Egyptian protesters

Mubarak is confined to a prison at this moment; a prison of his own making. He tried, yesterday, to project a facade of competence, control and power but he failed.  The Egyptian people rejected his lopsided compromise to remain in power until the elections, even with Mubarak saying that anarchy will occur if he is not allowed to finish out his term.

He must be one of the most miserable of men at this moment, hiding his fears while trying to exhibit the stability of a ruler who has not lost his people. He is a slave, a slave to his legacy which has been wrecked by those he thought he ruled. He is not his own master any more; he is a puppet being manipulated by everyone he has ever come in contact with.

The events of this past week have galvanized the world.  Mubarak has not been first in exhibiting kindness and justice, it is his people who are demanding a new way; a way that rids the country of corruption, terror and fear, and they are trying to accomplish it using peaceful means.

What does this say to those of this world that believe change only comes at the end of a gun? What does this do for those out there that think violence is the only way?  Will something occur to destroy this image of peaceful dissent? 

Unfortunately today there appears to be conflicts between Mubarak thugs(those too intent on violence to be regular people)and anti-Mubarak peaceful factions which have been the bulk of the protesters for the past week.  Some of us watching this believe it to be an engineered conflict;  one that will establish reasons for the police and military to crack down on all the people gathering around the country.

This morning i saw this written in a comment thread about the Egyptian uprising on the Daily Kos that a typical tactic of a repressive government is to infiltrate with “supporters who disguise themselves, join the crowd of protesters and create havoc.  Then the government/uniformed police/military can step in to "restore order" and "protect private property."  This also leaves western governments (US/Britain/France/Germany) and other autocratic (Israel/China) regimes free to claim that the protesters were infiltrated by  leftists/anarchists/communists/Muslim fundamentalists and an orderly transition of power (same regime with different faces) was in jeopardy.

Make no mistake, the people have the power, all rulers know their position is tenuous when they have lost their countrymen.  These people that are marching day in day out want the right to choose. They are defying the curfew to show that they are not afraid of the military, they want change and they are willing to demonstrate to get it. Even without the internet, the railroads etc. the people are getting their message out, they are becoming more unified. They are working together to keep the areas clean, to tend to the sick, to feed those who are hungry. The people are happy, they have found their voice and they don’t want to lose it again. They are working against those that would use violence to break up the crowds.

Some of the agitators have been captured by anti-Mubarak protesters.  You have to ask why men riding camels and horses are the ones creating violence and havoc? Why would Mubarak supporters immediately indulge in violence instead of peaceful opposition after a week of watching peaceful protesters? After being searched some are appearing to be carrying police id’s.  Apparently everyone carries an id that says on it what your job is, so they can identify Mubaraks security forces immediately.

If Mubarak really believes in change and wants to be a part of that change he should stop his security forces and supporters from injuring the people who have been demonstrating peacefully.  If there are pro Mubarak people who disagree with the anti-Mubarak forces they should also be out demonstrating peacefully.  An attack upon peaceful protesters is not the way to rule a country. What is happening today reflects badly upon Mubarak.  It is not the way to go out of power.

water photos

Me

i'm going to do something a little different today.  Over the holidays i was the happy recipient of a camera that can take pictures underwater.  Its not as great as my friends who has an underwater video camera that he wears on his head, but it will take some great pics when the photographer(me)gets more proficient.

If you want to see a fun video of a lot of us swimmers frolicking with dolphins for over 5 minutes check out this link.http://www.vimeo.com/17978070  It all happened at Cane Bay about a month ago and we are still talking about it because there were 13 of us and only 2 of them.  Anyone who has been in the ocean with dolphins can attest to it being a spiritual experience, especially when they interact with you.

Cane Bay

Swimming with dolphins is right up there with those special moments you share with your favorite cat or dog or even other human beings; when they love you unconditionally and just pour out their need to interact too.  We aren't alone in this world when it comes to the desire to investigate other species.

Recently i've been lucky enough to have birds(the Great Egret that came to visit came everyday for two months, he only stopped when i took on the care of my friends dogs, maybe he will come back now that i'm done with that for awhile).  This cool turtle this morning that found us just as curious as we found him, the fish that will surround you if you hold still long enough, and of course the dolphins, there are others but for this piece the ones i've mentioned have been most important up to now.

