Tuesday, April 22, 2008
The Old Man Down the Road
The Old Man Down the Road - John Fogerty
He take the thunder from the mountain
He take a lightning from the sky
He bring a strong man to his begging knee
He make the young girl's mama cry.
You got to hidey-hide
You got to jump and run
You got to hidey-hidey-hide
The old man is down the road.
He got the voices speakin' riddles
He got the eye as black as coal
He got a suitcase covered with rattlesnake hide
And he stands right in the road.
Chorus
He make the river call your lover
He make the barking of the hound
Put a shadow 'cross the window
When the old man comes around.
Chorus
The old man is down the road.
%%%
Saturday, June 23, 2007
summertime, summertime, sum-sum-summertime
So it's a couple of days past the solstice, Saturday morning, my shoes are full of dew and grass clippings, I got to see the Doobie Brothers the other day, we're going "Up Nort" in a few days, my new Harley is ready in six days - what's missing?
We don't know if there'll be a Ballpark Tour this year yet. I mean, come on already.
So now as I'm leaving
I'm wearly as hell,
The confusion I'm feeling
no tongue can tell,
The words fill my head
and fall to the floor,
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war
We don't know if there'll be a Ballpark Tour this year yet. I mean, come on already.
So now as I'm leaving
I'm wearly as hell,
The confusion I'm feeling
no tongue can tell,
The words fill my head
and fall to the floor,
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war
Friday, May 4, 2007
Thoughts on China and Sustainability
After being home from China for some weeks, I’ve thought quite a lot about what I saw, especially regarding sustainability. One thing that’s clear to me is that our perceptions of China’s place in all this are being managed pretty well by our mainstream media. It is true I suppose that China’s gross energy consumption is equal to or near ours. However, it is also true that there are something like 4.3 times more folks there.
China’s energy consumption is growing quickly and there’s not a reasonable way they’ll ever be able to get at enough hydrocarbons to equal our per capita consumption.
So, they are pushing things everyday that we don’t see much of. Everything that looks anything like a “house”, even 3-4 story flats, has active solar hot water. Student housing at the universities has serious negative incentives for electric usage in the residences – electric meters for the rooms! They pay as they go. After dusk, the residences were almost completely dark, and students were gathered in public places and classrooms in groups to study.
Green design is in the news constantly and new developments everywhere incorporate storm water into water features and set aside green space – even in the midst of developed Shanghai. Shanghai bought and cleared several square kilometers of land right in the midst of vast development and created Central Park to provide green space, water, an amphitheater, gardens, and miles of walking paths.
In the major cities I saw many construction sites where, to try to cut down on airborne particulates, builders used fabrics – sort of like our landscape matting, to cover the bare ground and cut down on wind blown construction dusts. At my host, Zhejiang Unversity, planners gave up on siting a major new building at the home campus in favor of setting up a beautiful natural park - again with water, trails, and plantings - to decompress the campus a bit and give humans a respite from hardscape and structure. These efforts are unbelievable committments - especially given the scarcity and price of land in the cities.
There’s no question that they have a lot to do but there's a lot of good. Traffic was no where near as bad as I was told to expect (and the roadways, especially in Hangzhou, were excellent). It was exciting to see the efforts that are in place and underway. I talked a lot about our own renewable energy work at St. Olaf, and that’s what my counterparts were most interested in.
China’s energy consumption is growing quickly and there’s not a reasonable way they’ll ever be able to get at enough hydrocarbons to equal our per capita consumption.
So, they are pushing things everyday that we don’t see much of. Everything that looks anything like a “house”, even 3-4 story flats, has active solar hot water. Student housing at the universities has serious negative incentives for electric usage in the residences – electric meters for the rooms! They pay as they go. After dusk, the residences were almost completely dark, and students were gathered in public places and classrooms in groups to study.
Green design is in the news constantly and new developments everywhere incorporate storm water into water features and set aside green space – even in the midst of developed Shanghai. Shanghai bought and cleared several square kilometers of land right in the midst of vast development and created Central Park to provide green space, water, an amphitheater, gardens, and miles of walking paths.
