LISTEN FOR THE SONG.

Shot of breaking clouds over Springfield during the April snowstorm a couple of years ago. I don't know who wrote the poem. I'm sure I found it on the net. It's been sitting, humming on my hard drive for awhile. 

ANOTHER BLAST FROM THE PAST

Granted this cartoon is from back in the Bush years. Just substitute the name on the door for Paul, Inhof, Cruz, Rubio or any of the other Climate Deniers in Washington. "But senator/representative/governor ________ doesn't believe in..." Bit hard on the aide on the floor. I doubt if the bear could digest any of these clowns either no matter how hungry the poor beast was.

Do I sound a bit cranky? Damn straight.

THE CANARY IN THE COAL MINE?

Image from the net. 

Several years ago I blasted through Mary Renaults’ series of novels set in ancient Greece. I posted an entry about Greek cities and my opinion that our Greek and Roman ancestors would look at many of our so called cities, scratch their heads and go “?” followed by “I don’t know what this is but it’s not what I’d call a city.” Their cities were built around public market places where citizens could gather. There’s little left of the public market place left, it’s been strip malled to death. And the first time one of us agreed that we needed a permit to speak in what was left of public space; well that put the rest of the nails in the coffin

Which brings me to high fuel prices, depleted aquifers and more than fifty years of “do it your way.” It isn’t just a matter of big rigs with terrible mileage ratings. It’s decades of live here, work there, shop in four other places and bring water in through pipelines and canals.  Decades of land use decisions that encouraged sprawl, starved mass transit, trucked in food from across the country, allowed our rail lines to decay and depended on water from rapidly depleting aquifers or reservoirs on the Colorado that are shrinking faster than pure wool in boiling water.

Animal Vegetable Miracle author Barbara Kingsolver used to live in Tucson. One of the straws that broke the “where should we live” camel’s back was the notice that the water coming in through a newly constructed pipeline was ok to drink but don’t use it for your aquarium because it wasn’t good for the fish. !?!?!?!

 I haven’t done any research, but I suspect that many of the so called strip cities in the south west don’t have any kind of mass transit capability at all. And were in the middle of a freakin’ desert. Or damn close to it for cryin’ out loud. Too few of us asked the right questions when decisions were made nearly two generations ago. Too few of us realized that the business and civic leaders praising a certain type of development may have had vested interests in their success.

Too many of us didn’t ask questions when we were told we could live anywhere we wanted to if we could afford it.  We could have beautiful green lawns in the middle of a desert. We could still have fresh oranges when the new US crop was gone because they could be shipped in from Australia. Or we could have grapes in December because it’s summer in Chili. A couple can have eighteen or nineteen kids and not only are few eye brows are raised; they got a reality TV show. We could have anything we wanted and any attempt to question those wants was an infringement on our “personal liberties.” Too many of us didn’t seem to notice that the ones telling us about our trampled rights were the ones with their hands in our pockets and that the pea was never under the cup to start with.

There was an “oh shit” moment on The Weather Channel a few seasons back before NBC bought them out and fucked up the programming. For a short time there was a program called Forecast Earth that focused on threats to the environment. Part of a segment on diminishing water supplies focused on huge development being built in Arizona or New Mexico; more than five thousand homes. In near desert that’s been in moderate to severe drought for over ten years now. Trouble is, we don’t have records that go back all that far, and what we assumed was normal back in say, the seventies may have been unusually wet. What we’re seeing now may either be is truly normal or worse, aggravated by Climate Change.

Anyway, one of the prospective buyers, an older man, was asked if he was worried about water being available. His reply made me mad enough to spit. “There’s no water shortage as long as you can afford it.” His companion, presumably his wife, had the grace to look a little embarrassed but her comment was almost as bad. It was basically “well, they wouldn’t build it if everything wasn’t ok, would they?”

Honey, yes they would if they figured they could get away with it. The builder will have the money and be looking for more sheep to shear. As for you folks, you’ll be left holding the bag and/or the dry faucet.

That segment aired back in 2008.  Before the housing market went down the tubes thanks to the Great Recession. I’ve wondered sometimes how that five thousand unit subdivision has fared over the years. I hate to sound judgmental but frankly I hope he lost his shirt.  The fuel prices are still as high if not higher than they were when I posted this the first time and the drought is getting worse year by year.

DON'T LET SILENCE WIN

I've posted this before, but it's worth the reminder. We must speak for the trees and stones. We must speak for the grass, the rivers, the fields, the woodlands all the gifts of the Mother. If we do not speak no one will, then there will be only silence and tears. 

