Two Voices That Made A Difference

American music lost two historic figures in January: first Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers, and then Pete Seeger, whose performing career goes back to the 1940s.

Josh Marshall's appreciation of Seeger and one by Bruce Springsteen include a video previously featured on this site, of Seeger and Springsteen singing "This Land is Your Land" as part of President Obama's first Inaugural celebration.  Time Magazine has videos of his performances of some of his most famous songs.

Appreciations of Phil Everly that place him in musical and historical context by Linda Ronstadt and Paul Simon, among others are here and here.  Ronstadt wrote a neat three paragraphs for Time Magazine, which is buried behind their subscriber/registration wall.  But it's worth seeking out.

As these articles make clear, their legacies live not only in their own music but in musicians who came after them.  In Seeger's case, as Josh Marshall writes, his activism changed America in many ways. Helping to save the Hudson River from death by pollution is one of his greatest and least appreciated contrbutions.

Pennsylvania: The Company Town

Once upon a time I did some work for the Pennsylvania governor's office which included writing a booklet to accompany the state budget summing up programs underway.  It was called The New Pennsylvania: A Commonwealth That Works.

Well apparently there's an even newer Pennsylvania: The Company Town. Or to be more specific, Fracksylvania.

In some ways it's like the old old Pennsylvania of my grandfather's day, bringing up his family in what was literally a company town for many years, owned and operated by a coal company.

Now the fossil fuel frackers apparently own not only big chunks of the state--and I mean own--and they evidently own the legislature and governor's office, no surprise there--but they also apparently own the law.

Here's the story that only a British newspaper appears to care about:

Vera Scroggins, an outspoken opponent of fracking, is legally barred from the new county hospital. Also off-limits, unless Scroggins wants to risk fines and arrest, are the Chinese restaurant where she takes her grandchildren, the supermarkets and drug stores where she shops, the animal shelter where she adopted her Yorkshire terrier, bowling alley, recycling centre, golf club, and lake shore.

In total, 312.5 sq miles are no-go areas for Scroggins under a sweeping court order granted by a local judge that bars her from any properties owned or leased by one of the biggest drillers in the Pennsylvania natural gas rush, Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation.

What is this woman's crime?  She's a political activist against fracking.  Not violent, and there's little evidence she's even disruptive. (Unless you count bringing celebrities in to see the fracking for themselves.)  She's just a heretic.

So two things here.  The law simply bans her from property owned or leased by this monstrous company, with the full knowledge of its extent, and that it includes what passes for public spaces in this town.  Which is totalitarian enough but in practical terms it is an order almost impossible to obey because this company pretty much owns or leases the town.

The court order didn't specify the actual places she can't go, that is, nobody told her exactly what the company owns or leases.

Montrose where Scroggins lives

The company is Cabot.  The story continues:

" Cabot turned up with four lawyers and nine witnesses, employees of the company and the firm it hired to provide security. Scroggins represented herself. She told the court she had been unable to find a lawyer as the hearing had been called on 72 hours' notice.

By the time the hearing was over, the judge had granted Cabot a temporary injunction barring Scroggins from all property owned or leased by the company. "It is hereby ordered that Ms Scroggins is restrained, enjoined and prohibited from entering upon property owned and/or leased by Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation including but not limited to well sites, well pads and access roads," the injunction reads.

The effect of that ban is far broader than the dry legal language would suggest.  In court filings, Cabot said it holds leases on 200,000 acres of land, equivalent to 312.5 sq miles. That amounts to nearly 40% of the largely rural county in north-eastern Pennsylvania where Scroggins lives and where Cabot does most of its drilling."

coke oven in Mt. Pleasant past

This is hardly the only outrage to the rights of American citizens perpetrated by the law in Pennsylvania at the behest of its apparent masters, the fossil fuel frackers.  An earlier case arose in Mount Pleasant,  very near where my father was born and grew up.  It was coal and then coke country then.  Now it's a fracking motherlode.  From another Guardian story:

 "The Hallowich family had earlier accused oil and gas companies of destroying their 10-acre farm in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania and putting their children's health in danger. Their property was adjacent to major industrial operations: four gas wells, gas compressor stations, and a waste water pond, which the Hallowich family said contaminated their water supply and caused burning eyes, sore throats and headaches."

The family settled with the companies involved for $750,000 to move to a safer and healthier place.  But a condition of the 2011 settlement was recently revealed: no member of the family can ever, ever, ever talk about fracking, from any point of view, in any way, to anyone, until they die.  That includes the Hallowich children, who are 7 and 10 years old.  If they speak out of turn, the family loses the money, and at least one of the companies-- Range Resources-- said it will hold them to it.

This story was at least broken locally, by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.  This story adds that confidentiality agreements usually don't apply to children, but there was some question about it in this case because of the specific court order.  What is it?  Well, who really knows?  Reporters were barred from hearings and the record sealed.  The companies involved (not just Range Resources) are so far adamant.

How sweeping is the ban on free speech?  It sounds like it goes far beyond commenting on the case itself.   But the law is apparently conspiring to keep even that much secret.

So in Pennsylvania, free speech is controlled by frackers, a power which the law seems only too happy to hand them.  You can talk about anything in PA except what the fossil fuel dictators say you can't talk about, unless you want to be banned from your grocery store, or have your children live in fear of saying the wrong thing.The U.S. Constitution apparently doesn't apply there anymore.

