The Promise of the Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens)

Posted on November 23, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

The wind tastes faintly of Winter’s crispness; daylight is shading toward Winter clarity.    Heavy morning frost has become a regular visitor, persisting in the shaded nooks throughout the day and leaving the faintest impression of early snow in the darkest, deepest crannies where daylight scarcely reaches.  Pine limbs greet the day coated with frost, sparkling in the dawn as if decorated for the season by the hand of God.  Small puddles are frozen over each morning, while larger bodies of water appear merely cold and uninviting as they nurture an accumulating edge of rime along their shores, patiently awaiting the grace of an inevitable sheen of real ice.

But the ground is not yet hardened; not all of the migratory birds have flown south; daily temperatures still rise past crispness into the range of the notionally warm; plants have yet to turn into black, wintry pulp and still bravely wave their fading colors at the winds; more than a few trees hang on fiercely to the leaves remaining to them; and humanity goes about its endeavors in slim silhouette, as yet decrying the bulk of winter coats and gloves and boots – even as each of these items has begun to stir from its hibernation within the closets of Humptulips County, has begun to beckon slowly and seductively.

For it is but the cusp of Winter.  Winter’s spare and careful truths still lies weeks away.

But Winter’s annual harbinger now feeds in the valley’s flat places.  Snow geese have come south in their seeming thousands, stopping at the midpoint of their annual migration to rest and feed in the valley’s now fallow fields, searching for the fallen grain, for the roots, for the remaining grasses.  They scavenge in agitated white flocks, separated from one another in their respective fields of choice by some incomprehensible sense of family, carpeting the ground and appearing in their movements as if wind-blown spume left behind at low tide upon a lonely, deserted beach by an unseen, unheard, far distant surf.  They move to the rhythm of life, coruscating in the sunlight.

They are the promise of winter – even though they will be far away when it finally arrives.

Posted in Humptulips County, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off on The Promise of the Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens)

Of Little Girls and Perfect Days

Posted on November 20, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.

Robert Frost, Gathering Leaves

Violins of Autumn sobbing
Deep and lone,
Pierced my heart is with their throbbing
Monotone.
Fierce and quick the breath, and choking,
When at last
Sounds the hour, and I recall
The happy past.
With the truant wind that brought me
I must go,
Hither, thither, as this dead leaf
Whirls below.

Paul Verlaine, In Autumn

It is autumn within the elastic borders of Humptulips County, especially in its farthest reaches, especially in the suburbs of Boston where Helen and I spent our weekend with our granddaughters, son and daughter-in-law.  Maple leaves fall to the ground there by the yardful at this time of year, even as the watching trees harbor yet more leaves to be dropped after a full day of raking, gathering and bagging leaves has ended.  These remaining leaves represent the promise of more joy to come both in this present autumn and those in the cycles of seasons yet to come.

It is, of course, a time-worn clich to compare autumn with the later stages of a life, but, as with many cliché, it has a force which becomes stronger and richer with meaning with each passing year.  For, as I watched my granddaughters this past Sunday, memories of kicking fallen leaves along the childhood streets of an eastern Washington town warmed my heart, memories fostered by the sight of my granddaughters at play – granddaughters assisted in their play by two generations of adults working assiduously to clear a back yard of a great quantity of fallen leaves, granddaughters assisted in their play by these now-former children celebrating with a vicarious joy what it once meant to be supple and carefree by the constant forming and re-forming of the huge mound of leaves into which my granddaughters played with abandon.

Sunday was a perfect day, for there was great satisfaction in watching the little girls diving and swimming in, and erupting from, the leaf pile with the glee of dolphins at play.  For it was not a day of digital isolation, but an analog day spent in the outdoors.  An autumn day like so many of those now consigned to the long-tailed past; autumn days enjoyed when we were children and our parents were adults; autumn days enjoyed when our parents were children and their parents watched with delight, and so on down the eons of the human past.

For with age comes an understanding of the communal value of shared joys and comforts, an understanding expressed by means of gentle bemusement and the resulting willingness to become complicit in sharing these joys and comforts with a new generation.  There is no better way to spend an autumn day, no better way than to assist in the strewing of such memories along your wake.

Posted in Humptulips County, Our Place in the Firmament | 2 Comments

Dreaming of Books, Old Ladies, and Cows

Posted on November 8, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

I have always loved books, both for their content and for their form.  The same is true of my wife, Helen.  As a consequence, the Farm is home to far more volumes than sanity might suggest is prudent.  Most of them are plain and designed for everyday reading; some few of them are exquisite and designed primarily for our admiration, as they are individual works of art.

