Arrogance and defoliants
I’ll have to think of something upbeat to write after this post ;) But I was so depressed and quietly outraged by this that I just had to say something (you can skip it if you want to!).
I was reading an article in Science last night about Agent Orange, and medical studies they’re doing to evaluate the effects of dioxins on GIs and Vietnamese populations that were exposed, along with their children and grandchildren. This is something we’re all familiar with, but as I was reading the article something else really struck me. At the time, of course, they didn’t know that Agent Orange contained dioxins, so none of this was foreseeable. But… then I realized what exactly we were doing with it. It was some statistics reported in the article that really drew my attention to the things that no-one ever talks about.
We sprayed 10% of another country with a defoliant. Ten percent! Just so we could see our enemies better. This is a country where the vast majority of the population depends on agriculture to survive. 20,000 villages were directly sprayed, along with their fields and water supplies. With an herbicide. That’s 5 million people, directly sprayed, living in those villages. What did they live on after that, when everything around them withered away? What could they eat or drink, that wouldn’t be poisoned? What were we thinking?
The arrogance and inhumanity of this is breathtaking. No amount of soldiers saved from enemy fire could be worth that much disruption of native farming and village life. Just as we’ve seen in Iraq, the number of innocent people killed and affected in the countries we invade just doesn’t count compared to our own soldiers, in the eyes of the military and American people.
And there’s also some inner part of me that is just outraged about the forests, jungle, and river systems destroyed, defoliated, poisoned. All the birds, fish, plants, that special life killed in the name of war. It makes me wonder what these ecosystems look like now. Have they recovered? Will they ever recover? How did the birds and animals fare, when sprayed by herbicides and dioxins? Does anyone care? I’ve never, ever seen this even mentioned.
It makes me wonder if we would do this today. Almost immediately some inner voice pipes up and says, of course we would. Look at Iraq – absolutely trashed. Sure it’s not all our doing, but enough of it is. How long did it take before the Iraqi casualties began to be reported and debated alongside our own? How much infrastructure is nonfunctional, how many irreplaceable archaeological sites destroyed, how many millions lost their homes? How can anyone think this is worth it?
Sign me… baffled.
Blogging about blogging
Like my life, this blog is full of posts on many unconnected topics – nature, games, work, relationships, tarot, politics, literature… One thing I love about blogging software is the ability to see how many people are visiting your blog, where they came from, what they’re reading, and links going in and out. It’s a lot of fun to see what interests people the most. Here are a few interesting observations:
- Whenever I post on one of the big Yahoo lists, visits go way up. It seems people actually look up your Yahoo profile if you say something interesting and follow the links on it – who knew!
- There’s a whole group of tarot enthusiasts who read mostly the tarot posts – recently I had a large influx of folks from Russia when my tarot book was published there
- I’ve written a lot about relationships in the past year, having gone through some pretty deep personal experiences and transitions. These posts get read more often than any other, even though they are now off the front page. They are often found through search engines – or people get to the blog and go straight to the love category and read all the posts there
- Nature is another popular topic. WordPress has a nature tag shared by many blogs and any time any of us posts under that tag many people from within the WordPress network read it – kind of like a webring by topic made up of blog posts.
- Another thing that brings in a lot of traffic from the search engines is any post about astrology and combinations of various signs and planets. That and the relationship items are the most frequently found through searches.
- I’m enjoying random links that happen from time to time. I wrote a post on the metaphysics of mediation, which has been picked up by someone over at “blinkbits”, which as I understand it, is a way to share favorite posts from feeds.
- The blogs that tend to get the most comments are about relationships, politics, and nature :)
The way all this ebbs and flows is so interesting, and I really enjoy being able to see the friends and perfect strangers that have taken the time to stop by, read, and discuss. Thank you!
Walking the world
The world has been calling me to walk in it lately. It’s telling me that I need to go places on foot, instead of by car or even by train. I need to go walking in the Olympic Mountains, across the UK, in the Nisqually Delta, on little trails in my neighborhood.