Over the past few weeks i have been practicing  taking underwater pictures.  i'm not very good as it is entirely different from taking pictures on land.  A lot of bobbing on all sides of the equation take place in the water.  i'm bobbing, the fish are moving and a lot of deleting is going on, but it is fun.  You lucky readers get to view a few of the ones i didn't delete.

Hawksbill Turtle

The dolphins were back this morning but none of us were fast enough to catch them as they cruised through our swimming area. We swam out after them but were side-tracked by a turtle.  Two of us(the video guy and myself) were trying to maneuver into position to take pictures and more than once we each wrecked the others shots.  We were even crashing into each other, bobbing up, laughing and quickly getting back to business.  Neither of us were bothered by the other because we were so focused on trying to get that special shot of a Hawksbill Turtle who was the most cooperative we have had in a while.  i can certainly do much better than this pic, but at least you can see him.

If we held still he would start to float up to check us out, but if we made any sudden movements he became spooked and would swim back down.  That fear factor that everything alive has was activated but not too severely because he kept coming back to spend more time with us.

Most of us keep our fears to ourselves, we don't broadcast them unless we feel safe with whomever we are revealing them too. The turtle felt semi-safe, the egret felt semi-safe and so did the fish.  This allowed them to approach, as do humans, when they decide to lay their fears aside.

Atlantic Ray

Animals use camouflage to blend in, to protect themselves from predation by other animals that might want to eat them.  In nature there is a great need to blend in to conceal themselves.  In the human world there is also a great need to blend in for protection and support.

Some of us let our fears get in the way of real progress. The turtle this morning was willing to take us on as long as we didn't try to get too close.  He was willing to let us examine him.  He was willing to interact as a first step.

Last night some of those legislators in the audience, during the Presidents address, got closer to their opponents.  They actually interacted on a different level from the norm. They sat next to each other in the chamber. 

Blue Tang

i'm hoping it wasn't the last time they will mingle in this way.  i'm hoping they put some of their fears aside and understand no one on either side wants to wreck this nation.  i'm hoping they will learn that working together will bring forth good things for all of us.  i'm hoping this is the start of moving us forward in a way that is good for everyone not just a few.

them

The interesting thing about humanity is that when friends or family are in need, the community they have established around them kicks in to help.  Most often we recognize these behaviors as actions done on a voluntary basis.  No one coerced us to act, no one is paying us to respond, we help to benefit other people in our lives.

 Giving and receiving help has its rewards for all involved.  It reinforces the ties that bind and puts more of an emphasis on community.  This past week a friend has been in need and all around have kicked in to make this particular passage through life a little less traumatic.  It has been a joy to watch all the love, help and support materialize in such a short time.

Things that normally would have taken weeks to accomplish all fell into place and got done 

But this is not the topic of this piece,  today I want to talk about "them."

The dictionary describes them as the objective case of they.  They is described as the plural of he,she or it.  People, men, or women. Them is all of us, all of us human beings that make reference to "them" as if them is from out of space.

i read a piece the other day that was talking about the invasion in Afghanistan and how difficult it is for us here in the US to comprehend what it is we are doing to "them."  The writer asked the readers to try to put the shoe on the other foot.  To understand that we are all "them" to understand that if we were living in a war torn country we would be reacting to our situation exactly as they are.

 When i read the piece it became apparent that we use that word daily in our newspapers, radio's, in our homes, in our politics, in our speech etc. to always describe some "them" that are doing things we don't approve of and don't support.  Upon further research i found that the word them is one of the top twenty words used in every day discourse.

We all refer to "them" or "they" when describing humans that follow different political, religious, or social customs that we don't follow.  Since i don't have much time today, i thought an exercise we could all try may be appropriate.

The next time you use the word "them" negatively, stop yourself.  Imagine yourself as "them".  If it is a boss or co-worker that you are referring to negatively, imagine yourself as them.  Maybe it is the atheist or the Christian or Muslim, maybe it is the Democrat, the Independent or the Republican.  Maybe its the guy down the street whose dog is driving you nuts. Try to get inside their head, take on their job,take on their views, now how would you be acting if you were them?

Can you find any place where you may understand why they act or believe the way they do? Can you find some understanding?  i'm not asking you to accept them, or agree with them, i'm just asking for a little bit of understanding.

