WHAT CAN'T BE CHANGED

Today is the fifty seventh anniversary of MLK's I have a dream speech. You remember MLK. Made a speech. Everybody cheered. And Kink magically disappeared only to reappear in the spring of 1968 just in time to meet that bullet in Memphis. And deep, deep down you have to wonder how much has really changed. 

I’m getting a little fed up with the comments that the Irish, the Germans, the Italians etc. ad nauseum had adapted to the majority culture in the US so why can’t _______ I don’t think you’ll have to think too hard to fill in the blank.

Well for starters many of those minorities are white or at least rather tan in complexion. Lose the accent, alter your name, move to the other side of the country and you can pretend to be just about anything you want to be. If anyone is curious enough to ask, that is. Even the Italians. For every immigrant’s son who looks like Antonin Scalia, there’s a blue eyed blond from the north of the country that was settled by the Germanic tribes. Change your name from Bellini to Bell and nobody will ask any questions.

As for the minorities from the orient, they faced some very extreme prejudice in the early years. And let’s face it. I didn’t take the time to run the numbers but there just aren’t that many Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Asian Americans in this country. I suspect that there are parts of the country where the good citizens can go for years and not see an Asian face outside of the TV or movies.

African Americans have been the quintessential other from the beginning. Were they persons or property? The constitution came down on the side of what? They were persons but only 3/5 of a person and only so they could be counted for census purposes. Called “black” even though most African Americans are varying shades of brown it conjures up all those images of darkness.

The dangers of night. Going over to the “dark side.” Thanks George we really needed that and Darth Vader in his midnight black get up to let us know he wasn’t one of the good guys. The psy cops in the Babylon 5 universe with their SS wannabe’s black uniforms. The black sheep of the family. The black market. All the negative images conjured up by “black.”

You can change your name. You can get an education that lets you speak like a BBC presenter. You can get a good job and dress the part. Even buy a decent car. There are still areas where the real estate agents will try to steer you away from. You can still be arrested for buying a belt considered too nice for somebody like you. You and that nice car can still be pulled over for “infractions” that probably wouldn’t be noticed in a European American driver.

You can be stopped and questioned for walking while black with your hands in your pockets. (true story. Apparently a store owner had called because an African American with his hands in his pockets had been passing back and forth in front of the store and he was afraid he was going to be robbed. No matter that the man who was actually stopped was nowhere near the store. He was walking the mile between the house of a friend and his place about a mile away)

You can still be called every vile  name in the book because, unlike other hyphenated Americans, you can’t change the color of your skin. From the day you’re born until the day you die too many people will only look at skin color and no further. And from the comments I’ve been reading on too many stories too many people aren’t interested in doing things any different. 

WHEN ANY BLACK MAN WILL DO

Another whack job, female, at the tRump fest has a biracial adopted son. And she is on record as saying that as this little boy with brown skin grows older the cope would be wise to "profile" him. Her name is Abby Johnson BTW. She has some other out their opinions but this just might be the worst. Leonard Pitts is still a colomnist at the Miami Herald. I don't take the Guard anymore so I don't know if his work is still published. I wonder what her reaction will be if or when her son is arrested in a case where "any black man will do." Or if she will blame him for being targeted instead of questioning the cops. This is from 2005 and things sure as hell haven't changed. 

Martin Luther King had a dream. What we have right now looks closer to a nightmare.

HOW THINGS ARE

This column appeared in the Sunday edition of the Register Guard. It doesn't need much introduction except to note that I had a huge lump in my throat and was almost crying by the time I was finished reading it. Most small children have that expression that says "all things are possible." To see that change to "this is how things are no matter how hard I try" has got to kill part of their parents spirits.

LEONARD PITTS JR.: Race issue hits home with son

October 7, 2005

BY LEONARD PITTS JR.

My youngest son was arrested last year.

Police came to my house looking for an armed robbery suspect, 5-feet-8-inches with long hair. They took my son, 6-foot-3 with short braids. They made my daughter, 14, lie facedown in wet grass and handcuffed her. They took my grandson, 8, from the bed and sat him beside her.

My son hadn't done a damn thing. I was talking to him long distance at the time of the alleged crime. Still, he spent almost two weeks in jail. The prosecutor asked for a high bail, citing the danger my son supposedly posed.

A few weeks later, the prosecutor declined to press charges, admitting there was no evidence. The alleged perpetrator of the alleged crime, a young man who was staying with us, did go on trial. There was no robbery, he said. The alleged victim had picked a fight with him, lost, and concocted a tale. A video backed him up. The jury returned an acquittal in a matter of hours.

