Clips

Pelicans, Belted Kingfishers and Ospreys all love this tree

Some days the ideas don't come fast and furious so i surf the net looking for trends that affect humanity. On St. Croix the Hovensa closing is the main topic of conversation and will create unknown opportunities for years to come; we still have far to go before we feel the real effects. i'm avoiding writing about it because i've taken a position of wait and see. So on to other things that can also impact us and our environment.

There's a hint of a rainbow wayyyyy back in that cloud

Hawksbills and Greens...of the ten tagged in August at Buck Island National Park eight are still sending out signals whoo hoo. The map at seaturtle.org shows all of them remaining in the Caribbean between Puerto Rico and down as far as Antigua. They slowly meandered away from St. Croix with some going north and others heading south. It will be interesting to see if they come back and when.  i'm always checking the turtles at Cane Bay and so far none of ours have been tagged.

Hawksbill at Cane Bay

Hope the Whimbrel...that bird is freaking amazing and she is ours. Hope lives here from September to May at Great Pond on the south shore until she takes off to migrate north to her breeding grounds close to the eastern Alaskan border. She flies non-stop from here to Virginia where she fuels up and continues the trek north and west. She has had a monitor on her for three seasons and is one of the few Whimbrels still transmitting data to scientists. She has proven that Great Pond is an extremely sensitive wetland area and needs protecting.

Great Pond where Hope hangs out

New York Attorney General Eric Schnierderman will be co-chairing an investigation into risky mortgage packaging and the abusive lending that lead to the housing bubble that crashed our economy. This was a long time in coming and it is just a start but maybe some where down the road those that took advantage of inexperienced buyers will be brought to justice.

Customs House

Newt Gingrich is experiencing a revival of sorts. This summer his rising star bit the dust when his campaign staff bolted. i think most of us thought he was finished but he stayed in the game. Now he has won South Carolina and is trying to win Florida...apparently his schtick is redemption, he has seen the light and changed his ways. i think Gingrich is a professional con man and if conservatives can believe that he has repented of his ways and he becomes their nominee for President of the United States then they will prove to the world that they really can be led like a cow to slaughter.

Beliefs...it is easier to believe and not question than it is to question.

According to Michael Shermer “Men and women, indistinctly, have the same tendency to believe weird things. What changes is the type of weird thing. Women believe more in mediums, spiritualists, fortunetellers, witchcraft, amulets, alternative medicine and healers. Men prefer to believe in the paranormal, pseudoscience, creationism and UFOs.”

Saturday Market at La Reine

Jails are a business and we are number one in the world for incarceration. A New Yorker article by Adam Gopnik, "The Caging of America," shockingly notes:

"Over all, there are now more people under "correctional supervision" in America - more than six million - than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height."

The toll on minorities is devastating because a lot of poor black and white men were incarcerated for non-violent crimes:

For a great many poor people in America, particularly poor black men, prison is a destination that braids through an ordinary life, much as high school and college do for rich white ones. More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some time in their lives. Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today - perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system - in prison, on probation, or on parole - than were in slavery then.

Gopnik is appalled: "The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life."

And here's my two cents on that issue...when jails became a business the need for customers increased. Without customers there can be no profit so the fact that we are the number one jailers in the world does not surprise me.

Until next week, see ya.

ST Croix Oil Refinery closing

If you can't wade through the stuff see below for oil refinery comments.

Two individuals interacting through the use of vocalized reverberations that are recognized as containing a code of sounds that both understand. When you think about speech it is amazing that the grunts we emit induce reactions from those we want to impact in some way.

Green Turtle's never have goop on the rear of their shells

i don't know if any of the rest of you have ever done this but when i was young maybe seven or eight i would say a word to myself over and over. i'd repeat a word say...ant... for instance...ahhhnnnntttttt. i'd watch ants going about their business, trekking along in single file, bumping heads with ones going in the opposite direction and say to myself ahhhnnnttttt. i'd say it slowly over and over while i was leaning over watching them and think about the sounds and wonder how in the world ahhhnnnntttttt ever came to be the sound we use to indicate an ant. i'd repeat color sounds, sounds for objects, all sorts of things and never be able to understand why that particular sound became responsible for identifying something we take for granted. i still don't completely understand how we originally agreed that certain tonal articulations had any meaning at all.

