On the dividends of a late read

I read a lot, eagerly, omnivorously, and in doing so sometimes overreach, ordering books I can’t possibly get to in the short term; hence they accumulate in heaps on my office floor, as my shelves are already squeezed. I confess my gluttony, yet without repentance. Liking books isn’t a bad vice, I think, and I’ll hardly bankrupt our family budget in doing so.

Sometimes, however, I’ll guiltily raid one of my piles, snatching a book that’s lain there goodness knows how long, with the end result that it’s somewhat dated in what it has to say. Take, for instance, my latest snatch, Bill Bryson’s I’m a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away. Well, here’s a book that came out in 1999, or 12-years ago, and I’m reading it just now. I deserve what I get.

But sometimes there are dividends in doing a late read, as time’s passage can afford a new perspective. For example, Bryson, in a chapter called, “The Numbers Game,” has this paragraph, mind you, written pre-1999:

No matter where you turn with regard to America and its economy you are going to bump into figures that are so large as to be beyond meaningful comprehension. Consider just a few figures culled at random from this week’s papers. California has an economy worth $850 billion. The annual gross domestic product of the United States is $6.8 trillion. The federal budget is $12.6 trillion, the federal deficit near $200 billion (p. 51).

Well, let’s see what time’s warp has done to those stats.

Today, the worth of California’s economy has swelled to $2 trillion.

The USA annual gross domestic product (GDP) is now over $15 trillion.

The approved federal budget for 2011 is currently at $3,360 trillion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_States_federal_budget#Total_spending
Wikipedia

As I write, the federal deficit exceeds $15 trillion. http://www.federalbudget.com/FederalBudget. The figures increase every second. Remember, it was just $200 billion when Bryson wrote his book 12-years earlier!

I don’t know about you, but I find this sobering, if not downright scary. We’ve gone from a budget mess to the very precipice. Ironically, the bailouts and stimuli to the economy, rather than helping us, are contributing to our economic malaise, turning the United States into a full scale deficit crisis. Somewhere, we’ve got to stop the fiscal hemorrhaging. Ok, my figures update Bryson’s 12-years ago. What’s going to happen over the next ten years? I don’t think any of us want to go there!

For a sense of just how much money is dripping away into interest payments on accumulated debt exceeding $15 trillion we can’t do better than Bryson’s fantasy analogy of earning one buck for each dollar you could initial to determine how long it would take you to earn just a trillion dollars:

If you initialed one dollar per second, you would make $1000 every seventeen minutes. After 12 days of nonstop effort you would acquire your first $1 million. Thus, it would take you 120 days to accumulate $10 million and 1,200 days–something over three years–to reach $100 million. After 31.7 years, you would be as wealthy as Bill Gates. But not until after 31,709.8 years would you count your trillionth dollar (and even then you would be less than one-fourth of the way through the pile of money representing America’s national debt). That is what $1 trillion is (p. 52).

As I’ve said, sometimes it’s serendipity to read a book later rather than sooner. Unfortunately, not many in the right places seem to be reading–or listening–at all. I think of other problems experiencing the “kick-the-can-down the road” syndrome,” for example, accelerating climate change, a nuclear Iran, a world with insufficient water, population overload.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Mr. President, teach us to believe again

A century ago, or in 1911, Teddy Roosevelt traveled to Osawatomie, Kansas, delivering a message of progressive populism that stirred a nation and has become known as the “New Nationalism” speech. In that speech he championed a new America founded upon genuine democracy and social justice: an 8-hour work day; minimum wage guarantee; insurance for the elderly, unemployed, and disabled; political reform; and a progressive income tax. Teddy just happened to be a Republican.

Yesterday, President Obama gave the greatest speech in his political career–not only with his inveterate eloquence, but more importantly, in his compassion for our millions in economic stress, largely through no fault of their own, victims of an oligarchy of the wealthy, the conspiracy of corporate and banking interests, the callousness and cowardice of our political leadership. I’ve heard or read many great speeches over a lifetime. This one, delivered in obscure Osawatomie, Kansas, where Teddy Roosevelt spoke long before, may herald a new Obama in a likely second term, no longer under partisan pressure, enabled and willing to implement the dream he articulated so ably in 2008, only to retreat repeatedly from that vision of peace, prosperity, and social equality. We would like to believe. Teach us how. (See my end comments.)

