three in the morning, at an age of four

he unexpectedly embraced me

as i checked on this little buddle of love and joy …

 

“I love you grandpa!”

*************************

 

fooling them into thinking i was telephoning santa claus, and shortly thereafter

the arrival of ol’ saint nick and mama claus (the dennis bakers)

and their merry visits in our betsy martin, wonderfully-decorated-home …

 

they loved the baker clauses

 

grandkids tromping/running around and ’round and ’round and around

this ol’ 1920s sears home

having so very much fun …

 

i.b. & a.l. loved this old house

 

at six years, dressed like a rock star

on a halloween night

agilely leaping from the trailer stage like a star with flames …

 

kids love the festivities of samhains

 

another six year-old industriously working over & around the chiminea

for more than an hour

experimenting, making tea, patiently explaining scientific concepts to his old grandpa

 

this boy imbibes & assimilates scientific knowledge & wisdom

 

“we hit the target right in the center with the 22!”

“swimming in this cool comal is really great!!”

“sure i’ll play you at chess, … checkers, mancala, cornhole, or baseball … and beat you soundly, grandpa!!!” …

 

games of intellect and skill which owen zane et al. love and at which they excel

 

love so thoroughly

their competitive and joyful sporting through swimming, running, baseball, futebol, and karate

and the music they play …

 

and certainly they love it too

 

the four-year-old mischieviously innocent

and dancingest, twirlingest human around

love dearly this beautiful little girl …

 

she is deep and forever, lovingly in my heart, mind and soul (not unlike all the others)

 

young scientists experiencing lady beetles

and multitudes of hexapoda and other arthropoda

and additional biota including the dinosaurs of the twenty-first century …

 

how can an old entomologist/ecologist not love it?

……………….

yes i did once paddle william soundly

when he refused to bathe on a camping trip

a terrible sin … i do not believe in corporal punishment or threats of … and should not have done this …

 

the love was, is, will always be there  … and paddling was a terrible wrong

……………….

perhaps all this doesn’t matter

to anyone else!

but it certainly does to me …

 

deep love, real caring, unconditional forgiveness, reconciliation is necessary

for quality life for all, including individuals and populations of other species,

for as long as possible

 

humblly, respectfully, and lovingly,

pbm

7 S’s / VV->^^

 

No.  …  Pope Francis is not perfect.  But he is one religious leader who is honestly and smartly, and in humility, attempting to address challenging local & global issues of socio-ecological injustice and insanity positively & effectively.

The encyclical of Francis, “Laudato si” stresses that: 

• the ecological crisis is a moral & spiritual challenge to care for creation,
• we are all connected and should plan and act in solidarity, and
• we must acknowledge that the poor contribute the least to the ecological crisis. 

Francis has said that “taxation should favor wealth redistribution for public services.” 

Finally, in “Fratelli tutti,” Francis says “Life, for all its confrontations, is the art of encounter”. That is what life is: the art of encounter. Encounter is, as it were, the oxygen of life.  Francis denounces a culture of walls and disparity and asks for us to see Jesus of Nazareth in the excluded.  

He wishes for us to recognize that peace comes through truth, justice, and mercy.  Francis shouts out to the world, “Never again war” … or the death penalty.

…………………

No.  …  I don’t have the social, political, human, financial, and cultural capital of Francis.  However, somewhat remotely like the proposals of Francis, the positions I personally take aren’t socio-politically, economically, or even religiously popular.  Remarkably, my humble proposals of anti-growth and that “Less Is More”* can even seem radical in this neoliberal capitalistic globe of rapid depletion of: social fabric, dynamic homeostatic symbioses including humans, and sustainable ecological systems.  They seem so very radical to some, even though they are desperately necessary for quality life for a decent existence of future generations.

