Life Magazine in 1948

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Continuing my look at Life Magazines on Internet Archive….

As I looked at the issues from 1948, I noticed more stories about booming business and industry that about the aftermath of World War II. Isreal was in the news…and Truman surprised the prognosticators by winning the election in November. Children were in the news struggling in a polio epidemic or left behind across the world by GI fathers or hungry/homeless in Europe. The Life pictures are windows into what the publishers (and a lot of other people) thought was newsworthy in 1948.

 Life Magazine 1948-01-05 - Big whale kill in Faeroe Islands

Life Magazine 1948-01-12 - Coca-Cola advertisement (vending machine)

Life Magazine 1948-01-19 - As the Arabs fight from ambush, the Jews train regular army

Life Magazine 1948-01-26 - Fighting bighorn rams

Life Magazine 1948-02-02 - Palestine Jews crawl through cross fire

Life Magazine 1948-02-09 - The US runs short of oil

Life Magazine 1948-02-16 - Gandhi joins the Hindu immortals

Life Magazine 1948-02-23 - Timberline skiing

Life Magazine 1948-03-01 - Scio, Ohio rebuilding pottery plant

Life Magazine 1948-03-08 - Explosions kill Jews as Arabs defy the UN

Life Magazine 1948-03-08 - Sacred rivers receive Gandhi’s ashes

Life Magazine 1948-03-08 - The Brando’s – the brother and sister from Omaha

Life Magazine 1948-03-29 - Czechs flee their new red regime

Life Magazine 1948-04-05 - Ozark spring

Life Magazine 1948-04-12 - Cannon percale sheets

Life Magazine 1948-04-19 - Dishwasher advertisement

Life Magazine 1948-04-26 - Meteor Crater in Arizona

Life Magazine 1948-05-03 - Spring walk (garden)

Life Magazine 1948-05-10 - Jews score a preliminary victory

Life Magazine 1948-05-17 - Maine & Pennsylvania

Life Magazine 1948-05-24 - American Airlines advertisement

Life Magazine 1948-05-31 - Isreal is born in travail and hope

Life Magazine 1948-06-07 - Pennsylvania railroad advertisement

Life Magazine 1948-06-14 - Trademarks in nature and gasoline

Life Magazine 1948-06-21 - Hong Kong’s eastern tip – cemetery for World War II dead

Life Magazine 1948-06-28 - Western Europe wears a new look

 Life Magazine 1948-07-05 - Oil breaks production records again

Life Magazine 1948-07-12 - Earthquake in Japan

Life Magazine 1948-07-19 - Fogging to kill insects (using helicopters)

Life Magazine 1948-07-26 - Chicago beach

Life Magazine 1948-08-02 - Black and white ranges of Peru

Life Magazine 1948-08-09 - Steel and sunflowers in Ukraine

Life Magazine 1948-08-16 - American abroad

Life Magazine 1948-08-23 - GI children left behind by their fathers from London to Tokyo

Life Magazine 1948-08-30 - Polio epidemic

Life Magazine 1948-09-06 - Madison, Wisconsin

Life Magazine 1948-09-13 - Airborne hospital

Life Magazine 1948-09-20 - Western Electric (telephone) advertisement

Life Magazine 1948-09-27 - Soviet prison camps

Life Magazine 1948-10-04 - Never has such a volume of goods been manufactured by a nation at peace

Life Magazine 1948-10-11 - Ritze crackers with cheese

Life Magazine 1948-10-18 - Yardley advertisement

Life Magazine 1948-10-25 - Earth photographed from rockets

Life Magazine 1948-11-01 - Rainwear

Life Magazine 1948-11-08 - Bees on the wing

Life Magazine 1948-11-15 - Truman wins!

Life Magazine 1948-11-22 - The US harvests a record corn crop

Life Magazine 1948-11-29 - Watchmakers of Switzerland advertisement

Life Magazine 1948-12-06 - Johnson and Johnson first aid advertisement

Life Magazine 1948-12-13 - Pennsylvania railroad holiday homecoming

Life Magazine 1948-12-20 - American Airlines “I’m closer to my grandchildren” ad

Life Magazine 1948-12-27 - Christmas finds many children of Europe in great need of help

Serendipity Trees

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Serendipity trees are one of the joys of native gardening! I have 3 different kinds in my yard.

The oaks are from ‘squirrel planted’ acorns – probably from my neighbor’s red oak. Most of the time I mow the seedlings but there is one that is growing in the place where we had to cut down a pine (it fell on its own really). The oak is growing well and is no longer much shorter than the plants around it: iris, beautyberry, gray-headed coneflower, and newly planted elderberry. My plan is to enlarge the bed as the oak grows so that most of its leaves will fall in places that will never be mowed! In the front yard, there is a younger seedling in the native plant garden that is shorter than the Missouri evening primrose beside it! It too can continue to grow and the bed can be expanded over time to receive its leaves.

