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#686 – Dick Bernard: Going to listen to Al Gore on “The Future. Six Drivers of Global Change”

Friday, February 8th, 2013

Al Gore was in Minneapolis on Thursday, and while I’ve been to lots of speeches, including by Mr. Gore, and didn’t really need to go, there is something that draws me to such events. I got to Westminster Presbyterian Church an hour early, but turned out to be a half-hour late: I got a seat, but in one of two overflow spaces. The house was packed for the longstanding Westminster Town Hall Forum.

Al Gore speaks Feb 7, 2013, Westminster Town Hall Forum Minneapolis MN

Al Gore speaks Feb 7, 2013, Westminster Town Hall Forum Minneapolis MN

I won’t write a review of the speech: you can listen to it here. (This is the instant video of the speech. Mr. Gore’s portion begins at approximately the 40 minute mark). At about the ten minute mark is a 30 minute musical concert by a twin cities musician, who was also very good.

Neither do I plan to review Mr. Gore’s book, “The Future. Six Drivers of Global Change“, which is readily available everywhere, and is meant for reflection, discussion and personal action.

“The Future” is a book for thinking, not entertainment.

I’ve long liked Al Gore. He is a visionary, not afraid to articulate a realistic vision if we wish to survive as a human species.

Visionaries, especially prominent ones, are often viewed as threats, and are vilified in sundry ways by their enemies.

So it was with Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth which was released in 2006, ridiculed by his enemies. But as current events in our country are showing, the film has been in all relevant particulars true, if anything, even conservative. Yes, there are “yah, buts” in the film, but as an acknowledged climate expert said at a meeting I attended a year or two ago, he said the film was 90% accurate, and this was from wisdom of hindsight.

We saw Mr. Gore speak on An Inconvenient Truth a year before the film was released, in 2005, and it was a memorable, never to be forgotten event. Here’s what I wrote about it then: Al Gore July 2005001. It is remarkable that this was eight years ago, already. Of course, largely, denial continues to be a prevalent reaction to things like Climate Change.

In so many ways we humans live with short-term thinking (“me-now”) and we imperil not only our present, but certainly our future. “An Inconvenient Truths” dust jacket made some suggestions back then that are still relevant today. They are here: Al Gore Inconven Truth001

“The Future” covers numerous topics other than just climate change, and covers them well.

In his talk, Mr.Gore said he got the idea for “The Future” several years ago – 2005 I seem to recall – from a question someone asked at a presentation he was making somewhere in Europe.

From that seed grew extensive research and reflection.

Mr. Gore suggests – that’s all he can is suggest – a wake-up call.

To those who think the cause is hopeless, he asked simply that we remember changes like Civil Rights in this country, which in his growing up days in Tennessee would not have been seen as a possibility either. It is the people that will change the status quo, he said, recalling a particular learning moment in his youth when a friend of his made a racist comment, and another friend told him to cut it out. It is small moments of public witness like these that make the difference, he suggested. He gave other examples as well.

Of course, Gore is a prominent world figure, a former Vice-President, and now a very wealthy man.

But in his appearance, yesterday, he was part of us – he even stopped by the overflow rooms before his speech to give a personal welcome. It was a nice touch, we felt.

By our demeanor – I like to watch how audiences react at events like this – we were very actively listening to him.

It’s past-time to get personally involved, but never too late.

(click on photos to enlarge)

Mr. Gore stops by one of the two overflow rooms prior to his speech.

Mr. Gore stops by one of the two overflow rooms prior to his speech.

Posted in Climate Change, Community, Economics, Education, Environment, International Relations, Nature, Peace & Justice, Politics, Technology | No Responses »
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Dick Bernard – Thoughts at Christmas Holiday Season 2012: Have a Great Day.

Sunday, December 2nd, 2012

PRE-NOTE: I encourage you to watch the video at the end of this post.

Thirty-five years ago, sometime in early December of 1977, I did my first homemade Christmas card for friends and family, a very simple card with illustration by my then 13 year old son, Tom, and a hand printed short phrase by Kahlil Gibran: “Then said a rich man, Speak to us of Giving. And He answered. You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”

The twelve months preceding that card were memorable, though not necessarily in a positive sense, though there was much positive, too.

