Kenny Thrives

;-                After a difficult month of September-for personal reasons-Kenny has settled into an inspirational life of music at Edinboro University...The music department has been downsized and future cuts have been threatened, but for now Kenny says that he is loving his life there, and we can observe the positive impact that his professors are having on him. This picture is from a chorus concert on November 10th, which to my ears was a professional presentation that brought tears to my eyes. As he has been challenged by the fresh new talent around him he has responded by producing the best music we have ever heard him do. In that sense of using and developing his God given talents he is exactly where he should be...If Edinboro can no longer provide musical education he will transfer to another school and is already dreaming of the prestigious universities to the east.
-As for the snow...we woke up to three inches that gave the woods the look and feel of January...Too soon for my tastes but Warren weather can go from short sleeves to icicles in the span of a week, so that's the nature of the town.                                                         

Human Insanity

Readers of this blog know that I occasionally get on my soapbox regarding issues about which people have differing opinions, but I hope that any rational being can agree that the following is absolute lunacy: "The Titan 2 missile carried a a 9 megaton warhead, which is about three times the explosive force of all the bombs dropped during World War 2, including both atomic bombs". Read that sentence again...that is One missile in one silo in 1980, and the devil knows what weapons are out there in 2013. I admit that I am ignorant about the destructive power of our arsenals; such information is not bandied about any more than photos of the wounded in our wars. But I do know that these are choices someone is making to produce and maintain this stuff, and now there are crazies-in the name of God- doing everything they can to acquire them. In 1945 Oppenheimer remarked about the bomb that it brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." -so he knew that potential future the moment it occurred. I understand the threat of Nazi Germany that precipitated the development of nuclear weapons, but that same evil may one day have those weapons at it's disposal, and unfortunately, human nature being what it is, a simple accident or unintended consequence could unleash the power when we least expect it. POSTSCRIPT: The United States continues to spend 2 billion dollars a week on the war in Afghanistan, while one billion a year could theoretically educate the five million children there who do not go to school.(..for a little Truth about that war watch the documentary "Dirty Wars" and other work by journalist Jeremy Scahill, currently on Netflix and other places) I guess Americans have grown extremely complacent regarding such obscene, immoral uses of their tax dollars, and sometimes I wonder why...Have we grown so fat and comfortable and self absorbed that we would rather give a guy like Dick Cheney a heart transplant ( $658,000 in 2007 dollars, plus about $21,000 annually in follow up costs) rather than help the uninsured children anywhere to get basic care? Has the lack of a military draft and the censure of the media so detached the average person from the realities of what is going on in our wars that nobody but those directly involved cares? Meanwhile, despite the lowest violent crime rate in 40 years many Americans seem to the think our society is crumbling... There really is so much misinformation and sheer ignorance despite the proliferation of the internet-or perhaps because of it-that I suspect we are so inundated with disposable information that nobody really investigates anything anymore- and if Truth-with a capital T- is discovered, there is so much suspicion and mistrust that even facts are discarded as mere opinion. Our government seems to be run by emotional children backed by self serving money, and we as a nation sit and bitch rather than vote Everyone out and try something new...Does it...will it...has it always taken a crisis to get human beings to change and find different ways to live?...and if so, do we have that the time to procrastinate anymore? Personally, I have written far too many words in my life not to have learned of their ineffectiveness compared to action, yet I keep noticing that even the so called 'poor' have cell phones and fake nails and beer, so what exactly are the priorities this nation is obsessed with?

Self Explanatory

"The gulf between the richest 1% of the USA and the rest of the country got to its widest level in history last year.
The top 1% of earners in the U.S. pulled in 19.3% of total household income in 2012, which is their biggest slice of total income in more than 100 years, according to a an analysis by economists at the University of California, Berkeley and the Paris School of Economics at Oxford University.
The richest Americans haven't claimed this large of a slice of total wealth since 1927, when the group claimed 18.7%. The analysis is based on data from Internal Revenue Service data.
One of the economists behind the research, Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, is a top researcher in the topic of wealth and income inequality. He won the John Bates Clark medal last year. The Clark medal is awarded to the most promising economists under the age of 40. Past winners have includes Paul Krugman of Princeton University, Lawrence Summers and Steve Levitt, co-author of "Freakonomics."
In a separate analysis, Saez found the top 1% of earnings posted 86% real income growth between 1993 and 2000. Meanwhile, the real income growth of the bottom 99% of earnings rose 6.6%."
.............so...still think the game isn't rigged? The system is corrupt and broken and you can't do a damn thing about it...Not to be melodramatic, but I keep wondering if the military-which is mostly lower and working class-will side with the people if and when it all collapses. Meanwhile, according to today's paper 6,000 of Warren County's 41,000 people are living at or below the poverty level ($23,550 for a family of four) yet the EOC (Economic Opportunities Council) has a mere $10,000! to help them pay the rent. The spokeswoman says she receives 10 calls a day asking for assistance. So,while bridges are falling down, people are living in poverty and we waste trillions of dollars on war, it remains unconscionable that this nation should find itself in such dire straits.

