April's notions about getting old

There are several ways to age. I had a sister-in-law who was determined to age as rapidly as possible. It was as if there was a benefit to being feeble. Recently I watched a Dragnet television show from the mid 1960’s. In the episode a character reminded Joe Friday that she was fragile because after all, “I’m 62 years old” she opined in a weak tremolo. A few years ago while in a fit of self absorption I googled one form of my own name. I found one of me who was a few years younger. His web site was devoted to his grand children. His own photograph made him look several years older than I. The leisure suit did not help though he chose it as representative of himself.

A few years ago a close friend (two days younger than I) suggested that there was something like a cut off point in the mid to late 60s in which young people determined that they should mature faster than others who came a few years later. It seems there is something to his anecdotal impression. People, who are five and six years older than I, seem to relish their age. I simply abide by my own. Hell it only lasts a year.

Well I cannot control the aging process. I suppose to the largest extent I can control how it affects me or at least my attitude about it. I cannot will away the physical effects of age though I suppose I can deter them to some extent. Since I decline on cosmetics I cannot hide the gray hair on my head or chin. The various webs growing across my face and brow determine that I have at least attained some age.

I used to take notice of how young some people looked. I have to admit that ten and fifteen years ago most people thought I was younger than I was. I had the good fortune of
an unwizened face. Another factor has to do with expectations. Since my kids were born during my very late 30s, I was amongst parents who were noticeably younger than I as we attended school functions with our kids. One of the things I noticed was that the spell of youthful looks beyond their reality was most often met with a sudden departure.

The gloss of youth when enduring longer than it should, hits the road suddenly and distinctly. It certainly happened to me. A few years ago people suggested that I was about 10 years younger than I was. Now if I am lucky people suggest that I am about two hours younger than I am.

All right so now I look my age (no one is suggesting to my face that I look older than that). Do I act my age? It would be easier for others to assess that but I have commentable comments and here are some of them.

I have stayed lean and get lots of exercise so I have stamina. That is sort of youthful don’t you think? I have a wry and ironic sense of humor. In the past this was referred to as acid humor. Acid being the drug rather than the fire like chemical. I still listen to the same music that I did in college (OK that may not work because I listened to far more Charlie Parker and Clifford Brown than I did The Doors or Leonard Cohen).

I think I am going on too long here. I never imagine myself as old. I like to think that when I make eye contact with the pleasant looking young woman I pass on the street, the smile she provides is a tiny testament to my youthful vigor. In reality it is more likely to be her kindness to her elders. A guy can dream though.

So I feel young and essential. I am building an interesting garden (more on that in coming blogs) and have gray hair. I have a lean and sinewy persona along with aching arthritis in my hands. My gums recede and I forget and remember at inopportune times.

Barring an accident or some cancerous mutation I probably have about 20-25 years left to explore life. I cannot think of anything better to do with that time. I hope I die falling off a cliff when I am 85.

Spring time 2009

It’s April now. Last week and friend and I went to see the Cherry Blossoms decorate Washington DC. I did this when about an extra several hundred thousand others descended on the capitol. It may have been great to enjoy the blossoms but it would be hard to tell as we were buffeted by the crowd, the festival noises and the wind.

It was a sunny day Saturday, April 4th. The temperature was mild-perhaps in the mid 50s. The wind gusted to the mid 50s as well. This phenomenon rendered most all conversation impossible if it were to occur outdoors. The sound of the gale and the extra effort to keep one’s hat on were too distracting to imagine any meaningful discourse.

When the wind is not howling (seemingly never), it is apt to be raining. When it is raining (seemingly more often than not), the temperature hangs out at around 50 degrees. When it is not howling or raining it is sunny but it is about 50 degrees and that is not enough to enthuse us about spring.

The tulips, daffodils, crocuses and the other early bloomers are doing just that. Despite their florid color and shapes they tend to look barren in the dismal gray of a rainy day; they tend to look brutalized from the wind that blows them nearly horizontal. There has been no royal pertness in this spring’s blooms and that is too bad. Most living things (mainly human) do not merit their supposed birth rite but spring blooms do. They are not getting their due this spring.

Moss is growing Kelly green as is the other undergrowth that is making its way as a replacement to the moribund grays of last year’s verdant crop of foliage. Lawns have been mowed and are awaiting there second shearing as they grow in mis-matched unevenness making the front yard look as if it gave itself its own haircut.