We can do this simple exercise every time we think negatively about anyone that doesn't view life the way we do.  We can simplify our reactions and even choose to not be right just for the sake of being right.  We can make a difference in our daily lives and the lives of others with a little understanding.

St. Croix Christmas Parade 2011

Guess who this is.

The best thing about the Crucian Christmas Parade is seeing people you know.  Especially when they walk right up to you, in their costumes and you have no idea who they are until they say your name.

This parade has always been about participating. Until this year, the crowd would usually flow out into the street, much to the chagrin of the authorities trying to keep us off the route. It wasn't just the paraders wanting to loosen up with friends, the watchers felt a part of the action too, trading drinks, kisses and hugs, and having a pic or two taken while the parade grinds to a halt, which by the way is standard practice every year.  All the troupes have to perform in front of the governor so the parade moves along in stops and starts. Getting up close and smoozing with the entertainers who passed is a given, dancing along and taking pictures with people in great get-ups was much easier before the powers that be put up the darn barricades.

All day we were trapped behind these metal fences that were bolted together and hard to hop.  Police were stationed at crossing points where they would let you cross as long as you weren't interfering with the flow.

Picture taking was difficult because only the press could get up close and personal.  One friend, on the wrong side of the barricade, told me all you had to do was sling two professional looking cameras around your neck and access was easy.  Unfortunately for me i only had my point and shoot.

Not to be outdone, i managed to find a spot where i could creep out into the street, take a quick pic, and rush back behind the fence. It was like playing hide and seek.

This year there were so many different performers it was hard to pick and choose the ones to publish. 






This guy with the Lion Head is one of my faves.  Every year i have a picture taken with him that i put on the refer in the kitchen.  He's our local pesticide man.  While this other guy had the eeriest eyes.

A local doctor

The get ups were great and the final tramp of the day was a bit harder to get involved in because of the barricades.  But those who won't let a few fences stop them were able to dance along behind Express Band after the last troupe passed by.

The hardest part of the whole day was trying to move around.  You couldn't walk up and down the street as easily to visit friends that were viewing from different locations, so i missed talking to a lot of buddies this year. Once you were in your spot you were pretty much stuck.

Even so it was a great day and a definite must do for those who haven't yet experienced carnival on St. Croix!


The holiday season is officially over.  Its a weird thing but until the parade is over i never feel like the year is done. Hello 2011 here we come.

Another friend and her child

looking back while tramping at the end of the parade

looking forward while tramping at the end of the parade

Cruician Christmas Festival

For many, the holiday season is over.  The ornaments have been taken off and the trees discarded.  Children have started school and parents have gone back to work.  Here in the islands the season is moving into its culmination with Three Kings Day.  Since this particular holiday falls on a Thursday this year, festivities will last until Sunday.

All over the world Three Kings Day is celebrated by different cultures in various manners, some do their gift giving now, some take down their trees, others engage in fasts or cold water dunking's, some sing songs and visit homes around their towns, while others pass out sweets and goodies.  On St. Croix, we celebrate our Crucian Christmas Festival.

Leading up to this week many competitions have been held to narrow the fields.  The Calypso singers, adults and children have spent many hours working up their repertoire's and last night gave it their all.  The young children have vied for prince and princess, while the young men and women have battled to represent St. Croix during the festival celebrations.  The road march has been chosen and troupes are putting the final touches on their floats and dance routines.

2006 Parade

The Christmas Village opened up in Fredericksted and most residents of the island will make at least one visit during this time.  Food booths are arranged in a semi circle with a band stand at one end and an area for dancing, smoozing, and general congregating.  Off to one side are the carnival rides for the kids and adults that still love the thrill.

J'ouvert started this morning at 5:00am with a tramp from Hannah's Rest.  Traditionally people meet in the dark to gather behind a truck with huge speakers and band members that lead the way into town.  Everyone dances behind the truck and feels the love.  This afternoon women and men gather in front of the clock tower to display and sell their traditional foods at the food fair.

Every night bands line up to entertain the crowds.  Reggae night is tonight, tomorrow is Latin night, Friday is the Children's Parade and Saturday is the big adults parade.  Sunday is the finale with boat races, fireworks and the festival wrap-up.

