It was good to have a few days off, but to have them hot, and then to come home to even more of the same has left me enervated and even further behind in most everything, including this blog. This is the third little wave of extreme heat we have had this season - and it's just the beginning of summer. Is this the beginning of accelerating climate change, or just normal variation? I certainly can't remember such a hot June in all the years (now 23 in total) that I have lived in California.

I've been reading through the backgrounders from the UN climate change and food conference early this month, and I find that so much of it, though intended to describe the developing world, applies here.

I can't get the pictures of those drowned pigs in Iowa (from the News Hour) out of my mind. Would it have been possible to rescue the hogs if there hadn't been 3000 of them confined in that barn? Someone will scream sacrilege, but I couldn't help thinking about the difficulty in rescuing people who are living too close together without the means to help themselves to safety. Katrina images, I suppose. If we are the hogs keepers, then we are the ones responsible for their useless deaths.

If I were sentimental about animals imagine what I would be writing.

Meanwhile, I learned that National Geographic has a page with many stories about global food.
I'm posting the link on the list to the right.