Wayback Window—Room with a Vintage View

WAYBACK WINDOW—ROOM WITH A VINTAGE VIEW

Advantages to Having #Vintage Boomers’ Writerly Perspective —First Wednesday from Beyond Time Barrier

The good writer/artist is a vehicle for truth, s/he formulates ideas which would otherwise remain vague and focuses attention upon facts which can then no longer be ignored.

Iris Murdoch 1919-1999 Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature

SEPTEMBER Northern Hemisphere Switch to ‘Autumn’ Thinking…Planting

September wasn’t always the ninth month: its name septem means seven. Roman calculation before the Julian calendar reform in 46BC began at March equinox. Julius Caesar changed Roman lives by changing how their year went. By adding days and months (January, February), he created a mode of reckoning which survived until the Reformation. It went into Roman law two years before he died, 44BC.

His Julian calendar, widely adopted in remarkably short time within the Empire, survived in the Western world for more than 1600 years until 1582, when a correction was made [Pope Gregory XIII instigation hence ‘Gregorian calendar’ revision] to correct Julian calendar’s drift against the solar year of 365.25 days. Most of Western world adopted it, Roman catholic countries before, Protestant countries after the Reformation.

Eruptions of rebellion broke out in Scotland, when the Reformed Calendar—backed by the Reformed Church—went into effect in 1752. Bemoaning their eleven ‘missing days’ in tinkering with leap years, adding and subtracting at will, making a mockery of a lifestyle usually ruled by the Ocean, they did it their own way.

Some coastal ports of the ‘North Coast’—ocean-going villages & fishing communities in Banffshire, Buchan and along Moray Firth in Northeast Scotland—protested the loss of eleven days; maintained their own rhythm by holding their own fire festival : not at New Year but during Aul’ ‘Eel (Old Yule) in second week of January. Burghead burns the Clavie Stonehaven swings man-size fireballs around the coastal town.

Other North Coast towns (Forres, Pennan & ‘The Broch’ (Fraserburgh) also kept similar rituals up until WWII, discontinued after 1945.

Burning the Clavie on Aul’Eel, left: oak whisky barrel soaked in tar set alight and carried around the town of Burghead by Clavie King and Clavie Crew Dying firebrands then hoisted up on to Doorie on castle ramparts to burn rest of night. Clavie King Dan Ralph

Rhythm of the Seasons Guides the Human Machine

Much weight has been placed in these recent times on living a healthy life, cultivating an outdoor lifestyle—walking, hill-climbing, gardening—back-to-nature open air pursuits. With increasing use of social media, charitable rewilding groups and some landowners are committed to restoring wild spaces, with plans to reintroduce extinct species. National Trust (former Royal property) Mar Lodge, top rt. before&after rewilding 2011 & 2021.

The movement has become enormously influential: countries in the former European bloc are now proud to reveal their reintroduction of (formerly endangered)rare species like wolf, boar and marten. Pacific NW and Canadian forests are responding to replanting; with activists halting clear-cut felling of ancient woodland

Scotland’s last wolf was shot in Braemar in 1720 by a Royal.

Rewilding Restoring Forest builds on Earlier Spiritual Initiatives

Present-day Royal estate of Mar Lodge (top rt., now administered by NTS) plans to follow a lead set in the ‘Sixties by the Findhorn Foundation, in their organic garden, at a time when spin-off miracle Trees for Life treeplanter-cum-earth wizard founder, Alan Watson Featherstone was bringing ancient Caledonian pine forest (and related understorey wildlife) back in Glenfeshie, and Dundreggan, near Loch Ness. Mindful of ecosystem fragility, TFL offers instruction and accommodation to volunteers in its wilderness locations.

Trees for Life is some thirty years ahead of the (top) Mar Lodge project: Before-and-after views are invaluable in locations where locals remember the treelessness—sadly almost 70% of Cairngorms National Park is still treeless—long way to go. Next decade’s #before&after pictures should be stunning!

