Another view of Islamophobia

"Out of control clergy, religious demagogues with their consecrated militias, religious parties usurping the functions of the state . . . It all sounds like the worst stereotypes of contemporary radical Islam, in Iran and Somalia, Iraq and Lebanon.  . . .  Just a century after the conversion of the Roman empire [in the 300s AD], Christian churches were acting precisely on the lines of the most extreme Islamic mullahs today." (my emphasis) 

So writes Philip Jenkins in Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years (New York, HarperOne, 2010), p. 30.

“The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” — Albert Einstein

Olio

If you do crosswords, you know what to expect under the  title "Olio" --

1. 1. A mixture or medley; a hodgepodge.
   2. A collection of various artistic or literary works or musical pieces; a miscellany.
   
   Here are some of my pix which had not yet found a narrative home on the blog.
   
   

   

   Taken of a puddle in a Waldoboro pine grove.
   I was under my huge, Boston Coach umbrella.

   
   

   

   One of many spectacular sunsets,
   from the deck of the Waldoboro house.

   
   

   

   Headlight reflections at the Owl's Head
   Transportation Museum near Rockland, Maine.

   
   

   

   October 8, 2010, Day of My Vanity.
   My one wearing of earrings for pierced ears,
   before the holes rebelled, closed up tight.

   
   

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

   

   Leaning to check their appearance before
   spring arrives along the Sudbury river.

   
   

   

   You remember! January 31, 2011, Wayland, MA.

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

   

   Hooked rug from the 1940s, by Mercedes and James Hutchinson. Was shown at the Farnsworth Museum, Rockland, Maine. "Bundling" dates from the colonial days, if not earlier. The Hutchinsons produced hundreds of rugs, each unique, during their 20-year cottage industry.
   
   FiNiS

   
   

Grandmother's Happy Day

[If you view grandmom-love as shameless schmaltz, you may want to quit reading here and go on to something else.]

Kaleigh and Gavin are my grandkids. I love to visit them. They live near a good zoo, so we usually spend a day there when I visit. This blog records, via my trusty cellphone camera, a happy day in late February, 2011.

This is Kaleigh, adding a Bengal tiger
to her journal. These seriously endangered
cats have fired her imagination.

This is Gavin, adding a black rhino to his journal

.

Gavin's main goal for the day, though,
was to photograph the trip to the zoo,
using a digital camera with a tripod. 
Mom (Leah) watches as Gavin begins
to figure out the engineering of the tripod.

Kaleigh wants a piece of the action.

Photographer and model.
He did shoot animals, too.
He carried his own equipment all day.

Leah early learned the value of recording
life events via still and video photography,
journaling, drawing, and painting, and has
passed that interest along to her children.
She asked all of us to sketch six animals.

In the zoo's butterfly house.

Gavin and Kaleigh have also been
encouraged to study what they see;
in this case, butterflies in various
stages of development.

Setting up for the black rhino.

Got him! At this point, Leah had Gavin
switch to drawing, which brought his
observations of animals to a new
level of awareness.

Where are those hippos?

Last shot of the day,
Kaleigh with a statuesque cobra.

The Best of April

You might expect my "best of April" to be the disappearance of winter's snowbanks and ice dams. Or the return of crocuses and daffodils.
No. It's our return to living on the deck.

This year's best signs of deck life are:
1. Pots of flowers and flowers-to-be.
2. A pair of new Adirondack chairs.

Hers.

Him with his.

Roy surprised me with the first chair yesterday, after he put it together downstairs in his home office. He thought it should be yellow. I said robin's egg blue. I wanted to buy one for him, so off we whisked today to Home Depot to choose paints and a second chair. Roy's chair -- in soft yellow -- is well on its way to its spot on the deck.

Sing, birds!

Walking in the April Rain

Pristine puddle.

One stomp.

Two stomps.

"D" Modified

"What Crisis?" asked Edward L. Glaeser in Thursday's Boston Globe, referring to current concern about the state of America's infrastructure -- as articulated by our President and especially as rated (berated!) by the American Society of Civil Engineers report which I referred to in yesterday's blog.

Glaeser fleshes out rather than debunks the "D" grade. Yes, only 68.2% of Americans have broadband -- but nearly half of those without the Internet report lack of interest or need as the reason for being unconnected, while only 3% want it but can't reach it. He also points out that our low grade on rail rightly targeted passenger service but failed to report that the USA does far better on freight service than the Europeans. Forty-eight % of American goods travel by rail compared to 18% of EU shipping.

Glaeser, a professor of economics at Harvard University, does not deny the deterioration or inadequacy of other infrastructure elements. His main concern, as befits his profession, is that current funding and planning procedures are often extremely wasteful:  "Better infrastructure spending," he says, "would make more assiduous use of cost-benefit analysis vetted by outside experts." Good point.

However, as the new wife of a man who narrowly missed being on a major highway bridge when it collapsed, I still want to see things that we need and use FIXED. Yes, let's be more intelligent about planning and funding procedures, but let's bite that ole bullet and get these mundane needs moved way up America's priority list.

