My Midwestern culture-shock was pretty intense for a while, but even when I think I've gotten used to local behavior, something comes along to amaze me all over again.
I've certainly been aware that one of the Midwestern core values is total irrationality. The fundamentalist belief system of the local farmers and factory workers says that rationality is pagan and anti-God. It's better to believe whatever you want about global warming or what causes cancer, since the most uninformed person's opinion is just as good as that of the most learned philosopher. More "educated" people, the doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, tend to have a "spiritual path" that also decries modern fantasies like, say, the germ theory of disease. Well, maybe not the doctors. But everyone seems to subscribe to the "thinking makes it so" attitude.
In yesterday's newspaper there is an article about a local eyesore, an old garage in a residential neighborhood. It has also been found to be a menace to public health and safety. The town has been going around with the owner, to get him to tear it down, for seven years. Finally they reached a resolution. But...
One commissioner said (despite seven years worth of evidence) that he "didn't believe" that there was a problem. Therefore, according to his belief system, there is no problem and anyone who says there is obviously is doing something Bad. Evidence is irrelevant. Seven years of work by other commissioners is irrelevant. So he fought having anything done about the property!
Maybe I could call this the "Reagan Effect."
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Monday, October 15, 2007
Abalone: delicious, dangerous, declining (Blog Action Day)
I remember when I was small, watching my mom in the kitchen as she pound-pound-pounded away at the abalone. She would pound it out with a special little hammer into a white circle, then cook it quickly. I don't recall any recipe, just that it was delicious, so good that even incipient vegetarian me would gobble it down. Guess I'm just a fake vegetarian... at least in some instances!
People near my folk's house on California's Mendocino Coast talked about how in the past, into the 1980s, they would just wade into the ocean and pick abalone right off the rocks. Most homes in the area had heaps of abalone shells moldering away in the yard (or at least until a few years ago, when a man came by offering a buck each for them.)
So I started wondering why they aren't just there on the rocks anymore. Too many people? Too many seals? A little research project got underway.
"Abalone are easily overfished." says the California Dept of Fish & Game. "They have slow growth, infrequent reproductive success, vulnerability to fishery-related injuries, high mortality of small animals, and need high densities for successful reproduction."
And it turns out there are lots of different kinds of abalone local to the Mendocino Coast: Haliotis rufescens (red abalone); H. cracherodii (black abalone); H. kamtschatkana (pinto or Northern Abalone); and sometimes H. walallensis (flat abalone.) The only one you are supposed to pick (abalone fishing is called "picking", actually they have to be pried off the rocks with a crowbar, not just "picked") is the red, which is found intertidal to 80 feet. This is the one we all know, with the irridescent inner shell and reddish outer shell and the delicious white "foot". It can actually live to be 40 years old, and the biggest recorded one was 12 5/16 inches long.
The black abalone was most likely the one people used to wade in and pick off the rocks--it lives in the high intertidal zone. Turns out the population of black abalone was being, like all abalone, over picked, but what almost did it completely in was a disease, abalone kidney coccidia or "withering syndrome" which killed off a large part of the population in the 1980s. It is now protected--and anyway, it is also reportedly the least desireable meat. The inside of its shell is very pale, and the outside is black.
The pinto is the tiny little one. It never gets very big, the record was about four inches long. It's also protected. Same with the flat, which is also little.
When out abalone-ing, the rules are that no scuba gear can be used, you may only have three at one time and no more than 24 in a year. Swimming in the ocean is dangerous and cold; that should be protection for the abalone. But poaching is a serious problem. Abalone is tasty and trendy, and worth a lot--really a lot--of money. It's just sitting out there in the ocean, unprotected. And the American tradition is to be bold and take what you want or need---
Not too long ago a poacher was caught with a huge catch of abalone (and they threw the book at him, too.) He was an immigrant, I'm sure he was just a poor man who came here for economic reasons, and was looking to, as Kaiser Cement trucks used to say on them, "Find a need and fill it." Abalone is sitting unprotected out in the ocean, a "thing", an economic opportunity. No need to worry about taking too many, because when it's wiped out, there will always be some other "thing" to make money on.
