BUBBLEMAKERS INHERIT THE EARTH

Seems clear that economic growth in the U.S. was highest, prosperity more widespread, and the middle class more secure when the top marginal tax rate was at its highest (up to 92%) during the post-war period, 1946-1963. After Reagan slashed the marginal rate in 1982 (from 69 to 50%), deficits ballooned, the recession deepened, and (I believe) the middle class began a long retreat which has continued to the present.

Whether a greater number of payers ACTUALLY pay at the highest rate today (not whether they are simply eligible to pay at that rate) would be instructive to know. I really need to hire my own bevy of tax advisors!

True, there is lack of a definite correlation between tax rates and the health of the economy. But, let me add one more: The recent Bush tax cuts (in 2000?) and the subsequent severe, near fatal, economic downturn of last year (2008).

Yes, there are complicating factors (the messiness of economics not having laboratory conditions), such as "natural" economic cycles, monetary policies (Bush spending mushroomed, particularly war spending), and the fact of the tendency (in the system we have) toward economic bubbles.

I wonder whether the system is now more conducive toward bubble creation. I also wonder whether a higher (possibly much higher) marginal tax rate would mitigate against the "bubbling."

TALKING HEADS

In Japan, at Zen temples I have experienced school-girl groups with their query-the-foreigner English assignments when all I wanted was to focus on my self-inititated talk-to-inner-buddha assignment. It instigated my realization that the gaggle of school girls well reflected the gaggle of rushing thoughts I had inside. When the ten-headed mass passed on downhill, I was able to focus more on the attempt at single-mindedness.

Somewhere Henry James the Elder said (in 1883) that, "The visible world is but man turned inside out that he may be revealed to himself." If that's true, then perhaps I am but a squalling multi-cephalic mass of protoplasm walking the Zen temple of life.

If asked, I'll answer in my best English.

MINDING THE MULTITASKING

Today was another Korean boy-band day (e.g., see Super Junior) here at my residence, as my school on the Mississippi Gulf Coast took a storm day and daughter Sanjina, already here from yesternight, stayed on my 'puter all day watching music videos and downloading music onto her MP3. The several Korean bands who she likes are similar to the Backstreet Boys (to me) and are quite good, in a 16-year-old American girl sort of way.

It's always the same: She multitasks on 'puter listening, watching, downloading music and playing with her photos and manipulating her Facebook and IMing and texting and sometimes doing school homework and interacting with me, and so on, while I play the housefather role (making soup today). Whew! I try to limit my multitasking to no more than three or four activities!

In those moments I can't help but think of the cemetery scene in the play Our Town, when the girl realizes, belatedly in the afterlife, the preciousness of the everyday miraculousness of life--her former Earthly life with her friends and family that she took for granted, that had passed forever.

We all do, don't we? Is there a way to consistently break through to the presence of the divine inherent in the everyday? When I sit here at my 'puter--finally!--I can much more easily practice minding and awarenessing (as the handwritten sign on my wall reminds me), but at school tomorrow I will mostly fall back into the routine, the rut, the messiness of dealing with other people and the rawness of human relations.

Oh, well. I'll look forward to Korean boy-band night again next week and watch my beloved daughter Sanjina Marie while she mostly ignores me. I did the same with my parents. Life--mostly unaware--does go on.

EINSTEIN AND THE ENDS OF REALITY

In interest of full discussion of Albert Einstein, the complex person and his beliefs concerning religion, one must consider the famous letter, written by hand in 1954 a year before he died, and auctioned last May 2008, in which he said some things that might surprise those religionists who quote other statements he made at other times.

Einstein was quite clear in some of his comments about his not believing in a personal god and in his general condemnation of religion, although, paradoxically (it would seem) he thought that religion could enrich life.

Einstein admired Baruch Spinoza and his pantheism--that God and Nature were more or less synonymous. In a telegram to a rabbi he stated, "I believe in Spinoza'a God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God Who concerns himself with the fate and doings of mankind."

In the 1954 letter, Einstein, writing to a philosopher friend who had written a book about Judaism, said that, "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish." He goes on to say that, "the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition."

Was Einstein "spiritual?" Yes, I believe he clearly was. But not in the way that some would want. Anyone who examines the edge of reality, as did Einstein, must think about "spiritual" reality, or about what is (concrete) reality. He was lifting the veil of the physical universe and appearing underneath--or perhaps beyond the edge, although he does not seem to have made any statements about anything beyond the physical universe.

Yes, Einstein stated in his speech "On Science & Religion," that "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." Yet, I'm not sure he had any more insights than that; at least as for as I know he never said much more. Still, even though it is clear that he found the practice of religion distasteful, he never condemned belief itself.

All this makes me admire Einstein, in his mostly nondogmatic views. He clearly was neither an atheist nor a theist nor a religionist--in their usual meanings. So, what was he? I do not think he exactly developed a complete spiritual view of reality. Perhaps the key to this is that his last 25 years were spent in fruitless search for a unified field theory based on a fundamental misunderstanding of modern physics.

Was he chasing a "unified field theory of physico-spiritual reality?" I'm sure he would have loved to have found it in a neat mathematical formula.

What I learn from Einstein's life and his life search is that I can marvel and wonder at the reality of the Universe, as he must have done, and even use religion and spiritual views in the process of marvel and wonder--but science does not reveal these ultimate realities. That seems to have been the position of Einstein. For me, that's my view also. Today and in the end, that's also pretty much all I can do.

ANCIENT CLIMATE CHANGE AND CIVILIZATION

North Africa underwent massive climate changes in the 4th and early 3rd millennia BCE as result of natural climate change. It had been a region of savanna land--scattered trees and grasses and some flowing rivers--much like those Sahelian areas to the south of the Sahara (even today), with much the same flora and fauna, as depicted on Saharan cave paintings. Yes, by the time of the Romans, it was a full-blown desert south of the north African coast, but the coast, at least around Carthage (present-day Tunisia) was producing a lot of grain.

It is thought (with research ongoing, especially by the Western Sahara Project in southwestern Algeria) that the resulting eastward migration of peoples fleeing the uneven desiccation of North Africa might have spurred the development of the first civilizations in the Nile River valley and Mesopotamia. Climate change caused migration which spurred the development of civilization (when the hydraulic civilizations developed from the control of water for irrigation which occurred as the result of governmental structures).

It is interesting to consider that the thinking behind why the pig became taboo in the diet of peoples in southwest Asia (the various Semites) is because (according to the school of Cultural Materialism) the pig is naturally a forest animal whose diet consists of forest substances, such as roots, tubers, acorns, nuts, grubs; thus it became destructive to the remaining forest ecology of southwest Asia as it desiccated. So, the best way to prevent the raising of pigs and save the land was to make pigs taboo, literally not what the gods say is "clean" to eat.

Those various peoples had centuries to adjust to the massive changes in regional climate by changing their diet, etc. I'm afraid that we today will not have much time (anyone ready to change your diet?). Many scientists are now thinking that we are facing massive climate changes that could occur almost like flipping a switch.

We have ample evidence of civilizations destroying their base ecology. Seems patently obvious we are doing the same. Is our civilization different so that we can forestall the worst?

GLOBAL COOLING AND ICED TEA (PARTY)

I explain the supposed global cooling since 1998 by saying it did not happen. It is bogus use of data.

The present decade has been the warmest in modern recorded history. Every year this century has been warmer than any year before 1998.

The claim that there is a global cooling trend occurring at present uses 1998, an abnormally warm year, as baseline, and then says no year since has been as warm. Use either 1997 or 1999 as baseline and a different mini-trend appears. The "cool trenders" (including the Tea Party) are manipulating the record with a preconceived end. The supposed cooling claim also ignores smaller fluctuations within longer trends. The record shows several fluctuations since 1998. But the longer trend is clearly upward toward warmer temperatures. And, of course, greater amounts of greenhouse gases are being added to global atmosphere--thus the projections of continuing increases in global temperatures.

Besides, NOAA has newer data that show 2005 was warmer than 1998. NOAA also re-examined its data and found no cooling trend.

No need to rely on me, though. Just last week (27 October 2009) there was the Associated Press (AP) story all over the media (except Fox Opinion Network, of course) about AP presenting the NOAA temperature data to four statisticians in a blind study to see whether they could detect a trend in the data. They did not. Read the truncated AP article in the Philadelphia Inquirer (http://www.philly.com/inquirer/health_science/daily/20091027_Number_crunchers_reject_global_cooling.html ) or the longer one (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gGAa00xryzkYa7FUhfip-CDPM_tgD9BIUU5G0)

PEAK OIL, DE-GLOBALIZATION, AND THE NEIGHBORHOOD EFFECT

I believe the Chinese have a valid point in their claiming that they have become the world's workshop (capital easily relocates to take advantage of cheaper inputs) and thus pollute. In essence, the US has exported pollution, by shifting industries and jobs overseas (the Chinese, beginning with reforms of Deng Xiaoping, were certainly not forced by us) to save our cities (but not our workers' jobs). And, our cities are, for the most part, cleaner. Our primary air pollutants are no longer caused by electricity-generating power plants and factories but automobiles. Of course, "pollution knows no boundaries," so pollution returns to us in several ways. It's all so short-sighted.

In any case, with peak oil just a very few years away (if you accept the views of some economists), then there must come a process of de-globalization that will change everything. The previous decades-long era of the global shift to a geo-economy will end, and a reversal will commence, including the "neighborhood effect" of industries re-relocating back closer to customers in North America and Europe. This will begin to happen even before peak oil, as oil prices (already at $76 pb) continue to climb as the global economy continues to recover.

But with peak oil (some see as high as $200 pb within six years) we will see the growth of regional economies as the geo-economy declines. This scenario depends on the advent of peak oil. There would necessarily be a great deal of destabilization and turmoil (but opportunity as well)--so get ready.

Otherwise, China will manufacture a very high percentage of all automobiles within ten years as well as continue to be the world's workshop for smaller consumer items, although it is beginning to have such severe environmental problems and incipient labor shortages that production will be hampered, to the advantage of the other emerging economies, such as India.

Seems there are two basic scenarios: Manufacturing continues to locate in China (and India and the other emerging economies: Brazil, Philippines, etc.) or peak oil changes it all.

Regardless, we might have only a very few years (now measurable in only a few dozen months) to hold global atmospheric CO2 under 350 ppm and hold global warming under 2.0C (to perhaps 2.4C) to prevent environmental tipping points from being tripped--the melting of the Arctic ice cap, the thawing of permafrost, and the warming and acidification of the oceans. Each of these is a positive feedback loop, thus the reason they are critical. For example, with increase of global atmospheric CO2, the oceans absorb CO2 and acidify; with oceanic acidification comes the dying off of zooplankton which are CO2 absorbers and O2 emitters.

So, from China as economic powerhouse and global polluter (along with ourselves!) to the globe in peril--we collectively have questions to answer and changes to be made and adjusted to. It WILL be interesting!

I SAW NATURE ON TV; IT WAS A REALITY SHOW

Increasingly, inexorably, we have a Truman Show world where, if not Truman's light bulb or Russia's cement falling out of the sky (http://www.universetoday.com/2008/06/19/when-cloud-seeding-goes-wrong-cement-chunk-falls-from-the-sky/) , we see rising CO2 concentrations leading to a global climatic tipping point, disappearing frogs, bleaching corals, and exploding numbers of asthma cases (the latter two conditions thought to be caused by African dust falling in the West Indies)--all reflected in the signifying quote of the book Last Child in the Wilderness: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder (quoting an astute fourth-grader): "I like to play indoors better 'cause that's where all the electrical outlets are."

It's also where we can watch some nifty Nature shows (in our asthmatic state) and eat some snacks fried in peanut oil grown on the chemicalized, wind-swept, desertifying lands of West Africa.

THINKING'S A ROVER

This interview--http://video.pbs.org/video/12947821--of novelist James Ellroy, by Tavis Smiley, shows Ellroy saying, among other things, that his novelist's modus operandi is to "create private infrastructure of big public events," in this case referring to his new novel, Blood's a Rover, about the era in American history from 1968-1972, including the assassination of M. L. King, and the psychology of assassins who seek redemption.

A writer of fiction would want to know about Ellroy's methods. Not so sure about his animus, in which, since his last novel, he has experienced a nervous breakdown, financial near-ruin, divorce, and at least two love affairs and break-ups, one with a married writer. Previously, after his mother was murdered, in 1958 (still unsolved), he became an after-hours pervert, breaking into homes and stealing women's underwear.

I've never read Ellroy, though we were born six months apart and look something alike. He lies thinking in the dark more than I. Apparently, I look at maps in light more than he.

MELATONIN REVIEW ARTICLE

I was surprised to find that the peer-reviewed FEBS Journal (of the Federation of European Biological Societies) is available to all. The article I have linked here-- http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118634749/PDFSTART --is a long review of melatonin studies, which turns out to be more useful and versatile than I knew.

Some of you might be interested in its use in anti-depression, anti-SAD, anti-breast cancer, and so on (the rest of us). I have a system in which I use it in anti-jet lag (the article discusses this, too) and in its chronobiotic effects every night.

Re St. John's wort: I advise O-blood types against using it as it is an "avoid" for them. I tried it years ago and began to feel quite psychotic (actually, I'm not at all sure what that word really means since that has never been my experience). In any case, I felt quite loopy (about THAT I know a bit more!). Seriously, I very much disliked the garbled, befogged, tangled mental experience of using St. John's wort and trust the advice of the blood-type regimen. Other blood types can use it.

MISGUIDANCE AFGHANISTANCE

America is again (third time!--Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) being massively deluded, by the military-arms merchants-media complex, into thinking a war--another war in Asia to occupy a country--is winnable. Russia with its 600,000 troops could not subdue Afghanistan (and neither could France vis-a-vis Indochina). There is no reason to believe the US could do the same.

Afghanistan is not Iraq; its geography is much more difficult, its people even more fragmented. Besides, it has never had a strong central government, thus is much harder to control. In the meantime, we do not have the 250,000 to 600,000 troops (using General Petreaus' own COIN manual) to send there. And, do we really want, if anyone cares to think about it, to empty our treasury for such a doubtful enterprise, one which will not bring us any measure of greater security?

In any case, it is clearly the wrong strategy; see this video: http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog/?p=702

And, please, can we dispense with the canard about contemporary warfare (in Asia or elsewhere which always kills more civilians than combatants--combatants who are fighting a nationalistic war) having ANYTHING to do with our freedom and patriotism?

Perhaps an analysis of the domestic powers who want us to align our thinking to the Orwellian "war is peace"--that our very freedom is at stake--would be a better use of time. Who really gains?

DIGGING TIME

After several days at the dig--Arbeia Roman Fort on Tyne, South Shields, England--I frequently experienced momentary mental flashes of the layering of time that matched the layers of soil and occupation we were laboriously unearthing. As I held a shard of Roman pottery, I gazed out of the pit at present-day, street-level England aware of the time-collapsed passage of centuries and realized that I was doing menial labor moving the same earth where others, stretching backwards in time 20 centuries or more, had also performed their labors, whether as Celtic agriculturists, Roman soldier-builders, Medieval plowmen, or Victorian-era laborers.

Perhaps my diachronic sense of the passage of time--the mental flashes of someone from a time-space in which the temporal sense operates mostly in present tense--only could have occurred while standing deep in an archeological pit holding a shard of Roman pottery.

The raucous gulls on the roofs across the street seemed to mock, in full-throttle disdain, my pondering the meaning of time.

AGE OF STUPID

Tonight, in a local theater I attended the live-feed of The Age of Stupid event shown simultaneously in 63 countries. The docudrama film (shown as part of the live-feed) says that a 2.0-2.4 degree Centigrade threshold for rise in global temperature must be held in check because that temperature is the tripping point for further release of greenhouse gases, such as methane from Arctic tundra, etc., which is purported to be the beginning of systemic failure of planetary life-support systems. For example, Himalayan glaciers are on a fast retreat. Those glaciers feed some of the world's largest rivers, vital to about 1.3 billion people. The rivers include the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Salween, Irrawaddy, Mekong, and Yangzi.