Too late now

But the damage was done. The police took a picture of my son. He is on his knees, hands cuffed behind him, eyes fathomless and dead.

So I take personally what William Bennett said. Bennett, former education secretary, said last week on his radio program that if you wanted to reduce crime, "you could ... abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down."

Bennett says critics are leaving out his denunciation of the idea and the fact that he was criticizing a thesis that holds that making abortion readily available to low-income women in the '70s led the U.S. crime rate to drop in the '90s.

I get all that. But what bothers me is his easy, almost causal conflation of race and crime, as if black, solely and of itself, equals felony.

The way it is

It's a conflation that comes too readily to too many. The results of which can be read in studies like the one the Justice Department cosponsored in 2000 that found that black offenders receive substantially harsher treatment than white ones with similar records.

They can also be read in that picture of my son, eyes lifeless and dull with this realization of How Things Are.

I asked a black cop who was uninvolved in the case how his colleagues could have arrested a 6-foot-3 man while searching for a 5-foot-8 suspect. Any black man would do, he said.

So how do I explain that to my son? Should I tell him to content himself with the fact that to some people, all black men look alike, all look like criminals?

Actually I don't have to explain it. A few months back, my son was stopped and cited for driving with an obstructed windshield. The "obstruction" was an air freshener.

So my son gets it now. Treatment he once found surprising he now recognizes as the price he pays for being. He understands what the world expects of him.

I've watched that awful knowledge take root in three sons now. In a few years, I will watch it take root in my grandson, who is in fifth grade.

The conflation of black and crime may be easy for William Bennett, but it never gets any easier for me.

LEONARD PITTS JR. appears most Wednesdays and Fridays in the Free Press. Reach him at the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, FL 33132; at 888-251-4407 or at lpitts@herald.com.

TRAFFIC IN DEATH

Mexico has ordered the phase out of Monsanto's RoundUP. The country's plans to be RoundUp free by 2024 were announced in mid July. The herbicide has been blamed in connection with non Hodgkin's lymphoma. The current EPA disagreed with a jury finding in favor of two patients in a 2019 lawsuit. And TV is littered with ads for class action lawsuits. Mexico is working towards the traditional practices of the native farmers. Practices they've used for generations. Practices some farmers in this country have been using or rediscovering. Wendell Berry is good resource to begin with. His collections such as The Unsettling of America, What Are People For, The Gift of Good Land.

There is also some decent evidence supporting the main ingredient in the herbicide, glyphosate, as an underlying cause of chronic kidney disease in farm workers in countries including Nicaragua, El Salvador, Sri Lanka, and at least one state in India.  (the article is from a US publication by the way with links to other articles) The patients are agricultural workers in their twenties and thirties with none of the usual underlying causes such as diabetis mylitis. 

Researchers are looking glyphosate as having a synergistic effect with heavy metals, polluted water, other chemicals. In other words the chemical may not be the only cause but it looks like it's on the list. Most of the countries involved have a history of lack of access to clean water. Low level agricultural workers often are working in countries that are hot and even if the water is clean they can't always get water when they need it. 

Now we get to GMO's. The deliberate creation of plants that can be poisoned and survive while all the plants around them curl up and die. Problem is that in countries like India the plants in the farm plots are not the only plants the peasants use for food. There may be a hundred different plants on the roadside that the people use for food for themselves or their animals. Adding in the costs of extra water and fertilizer actually makes the engineerd crops no better  than the non engineered crops.

Also engineering crops like wheat into putting all its energy into grain at the expense of stalk ignores facts of life in the third world. Farmers eat or sell the grain. Their animals often depend on the straw or waste grain for food. They usually can't afford to buy extra feed. Another example of how ignorance of the third world by the first world can be lethal. And it isn't just the farmers, glyphosate doesn't break down as fast as the scientists hoped. We all are exposed to trace amounts of all those lovely chemicals. 

As RoundUp resistant "super weeds" have cause increasing problems Dow chemical has pushed for the EPA to ok increased use of 2 4 D as the answer. Trouble is plants are becoming more resistant to that chemical too. And 2 4 D has a history. It was one of the ingrediants of Viet Nam era Agent Orange.

Of creating plants can created their own pesticide. Often killing good bugs along with the target bugs. Just ask the Monarch butterflies how they are faring these days. 