At the park the toads croak and groan their amorous notes while everywhere the birds trill with hopes of allure (or deceit). The squirrels seem to have a glint in their eyes (or do I anthropomorphize)? It is a randy world here in the northern hemisphere.

The rain barrel is full, the herb seeds incubating and the garden waiting to be finished; the seeds ready to germinate. This year I’ll be planting tomatoes, squash, peppers, beans, peas and asparagus; perhaps more. I need to find some tomatillo seeds but if they are not local they will be sent away for and used next year.

We will have to make due, those of us who wish the skies were bluer and the sun to warm us another 10 degrees. We only visit this orbiting orb for several decades and nature only provides for itself. We need to enjoy those things that we can. There are many of them too.

What’s in a Word?

A new web based, on line journal appeared last year. Evolution: Education and Outreach is designed to assist pedagogues (whether they are professional or otherwise) to understand how to impart the understanding of evolution as well as to scrape away the ideology that our opponents hope to impute on us. If creationists can find an opportunity to show that we practice a form of religion it makes a stronger case for imposing their form of religion on public school education.

A few years ago I came to understand the distinction between “believing” in evolution and believing in the efficacy of evolution as a method for understanding how material questions can be answered. Evolution is not a belief system but a methodology about how to understand the physical conditions of our world. It is not an answer to supernatural questions. It never dressed itself up to be. Evolutionary science solves problems that humans face every day.

In the journal (2009) 2:90-94, Glenn Branch and Eugenie Scott address an additional term that grows suspect as we attempt to discuss evolution to others who have confused notions of it.

The phrase “Darwinism” evokes the term “Evolution” to most of us who are secure in the knowledge that evolutionary science answers questions (and cures diseases). Yet it fails to aid in convincing those who are on the fence as to the value of evolution. It also creates sort of an ammunition for creationists who are looking for any “wedge” to splinter the understanding of phylogeny.

The numbers are legion who do not know what to understand. Their families and preachers tell them that evolution means atheism and is only a theory; that scientists have vast differences in their understanding and acceptance of evolution; that many in the media (with politically motivated agendas) view evolution as “junk science”.

We do not make a case for gainsaying those types of assertions when we conflate Darwinism to Evolution. Nor do we do so when we use the notion “believing in evolution”. Most of you readers know what those terms mean, but if we stick to them we are preaching to the choir (well…so to speak). We are also opening ourselves to the creationist argument that we ascribe ideology to evolutionary thinking. Once done, that effort equates our understanding, to a religious concept in their debate.

I’m a major proponent of Darwin. His notions of the tree of life and natural selection as its engine, are the cornerstones of the science that exists today. Darwin was prescient in many ways but his theory is only the base to what exists today. He could only work from the knowledge and tools of his time. He set the stage but the theory of evolution has gone far beyond what Darwin could impart. When we lionize Darwin we risk opening the notion of evolution, to creationist attacks that we are ideologues who preach a form of religion.

Science in 2009 is not really utilizing “Darwinian” thinking. It is utilizing evolutionary thinking. Since the fact of science is only a result of the fullest extent of its methodology, evolution cannot be a belief.

Most of us want to be pedagogues. We may have no interest in teaching high school students but we want to present a clear understanding of the method of research in our conversations. Evolutionary science is curing disease and helping us understand of earth. Let us use our terms cautiously. As great a man as Darwin was, he knew very little of what his theory of evolution tells us today. That theory is a viable construct to guide future research and understanding but it is not a belief system.

More links found today (02.12.09)

In America of course we celebrate Lincoln and Washington’s birthdays as we should. I have been pleasantly surprised at the growing consideration of Darwin. As one who set the stage for 150 of scientific research, he ought to be.

I noticed that my local Border’s Book store has a special section to promote Darwin and the theory of evolution.

National Geographic has its regular evolution issue and Forbes Magazine is devoted to Darwin in its current issue.

Below are a series of web links devoted largely to Darwin and to Lincoln as well.

