My neighbor Cal and I went to the Town Board meeting tonight to urge a responsible approach to the American Transmission Company’s proposed hundred million dollar build out of facilities including a 345kV line to nowhere across our marsh. Cal is a wetlands ecologist and quite a Christian, a combination that I find baffling, but it works for him. (”Oh me of little faith…”)

Tonight after we had our way with the board, influencing them to file for intervenor status with the State Public Service Commission and to write a letter to the County Board supporting a moratorium on construction of new power facilities until a needs assessment has been completed, we stood talking in the parking lot for a while. Cal was all about how our language gives us away: “Do we call all this black stuff underground ‘fossil fuel’ or do we see them as great carbon sequestration systems that made the planet habitable?” He pointed out that until the ‘enlightenment,’ our metaphor for creation (yeah, the planet - lots of xtians call it “creation” - as distinct from “tarnation” I suppose, and of course “tarnation” in the context of exploiting carboniferous stuff… well you get my drift) … anyway the dominant metaphor for creation was a book, a book to be read. Then somehow it shifted to the earth as a machine, a great storehouse of “natural resources,” goods to be used, to be consumed.

He was talking about this article by William J. Mills, unfrotunately it’s part of the great information sequestration system called electronic serialization, and it would cost me twenty-five clams to read the whole thing. The abstract says:

Metaphor plays a fundamental role in our perception and comprehension of our environment, not just as a means of escape from customary vision but, more importantly, as the means whereby that customary vision first becomes established. Societies differ in “metaphorical vision” because their vision of the world derives from different metaphors. Three periods in the history of the Western world are distinguished. In the Middle Ages, nature was seen primarily as a book. In the Renaissance, it was believed to be organized in the same manner as a human being. In the modern age, the most influential metaphor has been the machine. A society’s choice of one metaphor rather than another as the primary vehicle through which it seeks to comprehend its environment is highly indicative of the needs and aspirations of that society.

…that Betsy is somewhere in Europe mit dem seehonden or something.

“It was a substantial-looking farm. In the stables, over the top of the open doors, one could see great cart-horses quietly feeding from new racks. Right along the outbuildings extended a large dunghill, from which manure liquid oozed, while amidst fowls and turkeys, five or six peacocks, a luxury in Chauchois farmyards, were foraging on the top of it.”

I went out tonight to the garage, a blue plastic 40 gallon garbage can in hand, empty from the road where the Waste Management corporation had left it. As I walked by the shade beds, bathed by the breeze in the scent of mock orange, I thought there were worse things than being alive on a sunny evening in June. I came out from beneath the shrubs and the trees into the graveled parking area before the garage and there high above the tobacco shed the moon was tethered, just another element of the view, and not close or particularly accessible, but mine at that moment, as much mine as the shed and the parking lot, the walnut or the pines, as much mine as the Philadelphus coronarius that shades the drive and soaks the June air with a scent that is almost psychedelic.

At the cassandra pages I read about a sea of trillium…

As I walked along the lake this morning, three fat large-mouth bass swam in the clear water just off shore. The sun was so bright, shining toward me from the east, that it made the body of the smallest fish translucent. One fish then turned and lazily swam toward me so that I could see both eyes at once, glinting orange. I waved my arms but the glare on the water favored me; the fish turned again and swam off, unperturbed. This scene — the shoreline and myself, looking into the water — are a recurrent dream, and today I felt myself shifting between partially-remembered dream sequences and the real interplay of lake-life and observer. These dreams are sometimes disturbing, and always strange — I’m quite sure the water represents my unconscious mind — and I’ve never fully understood them. I left the shore after a while and walked across the road to the woods, and followed a deer trail through the undergrowth to the edge where the woods give way to a farmer’s meadow. The deer had been there last night, from the looks of the fresh scat and scuffled earth under a copse of thorn apples. I backtracked, looking for hepaticas, and found their leaves and some spent blossoms under a tree where they’ve always grown. I sat down then, with my back against the the tree, and gazed across a sea of white trillium. I was there a pretty long time, long enough for the woods to settle once again into my eyes and heart, creating a strong memory of the white blossoms; the scent of the warming earth under its cover of leaves; the pair of warblers overhead in the budded branches of a hickory, singing the spring.

“We must teach the children that taking care of the land and learning to feed yourself are just as important as reading, writing, and arithmetic. For the most part, our families and institutions are not doing this. Therefore, I believe that it’s up to the public education system to teach our kids these important values. There should be gardens in every school, and school lunch programs that serve the things the children grow themselves, supplemented by local, organically grown products. This could transform both education and agriculture.”

- Alice Waters, “A Delicious Revolution”

Baffled by the Beauty Bush in the backyard, Beth keyed it out via Google. We’ve only been wondering what that beautiful shrub is for the last fifteen years or so! Here’s a close-up of our Beauty…

Kolkwitzia or just another Daphne of some sort? My local plant expert raised the question. You be the judge.

I don’t know the answer. I’m not sure I know the question. But ever since I saw Troy Worman’s odd assertion regarding the femmeyness of RB, whom most of us have heretofore considered a manly man indeed, I’ve been afraid that I might somehow shift gender myself. And, as it turns out there is some evidence. I’ve signed up for BlogHer. (Day one is full, so I’ll have to do some creative lurking if I want to get tips and tricks from Heather Champ).

Today came this shocking news from ZA. Golby says, “…this past week, I’ve come over all schoolgirlish.” Perhaps it’s the global warming. I don’t know. Will I see you fellas at BlogHer?

Appalling… maybe this is why I don’t pay much attention to the news:

Climbing enthusiasts will join Mt. Everest pioneer Sir Edmund Hillary in condemning climbers who left a British mountaineer to die during their own attempts on the world’s tallest peak. In an act of appalling indifference, more than 40 climbers reportedly filed past David Sharp as he lay dying without oxygen on the way down from the summit during a solo climb last week.

MtEverest.net reports…

The latest case is British David Sharp. David vanished on his summit bid last week, and the only reason the world knew was thanks to a blog entry by his team mate Vitor Negrete. Vitor dispatched that David had died, and reported 3 more climbers missing on the mountain. He was distraught by the situation, including the fact that his high camp had been robbed. “All these events have affected me deeply – I even considered calling the attempt off,” he said. The next day, Vitor was dead.

David Sharp, 34, was still alive at 28,000 feet. Double amputee Mark Inglis, told the news source: “He was in a very poor condition, near death. We talked about [what to do for him] for quite a lot at the time and it was a very hard decision. About 40 people passed him that day, and no one else helped him apart from our expedition. Our Sherpas (guides) gave him oxygen. He wasn’t a member of our expedition, he was a member of another, far less professional one.”

Mallory’s famous line, “Because it’s there,” always struck me as a little arch, fake on the face of it. I’ve spent enough time in the Sierras and on other mountain sides to have a different answer: “Because you’re not there.” For me there is no finer get-away than a ramble in the mountains. And I always thought the folks I ran into on the trails up there would help me if I was in a jam, as I would help them. Quasi-technical climbers, these summit tourists, must be a different breed though, a new age breed. The fact that forty could pass a dying man without giving up “their summit” to help him speaks volumes.

(Thanks to Shelley Powers for the reference point.)