Yes.  …  Living a minimalist ecological footprint is the moral and ethical way toward what should be our goal of quality life for all, including other species.  I necessarily propose living the seven S’s … sabiamente (or wisely), simply, smally, slowly, steadfastly, sharingly, sustainably.  (I stopped at seven [7] because of my respect for the recognition of this number, seven, by some indigenous nations as a sacred number which represents world order to its fullest. … But I could have easily added “living in solidarity.”)

Anyway, there are policies and actions we should be taking, such as:

• individually and collectively lessening our ecological footprint and living in concert with nature;
• sharing toward equity and opening borders;
• realizing positively ethical applied ecology across curricula & campuses of all human organizational entities;
• pacifism, including the abolishing of the death penalty vs. guns, arms, & War;
• realizing appropriate applied agroecology through a matriarchal agrarian society; and of course …
• anti-growth and development of a more appropriate political system.

All of this is a big bill to fill.

But here in Clean, or Real Seguin, we could truly get real, show solidarity, practice an ethical art of encounter, and begin to do just a little more good than we currently are … in the following ways …

• honoring the black human-sector of our ecological community through removing the John Ireland monument at Central Park, Seguin, Texas,
• as a show of respect for Tejanos, the owners of the Aumont building, Seguin should remove the Texas Ranger mural on the north wall of that historical building,
• we Seguinites should erect a monument at Central Park to the wonderful indigenous peoples we drove out and killed into genocide, who had lived in relative concert with native pecans, acorns, deer, prickly pear cactus and other good foodstuffs and gathered relatively sustainably for thousands of years in this land of the Guadalupe-Blanco River Watershed,
• not using disposable plastic bags to carry purchased goods from our stores (I would propose that HEB immediately terminate the silly immoral use of of disposable plastic bags, and soon quit making disposable paper bags available,),
• collectively learning to compost organic materials from our homes and local landscape … and effectively use on local Land this organic and nutrient-laden “Gold.”
• closing of some of Seguin (eventually much of Seguin) to private automobile traffic as well as to make the city more bicycle friendly in other ways!

These actions here in Seguin might eventually result in intelligent and robust communication and policies and accomplishments toward anti-growth & sustainable ecological community!

(There’s more of these sorts of suggestions on pages 235-7 and others in our little book on applied ecology, Games We Play (kite.pub) .  Moreover, British ecological economist Kate Raworth does a great job through her illustrations of doughnut economics in her intellectually smart book, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist – Wikipedia .  She clearly demonstrates how growth and increasing needs of the human component of Eaarth (or Earth in the Anthropocene), exacerbates the serious ecological problems of exceeding limits for what was and can be a wonderful living, relatively natural Earth with rich topsoils, clean water & air, and a healthy biodiversity including robust photosynthesizers.

……………..

I must emphasize in this final paragraph that what has made living on this Eaarth particularly pleasurable … is song.  Music, song, and the arts has contributed so very much to quality life.  And it can even be song which is more brutally honest than joyful:

“I don’t doubt for a minute

someday we’ll all learn to start livin’ together

…

We’ll save a little green

A place for birds to sing …

…

someday we’ll all stop

and realize what we’ve got before it’s all gone

someday we will

but I wonder if the world can wait that long

…”

 

Wonder If the World Can Wait That Long

By Adam Wright

(2609) Wonder If The World Can Wait That Long by Adam Wright (lyric video). – YouTube

 

pbm

7 S’s / VV->^^

……………………………

in many ways i have had my way

born of St. Louise Katherine Kneuper Martin

wedded to a wonderful Elizabeth Florence Hoffmann Martin

for 51 years

(and Betsy has a Johnny Hoffmann-smile)

many real and thoroughly good & special family & friends

some of whom attended our recent wedding anniversary celebrations!

but i am never satisfied

from, through, & with my 1946 to 2022-experiences & viewpoints

in a world of locally moral & immoral humans in a globally very, very, very immoral society*  …

it could be so much better!