In the major cities I saw many construction sites where, to try to cut down on airborne particulates, builders used fabrics – sort of like our landscape matting, to cover the bare ground and cut down on wind blown construction dusts. At my host, Zhejiang Unversity, planners gave up on siting a major new building at the home campus in favor of setting up a beautiful natural park - again with water, trails, and plantings - to decompress the campus a bit and give humans a respite from hardscape and structure. These efforts are unbelievable committments - especially given the scarcity and price of land in the cities.
There’s no question that they have a lot to do but there's a lot of good. Traffic was no where near as bad as I was told to expect (and the roadways, especially in Hangzhou, were excellent). It was exciting to see the efforts that are in place and underway. I talked a lot about our own renewable energy work at St. Olaf, and that’s what my counterparts were most interested in.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
More Earth Day on the way
The Elements
Modern science has progressed beyond anything imagined in the days when most cultures recognized the "elements" as earth, air, fire, and water. We now think of "elements" as something quite different. We have the periodic table with dozens of substances that are unique and as simple as they can be. In our present time view, the former element "air" is really composed of the elements hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, ozone, and on and on. "Earth" is composed of iron, carbon, hydrogen, and again, on and on. "Water" is hydrogen, oxygen, and a variety of elemental minerals. "Fire" is fundamentally dependent on the elements, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. Early members of most religious traditions recognized "Spirit", sometimes the “aether” as the fifth, sort of all encompassing, element.
I submit that in our desire to manage human and institutional impact on the biosphere we have become so dependent on engineering and minutiae that we have lost sight of the bigger picture in important ways.
Anne Lamott proposes that there are times for all of us when we simply think, analyze, puzzle, and confound ourselves more than is healthy rather than going with what is in our hearts. The heartfelt action is often better than the highly analyzed, pragmatic, reaction. Discussing this in her book, Operating Instructions, she even says that at some point, usually sooner rather than later, "…the mind is a bad neighborhood at 4:00 AM where we should not go."
The work of many physicists has been taken to task because of a perception that it is aimed at disproving the existence of God. Indeed, many have worked at almost infinitesimally small levels, but in the context of the infinitesimally vast universe. Even though much of the work could be characterized as being at odds with the view of a perfect universe that emanated from the hand of a creator, Einstein especially has acknowledged in writings for the general public that at some point, there is no other explanation for the order and perfection of the universe. In my view he worked so well because he seemed willing to acknowledge that what he believed in his heart was as valid as what could be tested. He worked on the modern elemental level in the context of the fifth of the old elements, Spirit.
I used to worry about why Pi or Phi works. An Internet search for either can be scary. I have come to be able to relax and simply say that they just work because of the perfection of the universe. At some point we need to back out of our minds, away from the too close look, out of the bad neighborhood, and go with what we feel intuitively.
Thought about this way, perhaps the ancient elements, again, earth, air, fire, water, and spirit are a better way to think about our biosphere. Virtually every environmental issue or impact we can think of consists of and affects most of these elements. For instance, it quickly becomes clear that heating a campus of buildings with a central plant, where steam is generated by fossil fuels - oil, gas, or coal - depends on the elements of earth, air, fire, and water. The hydrocarbon fuels come from the Earth, they need Air in order to be able to oxidize as Fire, and so, produce steam from Water. The by-products of consuming Earth and Air by Fire affect Water, Air, and Earth. Mining of the Earth for fuels affects Air, Earth, Water, and requires Fire (electricity, gas, oil). Softening makeup Water for our Heating Plant requires Fire (electricity or heat), which requires Earth and Air, returns some substances, calcium, manganese, iron etc. to the Earth or maybe Water and, well, you start to get the picture.
Understanding of the principles that guide the best use of the elements of creation demands that we think about Earth, Air, Fire, and Water only in the context of the fifth, Spirit. Almost any resource development or consumption issue can be looked at in this way. Preserving the Earth and its resources for the future, cleansing our Air to help the health of our natural world, helping to conserve, restore, and clean our Water resources, and conserving and renewing our energy sources, Fire, will assure the future viability of creation. Preservation and cultivation of Spirit, and examining our use of the other elements in that context, will assure that we bring balance to the ecology of our campus, or any other institution or situation.
