Coronavirus Like Smoke Inhalation

 

My notion of the day is that smoke inhalation is a decent metaphor for coronavirus.  This is because of the concepts of toxic dispersion and viral load.  In other words, it does not matter if one encounters a few viral bits, but rather if enough bits are present to overwhelm the normal filtering defenses of the body.

Think of smoke outside.  You hardly notice smoke from a campfire unless you are sitting right on top of it for a while.  Even being near a forest fire hardly matters, although the air quality declines.  One rarely hears of a person dying from smoke inhalation while they are in a field.

Inside, it is a different story.  Smoke is trapped depending on ventilation and size of the room, and quickly becomes lethal.  A bandana or towel (mask) may help for a while, but eventually it is useless and only the rescue equipment worn by first responders is effective.

Think of infected people as campfires, some very smoky, some less so.  The rest of us go about with or without bandanas, near them or further away, rarely affected by smoke outside, but potentially stricken by being near them for a while in close quarters, somewhat like death from carbon monoxide poisoning.  These people may put blankets over their own fires, but this is only partially effective.

And finally, to stretch the metaphor perhaps a bit too much, think of age as height.  Those breathing air higher up in a room will be more affected than those (like children) near the floor.  And, of course, a lot depends on the state of your lungs.

On A Beach

Kayaks and paddleboards have multiplied quickly over the last decade.

• Heat wave has temperature in lingering humid nineties; with many others I sit on the local bay beach, dipping in every few minutes as I overheat while enjoying the scenery.  Children and grandparents and couples, and teenagers, and parents, and solitary old people mill around, splash, or sleep.  If a few of them were digging clams, I could almost believe myself back in the social environment of the late Pleistocene, on summer shores before bathing suits were necessary or invented.
• This is a social scene.  An unarmed lifeguard provides security enough.  Everyone is enjoying themselves, their group, nature.  Nobody is staking out private property, everyone is pretty happy.  A few loud screams and laughs from young kids, perhaps a voice too loud here and there.  But all is calm and seems to show people well-adjusted and content just to be alive, not at all the ferocious beasts of Darwinian struggle, nor the mobs of dystopian fantasies. 

Armed with only moral authority, Lifeguards easily maintain common courtesy

• One of the inherent problems of “social science” is on full display.  None of these individuals is a “typical person.”  The two year old is different than the 8 year old.  That old woman has different outlooks than the braying fat young man.  Some are smiling at children’s antics, others merely annoyed.  Even those exactly in the same age group _ like the various toddlers in their puddle jumpers _ are doing very different things _ some scream, some splash, some cry, some just build sand castles.  To say they are all “equal” is a stretch, to claim each can be defined in the manner of a chemical element is insane.  The full complexity of human existence and its meaning is out in the open, on sunny sand.

In this pandemic summer, “clumping” of subgroups is more common than usual.

• Oh, you exclaim, but this is not typical.  These people are on vacation from “real life,” the true daily grind.  They are sated with food, content with existence, mindlessly escaping (temporarily) from worries.  When they leave, they will be totally different.  They will never have enough food, they will never be content, they will always worry.  They will struggle endlessly against each other for their never-achieved place in the world.  Why, even as you watch them now, some get bored, some leave, some even begin to annoy others.  This shows our basic restlessness.  We quickly revert to prowling predators.
• Hot overhead sun symbolizes stability, ceaseless waves breaking on shells signal ongoing patterns, and just maybe the way these individuals and groups interact in this setting is more appropriate for science and social engineering studies than what crazed teenagers do on the battlefield.  Humans are a social species, and they conquered the world not as individuals, but as tribes.  The most successful tribes took over others not as single warriors, however fierce, but as organized bureaucrats with an elite skimming production from complacent masses.

Except for marks of tides, this bay shore resembles a lakeside resort.

• Imagine, then, that we have not a glimpse of utopia, but rather of our ancestral heritage, when the world gave us all we needed to live without too much work.  Like those ancient South Sea Islanders of whom we read, before they were corrupted by the modern world.  Work?  No, almost everything, even the daily fishing routine, becomes a kind of non-hassled play.  Can’t machines somehow make our world like that all the time?
• My utopian fantasies fade as a cloud covers the sun.  Letting thoughts wander far from the daily grind has always been useful.  We remember Archimedes running naked down the street shouting “Eureka!” or Darwin slowly cogitating on strolls through the woods.  People lately have wanted politicians to “do more” and keep their noses to the grindstone.  Others scream everybody should get back to work. Just maybe that is exactly the wrong methodology to figure out a better way to control and appreciate this world.