Hawksbills always seem to have goop on the rear of their shells

Apparently i'm not alone. Linguists, anthropologists, philosophers, evolutionary biologists and psychologists have all wondered how human language developed. Those that follow the Bible believe that Adam was the first human to speak a designed language that was later scattered into separate languages at Babel by God. Chomsky a linguist at MIT thinks we may have a “language center” in our brains that enables the youngest child to acquire language innately. Others think the evolutionary tweaking of a few genomes way back when is the only thing separating us from the animals.

Moray body language

The Oxford English Dictionary has almost 176,000 words in common usage, 47,000 words in it are obsolete and 9,500 are derivative. No one really knows how many words the English language contains because it adds and subtracts them constantly based upon usage. It is thought that English has more words than other languages because of the addition of Latin and French after the Norman invasion in 1066.

Atlantic Ray trying to get away

The difference between us all lies not in our understanding but in our vocal projections. Since we attach different meanings to sounds we can't always speak to each other but we can understand every human on the planet through their body language. All humans recognize laughter, sadness, puzzlement, distress, arm signals, head nods, gestures and pictures that we draw. Travelers, even without knowledge of the language of the country they are visiting can get their needs met through sign and body language. We can communicate on an elementary level at all times no matter who we are with.

Can you read his body language?

Conversation can be verbal or non-verbal and both methods or a combination of the two clue us in to the intentions of those we interact with. Sounds may convey meaning but the way you look, listen, sit, move or react can give a much more in depth message. You may be trying to convince someone of one thing while your body language is sending a mixed message. If the two aren't working together the receiver of the information may have his or her doubts.

Today on the island we all got the horrible news that the oil refinery is closing. Everyone is talking about it and most of it is negative. Lots of people will be loosing their jobs and moving off island to find work. Everything will be affected, housing, gasoline, schools and all the business's that worked directly or indirectly with the refinery.

St. Croix has experienced ups and downs through out its entire human history and this will not be the worst thing that has ever happened on the island. Over time we have had earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunami's and declining economies brought on by the demise of the sugar industry, aluminum, rum and now oil. At one point in the 1600's all residents were ordered off. In the future it will be something else that will crash and burn...those committed to St. Croix will stay and those that can see no new future here will leave.

My advice is wait and see how things shake out. Some other company could make a bid for the refinery, Hess may decide to re-open if market conditions change and there could be better days ahead. One just never knows. When the refinery in Aruba closed they focused on tourism and the island is now one of the top destinations. Sometimes when things go bad it becomes an opportunity to create something new and better.

Conversation on the streets will be full of melee, take it with a grain of salt. Don't make decisions based upon other people and don't bolt just because everyone else thinks that is their only option. People will continue to live and work here for eons to come regardless of the Hovensa closing.

Think about it

Eleven days into the new year. How many times have you started to write the year down(2012) and gotten it wrong? Seems like it is a right of passage every year, learning the new numbers so you don't even have to think about it.

There are so many things we don't think about as we go about our days i thought i'd shake things up a bit.

How many of you know that flooding in Thailand is three times normal for January? Eleven days and its already three times worse than the average for the whole month. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2012/jan/10/weatherwatch-floods-thailand-temperatures-us

“2011 sets a new U.S. record for combined wet and dry extremes
If you weren't washing away in a flood during 2011, you were probably baking in a drought. The fraction of the contiguous U.S. covered by extremely wet conditions (top 10% historically) was 33% during 2011, ranking as the 2nd highest such coverage in the past 100 years. At the same time, extremely dry conditions (top 10% historically) covered 25% of the nation, ranking 6th highest in the past 100 years. The combined fraction of the country experiencing either severe drought or extremely wet conditions was 58%--the highest in a century of record keeping. Climate change science predicts that if the Earth continues to warm as expected, wet areas will tend to get wetter, and dry areas will tend to get drier--so 2011's side-by-side extremes of very wet and very dry conditions should grow increasingly common in the coming decades.” Jeff Masters http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/show.html

Or that 171 inmates still live at Guantanamo. 600 have been released and only 6 ever convicted. According to our own government reports 92% of the prisoners in Guantanamo never fought for Al Qaida. The close Guantanamo banner i used to have here mysteriously disappeared when the site went down, but it doesn't mean i've forgotten it or have changed my mind about its closure. It has been open ten years too many.

Or about all that killing going on in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Just yesterday 10 “Taliban” were killed by joint NATO and Afghan forces. In Pakistan 29 were killed and 40 injured in a bomb blast. And two of our drone missles killed 4 over the border in Pakistan. All deaths are always labeled as militants, taliban or al-quaida with no mention of civilians caught up in the conflict. i wonder when civilian deaths will be counted the way our soldiers are? Or if we will ever care.

