How Hot was It?

It was hot, but not bad hot.

Maybe not so surprisingly, I think about the language of climate change discussions, news reports, arguments—okay, brouhahas. And our—at least my—experience of a climate and the daily weather.

The recently ended month of July as recorded at the Greenville-Spartanburg airport weather station was above average for the daily high. Now what I experienced was not atypical for a summer month around here, some hot days, some hotter days, some humid days, some less humid days, some cloudy days, a rainy day or two. 

What can I tell you given it was above average historically? Well, didn’t strike me as anything too extraordinary. Let me free the cat from the bag: Average daily high for July since 1943 around here, 90.258. Average high this year, 90.333. 

Technically it was, uh, hotter or maybe more accurately warmer. Maybe it helps to look at the lowest high (great stuff right there) and the highest high, 81 and 96. I figure most of us would comfortably describe the 96 as a hot summer day. Desert dwellers please stand down.

I do know that one day it was 91 with only 39% humidity at 2:00 in the afternoon, and what did I do, I mowed for 45 minutes. Why? Because that beats cutting grass at 88 with 82% humidity. The warmer temperature felt cooler.

Most of us know that some summer days are hot. Some are hotter. And some are hotter than hell. Where those demarcations fall on the gauge, I do not know. But, I know which when I feel it.

The predictions of a global rise of around 5 degrees on average by the end of the century based on models—which are ever being adjusted—run hard up against, I think, the immediacy of human experience. We are some seriously right here and now creatures. 

Consider the language of a news report two weeks ago about beach towns “soon” (my emphasis) being underwater. In the same article the target date for this flooding is 2060. Forty years…soon…40 years…soon. Again, maybe it’s just me, but not convinced human beings are going to correlate soon with 40 years.

Sure, in astronomical or geological time, 40 years, pfffft, gone. Not even gone…g. Not even that long. However, that would be only 10 presidential elections. Only? Egads!

Here might be the real crux, 90% of folks 50 or older right now will be dead, or very nearly. Accuse me of being morbid and/or shunting the problem onto future generations, fair enough. 

But, when Charleston or Miami or New Orleans throws in the soaked towel and moves to higher ground, then the crisis is being responded to. 

Until then, air-conditioning manufacturing might be a good long-term play for your investment portfolio. Just think, around 70% of the world lives without air-conditioning.

Let’s rattle that cage another day.

Resilience

A fair question Baby Sister asked: What’s with the PLANTS? Her emphasis, to be sure. The inquiry was rooted in my potting up 5 jade boxwood she ripped untimely from the womb of the earth—there a Macbeth reference, more specifically Macduff—and sent to me in a plastic garbage bag via our younger brother. 

They spent two days, bagged as it were, under a crape myrtle. The two on the right have been subsequently up-potted, the leaning mini-tower of boxwood is now in its final death throes. But, 4 of the 5 look to be candidates for bonsai—well, at least pre-bonsai. Nor would I choose the word topiary. Many folks here in South Carolina understand my reluctance to use that term: see Pearl Fryar in Bishopville. 

Let’s get an obvious gag set aside. If a boxwood limb falls in the hedge…?

So, the plant thing. 

I have said before plants make me laugh. Not fall on the floor, tears streaming laughs, but more wry chuckles, head-shaking guffaws, often those of the how did that happen variety.

My largest tomato plant this year is a volunteer I moved when about 6” tall. It promptly fell over but 3 days later rallied from forces within, and now a massive plant dominating a 4’x8’ bed. Makes me laugh. 

And the 2 rescue hydrangeas beneath that tomato jungle, they’ll survive, no doubt in my mind. 

Resilience.

Cut a Bradford pear to the ground, cut a Natchez crape to the ground, watch an oak tipped on its side by a hurricane, you’ll see. Watch perennial sunflowers come back from over-wintering—amazing, to me. Cue guffaws.

Just spend some time in the woods or walk along a rocky ledge or study beach dunes, you’ll see. Stuff wants to live. The biological imperative, I suppose.

Cracks in a sidewalk.

Not just flora, of course, but fauna, too. I’ll throw us into that second pile. From Savissivik to Tamdjert, from Warroad to Cocodrie, we survive—and we laugh.

Why? Maybe for a simple fact, we live.

Shoot the Moon

Were I Master of the Universe, Homo sapiens would be quarantined to their home planet with a traveling ceiling of 29,000’ above the surface. 

A precedent does exist for my conjuring that grandiose title. Several times in my teaching career, students brought up the notion of my candidacy for public office—the 2000 run for the presidency even produced a campaign poster.