Ode on a Plastic Urn

Serves its purpose nicely, but will never be in a museum.

• As my wife carefully tends patio pots filled with treasured annuals, I am reminded of the poem Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819) by John Keats.  In the course of a relatively long meditation about the decorations on an ancient vase, he provides the famous lines:

… Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

  Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

…  'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'—that is all

    Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

• Over the course of a long life, I have discovered that my idea of truth constantly changes.  I resist the word “evolves” because that seems to imply the idea of progress or at least increased complexity.  I find that sometimes I agree with philosophic or religious points of various types, and later I do not, and then I may change my mind again.  Beauty is a fine concept, but exactly how would it ever relate to Truth?  When truth is, for example, being swamped at sea in a hurricane or attacked by a grizzly bear, it would be had to appreciate the beauty of the situation.  And I have heard many melodies much finer than any I could imagine on my own. 

Patio arranged with almost Mediterranean sensibility.

• Part of the charm of this poem, of course, is its focus on a rare ancient product of Classical Greece, an admired culture.   Youths, surrounded by flowery fields, chase each other without a care in the world playing flutes.  Captured in artistically painted ceramic, they will never know pain nor grow old nor have to work for a living.  Utopia in a nutshell.
• Such esoteric fancies would probably not arise from plastic containers in the back yard.  As it turns out, none of ours are painted with delicate thoughts, but even if they were, they would be disregarded as common, trashy products of mass production.  No plastic urn will survive millennia.  Besides, I suspect that Grecian urns were pretty common in Greece at the time.  It is only the ravages of centuries that have made them rare and thus worthy of contemplation.
• I do happen to agree (at the moment) that life is beautiful.  At least for me, right now.  But I also am aware that there is a lot of ugliness around, and a lot of “just so” that is hardly worthy of assigning some aesthetic judgement.  Truth, on the other hand, turns out to be complicated, fractal, and contradictory.  I can always manipulate my judgement to appreciate beauty, but no matter how carefully examined, truth remains elusive and almost never fully welcome.

Is this beautiful?  Depends, like all aesthetics, on who you ask.

• Beauty is quite enough, sometimes.  Flowers provoke reflections on nature and time and meaning, as well as being simply marvelous in themselves.  Colors are magic, patterns are enchanting, bees hum harmonies of ecology.  Blossoms constantly fade as others promise bloom.  Once in a while perfume lingers in sultry wisps.  Birds chirp anthropomorphic happiness, squirrels playfully dash everywhere.
• Joan has provided the human touch, selecting and arranging perennials, pots, hanging baskets, and plastic urns to display what she considers the most perfect arrangement.  She shapes high and low, red and blue and orange, small leaves and large, other infinitely complex internal judgements of aesthetics, until she considers it as right as can be.  Or at least as right as it can be on our budget.  I simply sit and marvel, and pretend the plastic is ceramic, the molded decorations done by some master craftsman, and even project a ghostly image of a goatherd and his sweetheart racing through verdant meadows.

• 

  A nice niche to provoke minor thoughts, all I ask in summer.

• No Keats, I, but revised:

… Heard melodies are sweet, all those unheard

  Are nothing; whatever plays, I listen;

…  'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'—that is one

    Of many lovely thoughts, each contradicts the last

Thunderstorm

Storm clouds over stores, actual weather and metaphor combined.

• Formulating complaints is a specialty of elders.  Sometimes we claim the past was better, sometimes we lament  things did not turn out as we wished, but mostly we are certain things now are never as they should be.  Weatherwise, not long ago it was too cold, then too dry _ now it is much too hot, and a deluge arrives way too often.  July is often a month of thunderstorms.
• Frequency and severity of storms does seem to be increasing, a feature of climate change.  As oceans warm and wind patterns shift, scientists predict extreme events much more likely.  Long dry spells may be followed by huge water events.  Common localized storms will increase in intensity as heat speeds up gusts of wind and delivers more moisture from saturated atmosphere.   Trees that have stood for hundreds of years are toppling everywhere.   Computerized weather prediction models seem to be failing drastically.

Lovely lilies survive downpours, but are will be killed by tiny red invasive beetles.

• People hardly care.  We are no longer farmers.  We are no longer barbarians paying attention to the gods and spirits of nature.  If it floods, we stay home.  If it is hot, we turn on the air conditioning.  If one crop fails in the Midwest, we import food from somewhere else.  We think we are civilized, technologically secure, safe from harm.  Science will save us, even as badly applied science causes most of the troubles.  We’ve banished the gods, eliminated the spirits, and we say we rely on cold logic and facts.  But, of course, we ignore facts when we do not like them, and logic is easily twisted any which way by clever argument.

