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These beautiful cows are devastating our climate.
Apparently I haven't done enough to educate my fellow Americans about the environmental benefits of eating less meat.  examined beliefs about climate change and the efficacy of actions around diet and other strategies in the US and the Netherlands. One of the authors of that study, Annick de Witt, :
We presented representative groups of more than 500 people in both countries with three food-related options ( eat local  and eat organic produce) and three energy-related options (  and install solar panels). We asked them whether they were willing to make these changes in their own lives, and whether they already did these things. While a majority of the surveyed people recognized meat reduction as an effective option for addressing climate change, the outstanding effectiveness of this option, in comparison to the other options, was only clear to 6% of the US population, and only 12% of the Dutch population.
Only 6% of Americans knew about the &outstanding effectiveness& of reducing meat to combat climate change. (Notice this is merely reducing meat, not eliminating it altogether.)
What is this &outstanding effectiveness&? About a , for one: 
A global transition to a low meat-diet as recommended for health reasons would reduce the mitigation costs to achieve a 450 ppm CO2-eq. stabilisation target by about 50% in 2050 compared to the reference case.
In other words, without reducing the meat in our diets, we’ll have to find those savings in greenhouse gas emissions somewhere else. 
Emissions from livestock account for as much greenhouse gases as the entire fleet of cars, trains, ships and airplanes throughout the world. No one loves cows more than I do, but clearly the world would be better off if there were fewer of them. Lots fewer of them. (With 1.4 billion cows in the world, we could stand to lose quite a few before anyone would notice the lack of bovine beauty on our hillsides.)
And in fact, those hillsides and pastures currently occupied by cows could be filled with carbon-reducing trees. If we’re going to keep greenhouse gas levels low —so that temperatures rise below 2C degrees, or even 1.5C as scientists are currently advising—we need to plant trees to recapture that carbon we've already released. Lots of trees. Billions of trees. So freeing up the 80% of the world's land that is currently occupied by my friends the cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens (and the crops they consume) and replacing them with trees and other vegetation would go a long way toward fixing our little problem with climate change. 
One reason cows and other ruminants produce so much greenhouse gas is that the gas they produce is methane, not CO2 (carbon dioxide). And the impact of methane is over 25 times as great as CO2. But because
than CO2, the good news is that removing it will have a sooner impact. So all those meatless meals will make the atmosphere that much cleaner, in, oh, about 12 years! 
Even worse than methane is nitrous oxide, which is produced by the manure of all those livestock. And nitrous oxide is a major player in greenhouse gas—it’s hundreds of times more potent than CO2. Manure from livestock accounts for a whopping 65% of human-related nitrous oxide. That gives new ewww to poo.
What about eating local? Eating a plant-based diet one day a week—the equivalent of taking 273 cars off the road—has more impact than eating local seven days a week. If you multiply by seven, you can get an idea of the benefits of a completely plant-based diet. But hey, you could do both! Try eating local, plant-based food from your farmer’s market whenever possible.
The study points to another factor that may influence people's knowledge of the destructiveness of eating meat: 
People who already eat less meat may be more open to hear and retain information on the climate impacts of meat, while people who eat lots of meat may be more inclined to deny or downplay it.
Does this ring a bell? Push any buttons? Clichés aside, it struck a chord with me: I happen to like eating sugar very much, and there's an inconvenient amount of research saying sugar isn't very good for you. I ignore it. Why? Because I like sugar and don't want to feel guilty when I eat it. I don't want to change my ways. This, I suspect, is true of many meat eaters as well, including many people who consider themselves environmentalists.
The author of the piece goes on to suggest several ways to make this realization more, well, palatable. She suggests moving &beyond finger pointing tactics& and focusing on the empowering message of meat reduction. 
And, &while environmental behaviors often involve sacrifices, the meat-reduction option offers a range of personal benefits.& What are these personal benefits? For me, it's the huge savings in calories that would otherwise be delivered by the meat on my plate. (Did I mention I love sugar? I would much rather eat a few Oreos after dinner than eat a hunk of meat as part of my meal.) There's also the wide variety of plants at my disposal, a diversity I didn't know about before I started exploring vegan and vegetarian cooking. I ate quinoa and kale long before hipsters noticed it, I was making risotto before gastro pubs were even a thing, and I ate cactus long before Wegman's started selling it in their produce department.
I like my food cutting edge. 
