Category Archives: Commentary on the news
The Seventh Generation
Samhain Waning Thanksgiving Moon
Any of us who work the legislature and the administration for any purpose have to take the 6.2 billion dollar deficit seriously. It will disrupt state work, occupy legislative time and distract attention from other matters, especially longer term matters like environmental and conservation issues. It could also, in light of its direct cause, the economic crisis and slow return of jobs to our state economy, tilt the scales in favor of jobs based proposals like the Polymet hard-rock, sulfide mine proposed for the edge of the Iron Range.
In times when the books balance and the state’s economy hums along at full employment decisions with long term consequences are still hard to make. It would be easy, then, in hard times, to simply duck the issues of logging off our state and national forests, their resiliency in light of climate change and the damage to them wrought by invasive species and powered vehicles. It would be easy, then, in hard times, to put off financial investments in mass transit. Why spend money when we already have roads and buses? It would be easy, then, in hard times, to put off more ambitious clean energy goals, continuing to pump electricity out of toxic emitters like coal plants, balking at ground floor investments needed in wind and solar energy.
It would be easy, but it would not be wise. We have learned already, the hard way, that mountain tops once removed, will no longer rise toward the sky. We have learned, the hard way, that sulfide mining produces heavy metal and sulfuric acid waste that lasts not years, not decades, but centuries, outlasting the companies that produced it, the jobs created and the governments that allowed it. We have learned, the hard way, that generating energy with dirty fuels like coal, gasoline and nuclear fission has consequences, world changing, life shattering, additive changes.
This means that especially now we must be vigilant, careful, thinking about the seventh generation when we make our decisions. Will the seventh generation of Iron Rangers be better off with hard-rock sulfide mines spread along the Range? Will my seventh generation, my grandchildren of the distant future, find a boreal forest in Minnesota? Will there still be unpaved portions of the metro area? Areas saved by the development of rail, bicycle and pedestrian pathways?
Hard times, hard as they are, come and go. The clean waters we love, the dense forests through which we hike, the fresh air we breathe can all be imperiled by decisions made with long term benefits lost, traded for short term gain.
Leave It Alone
Samhain Waning Thanksgiving Moon
Coming home tonight from the city I encountered a traffic slow down. It allowed me to get close to an older model GM car with a bumper sticker in letters too small for me to read from a distance. The bumper sticker read: Leave the Constitution and the Bible Alone.
The world of such a person, that is a person who would both buy and display such a message, must have a lot of fear leaking into it. Not surprising. Job losses. Uncertain economics at the national level. A black President. The furor stoked by the Tea Party folks.
Think of it though. A whole world bounded by two written documents, documents written by men, interpreted by men and now some women, too, but documents of humans nonetheless. A world with absolute faith in those two written documents, a faith so necessary, so critical that if others tamper with them… Well. They’d better not. Leave’em Alone. This feels like such a lonely and fettered existence, cramped, perhaps like a one room apartment or a small economy car.
Any conversation with such a person must not start with the constitution and the bible, it must start with the aspects of their life they believe protected by them. Their sense of identity. Security. Safety. Morality. Only as people feel safe can they begin to question, until then, too much is at stake.
So, for God’s sake, leave them alone.
Teaching Pigs to Sing
Samhain Waning Thanksgiving Moon
“Trying to get people to reason in a way that is not natural for them is like trying to teach a pig to sing. You don’t accomplish anything and you annoy the pig.” – E. Jeffrey Conklin and William Weil
This seemed like a useful thought as we approach the opening of the 2011 legislative session. We need to change our message so that those in charge of the legislator can hear it and realize that safeguarding our environmental heritage is a non-partisan responsibility to our kids, our grandkids and their grandkids.
More interviews today, more with talented people who want to work with the Sierra Club.
Little new snow today so I don’t anticipate the crush this morning that I experienced yesterday. And more Big History on the drive.
