A Trip to Remember

Anne and Algebra in the Grand Canyon

As you get older, you begin to assemble lists of the things you’d like to do before you… well, before you… You know! You know what I mean! Don’t you?
by Charlie Leck

If you’re up around my age, you know exactly what I mean by the statement above… or at least what I was trying to say in the statement above.

I’ve listed here before a few of the things I want so much to do before… before,… you know!

The Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul

A cruise in a small ship into the Alaska wilderness

A few days in Oklahoma (which, after Alaska, would be the only state in the Union I haven’t visited).

A ball game at Fenway Park

There’s more, but they’re really only personally important… you know!

Last year I was able to take a visit to Prague off my list. I had such a wonderful time there that it made the rest of my list seem ever so much more important to me.

I only discovered recently how important my wife’s trip down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon was to her. She and her daughter attempted the trip down from the South Rim of the canyon. My love came home with over 250 photographs.

“Here, print these for me!”

It wasn’t a stern command – just an impatient one! She was bubbling over about her trip and how exciting it was – and how fulfilling! She wanted to go over the photos again and again.

“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do – something I’ve only dreamed about.”

She did the trip her way – riding down there on the back of a mule. You have to know her! She loves mules. She’s owned one mule or another (and sometime more than one) from the day I met her. Molly was her faithful mule when I first met her. Oh, my! How Molly loved and trusted my wife – and vice versa!

For a while she owned a pair of matched, pinto mules (Katie and Becky) and they brought us tons and tons of fun (but that’s another whole and long story). A fellow came to our farm and met these two beautiful mules, and simply had to have them. He was such a mule lover that the dear woman thought they’d have a better home with him than us. It was a nice thought, but, I’ll tell you, Becky and Katie lived a life of which mules could only dream while they were with us. We have a photo of them hanging in one of our most used rooms in our house – the toilet room off our master bathroom. My, they were beautiful girls.

Other mules followed them in residence here on our farm. Some, like Strawberry, weren’t quite so successful. Our current family mule member is Reba. She’s a beauty and she and my wife go out exploring together on a pretty regular basis.

When I ran all of her Grand Canyon photos through Light Room and properly exposed them and sharpened them and, eventually, printed them, I was so impressed with the beauty of the flora and fauna, the spectacular colors of the rising sun in the deep, deep canyons, the unusual color of the river running through it, and the spectacular and bright colors of the gigantic rock, that I understood the fascination she had about the adventure. My wife went first to the photos of the mules and wanted to talk about them and describe them and talk of their dexterity and strength and loyalty.

I don’t know how to explain it. You just have to know her. None of it came as a surprise to me.

She enjoyed her voyage so much. She was aglow with excitement when I picked her up at the airport. After she’d gotten in my car at the airport, she virtually bubbled over as she tried to tell me everything in the first five minutes we were together. In fact, it will take weeks for all the excitement to expend itself. I’ll enjoy these moments, watching the fire in her eyes and listening to her descriptions of the canyons and the mules.

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Who is to Blame for Political Dysfunction?

     Artwork © Scott Gustafson. All rights reserved. Used with permission!
      Visit Scott's website

Take it not from me, but from non-partisan political observers, that the Republican Party is dragging the nation down with it!

by Charlie Leck

Let’s just say it: The Repubicans are the problem!
Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann are the co-writers of a column that appeared in the Washington Post yesterday that blames the Republican Party for contributing most significantly to the current failure and stagnation of the political system in America. I strongly suggest you read the column (whether you are a Democrat or a Republican – or neither). Taken together, Orstein and Mann paint a pretty objective picture.

Who are Orstein and Mann?
It makes sense to know about these two guys in order to comprehend the full impact of what they write in this column.

Ornstein is a scholar on the staff of the American Enterprise Institute. Mann is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. The Washington Post column is an adaptation from their book: It’s Even Worse Than It Looks.

Mann is a highly respected and extremely well known congressional scholar and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The Brookings Institution is a highly regarded think tank in the nation’s capital. It states its mission this way: “…to provide innovative and practical recommendations that advance three broad goals: strengthen American democracy; foster the economic and social welfare security and opportunity of all Americans; and secure a more open, safe, prosperous and cooperative international system.” Its claim of non-partisanship has been generally accepted.

