Bus Stop Butts & Now We Have Weather

(Slight Grossness Warning:)

When I was a kid of 11 or 12 in northern New Jersey, the crowd I ran around with spent a lot of time pursuing three things: fishing in what I now understand was a toxics-laden pond near a chemical plant, seeking alcohol, and seeking cigarettes.

We quickly learned that the best place to find cigarettes was on the ground around the bus stop, especially the bus stop that hosted express buses to The City. People would light up, the bus would come, and they'd drop the barely used cigarette on the ground. We found many long butts to finish off. Germs and overall grossness just added to the frisson of the search.

When I was a teenager, I found myself on the other side of the transaction. I learned that the surest way of getting a bus to NYC to arrive was - in my extreme cool, with my 20 cent pack of Camels - light up. It seemed like the second I dropped the Zippo back into my jeans, a big smokey bus would lumber around the corner.

This morning, after hours of non-responsiveness, the Weather Underground that I posted about a few minutes ago re-appeared. The salt marsh weather badge showed up within seconds of my posting about it being gone. Clearly, I have some Special Powers: the incredible ability to restore missing items, from buses to weather reports, that I write about.

So I'm going to keep up my lucky streak, and mention to you that I notice a lack of patient and kind humility among us humans, and a sad substitution of hollow materialism for a sense of connection with our exceptionally gorgeous world. Like posting about the weather or lighting up a cancer stick at the bus stop - maybe those New Year wishes will soon become real.

Happy New Year from the Salt Marsh Vigilance Committee

Weather

So far today the Weather Underground, the site of super-meteorologit Jeff Masters, is down. Thus, the salt marsh weather badge on this blog won't work. WRTI. Do you know what that abbreviation means?

Super-Photographer Jan provides an antidote to today's icy weather, by tapping into his library of lovely local pictures; thus he conquers space and time.

Monsanto and the LM

Today I'm mad at the mainstream media, so what else is new? In fact I'm changing their name from MSM to LM - Lazy Media.

The occasion is reporting that says - Oh I Am So Shocked - the Environmental Protection Agency is upset with Monsanto because its genetically engineered corn is turning out to have serious problems, and those problems are appearing sooner than expected.

Today's Lovely Forest Refuge Pictures
Are By Jan

I want to mention three gripes here. First, LM reporting on this development is feeble even for them, failing yet again to tell the story of how a conflict they  reported on years ago has turned out. The LM likes reporting on clashes, but they have little attention span for letting us know how the debate resolved.

A case in point is AP reporter Rick Callahan, seen in the HuffPo (which is increasingly a mainstream member of the LM). He gets the explaining part done well, after all he does write for the AP. Then he goes on to quote a slick fleet of professors, also normal practice in these articles. He includes the obligatory quote from the EPA, clucking its government tongue at what the same government has been protecting and promoting all these years.

Then we come to the "citizen" input. What do we get? A single unintelligible sentence from a professional climate change denier. What about the scores of people who have been warning of Monsanto's insect resistance problem year after year? Nada.

Margaret Mellon, Senior Scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists-USA, wrote a book in 1996 along with Jane Rissler, The Ecological Risks of Engineered Crops. It remains the best book on the subject and lib arts people can understand it. Dr. Mellon has continued to write and speak on engineered food since then, and you can find lots more from people like the author of Farmageddon, Canadian Brewster Kneen - and do have a look at his family's magazine, The Ram's Horn (www.ramshorn.ca). You could even read Genetically Engineered Food: Changing the Nature of Nature, the second edition came out in 2001. I wrote it.

There are many other sources of useful information on the dangers of engineered crops. Ten years ago, the LM called me daily when they needed an instant tart quip for a conflict story; now they seem to have lost track of the stacks of critical evidence going back 15 years. And perhaps they are unaware of Google.

At least Callahan put obvious effort into the story - the vast majority of the LM is mute on this rather significant development in our food supply.

My second complaint is hinted at above: when Monsanto engineered its crops the risk were well known, including the possible need to increase application of poisons on crops, the spread of engineered traits to non-engineered crops, and the development of "superbugs" that couldn't be killed easily - or at all. This can jeopardize the food, our organic industry, our health, and security of the environment. Risks were known before Monsanto's engineered corn was released, as Callahan says, by many including the government that approved it.

Now the EPA is wringing its hands. The government's coddling of a powerful company in spite of future public and environmental health problems is hinted at by Callahan and others, but not explained or documented. Our federal government, which is designed to protect us, gets a free pass by the LM even when those agencies knowingly fail to do their core job.

OK third: Monsanto's response to all this? They're busy pointing the finger at farmers, their customers. This is such a top-drawer instance of blaming the victim, Monsanto should try running the State of Maine, because they've exceeded even our mean-spirited governor's habit of blasting those who are least able to defend themselves. Just when I thought there was nothing Monsanto could do to increase my contempt for their corporate values, they display their creativity in finding a way to let a company agenda roar past public perceptions of fairness and decency.

