We each began a (more-or-less) weekly blog in February, 2006. In part, we do this to keep our writing noses to the grindstone, and in part to reveal some internal dialogue to our nearest and dearest - and any other interested website readers.  The most recent blog entries are at the top of the page.

Click here to see the index of all blog topics.

[And to read the 2007 blog entries, click here]

August 23, 2006 (Bill: The Medicare snafu)

          Today's Oregonian contains inside this little squib about a major snafu by the Medicare Program.

"About 230,000 Medicare recipients are getting checks that eroneously reimburse them for monthly premiums they have paid for prescription drug coverage this year. The checks average about $215 and are accompanied by a letter that mistakenly says that the Social Security Administration will no longer deduct monthly premiums for drug coverage. Medicare officials caught the glitch just after checks totalling $50 million were sent out last week. As a result, they began sending a second letter instructing the elderly and disabled not to cash the checks and assuring them that their prescription drug coverage will continue."

          Give me a break! Instead of seeking out qualified people, this administration has consistently appointed political hacks to top level management positions in the federal government, as part of its effort to crumble some formerly effective programs. It is clearly succeeding.

August 15, 2006 (Bill: Nietzsche)

          Serendipity Strikes Again. I’ve long been an advocate, fan, and admirer of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) because of his insights into what it means to be a human being. I’m aware that the default setting on Nietzsche is that he advocated Aryan reform and was deemed a precursor to Nazism in Germany. There is now ample evidence that all of that is untrue, but the stereotype hangs one. For me he says better than any other philosopher that the purpose of life is to continue evolving beyond our present state and that the way to do that is to look deeply into ourselves and come to understand just what drives our behavior.

          Imagine my delight last week when reading The Yalom Reader (Irvin Yalom)  I found in chapter nine a discussion of Nietzsche’s remarkable contributions to existential thinking. Yalom articulates my long term stance on Nietzsche incredibly well, certainly a good deal better than I can. It was nice to discover someone else, especially one as well known as Yalom, supporting my position that Nietzsche has a huge amount to offer and was not simply a “God is dead” anti-life philosopher.

          It appears that, as Nietzsche predicted, he may be coming into his own a hundred years after his death. For a quick glimpse of what Nietzsche was about read pages 375-380 in The Yalom Reader by Irvin Yalom: New York, Basic Books, 1998.  If that cranks up your interest, have a go at reading The Portable Nietzsche edited by Walter Kaufman: New York, Viking Press, 1954.

August 3 , 2006 (Bill: Politics!)

         Listening to NPR’s All Things Considered last night was informative and sadly entertaining. The gist of one news report was that Congress has decided to allow the cafeteria in the Capitol to
return to listing French Fries and French Toast on its menus rather than Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast as they are now labelled. Why was this necessary? Because a resolution had been previously passed to eliminate the use of the word ‘French’ to symbolically show our disdain for France in not supporting the pre-emptive attack of Iraq in 2003. I find it positively ludicrous that Congress is so engaged in the bizarre charade we call politics that it has the time and energy to first pass and a few years later repeal such a resolution.

July 20, 2006 (Bill: Pre-emptive strikes)

          In the course of 7 days ending yesterday there have been over 2,000 air attacks by Israel on Lebanon. And no-one is calling it insane. In the last decade, the US has set back the course of peace by 100 years. It has made the idea of "pre-emptive" strike acceptable as a rationale for invading or bombing a country. The US has led the way, and modelled that behavior for others to follow. Just watch how Israel has learned from us.  

          In domestic situations, pre-emptive strike is called assault and battery with a deadly weapon. What's going on in the middle east is standard "We have to destroy the village to save it" bullshit, and our government is highly invested in not calling a spade a spade.

July 1, 2006 (Bill: Existential issues)

          I'm busy now that I'm back home in Clemmie. I think often about the four primary issues that all humans face because of our unique capacity for self reflection. For the most part, because these issues are so anxiety provoking, we spend our lives figuring out how to keep busy enough so we can avoid dealing with them.

• We are mortal. We are going to die, and in a hundred years we and everyone we know and love will be dead and gone.
• Choice. At every moment in our lives we are confronted with choices; as you read this you have to choose whether or not to believe it.
• Loneliness We are born alone and we will die alone and we know it - yet much of our time is spent in attempting to make meaningful connection with others.
• The meaning of life. We are born into a meaningless world. We have to create meaning in order to know how to act and we do this by choosing a social role that our culture affirms (doctor, lawyer, soldier, teacher, plumber, minister, politician, whatever.)

