Great Stories and a Banana Slug

I firmly believe that humans are wired for meaning and thrills.  We all live for something, whether it be money, politics, public service, God, art, ferrets, liquor, resentment, or a weed-free lawn. 

I'm convinced that folks who join extremist movements -- Islamists, John Birchers (do they still exist?), or the crazy wing of the Tea Party -- are motivated by a search for meaning and excitement that has been derailed by laziness and fear.  Join any of these three movements and your life has an immediate scoop loader full of meaning coupled with thrills up the wazoo. What could be more fun and fulfilling than banding together with a clot of like-minded collaborators to battle a conspiracy of evil adversaries?

But the problem is that this choice is ultimately a dead-end.  What do all the great stories tell us?  Choose a risky path that challenges your preconceived notions and end up braver, stronger, and more compassionate (and maybe save the world).  Choose a path that justifies your preconceived notions and end up just as selfish, ignorant, fearful, and self-satisfied as you were when you started out.  And that's a ginormous wasted opportunity.

Next subject:  here's an enthusiastic high five to the theology geeks who knew the answer to my last quiz question.  The correct answer was: "Nothing."  Jesus had exactly nothing to say about homosexuality. He did, however, have quite a bit to say about compassion and reconciliation.

Next next subject: the picture at the top of the page is of 3/4ths of Crabby Mama's youngsters.

Today's front yard critter count:
Deer: 3 (a doe and her two spotted spring babies).
Raccoons: 3 (Old Tailless Guy's Little Woman and her 2 eggplant-sized babies who seem to communicate with their mama by chirping)
Swainson's Thrushes: Lots
Chipmunks: Two
Slugs: 1 (a very handsome Banana Slug streaming across the front porch)

Friends and Firelight

Last summer we (well, Stu) built a small fire pit in our yard.  We had visions of friends gathered around the campfire, sharing food, laughter, and conversation.  I'm happy to report that the fire pit has worked out exactly as we hoped.  Yesterday evening we hosted some dear friends for dinner prepared under the stars: fresh wild salmon cooked over the flames on cedar stakes, accompanied by potatoes and apple crisp cooked in two Dutch ovens over charcoal.  I swear that food cooked outside tastes better than food cooked indoors. Plus nothing beats seeing friends' smiling faces lit by firelight.  Everything about the evening was a most welcome antidote from the head-exploding aggravation of the ongoing oil "spill" in the Gulf and continuing crapification of American politics. Sometimes it's grand to just focus on the blessings near to hand.

On a different subject, here is a quiz for my friends with an interest in theology:
Question: What did Jesus have to say about homosexuality.
Answer:




Today's front yard critter count:
Deer: 2
Raccoons: 5 (Crabby Mama and her young adult children are healthy, happy, and still hanging out together.  They stop by occasionally in hopes of a snack.  They occasionally get one.)
Chipmunks: 2 (living in the fenced vegetable garden)
Squirrels: many (still loud)
Rabbits: 1
Stellar's Jays: 2 (probably with a youngster stashed in a nest nearby)

Illumination and Homer Simpson

Sometimes juxtaposition can beget illumination.

On Friday I learned that the manatees may need to be rescued from spreading oil in the Gulf of Mexico.  As you probably know, manatees are large, goofily lovely aquatic mammals known for their friendly nature, their big flippers, and their frequently losing battles with power boat propellers.  Already endangered, unseasonably cold weather in the Gulf last winter decimated an additional ten percent of their population. Biologists have no idea whether they will be able to successfully relocate the manatees before they're harmed by spreading oil and it goes without saying that BP has no contingency plan to address this eventuality.

On Friday I had also just about completed Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's excellent book, "Half the Sky" about the worldwide scourge of female sex trafficking, honor killings, genital mutilation, maternal mortality, and mass rape.  The glaring truth is that across a substantial portion of the globe the profound ongoing suffering of millions of women and girls matters not one whit.

To say my heart was heavy would have been an understatement.

Then on Friday after work I went to dinner with two women friends.  We ate, and drank, and talked, and laughed. Afterward we walked out of the restaurant into a balmy, golden Pacific Northwest evening, free as birds, happy as larks, with the scent of summer in the air.