People come from all over the world to enjoy this time of year in the islands; it is by far the best time to be here. 

2005 Parade

We have house guests from Europe and no time to blog.  Most try not to work during this week, it is a time for being with family and friends, so today's piece is a shorty.    Hopefully i'll have pictures from the festivities for next week. 

Shared Air

Years ago i wrote a piece called Shared Air, i wrote it like poetry in prose. So bear with me it was my first attempt.

i’m reproducing part of it here to establish a premise that i develop further on.  i hope this will resonate with some.

Shared Air

Look closely there are divers

One never knows when the perfect diver, one who is inexperienced, one who breaths heavily, will be found lurking amongst the coral.  Unaware of one swimming above, the diver stays focused on the underworld, inside the water-world, consumed by the liquid.  The diver exists in a vacuum never realizing someone above, someone floating above them on the surface of the water, has stopped.

Breathing is shared, but only the one above knows about the sharing.  The inexperienced one below breaths quickly, in nervous bursts, using up air, but needing more to calm the senses.  Above, the swimmer hovers, feeling excited, while she waits for the breath to reach her.  Will there be enough?

The swimmer watches and follows.  The diver looks and experiences and breaths.  With each breath the bubbles take shape and ascend to the surface to surround and massage the swimmers entire being.

The swimmer knows she is stealing a part of the life of the unknown diver but she doesn’t care.  She can participate with the diver’s life breath in a way the diver never can.  All around her is silence.  The breath encased in bubbles of all sizes burst upon contact with the swimmer.

The swimmer doesn’t need the air to survive, she needs it to sooth.  To envelope her for a moment in a world that knocks at all her senses, a private world shared but not known by those that participate.

The swimmer knows if she follows she can be completely encased in bursting bubbles.  No other world exists at this moment except the bubbles and the exhilarating feel of them on her body.  Severing the tie to the diver jolts her out of her reverie.  She doesn’t want to break away.

 How do we help establish an oasis for conditions that could create decent living for a greater majority of people around the world and here at home?

Can self interest prevailing over community be the answer?  We have just spent three decades trying this tact.

People who have forgotten how to share, who think only of themselves, will never provide a venue for the advancement of others or even themselves.  The world created from this model leaves a cold hard reality that many in America have yet to come to grips with, but will have to if we continue down this path.

Why is it that the EU, which has a larger population than the US, has a higher standard of living, longer life expectancies, provides universal health care and a safety gap for the unemployed, is so successful; why don’t they have homeless people crowding their cities and why is their economy doing better than ours?

What are we doing wrong? And why don’t we examine and emulate their methods?  They are investing in themselves to our detriment. Even Asia is investing in themselves.  All of them seem to be working with a vision of the future that they are striving to achieve, whereas we have no vision.

We see this today with the state of our economy.  Self interest has institutionalized a chaotic economic machine that no longer works for the majority of the nation.  If we continue spiraling along this path we will soon see more of every part of society on the streets and on the skids.  Elderly pushing their shopping carts filled with all their belongings, families sleeping in tents on sidewalks, single men and women scrambling for whatever low paying jobs they can find to keep them in their cars another day.  Where do we see this country going? What is our vision for the future?

An empty vision

The past thirty years have shown that the “free market” is not the answer.  We have sold or moved all our industries off shore, we have gambled away our industrial base. We have become dependent upon other nations for everything we need to survive, including making war.  All our basic necessities come from somewhere else, our food, our clothing, our energy, our bullets.  We don’t even control the quality of the products we consume and use anymore. We have become failures at providing for ourselves, and wasn’t that our mantra, “Providing for Ourselves?”

The Republicans offer only their standard prescription of tax cuts for the rich, a rollback of more regulations on predatory corporations, war and elimination of the social safety net which includes Social Security and Medicare.

This is a proven prescription for further job loss and devastation of the middle class.  Is this what our vision of the future is?

We are a service society; we know how to consume and not much else. We have stopped investing here at home.  We are letting the nation self destruct.  Our priorities have become skewed in favor of wars that kill and maim, corporations that use high profits as an excuse for offshoring jobs, and a failure to take care of our environment.  We would rather invest in the military than invest in our nation. We would rather give tax cuts than invest in our infrastructure, schools and public services. We have lost focus and are starting to crumble.