Certainly without intending, the hand-made card became a tradition, continuing to this day, the 36th in the series. The first 20 or so were sent exclusively by U.S. mail. This will be the first one which one must have access to the internet to see in complete form.

Each year since 1977 has had one thing in common: something would happen sometime during that year that stuck with me, and the annual card was born, never fancy, always just me. We all have our ‘ways’.

2012 was an event-filled year, but nothing rose to the surface until an idea struck, yesterday, with receipt of an unexpected photo from a friend, David (click to enlarge):

1973 in the Bugaboo Mountains of British Columbia, Canada.

David, the guy in the blue shirt in the front row of the photograph, is a “coffee buddy” most every Friday. A month or so ago I had invited he and another coffee friend, Fred, to join a small discussion group whose members are retired educators, interested in public education.

David came to our gathering on Nov. 16, sat down at the table with the other five of us, and immediately noted Jerry, with an exclamation: “I think I know you!”

Indeed they did know each other, and David found the old photo. Jerry is the guy with the mountain man beard in the photo. They and the others were for a number of years in the 1960s and 1970s members of a twin cities group, primarily teachers, who did some mountaineering each summer at places like Bugaboo, Devils Tower, and on and on.

While I never mountaineered, the photo was nostalgic for me, nonetheless. While disconnected in fact, I was connected in spirit.

Such is how things seem to work in this universe of ours. Random things are not so random at all. I recall the 2011 film, “I Am, the Documentary“, which remains available for viewing. We saw it when it first came out, and highly recommend it. It gives lots of food for thought.

Yesterday went on, and in the afternoon Cathy, my spouse, put up the Christmas tree, with help from one of our daughter-in-laws.

That tree has been Cathy’s tradition for many years.

In the evening, after the project was completed, I went down and saw the tree, and there affixed to one of the branches was the 1977 Christmas card of mine, about the only “ornament” I can say I own.

1977 greeting card on Christmas tree Dec. 2012

The 2012 Christmas message was born, from random acts with no relation to each other. Such has happened before, and will again, doubtless.

Happy Holidays at this Christmas season.

The passage of time since that first card reminds me of the second card, in 1978, when I chose this poem by the famous poet, Unknown:

THE LOOM OF TIME
Man’s life is laid in the loom of time
To a pattern he does not see,
While the weavers work and the shuttles fly
Till the dawn of eternity

Some shuttles are filled with silver threads
And some with threads of gold,
While often but the darkest hues
Are all that they may hold.

But the weaver watches with skillful eye
Each shuttle fly to and fro,
And sees the pattern so deftly wrought
As the loom moves sure and slow.

God surely planned the pattern:
Each thread, the dark and fair,
Is chosen by His master skill
And placed in the web with care.

He only knows its beauty
And guides the shuttles which hold
The threads so unattractive,
As well as the threads of gold.

Not till each loom is silent,
And the shuttles cease to fly,
Shall God reveal the pattern
And explain the reason why

The dark threads were as needful
In the weaver’s skillful hand
As the threads of gold and silver
For the pattern which he planned.

*

POSTNOTES:

Another view of Bugaboo in 1973. Note peak with a dot of snow in background. That is same peak as shown in above photo.

During the past twelve months I began making a point of taking some photos each month at an 1870-era one-room farm house at a small city park near our home. The ‘album’ now includes perhaps 44 photographs. You can view them here.

A few weeks ago came a remarkably uplifting piece of video, less than ten minutes in length, which I would invite you to enjoy in the spirit of the season. You can access it here. It is exactly as it is. Do check it out. The film is by Louie Schwartzberg. It is narrated, beautifully, by Brother David Steindl-Rast; the beautiful music by Gary Malkin.

Posted in Community, Family History, Minnesota, Nature, Quietings | 1 Response »

#655 – Dick Bernard: Ken Burns on PBS: The Dust Bowl, part two

Tuesday, November 20th, 2012

I wrote about the first segment of Ken Burns The Dust Bowl here.

