A peak into Some Like it Hawk and The Pluto Files

 Happy Spring - I hope you are getting less snow than we are!

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader.

This week I am reading Some Like it Hawk by Donna Andrews (the 14th book in the Meg Langslow series). These books are cozy mysteries with more emphasis on characters and silly situations than deep, serious mysteries, but they are fun and relaxing to read. Here are the opening lines ...

"Welcome to the town that mortgaged its own jail!" 
The amplified voice blaring over the nearby tour bus loudspeaker startled me so much I almost smashed my own thumb. 


And from The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet by Neil deGrasse Tyson we have ...

At about four in the afternoon on February 18, 1930, 24-year old Clyde W. Tombaugh , a farm boy from Illinois, discovered on [sic] the sky what would shortly be named for the Roman god of the underworld. Tombaugh had been hired by Arizona's Lowell Observatory to search for the mysterious and distant Planet X.

 (I have to confess that first sentence put me off rather badly, but I enjoyed what I was reading up to the point my son ran away with the book.) 

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For The Friday 56 hosted at Freda's Voice here is something from page 56 of Some Like it Hawk ...

"Meg, what's going on out there?" he asked. The connection was faint and fragmented. 
"Out there? Are you still in the cellar?" 
Randell glanced up.
"Is that Phinny?"
"No," I said. "It's my brother, Rob." 
"We heard something out there," Rob said. The signal was weak and I turned on the speaker to hear better. "Sounded like fireworks or gunshots. Phinny was worried that the guards were trying to storm the barrier." 

And from page 56 of The Pluto Files we have ... 

Clyde Tombaugh was still alive in the early 1990s. He saw the Kuiper belt omens, but fought them tooth and nail with cane in hand, using his cane not only as a walking aid but also as punctuation for the aggressive arguments he would make. Tombaugh had the most to lose if Pluto were classified as anything other than a full, red-blooded planet.

Source: http://www.gocomics.com/mattdavies/2006/08/18#.UyuQOF6SAhk

 

Tonawanda Coke Sentencing !

Sentencing in the Tonawanda Coke case was today.

Chief U.S. District Justice William Skretny ordered Tonawanda Coke to pay a fine of $12.5 million over 5 years (i.e. $2.5 million in annual installments) and issued a sentence of 5 years probation. Based on the violations, as Tonawanda Coke was found guilty on 14 of the 19 counts levied, the company was facing fines up to $290 million dollars as tallied by the judge. According the the Buffalo News 'Chief U.S. District Judge William M. Skretny said he sought a “reasonable” penalty that proved more than a “mere slap on the proverbial wrist.”'
The government sought $57 million, with most it, about $44 million, classified as a criminal fine. I wonder what the judges definition of a slap on the wrist is ?? 

The plant will also be required to fund two community service projects not to exceed $12.2 million: an epidemiological study and a soil testing project proposed by Jackie James Creedon. The epidemiological study will be a 10-year study on the health effects that the coke oven emissions have had on the nearby Tonawanda and Grand Island communities that will be conducted by researchers at the University at Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions. The soil sampling study will be done by the community.

Earlier this week, Skretny rejected a request that residents of Grand Island and the Town of Tonawanda be allowed to seek restitution as part of today’s sentencing of the company. So basically the people who have been harmed are not really getting much of anything out of this. 

The judge also sentenced Tonawanda Coke's environmental manager, Mark Kamholz, to one year and one day in jail along with a $20,000 fine and 100 hours of community service. He was found guilty of 15 criminal charges and had been facing up to 75 years in prison.

So, on the whole - lame does not even begin to cover it. Disgusting isn't close either. I am just aghast - this is appalling.

Rainbows, cuteness and random thoughts

Rainbow! We saw this in the sky over my daughter's school this morning as I was dropping her off. It was beautiful.

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Random cuteness ...

Last night at dinner my son made a little sketch of a drink in a coconut - it had something to do with what he was talking to his father about - then the word lime was said and next thing I know - my daughter was sitting there singing ...