‘We have lost most of the larger predators in Scotland. We used to have elk, auroch (wild cattle), brown bear, wildcat, wolf and lynx. We could restore all these species—there is enough space—but we do need to do a lot of habitat restoration as I don’t thihnk there’s enough habitat for them.’ Andrew Kitchener NatMusScot

‘Britain has one of the lowest forest covers of any nation in Europe at only 13%, less than half the Euro average, 38% across EU, with an increase of only 1% in the last quarter century.

‘For Scotland, most northerly of 4 Brit.nations, expanse is proportionally higher, rising from 5% to 19% in last 100 years., Much of that forest is commercial plantations—which contributes $1.4billion to the national economy, but according to rewilders, are less biodiverse.

‘Only one-fifth of Scotland’s forests are native woodlands.’

Author/Photographer Kieran Dodds &Curator of Vertebrate Biology, NatMusScotland, Andrew Kitchener

There are advantages to being a (tick one) Boomer, oldie, vintage, organio; Wartime Land Girls worked with pick & shovel. Townsfolk work garden allotments-nothing new. Some of us even remember harvesting without machines.

Trying Harder Isn’t Enough: We Have Serious EarthCare Work to Do

We’ve been experiencing another year of highest-ever temperatures, and unprecedented snowmelt of world’s most reliable glaciers. Most alarming, however, is severe drought expectancy in five States in the SW United States, fed by the Hoover Dam and Sacramento valley’s Oroville Dam (under forced repair).

Mount Shasta, below, has no snow—first time ever. The Yurok are still insisting that Atlas-Copco remove and restore dam damage on the River Klamath. Oil pipelines have been halted in B.C. and Midwest USA.

With another year of enforced isolation upon us—but with benefit of breathing fresh air—EarthFirst movements are gaining ground. More supporters provide more resources for restoring land health. Group consciousness spreads urgency on the need to replant-rewild-restore our patch of Earth so it can look after original species, us included.

Mount Shasta, iconic source of the Klamath and Sacramento rivers. Sacred source well in downtown Shasta City, CA is dry. Successive dams report low water level or-as at Oroville-inoperative; salmon hatcheries are failing.

Sacramento basin water supplies Bay Area of San Francisco & Peninsular home to most of world’s hi-tech companies Silicon Valley.

Hoover Dam provides H20 to 5 U.S. southern states, water levels below record low.

Writers’ Cave Resolution: Keep on Keeping On

Insecure or otherwise, we writers do need help occasionally to keep our nose to the grindstone. Inspiration from such New Age visionaries as Findhorn’s founders Eileen Caddy and Dorothy Maclean who started a spiritual garden in 1968 only to see it become a world ecovillage of global influence. are invaluable in reaching our own comfort zone —albeit head-down. Some scriptorial caverns have MILES of subterranean tunnels and false passages to keep us in solitary company of our Muse. All right. Admit it. We thrive in solitary. Writing feeds the introvert scribe.

Muse speak: You may play in the sunshine; then—back in the box. Happy Kalends of September, sacred to Jupiter the Thunderer. May he see us through this dry spell and unleash his life-giving waters in time. ©2021 Marian Youngblood

Trinidad—the Lighthouse That Got Hauled Away

Mostly Monthly Caring Corner for Insecure Writers

TRINIDAD MEMORIAL LIGHTHOUSE SONG
with apologies & gratitude for the John Prine (October 1946-) original Paradise

Trinidad Memorial Lighthouse before removal, during local annual thanksgiving ceremony to fishermen November 2017

Chorus*:
Oh, Daddy, won’t you take me
Back to Trinidad Lighthouse
Down by the Memorial where Mom’s ashes lay.
I’m sorry, my son, but you’re too late in askin’
‘Cos the Anderson Dura Crane hauled it away.

We looked north, we looked south, along East, West and View Streets:
Strawberry Rock, Patrick’s Point to Luffenholtz bay.
Searched Scenic till sunset—along Baker’s Beach, Old Home Beach.
Finally at Launcher Cove, we called it a day.

