Environmental

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Paper Towels Don’t Just Kill Trees

Paper towels don’t just kill trees.

They kill the family of baby birds nesting in the tree, leaving bird parents lost and wondering what happened to their children.

They kill the raccoon and opossum babies who were sleeping in a warm nest with their mothers.

They kill the insects and spiders that live on and around the tree.

They kill the plants around the tree, the sorrel, the ferns, the rhododendrons.

Giant tires from the machines that rip the tree from the ground smash the homes of mice and salamanders, killing them too.

Those same tires leave mud that drains into nearby streams, harming the lives that live there.

Paper towels don’t just kill trees; they destroy the lives of everything living nearby. Is it really worth it to destroy an entire community just so your hands can be dry?

Shake off your hands and let them air dry.
Death of an Ecosystem More Death of an Old Growth ForestThe deaths of these trees mean the deaths of many others whose bodies we don’t see, left to rot in the forest. The forest “managers,” the corporations who profit from this death may have piled some of the destruction into mounds and set fire. All this death and destruction for what?

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Rumble

The forests need to be managed, they say. The brush and plants growing at the bottom of trees, the “understory” has to be cut out because it causes forest fires, they say. Cutting down the trees is best, they say. Rumble.

They say what the public wants to hear so that the public won’t question them. In fact they create the “science” to back up what really is just meant to make cutting down the trees easier for them to do. If there isn’t brush in the way they can more easily back up their machines to kill and destroy the trees, hook on the chains, rip off their branches, drag them down and out, lay them on a truck.

Rumble.

One after another after another after another after another. The trucks rumble by. Every five minutes a truck full of logs drives by my house. Every five minutes another 20 or 30 trees carried out of the ruined forest.

Rumble.

How many walls are built out of the dead bodies on that log truck? How many shitty pieces of quarter round sold at the Home Depot? Rumble.

They love the big trees. The bigger the tree, the more “board feet of lumber.” Forests aren’t even discussed in terms of the ecosystems they represent. They’re seen as a “resource.” They are seen as siding, or fencing, or roofing, or a new office because the one that works just fine but isn’t pretty enough needs a “facelift” so the humans inside can keep their blinders on and pretend the world isn’t falling apart around them.

Rumble.

Once the trees are cut and taken, what is left is piled up and burned or left to rot. Detritus. Nothing here worth anything, at least to us.

Rumble.

Last year after the massive fires on Mt. Hood caused by a fool with a firework the husband of a friend posted on social media about how it was best to “manage” the forests. Humans needed to go in and cut the trees. He had learned this in school in forest management, taught by professors schooled by the timber companies. Because he had learned this at university, it had to be true, and he was passing his wisdom on to his friends.

Rumble.

Forest science. Forest engineering. Forest fucking manipulation to lead to Forest Products. That’s the point of the “science.” That’s the point of the “engineering.” The foxes teach the students how to catch the hens. The students become more foxes. The foxes tell the people that the hens need to be managed. They tell the people that the hens will become dangerous, that their homes will burn, that the hens can’t possibly live their own lives without fox intervention. The foxes need to remove the hens.

Rumble.

The universities with their Forest Science, and Forest Engineering, and Forest Products are all designed to create more willing cutters to remove the trees from the forests for human use alone. No matter that humans can’t BREATHE without trees. No matter that deer, and raccoons, and bears, and birds, and mountain lions, and salmon, and wolves, and fungi, and Rhododendrons, and Snowberry bushes, and beetles, and bees, and flies, and every other creature that lives in the forest needs the forest to exist as it has for thousands and thousands of years without human intervention.

Rumble.

They’ll bring in the stories about how native Americans used controlled burns to manage forests as platitude to keep everyone comfortable and justify their continued destruction. Nothing to see here, folks. Keep moving on. Oh, look! Tom Cruise is getting married. Did you know that?

Rumble.

I drove to Portland yesterday. On the way I saw at least six trucks filled with logs two and half and more feet thick. Those trees had been here before the Wetiko virus bearing humans came along and killed them. Now they’re dead. Now they’ll be in someone’s kitchen or on the side of an ugly McMansion.

Rumble.

The trucks don’t stop.

Rumble.

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Population Reduction

I read another article today about how humans need to change their eating habits if we are going to survive. In it, the author presumed a human population of 10 billion by 2050.