Part Two, last evening, was equally compelling. You can watch both part one and two here.

Together, the two segments total nearly four hours. They are available on-line through December 4. They are well worth your time.

And they provide lots of opportunity for reflective thought about where humans and government fit into nature, positively and negatively.

If you watch the entire four hours, about ten years in, particularly, the area of the Oklahoma panhandle – “no man’s land”, and you think about our place in the our own present and future United States and World, you will have reason to consider what we are bringing down upon ourselves and our own future, if we pretend to ignore the consequences of our own actions.

There is no sugar-coating. This is reality, and not belief.

As I watched I got to thinking back to something I wrote seven years ago as my Christmas Letter.

It was a story about an old Cottonwood tree at my Uncle’s farm in North Dakota. The story is here (link is in the caption below the photo). The tree still exists, out there in a row of trees east of the farmstead.

Have a great Thanksgiving.

Help keep Thanksgiving for the generations to come after us.

Posted in Community, Environment, Family History, History, Nature, North Dakota | No Responses »

#654 – Dick Bernard: The Dust Bowl

Monday, November 19th, 2012

Sunday evening we watched part one of Ken Burns’ latest photo-documentary: the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

I’d urge everyone to watch this series, which is playing on public broadcasting around the nation.

You can watch the program online here, but only through Monday, November 19. Consult your local listing regarding part two.

Born in 1940 in North Dakota, I just missed the Great Depression, and thus did not experience directly the drought years that so heavily impacted the state.

But my entire background experience – my raising – was shaped by people who actually experienced those bad years.

North Dakota was not technically part of the Dust Bowl, which centered in the panhandle of western Oklahoma and neighboring states of Texas, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico. But according to Uncle Vincent, near 88, who we visited in LaMoure this past weekend, ND certainly did experience the massive dust storms, though not on the scale farther south.

Vincent has always remembered 1934, the year he was nine years old, as being the worst year of all in south central North Dakota.

In fact, the only time ND entered Sundays program was 1934, when President Roosevelt came west and did a trip through part of North Dakota. A hand-made sign from someone said, at the time, “You brought back beer”, recognizing the end of Prohibition, “now bring us water”.

Back then, like now, people liked to pretend that they could use “God’s gifts” as they wished; and that their actions would have no consequences. They were in control.

Ain’t so.

The Dust Bowl years were with no reasonable question the worst directly man-caused catastrophe in American history. The genesis of the Dust Bowl was the result of careless national policy, and hope-springs-eternal practices of Dust Bowl farmers. Buffalo grass could handle the drought and wind storms. Over plowing, wind and no rain brought disaster in the 1930s.

We live in the same kind of dream world today – not surprising, we’re the same human beings. We’re not much into long term vision, or vision period.

We think that there are no consequences to our own head-in-the-sand attitudes about many things, climate included.

North Dakota is now a very prosperous state, with oil extraction in the west a primary reason. But in the long run it will be false prosperity caused by contemporary folly of short-term thinking.

Vince and I chatted a little about this.

North Dakota today is said to have as much oil reserves as Saudi Arabia, but we need to remind ourselves that we are driving ourselves over another cliff on energy: even with North Dakota, the oil resource has finite limits, and when its gone, what will our descendants do then?

And what are the consequences of fracking, long term.

As with foolish over-plowing in the development days of Oklahoma and other states, we can consider that we are digging our own grave as a prosperous society.

The Dust Bowl is a good vehicle, a wake up call, for all of us.

Do take the time to watch it.

Aunt Edithe and Uncle Vince, Nov. 17, 2012

Dry Antelope Creek ND, Nov. 18, 2012

(Uncle Vince, for all of his working life a dirt farmer in North Dakota, noted in a previous visit that while it was dry in his areas in 2012, farmers still had very good crops, especially of corn. He said the crops utilized good subsoil moisture, but there needs to be a wet fall and winter to replenish that moisture, or a dry year next year would not have such good results.

Antelope creek, which we used to play in as kids in the 1950s, was dry yesterday. Meaningful, or meaningless?)