Dark purpling skies in the northwest herald approaching lightning and thunder.

• This year, powerful thunderstorms seem to underline the equivalent social unrest.  Distant rumbles and flickering flashes on the horizon warn that danger approaches.  Media warns of problems far away, but far away is growing closer all the time.  “Those people” are becoming “these people” and eventually ourselves.  A few folks remain oblivious sitting on the beach until the last minute, walking under threatening clouds, ignoring all on the chance that it will miss this area.  And, anyway, they know there is little they can do to affect whatever outcome occurs.
• There is also a social feeling in the air, not unlike the ionization one can sense when lightning is immanent.  Hair stands on end as electrical opposites charge.  Social polarization is evident on all sides, on all politics, in every conversation.  People shout and grumble and condense internal gripes.  Everyone is unhappy, and everyone senses that something big, potentially catastrophic, is about to happen.
• Sometimes, as huge thunderheads draw near, it seems I live in the twilight of the gods.  Soon this world with all its problems and glories will be washed away into myth.  Lightning will crack, thunder will boom, rain will cascade, wind will howl, trees will split and fall, roads will wash away, crops will be flattened, homes will be destroyed.  Afterwards there may be a new landscape, even with a rainbow, but it will never quite be the same.

Before and after the rain passes, beauty remains transcendent.

• Then again, I recognize an old man’s pessimism.  Most storms do no such damage, nature recovers from even major disasters like earthquakes and volcanos, people are well insulated and we believe we can overcome anything. 
• So, the complaint for the day, as once again humidity suffocates each breath as heat blooms in blasting sunlight.  Surely there will be more storms this afternoon.  Just as surely, tomorrow will dawn with birds and vibrant colors, clouds or not.  Anything else would lead to annoying boredom.

Daylilies

One day open per bud, thick clusters of sword-leaves, almost a wildflower.

• Daylilies remind me of that Biblical phrase: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.”  Those hardy flowers seem to effortlessly take over spaces which other plants ignore.  A shimmering patch can choke out surrounding weeds and seem almost a beautiful mirage on a barren hillside.  Yet the darker side is that each bloom, as the name declares, is on display for only 24 hours before it shrivels and gives way to another.
• For years, hedonists have seized on that saying to explain why work is not necessary.  Let life flow, and there will be enough for everyone.  Of course, this flies in the face of daily evidence _ sitting around like a dumb plant does not create a happy human.  We have wants and needs and even satisfactions from accomplishing things.  Work is a valuable part of social humanity.

 Less hardy varieties show differing looks.

• Industrialization arrived with memes of Spenserian Darwinism.  Nature red in tooth and claw, life brutal nasty and short.  An early hardworking bird gets the worm, the rest starve.  Evolution constantly drives out the weak and badly-fitted, hardworking folks are just like top predators.  Most must be sacrificed so that the few can lead the species forward into some imagined wonderful future.  And, by selfish extension, the wealthy and powerful can rest happily assured that they are the most fit, the smartest laborers, and the spearhead of nature’s ascent.
• Daylilies, like everything alive, are an endpoint of evolutionary “struggle.”  I suppose the species got tough as the weak shriveled.  Yet, as the example of the dinosaurs prove, some survival is dumb luck.  Some of the dumb luck enjoyed by daylilies (and many invasive species) is the massive ecological engineering done by people, including planting them.  And although flowers and trees are (we are assured) always engaged in a competition for scarce resources, day by day and hour by hour the life of a giant oak or a daylily patch hardly seems as terrifying or exhausting as Hobbesian  theory predicts.  Maybe our own jobs should reflect that observation.

Brilliant sparks out of a dark background always cause me to smile

• Which brings me to the evangelistic American religion of work.  Social Darwinists neatly summarize that as society becomes perfect, capitalism will assure that the worthy become wealthy, the poor deserve their poverty, action leads to improvement, and, in short, a working job is the stigmata of our revealed holiness.  When people refuse to work, society crumbles.  When people fail to recognize the legitimacy of wealth as held by the current elite, civilization will collapse.  No medieval kings nor Assyrian priests ever expressed basic conservatism better.
• I did what I consider my share of socially approved work, and was adequately rewarded.  I put in a lot of hard labor, but I also recognize I benefited from a big mixture of dumb luck, including my basic genetic mixture and birth situation.  Since I retired I continue to pursue projects and localized unpaid tasks, which give me personal reward.  I remain open-minded about the current American system.