What I would like to know is why the population numbers are taken as a given and considering reducing population numbers is never even explored. If humans really want to make a meaningful impact, we are going to have to do more than change our eating habits. We are going to have to reduce our populations to much smaller numbers. We are going to have to accept that some of us cannot have children. That is the price we all have to pay in order to have any possibility of survival (which is slim anyway, considering our many destructive impacts on this planet).

Of course, any time anyone brings up the possibility of reducing population everyone starts screaming and jumping up and down that we are going to infringe on rights or force poorer populations to stop having families, but overreacting and assuming the worst-case scenario doesn’t alter the current trajectory and distracts from the reality that if we don’t do it, nature is going to do it for us, and it’s going to do it in a much crueler manner than we could. Death by starvation is not pretty. Humans cannot continue living as they have. Humans with greater resources cannot continue living like their needs are the only needs, and ignoring the entire planet in the process.

It’s a fact–the planet is not limitless and living like it is will ensure its destruction.

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How to Get Rid of a Smelly Sponge

How come kitchen sponges are smelly?

I made a discovery about stinky sponges. I’ve always make a point of squeezing all the water out of a dish sponge so that it doesn’t sit and fester and smell. When I used to have a dishwasher, I would wash the sponge in it periodically to disinfect it with hot water. I have also sprayed the stinky sponge with bleach, which I don’t like to do because it gets a toxic chemical near our dishes.

For a few years now though the sponges in our house have not been stinky. I attributed this to vigilant sponge squeezing. We also have a little rack that hangs on the side of the sink to put the sponge in so it doesn’t sit stewing in water. The sponge used to really smell when I lived with my ex who would leave it in a puddle in the bottom of the sink. We’ve been apart for over five years now and the sponge hasn’t smelled since then. Keep it dry, keep it on the side of the sink. Problem solved, or so I thought.

Then I made an interesting discovery.

For the longest time, I purchased mainstream dish washing liquid  like Dawn™.  When I moved back home to Portland and was able to shop again at New Seasons, I started buying more environmentally friendly soaps that smelled really good like Mrs. Meyers Clean Day™. Oh, I love that soap. It’s not much more expensive than the mainstream stuff and it smells so delicious.

One day, we ran out of dish washing soap and I was at some store that isn’t New Seasons buying who knows what. The store didn’t have any options for dish washing soap other than mainstream brands. I bought a jug of Dawn™ and didn’t think much of it. It doesn’t smell pretty like Mrs. Meyers™, but we were out of soap and it was there so I bought it. I thought little of it beyond that.

Then a couple of weeks later, I realized that no matter how much I squeezed out our sponge, it smelled. Bad. I couldn’t figure why until I remembered the dish washing liquid change and wondered if this was what caused the smell to return so I decided to try an experiment.

I bought some more of the Mrs. Meyers™ environmentally friendly soap and started using it instead of the Dawn™. I did this for a week and the smelly sponge went away. I used the Dawn™ again for a week. The smelly sponge returned.

My conclusion?

Smelly sponges have nothing to do with how much water you squeegy out of them, they smell because of the detergent used to wash dishes. I have no doubt of this. I’ve tried a variety of different soaps including Trader Joe’s dish washing soap. No smell. Biocleen™. No smell. J.R. Watkins™. No smell. Seems to be the Dawn™ that makes the sponge smelly for whatever reason.

I still have the jug of Dawn™ under my sink way in the back. It’s there because I’m not sure how to dispose of it without putting it in a landfill and somehow that feels as bad as dumping chemicals in a landfill. I’m sticking with the good stuff. Dawn™ might “cut grease” but God only knows what else it’s doing that it allows bacteria to fester in the dish sponge and make it smell like old feet. Yuck. No, thank you.

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Smoke and Fire

Love wins today. Love always wins. In this moment, there is love. The fear I feel from these fires is filled with love for this earth. The earth is us and we have eaten her like a cancer, eaten ourselves.

Our city was covered in smoke today blown in from wildfires in eastern Washington and northeastern Oregon. The entire Willamette Valley was covered in smoke. This fills me with sadness and dismay. I awakened because I needed to go to the bathroom. My room was stuffy because during the day Saturday the girls closed out the smoke. When I went to bed I didn’t reopen the window. When I awakened, the room felt stuffy so I opened the window to let in some fresh air. The breeze blowing in was crisp and smelled fresh. No smoke. But it got me thinking about the smoke and fires, awakened me. I looked on the internets and read stories about the smoke and fires and wept.

We are killing our planet, humans. We have to face reality. These fires. This water shortage. This changed summer that is like nothing we have ever experienced. These heat waves over and over and over. 2 degrees Celsius average increase means temperatures of 130 degrees. Can you live with that?