My love of books began early.  Along with my siblings, I shared a small library of children’s books that had been given to my mother in her childhood and augmented over time by communal purchase.  These books were well-loved, with many a scrawl of delighted wonder adorning their pages written primarily in crayon or pencil.  Writing in these books was strictly forbidden by my mother, but each of us got carried away at times and put our personal stamp of approval on some especially appealing volume.  There are only a few of these specific volumes remaining, and each time I handle one of them memories of another time come alive – a lost time before the unrelenting squeal of electronics; a time when imagination rather than imposed artifice ruled the mind waves.

Books freed me from whatever shackles I endured as a child.  For a good book fires the imagination and creates a belief that one can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone he or she wants.  And a sparking of the imagination leads to dreams, and dreams – even the most elusive – are always to be chased, always to be pursued over the course of a lifetime.  Once imagination is sparked, all that is needed is a gentle push and a little willpower to begin a voyage of discovery – the sort of gentle push that comes from a parent reading to a child the sort of gentle push that can escalate into a rocket ride when a child learns to read on his or her own and has the will to run free.

I just finished reading a book in which the author’s primary thesis is that certain moments come along which are destined to alter the course of a life, moments that render once-possible alternate timelines impossible by the choices we humans must make at such times.  This view of life is resonant with the concept of Fate, is very like that faced when using computer software – you must make a choice at a fork in the software’s decisional tree, and proceed down one of its branches to the exclusion of another.  This is of the essence of computer software, and this, I suspect, is the reason why achieving the concept of Artificial Intelligence is so difficult.  For in the living of a real life, this thesis is only momentarily true and is the stuff of circumstantial hypnosis – not the stuff of dreams.

In real life we can consider other possibilities even after choosing to take the left-hand fork in the road.  We do this by dreaming of having chosen the right-hand fork instead and by our nearly constant contemplation of other potential realities beyond those presented to us at any particular fork in the road.  Books are the usual means by which we pursue these alternate realities even as we travel our particular narrow lane of choice.  Reading frees us from our own narrow path so that we may consider becoming everything from space pirates to cowboys, from detectives to serial killers, from a person of a different gender to a person of a different color, from Walter Mitty to Natty Bumppo – and everything in between and the infinity beyond.

And by keeping these dreams alive, we can go so far in a real life as to revisit our earlier choice of path and choose a new one to travel in future.

Books are the sparks of the imagination fostering our dreams.  Specific books suggest  specific alternative realities; an aggregation of books is of the essence of the concept of possibility.  As I write, I am sitting in an honest-to-God library: a library we chose to build after we’d paid our mortgage; a library which required a new mortgage to finance it.  At the time I wondered if I was insane; I now know that insanity is the stuff of life.  For our library ensures us equally of savoring the promise of dreams represented by each newly purchased book and of memories gripped tightly by each previously read volume.  It is this interaction of memory and dream that fuels thought; it is thought that fuels new or supplemental dreams; and dreams are the fuel of a real life, even as they are the bane of those seeking to create Artificial Intelligence.

So to those who prefer their Kindles, Kobos, Nooks, iPads, or whatever have you, here’s to you.  They are better than nothing, and, admittedly, they are convenient devices, take up far less space than our library, and cost much less to own.  But they lack the heft of our books, and they only partially fire the imagination.  For I can look around me and remember my sojourn with Robin Hood and Friar Tuck in Sherwood Forest, remember my time drifting down the Mississippi River on a raft with Huck and Jim, remember my incarceration in the Chateau d’If along with Edmond Dantes, remember my time riding the sandworms of Dune – not through the courtesy of an electronic aid, but by holding and contemplating the very volume through which I first savored these experiences.

As a former partner of mine was wont to say: “To each his own, said the Old Lady as she kissed the cow.”

Posted in Books and Stuff Like That | Comments Off on Dreaming of Books, Old Ladies, and Cows

The Glory of a Rural Mailbox

Posted on October 29, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

The nights are getting cold, almost cold enough for frost to grace our mornings.  There was a proto-frost, an almost-icing, on our fields yesterday morning when I walked down to get the newspapers and mail.  The air was clean and the light exceedingly bright – as bright as a cloudless day in Winter.

Yes, the sun has returned to Humptulips County.  At least for now.

A walk to our mail box is not long – perhaps the length of a football field each way – but there are no yard lines and the walk is not accomplished in a straight line.  This time of year, it is best to walk along our driveway, which is a curving, up-and-down affair.  In the Summer I will sometimes walk through our fields to get the mail, but this time of year the fields remain wet until late afternoon, and I have no wish to spend time donning boots in order to perform so mundane an activity.