Of course, I was then and still remain imminently unelectable—proudly so, I would add. However, I glommed onto the M of U role, offering, threatening, to straighten up some things within two weeks. 

No doubt former students, former colleagues, former administrators, friends, and family cringe at the thought. Okay, everyone I’ve ever known, fair enough.

Perhaps some savvy reader notes the ceiling I would impose is well below commercial flight paths. Well, that’s too damn bad.

Adventurous types might start whining about Everest’s summit being just 29' above the forbidden zone.

Well, that’s too damn bad, too.

In the greater cosmic scheme, Earthlings, y’all are grounded. No orbital flights, no satellites, no rockets, no space probes, no return missions, nada.

It’s all CGI now, kiddos.

But breathe freely again, of course I will not be, have never been, the once and future Master of the Universe.

Okay, fine. Then how about this gambit. I’ve got dibs on shipping all our garbage to the moon. Yep, all gazillion gazillion tons of the plastic, the glass, the metals, the clothing, the paper, shoes, broken toys, books—sadly, books—cars, cans, cast iron skillets. Radioactive material! Our refuse, our rubbish, the flotsam and jetsam our civilization generates.

Just payloads propelled by mighty rockets and gone. No permits, no property rights, no borders, just crash land the whole thing Anywhere Moon. Craters to contain our crap for time immemorial.

Harvest Moon, Blood Moon, Crow Moon?

Garbage Moon.

Steal the Bacon

Sunday morning I had the occasion to scamper about 15’ or so. Wanting to readjust a sprinkler’s spray pattern, I hustled in, made the change, and hustled back out of range. In retrospect, given how hot and humid the morning air, not sure why I thought it worth dodging a few drops of water. 

For the sake of accuracy, I did not scurry. One does not scurry at 235 pounds. A scampering it was, short-ish strides, no time for long ones. 

The mini-dash made me think back to playing hours and hours of Steal the Bacon. In the hierarchy of playground battles, Steal the Bacon was topped only by fierce 2-square and 4-square contests that might last an entire recess period.

That scene stirred the memory of the hot sand sticking to our sweaty skin when we would dive for a ball. These struggles, by the way, took place in St. Petersburg, FL in early 60s. Ambitiously we would draw the roughly 8’x8’ boxes that made the generally sedate children’s game an athletic battle royale. 

Steal the Bacon, however, kept us on our feet mostly. A shell, a can, a soda bottle, a baseball, something to place on the ground between the competitors. We would move in cautiously—sometimes feinting a grab of the target to get our opponent to make a premature stab—the basic rules to steal the bacon and retreat to our safe line. Or get tagged. Simple, but nuanced. Guile, quickness, a sure hand, all to be advantaged. 

Snatch the bacon, scamper home. 

The heat of that sand in my mind dredged up trips to the beach as a child. I hated wearing the little rubber flip flops, and so I would hotfoot it from the car across the sun-fried parking lots onto the searing white powdery sand—quick steps, fast fast fast, down finally to the wet sand and into the water. 

I’m telling you, you had to move out or lose the skin on the bottom of your feet.

Which—and this makes me laugh—brought to mind my one record-setting athletic moment. In junior high p.e., various basic track and field events would be timed or measured, the records to be maintained for all to see for all time.

Well, maybe not for all time.

But for some years I held the record for the shuttle run, a short dash to grab an eraser, return to the mark, back to grab another, and then home to run through the line like the end of any footrace. 

I don’t remember the distance, but all those hundreds of games of Steal the Bacon, all those painful runs to the Gulf, those were the underpinnings of my sporting glory. Perhaps, if the Eton playing fields produced victory at Waterloo, then surely the hot Florida sand my path to victory. 

And by way of the last vestiges of muscle memory, my dry run Sunday morning. Laurel crown not included.

Way Back in the Day

Oh, you remember this social gambit. If you could have dinner with anyone, or three or five, from the past, who would it be and why goes the inquiry. Because is not an answer. Okay, I threw that restriction into the mix.

So back you reach, Catherine the Great, Elizabeth I, and Cleopatra. Now that is a game gang of throne-sitters.

Or, Ho Chi Minh, Thomas Paine, and Spartacus. No, you go figure.

Marie Curie, Marie Laveau, and Marie Antoinette. Go ahead, laugh. And, one more, Marie Callender. Laugh. Out. Loud.

Me? Seriously? Well, I would change to the other game. Literally me, back in time, not having so-and-so break bread with me around the patio table.

