I had long ago made up my mind not to vote for John McCain, because he is no longer a maverick, if he ever was. Now, as I have gone through a comparison of the programs he endorses, versus those endorsed by Barack Obama, I would not vote for him, if for no other reason than that he supports the expansion of nuclear power. Barack Obama does not support development of nuclear power production, but favors development of alternative energy sources.
There is now reasonable hope that we can begin commercially producing biofuels from algae in the next ten years. Promoting such development, as Obama does, would result in the creation of new industries, while the expansion of nuclear power would require close regulation and protection of nuclear materials, FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS! Not only would nuclear materials need to be kept from leaking into places where they could accidentally harm living things, but they would have to be protected from malicious misuse, as well. The development of nuclear power production is a hugely expensive, dangerous undertaking that would last for many generations!
Wouldn't we rather have the expansion of businesses that would produce materials and technologies which don't emit invisible waves of harmful radiation, and which would immediately free us from foreign powers and corporations?
Putting money into this sort of technology would also free us from the fact that ethanol production from corn is a soil-depleting technology. Corn is a slow-growing crop, compared to algae, and producing fuel from corn diverts land from food production to fuel production at a time when human population is at its greatest. Where corn takes months to produce the raw material for food or for ethanol, some algaes can double their biomass in a matter of days. And, in the process, atmospheric carbon dioxide is converted to other compounds, thus reducing greenhouse gas volume! The fact that it would produce AMERICAN jobs, is no small thing, either!!!
There is also ongoing development of new photovoltaic (solar electrical generation) materials that will greatly increase the efficiency of power production from sunlight. This will also decrease our dependence on fossil fuels and create new business opportunities.
The expansion of wind generation has come rapidly in the current economic climate, and there is still great potential for further development that will result in environmental and other benefits.
With comprehensive conservation of fossil fuels through ramped emission reduction standards, speed limit reductions and expansion of mass transit, we could quickly see fuel prices stabilize for the meantime. This should not be a signal to go back to our old spendthrift ways, but gives us breathing room to reach new dynamic equilibrium, economically, socially, and environmentally.
Fossil fuels WILL RUN OUT SOON, probably in this century, at current consumption. Their continued extraction will only become more difficult and more expensive, and in the process will destroy even more natural habitats necessary to ourselves and the remaining creatures with whom we share the Earth.
Any alternatives that reduce the amount of fossil fuels consumed, is beneficial, in terms of cost, release of greenhouse gases, dependence on foreign sources, and new American business generated.
This opens the door for alternative fuels, increases in efficiency, and all sorts of innovations which will result in a better future for our children and grandchildren.
If for no lesser reason than the very quality of Earth's future, a vote NOT cast for John McCain, is a vote well cast.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
Enter the Circle
Enter the Circle
Enter the circle in silence.
Quiet the tumult that troubles your thinking.
Hear the rush of the wind,
the rustle of leaves
and the song of the bird.
Feel the warm sun shining on your face.
Hear the voice of clarity.
Feel the power of profundity.
Be refreshed and find peace.
Leave the circle in silence.
Carry clarity in your mind.
Feel profound power when courage is needed.
Carry the powerful quiet of the circle within you.
copyright 2008
G. Douglas Clarke
May 24, 2008
Enter the circle in silence.
Quiet the tumult that troubles your thinking.
Hear the rush of the wind,
the rustle of leaves
and the song of the bird.
Feel the warm sun shining on your face.
Hear the voice of clarity.
Feel the power of profundity.
Be refreshed and find peace.
Leave the circle in silence.
Carry clarity in your mind.
Feel profound power when courage is needed.
Carry the powerful quiet of the circle within you.
copyright 2008
G. Douglas Clarke
May 24, 2008
Monday, May 5, 2008
I wanted you to know
If you're getting this in an e-mail, it means I've added your name to the distribution list, so any time there's a new post, you get it by e-mail, too. But I just instituted this, so there are other posts you won't see unless you go to the blog. If you don't want these to come by e-mail, let me know.
Doug
Doug
Friday, January 4, 2008
For Our Mother
I always loved my mother at the deepest levels, although I know I did not always feel that way at the surface of things. I may have even told someone (I’m not sure the words ever left my lips but I fear they may have) that I hated her, when I was a teenager. I know I responded very negatively to some of the things she did, but I know now that she had limited control over some of them, and that some of them were side-effects of medicines she needed to take. But I always knew she loved me very much.