Posted in Climate Change, Community, Environment, Family History, History, Nature, North Dakota | No Responses »

En Avant: A Significant Film Work in Progress on the French presence in Minnesota

Thursday, November 8th, 2012

An important film on the French presence in Minnesota, En Avant, is being prepared for production and at some point in the future will be released in France and in Minnesota.

French film producer and director Christine Loys has released this precis about her project: En Avant Précis as of Nov 6 2012CM. Here is a short, first, preview clip about the film.

At a special event at Alliance Francaise Minneapolis, on October 10, 2012, explorer and environmental advocate Will Steger of Ely, made brief introductory remarks before a discussion about the En Avant project.

(click on photos to enlarge)

Will Steger at En Avant introduction at Alliance Francaise Minneapolis MN October 10, 2012

Why Will? The answer lies in one of those serendipity things some people call coincidences, but which to me have more of an “unseen hand” aspect to them. Christine: “Will Steger was there as my special guest because he was the first person to introduce me to Minnesota.”

Most Minnesotans know that back in April, 1986, Richfield native Will Steger led an intrepid group of adventurers on a trip by dogsled to the North Pole.

The adventure was successful, and back at home, on a chilly May day, I was among those who gathered outside the Minnesota state capitol for the welcome home. Theirs was a thrilling accomplishment.

At the time, there had been a small piece of news about a rather astonishing meetup on the Polar icecap on the 1986 adventure. It is best described by Jon Bowermaster, with this recollection by Will Steger:

“As I skied the last half mile [of the Antarctic crossing in 1989] I could not erase from my mind a picture of another time, another cold place. It was April 1986, the middle of the frozen Arctic Ocean, when [French doctor] Jean-Louis [Etienne] and I first met. He stepped to the top of a ridge of jumbled sea ice, seemingly out of nowhere, and we embraced, like brothers, though we’d never even been introduced. Everything that we’d done these past years evolved from that fated moment, from that embrace. We had turned our dreams – about adventure and cooperation, about preservation and the environment – into realities. We had the confidence to take risks, and the scene splayed in front of us now was our reward, our affirmation.

The Soviets had marked our entryway with red flags and made a Finish line. A gathering of one hundred, speaking a dozen different languages, swarmed around us as we came down the flag bedecked chute. As I called my dogs to a stop one last time and stepped out of my skis, Jean-Louis walked toward me. I lifted Sam onto my shoulder and Jean-Louis – completing the circle begun those years ago in the middle of the Arctic Ocean – wrapped us both in a bear hug.”

Back in France, Christine Loys, a photo journalist who initially was a friend of Dr. Etienne when he made his solo trek, became part of the Transantarctica expedition whose co-leaders were Will Steger and Dr Jean-Louis Etienne.

Will Steger, Christine Loys, Jean-Louis Etienne, 2009 in Paris, after Will had given a talk on climate change at the U.S. Embassy

Some time later, Ms Loys made a trip to this mysterious place called Minnesota, and in her journey through our state was startled to see French name after French name…towns, lakes, etc.

She learned that the motto of Minnesota is in French, L’Etoile du Nord; and that the motto of Minneapolis is En Avant, meaning “Forward”.

The French knew much about Quebec, and the French antecedents of Louisiana, but very little about this apparently French-drenched place called Minnesota, and Christine went to work.

The idea for a movie about the French in Minnesota was born, from the earliest days of people like Fr. Hennepin, to the present world-known Guthrie Theatre, designed by the French architect Atelier Jean Nouvel, which overlooks the very falls of St. Anthony which Frenchman Fr. Louis Hennepin saw and named in 1680.

Ms Loys hard work continues as she returns to France for some months, with plans to return to the Minnesota in 2013.

We wish her well.

Panelists at Alliance Francaise October 10, 2012

Panelists from left to right: Pierce McNally, attorney; Jérôme Chateau, CEP Normande Genetics, former President of the French American Chamber of Commerce (FACC) and today Vice President of FACC; François Fouquerel, Dean of “Les Voyageurs” at Concordia Language Villages; Robert Durant, Treasury/Secretary at the tribal Counsel of White Earth; Bob Perrizo, artist, journalist, writer, historian

Also speaking was Barbara Johnson, President of the City Council of Minneapolis who made the introduction. She is a descent of the French. Her maiden name is Rainville.

