.


“We get two to three thousand folks during each open house, and they come from all backgrounds, all walks of life, from all over the country. You’ll see young families, young kids, students on a science project, old people who were alive at World War II, veterans who come up and say, ‘I was getting ready to go to the Pacific and this saved my life,’ motorcycle gang members – you name it they come.”


Eckles says the Department of Defense is not likely to stop using the missile range just to welcome more atomic tourists. But the military is preserving the Trinity site.


“It’s significant because it is the first atomic bomb explosion or test site. It did change our lives. The Cold War had a different tone to it because of nuclear weapons and them hanging over our heads. And of course, they are still out there so they still influence us.”


And world headlines about nuclear proliferation still make history a flash point.


At another historic atomic site, the job of preserving is a little more difficult. John Isaacson is a resource manager in the environmental stewardship division at Los Alamos National Laboratories. There, the Manhattan Project was the code name for the top-secret program to build the atomic bomb. Isaacson says we’re still trying to understand what to make of the beginning of the atomic age.


“This is history that is gone through a number of different sort of re-analyses in the past fifty years since the end of the war and it’s still very alive for many people, a very real history for many people”


But there’s a problem. Manhattan Project buildings at Los Alamos are deteriorating. Most are wooden and were thrown up hastily by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Although today, the public doesn’t get to see the site because it’s deep within a security zone, Isaacson says it should be preserved.


“I think the Manhattan Project is a real good example of this very controversial, unresolved historical process that, by preserving the buildings, it allows people to think about it, and it’s important to think about it.”


Isaacson wants us to keep the buildings in good repair for the day when they can be opened to the public. He’s getting some help. The Atomic Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C. is helping them and other Manhattan Project sites across the country raise eighty-eight million dollars to refurbish properties that are historically significant to the start of the atomic age.


For the GLRC, I’m Mary Ann Colihan.

Related Links

States Ready for Wolf Delisting?

  • Once hunted nearly to extinction, the gray wolf has recently rebounded under the protection of the Endangered Species Act. Now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to take the wolf off of the Endangered Species List and hand wolf management back to the states. (Photo by Katherine Glover)

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to remove the eastern population of the gray wolf from the Endangered Species List and turn over wolf management to state control. But not everyone thinks the states are up for it. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Katherine Glover has the story:

Transcript

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to remove the eastern population
of the gray wolf from the Endangered Species List and turn over wolf management
to state control. But not everyone thinks the states are up for it. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Katherine Glover has the story:


(sound of wolves howling)


The image of the wolf has always had a powerful effect on people. Wolves seem dangerous,
mysterious, romantic. They are a symbol of the untamed wilderness. Before Europeans came
to America, wolves roamed freely on every part of the continent. In 1630, the colony of
Massachussetts Bay started paying bounties to settlers for killing wolves. Over the next
300 years, wolf killing spread across the country, until all that was left was a few small
pockets of surviving wolf packs.


When the Endangered Species Act passed in 1973, the only wolves left to protect in the
Midwest were in Northern Minnesota. By some estimates, there were as few as 350 of them.


Today, Minnesota has a healthy wolf population of around 2400 animals, and smaller populations
are growing in Wisconsin and Michigan. Becaue of this success, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
has proposed removing the animals from the Endangered Species List. This would mean wolves would
no longer be federally protected – it would be up to the states.


(sound of gate opening)


Peggy Callagan works with captive wolves at the Wildlife Science Center in Minnesota. She’s the
Center’s co-founder and executive director. She and her staff research ways to minimize
conflicts between wolves and people. Callahan is looking forward to seeing the wolf taken off
the Endangered Species List.


“It’s a good thing for the Endangered Species Act, to take a wolf off or an eagle off or a
peregrine off when it has recovered. The act was not established to provide a permanent
hiding place. It was established to protect a species until such time that they could be
managed in a different way.”


Wisconsin and Michigan have wolves because young born in Minnesota have migrated east to start
their own packs. Callahan says how Minnesota manages its wolves will affect wolf numbers in the
Midwest. And she isn’t crazy about Minnesota’s current wolf management plan, which has different
rules for different parts of the state.


“Now, there’s a boundary; there’s a boundary called a wolf zone, and there’s a boundary that’s
called the ag zone. And nobody likes it. We went backward.”


In Northeastern Minnesota, where the majority of wolves are, landowners can only kill wolves
if they can demonstrate an immediate threat to pets or livestock. In the rest of the state, where
there is more agriculture and more people, the rules are more lenient. On their own property,
landowners can kill any wolf they feel is a danger, without having to prove anything to the state.


The Sierra Club is opposed to taking the wolf off the Endangered Species list, largely because
of Minnesota’s management plan. Ginny Yinling is the chair of the Wolf Task Force of the Sierra
Club in Minnesota.


“They’ve pretty much given carte blanche to landowners, or their agents, to kill wolves
pretty much at any time in the southern and western two thirds of the state; they don’t even
have to have an excuse, if a wolf’s on their property they can kill it. Instead of this being
what should have been a victory in terms of wolf recovery and the success of the Endangered
Species Act, instead we’re afraid it’s going to turn into something of a disaster.”


