Jordan Lake | The Casual Blog

July 9, 2021

Some good soul, and talking about race

This past week we went out to see a movie for the first time since BC (Before Covid). Sally had read about a new documentary, Summer of Soul, playing at the Rialto, our old time neighborhood movie house. There was only one guy there selling tickets, and he also sold drinks and snacks, so it took longer than usual time to get a ticket, popcorn, and a beer.

But it was so worth it! Summer of Soul is about a concert series in the summer of 1969 in a park in Harlem with mostly Black musicians and hundreds of thousands of Black people listening, singing, and dancing.

The musicians included already famous and future legendary performers, including Stevie Wonder, B.B. King, Nina Simone, David Ruffin, Max Roach, Ray Baretto, Mahalia Jackson, the Fifth Dimension, Sly and the Family Stone, and Gladys Knight and the Pips. That is, some of the very best gospel, blues, jazz, soul, and rock ever made. The musicians seemed to feel the love, and their performances showed it.

It was amazing that it ever happened, and unfortunate that it never became a cultural touchstone, like Woodstock, which happened the same summer. Fortunately, the producers saved the videotapes, and now, 52 years later, we can get a good look at what we missed. It may be just the right moment to discover and cherish this wonderful moment of Black culture. The film is streaming on Hulu.

As you probably already know, race is multi-dimensional issue in the United States, which we haven’t fully worked through. One indicator of this is the odd new moral panic about the teaching of critical race theory. I learned last week that parents in Loudoun County, Va. and other places are harassing and threatening school board members because they believe their young children are being taught this specialized CRT scholarship.

This notion, promoted by fearmongering rabble rousers at Fox News, is almost certainly untrue. But it’s concerning that these parents, who presumably love their children, seem really worried. They apparently think their children may learn some really bad lessons — ones that run contrary to our traditional narrative of progress and harmony.

It isn’t surprising that being clear and direct about race makes some white people uncomfortable. For one thing, it isn’t how we were taught. For another, it may involve unpleasant feelings, like regret, shame, and guilt. For some, there could be a feeling that their position in the hierarchy is indefensible and threatened. And it isn’t surprising that some react to this discomfort defensively, converting it into anger and denial.

But I still find it remarkable that those who want avoid the issue attack those who would like to address our racial history and problems as racists.

Anyhow, for those who aren’t full of that sort of fear and anger, I recommend a recent podcast series from RadioLab: The Vanishing of Harry Pace. It tells what is known of Pace, a highly accomplished businessman who wrote popular songs, started Black Swan records, led a Black insurance company, and then seemed to change his racial identification.

Part of what’s fascinating is how race can seem firmly fixed, and turn out to be highly ambiguous. Similarly, history that we assume must be well settled can turn out to be full of uncertainty.

Along this same line, remember the Alamo? The way I heard the story as a kid, it was a heroic battle for freedom in Texas. This was not true, according to Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford. In an interview on Fresh Air, Burrough explained that the battle was part of a struggle mainly about preserving and expanding slavery by white settlers in what was then part of Mexico, where slavery was generally illegal.

The supposed idealism and heroism were Hollywood creations. Burrough noted in the interview that contradicting the traditional accounts of the heroism of Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, etc. made some people, including militia types, extremely upset.

Getting back to music, I’ve been reading a biography of Claude Debussy by Stephen Walsh. As is usually or always true with music writing, it doesn’t succeed in conveying anything close to the actual music, but it does suggest perspectives for listening. Debussy’s music, some of which I’m capable of playing on the piano, was highly original, but he also acknowledged being inspired by music from other cultures, including the Javanese gamelan tradition of Indonesia.

Inspired by Walsh’s account, I decided to track down some gamelan music, and found plenty on YouTube. The examples I heard didn’t sound at all like they could be Debussy’s model, and I’m inclined to think he drew more from traditional Japanese music. But with YouTube it was surprisingly fun to dip into Javanese and Japanese music. It inspired me to start exploring other traditional world music through there — from eastern Europe, native Americans, west Africans. There’s a ton!

These photos are from Jordan Lake this week. There weren’t a lot of birds there, and those I saw didn’t perform any spectacular feats, like catching a fish. But I liked this osprey.

May 15, 2021

Attacking fact checking, and the big election lie emergency

I’d planned to head to eastern NC this week to look for black bears and other creatures. Unfortunately, in Raleigh and elsewhere, there was a gas shortage. For a few hours, drivers and cars waited in long lines to get into stations, and then, the lines disappeared, and all the stations that I checked were out of gas.

The primary cause was a criminal hack of a major fuel pipeline company, with a secondary cause of a mass freak out (panic buying). People will probably calm down eventually. In the meantime, anyone taking a long road trip faced a good chance of getting stranded without gas, and so I sadly put off the bears. These pictures are ones I took recently at Jordan Lake and Raulston Arboretum

I’d been looking forward to taking a break from the subject of Trump, elections, and democracy. For a couple of weeks, it looked like we were heading towards normal, still with big problems, but having avoided a crash into full-on fascism. Right now we’ve got a full plate of wars, diseases, and other miseries, and it would be good not to add to the to-do list. So I’m sorry. But this is an emergency: our democracy is in a crisis.

