I used to post longer pieces. This link's to a post from a couple years back about Stewart Brand's answer to climate change, Whole Earth Discipline.
For the last few months, I've concentrated on writing profiles of systems thinkers -- Faces of Wisdom -- for Duluth's Zenith City (semi) Weekly. Here's my profile of gardener and soil builder John Jeavons
I finished my newest profile, on 350.org founder Bill McKibben, today. I tried to write it yesterday, but wound up at 1200 words. I'm usually published at 800 words, but my editor, Jen, likes me to write long. She says, "I can cut, but I can't add." Still a third is a lot to cut gracefully, so I wrote a second version, 900 words long.
(Ironically, I proposed a series like the old Ripley's Believe It or Not, with fewer than a hundred words.)
David Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster (start with the fourth one down) is a collection of published essays, as submitted. It's interesting to see what wound up on the floor.
Maybe someday.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Friday, December 28, 2012
People As Subsystems
Ecologist Howard Odum noted in Environment Power and Society that what a system can do is limited by its subsystems, and by the larger system of which it is a part.
If we think of a person as a system, his or her subsystems would include metabolism, wealth, personal connections, knowledge base, intellectual firepower, etc. He or she would be a subsystem of a society, whose operations oblige and proscribe various activities and accomplishments. A Yanamamo won't build a helicopter, and a North Korean won't direct a 3D, CGI film of The Catcher in the Rye.
And, we have to wonder, how can an American find a way to live a just, satisfying, and ecologically-based life?
If we think of a person as a system, his or her subsystems would include metabolism, wealth, personal connections, knowledge base, intellectual firepower, etc. He or she would be a subsystem of a society, whose operations oblige and proscribe various activities and accomplishments. A Yanamamo won't build a helicopter, and a North Korean won't direct a 3D, CGI film of The Catcher in the Rye.
And, we have to wonder, how can an American find a way to live a just, satisfying, and ecologically-based life?
Buckminster Fuller: Dark Horse In The Race To Save The Planet
A wild card in the struggle to save civilization is one key idea of Buckminster Fuller's. Bucky said lots, but this probably is his most solid, and maybe useful, idea.
He said it's invisible, because it involves a kind of knowledge most of us don't have or pay understand.
Modern alloys have many times the tensile strength of rocks, lumber, or concrete -- conventional building materials -- and greater tensile strength than nineteenth century steel. Of course, conventional buildings are made by piling things on top of other things -- compressively -- and materials' compressive strengths are relatively pitiful.
Also, Fuller's geometry, which you can see in his invention, the geodesic dome, is tensile -- it hangs together. Build our structures using Fuller's tensile geometry and incredibly strong modern materials, and it only takes a tiny fraction of the material conventional techniques would. Those domes are hanging from themselves, and could cover counties without any pillars.
The combination of modern materials and a kind of building which hangs instead of stacks might be economical enough to make us the planet of billionaires Fuller claimed we are, "entirely unaware of our good fortune."
In the twenties, Fuller analyzed a model modern house, proposed by the American Institute of Architects, realizing that all of the lumber, plumbing, concrete, wires, appliances, etc. would weigh 150 tons. He designed his Dymaxion House to provide the same area and functions for three tons. The Dymaxion House would have been mass-produced, so there would have been time savings, as well.
After World War II, he built two prototype Dymaxion Houses, which operated as proposed, and weighed...three tons each.
Objections are that these structures would be unconventional and startling, compete with existing industries, aren't the kind of things individuals can do by themselves (industrial production versus craft), requiring cooperation, and the possibility that there would be hidden infrastructure belying apparent economies. But these are just questions. It would be nice if people caught on to possibilities like Buckminster Fuller's in sufficient number to start having a conversation.
The stakes are too high not to.
He said it's invisible, because it involves a kind of knowledge most of us don't have or pay understand.
Modern alloys have many times the tensile strength of rocks, lumber, or concrete -- conventional building materials -- and greater tensile strength than nineteenth century steel. Of course, conventional buildings are made by piling things on top of other things -- compressively -- and materials' compressive strengths are relatively pitiful.
Also, Fuller's geometry, which you can see in his invention, the geodesic dome, is tensile -- it hangs together. Build our structures using Fuller's tensile geometry and incredibly strong modern materials, and it only takes a tiny fraction of the material conventional techniques would. Those domes are hanging from themselves, and could cover counties without any pillars.
The combination of modern materials and a kind of building which hangs instead of stacks might be economical enough to make us the planet of billionaires Fuller claimed we are, "entirely unaware of our good fortune."
In the twenties, Fuller analyzed a model modern house, proposed by the American Institute of Architects, realizing that all of the lumber, plumbing, concrete, wires, appliances, etc. would weigh 150 tons. He designed his Dymaxion House to provide the same area and functions for three tons. The Dymaxion House would have been mass-produced, so there would have been time savings, as well.
After World War II, he built two prototype Dymaxion Houses, which operated as proposed, and weighed...three tons each.
Objections are that these structures would be unconventional and startling, compete with existing industries, aren't the kind of things individuals can do by themselves (industrial production versus craft), requiring cooperation, and the possibility that there would be hidden infrastructure belying apparent economies. But these are just questions. It would be nice if people caught on to possibilities like Buckminster Fuller's in sufficient number to start having a conversation.
The stakes are too high not to.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
The Nation On Secession
I let my Harper's subscription lapse, and stopped listening to Democracy Now for the sake of my mental health, but I sneaked a look at the current Nation today at the library.
Calvin Trillin about post-election secessionists: We do respect your point of view/We're glad to see the back of you.
There's a more prosaic thousand words about secessionists, later in the magazine, pointing out that their states, ironically, are major beneficiaries of big federal government, and comparing the American movement with regional/ethnic movements in Europe -- Scottish, Catalan, etc.
Off the cuff: I'm torn. We're all in this collapsing world economy together, and giving Yahoos the right to self determination could sabotage reasonable people's chances. On the other hand, they seem to be doing a decent job of shooting our collective feet already.
Continuing the motif, there's also a review of John G. Turner's Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet, about the founder of the little theocracy in the basin.
Calvin Trillin about post-election secessionists: We do respect your point of view/We're glad to see the back of you.
There's a more prosaic thousand words about secessionists, later in the magazine, pointing out that their states, ironically, are major beneficiaries of big federal government, and comparing the American movement with regional/ethnic movements in Europe -- Scottish, Catalan, etc.
Off the cuff: I'm torn. We're all in this collapsing world economy together, and giving Yahoos the right to self determination could sabotage reasonable people's chances. On the other hand, they seem to be doing a decent job of shooting our collective feet already.
Continuing the motif, there's also a review of John G. Turner's Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet, about the founder of the little theocracy in the basin.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Logicomix
Most humans behave irrationally. All the more reason to pursue the study of logic... Of course I am also human and thus am no stranger to fits of non-logical thinking. But I can also discern these tendencies in myself and thus am more able to resist them...
Bertrand Russell, quoted in Logicomix, Doxiadis, Papadimitriou, Pasppadatos, and Di Donna, 2009, Bloomsbury, NY
Bertrand Russell, quoted in Logicomix, Doxiadis, Papadimitriou, Pasppadatos, and Di Donna, 2009, Bloomsbury, NY
The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker.
Barbara and I spent Christmas Day at Sam and Marissa's house. Sam is our 31-year old. I looked through his copy of The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker.
A lot of the drawings from the twenties and thirties made me laugh, and the drawings from the twenties were great -- draughtsmanship and composition equal to high art and illustration, some of the design derived from Cubism.
Beginning in the forties, I laughed a lot less. My reaction was usually, "Oh yeah, I get it." The drawing was okay -- cartoon-level
Then sometime in the nineties, the cartoons started to get funny again. Were they really, or was it that their themes were closer to mine, and the kind of gags were ones I'm conditioned to laugh at?
And if that's true, what does it say about the cartoonists eighty and ninety years ago?
Oh, and William Hamilton's drawings are twenties quality.
A lot of the drawings from the twenties and thirties made me laugh, and the drawings from the twenties were great -- draughtsmanship and composition equal to high art and illustration, some of the design derived from Cubism.
Beginning in the forties, I laughed a lot less. My reaction was usually, "Oh yeah, I get it." The drawing was okay -- cartoon-level
Then sometime in the nineties, the cartoons started to get funny again. Were they really, or was it that their themes were closer to mine, and the kind of gags were ones I'm conditioned to laugh at?
And if that's true, what does it say about the cartoonists eighty and ninety years ago?
Oh, and William Hamilton's drawings are twenties quality.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Wayne LaPierre Crazy?
Wayne LaPierre met the press Sunday and said, "If putting armed police in schools is crazy, call me crazy."
Okay.
Oh, yeah, and would Colt Firearms be willing to pony up the guns? Maybe PointBlank Body Armor would come across with the Kevlar vests.
Okay.
Oh, yeah, and would Colt Firearms be willing to pony up the guns? Maybe PointBlank Body Armor would come across with the Kevlar vests.