To achieve the goal of slowing the rise in greenhouse gases, there will have to be a firm commitment to changes in lifestyle. To that end, there is a movement to obtain commitment from millions of people to reduce their carbon footprint by 10% in 2010--called the "10-10" pledge. That seems fairly easily doable by people. I'm pledging now.

Tomorrow at the U.N., in NY, there is supposed to be a major statement by Chinese Pres. Hu about China's intentions. This is part of the lead-up to the Copenhagen Conference, in December. This is the international follow-up to the Kyoto Conference, of which Australia and the U.S. did not sign.

I'm not fully understanding why 2015 is considered such an important date, but that year--rushing toward us impossibly fast--is given as the end-year for achieving the prevention of the 2.0-2.4 Centigrade rise. It was stated that it is not science that is holding us back from doing what it will take to save the Planet (for human habitation or at least a recognizable civilization), but the political will, i.e., it is people. I can see a huge fight in the U.S. as it will be presented by some as a hoax and government-takeover of personal freedom. I predict Glenn Beck calling people to DC for a march for personal "freedom" and the "American lifestyle," etc. They'll feature gas-guzzling SUVs and chant "Drill, baby, drill!" and say that it is part of Obama's secret plan to engineer a Hitler-like takeover of government and society. (My own brother, who is a Beck and Fox fan, says he sees signs that Obama is doing just this!) Hold onto your hats, folks, things are going to get even nastier.

Interference with nature? There is no unadulterated nature now; it's a human-written, produced, and directed show. We have created the Anthropocene: the entire Planet as our stage-set. The only question now is what ending will we decide to write for the world. And, which history will be written about our present era: Age of Stupid or the Era of Challenges Met (like humans have never seen before)?

ARTICLE ANNOTATION--MAPS IN LITERATURE

Byrd, M. 2009. This is not a map. Wilson Quarterly, summer: 26-32.

In this essay about maps in literature, the author notes that “plot” carries two meanings: the plot of ground or space where the story happens and the plot or action of the story itself. He catalogs a long list of authors, from Hardy to LeGuin, and fictional works with attached maps, from Gulliver’s Travels to that of Pooh’s which shows “where the Woozle wasn’t.” Weaving the essay around Robert Louis Stevenson and Treasure Island, he says, “It may be a map of a real place or an imaginary one. What matters is that we cannot explain a map by a map. …[W]e transform its spaces into something human, and everything human has a story.”

SENATOR WICKER'S "REPORT ON HEALTH CARE"

U.S. Senator Roger Wicker’s (R., Miss.) summer 2009 “Report on Health Care,” mailed out recently to thousands of Mississippians makes the main point that the public-health insurance option is a “bait and switch tactic.” His basis for making this claim, as shown in a large graph, is that, of the 170 million Americans who currently have private insurance, 119 million could lose private coverage under the proposed public plan—70% of the total. In the graph and repeated in text, Wicker uses “a recent study by the nonpartisan Lewin Group” for those data.

The Lewin Group might be “nonpartisan” but it manifestly is not disinterested. It is part of Ingenix, owned by United Healthcare Goup (UHG); in addition to its flagship company, UnitedHealthcare, UHG has been busy buying insurance companies, making it the largest health insurer in the country. Previously, Lewin Group has released “studies” that claim a public-option would cost doctors and hospitals money.

Five times in Sen. Wicker’s report he uses some version of the phrase “government takeover of health care.” He claims that “a public plan would kill the private insurance market.” But, the Lewin Group consultants he uses to support his claims have insurance industry ties, thus their editorial independence is suspect.

The independence of politicians, too, has long been suspect; and Congress’ standing with the public could hardly be lower. They would help their cause by presenting honest assessments of issues, using unbiased data. Then, with the crucial and necessary assistance of responsible media, the public forum would be a place where citizens could rationally decide public issues.

Sen. Wicker’s report, rather than pulling us out of the bayou of befuddlement, is, instead, a less-than-honest assessment, if its claims are supported by biased data. It seems they are.

AUTO-EROTIC POLITICAL ASPHYXIATION

We are witnessing a pitiful display of emotional masturbation enhanced with auto-erotic political asphyxiation incited by the radical, extreme Right armed with the enormous power of a few entertainer-editorialists on Fox and radical, extreme right-wing radio. The deeply propagandized paranoiacs believe that the president's pep talk to young people to study and excel is somehow a sinister act of brainwashing!

The president's talk will be offered on the White House website and is strictly VOLUNTARY, of course, as to whether schools and teachers show it to students. Read the lesson plan, which no one has to follow--it is benign, folks!

I ask you: What will be the next fanciful, paranoiac issue de jour once Fox and the other purveyors of paranoia have exhausted this one? They have painstakingly cultivated the emotional ground while shredding all standards of journalistic responsibilty and patriotic decency to conjure up political fantasies to lead millions of the discernment-challenged into a frenzy.

Those of you advocating withholding your children from school because they could have a rare chance of watching a president speak to them about the importance of education to them and the country are doing your children the disservice of observing you in unthinking, reactionary paranoia. Are you equally concerned about the power of the radical, fearmongering right-wing media which are demonstrably dealing in outright lies?

LOCKERBIE: MERCY, JUSTICE, AND RETRIBUTION

THINKING IN A CIRCLE--It was the merciful thing to do, to release Megrahi (all other things being equal), if, indeed, he has an extremely short time to live. This should be true, no matter that he is given a hero's welcome in Libya. The Libyan government and people have their own agenda concerning this that should not enter into the evaluation of whether to release him or not.

The matter about the agreement with the British government certainly throws an ethical complication into the matter. It's easy to be cynical about its behavior, that someone benefits monetarily--and politically, if the situation had not come to light. Surely the people involved realized that the truth would surface.

Still, regardless of the fact that some people stood to benefit from his release should not outweigh whether it is morally right to release him or not.

The obligation to the families of the victims is more problematic. Here is, I think, where the point of the fulcrum balances the two sides: humanitarian gesture to the perpetrator or obligation to the families of the victims. Further, it is a democratic government (Britain) that is supposedly there to serve the people. In this case, then, perhaps the release should not have occurred.

When my mother-in-law (who had been my seventh-grade teacher) was murdered on Christmas eve in 1991, my (former) spouse and I cared nothing about revenge. We only vaguely and unspokenly assumed "justice" would be done, which meant that since the perpetuators were teens, they probably were sent to a camp for a couple years. We never talked about revenge or retribution. Never. The monstrosity of the crime and the course that it set for the several of us left alive to deal with the history and reality of her absence could never have been rectified or assuaged in the least by a tooth-for-a-tooth dispensing of justice. I frequently look at my teen daughter and think about her absent grandmom who would have added immeasurably to my daughter's life. Justice, yes; retribution, no. It would not have added anything positive to our situation.

If I were a member of one of the Lockerbie families? Well, it's difficult to imagine being in their shoes, but--very honestly, and to reverse myself from what I wrote above--it would bother me probably a great deal that Megrahi was welcomed as a hero. I could go for some humanitarian gesture, but not if he shows no remorse. But, I wonder whether he was not a pawn in the hands of the Gaddafi government? Surely it was using him for its political benefit.

Ah, the complexities of human affairs! Makes life interesting, does it not? Sometimes it makes me begin with one position, and then think in a circle.

HEALTH CARE 3

There are no plans, nothing anywhere in anyone's proposed legislation, for "government takeover" of the health industry. There ARE plans, though, for the continuance of a near-monopoly of the big half dozen insurance giants. That's why a public option is so crucial: to create some competition in the insurance world. Competition would help to contain prices. Second, why is it WalMart can market some drugs for, say, $4? Because it can buy in such gargantuan bulk, it can dictate prices to the suppliers. There's only one entity that would be larger than WalMart to do the same: a public insurance pool.

Capitalists (the REAL capitalists who actually control hefty capital) want monopolistic conditions and seek to restrict competition for their benefit (while the rest of us hope for a little true competitive capitalism). That's one of its paradoxes: the ideology at street level does not match the natural inclination (and real actions) at the level of the boardroom.

In the case at hand, all the proposals would send windfall profits to the insurance companies, because all the proposals expand coverage (even the Republican proposals), adding coverage to tens of millions of people. Remember: the proposals are not for GOVERNMENT insurance, but for a public-insurance plan or for government payments--to the insurance companies! That's why the insurance companies are generally onboard for nearly all the plans. From where they sit, it looks pretty good for business.

The pharmaceutical companies are onboard for nearly all the plans, because they would be getting increased business by way of more people covered by insurance who would be getting the drugs they need. It also looks pretty good for the drug companies.

Many physicians and medical associations support a public option, because they see they are prevented from practicing good medicine when the insurance companies are calling the shots (good pun!).

81% of the American public wants a public option for health insurance.

So, if the insurance industry knows it would benefit immensely, and big pharma knows it will benefit, and many doctors want freedom from the insurance companies, and most people want a public option, and the only entity capable of containing costs (through competition and the power of bulk-negotion of prices) is a public option--then why all the dissension and huge disinformation campaign about something cleverly labeled as "Obamacare" and "socialized medicine" and a "government takeover" of the health industry? My conclusion is that it is simply a political maneuver to destroy Obama.

I can think of no other reason why spreading fear and disinformation (e.g. death panels, Nazi health plans, euthanasia, robbing medicare, socialized medicine, long wait lines, government takeover, faceless bureaucrats intervening between patient and doctor, rationing of health care) is so important. Remember: EVERY other developed country (each has its own variations), with greater public involvement in health care than we (although we do have public programs in the form of Medicare/Medicaid and the VA system), has arguably, but demonstrably, a more successful health-care system than the U.S. Yet, what we get is widely disseminated disinformation and fearmongering.

Sadly, this climate drives out real discussion--like just how ARE costs going to be contained? I heard that a family of four, who today could be paying as much as $1,000 per month for health insurance, would, by 2020, at the rate health insurance is rising, be paying $20,000 per year. I cannot speak for the veracity of the figures, except that they are extrapolation from now to then.

And, there's little talk about how the public-option plan is ALREADY a compromise. The one that is the most rational and beneficial is the single-payer plan, which takes health care out of the profit-making business. I guess the Obama administration made a tactical decision to go with a compromise.

But, I wonder if they understood the ferocity of the opposition in using the proposed legislation as a sledge hammer to perhaps mortally wound the party in power. Too bad: There are some huge issues looming over the threatening horizon (like Iran, Afghanistan, taxes, the global environment) in which a true public discourse--meaning "real," without the political demonization--is greatly needed. I'm afraid the atmosphere has now been ruined, because some corporate media and political groups understand the power they have for spreading hate and fear, and thus control the votes. We all lose.

HEALTH CARE 2

I'm sure we can back-and-forth in an endless badinage about health care. But, for now let me inject a small point--a generality!--and some observations.

The accrual of profits might not be the only impetus to innovation. To wit: innovation occurs in some countries due to strict cost controls where the downward pressure on costs by cost controls motivate researchers to find ways to improve medical procedures. For example, in the U.S. an MRI of the neck region costs about $1,500, while in Japan the same procedure costs under $100. Not coincidentally, many of the medical innovations which we use come from places such as Japan, Canada, France, Switzerland, Britain, and so on.

Probably, I believe, we will have a health-care bill by November because both sides need to claim that they have been at the people's business. It will be a compromise. The Obama Administration is desperate to get some kind of bill to claim some kind of "success." The Republicans can also claim "success" by claiming they stood up for the American people and defeated "socialism" and the "government takeover" of health care. The bill will do little to lower costs and will put off to some later date any true reform. Without government involvement, I see little reform occurring.

In the meantime, the shorter-term goal of Republicans to badly wound Obama has been successful leading up to mid-term elections. Unfortunately, the party out of power has the incentive to resist what is best for the country, which lessens the party in power, until the opposition party is in power.

I believe eventually, after the country is in severely desperate crisis (the American way!), and no matter which party is in power, we will have significant government involvement in health care (which we already have, like Medicare). It would not come as any surprise that this could occur--perhaps most likely would occur under a Republican Administration (think environmental laws passed under Nixon). I imagine they will promote it as the patriotic thing to do (and depend on Americans' short memory).

HEALTH-CARE OR DEATH-CARE SYSTEM?

One of the protestors at a recent Tampa town-hall meeting of a U.S. Congressperson mistakenly said that the U.S. has the best health-care system in the world. Hardly.

The W.H.O., I believe, ranks the U.S. as having only the 37th best. And, each of the 36 countries above the U.S. spends less per capita than Americans do. Spain is ranked number six or seven, spends less per capita than we do, and has one third fewer deaths due to wait times. Many countries--e.g., the U.K., Gemany, Austria--outperform the U.S. in terms of wait times for appointments and surgeries (but not true for Canada).

18,000 people in the U.S. die each year due to lack of access to health care. How much do those 18,000 families appreciate the facticity of free-enterprise "health" care protecting corporate profits, an overall system that lacks universal coverage and condemns 18,000 people each year to a death sentence?

Do we not have an overall system that is in some crucial ways a "death-care" system? And, does anyone deny that as a holder of an insurance policy (or coverage from a group policy) that we are at the mercy of the insurance companies--faceless employees--at the critical moment when we might need them? They can, and do, deny coverage after someone has paid premiums for years. Afterall, profits are the bottom line. Yet, I'm one of the Americans who is satisfied with my health coverage. But, I've never needed serious care. That's when my life would be placed in the hands of someone sitting in a cubicle of my insurance company, someone who would lose her job if she does not conform to meeting corporate profit goals.

No wonder people in other countries are amazed at the system under which we suffer. Do they complain about theirs? Endlessly. Does probably every other developed country have a better system, overall, than ours--but not necessarily the best doctors, nurses, hospitals, technology? Almost certainly--unless you are of the rich class of Americans who can freely purchase the best.

In addition, we force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France that number is zero; Britain zero; Japan zero; and Germany zero. This is criminal.

Furthermore, the U.S. private-enterprise, for-profit health-insurance system has the highest administrative costs in the world. U.S. companies spend approx. 20 % on nonmedical costs, while it is only 6% in Canada--run by government bureaucrats--while providing universal coverage. France has universal coverage while spending 4% on administrative costs; Taiwan spends 1.5%. This is one reason we need a government option: to force down costs.

And, of course, American life expectancy is not the highest; and our infant mortality rate is not anywhere close to the best, and in some places in the U.S. it approaches poor country levels. Too bad for them.

One protestor outside the Tampa meeting held a poster that reads something about "government takeover" of the health-care industry. Is this intentional disinformation or ignorance? Because it is just not true; it should be countered with the truth, along with the other two absurdities of the troika of scare tactics: death panels and "socialized medicine."

We really must have real debate in the public forum about health care in America. But mobocracy seems to have taken over with a campaign of disinformation.

Here's another reason we need real information so that Congress can decide: the GAO, I believe, has projected that by 2020 40% of the entire national economy (the GDP) will be made up by health care. My rough estimate is that might amount to some 7 to 8 trillion dollars. Is this why the scare tactics are so shrill? Some groups stand to make profits beyond belief. You have to ask, Why the scare tactics? Who is behind them? Is it a power play? Is it simply to cripple the Obama administration for the next three years? Is it about the mid-term elections? Why?

UNDER MARBLER SKIES

In fifth grade I won the coveted marble championship,

a sport requiring the marbler to mentally calculate

distances, directions, angles and carom trajectories,

a sport cerebral, but also strenuous and boyish,

crouching in the dirt in the outdoors...

at that distant time beneath cloud-scraping oaks

playing bombsies under silver Sputnik skies.

Secretively, away from my marbler pals, I was a big reader

and would have loved to have won the Spelling Bee;

but at the beginning of character formation

my self-concept of Scholar-Marbler was still inchoate,

developing to my present life as an aggie taw...

a grown boy of knuckle-down exercise regimen

playing potties, shooting with orthographically written words.

Sometimes wistfully returning for a while to simpler times

of dirt-crawling, sky-gaping boyhood innocence,

I try real, real hard to look around beyond the ring

with caroming agate-thoughts and upward gaze,

noticing and remembering...

marking and minding the winners-keepers games

playing keepsies out under tall, oak-scraped marbler skies.