Before I get to the crisis, a related development: this week a state legislator in Michigan proposed a new law aimed at fact checkers. As a former professional fact checker, I wondered what was up. According to the Washington Post, the legislator in question was a supporter of “Stop the Steal” and opponent of Covid safety measures. He proposed that fact checkers be required to register with the state, post a million dollar bond, and face fines and lawsuits for their mistakes.

As an ex-lawyer, I’m pretty confident that such a law would be struck down as unconstitutional, as long as we have anything resembling our current constitutional system. But the proposed law is one more indication of the fragility of that system.

It’s been four decades since I worked as a fact checker at The New Yorker, and through the years it never occurred to me that the government might try to put the lid on fact checking. I assumed that almost everyone would prefer to have truthful, reliable information, as opposed to mistakes or lies. Even though right-wing propaganda networks regularly play fast and loose with facts, the idea of making it a crime to try to get the facts right is something new.

Here’s fact checking in a nutshell: the job of the checker is to figure out whether statements purporting to be factual are accurate. Sometimes this is straightforward, as with correctly spelling names and confirming addresses, but other times it requires more research and analysis. On issues requiring expertise or first-hand knowledge, it requires consulting reliable experts or sources. It requires judgment when, as happens, experts or sources disagree. In such cases, the checker may add a note that there’s a disagreement.

Like all humans, fact checkers sometimes make mistakes. In such cases, they may be reprimanded, fired, or, in cases of libel, sued. So the proposed Michigan law would seem pointless, if the point were to punish mistakes. It makes sense, though, if the aim is to clear the way for big lies by discouraging checking. For those whose careers depend on lies, facts are pesky things.

And so we come to the crisis. This week Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney was tossed out of the Republican leadership because she called out the big lie that Trump won the 2020 election and was denied the presidency because of fraud.

This action resembled Republicans’ refusal to impeach Trump, but it was actually worse. It’s the difference between quietly tolerating a lie and loudly shutting down those that oppose the lie. Instead of merely declining to hold Trump accountable for the January 6 attempt to overthrow the election, the Republicans are now effectively co-signing his lies about the election and endorsing the January 6 insurrection.

In an almost-but-not-quite comic development, some congressional Republicans are now rechristening the mayhem of January 6 as a normal tourist visit unrelated to Trump and his supporters.

For any who have forgotten, Trump supporters waving MAGA flags and sporting MAGA paraphernalia stormed the Capitol, shouting death threats, and vandalizing the premises as they searched for fleeing legislators who’d been about to complete certification of the election of Biden. There were several deaths, dozens of injuries, and legislators and guards who feared for their lives.

Meanwhile, having narrowly lost the last election, Republicans in 30-some states are moving forward with new voting laws designed to reduce the number of Democratic voters. According to a new report in Mother Jones, this effort has been organized with military precision by a right-wing dark money outfit associated with the Heritage Foundation.

The quasi-clever cover story for these laws is that they are needed to address voter fears of election fraud. There could be such fears, but in fact, there is no significant election fraud problem. The fears are based on the outrageous lies propagated at high volume by Trump and his supporters in connection with their effort to overturn the last election.

Senate Bill 1 could put a stop to the worst of the state level election rigging, but that legislation is opposed by Senate Republicans and can’t advance as long as the filibuster stays in place. At the same time, state Republicans are getting rid of election officials who refused to go along with the Trump attempt to steal the 2020 election, and replacing them with Trump loyalists. That is, they’re putting in place election officials who appear committed to stealing elections when directed.

There are a lot of moving parts, but the direction is clear: the end of our traditional system of transferring power peacefully based on fair elections. Republicans are in the process of replacing it with a system in which elections are a sham used by the powerful to fool the gullible. Such systems have a long history, but only in countries that we would not call democratic, such as China, Russia, and North Korea. To put it plainly: Republican leaders are now working on a large-scale effort to undermine the foundation of American democracy.

There are, of course, some principled Republicans who oppose this effort, and others who haven’t yet heard what’s happening, but would not support it. But right now the Republican leaders at the national and state level are moving ahead to set up a system where only their candidates can win. For many rank-and-file Republicans, persuaded by decades of right-wing lies that Democrats are evil socialists and otherwise very scary, changing the system to keep out Democrats may seem like a good idea.

Possibly the Trump fever will break, and those with the illness will revert to traditional support for fair elections and facts over lies. But I wouldn’t count on it. It’s more likely that our democratic experiment will only survive if we fight for it (non-violently, of course). We could start by junking the filibuster and moving ahead with Senate Bill 1.

March 7, 2021

Ospreys, crock potting, and the Trumpist campaign against fair elections

When I went out to Jordan Lake late Wednesday afternoon, I saw my first osprey of the year perched in a pine across the river. I put my camera on the tripod and waited for it to fly before dark, but it didn’t. However, when I went back on Friday afternoon, there were a couple of them patrolling, and in the last patch of sunset on the river, I caught one catching a fish. I also saw many great blue herons, and one young bald eagle.