The American Enterprise Institute is a conservative think tank that says its mission is “to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism – limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility…”

“Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

“The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

“When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

“Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

“The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

Mann and Ornstein blame this movement to the far, far right of the political spectrum on a number of possible factors…

·         The Roe v. Wade decision on legal abortion in ‘73

·         California’s proposition 13 that launched the anti-tax movement in ‘78

·         The increased popularity of conservative radio talk shows

·         The emergence of admittedly biased news programming, like FOX News

Yet, more so, the writers trace the hard to the right movement of the GOP to the influence of two particular individuals: Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.

It is difficult and dangerous to summarize such a significant and complex piece of political analysis, so I urge you to read the entire piece as it is presented in the Washington Post and this may then lead you to order the book by these two writers. Nevertheless, I will take a stab at a brief summary.

Why Gingrich and Norquist?
The Norquist connection to this radical movement of the party to the right is the easier of the two to explain, so I’ll begin there.

In 1985, Grover Norquist founded Americans for Tax Reform and, with it, the Taxpayer Protection Pledge. Both are prime exhibits of the dangers of absolutism in politics or, for that matter, in society itself. The pledge binds those who sign it to NEVER support tax increases. The absolute here is absolutely clear. Here’s the kicker (as in kick in the pants): 238 of 242 House Republicans have signed the pledge and so have all but six of the 47 Republican U.S. Senators. To not sign the Norquist Pledge is to put oneself at risk for failure in the next election.

As a result of the no-tax-increase pledge, compromise in the House and Senate over virtually any serious and important issue is nearly impossible. The U.S. Senate filibuster rule was once only used sparingly and for extremely important issues or appointments. It is now used in considering and voting on nearly every single issue that comes before the Senate. A simple majority can no longer pass any controversial issue. In the Senate, it currently it takes 60 votes to pass any bill to which Republicans object.

The two authors blame the intransigency of the Republican Party for causing the recent and historic down-grade of America’s credit worthiness – the first down-grade of America’s credit standing in our history.

Among moderate Republicans in Congress there is all-out fear of the power and irrationality of their own party’s very conservative right-wing.

As a result, the work of the Congress has come to a near standstill on all matters except the most ceremonial and unimportant issues.

A key question – probably to be answered in the coming November elections – has to do with how seriously the American public is infected with this Norquist ideology. If the contagion runs deep, American society could be significantly changed for a long period of time.

The Newt Gingrich factor!
Gingrich was clearly the leader, from the time of his election to Congress in 1979, of the fight to wrest congressional control away from the Democratic Party. His goal was accomplished in the 1995.

The result of the Gingrich-Norquist reformation of Republican politics has left us with a Congress than cannot act on the simplest of governmental and administrative actions.

To make matters worse, conventional and rational, sensible, cooperative Republicans are leaving the Congress in disgust.

Unfortunately, the two authors predict that the “ideological divide will probably grow after the 2012 elections.”

“In the House, some of the remaining centrist and conservative ‘Blue Dog’ Democrats have been targeted for extinction by redistricting, while even ardent tea party Republicans, such as freshman Rep. Alan Nunnelee (Miss.), have faced primary challenges from the right for being too accommodationist. And Mitt Romney’s rhetoric and positions offer no indication that he would govern differently if his party captures the White House and both chambers of Congress.”

Oh, my! I’m sorry to put this in front of you today. I should have written about something rosier – like the international growth of nuclear weapons – or, perhaps, of the rapidly declining respect in which America is today held all around the world – being taken less and less seriously when it speaks of Democracy because it cannot even get its own house in order.

“Wasn’t that a dainty dish,
To set before a king?

The king was in his counting house,
Counting out his money;
The Queen was in the parlour,
Eating bread and honey.”

The article by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein is very important. Their new book is… It’s Even Worse than it Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism.

