Search Results : nature rights

  • Rights of Nature

    Imbolc and the Ancient Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Ancient Brothers. Mario in Nice. Paul in Maine. Bill and Tom in Minnesota, land of the forgotten winter. Me on Shadow Mountain. Video of tumbleweeds invading towns in Utah and Nevada. Living their best life. Mark and sunrise in Hafar. AI. My son. Seoah. Murdoch. Seoah’s sisters and Kai, the writer. Korea. Mary in K.L. Diane in S.F.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Rights of Nature revolution

    One brief shining: This time Zoom picked up a feed from Globeville, a largely Latino neighborhood just off I-70 that houses the expanding campus of the National Western Stockshow, which today featured folks around a plank wood table with those of us in Vail, in the San Juans, on Shadow Mountain, in Leadville gathered to talk book, this Rights of Nature book which may be pointing the way forward for the Great Work.

     

    Quite a while ago Mario read in the New York Times an article about the Rocky Mountain Land Library. This would be great for you, Charlie, he wrote. I’d read the article, too, and agreed. I got in touch, but it was too early for volunteers. Then Kate got sick and though I followed its growth some, I couldn’t get involved.

    Yesterday I had my first real interaction with them on the Rights of Nature book club. An hour and half. There were 17 people in all, 10 at the Land Library’s Globeville office and five of us on Zoom. An eclectic group that included college professors, a Southwest Colorado Federal Conservation official, a microbiologist with a graduate degree in theology in Vail, a Leadville participant engaged in a statewide Responsible Tourism plan, animal rights activists, attorneys, and two folks from the Land Library.

    The conversation inspired me, stoked the fires. Even in this weighted sample of folks already interested, the rights of nature idea often felt like a bridge too far. The Conservation woman wanted achievable goals that built community support. Personhood for a river? Way too far.

    The woman from Vail with the theology degree asked me to comment on Thomas Berry’s book, the Great Work. So I did. “I consider it a core work. In it he says it is the Great Work of our generation to create a sustainable presence for human beings on this earth. He moved me to turn aside from economic justice work to focus on climate change.”

    Surprised me but I then had the group’s attention. At the close one of the leaders of the Land Library asked me if I thought the Great Work would be good for another book club. Yes. It’s short and easy to read. Unlike, btw, The Rights of Nature which is a good book, too, but neither short nor easy.

    All of this dovetails with the work I’m doing in fits and starts on Charlie’s List. It occurred to me that I may have an opening now to reconsider work with the Land Library. Believe I’m gonna take it. Bound to be a mitzvah.

     

    Just a moment: Caitlin Clark passed Pistol Pete Maravich’s tier 1 NCAA scoring record yesterday. Wish I could have been there. Women’s b-ball is having a long minute. Bout time.

     


  • The Rights of Nature

    Imbolc and the Ancient Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Tara. Joanne. Jamie. Ginny. Janice. Scott. Wild Mountain Ranch tenderloin. The Rights of Nature. New Zealand. Maori persistence. The Whanganui River. Its legal rights. Constitutions that protect the rights of nature. My Lodgepole companion. Tree huggers. Regenerative farming. Land as itself, not property. Shadow Mountain. Its rights.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Rights of Nature legal revolution

    One brief shining: So I tried the Pomodoro method yesterday, work intensely for 25 minutes, 5 minute break, do that three times, take a 30 minute break, and found it helped me keep reading and not get distracted by oh, an e-mail, wait I’d like something to eat, maybe I should put that new light for zoom together; it’s for working on a longer project requires focus.

     

    No. I’m not going back to the work world. I like to increase my productivity if I can though and will try different methods from time to time. Right now I’m trying to get this book, The Rights of Nature, read by Saturday for the Rights of Nature bookclub. Sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Land Library it’s in the sweet spot of my passion: our world and how we humans can live within it. Over time.

    If you want to feel better about our species, you might find this book worth a read. It summarizes the theoretical (jurisprudential?) movement of the same name. This legal movement is active in many nations around the world including the United States and Canada. It tends to gain ground through individual lawyers and certain types of NGO’s like the Community Environmental Defense Fund and GARN, the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, though in some places like Ecuador mass political movements have played a role, too.