This is not one of those stories from someone who’s trying to make peace with a deceased loved one, after the fact. I spent hours with Mom, even before cancer began to steal her energies, wrestling with things that had come between us. On several occasions, we ended up crying and hugging, understanding each other much better, and forgiving each other for hurts and misunderstandings.
I am the last of five children and I’m afraid our father has never fully grasped the depth of reconciliation that Mom and I found in the last ten years or so of her life. He seemed to think that I hurt Mom’s feelings, but I believe we truly were able to work our way through most of the things we had done in the past that caused each other pain, and I know I only think fondly of her now.
Over the years, a few acquaintances, and even a few members of our extended family, treated our mother with a lack of respect, and even with scorn. I always suspected this was in response to her emotional idiosyncrasies. She was very emotional and obsessive/compulsive and all, but little did other people know – at least until recently – that Mother’s foibles have specific, medical labels. They unfortunately also bear stigma, even if less so than in the past.
We, her children, have always felt set apart, apparently because of our close association with Mom, and perhaps because we resemble her. It is not that people haven’t been generally cordial, but many have let us know they regarded us differently. I think in some cases they couldn’t even have acknowledged that they felt that way, to say nothing of knowing that they were sending such signals. Perceptions are such elusive things……..
Anyway, it was a lovely surprise, last Friday, when a family friend joined me in walking up the street, and made a point of saying that they missed my mother, even though she’d died seven years before. In the course of conversation, I remarked that some folks thought Mom was a “strange bird” and this friend reminded me that my mother’s love was never in doubt, and that it always flowed freely from her. This friend said “we go back a long way, don’t we?” It was my pleasure to concur.
Even in this time of Muslim-bashing and Christian fundamentalism gone amok – it would be no surprise to Mom that this Muslim (ZR) friend would have recognized her love for people, for all living things, and for beautiful things like sunsets…….she was that sort of woman.
G. Douglas Clarke March 20, 2005
This is not one of those stories from someone who’s trying to make peace with a deceased loved one, after the fact. I spent hours with Mom, even before cancer began to steal her energies, wrestling with things that had come between us. On several occasions, we ended up crying and hugging, understanding each other much better, and forgiving each other for hurts and misunderstandings.
I am the last of five children and I’m afraid our father has never fully grasped the depth of reconciliation that Mom and I found in the last ten years or so of her life. He seemed to think that I hurt Mom’s feelings, but I believe we truly were able to work our way through most of the things we had done in the past that caused each other pain, and I know I only think fondly of her now.
Over the years, a few acquaintances, and even a few members of our extended family, treated our mother with a lack of respect, and even with scorn. I always suspected this was in response to her emotional idiosyncrasies. She was very emotional and obsessive/compulsive and all, but little did other people know – at least until recently – that Mother’s foibles have specific, medical labels. They unfortunately also bear stigma, even if less so than in the past.
We, her children, have always felt set apart, apparently because of our close association with Mom, and perhaps because we resemble her. It is not that people haven’t been generally cordial, but many have let us know they regarded us differently. I think in some cases they couldn’t even have acknowledged that they felt that way, to say nothing of knowing that they were sending such signals. Perceptions are such elusive things……..
Anyway, it was a lovely surprise, last Friday, when a family friend joined me in walking up the street, and made a point of saying that they missed my mother, even though she’d died seven years before. In the course of conversation, I remarked that some folks thought Mom was a “strange bird” and this friend reminded me that my mother’s love was never in doubt, and that it always flowed freely from her. This friend said “we go back a long way, don’t we?” It was my pleasure to concur.
Even in this time of Muslim-bashing and Christian fundamentalism gone amok – it would be no surprise to Mom that this Muslim (ZR) friend would have recognized her love for people, for all living things, and for beautiful things like sunsets…….she was that sort of woman.
G. Douglas Clarke March 20, 2005
Monday, November 26, 2007
Notes to self
Consider now your father's death.
Did you understand his wishes?
Did you carry them out well?
Consider how your father died.
Did he go as he'd approved?
Is there any good way to go into the long night?
See all the days of your shared lives.
Re-consider how well you lived them.
Did you really do all you could?
Feel his absence to the depth of your being.
Allow yourself to hurt and cry and mourn,
and live your remaining days accordingly.
Consider now your own young son.
Re-member your father knew not his father,
and do what you can to prepare that boy.
Give him what your father gave you
and add ten measures more, daily.
Give things that will endure when you are gone.
Consider your father's death
Consider how your own may come,
and live today as if a herald of that day.
G. Douglas Clarke, September 13, 2007
Did you understand his wishes?
Did you carry them out well?
Consider how your father died.
Did he go as he'd approved?
Is there any good way to go into the long night?
See all the days of your shared lives.
Re-consider how well you lived them.
Did you really do all you could?
Feel his absence to the depth of your being.
Allow yourself to hurt and cry and mourn,
and live your remaining days accordingly.
Consider now your own young son.
Re-member your father knew not his father,
and do what you can to prepare that boy.
Give him what your father gave you
and add ten measures more, daily.
Give things that will endure when you are gone.
Consider your father's death
Consider how your own may come,
and live today as if a herald of that day.
G. Douglas Clarke, September 13, 2007
Sunday, September 23, 2007
My, how the world has changed . . .
I hadn't thought about something I had done in my college days as being terribly significant until yesterday, when some storytelling prompted a Bronx resident sojourning in our little town while attending college, to say "you wouldn't survive if you did that now."
I had been telling how, in my sophomore year of college, three classmates and I had taken a train from Huntington Station, Long Island to Bridgeport, Connecticut and then hitchhiked from there to Hartford. We had left Long Island on Friday, all with plans for returning to campus after the weekend. I had gone to see my friend Jodie while the others went to the New England Fiddle Contest (and maybe a Grateful Dead concert that was also going on). They had all hitchhiked back on Sunday, but I had lingered another day and hitchhiked back alone.
What had prompted all of this was simply that I had inquired of a restaurant clerk, where he came from. When he had said "Connecticut" I had requested greater detail, to which he'd said "Hartford", prompting me to say "Oh, I once hitchhiked from there to Long Island. He raised his eyebrows at that, and made some comment of surprise. When I rejoined my fellow diners, I told the story in more detail, prompting the comment on dubious survival.
I remember my friend (who I had hoped would become more of a companion) dropping me off on a West Hartford entrance to the Merritt Parkway and being warned that I could be arrested for hitchhiking. After at least an hour, a black man in a powder blue VW Beetle picked me up and drove me all the way to Cross-Bronx Expressway, where he let me out on the ramp. For some reason I was not certain I was on the right ramp, so I climbed over the railing and headed for the nearest gas station, to ask for help in being sure.
As I recall, no-one there habla'ed de Englais, but I looked at a map on the wall, gestured to where I thought we were and where I wanted to go and pointed outside to the ramp I'd just left, got a nod, and went back out. Still not being quite satisfied, I walked out the ramp until I could read the signs over the roadway, and then walked back to where there was room for someone to stop and pick me up. I still have the sign I carried that day, tucked under our bed, I think: a rectangle of cardboard, with "Lloyd Harbor Long Island" written on one side, and "Hartford" on the other.
I think my next ride was in a VW microbus, in which I sat and ate sandwiches given to me by the owners, while petting their dog and talking about whatever came up. They dropped me off at an intersection leaving the Long Island Expressway and entering Cross Island Parkway, I think. The way I've always told the story, I got three more rides and made the trip in four and a half hours, but I remember nothing else until I was actually let out of that last car, right in front of our dormitory. My companions were embittered that they had taken twelve hours to get back to the same place, and had had to walk the last five miles. That was in 1976 or 1977 (I'm not sure if it was fall or spring semester of college).
Our companion at a meal yesterday lives in the Bronx, and seemed genuinely impressed that I had done such a thing, and I have to admit that I shudder at the thought of how alone and exposed I was. We talked about the fact that, the last time we went to Long Island, we were stuck in traffic near the very same place on Cross Bronx Expressway, and I had marveled that I had once stood and lobbied for a ride from that spot. On the more recent occasion, we had seen a car-load of Hasidim on one side, and on the other, a car-load of young men who seemed itchy for a fight and had tried to make eye-contact and heckled us and other drivers while we were all sitting still, waiting for traffic to move ahead. That had given me cause for concern, as had my previous journey through that same passage.