HEALTH-CARE RECRUITMENT

Groupthink reigns in many sections of the American populace. To wit, nowhere in one of the proposed health-care bills before Congress (sponsored by Reps. Dingell, Rangel, Waxman and others) does it indicate that "intellectual standards" will be lowered for admittance to medical schools. That is the conclusion of some political bloggers who have led some people into a feeding frenzy embarrassing to behold. One does not like to witness such baseness springing forth from fellow countrymen.

Some sections of the proposed bill (beginning around page 880) are designed to recruit pre-med students to the domains of family medicine, general pediatrics, general internal medicine, and geriatrics--non-specialties, all--and then give some preference to those medical schools which have established programs that recruit from minority and disadvantaged populations (who could be white). As far as I know, most medical schools do this already.

And, recruitment does not necessarily mean lower standards. Let's say the University of Kentucky Med School recruits students from the Appalachian region of the State, then it would receive some preference under the proposed bill. One impetus for this type of program is to encourage doctors to return to those disadvantaged areas from which they are recruited, such as Appalachia.

Remember: by about 2047 there will be no majority ethnic group in the U.S. I'd say it would be advantageous, looking forward from the present, that we have a cadre of doctors who are Hispanic, black, and others, including Native American, trained to work in those respective communities.

Social engineering? I suppose so. But let's say there is a bright black or Hispanic student from an inner-city school who shows promise and desire to become a family or general pediatrics or geriatrics doctor--if you do not support the part of the proposed bill that would encourage med schools to recruit from those populations, then what better ideas do you have? Can you think this through without recourse to accusations of imaginary racism, Hitlerism, and take-away-your-freedomism?

CORRUPTED CURRICULUM?

I have recently read some reactionary distortions maligning Newton [Massachusetts] Public Schools (NPS) and probably public schools in general. This is part of a strain of thinking that sees public education as corrupted by politics, political correctness, and social engineering. It is a continuance of the arguments that began with the discussion about multicultural education, in the 1980s.

Since it is a public school system, NPS falls under the curriculum guidelines of the State of Massachusetts and follows education standards of the pertinent professional educators' organizations, such as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

It is a distortion to claim that the "number one priority" in the math curriculum in NPS is to actively teach "respect for differences," and other goals that promote anti-racism, anti-discrimination, and the like. Instead, the latter are listed as the first "outcome"--all the other outcomes are math-related. In addition to the overall "goal" of the math curriculum--"for all students to understand mathematical concepts and processes"--there are seven "objectives," all math, plus "content strands," all math.

One blogger claimed that class time apparently is spent teaching students to "see prejudice everywhere" (even in math classes)--another distortion. Because a desired "outcome" lists anti-discriminative behavior does not mean time in a math class, or any class, is spent "teaching" this value.

Incidentally, for the worried reactionaries among you, a study was completed in 2008, in California, that shows that young people actually do exhibit the values of anti-discrimination, etc. These positive behaviors are probably occurring among young people without any class time devoted to these behavior outcomes, because they are values now prevalent in society. NPS is simply acknowledging the desired social reality (not as a teaching objective) in its curriculum. Good for them.

MIDDLE EARTH IMAGINARY

Having recently visited England, I disagree somewhat with J.R.R. Tolkien's statement that "subcreation" is the invention of a totally imaginary, fully articulated world. In truth, it seems to me that the "subcreation" springs from the physical world and landscape in which one already lives and usually is not "totally imaginary." At least in Tolkien's case, the philologist of medieval Scandinavian languages lived in a land of ancient trees and ancient Druidic mysteries (England) which informed at least some substrate of his fertile imagination.

Could Middle Earth have been subcreated in the Outback of Australia, if one had no knowledge of rural England? Tolkien, it seems to me, remade--subcreated--the England he knew into a fanciful fantasy land and used biblical themes of the ultimate struggle between forces of light and darkness. His English sense of (real) place became the Middle Earth sense of imaginary place.

To me, England wears antiquity like Sherlock Holmes wears his overcape (coming to a theatre near you [starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law]).

INTRAMURAL LIFE LESSONS

A matter about which many people intimate in their complaints about schooling is something known as the "hidden curriculum." (Yes, I am returned from three weeks in England--one-week pure travel and two archeologizing in the cold mud at a Roman Fort searching for Hadrian's footprints.)

Usually reference to the hidden curriculum is used in the negative sense; e.g., the Hard Times, undemocratic, classist, sexist, racist, ageist, and particularly today, the sexual-orientationist messages (heteronormativity is rampant in schools; witness the popular teen pronouncement, "That's gay") which reverberate between and around the walls of American schools. And, yes, I am sure that a hidden message is conveyed that war is good for all good children and American democracy. Contra that message, one of my favorite sayings, readily repeated to my students, concerning war, is WWII correspondent Ernie Pyle's pithy observation that, "War is hell." (Later, Pyle was machine-gunned in the head and buried with his helmet and boots on.)

What I am aiming for here is that even though I was a rather indifferent K-12 student myself, there were life-enhancing lessons, conveyed by the hidden curriculum which have informed who I am, and, I suspect, who each of you is today. Hopefully, there were sufficiently positive ones to have pointed you toward a life well lived.

In particular, I am reminded of a teacher of math about whose subject matter I cared less than little. In one of his classes I bargained (actually, I rather presumptuously dictated to him) that I would gladly accept a failing grade for the class, if he would acquiesce in my daily retirement to the school auditorium to sit alone and read (at that time science fiction, historical fiction, etc.). I assessed that I had bargained well.

I did not enjoy Mr. Wilcox's class at all, due to the subject matter. However, my point here is that there was a hidden-curriculum lesson that I learned from him: Respect for adults, respect for teachers, respect for people in general, but especially a great deal of respect for him as a person.

Last week we learned that Mr. Wilcox was given two weeks to two months to live. Here is what I wrote on our class website earlier this (late) morning:

Classmates,

I have recently returned from some travel and read (checking my email at a public library in northeast England) with disquiet the medical update on Mr. Wilcox. I join you in sending an invocation to the Universe on his behalf.

When we saw Mr. Wilcox at the Class gathering, in May, he was manifestly radiant in the way that some people become when their soul is beginning to wing its way to Elsewhere. The Soul knows. His address to the group just before he left now seems in hindsight to have been a subconsciously knowing farewell to a group of people, his students, who have so many fond and appreciative memories of a teacher about whom we all continue to this day to highly respect. Those of us who were fortunate to have been there to see him at the gathering were transfixed by his brave, from-the-heart, talk.

Carl Jung said that, "One looks with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings." This you did, Mr. Jim Wilcox, even long after we left your classroom. And for this, we give thanks.

Mr. Wilcox, my math teacher, taught me little math (not his fault). He DID "teach" me an equation to the 10th-power more valuable. You know what it is.

LACHRYMAL CYCLING

Tears are fragrant nectar bathing

the Earth, the place

that provides upwelling springs of water

that fall again to Earth as ever-recycling,

renewing tears that revolve, replenish,

return to my eyes, then again return home

to my place

on Earth.

LENSING EFFECT OF DOWNTOWN MEMORIES

As with any illumination pattern, say the scientists,

some shine brighter than others.

The same with memory.

The lensing effect of light

reflected off a curved rim of any size

collects at a point on the surface--

of coffee in a cup or water in a pool

or even intergalactic rays of spacetimelight

reflecting off the edge of a galaxy--

and focuses and distorts in cusp-curve effect

onto predictable places in spacetime.

So it is with memory.

The relative dimness of some places

is precisely balanced out

by the relative luminosity of other places;

with memory balancing the same way

in a Universal Memory Principle

in which some placetimes are recalled brightly

while others remain dimmed or uncollected.

When I think of my hometown,

the memories traveling as timethoughts

focus in lensing effect

on the once viable downtown of the 1950s-’60s,

concentrating memory rays there

when a vibrant downtown was filled

with the lifelight of people

traveling to town to do their business:

to ambulate, congregate, recreate, inebriate,

and drink coffee with timelight

in focus on their living surfaces

and bloviate with friends and acquaintances

on the corners of time

where few remember to stand today.

I might get a haircut and buy the latest comics:

Superman, Batman or Archie

or watch several movies at the State Theater:

Flash Gordon, Red Ryder, Hopalong Cassidy

and eat chess pie at Winnie’s Grill

and shop for toys at the five-and-dimes

and later, as a teen, play pool at Central Pool Hall

hiding from Dad--I should have been working

at the small-town newspaper in a town

which had a real downtown

where its lifelight flourished

for a time.

And in the past-future time of now

I focus on the cusp-curve lensing effect

of my collected, luminous mind-images

of downtown light past

which is not yet entirely passed.

FROM ANTHROPOCENE TO NECROCENE

From the top: In an article in GSA Today (Feb. 2009), newsletter of the Geological Society of America, 21 scientists discuss evidence for international formalization of the designation of the Anthropocene epoch, as the current interval of anthropogenic global environmental change; i.e., environmental change induced by human action which has global implications. The Anthropocene, they suggest, began around AD 1800, succeeding the Holocene. The scientists are formalizing the reality that we inhabit a human-controlled (or at least overwhelmingly human-impacted) world. The whole Planet has been humanized.

My point: Humans are changing the face of the Earth, its species, even its chemistry to the point that our actions are paramount.

To the bottom: Every day we make small decisions that impact the physical world, both local and global, usually without feeling we are interfering with "Nature." Humans are the controllers now. We decide. It's our Planet to alter in the ways we collectively decide.

It is all altered already. But, will we continue to alter the world in ways that ensure our survival? If not, then a possible remnant of humanity left over after the all-systems crash might label the next epoch the Necrocene: the Death Epoch.

AWARENESSING THE MYSTICAL INCENSE

Have you ever asked the question about reincarnation, about who or what decides about the present circumstances of our individual lives? One answer, a newer, might I say New Age version, is that we as souls determine beforehand, before birth, what is to be accomplished, the lessons to be learned, and probably with whom we learn these spiritual lessons. This is a kind of free-will, self-deterministic worldview of the explanation of the purposes of human existence: we come to learn spiritual lessons that we prenatally determine.

The more traditional view of all this brings in the Law of Karma (Law of Cause and Effect or Law of Reward and Punishment). The concept of karma moves the present circumstances of our lives away from the soul deciding its own goals towards what seems to me to be a bit more mechanistic and impersonal worldview--the Law works in cause-effect application to the life of the soul in each incarnation. Thus, the soul contains within itself the results of its past existences, its past actions, which are deterministic of present circumstances.  

The first view, the soul-decides-its-spiritual-goals worldview probably appeals to Western ideals of primacy of individual free will, in a kind of spiritual individualism. The second view, the more traditional, relies on a "natural" law of the universe, in that karma is applied as impersonal judgment.

Hope this helps. I write this only as background information, about which I expect no one to believe. I'm not sure I believe it (reincarnation and karma) anymore myself. Presently I'm in a period when I seem to have no definite beliefs at all, when I have faith that having no or few definite beliefs is itself a faith that I find acceptable (and probably the most honest state for me).

I seem to be moving away from what I might label a more Hinduistic worldview (in 1985 I was initiated into Surat Shabd yoga or, older name, Radha Soami [it is not Hinduism per se, but a centuries old form of meditation practice], and traveled to an ashram in India four times over the years) towards, once again, a more Buddhistic worldview (I read Zen in the early 1970s and at various times associated with various Buddhist groups and initiated into a Taoist sect, in Taiwan, in 1988). All of this I am increasingly folding into an ecofeminist theology, a pneumatology of Earth Spirit. Thus, as I have long self-labeled, I am pagan-Buddhist-Baptist (and more).

Almost as a prayer and simultaneously a mantra, I still hold to my article of faith that I, we all, are, and should aspire to be, "conscious co-workers of the divine plan," which, of course, presupposes that there is a "divine" and a "plan." It works for me, without my fervently holding belief in the presuppositions, although there does, indeed, seem to be a "plan" to the madness (actually, I have some faith that there is a plan). 

I also seem to be simplifying my beliefs to a very few precepts: 

My body is the temple of the Spirit; 
my mind is my church. 
And, in my mind, which I do not dualistically separate from my body, I practice Minding and Awarenessing. 

These things I DO believe. Beyond these, I have almost no (definite) beliefs.

However, to turn mystical and poetic (as a project of Awarenessing?), I write this: 

My prayers are pure mystical incense 

wafting to Heaven. 
My tears are clear fragrant nectar 

bathing the stars.   

MEET THE AUTHOR AT THE BOOK SIGNING

This I believe: Who we are as beings is who we have "wanted" to be, whether we exactly KNEW it, consciously, or not. On some level, a real level, we have created ourselves (notwithstanding that there are other levels, other forces, that are partially deterministic). To accept responsibility for our lives, the way they have transpired, seems we must recognize the implications of our decisions. Have we not created who we are?

Obviously I lean heavily to the self-creation side. I understand that many people feel controlled by events, that their lives have not been their own. I tend toward the autobiographical self: we write a story that comes true as we author it. We unfold a narrative that we nearly entirely ourselves create, or at least in reaction to those events which seem to come to us unbidden.

Which is it? Is the Universe purely chaotic? Or, do we in some way, somehow, exert some control--again, whether we are conscious of it or not?

Wouldn't it be a nice, possibly highly beneficial, exercise to begin thinking we have a great deal of control, and begin to act as if we do, and as a result, possibly influence the outcomes? But, when things do not SEEM to go our way, we take the attitude that that is okay, too?

Is this too much idealism? Or, is the reality (one reality) that there is power, much power, in positive thinking, and good storytelling--the telling of the story that we have chosen to make happen.

I understand that this kind of thinking brings up a host of philosophical, psychological, theological, and spiritual issues of what it means to be human, what is the I we seem to take as real, what is consciousness, and so on--what in social science is called "agency," a kind of sovereignty of the self.

Let me cut short this line of thinking by saying that the question of selfhood has been long recognized as problematic, including by the ancient Greeks. In the sixth century BC the Buddha claimed that the self is just a name or label given to something that does not really exist. So, if you reread what I wrote above about controlling at least some of our own destiny, the question comes up as to whom, or what, does the controlling. Perhaps it is a beneficial illusion to believe we as individuals actually DO control our life trajectories, in that there might be some power in the praxis.

In any case, it is late, and "I" need to retire for the evening (now 1 a.m.), so that "I" might dream of a "reality" to continue "writing" "my" continuing lifestory.

FLUTTERBY PARADOX

That's it: Lose yourself in "real" life.
And, also find yourself and Self there.
Because the losing is the finding.
And, when we find, what we find,
that's a loss, too.

If we could but see,
myriad things happen in paradox.
Because paradox mysterious
is the wondrous paradigm.
Although paradoxically there really
is no paradigm
that is permanent except love.

Books and gardening--real places
to dwell, where inspired human words
and the voice of the Earth
speak to the soul from the Soul--
will speak to you.

You have inspired me
in many ways. My life,
I, would not be the same
if you had not fluttered in
on your butterfly wings
of paradox.

Make vows, break vows
--that’s fine.
But, always see a vision
of where you want to be
someday.

Then, envision the place
where you are now,
where you are at once lost
and found, where you are
always losing/finding
and seeing and loving.

Now, envision how
you can self-inspire.

Then, sometimes let us know,
let me see something
of what you find (and lose)
in the butterfly Garden
of paradox.

JUST AS IT IS

We might as well cease personalizing
the consequences of impermanence
and imperfection
since life is merely doing
what life does to us and everyone
eventually and often.

It is not out to get us.
It just is.
We should see ourselves as fortunate
to be here now in this Is,
though we are impermanent
though we are imperfect.

The wise prescription
is to not take It personally
because the imperfection itself
is not permanent. And, neither are we.
Is It just? It does not appear to be.
It just is.

This we can know:
We imperfectly
live
impermanently
in the enduring
It-Perfectly-Is.

SUSAN BOYLE AND SIMULACRUM SELF

Insta-celebrity, Scotswoman Susan Boyle has gobsmacked the TV/Youtube world because talent, as is usually thought, must glam itself for presentation, for acceptability. Glamorous she is not.

She has said she does not want to much change herself in adjustment to her newfound fame because it would not be real, it would not be she, her authentic self.

Good for her. Good for us all, as we see an authentic person (at least for now) who just might remain so. Why become a spectacle? Why become a simulacrum of oneself, in which image becomes more "real" than the formerly "real?" And, in which the formerly "real" self gets lost in a funhouse of mirrors, with the way out permanently obscured?