Now we come to a pet theory of mine. It's been cooking for awhile. I've looked at several of the websites pushing so called Intelligent Design. Can't really find out who is footing the bills for the and lawsuits. Yes, ID is often seen as having religious foundations. But I see something else. I have an unused Anthropology degree. I've had classes in genetics and heredity. 

Anyone who has studied standard evolution realizes that RoundUp and 2 4 D and plants engineeers to make their own pesticides are doomed to failure. Not all the so called weeds or the insects eating your crops are killed by the engineered products. A few survive and they reproduce. Next time a few more survive and reproduce. Until RoundUp or 2 4 D or the cotton that makes it's own bug killer don't work anymore. We can't kill our way to success. The companies that traffic in death are just hoping they can delay the inevitible just a little longer so they can make just a little more profit. Too bad the true costs in fertilizeer run off, poisoned land, and failed farms never show up on the balance sheets.

\WHERE I'M STILL FROM

Back in the day the company I worked for got involved with one of these motivational gurus. Who shall remain nameless  because to be honest I can't remember his name. He did have a really cool website. If you couldn't send your employees to hia mini boot camp you could buy a set of DVD's. I believe they ran about ten grand.

I was low enough on the totem pole that I managed to avoid being shipped clear across the country. I guess this stuff works for some folks but the more I heard the less I liked where this guy was coming from. Near as I could figure out it's a cross between a mini boot camp, revival meeting and a rock concert. Someone mentioned a scavenger hunt at four in the morning. 

The rest of us were blessed with a mini taste at an office meeting and when I asked one "graduate" what the loud music was supposed to do I was told it was "part of the program." I still haven't figured out how keeping me up most of the night three days running or trying to fracture my eardrums is supposed to improve my team building skills. I guess this is why they paid him the big bucks.

Having figured out where I didn't want to go, I found myself trying to put where I was comong from into words. I think what still troubles me the most it the effort to keep us all running so fast we don't have time to think. To keep the man made noise so loud that we can't hear what the world around us is trying to say.

Anyway this is what I came up with. If you were to bet that I never shared this with anybody at work, you'd win. Junction City was definiely not Springfield or Eugene. I think what bugs me the most was  the idea that you can do it by yourself. The old visualize success and it's your fault if your vision doesn't come true. That may be true to a point. But nobody and I mean nobody makes it alone. And that is what brought this little entry to life.

Earth, Air, Fire and Water, each element has a voice-but it can't sing without the others. Without the Earth in the form of the moon there would beno tides-no waves. Without the waves there would be no hiss of the little waves meeting the sandy beach. The great booming roar when tons of sea water meets two hundred feet of black basalt cliffs would be lost forever. Without the mountains to form cliffs and steep falls the roar of the waterfall would not exist. Without the rocks and stones in their beds, rivers and streams would lose their voices

Fire has a quicker, harsher song. Without water to make steam and sizzle,without trees or wood to burn, Fire would have almost no voice. As a lava flow cools the rocks grind together and the escaping gasses hiss and twist. Take away the fire from the earth's mantle and these fall silent.

Air has a voice when it meets Earth and what grows from the Earth. The sighing of the trees, the lonely whistle around the cliffs, the cry of the gulls carried from a windy beach, the rustle of the grasses, these come together to make a chorus when the Air sings its songs.

Earth sings some of her songs alone; the sounds of rocks falling and sand or gravel rustling when someone walks across it are earthly solos.  But many of Earth's songs are sung by what grows from the earth or swims in the water. But, without air to carry birdsong or the sea  to carry whale songs the world would be a quieter, lonlier place. Let us join our songs to the songs of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Together these are the songs of Creation

TOO BAD WE CAN'T IMAGINE

I posted this back in 2005.  We literally have a man in the oval office who obliquely calls for civil war if we dare turn him out of office. It's not as if we haven't seen car bombs, drones, brutal idiocy since we unilaterally went into a war of choice, not necessity, and watched it unfold on cable. Some of us anyway. Too many of the rest were worrying about the Kardashians or other people famous for being famous. Ok my cranky genes are in full play today and I can't say better now what I said before. 

One of the excellent documentary series in my DVD collection is the British series The World at War. It was originally broadcast on PBS in the seventies. I’m not sure you’d call it enjoyable but it’s close to the real thing most of us are going to get. The set includes a “how we did it and why” documentary with the producer. Either film footage and or on screen interviews. No reenactments, period. There is some footage that was staged for the camera but you are told about and why it was done. Excellent, and I do mean excellent narration from Lawrence Olivier. That man could do more with a slight inflection of voice than a paragraph of prose.

