The Stainless Banner

At this very moment, as we try to absorb the tragedy that took place at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, the confederate flag continues to fly on the grounds of the state capitol of South Carolina.It is also present in a sacred little corner of the actual state flag of Mississippi. This is shameful. If one holds the thought that this flag is simply a little piece of our American history that should be treasured, think again. This flag (known as The Stainless Banner) was constructed to symbolize a more perfect union of twisted ideas and demented attitudes. I wish it weren't part of my country's history, but it is and fouls the very bedrock of our constitution and principles. We will always have assholes that want to display the glory of the confederacy but to have state governments partake in endorsing our sordid past is inexcusable. Here is an excerpt from the "Cornerstone Speech", delivered by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens on March 21, 1861 as the drums of civil war started to beat, which illustrates the Confederate ideology in case one doubts the symbolic intent of the confederate flag:

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth..."

Epistle

The difference a day makes. I was ready to write my thoughts on LeBron James and his seeming arrogance in light of his statement following the game 5 loss of his Cavaliers to the Golden State Warriors during the NBA Finals. Speaking at a post-games interview, under the umbrella of flashing lights and crackling microphones and ludicrous shout-outs by dozens of sports journalist wonks, King James was asked if his mental attitude had changed in the series given the state of his team's injury roster. His response: "I feel confident because I'm the best player in the world. It's that simple." Wow, that was a show stopper and lit up the switchboards plenty as the words, "arrogance", "pride", "hubris", were being rattled around through the news cycle and the water cooler chats, both real and cyber. What interested me was the question of arrogance. What is it? Why is it unbecoming and the evil twin to humility? But, my curiosity about the matter of arrogance suddenly became trite the night nine precious souls were blown away during a church Bible study gathering by a 21-year old madman with a handgun and a vendetta against the black community. Awash in his toxic veneer of whiteness and apartheid sensibilities, Dylann Roof visited the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, ready and loaded to kill. He was welcomed into the Bible group by the pastor, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, and following an hour or so of prayer and brotherly communion, he turned his gun on the group and joined the growing ranks of America's mass murderers. And these nine innocents joined the ranks of those slaughtered at the hands of a madman holding and firing and reloading a gun; only this time the murderer was also a racist.  I don't understand racism and I never will. It is illogical, irrational, inexplicable.  I am white and I am sorry.

Earth Day 2015

Memorandum
To:  Earth
From: Earthling
Re: Leasing Agreement

Per our recent conversation in the Cuyamacas atop Stonewall Peak, where I pointed out to you the decimation of the pine population and the receding waters of Cuyamaca Lake and the concern I have regarding the seemingly endless drought that is forcing us to raid your precious aquifers while continuing to build housing units that will bring in more thirsty souls to the region, I feel that it is time for you to take some action to get this place back into balance, and pronto. Your lollygagging around moaning and groaning about our lack of foresight and utter disregard of the needs of our neighboring species as we suck dry an inhale of the resources that once seemed endless and spew an exhale of our craftily monsantoed toxins, like some fire-breathing dragon, is getting old. When this contract was made, our understanding was you would provide everything we needed to exploit, plunder and deplete, to our hearts content, the admittedly beautiful and wondrous landscape you so creatively wrought from a magma of miracles. Yes, we have been a little rough and trashed the place, turning your handiwork into a tenement of human turmoil and waste, but that's what bad tenants do. You need to do something to make things right. Don't just stand there looking at me with that blank look. If I'm not mistaken, you are referred to as "Mother" Earth. So, how about a little TLC. Please save us from ourselves. You've got 30 days.

Elegy To The Dead Raccoon

I apologize to the dead raccoon. Splayed by the side of the road where a sidewalk might be. Had there been one. A fresh kill, but clean. A thin ooze from the mouth. Hit and run, no doubt. "I am so sorry. I honor you," I say to the raccoon and really to all the critters who cross the line. If ever there was a heaven, which I believe impossible, all cars should be banned along with all humans. Which makes me sad for me.  Let the dear hearts rise up, ringed tails slipping away to a safe hideaway, a sky of dotted swiss. There a raccoon, a crow, up goes a skunk, the opossum who drank from my hose, the coyote, skinny as a rail. A sumptuous feast would await their arrival. That would be heavenly.

