gathering

Feels like it's snowing all over the world

The Boston Globe's Big  Picture has a terrific round up of snowy photos from around the world.

The Big Picture

A new start

My editor's note from the January, 2010 Exchange magazine

The end of the decade really snuck up on me. It wasn’t until I began noticing all of the “best of the decade” stories in the media in mid-December that I realized we were facing  the end of the naughts.

I know life just continues to accelerate as we age, but this is alarming. Have we really reached the end of a decade already? The beginning of the decade seems so distant now.
The end of the last millennium was marked by widespread worries that the advanced, tech-heavy world we had built would collapse, that computer chips large and small would fail at the stroke of midnight, Y2K.
I can remember that night, waiting for news from around the world, in countries that reached midnight before us, to see if things continued to run, if toasters and water utilities and power grids and alarm clocks kept working.
And I remember serious discussions for months leading up to that night, about what neighborhoods and families and businesses should do to weather the possible meltdown – stock up on water and canned foods, form block organizations so neighbors could help neighbors and the like.
The toasters kept running. The lights stayed on. In hindsight, the worries seemed unwarranted and the huge specter that had been Y2K quickly faded. Perhaps what we took away from Y2K was that even the largest, most publicized problems weren’t really worth the worry, that they would soon drop from radar screen. Ebola? No biggie. Bird flu? Nah. Climate change? Fodder for late night TV monologues. Swine flu? Piece of cake.
We just don’t seem to get too worked up about most things. Of course, 9/11 rattled us in the US like little else in our history, save perhaps Pearl Harbor. But while we continue to fight two wars in the aftermath of that attack, we don’t seem to spend much time thinking about that here at home.
Nor does the urgency of climate change have much of an impact, really, in our daily lives. In homes across the country, we’ve switched light bulbs, tried to bring our own bags to the grocery store and considered buying a hybrid, but mostly we go about our lives much as we always have.
So, here before us is a new decade. And though it is not as auspicious or as portentous as a whole new millennium, it requires even more of us. Perhaps the Y2K bug was a sort of snooze alarm. It’s now time to wake up and shake off the hangover.
Our economic system is in chaos. Top researchers maintain we have a very short window to prevent global climate catastrophe. Our food system is top heavy, inefficient and largely devoted to unsustainable “foods” and practices. We have hungry, cold and sick among us - we can see them from the windows of our SUVs.
We don’t need to work for change - it is inevitable.
But we do need to work – together - to create the changes we want.

Time for a slow holiday?

I write this a week before Thanksgiving. Last night in Red Arrow Park, the city’s holiday tree and lights were turned on for the season. I drove home from an event downtown late in the evening in a damp and drizzly winter wonderland.
The holidays are here. Black Friday is a week away but the big department stores have been furiously advertising sale after sale for weeks already and most trim-a-tree departments have been up long enough to gather dust. The tide now turns well before the last carved pumpkin has been chewed apart by hungry squirrels.
Buy, buy, buy. Spend, spend, spend.
It’s all part of an incredible machine created to keep money moving and changing hands. This year’s hot fashions and the toys with the most buzz were decided upon months, if not years, ago. Sales catalogues arrive with convenient, ready-to-fill-in wish lists. Just check the things you want.
It’s always been overkill – a season of excesses. But the avarice feels even more awkward and out of place this year. For one, we are at war, still, though it is far away and remote for most of us. But if those grim bodycounts somehow can’t cut through the haze of consumption, then surely the economic headlines will.
Lay-offs, foreclosures, downturns and plant closings, even in other states or other communities, echo in the air and hit home with force. Seems we all know someone, some family, affected by this recession.
It’s not just here. I was in Ireland earlier this year, which might be suffering even more from the recession. Worse, it came on the heels of a period of tremendous economic growth and prosperity for that country, one of Europe’s poorest nations not too long ago.
Boom and now bust. I asked people I met if they thought the recession would cause any permanent shifts, if their countrymen would change their ways. To a person, they answered no, that as soon as the economy rebounded, the demand for bigger homes, larger cars, glitzier gadgets and more of everything would return in earnest.
I wonder about that here in the states. Experts say this will be a smaller, less expensive holiday (which is why those department stores already have been advertising so much). The recession will take a toll and alter how we typically mark this time of year. We will travel shorter distances or not at all. We will spend less on gifts. We will eat in more. We may even do some charity work.

I know, we have this engine of commerce to feed, that jobs depend on us spending and on us keeping that money moving – but I can’t help but think that all these adjustments, all these compromises – well, don’t they sound pretty good?

Have a happy, festive and slow season.My Dec. Editor's Note, from the Exchange magazine.

