Tuesday, July 31, 2007
OK
OK
July 31, 2007
…Soon we will inspire the July garden’s densest
effluence and shuffle to drowse in maple
shade and the shade of birches, convening where soft mosses are softest
to build with our bodies temples for Venus
as summer suggests: We sigh, we are easy – because we understand
that we must squeeze every moment: the truest
aphrodisiac is our certain knowledge that we will die: we sweat,
we pant, we drop our pants whenever we touch
the subject of dying – because dead people rarely appear content;
because they want energy; because they lack
desire for each other’s bodies. In response to death’s deplorable
likelihood, we bed each other down in spring.
Or say: In spring (and for that matter in summer, fall,
and winter) each of us dreadfully desires to die…
excerpted from Winter’s Asperity Mollifies by Donald Hall
***
OK, I’ll own up to it
although no more than you do I dreadfully desire
to die
I do find our knowing that we are here for a season, not
for eternity
perhaps alongside the odd odds-against reality that we
are here
rather than not, somewhere instead of nowhere, perhaps the
most fascinating
I started to say riddle but that we die is not so much
a riddle
as a teasing inscrutability, not to be solved but to probe gently as
we consider
if not why we are here, what to do with being here because here
we are
You will have heard about Oscar, the cat in the Providence
nursing home
who was the subject of an article in the New England Journal of Medicine
Oscar perches
on the bed of people who in 25 cases so far have died within
four hours
of Oscar sitting vigil. In case number 13, the hospice doctor warned the
patient’s family
that all her vital signs signaled imminent death but Oscar remained aloof
the doctor
thought Oscar’s string was broken until a few hours later Oscar returned
hopped lightly onto her bed and the chosen lady died within two hours.
You must have moments – as I do – when you know
you know
moments so filled with awe and terror that you hope you are dreaming
not parsing
the world through your rational linear science-approved consciousness
you trust
except when high in the endorphin drenched zone or tasting the
little death
that comes with gambling the lot submitting your
stripped self
for a trip to god-knows- where where the only certainty is the
insane decision
that knowing what you know unfiltered unprotected unupholstered
or as
much as your rational linear science-approved consciousness
will admit
for however long you can make the thing go
it is not only all worth it but it’s a goddam
riot.
July 31, 2007
…Soon we will inspire the July garden’s densest
effluence and shuffle to drowse in maple
shade and the shade of birches, convening where soft mosses are softest
to build with our bodies temples for Venus
as summer suggests: We sigh, we are easy – because we understand
that we must squeeze every moment: the truest
aphrodisiac is our certain knowledge that we will die: we sweat,
we pant, we drop our pants whenever we touch
the subject of dying – because dead people rarely appear content;
because they want energy; because they lack
desire for each other’s bodies. In response to death’s deplorable
likelihood, we bed each other down in spring.
Or say: In spring (and for that matter in summer, fall,
and winter) each of us dreadfully desires to die…
excerpted from Winter’s Asperity Mollifies by Donald Hall
***
OK, I’ll own up to it
although no more than you do I dreadfully desire
to die
I do find our knowing that we are here for a season, not
for eternity
perhaps alongside the odd odds-against reality that we
are here
rather than not, somewhere instead of nowhere, perhaps the
most fascinating
I started to say riddle but that we die is not so much
a riddle
as a teasing inscrutability, not to be solved but to probe gently as
we consider
if not why we are here, what to do with being here because here
we are
You will have heard about Oscar, the cat in the Providence
nursing home
who was the subject of an article in the New England Journal of Medicine
Oscar perches
on the bed of people who in 25 cases so far have died within
four hours
of Oscar sitting vigil. In case number 13, the hospice doctor warned the
patient’s family
that all her vital signs signaled imminent death but Oscar remained aloof
the doctor
thought Oscar’s string was broken until a few hours later Oscar returned
hopped lightly onto her bed and the chosen lady died within two hours.
