One shot left

"Do we want to be remembered as the generation that saved the banks and let the biosphere collapse?"

So asks George Monbiot in his article you can link to above. First World governments have been propping up the false economy to the tune of $4.2 TRILLION. They moved fast and they moved with a surety born out of what can only be called blind-vision.

Monbiot mentions that permafrost -- the world's biggest carbon sink -- is melting, and that it isn't even accounted for in most scientific climate change models.

I think back to our local MLA (Minister of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia) Bill Bennett, when he said, not 10 years ago, that environmentalists who warn about climate change are just like Chicken Little "running around saying 'the sky is falling! the sky is falling!'"

Are there any options to steer this crazy ship, the bulk of our denial, the relentless results of our greed, into calmer waters?

Monbiot offers some analysis, gathered from a number of sources, that isn't hopeful.

We have known about the dangers for decades.

Decades.

What now?

This be the verse

They fuck you up, your mom and dad

They may not mean to, but they do.

The fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can

And don't have any kids yourself.

~ Philip Larken

CARTOON CONTEST EXCLUSIVE

I'd love to be a cartoonist, but I've only ever had two ideas for cartoons.

To empty myself of this useless dream, I describe them here.

I'll pay anyone who draws them five bucks a piece--unless more than one person tries it, in which case I will declare a winner and pay that person only. (But the drawing has to be either skillful or wittily rustic---if you dash it off, dash it with style.)

1) Two very old and decrepit women sit in wheelchairs on a veranda. One has curlers in her hair and the other has just had her hair done. She is speaking to the first. CAPTION: You look tired.

2) A giant monster has smashed its leathery claw through an office building and picked off a middle manager. The man, in short sleeved shirt and tie, is flailing in the gnarly fist as his colleagues look on, horrified. The man screams. CAPTION: But I was just about to peruse the document!

-----------

Don't you find that when people say you look tired, they are really saying you look old? It's not like you can pick "looking tired" out of your teeth or tuck it back up under your dress.

And don't you hate the word, "peruse"? Yick. Read it! Documents are to be read!

Please comment on my post and let me know if you are in the running for the five dollars (CDN) I mentioned. 

This contest is only open to my friends---unless all you thousands of my "international" readers can convince me otherwise.

I'm serious.

Two cartoon ideas copyright Trish Barnes. Trish Barnes reserves the right to withhold the $5 award if no cartoons are up to snuff.

Poem / Counterpoem

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

 ~ William Carlos Williams, 1934

----------

Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams

1

I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.

I am sorry, but it was morning,and I had nothing to do

and its wooden beams were so inviting.

2

We laughed at the hollyhocks together

and then I sprayed them with lye.

Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.

3

I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years.

The man who asked for it was shabby

and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.

4

Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.

Forgive me. I was clumsy, and

I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!

~ Kenneth Koch, 1962

---------

Spraying hollyhocks with lye? Who would think of that?)

Murder is not punishment

On November 4, 50 men threw rocks at a young woman's head as she lay buried up to her neck in a hole in a stadium in Somalia.

Up to 1,000 people looked on--some anxiously, because a mêlée broke out and one little boy was shot and died.

Whether she was 13, as Amnesty International claims, or 22, as her murderers claim, is of no concern.

So much blasé hatred toward the body of another human being.

So much quick judgement.

Even one person dying under these circumstances is too many. Loss of life is the concern.

Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, I'm crying for you. Little boy, I'm crying for you.

I know that each man who harmed your precious bodies will one day feel remorse and compassion.

This is my prayer.

----------------------

I've read over the years that the feminine consciousness of the Earth is moving to rise up, get active, save us from hatred like the sort that would murder Aisha and the little boy.

From Mayan prophecy (written by white authors, I must add) to Jungian analysts, such as Marion Woodman, I hear that the feminine is waking from a bludgeon-induced slumber of thousands of years.

Have you ever read "The Chalice and the Blade?" by Riane Eisler? Ms. Eisler was one of the first people to write about the balance of gender power within our constructs of "gods" and "goddesses."

Looking to be heartened today I found Ms. Eisler's website.

She is still writing and still working to help increase our understanding of gender and also of violence.

She has started the Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence, SAIV, a grassroots movement that works with religious leaders to help reduce violence. When 80% of the world's people look to their religious leaders for guidance, it is up to the leaders to condemn violence in the home. Yet, the world over, religious leaders tend to remain mute about violence in the home. Eisler says cultures that condone violence in the home are also more warlike.

I signed up with SAIV today.

I don't know how I may be able to help.

My heart is open.

The Centenarian Time System--The Little Old Lady Scale

Having no TV, I missed Mr. Obama's speech last night.

But the Huffington Post has published it word for word. (With a few errors in punctuation.)

In his speech, Mr. Obama illustrates how history can be measured in the lifespan  of a 106-year-old woman, Ann Nixon Cooper.

A few weeks ago my husband and I were talking about history.

How far we have come since, say, Archimedes. He died in about 212 B.C.

So long ago, we agreed. So lost in the dust.

And yet, what if we were we to measure time differently, using a different scale? 

Could we make our understanding of time and history more immediate?

I thought of my grandmother, Jessie Angeline Reed, who died three years ago at age 94.

How many little old ladies---crocheting, attracted to flowered placemats---would it take to get us back to the times of Archimedes?

What if there was a line of Little Old Ladies to measure time?

A child is born.

At her cradle sits a Little Old Lady.

The child herself becomes a Little Old Lady.

100 years from her own birth, she sits at the cradle of newly born child.

And so on.

Turning the metaphor backward, how many Little Old Ladies would take us back to Archimedes?

Only 22.

Just two Little Old Ladies ago, the importation  of slaves into the United States was banned, Russia attacked Finland and Ludwig Van Beethoven performed his own works at a concert in Vienna.

Just four Little Old Ladies ago, Quebec City was founded, John Milton was born and fire destroyed all the houses in Jamestown, Virginia.

Just ten Little Old Ladies ago, Henry the First, King of France, was born.

And so on. Dear Wikepedia gets hazy and I have work to do so I can't scour the web to find tidbits that might make me look smart.

But, 22 Little Old Ladies don't even fill a room.

The woman Mr. Obama mentioned in his speech, Ann Nixon Cooper, is not just the emblem of America's "Yes we can" attitude overcoming the forces of hatred, injustice and deadly technology. She is, like all of us, a living embodiment of time. 

Mrs. Cooper, you have my respect.

Welcome Obama

It's 9:09 Mountain Standard time on November 4, 2008.

Most polls are closed except in the west.

Still, Obama has won.

Obama is the new president of the United States of Amercia.

I haven't been so heartened by U.S. politics since Jimmy Carter won in . . . 1976 or so, wasn't it?

I was just a kid then, but I recognized goodness in Carter.

I recognize the same in Barack Obama.

Welcome, Barack Obama.

May Stephen Harper, Canada's right-wing prime minister, take a leaf from your tree.

Trish