Hope? (November 7, 2020)

We can have some real hope

For young ones and those to come …

 

When we baptize them

And cleanse them of our original sins,

Sins against indigenous peoples and slaves,

Sins against those of color …

When we baptize them with robust local and global

Affirmative action and reparations,

 

When we throw out the money lenders who provide the capital

For the military-industrial complex, nuclear arms, other armaments (local and global),

And Wars,

 

When we rid ourselves of capital for ecological destruction.

 

 

I’ll have hope when we all begin learning

Ecological principles, processes, and values

And begin to realize the rights of health care for all in the world …

And sustainable livelihoods

Which are truly sustainable for all, …

Other species, the poor, … and the rich.

 

 

Joe and Kamala,

 

It will be tough.

You’ll have to be smart, work hard, and sacrifice much.

In solidarity!

“Please!” do give us some real reasons for hope.

Not for MAGA empires

With the lion’s share of the natural resource base

And power over Nature and the poor,

But for a U.S.A., a European Union, a China, a Russia, o Brasil, an Israel, a Mexico,

A Korea, a Philippines, an Egypt, a Hungary, a Venezuela, a Honduras, a Nicaragua,

An Iran, a Belarus, the Ukraine, the Congo, a Nigeria,

A Syria, a Yemen, an Afghanistan, a Somalia, an Iraq …

For Trump’s s-hole countries, for all our s-hole countries

 

Which will truly address collectively, transnationally,

In solidarity,

Social injustice, inhumanness, and ecological insanity.

 

Give us hope for a world without the power of billionaires,

A world which empowers the truly poor and relatively powerless

With physical and mental well-being, with Maslow’s needs,

Profound and holistic ecological health,

Concerted efforts toward scientific knowledge, wisdom, and prudence

And in route to critical thinking and appropriate decision-making

With transnational practice of the golden rule, the precautionary principle,

And abiding by the Second Law of Thermodynamics

As well as the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights

And Agenda 21.

 

Give us a world that respects Gandhism rather than Trumpism,

A world of individual lives and collective-connected life

Living in solidarity

Sabiamente, simply, smally, slowly, steadfastly, sharingly,

Sustainably.

 

We say to those to the mighty right,

“Your might, or wishes to be so, do not make right.

It is a sin. A mortal sin.  A deadly sin.  An ‘unforgiveable’ sin!”

 

To those on the left who point to and vehemently criticize the grave sins in the past,

Including the recent past

Of the long and exhaustive, billionaire-moneyed campaign

Of yours, Joe and Kamala, …

We say to our dear sisters and brothers on the left who are quick to point fingers,

“Joe and Kamala are relatively good people close (or closer) in values

To the truly good people of demos.”

Forgive them (and others to the left, AND the right, AND of the middle)

For their original, venial, mortal, deadly, “unforgivable” sins

And work towards their rehabilitation.

Force and support the appropriate and best use of their new powers.

 

Let’s all try, as hopeless as it might seem

To all lighten our ecological footprints,

Our energy transformation,

Our embodied appropriation of net primary productivity.

Let us all try to get along on this third rock from the sun–

On which we are de facto stuck–

Through actions affirmative and recent Paris Accords,

And even more robust justice system reforms than Trump’s incredibly good one,

Nuclear disarmament treaties and defunding our War Department,

The banning of other arms,

Defunding and disarming police

And getting them out of schools

In real efforts toward curing the root causes of social disease and disharmony.

Let us work toward regeneration and conservation and development

Of resilient, sustainable ecological community.

 

Let’s work toward realizing sustainable livelihoods in s-hole countries,

All of our respective s-hole countries here on Eaarth.

 

May we work to have Faith in ecological science,

To be charitable and to genuinely Love one another and all of Nature,

And realize real Hope.

 

Let’s all let our hearts bleed liberally for justice,

Hug some trees, and

Attempt to commune peacefully,

As positively ethical applied community ecologists,

For the good of the future progeny of Homo sapiens and other species,

For the good of Nature … dynamic homeostatic symbioses.

 

The challenges are great.

But the goals of Bernie and AOC and others of like minds

Are mostly good and their efforts admirable,

And they are achievable with appropriate and persistent strategic planning and action,

Effective monitoring, assessment, and replanning to right a course.

 

Joe and Kamala,

 

you all and Speaker Pelosi do have Mitch McConnell et al.,

The very red states, and the right-wing Supreme Court with whom to deal.

Still … keep your hopes up and persevere!  They all, we all, have SOME decency!!!

 

Some say our socio-ecological challenges are insurmountable.

