Thursday, August 31, 2006

Inclusive fitness

Tomorrow, my oldest daughter moves out. My youngest child is still wearing diapers. This is a mighty spread of years. What am I doing? What was I thinking? I suppose the obvious answer is that there was not much thinking going on at all. But I do remember the doubts I had in both cases, as the new little beings crackled into life inside their mother's wombs. With my first, I doubted myself. Was I ready to be a parent? (no). Was I prepared to make a lifelong commitment to her mother? (no). With the last (yes! The last!) I doubted the world. Would it last long enough for him? (I don't know) Would the carnage wrought by my generation and the generation before mine be enough to prevent him from reaching middle age? (I don't know)

The funniest part of all of that is that it feels like some kind of warped progress. It's not me I doubt anymore. I know what I am and what I can do (and also what I'm not and can't). It's the world I've helped to create that I doubt. I tell myself that provided he can live long enough to catch his breath when he sees Cezanne's apples, or laugh out loud when he looks at Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie and 'gets' it, then it will be worth it for him even if, later, his lungs stop working because there's no air left to breathe or his stomach digests itself because there's nothing left to eat. That's what I tell myself. Over and over and over again.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Great neighbourhoods

I spent last night getting drunk on our neighbour's front lawn. It looked for a while as though I would need to be dragged home by my feet. The offer was on the table. There we all were, a mass of children huddled over a blanket making corn husk dolls, ringed by a circle of adults sipping cocktails of one kind or another, passing favourite drinks around. For some reason, many of them landed in front of me. For obvious reasons, given the day I'd had, I didn't refuse any of them. The words were never spoken, but my Gilbert grief was not a secret. It was interesting to sit amidst all of this relaxed goodwill and friendliness, and to reflect from my bleary state of intoxication, on what was happening here. In a way, we're near strangers. We've only lived on this street for a few weeks. Yet there's a crazy intimacy among us. We know many of each other's secrets -- who is sick and who is well, whose marriage is working and whose isn't. There's an easy and natural sharing like nothing I've ever known before. These people already feel like family. What kind of alchemy is at work here? I write about how the raw configuration of streets and houses can affect people's behaviour. But here there's certainly much more at work. One day I may understand more of it, but for now I think I'm happy enough to float down the river of tiny weed-covered lawns, looking up occasionally at trees that may have witnessed such gatherings for many decades. There's knowing, after all, but there's also being. I'm learning that this applies to human relationships as well as it applies to other kinds of ecologies.

In the middle of the party, the woman who sold our house to us walked down the street, returning from work to her new home. There were tears on her cheeks. She hadn't wanted to leave. No wonder.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Gilbert The Great

Monday, August 28, 2006

It's been a crazy month

We've been back from Nova Scotia for less than 8 weeks. It would be therapeutic for me to go back through my blog entries for those few weeks, but I'm almost afraid to do it, so much has changed.

There's no question. This book deal, the run-up to it, the final burst of writing to get a proposal that met the standards of my amazing agent, the flurry of emails that left me with a ruined gut, a wicked run of insomnia....all of it together has knocked me right off my horse and into the dust.

It's time to calm down, take a few more breaths, and remember who I am and what I'm up to.

When I got up this morning, I was greeted by old faithful doggie, who is now so sick that he doesn't even bother to stand up to greet me. His eyebrows flick around with the same adorable little clowny hat shapes they've always had. But the eyes themselves, they're dull. He can stand up, but unless it's for a bite of food (and he can only really hold down a bite or two), he'd rather not bother. He'll go outside the door to defecate, but only if you make him. He'd rather stay inside and go under the kitchen table.

Ten weeks ago, doggie and I ran up and down the ocean beach, wondering how we would get back to that place to live out our days. Doggie isn't going to make it. In fact, he's not going to make it through tomorrow. I'm going to help him see things out while he's still got just a shade of dignity left. I just made the phone call.

I need to pull myself out of this starstruck slippery swerve that's leading me to a place I don't want to go. If I can't, I won't make it back there either. The book is exciting. The hype is exciting. I can't tell you how it felt to sit in a publishing boardroom, listening to a roomful of people try to convince me that I should "let" them publish me. But now that's in the past. I need to get back to remembering all those important little details, like where this book came from in the first place. It didn't get started in a boardroom. It got started while I was lying on a huge piece of rock that was jutting out into the water, seaspray wetting my face. The connections that made all these editors so excited flashed through my mind while I lay there on that ancient boulder, shielding my eyes from the brilliant sun. My most ambitious goal of all for the book should be that I want to make a few others find their own rock and lie across it, drinking deep, finding the connection to the planet that is the only thing that makes this daily grind worth cherishing. Royalty rates and mass paperback editions should not be entering into it, unless they help me get closer to that goal.