Or that UN inspectors have had and still have access to Iran's Fordow nuclear enrichment site. According to Juan Cole at Informed Comment our sanctions are about regime change and not stopping nuclear proliferation. In fact he thinks our sanctions against Iran could be a war crime.

“I think blockading a civilian population for the purpose of instituting regime change in a state toward which no authorization of force has been issued by the UN Security Council may well be a war crime. Even advocating a war crime can under some circumstances be punishable, as happened at the Nuremberg trials.” Juan Cole

And its not just civilians getting slaughtered in our wars more than 100 species go extinct every day. The beautiful video up at National Geographic is large and powerful. Go visit.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/visions/field-test/sartore-biodiversity/assignment?source=hp_dl5_ngm_field20120107

Experiment with thinking about things you usually don't think about maybe it will open up new ways of viewing ourselves.

See ya next week.

St. Croix Christmas Parade 2012

So many beautiful people at the parade yesterday go check out the slide show. Too many to put up here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7584904@N07/sets/72157628779291837/show/

Water has a memory

i spend a lot of time in the ocean and have always felt a communal, spiritual, reverence for it's ability to cocoon me in wonder and awe. Many times i think it is working with me to make my immersion in its substance more pleasurable. This morning a friend i swim with introduced me to the idea that water has a memory.

Researching on line brought me to two You Tube videos that touch on the topic of water and memory. Pretty exciting stuff. They are both about 3 or 4 minutes long and easy to watch.

We think of water as a necessary part of our survival, something we need to consume every day to stay alive but for most of us it is a mindless task drinking that which is vital. Our bodies weight is composed of 75% water and yet we focus on the other components like muscles, the skeleton, the vascular system and fat before we consider the major impact water has upon us.

Water is essential to good health and longevity; it flushes out toxins in your organs, carries nutrients to cells, and keeps the ear, nose and throat tissues moist. Fresh water is something every human being on earth needs and that we all use communally; it is not something that should ever be controlled by private enterprise.

We think of the earth as being surrounded by water but USGS created a photo that depicts water as a globe superimposed upon the earth. The reality of this photo is a wake up call to all of us. Water is precious, it appears to have a memory and there really isn't as much as we think. "That little sphere of water with a diameter of 860 miles sits over the mid-section of the US and includes all the water in the oceans, seas, ice caps, lakes and rivers as well as groundwater, atmospheric water, and the water in you, your dog, and your tomato plant."  USGS

Credit: Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; USGS..
Data source: Igor Shiklomanov's chapter "World fresh water resources" in Peter H. Gleick (editor), 1993, Water in Crisis: A Guide to the World's Fresh Water Resources (Oxford University Press, New York).

Reflection

If we can open our minds enough to accept nature as our partner and co-worker we will find ourselves at peace. Our energy will increase, our sense of well being and the course our life takes will only be enhanced by our conscious efforts to include nature in the web of connections we weave every day.

Don't be surprised at the growth you experience when you embrace nature. You will become more personally beautiful when you take the small amout of time necessary to interact with it. Wake up early and watch a sunrise, catch a sliver of the moon interacting with Venus, stop to watch leaves flutter as you are walking to work. The time it takes to interact is miniscule in relation to the good feelings it will leave you with.

Sometimes it is hard to remember that we are part of Nature and that we are only one strand of the whole unifying structure that cocoons us.

If we impact it negatively it will increase our discomfort. So partake of its majesty whenever you can.

This morning a large group of us combined exercise and an appreciation for our island environment that encourages us to partake of its offerings. The ocean called and we entered to experience its power and the power it released to us. It was a beautiful morning, clear, sunny and sprinkled with enough waves to move us quickly to our destinations. We had visitors that oooed and ahhhhddd and were most positively touched by the swim and all they saw.

Seeing other people so enthralled with a world we never take for granted just warms my soul.

i hope you enjoy the pictures.

See you next week.

St. Croix Holidays are Here

doesn't look as bad as it felt while swimming in it

It really feels like the Winter Solstice here today. The northwest swells were a challenge to swim through this morning(a surf advisory was out but we went anyway), visibility was minimal just enough to find the path to where you were going, but the ride back in was a blast...surfing all the way... The wind(20-25k)after getting out raised the goose bumps in warp speed. The Christmas Winds have set in with a vengeance, bringing clouds, big swells and gnarly weather to the island.