Others posit that Capitalism based on the original sins

Of genocide of and Land grabs from indigenous peoples

And exploitation of Nature and relatively powerless humans

Is the best system possible

(Mostly, I think, because they are Haves who Have!).

Others say significant change from the current exploitive system,

Though needed,

Would be against their traditions, their tribe, their family,

The values of their spouse, significant others, loved ones.

They want their kids to have more

Even when their kids have more than enough more

And there isn’t enough for all kids, including kids of other species, to have more.

Perhaps loved ones don’t deserve to be loved so much??

Or rather, perhaps true love, though it may be perceived as callous tough love,

Is facilitating a learning toward living–and dying–in concert with all other life?

 

Seven to eight billion humans (going on TEN!)

And their substantially more numerous domesticated species

(Utilitarian species as well as sometimes only decorative house cats and dogs)

Artificialize and cover most of the globe.

And even though we’ve left little for wild species,

Many “humans” seem to want more

Which will inevitably eliminate these beautiful, natural creations of the wild.

More wanting more,

Worshipping at the altars of money and stuff and recreation.

Re-creating as if they were God

Rather than respecting and living in concert

With the real god, dynamic homeostatic symbioses.

Plowing, mowing, leaf-blowing

With millions of fossil fuel-driven machines,

Concreting, asphalting, plasticizing, building many relatively useless structures,

Trains of 18-wheelers and automobiles continuously traveling up and down the interstates

When real trains would be so much better ecologically,

Because laissez-faire capitalism demands it!

Hard-wiring of Earth with cables across land and sea.

Soft -wiring ubiquitously, currently with the latest capitalistic technology, 5G, across the airs

Because neo-liberal capitalism demands it!

 

 

Do I have hope.

Yes. …

Some hope.

 

¿¡Esperanza!?

Cuando empezamos a vivir sabiamente

Sabiamente, simply, smally, slowly, steadfastly, sharingly,

Sustainably.

In solidarity

……………………

pbm

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )

Challenges. October 6th, 2020

I do realize my mental capacities, knowledge, and energies are limited and that I am extremely insignificant.

Nevertheless, I am secure and crazy enough to be willing to debate anyone from Stephen Miller to Dan Patrick to Don Keil (our Seguin Mayor) concerning local to global goals, plans, policy, actions, and sustainability assessments IF the debates are appropriately planned, organized, facilitated, fact-checked, and organized.

I can struggle through the weeds of the mess this world is in and attempt to sort it out and make sense out of it in terms of roads we may wish to travel from here.

Nevertheless, and in the meantime, more holistically I’ll stress that the real challenges are:

  1. disparity,
  1. rampant artificialization and overshoot of human consumption and human and domesticated species numbers and biomass,
  1. “drawdown” of the natural resource base (good topsoil, quality water, the right kind & amount of net primary productivity, and appropriate biodiversity), and
  1. a failure to abide by the Golden Rule, the Precautionary Principle, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, and ecological principles & processes and values.

I am truly not overly enthused in having Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as world leaders for needed systemic change toward all living (in solidarity and peacefully) … sabiamente, simply, smally, slowly, steadfastly, sharingly, sustainably. Nevertheless, they are decent statespersons who are trying to do good for all, there is a good chance that they will listen, and there is a possibility that they will perhaps help get the world on a track for quality life for all, including other species This is definitely not the case for Donald Trump, most Trumpians, and many Trumpsters* … and policies and actions of destructive neoliberal capitalism, conversion of Earth to Eaarth, and rape of the natural resource base and the have-nots of the world.

(*We desperately need ecology across the curricula & campuses of all human organizational entities.)

pbm ( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )

OOO*

the world is sort of squirrelly

from a sane human’s point of view.

yes, some sane humans might actually exist.

personally, if i weren’t truly crazy,

this miserable world would drive me totally insane.  …

(yep, i did steal this from the Littlefield, Texas boy

who survived the day the music died.)

 

have you ever wished you might be a gnarled old oak log

lying in a bed of live oak leaves,

calmly resting and enjoying the comfort of warm decaying organic matter

and having an occasional earthworm, earwig, or ironclad beetle scratch your back?

you sometimes listen to the annoyingly pleasant song of the mockingbird

perched on the pecan limb above …

singing to high heaven.

you watch the gardener carefully position seed in appropriately prepared good soil.

you love seeing the lovely green bunchgrasses quietly grow.

you wonderfully feel the south Texas summer, fall, winter, spring winds blow.

no worries about whether it rains … or not.

 

when humans pass

the world will be sane again.

and perhaps Kaw-liga**, the poor old wooden head,

will find his Indian maid.

or perhaps he never lost her

and ol’ Hank’s catchy story distorts reality and Truth?

