as winter wanes (slowly)

The beauty of our life is that, despite the danger and fragility and outright darkness that lie all around us, we are free. We are free to be something.

Anything can be chosen today; we can take ourselves down any path tomorrow. The day after we can choose another detour. We are free to live, free to die; free to be miserable, free to dance; free to fast, free to gorge.

We haul around an oasis of blood, bone, proteins, enzymes inside these carapaces we call our bodies. They aren't really even ours. They're like pets we wash, feed, exercise or let go. It's not even a luxury ride but a crude beast that happens to be required in order for us to happen.

We're each alone on this road, this place of moon and stars. We become. That's all. Exposed to novelty and chance and circumstance, not to mention our own sense of self and mindedness, we are our own perfect celebration. Unless subjugated or imprisoned we can do anything we want, but even under the most dire conditions we still have a choice.

We never know who will live or how long or whether it is ourself. We're born by lot and die when the time comes and that's a good thing. We don't have an expiration date or a guaranteed lifespan either and who would want that?

At the end we report back to the universe what we've seen.. a lake, a flower, rain, a shawl a mother made. There was a child, a lover, a friend. This is all we have or ever will have. We're free to hold on tight or free to let go. The moment belongs to us.

***

The painting, one of my favourites, is by Michael Sowa, a contemporary German artist whose work is always amazing.

This is a reprise of a post written in early 2009. 
Still works for me..

♡

going mobile

Something we saw when we were out recently. The guy was driving flat out (maybe 8mph). Only in Halifax..


We have arrived at the time of year when we see and feel some significant weather events. It rained a lot on theThanksgiving weekend (last of that hurricane) with what seemed like tree stripper winds. Then the next day showed the trees just about as full as they had been before. Better still, the frog pond at the park that had dried into a giant mud flat by summer's end had refilled and the ducks were back. Again today and yesterday we've had lots of very heavy rain and strong winds besides. Happily it all let up for a few hours, long enough for us to have a good walk in the park. The coolest part of that was when we rounded the point to the beach area to find huge waves coming out of the fog. The sound alone was absolutely mesmerizing but all the more wonderful was seeing the heave and curl of the waves as they broke far from shore and again as they burst on the rocky beach. We sat and watched for a long time.


“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies”
– Groucho Marx

♥️

Crow hill

Almost every day I read the news because I want to stay informed about what is seemingly going on in the world outside my house and neighborhood. These days this is an unpleasant experience. The more I read the more worried I get. Things do not seem to be going well. The news about what is going on out there and what's going on inside myself seem mutually to freeze one another into place and a desperate kind of negative reinforcement takes place.

But when I put the computer aside to read a book, listen to music, paint or go for a walk I begin to thaw out. The frightening aspects of the world disappear and my body and mind relax into a state that may be the opposite of distraction. Art and direct contact with the world of the senses saves me from freezing. I wonder if people naturally tend toward ice (or stasis) as we crave a fixed sense of things and reliable truths we can depend on. It seems to me we love young children and the idea of childhood because through them we can re-experience a time before the self freezing, necessary for gaining discernment, took hold.

Imagination soothes the body, warms the soul in a reality wider, deeper, and more mysterious than we can directly sense or rationally know. Imagination sees into and through the apparent world to another world, luminous and significant. 

from: Talks with Crow

♡

winter weekend in Halifax

We're in the midst of a typical Halifax winter right now and that means the temperatures bounce back and forth between very cold and just above freezing with the addition of some often powerful winds. Considering there's usually some precipitation in the offing we can expect snow and rain in sometimes equal measure with the result that whatever hits the ground usually freezes. Icy patches and lumpy icy footprints make walking more a trial than an enjoyable outing to one's favorite haunts. Of course we're still going to the park as often as we can (barring storms and below zero windy days) but we've been avoiding the higher paths because whatever you walk up also has to be walked down - the same route the water has taken when the snow melted a bit. Ah well, at least we're almost a month past the shortest day so I won't complain.

