Energy, etc

Warren is in oil and gas producing country, so the surrounding mountains and nearby Allegheny National Forrest are filled with oil rigs and pipelines, and more are being drilled. In fact, the original oil rush began in western Pennsylvania in the late 1800's and continues to this day. I often use the access roads as hiking trails, and have a mixed mind as to the environmental, economic and political impact of all the development. There has been violence recently-mostly slashed tires and other mischief- involving disputes between the landowners and oil producers and the Forest service and environmental groups, apparently because of frustration with the federal bureaucracy that restricts what the producers view as personal rights. The latter own the subsurface mineral rights but have to build roads to reach the drill sites, which damages the publicly owned forest. As far as I can determine, the environmental effects are mostly visual, because water quality samples in 1998 of a local stream( Brown Run ) showed no noticeable effects from the oil and gas wells, and air quality in Warren County is rated "good" for 93% of the year. Of course, this relates to the larger questions of whether the nation and the world want to continue extracting fossil fuels or switch to renewables, and those require complicated answers.

      Around here, where United refinery, gas and oil exploration, and logging are economically important, the bias is towards development of the mountains, and despite my ecological leanings, I absolutely respect the hard physical labor required to reach some of the remote oil and gas fields. As I hike past them there is an occasional whiff of oil or gas, but no apparent irreversible damage that a hundred years left to nature would not repair. The most damaging spill in the last three years was the deliberate opening of valves by disgruntled, fired employees, so it seems that human nature is always the most pervasive threat. Yet I see bird nests in the old pumps which are rusting away, and the derricks of the 18th century are long gone and their access roads overgrown. The cumulative effects of over consumption may eventually cause planetary damage, and I personally believe solar power will offer the most abundant power supply, but until that day comes, it is clear from the local debate that strong emotions on both sides misrepresent the reality of what needs to be done. Meanwhile I continue to walk or bicycle and turn the lights off...

Wednesday

A young woman-25 years old- died in a car accident at about 6:30pm two days ago... I happened to be sitting on the back stairs about a hundred yards away and heard the bang when her SUV hit a pole dead center. Moving at a casual pace I put on my shoes and walked past the scene about 3-4 minutes afterward, where bystanders were looking at her unconscious body sprawled on the front seat. Apparently she had hit the steering wheel/windshield? and fell over onto her back. I did not see any blood nor severe injuries and as I glanced in I overheard one of them remark " Yes, she has a pulse." When I walked past two police cars arrived, so one of the bystanders asked the officers if they had a CPR machine, to which the answer was no. I noticed the lack of urgency in the police, who spent about a minute surveying the traffic and assessing a dangling ( harmless ) telephone wire before looking at the victim. While I circled the block, having neither the medical experience to help nor wishing to gawk, I finally heard an ambulance arrive about 5 or 6 minutes after the moment of the crash. Of course, this was far too late if she had been breathless the whole time, and I later heard that she had died at the scene-probably of internal injuries. Further gossip confirmed that she had led a troubled life and possibly had blacked out or seizured-or even made a deliberate turn-before hitting the pole. Fortunately no one on the sidewalk was injured, for this was directly in front of a music store and a short distance from a dance studio where young girls had been assembling.
When I returned to the house after observing the scene, it occurred to me that despite my curiosity I had neglected to say a prayer for the woman and her family, which I immediately did, and in retrospect that was probably the precise moment of her dying...I guess I have no lasting feelings either way, for I saw many roadside memorials while I was walking the country, so this accident-although tragic to the family-is one more death to me. Supposedly there are more hospital acquired infections resulting in death every year than traffic deaths, so maybe our concerns about risk are misplaced anyway...better to just get on with living...

Babble

It has been an emotionally strange two weeks...Beth is moving to a new apartment, which has exhausted her as preparations are made, and I have been floating in and out of consciousness-or so it seems, as the long winter finally breaks and my mind adjusts to the changing of the seasons. I have read too many studies about split brain patients-those who have had strokes or had their corpus callosum between the two brain hemispheres cut-to take anything my left verbal 'reasoning' side makes up to explain a mood too seriously, but it really does feel sometimes that factors beyond my conscious awareness-even things such as magnetic field changes-influence my emotional state unexpectedly. Perhaps the increased light of spring causes hormonal changes which require a transitional period during which the mind works out an equilibrium-which at another time of year would scarcely be noticed...Biorhythms are odd beasts..such as whatever causes women who work together to synchronize their menstrual periods ...So there Is some scientific reality to all this, as well as the possibility that some of it is bullshit made up by the left brain to explain a right brain mood which it does not comprehend... hard to tell which is which.

