hobo bibliomancy

Two great tastes came together oh so magnificently on my walk to work yesterday morning; it isn’t normally what I’d consider quality time.

As I’m about to turn the corner to my place of work–I’m shuffling glumly, head kind of downish, a demi-scowl fixed in place–I see out of the corner of my eye that there, on top of the concrete trash receptacle, is a book, left open. It takes me about ten additional paces for the peripheral image to register. I snap back to a healthier level of presence, and decide to say, yes, I will let the universe play with me, and I with it. I stop, do a 180, and return to see what it is that’s on top of the trashcan.

It turns out to be a copy of Vol. 6 (Holderness–Krasnoje) of the 15th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and it’s open to: jackal.

Now then, among my favorite things: found objects and bibliomancy.

Caution is my default mode with found objects in my work ‘hood. It’s a dogeared, hard-scrabble, toughluck, and urine soaked chunk of town. But this particular volume looked to be in decent shape, so, yeah, I grabbed it.

As for bibliomancy, it’s a party trick we like to haul out from time to time, typically with a dictionary. Close your eyes, open the book randomly, plunk your finger down somewhere, anywhere, onto the page you’ve opened to, open your eyes, and read. The hope is that what you have selected will have some entertaining, enlightening, or, if you’re lucky, downright creepy resonance with what’s happening in your world.

So then, the jackal; my unwitting street reading:

In the New Kingdom Anubis was seen as being in charge of legions of thousands of daemons, and could be appealed to for protection against negative magic, especially curses. He also punished those who violated tombs or gave offence to the gods.

I thought it a lucky break, finding this totem of the warding-off of curses and all manner of bad juju, as I was about to enter the office. There’s a micro-scale, highly localized urban legend in my shop that our building carries a curse placed upon it several years ago by some local practitioners of the darker spiritual arts, in response to some very badly handled community relations on the part of the real estate developers who were behind the conversion of the former industrial building I work in.

I don’t honestly know enough about the spiritual practice in question to put any credence in the story or in the efficacy of the bad mojo spell. I can say that my day time finds me surrounded by and interacting with  the ranks of the walking professionally wounded. And there I am. Right there. With them.

So, yes. A little sign of protection? I’ll take it. And I take strength in knowing that someone out there can relate.

Alternately, what with the fact that the open pages also included an entry on U.S. President Andrew Jackson, perhaps it was simply a cosmic reminder that I needed to hit an ATM to take out 20 bucks for the day.

mao see tongue

Well, alright! THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about, see!

A little over a month ago I coughed up a brief nugget of grousing with regards to some particularly macabre accountancy being undertaken by the folks at EPA. Instead of setting their bean counters to the task of devaluing the human life by approximately $1,000,000—presumably to lay a surreptitious thumb on the industry-friendly side of the cost-benefit scales—the EPA would be far better used, and we’d be better served, were they to approach the task of more accurately valuing intact, productive natural systems, and to account for losses—real monetary losses—borne by those impacted by natural systems’ destruction.

We look at a forest and count board feet at some projected market value. What’s the replacement cost on the carbon dioxide-to-oxygen exchange?

That’s the sort of economic challenge that I’d much rather the folks at EPA sink their teeth into.

So, needless to say, it pleased me to no end to catch this article in today’s paper as I rode BART work this morning.

Gretchen Daily wants to protect the planet by convincing governments and big investors there’s money to be made – or at least saved – in preserving nature instead of exploiting it.

It’s a fresh approach to conservation that is drawing international attention to this unpretentious Stanford biologist who has garnered some of the world’s most prestigious scientific honors. At its most basic, Daily is figuring out how to put a price tag on the natural world. And colleagues say she has done what many scientists have not: connected theory to practice.

Duly noted that this research is taking place within academia as opposed to the public sector, but fine. It’s underway, and it’s receiving section-front, above-fold coverage. Right the hell on.