Ivan Illich once said, “True learning can only be the leisurely practice of free people.  In the consumer society we are either prisoners of addiction or prisoners of envy.  Only without addiction or envy, only without educational goals, in freedom can we enjoy true learning.”

Where is the wisdom and learning?  How do we teach comity and community and conscience to the unformed many?

i’m a citizen of St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  The core of my existence has been here.  So the values and personal interactions with others has more of a small town aspect rather than the anonymity of a big city.

All those we don't know

Unlike the cities, people here have the time and inclination to share their lives with others.  We have the tools to create an oasis for decent living.  Here people still share, people still work together to find ways to better the life experience for all, we haven't given up, we keep trying to make life better for those less well off.

We can participate in each other’s lives with out acknowledgment from anyone.  We can affect and be affected by those we don’t know in positive ways.  Shutting the doors to that possibility leaves all of us vulnerable to a chaotic world none of us will enjoy.  As we move towards a different world and develop a vision for the future let us think about all of us, not just ourselves.

2010 Gift Wrapped

A Great Egret came to visit

Geeze, i’ve just spent way too much time perusing the net looking for positive feedback on this year, 2010.  

Looking for good news was a struggle and much harder than i thought it would be; i know that good news doesn't sell but the pursuit left me feeling so thwarted that i’m going to make up my own past year of positives, interspersed with the few i could find.   

All the good news must be on the last pages at the end of thousands of bad news events in Google search.  See if you can determine which ones are true and which are false.







First off, scientists have discovered that the oil will never run out and there is no need to plan for a world without it.

The Chilean Miners were rescued…WhooHaaaaa

Coal is clean, never again will it darken your hands, or dirty your air.

Global warming, who made up that name?  Scientists have declared that all those unusual weather events happening all over the world are a figment of your imagination, more hurricanes, rain, snow, wind and mudslides are good for the environment and won’t damage the world as we know it.

Unemployment plummeted, jobs are a dime a dozen.

The San Francisco Giants won the World Series...Yee Haaaaa


Liberals and Conservatives have agreed to compromise.

We are safe.  Fighting the terrorists over there has made us completely safe and worry free.  Rejoice.

The BP oil spill has done wonders for the environment.  Fish populations are increasing, birds are thriving and oil in your diet will improve your health. 

Wetlands and beaches along the Gulf coast are enjoying the nutrients from the oil and dispersant's; making your time there that much better, tourism is booming.

A birding pond being taken over by an invasive plant

No hurricanes hit St. Croix

New Study Proves Fox News makes you stupid

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repealed

Health Care and Child Nutrition Bills Passed

BP plugs well in the Gulf.

Most people’s stock portfolio’s have recovered since 2007, of course if you sold, tough luck.

Spain won the World Cup

All those who don’t believe won’t get to heaven; they won’t get to hell either.

If we don’t stay in Afghanistan and Iraq we will loose the whole world.

Coral Vine

Lowering taxes on the rich will make them keep their corporations in the US and not offshore the jobs.

All those believing Muslims are terrorists are granfalloons and proud of it.  Its Us versus Them and don’t you forget it.

Reducing property taxes won’t, i repeat won’t affect schools, emergency services, or police response times.

We are proud to be turned into a third world country, we are doing the world a favor by off shoring jobs, ignoring climate change, reducing taxes, and failing to invest in ourselves.

Ignoring haters and fear mongers makes you healthy, wealthy and wise.

START treaty ratified.

Are you happy now that you have read the list of positives we enjoyed in 2010?
Sharing good news with others increases the perceived value of those events, especially when others respond enthusiastically, and that enthusiastic responses to shared good news promote the development of trust and a prosocial orientation toward the other. Studies have found consistent support for these effects across both interactions with strangers and in everyday close relationships.
Source: "Are you happy for me? How sharing positive events with others provides personal and interpersonal benefits." from J Pers Soc Psychol. 2010 Aug;99(2):311-29.

Even dumps are beautiful at sunrise

Happy Holidays to All, And to All a Good Day.

