[Oe List ...] OE Digest, Vol 38, Issue 7

Sun May 10 14:19:39 PDT 2015

Richard is on the ball!  Accelerate 77 is impressive.

My little image-making effort.  First is in today's edition; the second will be tomorrow's editorial.  I ghost write local editorials so my column with the photo and byline shows up only on Mondays and Thursdays.  Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays are ST editorials.

Earth on Mother’s Day

AstronautEdgar Mitchell of Apollo 14 waxed poetic:

Suddenly, from behind the rim of themoon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges asparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky blue sphere laced withslowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thicksea of black mystery.  It takes more thana moment to fully realize this is Earth . . . home. 

The earthrise photo became the central mythological symbol of promiseand hope surrounding my early adulthood.  Apollo 8 took the picture and shared it with aworld at the time enmeshed in the Vietnam War, but the Earth (photo enhanced byApollo II) becoming my mother widened my lines of allegiances!

On thisMother’s day (across the International dateline), I am a few decades late inrecognizing the damage we have inflicted on Mama Gaia.  Feeling sorry for the neglect will notrestore her health, regardless of how resilient we consider her to be, butrealizing that our humanity is tied to a breathing organism treated heretofore as"lifeless", it matters; it makes us realize that we can decide tofend for our survival as humans in the context of an organism kept alive andhealthy.

We arechildren of evolution.  My head hasgotten bigger as we focus existence more on the complexity of the cerebrum andits cortex more than we do on the cerebellum and the medulla oblongata; onthoughts more than feelings and senses, on cognition with words, pictures andnumbers more than impulse and intuition with gestures and explosions, nor do weeven pay heed to what we experience in sight, sound, smell, taste and touch.  Ours has been a culture that perennially asks:How does that make you feel?

BigBird on Sesame Street went before the Bird Supreme Court to test a bird law on“ losers’ weepers, finders’ keepers” when his abode in his absence was takenover by another bird and claimed it.  TheCourt adhering to the cold letter of the law decided on the letter of the lawbut was asked by Big Bird how they “felt” on the matter if they were in hisshoes, shifting the discourse from cognition to intuition. 

I brookno ill against reason and logic as operational principles until they becomemasters of societal behavior rather than servants to decision-making processes.  E.g., many deny the reality of climate change,even in high government offices.  

I traveledin the last five years across plains, rivers, landscapes and mountains, ofInner Mongolia and Dong Bei, Sichuanand Chiang Jiang, Canada’s Banff, CA’s Bay Area and Chicago’s windy city,Honolulu’s skyline and Manila’s smog, and the lagoon shores of Saipan, and I knowof the erratic nature of weather being the rule more than the exception.  Friends of the US northeast to Texas'Southwest attest that mother Gaia shows symptoms of midlife crisis.

Theawareness of climate change is really not the issue but the impingement of thereality on our behavior and our active acknowledgment of it.  As simple as discarding plastic wrappers thattake 10k years to decompose alerts us on our propensity worldwide to throw awayas if someone is assigned to pick after our droppings and make it evaporate.  I picked up a discarded milk carton at theflagpole of the American Memorial Park the other day.  

InChina, someone is assigned to tidy up every square foot of public space.  On the way to the airport one snowy early morningthis March, a lady swept her assigned 100 meters on an elevated highway on thewinter cold with the white stuff still on the ground.  

We area throwaway society.  My mother did thereverse.  She recycled.  The only problem was that her neighbors thoughtshe was the designated recycler of their discards.  So her room in Honolulu was always full of"junk”.  

Savingplanet Earth is a favored shibboleth.  Theearthrise photo is a favored image; saving it is an outlook accompanying printsin various languages. Whether we are doing something to keep it healthy andclean is another matter.  That is morethan just keeping the country club lawn mowed, and the golf course puttinggreens trimmed.  Beautify CNMI goes beyond just picking up people’s trash along thelagoon shores.

Systemicdegradation of the planet abounds in private and public practice for the sakeof the quick green buck.  Worldinvestments just hit gold in Pinoy mines!  Mercury on the riverbeds will increase.  Effluents feed the algae in our lagoon.  The indigene community is sidestepped on theburial grounds’ sanctity at the proposed casino site currently underconstruction in Garapan.

We'veharped on the short-term preoccupation of Keystone XL pipes for Alberta tar sands.  We frack shale, burn coal, damn waters upsettingecological balance, and desperate souls of a slowly dying fossil fuel tradefunds lobbies, written up in the press where the media practices journalism.

AKorean tourist in Saipan wore a t-shirt: "it's the only one we're got;love it".  I hasten to add: theMother and her children! 

Buck it!

At the recent White House correspondents’ dinner where it istraditional for the President to roast journalist and vice-versa, Obamarevealed that he is often asked what was in his bucket list.  Obama named a list and responded with “Buckit!” Parental permission advised if googling the term! 

Moviegoers will recall a Rob Reiner movie titled The Bucket List with two terminally illmen on a road trip to do their wish list before they kick the bucket!  “Bucket list” meant those things we hold dearand would do everything within our powers to perform before we keel over!

The “buck it” phrase is reminiscent of Harry Truman who displayeda sign on his desk clearly defining the line of responsibility.  “The buck stops here,” it said.  He made final decisions, one of whichoccurred three months after he assumed the top WH office and let loose thepower of uranium fission and plutonium implosion over the skies of Hiroshimaand Nagasaki. 

Oswald C. Brewster, an engineer who helped separate theuranium isotope changed his mind about the bomb after Germany’s defeat.  He wrote Truman: “This thing must not bepermitted on earth.  We must not be themost hated and feared people on earth, however good our intent may be.” 

Brewster’s lone voice in the wilderness proved prescient onthis side of the nuclear arms race.  Wemay not be the most feared people on earth but being the most hated, even byPinoys who languished on Uncle Sam’s benevolent ministration, is close.  

Ironically, the absence of any word of remorse by Shinzo Abein his address to the US Congress is reminiscent of the US absence ofcontrition after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  

Neither love nor hate of what Franklin Delano Rooseveltbegan as the New Deal that defined abroad-based coalition in politics and enlarged Federal government’s role on USaffairs, is the intent here.  

It is to underscore decision making in the Americanunderstanding is based on “We, the people”, and if formal structures ofgovernance no longer reflect the will “of the people, by the people and for thepeople”, and the exercise of voting on elections too lengthy between intervals,a recourse to a Parliament of the Street accommodates warm bodies on the frontlines.  Either method is very red-white-and-blue.

FDR died a good 70 years ago in 1945, and third VP Missourifarmer Harry Truman ascended into an unfamiliar role.  FDR was such a decisive figure that Garner,his VP for the first two terms, turned against him when FDR acceded to a thirdterm, getting indecisive liberal Henry Wallace as VP.

This is neither to glorify FDR and/or Harry Truman.  It is to remember that popular referendum donot always hold water, e.g., the vote against casinos in Saipan.  Nor decimating the turtle eggs and the tutut on Tinian and Pagan per the EIS’design a decision popular choice will unmake. The EIS hearings are genial to local opinions but uniformed personnelwill exercise the “buck stops here” option, regardless of local sentiments. 

The parliament of the street may be the only local remainingrecourse.  Buck it!

j'aime la vie

yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate! in all, celebrate!

-----Original Message-----
From: via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
To: oe <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Mon, May 11, 2015 3:50 am
Subject: OE Digest, Vol 38, Issue 7

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   1. What a Time to be Alive (Richard via
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