Photo Of Interesting Building In Galveston, Texas

Here is a picture I took two weeks ago of an interesting building in Galveston, Texas.

You should come and spend a day in Galveston.

You’ll be glad you did.

Friends & Facebook

I’ve had something of a social life over the last six weeks or so. This is the first time I can say this in my ten years in Houston.

I went to a baseball game with one Houston-area blogger, went for a beer with another, and had lunch with yet another comrade blogger. 

It’s been good to get out. Though it has been a bit jarring. I’ve made friends at work and know a few people through my wife, but one-on-one contact with others outside of the wife and work has been a rarity in Houston.

For the last decade, I’ve conducted much of my social life via e-mail, cell phone, and in my one or two yearly visits back home to Cincinnati. I pack a lot of visiting in my Cincinnati trips. I plan them down to the minute.

( Please click here for a post I wrote about keeping friendships over distances of time and space.)

I keep a phone list with me, and call old friends when I drive down to Galveston or whenever the mood strikes me. Just a little effort goes a long way towards maintaining friendships over the long haul.

I can’t say I’ve been lonely in Houston. I’ve felt connected with others and talking walks and reading carry me a long way in life. I do suppose though I was getting a bit bored. I know that is what I found myself telling the wife.

I’ve also set up a Facebook account. My profile is bare bones. I imagine I’m waiting to see if I know anybody on Facebook.

Three people have linked up with me on Facebook in the four weeks I’ve had the account. Two are local bloggers. I’ve searched within Facebook for people I know, but they don’t appear to have accounts. 

Maybe they have other stuff to do.  

In any case, it is good to have friends in our often cold world. 

There are many good ways we can successfully approach and conduct relationships. 

It is excellent we have the capacity to know others and that we are able to be good and loyal friends. 

Global Poor Keep Taking Hits—Clinton & Obama Silent About It As Always

The BBC reports that damage to the environment will harm living standards for the world’s poor. 

From the article–

Damage to forests, rivers, marine life and other aspects of nature could halve living standards for the world’s poor, a major report has concluded. Current rates of natural decline might reduce global GDP by about 7% by 2050.

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) review is modelled on the Stern Review of climate change. It will be released at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting in Bonn, where 60 leaders have pledged to halt deforestation by 2020.

“You come up with answers like 6% or 8% of global GDP when you think about the benefits of intact ecosystems, for example in controlling water, controlling floods and droughts, the flow of nutrients from forest to field,” said the project’s leader Pavan Sukhdev.

“But then you realise that the major beneficiaries [of nature] are the billion and a half of the world’s poor; these natural systems account for as much as 40%-50% of what we define as the ‘GDP of the poor’,” he told BBC News.

In our interconnected world, issues such as this should be part of the political discussion.

Why have Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton been silent on the world food crisis that has impacted millions of people across the world?  

As a rich and powerful nation, we have obligations to others beyond our borders.