The picture above is part of the South West Coast Path in England, a continuous path along the coastline of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset. It links to many inland paths across the moors and old mining areas of Cornwall. And then there is the famous Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales… not to mention Scotland and Wales, which are full of ancient walking paths.
I took the first step today, now that the weather is above freezing. Well, maybe not the first step. I did buy all my hiking gear last fall and put it to some use. But I had no desire to go out in the ice and snow this winter – I choose to walk above 40 degrees :) I’m optimistically hoping that we’re back to normal for this area and I can start being outdoors some.
In any case, today I walked the 3 mile trail behind my house, just a little neighborhood trail that goes through some forest, a bit of wetland, and some parks. Over the next six months I’ll be working up to 8-mile hikes on uneven terrain in preparation for a walking tour of Newfoundland in July. And then perhaps next fall… a month in England?
Imagine a coastal walk where each day brings new scenery, mining ruins, interesting geology, little villages, side paths to moors and mining towns, beaches, pubs, and wildlife. Every few miles there is a little town with places to eat and spend the night, so the length of each day’s travels can be chosen according to the terrain, weather, and level of energy. Public transportation is good, so there’s no need to worry about getting back to where I started from.
The only things I really need are sturdy shoes, layered clothing, tide tables and detailed walking maps and I’m good to go. Oh, and binoculars :) However far I get in a month is how far I get, and if a pub, B&B, or a book looks enticing, I need go no further that night. I might just disappear off the face of the earth for a while… or to the face of the earth, as the case may be.
News I never thought I’d see…
In yesterday’s Tacoma News Tribune:
CEOs ask Congress for emissions limits. ~blink~ Check out these words of wisdom:
“mandatory reductions of heat-trapping emissions can be imposed without economic harm”
“we do not believe that voluntary efforts will suffice”
“The science of global warming is clear. We know enough to act now. We must act now.”
“We are asking Congress to not wait for a new administration and not to wait for the presidential debates.”
And just who are these forward-thinkers? Alcoa, BP America, DuPont, Caterpillar, General Electric, Duke Energy Corp, and several leading environmental groups. ~double blink~
Some part of me is thinking there has to be a catch. Either that or they’re finally listening to their insurance companies, who’ve been getting increasingly concerned about the impacts of global warming on their bottom line. And of course some of their solutions are intended to stave off what they see as worse choices, such as the command-and-control approaches of the past, by implementing market-based emissions caps trading systems. Nevertheless, it’s nice to see some big energy companies admit that global warming is real, and that something needs to be done.
Meanwhile, in the State/Local section of the paper…
State should respond to climate changes now, not later
This article describes the recent study which was done for the Washington State Legislature on the likely fiscal impacts of global warming. This is no news to Swiss tourism and ski resorts, who have recently learned they’re likely to lose all the glaciers in the Alps by 2030-2050. Here in Washington, we’re also losing our glaciers and our snowpack, which not only serve the ski resorts but provide much of the water for Western Washington, not to mention water for salmon streams, low-cost renewable electricity, and agriculture.
An estimated 2-foot rise in sea level by 2050 is expected to have significant costs associated with it, including loss of property, damage to waterfront infrastructure and ports, and storm sewer backups. A projected rise in forest fires will continue to strain our already over-burdened fire-fighters, who can no longer rely on the National Guard to help out. Wildfires also burn valuable timber, damage habitat and reduce recreational opportunities. Finally, there is the issue of extreme weather, which already appears to be impacting the state.
All this, and the article on glacier loss in the Swiss Alps, in a SINGLE issue of a daily newspaper. Significantly, these were not articles in the science section, but in world, national, and state news.
Meanwhile… the local school district in the next town over has decided that Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth cannot be shown in high schools without a contrasting viewpoint. High school science teachers have reported that they don’t feel they can show the movie because they can’t think of what such a contrasting viewpoint would be. Meanwhile, parents and teachers are organizing local showings of the movie to offset the … shall we say … ostrich-like behavior of the school board.
The Decline and Fall of …. which empire was that again?
