On December 28, a 2 1/2 year old male wolf crossed the border into California after a 1,000 mile journey south through Oregon. Wolf OR7, as he is called by Fish and Game, is the first wild wolf in the state in almost 100 years. A young wolf will leave his pack to search for a mate to start a new one in situations like too many wolves competing for game in a certain region.
Wolf OR7
The new California wolf is a descendant of the 66 Canadian wolves who were relocated to Yellowstone in the mid 90’s. He is one of an estimated 1600 wolves who now roam free in the Rocky Mountain states, in the southwest, and in Oregon.
According Tim Holt, a freelance writer in Dunsmuir, CA, “local ranchers and a few pandering elected officials have him in their cross hairs, saying he ought to be shot on sight.” At the same time, “there are wolf advocates who practically worship this predator, seeing the wolf as symbol and martyr of a vanishing wilderness.”
Holt sees another possibility:
The removal of wolves, or their reintroduction, reverberates up and down the food chain. By culling deer and elk, new wolf populations help restore vegetation along streambeds, improving habitat for songbirds, beavers and river otters. And by going after weak and old members of deer and elk populations, they help strengthen their stock. Wolves, in other words, are instinctive wilderness restoration specialists.
So the wolves’ return to this state offers a litmus test of our commitment to the health of our remaining wildlands. But it goes beyond that. Allowing them to reintroduce themselves would be one more sign that we’re moving away from a human-centered view of nature, based on narrow economic interests, and have begun to see ourselves as a part of what might be called the broader economy of nature.http://www.sacbee.com/2012/01/29/4221053/wolf-can-help-us-balance-our-approach.html#storylink=cpy
Somewhere deep within us as well, is a fear of wolves that makes generations of children shiver at Little Red Riding Hood. That thrilled me when I read Jack London’s stores of wolves battling men. I didn’t know at the time that London’s stories were pure fiction. No such incidents ever happened. During the ’90’s, I volunteered at the Folsom City Zoo because I wanted to interact with the wild canines – the wolves and foxes and coyotes.
Helping to socialize Redbud, a wolf pup, ca 1995
During the 90’s, all the texts on wolves agreed there were no confirmed cases of a non-rabid wolf attacking a human in North America. I don’t think that has changed. A classic account is 50 years old. Farley Mowat, a Canadian author and conservationist, spent a summer living by himself among wolves. In his 1963 book, Never Cry Wolf, he wrote: “We have doomed the wolf not for what it is, but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be — the mythological epitome of a savage, ruthless killer — which is, in reality, no more than the reflected image of ourself.”
Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat, 1963
The book, and the movie made of it in 1983, deserve much of the credit for reversing public attitudes toward the wolf, and allowing reintroduction to happen at all.
Never Cry Wolf movie, 1983
Gandhi said the character of a nation is revealed in the way it treats its animals. Let’s hope the way we treat OR7 reveals something compassionate, wise, and generous in us.
On Sunday evening, I was delighted to catch the first episode of the new PBS series, Moyers & Company. You can view it, and a lot more, on the new website, http://billmoyers.com/.
Moyers interviewed political scientists, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, authors of, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer–and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class.
The conversation startled me, as Hacker and Pierson said they were startled during their research. They found that the current income gap in this country – greater than in some third world countries like Egypt – was not an inevitable consequence of free market dynamics or trends like globalization. It was politically engineered over the last 30 years. Hacker and Pierson argue that the current American leadership more closely resembles a third world oligarchy than the democracy our parents knew.
“Who’s the culprit? “American politics did it– far more than we would have believed when we started this research,” Hacker explains. “What government has done and not done, and the politics that produced it, is really at the heart of the rise of an economy that has showered huge riches on the very, very, very well off.”
Bill considers their book the best he’s seen detailing “how politicians rewrote the rules to create a winner-take-all economy that favors the 1% over everyone else, putting our once and future middle class in peril.” – (from billmoyers.com)
Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson on Moyers & Company
Winner Take All Politics is going into my already overcrowded book-queue, since it appears to be of critical importance. The first step in correcting a problem is gaining an accurate understanding of its nature. The fact that the assault on the middle class was created and not fated is good news, according to Hacker and Pierson. Something done can be undone. Along with Moyers, they agree that our current national sense of outrage is a positive sign.
Moyers’ work and website are important to bring up today. On the website you can find an April, 2010 interview with two African American lawyers, discussing what Dr. King would have made of America today. Lawyer Bryan Stevenson said:
“I think in America, the opposite of poverty is justice. I think there are structures and systems that have created poverty, and have made that poverty so permanent, that until we think in a more just way about how to deal with poverty in this country, we’re never gonna make the progress that Dr. King envisioned.” http://billmoyers.com/content/bryan-stevenson-and-michelle-alexander/
These are important things to consider, especially today.