The walk is not long enough to count as exercise, but it does allow enough time to take the Farm’s pulse.  Birds are usually about, either visible in flight or invisibly raucous from the depths of the trees and woods.  Insects grace the Summer’s walk, but aren’t readily apparent this time of year.  Ants scurry about industriously along the paved portions of the driveway, just large enough to make their presence known so that I might avoid them whenever I can.  Things are always growing, whether or not deemed desirable by the Farm’s human residents.  Yesterday’s new growth consisted of several dozen large, moist mushrooms of various slimy descriptions growing in the darker hollows where the sun rarely finds its way.  I swear they were not there two days ago when I last made the walk.

Yesterday morning, I discovered a 10 foot long spider web strung across the driveway at the half way mark just beyond our barn – a single, head-high strand placed across the driveway as if with the intent to decapitate the unwary human walker.  The spider who strung it must have had visions of glory approaching megalomania.  If nothing else, he or she must have been a prodigious athlete.  I debated leaving it in place to see what it might evolve into with the passing of another day, but batted it away instead while fantasizing how it would feel to be hung from it, cocooned in spider silk, awaiting inevitable disembowelment.  My mind ran briefly back to Bilbo’s adventures in Mirkwood.  With this in mind, I struck my blow for the freedom of both humans and hobbits alike.

After getting the mail and turning to begin my walk back, the colors surrounding our home came alive.  Helen has planted bunches of color, and they are best visible at the entry to our driveway from the lane.  The sweet gums are turning a bright yellow, but the yellow appears to be working up from the extremity of their drooping limbs leaving long cascades of green ending in lengthening yellow fingers.  They resemble a fireworks display that has frozen in place; or at least a fireworks display that is ever so slowly passing into its eventual fade out.

Yellows predominate, but there are a good many reds serving as accents  reds ranging from the dark dusky red of our Japanese Maple to the light watered rose of a solitary Magnolia.  These lighter reds are scarce and are the most pleasing to the eye, for they seem somehow ethereal, as if brushed lightly upon the landscape by a master watercolorist who knows the value of less, the worth of grace notes.

The distant blue haze that is October’s hallmark has yet to appear, but perhaps it will grace November instead.  Trees are late shedding their leaves; late in turning color.  Some seem to have shed their leaves without bothering to allow them to turn, as if we humans had done something to offend them mortally and have proven unworthy of ritualistic displays of their finery.

This has been a curious, intermittent fall – rare sunny days interspersed among long foggy periods lacking light.  Yesterday was one of brightness, a brightness briefly bordering on Winter’s glare, a brightness filled with blessing, a brightness ennobling the merest of tasks – a solitary walk to the mailbox.

Posted in Humptulips County, Our Place in the Firmament | Comments Off on The Glory of a Rural Mailbox

Foggy Days and Foggy Nights

Posted on October 26, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

“Fog everywhere.  Fog up the river where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it roils defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.  Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights.  Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats.  Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ‘prentice boy up on deck.  Chinese people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.”

Charles Dickens, Bleak House

A miracle has occurred: morning has broken without the accompaniment of a blanket of fog; in fact, without the least hint of fog.  For the first time in many days, fog has not beset Humptulips County so that even the nearest trees lack definition or, on some days, even outline.   Only high clouds remain this morning to remind us that the mists are still close by, gracious in their restraint but laden with threat.

Fall is often a time of heavy morning fogs here in Humptulips County, fogs that typically disappear into the advancement of mornings.  They are often localized to boggy areas or to the shorelines of rivers or lakes, and since the Farm has one boggy area and is near to the river, we are often blessed by their magic.  The fogs of the last fortnight, however, have enjoyed epic staying power, remaining with us for entire days as if we were being treated to a perpetual overnight.  All of Puget Sound and its adjacent lands to a depth of thirty to fifty miles have been blanketed and muted, swaddled and cocooned.

The fogs have been so deep that I have felt as if I should be preparing for a trip to the Chancery Court, that I was faced with making a presentation in the matter of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce and was unprepared even for such a smallish bit part.  However, since the matter has been toiling on for some 200 years by now, and since none of the litigants could remember what the matter was about even when Dickens first described it, I haven’t been overly concerned about my lack of preparedness, just mildly bothered.  I began my preparation for the Chancery Court this morning in the dark hours, in my anticipation of the morning’s fog we were assured of by the weatherman, by re-reading the first chapter of Bleak House – only to find when the sun finally rose that I had been freed of obligation.

While I enjoy the fog for its hints of things fey, after several days of its unrelenting presence the atmosphere becomes heavy with an assumed, undefinable dread.  Things lurk in the fog.  Things lurk in the fog even when they haven’t the least disposition to lurk.  Ordinary things assume cloaks of extraordinary shapes and loom suddenly as if springing from ambush, when they want nothing more than to be at peace and have ordinariness re-established as quickly as possible.  Nothing is as it should be; nothing acts as it should act; and nothing is often as startling as if it were something.