Colleges have a sort of unique responsibility to perpetuate themselves. Indeed, mission statements often address this aspect of their life. In addition, most purport to exist in order to serve, as St. Olaf does, by producing graduates prepared to serve a wider creation. We say that we focus on what is ultimately worthwhile and aspire to educate the whole person - mind, body, and spirit.
Preparing students to serve the world while using creation poorly as a college organism is irresponsible and selfish. We have been provided with the natural world and free will. It is ours to use wisely or mess up and we will be the beneficiaries or victims of the ways we choose to exercise our will on creation.
The elements of campus ecology, a small start:
Fire
Gas, Oil, Electricity, indoor and outdoor light, daylight, light pollution, vehicle fuels and lubes, solvents of all kinds, art/science/maintenance, embedded energy in acquired materials, fuels in art processes
Water
Domestic, sanitary sewer, storm water runoff and retention, AC, science, wetlands, mowing and land management practice, food - prep, cooking, dish washing, waste stream, implications of water in materials acquisition and production, cooling, steam production, vacuum by aspiration
Earth
Grounds maintenance, hardscape, land management, wetland, woodland, upland restoration and management, wildlife, bio-mass, outdoor recreation, athletics, natural resource management, material sources, ag and lawn chemicals, fertilization, mowing reduction, fuel acquisition and conservation
Air
Wind-powered electrical generation, particulate emission, CO2 sequestration, O2 production through bio-mass, CO, CO2, NO, SO, etc from carbon based fuels, science and art emissions, woodshop emissions, vehicle emissions, implications of materials acquisition and production on the air, particulates in ceramics, sculpture studios, art welding shops, foundry, and fume hoods. Dust emissions from clothes dryers.
Spirit
College of the Church, stewardship of the natural world, stewardship of the built environment, stewardship of the humans - fair work environments, social impacts of materials and processes, equality across the workplace - faculty, support and professional staff, administration, by gender, gender preference, age, race.
Physics tells us we cannot create or destroy energy, but that does not absolve us of the ramifications of people changing its form. As we think about the ecology of our campus, and its biosphere, we need to consider:
"Although I die, I shall continue
to live in everything that is.
The buffalo eats the grass.
And I eat him; and when I die,
the earth eats me and sprouts more grass.
Therefore, nothing is ever lost
and each thing is everything forever."
Native American author, unknown
Modern science has progressed beyond anything imagined in the days when most cultures recognized the "elements" as earth, air, fire, and water. We now think of "elements" as something quite different. We have the periodic table with dozens of substances that are unique and as simple as they can be. In our present time view, the former element "air" is really composed of the elements hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, ozone, and on and on. "Earth" is composed of iron, carbon, hydrogen, and again, on and on. "Water" is hydrogen, oxygen, and a variety of elemental minerals. "Fire" is fundamentally dependent on the elements, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. Early members of most religious traditions recognized "Spirit", sometimes the “aether” as the fifth, sort of all encompassing, element.
I submit that in our desire to manage human and institutional impact on the biosphere we have become so dependent on engineering and minutiae that we have lost sight of the bigger picture in important ways.
Anne Lamott proposes that there are times for all of us when we simply think, analyze, puzzle, and confound ourselves more than is healthy rather than going with what is in our hearts. The heartfelt action is often better than the highly analyzed, pragmatic, reaction. Discussing this in her book, Operating Instructions, she even says that at some point, usually sooner rather than later, "…the mind is a bad neighborhood at 4:00 AM where we should not go."
The work of many physicists has been taken to task because of a perception that it is aimed at disproving the existence of God. Indeed, many have worked at almost infinitesimally small levels, but in the context of the infinitesimally vast universe. Even though much of the work could be characterized as being at odds with the view of a perfect universe that emanated from the hand of a creator, Einstein especially has acknowledged in writings for the general public that at some point, there is no other explanation for the order and perfection of the universe. In my view he worked so well because he seemed willing to acknowledge that what he believed in his heart was as valid as what could be tested. He worked on the modern elemental level in the context of the fifth of the old elements, Spirit.