I’ve been learning to cook with an old school crock pot, which has generally worked out fine, though this week I had a near disaster. I tried to adapt a recipe for spinach lentil soup with lemon. Crock potting is a good style for me. It gets to the point without much fuss, but allows for improvisation, and after a long simmer, the result is usually surprisingly good.

But I was well into adding a lot of chopped vegetables before I realized there wasn’t room in our crock pot for everything, and I had to start subtracting. The lentils came along much slower than expected, and were not nearly ready by dinner time. So we ordered takeout falafel. We had the lentil soup the next night, and it wasn’t bad. In fact, Sally said she really liked it.

Speaking of disappointments, I was hoping the Trump Show was over, but unfortunately, it’s not. Since 2015, our Disgraced Former President (DFP) has taken up way too much of my brain space! Whatever you think about the DFP, you have to admit, he is not a quitter. Last weekend he recycled his patented mix of pomposity, ignorance, and fear mongering to a gathering of Republican leaders in Florida, and guess what? They cheered him on.

It’s no surprise that the DFP won’t shut up (has he ever?), but I was surprised that the Republican establishment wouldn’t seize the opportunity to change course and dump him. Surely most of them know perfectly well that his election fraud claims are absurd and despicable lies. Don’t they? Is it possible that these accomplished and privileged people have been infected by a mass delusion?

If so, it would not be a first. Starting in the eighteenth century, American political movements were built on and amplified hysterical fears of Native Americans, Germans, Mexicans, Asians, Irish, Italians, Greeks, Poles, Croats, and the list goes on. Not to mention movements against Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, and other non-mainstream religions. And of course, witches. Last and also first, there was and is the hateful ideology of white supremacy used to justify enslavement of Black people, and their continuing oppression.

Each of those sad chapters was partially driven by ignorance and fear, but there were also political opportunists who exploited such fears. The current Republican leaders mostly look like opportunists. Some of those now cheering the DFP truthfully acknowledged his leadership of the January 6 insurrection just weeks ago. Last week they were not only supporting the outrageous lie of a stolen election, but were joining the attempt to blame the Trumpist insurrection on antifa and left wingers. Have they no shame?

Apparently not, and so we’ve got some hard work ahead of us, with the next elections not far ahead. The reliably incisive Charles Blow recently reported on work by the Brennan Center for Justice finding that state lawmakers have legislation in the works to restrict voting access — meaning suppressing voting by minorities to maintain power by mostly white elites — in 43 states That’s a lot of states — 86 percent! As Blow notes, similar voter suppression happened after the Civil War, and subverted democracy. The current Republicans appear to have decided there is only one way for them to win a fair election: not to have it.

Fortunately, their efforts to further unlevel the elections playing field are now out in the open, and defensive measures are in process. The House has passed H.R. 1 with much needed election reform going in the fairness direction, and it is conceivable that the Senate will modify the filibuster and do likewise. Maybe someday we’ll go further with a commitment to fair elections by simplifying the process and incentivizing participation with paid leave and cash.

Along with the big challenge of having fairer elections, we also have the separate challenge of how to fashion a government that better serves ordinary people, rather than tilting in favor of corporations and plutocratic elites. This week I heard a podcast introduction to the proposal of Helen Landemore, a political scientist at Yale. She sounded brilliant and unafraid to experiment with new ideas for practical improvements to democracy.

Landemore proposes setting up counsels of randomly selected ordinary citizens to work on important problems. In an interview by Ezra Klein, Landemore explained that even at its best, our existing system systematically excludes minority and other voices, and that including these voices would improve decision making. Landemore had some real world examples suggesting how to move forward along this line, including experiments in Iceland, France, and Switzerland. I’ve got a bit of a reading log jam at the moment, but I’m thinking her book, Open Democracy, could be worth reading.

February 27, 2021

The worst idea in history: animals and us

Canada geese at Shelley Lake near sunrise

I’m recovering just fine from my neck surgery, and the weather turned nicer, too. For a couple of days, it felt like spring, though after that, it cooled off. In the pleasant interval, I took my camera out to see the birds at Jordan Lake, and also stopped in to check on the bald eagles nesting at Shelley Lake. These are some of the pictures I took.

Spending some time with the animals, or even just standing by the water hoping they’ll show up, is very therapeutic. Walt Whitman got it right in his famous poem; being with them is moving and soothing. When I get out around sunrise or sunset, I’m always a little surprised when there are few or no other people looking at them, but not sorry.

Great blue herons at Jordan Lake near sunset

Apropos, there was a lively short essay in the NY Times this week on something I’ve hoped others were thinking about: the disconnect between what we know about animals and how we treat animals. Crispin Sartwell, a philosophy professor at Dickinson College, wrote that western philosophy has labored mightily to establish that humans are different from and superior to animals, and failed. Perhaps this is starting to be noticed.

Everyone who stayed awake through high-school biology learned that homo sapiens are animals, with close physical similarities to many other animals. But most of us still think of ourselves as not actually animals, but rather, better than animals.