Doggie's bowing out tomorrow. I'm bowing out later. His day is fixed, but mine's still a matter for speculation. It's coming, though. When it does, I hope it won't be the hype I'm thinking about, nor all of those emails from New York. It'll be that rock, that spray, and that sun that fills my mind. At least if I've got any sense it will be.

Friday, August 25, 2006

Breathing again

Some years ago, I was awarded tenure. This is not quite the ironclad guarantee of employment for life regardless of one's worth or work that many people believe it to be, but it is probably the closest thing to lifelong job security that exists on the planet. Like many honest academics, I'm sure (I hope!), I remember feeling some ambivalence about this. It wasn't so much that I felt that I didn't deserve it. I worked hard for it. It was more that I wondered whether anyone had that kind of worth. After all, given the kind of work that most academics do, we don't really need the kind of protection for which tenure was designed. Originally, the idea had been that universities (and society at large) did not want to have their thinkers fear job repercussions for any of their views. In short, we don't want academics to fear speaking the truth because they might lose their jobs. Now. Honestly. Can you imagine a scenario in which I might lose my job for asserting that animals use a certain kind of visual information to judge distance? Or that prey animals might communicate with one another to help avoid predators? It seems unlikely. But lives change. Ideas evolve. One never knows.

Nevertheless, I was pretty sure at the time (late in the last century) that though I was incredibly grateful for the gift of tenure and all of the freedom and opportunity it gave me, I would never have to use it, so to speak. I couldn't imagine having anything so controversial to say about visual perception that those in power would want to fire me. It seemed absurd. So, to thank the gods, feed my karma, salve my conscience about the fact that most other residents of the planet are not in a position to know what they're going to eat next week let alone where they're going to work next decade, I made myself a promise. I promised that if I ever had a chance to use my position to influence people, change minds, do good for the planet then I would. And if such a chance arose, I would use it to the hilt.

Today, I seem to have been given such a chance. I've been able to convince a very good publisher to undertake a firm commitment to shepherd my book through the editorial process, to promote it (and me) in such a way that I could bring some of the ideas that I've been carping about in this blog (and to my friends) to a wider audience. They're completely behind my effort to use my paltry ideas to promote environmental activism. To try to wake up a few more minds. If I can work hard enough to seize it, I've been given a chance to change the world, only by a little bit, but a little bit in the right direction. I can't begin to describe the feeling. It's a combination of euphoria and panic. Mostly euphoria. I feel as though I've been kissed by the universe, but I'm not sure whether I'm up to returning the kiss. I'm going to try. Soon, I'm sure, I'll be jaded. I've already been warned that there will come the day when I'll wonder why I ever thought any of this was a good idea. So I want to just sit here in silence for a few more minutes and listen to my pulse in my ears, feel that warm buzz in my belly, and let the tears fill my eyes.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

mortality

If he had lived, my father would have been 83 today. If he had been alive, and if the last couple of years of his life is any guide, I would have been sneaking him out of the nursing home and over to an Irish pub that was a favourite hiding place for him. He and I would have hoisted a respectable number of pints of the sacred black Irish nectar, and then, in the wee hours of the morning, I would have found some way to get him past the gatekeepers of his 'residence' and safely back to bed. They would have given the two of us some stern glances, I'm sure, but behind our backs they'd be smiling. Who wouldn't? Even as the cancer ate his body, he was a jolly, magic fellow with an endless appetite for fun and mischief, a deep heart of goodness, and an ability to whip a room full of ailing seniors into a laughing, dancing frenzy with a cock of his head, a wry joke, and a ridiculously unbalanced little two-step jig. Like his invented foreign languages -- the quasi-Russian lyrical poetry and the nonsensical German barks, his dance steps were original and beyond imitation. He's gone now, and I won't visit those last days again. Not today, anyway.