"... you put the slime in the coconut, you put the slime in the coconut she drank them all down, you put the slime in the coconut she drink them all down ... Doctor!"

Well - now we know why they needed the doctor :) 

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For a cold war kid - the stuff going on in the Ukraine is very unnerving. 

Wondrous Words Wednesday 7

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Kathy at the Bermuda Onion where you "can share new words that you’ve encountered or spotlight words you love. Feel free to get creative!"

Last week was test writing - this week is midterm grading, so I am reading a silly book this week - Some Like it Hawk by Donna Andrews (the 14th book in the Meg Langslow series).  And in this book I found the word ... 

"Save the mime, apple pie, and motherhood speech for the voters," I said. "What Ms. Jones doesn't mention is that in addition to being a mime, she's also an ecdysiast."

Gypsy Rose Lee - because that
is the closest I am coming to
illustrating this word.

ec·dys·i·ast
noun \ek-ˈdi-zē-ˌast, -zē-əst\

1:  stripteaser
2: An erotic dancer who removes their clothes as a form of entertainment; a stripper.

Origin of ECDYSIAST

Greek ekdysīs

First Known Use: 1940
Coined by H. L. Mencken from ecdysis (on the model of enthusiast etc.).

First - what a word to randomly be looking up on the internet when you are tired.  Second - a mime stripper ...  the mind reels!

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From Field Notes from A Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert I ran into

"from Siberia to the Austrian Alps to the Great Barrier Reef to the South African fynbos -" 

I came to a screeching halt at fynbos ...so from Wikipedia ...

"Fynbos (/ˈfeɪnbɒs/; Afrikaans pronunciation: [ˈfəinbɒs]) is the natural shrubland or heathland vegetation occurring in a small belt of the Western Cape of South Africa, mainly in winter rainfall coastal and mountainous areas with a Mediterranean climate. The Fynbos ecoregion is within the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub biome. In fields related to biogeography, fynbos is known for its exceptional degree of biodiversity and endemism (the ecological state of a species being unique to a defined geographic location)."

 Oh My God - just Google the images for fynbos - it is gorgeous !

Source: http://www.bushmanskloof.co.za/activities/nature-and-wildlife/the-world-of-fynbos

Updates on Elk River WV and NC Duke Energy sites

Elk River Spill in West Virginia

On March 12, 2014, Freedom Industries submitted the first phase of their Tank Decommission Plan for its Charleston facility, site of the Jan. 9 chemical spill into the Elk River. The plan was approved by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and details the procedures to be implemented in order to begin removal of the above ground storage tanks at the site. Most of the liquid has already been removed from the tanks, with the exception of a product called tank heel, which is the sludgy stuff left at the bottom of storage tanks and which can't be pumped out using normal procedures.

According to the plan, contractors will start by removing the storage tanks on the north end of the property, near the faulty tank (No. 396) that leaked. Workers have also cut a hole in tank No. 396 to remove the tank heel. The floor of the faulty tank will be taken for examination by the Chemical Safety Board.

Illegal Discharge from Duke Energy Sites? 

According to the New York Times, recent aerial photographs of two Duke Energy coal ash ponds at the head of Cape Fear River show portable pumps and hoses that "appear to be siphoning water into a canal leading to the river."  Inspectors from the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources noticed the pumping while on a site visit last week. A Duke Energy spokesperson said that the pumping was "routine maintenance" allowable under the sites' permits, but if the discharge was untreated wastewater, that would be a violation. The two Cape Fear sites, located near Moncure, NC, have permits for vertical pipes that drain water from the top of the ponds when precipitation and runoff cause water levels to rise. The idea is that the water on the surface should be relatively clean, because the toxic materials sink to the bottom of the ash ponds. Pumping out the deeper water risks releasing contaminants. State regulators are investigating.

An image provided by the Waterkeeper Alliance which shows a portable pump siphoning water from a coals ash pond owned by Duke Energy into a discharge canal leading to the Cape Fear River.