About ten years ago I read Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and was struck by certain similarities to a certain civilization we’re all familiar with. Check out this list of contributing factors hypothesized by Gibbon and other historians:
- Constant foreign invasions and overextension of the armies, resulting in a massive percentage of the tax base going to support the wars, a general reluctance on the part of the populace to serve in the legions, and the hiring of mercenaries to do some of the fighting
- The federal government taking local tax revenues to support the wars and reducing support for local government, resulting in less investment in infrastructure and social services
- Farmers being forced into bankruptcy and welfare due to taxation; the disappearance of the middle classes; starvation among the poor
- General hedonism among the upper classes, gluttony and drunkenness, moral and ethical decline, and materialism
- The rise of lawyers and litigation, placing a burden on government and the economy
- Inflation of currency and lack of manufacturing
- The emergence of Iran as a military threat (!) and being constantly embroiled in battles in the Middle East
- Environmental degradation caused by overpopulation, including deforestation, over-use of water resources, and extinction of species
Gee. Does any of this sound familiar?? It seem even more true than 10 years ago when I first read it. Maybe it’s time for us to take a fall; if the British survived it, so can we. Possibly a little more humble for it, let’s hope.
The Voices of Men
Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Ladysmith Black Mambazo in Olympia with a friend, and it brought to mind something I have noticed before, which is how the voices of men in song are missing from our culture. I’m not sure exactly how to explain this, because I’m sure you can immediately think of all kinds of genres, such as rock and roll, pop, etc., where men are prominent. But it’s not this basic – unembellished, deeply male, powerful singing.
I have heard it other places too – on Anoushka Shankar’s albums of Indian music (for example, “Rise”), in Peruvian music… basically in world music. But not ours. Our male voices are almost always counter-culture – not a strong presence of or within the culture. Just being men, who they are, expressing their basic essence with their voices. The only good examples I can think of that give me the same feeling are black spirituals from the South – but again, those are African roots and African-American voices, raised in opposition to (or spiritual endurance of) the dominant culture of the time. Maybe it’s no surprise that my favorite American music now is blues.
So where are our voices? Where are the male voices that represent my culture – Norwegian, French, Welsh? American? Did they ever exist? Or is that not our way? Perhaps they are heard in fishing tales, in heroic stories, in myth rather than in song.
Check out the Tarot Channel
I just started writing for a new group tarot blog (featuring Mark McElroy and Janet Boyer as editors) over at The Tarot Channel. Pop over and check it out, and let us know what you think. It’s a neat idea, I think, to have a bunch of us writing in the same place about a topic we all like, but approach in very different ways. Plus Mark has a unique talent for finding odd and interesting tidbits on the web to keep us all entertained :)
As you know, this blog is kinda my own personal space, and you may find anything at all here on any given day. This way, if I feel like really writing about tarot in ways that are more in-depth and less personal, I’ve got another place to do it. Both of these forms of blogging are new to me in the last year, and it’s all very interesting – so many ways to communicate and participate in a community, and hard to know which ones will take the world by storm and which ones will slowly fall away. Fun to watch it happen though!
Procrastina-a-tion
I was just reading in the paper about how we have become much more severe procrastinators than we used to be. This certainly fits with my sense of how big a problem it has gotten to be in my life. But it’s not just a general sense – several large studies in the US and Europe have documented how much worse the problem has gotten in the last 10 or 20 years. By far the biggest contributor is the much greater prevalence of distractions in our lives.
It seems that collectively, we have little will power. The best way to avoid procrastination is to avoid distractions that would allow us to procrastinate. Unfortunately, not only are more distractions available, many of them are required tools provided at work to make us more productive (!) – computers, hand-helds, cell phones, faxes, instant messaging, not to mention the other stuff – televisions, latte stands, gameboys, etc.
Some of the study authors estimated that if people just turned off the little bell that announces e-mail messages in our in-box, we’d save hours per day. We’re like little Pavlovian dogs that just can’t help seeing what new e-mail has arrived – which may lead us to check something out on the Internet, make a phone call, type a response, look something up – anything but do what we were originally doing. Oh, and maybe we’ll check out the… erm, blog entries… that have come in in the meantime, just because.