Money, fame, career are terribly tempting. The loss of self must be weighed against winning the world--a dilemma I'm glad I do not have.

It will be interesting to watch Miss Boyle. In some ways I hope she steps back from front stage and dissolves back into a real life. In other ways, would it not be hopeful and inspiring to observe her build a singing career but remain homely, shy, unassuming, unadulterated--and real?

Good luck, Miss Boyle. You'll need to think hard about this turn of events. You'll need to hold onto a self that could get unreal real fast.

PRAY FOR THE OTHER TRADITION

Today I received another mass-forwarded email; this one calling for a day of prayer for a return to "traditional American values." The email message implies that America is going to hell because of its loss of unnamed, supposedly traditional, values. Without analyzing how America has always, in every era, purportedly been "going to hell"--an epicycle around the central Christian belief of America's "fallen nature"--I would like to point out that there is another, alternative tradition in American life: that of the perennial struggle for freedom, for equality, for the poor.

While recognizing the thesis of historians Will and Ariel Durant, who said, "Even the skeptical historian develops a humble respect for religion, since he sees it functioning, and seemingly indispensible, in every land and age"--I would like to draw attention to someone--lawyer and writer Clarence Darrow--who I think represents that vital aspect of American history and very real American traditional value, for which the mass-forwarded email does not represent. Today (18 April) is his birthday (see http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/DARROW.HTM) He was born in Kinsman, Ohio (1857), and fought for unions, racial equality, and the poor. In the 1925 "Monkey Trial," he defended high school teacher John Scopes for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution in a Tennessee school.

If you have not viewed it before, I encourage you to watch the movie, Inherit the Wind, about heroic Darrow and the Scopes Monkey Trial. This, too, I maintain, represents traditional American values.

Are the writers and forwarders of the email calling for a day of prayer concerned with assertive government policies to help the poor? Are they concerned about social justice? Are they concerned about the end of racism? Do they advocate for some redistribution of wealth in America? Are they concerned for marriage equality?

No, I think not. Their prayerful concerns are political in a negative sense, in that they divert attention away from an agenda of social justice. They can have their revival in the "wilderness," like the 1801-1805 Great Revival which swept the frontier in Kentucky and spread throughout the South, but it will do nothing to ameliorate the material basis of American inequality.

For this, the traditional prayerful might need our prayers.

ARCHEOLOGY OF LIGHT

I'm in vivace mood this morning. Let me explain. For some years I have envisioned myself sitting in Durham Cathedral--the world's most magnificent Norman Romanesque church, begun in 1093, and a UNESCO World Heritage site along with Durham Castle and the Monastery on the rock--walking the cloisters, sure, and gazing at the motes of floating color streaming from the rose windows, but mostly just sitting in the soaring majesty of the nave, imbibing the near-timeless atmosphere in inward/outward contemplation.

Continuing the story: This week, I received notice that I will be assisting at the Roman Fort on Tyne archeology site. This is the A.D. first-century fort that protected the main seaport and town for construction of Hadrian's Wall, which begins 4 miles away and runs 80 miles across the narrowest neck of Britain south of Scotland. The dig is located in South Shields, close to Newcastle upon Tyne, on a hill above the North Sea.

This will be my second dig; the other was a Mayan site. So, I have traveled a bit before (most recent was my second study trip last October to China and Japan) and excavated with the archeologists.

But, here's the part that has vivace notated in the margins of my Sunday morning hymnal: the Roman dig is about 15 miles from Durham.

Visions have power; visions solidify. I shall sit and drink the light in Durham Cathedral.

IMBIBING THE BEST MEDICINES

Today (22 March) is the birthday of Billy Collins, twice Poet Laureate, who wrote the top-selling book of poetry this century. He laments that the Romantics killed off humor in poetry, unlike Chaucer and Shakespeare who were both ribaud and humorous.

Here are two stanzas from his short poem "Introduction to Poetry" which shows some of his poetic humor:

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

Perhaps you have read Collins' "Lanyard" (linked below) in which he humorizes (don't we need that sort of word today in our individual and social lexicons?) the boyhood--and girlhood?--practice at camp of fashioning something rather impractical for a parent. I did it--at Vacation Bible School. My mom was so understandingly appreciative of the near useless objects, including a lanyard of which Collins poetizes!

Thank you, poet Billy, for reminding us of the filial-parent relationship of patient love. It is never useless nor impractical.

Here is Billy Collins' reading of "Lanyard":

video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EjB7rB3sWc

IS GREENLAND MELTING?

Whether Greenland is melting or not is a vital issue for future public policy and future human life on this Planet. Below is a brief discussion.

Recently I navigated to a website http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/30/the-ice-in-greenland-is-growing/ (provided by some global-warming deniers) about ice growth in Greenland (it contends that the Greenland ice sheet [GrIS] is actually increasing; and, therefore, global warming is a myth) and found that it is only anecdotal about snow drifts building up around a DEW radar installation--with a photo to prove it! In addition, to buttress its argument, the website provides a map and reference to a research article by Johannessen et al. (2005. "Recent Ice-Sheet Growth in the Interior of Greenland," Science, 310(5750):1013-1016). I went to that article and read that the researchers measured the altitude of the GrIS above 1,500 meters, between 1992 and 2003, and found that it increased in height an average of 6.4 centimeters per year. Below 1,500 meters the average elevation change was minus 2.0 cm/yr. (the thinning margins of the ice sheet), for an average increase of the entire ice sheet of 5.4 cm/yr.

But, the Johannessen et al. research was not carried out to determine volume, it was simply about height above sea level of two separate regions of the GrIS--interior and margins. And, it makes no sense to average a positive and a negative to arrive at average change for the whole ice sheet, when the interior is a far larger expanse than the narrow (but growing) margins.

So, I found a more recent article (Schuenemann et al. 2009. "Synoptic Forcing of Precipitation over Greenland: Climatology for 1961-99," Journal of Hydrometerology 10) which states, "Recent changes of the GrIS include not only a thickening of the interior of the ice sheet [i.e., it is increasing in elevation in the interior, as the Johannessen article above shows] but also a thinning along the edges" [as the Johannessen above also found]. But, importantly, it goes on to state that, "The most recent analyses have shown AN OVERALL NET LOSS OF MASS because of increasing melt and ice discharge" [my emphasis].

From the above, I conclude that the GrIS is increasing in elevation in the interior, while it is thinning and shrinking at the edges, and that OVERALL there is a decrease in mass. This is the (hugely significant) problem: the Greenland ice sheet is melting overall.

Furthermore, the melting of the GrIS, say Schuenemann et al., "has very likely contributed to the rise in sea level" due to its "capacity to influence global climate..." in several ways.

I thank those deniers for the continuing challenge to find for myself the science of global climate change. I also thank them for the continuing confirmation that there are interests who present anecdotal evidence (e.g. snow drifts building up around a radar site) and link it to research that does not support what the anecdotal evidence purports to say (e.g. the Johannessen et al. article above).

Once again, I feel confident about what science is telling us about global climate change. But, I continue to wonder about the deniers. Why not stay with the science, instead of promoting an anti-science? Believe me, if science begins to tell me that global climate change is not happening, or that the end result might be a global cooling (which is possible, if there is a tipping point with the Greenland ice-sheet melt setting off a reduction of the North Atlantic haline circulation)--or whatever science tells us--then I will believe what the CONSENSUS of scientists tells us.

Why not? To do otherwise is to take an ideological stance that will continue to confuse the public about what science says is happening and will delay critical changes that humanity will have to make if it is to survive. The issue of whether Greenland is melting is one of the critical issues that we must leave to science and not to ideology. It is crucial that we believe the science. It is folly to do otherwise.

AN EMBERED LIFE REMEMBERED

When life looms indecipherable,
the fire raging in the attic
fueled by a lifetime of memories
like a half-forgotten diary bundled
in an old travel trunk, sends up
into the ember-streaked night
charred diary pages of worry
rising on updrafts of chance
escaping on determined winds
and then drifting down
into a wasteland of recovery
where you can find
the charred pages of worry
lying in an improbable oasis
of open-eyed optimism.

Recalling the fire in the attic
and reading the script of memories
in the newfound diary spaces,
a healing life, a renewed life,
can be written on the blank pages
that are yet scorched at the edges
by the already lived embered life
smoldering and openly remembered.

PAS DE DEUX WITH THE TERPSICHOREAN UNIVERSE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6r4KT8-VX0

In this deeply existential song, Human (video link above; lyrics below), by The Killers, with its stirring querying of the meaning of human life, the ultimate question it asks is whether we are merely human or whether we are also dancers, participants in the larger context, the Great Dance of the Universe.

It asks whether humans exist as no more than individuated life forms, scheduled to live out a short existence here on Earth with no eternal prospects after we "cut the cord." Or, whether as humans we are active, ensouled bodies dancing in the Great Recital of the Universe.

We live all-too-brief life spans as individuated life forms, as humans who ask existential questions looking for ultimate, meaningful answers. The lyrics say, "I'm on my knees looking for the answer," but "there is no message we're receiving." This indicates humans exist in an unfathomable universe in which we live as "nervous" beings, with "cold hands" who must assume responsibility for acts of free will as we question our very existence.

At moments in our individuated lives, the lyrics say, we "see an open door" to the Beyond, in which at the last moment of life, "when the call comes" and we are on "the platform" ready for the final take off, we "clear our hearts," kindly acquiesce and "surrender" in a final leap of faith.

The lyrics say humans leave behind grace, virtue, good, soul, romance, devotion--the things that make us distinctly human, but we participate in a larger show, that of being Dancers in the Great Dance of the terpsichorean Universe, the "home" of which we dream.

Notice the band (in the official video) performs in a nonbiological mise-en-scene of nonhuman life forms. The tiger and lion signify the Universe-as-predator on individuated human lives; the vulture signifies death, our absorption into the Great Beyond. The band at the end gazes out beyond Earth, beyond individuated human life, to that open door.

The answer to the plaintive, existential question of whether we exist as humans or as dancers is that we, in essence, exist as both. In truth, we are embodied souls living within the greater OverSoul, the Atma.

The task, then, is disremembering the existential questions--plenty of that anon--and dance now in unfettered pas de deux with the embracing Universe. This song, by The Killers, provides some fullness-of-faith moments in which we can do just that.

Human
by The Killers

I did my best to notice
When the call came down the line
Up to the platform of surrender
I was brought but I was kind

And sometimes I get nervous
When I see an open door
Close your eyes, clear your heart
Cut the cord

Are we human or are we dancers?
My sign is vital, my hands are cold
And I'm on my knees looking for the answer
Are we human or are we dancers?

Pay my respects to grace and virtue
Send my condolences to good
Give my regards to soul and romance
They always did the best they could

And so long to devotion
You taught me everything I know
Wave goodbye, wish me well
You've gotta let me go

Are we human or are we dancers?
My sign is vital, my hands are cold
And I'm on my knees looking for the answer
Are we human or are we dancers?

Will your system be alright
When you dream of home tonight?
There is no message we're receiving
Let me know, is your heart still beating?

Are we human or are we dancers?
My sign is vital, my hands are cold
And I'm on my knees looking for the answer

You've gotta let me know
Are we human or are we dancers?
My sign is vital, my hands are cold
And I'm on my knees looking for the answer
Are we human or are we dancers?

Are we human or are we dancers?
Are we human or are we dancers?

ZINGING ALPENTHOUGHTS

Like transhumant Pyrenean shepherds
my thoughts at times nourish in lowlands
revolving about quotidian physicality
such as whether Cajun seasoning works
in adzuki bean soup simmering on my hearth
or whether Roncal sheep cheese
will make my palate zing
--make it zing and zing.

At times my mind migrates upslope
to nourish seasonally at montane heights
on alpine meadow flowers and forbs
of rarified thought
such as whether black holes sing
or on the topology of the Universe,
whether space curves back onto itself
returning to where it all began
with no edges or ledges falling into nowhere
and whether as it circles around
it sings
--circling around it sings.

I’d like to think that space-time,
matter, light, and thought all sing
as they zing upslope and down
and round and round.
And, like alpenglow at dusk and dawn
irradiating empyrean heights in lights
of life and thought flowing up, down, around
in a knowable Universe of arcing shape
that thinks, knows, and sings
--it thinks and knows
and knows
as it sings and glows.

TOPONYMING EAST SEA

The Korea Times carried out a study of maps from 45 countries to ascertain prevalence of usage of the toponyms "East Sea" (preferred by Koreans) and "Sea of Japan" (the usage most prevalent worldwide). It found that 26% of maps it surveyed use both toponyms in this exact form: "Sea of Japan (East Sea)." An additional 3% use only the designation East Sea. Thus, 29% of the maps surveyed use the toponym East Sea in one way or the other.

Since this campaign by Korea to change the cartographic toponyming began only recently, in 2002, I'd say that a 29% usage rate internationally is fairly significant. Korea's campaign has been successful, but not ultimately satisfying to Koreans, as manifest on various Internet forums.

Furthermore, my fairly new (maybe 2007) National Geographic large wall map in my classroom uses both designations in the parenthetical form above. Also, my Prentice Hall high-school world geography textbook (World Geography: Building a Global Perspective, 2005) uses East Sea, in the parenthetical form above, in the four maps which appear in the chapter covering Japan and the Koreas. However, the textbook does not use the two toponyms elsewhere, e.g. in the atlas section; but, perhaps it will update all its maps in later editions.

The practice of using local toponyms, which would partly assuage nationalist sentiments, can be employed by Google maps because they can show local usage depending on where the person and his/her Internet server are located. Thus, Koreans, in Korea, accessing the East Asian region in Google maps would see the toponym East Sea. Not so easily done for printed maps and atlases.

This brings up a serious cartographic problem: Should the Korea Strait also be renamed "Korea Strait (Japan Strait)"? Should the Straits of Florida be renamed "Straits of Florida (Straits of Cuba /Straits of Bahamas)"? Should the Arabian Sea be parenthetically labelled Indian Sea or Pakistani Sea or both? I've heard that in Indonesia the ocean to its west is named the Indonesian Ocean. How about the U.S. renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Sea of Mississippi?

Perhaps if rampant nationalism slowed down there would not be such interest in this cartographic dilemma. Not much hope for that.

UNSCIENTIFIC MIND

I have been wondering about the mind-set of those who are drawn to rather fantastic and certainly scientifically unsupported explanations of phenomena. I'm not sure whether this mind-set is more widespread now or not. It does seem there is a great deal of it these days. I know that this mind-set retains an attitude that truth is hidden (literally, occult) from mainstream, scientific view; and that it is "revealed" somehow to self-trained "investigators" (and nearly no one else; it's good for book sales!).

I recall my excitement in the late 1960s to read Emmanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision, which was widely read and finally discounted by scientists. My interest in it ended when it was attacked by them. That was good enough for me.

The question, then, that I am interested in concerns the mind-set of discounting science and believing what is unscientific. Why? What is this need about? Why distrust what science says? Is not the true history of the Sumerians, for example--as written by historians who use established methods of historiography--sufficiently wonderous? Is this a phenomenon that is more prevalent in the U.S.? Is it growing? If so, why?

SOMATOPIA INSIDE, UTOPIA OUTSIDE

I had to go way back into my blog files to find the following (now with slight revisions). Should I apologize for the transparent academic feel of my writings? Invariably they do not begin that way, but quickly turn toward things I have read in academic-type journals and fold into my own experiences and thoughts as I attempt to answer real-life questions.

Postmodernity, with its disillusionment of Grand Narratives, absolute truth, rationality, progress, optimism, and the ideal society, encompasses a variety of perspectives on our contemporary condition. Postmodernity replaced modernity's outward gaze of communitarian utopia with the inward gaze of the body as the utopian project. This project is about the attainment of the perfect, imperishable body. The new postmodern utopian project of the perfect body has been called Somatopia, an inward gazing abandonment of outward utopia.