But the best benefit, and the real reason I switched to a vegan diet, was because I hated the guilt I felt every time I ate meat. Even before I lived next door to cows—indeed, from the time I first knew where the meat on my plate came from—I knew there was suffering involved in raising and killing animals for food. I avoided that information, too, during my meat-eating days, because I didn't need any more guilt. Now, I merely feel a huge sense of relief every time I come across one of those shock videos online.
These concrete cows release much less methane than the real thing.
So yeah, I get it—I know why my environmentalist friends don't want to know more about the huge environmental costs of their diets and the “outstanding effectiveness” of eliminating even some meat. But the fact that only 6% of Americans do know this, when around 40% consider themselves environmentalists, tells me I haven't done enough to educate my circle of friends. (Yes, I take these things very personally.) 
The author concludes with : 
Consumption and lifestyles therefore tend to be shaped more by people collectively than individually. The most effective strategies thus engage people in groups, and give them opportunities to develop their understanding and narratives about food in dialog together.
Well, I have a blog, a few hundred cookbooks, and several social media accounts. If anyone is prepared to help people develop a narrative about food, it's me—well, me and a few hundred food bloggers who focus on plant-based cooking. As a plant enthusiast, I want to share my love of beans and fennel and farro. (But not avocado. Never avocado.)
So join the avocado-free Zeitgeist! And save the planet one meal at a time!
Do you want to know more about the link between livestock and greenhouse gas emissions? Try , a think tank in the UK that's been studying this for a while. Prefer your info from the American side of the pond, and in video form? Try . And if you like a little conspiracy flavor with your facts, try .
We got some photos of the deer this week on the new trail cam—the old one, which we got for Christmas, broke right after the big snow. Fortunately, the manufacturer sent a replacement, an improved model at that. 
I was happy to see what looks like a fawn in the pictures. She or he has baby fawn markings, spots to keep her camoflaged in the woods. She looks a little wobbly on her feet still, though it's hard to tell from the photos. 
Isn't she sweet? 
In this one, you can see her markings (I'm going with &she& here) and in the one below, you can see just how spindly her legs are. Any guesses on how old she is? 
I think she might have heard the dog barking inside. 
Hopefully we'll get more photos before she's all grown up. We need to name her. Ideas welcome! 
Is there any way to stop the Donald? 
A lot of my friends abroad have been asking me lately if there's a chance Donald Trump can ever become president. I un the president of the United States holds a position that directly affects people all over the world. They've heard and seen how many votes he's getting. Is President Trump inevitable?
The short answer is: no. President Trump is not inevitable.
The long answer is more complicated, since American politics is very complicated. 
I see three main choke points stopping the Rise of Trump. 
1. The GOP itself. So far, the Republican party hasn't mounted much of an opposition to Trump, despite lots of handwringing among the party elites. Part of the problem is there have been too many candidates in the race for those elites and for voters to coalesce around a single alternative. But now that may be just the ticket. 
Preventing Trump from getting over 50% of the delegates is key. Right now he's on a trajectory to win enough states' delegates that he will win on the first round of voting, thus assuring the nomination. But the rules of delegate allocation change in many of the remaining states: they award delegates in a winner-take-all manner. Whoever wins gets all the delegates, rather than the delegates being assigned according to the proportion of the vote each candidate wins. 
Right now, Trump is leading in the polls in these states, too. But if the remaining candidates say this: &Don't vote for me in Ohio, vote for John Kasich (governor of Ohio); don't vote for me in Florida, vote for Rubio,& and so on, with some large winner-take-all states going to Anyone But Trump, Trump will be prevented from getting 50% of the votes and there will be further rounds of voting at the convention in Cleveland. After that first round, delegates are not bound to vote for the candidate they're pledged to. Thus, 51% of the delegates may decide that Rubio should be the nominee, or John Kasich, or Mitt Romney (who may be seen as a &white knight& candidate who can rally the party). 
Could this happen? It's very unusual for a candidate to deliberately direct their voters to vote for someone else, but the fear that a Trump nomination holds for the GOP is growing every day. I'd give it a less than even chance, but there's still a chance--and a chance that if they did, it would work as expected. Otherwise, Trump gets 50% of the delegates and is crowned the nominee in Cleveland. 
And if they do stop him at the convention, after he's won state after state and delegate after delegate? He'll be one angry bear, riled up and ready to destroy those who poked him. He'll either run as a third party candidate (it will be difficult, and impossible in several states, to get on the ballot by that point) or will throw his support to a third party. I wouldn't even be surprised if, enraged, he told his supporters to vote for Hillary Clinton over the dirty, rotten Republican who stole the nomination from him.