Admission / full-disclosure: I bailed, running and screaming, on my early intentions to pursue an undergraduate major in economics. Having rather enjoyed my freshman year introductory micro- and macro- classes, and having come to an early though not well articulated sense for the extent to which our environmental challenges were economic at their root, I thought (briefly) that a geology and economics double major might set me up quite nicely for a professional life in the environmental field.

Then I hit intermediate microeconomics.

I think it was a lecture on diminishing marginal utility that caused something in my cerebellum to snap. The example the professor used to illustrate his point was leaving the water running while brushing your teeth, as there’s no appreciable value to the (wasted) resource. Even in moist New England, more than 20 years ago, this just struck me as completely perverse. And it dawned on me that any field of study so deeply rooted in ”all other things being equal,” and that is predicated upon assumption after assumption—none of which are likely to actually pan out when you bother to ground truth them—is probably not where I should focus my energy.  

I became more convinced of the fact that environmental challenges were economic in nature, but in addition, going further, of the likelihood that many of them were exacerbated if not caused altogether by the deep flaws in the western economics toolbox, and the damage done through their application.  

But, so long as growth is unquestioned king—and unfortunately it is—it’s the toolbox that we have. And I am heartened to see that the need to recognize the very real, and quite irreplaceable, value delivered by viable natural systems is being undertaken, and is being given notice.

Oh, man, I just love this… me:

We continue to treat our resource base as an ATM machine tied to an account whose balance is always assumed to be well in the black. We have a long way to go in seeing to it that cost benefit analysis adequately captures the value of resources and systems.

and Gretchen Daily:

“Here’s how I often think about it: If you look at nature today, it’s almost like an all-you-can-eat buffet: Unless you set a price tag on the different things on the table … people are going to go whole hog like we are now and eat all they can as fast as they can.”

Go git ‘em Gretchen. And thank you for giving me cause to get my gloat on this Monday morning.

they must think we’re stupid

I couldn’t believe my ears.

Just recently caught a television spot. I think it was for some manner of skin cream. The spokes model says: “The best way to protect the future…is to create it.”

Is she kidding?!

Everyone knows that the best way to protect the future is—when you travel to it—don’t. touch. ANYthing.

farewell to a giant

I won’t pretend to do justice to Jerry Wexler’s impact upon 20th century popular music, but I do feel compelled to note his passing with gratitude for the astonishing body of work his hand helped to craft and mold and bring to life.

My music collection runs rampant with what he touched. Yours probably does as well.

A long and incredibly fruitful life. Rock on, Jerry.

like a robot needs a skeleton key

Above is the first appearance of still-unnamed robot character. He’s been simplified a bit in the two years since, and still not locked firmly into place, but in ongoing appreciation for his having shown up at all to begin with, I’ve kept him mostly intact.

Not sure what has sent me into this particular space I’m in today, but I am in complete identification with a robot, staring at a key and a paintbrush that dangle right in front of what passes for a face, in a state of vapor-locked and ineffectual cluelessness at to what the hell to do with either of them.

In other news, male crickets have four distinct chirping patterns.

how l’eau can you go?

What a terrific article.

I’m once again reminded of a blithely tossed-out-there observation from my grad school professor of water policy and planning. He completed bachelors, masters, and doctorate studies at three western-state universities, but at the time was lecturing to an audience mostly of easterners: people who knew, by experience, days of sheets of rain. Or mountains of snow. Or both. And he clearly wanted to foster a sense of empathy for the parched among the moistened.

What he said sixteen years ago, what stuck, was this: the farther west you go beyond the Mississippi River, the more likely it is that you’ll find something in the local news, TV or print (if the latter, in the first section if not the front page), relating to water. My eight years in California have offered me evidence that the guy knew what the hell he was talking about, although I suspected as much at the time.

The matter of recycling domestic wastewater into non-potable uses—irrigation comes to mind—is big enough. Rendering it safely potable is an entirely bigger deal, and represents an approach that I expect will be increasingly applied, and would argue to present itself to be increasingly necessary on short order.

Having spent a couple years managing stakeholder group processes relating to state-level public drinking water regulatory issues, successfully navigating the competing view points that arose within the context of comparatively less volatile source protection initiatives, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during the outreach and education efforts necessary to getting such a project approved and implemented. I am beyond impressed.