You must have moments – as I do – when you know
you know
moments so filled with awe and terror that you hope you are dreaming
not parsing
the world through your rational linear science-approved consciousness
you trust
except when high in the endorphin drenched zone or tasting the
little death
that comes with gambling the lot submitting your
stripped self
for a trip to god-knows- where where the only certainty is the
insane decision
that knowing what you know unfiltered unprotected unupholstered
or as
much as your rational linear science-approved consciousness
will admit
for however long you can make the thing go
it is not only all worth it but it’s a goddam
riot.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
This American Life
I don't know if you ever listen to Ira Glass doing This American Life on NPR.
I do whenever i can because something about it makes me happy i woke up that day, not always true.
Today Ira did a story on the documentary film, "How's Your News", which was masterminded by Chad Urmston, my step-son's longest standing friend. Chad, who worked several summers during high school and college at Camp Jabberwocky, a camp for retarded people, packed several of these people - now adults - into a camper and drove them cross country. They stopped all along the way and would go into shopping malls and street corners and interview people. They would simply approach someone and, obviously different from the slick kinds of reporters people are used to, would begin asking them questions.
What have you always dreamed of doing?
At first some of the people - if they didn't simply walk away as i likely would have - were non-plussed. Because these people with microphones stuttered and slurred their words, obviously mentally challenged.
But before long those who didn't flee inevitably ended up telling them all sorts of things about themselves and exchanging with them as if they had known them for years.
I saw this film right after it had been made and I loved it. You could tell Ira Glass was deeply moved.
Last week Chad and his former band - Dispatch - that had disbanded a few years ago, reunited to do a concert to benefit the Elias Fund and several other projects in Africa. Chad and my step-son traveled in Africa the year they graduated from high school and Chad has been seeking ways ever since to do some projects that would help, first of all Elias, a worker he met there, and then countless other projects.
So this band - Dispatch - that has never advertised, only let themselves be known on the internet, put up on their site that they were going to come together to do a concert in Madison Square Garden. It sold out in an hour. So Madison Square Garden suggested they add two more nights and, as they put notice of them on the internet, they, too, sold out in under an hour.
Sixty thousand people at - who knows? $50 a ticket?
And Chad and his friends travel around ina broken down bus and live at each others' parents' houses.
So when i turned on the radiop today I was ecstatic.
And I learned again that nothing runs my endorphins like a brush with unfettered reality.
I do whenever i can because something about it makes me happy i woke up that day, not always true.
Today Ira did a story on the documentary film, "How's Your News", which was masterminded by Chad Urmston, my step-son's longest standing friend. Chad, who worked several summers during high school and college at Camp Jabberwocky, a camp for retarded people, packed several of these people - now adults - into a camper and drove them cross country. They stopped all along the way and would go into shopping malls and street corners and interview people. They would simply approach someone and, obviously different from the slick kinds of reporters people are used to, would begin asking them questions.
What have you always dreamed of doing?
At first some of the people - if they didn't simply walk away as i likely would have - were non-plussed. Because these people with microphones stuttered and slurred their words, obviously mentally challenged.
But before long those who didn't flee inevitably ended up telling them all sorts of things about themselves and exchanging with them as if they had known them for years.
I saw this film right after it had been made and I loved it. You could tell Ira Glass was deeply moved.
Last week Chad and his former band - Dispatch - that had disbanded a few years ago, reunited to do a concert to benefit the Elias Fund and several other projects in Africa. Chad and my step-son traveled in Africa the year they graduated from high school and Chad has been seeking ways ever since to do some projects that would help, first of all Elias, a worker he met there, and then countless other projects.
So this band - Dispatch - that has never advertised, only let themselves be known on the internet, put up on their site that they were going to come together to do a concert in Madison Square Garden. It sold out in an hour. So Madison Square Garden suggested they add two more nights and, as they put notice of them on the internet, they, too, sold out in under an hour.
Sixty thousand people at - who knows? $50 a ticket?
And Chad and his friends travel around ina broken down bus and live at each others' parents' houses.
So when i turned on the radiop today I was ecstatic.
And I learned again that nothing runs my endorphins like a brush with unfettered reality.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Terrorist Report
Now tell me, dear reader, when the government released a report saying that this country faces an ongoing and persistent threat of terrorism, did you learn something you hadn't known?
Government speak has always been insulting to ordinary human intelligence, but we have hit a new low here.