Looking back, I have a sense of pride in being able to say I did that, but I feel no cravings to repeat it.
I do wonder how much the world has changed. Would a young man with long hair and little money (and both innocence and fear) be able to hitchhike that same way today? The question does not burn enough in me to try that test, but I do pine a bit for the days when hitchhiking was fairly acceptable and there was a reasonable expectation of safety, and of getting a ride. Now it seems only the hardiest, boldest and most desperate take that method of transport. Yet my soft-spoken, un-intimidating mother had done so in her youth. Somehow those years when the world was younger, were times of greater trust, and perhaps of greater acceptance of differences. I do pine for those things, and hope they will be part of our future, in much greater measure.
I had been telling how, in my sophomore year of college, three classmates and I had taken a train from Huntington Station, Long Island to Bridgeport, Connecticut and then hitchhiked from there to Hartford. We had left Long Island on Friday, all with plans for returning to campus after the weekend. I had gone to see my friend Jodie while the others went to the New England Fiddle Contest (and maybe a Grateful Dead concert that was also going on). They had all hitchhiked back on Sunday, but I had lingered another day and hitchhiked back alone.
What had prompted all of this was simply that I had inquired of a restaurant clerk, where he came from. When he had said "Connecticut" I had requested greater detail, to which he'd said "Hartford", prompting me to say "Oh, I once hitchhiked from there to Long Island. He raised his eyebrows at that, and made some comment of surprise. When I rejoined my fellow diners, I told the story in more detail, prompting the comment on dubious survival.
I remember my friend (who I had hoped would become more of a companion) dropping me off on a West Hartford entrance to the Merritt Parkway and being warned that I could be arrested for hitchhiking. After at least an hour, a black man in a powder blue VW Beetle picked me up and drove me all the way to Cross-Bronx Expressway, where he let me out on the ramp. For some reason I was not certain I was on the right ramp, so I climbed over the railing and headed for the nearest gas station, to ask for help in being sure.
As I recall, no-one there habla'ed de Englais, but I looked at a map on the wall, gestured to where I thought we were and where I wanted to go and pointed outside to the ramp I'd just left, got a nod, and went back out. Still not being quite satisfied, I walked out the ramp until I could read the signs over the roadway, and then walked back to where there was room for someone to stop and pick me up. I still have the sign I carried that day, tucked under our bed, I think: a rectangle of cardboard, with "Lloyd Harbor Long Island" written on one side, and "Hartford" on the other.
I think my next ride was in a VW microbus, in which I sat and ate sandwiches given to me by the owners, while petting their dog and talking about whatever came up. They dropped me off at an intersection leaving the Long Island Expressway and entering Cross Island Parkway, I think. The way I've always told the story, I got three more rides and made the trip in four and a half hours, but I remember nothing else until I was actually let out of that last car, right in front of our dormitory. My companions were embittered that they had taken twelve hours to get back to the same place, and had had to walk the last five miles. That was in 1976 or 1977 (I'm not sure if it was fall or spring semester of college).
Our companion at a meal yesterday lives in the Bronx, and seemed genuinely impressed that I had done such a thing, and I have to admit that I shudder at the thought of how alone and exposed I was. We talked about the fact that, the last time we went to Long Island, we were stuck in traffic near the very same place on Cross Bronx Expressway, and I had marveled that I had once stood and lobbied for a ride from that spot. On the more recent occasion, we had seen a car-load of Hasidim on one side, and on the other, a car-load of young men who seemed itchy for a fight and had tried to make eye-contact and heckled us and other drivers while we were all sitting still, waiting for traffic to move ahead. That had given me cause for concern, as had my previous journey through that same passage.
Looking back, I have a sense of pride in being able to say I did that, but I feel no cravings to repeat it.
I do wonder how much the world has changed. Would a young man with long hair and little money (and both innocence and fear) be able to hitchhike that same way today? The question does not burn enough in me to try that test, but I do pine a bit for the days when hitchhiking was fairly acceptable and there was a reasonable expectation of safety, and of getting a ride. Now it seems only the hardiest, boldest and most desperate take that method of transport. Yet my soft-spoken, un-intimidating mother had done so in her youth. Somehow those years when the world was younger, were times of greater trust, and perhaps of greater acceptance of differences. I do pine for those things, and hope they will be part of our future, in much greater measure.
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