Up in BC, an area of ocean next to a prison with 24 hour armed guard patrols was studied and found to have more and larger abalone and better reproduction of abalone than in an allegedly protected reserve right next to the prison area. It's the same sad story, people want what they want and if there's a buck to be made, someone will find a way to make it. In his book "Collapse" Jared Diamond wonders what the man who cut the last tree down on Easter Island thought while he did it (with no wood, there were no boats and no escape from the island, let alone fishing or building materials or soil protection--to make a long story short if you don't know it all ready, there were terrible wars and starvation and everyone died and etc.)
I know what he thought: "If I don't get it, someone else will!"
Same with the abalone.
Back to the Dept. of Fish & Game: "These factors (slow growth, infrequent reproductive success, vulnerability to fishery-related injuries, high mortality of small animals, and need for high densities for successful reproduction) limit the ability of abalone to withstand a fishery...Red abalone in northern California are believed to grow slower and reproduce less frequently than those in the south...surveys have revealed few abalone in the 2-5 inch size range, an indication that significant reproduction has not occurred. At Van Damme State Park in the early 1990’s SCUBA surveys found that over 75% of the population was under the legal size compared to only 50% today. " (2005)
Moral: Don't poach (Hey! I never would do that!) Watch for poachers (But I'm not there 24 hours a day!) Don't buy black market abalone (I've never seen it for sale!)
Oh heck, I don't know. I've just written myself into a corner more depressing than the latest issues of "Audubon" and "Sierra" put together.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Poem by Cuī Hào: The Yellow Crane Tower
I bought a souvenir fan in Chinatown, printed with black characters on a white background. Accompanying the fan, tied to it with a bit of string, was a translation on a white card: (as written)
"The ancient fairy has flown away, riding on a yellow crane, all that is left is the empty tower of the crane. The crane has flown never to return, and now for hundreds and thousands of years therre will only be white cluds drifting.
"Under the sun in Han Yang, the trees are clearly discernable, even the fragrent and thick grass on Parrot Island are clearly visible.
"But as the day drifts towards evening dusk, one asks where one's home land is, the lingering and mystifying mists above the rivers adds to one's sadness."
I knew it was a poem but only yesterday rummaged out the original, by Tang Dynasty poet Cuī Hào.
Here is an unattributed translation that I've found on several travel websites:
The Yellow Crane Tower
Where long ago a yellow crane bore a sage to heaven,
Nothing is left now but the Yellow Crane Terrace.
The yellow crane never revisited earth,
And white clouds are flying without him for ever.
Every tree in Hanyang becomes clear in the water,
And Parrot Island is a nest of sweet grasses;
But I look toward home, and twilight grows dark
With a mist of grief on the river waves.
It's hard to tell from that translation, but the poem was considered so emblematic and was so influential that even the great Li Bai felt unable to write about the tower, though he eventually wrote his famous poem about watching from the Yellow Crane Tower as his friend sailed away to the west.
The tower, Huanghelou, (or rather the current version) is on a hill overlooking the Yangtze (Changjiang) River in Wuhan near the mouth of the Han River (Hanshui) in what is today Wuhan. It looks from the former town of Wuchang to the former town of Hanyang, both swallowed by the modern metropolis. I don't have a good map so I don't know where Parrot Island is/was, but the river was famous for its floods and probably that's something that changed.
Here's a literal translation (pinyin):
Past person already gone yellow crane away
Here only remain yellow crane tower
Yellow crane once gone not return
White cloud 1000 years sky leisuredly
Clear river clear Hanyang tree
Fragrant grass parrot islet
Day dusk homeland pass what place be
Mist water river on become person sorrow
The tower itself is what westerners think of as a pagoda, with multiple levels and turned up eaves. The first tower ("lou"="multistoried building"; a pagoda has something to do with Buddhism) was built in 223AD (Three Kingdoms Period,220-280AD); since it was wood it was burned and reconstructed many times. The current building dates from the 1950s, styled after the Qing Dynasty version. I wonder if there is a drawing anywhere of the original.