Anxiety And Alprazamalama
EXT. HOSPITAL EMERGENCY ROOM - DAY
BOB pauses, exiting the emergency room. He wears a drab business suit, mops his forehead and looks up with visible relief.
BOB
I thought I was having a heart attack. Thank God it was only crippling anxiety disorder.
INT. DOCTOR'S OFFICE - DAY
DOCTOR
Fortunately for anxiety sufferers like Bob, now there's Alprazamalama.
STILL LIFE OF ALPRAZAMALAMA
HURRIED VOICE-OVER
Check with your doctor to see if Alprazamalama is right for you. Check with your doctor if you experience any of the following while taking Alprazamalama: depression, thoughts of suicide, suicide, thoughts of mass murder, mass murder, chest pains, racing heart, dizziness, nausea, uncontrolled muscle movements, jaundice, hallucinations, or anxiety.
BOB pauses, exiting the emergency room. He wears a drab business suit, mops his forehead and looks up with visible relief.
BOB
I thought I was having a heart attack. Thank God it was only crippling anxiety disorder.
INT. DOCTOR'S OFFICE - DAY
DOCTOR
Fortunately for anxiety sufferers like Bob, now there's Alprazamalama.
STILL LIFE OF ALPRAZAMALAMA
HURRIED VOICE-OVER
Check with your doctor to see if Alprazamalama is right for you. Check with your doctor if you experience any of the following while taking Alprazamalama: depression, thoughts of suicide, suicide, thoughts of mass murder, mass murder, chest pains, racing heart, dizziness, nausea, uncontrolled muscle movements, jaundice, hallucinations, or anxiety.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
NRA:Short Deck Or Stacking It?
So...
NRA Executive Veep, Wayne LaPierre ("Help, I'm a rock."), says we should put an armed guard in every American school, and do it by the time the kids get back from Christmas. I figured those guys would be among the fiscally responsible. How many schools are there in the country? There are some cops in some schools, but LaPierre is calling for a major jobs program.
Is the NRA playing with a full deck?
NRA Executive Veep, Wayne LaPierre ("Help, I'm a rock."), says we should put an armed guard in every American school, and do it by the time the kids get back from Christmas. I figured those guys would be among the fiscally responsible. How many schools are there in the country? There are some cops in some schools, but LaPierre is calling for a major jobs program.
Is the NRA playing with a full deck?
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Those Days Are Gone Forever
My mother's maternal grandfather worshipped Lincoln, edited a small-town, Republican newspaper, supported the community of Macomb, Illinois, and provided for a very comfortable childhood for me and my sibs. He was a die-hard nineteenth century libertarian. Once he gave Mom five Depression-era bucks for thinking for herself and writing what amounted to a socialist school theme, a theme which appalled and embarrased my Democratic Granddad.
I call myself a conservative, but nobody else does. "Pal" (my great grandfather) probably wouldn't either, but I like to think that I could persuade him. In a morally relativistic universe, I try to stay in sync with the largest morally meaningful system. Pretty good trick, huh?
Like Wes Jackson says, we all live in the extractive economy.
But, like Barbara says, degree matters. What passes for conservatism these days is a bunch of what Stephen Gaskin calls "plungers" and "bet-the-farm-on-a hunch-boys." (And their dupes).
That was okay for Pal, who lived on the upslope of peak oil. During the Great Depression, he backed his hunches, and new oil reserves backed them too. It even seemed, especially with the Green Revolution, a dozen or twenty years later, that his plunging helped improve the commonweal.
Those days are gone forever.
I call myself a conservative, but nobody else does. "Pal" (my great grandfather) probably wouldn't either, but I like to think that I could persuade him. In a morally relativistic universe, I try to stay in sync with the largest morally meaningful system. Pretty good trick, huh?
Like Wes Jackson says, we all live in the extractive economy.
But, like Barbara says, degree matters. What passes for conservatism these days is a bunch of what Stephen Gaskin calls "plungers" and "bet-the-farm-on-a hunch-boys." (And their dupes).
That was okay for Pal, who lived on the upslope of peak oil. During the Great Depression, he backed his hunches, and new oil reserves backed them too. It even seemed, especially with the Green Revolution, a dozen or twenty years later, that his plunging helped improve the commonweal.
Those days are gone forever.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
To Heck With The Dialectic
Post-presidential election, a guy I know, a skilled craftsman, asked me if it had turned out the way I wanted. It had on one level, but, on another, there was no way it could have turned out the way it needed to. I tried to explain, but my friend said very nicely that he wasn't interested.
His own politics are Independent, or at least adamantly moderate. Sad, because we're in a bind, and the extremists know it, and further, we, on all sides, are serious about surviving and thriving. You can compromise about things where people have different interests; everybody gives a little. You can't compromise on whether or not civilization persists.
His own politics are Independent, or at least adamantly moderate. Sad, because we're in a bind, and the extremists know it, and further, we, on all sides, are serious about surviving and thriving. You can compromise about things where people have different interests; everybody gives a little. You can't compromise on whether or not civilization persists.
Sort Of A Sacrament
And then there is that other relationship which is emphatically not "sort of." Many men have gone to the stakefor the proposition that the bread and wine are not "sort of" the body and blood.
Gregory Bateson, "Metalogue: Why a Swan?" Steps to an Ecology of Mind
Gregory Bateson, "Metalogue: Why a Swan?" Steps to an Ecology of Mind
We're All A Little Crazy
We all make errors [in recognizing metphor, humor, fantasy, etc.] at various times. I'm not sure that I've ever met anybody that doesn't suffer from "Schizophrenia P" more or less.
Greogory Bateson in "Epidemiology of Schizophrenia," Steps to an Ecology of Mind
Greogory Bateson in "Epidemiology of Schizophrenia," Steps to an Ecology of Mind
The Problem With Ronnie
The problem was not that Reagan's sunny disposition somehow masked a fascist soul; the problem was his sunny disposition.
Bill McKibben in Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
Bill McKibben in Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
Quote For the Moment
Error must be corrected. It doesn't have to be acknowledged.
Dee Hock, creator of Visa
Dee Hock, creator of Visa
Tolerate The Second Amendment
| My own gun ownership -- a .22 caliber target pistol in the late 1970s -- was symptomatic of a then-loose screw. The Second Amendment is unique in the right's apparently being contingent on the necessity of a "well regulated militia," and in being so object-specific. Swords and flintlock rifles. The arms we may bear preceded even Eli Whitney's mass production. The argument I've heard most frequently for preserving private arsenals has more to do with fear of government than supporting it as part of a militia. In fact, in an interview with Talk of the nation's Neal Conan, More Guns Less Crime author John Lott said that Columbine High School shooter Dylan Klebold had written to his state representative objecting to proposed anti-gun legislation, and that the law went into effect on the day of the shootings. I'm sure Conan had to restrain himself from asking if that were a threat. Be all that as it may, the current clamor for gun control seems mistaken: Everybody has guns. When I was a Minneapolis energy auditor, poking around in people's houses to save heat. I saw many guns. Among friends, I know three machine guns, and they aren't going anywhere. Their owners, Vietnam-era vets, will hide them and vote Tea Party. That's unfortunate because one of them, at least, is a sensible and humane guy, and you don't have to dig very far to see it. We're looking at some nasty weather. I believe that dealing with the limits to growth will require some restrictions on personal liberty, and I don't want to alienate anybody who can help. Let them keep their well oiled security blankets. More immediately, we might be able to keep guns out of the hands of the nation's Adam Lanzas, but I'm betting that mass shootings will continue at a rate of about twenty a year. Whatever goads somebody to put innocent strangers to death -- children for pete'ssake -- will remain, and gun-control nuts will be disappointed. It ain't gonna be easy, but if we want to stop violent grandstanding, we'll need to go deeper. |
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Harold Kushner: Good Insight Comes From The Basilica
| I listened to Harold Kushner's October talk at St. Mary's Basilica. I heard it on the radio, but I know that, for non-liturgical events, they put signs on the confessionals directing people to the bathrooms downstairs. Kushner spoke about his recent book The Book of Job: When Bad Things Happen to a Good Person. Job, the original, is one of five books of the Bible that I've read all the way through. I've read it twice, once twenty years ago because Gregory Bateson quoted it, and again more recently and with greater understanding. (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Revelations are the others; I tried Genesis but it wore me out.) Kushner said he believes that the story -- God sorely afflicts a devout, virtuous, and prosperous man, who remains steadfast, and is rewarded with new prosperity -- was a folk tale. About 2500 years ago, some brilliant theologian and poet became dissatisfied with the story and used it to bracket a more nuanced examination of doubt, faith, and what it means to love God. The message, according to Kushner, is that a world without suffering would be a world without growth, and if we can't get mad at God, it's a lifeless kind of love. God's message to us is that we will suffer, but He will not abandon us. I'm more of a not-peace-but-the-sword kind of guy, but I enjoyed hearing Kushner. During the question period, somebody asked about virtuous atheists and agnostics. Kushner said that God wants us to behave well, but isn't interested in the credit. He said that the people the questioner asked about are probably not really atheists and agnostics. The thing that keeps us doing good and avoiding evil is a notion of God. That reminded me of a quote from Samuel Butler, a mostly forgotten nineteenth century British author, and critic of Darwin: The argument between the theist and atheist is over whether we shall know God as God, or by some other name. |
Monday, December 17, 2012
St. Paul Chamber Orchestra And The Social Contract
The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra is on strike . Money is the issue, and I'm sympathetic. these are skilled artists, with neurosystems and senses of beauty (probably a false distinction, but just "neurosystems" seems too cold) developed far beyond those of the people for whose pleasure, and especially, at whose pleasure, they perform. Maybe the occasional surgeon in the audience operates at that level, but mostly, it's just us duffers.
