Author: patd

“Let’s stop trying to choose the political leaders who we believe are the most godly because, in reality, only God knows people’s hearts. You and I don’t, and we are all sinners.”

So says our Trail friend xrepublican.  Sadly, more than just the grown-ups have left this global room, too many of the critters among us are also on the way out according to a new United Nations assessment as reported by

New York Times: Humans Are Speeding Extinction and Altering the Natural World at an ‘Unprecedented’ Pace

“Human actions threaten more species with global extinction now than ever before,” the report concludes, estimating that “around 1 million species already face extinction, many within decades, unless action is taken.”
Unless nations step up their efforts to protect what natural habitats are left, they could witness the disappearance of 40 percent of amphibian species, one-third of marine mammals and one-third of reef-forming corals. More than 500,000 land species, the report said, do not have enough natural habitat left to ensure their long-term survival.
Over the past 50 years, global biodiversity loss has primarily been driven by activities like the clearing of forests for farmland, the expansion of roads and cities, logging, hunting, overfishing, water pollution and the transport of invasive species around the globe.
[…]
All told, three-quarters of the world’s land area has been significantly altered by people, the report found, and 85 percent of the world’s wetlands have vanished since the 18th century.

According to On This Day in
1626 Dutch colonist Peter Minuit organizes the purchase of Manhattan Island from Native Americans for 60 guilders worth of goods, believed to have been Canarsee Indians of the Lenape

and according to Fact/Myth
The Dutch Traded Manhattan to the English for Nutmeg
At the height of the spice trade, the Dutch traded Manhattan to the English for the Nutmeg-rich Run Island via the 1674 Treaty of Westminster. This treaty ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War (if not “the Nutmeg Wars“) and allowed Britain to officially claim the land it had already occupied illegally since 1664. Until 100 years later when the Dutch’s monopoly goes bankrupt, the American patriots take Manhattan, and the British take the island again before giving it back to the Dutch.

CNN:  Boeing 737 skidded into a river in Florida with 143 people aboard

 

If it’s the Friday before Derby, it must be Oaks day and the running of the ladies for the lilies.
At Churchill Downs there’s also Lily of the fillies (and stallions too) pictured in the Courier Journal story “What calms a nervous Derby horse? These playful goats on Churchill Downs’ backside.”