The White House spokewoman on terrorism announced today that terrorists - including the feared Al Qaida - are working to defeat our defenses and will, if they can, aquire and use nuclear weapons against us.
How would we ever learn these things otherwise?
Government speak has always been insulting to ordinary human intelligence, but we have hit a new low here.
The White House spokewoman on terrorism announced today that terrorists - including the feared Al Qaida - are working to defeat our defenses and will, if they can, aquire and use nuclear weapons against us.
How would we ever learn these things otherwise?
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Getting Rich
One of the strangest stories in the news this week was about John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, having participated anonymously over the years in an internet chat room in which he regularly trashed Whole Foods' rival, Wild Oats. Now it turns out that Whole Foods may make a bid to buy Wild Oats, which could turn this bizarre episode into a legal issue.
What strikes me is the adolescent quality of the matter.
And the disconnect between the classy - expensive - quality of the Whole Foods brand, and the embarrassing, petulant behavior of the man running the company.
But why should that surprise me when the President of the United States, in responding to challenges made to his disastrous Iraq debacle, sounds for all the world like a late adolescent whose manhood has been questioned?
In one of the stories about the death of Lady Bird Johnson, there was mention of a quote from her husband, whose presidency, at the time, struck me as a low point in the dignity of American public life. (I remember a photo on the front page of the NY Times on Christmas 1963, just a month after Johnsons succeeded the slain JFK. The picture was of two stuffed steers, family favorites which had died, that the president had stuffed as a present to his wife.)
The last phrase of the quote spoke of the goal of American dream being, "Not about building wealth, but about how to use wealth."
Sounds almost quaint in a world in which a yellow journalist with billions to spend, is bidding for the ownership of the Wall Street Journal, the proud (some would say conceited), stuffy, standard bearer of old NY business.
Now, a case could be made that what is going on is nothing more than pulling the cover off the prettied-up nastiness that American business - and all business - has always been about. Beating the other guy.
But, that as instinctively crass a person as Lyndon Johnson (how he ever ended up with a woman with the class of Lady Bird remains a mystery) would feel compelled to cast the purpose of making money, not as spending it to puff up one's self like Donald Trump, but for the good of the world, shows how much things have changed in the past forty years.
John Mackey, from the reports, seems hardly chagrined at having been caught taking part in the food fight. The main concern of his Company, Whole Foods, so far has been to try to portray his actions as personal, not corporate, so as to stave off SEC interest.
Some may think it a reach to say that the unleashing of all appetites - giving license to every self-aggrandizing impulse - is what led a Cheney-Bush team to believe they could impose their will on Iraq with no opposition. I think it follows as night follows day.
Recently there was a dust-up in Australian politics when a cabinet minister said - as an aside - that considerations of Australia's need for oil played a role in the government's decision making about whether to withdraw its troops from Iraq. Others in the government reacted as if the man had dropped his drawers in Parliament.
As if such a thing had never occured to people.
It may be naive and the nostalgia of an old man to think that greed and self-promotion might take a place- if not a back seat - alongside more noble motives like concern for people who are poor, and how to spread wealth more evenly .
But I suspect such a move - whether instinctive or requiring self-discipline - is not merely a matter of good manners, but of whether our species will show itself willing enough to cooperate rather than merely compete, to prove suitable for ongoing existence on this planet with finite resources.
What strikes me is the adolescent quality of the matter.
And the disconnect between the classy - expensive - quality of the Whole Foods brand, and the embarrassing, petulant behavior of the man running the company.
But why should that surprise me when the President of the United States, in responding to challenges made to his disastrous Iraq debacle, sounds for all the world like a late adolescent whose manhood has been questioned?
In one of the stories about the death of Lady Bird Johnson, there was mention of a quote from her husband, whose presidency, at the time, struck me as a low point in the dignity of American public life. (I remember a photo on the front page of the NY Times on Christmas 1963, just a month after Johnsons succeeded the slain JFK. The picture was of two stuffed steers, family favorites which had died, that the president had stuffed as a present to his wife.)
The last phrase of the quote spoke of the goal of American dream being, "Not about building wealth, but about how to use wealth."
