Tuesday, September 15, 2026

Book Reading List 2026

Book Reading List 2026

Monday, September 14, 2026

Book Review - The Nature of Desert Nature: Meditations on the Nature of Deserts

The Nature of Desert Nature
Title: 
The Nature of Desert Nature: Meditations on the Nature of Deserts
Author: Gary Paul Nabhan
My Rating: πŸ‘πŸ‘πŸ‘πŸ‘
My Review: 
Gary Paul Nabhan is an amazing author and great ambassador for the desert. I enjoyed how this book combines science and poetry in describing the nature of deserts. Growing up in Southern California gave me lots of opportunities to explore and enjoy different deserts including Mojave, Sonoran and Great Basin deserts. This book awakened many fond memories of those times and has given me some new perspectives on the nature of desert nature.
      
Description (Audible): In this refreshing collection, one of our best writers on desert places, Gary Paul Nabhan, challenges traditional notions of the desert. Beautiful, reflective, and at times humorous, Nabhan's extended essay also called "The Nature of Desert Nature" reveals the complexity of what a desert is and can be. He passionately writes about what it is like to visit a desert and what living in a desert looks like when viewed through a new frame, turning age-old notions of the desert on their heads.

Nabhan invites a prism of voices—friends, colleagues, and advisors from his more than four decades of study of deserts—to bring their own perspectives. Scientists, artists, desert contemplatives, poets, and writers bring the desert into view and investigate why these places compel us to walk through their sands and beneath their cacti and acacia. We observe the spines and spears, stings and songs of the desert anew. Unexpected. Surprising. Enchanting. Like the desert itself, each essay offers renewed vocabulary and thoughtful perceptions.

The desert inspires wonder. Attending to history, culture, science, and spirit, The Nature of Desert Nature celebrates the bounty and the significance of desert places.

 


 

Friday, September 11, 2026

Rally - Banners Over I-5 September 11, 2026

Friday September 11, 2026 - Vancouver, WA - Banners Over I-5 Rally on the Evergreen bridge over I-5 Freeway. Wake up America! If you’re not outraged with what’s happening, you’re not paying attention! Vote them out! In your guts you know he’s nuts!
SOUND ON🎧

Saturday, September 5, 2026

Book Review - Extinctions: How Life Survives, Adapts and Evolves

Extinctions: How Life Survives, Adapts and Evolves
Title:
Extinctions: How Life Survives, Adapts and Evolves
Author: Michael J. Benton
My Rating: πŸ‘πŸ‘πŸ‘πŸ‘πŸ‘
My Review: I loved this book. 
My main reason for reading it was to better understand how life has evolved on Earth. Scientists have determined Earth has experienced at least five major mass extinctions - 
  1. End-Ordovician (444 million years ago) - Caused by rapid global cooling and glaciation, which caused sea levels to drop drastically and destroyed shallow marine habitats, followed by quick warming and oxygen loss.
  2. Late Devonian (360 million years ago) - Caused by massive ocean anoxia (oxygen depletion) and nutrient overloads (eutrophication), partly linked to early land plants weathering soil and altering atmospheric carbon dioxide
  3. End-Permian / "The Great Dying" (250 million years ago) - Triggered by colossal flood basalt volcanic eruptions (the Siberian Traps) that released massive greenhouse gases, causing extreme global warming, ocean acidification, and sulfidic, oxygen-starved oceans. This was the worst event, wiping out 96% of species.
  4. End-Triassic (200 million years ago) - Caused by intense volcanic activity tied to the breakup of Pangea, which rapidly pumped carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and drove severe climate change and ocean acidification
  5. End-Cretaceous (66 million years ago) - Caused by a huge asteroid impact resulting in the Chicxulub crater in modern-day Mexico, which triggered a prolonged "impact winter," blocking sunlight, halting photosynthesis, and collapsing global food chains. The fifth extinction wiped out about 80 percent of all species, including the dinosaurs.
While extinction events are not common, it appears they are a natural part of how life evolved on Earth. Many scientists believe that Earth is now experiencing a human caused "sixth extinction" event (Holocene or Anthropocene extinction) due to habitat destruction, climate change, pollution and over exploitation of natural resources. On a geologic time scale, humans are just a blip and at the rate we're going, I truly believe humans could end up going extinct just like the billions of other species before us. 

Description (Audible): Cutting-edge techniques across biology, chemistry, physics, and geology have transformed our understanding of the deep past, including the discovery of a previously unknown mass extinction. This compelling evidence, revealing a series of environmental crises resulting in the near collapse of life on Earth, illuminates our current dilemmas in exquisite detail.

Beginning with the oldest, Professor Michael J. Benton takes us through the "big five" die outs: the Late Ordovician, which set the evolution of the first animals on an entirely new course; the Late Devonian, apparently brought on by global warming; the cataclysmic End-Permian, also known as the Great Dying, which wiped out over 90 percent of all life on Earth; the newly discovered Carnian Pluvial Event; and the End-Cretaceous asteroid. He examines how global warming, acid rain, ocean acidification, erupting volcanoes, and meteorite impact have affected conditions on Earth, and how life survived, adapted, and evolved.

In Extinctions, listeners will learn about revolutionary new tools used to uncover ancient extinction events and processes in forensic detail, and how scientists are improving our understanding of the deep past. New research allows us to link long-ago upheavals to crises in our current age, the Anthropocene, with important consequences for us all.

Friday, September 4, 2026

Rally - Banners Over I-5 September 4, 2026

September 4, 2026 - Vancouver, WA - Banners Over I-5 Rally on the Evergreen bridge over I-5 Freeway. Wake up America! If you’re not outraged with what’s happening, you’re not paying attention! Vote them out!

SOUND ON🎧