Trinidad Memorial Lighthouse before they hauled it away

That night in the moonlight
We held candlelit vigil—
Trinidad fisherfolk, Yurok, Tsurai—
Our Tribe of all colors, we held hands together
Asking Angels to help us find Truth in our Cry.

Next day, Johnny from the Seascape said:”Hey, this what yer lookin’ fer’?”
Yer Lighthouse and Bell are over State Beach way.
The Tribe that owns the Dockland are letting you guys park there.
So it looks like yer Lighthouse is down here to stay.”

o 0 o 0 o

Thank you, John Prine

—and for reference, John Prine’s chorus*:
Oh, Daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in askin’
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away

Then the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.

More than One Way to Skin a Cat**
Much press and local speculation surrounded a “sit-in”/occupation of the Lighthouse in the days between Christmas 2017 and Epiphany 2018, coincidentally the night of candlelight vigil on the Bluff. There had been marginal crises between some factions, averted by human common sense and greatly aided by the Rancheria of the Tsurai, Cher-Ae Heights Casino and local residents of Trinidad town.

Quietly, without fanfare, the Rancheria, aka Casino, who own the land on which the local crab fishermen dock, land and store their crab-pots—hugely important financial input for the local community—offered a stable, ocean-front location for both Lighthouse and 1898 bronze Bell. Civic Club, magistrates, city councillors and residents were appeased with one swoop. See Dana Hope, Civic Club president’s remark below, and our previous blog on this event.

**with apologies to my dear-departed Smilodon

Space Race during Government Shutdown

Tiny memorial lighthouse being ‘hauled away’ by crane, Epiphany January 2018

While some government-related areas suffered from emergency shutdown at this time—e.g. astronauts unable to access Space Shuttle Robot Arm—on television—until departments went back online, National and State Parks on restricted hours; residents and loved ones of those at sea in Trinidad behaved with decorum and with human compassion and “fixed it”—at least temporarily.

“We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Chairman Garth Sundberg of the Trinidad Rancheria and their tribal council for making this solution possible. I think the city of Trinidad, certainly the Civic Club and frankly the entire county of Humboldt owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to them. They were the ones that came in and created an option when we didn’t know that we had one.
Dana Hope, Trinidad Civic Club President, 2018”

Now we in Trinidad can all sing together—in jubilation
Chorus
“Oh, Daddy, guess what I found? —the Trinidad Lighthouse!
Along with the Bell that bongs noon every day.
It’s sittin’ in the crab-pots, with nobody watchin’
An’ nobody’s now gonna haul it away.”

With grateful thanks to my [incognita assistant] singer-songwriter, Marianne, who inspired and prompted better scanning of some of my verses. Hope you IWSGers & Alex all appreciate her work!

And for those who do, Happy CARNIVAL!
©2018 Marian Youngblood

What the World Needs Now…is Love—and Water

The TURN OF THE SCREW
Changing Times call for Change of Tack

Diana Ross in her heyday—’sixties queen of rock and soul

Diana Ross, Jackie deShannon and others sang—

What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love,
No not just for some but for everyone.
Hal David and Burt Bacharach, 1965

Only fifty years later, we could change the word ‘love’ to ‘water’ and be closer to what this speeded-up world has become—July 2017 hotter than July 2016, which went down in the record books. Water in some places more precious than gold.

Essayist and Kentucky farmer, Wendell Berry [Another Turn of the Crank, 1995] is convinced that organic/sustainable farming in the developed nations ended with the end of World War II. He maintains carefully-managed farming and forestry—as currently practised by the Menominee tribe, can still save agriculture and world food crises.