We are taking something so beautiful and killing it for our convenience. What have we gained? What has industrialization gained us? We have less time to spend together than ever before. We live in boxes separated from one another and stare at screens in our hands and on our desks instead of looking at one another and what do we get from it? Our planet burns. It sweeps water from the oceans across the land. We are destroying species at rates unheard of for millions of years. Yes, it is us. For convenience. What will it take to wake people up? Will it be our own extinction?

I hold my small daughter in my arms and feel such love for her and also such real grief and fear of what she will grow up into.

Nature does bat last, but really, who wins this if the planet is burned and gone?

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A Nation of Toddlers

America is perhaps the most infantile culture in the world. We are a nation of toddlers shouting “Me first,” and “Mine, mine, mine!” Americans are some of the most spoiled, entitled, selfish humans on the planet. Patience seems not to exist. Sharing, taking turns, putting others in front of the self, these are behaviors of maturity, and our culture regards them with disdain.

Nowhere is this more immediately evident than on the road. Someone inadvertently cuts in front another driver and the person whom they displaced acts as if they grabbed their toy from the sand box and ran with it. You turn on your turn signal to change lanes and the cars beside you speed up to ensure you don’t get in. Everyone is in a race to be first, to be in front, and any action that thwarts this desire is seen as a personal affront.

Rationality is the ability to make rational choices, thinking through the consequences and taking actions that make rational sense. Adults are able to distinguish between the feeling process and the intellectual process and have the ability to choose between having one’s functioning guided by feelings or by thoughts.

People living within a child’s frame of reference often overreact emotionally to events that are insignificant in the overall scheme of their lives, and fail to respond to events that are important or crucial to their well-being.

The life of a child is helpless and powerless. It is a place of inequality, fear, and paranoia. As a child, anyone can control and overrun you. As an adult you own your life and destiny. If you remain a child in your adult life, you look at the world around you as dominating, controlling, and dangerous. America views the world from this childlike view. We are the most militarized nation in the history of the world, seeing everything and everyone as a possible enemy, and every action as a possible threat. (Or at the very least this is the excuse offered to the nation of children by the totalitarian toddlers who seek to amass the greatest pile of toys in the sandbox.)

It is evident in gun culture: I don’t like the way you looked at me, I think you threatened me, I’ll pull out my gun and shoot you, and in many places in the country, this is acceptable.

It is evident in America’s level of debt: I want what I want when I want it, even if I can’t afford it, and the nation itself wants what it wants when it wants it, even if it can’t afford it. It will also spend to maximize the profits of a few while ignoring the needs of the majority.

It is evident in the media that will only tell us the story the tellers want us to hear, like paternalistic parents ensuring we get the story that will not result in a tantrum.

It is evident in our approach to politics. We believe what we want to hear, and accept the tropes of the politicians, believing the speeches and ignoring the actions, constantly seeking that which instantly gratifies us and makes us believe everything is okay even when it is not.

It is evident even in our approach to art and culture. Spectacle wins; quality is meaningless. Americans are like small children witnessing fireworks, completely unable to comprehend an exquisite work of literature or art.

It is evident in our unwillingness to see what is happening across the world as the oceans are acidifying, the poles are melting, the trees are dying, the coral reefs are withering, creatures are becoming extinct at an unparalleled rate, and human populations are increasing to untenable levels. The end is near, but damn, we don’t want to know about it. Turn on the Avengers, the American version of Barney, pull the blanket over your head, stick your thumb in your mouth, and just pretend everything is a-ok.

I could go on and on.

It is as if in gradually finding ways to make life “easier,” in giving up the ability to learn to find and store food, to house and clothe ourselves, to learn to keep warm in the outdoors, and to coexist with the planet on which we were created, we have given up the ability to be fully adult and actually, fully human.

 

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January showers bring…February flowers?

Today I drilled holes in pots to make olla pots for my garden to water more efficiently. My greenhouse is THIS close to being done, but there is still a hole on one wall up top and today was windy and stormy, so I climbed up and tacked up a piece of plastic to stop the rain from blowing in. While I was perched precariously on the edge of the fence, small nails held between my lips, a hammer balanced in one hand as I held on and attached the plastic there, I saw a honeybee. It was quivering on top of the greenhouse, doing that weird honeybee dance they do, wiggling its back end. I wasn’t sure what it was doing sitting on top of my greenhouse in the wind and periodic rain drips. No other bees were in sight. There were no flowers near it. It looked fragile, there in the wind in the wrong time of year. It was too warm outside for the time of year. Balmy and weird.