As the economy contracts, this is how it happens: faced with fewer resources, the MBAs who control the budget will reduce expenses where it's easiest. They know they can't get very far, asking for give backs from suppliers, bankers, and taxmen, and audiences and grantors are contributing at their limits, so they relieve the pressure on themselves by demanding help where it's easiest: subordinate (!) members of the team.
Quick review: There are twice as many mouths to feed as there were forty years ago, and there were a lot then. Also forty years ago, it took one unit of oil to drill eighty, now it takes twenty; we're pumping a lot of what's, near as I can figure, the real basis for our currency, but we burn a fourth of it for the privilege. Global warming and other forms of pollution (and pollution control) take a bite out of our wealth. Borrowing made sense as the economy expanded, because we could expect to service debt with wealth we planned to create with borrowed capital; now, as the economy contracts, payments to creditors will come from society's operating budget. And there has been a major concentration of wealth in the same forty-year period, so capital that might have gone to innovation and compensation, feathers the already plush nests of the SPCO's directors and major supporters.
I don't believe that workers, even workers as noble and virtuous as classical musicians, can justly expect compensation commensurate with "world-class music." But neither can performers in New York.
And neither can MBAs, and the venal lightweights who get rooms at the Crowne Plaza because it's too far to drive back to fucking Wayzata after the concert.
What the musicians, and other workers going forward, need to realize is that we're on the brink of the precipice, and we're in a struggle for standing room as it crumbles. Some old fart in a thousand-dollar suit, hundred-dollar haircut, and a one-of-a-kind pair of gold cuff links is gonna try to knock you into the abyss, but the ground really is crumbling.
Forget ticket prices. Negotiate the social contract.
As the economy contracts, this is how it happens: faced with fewer resources, the MBAs who control the budget will reduce expenses where it's easiest. They know they can't get very far, asking for give backs from suppliers, bankers, and taxmen, and audiences and grantors are contributing at their limits, so they relieve the pressure on themselves by demanding help where it's easiest: subordinate (!) members of the team.
Quick review: There are twice as many mouths to feed as there were forty years ago, and there were a lot then. Also forty years ago, it took one unit of oil to drill eighty, now it takes twenty; we're pumping a lot of what's, near as I can figure, the real basis for our currency, but we burn a fourth of it for the privilege. Global warming and other forms of pollution (and pollution control) take a bite out of our wealth. Borrowing made sense as the economy expanded, because we could expect to service debt with wealth we planned to create with borrowed capital; now, as the economy contracts, payments to creditors will come from society's operating budget. And there has been a major concentration of wealth in the same forty-year period, so capital that might have gone to innovation and compensation, feathers the already plush nests of the SPCO's directors and major supporters.
I don't believe that workers, even workers as noble and virtuous as classical musicians, can justly expect compensation commensurate with "world-class music." But neither can performers in New York.
And neither can MBAs, and the venal lightweights who get rooms at the Crowne Plaza because it's too far to drive back to fucking Wayzata after the concert.
What the musicians, and other workers going forward, need to realize is that we're on the brink of the precipice, and we're in a struggle for standing room as it crumbles. Some old fart in a thousand-dollar suit, hundred-dollar haircut, and a one-of-a-kind pair of gold cuff links is gonna try to knock you into the abyss, but the ground really is crumbling.
Forget ticket prices. Negotiate the social contract.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Report From The Path To The Grave
What's it like to die?
There's no reporting after the critical moment, but we can describe the "technology of dying" that Gregory Bateson dreaded. Maybe there's even value to that. Fewer surprises.
In my early forties, wrestling with my son and his contemporary uncle, I thought I felt frail. Maybe I was mistaken. Either that or I adapted and accommodated. Anyway the boys grew out of wrestling.
At forty-five, my damaged knee suddenly went lame. The orthopedic surgeon thought I would need a replacement in "fifteen or twenty years." TAking care not to irritate it took some learning, but that and exercise seem to be preserving it. Eighteen or nineteen years on, the replacement still seems years ahead.
At fifty I was at my college weight and bench-pressing almost that much. In spite of a melanoma, removed the day after Arnold Schwartzenegger was elected Governor of California -- and in spite of driving and dispatching interstate buses, sleepless work -- I managed to kid myself through my fifties that I was defying age. (Melanomas can kill you, but treating one that hasn't grown too far is roughly equivalent to a root canal.)
In my sixties I'm beginning to feel mortal. I have to baby tendonitis in my elbows; biceps curls aggravate the right one; triceps curls aggravate the left. A rotator cuff impingement in my left shoulder doesn't always respond to stretches and compensatory resistance exercises. Sometimes lower back pain will cancel workouts, in spite of a pretty rigorous program of physical therapy exercises. There are hints of arthritis in the joints between my thumbs and wrists, and weird, what's-that-about aches and pains here and elsewhere. They tell me I have cataracts, but so far, I can't notice, although I do require distance correction now.
Heart, blood pressure, and blood chemistry are good, due as much to genetics as to virtue. When I take those surveys to determine how long I'm going to live, the early nineties seem the target.
Benjamin Spock wrote a book at ninety, but said that it was the last one he had energy for. Jack Lalane made it to ninety-five, and was lifting weights until shortly before his death. At eighty, Clint Eastwood said that he didn't feel obliged to add pull-ups each workout. BKS Iyengar, on the other hand, claimed at ninety-two to still be making progress.
There's no reporting after the critical moment, but we can describe the "technology of dying" that Gregory Bateson dreaded. Maybe there's even value to that. Fewer surprises.
In my early forties, wrestling with my son and his contemporary uncle, I thought I felt frail. Maybe I was mistaken. Either that or I adapted and accommodated. Anyway the boys grew out of wrestling.
At forty-five, my damaged knee suddenly went lame. The orthopedic surgeon thought I would need a replacement in "fifteen or twenty years." TAking care not to irritate it took some learning, but that and exercise seem to be preserving it. Eighteen or nineteen years on, the replacement still seems years ahead.
At fifty I was at my college weight and bench-pressing almost that much. In spite of a melanoma, removed the day after Arnold Schwartzenegger was elected Governor of California -- and in spite of driving and dispatching interstate buses, sleepless work -- I managed to kid myself through my fifties that I was defying age. (Melanomas can kill you, but treating one that hasn't grown too far is roughly equivalent to a root canal.)
In my sixties I'm beginning to feel mortal. I have to baby tendonitis in my elbows; biceps curls aggravate the right one; triceps curls aggravate the left. A rotator cuff impingement in my left shoulder doesn't always respond to stretches and compensatory resistance exercises. Sometimes lower back pain will cancel workouts, in spite of a pretty rigorous program of physical therapy exercises. There are hints of arthritis in the joints between my thumbs and wrists, and weird, what's-that-about aches and pains here and elsewhere. They tell me I have cataracts, but so far, I can't notice, although I do require distance correction now.
Heart, blood pressure, and blood chemistry are good, due as much to genetics as to virtue. When I take those surveys to determine how long I'm going to live, the early nineties seem the target.
Benjamin Spock wrote a book at ninety, but said that it was the last one he had energy for. Jack Lalane made it to ninety-five, and was lifting weights until shortly before his death. At eighty, Clint Eastwood said that he didn't feel obliged to add pull-ups each workout. BKS Iyengar, on the other hand, claimed at ninety-two to still be making progress.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Send Not To Sandy Hook
No man is an island
Entire if itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thy friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls.
It tolls for thee.
Still, it seems like in a nation of 300 million, in a world of seven billion, in a world of genocide and famine, mass shootings like today's in the Sandy Hook Elementary School are of questionable consequence. The number of Connecticut deaths is equivalent to a bus accident's, and the news focus on the Sandy Hook horror sounds like a gawker slowdown.
But here I am gawking.
Consequence would come because murders like this are are of a pattern, examples of something larger that afflicts us, or that come from something we, as a culture, are doing very wrong. Something that we can learn and fix.
Usually the murderers do not themselves survive. They kill themselves, or die at the hands of police who want to protect innocents. If some future shooter does survive, his life should be forfeit, not to the executioner, but to researchers who will try to find out what pathology was at work.