What's next for Pennsylvania-- the Iron and Coal police? Pinkertons and state police shooting down protestors?  As Pennsylvania becomes Fracksylvania it drills down into the muck of its own worst history.

Believe It

Gloomy poll numbers (the ones they choose to headline) and cynical analyzes, the time is out of joint, and so you might expect a defensive, awkward State of the Union.

Instead President Obama gave a confident, energized and forward-looking address, crisp and comprehensive, speaking over the heads of Washington to America, to history and to the future.

This is not a view you're likely to read elsewhere, at least not yet.  But it is what I saw and heard.  Last year President Obama urged Congress to act on a host of proposals that were eminently doable, both practically shovel-ready and politically mainstream.  They did nothing, bringing shame on themselves and a cloud of depression on the country.

This year he spoke of successes wrought usually by executive initiative and in partnership with coalitions of state and city governments, educational institutions and corporations, and he announced further initiatives to partner even more widely and deeply.  And he invited Congress to come along.

Rhetorically he did not use the word "progressive" but spoke several times of progress. One of his themes was citizenship--individual responsibility for the common good.  He spoke of opportunity, equality, justice and freedom--themes repeated from his famous speech after the New Hampshire primary that became mantras in the most famous campaign videos ever.

There are as usual hints of JFK especially in his final emphasis that progress is not easy, it takes time and effort.  The media says and will say that he said nothing new--that's right, he's been announcing these principles and goals, and ways to move towards them, while cautioning that it won't be easy and it will take time--from his 2008 campaign and especially his victory speech on election night in Chicago.

The speech transcript is here, the video of it with a second screen of facts and images is here.  I won't go through the themes of the speech, but simply reproduce some of the sentences that jumped out at me.

"After five years of grit and determined effort, the United States is better-positioned for the 21st century than any other nation on Earth. The question for everyone in this chamber, running through every decision we make this year, is whether we are going to help or hinder this progress."

"But America does not stand still – and neither will I".

"Opportunity is who we are. And the defining project of our generation is to restore that promise."

"Taken together, our energy policy is creating jobs and leading to a cleaner, safer planet. Over the past eight years, the United States has reduced our total carbon pollution more than any other nation on Earth. But we have to act with more urgency – because a changing climate is already harming western communities struggling with drought, and coastal cities dealing with floods. That’s why I directed my administration to work with states, utilities, and others to set new standards on the amount of carbon pollution our power plants are allowed to dump into the air. The shift to a cleaner energy economy won’t happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way. But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact. And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did."

"A pre-existing condition used to mean that someone like Amanda Shelley, a physician assistant and single mom from Arizona, couldn’t get health insurance. But on January 1st, she got covered. On January 3rd, she felt a sharp pain. On January 6th, she had emergency surgery. Just one week earlier, Amanda said, that surgery would’ve meant bankruptcy. That’s what health insurance reform is all about – the peace of mind that if misfortune strikes, you don’t have to lose everything."

"After all, that’s the spirit that has always moved this nation forward. It’s the spirit of citizenship – the recognition that through hard work and responsibility, we can pursue our individual dreams, but still come together as one American family to make sure the next generation can pursue its dreams as well."

"We have to remain vigilant. But I strongly believe our leadership and our security cannot depend on our military alone. As Commander-in-Chief, I have used force when needed to protect the American people, and I will never hesitate to do so as long as I hold this office. But I will not send our troops into harm’s way unless it’s truly necessary; nor will I allow our sons and daughters to be mired in open-ended conflicts. We must fight the battles that need to be fought, not those that terrorists prefer from us – large-scale deployments that drain our strength and may ultimately feed extremism. So, even as we aggressively pursue terrorist networks – through more targeted efforts and by building the capacity of our foreign partners – America must move off a permanent war footing."

"... working with this Congress, I will reform our surveillance programs – because the vital work of our intelligence community depends on public confidence, here and abroad, that the privacy of ordinary people is not being violated. And with the Afghan war ending, this needs to be the year Congress lifts the remaining restrictions on detainee transfers and we close the prison at Guantanamo Bay – because we counter terrorism not just through intelligence and military action, but by remaining true to our Constitutional ideals, and setting an example for the rest of the world."

"But these negotiations [with Iran] do not rely on trust; any long-term deal we agree to must be based on verifiable action that convinces us and the international community that Iran is not building a nuclear bomb. If John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan could negotiate with the Soviet Union, then surely a strong and confident America can negotiate with less powerful adversaries today."

"Our freedom, our democracy, has never been easy. Sometimes we stumble; we make mistakes; we get frustrated or discouraged. But for more than two hundred years, we have put those things aside and placed our collective shoulder to the wheel of progress – to create and build and expand the possibilities of individual achievement; to free other nations from tyranny and fear; to promote justice, and fairness, and equality under the law, so that the words set to paper by our founders are made real for every citizen.

 The America we want for our kids – a rising America where honest work is plentiful and communities are strong; where prosperity is widely shared and opportunity for all lets us go as far as our dreams and toil will take us – none of it is easy. But if we work together; if we summon what is best in us, with our feet planted firmly in today but our eyes cast towards tomorrow – I know it’s within our reach.

Believe it."

The Dreaming Up Daily Weekly Quote

"The absurdity of a life that may well end before one understands it does not relieve one of duty...to live through it as bravely and as generously as possible."