    New Zealand has made important advances in their legal system by giving personhood to the Whanganui River and a former National Park with the unusual name of Te Urewera. It means burnt penis in Maori. Apparently a chief rolled over onto a fire and died there. Both the Whanganui and Te Urewera now own themselves and have human advocates who can file lawsuits and speak on their behalf to the New Zealand government. Imagine if the Mississippi had the same rights as a corporation Which is also a legal person in the U.S. Or, Shadow Mountain. Or, Lake Minnetonka. Or, Lake Superior.

    You might recognize that this movement has roots in the lifeway of indigenous people. It does. The Maori played a key role in changing New Zealand’s laws. A Maoriiwi,tribe, championed the Whanganui river personhood because the river is central to the iwi’s identity.

    Gonna add certain of these NGO’s to Charlie’s List. I’m beginning to see a web of interrelated ideas, actions, and groups that are already at work building a sustainable human presence here on Earth. For the future of humans as a species this is work that has to be done and done now.

     

    Just a moment: On Netflix. The anime series Blue-Eyed Samurai. This is a story of Shogunate Japan when Japan had closed itself off from the world. The plot follows a blue-eyed Japanese child, a pariah because of the child’s Portuguese father, one of four white men in Japan at the time. He raped the child’s mother. Revenge drives the story.

    For anyone familiar with the Ukiyo-e woodblock prints of the same era in Japan, you will see the careful attention the animators have paid to them as they created this series. Japanese puppet theater also gets a central moment.

    This is adult fare and a complicated, compelling story rendered in the most beautiful anime.


  • Shortie

    Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Elephants. Non-human rights. The Nature rights legal movement. Tom. Diane in Uzbekistan. Mark and Mary in K.L. My son now 43. Songtan, South Korea. Murdoch. Seoah. Rich Levine. Ruth. Gabe. Colder weather. Red flag day. Insurance. Car. House. Yikes. Ruby. Ready to roll. Wolf Law. Boulder. Today. Colorado Supreme Court.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Wild Neighbors

    Kavannah: Justice Tzedek

    One brief shining: Ding-a-ling, ling ding-a-ling my hand reached across my pillow to find my offending phone, positioned near my right ear so I would not miss its call to action, yet when received I wanted it to stop ding-a-ling, where is the damned thing, ding-a-ling hear them ring soon it will be me on the road to Boulder. Ah. Found it.

     

    Yes. For those of you who might wonder about my getting up this Elephant’s rights morning. I did it. A bit bleary eyed maybe. Coffee made yesterday ready. English muffin. Peanut Butter. Honey. One celecoxib. I’ll leave in about ten minutes. Should get there around 8 am. An hour and a quarter ahead of the arguments. Ruth is going. We’ll have breakfast after. We’ll see Rich.

    Feels good to be doing this. Spontaneous decision Monday to go. Liking this. Renders the questions I raised yesterday to a more acute level.

     

    Brother Mark stuck in ESL desert, his departure for Saudi Arabia pushed back once again. Frustrating for him.

     

    Well. Time to pick up keys, wallet, and sunglasses. See you around the waterhole.

     

     


  • Water

    The Mountain Summer Moon

    Shabbat gratefuls: That sinking into a pleasant day feeling. The heat. Great Sol. Carbon emissions at record highs. Life changing politics on tap. Project 2025. The Sea reaching out, claiming more Land. This heated Land. The poor, especially those in cities like Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, L.A. Water. Transpiration. Evaporation. Precipitation. The cycle.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: My well

    One brief shining: 28 years with a well and a septic system, Andover to Shadow Mountain, no fluoride, the occasional bit of radon, acidity, and chemicals, flowing in from the Aquifer below, in Andover from the Great Anoka Sand Plain, here on Shadow Mountain the well drilled into fractured bed rock, much of the same Water flowing back out through sinks, the washing machine and dishwasher, toilets and into the leech field well toward the back fence line, returning that Water to the Aquifer.