Dick Bernard was invited to make some remarks representing the 2012 Franco-Fete committee, of which five members were in attendance at the gathering.

This is also posted also here.

Posted in Community, History, International Relations, Media, Minnesota, Native American, Nature, Quebec/French-Canadians | No Responses »

#537 – Dick Bernard: Spring “Yard Work”

Saturday, March 17th, 2012

Today, being a late April day (albeit in the middle of March), with all the snow gone, a short sleeve day and all, seemed a good day to begin the annual housekeeping trek along my walking route which ends on the north side of Carver Lake.

Helpfully, one of those small plastic buckets, about a half-gallon in size, materialized near the beginning of the walking route. In its previous life it probably held a plant. Perhaps it had blown off someone’s deck. Whatever, it was useful. (Actually, it had sat there for several prior days, but the time was not yet right to pick it up.)

Today was the day it would be of service to the community.

Our walking route is pretty clean. There is a small crew of people – mostly unknown to each other – who do “police call”.

Still, the first post-snow day out yields its share of treasures, mostly off the beaten path.

For instance, a bright piece of paper beckoned me into the off-trail woods, and when there I spotted three old and gray beer bottles, well disguised from many moons of anonymous living.

Along the way I was fetching something in the weeds and I met a guy who noticed, and groused about those people who toss stuff “when there are all sorts of garbage cans along this walk”. So true. I subscribe to the philosophy, though, that left garbage along the path is a magnet for more garbage, and policing helps keep down careless disposal of anything from cigarette buttes to tissue. Every little bit helps….

At the bench where I learned, a couple of years ago, that it is important to carry along one’s cell phone – it might come in handy – I met the pleasant guy I see frequently, pushing his Dad in his wheelchair for a walk in the park. We chatted a bit, and he commented that he’d filled two bags full of trash this same morning.

He usually does policing of the pond and lake banks, but he doesn’t sound quite as enthusiastic about doing it this year. Too big a mess. Maybe some of us will “step up to the plate” and help?

Past Carver Lake swimming beach and up the hill I went. A one liter plastic pop bottle beckoned, and when I got to it, assorted other trash magically appeared in its neighborhood. I was rapidly filling that little bucket a second time.

At the playground, a Dad was supervising playtime for his two year old. The youngster saw me dumping the garbage, and the Dad said “thanks”.

It was a good day on the trail today.

Have a great one yourself.

Posted in Community, Environment, Minnesota, Nature, Quietings | No Responses »

#510 – Dick Bernard: A Memory of a long-ago Ground Hog Day

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

Today is a pea-soup fog day in my town, and the temperature is about 32 degrees, so any of the resident Woodbury groundhogs have no worries about sunburn, or freezing to death. They will not see their shadow, at least not from sunlight.

But the place for groundhogs today is Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Punxsutawney Phil has been on the job since 1887, telling us about the rest of winter. Here’s something about him, and what he predicted today….

There are, of course, other groundhogs, and twenty or so years ago my Dad, Henry Bernard, recalled a story of his Dad, circa 1912 at their home on Wakeman Avenue in Grafton, North Dakota.

“I must have been four or five [Dad was born Dec 22, 1907] when this incident occurred.

My father, Henry Bernard, was the chief engineer at the flour mill. During the summer the fellows caught a woodchuck (groundhog) and put him in a cage. He was named “Pete”. Pete gave a lot of amusement to visitors. His ability to peel and eat a banana was a source of awe to visitors. However, his ability to eat a soda cracker without losing any crumbs was remarkable.

Pete was kept in the cage until fall when he became very drowsy and slept almost all the time.

Dad decided that Pete was ready to hibernate and took him home and released him in the unfinished basement that we had. Pete got busy and dug a hole in the dirt wall., “stole” bananas, apples, carrots, etc., and took them inside the hole and sealed it from the inside.