Peter Matthiessen
The Snow Leopard 

The Radical King

"The curse of poverty has no justification in our age …. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

By the standards of the time, Martin Luther King was a radical, not only on civil rights but on the war in Vietnam.  Now that aspects of his agenda have been enshrined in law, and he has been enshrined in a holiday, it is well to note that in some other areas he would be considered radical today, especially on the issue of poverty and what today is somewhat confusingly called income inequality.

He was scheduled to march on Washington again in 1968, on the issue of poverty.  He was assassinated before he could.

His passion on the issues of alleviating poverty came from the same source as his passion for ending racial injustice: real human suffering.  An example he noted:

"And I was in Newark and Harlem just this week. And I walked into the homes of welfare mothers. I saw them in conditions-no, not with wall-to-wall carpet, but wall-to-wall rats and roaches. I stood in an apartment and this welfare mother said to me, “The landlord will not repair this place. I’ve been here two years and he hasn’t made a single repair.” She pointed out the walls with all the ceiling falling through. She showed me the holes where the rats came in. She said night after night we have to stay awake to keep the rats and roaches from getting to the children."

Does anyone believe this doesn't go on right now in America, almost a half century later?

More to come here on the topic of poverty and the income divide.

Here Today, Not Gone Tomorrow

California Governor Jerry Brown declares drought emergency.  A thorough and scary article by Sarah McBride for Reuters.  However our North Coast isn't included technically, since we're under some other kind of drought emergency thing, says the Times Standard.

U.N. draft report says technological fixes for limiting the climate crisis in the future will be vastly more expensive than the cost of limiting carbon emissions now--and they don't yet exist and might not work anyway.

 State Court Judge strikes down Pennsylvania voter ID law.  The opinion goes at the heart of the case against such laws (they unfairly limit the right to vote) and against the supposed justification for the law (no voter fraud shown.)

Weed v. Water in Humboldt County

When I got to Arcata I was briefly involved in writing about forest issues, principally for a documentary film called  Voices of Humboldt County: The Cumulative Impact.  Professionally it's not one of my happiest memories in that I was never paid and though I got screen credit, that usually doesn't show up in online citations.  But in shaping and writing the script (including final draft) I learned a lot about the effects of cutting too many trees in the wrong places, not only on the forest habitat and on local landowners (the destruction caused by flooding made worse by over-cutting prompted the docu) but on salmon habitat.

A rapacious timber company is still alive in the legacy of Humboldt, as evidenced by this letter to the editor by one of the principals involved in that documentary, Dr. Ken Miller (you'll have to scroll down for it, to the subtitle  "Gallegos’ proud record as DA") which details some of the conflict of interest, chicanery and mendacity involved in local government as well as the company involved.

But the current threat to salmon habitat comes from the new biggest industry in HC: pot growing.  According to another NPR report: 

"According to critics, marijuana plantations guzzle enormous amounts of water while also spilling pesticides, fertilizers and stream-clogging sediments into waterways, including the Eel and the Klamath rivers, that have historically produced large numbers of Chinook salmon and related species."

So the first part of the problem is the huge amount of water these "plantations" are said to be taking out of streams, to the extent that many are drying up.  That particularly critical because the North Coast along with the rest of California is in drought, and it's getting worse.  Here it is mid January and there are forest fires already in the county.  Tuesday in Arcata hit 68 degrees, and Wednesday 73--these would be unusually warm temps in summer.  Right now it's supposed to be mid 50s and raining.  We've had one day of rain this month.  Wells are drying up and folks are using water reserves they normally don't touch until late summer.

Salmon need water--cool water-- in streams and rivers.

That puts the focus on the largest users:

 "According to Bauer, 24 tributaries of the Eel River — in which once-enormous spawning runs of Chinook salmon have nearly vanished — went completely dry in the summer of 2013. Each, Bauer says, was being used to irrigate pot farms. As a result, Bauer expects to see poor returns of Chinook and Coho salmon, as well as steelhead, in several years. While 2013 saw record-low precipitation in California, drought, Bauer says, is only part of the problem, and he still blames marijuana farmers."

The other problem is the pesticides that the new industrial pot growers are using:

"Fertilizers that drain into rivers can cause floating carpets of algae to grow in the water. When these mats begin to decay, the breakdown process steals oxygen from the water, suffocating fish. Bauer has discovered pools full of dead adult Chinook salmon — fish full of eggs, he says, that had not yet spawned."

"Scott Greacen, the executive director of Friends of the Eel River, warns that, unless pot growers are more closely regulated, some of California's North Coast salmon runs could be looking at extinction."

These issues are part of a very active public dialogue in Humboldt and the North Coast: the redwood forests may have receded in political consciousness, but salmon and weed remain hot topics, and are as least as crucial as cultural as well as economic and ecological issues.  Southern Californians may be more used to water as a political issue.  Now the North Coast welcomes you to the climate crisis.

Attack on Penn's Woods

Pennsylvania is among the most forested states in the contiguous U.S.  But not only is this news to outsiders, most Pennsylvanians are unaware of their forests and threats to them.

I discovered this in reporting a magazine piece I did some 20 years ago, and I believe it's still true.  (I've reposted the piece with photos here.)