Diogenes? Further back. Narmer? You think going back 5,000 years is some kind of way-back travel?

No, I’m looking for a warm meal—hippopotamus perhaps—around 200 million years ago with a small band of Homo erectus, maybe at Koobi Fora in what is now Kenya.

But I’m not there for the cookout, I’m there because this early relative apparently lacked the anatomy necessary for speech.

Yes, I’ve gone back to visit, hoping to be there when H e with several companions happen to catch a clear night where they can look up and see the sky awash with millions of stars. I want to hear that very particular human utterance voiced for the first time: Ahhh. 

Their mouths agape, perhaps they unconsciously reach out to one another, do they exchange looks—baffled, curious, surprised? Do their faces register astonishment as we see on the face of a child’s first experience of an overwhelming sense of something beyond their comprehension? 

I go too far. I wield a vocabulary 10 million generations in the making. No, I have gone back to witness a vocalizing, not a verbalizing. To share the unspoken, to connect via experience without the analyses and extrapolations inherent now in human language.

Just being, in the moment. No science. No dogma. In awe, back in the day.

Envying My Neighbors' Hammock at Windy Hill in Lyman, South Carolina

Across the way the neighbors’ hammock sways,

unencumbered,

work and school the reason why.

Beneath their porch roof it awaits,

while I shade my eyes with a broad-brimmed hat

in the midday sun.

Beyond the tree line, a red-shouldered hawk calls.

My dog hunkers down behind the shed.

I, chores to attend, gather tools and wire,

the garden fence next on the list.

Hands full, I stop—a pause, really,

thinking of how I might

ease myself along through the rest of the afternoon.

But, at my back: Time!

One last glance over my shoulder, then onward.

Growing Seasons

Within the past two weeks, we here in USDA zone 7b witnessed quite the growth spurt in plants and trees. The leafing out nearly complete, and then the newest greening as if somehow the vegetation was spiked by some super-secret alchemy—most likely just more sun and plenty of rain. Warmer, too.

I more easily notice the change in the neighbors’ trees and bushes. A quickening that brings fresh leafy greens to the end of branches and stems. Only when I am next door to I appreciate more fully what is going on on my side of the fences. 

An evening conversation last week called up my stint with 6-8-year-olds in a 2^nd/3^rd class I taught in ’79-’80. I noted how I needed to generate a whole different level of patience than my 26-year-old-self brought through that classroom door. And pronto.

Then we switched the focus to the high-schoolers. I voted for juniors as my favorite students purely from the standpoint of teaching, the changes that took place, the second semester blossoming for so many. Maybe the driving more, the dating, maybe working, but something seemed to happen post-holiday break that shot them forward.

Of course, the seniors offered their own rewards—not only academically—reality checks were coming due for them, the countdowns to a finality, a last walk out the door, a bigger beginning looming. Great stuff.

More and more, and not so much as a joke, I speak of this being my 3^rd growing season here. Not such a bad way to ground where one stands.

On both sides next door, two kids each. They range from 5-9. Most folks know what kinds of changes I have seen in them with the passing seasons. 

Often I see parents post photos of kids for a birthday and include pictures from previous years, and often the commentary runs along the lines of “Slow down” or “Growing up so fast”. Yep, they are weeds. In a good way. 

Somewhere along the way—can’t give credit where due, unfortunately—someone offered up this thought as a perfect gift for a child: Take your time. A kind gesture to the child, no doubt. A plaintive phrase for parents perhaps.

But, it’s growing season.

Funny, Not Funny

“I’ve had this duck since before I was born,” asserted my seven-year-old neighbor as she sat on her swing yesterday evening. Wow, okay, my mind stumbled back through the history of my current possessions. 

“I have a desk I’ve had since I was 12.” 

Fortunately I didn’t have my glasses on to see the look on her face. Her tone was enough. “That’s not from before you were born.”

Duly noted, thank you, future lawyer.

Perhaps that duck will be a family heirloom into the next century. Perhaps my desk will as well. Who knows.

What I do know is I have a lot of stuff in this house, stuff that at some point will have to be dealt with as in want it or don’t want it. Can give it away, can’t give it away. Pity my family if they have to bend shoulders to the task.

Maybe, if the timing works out, a niece’s child will want my garden tools because they are needed for a first yard—with a house, too, I suppose.

Maybe some will need to fill bare walls with prints and the collection of boat photos I have will work nicely.

Maybe some of the dishes will help a college student or a newlywed. Maybe they can go to Habitat for Humanity.