Losing people. It's one of those things I suppose we have to get used to, but I'm not there yet. I've lost two childhood friends in the last six months. The first one hit hard. He was my first close friend. High strung, of intimidating intelligence and wit, he battled depression for much of his life and when he felt he could no longer take his young family along with him on the struggle, he unmoored himself from them and set them all free. I've got much more to say about this fellow -- he's a part of me in more ways than he could ever have known -- but I'm not ready to talk yet. The wound is too fresh.

This latest casualty, similar in some ways, yet so different. His mental demons were stronger -- they kept him away from any semblance of a real life. He spent the last half of his living on the streets of Toronto, begging cigarettes, hurling abuse at passersby.

In a couple of days I'm going to Toronto to try to flog a book idea. While I'm trying to reach for a dream, the sidewalks will be littered with the chalk outlines of my childhood chums. If that won't help me to see how this is all just illusion, then there's no hope for me at all.

Friday, August 18, 2006

The market speaks

The extinction curve of the SUV sharpens slightly.

The marketing masterminds at Ford are calling it the "Accelerated Way Forward Turnaround."

Holy crap! Sounds like they're doing donuts in the parking lot.

Somebody needs to hire up those who are being laid off and get them building electric cars.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

A new day

I'm looking forward to this day. I just saw my children and my wife into the spawnhauler. They're taking off for a daytrip. I decided to stay behind to work. I was astonished, and very moved, by the tears in the eyes of my pre-teen in training when she heard the news. I know things are going very well between the two of us, but I didn't know I mattered that much to her. I almost changed my mind, but we compromised by agreeing to spend some 'uptown' time together on the weekend. We'll go sit at the Italian place and have some gelato, and then wander down the street to 'do the books' at this great little independent store.

As I watched the van drive away, it reminded me that, last year, on sabbatical, this was pretty much my life. I'd crawl out of bed, make coffee in my underwear, help get the day started and then be left to myself for a few hours of solitude and writing. I can't see the ocean from here, and the sound of the wind in the trees has been replaced by the murmur of trucks on Main Street, but it still feels luxurious to have time stretching before me with nothing to do with the hours but play with ideas, write a bit, look up a few facts. I think it's possible that I'm close to finding what I want out of life. I want a little bit less of what I have now, and a little bit more of what I have extended before me, so far still out of my grasp, but ever so slightly closer to being within reach. It's a funny thing how you can spend 48 years struggling, meandering, halting and then going backwards, turning in circles, sitting in despair with hands over eyes, curling up in bed without a clue as to what should happen next and then, finally, achieve a little window of clarity and say: "Oh. Wow. That was so easy. Why did this take me so long?"

My wife and I had a short, whispered conversation in bed last night. We were both thinking much the same thing and reached agreement in an instant. In two years, our lives could look very different. We can see the path. We just need to avoid any serious stumbles. As I write these words, I remember following boy wonder down the sidewalk this morning. He took off in excitement when he heard the siren of a firetruck. Soon he was airborne. Then came the Polysporin.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Happy hammers

I ran past a Habitat for Humanity build site this morning. There must've been close to 50 people hammering, yelling, laughing, standing in clusters in colour coded overalls. You could see a house springing from the ground like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon in a time lapse film. It was awe inspiring, hope building, spectacularly encouraging.

On the return leg, as I ran past the massive Sun Life parking lot, two young guys roared past me in a big Yukon, almost cutting my legs off at the knees in their urgency to get a good spot in the half full lot so they could get inside the building and get busy turning down claims.

Oh well.

I've got other news, too, but I'll sit on this for a bit.

But here's a hint.

"Start spreadin' the news....."

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Reasons we deserve extinction, Part 4

Offered without comment:

A Hummer of a Summer

Monday, August 14, 2006

An uphill battle

We had great company for the weekend. We went with them to a local tourist trap called African Lion Safari. It's one of those places where you can drive through huge pens of animals and get some small idea of what it is like to be on safari (though when I was on safari in Africa, I don't remember seeing many places where buffalo, bears and monkeys got tangled up together). If you're smart at this place, you pay the extra few dollars to ride the bus through the pens rather than take your own vehicle. Those bored monkeys can strip down a decent sedan in a matter of five minutes. Every few years, some Darwin Award winner decides to roll down their car window to commune with the animals. Sometimes they live, and actually prosper. I was feeling slightly queasy (still suffering, I think, from a fair amount of immune system devastation caused by the stress of a whiff of literary success) so forewent the bus ride and waited on a blanket and under a tree for the rest of the gang to return.