The rapacious industries that are taking over the Commonwealth, not only fracking for natural gas wherever they please but rewriting laws that endanger environment and health more generally, are reaching into Pennsylvania's state forests according to this NPR report.  

"Pennsylvania is no stranger to extractive industries, like timber. By the early 20th century, its forests were decimated. Today they've grown back and trees are harvested sustainably. But, Pennsylvania has emerged as the fastest-growing state in the nation for natural gas production — with hydraulic fracturing technology unlocking vast amounts of gas in the Marcellus Shale. Scientists say this surge in gas development is having new kinds of dramatic effects on forests. Pennsylvania has roughly 2 million acres of public forest land; about a third of it is available for drilling."

"Kevin Heatley lives in the area and has come to these woods for years to hike. He's an ecologist by trade and he's concerned about what he's seeing. "Everything from the noise and the traffic to the lighting, to the pad placements, to the pipeline construction to the road expansion — this is all industrial infrastructure," Heatley says. "It's inherently incompatible with sustainable forest management. "You're looking at some of the impacts associated with forest fragmentation," he says. Forest fragmentation is what happens when human development crisscrosses the landscape, carving up large swaths of contiguous forest into smaller pieces."

And this destruction is not being inflicted from the edges or borders, but in the core:

"Core forest means "forest next to forest," making it very different from so-called "edge habitats," which means forest next to something else, like a grassy field, or a suburban home. The big tracts of core forests are rarer and they're home to species that don't do well near people. When core forest is lost, the host of important services provided by its plant and animal species go with it, according to Margaret Brittingham, a professor at Pennsylvania State University who has also studied forest fragmentation. "Insect control, climate control, water purification, you can go on and on," she says. "Recreation, aesthetics."

Not content with the power to destroy they now have, these companies want even more control and dominion, until only they rule the Commonwealth:

"But the gas industry is pushing a new measure that may lead to more forest fragmentation — a controversial bill that would limit the authority of state agencies to designate endangered species. The bill passed the state's House Game and Fisheries Committee in November."

When I posted my old story online I was able to restore the section that was cut for its original print publication, which is about Gifford Pinchot, the forester who became governor, and his friendship with President Teddy Roosevelt.  The kind of dominion these industries are seeking and in large measure already enjoy hasn't been seen generally since TR's day, and he was instrumental in reigning them in.

There are places where this hegemony continued--West Virginia being a conspicuous example, and so the chemical spill that cut off water supplies last week was more business as usual than shocking news.  Even with its habit of alternating governors of different parties, Pennsylvania had established environmental law and practice to control at least the most obvious rapacity.  But the current far right governor and right leaning legislature has paved the way for the latest attempted takeover by fossil fuel interests.  One ray of hope is that this governor is vastly unpopular, and is unlikely to be reelected.

Pennsylvania let its forests be destroyed once before.  The citizens of Penn's Woods (which is what "Penn-sylvania" means) can't let it happen again.

Potpourri

Now that potpourri is legal in Colorado, it's only a matter of time before it is in California.  Anticipating that, here's a potpourri of links from 2013 and early this year that I didn't get to in thematic posts.

For Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Pirates fans, here's a great story about Pirates manager Clint Hurdle.  I can go on about what's wrong with Pittsburgh, pro sports and the lamentable level of American profundity but this is a Pittsburgh story that says a lot about what is best about the place.  There are just enough stories like Clint Hurdle to justify realizing that there's a certain special character about this city.  Some other reports note various characteristics, such as healthful living  here (though I hate to link to Queen Ariana's slave quarters) and articles in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette series retrospective on the past 30 years: the increase in green spaces, and the overall change from "hell with the lid off" to a perennial "livable city."

                                   
Some years ago I read and "reviewed" the books that came out of several years of the Mind and Life conferences convened by the Dalai Lama, bringing together scientists and Buddhist practitioners to see what could be learned by both that went beyond the limits of each.   Brain scientists in particular were interested in meditative states attained by trained and veteran Buddhist meditators.  I've followed some of the ongoing work in this area since.

Most of what scientists have "proven" with brain imaging etc. simply confirmed what meditators observed.  But this study caught my attention: that meditation could influence gene expression.  How genes are "expressed" and interact in given situations is the new frontier of gene research, now that the prior belief that the presence or absence of particular genes determines everything is no longer tenable.  Gene expression may turn out to be much more important, in the still mysterious complexity of our beings in the world.

Research on some bones of Neanderthals made news late in 2013.  One conclusion: "The ancient DNA reveals a long history of Neanderthals interbreeding among at least four different types of early humans living in Europe and Asia".  Another study of bones suggests that Neanderthals had the same vocal capacity for speech as modern humans.  These studies are among those that suggest a closer relationship among earlier human species.  As one of the researchers of the latter study said, "Many would argue that our capacity for speech and language is among the most fundamental of characteristics that make us human. If Neanderthals also had language then they were truly human, too."

This may remind us that we tend to err towards the extremes.  Either earlier human species (or other animals, or even other nationalities of humans) are entirely different, or they are entirely the same.  Our conception of our human ancestors seems to have been expressed and then set in cartoon stone with the Flintstones.  But there's much to learn about ourselves from a more accurate idea of real life, now and hundreds of thousands of years ago.  Paul Shepard in particular repeatedly made the point that the human history we know is a small fraction of human time--10 thousand out of hundreds of thousands of years.  That span of time is when we evolved, and yet we know little about how we responded to those early environments, and therefore in large measure what we actually are now.

