Random Notes
So here's something that's difficult to understand, this war thing. How can there be so many places in our world where war is a normal thing? Imagine a six-year old child; in certain parts of Syria that child would have by now grown up knowing only the sounds of mortar rounds and bullets (the civil war there enters its sixth year). In the child's mind there is likely little initial thought that stepping outside could mean his death or a serious injury, an injury that likely wouldn't be treated until he had undergone a long period of pain and agony. A child. Such stories of ongoing war and fighting, perhaps just isolated incidents or perhaps not, still prove difficult for me to understand.
Much of this came home in a recent interview from Terry Gross and her series, Fresh Air, in which reporter Rukmini Callimachi talks about her front line reporting on the fighting in Syria, what that means to be so close (generally as in a block or two away from the actual fighting but close enough to feel the shock waves and sounds of sniper fire), of how ISIS will kick in your door and basically imprison your family in one room while they dig out an escape tunnel (as in digging out your entire living room wall to wall and stacking the dirt in the rest of your home, floor to ceiling). In the background of some of her reporting, you can hear the constant (at least to those of us used to quiet or just the sounds of traffic or voices) sputtering of bullets and mortars, unfitting sounds that do indeed seem constant, a deadly staccato that seems to be without end). Here's how author Luke Mogelson described it in The New Yorker on writing about the efforts currently underway to take back Mosul in Iraq: The snipers eventually quit for the night, but they resumed with gusto in the morning. The SWAT-team members who were not stationed on the roof went to the road behind the house. Bullets zinged up the alley leading to the cemetery. Every now and then, the men backed a Humvee into the alley and aimed a few bursts from the Dushka at Al Quds; they also launched grenades from a turret-mounted MK19. The moment the Humvee pulled back behind cover, more bullets hit the house and the houses around it. They kicked up dirt and slapped against walls. They pierced an empty fuel tanker. They shook the branches of a tree and cut down leaves. They ricocheted off power-line poles, ringing them like bells. And it's not just ISIS; back in Syria, the government soldiers were described this way in The New York Review of Books: “When we went in, people were given one hour to evacuate,” a United Nations official said of Daraya. “They took nothing with them.” Regime soldiers looted everything the residents left. A Syrian friend, who has avoided taking sides in the war, told me, “When soldiers conquer an area, they regard everything as theirs.” Soon furniture, crockery, linens, televisions, refrigerators, and electrical cables turned up in the ta’afish --market for stolen goods-- of Damascus.
Both the broadcast and the articles were excellent and worth both listening to and reading (the article on Mosul is rather lengthy but will give you an idea of what a reporter embedded on the front line witnesses). Courageous reporting, both...but stepping back, I just don't get it. Any of it. What is all this about, this fighting, and why is it happening all around the world? Indonesia, Sudan, the Congo, parts of the Middle East. Patriotism, a battle for religion or land or power...maybe a battle for all of it? And again, where do all the bullets and mortars and weapons come from, this when the price of a simple gun here in the U.S. (about $400) is out of reach for most families. Purchasing just one more expensive assault weapon?...out of the question (even buying the hundreds or thousands of bullets would be out of reach or at least a low priority). Now place all of that weaponry in a remote area, generally one rife with harsh conditions where simple things such as water and eggs are difficult to obtain. Going to the bathroom with a flushing toilet, taking a shower, washing your clothes...out of the question. Now picture the family whose door has just been kicked in unexpectedly; here comes an entire team of well-equipped, adrenaline-filled fighters bursting into your home and fighting another group of even more weapon-equipped and high-tech soldiers outside...and there you are, scared, and thirsty, and hungry, and wondering if you'll still be alive in the morning or if your child or baby or grandmother will even make it through the night. You've seen death around you by now, everywhere...even if you're a child. That, I don't get...I don't understand how sort of thing can be funded and encouraged and done and authorized with such apathy as if it were all a dimensional computer game.