Just some quick notes on a story I have been following, in large part because it is so important and yet so downplayed in the US media. By coincidence (I assume), the latest saber-rattling news was back on page 13 of the Friday the 13th edition of the Sacramento Bee. The front page headline story involved the closing of a local shopping center.
US carrier in the straits
Thanks to the internet, and especially British news sources, we learn that yesterday, Iranians accused the US of sending one of its ships into the 10 mile “maneuver zone” where the Iranian navy is conducting war games. In response, Iran threatened to close the straits. The Obama administration said this would be a “red line act,” that would provoke a military response.
On Wednesday, a top Iranian nuclear scientist died in a bomb blast after a passing motorcyclist attached a bomb to his vehicle. He was the fourth top scientist to be targeted in the past two years according to a Jan. 12, editorial in the Los Angeles Times, which said, “That’s the kind of clean, covert assassination method favored by Western intelligence agencies.” Although Secretary of State Clinton denied US involvement, the Iranians don’t believe her, and the Times was skeptical:
“[Clinton] went on to deliver a lecture about the need for Iran to shut down its nuclear program, which we agree with. But we also think the bombing merited something more – a strong statement that the United States decries political assassinations. The U.S. is already on shaky legal and ethical grounds with its own program of targeted drone assassinations of suspected terrorists. But at least we’re at war with al-Qaida. State-sponsored extrajudicial killing is a serious violation of international law, and car-bomb assassination is a tactic little different from the methods used by terrorists. It would be nice to hear Clinton, or President Obama, emphasize such principles.”
The Times editorial went on to say economic sanctions do not appear to be working, but that may depend on who you ask. I caught an NPR interview with a correspondent in Iran who said, yes, they are working, just not perhaps as we want them to. He said he went to the store to buy an Oral B toothbrush and there wasn’t even toothpaste available. The citizenry doesn’t really understand the nuclear issue, but it does blame the US for mounting hardships. Meanwhile, I’m guessing Iranian leaders are not suffering a lack of toothpaste.
Iranian warship test fires a missile in the Straits, Jan 1
The LA Times noted, you can’t assassinate collective knowledge. Sooner or later, Iran will have nukes. Another middle-east war will not close Pandora’s Box. Yet I still find it hard to believe that this is all about nukes. I’m thinking of Col. Andrew Bacevich’s 2008 predictions. http://wp.me/pYql4-1AT. Until we take the quest for energy independence seriously, armed conflict over oil will be our future.
In 2011, Wikipedia estimated that the price of Tomahawk cruise missile was $830,000. How many scholarships would that buy for future energy scientists? How many studies of alternative fuels would that fund? How many lives and dollars are we prepared to spend trying to push back the river?
The juxtaposition of headlines this morning was strange but telling. On page one of the Sacramento Bee, under the heading of “Tourism,” was the story of Virgin Galactic, a travel company that expects to offer 2.5 hour rides into space, starting as soon as next Christmas, for a mere $200,000.
You might want try to lock in your price now, before it goes up. Buried back on page seven was this headline: “Risk of showdown with Iran escalates as oil prices climb.” According to Andrew Bacevich, in a 2008 interview with Bill Moyers, we can expect a constant string of oil crises; the choices we make as a nation make them inevitable. There’s a price to pay for cheap space travel, among other things.
Andrew Bacevich
Bill Moyers 2008 interview with Bacevich is published in, Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues, (2011). In the preface, Moyers says, “Our finest warriors are often our most reluctant warmongers.” Bacevich is a West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran who retired as a colonel after 23 years in the military, to teach history and international relations at Boston University. Bacevich’s son, Andrew, died in Iraq in 2007. Bacevich is the author of several books, including the best selling, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (2008).
In his interview with Moyers, Andrew Bacevich doesn’t pull any punches. He says our foreign policy, including our wars:
“reflect the perceptions of our political elite about what we the people want. And what we want, by and large, is to sustain the flow of very cheap consumer goods. We want to be able to pump gas into our cars regardless of how big they happen to be…and we want to be able to do these things without having to think about whether or not the books balance at the end of the month…”
To our list of wants we can now add, “affordable” space travel, with its guaranteed 5.5 minutes of weightlessness. As an ex-miltary officer, Bacevich points to the dark side of this, something you never hear in presidential debates, and don’t often see anymore on the front page of the paper.