If i had my way

governmental entities in my local community

would buck the globally prevalent immoral policies & actions

of neoliberal capitalism, growth, and socio-ecological destruction

from the left and the right and center

from many religious, social, political, ECONOMIC, and other human ecological structures

we would luchar for new socio-political/economic systems

of Positively Ethical Applied Community Ecology/PEACEmaking

in which humans live sustainably …

sabiamente, smally, simply, slowly, steadfastly, sharingly

Yes!  Sustainably & in Solidarity

with small individual & collective ecological footprints

and in concert with a dynamic homeostatic symbioses, or nature

most important

my own family

immediate and extended

would strive for solidarity and harmony

through intelligent & persistent diplomacy & communication

Amen

********************

*Moral Man and Immoral Society – Wikipedia

pvm

7 S’s/VV->^^

 

in the 1970’s with speed limits at 55

and a curbing of christmas lighting

i was somewhat elated

that we’d finally begun to realize some socio-ecological sanity

(my dad loved it!

he drove 45

and went around turning out lights)

……………………

deaf ears.  blind eyes.  lack of real feeling

 

deaf, blind, oblivious

the parade on july fourth was de facto celebrating unbridled growth and War

 

celebrating what cannot be

and doing some celebrating of what was/is truly quite criminal

 

look … i can truly enjoy & appreciate all the hoopla & fireworks

and the smiling faces of joy and fun antics of mayor donna & mary jane windle & linda duncan

and city manager steve

and others

nevertheless i do not wish for us to get too joyful & complacent*

 

my hope is that

sometime soon after i pass

we seguinites, texans, citizens of los estados unidos & do mundo

will wake and realize what we did and are doing

through our terrible addiction to growth

 

“growth (and associated militarism) isn’t freedom” for many reasons

 

obviously our economic growth and ecological destruction

supported by tropical/south-of-the-tropics’ exploitations, invasions, and socio-ecological disruptions

are not freedom for the undocumented nicaraguan workers–

in legal limbo and slaving in a deep socio-political/economic rut

at cheese & pizza factories in Wisconsin– …

folk with whom I recently stayed with and visited

(by the way, we unfortunately have a similar despairing situation at tyson in seguin)

 

obviously growth was not/is not freedom** for the indigenous human beings of Pine Ridge Reservation

with whom i volunteered in an ecology camp for youth a few days past

and from whom we ripped Land, their natural world; Tatanka, their foodshed, their renewable energy;

language, culture, spiritually, stability; sense of place and community

who we, including our “revered” forefathers, genocidally killed toward annihilation

with germs, guns, ecological devastaion, and starvation …***

and despite our sacred flag and constitution and amendments and rule of law

and so-called Christianity

we broke treaty after treaty after treaty after treaty

 

(yeah! … MAGA!!!)

………………………………..

now  …

my schedule for these five-minute presentations to local governmental entities

in my effort to PERHAPS tweak your interest toward ecology & critical thinking

dictates that i begin say something about the Net Primary Productivity & Human Appropriated Net Primary Productivity

that we really depend on for energy and perpetual life

and that are key indicators of sustainability

or quality life & equity for all, including other species, for as long as possible****

 

Net Primary Productivity is what is left over from photosynthesis for consumers

after the real producers on Eaarth, or photosynthesizers

have their needs of solar energy

 

Human Appropriated Net Productivity is what the currently most powerful consumers, humans,

especially those of los estados unidos

(often greedily) utilize

(as I have stressed before in these presentations

we citizens of los estados unidos, as four percent of Eaarth’s human population

consume twenty plus percent of eaarth’s resources)

 

and we humans appropriate a lion’s share, or twenty-five plus percent, of net primary productivity

