blog (October, 2006)
selling environmentalism to Americans
Trying to convince your fellow Americans of the necessity of environmentally-conscious action? Speak to their pocketbooks.
So, big news: Americans are shallow, misinformed, self-interested, and unsophisticated. But they're our neighbors, our colleagues, and our relatives. And they're likely your clients, customers, or constituents. If you want to move them toward greener behavior and actions, you'll need to deal -- carefully and creatively -- with all of these sobering realities.
-- Joel Makower, WITTs, YOYOs, and Why Americans Don't Go Green
beauty must be defined as...
Beauty must be defined as what we are, or else the concept itself is our enemy.
I saw this poster on the wall in the (Cleveland) C-Space bathroom, and liked it so much I made an extra trip to the toilet just to have another look.
Click the image for a larger pic.
perspective on mass extinction
A Mass Extinction Event is a sad thing, but life has a way of bouncing back, new and strange. We're unlikely to kill off life on Earth. Even if we do, there are 100 billion stars in our Galaxy and 10 billion galaxies in the observable Universe, for a total of roughly 1021 stars. So, if we screw up, it's no big deal... except for us!
-- John Baez, "Zooming Out in Time" Long Now Seminar, October 13, 2006
Stewart Brand wrote a summary of the talk, with links to slides
rocky mtn white-out
This morning I hiked out from Bear Lake in Rocky Mtn. National Park. Out here -- up here -- winter's on.
The wind is snow's catalyst to life; stirring, swirling games and patterns. And that's about the only thing I've found alive out here. Half an hour in town and I saw twenty elk. Five hours in the alpine tundra: not one. I guess they've come to depend on the supermarket and Kind Coffee.
The wind gives me life too, and at over 10,000 feet I'm sucking for it.
The trail forks: drifted snow on the path I'd planned for, footprints on the other. Alone and without a few essentials for a night in the wilderness, I take the road more travelled.
Following one, another's, footsteps, sometimes thigh-deep. Trying to tread lightly, deftly -- not to trudge, tromp, trod -- legs are not wood posts. Ballet on the mountain.
Making up mantras.
If there were an uncovered rock I could sit and write a few, before lighthead loses them.
If I had a real camera and it weren't so white out, I could try to capture the whiteness.
If I had gators and good boots...
A couple hours out I met the man I'd been tracking -- on his way back -- and thanked him for his footprints. He had gators. And poles, and headphones. Listening to what? Not the creaking trees.
I turned back where he had: on an open ridge: element-exposed, wind blasting snow in volleys and sheets and war... We never made it to Odessa Lake.
I trudged/tromped/dogged most of the journey back down. On the return drive to town (to catnap at the Estes Park Hostel,) sky blue and clear, country colored (colorado!)
Hike lower country tomorrow: more colorado.
re-fuse to thaw
Winter draws,
and draws in.
I'll compact to fluoresce.
Soft white and diffuse,
at a'quarter's duress.
Woolworn, threadbare born,
whittling will all-th'while.
Whistle shrill and I'm there,
silverlining, sundial.
With apollo's apoyo, bold and cold-stilling,
Caving in, chilling out; rollingplay and spell-trilling,
'Til then,
a thick, brisk, quick fistfull of fall,
leaving wistfull wellwishing to one and to all.