2. Hillary Clinton. Clinton is almost sure to win the Democratic nomination, and for , she's favored to defeat Donald Trump in November. How could she defeat him when Republicans have failed? Because she faces none of the constraints that Republican candidates have grappled with. None of them challenged Trump's tax plan, because all of their plans are just as outrageous, based on lowering taxes for the rich, raising them for the middle class, and increasing spending on the military. They all make voodoo economics look like trick-or-treat.
Hillary's tax plan is based on sound economics, does not favor the rich, and most importantly, adds up, no matter what your level of math or belief in unicorns bearing magic tax cuts. 
She also isn't aiming for the votes of the racist underbelly of the Republican party, voters who look askance at candidates who denounce racism and defend immigration reform. She can attack Trump full force on the despicable tactics he's used to get votes, without fearing she'll alienate voters who'd never vote for her anyway. His unfavorable ratings are huuuuggge! It's key to remember that he is only popular with a (too large) segment of the Republican party, a segment that has turned out to vote for him because they hear his dog whistles (like when he refused to denounce David Duke and the KKK on CNN Sunday). 
Here's the thing about US primary elections: Primary voters are a subset of general election voters, and an extreme subset at that—in both parties. Moderate voters are outnumbered in primaries, but in a general election, they prevail. And moderate voters will not vote for Trump. 
Where will moderate GOP voters go? Some will stay home (or leave the tick box for president blank), some will vote for a third party, and some will vote for Hillary, as the lesser of two evils, in their view. I could see a Republicans for Hillary Facebook group getting lots of new members.
3. Barack Obama. The only politician who's bested Donald Trump in a war of words is Barack Obama (see the from 2011). He's a gifted orator, and possesses the sharpest wit of any politician I've ever known. He's been silent so far, remaining &presidential& and above the muddy fray, but with his legacy at stake, he'll be a powerful and energetic voice of opposition to Donald Trump. He'll humiliate him. It will be ugly, and hilarious at the same time. Make popcorn. 
So if Hillary Clinton somehow can't annihilate Donald Trump on the campaign trail and in the debates, look for the sitting president to devastate the Trump with surgical precision. 
Here's how you defeat Donald Trump
Is there anything that could lead to Trump winning in November? I see a couple of possible scenarios: One, the American economy could go into recession. Right now, economists give this a worrying 20-30 percent chance of happening, due to Brexit, China, the still wobbly Euro-zone, student loan debt, etc. And if this happened, the Republicans in Congress would do nothing to prevent it, and there's little a president could do, either. Notice that several of these possibilities are completely outside the control of the US—just to be safe, you probably shouldn't vote for Brexit if you live in the UK. (Already the possibility of Brexit is driving down the pound, making it harder for American goods to compete in Britain.)
A second possibility is a major terrorist attack on the United States, just before the election. I see this as more likely than a recession. Remember, Congress has done nothing to keep guns from the hands of suspected terrorists on the no-fly list. It wouldn't surprise me if a handful of home-grown terrorists shot up a concert venue, a cafe, a school—this happens all the time, anyway, except those murderers aren't labeled as terrorists unless they're connected with jihadists. Scare Americans would flock to the candidate who promises to save them, although some may come to their senses and vote for the candidate who promises to forbid would-be terrorists from buying weapons.
Other scenarios: 
Ted Cruz could be the nominee. He's won more states than anyone other than Trump. By rights, the nomination should go to him if Trump is defeated at the convention. But everyone hates him. His colleagues in the Senate detest him. American general election voters would hate him too. Hillary would beat him handily. 
Marco Rubio: He's better liked than Ted Cruz, but not by a lot. We haven't see a lot of the Republican establishment come out for him, because they think he doesn't deserve to be president. He's a first term senator, and he's seen as grabbing for too much, too soon. But he'd win their support in a heartbeat if the only alternative were Trump. Hillary would have a 50-50 chance of beating him. 
John Kasich: He's a popular governor of Ohio. He's seen as the moderate in the race, simply because he doesn't brag about torture and kicking 11 million immigrants out of the country. But he's a fairly old school conservative. Hillary might not beat him, especially if a recession looms. 
Mitt Romney: He would be seen as a savior, and grateful establishment Republicans would eagerly vote for him, and moderates in the party would follow suit. Trump's voters would hate him as a usurper, and either vote for someone else or stay home. He might win, though, especially if the economy falters.
