How Can You Laugh?
There's more to those words listed above, they being just one of the Beatles lyrics which finished with "...when you know I'm down." And I must admit that after a blitz of reading the news and other depressing tidbits, it's getting to me. So for the past few days I've been a bit "down." But shed no tears, my woes are so tiny that for someone who is truly depressed, or suffering from long-term depression, my being "down" would probably prove truly laughable. On the other hand, I tend to pull through these occasional slumps by lumping it all into a yin/yang moment of balance, my belief that there can only be so much good or bad before the pendulum has to swing back the other way (hmm, sounds very similar to Warren Buffet's indicator of our stock market's antics). But when you're facing a downturn (real or imagined), it can be difficult to see the sun over the horizon...think of being laid up in a hospital, or being laid off, or going yet another month without much money to feed your kids or pay the rent. At those points, the outlook might appear so long-term that the bad news might appear to be invincible. So, if you're anywhere near that point then stop reading now and jump to the bottom few paragraphs, for what follows are the bits and pieces that somehow seemed to be piling up in the pages I happened to pick up (and fair notice, this post isn't 100% depressing news...just that I thought I'd get the slurry of negative stuff out of the way early, while you're fresh and off guard).
One can jump into politics with those around the world wondering what the heck is happening in the U.S. And have no fear for many of us are wondering the same thing. It's an almost daily show of corruption or sex scandals or greed appearing in the upper echelons of our government, far overshadowing those trying to do good and follow what they feel is the right course. What's scary is that for many facing imprisonment or at the least, questioning, that is likely their feeling as well, that they are doing right; as just one example the current director of our Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, was quoted by The Daily Beast as, "...so comically corrupt that it's become impossible to keep track of all the investigations into his unscrupulousness" (he openly declares his disbelief in evolution, has reversed coal regulations to allow the dumping of their toxic tailings into rivers, and ruled that no further attempts ...will be made to assess the damage a potential carcinogen can cause people through air pollution and soil and water contamination. Meanwhile Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, openly re-drew the new boundaries of the shrunken Bear Ears National Monument to exclude our state representative's recently-purchased land, thus making it available for development or mineral exploration (that same representative is fighting for a new water way directly over his "other" recently purchased land so that he can lease that right-of-way back to the state). And speaking of leases, oil and gas companies now hold mineral right leases on land indefinitely, all without paying rent or royalties; if you or any other member of the public wants to use or bid on that land, well, you're out of luck. Said the Government Accountability Office: The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) grants suspensions (that is, public lands held under "suspended leases which never expire) without any opportunity for public comment, and once granted they are never reviewed.
This is all nothing really new in the U.S., or the world really. Often a bullying leader will force the ruling government (in the case of the U.S., the Republican-controlled Congress) to back down; and recent polls show that among Republican voters themselves, North Korea's dictator is viewed more favorably than that of the leading Democrat in the House of Representatives...what?? Since when did one of the pillars of democracy start favoring dictatorship? Add to all of that, the revelation that the U.S. population owns 46% of the world's guns; that's a little over 324 million guns or over 120 guns for every 100 residents (in a distant second place is Yemen with 52+ guns per hundred people). Fortune magazine headlined its recent cover, "The End Is Near" (of course, it was targeted at the economic model but hey, you get the idea). And with all of this going on just what is our Congress doing? Well, not much as the House side will continue its normal time off through the rest of the month while the Senate, perhaps feeling a bit more guilty, has reduced its vacation time to just one week (down from its usual three weeks this time of year). Not much of importance going on in this country says our top elected leaders, which might explain the recent jump in plastic surgeries by 29% --liposuction, eye lifts, hair transplants, and Botox-- by men! Appearances are everything, right?
Our climate is going haywire (or seems to be) as if mimicking the fact that churches and charities will be losing some of their tax benefits (due to the new tax laws) while Congress considers whether to add even more to our deficit by making changes to some capital gains and thus benefiting the wealthy even further (our Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin , has said that he would make the change with or without Congress); the U.S. currently pays close to $1 billion per day just in interest on our debt. Nothing really new there as exemplified by the recent book, Ten Thousand Years of Inequality which shows that the gap between rich and poor was almost as great in the days of Mesopotamia and Pompeii as it is in today's U.S. Throw in the wildfires happening all over the world, filling the air with smoky haze and added pollutants (on a good note, tobacco smoking among both adults and children & teenagers is down, partially replaced by vaping which, unfortunately, is proving even more addictive), illegal immigrants being deported and separated from their children (an interesting viewpoint appeared in The Washington Post),* and a study showing that the combined effects of 200 common drugs such as Prilosec, Zantac and Xanax can lead to (and build upon each other to create more) depression. Is it any wonder that suicides in the U.S. have jumped 28% in less than 20 years? (suicide is now the 2nd leading cause of death for young people).