So here's something else I don't understand...do something that you, an intelligent and likely respected person, would willingly do even if you probably knew would harm hundreds or thousands of people. This can be a pharmaceutical or a food additive, or even a guideline (oleo margarine to please the corn industry?)...or something possibly worse. In Sierra there was the story of CAFO or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, this particular one being one of the 4400 such large operations in the state of North Carolina alone (such farms produce half the meat consumed in the U.S. says the piece). The waste generated by such a caged population of hogs or cattle or chickens can generate lagoon-sized holding ponds, many (in this case at least) 25-30 years old. Getting the lagoons to evaporate soon becomes a challenge; stopping them from overflowing or leaching into the water table becomes an even larger challenge. So what's the big deal? For one thing, such waste can carry the organism pfiesteria (as the article says, "You can fit 10,000 of them on the head of pin.") an organism that gets into wild-caught fish, causing boils which can spread to the fishermen along with the addition of memory loss. In 1990, "over 2 million fish surfaced dead on the river between August and October." Pfeisteria. And from the streams and rivers the water then flows out into the ocean.
Way, way back, a farmer in North Carolina saw the potential for mass factory farming of pigs, got himself elected into government and began passing bills to protect what would soon become a massive escalation of blocking watchdogs and regulators from any interference in such farming practices (the farmer/senator sold his operation to the corporate SmithfieldFoods which soon sold it to China's WH Group...ten years after his election, the former farmer's net worth stood at a billion dollars). The only regulator able to stand up to such state regulations (whose enforcement budget was slashed) was the federal government's EPA (whose own budget is scheduled to be slashed in Trump's proposed budget is passed by Congress). When the rains come, the lagoons are poised to flood...says the article: The sandy soils and relatively high water table of the coastal plain allow the aquifer to be accessed through only a few feet of soil. "When you're spraying swine waste out onto these fields, within a few hours what passes through the soil can be in the water table," Mallin said (Dr. Michael Mallin, a biologist and research professor out of the University of North Carolina). "The water in the aquifer will move downslope until it encounters a surface-water body, generally streams." Those streams lead to rivers, which, thanks to the hog farms, have become inundated with nitrates, fecal microbes, bacteria, and viruses. The DEQ (the state's Department of Environmental Quality) admits that there are intakes for municipal water systems on area rivers, which means that even if locals aren't using well water, they can still be bathing in, cooking with, and drinking water tainted with hog waste. Mallin also said that kids who swim and play in those creeks and streams are at risk of getting sick. The farmer wasn't alone in his quest for others in government had to both vote and approve his bills and to both vote and approve to cut budgets and to both vote and approve to future regulations or lawsuits. But weighing personal gain against the possible problems pfeisteria could cause --the possibility of sickness or memory loss or death, even to a six-year child-- that I don't get it.
Okay, this is getting a lot to read but one more closing thought. Pulitzer Prize winning author, Kathryn Schultz, wrote a piece in The New Yorker on losing things. Her writing snaked around from lost keys to lost memories and even how our language has shifted and slid the meaning of the words loss & lost to mean less and less. It's a poignant read, and one well worth taking the time to do so; but here's one of her conclusions at her clumsy losing of keys and such paled when set against her dying father: It is breathtaking, the extinguishing of consciousness. Yet that loss, too—our own ultimate unbeing—is dwarfed by the grander scheme. When we are experiencing it, loss often feels like an anomaly, a disruption in the usual order of things. In fact, though, it is the usual order of things. Entropy, mortality, extinction: the entire plan of the universe consists of losing, and life amounts to a reverse savings account in which we are eventually robbed of everything. Our dreams and plans and jobs and knees and backs and memories, the childhood friend, the husband of fifty years, the father of forever, the keys to the house, the keys to the car, the keys to the kingdom, the kingdom itself: sooner or later, all of it drifts into the Valley of Lost Things.
So there. There's what I don't get. The bullets, the damaged child, the quest for billions at the expense of perhaps billions (of lives), the convincing that we can indeed take it with us in the end when in fact it will all be gone...the kingdom itself, or at least our comprehension of it. The realization that only one letter separates the word lives from lies. Why do some of us convince ourselves so and feel that we are so right that other lives don't matter? That a bullet is a justified bullet whether it strikes a wall or a child, and whether you fired it from a gun or made it in a factory or ordered pallets of it sent to a country you likely will never visit. Just be sure to send the deposit here. Hmm, I don't get it...just some random notes.