Over the centuries a legend grew up about a man who lived an austere life in or by the tower, and was taken up to heaven on the back of a yellow crane to become one of the immortals. Other legends say it was a fairy that was taken up from the tower. Another website relates this story:
"Long long ago, there was an aged man with gray hair and long beard who rode a yellow crane, flying slowly to fall down on the top of Mount Snake. All the farmers, old and young, chatting and playing on the hillside with rocky ground were surprised to look at the stranger. One of boys stepped forward to ask him who are you?swheresare you from? ?Listening carefully to the boy, touching his beard, the aged stranger answered: My name is Wang Zi-an [King's Son-safety], my hometown is over there..."he pointed out to the blue sky, and rode on the crane's back again to fly lightly to the heaven. The Yellow Crane was fluttering higher and higher, passing through the thin mist and thick cloud and vanishing in the remote dome of the sky. An old farmer said: there are only the cranes in white, in gray or the red-crowned cranes we have seen in our human world, but no crane in yellow. I'm sure the yellow must be a fairy crane. ?And then a mid-aged man said: what we have seen is a strange event, and we should build a pavilion to commemorate what happened to us."sure!"everyone agreed with him. Afterwards, the Yellow Crane Tower was established at the top of Mount Snake. That's the tower's origin."
The same website provides this translation:
Long ago a man riding a yellow crane flew away,
Leaving the Yellow Crane Tower empty till today.
The yellow crane has never returned once again
The 1000-year lonely clouds leisurely remain.
The river is so clear to mirror the tree shadow,
The grasses on the Parrot Islet luxuriantly grow.
I'm not on way home as the sun behind the hill,
My sorrow waves with the mist-veiled billow.
I'm still looking for other translations.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
'1491' - Getting a sense of the past
'1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus' by Charles Mann
Most of what you find written about pre-conquest "Indians" is broken apart along modern political boundaries. For example, it's hard to get a sense of a culture when part of the culture is written about only in books about Colorado and part of it only in books about Mexico. A great achievement of this book is the ignoring of modern political boundaries and looking at the great sweep of cultures that were here pre-Columbus, pre-smallpox.
This book is important because it talks about something most modern white Americans would rather not talk or think or even know about: Before our European ancestors arrived, the continent was full of people. People of many languages and cultures, as distinctive, complex, and advanced as any in the "old world." Cultures that are now utterly lost.
I still find books about "the Indians" that describe their idyllic, simple life, plucking the fruits of an Eden that only exists in European fantasies. The way our great-great-great grandparents imagined it, and we don't want to hear a different message. In correcting that view, "1491" may be a path back to sanity.
But the book is NOT one of those downer everything-is-doomed Sierra Club magazine books. It's not a bone dry academic book either. It is a fine, journalistic overview of an enormous topic, lively and fascinating reading. It's a big thick book, but I flew right through those pages.
Charles Mann is a journalist covering technology, commerce, and science. His website is at www.charlesmann.org.
Most of what you find written about pre-conquest "Indians" is broken apart along modern political boundaries. For example, it's hard to get a sense of a culture when part of the culture is written about only in books about Colorado and part of it only in books about Mexico. A great achievement of this book is the ignoring of modern political boundaries and looking at the great sweep of cultures that were here pre-Columbus, pre-smallpox.
This book is important because it talks about something most modern white Americans would rather not talk or think or even know about: Before our European ancestors arrived, the continent was full of people. People of many languages and cultures, as distinctive, complex, and advanced as any in the "old world." Cultures that are now utterly lost.
I still find books about "the Indians" that describe their idyllic, simple life, plucking the fruits of an Eden that only exists in European fantasies. The way our great-great-great grandparents imagined it, and we don't want to hear a different message. In correcting that view, "1491" may be a path back to sanity.
But the book is NOT one of those downer everything-is-doomed Sierra Club magazine books. It's not a bone dry academic book either. It is a fine, journalistic overview of an enormous topic, lively and fascinating reading. It's a big thick book, but I flew right through those pages.
