Flexibility

For the white man to live in real harmony with it (land) seems to require either a degree of public regulation he would not tolerate or a degree of enlightenment he does not possess. -Aldo Leopold

I have been thinking a lot about those words of the godfather of the ecological movement, words written about 65 years ago. What I sense happening is that (some folks at least) are increasingly aware that we are pushing the limits of what Mother Nature is able to endure. And so, in a desperate attempt to find some kind of equilibrium between the needs of civilization and the need to protect an increasingly injured earth, we pass many laws governing our activities that affect the earth around us. Many see the laws as helping to protect the earth while others see them as an infringement on their rights. Since Leopold wrote in the first half of the last century the debate has not changed. Perhaps it is the intensity of the debate, fostered by the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community, that we have pushed earth’s capacity to the precipice, leading us to increasingly hardened positions.

It isn’t hard to see the affects of storm water and all the malignant pollutants like oil, draining into the street drains wherever we go during a rainstorm. So, somehow we have to try to deal with that drainage, which after all, we all contribute to and you try to find some kind of law that would mitigate what we have been doing to the waters that surround us. The problem gets to be that it is hard to find a brush that doesn’t tar everything in sight or not in sight. For instance when we moved here 12 years ago we spent several years and in excess of $25,000 in controlling the storm water that was coming down on us from Cattle Point Road. That, in this year’s understatement, was a project. I learned more about the flow of water than I ever thought I would need to know. So, when I read that “We are all in this together,” I thought “Surely you must be pregnant.” Nobody else was ever in it when we were bailing. At any rate, I think a very serious question is to be asked about what was learned from the last vote on stormwater.

And then comes rainwater. Seems we have been longtime violators of the law. Well, let’s look at that. We drain thousands of gallons of water from our roofs into two ponds. Storm water from above us also feeds these ponds. The ponds provide, amongst other things a water supply for the myriads, myriads of wildlife we inherited from the massive clear cutting near us. But we did something else in our ignorance of the law. As our buildings were dumping thousands of gallons of rainwater onto a slope, the amount of water we were continually dumping on our neighbors was massive. How do you take impacts like these into consideration when enacting a law? Anyway I guess that will change, but I was still a lawbreaker.

Now we have coming down on us laws about septic systems, regular maintenance, fees (read taxes), inspections and more. I reckon this happened because so many of the septic systems along Hood Canal were old, leaking and significantly contributing to the pollution of Hood Canal. I can understand that. But here we are, having had the septic system serviced regularly and early. I always get told, “Gee you really keep this clean.” But that’s the way we have operated. Now for that we will be smeared by a broad brush that catches all.

Now, I don’t have the answer to how you make flexible laws nor where you look for wisdom to do so. But some how, some way there has to be a better way than we have been going about it.

(Ron Keeshan wrote, in response to the County request for input on sustainable growth:
“There is one bottom line issue and one only. How much water do we have under us and when that is ascertained what population and usage will that amount sustain?”)

Frugality

Gee whiz, the mentally challenged US media has been able to move off its preoccupation with the likes of Paris Hilton and other detritus of American culture. Suddenly the real world dawned and did it ever. Economics arrived front and center. The spin doctors will of course attempt to get this financial turbulence back in its bottle permanently but that is not going to happen. Our crippling debt has begun to catch up with us. I do not now want to belabor this as I will examine the many hard financial choices in front of us at a future time.

Where I want to go now is this: pure and simple the United States is a subprime borrower. In the world of economic power, the dollar is weaker and weaker. In the arena of power, money talks and no amount of bullying will get you anywhere. Make no mistake, the US has now fully entered the world of declining power. And this will monumentally affect all levels of government, from Washington to the state to the local level. Huge infrastructure expenditures (think roads and ferries for starters) need to be made in an economy reeling from debt.

Now is the time for the County to tighten its belt. No more consultants, no more major purchases, secret or otherwise, no more bond obligations. By the way, just how big is our bond indebtedness? A mentality of conservative and reduced spending must be front and center.

One place we can begin is in this Kafkaesque futility called finding a transfer site. You know, we recycle at the transfer station. The key words are: reduce, recycle, reuse. In my mind they fit perfectly for this transfer station. Let’s reduce County expenditures, recycle and reuse what we’ve got! There is absolutely no doubt that the current transfer station is being run in order to fail and thus necessitate relocation. This is nothing short of preposterous. The Council needs to act like a Council: vote to require Public Works to update the current facility and see that it is run professionally. If it means selling property to get the funds to do it, by damn, do it! Get off it! Now!