Beth and I rode our bikes in a local race called the Kinzua Tango, which begins with a 13.5 mile run that transitions into a 20 mile bike ride that transitions into a 2.5 mile swim in the lake, then a 6-7 mile orienteering section through the woods, then another 4.5 mile run, finishing with an approximately 12 mile canoe race down the Allegheny. Athletes can do the entire race as individuals or in teams of up to six people who each do one or more sections. As the official team member of a Northwest bank team, Beth rode the bike section and I provided company. We had ridden her section several times beforehand, which consists of macadam and dirt roads rambling up and down the mountains near the Allegheny Reservoir, and finished in a respectable 2 hours. No doubt elite athletes who train regularly do it in less time-the best finishing in an hour to an hour and a half- yet a twenty year old college kid who runs and bikes regularly only beat our time by 5 minutes, so with serious training we could likely cut 20-30 minutes off our average. The race began at 7am and our canoe team touched shore at 8:08 pm, which put us last overall but better than that in individual sections, and in the end everyone had a great time. The team ( most of them are under 30 years old...)are already strategizing for next year, for this was their first race and they feel they can easily improve their showing.

Read two interesting books lately, as shown, the first exposing the sadistic, manipulative nature of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder or the cult/religion known as Scientology. Let's summarize it this way: The guy abused his wives and forced his followers to do such things as push peanuts around the wooden deck of his boat as punishment for insubordination. Of course this was under the guise of helping them to become "clear"- a Scientology term for psychologically healthy. Hardly the stuff of a genuinely loving, compassionate human being, spiritually speaking or otherwise. No doubt a few people were helped by his methods, for the path to peace of mind is as diverse as the mind itself, but let's not idolize this person, people. I read Hubbard's book years ago and recognized some truths in it, but so too do Islam and Christianity and other religions have elements of truth that can be beneficial...but not when they are corrupted by the same old failures of human nature.
The second book deals with the abject poverty in Africa that no amount of foreign aid will cure. Mr. Theroux travels from Capetown into Angola by car and bus and train, mingling among the native population, and gives an insightful, sobering assessment that Angelina and Bono have never experienced. After decades of war, Namibia and Angola for the moment are in comparative peace, but millions of people live in slums while the governments and complicit foreigners siphon off literally billions of dollars in oil revenues for their own corrupted pleasures. With so many unemployed young people watching this, it is only a matter of time before the place blows up again-and justifiably so. Yes, there are some good people trying to make positive changes, but the systemic breakdown in so many African cities and countries seems intractable....Both books offer information you likely won't find on the evening news, and both make you appreciate the controlled, civilized corruption and incompetence that forge the socioeconomic decisions in the U.S.A., where the majority of us remain fat enough so as not to conceive of rebelling.

Two Milestones

....and both were momentous occasions for different reasons. First, Kenny graduated from Warren high school on June 7th, and around the same time the 17 year cicadas emerged from the ground to begin their adult phase. Kenny was born the year before this brood of insects was hatched, but when one considers the immensely varied life he has led in those 18 years versus the life underground sucking on tree roots that the cicadas have led, one can appreciate the vast differences between our species. The biological clock that allowed the insects to emerge together is still a mystery, while Kenny, like his classmates, has followed a culturally programed clock all his life and only now has obtained the legal adulthood to decide what he wants to do with his future -which is to play music. The cicadas? They will follow their instincts to mate and then die, and their children will burrow underground to begin the cycle all over again. Whether Kenny will eventually marry and have children who repeat his cultural cycle is a measure of his free will, which no doubt is what truly separates us for the insects.

What's Wrong With Russia?

