First post in ages .... just returned from several months in the U.S. ... I avoided the worst of the heat and spent my summer in green and pleasant lands, along the shores and hills of home. Major landmarks ... Semicentennial ... a Jubilee year. And I've bought a house!  Cottage really (with a separate studio) ... so now I'm a home owner!  And a landlord ... since I still live in Iraq

All the things I missed in Iraq this summer .... heat of course, a fish kill, a cholera outbreak. But all these are past (for now atleast).  I've returned to cooler weather, brown hills, rain and thunder storms and some staff leaving while others are joining us.

We start a new project now ... RiverWatch.  Taking people out to the rivers to monitor water quality ... a citizen science program.  Modeled on a program by the South River Federation.  Perhaps if people here see what is really happening to their rivers and experience it directly they will do something to protect and clean them up... stopping the fish kills, stopping the Chloera, stopping the habitat destruction.