Deliberate

"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn... I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. " Henry David Thoreau

I was tramping through the Cuyamacas today on an eight mile trek along Cold Water Creek, which surprisingly, in these drought wrenching times, was babbling along for a good distance, breathing in the sweet aura of the Mountain Lilac (Ceanothus) and thinking about Thoreau's line of living deliberately. Now, Cold Water Creek is no Walden Pond, and my intent was simply a day's sojourn and not a two-year's dedication to building a dilapidated lean-to, growing beans and capturing the essence of my existence. But, along the way, on this four-hour hike, hot-wired into this landscape, I finally understood what Thoreau meant by living deliberately. It was so simple, so elegant a notion that it could be easily overlooked in the hurly burly plugged-in life just down the road a piece. Wake up. That's what he meant. Breathe it in:  Every sound, every bird call, the rustle of the bushes, the wind sighing through the pines, the clouds, the tiny blue flowers, the faint hum from the bees, the snap of my lunch apple, glug of my water bottle, the straps of my backpack, the charcoal hollows of burnt out trees, the pink granite boulder faces,  the sheer here and now and this is all there is at this moment. That's what he meant. I am awake and deliberate. As an aside, notice the "liberate" contained in deliberate? I am also, free.

Resolutions

I tried a number of new year's resolutions on for size and soundly rejected all but one. Oh, they were all noble pursuits, worthy of my time and energy. But, that's the rub; time and energy. It's hard to be "real" with oneself and separate the you that fantasizes over the you of your dreams from the you that understands what you can actually count on yourself to do. The responsible you versus the flake. Now, the flake is lovable, the one who gets distracted and says yes to everything because everything seems so exciting. Yoga, yes. Drawing class, yes. Writing class, yes. Bicycling to work twice a week, yes. Give up dairy, yes. Take on a horse, yes. Raise backyard chickens, yes. Publish a book of poems, yes. Take on Spanish, yes. Work at a community garden, yes. This list of wishful frivolity goes on and on and just by holding the list can be a balm of sorts healing scratches and scars from a previous year of disappointments. There in black and white is the potential for a new you, an improved 2015 model accessorized to the hilt with shiny new interests and fascinations. Yes, I'm an interesting person who  does interesting things and I really count for something. And so it goes. Yet, when it comes down to meting out time to accomplish these new goals, the second hand falls short. So,  in order to avoid these resolution pitfalls and following a long session with myself attempting to have a meaningful two-way conversation with my stubborn "other", in love with the me it would like me to be, I sloughed the list of all but one. RESOLVED: To practice the guitar in a thoughtful manner five days a week.  We'll see...

A Silent Spring Revisited

No warbling awake
The deafening hush tuneless
Our world out of tune




In 1962 Rachel Carson published her seminal work, Silent Spring, which pointed out the dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides, with a particular emphasis on dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, better known as DDT, a type of synthetic pesticide which works by attacking the nerves of pests. Although Ms. Carson was demonized by the chemical companies as a bogus female quasi-scientist alarmist, her well-researched study of our pest eradication methods at that time was convincing enough to get a nod from President Kennedy, had the public feeling uneasy about the practice of aerial spraying of pesticides and eventually led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, established during Richard Nixon's tenure. Quite an accomplishment for one lone woman in a wilderness of money, machismo and corporate machinations. While Ms. Carson died prior to much of the hooplah and banning of DDT, still she saw that her carefully drawn work did hit a nerve and did get a conversation going from the urban centers to the rural hamlets. Environmental awareness was outed and our citizenry became interested and some progress was made. Then suddenly something happened. That something was NOTHING. We got lazy and content with not knowing nor caring and started trusting the fox in the henhouse, the corporations and government to have our best interests at stake. Now the henhouse is in a shambles, the hens are dying and the foxes are fat. It's time to pick up A Silent Spring and give it another look before we are all forced to fly the coop.