There is a dying redbud near the neighborhood stormwater pond, but it is leaving its progeny all over the neighborhood – seeds probably transported by birds. Some are growing as shrubs near the holly…and other is growing in a good place to provide some nice afternoon shade to our deck in the next few years.

The hackberries are also bird planted; there is a big healthy tree near the dying redbud with lots of seeds that I see on the sidewalk in the fall. I have several that are coming up in the bed with the hollies and with a Japanese barberry. The Japanese barberry is not native and somewhat invasive so I will be cutting it down repeatedly until it dies – making room for the hackberry!

I like the serendipity trees. It akin to a savanna replenishing itself naturally.

Plastics Crisis – Dryer Lint

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A few weeks ago, I laundered the polyester table clothes that were used for our tables at the Butterfly Festival. I don’t usually put synthetic fabrics in the dryer (heat causes them to wear faster) but the table clothes were too big to hang dry without a long clothesline – which I don’t have. It was an opportunity to look at the lint from synthetic fabric.

I used my phone and a hand lens too look at the tangle of thin fibers. It is easy to imagine them breaking up into small segments. They are already microscopic in diameter. This is fabric that does not look fuzzy at all – but is still shedding fibers. It also provides an inkling of what is shed during washing as well (and is mostly leaving in the water).

Years ago, there was a suggestion to put dryer lint out for birds to use as nest material. DON’T DO THAT unless you are sure that what was dried is 100% natural fibers – which is very rare these days.

Cat Sitting

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My family is traveling…I am the only one at home – which means that I am taking care of cats in 2 locations! Food, water, litter scooping….the occasional clean-up of throw up. Treats occasionally but they don’t seem to be as crazy for them as previous cats.

My daughter and husband left for an amateur astronomy event in Nebraska in the early morning. I took a picture of the sunrise at my house since I was up and ready for the day already.

They sent a picture of their camp later in the day…and then sunset.

Evidently the sky was clear, but it was windy which made photography more challenging. They did send one picture from the first night.

There are evidently some tiny prickly pears in the field where they are set up…they stick to everything – including tires.

My son-in-law left for a conference early the next day. I checked on their cat in the afternoon…refilled a water bowl and refreshed the food supply. My son-in-law had already put the trash/recycle bins out at the edge of the driveway; I put them away when I went the next day.

I am enjoying the quiet of home…even with the little bit of extra work cat sitting!

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 18, 2026

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

07/06/2026 Clean Technica Fixing Climate Communications Part 1 - Make consequences such as your insurance bill, your home, and your children’s health urgent and tangible; make the cause concrete by anchoring every message to pollution rather than climate change; and make the cure feel expansive rather than restrictive. Reaching enough people to sustain the transition will require a delivery infrastructure built around genuine community engagement, economically grounded wins, and a willingness to hold accountable the interests that have made this conversation harder than it needs to be.

07072026 Clean Technica Climate Communications — From Losing the Argument to Winning It Part 2 - Telling the climate story with the value proposition of cost, risk management, improved operational performance, supply chain resiliency, and long-term enterprise value is a winning one. It’s a strategy that appeals to the C-suite, is durable, and can be couched in shareholder returns.

07/06/2026 Smithsonian Magazine These 11 Wildlife Images from the Ocean Conservancy’s Photography Contest Showcase the Wonder of Earth’s Waters - The annual contest received more than 1,000 photographs of marine wildlife and habitats this year. The ones that rose to the top were portraits of ocean wildlife, and I think that’s because we crave to see and connect with animals on an interpersonal level.

07/07/2026 The Conversation 3.1 billion‑year‑old rocks in Australia reveal a forgotten chapter of Earth’s water cycle - We learn the water cycle in school as a story of evaporation and precipitation. But Earth runs a second, far slower one deep beneath our feet. On the ocean floor, seawater seeps into the oceanic crust and reacts with the rock, becoming chemically bound inside its minerals, locked into their crystal structures rather than sitting as free water. Over millions of years, sinking tectonic plates carry these water-bearing minerals down into the mantle, the hot rock layer beneath the crust. This sinking of one plate beneath another is called subduction, and volcanoes eventually breathe the water back out. The deep water cycle moderates Earth’s water budget. At the surface, it keeps the oceans from drying up or drowning the continents, while in the interior, it changes how the mantle melts and builds continents.

07/06/2026 NWF Blog Marine Animal Quiz: It’s Plastic Free July! - Take the time to learn more about how plastic pollution in the oceans of the world harms marine life and consider action steps you can take to reduce your plastic waste footprint.