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Metta World Peace

    Sunrise in the Grand Canyon
           Photo by Anne Wakefield-Leck
              22 May 2012

I don’t follow professional basketball and don’t have a lick of interest in it even when its championship game is played; yet, I took notice the other day when I learned one of the more inflammatory and reckless stars of the game is named Metta World Peace.

by Charlie Leck

metta… a Pali term for lovingkindness or for the Buddhist virtue of kindness or maitri

“I ain’t kiddin’ one little bit!” That’s what a young kid, who had fetched my parked car, said to me downtown the other day. He had just told me about a basketball player named Metta World Peace and I had looked at him with squinted eyes and a tilted head. He was wearing a basketball jersey with a number on the back of it and the name World Peace lettered over the number.

“You’re kidding me,” I had said to him in disbelief.

When I got in the car, my luncheon companion said to me: “You aren’t really that stupid are you?”

“What?” I said, keeping my eyes on the busy city traffic. I really didn’t know what he was talking about.

“You ever watch the sports channel?”

“Naw! Not very often. Maybe when it’s carrying a big football game or the World Series or something!”

He directed me to a Starbucks and sat me down while he folded open his iPad and loaded up what had become a famous video of Metta World Peace, formerly known as Ron Artest. I watched the video of a moment in a professional basketball game in which Mr. World Peace threw a vicious, intentional elbow into the neck and head of an opposing basketball player. It was an incredibly violent action that made me gasp. I am not going to make it available for you here (but you can find in scattered across the internet or You Tube if you want to).

I sat and stared at the video as my friend replayed it for me.

“Is this what is wrong with the world?”

“It’s one guy,” my friend replied, “and it’s not the world!”

“But, Christ! In a basketball game? In sports? With kids watching?” I was dumbfounded and just rambling. I wished that I hadn’t just eaten lunch. “This is one reason why I don’t ever watch the NBA (National Basketball Association) or hockey,” I said quietly. The games are stupid. There’s no elegance or innocence left!

For the record, my friend didn’t agree. He told me I “didn’t get it!” Maybe he’s correct. Maybe I don’t. I must be a pansy-ass! I prefer the women’s style of basketball and I can watch those games – either college or professional – and find them terribly enjoyable. There’s something left in the way they play the game that reminds me of the pick-up games I played as a kid. And, I like women’s hockey and I’ve gone over to the arena at the University to watch a game or two.

One of my daughters likes professional basketball. I took her to a couple of games when she was a kid. For her birthday, I got us front-row seats right down at court level. You could hear what the players were saying and see the perspiration dripping from them. We could have reached out and touched them. I kept searching for something beautiful about the game. I saw plenty of skill, hued by hours and hours of practice and playing the game; but I didn’t see beauty or wonder – not the kind of thing I see when a centerfielder races away from a batter’s swing and catches up with a baseball soaring above his head and gathers it into his glove just in front of his chest as it comes down over his shoulder (Say hay, Willie Mays!) I like the quietness of a baseball park, a golf course or a sailing lake.

Ron Artest is a vicious character. This, it turns out, is not the first of the violent incidents he’s been involved in during a basketball game. The NBA Commissioner suspended him for seven (7) games for the violently thrown elbow.

“What a joke,” I said to my friend. “He should have been thrown out for the remainder of the season – at the very least!”

World Peace sent a Twitter message out to his followers…

“When two power houses collide (sic) there will be player confrontation… When you get players that are capable of being ejected, that player has to be aware of the opponent trying to get under his skin… This type of competition makes for great entertainment… When two power houses (sic) collide you will be enthralled by its art form.”

“This type of competition makes for great entertainment…”
I expect that those who sat in the Coliseum to watch the gladiators – or the Lions versus the Christians – thought the same thing.

Next week the professional golfers move to the Quail Hollow Club, in Charlotte (NC), and I’ll spend some time in front of the television watching them maneuver the small, white ball around that gorgeous golf course. It will be a beautiful and graceful thing to watch – a sport, I suppose, for pansies.

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Oh, How the Mighty

In 2007, as the Democratic candidates for President went through what Romney and Gingrich are going through these days, I was pretty impressed with John Edwards, champion of the poor and neglected, and with his sweet wife, Elizabeth.
by Charlie Leck

I was really taken by John Edwards in 2007 and how convincingly he talked about his commitment to the poor and ignored people of America. He seemed so genuine and sincere. So did his wife, Elizabeth.

