BETTY BEETHOVEN!

IF______________,THEN______________

IF_____, THEN __________

Why are we so tempted to fill in the blanks?

So eager to fill those spaces with every worry in the world, every instance of conditional belief and test?

So willing to deliver that list to our enemy to use against us?

So what happens when the blanks are filled?

I go on. I get mad. I fall down. I want to bang a Bible against my head a few hundred times. Repeat. 

And then...the magic. I am OK.

I listened this week to a statement about what IF? What IF I actually take the courage God is handing me? Is it possible that I might be one decision away from the biggest game changer on my life's map? The biggest bend in the road? 

If ______? Then GOD.

Amazing words from my bestie at I Heart Galveston.

THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE IS INDIFFERENCE

IN A NEW YORK MINUTE

My phone won't let me send videos larger than this but there are at least 8 of these books and she knows every word. She can also read longer books that belonged to Poppy when she was little. I think what amazes me the most is her ability to teach and push herself. Do not get me wrong, her teacher is AMAZING. I have no clue how she has the patience to endure 17 little children every day. I think this age is tough in that their attention spans are SO.DANG.SHORT. Betty is very curious right now and when I visited her at school one day, I noticed her entire class sort of wandering around. Each of them doing their very own thing ie dancing or clapping their hands or talking to a friend. How hard it must be to line them up each day. It reminds me of the owl in Bambi when he screws his head around to convey being twitterpated. All in their own little happy worlds. I am also not going to discredit myself. I read to Betty A LOT and always have. But the truth is she is so very capable.....a sponge just waiting to take it all in. She has expressed this at school but in other aspects as well. She goes to piano once a week but has taught herself many of the notes. She learned part of Mary Had a Little Lamb but 'sounded out' the rest herself. She has also learned how to turn on the metronome in the Garage Band App and listen to it while she practices. POINT BEING, these little creatures are dang smart. It is truly incredible to watch her learn and grow and expand and become her own person. I am more proud of her than I ever thought possible.

Recently 5 teenagers were killed and in a car accident outside of Dumas, two of them sisters. My heart has wept this week. I simply can't fathom how someone could survive such a tragedy. I pray. I beg. I praise. As someone reminds me often of Don Henley's words, "If you find somebody to love in this world, you better hang on tooth and nail. The wolf is always at the door. In a New York Minute everything can change." Life is so short. Hug someone you love today!!!!

HOTTER THAN A WELL DIGGER

 Locusts? Lion attacks? Kings of Leon drummer procreating? Jeb Bush entering the 2016 race? And now this?

Be afraid people. Be very afraid.


NY TIMES-Global temperatures are warmer than at any time in at least 4,000 years, scientists reported Thursday, and over the coming decades are likely to surpass levels not seen on the planet since before the last ice age.

A research vessel collected data about past sea surface temperatures.

Previous research had extended back roughly 1,500 years, and suggested that the rapid temperature spike of the past century, believed to be a consequence of human activity, exceeded any warming episode during those years. The new work confirms that result while suggesting the modern warming is unique over a longer period.

Even if the temperature increase from human activity that is projected for later this century comes out on the low end of estimates, scientists said, the planet will be at least as warm as it was during the warmest periods of the modern geological era, known as the Holocene, and probably warmer than that.

That epoch began about 12,000 years ago, after changes in incoming sunshine caused vast ice sheets to melt across the Northern Hemisphere. Scientists believe the moderate climate of the Holocene set the stage for the rise of human civilization roughly 8,000 years ago and continues to sustain it by, for example, permitting a high level of food production.

In the new research, scheduled for publication on Friday in the journal Science, Shaun Marcott, an earth scientist at Oregon State University, and his colleagues compiled the most meticulous reconstruction yet of global temperatures over the past 11,300 years, virtually the entire Holocene. They used indicators like the distribution of microscopic, temperature-sensitive ocean creatures to determine past climate.

Like previous such efforts, the method gives only an approximation. Michael E. Mann, a researcher at Pennsylvania State University who is an expert in the relevant techniques but was not involved in the new research, said the authors had made conservative data choices in their analysis.

“It’s another important achievement and significant result as we continue to refine our knowledge and understanding of climate change,” Dr. Mann said.

Though the paper is the most complete reconstruction of global temperature, it is roughly consistent with previous work on a regional scale. It suggests that changes in the amount and distribution of incoming sunlight, caused by wobbles in the earth’s orbit, contributed to a sharp temperature rise in the early Holocene.

The climate then stabilized at relatively warm temperatures about 10,000 years ago, hitting a plateau that lasted for roughly 5,000 years, the paper shows. After that, shifts of incoming sunshine prompted a long, slow cooling trend.

The cooling was interrupted, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, by a fairly brief spike during the Middle Ages, known as the Medieval Warm Period. (It was then that the Vikings settled Greenland, dying out there when the climate cooled again.)

Scientists say that if natural factors were still governing the climate, the Northern Hemisphere would probably be destined to freeze over again in several thousand years. “We were on this downward slope, presumably going back toward another ice age,” Dr. Marcott said.

Instead, scientists believe the enormous increase in greenhouse gases caused by industrialization will almost certainly prevent that.

During the long climatic plateau of the early Holocene, global temperatures were roughly the same as those of today, at least within the uncertainty of the estimates, the new paper shows. This is consistent with a large body of past research focused on the Northern Hemisphere, which showed a distribution of ice and vegetation suggestive of a relatively warm climate.

The modern rise that has recreated the temperatures of 5,000 years ago is occurring at an exceedingly rapid clip on a geological time scale, appearing in graphs in the new paper as a sharp vertical spike. If the rise continues apace, early Holocene temperatures are likely to be surpassed within this century, Dr. Marcott said.

Dr. Mann pointed out that the early Holocene temperature increase was almost certainly slow, giving plants and creatures time to adjust. But he said the modern spike would probably threaten the survival of many species, in addition to putting severe stresses on human civilization.

“We and other living things can adapt to slower changes,” Dr. Mann said. “It’s the unprecedented speed with which we’re changing the climate that is so worrisome.”

THE EPITOME OF DORKINESS