07/04/2026 ScienceDaily The secret to healthy aging may be hidden in your blood - A new study found that centenarians have a unique chemical "fingerprint" in their blood that sets them apart from normal aging, including unusual patterns of bile acids and steroids linked to longer survival.

07/03/2026 Planetizen Lake Powell reaches lowest water level on record - Currently, Lake Powell is around 24 percent full. The last time it was completely full was in 1983. Since then, water levels have fluctuated, but in 2026, they have fallen to a critical point. And there are multiple concerns if the water levels continue to drop. One includes reaching "dead pool," the point at which water levels are so low that water can no longer move across the dam and into the Grand Canyon, which would cause significant ecological impacts and reduce the capacity for hydroelectricity. 

07/03/2026 Yale Environment 360 In Overfished Adriatic Sea, Dolphins Look to Trawlers for Food - Off the eastern coast of Italy, large numbers of bottlenose dolphins are looking to fishing trawlers as a source of food, a sign that dolphins may be struggling to feed themselves in waters depleted by overfishing. Dolphins may also suffer hearing damage that results from chronic exposure to the noise of trawlers. It is risky behavior. However, finding sufficient prey away from trawlers in an overfished sea may be too difficult. It appears that for these animals, taking the risks is better than going hungry.

7/2/2026 Smithsonian Magazine Earth Might Be Home to 20 Million Insect Species—More Than Three Times as Many as Previously Thought – Only about one million species have been named and described, meaning up to 95 percent of the planet’s insect diversity might remain a mystery…. With more than 40 percent of known insect species threatened with extinction. “The library is being burned before the books can be read.”

6/21/2025 YouTube Slicing and Dicing Onions – Learn some practical kitchen knife skills via a video from the American College of Culinary Medicine!

Illustrations of A Child’s Garden of Verses

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Robert Louis Stephenson’s classic – A Child’s Garden of Verses – has been illustration many times. I recently browsed 6 that were published between 1895 and 1919 that are easily available on Project Gutenberg. Enjoy art associated with familiar poems! The links below show the artist and date and publication.

 Maria L. Kirk - 1919

 Charles Robinson - 1895

 Bessie Pease Gutmann - 1905

Suburban Savana – 4

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Continuing my series on my progress toward transitioning my yard to a suburban savanna…..

This month I am focusing on water. My yard has a sprinkler system that was installed in the late 90s. We get it checked at the beginning of each season and replaced the controller last year so that it doesn’t come on if there was rain recently (prior that that we often manually turned if off earlier in the growing season when our area gets enough rain for plants to thrive).

This year I am watering as I have in years past since so many of the plants are new. Next year I will likely reduce either the duration or the frequency since the plants are native and should thrive without extra water. In subsequent years when most plants are well established, I might simply turn on the sprinklers manually…only when there are very long periods with no rainfall (i.e. in drought conditions).

The only plant that will likely need extra attention is an Kousa dogwood (planted by a previous owner) that is growing in full sun. Even with the watering I do now, it tends to get some dry/brown leaves in summers with high heat and little rain. It’s not a native so obviously is not honed to our Missouri climate! I might put a soaker hose in to specifically provide water to the roots of the tree….or plant some green native ground cover (something like golden ragwort on the north and south, Missouri evening primrose on the western side, violets on the eastern side) under the tree that will keep the soil cooler than the mulch that is currently there.  

In a few years, if something on the sprinkler system breaks enough that it would required replacement – maybe I will decide I don’t need a sprinkler system often enough to warrant the expense!

More about my suburban savanna and blooms for pollinators next month.

Previous Suburban Savanna Posts:

April 2026 – Overview

May 2026 – Planting Natives

June 2026 – Shade Garden

Plastics Crisis – Avoiding Plastic Wrap

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This is the season for watermelon! In prior years, I generally cut it and put some plastic wrap across the portion I was putting back in the refrigerator. This year – I thought about an alternative…. wanting to avoid single use plastic entirely.

My solution: turn the watermelon upside down on a tray! So simple. If the juice leaks a little, the tray will hold it, so it is better than plastic wrap from that perspective.  I found myself wondering why I didn’t think of this before.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 11, 2026

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

07/01/2026 Clean Technica Southeast Missouri Smelter Announces Intent to Restart This Year - Not mentioned in the release today is how the smelter will be powered, and whether the smelter will be in compliance with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources plan to reduce sulfur dioxide pollution to levels that are safe to breathe. New Madrid County recorded the worst air quality in the United States before idling.

07/01/2026 Yale Environment 360 A Home Battery Revolution Is Reshaping the Power Grid - As residential batteries have become more energy dense, cheaper, and smaller, more households are storing their excess solar power. Now, utilities and energy companies in dozens of countries are buying up those electrons, bundling them together, and using them to balance the grid.