Excerpt:

Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there’s been a certain crowd in Washington for the last few decades who respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune.  “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us.  If only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes – especially for the wealthy – our economy will grow stronger.  Sure, there will be winners and losers.  But if the winners do really well, jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everyone else.  And even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, they argue, that’s the price of liberty.

It’s a simple theory – one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government.  It fits well on a bumper sticker.  Here’s the problem:  It doesn’t work.  It’s never worked.  It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression.  It’s not what led to the incredible post-war boom of the 50s and 60s.  And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. 

Remember that in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history, and what did they get us?  The slowest job growth in half a century.  Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class – things like education and infrastructure; science and technology; Medicare and Social Security. 

Remember that in those years, thanks to some of the same folks who are running Congress now, we had weak regulation and little oversight, and what did that get us? Insurance companies that jacked up people’s premiums with impunity, and denied care to the patients who were sick.  Mortgage lenders that tricked families into buying homes they couldn’t afford.  A financial sector where irresponsibility and lack of basic oversight nearly destroyed our entire economy. 
We simply cannot return to this brand of your-on-your-own economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country.  We know that it doesn’t result in a strong economy.  It results in an economy that invests too little in its people and its future.  It doesn’t result in a prosperity that trickles down.  It results in a prosperity that’s enjoyed by fewer and fewer of our citizens.  

Look at the statistics.  In the last few decades, the average income of the top one percent has gone up by more than 250%, to $1.2 million per year.  For the top one hundredth of one percent, the average income is now $27 million per year.  The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her workers now earns 110 times more.  And yet, over the last decade, the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about six percent.

This kind of inequality – a level we haven’t seen since the Great Depression – hurts us all.  When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, it drags down the entire economy, from top to bottom.  America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity – that’s why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars they made.  It’s also why a recent study showed that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run.

Inequality also distorts our democracy.  It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder.  And it leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them – that our elected representatives aren’t looking out for the interests of most Americans. 

More fundamentally, this kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise at the very heart of America:  that this is the place where you can make it if you try.  We tell people that in this country, even if you’re born with nothing, hard work can get you into the middle class; and that your children will have the chance to do even better than you.  That’s why immigrants from around the world flocked to our shores. 

And yet, over the last few decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk.  A few years after World War II, a child who was born into poverty had a slightly better than 50-50 chance of becoming middle class as an adult.  By 1980, that chance fell to around 40%.  And if the trend of rising inequality over the last few decades continues, it’s estimated that a child born today will only have a 1 in 3 chance of making it to the middle class. 

It’s heartbreaking enough that there are millions of working families in this country who are now forced to take their children to food banks for a decent meal.  But the idea that those children might not have a chance to climb out of that situation and back into the middle class, no matter how hard they work?  That’s inexcusable.  It’s wrong.  It flies in the face of everything we stand for.

Postscript:

Mr. President,

We would like to believe you, but works are more convincing than words. The Occupy Wall Street movement with its many unemployed, debt-ridden students, disenfranchised homeowners, disillusioned returning veterans is just as much about the failure of government as it is about the egregious wrongs of an unfair distribution of wealth. We’re tired of politicians and their manipulations,their evasions and opportunism.

Mr. President, teach us how to believe again.

Sincerely,

The American people

How banks war on you and me

According to Wikipedia, “Bank robbery is the crime of stealing from a bank during opening hours.” Let me try a new definition: “Robbery is theft from the people during opening and closing hours.” Yes, banks are quite capable of committing crimes, and often do, as bullies motivated by greed. Banks, in case you missed it, were the primary culprits in fomenting our economic downturn in 2008, the worst America has faced since the Great Depression and likely to continue for several years. In the process, they’ve been able to pull off nearly a trillion dollars in bail out money to cover their profligate scheming and spending, passing their debts on to the citizenry; another two trillion has been spent in trying to re-right the economy. What is more, along with behemoth corporations, banks are kingpins in a concerted effort to dismantle government regulation, giving them a freer hand in accumulating profit.