Finally, a couple of stories in the political realm.  The first is an under-reported but significant story about the alleged complete lack of security for President Obama at the Nelson Mandela memorial.  Coming so close to the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination, this was chilling.  And even more troublesome was the lack of attention it got.

The others are Cold War history revealed, sort of.   One story: For Nearly Two Decades the Nuclear Launch Code at all Minuteman Silos in the United States Was 00000000.  It's about how the military undermined the attempts by JFK and other "civilians" to install safeguards against accidental or premature launching of nuclear missiles, and ipso facto, apocalypse.  Though this particular revelation has since been disputed, it is of a piece with others, for example, in recent books on JFK and/or the Cuban Missile Crisis.  General Jack D. Ripper was not entirely fictional.

Another looks at the Soviet side, and a submarine commander who "should" have but did not start a nuclear exchange.  As we look back we ask, do we actually think we are less crazy now?  Look around.  What we are is more complacent.  Assassination, even nuclear war are still present possibilities, and we ignore them at our peril.  We should read these stories and reflect, because a huge element in our complacency is not understanding what these things would really mean.

Last but not lease---happy birthday, Kath!

The Dreaming Up Daily Weekly Quote

"Imaginative literature … does not enslave; it liberates the mind of man. Its truth is not like the canons of orthodoxy or the irrationality of prejudice and superstition. It begins as an adventure in self-discovery and ends in wisdom and humane conscience."

Chinua Achebe

The Vortex Update

True to form as predicted, the Rush of Wind on the radio claimed the polar vortex was something liberals made up for this week.  Today Show meteorologist Al Roker tweeted a copy of the 1959 definition, a clear example of ultra liberal time travel, or an Obamabot rewriting history.

Andy Borowitz at the New Yorker headlined: 

Polar Vortex Causes Hundreds of Injuries as People Making Snide Remarks About Climate Change Are Punched in Face

However, there were some new words added to my vocabulary as a result of the vortex weather, like freezing fog and frost quakes.  Frost quakes were reported not only in Ontario but in Maine, Wisconsin and Ohio. Hint: not a breakfast cereal. 

Meanwhile, the polar vortex-delivered Arctic-like weather killed at least a score of people, cost the U.S. $5 billion in lost revenue, and was responsible for the lowest temperatures so far this century for a number of U.S. cities.  All 50 states experienced freezing temps at some point this week.  

The Vortex

As I write this--after midnight Sunday in the Midwest and Eastern time zones--many places there have already recorded their high temperature for Monday.  Monday and Tuesday (in some places Wednesday) will be more dangerously cold than any days in at least 20 years there.  The upper Midwest (Minnesota, North Dakota) was already freezing on Sunday, also hit by snow and wind (up to 10 inches in Chicago.)
Further east in Indianapolis and in Ohio the combination of wind, frigid cold and ice are already closing highways as well as schools and businesses.

 From a relatively balmy Sunday, Pittsburgh goes into the deep freeze Monday and Tuesday, and is scheduled to emerge to another balmy day on Wednesday.  Very cold temps and wind will eventually extend not only along the northern East Coast but deep into the South, with single digit temps forecast for Charlotte and Atlanta.  All kinds of low temp records are likely to be broken over much of the country.

Cities like Chicago and Pittsburgh are taking this especially seriously because a lot of people think they know what cold is, but they don't.  They simply haven't experienced it, or at least not in a very long time.  And with windchills possible to 50 or even 70 below, even brief exposure can mean frostbite or worse.  This is dangerous weather.

Down in Washington (where a forecast Zero will break its record) there will be wags chortling (especially since Congress reconvenes Monday) that obviously there's no global warming going on here .  Of course by now only the purposely ignorant can ignore that global heating models have shown effects including heavy snowfalls and frigid temps.  But it seems a lot of people make a very good living being purposely ignorant.

But this may be an even more specific example of a global heating effect.  One prominent theory (being promoted as fact in headlines) is that these literally Arctic temps are due to a "polar vortex," the Arctic's equivalent of a super-cold hurricane.  Because these frigid winds whip around in a circle they usually stay in the Arctic, but this may be a weakened polar vortex that has partly blown south--and one prominent theory is that it has been weakened by warmer air as a result of the melting of Arctic ice, which is a result of global heating.

NOAA scientists suggest this as they study other evidence for a "warm Arctic/cold continent" effect.  Data from 2009 and 2010 suggest this is a pattern.  But the idea that Washington would be hit with dangerously cold temperatures as a result of the climate crisis was already dramatized in Kim Stanley Robinson's Science in the Capital trilogy (2004-7.)  So it's not a new idea.

Of course, the skeptics can take the colder winter temperatures, figure in the hotter summers, and come up with a temperate average that will gosh just prove that this climate crisis isn't happening at all.  This is what happens in the circular winds of Washington.

The Other F Word

Okay, I'm going to sneak this in like the addict I apparently am.  The NFL playoffs have begun.  As I predicted, the "defending champion" Ravens stunk this year and didn't even make it as a Wild Card team.  As I sadly predicted, the Steelers didn't get in either, although they came exceptionally close: if a call hadn't been blown (that the League admits was blown) that gave San Diego a victory in their last game, the Steelers would have been a Wild Card, and would probably have defeated the Bengals Sunday.  And then gone up against Denver a decided underdog next week, but with the advantage most eventual champions have--of peaking at the end of the season.  I think the Steelers probably would have a chance against Denver if Manning had an off-day, but New England as well?  Probably not. So it is interesting that at least the sportswriters in Pittsburgh aren't crying much about it--they don't think the Steelers deserved to be in playoffs.  

