MORE PIPEDREAMS?

 US drought monitor map as of July 19 of this year. Parts of eastern Oregon and northern California have eased up. A bit.  Includes Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

Oregon and Washington aren't quite so bad off although there is a dark brown area that looks to be about where Bend and Sisers are located. Just dong a little sifting throught the websites yesterday apparantly the flow on the Columbia is down from the old normal. Say about fifteen to twenty years ago. The last time any water gushed around here was back in the nineties. 

A map of the area drained by the Columbia River system. Rising in British Columbia the rivers drain an area the size of France. By volume it's the fourth largest river system in the US and the largest draining into the Pacific. Small wonder greedy eyes to the south covet the waters of the Columbia. 

The system supports over sixty dams tying toether irrigation, hydropower and a network of locks and barges that ties the Port of Lewiston to the Pacific. And has cut down the salmon runs to almost nothing including the destruction of the fishery at Celilo Falls. Somehow I don't believe that naming the reservoir Lake Celilo quite makes up for that. 

The Snake and the Columbia form the squiggly sections of the borders between Idaho and Washington. During the low flow parts of the years Spring, Summer and Fall waters from the Pacific can flow up to one hundred six miles up the river. So far seawater hasn't made it into the Willamette River which joins the Columbia just over one hundred miles from the Pacific. 

There are four dams on the lower Columbia between Oregon and Washington; Benneville, The Dalles, John Day and McNary. All four have lochs and power stations. The Columbia reaches Oregon just east of McNary dam. And the weirdest thing happened when Rick took us over to the Washington side where the loch is located several years ago. We lucked out and the loch was in use. As the water drained out to the lower level the illusion was that we were going up, not that the water was going down. Reeealy weird. 

Unfortunately I can't find an opinion piece I read yesterday asking why water from the Columbia can't be sent via pipeline to the southwest. One of the comments on the piece claimed that diverting ten pecent of the flow from the from the point where the river enters Washington. I can only assume the commenter hasn't seen a topo map of my home state. 

See that green area that ends at the point the state border becomes a straight line. That's where the river enters Oregon. The green you see is the lowest elevation. The shades of purple to blue are progressively higher in elevation. The cerntral plateau averages about three thousand feet in elevation.

His theory was that diverting ten percent of the flow would not harm the salmon runs. Any more than they already are. More on that later. I'm assuming some sort of pipeline. I'm guessing they'd want to tie into the Colorado system somehow, somewhere. I believe the closest the Colorado comes to Oregon is donn the corder of Utah. A long way to go and a lot of rugged real estate in the way 

Now about that ten percent of the flow. How will that affect power generation. Can wind generation take up the slack? How will losing ten percent of the flow affect barge traffic. And how will that ten percent really affect the salmon runs. Will the diversion cause the waters in the reservoirs to warm up even more? Warm water and salmon don't exactly mix. 

Water from the Pacific already makes it just over one hundred miles up river. What would be the effect of a ten percent diversion have on possibly increasing that distance. The mouth of the Willamette is one hundred one miles from the mouth of the Columbia. Could this affact water quality in the Willamette. What if any effect would this have on wells near the river? Add in rising sea levels and what happens to the that equation?

This tale certainly grew with the telling. Haven't written anything like this in a very long time. Feels good. 

A SCARY PIPEDREAM

 A bit of a change brought on by this article. One of several published in the Desert Sun, a Utah newspaper, over the past month or so. A quick Google hasn't uncovered much along these lines from other sources. Probably because Southern California has already understood that there are limits to what can be extracted from the rest of the country. I posted this on FB and this is what I wrote to go with it with a few additions. 

You chose to live in a desert. You are encouraging more population to move to your desert. And basically mocking anyone who points out that it is a desert and pointing out that other civilizations came a cropper when the water stopped flowing.

Once that pipeline is built it won't stop with just a portion. The rest of us will hear a giant sucking sound as every drop of fresh water is diverted. Earlier in the last century a plan on paper would have diverted fresh water from just about everywhere including the Great Lakes.

Check out Cadillac Desert. There once and is on file somewhere a plan that would have diverted water from ALASKA via British Columbia down to the southwestusing a network of dams and pipelines. The Canadian Prime Minister thought is was a good idea. A great many of his potential voters weren't too cool fwith the idea though, since the plan involved building that huge dam and creating a reservoir five hundred miles long.

Most of western Canada probably looked at THEIR rivers that were awfully close to that network and wondered how long it would be before the US cast our greedy eyes towards those rivers. There are limits damn it. We either learn to live within them voluntarily or the universe will impose the limits and believe me, we won't like it. Although I probably won't be here to see the fallout. Not so sure about my great nieces and nephews.

And how blithely the commenters spoke of diverting just ten percent of the flow from the Columbia. Won't hurt the salmon since we won't need to build any new dams. Yo, we have a drought up here too. Maybe Oregon and Washington could build greenhouses and supply some of those out of season vegetables.

And what would a ten percent decrease do to Portland's viability as a port? And what would ten percent mean to pulling sea water up the Columbia River. The whole "we need it so let's figure out how somebody else can give it to us." Incidentally the Columbia was placed off limits by congress two generations ago and believe me we will fight to keep it that way. Thank you senators Jackson and Magnuson of Washington. You see some folks down south just hate of idea of ANY fresh water making it to the sea.

Once upon a time the Colorado reached the Pacific though wetlands and delta rich in plants and wild life. The Colorado reaches the ocean maybe every few years and then only a trickle. The Colorado network never carried the water it was assumed it would provide and that was over allocated. There are limits folks. Don't assume that the rest of the country is going to bail you out without some draconian limits placed on your dreams. If the dreams are fulfilled at all.

We might be convinced to keep the lights on and the faucets flowing for the population you have NOW. You want more people you figure out how to get the water. You won't get it from us. We have our own lights to keep lit and our own faucets to fill.

NOW THAT HE IS SAFELY DEAD

  

Photo courtesy of the National Park Service I really do hate that statue. It doesn't do the man justice. Has he been safely dead long enough to quit running edited videos of that "I have a dream speech/" And I have never been able to get around Blogger's formatting issues. Sorry.

 Several years ago I ran across a skinny little volume of poems and essays remembering the death of MLK. Ironicall while Drum Major for a Dream was edited by religious studies professor Ira Zepp and Del Martin who teaches literature, writes some poetry. Both were respeccted instructors at Western Maryland University. The volume was produced by the Writers Workshop - Indian Creative Writing in English headquartered in, wait for it, Calcutta. India. 

Now that he is safely dead

Let us praise him.

Build monuments to his glory

Sing hosannas to his name

 

Dead men make such safe,

Convenient heroes:

They cannot rise to challenge the images

We would fashion from their lives.

 

And besides,

It is easier to build monuments

Than to build a better world.

 

So, now that he is safely dead

We, with eased consciences

Will teach our children

That he was a great man…knowing

 

That the cause he lived for

Is still a cause. And that the dream

For which he died is still a dream.

A dead man’s dream.

 Carl Wendell Hines Jr. in Drum Major for a Dream

This piece was written in memory of MLK Jr. Screen shot from the Amazon Books website. The volume only has seventy or so pages. Bound in the cloth used for saris. Not the really nice, shimmery ones. the kind of cloth the village women wear. Poems, short essays, some very angry. I believe that only one edition was produced by this group. If there is an earlier version I haven't found one. The only copies avaiable are used and they are pricey. Very Very pricey. Believe I will do a little digging. Now if I can just solve the formatting issues in word.  Grrrr. 

 Actually this is an update of an earlier journal entry. This piece was written in memory of MLK Jr. However it could also describe the fate of the teachings of a certain footsore rabbi who came a cropper when he went against the combined power of Rome and the Jerusalem power structure. However unlike MLK who left his letters, speaches and sermons that footsore rabbi left no written record. We don’t know what HE taught. He didn’t write anything down. People with their own agendas did write things down and out of those writings at least one author has identified eight distinct theologies in the New Testament. And he believed that seven of those were wrong. Unfortunately that book didn't make the trip to Eastern Oregon and damn if I can remember the author or the title. 

 Now that He is safely out of the way we can make just about anything we want out of the scraps that were allowed into the accepted canon and proceed to beat each other over the head with them and build fences with safely locked gates. Above those gates are the words Keep Out.

EXCERPT FROM A LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM JAIL

 Written in April of 1963

 “I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice, who constantly say “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action.” Who paternalistically believes that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom…” Martin Luther King Jr. Letter from Birmingham Jail. 

He echoes what I've often felt. Who are the greatest enemies of change? The diehard segregationists, abortionists, talking heads at least they make no secret of who they are? Or is it the nice people who just can't be bothered, don't want to rock the boat, don't have time or are afraid that they'll get into trouble too. 

And another group we've seen all too many of these last election cycles. They can't get al that they want, when they want it, so they pick up their marbles, go home and forfeit the more important right we have that is guaranteed under the constitution. The right to vote. Also the responsibility to make sure the candidate are there to do the job, not running as a spoiler. Jill Stein comes to mind as an example. And if Ralph Nader had sat out the election in 2000? Old news but it does get you to thinking. 

Also the churchmen who told King that he was supposed to stick with spiritual matters and not meddle in politics. But how can you separate the two? You can't. King pointed out that young white men and young black men were being sent half way around the world to fight toeither when in many parts of the country they couldn't sit down a share a meal in the local  diner. 

THE INCONVENIENT HERO

 t's the annivesary of the I Have a Dream speech. Our national mythology drops MLK off the radar in 1963 and he resurfaces just in time to be murdered in cold blook in Memphis in 1968. Ah the sixties. frankly when you think about it very little permanent good came out of that chaotic decade.  

This is an excerpt from the conclusion of Vincent Harding’s essay The Inconvenient Hero found in his collection Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero.

This essay collection was originally published in 1996. The echoes of the fall of the Soviet Union were still reverberating. If he had revised the essay for the second edition he probably could have used manipulated anti terrorism and it would mean pretty much the same thing.

1996 the videogame industry was just taking off and “Reality TV” was a nightmare waiting to be born.

The so called Free Trade Agreement treaties were just being negotiated and signed. Beware when anyone in any government or corporate position tries to pat you on the head and tell you not to worry your little head about the details; it’ll all work out.

And the toxic hyper individualism pushed by the likes of the Ryans and Santorums was just beginning to send out its poisonous tendrils.

Harding really catches the cadence of the spoken word in the written word. If you can get away with it try reading it out loud. And Mr. Harding goes in the neglected Wordsmith column.

“Who dares recall the man when, when all the plagues he fought are still among us, standing in the way of the “America we hope to be”: poverty and exploitation, racism, militarism, materialism, manipulated anticommunism? How shall we recall him when the America which has been is still protected and justified by Bible quoting presidents and supine legislators who offer no visionary leadership to a spiritually crippled people?

Who dare rededicate themselves to the causes of this hero? Who is there now when major portions of his black middle class have made their peace, found equal opportunity in the America that is? Someone.

Who is there now when the overwhelming experience of the black church is still focused on the individualistic religious experience, breaking faith with the Tubmans, the Turners, the Truths, and the Kings (and the King)/? Someone.

Who is there now when so many Black youth in whom the fire once burned are now being cooled out by drugs, by jail, by military lies, by poisoned cultural opium in music and on screens, and by big money for small games? Someone.

Who is there when so many of his white comrades now stand by in cynicism, success, fear, and puzzlement? Someone.

Who is there when the poor (and the recently poor) now compete for crumbs across racial and ethnic lines, rather than standing together in vision, to pray, to recollect, to plan, to struggle? Someone.

Who stands with a hero who insists on living for the broken and exploited,  Who refuses to deny nightmares, who still will not let dreams die, and is not afraid to go on exploring, trembling, stumbling wherever dreams lead him? Someone.

Who will open the door for the children, to let them see him, feel him, as he was, to recall him as he is, perhaps to expose their hungry, directionless lives to the flaming vector of his passion for the poor? Someone.

Is he safely dead? Perhaps we should recall him and see. Now. Perhaps in the process we  learn again how to live – unsafely, in love with God and neighbor, with cleansing, purifying fire, with the America that is yet to be created – by us. 

STILL PASSING FACE PALM APPROACHING MELT DOWN

 

When I originally wrote this entry you could make comments on the reviews on Amazon. Back in 2020 Amazon not only removed the ability to comment on a review but removed all the comments already written. Too bad. It was a riot to read the comments on this particular review. 

I have admited over the years that admired Carl Sagan. He may not have been the best scientist in his field but his ability to explain how science works was remarkable. He didn't talk down to his adience. He assumed that anyone who was curious, willing to listen, perhaps willing to do some of their own research was capable of understanding the basics of science. He had his prejudices and was upfront about them. Didn't have much use for astrology or the UFO mania. He didn't discount the possibillity of life on other worlds just that was no hard evidence that thos possible aliens had visited earth. Or if they had they didn't leave any evidence  behind. I still make no apologies for being totally PO'd  at a reivew written by someone who didn't bother to watch the series or do any basic reserach on Dr. Sagan's background and education. And it's only gotten worse. At least it looks like it to these tired eyes. 

Between politics, crap like this and some stories about rape/shaming culture in certain fundie colleges in this country I was just about ready do somebody some serious injury last night. So I wrote it out instead of punching it out. 

“I rented the 13 episode series after having watched a portion on PBS, thinking that it seemed like a good watch. How wrong I was. This is nothing more than a New Age brainwashing series. The music, often Vangelis, repeating the same things over and over, does nothing but brainwash and dumb the viewer. The overall purpose of the video series is a "science as religion" infommercial (and perhaps a means of self-worship -- he seems to enjoy the sound of his own voice). Sagan, as it should by now now be widely known, himself engaged in his fair share of pseudoscience. He is best described as a sci-fi writer pretending to be a scientist. By accusing others of pseudoscience, he was able to divert attention away from his own pseudoscience because clearly, anyone accusing anyone else of something can't possibly be doing the same thing. That would be hypocritical! And, after almost 30 years, the tapes still sell for this ridiculous price. Save yourself the time and/or money and restrict yourself to series about real science. This is in the same league as "What the bleep do we know?", judging by the trailers and clips of the latter.”

This is a review of the original Cosmos series I stumbled over on Amazon. I do love the one star reviews. In a back handed, how can anybody be so freakin’ braindead in the 21^st century sort of way.

One the reviewer doesn’t tell us how much of the series he/she actually watched. I’m guessing just enough to trigger the inbuilt fundie meter. I gathered enough from their other reviews to suspect we might be dealing with some kind of “theology” student here.

Anyway, typical fundie bashing of anyone they don’t agree with. Beginning with, drum roll please.

“New Age propaganda.” New Age as defined by Webster: an eclectic group of cultural attitudes arising in late 20th century Western society that are adapted from those of a variety of ancient and modern cultures, that emphasize beliefs (as reincarnation, holism, pantheism, and occultism) outside the mainstream, and that advance alternative approaches to spirituality, right living, and health. If this mindless twit had bothered to actually watch the series he/she would have discovered that Carl Sagan was about as New Age as my mother. He doesn’t mention reincarnation, had no patience with the occult, astrology or the UFO cult of the times. He doesn’t discount the possibility of extra terrestrial life. Just that we’ve been visited recently. Or any time for that matter.

Geez, what do you have against Vangelis? The soundtrack also includes other “New Age” brain washers such as Vivaldi, Bach, Pachelbel and Rimsky Korsokoff.

Science as religion. Excuse me while I go take forty turns around the yard to cool off. Science is just that science. And Sagan did spend a fair amount of time over the course of the series lamenting what we’ve lost in the fires of history. Also lost libraries.

“loves the sound of his own voice.” Yo, Spam for brains (sorry for insulting a perfectly useful if calorie and salt laden lunch meat) he’s the narrator for cryin’ out loud. The programs are his personal opinions so there are very few other talking heads involved. I guess he could have collected a bunch of slides, put labels on them and did a thirteen hour slide show. 

“A pseudo scientist pretending to be a scientist.” Face palm, head bounce, ear splitting scream. Two bachelors, a master’s and a PhD. Taught in California, at Harvard and Cornell. He participated in several space missions through the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I mean how much MORE DO YOU WANT!!!. I have at least four of his essay collections in my library. Demon Haunted World was probably the best.. He did write ONE novel. Contact, which I haven’t read. Saw the move though. It was cool. Known as a science fiction writer pretending to be a scientist????? Are we even on the same planet?

I suspect that the so called pseudo science in question is Sagan’s thorough going, passionate defense of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. And I do mean passionate. He spent at least ten minutes in the second episode waxing nealyr poetic over the shared ancestry of bacteria, fish, trees…and us. And I just rewatched the third episode. I suspect the other "pseudoscience" is climate change. Sagan was ringing the alarm bells back in 1980. 

This is a prime example of the mountains of crap we have to put up with as we try to too many of our fellow citizens kicking, screaming and shouting at the top of their lungs out of the Dark Ages and into the future. Can’t stop now there’s too damn much to lose.

 And please excuse the caps and extra punctuation, but I passed pissed off yesterday and am rapidly heading into ballistic territory.

One consolation out of thirty six comments originally attached to this one star review, ninety five percent were of the “bro, what HAVE you been smoking” variety. 

THE PALE BLUE DOT

 Shot taken by the Cassini space probe. That tiny dot below the rings of Saturn is our earth. What Carl Sagan called "the pale blue dot."  

When the Voyager space craft had reached just beyond the outer planets Carl Sagan persuaded the  mission controllers to turn the space craft around to take pictures of the planets. Earth didn't even cover a whole pixel. And this is what Carl Sagan had to say about that piece of a pixel. 

What he had to say about that small island in the Cosmic Ocean can't be said often enough. Neil Tyson used this quote in the finale of the final episode of the new Cosmos. That quote and his summing up are enough to get me to buy the series.

"From the Pale Blue Dot.

That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar. Every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, live there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturing, our imagined self importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity-in all this vastness- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.

It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and if I might add, a character building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known..

 Carl Sagan.

Yes, it's the only home we have or will have in the forseeable future so we do we keep treating it like a garbage dump? Why do we treat our neighbors as if they were disposable trash? Why, oh why, oh why. I was literally in tears at the end of the episode. We're capable of so much more. So damn much more.