I was lucky enough to take a two week vacation earlier this summer (I KNOW!! — two weeks seemed so luxurious!), and for this particular trip, my husband and I chose to tour around the UK and Ireland. I loved all of the places we visited, but my favorite had to be Scotland. The people were friendly and spirited, the landscape was beautiful, and much fun was had by all. I was just looking through our trip pictures, and here are a few of my favorite Scotland pictures (yes…I love nature photography, can you tell?).

If you haven’t been to Scotland yet (especially the Scottish Highlands), please get yourself there posthaste. It truly is an amazing place. I’m fairly well-traveled, and I’ve seen many beautiful things around the world, but the Highlands area ranks right up there at the top of the list. My pictures can’t even begin to do it justice. What are you waiting for? Go!

Every summer, the Virginia Beach area becomes “Land of the Roof Racks,” as scores of tourists (mainly from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) make their way down to our area to cause much traffic. I don’t begrudge these people their vacations, and indeed, they contribute money to our local economy with their purchasing power (which is nice), but I do begrudge them their roof racks. The picture at right is typical…a large minivan or SUV with extra storage on the roof. Really, how much crap do you need to bring on vacation with you? In fact, there were only TWO people in the SUV pictured, which means that the entire backseat and trunk storage area were NOT ENOUGH to accommodate the vacation needs of TWO people. The sad thing is that this is no anomaly; I rarely see smaller out-of-town cars with roof racks, but people with giant SUVs seem to require them.

How my three-person family survived traveling to our 1980’s beach vacations with no roof rack and only the trunk space of a tiny 1982 Toyota Tercel hatchback, I’ll never know.

In the bathroom at work this week, I noticed that someone had taped this sign to the inside of the stall door…

Judging by the clip art on the sign, apparently they don’t want you to flush toothpaste down the toilet either.

I moved to the Hampton Roads area several years ago at the beginning of July, and one of the first things I noticed when I arrived was the proliferation of these beautiful crepe myrtle trees. They are everywhere here, and, like clockwork, they bloom in late June/early July each year. The blooms on these trees come in many colors (light pink, purple, white), but the dark pink pictured on the left is my very favorite color of all. I like to complain about this area sometimes…the traffic, the prevailing politics of the area that are different from my own, the lack of “big city” feel and events, but I can’t complain about the crepe myrtles. I just love them, and I feel a sort of nostalgic happiness each year around this time when they bloom. So, yay for crepe myrtles…one of the very best features of the Virginia Beach/Norfolk area!

As an article from today’s New York Times indicates, the lingering effects of a massive gas leak back in 1984 continue to haunt the people of Bhopal, India. The Bhopal accident, although tragic, is also instructive, as it raises incredibly important questions environmental justice issues that are still timely given globalization trends and the proliferation of multinational corporations into developing states around the world.

If you read the article and are interested in learning more about the gas leak and its effects on Bhopal, the following video is a worthwhile way to spend about 16 minutes. You should know that an NGO, the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, created this video, thus the filmmakers have an agenda. Certainly, then, in the interest of fairness, you should check out out Union Carbide/Dow Chemical’s perspective on the Bhopal tragedy, and then make up your own mind regarding where the blame lies in this situation.

Several questions come to mind after watching the video –

–Who was ultimately responsible for the gas leak? Was Union Carbide responsible because they didn’t keep the plant up to safety standards, or was the Indian government responsible because it didn’t hold regular inspections of the plant to make sure that safety was a primary issue?

–If you believe, as many people claim, that Union Carbide had different safety standards for its American and Indian plants, is it ethical for Union Carbide (or for any company with similar plants in different countries) to hold the plants to different safety standards?

–Does the fact that the Bhopal plant was built in an impoverished area mean that it was more important for Union Carbide to provide jobs to the people of Bhopal than to focus on costly safety standards that may force some of those jobs to be cut?

–Did the survivors receive fair compensation? What is the value of a human life? How do you compensate someone for future medical problems or future environmental hazards that may occur as the result of a chemical leak twenty years ago?

These are all incredibly difficult questions to answer, but the thousands/millions/billions of people that have the potential to be affected by similar situations require us to be thoughtful and measured in our response to those questions.

This is the bunny that lives below a tree next to our house. He usually runs away whenever I spot him, but today he must have been in a good mood, and he consented to pose for this picture (before running away, of course).

I love bunnies…I can’t help it — maybe it’s a vestige from my childhood? When I was about eight years old, I received a bunny as a birthday gift. I named the bunny “Lady” (as I had named my three previous hamsters), and was crushed when Lady died after a week. The pet store said that Lady (and her brethren) had apparently been infected with some sort of bunny illness, so they gave us a free replacement bunny, whom I promptly named Lady. Lady the Second lasted only six months before succumbing to that great rabbit hole in the sky. The sadness I experienced due to the short bunny life span (at least under the care of myself as an eight year old) prompted me to never own a rabbit again, so I enjoy vicariously owning this bunny in our yard, and at least I know that if he/she dies, it probably won’t be my fault this time.

As those who live in the Norfolk/Virginia Beach region know, there is no shortage of water in this area. Everywhere you look, rivers, canals, and lakes abound. Of course, along with the aesthetic benefits of water’s beauty comes the modern drawback — traffic stops generated by tunnels and bridges. I took the picture below the other day as I was stopped at the Monitor-Merrimac Tunnel while they conducted some emergency road maintenance.
I was lucky with this tunnel stop, as it was one of the “good” traffic stops — I only waited about ten minutes here before traffic started moving again. If there is a major accident in the tunnel, which happens several times a week (sometimes, several times a day), you can wait for hours or even be rerouted to another tunnel, which is about 45 minutes out of your way (IF you don’t run into any other traffic on the way there). Making matters even worse, the “powers that be” only make the rerouting decision after you’ve been sitting at the entrance to your original tunnel at least an hour — which can make you almost two hours late for work. I used to take the Monitor-Merrimac Tunnel every day as part of my regular commute, and I was stuck at one of these major traffic tie-ups about once a month. So, it’s not something that affects you every day, but when it happens, it’s monumentally frustrating.

The drawbridges in the area provide a more constant and daily (or hourly) source of exasperation. Unfortunately, at certain of this area’s many drawbridges (Steel Bridge, I’m looking at you!), you can wait upwards of thirty/forty minutes at a bridge opening before traffic starts moving again. Then, once you can actually move your car, you’d better hurry because the bridge is likely to open again in another 15 minutes. It’s beyond frustrating, and although I love the beauty of the natural environment here, you pay a heavy price for it in terms of every day traffic.

This story in yesterday’s New York Times details the on-going refusal of the White House to endorse, or in this case, even acknowledge, meaningful climate change policy. Honestly, I have no words here…this story is so ridiculous, it defies common sense and logic.

Fortunately, Jon Stewart and the Daily Show make up for my loss of words on this subject.

As you can imagine, with two dogs and a cat, the carpet in my house is often covered in hair. It got to the point where I found it really disgusting and unmanageable, so I finally decided to invest in a Roomba. Almost four hundred dollars seems like a lot to pay for a vacuum (and it is!), especially when you aren’t sure whether this tiny round vacuum will be able to keep up with the volume of pet hair on your floor. I am pleased to report, however, that Roomba has been worth every dollar, and I now I can’t live without one. Every night, I turn Roomba on, and every morning I awaken to a nice clean carpet. Roomba, I love you!

And, as an added bonus — swirly Roomba vacuum patterns on the floor!!