They managed to get interviews with soldiers and pilots from both sides. There are interviews with Hitler's secretary and German civilians who opposed the war as much as they could, including Dietrich Bonhoffers' sister in law. They tracked down Holocaust survivors and Heinrich Himmler's attache. And got him on film. Oral history at it's best.  

For me, the most effective footage is of bombed out cities, columns of refugees and interviews with survivors of the bombings. On both sides. Allied or Axis, in the end the civilians took it in the teeth, as usual.

Americans haven’t had anything like this happen to our people since the Civil War. Parts of Kansas, Missouri and sections of the south saw devastation nearing the scale of some of the earliest bombing raids. By the time the allies perfected long range bombing they were able outdo the Luftwaffe on a scale of at least a hundred to one.

Nothing on the scale of Hamburg, Dresden, Stalingrad, Tokyo or the fall of Berlin has ever happened on American soil. Sorry folks, as bad as September 11, 2001 was, it wasn’t even close. According to the series the Russians had nearly 200,000 casualties in the taking of Berlin. There’s never been an accurate count of the German casualties when the city fell. And that was one city. Just one city out of hundreds of cities and villages on both sides of the war.

The generation that fought in WWII is passing. The Vietnam generation is aging. None of politicians currently in office have seen combat or cities in flames. I’m willing to bet that very few of them have seen this series. Our leaders criticize European leaders for being unwilling to go to war. We don’t have any room to put the French or Germans down for their reluctance to send their citizens to war based on evidence that hasn’t held up. God knows they’ve seen enough destruction in the last century to last anyone with an ounce of empathy for several generations.

American cities have never had to endure night after night of bombing. We’ve never had a city with so many fires that the river supplying the fire crews literally dropped below the water intakes. Or had fires so fierce that it didn’t matter if the city was blacked out. The flames lit up the Thames so brightly it was like a beacon.

I never, ever want our people to find out first hand what such a war is like. But, maybe if we could imagine it just a little we’d be a little less eager to inflict it on someone else.

Oh, and that goes double for the ones setting off car bombs. But, what did we expect? The Sunnis have held the power in Iraq for several generations. Watching what the current party in power in our country is willing to do cement their hold on political control can we really expect the Sunnis to do any less. As least we’re still content with verbal dynamite. At least most of the time.

ANNIVERSARIES

I originally wrote this back in 2005. And if mom had made it to July she probably would have reupped for another year of the Geographic. In the past fifteen years a few things changed. Besides moving. We stopped taking the Portland paper. Thanks to competition from the net, 24/7 news, and the general apparent dumbing down of my neighbors the Portland Oregonian basically quit servicing the rest of the state outside the metro area. 

Yes, you can access the paper online but it's not the same as thumbing through the paper getting ink on your fingers. And the specialty sections are subscription only. 
The Eugene Register Guard is still a family owned paper, but frankly all the extra paper is something I just don't needed. 

The nephews still don't read anything more than they need to. Somehow the reading genes from mom and dad landed on me. I got the double dose and proud of it.

Sometime this year there is a fifty-year anniversary. If I wanted to dig through the stored National Geographics I could find the exact month we started taking them. I think it was July actually. There were two constants when I was growing up. No matter how tight things were the subscriptions to the Geographic and Reader’s digest were renewed. We still take the Geographic; we’ve always taken at least two newspapers. I can’t remember when I was introduced to the local library. It wasn’t half bad for a logging town of about 3500 people.

I used to joke that I was born with a book in my hands and I’d read darn near anything. Books about rivers, mountains, submarines, other countries, dog stories, cat stories, historical novels, science fiction, fantasy, encyclopedias, aspirin labels, the first aid book. If it was that black on that white I answered the siren call. I’m not sure that my folks always knew what to make of me. I went to Ben Hur in the fifth grade and promptly went to the library and checked out the book-the unabridged version. I never much cared for romances though.

You may ask what brought on this little meditation. I’ve got five nephews and I don’t think any of them read just for the fun of it. They all get excellent grades; they pass their tests with flying colors. They play sports: the whole modern child hood bit. Video games all that great expensive stuff but the magic isn’t there. Henry VIII is as real to me as Bill Clinton. Paul Revere’s Boston as familiar as down town Eugene, Anne McCaffrey’s Pern is as real as my back yard. (I’ve always had a thing for dragons.)