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As Sartwell notes, we’ve also been taught to regard humans as distinctive and superior on account of their consciousness, reasoning abilities, and moral systems. Comparisons of humans and other animals generally focused on the things humans did best, such as human language, rather than areas where animals outperformed us, such as sight, hearing, smell, strength, speed, endurance, and memory. Where animals showed sophistication in their communications and culture, we learned to avoid thinking about it.

The essential lesson pounded into all of us was that human intellectual qualities justified treating other animals as mere objects to be dominated and exploited. This idea is so familiar and deeply entrenched that it is hard to see it clearly as an idea subject to discussion.

In my student days at Oberlin College, we used to debate the extent to which ideas could affect human history. We were thinking about whether the philosophies of canonic thinkers like Aristotle, Locke, or Marx were primary drivers of cultural change.

We didn’t even think to consider the effects of the idea that humans are separate from, and far superior to, animals. The idea has no known author and no supporting reasoning. If examined with any seriousness, it falls apart as nonsense. Yet, as Sartwell suggests, it is almost certainly the most important idea in human history.

Sartwell raises the issue of how thinking of humans as fundamentally superior to other animals relates to other hierarchies. To justify slavery, colonialism, or other violent oppression, the groups to be dominated are characterized as beastly, wild, savage, brutal, fierce, primitive, uncivilized, inhuman, and so on — in short, “like animals.”

Even today, discrimination follows this same basic pattern in addressing people with African ancesters, other disfavored nationalties, women, religious minorities, and LGBTQ people. That is, these groups are defined as something less than fully human, and therefore not entitled to the highest degree of privilege.

The hierarchies that stem from treating animals as inferior have caused enormous harm to the humans who are denied full human status. Slavery is a dramatic example from our past, but there are many others that are very much still with us, like suppressing the votes of minorities, lower pay for women, and violence against LBGTQ people.

As Sartwell notes, this hierarchical, exploitative way of thinking divides us both from each other and from nature. Indeed, it has led to an existential crisis for nature. A couple of articles this week highlighted aspects of this.

According to a new study, about one third of freshwater fish species are threatened with extinction. Climate change, habitat loss, and pollution caused by humans accounts for much of this dire threat. Meanwhile due to these same factors, the populations of large animals (mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish) have fallen by 68 percent since 1970. More than two-thirds of these animals. Gone. Since 1970. Holy camoly!

Part of our unfolding catastrophe has to do with our view that animals are so inferior that they can properly be treated as food. A new piece by Jenny Splitter in Vox sums up some of what’s happening. Meat production through factory farming — that is, raising and slaughtering billions of animals each year — accounts for more than 14 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and also for vast losses of habitat for wild animals. This food system is raising the threat of extinction for thousands of species.

Our meat-based food system is not only deeply immoral, but unsustainable. To continue along this path likely means ecological and human disaster. Splitter’s piece notes that we may get help from technology, like lab grown meat, and from requiring more responsible farming practices. But cutting back on eating meat and moving toward a plant-based diet is something we as a species will have to do eventually. And we as individuals can do it now.

If you are either on board with plant-based eating or interested in experimenting, or even if not, I recommend trying Guasaca Arepa on Hillsborough Street. They have some outdoor picnic tables, where I ate my first ever arepa this week. It’s a Columbian speciality that involves putting various fillings in a sort of cornmeal cake. Guasaca has many fillings on offer, but I tried the vegan. Though a bit messy, it was delicious!

Pied-billed grebe at Shelley Lake near sunrise

May 10, 2020

Ways of looking at fishing birds, The End of Nature, Fellow Creatures, and the appeal of slavery denialism

Osprey at Jordan Lake preparing to dive

Again this week I spent some time at Jordan Lake looking at the water, trees, and birds. The birds weren’t as numerous this week, but I saw ospreys and great blue herons catch a number of fish. Even watching the inherent violence of animals eating other animals, there is something peaceful. They’re doing what nature designed them to do, as they’ve always done.

I got my first relatively high end photo printer this week. Hunt’s photo supply offered a big discount on a Canon Pixma Pro 10, and with the pandemic lock down still in force, I decided to experiment with some home printing. It was not a smooth take off. After putting some parts together, I ran into software problems, and ended up spending the better part of an hour on the phone with the Canon customer support guy. There is definitely a learning curve to making good prints, but after watching a few instructional videos, I managed to make a couple that I thought were promising.

As I worked on my prints, it occurred to me that there are a lot of levels of nature photography, and different ways of looking at the pictures. A photograph can pull us closer to a moment of reality, but it can also do the opposite. When I see a picture of a bird catching a fish, I might just think, that’s a picture of a bird catching a fish, and not think much else. That is, I might mistakenly think the photo fully contains the event, and for that reason not even bother to look carefully at what can be seen of the event. I could be thinking, I could always look at it later, and never do it.

Great blue heron and fish

On the other hand, I might decide to look harder, and consider the species of bird, the species of fish, their ages, the location, the weather conditions, and other particulars of the moment. At the same time, I might get some sense of the existential terror of a particular fish and the ecstasy of a particular bird. I sometimes notice how certain birds can look beautiful and repulsive at the same time, the last remaining dinosaurs.