 

i’ll let your inquisitive, rational, moral & ethical minds take it from here

to cogitate and deliberate on why continued growth (including military power and manufacture of guns and other armaments)

is not only immoral and ecologically destructive

but “in the end” … even impossible

 

pbm

7 S’s / VV->^^

*****************************************

*Mom’s Kneuper side of our Louise & Alton Martin family settled in what is now Guadalupe County in the 1840s and 100 years later, my Mom and Dad had their first home near Mary B. Eskine School and bought furniture at Starcke’s. (I have an old historical booklet from the 1940’s sponsored by Starcke’s which Mom gave me.)  Grandpa Paul Kneuper used to stay at the Aumont when doing governmental and political business.  The Martins from Stockdale traded in Seguin from in the early 1900’s.  Brother Dr. John Russell Martin, MD was born in the small hospital which later housed the Head Start program.  My beautiful & delightful first cousin Wanda Jo Dinklage visited where her grandparents lived on Jefferson Street and she lived in Seguin off and on over many years.  My father-in-law, Johnny Hoffmann–a good cowboy & excellent roper–used to rodeo in Seguin, and he thought the prettiest women in the world were from here in Seguin (other than his wife Florence (Sachtleben).  I swam in & thoroughly enjoyed the old swimming pool at Starcke Park on occasion.  My wife Betsy and I moved here in 1985 and taught school here, and our children spent most of their formative years in Seguin and Seguin schools.

Mostly via bicycling … I have enjoyed the pecans and pecan trees, and Guadalupe River, and Isaac Horta, Sam Ramos, Frank Woods, & Jim Monkerud et al. and tennis, the KC Hall dances, and Pete’s HEB camps, and the SOLC, and Davila’s barbeque, and our Lady of Guadalupe, and Jeep Kiel & his beers, and LULAC and its community garden, and Marvel Maddox & Bobbie, … and all the people of Seguin … and more! … for many years!

I love this place/this ecological community as much as anyone!!!

**(2557) The Freedom Song – YouTube … written by the amazing & savvy artist, Andy Wilkinson!

***Floyd McGee’s “Indian” stories in the Seguin Gazette are illustrative of this, even though they are mostly written under some considerable influence of a white man’s European colonial/Christian/Manifest Destiny perspective.

****From pages 146 & 198 of our little book, Games We Play (kite.pub) .

(Close to eight billion of one dominant species

Annually transform/”consume” more than 580 million trillion joules

Or in excess of about 13865 million tons of oil equivalents)

 

Gaia, Earth (now Eaarth), nature, dynamic homeostatic symbioses

Are matter … simply, complexly … organized with free available energy

And if the energy and resultant chemical reactions aren’t excessive

All is sort of well

 

For most of human existence people lived within their means

For 200,000 years or more, sapiens depended on daily solar energy

Unfortunately for the last 300 years, & especially the last 60

We have become hopeless fossil energy junkies

(We worship at altars of Growth and Neoliberal Capital

Which are dependent on fossil energy & matter)

 

Therefore,

What does plain paul think about all this leftist/”Progressive”/scientific fretting

About “Positively Ethical Applied Community Ecology”/or PEACEmaking?

Well as a white heterosexual male and “middle-class” US citizen

With a doctorate in a science and some pretty good connections

Isso é, decent socio-political & financial capital

plain paul has it made here in 2022

He’ll slide on down the lane of slick petro for 15 or 20 years, or less

And then his worries will be over

He’ll be dead and gone

He’ll leave his and your mess to his and your progeny

 

I suppose plain paul has no real reason to fret!??!

 

(And “Bless him Father for he has sinned.”

He sleeps well EVERY night)

…………………………..

But here is the REAL deal:

 

The Eaarth, its ecosystems, THE ECOSPHERE … CAN BE DIVIDED INTO FOUR QUADRANTS–

 

1.Soil & air (perhaps the most important)

……….

2. Water (Important? Well, we humans are about 60% water!)

……….

3. Organisms (Hmmm. We humans, in particular, do think we are important!

But the trillions of organisms in & on our body outnumber human cells ten to one!!

 

Anyway, in a sort of selfish way of thinking

ORGANISMS are pretty durn important)

……….

