Sixty million years

Sixty million years of evolution since the last Extinction, and it also (see previous post), I'm happy to say, comes to this:

Bebe & Me, by Sophie McDow (2009) – A book for all (the) ages

In this slim book, a seven-year-old child tells us in her own words and through her own full-color artwork about the special relationship she has with her grandmother. Author Sophie McDow has a distinct advantage in tackling this subject in that her grandmother’s own story is interesting in itself. Grandma Bebe (Becky Guinn) is a talented artist and art teacher who lost both hands and both feet to an adverse reaction to medications during a hospital stay, as Sophie puts it, “to get her heart fixed.” However, Bebe’s heart apparently didn’t need all that much fixing, because she had the heart not only to survive the ordeal but with the aid of prosthetics to resume her artwork and teaching. Sophie tells us, “Bebe can do everything she used to and now even more! Her hooks are really strong and her chair is really fast!”

The story of “Bebe and me” is well-told from the child’s point of view in simple, direct and well-chosen details and appealing and colorful drawings. There is no mistaking that this is a child’s book, and a children’s book that will captivate beginning readers and delight grown-ups who read (and show) it to children. But Bebe & Me surpasses such categories. It’s a little book for all ages and for all the ages. In presenting the story of her grandmother’s life and of their special relationship, the child has been able to see and render for us what makes any relationship truly “special.” Just one example: “Bebe is smart and helps people learn and makes everyone feel great about themselves.”

Recommended for all audiences. Book is available at bebeandme.org.

War on coal? No, war on our life-support system

Sixty million years of evolution since the last Extinction, and it comes to this:

Members of the Alabama Public Service Commission have been getting a lot of publicity about their resistance to what they call the “war on coal” supposedly being waged by the Obama administration and the EPA. PSC head Twinkle Cavanaugh even extends the metaphor, saying EPA's proposed rules, aimed at reducing CO2 emissions, are an attack on “our way of life in Alabama.” Incoming PSC member Chip Beeker has been quoted as saying Alabama coal is God’s gift to us and that the EPA’s “war against coal” goes against “God’s plan” for it to be used without interference.

One of the people who represented coal interests at a recent news conference held by PSC members, Republican National Committeeman Paul Reynolds, was reported to have given his version of Cavanaugh’s “our way of life in Alabama” that is supposedly threatened by the EPA: “It is the goal of the ordinary working man to go to work so he can come home to an air conditioned house, have a nice TV to watch, and have a comfortable life.”

If this is the highest goal a person or a people can aspire to, a way of life so materialistically self-centered and uncaring of the consequences, a life focused on worshipping in air-conditioned comfort at the altar of the "nice TV," it seems to me not worth defending. That’s not to say it isn’t an accurate depiction not just of Alabama but of the dominant American way of life. A life of unlimited, unfettered consumption of Earth’s “resources.”

That is, a way of life at war with our life-support system, aka “the environment,” which we systematically destroy so we can for a while enjoy “a comfortable life.” For how long? Not long, I’m afraid. 

Those proposed EPA rules, btw, do not dictate that Alabama has to change anything about the way it uses coal. The rules only say the state needs to find ways of its own – efficiency standards and improvements, solar, wind, even nuclear – to reduce CO2 emissions by 30% from 2005 levels. In other words, not even half-measures compared to the changes actually needed. The bridge is out ahead, but the party in the club car of the Doomsday Express goes on. 

The best overall presentation on the situation I know of is Nate Hagens' "Humans and Earth: Transitioning from Teenagers to Adults as a Species." That title sounds optimistic, I know. Nate's take-home, bottom-line, what is to be done: "I'm trying to be a better person."

Hagens, if you haven't seen his stuff, is a former MBA and millionaire Wall St broker, vice-president of Salomon Brothers, who quit the money business in disgust and got a PhD in natural resources from the University of Vermont; and for 8-9 years was a principal editor of The Oil Drum website. Now has a farm in Wisconsin.  He sees the Big Picture. 

I also recommend Guy McPherson's "Only Love Remains." 