Dad remembered the story about the groundhog and on February 2nd told mother to watch and if Pete came out to send the “boy” (that was me) over to the mill to tell him.

Sure enough Pete did come out, saw his shadow and went back into the hole for another six weeks. We must have had more winter.

Then he came out again but was sickly and died shortly after. The veterinarian said it was because he lacked certain things for his diet that he would have picked up if he has run wild. Dad had Pete mounted and kept him for many years. This story was often repeated and even I have repeated it many times since that time.”

Thanks Dad.

Posted in Family History, History, Nature, Quebec/French-Canadians, Quietings | No Responses »
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#385 – Dick Bernard: A 2:43 Speech: “Last Night I had the Strangest Dream”. A matter of Climate Change and Other Things.

Friday, June 17th, 2011

UPDATE/SUPPLEMENT June 19, 2011, here.

As we all do, I dream, and I just awoke from a dream whose essential message I remember. This doesn’t always happen.

I want to share the dream, and speculate from whence it came.

For some reason I found myself as king# of the world, only for a few minutes, able to direct people who were influential decision makers.

Since only a few run things in this world of ours, I didn’t have to speak to all 7 billion people, only to a few. We were in a large, stark, room, and the few of us could gather in a corner. Perhaps there were a dozen of us. Significantly, there were no women# in this directed conversation.

We gathered in a square, each bringing our own platform, which seemed to resemble a school desk such as a student would occupy. They were of random design, these desks. Again, we were all men#.

All gathered together, I gave the direction, which for some reason sticks vividly in my mind.

Each person in this square had precisely two minutes and 43 seconds to say what they had to say. No rebuttal, no debate. Two minutes and 43 seconds.

Then I woke up.

There are people who make their living interpreting dreams. I’m not one of those people.

The back story of my dream perhaps came a few hours earlier when I, along with perhaps 70 others, men and women, participated in a powerful one and a half hours with world climate expert Professor John Abraham of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. He started his talk with a satellite photo of the world, specifically Africa; he ended his presentation with photos of his two daughters, age four and five, who are, he said, the reason he’s devoting his professional life to the crisis of climate change. He is, after all, making their future, and that of their descendants. Africa in particular, and the coming generations will reap the consequences of human activity, especially during the period of the Industrial Revolution.

It was a powerful evening.

I wonder if, when I read this aloud, I’ll come out to two minutes and 43 seconds.

*

“Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream”? I first heard John Denver sing that song years ago; it most impacted me when Lynn Elling led us in that song in June, 2007. It was a moment, that one in 2007, that changed my life.

You can listen to John Denver’s rendition at my website A Million Copies. There you can also read about Lynn Elling, and also about Dr. Joe Schwartzberg’s Affirmation of Human Oneness. Dr. Schwartzberg was in charge of last nights meeting, and at the beginning, we read his Affirmation of Human Oneness, appearing at the website in the 41 languages into which it has thus far been translated.

On reflection, my dream was not at all strange.

How about for you?

What would you say in your two minutes and 43 seconds, and to whom would you say it?

Most importantly, then what will you do to put that 2:43 into reality? Not, what will you order others to do, but what will YOU do?

This is an especially important question to the women. Men have mucked things up royally, and perhaps terminally. Women can turn things around perhaps more effectively than any group of men can.

It’s time to act.

Some Resources:

Dr. Abraham’s climate science organization website is here. There is a lot of content accessible here.

A website he recommended is CoolPlanetMN. And another, Minnesota Environmental Partnership.

The organization Lynn Elling founded in 1982: World Citizen. The organization sponsoring last nights event with John Abraham: Citizens for Global Solutions MN. I am privileged to be part of both groups.

(Click on photos to enlarge them.)

Dr. John Abraham, professor, School of Engineering, St. Thomas University, St. Paul MN

Dr. Joe Schwartzberg, President Citizens for Global Solutions MN, Professor Emeritus in Geography, University of Minnesota, June 16, 2011

Extra Special Thanks to Lee Dechert who made this program happen.

