Another Victim of Human Convenience

The rings of the past speak volumes of other eras, eras in which chain saws had not yet appeared, eras when even natives had to work very hard to obtain their wood...and then came Euroman and Western Forest became a commodity, rather than an ecosystem of value.

Hopefully, rain, pollen, seeds, lichens, soil, dust, bird poop, etc will fall into the cracks enough, that some form of life can make use of this wood, created by sunshine and carbon dioxide making one of the most sustainable energy source, 

What to say?  What to do? cut back somehow, redefine wants and needs, pay more attention to the consequences of our lifestyle...speak up for life, whenever you have a chance...support to underdog....our planet.

     Once upon a time, when I was just 9 years old, an immigrant kid from Holland, who'd just spent his first year in Canada, in Vancouver, when his father found work as an engineer in a remote corner of British Columbia, named Oliver.

A Company called Trump Limited was developing the concept of a mechanical giraffe for picking and pruning and electrical work, and so we moved to paradise...here I could swim in a lake a few blocks from home, walk through a cactus patch on my way home from school, fruit was abundant, as were lakes and hikes, but best of all, my family made friends that lasted.

     Today, the town of Oliver still means something special to me...a town with some pride, where many of the buildings of my childhood are still standing, access to the river is abundant, bike trails along the river, and the pleasure of finding some of the best wine I've ever tasted, which isn't saying much, because I usually avoid the snobbery of wine tasting, but have to admit, Silver Sage in Oliver made even me sip every variety...my only event ever.  (-:

      Being out of the USA for a few days, without a computer, the news, fleeing from a country devolving into its own terrorism as the rift of economic classes and fundamentalism untie the "United We Stood".

     For a few days I could day dream back to another era before modern technology, when food was grown locally, and families still owned the farm...fruit stands everywhere...because here in the Canadian Okanogan, that's still the way it is...and they're actual Canadian youth who migrate to the valley from the big cities, both French and English speaking,  to make some money, and explore.  When I first moved to the Wenatchee Valley in 1978, we, too, had a sort of hippie youth movement in the valley during fruit picking times, and many of us stuck around to build new lives.

     We stayed at a small resort on a small spring fed lake, called the Lakeside Resort, where a simple cabana was affordable, and the beach was only a few hundred feet away.

     People smiled and even the youth wasn't constantly staring at their phones...

Memories of my childhood like seeing a rattlesnake for the first time, sitting around a campfire singing folk songs with friends, being able to hang out with some friends after several years of school after school...

     Most of my childhood home towns have changed drastically since my stay there, such as Amsterdam, Vancouver, Seattle, and even the Wenatchee Valley...they hardly remind me anymore of my time there,

but Oliver still exudes a spirit for me that comforts me, almost makes me, too, want to escape Trumpland.

     If you'd like to see the view from this region, you can check out the video below.

     

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is27Dyb6Qis

     Once upon a time, when I was just 9 years old, an immigrant kid from Holland, who'd just spent his first year in Canada, in Vancouver, when his father found work as an engineer in a remote corner of British Columbia, named Oliver.

A Company called Trump Limited was developing the concept of a mechanical giraffe for picking and pruning and electrical work, and so we moved to paradise...here I could swim in a lake a few blocks from home, walk through a cactus patch on my way home from school, fruit was abundant, as were lakes and hikes, but best of all, my family made friends that lasted.

     Today, the town of Oliver still means something special to me...a town with some pride, where many of the buildings of my childhood are still standing, access to the river is abundant, bike trails along the river, and the pleasure of finding some of the best wine I've ever tasted, which isn't saying much, because I usually avoid the snobbery of wine tasting, but have to admit, Silver Sage in Oliver made even me sip every variety...my only event ever.  (-:

      Being out of the USA for a few days, without a computer, the news, fleeing from a country devolving into its own terrorism as the rift of economic classes and fundamentalism untie the "United We Stood".

     For a few days I could day dream back to another era before modern technology, when food was grown locally, and families still owned the farm...fruit stands everywhere...because here in the Canadian Okanogan, that's still the way it is...and they're actual Canadian youth who migrate to the valley from the big cities, both French and English speaking,  to make some money, and explore.  When I first moved to the Wenatchee Valley in 1978, we, too, had a sort of hippie youth movement in the valley during fruit picking times, and many of us stuck around to build new lives.

     We stayed at a small resort on a small spring fed lake, called the Lakeside Resort, where a simple cabana was affordable, and the beach was only a few hundred feet away.

     People smiled and even the youth wasn't constantly staring at their phones...

Memories of my childhood like seeing a rattlesnake for the first time, sitting around a campfire singing folk songs with friends, being able to hang out with some friends after several years of school after school...

     Most of my childhood home towns have changed drastically since my stay there, such as Amsterdam, Vancouver, Seattle, and even the Wenatchee Valley...they hardly remind me anymore of my time there,

but Oliver still exudes a spirit for me that comforts me, almost makes me, too, want to escape Trumpland.

     If you'd like to see the view from this region, you can check out the video below.

     

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is27Dyb6Qis

The Washington State History Song

     Existentialism moderated by some bliss from ignorance seems more and more necessary for me to remain interested in life and future.