The penalty for murder should be to be turned inside out, and into a clockwork orange. Call me brutal, but if there is any meaning in senseless violence, I want it..
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Memento Mori At An Unexpected Place
I'll be 64 in February. I think I'm one of those guys about whom younger men say they hope they'll look "that good" when they're "that old." I eat my vegetables, and stay trim with weights, yoga, and lots of dips into the new skills pool. After all is said and done though, I'm still "that old."
I met a high school friend's mom at a funeral Tuesday, frail, but entirely compos mentis. She didn't recognize me.
It's sobering, because I figured that, except for the white beard, I look like I did fifty years ago. Tall, all my hair, flat bellied, and, pretty obviously, "one of the Roarks."
Believe it or not, I hadn't expected a memento mori at a funeral. The emotion I've always felt at funerals is a sympathetic grief for the family, and I did lose a little bit of "it," when the deceased's nine- and fifteen-year olds delivered wine and water at the Offertory.
Life is short.
I met a high school friend's mom at a funeral Tuesday, frail, but entirely compos mentis. She didn't recognize me.
It's sobering, because I figured that, except for the white beard, I look like I did fifty years ago. Tall, all my hair, flat bellied, and, pretty obviously, "one of the Roarks."
Believe it or not, I hadn't expected a memento mori at a funeral. The emotion I've always felt at funerals is a sympathetic grief for the family, and I did lose a little bit of "it," when the deceased's nine- and fifteen-year olds delivered wine and water at the Offertory.
Life is short.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
The Mayan Calendar And Buckminster Fuller
I picked up Buckminster Fuller's Cosmography, the book he was working on when he died, and which was published in 1992. Thumbing through it for inspiration, I found the diagram on page 160 startling.
Imagine a circle standing for the globe. At nine o'clock there is drawn a Mayan step pyramid, at twelve, a Greek temple, at three, an Asian building with curved peak-ridge and eaves. The Greek steps are drawn with sloppy curves, more or less concentric with the circle representing the Earth. The Mayan steps are crisply drawn with a straight edge, ninety-degree t-bars for a line radiating from the circle's center.
This is the caption:
FIG. 6.31 Earth surface considerations around the world. Greek temple builders used plumb bobs, and their temple steps, if longitudinally sighted, will be found to be inadvertently following the curvature of the Earth. Mayan foundations were correctly engineered to be tangent to Earth and were conscious of the planet's spherical surface curvature. Many buildings in Asia were derived from ships drawn up on land; thus, their lines are reflection patterns of a ship's lines.
Let's ignore the Asian building. This is typical Fuller speculation. We'll say, "Sure. Whatever."
Of course we agree that the Greeks built the way Fuller says. It's the way we would. It's hard to imagine a different way of laying broad stone slabs on the ground. I haven't done it yet.
But the Mayans! How did they do that? How did Fuller know they did? Where can I find out more?
It's tempting to write the notion of the Mayans building tangents to the Earth's spherical surface as an eighty-nine year old's delusion, especially within two weeks of December 21, 2012. I read enough Fuller in my thirties, though, to say that I think I can recognize Bucky's bullshit, and this ain't it. That substance smells more like the Asian-boat thing.
You don't skim Fuller. Anyway, I can't, and I haven't found any exposition in the text that references FIG. 6.31. The Mayans don't pop up in the index at all.
I wonder if "Kiyoshi Kuromiya Adjuvant" remains alive. I'll google him and send him a snail mail.
Imagine a circle standing for the globe. At nine o'clock there is drawn a Mayan step pyramid, at twelve, a Greek temple, at three, an Asian building with curved peak-ridge and eaves. The Greek steps are drawn with sloppy curves, more or less concentric with the circle representing the Earth. The Mayan steps are crisply drawn with a straight edge, ninety-degree t-bars for a line radiating from the circle's center.
This is the caption:
FIG. 6.31 Earth surface considerations around the world. Greek temple builders used plumb bobs, and their temple steps, if longitudinally sighted, will be found to be inadvertently following the curvature of the Earth. Mayan foundations were correctly engineered to be tangent to Earth and were conscious of the planet's spherical surface curvature. Many buildings in Asia were derived from ships drawn up on land; thus, their lines are reflection patterns of a ship's lines.
Let's ignore the Asian building. This is typical Fuller speculation. We'll say, "Sure. Whatever."
Of course we agree that the Greeks built the way Fuller says. It's the way we would. It's hard to imagine a different way of laying broad stone slabs on the ground. I haven't done it yet.
But the Mayans! How did they do that? How did Fuller know they did? Where can I find out more?
It's tempting to write the notion of the Mayans building tangents to the Earth's spherical surface as an eighty-nine year old's delusion, especially within two weeks of December 21, 2012. I read enough Fuller in my thirties, though, to say that I think I can recognize Bucky's bullshit, and this ain't it. That substance smells more like the Asian-boat thing.
You don't skim Fuller. Anyway, I can't, and I haven't found any exposition in the text that references FIG. 6.31. The Mayans don't pop up in the index at all.
I wonder if "Kiyoshi Kuromiya Adjuvant" remains alive. I'll google him and send him a snail mail.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Liberty Or Moose Turd Pie
There's a commons of liberty we all draw from, and the way we manage that commons determines the "net liberty" for those of us who graze on it.
"Okay, enough," says some glib fascist, "That's doublespeak." Then he'll go off on a tangent about Orwell and the totalitarian left.
Ron Paul makes a net-liberty calculation when he talks about the Confederacy. The great Russian philosophical novelist Ayn Rand assumes a commons of liberty that would serve all of us best if we let the Hank Reardons and Frisco D'Anconias of the world plunder it. (Didn't it creep you out just a little that Dagny, the novel's eyes, winds up as prize for the top libertarian in the book?)
And we make that calculation when we condemn to the Third Reich's struggle for lebensraum. And a nice new sofa and coffee table.
There's gotta be some accommodation to living in a finite world with other people. I would rather a representative government call the plays, so that I have some say. The libertarian plan has interested parties, with superior ways of organizing to protect those interests, make the call. Or worse, has the planet's new dominant life form, the corporation, ordering my life.
"Okay, enough," says some glib fascist, "That's doublespeak." Then he'll go off on a tangent about Orwell and the totalitarian left.
Ron Paul makes a net-liberty calculation when he talks about the Confederacy. The great Russian philosophical novelist Ayn Rand assumes a commons of liberty that would serve all of us best if we let the Hank Reardons and Frisco D'Anconias of the world plunder it. (Didn't it creep you out just a little that Dagny, the novel's eyes, winds up as prize for the top libertarian in the book?)
And we make that calculation when we condemn to the Third Reich's struggle for lebensraum. And a nice new sofa and coffee table.
There's gotta be some accommodation to living in a finite world with other people. I would rather a representative government call the plays, so that I have some say. The libertarian plan has interested parties, with superior ways of organizing to protect those interests, make the call. Or worse, has the planet's new dominant life form, the corporation, ordering my life.
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Climate Or Economic Catastrophe: Rock Or Deep Blue Sea?
If a major industry -- fossil fuels -- has to write down $20 trillion dollars, it's a disaster.
So we're offered a choice of disasters: a climate catastrophe or an economic one. Which one might we manage?
So we're offered a choice of disasters: a climate catastrophe or an economic one. Which one might we manage?
Edgar Lee Master's Dead Grandmother Talks Through Hat
I've been re-reading Edgar Lee Master's the Spoon River Anthology. Really, reading John Hallwas's introduction to his, 1992, annotated edition, and dipping into the poems, and the gossipy notes to each poem. Spoon River is a fiction, based on Lewiston and Petersburg, Illinois. I'm from the next watershed west of The Spoon.
In the Anthology, the poems are speeches of the dead in a small-town cemetery, and each gives an account of his or her life.
"Lucinda Matlock" is based on the poet's paternal grandmother, a long-lived pioneer wife and mother. The poem ends,
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you --
It takes life to love life.
Lucinda doesn't know what she's talking about. Spoon River is about the decay of the American vision. People are trapped in a system rigged by villains. Lucinda lived the vision, was born on the prairie, suffered of course, but did what was appropriate and meaningful. Her children had Lucinda's legacy snatched from them, but she can't see it -- not because she's dead, but because she's adapted to pioneer times. She thinks that things are the way she lived them. Her degenerate sons and daughters are ensnared by the Thomas Rhodeses, Editor Whedons, Mrs. Pantiers, and John M. Churches of the book. These people -- and Spoon River Anthology is a roman a clef -- robbed Lucinda's offspring, notably her grandson the author, not only of bread and land, but of the wherewithal to live meaningfully.
In the Anthology, the poems are speeches of the dead in a small-town cemetery, and each gives an account of his or her life.
"Lucinda Matlock" is based on the poet's paternal grandmother, a long-lived pioneer wife and mother. The poem ends,
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you --
It takes life to love life.