Charles Mann is a journalist covering technology, commerce, and science. His website is at www.charlesmann.org.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Review: Children of Men (film)
Originally posted on Wednesday, January 17, 2007
The film "Children of Men" is set in a near future when people are no longer able to have children. The story takes place in a gloomy England which maintains a veneer of civilization while the rest of the world collapses. To make the point of what is at stake, the story opens with the killing by a mob of the world's youngest person, an eighteen-year-old, for failing to give someone his autograph. Despair and senseless violence are presented as the reaction of both individuals and governments as humanity faces a slow extinction.
The British government rounds up and jails any refugees, and deports them to brutal concentration camps (in busses with "Homeland Security" painted on the sides.) The story's protagonist is a dispirited bureaucrat, traveling to and from work on the train, coffee cup in hand, ignoring cages full of pleading refugees in the train stations.
He has a cousin high up in the government and an ex-wife who is leading a violent radical group protesting the mistreatment of refugees by setting off bombs. The ex persuades him to help obtain documents to get a young refugee woman to the coast, so he visits his cousin to ask for the papers. The wealthy cousin is collecting the world's art in his penthouse, from Michelangelo's "David" to Pink Floyd's pig balloon. Picasso's "Guernica" hangs on the dining room wall, where the cousin's teenage son, one of the last generation, plays some sort of video game during dinner, utterly oblivious to everything going on around him.
Having obtained the papers, the bureaucrat finds he must travel with the refugee to get her safely through; with his ex-wife, her lieutenant, an older woman, and the refugee girl, they set off by car to catch a boat somewhere along the coast. En route they are attacked by a roving band of bandits. The police arrive and in the general shootout the police are killed and the group are caught by police surveillance cameras. Now a wanted criminal, the bureaucrat finds that the radical group plans to do away with him; he also discovers that the refugee girl is the first pregnant woman in eighteen years, and that the group plans to use her to further their cause rather than allowing her to escape to safety. The older woman, who is a midwife, the refugee, and the bureaucrat all escape from the radical group, and the film becomes a first rate chase movie, as the small party tries to escape both the government forces and the frustrated radicals, and deliver the refugee girl to her boat.
Overwhelming the action-movie chase and the science-fiction movie futuristic gloom, though, is the fundamental message of the story, a Christian message of sacrifice and redemption. Many willingly sacrifice their lives for the refugee girl, who symbolizes hope, on her way to the mysterious boat, symbolizing redemption. The point is made that most people are unredeemable; when people first see the baby, during a firefight between the police, radicals, and refugees, they stop fighting and many fall to their knees in awe. But a few moments later they turn their backs and begin killing each other again.
There is another, more disturbing disturbing message in the film, one that is part of many people's understanding of Christianity; one that doesn't think much of women. Except, of course, when they are young, passive, and pregnant. The refugee girl has little to say about what is happening to her, and is more or less just carried along. Mysteriously, all involved seem to have little interest in locating the man that got her pregnant; you would think that would be of major interest when considering the future of the human race (especially since the title of the work is "Children of MEN".) The implication, then, is that the men are all OK and it's just the women who are defective. The carriers of Original Sin.
The rest of the women in the film are not held in high esteem by the storyteller. The only powerful woman in the movie, the ex, is "suitably" punished by pointlessly dying while playing a silly game. The midwife is nutty ("Did he really see flying saucers?"), although she gets to sacrifice herself for the cause, which also allows the man to deliver the baby. The bureaucrat's mother is catatonic. An Armenian refugee woman helps them escape, but chooses not to come with them to the redeeming ship. Oh, and when the ship comes, the sailors are all men.
The "radicals" are presented as being as great an evil as the government; incoherent in their goals, they seem to only crave power and meaningless violence. The basic view of "older generation" has of any opposition. Or maybe it's a little side message from the storytellers: "We are smarter than you because we know it's not the sixties anymore."