We live in an era of the crisis of the self in the Age of Information--individualization without community. Without situatedness in community, we seek our own individual reality and truth. One strand of this era is the medicalization of society, again due to the Information Age. One of its fantasies is that of the body perfect, the fantasy of bodily perfection. It's healthism run amuck, without rootedness in an outward community, where we formerly situated ourselves. Think of the parade of perfect bodies in the media; bodies that are sculpted, medicalized, cosmeticized, surgically manipulated, air-brushed, and starved. Combine this with the rush to self-diagnose, self-screen, self-prevent, self-treat, and self-medicate. Further, look at people in packed gyms straining toward the youthful look. Much of this has come about because of the medical-health information readily available in the Information Age. We can now research, self-diagnose, and buy over-the-counter--all in the effort to delay ageing.

But, is Somatopia a utopia or a dystopia? It seems we are becoming a population of the "worried well"--we might be well, but we are worried we might not be for long. The ultimate trajectory of the futurist utopian body project is post-human, cryogenic, transgenic, cyborgian, bionic, and computerized. The postmodern condition is that we seek eternal life here on Earth, while we live as atomized, individualized bodies, in a globalized non-society.

However, the inward-body Somatopistic project cannot sustain itself without a healthy society and Planet in which we live as bodies. Ultimately, we must balance the two utopian drives--inward/body, outward/society--to achieve healthy bodies in a healthy society on a healthy Planet.

In short, Somatopia can take place only on a healthy Planet. Our embodied spaces, in order to maintain their health, must exist within Planetary spaces that are equally sound. After all, we live as biological bodies of embodied Planetary space.

RISK SOCIETY

Jurisprudence is instructive because it teaches us about social values and how we assess them, including the worth of the individual in social context, which includes the context of the economic system.

In the McDonald's coffee case (see my following entry below), the Wikipedia article says it was McDonald’s corporate policy to dispense coffee at an extreme temperature and that it calculated the number of people injured in the past and who would be injured in the future did not warrant change in corporate policy. Naturally, the lawsuit was directed at the corporate level and not at workers at the restaurant who were following corporate policy.

Also, using the principle of “comparative negligence” the customer was found 20% responsible for the scalding and McDonald’s 80%. Thus, a jury of peers, hearing the evidence presented by both sides, adjudicated the shared responsibility of the two sides for the incident. Again, American jurisprudence helps society understand how we collectively assess social values. In this case, the jury of citizens ruled that McDonald’s was indeed negligent in its policy.

Risk is tough to assess, and, increasingly modern society is full of risk, no doubt. See Anthony Giddens about what he calls the Risk Society. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_society. Risk is increasingly manufactured, human-generated risk. This is one reason we have legal institutions to sort some of it out for us, since the traditional institutions of church, extended family, and village community were supplanted by the nuclear family and nation state and, yes, legal instutions.

Many people rue the fact that America is so litigious. But, without our legal institutions, there would be little sorting at all.

DEATH OF COMMON SENSE OR CORPORATE MALFEASANCE?

The notorious case of the hapless woman receiving a supposedly huge award for her McDonald’s coffee burns is an interesting study. Read about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald

She received third-degree burns, underwent skin grafting, remained hospitalized for eight days, and was medically treated for two years afterward. Initially the woman asked for only $20,000 for her medical costs. But, after McDonald’s repeatedly refused to settle, her final settlement was under $600,000, not the $2.7 million in punitive damages that the jury awarded. Previously there had been over 700 reported instances of McDonald’s superheated coffee burning people before the case of the Houston woman. Evidently, McDonald’s understood the dangers of its product and was willing to risk any repercussions.

In my estimation it was not a frivolous lawsuit. Sometimes it takes legal action to rectify an egregiously negligent situation (at times with ample warnings of things remiss in their products and practices) and indemnify those people who are on the tragic end of misguided corporate decisions. Yes, we are a litigious society, but there are interests who, to enhance profits, will make cold calculations that they know will damage real people. If that is their calculus, then they should at least pay for some of the human wreckage they knowingly leave behind.

Some people have placed blame on the woman. Others have reasoned that there Is no evil Ronald McDonald plotting in corporate offices to harm humans. But, the facts are that McDonald's' lawyers and corporate officers did, in fact, make the calculation that the corporation would gain monetarily by superheating its coffee--it was coporate policy, not a decision at the level of individual restaurants or individual workers. From the Wikipedia article: "McDonald's quality control manager, Christopher Appleton, testified that this number of injuries [more than 700 reports] was insufficient to cause the company to evaluate its practices."

If corporate malfeasance is not punished, then we are left to the mercy of the bottom line. Is this not common sense?

TRISKAIDEKAPHOBIA AND SACRED THIRTEEN

Triskaidekaphobia was widespread in Europe by Medieval times and in other places, such as ancient Persia. But, among other places and peoples, such as with Jews and Sikhs, the number 13 is a positive number (perhaps triskaidekaphilia). There is much speculation about how triskaidekaphobia came about--stories about 13 attendees at the Last Supper, etc.

But, what is more interesting, at least to me, is why the number 13 was a sacred number in pre-Christian, and further back in pre-Indo-European, Europe. I attended a lecture of professor Marija Gimbutas, UCLA archeology professor of Indo-European studies and of "Old Europe" (before the Indo-European invasions of the 5th millenium BCE), and twice talked to her on the telephone around 1991 (unbeknownst to me she was dying at the time) and bought one of her expensive books. She claimed, as do others, that a very important part of Old European (pagan) religion (which existed for tens of thousands of years) was based on the number 13, because the lunar calendar has 13 full moons or new moons. Also, there are 13 days of waxing moon before a full moon and then 13 waning days.

Taking this one step further, there is correlation between moon cycles and the human female menstrual cycle. Afterall, the mens in that word refers to moon, referring to 13 female menses in a year. It should, then, not be surprising that Old Europe had a moon goddess.

Long before Christianity, according to Gimbutas, when Indo-Europeans invaded Old Europe, the peaceful, egalitarian, Mother Earth-based religion which had priestesses was supplanted by a warlike, male sky god-based religion. The old religion had to be destroyed (usually the first project of domination); thus, the number 13 was made rather taboo. And, females were relegated to inferior status: no priestesses, no moon goddess, little respect.

It makes a good story, although I'm sure it is controversial among archeologists. I've not heard anything lately about this area of thinking. There is a very interesting book that includes this information called The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, by Riane Eisler, first published in 1987, with a new epilogue in 1995. You ardent feminists must read this (but surely you already know of it).

CROWSCAPES OF HOME

During an era of impressionist living
I would drive out to the Bluegrass countryside
in deepest snows
and traipse alone for many hours
through chiaroscurist black/white
snowscapes of hills and fields
descending deeply incised valleys
in that karst topography
deeply incised in my brain folds
and walk alone in icy streams
and talk to crows
and sit alone under rock overhangs
never wanting to return
to whatever one must eventually return to
except perhaps I have never
really returned from wherever I was
when conversing (never really alone)
with the crowscapes and snowscapes
of Home.

HATE BEYOND LIMINAL

As long as media personality Rush Limbaugh is in the driver's seat of Republican Party rhetoric, the Democratic Party looks safe in winning elections. And, rhetoric it is--arrogant, stentorian bombast that seeks to divide the electorate.

Yes, Mr. Limbaugh is popular among a subset of GOP activists, but this insures the Dems will win elections, because Mr. Limbaugh alienates a great deal of the middle. And, the middle is required for winning elections today.

Re racism, I have heard Mr Limbaugh make what I considered liminally racist comments, slightly under the threshold for what would be considered blatantly racist. However, as far as effective rhetoric employed to promote fear, liminal comments are quite effective.

But, Mr Limbaugh goes far beyond the liminal. Can anyone deny that he excels in generating fear? Listen to his vitriolic use of the word "liberal" to provide his listeners an object to hate. This reminds me of the "Two Minutes Hate" propaganda film with hate exercises spewed everyday on telescreens in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Similarly, Mr. Limbaugh, to me, is the dystopian personification of entertainer-exercised hate, far beyond the liminal in our all-too-real divisive present.

Again, I'd say the Democratic Party should be quite pleased the leadership of GOP opposition (at least publicly) is now firmly in the hands of fear-mongering Mr. Limbaugh. His is an alienating, divisive, threatening political rhetoric which motivates a minority sector, a sector of the electorate who do not want true discussion of issues; they want to be handed a political line they can accept without a full airing. Mr. Limbaugh, the entertainer, wants to create true believers (the so-called "Ditto-Heads") and garner high listener ratings numbers and collect a huge salary.

But, majoritarian politics will always need a uniting figure. Mr. Limbaugh is not it. The Dems should be majorly happy.

AUTOCTHONY COMING AND GOING

From dirt we came. We, I'll say it, perhaps as would Kentucky essayist, novelist, poet Wendell Berry, are autocthonous beings, as are all creatures, or at least we should be. Wonderful word, autocthonous: "formed or originating in the place where found," as we miraculously spring up from the soil of our home place. Native American literature is largely a discourse about place and one's spiritual connection (or not) to one part of the Earth.

When we are alienated from our place we experience solastalgia, a term I found in the journal, Australian Psychiatry, that indicates environmentally induced distress. I speculate that as we are exposed to greater environmental change, we will experience more solastalgia, more alienation from the place we live. The remedy: engendering the feeling and practice of living as autocthon, a creature who truly dwells in place. For me, perhaps I should return to playing marbles. To dirt we shall return.

DOCTOR FRANKENSTEIN'S MIDDLE EAST CREATURE

There's a great deal of evidence resulting in belief by American diplomats and those in the intelligence community that the future of Iraq very much depends on what Iran decides to do. The current "peace" in Iraq, which is not very peaceful, is a pause in which hundreds of Sunni men who participated in the U.S.-allied Awakening have been assassinated, either by death squads linked to the Iraqi ministry of the interior or Iran's intelligence service. This leads to the conclusion that the Surge has not created the conditions for permanent peace and the context exists for another flare up of violence, notwithstanding the recent, peaceful elections.

The American war in Iraq has created the conditions for Iran to become the major player in the region and it holds most of the cards in Iraq. Whatever the outcome, and it might be a major confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, it is Iran and its actions in Iraq and the bargain it forges with the U.S. that will be the force largely driving the future of the region.

The U.S. as Doctor Frankenstein has created its own monster. Let's see if it can be contained; or whether, as in Ms. Wollstonecraft Shelly's novel, events have turned and the Doctor has lost control.

REMEMBER MARBLER SKIES

My former spouse and I were in 1st-, 4th-, and 5th-grade classes together. In the 5th grade, she won the spelling bee; I won the coveted marble championship. Marbles is such a cerebral sport, requiring the marbler to mentally calculate distances, directions, angles and carom trajectories. It is a strenuous, manly sport, too--crouching in the dirt in the outdoors, at that distant time under scraping-cloud oaks at the Central City [Kentucky] Grade School, in the 1950s, beneath azure Sputnik skies.

Secretively, I was a big reader and would have loved to have won the spelling bee. But, at that time my concept of scholar-athlete was still inchoate. Later, I began to imagine myself to be both--now with a dedicated exercise regimen, caroming marble-thoughts, and orthographically correct written words.

But, wish I could return for a while to the simple times of dirt-crawling, marble-playing, sky-watching boyhood innocence. I would try real, real hard to look around and notice and remember...and remember...oak-scraped skies.

BRAINBUSH MIRACLEGROW

Tea is infused using leaves (preferably the last three) of the Camellia sinensis, the tea bush. The flowering pink or white camellia shrub that graces winterscapes when little else is blooming is its cousin.

Thoughts go to the mythic Chinese monk, who, while struggling to remain awake during meditation, exasperatedly ripped his eyelids off, threw them to the ground and there miraculously grew the first tea bush.

Nothing more civilized than in the afternoon, after teaching teenagers, to return home to infuse a hot cup of tea (preferably three), either oolong or green, and perhaps sip while gazing out the window upon sky and nearby trees and think sky thoughts of life's meanings. Thoughts that sometimes I rip out of my brainbush in attempts to awaken. It is rather a miracle that thoughts grow at all.

NOT BY CHANCE

My 16-year-old daughter, Sanjina Marie, and I made our periodic trek yesternight to one of the big-box bookstores here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (with soymilk latte for me and hot chocolate for her) so she could lose herself for hours in the fantasy section and I search for articles to annotate for Journal of Geography. There I found a new poem by fellow Kentuckian Wendell Berry in the current Harper's (Feb. 2009, p. 20). Its title is "By Chance, Of Course," is just 26 lines and has a startling last two lines, which I will not repeat here.

I will, though, copy its prolegomenon with my insertions:

"While attending the annual convocation of Cause Theorists and Bigbangists [must have been a conference of theoretical astrophysicists] at the local provincial research university [most likely the University of Kentucky, where he has long been an adjunct professor; the use of "provincial," of course, is mildly pejorative and has the connotation of "lacking refinement"], the mad farmer [ha! W. B. himself; neat contrast to scientists] intercedes from the backrow" [a clever way to introduce the piece by literally emplacing himself, as poet-observer, on a distant perch where he can observe the scientistic view of life].

The poem is about the reality of Chance, in which--it is clear (caustic and emphatic ending, as I said)--W. B. does not believe. Berry's is a spiritual view of the Universe, I'd say, without talking directly about religion.

Sorry I did not copy the entire poem; but I wanted you to seek it out, if this is your wont.

To be fair to science, though, it does not...oh, heck, let science speak for itself. Our everyday experience of life is indeed poetic.

AUTUMN LIVES

As leaves fall from a tree
and the tree lives still
we drop from the living
while life goes on and on
as old leaves fall
before new lives appear.

But as nothing lasts
forever and ever
the old tree disappears
from the landscape
replaced by new trees
with their leaves.

And the old landscape falls
rises and falls into new
geomorphologies
with rejuvenating vistas
new shapes and forms
and new existences

that appear and flourish
rising and falling
and live not remembering
for a time like young leaves
on a yet vibrant ancient tree
somewhere in a new lifescape.

COUNTERING PSYCHOTERRATIC ILLNESS

I wonder whether we are all headed to a Truman Show artificial reality in what some are calling a "post-human" world.

Seems the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary has recently perturbed three groups of Brits: Christians, naturalists, and historians. One thing it has done is to drop all references related to nature. http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/081209/entertainment/axed_from_oxford

This reminds me of the discussion and controversy surrounding the publishing of E. D. Hirsch's Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (1987), which included as an appendix 500 facts (I believe) that Americans should know to be "literate" culturally, so as to be able to take part in public dialogue. (Later, Hirsch would publish dictionaries of cultural literacy.) We in education at that time (I was working on an MEd in secondary social studies while teaching high school) were strongly skeptical of his pedagogical recommendation to simply teach cultural facts. The teaching of facts is not effective pedagogy. But now I wonder how young people are to absorb sufficient cultural background, or cultural literacy, for continuing social cohesion. This, it seems, has not been resolved, and today does not appear to be on anyone's agenda. That a dictionary drops references to nature is not encouraging.

In a related matter, I ran across an article in Australian Psychiatry (2007, vol. 15 Supplement) in which the researchers studied people in New South Wales, Australia, in terms of their psychological stress induced by the persistent drought there. The researchers were applying the new (since 2003) psychiatric term solastalgia: the earth-related mental illness where people's mental wellbeing is threatened by the severing of "healthy" links between themselves and their home and territory. Geographers call this a loss of sense of place or placelessness. In the U.S. data relate that Americans get out into nature less; e.g. there are decreasing numbers of hunting and fishing licenses issued each year.

The connections I am making between a British dictionary that drops vocabulary reflecting the natural environment (flowers and landscape terms), and the loss of cultural literacy in America, and the great changes that both our local and global environments are going through is that we are headed toward increasing experience of solastalgia. In these times, it seems to me, we need greater emphasis on solidifying our experience of where we live, the localities in which we are embedded, our sense of local places.

I know many people revere the beauty, even sacredness, of nature, etc. Perhaps we, and many other adults who understand, will someday become docents to reintroduce younger people to their natural environment. Perhaps we are the reserve cadre of wise old ones--who feel "at home" in the world--who shall one day help to combat the widespread lived experience and pathology of solastalgia. It will be therapy for those missing the nurturance of their "mother"--Mother Nature. Nature is not only beautiful (and sacred), it is needed for human mental health.

