Yesterday Steve, Mary and I participated in Buffalo's Science March along with about 2000 other scientists, environmentalists, progressives and those who believe in evidence based public policy. Marches were held in over 600 cities and communities all over the world. In Washington, DC, more people marched yesterday than attended the inauguration. What a statement! However, the message was lost on DT and his party.
At one town hall this past week, a Republican congressman asked what evidence they could present that would convince him of the threat of global climate change. He said nothing they could present would change his mind because that was all liberal science. Contrast that to Congressman Higgins from Buffalo who spoke at the rally about how the EPA had resurrected the Buffalo River and the Great Lakes. The EPA, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act were signed by Nixon! What happened to the Republicans since then?
Tomorrow I will again call Tom Reed's office and talk about the funding for the Great Lakes preservation. The proposed budget eliminates 97% of the funding of in order to build a stupid border wall and increase military spending. Reed will never vote to oppose DT, but that can't stop us from trying to sway him. He's voted 100% of the time with DT.
Science has been my nemesis this week. Of course, I have used up the memory on my laptop with all my photos. Evan helped me today because I was panicking about getting photos from Saturday's one day hike to send in with the manuscript. He compressed the photo files from 344 GB to 178 GB. But, after four hours only 1 GB had been uploaded. At this rate, it will take another 29 days! It's because of Netsync's slow processing. I'm so close to being finished with the book that the computer issues are very frustrating.
Most of this year's campers have submitted their photo release forms so my plan is to use this weekend's photos of the whole group and the pyramids that kids build in the afternoon as illustrations. It's been easier to get their releases than past campers simply because I have access to them. And they are really excited about being included in the book.
This week I finished another round of editing after my friend Carol B made a few suggestions on the consistency of the layout, spacing and indentations. She used to edit scientific journals so it's her specialty. I also broke up the long narratives of the three chapters on the hikes with section headings to make it visually more appealing. So the manuscript is again ready to go. I just need the photos.
The week ahead will be crazy. Today we scouted the Center and Meadow Toad part of our route because there is major construction underway. Several windmills are being installed over the summer. Much of the preliminary site work is done and we needed to check if our route would be impacted. It is. The property we cross on Friday to get to lunch, the area Evan calls the field of endless dandelions, will have a windmill. Already many trees have been cut down and the slash blocks our path. The crew is due to return to clean up the site, but we don't know when.
On Tuesday, the adult and student leaders will meet for our annual orientation. I've spent days trying to balance all the cook and hike groups and may finally be done. Probably we should have had 24 groups rather than 23, but we had too many groups of 4 hikers. Steve and I won't have a regular cook group so we will be floating. Hope everyone can adjust.
It was great to be outside this week. We did lots of walking and gardening and also opened the pool and mowed. I cannot wait to swim!
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