Yesterday it was 5° and windy, so instead of the park, we decided to go and see a movie we'd been looking forward to - 'Inherent Vice'. The book written by Thomas Pynchon has become a favorite of ours, at least as far as normal size novels go. ('Against the Day' at 1100 pages is our real favorite and highly recommended if you haven't read Pynchon since 'Gravity's Rainbow'.) 'Inherent Vice' is a comedic hard-boiled novel about a hippie detective in late 60s LA. Numb, who lived there in those years, found the book very true to his memories of the time. I lived elsewhere back then but also remember the period and attitudes similarly - as probably do you. Anyway, the movie was very disappointing for both of us. The director and scriptwriter, Paul Thomas Anderson, born in 1970, seems to have missed the feeling of the book and the time entirely by turning the wild and joyous original into character studies of the detective, his ex-girlfriend (who hardly appears in the novel), and the policeman. He made such a wonderful job of portraying the early 20th century in 'There Will Be Blood' that we thought this would have been easy.  Instead, we didn't even get to see LA since almost everything was filmed inside. Anyway, I see it has a few good reviews but we gave it a one star.

We rarely go to movies these days anyway since it's much more pleasant to rent or stream them. 'Avatar' was great at the theater with our 3D glasses perched on our noses (^^). I have to say what made yesterday's experience bad before the start was having to watch commercials in 'surround sound' and then seeing previews for 'Hot Tub Time Machine 2' and some other silly overly frantic things neither of us can remember. No wonder 'The Interview' got made and released if those movies are typical of what audiences pay money for now.

Speaking of art of one kind or another, I've got myself stuck again in my attempt to illustrate the story a friend's daughter wrote many years ago. The problem is in keeping all the pictures at the same design and color levels. At this point I've just about come to the conclusion it doesn't really matter if they all look different since (for better or worse) my particular style is always going to be there even if the girl's shirt is pink in one picture and peach in another. Geez. What can I say, but I'm just not a comic book artist (a fine and worthy profession though it may be). This is a recent practice picture - still deciding on paper type and how much inking is the right amount.

Stay cozy.
♡

simple things

I'm almost embarrassed to post a picture as simple as this one done on a recent  afternoon but I'm going to do so anyway. This is no brothers Detmold, nor Edmund Dulac, nor any of the other watercolorists of the early twentieth century whose work I admire so much. It's not even as complicated as work I did years ago when I had a full time job and a busy schedule that accounted for most of my waking hours. The fact I painted a number of fairly large and complicated pictures, some of which took weeks to complete, seems strange to me now. Now I have less patience - or perhaps it's that I feel I have less time (no, I'm not ill) but every so often some little image appears and I just want to see it done. I don't want to wait. So here's this one that reminds me of words I once heard in a dream or brief vision just before sleep came - the color of Heaven is green. I don't know what that meant, if anything, but I do know that there's no happier time for me than walking along a sunlit beach with a good friend.

It's the simple things in life that bring us our best and most satisfying experiences.

♡

doing what becomes us

A formerly thriving monastery is down to its last three monks, and the place has lost all of its spiritual influence. The Abbot walks down the long stairs to consult with a passing well-known wise man who tells him, “I don’t know how to solve the problems of your monastery, but I do know that one of the three of you that remain there is actually the Messiah.”

The Abbot returns and repeats this to the other two monks. Each of them considers inwardly, “Well I know it’s not me, so it must be one of these other two.” Thus they all start treating each other with the greatest of reverence, kindness, respect and love, thinking they might be in the presence of the Messiah. The positive energy that this generates begins to infuse and radiate out from the monastery, and as new visitors pass through, they are infected by it and choose to stay on as monks, and within a short time, the monastery is once again a vibrant and thriving institution.


It's a pretty cool story and one whose premise is inarguable (if you don't believe me, ask Jesus or the Buddha), but I'll have to agree with whomever first mentions that things don't often work out that way among most of us humans. There are so many potential tragedies in process right now that I almost have to wonder how we've lasted as long as we have. Perhaps it's because Progress as we know it now wasn't invented until about 300 years ago. Before that people mostly did what they'd always done, even if that did involve grabbing grandfather's sword or pike and heading off to battle every so often. At least then the battles were generally right on one's doorstep and there was no question of punishing strangers who lived thousands of miles away. Okay, there were the Crusades that were motivated by religious mania and greedy land grabbing in the Americas etc., but my point is that things didn't start getting really crazy until fossil fueled industrialization became endemic.

There's a very old legend among the mystical teachings of several religions that there's always a small group of hidden saints who are 'holding up the world' but who live out their lives as ordinary people. We can never know for sure that the clerk at the market or the bus driver who greets us with a smile isn't one of them. Since we can't know who is or who isn't an Enlightened human being, why not treat everyone as though they are? I rather like the concept that there's no such thing as Enlightenment as that term indicates a changeless state (and there's no such thing in Reality), but what's possible for all of us is Enlightening as a verb, or Becoming if you prefer.