There is a point to this little bit of boring travelogue. African Lion Safari is a great place to people watch. I saw women in burkas, massive familes of Tamils, Sikh clans with very majestic looking men coasting regally along the pathways with their massive turbans, followed by happy squealing masses of kids with those cute little mini-turban topknots. Everyone had spread large picnics out on the grass, and their blankets were overflowing with interesting pots of food both hot and cold, all combining to make a fantastic sight and smell. Looking around, we certainly didn't seem like we were a species on the threshold of extinction. It seemed like a huge celebration of life. The weather was perfect, and the air seemed surprisingly clean and fresh. When I see a scene like that, I get a confusing tangle of feelings. Could my anxiety just be a huge overrreaction? Will everything be ok? And if I'm not wrong, then what will it take to wake us up? In the face of beautiful, perfect days like that, will enough of us be able to muster the will to make those deep cuts to our lifestyle that our kids are depending on us to make ? I've written about this preoccupation before. How does one strike that balance between preserving enough of the happy stuff of life to remind one of why life is even worth worrying about, yet at the same time do enough to reverse the trend that will sweep us off the planet? How do we have our cake and eat it too?

I had a long talk with a friend about all of this today. He does think I'm overreacting. He does think everything will be ok. He's a pretty smart fellow -- a science teacher who knows quite a few of the relevant facts about climate change and he's just not that worried. He hasn't read the same books that I have, but he's seen some of the same things that I have. In fact, having lived in the Arctic for a number of years, he's seen quite a few of the effects of climate change first hand. And he still thinks we've got a good, long time before we see any kind of change that will affect our everday lives, and that before that happens, the economic benefits of living sustainably will do their work and motivate us to live differently. He argued, somewhat persuasively, that for all of my anxieties, my behaviour suggested that I felt the same way. I wasn't carbon neutral. I hadn't drained my hot tub. I still used my car. I had talked about pulling up stakes and moving to a few self-sufficient permacultured acres in the wilderness, but what I had actually done was to buy a new minivan and a house in the city with a massive mortgage. Does that make me a hypocrite, an optimist, or just a confused idiot?

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Self-absorbed silence

My self-absorption has deepened this week, hence the lack of posts. It isn't that I'm not paying attention to the outer world, though. I'm aware of the reports of the massive thwarted bomb attack in London and attuned to the confusion about the fact that this threat was followed for 8 months before being acted upon. I'm also laughing, like everyone else, about the official protestations that this is not about a war of religions or civilizations. Of course it is. Ours is the civilization that would like to sop up all remaining fossil energy to support our ridiculous lifestyle and, before that need, nothing is sacred. Including lots of stuff that is sacred to other large portions of the world population.

I've also spent a bit of time dwelling on my attitude towards alcohol. Did I have a bit too much glee when I learned that "the mother of all liquor stores" is being opened just up the street from me? It's a funny cultural thing I guess that if I lived somewhere like Detroit or Buffalo, I'd probably greet that news with a fair bit of consternation, thinking of drunks, guns, robberies and mayhem. Here, in Canada, we greet the news with celebration. Next to a city square with fountains, sycamore trees, and chess sets on old stone tables, there are few things that bring more pedestrian life to an urban centre than a huge booze boutique. My glee. My dear wife pointed out to me, on Sunday, that my worrying about what I would drink on Monday (knowing that the liquor stores would be closed for a stat holiday) was probably not a very good sign. I think that perhaps she overreacted (after all, my worries were precipitated by her announcing that she was taking all of the booze out of our house to a party that she was going to the next day. I'd declined the invitation in order to get some quiet work done around the house but felt I might deserve a cold beer at the end of the day). But I don't always know what's good for me.

I just had lunch with my wonderful wife. We shared a couple of glasses of wine, and marvelled over the time dependence of alcohol tolerance. In the late evening, we can easily knock off two or even three thimbles of scotch without feeling a thing. A single glass of red with lunch can leave us slithering around on our seats, groping one another under the table. (ok. I groped. She stopped me in my tracks with a smoldering stare. But she was tipsy.)

We were celebrating another small rung on the long ladder of literary success. I've had 'the call' from a publisher. This is still a long way from a happening thing (this point driven home by the frequent use of words like 'promotability', 'media savvy' and 'presentable' in connection with my grisled old visage). But it is a necessary step and one that takes me to a slightly higher altitude from which I could be dropped and smashed like a fragile old quail egg with a beard. Yes. I know. Writing like that is neither promotable nor presentable.