07/01/2026 Planetizen Replacing lead pipes in Chicago costs more than 6 times the national average - Chicago has the nation's largest inventory of lead water pipes. Officials say replacing each one costs about $31,000 on average — more than six times the Environmental Protection Agency’s national estimate of $4,700 a line. The most significant factors driving up costs include inefficient early contracts, cumbersome permitting requirements, and the city’s reliance on one-off replacements rather than undertaking whole blocks at once.

07/01/2026 NPR Lone star ticks are covering much of the U.S. Here's what you need to know - The lone star is spreading across vast regions of the U.S., and the illness it carries, the alpha-gal syndrome, is spreading in more than 30 countries on six continents, often spread by various other ticks. The alpha-gal syndrome is more difficult to diagnose and treat than lime disease, and the symptoms are more severe. In many cases, the victim develops an allergy to all red meat, including nearly microscopic particles of it. The allergy can become so extreme it can kill you.

06/28/2026 BBC What watching the sunset really does for your health - There's growing evidence that sunsets – and sunrises, for that matter – can have a meaningful impact on our brain and mental health: diminishing anxiety and depression while boosting memory, creativity, sleep and even altruism. 

6/25/2026 The Conversation Most bees are solitary and don’t live in hives. Climate change risks them starving - Currently, most of what we know about bee nutrition comes from highly social species such as honeybees or bumblebees. Yet most bees are solitary or communal (group living but with no queens and workers). They might experience the nutritional landscape and nutritional stress in very different ways.

06/22/2026 NASA A Turquoise Tint for the Black Sea - The Black Sea sits at the boundary between Europe and Asia and connects to the Mediterranean Sea via a chain of waterways. Its surface often appears dark, but each spring and summer it transforms into a striking expanse of swirling turquoise. The turquoise color is likely caused by coccolithophores, a type of phytoplankton covered with calcium carbonate plates that can give surface waters a milky-blue appearance. These types of phytoplankton tend to dominate in late spring and early summer. Other times of the year, diatoms—a type of microscopic algae with silica shells—can become more prevalent, and they tend to darken the water rather than brighten it.   

6/24/2026 NWF Blog 7 Moths that Make Butterflies Look Boring – The only one I haven’t seen is the Texas Wasp Moth!

06/30/2026 Artnet These 10 U.S. Landmarks Are At-Risk - As America gears up to mark the 250th year of its independence, the World Monuments Fund (WMF) is throwing a spotlight on 10 historic places that it says are most urgently in need of preservation.

6/27/2026 Science Daily Yellowstone’s supervolcano may be fueled by something unexpected - Instead of a deep plume rising from near Earth’s core, a broad “mantle wind” may push hot rock beneath Yellowstone, generating magma closer to the surface. This process helps create a massive underground magma network and may explain how supervolcanoes remain active for long periods.

Birds in Flight

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The week’s eBook was published in 1922…and has great illustrations of birds in flight created by Roland Green. The books is available on Internet Archive.   Enjoy browsing!

 Birds in flight by William Payne Pycraft and illustrated by Roland Green

Five Years from Now

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During my career – there were development plans that addressed ‘what do I want to be doing 5 years from now…and what can I do to prepare myself?” I am trying to apply the idea to my post-career life – which does not have salary as a motivating factor. My overarching goal is to become wiser every year…to care for my family…to contribute to the well-being of my community….to blend the things I do rather than trying to separate them.

In 5 years, I want to be much as I am now…but better prepared for whatever health/infirmity develops as I get older and take more action to leave the world a better place.

Here is my high level “what I can do to prepare myself:”

  • Continue doing what I am doing now with some changes

  • Consciously increase activities that sustain or improve my physical resilience (i.e. targeted exercise primarily)

  • Decrease my carbon footprint. Here are some things I have in mind:

    • Replace my plug-in hybrid car with an electric. This will probably happen in 2027.

    • Put solar panels with battery on my home. This will probably happen in the next 2 years.

    • Eat more from my own yard (I already eat seasonal greens from the yard….and am looking forward to elderberries and pawpaws in the coming years).

    • Gradually replace my wardrobe with clothes made from natural fibers.

    • Reduce the turf in my yard to 30% or less.

    • Allow an oak to grow in both the back and front yard (they as seedlings now).

  • (Maybe) Begin to skew from outreach/education type volunteering toward advocacy. This could mean that I would decide not to continue as a Missouri Master Naturalist.

Now that I have written this down, I realize that my trend is good….that the plan is simply tweaks that will take some disciple/energy to implement.