AFTER THE CRUSADES COMES THE CALIPHATE

Note: The following note (now with revisions) I posted on a Turkish English-language political blog, at the end of an opinion-piece about the recent American presidential election: http://www.worldbulletin.net/author_article_detail.php?id=1876

I'd say America is not in a "Crusade" against the whole "Muslim world," as you say. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are against very specific, regressive subsections of the Muslim world--not against all Muslims--which is not a unified community, in any case.

But, let's look ahead: When the U.S. is out of Iraq in about 18 months, what then? Will Iraqi Muslim factions cease fighting with each other? Will neighboring Iran be satisfied with the status quo? Will Afghanistan regain peace (which it never had)? Will Pakistan settle its longstanding internal discord? Will India not continue to experience factional strife? Can you assure us that the Muslim "world" will change for the better?

I am one who thinks American efforts in the Middle East/Afghanistan have been misguided and mostly detrimental to both the U.S. and those countries in which it has been involved. But, will the essentials much change as the U.S. extricates itself from those troubled places? What is your basis for optimism after America withdraws?

If you are a moderate Muslim, where will you stand after the current misnamed Crusade ends and the widespread, internecine Muslim warfare continues, with the U.S. no longer actively fighting, but in which you will be forced to choose sides? After the "Crusades" (part two), and after America takes care of its own energy needs, where will you be, as a moderate Muslim, when medieval Muslim forces fight to establish the theocratic Caliphate (part two) on your head?

TUMBLEWALL

Here on the edge of walls falling
stands the recently united America
recalling the old injustices
admonishing "be patient"
that King said could not wait
from his cell which we now see
was our cell, too, whose walls
now tumble down.

Sure, many do not remember.
But, when talking heads say
the country has found itself
some recall the old impatiences
who fought to crumble these walls
revealing exposed people
hopeful that today’s impasses
will lead to other walls
for us to tumble down.

So we stand here
on the edge of walls falling
in the still uniting America
and look out on the land
in wonder
at what shall be done
to make more walls crumble
in remembrance
of those who first faced
cell walls
yet untumbled.


Composed on the afternoon of the Presidential Inauguration, 20 January 2009.

CALVIN COOLIDGE BUSH CONTRAPUNTAL

Recently a short news item appeared with the headline, "President Bush Desecrates American Flag," showing him autographing a small, hand-held American flag. This is an apparent illegal act according to United States Flag Code--Section 8, Part G (Respect for Flag), which states in part: "The flag should never have placed upon it...insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature."

Bush's lack of knowledge about flag protocol is relatively insignificant. (I personally do not know the definition of "flag." Is what he is signing considered a real "flag" or a replica of a flag?)

But, Bush's willingness to subvert the Constitution, on the other hand, is a serious matter. Some of you might recall that in an interview, in 1999, I believe, before the first election, Bush stated that he believed God had called him to become President. It's obvious now that he also believed that God backed his war of choice in Iraq, his authorization of torture, illegal detentions without charge, disregard of habeas corpus, secret wiretapping, and generally his Dominionalist belief in the special calling of the U.S. to "save" the world or at least control it for the good of the "godly" U.S. In his last press conference, he admitted no mistakes, just "unfortunates." When God is on your side, then perhaps a half million deaths and thousands of tortures in Iraq are simply "unfortunate."

It was obvious to many before his first presidential election, in 2000, that Bush was woefully lacking in mental acumen for the office of the President of the U.S. You could tell then that he was ideologically bound and would govern from a rigidly neo-con perspective, which could lead us into trouble or at least generally ignore our many problems and ignore the Constitution. Which he did.

See this web page which includes an article from Reuters (1/19/2009) summarizing recent editorials from around the world about the Bush presidency: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Newspapers_around_world_skewer_Bush_on_0119.html

Historians are already judging the Bush presidency at the lowest rating (some have said the worst in American history. But, unlike presidents Nixon, Carter, and Clinton, I predict that we will hear little of George Bush after he leaves office, in terms of public service or, like Nixon, writing books about international affairs (unless he, Rumsfeld, and others, are charged with war crimes!), because he is so little interested in the world. He is a dull, lusterless man. There's much to compare with Calvin Coolidge.

It is interesting that historically we elect counterpoints to the previous president. To wit: If Bush is insular, ideological, subverter of the Constitution, knowledge-restricted, believer in simple (revealed) truths, and non-reader of books--contrapuntally we elect a multi-racial, multicultural, acclaimed writer, professor of Constitutional law, and the "most-intelligent-in-the-room," inspiring, great-communicator pragmatist. There's much to compare with Abraham Lincoln.

RUPP'S DROP OF FORLORN SWEAT

Note: I was a walk-on basketball player at the University of Kentucky, in 1965-66, the year the varsity--with Pat Riley, Louie Dampier, Larry Conley, Tommy Kron, Thad Jaracz--went undefeated until the last game of the regular season and went to the final game of the NCAA tournament before losing to Texas Western and entering basketball history for several reasons.

The post-comment is by Bill Rutledge, from Adairville, Kentucky, another walk-on and who also remembered the drop-of-sweat incident.

In the middle of one of those eerily quiet varsity practices (as I judged them), when the team was going full court ( I and the other freshmen came early to watch), Coach Rupp bounded out of the bleachers from about the sixth row, exhibiting startling agility, and ran to near center court and “discovered” a single drop of sweat (as he put it), pointed to it and in dripping sarcasm (and surely reverse psychology) accused Thad Jaracz of running the floor so hard he actually shed a drop of sweat. I personally was mortified as I am sure Jaracz was, too.

Here’s my interpretation: Coach Rupp, I feel, used Jaracz as whipping boy, to communicate to the whole team. I bet the rest of the team took to heart the message that day. Even sitting in the bleachers, I know I felt the sting of contemplating that single, drop of sweat lying alone and forlorn on the floor of Memorial Coliseum.

Lee,
darned right I remember you!! You were the one exception to the “white guys can’t jump” rule on that team. We badly needed some athleticism and you brought it. Unfortunately for me, that made you the sixth man and pushed me out of that spot. Great to hear from you.
I do remember the road trip to Knoxville. Dreary place, especially during the game, with Howard Bayne (sp?) beating up on our guys inside. As I remember, Ray Mears figured out how Coach Rupp beat him in Lexington and made some adjustments to the baseline coverage in his 1-3-1 and UK wasn’t quick enough to react to it.
Please do post something about the varsity practices. These folks love it, and I’ll eat it up.
Again, really great to hear from you.
Bill

Rupp's Falconry

I was privileged to become included in the second crop of basketball player walk-ons, in 1965-66, at the University of Kentucky (the year of "Rupp's Runts") after the three freshmen scholarship players became ineligible. At 6’2" and never a guard in high school, I actually got some playing time at forward.

I went on the bus road-trip to Knoxville, the only regular-season game the U.K. varsity lost that year. I remember the U.T. arena seemed to be strangely underlit. Perhaps that prefigured the quiet and mournful trip back to Lexington.

I used to take a long time showering after practice, so I met Coach Rupp twice as he was waiting for his driver to pick him up at the side door of Memorial Coliseum, in Lexington, on the Avenue of Champions. Coach Rupp apparently, as I saw once, got physical therapy from someone, possibly one of the trainers, so he stayed late, at least some evenings. He was quite friendly and talkative (in his high-pitched voice) and I was incredulous that he bothered to speak to me at all. He appeared to me as a giant falcon, with his aquiline, beak of a nose, soaring above the rest of us, but always capable of descending in a quick swoop on the flesh of mere mortals. Luckily, he was well fed (and friendly!) when I met him.

(IM)MORAL CERTITUDE

George Bush's moral certitude stemming from his fundamentalist Christian views led him to believe that America was given a special dispensation from God to protect itself in any way possible, even perpetrating evil acts (torture, illegal confinement, etc.). His moral certitude was that, in a sense, he, George Bush, could do no wrong because God was on HIS side and on the side of America. Look at his recent press conference when he said mistakes were (only) "unfortunate."

He is leaving office believing he was always in the right and that history will absolve him. He really does believe that the Iraq War, a war of choice that slaughtered perhaps a half million Iraqis and displaced several million others, was justifiable.

I say that history has no timeframe on evil. I look forward to the day when historians, who have already judged the Bush Administration at the lowest possible rating, will help us understand that it was a last-gasp (even evil), episodic spasm of American Empire. Perhaps we can now live within a community of nations with real American leadership. The Planet has problems that cannot wait.

HEADSTONE EDITORIAL

This poem is about my father, Larry L. Stone, who was editor of the Central City, Kentucky, Times-Argus, from 1949 to 1993.

Laconic is a word you taught me
telling me the story of its origins
in Laconia where Spartans
were people of few words
and men of action soldiers
who needed few words to kill.

You wrote your brief epitaph
and summed up a life
as Editor, Soldier, Miner
but a life edited in three words
is written only as an editorial
by an epitaphic editor of headstones.

As a miner your underground stint
before marching off to college
was as concise as your self-definition
but at that time you would not know
about the other two parts of yourself
that would appear in headstone headline.

As soldier during that European war
you bivouacked at the castle with wine keg
so large with dance floor on top
on your way to become soldier-editor
of the Army newspaper
writing terse headlines of battles.

Returned from war you were verbose
as stressed soldier and toasting editor
spewing linotype words of molten metal
not to be proofed until later
when a short life was editorialized
in three-word headstone headline.

As miner of words editorializing soldiers
as soldier battling word demons
but in the end as epitaphic editor
you had the last line
writing your own headline
of stone

WILD DANCING DURING DYSTOPIA

This oldies site is a good one:
http://oldfortyfives.com/TakeMeBackToTheFifties.htm

It caused some delirious elation in me, more than could be legally expected, as I jumped around and danced wildly, especially to At the Hop. I hope y'all have attached good speakers with separate bass to your 'puter.

As I rest my knees, it occurs to me that we, the first of the Boomers (1946-50), lived during some unique, idyllic times. I acknowledge that all time-spaces are unique and that there have been studies of the underside of life in America in the 1950s (e.g., domestic violence and racism), but being born not long after the Depression and very soon after WW II (although collectively we suffered from some of our fathers' psychological repercussions from war) afforded us the milieu of renewed hope and confidence of our world getting better. Though the Cold War was a sobering check on unfettered optimism (for many years I had serious dreams of nuclear war), the Zeitgeist of 1950s America was still that the City upon the Hill was reachable and we were very nearly living on that Hill.

Perhaps dystopian times are upon us now, but at least I can dance wildly--in both body and spirit--at the Hop, on the Hill, in my rock-'n-rolled embodied space.

HEADKEEPING IN APOCALYPTIC TIMES

Recently a video has surfaced by talk-host Hal Turner who claims the U.S. is preparing to demonetize the dollar and issue a new currency called the "Amero." He claims that the U.S. has minted 900 billion of the coins and they are stored in China!

The Turner video and his claims of a new U.S. currency are as silly as they are false. The Snopes.com article http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/amero.asp about the video should be sufficient refutation of the urban legend that Turner seeks to disseminate.

I was very disheartened by all the conspiratorial urban legends viciously created and continuously--both consciously and unconsciously--(re)circulated about Barack Obama. Seems that America has been especially prone to apocalyptic and millenarian (sell your possessions and wait on the hill) groups and thinking for a long time. It will not cease now.

In no way could the U.S. government unilaterally make such an extremely radical alteration in its currency. First, it would be a cataclysmic destabilization of not only China with whom the U.S. economy is closely articulated (and the U.S. does NOT want a destabilized China), but also of Japan, who holds approx. $880 billion, Taiwan ($260 billion), and South Korea ($230 billion) and also of the U.S. itself.

Alongside the rantings of paranoiacs, we can hold out some hope for positive human behavior during tough times. Yes, always there are people who respond well, even heroically, during adversity, but I think we are already seeing increased negative behaviors as result of financial pressure on people: suicides, crime (banks robberies have exploded in New York City recently), possibly racial/ethnic strife, family problems, drug use (could this get any worse?), and even the Hal Turner-type paranoiac-conspiratorialists.

Seems utopia is nowhere in sight; dystopia is closer to us. But, hopefully, the economic downturn will run its course within two years. In the meantime, we--the whole world--must use the interim to reorganize some critical matters: energy use, transportation, etc. It is an opportunity to rectify some fundamental human lifeways. How much do you think this will happen?

To modify how modern humans relate to the environment in which we are ontologically embedded is a radical project. It's a spiritual endeavor that cuts to the core of how humanity sees itself and its relation to Creation. Religious views necessarily will have to change; but they will not change easily.

No, I do not believe in an Apocalypse. But, now in the 21st century, I do believe in the continuity of turmoil experienced in the 20th century, but not necessarily of the same formation. World history is replete with cataclysms. If you look at 14th-century Europe (Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror is about that disasterous era), it was an astounding cataclysmic time as was the 20th century. If you look at 20th-century China, it was an incredible time of upheavel and human tragedy. There's no reason to think that the world is now somehow immune from at least some of this. But, the scaremongers--the psychotic Hal Turners and dispensationalist Hal Lindsays (remember The Late Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series? )--of the world do not help. They benefit by their scare tactics.

When many people are even more prone to being swayed by sensationalism and conspiracy theories and demogoguery and "prophecies" and religious extremism, it's a time when rational people must keep their heads straight. I remember the words of Rudyard Kipling's If:

"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs...."

In these times, I'd say headkeeping is psychologically and spiritually tough to do.

EMBEDDED IN THE GREAT GESTALT

Spirituality is the process of learning who we are, even when we never reach, at least in this lifetime, total direct conscious contact with the Design Integrity Gestalt of the Ground of Ultimate Being (otherwise titled "God"). My conceptual label blends R. Buckminster Fuller's "design integrity of the Universe," and Paul Tillich's "Ground of Being," with "gestalt" to indicate the functional whole without properties derivable by summation of its parts.

That's alright; we are all embraced by that Mysterious Boundless Being--as it is also embodied within us--whether we realize it or not. At some point, though, it should be obvious that words do not get us there; there must be some direct experience (although each quotidian moment IS direct experience). All religions, and even, I would say, some nonreligious systems of thought, attempt to engender some of that direct experience of the Ultimate Reality.

The spiritual principle, then, is to comprehend that we are centered (there is no other place) in that Transcendent Luminosity and simply live (even unconsciously) as embedded, nonseparated energies in the Design Integrity Gestalt of the Ground of Ultimate Being. The key is the comprehension, the realization, that we are always embraced by and embedded in the Great Gestalt.

The classical crossover piano music and the rain pattering my window and the clunking bamboo chimes are more than nice on this luminous day.

WHAT-IF CARTOGRAPHY

A web site I recently found

http://www.megophone.com/neuyork.html

contains a map project that used a 1937 map of New York City and changed all the toponyms to German to create a germanized and Nazified "Neu-York." The idea is to conjecture cartographically what NYC would have become if the Nazis had won WW II.

The map printed only 20 copies (plus proofs) and were being sold for $2,500 and possibly more as they are sold (few were remaining).

Here are my comments to the cartographer:

Wonderful project, Melissa. You have turned what-if history into what-if geography and what-if cartography.

You might recall that American writer Philip Roth wrote the what-if novel The Plot Against America (2004) and has Charles Lindbergh defeating Roosevelt in the 1940 election and plotting an isolationist course during the war. The novel depicts the beginnings of Jewish persecution in America at that juncture. Roth, in the dust jacket, poses before an old map of Newark, New jersey, where the novel unfolds.

I think you must arrange mass printing of the map for its pedagogical value. Students would be able to better understand historical contingencies and how they might play out literally on the ground.

HITLER'S GLOBE

Recently a news story appeared about the globe used in the recent film, Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise. See here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/02/tom-cruise-may-face-legal_n_154748.html

The globe, taken from Hitler's Berghof, near Bertchesgaden, in the Bavarian Alps, after the end of the war, appears quite an ordinary one, probably produced in the thousands. It would afford little detail for "planning" anything. But, then, Hitler was not much of a detail person, as he "set" overall policy, usually as a result of his lieutenants asking him questions to obtain a sense of his thinking. His interest was more in architectural plans for Berlin after the war (a new imperial Rome on the scale of his meglalomania), which suited his artistic side. Now, that would be a set of interesting documents!