“These are the kind of people,” I thought, “that we need in the White House.” I wrote it proudly, here on this blog!

By the end of the year, I began to see through John Edwards. I had discovered he was a scalawag, worthless piece of shit, and I had figured out that he was a phony and not nearly as bright as I thought he was. A lot of it began with is $400 haircuts. Some things about his wife began to ring untrue as well.

I transitioned over to Barack Obama after a short flirtation (probably not a good word to use here) with Hillary.

Now the John Edwards trial…
We are all finding out just how egocentric and narcissistic John Edwards really was (is) – how vacuous and insincere. He was, as some friends of mine like to say, “just an empty suit – expensive as the suits were!” John Edwards was as phony as a wooden nickel – as phony as a three dollar bill – as phony as a carnival barker.

I don’t like to be fooled. I hate worse to be made a fool of. John Edwards did both to me.

If you want to understand my anger and embarrassment, you only need to read Maureen Dowd’s column in the New York Times: Brutality of Servility. I sat in a Starbucks this morning, with the New York Times spread open before me as I sipped on my morning latté. I seethed as loudly as those espresso machines that the baristas were working.

“What a bum! What a piece of crap,” I thought to myself. “Put him away and the hell with him!”

“In the winter of 2007, as Edwards campaigned for the presidency in Iowa, he still found time to check up on his pregnant girlfriend, Rielle Hunter, who was on the lam and with fall guy Andrew Young and his family, zooming around in private jets to luxe resorts and haciendas in Aspen, Santa Barbara and Florida.”

What a jerk I was! Maureen Dowd crushes the truth about Edwards right over my scalp and describes the major question in the courtroom…

“Everyone’s arguing whether Edwards is a swindler or merely a swine.”

While the world was falling apart all around him – during that campaign – John Edwards was unable to realize it because, as Dowd says, “John, of course, loved John…”

Dowd concludes her column with a slap in the face – my face!

“It’s a trial without heroes, just liars and an abhorrent trio of selfish people trying to spin the story their own way.”

I need to do something to make myself feel better, so I guess I’ll go stick my head in a tub of boiling tar!

Those clear, twinkling eyes and that wide, toothy, confident smile fooled the hell out of me. The poor and neglected in America were his biggest concern, he said. And I believed him.

As an old Hungarian friend used to say of my naiveté: “Sometimes you can be one dumb, some-of-a-bitch!”

Angrily, I pushed the newspaper aside and it tipped over my cup of hot latté – right into my lap.

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Lamb Chili

Take some ground lamb (from Sheepy Hollow if you can get it) and make an absolutely wonderful chili with it.
by Charlie Leck

I used white cannellini beans as a base along with one pound of ground lamb and then followed this recipe I got from a guy in the seafood department at Whole Foods. Don’t ask! I don’t know how it all happened. He just knew I was married to the “lamb lady” and thought I might like a new recipe. He said he got it from the New York Times (I didn’t go looking for it but you might want to), but he figured he remembered it well enough. He wrote the following down for me – just this way:

1 pound of ground, fairly lean lamb

Olive oil for browning

1½ tspoons of tomato paste (I used an Italian, doubled paste in a tube)

3½ cups of canned cannellini beans (pre-cooked)

1 onion chopped quite finely

1 poblano pepper, seeded and chopped (use some of the seeds if you wish spicier chili)

1 anaheim pepper, seeded and chopped

1 very small bunch of cilantro, cleaned

4 garlic cloves, chopped

2 Tspoons of chile powder (or more to taste)

1 tspoon of coriander, ground

1 tspoon of cumin, ground

Here’s how he recommended I do the chili:

1.     Heat up the olive oil in a stove-top pot and brown the lamb, breaking it up, until it is well browned. Season it a bit with some salt and pepper. You'll put more in later. Move the meat to a plate covered with a paper towel.

2.     Brown the onions and peppers and cook them until they are soft. Add very finely chopped cilantro stems and leaves. Also stir the garlic in and allow everything to cook and brown for several minutes. Stir in the tomato paste and stir until it begins to cook and turns brown

3.     Return the browned lamb to the pot and stir it 4 cups of water and the beans. Add some more salt. Allow it all to cook slowly for at least 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4.    If the mixture becomes too thick, stir in some more water. I refrigerated the chili for about 6 hours and then reheated everything. It's the kind of thing you could leave in the frig overnight and serve it the next day (it will only improve).