Fourth of July, 2014

I'm almost a month late getting this up. Since I started this blog with a Fourth of July essay, seems I should observe the Fourth this year. So. Here's the Fourth of July editorial I published in the Free Fredonia Times #27 (with a little editorial touch-up for the occasion).  I want to add just one point, a point I dared not make in the Times. If you want to look for a "message" in the film I'm recommending, The Lone Ranger, listen to Tonto: "Comes a time good man must wear mask."Thinking about this point got me looking back at my first Fourth of July post; still and again relevant.

Editorial – Reflections on the 4th of July

Happy? Birthday USA

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.– That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. –Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence.

Happiness a right? No, we have only the right to pursue happiness. But there is a catch here, if you care at all about “original intent.” For Jefferson, “true happiness” lay not in the mere satisfaction of personal desires or in simply enjoying a pleasurable life. The pursuit of happiness was the exercise of an innate “moral sense” recognizing that personal safety and well-being depend on just and equitable social and civic relationships. In a late letter listing his philosophic principles, Jefferson wrote: Happiness the aim of life.Virtue the foundation of happiness.

Some scoff at such high-minded rhetoric coming from someone (and the rest of the Signers) who owned slaves and who chose to count only white property-owning male persons as being equally deserving of such rights. I say at least let’s give them credit for establishing an ideal our country has been in the process of fully realizing for yea these many years. However, it seems to me proper on the Fourth to consider how much or how far our country has actually progressed in achieving the ideals of the Declaration. Is our country, as a whole or as a population of individuals, pursuing “true happi-ness?” Does it count for or against, for example, that we have now reached the point where we consider not just all human persons as deserving rights, but corporations as well?

I confess that while I would like to whole-heartedly wish Happy Birthday! USA, my country seems to me to be less and less pursuing true happiness. But I do always try to look on the bright side. So just let me recommend the The Lone Ranger, the 2013 film starring Johnny Depp. Jefferson likely got the phrase “pursuit of happiness” from one of his chief intellectual heroes, John Locke (in the Essay on Human Understanding, 1690). So seeing the to-be Lone Ranger at the beginning of this film carrying as his "scripture" instead of a Bible John Locke’s Treatise on Civil Government tips you off to the seriousness of this funny fable, based on a true history of the making of America.

Letter to editor: US policy in Ukraine risks nuclear war

(published in the Valley Times-News, May 1, 2014)

In 1962 Russia began placing nuclear missiles in Cuba, only 90 miles from the US homeland. That led to a military confrontation, the US Navy blockading Cuba, with destroyers dropping depth charges on Russian submarines sent there to protect Russian shipping. Russia’s Nikita Khruschev declared the blockade was an act of war and threatened global nuclear war if the US would not back off. At one point a Russian submarine commander ordered launch of a nuclear-tipped torpedo against a US destroyer, which would almost certainly have triggered a nuclear World War III. He was stopped only because the political officer on the sub had authority to countermand the order. The US and Russia were “eyeball to eyeball” and the world within an eye-blink of annihilation. Thankfully, on the 13^th day of the stand-off the Russians backed away, agreeing to withdraw their missiles from Cuba.

I remember vividly how frightening the Cuban missile crisis was, perhaps especially because I was at the time living with my wife and children in Miami; but also because I was only recently discharged from service in the US Navy and had in the Pacific off California watched American destroyers playing tag with Russian submarines. It was “only” Cold War gaming, each side testing out the other side’s tactics. But we all knew the slightest mistake on either side had the potential to start the nuclear Hot War that would kill us all.

The Cold War supposedly ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and our collective fears of nuclear war have abated. But today the US (and NATO, dominated by the US) is making the same mistake the Russians made in 1962 by threateningly moving massive nuclear-capable military forces close to the Russian homeland, along the western border of Ukraine and in the Baltic and Black Sea areas. The Russians are lining up their forces on the other side of Ukraine. Should civil war break out in Ukraine, which now seems likely, Russia is likely to send its forces into Ukraine to protect its legitimate economic interests in the area. What will US/NATO forces do? It’s important to realize that Russian military doctrine dictates use of tactical nuclear weapons any time they are out-gunned in conventional combat. Such a conflict could not be limited and would almost certainly lead to the nuclear wildfire.