A third party Trump candidacy: If this happens, he might be able to spoil things for the Republicans, which will only make it more likely for Hillary to win. 
A third party Bloomberg candidacy: If Michael Bloomberg decides Trump is too odious to be tolerated, he might get into the race as a third party candidate. He'll act as a spoiler, and would almost certainly throw the election to the House of Representatives if no candidate gets over 50% of the electoral college votes.
A Sanders nomination: Sanders would not likely win against any Republican other than Trump and maybe Cruz, and Trump would take the gloves off his &pretty& hands and go after him hard, as a kooky, Socialist Northeastern liberal with a huuuuuggge tax plan! And with economists hardly defending Sanders' tax plan as it is, I don't see how Sanders could win a war of unicorns with Donald Trump. I'd give him a 50-50 chance of beating Trump, but it's a moot point: Not only is Sanders unlikely to win the nomination at this point, but if he did, Michael Bloomberg would almost certainly enter the race. Mitt Romney would also consider a run, if Bloomberg declined. And if no one won 50% of the vote, off to the House we go! And the House wins: they're certain to retain a Republican majority, and they would vote for Trump or Romney. 
Bottom line: Hillary Clinton can beat Trump, if the GOP fails to do so at the convention. And if she doesn't, I'll be heading across the pond, in a life raft if I have to, along with a lot of other Americans.
My question for my friends in the UK is, will Britain take back her recalcitrant colonists when we fall upon her shores, our tails firmly between our legs? 
A standoff, near the entrance to the kitchen
Cats and dogs weren't meant to live together, my dog tells me, and if the cat could talk, he would say the same. 
Regardless of this truthism, I have managed to keep peace, or near to it, for the last nine months while my daughter's cat has lived with us. It was supposed to be a temporary situation, but due to a housing situation no one could have foreseen, a fortnight has become nine months. And the cat who was once known as Basement Cat is now, well, Run of the House Cat. 
Not only does Tony the Cat have the run of the house now, he also roams atop countertops and tables, inside closets, and if he can pry open the garage door with his tiny (but strong!) feet, he goes in there too. 
Tony eyes Sparky, who is completely unaware that the cat is planning to stab him in the back.
And my , who wouldn't tolerate a dog of the same size anywhere near, is fine with it. Sometimes. 
They grudgingly accept each other's company, but neither one is happy with the situation. Sparky is probably more willing to share space with the cat, since we properly conditioned him by giving him treats when the cat was near—thus he associates the cat with bits of Pupperoni. The cat, though, hasn't had as much conditioning, since cats don't have a reward center as highly developed as Sparky's. 
Sparky's reward center is huge. YUUUGGGE! His whole body, all 59 pounds, is basically one big reward center. He will do anything for a reward, including tolerate the presence of a rather spiteful cat. 
I've even taught him to embrace the human quality of Taking Turns. We play a game: I toss a treat for Tony down the hallway, he chases it, captures it with a paw, and eats it. Then I tell Sparky it's his turn, I toss a treat, and he gobbles it. Then I tell them it's Tony's turn, and so on, while each waits patiently, even Sparky, who'd normally be all over any food that gets tossed to the floor.
Yes, the dog who'll literally lift textbooks out of a box to retrieve a lost treat waits for the cat to have a go at a treat tossed to the floor. 
I never imagined this would happen when we first brought the two of them into close proximity, a basement door safely separating them. Sparky is highly reactive to squirrels, dogs, cats, anything that moves. But here we are, sort of co-existing peacefully. 
Of the two of them, it's the cat who's still got issues. He'll wait around the corner, and when the dog passes, his head carefully turned to avoid causing affront, the cat bats a paw at him, hissing when he misses. He'll sit in silence, glaring at Sparky, daring him to react—and until a couple of months ago, Sparky would occasionally take him up on that challenge, erupting in barking and giving chase—but only to the top of the basement stairs. He knows the basement is Cat Territory. He only goes down there when there's a tornado warning, and frankly, the tornado is less scary than the cat.
The only complaint Sparky has is when the cat claws at the furniture. He's like that kid in second grade who told her mom every time you called her a name. He whines, looking at the cat, then at me, as if to say, &Do you SEE what he's doing?! He's destroying our furniture! Make him STOP! Also I get a treat for telling, right?&
Who knew Sparky was such a snot-nosed little tattletale? I didn't even know dogs cared about furniture. 