And I get it: there’s an ick factor to be overcome, and as the NYT article demonstrates, some in the California community profiled remain unconvinced, too heavily invested in the fear and disgust to be moved by facts. The hurdles are more psychological and emotional than they are technical.

But as a once student of and practitioner within matters hydrospheric, I’d offer a simple truth: there’s probably no infinitesimal parcel of our planet’s limited supply of water that has not at one time or another passed through someone’s or something’s system, or percolated through the leavings of same. Multiple times. Deal with it. Welcome to the water cycle.This is what water does: it cycles. On and on and in and through and in and out and on and on.

 

(dmb tangent: I thought that I’d recognized the article author’s name; confirming as much served me some embarassment at not yet having read her recent and largely acclaimed book on the subject of bottled water, languishing on my gotta-read-this mental list for months. I expect that stumbling across this recent contribution to the New York Times and making the connection will serve as kick-in-pants to make my way to the bookstore. Soon, already.)

Happy Mungday

i type away

and play with ink

at times i’m pleased

sometimes it stinks

 

the week begins:

a monday funk

know not to do

but scratch my junk

 

an itch acknowledged

starts my day

i play with ink

i type away

blocks: a) creative b) building

1) I have got to get my scan on.

It’s a bit of an impediment to flow, having a scanner, having a computer, but not having the wherewithal to have them shake hands and work together.

* sigh … *

I own it: I’m not gadget guy. But this is not part and parcel of me being a tech cheese-fist. There is definitively no driver that exists for my particular scanner that will work within this machine / os configuration. Old hp, old mac. Screw it, I’ll schlep my wares over to glom of a friend’s rig before too much longer, I hope.

Been fairly productive, line wise. Out of no where, I’ve taken to drawing without pencil, and, necessarily, significantly, without eraser. That’s kind of a big symbolic deal.

2) What a wake-up call this morning, facing my saxophonic rustiness. That’s. What. Happens when you don’t find time to play. My diaphragmatic processes and structures are total mung. Dang. I literally need to relearn how to breathe correctly into a saxophone.

Which means that I need to find time, and a place, to accomplish this.

3) First published blog contribution! Also kind of a big symbolic deal. Many thanks, Dan.

I’d be remiss to not encourage any who find their way here to meander on over there as you travel the tubes.

when the student is ready, the teacher will appear

Uncanny.

 

The first and last time I’d seen the guy—seated in a wheelchair, playing an electric guitar through a battery-powered amp, and playing it very, very well by the way—was nine months ago. He was in a stone courtyard at the corner of Webster and 21^st in downtown Oakland, and I passed him on my way to BART on the very morning before heading off to participate in a quarterly gathering of kindred spirits aligned in self-exploration and personal development. 

 

It was truly an illustrative and rich and indelible moment: in a funk of stuckness, unsure of my footing, of my place, and still locked in a tired cycle of self-doubt and self-criticism—but, at least, having achieved awareness of this dynamic as an unconstructive pattern into which I’d long been investing my energy—I regarded this wonderfully talented individual as, among other things, a basis for an engrained, patterned, fresh round of self-pummeling:

 

So what’s YOUR excuse? This guy’s in a wheelchair fer chrissake, and he’s out there making art.

 

I’d immediately become of the aware that I was doing a number on myself, and reacted in the most predictable, unfortunately instinctual way:

 

Damn it, why the hell are you beating up on yourself, dumbass?

 

After a heavy sigh, I can only imagine the odd, 7am sidewalk figure I cut then and there to the handful of passersby, as I burst into laughter.

 

So, needless to say, it absolutely took my breath out—on my way to BART, at the corner of Webster and 21^st, on the morning of this quarterly gathering, at the one-year mark of my participation it just so happens—to once again encounter this wheelchair-bound guitarist.

 

Why this morning? Why not Tuesday? Or last month? Go figure. All I can offer up is my astonished gratitude for the serendipity, and a growing resistance to belief in coincidence.