“One of the ways we avoid confronting our refusal to balance the books is to rely increasingly on the projection of American military power around the world to maintain this dysfunctional system.”
The biggest elephant in the living room is our dependance on foreign oil. Without oil, Bacevich notes, the middle east has “zero strategic significance.” Every president since Richard Nixon has promised to address our dependance on foreign energy, and Jimmy Carter staked his political career on finding a solution. Bacevich paraphrases Carter’s speech in 1979:
“If we don’t act now, we’re headed down a path along which not only will we become increasingly dependent upon foreign oil, but we will have opted for a false model of freedom. A freedom of materialism, a freedom of self-indulgence, a freedom of collective recklessness. The president was urging us to think about what we mean by freedom…Carter had a profound understanding of the dilemma facing the country in the post-Vietnam period. And of course, he was completely derided and disregarded.”
When Moyers asked him about the realities of al-Qaeda and radical Islam, Bacevich replied that yes, they are violent and dangerous, but are “akin to a criminal conspiracy…Rooting out and destroying the conspiracy is primarily the responsibility of organizations like the FBI, and of our intelligence community, backed up at times by Special Operations Forces. That doesn’t require invading and occupying countries.”
At the end of the interview, Bacevich, who defines himself as a conservative, says he hopes we will come to understand the war in Iraq as a great mistake. And rather repeat the mistake in Iran or anywhere else, hopes we will “look at ourselves in the mirror. And…see what we have become. And perhaps undertake an effort to make those changes that will enable us to preserve for future generations that which we value most about the American way of life.”
You can read the full text of the interview with Andrew Bacevich in Bill Moyers Journal, along with many other provocative talks with thinkers and artists across the spectrum of contemporary life.
Now is when writers compose their summaries of the outgoing year, and I wanted to weigh in too. Problem was, I kept discarding drafts as my inner parental voices chimed in with, “Quit whining.” Eliminate whining, and it’s hard to come up with things to say about 2011.
Now that we have that out of the way, what’s left? I sometimes compose gratitude lists at turning points in the year, and I find it a worthwhile practice, but I think people have to do this for themselves. I started one list by writing, “We survived,” which brought to mind several good people who didn’t. Sometimes the things we are grateful for are weighty, things to “ponder in our hearts,” as the Christmas story puts it.
In the middle of these reflections, a phrase I hadn’t thought of for years came to mind: “Drown their butts, crush their butts.” This stanza comes from Gary Snyder’s marvelous, Smokey the Bear Sutra. When found it online, I stopped to appreciate these words at the end of the poem:
(may be reproduced free forever).
Those five simple words of generosity opened a real wellspring of gratitude for me, so now I want to share this poem, one of my favorite by this Pulitzer Prize winning poet. May reproducing it here benefit beings everywhere.
*****
Gary Snyder
Smokey the Bear Sutra
Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago,
the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite
Void gave a Discourse to all the assembled elements
and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings,
the flying beings, and the sitting beings — even grasses,
to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a
seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning
Enlightenment on the planet Earth.
“In some future time, there will be a continent called
America. It will have great centers of power called
such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur,
Everglades, and so forth; and powerful nerves and channels
such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon
The human race in that era will get into troubles all over
its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of
its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature.”
“The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings
of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth.
My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and
granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that
future American Era I shall enter a new form; to cure
the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger:
and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it.”
And he showed himself in his true form of
SMOKEY THE BEAR
A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs, showing that he is aroused and
watchful.
Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances; cuts the roots of useless
attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war;
His left paw in the Mudra of Comradely Display — indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma;
Wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the countless men oppressed by a
civilization that claims to save but often destroys;
Wearing the broad-brimmed hat of the West, symbolic of the forces that guard the Wilderness, which is the Natural State of the Dharma and the True Path of man on earth: all true paths lead through mountains —
With a halo of smoke and flame behind, the forest fires of the kali-yuga, fires caused by the stupidity of
those who think things can be gained and lost whereas in truth all is contained vast and free in the Blue Sky and Green Earth of One Mind;
Round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great earth has food enough for everyone who loves her and trusts her;
Trampling underfoot wasteful freeways and needless suburbs; smashing the worms of capitalism and
totalitarianism;
Indicating the Task: his followers, becoming free of cars, houses, canned foods, universities, and shoes;
master the Three Mysteries of their own Body, Speech, and Mind; and fearlessly chop down the rotten
trees and prune out the sick limbs of this country America and then burn the leftover trash.