USA earns a sobering "D"

"In 2009, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) released its comprehensive infrastructure report card. It's not a pretty read," writes Arianna Huffington in Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream
(ISBN 978-0-307-71982-9).

Overall grade on our national infrastructure?
"An appalling D," Huffington continues. And this, she adds, is a downward trend since 2005.

For instance:

Transit and aviation, fell from D+ to D.

Roads dropped from D to D- (how much closer can we get to failing?)

Dams, hazardous waste, and schools remained at their 2005 D grade.

Drinking water and wastewater "remained mired at D-."

According to the ACSE report card, it would take an investment of $2.2 trillion to bring our vital functions up to barely passing, if we were to work at the repair and rebuilding for 5 years. But how much has been budgeted for that 5 years?  $975 billion.

Are we in the eve of the collapse of the American Empire? 

Some Web sites to check:
www.infrastructurereportcard.org
www.asce.org
www.scientificamerican.com  : "It's the kind of report card you . . . " by Katherine Harmon,  "U.S. Infrastructure Crumbling"  28 Jan. 2009.

Huffington covers many other areas of national life which she documents are in decline: education, employment,  upward mobility, government by elected representatives, housing, etc.; but urgent as are all those problems, it is the deteriorating condition of our electric grid, underground water and sewer pipes, bridges, and the like that grabbed my attention. I watched "The Crumbling of America" on the Reelz cable channel during the week I was reading Third World America, so I've had a comprehensive look at what Huffington was writing about. Even after subtracting a percentage for a bit of entertainment hype in each presentation, there's still reason to be concerned. Just look around!

A most appealing feature of Huffington's book is that she devotes a large section to what ordinary individuals can do (and are doing) to help reverse the negative trends.  It can be as simple as withdrawing one's money from a robber baron bank (i.e., Citibank, Bank of America, etc.) and put it in a credit union. Read!

Back to infrastructure:  It's time for Americans to put each other to work not just repairing the decay but leapfrogging over existing ways and means to create stronger, more efficient and long-lasting infrastructure. There's plenty of money floating around (Wall Street? corporations?) to get started on this megaproject.  And perhaps the public-spirited billionaires who are giving their fortunes to various charities could direct some of their largesse to ensuring that the mundane essentials for human life are put back in place.

I live in one of the most affluent towns in a fairly affluent state, and here are some infrastructure problems I pass every day. (Photos by Roy Barnacle)

The snowplow must have done this while trying
to dispose of our monumental quantity of snow.

It's hard to justify the use of non-galvanized
metal guardrails. These posts so readily rotted
that one wonders if they were properly prepared.
Notice the lack of breakdown lane or even ditch.

One person CAN do something:

Here is Roy, putting the yellow visibility
marker back on a chain-link gate.

One small blog post cannot tell all or accomplish all, but maybe this one will help a little. The ball is in our court.

A Woodland Reality Show

My second visit to the beech woods along the edge of the Great Meadows wetlands was a small shocker. Just as I was lowering myself onto the comfy hummock, Wednesday's brighter sun revealed the green flash of broken beer bottle. Sure enough, the jagged edge of a broken Heineken protruded from the ground just six inches from where I had sat the day before. After carefully digging it up and setting it aside, I looked around for more. Bit by bit I gingerly reassembled about half a bottle.  This is no longer the woods Thoreau trod.

I felt restless, unable to connect with the life around me, so I trekked home, planning to bring gloves and a sack next time.

That brings me to Thursday. No sun, on this day before a storm, but I went to the woods anyway. I filled one sack just at the opening of the trail. A chain keeps cars out, so the persons who toss their single-shot bottles of Lord Calvert, super-charged caffeine drink cans, cigarette butts, and fast food containers around the trail head are folks who don't want to be separated from the anonymity of their cars.

With the green glass -- at least what I had found of it -- safely in my sack, I sat on the hummock to enjoy the scene. The edge of the wetland was less dramatic, now, with the spring flood waters receded almost out of sight. Before long, the high-pitched "yap, yip yap" of three tiny, bouncy dogs announced the arrival of more humans. This mother and daughter team told me that they often pick up trash on Wayland's woods trails. One time they collected enough that the town agreed to come pick up the pile. The mom said it is a specialty of certain young citizens to insert broken beer bottles, jagged edge up, in the dirt of a trail. Why? Who dares to guess. But the practice does make life much less pleasant for dogs and owners.

Having cleaned up one entrance, I left by another. I saved half of one bag to pick up trash along my own road. The wildlife refuge woods by the river seems just as vulnerable to litterbugs. I was tired by the time I reached home. See the results of my first trash pick-up below.  But not to leave you on that downer note, I'll add another photo, that of one of the noble beech trees in my beauty spot.

One day's collection -- and a partial one at that.

Beech trees, with their spectacular roots,
seem related to elephants.