TRIFECTA

I hit the trifecta recently. No, not at the racetrack; i
saw three examples of wildlife near my home. First i
stepped out of the house and saw in the leaf litter a
garter snake with a frog in its mouth. A little bit later
i saw an upward-spiraling broadwing hawk not very
far above me. (We call it 'ours' since it hangs around
our property.)

Soon after that my dogs and i saw a beaver standing
beside a wetland. Naturally we went over to have a
look and naturally the beaver took to the water as soon
as it spied us. But instead of swimming off to the far
side of the swamp it merely turned around in the water
and calmly looked at us. I could have touched it with
a stick, it was that close.

I stood still and watched it til it turned around and
leisurely swam off. The channel it was in was so shallow
that it had to crawl over a high spot that put most of its
body above the water. I marveled at its composure. The
last beaver i saw did a somersault in the water when it
saw me & swam off quickly. (Their eyesight isn't that
good.)

So, three sightings of special animals in about a half
hour. That's my trifecta.

Want to experience something similar? The more time
one spends outdoors in nature, the more likely one is to
have such encounters, while walking slowly and not
making too much noise.

"Malefactors of Great Wealth"

"There is not in the world a more ignoble character
than the mere money-getting American, insensible
to every duty, regardless of every principle, bent only
on amassing a fortune, and putting his fortune only to
the basest uses....to speculate in stocks....careless of
the working men, whom they oppress, and of the State,
whose existence they imperil."

--Theodore Roosevelt, who also coined the phrase,
"malefactors of great wealth"

'CIVILIZATION'

I can barely stand to write the word 'civilization' with-
out using quotation marks, which means to me the
equivalent of: "Civilization? Not really." Shouldn't
civilizations be civil? Then why are they so noted for
their abominable treatment of subaltern peoples?
(sub=under, altern=alternative, different, and ulti-
mately, inferior.)


It is virtually a given that societies of power will press
their will against weaker societies. The US is no excep-
tion. Civilization is supposed to mean 'advanced' in
science, technology, and the arts, but what good are
they in the face of the urge to dominate others, often
to their great suffering? The pictorial equivalent is of
a person wearing fine clothes while doing evil. What
do the clothes matter in the face of the fundamentals
of being truly human? Was Nazi Germany civilized?


In light of the woeful fact that human societies (and
individuals) are all too capable of the demonic, i pro-
pose a single standard for 'civilization' that transcends
all others. Compassion is the term for the society or
individual who is not taken over by its/her/his will for
power. The Hindus have a word for it: ahimsa, which
means 'harmlessness'. If that is the standard, then
Clara Barton and Mohandas Gandhi are the truly civil-
ized, along w the Dalai Lama in our own time. Most
politicians (but surely not all) would be uncivilized
in this regard.


We are at a crossroads of 'civilization' in this time. We
are like a ten-year-old with a chemistry set: old enough
to create serious trouble but not old enough to be res-
ponsible about it. We need to grow now in a way that
takes responsibility for the well-being of all.


But how does one communicate this essential idea to
those who are immune to it? The crude will laugh and
jeer; they know only their own appetites in a setting
that encourages those appetites. What they will or will
not do will have great effect in our present world. How
does one explain color to the blind?


Compassion then, including compassion for oneself,
is the hope of the world. Fortunately, there are many
today who understand this.

I LIKE LIT

I was fortunate to grow up in a family that read and
that prized knowledge for its own sake. Every Satur-
day our parents would take my brother and me to the
local library to check out books. When i was a teen-
ager i would read up to maybe eight books at a time.

How does one do that? I would read one book until
i got tired of it and then would go on to the next book
and so on until i was tired of reading. I had a crying
need to experience the world beyond the boundaries
of the tiny little town i grew up in. (Those were the
days when there were only two--maybe three--TV
stations and the content was pretty mediocre.)

I haven't been able to read much since i went to grad-
uate school but i'm at a point now where i can start
the lush (book) life again. I still read a number of
books at one time; it would be no exaggeration to say
that there fifty books around my bed. I'm not read-
ing them all but they are all books i'm looking for-
ward to reading. I'm waiting for the day when you
can get a chip implant and download the book
straight to the brain.

Here is the first paragraph of a book i just finished
by the Swedish author Par Lagerkvist, winner of the
1951 Nobel Prize for this book, The Dwarf. Not sure
when it takes place but in the time of princes, castles,
and royal courts.

"I am twenty-six inches tall, shapely and well
proportioned, my head perhaps a trifle too large. My
hair is not black like the others', but reddish, very
stiff and thick, drawn back from the temples and the
broad but not especially lofty brow. My face is beard-
less, but otherwise just like that of other men. My eye-
brows meet. My bodily strength is considerable, par-
ticularly if I am annoyed. When the wrestling match
was arranged between Jehoshaphat and myself I
forced him onto his back after twenty minutes and
strangled him. Since then I have been the only dwarf
at this court."

SPRING HAS SPRUNG

"Spring has sprung, Fall has fell, Winter's gone, all is
well."

So goes an old country & western song that comes to
mind as i contemplate the season. Spring is the excit-
ing season because of all the changes that go on, day
by day, to make our environs green & alive again. It's
a kind of resurrection from the dead & i thankfully
greet all the old friends as they arise and flower.

No one ever asked me what the 'official' sign of Spring
should be but if they did i'd choose the flowering of
the shad tree, also known as shadbush and service-
berry. Inconspicuous the rest of the year, the shad
tree is the first to flower in the woods in Spring, at
least in my part of the northeast. Its white flowers
and slender trunk give it a grace unlike anything
else in the forest.

But the shad tree has another dimension to it that is
not easily seen, which caused it to stand out for the
Original People (the Indians) prior to the European
Invasion of North America. And it is that the shad
tree flowered at the same time as the shad fish began
to swim up the rivers to spawn. For Indian peoples
(in my area the Mohican and the Munsee Delaware),
who sometimes suffered from starvation at the end
of Winter, the flowering shad tree must have had a
wonderful effect, for it meant that an abundance of
food was at hand once again. Although there is no
record for it, we can imagine how joyfully they cele-
brated.

And that is why i choose the flowering of the shad
tree as the recognized symbol of Spring in the north-
east. Not only is it beautiful but it heralds a new and
freshly-made world, full of rewarding possibilities.
Go out now and look for this special wonder of Nature;
it's everywhere.