Globes and maps, of course, can be used for their symbolic value. Re this, a more interesting article about some Nazi globes is here http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/arts/design/18globe.html

Also, Mark Monmonier writes about Nazi cartopropaganda in his How to Lie with Maps (chapter 7).

The Hitler globe appears quite ordinary, as I said, with probably hundreds of copies extant. Second, to say the Valkyrie props department made a "replica" probably greatly stretches the facts. The movie set artists would have no reason to place literally thousands of minute pieces of geographic detail--toponyms, etc.--on the movie-version globe. The globe used in the film, then, was a facsimile used for its overall, authentic, period appearance.

Then why would the present globe owner make such noise and threaten lawsuit? Publicity for the globe and for the owner--self-aggrandizement--is most likely. It makes for a good, and easy, story and adds monetary value to the globe itself (think resale value).

ECOSYSTEM DISTRESS SYNDROMES

Albrecht, G., G.-M. Sartore, L. Connor, N. Higginbotham, S. Freeman, B. Kelly, H. Stain, A. Tonna, and G. Pollard. 2007. Solastalgia: The distress caused by environmental change. Australian Psychiatry 15 Supplement:S95-S98.

Relating ecosystem health, human health, and psychological outcomes, the concept of solastalgia was created (in 2003) to describe place-based psychological distress when people negatively perceive their home environment. The article applies the concept to the experiences of people living in two distressed environments: areas of persistent drought and open-pit mining in New South Wales, Australia.

Solastalgia is placed under the larger concept of psychoterratic (environmentally induced) mental illness, which also includes nostalgia: diagnosable mental distress produced by separation from home (“homesickness”). The researchers found that the mining landscape produced solastalgia and loss of sense of place.

NONMEAT-CENTERED PALEOANTHROPOLOGY

Vegetarians take note: http://review.ucsc.edu/fall07/text.asp?pid=1631

As a vegetarian for 38 years, it has always been problematic for me to explain how the nonmeat diet fits in the evolutionary sequence. Until recently most paleoanthropologists believed that the explosion of evolutionary change that took place more than two million years ago which moved hominins away from their anthropoid cousins (chimpanzees and gorillas) and saw increases in brain and body size and bipedalism, was due to the growing importance of meat in the diet. As a professor said to me about 25 years ago while looking directly in my eyes, "Lee, your kind are an evolutionary dead end." Of course, he meant that I was also a dead end, a loser in the survival-of-the-fittest struggle! I have patiently awaited the time when there would be scientific movement away from "Man, the Hunter" and "Man, the Meat Eater" thesis. Evidently, that time has finally arrived.

Prof. Nathaniel Dominy (the anthropologist in the article) does not, as far as I know, talk about vegetarianism. To be sure, he also is not claiming that early hominins were vegetarian, but that they needed a readily available energy and nutrient source, and that hunting is NOT sufficiently efficient for that practice to have supplied enough nutrients. He says the critical food source was under their feet as Underground Storage Organs: roots, tubers, bulbs--what he calls a goldmine for early development of hominins.

I'm feeling some confirmation of a diet that I chose long ago for reasons environmental, healthful, ethical--and now genetic and evolutionary!

For further explanation, go to this link: http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/press_releases/text.asp?pid=1643

VERY BERRY

You are so berries
I want to turn you
into deep-dish cobbler
topped with cream.

You are so berries
I want to jar you
into jam
and spread you
on bread.

You are so berries
I want to distill you
into cordial,
sniff your bouquet

of overtones of passion,
undertones of artistry,
hint of ferae naturae,
roll you on my tongue,

and sip...slowly
berry...slowly.

CAVETIGHT SCREAMS

Cold spontaneous screams erupt
as car door closes
casting crude blasphemies echoing
bursting up from that raw place
where stirring songs on the radio mock.

Carousing couples in convivial clubs
with steamy windows into the soul
show friends within
who have an assigned place
for slurring singles
and their talking bottles.

Wailing reminders
of the unguarded Garden
where wandering and suffering
the primal anguish of severance
endured through ages
from cold caves
to screamtight cars.

ROILY RAW

Lift up the living plastic edge of the sea
Molded like quicksilver on the beach
And peer underneath the throbbing surface waves
For the deeper stronger currents and eddies.

Same as with my living plastic heart.
Lift it and see the raw quivering bottom
Where pain settles like swirling silt
Under the roily salty waters
Of life as they move in flows of
Has-to-happen
To nourish other climes
that do not know the turbid waters
of my currents of pain.

CHASM WHISTLE

What was that strangely familiar,
birdlike sound warbling up
from the deepest chasm
between thinking and feeling?

Whistling that comes
from spontaneous thinking-feeling
aliveness
that's been quiescent for weeks
during the overwrought era
of recent agitated,
yet ultimately purifying, pathos.

Whistling that leaps
across the chasm
bridging the thinking-feeling ledges
of it's about time to fly.

GOING

You ask, How're things going?
They're going prosaic here,
going pedestrian there,
punctuated by bursts of exhilaration
for no good reason;
going for periods of steady contentment,
to yet again going to question everything,
including what it means going alive,
to be me
going through a landscape with no horizon,
going where?

WHO AM "I"?

I would say we are correct to ontologically wonder sometimes, as we all do, whether we are simply a figment of our own imagination. I contend that we self-create. Instead of the Cartesian Cogito, ergo sum--"I think, therefore I am"--which posits an Ego, an I who is a priori (presupposed), I would say, Placebo, ergo sum--I hallucinate myself into being. The perennial philosophical problem, of course, is just who is this "I" who we all think exists?

Stay tuned: I'm working on it! Ha! Meanwhile, "I" "am" here.

ENGLOBED MINDS

A famous quote by T. S. Eliot, part of a poem in his Four Quartets, has stuck in my mind for years because I realize very personally its meaning, and informs some of my thinking about the geographic imagination. The latter I define simply as how we see the world and our place in it. I have altered his poem to read thusly:

We shall not cease from [self-]exploration
And the end of all our [mental] exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
and know the place [--and ourselves--] for the first time.

As we come to understand ourselves in relation to the local places where we dwell and the globalized world in which we increasingly inhabit, we will come to know ourselves to that degree.

Humans today are englobed (or ensphered) intellects, hopefully rooted to a particular place, and also aware of the world as a whole, as a unity. We are thus "glocal" (local and global) cosmopolitans, mindfully dwelling in a place and responsibly inhabiting, living on, the globe.

FUTURE LOOKS

The future is not
what it used to be.
The past was not
what it shall be.
The present looks both ways
and decides.

GONE TO HEARTS EVERYWHERE

Can anyone here tell me what happened to my ol' friend John?

John lived from 1917 to 22 November 1963 with a great deal of verve and humor and intelligence. I had read his book, Profiles in Courage, in early high school, so I knew that he was an intellectual force, or rather that he himself respected intelligence and the courageous belief that the human mind could devise solutions to problems. John had courage.

He also introduced me, because he read them, to a new author, Ian Fleming and his fictional British spy, James Bond. John had style.

I can tell you where I was that afternoon at around 1 p.m. on a Friday when our school principal announced that John was dead. I was in the Central City [Kentucky] High School library with my girlfriend, Diann Wright. She can tell you that I presciently said to her that we would always remember where we were at that laden moment. Because at that instant, the world changed and we changed. We had to live thereafter in a heavier world feeling vacant without John. John had presence.

Can you tell me where he's gone?

John has gone to hearts everywhere. Those hearts, some of whom cried today, can only hope to emulate his courage, style, and presence.

REALIZE THE CHOICE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMOMgQCRAqM

Attitudes are a secret power:
the power of choice.

But, the choice to choose love
is a Choice that already exists
outside/inside us.

The Choice was made
for all time
by the Power
that chooses.

All we have to do
is to realize that Power,
that Choice,
that exists internally/eternally
--that Love.

BERRIES ON THE PATH

As you pause
and scan the thicket of life,
a path appears
through which you can carefully,
yet with some assurance,
walk,
watching
for berries of nurturance
that grow
for the thicket traveler
within arm's-reach of the path.

LIVING AT (CYBERSPATIAL/REAL) HOME

The diasporics and nomadics of the world share a new sense of global space, but, also, a concomitant placelessness. In fact, I believe nearly everyone in the world does today to some degree. From the "global souls" written about by Pico Iyer to the stay-at-"homes" (with "home" now a contested term) who experience telepresence while viewing their TVs which show event-spaces around the world--we all now have some expansive sense of global space while feeling the alienation of placelessness.

Yet, as the world globalizes--and because of it--people feel the need for a renewed sense of place: The need for attachment and rootedness to a place to counter the deracinated global sense of space. Using the term "glocalization," which indicates the interweaving of localities into larger economic spaces, I call the cognition of the continuum from local to global spaces, "glocal spatial cognition."

We live in spaces from local to global. In the case of bloggers--those who maintain a presence in their own blog sites, including ones such as MySpace--we create cybernetic space, to afford us some identity and sense of "home." Further, our cyberspatial presence also is partly defined by our presence in "real" space wherever we live (and vice versa). Indeed, we who have our own blogs are creating some sense of home--albeit, partly cybernetic and partly "real."

The computer and "real" space are now interwoven--we live at "home" with the machine. Thus, "home" itself is now cyborgian. So is our spatial cognition.

AMERICA HAS BECOME MORE AMERICA

With the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States, I feel that America has taken a great forward leap to fulfilling its promise made long ago and kept alive, sometimes dimly, through several centuries.

Thus, I see the election of Barack Obama, a black American as President, as a historical moment that is consumation of a long wait, a waiting that fulfills the hope of an experiment. The American experiment--never assured of success--has always been that all Americans would have a chance to effect their potential.

It is difificult for me to express my personal feelings about Sen. Obama ascending to the highest office in the land and arguably the most important in the world. Having grown up in a small southern town in the 1950s and '60s, where and when prejudicial attitudes were the norm, I, too, living in that racist milieu, was a child racist, or at least I breathed the air of institutional and social racism and accepted it as normal.

The historical moment of Obama's election was so palpable to me that it felt as if several time-space cycles phased in together at the precise moment that they were "destined" to take place. It felt like a completion, an old promise fulfilled for America generally and for me personally. When I saw Barack Obama embrace his running mate Joe Biden on stage at the end of Obama's victory speech on election night, it seemed much more than two election winners celebrating, it seemed to be the apotheosis of that centuries-old promise, of racial reconciliation. Again, it was also my completion, and my apotheosis.

We, as a people, living in the present, have become more of what "we"--envisioned for us 220 years ago by America's Founders--promised ourselves. It was a Covenant that could not be fulfilled during those long years. The Promise had to be kept (barely) alive through centuries of slavery, through turmoil of the Civil War, through dark days of Jim Crow, through struggles of the Civil Rights Movement, and through years of resignation that matters would not change.

I am speaking of hope, the hope that was the vision of the Founders. That hope and vision were that America could become, one day, the land of equal opportunity, the land of the free, the land of hope, and the place where people could dream of fulfilling their dreams. Now, with the advent of a "black" man to the highest office in the land, that hope is now reality.

America has now taken a giant step to realizing its potential. The election of Obama is the fulfillment, a historical moment, when America has now become more of itself. America has become more of what it has always promised. America has been waiting to become more America. That moment has arrived.

HEAR OUT THE FRINGE

Global warming deniers could well make their case that there is no truth to anthropogenic causes of global climate change, and even that CO2 has no climate effects, without claiming that phony science is creating a phony crisis (global climate change) that would destroy industrialization.

Here are my thoughts: First, even if CO2 were not found as a force agent, the processes that produce CO2 also co-produce other harmful byproducts, such as NOx, CO, and sulphur compounds, all of which are harmful either to humans and/or to water bodies, and thus aquatic life. Not to mention particulates that are injurious to human lungs. Thus, preventing production and harmful effects of CO2 (although some global-warming deniers deny this, too) would, in any case, mitigate other deleterious effects.

Mitigating production of all harmful byproducts of industrialization does not necessarily destroy industrialization, as it would change it for the good. Therefore, I believe the summative statement--the mitigation of production and harmful effects of CO2 would destroy industrialization--is extreme.

For someone who has been a near-continous student throughout his sexagenarian life, now working on degree number eight (four Master's and now PhD Geography), admittedly means little in climate debates, especially when I am outside my usual areas of interest. I grant you that I must rely on secondary literature. But, can global-warming deniers convince me that they understand primary scientific literature any better than I?

One last comment: I am probably more open-minded than most people you might run across in the climate change debates. As a teacher, I take seriously my obligations to understand all sides of a discussion--and then take a stand. So far, until the majority of scientists change their views (and, yes, you can be assured that Kuhn and his treatise about scientific revolutions was high on the reading list of more than one of my Master's), there is no compelling reason why I should change mine. I shall, though, continue to hear out the fringe.

UNDERGROUND-COAL GASIFICATION

Recently, I did an admittedly quick study of the scientific literature using SCIRUS and Academic Search Premier as search engines about underground-coal gasification (UCG). I found that there is research being conducted that looks very promising, especially in China and secondarily in India and the U.S.

My anti-coal credentials are fairly strong, as I went back to school in 1976 just so I could become a Surface Mining Inspector for the Kentucky Dept. of Natural Resources. I saw firsthand the destructive nature of coal mining. In fact, my position was largely as an enforcer of environmental laws.

Contra my anti-coal sentiments, what I found out perusing the literature about UCG--which, again, was a very quick study on my part, and which addresses some of the objections some have voiced--is that the surface ground is little disturbed since the coal is processed underground. In fact, old mines could be reused to extract their remaining energy. It seems that three holes are dug down to the coal seams. This, then, eliminates above-ground transportation and processing (which are huge problems in Eastern Kentucky). It would also eliminate pollution of surface streams which, again, is a huge problem in places such as Eastern Kentucky. It sounds promising to me that the coal remains in the ground, while the energy is processed in the ground, too, and then brought out clean (as far as I know).

Here is a recent news article from "Science Daily" about UCG. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080215135731.htm

Much criticism about "clean-coal" technologies is about ABOVE-ground carbon sequestration, which does have more problems.

Both China and India have large coal reserves, which is the reason they are interested in UCG technologies. China has the world's largest reserves, while the U.S. is second and has reserves that would last 350 years at current use-rates.

Also, both U.S. presidential candidates have said they will pursue "clean coal" technologies, thus we should be educating ourselves about their potentials. I hope that more Americans (and Canadians) will research UCG. I will be happy to be realigned about their possible dangers and inadequacies. Let us begin a discussion based on at least a semblance of research. But, so far, UCG seems very promising--and hopeful.

Truthfully, nearly every new energy technology is about a decade away from any large-scale production. Question: Where does this leave us?

I AM THE JOURNAL

When at a Buddhist shrine in Nara, Japan, recently (Oct. 2008), I purchased a blank-paged book and had the monk shown in the photo write something in Japanese calligraphy. Then I wrote this haiku:

In my blank journal

monk writes fluid calligraphy

--I snap quick photo

Perhaps the blank journal is metaphorical of our lives. Surely the Preface is already written, but to what extent is the remainder of our lives a tabula rasa ready to be written upon? The question, then, is to what degree does the Preface prefigure the remaining plot and character development?

Sometimes I feel my life-plot was written ages ago and I am passively/actively observing its narrativization--written in exotic calligraphy in my Journal--of a life in which I strive to be a Conscious Co-Worker of the Divine Plan.

The story denouement is nearly always anticlimatic, for the main action occurs in the middle of the Journal, in the present. That's where I am now: in the always-present, not entirely cognizant of the meaning of the calligraphy. But, that's acceptable, because I am the Journal.

