CHANGE IS INEVITABLE

Have you seen photos of the beautiful cave paintings in Lascaux, France? (Click “discover,” then “virtual visit”).

There is so little we can know about these prehistoric cave paintings.  What do they mean?  Who painted them?  Were they painted by men or women?  No one knows.  I doubt anyone will ever know. 

The cave paintings depict different kinds of animals.  Were the paintings created to petition gods, goddesses, or animal spirits to provide hunters with good hunting?  Perhaps the images had no more to do with hunting than the wintry scenes of deer and chickadees on Christmas cards.  We have no clues that will tell us about these people with any certainty.  We have only mystery.

The Lascaux cave paintings are many times older than the pyramids of Egypt.  The paintings were made about 17,000 years ago.  It’s hard to grasp how long that time is.  It’s easier for me if I think in terms of generations.  Figure this:  There is approximately one generation each 33 years (or so says The How Book for Genealogists, Sixth Edition).  At three generations per century and 30 generations per millennium, that comes to 510 generations. 

Maybe you have started working on your family tree.  Maybe you know the names of all eight of your great-grandparents.  Maybe you’ve traced some ancestral lines back a dozen generations, Why can’t you trace back 510 generations?  Maybe one of your ancestors was the artist who painted those cave paintings.  Why can’t you know her name?

Well obviously, the reason you can’t go back 510 generations is because there is invariably some catastrophic event like a fire burning down a church with all the church records inside, a war where everyone in the town is killed or becomes a refugee, a flood, a famine, a plague, etc., and records are lost.  Languages evolve and records become undecipherable, paper records molder and crumble and are not replaced; and if you go back far enough, there is no system of recordkeeping, or no writing.  People forget.  People emigrate.  Communities forget or disintegrate.  Institutions don’t last.  Libraries, governments, organizations – all fail eventually or so it would seem.

We like to think we have continuity in our institutions.  Many who call themselves Christian like to think they are followers of a man named Jesus who lived about 2,000 years ago in Palestine, but how many of these so-called Christians actually understand and strive to follow his instruction to “love your enemy”?  Just how much continuity is there?

We like to think that the concept of democracy and “liberty for all” instituted a short 200 years ago here in the US will last forever, but now people seem willing to give away chunks of that liberty – the freedom from government spying guaranteed by the fourth amendment to the US Constitution.  They are giving away our liberty in order to obtain some more “protection” and “security,” not realizing that the very foundation of our strength and our identity as a nation lies in the liberty they are giving away.  Will there be continuity or not?

We like to think that the institutions on which our society depends are rock solid, and then we look around and see that half of all marriages end in divorce.  We see that the news media are being taken over by commercial interests that give us entertainment news, not real news, and we have very few independent news outlets left.   We see that all the decisions that really matter in this country are increasingly being made by the corporate puppeteers who hold the strings in government.  Hard to find continuity amid the changes!

When does a civilization start to collapse?  When a devastating hurricane comes along?  When the climate changes and the people have no more rain for food crops?  When someone decides to drain the Treasury for one more war to grab resources?  When the country goes into massive debt to pay war profiteers and much of that debt is held by foreigners, and the taxpayers’ debt and interest payments go abroad?  When the jobs go abroad?  When the people self-destruct on drugs and poison themselves with pollution?  When the people lose control of their government, yet couldn’t care less?

When we look at the kaleidoscope of history there is very little that is lasting.  Nothing is constant except change.

Where am I going with this?  Lately we’ve heard that we need to increase the number of nuclear power plants in order to decrease our carbon footprint on this Planet – meaning we need more nuclear power plants so we can continue our unrestrained consumerism, without worsening global warming.  Of course building more nuclear power plants means more highly radioactive nuclear waste – waste that is incredibly toxic and needs to be kept out of the environment; waste that stays dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years (far longer than the amount of time that has passed since the caves were painted at Lascaux).  Well, good luck with that.   

What about current plans to bury the radioactive nuclear waste deep in Yucca Mountain, Nevada?  Some would like us to accept the risk that it might leak into groundwater, get into drinking water, into the biosphere, and into the food chain.  Accept the risk of earthquakes.  Accept the risk that people might someday unwittingly disturb the waste burial ground, or maybe release the waste intentionally as an act of terrorism or insanity.  There would have to be institutional controls to keep people away.  But how? – fences and armed guards funded by bureaucracies spanning millennia?  How long would those institutional controls last?  200 years?  2,000 years?  Not long enough?  How could anyone reasonably expect we could manage these wastes and keep the burial site intact over thousands of years?