Eo ipso the wine at lunch.

Monday, August 07, 2006

anniversary

58 years ago today, my parents were married. August 7, 1948. I'm just surfing around the Internet, trying to get some idea of what the world must have been like on that day. The London Olympics would have been in full swing -- the first Olympic Games since the 1936 games in Berlin. Germany and Japan were not invited to the London Games. One of the big dramas was the finish of the marathon, in which a Belgian runner, Etienne Gailly, entered the stadium first but was so spent that he was not able to do his lap around the track to win the event before he was passed by the two runners behind him.

I've been reading some of William Whyte's early magazine articles for Fortune, forerunners of what would eventually become his book "The Organization Man", documenting the sociological changes taking place in post-war U.S. that eventually brought about a new style of architecture, urban design, lifestyle changes, mobility, suburbanization. Much of this, we're reaping the cost of today in terms of how we live and (yawn) environmental destruction. Much of this sea change seems to have come out of a new set of expectations following the end of World War II. Which is odd, because I've been thinking that the last time we saw the kind of collective response to a global threat that might work with global warming was the response of Britons to the threatened Nazi invasion. What sent my thinking down this road was Al Gore's citation of Winston Churchill's words (not about the war but about another event -- go see the movie). For all of the horrors he participated in, Churchill had a way of getting people moving. I remember how much my father loved him. I remember the day that Churchill died -- a sad day in my house. It was a few days after my 7th birthday and just a few months before we left England for Canada. The television screen went black for a good minute before the sombre voice of the BBC announced his death. Is there any chance today that a charismatic leader could come along and lead the world, or some part of the world, in the direction it needs to go? We seem so much bigger, less ruly, more greedy, scattered, confused. It's hard to believe one person could bring it all together. Maybe the right combination of charismatic leader, a Kennedy type, and an event, bigger even than Katrina, all taking place at around the same time, could push us into massive action. Or maybe we'd just raise our dozing heads from the table for a minute, peer at it all with a single sleepy eye and say "oh, great, just another 9-11 clone. Wonder when the movie will come out..."

But this is supposed to be about my folks. This was their day. Bright eyed, happy, keen as hell to have a big bunch of kids (which they did). The Nazis beaten, what could possibly stand in the way of centuries of happiness, stability, and prosperity? My parents both saw the world out, only a few years ago, believing with all their hearts that this was still so. Their children, all successful, prosperous, and leading their own happy families gave them no reason at all to doubt it. I'm glad they had that. Happy anniversary, mum and dad.

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Joy

I'm snatching a little joy today. I'm taking the day off. Relaxing. Thinking as little as possible. Reading a funny book out on the deck with a bottle of wine beside me. Enjoying my kids (especially at this particular moment when the youngest two are napping). Snippet from the boy wonder early this morning:

BW (as he climbs aboard his trike): Bye mom! I'm going to the grocery store
Mom: What are you going to buy?
BW: Broccoli and jelly beans! (BW does a few laps of the driveway and then returns with a worried frown.)
BW: Darn!
Mom: What's wrong?
BW: I forgot the broccoli.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Zealous nuts

Just when I needed it, the newsletter for the Project for Public Spaces arrived in my inbox. Zealous nuts are non-experts, "impassioned citizens" who take it upon themselves to improve the urban landscape by spearheading intelligent development or redevelopment -- markets, public squares, better parks -- the kinds of things that help to make healthier cities. None of the activities catalogued will really prevent the sun from burning off our eyebrows in the next 50 years, but anything that pulls people out of the mindset that you've got to have a 1/2 acre plot in the suburbs with a multi-level swingset and a barbecue that uses a Saturn V booster for a fuel source has got to be a good thing, no?

I'm just casting around for reasons to be optimistic. I had a note from a dear friend yesterday, sharing my feelings of fear that our extinction is imminent and worrying about what to do with a growing anxiety that seems not to be shared by most people. It's hard to find those straws to clutch, but so important that we do. If we don't find a way to carve out a minute or so from each day to remember why all of this is worth worrying about, then it becomes too easy to give up and, like Stephen Hawking, make plans to run away from the disgusting mess we've made.