Much of this came home in a recent interview from Terry Gross and her series, Fresh Air, in which reporter Rukmini Callimachi talks about her front line reporting on the fighting in Syria, what that means to be so close (generally as in a block or two away from the actual fighting but close enough to feel the shock waves and sounds of sniper fire), of how ISIS will kick in your door and basically imprison your family in one room while they dig out an escape tunnel (as in digging out your entire living room wall to wall and stacking the dirt in the rest of your home, floor to ceiling). In the background of some of her reporting, you can hear the constant (at least to those of us used to quiet or just the sounds of traffic or voices) sputtering of bullets and mortars, unfitting sounds that do indeed seem constant, a deadly staccato that seems to be without end). Here's how author Luke Mogelson described it in The New Yorker on writing about the efforts currently underway to take back Mosul in Iraq: The snipers eventually quit for the night, but they resumed with gusto in the morning. The SWAT-team members who were not stationed on the roof went to the road behind the house. Bullets zinged up the alley leading to the cemetery. Every now and then, the men backed a Humvee into the alley and aimed a few bursts from the Dushka at Al Quds; they also launched grenades from a turret-mounted MK19. The moment the Humvee pulled back behind cover, more bullets hit the house and the houses around it. They kicked up dirt and slapped against walls. They pierced an empty fuel tanker. They shook the branches of a tree and cut down leaves. They ricocheted off power-line poles, ringing them like bells. And it's not just ISIS; back in Syria, the government soldiers were described this way in The New York Review of Books: “When we went in, people were given one hour to evacuate,” a United Nations official said of Daraya. “They took nothing with them.” Regime soldiers looted everything the residents left. A Syrian friend, who has avoided taking sides in the war, told me, “When soldiers conquer an area, they regard everything as theirs.” Soon furniture, crockery, linens, televisions, refrigerators, and electrical cables turned up in the ta’afish --market for stolen goods-- of Damascus.
Both the broadcast and the articles were excellent and worth both listening to and reading (the article on Mosul is rather lengthy but will give you an idea of what a reporter embedded on the front line witnesses). Courageous reporting, both...but stepping back, I just don't get it. Any of it. What is all this about, this fighting, and why is it happening all around the world? Indonesia, Sudan, the Congo, parts of the Middle East. Patriotism, a battle for religion or land or power...maybe a battle for all of it? And again, where do all the bullets and mortars and weapons come from, this when the price of a simple gun here in the U.S. (about $400) is out of reach for most families. Purchasing just one more expensive assault weapon?...out of the question (even buying the hundreds or thousands of bullets would be out of reach or at least a low priority). Now place all of that weaponry in a remote area, generally one rife with harsh conditions where simple things such as water and eggs are difficult to obtain. Going to the bathroom with a flushing toilet, taking a shower, washing your clothes...out of the question. Now picture the family whose door has just been kicked in unexpectedly; here comes an entire team of well-equipped, adrenaline-filled fighters bursting into your home and fighting another group of even more weapon-equipped and high-tech soldiers outside...and there you are, scared, and thirsty, and hungry, and wondering if you'll still be alive in the morning or if your child or baby or grandmother will even make it through the night. You've seen death around you by now, everywhere...even if you're a child. That, I don't get...I don't understand how sort of thing can be funded and encouraged and done and authorized with such apathy as if it were all a dimensional computer game.