And while we are at it, I would like to see someone in the County (no more consultants!) do an audit of how much County staff time and money has gone into this infernally unending project. Now understand that I fully realize how many good folks have contributed an incredible amount of volunteer time to Solid Waste. And I know folks who have contributed great time and creative thought to the process only to watch their ideas disappear. The disappearance was intentional. No input desired by Public Works.

What I want is some kind of dollars and cents report of how much taxpayer money has been squandered in studying and discussing this issue. Now hear this and hear me loud and clear. The County is either going to start doing things like this in a business like way or we will all pay a heavy price for it later. Do not think that what is happening to America financially will pass us by out here. It won’t. We can mitigate part of it by responsibly dealing with our own expenditures now.

(Ron Keeshan --who always enjoyed chatting with Julie when the transfer station was run professionally.)

Season

If you are going to walk into the polarized political minefields of America, I think there is no bigger one to start with than religion. And this season of the year seems as good as any to do so.

Every poll or sampling says the same thing. Quite simply, America is by far the most religious of western industrialized countries. In the same vein, a poll in the New York Times of 33 countries (Europe and America) I saw showed that the only country with less belief in evolution than America is Turkey.

There is currently a gloating amongst much liberal media that the “religion thing”, especially the fundamentalist orientation has crested and is now in decline. I do not think anything could be further from the truth. For one, I have always believed that people flock to religion in times of great angst. The 21st century will produce an abundance of that. In past years when I have tried to talk with liberals about being open to religious folks I was met with sneers or exclamations of derision.

I am convinced that religion is such a part of the American ethos that an ethically challenged, faith-waving politician could beat an ethically pure as the driven snow atheist, any day in the week. Christian faith is just a given presupposition for seeking election. Consider the current presidential race. Can you top my Jesus sounds harsh but I believe it close to reality.

I think the last seven years have seen a successful effort to destroy any vestige of separation of church and state. An Office of Faith Based Initiatives in the White House joined together church and state. Clearly for me, fundamentalist Christianity has become a state sponsored religion. I would hope the “state” will disengage from this unconstitutional affair as quickly as possible. While revisionist history has tried to make the founding of the Republic a Christian enterprise, I think no serious scholarship could possibly support that. The Founding Fathers beliefs were deep and sincere, but the cruel religious wars of Europe weighed heavily upon them. To prevent this happening here, they mandated the state be neutral when it came to religion.

Today, religion is a rough playing field in America. Candidates in both parties wear their religion on their sleeves. Many fundamentalists would make a declared or undeclared war on Islamic religion. That particular expression of Christianity reminds me of Mark Twain: “Man is the Religious animal. He is the only Religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion-several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven.”

Now enter into the American politico-religious fray, the indomitable British atheist Richard Hawkins, advocating atheist clubs, in order as he says to give voice to the persecuted 10% of Americans who consider themselves atheists.

Then toss into the mix the “Gospel of Wealth” bunch mixing a comforting blend of Jesus will make you wealthy and mega-church religion. Some of the Gulfstream flying, Bentley driving pastors have become so rich that Sen. Grassley, R-Iowa is holding Congressional hearings on their tax-exempt status. It seems tax-exempt church “businesses” have exploded.

So how does one find a way through this religious mix? Alas, no matter what you do, you alienate a whole bunch. But there have always been voices of calm and decency. They just aren’t heard over the din. While I stand outside of the religious, I still have profound respect for those voices. One such voice was the Hebrew prophet Micah: “He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

(Ron Keeshan wishes that for all people and religions in this and all seasons)

Bibliophile

Kill the television and give yourself some wonderful books for the holidays. Support your local independent bookstores!

JOURNEY INTO THE WEB OF LIFE True, shameless self-promotion. My book consists of photographs, short essays and captions on the natural world. We wanted to communicate to both children and adults. The book does. I recently did a book signing in Los Angeles where parents and children sat together and really shared thoughts about what they were reading and seeing together. Hope for an embattled natural world.

THE LAST WILD WOLVES Ian McAllister Ian is back with his life-long love of the Great Bear Rainforest of the British Columbia rain coast. This is a big and pricey book but be assured it will be the book that future wolf books will be measured by. Ian will be back for his fourth trip to the Island for an evening lecture and slide show sponsored by The Web Of Life Along The Pacific Flyway early next year.

WHAT WAS ASKED OF US: AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE IRAQ WAR BY THE SOLDIERS WHO FOUGHT IT Trish Wood Come my fellow Americans, let us look it straight in the eye, learn from it, and pay to help those who suffer from it.