So I am pleased to see a day without fog announce itself, pleased to see the dawning of a typical mid-fall day: to be certain, a variant B mid-fall day, the sort with only a threat of rain, as distinguished from a Variant A mid-fall day, the more usual sort replete and resonant with rain from dawn until dusk.  For either variant constitutes an ordinary mid-fall, Humptulips County day, days full of wetness or of the augury of wetness, days lacking a sustained, lurking dread.

Posted in Humptulips County | Comments Off on Foggy Days and Foggy Nights

The Morning Of Our Discontent

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

Last night our nation’s Congress finally passed a bill to extend our debt ceiling and to fund our government, relieving it from the shutdown forced by a wholly dysfunctional, irrational Congress – a shutdown costing our economy an estimated $24,000,000,000.  There was no need for the shutdown to occur; no rational reason whatsoever to have come so near to the debt ceiling that we adversely affected the nation’s credit rating.

As a result, we’ve awoken this morning to widespread national dissatisfaction with the political establishment in Washington DC.  Those who hate Democrats are mad at the President and Harry Reid; those who hate Republicans are mad at the house, the Tea Party, and Ted Cruz.  Those who admire the Tea Party are mad at everyone, including themselves.  They’ve been mad for a long time, continue to stay mad and revel in madness – in both of the word’s senses.  While this is not the first time insensibility has reigned in Washington DC, it is the only the second time insensibility has extended to the point of stabbing ourselves rather than Caesar.

Come to think of it, the first time occurred with the assistance of most of those presently in Congress, a fact that should remind us of just how stupid this present Congress really is – so stupid that it not only is unable to learn from the mistakes of past Congresses, it is unable to learn from its own!

To those, like me, who are so profoundly disappointed this morning, so profoundly angry over the fact that stupidity stalks the halls of our government and reigns supreme, I offer a reminder, a warning, and an opportunity.

The reminder is that Congressional failure has its seeds in our personal voting habits.  If we elect only idiots to Congress, we will inevitably reap idiocy in our legislation – or, in this case, in our failure to legislate in a timely manner.  If you think your vote is so meaningless that you won’t bother to exercise it, think again.  In fact, think about Ted Cruz.  One or two votes might well make a difference in his recall or in his eventual reelection effort.  Personally, I don’t want to think any more about Ted Cruz than I have to or about his disgustingly smug enjoyment of the limelight, for he reminds me strongly of another attention seeking, focus stealing, personality impaired imbecile – Senator Joseph McCarthy.

But imagine if you will, a la Rod Serling, the Senate without Ted Cruz.  The Senate would be a marginally improved place for his absence.  Admittedly, Cruz’s recall or his failure of reelection would not solve all of the problems in Washington, but the Congress would be a marginally better place if he were not a member, would be a marginally smarter place, would be a markedly more civil place.  Then imagine how much better Congress might become if a great number of his fellow idiots and imbeciles (you decide who they are; there are so many from which to choose) were removed along with him.  That can only happen if each of the Perpetually Angry exercises his or her right to vote.

My warning is this – hang on as well as you can to the anger you feel this morning, for only your anger and mine will see us through to more idiot and imbecile free Congress, once that is sufficiently idiot and imbecile free that it can again function with at least a modicum of success.  Anger is one of those emotions that is difficult to sustain, for its existence depletes our energy.  Political anger is especially ephemeral, often evaporating in the stew of partisanship by the time of a far distant election.  Unfortunately, the next Congressional election – other than that of Corey Booker in New Jersey – is a year and change away.  What all of us angry people need to do this morning is to sustain our anger until November 4, 2014.  No small task, but we one we can accomplish if we try, if we put our collective backbones into the effort.

The opportunity I offer is to join the ranks of the Perpetually Angry.

Those of us who seek membership in the ranks of the Perpetually Angry will undoubtedly have considerable assistance in sustaining our anger at least through January and February.  This is because inherent in the legislation that was passed yesterday is the chance to have the equivalent of a bar room brawl in Congress all over again in January and early February; inherent in the legislation that was passed yesterday is the notion that Congress still reserves its God-given right to act with a full measure of stupidity, still believes it is possible to wield its powers insensibly, still believes that thuggery and extortion are proper means by which to run or control a government.  If they felt otherwise, they wouldn’t have set the next deadline so near to this disaster.

So Congress will likely help us in our efforts with another dose of anger-inducing, anger-sustaining stupidity, but even if, through some miracle or other, they don’t, all of us – those of us who are willing to join the ranks of the Perpetually Angry – need to remember how we felt this morning on the morning of November 4, 2014 when we next have a chance to toss out many of the rascals. For on that date, the entire House of Representatives and approximately a third of the Senate will be up for reelection.  So our job now – regardless of our political persuasions – is to remember how you feel this morning, remember how disgusted you are with the effects of intransigence, stupidity, inability to compromise, the pandering to big money, the incivility, and the patent stupidity that rules the Halls of Congress.  Our job is to find and elect candidates of all persuasions who believe in civility and in the power of listening; who understand that their beliefs, while sincerely held, are not the only beliefs important to this great melting pot of a country; who understand that compromise is the grease of democracy; who will fight fairly for their goals while understanding that God didn’t ordain them or bless them with the only semblance of Truth.