Sounds almost quaint in a world in which a yellow journalist with billions to spend, is bidding for the ownership of the Wall Street Journal, the proud (some would say conceited), stuffy, standard bearer of old NY business.
Now, a case could be made that what is going on is nothing more than pulling the cover off the prettied-up nastiness that American business - and all business - has always been about. Beating the other guy.
But, that as instinctively crass a person as Lyndon Johnson (how he ever ended up with a woman with the class of Lady Bird remains a mystery) would feel compelled to cast the purpose of making money, not as spending it to puff up one's self like Donald Trump, but for the good of the world, shows how much things have changed in the past forty years.
John Mackey, from the reports, seems hardly chagrined at having been caught taking part in the food fight. The main concern of his Company, Whole Foods, so far has been to try to portray his actions as personal, not corporate, so as to stave off SEC interest.
Some may think it a reach to say that the unleashing of all appetites - giving license to every self-aggrandizing impulse - is what led a Cheney-Bush team to believe they could impose their will on Iraq with no opposition. I think it follows as night follows day.
Recently there was a dust-up in Australian politics when a cabinet minister said - as an aside - that considerations of Australia's need for oil played a role in the government's decision making about whether to withdraw its troops from Iraq. Others in the government reacted as if the man had dropped his drawers in Parliament.
As if such a thing had never occured to people.
It may be naive and the nostalgia of an old man to think that greed and self-promotion might take a place- if not a back seat - alongside more noble motives like concern for people who are poor, and how to spread wealth more evenly .
But I suspect such a move - whether instinctive or requiring self-discipline - is not merely a matter of good manners, but of whether our species will show itself willing enough to cooperate rather than merely compete, to prove suitable for ongoing existence on this planet with finite resources.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Your Money
In what may be an attempt to loosen the relentless grip of the global marketplace, the small town of Great Barrington in western Massachusetts has issued its own currency.
I had read a squib about this some time ago, but it wasn't until I spent a weekend there for a wedding that I saw it in action.
Seems they got permission from the Treasury Department for this social, political, economic experiment. The purpose is to encourage spending money made in the local area with merchants in the local area. I'm not sure how wide the area is in which stores have agreed to accept the currency, but it is more than just Great Barrington.
We went into several stores and saw people using it.
I would think it must have required some pretty sophisticated people to pull it off. The notes had to be designed and printed so they would be difficult to counterfeit. And they had to figure out the exhange rate, which, as I understand it, makes the local notes worth 90% of U.S. currency. It's not clear to me just how or where one goes about changing American dollars for Great Barrington money.
That means, if I understand, that one must be willing to accept a discount on what one spends in the local currency.
Not surprisingly, Great Barrington has a lot of second home owners from the canyons of Wall Street.
The bills are beautiful, prettier really than American money, with local scenes in various colors.
But they are apparently printed on slightly thicker paper, or is it that, not having passed through as many hands, they are newer and unworn? I think I overheard a woman checking out at the local co-op say that they didn't quite fit into her billfold.
I wish I was a sufficiently sophicticated economist to consider the implications of such a thing. It would seem to me they are profound. I couldn't find anyone who could tell me what the results so far seem to be. The new bills have been incirculation for a year or more and people seemed comfortable handling them.
Think global, spend and live local is a slogan of the so-called green, sustainable movement. Living in Vermont as I do during growing season, I mostly buy food from farmers I know who live within 10 - 15 miles of where I live. And most of them are organic. I love doing that and I love the farmers, pure spirits who work hard and love the land.
In California, where we spend winter, we still are lucky enough to find much of our food from a local farmer's market, though few of them are organic, and they live at a greater distance from us. But our life there is tied much more to the global market place, and I am grateful for the abundance and variety that makes possible.
In the 60s when many of us were protesting the Viet Nam War and racism, there was a lot of rhetoric about dropping out of what we called The System. But few of us had any idea how to do that or the courage to face the consequences.
Strikes me that, in rather subtle but maybe far reaching ways, strategies are forming in pockets all over the world for preserving some sense of dignity, integrity and autonomy in a world flattened and homogenized by the internet and global market, threatening to erase distinct identity.
