CAN NUCLEAR POWER HELP CLIMATE CHANGE...

The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Week Magazine are talking about Nuclear power. They are quoting scientists who are saying that keeping existing nuclear plants open and building dozens of new ones can help many countries, and enable the U.S. to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Here's the scary numbers: If we don't reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by 45 percent by 2030, and get to zero by 2050, extreme weather--devastating droughts, floods, wildfires, and storms--will get worse and occur more frequently.

After seeing Jane Fonda, and Jack Lemon in "China Syndrome," we're remembering "The Three Mile Island Incident" of 1979, and Chernobyl, 1986. And Fukushima, 2011 is still haunting us.

Actually, there have been at least 56 "accidents," (no deaths, but millions spent on repairs), at various nuclear reactors in the U.S. Even so, building more nuclear plants to generate electricity is being touted as a miraculous solution to the world's energy needs. Perturbing fact--Germany spent $580 billion on renewables (wind and solar), but electric bills in Germany are the highest in Europe, and its emissions have not been reduced. On the other hand, Sweden's three nuclear power plants with just eight nuclear reactors, along with the hydroelectric plants in Sweden's rivers, using water, a renewable, are generating electricity, and supply more than 40 percent of Sweden's energy needs, while other renewables supply the rest. Fascinating fact: Sweden's emissions have dropped by half.

Dams 

Couldn't the U.S and other countries do what Sweden has done?

Renewables

 None of the articles in the prestigious newspapers suggest action.

Hey, I'm an ex dancer blogger-writer, not a facilitator or activist, but guys, THIS is something we need to investigate--not ASAP--but do now--start doing right away, immediately!

(VIDEO) SNACKING ON THIS AND THAT

John Cullum and wife Emily Frankel are revving up do a video and sharing visions of things to nibble.
'

Also contemplating sharing some fascinating 'snacks for the mind.'

A VERY SPECIAL HERO, ACTOR MICHAEL J. FOX.

I remember, maybe you remember seeing Michael J. Fox when he was an exceptionally good-looking, successful actor in TV series "Family Ties,"and  "Spin City," and became an international star in the "Back to the Future Trilogy," "The Hard Way," "Doc Hollywood," "The Secret of My Success," "Bright Lights, Big City," and "The American President."

Wham! Fate, bad luck (whatever you call it) hit him.

Age 29, in 1991 Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, an incurable, progressive nervous system disorder that affects movement. He didn't disclose his condition to the public till 1998. He partly retired from acting in 2000 as the symptoms of his disease worsened.

These photos indicate how it changed the way he looked.

1990-------------2000

In January, the New York Times said, "Fox has had a remarkably successful second act. After going public with his Parkinson's diagnosis in 1998. he's raised 800 million to combat the disease. He's written three best selling books, despite Parkinson's physical limitations, has performed important roles in a string of hit TV shows, and has a famously happy family life."

Now, at 57, Michael says, "I'd developed a relationship with Parkinson's where it left me areas I could still flourish in."
      That changed last year. He developed a spinal problem that required surgery and extensive rehab. He largely recovered, only to fall at home in August and fracture his ankle. He says, "Those setbacks brought places where I wondered was it false hope I'd been selling? Is there a line beyond which there is no consolation?" Dealing with when he couldn't walk, had health aides 24 hours a day--Michael remembers asking himself if he was still able to tell himself, "Hey, chin up!"

       "Yes" was his answer.

Friends, readers, grab what you can from this. Michael J. Fox sees each day through lens of optimism, and takes on a day with--not just hope--but a very strong, exceptionally strong flow of positive thoughts.

He says of his life, "If the worse I've had is as bad as it gets, it's been amazing."

ASTOUNDING PLACE TO VISIT

On a huge green lawn in Montgomery, Alabama, sits the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, for people who were lynched.

In the main building, proceeding down a grim walkway with 800 weathered steel columns hanging from a roof, on each column is the name of a county and the people who were lynched there, most listed by name, many simply as "unknown." The columns seem like the headstones. As you walk, the floor gradually descends till the columns are all dangling above you, leaving you looking up just like the callous spectators in photographs of public lynchings.

The magnitude of the killing is harrowing, more so when paired with the circumstances of individual lynchings that are described in brief summaries along the walk: Parks Banks, lynched in Mississippi in 1922 for carrying a photograph of a white woman; Caleb Gadly, hanged in Kentucky in 1894 for "walking behind the wife of his white employer," Mary Turner, who after denouncing her husband’s lynching by a white mob, was hung upside down, burned and then sliced open so that her unborn child fell to the ground.

Brian Stevenson and a small group of lawyers who were inspired by the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, and the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, spent years immersing themselves in the archives of county libraries that documented thousands of lynching. Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, nonprofit organization behind the Alabama memorial, Stevenson said, "Just seeing the names of these people, many never named in public--there's nothing like this in the county."

Thus far, they've cataloged 4,400. On the huge green lawn there are duplicates of each steel column arranged like coffins, names of persons lynched, where visitors often sit and rest. Could you sit there and rest? I couldn't. The awareness of so many people lynched, is overwhelming.