Just when we thought Russia might actually be entering the 21st century the government has started this crap...persecuting people for opinions and lifestyles that ultimately threaten only ignorant, weak willed and generally middle age white males...God I had hoped humanity was progressing beyond such fearful, hateful thoughts and closer to tolerant, loving ones, but I have always been a dreamer believing in what humanity Could be rather than what it is. Such lost, immature minds perpetuating such unenlightened perversions...

Facebook

My son created a Facebook page for me to help generate interest in my book 'Anti-Clock, Walking Across America' which is on kindle at Amazon.com...To all those who have shown interest I thank you from the bottom of my heart. It feels odd to promote myself in any manner but I don't know any other way to get the word out. Writing at it's core is a very solitary activity, and I literally have spent thousands of hours alone both walking and writing, trying to find inspiration that might be helpful to the rest of humanity. The cross country walk was the culmination of that process and hopefully the book can inspire someone the way it's creation inspired me. In the end we are all in this together!

Tornado Near Warren?

The area had severe thunderstorms on the 28th, with wind and lightning and rain...There were dozens of trees blown down in a few areas, and some roof damage, but the most striking destruction was on a ball field near Russell, a small town a couple of miles north. Certainly there were very strong gusts, because light poles at ball fields are rated to withstand over 100mph winds. Nobody was injured and chainsaws are plentiful around here,so there are already neatly stacked cords of cut logs waiting for someone's wood stove. In the 1980's tornadoes killed people in Kane, a town 20 miles south as the crow flies, so outbreaks are not unheard of, regardless of the mountainous terrain.

Snow in May

Took these pictures this morning looking out the backdoor...Snow showers and a high of 45F on May 13th...Bizarre...Beth tells me she remembers snow around here on Memorial day in the past, and I vaguely remember seeing a snow shower on May 3rd when I was a kid living near Allentown, but accumulating snow in mid May after two weeks of 70F weather? Bizarre...Walking on the mountain after I took these photos the snow had coated the brush and tops of logs, then lingered for a couple of hours in the cool air. Yet the forecast is for 73F by the 15th so this is a freak cold spell...Bizarre!

Spring?

Finally saw a cabbage butterfly on April 30th, some three weeks later than usual and as much as six weeks later than during the warmest springs back east, when I once saw them in mid March...So that signifies the cold weather we have had this season and the delayed spring generally in these mountains. I saw a mourning cloak butterfly (they overwinter as adults)about a week ago, and that too was three weeks later than back east. The spring azures (little blue butterflies) have been out for two days and today I saw the first angle wing butterfly.Only in the past week has the landscape begun to explode with plant life, with colts foot and adders tongue (trout lilies)blooming, and beginning today they share the roadside with some wild mustard blooms and more abundant dandelion. The mountaintop canopy looks as if it has been lightly brushed with green, although here in the valley the forsythia and magnolia have been blooming a week.So it's been a mixed, hesitant season,hardly reflecting global warming this year except in its bizarre extremes. The news today reports a foot of snow in Minnesota and Wisconsin,so the atmosphere is certainly erratic. The extended forecast finally indicates sunshine and warm (65-70F ) temperatures,so I finished putting new shingles on the garage roof yesterday and soon Beth and I will do some exterior painting and landscaping that the house needs.

Death of a Tree

This is a Blue Spruce that my mother had planted some 19 years ago after using it as a Christmas tree. Although I lament killing any living thing, I have no particular attachment for this particular tree so Beth and I have agreed to do new landscaping.Where the tree had stood likely will be bird feeders and baths and flowers and grasses-maybe a fire pit-and whatever else we need to create a new sanctuary.