I'm sure everybody in the League office who cares about money is praying for a Denver-New England playoff game, which could reach Super Bowl proportions in TV viewership.  And they wouldn't cry too much if one of those teams wound up facing San Francisco in the SB, because this year the quarterback is the story.  Peyton Manning is the biggest potential story, but you've also got Tom Brady, Colin Kaepernick, even Andrew Luck, Cam Newton, the ancient Brees and Rivers  or the Seattle phenom Wilson.

You have to like Denver at home over overmatched San Diego.  Indianapolis and New England is a potentially fun game, especially since both teams--and both quarterbacks--can come back big in the second half, the fourth quarter.  That game won't be over til it's over. Kevin Seifert is picking the Niners to win it all, much like the Steelers did when they were the first to get there on the road.  They'll have to get past Carolina, and western fans particularly are looking forward to a San Francisco-Seattle game the following week.  So the dream matchups are Denver-New England and SF-Seattle.  If the past is a guide, at least one of those teams won't be there.

Now I'll shut up about football, an increasingly troublesome game, with more injuries and bad behavior than ever in the NFL, and the truly awful stats on repetitive brain injuries at any level. (Seifert praising the Niners for wearing short sleeves or their coach for not wearing his parka in near-zero temps at Green Bay is sickening. Is frostbite so manly? What kind of example is that?)  It's potentially still a good game, but not as it is played today on any level.

The Dreaming Up Daily Weekly Quote

“Peace begins in thought. Thoughts enworded go from mind to mind, and mind makes the world. Peace, illusive, abstract, negative Yin, dream, would take a long writing-out to make real. Its book has to be longer than war books—longer than a bumper sticker, longer than a sound bite. As we read, neuropeptides in the brain grow longer, longer than in nonreaders. Thought becomes body. Sudden fast change is a method of war. The logic of peace has to be spoken out at length.”

Maxine Hong Kingston
The Fifth Book of Peace

Common Thread

European Parliament building in Strasbourg, France via Flicker

Here in the U.S. when we wring our hands about our rabid right wing, its racism, violent rhetoric and embrace of ignorance, we tend to see it as a local aberration, a national failing.

But it's not entirely limited to the U.S.  Thanks to the Mayor of Toronto, we're more cognizant of a Tea Party rightist trend in Canada, which has affected national as well as local politics and policy.

Now an oped in the New York Times asserts a widening of something similar in Europe, and not simply within countries.  It is deliberately attacking the European Union, so it is happening to Europe.

Andrea Mammone writes:

 It may seem bizarre that two far-right, nationalist politicians — Marine Le Pen of France and Geert Wilders of the Netherlands — have reached across borders to form a Pan-European group dedicated to weakening the European Union. Their aim is a transnational political alliance that would compete in the May elections for the European Parliament; once in power, they would cooperate to try to rein in the power of Brussels.

While the Tea Party in Canada may be partly an American import, Mammone traces the history of the European model:  "But in fact, since the early 20th century, Europe’s far-right nationalists have often united in search of an “other” to oppose, exclude, resist, restrict or oppress... "

The most extreme and famous example is the Nazis.

This vision did not die with the end of World War II. Transnational links among right-wing parties, based on common fears of minorities and immigrants, endured. The right-wingers, while speaking different languages, borrowed ideals, strategies, slogans and theorists from one another... 

So when observers marvel about the “new” nationalist parties of Europe, they are capturing only part of the truth. These right-wingers mistrust or even detest the Continent’s core institutions — the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the European Parliament — but they are perfectly happy to join up with extremists in other countries to weaken those institutions. 

Anti-immigrant racism and a deathly hostility to government characterize European as well as North American far rightists. They seize upon economic troubles:

Soaring youth unemployment, stringent fiscal policies, German-led monetary clout and the presence of Muslim immigrants have created a perfect target for the likes of Mr. Wilders and Ms. Le Pen, who blame outside forces like the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Union for their nations’ woes. Conveniently, they overlook structural problems like the costs of social welfare and pension programs, declining birthrates, aging populations, stagnant labor productivity and intensifying competition from the economies of Asia and Latin America. 

But Mammone also suggests that bureaucratic remoteness has left the European Union open to such attacks. These parties may gain enough votes in coming elections to cause trouble. "Even as a tiny, noisy voice within the European Parliament, this alliance could create a lot of trouble. Just think of the successes that Tea Party Republicans have had in impeding decision making in the United States."

How would these right-wingers reshape Europe? They say they would give power back to nations by dismantling the technocratic decision-making power amassed in Brussels and returning powers back to individual member states. They would pause, if not quite reverse, six decades of growing integration.

Two elements in this analysis seem especially appropriate to a more cogent analysis of what's going on in the U.S.  First is relating it directly to movements in the American past.  Some efforts have been made but none seem as effective as the vigorous pushback in the 1960s to the extreme right surge during the administration of the first U.S. President to be of the alien Catholic faith (while today's rightists include many Catholics). Richard Hofstader's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life comes to mind, a history of ignorance-proud extremism, and a best-seller in the early 60s.