I watch with the fascination and dispassion of an old man.
I had read a squib about this some time ago, but it wasn't until I spent a weekend there for a wedding that I saw it in action.
Seems they got permission from the Treasury Department for this social, political, economic experiment. The purpose is to encourage spending money made in the local area with merchants in the local area. I'm not sure how wide the area is in which stores have agreed to accept the currency, but it is more than just Great Barrington.
We went into several stores and saw people using it.
I would think it must have required some pretty sophisticated people to pull it off. The notes had to be designed and printed so they would be difficult to counterfeit. And they had to figure out the exhange rate, which, as I understand it, makes the local notes worth 90% of U.S. currency. It's not clear to me just how or where one goes about changing American dollars for Great Barrington money.
That means, if I understand, that one must be willing to accept a discount on what one spends in the local currency.
Not surprisingly, Great Barrington has a lot of second home owners from the canyons of Wall Street.
The bills are beautiful, prettier really than American money, with local scenes in various colors.
But they are apparently printed on slightly thicker paper, or is it that, not having passed through as many hands, they are newer and unworn? I think I overheard a woman checking out at the local co-op say that they didn't quite fit into her billfold.
I wish I was a sufficiently sophicticated economist to consider the implications of such a thing. It would seem to me they are profound. I couldn't find anyone who could tell me what the results so far seem to be. The new bills have been incirculation for a year or more and people seemed comfortable handling them.
Think global, spend and live local is a slogan of the so-called green, sustainable movement. Living in Vermont as I do during growing season, I mostly buy food from farmers I know who live within 10 - 15 miles of where I live. And most of them are organic. I love doing that and I love the farmers, pure spirits who work hard and love the land.
In California, where we spend winter, we still are lucky enough to find much of our food from a local farmer's market, though few of them are organic, and they live at a greater distance from us. But our life there is tied much more to the global market place, and I am grateful for the abundance and variety that makes possible.
In the 60s when many of us were protesting the Viet Nam War and racism, there was a lot of rhetoric about dropping out of what we called The System. But few of us had any idea how to do that or the courage to face the consequences.
Strikes me that, in rather subtle but maybe far reaching ways, strategies are forming in pockets all over the world for preserving some sense of dignity, integrity and autonomy in a world flattened and homogenized by the internet and global market, threatening to erase distinct identity.
I watch with the fascination and dispassion of an old man.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Lightning
Last night as I was about to fall asleep, something light registered through my closed eyelids and I opened them.
A bright light over in one corner of the room, flashing at intervals of a second or two.
At first I thought I might be dreaming. Or that the flashers I have sometimes experienced in my peripheral vision had returned.
But as I looked longer I realized a firefly, a lightning bug, had somehow made its way through the screen into the bedroom. I don't know that I have ever seen one of these beautiful insects inside the house before and I was surprised at how bright its light was, at least as bright as a flashing beacon from a flashlight. When I see them outside their light quickly fades into the darkness. The twinkling is one of their attractions. Even trapped in a bottle - as we used to do to them when I was a kid - their light seems to fade, as if they find confinement discouraging.
But this lightning bug flashed with exuberance. The whole room lit up with each pulse.
I considered whether this was something that required action from me. Time was when I would without hesitation kill any bug in my room before going to sleep. I still do if it's a misquito. But advancing age and the influence of the back to nature, so-called green movement have left their mark on me and I try not to harm anything that doesn't threaten me.
The more I thought about it the more I liked the idea of having a firefly keep vigil while I slept.
This morning I could find no sign of the bug.
Then the sky suddenly lighted and thunder rolled and we had a rousing storm, right at dawn. I love these storms and this time we didn't lose our power.
When you think about it - if you think about it - considering the amount of concern we all have about where our power to light and heat and run our world will come from as the reserves that built up over aeons dwindle, what a thrill to be visited by a bug and a spontaneous display of light and energy as I lay in my bed doing absolutely nothing.
A bright light over in one corner of the room, flashing at intervals of a second or two.
At first I thought I might be dreaming. Or that the flashers I have sometimes experienced in my peripheral vision had returned.
