Pink flame retardants - what do we know about them?

 “Yeah. They’ve got a couple water sources, so she might be on the hose. I know they dropped mud on her earlier.” 

 “Why would they drop mud on Rowan?” 

 His laugh broke out, long, delighted. 

“Sorry. I meant the fire. Mud’s what we call the retardant the tanker drops. 

Believe me, no smoke jumper wants to be under that.”

Chasing Fire

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Glenn Beltz, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Aircraft battling fires raging through the Los Angeles area are dropping more than water: Hundreds of thousands of gallons of hot-pink fire suppressant ahead of the flames in a desperate effort to stop them before they destroy more neighborhoods.

CNN

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 “It’s thick pink goo, and burns if it hits your skin.” 

 “Why pink? It’s kind of girlie.” 

 He grinned as she got out a skillet. 

“They add ferric oxide to make it red, but it looks like pink rain when it’s coming down. 

The color marks the drop area.”

Chasing Fire 

'Catastrophic' bushfires hit Sydney

“Take cover!” she shouted to her team. “We’re good, Gibbons. Tell them to drop the mud. We’re clear.”

Through the smoke, she watched the retardant plane swing over the ridge, heard the thunder 

of its gates opening to make the drop, and the roar as the thick pink rain streaked down from the sky.

Chasing Fire

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Fires burned out of control in Sydney's north ahead of a wind change on Tuesday night that could send infernos in a completely new direction, spelling disaster for at risk areas.

DailyMail

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“You don’t want to hear about mud.”

“You’re wrong,” she told him as they gathered up the tray,

 the glasses, the wine. “I’m interested.”

“It’s thick pink goo, and burns if it hits your skin.”

“Why pink? It’s kind of girlie.”

He grinned as she got out a skillet. “They add ferric oxide

to make it red, but it looks like pink rain when it’s coming down. 

The color marks the drop area.”

Chasing Fire

Women are aging alone more than ever

“I’m happy,” she told him. “I tend to be a happy person, and I learned 
how to be happy on my own. It was good for me, to have that time, 
to find out a little bit more about myself. What I could do, 
what I could do without.”

Chasing Fire

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By Alexandre Godreau alexandre_godreau - 

https://unsplash.com/photos/lbhVDNb5JRU, CC0, 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61829641

Figuring how to make it work

There are challenges — and rewards — to going solo.

mother nature network

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She waited until she thought that Lulu had had time enough to get home from the bookstore but not enough to settle in too comfortably. 
After she’d waded through the lawn art, adjusted her eyes to the 
virulent colors that Lulu habitually selected to paint her house, 
and knocked on the back door, Ripley was pleased to see her timing was good. 
Lulu had changed out of her work clothes into a sweatshirt that read, 
“Coffee, Chocolate, Men . . . Some things are just better rich.” 
She had an unopened bottle of wine in her hand and was wearing ratty red slippers 
and the faintly irritated look of a woman who’d been interrupted.

Heaven and Earth

Sex After 60

“I’ve wondered since you called if we’d take each other to bed tonight, then I had to do thirty minutes of yoga to stop being nervous.”

“Nervous? You?”

“I’m not a kid,” she reminded him as she drew him into her bedroom, where the light through the windows glowed soft. “Men your age often look at thirty-somethings, not fifty-somethings.

That’s twenty years of gravity against me.”

“What would I want with someone young enough to be my kid?”

When she laughed at that, he grinned. “Hell. It’d just make me feel old. I’m already worried I’ll mess this up. I’m out of practice, Ella.”

“I’m pretty rusty myself. I guess we’ll see if we tune up as we go. You could start by kissing me again. We both seemed to have that part down.”

He reached for her, and this time her arms went around his neck. He felt her rise up to her toes again as their lips met, as they parted for the slow, seductive slide of tongues.

He let himself stop thinking, stop worrying what if. Just act. His hands stroked down her back, over her hips, up her sides, then up again to pull the pins out of her hair.

It tumbled over his hands, slid through his fingers while she tipped back her head so his lips could find the line of her throat.

Nerves floated away on an indescribable mix of comfort and excitement. She shivered when he eased back to unbutton her shirt. As he did when she did the same for him.

She slipped out of her sandals; he toed off his shoes.

“So far . . .”

“So good,” he finished, and kissed her again.

And, oh, yes, she thought, he definitely had that part down.

Chasing Fire

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By Ian MacKenzie (Flickr: Old Couple) [CC BY 2.0 
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

5 Things Nobody Tells You About Sex After 60

Here's what to know as you go into your golden years of lovemaking.

MSN

Women

He started to tell his kids to stand up, but he didn't have to bother. 

When Tereza Giambelli walked into a room, people got to their feet.

He'd forgotten she was so petite. They'd had two meetings in New York, face-to-face. Two long, involved meetings. And still he'd walked away from them with the image of a statuesque Amazon rather than the fine-boned, slim woman who walked toward him now. 

The hand she offered him was small and strong.

The Villa

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By Mauro Cateb - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18781082

Women in Their 60s on the Secret to Living Your Best Life

In today's youth-obsessed world, just walking out the door, flicking on the TV, or checking your Instagram feed can be a veritable minefield for your self-esteem. Even when you know deep down that you're scrolling through someone's highlight reel, it still impacts you IRL.

Thankfully, a slew of insanely stylish and savvy femmes in their 60s are breaking the mold with authenticity, honesty, and a zero–face-lift policy. These women are proud of their unconventional looks, disregard trends for personal style, eschew gender conformity for feminism, and exercise their sharp wits, all while they perfect the art of aging gracefully. 

MY DOMAINE

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The minute the door closed behind her, she did a high-stepping dance in the bold purple peek-toe pumps she’d bought that afternoon.

On a foolish giggle, she walked to the sink, studied her giddy face in the mirror. “Let the adventure begin,” she said, then took out her lipstick.

A few years before, she’d wondered, worried, all but assumed her life was essentially over. In a way, it had been, had needed to be to push her to start again.

So far, the new life of Ella Frazier brimmed with interesting possibilities. 

Chasing Fire

Ice Cream Choice

Rowan licked her strawberry swirl, enjoying the buzz of pedestrian and street traffic as

she strolled with Gull.

“That’s not really ice cream,” she told him.

“Maple walnut is not only really ice cream, it’s macho ice cream.”

“Maple’s for syrup. It’s like a condiment. It’s like mustard. Would you eat mustard ice cream?”

“I’m open to all flavors, even your girlie strawberry parfait.”

Chasing Fire

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"StrawberryIce". Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:StrawberryIce.jpg#/media/File:StrawberryIce.jpg

There are those things we eat, make, read, and gush over that are just too good to keep to ourselves. Here, we resist the urge to use too many exclamation points and let you in on our latest crushes.

Today: You hear the ice cream truck rounding the corner and it's time to make a choice: Here's what your decision says about you.

FOOD 52

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She caught herself, shook her head. “Here you are on what I’m sure is very rare and precious free

time, and I’m full of gloom.”

“You need ice cream,” Gull decided. “What flavor?”

“Oh, no, I—”

“Ice cream,” he repeated, “is guaranteed to cut the gloom. What would you like?”

“You might as well pick something,” Rowan told her. “He’ll just keep at you otherwise.”

“Mint chocolate chip. Thank you.”

“I’ll be back in a minute.”

Chasing Fire