Sharing our space

It hurts my heart every time I pass the dried-up remains of a certain turtle, on the shoulder of a certain stretch of I-95 that I traverse daily on my way home.

It takes a long time for a turtle to grow to large size. I wonder how long this one had lived before it met its demise on this unforgiving freeway. I wonder, too, if its ill-fated decision to try to cross the freeway was motivated by the recent obliteration of the adjacent forest to create yet another useless new development to put money in somebody's pocket.

I read a bittersweet column today by a resident of my city, offering ways that we can -- having stolen so much from nature -- give a little back. Poignant was her depiction of the annihilation of a large meadow near her home where killdeer birds once nested. It is now eye-sore sprawl and roadways.

We have claimed so much of the earth as our own -- cleared it, paved it, spread buildings across it. We never consult the previous occupants, whether plant or beast, as to their opinions in the matter. In some cases, we don't even regard the feelings of the human occupants. Ask any Native American, or the Bikini islanders, or the descendants of the Appalachian mountain folk driven out by 20th-century government decree, or the victims of that pernicious evil called "eminent domain."

Can we ever say enough is enough? Can we please just assess what we already claim as ours and clean it up and deal with it more efficiently? Can we accept as a fait accompli what we have done in the past and have the decency to wreak no more misery upon our beleagured world?

Can we end our addiction to destruction,and once and for all declare that what little we have left in a natural state should stay that way? There are thousands, perhaps millions of acres of so-called brownfields, homes standing empty, poorly planned industrial complexes. Those are ours. Let's clean them up and make no more.

If I ruled the world, the bulldozers would grow cobwebs and rust away, damn them all! No bloated developer would ever again waddle onto the edge of a woodland with his golden shovel and his Jabba-the-Hutt grin, announcing yet another gas station to go up where birds once sang, unless and until we had fixed the messes we have already made.

And even then, the lousy ogre would have to move every single plant on the site to another location at his own expense, even if he had to get down on his hands and knees with a trowel to do it. And if a single birdnest or rabbit burrow were found it's sorry Charlie, take your blueprints and stick em where the sun don't shine.

The Roman Experiment

There are three kinds of people in the world, politically speaking.

Firstly: Those who believe that the greater good is accomplished by reducing governmental power.

Secondly: Those who believe that the greater good is accomplished by increasing governmental power.

And thirdly, those who are just in it for themselves, who disguise themselves in whatever cloak of political rhetoric they need in order to achieve and cling to power.

Conservatives, at least of the United States type, align with the first theory. Different labels may be put upon proponents of limited government elsewhere.
Liberals (again speaking of the U.S.), align with the second.

At times, people of both the first or second persuasion charge each other with evil motivation. In reality, both of the first two types are, by and large, good people, trying to make the world a better place.

True evil belongs to that third type, which includes horrible human beings such as Pol Pot of Cambodia or Kim Jong Il of North Korea. I read that Kim has now thrown off all pretense of leading a communist utopia and instead adopted the motto of the old Roman emperors: Take care of the army and don’t worry about anyone else.

The critical problem with increasing governmental power as a means to achieve greater good, is that it is the surest way to empower that evil third type. Lenin’s Soviet framework, built upon the idealist Marx’s vision – Marx, who never built a gulag or oppressed anyone – was the perfect structure to support the monster Stalin.

We can argue about whether other notorious world leaders, past and present, were trying to build better societies or simply enjoying the spoils of power. I speak of Idi Amin, Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Hugo Chavez, Nicolai Ceausescu, Saddam Hussein, etc. But can anyone seriously argue that any of the above preached, or preach, less government rather than more?

What has fascinated me in my study of the late Roman Empire, is the history that we don’t learn in school and how it relates to the above.

How much this entity, which survived for roughly five hundred years (if you count from the rise of Julius Caesar to the sack by Alaric and don’t count all the previous years of the Republic or the Byzantine Empire that struggled on in the east after the fall of the Eternal City), was a constantly changing, conscious experiment in human government.

How various Roman leaders, from Augustus to Diocletian, tried different and creative ways to balance power and address the needs of the people. How some of the most reviled of its rulers, such as Nero, actually started out with apparent good intentions but then succumbed to paranoia or power lust … because there was, ultimately, no one to stand in their way.