My raspberries are coming up. The tulips and daffodils are fully bloomed. The cherry trees in my yard are bloomed. My lilies are popping little points up through the soil. Usually in February I spray my fruit trees with dormant spray, but you’re supposed to do it when they’re dormant, and little buds were already present, so no dormant spray. They’re young and I’m sure they’ll be fine, but there aren’t many pollinators out in this bizarre weather, which means likely little fruit this year. This is not normal and not a pattern from the past. Humans have caused this and humans want to ignore it in favor of the latest football scores or whatever else that helps us to ignore the obvious right in front of our faces. It’s like we have a tumor on the side of our head and want to just look around it and pretend it’s not there. The spring rhyme goes, “April showers bring May flowers.” It’s not January showers bring February flowers, and these flowers that are here in March were here in February. We don’t give Valentine’s lilies, we give Easter lilies. At Easter. In actual spring. It isn’t spring in the northern hemisphere where I live. We haven’t had the equinox yet. It is still winter here. So many seem to forget this while infatuated with the sunny weather. This isn’t normal.

If your children were in harm’s way, you would try to help them regardless of the outcome because you love them. Shouldn’t it be the same for the Earth, which is us? We are the Earth. We should help her instead of committing slow suicide (though not so slow anymore, it seems).

I’m writing this sitting in warm covers in a snuggly bed. I washed all of my bedding today and it smells fresh and clean, and it’s soft and cozy. I’m so grateful to have a warm bed in a warm house, my dogs snoring softly near me as I write. I’m lucky, and I’m grateful for what I have.

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When Ice is Fire

Humans, humans. Going about their business. Living their lives. Making their sounds. Taking up more than their share of space everywhere. Assuming they are the center of everything. Ignoring the meteor heading right toward Earth.

Ah, there she goes again, getting all caught up in that climate change hype again.

Yeah, that’s me. Certain our future at this point is a ball of fire headed in a trajectory straight toward the center of the planet. I keep leaning toward the possibility of something else, then turn my face toward the sky and see that meteor hell bound for us and feel that reality forcing me to acknowledge its existence. I feel that meteor’s heat upon my skin. I see the path it is burning and it is impossible not to feel a little frightened, not to feel overwhelmed by the probability of it all, not to feel ashamed for my race, not to feel desperate to do something, anything besides sit back and let it happen.

A huge West Antarctic ice sheet is starting a glacially slow, unstoppable collapse. Alarmed scientists say this means even more sea level rise than previously expected.

Genius, humanity. Good for you.

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We’re Killing our Planet

We are killing our planet, and while it might be the tiny fragment who benefit in the short term monetarily, it is anyone who refuses to acknowledge or stop the problem who is equally complicit. I start to list all of the things we are doing to this earth, most of which is done in the name of increasing short-term wealth for a very few, but much of which increases conveniences for a lot of us, and the list grows too big to write out in a blog post. There are books listing all we are doing and what could and should be done (Eaarth by Bill McKibben is a favorite), so I don’t really need to list out all of it anyway. Sometimes it is just hearing about a couple of these things within the same two hours that gets my stomach rolling. Today in Master Gardener class we discussed the multiple assaults that are decimating the bee populations. This was followed closely by the big money, big oil bullshit report by the USDA on the Keystone XL pipeline. Most Americans aren’t following this, and of those who are, many don’t realize that those who wrote the report were hand-picked by big oil interests. Gads, when are people going to realize that we are being railroaded on every front? How bad does it have to get?

Herein lies another part of why I rarely write here anymore is because it all just seems too big and too insurmountable. I am simply one tiny voice not being heard. This is not sour grapes; it is reality. I have thought and analyzed and considered and wondered, and then thought about it all again, what is the purpose in my writing here? The conclusion I continually draw is that if I’m trying to get some message out about what we are doing to this earth, this blog adds very little to the conversation, and so I don’t write, not much anyway, because it is so overwhelming.

We have to save our planet. People have got to start caring and doing more than separating their trash into piles that can be recycled versus those that can’t. It is going to take something bigger from each and every one of us. In the meantime, the planet will never be the same. It can’t. We can only hope to make it a place that we can live on for more than a few more decades. We have got to see past this minute and understand our long term actions. We have got to be mindful in every single thing that we do, because it has an impact. We ALL have an impact. Go buy some plastic contrivance for your child’s birthday? Recognize that the plastic contrivance has a long-term impact, then ask whether it is worth the trade off. I cannot imagine anyone who really understands this ever believing that whatever they gain from the plastic contrivance will outweigh the life of our earth. Because it is that important. Every tiny decision adds to the mass that makes everything a very, big deal. It does overwhelm me because it really is that big and because we have chosen not to pay attention, now we will be forced to take action as we are bombarded by climate event after climate event, and lose species after species after species.

