There's something about Al

I have to say I really enjoyed An Inconvenient Truth. There was something about watching Al Gore and actually wanting to listen that got me excited. Let's just say that was some slideshow. I couldn't help but picture current Bush doing this particular slideshow or any for that matter. It just makes me long for a president that had a greater understanding of something than simple policy. i heard a soundbite on tv from someone pointing out that while Bush was in Vietnam he spent all of about 15 minutes outside of meeting rooms. A man who had never visited the country before had absolutely no interst in learning anything about the country. Since most people have seen An Inconvenient Truth and get the general message, somehow the film just made me wish for some real information coming out current government.

An Inconvenient.... Electric Car

It took me a while but I received on netflix both Who Killed the Electric Car and An Inconvenient Truth. Who Killed the Electric Car, I believe you can find for free online. In need of new wheels for a while now, I've been waiting to buy anything until I caught up with the current technology. This film helped set me straight. Basically GM had a somewhat popular electric car introduced in CA in the 90's but decided it wouldn't be as profitable over the life of the car as gas powered so they destroyed the few they had out there much to the disappointment of happy customers. It's a control thing on the part of automakers. Meanwhile currently the gov. and the auto industry embrace hydrogen as the future although it will be 15 years off and still expensive for consumers. The bottom line is that hydrogen represents their attempt to have the word alternative used in ad campaigns without a true desire to ever create the car. Gas is just too good for the whole crue- feds, car makers and oil companies. The irony is that while they've been guarding their pocketbooks assuming they can control consumer education, Toyota's hybrid sales have been growing, among others, and they are slowly losing consumers. You can look at Detroit now and see how American automakers are fading into American history. Oh, America....!

False alarm. It was a Red-bellied

Now we know for sure. Although I did have my camera when the woodpecker returned yesterday, it was too high in a slash pine to get a good shot. This is, however, what we saw- a Red-bellied woodpecker. OK so it doesn't look anything like the Ivory-billed except for the red, black and white colors but at least we're on the lookout. Let's put it this way, before these sightings I didn't know there were woodpeckers in FL.

Ivory-billed woodpecker

Just for fun I'd like to think that what I saw on Gottfried a few weeks ago was a Ivory-billed woodpecker. I was on the top end of the lot and I heard a tapping sound and knew it was a woodpecker. I walked over to the sound and looked up and saw this beautiful bird with a black body and and a red head. I am not a bird watcher generally but it was pretty impressive. It was tapping into an Australian Pine which is a non-native tree and seemed frustrated and flew off. It wasn't until reading another chapter in Wilson's book The Creation that he described a miraculous discovery of what had been thought of as an extinct woodpecker, the Ivory-billed. He decribed it and mentioned the initial redicovery had occured in the same region where we are in FL and then I began to wonder if this is what I witnessed. I went to the Cornell, Search for the Ivory-billed website (where I pulled the above photo) and found that there is at least a chance it could have been. Confusion often occurs between the more common Pileated woodpecker which is found in open parks, golf courses etc. The habitat on Gottfried matches more closely to that of the Ivory-billed. Unfortunately, there was no camera in hand and I didn't know enough of the markings at the time to have a clue. I'll keep my eye out for a return just in case.