And honestly I don't know how I got turned on to science fiction and fantasy. Maybe there was a copy of Amazing Stories or Galaxy when I hit the comics section at the local store. Have to admit that some the authors I loved when I was a kid haven't aged that well. Heinlein for one. And I still have a thing for dragons, hobbits, robots, and sandworms. And Star Trek. Original Trek, and maybe Picard. Not JJ Abrams. Not much anyway.And Khan played by a Brit? At least Montalban "looked" like he could have been a Sikh. 

We were members of the Methodist church in Oakridge and mom was active in Ebbert in Springfield. Anyway. She went with the Springfield UMW group to a yearly meeting in Roseburg, I think. One of the Oakridge delegates was the retired city librarian. We moved in 1968 and this was around 2012. She asked about me. I guess it isn't so strange I was in there about once a week for I don't know how many years.  And given the relative size of Oakridge and Springfield, Oakridge actually had the better library. In my opinion.

Oh, well I keep hoping lightning will strike.

A MICRO WORLD

You drive west on West D street in Springfield until you hit the end of the street and either turn left to pick up the parking area/boat ramp (sort of a ramp) bike/hiking paths or right onto Locust. There used to be a building there that had something to do with the water system. Frankly I forget because it was torn down about forty years ago. The land was eventually turned into a little park and some houses were built along the access road.

Near as I can tell that building was the only reason there is a little creek running off the Middle Fork, down by what used to be a landfill, now bordering the bike path, and rejoining the main river at Alton Baker Park. Anyway there is a short bridge across the creek that allows park personnel access to the bike path.

At the southeast end of this bridge there used to be a beat up stump about say, eight inches across and three feet high. That stump was its own little world. Of all the places I took pictures of I never thought to take a picture of that microworld. I remember at least two kinds of moss. The green velvety kind and the rougher yellow green kind.

After a rain there would be a little cluster of midget toadstools about and inch or so tall. A few grass seeds would come in on the wind, looking like tiny trees with their seed clusters. If you looked closely there might have been a lady bug or two and the tiniest daddy longlegs spiders. At least they looked like daddy longlegs. On a foggy moring there might be a tiny spider web woven between the grasses and sparkling if a puff of breeze parted the mist. Midget spiders weaving webs to catch even smaller prey.

The bark on the stump was raggedy with moss in the cracks. It had either been a very small tree or a bush with delusions of grandeur. I don't remember how many times I stopped by that micro world and almost got lost in that world. It's been years since I remembered that little world. May have been a couple of collections of haiku no longer hiding on my bookcase.

WHAT DIDN'T GET TAUGHT IN HISTORY CLASS

I really didn't know how this post was going to work out. Guess it just depends. But it's starting to look like a batch of my bread dough. It's trying to get out of the bowl. I grew up in Oakridge, Oregon. Just under forty miles SE of Springfield/Eugene. When we wanted to go back for a visit there are two ways to get there. The fast way and the slow way.

If you are sort of in a hurry and not too much on sight seeing you can pick up the freeway, head south east and take the exit for Hwy 58. And until today I had passed through Pleasant Hill and by the Elijah Bristow State Park without too much thought. Pleasant Hill doesn't look like much from the highway but the net claims a population of over five thousand. I know mom lived there for a year or so when she was a little girl. Went to a one room school house with an out house and pump to work if you wanted a drink of water.

Elijah Bristow. Born in Southwestern Virginia in 1788. Served in the War of 1812. Got married in Tennessee, moved around ended up in Illinois. Raised a family. Left them in Illinois while he headed west with an ox team. I can't find out if he was traveling alone or with a party. Fetched up at Sutter's  Fort. 

This was 1845, before the gold rush and Bristow was 58 years old. Headed north in 1846 following a route through the mountainsknow as the Siskiou Trail that later became Interstate 5. Traveled as far as the Salem area, came back south passed through what is now Jasper and forded the MIddle Fork of the Willmette.

Bristow checked out the land south of what is now Springfield. Liked what he saw and named the area Pleaant Hill. Claimed 640 acres and built the first permanent house in what is now Lane County and sent for his family.Pleasant Hill was the first town in the county. Bristow became the first postmaster. He and his wife donated land for a school, a church and a cemetary. The cemetary is still there. You can see it from the highway. it isn't very big.

Well, well. See what happens when you head in one direction and find yourself exploring something and somewhere else entirly. Two of the four settled near the Bristow claim. The fourth member of the party was named Eugene Skinner. Three guesses which city is named for him. I;ll get back to him later.

Might as well stop here and pick up the road trip tomorrow.

STARTED AS A SHORT RANT, AND GREW

I can say things here that I woudd not put out on my FB page. For a lot of reasons. For one it's more personal.