The book the monk story is from (and now own as my very first digital copy) is called 'Why I Am Not Enlightened' and was written by a very wise and funny Western spiritual teacher called Elias Sobel. I recommend it to you.

As Crow says, 'Even if you people can't be perfect, you can at least be nice to one another'. 
♡
ps: I didn't get a Kindle but have downloaded a free Adobe E-reader.

not so long ago

While wandering around online yesterday I happened across this picture of Louis Armstrong playing a song for his wife. Do you remember him? Silly question - how could you not? Since Louis Armstrong was my Dad's favorite musician, when it was announced he'd be playing at Toronto's CNE Band Shell in the mid-60's, Dad insisted I accompany him just in case there wouldn't be another chance. Naturally I was a bit more interested in seeing other bands at that point in my life but my father was so excited at the idea  of seeing the great musician again that I agreed to go. I was glad I did. The music was wonderful on a bright and sunny afternoon but best of all was seeing my Dad so transported by the infectious joy that Louis radiated. As well as being a musical genius, kind and generous too, he was also very funny:

When I was a kid, that um.. My mother - we lived in an old town in Louisiana named Butte Louisiana - she sent me down to the pond to get a pail of water one day, and I came back, and my mother was on the porch, and she wanted to know 'where’s that water?' I said, 'Well momma, there’s a big old rusty alligator in that water. 'She said, 'Oh boy, go and get that water - don’t you know that alligator’s as scared of you as you is of him?' I said,'Well, if that alligator’s as scared of me as I is of him momma, that water ain’t fit to drink.'

There are many stories if you go looking, including one about the fact he never had a Christmas tree until he was 40; he was so entranced with it he took it on tour and only gave it up when his wife insisted it was dead. Here's another one I enjoyed just because it highlights his kindness:

One afternoon in the spring of 1928, Louis Armstrong was strolling through his South Side Chicago neighborhood with a young friend, tenor saxophonist Bud Freeman, when they came upon a group of street musicians. They were playing 'Struttin' With Some Barbecue', a recent hit song by Louis Armstrong's Hot Five band, and the trumpet player was laboring his way through Armstrong's own song note for note.

When the man finished, Freeman remembered, Armstrong clapped politely, then stepped closer, not wanting to embarrass the performer, and murmured, 'Man, you're playing that too slow.'

'How would you know?' asked the trumpet player, indignant.

'I'm Louis Armstrong. That's my chorus you're playing.'

When he and Freeman passed by the next day, the musicians had put a hand-lettered sign next to their tin cup: 'PUPILS OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG'.

Not remembering the particular song, I looked it up and found this youtube clip of Louis at a 1950's Paris nightclub when he jammed with Claude Luter on 'Struttin'. They don't make them like this anymore:


Louis Armstrong  Claude Luter- Struttin' With... by redhotjazz

I'm old but not old enough to have seen Louis Armstrong in his prime. Still, I feel very lucky that I did get to see him laugh and play with my own eyes.

Is there anyone now gone you feel glad to have seen? or anyone you wished you could have seen?

♡

this and that

While looking for something else I never did find (isn't it always the way?) I came across a number of little heads I'd sewn years ago for a doll making project. I did make a couple of dozen little ladies as gifts for friends but never used all the heads. Not feeling like drawing I decided instead to see if I could use the faces as part of the design for small hand-made boxes. Using the front and back of a cereal box, some extra pieces of scarf silk I'd dyed, as well as some glue, this is what I've come up with in the past couple of days of sometimes cold, sometimes snowy, sometimes rainy but always winter weather. It's an octagon 2.5 inches across, 2 inches tall and silky inside and out.

While my hands were busy I couldn't help but come up with some random thoughts about this and that in the news and round about. Here are some in no particular order:

Although you can send most anything anywhere it costs more, takes longer and it's getting harder to find a post office or a mailbox.

Some people can't afford fuel to heat their homes but if they're lucky enough to live in a gas fracking zone they can warm up by turning on the kitchen tap and flicking a match.

Cities can be reached by superhighways and space age bridges but neighborhood streets aren't being repaired.

If a good size storm comes along and washes out the road to your town the government might decide your town wasn't worth visiting anyway.

In some places not only are the streetlights out but they pulled out the poles to save on vandalism and people calling to report the lights are off.
corollary: You may buy a new gadget on sale but you could be carrying it home in the dark.

Many cities have purchased folding buses that are almost too big to go around corners. By the time you walk back to your seat the front of the bus has arrived at your stop.