I used to worry about why Pi or Phi works. An Internet search for either can be scary. I have come to be able to relax and simply say that they just work because of the perfection of the universe. At some point we need to back out of our minds, away from the too close look, out of the bad neighborhood, and go with what we feel intuitively.
Thought about this way, perhaps the ancient elements, again, earth, air, fire, water, and spirit are a better way to think about our biosphere. Virtually every environmental issue or impact we can think of consists of and affects most of these elements. For instance, it quickly becomes clear that heating a campus of buildings with a central plant, where steam is generated by fossil fuels - oil, gas, or coal - depends on the elements of earth, air, fire, and water. The hydrocarbon fuels come from the Earth, they need Air in order to be able to oxidize as Fire, and so, produce steam from Water. The by-products of consuming Earth and Air by Fire affect Water, Air, and Earth. Mining of the Earth for fuels affects Air, Earth, Water, and requires Fire (electricity, gas, oil). Softening makeup Water for our Heating Plant requires Fire (electricity or heat), which requires Earth and Air, returns some substances, calcium, manganese, iron etc. to the Earth or maybe Water and, well, you start to get the picture.
Understanding of the principles that guide the best use of the elements of creation demands that we think about Earth, Air, Fire, and Water only in the context of the fifth, Spirit. Almost any resource development or consumption issue can be looked at in this way. Preserving the Earth and its resources for the future, cleansing our Air to help the health of our natural world, helping to conserve, restore, and clean our Water resources, and conserving and renewing our energy sources, Fire, will assure the future viability of creation. Preservation and cultivation of Spirit, and examining our use of the other elements in that context, will assure that we bring balance to the ecology of our campus, or any other institution or situation.
Colleges have a sort of unique responsibility to perpetuate themselves. Indeed, mission statements often address this aspect of their life. In addition, most purport to exist in order to serve, as St. Olaf does, by producing graduates prepared to serve a wider creation. We say that we focus on what is ultimately worthwhile and aspire to educate the whole person - mind, body, and spirit.
Preparing students to serve the world while using creation poorly as a college organism is irresponsible and selfish. We have been provided with the natural world and free will. It is ours to use wisely or mess up and we will be the beneficiaries or victims of the ways we choose to exercise our will on creation.
The elements of campus ecology, a small start:
Fire
Gas, Oil, Electricity, indoor and outdoor light, daylight, light pollution, vehicle fuels and lubes, solvents of all kinds, art/science/maintenance, embedded energy in acquired materials, fuels in art processes
Water
Domestic, sanitary sewer, storm water runoff and retention, AC, science, wetlands, mowing and land management practice, food - prep, cooking, dish washing, waste stream, implications of water in materials acquisition and production, cooling, steam production, vacuum by aspiration
Earth
Grounds maintenance, hardscape, land management, wetland, woodland, upland restoration and management, wildlife, bio-mass, outdoor recreation, athletics, natural resource management, material sources, ag and lawn chemicals, fertilization, mowing reduction, fuel acquisition and conservation
Air
Wind-powered electrical generation, particulate emission, CO2 sequestration, O2 production through bio-mass, CO, CO2, NO, SO, etc from carbon based fuels, science and art emissions, woodshop emissions, vehicle emissions, implications of materials acquisition and production on the air, particulates in ceramics, sculpture studios, art welding shops, foundry, and fume hoods. Dust emissions from clothes dryers.
Spirit
College of the Church, stewardship of the natural world, stewardship of the built environment, stewardship of the humans - fair work environments, social impacts of materials and processes, equality across the workplace - faculty, support and professional staff, administration, by gender, gender preference, age, race.
Physics tells us we cannot create or destroy energy, but that does not absolve us of the ramifications of people changing its form. As we think about the ecology of our campus, and its biosphere, we need to consider:
"Although I die, I shall continue
to live in everything that is.
The buffalo eats the grass.
And I eat him; and when I die,
the earth eats me and sprouts more grass.
