Back in the World

    I returned to Warren after six weeks in the south and west, with four weeks passed in the van traveling to National and State parks to hike and golf, and I also visited a friend in eastern California. After so much time off the grid I returned with a renewed aversion to the news and the superficial, simplistic soundbites of commentators and politicians; it saddened me to think that our leaders are chosen and important decisions are being made on such distorted, incomplete information. Being away from society for a month clarified the inanity of our culture-the exaggerations and sensationalizing and general 'dumbing down' of the complexities of human existence.                                                                                

  So while I was away the Ukraine war started and Omicron mostly came and went and I was blissfully unaware or only marginally aware while on the wide open desert roads through which I was driving.  Ignorance is bliss so long as the troubles of the world are not directly affecting you, although sticking ones head in the sand does not really solve anything, and the world is too connected anyway to avoid for long.      

    Upon returning home it was obvious that the alternate realities of Republicans and Democrats had not changed, and there truly is no reconciling with those who believe the world is flat. People who sow division to obtain or maintain power, or people who are incapable of compromise, or people who are incapable of seeing holistic viewpoints-unfortunately, they hold disproportionate power in societies, with Mr. Putin being the latest example. I suspect that Mr. Putin had no incentive to invade Ukraine while Mr. Trump was in power because Mr. Trump was doing his best to dismantle NATO without violence; it would have been nice to be a fly on the wall during their two hour off the record meeting back in 2018. It was only the American constitution and a few key, morally and ethically motivated people who provided the checks and balances to prevent Mr. Trump from overriding the will of the people as is happening in Russia. ...Civilization and freedom really are that tenuous, even here, and many Americans have the same blindness and simplistic inability to see the implications of their grabs for power.                     

    Meanwhile, people are blaming Mr. Biden for all their troubles, from inflation to gas prices to the Ukraine war as if they had no knowledge whatsoever of budgeting and personal choices and random fate. Have they not noticed all the twists and turns in their own lives that were beyond their control? Why on earth would they suppose that one man-or even one institution-can control all the thoughts and actions of the rest of humanity? Stop blaming others for the state of your personal life. Start using the freedom you possess to think critically and make better choices while you can. Your gas guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks and smart phone contracts and fancy nails and pizzas are not necessities, although one would be hard pressed to convince some of you otherwise. ..and on and on...obviously I did not miss this crap during my time in the van, but I am still sad that it is human nature and the state of our world.

This Keeps Me Awake at Night

"It will be months before the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol will release its first report on the causes of that day's deadly violence.

New polls show that Americans of different parties view it very differently, from whose fault it was, whether violent action is OK, and whether those who stormed the Capitol were mostly violent or peaceful.

WBUR is a nonprofit news organization and our coverage relies on your financial support. Please give today.For a year now, the images of people storming the Capitol to stop President Biden’s election certification have played over and over. And while most people have formed opinions about the people involved, one political scientist has dug deeper.Robert Pape, who directs the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago, has been analyzing the identities of the more than 700 people arrested for breaking through the barricades that day.He's pored over their court documents and discovered some surprises. After months of looking through the reports, Pape says the picture remains the same: Over and over again, people interviewed by officials said they went to the Capitol on Jan. 6 to support former President Donald Trump and claim Trump as the legitimate president, not Biden.“This isn't just simply normal criminal behavior or escalations like street fighting,” he says. “This is clearly collective political violence done by hundreds and hundreds of people for essentially the same political purposes.”

Demographics breakdown of the riotersRight-wing extremist violence is usually strongly linked to skinhead gangs or militia groups. But as of Dec. 2021, he says 87% of Capitol rioters he’s analyzed were not members of violent groups like the Oath Keepers or Proud Boys.“We're used to thinking of extremists as on the fringe,” he says. “... What we see over and over in their demographics and in their motives really is a disturbing picture: That this is coming from part of the mainstream.” More than half of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists were white-collar workers such as business owners, architects, doctors and lawyers. Pape, who has decades of experience studying global political violence, says this statistic was unexpected. Out of the hundreds of people arrested for breaking into the Capitol, he says only 7% were unemployed at the time — nearly the national unemployment average. Normally, 40% of right-wing extremists have prior military service, whereas Jan. 6 Capitol riotersat at about 15%, he says. Pape also looked into the rioters' criminal backgrounds and found “30% of those who broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6 have a criminal history of some kind, often basically being arrested for drug misdemeanors,” he says. “But that compares to 64% of right-wing extremists.”Typically, right-wing extremists are young — normally under the age of 34. On Jan. 6, rioters were mostly in their 40s and 50s.“This is uncomfortable for a variety of reasons. It means a lot of our usual counter-violent extremist solutions just don't apply,” Pape says. “Usually, we think we'll get them a job. Well, we've already got over half business owners, CEOs and folks from white-collar occupations — that's not going to work.”Demobilizing tactics often involve helping young right-wing extremists develop better relationships and eventually get married and have kids. But he says many Jan. 6 rioters already are married and care for families. It’s crucial for community advocates, politicians, faith leaders and law enforcement to understand “we have a different type of problem on our hands going forward,” he notes.“We need to really come to grips with the fact that what we saw on Jan. 6 is not simply the usual bad apples acting out yet again,” Pape says.