But as I looked longer I realized a firefly, a lightning bug, had somehow made its way through the screen into the bedroom. I don't know that I have ever seen one of these beautiful insects inside the house before and I was surprised at how bright its light was, at least as bright as a flashing beacon from a flashlight. When I see them outside their light quickly fades into the darkness. The twinkling is one of their attractions. Even trapped in a bottle - as we used to do to them when I was a kid - their light seems to fade, as if they find confinement discouraging.
But this lightning bug flashed with exuberance. The whole room lit up with each pulse.
I considered whether this was something that required action from me. Time was when I would without hesitation kill any bug in my room before going to sleep. I still do if it's a misquito. But advancing age and the influence of the back to nature, so-called green movement have left their mark on me and I try not to harm anything that doesn't threaten me.
The more I thought about it the more I liked the idea of having a firefly keep vigil while I slept.
This morning I could find no sign of the bug.
Then the sky suddenly lighted and thunder rolled and we had a rousing storm, right at dawn. I love these storms and this time we didn't lose our power.
When you think about it - if you think about it - considering the amount of concern we all have about where our power to light and heat and run our world will come from as the reserves that built up over aeons dwindle, what a thrill to be visited by a bug and a spontaneous display of light and energy as I lay in my bed doing absolutely nothing.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Brattleboro
You'd like Brattleboro, the town the 60s never abandoned.
Although this is likely to form the core of my Zone Note I will get to on Tuesday, it is so delicious I wanted to take an early swing at it today.
On Friday I was running errands in Brattleboro while Lacey was riding horseback. When I returned to fetch her she asked me if I had remembered to pick up the cleaning disc at Staples so we might watch a DVD from NetFlix (our kids gave us a subscription for Christmas hoping to bring us into the present century) without the characters suffering seizures, which, of course, I had forgotten.
So back we went.
We were slowly cruising Main Street when we both noticed a man exit a store and stroll down the sidewalk in our direction.
We noticed because he didn't have on a shirt. Or pants. Or shoes. Or anything else.
I would put his age - based on a number of observations about his physiology - at at least 60 (Lacey concurred). He was fairly tall (or was it just that he was lean?), fair skinned, graying red hair (though I think he was bald, on his head), looked to be in good athletic shape for someone his age.
And he looked casual, even nonchalant.
All that I have told you we observed in perhaps 15 seconds as he continued his stroll and we moved slowly in the opposite direction with the rest of the traffic.
A woman and her maybe 10 year old daughter were getting into their car just as he passed by (we wondered if they had been in the store from which he exited) and the girl was young enough to appoint herself the one to announce to the rest of us - who hadn't time enough to figure out how we ought to react - that the man - no emperor - had no clothes. In fact she pointed at him. Her mother - what a great mother - acknowledged what her daughter had pointed at, didn't rush her about getting into the car, and laughed as she made eye contact with us.
Maybe you have read in the paper - it made the wire services - that Brattleboro has no law against public nudity. Last year, in a story that also made national news, some kids who hang out in a local parking lot and work at looking disreputable, stood around nude off and on for a few days. But those were kids and when no one paid much attention, the fad faded.
This rather severe Yankee-appearing man was my age and everything about him showed that.
Brattelboro, you have to love it.
Although this is likely to form the core of my Zone Note I will get to on Tuesday, it is so delicious I wanted to take an early swing at it today.
On Friday I was running errands in Brattleboro while Lacey was riding horseback. When I returned to fetch her she asked me if I had remembered to pick up the cleaning disc at Staples so we might watch a DVD from NetFlix (our kids gave us a subscription for Christmas hoping to bring us into the present century) without the characters suffering seizures, which, of course, I had forgotten.
So back we went.
We were slowly cruising Main Street when we both noticed a man exit a store and stroll down the sidewalk in our direction.
We noticed because he didn't have on a shirt. Or pants. Or shoes. Or anything else.
I would put his age - based on a number of observations about his physiology - at at least 60 (Lacey concurred). He was fairly tall (or was it just that he was lean?), fair skinned, graying red hair (though I think he was bald, on his head), looked to be in good athletic shape for someone his age.