The banking sector is grateful for our help, screwing us at every turn in efforts to extract still more from the masses they’ve victimized, moving with alacrity in foreclosing on money that shouldn’t have been loaned, often for houses no longer worth their original loan amounts, and doing so without properly reviewing delinquent mortgages (i.e., robo signings). With regard to bank issued credit cards, despite government efforts to safeguard consumers from excessive interest escalation, the banks have found other ways to accumulate capital, imposing charges, for example, on using tellers rather than ATMs and fees on checking accounts below a designated amount. Take Bank of America, for example. It had originally opted to charge debit card users $5 monthly. Public outrage, however, curtailed its implementation. Look for the banks to move more quietly to introduce other charges. You name it, they’ve got a gimmick, proving it’s easier to catch a greased pig than a banker in his Mercedes.

Although our government rightly views consumer spending as a key catalyst to stimulating the economy, banks have made it difficult for many to borrow money, especially for mortgage loans, requiring up to 20% down payment. Obviously, this leaves out many young people and middle class wage earners. Home construction, along with the auto and aircraft industry, is a key component of the American economy. Currently, banks are sitting on a mound of money while looking for better investment returns elsewhere. You and I don’t figure into the equation.

Make no mistake about it: both Wall Street and the banks created the bubbles that got us here, resulting in millions without work and depleted federal and state coffers. It’s gotten so bad that many cash-strapped states are now resorting to selling off their infrastructure such as highways to raise revenue and avoid upkeep outlays. Ultimately this represents an impetus yet again in the dismantling of government, transferring the people’s assets to the private domain. It’s among a speculator’s greatest dreams, and don’t think for a moment that Wall Street and the banks don’t have their eyes on it.

Bank manipulation, or fraud, isn’t anything new. Take for instance, the banking scandals of the 1980s involving many savings and loan institutions. Insiders would falsify the books, making a failing bank appear healthy. Ultimately, the failing bank burdened the federal treasury with making good on consumer deposits up to $100,000 under USFDC guarantees. That means you and I paid the bill for their malfeasance. Hey! Sounds a lot like those recent bailouts. It continues to be difficult, however, for the courts to prosecute since the statutes require proof of intent to deceive.

Fortunately, we have a few watchdogs looking out for our interests, though scarcely enough, given the systemic problem of banking kleptomaniacs. Last week, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley sued five of the nation’s largest banks, alleging illegal foreclosures and deceptive mortgage servicing.

This suit seeks accountability against the banks for both cutting corners and also rushing to foreclose on homeowners without following the rule of law. There is no question that the deceptive and unlawful behavior by Wall Street and the large banks played a central role in causing this economic crisis. We believe they are not too big to have to obey the law.

The suit names Well Fargo, Bank of America, J. P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and GMAC.

The Tea Party has it all wrong. We don’t need less government. We need more.

Procrastination: taking the thief captive

Do you procrastinate a lot? Do you live in the moment, caving in to impulses? I know I do, even though people think I’m productive. If I do accomplish anything, it’s generally out of remorse for having wasted yet another day getting very little done. Next thing I know, the days become weeks; weeks, months; then years. Getting something done at last takes on the note of self-flagellation. I must be punished.

It shouldn’t be this way for me or you. I honestly don’t believe it’s in our genes, which should come as good news, since it means we can do something about it.

The why of it:

Its formula is very simple. We don’t find hard work pleasurable, especially when it prevents us from engaging in socializing with friends, indulging in TV, web-surfing, or the social networks. Besides, we work all day. When we get home, other duties await us. Hey, give me a break!

Now this isn’t all bad. If we practice a structured procrastination that allows us to reward ourselves along the way, we actually might feel up to doing the laborious, but meaningful. The problem ensues when diversion turns into all play and no work. Johnny doesn’t finish his broccoli by first eating dessert.

Coping strategies

Say no

This is very hard. Behaviorists, in my mind the most insightful in the psychological sciences, have empirically demonstrated our relationship with other animals in being conditioned by stimuli-response mechanism. Behavior gets reinforced by the pleasurable and discouraged, even extinguished, by the unpleasurable.

Procrastination is a matter of being unable to control our urges. We confuse our desires with our needs. Fortunately, we can do exercises that strengthen our will power and, in the long run, foster our happiness. Try saying no to that extra portion or that invite out. Work on saying no to that impulse urge to buy those Bose noise cancelling headphones.

You can help yourself say no to interruptions by setting up time-space parameters. Set up a scheduled time slot, preferably in the early morning while your energy level is still high and before you do anything else. Work in a specific setting, conducive to focus, i.e., away from family, friends, loud noise, etc.

Say no to interruptions of any kind apart from emergencies. This is your time. Your space. Your closet from the world. Be ruthless.

