What is a Monthly Leaf Pile? Monthly Leaf Piles are summary posts where I “rake together” of a variety of thoughts, activities, and behind-the-scenes activities that include more personal stories, commentary, and whatever else I can think of in looking back at the previous month. If you enjoy them, be sure to subscribe to this blog by simply checking the box in the comment form and entering your email.

The waning days of summer are finally upon us here in the Northern Hemisphere and one I am sure many of us don’t care to repeat again. Michigan weather has a way of reminding us not to start counting those changing leaves just yet. Cherish those occasional cool, breezy nights as some toasty ones likely remain in nature’s quiver. I’ve never been a fan of hot/humid weather unless it is accompanied by a hammock next to a tropical blue sea and preferably a drink with a little umbrella in it. Note to self: long overdue for making that happen.

August was busy for me in some ways, other ways not so much. I procrastinated again in doing this month’s leaf pile. I am never quite sure what to put in it or even quite sure if I will continue them. I try to make notes or save bookmarks throughout the month as references only to ultimately discard them as my motivation to write about them fades.

Photography

As I’ve already written to the point where I feel like I am repeating myself, much of my photography these past few months seems to be in exploring exposures I already have versus going out and making new ones. This was both hindered and energized by random spurts of motivation and generally feeling well enough to do the work. There are also many times where I find myself buried in resolving technical issues that seem to happen from time to time with my website. Technostress sets in and sabotages any desire for creating much.

website bits and bytes

Anyone running their own website can likely relate to the aspect of updating one thing and having it break another. I sympathize with WordPress Plugin developers at times and curse a little at others. I recognize it is impossible to test every single combination out there and hiccups happen – it is just difficult to sort what is causing what. While I’ve luckily avoided total site disruption issues, some plugin updates tend to break little things here and there, some even go unnoticed until I stumble upon them.

For example, the use of a Lightbox feature from NextGen Gallery for viewers to see the larger versions of images in my posts. But if you click on say, the second or third image in the post, the image that pops up is the first image in the post. That isn’t how it is supposed to work. This only happens when using the NextGen Gallery Pro Lightbox, but not the other Lightbox options provided within the plugin. To me, it seems a problem with this plugin with this specific option. However, the support at Imagely was not able to offer much help on their end and concluded it must be something on my end.

I already spent hours turning things on and off to test it and am still not able to figure it out. It just doesn’t make sense why it is behaving that way. The only thing left would be to create a complete sandbox duplicate of my site, use a different theme, and test it that way. That seems like a lot of work to debug this one annoying issue. As such, I gave up for now and am leaving it the way it is. I could switch to a different lightbox popup feature, but that ends up impacting all of my galleries and E-commerce functions. As they say, “Sorry for the inconvenience… The Management.”

This is just one of the problems I have been debugging lately. Between this activity, which is pretty damn boring to read about (sorry for that), debugging other conflicts after updates, and fending off some very persistent hacking attempts, I spent more time in the code bowels of my site, testing and admin activities than I prefer. The joys of being a one-man operation.

Creativity

The peaks and troughs of creativity are a peculiar thing. All the tips I’ve ever read for trying to spark it never worked for me with any great staying power. I’ve tried the different lenses, different subjects, different locations – all which may have prompted some new ideas more or less. It either just happens or it doesn’t. But I did hit a small streak while dabbling around with my Elementals project. It is a theme I will continue to develop as the inspiration hits. This duality of creation and destruction seems to be on my mind a lot these days.

The featured image in this post is the latest in that series.

“Remember, the best place in the world to see is wherever you are..”

— Freeman Patterson

Worthy read: Oliver Sacks on the Three Essential Elements of Creativity

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Environment

The Year of Zoom

I participated in quite a few zoom calls and webinars in August continuing to work on issues with respect to the environment. A particularly intriguing one was on a Zoom call with our Senator Debbie Stabenow which was set up by our local Citizens Climate Lobby chapter. If you aren’t familiar with this group, you should look up your local chapter. They really try to promote bipartisan solutions and support legislation on the climate crisis we are facing.