Yinling is also concerned with the protection of wolf habitat, such as den sites, rendezvous
sites, and migration corridors.


“The current management plan protects none of those areas; it leaves it entirely up to the
discretion of the land managers.”


But wildlife managers say these are not critical for a large wolf population
like Minnesota’s. Mike DonCarlos is the wildlife program manager for the Minnesota
Department of Natural Resources.


“As you look at the range of species that are threatened by habitat change, ironically the wolf
in Minnesota is not one of them. As long as there’s a prey base that continues, wolves should
do just fine. The key is mortality rates and availability of food.”


In Wisconsin and Michigan, where there are fewer wolves, state laws will continue to protect
wolf habitat. Peggy Callahan says she has faith that the wolves will be fine, even if the
Minnesota state plan is not perfect. But at the Sierra Club, Ginny Yinling says they have
plans to challenge wolf delisting in court.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Katherine Glover.

Related Links

The Foibles of Suburban Lawn Care

  • Although a well-manicured lawn offers certain benefits... not everyone thinks it's worth the effort. (Photo by Ed Herrmann)

One of the great rituals in suburban America is mowing the lawn. A manicured lawn seems to say that the house is well cared for, that it belongs to the neighborhood. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Ed Herrmann wonders whether this obsession for the perfect lawn is worth the effort:

Transcript

One of the great rituals in suburban America is mowing the lawn. A
manicured lawn seems to say that the house is well cared for, that it belongs
to the neighborhood. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Ed
Herrmann wonders whether this obsession with the perfect lawn is worth the
effort:


(sound of evening insects)


It’s a late summer evening and at last I can go outside and enjoy the
sounds of the neighborhood. There’s a little breeze, the air is cooler. The
chorus of insects is soothing, gentle but insistent, an ancient throbbing
resonance. Much better than during the day…


(roar of lawn machines)


Summer days in the suburbs are the time of assault, when people attack their
lawns with powerful weapons from the chemical and manufacturing
industries. Anyone who uses the words “quiet” and “suburbs” in the same
sentence has never been to a suburb, at least not in summer.


It takes a lot of noise to maintain a lawn. Besides the mower, you’ve got edgers, trimmers,
leaf blowers, weed whackers, core aerators, little tractors, big tractors, slitting
machines. I don’t know whatever happened to rakes and hand clippers. One
thing’s for sure. This quest for lawn perfection wouldn’t be possible without
the industrial revolution.


(machines stop)


So where did we get the idea that a house should be surrounded by a field of
uniform grass kept at the same height?


Well, with apologies to the Queen, I’m afraid we must blame the British. It
seems that, along with our language, our imperial ambitions and our
ambivalent morals, America also gets its notion of what a lawn should look
like from the English. Of course, the estates of the English aristocracy were
tended by a staff of gardeners. England also has a milder climate, and the
grass that looks so nice there doesn’t do as well in North America. In the
1930’s the USDA came up with a blend of imported grasses that would
tolerate our climate. Since these grasses are not native, they need help, and
that calls for fertilizers, pesticides and lots of extra water. Since normal
people can’t afford gardeners who trim by hand, that means lawn machines.
American industry to the rescue.


(mower starts up, fades under next sentence)


A quick Google tells me that today we have 40 million lawn mowers in use.
Each emits 11 times the pollution of a new car, and lawn mowers contribute
five percent of the nation’s air pollution. Plus more than 70 million pounds of
pesticides are used each year and over half of our residential water is used
for landscaping. Don’t you love those automatic sprinklers that come on in the
rain? Add to that all the time that people spend mowing and edging. Of
course the two billion dollar lawn care industry is thrilled about all this
enthusiasm, but I gotta ask, “Is it worth it?”


Call me old fashioned, but I actually prefer the looks of a meadow with mixed
wildflowers and grasses to the lawn that looks like a pool table. My own lawn
is somewhere between. It’s mowed, but it’s what you might call multicultural.


There are at least five different kinds of grass with different colors and
thicknesses, plus clover, dandelions, mushrooms, a few pinecones, and a
rabbit hole or two. There’s also some kind of nasty weed with thorns, but even
that has nice purple flowers if it gets big enough.


Clover, by the way, used to be added to grass seed because it adds nitrogen to
the soil. Now we just buy a bag of nitrogen fertilizer, so who needs clover?
And what’s wrong with
dandelions? You can eat them, some people even make wine out of them,
they have happy yellow flowers; yet to most people they indicate your yard is
out of control. So I’m down on my hands and knees pulling dandelions. I’m
not sure why, but I hope it keeps the neighbors happy.


One thing I won’t give in to, though, is the chemical spraying trucks, painted
green of course, that roll through the neighborhood.


I can only hold my breath. (sound of trucks and mowers) Try not to listen. And
wait for the evening. (evening insects)


(air conditioner starts up)


Although, with all these air conditioners, even the night’s not too quiet.


But that’s another story.


Host tag: “Ed Herrmann is an outdoor enthusiast living in the
suburbs of Detroit.”

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