I really believe if we are to survive, and honestly I’m not sure I would want to be a part of an earth populated only with humans, we have got to change. We have to stop participating in a system that doesn’t work. We have got to stop polarizing and warring. It will only happen through peace and love, if we can actually get there. I see glimmers of hope, interspersed with stories about the bees and the Keystone XL, but sometimes it is really difficult to maintain equanimity.

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A Possible Cure for Insomnia

This piece was published on Huffington Post.

A Possible Cure for Insomnia

I have figured out one possible cure for insomnia.

I started having insomnia in the mid-1990s. Mine is the sort that wakes me up at night, my little brain buzzing like an electrical transmission tower, thoughts of work, thoughts of family, song worms, you name it.

To keep reading, click here.

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Letters to Annoying People

Dear Hairdresser,
Here is a clue: Just because you think my hair might look “cool” with that fancy cut you propose does not mean that I want you to cut it that way. You are not me. You do not live with me and you are not someone I spend a lot of time with. This means that if you suggest a fab new do and I turn you down, you don’t cut it anyway. It also means you don’t cut it like you want to without saying anything at all. It means you do what I want, whether you like it or not.

Dear Person Who Leaves Dog Shit on the Sidewalk,
The reasons you should pick up your dog’s shit are so inherent and numerous, it honestly blows my mind that you don’t know any better. Perhaps you are simply stupid. If this is the case, you are really too stupid to own a dog. If it isn’t that you are stupid, but rather that you are careless or insensitive, then you are too careless and insensitive to own a dog. You would likely accidentally kill it or starve it to death or something. Whatever the reason, if you leave your dog’s shit on the sidewalk, find the dog a better home and go rub some dog shit on your face.

Dear Woman Who Won’t Step Aside on the Sidewalk,
Yes, you know who you are. You are the bitch who has to prove to everyone she encounters just how ALPHA she is, and in doing so, refuses to step even slightly to the side when encountering others. If someone is approaching you and there is a building or some other obstruction on the sidewalk on their side, and things are open on yours, common courtesy dictates that you step slightly to the side to allow the other person passage. You don’t prove your superiority when you refuse; rather you prove your insecurity, your pettiness, and just how pathetic you truly are. And watch out…one morning when I’ve gone without just enough sleep and my hormones are all over the map, I might actually turn around and whack you in the head with my purse. Hag.

Dear Man from blog Watt’s Up With That?,
You are a fucking moron. I realize from your consistent position near the top of the WordPress Dashboard that you must have a lot of readers. I can only hope these readers actually disagree with you, they just have a stronger stomach than I do. I can’t read your drivel or your claims that the planet’s climate isn’t changing. It doesn’t take a geoscientist to walk outside and figure out that things are drastically different. You can try to claim these are “natural” trends, in spite of the fact that nothing natural on the massive scale we are experiencing occurs in under a decade. You can try to turn people off to buying an environmental car because it’s ugly. You can do all your damage. Just know this: Any success you have in convincing people of your stupidity will only harm your children. There will be no frogs for them to play with, or polar bears or bats or numerous other creatures for them to share the planet with (although maybe that is what you want). Your offspring will fry in the sun and drown in the ocean, and just think, you did it to them! Kudos, asshole.

Dear Rush Limbaugh,
You know, I can’t say it any better than Al Franken. You are a big, fat idiot.

Dear Building Managers Everywhere,
It is not necessary to turn air conditioning up so high that buildings inside are 30 degrees in the summer just because it is 90 degrees outside. Buildings need only maintain a consistent temperature all year round, regardless of what the temperature is outside. And actually, your logic in turning the AC up in the summer is flawed. If you are going to adjust the temp inside according to the temp outside, buildings should be colder in the winter and warmer in the summer because people are wearing more clothes in the winter and fewer in the summer. Maybe if you actually turned the AC down your brains would thaw and this would be obvious.

