Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Golfing in the Apocalypse




Speaking of fire, Judy and I enjoyed our first woodstove fire of the season last night, setting up a card table to have supper in the living room in front of our beloved cast-iron Jotul heartwarmer.

And, speaking of appropriate technology, this from the YouTube video I stole the above photo from:


That video: "Ecology as Theology: Inspiring Science for Challenging Times"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1pAmGHrJZU&feature=youtu.be

It's Michael Dowd, who describes himself as a "recovering progressive, " now moving "from naive techno-optimism to sacred realism." His base website is: http://thegreatstory.org/ If you're interested, I would suggest going to thegreatstory.org and clicking on the What's NEW link, which offers a 27-minute youtube video of Dowd at a Michigan UU church, along with a 70-minute slide presentation.

So. On one hand we have the climate change deniers. Bad enough, but they seem to be fewer and fewer. Although, yes, too many of them (that one especially) occupy seats of power. On the other hand, we have too many "progressives" denying that the laws of thermodynamics and ecology trump (reverse English pun intended) technological fixes. Working feverishly to green the Titanic and maintain golfing-as-usual.

NOTE: I actually composed the above, with the reference to "last night," in late October. I had intended to add more commentary on the progressive, green/renewable and techno-opimistic sustainability movement. I didn't get around to that. And Fredonia Heritage Day and Armistice Day intervened. Today I think the best I can do is to send you to read a really persuasive article just published on the Resilience website, titled The Limits of Renewable Energy and the Case for Degrowth

BTW: Can anyone out there say whether the golfing in the apocalypse photo is for real or just a Photoshop fake? If so, pls let us know. 

As always I'm asking, your thoughts?  



Sunday, November 11, 2018

Armistice Day Remembered

Veterans honored at the Fredonia Heritage Day festival, November 3, 2018


I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them on proclamations that were slapped up over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stock yards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates. – Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

"I hate war, as only a soldier who has lived it can, as only one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. – General Dwight Eisenhower

Today, November 11, 2018, is my 83rd birthday. And the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, ending World War I. When I was a child November 11 was still celebrated as Armistice Day, so I never had to go to school on my birthday. Now the 11th is Veterans Day. Although still a holiday, it is very different from the original Armistice Day. Back then, that "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" was designated as “a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated."

 After World War II, the U.S. Congress decided to rebrand November 11 as Veterans Day. Honoring the warrior then quickly morphed into honoring the military and  in effect glorifying war. You can't have a Veterans Day without veterans. Armistice Day represented the hope that we would have no more veterans.
  
I took the above photo, choosing not to hand my camera off and go join the lineup of veterans. I was wearing my Veterans for Peace hat, and Hemingway's words were ringing in my head. I had read that novel of World War I when I was in high school, and that passage especially stuck with me. Although it took me many years, along the way becoming a veteran myself, to try seriously to change my life accordingly. To become a "Veteran for Peace." (See veteransforpeace.org/take-action/armistice-day)