Lake Springfield Boathouse Garden

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I’ve been volunteering for the weekly maintenance sessions at the Lake Springfield Boathouse Garden this year. It’s been a learning experience. Recently the ‘taskmaster’ sent some pictures from 3 years ago – around the time I first visited the place.

The next time I volunteered, I took some similar pictures to document the way it looks in 2026. The plants are much more established now.

Of course I couldn’t resist taking some closer photos – cone flowers, button bush, cup plant, and some mushrooms that reminded me of roasted marshmallows.

Plastics Crisis – Bring your own…

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One of the biggest ways to reduce single use plastics is to remember to ‘bring your own’ more frequently. The easy ones for me are:

Bring your own water bottle. I have three different reusable water/beverage containers – stainless (although – aargh! – with some plastic in their lids). It’s very easy to refill them; lots of places have water fountains that include a bottle filler above the fountain! I even use my water bottle when I brush my teeth in hotels – avoiding a single use plastic cup that they provide.

Bring your own bag/basket. I have a collection of bags that I use for my usual shopping (square bottoms, sturdy enough to handle heavy items, easy to keep clean). I keep a canvas bag in my car and a stuff bag in my purse for ad hoc shopping. I’ve recently added a basket to my collection but haven’t quite gotten used to it. Overall – I manage to avoid single use plastic shopping bags almost completely.

Bring your own eating utensil. I am reusing a gel pin tin for carrying silverware when I travel. If I buy a fast-food salad, I can avoid the plasticware – although I haven’t figured out how to avoid the plastic container it comes in. I generally put the used forks in the ice chest and then into the dishwasher when I get home.

Bring your own bowl. I pack a glass container when I travel to Lewisville since the hotel breakfast has Styrofoam plates (the hot items are in metal trays, and the serving utensils are metal). I get my scrambled eggs and bacon in my own bowl…and use my own silverware too…..making the breakfast plastic free!

Bring your own cup. When I travel in the wintertime, I bring my own ceramic cup to make hot tea (with my own tea) in the hotel microwave. The cups they provide are Styrofoam or plastic-coated paper….and more hotels have put in Keurig things which have a lot of single use plastic.

Bring your own snacks. I frequently cut up veggies or make my own chicken/egg salad and put it in my own reusable (glass) container for when I am away from home at mealtime. It does mean that I am taking an ice chest as well. During the summer – I always have an ice chest when I travel to keep food and toiletries from getting too hot!

These are just a few ideas of how ‘bring your own’ can reduce your contributions to the huge piles of single use plastics.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 04, 2026

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

06/24/2026 I’m Plastic Free How to Tell if a Company is Actually Reducing its Plastic Footprint? - In the 2020s, it is no longer enough for companies to say they care about the planet while their products, packaging, and supply chains continue to leak plastic into the environment. Plastic pollution is not only a litter problem. It is a materials, design, energy, waste, and accountability problem.

6/24/2026 NWF Blog Go Plastic Free This July - Reducing our plastic waste helps the environment by not only ensuring it’s pristine, but it also prevents plastic from being ingested by wildlife, where injury and death are common outcomes when they interact with plastic. Plastic is also a known hormone disruptor, which can and does affect wildlife and humans.

06/23/2026 The Conversation We found microplastics in hedgehogs – then we traced them back to pet food - The story began in 2021, when we collected 189 hedgehog faeces samples from residential gardens and rehabilitation centres across the UK. We found plastic in 19% of them. Research suggests that food left out by people is the single biggest reason European hedgehogs visit residential gardens. Many hedgehogs have even become reliant on it, especially during the autumn and winter. We found microplastics in 29 of the 38 pet food products we tested. In 18 products, contamination appeared in more than one retail unit. Although plastic was found across the products tested, those in the “value” price category had more positive samples.

06/23/2026 The New York Times Former NOAA Employees Revive Climate Site Shut by Trump Administration - The new site, climate.us, is an effort by former staff members at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to present climate science previously housed at climate.gov, including data, reports, articles, and congressionally mandated national climate assessments. The new site is effectively the “first full clone” of climate.gov.

6/23/2026 Clean Technica How you fight climate disinformation – Several strategies….including Pope Leo XIV has called “the drug of fake news” a threat to a health society and has called on journalists to “safeguard voices and faces, cultivate seriousness in every report and every analysis, preserve the beauty of cultures and territories.”

6/25/2026 BBC Droughts are transforming the Turkish landscape with massive sinkholes - The "breadbasket" of Turkey, Konya's valleys are filled with the farms needed to feed a growing nation. But the available groundwater is drying up and causing fields to collapse. Turkey has been seized by ongoing drought, with a United Nations report predicting that Turkey would become a water-poor country by 2030. Konya's sinkhole problem is a perfect storm of geology, drought and intensive agriculture draining the groundwater.

