Linkmeister

Heat, volcanos, and fauna

If you live in the Northeast or Midwest, you may already know this. The Federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides cash to help the poor pay for heating oil, has had its budget reduced by $300M. On January 11, 2002, President Bush signed the FY 2002 Labor/HHS/ED appropriations bill. It provided $1.7 billion in regular funding for LIHEAP. The Administration's budget request for LIHEAP remains at $1.4 billion in regular LIHEAP block grants for FY 2003. I don't know whether this is general cost-cutting, a decision that the poor should eat or stay warm but not both, an attempt to pay for higher defense spending, or a reversal of the Administration's views about global warming trends (hey, if the earth is getting warmer, we don't have to pay as much for heating oil, right?). Whatever it is, it's expected to have terrible effects on many of its recipients, according to ABC's World News Tonight last evening. Addendum: the Fed's website is about as non-informative as any governmental site I've ever seen.

Here's an Op/Ed from our local paper which nearly perfectly expresses my view of the Bush Administration in fancier language than I normally use, but the author's a law professor, so that's to be expected.

220 miles southeast of me, there's a rather spectacular event continuing; it's been going on for 20 years now. I refer to the eruption of Kilauea, of course. It's covered land (including a lot we used to own), roads, and archaeological sites, and it shows no sign of abating. I was last over there about 12 years ago, and it's an amazing thing to see. Molten rock flowing into the ocean creates huge steam clouds, kills fish, and gives one a sense of how impervious nature is to what humans try to accomplish.

Inside: Invasion of rodents and avians!

We had what Mom termed a "very zoological" afternoon yesterday. It began with my filling the bird feeder, which I'd been neglecting for a week or so. This prompted a flurry of activity on the part of several cardinals and many Java Sparrows. A couple of the cardinals apparently got disoriented, and within seconds of one another they crashed into our ground-to-ceiling windows. One of them seemed to hit head-on, for he/she landed on its feet on the ground and stood there for about ten minutes, nearly unmoving. This behavior fascinated the bird-dog Tigger; she stood in the classic pointer position at the door, staring unblinkingly until the bird managed to recover its senses and woozily walk (not fly) away. Meanwhile, a small mouse or rat discovered the feeder and kept making hit-and-run forays into its trough to nibble. Exciting stuff, huh?

Posted by Linkmeister at January 13, 2003 10:56 AM