The Key Moment

The reports out of the Gulf are conflicting. BP succeeded in sealing the well or they didn't. It's about as clear as the video feed of the gusher a mile down in the steamy waters. When I worked on the shrimp boat, the Trey B, we used to dive off the bridge in the morning to wash the stink of the night work and the rotting off and see the schools of fish coming up from the deep blue and then fishing for ling which was about as easy as I've ever fished for anything. I don't like to read the news reports of the oil spill because it's too depressing. It reminds me of the sinking feeling I used to get when reading of the Exxon Valdez. That sent my wife and I up to Scotland on a two week vacation from our jobs in London to find a way to get back some balance in our lives. We stayed at a place called Erraid which was allied with the Findhorn community. That Exxon Valdez spill was the beginning of a cultural shift which revived the environmental movement for a time in the early nineties. This accident will have the same effect on our consciousness. If the Democrats can go on the offensive and use this midterm election as a referendum on laissez faire capitalism it would be good. Push the people who believe America was built for the get rich quick scheme into a corner. Or to paraphrase a bumper sticker that quotes Sarah Palin I've seen around town. "How's that deregulatory, no government thing working out for ya?" It couldn't be clearer than the black gunk washing up onto the Gulf coast's beaches.

A Stain on Us All

Reading Psalm 104 tonight:

"How many are your works, O Lord!

In wisdom you made them all;

the earth is full of your creatures.

There is the sea, vast and spacious..."

Nobody knows the purpose of creation, but the joy and exuberance of it are hinted at in the words of this song of praise. All of us must be feeling shame at what's happening tonight in the Gulf of Mexico. A month now, and the oil continues to gush from the well a mile below the surface, now the New York Times is saying at a rate far greater than originally estimated, hundreds of thousands of gallons a day, collecting in thick vertical plumes below the surface, sucking the oxygen out of the water and creating vast dead zones.

I worked after college on a Gulf shrimp boat out of Galveston. I remember the nets coming up out of the water bulging with sea life scraped from the sea bed. I thought that was rape, but this beggars the imagination. Drill, baby, drill. Yeah, right. Think again on that one maybe. It's only fair that this should happen in our waters as we suck up 25 percent of the world's fossil fuels to run everything we do. Even the food we eat is oil. I hope Kerry is able to ram home the climate change bill through the Senate, given the timing. We need to begin to shift now away from fossil fuel dependency. Everything is linked to that, even our soaring health care costs on the back of the obesity epidemic, fed by corn syrup which is again, oil. Junk in, junk out. And the GDP reflects expenditures that are really the death throes of a culture that is only now beginning to realize the extremity of the situation. And there's Rush saying that it's only natural, what's to worry about a few slicked bird feathers.

The brain dead, too, have their place, I suppose, but I'll admit if it had been my creation I would have left the Limbaughs of this world and their followers on the drafting floor.

Photo by Associated Press (Dave Martin)

This is the Day as the Grass has Made

We're into the deeper green of a well-watered spring now. The grass is growing inches a day and the sheep are down in the lower field. They can hardly keep up with the rotation. It's taken me a good amount of time to get the mower going. I use it around the house and the blueberries. It's a real work horse, but the ethanol in gasoline gunks it up, and it takes awhile to get the kinks out in the spring. I still need to look at the manual and see what needs to be tightened to improve the traction of the wheels. The engine is working fine now, but there is a belt loose running to the wheels. On the apple front, have finally figured out this year the little pest that wreaks havoc right at petal fall, the tarnished plant bug it's called, and I finally identified the tell-tale browning at the midrib of the leaves and frizzling of the flower buds. One spray of pyrethrum and it looks like it's taken care of. I can take a look at my first Northern Spy. If if it gives off a healthy vibration from the back door I know things are good. Today I gave the trees with substantial blossoms a spray of Surround, which is a fine clay that coats the fruit buds to protect against plum curculio. The curculio lays eggs in the small fruitlets and it has been a problem these last few years. The Surround spray is the only organic option, and it has been only partially effective, due I think to the small numbers of fruit bearing trees we have so far. This year we have double the number, which should reduce the pest pressure. Also I am leaving a trap tree unsprayed to see if that works.

There is no question that apples are a labor intensive crop in this part of the world. In the old days, they used to handle curculio, all hands on deck, going out at dawn and placing a sheet around a tree, then thumping it with a club hammer. The vibrations would send the bug to ground, where they could be rolled up and dispensed with before moving on to the next tree in the row. That might be us if the Surround doesn't fly and I can convince the kids that bushels of apples are worth getting up early for.