It's very well made film, with lots of interesting visual details that carry the mood. Motorized rickshaws belch smog in the resource-poor and no longer environmentally conscious city streets; abandoned farmland is piled high with the burning bodies of dead cattle; wild deer feed on plants growing in an empty and collapsing grade school. Clive Owen plays the bureaucrat perfectly. The supporting actors are all very good, especially Michael Caine as the bureaucrat's ex-hippie father, hiding out in the woods, the British TV actress Pam Ferris as the midwife, and Chiwetel Ejiofor as the radical lieutenant. Claire-Hope Ashitey doesn't get to do much except have an animatronic baby on-screen.
On the whole, though, the "message" factors in this movie cancelled out most of my enjoyment.
The film "Children of Men" is set in a near future when people are no longer able to have children. The story takes place in a gloomy England which maintains a veneer of civilization while the rest of the world collapses. To make the point of what is at stake, the story opens with the killing by a mob of the world's youngest person, an eighteen-year-old, for failing to give someone his autograph. Despair and senseless violence are presented as the reaction of both individuals and governments as humanity faces a slow extinction.
The British government rounds up and jails any refugees, and deports them to brutal concentration camps (in busses with "Homeland Security" painted on the sides.) The story's protagonist is a dispirited bureaucrat, traveling to and from work on the train, coffee cup in hand, ignoring cages full of pleading refugees in the train stations.
He has a cousin high up in the government and an ex-wife who is leading a violent radical group protesting the mistreatment of refugees by setting off bombs. The ex persuades him to help obtain documents to get a young refugee woman to the coast, so he visits his cousin to ask for the papers. The wealthy cousin is collecting the world's art in his penthouse, from Michelangelo's "David" to Pink Floyd's pig balloon. Picasso's "Guernica" hangs on the dining room wall, where the cousin's teenage son, one of the last generation, plays some sort of video game during dinner, utterly oblivious to everything going on around him.
Having obtained the papers, the bureaucrat finds he must travel with the refugee to get her safely through; with his ex-wife, her lieutenant, an older woman, and the refugee girl, they set off by car to catch a boat somewhere along the coast. En route they are attacked by a roving band of bandits. The police arrive and in the general shootout the police are killed and the group are caught by police surveillance cameras. Now a wanted criminal, the bureaucrat finds that the radical group plans to do away with him; he also discovers that the refugee girl is the first pregnant woman in eighteen years, and that the group plans to use her to further their cause rather than allowing her to escape to safety. The older woman, who is a midwife, the refugee, and the bureaucrat all escape from the radical group, and the film becomes a first rate chase movie, as the small party tries to escape both the government forces and the frustrated radicals, and deliver the refugee girl to her boat.
Overwhelming the action-movie chase and the science-fiction movie futuristic gloom, though, is the fundamental message of the story, a Christian message of sacrifice and redemption. Many willingly sacrifice their lives for the refugee girl, who symbolizes hope, on her way to the mysterious boat, symbolizing redemption. The point is made that most people are unredeemable; when people first see the baby, during a firefight between the police, radicals, and refugees, they stop fighting and many fall to their knees in awe. But a few moments later they turn their backs and begin killing each other again.
There is another, more disturbing disturbing message in the film, one that is part of many people's understanding of Christianity; one that doesn't think much of women. Except, of course, when they are young, passive, and pregnant. The refugee girl has little to say about what is happening to her, and is more or less just carried along. Mysteriously, all involved seem to have little interest in locating the man that got her pregnant; you would think that would be of major interest when considering the future of the human race (especially since the title of the work is "Children of MEN".) The implication, then, is that the men are all OK and it's just the women who are defective. The carriers of Original Sin.
The rest of the women in the film are not held in high esteem by the storyteller. The only powerful woman in the movie, the ex, is "suitably" punished by pointlessly dying while playing a silly game. The midwife is nutty ("Did he really see flying saucers?"), although she gets to sacrifice herself for the cause, which also allows the man to deliver the baby. The bureaucrat's mother is catatonic. An Armenian refugee woman helps them escape, but chooses not to come with them to the redeeming ship. Oh, and when the ship comes, the sailors are all men.
The "radicals" are presented as being as great an evil as the government; incoherent in their goals, they seem to only crave power and meaningless violence. The basic view of "older generation" has of any opposition. Or maybe it's a little side message from the storytellers: "We are smarter than you because we know it's not the sixties anymore."