They are highly focused on generating support for a particular piece of legislation titled The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (H.R. 763) which has a website here. If you aren’t familiar with the principals of carbon fees and dividends, I highly recommend visiting the linked legislation and website to learn more and contact your local representatives to encourage support for it. Whatever you think about the effectiveness of government and who they are beholden to, one thing is for certain – if they don’t hear from a lot of us, they won’t consider it a big concern. Money has a powerful voice of course, but so does the accumulative strength of a lot of voices and certainly A LOT OF VOTES.

Back to the call, Senator Stabenow is a particularly big advocate of bipartisan work behind the scenes and actively involved in the US Farm Bill. She sees farmers as playing a vital role in getting them engaged in reducing the country’s carbon footprint and potentially playing the role of experts in role of carbon storage and soil management. She had some interesting stories to share (which shall remain in confidence out of respect of it not being a public meeting) about bipartisanship with some rather surprising players from across the aisle. With all the polarized vitriol going on in American politics, it was nice to hear some stories of cooperation.

We were also fortunate enough to have her Senior Policy Advisor stick around for more time in a Q&A session. He answered and supported a submitted question of mine concerning the growth of demand in minerals (in particular rare earth minerals) to support our transition to a cleaner energy future. It is an aspect of renewable energy and electric vehicle growth that we must monitor and track closely to make sure the transition to these new sources does not bring on more environmental injustice in poorer nations.

Other calls and webinars involved presentations hosted by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) on sustainability initiatives, weekly meetings on climate subjects with a Climate Reality Project chapter, and a panel discussion on the House Select Committee on Climate Crisis report. All of which resulted in a lot of notes and thinking about how I can personally act on some of this information.

A backyard nemesis

Summer yard maintenance seems to have one particularly annoying constant for me – pulling poison ivy. While I generally don’t try to “manage nature” much, this is one exception. It is quite abundant in the woods behind our house, to the point where I completely avoid any off-trail exploring basically June through September. As such, it is like maintaining a wartime front in keeping it out of our yard where our dog obviously runs and can pick it up on his fur, paws, or personally coming into contact with it. Both my wife and I have bad reactions to it. On more than one occasion I’ve had the mysterious rash pop up where I can only assume it was from petting my dog.

We are quite against using any widespread chemical applications, although I have tried highly localized use of herbicide on individual plants. Even commercial “poison-ivy” grade herbicides don’t seem to have any effectiveness. It is one very tough plant which happens also to love higher CO2 concentrations in our environment.

Despite trying homemade herbicides in the past, I decided it warranted another effort as manual pulling is getting old, has limited effectiveness and exceeded my abilities to continuously do so this summer. No matter how much I “glove-up” and wrap garbage bags around my arms just short of a hazmat suit, I always seem to get some exposure to it. So I brewed up the recommended mixture of white vinegar, salt, and a splash of dish soap. Then off to battle!

It is too early to tell if my new attempts are successful. I certainly can see some plant stress taking place on the leaves. Some very young plants appear to succumb to this latest war effort, but others are proving to be quite formidable. With their extensive root systems that always break in pulling, it is always hard to tell if it is the same plant coming back, or some new plant entirely popping up in the same area. I’ve read that goats love to eat poison ivy. I wonder how Cosmo would get along with one?

Sustainability

On another local note, I was appointed in July to the newly formed Sterling Heights Sustainability Commission and we had our first meeting in August. Around the same time, some local media was reaching out to commission members for comments and I was fortunate enough to have some of my responses included in the article. The mission of the commission is quite broad and I am excited to be taking a part in helping our local government consider the many aspects of sustainability to plan for the future.

Well, I could probably go on with other things here but this post is already probably too long and rambling. I wish everyone a healthy, safe September. A final thought…