Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  … Thank you all!

………………………

I have had a relatively easy life.  Early on … very early on … Uncle Peggy provided me plenty of work & later he started me toward a sustainable livelihood in ecology.  Daddy gave me some discipline & my siblings were supportive, but certainly not overly supportive.  And I was fortunate to live in what was a relatively wonderful little diverse community of Devine in my formative years.*  …  Then I met beautiful Betsy at Quihi & we had some good kids and grandkids.

 

But, I think, far above & beyond it all, I was incredibly lucky to have St. Louise Katherine Kneuper Martin as a Mom.

………………………

I thank Linda & Tim & Mari Aguilar–& my wife Betsy, and many others, for all you have done for Mom in recent days, months, & years.

……………………….

I wish to end my words with some little, but significant, bits which regretfully we, & particularly including me, may never learn.  I impart the following to some extent because Texas State Senator & family friend Walter Richter** taught me that we all should be, & actually are—though perhaps not good ones—politicians, teachers, & preachers.  (And, yes, I am appropriating in some of what I am going to say, including Pope Francis’ wonderful messages.)

 

One of my colleagues once said, “How could you as white boy from rural, agricultural south Texas & from two land grant colleges, especially A&M, have such a socio-ecological justice ethos, or try to?”  (This colleague is black, born in colonized Belgian Congo.)  … My answer to Roger Biduaka would be the conservationist learning from government programs by my Dad after World War II & his imparting that to me.  It was seeing the very obvious wrongs in “Divine” Devine while growing up.  And Pope John XXIII & Vatican II … & the pacifist movements of the 60’s & 70’s.  …  BUT MOSTLY IT WAS MOM ST. LOUISE.

 

I am sad today because of Mom’s death.  But for the most part I am very, very sad in my reflections that what folk might say in this moment in praise of Mom & all the accolades they may give her, and the statements that some may make about hoping that we all live Mom’s legacy and effect good change through good trouble … will soon be “water under the bridge.”  Similar to promises by some teachers, preachers, and politicians in moments after our frequent mass shootings in this miserable country, living the legacy of Mom St. Louise Kneuper Martin ain’t gonna happen for many folk or in any significant sense.  (The last four years have underlined these strong feelings in me.)

……………………………

Nevertheless, I’m not giving up on what Mom and Dad did try to teach me about ecological justice, but especially what they taught, largely through example, about social justice.

 

Dad did help to teach me with little comments over the years to know that Wars, arms, armaments, & preemptive & retaliatory strikes beget War.  War is the most unjust thing we do, socially & ecologically.

 

Mom, St. Louise taught me that with wisdom, patience, perseverance, humility & COMMUNICATION … AND COMMUNICATION!)

 

AND COMPASSION & FORGIVENESS … AND FORGIVENESS!! …

 

with Love …, PEACE CAN BE ACHIEVED

 

—CAN ONLY BE ACHIEVED–W/OUT WAR.

 

Please try to leave here today in peace with humanity

 

(the undocumented (the i-word is not appropriate), the imprisoned–for whatever reason they are incarcerated including by ICE, the poor–for whatever reason they are poor, the powerless & disenfranchised, those with whom you are uncomfortable no matter their religion, ethnicity, sexual identity or persuasion, skin pigmentation (n-, s-, g-words are generally not appropriate), culture (the j-word is oftentimes inappropriate), traditions, country of origin (w- or p-words may not be appropriate), socio-political/economic “caste”, etc. … or how they dress or decorate their corpus, …) …

 

leave here in humility & peace, go in peace alongside Mom St. Louise Katherine Kneuper Martin.

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

*In my presentation (& afterwards) at Mom’s visitation services on Friday, April 9th, I did attempt to appropriately recognize some of the wonderful Moms I was fortunate to know and learn from in my years in the Devine, Texas area in addition to Mom St. Louise, … like Mrs. Josephine Fortran Bain, Mrs. Helen Loraine Wilkinson, Mrs. Doris Wallace Garrett, Mrs. Mildred Belew, Mrs. Marie Keilman, Mrs. Libby Jasik, and Tony Cruz (who mothered us as members of his farmworker crews), and others.