The heirloom cane back sofa that is more than a century old, somebody has to want that piece, right?

And the memorabilia, a beer stein from Germany, handmade pottery from family and friends, paintings, a collection of model clay soldiers from China, racing trophies—no, probably not the trophies. Anyone, anyone?

The recent surge to purge as part of the cultural zeitgeist makes me laugh. Take a look at the number of storage facilities coming to an area very near you. Not that there aren’t good reasons for renting one. But.

To believe we are not awash in a rising tide of stuff is for blinkered deniers. And consider the push to market the merch to the rest of the world. You think we have stuff here in the US, wait until 7 billion have the same amount of stuff.

Consider this cartoon from The New Yorker.

Funny, not funny.

Purge? Sure, that I will leave for my family when I am mortuus in lutum, feeding the garden.

Now, about the books. I’m am sure there will be quite the scramble for the 1640-page The Oxford Classical Dictionary.

Not funny.

Notre Dame, 1980

For me to use the phrase my Paris is absurd. I have not lived there, and so have not worked there, have not schooled there, have not loved there, have not faced the daily aggravations great or small that may come to be a part of living anywhere.

But.

If one measures time in a locale by sleeps, then as it turned out, I spent more of my life so far in Paris and its environs than Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, or New York. Even New Orleans. My first visit in 1980 was with a friend from LSU. 

Paris was an idea formed in my imagination in the decade before I set foot in the city. Because I was 27 that first morning rather than 17, I had expanded my expectations much further than my American-centric high school reading list prompted. Paris for me was created by Balzac, Stendahl, Rabelais, Proust, Rostand, Zola, and Hugo. By Sartre and Camus. And, not too surprisingly, so very much by Hemingway. 

My first destination in Paris early on a Saturday morning was Notre Dame. My friend was at an appointment to finalize paperwork for a teaching position in Toulouse. I was on my own for a bit.

Cool and humid, the sky gray, the morning was so very quiet. After taking a few pictures, I walked up to the cathedral’s entrance. I would be the first tourist admitted that morning, and no one would be tailing along.

For a moment, think of that possibility if you have some iconic place you long imagined—alone one morning on the Golden Gate Bridge or at the north rim of the Grand Canyon or the lookout from the Empire State Building.

Let me skip ahead to a small detail. The history of the cathedral is well documented, the church’s magnificent interior both meets and betters all expectations. For me, a living history was in worn stone steps leading up the left tower, connecting me to the parade of the hundreds of thousands of individuals who preceded me and would follow me.

Reaching the walkway connecting the towers, I stepped out as if into the sky. Below me Paris, the Paris I imagined. The muted colors of the buildings, the many chimney pots, the Paris of Balzac and Hugo.

In 1980, scaffolding was also in place. A workman perched just below me, and when we made eye contact, he and I nodded to one another. Perhaps he was too bleary-eyed to see how I saw his city or too jaundiced to care what the look on my face registered.

Yet—what I saw that early morning, from the height of Notre Dame was a personal Paris, the Paris of my dreams.

And now the fire of 2019. Some weep, some cheer, and many may be indifferent. Notre Dame still stands, for me, part of the personal lore that makes life worth living.

A Stirring Tale

My father’s people came from what was known as hill country long before political boundaries were established here. My mother’s clan lived along the eastern bank of the river and were part of the dozen or so families to first settle that area.

Of course, as part of tribal tradition, my father for his part stirred with his left hand and held the skillet handle with the right. Frying catfish, making French toast on Sunday nights, searing a steak before setting it on the grill—stir with the left, handle in the right.

So when he decided to walk the fifty miles and ford the river, he brought his ways. And when my mother against the wishes of her family and her neighbors decided to marry this outsider, she brought her tradition into the mix.

My mother stirred with the right and the left gripped the handle. Making a chicken-vegetable stir fry, or a roux, or braising beef tips. Stir with the right.

To their credit (or so I think), our parents allowed us—their five children—to decide which hand would handle the chore of stirring. But it wasn’t easy. Back then, long before phrases like inalienable rights came into our vocabularies, folks were more than touchy about such essential issues. Our barn was burned down three times, and I never met my father’s family until I made the trek when I was in my mid-50s.

Now, as we are enlightened, the law of the land allows either hand for stirring, and no serious challenge to this legal precedent has arisen in a dozen years. Perhaps my parents would feel vindicated. RIP, Mom and Dad.

Semper libero!