Happy 12th of February.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/opinion/12judson.html?ref=opinion


http://www.politics.co.uk/analysis/legal-and-constitutional/support-grows-to-make-darwin-day-a-holiday-$1268366.htm


http://www.examiner.com/x-2044-Atheism-Examiner~y2009m1d30-Darwin-Day-global-celebration--February-12-2009


http://www.scienceprogress.org/2009/02/darwin-day-a-celebration-of-science-not-conflict/

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0212/p01s03-ussc.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/feb/12/simon-conway-morris-darwin

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100597929&sc=emaf

http://www.npr.org/help/media.html

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/02/12/lincoln_bicentennial/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/opinion/12thu4.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Some similarities between Lincoln and Darwin

While doing this annual research involving both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, what struck me was both profound and simple. Both were humanitarians; both were men of their times and they had strong notions about the value of people as humans.

Darwin met many tribal people in his travels on the Beagle and he held strong opinions about them. He was very interested in understanding their culture and their practices. In this sense he was an anthropologist though we rarely think of him as such.

He had great respect for those peoples as individuals and their cultures as human. There is no evidence of Darwin denigrating them as humans. He did however; feel that their culture was inferior to his 19th century western perspective. He felt that they needed the taming influence that was most conveniently derived from Christian missionaries. Darwin also was very cognizant that Europeans were an invasive species. They did what those species tend to do to the local environment. They overtake them and they change the entire eco-system. Darwin lamented this idea in The Voyage of the Beagle. It was a paradox for him as he saw the natives as living in cultures that needed an upgrade. Deign as he was, he admitted that the missionaries provided the steps toward civilization that natives required and yet he recognized that Europeans were stepping in on territory that they really had no moral right to. This was a struggle for Charles Darwin.

Lincoln had his issues with slavery. Like Darwin, on a personal basis he found the practice loathsome. On a practical level he found it to be politically expedient and manipulated his position and dictates as a president for the pragmatism of saving the Union and winning the war. Lincoln was pragmatic in the sense of the American philosophers that came about directly after the Civil War. Pragmatism in this sense is not the way it is used most commonly today. Pragmatism here is not conflated to practicality.

Pragmatism as defined by Dewey or Peirce described it to mean (this is a nutshell version) that one discards a belief when it is no longer functional and another provides more validity. It means being flexible to changing attitudes and beliefs based on new data. Lincoln was masterful at that and when one reads statements he made in 1848 versus those made in 1860 one recognizes him as a man who is in continual education. Lincoln never stopped learning and or amending his position based on what he understood at any time.

Abraham Lincoln viewed the African-Americans who were mostly slaves, as an inferior culture to the one that he thrived in. He felt that they needed “upgrading”. He did not put it into the missionary perspective that Darwin did but reading done here suggests that he would not have disagreed.

Most importantly though, Lincoln never treated a slave or a black freed-man with anything less than dignity-just as Darwin treated natives in has travels with personal respect.

Both were men of their times and positions. Neither were bastions of progressive race relations as we might expect in the 21st century. Both were considered very progressive (if not politically practical) in their day.

It would be at minimal naïve and maximally disingenuous to suggest that either would have 21st sensibilities about race. It is true that they each saw their own culture as superior to those described. It is equally true that each saw every human as a rightful heir to this planet and as a moral equal. Let us not be the naïve ones and try to place Darwin or Lincoln in our own cultural milieu and then castigate them for not having the racial foresight that the last 150 years have provided us.

Both men were very much ahead of their times in terms of dealing with minority races. Certainly they believed that those peoples needed “uplifting” but both saw them as indeterminably human and due respect.

I refused to vote for a black man to be president

Most of those who know me well assume that I voted for a black man to be the president. There are reasons that they would think that. Here are a few:

1. Some know that as a college student I was a member of the Black Student Union despite my Caucasian origin.
2. Some know that I have in the past been the campaign manager for a black political candidate.
3. Some know me as a member of the 60s student group-People Against Racism.
4. Some know me as a person who is not regulated by racial decisions when it comes to judging another.

I can understand that with those credentials amongst a few, people reading this would be baffled that I would not vote for a black man to be president.

My decision had nothing to do with the race of the person I would vote for. There are many reasons that I did not vote for a black man to be president. Here are a few:

1. Eight years of reneging on the notion of “compassionate conservativism.
2. Eight years of usurping public trust for the benefit of the tiniest minority.
3. Eight years of allowing “handlers” make policy for a weak president.
4. Eight years of attempts to destroy the federal government and replace it with business/political cronies.

I hadn’t thought about the possibility of a black man running for the nation’s highest office until about a year ago. It was not on my radar screen when I formed opinions and learned about the conditions of Americans and the International community during the last eight years.