**Walter helped me purchase full page ads in several rural south Texas newspapers in support of Walter Mondale against Ronald Reagan when the newspapers wouldn’t publish my regular column, “Speaking Freely About Agriculture,” to that effect, i.e., the ads we purchased were my column written for that week.

 

pbm  4/9/21

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )

there’s a special peace

here in mom’s room

in her home

our home

in divine devine

this easter day

 

divine devine

a place of special texas wildflowers

and wonderful april warmth

 

i do not wish

to leave the bedside

of such an always peaceful saint

 

this peace, her peace, will never be forgotten

lessons learned

or that should be learned

by me and kenny

perhaps not learned by me

or many

or hardly any

 

marine corps dad taught me …

War

arms, armaments,

preemptive or retaliatory … vengeful … strikes

War!

War is not worth it

War … begets War

 

War does beget War!

 

Mom whose brothers and husband and in-law family fought in world war ii

taught me … that

with wisdom, patience, perseverance

with communication and forgiveness

with LOVE

with deep real true LOVE

peace can be achieved …

WITHOUT WAR

peace can be achieved

WITHOUT WAR!

 

War begets War

 

War does beget War

 

Mom and dad taught me

Mom and dad did teach me

PEACE CAN ONLY BE ACHIEVED WITHOUT WAR!

without guns, and arms, and armaments,

without snipers and fighter pilots and bombing specialists and tank commanders and …

without cool cold remote drone warriors …

…………………………

i hope mr. prince of peace

that you aren’t giving me

giving us

false hope

 

yes …

 

i do hope mr. prince of peace

that you aren’t giving me

giving us

false hope

 

pbm

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )

 

‘War Begets War, Violence Begets Violence’ | HuffPost

I

as a child of the time it never rained^1–

in 29-inch annual rainfall medina county texas

with a tremendous range around that mean

meaning it can be as low as 10 inches annually–

water, freshwater, fresh water is a first love

 

fresh water is to a great extent my serious concern

when I think about the going-on 10 billion plus

and current levels of consumption of 200,000,000

calories per capita daily

by Haves of course

(ten billion gluttonous biota

consume enormous quantities of quality water)

 

less abstract are the relatively barren

eroded shores of the frio

and a polluted guadalupe

including secret secreted estrogens and their metabolites

and pesticide hormonal mimics

 

once these freshwaters mostly added salts

now they also innocently help to plasticize the seas

 

and despite ubiquitous prevalence

of neoliberal capitalism “freedoms” and laws

in minds and actions of twenty-first century humanity

there is natural law

water is a right and polluting it, artificializing it,

then commodifying it–is a sin, often a serious mortal DEADLY sin

………………………………..

II

clean freshwater systems

we pollute them

quality freshwaters

we plasticize them

sustainable freshwater systems

sometimes we agrilogistically suck them dry in decades

before what were big rivers can reach the seas

as they once did for eons

sustainable fresh water

sometimes it is at a premium

even in over 100-inch annually

tropical rainforests

 

but con dinero sucio

we can “always” get “clean” water from niagara©

well … clean, but with ingestion of some microplastic bits

and expenditure of plenty of low entropy (high entropy!!!) calories

clean water with dirty money

………………………………

III

waterworld 2021 and beyond–

mni² …  three percent fresh

disposes plastics to seas

expediting death

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

1 The Time It Never Rained (tamupress.com)

2 Oglala Lakota word for water.

 

pbm

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )

Oh sim!  Com certeza.¹

Spring, a primavera, is hands down my favorite normal seasonal experience each and every year.