Metaphors or anthropomorphic triggers _ but daylilies are mostly just beautiful fun.

• What is individual purpose, how is a life judged?  That is the proper function of any religion, including obsessive capitalism.  Sometimes, meditating on flowers, beauty seems enough.  Other times, watching an osprey snag a fish, beauty alone seems strained.  I have no answers, and in lovely summer I often even stop asking questions.  My mind becomes just another short-lived flower of the moment.

Frantic

A touch of July Fourth patriotism amidst the neighbor’s coleus.

• Madness reigns throughout nature as midsummer passes.  Everything not yet hatched is racing to do so.  Annuals are greedily sucking moisture from the ground, handicapped this year by a pretty nasty drought.  Trees are already in full foliage glory, building limbs and roots to survive for years to come.  A glance each cool morning, a stroll each sultry afternoon, a reflection each evening shows ongoing activity.  Once in a while huge storms shake the soul.
• As always, it is easy to run everything through our amazing anthropomorphic filters.  Sun and thunderstorm perform like gods to amaze us.  Weeds invade carefully cultivated flower beds.  Insects display resilient determination, butterflies float happily, bees work industriously.  Children and even aged adults invent entire mythologies which interpret and explain complex behaviors and interactions.

Bucolic suburban street scene seems mostly nature

• On the ground grass has already browned here and there.  Summer flowers bloom cascading crescendos, each niche attracting particular pollinators.  Fruits begin to ripen on berry bushes and apple trees.  Cultivated perennials like hibiscus and roses are everywhere, uncultivated invaders like ragweed and bamboo carpet vacant lots.  From one week to another views transform completely as if the world is one a giant stage set.
• Robins hop randomly for worms.  Swallows swoop ceaselessly over meadows.  Dragonflies are beginning to show, lightning bugs arrived a few weeks ago, bees wonder what all the fuss is about.  Dreaded mosquitoes and ticks are about to become real nuisances, and in deep woods or late evening on the beach gnats crazily seem to aim for our eyes and ears.  “No See Ums,” native Americans supposedly named them, very appropriately.
• Harbor waters have begun to turn murky with algae; seaweed arrives in increasing abundance with each high tide.  Horseshoe crabs are almost done annual rituals, but still ply shallow waters.  A few tiny schools of tiny fish flash about, safe from bigger fish so far, but easy prey for egrets and diving terns.  Fortunately, no stinging jelly fish pulsating almost invisibly.  And tremendous events underwater, where none of us can see.

 Backyard gardeners create niches resembling corners of Versailles

• People are part of nature too, of course, and desperately try to retain their own seasonal rituals.  But this year has been difficult, with pandemic fears and “social distancing” even in parks and beaches, more crowded than usual.  Everyone adapts more or less, but fondly remembered last year seems as distantly alien as the last days of the Roman Empire.  Yet children play in the water, run on the sand, yell in the back yard, stare at ladybugs or caterpillars on a leaf, flinch from a huge spider.  Much remains the same.  A big change is that adults, usually worn down from work and just wanting to relax a little by doing nothing while on vacation, are more bored and restless and search for something interesting to do.
• Lazy hazy crazy days are genuinely here.  Summer has begun, fireworks light the sky, and we regretfully begin the long slide to autumn.  Already nights descend sooner, foliage darkens, birds have finished nesting.  Over two months of glorious days to go, yet already a melancholic undertone becomes perceptible.

Lightning Bugs

Should take pictures of bugs, but midsummer flowers are so beautiful

• Arthropods _ including insects _ are the most diverse and most populous of the “higher” animal organisms.  They are all very strange creatures.  It is hard to imagine we share the same DNA foundation, and are cousins some multi-eons back.  Some _ like mosquitoes _ I could quite well do without.  Others _ like bees _ are helper friends and I worry about their survival.  And then there are multitudes _ like butterflies and lightning bugs _ that “simply” add beauty and wonder to our world.
• Late June of each year arrives with the surprising emergence of lightning bugs.  There is no sign of them until suddenly one evening, perhaps as I take out trash, there are sparks glittering here and there.

Blooms attract insects, and I am willing to not spray and accept any losses.

• Sometimes I need to look twice to be sure it is not an illusion.  And then more and more arrive as days go on.  Their patterns zoom about, and like an evening fog their luminescence lifts higher and higher as darkness prevails, beginning level with the grass, ending the evening up near the top of trees.  Where and how these mysterious creatures spend their days and the winter I have little idea, although once in a while one of them may do the equivalent of a flying stumble during daylight.
• They are a wonderful reminder of childhood.  Catching them is easy enough, three-year-olds master the simple upward scoop in no time.  Cruel-five-year-olds have learned to dismember them and paste glowing globs on arms and face.  Into early adolescence, some kids put them in jars for “study,” all too frequently and tragically forgotten.