Related to achieving impulse control, or delay of gratification, is improving your ability to focus. It’s why I’m high on yoga, meditation, or games of skill such as chess, sudoku, or scrabble. Besides, they stretch our brains as well. (See my previous post.)

The great pioneer in self-control studies was Walter Mischel of Columbia University and, later, Stanford. Ultimately he came up with the marshmallow test in which school children were offered a choice between an immediate treat or two treats if they could just wait a while. Those able to delay gratification seldom cheated, were more intelligent, more socially responsible, and more ambitious and likely to succeed. Being able to say no says something about you. It isn’t innate. It’s acquired. (For a fascinating look at Mischel’s work, see David Akst, We Have Met he enemy: Self Control in an age of Excess, Ch.8 (2011).

Set up daily tasks

I recommend shooting for one task per session, or daily. Take writing, for example. For longer pieces, I like to go for quantity, say five pages or a chapter. If learning a language, a minimum of 30 minutes or say 15 minutes for review, 15 minutes for new material, 15 minutes for listening practice. If it’s a household or outdoors project, spread it out, maybe into several days with specific goals established for each day. The idea is to take things in steps. Rome wasn’t built in a day, as the aphorism has it. I’ve always liked the Chinese way of putting it even better: “The longest journey begins with the first step.”

Be clutter free

You probably won’t see this mentioned very often when it comes to overcoming procrastination, but high on my list is a conducive work space. I just know I’m more motivated if I have a clean desk, organized shelves, good lighting, a comfortable chair. If nothing else, a clean space gives me a sense I’m in control. Hey, I can actually find things, whether in the office or shed. Your space should make you glad to be there.

Reward yourself

Try to make it fun. Take a break, maybe every 30 or 60 minutes. Pour another cup of coffee, or get into those freshly baked cookies. Don’t linger. 10 minutes and you should be back at it. Reward yourself for every step accomplished, not just at the end result. And when you do achieve the end result, hey, go for the Bose headphones!

Create time

How often have you said to yourself, fine and good, but I just don’t have the time? That’s nonsense. It’s been estimated that a commuter on a train or subway, just reading 15 minutes a day, could read several hundred books over a three year period or through a set of encyclopedias. I average a book nearly every 10 days simply by reading while waiting for a TV program or just to relax in bed before falling asleep. At the doctor’s office, I always have a book or smart phone along for e-books. You get the idea!

In college, I was an English major, specializing in Victorian literature. In the flow of things, I came across Anthony Trollope, one of the era’s most talented and prolific novelists. Trollope got some of his contemporaries mad. He was a postal inspector riding frequently on trains. He’d write for 20 minutes or so, then put the pen and paper away. Ultimately he wrote 47 novels, many of them still esteemed, and dozens of short stories.

Settle for imperfection

Chances are you won’t get it right the first time. Be easy on yourself. It isn’t where you begin, but how you end up.

Vary your routine

Doing things the same way day after day leads to staleness and diminished interest. Try shaking up your routine by substituting new tasks, new approaches, different rewards, etc.

Start right now

Resolutions are only as good as their implementation. Ben Franklin in his inimical wisdom, put it best: “You may delay, but time wiil not, and lost time is never found again.”

Brain-tickling: n- back tasking

I’ve just returned from North Carolina, visiting my wife’s father in a nursing home. He turns 92 this Christmas. Right now, he’s recovering from a series of falls, the last one resulting in a broken ankle and hence nursing facility. Daddy is lucky in some respects, for the facility strikes me as well run, with sensitive staff (blessed with a sense of humor), decent meals even if institutional, and clean premises.

Yet in all of this, I couldn’t help taking in the white-haired residents, all of them in wheelchairs. Some seemed fixed, no movement throughout the day, heads bent, silent. One dear lady, presumably a stroke victim, courageous, tried to greet strangers, but she might well have spoken another language. In place of words, cheerily pitched sounds, but murmurings for all of that. In nearly a day at the place, I saw few visitors. If “loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every person,” as writer Thomas Wolfe held, then its apex must be old age.

And yet there are things we can do to ease our journey into our senior years. For some time, I’ve been exercising daily, and rigorously, on our elliptical machine. Now I’ve added strength exercises three times a week, using weights to enhance muscle growth. After recently taking a bone scan test, I was delighted to learn I hadn’t lost any height, an occurrence as high as 80% in seniors.