While aging I continue to be interested in learning and developing. I am a pragmatist in the tradition of the American pragmatists of the 19th century rather than the misused term so roundly tossed out today. I am a believer in the Enlightenment notions that suggest that with empirical knowledge humans will make better decisions.

Voting for a black man would be soundly against those notions of Enlightenment and Pragmatism. So I did not vote for a black man to be president.

I voted for Barack Obama for many reasons and none of them were for a condition of his racial heritage. I admit that I would have voted for a tomato over John McCain but in fact I was enthusiastic in my efforts to elect Obama. My efforts had no place for his race.

As the campaign progressed I became acutely aware that we were dealing with a man who was promising the population that he was looking for genuine pragmatic answers to the many woes he would face tomorrow as he is inaugurated.

He has promised us that he will return executive decisions to be ones guided by science and sound logic rather than partisan rationale. He left me convinced that it is his goal to look out for Americans and to make decisions that are not designed to fulfill campaign promises or to strengthen party causes.

Ultimately here are some of the reasons I did not vote for a black man to become president:

1. I want to see a president with intelligence.
2. I want to see a president with strong moral commitments.
3. I want to see a president who does not make party loyalty their goal.
4. I want to see a president who can articulate a method to get out of the quagmire that he (and us) are left with in the hurricane disaster left by his predecessor.

So I did not vote for a black man to be president for all of the reasons above. I voted for Barack Obama because he is a fine choice given the conditions that prevail in America today. His job is onerous and filled with tests. I am left with confidence that right now the role of president has no bearing on race. No one is up to the task because they are a black man. I did not vote for a black man, I voted for Barack Obama instead and it was because I am convinced he is currently the man up to the task of putting this country on the right path and correcting as many of the ill conceived notions of the last guy as possible.

That is why I did not vote for a black man to be the president. That is why I voted for Barack Obama. Tomorrow he is sworn in. I will have faith in him so long as he does not let me down because I am convinced he would want me to view things that way.

Yay Barack! Yay Change!

Backyard Fauna...a follow up

The different seed has made a little change these past several weeks. The Chickadees have returned and the Song Sparrows on occasion, deign to challenge the House Sparrows for some of the feeding real estate.

There are only two feeders during the winter months. One with suet intended to lure a Downey or a Hairy Woodpecker. The other feeder, located near the kitchen window where I gaze and ponder the most, is for the “other” birds.

Since slathering the pole with grease the squirrels have given up trying to scale it. Initially they would leap to its midsection and glide down the pole providing us humans with some mirthful moments. They seem content now, feeding off the ground along with the Song Sparrow. There are enough residues from the frantic, feeding forays that there is plenty for all of them.

On the counter in the kitchen are a couple of oranges that are the remainder of too large a purchase. The peels are thinning and the pulp drying. Other than perhaps some zest they have little other value. I quartered one and laid it out underneath the feeder in a row where I could see what would happen. The birds ignored it entirely and after a very brief examination, the squirrels did too.

During the summer I grew tomatoes in a variety of locations in the yard. Deep in the back and out of view from the kitchen I grew an heirloom species whose particular name I have forgotten. They were medium size and quite good. Towards the end of the season while there was still several weeks of growing season, the nearly ripe ones began to disappear. They were not gnawed at they were picked clean and eaten elsewhere. There was no evidence of their remains any where nearby.

The plants were not damaged so I ruled out fox. Since they were not picked away at I ruled out rabbits. I wasn’t sure about the squirrels however (a brief aside, while it is very unlikely, it could have been humans). I didn’t know whether a fruit filled with citric acid would delight them.

Over night after leaving my orange pieces in the yard, they disappeared. I walked around and looked under a few of the bushes nearby and saw no sign of them. They were taken away to be eaten elsewhere.

In October I had moved the suet to the deck off the back of the house. No birds approached it in my viewing times. On two consecutives mornings I found a couple of raccoons on the railing, using their tiny but very deft paws to go through the cage that houses the suet squares to pull out chunks of the waxy mix. They took turns; they made a mess on the railing. At an interval that each seemed to understand, they cleaned up the mess and returned to scooping out their portions in what appeared to be systematic cooperation. In two mornings the suet was gone and I saw no more of the raccoons. They are nocturnal of course.

I think perhaps they have no issues with the acidity of citrus fruits. This evening I will cut up the remaining old orange and put it on the deck railing.