It's very well made film, with lots of interesting visual details that carry the mood. Motorized rickshaws belch smog in the resource-poor and no longer environmentally conscious city streets; abandoned farmland is piled high with the burning bodies of dead cattle; wild deer feed on plants growing in an empty and collapsing grade school. Clive Owen plays the bureaucrat perfectly. The supporting actors are all very good, especially Michael Caine as the bureaucrat's ex-hippie father, hiding out in the woods, the British TV actress Pam Ferris as the midwife, and Chiwetel Ejiofor as the radical lieutenant. Claire-Hope Ashitey doesn't get to do much except have an animatronic baby on-screen.
On the whole, though, the "message" factors in this movie cancelled out most of my enjoyment.
"Eifelheim" by Michael Flynn: visiting the Middle Ages
Originally posted on January 15, 2007
I enjoyed "Eifelheim" by Michael Flynn (Tor Books 2006) more than any sf I've read in a while. The novel involves a statistician-historian in the very near future trying to track down why a German village wiped out by the plague in the 1300s was never resettled, though all of his models show that it should have been. The story then turns from the historian to the village that he is trying to study; most of the novel is set in the years 1348 and 1349. The author gives the reader a vibrant sense of life in an isolated village in the Middle Ages, with detailed description of the town and its complicated individuals, as well as the milieu they live in.
The 'sf' part of the plot includes both theoretical physics as well as "bug-eyed monsters" - who are also unique and carefully drawn individuals. The rest involves discussions of religion and politics in the middle ages; tragic misunderstandings (that reminded me of Mary Doria Russell's "The Sparrow"); philosophic discussions of good and evil and what it means to be human; and a lot of multilingual wordplay. Not to mention that William of Ockham comes to visit.
This novel doesn't "move" like the usual run of sf that is intended for fifteen-year-old boys; but it is not a slow-paced story or overlong. The fascination really is in the detailed portraits of the lives of the individuals in the mill and fields, homes and castle and church, and the way they think about the world. And on top of that, it's nice to join in with an an author having fun with words! (It did occur to me that it must have been "Teufelheim"... and what is "cliology", anyway?)
In the middle of reading the book I decided to look up "Eifel" and found this web page on someone's genealogy site: http://www.diederich.com/EifelDistrict.htm. It seems that the Eifel Mountains (in the general area covered by the novel) had in the past a spooky reputation. It is that kind of book, encouraging you to take your own digressions.
I enjoyed "Eifelheim" by Michael Flynn (Tor Books 2006) more than any sf I've read in a while. The novel involves a statistician-historian in the very near future trying to track down why a German village wiped out by the plague in the 1300s was never resettled, though all of his models show that it should have been. The story then turns from the historian to the village that he is trying to study; most of the novel is set in the years 1348 and 1349. The author gives the reader a vibrant sense of life in an isolated village in the Middle Ages, with detailed description of the town and its complicated individuals, as well as the milieu they live in.
The 'sf' part of the plot includes both theoretical physics as well as "bug-eyed monsters" - who are also unique and carefully drawn individuals. The rest involves discussions of religion and politics in the middle ages; tragic misunderstandings (that reminded me of Mary Doria Russell's "The Sparrow"); philosophic discussions of good and evil and what it means to be human; and a lot of multilingual wordplay. Not to mention that William of Ockham comes to visit.
This novel doesn't "move" like the usual run of sf that is intended for fifteen-year-old boys; but it is not a slow-paced story or overlong. The fascination really is in the detailed portraits of the lives of the individuals in the mill and fields, homes and castle and church, and the way they think about the world. And on top of that, it's nice to join in with an an author having fun with words! (It did occur to me that it must have been "Teufelheim"... and what is "cliology", anyway?)
In the middle of reading the book I decided to look up "Eifel" and found this web page on someone's genealogy site: http://www.diederich.com/EifelDistrict.htm. It seems that the Eifel Mountains (in the general area covered by the novel) had in the past a spooky reputation. It is that kind of book, encouraging you to take your own digressions.
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