This juxtaposition damn near killed me.  Glory here, sorrow there.  Delight here, anguish there.  Lusciousness here, barrenness there. How to hold both in my heart?  How to simultaneously love the good and face the bad?  "Simple" came the answer, an answer both old and new, "it's simple."  "The riches you've been given, the riches of education, safety, freedom, work, food, water, aren't yours to keep.  They are yours to give away."

Doh!  Homer Simpson head slap!

As my hero, Bono, sang almost twenty years ago:

One love
One blood
One life
You got to do what you should
One life
With each other
Sisters
Brothers
One life
But we're not the same
We get to carry each other
Carry each other

One...life

One

Today's front yard critter count:
Deer:1
Raccoons: 0
Chipmunks: 1
Squirrels: 1
Manatees: 0 (but they can come live with us - we have a spare bedroom)

If I Had a Rocket Launcher

One advantage of middle-age is the acquired ability to compartmentalize.  As life piles up sorrows and disappointments, the capacity to say "I'm not going to think about that" becomes an essential life skill.  In recent months, my method of preserving some level of equanimity in the face of brainless political grandstanders, power-hungry media hacks, avaricious financiers, and other loathsome bit players on the American stage has been to simply ignore them.

But the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has overthrown my ability to look away.  Every headline is an ax in my chest. I'm breathless with grief and fury.  Up to 798,000 gallons of oil are gushing into the Gulf every day.  The top kill fix has failed and BP's next "plan" (or should I say "irresponsible wild ass guess") is a modified version of attempts that have already failed twice.  According to a story in yesterday's New York Times, BP knew there were problems with the well casing and blowout preventer almost a year ago but nonetheless approved construction in violation of the company's own safety policies and design standards.  Yesterday morning a BP executive said that the real "end point" is a relief well which won't be in place until August.  Yes, you saw right -- August.

This calamity is only the latest piece of evidence that corporations like BP should not unthinkingly be given the same legal rights that you and I have.  The Supreme Court was dead wrong in January when it said that restrictions on corporate spending on elections are impermissible. Unlike human beings, corporations pair unlimited life spans and resources with a single goal: to make as much money as possible for their shareholders.  They are created as amoral entities with no obligation whatsoever to be caring neighbors, respectful employers, or protective stewards of our shared planet.  To the contrary, when their obligation to their shareholders requires it, corporations must be intentionally heartless, harmful, and destructive.  Pro-business interests constantly agitate for the elimination of government regulations, arguing that corporations are fully capable of self-regulation.

To which I reply,"No.  They're not."  And, as our friends on the Gulf Coast are learning to their sorrow, treating multi-national corporations as anything other than potentially lethal creatures is suicide.

I look at the ruin in the Gulf and say to myself "face this."  And "remember."  Remember and vote for leaders who won't be bought by the oil companies.  Remember and hold government accountable for real corporate regulation.  Remember and when told by oil company shills and their media lackeys that less corporate regulation is good for me, reply that I've seen the fruits of their labors in a desecrated Gulf.  They're criminals and as my hero Bruce Cockburn said, "If I had a rocket launcher, I'd make somebody pay."

On a lighter note, the picture above is a beaver lodge in an alder woods near Mt. St. Helens on a spooky beautiful overcast day. We didn't see any beavers although we did see some sort of unidentified small mammal swimming toward the lodge and clambering up onto the roof.

Today's front yard critter count:
Raccoon:  1 (Old Tailless Guy)
Deer: 0
Neighbor cat: 1

The Love You Take is Equal to the Love You Make

For all my friends and acquaintances who give a damn and live that out by making good art, good writing, good photographs, good science, good kids, good government, good food, good health, good music, or good-whatever-you-were-created-to-do, I offer this gorgeous poem by Mary Oliver.  Blessings on you all!

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say; all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end simply having visited this world.

                                                  -- Mary Oliver

Today's front yard critter count:
Deer: 2
Raccoons: 0
Squirrels: 2
Chipmunk: 1
Frogs: bazillions

Risk and Willed Ignorance

I learned as a young lawyer to consider risk when making plans.  There are two parts to risk: the odds that something will happen and how disastrous that something might turn out to be.  A 1% risk may sound small until it's a 1% risk of, oh I don't know, getting gunned down in the next 60 seconds.  Then a 1% risk sounds pretty darned high.