5.   I served the chili in a bowl and put a dollop of yogurt on top of each serving and a wedge of lime on the plate beneath the bowl. I also garnished each serving with just a few of the cilantro leaves. I also served it with a glass of smooth, Spanish red wine (El Primavera)

This made a dang good looking and great tasting bowl of chili and the lamb gives the dish a lot more flavor than does beef.

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George Clooney’s Place

Can you imagine? I might be going to George Clooney’s place for a big party. And the President may be there, too.
by Charlie Leck

I received an email from Ann Marie just this morning – that’s Ms. Habershaw to those of you who don’t know her so well.

She wanted to let me know about the attire I might be required to wear when I and my guest show up at George Clooney’s house for a big bash with President Obama. Wow! I’m really friggin’ nervous about this.

Ann Marie also advised that I pick my guest carefully. She reminded me: “Whoever you pick to join you is going to owe you big time.”

“Think about it,” she suggested to me.

Well, I was just thinking about taking my wife along, but maybe I should take Ann Marie’s advice seriously and give it some more thought.

California! I doubt it will be black tie. I’ll probably need something like a pink sport coat (linen) and a nice yellow, silk shirt beneath it. Very dark gray slacks seem to make sense – along with yellow socks and a pair of soft leather loafers. Oh, boy! And, I’d better work on losing 20+ pounds before the big evening.

That was easy, but this matter of a guest is sticky! Just who? As Ann Marie suggests, it should probably be someone who I’ll enjoy having in my debt for a while. Just who? Maybe I can talk to my wife and get some suggestions from her.

First, I guess I better send in my $190 to the President’s campaign. That’s how much Ann Marie suggests I send on to her. It’ll get me in the running for this visit to George’s place out in LA. I don’t really want a lot of competition, but since you’re a pretty good friend I’ll let you in on where and how you can get in the mix as well: Go to this web site and send the President’s campaign a little gift. Any amount will get you in the running, but, from what Anne Marie says, it looks pretty much like I’ve got the thing wrapped up.

I just need to figure out who I’ll take with me.

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The Earth is Blue

I listened to a remarkable discussion on Science Friday this past week. It was about the wonderful oceans that cover the earth and it really got me thinking.
by Charlie Leck

I’m not the science type. Though I listen constantly to Minnesota Public Radio, I usually turn the dial on Friday afternoon, when Ira Flatow begins his show. This week I hung around and around… and listened intently to this discussion about the importance of our oceans and how we ought to be protecting them.

Listening to Science Friday turned out to be a real treat. I was especially intrigued with the discussion about exploring the deepest and darkest parts of the world’s largest ocean. (It’s about 47 minutes of extraordinary radio and you can listen right here!) Ira Flatow began this way…

“The Pacific Ocean,… it is the largest body of water on Earth, and its trenches are also the deepest. You could put Mount Everest into some of them, and the top would not even peek out.” (Or, for fun, should it be “peak out?”)

“The Pacific covers about a third of the Earth's surface, yet more people have stood on the surface of the moon than have reached the very bottom of the Pacific. This hour, we'll be talking with a few people who have been there, diving to some of the world's least-visited places, like underwater mountain chains, unexplored coral reefs and the least-visited spot on Earth, the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on Earth.

Guests on the show included people like James Cameron, who is an explorer/film maker for National Geographic (NG); Sylvia Earle, an oceanographer who also founded Mission Blue and explores for NG and is a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences (CAS). James McCosker, the chair of aquatic biology at CAS.

Earle made a remarkable point during the show about the huge difference between the exploration of space and that done in our oceans. Her point was that the “astronauts have somebody else build their spacecraft.” Billions and billions have been spent on space exploration, while the explorers of the deep need to raise the money and build for themselves the underwater craft in which they are going to explore.

“It’s a big mystery of the sea,” Earle said to laughter from the other guests. And then she said something that just captivated me and hooked me as a listener for the next 45 minutes.