Lucinda doesn't know what she's talking about. Spoon River is about the decay of the American vision. People are trapped in a system rigged by villains. Lucinda lived the vision, was born on the prairie, suffered of course, but did what was appropriate and meaningful. Her children had Lucinda's legacy snatched from them, but she can't see it -- not because she's dead, but because she's adapted to pioneer times. She thinks that things are the way she lived them. Her degenerate sons and daughters are ensnared by the Thomas Rhodeses, Editor Whedons, Mrs. Pantiers, and John M. Churches of the book. These people -- and Spoon River Anthology is a roman a clef -- robbed Lucinda's offspring, notably her grandson the author, not only of bread and land, but of the wherewithal to live meaningfully.
Friday, December 7, 2012
Bill McKibben In Rolling Stone
I'm not that big on climate change rhetoric. Sure, it's true, but it gives complaisant numbnutzes a controversy to distract us from doing what needs to be done.
And what we need to do, we need to do, climate change or no.
The controversy's on the back burner, and seems to be abating there. Sandy, etc. seem to have convinced people like NY mayor, Michael Bloomberg. He doesn't get it all yet, but he's started to think about it.
Somebody who does get it, is Bill McKibben who was recently in the Twin Cities, and whom I missed. Friends did go to hear McKibben, and conversations with them made me go to the library and read McKibben's piece, The Reckoning, from the August 2 Rolling Stone:
* We've decided that two degrees celsius is the warming increase we can stand;
* We're at 0.08, and the weird weather has been weirder than predicted;
* We can add 565 gigatons of carbon dioxide to the air between now and midcentury without pushing ourselves over the two-degree mark;
* Oil and coal companies have 2, 795 gigatons of future CO2 emissions in proven reserves;
* These reserves are their capital, and if we did what we need to do, the carbon companies would have to write off $20 trillion of their assets.
The article has a Tragedy-of-the-Commons angle, and I won't give away McKibben's way of resolving it.
And what we need to do, we need to do, climate change or no.
The controversy's on the back burner, and seems to be abating there. Sandy, etc. seem to have convinced people like NY mayor, Michael Bloomberg. He doesn't get it all yet, but he's started to think about it.
Somebody who does get it, is Bill McKibben who was recently in the Twin Cities, and whom I missed. Friends did go to hear McKibben, and conversations with them made me go to the library and read McKibben's piece, The Reckoning, from the August 2 Rolling Stone:
* We've decided that two degrees celsius is the warming increase we can stand;
* We're at 0.08, and the weird weather has been weirder than predicted;
* We can add 565 gigatons of carbon dioxide to the air between now and midcentury without pushing ourselves over the two-degree mark;
* Oil and coal companies have 2, 795 gigatons of future CO2 emissions in proven reserves;
* These reserves are their capital, and if we did what we need to do, the carbon companies would have to write off $20 trillion of their assets.
The article has a Tragedy-of-the-Commons angle, and I won't give away McKibben's way of resolving it.
Economic Seppuku For The Elite
I told a friend Tuesday that I knew what needed to be done, then babbled about systems thinking.
What needs to be done amounts to what's been described a lot lately, re Greece and Spain, as "austerity."
The problem with austerity is that the way it's likely to play out is as a kind of feudalism, with the promiscuous bastards that brought us to the brink being the lords, and the creators of wealth, the serfs.
So what else is new?. What we need is Mr. Charlie's economic seppuku.
What needs to be done amounts to what's been described a lot lately, re Greece and Spain, as "austerity."
The problem with austerity is that the way it's likely to play out is as a kind of feudalism, with the promiscuous bastards that brought us to the brink being the lords, and the creators of wealth, the serfs.
So what else is new?. What we need is Mr. Charlie's economic seppuku.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Cindy Sherman At The Walker
The Walker Art Center has a Cindy Sherman show until February 17, and has blanketed the town with images of Ms. S. in various roles. Ghastly.
Sherman is a photographer, born 1954, and film director whose oeuvre includes a lot of pix of herself tricked out like an "astonishing array" of "meticulously observed" characters.
Um. She costumes herself and makes herself up to look like victims, including:
A rich man's accessory who is keeping herself beautiful with exercise, the surgeon's art, and a trowel, long past her sell-by date;
Somebody -- maybe homeless -- who is way too tired;
I don't know who that one is, but she puts lipstick on the white parts of her lips;
A clown with buck teeth, freckles, and a passive-aggressive gaze;
A startled, beautiful, and trapped waif.
The guy who needs to see these never will, even when he's standing right in front of one.
Sherman is a photographer, born 1954, and film director whose oeuvre includes a lot of pix of herself tricked out like an "astonishing array" of "meticulously observed" characters.
Um. She costumes herself and makes herself up to look like victims, including:
A rich man's accessory who is keeping herself beautiful with exercise, the surgeon's art, and a trowel, long past her sell-by date;
Somebody -- maybe homeless -- who is way too tired;
I don't know who that one is, but she puts lipstick on the white parts of her lips;
A clown with buck teeth, freckles, and a passive-aggressive gaze;
A startled, beautiful, and trapped waif.
The guy who needs to see these never will, even when he's standing right in front of one.
Degree Matters In The Extractive Economy
Talking with wife, Barbara, about somebody who means well, but does something that's guaranteed to hasten collapse.
Tom: Wes Jackson says we can't help but live in the extractive economy.
Barbara: But degree matters.
Tom: Wes Jackson says we can't help but live in the extractive economy.
Barbara: But degree matters.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Still A Space Cowboy (After All These Years)
I'm a space cowboy, which ain't a fer real cowboy, but it's pretty real. Yeah, it's real. Man.
Gotta credit Steve Miller for the phrase, maybe a better word for hippie, and it ain't that bad of a song:
All you back room schemers and small trip dreamers
Better find something new to say
Cause you're the same old story
It's the same old crime
And you got some heavy dues to pay.
What it's really about was in 1957, I'm sitting in my pajamas, Mattel Fanner Fifty strapped to my thigh, half pint ten gallon hat on my head, and I'm watching Have Gun Will Travel on Saturday night. Fast forward a dozen years, and Neil Armstrong is conquering the moon, I'm dropping acid like popcorn, in protest of the Vietnam War.
I'm sure you know where it's at.
Gotta credit Steve Miller for the phrase, maybe a better word for hippie, and it ain't that bad of a song:
All you back room schemers and small trip dreamers
Better find something new to say
Cause you're the same old story
It's the same old crime
And you got some heavy dues to pay.
What it's really about was in 1957, I'm sitting in my pajamas, Mattel Fanner Fifty strapped to my thigh, half pint ten gallon hat on my head, and I'm watching Have Gun Will Travel on Saturday night. Fast forward a dozen years, and Neil Armstrong is conquering the moon, I'm dropping acid like popcorn, in protest of the Vietnam War.
I'm sure you know where it's at.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Quotes From "Angels"
A couple of quotes from VIII Metalogue: "Secrets" in Angels Fear, by Gregory and Mary Catherine Bateson. The Metalogues were dialogues between "Father" and "Daughter." Most of them were written by Gregory ("Father"), but this one is by Mary Catherine ("Daughter"), written after Gregory's death. Neither quote is the main point of the Metalogue, or even complete thoughts, just kind of interesting.
"We have so largely lost track of the sacred that we are becoming incapable of committing sacrilege."
"The story is about the need to limit or control knowledge or communication across species lines and across gender lines -- the basic discontinuities of natural history."
Mary Catherine put both quotes in Gregory's mouth.
"We have so largely lost track of the sacred that we are becoming incapable of committing sacrilege."
"The story is about the need to limit or control knowledge or communication across species lines and across gender lines -- the basic discontinuities of natural history."
Mary Catherine put both quotes in Gregory's mouth.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Human Progress Real!
Sometimes I wonder if there really is progress, or if we just keep rearranging the furniture. I mean, finally there's going to be entropy, but you can arrange it so that some subsystem of the universe prospers by increasing entropy in the rest of the big system.
Life miraculously does this. According to Newton, you and I are not really supposed to be here. But from the human point of view, can we learn as a species and find a way to live with each other and the rest of nature?
Somebody, maybe Derek Jensen or Jared Diamond, suggested that agriculture was humanity's biggest mistake. With ag, we got hierarchies, private property, women and children as chattel, war, slavery, depleted soil, the beginnings of all the heartaches that we wonder and anguish over in the 21st century.
As agriculture outpaced forager depletion of the environment, industry has outpaced agriculture. The best, most nearly complete model of the world economy predicted economic collapse in this century, absent certain changes. There may be cameras on Mars and a Worldwide Web, but things like that happen at a cost.
I'm working on some projects that I think demonstrate human progress.
I'm working to bring Nora Bateson's cinematic portrait of her father Gregory, An Ecology of Mind, to the Twin Cities. Bateson thought that an epistemology that was neither superstitious nor materialistic could bring us into a relationship with our planet that could last and make us happy. The trick will be to get a speaker to answer questions. Bateson was a very -- um -- knowledgeable fellow and can be hard to follow.
I'm helping neighbors to build relationships in south Minneapolis that we hope will allow a smooth transition from an oil economy to one that will let us thrive on down the corridors of time.
My current Face of Wisdom for Zenith City Weekly is Dimitri Mendeleev. Mendeleev took the handful of elements isolated by the 1860s, and arranged them as we know them in the Periodic Table, leaving spaces for elements remaining to be discovered. In other words, Dimitri took the dribs and drabs that had been discovered, and teased out their relationships. He gave us the beginning of a theory of matter!
List other global understandings of existence: genetics from Mendel to the Human Genome Project, quantum mechanics, cybernetics, chaos theory, natural selection, ecology. These indicate progress in that our noodling around and trying to understand every single thing by itself has given us a comprehensive and accurate understanding of our place in the universe.
Life miraculously does this. According to Newton, you and I are not really supposed to be here. But from the human point of view, can we learn as a species and find a way to live with each other and the rest of nature?
Somebody, maybe Derek Jensen or Jared Diamond, suggested that agriculture was humanity's biggest mistake. With ag, we got hierarchies, private property, women and children as chattel, war, slavery, depleted soil, the beginnings of all the heartaches that we wonder and anguish over in the 21st century.
As agriculture outpaced forager depletion of the environment, industry has outpaced agriculture. The best, most nearly complete model of the world economy predicted economic collapse in this century, absent certain changes. There may be cameras on Mars and a Worldwide Web, but things like that happen at a cost.
I'm working on some projects that I think demonstrate human progress.
I'm working to bring Nora Bateson's cinematic portrait of her father Gregory, An Ecology of Mind, to the Twin Cities. Bateson thought that an epistemology that was neither superstitious nor materialistic could bring us into a relationship with our planet that could last and make us happy. The trick will be to get a speaker to answer questions. Bateson was a very -- um -- knowledgeable fellow and can be hard to follow.
I'm helping neighbors to build relationships in south Minneapolis that we hope will allow a smooth transition from an oil economy to one that will let us thrive on down the corridors of time.
My current Face of Wisdom for Zenith City Weekly is Dimitri Mendeleev. Mendeleev took the handful of elements isolated by the 1860s, and arranged them as we know them in the Periodic Table, leaving spaces for elements remaining to be discovered. In other words, Dimitri took the dribs and drabs that had been discovered, and teased out their relationships. He gave us the beginning of a theory of matter!
List other global understandings of existence: genetics from Mendel to the Human Genome Project, quantum mechanics, cybernetics, chaos theory, natural selection, ecology. These indicate progress in that our noodling around and trying to understand every single thing by itself has given us a comprehensive and accurate understanding of our place in the universe.
Monday, November 26, 2012
Growing The American Economy
In the recent presidential election, one side said that the way to grow the stalled economy was to relieve employers of the burdens of taxation and regulation, while the other said that getting new money into the budgets of middle class families would do the same thing by increasing markets for the employers to sell to.
"How do we grow our stalled economy?" is the wrong question.
A better one is, "How do we assure 300 million Americans of livelihoods, now that the economy has grown as far as it will?"
"How do we grow our stalled economy?" is the wrong question.
A better one is, "How do we assure 300 million Americans of livelihoods, now that the economy has grown as far as it will?"
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Deliverance And Integrity
Spent Thanksgiving with my family in Macomb, Illinois.
We celebrated at a rented lodge, four buildings in the woods built by a demented millionaire during the 1920s. It belongs to the university today, and a previous guest left a copy of James Dickey's Deliverance.
Dickey's great; everything in the story is imagined accurately and in scrupulous detail.
Ed Gentry -- the Jon Voigt character in the movie -- tells the tale. He is a partner in a pre-computer graphic design firm, and comfortably trapped.
Ed's friend Lewis -- the Burt Reynolds character -- manages inherited rental properties. Explaining to Drew, another suburban businessman, why Drew should prefer to share a canoe with Lewis, Ed tells him, "Fine. But you probably ought to know that he can handle a canoe pretty well, and I can't. He's strong as the Devil, too, and he's in shape. I'm not." Drew says, "I'm a-goin' with you, and not Mr. Lewis Medlock. I done seen how he drove these roads he don't know nothing about."
Ed introduces himself in the book's first section. "Before," and early in the second section, "September 14." Several of September 14's pages are a conversation that introduces Lewis. It's Friday morning and Ed and Lewis are in one of two cars, headed into the mountains to canoe a wild river that will soon be dammed for development.
" 'I had an air-raid shelter built,' he said. 'I'll take you down there sometime.' " Deliverance was published in 1970, when bomb shelters were already an anachronism, but Dickey may have been working on the novel for several years, and the shelter doesn't make another appearance. " 'I decided that survival was not in the rivets and the metal, and not in the double-sealed doors, and not in the marbles of Chinese Checkers. It was in me. It came down to the man, and what he could do. The body is the one thing you can't fake; it's just got to be there.' "
They drive on and Lewis tells Ed that he would move to the mountains, hunt and farm, if there were a nuclear war.
" 'Oh, I don't know,' I said. 'If you wanted to, you could go up in the hills and live right now. You could have all those same conditions. You could hunt. You could farm. You could suffer just as much as if they dropped the H-bomb. You could even start a colony, How do you think Carolyn would like that life?'
" 'It's not the same.' Lewis said. 'Don't you see? It would just be eccentric. Survival depends -- well, it depends on having to survive. The kind of life I'm talking about depends on it's being the last chance. The very last of all.'
" 'I hope you don't get it,' I said. 'It's too big a price to pay.'
" 'No price is too big,' Lewis said, and I knew that part of the conversation was over."
There's a piece of foreshadowing later in this conversation. They are talking about the integrity of fitting into your own fantasy. Both men have hunting bows.
" 'There're lots of other kinds of people to be than what you are,' I said.
" 'Sure there are, But this is my kind. It feels right, like when you turn loose the arrow, and you know when you let go that you've done everything right. You know where the arrow is going. There's not any other place that it can go.' "
Two days later, Lewis is lying on a beach at the bottom of the river gorge, with a compound fracture, and Ed has to scale a cliff, stalk a woodsman who has sodomized one canoeist and killed another. He must save his own life, Lewis' and the rape victim's by killing the man with bow and arrow.
At the critical moment, the man realizes he is in Ed's sights, and faces him. Ed's concentration evaporates, and he lets the arrow fly. It hits the man, but Ed falls from the tree he's used as a blind, breaking his bow and putting an arrow through his own side.
The man shoots at him, and Ed hides behind a rock. He watches his victim's agony, wishing death would end it. Ed passes out, and wakes to find the man gone. He follows the trail of blood to the woodsman's corpse, and can't be sure that he's killed the right man.
" '...you know when you let go that you've done everything right. You know where the arrow is going. There's not any other place that it can go.' "
We celebrated at a rented lodge, four buildings in the woods built by a demented millionaire during the 1920s. It belongs to the university today, and a previous guest left a copy of James Dickey's Deliverance.
Dickey's great; everything in the story is imagined accurately and in scrupulous detail.
Ed Gentry -- the Jon Voigt character in the movie -- tells the tale. He is a partner in a pre-computer graphic design firm, and comfortably trapped.
Ed's friend Lewis -- the Burt Reynolds character -- manages inherited rental properties. Explaining to Drew, another suburban businessman, why Drew should prefer to share a canoe with Lewis, Ed tells him, "Fine. But you probably ought to know that he can handle a canoe pretty well, and I can't. He's strong as the Devil, too, and he's in shape. I'm not." Drew says, "I'm a-goin' with you, and not Mr. Lewis Medlock. I done seen how he drove these roads he don't know nothing about."
Ed introduces himself in the book's first section. "Before," and early in the second section, "September 14." Several of September 14's pages are a conversation that introduces Lewis. It's Friday morning and Ed and Lewis are in one of two cars, headed into the mountains to canoe a wild river that will soon be dammed for development.
" 'I had an air-raid shelter built,' he said. 'I'll take you down there sometime.' " Deliverance was published in 1970, when bomb shelters were already an anachronism, but Dickey may have been working on the novel for several years, and the shelter doesn't make another appearance. " 'I decided that survival was not in the rivets and the metal, and not in the double-sealed doors, and not in the marbles of Chinese Checkers. It was in me. It came down to the man, and what he could do. The body is the one thing you can't fake; it's just got to be there.' "
They drive on and Lewis tells Ed that he would move to the mountains, hunt and farm, if there were a nuclear war.
" 'Oh, I don't know,' I said. 'If you wanted to, you could go up in the hills and live right now. You could have all those same conditions. You could hunt. You could farm. You could suffer just as much as if they dropped the H-bomb. You could even start a colony, How do you think Carolyn would like that life?'