How gradually a hard-working society of independent-minded, mostly agrarian folk, with a relatively democratic system of leadership, degenerated into a an entertainment-crazed, urban mob demanding more and more hand-outs from their leadership, a mob which ignored national defense and a leadership which constantly added more and more planks to its pulpit of power and rarely, if ever, removed any of the accretions once each spasm of grumbling over their illegality had ceased.

We are fools to ignore the lessons that Rome taught by long and painful experience. Fools to think that world leaders today are cut from different cloth than the ones who once wore the purple toga. Fools to think that human nature ever changes.

Snake-a-phobia

My blogfriend Kat's healthy, well-informed attitude towards snakes is an inspiration to me. She knows to watch out for them, but She doesn't panic at the sight of them nor seek to kill them.

Lately my state seems to be racked with snake-a-phobia. I overheard someone at a meeting last week express relief that another friend had run over a snake in their neighborhood. My nephew-in-law,who does maintenance work at an apartment, told me with great exaggerated gestures the other day, about how he had deliberately run over a "big copperhead snake" with his riding mower and "chopped it all up."

When I conjectured that perhaps what he saw might have been a harmless black snake, gestures of annoyance were sent my way and insistence that indeed, it was a copperhead.

Now I know that copperheads and water mocassins do live in my area. I also know that they don't seek out people and are part of a snake population that also includes serpents of a non-venomous nature. I have hiked the swamps and hills of my surrounding woodlands for more than ten years and failed to see a single snake, whether venomous or non. In other words, we are hardly in peril.

And I really get annoyed with people who kill a harmless, even beneficial creature, just because it is a snake.

Five things wrong ...

Five things wrong with the U.S.of A. today:

1. A society based on the rule of law is a Roman innovation, and a brilliant one, a bulwark against tyranny of the minority or the majority. Thus, in history, law codes gradually supplanted tribal justice and the use of community shaming in order to maintain a sense of morality. However, relying wholly on the rule of law can cause a problem: No one fears to offend, or feels shame in violating, mere ink and paper scribblings. If the law is not "written in our hearts," we have a problem. Rule of law also spawns legions of lawyers making their fortunes trying to outwit it, and keeps legislators in a constant battle to keep up with the latest outrages, from cell phones while driving to the plague of underage "s$xting." Basic shame is so very old-fashioned.

2. Education. I sound like some wheezy old grandfather, but there are countries in the world in which children walk for miles each day to sit in some hovel of a building with the barest rudiments of educational materials, so hungry are they to learn. By contrast, most American children consider "school" akin to prison and being devoted to learning horribly "uncool." Also, far from being the respected sage he/she once was, today's teacher must constantly walk on eggshells lest he/she be sued, and runs the risk of poisoning if he/she leaves a coffee cup unguarded in the classroom.

3. Economy. It's based on an ever expanding cycle of exploitation, a sort of pyramid scheme with Earth as collateral and all of us as eventual suckers. This is certainly not solely an American problem. And world socialism proved no better, even much worse, than capitalism, at resolving this dillema. There is a problem when prosperity depends on wringing more and more crops out of more and more exhausted soil, on building more and more gas stations and shopping malls where forests once grew, on constantly taking, taking, taking. That problem is that eventually, the soil is dead, the forests are gone and the minerals are all extracted and shipped away. You can only eat so many potato chips out of a bag before it becomes empty and useless.

4. Two-party system. These days, it's becoming more like one and a half. I am quite aware of the flaws of parliamentary rule in other lands, where coalitions constantly form and break up, and centrist parties can be at the mercy of wacky loons and fringe parties. But I am emphatically neither a Democrat nor a strong Republican so I am in essence left out of the political process, forced each election to choose one or the other of people I more and more like less and less.

5. Losing touch. We are losing touch with history. Go to Mt. Vernon and you will find out how long it has been since a sitting U.S. president bothered to visit our first president's estate, a stone's throw from Washington D.C. We are also losing touch with nature. And we are losing touch with the values taught in our mostly agrarian past: Love for the land, self-reliance, a sense of the seasons, hard work, love for hard work, patience in adversity and even delayed gratification -- corn doesn't grow in a week unless you are playing Farmtown on Facebook.

Intelligence beneath your feet

How do you define intelligence?

Is it the ability to make tools? To reason out the solution to a problem?

I have been alerted today to the publication of a fascinating book, which almost sounds Star Trek-y in its depiction of the vast and mysterious intelligence living beneath our feet: fungi.