Therefore, nothing is ever lost
and each thing is everything forever."
Native American author, unknown
Earth Day on the way
Sustainability – April 12, 2007
I think that the upper mid-west family farm, between the late 1800s up to maybe WWII, may have been “our” most sustainable living model. In this case, “our” is us – the immigrant population. This model couldn’t support a huge population, but if we’d stuck with it, there probably wouldn’t be so many of us either!
Many earlier Americans lived more sustainably, although that thinking can tend to be too romantic. The mysterious disappearance of the Anasazi is probably not so mysterious; it’s likely that their lifestyle overcame the local biosphere’s ability to support it when stressed by drought and so on.
In spite of that, the Navajo have lived on much the same land for centuries, I think because they have a really “outside the (or at least, our) box” idea about what’s needed. If you’ve ever driven through the Four Corners, and so across much of the huge Navajo Reservation, you’ve seen really little, maybe sort of dilapidated, homes off in the distance, where – from inside our box – it doesn’t seem reasonable to live. Traditional Navajo work to live with the concept of “Beauty”. I can’t possibly truly understand this or explain it, not having grownup with it, but I think that being in a state of Beauty means that one is in harmony with their setting, themselves, and their neighbors. When this state of harmony exists, a person just doesn’t need a lot of material to be well.
There’s a Minnesota writer I like named Kent Nerburn who has done a lot of work with folks on the Red Lake reservation over time (he lives in Bemidji). I found an interview with him some time back and something he said hit me hard.
Interviewer: “Do you think Native Americans have something important to teach us? If so, can you somehow express what it is?”
Kent Nerburn: “Own less stuff. Listen to the land. Care for family. Be as responsible to your past as to the future. Value honor as highly as freedom, and know that there are some bondages that are good. Recognize that the spiritual lives in the funkiest corners of your daily life as well as in the most elevated places of your search for God. Stop thinking that you're hot shit.”
He wrote my favorite non-fiction book , Neither Wolf Nor dog, On Forgotten Roads With an Indian Elder. There’s not a good way to explain this book; if you know it, you also know what I mean. Even though the people are Lakota and not Navajo, as you read this you’ll start to understand both the idea of Beauty and where the quote comes from. As the adventure unfolded, I found myself first wondering what on earth this well meaning but naïve new American was thinking attempting to do the project in place, and at the end wondering why he would go back where he’d been.
I recommend Neither Wolf Nor Dog to every person concerned about the ways we live in the world – it will get you thinking about what you believe you need versus what is truly needed to live in the beautiful place.
"True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed."
- Tom Robbins
I think that the upper mid-west family farm, between the late 1800s up to maybe WWII, may have been “our” most sustainable living model. In this case, “our” is us – the immigrant population. This model couldn’t support a huge population, but if we’d stuck with it, there probably wouldn’t be so many of us either!
Many earlier Americans lived more sustainably, although that thinking can tend to be too romantic. The mysterious disappearance of the Anasazi is probably not so mysterious; it’s likely that their lifestyle overcame the local biosphere’s ability to support it when stressed by drought and so on.
In spite of that, the Navajo have lived on much the same land for centuries, I think because they have a really “outside the (or at least, our) box” idea about what’s needed. If you’ve ever driven through the Four Corners, and so across much of the huge Navajo Reservation, you’ve seen really little, maybe sort of dilapidated, homes off in the distance, where – from inside our box – it doesn’t seem reasonable to live. Traditional Navajo work to live with the concept of “Beauty”. I can’t possibly truly understand this or explain it, not having grownup with it, but I think that being in a state of Beauty means that one is in harmony with their setting, themselves, and their neighbors. When this state of harmony exists, a person just doesn’t need a lot of material to be well.
There’s a Minnesota writer I like named Kent Nerburn who has done a lot of work with folks on the Red Lake reservation over time (he lives in Bemidji). I found an interview with him some time back and something he said hit me hard.
Interviewer: “Do you think Native Americans have something important to teach us? If so, can you somehow express what it is?”
