As with most years of human history

Twenty-twenty had its ups

And it had a plethora of downs

… with family and friends …

Happiness and sadness,

Gladness and frowns.

 

The vote sort of went my way

But we must not gloat!

As Brandy Clark and Randy Newman sing it:

“We’re either all the way left or all the way right

The only time we meet in the middle is to fight

The rich get richer, the rest get a little more broke

We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

 

In 2020 I learned of the knowledgeable and prudent tweeter,

Economic anthropologist Jason Hickel

Who has written “Less Is More.

How Degrowth Will Save the World.”

Jason suggests quite doable pathways,

Local and global.

And sustainable livelihoods

Which are socially just and ecologically sane.

 

We are hopefully weaning ourselves of another tweeter,

The infamous one

With shrewd cadres

And flimflammed masses

Of enablers.

The narcissistic calloused one

Who’s lying and con artistry

Brings out the worst in ALL of us.

 

…………………………..

 

In 2021:

 

1. Fifty years

Delightful Elizabeth Florence Hoffmann Martin

And I

Will have been wed.

Around the Sixteenth of July

We hope to celebrate

And share

Love, spirit(s), and bread!

 

2. Perhaps we, Betsy and I et al.,

Will have a book realized

Similar to that of Jason’s

On the Truth of an ethical community ecology.

Which may be read.

 

3. There are those I dearly love

With whom I am estranged.

Perhaps, “graças a ‘deus,’”

Twenty twenty-one will bring a more or less bliss

Communion with these wonderful five once again.

 

4. We believe

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2

Will be mostly managed somewhat adequately.

 

5. We hope to visit friends …

From Maranhão to Campo Grande, Porto Alegre, São Paulo, & Rio in Brasil,

In Central America,

And maybe even take a trip to the Emerald Isle?

 

…………………………..

 

Happy (some belated) Diwali, Bodhi Day, Yuletide, Hanukkah, Yalda, Christmas, Ashura, Kwanzaa!

Happy living (and dying) in 2021 and thereafter!!!

 

Love,

paul bain martin, Betsy, and family

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )

we must change the village

nevertheless this village

in a crazy human economy

in this twenty-first century ce

is truly a global village

therefore much of our/my rhetoric

about pathways to saving the world

is puro bs

 

pbm

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )

NEVER satisfied

but steadily happy

pushing responsibility toward others

mostly dreaming

and piddling

 

pbm 12/3/2020

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )

 

our real problems are systemic

it takes a village

however, the root problem is the village

the village must change

WE, the village, must change the village

we must change

w Solidarno?ci, ¡Si! ¡Se puede!

……………………

*From Dad Alton Martin, E.F. Schumacher, Howard T. Odum, Herman Daly, and Jason Hickel.

pbm

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )

Running barefoot up the deep sands

Of the oat-planted hill owned by Uncle Peggy

In the cool days of the autumns

Of the 1950’s and early 60’s

Thinking I’m a speedy gazelle,

but de facto

A young beast of a boy lumbering

In the extremely loose soil just east of Devine.

 

First place in the elementary school races!

Which resulted in an empowering zeal

At that old school across the street from St. Joseph’s.

 

Coached the amazing Gus

From rural Pawnee and then Harlandale of San’tone–

“Hands all the way up to the line.

Cock your body into a tight spring

Ready to smoothly and quickly burst forward

At the very first sound from the gun.

Hug that line to your left;

It’s the shortest distance.

Sprint really stretching those legs out.

Be relaxed,

And stride at ninety percent of full speed through 330 yards.

Then gut it out with all your might through the 440 finish.”

Coacher’s calming but persistent training

And communicating / learning on both our parts

Led me to a win in the district meet

On that dirt track in Devine

One lovely, but very warm, spring day

In 1964!

(Even though I messed up on the time of the final,

Had just eaten a big T-bone steak at home,

And almost missed that very important race!)

 

This led to regional at Texas A&I

“Faster paul!  FASTER!!!”

(I’d asked really good sprinter Bobby Bendele

To let me know at the 330

If I could coast in to the finish in the prelims

To save energy for the finals.)

In the finals I did beat the previous year’s State Champion,

The black and beautiful-ly muscled and very long-legged June Butler.

(He pulled a hamstring.)

Because of pure luck (ask SA stadium “tocayo” Coach Jerry Comalander for the story)

I came in second

And got to go to Austin for the state meet

Along with my truly fast-running and really quick teammate Bobby.