 These lilies are being destroyed by an invasive orange beetle

• Pesticides, children, lawn mowers, birds, whatever _ how can they ever survive?  Yet they do, reminding us once again of the amazing persistence and regenerative capacities of nature.  A few bugs become multitudes in no time _ again witness those mosquitoes.  Some of them may even adapt quickly so that sprays no longer affect.  I continue to lament what seems a dearth of old reliables _ where are the tent caterpillars and gypsy moths and monarch butterflies of yesteryear? _  but some of the old ecology somehow continues.
• Perhaps I am too old to attach much meaning to this.  Each day is a miracle, with wonderful treasures still available if I open my senses.  Lamentation of what used to be, fear of what may arrive are less my concern than when I was younger and presumably had more power.  A thrill of discovery, of unexpectedly finding nature renewed, another summer marked, are enough.  Whatever may come, lightning bugs are here now.

Unnoticed millipedes and ground crawlers love cool shade under ferns.

• False optimism, you may shout.  Guilty as charged.  Some may approach each evening grimly aware that all is an illusion.  We are doomed to die when we are born.  There is much wrong with the world.  Even more seems to be getting worse by the hour.  And nobody listens to our lament.  But _ there goes another flash _ and my mercurial mind is once again turned to happy memories renewed.

Poisons

An all too common sign around our neighborhood.

• I’ve lived immersed in poisons.  Some of them were natural _ evolution handled most of those toxic effects.  We should note that nature itself presents many toxins, from elements like arsenic and uranium to toxins from venomous animals,  to deathly fungal mushrooms and hemlock plants . But the last century has been one long miasma of newly discovered and created chemicals, usually claimed to be harmless, but nobody knew for sure, and certainly nobody knows right away. 
• Those sublimely remembered good old days of the fifties were an immense waste dump.  Everyone figured of one pound of something useful (like DDT) worked well, five pounds would work even better.  Pesticides, herbicides, and unconstrained byproducts of processes old and new poured into the environment.  Fish and birds died en masse.  Babies developed strange maladies.  Adults were exposed to coal dust, asbestos, industrial cleaning agents.  Wearing gloves or masks (or even following directions) was for wimps.  Streams ran black, smog obscured cityscapes, any unused patch of ground could be used as a dump for old oil, paint, or unknown liquids. 

Nevertheless nature seems to do ok, even in this junk drainage behind a drugstore

• In these strange new days, it seems everyone is increasingly scared of chemicals.  Never mind that everything is built of chemicals _ any of them must be bad.  Why, just look how horrible their names sound!  So we have “organic” and “cleansing” and some fairly obscure witchcraft practices to deal with.  Meanwhile, my same neighbors who would never touch a regular old apple happily spray their yards and homes, accept combustion products from yard machines, and drink bottled “pure spring water” contaminated with plastic molecules.  I sometimes think masses of people have simply been “reeducated” from one set of ignorances to another.

Mea Culpa

• Enumerating poisons in our environment is useless, especially when we remember that just about everything is a poison in strength _ even water.  And it is hard to make a case that we must avoid their use entirely _ mosquitoes are annoying and a health risk, herbicides do feed the planet.  What bothers me is the unthinking contradictions I see around me.  People trying to cut out poisons in foods, for example, while dumping them around and in their homes.  To be honest, I think we do use somewhat less per capita than my parents’ generation, but on the other hand there are so many more capitas these days, which is a heavy load on the natural environment.

From here, the environment seems just dandy.

• Is there some reasonable solution?  Sure _ less people.  Well … yeah … but …  That’s the trouble, every solution has too many residual problems.  Conservation would be nice, environmental awareness is great _ but everyone seems to want that boat or to have the ability to fly to some vanishing bit of jungle elsewhere in the world.  I saw a crowd the other day staring and photographing a once-common big yellow butterfly as if it were a rare creature _ and today it is, perhaps to be gone in a year or so.
• A concentration of people into cities might be helpful.  Keeping the poisons we use constrained into small geographic areas would be the best outcome.  Farms as we know them may already be giving way to robotic workers and different ways of raising things like meat.  Meanwhile I’m enjoying my last few years admiring what remains, and trying to keep my own poison requirements as low as possible.