 

pbm

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )

…………………………………………………

*Object oriented ontology or “nature of existence.”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_ontology

** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FY7RWJAtJQ  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaw-Liga

Earth’s Biomes. Quality Life Which is Threatened by Anthropogenic Changes in Climate

The Earth’s deserts are wonderfully dry.

Tropical rain forests are lush and wet.

A must to visit but you’ll boil or fry.

Many species in both are under threat.

Homo sapheads has done little good yet.

 

Temperate forests are lovely and green.

Look down from the mountain and see their sheen.

Tundra in the north is amazing and cold.

Our warming of the Eaarth is truly mean.

What do you think?  Can we change this dire mold?

Life Is But a Game

Life is a SERIOUS game for self, family, deme, population, species, community, watershed, ecosystem, biosphere, Earth (and probably other “earths”).  This is so whether it is with or without Muhammed, Aristotle, Jesus of Nazareth, Rumi, Adam Smith, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Karl Marx, Hitler, Greta Thunberg, or Trump.

 

Nevertheless, it is ONLY a game.

 

pbm

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )

 

.

Sin, Original Sin and Slave Justice, Corona Justice, and Just Just Liberals1 (Also Do Numbers Matter?)

i feel compelled

to discipline myself a bit

and get some righteous thoughts

up into the cloud and down on paper.

 

nevertheless, i am not so disciplined

as to complete this task

in compliance with the structured form

of the assignment this week

from Creekside Poets, which was

ten lines,

ten syllables per lines, and

a rhyme scheme of ababbccdcd.

 

lo siento.

…………………………………………………..

 

i do appreciate my catholic nun teachers

(especially the young and pretty carmelites from mexico

who came to devine to help us learn

in the hot, humid summers,

before air-conditioning)

but …

 

Richard Guajardo may remember it differently.

however, my memory of Richard’s arguments

with that poor nun one wednesday eve in 1958 or 1959

was over a need, or not,

for more social justice

and less hypocrisy

within our holy roman catholic church.

 

“don’t worry, fellow catholics!

most of us are married to catholics.

therefore, (unjust) lack of respect

for the religions of others (the unredeemed, the infidels),

shouldn’t really bother us catholics.”

 

young Richard argued that the non-catholic halves of our parents

were not sinners because of their differing state of belief

and that he and i would not be sinners as catholics

simply because we attend the protestant services indulged by our parents.

 

 

i do love my seguin, texas tennis buddies

and our camaraderie on Saturday mornings,

but ….

 

heard on the tennis court this past weekend2,

“don’t worry, you proud white americans

of these great united states.

we only brought in about 400,000 slaves

or only about six percent of the Africans

shipped to the americas.

(and we can’t worry about the ninety percent who died in route.

that’s water under the bridge!)

besides, slavery proliferated humanwide

way back after the worst mistake of humankind3.

(that mistake was agriculture.)

and we have treated our africans relatively well.

therefore, don’t be concerned about this itty-bitty original sin.

no need for any guilt, reparations, or affirmative actions.

and, oh yes,

maintain those Jim Crow monuments!”

 

 

i consider many who are politically right of center

to be friends

but …

 

how can they agree with con-man trump?

and his pooh-poohing (a measly) 200,000+ deaths

(less than 0.06 percent of our U.S. population)

from COVID-19,

which should be even less of a worry

because most of these dead humans were old

(and of color).

(and, why do we honor

the relatively few who died in wars??)

 

 

i do love it

when i occasionally meet my neighbor

the mayor of seguin on the streets

and he greets me with pleasantries

but …

 

in discussing on facebook

recent thefts of his holy trump signs and trumpster flag,

our esteemed mayor,

in Trumpian fashion,

blamed the thefts on

the “deranged mind[s] of liberals who must destroy the opposition”

and who are “low-life’s” [sic].

(i do love him and his lovely wife!)

 

 

why don’t we all get along, Rodney King?

we are extremely poor at communicating.

we really don’t make enough of a concerted effort

at tearing down walls

and removing religious, tribal, socio-political barriers

to justice and real love.

there is a paucity in the world

of open-mindedness, empathy, and compassion

and adherence to the golden rule4.

 

pbm 9/22/20

( 7 S’s / VV->66 )

……………………………

1 Ecologically connected.  All is connected.

2 Paraphrased.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race

4 An ethic of reciprocity.

September 15, 2020. Coach Frank Wood Died Today

Coach Frank Wood died today,

One of many friends in our adopted hometown of Seguin

Who sorrowfully are passing with increasing frequency.

 

Frank needed me at times

For companionship at a meal,

To use our computer, or a ride.