Dear New York City,
Here’s a concept: Recycling. In a city this size, the fact that recycling isn’t required of buildings and is basically non-existent everywhere else is a deadly sin. You are a ginormous city, the biggest in the US. You have an obligation to the rest of the country and the rest of the world to recycle as much as possible. Do you do it? Not enough. You should be ashamed and get with the goddamned program already. Too much of your shit can be recycled and too much of your shit isn’t. Fix it.

Here’s another concept: Not every damn thing needs to be wrapped in plastic. Guess what? Zucchinis last longer outside of plastic and styrofoam. So do bananas. And guess what else? When a customer at a store doesn’t bring a bag, you don’t have to double-bag in plastic, one is more than enough. Or when a customer buys something like a pop or something else obviously intended to be consumed immediately, you don’t need to bag it at all. Plastic is nasty stuff. There are limited circumstances when it should be used, such as in the medical profession. Otherwise it is a non-biodegradable, environmental disaster and your overuse of the stuff, especially considering your enormous size, constitutes a criminal act. Fix it.

Dear Constant Facebook Posters,
Guess what? I don’t give a shit if you’re off to take a run or a shower or grab a cup of coffee. That isn’t the kind of information I think anyone cares about unless you are a celebrity (And people who care what celebrities do are idiots, so why would you want to please them?). It is nice to have a place where you can find that long lost high school friend and see how they are doing and what is going on in their lives. It is annoying to have to hear how so-and-so had to clean up their kid’s vomit last night or every trivial piece of crap they do every minute of every day. Oh, and guess what else? Pieces of flair are stupid. Throwing virtual water balloons proves you have no life and should consider getting one. Ditto with virtual hugs, “L’il Blue Cove” and all the other crap Facebook flunkies dream up to fuck with you. I have an idea, instead of wasting time on Facebook, how about taking all that extra time you have to waste and heading down to the library or the bookstore and getting a book and reading it. Try it, you might learn something.

Dear Self,
Time to stop bitching and pretend to work. Enough said.

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Clear Cuts National Forest

One thing that struck both of us immediately as we set out early January 8 was how shocked we were at the bright, sunny, and simply warm weather.  As we crossed the Siskiyou Pass, there was so little snow, the landscape around us looked almost summer-like in places.  Then as we headed into California and passed through national forests, Shasta and Lassen, we were apalled at the level of clear cutting. The forests there were simply obliterated.  We decided to take some photos.

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Dear Oprah

I read today of communities in Ghana where people die daily from dysentery and disease because they do not have clean water.  The watering holes are foul and bacteria laden.  There is no fuel for citizens to burn to boil the water and kill germs.  What these people need are water treatment facilities.  I got to thinking about your generosity building schools in Africa and realized you could probably use your influence help with a project of this magnitude.

Of course I realize this isn’t a possiblity in many countries in Africa.  There is so much violence and strife, any efforts would be thwarted.  But Ghana has held proper elections since the early nineties.  They have worked to rise above civil war and to make their country a safe place to live.  Isn’t it time to help them along this journey by bringing them clean drinking water?

Our intentions are worthy.  We send bags of grain, but they never arrive.  We pull musicians together to sing about children and we buy the cd’s.  Yet what these people really need is good, strong infrastructure to help them on the path to self-reliance.  We have the expertise. We have the wealth.  We should put it to good use.  Oprah, you can help.

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America the Ugly

Milla’s dad informed me that a store I was looking for was in Longmont, Colorado.  Considering I have explored the south and the east of Boulder fairly well, and also considering Milla was spending the day with her dad, I decided to traipse on over to see if I could find the store and check out the town.

No offense to Longmontites, but what a disappointment.  Longmont is covered in ugly, bland, spread-out big box stores and their smaller corporate cousins.  The houses were modern bland equivalencies, the sort preferred by developers who buy their blueprints from Plans-R-Us.  Maybe I turned around to leave too soon, but I did not discover a prettier town center.  I had to get out.  The place sucked the life out of me.  Like so many truly homogenized American towns, the place had no aesthetics, no character, nothing.  No wonder so many Americans are depressed.

Going to Longmont, Colorado was exactly the same as going to Redding, California, which was exactly the same as going to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which was exactly the same as going to Beaverton, Oregon, only flatter.  With few exceptions, American towns have zero character.  It is impossible to tell you are in another city in another state other than the fact that the license plates are different.  People lament the lack of community in America today; perhaps part of the problem is that we can’t tell one community from the other any more.