And he looked casual, even nonchalant.
All that I have told you we observed in perhaps 15 seconds as he continued his stroll and we moved slowly in the opposite direction with the rest of the traffic.
A woman and her maybe 10 year old daughter were getting into their car just as he passed by (we wondered if they had been in the store from which he exited) and the girl was young enough to appoint herself the one to announce to the rest of us - who hadn't time enough to figure out how we ought to react - that the man - no emperor - had no clothes. In fact she pointed at him. Her mother - what a great mother - acknowledged what her daughter had pointed at, didn't rush her about getting into the car, and laughed as she made eye contact with us.
Maybe you have read in the paper - it made the wire services - that Brattleboro has no law against public nudity. Last year, in a story that also made national news, some kids who hang out in a local parking lot and work at looking disreputable, stood around nude off and on for a few days. But those were kids and when no one paid much attention, the fad faded.
This rather severe Yankee-appearing man was my age and everything about him showed that.
Brattelboro, you have to love it.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Population
Remember the Limits To Growth movement in the 70s?
The conviction that population growth was the major impediment to human well-being, especially in but not limited to, less devloped countries, gained a consensus.
But addressing it was incredibly dicey.
In 1969 i went with a woman from Planned Parenthood to a meeting at a church in the ghetto of Akron, Ohio where she gave an impassioned speech about the connection between family size and economic status. She described the benefits to women - the meeting as I recall was perhaps 2/3rds women - of being able to continue to work after having babies, and of not being tied to infant care long after they were too old to have the energy required.
The audience seemed to me to be listening at least politely, if not closely.
But as soon as she sat down, the pastor stood up and said that he wanted to be clear that Mrs. Baker - fine caring woman though she might be - was bearing a racist message of limiting the size of black families so white people could remain in power.
Mrs. Baker was horrified. She rose to her feet and protested that she had a long public record of serving civil rights as many in the audience knew from personal experience.
The pastor patronized her, saying he was sure she didn't intend to deliver a racist message but the fact was that was what she was doing.
Since then the subject seems to have alternately disappeared from public conversation, and been challenged by some who say there is plenty of food and water and other resources to sustain even a larger population than the present one, if politics and the lust for power did not preclude that.
Now a fascinating article from an obscure source, about what to make of the discovery several years ago of vast numbers of frogs in ponds in New England with deformities. Most of the deformities were missing legs.
For the ensuing years scientists have been investigating, without success, what might be causing this. Most theories focused on genetic disorders, introduction of pesticides from runoff from farms, and climate change.
A new study seems to suggest it may have to do with human population crowding the frogs from their historic habitats into smaller ponds where they are so crowded that they fight each other for territory and food. And in the fighting they often bite and tear off each other's limbs.
It seems so bizarre, I think perhaps it's so.
And if so, a weird addition to the conundrum of too many people on the planet.
The conviction that population growth was the major impediment to human well-being, especially in but not limited to, less devloped countries, gained a consensus.
But addressing it was incredibly dicey.
In 1969 i went with a woman from Planned Parenthood to a meeting at a church in the ghetto of Akron, Ohio where she gave an impassioned speech about the connection between family size and economic status. She described the benefits to women - the meeting as I recall was perhaps 2/3rds women - of being able to continue to work after having babies, and of not being tied to infant care long after they were too old to have the energy required.
The audience seemed to me to be listening at least politely, if not closely.
But as soon as she sat down, the pastor stood up and said that he wanted to be clear that Mrs. Baker - fine caring woman though she might be - was bearing a racist message of limiting the size of black families so white people could remain in power.
Mrs. Baker was horrified. She rose to her feet and protested that she had a long public record of serving civil rights as many in the audience knew from personal experience.
The pastor patronized her, saying he was sure she didn't intend to deliver a racist message but the fact was that was what she was doing.
Since then the subject seems to have alternately disappeared from public conversation, and been challenged by some who say there is plenty of food and water and other resources to sustain even a larger population than the present one, if politics and the lust for power did not preclude that.
Now a fascinating article from an obscure source, about what to make of the discovery several years ago of vast numbers of frogs in ponds in New England with deformities. Most of the deformities were missing legs.
