Earth Day 2015 – the coming years

My writers' group yesterday discussed an article in The Guardian about the choices made by the Oxford Children's Dictionary editors that set me off, so I wrote this today.

Formosan Clouded Leopard

Earth Day 2015 – the coming years

The Oxford Children’s  Dictionary

edited out words like acorn, otter,

blossom and walnut from the most

recent edition – in the editors’

esteemed wisdom these words were

no longer relevant to today’s children.

Instead words added included celebrity,

broadband, database. Database this

for relevance: remove northern white

rhinoceros from the lexicon – do it soon –

there’s only one breeding male left.

Erase mountain gorilla, predicted

to disappear this year. We are on the edge

of a mass extinction event say the experts.

For the clouded leopard, it’s already

too late. Wipe its name from the slate.

Delete, delete, delete: Hawaiian crow,

last seen in 1999; Pyrenean Ibex, 2000;

spotted green pigeon, 2008. Never say

their names. They deserve better than

to be categorized by the species that

supervised their destruction. Remove

them from the discussion. Other names

rise to  the top of the list, replace what
was lost, next to be forgotten.  Keep

the newly added word, endangered.
We’ll need it in the coming years.

I'm a Little Down

Here's day twenty's submission of NaPoWriMo (a poem a day for the month of April in honor of National Poetry Month). Earth Day is in two days.

I’m a Little Down Today

Last month, the CEO of Exxon-Mobile said,

“I’m in the business of making money,”

as he told the environmentalists

to go fuck themselves

in so many words.

The ice caps continue to thaw.

Monsanto and the chemical corporations

are happy to defy the impotent EPA

while they manufacture pesticides

and GMO food, but don’t want to tell us

what it is that we’re eating.

Nuclear power is green energy?

The petroleum industry has made

so much throw-away plastic

that researchers can’t NOT find any

pieces of it in the Pacific ocean,

no matter where they sample.

The Great Barrier Reef is dissolving

from ocean acidity.

Honeybees are dying from the use of

unregulated pesticides and herbicides,

and as a result, the pollination of crops

like London Bridge, is falling, falling.

And we can’t pass a law that regulates

who can buy a gun?

All fall down.

Spring Willows

Here's day twelve's submission of NaPoWriMo (a poem a day for the month of April in honor of National Poetry Month).

photo from Long Island Daily Photo

Spring Willows


I don't have a photograph
of a willow.
Today as I drove by
two trees tentatively sending shoots
out spindly arms
 - can I call them arms?
they seem armlike to me -
they move in the wind like we wave
or better, dance - a smooth swaying
or a sashay, one almost thinks...

Anyway,
these two trees, relatives, I assume
only because they were near one another
like a brother and sister might choose
another question:
- is it odd to think of tree as siblings -
 part of a family?
Isn't that what a grove is?

But to the narrative
I am struggling with here,
these two trees seemed to wave
as I drove by, and they had a feel to them
that they wanted to be noticed.
Or maybe it was just me, wanting to see them,
and I thought,
I don't have a photograph
of a willow.

I'd sure like one.

Another Year, Another Battle...

It's January 2nd, we survived the New Year, the holidays, and even the event that threatened to spoil our celebration of the winter solstice - the Mayan Apocalypse. Now that it's over, I look out my window on a chilled landscape that gets even more chilling with each Facebook post I read or article I scan on the news web sites. The end-of-the-world fantasy is gone, but the real one feels like it's creeping up on us just as if we lived in this gray ice-fog every day of the year. Extinctions are increasing exponentially around the globe, Arctic and Antarctic sea ice is disappearing at an accelerating rate, giant storms, floods and drought are ravaging the planet with increasing frequency, and what are we doing as a race? The same old act: shooting each other; arguing; looking the other way; praying; making shit up to be afraid of. 

 It's easy to feel overwhelmed by all the things that seem to be going wrong when you sit back and reflect on the state of the world and what a mess mankind is making of it, but I really believe that is counterproductive. How can I look my son in the eye and say, "It's too late. Your baby girl doesn't have a chance." I can't. I refuse to believe we will allow ourselves to sail into that bleak future. And the fact of the matter is that we cast off the lines on that voyage long ago. But we can still change course, turn off the autopilot that is steering us into the maelstrom and hand-steer ourselves to smoother, cleaner waters. That is what I have to believe: that abundant, unpolluted waters are still achieveable. But in order to get there we need more hands to be willing to take the wheel, and we need to remain committed to that course. That is why I will continue to rail at the insanity that plays out in the halls of our government, even if it's only on my Facebook posts or in emails to my congressmen. But here? On a blog about fishing and family? Yes, here too. One issue at a time.

 

I'm no expert on genetic modification of food, but I did harvest a food product (salmon) for 20 years in Alaska (from 1977-97). The threat of farmed fish damaging the gene pool if they should escape their pens has been well-documented over the years. Farmed fish were a big hit when they first began showing up on the international market - they were beautiful (no scars or net marks that come from living in the wild or being caught by fishermen). They were available fresh any time of year, not just during the salmon seasons. And they were cheaper. Before we knew it, fish farmed in Norway and Chile (farms were banned in Alaska) had taken a third of the fresh market out of the hands of the fishermen. Alarming as it was, fishermen unions and some processors took a while to respond with marketing efforts of their own. Wild salmon isn't fed food supplements, has better muscle tone from not living in pens, and doesn't need the food coloring added to the meat like farmed. That message, simple as it was, took years to get out. All of which helped to label farmed fish as an unhealthy food to feed your family. Ironically, the US FDA won't label wild salmon as "organic" because they can't document what they eat out in the oceans while they are maturing - a four-year process in most salmon species. Instead, the farmed fish can get that label, depending on where their enhancement drugs originated. Look here for documentation: The GMO Salmon Struggle

BUT the corporations involved in producing farmed salmon, and one in particular, AquaBounty, have recently taken it a step further - to genetically modify farmed fish to GROW faster. This presents a whole litany of new problems, also documented in the attached article. Just one, that a GMO fish has a voracious appetite, presents a problem for survival in the wild where food sources fluctuate dramatically. If the wild population is contaminated by such a modification, they entire species gets pushed closer to the edge if food sources decline. In other words, they could run out of gas quicker. 

The entire idea of playing with these kinds of enhancements seems ludicrous to me. Why take the risk? Once a GMO fish escapes and breeds into the wild population you can't unring that bell. It's just one among many ideas that are pelting the commercial fisheries around the country (and world) and putting them in jeopardy. Ocean acidification is another major concern (more on that later), and the Pebble Mine (a copper strip mine) proposed at the headwaters of the largest salmon producing rivers in the world (Bristol Bay, Alaska) is another. Makes me glad I'm not making my living on the water anymore, but infuriates me just the same because many people I love still do. One of those folks summed it up well when he said, "They only have to win once to do their damage. We have to win every time." True enough. But I like to think that with each victory the fog seems to lift a little.

If you'd like to join in and tell the FDA not to do this or donate to that cause, go here: Food Democracy Now: No Frankenfish!

 

Fallout

We need to respond to what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico with all the creative energy we can bring to bear. This is so huge in such a negative way, if you are someone who is disturbed by what is slowly smothering us day by day, then let's rise up and DO something about it. Join together. Create. Write songs, poems, stories real and imagined; paint, draw, photograph, sculpt, carve. Create a body of work as vast in scope and size as this ever-growing spill, and let the oil companies and politicians know how many people all over the world are being affected by this catastrophe!

Send examples of your creations or post them on the new Facebook Page: "Artists Respond to the Gulf Oil Spill."

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Artists-Respond-to-the-Gulf-Oil-Spill/122378651135559

Here's one from me, written 21 years ago, after the Exxon Valdez disaster:

Fallout

Innocence in your eyes,

you ask,

"Daddy, we will be safe from the oil?"

I swallow hard.

How can I say to you,

"No! One day it or something like it

something we have created

something I have given my blessing to

(if only by my silence)

will kill us all."

instead I lie,

"Yes, punkin. We'll be safe."