     

    a more accurate depiction of the global human-integrated water cycle diagram          10 August 2020 Source Own work Author LangeLeslie and Anna Wright cc license     click to expand

    . “The water cycle describes the processes that drive the movement of water throughout the hydrosphere. However, much more water is “in storage” (or in “pools”) for long periods of time than is actually moving through the cycle.” wiki

    Water. Water. Everywhere. Including outer space. Astronomers find largest, most distant reservoir of Water in the Universe.* Yet as we can see from the above diagram its distribution on Earth is such that only minimal amounts of fresh Water exist and those that are available are not distributed equally across the continents. See this interesting website: A Look at Global Freshwater Distribution.

    The notion of increased heat across the globe caused me to go hunting for information about fresh Water resources since transpiration and evaporation will both increase as the thermostat gets twisted higher and higher. This will have the effect of changing existing patters of freshwater distributions. But how? I don’t know if anyone is planning for this.

    This will happen whether the red hot MAG(m)A flows through our political veins or not. As will Sea level rise. And all the other climate change sequelae. Which means that a Ron DeSantis attitude might prevail among U.S. policy makers. What attitude? Florida Gov. DeSantis signs bill that deletes climate change from state law. Just don’t say climate change. And it will go away. Right?

    The world may soon enter a period of leadership when national interests, dare I say it, trump global interests. Such a good time for it, too. Since dramatic and difficult to achieve carbon emission reductions are necessary to avoid the worst scenarios. Unlikely to happen. Which will result in a world catastrophe. I admit we were headed that way anyway, but these political changes will seal off any hope for effective addressing of climate change.

    This puts the onus on those of us in the liberal to leftist camp to figure out how to work on these issues without governmental support. It can be done. Look at the nature rights movement. The many NGO’s out there from Ancient Forest champions to eco-justice. Even the restoration of Axolotls and Chiampas farming.

    Perhaps that will be the way of the future for compassionate and justice oriented work. Happening now.

     

    *”Two teams of astronomers have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. The water, equivalent to 140 trillion times all the water in the world’s ocean, surrounds a huge, feeding black hole, called a quasar, more than 12 billion light-years away.”


  • The WHI: the Wildlife Human Interface

    Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Ruth. Rich. The Colorado Supreme Court. UC Boulder. Wolf Hall. Elephants. All of our Wild Neighbors around the world. Doug’s Diner. Being a student. Jamie. Luke. Woolly Mammoths. Driving to Boulder in the early morning as Great Sol gradually lit the Hogbacks, the Meadows in their russets and greengolds, the lower down deciduous Trees aflame with reds and oranges and yellow. Getting out and about.

    Sparks of joy and awe: Non-Human Rights

    Kavannah: Kavod  Honor

    One brief shining: Sitting next to Ruth, I watched the mock courtroom of Wolf Hall fill up with law students dressed in their student variety from jeans and backpacks to a black dress and pearls, the conversation subdued since the presence of black robed Colorado Supreme Court Justices would soon transform the mock courtroom into a real court, one about to hear a pleading that Elephants fit the definition of person for the purpose of a writ of habeas corpus*.

     

    I want to back into this topic. A story I’ve told and retold. Almost exactly ten years. October 31, 2014 I stood in what would soon be my back yard staring into the soft black eyes of three Mule Deer Bucks. Seemed like a long time though probably no more than a minute. When they decided we were done, I felt as if I’d been granted permission to live here among them, a message delivered by these spirit beings of the Mountains. Yes, you can say I overlaid on those three Bucks my own interpretation. Finding in that encounter a blessing I hadn’t known I’d sought.

    In 2019. June. The day I began 35 sessions of radiation for my unhappily returned prostate cancer three Bull Elks jumped over our five foot fence with great ease and proceeded to eat the blooming Dandelions. One of them had only one antler. They would come again and again.

    A year ago on a rainy July night I drove up Black Mountain Drive not far past the Upper Maxwell Fall’s trail head and encountered a Bull Elk staring at me as I passed by, his bulk hidden by the Aspen stand, but his antlers and face clear in the momentary flash of my headlights.

