Harvey striking the pose. ©2010 Harveytheturtle.com

A reader sent in  a note about a particular problem she’s having.

I hope we can have deep, meaningful, interesting conversations. Like now, other than the warming up of the planet, I am overwhelmed by the fact that my bread is delicious just out of the oven and it gets rock hard as soon as it cools down. Harvey, help! – Rebeca

I know what you mean, Rebeca. Being a box turtle, I need my food to be soft and pliable. So, I researched your problem and I have come up with a potential solution.

It sounds like your bread gets stale rather quickly. That happens, as far as I know, when the humidity evaporates too fast, leaving it very dry and hard. This is normal for homemade bread. The key is trapping the moisture, but not too much.

One potential solution is storing the bread in a plastic bag. Be aware that if you trap all the moisture by putting it in a plastic bag, the bread may be preserved fresh longer but then after a couple days it just feels and tastes kind of damp. I’d rather have dry, stale bread than wet, stale bread! Others have complained of mold growth on bread placed in plastic bags, though I’ve never had this problem because my family eats the bread faster than mold can be noticed.

A second solution is storing the bread in a brown paper bag. The color of the bag blocks out sunlight, and the paper allows some moisture to escape. This prevents mold growths and the problem of wet-stale bread. The bread will still become stale – and at a faster rate than if stored in plastic bags. However, the process will be slowed by 1-2 days.

A third solution to bread becoming stale is to invite friends and family (and turtles) so that you can all eat it no more than a few hours after it’s made! I would put it in a brown paper bag until then.

All bread gets stale, so don’t despair when the same happens to your bread. It doesn’t mean it’s bad bread. In fact, the store-bought bread that doesn’t get hard very fast isn’t as good as homemade bread!

Harvey, under his luxury cave. ©2010 HarveyTheTurtle.com

The oil spill in the gulf and the question about who is to blame reminds me of a poem by Pablo Neruda entitled “Bomb (II)” in the poetry collection “World’s End [Fin de mundo].” I dedicate this to my brothers and sisters and cousins (you call them sea turtles) dying in the gulf.

I’m not sure of the sea
on such a presumptuous morning:
who’s to say – the fish may put on
their nuclear scales
and deep in the infinite waters,
instead of original cold,
the death-fires are kindling

The savaging sea piles its fears
on the shores of the world:
no tower can deliver us now
from the enemy wave.

Earth wasn’t enough for them.

They had to murder the ocean.

The wave mixes its salt
with a hellish concoction,
the void vomits up
all its mineral fury:
even the hurricane
brews us a teacup of venom
and serves man a birthright of porridge-
half fire from the sea, and half death.

Leave it to Pablo Neruda to write about an event 40 years into future. Let me make it obvious whose fault is the oil gushing forth from our planet’s interior: ALL HUMANS. Was it BP? Yup. Was it the general person driving her car? Yup. Was it the people who use plastic bottles? Yup. What about the people who refuse to bring their own cloth bags to the grocery store and instead allow the stores to use plastic bags? You bet. Was it my owner who still doesn’t know how to tell the bagger at the grocery store that we don’t need a plastic bag for the eggs? No comment…

I am appalled that an oil spill of this magnitude has not become an outrage around the world. President Obama (I’m glad that as a turtle I didn’t vote for him) is obviously dragging his feet. But so is BP. And so is everyone else. My turtle cousins and a select few pelicans are the only ones trying to do something about this man-made disaster. My salt water family is dying while humans sit there saying, “This may go on until August.” Well, that’s a load of turtle bowel movements!

Event that transpired when Harvey was reading about BP response. ©2010 HarveyTheTurtle.com

I cannot believe that of all the technological prowess you humans have, of all the scientific knowledge and understanding of physics, your kind can’t even seal a simple pipe!

Even more disturbing is a simple fact. After the earthquake in Haiti, THE ENTIRE WORLD ran to the country’s rescue. Before that, it was the tsunami that brought you simple humans together to rebuild your primitive society you call “civilization.” Even the ill-fated response to Hurricane Katrina galvanized your people into action. What is your excuse now? “The law says that whoever caused the spill has to clean it up.” That’s fine and dandy, when the entity which caused the spill knows what the heck it’s doing!

You mean that with all of your military power, with all of its genius scientists, you humans still cannot do anything about sealing a simple pipe? You can design and stock-pile more nuclear warheads than you can handle, you can drop “bunker-busting bombs” and build multi-billion dollar flying machines of war that send missiles with literally pinpoint accuracy, and you can’t do anything about sealing a simple pipe?

A hundred-billion dollar corporation can dig wells miles beneath the ocean floor but for some reason can’t seal a simple pipe. Well, my turtle cousins could probably do a better job than you, but unfortunately Obama’s administration still does not allow anyone else but BP into that zone. Obama officials say that we must leave the job to the people at BP who can do it. If they can do it, why haven’t they done it yet?

Obviously, they can’t do it. The other oil companies should be scrambling and demanding that they help. Their future is on the line as much as BP’s.

This is an outrage. My fellow turtles are dying while you humans fail to take action. I’m thankful I don’t need oil to survive. I would just hibernate during the cold months! Take that as an example. If BP and the other oil companies were smart, they’d invest HEAVILY in solar and wind power. That wind power project off the coast of Cape Cod? Yeah, BP should jump into that project. There may be 100 years of oil left. (Only a limited amount of dinosaurs died a hundred million years ago.) After that, I wish you humans the best of luck…you’ll need it.