This will be a short one, I hope. Half an eye on the tube this morning with the commercials muted and who popped up with an overlong presentation? Franklin Graham, son of the late come to Jesus revival spouting Billy Graham. Never really could stand the father and I have less use for his son.

I was raised Methodist and Methodists are just that. Methodical. At least more restrained than the Pentacostals and the Charismatics. Honestly there were some Sundays when I was more likely to dose off than to start speaking in tongues or passing out on the floor. The only thing that saved me was I was in the choir. Anywway, this is already heading out on its own.

And that original label was not meant as a complement. I don't believe John Wesley intended to split off from the Anglicans. He was a member in good standing, I believe, of the established church to the end. His targets were the poor. Mill workers, miners, rural farmers their workers. He used lay preachers. He allowed women to preach. At least until his death and his successors ended that quickly. Actually the women were better at going into prisons and work houses to spread the gospel than some of the men

And incidentally when follks start going on about going back to the Old Time Religion at the time the constitution was ratified you can forget about the Methodists and their offshoots. Those denominations did not exist. An early abolitionist his Thoughts Upon Slavery was written in the mid seventeen hundreds as a pamphlet. He did extensive research to supports his descriptions of the tribes that ended up as targets for European slavers. Especially the English God help us. Peaceful, for the most part. Living decent lives, taking care of their own. At least before the coastal rulers began raiding to provide cargoes for the West Indies, the Carribean and the colonies that became the southern states.

Anyway back to the Grahams. Billy was basically the tame preacher who pretty much supported the status quo. I'm not sure he ever came out against the Viet Nam war. He was also as far as I can  find out a late supporter of the civil rights movement. His revivals were reported as long on alter calls and short on providing those that "accepted Jesus" with follow up to help them find a church or any kind of community support.

Well what was planned as a short rant is getting a little longer than planned. Anyway, the commercial. Just accept Jesus and let Him take over your life and what? That's been my problem from almost as long as I can remember.. No pagan deity that I have studied has commanded absolute obedience. And thereby hangs the trap. When life goes wrong it isn't God's fault. It's your fault because your faith wasn't strong enough.

And on the other side we've been hit with the centuries old "God has chosen this ruler" and we have to obey no matter how ill equiped that person is for the job. Funny how Bush II and the current occuapant  were divinely appointed but somehow the man in the middle of the succession was slipped in by the devil, or somebody at the bottom of the divine hierarchy. Yes the Bible tells stories of men who sinned, King David for example, and were still used to do God's will. But David repented of his sins. I doubt if the current occupant has repented of anything or even had much of a sense of sin in the first place. My, my we are getting a little cranky this evening.

Anyway, there is an evening breeze rustling the tree outside my window. The finches and the siskins are working on their pecking order at the feeder. I believe there is a second hatching learning the ropes. I got a look at one at the feeder who still had bits of down clinging to its flight feathers. They can fly well enough but seem to have a little trouble gauging their landings.

From a good friend the mystery bird is an English Sparrow or House Sparrow. A non native so I guess that's why my searches of Oregon birds didn't bring them up. Back in Springfield some of our hummers liked to dive bomb the sparrows next door. But they also dive bombed me once in awhile. a buzz of wings. a chp, chp, chp and off they'd go.

Well, this did grow. Hopefully my next entry will be a little less all over the place.

MYSTERY BIRD

Little guy with a black chin and a brown cap on its head. Too big for a chickadee and the beak seems to be too small for a grosbeak. Anybody have any idea what this little character is? There is a pair of them here in Hermiston. Very calm. Even when the new set of siskins  flutter at them. Just look around like "whtat is this little guy doing?"

THIS SIDE OF HEAVEN

There's a loop drive that starts in Springfield. Head east on 126 towards Sisters and Bend. 126 is a state road, well maintained but a little on the narrow side. There's the Mckenzie River on one side and mountains on the other. It's about and hour drive to Koosah Falls.

About a half mile or so further east you come to Sahalie Falls.

Both shots from the net by the way. One of the sources for the McKenzie River is Clear Lake. About Three Thousand years ago two separate lava flows temporarily blocked the lake. When the lake started flowing again the results were two small, but beautiful waterfalls. There is a faily easy walking trail between the two. Fairly easy if you can walk fairly well. Not exactly walker friendly but really, really beautiful. 

Trees, moss covered rocks, the smell of the bark on the trail, the sound of the falls. You just might think you made it to heaven or at least Sahalie Falls. In the Chinook trade jargon the word for heaven is Sahalie. 