Comments

tastytastebuds: Stop! You’re making me hungry!

masonmcwhorl: Go back to you own damn country!

historyhound; The founding fathers through their brilliant dialogues anticipated the ever-changing environment that would be created by such an amalgam of tribal traditions.

pollyforpeace: CARNIVORES are DESTROYING our ENVIRONMENT!!!!!!!

gerta47: Your why are homeland is a cesspool nation.

saintx: Justice for Left-handers!

ghaws: Beautiful!

littlebiddy: @masonmcwhorl No, you leave!

gardendelights: Recipe for stir-fry?

william86: Explains why kids are so screwed up these days and getting worse.

masonmcwhorl: @littlebiddy No, you leave!

acamustoo: Life is the sum of all your choices.

Citizen K

Along with around 87% of my current fellow US citizens, I was born here in this country. And so when I just a wee, wee lad—as for cherubic, I have some doubt (as many others do surely)—the rights and laws of this nation I duly inherited. I say inherited in the sense that I have not written a law, passed a law, or for that matter voted for a law.

No, I have gone about my life’s business as one of many, paying taxes, obeying said laws, keeping my property reasonably tidy. Perhaps some fellow citizens would want me to do more, although I can’t imagine anything of such magnitude that they would be harping at me about it. Some think my role-playing just fine, and the vast majority never give my performance as citizen a second thought—heck, never a first thought most likely.

My take on being born a US citizen is premised on an obvious point: The moment of my birth was also a moment of birth for hundreds of others around the globe, each a citizen of where brought into this world. I surely must have a Chilean “cousin”, a Cambodian “cousin”, and a Canadian “cousin” along with the rest of an international lineup born August 11^th, 1953.

I wonder if any of these birthdate cousins migrated here and became fellow US citizens. Odds to the affirmative must be reasonably good, I think.

I am here, historically speaking, via some ancestors who arrived well before the birth of the US in 1790 with the ratifying of the Constitution. However, the ratification happened only after Rhode Island first rejected the document by popular vote, and then, by way of a constitutional convention, caved by a margin of two votes under threat of being identified as a foreign country otherwise.

I skip past the Declaration in 1776 because anyone can declare pretty much anything about anything. Let me see, then, what results.

The Rhode Island example is instructive. The popular vote regarding the Constitution, an example of democracy in action. The convention delegates’ vote, a republican act—overturning the popular vote in this instance.

The Constitution is the elemental homeland document conceived in a very particular time and place, coming on 230 years ago in Philadelphia. But what interests me as we bat and batter the document about is population.

According to the first census in 1790, 3,893,635 was the count. Now, estimates have us 84 times larger. Think of a town of 1000, for example, now a small city of 84,000. 

Or think of Virginia in 1790, the most populous state then by more than 12 times tiny Delaware. Now consider California today with 69 times more folks than Wyoming.

Right there, then, begin your mulling over the Electoral College. Of course, without taking account of the state where you now reside. Of course.

Maybe—most likely—my yard could be, should be tidier.

To the Sea

I have returned to take in the sea,

to listen, to have a look.

Tide just beginning to turn,

I am only steps away from the dunes.

And, yes, the morning air smells of the sea.

I have sailed these waters. I turn my head

a few degrees south. I feel the breeze

across both ears,

and so, right on the nose.

A bus arrives. Long-distance travelers, they

file along the sandy path between sea oats

and scattered patches of beach amaranth.

A wintry geography escaped,

they have landed here,

all ooo’s and aaa’s, these good folks

from Cedar Rapids and Waterloo.

They shade their eyes from the low sun.

Such an expanse of water, they have not seen.

I want them to hold their arms

out wide as if to embrace water and sky.

I want them to close their eyes

and to inhale deep, deep—

then, something

more to be carried home—

ever in them, this sea. 

Breaking Leaf

Perhaps my use of the word amazement is too easily triggered. In the sense of wonder I mean. And ‘tis the season for me daily to shake my head—spring, you know.

Despite decades of planting trees and shrubs and flowers, I am amazed at what returns from winter-induced dormancy. Despite a lifetime of seeing the process over and over and over again beyond the limits of my yard, I marvel at the sights.

Recently I made the drive from home to the Charleston area, and the flowering redbuds and dogwood along the way, those untended by human hands, out in the woods, startle me. Yet, I have seen this process along this road—oh, I don’t know—hundreds of times?

The paradox for me is that I am well aware of the biological drive in these living things to survive, but I have no expectation of the annual greening, the flowering, this reawakening.

Look to the woods, no humans pruning or mulching, but a thriving community of trees and plants and wildlife. I get that. And still I am struck by this springing forth.