Protected: Nick with Jim
Protected: Nick Pleads
Nick
Samhain Waning Thanksgiving Moon
The Nick Caspers murder trial will not happen. Nick decided to plead guilty to Felony A Murder, a charge that gives a chance at parole, as opposed to the Felony AA that he faced at trial. That one carried life without parole.
As Woolly Paul Strickland said, we all have done things in our lives for which we were not brought to account, not so for Nick. I share with Paul a hope that the judge will be merciful in his sentencing. The extraordinary impact an event like a drunken fight in a small North Dakota town can have on individuals and families near and far makes me aware of the lives impacted by each person involved in our criminal justice system, victims and perpetrators alike. On TV the criminal is often a bad person and the prosecution and the victims good people; in life, the shades of gray cover the just and the unjust.
Nick enters the darkest part of this long and unfinished journey in December. There is, of course, the irony of his situation counterpoised to the holiday lights and Santa Claus and families gathered in churches singing Christmas carols. Not so ironic, and perhaps more helpful, is the season seen from the perspective of the Great Wheel. In December the earth reaches the point in its orbit, the Winter Solstice, when the darkness that has gathered strength ever since the Summer Solstice reaches its zenith on the longest night of the year.
The Great Wheel teaches us that the descent into darkness is never the whole story. In fact, it shows us that even the darkest night bears within it the seeds of increasing light, an increasing light that will lead, in time, to a new growing season. Owning the descent for what it is, a trip down into the underworld, but a descent that has a path leading back to the surface world, is a strong narrative for Nick and his next few weeks and months.
Mikki and Pete, Nick’s adoptive parents, Nick, Jim and all the South Dakota folks: we’re with you as you make this journey. You don’t have to go it alone.
Night Talk
Samhain Waning Thanksgiving Moon
Though the pain has subsided, it still keeps me awake without medication. So, I’m up at 6 am, a rarity for me these days. When Kate shifts off regular work, no longer comes home around 10 pm, then I’ll go back to an earlier bed time and 6 might not be so unusual.
I understand the attraction of the night. I feel it myself. The quiet, the dark has a friendly feel to it, a time when the home becomes a hermitage or a studio or a writing garret, far off from the demands of mundane life. Reading late has an appeal, the book, the words float up and occupy the whole, not reading anymore, but traveling along, carried on a river of narrative. Writing has the same free, anchors away momentum. The ship sails away from the dock, following the rhythm of an ocean current, one that runs just along the border between the conscious and unconscious realm, between the warmer, busier, lighter waters near the surface and the benthic deeps, unvisited, stygian, fecund, down there the ocean reaches its source, the collective unconscious, yet deeper and universally expansive, the holy well from which archetypes, genetic memory, forces creative enough to bring life itself into existence make their slow way.
Night talk. Or, rather, very early morning talk.
Black Friday
Samhain Waning Thanksgiving Moon
Kate had to tell me, again, what black Friday means. Apparently (and you probably already know this) it’s the date retailers calculate they slip over from being in the red to being in the black. When I have trouble remembering something, it’s often because I have another association clogging up the rememberer. In this case black Friday has a theological tinge in my brain; it takes me to a day of lost hope, ultimate despair. As a result, I have trouble associating it with anything positive.
If I consider the number of people camped outside (one woman since Wednesday night at a particular BestBuy), and, if I consider the reason many of them are in those lines, my association seems closer to the mark. Our emphasis on extravagant gifts to celebrate the birthday of a man who wanted us to declare freedom to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind has always revealed the dark side hedonism which we let loose at Christmas, but the pitiful sight of people braving cold and inclement weather as blind captives of our economic system. Well…
A very positive note is the number of scientists now willing to engage in reasoned debate on the topic of global warming. Understanding the science behind global warming takes careful attention to several different lines of reasoning and a dispassionate explication of those various strands works best from within a scientific rather than a political frame. Perhaps, as an article in the paper said, we will be able to move beyond this debate and onto the question of what can we do.