If you have the same feelings about the Presidency, you will have to wait until 2016 to make your point.

I assume most of you are damned angry this morning, most of you are as angry as I am that we’ve put the idiots in charge of the asylum.  If you aren’t, shame on you.  If you are, join the ranks of the Perpetually Angry and hang on to your anger and hug it to you closely.  Think of it as your blanket or your Teddy bear of yore, and hold onto it as tightly as you can for as long as you are able.  Hold onto it to assist you in surviving the months of certain stupidity yet to come; hold onto it for the sake of your eventual comfort and sanity.

For if we remember and if we will vote, our anger can make us free.

Posted in Civics, Politicians and Other Lower Life Forms | Comments Off on The Morning Of Our Discontent

Running The Molecular Relay

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

It has been several days since my sister-in-law, Mary, passed away last weekend after months of fighting the cancer that brought her down.  Her fight was epic, but the cancer prevailed as it had too great a head start by the time it was discovered.  And this despite her faithful adherence to her doctor’s recommendations over the years as to testing and examinations.

In the relatively brief interval between the day of her death and today, I have been struck once again by how the world continues to turn and life goes on about its business even as one of us is no longer present to experience it.  The most mundane matters still occupy the bulk of our time in the routine manner in which they assert themselves – birds are still singing, fog is still rising in the mornings, leaves continue to fall pursuant to the demands of the season, and the dependable rain continues to mark the bulk of autumn’s hours.  Despite the cataclysm of a family death, nothing appears to have affected this routine, the views from our windows remain unchanged.  Humptulips County steadfastly adheres to its routine as if nothing happened.

But something did happen, even if the ripples from Mary’s passage were not of seismic impact in the way that, say, the assassination of a renowned world leader might have been.  While Mary had no children, she lived the life of a busy, successful professional and, in so living, enabled many others to earn their livings and have children of their own.  In this way she contributed to life’s endurance.

To me, life is an entity unto itself that employs many forms to carry it forward through time.  Each living thing is but one molecule among the many that, in combination, constitute the river of life; each living thing contributes to the river’s forward motion by serving its term and endowing life with the means to carry on beyond that term.  Those of us with children leave someone to leap-frog us and carry the life force forward beyond our farthest reach; all of us, childless or not, help provide the goods and services required for others to reproduce and continue the effort.  It’s all of a piece, whether orchestrated or not, whether accidental or a deliberate result of the will of a greater unknowable entity.

The important thing about life is not the reason it first occurred; the importance of life is in its will to persist.  Of course we are curious about why life occurred in the first instance.  All cultures have a creation myth, after all.  But when we use the zealotry of our beliefs to assert them forcefully upon others, when we try to assert the primacy of our creation myth over that of others – even unto the point of murder – we demonstrate an inherent failure of understanding of the importance of life’s miracle.  And even when acts of murder become societal affairs which periodically attain the unimaginable level of the Holocaust, life simply continues on after the latest eruption has calmed despite the absence of the innumerable souls left behind when the eruption has spent itself.

Mary’s sustained battle with her cancer is ample evidence of life’s indomitable will to move forward through time, and her death demonstrated that each living thing – each of us – is a fragile vessel which will serve life’s willpower only for as long as it is able.  She fought with tooth and claw, fought on despite the doubts and concerns of her doctors, fought on with the loving and able assistance and gentle understanding of her husband, Gregg.  For she understood life’s imperative; she understood that life is a long distance relay and that each of us must carry our portion, our baton, as far as we can before handing it off to another.

And in Mary’s death lies an understanding of our own purpose; and in the manner of her fight to live is a lesson for us all.

Posted in Our Place in the Firmament | Comments Off on Running The Molecular Relay

A Climatic War Zone

Posted on September 30, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

The arrival of fall has turned Humptulips County into a climatic war zone.  Even as I write I can hear thunder in the distance and rain is falling regularly as it has been for the last three days.  This is not a gentle rain; it is a hard, drenching rain of the stuff of legend.  As a consequence of its determination, the rivers are running as high as the winds are blowing hard.  The farm is very wet.  It is a good thing that I finished mowing the pastures last Thursday, for I would likely get the tractor mired in the low spot in the western pasture were I to try to do so now.  The weatherman did see this storm coming and sent us ample warning.