 

All Comer’s Track and Field at Tift High

In the summers of the late 1970’s in Tifton, Georgia,

Where I worked as Pasture-Small Grain Entomologist

At the expansive Coastal Plains Experiment Station.

“I can take these youngsters

In the sprints.”

And I did compete well against the youthful Georgians,

Especially in the 440.

 

“Got to beat that durn Leon Stacy.

He’s a bit younger

And he may have won the mile

At the high school state meet in Oklahoma

But he’s a smoker.

How the heck is it he comes in first

And me second in these entomological fun runs?”

“Train!  Train!  Train!

100 yards full speed

And walk a 100.

Repeat this 20 times.”  …

“Got damn!

I finally got him!”

 

“A 15-miler in the Okefenokee?”

“Naw guys.

It’s summer and will be too damn HOT and HUMID!”

I’d never run more than a 10-K.

But peer pressure won me over.

And by focusing on a young little blond in front of me

Bouncing easily over the terrain,

I ended up leaving my compadres behind,

And running a pretty good race.

 

In all of my five and 10-K’s,

It was the hills where I excelled,

Made up time, and passed other runners

Thanks I suppose to those runs

Up Uncle Peggy’s sandy hill in Devine.

 

Pensacola in Naval Air training.

In races in our outfit

Only squeaky-voiced good ol’ Chuck Baldwin,

A damn good pilot

From Denton, Texas …

(And when asked how far it is across Texas

He’d creak out

“About a million miles.”)

Anyway, he was the only one

Who could beat me in those Pensacola runs.

 

Freely traversing with some considerably speed

St. George and Padre Island

Copacabana and other beaches

Desert ups and downs in Big Bend

Greener and steeper inclines, declines

in North Georgia near Helen.

 

My knees are shot now

But I can still experience the running exhilaration

On my Trek-1000

Or in a sprinting swim.

……………………..

 

Before agrilogistics and industrialization,

Capitalism, and mind-swamping electronic information

There were 200,000 years of living truthfully

And of running truthfully.

 

We were born to run!

pbm

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )

Drop, drop; drip, drip.  RAIN!!!

A life-enhancing process.

This slow, soaking gain.

…………………..

*The Time It Never Rained | Texas Standard

pbm 11/28/20

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )

can we achieve

providence, heaven, nirvana?

sure!

but a desired providence or heaven

is best expressed

and realized

as nirvana

 

and nirvana must always

include a striving for nirvana for all

including other species

 

greed for energy

and rampant energy transformation through

excessive destruction of daily photosynthate,

use of slaves,

employment of fossil energy, nuclear energy

or use of so-called renewable energy

shuts us off from nirvana

 

trumpian, nazi , american empire, chinese empire orgasms

involving market power

(military-/police-power/kill-power,

atomic power, mined fossil power,

bluffed/”financial” power,

power over the disempowered)

are fleeting nightmares,

terrible false hopes

 

continued growth of  the human economy,

populations of humans

and of domesticated species

es pura mierda and

 

the antithesis of nirvana and

 

the antithesis of dynamic HOMEOSTATIC syntheses

 

pbm 11/28/20

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )

 

My family

Is dynamic homeostatic symbioses

With an emphasis on HOMEOSTATIC.

A homeostasis which realizes

A robust and dignified

Quality life …

And death* …

For all of Homo sapiens

And individuals of many, many, many other species.

………………….

*Dr. Cornel West, Harvard University, says that the most important thing for his students to learn is how to die.  He emphasized this in a wonderful PBS interview of this year of 2020: Cornel West and Robert George | Video | Firing Line with Margaret Hoover | PBS .

pbm

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )

A nice example:

 

A World of Dew by Kobayashi Issa

A world of dew

And within every dewdrop

A world of struggle

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

November 24, 2020. South Central Texas Hard Truths

… and Beauty to Please

Drought is here to stay

Some say on this fine fall day

In which cool mists tease.

 

Concerns

A frightful future?

For most we’re already there …

Solidarity???

 

Why?

god!  Why was I born?

To simply chat and get fat?

Something’s wrong with that!

 

Deplorable

I don’t give a damn

About rationales they make

Enabling Trump was … .

 

2021

Biden may blow it

For this world of eight billion++

But it could be worse.

 

In a Hurry to Get Things Done

Time is fast-ticking

And Creekside Poets awaiting

Haiku. … Abating?

 

pbm

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )