Engaging the Inertial Dampeners

I have come to the conclusion that inertia is the strongest force in the universe--at least, in my universe.  Once I start doing something, my tendency is to keep doing it until acted upon by a countering force. To wit: once I got into the habit of writing on a frequent basis, and I kept on at it, somehow finding the time to get an essay or two or three a week posted on this or another blog.

Sometime in the last year or so, however, the forward flow was slowly counteracted by forces that seemed to be beyond my control.  My students are, for example, becoming more and more academically needy from lack of appropriate training, and much more difficult to engage.  I'm probably getting grumpier and more boring from lack of interest in the more time-consuming aspects of social media (still no Facebook, although I did sign up for Google Plus, visited infrequently) and even less interest in most popular culture.  I cannot, for example, even begin to understand the zombie thing.

The result of the change in inertial direction has meant fewer and fewer blog posts.  This is probably not a bad thing, because even I got tired of hearing myself grouse all the time about the sorry state of the galaxy.  Nevertheless, the Beloved Spouse and I have recently managed to get off our saggy duffs and begin something we've been needing to do since we bought our little house on the Texas prairie: renovate our sadly neglected bungalow.  It's about rutting time, since the poor thing turns 90 this year.  We kept thinking we'd do it ourselves, but never did.  And now I know why.

Mind you, we were spurred into action by a series of unfortunate events (what I now think of as an example of an inertial dampener--or, as some Trek buffs like to say, "damper").  Designed to keep spacegoers from slamming into the walls when a ship drops out of warp, these nifty devices compensate for the inertia that speeds the Enterprise and the rest of the Fleet through space.   In our more earth-bound sense, it refers to the proverbial kick in the arse that gets things moving.

The Kelmscott-Manor lookalike next door recently sold (finally, after well over a year on the market for about a half a million; I think it fetched around 400K) to a lady with cocker spaniels who clearly didn't want our mangy little bungalow to mar her privacy or her view.  So she put up a six-and-a-half foot wooden privacy fence that runs from the back of both properties to about where our front porch begins.  Suddenly, instead of the lovely twin gables and rose garden, we were faced with the ass-end of a fence, metal support posts included. 

On the plus side, we don't have to look at the bad concrete-step replacement with its adjacent concrete lions (the BS and I belong to neither the Cult of the Concrete Animals or the Cult of the Bronze Children, both of which seem to be rapidly gaining adherents in town).  It also cuts down the air flow and toasts our side yard in the afternoon. 

Instead of bitching and wingeing, however, we squeezed the lemons out, added limoncello and ice, and got the same fence company to build us a craftsman style four-foot spaced picket fence with a pergola and gate, and we're getting rid of the old wire fence that demarcated the back yard; the puppies are going to be ecstatic because they'll be able to get much closer to the terrifying babies and strollers and neighborhood dogs that Woody and Arlo are jointly convinced are out to get us.

The fence, in the end, was what finally got us serious about the renovations.  Thanks to a very nice re-do across the street, we found a contractor without the help of Angie's List (from which I'm going to resign shortly; we apparently don't like the same things that everybody else likes), and his crew is already at work prepping the house for painting, re-roofing, re-siding, re-glazing on the exterior.

Before I close out this rather long-winded account, I'd like to mention the sweet man who drove by the house a few weeks ago, with the improbable (but appropriate) name of Charlie Angel.  He had  been driving by occasionally, hoping someone would be out so he could stop and ask about the house he'd been born in--not brought to at birth, but born in!  He'd lived here as a child until his parents built another bungalow a few blocks away, but he had a child's happy memories of the place, which apparently hasn't changed all that much.  After a tour of the house (which was embarrassingly messy, but he didn't seem to see the dust and clutter) he left, a happy man, and we promised to have him back after the renovation is finished.

It's funny how this encounter reinforced my very conservative approach to restoring historical spaces.  The house may well end up looking even more like it did when Charlie was a little boy. For one thing, no granite is going in. Anywhere.  We're not even putting in air conditioning (that's a later project, because what we are doing has already taken up the budget).  Most of what's happening is conservation rather than renovation, with the idea of making the place more livable in case we get stuck in Texas for the rest of our lives.  The Beloved Spouse had already taken the summer off from teaching, and has begun the onerous task of clearing out the garage, carting stuff to the tip, arranging for "big trash" pick-up, and financing for the repairs.  So even though my tiny little holiday (two weeks) began on Monday, he'll be able to supervise the work over the summer and all I have to do post commentary on the progress of our new inertial direction.

Image notes: the photo is one I took this week, with the house in mid-prep (the construction debris trailer can be seen at left). The shot was taken with the Nikon D80.

Earth Day 2012, Part 2: Living Here, Living Now

 

 As an antidote to yesterday's depressing assessment of the State of the World, I thought I'd offer a second look. I seldom stay down for long, and it didn't take much to set me on a more optimistic track this morning.

After slogging though the Sunday edition of the Daily Poop, I picked up the February/March edition of Mother Earth News (in preparation for a day in the garden), and read this from the "News from Mother" column:

These days, if you find yourself feeling negative about the future of humanity, you may find some solace in looking at the past.

Well, looking at the past is something I do for a living, so the invitation is a natural for me.  In fact, my Art History 2 lectures just last week focused on conditions in nineteenth-century England at a time when folks like William Morris, John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites,  and other admirers of the Medieval world were all themselves looking to the past for better models of how to live.

As the Mom article pointed out, however, there are many aspects of human life that have actually improved since both the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century: life expectancies are way up, violence is (amazing, but true) way down, and we're generally kinder than at any previous moment in recorded history.  We don't hold slaves, we don't sanction cock fights, and we generally don't kill people we don't agree with (even though we might talk about doing so during election years).

The article ends with an acknowledgement that we've still got a way to go, but instead of throwing up our hands in despair (which is what I probably seemed to be doing yesterday) it notes that we actually have examples of how we've improved things in the past:

. . . looking at what we've achieved, it doesn't seem unreasonable to think we can solve present and future challenges. We can live on this planet in a sustainable way. We can preserve its health and vitality for future generations. And we can make the lives of future human beings even better than the lives we lead today--we have a track record for that kind of achievement.

So, instead of whining about what we haven't accomplished since 1970, perhaps it's time to note that some significant changes have occurred, and to relish them rather than keep complaining about what we still need to do. At least for today.

For example, when I first became a vegetarian back in the late seventies, I did so because I didn't like the way animals raised for food were treated.  I figured that if I couldn't take the responsibility for killing an animal myself, I didn't have the right to eat it.  Eventually, I relented when my kids started insisting that they were being deprived, but we still ate meat sparingly, and I did the best job I could in finding humanely treated animals.  Nowadays, we still eat meat infrequently, but when we do there are numerous outlets from which we can buy "happy" cows, pigs, and chickens.  I can buy eggs that are expensive but come from chickens raised more like the ones we had when I was a kid.  I'm quite willing to pay a premium to do so, even if it means that most of my diet needs to come from grains and vegetables (all organically and/or sustainably raised, some home-grown).  In truth, however, we could largely solve our national obesity problem by doing just that: changing our diets substantially, and weaning ourselves from overly-processed foods.

When I drive to buy my food, I can now do so in a fuel-efficient car that sips gas and causes far less particulate matter to enter the atmosphere than any car I've ever driven.  The good thing about high gas prices is, after all, that manufacturers are producing more and more automobiles with higher and higher levels of fuel economy and lower emissions.  These days I'm watching the highway fill up with hybrid cars, even though in this part of the world pickups will probably rule in perpetuity.

Advances in medicine, although expensive, mean that I got an extra twenty five years with my father, and have myself lived eighteen years longer than I might have done (and another three years than I might have from the valve problem).  New drugs have kept me essentially healthy, and will probably prevent my daughter from ever having to endure bypass surgery at all, even though she shares my crappy genes. Cures for various cancers are being developed, and we've already seen declines in occurrences based on improved ways of life; as drugs and diets and living habits improve, fewer people will have to suffer from them, and those who do may well see even more cures developed in the next several years. 

As much as I might rail against technology, I'm always aware of what I owe to innovation. We have lived in an old house (celebrating its 90th birthday this year) for the past twelve summers, relying on its solidly-built bones and dual attic fans to help keep us cool.  We've gotten by with three small air conditioning units for three rooms, and have stayed relatively comfortable.  This year, thanks to tax rebates and technological availability, we're hoping to install a geothermal heating and cooling system, in part to replace the aging gas furnace installed when we bought the house.  The plan is to wean ourselves as much as possible from fossil fuel consumption.  Of course, even ten years ago, this option would have been a mere pipe dream--so our fuel consumption options are improving rather rapidly.

These changes are, in truth, rather insignificant in light of the challenges that lie ahead.  Big Oil is still in charge, Big Consumption is still the economic model, and much of the world still has no access at all to any of the improvements we enjoy.

War, pestilence, pollution, and greed are all still there, lurking.  But we may be getting better at ridding ourselves of their threats--or we could be, if we can figure out how to meet the challenges of educating our kids well enough so that they can ensure their own futures.  As much as I complain about how little my students know, I can't help but think that they'll work it all out, as long as we can help them develop the tools. 

Image notes: this shot was taken facing east one evening last month with the Nikon D80.  We've had an abundance of rain this spring and the skies have been lovely.  Yesterday's post features a view west, probably taken later that same day.

Earth Day 2012, Part 1: Hunkering Down

I can't say that this Earth Day finds me particularly sanguine about the future of this planet.  My puny efforts to shore up my half acre and shield it from encroaching doom seem almost like a bad science fiction novel about the end of the world.  Continuing efforts to learn to love the prairie (of which there is really very little left) aren't working especially well--and I frequently find myself indulging in "real estate porn," looking for affordable properties in the desert west.

In the meantime, the carbon sink is wilder than ever except for the patch I've cleared out for tomatoes. We'll have to do a bit of work tomorrow to open up a little more sunny space, but if I can remember to water them, they should do well enough.  But the abundant rain this spring, along with the lack of a true winter, have both meant that the whole place is lush and jungley. I'll have to clear out a mass of mint soon, because it's taking over the entire potager. A lettuce plant from last year has taken over the entire pot, is now nearly three feet tall, and has bolted, producing rather lovely yellow flowers.  The leaves, alas, are too tough to eat.  My Swiss chard is massive and not particularly tasty, but pretty to look at.  The few things I've planted seem to be doing well, and there will be banana peppers for salads along with the tomatoes--but I'm skeptical about my ability to get anything else in before it's too  late. But all this what's going well.

The truly depressing news has to do with oil and gas and tar sands and fracking. There seems to be no end to the American lust for fossil fuels, and the Obama administration is too interested in re-election to buck it.  I'm not sure anyone there really wants to anyway.  I do have to laugh at the far-right characterization of Obama as a Socialist, because he wouldn't know one if it bit him. Hard. On the nose. The Keystone pipeline has been delayed, for "further study," but the lower half of it has received a go-ahead. So now we can expect a large chunk of what's left of the prairie in East Texas to be plowed under in service of transporting oil to the Gulf for processing and (inevitably) to be shipped off to China.  So much for ensuring the energy future of the United States.

I truly long for some really convincing report to announce the arrival of Peak Oil and Peak Natural Gas so that the oil industry (which is, of course, a Person, with rights equivalent to mine--or better) might finally put its mighty weight behind alternative energy sources. But it most likely won't happen in my lifetime, and I'm becoming quite thankful that I won't have grandchildren who'll have to deal with the consequences.

Last year's Earth Day post was far more optimistic, and I apologize for being so gloomy this time. But the evidence for climate change mounts daily, and its increasing rapidity is daunting.  All that old crabby utopian social-anarchists like me will be able do do in the future is to sit baking in our lawn chairs under the ravaged no-longer-bearing pecan trees and say "I told you so."

When I think back to that first Earth Day nearly forty years ago, I remember some of the cranky folk I knew then: long-haired hippies crying doomsday slogans and warning of environmental devastation if we continued on our wicked, planet-destroying paths.  For much of the last thirty years we've been wrapped in a cocoon of possibility, insulated against reality, and even gigantic oil spills (the most recent Gulf spill, as Rachel Maddow pointed out on her show last night, has taught us no appreciable lessons) and devastating weather can't shake us out of our complacency.

My only recourse seems to be to build a thicker cocoon.  I've already let the birds plant a perimeter forest around this small plot, and during the summer I can hide out in the back yard between teaching assignments. In the winter I can draw insulated curtains to hold out the cold, if it ever really gets cold again. In a couple of years I can retire and take a trip out west, because Vera's 56 miles per gallon  will probably be enough to make one last visit possible.  At the rate we're pumping oil, there should be more than enough for another decade, especially if the price keeps rising and fewer people drive. 

But it's difficult to muster any optimism at all when the real price of all this pumping will be smuttier skies, less breathable air, smoggier sunsets, and universal lung problems. 

Ever hopeful,  however, I'll spend Earth Weekend in the garden, communing with the bees and butterflies that are still around, enjoying the sultry southern aromas of spring, mowing down prairie grasses, re-reading Morris, and dreaming of utopia. 

May the next year prove me wrong and provide us with a path toward change.