COURAGE FOR THE EARTH Edited by Peter Matthiessen This is a small paperback gem, a collection of short essays celebrating the publication of Rachel Carson’s SILENT SPRING. A dozen contributors range from E.O. Wilson to Terry Tempest Williams.

THE SEVENTH GENERATION Jonathan Schell. Long time chronicler of the world of the nuclear bomb, Schell, in this slender volume describes the seventh generation of the bomb as one characterized by dangerous proliferation. Well worth pondering as we evaluate where leaders will take us after this election. Very readable.

PLATO AND PLATYPUS WALK INTO A BAR Cathcart and Klein Want a really good raucous laugh? This book is for you. The authors are two philosophers who don’t take themselves too seriously and tell the history of philosophy through jokes. I loved it.

SIGHTINGS Sam Keen Keen is another member of the ex-Presbyterian Pastors Club whom I have followed for years. A fine writer, this book is no exception. The booklet reflects his love of birds and the part birds played in his move out of ideology to the natural world. A bird lover’s delight.

LIQUID TIMES Zygmunt Bauman Oh boy, in a 100 page paperback you can really wrap your mind around a serious piece of work on where globalization is leading us. I am not a fan of sociologists. I make an exception for this short piece.

THE SINGING CREEK WHERE THE WILLOWS GROW: THE MYSTICAL NATURE DIARY OF OPAL WHITELEY Ben Hoff and Opal Whiteley Ben Hoff wrote THE TAO OF POOH which comes about as close to being my Bible as anything. Personally I consider this to be in the half –dozen finest natural history books I’ve read. It is the diary of a schizophrenic young child subjected daily to abuse, seeking and finding her solace in the natural world. Hoff tells me he is seeking to make a movie of it

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FREEDOM NEXT TIME John Pilger I consider Pilger, an Aussie, to be the greatest human rights advocacy writer in the world today. He writes with a moral fervor that gives great dignity to the moral enterprise.

FREEDOM’S POWER: THE TRUE FORCE OF LIBERALISM Paul Starr
Bill Moyers heavily promoted this. It traces the history of liberalism through the ages to the present. I liked his call for liberals to stop evading the word and own their illustrious heritage.

(Ron Keeshan for whom it is ok if he goes out reading.)

October

What is it about October? Yeesh! Maybe there is more to Halloween than I thought. Maybe the planets get in some strange alignment. Maybe they think it’s the Ides of March or something. But October seems to have a way of having things in one genuine mess. Back in 1962 there was the Cuban missile crisis. Now, amongst a whole lot of other things, we are into grief with the Russians again over missiles. This time the shoe is on the other foot. The US is deploying missiles in Eastern Europe, at Russia’s doorstep rather than Russia deploying them on our doorstep. Putin is calling Bush’s move. I would not be cavalier about this event. The Cuban missile crisis was bad enough. There are different elements in play here.

For one, there is a totally different type of administration in Washington this time. The last time around, John and Bobby Kennedy had both read Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August. For me Tuchman remains as one of America’s premier historians. The Guns of August is a brilliant analysis of the drift into a war that no one seemed to want. The Kennedy brothers talked about this book with each other. Let’s pause for a second and think on that. On the verge of a possible nuclear war, two brothers are discussing an incredible book about the drift into war. Nuclear war, with all of its horrors stared these brothers in the face. Perhaps it is possible to say that what you read does define you. Well, whatever else will be said, the world survived that October.

I hope the current October missile crisis will also prove survivable. But there are much different dynamics this time. This is an administration arrogant about throwing its weight around. I do not sense that it is able to compromise, much less back down. I also have felt for many years that there are Hawks in both parties that would relish a war with Russia. Compound that with fundamentalists who would be delighted to see Armageddon and you have the making of a perfect storm.

There are further serious dynamics in process around the mid-east. International conflicts have been started on less provocation than the seriousness of the Turkish-Kurd encounters. When you open Pandora’s box, lots of things can emerge, and truly the box cannot be re-closed. Again, I’ll be straight. This administration would really like to confront Iran militarily. Have we carefully thought through the consequences of this? I think not.

Now reading The Guns of August or The Zimmerman Telegram also by Barbara Tuchman, will not bring the sales hysteria of Harry Potter. Neither will reading Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilization. This is as magnificent a piece as I have read about the aftermath of WW I in the mid-east and its consequences today. Oh my, what one could learn about historical misadventures in the mid-east from reading that work! But just perhaps some future leader will have done so and the world will be pulled back from annihilation.