Apartment building common areas are no longer being heated but management tells you the fans blowing cold air in from outside is a 'feature'. Remember to wear heavy clothing while using the laundry room.

On the plus side, zipper technology is better. I remember a time as a kid when I thought I might spend the rest of my life in my snowsuit.


Atlantis - An inconvenient truth from Simon Prager on Vimeo.

Now I have to go and find a box to put my box in.
♡

surface details

Just in case you've been wondering what I've been up to lately here are a couple of the sketches I've been playing with in the past couple of days. Neither of them is actually done or even close to it in the finished sense but I'm tending to lean toward refining the seated lady more than the mirror woman. Both tell something of a story but the reflection on outward form and stretching time to some machine like plastic being interests me less than the contemplative aspect of the other. I'm curious about what it is the seated lady may be considering.

A long time ago I spent my painting time trying to reproduce modern versions of the work done by the 19th century watercolorists whose work I continue to admire more with passing time. Although I did come up with some interesting images I never did manage to capture the look of both innocence and wisdom I was trying to portray. It's no longer the 19th century or even the early 20th and my imagined version of the tranquility of those times is currently in abeyance. I'm not a particularly realistic person when it comes to my preferred memories or thoughts about the past but I do believe there was a time not so very long ago when mutual respect was more common. Things are going much faster now but nobody knows the ultimate destination.

I think we each must have a better world we dream about in order to allow for a better place to grow. My plan is to continue spending the time I have imagining and painting a prettier one. Whatever your skills and interests I hope you will keep on doing so too.

♡

the studio 2011

I've been tempted several times in the past few days to show you the current Crow portrait through it's drawing and inking stages but I'd rather save showing it until it's finished. Likely as that is to be a few more days I thought I'd show you this year's version of my workspace. Tiny, isn't it?

With the exception of a block of standing shelves to the left and slightly behind where the scanner, more paints, inks, and other supplies wait close to hand my studio occupies a corner of our living room on the wall furthest from the west facing windows. It's not ideal but there's a natural light artist's lamp that lights the work well enough throughout our frequent overcast days. There's another lamp I can use as required but no space to leave it permanently. My portfolios are under the left side of the table leaning against the wall and behind my saddle stool are the sketchbooks, two boxes filled with silk painting supplies I'm loathe to unpack, and a tall but narrow chest of drawers that holds peripherals.

Stretcher frames, sewing machine, boxes filled with silk and fancy fabrics live down the back hall where we luckily have some enormous closets. The framed artworks we brought with us are also still in their professional moving cartons in one of those closets. After eight months in Halifax we continue to wait for news from the Canadian government that my husband will be welcome to stay. Immigration allows itself almost a year to complete its review and in the meanwhile we'll remain where we are. Why add confusion to a complicated process?

I still feel like an ex-pat American far from home. Nova Scotia is a quirky place but the world is full of them and it's friends who make a place comfortable. You all help a lot with that.

My paper should be dry again now and Crow is calling.

♡

still in space

Have you ever wondered how amazing total eclipses are? Some weeks ago I ran across this photograph taken last summer during the total solar eclipse that was visible in southern India and parts of China and wondered, not for the first time, about the possible meanings of something we marvel at when it occurs locally but generally don't consider much at all. I remember hearing it said that if one found a watch one immediately knows it was made by a watchmaker and if one found a watch on Mars we would look for a watchmaker there.

It is very strange that the disc of the Moon should seem, from an Earthly perspective, to be exactly the same size as the Sun. Although we take it for granted that the two main bodies seen in Earth's skies look the same size, it is actually something of a miracle. Most people are fully aware that the Moon is tiny compared to the Sun but that it is much, much closer to us causing them to appear as equal discs. To be precise the Moon is 400 times smaller than the star at the center of our solar system, yet it is also just one 400th of the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

The odds against this optical illusion happening at all are simply huge - but how bizarre that both values are the same, perfectly round number. It's very puzzling. Isaac Asimov described this perfect visual alignment as being:

"The most unlikely coincidence imaginable".

This perfect fit of the lunar and solar discs is a very human perspective because it only works from the viewpoint of someone standing on the Earth's surface. I'm sure there are many wonderful sights in the galaxy but it seems to me that if there were aliens doing a Grand Tour of this particular spiral arm of the Milky Way stopping by the earth to watch a total solar eclipse and that magical diamond effect might be a high point. Perhaps we should watch out for 'people' wearing very bulky suits or viewers who stay inside large vehicles next time there's one occurring in the neighborhood.