June 26, 2006 (Bill: Military spending)

          The U.S. defense budget, $561,000,000,000, is more than half of the world’s total defense budget which distributed among 169 countries totals $1,097,115,610,000. We’re spending more than twice the $280,000,000,000 combined spending of the countries with the next ten largest defense budgets (U.K., France, Japan, China, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Russia, India, South Korea, and Australia). Our defense budget is more than 45-times larger than the combined spending of the seven states we have identified as "rogue" states (Cuba $1.4 billion, Iran $6.2 billion, Iraq $0, Libya $0.6 billion, North Korea $1.9 billion , Sudan $0.5 billion and Syria $1.5 billion).

          Meanwhile polls by the Program on International Policy Attitudes indicate that more than 80% of the U.S. voting population wants reduced military spending and increased spending for social services such as health care and education - over 50,000,000 of us are without health care insurance.

          Whatever became of our representative democracy? The will of the people? Just who is being represented? Who’s interests are being served?

June 23, 2006 (Bill: Our Calanais stones)

          We went and saw the Calanais Stones on the Outer Hebridean Isle of Lewis in Scotland. A magnificent array of huge stones, each ten to twelve feet high, possibly three feet wide, maybe 1½ to 2 feet thick and weighing upwards of 1500 lbs., all carefully placed to form a Stonehenge-like pattern that clearly had some kind of meaning and spiritual significance to the people of the prehistoric culture that erected them some 5000 years ago. Undoubtedly they congregated here at this site they deemed sacred. In some way these stones were part of their understanding of what the heavens were about or addressed the spirits of their ancestors or appeased the gods in whom they believed. Perhaps they marked the equinox or seasonal changes or the phases of the moon or the tides. Clearly some system of beliefs, some explanation of what life was about, its higher meaning, led them to devote the necessary untold hours, days, and years of collective time, energy and tribal resources needed to construct such a site.

          It was a poignant reminder that through the development of language Man is unique in the animal kingdom. He is the only animal to have evolved to the point where he is meaning-driven rather than instinct-driven, and to that end must and does create symbols and rituals which ascribe meaning to life. We are the only species who, as Shaw noted, must explain ourselves to ourselves.

          And now, in our present culture what drives our behavior? How do we ascribe meaning to our lives? To what do we devote untold hours, days, and years of collective time, energy and tribal resources? What sites have we created and deemed sacred? Where do we congregate? Where are our Calanais Stones? Have shopping malls become our sacred ground? Is it ‘shop ‘til you drop’ that we’ve sanctified? I fear we have so subordinated our human values and rights to the demands and expectations of market forces that we are turning our entire society into docile consumers. It appears Ralph Waldo Emerson accurately expressed our creeping deification of consumerism some hundred and twenty-five years ago when he said; “Things are in the saddle, and they ride mankind.”

[NOTE: due to distractions and constraints on accessing the Internet during our travels in the UK, the blog entries are on hold for a few weeks.]

April 26, 2006 (Bill: Our default settings)

          I’ve been thinking again about what makes us human beings tick. At this point in time the world population is about six and a quarter billion. It’s a bit tough to get your mind wrapped around a number that big. If you counted it out at the rate of one number per second it would take you more than 200 years to finish counting. (Actually a lot longer than that because all the big numbers like 37,491 take more than a second to say.) Whereas six and quarter billion minutes ago would take you back 12 or 13 thousand years. So here we are, all 6,250,000,000 of us, each unique, each with our own names. Each of us harboring the miracle of self-awareness, the ability to self reflect and contemplate whether we are being a person right or should we try to change the way we are.

          As we go through life, we develop many of what I call ‘default settings’. Those ways of behaving and responding to situations without really consciously thinking them out. Are we essentially hopeful or fearful? Go for it or be careful? Competitive or cooperative? Doubter or believer? Yes or no? Abundance or scarcity focused? Do we sort for what’s wrong in a situation or what’s right? Do we see the universe as friendly or unfriendly? These default settings have a huge impact on how we go at our lives, on what makes us tick in our own unique way. When we are unaware of them they often trump or short circuit our rational thinking process. When we are aware of them we can control them;  when we’re unaware of them they control us.

April 19, 2006 (Bill: The Iraq war)

          Here in the United States we have a form of government which is called a representative democracy. That means we elect a president, senators and representatives and send them to Washington to represent the will of the people and speak and act on our behalf. A study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) found that on the eve of the 2004 election, 74 percent of the public felt that the United States should not have gone to war if Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction or was not providing support to Al Qaeda (58 percent of Bush supporters, 92 percent of Kerry supporters and 77 percent of the uncommitted).

          PIPA studies have also shown that by April 2003, a few weeks after the invasion, a large majority felt that the UN should take the lead in resotring civil order and economic reconstruction in Iraq. By December 2003, 70 percent of us held that the UN should also ‘take the lead to work with Iraqis to write a new constitution and build a new democratic government.’ As pointed out in Noam Chomsky’s recent book Failed States, these figures suggest a simple ‘exit strategy,’ if our current administration had any interest in pursuing this course: follow the will of the American public, and transfer authority to the UN - assuming, as always, that Iraqis favor this option.

April 14, 2006 (Bill: Presidential misbehavior)

    During his execution of the office of the presidency George W. Bush has violated his oath of office to faithfully execute the laws of the land on a number of fronts including:

• launching an illegal war in violation of signed treaties, which the Constitution sets forth as the law of the land;
• the wiretapping of U.S. citizens in contravention of FISA;
• allowing the articulation and defense of a policy in favor of torture - in contravention of an archetypal norm basic to any legal order and civilized society;
• engaging in the mass detention of citizens and non-citizens solely on his unreviewable word that they are ‘enemy combatants’;
• denying the right to counsel to detainees, including U.S. citizens on U.S. soil;
• the mass detention and disappearances of immigrants;
• the abuse and torture of detainees on the mainland, in Guantanamo, and in Iraq; and
• misusing the concept of rendition in violation of the Geneva Convention

          Taken as a whole, these acts represent a pattern of behavior which conflicts with our constitution, international law, and any common understanding of morality. I am deeply concerned about the appalling precedent that will be set for future presidents if the Judiciary Committee does not initiate impeachment proceedings in response to this consistent pattern of executive misbehavior.

          Representative John Conyers has proposed H. Res. 635 which calls for a Select Committee to investigate President Bush’s lies about Iraq, wiretapping, etc. and to make recommendations as to whether there is sufficient evidence for impeachment.

          I urge you to write (fax is recommended) to your congressional representatives in Washington and on the Judiciary Committee and ask them to support Rep. Conyers and vote yes on HR 635.

March 13, 2006 (Bill: Head Start)

    Did you know that:

• The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will be looking at the Head Start reauthorization legislation (S. 1107) which will come to the Senate floor soon.
• They are considering effectively dismantling the program by shifting oversight to the states.
• There is also the danger of across-the-board cuts in federal discretionary spending, which will reduce Head Start funding.
• The U.S. has highest prison population per capita in the world at 701 per 100,000 at year end 2004 for a total of 2,267,787 inmates. The average annual cost per inmate per prison year is over $20,000. Construction costs alone for new Federal prison in 2001 - 2003 exceeded 1.2 billion dollars. We are currently spending over 18 billion dollars a year on the war on drugs alone.
• Research has proven that Head Start is the single most effective program for reducing delinquency, criminal behavior, and adolescent entrance into the criminal justice system. In 2004 the total federal budget for Head Start was only $6,773,909,000.

         I want more support for Head Start and less need for building more and more prisons so I’m contacting my Senators and my House representative to let them know that. If you agree, I’d like you to do the same:  call, write, e-mail, fax your congressional representatives and let them know that you support Head Start and want to see the program strengthened rather weakened. Do it now! You live in a representative democracy. Don’t be a spectator who votes once every four years. Be enough of an activist to let your representatives in Washington know what you want from them. Thank you!

March 9 , 2006 (Bill: The National Debt)

    Notice To All Residents of the United States: As of this morning the national debt stands at $8,280,138,347,988.18. The debt increases because the U.S. Government spends more than it collects in taxes. This is called deficit spending. Since last September 30th the National Debt has continued to increase an average of $2.17 billion per day. The estimated population of the United States is 298,726,564 so each citizen's share of this debt is now $27,718.12. Please send your check in that amount to the Treasury Department at once. Each day’s delay is costing you an additional $726.42.

    You will be relieved to learn that the Treasury Department does accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express. Remember, these cards have been created to allow you as an private citizen to engage in the miracle of deficit spending. Should you decide to pay by personal check, please add $2179.20 to pay for the three days it will take for your check to clear. And, of course, advise your congressmen that you badly need additional tax cuts in order to satisfy the Treasury Department's appetite.

February 25, 2006 (Bill: Works of Ernest Becker)

          I’m quite taken with the works of the anthropologist Ernest Becker. He wrote three very powerful books: The Birth and Death of Meaning;  Denial of Death (for which he won the Pulitzer Prize);  and Escape from Evil. They are all based on extensive study and integration of the findings of anthropology, sociology and psychology over the last century.

          Essentially, Becker found that those fields clearly show that man is the first species to be motivated and driven primarily by two basic psychological needs: the need to avoid excessive anxiety; and the need to maintain and support sufficient self-esteem to feel as though he matters, has value, and is worthy in the culture in which he is born into or finds himself. Through the evolutionary development of the ego, which Becker defines as the first psychological organ to evolve, and the development of language, man learned to control his instincts, put them on hold, evaluate situations, and examine alternative courses of action. He does this by employing language to symbolize his day-to-day life experience and by responding to the meaning of the symbols. Thus man has become the first species to be primarily "meaning-driven" rather than "instinct-driven."

          Thus, if your spouse answers the phone and says: “Its your mother, she wants to thank you for the birthday gift” you respond very differently than if your spouse says: “It’s the police they’ve been told there’s a bomb planted in our house due to ignite in fifteen minutes.”

          This step in evolution has created a world-changing - possibly earth-shattering - impact on life on this planet. It has provided the means to create, among other things, ideology, philosophy, theology, nationalism, chauvinism, jingoism, patriotism, medicine, engineering, mythology, environmentalism, war, and genocide. It has also endowed our species with the responsibility of being active participants in, rather than passive recipients of, the evolutionary process.

          One of the most compelling and weighty questions of our era is how we are handling that responsibility.

February 19, 2006 (Bill: Integrity)

          I’ve been thinking about the concept of integrity. It goes all the way from the capacity of our autonomous nervous system to reject foreign objects - organ transplants that we wish it wouldn’t reject - to kinesiological muscle testing which make a person test weak if he lies or states a false name. The body doesn’t know how to lie. Another way this surfaces in human interaction is Freudian slips when we mis-speak because of an internal conflict or disagreement about what we are saying.

         It appears that integrity is closely tied to the concepts of trust and truth. “He has a lot of integrity” usually means "what you see is what you get." Apparently when you fail to follow Shakespeare’s advice and “to thine own self be true,” your muscles know about it and say ‘no,’ and your unconscious knows about it and mis-speaks for you.

          How do we decide when a person is telling us the truth or lying to us? When we hear a politician speaking how do we determine whether or not to believe him? Perhaps we should have kinesiologists on hand whenever politicians make speeches.

September 18 , 2006 (Pat:Death of the common good)

          I am having a very hard time sitting on the sidelines while the president of the supposedly most advanced country in the world condones and promotes the "disappearing" and torture of political prisoners. Apparently there are some 14,000 of these souls being held outside the US. Why aren't we all rising up in revulsion? Is this what western civilization is about? Didn't we think this kind of behavior belongs only to bully dictators?

          These past 6 years, and presumably for the next two, my country is being governed by a bunch of cronies who don't understand the fundamental difference between policy and politics, who never internalized the lessons of Civics 101. Policy is about the common good. Politics is about grabbing and keeping power at all costs. Our so-called leadership seems to be building a funeral pyre for the poor old common good.

          I think I'm disgusted.

August 31, 2006 (Pat: Confronting existence)

          In the dusk of yesterday's evening I walked to the mouth of the nearby Siuslaw River to see what birds were about. On a log inside a floating dock I saw some 500 (mostly Western with a few Least) Sandpipers huddling together, shifting position, zipping on and off, while preparing to roost for the night. These teeny birds - some for the first time - are migrating south from breeding grounds in the northern tundra. Each one is special, I thought, no less than you or me.