“Why don’t people care? It is our life support system. The planet is blue, and we know so little about it, and we’ve allowed terrible things to happen to it. The ocean is in trouble. That means we’re in trouble, and we’re blissfully continuing to do dastardly things to the ocean, and we don’t even – you know, we haven’t made the investment in understanding what’s there. Only about five percent has ever been seen, let alone explored.”

You know, I just finished reading stories in the Washington Post and the New York Times about the volumes of dollars that are being raised by political candidates for office. I mean, I’m talking about hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars being donated to the candidates’ campaigns by wealthy Americans in every quarter and sector of the nation.

If Sylvia Earle is correct – that the ocean is our life support – why the heck can’t we find the funds necessary to really explore the oceans of the world so that we can devise techniques to protect what we’ve got there?

Of course, the nay-sayers are screaming about the alarmists. The good-old Earth can take care of herself they assume. We’ll not damage it by polluting the skies and the seas. Just as they say that global warming is a myth, so they say that ruining the oceans is silly: “What we do to the seas in like spitting in the…. like spitting in the… in the… well, you know… the ocean!”

How much do we spend on exploring our oceans?
Well, I can guess that we don’t spend nearly the kind of money we spend on exploring space, but we must at least spend a few billion on checking out the health of our oceans, don’t we? Ms. Earle gives us the answer to that question:

“A tiny fraction, and I wouldn't take a penny away from what we're putting into aviation and aerospace, but we need equal support, at least, for this part of the solar system. I mean, this is part of the universe, too, this little blue speck that's in the great blackness of space. And, you know, the whole budget for the National Underwater Research Program is a few million dollars, and it is being zeroed out this year, right now.”

Zeroed out? What does that mean? I couldn’t wrap that comment around my brain – or I couldn’t wrap my brain around that comment!

“Well, listen, stupid,” my brain was screaming. “Write down a big zero on that little piece of paper in front of you. Now look at it! Or, would it be more helpful to write it out in big letters; you know, Z-E-R-O. Got it now? That’s how much money our nation will be spending on exploring and studying the oceans.”

Mr. McCosker waxed eloquently about the Galapagos and, though they seem far away from the oceans that border our nation on east and west, the man made some important points.

“Every dive we would make, we would make discoveries of new species, new behaviors, and we’d see – even human trash on the bottom of the Galapagos at 1,000 meters depth.

“It’s a World Heritage Site. It’s a national park. It’s still not that well-understood, and it’s being modestly protected, not adequately protected.”

Miss Earle gets the prize for wit during the show when she made the following crack in response to a Flatow question that sounded, suspiciously, set up:

FLATOW: Yeah, and Sylvia, I guess a lot of people don't realize that fish spend most of their time in the dark, right. It's dark and deep down there.

EARLE: Most of life on Earth lives in the dark, not just in places like Washington, D.C.

EARLE: Did I say that? I guess I did, oh dear. I had just come back from the Galapagos, the - you know, I got the TED Prize in 2009, awarded a wish, and one of my wishes was to get some brainy people together to go and brainstorm what we could do about the ocean. And the mission was to go to the Galapagos.

And just after getting back, what happened? April 20, the big blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, which was a wakeup call for those of us who care about the ocean. In such a short period of time we can just change the nature of a big body of water like the Gulf of Mexico and how it's not just there, it's the whole planet that we have modified, changed on our watch, more change probably in the last 50 years or so, since John began diving...

The show plows on with the really important questions: What can we do? How can we do it? What can plain, old citizen-listeners do to help protect our oceans from abuse? Ms. Earle and Mr. McCosker bounce up with enthusiastic ideas for all of us. I’m telling you it’s worth listening to.

“So, knowing is the key,” Ms. Earle emphasizes.

Ignorance about the sea has to be wiped away with our fears of the oceans’ depths. We have to understand why these oceans are so important in sustaining our life on earth and what we are doing to harm them. There needs to be greater attempts to satisfy the curiosity of the young about the oceans and the life in the ocean. Young people need to demand that the international community invest in undersea exploration and testing. Space stations? Yes, and undersea stations too.

Move toward the end of the radio discussion and listen to McCosker and Earle talk about the amount of trash in the sea and the damage it is doing to ocean life. It’s a frightening chat that ought to awaken us to ourselves and what we are allowing to happen on a world-wide scale.