" 'It's not the same.' Lewis said. 'Don't you see? It would just be eccentric. Survival depends -- well, it depends on having to survive. The kind of life I'm talking about depends on it's being the last chance. The very last of all.'
" 'I hope you don't get it,' I said. 'It's too big a price to pay.'
" 'No price is too big,' Lewis said, and I knew that part of the conversation was over."
There's a piece of foreshadowing later in this conversation. They are talking about the integrity of fitting into your own fantasy. Both men have hunting bows.
" 'There're lots of other kinds of people to be than what you are,' I said.
" 'Sure there are, But this is my kind. It feels right, like when you turn loose the arrow, and you know when you let go that you've done everything right. You know where the arrow is going. There's not any other place that it can go.' "
Two days later, Lewis is lying on a beach at the bottom of the river gorge, with a compound fracture, and Ed has to scale a cliff, stalk a woodsman who has sodomized one canoeist and killed another. He must save his own life, Lewis' and the rape victim's by killing the man with bow and arrow.
At the critical moment, the man realizes he is in Ed's sights, and faces him. Ed's concentration evaporates, and he lets the arrow fly. It hits the man, but Ed falls from the tree he's used as a blind, breaking his bow and putting an arrow through his own side.
The man shoots at him, and Ed hides behind a rock. He watches his victim's agony, wishing death would end it. Ed passes out, and wakes to find the man gone. He follows the trail of blood to the woodsman's corpse, and can't be sure that he's killed the right man.
" '...you know when you let go that you've done everything right. You know where the arrow is going. There's not any other place that it can go.' "
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
The Conundrum of Our Time
It's clear to me from yesterday's blog that some occupations that are a drag on the economy. Armed Robber. Pimp. Corporate CEO.
If you accept Schumacher's claim that natural resources are capital and not income, and then -- thought experiment -- eliminate oil, everybody's broke.
Simplistic it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, if we're gonna dig our way out of this hole, we're gonna need a shovel and tetanus shots, etc. Somebody's gotta pump the oil, dig the taconite, and inactivate the tetanospasmin.
Buckminster Fuller suggested pensioning everybody off. (Quotes are from page 266 of Critical Path.) "Obviously the first step is to pay people the handsome fellowships to stay at home and say to themselves, 'What was I thinking about before I was first told, convincingly, that I had to "earn a living" by doing what someone else said I had to do?' " "With complete freedom of choice, much of humanity will begin to discover that it loves to work at tasks of its own choosing -- that it loves to discipline itself to demonstrate its competence to others -- that it will compete with the many to demonstrate its competence to serve on one of the multitude of production teams."
Aint' gonna happen.
But consider this: It's the hard-working middle class, whatever they do, that has the heaviest ecological footprint. There are too few rich to make much of a difference, and the poor don't consume enough. Corollary to "the poor don't consume enough," it's absurd to say subsistence is too much.
I have a schizophrenic friend who lives on less than a thousand dollars a month -- SSI, I do believe. He fouls the nest much less than I do, because he's so fucking poor, and he keeps trying to make a difference, persuading people to an environmentalist point of view.
If you accept Schumacher's claim that natural resources are capital and not income, and then -- thought experiment -- eliminate oil, everybody's broke.
Simplistic it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, if we're gonna dig our way out of this hole, we're gonna need a shovel and tetanus shots, etc. Somebody's gotta pump the oil, dig the taconite, and inactivate the tetanospasmin.
Buckminster Fuller suggested pensioning everybody off. (Quotes are from page 266 of Critical Path.) "Obviously the first step is to pay people the handsome fellowships to stay at home and say to themselves, 'What was I thinking about before I was first told, convincingly, that I had to "earn a living" by doing what someone else said I had to do?' " "With complete freedom of choice, much of humanity will begin to discover that it loves to work at tasks of its own choosing -- that it loves to discipline itself to demonstrate its competence to others -- that it will compete with the many to demonstrate its competence to serve on one of the multitude of production teams."
Aint' gonna happen.
But consider this: It's the hard-working middle class, whatever they do, that has the heaviest ecological footprint. There are too few rich to make much of a difference, and the poor don't consume enough. Corollary to "the poor don't consume enough," it's absurd to say subsistence is too much.
I have a schizophrenic friend who lives on less than a thousand dollars a month -- SSI, I do believe. He fouls the nest much less than I do, because he's so fucking poor, and he keeps trying to make a difference, persuading people to an environmentalist point of view.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Social Media and The Limits to Growth
I've been writing a column for Duluth's Zenith City (semi-) Weekly, profiles with portraits, of the kind of people I've covered on this blog. That's taken me away from here for a while.
I came back with the idea of short, frequent comments, and found that the software had changed, gone beyond what my decade-old iMac could do, beyond what I could upgrade to.
The IMAC is a great old workhorse. Congratulations to Apple for making something that's easy to use and that lasts!
One of the suggestions that The Limits to Growth made for limiting industrial investment to depreciation, and avoiding worldwide economic collapse, was producing long-lasting things that are easily repaired. Think of the old Volkswagen Beetle, or the chest freezer in my basement that's probably as old as I am.
Changes in Blogger (and other social media site) software doubtless fit Google's (and other companies') business plan and contribute to their bottom line, but they force us to scrap perfectly good tools, or opt out of the civic conversation. Do wrong or be disenfranchised. This depletes society's actual wealth, even though it employs and enriches some. It's an example of how individuals' interests can be contrary to society's, of how the short term preempts the long.
I came back with the idea of short, frequent comments, and found that the software had changed, gone beyond what my decade-old iMac could do, beyond what I could upgrade to.
The IMAC is a great old workhorse. Congratulations to Apple for making something that's easy to use and that lasts!
One of the suggestions that The Limits to Growth made for limiting industrial investment to depreciation, and avoiding worldwide economic collapse, was producing long-lasting things that are easily repaired. Think of the old Volkswagen Beetle, or the chest freezer in my basement that's probably as old as I am.
Changes in Blogger (and other social media site) software doubtless fit Google's (and other companies') business plan and contribute to their bottom line, but they force us to scrap perfectly good tools, or opt out of the civic conversation. Do wrong or be disenfranchised. This depletes society's actual wealth, even though it employs and enriches some. It's an example of how individuals' interests can be contrary to society's, of how the short term preempts the long.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Jeremiad on the Economy
Did anthrogenic climate change cause Hurricane Sandy, the current midwestern drought, and the rain that started right after you washed your car? The standard answer is "You can't say." What you can say is that higher levels of "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere will cause weird weather in general, but there are too many steps between letting energy into the system and not letting it our, and any one event. And not much point in lingering over the argument.
You can also say that it's valid and legitimate to discuss the composition of the atmosphere when something unusual and unpleasant has happened.
But that's not what I want to talk about. I'd throttle back my energy use, and so should you, if I'd never heard of "global warming." I want to use climate change as an analogy for something else.
I've mentioned The Limits to Growth before. Limits was a 1972 report on a computer study that predicted global economic collapse in the 21st century unless the world limited births to deaths and industrial investment to depreciation. Australian Graham Turner surveyed the trends that Limits modeled: population, industrial production, agricultural production, services, and pollution. 1972 to 2000, those trends were as predicted.
Can we blame Greek and other European economic problems on Limits' predicted economic collapse? How about post-Sandy gas lines? 8% unemployment? Lockout at the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the NHL?
Sure. Take them as warnings.
You can also say that it's valid and legitimate to discuss the composition of the atmosphere when something unusual and unpleasant has happened.
But that's not what I want to talk about. I'd throttle back my energy use, and so should you, if I'd never heard of "global warming." I want to use climate change as an analogy for something else.
I've mentioned The Limits to Growth before. Limits was a 1972 report on a computer study that predicted global economic collapse in the 21st century unless the world limited births to deaths and industrial investment to depreciation. Australian Graham Turner surveyed the trends that Limits modeled: population, industrial production, agricultural production, services, and pollution. 1972 to 2000, those trends were as predicted.
Can we blame Greek and other European economic problems on Limits' predicted economic collapse? How about post-Sandy gas lines? 8% unemployment? Lockout at the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the NHL?
Sure. Take them as warnings.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Drawing Group last night, and I got some promising studies.
The last two weeks have been busy writing about synthetic marijuana, a new Minnesota drug statute, and a September raid on a Duluth head shop that raises questions about official respect for the Fourth and Sixth Amendment. (The Fourth is the one about being secure in our persons houses and effects, and the Sixth says we're entitled to a speedy and public trial.)
At drawing group we talked about the new Vikings stadium that the state and city are going to subsidize. Sue had mentioned last week that a sports stadium anchors a lot of downtown businesses. I mentioned that professional sports provide a venue for deal makers to network. This week Sue said that the stadium is important to the future of the Twin Cities economy. I said that that is the reason I opposed the stadium. I mentioned The Limits to Growth, and Australian Graham Turner's confirmation that the LTG 1972 predictions for significant curves (Non-renewables, per-capita services, per-capita industrial production, per capita agricultural production, population, and pollution) were on track as of 2002. I said that the modelers had been able to avoid mid-century collapse only by limiting births to deaths and industrial investment to depreciation. Kathy had read about LTG recently, including the 2030 prediction for collapse, which comes from some other sources than the study. The modelers refused to be that precise, and the curves drop sharply in different parts of the century for different scenarios.