So here's something else I don't understand...do something that you, an intelligent and likely respected person, would willingly do even if you probably knew would harm hundreds or thousands of people. This can be a pharmaceutical or a food additive, or even a guideline (oleo margarine to please the corn industry?)...or something possibly worse. In Sierra there was the story of CAFO or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, this particular one being one of the 4400 such large operations in the state of North Carolina alone (such farms produce half the meat consumed in the U.S. says the piece). The waste generated by such a caged population of hogs or cattle or chickens can generate lagoon-sized holding ponds, many (in this case at least) 25-30 years old. Getting the lagoons to evaporate soon becomes a challenge; stopping them from overflowing or leaching into the water table becomes an even larger challenge. So what's the big deal? For one thing, such waste can carry the organism pfiesteria (as the article says, "You can fit 10,000 of them on the head of pin.") an organism that gets into wild-caught fish, causing boils which can spread to the fishermen along with the addition of memory loss. In 1990, "over 2 million fish surfaced dead on the river between August and October." Pfeisteria. And from the streams and rivers the water then flows out into the ocean.
Way, way back, a farmer in North Carolina saw the potential for mass factory farming of pigs, got himself elected into government and began passing bills to protect what would soon become a massive escalation of blocking watchdogs and regulators from any interference in such farming practices (the farmer/senator sold his operation to the corporate SmithfieldFoods which soon sold it to China's WH Group...ten years after his election, the former farmer's net worth stood at a billion dollars). The only regulator able to stand up to such state regulations (whose enforcement budget was slashed) was the federal government's EPA (whose own budget is scheduled to be slashed in Trump's proposed budget is passed by Congress). When the rains come, the lagoons are poised to flood...says the article: The sandy soils and relatively high water table of the coastal plain allow the aquifer to be accessed through only a few feet of soil. "When you're spraying swine waste out onto these fields, within a few hours what passes through the soil can be in the water table," Mallin said (Dr. Michael Mallin, a biologist and research professor out of the University of North Carolina). "The water in the aquifer will move downslope until it encounters a surface-water body, generally streams." Those streams lead to rivers, which, thanks to the hog farms, have become inundated with nitrates, fecal microbes, bacteria, and viruses. The DEQ (the state's Department of Environmental Quality) admits that there are intakes for municipal water systems on area rivers, which means that even if locals aren't using well water, they can still be bathing in, cooking with, and drinking water tainted with hog waste. Mallin also said that kids who swim and play in those creeks and streams are at risk of getting sick. The farmer wasn't alone in his quest for others in government had to both vote and approve his bills and to both vote and approve to cut budgets and to both vote and approve to future regulations or lawsuits. But weighing personal gain against the possible problems pfeisteria could cause --the possibility of sickness or memory loss or death, even to a six-year child-- that I don't get it.
Okay, this is getting a lot to read but one more closing thought. Pulitzer Prize winning author, Kathryn Schultz, wrote a piece in The New Yorker on losing things. Her writing snaked around from lost keys to lost memories and even how our language has shifted and slid the meaning of the words loss & lost to mean less and less. It's a poignant read, and one well worth taking the time to do so; but here's one of her conclusions at her clumsy losing of keys and such paled when set against her dying father: It is breathtaking, the extinguishing of consciousness. Yet that loss, too—our own ultimate unbeing—is dwarfed by the grander scheme. When we are experiencing it, loss often feels like an anomaly, a disruption in the usual order of things. In fact, though, it is the usual order of things. Entropy, mortality, extinction: the entire plan of the universe consists of losing, and life amounts to a reverse savings account in which we are eventually robbed of everything. Our dreams and plans and jobs and knees and backs and memories, the childhood friend, the husband of fifty years, the father of forever, the keys to the house, the keys to the car, the keys to the kingdom, the kingdom itself: sooner or later, all of it drifts into the Valley of Lost Things.
So there. There's what I don't get. The bullets, the damaged child, the quest for billions at the expense of perhaps billions (of lives), the convincing that we can indeed take it with us in the end when in fact it will all be gone...the kingdom itself, or at least our comprehension of it. The realization that only one letter separates the word lives from lies. Why do some of us convince ourselves so and feel that we are so right that other lives don't matter? That a bullet is a justified bullet whether it strikes a wall or a child, and whether you fired it from a gun or made it in a factory or ordered pallets of it sent to a country you likely will never visit. Just be sure to send the deposit here. Hmm, I don't get it...just some random notes.
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