Up, Down.
Peter F. Sale - Our Dying Planet: An Ecologist's View of the Crisis We Face from University of California Press.
At Amazon.ca, Amazon US, and at Abe's. (But not at the Toronto Public Library for some reason?)He talks with: Ecoshock, Part 1 & Part 2 - audio only, about 15 minutes each; with CBC on Quirks & Quarks - audio podcast 50 minutes (including idiot remarks by Bob McMuggle but otherwise informative - as if there will even be a recognizable 2050!); and on all-night California radio with George Noory of KSFO 2 hours, and with Ecotopia on KZFR 30 minutes.
We have ONE BIG complicated problem, not many small ones. (!!)
Riddley Walker might have called it the 1 Big 1.
| Ensanguining the skies How heavily it dies Into the west away; Past touch and sight and sound Not further to be found, How hopeless under ground Falls the remorseful day. |
Inspector Morse: TV on the cusp - somewhat less use of gross manipulative techniques make it shine - if only relatively; 33 episodes, 1987-2000 downloadable here. The last episode features the poem by A. E. Housman: More Poems XVI (also here), 1936.InSecurity & Death in Paradise are ok too, but not so much.
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A friend of mine regularly complains that he does not see acknowledgment of population as the root cause of all our troubles, nor anything like it. What he means is that he does not see it every day in The Sun & The Star & The Globe (and other tabloids). I say, yes but (immediately putting myself in a bad debating position) ... anyone with any sense has been saying it for years, from Paul Ehrlich & The Population Bomb in 1968 on forward. Before that too, Malthus was when? 1800 give or take.
Neither of us is right. He is able to blame everything on the lame liberal media: leftards & associated reactionaries; and I know that indeed, population is not quite a root cause, not quite the be-all or end-all, close but no cigar.
My friend Keith liked the word 'fecund', liked to speak it in his lectures because that hard-C has a certain impact and does something delicious in your mouth when you say it. I am more with 'fecundity' which sweetens it with a bit of doo-wah-ditty.
Jean Quan was born in 1949 - in the wee trough between the peak and the hump. So what?
I remember a poem about persistence; that an image may persist in the eye beyond death. I think it had something to do with Hiroshima. I can't find it again.
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I learned about Jura from a particularly dissolute Scot. Between rumpy-pumpy with half (or more - it was the early 70's) of the girls at the bank we sometimes drank Guinness together at a bar on Fleet Street not far from St.Pauls, and one evening he showed me how to cut the bloat from too much stout with a quick double whisky, and Jura was preferred.
Then in the mid-90's it abruptly changed, for the worse. Shite! Obvious from the first sip of a bottle with the new label. So here's the timeline:
1810 established, though whisky was being made there before this;
1875 James Ferguson & Sons;
1901 abandoned, the distillery that is but not likely the practice;
1960-3 rebuilt, Jura Distillery Co Ltd / Mackinlay McPearson Ltd / Scottish & Newcastle Breweries / Robin Fletcher & Riley-Smith & William Delmé-Evans (architect);
1994 Whyte & Mackay Ltd;
1996 American Brands / JBB Greater Europe plc.;
2001 back to Whyte & Mackay Ltd.
There are still Macallan's and Highland Park; both adequate, though the price becomes so high that it is almost impossible to ignore.
There is a youthful time of fucking to exhaustion with no plan, waking still coupled, astounded by beauty. Before any tricks; long before Wyatt's "Dear heart, how like you this?" kicks in. Youth passes but one may learn that real quality has a kind of gravity to it; an inevitability that needs no standard beyond the moment (Anarchy!). Matthew (in 11:30) even reports him saying, "For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Possibly not his yoke as it turns out but, yes.Some of the girls have rows of tiny scars from razor cuts here and there on their bodies - reminders of an initiation into Candomblé, na barracão.
(The anonymous model as tally was found at Sirreal. I mentioned the bottle of Jura before. The island is not so remote, not so far west of Glasgow, but the route is not direct as you can see on this map. Information about Jura whisky here, here, & here.)
Two or three more words in Japanese: (see Setsu-den previously)
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Long before the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear fiasco, per-capita energy use in Japan was about 50% of what it is in North America. They have reduced it an additional 25% and more since then, with pride in the achievement. The Japanese recycle 70% of post-consumer plastics, compared with 20% (if you're lucky) in North America. QED.リサイクル / risaikuru / recycling.
プラ / pura / plastic.
もったいない / mottainai / "Oh, what a waste!"
In Toronto (The Good) there are ad campaigns stressing what NOT to put into the recycling box.In Ontario we have enough bureaucrats on the gravy train to recycle every piece of e-waste by eating it (see Harry Crews' Car). Start at OES (Ontario Electronic Stewardship) and follow the sewer off in all directions, leading, as it often does to containers bound for bum-fuck somewhere or other where life is even cheaper.
In k-k-Canada, those who give a sweet rat's ass are few and far between - a nation of the led-by-the-venal-and-mediocre. Always be polite. Don't give in to despair. And never never send cash in the mail.
I mention The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (download) again because it is both informative and potentially instructive.
Highland Mega Quarry in Melancthon: (previously here)
A few more faces for the rogues gallery: John Lowndes, Joseph Izhakoff, & John Scherer - all 'principals' apparently. Principal sleveens, stoats & weasels, working in the interests of Seth Klarman, a very wealthy short-seller (which is good or bad depending on who you talk to) and named Investment Guru of the Year for 2011 by somone or other.Two longish articles on the situation:
Anatomy of a quarry fight, in The Star recently, and,
Quarry on Ont. farmland was the plan, firm says, at CBC in October.
A link to what look to me like the good guys: NDACT (North Dufferin Agricultural and Community Taskforce, Inc.) and to their excellent christmas card, and to my first line for information: Mining for the Truth in Melancthon.
Maybe even a bit of good news (not the death of Ilya Zhitomirskiy y'unnerstan' but the concept) on the IT networking front, check this out: Diaspora.
(Or, if you feel like weeping over the same issue, have a close look at what's happening at Occupy Toronto as they shill for Facebook & Google+, and compare&contrast with Occupy Wall Street, open-source and all.)
"... he’s afraid and confused and his brain has been mismanaged with great skill."
(License To Kill, Bob, 1984, and by Richie Havens & lyrics.)
I was in a church-choir in a small village. There were three of us. The others were willing to sing this tune - the pianist liked the phrase I've quoted as I remember. I bought the sheet music but we never got around to it. I can't remember why not. Someone's husband came along with a french horn around christmas time and we did a version of Wenseslas. That was a gooder!
Be well.
Down.
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