But forget the musings on future harvests. The fresh faced trees and the bright sun and cool days, the promise of renewal and future bliss, this is the best of New England -- aside from the bounty of falling leaves in the fall.

A Sense of Modicum and Decorum Out of Whack

I just got the hospital bill for the splinter in my foot I blogged about a couple of posts ago. A few bills short of $2,000, and they didn't even get it out. You would think there would be some sense of professional shame attached to the issuing of such a bill, but there wasn't. To recap, I stepped on something while digging in the garden a couple of weekends ago, and, unable to get it out myself, I went to the emergency room of Concord Hospital, where a female doctor on duty went to work, first injecting the bottom of my foot with some anesthetic. After about a half an hour of labor with knives and other apparatus and more injections of anesthetic, she pronounced the splinter unfindable. Another doctor, a higher up, was called in and he took a look, probed with his fingers around the wound, and said there was nothing else to be done and advised me to "soak your foot in soapy water and take these antibiotics." I hobbled home, worse off then when I'd arrived. I assume that this advice was the part of the bill itemized under "professional services" - $800. I understand the economics of health care are out of control, but more fundamentally, can I say the word ripoff and get some nods of agreement out there in the virtual world?

Obviously, the fact that the insurance company picks up the tab for all but $50 worth of this mockery of a sham, to paraphrase Woody Allen, is the crux of the problem. If I had to pay it all myself, I can easily assure you there would be some pain coming back at somebody in the administration of said hospital. But, indulge me in some larger ramblings about what this all means.

We've gotten way too greedy, people!!! This is like Wall Street, where Goldman Sachs used to be a respectable company helping clients handle their investments before falling prey to the machinations and money lusts of traders like Fabrice Tourre, or like a whole nation of Tea Partiers out there who don't want to pay taxes but don't mind going to war in different parts of of the planet to secure their comfortable existences and "way of life." We talk about this bubble, or that bubble, and assume they come and go and eventually we settle into some economic semblance of reality, but really, we all live in the bubble of expectations called the American dream where everyone gets rich and if you don't there's some flaw in your character. I blame it on the Puritans. We are a nation of pigs suffering under the delusion that it's healthy to be so. Our sense of modicum and decorum is all out of whack. With these trials of the Goldman Sachs people, I will admit, I am asking myself: Is this where we get out the pitchforks?

To those wondering, the splinter did come out on its own about ten days later, after my wife went on line and discovered the home remedy of soaking in hot water, baking soda and hydrogen peroxide. One afternoon I pushed and out it popped, almost a quarter inch of pine. I wonder if I could sell it on Ebay.

The Tragic Nature of Spring

It's spring and there's lots to do fixing up the place. We had nine lambs, three died. You don't associate spring with tragedy in the popular imagination, but it's there just like the daffodils along the road. Two were born so weak to Bully's daughter, she tends to shy away from the feeding troughs with the grain. This year she had twins for the first time. But they couldn't stand despite her best coaxing. They walked around on their forelegs bleating for a day or two and finally succumbed. In the past we've bottle fed and run around in emergency mode. But this year, for some reason fatalism took over. This year death won an easy battle in the spring, a gimme in essence, but we have nine beautiful lambs and they frisk and play, they really do, skipping and jumping with the seasonal exuberance, the joy of being alive that puts us older ones to looking on with envy and thinking we could keep up, if only.

Went down to Boston for my nephew Nic's graduation party. He had the college kids over to his mother and stepfather's apartment in Cambridge, a beautiful place, but that's the subject of some other post. It was nice and intergenerational. Argued with my sis over whether the French were right to ban burkas on Muslim women in public places. That's the kind of family gatherings we have, a combination of high minded civic concern and ornery, alcohol infused in your face argumentation. The college kids were looking on and laughing, so in a sense we had the seasonal advantage on that night. Nothing like a little wine and the verbosity loosens up like a New England river in flood stage. Nic, the graduate, is taking a bicycle trip down the West coast, from Vancouver to San Diego. I advised him to keep going, spend some time in Baja, some unstructured end of the road time. He's figuring out where to go, what to do. It's a crucial, under-estimated time of life, post college, no fixed plans, no fixed abode. His girlfriend wants to get married. She's great, we all love her. She made a raspberry trifle for Thanksgiving a couple of years ago that stole the show. But is he ready for married? Is the timing right, and has he spent enough time at the feeding trough of his youth, because if he hasn't, then he could be spending the rest of his days on his knees, not quite getting to the udder. That would be a tragedy of a false spring.