“One who speaks for the tree roots and stones. Who speaks with the tree roots’ and stones’ voices. One who speaks as the grass and rivers. One who speaks as fields andwoods and hills and valleys and the salt marshes and waves and tides. Yet who speaks as what is close to home. With the mouse’s voice or the seagull’s or the fox’s or the badger’s. One who speaks in cadences that go beyond the darkness and beyond stars,
encompassing what is unmeasurable. One whose entire being vibrates to the spirits’ words in nature, like a reed at dawn in a pool where trout swim.

Picture a living world of tree roots, grass roots, little streams, big streams, great oceans, waters seeping into the deep rocks, recharging the headwaters of rivers and streams. The world is alive with whispers.

Wildwood mystic Rae Beth wrote of one of her familiars, an old cunning man who lived in Britain over a thousand years ago. He spoke to her of prayers. He said that we must know all the prayers of the world around us; of the birds, beasts or fish. I can understand the idea that a sparrow or a fox might pray; but the prayers of streams or stones?

What does water dream of and pray for? Does the drop of water in a tiny brook remember when it was part of a mighty ocean? Does it remember being a snowflake, a glacier, or a tiny drop of rain? Does it remember being another tiny rivulet? Flowing from rivulet, to stream, to mighty river and finally to the sea. Does it remember being caught up by the warmth of the sun only to become a new drop of rain. Does it remember the long fall from cloud to earth, the sinking into the soil, the slow drift into tree roots, the release from leaves into the air and back to clouds to fall again.

What does a stone remember? Does it remember when its atoms were part of the primal lava flows? Does it remember further back when the atoms were formed in the death throes of a super nova? Do the atoms remember their lives in a cliff face being ground down by relentless breakers? Does it remember the endless pressure as the sandstone was thrust again into daylight or carried down into the heart of the earth to return again as a lava flow?

Imagining the dreams of a bird, badger or fish is difficult enough for a human. Normally we see water, grass or stone as inanimate, unaware. To imagine their prayers; that is a mystery.

I AM FIRE

There is a type of Irish poetry called the “boast.” The poem is a series of statements; the poet claims to have been or to have been many things in creation. Tom Cowan in Yearning for the Wind.

Perhaps the form can be used another way too. Not a boast so much as an expression of your unity with your family; its history and the land where you live. Perhaps even the lands where your ancestor’s might have lived.

I am fire from the heart of the earth;

I am the sun, caught in flowing stone;

I am a pillar of mist, born when glowing stone met foaming breakers;

I am a cloud, gray white and heavy with rain;

I am a drop of rain, fresh water become salt;

I am a wave breaking on wind whipped cliffs;

I am a grain of sand caught in the ebb and flow of the tides:

I am the land;

I am the sea.

This is my take on living in a part of the world caught between the hammer of Oregon’s volcanic heritage and the anvil of that great western ocean. That wonderful, wild not so Pacific Ocean.  

THE YANKED BALLOT MEASURE

Or "you're picking on us."

Got my dose of face palm humor Saturday morning. Friend of Religious Freedom has suspended its plans to gather signatures for a ballot measure to allow a so called religious exemption law in Oregon.

Near as I can tell, an organization presents its proposed ballot measure to the state. If memory serves the organizations used to title them. That lead to lawsuits depending which side lost (or won) so the state stepped in. The state attorney general’s office checks out the law and gives the proposal an official title. Then the state supreme court signs off on it. Apparently they didn’t like the wording of the title as certified by the state.

“The campaign sought to portraythe issue as one that frees business owners from having to violate their religious beliefs by abiding by Oregon law.

But the certified ballot title does not acceptably state this Friend of Religious Freedom said in the release issued late Friday afternoon. Indeed, it states it as intolerant instead of protecting equal rights of conscience.”

The good folks behind the cancelled ballot measure believed that the language would prejudice the voters against them. Well boo f’ing hoo. The potential discriminators complain about being discriminated against. Cry me a river. Here's newsflash for you, we already know you're intolerant, we don't the title of a ballot measure to clue us in.

What were you hoping? You can put a saddle and a jockey on a donkey but that won't make it a racehorse. 

WHEN THE BILL COMES DUE

It began long before that. It began when we split earth from heaven and forgot that for what we take we must give something back and give thanks for the bounty of the earth. That which Creates will not be ignored, forgotten or mocked. I pray that when the reckoning comes due the God/dess will be more generous with us than we have been with the Creator and each other. 