         We humans must consciously or unconsciously come to terms with the essential facts of our existence. These are scary things to face: (1) we are going to die; (2) we do not control our world; (3) we live and die alone; and (4) the universe is indifferent to us. It seems that there are two ways that individuals deal with these anxieties of existence.

          Irvin Yalom said: "Wisdom does not lead to madness, nor denial to sanity. The confrontation with the givens of existence is painful but ultimately healing."  This confrontation, it seems to me, is the true work facing each of us. And it is healing work: if we don't do it we must use up psychic energy to keep the lid on Pandora's box.

August 22, 2006 (Pat: Winning hearts & minds)

          Dear President Bush: you won't win the hearts and minds of American citizens with hollow and manipulative rhetoric. We're not so stupid we can't see that it's just words, words, words, a whole lot of empty spin. And you don't win the hearts and minds of people in other countries by using force. You win hearts and minds at home and abroad by doing useful and helpful deeds. It's not what you say that people care about, it's what you do that counts.

August 15, 2006 (Pat: Newton's 3rd Law)

          The BBC news website is holding a moderated debate about whether the cease fire in Lebanon will be permanent. Here's the 2¢ worth I offered:

The cease fire in Lebanon will not permanently hold until the underlying grievances and frustrations on both sides are dealt with and widely seen to be FAIRLY addressed. Force cannot produce permanent peace - Newton's third law applies equally to human behavior (fighting and coercion.) Peace can only be achieved through some kind of political process that is perceived to be fair by all parties. Hence, so long as the US is involved, peace will remain illusive because of its (the US') obvious bias.

          FYI, Newton's 3rd law states "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." This means that in every interaction, a pair of forces act on each other. Forces always come in pairs - equal and opposite action/reaction force pairs. Ergo, if one person starts a fight with another, the victim fights back - even if they have to do it surreptitiously. Just watch any kindergarten playground.

August 11, 2006 (Pat: Maintenance)

          Being aware of how little maintenance we have in our lives made me think about how slowly its burden awakens in kids. When a kid gets a new toys or stuff, s/he tend to think it's always going to stay in its new, pristine, condition and then is disappointed when it break or loose its luster. For the most part, at that point the item goes in the trash bin. Except for favorite shirts, shoes, etc., which improve with age until they're rags or outgrown. Same thing with a new first house or car. Young or first-time buyers rarely plan how they're going to pay for maintenance and repair - such demands appear after-the-fact as unpleasant surprises.

          Why don't schools teach, beginning at a young age and continuing into high school, formal life skills? About money, where it comes from, credit, debt, and saving. About maintenance, its burden of prevention, routine care, and the drain of deferred cost. That the more you have, the more you'll be buried in maintenance. About human relations, conflict, cooperation, individual differences, and social responsibility. About health, nutrition, attitude, and fitness. About family life, child care, stress, and aging.

August 4 , 2006 (Pat: The RV Life)

          I know it's not a week since I wrote my last blog entry, but I have to share this thought. (With whom, I wonder? Does anyone read these blog entries? Please let us know.) Anyway,  I was thinking how much easier it is in Clemmie to get up and go somewhere. Basically a question of securing a few things inside and remembering to unplug. A few moments only. We forgot one day, but a fellow camper hollered at us that we were dragging our electric cable - thankfully before we got far enough to do any damage. Athough Bill just said, but tomorrow I have to undo the water hose as well. Back on Callipygia (where are you now, dear sweet boat?) departure was a big deal, a long checklist of things to prepare and to not forget. Much as I loved those years, I'm glad I don't have that burden on my shoulders any more. Nowadays, the worst that can happen to us is that we get stuck by the side of a road somewhere - in our very own home. We can't drown.

August 3 , 2006 (Pat: Boxed in)

          At 6 am this morning I walked through the trees to go to the bath-house for my morning duties. The brisk clear air, the soft sounds of squirrels and nuthatches, and the sweet smell of cedar invaded my senses. Life: what a miracle. This is about as good as it gets. If/when we move into a house, we'll have to put the bathroom at the end of the yard. I cry quietly for the millions who live boxed inside the paraphernalia and busyness of modern living, never noticing that life is passing by.