 

For sixty-two years in south and central Texas

Spring has been sprinklings and blankets of beautiful petite copos de vinho, wine cups,

Prickly poppies, phlox, Indian paintbrush, bluebonnets, evening primrose and so much more natural beleza.

And flavorful and scrumptious dewberries and tasty crunchy, tart nopalitos.

 

During the ten lovely years in north Florida and south Georgia

A primavera was a prevalence of amazingly colorful flores …

Azaleas, dogwoods, redbuds, irises and honeysuckles.

 

In the two years north of the Tropic of Capricorn in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brasil

Spring wasn’t really of note.

It was spring year-long with the ever prevalent flaming árvore, flor de flamboyant; buganvília, generally called primavera!, and orquídeas.

 

For perhaps 30 years of my youth, spring was also track and field including all-comers community meets in Tifton, Georgia

And the 15-miler in the Okefenokee

And numerous five- and ten-K races

Of wonderful spring warmth, open air, and camaraderie.

 

In this time of COVID-19 we wonder about a “return” to normal.

An urban dictionary definition emphasizes that normal is about as concrete as love.

 

And I will always love spring, in a pandemic or otherwise,

Normal ou “fora do normal.”²

^{***************************************}

1Portuguese is naturally poetic.

2  In doing a bit of researching for developing this poem, I came across this URL– Campo Grande is the first Brazilian city to calculate its Ecological Footprint | WWF Brasil –and made these comments on FaceBook:

Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul Brasil is where we lived for two years in the 1980s.

………….

The number of Earths needed for the consumption levels of the U.S. is five (5)!!!

As points of reference, from fairly recent calculations per capita (in acres) of WWF:

World’s biocapacity-4.4

 

Ecological footprints:

U.S-20.3

Poland-11.0

Brasil-7.7

Mexico-7.0

China-5.2

Honduras-4.2

Nicaragua-3.4

India-2.9

 

pbm

( 7 S’S / VV->^^ )

Life in song.

(You cannot argue with a song.¹

I don’t and I won’t!)—

 

“I don’t doubt for a minute

Someday we’ll all learn to start livin’ together

We’ll fix all our mistakes …

Someday we will

But I wonder if the world can wait that long.”²

 

“I got a feelin’ called the blues, oh Lord,”

“I’m so lonesome I could cry.”

 

 

“I’m going back some day come what may to Blue Bayou
Where you sleep all day and the catfish play on Blue Bayou …

How happy I’d be.”

 

“Come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now.”

 

“I saw cotton and I saw black
Tall white mansions and little shacks
Southern man, when will you pay them back?
I heard screamin’ and bullwhips cracking
How long? How long? How?”

 

“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We’re finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio.”

 

“Ain’t but three things in this world that’s worth a solitary dime
But old dogs and children and watermelon wine.”

 

“He smiled and all his teeth
Were covered with tobacco stains
He said, ‘It don’t do men no good
To pray for peace and rain.

Peace and rain is just
A way to say prosperity
And buffalo chips is all
That means to me.’”

 

“There he sits all alone on the sidewalk
Hoping that you won’t pass him by

Should you stop?, better not, much too busy
You’re in a hurry, my how time does fly.”

 

“Have you ever noticed when you’re feeling really good
There’s always a pidgeon that’ll come shit on your hood?
Or you’re feeling your freedom and the world’s off your back
Some cowboy from Texas starts his own war in Iraq …

Some humans ain’t human, some people ain’t kind.”

 

 

“I don’t doubt for a minute

Someday we’ll all learn to start livin’ together

We’ll fix all our mistakes …

Someday we will

But I wonder if the world can wait that long.”

 

“I got a feelin’ called the blues, oh Lord,”

“I’m so lonesome I could cry”

 

Life in song.

(You cannot argue with a song.¹

I don’t and I won’t!).

 

pbm

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )

………………………….