A generation is usually counted as twenty years. A kloof is a small, deep sided ravine or valley. You see them in Eastern Oregon. That’s where the small trees and bushes are. The veld, is the grass country or even the grass. The titihoya is a small bird much like a plover. From Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country.

“There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass covered and rolling, and lovely beyond any singing of it. The road climbs seven miles into them into Carisbrook; and from there, if there is no mist, you look down into one of the fairest valleys of Africa. About you there is grass and bracken, and you may hear the forlorn calling of the titihoya, one of the birds of the veld. Below you is the valley of the Umzimkulu, on its journey from the Drakensberg into the sea; and beyond and behind the river, great hill after great hill; and beyond and behind them the mountains of Ingeli and East Gruiqualand.

The grass is rich and matted, you cannot see the soil. It holds the rain and the mist, and they seep into the ground, feeding the streams in every kloof. It is well tended, and not too many cattle feed upon it; not too many fired burn it, laying bare the soil. Stand unshod upon it, for the ground is holy, being even as it came from the Creator. Keep it, guard it, care for it, for it keeps men, guards men, cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed.”

This was written the late forties. There is so much we can do to destroy the land and what depends on it whether the CO2 rises and the frozen methane is released.

 Replace the grasses with monoculture farming and you leave the soil naked and unprotected. The moisture leaches away. I’ve watched Willamette Valley farmers plow or harrow and already plowed, dry field on a hot, windy day and seen the soil blow on the wind.  Between the tree poachers and big ag the southern rainforests, the lungs of the planet, are still disappearing. There are abandoned cotton fields in the southwest crusted with salts and minerals the soil so compacted that even when it does rain the water has nowhere to go.

We take the tops off mountains and dump the waste in creeks fouling the drinking water downstream. Coal and oil trains far heavier than any freight that went before travel tracks not made for the load and we wonder why they don’t make it through. We’ve created crops that can be poisoned and “live” while the residues kill the soil. These things would happen whether the gas levels rise or stay the same. The warning bells have been clanging for nearly three generations, while we remain deaf, dumb and blind.

When a slice of bread costs more than a steak, then maybe we’ll wake up. Of course by then it will be too late for most of us. 

BLAST FROM THE PAST

I'm sorting through the pictures on my computer, getting rid of the duplicates, etc and ran across this blast from the past. Not much has changed since 2009. It's gotten worse. The government releases a report on climate change affecting the US and the house investigates Benghazi. AGAIN.

STARDANCE

The Whirlpool Galaxy approximately twenty three million light years away. Also known as M51. Can you imagine dancing among those stars?

Do you remember?

There was nothing and then there was….everything. In an instant a universe was born. The light faded and elemental particles came together. Hydrogen, gravity and time. The hydrogen pooled together and pooled again. Gas clouds whirled and swirled in the dark. Whirled, swirled, danced and grew again until hydrogen atoms fused with hydrogen atoms light returned to the universe.  Pinpoints of light became glowing beacons in the night.

 You danced in the starlight. Blue white giants were born, filled the universe with light and gave their lives in blazes of light and gas greater than a million stars. You watched as star seeds of iron, carbon, oxygen and all the other elements were born. You danced again as the newborn planet seeds swirled together, grew larger and larger still. 

 The next generation of stars began to shine, but instead of lonely splendor, their light reflected off growing worlds. Some were too far away; you could barely see their parent star through the misty, swirling gases. There were great gas giants; more failed star than planet. Some worlds formed too close to the star fire and were blasted, bare rock before they were barely born. A few were too small; their atmospheres were lost to the cold of space leaving deserts behind.

You danced again in the solar winds. In a forgotten corner in one of the great, glowing spiral arms of a galaxy you found a gleaming blue white world; a living miracle in the jeweled blackness. 

TURN OFF THE TAPE

Grandma had a stack of old 78’s that included a revival hymn with a verse that went like this. I think it was the refrain. “The B I B L E. Yes that’s the book for me. I stand alone on the WORD of God. The B I B L E.”

The tape starts running whenever I run across dumb ass comments like this.

“The scientific method demands scientific observations. Since no scientist today could observe the alleged deep history that Tyson eloquently describes, a scientic understanding of earth’s geological history requires reliance on some sort of eyewitness account to the past. There is a Book (capitalization his, not mine) the recorded Word of God provided by the Creator of the earth, that provides in its history a reliable and consistent guide to interpret the geological record.” Comment on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s page. Oy. Face palm, head bounce. Epic scream.