Many years ago, I was asked to review a tell-all book by the former CIA Station Chief in Saigon. The book showed that the peace movement's worries about what the CIA was up to in Viet Nam were mostly true and in many instances, more egregious than had been suspected. The review concluded that activists were not too "paranoid." In fact, if we had any fault in those years, we weren't critical enough. The same holds true for the continuing battle over accelerating domination of the world's agriculture by genetic engineers who patent and modify humanity's food at our expense and risk. The problem isn't that we're too suspicious or alarmist - it's that we're not skeptical and critical enough.

When some biotech company wrecks part of our food supply, and you can no longer safely consume that food, and engineered genes have contaminated even the non-owned part of that crop - then what will you eat?

The Holy Land

A phrase attributed to Black Elk is, the holy land is everywhere. I love this idea. My tiny piece of holy land is the marsh that fronts our little village, and in fact my town has me pay taxes on a large piece of marsh I can't actually use beyond staring at it and loving it.

Yesterday the warm low pressure had moved in, drenching us and melting most of the snow. Today the high pressure and arctic thermometer have returned. The marsh is frozen. Even part of the Dyer River is iced over, something I usually haven't seen this early in the winter.

Each day without exception, the holy world around us brings compelling change and sublime beauty.

Matt, Scarlett and Hillary

The media drumbeat over the Republican-Libertarian primary is like a toothache - incessant and painful. The best way to stop the discomfort - by shutting off the media - isn't a choice I'm making right now. So my pain control strategy is to instead pay attention to the Democratic headache.

Matt Damon is an attractive and capable public figure who behaved with intelligent dignity during the 2008 Presidential campaign. I'm not sure I understand why it's important to have some young actor involved in politics, but I know it's the way things are done, especially by Democrats.

This time around, Damon is pulling back from the President, chiding him in public and implying he'll sit out the campaign. I think he's using is a dangerous tactic, akin to destroying the village to save it. But I understand the impulse to kick our uninspiring Administration in the pants. One way politics works is for friends to become critics, and then return to the fold for the denouement.

Scarlett Johansson is another attractive and apparently able actor who has been a strong supporter of a number of Democratic politicians. She has not gone the Damon route - she continues her steadfast support of the President, politely scoffing at the Damon-esque strategy of public disparagement.

You'd be disappointed if I didn't throw in some reference to the past. I recall in 1963 sitting all night on the floor of a University administration building in Madison, debating this basic point: do you work for change from within or from the outside? I imagine this discussion went on in the Roman Senate and among Moses' wandering Jews, it's a rudimentary disputation in all politics.

In 1963 I was a "work from the outside" kind of guy, as were most of the group. After all we were sitting in, taunting the cops. These days, I haven't moved from the outside to the inside camp. Now I want both, a buddy movie starring Scarlett and Matt. I think we can do a good job of denouncing the Obama Administration, while still helping with phone banks and writing checks. I'm better abe to see both approaches as politically justifiable and even necessary. And that brings us to Hillary.

Robert Reich writes in the HuffPo about swapping Biden and Hillary. Having seen this same speculation in several places in the last 10 days or so, I'm assuming it's a trial balloon; I'd guess it comes from Biden. Until Reich's article came out, I didn't pay much attention to the speculation, because I assumed Sec. Clinton wouldn't feel compelled.

Reich points out motivation from inside the Democratic Party: if Clinton joins Obama as VP, she'll be as well positioned as she ever can be to run for President in 2016. The Democratic Party would have 16 years of continuous rule, enough time to change some of the country's power levers, especially the Supreme Court. Clinton has shown from her time in the Senate that she's an especially adept team player - I think she'd be most amenable to overcoming her reluctance to drill deeper into the Obama regime if party heavies made the appeal.

Also an Obama-Clinton ticket would go a ways towards mollifying the Damon demons, securing a portion of Obama's left, enabling him to push a bit to the right to counter the Romney campaign. Any Republican other than Romney will remove much of the pressure on Obama's people to accept Clinton in the #2 position, since Obama will not need to push so far into the center if he's running against a reactionary looney.

It's All Fluff

Like Republican campaign statements, some dogs are tiny things surrounded by fluff. Last night Julia gave Jimmy a thorough bath, and this is the result:

Freakish

Our freakish weather here on the marsh - it was 50º before dawn today - is an inspiration to share this stunning photo from Jan.

Peace, And Not One Sparrow Is Forgotten

All of Today's Photos By Jan

My life is supported by the efforts of numerous benefactors whose exertions make my life more comfortable, and also more insulated from the unappealing underpinnings of modern life.

Ever chop the head off a chicken or pluck it? How about digging a septic pit? Running electrical cables in mud? Changing oil in a car? I'm thinking of slightly unpleasant jobs I've done in the past that helped sustain me and my family. There are many tasks that are much worse, like the steps to obtain and process the leather in my belt, or the performing of major surgery inside my chest. The list is long.

If you were a peasant in India or Congo, the great majority of life support tasks, no matter what the aesthetic, would be your individual responsibility. This is the context for what I want to talk about today:

On Christmas eve, we heard a rapid series of loud explosions. I looked out to see a man just across the marsh, shooting towards us. Actually he was shooting at the geese floating in the marsh between us. After a while he managed to maim at least three of them - that's how many were eventually floating in the marsh, dead. The man then went to his car with the child who was with him to get his fishing pole. He was trying to reach the dead birds.