Fresh Eyes

Red maple leaf floating on branch, like me one of uncounted and unnoticed uniquely similar to all the others.

A simple leaf lies next to the keyboard.  Unlike most springtime foliage, it is a dark red, from a maple tree in our front yard.  There are five perfect toothed lobes, main vein down the center of each, lesser lines branching off.  It is small, still perfect, undamaged by insects.  It displays a miracle complete in itself.  It represents infinite miracles of my cosmos.  I usually ignore it, and almost everything else.

To combat complacency, I force myself to adjust my vision.  Seeing with “fresh eyes” requires a different kind of concentration _ immersion in sensation rather than logic.  Academic descriptions are not sufficient.  Ecstasy of the moment requires removal of blinders which I must normally use to ignore all except which is “important” or “necessary.”  When I open to detailed appreciation, I may be too blinded, stunned, and helpless to get out of the way of an oncoming truck.

Just another tree, just another day, just another practical miracle.

When counting one by one, anything over a hundred is practical infinity.  This leaf is one of an infinite number on a tree that has been in our yard at least fifty years, maybe more.  It was mature when we moved in, thirty years ago.  I confess I often notice it only when avoiding branches while mowing, or cutting back ivy underneath, or raking leaves in the fall.  Most mornings I try to pay respect _ the images of foliage change dramatically in early sun, late sun, moon, clouds, fog, rain, wind, snow and every other possible meteorological condition and combination of effects.  But usually, it is just another tree in another suburban yard.

At this level, it is well to avoid deeper meditations.  Yes, this single leaf implies our entire universe.  Yes, I can imagine billions of years of evolution, thousands of years of human history, my very life and meaning _ all if I pursue logical trails of why and how this leaf exists here and now.  But fresh eyes require a different perception of surface beauty,  uncomplicated by intelligence and knowledge.

Common ragweed in front of a common view of a regular old harbor.  Wow

Visual artists try to communicate that mystery.  Successful artists begin by experiencing the overwhelming majesty of some selected viewpoint.  They manage the difficult translation to some media that is itself mysterious and beautiful.  Full achievement of that goal is doomed, but the artist has also been rewarded with the ecstasy of creative involvement.

A rose is a rose is a rose.

Looking at art is exactly what we do to refresh our eyesight.  When I walk out of a museum, I often perceive the world anew, in different colors and combinations.  For a few moments, blinders are in my pocket.  I perceive colors in shadows, or forms in outline,  or abstractions of light.  Often I simply pay attention to what I have missed.

And another fine view

As an elder, I try to experience the world as if I were a child.  Amazement reigns.  A leaf, a tree, a butterfly can be enchantment.  In this fortunate state of mind, an often grumpy outlook has been redirected such that life seems gloriously new.  Our mind is always capable of casting illusions onto “reality,” fresh eyes help shape those filters into happiness. 

Fumes

Fossil-fueled boats pollute water and air; these have no economic purpose.

Modern civilization is fashioned of fossil fuels.  Coal and oil have enabled infrastructure, technology, and living standards for masses of people that were only dreamed of by tiny elites a few hundred years ago.  Realization that heavy use destroys the biosphere has hardly made a dent on emissions.  We enjoy our current conveniences and want to continue eating in the style to which we have become accustomed.  Complacent inertia strips mountainsides and pumps holes to spew carbon ubiquitously.

Almost infinite conflicting predictions concern changes ushered in by this pandemic.  I forlornly hope it becomes the proverbial “whap alongside the head” that knocks sense into society.  In particular, I wish our excessive use of combustion would slack off.  Recent health, economic, and social crises could help us to move on.  Imagine a world without internal combustion engines, few jet airplanes, many windmills and solar panels, insulated “green” homes and offices _ cleaner air each year.  And, yes, we could still work, eat, and be entertained.

 Roses bloom as much of life continues heedless of possible catastrophe.

Progression in that direction has been going on for some time.  Texas produces huge quantities of wind energy, homes are sheathed in solar panels, electric vehicles are mandated in places like China and Europe.  Various technologies proclaim breakthroughs week by week.  Younger generations had already rediscovered the joys of living in energy-efficient apartments in cities. The cost of “renewable” energy has been dropping dramatically.  But there seemed to be a very long slog ahead, simply because society was used to multiple vehicle households, high heating and cooling bills, work that demanded frequent travel, and all the other assumed requirements of life.   