Heavens, where's the good news? How about this one...in Vietnam, Operation Thunderstorm ended a monthlong cooperative investigation with 92 countries and temporarily stunted an animal smuggling trade. Said the report: Some 43 tons of wild meat were intercepted, including bear, elephant, crocodile, whale, and zebra, and 1.3 tons of elephant ivory, 27,000 reptiles, almost 4,000 birds, 48 live primates, and 14 big cats. Eight tons of pangolin scales, used in Asian medicine, were seized, half in Vietnam on a ship from Congo. Wait, that was the good news? For me, despite the sad statistics of how vast this trade still is (after all, the above result was only a single month's haul), it showed that countries can and will work together, that good is still out there fighting the brave fight against great odds such as declining budgets, a disappearing middle class, and little public interest. When National Geographic ran a piece on the many ways the positioning of our planet and our solar system is something we share with virtually no other (thus, life), they also featured the views of many returning astronauts and cosmonauts, one being Gennady Padalka who holds the record for the most time spent in space. Says the piece: For him, the experience was a lesson in the virtues of teamwork, which became amplified in the lethal environment of spaceflight. There's no doubt in his mind that the planet will endure, even if it is significantly altered by humanity. But her wonders if we as a species will survive our more selfish actions.
A good friend would often reflect in her newsletters on the delicate balance we seem to maintain with life (she's now passed but at the time ran a thriving business that had her travelling across the globe year after year). In one of her letters she wrote: As this earth day has come and gone, I've been thinking about the connection between our treatment of our environment and of other people on this tiny planet. While I am occasionally tempted to surrender to feelings of despair, I take hope in the ways that nature heals herself. Watching flowers blossom in the desert after a rain, watching what's left of a tree send out shoots and form new branches after being cut down, seeing grass sprout up in sidewalk cracks, all these offer reason for hope...I see a direct correlation between disregard of the earth and violence toward other cultures. Anytime we separate ourselves out from nature or from other people we run the risk of acting in an unconscious, destructive way. We allow ourselves to feel "better than" or "justified" in our actions. In describing his spiritual practice Thomas** says, "It is not possible to live in mindfulness and destroy life."
At times we all feel down, and sometimes those periods are stronger or deeper than others. But so far I am fortunate for something seems to always bounce me back and that something is usually something from the outside world...nature. The other night, my wife and I sat outside, talking for a bit when we spotted a rather large hawk circling overhead. We had seen as many as 13 of these large hawks but not very often. Still, something magnificent happens when seeing a large creature above you whether an eagle or a turkey vulture, that floating so gracefully in an atmosphere as alien to us as the ocean. But what we noticed more was the sudden silence around us, the birds --even the tiny hummingbirds so plentiful at our feeders-- were now gone, hidden and totally quiet. And then, the hawk landed on a large branch just above us, no more than 20 feet away. It stared at us, perhaps wondering why we were staring back (the hawks eyesight is ten times better than ours, something 20 feet away to us appears only 2 feet away to a hawk). It seemed to be a red-tailed hawk, their size somewhere between a crow and a goose with a wingspan of about 4 feet (114-133 cm), but we're not bird experts by any means. But it sat there for a good 5 minutes. Wow! Then as if tired of the silence, flew directly over us and away; but what happened next was that all the once-hidden birds emerged almost immediately, 4 of the hummingbirds flying out from under one of our hanging flower baskets, the air now filled with singing and chirping. It was a special moment, one we've never witnessed before and would likely never witness again, and yet something that likely happens in nature all the time and everywhere; predator and prey, that delicate balance in action, the good and the bad as seen from both sides. Life. It was a reminder that despite all that was happening in the news, there was something much bigger and much more important happening, something as unstoppable as a moving desert...and it was all there in front of us, staring back and wondering.
*In the story's follow-up, a judge ruled that children under 5 who have been separated from their deported parents must be reunited within 14 days; in this case, Portillo's daughter arrived back in El Salvador to her waiting father.
