{"id":1241,"date":"2011-11-04T14:54:57","date_gmt":"2011-11-04T14:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoe.wordpress.com\/?p=1241"},"modified":"2011-11-04T14:54:57","modified_gmt":"2011-11-04T14:54:57","slug":"urban-forestry-duck-weed-a-tractor-tire-flannel-shirts-and-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=1241","title":{"rendered":"urban forestry, duck weed, a tractor tire, flannel shirts and freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two days ago the AP carried a story saying the UN inter-governmental panel of scientists not only continue with their assertion that global warming is real, but it’s apparently accelerating rapidly.\u00a0 However, the panel does note there is still time (but not much) to curb it.\u00a0 With this in mind, I attended the Northwest Ohio Urban Forestry Seminar at Bluffton University yesterday.\u00a0 You see, trees absorb carbon dioxide.\u00a0 So if we start planting a bunch of trees all over (in tandem with sacrificing, going to much more green energy, etc.), we’ll have a leg up on this global warming thing.\u00a0 Nebraska City, Nebraska (home of “Arbor Day”), did.\u00a0 On a campaign stop there several years ago, we learned this town of 7,000 people was planting 10,000 trees.\u00a0 While we were in Rawlins, Wyoming,\u00a0for another\u00a0campaign stop, a U.S. Forestry person there told me that while we get so up in arms about the rapidly depleting Brazilian rain forests — we clear cut almost all (96%) of America!\u00a0 And it’s time we start looking\u00a0in our own backyard, and, well,\u00a0planting some more trees in it…\u00a0 After the seminar, I took our kids to basketball practice at the Harrod, Ohio (pop. 467), Multi-Purpose Center.\u00a0 And as luck would have it, the Harrod Village Council was meeting last night just up the hall from the gym.\u00a0 I stopped in.\u00a0 While most of the nation was riveted on the mounting tension between Israel and Iran yesterday, the Harrod Village Council people discussed the best way to get some “duck weed” off a local farm pond.\u00a0 And then there was the issue of a tractor tire in a ditch by the fertilizer plant.\u00a0 The village administrator said:\u00a0 “If the water plugs up in a big storm, there could be real trouble out there.”\u00a0 (And\u00a0you think this nuclear threat in Iran is a nuisance…)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Note:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Levity aside…\u00a0\u00a0My wife Liz was just showing me yesterday that iconic Norman Rockwell painting of a man in a worn leather coat and flannel shirt standing to address what seems like a small village council meeting in America somewhere.\u00a0 The picture has\u00a0“grassroots democracy” written all over it.\u00a0 And these guys at the\u00a0Village Council meeting in Harrod last night, dressed in jeans, work boots, flannel shirts…, were living this small town democracy thing out with all the gravity it should be lived out with —\u00a0as were those in the audience.\u00a0 For instance, three women from the Harrod Historical Society were there to lobby that the town park lights not be turned off as a cost cutting measure.\u00a0 Those lights shine down on, not only grass and park benches, but a 1905 Shay Steam Engine (which was designed here) and a Veterans Display that features\u00a0a full-size Army green tank, a full-size Army green helicopter, and the words on a plaque nearby that say, in essence,\u00a0that people gave their lives\u00a0so that the\u00a0democratic process\u00a0that was being played out in this small village council room up the street\u00a0last night — could go on.\u00a0 Note 2:\u00a0<\/strong> As the highly-charged, geopolitical\u00a0international chess game\u00a0goes on around a “nuclear Iran,” like with the rain forest dynamic, it’s time the U.S. look squarely in it’s own backyard — or at least in it’s ‘backyard’ out West.\u00a0 That is, I once posed to a reporter from ABC News<\/em> in Toledo, Ohio:\u00a0 “What if we let the weapons inspectors into Montana?\u00a0 What would they find?”\u00a0 Hint:<\/strong>\u00a0 Some 2,000 nuclear missiles aimed all over the world, including at Iran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two days ago the AP carried a story saying the UN inter-governmental panel of scientists not only continue with their assertion that global warming is real, but it’s apparently accelerating rapidly.\u00a0 However, the panel does note there is still time …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}