Speaking of extinction events, I’ve been reading The End of Nature, by Bill McKibben. The book was published in 1989, as the possibility of massive environmental destruction from manmade climate change was coming into focus, so it is dated. But the basic science hasn’t changed, and a lot of his account is dead on target. As with his recent book, Falter, he has a gift for putting these difficult issues in perspective, which makes it possible to think productively about them.

I’ve also been re-reading Fellow Creatures, Our Obligation to Other Animals, by Kristine Korsgaard. Korsgaard, a professor of philosophy at Harvard, makes the case that we are not justified in treating non-human animals as objects to be exploited, and that they are entitled to respect.

Her argument is built on her extension of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, which I find difficult. I suspect that if I fully understood Kant, I would not be a Kantian, though it’s doubtful I’ll ever know for sure. Still, struggling with his theory of morality seems like good exercise — brain calisthenics. And Korsgaard is surely doing something worthwhile in investigating our relationship to non-human animals and whether any system of morality can exclude them.

I was happy to see that Nikole Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize for her remarkable work on the 1619 Project. Her original introductory article is here. As I’ve noted previously, the series published in the New York Times along with a podcast proposed new ways of thinking about the role of slavery and white supremacy in forming America.

It was surprising that George Will used his column to attack and distort the message of the 1619 Project. Will is a very intelligent person, and his column is a reminder of how being intelligent does not at all inoculate people against such mental tendencies as denial and bias.

That is, one can be both smart and prone to denial and delusion, including denial that slavery was an essential, formative element in American democracy. Will’s attack on the 1619 Project does not, of course, mean he is himself a racist. But it is a reminder of how deeply white supremacy is woven into our culture, and how uncomfortable it is to look straight at the racism of our past and present. Will’s anger at the challenge to some of our founding myths is understandable, but his obfuscation is a regrettable service to white supremacy.

May 3, 2020

Missing Florida, processing some photos, and picturing hell

Osprey at Jordan Lake

I’d planned to be in Florida this past week photographing the big birds there, like egrets, wood storks, and roseate spoonbills. With the coronavirus pandemic still in full force, that wasn’t possible, but I did get to spend some time at our area parks, including Shelley Lake and Jordan Lake. It was good to be outside with our local birds.

Although I didn’t capture any images that were singular, I was happy to practice getting better exposures. I also enjoyed experimenting with the raw images in Lightroom, Photoshop, and other apps, with a view to improving my processing skills. Here are some of the results using bird shots I took this week, as well experiments with Sally’s orchids. The white one lost its flowers a few days after the last shot of it. Hope it will come back next year.

These days there’s a lot of background fear and worry, and no simple solution to all our ills. But I’m finding it helpful to spend some time focusing on moments of beauty and peace, and also spending more time meditating. I discovered some good new (to me) resources on YouTube, including some guided meditations by Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield. I don’t think I’m anywhere near nirvana, but I’m happier and more peaceful.

Tufted titmouse at Shelley Lake

I used to worry about the possibility of going to hell. In the religious tradition I grew up in, hell was a real place, ruled by Satan, where sinners were sent after death to be tortured forever. I eventually came to think that the likelihood of there being such a place was close to zero, and that worrying about it was a waste of time. But it’s interesting that the concept of hell has had such a long life, and continues to terrify people today.

I learned more about hell in an interview with Bart Ehrman on Fresh Air a few weeks ago, and just finished his new book, Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. Ehrman, a professor of religious studies at University of North Carolina, contends that the notions held by most Christians of the afterlife are not found in the Bible. Rather they were made up by various early Christian writers to support religious theories and emotional needs.

It’s good to know that the horrifying idea that God set up a massive system for never ending torture is not universal, and is actually a relatively recent (around 1,800-year-old) invention. Christian ideas of hell have varied with respect to the brutality and intensity of the torture, including some with extremes of sadism. But even the milder versions are peculiar. Our experience is that we get accustomed to almost any pain or misery, and nothing lasts forever. The oddity, and impossibility, of unending, unstoppable agony does not seem to have struck many people.

In the interview on Fresh Air, Ehrman mentioned that he was confident that hell did not exist. He seemed to think people suffered unnecessarily because of the concept, and that they’d be happier without it. I think that, too.

On the other hand, I’ve been re-reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s book on the meat industry, Eating Animals, which depicts a truly hellish reality. Every year, billions of sentient creatures — cows, pigs, chickens, and others — are brought into existence by humans who treat them with unspeakable cruelty. Humans inflict suffering on these animals on a scale that truly defies comprehension. Then they kill them and eat them.

The horror of the meat industry is most apparent in its cruelty to billions of individual animals, but it also produces a lot of suffering less directly. It is one of the largest contributors of the greenhouse gases that account for global warming. It introduces steroids, antibiotics, bacteria, and viruses into the human food chain that account for a lot of sickness and death.

The meat industry is also a place of misery for the workers who kill and cut up the animals. Slaughter houses are some of the most dangerous workplaces in America. Many of the workers are immigrants who are too desperate and powerless to demand safe conditions and reasonable pay.