An even more amazing thing that's true about the Moon's movements above our heads is that by some absolutely strange mechanism of nature, the Moon also manages to very precisely imitate the movements of the Sun. The full Moon is at its highest and brightest at midwinter, mirroring the Sun at midsummer and at lowest and weakest at midsummer when the Sun is at its highest and brightest.

I don't know about you but I'm beginning to think something weird is going on around here. I may have to go and look for a Watchmaker.. or maybe I'll go and do something useful like making chocolate brownies.

lying low

I've been reading a lot these past few days about Ron Suskind's book 'The Way of the World' and the death of Bruce Ivins, the bio-terror expert who worked for the Defense Dept. Thinking about the ramifications of both stories is enough to give someone a headache.

What's certainly true is that here we have more of the same old thing and whether we're talking about the Downing St Memo or Stephen Hatfill who just won a lawsuit against the FBI it matters little if the media continues to play these revelations as though they're purely partisan issues and therefore not seriously worthy of investigation.

There is a crudity to the machinations of the current regime that make it all too plausible that the White House (and I don't mean GW) really did forge a backdated letter in 2003 that would incriminate Saddam Hussein as having masterminded 9/11 AND having a nuclear weapons program. How convenient.

Next we have the alleged suicide of Bruce Ivins who, while under 24 hour surveillance in a mental hospital, somehow managed to get hold of enough drugs to kill himself. One can only imagine the conversation, 'Where is he now, Bob?' 'Well, he just came out of the pharmacy again but he looks okay to me'. The problem here is that the man is dead and there will never be a trial.

I can't help but think that nothing short of having live television coverage of George Bush and Dick Cheney molesting babies on the White House lawn would call down enough anger that an impeachment hearing would be demanded nationally. I'm afraid even that would be greeted by the talking heads as an opportunity for digression - 'We haven't heard the babies side of it yet, Jack, and we might just have to wait a few years until they learn to talk.' 'Why that's right, Bimbette. Let's get the famous child psychologist Dr. Jerkoff on the screen right after these messages from our sponsors'.

It's all broken.

(drawing by Aubrey Beardsley)

results so far

When I got the scanner last week my first thought was to look at the old 35mm slides so I'd have a permanent computer record. Years ago there were no automatic photo systems that would adjust focus and light levels so what might look perfectly fine through the lens as you adjusted the setting could easily result in a fuzzy picture of your subject. This wasn't so bad with photos of people and places but ruinous to artwork. Maybe I needed new glasses. Anyway, I did get a few including this one which looks okay so long as its not enlarged. Painted in 1984, the girl in the grass appears to have rickets and I wonder why I didn't correct that thigh bone while I was drawing. Did I do it on purpose? If so, I can't remember the point and I hope the person who owns it now doesn't cringe at the thought of her standing up.

Another from the same time period is this one with, once again, the theme being running. Little do we usually know it but I've learned the faster we run from one thing the quicker we'll get to the next - ready or not. What I remember really being interested in was the idea of riding an ostrich and this was the only way I could envision anyone doing so.



















I ran across an interesting analogy recently regarding atheism that simply asks you to imagine the kitchen appliances arguing about the existence of electricity. If the power goes off the discussion is over. I rarely buy the Shambala Sun magazine since there are too many reminders of how fashionable Buddhism has become in the west. The very idea of having my own perfect meditation supplies or altar with a plastic Buddha (or worse, one that was stolen from Tibet and sold by the Chinese) feels repugnant to me. Yet I do meditate and have been a long-time customer at the smorgasbord of spirituality.

Anyway, I bought the Jan issue and there was a very interesting discussion article called 'Mind, Matter and God' by Barry Boyce whose main point is that popular atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris have all fallen into a linguistic trap by taking on the fundamentalist elements of theistic religions and then allowing them to define the argument. Equating Pat Robertson with a Zen master is obviously going to result in a lot of confusion. Did Moses really part the Red Sea? Well, duh.. A more temperate approach is to have respect for and practice, if anyone so desires, the more contemplative aspects of whatever tradition suits us. I wanted to link to the article but since the magazine is still on the stands it's not available yet but I thought it interesting enough to mention.

Keep smiling and you'll look like :-) me.