Porcupines, Coyotes, & Men

Took a walk with the dog in the woods about three miles outside of town, where the snow had finally melted although the landscape still displayed the look of mid November, brown and gray and lifeless. About a mile and a half along a logging road we came upon a porcupine in a culvert feeding on one of the few shoots of new grass. This particularly individual showed absolutely no fear or concern that we were approaching, and only raised its head to gaze at me when I deliberately made noise and moved into its line of sight. By that time I had picked up the dog to prevent her from getting too close, for she had had an encounter with a porcupine several years ago after which I had had to yank a half dozen quills from her snout. Together we stared at the porcupine as it nonchalantly chewed the grass five feet away from us, for it had learned from experience that it possessed few enemies-including us- willing to brave its needles. At length we left it where we found it, and I marveled at what a slow, clumsy animal it was-slower and with poorer eyesight than an opossum I thought-but obviously adept at surviving in the harsh mountains. As we were walking back we were passed by two men shouldering rifles, one of whom said “Out walking with your killer dog I see”…for people commonly misjudge Chelsee’s prowess because of her small size, not realizing that her terrier half easily outruns many breeds twice her height. I replied that she was a “great little dog” to which he began boasting that there was a least one coyote that would not bother us because “I killed it three weeks ago!” Apparently the two of them were on another coyote hunt, and when I remarked that coyotes had never bothered us, this particular fellow remarked a second time, with obvious pride, that he had shot one, as though to him the animals were the devil incarnate.Sometimes coyotes were hazardous to small dogs and chickens when people encroached on their living space and them on ours, but to deliberately hunt them down in their wild habitat bordered on sadism in my opinion. In my youth I too had shot my BB gun at birds and frogs and grasshoppers and felt no remorse, but I was as ignorant at the age of 15 as some men my present age remained,and I eventually had concluded that killing for ‘sport’ merely reflected a state of emotional and spiritual immaturity. During our five years of walking the dog and I had only encountered a single coyote, and that animal wisely had maintained a distance of fifty yards from us as it slowly retreated. Like most member of it’s species it had been more curious than threatening to us, and intelligent enough to be wary of humanity’s dangers. When the two men turned onto another trail and we parted ways, I was glad that they would not encounter the aforementioned porcupine, because I assumed that one of them would have gladly shot the hapless animal and called it fun, or fair game, or some other such nonsense. By contrast, hunting for food rather than consuming a pen raised animal showed a respectful understanding of the natural ecology of the woods, and in that regard many local gun owners were far savvier about the real world than people isolated in metropolitan areas. As the federal government and corporations confiscated more and more power from individuals,those who "cling to guns " appeared wiser than many of those who feared them.

Science And NDE's

THIS IS FROM 'SCIENCE DAILY' ONLINE >> "Seeing a bright light, going through a tunnel, having the feeling of ending up in another 'reality' or leaving one's own body are very well known features of the complex phenomena known as 'Near-Death Experiences ' (NDE), which people who are close to death can experience in particular. Products of the mind? Psychological defence mechanisms? Hallucinations? These phenomena have been widely documented in the media and have generated numerous beliefs and theories of every kind. From a scientific point of view, these experiences are all the more difficult to understand in that they come into being in chaotic conditions, which make studying them in real time almost impossible. The University of Liège's researchers have thus tried a different approach. Working together, researchers at the Coma Science Group (Directed by Steven Laureys) and the University of Liège's Cognitive Psychology Research (Professor Serge Brédart and Hedwige Dehon), have looked into the memories of NDE with the hypothesis that if the memories of NDE were pure products of the imagination, their phenomenological characteristics (e.g., sensorial, self referential, emotional, etc. details) should be closer to those of imagined memories. Conversely, if the NDE are experienced in a way similar to that of reality, their characteristics would be closer to the memories of real events. The researchers compared the responses provided by three groups of patients, each of which had survived (in a different manner) a coma, and a group of healthy volunteers. They studied the memories of NDE and the memories of real events and imagined events with the help of a questionnaire which evaluated the phenomenological characteristics of the memories. The results were surprising. From the perspective being studied, not only were the NDEs not similar to the memories of imagined events, but the phenomenological characteristics inherent to the memories of real events (e.g. memories of sensorial details) are even more numerous in the memories of NDE than in the memories of real events. The brain, in conditions conducive to such phenomena occurring, is prey to chaos. Physiological and pharmacological mechanisms are completely disturbed, exacerbated or, conversely, diminished. Certain studies have put forward a physiological explanation for certain components of NDE, such as Out-of-Body Experiences, which could be explained by dysfunctions of the temporo-parietal lobe. In this context the study published in PLOS ONE suggests that these same mechanisms could also could also 'create' a perception - which would thus be processed by the individual as coming from the exterior - of reality. In a kind of way their brain is lying to them, like in a hallucination. These events being particularly surprising and especially important from an emotional and personal perspective, the conditions are ripe for the memory of this event being extremely detailed, precise and durable. Numerous studies have looked into the physiological mechanisms of NDE, the production of these phenomena by the brain, but, taken separately, these two theories are incapable of explaining these experiences in their entirety. The study published in PLOS ONE does not claim to offer a unique explanation for NDE, but it contributes to study pathways which take into account psychological phenomena as factors associated with, and not contradictory to, physiological phenomena." >> NOW MY TAKE ON IT ALL >>... the Key error made by science is the assumption that there is an “exterior” which defines " reality". Rather,an NDE,or any true spiritual experience, is an acute perception that there are NO BORDERS between the mind and the outside of the skull. Instead, think of skin, bones and the brain on a quantum level-as shifting, merging energy fields- and the absence of borders is easier to visualize. As Einstein said "the field is the only reality". To me,consciousness is a constructed ‘reality’ arising from within and without,part of a 'universal intelligence' of which we are a conduit, and which perhaps also explains and validates our mystical sense of 'oneness'..?