It was therefore not a huge surprise that there have been serious Covid-19 outbreaks in industrial meat operations. But the reaction of President Trump was surprising, and even for him, perverse. He issued a declaration that the meat industry was essential infrastructure under the Defense Production Act and must therefore remain open. He didn’t say how this was to be accomplished if the workers in large numbers got sick and died.

So is the meat industry, with its enormous profits based on cruelty and lies, essential? It’s hard to see how that could possibly be. We can certainly survive without meat, and hundreds of millions of people do so every day. In fact, eating a healthy plant-based diet is a lot better for the human body. I’ve been doing it for twenty-some years, and I’m here to tell you, it’s been good.

Perhaps, along with a lot of death, Covid-19 will cause more people willingly or unwilling to eat less meat and more plants. Once we factor in all the health gains from less meat-related disease and reduced greenhouse gas emissions, we might have a net gain in the survival rate. There could be a win-win — less animal cruelty, less human suffering, and more health and happiness.

April 26, 2020

Happy 50th Earth Day, and calling out the plutocrats

Great blue herons at Jordan Lake

I went out to Jordan Lake a couple of mornings last week, including on Wednesday, which was the fiftieth anniversary of the first Earth Day. I managed to get my photography gear down the loose rocks to the river side, set up the tripod, tested exposures, and waited to see what would happen. I enjoyed watching the birds, and especially the ospreys and the great blue herons.

The GBHs are really good at catching fish! It happens so fast that you can barely even see the catch. Looking at the pictures afterward, I felt sad for the unfortunate fish, but still happy for the birds. They aren’t cruel; they fish out of necessity.

On the drive, I listened to more of the Scene on Radio podcast, which I’ve found very thought-provoking. The producers and scholars discussed libertarian ideas, including the notion that all government is bad and individual wealth is the highest good, and explored how those ideas relate to race and politics.

As the podcast noted, what drives the hard-right plutocrats is not just pure greed, but also a kind of twisted idealism. They believe that the individual is supremely important, and individual success is the highest good. There is no point to social organizations or communities other than as a platform for high achievers. Wealth is a sign of virtue, and poverty a sign of vice. Greed is good, and only the wealthy matter.

Osprey with fish

These people generally admire the work of Ayn Rand, a third-rate writer and pseudo philosopher whose awkward and sad novels idealize grotesquely rugged individuals. Admiring Rand is more than a sign of poor literary taste; it indicates moral immaturity. In the Randian libertarian view, it is not just understandable, but desirable, to cultivate indifference to the welfare of others. The poor are by definition unworthy, and deserve whatever misfortune strikes them.

Preventing minorities from voting is an important political objective for the libertarian right. The plutocratic leadership expects to always be a minority working to benefit itself, and so an actual democracy where everyone is allowed and encouraged to vote would not work for them.

If there were a level playing field and an informed electorate, the majority would never vote for such a system, since it doesn’t serve the best interests of most people. But of course, we do not have those things. Instead, we have massively-funded disinformation campaigns, gerrymandered electoral districts, and laws discouraging the non-rich from voting. And if that is not sufficient, they cheat. This could all be viewed as wrong, but they view it as well justified, since they believe (or at least some part of them believes) that all that matters is their own welfare and success.

It is hard to believe how pervasive these libertarian, anti-government ideas have become, especially given how much they conflict with traditional American norms of fairness, equality, and representative democracy. This helps explain why we in the US lack some of the basic attributes of advanced democracies in Europe, such as a health care system that works for people other than the rich and safety net programs for ordinary people. Such programs would involve government action. And in this extreme libertarian view, government action is always bad. The same for taxes.

This is one of the rays of hope of the coronavirus pandemic: it exposes the narrowness and moral degeneracy of these ideas. It could hardly be more obvious that government action is needed to address the pandemic, and it seems crazy to argue otherwise. To be sure, some still do. Some are so in love with their ideas, or desperate for income and food, that they have been marching in protest against business closures, at the risk of their lives. But others are not so fanatical, and are moderating their views to accommodate reality, and survive.

Perhaps we’ll emerge from this crisis with a more realistic view of the importance of government, and more compassion for those less fortunate. We might rediscover the significance of the natural world, and cultivate more appreciation for animals other than humans and the fascinating interrelationships of living things. If we can get started down that road, there’s still hope that we won’ t ravage the planet completely before Earth Day 100.

April 19, 2020

Big birds, pandemic masks, non-dairy cheese, factory farms, and the war on climate change

Bald eagle at Shelley Lake

I managed to get up early three mornings this week to spend some time with the birds of our area, including these bald eagles, great blue herons, and ospreys. The birds weren’t doing anything special — just living their lives. But it was especially heartening in this perilous time to get their orientation — intense, with all the senses open, and prepared for the next opportunity.

This week Sally got me a coronavirus mask that had been sewn by the tailor at our dry cleaners. It’s green and looks, well, strange. I’m starting to wonder whether we’ll be getting used to not seeing much of each other’s faces.