This isn't a tirade about hunting. The camo-clad genius was shooting in the middle of a village, he was shooting into the marsh at high tide with no boat and therefore no hope of retrieving what he killed. And talk about sitting ducks - he was shooting big tame geese a few feet from shore. The Maine Warden Service subsequently recovered one of the geese as evidence when the water level dropped, and I'll be interviewed later this week along with others around here by the MWS for what I hope will be a prosecution.

If an idiot can get a driving license - and anyone who's driven in Connecticut knows that to be true - then the same is true for other licenses, including hunting permits. We don't stop all driving because of the actions of a few, even though cars kill more people in Connecticut than hunters do.

I'm irked by people who move into a rural state like Maine and complain about hunting; many families here put meat on the table by killing it themselves. We move-ins criticize something we've probably never seen that feeds people, while we ignore the origins of the plastic wrapped dead animals we slap on our grills for summer cookouts. Leaving this week's goose hunter aside, I'm quite sure the animals my friends and neighbors kill themselves are healthier and suffer less than the ones I buy at the supermarket.

The title of this post is a Shaker saying that's a favorite of mine. What I want to ask you about is, how can we have a sane and balanced life with respect to the suffering and death that sustains us?

My house and car are powered by petroleum from the blood of thousands. I eat chicken and fish, I wear leather, I walk on a wooden floor. The far-reaching web of extraction that keeps me going can be deconstructed from an ethical perspective until, if you have any sensitivity at all, you're ready to weep.

I want to explore possible responses from those of us at the top of the worldwide food chain.

One response is for people to feel guilty. This common response is least honorable. Guilt is not productive; it doesn't save a single chicken or Afghani villager. Instead, it's another form of First World self-indulgence, because it's mildly uncomfortable to feel guilty. I think people use feeble self-flagellation as an expiation - they use guilt as a tool to make guilt go away. Neat trick.

Another way rich modernists rationalize the disproportionate burden they place on life around them is to declare solutions impossible in order to grant themselves permission to pillage unfettered. "Nothing I can do," they say, often scoffing at people who do make an effort, like Occupy activists or vegetarians or hunters. Since those efforts are not perfect, it's not hard to find flaws that can be used as excuses to not even try.

I'd like to suggest a few things to address the burdens we live by.

First is the mental part. Let's have some right relationship here - dismount from the high horse. If you're an urban-originated person who reads the New Yorker like I do, let go of the sneers for those who kill their own food, and don't use sloppy careless hunters or the foul mouthings of the NRA as an excuse unless you're prepared to raise chickens and buy a hatchet.

And by the same token, lay off the vegans and vegetarians, especially if you have a Remington 872 in your closet like I do, because they have a lighter footprint, they don't hurt you in any way, and they're making a better effort than most of us.

Second, try to push yourself down the food pyramid to lighten your pressure on the earth. Don't you dare use the impossibility of perfection as an excuse to never try. Take very small steps, so you can get used to it and avoid  another fad that you dump after 6 weeks. The world is chock full of information about the environmental and health implications of every conceivable kind of food, supermarkets even have handy little labels. Just put in the small effort, and if you cook for others, keep strong in the face of whining and ridicule. You are so busy I'm sure, but somehow I think you can find 10 minutes - honestly no more - to read some labels and explore some new sources of food.

Give up beef. The cultivation of beef has been well shown to create vast planetary damage, massive suffering, and ill health. Please don't send me emails about the culture of ranchers. Some occupations like book binding are fading away, and while being a drug runner does create jobs, too much harm results. It's illegal to kill a cow in every one of India's states, and the billion people in that country apparently don't miss hamburgers.

In short, you can adjust your attitude towards those who behave in a way that is unfamiliar, from duck hunters to vegans. And you can slowly change your own practice in what you consume.

After those two ideas, is the really hard one. Create and maintain a spiritual or somehow transcendent connection to the living world around you. You can be as scientific and rationalist as you please. And I'm not telling you to sign up for a religion. But a healthy relationship to the world includes making bonds with what sustains you, however you may understand that. It is not enough to oil your gun or print out a wallet card of endangered fish species. Doing those things is fine as long as you also give a prayer of thanks to the deer or supermarket chicken that lost its life on your behalf. The root of our modern excess is our disconnection.

The most powerful tool we have to reduce our damage to the world is to move ourselves from the peak of life to the center of a complicated living lacework. Rationalist and reductionist thinking will produce lots more gee-whiz, but living with a modest and grateful heart is what will save us.

Peace, and not one sparrow is forgotten.

Duck Dreams

I know that a number of you reading this blog migrated from Mary Harrington's blog, Duck Dreams. She kept that blog going until 36 hours before her death, 14 months ago today.

The puzzle of how to preserve her blog has been solved by Shared Books. They do a first-rate job of creating a lovely book from the entire blog, pictures and text - all they need is the blog's address, which is http://duckdreams.blogspot.com. Shared Book's Blog2Print service is at sharedbook.com.