'Among today’s senators and representatives, the overwhelming majority of racial and ethnic minority members are Democrats (83%), while 17% are Republicans. This represents a shift from the last Congress, when just 10% of non-White lawmakers were Republicans. Our analysis reflects the 532 voting members of Congress seated as of Jan. 26, 2021.' -Pew Research Center

  Yes-there are racist motivations within the Republican party, despite denials and regardless of the socio-economic diversity of the rioters. These people will defend lies and violence to stay in power and undermine our democracy...I find this disturbing, dangerous and definitely not over...The Democratic efforts to change election laws may not be perfect, but some basic rules to avoid cheating seem so common sense that the two parties Must cooperate in order to avoid future violence.

 

Babble...

    Writing today not with anything particular to say, rather because I feel like I've neglected to blog about the Colorado vacation Beth and I took a month ago and a wonderful visit with an old friend a few weeks later and some of the other thoughts that have passed by. Maybe I'm thinking that words seem shallow and pointless compared to the emotions that really motivate us, or that it has all been said one way or another by me and others, or that none of it matters and people are going to think and do as they feel regardless of what anyone says. 

                                                         My recent journal entries have been somewhat pessimistic, or realistic,

or perhaps fatalistic in regards to the future of humanity... With  people dying of covid while at the same time denying they have the disease-as happened to the 40 something year old brother of a friend-what possible hope is there that humanity will ever believe in the less tangible threats of climate change and other slow emerging problems? Men a block away from here have new signs in their yard claiming that Mr. Trump won the election, while Q'Anon followers assembled in Dallas to await the coming of... John F Kennedy, Jr who died in 1999....?  A sane person cannot make this stuff up, but it sure is disturbing that human beings can be so gullible and uncritical in their thought processes....particularly as I witness the depths to which they sink to defend them. They do not comprehend the horrors that a breakdown in civil society would unleash. 

     Being of an independent nature, perhaps I am pessimistic regarding humanity because I understand the deep inner origins of personal growth, and I witness people neglecting the difficult effort needed to embrace empathy and compassion and the interconnection of all things. I see their unwillingness to examine their own prejudices and find a more holistic view of the world, so Tribalism, or family, or culture, or religion, or political party becomes all that is valuable to them. Humanity becomes dragged into that narrow place despite the efforts of the open-minded. At the same time I understand that each of us grows at our own pace and I have no right to judge humankind from my own small experience; sometimes I forget how little I truly know of the Universe and our place in it.

               My faith remains in Nature and the knowledge that humanity does not and will not affect the Cosmos. We are of no consequence to the stars, so the sun will burn on until its own eventual death-whether or not we kill ourselves. 

                                       

As for Colorado... our visits to Mesa Verde, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and the Rocky Mountains were stunning. There simply is nothing to compare east of the Mississippi River...As for why the cliff dwellers built where they did, the intuitive answer Beth and I concluded was that they retreated there for self protection; such isolated difficult terrain immediately suggested that they were escaping violence. 

(...as always, click on the photos to enlarge them...)

    

    Here is another book exposing the recurring incompetence and corruption of the last 20 years in Afghanistan, which at least helps explain why Biden was so adamant about getting out. That said, I believe that the method of the withdrawal was atrocious. Even a layperson like me could see that the Taliban were motivated and capable of overrunning the entire country as soon as the northern cities started to fall. I thought that that the departure should have begun months before and included Bagram Air Force base.. Move the people there and fly them out before closing the base. But reality is what it is and America will repeat the same mistakes in the future because that is what we do....I was alive and watched as the helicopters evacuated people from the embassy in Saigon in 1975, so it seems as though 25 years was long enough for politicians to forget and lead the nation eyes wide open into another unwinnable war that more knowledgeable people pleaded them not to. Books like this reveal the absurdity of people who believe in conspiracy theories-as though politicians or the military or anyone else could possibly agree on anything and commit to one, unified front for more than a short period of time; that simply is not in human nature, especially in short sighted, arrogant Americans-mostly middle aged white men- who believe in their own superiority. It was as early as December, 2001 when the mission in Afghanistan became murky and plans were being discussed to invade Iraq, so like the Vietcong before them, the Taliban and Pakistanis wisely said, ' We will wait you out'.

