Thought for the Day (Dec 30)

Subject: Thought for the Day (Dec 30)
From: Peter T.
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 09:48 AM

(dec 30) I go out into the deep wooded ravine I know best, just to clear my mind and let the cold wind brush through. A millenium ago, all this was different. This lowest part of Canada, now on the edge of the Carolinian forest (the oak-hickory that makes up the Middle U.S. states) was spruce and pine, probably more like northern Maine. It was colder in the year 1000, but there was an endless abundance of birds and animals and fish everywhere,blizzarding the sky, filling the forests, flowing down the rivers. The trees were wide and high, especially the high white pines.

What there is 1000 years later is a sad remnant, full of invaded tree species like Norway maples and scrub ornamentals escaped from lawns; but it is practically empty of animals, birds, and the fish are struggling. It has been all cut down at least twice, so the current trees are all 100 years old or less. And every few minutes, when the wind shifts, I can hear cars on the motorway. It is a mess, really: nothing to be proud of.

In another 100 years (I cannot think 1000 years)? All this will be different again. If we are lucky, this will all be Carolinian forest, the current trees dead from the changed climate and insect borne diseases, and replaced by southern forest completely. If we are not, then it will be something worse: a forest of new genetic weeds, or the radioactively transformed survivors of the next war. One thing for sure: the wind won't be this bitterly cold here then -- and if I was around, as a good Canadian, I would probably miss it.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Dec 30)
From: KathWestra
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 10:34 AM

Peter, I can't let the year end without thanking you for this and all your other provocative, eloquent, and elegant thoughts for all our days. Thank you!

I am particularly moved when, as you did today, you write about nature -- its mystery, its magic, its power despite all our efforts to control it, and the precarious state of its treasures at the hands of human-unkind.

In the ever-sprawling metropolitan Washington, D.C. area where I live, it seems that folks won't be content until they have leveled every last patch of forest, paved every field, and turned every natural stream into a storm drain. These days, I get only a few species of birds at my backyard feeders. With the exception of the black-capped chickadees, which seem to be thriving, I see mostly English sparrows, starlings, and marauding flocks of pigeons. The woodpeckers, goldfinches, song sparrows, cardinals, bluejays, towhees, grosbeaks, and wrens are fewer and fewer with every passing year.

My wish for all of us as the new year turns is that we will be more aware of our small place in a world that includes much more than just the human species, and that we will have the shared commitment to do what it takes to heal and restore our troubled Earth.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Dec 30)
From: katlaughing
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 12:12 PM

Thank you, both. So expressive and beautiful.

I've often had daydreams about turning Wyoming's prairie totally back to nature. I know it would take a while, but I can just imagine it with knee-deep grasses shifting in the wind, as the antelope do, in a graceful arc of One. In Wyoming, one is ridiculed for having such dreams, but I still like to think of the seventh generation and what is to come for them and theirs.

If our words and thoughts do have an effect, as I belive, then I look forward to the rippling grasses of the high plains and the Carolinian forests of Canada, as well as the return of cardinals, towhees and others to areas now lost to them.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Dec 30)
From: DonMeixner
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 01:02 PM

IMHO

I think I look into the new century with more hope and optimism than I have ever had before. I can look at where we have been and what we have lost over time be sad for its going. But What a world is coming.

I'd compare the human race to toddler who is going through the living room and laying waste to the landscape. Three steps forward and two steps back all the way but making slow progress. Broken lamps, cookie jars, torn photos, some rare and irreplaceable, some not. Some completely destroyed and some damaged but reparable. But in the path of this carnage is adavncement and growth. Lessons are learned on the backs of things lost and this has been the toll paid by humanity since the beginning of our time on the earth.

In the span of modern history we have lost wildlife because of human interference with the way of natural life. We shot down great flocks of Pssenger Pigeons for the adornment clothing. But in a few years since that time we discovered our stupidity with DDT and have generally saved The Perigrine Falcon and Bald eagle from distinction. Three steps forward and two steps back.

On a boring afternoon near the turn of the last century the army of Napoleon used the Great Spinx at Giza for target practice and shot its nose away. Little kids playing at vandals because it was just an old stone beast from antiquity. In this century the combined efforts of the Soviets, Egyptians, and the French worked together to save the Aswan Relics and move them to higher ground so as not to be flooded into only a memory.

Three steps forward and two steps back.

I am willing to bet we will lose countless irreplaceble pieces of our world as we move ahead. I hate to say it but thats the cost of keeping us on this planet. I can't imagine a world with out Monarch Butterflys or Dandelions or Adirondaks or Ayers Rock or Red Dear or White Rhinos, or Elephants or..... fill in the blank. But the cost of getting us as a people to this point where we are willing to fight to keep from losing these great natural amazements was all that we have lost in the millenia that have passed. There is no gain in sitting back and wringing our hands over that which has been lost. We know what we have lost. We as a people are at a point where we can stop the losses. We need to take this knowledge and use it to teach ourselves and to help others in the world family. The shame would be knowing the price we have paid for the admission into the next century and then not going to the show.

Don

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Dec 30)
From: annamill
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 01:14 PM

Don, I love and admire and feel uplifted by your comments. Thank you for your optimism. You have expressed what in my heart I have been feeling for years.

Love, annap

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Dec 30)
From: katlaughing
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 01:24 PM

Beautifully put, Don. I wonder sometimes, though, if I agree with the egocentricity that reckons humans are that important. Other than a few, I'd rather Nature continue on at the expense of humans, rather than the other way around. I've never heard of a tree species or other processing through evolution at the risk of extinction of humans, though.

katinanotveryhumantarianmoodtoday

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Dec 30)
From: DonMeixner
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 01:42 PM

Kat,

Thats the beauty of nature. It adapts far better than we do. It lives in boiling water and crushing, ink black pressure at the bottom of the sea. The only thing poison ivy feers is goats. The river doesn't care whether you build on its banks, it'll just flood you out.