As a matter of course, I walk my yard and check on what I have planted, waiting for the first sign of leaf or blossom. The nodes swell, another day goes by, another week, and then, finally—yes! The tiniest bit of color, the beginning of an unfurling. Amazing.

This year my daily checklist includes keeping careful tabs on the first apple blossom in my little orchard, the cuttings I have potted, and a Japanese maple I transplanted in mid-February. I put the tree in the ground in Ladson, SC 5 years ago, and now here it is after a 3-hour drive to the NW.

Of course, the root system was deeply developed, and I had my doubts about this uprooting, which I would have anyway.  Weeks, nothing. Then some swelling. And two days ago, voila!

Okay, a small thing, perhaps, so go with awe, an even smaller word. Surely, the daffodils are enough to astound. The first signs of the perennial sunflowers I planted by seed last year? Get out!

In Ithaca

To be truly free, truly

be nothing.

Be not husband, be neither parent

Nor son.

Be not storied, be not story-teller.

Be not creator, be not destroyer.

Silenced, no prayers, no howls.

Be neither light nor darkness.

Strike not a fire, nor be as ice.

Wind-swept, the crags,

the rise and fall,

the land, the sea—

free.

Oh, That Smell

I sat outside on the patio to eat my lunch today. A pleasant, if overcast 65. First time this season, even though we did have a very warm first full week of February. And Spring little more than a week away. All good.

My mother likes updates of what’s what as dormancy is broken by trees and shrubs—in the woods, the yard, the garden, the nursery—and especially she likes reports on what’s flowering.

The frontrunners this year the usual suspects. Some cherries, pears, daffodils, of late forsythia. The list is a visual inventory, peaches—the two dwarf varieties way ahead of the other varieties.

Knockouts leafing as well the past few weeks.

Buds are swelling on the poplars, apples, plums, and Japanese maples. First leaves are appearing on the dogwood, red maples, azaleas, and burning bushes.

Of course, the birds for a month have advertised a change in the air. Eider ducks, mallards, Canada geese, and this year a pair of Red-tailed hawks that also seem set to nest as well. Not as dramatically obvious—to me, at least—I fully expect the usual suspects to bring little ones into our fold out here. Mockingbirds, bluebirds, cardinals, blue jays.

Not sure about the robins as they seem to drift in and out on the tide of temperature changes.

Something different today, however. The air, the scent of, that smell. Verdant? Not quite. Viridescent? A wetness, an earthiness, vegetative, loamy. Spring.

The field plowed, the garden tilled. The green fuse lit, eh, Mr. Yeats?

The Cowman Calls

Lo,

the cowman calls

his kingdom’s cows to come.

Lumbering in from pasture and woods,

the late afternoon feed,

to the trough they plod.

Buckets emptied, and booted he and gloved

the hands that have worked the work—

calves cradled, the stings of barbs,

hammer blows, fingers chapped with cold—

sweat-stained his cap, the tromping weariness.

The days come, the cows come,

comes the cowman, his kingdom to adore.

Cheese? Gee Whiz!

What follows may or may not ruin your day. May depend on what you can live with, or without.

According to a recent article in New Scientist, around 22,000,000 tons of cheese were produced last year. You don’t buy it by the ton, of course. So, that’s 44,000,000,000 pounds. Seems staggering, but again, with around 7 billion folks potentially eating cheese, well you can do the arithmetic. 

More important is that cheese production is now significantly greater than in 2000, which produced a still huge 15 million tons. Which brings to the expansion of milk production, from 480 million tons in 1970 to around 800 million tons today. 

One the fastest growing markets for cheese now is Asia, by the way.

That economic driver brings us to dairy cows, which in the US, for example, means a 13% increase in milk per dairy cow between 2007 and 2016. A growing cheese market, rising demand for milk, and voila more intensive efforts to get production figures up. And so the 20-year-life span that would occur naturally falls to around 5 for a dairy cow. The end is typically at the slaughterhouse.

Of course, as we are more and more sensitized to our carbon footprints, more and more studies are conducted to measure the impact of our foods, our clothing choices, our modes of travel, our lawn management practices, and the list goes on.

Milk and yogurt are going to generate about 1.5 pounds of carbon dioxide to produce around 1 pound of product. (I’m converting kg to lbs, roughly, but fairly, I think.) About 6 pounds of CO2 for your pound of cream, 10 pounds for your mozzarella, and 13 pounds for cheddar. 

The cheeses don’t stand alone when it comes to a carbon footprint. Most folks know beef production tops out at about 23 pounds of carbon for 1 pound of meat and lamb weighs in at 20 pounds.