6/25/2026 Science Daily Osteopenia is silently weakening bones in millions of people - Exercise, adequate calcium and vitamin D, and other healthy habits can slow or even partially reverse the decline.

6/23/2026 The Conversation Earth’s oldest crater really is over 3 billion years old - Zircon is tiny, tough and unusually good at keeping time. It contains uranium, which slowly decays into lead. By measuring uranium and lead in a zircon crystal, we can estimate when that crystal formed, or when something strongly altered it. Apatite can grow when hot fluids move through broken rock – exactly the kind of system an impact creates, as heat and fractures drive water through a crater. The apatite gave the same age as the modified zircons. Two clocks, in different minerals and different rocks, pointed to the same event about 3.02 billion years ago.

6/22/2026 Smithsonian Magazine Authorities Investigated Reports of an Illegal Excavation in Rome. Then, They Stumbled Upon an Ancient Villa Adorned with Mosaics - In mid-February, residents of Castel di Guido, a village on the outskirts of Rome, notified police of unusual activity taking place nearby. Locals had spotted people digging at night, seemingly without authorization. When authorities investigated the site, they realized that looters had used a backhoe to access an underground cavern protected by fencing. Archaeologists jumped into action to prevent further damage—and soon discovered a well-preserved set of ruins that may have been visited by Roman emperors. Emergency excavations revealed the ancient structure’s entrance hall, which featured a central impluvium, or marble basin at the center of the room, and a mosaic floor adorned with botanical and geometric designs.

6/17/2026 Yale Environment 360 A Missing Piece in Climate Models: Nature’s Own Emissions - For decades, climate scientists have issued warnings about positive global warming feedbacks, vicious cycles in the Earth system in which rising temperatures from burning fossil fuels beget more warming. Feedbacks in which ecosystems emit more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere are so complex that they are often left out entirely. For example, how much more carbon dioxide will be emitted as wildfires increase? How much more methane will bubble up from fermenting wetlands or seep from thawing permafrost? Remarkably, these so-called warming-induced emissions are poorly represented or absent from the most influential climate models. Climate modelers are scrambling to catch up.

eBotanical Prints – June 2026

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Twenty more books were added to my botanical print eBook collection in June – all are available for browsing on Internet Archive.   16 of the books are a continuation of the Carnivorous Plant Newsletters; there are 4 volumes per year so this month includes 2013 to 2017; I’ll continue browsing this periodical in July. There were a few miscellaneous volumes at the beginning of the list – with a wide range of publication dates (1660 – 2001).

My list of eBotanical Prints books now totals 3,383 eBooks I’ve browsed over the years. The whole list can be accessed here.

Click on any sample image from June’s 20 books to get an enlarged version…and the title hyperlink in the list below the image mosaic to view the entire volume where there are a lot more botanical illustrations to browse.

Enjoy the June 2026 eBotanical Prints!

6 Maine Trees * Goodale, Rebecca * sample image * 2001

JARDIN DE RARES ET CURIEUX FLEURS FAICTES * Geest, Julius Francois de * sample image * 1660

Sketch book of flowers in watercolor * Dabney, Beatrice Penati Adams * sample image * 1960

Practical directions for learning flower-drawing. Illustrated by coloured drawings * Syme, Paterick * sample image * 1810

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.42:no.1 (2013)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2013

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.42:no.2 (2013)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2013

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.42:no.3 (2013)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2013

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.43:no.1 (2014)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2014

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.43:no.2 (2014)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2014

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.43:no.3 (2014)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2014

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.43:no.4 (2014)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2014

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.44:no.1 (2015)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2015

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.44:no.2 (2015)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2014

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.44:no.3 (2015)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2015

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.44:no.4 (2015)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2015

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.45:no.1 (2016)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2016

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.45:no.2 (2016)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2016

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.45:no.3 (2016)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2016

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.45:no.4 (2016)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2016

Carnivorous plant newsletter v.46:no.1 (2017)  * California State University, Fullerton. Arboretum * sample image * 2017

Ten Little Celebrations – June 2026

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The beginning of the month was very hectic….but I recovered in the later weeks. There was a lot to celebrate.

Violet leaves with spaghetti sauce. It’s such a joy to simply walk outside in the back yard and cut a few leaves to eat almost immediately!

Microplastics talk to Missouri Master Gardeners. The audience was not large, but they made up for it in enthusiasm. I celebrated that I’d gotten it done!

Clumps of mushrooms around native plant garden. The edges of the oak mulch are evidently perfect for mushrooms. I celebrated that they looked like a natural ‘edge’ to the bed.

Hummingbird and squirrels and chipmunk seen from my office window. Hurray! We finally have a chipmunk visiting our yard…the first time I’ve seen one here. The hummingbird is coming to our feeder regularly and the squirrels run along the fence tops and through the pine to get to the holly just out of my view.

New glasses. I celebrated new single vision glasses for distance….and really like them for driving.

Hellbender tour. The hellbender conservation lab at the St. Louis Zoo was a great opportunity to see an animal I’d heard about but never seen….and the two flamingos on nests were another sight to celebrate.

Audubon Center at Riverlands. It was too hot to truly enjoy Riverlands and confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers…but I celebrated that it will make a great birding trip for next winter.

Telecon about data centers in Missouri. I celebrated an interesting telephone conference on data centers in Missouri; I now feel more knowledgeable about the issue.

Yellow and white wildflowers between Missouri and Texas. The yellow and whites along the roadside are the colors of summer along my route…celebrating the season.

Glorious summer yard. There are so many good things happening in my yard – so many reasons to celebrate native plants!

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 27, 2026

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

06/17/2026 Science Daily Scientists say most of what’s in your food is still a mystery - Most chemicals in food are invisible to us in terms of research. We consume them every day, but we have little idea what they do. Projects such as the Foodome Project are now attempting to catalogue this hidden chemical universe. More than 130,000 molecules have already been listed, linking food compounds to human proteins, gut microbes and disease processes. The aim is to build an atlas of how diet interacts with the body, and to pinpoint which molecules really matter for health.

06/17/2026 The Conversation Levels of ‘forever chemicals’ in dolphins and whales are rising globally - Whales and dolphins inhabit some of the largest and seemingly most pristine environments on Earth, from tropical coastlines to Antarctic waters. Yet even they cannot escape PFAS – persistent “forever chemicals” that leak from our homes, factories and waterways into the sea. Whales and dolphins inhabit some of the largest and seemingly most pristine environments on Earth, from tropical coastlines to Antarctic waters. Yet even they cannot escape PFAS – persistent “forever chemicals” that leak from our homes, factories and waterways into the sea. Some dolphin studies have reported changes in immune-related markers associated with PFAS exposure. The highest concentrations tended to be found in coastal dolphins and porpoises, suggesting animals living near urban and industrial areas face greater exposure.

06/15/2026 Smithsonian Magazine Venus Flytraps Snap Their Traps Shut in Less Than a Second - A team reports that the chomping motion happens when rigid walls of cells on the leaves’ outer surface suddenly soften. The findings provide new insights into plant biology and could inspire new robotic designs.

6/16/2026 The Conversation Microplastics are everywhere in Pennsylvania’s water – but the tide may be turning - Microplastics are nearly everywhere, their concentration in sediment has been doubling every 20 years, and some of the most common types are among the most toxic. More than 80% of mismanaged plastic waste - plastic that’s littered, dumped or otherwise not properly contained - is estimated to be transported by rivers to coastal environments. What can you do to decrease your exposure to microplastics and help decrease their spread? You can stay informed about which plastics carry the greatest health risks and check the recycling number on the bottom of containers before you buy. You can also swap out single-use plastic cups, straws and food containers for alternatives, such as glass, stainless steel or unbleached paper.

06/11/2026 NASA Air Pollution’s Daily Pulse Over the Northeast - More than 35 million people live along the New York–Washington corridor and breathe the region’s air. While air quality has improved significantly in recent decades, outbreaks of ground-level ozone remain common, particularly in the warm summer months, when the chemical reactions that produce the pollutant accelerate and stagnant air allows ozone to accumulate. A reminder of this seasonal phenomenon came earlier than usual in 2026, when a mid-May heat wave prompted the New York State Department of Health and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation to issue a health advisory on May 17 over concerns about ozone.

06/13/2026 Clean Technica Solar & Storage Provide Over 90% of All New Power Added to the U.S. Grid in Q1 - The United States added 7.8 gigawatts (GW) of new solar capacity in the first quarter of 2026, surpassing 6 million cumulative installations as solar remained the leading source of new power added to the grid. Despite changing tax policy and regulatory actions targeting clean energy, solar and energy storage represented 91% of new capacity installed in Q1 as utilities, homeowners and businesses seek energy security amid global gas and gas turbine supply disruptions.