**A reference to Claude Anshin Thomas and his book At Hell's Gate; in the book, "Thomas says that the authoritarian, abusive family structure he experienced led him to accept the shaming tactics used in military training as a natural thing...It's a logical extension of a training that teaches people to see another race as the enemy. And it's the same separatist thinking that allows us to pollute our streams and air to the point where asthma, cancer, and ADD/ADHD and other thinking disorders are increasingly common."
One can jump into politics with those around the world wondering what the heck is happening in the U.S. And have no fear for many of us are wondering the same thing. It's an almost daily show of corruption or sex scandals or greed appearing in the upper echelons of our government, far overshadowing those trying to do good and follow what they feel is the right course. What's scary is that for many facing imprisonment or at the least, questioning, that is likely their feeling as well, that they are doing right; as just one example the current director of our Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, was quoted by The Daily Beast as, "...so comically corrupt that it's become impossible to keep track of all the investigations into his unscrupulousness" (he openly declares his disbelief in evolution, has reversed coal regulations to allow the dumping of their toxic tailings into rivers, and ruled that no further attempts ...will be made to assess the damage a potential carcinogen can cause people through air pollution and soil and water contamination. Meanwhile Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, openly re-drew the new boundaries of the shrunken Bear Ears National Monument to exclude our state representative's recently-purchased land, thus making it available for development or mineral exploration (that same representative is fighting for a new water way directly over his "other" recently purchased land so that he can lease that right-of-way back to the state). And speaking of leases, oil and gas companies now hold mineral right leases on land indefinitely, all without paying rent or royalties; if you or any other member of the public wants to use or bid on that land, well, you're out of luck. Said the Government Accountability Office: The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) grants suspensions (that is, public lands held under "suspended leases which never expire) without any opportunity for public comment, and once granted they are never reviewed.
This is all nothing really new in the U.S., or the world really. Often a bullying leader will force the ruling government (in the case of the U.S., the Republican-controlled Congress) to back down; and recent polls show that among Republican voters themselves, North Korea's dictator is viewed more favorably than that of the leading Democrat in the House of Representatives...what?? Since when did one of the pillars of democracy start favoring dictatorship? Add to all of that, the revelation that the U.S. population owns 46% of the world's guns; that's a little over 324 million guns or over 120 guns for every 100 residents (in a distant second place is Yemen with 52+ guns per hundred people). Fortune magazine headlined its recent cover, "The End Is Near" (of course, it was targeted at the economic model but hey, you get the idea). And with all of this going on just what is our Congress doing? Well, not much as the House side will continue its normal time off through the rest of the month while the Senate, perhaps feeling a bit more guilty, has reduced its vacation time to just one week (down from its usual three weeks this time of year). Not much of importance going on in this country says our top elected leaders, which might explain the recent jump in plastic surgeries by 29% --liposuction, eye lifts, hair transplants, and Botox-- by men! Appearances are everything, right?
Our climate is going haywire (or seems to be) as if mimicking the fact that churches and charities will be losing some of their tax benefits (due to the new tax laws) while Congress considers whether to add even more to our deficit by making changes to some capital gains and thus benefiting the wealthy even further (our Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin , has said that he would make the change with or without Congress); the U.S. currently pays close to $1 billion per day just in interest on our debt. Nothing really new there as exemplified by the recent book, Ten Thousand Years of Inequality which shows that the gap between rich and poor was almost as great in the days of Mesopotamia and Pompeii as it is in today's U.S. Throw in the wildfires happening all over the world, filling the air with smoky haze and added pollutants (on a good note, tobacco smoking among both adults and children & teenagers is down, partially replaced by vaping which, unfortunately, is proving even more addictive), illegal immigrants being deported and separated from their children (an interesting viewpoint appeared in The Washington Post),* and a study showing that the combined effects of 200 common drugs such as Prilosec, Zantac and Xanax can lead to (and build upon each other to create more) depression. Is it any wonder that suicides in the U.S. have jumped 28% in less than 20 years? (suicide is now the 2nd leading cause of death for young people).