I mention this because I'm puzzled about comments some friends have made recently on Facebook.  On days when the weather is unseasonably cold here in the Pacific Northwest, I see gleeful postings like "Must be global warming.  NOT!" or "Global warming, WHAT global warming?"

The actual problem is global climate change and not simply global warming, and weather that's weirdly cold can be evidence that the climate is indeed changing. This winter Rush Limbaugh announced that climate change was a hoax because the weather in Washington, D.C. was cold, all the while failing to notice that the Vancouver Olympics had to truck in snow and Seattle had its warmest January on record.  The problem is the larger trends over time in multiple locations around the globe, not just what we see when out the kitchen window.  So at a superficial level what troubles me about these blithe triumphalists is that they appear to getting their scientific information from featherbrained bumper stickers and bad sermons.

But at a deeper level what troubles me is the apparent absence of any sort of risk analysis.  As Bill McKibben recites in his wonderful new book "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet" (and no that's not a typo), in October 2007 the Arctic ice cap was 1.1 million square miles smaller than it had ever been in recorded history.  In 2009 scientists saw the first tundra fires ever.  The tropics are moving north and south, pushing the arid subtopics ahead of them, causing droughts for millions of people.  As a result of droughts, worldwide wheat, corn, and barley yields are down by 40 million tons a year.

And so on.

And so on.

Given these sorts of facts, I wonder what sort of risk analysis is going on in my friends' heads.  Many of them have children and grandchildren.  Assume for the sake of argument that the facts Bill McKibben lists are not actual facts but merely "might be" facts.  Assume furthermore that there is only a 1% chance that these "might be" facts are true.  (They actually ARE true but we're just playing with a hypothetical here.)  It seems to me that a 1% chance of ruining the one and only planet we've been given is a colossally unacceptable risk.

So I wonder if for some people critical thinking and risk analysis might be entirely beside the point.  Is it possible that folks start from the premise that they don't WANT to change a damn thing and they therefore construct a narrative in their own heads so they don't HAVE to change a damn thing?  Risk analysis? WHAT risk analysis?  Don't need no stinking risk analysis.  I want my S.U.V!!!  I want all my cheap plastic crap!  I want strawberries in January!  And to hell with everyone else....

On a lighter note, the picture up above is of a series of stair-stepped beaver dams near Mt. St. Helens.  We counted five big dams and two little dams.  Three vultures circled up above, checking to see if we were still moving (we were), followed by two ravens checking to see if we had bologna sandwiches to share (we didn't).

Today's front yard critter count
Deer: 0
Raccoons: 0
Squirrels: 1

Thinking About Borders. And Laws. And Fear

I'm feeling in need of some fine poetry this evening.  For your viewing pleasure I offer the following:


                        Confession

The Nazi within me thinks it's time to take charge.
The world's a mess; people are crazy.
The Nazi within me wants windows shut tight,
new locks put on the doors.  There's too much
fresh air, too much coming and going.
The Nazi within me wants more respect.  He wants
the only TV camera, the only bank account,
the only really pretty girl.  The Nazi within me
wants to be boss of traffic and traffic lights.
People drive too fast; they take up too much space.
The Nazi within me thinks people are getting away
with murder.  He wants to be boss of murder.
He wants to be boss of bananas, boss of white bread.
The Nazi within me wants uniforms for everyone.
He wants them to wash their hands, sit up straight,
pay strict attention.  He wants to make certain
they say yes when he says yes, no when he says no.
He imagines everybody sitting in straight chairs,
people all over the world sitting in straight chairs.
Are you ready? he asks them.  They say they are ready.
Are you ready to be happy? he asks them.  The say
they are ready to be happy.  The Nazi within me wants
everyone to be happy but not too happy and definitely
not noisy.  No singing, no dancing, no carrying on.

                                           --Stephen Dobyns

Today's front yard critter count:
Deer: 0
Raccoons: 0