Another Diana, Princess of Wales—in iconic dress—stunning a nation then & now 20 years ago today since she died

1. FORESTS
Sustainable forestry—as Berry suggests—currently seems a contradiction in terms. Lumber companies like Green Diamond who own 393,105 acres of redwood and Douglas fir forest in Northern California view small local donations as a way of avoiding huge public outcry in their continuing unsustainable forestry practices in Mendocino, Humboldt, Del Norte and Trinity counties. They have been donating ‘donor rock’ monuments, courtesy benches, in Saunders’ community park within their tree-felling domain—Trinidad, CA—a small town park overlooked by a fifteen-acre scar on the hill behind, where Strawberry Rock forest has been hacked into hatchet-shape profile by past, poorly conceived clear-felling operations. Local opinion strongly encourages them and their subsidiary logging companies—including California Redwood Co.—to give back to the community—without strings—the Strawberry Rock ‘trail’ which was a logging road through their near-400,000 acres of Northern Humboldt forest. Local Yurok and Tsurai tribal communities who formerly occupied some of the parcels, urge them to GIVE BACK THE LAND.

2. FISH
Klamath River Festival of 2017 imported/purchased salmon from Alaska, after removing it from the menu altogether last year. Concern over hatchlings is supreme with many of local tribespeople actively introducing protective measures.

Hatcheries on nearly all western rivers are in crisis: either banned (legislation) or unmanned (poor management)—a zero percent return at Oroville has stunned the Central Valley; Jefferson county/Del Norte tribes are now actively managing their own fish.

Mendocino water towers from frontier times could return to former use

3. WATER
Not just California’s Central Valley—whose water supply is still funneled south to the Greater Los Angeles basin—but, in common with many less affluent countries in the world, water is becoming more precious than food.

The world is getting thirsty.

Waste water in many cities is still flushed down the drain instead of being collected as rain and storm water in reservoirs—as was the norm until late 1960s—see Mendocino town water towers, still standing though not in use, right.

Time to conserve ‘Waste’ WATER, not flush it into an already-polluted ocean.
Even the smallest reservoir could prove invaluable in ever-present occurrence of forest fire.

4. POPULATION – 7 BILLION & counting
‘Sixties belief in having no children or only allowing oneself one child is now a past pipe-dream. While there are baby-boomers of the ‘Sixties who resolved not to add to the population, their group [and laudable ideal] are far outnumbered by mindless generations since who have no concept of self-control in the genetic department—not a popular subject. It is not p.c. to say no more babies, but we are sensing a call for Moderation/BALANCE in all things—including procreation.

Larsen-C Iceshelf finally broke off from Antarctic peninsula, July 2017—sea-level rise expected

5.CLIMATE
California government initiatives are already in place for the State to act on its own to steer a corrected course through a mire of climate and emissions’ blunders, to lead Washington in showing the way to conserve resources while reducing impact on climate change. Governor Brown’s administration is prepared to go it alone without federal intervention. California is also already ahead in preparedness for natural disasters, fire, earthquake, flood, tsunami warning system and the anticipated sea level rise —c.f. Larsen C shelf break-off 2017, left, during Antarctic ‘winter’. Meltwater is expected to affect the South Pacific in particular, but islands in north Pacific are already seeing the rise.

Remembering Diana, Princess of Wales
While this blog edition is a poor commemoration of that beautiful creature who was Diana, Princess of Wales, I like to think she would have supported all the above points of crisis affecting her/our beloved planet. From that perspective, I believe she is looking down today on us Insecure Writers and at what the world has become. She affected the lives of those who knew her. I believe her charismatic and generous approach may serve as an example to us all, as we face the autumn of 2017 in a changed and changing world.
©2017 Marian Youngblood
p.s. Forgive me Alex and IWSGers for my five-month absence and ‘early’ return 😉

Light on the Horizon When All Seems Dark

CANDLEMAS NEW MOON BRINGS LIGHT INTO DARK CORNERS
Monthly Insecure Writers’ Corner in the Year of the Rooster

Pre-Celtic Candlemas—cross-quarter day—celebrated return of sunlight to N. hemisphere

Green Comet 45P rounds the Sun and is heading our way

‘When beggars die, there are no comets seen
The Heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes’
Calpurnia to Julius Caesar on eve of Ides of March

If we were all visionaries, we might prophesy from our current corner of the world all manner of wild suggestions on what will happen in the corridors of power in the coming months.