Mary and Francie, 2009

Winter Near and Far

Before resuming the text portion of this blog, here are some images from friends. As the big wet flakes dropped on Christmas, Gordon shared his photos from the same time. He doesn't live around here, at this time of year:

This cluster of monarch butterflies is in their winter quarters.

This snowy crick is from always reliable Jan, who's much closer to home; the one below is from friend Sally, who has Indian Runner ducks. I've had those same ducks in the past, they're living cartoons kind of the way my pup Jimmy is. Sally adorned hers for the holidays:

Winter on the Dyer River

This lovely photo, by Florence Allen, shows the Sheepscot Village dock to the right; just beyond it out of the picture, is my house. It's reproduced here with the permission of the Sheepscot Valley Conservation Association.

Charity on the QT

Mailman Glenn, who is equally adept at delivering the mail or quoting poetry and philosophy, making him Quotin' Totin' Glenn, points out that we can direct our holiday feelings of warmth towards our neighbors by donating to local organizations, with what he calls "a supportive stance on personhood." In that spirit he says his money will go to Coastal Kids - where you live probably has a similar pre-school program.

http://www.coastalkidsme.com/about-ckp/

A clear and inspiring new article on donating money is by David Morris, well worth reading:

http://defendingthepublicgood.org/2011/12/22/occupy-giving/

Just a few dollars will do the job for the non-profits living on amalgams of many modest gifts. My money goes to Maine's Disability Rights Center, Frances Perkins Center, Maine People's Alliance, Maine Organic Farmers & Gardeners Association, and ACLU.

And there's still enough left over even for someone on Social Security to buy a few of those gifts Glenn has been bringing by.....

Peace on Earth

From Jan -

Snowy Sheepscot

Hwy 218, Driving Towards Sheepscot

This is my idea of winter weather - above freezing and just enough snow to be pretty. Here are a couple of pictures from today's trip to the supermarket to stock up on food for the kids arrivals.

The Dyer River at High Tide From My Back Porch

Bi-Partisan Nuttiness

Talking about the "silly season" in politics might be a redundancy. Right now both national parties are cooperating in displays of preposterous behavior that exceeds even their usual shortsightedness and irrationality.

The Republican candidates are busy lining up to endorse the Personhood Amendment, which gives "person" status to fetuses at conception. This idea has been rejected in such liberal bastions as Mississippi, and by such left-wing organizations as National Right to Life and the Catholic Bishops. Mississippians realized that this ridiculous proposal would reduce or eliminate their access to birth control, and permit the intrusion of an extreme segment of our society further into the intimacies of their lives. The anti-choice group and bishops cautioned against the personhood movement, because they know it would provide victories for the pro-choice position once it got into court.

But being ridiculous, offensive and self-defeating hasn't stopped Republican candidates to from lining up to sign on to the fetal personhood program.

In the spirit of bipartisanship, the Democrats are engaged in a similar leap into short-term image boost at the cost of long term success. They're trying to capitalize on the mistakes of their opponents, by watching the Republicans oppose tax relief for 160 million Americans at Christmastime.

The problem is, the particular issue here is the Social Security payroll deduction, down to 4.2% from its usual 6.2%.

Let me tell you something. I'm not an economist, but I'm pretty sure if you maintain the level of the payout, but reduce the money coming in, you're going to run into problems down the road. A kid with a paper route could figure that one out, but evidently the Democrats haven't. Social Security is a successful and hugely popular program we've had in place for over 75 years. The Republicans and their pals in the press keep saying that Social Security is an entitlement - which it is manifestly not - and that it's running out of money. Which it's not, yet.

By extending the cut in money going into Social Security,  the Democratic Party is doing the work of the Republicans. Democrats are undermining a program that's been the bedrock of the liberal social agenda since the New Deal, a program that is perennially popular with a heavy majority of voters. They're also setting themselves up big time for a January trouncing by the Republicans, who will return from their vacations to negotiate a longer-term extension of the 2% reduction. The Republicans will say, fine, keep the payment at 4.2%, but to offset that loss of income to Social Security, let's cut Social Security benefits.

Thus we have the picture here of both parties collaborating to give themselves short term victories, at a long term cost to millions of American citizens,

Question for the day: are our elected representatives cynical wheeler-dealers, fools, or . . . . both?

Mysterious Day

Yesterday was a gray day here in Maine, illustrated well by Sheepscot friend Jan, who took this photo of a small stream that feeds into the Marsh River. The Marsh is the next river down from the Dyer, the river I live on - both feed into the mighty Sheepscot River, which flows to the ocean. The stream Jan pictures is where he has seen some of the wild life I mentioned the other day, including the cougar.




You might also recall my previous mention of sunny California friend Gordon, the guy who knows where things are in the heavens. Ever the optimist, he tried again yesterday to show me via email where the International Space Station is. The snow clouds were already covering the sky, so I had an excuse to fail, as I usually do anyway, in finding heavenly objects.