Access to both falls is just off the highway, but bring your own water and rest room facilities are at Sahalie and it's basically a very high class outhouse. It's a beutiful drive and a wonderfull hike.

SKY JEWELS

From NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day archive. This galaxy is designated NGC2442 in the southern skies. Sometimes if I can't come up with something I go looking for jewels in the skies.

The galaxy can be found in the constellation Volans, the Flying Fish. Like most constellations a fair amount of imagination to actually "see" that fish. A distorted spiral the center glows with older stars withi the bright blue is that of younger white hot stars. The reddish glows in the arms may be clouds of gas where new stars are being born. This is a combined image from the Hubble telescope and the Europaen Southern Observatory. The light captured in this image started towards us about fifty million years ago.

Fifty million years. The surviving dinosaurs were testing their wings, mammals were on the up and coming and Oregon barely existed.

I WAS

Drop by for a visit and you never know where you will end up. 

Somethng I really should have worked on last night even if it would have made me late to bed. It's not like I have to be somewhere at a certain time in the morning. I wrote this as an experiment several years ago patterned on the Boast of Amergin, a bard and one of the sons of Mil.

"I was the sun, warm rays piercing the clouds to the sea.

I was the sea, mists rising to join the clouds.

I was the clouds riding the winds to rise above the coast range.

I was the mountain, heavy mists drifting across the cliffs.

I was the cliffs, wind carved trees clinging to the crags and bluffs.

I was the trees, leaves catching the fogs; releasing moisture into the earth below.

I was the mist, caught in the moss and last year’s leaves.

I was the moss, trapping the rainbow drops, releasing them into the soil

I was the soil, water full, drops working down, down the foundations of the mountain.

I was the bedrock, water following the cracks, pooling, feeding the deep springs.

I was the deep springs feeding the pools under the trees.

I was the pools, home to little streams bubbling over the rocks fallen from the cliffs.

I was the little streams, rushing to join the great river as it rushes to the salt marshes.

I was the salt marsh, feeding my water back into the sea.

I am the sea, sun warmed, giving up the mists to the sky."

Not too bad for an amateur. But as I reread this I was struck by time. Somewhere around ten to twelve billion years ago this universe was created. Current theories revolve around the Big Bang. Literally almost all the hydrogen in the universe was created in that whatever it was. All the rest of the elements that make up the rest of the universe were cooked in stars. 

Some shed as stars like the sun become red giants and shed rings of gas. Others, the heavy elements like oxygen and iron are created when the blue white giants die in the cataclysms of novas and supernovas. The lives of stars like the sun are measured in billions of years. The lives of the giant blue white stars can be measured in millions of years. generation after generation cooking the elements needed to build a world and shedding them into space.

Hydrogen. One proton, one electron. Needs an additional electron for stability. Oxygen. Eight protons, eight electrons. Two electrons in the inner "shell" six in the outer shell. Two hydrogen atoms will combine with one oxygen atom to form one molecule of water. 

That water that rises to the clouds, falls as rain, trickles deep into the rocks or runs off in a million streams is millions if not billions of years old. That water may have misted the first green to colonize the land. That water may have supported an ammonite or an ancient shark. Sheltered the early crocodiles or refreashed a dinosaur. Perhaps provided a bath for the first birds. Rained on the first flowers.

As I reread that little piece I was struck for the first time by time. Water in whatever form made of atoms millions to billions of years old. Perhaps even part of other worlds. The universe is a great recycler. And you might end up feeling a little humbled and maybe a little more willing to treat that precious water with the respect given to any elder. 

I STARTED THERE AND ENDED UP SOMEWHERE

I've  been thinking about the protests  since  George Floyd  was murdered. The protests, the reactions to them, and time. I was fourteen, my middle sister was four when JFK was assassinated. My little sister wasn't even born yet. Frankly the urban riots of the civil rights and anti war era were almost off the radar in rural and almost small city Oregon. The most we knew about Watts was from my uncle, an LA cop. And he was driving to Oregon on vacation his family the day before the ghetto blew up.

By the time the Viet Nam war sort of ended one sister was finish high school and the other was heading for junior high. In spite of the watching of the news, the two papers we took, and the magazines neither one was very political and both were far more religious than I will ever be.

Jump forward the fifty or so years. We all look at the protests in a different way. For me, it's we have been down this road before. In a way the protests are trying to change beliefs and actions from the top down. It didn't work then and it doesn't work now.