    Yesterday morning I got up at 6 am, got dressed, drank some coffee, gathered the items I needed, put on my black Grateful Dead hat with the colorful dancing Bears and began the hour long drive down the hill, then north to Boulder. Along Hwy 285, still well into the foothills I saw a black shape along the side of the road. Since many people have metal cutouts of various Wild Neighbors as lawn decor, I imagined at first that this object was one of those. Until it looked at my oncoming car, turned quickly around, and scuttled in that soft clumsy-appearing Black Bear amble back into the Forest.

    I don’t see many Bears. This is the third one I’ve seen since I’ve lived up here though they live all around us. A few years ago walking not far from my house a large Black Bear crossed the road not thirty feet from me. Last year I saw a Bear near the intersection of Brook Forest Drive and Hwy 73. That’s all of them.

    In each of these three instances the Bears turned away from me, hurrying into the shelter of their wild home, the Forests and Mountains.

    All this means I live in the WUI. The Wildlife Urban Interface. Again, yes, you can argue we shouldn’t be here. Maybe not. But we are. Even the cities outside which the WUI exists were once encroachments on Wild habitats, too. Like the Animals of the Mountains we too have to live somewhere.

    Not an apologetic. A statement of fact.

    My friend Marilyn Saltzman told of a safari she was on a few years back. Their guides took them to a Watering hole somewhere in the Bush. A herd of Elephants drank from it while a number of other Animals waited. Some Elephants left, then came back, others left. Not until the last Elephant had gone did the other Animals come to drink. As she told this story, I thought, who is the true monarch of the Jungle?

    Finally, you might say. Seated in the mock courtroom made real, like the Velveteen Rabbit, Ruth and I listened to two lawyers make oral arguments that the five elephants: Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo deserved release from their confinement in the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. Yes, that Cheyenne Mountain.

    The Non-Human Rights Project had entered a writ of habeas corpus claiming they did have that right under a writ. The Cheyenne Zoo had counsel as did the five Elephants. This article in Colorado Politics is an excellent summary of the proceedings.

    It was like watching yesterday and tomorrow. The gray haired, dismissive and at times arrogant attorney for the Zoo, represented the status quo. Basically: We’re a really, really good zoo. The younger, much younger lawyer for the Elephants represented the growing awareness of the blurry, blurry line separating us from our Wild Neighbors. Sure, Elephants. Big brain. Social. Emotional. Sensitive. Like Primates and Whales and Dolphins and other clearly intelligent animals, even Corvids, to mention another class of Animals, Elephants in zoos represent an obvious case of anthropocentrism used as a rationale to dominate, entrap, and enslave other Animals.

    Through the Rights of Nature movement, see my March 4 of this year post, not only Animals but Rivers and Forests have been granted legal rights and protections. Zoos and those defending them are on the wrong side of history. It will take years and many more legal proceedings but somewhere, sometime the thin edge of the wedge will hold open the door to a world where humans live as part of the Interdependent Web of all beings (defined as widely as you wish) on Mother Earth. When this happens, it will have Earth shattering, no let me amend that, Earth healing consequences.

    This Mabon morning in Colorado, yesterday, I saw one more track being laid down toward this too far off day.

     

     

    *Although there have been and are many varieties of the writ, the most important is that used to correct violations of personal liberty by directing judicial inquiry into the legality of a detentionBritannica


  • Liberal Arts, their necessity

    The Mountain Summer Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Gabe and Ruth. Beau Jo’s. Pizza. Cool nights. 22 degree difference: Lakewood to Shadow Mountain, 92-70. Abert’s Squirrel and Red Squirrels running. Chipmunks. Rabbits. Marmots. Fishers. Pikas. Prairie Dogs. Mice. Ravens. Crows. Magpies. Corvids.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Family

    One brief shining: Outside along the fence, there, peripheral vision alerted me, found it, a hopping form, bushy tail, then another, Red Squirrels, smaller all black pointy ears, running between the Lodgepoles, an Abert’s Squirrel, a very squirrely morning.

     

    Excited. I got a new translation of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Plan to read it through as part of Herme’s Pilgrimage. Stephanie McCarter from the University of the South. Not as ground breaking as the new Iliad and Odyssey by Emily Wilson, but fresh eyes and a woman’s perspective. Looking forward to grounding myself again in Ovid’s world of epic poetry, shapes changed into bodies, metamorphosis.

    You could call me a classicist. Not in the academic sense, I don’t have the languages, but religious and ancient classical texts do have a gravitational pull for me. In translation I’ve read and returned to the Bible, Homer, Chinese literary classics like Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Greek philosophy, the Talmud, Roman and Greek playwrights and poets like Ovid, Beowulf, the Norse sagas, Dante.

    When I say I’ve returned to them, I mean I will read them more than once. Which I don’t tend to do with more modern works. Say after the Renaissance.

    You could call me, too, conservative. I also keep returning to religious institutions and religious life. There’s a strong part of my inner journey that’s fed by books like the Torah, the New Testament, Tao Te Ching, Chado: the Way of Tea. Even the Great Wheel emerges from the long ago past.

    The vast deposit of human literature allows us to hop into a Jules Verne’s contraption of the mind, find long ago cultures like the Zhou Dynasty, Renaissance Florence, the Shogunate in Japan, village life in the old Celtic world, and for a time live in them, seeing the sights, considering the patterns of thought, the imaginative creations of other ways for being human.

    The wonder and magic of reading.

    Our era has begun to focus education away from the liberal arts which introduce us to philosophy, history, literature ancient and modern, languages, music and theater, poetry. We have a science and business tropism, a tendency to bend our institutions toward technology, toward business, toward matters concerning the practical arts like engineering, medicine, corporate agriculture.

    Of course those practical paths undergird our day to day lives. Necessary to us all. Yes. But, and here’s where the classical world, the conservative nature of the liberal arts and religion comes into play, to what end do we sustain human life? For what purpose do we earn profits? What is a humane approach to political economy?

    Without poetry and chamber music, without the voyage of Odysseus, without the journey of Dante, without the often ancient debates over the purpose of community, of nationhood, of war, of humanity itself, without Lao Tze and Confucius, without Zen and animist faiths like Shintoism and Western paganism we have no compass points to guide our white coated brethren, our C-suite compatriots, our decisions between a Trump and a Biden.

    Aimlessness leads to corruption, mendacity, and general rot. We are, right now, reaping the whirlwind of this shift in basic education.


  • Coulda. Shoulda.

    Imbolc and the Purim Moon

    Monday gratefuls: Clogged sinuses. MST darkness. The Night Sky. Orion. Aquarius. Betelgeuse, ready to go Nova. James Webb. SpaceX. Odysseus, tilting on the Moon. That day in July when Neil Armstrong stepped off the Moon lander. JPL. Caltech. MIT. Engineering. Putting science to work. Tom. Bill. Helen. Veronica. Arjean. Tara. Hebrew.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Old movies on the Criterion Channel

    One brief shining: Put on my old guy velcro Snow boots, gathered up one of my Leki hiking poles, and set off on a Snowy adventure, would I make it all the way to the garage, lifting my feet, then setting them down in Snow to my waist, up down up down until I reached the door, yes, made it!

     

    I will not be able to go to the garage for a while through the sewing room door. I went out to it yesterday to retrieve the garage door opener so I can get in and out through the sliding garage doors. Shouldn’t be too long since we have 50’s in the forecast this week.

    Feeling a bit diminished by not being able to handle the Snow myself. That silly guy thing. I wouldn’t have been able to do it even if the snowblower worked. Heavy, wet spring snows clog it up. Not to mention my SOB issues. No, not that. Shortness of Breath=SOB. Besides, I already have a snow plow guy. So why?

    Oh, you know. What I could do. What I used to be able to do. I used to be able to run. I used to be able to power all the work in my garden with my legs and my upper body. I used to be able to handle a chain saw. Move slash. Buck trunks. I was a guy in the still strong days. So why not now? I don’t want to be only a mind on two legs. My self critical self wrecker says, nah. You coulda. Shoulda.

    Guess this is one with the questions I posed the last week or so. I need to flip the kayak. Get back to the oxygen in my life as it is. Right now. Here and now. A life filled with friends, ideas, wild neighbors, a willingness to go down that unexpected path all the way.

