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Category Archives: United States

California: Spring Garden Delights 2025

29 Sunday Jun 2025

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Nature and the Environment, United States

≈ 81 Comments

Tags

Abutilon ‘Tiger Eye’ plant, Adenia glauca, Aeonium ‘Lily Pad’ succulent, Baby Rubber Plant (Peperomia obtusifolia ‘Variegata’), Beauty in Diversity, California Spring Garden 2025, Gingko Biloba, Indoor Garden Los Angeles/CA, Los Angeles/California, Polka-Dot or Bunny Ear Cactus

Rosaliene’s Garden – Spring 2025 – Sons’ Adjacent Apartment

During the warmer and drier spring days, I was finally able to return to my weekend gardening activities. Our garden remains a source of joy and a refuge. With ongoing raids in our Latino communities across Los Angeles County and beyond, it has become clear that one’s legal status offers no protection from being randomly grabbed and disappeared. No criminal record; no problem. They fabricate one: resisting arrest, assaulting an officer. It’s a numbers game: a 3000-a-day quota. Now, I’m wary about going for my scheduled yearly blood and urine tests next month. You see, my medical clinic also serves our Latino and homeless communities.

During the time I spend with our plants, I forget this crazy world I now live in. They respond to my presence, my touch, and my voice. (Yes. I talk to the plants. 😊) They care not about the color of my skin or country of origin. My neighbor’s cat, Pumpkin, couldn’t care less, either. She loves to spend time with me while I’m gardening. At the request of blogger and cat lover, Rebecca Bud at Rebecca’s Reading Room, I’m sharing the photos below of Pumpkin.

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Resilience against Tornadoes on a Changing Planet

08 Sunday Jun 2025

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, United States

≈ 62 Comments

Tags

Climate Change, Global warming, Joplin/Missouri/USA, Resilience after Severe Weather Disasters, Tornadoes in the USA, USA Tornado Alley

Tornado Damage Joplin – Missouri – June 1, 2011
Photo Credit: Bob Webster, Pryor/USA

As a resident of Southern California, I’ve yet to come face-to-face with one of those terrifying tornadoes I’ve seen in movies. Tornadoes don’t occur often in our state. Whenever they do occur, they are weak, ranked EF-0 in the Enhanced Fujita Scale, causing little damage. The reality of being pummeled by a violent tornado is a devastating, life-changing, traumatic experience. Such was the case for people living in Joplin, Missouri, on May 22, 2011, featured in the Netflix Documentary The Twister: Caught in the Storm, released on March 19, 2025.

The tornado that struck Joplin in 2011 was rated EF-5 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, with maximum winds over 200 mph (320 kph). Ranked seventh among the top ten deadliest tornadoes in United States history, it is the deadliest so far in the 21st century.

With a population of more than 50,000 and a population density near 1,500 people per square mile, Joplin suffered extensive damage amounting to US$2.8 billion. According to the account recorded in President Obama White House Archives, the tornado first touched down in the southern part of the city at 5:41 p.m. local time. During the following 32 minutes, it headed eastward across the city, demolishing everything in its path for 13 miles (21 kilometers) and extending as much as a mile (1.6 kilometers) wide at its widest extent.

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Solidarity: The People’s Power

06 Sunday Apr 2025

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Nature and the Environment, United States

≈ 69 Comments

Tags

Biodiversity, Climate Change, Copernicus Charts of Global Atmospheric Concentrations of Carbon Dioxide and Methane 2024, Copernicus Global Climate Report 2024, Environment, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), nature, Planetary Life Systems, Sustainability, UN Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), UNFCCC Paris Agreement 2015, WMO State of the Global Climate 2024, WWF Living Planet Index (LPI)

Hands Off Nationwide Protest – Los Angeles – California – April 5, 2025
Photo Credit: Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images

I know… I share your pain. I’m also scared. These are dangerous times for immigrants in America—scapegoats for the social and economic ills of our nation. Our trade partners, too, have come under attack. It’s now tit-for-tat for unfair trade practices. “Liberation Day” on April 2nd has unleashed import tariffs/taxes, ranging from 10 percent to 54 percent, for all countries that sell goods to the United States. What a high-risk economic strategy! But this is just the latest drastic change assaulting us daily since January 20, 2025.

Regardless of our political views or ideology, we the people will have to deal with the negative or unexpected consequences of dismantling our government agencies and picking a fight with our closest allies since the end of World War II. Judging from these developments, it seems that the globalized capitalist economic system is under stress. And so it should be. For how much longer can we sustain an economic model of continual growth and profits that is pushing our planetary life systems to their limits?

Non-human life faces extinction and more frequent, extreme weather events are disrupting and threatening human life. The minority billionaire ruling class (MBRC) believes that environmental and other deregulations are the answer to renewed economic growth. Their insatiable greed blinds them to all the warning signs of economic and societal collapse. Instead, they now grasp at AI, an energy guzzler, to preserve their way of life.