The second is related: the inability of defenders of government and liberal democracy to respond to the challenge.  President Obama has been eloquent in his redefinition of this political ethic, and while the media establishment etc. ignores him (and even liberals criticize him for not saying what in fact he is saying.)  In policy and political terms, there are some political signs: the elections of progressive populists Senator Elizabeth Warren and Mayor of NYC de Blasio.  The rabid right as a more extreme version of the policies born in a new flurry of right wing think tanks a few decades ago suggests that new progressive organizations, notably the Center for American Progress, may be crucial in creating more momentum .  But at the moment, the progressive defense seems insufficient.

Here's Mammone's conclusion about Europe:

Tragically, in the face of this assault, calls for European solidarity are few. This is a sign of how far Europe has come from the dream that helped lift it from the ashes of war. It is a sign of the fading of the vision — common markets, democratic institutions and societal integration — promoted by the postwar founders of European integration: thinkers and statesmen like Konrad Adenauer, Winston Churchill, Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and Altiero Spinelli.

The European Union must reclaim its reputation as a champion of the people. Its leaders should abandon their embrace of technocratic solutions, their support for the banking sector and their stoic austerity. Unless they deliver more jobs, and more of a sense that citizens are in charge, the far right will only keep growing."

It's about more than Europe. It's global economic policy that favors the wealthy, that sets the rest against each other for the crumbs, gets the majority poor to hate the minorities and vote against those who might use government to constrain the rich and enforce economic justice. That's the common thread, isn't it?  Encouraged by needless austerity, racial flashpoints, and a comfortably complacent or otherwise helpless governing class. 

Snowy New Year

 Winter storm from the midwest to the northeast coast so far yields massive snow totals in New England with more to come for New York on Friday, accompanied by wind and followed by subzero temps. Gov. Cuomo declared a statewide state of emergency. Air and highway travel have been disrupted.  More photos from the first day of this storm.  Meanwhile, the Midwest is bracing for a blast of very cold air that could reach into the South.

Engage! 2014

This is one big reason I voted for the guy for President (twice, primary and general) in 2004.  From the New York Times:

But while the public’s attention has been on his diplomacy in the Middle East, behind the scenes at the State Department Mr. Kerry has initiated a systematic, top-down push to create an agencywide focus on global warming. His goal is to become the lead broker of a global climate treaty in 2015 that will commit the United States and other nations to historic reductions in fossil fuel pollution. 

The story by Coral Davenport notes that as Senator and so far as Secretary of State, John Kerry has a long record of commitment on addressing climate crisis but with only a short list of successes.  However, there is one potentially significant one recently:

 As a result of midlevel talks Mr. Kerry set up to pave the way for a 2015 deal, the United States and China agreed in September to jointly phase down production of hydrofluorocarbons, greenhouse gases used in refrigerators and air-conditioners.

“He’s pushing to get climate to be the thing that drives the U.S. relationship with China,” said Timothy E. Wirth, a former Democratic senator from Colorado who now works on climate change issues with the United Nations Foundation. 

China is making some moves on climate issues, including an internal cap and trade scheme (not noted in this story.)  If the two biggest greenhouse gases polluters in the world can work together on this issue, it could well have a positive effect globally.  It's still a long shot but there's that possibility.

Institutional change in Washington is often slow, but it does often start at the top.  A new emphasis on climate began in the Energy department in 2008, and in the EPA arguably a few years later. Those changes as they work their way through the bureaucracy now make it possible for enforcing as well as creating rules regulating greenhouse gases produced for power generation.

 Now Kerry is changing State:

Shortly after Mr. Kerry was sworn in last February, he issued a directive that all meetings between senior American diplomats and top foreign officials include a discussion of climate change. He put top climate policy specialists on his State Department personal staff. And he is pursuing smaller climate deals in forums like the Group of 20, the countries that make up the world’s largest economies. 

Other nations are taking notice, the story says, and it details John Kerry's unbroken series of efforts to address the climate crisis, some including his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, whose own advocacy on this issue predates their marriage.  

With John Kerry at the helm of the State Department to deal with other nations, and now John Podesta in the White House to encourage domestic action, it could be that in the next two years, even against overwhelming odds, the fight for the future may be truly engaged.  Davenport's story notes:

It has not gone unnoticed that this administration is now much more engaged on climate change,” said Jake Schmidt, the international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Every international negotiator understands it.” When Mr. Kerry took office, Mr. Schmidt said, “The dynamic changed quite a bit.”

Get It Straight 2014

Addressing problems begins with defining them correctly.  Mistakes even in categories (let alone facts) lead to errant solutions or more likely, cynical but very windy and useless controversies.  These days the mistakes are often made by substituting the most repeated, most fashionable category for the one that's correct but slipping away fast, even out of consciousness.

Two examples of this tendency jumped out at me recently.  The first was in one of the conversations about prospects for 2014 and the future generally on NPR.  This one was "What Does the Future Hold for Climate Change." Host Steve Inskeep interviewed Andrew Steer of the World Resources Institute. Steer was putting forward the Consumer Goods Forum as a hopeful sign--a group of companies that want to be "the good guys" and reduce carbon, not buy tropical oils that lead to deforestation, etc.  He said they were responding to customers who "increasingly want them to do the right thing." Then this exchange took place:

INSKEEP: It's the image thing. It's public relations.
STEER: Well, almost so because - so the moral thing. I mean the reason that I recycle is not for my image. It's because I actually think it's the right thing to do. 