SYMBOLIC SPACES OF HOME

My cognitive space of home breeches borders and includes viewing the framed calligraphy of "Spring" by a Peking University professor, burning Japanese (temple) incense, sipping green tea (steaming with undertones of honeysuckle) from the cup I purchased at a small Shanghai shop; surrounded by sundry other objects--tea sets, chops, jades, silks, statues all bought in Taiwan, China, and Japan--and visualize that I am a Tang Dynasty scholar (with no attempt to read the Analects and no talent for any Chinese arts) living and creating in my micro-space of an imagined scholar's studio (described below).

http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/editorial.php?issue=013

This 'studio world' was a very special space. It was a physical space, often a pavilion set apart in the garden, screened perhaps by bamboos, a place of seclusion and privilege, where the literati could elaborate their fantasies, surrounded by their favourite knick-knacks (strangely carved inkstones, armrests for calligraphy, paperweights, brushes, seals, incense burners, weird roots and rocks etc.). It is in just such a space as this that many of the experiences and encounters of Strange Tales take place. But the 'Studio' was more than this: it was also a symbolic space, a gestalt. It denoted a whole cultural, spiritual, aesthetic and sensual world.

We all live in symbolic spaces. I have described mine.

DEAR RED-STATE-OF-MIND

Fully recognising that there are human cells in Red States where there are strong Blue tendencies and vice-versa, you Red folk live among us, the Blue folk. Thus, it is less a geographical division, than existential. I understand, then, that we all will still have some sort of post-divorce relationship.

I'm trying to be a gentleman about this and look past recent events to the far side when we, the Blue-State-of-Mind, will be happily divorced from your Weltanschauung of struggle, as you see it, between good and evil, with the U.S.A. and its military always on the side of good; your belief that Genesis is holy writ and should be taught as Truth; that sexual orientation somehow matters to God; that dictates of economic triage force you to consign the poor to an unattended gurney on a dark side corridor; that trickle-down economics is a law of the Universe; that government never helps solve social problems and all blame is on government and none on corporations; and, perhaps most importantly to your Weltanschauung, your long-practiced cynical politics of division, always labeling an Other--immigrants, minorities, non-Christians, Liberals--who does not love America, but you, of course, do.

Divorce is in order. But, you shall have the harder time, as the country is changing and you cannot keep up with those changes which will severely challenge your Weltanschauung. Hopefully we can reach some kind of rapprochement. In any case, Truth is not on your side. But, sadly for us all, you have too much power to ignore. It's the Blue-State-of-Mind inclusive truth to your Red-State-of-Mind exclusive, irrational power.

My Weltanschauung tells me that Truth will likely win in the end.

November 8, 2008 9:56 AM Note: The following was penned post-election by me as a follow-up.

Dear Red-State-of-Mind,
Let's make up and reengage. The problems outside us are too severe to go it alone. We need each other. I will even listen to what you have to say, so that some sort of modus vivendi can be worked out. At the moment, even our relatives (the rest of the world) are on our side.So, what say you? A deal? If we form a more perfect union, we have everything to gain; if we don't, we have a great deal to lose. Let's get to work. After all, the territory as a whole is looking a bit purplish.

LISTEN THROUGH THE GARBAGE

I both agree and disagree with the analysis that most of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates' talk so far has been "garbage."

In past presidential elections I almost exclusively focused on the issues, without much considering personality and even character. Now, I believe, the next President and his administration must, if we have any chance of surviving, tell the American people that we will have to sacrifice and make very painful changes to our very unsustainable lifestyles--economic and environmental. This will require of the next President believable communication, character, and leadership. Franklin Roosevelt had it; our next President must possess it, too.

The next President and his administration must also revise the direction our foreign policy has been going. He will have to communicate that the misguided "global war on terrorism" should, instead, be an internationally unified policing of terrorist groups. Sound judgement, communication, and believability will be key to this.

Last, I believe this election is an existential election about who we Americans understand ourselves as being as a nation, where we want to go, and how we could get there. If we begin to solve the energy and financial crises, there will be painful adjustments to lifestyles. Only a good communicator with great character can help us understand ourselves and help us feel the requisite confidence that great changes will require.

For these reasons, for the first time, I am considering communication skills, character, judgement, and leadership skills of the presidential candidates. Many of the problems we will have to face as a nation are not now being addressed--much of the talk is garbage--but this does not mean they won't be addressed. The problems will be forced on us.

So, I'm now listening very closely to the garbage--actually, through the garbage--to make an evaluation on communication, character, judgement, and leadership. Listen very closely to the garbage and then consider the communicator beyond it. I believe one of the candidates is clearly far ahead. That is he who we will rely on and sorely need very soon.

MENTAL SPATIALITY OF HOME

Thinking of living space, I sometimes scale up to larger spaces, because this is the general area that I study, especially how we cognize place and space.

I say emphatically that spaces affect our psyches. And perception and feeling of space does, too. Place and space affect how we identify who we are. And it works obversely, too: Our perception and conception of place and space determine what those places and spaces are. We construct space; it is not "something" that exists unchanged without our construction of it.

The latter is more difficult for us to understand because in ordinary consciousness we think of space as a container (the container theory of space) in which objects and events take place. (Here I go again on the conceptual level. But, theory is needed to explain reality, to place it in context of meaning.) But, there is a great deal of postmodernist thinking which sees space as not absolute--a preexisting thing--but as social and mental construction. This says that we construct ideas of place and space, as society (e.g. the Frontier Thesis) and as individuals. Some people, for example, require a home of cozy sparseness (or sparse coziness); others have other spatial preferences.

It's interesting to think about the role our childhood home has as a template for what we now in adulthood perceive as the spatiality in which we are most comfortable. In the childhood home, inhabited space transcends its geometrical space and becomes a place--a trellis--upon which we construct something of our conception of the larger universe. After all, the childhood home is the place of our first universe; it was the only space that we knew.

Incidentally, my childhood home was filled with stacks of newspapers. In the house of my psyche, I've been stacking up the "newspapers" ever since!

JAPAN AND WHALING

The government of Japan does not stop Japanese whaling for several reasons. First, there is no domestic constituency that can pressure the Government of Japan to end whaling. This is partly due to a weak Japanese environmental movement. Most Japanese see environmental problems in terms of air and water pollution and have little awareness of animal rights. They also equate harvesting whales to the cattle industry.

Second, the government of Japan is vitally concerned with protecting its rights to global resources, especially those of the oceans, from which Japan gets about 40% of its food. Without considerable international economic pressure to its economic interests, it will never change its whaling policies, even with the anti-whaling diplomacy of the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand through the IWC (International Whaling Commission).

Third, the Japanese whaling industry is a significant part of the politically powerful Japanese fishing industry. As I explained above, in terms of diet and environmental attitudes, the Japanese people do not support, or even understand anti-whaling sentiment, which, in any case, is not reported in the Japanese press. (I am just returned from eight days in Japan.)

When I first heard that some schools in Japan were trying to feed whale meat to Japanese school children, I thought surely not, but then I found the following 2005 article from BBC News about that very practice: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4106688.stm So, the campagn is unfortunately true. The article makes the point that whaling is not important to the average Japanese, thus there might be hope that they can be reached with the anti-whaling message.

If diplomatic pressure is not working; if the confrontational direct actions of Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd are not working; then boycotting Japanese products is probably the only hope. But, it would have to be so massive that it would enter the civic dialogue in Japanese society. Right now, this is not happening; and, powerful forces are at work to prevent the message from affecting the government of Japan and reaching the Japanese people. It will have to be a message sufficiently powerful to shake the table on which Japanese eat.

TOPONYMING POWER

I’m starting a letter-writing campaign with students in my A.P. Human Geography and World Geography classes at Ocean Springs [MS] High to persuade National Geo, Nystrom, Hammond, Rand McNally, and the other map and atlas publishers to change the toponym “Gulf of Mexico” to “Sea of Mississippi,” since it is actually a sea as much as the Caribbean Sea and others and it washes the shores of our great State; plus there is a great river of the same name.

Just joking!
I understand that countries might desire toponymic changes to reflect their own countries–such as Indonesia already labeling the ocean west of it the “Indonesian Ocean,” and the countries on the eastern shore of the Arabian peninsula pushing to name the adjacent sea “The Gulf”–but the cartographic confusion would be considerable. For example, could Kentucky justify renaming the Ohio River? After all, it possesses it within its territory. All international toponyms outside the jurisdiction of individual countries would have to be (re)negotiated, with neutral names triumphing. Or, would there be increasing international tension as a result of nationalistic interest in “toponyming?” Wouldn’t Scandinavian countries want to rename the Baltic Sea the “Scandinavian Sea?” As the world globalizes, there will be more desires to reflect the local, including the nation and its place names.

But, perhaps a compromise with the Sea of Japan/East Sea dispute would be the "Sea of East Asia" or the "East Asian Sea." Otherwise, increasing localization of toponyms will become the norm, unless economic power and influence continue to be the toponymic policies of the large cartographic corporations.

NEIGHBORS, SPACES, BORDERS

Questions of spatiality and the cognition of space--from the personal to the social to the global--are sites of considerable theorization and public discourse. A recent example is the attention given to the geographic imagination of Gov. Sarah Palin, in the way she imagines Russia as spatially close to Alaska (which then supposedly gives her some foreign policy expertise!). We can say that she cognitively imagines Russia as close, even though the core area of that country (in the European part) is actually about 12 time zones away from Alaska.

You might recall some of the hotly discussed topics (ca 1970) around the theories of Robert Ardrey (books: African Genesis, The Hunting Hypothesis, and The Territorial Imperative) about the origins and nature of humans. He popularized the ideas that humans descended from killer apes, supposedly making us "naturally" aggressive and territorial. Ardrey was controversial from the beginning (actually, he was reformulating earlier theories). Still, I think we can say that humans, to varying degrees, are, or can be, territorial.

Western society, already, in past centuries, had become individuated, even atomized, in its manifestation of individual use of space. This can be seen in how homes are now set up as individual, separate units. Previously, in medieval Europe, homes were much more public, more like pubs. Compare this to the Yanomami (the "fierce people" of the Venezuelan-Brazilian border area), who live as whole villages under single roofs--a toroid-shape structure (think of an auto tire or a hollowed-out doughnut) without partitions between family units. They have no privacy, as we think of it.

The interpersonal space that each of us maintains around us is called proxemics: the human use of space within the context of culture. (This is the term anthropologist Edward T. Hall developed in The Hidden Dimension [1966].) For example, Americans want to maintain a more distanced interpersonal, public (as distinguished from private, intimate) space. Have you had the experience of culturally-different others standing way too close for your (psychic) comfort?

Our need to control space can manifest at work and/or at home (or on highways: road rage!). Some people obviously have a high need to control their space and boundaries. There are social influences in society today for our need to control our space, but there is probably some personal, psychological etiology to abnormal territoriality.

But, I'm wondering whether today we are developing a greater psychic need for personal control of space and concern for personal borders at a time of increasing social and personal deterritorialization of our experience of space, brought about by"distant proximities" (far places experienced proximally) and "space-time compression" (annihilation of time and distance through technologies of communication and travel).

My idea is that as we experience increasing distanciation (social science term for personal connectivity to distant places, objects, people, events), we have a greater psychic need for--I'll have to coin a neologism here--proximatization, or the experience of maintaining a microspatial home territory with definite borders. In other words, as spatiality goes global, we are becoming more concerned with our personal microspace. Today, this is about the only thing we have any hope of controlling.

THE EXISTENTIAL ELECTION

Unfortunately, there are no good tools external to ourselves to help us decide which presidential candidate to choose in the approaching election. This is due to the problems we face as a nation, which will soon be excruciatingly existential. They will be questions ripping at our core because we have long ignored them and because they will be questions dealing with life and death issues. The questions are about who we see ourselves as a people, where we want to go, and how we could possibly get there.

They will be about priorities: Particularly, how we choose to use dwindling resources, what we choose to spend treasure on, and, painfully, what we have to sacrifice.

We must choose which of the two candidates has the analytical abilities, communication skills, and, possibly, fortitude to tell the American people what we would not want to hear, and to possibly serve one term after he is pilloried for his honest appraisal of our dilemmas.

The last who attempted honesty with the public was Jimmy Carter, who laid it out in a talk, on 15 July 1979, denounced as his "Malaise Speech." Yet, he bravely attempted--in an act of political suicide--to show us that our growing dependence on foreign sources of oil was compromising our freedom and that we would have to sacrifice as a people in our wasteful energy-use and lifestyles.

In the following campaign the Feel-Good candidate effectively labeled Carter a "gloomsayer" and regaled puerile America with a false, utopian vision of unlimited prosperity, spending, and oil. He was the Prophet of Profligacy, as tens of thousands of millionnaires were created and America dreamwalked into a borrowed future.

Carter lost by a landslide; America lost because we could not face the truth of a future living within our means. The new President preached that government was THE problem; yet, it expanded under him. He preached that government spending had to be reduced; yet, under him government spending and the budget deficit exploded. But, Americans were feeling quite good about themselves in their head-in-the-sand, deficit-financed "Morning in America."

Who could best lead us, at this extremely late hour, as our profligate ways become curtailed during the likely long, worldwide recession soon to begin. Who best to reign in the imperial overreach of our military? Who would understand that a Nineteen Eighty-Four-like perpetual war is detrimental to our security and is breaking our military and depleting our coffers? Who understands that the doctrine of preemptive warfare compromises our security? Who understands that the fight against violently radical Islamism should be an internationally unified policing against a criminal conspiracy, not global war. Who understands that the Iraq War is a collossally tragic misadventure that partially resulted from the Pentagon's historically naive "Full-Spectrum Dominance" strategy formulated during the early 1990s? Who has the insight that the roadside IED (improvised explosive device) is a symbol of this fraudulent policy?

The President who came after the President of Feel-Good defiantly exhorted that the "American way of life" was not up for negotiation. Yet, this is EXACTLY what we must do: negotiate within ourselves individually and collectively who we are and want to be. Do we want to continue on with the profligate, dystopian downward slide of the country? We must decide. Who can help us see ourselves?

So, who will tell the American people that the country's problems are not out there, external to us? The relevant tools we need in choosing a President are inside each of us. This is because they are internal problems, inside the collective polity of the American nation, manifesting as existential questions of how we fit in the world--the real world, not the imaginary one in which we have too long been living. Who would, who could, possibly lead us in the painful accounting of truthfully seeing ourselves?

MISLED AGAINST MISCEGENATION

[Note: My comments here are concerning the YouTube video of a James David Manning, who is black, broadcasting his castigation of Senator Barack Obama's mother (PhD Anthropogy), who Manning says, was "trash" and other extremely derogatory labels. I will not post a link here to the verbicidal video.]

Incredible! Where to begin? I could force myself to watch only a bit less than half. At that point, I began feeling that the "Reverend" has severe mental problems. On this basis, his verbicidal rant probably deserves no analysis.

But, two points: the pejorative labeling of a woman as "whore" and "trash" is sexist, because it is directed at the woman only. So, on this point, the "Reverend's" diatribe deserves no airing. (I am incredulous that he actually is a "pastor" of a group of people. Poor people!--if they follow this deranged man.)

Second, he defines the two labels in terms of a white woman partnering with a black man. That archaic thinking came out of the experience of some African-Americans of an earlier era. (Note: For full disclosure, I am a white man, originally from small-town Kentucky who now lives in Mississippi, where I taught at a nearly all-black school, but who has lived in Taiwan and Jamaica, where I was the only white teacher in a large high school and where I was once labeled by a Rastafarian as being from "Babylon," thus I could speak no truth.)

I was aware, when I lived in Malibu, California, around 1980, of Black Nationalist groups who espoused separation of races in the belief that whites were polluting the gene pool and racial identity of blacks. (There are, of course, white nationalist groups who hold diametrically opposite racialist views.) Also, I believe, the Nation of Islam preaches against the miscegenation of "races." (Another note: Much serious thinking posits that there is no valid scientific basis for what we call human "races." [See anthropologist Ashley Montegue's The Most Dangerous Myth.] Of course, there are some opposing views.)

My point here is that the "Reverend," apparently, in principle, preaches against miscegenation and is willing to hurl extremely derogatory names at white women who break the "Reverend's" separatist code.

Every year at my school, I meet mixed-race couples or single parents whose children are mixed race. Seems this year there are more mixed-race children, and, in fact, it is a growing identity in America.

One of the reasons I am inspired by Senator Barack Obama is because of his mixed-race identity. If you read some of his two memoirs, you would understand his unique perspective of both white and black milieux: he has lived in both. America, I believe could profit from his perspective.

What we do not need is the hate-filled spewings of the so-called "Reverend." What we do need is the practice--at both personal and political levels--of racial unity.