 

St. Croix Boat Parade

Gathering for Boat Parade

Tomorrow is a big day in Washington DC.  Veterans for Peace will be leading a silent march after listening to important speakers like Daniel Ellsberg(Pentagon Papers), Ray McGovern(retired-CIA) and Mike Prysner (Iraq vet and cofounder of March Forward!) among others; to make a stand for peace.  Basically they are asking Americans all across the nation to ask themselves an important question.

 That question is "how the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and the expanding war in Pakistan has affected the economy at home."

Their focus is to connect the dots between our faltering economy and the ongoing wars that are draining the treasury. 

The march is to be non-violent and led by Veterans.  It is being billed as the largest U.S. veteran-led civil resistance to war.

Santa arriving for Boat Parade

"During the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King called our government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Why is it so few Americans ever consider the kind of damage we inflict daily?

"There are children being orphaned, maimed or killed every day, in our name, with our tax dollars; there are soldiers and civilians dying or being maimed for life, in order to generate profits for the most odious imperialistic corporate war machine ever, again in our name. How long are we going to let this go on? Until it is too late, until this destructive machine destroys all of us and the planet to boot?" Welcome to Stop These Wars.

Hotel on the Cay looked so pretty while waiting for the parade

Margaret Flowers a pediatrician has a piece up today(http://www.stopthesewars.org/?p=363) that asks everyone at the end of her piece to take a stand and speak out. 

"However, in these times, it is more important than ever that we do speak out. To be silent is to be complicit. We must not be complicit. We must stand together strongly on the side of justice so that one day justice will prevail."

Boat Parade

Another writer asks why the wars are not being debated as part of the deficit reduction conversations. Dan Kovalik claims there is a deafening silence about the wars in the media and elsewhere when it comes to the deficit.  Reducing Medicare and looking into Social Security which affects all our seniors is given higher billing than the on-going wars.  Why is this he asks?

Fireworks after Parade

So today I'm speaking out.  It is time we talked more as a nation about our goals and aspirations.  How do you spread freedom?  How do you spread peace?  So far, after 9 years of war, neither Iraq nor Afghanistan exhibit either freedom or peace.  Maybe it is time to reconsider what we are doing in the world.  Maybe it is time to discuss the wars we are financing with our tax dollars?

Quotes i love

For a few weeks i’ve been cleaning and painting the inside of the house.  Must be that blog i wrote last week about cleaning up.  All around the computer i’ve had little bits and pieces of paper taped on to the book shelf that have quotes i love written on them.  Many times while contemplating some problem i read them for inspiration. i took them all down last week but couldn’t part with them.  My computer area looks clean but barren.

Some of us are drawn to sentences and passages that relate to our lives; quotes for me, bible passages for the religious, philosophical treatises, or just great writing that spoke to some part of our being that we couldn't express but the writer could. The language connects with what’s alive in all of us; it speaks to some core belief we have within us and can help motivate or bring peace during turbulent times.  It can be a language of freedom and joy that comes from a middle path.  These quotes that i like are not meant to take sides; they are just reflections that may guide any of us down the path to peace.

Stories and quotes matter, they are the glue that lead us to kindness and unity, that teach us that we are all part of a greater whole.

i have a magnet with my favorite quote that sits on the refrigerator, that one will never be put away and here it is at the top of the list.

The most wasted of all days is one without LAUGHTER.  e.e.cummings

A drop in the ocean partakes of the greatness of its parent, although it is unconscious of it. But it is dried up as soon as it enters upon an existence independent of the ocean.  We do not exaggerate when we say that life is a mere bubble.  Gandhi

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?  Thoreau

Fr ail dire e il fare c’e di mezzo il mare.

The sea is between saying and doing something.

The one who gives up cultivating the moral force when no instant effect can be seen is like one who farms but would not tend to the weeds.  Mencius

I don’t know why I did it, I don’t know why I enjoyed it, and I don’t know why I’ll do it again.  Socrates.

He who is led by fear, and does good in order to escape evil, is not led by reason.

Spinoza

A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.  Spinoza

Happiness is the patient acceptance of the inevitable.  Spinoza

What would you do if you knew you could not FAIL?

Once words leave your mouth they fly around the world like birds and light where they please.  You can’t whistle them back.  Charley Reese

i think all of us find language that speaks to us in ways we like to remember, language that others have put on paper that we can reflect on;  i'm looking forward to starting a new list...If you have any quotes or sayings that you especially like please put them in the comments...see you next week.