Condor Babies Migrate to Ancestral Redwood Forest
Amid a tumult of projects ‘supporting’ Americana, one might lose sight—in this New Year of the Cockerel [Chinese Rooster/ancestral Eagle]—of a happy ending to the return of the condor to the wild.

More than one hundred years after they became extinct in the region, the native American eagle/buzzard Condor will soar again over its ancestral Redwood forest in Humboldt and Del Norte counties.

The condor plays a major part in Yurok ceremonies and culture since time immemorial, according to chairman of the Yurok Tribe, Thomas P. O’Rourke Sr. “It is through collaborative projects like this that we will bring balance back to our natural world.”

He speaks of a plan devised alongside local agencies and the National Park Foundation, to reintroduce fledgling birds in the fall of this year into Redwood National Park at Bald Springs, Orick, CA. Pacific Gas & Electric [PG&E], will provide funding and support for this project. More importantly, the energy company will ensure that condor flight paths will not be obstructed by power lines, allowing the birds to prosper in their natural habitat.

Condors in Orick—a dream come true for Tribal chiefs and conservationists alike

The Yurok—largest of the California native American tribes— have been leading an effort to bring back the endangered birds, which lived alongside them for centuries in redwood forest lining the Klamath River.

“When the Condor of the South flies together with the Eagle of the North, the spirit of Mother Earth—Pacha Mama—will awaken.
Then She will wake millions of her children.
This will be the Resurrection of the Dead.”
Quechua Inca Prophecy

Condor Feather Regalia Returns Home
White deerskins, condor feathers and headdresses made of bright red woodpecker scalps were among more than 200 sacred ‘living’ artifacts returned to the Klamath tribe of the North Coast two years ago.

Since their sacred dance regalia returned home, after a century on museum shelves in Maryland, the tribe’s 5,500-strong membership are exultant that their homeland—55,000 acres along the Klamath River—can now celebrate the return of its most sacred bird.

Tribal leaders affirm the sacred feathers and headdresses date back hundreds—possibly thousands—of years. They will continue to be used in ceremonies intended to heal the world.

Sacred regalia of Condor feathers, decorated woodpecker skulls used in Yurok tribal Dance of Gratitude

Yurok Tribespeople celebrated their return in 2014—among the largest restoration of American Indian sacred objects ever—from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, MD. The sacred objects, purchased by the Smithsonian from a collector in the 1920s, were given a welcome home after nearly a century, like ‘prisoners of war’, according to Tribal Chief O’Rourke.

This week fifteen organizations have agreed to cooperate on a reintroduction project in Humboldt and Del Norte counties. Meeting in Eureka, they included National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the Yurok.

This autumn, after an ‘adjustment period’ with human condor-glove-Mama, above, the captive bred babies will be released into Redwood National Park at Orick, CA—neighborhood forest to the Yurok—and in a State Park in Del Norte county.

The Humboldt forest location is one of few remaining untouched old growth Redwood—sequoia sempervirens—oases in Northern California.

Even if bird fancying is not your thing, IWSGers can, I am sure, find solace in this Year of the Rooster that we can achieve what was once thought impossible. We can do magic. We can bring back from the Dead.

But, we Insecure Writers knew that all along, didn’t we Alex?
It’s why we continue to write.
©2017 Marian Youngblood

End of an Era—or Just the Beginning

MOVING INTO 21st CENTURY REALTIME CORNER FOR IWSGers or
If your [writerly] past calls, don’t answer

Picasso’s fragile crystal 20×20 ft curtain “le tricorne” greeted Four Seasons’ diners until sold for a queen’s ransom

The Four Seasons—New York’s world-famed dining emporium-par-excellence at 52nd Street and Park Avenue changed the face of Midtown dining, as did Mies van der Rohe’s magnificent Seagram building, built in 1958, with panache and display more suited to High Empire. The building’s frontage made ‘scandalous’ display of a grand plaza and fountain on Park Avenue’s precious real estate frontage.

