Things going on around here.

It was cool yesterday afternoon, I got out and mowed the yard before dinner.  Really nice out.  Yellow leaves from 5 100ft+ cottonwoods near the house mulched nicely under the old mower, a few red leaves out front from a neighbors maple.  My maple has not changed yet, still green as are some of the mulberries, hackberries.  The redbuds are about half green leaves and half yellow with some falling.  The elms and dogwoods still green, the walnuts turned yellow long ago and are almost bare.  The grass is dry so I turned the well on this morning and the fescue looks greener already, sprinklers still running and the wind came up to 22mph blowing water all over the yard, a few late robins are running through the mist.

So far we haven't had a frost, it's really late in the year to be frost free here.  I need to put some oil on my wooden deck floor, I did the rails already.  I don't want to do it when it's under 50°f, the oil won't soak in good enough, I don't want it drying laying on the surface.  It's suppose to get up into the 50's for a couple hours but I think I'll wait for a day when it will get warmer and stay up for several hours.

I am struggling with my latest sculpture, a full sized realistic and accurate bust of Hermann Hesse, 17" tall, author of Steppenwolf, Sidhartha, Glass Bead Game, If the War Goes On. In Sidhartha a young man leaves on a life long journey seeking spirituality and self and in the end he finds it, one of my favorite books, set in the time of the Buddha, it's one of my favorite books and with his other books was widely read in the 1960's.   Hermann fled Germany with his Jewish wife and was given citizenship in Switzerland just before the war.  He has a wrinkled forehead that has given me fits.  I have put the wrinkles on and scraped them off 5 times.  Plus I made one of the best mouths of all time, it looked like it could talk, only to see later it was too far forward compared to his nose and chin, my tutor cut it off, I couldn't do it, the new mouth is in the right place now, it's well done, but it doesn't have that look, it's not as good, and messing with it is dangerous, I don't want to do the 5 times forehead wrinkles routine on the mans lips.

The wife is lurking around with projects in mind, something is about to happen I can feel it.

Robertson of 700 club tells their listeners invest in oil stocks, it's biblical

A few days ago I found an article about the life of fracked oil and gas wells.  Thousands of the 1.1 million active wells in the US are fracked, leading to the industry boasting of energy independence.  Don't get your hopes up that fossil fuel can do that.  Fracked wells have a terrible habit of dying young.  Within 2 years the (national) average well production falls about 50%, within another couple of years the output becomes uneconomical which means re-frack or cap.  At this rate the industry needs to replace over 1/4 the fracked wells a year to maintain current output.  The payback may fall short over time at this rate if oil prices fall further, and natural gas prices don't rise faster.  Seeing your investment wiped out due to charlatans advice and greed, well that's biblical.

Your fathers oil wells produced for at least 5 years, most lasted decades with a few approaching a century.  Why the change?  In dad's day, they were going after the easy to recover oil and gas, now we are into the expensive hard to get at era.  We need to leave it lay, nature put it where it wouldn't hurt us, and gave us wind and sunshine.  Next time you see an add about energy independence, watch to see how much they talk about renewables, more efficient lighting and transport, energy stingy standards for homes and appliances, energy efficient industrial equipment, - these things will get us to energy independence quicker than any other method.

Gas prices will go back up, forever up.

Oil prices have fallen, from $100 a barrel to $80.  Your price at the pump is coming down too.
Which leads me to point out that much of the American public will always act to ensure future damage to their finances are just a matter of time.
Consumers: As soon as gas prices went down, low mileage SUV's, pickups, and the general mix of poor energy effiecent cars jump in sales.
Oil price history:  Prices always go up.  They come down for a few months, some dips last 16 months, but the trend is up, forever up.
Oil producer strategy: Saudi Arabia and other big producers want to put a halt to fracking and oil sands operations all over the world. Adding to the supply coming from those new sources combined with lower demand due to so many low mileage cars being sold the last 5 years, has brought on lower prices.  In the past Saudi and others would cut production at this point to hold up prices.  This time they want it to fall.  Prices at $80 a barrel cools interest in those hard to recover resources such as oil shale, oil sands, fracking.  The industry says $77 is the point some operations will shut down.  If they can get it lower or hold it for months the drilling rigs will come out of the fields, some drillers will go out of business.  When they cut production prices will go back up but it will take years for drillers to return in great numbers to the field.
Sage advice: Buy the highest mileage vehicle you can, prices will go back up at the first international crisis or when big oil thinks they need the money.  I have an 08 Camry hybrid, get 39mpg, it paid for it's higher price (over the standard model) several years ago, and now that prices are low, wow, I really have low fuel bills.

They know they will lose the fossil fuel fight, but when, at what cost to the climate?

 Thats me helping people write letters on an i-pad to their state representatives to support wind and solar energy.  In a few days at the fair we got about 2,000, more than double last year.  A year ago we had several people come in to fuss about wind and solar, this year only 2 or 3, everyone else wants it and wants the legislature to stop trying to make it harder to build a clean energy future.

Below is what Shell Oil projects for all energy sources in 86 years.  Look at that, oil 10%, coal 3.9%.  I met a man who advises oil execs on global warming, he is not there to pump warm air up their skirts, they hire him to explain the latest actual science. He said the only thing they ever ask is not if it's real, but when will they be made to stop.  What we have to do is make them stop sooner not later, transition to a new economy, slow the disruption coming from heat, storms, reduced food production.  This is a Shell made chart.

Ban flights out of Texas, protect us from Ebola

GOP and some Dems want flights from Africa banned to save us from Ebola.  Only one guy came in so far that was unknown to have it.  But, they are tracking lots of people exposed who came out of Texas.  Fuck Rick Perry, stop flights out of Texas.

I think the reaction is a bit much folks.  So far 1 death in the US from Ebola and oh my gosh it's gonna kill us and it's that black Presidents fault.  Really, your worried about that.  50k to 60k a year die in US hospitals from infections caught in the frigg'n hospital, 30k a year die from getting the wrong meds or the wrong dose of the right meds.  Then the flu kills 10k to 40k a year, heart disease 600k, obesity/diabetes almost that.  Almost all of these could be prevented.  Ebola is nothing.  We should be asking hospitals to clean up, why the hell did my fater-in-law end up with 2 near deadly infections from a short hospital stay?  No wonder people get Ebola, the places are truly dirty.

"Pope Francis the liberal" beaten back by conservatives.

Gays will not be welcomed to the church.  Neither will divorced people or people living together yet unmarried.  The bishops rebelled, last week it looked like they would show some compassion, nope, scorn and bile instead.

Bobby Kennedy's speech, an amazing forward thinker

Speaking of stuff, like the quality of our political debates as Bobby mentioned. Gregg Orman the independent currently leading 73 yr old live long senator (R) Roberts. Orman has spent 3 million of his own money on the race so far, yet is outspent so far by 3 or 4 to 1 by the Republicans. Kansas is only 3 million total and very few vote here. By the time this is over I bet the cost per vote will be around a thousand. Orman is everything the Republicans stand for, rich, really nice guy, owns several businesses, started small, knows powerful people all over, yet they are attacking him for being all of these things. He was a republican at one time, so there you have it, traitor.