1 From David Fleming’s Surviving the Future (2016).

2 The song lines were written—in chronological order after these first ones—by:  Adam Wright, Friend & Mills, Hank Williams, Roy Orbinson & Joe Melson, Chet Powers, Neal Young (2), Tom T. Hall (2), Willie Nelson, and John Prine.

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

 

baked red Lagopus grouse were on their plates before they left their homeland from the port of lunderburh.

shearwaters and petrels flew ‘round as they rocked westward on ocean trade winds and on ocean waves

for the land named for the virgin queen.

(later they rocked in wagons across land … for Lands … of more western settlement-stops.)

in their moves toward arkansas and then the promised land … the state of texas

they frequently ate of the more than three billion wonderous migratory Ectopistes,

the most abundant aves in north america …

(which would NEVER be depleted  …

you know, possible extinction was a hoaxed declaration like other hard science news of yesterday and today: evolution by natural selection; depletion of the natural resource base of top soil, quality water and air, photosynthesizers and net primary productivity, biodiversity, … and homeostasis; global climate change; coronavirus disease 2019, … .)

 

yes, ok!  … moving on …

 

majestic eagles, Aquila fasicata, soared overhead as they left holler and nassau for the port of bremen in 1845

about one hundred and fifty years after the british ones referred to herein sailed from the port of london town.

shearwaters and petrels flew ‘round as they rocked westward on ocean trade winds and on ocean waves

toward the port of indianola and the republic, then state, of texas.

 

then it was the trilling of the polyglot Mimus where alton and louise met on uncle peggy’s dairy land near elmendorf during the terrible second great war

(War … involving regular people, not a greatest generation, who also killed, and who ate, and who deeply appreciated the beautifully feathered class of biota which can sustainably employ such amazing flights of wonder).

 

yes, ok!  … moving on …

 

the polyglot wasn’t mocking the young sweethearts, but lending natural musical beauty to the martin-kneuper lovers visits at the edge of the country of hills, new braunfels,

and then air-filled Mimus song to their honeymoon home in clean seguin and on The Farm near the “dale” of “stumps,” stockdale, Texas.

 

“Tra-la-la, tweedlee dee dee it gives me a thrill
To wake up in the morning to the mockin’ bird’s trill

tra-la-la, tweedlee dee dee
there’s peace and goodwill
you’re welcome as the flowers on mockin’bird hill.”

 

pbm

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )

estou quase conseguindo.

mas é difícil (se) comunicar.

………………………..

diversity–

but not the right kind of diversity

(“right kind” is so hubristic, so very elitist, so artificial and anthropocentric)—

diversity

is more necessary,

more desirable

than equality or homogeneous excellence …

in nature (dynamic homeostatic symbioses)

in life, in livelihoods,

in all ecological, economic, socio-political systems,

and in our oh-so-special schools–

public or private,

our oh-so-important life-long learning–developing ecological literacy and ecological values …

 

 

toward peace.

 

 

always strive for diversity,

diversity … AND equity.

mutt genetics, natural mutt ecological systems, mutt organizations,

mutt schools, varied mutt systems of learning,

are more important than thoroughbreds

mostly because “environments” are so very temporally dynamic.

 

ugbeautiful, multiintelligence, thinkdoers, variedfitness, polyglots, complicatedfreeversevillanelle, abstractclassicimpressioncubdadasurrealism, scientificmythicaltruths, hybridsociopoliticaleconomicsystems, homoheteropanintertransasexual, atheistagnosticignosticgnostic, herbcarniomnivores, multiethnicculture, coatsofmanycolors

 

“in the whole scheme of things”

mutts, not purebreds, are the long-term heroes,

the sustainers of wonderful quality life

for as many as possible and for as long as possible,

diversity in dynamic homeostatic symbioses

is essential

for regeneration, for restoration, for conservation,

for resilience,

for sustainable ecological community.

……………………………..

(voy a pensar y trabajar en esto un poco más.

………………..

i dzi?kuj?)

 

pbm

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )