chasing answers newsletter #46

The Big Dance, Solar water heaters, It's not just the kids, They have feelings

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Happy Sunday!

Last November, I wrote about how the week of Thanksgiving is my favorite week of the year. And it is. But the NCAA Tournament's opening weekend is a very close second. 

The Big Dance, as it's often referred to, is my favorite sporting event of the year, other than a particular college football game in late November (Go Blue!) Going back to high school, the opening weekend of March Madness has always meant four consecutive days of nothing but college basketball. I would skip school, take days off work, whatever it took not to miss a minute of the action. 

I know exactly where I was for many of the greatest tournament games. Whether it was a weekend trip to Vegas for the tournament or sitting around a poker table at my buddy’s house. 

Watching a highlight reel of all-time great moments from past tournaments is like a time machine that instantly takes me back to those places. 

So, it’s incredibly weird that for the second year in a row, I watched exactly zero games during the first four days of the tournament. Somehow, life has become too busy for The Big Dance to play such a critical role in mine.  

But Saturday, I did have an entirely different kind of dance on my schedule. I was fortunate enough to be the date of the most beautiful five-year-old at the Cinderella Ball Father-Daughter Dance. 

My daughter was decked out in her new dress and matching shoes, complete with nails to match. It was a ton of fun, and there’s no place I would have rather been. But, I have to say, seeing a bunch of five to nine-year-olds running around dressed as though it was senior prom makes me feel like these kids are growing up WAY too fast. 

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Solar Water Heaters

(Photo credit: Distilled)

90% of Homes in Israel Have A Solar Water Heater. Why Don’t More Americans Use Them?

Solar water heaters have not been on my radar during my quest for climate solutions. But

Michael Thomas

, who writes

Distilled

wrote this excellent article about their history and why we don’t use more of them here in the U.S., even though in some countries, up to 90% of homes use them for their hot water needs. 

I had no idea that, at one point, up to 40% of homes in some regions of the U.S. had solar water heaters. Their popularity diminished due to the rising costs of the water heaters themselves and the decreasing cost of electricity. 

I continue to be amazed at how many solutions we have but fail to implement on a large scale.

Read the full article above for a deeper dive into the topic.

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It’s Not Just the Kids

(Photo credit: The Guardian)

‘We have money and power’: older Americans to blockade banks in climate protest

It’s become the norm to see young people leading the fight against climate change, especially regarding climate protests and demonstrations. 

The first image that comes to mind when you think of a climate activist is likely Greta Thunberg, the twenty-year-old Swedish environmental activist. 

But this Tuesday, in 90 locations across the U.S., older Americans will take part in the protests of banks that continue to finance fossil fuels.

The protests, which are being “billed as the first set of mass climate demonstrations by older Americans,” have been organized by Bill McKibben and his organization Third Act.

So often, it seems that older generations have readily passed the problem of climate change to today’s youth, so it’s awesome to see the 60+ crowd stepping up. 

As McKibben said, “So far the kids have had to do all of the work and they’ve done an amazing job but it’s not fair to ask 18-year-olds to solve this problem.”

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Best of Twitter

They have feelings, people.

They have fucking feelings.

Ricky Gervais @rickygervais

💔

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I hope you all have a great week!

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randy