Longmont resembled the tri-cities area of eastern Washington nearly identically.  One thing Oregon has that seems to be sorely lacking in both Washington and Colorado is an urban growth boundary.  In both Colorado and Washington, buildings sprout seemingly out of nowhere, randomly placed wherever the landowner had a whim, regardless how well it fits with the landscape or where a town ends.  Lots of developers in Oregon bitch about the growth boundary, but I’m all for it.  It forces people to be creative with the space they do have.  In towns in Oregon where the boundary has been extended, the decimated orchards and fields are replaced with cloned McMansions, cloned townhomes, and hideous utilitarian corporate chains.  In the coming weeks, yards will be filled with hideous, plastic, walmart holiday atrocities.  Wretched.

While I’m not a huge fan of overly ornate, clean has translated into purely utlitarian, which basically means completely ugly.  Who knows, maybe clean wasn’t the culprit.  Perhaps it has more to do with rape and pillage development, make as much money as possible and get out.  Whatever happened to wanting to make something look nice?  Whatever happened to originality?  It was all sacrificed at the alter of the almighty dollar.

There is that Cree proverb that states, “Only when the last tree has withered, the last fish has been caught, and the last river has been poisoned, will you realize you cannot eat money.”  It seems when money is the only consideration or the highest consideration, not only are life and nature sacrificed, so too is beauty.  What a shame.

We should change the name of the song “America the Beautiful.”  It does not hold true any longer.  We are now America the Boring, America the Utilitarian, America the Ugly.  We don’t need some futuristic, sci-fi warning of a world in a plastic bubble to worry about.  We’re already there.

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Empathy for Kurt Cobain

Life is surreal. It’s amazing how twisted up people can make things.  I constantly hear stories that from the outside seem to have such simple solutions, yet the parties involved are fully unwilling to act simply, choosing instead to remain mired in complications.  Humanity.  It appears we are doomed to destroy ourselves, but before we go we are all going to make certain we’re as miserable as possible.  How often, I wonder, could one’s life be different with the simple choice of just letting something go?  Ah, what do I know anyway?

Blogging non-sequitur: I did not know that Willie Nelson wrote Crazy.

So yesterday I went to Aberdeen, Washington.  The trip was an homage to Kurt Cobain.  We listened to Nirvana the whole way there.  Okay.  I’m joking.  That would have been pathetic.  Aberdeen was an afterthought.  We listened to a lot of music, but none of it was Nirvana.  My friend and I decided to go to Long Beach to get out of Portland since we both had the day free.  We got to Long Beach and although it was brilliantly sunny, the wind felt like it was blowing off the side of a glacier.  We walked out to the ocean then turned around and went right back to the car.  Our ears were frozen.  The best part of the visit was our dogs.  His dog was thrilled to pieces.  Oh my God, we’re at the beach!  There is sand!  There is water!  There are people to sniff!  I can get wet!  I can run!  I can wag! My dog was not thrilled to pieces and clearly thought we were insane.  He followed behind me whimpering.  You have got to be kidding.  Can’t you pick me up?  My paws are freezing!  Is that water?  That’s water.  No way.  I am NOT crossing that water.  Oh for Christ’s sake, are you crossing that water?  What is wrong with you people?  That water is freezing.  Do you feel that wind?  Seriously.  I can’t believe you would volunteer to come out here into the sand and water and wind.  There must be something deranged about human beings.

I think Piper was right.  It was too cold, windy, and wet.  So we decided to leave Long Beach and head to Aberdeen.  It was only another hour north and Kurt Cobain grew up there.  We had to see if the town was anything spectacular, particularly since he’d become famous and then died.  I mean, towns love that stuff, don’t they?

Apparently not.  Wow.  That is about all I can say.  We both lamented having failed to bring any sort of recording devices beyond the cameras in our mobile phones.  I don’t know that I can convey in words the pitifully depressed state of the place.  I actually had the thought that I could understand why someone living there would want to commit suicide.  Of course, Kurt wasn’t there when he committed suicide and had probably not been there for a long time, but it gives one the sense of the place to know that the impression it leaves is that of the will for self destruction.