My needs include companionship

And Coach Frank provided it

And exercise and zeal

Through his organized tennis matches

Each Saturday morning

On the courts of Seguin

Filled with compadres

From this hometown,

And New Braunfels, Marion, Shiner, LaVernia, and San Antone,

And who knows where else.

 

Coach Frank tried to improve my tennis

And I tried to turn his mind from concern about leftist conspiracies

We both mostly failed in these efforts

But we were good friends.

 

Through his love for Mexican food and an increasing barriga

With one leg, ravaged by polio in his youth, increasingly less functional,

Eventually Coach Frank’s corpus slowly began to fail him.

 

Coach Frank lived a very simple life

Which we all should somewhat emulate.

 

Coach Frank Wood died today.

…………………………………….

pbm 9/15/20

faith, hope, and love

good diversity, good natural dynamism

is the beauty of our world.

it is what i truly love.

 

i become warm and pacific

when discovering some thing new and virtuous,

which truly is always elderly and was always there.

 

innocently true beauty

and innocently true love,

always old and ubiquitous,

but hidden for new discovery,

is what restores my faith

in species, in tribe, in population, in deme.

 

good is god, god is good.

good diversity.

good dynamism.

good beauty.

good good.

………………………..

Good GOD!

…………………………

good demos?

 

it is difficult,

but i must have faith in demos

and hope for continued discovery

of good beauty and love.

 

pbm

( 7 S’s / VV->^^ )

VOTE BIDEN-HARRIS

VOTE BIDEN-HARRIS.

o I’ve been frustrated & angry about local & global social injustice ever since we had some agitating discussions w/ a nun in a 7th-grade Catholic catechism class in Devine, TX in the 1950s.  But never like now.  …  I feel a shame & a dirtiness that we elected Trump & enabled Trump & his Trumpians.

o Biden & Harris (B&H) are decent, moral, & ethical humans of faith.  They are statespersons who aim to seek truth & serve.

o B&H trust & respect you w/ straight talk & the truth.

o B&H believe in everyone’s right to good health & a good education toward a sustainable livelihood regardless of their income or socio-political/economic status.

o It is obvious that B&H holistically & profoundly respect life, rights of all life, & adherence to the golden rule … & much more than Trump.

o B&H will work … toward a sustainable agriculture, to stop the terrible & unsustainable bleeding  from environmental damage the Trumpians have done, & for campaign finance reform.

o B&H will not come after my 22 or my wife’s deer rifle.

o B&H don’t overtly or covertly deny the existence & seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic or climate change.

o B&H have much respect for those who serve or served in uniform.  Trump always directly & indirectly aims to serve self.

o Rather than democratic socialism for common & shared wealth, which is what good government is about, the real worry is authoritarianism.  And you are seeing plenty of this undesirable authoritarianism in Trump.

o B&H won’t be boasting about how great the U.S. is, including its capacity to destroy civilization several times over with its nuclear arms.  B&H can be approached for a bipartisan process of nuclear disarmament, real demilitarization, & a process of real PEACE.

o Decent leaders in the Republican Party are voting for B&H.

o Joe Biden ISN’T a spoiled, narcissistic boasting reality TV pretty little rich boy, a snake oil promoting con-man, or a conspiracy theorist who is a corrupt inciter of violence & emoter & spreader of panic … & he ISN”T anti-science or a cult leader.

o I’ll vote in solidarity w/ a wonderful fellow with an African-American dad & Mexican-American mom, who saved my life in August of 1964 & w/ other peoples of color & indigenous peoples who will vote for B&H.

………………………………..

I voted for a good man in the Republican Party in 1976, President Gerald Ford.  His party has done some significant good in the past, e.g., establishment of EPA by Nixon & a start at some prison reform under Trump.  However, profound belief in the “invisible hand,” trickle-down economics, & laissez-faire growth for haphazard guiding of society toward justice & protection of top soil, adequate quantity of quality water, good air, appropriate energy transformation, & biodiversity, will not get us to quality life for all.  We need regulation & local & global focused work towards resilient, sustainable socio-political/economic (ecological) systems.

YOU MUST VOTE BIDEN-HARRIS and the Democratic ticket.

Love all of you, and definitely including Trump, Trumpians, and Trumpsters,

paul bain martin

(I am a teacher of biology, son of Alton Martin of Stockdale-TX & Louise (Kneuper) Martin of New Braunfels-TX who was raised on a very small diversified hog farm near Devine-TX, worked south Texas fields as a farmworker as a kid, studied at Land-Grant Universities & who is interested in short & long-term quality life for our youth … & for all.)