July 28, 2006 (Pat: Two in a small space)

          When I tell people that we've lived fulltime together in a small sailboat/RV for 6 years, almost always they react with the statement:  "You must like each other a lot." The fact of the matter is that we do - but, unknown to them, the smallness of the space actually enhances the liking. Most people seem to think, instead, that it would enhance the frustrations and annoyances. Not true. In a small space you end up having conversations or interactions about all manner of things on all manner of topics at all manner of times simply because of the proximity. To quote Bill (see Bill's Wisdom) : "The essence of trust is how safe is it for me to be me with this person as opposed to being careful?"  Living together in a small space forces each person to be more openly "me." Thus, it can significantly enhance the trust in a relationship - if you let it. If/when we have to move "ashore" it will definitely be into a small space.

July 13, 2006 (Pat: What really mattered?)

          We're back "on the road" and it's a bit of an adjustment. Our trip to the U.K. is stuffed away in memory (and slide shows), like it barely was, in deep hiding with other past experience. Settling down in Clemmie was tough. First, the schedule: finish this, check that, go here, visit there. Thank goodness the mantle of simply being came out of storage: sit here, look there, notice this, hear that. Don't have to be anywhere anytime. Do a little something, disappear into details. When it's finished move on. My work life was never so. A few fleeting moments on vacation perhaps. Otherwise, a busy routine, overseen by a mental "to-do" list erupting in the night, shoulder and neck muscles on permanent taut alert. Of all I worked at doing, what became of it? In the grand scheme of things, what of it really mattered?

July 4, 2006 (Pat: What do you want?)

          What do you want? There's a question worth asking. Today (at least) I want to become wise, and humble - or is it humble, and wise? I want to recognize all the bird sounds I hear. I want to be chopped up and taken into the woods as bird food when I die. Who knows what I'll want tomorrow or a year from now.

June 7, 2006 (Pat: Culture shock)

          I'm having a bit of culture shock during our trip "back home" to Scotland. It's changed and I've changed, and there's a lot of it I don't like. Couldn't possibly be me, so surely it must be them don't you think? I'm making a note of the things I'm reacting negatively to in the hope that by witnessing my own prejudices I may be able to eliminate them. I thought maybe I would enumerate them here in my blog, but when I looked at the list I see that it's far too long! Well, well, well, what does that mean?

June 2, 2006 (Pat: Ain't it Awful)

          I've been watching the local BBC News this week, while my body has worked to overcome a bad cold. What struck me most is how confrontational the reporters are, and how much they seem (to me) to twist things to produce an "Ain't it Awful" or "Aren't they Bastards" effect. The marketing of fear is at least as fullblown as it seemed to us in the U.S. And, the peddling of fear is likewise about all of the wrong things. Terrorists, Iran, taxes, the usual suspects. Not much about the real dangers humanity faces, and to which it seems to be largely blind or indifferent: global warming, materialism and greed, environmental destruction, and species extinction.

[NOTE: due to distractions and constraints on accessing the Internet during our travels in the UK, the blog entries were on hold for a few weeks.]

April 23, 2006 (Pat: Misplaced priorities)

          I'm looking forward to our trip to the UK next month. In particular I'm eager to check out the birds I used to see and pay little attention to when I was a kid growing up in Scotland. To my distress I have learned that the ubiquitous house sparrow has all but disappeared from British cities and is rapidly declining in European ones too. Good thing they've got their DNA all over North America - reproduced from 9 birds introduced a hundred years ago. They're spunky little gems and well worth the watching. And, as we plan to head for the Oregon coast after our UK visit, it's distressing to learn that large numbers of starving pelagic (sea) birds are washing up on the Oregon coast. What are we doing to our environment?

          I'm interested in seeing the changes that have occured in the almost 20 years since I last went "home" to Scotland.   I Wonder if they're having water problems. Did you know that 1.1 billion people don't have access to safe water and 2.6 billion people are without basic sanitation? A situation that is steadily getting worse as we head for global environmental collapse. To quote Jeffrey Sachs of the UN Millenium Project "Everything we think is at the core of our geopolitics -- the war on terror, Islamic fundamentalism -- have almost nothing to do with the real challenges we face on this planet, they are a distraction and a misunderstanding. Ignorance, misplaced priorities and indifference are keeping the world firmly on the path to disaster." And, I add, nowhere is this more true than in the USA.

April 17, 2006 (Pat: Where are we going?)

    I've been spending a lot of time lately at the hospital. Hours with not a lot to do but love the patient, Sudoko, and try out some thought experiments. Oh yes, and people watching too - which with the possible exception of bird watching is the best pastime of all.