It’s amazing how our weather went from that of gentle summer to a semi-apocalyptic fall in a matter of hours.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a dramatic shift in the seasons unless it was during those long gone days I spent in Ann Arbor where spring typically comes and goes in a matter of a few days.  It is certainly unusual to fall off such a weather cliff here in the Pacific Northwest, and I have to wonder if this is a portent of things to come courtesy of global warming.

For now, we are safe and warm.  The night was somewhat cold courtesy of a power outage that lasted several hours, but our power is back on now and I am once again able to choose to ignore the rain or to sit in a convenient window and watch it fall.  I can exercise this conscious choice today, for there won’t be any outdoor chores to perform unless a drain clogs up sufficiently that clearing it is preferable to the resulting flooding.  That may prove to be a hard call if it happens, for this is a day to stay indoors and to leave the weather to its work.

There is something melancholy in a fall rain, something that draws the eye and feeds our reservoirs of memory.  And our present rain, as hard and as persistent as it is, may prove more melancholy than most, for it has already denuded much of the Virginia Creeper in our turnaround, making me believe that any walks in appreciation of autumn’s foliage must be taken somewhat in haste this year for it may well be that this year’s season of color will be truncated.  It isn’t fair to say, as some have, that fall has been skipped this year and winter has already arrived, for the temperature belies that notion.  But it is fair to say that if the rain continues in this way for too much longer, the leaves will fall before they usually do, may well fall even before they turn color.

I hope the leaves survive to burst into color, for there is glory in the radiance of a bright fall day when the leaves have turned, enough glory to fill the soul’s fuel tank to bursting, to give us sufficient fuel to carry on until Spring.  For by themselves, winter’s bright, hard, cold, inspirational days come at insufficient intervals to keep the tank full.  They are only additive to its depth; their occurrence is never sufficient to top it off, only to replace some lost hope with their wonder.  It takes a heavy dose of fall colors to give the soul’s fuel tank the depth it needs to keep us all safe from despondency until Spring, to allow us to endure sailing winter’s customary overcast in which those bright cold days infrequently emerge as if islands of clarity, as if tropical islands in the depths of the southern Pacific Ocean.

So I will watch and wonder today, wonder if these rains will be strong enough to leach away the colors from this fall.

Posted in Humptulips County, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off on A Climatic War Zone

Autumnal Pas de Deux

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

Autumn arrived precisely on schedule this year in Humptulips County.  For once, the calendar and the weather decided to dance a pas de deux and the day of the autumnal equinox coincided with declining temperatures and the first rains of fall.  You can always tell fall rains, for they are gusty and have a chill about them that is absent at any other time of year: a clammy, cold chill as opposed to the bitter cold and icy rain of winter; a long-term, musty, pervading chill inhabiting every nook and cranny with a determination  unknown to the rains of other seasons.  Fall rain is noticeable because it is the dominant force and the secondary identifier of the season, serving, as it does, as the agent to bank and quiet the leafy fires – fall’s primary identifier.

Things are not often so efficient here, with the usual pattern being that Summer sneaks past the boundary imposed by the autumnal equinox for at least a week or two.  Consequently, the autumnal equinox often passes relatively unnoticed, a mere date on the calendar with technical meaning only and notable only for the fact of having occurred.  It usually is respected, but unhonored; noted for its significance, but ignored in fact.

Summer weather usually survives into mid-October, even if humanity’s feel for summer regularly departs during the long Labor Day weekend.  Post-Labor Day summer survives almost as a will-o-the-wisp, as weather to be yearned about rather than to be enjoyed, coming after commerce and industry reassert their primacy over the lazy, somnolent days of high, hot suns.  These September days are when summer devolves into Indian Summer.  You can never be certain their weather pattern will adhere on weekends when it might be enjoyed to its fullest, for these are the days of summer’s spume – a spray of warmth flung shoreward by its last cresting wave, a wave now receding rapidly from view.

Rain drums on my Library’s roof even as I type these words, its rhythm sufficing to venerate the books, to validate the human spirit contained within, and to implant the emotions which will cause the Library to become the center of my existence for this season and for the one to come.  For these are magical rains: even as they bring the chill, they somehow stoke the home fires; even as they drown and quench autumn’s fire, they somehow feed the fires of human emotion.

Posted in Humptulips County, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off on Autumnal Pas de Deux

A Harebrained Proposal?

Posted on September 14, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

“People should be allowed to pursue their happiness in the competitive market. But it makes no sense to require people to compete in the market for basic goods. Those who lack such goods have little chance of winning them in competition with those who already have them. This is what leads to an underclass exhibiting the antisocial behavior condemned by one picture of young black men and the object of the prejudice condemned by the other picture.

We need to move from outrage over the existence of an underclass to serious policy discussions about economic justice, with the first issue being whether our current capitalist system is inevitably unjust. If it is, is there a feasible way of reforming or even replacing it? If it is not, what methods does it offer for eliminating the injustice?

