Category Archives: Ecology, religion, justice

Odds and ends

The first week or two of September has been the busiest time of year in all the Unitarian Universalist congregations I have served, as we rev up again after summer slow-down. This week at First Unitarian has been no exception. Church phone ringing, meetings, people stopping in to say hi, lay leaders trying to get thigns done — the usual. On top of that, Carol and I still don’t have DSL service at home, and there’s something wacky with the DSL service here at church. Net result — I haven’t posted anything to this blog since Saturday.

But here are some odds and ends from notes I’ve accumulated over the past few days….

Sunday evening: Candleworks restaurant, two blocks from our apartment, had an outdoors band which was, um, pretty mediocre (to be charitable) and all too audible from our windows. Rather than suffer, um, listen, we took a walk down by the waterfront. Talked with a crew member from the cruise ship docked at the end of state pier — fascinating guy, loves to travel, hiked most of the Appalachian trail a couple of years ago, has gone all over North America, has found perfect job working for a cruise ship. He’ll take a couple of weeks off in the fall to go deer hunting in Michigan, where he comes from. Also spent a couple of hours talking to J. S., director of the port facilities. He regaled us with tales of what it’s like to run a port as a local official having to intereact with state and federal agencies. He grew up on the water in Revere, and rowed all over Boston Harbor in his youth — salt water runs in his veins.

Monday: Carol and I drove to Horseneck Beach in Westport, the big state beach for the Southcoast region. All the lifeguard chairs had already been removed from the beach and stacked behind the showers building. I wandered over to the snack stand, which was still open. “Hi, any hot dogs left?” I asked. “Well if you want hot food, we have fries and clam cakes,” he said. The clam cakes looked soggy. I had fries. I could see the staff emptying out the shelves and scrubbing everything down. The end of summer.

Tuesday: The news from the Gulf Coast continues to be depressing. Might be some refugees coming to Otis Air Force Base near here, and one member of our congregation is working for a non-profit agency that will probably provide services to them. I am following the “blame game” that’s going on in the press — Bush is to blame, the Louisiana state governor is to blame, the Army Corps of Engineers is to blame, local governemtn is to blame. I’d love it if someone in authority just said, “Things aren’t going well, I’m sorry” — but we no longer say “I’m sorry” in our culture, do we? Bush is taking heat for his “weak leadership” — too early to second-guess anyone right now. As a minister what I’ve noticed is that Bush, an avowed Christian, has insulated himself from the poor and destitute. This, too, has become a national trait — those of us who are comfortable don’t want to get too close to the poor, the hungry, the destitute. It’s easy to write a check for disaster relief in a place a thousand miles away, but much harder to have to deal with hunger in someone standing next to us. Maybe that’s why some Americans are so angry at Bush for avoiding the poor and destitute — his actions are merely a reflection of our actions. No one likes to see an ugly reflection of themselves.

Wednesday: Had an appointment over at the Standard-Times, the daily newspaper here in New Bedford. Fun to walk through a real newsroom, although it looks nothing like the photos we have of the newsrooms my grandfather worked in. One picture shows him with the green eyeshade, sitting at a big wood desk covered with papers, sleeve garters, a couple of guys witting near him smoking cigars. The Standard-Times newsroom — big modern open space, fluorescent lights, windows looking out over the downtown, cubicles, computers on every desk. I was talking with Linda Rodrigues of the Standard-Times, and we discovered we are both interested in the new news media. Newspapers are moving more and more to Web sites, blogs, and so on. But I’ll bet the move away from newsprint will not change the basic newsroom — the computers are already there on everyone’s desk.

P.S.: Latest news this morning is that no one will be relocated to Otis Air Force Base.

Update — September 10, 2005: Evacuees have been relocated to Otis.

More on Katrina

My younger sister, Abby, writes:

Hi Dan,

As you suggested, I sent a donation to the American Red Cross for hurricane disaster relief. But I saw something on the Today Show this morning that got me thinking — a man on a rooftop in New Orleans with his three (rather injured) dogs. It got me thinking about how we need to remember the pets, wildlife, and farm animals who were also affected by the hurricane, and whose needs will, by grim necessity, take a back seat to those of the humans who are suffering.
“Anyway, is there any chance that you could mention on your blog that donations can be made to the Humane Society of the United States Disaster Relief Fund, www.hsus.org? I know you reach a lot of caring, concerned people via your blog. Which I do read regularly, by the way….

Great idea — and anything for a regular reader, Abby!