Giving Inskeep his due, he was probably talking about the motivation of the companies, and he's probably right to be cynical in assuming they're responding to customer pressure for p.r. purposes.  But Steer makes the right distinction.  The reason is not public relations, it's moral.  And that's the important distinction.  If the commitment isn't moral, it won't be real--even if Steer had to explain that somebody could do something because "I actually think it's the right thing to do."  So advocates can't be talking about companies improving their image.  They must keep to the correct category: the morality of destroying the Earth and the human future.

On a different subject, Michael Wolff in the Guardian reports on the New York Times effort to keep competitive on the Internet by including "native advertising"--those weird ads and "links" that are actually advertising.  Their quality is usually that of the kind of ads you used to find in the back of sleazy magazines. Now they're on virtually every Internet site. The Times is going to include them, Wolff says, but in ways that separate them from editorial content.

Wolff (not always the most reliable of reporters) seems pretty astute on the clash of advertising models on the Internet vs. print, but he goes frothing at the mouth haywire asserting that newspapers and magazine that insist on a distinction between editorial content and advertising are doing so because they are elitist.  The easy-entry, click-happy Internet threatens the Times ability to '"demonstrate its quality bona fides or cast its snobbish spell."

But the issues aren't elitism or snobbery, however potent they may be in even an Internet outlet's appeal.  They are the independence of the editorial voice, and readers' confidence that they know who is talking--is it the Times, or is it an advertiser with its agenda?

The threat of advertising encroaching on editorial independence and on the clear difference for readers of editorial content and paid-for advertising content has been ongoing in print and broadcast media for at least my quasi-adult lifetime.  The Internet is already swamped with dubious information, dominated by sensationalism and cheap momentary emotions, as well as by complete fraud.  With a few exceptions, the only semi-reliable news comes from the Internet sites of established print and broadcast news organizations that at least try to take journalistic ethics seriously.  But starting with the native ads cluttering up the page and insulting you, and the links that may lead to a real story by that publication or far afield to another site where you get cookied and possibly virused, these outlets too are becoming distressingly less reliable. (And the popup ads etc. make them very discouraging.)  The situation is going to continue getting worse especially if people can't frame the issues correctly, but fall back on fashionable business-based cynicism.

Both of these category "mistakes" have a couple of things in common.  They favor corporate, B-school fashionable concepts instead of older principle-based ones that apparently have to be dredged shamefaced out of the forgotten deep.  And these "mistakes" have something in common with a broader one expressed by the Canadian Native writer Thomas King.  He relates (in verse) a Coyote story in which Coyote is tricked by Weasel into tying his tail in a knot so tightly that it fall off, because Weasel convinced him it was the key to being able to whistle well.

King concludes: "Elwood told that story to the Rotary Club in town/and everyone laughed and said what a stupid Coyote./ And that's the problem, you know,/seeing the difference between stupidity/and greed."

R.I.P. 2013

Among those we lost in 2013: Doris Lessing, Peter O'Toole, Julie Harris, Roger Ebert, Jonathan Winters, Joan Fontaine, Karen Black, Annette Funicello, Chinua Achebe, Elmore Leonard, Lou Reed, Dr. C. Everett Koop, Frederik Pohl, Deanna Durbin, Jean Stapleton, Ray Manzarek, Esther Williams, Eleanor Powell, Philip Slater, Nelson Mandella.

More on them and others we lost at Books in Heat, Stage Matters, Boomer Hall of Fame and Soul of Star Trek.   May they rest in peace, as their work and example nourish and guide us into the future.

Our Year-End Newsletter

It’s the end of another dull and lurid year. Grandson Holden was kicked out of another prep school, while his aunt Emma divorced her fourth husband and ran off with the assistant producer of a reality show about producers of reality shows. Here at home, our town was declared pre-bankrupt and turned over to a state-appointed Manager who sold it to Google which digitized it, and so we now live in a replica that was manufactured in China—at least until somebody buys our 3-D printed house on EBay. On the bright side, we’d have a week to move, unless the buyer has Amazon Prime, in which case just overnight.

I was finally able to leave my job writing nasty comments to Internet articles about global warming and other “liberal conspiracies” for something I could believe in: correcting the appalling grammar and spelling in email spoofing.

We had a fascinating experience in local politics working on a campaign to outlaw assault weapons in our bathtub, but even though we lost that one, we are confident that our new project to combat global warming by getting everybody to wave recycled cardboard fans simultaneously will reach critical mass in the coming decade or two.

Culturally this year we attended a YouTube film festival via Skype—our favorite was the one about the new sport of texting while skydiving from drones—a real thrill ride! Although some of those space-walking cats were really cute!

Santa was good to me this year too, so consequently this letter was entirely written by my new robot!

Happy New Year from Our House to Yours!

painting: The Bear Dance at the Moulin Rouge by Gino Severini

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

  "Raccoons read alone and baboons read in bunches.
   And llamas read dramas while eating their llunches."

from Wild About Books by Judy Sierra, illustrated by Marc Brown, which one little girl on my list will be opening soon.  Merry Christmas!