Mies van der Rohe’s 1958 Seagram Building of 35 stories, with the Four Seasons on its mezzanine floor

The Seagram Building quickly became an icon of the growing power of the corporation, that defining institution of the twentieth century. In a bold and innovative move, the architect chose to set the tower back from the property line to create a forecourt plaza and fountain on Park Avenue which revolutionized Uptown architecture.

Mies van der Rohe, an adoptive American from the European Bauhaus school of architecture which enlivened German and British design after the drudgery of two wars, completed the building with his own interior design—lobby, elevators, individual furniture, lighting and trademark leather chairs on every office floor, asking his assistant Philip Johnson—architect on the contemporaneous Guggenheim Museum two blocks away, to go wild in creating the restaurant.

Craig Claiborne, then food editor of The Times, reviewed the Four Seasons two months after its July 29, 1958 opening.

“Both in décor and in menu, it is spectacular, modern and audacious, perhaps the most exciting restaurant to open in New York within the last two decades.”
Craig Claiborne

Even Mr Claiborne was impressed by the Park.Ave. Lobster Mousse and Salmon belly flown in from the River Spey!

The Four Seasons cost $4.5 million to open, nearly $40 million in today’s dollars. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which opened the same year, cost $3 million. The restaurant closed with an auction of its valuable Jackson Pollock and Joan Miró art last week, 58 years after the day it opened.

Go, wondrous creature, mount where Science guides
Go, measure Earth, weigh air and state the tides
Instruct the planets in what orbs to run
Correct old Time and regulate the Sun
Alexander Pope 1733

OPULENCE OF NATURE—Do We Need Another Wake-up Call?
Expounding on the luxurious nature of that past era makes the mouth water. Those candlelight dinners were nightly celebrated by Wall Street and Washington’s Great & Good, with the world’s foremost champagne on hand, Black Forest Gâteau with genuine cherries imported from, yes, Germany’s SchwarzWald—changes of napkins, matches and décor to reflect each season: green for spring, red for summer, brown for fall, white for winter. We would be hard-pressed to find such opulence now in a public place. Even downstairs, at the Brasserie, the eggs Benedict were to die for.

But such opulence does—or did—still exist until recent years.

The Miners’ Canary

Klamath river salmon no longer on menu at August Salmon Festival

Take the situation in Nature, for example—northern California to be specific: ten years ago all the rivers ran approximately the same course, feeding fish, humans and trees without discrimination or interruption.

Abrupt change, they say, doesn’t happen overnight. But, tell that to the tribal residents and neighbors on paucity-running Klamath, restricted water-hours-Trinity, or the not-so-wild-and-scenic Smith rivers. The Hoopa Trinity statement by Tribal Chief Ryan Jackson says it all:

[This warning is] not just a miner’s canary—it is the tsunami siren notifying North Coast communities of impending environmental catastrophe and cultural devastation
Ryan Jackson, Hoopa Valley Tribal Chair, Trinity River Watershed

Endangered Species Act law suit by Hoopa Tribe of Trinity County initiated by the Elders because symptoms displayed in the famed Trinity River bed show signs of decay and death. The Tribe’s warning to authorities in neglect is that river disease is killing not just the food supply, but the planet’s lifeblood.

Somewhere in this song of great traditions there is an Era-ending note. It may sound slightly off-key. It may not sound terribly writerly to those of my cohorts and colleagues under the tutelage of our Grand-Chef Alex.

But I guess we have to admit it’s here—now—and we’re going to have to deal with it.
Thanks for listening.
©2016 Marian Youngblood

Beating the Same Drum—for our Earthly Home

MONTHLY INSECURE WRITERS’ SUPPORT GROUP CORNER
Optimism as an Excuse for Delaying

Dr. Suess predicted our human dilemma in finding a balance with Nature

“If we try to ‘save everything,’ we risk saving nothing of consequence. We’re already spread too thin, and losing ground every day”
Corporate ‘optimism’ of Dan Ashe, Director U.S. Fish & Game/Wildlife Service

One of the most facile excuses we have heard recently for the U.S. Government’s NOT upholding the Endangered Species Act.