Gordon is also one of those rare people who understands the solstice. Here is his explanation of yesterday's event:

"While it is true that it’s the day when we start to gain daylight (I like that positive definition rather than “it’s the darkest day of the year’), most people are confused when I start talking about sunrise and sunset. Most people think that tomorrow the sun will start rising earlier and setting later than it did today. But that’s only partially true. Here in Santa Barbara, for example, the sun started setting later than the day before on December 8. So on the 9^th the afternoons started getting longer. But the sun won’t start rising earlier until January 13^th. Very difficult, for some reason, for people to understand it. But there it is.

By the way, your afternoons started getting longer four days ago, and the sun starts rising earlier on Jan. 20."

Darkness Into Light

Today is the winter solstice. It's a day everyone recognizes but few, starting with me, really understand. A friend suggested I look into it and I did. I finally gave up on my nerdy research when the details of spinning, circling and interacting objects in three dimensional space began to make my liberal arts head hurt.

Leaving wonky-sci aside, gratefully, let's look at what grabs people about this day: it's when we think/assume/hope daylight will begin to increase. Even though we're in the early reaches of winter, kind of a tough time up here near the 45th parallel, today we have a reason to think we'll see more sun and eventually, warmth.

When I lived in the tropics, there was little zeal for the solstice. Along the Mekong River in Laos, I could wander down to the banks and watch the sun go down over Thailand on the other shore, knowing that within 10 minutes on either side of 6:30 PM, I'd see the deep red and purple daily sundown show. The further one travels away from the equator, the greater the change in the timing of rising or setting of the sun, from month to month.

There's a lot in literature, art and religion -  the endeavors that make us human - about the transition from dark to light. The most striking, in my experience, occurred right after the torture and death of Matthew Shepard in 1998. My wife the Rev. Mary held a community service in her church with some other clergy. Over the years, her inevitable response to inexplicable tragedies was to simply open a space for people to be together to sort themselves out.

Matthew Shepard

For this service, the sanctuary was gradually darkened as the hate crime and its meaning were brought before the hushed crowd. Ultimately, there was a single candle burning on the chancel. For Mary, it represented the burning of hope in the darkness. Her message was that hope never goes away entirely, the darkness never envelopes us completely. Then gradually candles ringing the congregated people were lit as readings and singing told of the coming of the light: of knowledge and community and love. Power for the good.

Now on this solstice, coming more than a year after Mary's death and at the start of another crunchy stormy Maine winter, I'm filled with the message in that simple service from years ago - the light never wholly goes away, and it always comes back - to illuminate us, warm us, and hold us in a safe embrace.

Important Correction

The cat pictured below is not Norby, it's Colossus, as I do actually know. I do wish her team of frisky attorneys would stop sending me C&D letters......

Wrapping With Newt

Like many of you, I've been wrapping packages. This ritual always makes me feel like the leading contestant in a reality show called "Major Failures of Fine Motor Coordination." My favorite part - aside from the great blessing of gift bags - is using those stick-on pre-made bows. My fascination with gift bows started over a half century ago.

Dawn Breaks on the Marsh

In the late 1950s, I worked in Miss Heathcote's gift shop. One of my jobs was to prepare for Christmas - in August. This effort involved many hours in the stock room with the big bow making machine. It was green cast iron, with a wooden hand crank and long sinister cutter lever. The Rube Goldbergian charm of the gizmo wore off after about the ten millionth bow. 

Another of my duties was to go through huge piles of Hallmark cartons and check them against the orders, then count each card and each envelope, because Miss Heathcote was certain she'd be shortchanged. In my years working there, counting more cards than there are stars in the galaxy, Hallmark never shorted a single item. The job was worth 90 cents an hour minus withholding, paid Friday afternoons in cash. I'd shove the little brown pay envelope in my pocket and catch the next bus to New York, returning late Sunday night. I was 14.

Thinking about Miss Heathcote brings me to the subject of child labor.

That rascal Newt has come up with the best book promotion scheme ever: pretend to run for President of the US. I might not be unique as one who finds almost everything about that man repulsive, but you have to hand it to him for marketing savvy. He's made headlines as an advocate of child labor, a position one would have thought was rendered unfashionable in the first part of the 20th Century when Frances Perkins and American labor unions were busy banning it.

For Newt, his preposterous position that small children in public schools should also be their janitors is an unserious reactionary politician's trifecta: he gets to bash unions, blame the victims/poor people, and obliquely pander to the subsurface racism that's rampant in Republican politics nowadays for pretty obvious reasons. Since ol' Newt has not the slightest intention of actually being President of the United States of America - the job is way too much work for a guy like Newt even if he were qualified - he can just fling out random positions and sell more books, give more speeches for pay, and land those fabulous consulting contracts. What a guy.

As with much demagoguery, there is a tiny kernel of worth inside Newt's position. Two in fact.