A Personal Rant Against Misfortune

This is a personal rant. I'm tired of going after the big issues of the day. Yeah, it makes me feel better, but what good does it do? I'm not kidding myself. I worked as a reporter for ten years and the world went on after I quit. All of this is like the waves hitting at rocks. Like quantum physics, inexplicable, thought transference through some undiscovered medium, hoping that some current of thought will be picked up and like magic impact multitudes. Like prayer, this blogging depends on faith and discipline and ultimately its effect on anything but the mind of the perpetrator is on shaky ground.

Okay, I stepped on something in the garden while digging potato beds last weekend. I got a splinter in my foot which resisted my best effort with needle and tweezer. Saturday night I went to the emergency room. The doctor laid me stomach down on the bed and injected painkiller into the sole of my foot. That was the most painful thing I'd experienced since root canals. Then she proceeded to slice away, trying to get at the troublesome object lodged at the base of the punture wound. When the nurse came in and commented on the amount of blood getting on the floor, I knew it was trouble. I bit the pillow a couple of times with the painkiller and the knife slicing away. They never found the splinter, left me sitting on the bed with paper towels to stanch the bleeding, then sent me home with a prescription for antibiotics, saying I would probably get an infection. I resisted for a few day, but the swelling and limping didn't go away. I've been on the pills for a couple of days now and it's getting better, thank you, but oh so slowly.

The world sucks when you are infirm. I can't think what it could be like to be truly incapacitated. There was a girl two days ago I had to escort from class to the front office and back again while I was on hall duty. Her name is Brittany and she has twisted legs, all out of whack, and crutches that she carries supported at the wrists that she uses like an insect's feelers while she lurches unsteadily on the legs that look like they were bent on a rack. She was sweet and game even though I walked her down the stairs by mistake instead of taking the elevator. She told me every day coming to school is like going to the place with fire and pointed with her crutch at the ground. I know most teenagers feel that way, and her bright uplifted face told everything you wanted to know about heart, but what a struggle every day. And for us relatively able people, a splinter in the foot blackens everything until it clears up. That's how fragile well being can be.

Tomorrow I am going to a memorial service for the wife of a man who teaches at our school. She died recently, and he's been bearing up well. The support of colleagues and friends has been lightening his load. I would have to quit. It wouldn't be enough for me. Maybe I am bipolar in that regard: when I am well I am reaching for the stars, and setbacks send me plunging through the black hole. Maybe not, maybe I'm over those days. But look at what a splinter did. A tear in the heart would put me in the breakdown lane.

Faith is a Bird

"Faith is a bird that feels dawn breaking and sings while it is still dark" Rabindranath Tagore.

A thought for those dismayed by the sex abuse scandals rocking the Catholic church. It is so shocking and gives rise to such primal feelings of anger at the perpetrators that a sane response is to push it out of mind, but that is the wrong response. We don't like to dwell on the incomprehensible, and evil fits in that category of things that make no sense. In fact that might be one of the defining characteristics of pure evil, but I'm not sure. Certainly the behavior of church authorities through the years, as Maureen Dowd put it in her column, "the sordid culture of men defending men who prey on children," makes it clear that true faith means jettisoning the idea that the hierarchy are in any way infallible. This is a moment in the world when the status quo is crumbling, whether it be the conservative consensus against the role of government in the United States, or the final waning of any moral influence of the Church in western Europe, and in the wake of creative destruction comes the opportunity for progress. Until there is a reckoning with the Church's position on women in the priesthood and in the laity, there can be no healing. Perhaps it will take a tidal wave of a crisis, as this seems to be, to finally push the Catholic church to embrace reforms.

On a similar note, my son was reading Douglas Adams and I was inspired to look into Adam's atheism and ways to counter atheist criticisms of religious faith. My own instincts, and what little reading I've done, tell me that much of atheist reasoning is superficial and simplistic, but I came across this blog post of Edward Feser's that does a good job of spelling out more intellectually rigorous grounds on which to show that writers like Adams and mentors like Richard Dawkins do a shoddy job of deconstructing faith.

Spring is pushing ahead irregardless of cultural wars. We've been digging in the garden for ten years now. Our first year we dug out the sod from the beds and amended with cow manure from the barn across the road that was still standing. That was hard work. Now the soil is like butter and the pile of sheep manure, with frozen clumps still in it, gets wheelbarrowed from the bottom of the garden, a little more convenient than that first year pioneering, or repioneering, if that is a word, because the Connors were first on this land in the mid 1700s.