I keep up with testing in general, whether annual blood checks or colonoscopies every three years, given my family’s cancer history. I get a flu shot every fall.

I haven’t touched meat in 15-years. I learned just the other day that only 15% of vegetarians suffer heart attacks. That’s good enough for me.

So much of preserving good health lies in adopting a preventative regimen, as Medicare and health insurers now increasingly recognize and encourage.

But there’s an aspect of maintaining good health that needs more attention. Consider that half of those past 85 suffer dementia. Now that’s huge! Think of the cost and the suffering, the diminishment in human dignity. We need to exercise our minds as well as our bodies.

I subscribe to Massachusetts General Hospital’s Mind, Mood & Memory. In its recent issue, the newsletter notes the success of those who exercise their brains, hence slowing down Alzheimer’s, or even preventing it. Cross word puzzles, Sudoku games, learning a language, etc., all help–and a lot. This hits my palette, for I’ve generally favored games of mental skill like chess over games of chance.

New research indicates that the key to warding off dementia lies in boosting working memory. But how best to do this?

Turns out there’s a brain exercise called n-back that not only stimulates working memory (the kind used in reasoning and solving problems), but increases IQ. Hey, it actually makes you smarter!

Well, this got me going on my own research. I even bought the iPad application N-Back Suite. It’s as gorgeous as it’s friendly to users, allowing for stretching the mind through sensory stimuli (letters, images, sounds, colors, etc.).

With n-back tasking the idea is to remember items appearing in sequences. You can adjust your speed and there are ten levels of difficulty. Most of us will be lucky to get to level 3. It’s challenging.

It’s been tried with children and young adults, too. After 30 days of exercising for 20 minutes, results showed significant gains in fluid intelligence, i.e., the ability to recognize unfamiliar patterns and solve problems. IQ scores averaged 5 point gains. These results lasted 3 months, even though the participants were no longer doing the n-tasks. MGH neuropychologist Mimi Castelo calls the results “impressive.”

If all of this interests you, here are some web sites that offer sample n-back exercises. But don’t forget the iPad application I mentioned earlier.

http://dual-inback.com/nback.html

htpp://brainworkship.sourceforge.net

Good luck!

Holding the President’s feet to the fire

If you go to the Obama campaign site Obama, you’ll read its boast of the EPA initiating restrictions on mercury and other pollutants from coal and oil fired power plants during the President’s tenure.

Just recently, the Obama administration announced its reaching agreement with the nation’s auto manufacturers to increase vehicle fuel efficiency to 54.5 mpg by 2025,

Perhaps the best news for environmentalists is the State Department’s recent announcement that it would delay construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to review its previously approved routing, ultimately deciding its verdict after the 2012 elections.

These seeming environmental breakthroughs, while making good copy, masquerade sobering truths.

Take the Keystone delay, for example. While this change from approval to delay has apparently rekindled environmentalist enthusiasm for Obama, Greens should be forewarned it probably reflects politics rather than sincere commitment.

You may remember that just last August hundreds of protestors against the pipeline, which would transport carbon-heavy tar sands from Canada to the Gulf, were arrested outside the White House, leading many environmentalists to think seriously about not supporting the President’s reelection.

This caution has apparently been tossed to the winds by the Keystone delay. I think this is a mistake. (See Rekindle.) Obama is simply just another politician governed by pragmatics, hence quite willing to pander rather than stick to principle in order to keep power. The Keystone Project delay is about re-routing only, not abnegation, and environmentalists are foolish not to note the difference as well as its ominous time-line.

Underscoring my suspicion is Obama’s earlier September decision to shelve new EPA proposals on smog. The President justified his decision on the basis of not wanting to jeopardize the economy by imposing new pressures on industry and business. Republican House speaker Boehner had argued that one of the EPA’s proposals would have cost $90b. Never mind, however, the consequences for those millions with respiratory problems. Clean Air Watch called Obama’s turnaround “political cowardice.” I agree.

As for the original Keystone plan that routed the pipeline incredulously through the sensitive Oragulla Aquifer, it was the Obama administration that signed on.

Won’t anything ever change in Washington? If we hold our ground and not conflate rhetoric with meaningful change, it will.

The bottom line is that we must hold the President’s feet to the fire.

Harvesting awareness

Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object you want to touch as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again.