Cheddar cheese on your burger? Groan a bit for this well-worn slice of wisdom: There is no free lunch.

Oh, for the mozzarella, about a gallon of milk to make 21 ounces of the cheese. Ouch! I always want extra mozzarella. 

Pork, chicken, and fresh fish, are lower in producing CO2 than cheese in general (Not all cheeses are equal—see above.) The big winner, if winning a smaller carbon footprint, would be the lowly bean which is almost 1 for 1 in CO2 vs actual product. 

Eat more beans, I guess. 

None of this information is meant to do any more than illuminate what I think the heart of all environmental, economic, political, and cultural issues—systems, the better word. The scale and complexity of the physical world with its growing human population, as one well-known personality discovered, complicate informed choices.

What to do? The best you can as you deem best.

As It Happened

Because I was hissed at by Kashmiris in 1994, my internal react-o-meter to world events budges slightly from neutral when I see or hear news of violence along the Pakistan-India border in that region. As it happened, back then I was on the road from Leh to Manali to catch a flight to Delhi.

The stretch where the incident occurred is along one of the highest highways in the world, and though it was mid-July, the road—unpaved—was badly cratered with potholes, and the snow on the hillside was still several feet deep. We came to a stop where a work crew of men, women, and little children were carrying rocks from the roadbed and tossing them over the side of the embankment.

My driver got out of our jeep and went over to the crew chief to negotiate our passage. Though wearing full winter gear, I was easily spotted as an Other, and all work ceased. Immediately the focus of the conversation settled on me and ratcheted up in volume several notches. My driver’s brother, sitting in the front passenger seat, turned and told me to stay put and to say nothing.

After a few minutes—seemed longer than a few—my driver returned, and slowly we crept forward between the workers holding stones and staring at me. Then, it began. Hissing. For about 10 yards, on both sides, adults and children hissed. Not a word was spoken. I did have that moment of “So, this is where it ends, a bang and, maybe, whimpering”.

When the crew was well behind us, we stopped. “What was that about?” I asked. “You are an American.” True enough. “Jimmy Carter did not help Kashmiris win their independence.” “What?” “Leaders wrote a letter, talked about Jefferson, and Lincoln, and Martin Luther King. But no response. No help.”

Well, damn.

By the way, I have never been able to locate any information about this letter and the alleged snub.

Coincidentally, before the region’s recent news, I was reminiscing about making the decision to go to the Himalayas in February, ’94. That 25^th anniversary thing that we do with markers for past events. We like our 5s and 10s and a 25^th or, egads, much less a 50^th.

I concluded that unlike my first several overseas trips, the Himalayas would happen solely by way of my own impetus. And I decided I didn’t necessarily want to go to Nepal along with hundreds of other American summer tourists.

In a stroke of serendipity, that month’s issue of The Atlantic had a small ad for a company called SnowLion, listing treks in Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, and Ladakh. Ladakh? Never heard of it. Turns out it’s an area referred to as “Little Tibet” for the influx of refugees that fled the Chinese Communists when they invaded Tibet.

Ladakh is an enclave in the modern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, which is how I crossed paths with disaffected Kashmiris. The region was and is politically sensitive because of India’s ongoing border issues with Pakistan and China, and all 3 countries maintain a strong military presence in those mountains. In fact, India did not begin pushing tourism in Ladakh until the 1970s, and what reports I could find made it clear that I was unlikely to be in the company of many Americans.

Regardless, by happenstance on the 4^th of July, 1994, I arrived in Leh, the capital city of the old Kingdom of Ladakh—elevation, 11,000’. As it turned out, I met two Americans—a mother and daughter—within 30 minutes of being in Leh. They were headed home that afternoon. I wouldn’t speak to another American until my flight home from Bangkok to L.A. two weeks later.

There’s more, of course, but that would be the rest of the story.

An Index (5)

First, a joke for an ex-pat friend. Then, after a passing remark to my mother, some homework. So, perhaps the list is telling, depending upon what you think it's saying. Open ambassadorships:

Albania
Belarus
Belize
Bolivia
Brazil
Chad
Chile
Cuba
Egypt
Eritrea
Estonia
Georgia
Honduras
Jordan
Libya
Mexico
Pakistan
Panama
Qatar
Singapore
Tanzania
Thailand
Turkey

Grouchy Buckets

Early yesterday evening I got my tail-end handed to me in a game of Horse, H to say bye-bye, Loser. My 8-year-old protagonist shot dying quails from 8’ out, no spin, just dead weight that either swished or did the slow, rolling death spiral into the net.

