A Darkening Morning
The sky is overcast, a chill asserts that Fall and Winter inexorably follows the tilt of the earth’s axis.
Over a bowl of cheerios I perused the New York Times Weekend Briefing email received in the early hours. Somewhere someone is awake, living, in full awareness of their lot in their one solitary life, Everyone has one ticket for a single go-round, and there is only one earth which we can call home.
The news feed was depressing. I glanced over it and put it aside for later, a more careful reading. There is civil unrest in Barcelona, Chile, Beirut, the Brits are bent on tearing apart their relationship with Europe, Haiti is on the brink of collapse, and there is to be an election in Canada that focuses on the misery of indigenous peoples. I could not drill down into all of this cresting dysfunction so soon after rising. There seems to be a very large number of people world-wide that are “surplus”, people knowing they have been left behind, rootless, belonging nowhere in the countries of their birth or the countries where they have immigrated.
Received this award winning photo from a friend who delights in animals, delights in dogs in particular.
Yongqing Bao has won the prestigious wildlife photographer of the year 2019 title for his image The Moment, which frames the standoff between a Tibetan fox and a marmot. A powerful frame of both humor and horror, it captures the drama and intensity of nature.
Read an interview published in Fast Company magazine of Yvon Chouinard, Chouinard, age 81, a Wyoming resident — the founder of Patagonia. He has been an ardent environmentalist for many years. Here are some statements by Chouinard worth careful consideration.
Everything man does creates more harm than good. We have to accept that fact and not delude ourselves into thinking something is sustainable. Then you can try to achieve a situation where you’re causing the least amount of harm possible. That’s the spin we put on it. It’s a never-ending summit. You’re just climbing forever. You’ll never get to the top, but it’s the journey.
You’ve got to reinvent capitalism altogether. It leads to a whole bunch of poor people and a few extremely rich people. Ultimately, capitalism is going to lose its customers. There won’t be anybody to buy the product because everybody is going to be so poor. The whole thing is going to crash before the next election, probably. We’re going to get another huge recession, and everybody’s going to lose out on their stocks. There we go again. It’s a system that’s got to change. The whole stock thing is dependent on growth. Look at Amazon. Amazon doesn’t make a profit. They don’t pay any taxes. Nothing. But they’re growing like crazy. It’s all growth, growth, growth—and that’s what’s destroying the planet.
Forget about trying to save the polar bear; you gotta save the planet to save the polar bear.
If you want to read the entire Chouinard interview CLICK HERE.
Fall is the season for harvest, for bright colors, for Halloween, — children in costumes walking house to house, in search of candy treats. It is nice to join one’s neighbors on the sidewalk and make the children’s event a festival of community togetherness. We were introduced to the Zombie flamingo this year by our daughter, and several have joined the more traditional yard flamingos.
What is more American than flamingos in the yard?