It remains to be seen if we will opt for energy sources and life styles that are compatible with our desire to respect and live in harmony with Mother Earth.  Or will we create more radioactive nuclear waste that will burden and endanger hundreds of generations yet unborn? 

The cave painters of Lascaux were able to sustain themselves without leaving any footprint except one – their paintings – a lingering bit of beauty to remind us and warn us of the fragility of our vaunted institutions. 

What will future generations remember about us?  How long will we (and our wastes) be remembered?

Slide show and music on my main page.

-2007-

TRIALS WITH BIRD FEEDERS

The squirrels win every time.

At first I thought a plastic bird feeder would be OK.  The feeder looked pretty.  It was cheaper than the wooden ones.  What I didn’t anticipate was that the squirrels would gnaw at the feeder and put holes in it.  Not to mention emptying the feeder almost as soon as I put bird seed into it.

For a while I was able to hold off the squirrels by putting big plastic sheeting around the deck railing that the feeder was tied to.  In retrospect, it’s a wonder the neighbors didn’t complain about the unsightliness of it all.  But in short order the squirrels figured out how to circumvent the barrier.

Another thing I didn’t anticipate was that the mice would take a liking to the seeds that tumbled to the ground from the bird feeder and that a little colony of mice would set up shop under the feeder.  I didn’t actually see any mice, but I assume they were there because I did see the three foot snake that decided to make itself at home under the bird feeder, probably because there were plenty of mice there for it to eat.

Fortunately, no snakes or mice came into the house.

That all happened when I lived in my previous home.  When I moved out here to the country, I got another feeder and one of those bowl-shaped squirrel-guards to hang over it.  That kept the squirrels off.  But I found out I had put the bird feeder too close to my shed where I keep my car.  Mice were attracted by the seeds that fell to the ground and started nesting in my car engine.  The mice covered up the top of the battery with seeds and other debris, and they ate a large hole in the lining on the underside of the car hood!  Fortunately no mice decided to come into my house. 

I realized I needed to move the feeder away from the shed and house.  I put it up high in a tree.  What I didn’t anticipate was that there were raccoons in the woods and they had no trouble climbing trees.  They would knock down the feeder and bat it around the yard to make the seeds tumble out.

That was long ago and I gave up trying to feed the birds.

I suppose I could get someone to install a bird feeder up high on a squirrel-proof metal pole.   Have him dig a hole in the ground (maybe with a jack hammer since the soil is so tough around here, ha, ha).  Put a pipe sleeve in concrete, put a squirrel baffle on the pipe, and so on, all for a small fortune.  Or I could get one of those expensive squirrel-resistant feeders with bars.  But then I’m sure I’d have to be prepared for so many adverse consequences, like maybe deer coming up and getting at the fallen seed.  Maybe get deer ticks in the yard and who knows what else.

Life hands us plenty of unanticipated happenings, consequences, and surprises each time we start a project, each time we try to accomplish anything.  I suppose I could try to just do nothing at all, all day long, but I doubt that would work – I think life will have its way with me no matter what I do. 

I’m not sure the birds need to be fed in the winter, but it’s probably something we should do since that is the way the National Audubon Society is able to document the ongoing decline in common songbirds – with volunteers doing the annual birdfeeder counts, the Audubon Christmas Bird Count and The Great Backyard Bird Count. 

The squirrels don’t need to be fed, at least not around here – they have plenty of acorns.   (They get no sympathy from me, heh, heh.)

If I did feed the birds, I’d try to learn how to identify them so I could participate in the counts.   I’d try to buy organic wild bird seed (grown without pesticides) so I wouldn’t risk harming the birds with seed that might be contaminated with pesticide.  After all, I wouldn’t want to risk contributing to their decline.  I wasn’t able to find any organic seed among the huge variety of commercial wild bird seed in my local grocery store, but undoubtedly, if I looked in the organic foods section, I’d find human-grade organic sunflower seeds that the birds would like.  I found an interesting place online that sells organic wild bird seed that I might try some day. 

But I’m not sure I want to add to the list of chores and tasks I have to do on a regular basis, or contend with any more unexpected happenings in the mice and squirrel department.

Slide show and music on my main page.

-2007-