Frogs and Ravens

Swine-Bird Flu and Anti-Immigrant Hysteria

Here's a couple of things to point out to the people who want to "blame the Mexicans" or who think that tightening our borders or cracking down on illegal immigration is the answer:

One, most of the vectors into the United States have been U.S. citizens with the money and time to travel to Mexico. Some poor dude who is infected with swine flu is not going to be healthy enough to make his way across the desert to infect you. It's your wealthy globe-trotting neighbors who are more likely to be a problem.

Two, because citizens traveling legally are the dominant vector, going after people who are in the country illegally is not going to be effective in terms of preventing disease outbreaks. For one thing, they're not the primary vectors at the moment; for another, wasting time, energy and money in an effort to deport or contain people is going to cut into funds needed elsewhere and scare people away from medical care at a time when it is important. Fear-mongering makes the situation worse.

Third, the only way to prevent disease entering this country would be to seal the borders entirely. This is unfeasible for three reasons:

(a) Our borders are long and poorly monitored, and we simply don't have the money or personnel needed to do that. Even if we decided to do this to prevent future disease entering the country, it would be prohibitively expensive. It's simply not the most efficient way to prevent the spread of disease.   Our inability to keep out exotic species - which sneak into the country in cargo holds, and which are brought in by breeders who lobby Congress to keep the gates open - is a useful illustration of how hard it would be to seal the borders physically.

(b) Not only would sealing the border be ridiculously expensive, it would be the most damaging thing we could do to our economy right now. Go into your average store and see what percentage of things there are "made in China" or elsewhere outside the United States. Now imagine that store without those things on the shelves. Then imagine the effects on US manufacturers and distributers with foreign markets. Closing our borders to people requires closing them to trade as well, and it would be economic suicide to do this.

(c) Swine flu is already in the country. It's too late. And there is no guarantee that a future epidemic will originate outside the U.S. - a number of U.S. factory farms are as unsafe as those elsewhere (remember the peanut butter plant?) It is far better to put money and time into things like inspectors, the CDC and disaster training and medical research - it increases flexibility, is more effective, and - hey, bonus - increases jobs and demand for U.S. scientists and doctors.

Fear-mongering calls to close our borders and blaming "illegals" are the equivalent of telling people that they should protect themselves by pulling a blanket over their heads so tightly that they smother. (And that's not even a metaphor - remember the people who sealed themselves up to protect themselves from anthrax?) Worse, it ramps up existing fear and hatred, and puts the lives of innocent people - and yes, even illegal immigrants may be innocents - at risk.

It's simply not a good idea.

(Revised from a comment on a post at Shakesville.)

Lakeshore Trail - 04/22/09

I decided to celebrate Earth Day by driving out to one of the nearby state parks.  The part of the country I'm in is one of pocket landscapes; there's nothing huge and sweeping, no sublime vistas, no wildernesses big enough to get lost in.  There are, however, a surprising number of small trails good for an afternoon's ramble.  Most of them are under a mile or two in length, so I was excited by this trail, which is nearly 3 miles, out and back.

Green Trail - 04/16/09

Finally got a chance to go back out to the environmental center and see how spring's progressing out there.  Lots of green, above and below, lots of bird song.  Not many insects as yet.  The ground's still squelchy in spots.

Happy Earth Day!

Two things for you to do today, in honor of Earth Day -

First, look beyond the simplistic, easy ways to "go green" for ways to reduce your impact on the planet and its inhabitants - and yes, that includes human beings.  Biggest hint - if it involves the exchange of money for Stuff that isn't food, shelter, or health care, give it a big ol' eyeball.  Give it two big ol' eyeballs if it's a solution being offered by a company or institution that benefits from people buying Stuff.

Second, go outside today.  Even if it's just for five minutes on your coffee break, go outside.  Observe the weather, the air quality.  If it's raining, get a little wet.  If it's sunny, tip your face up to the light.  Look around you and see what other living things - whether a giant sequoia or a street pigeon or a weed in the sidewalk - share this place with you.  When you go back inside, remember that these things are no less real than your life inside, and that they are no less important than the grand images in the nature calendars.  It's harder to appreciate and acknowledge the ordinary, but that's where we live our lives. 