(Ron Keeshan has never liked Halloween and still doesn’t. Too much trick or treating in the world.)

Unelectable

It appears that we are within about four months of knowing who the next presidential candidates will be. At this juncture it appears Hillary will receive the Democratic nomination unless Richardson or Edwards pull off a surprise. The Republican nomination still appears to be fluid. While things can certainly change, I find a genuine lack of enthusiasm for this election, save some sense of relief that the Bush term will end. As a matter of fact, what I sense in the political pulse, I would describe as “discontent.” These are some of the factors I hear uplifted the most:

The American political system is broken. The Electoral College has long since outlived its usefulness. The Elections go on far too long. Money governs the system and more and more people feel we are governed by who puts the money up and the rest of us have no say. Two families will have controlled the White House for 20 years. This could be extended to 24 years or more. And there is, I feel, a strong undercurrent that it doesn’t make any difference who is elected, the parties are a duopoly, with only minor differences in the basic policies of the two parties.

Another strong undercurrent is I believe real but is more undefined. That is, a sense of insecurity, a loss of control over our individual lives, that I find relatively new to the American ethos. In the growing rust belt of mid-America that has seen factory after factory close this is especially true. The cost of health insurance has risen disastrously. I hear more and more and more people saying, “It is frightening to be so vulnerable. I just have to hope I make it until Medicare kicks in for me.” Hit a major medical issue, your savings are wiped out and you lose your home. Big Pharma and the insurance companies may control the debate while the worries of the people are downplayed.

Personally, I think the time we live in is possibly the greatest crisis in American history. I have the strongest feeling that the current crop of candidates of both parties is weak. The Republican basic program is to continue the same old policies that have given the world nightmares and the United States a financial disaster and a first class Constitutional crisis. The Democrats run on a vague, fear driven anti-Bush campaign. Perhaps the anti-Bush anger is enough to get a Democrat in the White House. And then again maybe not. And I think that goes double if it is Hillary. The Democrats have become masters at seizing defeat from the jaws of victory.

I believe that both parties have turned their backs on their heritage. The Republicans have mired themselves in hypocrisy about fiscal responsibility. They have (as have the Democrats) forsaken Ike’s memorable warning about the military industrial complex. They have abandoned America’s greatest President, Lincoln who ended slavery and sought above all else to unite the country. Instead they have prostituted themselves to a “southern” strategy. The paralyzed, fear-driven Democrats have abandoned their party’s greatest President, Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR gave America a clarion call: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” George Santayana, the Spanish philosopher rings as ever, true. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Something new is struggling to be born. I may not live to see it but at the rate the Democrats are going they may not either. Waffling isn’t going to cut it with an anxious electorate.

In 2006 Frank Rich, writing in the New York Times put it succinctly, referring first to the Republicans and then to the Democrats. “The courage of Bad Convictions is better than no Courage and No Convictions.” The way things continue to go, the Democratic Party establishment will be able to use that for a headstone. Right now I would be willing to put money on a candidate of either party who comes along with a strong, honest vision that looks into the 21st century.

(Ron Keeshan , who remains anxious for our future)

Land

One of the most soul-satisfying books I have read in years is Julianne Lutz Newton’s Aldo Leopold’s Odyssey. It is a masterfully written book about the journey of a brilliant and curious man who wanted to understand the land and what was happening to it.

I am going to sidetrack briefly for there were a number of extraordinary moments in this book for me personally. General Grant has been, since high school, one of my great American heroes. American history, for a long time led by southerners, derided Grant. I am grateful that he has now been restored by thinking historians to his rightful place. When Liz worked in her family oil company the office building her father owned in Santa Fe was the Bergere house. One summer Grant stayed in the former officer’s quarters in the home with his family and stabled his horses in the garage Liz used. The street in front is named after him. I learned that Aldo Leopold married Estella Bergere, a daughter, in 1912. The historic house and grounds were doubly sacred. The house is now the library of the Georgia O’Keefe museum.

Leopold’s brilliant thinking emerged from studying erosion in the American southwest where destructive practices of grazing had produced disastrous results. His project became a quest to understand how we could live in relationship with the land without destroying it. The science of ecology was called by Leopold “the outstanding discovery of the 20th century”, and summarizes it as “the immense complexity of the collective interactions and organization of nature.”