First, kids are trained from an early age to be consumers of education, part of their overall training to be American Consumers of Chinese Made Goods. Many teachers and some school systems work against this "you're an empty vessel, I'll fill you up" kind of education, denounced 100 years ago by Vermonter John Dewey. I think all aspects of public education - leaving content out for a moment - would be enhanced by the kids feeling some ownership of their educational situation. Don't fire the janitors, instead make them teachers of environmental stewardship. The kids should be sweeping and dusting and mowing every day. Not just for pay, Newt - for learning.

Once again this is hardly a novel concept, Doctor Montessori's ideas along these lines came to the USA a century ago, as Dewey's theories were unfolding.

Geese on the Morning Marsh, High Tide

What the kids learn by working in their schools is that members of communities are interdependent, there is joy in being important to everyone, and that people can find deep satisfaction experiencing the concrete results of their work. I'm not talking about kids becoming bread winners, and it's ridiculous to fire the janitors - who are well qualified to maintain the schools while teaching responsibility and good work habits.

Second, work for pay is also a good thing, even for children. I worked for food in the school cafeteria starting in junior high, and then for Miss Heathcote and others in high school - to fund independence. Not iTunes or $150 sneakers - freedom and autonomy. How can we do this without displacing grownups in low-wage jobs, including people here from other countries who may be supporting half a village on what they earn clipping our hedges?

OK here it comes, one more excursion into the past: let's look to John Maynard Keynes, who died nine months after I was born. And the many people who made his ideas manifest in the world, again like our friend Frances Perkins and her pal Roosevelt. This means government as the employer of last resort, government as the bulwark against wild economic fluctuations, government as the ultimate supporter of those who pay for it, and government as protection from the greedy and powerful companies in banking, finance and investment. Nowadays, the fiscal conservatives who run our country, ranging from President Obama to our buddy Newt, reject just about all of these ideas, except for pathetic vestiges like TARP.

These people, to put it simply, prefer letting unregulated corporations run things, instead of governments we vote for. Me? I want the WPA. That's a serviceable framework for restoring independence and dignity to millions of out-of-work people in our unhappy country. I favor jobs provided to benefit the public through the provision of honorable work, as well as the goods and services thus created. In this context, we can put kids to work: as part of an inclusive labor policy that protects adult work, prevents exploitation of children, and allows kids to learn how to work. 

I'm kind of impatient with people who cite bad experiences with government as a reason to do away with it. If something doesn't work, fix it - don't toss it out. Why do the people who tolerate Shell Oil and Walmart and Goldman Sachs want to scrap the government they pay for and vote for? It doesn't make sense to advocate abolishing the very entity that protects you from corporate excess - unless you're the handmaiden of those very corporations, who want to run amuck unfettered.

Norby is Not An Advocate of More Work

And that brings us full circle to ol' Newt.

Winter Moving In To The Marsh

Ice Builds Along The Margins

High Tide On the Inlet

Low Tide On The Inlet

Tomorrow's post is about darkness turning to light. As we wait for the solstice, here's the marsh as winter tightens its grip.

Turkeys: Are You What You Eat?

One of the things most of us do around the holidays - no matter what our religious beliefs - is eat special foods. The Turkey Post - that's what this is, illustrated by Jan's wonderful pictures - is in honor of this time of feasting.

Every meal should try to meet three standards:

• Delicious
• Healthy
• Sustainable

Nobody's perfect, not to mention their cooking - but for me, those are the goals present in every act of food consumption. Another way to say this is we judge what we eat according to:

• aesthetics
• individual benefit
• community benefit 

About 20 or 25 years ago, my friend and co-worker HP turned up some turkey chicks. We called them NMB3's since the full name was a bit much: Naturally Mating Broad Breasted Bronze turkeys. There were only a few hundred left alive on the planet.

All turkeys used to look like the ones you see in Jan's photos. Around here, they live in the woods, fields and along the roads.  The NMB3s looked like the wild ones, although an expert like HP could probably spot the differences. Any non-expert could tell the difference between wild turkeys and commercial birds because they're conveniently color-coded: turkeys from the factory farms are mostly white.

In the 20th Century, the US and Western Europe converted their food supplies from a traditional agrarian arrangement to an industrialized system. The food supply gradually met goals of all industrial products from Model T Fords to iPhones: predictable supply, standardized parts, and large-scale marketing.

The food industry says its system enables large numbers of people to be fed reliably, safely and cheaply. Critics say the industrialized food supply is unhealthy and destructive to small and mid-sized farmers, and it's not cheap if you count the costs of personal and environmental ill health that result.

Turkeys have been bred to meet industrial standards. They are kept in severe confinement, fed antibiotics and other probably unhealthy chemicals to decrease problems of overcrowding and inbreeding. They are bred to be white so that the dots left on their skin after being killed and plucked don't show up dark.

Around 80% of Americans demand white meat. There's a whole literature of white meat debate - don't worry, I'll spare you. Whatever the reasons, fowl money is in white, that is breast meat. So turkeys are bred to have huge breasts. In fact for "modern" industrialized turkeys, the breast of the males are so huge the toms are unable to mount the females.

Next time you're thinking about how crummy your job is, remember that there are people out there who work as turkey inseminators. I don't know exactly how it's done, but I can't conceive of a method that would't be incredibly obnoxious. Even if you have a regrettable job like working in a shopping mall kiosk, or being the aide to a Republican politician, there's at least one job I know that's worse.