Obama

For years I had been half jokingly remarking that an economic depression would be beneficial to Americas soul-to remind people that our rampant materialism was not healthy...Obviously the reality of a depression would be more difficult to watch, and I have no clue whether the new "stimulus package" will have any affect. Certainly the current economic trouble IS exposing the flawed system, and the old adage "no pain no gain" applies here, with the choice-as always-being whether we find opportunities for productive change or try to preserve the status quo....in my humble opinion the latter is Not an option, because the rest of the world IS going to rise in power and influence, and oil and other resources Are going be depleted, so the time is Now to find new directions...Mr.Obama understands the problems and has assembled smart people around him...but I question the ability of the average politician or power broker to genuinely compromise for the common good, so we shall see if it is not too late...

Love revisited

This is the love of my life Elizabeth, maiden name Dunham, whom I met about a year and a half ago when she started riding bicycle with my sister. After their weekly rides the ladies would meet for "coffee talk" at my sister's house, where I would take my mother for the social gathering. There was no romantic involvement at first, but we gradually got to know one another and in May of '08 took a short Geo ride, then went to a casino for the birthday surprise of another friend, and a baseball game, then talked a lot at the fire in July, then the Paul Rodgers trip, and here I am writing this today. An easy camaraderie and abundant laughter was there from the start, which makes us realize that previous relationships in our lives were somehow contrived or unnecessarily difficult...and that a genuine love- with a genuine friend and 'soulmate'- is not work, rather is expressed naturally, almost effortlessly, with spontaneous joy and understanding. Perhaps all the other people in our lives were necessary lessons we needed in order to be the people we recognize in one another today, and maybe if we had met at the age of twenty we would not have emotionally connected as we do now, yet the reality could be simpler than that, where we just finally met a person with whom our true emotional selves- both child and adult- can be openly shared, and with whom our inner, original chemistry transcends analysis. We lift and buoy each other is a positive, joyous manner, and sometimes stand in the kitchen doing nothing, yet break out laughing for no reason- because that is the emotional sincerity of how we relate to one another. Serious talks, playful talks, serious walks, playful walks, laughing while working, while sitting, while eating, while driving, while making love...We simply enjoy what happens as if it has been blessed upon us from something beyond our understanding. There has been nothing 'giddy' about any of this, rather it has simply unfolded and deepened into a stronger desire to be with and give to one another. ..not bad for a pair of people independent by nature... At core is the growing trust and compatibility rooted in our basic decency, with honesty and fidelity as the foundations of our intimacy....Character traits which we individually brought to the table and which make everything as a couple that much more precious and enduring.

Christmas '08

Hey... 'Twas another great Christmas in Warren, and despite all the personal and worldly troubles we might be faced with, it is incumbent upon all of us to appreciate the good things and people we have in our lives...This is the traditional "couch picture", satiated by our good fortune and abundance! Hope everyone is well

God

My friend asked me to describe my vision of God, which of course I could not do. That is, a mature concept of God is an understanding of how the word relates to every definition offered throughout history as it is perceived and comprehended in one's private thoughts. How people define God is as varied as individuals, but intimately intertwined with how they define and understand spirit, or religion, or science, or love, or nature, or Creation, or all the other aspects of the human condition. The meditative experiences that have clarified my personal understanding- as it relates to the rest of humanity- is all that I can offer, and such revelations cannot be articulated, rather are intuitive, emotional perceptions of reality rather than blind faith. God in that sense encompasses an holistic vision which incorporates my non-verbal intelligence rather than my verbal, logical reasoning, which together strive to understand the unknown.

   Were I to be pressed further I would say that the word God, at least as it is related to a spiritual experience, is as undefinable as the word orgasm, or sorrow, in that unless one has experienced them there is No explaining them to another person through words and rational means of thinking. They are  in no way less unintelligent or less real than logical, linear ways of perceiving. There will always be a gap in our knowledge, and spiritual, mystical experiences may never prove something exists beyond materialism, but they offer a different way of seeing and interpreting the world. I envision the unity of materialism and spirit and man and God and time and all other aspects of Creation as parts of the same Universal Intelligence, although the loving, positive aspects of that origin have been distorted by some religions into perverse,negative aberrations-called the Devil or Satan or other terms. Science has no answer for the idea of God as being one possible origin of the Universe, including the Big Bang, evolution and all the rest. As the Buddhists would say, the whole conflict is merely a 'grasping for soul theory' brought about by the ego...Get rid of that and peace of mind-and maybe of humanity- follows.