The land has a history--a story to tell. (What a concept!) What is to be learned from this story? The land also reflects co-habitation with what Leopold called our “co-travelers”, all of the inter-dependent creatures whom we share this brief time on earth. The land also lives literally in relationship to all the surrounding “lands”; it is a “biota” a commons shared by not just the earth (and all its parts) but with all your neighbors. What any single one does affects the whole. Leopold moved us away from a constricted way of thinking about land, to a pyramid reflecting the inter-related complexity of land. As Newton put it, Leopold devised a pyramid:

Carnivores
Bird and rodent eating mammals
Herbivorous mammals
Insect eating birds and rodents
Plant-eating insects
Plants
Soil

Nutrition rises to the top of the pyramid from the bottom, the soil, and then as each dies it falls to the bottom, thus beginning again the life-giving cycle. This is the vision this great man gave us. It is a vision of “land health”. How do we keep the balance necessary for this land ethic? An ethic? Leopold slowly moved to the concept of “land use as a moral issue.” There is a “right’ and a “wrong”. It is “right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it does otherwise.”

Through this long odyssey Leopold had something constantly looking over his shoulder: “industrial man”. To the horsemen of the apocalypse, he added another: “A condition of unstable equilibrium between soils and waters, and their dependent plants and animals.” If “industrial man” continued his rampage of abuse, he would in the end find a “pyrrhic victory”.
How shall we end our odyssey?

My Republican grandfather and his brother started a ranch in central New Mexico in the early 20th Century. Ranching in New Mexico involved a decades’ long struggle overcoming the ravages of the Dust Bowl Drought. On the Colorado summer pasture the struggle was to overcome erosion and restore natural stream flows. Before he died my grandfather told family members his proudest achievement was leaving the land entrusted to him in better condition than when he had bought it. May we all aspire to claim that as our memorial.
Liz Keeshan
(Kibitzer-in-chief with privileges)

(Ron Keeshan converses each morning with his co-travelers and now also the spirit of Aldo Leopold. His newly published book, Journey Into The Web Of Life, is a photographic record of the journey he began fifty years ago and continues every day.)

Bananas

The other night I found myself laughing as I fell to sleep. I don’t have much of a sense of humor anymore. Looking across the country and across the world I find the current scene more than a little disheartening. Nonetheless I really felt tickled at what I had just read in the Business Section of the New York Times.

I have always believed in well-regulated capitalism. Yes, I know that regulation can become too cumbersome and needs to be jerked back to reality. I have also fervently believed that going in the opposite direction to an unregulated economy will ultimately lead you directly to 1929. I have believed that the regulated capitalism from the 30s to the 80s produced the great American middle class, a strong economy and perhaps most of all, a sense of American well-being. From the 80s to the present we have been pursuing deregulation and there will be an economic comeuppance on the horizon.

Part of the unregulated economy we have lived in allows financial markets to run amok. Americans used to produce goods for the world. Now our main “product” is a bizarre, convoluted maze of so-called financial transactions including sub-primes, derivatives, junk bonds, hedge funds, and leveraged buy-outs: a dizzying swirl of gambling. Underlying this get rich for a few scheme, has been deregulation AND the belief that the government was there to bail out losers, if their losses were big enough to rattle the whole economy. Social welfare for capitalism.

Well, you have to give it to these financial gamblers. They knew how to cover their tail-gates. Package their products up and sell them off across the world. A few wise souls saw what was coming. George Soros in The Age of Fallibility was one. He wrote clearly that the housing bubble would break. He also wrote that thinking its ending would ultimately be soft was erroneous.

How hard a landing remains to be seen. But something new has emerged from this financial mess. The international business community is now seeking what the Times calls “a role in the oversight of American markets, banks and rating agencies.” The rest of the world supports the huge American debt but while we continue to borrow we want to dictate a hands off policy. Not gonna happen. The conflict between radical de-regulators and the off-shore money suppliers will be interesting to watch, to say the least.

One aspect that I will not find interesting is our intercourse with China. With the USA debt China holds, I consider them our landlord. One of these bright sunny days, the landlord will find a Tonkin Gulf incident (that fabrication is what LBJ used to attack North Vietnam and what we’d love to see happen now in the mid-east so we can “legitimately” attack Iran) off Taiwan and decide it was time to reclaim Taiwan. And all the great military superpower will be able to do is grin and bear it. That’s what happens when you become a banana republic.

An election is coming too soon. Who will be the leader to call us to sacrifice and rebuild the American dream? I don’t see one.

Ron Keeshan rants regularly against pork and debt. His book of photographs and essays, Journey Into The Web Of Life, is available in local book stores.()