Despite the occasional whine, the awkward hissing, the standoffs at the entrance to the Land of Plenty (ie, the kitchen), I'm quite proud of what we've accomplished with these two. In the beginning, when the dog wanted to chase and bark at the cat, and the cat wanted to shred the dog's face, I never thought we'd be at this point. I rank this as one of my top five accomplishments in life, maybe even the top three.
My furniture, though, is a lost cause.
Five deer in the snowy woods
Yeah, turns out there are animals to blog about here in the New World after all. 
Of course I'm partial to farm animals—cows, chickens, sheep, and pigs especially, with the occasional  thrown in. 
But needs must. (I have no idea what that phrase means but it seems to fit so many situations.) Anyway, we've had a proper blizzard here, which you may have heard about on the news. I say &proper& because back in Britain they think any old snowstorm is a blizzard, when of course that's not the case. We ended up on the light side of this one, with only 22 inches or so. It turns out that after the first twelve it's all the same, something I did not know, never having seen more than twelve inches despite living in Wisconsin for six years. 
Anyway, the white blanket of snow makes it easier to spot the wild visitors, and no doubt they are bolder when their food sources are covered with 22 inches of snow. I managed to get quite a few shots of them (and I hate using the word &shot& in relation to an animal that too often meets that fate). In addition, we have a trail cam that picked up quite a few deer-in-the-headlights shots overnight. We also have fox-in-the-headlights shots, and a few dog-in-the-headlights. 
But this is Friday Deer Blogging, not Friday Fox Blogging—maybe next week. 
Welcome to America!
I live in a country where anyone can go to a gun show and buy a weapon without a background check. As you can expect, pretty regularly someone takes a gun to a school, a theater, a church--anywhere people gather--and shoots a lot of people. In fact, according to many reports a mass shooti we just don't hear about it unless more than six or seven actually die. 
I also live in a country where presidential candidates are suggesting that we intern Muslims because a few Europeans have shot and killed 130 people with illegal weapons they managed to smuggle in from, most likely, Libya. 
Ironically, those same Europeans could have, provided they weren't on a watchlist, flown to the United States and bought their guns legally. And even if they were on a watchlist, they could still buy guns here from a private seller or from a gun show without so much as a background check. 
Now, there is some evidence that at least some of these particular terrorists were on the no-fly watchlist (officials don't say exactly who's on it, for security reasons). Others may have been on a larger watchlist which has some 1.1 million names, including alternate spellings, and still others may not have been on any restrictive list whatsoever, in which case flying to the United States would have been easy: citizens of European countries don't need a visa to enter the US, and Americans don't need a visa to enter European countries. 
So yes, those Europeans could theoretically have flown to the United States and purchased weapons at a weekend gun show. I'm not going to pretend to know my AK-47s from my Bushmaster rifles but I do know that Adam Lanza used a Bushmaster to kill a classroom full of first graders and some teachers. I suspect some committed terrorists would find it perfectly adequate for their purpose.
Meanwhile, the politicians who've sworn an oath to the constitution continue to talk about unconstitutional religious tests as a requirement for refugees coming to the US, while many of them want to ban Syrian refugees altogether. 
But not a one has proposed tightening gun laws that have loopholes so huge that the term &law& hardly applies. 
It's very hard for me to take any of their talk of &fear& seriously when they aren't willing to take the basic steps to keep me and my family safe. Right now, there's
that's closed until the end of the month because one of their students is missing and he has a gun.
This is the definition of terror--students unable to go to school because a bad guy, who was formerly a good guy, has a gun and is upset.
Our American terror has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with a faulty interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. We can intern all the Muslims we want and build a wall high enough to keep out migrants and prevent every single asylum seeker from reaching our shores, but we'll still be forced to live in terror.
But it's the kind of terror that Americans are remarkably willing to put up with.
Welcome to America. Here's your gun, and a copy of our constitution. Ignore everything in it except a few words in the Second Amendment.
Cows marching across the pasture
Mama number 400326
Don't go!
I saw these lovely cows at my friend's house, where we stayed for a couple days during my visit to England. They all came to the fence when I walked over, even though I had nothing more than a camera in my hand. 
I took a few dozen photos, then walked away, unbearably sad for some reason. 
It's back! For a limited time only, Friday Cow Blogging will be making an appearance on these web pages. 
Maybe I should call this &English Friday Cow Blogging& or at the very least, &EU Friday Cow Blogging& since it is much easier to find cows in the bovine-friendly countries of northern Europe. Here in the US, I'm pretty sure I would be shot if I walked up to a pasture and started taking photos of cows, and as much as I love bringing you these smiling faces every week, I'm not about to risk coming face to face with a farmer loaded for bear. 