Heavens, where's the good news? How about this one...in Vietnam, Operation Thunderstorm ended a monthlong cooperative investigation with 92 countries and temporarily stunted an animal smuggling trade. Said the report: Some 43 tons of wild meat were intercepted, including bear, elephant, crocodile, whale, and zebra, and 1.3 tons of elephant ivory, 27,000 reptiles, almost 4,000 birds, 48 live primates, and 14 big cats. Eight tons of pangolin scales, used in Asian medicine, were seized, half in Vietnam on a ship from Congo. Wait, that was the good news? For me, despite the sad statistics of how vast this trade still is (after all, the above result was only a single month's haul), it showed that countries can and will work together, that good is still out there fighting the brave fight against great odds such as declining budgets, a disappearing middle class, and little public interest. When National Geographic ran a piece on the many ways the positioning of our planet and our solar system is something we share with virtually no other (thus, life), they also featured the views of many returning astronauts and cosmonauts, one being Gennady Padalka who holds the record for the most time spent in space. Says the piece: For him, the experience was a lesson in the virtues of teamwork, which became amplified in the lethal environment of spaceflight. There's no doubt in his mind that the planet will endure, even if it is significantly altered by humanity. But her wonders if we as a species will survive our more selfish actions.
 |
The Gobi desert defying China's tree-planting efforts to stop its encroachment.
(Photo courtesy of Cathay Pacific)
|
A good friend would often reflect in her newsletters on the delicate balance we seem to maintain with life (she's now passed but at the time ran a thriving business that had her travelling across the globe year after year). In one of her letters she wrote: As this earth day has come and gone, I've been thinking about the connection between our treatment of our environment and of other people on this tiny planet. While I am occasionally tempted to surrender to feelings of despair, I take hope in the ways that nature heals herself. Watching flowers blossom in the desert after a rain, watching what's left of a tree send out shoots and form new branches after being cut down, seeing grass sprout up in sidewalk cracks, all these offer reason for hope...I see a direct correlation between disregard of the earth and violence toward other cultures. Anytime we separate ourselves out from nature or from other people we run the risk of acting in an unconscious, destructive way. We allow ourselves to feel "better than" or "justified" in our actions. In describing his spiritual practice Thomas** says, "It is not possible to live in mindfulness and destroy life."
 |
| Another view of the encroaching Gobi desert, this near the famed Magao Grottoes and its 492 cave temples; photo by Wu Jian |
At times we all feel down, and sometimes those periods are stronger or deeper than others. But so far I am fortunate for something seems to always bounce me back and that something is usually something from the outside world...nature. The other night, my wife and I sat outside, talking for a bit when we spotted a rather large hawk circling overhead. We had seen as many as 13 of these large hawks but not very often. Still, something magnificent happens when seeing a large creature above you whether an eagle or a turkey vulture, that floating so gracefully in an atmosphere as alien to us as the ocean. But what we noticed more was the sudden silence around us, the birds --even the tiny hummingbirds so plentiful at our feeders-- were now gone, hidden and totally quiet. And then, the hawk landed on a large branch just above us, no more than 20 feet away. It stared at us, perhaps wondering why we were staring back (the hawks eyesight is ten times better than ours, something 20 feet away to us appears only 2 feet away to a hawk). It seemed to be a red-tailed hawk, their size somewhere between a crow and a goose with a wingspan of about 4 feet (114-133 cm), but we're not bird experts by any means. But it sat there for a good 5 minutes. Wow! Then as if tired of the silence, flew directly over us and away; but what happened next was that all the once-hidden birds emerged almost immediately, 4 of the hummingbirds flying out from under one of our hanging flower baskets, the air now filled with singing and chirping. It was a special moment, one we've never witnessed before and would likely never witness again, and yet something that likely happens in nature all the time and everywhere; predator and prey, that delicate balance in action, the good and the bad as seen from both sides. Life. It was a reminder that despite all that was happening in the news, there was something much bigger and much more important happening, something as unstoppable as a moving desert...and it was all there in front of us, staring back and wondering.
*In the story's follow-up, a judge ruled that children under 5 who have been separated from their deported parents must be reunited within 14 days; in this case, Portillo's daughter arrived back in El Salvador to her waiting father.
**A reference to Claude Anshin Thomas and his book At Hell's Gate; in the book, "Thomas says that the authoritarian, abusive family structure he experienced led him to accept the shaming tactics used in military training as a natural thing...It's a logical extension of a training that teaches people to see another race as the enemy. And it's the same separatist thinking that allows us to pollute our streams and air to the point where asthma, cancer, and ADD/ADHD and other thinking disorders are increasingly common."
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