Richard (Lee) Dechert introduces Prof. Abraham June 16, 2011

# – A woman friend challenged me on these references. The references were intentional, and as I remembered the dream. It is we men who have and continue to run our world into the ground. More and more women are involved, but until women make the election to take the lead, past mistakes will continue to be made.

Posted in Climate Change, Environment, Media, Nature, Politics | No Responses »
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#372 – Dick Bernard: Spring inches northward.

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

Today, May 10 in suburban St. Paul MN, the leaves on the trees have burst out, and the leafy green of woods in spring has returned once again.

Exactly one month ago, in suburban Albuquerque NM, I was taking a solitary walk along the Rio Grande River, and noticed a simple tree which intrigued me (click to enlarge photos):

It was about the identical stage of leaf development as the trees I saw on my daily walk today.

Carver Park Woodbury MN May 11, 2011

Further north of here, other trees will leaf out in coming days.

Further south of Albuquerque, somewhere, trees were leafing out precisely on the Vernal Equinox of March 20.

So it goes.

Spring brings with it the predictable; the only unpredictable is the precise timing for such events as the first leaves of summer.

Across the driveway, a duck has set up a nest beside a neighbors house.

With some luck (the family has a cat and a dog) the ducklings will hatch and follow Mom to some pond a few blocks away, and survive, and life will go on.

Walking along this morning, I was momentarily surprised by someone coming out of the adjacent woods.

Not to worry. Just a gray-haired lady who bent over to inspect some green foliage. “It’s milkwort” she said, excitedly, and walked on in the opposite direction.

Happy Spring.

I’ll include a photo from Babbitt MN to be taken on Friday, May 13….

Sandia Mountain Range east of Bernalillo NM Apr 10, 2011

Some Minnesota wild flowers May 11, 2011:

The much-maligned Dandelion (my Dad's favorite "wild flower")

Remembering a life as spring begins at Bear Lake near Babbitt MN May 13, 2011.

Posted in Environment, Nature, Quietings | No Responses »

#367 – Dick Bernard: “I Am”, the documentary

Thursday, May 5th, 2011

May 4, largely on the recommendation of our friend, Annelee, we went to the documentary, “I Am”, at the Lagoon Theatre in Minneapolis.

Wherever you are, I would highly recommend you see this extraordinary and thought provoking film.

Then seriously consider the implications of what you just saw.

The official website is here.

Doubtless, there are other on-line commentaries.

For me, it was one of the most powerful commentaries on the titanic clash of contemporary western culture versus the natural order of things that I have ever seen.

The film boils down, in my opinion, to a conversation about “competition” versus “cooperation”. Of course, our contemporary world is ruled by competitors, who won’t like this message (and who control the media message we daily consume). But the outcome for their descendants is inevitable…competition is a fatal disease.

In the long run, competition doesn’t have a chance and thus we who play by competitions rules don’t either.

But, see the film for yourself, come to your own conclusions, and hopefully let others know about it.

Because it is an ‘art film’ release, it is guaranteed a low audience, initially.

My recommendation: everyone should see it.

SUPPLEMENT: 100 Years

Not from the film, but (in my opinion) directly related.

For a time last fall I watched a most interesting TV ad. The actors were a Mom and her little girl. The little girl was trying to blow out a hundred candles on a birthday cake. The message was that it was really, really hard to blow out a hundred candles, and that we had at least 100 years left of Natural Gas in this country, so not to worry.

The ad didn’t play very long…I’m guessing there were people who saw it as I did.

Recently, the exact same text has surfaced, from the same company, on the same topic. The only difference is that there is a single actor, a nice/Dad-like/young middle-age Engineer Type man conveying the exact same message: we have at least 100 years of Natural Gas left, and isn’t that reassuring?

In the recorded history of humankind, 100 years is but a tiny fraction of a second in time; far, far, far less if one considers the time it took to create this natural resource now all but depleted.

But the message is everything: not to worry.

When the gas is gone there’ll be something else…or so we hope.

Posted in Community, History, International Relations, Nature, Peace & Justice, Technology, War | No Responses »
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