We are as guilty as the next guy, appreciating our heat and air conditioning

Biology has a term called “punctuated equilibrium” which describes what may be happening.  Little changes keep creeping into an organism, until some dramatic environmental event makes a few of these changes so useful that its owner becomes dominant.  For example, if people begin to work a few days from home, there will be no need to own more than one car.  If trips are shorter and less frequent, small electric vehicles work just fine.  If solar panels lower energy bills at home and office they will multiply. 

All of such changes have cascading effects on industry.  Electric utility companies already notice a drop in power demand, but if homes really start to go off-line, the cost of maintaining an electric network of wires and transmission stations becomes exorbitant.  If fewer cars are used less often, the underfunded road network will wither and encourage rail bulk transport.  Work from home is likely for service industries, electronic connections finally leap to prominence over face to face business travel.  Many factories (filled with robotic labor) will relocate to places like deserts where solar power is cheap and frequently available.  The list is long and strange.  And once started, the progression is self-sustaining.  It becomes too expensive and annoying to fight trends _ just like the replacement of horse-drawn transportation in a decade or so. 

It would be foolish indeed to ever ignore beauty.

Although I hate yard crews because of noise, they are indicative of hopeful home trends  _  renting or sharing power equipment.   The same is true of using cleaning services.  Home delivery of goods is more power efficient than multiple individual vehicles making short trips.  Solar panels, efficient lighting, decent insulation and windows all cut down on energy use and save money.  These and other similar issues are all of a nature that becomes more asymptotically common _ fads which are good for the environment.  All of these have been given a giant boost by the pandemic lockdown.

Anyway, I am breathing clearer this year.  The air has rarely seemed so delicious.  Admittedly, in the last few weeks, traffic has returned and mowers and blowers resumed their roars.  Peace and quiet gone with the return of economic activity.  As everything gets back to “normal” I fear that all my hopes and dreams are only hopes and dreams after all.  We have learned nothing.

More boats stretch to the horizon, forces greater than I are involved.

What nature remains seems to have adapted anyway.  I realize that my little locality does not represent the world, and my personal observation is hardly universal.  Yet local extinctions seem to have occurred, not only in reptiles like snakes and turtles, but in all species not cohabiting with man (e.g. gulls, raccoons, chipmunks, pigeons, rats, crows, dogs, cockroaches, etc.)  Insects are too sparse.  Thousands of plant species are gone with the snows of yesteryear.  Perhaps nothing can stop our march to sterility.

For a few moments, however, let me pretend there is a silver lining somewhere.  That a tipping point has been reached towards something better.  That trends aligned against fumes will begin a virtuous cycle that eventually ends smog forever.  I realize it is probably no more likely than any other fantasy of being saved by the supernatural, but I am grateful for any improbable fleeting vision of good to which I can momentarily cling.

Crisp

Enchanted backlit greens float everywhere

• Springtime in New York encapsulates revived youth.   Rejuvenation from seemingly lifeless barren landscapes begins in February, like a helpless newborn, with thrusting bulbs, swelling buds, and other tantalizing promises.  March represents the tiny baby stage, where amazing changes happen rapidly, but there is as yet no recognizable speech nor much motor coordination.  April breaks out as a cute toddler full of promise, but quickly morphs into a petulant May adolescent who alternately excites or disappoints with cold, or rain, or lovely days, or bright blossoms.  Ah, but then comes June.  A brilliant young adult out to change the world.

Iris is an old-fashioned favorite, and this one an heirloom from Joan’s mom

• “Crisp” describes Huntington outdoors as June begins.  Foliage has not yet developed a patina of dirt, nor has it been ravaged by the stress of drought and depredations of insects.  Flowers bloom abundantly, tended by bees of various types.  Grass has a special emerald glow.  Everywhere there is a peculiarly clean odor of restlessness, often punctuated by clouds of scent from surprising vegetation. Waves of flowers have come and gone, always replaced by new ones.
• Air remains crystalline, untroubled by the later humid haze and smog of summer.  Especially this year, distant views stretch clearly in sharp focus even to the far Connecticut shoreline.  Morning fog clears to bright clarity.  Occasional showers wash tenderly.  I take a deep breath, trying to appreciate the fact that our atmosphere exists, and that I can still take advantage of its often ignored wonders.

Rhododendron has done extremely well this spring.

• Early June floral displays are perhaps the most inspiring of all.  Although the cherry blossoms are long gone, and memories of tulips almost ancient, flowering shrubs are everywhere.  Fading azalea blossoms provide a thick coat of brilliance.  Rhododendrons explode with purple, white, and red cannon balls.  Over it all floats delicate pink and white dogwood.  Roses parade as if summoned by bugle calls.  Although the grand drooping plumes of purple wisteria have dried away, day by day another midsummer flower such as wild white daisies bursts on the scene.    