4. Energy (Enough said already about its supreme importance

Energy is your essence

A problem is …

That the essence of 21^st Century Homo sapiens

REEKS of oil, coal, and methane)

……….

 

Now let’s probe a bit deeper into the last 60 years and post significant-use-of-fossil-energy

 

1.In the first quadrant of the ecosphere we’re rapidly losing topsoil and polluting it …

As well as ruining air associated with it

2.  In the second we are tying up as well as polluting these amazing polar molecules

3.  In the third we are losing sustaining photosynthesizers, sustaining net primary productivity, and the sustaining connective glue of biodiversity

4.  For the fourth we dream of nuclear fission and fusion and so-called renewable energies.

But because of the 2^nd Law of Energetics,

More of any energy transformation (i.e., too much)

Causes additional problems of many types, including CO2 & CH4 challenges, radioisotopes, and heat pollution,

And general loss of homeostatic symbioses.

 

1.To mask problems in the first quadrant

We use fossil energy & matter in a Haber-Bosch process

Developed in Germany in the early 1900’s

To fix some of the 78% atmospheric nitrogen into essential protein, chlorophyll, nucleic acids, and ATP

And we use fossil fuel to mine phosphorus, potash, and limestone, etc.

In order to recharge and/or amend our soils for ephemeral productions

(By the way, for air and soil contaminates,

Dilution is largely the solution to pollution)

2. (Dilution IS also a solution to water pollution;

However, in addition we do use processes involving fossil energy

To make water potable and useable in living systems, primarily for human Haves)

3.  For the third quadrant, fossil material and energy can increase net primary productivity;

However, this isn’t sustainable

 

4.We ARE viciously addicted to fossil energy (and matter)

In ways that make the breaking of meth addiction in individual humans … peaches and cream

And most of you suckers,

Even some of you who are so-called biologists, naturalists, and ecologists

Don’t truly realize our dependence and enslavement

And its terrible, dreadful consequences …

 

o  Contamination & pollution of living systems,

o  But, also, chaos (including constant WAR) in what should be dynamic homeostatic symbioses

o  And in this chaos, tremendous DISPARITY because of undue, undeserved attention to military & arms, resultant Wars, perverted socio-political/economic (ecological) systems, and lack of appropriate sharing of power and essential resources toward sustainable ecological community

…

o  And … sapiens-devastating global climate change

 

(Often because of a lazy, satisfying “self-imposed” ignorance

O cabezas en fun…s)

 

Yep …

4.Growth and the fossil energy necessary for growth

are currently and into the future, seriously problematic …

 

o  Nature-/dynamic homeostatic symbioses-threatening problematic;

o  Life-threatening problematic

 

o  Gaia-threatening problematic!

 

Therefore, I emphasize emphatically …

… I regret to inform you that Ameerican-type artificialization & growth is not right

It is not moral and ethical!!!

 

And sorry, but neoliberalism & capitalism

 

(Including, especially, militarism, militarized police, & ubiquitous gun sales, …

Etc., etc. associated with greed, conspicuous consumption, ecological ignorance,

And individual rights over a sustainable ecological community) …

 

Won’t cut it!

 

Less Is More!  Degrowth is essential!

 

pbm

7 S’s / VV->^^

…………………………

*”Poem” written for a presentation to the Seguin City Council, Seguin ISD Board of Trustees, and the Guadalupe County Commissioners Court.  plain paul/pbm is almost one-third though his rough list of five-minute talks for presentation this year with a goal of attempting to deal with growth, i.e., the essential necessity of degrowth … and negative connections of growth and positive connections of degrowth with principles, processes, and concepts of positively ethical applied ecology, necessary for critical thinking, decision-making, and action.

pbm

7 S’s / VV->^^

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-rifle-that-ruined-america/ar-AAYunRI?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=bfe6185900d74be7bd578a448d127010

I suppose many of us feel that living the life-styles of our parents “would be the salvation of the world.” I most certainly do!