The United States has no legitimate national security interests in Ukraine, and trying to bring Ukraine into the European Union (or NATO), and massing forces along the border, can only be seen by Russia as threats to its security, as attempts to isolate and weaken it. The former Soviet Union might have been seeking world domination, but post-Soviet Russia has become integrated into the global economy and is not that kind of threat.  It’s time for the US to see the wisdom of backing off from an unjustified and unwinnable conflict, just as the Russians did in 1962.

Most of the time when I see just about everyone in Congress and in the mainstream media going along with a stupidly foolish and/or dangerously aggressive Administration policy, I shrug and say “What’s the use?” This time I’m at least sending this letter to President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry, along with Rep. Mike Rogers and Senators Shelby and Sessions.

-- Jim Allen, Fredonia

Note –  I saw after I had sent this letter a Wall St Journal interview with John Kerry: 

[Kerry's] greatest fear now? "I think it could deteriorate into hot confrontation," even without Russian troops crossing into Ukraine, Mr. Kerry said. "And there are provocateurs who are perfectly capable, who are trying to instigate that kind of flare-up. The fact it hasn't happened so far, he said, is a tribute to the discipline and restraint of the fledgling Ukrainian government. "But obviously," he added, "you could have a flash point here."

Signs and portents be damned

I'll just mention one sign – wandering around a few of the big box stores, looking for rabbit fencing and stuff of that sort, I am struck by huge piles of various flavors of Roundup. And no or very few rain gauges.

But I'm not going on about that or any other Bad News. For now just want to show you some photos taken in the last week or so. Most of the pink stuff is redbud blossoms. They have very delicately sweet nectar. They are very small, so take your time. The blueberries and apples are for later. We planted eight blueberry plants – two each of Woodard, Becki Blue, Climax, and Premier. You need different varieties to get adequate pollination. The apple tree in the photo is a Golden Delicious. You probably wonder why GD, eh? The two other apples we planted are a Fuji and a Gala. Getting apple pollination right is apparently something of a puzzle, and the authorities offer differing recommendations. No local nurseries offer semi-dwarf trees, and we did not want to plant full-size 30+ foot trees. And did not want to buy from a Big Box store. So we're limited to what we can find on the net. Stark Bros says their Gala will pollinate Fuji, but maybe not vice versa. Crabapples supposedly will pollinate all apple varieties; but Golden Delicious comes in second as a universal pollinator. We hope. Maybe it will make good applesauce too.

Remembering Pete

A Lincoln Memorial concert in 2009 ended with legendary folk singer Pete Seeger singing Woody Guthrie’s song “This Land Is Your Land.” He was joined by Bruce Springsteen and Pete’s grandson Tao Rodriguez-Seeger. They sang the song complete with the rarely performed verse "I came to a sign that said 'Private Property,' but on the other side it didn’t say nothing. That side was made for you and me!"

Judy and I last night watched the Democracy Now! tribute to Pete Seeger. One of our heroes. Really beautiful program about a great man. See & hear at http://www.democracynow.org. We're remembering a few years ago at the annual Ft Benning demonstration he did a concert, saying he couldn't sing but he did, and as always got us thousands to sing with him. And to get up and dance, in place and around and around the hall. Judy regrets not following up with Pete, must have been around '95, at a People's Music Network gathering people were trying to get Pete to go to Savannah during the Atlanta Olympics, and she said to him how about coming to Atlanta instead, we'll get network people together and sing peace songs at Marta stations, and he said "You get it organized and I will come." But she didn't get it organized. I recall at a demonstration in DC in ’85 his being there and being surprisingly friendly and accessible, I got close enough to speak to him, probably said something like, “Thanks for being here, Pete.” And he smiled and nodded.

Judy has jotted down what she could remember of the last things Pete said in the last live interview he did with Amy Goodman:

—Children know—you can’t live without love,

            You can’t live without laughter and play

            You can’t live without friends. . . .

And, on the Amy Goodman show about 4 months ago—Oct. 2013?—he also saluted teachers of children; women and children will help men know it’s not about seeking power or making money. . . .

Harvey Wasserman at EcoWatch has a very moving story about Pete and Toshi:
SO LONG, PETE & TOSHI SEEGER, IT’S BEEN AMAZINGLY GREAT TO KNOW YOU …

Excerpt, about a visit with Pete & Toshi at their home on the Hudson:

They chopped wood and made preserves and it was all so comfortably grounded. Toshi had a deeply affecting grace, an irresistible combination of firm direction and gentle wisdom. And those sparkling eyes. What a glorious partnership!