–Helen Keller

Are you a sleep walker? I’m not talking here of those who walk about rather than lie in bed when they sleep. I mean the way many of us live our lives, asleep to what goes on around us. Not surprisingly, we lose out on life’s conversation.

As sentient creatures, we’re able to respond to stimuli in the guise of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Think about it! Just take away any one of them and you get the picture. While losing your sight or hearing are surely impacting losses that severely limit, so is the loss of other sensory capacities. Imagine what it would be like being unable to relish mashed potatoes with gravy or the pleasure of your tongue indulging a chocolate ice cream cone.

My favorite poet has always been John Keats, poet extraordinaire in his sensory awareness. Reading a Keats poem is something like being locked up in a bakery. The one thing he feared was death, which he viewed as horrible in its annihilation of the senses, an end rendering us but sod. But we don’t need to die to forfeit awareness. Some of us are downright zombies in the here and now.

We live in a world now pervasively scientific and technological. They have their place in helping us live more ably and comfortably. And yet they often fail us when we live only for the quantitative or functional. We are not simply physical or material creatures. We are spirit, with the capacities to not only think, but to feel and choose. What would our world be like if we didn’t have music, or image (art/photo/film), smells of freshly cut hay, dinner on the stove, or garden roses? What if we couldn’t feel that soft velvet, the clasp of warm hand, the softness of the beloved’s cheek?

More than ever, we live in a world that can so busy us that we can become callous to what really matters. Each day simply repeats yesterday’s routine. Tomorrow promises more of the same.
Life is brief and tomorrow shouldn’t be assumed, for we live in a random universe. Our heaven lies in the Now.

Here are some tips that may help you increase your awareness and, consequently, your pleasure in life’s rich tapestry:

Keep a journal or blog

I can’t think of a better way to improve my awareness of what happens around me, or within myself for that matter, than keeping a journal or maintaining a blog: who, what, when, where, how. Writing this blog is a prime example. I’ve been writing on myriad topics for almost a year. Thinking about a topic has kept me on my toes, forced me to think about what I hear, see, or do. Good journals and blogs can be on anything, but simply centering in doings is more like keeping a diary. It’s not going to grow the senses. Select like you would at a gourmet restaurant, choose according to your palette, but choose wisely. Write not only about what matters, but why it matters.

Find space

We all need moments for ourselves. I find some of my best times are when I’m outside, working in the yard, the world very far away. My senses are kindled, and the birds, rustling leaves, and even the lowly worm, get noticed. Though I’m raking leaves, I’m alive, my mind a bubbling stream.

Meditate

I’m still working on this. Health authorities increasingly cite research, indicating a host of benefits in its alleviating stress and consequent anxiety, those salient features of modern life. Ironically, letting go or emptying ourselves leads to replenishment of awareness as we become absorbed in our breathing rhythms and are reduced to the sensory essentials. You can meditate anywhere with no equipment needed. Yoga, especially hatha yoga because of its slow pace and easy postures, affords a wonderful way to purge life’s pollutants and yield not only relaxation, but a reduced heart rate, lower blood pressure, better sleep, and improved moods.

Read

Become an omnivorous devourer of books, quality magazines and journals. Reading stimulates and prompts new conversations. But choose wisely. Some books are meant to be read; others, to be chewed; some, to be spat out. Some magazines, pulp publications devoted to stardom and gossip, are better left in the rack.

React

Reacting is fundamental to achieving improved awareness. When you read, go to movies, converse with others, see or listen to the news, ask questions, make associations, think about the validity of underlying assumptions, reign in generalizations. Be wary of too much TV. It breeds passivity, dulls the senses, makes the mind lazy, steals time for better things. Socrates wisely tells us that the unexamined life isn’t worth living. Don’t be a sponge. Be a hose.

Change your routine

Waking or driving, do you take the same route to work or school? Try a different one.

Always eating at the same restaurants? Go for adventure. At home, why not try that new recipe?

Always watching the big three: football, basketball, baseball? Why not take a peek at soccer, lacrosse, or hockey?

I think you get my meaning. Routine dulls the senses. Hey, it happens in relationships, too. Take heed!

Only the rich get to see Europe

I had promised my sister-in-law, ailing in Germany, that my wife and I would be visiting her next June. That may not be possible.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I checked into Orbitz this morning and discovered the cheapest fare was $902 with United/Continental. Wait! It gets better. That’s just the airfare. Add taxes, $617.19, and you’re looking at $1,519.19 per person. In other words, the taxes are two thirds the actual fare. I think that’s outrageous.