For the ensuing years scientists have been investigating, without success, what might be causing this. Most theories focused on genetic disorders, introduction of pesticides from runoff from farms, and climate change.
A new study seems to suggest it may have to do with human population crowding the frogs from their historic habitats into smaller ponds where they are so crowded that they fight each other for territory and food. And in the fighting they often bite and tear off each other's limbs.
It seems so bizarre, I think perhaps it's so.
And if so, a weird addition to the conundrum of too many people on the planet.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Monday
We had our 3 1/2 year old granddaughter overnight Saturday and discovered what our many grandparent friends have been crowing about. She is old enough to converse, tease, joke and keep us going at a fearsome pace. And, to her parents' surprise - they were off at a nearby inn for the night for a much needed and well deserved rest - she slept soundly and soundlessly from 8:30pm to 7 am.
Must be the Vermont air.
And the weather has done its New England dance, going from tropical humid to electrical midwestern scary, to November chilly, all in the space of a few days. Whatever may be happening to the earth's climate, and whatever we humans may have to do with it, New England's climate has always had its own mind.
So the president and vice president are now claiming that, basically, they are a separate political species from everyone else, not subject to the laws or norms of the rest of us. Do you wonder what George Bush might be seeking from Vladimir Putin in Kennebunkport? Like, "Vladimir, could you give me a few tips on how you just pronounce something and have it be so? Or how you can decide to charge a billionaire with tax evasion, put him summarily in jail and nationalize his company?"
"George, you and Dick seem to have pretty well managed creating your own laws down there in Guantanamo. I don't think you need much advice from me."
"Right, Vladimir, but we're looking for ways to do it right here in Washington. And you may have noticed that pesky Supreme Court we thought we had all wrapped up, has gone off half-cocked, changing its mind about hearing cases from the people we have locked up down there in Guantanamo."
"Oh, don't let the court worry you, George. They are just feeling the need to look independent. They know who butters their bread (isn't that the American idiom?)"
So this July 4th - as young American soldiers die by the score every week, turns out not to be a time for celebration, but a time to hunker down and do some serious planning for how to return this nation (and, with discipline and commong sense, the globe) to a course that promises some of what our founders risked their lives for. My 3 1/2 year old granddaughter doesn't quite yet understand all that is at stake. Until she does, the rest of us need to pull our weight and hers.
My body is complaining about having to bear the weight of gravity for these 67 years. Who knows how much longer before blessed weightlessness? In the meantime there is serious work to be done.
Must be the Vermont air.
And the weather has done its New England dance, going from tropical humid to electrical midwestern scary, to November chilly, all in the space of a few days. Whatever may be happening to the earth's climate, and whatever we humans may have to do with it, New England's climate has always had its own mind.
So the president and vice president are now claiming that, basically, they are a separate political species from everyone else, not subject to the laws or norms of the rest of us. Do you wonder what George Bush might be seeking from Vladimir Putin in Kennebunkport? Like, "Vladimir, could you give me a few tips on how you just pronounce something and have it be so? Or how you can decide to charge a billionaire with tax evasion, put him summarily in jail and nationalize his company?"
"George, you and Dick seem to have pretty well managed creating your own laws down there in Guantanamo. I don't think you need much advice from me."
"Right, Vladimir, but we're looking for ways to do it right here in Washington. And you may have noticed that pesky Supreme Court we thought we had all wrapped up, has gone off half-cocked, changing its mind about hearing cases from the people we have locked up down there in Guantanamo."
"Oh, don't let the court worry you, George. They are just feeling the need to look independent. They know who butters their bread (isn't that the American idiom?)"
So this July 4th - as young American soldiers die by the score every week, turns out not to be a time for celebration, but a time to hunker down and do some serious planning for how to return this nation (and, with discipline and commong sense, the globe) to a course that promises some of what our founders risked their lives for. My 3 1/2 year old granddaughter doesn't quite yet understand all that is at stake. Until she does, the rest of us need to pull our weight and hers.
My body is complaining about having to bear the weight of gravity for these 67 years. Who knows how much longer before blessed weightlessness? In the meantime there is serious work to be done.