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California: Winter Garden Reflections During Chaotic Times

16 Sunday Mar 2025

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Nature and the Environment, United States

≈ 74 Comments

Tags

Adversity, Flowering Aeonium Mint succulents, Flowering Aloe Saponaria (Soap Aloa), Los Angeles/California, Self-Sacrifice, Succulent Garden Winter 2025, White Azalea flowering plant

Flowering Aloe Saponaria (Soap Aloe) – Los Angeles – California – March 2025

While a two-headed monster is creating havoc, anxiety, and pain across the land of the living, Mother Earth signals that life finds a way in the face of adversity. The captioned photo features the explosion of orange flowers from the succulent Aloe Saponaria (Soap Aloe) in my neighbor’s garden on March 3rd. The photo below is a closeup of the early blooms captured on February 22nd.

Closeup of Flowering Aloe Saponaria (Soap Aloe) on February 22, 2025

In another adjacent garden plot, the potted white azalea plant defied last year’s extreme summer temperatures that scorched its foliage. During a dry winter, my concern grew for its survival. Just three days of continuous light rainfall in early February were enough to give it new life again. What a joy! 

White Azalea – Winter 2025
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Thought for Today: State Sovereignty Under New Threat

09 Sunday Mar 2025

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in United States

≈ 65 Comments

Tags

Greenland-USA Threat, Greenland/Denmark, UN Sovereign State Equality, United Nations Charter 1945, US Presidential Joint Address to Congress 2025, World politics

Map of North America and Greenland
Source Credit: World Atlas

The [United Nations] Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.

1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.

2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfil in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.

3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.

4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

~ Excerpt from the 1945 Charter of the United Nations, Chapter – Purposes and Principles, Article 2 (1-4). (Emphasis mine)

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Weather/Climate-Related Disasters in the USA 2024

02 Sunday Mar 2025

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Economy and Finance, United States

≈ 50 Comments

Tags

Climate Crisis, NCEI/NOAA, NOAA USA 2024 Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters, Weather/Climate-Related Disasters

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)
U.S. 2024 Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (released Jan/2025)

During 2024, thousands of our American brothers and sisters lost loved ones, property, and jobs to various weather/climate-related disasters that struck their state. Many of them are still recovering from their losses. Without resources, others will never recover. Tragedy does not impact us all in the same way.

On January 10, 2025, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released the data and analysis quantifying the economic costs of the disasters that reached or exceeded US$1 billion. They confirmed 27 weather/climate disaster events, amounting to a total of US$182.7 billion. This places 2024 as the fourth costliest on record, trailing behind 2017 (US$395.9 billion), 2025 (US$268.5 billion), and 2022 (US$183.6 billion).

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Thought for Today: How the Truth Can Save Us from Tribalism

26 Sunday Jan 2025

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Religion, United States

≈ 63 Comments

Tags

American Evangelicals, American tribalism, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America by Russell Moore (USA 2023), Politicized Christianity

Front Cover: Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America by Russell Moore
Photo Credit: Penguin Random House (USA, 2023)

Increasingly, in this sort of American culture, it is not just that we are divided about what we value about the way things should be, but what we are allowed to say about the way things actually are. Now, notice, what I wrote here is not what we see about the way things are, but what we are allowed to say. This is because we live in a time in which “truth” is seen as a means to tribal belonging, rather than a reality that exists outside of us…. Our passions and experiences and intuitions often warp the way we see things, especially the most important things, which is why we need grace. People are going to have—from now till the Apocalypse—arguments about what is true and what is false, what is real and what is fake. Our problem now, though, is that, increasingly, we are called not just to argue about what is true, but to say things that we know to be false, just to prove that we are part of the tribe to which we belong.  

Excerpt from Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America by Russell Moore, Penguin Random House LLC, USA, 2023 (p. 69).

Note: This excerpt is taken from “Chapter Two: Losing Our Authority” in which Russell Moore addresses the radicalization of many evangelicals, following the controversies regarding the global COVID-19 pandemic and the January 6, 2021, insurrection.


Russell Moore is an evangelical Christian theologian and ordained minister. He is Editor in Chief of Christianity Today and previously served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (2013-2021). Prior to that role, Moore served as provost and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he also taught theology and ethics.

FEMA: When a Natural Disaster Strikes Across State Lines

13 Sunday Oct 2024

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, United States

≈ 64 Comments

Tags

Asheville/North Carolina, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), DHS in Mandate/Project 2025, Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2018, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Hurricane Helene 2024, Hurricane Milton 2024, Ken Cuccinelli, National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), Proposed Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act of 2024, Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act 1974

FEMA Search and Rescue Teams Respond to Hurricane Helene – September 26, 2024
Photo by Patrick Moore / US Department of Homeland Security Media Library

My heart goes out to all the folks whose lives have been upended by Hurricanes Helene and Milton. As the warming of Earth’s oceans and atmosphere continues unabated—due to humanity’s inability to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels—tropical storms have become supercharged and more destructive over a much wider area.

