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.