It is easy – and true – to say that a society as wealthy as ours should be able to keep people from being unhappy because they do not have enough to eat, have no safe place to live, have no access to good education and medical care, or cannot find a job.  But this doesn’t tell us how – if at all – to do what needs to be done.  My point here is just that saying it can’t be done expresses not realism but despair.  Unless we work for this fundamental justice, then we must reconcile ourselves to a society with a permanent underclass, a class that, given our history, will almost surely be racially defined.  Then the bitter conflict between the two pictures of this class will never end, because the injustice that creates it will last forever.  Dr. King’s island will never disappear, and there will always be another Trayvon Martin.”

Gary Gutting, Getting Past the Outrage on Race, Opinionator/The Stone, New York Times, September 11, 2013

I recently read a piece in The New York Times that I believe everyone in America – or anywhere else, for that matter – ought to read.  Gary Gutting, its author, is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and he is seeking to remind Americans polarized in their view of the meaning of the death of Trayvon Martin that there is an underlying cause upon which they might find common ground if only a dialogue could be had about it.  Professor Gutting’s entire article can be found here:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/getting-past-the-outrage-on-race/?ref=opinion

Professor Gutting’s remarks seem to point out that the government of a representative democracy is not efficient or effective in resolving the causes of an economic underclass.  The point of this remark is not to suggest that a prince, theocracy, or dictator would be any better at it, since none of these forms of government is likely to care about the issue or to make it a priority.  It is to say, however, that representative democracies are likely, over time, to become so polarized over issues that reflect personal values that compromise about them not only becomes impossible, but parties become deaf to the possibility that they might share a modicum of common ground over the immorality of its root causes  – common ground from which a potential resolution might be fashioned.  This is due to the monumental effort each party must expend in shouting as loud as they can to be heard over the din of democracy.   The ever-increasing din ensures increased polarity over the consequences of basic, unresolved societal problems; the increased polarity over  consequences renders meaningful dialogue about the underlying causes nearly impossible.

While Professor Gutting didn’t issue a direct challenge to stop shouting and consider the causes, he does remind us that even very difficult issues are capable of solution if we do not surrender to despair in the consideration of their resolution.  After all, if we can go from speculating over the existence of canals on Mars to the discovery of thousands of planets circling far off stars in a little over a century, we ought to be able to turn our intellect to the successful resolution of basic societal issues that have plagued mankind forever.

For purposes of this piece I take it as a given that elimination of the need for a significant number of our citizens to spend their entire existence merely seeking to survive another day would be a positive result.  I suggest that if everyone would quiet down long enough to listen to their own voice, to their own soul, to their own heart, many would agree with this proposition even if they have qualms about what I – or anyone else – might be about to propose in the way of its resolution.  How much more prosperous we all would be, how much more secure and guiltless we all would feel, how much more confidence in the means we use to govern ourselves would we all have, if only we knew that our society assured each individual of the satisfaction of his or her basic needs.

But – surprise! – I don’t intend to offer a solution, for a solution to something this basic requires massive input from all concerned.  Instead, I want to think about whether there is a trailhead from which we might pursue a path of discovery leading to resolution.  For if we are to find our way to a consensus, we must first discover a path that might lead us there.

So what can we say about this problem that all of us might agree upon regardless of our place on the political spectrum:

  • Government doesn’t seem to be able to solve the problem by imposing a solution on society, because any such imposition is bound to favor the dominant point of view then in power.
    • Representative government has the particular difficulty of being representative.
      • While representative government assures that different viewpoints have a seat at the table, it also assures that each elected representative will be hard of hearing when it comes to compromise, for each representative has to please his or her particular constituency in order to stay in power.
      • Representative governments therefore work best at resolving basic societal issues when there is a pre-existing societal consensus about the essence of the matter; they work worst when there is no such societal consensus and only warring constituencies instead.
      • Therefore, societal consensus is best achieved through some means other than direct governmental action.
    • However, government can be very helpful in implementing necessary legislation when there are societal-wide agreements over how we want to act, especially if the political parties do not feel pushed to extremes in order to be heard.
    • Therefore, government may have a role in helping to eliminate an economic underclass, but only after societal consensus over basic issues has first been reached and a path to an ultimate resolution of the matter is identified – a path that allows for differences of opinion, even as it assures a common result.
  • Resolution of the issue does not require us to decide which of the viewpoints about Mr. Martin’s death as portrayed by Professor Gutting is more right and which is more wrong.
    • Resolution of the issue does not depend upon either extreme winning at the polls.
    • In dealing with so basic an issue, the concept of “winning” needs to be redefined in such a way that a win is considered to be a societal-wide improvement to which everyone participating in its fashioning can feel they added something material.
    • A win must:
      • Make each of us feel better about ourselves in accordance with whatever measuring stick we personally employ (religion, morality, feel goodishness, etc.)
      • Have broad enough support across the political spectrum so as to become a political possibility.  We do not need unanimity; we need significant consensus.
      • Allow everyone to be heard; allow everyone to feel materially involved.
      • Allow for conversations instead of shouting matches.
    • Consensus will have to be built a brick at a time by those demonstrating moral authority.
    • No single person or entity exclusively occupies the throne of moral authority, for there is no throne of moral authority.
    • Religion hasn’t a lock on what is or isn’t moral; it is but one voice at the feast of morality.
      • To suggest that religion has the only legitimate voice as to morality is to beg the question of which religion should be invited to the table.
      • Religion is but one of the ways mankind has chosen to seek a moral path, and religion has developed into a vast river delta of many streams emptying into the same sea.
      • All legitimate religions have a place in the discussion, especially since a shared consensus will have many differing aspects.
  • Ethical humanism also has a place at the table, since it is but another means of looking at human morality.
    • Humanity has found a variety of ways to express what morality is or isn’t, as demonstrated by the teachings and actions of Buddha, Confucius, Gandhi, Dr, Martin Luther King, jr., Mother Theresa, Albert Schweitzer, and others.
    • If nothing else, sheer numbers should prevail when it comes to earning a place at the table, especially when the goal is a societal compromise broad enough to support our elected representatives in moving forward.
  • Common sense must have pride of place at the table, since many proposed solutions will not be achievable either because they cannot work in real-time, lack a broad consensus, or because they represent only a narrow point of view.
    • Common sense is an exceedingly rare commodity, and what is common sense in one context may be zealotry in another.
    • The common sense we need must be founded in the belief that the goal (eventual elimination of an economic underclass) is central to the continuation of our society and must have the highest priority during discussions.  The common sense we require at the table must have the elimination of the underclass as its spiritual flame.
    • Leaders of the discussions must be possessed of this common sense, even to the point of being able to step aside when it becomes clear that someone else is better equipped to lead at various stages of discussion.
  • The goal we seek must be clearly and simply stated in such a way that all can agree using their point of view.
    • The more simply the goal is stated, the more likely that differing points of view can agree upon it.
    • Simplicity is of the essence of a starting point, especially when it comes to very complicated issues.  For at some very basic level there is common ground; it is the details of its resolution that divide us.
    • Therefore, it behooves each party at the table to remember a simple mantra.
    • Perhaps it is best to remember the Declaration of Independence, since that is what brought us all together in the first place: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
    • Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness brings us to Professor Gutting’s conclusion: “It is easy – and true – to say that a society as wealthy as ours should be able to keep people from being unhappy because they do not have enough to eat, have no safe place to live, have no access to good education and medical care, or cannot find a job.”
  • The discussion must be over how to achieve the stated goal; the discussion must not be about how we got to where we now are.
    • Discussions over who is at fault never resolve anything other than upon whom to affix blame, and, when it comes to blame, there is always plenty to go around.
    • Even a perceived moral high ground has dark consequences, since no human point of view is without its darker aspects.
    • Even when someone did nothing specific to contribute to an actively poor result, that someone was part of the culture in which the result was achieved and, therefore, added something, however big or small, to the creation or maintenance of the problem.  We all need to shoulder responsibility and move forward.
    • If everyone accepts that they contributed something to the problem in some fashion – even if simply by having ignored its very existence – no one need spend time seeking to affix blame upon others.

It seems to me that our self-professed “moral leaders” (whomever they may be) must begin this dialogue by calling a meeting somewhere, a meeting from which further dialogue can be empowered and can commence.  But before doing so, they must first examine themselves for the disqualifying signs of zealotry and ask themselves if they are truly willing to listen to someone who professes a shared goal, but with whom they may have profound philosophical disagreements.  No zealots for whom everyone else is an idiot, a heathen, a non-believer, an infidel need apply.  In other words, each participant at the table must be willing to recognize as an intellectual, moral equal someone who disagrees with his or her basic tenets of belief.

Surely there must be enough of us in sufficient despair over the existing gross imbalance of societal assets to realize that there must be a better way forward.  Surely there must be those of integrity who have the moral and intellectual strength to recognize that while they, alone, do not have all of the answers, they might find answers in consort with others from across the spectrum.  Will those with sufficient standing now come forward?

Or am I crazy to imagine there is even the slightest possibility of such a thing happening?  After all, I still have faith in Santa Claus.  I only know one thing with certainty: if you don’t ask, you won’t receive an answer.

 

 

 

Posted in 'Tis a Puzzlement, Civics | Comments Off on A Harebrained Proposal?