Homage to Albrecht Durer, who painted “A great piece of turf” centuries ago.

• If spring seems a metaphor for hope, June is that hope realized.  What were merely dreams _ late evenings, swimming in salt water, lazy hazy times, vacation plans _ are available to our waking moments.  Yet it is not yet horribly hot nor humid, we do not need to seek shelter at midday, we can still take long pleasant walks without desperate rehydration.  And, mostly, all of this is still new.  Just like arriving at a carnival for the first time as a young child, nature is all flash and brilliance and thrilling mysteries.  We have had no time to become jaded, have not yet been bothered by mosquitoes, can relish each moment outdoors.
• Solstice approaches in less than a month, the brilliant rays glint off morning dewdrops coating flickering grass blades.  Strong angles sparkle on waves, a magic canvas for boats large and small swarming into Long Island Sound.  Evenings linger almost too long for those of us exhausted by taking advantage of earlier dawn and the temptations of long walks.  Oh, and of course the various ambitions and chores and exercises newly available _ planting flower beds, mowing lawns, touching up the house, trimming shrubs.  Sun comes up as it goes down _ huge, fiery red, reminding us that it is indeed our true god.

 Let this perfect clematis star symbolize my hope for the future.

• June is a great time, even in bad times.  I sometimes think June exactly defines why I love this environment all year, in spite of its problems and climate.  But I must stop typing and run outdoors to breathe deeply and experience immersion once again ….

Memorial

Flags of celebration and respect to past glories are the dominant theme

• Traditional Memorial Day is martial in nature, with marching bands and veterans parading down flag-festooned streets as crowds cheer.  Media incessantly reminds us to remember sacrifices of all the brave people who have defended our way of life.  Slogans such as “freedom is not free” resound through the air. 
• I respect the military in our important wars.  Those who fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II did not do so for pensions and fast track into police forces later.  They were not planning a career.  They volunteered _ or were forcibly inducted _ to risk their lives and health into enemy fire and constant tension and disease.  What they did actually changed the way we live now.  Some of our other wars _ Mexican, Spanish-American, Korean, Vietnamese, Gulf _ have been of significantly less consequence.  And our current volunteer army is not much like our troops who fought the Nazi’s and Japanese.

Gold Star Battalion Beach is dedicated to men from Huntington who fought in WWII.

• This year is different.  Parades are banned.  Tiny gatherings are allowed at cemeteries which hold the remains of heroes gone.  Perhaps a few of us rethink who our current heroes are or should be _ what occupations and sacrifices are now most important to our way of life.  I wonder moreover if this particular holiday might be remembered as the end of a bygone era from a not too distant, totally changed, future.  Economic and social traditions and bonds are being stretched to and possibly beyond the breaking point.
• Eras sneak up on you, with assumptions and an inertia that claims “this is how it is.”  And yet, history proves that eras can end, sometimes slowly, sometimes in a blink.  The American, French, Russian, Chinese revolutions took only a few years.  The Medieval, Renaissance, Industrial, and Computer took longer.  Today, of course, everything runs at warp speed, and possibly the next huge paradigm shifts in culture and civilization will do so as well.  Much can happen in just one year. 

Fog clouds our hopes and fears most densely in the best and worst of times.

• Our current era, however many decades or centuries it has lasted, has been one of scientific discovery,  globalization of nature and culture, and massive population growth, some of it accompanied by more goods available.  There has also been severe consolidation of wealth, fragmentation of cultural goals into various fierce ideologies, and massive degradation of the environment.  Reporting of such changes has been practically instantaneous.  Above all, it has been an era dominated by the myth of American exceptionalism and Western capitalistic ideology.  Perhaps this is the moment when the world suddenly realizes, once more, that the emperor has no clothes.

 Goods and services have overwhelmed what were once productively silent wetlands.

• No matter what historians claim about historic inevitability, nobody in the middle of a revolution can predict its outcome and effects.  That has not stopped modern prognosticators who claim work as we have known it will mutate and vanish, for example.  Visionaries conjure vast economic and social upheavals, some apocalyptic.  I (optimistically) think the only “safe” option here is to plan on the familiar world never quite returning, and possibly being shockingly unrecognizable, in less than five years.

As traditional as it gets, I hope life remains stable for a while longer.

• After that, those who have time and energy to remember will no doubt gather at the future equivalent of a Memorial Day.  Toasts will be raised, the world as it once was nostalgically recalled, and (with luck) some kind of celebration held to cheer what came after.