My point you must remember was that humankind is at the point in its infancy where it can see the carnage and cost it has paid to get to this point. And not pay the same taxes twice as it moves ahead.

We see what nuclear power has done and can do. Just because we "can" is no reson "to" go forward with the stuff. Fewer nuclear power plants are built each year and those that are have been made smaller and more efficient. No we have to make them safe or not make them at all. But at least know we recognize this need. We never did before. Fossil fuels are an evil we live with. But we are getting better and more efficient with their use.

Besides Katey, we are a part of nature ourselves. If we don't learn to live right with it. It will adapt us into oblivion.

Don

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Dec 30)
From: katlaughing
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 02:20 PM

Yes, we may see the carnage and the need to stop it, but, in my opinion, it isn't happening soon enough and there are still so many people who deny it at all.

Perhaps my feeling this way comes from living in a wasteland of people who are so afraid of change that they would prefer the pollution, destruction, and annihilation to any change, for the better or worse. Of course, I am generalising about Wyomingites. There are many who care, it is just one great big struggle being in the minority. I know people here who are afraid to put environmental bumper stickers on their cars. I've been told, by old time family friends, that I should probably quit writing my editorials for publication here, because they just aren't "in sync" with the population.

Perhaps in the great scheme of things, Don, we are meant to be adapted into oblivion by Nature? Who knows?

Is it my day to be the curmudgeon?

luvyaKat

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Dec 30)
From: Peter T.
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 02:46 PM

I treat your remarks with great respect, Don, though we probably disagree about nuclear power in general. I am much less optimistic about what we have learned from what we have lost -- my students, for example, assume that today's wilderness is the same as what was lost. They have no idea. People use today as the norm, and as today deteriorates, they use that as the new norm.

How much are we learning as a society? We have approximately 30,000 chemicals in circulation, with thousands being added every year, with adequate testing having been carried out on about 100, singly. Nothing much is being done about this -- it will require a terrible thalidomide catastrophe to awaken real action. The United States is about to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty for ridiculous reasons, and that will trigger a desperate new arms race. Ecosystems all over the world -- the oceans are being eviscerated -- are under increasing threat. We are about 20 years from the last wasting away of the Serengeti in Kenya, the end of the Indonesian rain forest, and others. We are losing perhaps 20,000 species a year, a rate that seems to be increasing.

H.G. Wells said that the 20th century was a race between education and catastrophe: it is more likely to be true of the 21st, but the education part is lagging behind.

But, you are right, we have learned some things. We have lost the faith in human perfection and utopias, which murdered so many people for so many years. We have begun to stop wasting women so stupidly. Life expectancies are way up. But when I look at your toddler, I see a smaller room, and a larger box of matches. Probably just attitude, I guess: I have less faith in human progress and learning than you do, maybe because I use myself as my model of human betterment. I am sure if I used you as a model, I would be much cheerier!!!! I wish you a happy new year!
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Dec 30)
From: DonMeixner
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 08:10 PM

Dear Peter,

I can't agree you more, for the most part. All that you have said is undoubtedly true. The toddler is in room of matched and fans with out gaurds and razor blades and open outlets. But the beauty of this child is when evr a finger is burned enough and a razor blade us licked enough the child learns and goes to the next nest of scorpions in the play pen. Its human nature to learn from mistakes as often as we jaded ones like to think not.

I think I have more faith in human nature that you. Maybe because I work with people everyday who overcome as a matter of course. Maybe because I found away to do what I love to do when all evidence said I'd never touch a guitar again. And maybe its because I'm so afraid to think otherwise because I have kids.

I don't understand your comment on Neuclear power. I'm dead set against it myself. We have abundant water power and Hydrosites work for ever it seems. (I have some small experience there) And when they stop working they don't cost more to decommision that they cost to build. I just recognize N-Power as something we have to live with for awhile whle the rest of the world catches up with their own common sense.

Don

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Dec 30)
From: kendall
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 08:20 PM

A native American chief once said to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.. When the last tree has been cut down..when the last fish has been caught, when the last river is polluted..only then, will you understand that you cant eat money.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Dec 30)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Dec 99 - 08:29 PM

"Not in Utopia - subterranean fields, -
Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us, - the place where, in the end
We find our happiness, or not at all!"

That's Wordsworth, in The Prelude

But I still think that there's truth in what Oscar Wilde said about us needing to have Utopia somewhere in our map of the world. And he wasn't talking about some foreign country where they've got it all right - the false utopias that devastated this century. (And the fantasy of the triumphant Free Market System is just another of these.)

We have to have some picture in our minds of how it could be better, so that we can look at what we have, and see that it falls short of what we need, and doesn't have to be that way. That's what Thomas More was doing when he wrote Utopia, he wasn't suggesting that it was a perfect society that should be imposed on Tudor England, he was presenting it as a way of measuring how far Tudor England fell short of what it should have been.

Thee was some discussion on the radio about the best way to describe this past century, and it set me thinking.

I decided that the best way to describe would be as The Wasted Century. That's "wasted" in three senses - in the devastation we achieved, in our failure to make good use of the amazing resources we have obtained, and in the prevailing sense of exhaustion and disillusion, like some kind of collective hangover.

Which paradoxically makes me think things are going to start getting better. I think the protest om Seattle (for all it's downside, which I do not disregard) was a token of better days to come.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Dec 30)
From: Peter T.
Date: 31 Dec 99 - 09:21 AM

All fine, fine points. I misunderstood you, Don, to be advocating a return to nuclear power (albeit safer and more efficient). Apologies.
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Dec 30)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Jan 00 - 08:13 AM