The NMB3s, as the name says, can do the turkey cha-cha without assistance from human helpers. Like their wild counterparts.

Turkeys like the ones HP and I raised many years ago are now available for general sale around Thanksgiving, and at all times of the year if you are willing to poke around. They cost more and I guarantee, taste better.

But wait a minute, there's more.

Animals we eat do one thing really well. They convert carbohydrates to concentrated protein. This reflects a crucial difference in how our bodies use what we eat. Carbs - that are converted by our bodies to sugar - are what keep us going. Many people eat way too many carbs. Carbs - grain and sugar are examples - can be delicious, and the food industry pushes them because carb-rich food fits the industrial model so well - it's cheap and easy to sell. When we eat too many carbs, we become overweight and some people get diabetes. The American Diabetes Association says about 26 million people in the USA have diabetes and another 79 million are pre-diabetic. That's a third of the population at risk for a serious disease linked directly to food consumption.

A cow needs to eat about 6 pounds of grain to produce a 16 ounce steak on your table. A turkey needs to eat 4 pounds of grain for a pound of that white meat. A chicken needs 3 grain pounds to give us the same pound of flesh.

By eating meat, we are eating concentrated plants turned into the protein that maintains and builds our bodies. On a global scale, this concentration can be a problem, since there are a lot of very hungry people who could eat the pounds of grain that become a single hamburger. There are other problems with industrialized meat production like the huge amount of water that goes into producing that pound of flesh, environmental destruction of rain forests to create pastureland, waste produced by factory farms, and insane cruelty to creatures jammed in nightmare conditions.

If you're a vegetarian for those or other reasons, you'd better be careful to get enough protein, and not get carb-loaded. If you're a meat eater, you could be snarfing down nasty chemicals, heart-stopping quantities of fat, and supporting global evils like starvation, pollution, and animal cruelty.

What to do? Now for some hopeful news.

The strengths of the industrial food system are also strengths for people who want to change the food supply. In fact I wrote my first book over 20 years ago about just this topic. ⇒

Because the modern food system turns a biological and cultural act into an industrial one, food becomes a commodity. Cultural acts are priced according to complicated factors, while the price of commodities reflects simple supply and demand. The consumer of food creates a demand and the supply responds.

Here are a few easy steps:

1. Read Michael Pollen and others who counsel moderation andy common sense in eating. We don't really benefit from fads, cults, finger-wagging, guilt-tripping or other paraphernalia of personal change movements. Just return to the relaxed, balanced and sensible traditions that support all family and culturally-based values.

2. Reverse engineer the food supply by buying the food, if you can find it and afford it, that you know is healthier for people and the world. This means Thanksgiving turkeys from "heritage" breeds, as well as from the locally-sourced or organic or farmers markets or CSA or gardens. There's also something to be said for buying some healthy items in your supermarket, so their checkout scanners that count every item, create more orders for good stuff from their suppliers - thus making the overall food supply better and better.

2.5. If you hunt to put food on your table, your family is eating an animal that lived and died a lot better than its industrialized distant cousins.

3. Take it easy in making changes. Leaping in crazily, serving up long dinner table rants to captive audiences and foisting strange meals on your poor kids will not last. Leave the revolution in Tahrir Square and bring change to yourself and your family slowly and gently and with respect. That's the change that endures.

At the French Embassy

In 1983 I attended a pan-Pacific meeting called the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Conference, held in the three-year-old nation of Vanuatu, formerly the New Hebrides.

The New Hebrides had been a condominium colony - its people were under the colonial yoke of both Great Britain and France at the same time. This resulted, among other things, in three criminal justice systems - one New Hebridean, one British, and one French. When I visited, people still referred to the Condominium as The Pandemonium.

Vanuatu's tiny new government, led by Prime Minister Walter Lini, was composed of a very small core of young men who had studied - courtesy of the Council of Churches - in the US. They had read Fanon and other voices of the post-colonial world. They were sharply aware of their responsibility to create a new black nation using what they had learned in college, including avoiding the pitfalls they saw in other newly decolonized states.

A sign in the airport reminded a visitor that tipping was a federal crime: from the very start, Vanuatu included the dignity of its people in the idea of their new country. I attended a "pre-conference conference" at a fancy resort on an otherworldly island in a tropical lagoon. The wife of the New Zealand resort manager told me that in many years of such work, her husband had never experienced anything nearly as trouble-free as running that resort. When I asked why, she said that law in Vanuatu restricted the ownership stake of their New Zealand company to 49%. The remaining shares were owned collectively by the two villages on either side of the lagoon. The resort was entirely staffed by its owners, and there were few labor issues and no absenteeism. If a maid or cook couldn't come to work, she got her cousin or neighbor to cover.

Anyway the occasion of this post, aside from fitting in after the Chinese Power Projection posting, is to show you a photo that appeared while my daughter was storing some of her things in my attic.