Happy New Year Everyone

It's time to gird our loins and get back to the good fight. 2008 may be the year when we see things turn around - or maybe not but a paradigm shift is overdue and I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks to all who have come to visit. I wish you the very best for your hopes and dreams to come true

art for art's sake 2

Last year I was asked if I'd be willing to make a scarf for a long-time 'angel friend'. Now I really don't get the whole concept of that kind of friend since as I recall it was some weird market ploy developed by a company to sell base metal pins - but what do I know? My concept of angels isn't one that allows them to be anything other than enormous, magnificent beings totally beyond imagination.. frightening, in fact. Who in their right mind would want to meet the archangel Gabriel? But the lady who asked is a sweet woman who explained her friend was going through a very bad year and that she would dearly love to give her something special.

I must explain that I've never felt good about commissioned work - passed up an offer by Hallmark cards once because I knew I'd never be able to draw to order. I've never offered my services as an illustrator for the same reason but the lady talked me into it and so, in a fit of enthusiasm, I agreed. Right from the start I knew it had been a bad decision but I was stuck with having made the promise. The first scarf was so awful I threw it away after two weeks of salvage work. These are the two 'angels' that eventually looked okay enough and I handed the piece over with the promise to self never to make anything to order again. I've wondered if I'll see a stranger on the street and recognize her simply by the eight foot long silk scarf she's decided to show the world that day. It would be interesting.

Meanwhile it's much easier to work at a full-time job and save the creative side for when the time and inclination arrive.

an old favorite

Robert Crumb has always been one of my favorite artists and certainly one of the least appreciated American cultural chroniclers, at least in this country. He gave up on the place years ago and very sensibly moved to the south of France - nice climate, good cheese, great wine and a population who know how to treat a genius.

Of all his characters Mr. Natural is the most profound example of a practitioner of crazy wisdom. His perpetual idiot student is Flakey Foont who knows Mr. Natural has something special going on but is himself far too literal minded to actually get any of it. No matter how many times Mr. Natural whacks Flakey with a stick or shows him how to get along in the world Flakey always misses the point entirely.

When R. Crumb developed Mr. Natural a lot of people I knew were reading the Carlos Castaneda books about the Mexican mystic Don Juan and his attempts to teach Carlos to be a warrior. Carlos was much more successful than Flakey and in actuality probably invented Don Juan after stealing research done by other anthropologists but that's another story. I think Crumb understood that aspect as well as the basic misapprehension by naive 60's youth of just how tricky the tricksters actually are.

I think if more people had paid attention to R. Crumb's assessment of the state of American culture back then instead of writing him off as an eccentric cartoonist we'd be in a lot less trouble now.

one bookstore incl gods

Powell's - a big reason for living in Portland. A clerk once mentioned she's noticed us there every Sunday for years and my husband quipped 'It's cheaper than church'. He was right.


Reading is certainly one of my favorite activities and a book I'm reading at present which I'll recommend even before I've finished it is by Alan Weisman and called World Without Us. Without a doubt we've become a force of nature on this planet, not so much with our numbers, since it's been said we wouldn't fill the Grand Canyon, but with our lifestyle. Where animals take what they need where they can get it and move on, human beings eventually discovered we could manipulate our environment and stay in the same place year round. I won't attempt to reiterate Mr. Weisman's well developed descriptions of the course we've taken to get us to the point where not only our survival as a species but the survival of sentient life on the planet hangs by a thread - and unfortunately not even necessarily a biodegradable one. But please don't think of it as a depressing book since it isn't and that's not his intention; instead it's something to help us envision our options. It's also enjoyable taking the long view and imagining just how fast strip malls and office buildings would deteriorate and disappear. He also tells some extraordinary stories about what the world looked like before we became so numerous and industrious.

Strangely enough yesterday this article about the 3 Gorges Dam in China made me feel just a little bit better in that we as a race may be coming to understand some important points about how we treat the earth. It's remarkable the officials were allowed to say that. Of course, we're a LONG way from getting done what needs to be done but at least we smartass westerners with our opinions about how everybody else should conduct their lives may not be the only ones who have the beginning of an inkling of a clue about what's going wrong. Thanks to the internet we can see people everywhere learning to cope with change.

The one thing that will never make the world a better and happier place for all species is the continuation of war and mayhem. Yes, lots of people die in wars but every single time that happens more people are born afterwards and with that comes more poverty, disease and stress on the environment. Although I haven't finished reading the book yet I'm fairly certain that one conclusion he'll draw is that education, healthcare, and birth control will help us realize the necessity of stabilizing our population. Groups like Heifer may be our best bet for helping the world to become a better place. Or maybe we'll all get spirited away by a Rapture or aliens (as a zoo exhibit) and the planet will recover enough in a few millenia for another curious adventuresome species.