As the pandemic and the stay-at-home order continue, we’re trying to make the best of things. One good thing is finding time and energy to try new projects. This week I finally got around to one I’d been meaning to do for a while: making non-dairy cheese.

I’ve known for some time that dairy products involve heart-breaking cruelty to cows. Like other mammals, mother cows feel intense attachment to their young. The reason they make milk is to feed their babies. Factory dairy farms get them to make more milk by a cycle of artificial impregnation and stealing their calves immediately after birth.

The mothers cry out for their missing calves and grieve. Confined in small spaces, they are fed unhealthy diets that often include hormones and steroids. Their natural life span is around 20 years, but on factory farms they are too exhausted, sick, or injured to keep going after 5 years. So they are killed to make hamburgers.

Great blue heron in early morning fog at Jordan Lake

Some time back, Sally and I started finding good plant-based substitutes for milk — soy, cashew, almonds, oats. Quitting ice cream was challenging, for obvious reasons, but we’ve recently discovered some delicious non-dairy substitutes — Ben & Jerry’s, So Delicious, and Nada Moo. But it’s been hard to give up the deliciousness of cheese. We’ve had good plant-based cheese substitutes in restaurants, but haven’t seen them in our grocery stores. If you’re looking for a business opportunity, there’s a business idea, which you’re welcome to steal.

In the meantime, I tried a friend’s recipe for non-dairy brie, the main ingredient of which was cashews. It took some work, and I nearly burned out the blender motor, but the result was pretty good. I used fresh herbs — rosemary, sage, and chives. It tasted a lot like brie, but the consistency was more like a dip. I may have done too much blending. Anyhow, I’m planning to give it another shot soon.

I just finished reading Jonathan Saffron Foer’s recent book, We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast. It’s a book about the relationship of factory farming to climate change and to us. Foer reviews the facts, including the fact that animal farms are a major contributor to global warming. He thinks that we need to take whatever action we can as individuals to combat the developing catastrophe of climate change. Recognizing how deeply habituated we are to eating meat, he proposes that if we can’t quit entirely, we try eating it only at dinner.

Foer is a fine writer, and I was heartened by his good sense and good-heartedness. But I agreed in part with Mark Bittman, the NY Times reviewer, who said that hoping to save the planet by giving people good reasons to change their habits is probably not going to work. Old habits die hard, especially when they’re constantly reinforced by the advertising of agribusiness fighting for its accustomed profits.

Bittman recommended a piece by Bill McKibben that was in the New Republic in 2016 titled A World at War — We’re Under Attack from Climate Change, and Our Only Hope Is to Mobilize Like We Did in WWII

The war metaphor is not a new one, but it is still apt. McKibben points out that if Hitler had been wreaking havoc on our cities with firestorms, hurricanes, droughts, and floods, we would have seen the necessity of mobilizing to fight back. As McKibben recounts, in WWII the US mobilized in just weeks and months to make bombers, ships, tanks, and other weapons under the direction of the federal government. He argues that we’re going to need that sort of leadership to head off complete disaster.

Osprey at Jordan Lake

One benefit of the pandemic is that it is helping us get a new understanding of what a real crisis is, and how we can’t just do nothing. That may help us understand the need for government leadership on climate change. The idea that markets alone will solve our current problems is not going to work, and the political leadership now in place is not going to work.

The TImes reported this week on new research on the threat of climate change to animals. The scientists found that the risk of mass extinction is much closer than previously thought, with thousands of species at risk beginning in the next decade. The study emphasized that this is not inevitable, if we take dramatic action soon.

At the same time, the pandemic has brought into focus the precarious situation of working people. With businesses shut down, no jobs, and no savings, having food and housing is no longer a given. Pending getting new leaders and a compassionate safety-net system, we’ve been trying to do some extra giving for food and other necessities.

The latest: Sally discovered the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which is raising money for domestic workers who have no other resources. It’s a great time to help workers whose job is helping others and who can’t work from home.

March 29, 2020

Herons, virtual cocktails, and depolarizing

I got in a couple of trips to Jordan Lake dam before the big shutdown. There were quite a few great blue herons standing together and periodically flying into the river to catch fish. I saw a few squabbles over food and fishing spots. The birds were surprisingly comfortable with me, with one flying in to stand for a while just 20 feet away. I was looking forward to getting to know them better. But with the park closed, that likely won’t be happening this spring.

In the Raleigh area, we’re now under orders to stay home if possible. I’m fortunate not to be in danger of starvation or homelessness, but there are other challenges and disappointments. In addition to missing the birds and the spring flowers, I’m missing my exercise routine. I usually get to the gym or a yoga class six days a week, and have come to think of that as an important element of my mental health, as well as my physical well being. I’ve been trying to do more running, but I have concerns that too much will hurt my knees. Anyway, I did five miles yesterday.

We’ve heard that gun shops are doing a booming business. Apparently, the self-defense crowd is worried that desperate hordes will be attacking their homes, and they will need extra guns and ammo to shoot them. I think we’re a long way from a Mad Max dystopia, but it’s telling that those fears are here.