We arrived in the UK on Saturday, and by that afternoon I was out on the Thames, walking with my favorite dog, Stella, in my favorite spot, along the Thames in Bourne End. 
One of the loveliest stretches of the Thames as it winds through the Chilterns.
We always see cows when we walk there--they hang out in the delightfully named Cockmarsh, where they graze on grass all day and drink water right from the mighty River Thames. 
This far from the estuary, the Thames is still a mighty river, but it's not as wide and imposing as the London portion. There are always sailboats, yachts, canal boats, and other river craft sailing down the river or tied up at the moorings along each side of the Thames. 
A sailboat lesson seemed to be going on
It's dog friendly, of course, and Stella is pretty used to cows, living near them as she does. So when we came across the cows on our way back to the carpark, I didn't worry about her &worrying& the cows. 
The cows were all wading in the shallow water near the riverbank, as they do. These are all beef cows, young ones being fattened up before their eventual slaughter and trip to your supermarket. (Recipes here.) 
I liked this black one, who really wanted to get near to see what was in my hand, in case it was an apple. It wasn't, of course, only an Apple iPhone, but I don't think he minded. He just wanted to reach out to the strange human lady who likes to take photos of cows. 
 &Any apples?&
And then the cow and Stella fell in love through the kissing gate:
We left the next day for Cambridge, where I saw cows along the Backs, and lots and lots of flowers. More later!
I leave tomorrow for a visit to London. I have mixed feelings about that. While I want to be able to walk the hills of the Chilterns, ride the Underground to museums and galleries, and poke around castles and other ancient places, I don't look forward to that feeling that it's only temporary, that I'll have to leave in a week. 
Know what I mean? 
Can you ever really go home again, knowing it's no longer your home? 
I suspect not. I'm going to try to see things I haven't seen before—the , the , . The museums in London will have exhibits I haven't seen, too, and the Queen's Gallery always changes up what's on its walls. 
But knowing I can't go back home—to my red brick house on the edge of the Chilterns, next to a cow pasture—well, that's going to bring a pang or two. 
Someone remind me of my plumbing nightmares, okay?  
Hacking the BBC to watch London's New Year's Eve fireworks. This proved to be a melancholy moment.
Someone just posted a photo on Twitter of the north London sky. It was pretty ordinary—I've seen better, frankly, in New Mexico—but I got sad, in the homesick way I do whenever I see someone post on Facebook about something they're doing in England. Because I'm not there, and every day it gets further away. 
One year ago today we were packing our bags, trying to stuff everything that couldn't be sent with the shipment into seven suitcases and one dog kennel and fretting about how to get all of that to Heathrow. (Fortunately a friend volunteered, and then it turned out we needed her husband too—it took four adults and two cars to get us out of there.) 
It's odd the things I miss—not the sky, but the ground. The pastures, the parks, the green grass. The roads—the motorways and the A roads, and especially the &grey& roads as I called them, because they were grey on a map. (Yes, I always used a map when I lived to England, because technology can't convey how many ways there are to get to Amersham in quite the same way.) I miss skating through roundabouts, peeling off at the right exit and applauding myself for getting it right. Well done, you!
I'm still not used to hearing American accents coming from strangers—British accents were the norm for so long. My American-sounding neighbors must wonder why I smile to myself when I hear them calling their children with Southern drawls. There's no longer that &odd duck& feeling when I open my own mouth, knowing that my voice set me apart as &not from 'round here&. Unless you've lived abroad, you probably don't know what it's like to be identified as &other& as soon as you speak, and how you attempt to defy the stereotypes your countrymen have earned every time you do. Mustn't be loud! Mustn't not get British humor! Mustn't use the phrase &24/7&. 
I miss the transportation system, the ease of hopping on a train in my village, and being in Paris a couple hours later. Or Brussels. Even though mostly I just went to London, which suited me just fine. There is no better city in the world, for people watching, or museum seeing, or play viewing, especially once you've figured out the indoor maze of the National Theatre well enough to hit the toilets before the queue forms during the interval.
This might sound strange, for anyone who's actually been to Slough, but I miss the beauty of England most of all. There was a time when I didn't know what was so awful about suburban sprawl, because that was all I knew, and then I moved to England, and found villages and town centres and high streets with their jumble of shops and the odd thatched roof much more appealing. Now I live amidst suburban sprawl again—miles and miles and counties full of it, and it's truly ugly. Why would anyone do this to the countryside? Why does no one want to live close enough to the post office to walk, or to the beauty shop or the library or the optician?