But I had an agenda. I wanted a song for Solartopia, a vision of a green-powered Earth. And who was a pischer like me to ask?

Pete’s response was instant, warm, enthusiastic. He whipped out that legendary banjo of his and within five minutes he had a song. A good one.

He asked me to write some verses, then gently informed me that as a songwriter, I should keep my day job (which would’ve been great if I had one!).

So he handed me a set of envelopes carefully addressed to various lyricists. We kicked the thing around for a year or so.  

Then his wonderful colleague David Bernz came up with verses Pete liked. Joined by Dar Williams and a chorus of “Rivertown Kids,” they recorded it in a single take, and it found its way on to an album that won a Grammy.

Something only Pete Seeger could have done. Because for all the catalogue of his political battles, his unshakable integrity and his giving nature, this was a guy with an astonishing talent.
http://ecowatch.com/2014/01/28/pete-toshi-seeger-great-to-know-you/

Connecting the dots . . . . . . .

I just yesterday sent out issue #23 of the Free Fredonia Times, the newsletter I do for the Fredonia community. Trying to make the "paper" educational, I've started including a weather report. Here's what I did this time:

Connecting the dots 
The Weather Report

In September, 2014, a Danish freighter, the Nordic Orion, made the first successful commercial crossing of “the northwest passage” across a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean, from Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada to Finland. The cargo: coal. (Reported by foxnews.com and other sources.)

Temperatures reported by The Weather Channel at 7:58 am on Jan. 24, 2014 –
15°F in Five Points, Alabama.
36°F in Nome, Alaska.

Gov. Robert Bentley has declared a state of emergency in Alabama over the threat of a propane gas shortage, suspending the rules and regulations on sale of propane gas and lifting federal transportation motor carrier laws to allow more flexibility in delivery to homes, schools and businesses. Bentley said price gouging is illegal under the state of emergency and “We make sure if that takes place, those people are prosecuted. We also make sure that people who need propane can buy it from different individuals, so all of the rules and regulations are waived.”
(al.com, January 24, 2014)

“December 2013 was exceptionally cold in North America (9°F colder than the 1951-1980 average), and exceptionally warm in northeast Europe and Sibera (16°F warmer than the 1951-1980 average). Predictably, these weather patterns, which continued into January, caused many in the North American media to question the reality of global warming, but in fact the global December warming above the 1951-1980 average (1.1°F) was the same as the annual global warming for 2013.” (Dr. James Hansen, columbia.edu/~jeh1, data from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies)

Editor’s Note: Dr. Hansen says “There is substantial likelihood of a record global temperature in 2014 or 2015.” Of course he means a record warming, not cooling. We must realize this is just another prediction by a scientist and that our weather is highly variable – especially in a time of globally fossil-fueled economic growth.

The Times goes to around 250 people in the Fredonia neighborhood. What we call "Greater Fredonia." People seem to like the paper. I get many compliments and thanks for doing it. But I don't get much response to my educational efforts. And I doubt that many of my readers will see the picture these dots outline. Such obvious runaway positive feedbacks. And the Governor waves his hands, lifting all regulations to make for easier delivery of something we don't actually have – if there is a real shortage. Recognizing that making the propane market even freer will likely lead to profits so much higher the voters might care. But that happens in conjunction with demand shooting up, homeowners (and chicken farmers) getting panicky and wanting to "top up" before supplies run out. So the kind of thing that might actually help would be more regulation, like telling propane companies they can't deliver anything to anyone who isn't actually out of propane, or maybe within a day or running out, something like that.

Speaking of connecting the dots, I also included in this issue:

Just one dot in the Big Food picture: A recent report out of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences shows that U.S. agricultural exports from 2000 to 2009, valued at $55 billion, actually resulted in a net loss to the country of $13 billion if the accounting included the health costs (including 5,100 pre-mature deaths) of ammonia emissions, just one of the air pollutants from the exported crop and livestock production. Find details in Mother Jones magazine: motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/01/are-agriculture-exports-killing-us.
The article has a link to the original Harvard publication.

A high-resolution color PDF version of this issue of the Times is available at:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7oda8isjx769jzp/XT9VNstWLe