I don’t want to leave you with the idea that there is NO hope. There is hope! And, both McCosker and Earle talk about that and outline what can be done (what must be done) to understand how the oceans provide life to us – cause the rains to fall and enable us to breathe. Earle goes on…

“You don't have to touch the ocean yourself for the ocean to touch you everywhere, every day. We're just beginning to appreciate that, and knowing that, it is perplexing that it's taking us so long to take action.

“Our perception that the ocean is so big, so vast, we don't have to worry about it, it'll take care of itself, persists. It's there in the way that we treat the ocean, what we put in, what we take out. But just as in the early part of the 20th century, when Theodore Roosevelt and some of his pals at the time began to take action to protect the land, now in the ocean, starting in the latter part of the 20th century and now beginning to speed up a bit, areas in the ocean are receiving some sort of protection, about 1 percent.”

I just have to believe that our children and grandchildren will awaken to the great dangers in which we place our oceans – that they will demand more study and more action!

I can only imagine how beautiful and blue the Earth must look when one looks down upon it from the stars.

Again, if you have 45 minutes to spare, you can listen to the whole conversation right here! Let it play and fascinate you as you go about some of your important work.

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Here’s How I’m Voting in November

This video struck me as right on. It answers the question about for what or whom we should vote this November.
by Charlie Leck

Check it out. I think you’ll agree that this video takes the question out of our voting decisions.

The video is sponsored by Sojourners, an organization I really like, and if you want to help them pay for running this ad this autumn you’ll be able to make a contribution here. I think this video will make a big impact on people.

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If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.

Question: Safe Off-Shore Oil Drilling?

It’s only a matter of time before the next gigantic oil spill -- even as politicians are pushed into opening up more areas off-shore for drilling.

by Charlie Leck

This morning’s Washington Post story by Stephen Mufson explains quite clearly how dangerous off-shore drilling remains – to both human life and to the environment. It’s really worth the 10 minutes you’d give up to read it. On the other hand, it may frustrate the hell out of you.

A French drilling company is battling a leak in the North Sea that has been seeping oil for the last four weeks. In Nigeria recently, 40,000 gallons of oil leaked out of an old holding line that should have been replaced years ago.

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it [offshore drilling], but we ought to go at it with our eyes open,” said Roger Rufe, a retired Coast Guard vice admiral. “We can’t do it with a human-designed system and not expect that there will be occasional problems with it.”

The problems caused by the Gulf of Mexico explosion and spill are the most costly and serious in drilling history and it’s only a matter of time before something like it happens again.

“A National Wildlife Federation report said, for example, that the shrimp catch increased last year but that since the spill 523 dolphins have been stranded onshore, four times the historic average; 95 percent of them were dead. A team of scientists led by Peter Roopnarine of the California Academy of Sciences said oysters collected post-spill contain higher concentrations of heavy metals in their shells, gills and muscle tissue than those collected before the spill.”

Now we’re going into the pristine Arctic regions and spills there could be disastrous and very difficult to clean up. Laws from Congress are tougher regarding precautions that must be taken, but none of this stuff is full-proof as we can easily see from spills and leaks that regularly happen. We’re only human, after all.

The oil companies don’t seem to mind the risk. I’m sure they know problems are going to occur and they are going to get fined big bucks for their mistakes and they’ll have to pay out big-time for the damages. However, the business is so profitable (outrageously so as you can see by looking at their annual reports) that they really can handle their mistakes and the damage they do to the environment.

One day, however, in a place far removed and now very pure, we’re going to permanently soil the earth. It’s a prediction no one wants to make, but I’m afraid it is inevitable.

The Creator made us stewards of the Earth and we’re not doing a very good job of it.

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

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Adastra

Well, they picked a good name for it, anyway!
by Charlie Leck

A South Carolina friend and high school classmate tipped me off to this one. There's not much to say about it because it takes my breath away. This is a new yacht created by John Shuttleworth Yacht Designs. Her name is Adastra.

If you want to read more about this extraordinary beauty, you can go to this spot on Yahoo News.

I have no intention to chat with John Shuttleworth about his choice of a name.

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Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.