Its howling up here at the aerie. Comforters are on all the beds(i know you statesiders will laugh at how wimpy we are). i think the night time temperature hasn't dropped below 70 but we are freezing. Sweat shirts and long pants in the evening are a must.

i've been baking my holiday cookies and handing them out to friends only problem is i seem to be testing the quality more than necessary. Out and about around the island it is very festive. A new friend that just moved to the island and swims with us said his wife woke up to drumming and singing this morning, he told her she was hearing things. But when another friend arrived they said they had gone through a huge group of people dancing along behind Stanley and the Ten Sleepless Nights. So it sounds like jouvet which is the start of festivities. i really, really love this time of year.

Chicken Shack setting up the party

Christiansted is decked out in new lights. The Gentlemen of Jones seem to have replaced a lot of the old decorations and even have the Star of David on one end of town. The lights look really bright this year and the ones that cross the street are lovely. The boat parade was last weekend and the Christmas village is going up and every where you go food smells make you want to eat constantly. The racetrack has lots of activity, trainers working their horses and general sprucing up.

All the stores are jammed, people seem to be doing a lot of shopping and finding a parking spot close in takes all ones ommming skills. Kids and family are pouring in from college and jobs in the states. i'll bet this year more are coming home for reunions. Partying is taking a toll and we have barely gotten started...this won't end until the 6^th when the island winds down the festivities with the big parade.

Yummy Lobster

Music is everywhere and i want to share some of our traditional stuff with all a you in the states. So here is Stanley and his gang singing Mama Bake your Johnny Cake Christmas Comin.

See ya next week if i make it!

St. Croix-Aren't we Lucky to live Here-A Medley

 

Steeple Building is getting its shingles replaced today

Anyone going through Christiansted for the next five days will have to put up with some slow down. The steeple building is getting a well deserved face lift. New shingles, matched as well as possible to the historic ones, have to be installed.  In order to do this in the middle of town the contractors will be following the practice used in the past to replace them.

What this means is the top has to come off so the carpenters can work safely doing the replacement. To take the top off a large crane will be put in place to lift it down to the ground. The crane will impact the road and traffic will have to be diverted while it is in place. The roof will be repaired, the crane will put it back on and then be removed so traffic can flow smoothly again.

If you have ever wondered how a pig gets roasted this is the first step

Last weekend after a long swim we ended up having coffee at Bernies in F'sted. The owner was having a birthday bash latter that day and friends were preparing the pig to roast. i like to take pictures of all sorts of things and although it looks gross its interesting too. Notice the way it is attached and the seasoning sticking to the skin.

We have such interesting road side stands...love the hats

One of the really great things about driving around St. Croix is you never know what you will see. This stand really caught my attention with all the hats hung out for everyone to view. i hope the owner had a good day.

I love Century Plants and this one is just getting started

Massacred by a crazy bush wacker

A few years ago an amazing Century Plant at the bottom of my driveway decorated the skies with the most incredible curves you have ever seen. A big C that grew into an S and then flowered. i have scoured the entire island for years trying to capture another one and so far nada. Pictures of the curvaceous one are in the August 2008 blog. This one caught my eye the other day because the top had a bit of a curve so i'll be watching carefully to see what it does. Another one that had promise and was in a spectacular spot had its top lopped off by an over zealous bush wacking machine. i can hardly pass it without lamenting its demise. Don't they realize how many years it takes to even get to the flowering stage?

Where are the surfers?

Beautiful waves have been pounding the shores this past week and when waves and weather combined to deliver that "aren't we so lucky to live here feeling" i went out to take pics and just enjoy everything. i was amazed to find no one surfing these waves in a spot that is usually full.

So much character, I love this boat

 This island has so many beautiful things to photograph and enjoy it just never ceases to astound me. My underwater camera broke when i dropped it so i missed some spectacular pictures of a very large octopus regaling us with his ability to camouflage himself yesterday. He went through all the hues from bone white to a complete blend in with some dark coral. We also had an outstanding Moray Eel that was a brilliant green and completely exposed, he wrapped himself around one of those hated Lion fish, which are really quite beautiful, and just moved on. The turtles, fish and general good feel made for an outstanding day in the water.

Tanker waiting to unload, sun reflecting off its port side

Tankers can be beautiful too when they are waiting just off shore to be called into the refinery. This one had the sun reflecting off its port side and made a small statement in a huge sea of blue. And finally the moon. Sometimes we get so busy we forget to look around and enjoy the small things. Everyone lives in a place that has its own beauty, capture it, look for it, savor it. Connecting is important in personal relationships but it is also important to connect with your environment. Try to do a little bit of connecting each and every day. See ya next week.