Maybe because walking through the heat and humidity of summer, and the freezing snow covered sidewalks in winter, just isn't pleasant. But I wouldn't know, since the idea of walking to the optician, ten miles away, isn't something I'd even contemplate in this new country. I'd love a ten mile ramble through the Chilterns, though.
I'm homesick for those hills, those walks in the Autumn, the lush overgrown paths of Summer, the flowers in Spring. Sure, there are woods aplenty here, parks of some renown, trails just waiting for me to explore them. 
But they aren't the same. I found this out when I went to a nearby park, with several trails all promisingly named after nature. We chose one that led to a viewing platform over the marsh, but when we got there we realized that was the end of the trail and the only way back was down the same way we'd come. The poor dog was so bored he didn't even bother pulling on the lead, which of course he was attached to, because mustn't let dog off leash!
And get this—dogs aren't even allowed in the National Mall! Imagine Hyde Park without dogs! I bet you can't. 
Three years ago I was
as I watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics, after a summer &trapped in a perverse jet stream&, under monochrome skies, my mood &grim&. Like that, with a spectacle designed to show off England in an unseemly show of—yes, emotion, from a famously unemotional country—I was smitten by Britain.
It's really too bad Washington lost its bid to host the Olympics, because it appears to take an Olympic-sized ceremony to endear a place to me. I need that bold reminder, a jolt of pyrotechnics, maybe an aging monarch dropped from above, before I can truly fall in love with a country, even my own.
So that's it, one year on: my memories of England growing fainter every day, the green and pleasant land growing greener and more pleasant in my homesick imaginings. I don't think I'll celebrate this auspicious date, but if someone wants to set off a pyrotechnic or two I won't .
Where the cicadas live. 
I know, it's been, what, two months since I wrote about how much I hate living here, with longing references to how much I loved living in England even though I complained about the plumbing and the weather all the time when I did. 
If you can't parse that sentence, sorry. I'll try to write better from now on. 
To sum up the promise in that title, here are the latest reasons I've found for wishing I lived somewhere else, namely, somewhere near the 51st parallel, just a tad shy of the first longitude line. 
Eleventy One: The heat.
Eleventy Two: The humidity.
Eleventy Three: The bugs. 
It's not the heat, it's the humidity, but sometimes it's both, and the bugs that seem to be attracted to both. And not just the mosquitoes, but the noisy cicadas and crickets and other biting things that can infest a house if you have a dog and are not careful. (I found a tick on my neck one day. I can't even type that without grossing out.) 
The cicadas, or maybe it's crickets, make a racket like the sound of 200 televisions tuned into 200 different chat shows. I don't know how the creatures can hear well enough to figure out which cicada to mate with, with all that awful noise going on. It reminds me of something I've struggled to forget...oh, I remember! It's my childhood. 
And I know some smart people will have realized that I have air conditioning on this side of the Atlantic, which should make short work of that heat and humidity (that's why they're called &de-humidifiers&, duh!) but they don't work as well as advertised, especially when they're approximately 50 years old. (We even have two, one for upstairs and one for downstairs and basement, and yes, we've added freon.) Ceiling fans, however, do a remarkable job of cooling the air to a livable level.
It's so bad that I find myself longing for Autumn, my least favorite season. That's when all the pretty stuff dies, including leaves, which we have a lot of around here. 
I'll miss them, but if they take those noisy cicadas and the wretched heat with them, I'll be happy to rake them up in a few weeks. And by then I'll probably have a few more reasons to hate living here on the 38th parallel. 
Flowers at Edgware Station, two days after the bombing there
Ten years ago, I was getting ready to take my daughter to the train station so she could meet her friend at Baker Street Tube Station. They were going to do some exploring, since her friend had just moved to London. But the friend called before we left, said she was seeing lots of police activity from her flat window overlooking Baker Street station. So I turned on the BBC (Twitter didn't yet exist) and saw reports of explosions on several Tube lines. One was at Liverpool, another at Edgware--the tube station nearest my husband's office. But I didn't
he had arrived safely at work and as far as I knew, wasn't planning to go anywhere. 