    Yes. Because. That guy, that strong younger guy, is my past. I’m not weak, not since I got back to resistance work, but I’m no longer that guy physically. That guy is the past. This guy with the yarmulke, reading the parsha, observing Shabbat, he’s my present. This guy who sees the yearling Does, feels the companionable presence of the Lodgepole out my study window, loves Great Sol torching the top of Black Mountain each morning. He’s my present.

    This guy, the one who plows through books about politics, about Jewish holidays, about the Rights of Nature, about Animal Wisdom. He’s my present. And this particular guy is a through line from the young one who like the deceased author David Wallace might get in a taxi and say, “To the library. And step on it!”


  • Rustin

    Imbolc and the Ancient Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Tom. Cold night. 10 degrees this am. Canceling online subscriptions. Black Mountain, still 10,000 feet. Altitude. And, attitude at altitude. Dan. His gifts. Life. While it lasts. The Rights of Nature. Youtube. The Law. To whom it applies and to what. Rocky Mountain Land Library. Rustin. MLK. Civil Rights Movement. The March on Washington.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Fighting for what you believe in

    One brief shining: Watched Rustin last night, the story of Bayard Rustin’s role-he conceived and organized it-in the 250,000 person March on Washington at which Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, while navigating not only internecine warfare in the Movement and the myriad challenges of organizing an unprecedented, and still unmatched, gathering of African-Americans and their allies, but his own life as a gay man in an unforgiving time.

     

    Movies that move me. Rustin tapped me in a deep place. My heart responds to people who choose to fight. Rustin fought for his sexuality, against war, for socialism, and against racism. This movie accurately displays the toll of a life devoted to justice no matter where or when. My admiration for the depth of Rustin’s commitment couldn’t be greater.

    Some of you know the story of the Leadership Minneapolis moment in which I participated. Here’s the short version. Leadership Minneapolis was (is?) a program of the Downtown Council, a Chamber of Commerce for downtown Minneapolis. Somewhat like Rotary each year’s class picked young leaders from specific fields: the police, religion, banking, medicine, corporate life, the arts, education, civil rights. Not sure I’m remembering this exactly right but I think we met monthly with an expert in some field of leadership. The idea was both to hone our skills and create a network of folks we could tap as we continued our careers.

    My then close friend, Gary Stern, and I headed up a committee, a committee devoted to the vision for us. With consultant and now long time friend, Lonnie Helgeson, we created a definition of leadership. Leadership we said was love, justice, and compassion. Not sure at this remove, this was the mid-1980’s if I recall correctly, how we differentiated love and compassion.

    This effort and its full acceptance by those of us who created it led to the firing of the entire Leadership Minneapolis board. Goes to show you. A nationally syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, Neal R. Pierce, wrote a column on our effort, a positive one. So there Downtown Council.

    OK. He said a bit chagrined. Enough about me.

    My point? Rustin epitomized leadership as love, justice, and compassion. So did King. Watching this movie reignited my passion, at least for a moment, made me cry. At what? At the power of the powerless gathering themselves and pushing for change. At the power and working without a net nature of political organizing. At my memories of those times, of the times that came later. At the slow but certain bending of the arc of the moral universe. So slow. Too slow.

     

     


  • This. That.

    Imbolc and the Ancient Moon (92% Waxing)

    Wednesday gratefuls: Mario and Babette go to France. Tom goes to Evergreen. Mark (brother) may leave Hafar. New Mexico. 5 hours away. Marilyn and Irv. Primo’s. The Cutthroat in Bailey. Happy Camper. Jamie the phlebotomist. Blood draws. PSA and testosterone. Murdoch. Kep of blessed memory. Rigel, too. Gertie and Vega. Kate, always Kate.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Mario and Babette at the airport, ready to travel

    One brief shining: Unbutton my sleeve, roll it up above the elbow, set the elbow on the front rest of the phlebotomy chair, I’ll use a smaller needle she says to preserve that vein, little pinch, the needle is in and blood spurts out into tube number one, then tube number two, there you’re a tablespoon and a half less of a man.

     

    Yeah. Three months are up again. And this blood draw is significant. My testosterone should be up and as it goes up the likelihood that my PSA goes up rises along with it. Dr. Simpson told me, when we finished the second round of radiation, that there was a small chance I was cured. This is the test that might cancel that idea. Or, support the possibility if I get another undetectable PSA while my testosterone goes up. Not counting on either one. Results should be back this morning.