The moon last night    

Personal Responsibility

Moral insanity is mania without hallucination. Sufferers maintain their intellectual capacity but become carried away by emotions or moral dispositions, so much so that facts or reality fail to impact them.

Today we have a group of people on one side of the political landscape that are able to lump and blame all poor people, all unemployed, all disabled, everyone on welfare, and anyone that has had anything bad happen to them into the sub category of those who have failed the personal responsibility test.

This test has no questions but does put you in a category of pass or fail depending upon your economic status. Rich is pass, poor or unemployed is fail. It doesn't matter that you may have been born into wealth or came about it illegally, if you are rich you've passed.

Being poor means you have failed the personal responsibility test even if you have worked your entire life and are now unemployed because your factory shut down or your industry has ground to a halt.

Unemployed means you have failed the personal responsibility test even if you have sent out hundreds of resume's, been to umpteen job interviews along with hundreds of other people and are still on unemployment and can't find a job. Collecting unemployment checks even though you have payed into the system for this very reason to insure you against job loss is still failing the test.

The personal responsibility test never takes into account cause and effect. Never acknowledges that many things are beyond your control, like who your parents were, where you were born and how you were raised. Like the factory you have worked for your entire life that shuts down and sends the jobs overseas putting hundreds out of work. Like the company bailing on the pension plans and health care pay outs...or firing you two years before you reach retirement age for some bogus reason. That's your fault you know, you weren't personally responsible.

Failing the test means those who lost all their hard earned money in pension plans and may need welfare to help out in their old age because they were wiped out they weren't personally responsible. Failing the test means that even though you have planned and saved for old age, have health insurance but have to go on Medicaid after selling your home and depleting all your retirement savings when your wife suffered a type of cancer the insurance company wouldn't pay for. You've failed and deserve what happened to you, you weren't personally responsible.  But the people that sold you the insurance policy that doesn't cover your specific disease aren't complicit.

The conservatives defend the view that the rich are moral but the poor or even middle class that are losing homes and jobs and haven't been able to pull them selves out are somehow lacking in personal responsibility and a strong moral fiber.

The personal responsibility test fails to look at that most important segment of society that is causing millions to lose their homes and jobs; that caused the economy to tank by risking other peoples money and then having the taxpayers bail them out, what happened to their personal responsibility, why aren't they held accountable? Why do they get a pass? Its because we passed laws that say corporations are not people when it comes to accountability but they are when they want to finance politics, meaning they write the laws.

Private success and personal freedom depend upon the government protecting all of us equally and that is not happening today. Today it is more about self interest, the ethics of greed and profit as opposed to a market that works for all of us.

The reason that people that put us in this bind are not being prosecuted by our government is because it is too hard. They have too much power and money and can fight for years in court to avoid convictions. But the little guy, that guy that has failed the personal responsibility test he can't even get a hearing to avoid being thrown out of his house.

The hard working taxpayers, the 99% that bailed out the banks and financial institutions don't want corporations controlling their lives more than government. We the People had no control over any of the decisions made in 2008. Corporations govern our lives for their profit not for the nation, those that got bailed out and borrowed that 7.7 Trillion we are only just learning about, they made 13 billion off us...how much did you make? But that shouldn't be the question, it should be how much did you lose? They will send us into oblivion if it means they can make money.

Shouldn't we all be asking why they aren't paying their fair share for the massive amount of tax dollars that 99% of us have spent building the infrastructure they use daily, for the massive amount we have loaned them at rates we will never enjoy?

When we talk about personal responsibility expand that meaning to include those that have caused others to suffer. That have made money off our tax dollars and still want to contribute less and less to the maintenance of this nation.

A robust public is necessary for private success. Corporations have used the government and our tax dollars to their advantage but they don't want you to understand that. We want a Market for All not a Greed Market. When you think about personal responsibility think about how it applies to the wealthy and corporations too, not just the poor and down trodden. Think about cause and effect.

And PS:

When you support busting unions, you support lower wages, longer work hours, and no health insurance or pensions. You support the destruction of the middle class and people moving into poverty. When you support lower taxes for the wealthiest of us you defend the view that the wealthy deserve the power to control you. You support the failure to pass the personal responsibility test. The wealthy and corporations don't care about you, they care about their bottom line, and they sure as hell will use you to vote in their favor.

Corporations and the wealthy need to contribute more, they don't get off using the government for their purposes and to our detriment, that is not what we are about as a nation. Its time to ante up.