The...end? (XV, XVI, XVII)

Or is it the beginning? Alison has had three (!) articles published in the past three days, two of them on Saturday.
The first (XV) is about soot levels in Greenland ice cores from back in the Industrial Revolution. The heightened soot, a product of industrial work in the northeastern US, likely had a warming impact that has long been assumed to be part of a natural warming cycle. Soot warms us up by lowering cloud and surface albedo, causing more absorption of solar energy and less reflectance.
The second article (XVI) is about a small town in northeastern San Diego County that is having severe water shortage issues. If only people nationwide paid more attention to news stories like this they could think "why the hell are we devoting 90% of the water use in a desert to agriculture and golf courses?" Then maybe there would be some water-related reform. Ah, pipe dreams. I love the quote toward the end about the ultraconservative Californians.
The third (XVII) is about how short courses in CPR are just as effective as are long courses. I don't know whether I've ever taken a standalone CPR course, but I've been trained several times in the course of getting safety certifications back in the old consulting days. I guess we always had kind of a shortish course in that case; all I have trouble with is the number of compressions and number of breaths. But I think I remember hearing that the number isn't as important as the correct technique.
This may be Alison's last spurt of articles; she's currently in DC getting debriefed or something on the program, hanging out with her fellowship buddies for the last time (at least for awhile), and doing other things as well! I'm super glad she got the opportunity to do this for the summer, although I've been super unglad that she was gone.

This morning, on the way to Socorro, I finished reading my last Madeleine L'Engle book, Many Waters. This one was somewhat enjoyable, although again I've been vaguely disappointed in this series this time around. Not as good as I had remembered. I talked to SB a little bit about it this weekend on a service project up to Red River (which is a scary scary place, and is literally populated almost entirely by transplanted Texans), and he said that he remembers having read the first three books as a child and really wanting to enjoy the books, but not really being able to. Oh well, the next book is going to be Picture This by one of my favoritest ever authors, Joseph Heller. This book is about the Rembrandt painting Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer; as the painting is created, Aristotle becomes cognizant of his surroundings. As his ear is painted, he can hear, etc. It sounds interesting and I hope I enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed most of his other work so far (which is to say, a lot).

I'm at a tipping point now. I don't know which way I'm going to go but it will have implications on the entire rest of my life. I'm scared of making a decision, and not in my usual way of being scared to make decisions. There's going to either be a continuation or an ending and a new beginning.