     The headlines of current history are so appalling and alienating that I'm searching for some new perspective on the human condition that allows me to empathize, instead angering me with the hopelessness of our human families inability to see our commonalities, rather than our differences.
     It all comes back to: * over- population, *diminishing resources, *genetic and racial and class conflicts, *excessive wealth by corporate chronyism veiled as democracy, and the impulse all living things to protect their own most immediate gene pool be it tribe, family, or culture regardless of moral teachings to the contrary..."The Whispers Within" from a biologist clearly illustrate that whatever we want to call our patriotism, it all comes back to our most immediate clan when the going gets rough...call them militia, or call them the new tribal chiefs of red-neckia, the impulse to segregate is highlighted in almost all species of animals as well.
A current demagogue is currently trumping most racially nationalistic local leaders and followers.
     The Territorial Imperative, another biologist's perspective makes clear that even humans find that pissing on the boundary keeps the wolves further away.
Good fences make good neighbors, but only to a point, and when one neighbor drains the neighborhood of peace, quiet, and a parasitic disregard for the well being of the community, then fences alone, are not enough.
     So what am I trying to say?  I'm very discouraged.  All my life has been about de-illusioning myself about all the values I was told were human morality and ethics.  "Treating others as I wanted to be treated" I was told was the guiding principle of this heroic martyr wanted his followers to practice, and I was gullible enough to believe, despite Dachau, that deep down this is who we really wanted to be.  But each step of the way, from friends interred in Japanese Internment Camps, to realizations of the genocide of natives in North America who have never received an apology, to realizing even two black African cultures can be so vicious as to try genocide.  Gradually, I no longer have faith that Peace, as I understood it is possible, and even now, at 72, that brings tears to my eyes.
     Still, I am thankful, despite the humiliation of  being a gay draft dodger not to go to Viet Nam, and being grateful that despite not serving, life has given me opportunities, and it is painful to accept that power confrontations are as inevitable as volcanoes under the right conditions.  The Syrian refugees are the latest to try to run away, and are identified by their 'host' as invaders of  another culture, faith, color, dress, diet, and on and on, so it take a lot of determinations to put all other almost involuntary reactions aside...
That takes a lot of work, and risk for not adhering to the 'heil hitler' response of the crowd phenomena, so luckily I still can avoid crowds, and hide among the hills of our valley, to watch two ant colonies fight over a newly created openings in the ground en route to the aphid bushes...
I guess sighing, and shedding the odd tears is a natural phenoma to try to be at peace, again.

From  some perspective, somewhere, this little blue ball has too many pests, and as with other organism, a great die-off will result...I'm grateful it might be past my lifetime, but I'm not counting on it.

    This Aspen tree has grown over the previous 32 years since I moved in this neighborhood.  I've watched its bark form the eyes of Egypt, and enjoyed its siblings along the edge of town.
     But now, the city wants to expand, and thus make a wide road where once the farmers raised their cattle.
Like everywhere in America, towns and cities spread out like a parasitic bacteria that destroys life, ecosystems, and environments one road or house at a time.
At 72 years of age, I am not surprised for every year the virus spreads out into the natural environments that were still here when I arrived.
    Orchards mowed down for housing developments.
Supermarkets with gigantic parking lots where a stream and meadow used to be.
An now the wetland once abloom with blue lupines, will become another parking lot, even though its a wetland, so that the city can abandon their historic elementary school, and sell it as it is in the center of town, and then build a new elementary school where this tree now still stands.
    I know planning is against the constitution in America, so farmland isn't necessary any more when we can get our Asparagus from Peru, Our garlic from China, and apples from New Zealand.
     I don't want to sound like an anti-globalist Trump-pet because he's as hypocritical as one can get, but I am sad to see every year how the work of our pioneers, farmers, loggers, cattlemen, and others who struggled for a sustainable self-sufficient life style which once, was the American dream of the west.

Rodin's Thinker - Legion of Honor Museum

     I recently came across this photo I'd taken years ago, and the masculine, muscular sculpture sitting with his hand to his chin, and I had sat in the same posture only minutes before I saw it, pondering the fate of man...

Guilt will do no good, I know, but our generation has certainly not lived up to the promises to make the world a better place...

     Indeed, overpopulation has long been seen as 'the problem', but for America the problem is affluenza, the insatiable urge to replace, recycle, upgrade, with fancier and fancier technology, with a virtual  reality that is really not virtual, but real to a whole new generation.

     And who can blame them, when the daily news is full of the most inhumane events dreamed up by perverted religious fanatics reminiscent of the inquisition.

So, yes, I'm trying to hold up my head, be grateful that I had white male advantages in this life, parents who educated me, and a wonderful life of learning and exploring the human condition.  

     But as I see the children of my friends cope with the frighteningly expensive options of education, without which they'll be virtual lackey 'slaves' working 60 hours a week on minimum wage to support a family, and build debt with their credit cards.  This system reminds me more feudalism than representative democracy.

     I know, I'm saying nothing new, and I'm just venting my pain before I shed more tears.  I had bonded with that tree, in the beginning, it had represented the edge of town, the open sky of fields, the stages of green buds, and golden yellow leaves in fall, like sort of time clock of the seasons.

     I know, get over it, and I will, but the with the elimination of each small living being with which I've bonded, each acre I seen alive with birds and plants, each hill with Pines and Lupines in spring, not to mention the increased sounds of cars, sirens, chainsaws, OSHA beeping also change the aural environment as well...so you go back to the house and hide, a house 100 years old that has little value, except as a old geezer luddite who remembers his own parents saying...

"I'm glad I'm not part of your generation."

 So, I need to withdraw back to nature, at a smaller scale, where the chances of 'extinction' in my lifetime encourages me to appreciate and witness, and share the grandeur of the web of life, in the hopes that I may learn to live with less shame for my lifestyle.