Anyway, as I say in our recently-published little book on positively ethical applied community ecology, “Games We Play,” I am very sure that the world would be much, much, much better off if all lived the relatively sustainable livelihoods of Alton & Lousie Martin.

Alton & Louise lived “Less Is More,” low input, frugal, and humble lifestyles, which were in many ways anti-capitalistic & anti-growth … and very much in concert with a dynamic homeostatic symbioses including humans. …
……………………..

And what about their probable positions on guns, and gun ownership???

Guns were certainly not of a major concern of my Dad Alton (and definitely not of Mom Lousie). Moreover, Dad truly was a man who avoided excess … OF ANYTHING! (Well … he WOULD crack the whip over us when we were harvesting and putting up dewberries as a family. And especially in the late 1960’s-1980’s, he did always have a lot of hogs on our little five-acre place.)

Early on in my formative years in the 1950’s and early 1960’s we had only a short barrel .22 pump “repeating” rifle which my Dad had inherited. Later, a great uncle gave us a single-shot, longer-barrel .22 (which I now have and use when trapping wild hogs, but which I rarely do of late). … And we did have a couple of BB-guns as well as slingshots, which regrettably, sadly, shamefully, we didn’t call “slingshots.” (I have a post on this, “Confessions and Changes in Values and Socio-Ecological Actions,” in this blog site.)*

We five boys of Alton and Louise hunted cottontail & jackrabbit, squirrel, dove, and quail with these rifles. (Brother Charlie had the reputation for the patience to persist in hunting bobwhite quail until he got a tree-branch shot.) … And Mom would fry and then saute them under a low heat & a cover of gravy.

We had no deer on our 140-acre Stockdale, Texas farm nor in the pastures (of other land-owners where we hunted) around our five acres of mostly hog production near Devine, Texas. When we did get invited to hunt deer by friends around Kyote, Black Creek, or Big Foot, we borrowed rifles from other families, including a long and very heavy Japanese rifle from Tucker Irwin (a wonderful old neighbor who lost his legs in WW II, but never let that slow him down). (My brother Lawrence, now deceased & called “the Amazing Mr. Martin” in his Northside SA school district, shot his first deer with this Japanese rifle in the area of Kyote, Texas.)

Later, my brothers put their agriculture earnings together and purchased a 410 shotgun for hunting birds and a 30-30 rifle for deer hunting. I was off mostly working for my Uncle Peggy and others by that time and then at Texas A&M (where my rommmates and I hunted & ate rabbit, raccoon, & duck), in the Navy, etc.. … Most of my hunting around home was with the pump .22.

My point of this little rambling piece is that my Dad, who had been a Marine in the Pacific and at Peleliu and who was a great marksman, would never have dreamed of purchasing an AR-15, or even some of the other high-power rifles which even my own family now purchase and use.

Dad Alton would have recognized (if only in his subconscious) these high-power arms, AND other arms, as wasteful in very many ways (including the sad and sick destroying of those precious young lives recently in Uvalde, Texas, etc., etc., etc., etc. as a result of a captalistic, growth-** & gun-worshipping & relatively despicable, complacent & apathetical, satisfied, yet greedy, people we call “Americans.”***
…………………………..
*I must emphasize that these are my memories as the eldest of six siblings. My siblings will sometimes argue the details of these memories, even memories I have from before they were born.
**Including growth of arms and the arms industry. It means a “better” GDP in a world of very sick economics and sick economic measures void of indicators of sustainability, or positively ethical applied community ecology.
***A military-loving nephew will now accuse me of “appropriating my paw” … which is okay!

I obviously do not understand the Nature of Human Nature

Perhaps there is little Nature there?

At least now?

………….

pbm

7 S’s / VV->^^

 

It’s not the shooter’s fault

It’s the culpa of the ecological community