While I did post a comment, these ain’t it.

“Home school much?”

“ACE graduate?”

“This is a science page, not a fundagelical religious page.”

“Let me guess, you believe that the earth and the universe are less than ten thousand years old.”

“The Bible says so, doesn’t cut it. Find a reputable scientist to prove Dr. Tyson is wrong and we’ll talk, Oh, and Ken Ham doesn’t count.”

"Your God is too small."

And so on.

The comment I did make was reasonably polite but, it’s getting harder and harder to be polite to twits who want to drag us back to the Dark Ages. And yes the Dark Ages weren’t quite dark as authors like Gibbon presented them.  However, show me one original piece of research from about 500 to 1500. Even Copernicus got some of his ideas from Aristarchus although the reference didn’t appear in the final manuscript. Whoops, forgot about the printing press from the mid 1400’s. Guess I’ll have the knock things back a hundred years or so.

And what made Gutenburg’s press so wonderful. He came up with it just in time to take advantage of the translations of those fragments of the writings of the early Greek inventors and philosophers. The printers couldn’t keep up with the demand that fueled Copernicus, Galileo, Hubble, Newton, Herschel  and all who came after them.

Now, if I could just turn off the damn tape.

ALWAYS LOOK FOR THE BEST ANSWER

“…the spirit of philosophy has not yet appeared. For we are relying on divine communication to answer our questions. Not that the gods cannot be wise. But the point of a philosophical spirit is to rely primarily upon ones own thinking. The philosophical spirit is not content to simply accept what it is told, no matter how much prestige the teller appears to have. This is true even if the teller is a god. The philosophical spirit looks within itself, regards the world with wonder but also with curiosity and skepticism. It poses serious questions and makes a serious attempt to find answers. Nor does it settle for the quick and easy answer, unless it is the best answer.”  Brendon Myers The Earth The Gods and The Soul.

An attitude that is the direct opposite of letters that appear in the local paper about once a week. Unfortunately from different authors. Whether it’s evolution or climate change it just can’t be true “because the Bible says so.” In another part of the world it would probably be “because the Koran says so.” I have yet read anything in the paper here that says science wrong because “the Torah says so.”

I’ve noted before that I love one star reviews on Amazon. There’s an extremely verbose and increasingly rancorous exchange for the film Agora. A certain patriarch from Alexandria could possibly have ordered the murder of a certain female philosopher because after all Cyril was very well educated and the church made him a saint and there’s no proof and…When proof from anecdotal evidence of the times is presented it’s dismissed or ignored. The Eastern Orthodox Church never persecuted anybody. I just shelved a book on Byzantine history that would beg to differ. I gave up. It was too depressing.

And even if the patriarch was involved it didn’t have anything to do with religion it was “political.” As if the church and the state weren’t so close during those years that the relationship was damned incestuous. Especially in the Eastern empire. And so on.

Now we’ve got a Supreme Court decision that basically says that as long as nobody is pointing a gun at you and forcing you to pray minorities are being “coerced.” And a justice. Clarence Thomas, who believes that states should have the right to designate an official religion.

Excuse me, I’ll be over in the corner with Sagan, Gould, and Tyson.

Actually Oregon doesn’t present as large a problem. We’re one of the five most unchurched states in the union. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in the south or some parts of rural white bread America.

BOOKS ARE MAGIC

Books are not only  magic. They're lighthouses. The best books shine a light on ignorance, warning us away from the rocks. They're a beacon guiding us towards the truth. Books tie us together over the years and remind us that we've been here before. We've been here for the good times and the bad times. We've fought through before and we will again.

IT'S RASPBERRY TIME

This is more of an observation, than a long entry. I'll probably build on it. Been reading early church history. Been reading fairly early political history of the Eastern Roman Empire and I've come to a depressing conclusion. The church(es) as less the product of divine grace or inspiration than the result of who was the last man (usually) standing when the mob was driven away, the war was over, the last pagan, heretic or nonbeliever driven out. Why should anything change. It's worked so well for almost two thousand years. We not only don't learn from history, we're eager to repeat it.

WHAT IF

Is there really anything more to be said? Loving Cosmos. Still like the original better. But then Sagan had almost an hour to work with. Tyson has maybe forty minutes. Makes a big difference.