Such was the case recently when America’s southeastern states were hit by Hurricanes Helene (September 26-28) and Milton (October 9-10). It’s not just their wind speeds that make these storms deadly. Their size, speed, and capacity to hold more moisture can wreak havoc over more extensive areas. What’s more, their rapid intensification has alarmed our meteorologists. Within just two days, the unusually warm water of the Gulf of Mexico transformed Hurricane Helene from a relatively weak tropical storm into a historic Category 4 hurricane for this time of the year. Not to be outdone, Hurricane Milton took just over 48 hours to intensify from a tropical depression to a Category 5 Hurricane, according to NOAA Climate.gov. This is bad news. Millions of people in their projected path may not have sufficient time in which to evacuate to safety.

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Thought for Today: Proposal to Break Up and Commercialize NOAA

06 Sunday Oct 2024

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, United States

≈ 36 Comments

Tags

Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise / Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project by The Heritage Foundation (USA 2023), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Weather Service (NWS), Thomas F. Gilman, U.S. Department of Commerce

NOAA Satellite Image of Hurricane Helene moving into the Gulf of Mexico – September 25, 2024
Image credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION (NOAA)

Break Up NOAA. The single biggest Department of Commerce agency outside of decennial census years is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which houses the National Weather Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, and other components. NOAA garners $6.5 billion of the department’s $12 billion annual operational budget and accounts for more than half of the department’s personnel in non-decadal Census years (2021 figures).

NOAA consists of six main offices: The National Weather Service (NWS); The National Ocean Service (NOS); The Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR); The National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS); The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS); and The Office of Marine and Aviation Operations and NOAA Corps.

Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity. This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable. That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful func­tions. It should be broken up and downsized. [Emphasis mine.]

[…]

Focus the NWS on Commercial Operations. Each day, Americans rely on weather forecasts and warnings provided by local radio stations and colleges that are produced not by the NWS, but by private companies such as AccuWeather. Studies have found that the forecasts and warnings provided by the private com­panies are more reliable than those provided by the NWS.

The NWS provides data the private companies use and should focus on its data-gathering services. Because private companies rely on these data, the NWS should fully commercialize its forecasting operations.

Excerpt from “Chapter 21: Department of Commerce” by Thomas F. Gilman from Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project by The Heritage Foundation, Washington DC, USA, 2023 (pp. 674-675).

Thomas F. Gilman served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Administration and Chief Financial Officer of the U.S. Department of Commerce in the Trump Administration. Currently, he is a Director of ACLJ Action and Chairman of Torn­gat Metals. Gilman is the former CEO of Chrysler Financial and has had a 40-plus year career as a senior executive and entrepreneur in the global automotive industry, including roles at Chrysler Corporation, Cerberus Capital Management, Asbury Automotive Group, TD Auto Finance, and Automotive Capital Services. He holds a BS in finance from Villanova University.


The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is one of six agencies falling under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The agency’s mission is “to provide daily weather forecasts, severe storm warnings, climate monitoring to fisheries management, coastal restoration, and the supporting of marine commerce. NOAA’s products and services support economic vitality and affect more than one-third of America’s gross domestic product. NOAA’s dedicated scientists use cutting-edge research and high-tech instrumentation to provide citizens, planners, emergency managers and other decision makers with reliable information they need when they need it.”

  • Learn more at NOAA’s official U.S. government website.
  • Learn more about NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS).

California: Another Year of Excessive Summer Heat

15 Sunday Sep 2024

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in United States

≈ 63 Comments

Tags

Aeonium Mint succulent plant, Bridge Fire/Angeles National Forest September 2024, California Heatwave Summer 2024, Climate Crisis, Los Angeles/California, Propeller or Crassula Falcata Succulent Plant, Succulent Garden, Wildfires California Summer 2024

Rosaliene’s Succulent Garden – Summer 2024 – Los Angeles – Southern California

This summer, June through August 2024, the average temperature for the contiguous American states was 73.8° F (23.2°C) – 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit above average – ranking as our nation’s fourth-hottest summer on record. So says NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. California – together with Arizona, Florida, Maine, and New Hampshire – “sizzled through their warmest summer on record.” Heatwaves are growing more frequent, more extreme, and longer lasting in the U.S. West and across the world as the climate crisis drives increasingly severe and dangerous weather conditions.

To end this summer with a bang, an excessive heatwave arrived on Thursday, September 5th, bringing a record-breaking temperature of 112°F (44.4°C) in downtown Los Angeles on Friday, September 6th, says the National Weather Service. With temperatures in the nineties in our neighborhood in West Los Angeles for five days straight, I was forced to stay indoors – no weekend gardening – until relief came on Tuesday, September 10th.

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