I said that I recognized that mine was a minority opinion, and that people need jobs.
One specific action that LTG suggested was stewarding capital by building things that last and that are easily repaired. Appropos of that, I'm writing this on a borrowed computer. Google has changed the format for Blogspot, and my browser doesn't support it. My perfectly good computer won't handle the update. This is something I've already experienced with YouTube, and -- I believe -- Facebook. Hell of a use of capital.
The last two weeks have been busy writing about synthetic marijuana, a new Minnesota drug statute, and a September raid on a Duluth head shop that raises questions about official respect for the Fourth and Sixth Amendment. (The Fourth is the one about being secure in our persons houses and effects, and the Sixth says we're entitled to a speedy and public trial.)
At drawing group we talked about the new Vikings stadium that the state and city are going to subsidize. Sue had mentioned last week that a sports stadium anchors a lot of downtown businesses. I mentioned that professional sports provide a venue for deal makers to network. This week Sue said that the stadium is important to the future of the Twin Cities economy. I said that that is the reason I opposed the stadium. I mentioned The Limits to Growth, and Australian Graham Turner's confirmation that the LTG 1972 predictions for significant curves (Non-renewables, per-capita services, per-capita industrial production, per capita agricultural production, population, and pollution) were on track as of 2002. I said that the modelers had been able to avoid mid-century collapse only by limiting births to deaths and industrial investment to depreciation. Kathy had read about LTG recently, including the 2030 prediction for collapse, which comes from some other sources than the study. The modelers refused to be that precise, and the curves drop sharply in different parts of the century for different scenarios.
I said that I recognized that mine was a minority opinion, and that people need jobs.
One specific action that LTG suggested was stewarding capital by building things that last and that are easily repaired. Appropos of that, I'm writing this on a borrowed computer. Google has changed the format for Blogspot, and my browser doesn't support it. My perfectly good computer won't handle the update. This is something I've already experienced with YouTube, and -- I believe -- Facebook. Hell of a use of capital.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
A Role Model From The Hunger Games
Busy week. The big chore was a profile and drawing, both of mega-structure architect Paolo Soleri, for Zenith City Weekly. When I started this series, I thought I could pull the profiles out of my skull. They all take research.
Last weekend, Sam and Marissa took us to the opening of The Hunger Games. Directed by Gary Ross (Pleasantville, Sea Biscuit), based on the novel by Suzanne Collins, HG is set in a dystopian future US, in which the dominant Capital exact tribute from its twelve provinces in the form of twenty-four teenagers who battle to the death of all but one on television. Jennifer Lawrence carries the show as the identity figure, with Josh Hutcherson as co-fighter and love interest. Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland, and, especially, Woody Harrelson lead a strong chorus.
The Capital is all flamboyant manners, contrasted with a Dorothea Lange grittiness in the provinces.
Two reactions.
Dystopia seems appropriate now, a reaction to our current peril, but I couldn't detect a justifying glimmer of the society I know in this film (or in the book). Nor could I trace a path from now to the world of HG. I see two opposing points of view as possible foundations for an honest dystopia.
One is currently dominant, growing out of the 2008 recession and weak recovery, and Tea Party populism. In this view, taxation and regulation limit the engines of progress, that is capitalism, industry and technology. This imnpoverishes society and threatens a becoming human existence. Probably it threatens civilization.
In the other view, materialism mistakes capital for income, sees 20th century ingenuity at consuming capital as technological triumph over scarcity, and demands more in the face of overshot limits.
Maybe that's a little too deep. HG is a bagatelle, and taking a position on the economic controversy of our time might limit its greatest virtue. There were three little girls in front of us, two sisters and a friend, escorted by the sisters' father. The younger sister was probably eight, the friend and the older sister may have been eleven. They had all read the book, in fact they had read the entire trilogy, and were excited to see the film. Jennifer Lawrence's character is steadfast, strong, self-sacrificing, competent, kind, moral, and (begrudgingly) flexible. She's a real heroine.
The closest comparable action hero Barbara and I could think of was Ripley in the Alien movies, which weren't made for girls of tender years. The girls in front of us and their generation have an advantage none of their older sisters did.
Last weekend, Sam and Marissa took us to the opening of The Hunger Games. Directed by Gary Ross (Pleasantville, Sea Biscuit), based on the novel by Suzanne Collins, HG is set in a dystopian future US, in which the dominant Capital exact tribute from its twelve provinces in the form of twenty-four teenagers who battle to the death of all but one on television. Jennifer Lawrence carries the show as the identity figure, with Josh Hutcherson as co-fighter and love interest. Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland, and, especially, Woody Harrelson lead a strong chorus.
The Capital is all flamboyant manners, contrasted with a Dorothea Lange grittiness in the provinces.
Two reactions.
Dystopia seems appropriate now, a reaction to our current peril, but I couldn't detect a justifying glimmer of the society I know in this film (or in the book). Nor could I trace a path from now to the world of HG. I see two opposing points of view as possible foundations for an honest dystopia.
One is currently dominant, growing out of the 2008 recession and weak recovery, and Tea Party populism. In this view, taxation and regulation limit the engines of progress, that is capitalism, industry and technology. This imnpoverishes society and threatens a becoming human existence. Probably it threatens civilization.
In the other view, materialism mistakes capital for income, sees 20th century ingenuity at consuming capital as technological triumph over scarcity, and demands more in the face of overshot limits.
Maybe that's a little too deep. HG is a bagatelle, and taking a position on the economic controversy of our time might limit its greatest virtue. There were three little girls in front of us, two sisters and a friend, escorted by the sisters' father. The younger sister was probably eight, the friend and the older sister may have been eleven. They had all read the book, in fact they had read the entire trilogy, and were excited to see the film. Jennifer Lawrence's character is steadfast, strong, self-sacrificing, competent, kind, moral, and (begrudgingly) flexible. She's a real heroine.
The closest comparable action hero Barbara and I could think of was Ripley in the Alien movies, which weren't made for girls of tender years. The girls in front of us and their generation have an advantage none of their older sisters did.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Alley Oop & Graphing Peak Oil
A graph like the one above would be more effective. If I were a citizen of the Jurassic Period, trying to plan an economy dependent upon the size of the dinosaur herd, this would give me a better intuitive understanding than the same information displayed as bell curves.
Me and all the other Alley Oops have our caveman enterprises in the dinosaur economy. I want to try something new and stegosaur-dependent in the late Jurassic. If I want to count on enough stegosaurs, I'll have to count on several business failures among the other stego-businesses.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Factoids About Food And Farming
Researching food production for an eco-village operating manual, I came across these factoids, mostly in a book by John Jeavons, called How to Grow More Vegetables than You Ever Thought Possible:
The world has about one human lifetime of soil left, assuming industrial farming practices;
The world has about nine thousand square feet of arable land per person;
Nineteenth century Chinese practices allowed production for one person on four thousand square feet;
Jeavons and his colleagues at Ecology Action in Willits, California, can grow one person’s entire diet on five thousand square feet, with a six month growing season, and winters that allow them to grow grain over the winter;
Jeavons’ practices build soil rather than deplete it;
These practices require fifteen minutes (or less) per day, per one hundred square feet, translating to ten hours (or less) per day, per person, assuming the Chinese level of production.
The world has about one human lifetime of soil left, assuming industrial farming practices;
The world has about nine thousand square feet of arable land per person;
Nineteenth century Chinese practices allowed production for one person on four thousand square feet;
Jeavons and his colleagues at Ecology Action in Willits, California, can grow one person’s entire diet on five thousand square feet, with a six month growing season, and winters that allow them to grow grain over the winter;
Jeavons’ practices build soil rather than deplete it;
These practices require fifteen minutes (or less) per day, per one hundred square feet, translating to ten hours (or less) per day, per person, assuming the Chinese level of production.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Reading Environment, Power, and Society
Odum's goal for the book is to communicate a "macroscopic" -- as opposed to reductionist -- view of the world. He discusses the flows of power in ecosystems -- of which human economy is an example -- and suggests that human survival depends upon understanding the energetics of systems. He writes, "Since decisions on such matters in the arena of public affairs are ultimately made according to the beliefs of the citizens, it is the citizens who must somehow include the energetics of systems in their education."
I'll bite. I'm happy to be able to run my eyes over Odum's discussions of the power flows in various ecosystems. I'm grateful to him for providing a vocabulary of symbols used in network diagrams, such as the one above, which illustrates the flows of carbon in a microcosm. P=gross photosynthesis. R=respiration. Hexagons are self reproducing systems, either organisms or populations. The bulge on the left indicates plants as labeled. The things with roof are supposed to look like tanks, and stand for storage.
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