I admit I use it as a kind of reward. I’m reading or writing something for work, and I’ll finish a chapter, then read whatever e-mail has come in and lead wherever it goes if I feel like it. Then it’s back to my work and the next chapter. Of course, I’d get a lot more done if I’d take my laptop downstairs (with the e-mail off) and do it there. Somehow if you save an hour for e-mail before work and an hour after work, it goes a lot faster. Wonder what’s up with that? Probably because you’re not trying to (consciously or unconsciously) avoid work by spending more time on whatever else comes in.
It gets really bad when this habit is so ingrained that even removing ourselves from the e-mail, turning off the blackberry, etc. doesn’t do the trick. I go downstairs with my laptop and I still need that reward between chapters. Well look – there’s games on my desktop!! How convenient – just a hand or two of Hearts, that’ll do the trick. The study authors saved their particular ire for Minesweeper, which has probably caused decades of man-years to be lost from work.
Hmm… and here I am, blogging away instead of writing the latest chapter of my new book. !!!
The Metaphysics of Mediation
It’s interesting how the further I get into mediation, the more I read about advanced mediation techniques that are very metaphysical. People who are otherwise hard-headed negotiators talk about directing energy flow in the room, extending a space of love to encompass angry people, centering and creating a calm presence that flows to the participants, and other descriptions of what the mediator does that were very unexpected to me when I first started hearing them – especially considering the very businesslike, straight-laced looking people that I was hearing them from.
There are many zen-like discussions of how the mediator creates their own sense of centeredness and shuts out the distracting business and emotions of everyday life before the mediation, so that they can offer this groundedness to the participants from the start. Yet, what is more interesting to me is what happens during the mediation.
So many people come into the room expecting to convince us of one particular reality. Frequently we find ourselves wondering privately what the “truth” of the situation is, even though it’s not our job to identify the truth (unlike a judge or arbitrator), or you might say, to select among the possible truths. Instead, I have come to believe that it is our job to hear and support the two different realities that we know will be present in the room – to hold them in our hands and minds simultaneously as equally valid, equally real to those who hold them – no matter how crazy they sound to us, or how irreconcilable they are. Because it’s been my observation that when the mediators can do this, they are trusted, and the space becomes safer for both participants.
The safe space that is created then provides the opportunity for each person’s reality to shift toward the other’s. Sometimes this doesn’t happen, and then the mediator simply listens very carefully to identify whether there is enough overlap in the realities as they stand to reach an agreement. One might think that one has to first arrive at the truth to agree on what needs to be done, but this isn’t the case at all. As long as the agreement works within each person’s reality, it will survive. Sometimes, this feels like threading a needle or finding the pinpoint of overlap in widely divergent circles.
All the better though, if the comfort level increases to the point where the participants can start to shift their realities toward the other person. When that happens, it just becomes all the easier to craft an agreement – since now there is greater overlap and greater opportunity. This is where transformative mediation occurs – the opportunity to mend relationships and set the stage for healing and progress in the future – so important in cases of child custody, which is a large percentage of what we do.
Recently, I’ve been reading about the trickster archetype (shapeshifter, prankster, reality twister, gift-bringer) in relation to the role of the mediator, a fascinating subject which will have to wait for another post :)
Beautiful snow
How lovely to wake up to the sun shining on the snow, knowing that there’s absolutely nowhere I need to go today :) Late last night I had an urge to organize some recipes and go grocery shopping, and I’m very glad I did it then, as I could feel it getting icy cold. This is the kind of snow where it’s cold enough that even during the day it is outlining each tiny branch and nothing is melting.
What a strange cycle of weather we’re having this year – I’ve really never seen anything like it. Windstorms, followed by torrential rains, followed by snowstorms and subzero temperatures (during power outages)… then starting all over with little more than a day or two of “normal” weather in between. The exception is becoming the rule, and it’s barely the start of what is our normal storm season. So much for our dreary cloudy, gently rainy winters, which most of us in the Pacific NW are now looking back at wishfully.
Now the paper is predicting an odd weather phenomenon for this afternoon known as a “thundersnow” – a thunderstorm with snow. That should be entertaining! I was planning to go out for a walk in the snow this afternoon – but we’ll see :)
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