    On Friday I telehealth with Kristie. Assume I’ll have a new urologist/oncologist. As you may recall, my old one, Dr. Eigner, retired in December. Kristie and I will discuss what happens next in light of the results of the surveillance labs. Another step along this path.

    A bit of anxiety, peering into the unknown again. Between here and there.

     

    Breakfast with Marilyn and Irv yesterday. Always good to see them, get caught up. Primo’s. We were going to try the new Conifer bakery, Wicked Whisk, but it’s closed on Tuesdays. Driving to Primo’s on 285 there is a grand display of snow-capped Mountains in the distance, beyond the Platte River Valley.

     

    Going to be some folks here for my bar mitzvah. Some Ancient Brothers. Probably Pamela and BJ. I hope Gabe and Ruth can come. No real plans for an after party yet. The service is at 10 am so it would be way early for anything but a lunch or an enhanced oneg. The four of us haven’t gotten together yet and discussed what we might do. Whatever it is, it will involve food.

     

    I seem to have misplaced or outright lost a book. You might think this would not be unusual at my house, but you would be wrong. I have an excellent memory of where I last had a book. This one though, the Rights of Nature, which I’m reading for a Rocky Mountain Land Library book club has vanished from my sight. Frustrating because the book club meets on March 3rd.

    I’ve exhausted the possible places it could be and still not found it. I like to complete my assignments. Hard if I can’t find the book. Oh. Looked it up on Amazon. Bought it on Kindle. No hard copy to find. Guess that explains it.

     


  • Bullfights.

    Imbolc and the Cold Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Snow. Big Snow. Cold night. 13 this morning. A fine Shabbat. My reupholstered couch. Ackerman’s. Reorganizing, again, those books that have infiltrated the living room. Feels so good. Getting facile with my bar mitzvah Torah portion. Wild Mountain Ranch. Regenerative farming in Boulder County. Bullfighting and its cultured despisers. Great Sol. Dependable.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: El Toro

    One brief shining: In 1995 I bought a ticket at the Plaza del Toros in Mexico City, sombra, and went into the largest bullfighting arena in the world, most notable initially were the steeply sloped stairs leading up and up, the entrance to each row of seats marked with tin Corona cerveza buckets loaded with ice awaiting thirsty patrons, blue and white emblems on them, I sat down, only four rows from the arena itself, unsure what to expect.

    Found my notes from the bullfight. It was 1993, not 95. And the cerveza buckets were more toward the bottom of the arena, fewer toward the nose bleed seats.

    The Plaza del Toros is circular with a large ring in the center where the bull’s lives play out. The concrete rows of seats go up steeply from a wooden fence that separates the first row from the ring. Inside the ring itself wooden fence like structures provide protection for bandilleros and even toreadors. A gate on the side of the arena furthest from my seat opened for the march of the toreadors.

    Writing about this because an article in the New York Times announced that the Plaza del Toros reopened last week on January 28th after a two-year hiatus. Animal rights groups succeeded in a temporary ban and have cases before the Mexican courts now to ban bullfighting all together. Until those suits play out the largest bull ring in the world will continue offering bull fights.

    This dovetails with a book I started reading yesterday, The Rights of Nature: a Legal Revolution That Could Save the World. I’m in a bookclub out of the Rocky Mountain Land Library that will discuss this book in March. In the first chapter I read the author, David R. Boyd, writes about how it takes time for cultural change to occur. His references reminded me of Thomas Khun’s Theories of Scientific Revolution. Slowly. Slowly. Then all of a sudden Great Sol replaces Earth as the center of the Solar System.

    Boyd believes that the animal rights movement, a Mexican contingent of which shut down Plaza del Toros for two years, will occasion such a cultural shift about animals and that that could undergird the movement to finally give the rest of the Natural World legal rights. Ecuador has already done this as has New Zealand and 22 other countries to varying extents. May it be so.

    Will finish up about the bullfight but wanted to underscore here the Rights of Nature movement. It’s a really big deal and coming soon to a state or national constitution near you.