Egypt Hollows Latest Gig

     Kenny and Addison played a restored Bed and Breakfast in Kane, PA on the 17th, a beautiful old manor building from the 1800's that new owners are in the process of renovating. This likely will be their last outdoor show this year, and because of covid the future remains  a challenge for performers. They just released a new album 'Cut and Run' -available on digital format-which they have been recording over the past year and which has kept them sane and busy. In personal terms it has been a very difficult year for Kenny, and it is an unfortunate truism that you 'have to pay the dues if you want to sing the blues'.  Fortunately, that has translated into a mature sincerity and power in his music which is reflected in the new songs he has written. Bassist Addison and he have been playing together since high school and together possess the familiar osmosis/telepathy that only time and practice can develop between musicians. The small crowd responded well because it is music that must be listened to to be appreciated-which is not necessarily the attention span of crowds these days.

 

Insects, the Environment and the Future

  ...click on pics to enlarge

    I used to have an insect collection as a child and spent many hours running through the fields chasing butterflies and grasshoppers and other insects. In retrospect I was sometimes cruel to them- not maliciously but definitely ignorantly-shooting grasshoppers with a BB gun among other practices. I considered them playthings rather than living things, so it was not until I became an adult that I woke up to having empathy towards all lifeforms.
   The first picture is of crane flies mating, and although people often mistake crane flies for mosquitoes, the former are usually bigger and are in fact totally harmless to people. The second picture is of an assassin bug, which are mostly predators of other insects but which can bite people-something I learned by painful experience as a kid. The last picture is of of a red legged grasshopper, a short horned grasshopper and a member of of the sub family 'Spur-throat'. The latter are the common clear winged grasshopper which are abundant in roadside fields.

I have noticed that some species of insects are much less common than they were 50 years ago, which can be attributed to loss of habitat and over spraying of pesticides. The fields where I grew up near Allentown, PA are now housing developments, so thousands of grasshoppers are gone, along with less common butterflies like the painted lady that I used to see regularly.The white 'cabbage' and yellow 'sulfur' and 'alfalfa' butterflies are still numerous, but those few adaptable species cannot sustain an ecosystem. As the insects die off, so do the birds, because moth and butterfly caterpillars are a primary food source of nestlings in the spring. Oak trees can sustain over 500 different species of caterpillar, so cutting them down trickles all along the food chain. As I mentioned in my previous post, this century seems to be a critical one for the planet for many reasons, and as the codependency of so many different lifeforms begins to break down because of human activity, I worry that a tipping point may be reached. Many species and individuals-human beings among them-may die and it won't be the meek that inherit the earth- unless you count bacteria among the meek; they ruled the earth for billions of years and may once again. 

    I wish I could offer a positive outlook, but the behavior of people over the past year has solidified my awareness that they simply do not care about the social good-never mind less obvious problems such as the slow destruction of the oceans and other planetary issues. Out of sight, out of mind, so long as their preferred little tribe is doing well.  I know of a man-the healthy, fit, unvaccinated brother of a friend, in his 40's- who is recovering from a serious co-vid infection yet still refuses to accept the wisdom of vaccines and the ongoing threat of the disease to others. How is the future of the planet to be trusted to such people?  This mans freedom of choice includes the choice to ignore the consequences of his actions to both his neighbors and his grandchildren, and that lack of perspective infects millions of  educated people around the world. Contrary to their beliefs, the planet is warming and habitat and species are being destroyed and over population is contributing to the exploitation of the Earth...a fragile island spinning within the desolate, cold void of space.

Misc.

  I followed this old unused road ( old Route 6, now called Township Line Rd) about a mile to see how much nature has reclaimed it in the 60? years since it has been closed to traffic. It is located in the Allegheny forest near Kane, PA where one end is maintained with gravel to accommodate traffic to a natural gas compressor station.The other end passes an old camp trailer before becoming a maintained asphalt road again. In between the two points the asphalt has degraded to dirt path in some places, now used by four wheeler s and other off road vehicles that ignore the signs. It is always interesting to me to observe how quickly nature can recover from human encroachment-

at least of the macro intrusive kind; I am less optimistic about the chemicals and other less visible pollutants we have dumped into the environment. 

  The Rad Rover electric bike is something I purchased about a year ago, which after 700 miles of riding has proven itself to be a reliable and thoroughly enjoyable way to extend my rides. The battery lasts at least 30 miles in the hills around here, and allows me to do rides I would not otherwise attempt both on and off the road. One can still get a good workout yet have some help on the really steep stuff. (...as always, click on pics to enlarge)