03/17/2026 National Geographic To study microplastics, Cassandra Rauert first had to build a plastic-free lab. It wasn't easy - An air-locked, 250-square-foot facility built almost entirely from stainless steel and nicknamed “the submarine”—though it feels less like a sub and more like a starship from a galaxy where plastic never took over modern life. Known as the Minderoo Plastics and Human Health Laboratory

06/09/2026 Science Daily An invisible forever chemical rain is falling across the planet - Researchers found that refrigerants and certain anesthetic gases have generated more than 335,000 tons of trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), a highly persistent "forever chemical," that has been deposited across Earth's surface since 2000. The pollutant is now showing up everywhere from rainwater to remote Arctic ice, and scientists expect levels to keep rising. Scientists are still working to fully understand the long-term effects of TFA. The European Chemicals Agency classifies the chemical as harmful to aquatic life. Researchers have also detected TFA in human blood and urine. In addition, the German Federal Office for Chemicals recently proposed classifying TFA as potentially toxic to human reproduction.

06/09/2026 National Wildlife Federation Data Centers are Driving Up Your Energy Bill - Clean energy has become the cheapest form of energy, but wind and solar still only account for 17 percent of the country’s energy generation. The biggest barrier to deploying clean energy is usually transmission. Without enough transmission to deliver cheaper clean energy to where it’s needed, over 900 GW of solar and wind projects sit waiting in queue, and utilities often default to more expensive fossil fuel generation instead. We can double down on outdated systems that pollute our air and water and drive up prices, or we can invest in the resilient energy solutions that have proven to be the cheapest, build the grid needed to deliver them, and ensure the largest electricity users pay their fair share of the costs they trigger.

06/08/2026 National Parks Traveler Young Mountains, Old Rocks: A Geological Overview of the Teton Range - The Tetons continue to grow. The tectonic forces that built the range are still active, and stress continues to build even if the Teton Fault has not experienced major movement in recorded history. Evidence of ongoing stress appears east of the Teton Range, where the Snake River does not flow down the center of its riverbed. Instead, the river flows preferentially along the western side of its banks as the extensional stress builds and the eastern block of the fault (the block underlying Jackson Hole) tilts more westward.

Carl Sandburg’s Rootabaga Stories/Pigeons

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Project Gutenberg has the two Rootabaga books published by Carl Sandburg in the 1920s. Both books were illustrated by Maud and Miska Petersham. I remember hearing about these books when I visited Carl Sandburg’s last home in North Carolina with my daughter in 2003…but didn’t encounter them again until this year. Enjoy the text and the illustrations!

 Rootabaga Stories

Missouri Master Naturalist Conference Keynote

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The keynote speaker at the Missouri Master Naturalist state conference was Phil Valko – the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Sustainability at Washington University. He was an engaging speaker…starting his talk with a Missouri nature trivia quiz (number of springs and caves, etc.) and conservation history.

The major topic of the talk was sustainability at Washington University. I had already noticed the number of native plants in the areas of the campus I encountered during the conference. It was great news that they had successfully reduced the campus energy use and emissions while increasing the campus space! They have electrified their fleet and have solar panels on their charging facility.

The campus as its own thrift store to promote reuse – particularly during student move in and out at the university.

The campus also is an arboretum. It has 133 of the 153 trees native to Missouri and 63 of the 113 shrubs! The arboretum also has many non-natives….and the current logo for the arboretum features the ginkgo.

Washington University created a mobile app (Project Clean Grid) that displays a specific type of grid emissions data called marginal emissions that focus on the real-world impacts of using electricity – which power plants actually respond when you use more or less electricity and how much carbon they emit. By avoiding the dirtiest times (red and orange), high-carbon power plants run a little less. Shifting your usage to the cleanest times (green) makes use of lower-carbon power sources in your region and can even result in more renewable energy flowing onto the grid in regions with significant amounts of clean energy. I downloaded the app and have started to be more aware of the grid where I live.

Benefits of Riparian Corridor

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My second lecture session at the Missouri Master Naturalist state conference was Brian Waldrop’s Benefits of Riparian Corridor. Most of the material was not new to me,  but it was thought provoking.

There was a chart about different types of riparian corridors: forest, grassland, mixed, and wetland. I realized that the one I was most familiar with was forest (most of the time in an urban environment where the corridor was damaged by intermittent intrusion of heavy runoff that often undermined the trees. A stream in a tropical forest was shown with vegetation hanging well over the stream surface.

The wider the buffer, the greater the benefit - starting with bank stabilization and progressing to water quality, flood control, and wildlife habitat. In urban/suburban areas, we often think it is great if we can achieve bank stabilization!

It seemed logical that the type of plants found in riparian zones should be native, flood-tolerant, deep-rooted, and shade-providing. I realized that I don’t know these things about individual plant species. I tend to draw on memories of trees seen frequently along rivers in Maryland and in Missouri – like American sycamores!

The talk ended with some charts about good reverences. I am putting them on my list of books to browse online!

Conservation Planning Tools for Missouri Communities: A Reference Manual (from MDC)

Native Plants for Stormwater Management Projects (from Grow Native!)

Stormwater Smart Outreach Tools (US EPA)