I was wrong. He called later, from Guildford. He'd been walking to Edgware with some colleagues when they saw an empty cab, hailed it, and went to Waterloo, not knowing a bomb had just gone off in Edgware. They probably got the last train that ran that day, as soon after the bombings all transport came to a screeching halt. 
Another bomb struck in Tavistock Square, on a bus. My friend lived near there, I remembered her saying. I tried to phone her, repeatedly through out the day, and finally heard from her later. She and some other students had taken in some shell-shocked passersby, whose faces had been blackened by the blast on the bus. 
Later that afternoon I had to go pick up my husband in Guildford, since there was no other way for him to get home. I remember joining the queues on the M25, nudging along bumper to bumper, boot to bonnet, when I looked up. On one of the overpasses near Heathrow, a flock of sheep was crossing over the motorway, followed by a shepherd and his dog. 
There were signs, normally warning of motorway queues, that instead announced dire warnings of travel to London. &Avoid Central London, or Prepare to Meet Your Maker& or something like that, I remember. 
Even the sheep were leaving London, I said to my daughter.
I wish now I'd taken a photo, of the sheep, of the warning signs, of the cars all trying to get out of London. But no one had camera phones back then. All I had was a .
A couple days later we went to a play in London, where we laughed at the antics of The Producers, and of a man on the Tube at Edgware trying to teach his daughter to avoid saying &bombs&. I wrote about it . 
Hard to believe it's been ten years, and even harder to believe I don't live there anymore. 
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Deer come for a snack of hostas.
No, there are no cows here (anywhere, as far as I can tell) but there are other monstrously large animals. The deer in these parts are very big, especially to those of us accustomed to the small montjac deer in Buckinghamshire. 
This morning, Sparky started barking at the back door, and at first we thought it was just another squirrel. But I noticed this bark was different. It was more urgent and included some high pitched whining. So I got up and looked, and sure enough, there was a deer in the neighbor's garden, munching on her hostas. 
Remembering my duties as Friday Animal Blogger, I found my camera, then I went out (in my pajamas) and snapped some photos. That's when I noticed there were two deer, watching me in case I might have something other than a Nikon in my hand.
I could hear someone tapping at a window, probably the neighbor trying to warn them off. She doesn't like it when the deer eat her hostas, and with such a lovely garden, who could blame her? 
Having secured a few photos, I let loose the dogs. 
Within seconds, the deer were on the run, and it turned out there was a third deer, behind the shed in this photo. Sparky felt pretty proud of himself, and we let him run around barking for a bit, sure that the neighbor wouldn't complain. Then I called him in, gave him a bone, and told him Good job! 
He's been glowing all day, frankly.
In which the dog stars in her own photo album.
Summer Solstice, June 21 2005
A small visit to a small country.
A visit to Athens in January
A summer holiday in Germany's southern district.
A trip to Brussels, Leuven, and Ghent
A visit to modern Berlin
A one-day trip to the EU capital.
Jane Austen's home in Chawton, Hampshire, where she wrote her novels
A rainy trip to Cornwall in November
Because you can't do Cornwall in just one trip.
The Dorset coast in Southern England.
Dublin, Ireland
A ramble through pre-history, at Dunstable Downs in Bedfordshire.
Some photos taken in East Anglia, including Cambridge, Ely, and Thetford, home of Thomas Paine. (Don't miss the photo of his hair!)
Egypt, in pictures
The small village of Fairford, in the southern Cotswolds, has one of the few examples of pre-reformation stained glass in its village church.
Greenwich, home of the Prime Meridian
Gardens at Grey's Court, including the wisteria pergola.
Trip to Hadrian's Wall, in Northumberland, May '05
Our trip to Scotland's Highlands.
Trip to southern Ireland, including Tipperary county and Kerry County
The Lake District, May 2006
Lambing trip to Wales, March 2006
Loch Lomond, Scotland's prettiest loch
The Netherlands, aka Holland, is at its peak in April.
The Cotentin Peninsula, La Hague, Bayeux, and St Lo
Snowdonia, Llyn, and Anglesey, all in one convenient package.
The Italian Riviera, including Lerici and Cinque Terre
Some photos taken at Oxford, home of the dodo bird.
Some photos of Oxford and its colleges, including places you can't normally visit.
A winter trip to Paris, the "City of Light".
Where have you been all my life?
Toulouse, France, and its many churches
Stratford, home of Shakespeare, captured in photos.
A road trip to Cologne and Trier
A rainy visit to the RHS garden Wisley in Surrey.
Photos of Yorkshire, including the Yorkshire Dales National Park