In the spirit of making the best of things, we had our first virtual cocktail hour on Friday. We scheduled a half hour starting at 5:30 for video chatting and drinking with Jocelyn and Kyle in New York. We used Google Hangouts, which cut out a couple of times, but mostly worked. We commiserated about the pandemic, compared notes on streaming movies and series, and had some good laughs. We agreed we would all be in deep trouble psychologically if the internet stopped working.

This week I finished reading Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein. I recommend it to all who are interested in understanding why American politics seems to be working so badly. Klein contends that political parties have become markers of identity rather than matters of ideology. That is, whichever group we’re in, the group’s policies aren’t as important to us as our being part of the group. Those who aren’t part of our group are seen as enemies.

Klein sees race as a central factor in our politics. During the civil rights movement, Republican politicians used coded racial appeals to pull in working class white people. It seemed like that couldn’t work for long, but it’s still with us. This isn’t a new revelation, but Klein does a good job putting it in context.

Recently I discovered a good podcast called Scene on Radio that discusses American history and culture with a focus on issues of race and gender. It’s now in its fourth season, which reexamines the place of slavery in the formation of the American political system. The founding fathers had strong disagreements about slavery, so there’s not a single, simple narrative. But the wealthiest of the founders were wealthy because of slavery, and they made sure to protect their wealth, through the design of the Constitution and otherwise. Good podcast.

It was heartening that faced with a real emergency, last week Congress managed to pass a stimulus bill on a bipartisan basis. Perhaps it will mark the start of less polarization. But it appears that some at Fox News and extremist evangelicals are still taking the view that the pandemic is a liberal hoax designed to undermine President Trump. Apparently some reverends are summoning the faithful to attend their services on the grounds that there is no coronavirus. We all know that human powers of denial and self deception are great, but even so, with tens of thousands of people already dead, this is amazing. It’s a long way back from there to unpolarized reality.

March 23, 2020

Getting close to birds and farther from people: hunkering down for the pandemic

Last week I got out to Jordan Lake three times and spent some time around sunrise with the wildlife there. I saw lots of great blue herons, and several ospreys and bald eagles, as well as the less glamorous gulls, crows, and turkey vultures.

With the human world in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, I was especially grateful for some time with the birds. Of course, they have their own life and death struggles, including finding enough food to survive each new day. But they manage it without undue drama, keeping their focus on the task at hand. Once the essentials are taken care of, they become very still, alert but peaceful.

The pandemic has quite suddenly changed everything. We don’t know how long it will be before something like normalcy returns. In the meantime, there will be brutal economic hardship for laid off people who need the next paycheck for housing and food. On top of that, cutting direct human contact will likely cause a spike in depression and suicides. This is going to be tough.

In the midst of what looks like an epic disaster in process, it may not be the best time to talk of lessons to be learned. On the other hand, we’re all going to have some time on our hands, which we might use to think about our situation.

Illness can be a revealing crucible. It forces us to face up to reality. For example, parents may have all kinds of kooky ideas about praying for health, but when their own child gets seriously ill, and prayer doesn’t seem to be working, they will usually take the child to the doctor. Illness forces us to quit playing and get serious.

And so it is that we’re now looking to scientists for guidance about covid-19. Our President has led a war on science, muzzling experts and eliminating scientific positions and agencies, as the Times and others have noted. But he seems to be shifting gears, and now he’s consulting with doctors, public health experts, and other scientists.

At this point, it is hardly news that we have an incompetent and mentally ill President who sees the world exclusively in terms of how it can gratify his ego and bank account. But like the parents with a sick child, even he has come to see it’s time to go to the doctor and get actual facts and possibly some help. He’s still inclined to boost xenophobic conspiracy theories, but he’s finally making concessions to reality. Along with increasing death and misery, denying reality now might even be politically damaging.

As little as I respect the President and as fervently as I want to see him defeated, I want to wish him well in this regard: may he find the wisdom to defer to the best experts. Our scientists and doctors won’t have all the answers, but they’re our best hope. Assuming we make it through this crisis, we might apply this same rule to address other global crises, like global warming.

For the rest of us, there’s an opportunity to pause and reflect. Covid-19 has brought into stark relief the fragility of our social, economic, and governmental systems. If it wasn’t clear before, it’s now clear that our national healthcare system is a hopeless mess. Our social safety net is full of holes. Our system of profit-at-all-costs capitalism is failing to address basic needs.

In the face of the pandemic, even those officials of the all-government-is-bad view are modifying their opinion and trying to do something. It looks like the government may be sending out real checks to actual families to mitigate some of the hardship. This looks like progress, and also like a tiny band-aid. But who knows? We may look back on this as the historic beginning of a transformative new system with a universal basic income and greater fairness.

One thing is certain: this is not going to be easy. It’s definitely not the case that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. We need to cultivate our courage, and our compassion. Those of us with some surplus need to help others. My old friend Deborah Ross, a Democrat running for Congress in N.C. District 2, suggests donations to the N.C. Food Bank. The Washington Post yesterday had a helpful list of charities working for those who will be hardest hit.

Tag: Jordan Lake