Clean-up

Every week i have a clean slate that confronts my nimble fingers.  Some days i come here prepared to discourse on some aspect of humanity that we can all work at and other days i’m left wondering how i’ll tie together a vague notion i’ve been mulling over but haven’t quite formalized.

This week cleaning up has been front and center in my brain. Cleaning is something we all have to deal with, whether it’s our bodies, our environment, our mind or our lives.  We all clean something. We all notice immediately when cleaning up the muck in and around our home,our bodies and our minds makes a difference. Cleaning can do wonders for our psyche, our health, and our relationships. When you’ve finished cleaning and everything is sparkling it makes you feel good.

Lately i’ve been thinking about our environment and what filthy creatures we humans are.  All over the world every community has to deal in some way with our accumulated garbage, our sewage, and the pollutants that we spew into the air. 

If you are out and about take a minute to examine the town you live in; you will quickly discover and come in contact with our refuse.  It is unavoidable; whether it is the smoke coming out of the car in front of you, the litter in the gutters, the dumpsters on the sides of the road, the pollution in the air, the stinky smells or even just the clutter in your car...you will find our dirty behavior staring back at you.

Our mess is everywhere.  Companies spew clouds of gases into our air all day and all night.  Cars, trucks, trains, ships and planes spread contaminants, tractors spread pesticides, and we personally contribute with our technological must haves and our food packaging that must get discarded after use.

i do believe most of the world’s religions have some guidelines that tell us to be stewards of the earth, or put another way, responsible caretakers of this spinning planet.  When you look around it is easy to see that some of us are better than others at keeping their own private spaces clean, but when it comes to the entire world or even just your local town we all get a big fat F.

The conversation to date has restricted our failure to clean up after ourselves to a debate between two camps.  One camp believes humans and their effluent are having a negative impact upon the earth and its climate while the other camp believes what is being observed is normal and natural and the earth will take care of itself.  

The “debate,” if you can even call it that, has produced a mass of confusion for the ordinary human being going about their daily existence.  Alarming treatises on “rules that would undermine economies, destroy jobs, close down companies and entire industries, impoverish families and communities, roll back personal freedoms and civil rights – and enrich the lucky few whose lobbyists and connections may enable them to corner markets for renewable energy technologies, carbon offsets and emissions trading”(Paul Driessen) compete with alternate treatises on new rules governing emissions that would preserve economies and cities, create jobs, open up new companies and entire new alternative energy industries, enrich all families rich and poor and their communities through better health outcomes and cleaner air—without continuing to enrich the lucky few whose lobbyists and connections want to proceed with no change to business as usual.  Which side you’re on is irrelevant.

i don’t care which side you ascribe to, just consider this, it is an easy step to recognize that we are filthy, look out your door, look around your cities, towns and rural areas, we do leave a mess where ever we choose to live, our air is polluted, our cities and towns are filthy and our natural environment is suffering. 

If you spend any time out doors you will have recognized an alarming change in forests health, animal and bird life extinctions, coral bleaching and failing fish stocks.  Everyone, all over the world, that spends time outside is aware of our failure as caretakers.

i’m living in a tiny little place, but i spend a heck of a lot of time outdoors observing nature and we are definitely having a negative impact.  i see it when it rains and our run-off pollutes the ocean.  i read about it when sewer lines break all over the country and we pump raw sewage into the sea or woods.  The worst damage i’ve personally seen so far has been from the abnormally warm water that has so destroyed our coral beds and fish stocks.  Swimming through a white bone yard is the most disheartening thing an ocean lover can do.  They aren’t recovering. The forests aren't recovering, nor are the birds and animals.  So my question to you is what is wrong with wanting to clean things up? 

i'd like that simple question answered.  What exactly is wrong with wanting to clean up our environment?

If you subscribe to any of the religions that tell you to take care of the earth, and you are honest with yourself, then you have to admit we are failing our job as stewards of this earth.  i don’t care what the lobbyists and politicians say, scientific certainty is unnecessary for a clean up job, we need to clean house.  We need to clean up after ourselves; we need to care for the earth as well as we care for ourselves.  All of us can and will benefit from a healthy environment and that’s a good thing.

See ya next week.