Kent Nerburn: “Own less stuff. Listen to the land. Care for family. Be as responsible to your past as to the future. Value honor as highly as freedom, and know that there are some bondages that are good. Recognize that the spiritual lives in the funkiest corners of your daily life as well as in the most elevated places of your search for God. Stop thinking that you're hot shit.”
He wrote my favorite non-fiction book , Neither Wolf Nor dog, On Forgotten Roads With an Indian Elder. There’s not a good way to explain this book; if you know it, you also know what I mean. Even though the people are Lakota and not Navajo, as you read this you’ll start to understand both the idea of Beauty and where the quote comes from. As the adventure unfolded, I found myself first wondering what on earth this well meaning but naïve new American was thinking attempting to do the project in place, and at the end wondering why he would go back where he’d been.
I recommend Neither Wolf Nor Dog to every person concerned about the ways we live in the world – it will get you thinking about what you believe you need versus what is truly needed to live in the beautiful place.
"True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed."
- Tom Robbins
Sunday, April 1, 2007
That's Mr. Dylan to you...
Columbia Records has a thing going on bobdylan.com - submit your story about something Dylan. 1,200 characters. Sounded easy when I first read it as 1,200 WORDS. I went along for quite a while, I got to 1,199 words, cut and pasted it into the web form. What's this? Where is the rest of the text? It's cut off like crazy. I messed around for a while then went back to see the fine print again - well, it's not fine, I just saw what I expected to see. 1,200 characters this time. OK, I can make this work. Time passed, slash/burn, it still made sense, sort of. Cut, paste, it's cut off again, back to the directions, which I read for the first time. Dang it, spaces count?
Rip, tear, plunder, now you had to be there!
Unbelievably - 1,200 characters and spaces - I couldn't have done this if I wasn't jet lagged into tomorrow!
#
Soft late summer breeze, full moon, my four kids, a lawn just short of making dew. It’s THAT night - the band is perfect, the voice is right there, not in the mix as much as in front of it, talking to YOU. The greatest “Lay, Lady, Lay” ever.
My daughter refuses to leave; she needs a word with Mr. Dylan. “Emma, I’m sure Bob’s at the hotel wondering “What the heck was the deal with that moon?” “He’s still here and we need to find him, now!” “OK, you can’t do it alone, I’m your man.”
Soon we’re stumbling through backyards trying to get to the buses. Given the proximity to the scene of the crime most of the backyards are in the midst of afterglow parties. Several people greet us, a few laugh, most look at us with, “What?” “What are you looking at? She’s my daughter.” “You guys leave him alone, he’s my dad and he’s helping me find Bob!” We excuse ourselves and struggle through the hedge to the next back yard to repeat the scene; behind us we hear, “That poor guy, he’ll never get her home!”
No Dylan. She gets tired, the moon is still out, the breeze is still perfect, it is still just a nice stroll - and it is still in my head, “Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead."
Rip, tear, plunder, now you had to be there!
Unbelievably - 1,200 characters and spaces - I couldn't have done this if I wasn't jet lagged into tomorrow!
#
Soft late summer breeze, full moon, my four kids, a lawn just short of making dew. It’s THAT night - the band is perfect, the voice is right there, not in the mix as much as in front of it, talking to YOU. The greatest “Lay, Lady, Lay” ever.
My daughter refuses to leave; she needs a word with Mr. Dylan. “Emma, I’m sure Bob’s at the hotel wondering “What the heck was the deal with that moon?” “He’s still here and we need to find him, now!” “OK, you can’t do it alone, I’m your man.”
Soon we’re stumbling through backyards trying to get to the buses. Given the proximity to the scene of the crime most of the backyards are in the midst of afterglow parties. Several people greet us, a few laugh, most look at us with, “What?” “What are you looking at? She’s my daughter.” “You guys leave him alone, he’s my dad and he’s helping me find Bob!” We excuse ourselves and struggle through the hedge to the next back yard to repeat the scene; behind us we hear, “That poor guy, he’ll never get her home!”
No Dylan. She gets tired, the moon is still out, the breeze is still perfect, it is still just a nice stroll - and it is still in my head, “Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead."
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