Winter

It is still winter here in the western woods, with boot deep snow on the mountaintops and solid ice covering the dirt roads. It has been a mixed winter of bitter cold interspersed with thaws, but generally it has been below freezing and snowy since December 22nd. Little things turn my eye towards spring and help break the monotony of mid winter, like the chipmunk I saw yesterday and a small stonefly walking on the crust the day before, but February is always the doldrums of the year. This oil and natural gas substation is one of many scattered around the National forest, and hundreds of new wells have been drilled in the past few years. The companies are required to display their permits and often place them in a mailbox they install near their drilling sites. Although fracking is not yet common around here, some of the blueprints show both conventional and fracking wells among their plans. After the permits are obtained the trucks and bulldozers clear the trees and install the culverts and do all the other preparations required before the drilling begins. On paper the regulations appear stringent, but how well they are enforced miles from civilization I do not know. This particular substation is about two miles from the nearest macadam, and others are more isolated. The building houses a huge diesel engine that powers pumps that move the gas and oil through the miles of pipes buried all over the woods. Many of the individual drill pumps-which can be miles from a substation-are powered by electricity, so no doubt the diesels run generators as well. Electric wires are strung all over the forest, sometimes attached to a tree with a piece of rope or lifted from the ground with a 'Y' shaped branch, so not all of this is high tech. Personally,I have seen no real problems associated with the drilling, for other than the smell of gas near the substations and storage tanks, they become part of the landscape in the same manner that nobody notices telephone poles on a city street. They are there but the eye learns to ignore them. I use many of the logging and gas roads as trails through what would otherwise be a wilderness, and they enable me to keep my bearings. There is so much gas here that the companies are scrambling to find new markets in which to sell it to keep their profits up, although utility companies are claiming they need to raise gas rates-probably to cover their lower margins due to the glut of gas. POSTSCRIPT: March 14th- Not much has changed in the general landscape, and I walked this morning through two inches of new snow in what to the skin still feels like a January wind. But there are more signs of the coming spring, with streams that are clear of ice and running deep from melt off. On the 9th Beth and I saw the first robins, grackles and red wing blackbirds, and a few crocuses blooming the next day, but those species are in hiding today,buried beneath the snow, waiting for the thaws to become trustworthy. POSTSCRIPT: March 26th-Still clouds and snow showers and boot deep snow on the mountains, high temperatures in the upper 30's F ...It is a late spring no doubt... I asked an Amish guy what he thought of the snow and he replied "It's time to plow!" ...so most locals are ready for winter to leave...Is this an effect of global climate change-with extremes that we all simply have to adapt to?

Home

We finally finished the major work and moved in successfully on December 22nd, but both of us have been recovering from flu in the month since then...no doubt stress compromised our emotional and physical well being... The good news is that normalcy seems to be returning at last! We have some basement work to do and landscaping in the spring and other odd jobs, but the house is looking good:)Warren currently has been experiencing a prolonged cold snap, with daytime highs below 20*F(...so cold that the dog has not wanted to walk with me?)thus it's nice to have a warm comfortable house to come home to... Otherwise, not much new happening around here,or rather,it would be mere gossip to talk about, which is not my strong suit. In early March my daughter in law is being sent to a conference in Prague to give a presentation for her work with Merck,so my sons are flying with her to make a vacation of it. They plan to travel by train to Germany and fly home from Munich. This will be the first time to Europe for Barb and Forrest, although Skylar has been to Italy so he can add two more countries to his list!