Me? I’m out 10-14’ clanging shots that ricochet off the base of the goal and shoot off toward the street, which is a steady downhiller to the end of the cul-de-sac. So I’m flagging down misses—and not just mine—wearing jeans and slip-on Sketchers so worn down they have been consigned to the yard shoe bin.

After not shooting hoops, much less playing, since ’94. Idjit.

More than an hour of said foolishness later, I’m home, limping around, muscles strained where muscles no longer exist. And this morning? Hobbling to the kitchen, making a note to myself. Never again.

So what kind of mood am I in today. Foul? Sore? Well, let’s see.

Hey! If you’re tailgating me for miles in the left lane on the interstate until I can barely slip between two highballing semis down a long, steep hill, you better disappear like Roadrunner over the horizon.

No! I’m not running for any elected office. Ever. First, I’m unelectable. Second, I’m not taking campaign contributions from anyone. Not even my family. Not that they would go there. Which would make be beholden to no one. Roll that phrase around a bit in your head. Beholden to no one.

You! It’s an acceleration lane, so accelerate. Forty is not going to get you into the flow of traffic, which on highways around here pushes 80 to see how far can be traveled before tapping the brakes.

Professional golfer Phil Mickelson, with a net worth pegged $375 million, in an ad touted The Greenbriar resort in West Virginia for, among other amenities, offering falconry. Yep, falconry in the state that is one of the worst for opioid-related deaths in the US. Falconry in one of the 10 poorest states in the nation. Falconry. Sheesh.

Plant more trees. Yes, in your yard. And not 3’ from your house. Hate pines? Fine, just remember they suck carbon out of the air like sponges. Plant shrubs. Plant flowers. Stop growing grass that will never be used as a soccer pitch by your kids.

And I’m still cranky about a Range Rover driving up the steps to Heaven’s Gate. That ad campaign really got up my nose.

Listen! If you watch a 15-minute video presentation or lecture on black holes or Spinoza’s philosophy or ocean acidification, do not leave a comment to the effect that so much information was left out. It’s 15 minutes. De facto, it’s an introduction. Which is why I have started leaving comments for said miscreants like Would you please add a link to your video presentation. Thanks!

Yes, that politely. I’m not a barbarian, you know.

It was the humidity while shooting hoops yesterday.

Oh, look. Half a dozen bluebirds out back. Later.

Let's Get Geological, Geological

As a recently married nephew honeymooned in Italy—Venice to begin—I thought of Vesuvius 300 miles to the south and the eruption in 79 that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum. This volcano that last erupted in 1944 looms near a Naples today with a population well over 3 million.

Of course, here in the US we have our own volcanoes for experts to monitor and to worry about. A 2018 update by the US Geological Survey listed the five most dangerous as Mt. Kilauea in Hawaii, Mts. St. Helen and Rainier in Washington, Redoubt in Alaska, and Mt. Shasta in California.

For many folks volcanoes may seem too remote to give much of a thought to much less a second one. But a lot of us here and abroad are primed to take a beat down from the forces that may be unleashed during the course of our lives.

No less a part of the equation of geological processes is the fact of our human population exploding in the past century—may go from 3 billion to nearly 9 billion in my lifetime. And we are anchored onto a moveable crust and subjected to a whirlwind of threats.

Think of our major metropolitan areas, and what a checklist. Earthquake zones, check. Volcanic zones, check. Flood zones, check. Tropical storm zones, check. Tornado zones, check.

We are but passers-by when compared to, say, Vesuvius, which is estimated to be 17,000 years old. The Social Security actuarial chart has me most likely making it to a little over 84.

Take heart those who have reached 65, 1 of 4 expected to reach 90, 1 of 10 to make 95.

Geologists routinely spout numbers in the million and millions of years. No, billions—the Blue Ridge Mountains, 1.2 billion years old, but youngsters compared to South Africa’s Makhonjwa dated to be 3.5 billion years old.

Like a 22-year-old, and then me. The Himalayas? Children, as mountains go. Merely 450 million years old. Punks. Like an 8-year-old. Okay, maybe not punks. I know some sweet youngsters around that age.

Perhaps these timescales are on my mind because I see so many references to 2030 and 2050 and 2100 as part of climate assessments. I’ve got a chance, 10%, at 2050, or nearly.

Thirty-one years seem so far off? Hurricane Hugo’s 30^th anniversary approaches. Thirty years ago? Nah, for a lot of folks seems like yesterday.