Happy Earth Day!

Pressured

Wind rises, falls, rises again.  A few speckles of rain alight on the camera, my hat.  I walk with long steps, swiftly, in the direction of the coffee shop. 

Around the corners of the buildings, into the alleyways, race jostling gangs of petals, blowing past me like aggressive street urchins and their dogs.  I tip my hat into the wind, eying the world sidelong, head tilted like a wren.

Inside the coffeeshop, the petals look like snow.  The rain holds off.

I stride home in my unneeded puddle-jumping mud shoes, feeling the weight of the air shoving at me.  A leaf scrapes down the middle of the road, pauses to regard me, then resumes.  A cardinal leaps into the air like a leaf. 

I crouch down to pick grass for the cat, and my head rushes when I stand.  A high-pressure system creates a rush of air; mine is a low-pressure system.  I hear the burr of a lawnmower, rushing before the rain.

All around me the petals and leaves vibrate and shimmer.  Moisture hangs silent and waiting, waiting for the pressure of air.

Desert Easter

Frequently, when I was a child, school holidays in the spring overlapped with Easter.  Our family's response to the free week was to take off for the desert, joining my godparents at some pre-arranged meeting place - usually some small dusty park in some small dusty town.  We'd eat chicken sandwiches with mayonnaise at a splintery picnic table while my father and my godfather laid the maps out on the hood of the Jeep or the the Scout, running their fingers over the lines of contours and tracks.

Some years this week coincided with the blossoming of desert plants: chollas with their delicate, green-tinted petals, yellow burrobrush and creosote, the orange desert mallow, prickly pears flowers in astonishing pink, sturdy ocotillos blooming like torches... My dad was always on the look-out for cactus a-welter in blooms, and I remember one year he found a prickly pear that had seven in a row, all open at once.

The weather was usually sunny, but windy and cold, especially at dawn and dusk.  Specks of mica and sand in clothes, hair and our food were common; at night you could sometimes hear them skirling along the tarp we laid out on the ground, along with the rustling of the wind along the tarp's edges.  On especially cold nights the dog pressed close, curled into a tight ball of black and white hair.

Found Poem

The search strings that brought people to my flickr account, in the order they appeared:

moth wings
drinking sheep
small stripped moths
brown and black stripped moths
owl rock
brown spider orange legs
brown and black striped moths

Out and Back

On the way out twilight came early, in the form of sheeting rain and cast-up spray.  The sunset - official - was not for several hours.  The sky was dark with rain, at times lightly tinged with the green potential of swirling storms.

On the way back, rain-depleted clouds hovered, dark and portentous, above damp still air.  A series of false dawns bloomed along the roadway, as cities and towns lit up the clouds from below.

A high whistle droned as the car raced through the dark, pulling its own windstorm along the highway.  The drone formed a harmonic with the chanting of tires against road, the notes of potholes and lines of tar percussing the hum of engine and wind.

Auras and halos coruscated around the reflective surfaces of signs and painted portents indicating Exit Here and Stop and Do Not Enter.  Light swirled in the puddles on the road, arced along the edges of my glasses, shimmered in the foggy glow of the gas stations. 

All else was dark, and still.

Living with It

What seems like a long time ago I coined the phrase "post-academic stress syndrome" to describe the ways I felt after falling out of academia.  I don't remember thinking much about the long term at that point, because I was too busy processing the active trauma of the experience.

Now, six years out, I find myself thinking about how apt that expression has proven to be. 

Photography, Fora, and Gender Norms

I've been kicking around the idea for this post for a while, but have yet to come up with a neat way to lay out the bits.  Since I'm avoiding other work, I might as well give it some sort of shot, and have done with it.

The two intersecting axis - the culture of online spaces that are dominated by one gender, and the culture of online spaces discussing photography.

Now, before I proceed, I want to make clear that I'm not talking about some sort of gender essentialism; rather I am talking about the ways that spaces dominated by women or dominated by men tend collectively to demonstrate certain tendencies - this has very little to do with what actual men or women think or feel.