The approach into town from Long Beach leads one by miles and miles of decimated forests.  Good for you, logging companies!  It appears you have ensured there will be no lumber to harvest for decades!  The land was fully raped and pillaged.  We passed the Weyerhauser Mill, drove along a stretch of uninviting highway lined with storage warehouses and beaten down manufactured homes.  We came to a bridge and wondered whether Aberdeen continued on the other side or if the next locale was Hoquiam.  We discovered to our delight that Aberdeen did indeed continue to the far side of the bridge. Unfortunately since our visit was an afterthought, we arrived just shortly after six p.m.  This meant that nothing was open except the corporate strip mall and a porn shop.  We browsed the porn shop.  It was the same as all other porn shops I have ever frequented.  The funny part of the visit there was that a man sat at a counter and another man browsed horrible videos.  There were rooms in the back and we heard noises leading us to believe there were men back there as well.  But as far as we could tell, other than me, there were no other women in the place.  I informed my friend that the other men in the place were probably impressed he had a real girl with him and not a plastic pussy.  Good times.  The other highlight of our Aberdeen visit was the Star Wars store, but unfortunately it was closed.  Today I discovered quite by accident a similar store less than a mile from my house.  Since we missed the Aberdeen version, we’ll have to hit the one here.

The homes in Aberdeen were run down beyond belief.  My friend suggested that perhaps I could purchase one there for cash out from the money received in the sale of my house.  We took down the address of a place for sale to look it up.  I did and it is actually possible to buy a house there for 1960’s prices.  I saw several for between $40k and $80k.  The only problem is why would you want to?  Yuck.

Visiting freezing Long Beach and decripit Aberdeen was a fun impromptu road trip. We went to the grocery store in Aberdeen and bought jelly beans and went to the bathroom.  The bathroom had a beautiful view of the bay.  Seriously amazing.  Too bad it was wasted on a grocery store bathroom.  We drove home on the non-scenic highway through Olympia.  An enjoyable time was had by all.

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When There is Nothing Left, Maybe We’ll Figure Out We Can’t Eat Money

I hope all the naysayers out there who want to claim climate change isn’t happening are the first ones to drown when sea levels rise.  Don’t try and tell me bees spontaneously die off en masse every few thousand centuries or that “random” changes occur up and down, and we’re just in an “up” period.  There is nothing random about what we are experiencing.  It’s just too fast.

When I was a child, the state I grew up in had predictable weather patterns, patterns that had held since the state became a state in the mid-1800’s (and probably for centuries before white man came along and took notice).  Ten years before Al Gore was trying to convince us that the world is getting warmer, I noticed the patterns changing where I live.  Again, it’s just too fast.

Go ahead, you who want to claim science is wrong.  Keep doing things the way they have been done.  You can choke on your money as you drown in the rising oceans and burn in the unprotected atmosphere.  Good luck to you.  Maybe the planet will have a small chance at survival if all of you are bones at the bottom of the sea.  Those of us who are left can work to live in harmony with what is left of the planet after you’ve finished raping and pillaging and finally drowning in it.

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Little Fish

I made this story up for my daughter one night when she wanted me to tell her a story. The next night, “Tell me the story about Little Fish.” Huh? I had thrown it together on the fly. But she remembered every detail so as I began telling it, she would fix it. Together we recreated it. Then every night I had to retell it. After a bit, it gained nuance and tone. I finally wrote it down. She still loves it.

Little Fish lived in the ocean. She wanted to swim up the stream where she had been born.

Little Fish decided it was time to go. She started up the stream.

But then she saw a fisherman fishing along the banks of the stream, so Little Fish went back to the ocean to wait for a while.

She waited and waited and decided again that it was time to go back up the stream.

Little Fish swam and swam, past the place where she had seen the fisherman.

But as she swam, she saw an eagle, high in the sky, looking for a fish to eat. So Little Fish went back to the ocean to wait for a while.

She waited and waited and decided again that it was time to go back up the stream.

Little Fish swam and swam, past the place where she had seen the fisherman, and past the place where she had seen the eagle high in the sky.

But as she swam, she saw a giant fish, lurking in the shadows along the riverbank, hoping to capture its next meal. So Little Fish went back to the ocean to wait for a while.

She waited and waited and decided again that it was time to go back up the stream.

Little Fish swam and swam, past the place where she had seen the fisherman, past the place where she had seen the eagle high in the sky, and past the place where she had seen the giant fish lurking in the shadows.

But as she swam, Little Fish saw a monstrous brown bear, reaching into the water, looking for its next meal. So Little Fish went back to the ocean to wait for a while.

She waited and waited and decided again that it was time to go back up the stream.

But every time Little Fish swam up that stream and back, she grew a little bit more. And she was no longer such a Little Fish, but a very Large Fish.

This time, Little Fish swam boldly past the place where she had seen the fisherman, past the place where she had seen the eagle high in the sky, past the place where she had seen the giant fish lurking in the shadows, and past the place where she had seen the monstrous bear.

And Little Fish made it safely to the top of the stream to the place she would now call home.