Worse than we thought

The news from New Orleans and other areas hit hard by Hurricane Katrina just keeps getting worse. Now it looks like it will be months before New Orleans will be habitable again. All along the Gulf Coast from Louisiana through Mississippi and into Alabama was hit hard, with storm surges in excess of 20 feet in some places, and of course flooding from rain and rivers overflowing. Thousands of people may be dead, once we get the final death toll. This may turn out to be the biggest natural disaster in the United States since the legenary 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

The emergency response by governmental agencies appears to be unable to keep up with the magnitude of the disaster. (And before you blame those crazy people for staying in the face of evacuation orders, my sister’s blog makes a good point — many of them had no means to get out.) Worse yet, it looks like many areas that were hardest hit were woefully underinsured. All this means that voluntary contributions are going to be critical. Give what you can now. One way to give is through the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee’s Gulf Coast Relief Fund. They have pledged to keep administrative costs below 5%, and they have people on the ground in the affected areas with local knowledge of wht needs to be done.

Nor is this problem going to go away any time soon. Maybe we should all start a move to give donations to rebuilding the Gulf Coast in lieu of half our Christmas presents this year. Or something.

One last suggestion: before you send your donation to the aid agency of your choice, see if your employer will match it. Carol’s employer will match her donations, so we will send in our donations in her name.

The news from down there is so bad that when we saw gas prices of $3.49 today, it just didn’t seem that important. At least we’re alive.

untitled

Mr. Crankypants is back, and all nice and rested after a long summer vacation. But all the bad news has made him mean and cranky again. There can be nothing good about an entire city getting devastated by a hurricane. Lots of bad news about rising gas prices, too, but Mr. Crankypants has managed to find a silver lining in that cloud. What could be good about rising gas prices? Nothing, you say? Think again….

As Mr. Crankypants gets into his twelve-year-old Toyota Corolla (32 mpg around town, 36 on the highway), he sees someone drive by in a huge, brand-spanking-new Hummer (8 mpg on a good day). Mr. Crankypants just spent $26.37 filling up the Toyota’s gas tank, which caused serious feelings of crankiness. Ah, but watching that brand-spanking-new Hummer drive by, that made everything better. Mr. Crankypants imagines a conversation with the driver of the Hummer….

Hey, look at that brand-spanking-new Hummer! Wow, bet it’s loaded, huh? A/C, power-everything, that looks like a sunroof. Hey, when ja buy that? Three months ago? You mean when gas prices were below two dollars a gallon? Ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha! Hee hee. Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Too bad, sucker.

There now. Mr. Crankypants feels much better.

Storm water

We had pouring rain here in New Bedford last night. I could hear it pounding on the skylights of our apartment. When I got to the church this morning, I knew there would be water in the basement. An underground stream flows under the Parish Hall, and the whole foundation is less-than-waterproof. And I was right — there was water in some of the rooms in the lower basement.

Six hours later, most of the lower basement had up to a couple of inches of water. Towards the end of the afternoon, as the water kept rising, I decided to rescue some nice child-sized oak furniture that had been stored down there. I saved a few other nice things as well. By the end of the afternoon, I was hot and sticky and dirty, and feeling pretty cranky.

But I got to go home to a nice clean, dry apartment, with electricity and running water. I got to have a nice dinner in my own apartment. Unlike people in New Orleans, who are dealing with up to twenty feet of storm water — not just a couple of inches in the church basement.

From all accounts, it’s a disaster down there. I don’t pray, but I’ll be sending good thoughts. You can, too — send prayers, good thoughts, positive energy, whatever you got, they can use it. It wouldn’t hurt to send money, either. I’ll be sending my donation to the American Red Cross because I’ve seen first hand the work they can do in responding to emergency situations. Pick your own organization, but do send what you can.

Read BBC News coverage.

Read American Red Cross response. Includes a link to donate online.

Turtle

This evening, I went down to Allen’s Pond Audubon sanctuary in Dartmouth. At dusk, I was walking back along the beach when I heard someone shouting something over the sounds of the ocean. It was a fisherman I had seen fishing earlier.

“What?” I said, cupping my ear.

All I could hear in response was something-something-turtle.

I looked all around, but didn’t see anything. “Where?” I said.

He beckoned me over towards him, and when I got close enough he pointed to the ground in front of him. “It’s a leatherback,” he said.

A dead leatherback turtle lay at the edge of the water, mostly out of it. I would have said head first, but most of the head had been eaten away by something, leaving only the skull. If you weren’t looking, it could have been just another dark rock with seaweed hanging on it.

“I almost didn’t see it, but then I kicked this,” pointing at a piece of the flipper. “A boat or something must have hit him in the water,” he continued. “He must have come up here to die. Then probably one of the coyotes ate his head.” He paused, and we looked at the turtle for a bit. “I didn’t think they came this close in.”

“He hasn’t been here long,” I said. “He doesn’t stink yet.”

We looked over the body: almost black, sleek and streamlined, phenomenally beautiful even lacking the head. We thunked the shell. It was resilient, and sounded and felt much like a ripe watermelon when we tapped it with our knuckles. Ridges ran the length of the shell. The flippers were tapered and graceful. The whole body was big, a good five or six feet long, probably weighing a few hundred pounds. Even the blue-green curl of intestine spilling out from between the shells was beautiful. A senseless death.

“Well, now we can say we saw one,” said the fisherman, “even if it was dead.”