Fungi can colonize bare rock or thrive in a rich forest, or even the walls of your home. A fungal organism can live for thousands of years, be the size of a pinpoint or cover entire acres. They create partnerships with plants and even with viruses, and according to this author, they can possess a sentient awareness of their environment.

The linked article below certainly will get you to rethink these mysterious, ancient and essential "beings" -- neither plant nor animal.

http://www.thesunmagazine.org/_media/article/pdf/386_Stamets.pdf

I will not buy cypress mulch

The tragic genius of man is that if he works at it hard enough, he can find a way to exploit just about anything.

How about an ugly, inedible sea mollusc? Well, turns out the cuttlefish makes a great toy for caged birds. A root that forks like the legs of a man? Medically useless, but try telling that to superstitious people who pay dearly for ginseng. Horseshoe crabs? Scientists drain their blood for research.

Somebody recently discovered that the great sentinels of our southern swamps, cypress trees, make a long-lasting, pest-resistant garden mulch. And the saws are now cutting them, fast and furious, to sprinkle upon the suburbs of America.

That is a sad and sorry fate for such a special tree, arborial neighbor to the 'gator and cottonmouth, the eagle and the muskrat.

I will not buy cypress mulch. I will not be as those who tore down the buildings of Rome for cobblestones and doorstops. I will not spread the shattered shavings of this wild wonder upon my petunias.

http://mygardenguide.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1242&Itemid=27

What is missing

I have not walked in a long time. There was that rather hurried excursion down to see a boggy boardwalk with my Niece two weeks ago, true. She got very hot and thirsty and we came back quickly. It was a disappointment.

No, I have not wandered off on my own of late in woodlands, lingering beneath shade, stopping to turn over stones and squint at small flowers.

I have been to visit some blogfriends tonight, admiring their photography, and realizing that not only have I not walked in a long time, I have not recorded it in pictures.

Saturday, if Sweetie does not need me for something, I will walk.

Lunch break snapshots in spring

The rain has ceased and this is what I photographed on my lunch break today, in a forest near my office.



The above is the rare, trailing arbutus -- such a small flower that a casual passerby would surely miss it. I knelt down and inhaled its faint fragrance -- the first time in my life that I have ever had this opportunity.

My day

Four things, of varying importance, happened to me today.

1)I drove eighty miles (round trip) to attend a birthday party for a three year old. My brother-in-law's son.

2) I got a summons to jury duty, my first. Or rather, I have to call in with my number for the next three weeks and see if I get the joy of serving. My only experience with jury duty is watching Fred Flintstone get menaced by the Mangler. (Remember that episode?)

3. I finally chopped my way through the old black walnut log that came down on the backyard fence in our last hurricane. Now I can finally clean up the mess of honeysuckle and brambles that has taken over that corner of the yard. As I was yanking up those invasive vines and discovering to my sorrow that equally invasive English ivy is among them, I had a thought: Nature always wins. Anti-environmentalists like to tell us the earth will survive whatever man throws at it. That fact is probably true. But just WHAT part of nature will survive? Not the exquisite, the awe-inspiring, the delicate. Rather, such nasties as poison ivy, Norway rats, tree of heaven, pond scum and cockroaches. Is that the world we want for our children?



4. I learned the significance of the ash tree in ancient European mythology. And I read an amazing account, so interesting that I'm going to give it its own post.

The secret of lasting joy

What is the secret to lasting joy, to keeping a child's sense of wonder, to living the exultant life, to finding miracles every day?

It is embodied in this glorious statement by Kat (herekittykatkat.blogspot.com).

"All my life my everything I most have loved and appreciated is this life this world this everything and its every expression everywhere with all that crawls and flies and creeps and leaps and bounds and runs and hops, their every voice, their every circumstance."

What a magical outlook on life.

Some surprising facts about human nature

Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature
by Alan S. Miller, Ph. D., and Satoshi Kanazawa, Ph. D.

Why most suicide bombers are Muslim, beautiful people have more daughters, humans are naturally polygamous, sexual harassment isn't sexist, and blonds are more attractive.

http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20070622-000002.xml

I, ECD, am apparently an anomaly, as far as this study goes: I honestly and truly don't give a darn about a Woman's chest size; I much prefer brunettes, redheads or ravenhaired Ladies over blondes; and my poor parents had only one Daughter and a heap of sons.