I decided to find out why the high taxes. It’s the EU countries that are doing this. Scrapped for cash to finance their deficit welfare-state budgets, they’re looking everywhere. Tourists don’t vote. Voila! Well, and I think I’m not alone, I’ll vote with my feet.

Have they no clue they’re busting their own economies? No more flotillas of Americans and Canadians. Already, you can hear the screams of the European travel industry, not to mention airlines. So far, to no avail.

It’s amazing. I can book a trip from Lexington, KY, all the way to gorgeous Hawaii for just 754 rt, taxes included.

What a mess Europe’s gotten itself into. For decades since WWII, they’ve pretty much thought they had a free lunch, given their generous government outlays. Did they really think Disney World would go on forever? As is, they’ve got this heavy value added tax on virtually everything you buy, their touted free medical care is escalating in cost, and all of this while cutting their defense spending, already meager, by 50% in some countries. What a milk toast ally!

They don’t work as hard as Americans. Most retire 30 years and out. Vacations average 6 weeks, versus two for Americans, many of them not taking any vacation.

What’s awful is that their sorry mess could plunge all of us on this side of the pond into recession again. But what do you do about people who riot in the streets whenever austerity measures are adopted?

And there’s a warning in all of this for America to get its own financial house in order to avoid becoming a version of Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland. My own state of Ky is nearly 8 billion dollars delinquent in funding pensions for its public employees, including teachers.

Republicans, cutting spending without revenue increases through higher taxation won’t get the job done.

Democrats, increasing taxes without meaningful cuts in spending only delays our day of reckoning.

Better book that trip to Hawaii–don’t I wish–before Congress fancies imitating our European brethren and we all go down the tubes.

Evolution’s triumph: the Sandhill Crane

You can’t mistake Sandhill cranes, resplendent with red crowns, wide wing spans, and long legs.

Every fall, they come to Kentucky by the thousands, transients pursuing a rest stop as they wing their way to winter feeding grounds in the Mississippi delta, Florida, Mexico and Cuba. They draw their name from their principal migratory feeding ground along the Platte in Nebraska, with its 75-mile stretch of grass secured sand dunes.

They’re enchanting birds to watch and listen to. You can hear them coming a long ways off in what sounds like a thunderous French r made deep within the throat. These are creatures who sing and dance. Couples, who mate for life and live up to 20 years, actually sing in mutual cadence, sometimes leaping up and down.

They’re among our most ancient birds, stretching back several million years and preceding humans. By the early part of the Twentieth Century they had been hunted virtually to extinction. Through careful conservation, they’ve rebounded, though still threatened principally by habitat loss in Mississippi and Cuba.

Lately, they’ve been in my thoughts. Last spring I had been reading Carl Safina’s impassioned lament for nature’s vanishing wildlife, The View from Lazy Point, and several times he alluded to and quoted Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac, a collection of Thoreau-like observations on nature and man’s troubling despoilment of it. I was not disappointed.

In the course of this beautifully written book, Leopold comes upon the Sandhill crane:

A glint of sun reveals the approach of a great echelon of birds. On motionless wing they emerge from the lifting mists, sweep a final arc of sky, and settle in clangorous descending spiral to their feeding grounds. A new day has begun on the crane marsh.

When we hear his call we hear no mere bird. We hear the trumpet in the chorus of evolution. He is the symbol of our untamable past, of that incredible sweep of millennia which underlies and conditions the daily affairs of birds and men.

The sadness discernible in some marshes arises, perhaps, from their once having harbored cranes. Now they stand humbled, adrift in history.

—

Upshot:

This week here in Kentucky, the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources announced it will take applications for permits from Nov. 15 through Nov. 30 and hold a drawing Dec. 5 to select up to 400 hunters, the first state to do so East of the Mississippi. Hunters may take up to two sandhill crane then, or until hunters take 400 birds. The season will begin December 17.

Water: managing a precious resource

In North America, we take water availability for granted. This may not be our future.

One of our greatest challenges over the next several decades will be meeting our water needs, whether globally or in the USA. We can live with less oil or coal, find alternative fuels, or develop new technologies. Not so with water, an element vital to sustaining food production and keeping ourselves alive. Though as humans we can be a narcissistic lot, the truth is we’re composed of up to 90% water.