    Mostly, I wonder where our culture is going. I recently read Radical Evolution by Joel Garreau. I recommend it to you. He sets out three scenarios that could result as the accelerating rate of technological invention and mass consumerism cranks humanity up this incredible curve of change that we all sit on.

• Heaven:   over the next 40-50 years, humanity (or some of it) changes (evolves, engineers itself) into something different, a new species perhaps.
• Hell:   through continued acts of collective gross stupidity, we (and a whole lot else) come to a brutal, catastrophic end.
• Prevail:   the future is rocky but, as in the past, mankind muddles through as ordinary people facing overwhelming difficulties rise to the occasion.

    What do you think? And what are you doing to prepare and help your kids deal with the many toxic aspects of human culture?

March 20, 2006 (Pat: Traffic)

    We drove round the Atlanta ring road (I-285) over the weekend. Goodness knows what it would have been like on a weekday, much less at rush hour. To accomodate more vehicles, the road is now 9-10 lanes in each direction. What a nightmare. We made the mistake of driving the expressway that goes through the middle of Atlanta a few months ago on our way to the southwest. Same thing, 9-10 lanes in each direction. Wouldn't you know it: when you build more traffic lanes, more traffic comes. It's that simple. Let's hope Atlanta keeps on widening its roads, perhaps up to 32 lanes in each direction. Then they can knock down all the buildings, and pretty soon it won't be a city, just a muddle of huge concrete expressways with all the cars in Georgia driving round and round, not to mention each other nuts. And, oh yes, in the meantime we're running out of oil to make fuel for all this activity.

March 12, 2006 (Pat: Human progress)

    Yesterday we spent the day at the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains of Texas. It's a hangout for astronomers to do research through some very impressive (not to mention huge) equipment, and a place for the public to get educated.

    Being there certainly forces a focus on the grand scheme of things. Made me think that perhaps humanity's idea of progress may be changing. First came language, symbols, and writing, as measures of progress for early man. Then the notion of moral improvement through religion and philosophy was seen as progress. Next, after fire and the wheel, technology and trade came along with a switch of focus to accumulation of material wealth as the measures of progress. Nowadays, it strikes me that progress is happening through an increase in our connections and interconnectedness. Each of us knows what's happening to strangers in some of the farthest corners of the globe - and maybe even we're collectively beginning to care about them. Is a life-saving shift in direction happening for our species?

March 5, 2006 (Pat: Touching the Earth)

    Think for a minute. When was the last time your foot actually touched the Earth? At least the sole of your shoe, if not the sole of your foot? And I mean touched the surface of the Earth as it naturally occurs and not as manipulated, surfaced, constructed or built on by man? Can you rememberwhen it was and how it felt? If you live in a city it could have been months or even years.

February 26, 2006 (Pat: Instructing others)

     Our species is in trouble because it's members habitually insist on telling other members how to do something or what to believe instead of focusing on what's supposed to happen. Just imagine a home where the family rules were boiled down to one: "does this action increase the amount of love in the household?" Or a school where teacher performance is measured by: "does this activity enhance the ability of kids to learn and think independently and act for the common good?" Or a religion or political party where dogma and ideology are reduced to: "do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you." Wouldn't the world be a better place if people stopped trying to make everyone else fit into their notion of what a person should do and be? So here I am, one more person telling everyone what they ought to do!

February 19, 2006 (Pat: Bird counting)

          Today I turn 67, and I'm spending it counting birds. It's time for the 9th Annual Backyard Bird Count. My backyard is an ever-changing campsite, with an ever-changing bird community. I notice that I'm beginning to feel anchored to birds, they've become my familiar friends in a life where the human faces are all strange. The welfare of these little fluffy things has become poignantly important to me.

          This morning it's an unseasonable 34°F in south Texas, with a strong gusty north wind. I saw only 6 birds during my first 20-minute count time, at 8:30am. I imagine them dozing, huddled together in nooks, crannies, and shrubs with their down all fluffed up and bills tucked into their necks trying to keep warm. Later, flocks of lark buntings and white-crowned sparrows showed up, pecking at water drops from the faucet-to-hose connection outside our window. One got left behind as the others zoomed away in a small cloud. He seemed disoriented, lost almost until he saw his group winging again over some bushes in the distance. Immediately, he took off after them and left me to wonder... What?.