We are not saving the earth; the earth will be fine no matter what we do. We want to preserve an earth fit for human habitation; that’s what’s at risk here. Can we learn to live on this planet lightly enough that it can carry us, feeding us, watering us, disposing of our wastes, providing materiale necessary for our habitations and our economies? Those are the stakes.
It’s Here! It’s Here! It’s Finally Here!
Samhain Waning Harvest Moon
Election day. Or, as I prefer to think of it, extinguish those politicoporn commercials day.
The constant negative drone, the contention that the other person has committed some perfidy totally unexpected of a human being, let alone a politician, gets on my nerves, so, for the most part, I shut it out. But that’s not what I mean.
What I mean is the amount of hard cash required for designing, shooting and airing political commercials. Along with other technological expenses in the modern campaign the dollar amounts required make it inevitable that each politician, each one, Republican and Democrat, spend their incubency focusing not on policy or the politics of the day, but on fund raising. Fund raising in amounts so large that often times they go back to the same well not just twice, but thrice. This places every politician in Congress squarely in the sites of those who have wealth or who have become adept at bundling wealth from others for political purposes. This is not only bad form; it is also a bad way to create a government.
Add the constant fund raising to the incessant drum beat of lobbyists and it’s no wonder our democracy–for which we want to make the whole world safe–has twitches and contortions that make professional gymnasts look clumsy and out of practice. We are a people proud of our democracy, often hubristically so, and yet it has become a clogged artery, a broken limb, a part of our body politic that needs strong medicine and tough therapy to heal.
Our system of checks and balances has devolved into a system of halts and stops where partisan wrangling and/or ideological purity turns each place where a check might happen into a full body check against the boards and puts a thumb on the scales wherever balance must come into play.
While I’m at it, let me point out, too, a problem in our Senate. No, not the rules, though those do need attention. No, not Jesse Helms. He left office. I’m talking about representation. Here’s what the point in a brief paragraph from Wikipedia:
“The Constitution stipulates that no constitutional amendment may be created to deprive a state of its equal suffrage in the Senate without that state’s consent. The District of Columbia and all other territories (including territories, protectorates, etc.) are not entitled to representation in either House of the Congress.[12] The United States has had 50 states since 1959, thus the Senate has had 100 senators since 1959.
The disparity between the most and least populous states has grown since the Great Compromise, which granted each state equal representation in the Senate and a minimum of three presidential Electors, regardless of population. In 1787, Virginia had roughly 10 times the population of Rhode Island, whereas today California has roughly 70 times the population of Wyoming, based on the 1790 and 2000 censuses. This means some citizens are effectively an order of magnitude better represented in the senate than than those in other states. Seats in the House of Representatives are approximately proportionate to the population of each state, reducing the disparity of representation.”
And this from a book blurb on Amazon for: Sizing Up the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation–
“We take it for granted that every state has two representatives in the United States Senate. Apply the “one person, one vote” standard, however, and the Senate is the most malapportioned legislature in the democratic world.
But does it matter that California’s 32 million people have the same number of Senate votes as Wyoming’s 480,000? Frances Lee and Bruce Oppenheimer systematically show that the Senate’s unique apportionment scheme profoundly shapes legislation and representation. The size of a state’s population affects the senator-constituent relationship, fund-raising and elections, strategic behavior within the Senate, and, ultimately, policy decisions. They also show that less populous states consistently receive more federal funding than states with more people. In sum, Lee and Oppenheimer reveal that Senate apportionment leaves no aspect of the institution untouched.
This groundbreaking book raises new questions about one of the key institutions of American government and will interest anyone concerned with issues of representation.”
I mention this intriguing and disturbing analysis to underscore the problems with the amount of money it takes to win a Senate race which is, by definition, a whole state affair. This means that money sunk into races in smaller population states can have the affect of negating changes in the House of Representatives while increasing the amounts for which the elected Senator is beholden. This is not a recipe or a chance for corruption; it is a guarantee, a built in consequence of modern elections and an increasingly unequal Senate.
What to do? We’ll look at that tomorrow, apres deluge.