I was reminded of this fact several weeks ago after a three day bout with the stomach flu, with all its unpleasant symptoms. One of the first things you learn is to replace lost fluids quickly and amply. If you don’t, you risk dehydrating and its ultimate consequences, kidney damage and even shutdown.

When Americans think of drought, they probably think of Africa, certainly in the news lately and in past decades with its devastating water shortages. The reality is that what Africa is experiencing is becoming increasingly apropos for earth’s more prosperous regions as well. Take Australia, for example. Sydney draws its water primarily from capacious water storage facilities, drawn from rainfall and held in check by dams. In fact, Sydney’s reservoirs exceed New York’s storage capacity 4:1. Even so, the water flow into Sydney’s nine dams fell 45% between 1996 and 2003. The situation, even now, remains critical. It hasn’t rained plentifully in New South Wales for a very long time.

In the U. S, particularly California and the Southwest, water sufficiency, always a problem for essentially desert regions, has become a gnawing challenge. Southern California depends for much of its water on Northern California, to the latter’s consternation, since it’s also become plagued with serious water shortages. Normally dependent on melting snowpacks from the mountains, this source is proving unreliable, with snow melting earlier before it can consolidate in yet another link with rising global temperatures. Elsewhere, while Los Angeles is certainly under threat, one of America’s fastest growing cities, Las Vegas, may well run out of water, and very soon.

Consider the Midwest. Beneath America’s agricultural heartland lies the Ogallah aquifer, stretching through eight states, South Dakota to Texas. Used as a primary irrigation source, it’s now seriously depleted through over pumping. We are producing agricultural bounties drawing on tomorrow’s water.

If I had time, I could explore with you the causes for increasing drought and, ironically, for some areas like my native New England, unprecedented rain and snow with ensuing floods such as Vermont recently encountered. I wish I also had time to explore proposed solutions such as building more dams, which actually create other dilemmas. My focus here is on conservation, the wise use of water to make it go round and last longer.

1. Get rid of your lawn, or, reduce it sharply.

A 2008 NASA study concluded that grass lawns in the U. S. exceed the entire land area of New York state. In fact, one third of our water use is spent on our lawns or, shockingly, 200 gallons of water per person, per day. Lawns can be replaced or reduced with native, drought-resistant grasses of short height, needing little water. Attractive ground covers such as Irish moss or creeping thyme can help do the job. You’ll save on your water bill while reducing gas mower pollution and insecticide run off as well.  If you’re a garden keeper, plant varieties of flowers and vegetable with lesser water needs.

2.  Install water barrels.

Think about this: an inch of rain falling on a 1000 square foot roof generates 600 gallons of water, which can then be used for your flowers and vegetables. I installed one last summer with a eighty gallon capacity and found it filled up after a brief shower. More and more communities are imposing restrictions on water usage and water rates have been rising as new treatment plants become needed. I’m hoping to plant several raised garden beds accessed to this barrel through a hose.

3.  Be conservative in using water in the house.

In buying water products such as shower heads, faucets and toilets, look for the EPA’s WaterSense label. You can find such products online at
http://www.epa.gov/watersense/product_search.html

If you’re planning to build a new home, a family of four can save up to 50,000 gallons of water annually in a certified WaterSense installation. That’s sufficient to do 2000 laundry loads a year and a savings up to $600 on water bills. Savings can also be had by confining washer/dryer purchases to Energy Star products. (Tankless water heaters, by the way, can save up to 20% in energy costs per year and don’t require periodic flushing.)

Repair dripping faucets promptly.

4.  If a city dweller, opt for a green roof.

All of the applications I’ve mentioned have business and industrial applications as well. In Chicago, green roof gardens are catching on, with some 200 now in existence, including City Hall. Green roofs provide not only space for growing vegetables, but capture storm water while simultaneously cooling the urban landscape.

5.  Stop eating meat.

This recommendation may surprise you, sounds crazy, and is least likely to be adopted, given our cultural biases. But I mention it anyway, just for the record. A recent study by the Agricultural Water Management indicated that cutting animal product use by just half would result in a national reduction of dietary water requirements of 261 billion cubic meters annually by 2025. To put this in perspective, this is the equivalent of 14 times the annual flow of the Colorado River.e ample

The point in all of this is that you and I can take steps now to assure we have ample water at minimal costs in a world where this will be a decreasing reality.

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