Traveling around the world as I did in the 70s and into the 80s, I was accustomed to a "Yanqui Go Home" attitude - or worse - in many places. But in Vanuatu, people remembered American sailors arriving in World War II, building solid roads out of crushed coral and shells, spending lots of money, and departing - leaving only James Mitchner behind to write Tales of the South Pacific. Americans were greatly appreciated.

The Brits stayed and ran the place as a colony, and were consequently not liked nearly as much. Real enmity was reserved for the French, because they were still conducting nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean. This was not only a massive affront to the sovereignty of Pacific peoples, but an environmental threat, since the tests leaked into the ocean.

Me at the French Embassy, 1983

So the conference organized a demonstration at the French Embassy. No Vanuatu police appeared - they must have been busy elsewhere that day, in a capital city of 17,000 people, in a country with an army of 65 soldiers, most of them comprising the band. So we had a great day messing up the lawn of the French Embassy and listening to anti-French speeches. Nothing was broken, no one was injured. The food was great.

Frozen Marsh

To contrast with today's main post about the tropics, here are a couple of photos from this morning's frozen marsh. These were taken when the temp was 9º F.

The Varyag and the Projection of Chinese Global Power

Those of us who cradle our Kindle Fires and enjoy $8 T-shirts tend to think of our country's rivalry with China in terms of economics and the supposed imbalance of trade. Maybe some of us paste on those Free Tibet stickers and cluck our tongues at China's human rights record (forget Guantanamo, Abu Graib, Leonard Peltier - on and on). But mostly, we frame our relationship with the world's most populous country in terms of commerce.

What we may not think about too much is the cold steel underneath the economist's effete calculations. We don't take into account the military planning and contingencies and stockpiling and exercises and most of all - power projection: what happens right after diplomacy fails, sometimes beforehand.

In the colonial era, much of the global reach of the colonial powers was intertwined with their need for military bases - safe places to park fuel for passing warships ("coaling stations"), and eventually contingents of troops and then airfields. Airfields are very powerful.

Almost as soon as airplanes were invented a century ago, people started trying to figure out how to launch them from boats, because the messiness of dependance on colonies could be greatly reduced. The invention of serviceable aircraft carriers, more than Franz Fanon, helped end classic-era colonialism.

There are 22 working aircraft carriers in the world. I bet it will not astonish you to learn that half of them belong to the US, and any one of the 10 Nimitz-class carriers we run are bigger than many of the rest of the world's carriers combined - and that doesn't even count our 9 smaller non-nuclear carriers that equal what passes for an aircraft carrier if you're Great Britain or India.

Because all 11 US super carriers are nuclear-powered, we not only don't need so many airfields around the world to enforce our hegemony, we don't need those pesky coaling stations either. Nuclear powered ships run for years before they need to stop for a refill.

China's Peoples Liberation Army Navy, with the Bondian acronym of PLAN, has been shopping in used carrier lots around the globe for ships to "study." They've been building and rebuilding conventionally-powered carriers, some of which are 50-60% the size of US super carriers. Then PLAN jumped the global hegemony line a little more by buying an unfinished Russian carrier, the Varyag, that Ukraine had for sale in one of those warship yard sales we don't hear about. Actually the story of the Varyag is worth looking into - it was purchased by a travel agency, I'm not making this up, then broke loose in a huge storm and went adrift, and was banned by the Suez Canal. Anyway, eventually the huge ship was fitted and refitted as a modern aircraft carrier by PLAN. The as-yet unnamed aircraft carrier has just returned from two weeks of sea trials. Here's a picture from an excellent blog, defensetech.org - a good place to go if you want to track the implements of our forthcoming wars.

So what, you may ask?

First: 34 years ago I heard futurist Hazel Henderson give a talk in Minneapolis in which she talked about the "last thrashing of the dying dinosaur." If our country's political system continues its substantial decomposition, if we continue to permit a great number of our citizens to live in seething poverty, if we continue to confuse cultural diversity with an acceptance of pugnacious communalism, and if we allow the commodification of the most intimate reaches of our values, families, art and music and religion and education - then there we'll be, a snarling tyrannosaur on its back. With 11 nuclear aircraft carriers in its thrashing tail. The mad joyrides of Rumsfeld and Cheney will be nothing compared to what we could do then.

Second: China is a country that seems to have a high degree of comfort with the use of the mailed fist to both deter and punish what it perceives as threats. China didn't buy the Varyag just for 2012, the year we're likely to see it commissioned with a new name. The Varyag can launch all sorts of aircraft - it also has various other ocean warfare functions, and an independent missile launch system. But PLAN is in it for the long haul. In 20 or 30 years, China could have a world class power projection fleet to oppose what of the Nimitz-class ships are still afloat, poorly maintained by the wounded dinosaur.

Given those two observations, here's the so what: the gravely wounded institutions of our struggling polity and culture desperately need our attention. More than the sleekest aircraft carrier, our greatest bulwark against future existential threats is repair and recovery of our country's internal life. And we don't live in a vacuum: we're are under more scrutiny by our rivals than by our own citizens. Our adversaries see our strengths and weaknesses, and are making detailed plans and investments to address them. Will we?