We started walking back to the road, and I asked him if the blues were running. He said they had been, but they had been feeding voraciously on some smaller fish and weren’t interested in what he threw at them. It was getting dark enough that the colors were fading, and as I got in the car I heard a few last terns screeching as they dove for prey into the ocean.

You still have time

Today is Pee-on-Earth Day. Unless you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case it’s December 21. Beer to promote participation is optional.

I know I’m posting this a little late in the day for you to participate, but you’ll probably appreciate the privacy of night anyway. And if you don’t read this until after Pee-on-Earth Day, you hereby have special dispensation to pee outdoors at any later date.

Midwestern savannah

Oak savannah, up until 150 years ago one of the dominant ecosystems around here in the Tri-Cities, has fascinated me ever since I first saw restored oak savannah over at Nelson Lake Marsh natural preserve. Contrary to the stereotypes I’d been fed, the prairie was not the only major ecosystem in Illinois.

The earliest settlers found almost half the State in forest, with the prairie running in great fingers between the creeks and other waterways, its surface lush with waist-high grasses and liberally bedecked with wild flowers. Here occurred the transition from the wooded lands of the East to the treeless plains of the West…. The pioneers admired the grasslands, but clung to the wooded waterways…. The waterways furnished timber for fuel and building, a convenient water supply, and protection for the settlers’ jerry-built cabins from prairie fires and windstorms. Fires invariably swept the grasslands in the late summer, when the Indians burned off the prairie to drive out game….” Illinois Descriptive and Historical Guide: Compiled and Written by the Federal Writers’ Project of the Work Projects Administration of the State of Illinois, 1939.

Where did the woodlands go?

Lumbering activities and the pioneer’s early preference for the woodland reduced the forests from their original extent, 42 per cent, to little more than 5 per cent. What is now commonly thought of as prairie is often the increment gained from the clearing of the woodlands. –Ibid.

The oak savannah is neither prairie nor forest, but a separate natural community, a transitional zone between forest and prairie. According to one definition, oak savannah has more than one tree per acre, but less than 50 per cent coverage (some authorities allow up to 80 per cent canopy coverage). The widely-spaced oaks rise out of the grassy undergrowth, giving a park-like appearance. This makes for a beautiful landscape, which feels open yet protected by trees.

How much of Illinois was savannah? According to a 1994 North American Conference on Savannas and Barrens, “No estimate of the presettlement extent of oak savanna has been developed for Illinois.” Since even modern definitions of oak savannah vary, it’s not surprising that no such estimate exists. Yet the reports of early settlers talk glowingly about the park-like settings of early Illinois, so we can be sure they knew and enjoyed oak savannah.

Funnily, the suburban landscape of downtown Geneva superficially resembles oak savannah, with its widely spaced trees and the grassy lawns. But the community of plants and animals is quite different in the suburbs than in true oak savannah, and it is a transitional zone between shopping mall and housing development, rather than a transitional zone between forest and prairie. Some early accounts say the Indians kept the oak savannah open by burning away undergrowth periodically; to shape today’s suburban savannah, humankind uses power lawnmowers and tree services.

You can see a contemporary image of oak savannah at photographer Miles Lowry’s Web site. Link The top two images are of a restored oak savannah about three miles due east of Geneva. Or if you want a technical discussion of oak savannah as an ecosystem, you can find it at the EPA’s interesting Web site on Great Lakes ecosystems. Link

Nighthawks

ll week I’ve been hearing Nighthawks calling as they fly over downtown Geneva. Loud, too. Sometimes their nasal “peent, peent” call sounded so loud they must have been just a dozen feet over my head. But somehow I never saw one.

Then last night, Carol and I went walking down toward the river at about seven o’clock. By the time we got to Second Street, I could hear that “peent, peent” overhead, but I still couldn’t see them. Carol was patient with me, even though I stopped every fifty feet or so — “That one was really loud! But I still can’t see it.”

She was patient with me, that is, until we got onto the State Street bridge, and I walked into her because I was looking up at the Nighthawks. “That hurt,” she said. I apologized, and then looked up again. Now I could see them everywhere.

Swarms of insects were rising up from the river — maybe Mayflies doing their mating flight, but I don’t know much about insects — thousands of insects, anyway. Hundreds of Chimney Swifts were flying over the river, chittering and flitting to and fro, feeding on the insects. And there were Nighthawks among the swifts, twenty or more of them, with their wings crooked back, fluttering back and forth, up and down the river, chasing insects and calling out “peent, peent!” No, more than twenty of them. Lots of Nighthawks.

Don’t ask my why I got so excited about Nighthawks last night. Maybe because of the flittery way they fly. Maybe because they only come out at dusk, or because they’re close relatives of Whipoorwills. Or maybe because they are one of the last migrants to come north, a sign that spring is coming to an end.

The sun set amid white and gold clouds. An hour later, the moon rose in the cool evening air, orange and huge on the horizon. Summer’s almost here.