Created in 1973 as Richard Nixon’s sole claim to humanitarianism on his exit from office, the Endangered Species Act is about to expire. And big business—along with its allies in the huntin’-shootin’-fishin’ aka “sports” community are just going to let it happen.

Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Dan Ashe told a small Defenders of Wildlife group that he sees a “giant clash” between those who favor conservation and those who favor economic development; he believes that conservationists “must accept a world with fewer wolves, salmon, and spotted owls.” The Director of the U.S. agency fully responsible for protecting the nation’s biodiversity went on to say that, in the name of compromise, we must accept “a world with less biodiversity.”

We already live in a world with “fewer wolves, salmon and spotted owls!” Humans used to be able to live in balance with nature, as part of nature. We’ve allowed ourselves to behave in ways that suggest we are above nature—where we have the right to decide which species deserve to survive.

During the current Obama Administration, anti-conservationists have launched no fewer than 100 attacks on the Endangered Species Act. Often hidden, attached as riders to must-pass legislation such as authorization bills for U.S. Dept. of Defense, appropriations bills for Dept. of Interior and other Federal agencies, nearly half of the bills prohibit protection of individual species, such as the grey wolf or the Northern long-eared bat.

The Endangered Species Act is also being dismantled from within. At critical leadership positions, U.S. Administration has chosen individuals uncommitted to preserving biodiversity.

Optimism as an Excuse for Decimating World Resources
It starts at the top. The Director of the Fish and Wildlife Agency, it appears, has the view, that we must live with less biodiversity. He states—

Clearfelling is illegal in CA, but Federal agencies turn a blind eye where conflict of business interests occur

“Hellen Keller once said, ‘Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.’ The Fish and Wildlife Service, and the work we do, will continue to embody that spirit.

“That’s why we’re working hard to ensure that our organization is fit and capable to meet the challenges in front of us. And why we’re building and strengthening partnership-driven conservation efforts across the nation.”
Dan Ashe, Director, U.S. Federal Fish & Wildlife Agency

Helen Keller’s sentiments are laudable, but she was blind. So, it seems, are certain ‘partnerships’ chosen by U.S. government agencies to represent endangered creatures, once protected. Now no more.

Logging companies, careless in their custodianship of irreplaceable first-growth forest, are hungry to pick up scraps from the contested Klamath River watershed sell-off, in the wind-down to dam removal in 2020.

Green Diamond (so-called) Resource Company is one of these ‘custodians’. Touting in its conservation literature to hikers its success in saving the endangered California Spotted Owl from extinction merely two years ago, it is now implementing clear-felling in the bird’s target habitat of Humboldt County at the very moment its representative Endangered Species Act is becoming null and void.

California’s Spotted Owl, survivors of forest fires, but now unprotected—sweeties!

In continuing to allow economic gain to dictate our future action—or inaction in the case of the Endangered Species Act—we the people appear to condone our political/business leaders’ attitude.

Is it not time to stop this blindness? Instead, to use our combined intelligence/compassion and search for a future where we may begin to see the Earth—our only home—recover?

Apologies to my fellow IWSGers—under our Space-Cap’n.Alex‘s superb guidance—along with his co-hosts—if I seem to bang on incessantly at the same drum. But we writers have always known we had finite resources—worked our way to make the best use of them—as the plight of the planet is dear to us, too. It is our only home. There is no Planet-B.

So, Dan Ashe and his fellow sportsman Neal Ewald notwithstanding, we need all the help we can get from the writers, creative people, those with a voice.

Thanks for listening and if you feel motivated, be my guest and speak up for us all.
And Happy Bealltainn!
©2016 Marian Youngblood