Yes It Works, But…

Residents of Townsville, Queensland were amazed to see contractors mowing the esplanade on Charter Towers Road. 

Mowing esplanades is a common practice in  practically any city in the civilized world, so what’s the big deal?  Well the green on these esplanades is AstroTurf !

As the Townsville mayor, Jenny Hill, explains,  there has been a major problem  with people littering and throwing their cigarette butts out of passing cars, and the butts adhere to the AstroTurf. "So they're not actually mowing grass, as much as people would have laughed and pointed it out, they were using it as a vacuum to suck up the butts."

Rather than give them “Attaboys” for a clever solution – the mower does pick up the litter and deposit it in the grass catcher attachment - the city council has asked the contractor to find another way to do the job, “so they won’t look like idiots.”

Forever Stamp

In Thursday's post, I wrote about the coffee moving through the Port of Houston.  They do move a lot of coffee through the port, and a lot of cars, but by far the largest amount of freight is petroleum in one form or another.  Now that connection between the port and the petrochemical industry is being immortalized on a postage stamp.

Ten years ago, aerial photographer Jim Wark was flying his plane near the Houston Ship Channel and snapped a shot of a pair of tugboats "wrangling" two enormous liquid tank barges.

This month, the image he captured above the Old River Barge Fleeting area, near the intersection of the Ship Channel and the San Jacinto River, was released on a U.S. postage stamp. It's the first time, a postal official said, that a Houston landmark has attained that distinction.

"We're very pleased that the U.S. Postal Service recognized the barging industry on one of their stamps, particularly given its importance to our national transportation system," said Joe Pyne, chairman and CEO of Kirby Corp., which owns one of the two tugboats featured on the stamp.

The new stamp is part of a series called Earthscapes - released this week in conjunction with the beginning of National Stamp Collecting Month - is the latest series of Forever stamps, which can be used indefinitely for first-class mail at the 1-ounce rate.

"The stamps provide a view of the nation's diverse landscapes in a whole new way - from several hundred feet in the sky to several hundred miles in space," according to the Postal Service.

You can see the rest of the stamps in the series HERE.

Cement Ditch

According to a television station in San Antonio, Houston Mayor Annise Parker recently took a shot at one of Texas’ top tourist attractions.

She was asked why Houston has not developed its bayous as a draw for tourists and responded, according to television station KABB:

“As I travel I am often asked by people why we don’t turn Buffalo Bayou Park into a River Walk. The answer is that the River Walk is a cement ditch… there’s no nice way to put it.”

Her mayoral colleague, San Antonio’s Julian Castro, said Houston covets what it doesn’t have.

“Seems like Houstonians have a little river envy,” Castro said. “Mayor Parker is a good mayor, we have a good relationship but it was clear from her comments that Houstonians are more than a little jealous of the river walk.”

Awful Lot Of Coffee

A Houston Chronicle story this morning reports that the volume of coffee is up at the Port of Houston, and that’s a good thing. 

Coffee in the form of green unroasted beans has been a huge part of the commerce at the port for years, but took a huge surge after 2003.  That is when Houston became only the fourth US port certified as a green coffee exchange port by the Intercontinental Exchange, the organization that controls the trade of Arabica beans.

Years ago, when I was a service technician for 3M, part of my territory was the port.  I often made service calls on warehouses where green coffee was stored.  I was surprised to learn that green coffee doesn’t smell much at all – certainly doesn’t give off that wonderful aroma that covered the east side of town when the Maxwell House plant on Harrisburg Boulevard was roasting beans.

One of my first calls to a terminal warehouse full of coffee beans was to a warehouse that had previously stored bales of untreated cow hides.  Those hides had permeated the warehouse with the smell of rancid meat – that’s a smell that could turn you off of coffee forever.

Don’t Have A Dog In This Fight

You may know that the Boggy Thicket family includes two miniature dachshunds.  We still refer to them as our puppies, although they both turned eight years old this summer. 

Tinker and Dusty are happy and healthy, but lately Dusty has begun scratching and licking a lot – not enough to have raw spots, but enough to be noticeable and worrisome. On the off chance that she may have developed a food allergy, I decided to do some on-line research about dog food.

OH…MY…GOD!!!!!

If you think websites relating to politics or religion are contentious, just check out the sites that rate dog food.  Believe me, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

There are sites that will tell you that feeding your pet the product of any major manufacturer is tantamount to animal abuse.  Giving your animal dog food from Purina (Nestle) or Pedigree (Mars) is cruel, evil, worse than letting them starve.  Foods that contain grain, soy beans, or by-products of any sort guarantee your dog is headed toward and early and painful death. 

And those statements are from the less strident sites!

All of these sites state opinion as indisputable fact, and most of them disagree.  I don’t think I learned anything that I can depend on. 

On Quitting

I am not actively trying to quit smoking at the moment.  I have before, with mixed results, and I probably will again. 

My poor wife wants to quit.  She has tried on numerous occasions, but nothing seems to work.  Well, Chantix did, but the weird side effects made the cure worse than the disease.

My personal opinion is that while quitting is damn near impossible, not smoking is easy as pie.  Even the most dedicated two-pack-a-day smoker spends the majority of his time without a cigarette in his mouth.

I know – it’s sort of a Zen approach - but if you can get your mind around it, the trick is not to quit, but to simply not smoke.  Quitting requires total dedication, effort and will power.  Not smoking, like not doing anything else, requires nothing at all.

Of course, Honey will tell you that this approach is absurd – like telling someone to not think of elephants.

On Quitting

by Edgar Guest

How much grit do you think you've got? 
Can you quit a thing that you like a lot? 
You may talk of pluck; it's an easy word, 
And where'er you go it is often heard; 
But can you tell to a jot or guess 
Just how much courage you now possess? 


You may stand to trouble and keep your grin, 
But have you tackled self-discipline? 
Have you ever issued commands to you 
To quit the things that you like to do, 
And then, when tempted and sorely swayed, 
Those rigid orders have you obeyed? 


Don't boast of your grit till you've tried it out, 
Nor prate to men of your courage stout, 
For it's easy enough to retain a grin 
In the face of a fight there's a chance to win, 
But the sort of grit that is good to own 
Is the stuff you need when you're all alone. 


How much grit do you think you've got? 
Can you turn from joys that you like a lot? 
Have you ever tested yourself to know 
How far with yourself your will can go? 
If you want to know if you have grit, 
Just pick out a joy that you like, and quit. 


It's bully sport and it's open fight; 
It will keep you busy both day and night; 
For the toughest kind of a game you'll find 
Is to make your body obey your mind. 
And you never will know what is meant by grit 
Unless there's something you've tried to quit.

Moscow, We Have A Problem

Here in Houston,  we have watched the rise and fall of the US space program up close. We have seen jobs that used to be done at JSC (via the shuttle program) being done in Russia – and what many consider a humiliating picture -American Astronauts with their thumbs out, hitchhiking to the International Space Station on Soyuz II rockets. 

If you are among those who worry and wonder about the health of NASA, you are not alone, but have you given any thought to the Russian space program? 

Apparently, it isn’t in all that great a shape, either. Last week former Mission Control Operator and current NBC News Space Analyst has published an article with some very interesting facts -  James Oberg's Article.