Wrathful but Calm. Austere but Comic. Smokey the Bear will
Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or
slander him,
HE WILL PUT THEM OUT.
Thus his great Mantra:
Namah samanta vajranam chanda maharoshana
Sphataya hum traka ham nam
“I DEDICATE MYSELF TO THE UNIVERSAL DIAMOND
BE THIS RAGING FURY DESTROYED”
And he will protect those who love woods and rivers,
Gods and animals, hobos and madmen, prisoners and sick
people, musicians, playful women, and hopeful children:
And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television,
or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR’S WAR SPELL:
DROWN THEIR BUTTS
CRUSH THEIR BUTTS
DROWN THEIR BUTTS
CRUSH THEIR BUTTS
And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out
with his vajra-shovel.
Now those who recite this Sutra and then try to put it in practice will accumulate merit as countless as the sands of Arizona and Nevada.
Will help save the planet Earth from total oil slick.
Will enter the age of harmony of man and nature.
Will win the tender love and caresses of men, women, and beasts.
Will always have ripe blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a pine tree to sit at.
AND IN THE END WILL WIN HIGHEST PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT.
If you’ve visited Wikipedia recently, you’ve seen the header asking for small donations from users to keep the service free. As an earlier donor, I received a notice today and request to pass it on. They are close to their Dec. 31 goal but not there yet.
Disclaimer: I am a donor and I have no connection to Wikipedia other than as a frequent user. Please have a look at their fundraising site:
This began as a simple post over the weekend, after I spotted a story on Facebook about Fox News’ recent attack on the Muppets. On Dec 2, Fox business anchor, Eric Bolling was shocked – shocked, he said, that the villain of The Muppets Movie was an oil baron named Tex Richman. Bolling asked his guest, Dan Gainor, if Hollywood was trying to brainwash children. “Absolutely,” said Gainor. “And they’ve been doing it for decades.” Bolling “wondered aloud why the Muppets couldn’t, for once, “have the evil person be the Obama administration” http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/shortcuts/2011/dec/06/muppet-movies-communist-plots-revealed.
Silly me! I thought the Muppets were all about friendship and kindness. Now we learn that Fozzie and Gonzo are really Occupy operatives! I guess the 1% need hugs too!
The Guardian article, referenced above said, “The discussion…didn’t just typify the Fox News mission to recast the outside world as leftwing propaganda; it threatened to usher in a whole new paradigm of stupid.” My initial post ended by questioning the phrase, “usher in,” since the new era of stupid has been here for a while.
But I held up my posting because Sunday night, I witnessed an escalation: the Administration struck back, via the National Christmas Tree lighting ceremony. It was broadcast at 11:00pm – sensible, since it wouldn’t have drawn many prime-time viewers. In essence, it was a boring political add, thinly disguised as a heartfelt “event.”
“Reality TV,” I said.
“You mean surreality,” my wife replied.
In a word, it was yucky. Nothing spontaneous or from the heart – the whole thing was as carefully choreographed as an episode of Glee, but without the humor, (good) music, or fun. I took the dogs out and was ready to call it a night when I heard Kermit’s voice. There he was, part of the festivities, ushering in a new era of political celebrity wars.
Kermit and Michelle Obama read The Night Before Christmas (courtesy, Disney Corp.)
Celebs always appear in political dog and pony shows, and the Democrats usually win the game. They have the likes of Springsteen and Joni Mitchell. Hank Jr. is no match for them by any measure. And now the Dems are poised to win a war of non-human stars as well. Sure, the GOP can draft Buzz Lightyear, but Kermit and Piggy will always be fuzzier. And yet…
The whole thing strikes me as sad. I’m really sorry to see Jim Henson’s creations dragged into political nonsense. We’re used to a popular culture of false fronts and illusion, but I always hope our politics will be a little more real than commercials of happy shoppers dancing through K-mart.
Ain’t gonna happen. The parties learned their lesson from Jimmy Carter – only smiley faces get elected. [**for those too young to remember, during the 1980 presidential campaign, after a decade of stagflation, Carter said the country was “in the grip of malaise.” He lost the election by a landslide.]
My hope is that our collective attention-span for news has grown so short that the Muppet foray into politics will soon be forgotten. Let’s hope the PR machinery will roll on and focus on human folly, leaving the Muppets alone to be what they always have been – ambassadors of joy and goodwill, regardless of anyone’s politics.
It’s coming on Christmas They’re cutting down trees They’re putting up reindeer And singing songs of joy and peace Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on – Joni Mitchell
I can’t get the name of Walter Vance out of my mind. He was the 61 year old pharmacist, with a history of heart problems, who collapsed in a West Virginia Target store shortly after midnight on Black Friday. Witnesses told MSNBC that many shoppers ignored Vance and walked around or even stepped over him as he lay on the floor.
When NPR held a call-in show to ask about listeners’s Black Friday shopping experience, one caller reported that a woman had grabbed an item out of her cart, saying, “It isn’t yours until you’ve paid for it.” The incident mirrors a scene in a commercial that ran incessantly in the days leading up to the event.
Sales receipts were no guarantee of safety either – just ask the shooting victims in several parking lot robberies.
Exhausted after an all-night shift, one Target employee drove her car into a canal.
All of these reports emerged after the infamous pepper spray story that had the media wagging its head – the very same media that helped whip crowds into a feeding frenzy during the previous days
None of this is new. Christmas has always been the church’s most problematic holiday. The Hallmark version we know today was in part, carefully crafted by early 19th century merchants, in a manner not different in essence, from the effort to persuade millions of seemingly sensible people to spend Thanksgiving night in big-box stores.
Santa Claus by Thomas Nast, 1865. Would you want this guy roaming around your home late at night?
The Bible does not give a date for the birth of Jesus. Apparently, birthdays were not a big issue back then. Origen of Alexandria, a 3d century theologian, wrote that “only sinners like Herod and Pharaoh celebrate their birthdays.” December 25 was not fixed as the date of Christmas until the 4th century, and the nativity was largely ignored until the 9th century reign of Charlemagne.
Through the early middle ages, Christmas was overshadowed by Epiphany, which commemorates the visit of the Magi. It was not until the high middle ages that Christmas emerged as a popular feast day. “Feast” is an understatement. In 1377, Richard II’s guests consumed 28 oxen and 300 sheep. Caroling became popular then, though chroniclers complained of lewd lyrics. The same writers blamed pagan holidays like Saturnalia and Yule for the “drunkenness, promiscuity, and gambling,” of the celebrations.
In 1645, in an effort to rid England of decadence, Oliver Cromwell and his Puritans banished Christmas in England. The Pilgrims on the Mayflower were even stricter. From 1659-1681, Christmas was outlawed in Boston. English customs were shunned after the revolution, and Christmas did not become an official American holiday until 1870.
We can read on history.com that, “The early 19th century was a period of class conflict and turmoil. During this time, unemployment was high and gang rioting by the disenchanted classes often occurred during the Christmas season.” The New York City police force was organized in 1828 in response to a Christmas Riot. History.com continues: “This catalyzed certain members of the upper classes to begin to change the way Christmas was celebrated in America.”
In the absence of television, one thing 19th century chambers of commerce used to push their version of Christmas was Washington Irving’s, The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, a series of stories of life in an English manor house. “The sketches feature a squire who invited the peasants into his home for the holiday. In contrast to the problems faced in American society, the two groups mingled effortlessly.” Historians now claim the book does not describe any actual customs, but ones that Irving wished for and thus invented.
Even more important to the evolution of Christmas was Charles Dickens’s, A Christmas Carol, with its strong message that celebrating this holiday can make you a better person. Dickens’s book meshed with the Victorian emphasis on family , as well as a new appreciation of children.
Referring to the 19th century upswing of Christmas popularity, history.com says: “Although most families quickly bought into the idea that they were celebrating Christmas how it had been done for centuries, Americans had really re-invented a holiday to fill the cultural needs of a growing nation.”
The optimism of “a growing nation” that we see in historical prints and Christmas cards seems as quaint these days as the cards themselves. For a sense of the collective mindset this year, I look at this photo of students at the Charles W. Howard Santa School in Midland, MI. This year the Santas are learning to gently lower children’s holiday expectations.
Photo by Fabrizio Constantini, New York Times
I wonder what Santa said to the boy who showed up with a multi-page spreadsheet, cross referencing all the toys he wanted to different stores and prices. (What was he doing on Santa’s lap to begin with)?
***
Even a little research reveals that there is no “right” way to celebrate Christmas. This holiday has been re-invented numerous times. If individuals and families opt out of what no longer works and try to create saner traditions, no one will ever miss them. I’ll go ahead and lead off with a clip from my favorite Christmas movie of all time, in the scene that inspired this post, and leads me to wonder if the pre-repentant Scrooge isn’t due for re-evaluation.
Meanwhile, Be Careful Out There, and in case you were wondering, I’m off to see the new Muppet Movie today. I’ll soon be back with a report.
The First Gates 