My seeds are up. I wanted to take pictures, but I think the young lady who looks after our son may already think I'm completely nuts, and I didn't want her to see me hunched over in the mud, trying to take macro shots of little baby kale seedlets. It was a near-run thing, this germination. It was almost too hot for it. I'll say that again. Too hot for seeds to germinate. I didn't know that, outside of blast furnace temperatures, such a thing was possible. The table in the book I'm reading suggests that once things get beyond about 97 degrees fahrenheit, it gets dodgy. It got dodgy. But they're up, and doing well, and when I have a chance, I'll put some pictures of nice green sprouts here.

In our city, zealous nuts are in short supply. I'll need to learn how to be one. No. Pretty sure I am one. I just need to learn how to let the secret out. I've blogged before about the big parking lot across the street from our house (a couple of streets over, really). It's owned by a big insurance company. Sun Life. The parking lot is never more than 2/3 full. When it was put in place, in 1998, there was a bit of a scandal. The company owned a block of houses which they rented out. They had reassured tenants that there were no short term plans to develop. And then, one day, out of the blue, they sent around letters saying that they planned to doze the houses flat so their employees would have lots of room to spread out their SUVs. There was such a public outcry, replete with stories of sobbing tenants ripping gardens out of houses they'd lived in for years, sacrificing costly renovations they'd paid for themselves, that Sun Life, in an act of incredible benevolence, allowed ten houses to remain and let them be used by a variety of service organizations and health agencies, rent free. They took out a whole neighbourhood. But now they say they are on a hiring frenzy, need the space and so will knock those last remaining houses down and clear the block. They won't say how many people they're hiring, nor what their plans are for the hundred or so spots that sit vacant every day. They say they're being incredibly nice about all of this because, after all, they did not kick everyone off the block for a few extra years and, quoting from their press release, they've taken "pride in the attractive green spaces....around our Waterloo office." Really. Nice 1 metre wide swatches of grass winding between the cars. Not sure why they're as weed free as golf greens, but I can guess. I wouldn't be surprised to see a grazing herd of elk show up one day to squeeze between all those cars for a nice, green feed. I walk past this huge grey plain every day and I shake my head, imagining the things that could be done with that space, right on Main Street. A square, fountains, benches, chess sets, trees, markets. Sun Life could even help out by allowing public access to the space on weekends for special events. But no. Instead they've put up big signs threatening to tow your ass if you venture in with a car. Especially if you're borrowing a bit of Sunday space to go visit your grandmother in the hospital next door. They mention this explicitly. Not your grandmother, but the hospital. And, still, it sits empty. I imagine they must be worried about the liability that comes with sharing. Insurance is so expensive these days. It would probably be easier for Sun Life to be a good corporate citizen if they were doing a bit better....but....they're only worth about $400 billion, and their stock price has only risen about 50% in the last 5 years. The insurance business is such a mug's game.

The other day, as I was driving to work (yes, driving again...still no fucking bike seat) I got caught up in a big traffic jam in front of Sun Life. A hoary old man in a black suit (looking a bit like one of those ancient British bankers in Mary Poppins) was being wheeled out of a stretch limo and into the Sun Life building. We all had to sit and wait as Mr. Moneybags was safely stowed in the tower. I'm not normally a violent man, but I must admit my toe twitched just a little bit on the accelerator....

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

It's another crazy weather day

We're surrounded by cloud walls as the big chunk of hot, moist air around here does its best to make some twisters that might pound a little sense into us.

I've tried my best today to turn my thoughts away from the mess of the world and into one of the courses I'm teaching in the fall...acting as though nothing is wrong and this will all blow over and I'll be able to just go on showing pictures of the parts of the eye until I toddle off to my nice little hobby farm in Nova Scotia when I'm 83.

Not so much luck with that.

The thing is....if it's true that we have everything we need to change course and prevent climate catastrophe, then all we're lacking is, what? Will? Foresight? Connection? As much as we need to engineer carbon sequestration, we need to engineer new ways to think about this stuff. So sad to think that it will more likely be our nature and not our inability to invent new technologies that will ultimately burn our asses off this planet.

I'd like to stop thinking about all of this, even for a few days, but how does one do that and also kiss one's children goodnight and actually mean it?

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Inconvenient weather

Pre-teen in training and I went to Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth last night. As we were going in, we noticed a few cars sitting outside the cinema, engines idling so that the people waiting for showtime could enjoy their airconditioning for a few more minutes (without making the sweaty transit across the sidewalk to the airconditioned building? No idea, really). I'm glad they watched with us.