Barack Obama was elected and suddenly the US was a post racial society. Just ask the talking heads. Many of whom were terribly shocked when the election of the current occupant was like getting hit in the face with a bucket of ice water.

Damn this entry is taking over. The progressives hopped up and down with glee when AOC was elected from a traditionally democratic precinct. And that changed what in the bigger scheme of things. Not much. I got a ton of e mails this spring from progressive dems in Oregon trying to drum up opposition to senator Merkley. A fairly liberal Oregon Democrat. He wasn't "progressive" enough.

Yo! A senator represents the whole state, or should. And here in thinly populated Oregon east of the Cascades? That song doesn't play very well. Although there is a fairly large Hispanic population and several Native American reservations this is the part of the country coveted by some of the really far right militia groups who would like to set up a whites only enclave.

This could go on for pages or I can pause for a bit. How I react to the protests is colored by the ones I've seen before. It's as if we remodeled part of house, looked at the whole thing and said the job was done. But didn't  touch the foundations. The internet makes it far too easy to only communicate with those who agree with us. Back in the day there was no internet but a lot of good old fashioned shoe leather, knocking on doors, and talking to people.

All I can do is write. I don't even comment on FB very much anymore unless I can add to the discussion and half the time what I say gets twisted into something I never meant in the first place. A reply may not be acknowledged or it starts and endless thread. You've probably been there.

All I can suggest is that the progressives stop talking to each other all the time and get out and listen to other folks. Not everyone who voted for the current occupant is a blithering idiot. Many of them are watching their small towns dry up and blow away. Too many jobs pay too little and in some parts of the country it costs almost as much to keep a job as the job pays.

There's a lot bouncing around in the old brain box and this entry is miles from what I was thinking about when I started. Hopefully some of this makes sense.

MEDITATION

I was doing some guided imagery experiments once upon a time. Trying to get my 

head back in the right space. Takes time. Body may be boxed in, body doesn't have to be.

This is a tree known at the stinton oak. It is or was several years ago in county Devon in England. The tree is probably close to a thousand years old. Give or take a century. Kind of reminds me of an Ent, actually. Battered, missing branches, still standing. 

MEDITATION

Close your eyes and feel your body. Breath in, breath out; savor the miracle of breath. Feel your fingers. Feel your hands and arms. Savor the miracle of touch. You can find out so much; rough or smooth, hot or cold.

Move down your body, feel your legs and feet. With them you can explore the world whether it’s your backyard or the other side of the world. Walk barefoot through your world. Dry, rustling autumn leaves or the cold wet sands of an Oregon beach at low tide.

Breath in, breath out. Stretch out your consciousness. Feel the essence of your life. Your body may be new, but your soul is old. Finally it can express its beauty in songs, poems, dance, story, tears and joy. 

You are no longer bound by time or space. Let your thoughts drift. They are as free as the breezes that kiss you on a cool spring morning. But, it could be a summer night in Greece two thousand years ago. It could be autumn in Tuscany next year. You are no longer bound by time or place.

Stretch out you consciousness. You are an acorn born in the spring. You grew ripe through the summer. The winds of an August thunderstorm pulled you from the tree. You fell down, down to nestle among the wildflowers of late summer. The flowers die with the fall frosts and they bury you among their dead leaves. You are not alone, the banches of your mother tree were full. In half a millennia a new grove will rise again.

Another year, another spring; your shell splits. The first tiny leaves reach up towards the sun, the silk thread roots begin their long journey towards the center of the earth. Spring comes and goes. Summer sun comes and goes. A sapling slowly reaches for the sky. The wheel of the year turns and turns again. After all what is a century or so to an oak.

Another century of summers and winters. Your roots are intertwined with soil and gravels that rode the melting ice sheets that began to retreat ten thousand years ago. Remember, you weren’t the only acorn that fell that long ago spring. Your branches touch and intertwine with the trees next to you. Their branches intertwine with all the others. A grove of oaks a thousand strong.

Another century comes, another goes. You are slowly returning the soil that gave you birth. Even as your trunk weakens, it provides life to the moss and lichens growing in your bark. Trees were there before you. Perhaps they knew the ancient Druids. Perhaps Hern led the Wild Hunt through your grove. Times are harder, the earth changes faster and faster. But, not so much yet, that your sons and daughters have failed to take root and begin their long journey towards the sun.

Know this your life, and the lives of the trees and the stars are as intertwined as the branches of that grove of oaks.

Inspired by a piece on the website for the Raven Wood Grove.