Thoughts on gratitude - written for and read at First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee

I remember my father and the night more than 40 years ago. He woke me up in the middle of the night in my hometown of Derry in Northern Ireland - a town torn by strife, civil war nearly, between nationalists and unionists, between protestants and catholics. He woke me up and we dressed and walked out, up into the hills overlooking the city, and sat on the hillside in the ink dark, surrounded by others - a milky way of people clustered in small constellations on the hillside - and waited for an eclipse.
That night certainly inspired a lifelong interest in science and astronomy, but it taught me so much more as well: how a sense of wonder, a sense of awe, staring into the deep mysteries of the universe, could unite us all, adult and child, man and woman, nationalist and unionist, protestant and catholic, together. None of those differences mattered to us on that hill.
Now, deep under the soils of Switzerland this weekend, the engines have begin to rev and the Large Hadron Collider, the big bang machine, is springing to life. Molecules will be hurled around and around a 17-mile long subterranean racetrack, excited to incredible speeds, each molecule harboring the power of an automobile traveling 1,000 miles per hour, before being crashed into each other.
Scientists hope to uncover the the secrets to the origin of the universe in these crashes. And they might.
However, some scientists have voiced concerns - widely dispelled - that this experiment will birth a black hole or some other cataclysmic event that might imperil our planet. And still other astrophysicists say we have nothing to worry about - that the universe will not allow us to discover these secrets, that it will actually send agents back in time to stop the collider from working. Really. They’ve written papers!
The thing is, we just don’t know.
I have stood in the dark, deep night many times as dew has settled lazily on the grass, watching the heavens. I have been entranced by northern lights and in their movement have glimpsed cosmic secrets, of the dance of molecules that weaves us all together - you and I and the grass and the stars all.
I have strained to follow the bright arcs of shooting stars and in their faint traces have sensed the impermanence of all life - we each flash in our brilliance, we each reach apogee, and we each then fade and fall.
I have children. From mere cells they have sprung, from molecules dancing together, to form hair, body, eyes, smiles, hearts, souls and energy.
And I feel so often a child myself, always learning, always running up against the edge of mystery.
I know it can be the stuff of fear and worry. But it can just as much be the stuff of wonder.
For there is mystery in each sunrise, in each smile, in each tear and in each touch.
In the whorl of the fingerprints on a baby’s hand, in the shape of a cloud, in the spiral of a snails shell, in a single blade of grass –there is mystery.
There is just so much we do not know or understand. How did it arise? Where did it come from? Where does it go?
The truth appears to us much like that shooting star - ephemeral, evanescent, quickly gone. A mystery. And I am so thankful for that.
Because mystery begets awe and awe, that sense of wonderment, is intrinsically humbling. For it places us, not in the center of the universe, but near a small, unspectacular sun, on an arm of one of thousands of spiral galaxies hurtling at the speed of life away from the big bang. In that mystery is all of the potential of the universe. And for that, for those infinite possibilities, I am eternally grateful.

IBM makes 'thinking computer' breakthrough

Yet Olds cautioned that simulating the human brain is "such a complex problem that we may not be able to get to an answer, even with supercomputing."

"There are no guarantees in this game because the sheer complexity of the problem really dwarfs anything we've tried to do," he said.

via www.independent.co.uk

Computer researchers say they've made a significant advance in their attempts to build a computer that "thinks" more like a brain - able to deal with ambiguity and abstractions. Until now, thinking computers have been the stuff of science fiction - HAL anyone? - and, in spite of this development, may remain there for awhile, say the researchers.
I don't know. Perhaps they could begin with something far simpler, like Sarah Palin's brain?
Ouch! Sorry to my conservative friends. But can anyone tell me they would seriously consider her worthy of national public office?

More than 14,500 jobs lost at US newspapers in 2009 - so far.
Tragic for the men and women who have lost income and seen career choices diminish.
But what does it mean for us, all of us?
While many folks in the business lament the dwindling number of journalists and the hardships faced by print media, do we know for sure whether or not it's a bad thing?
It really rests on this: how many journalists do we need? How many writers, reporters, editors and other professional do we need to keep us adequately informed?
Something new and excited will come along to replace the traditional model of newsgathering and reporting, I've heard some say, and I have to hope they are right - I am an optimist at heart.
But I worry that fewrr people are watching the men and women in power. I worry that fewer questions are being asked and that the bright lights that ought to be shone on all the various activities associated with governing and commerce are dimming.

Do we have enough people still watching and asking?

The graphic below is from the site: graphicdesignr.net/papercuts/

Just bad luck?

It made for a funny story a month or so ago when two top physicists published a paper speculating that the Large Hadron Collider might be doomed to failure by the universe itself.
The $9 billion collider, built mostly underground in the Swiss countryside, is designed to seek evidence of the particles created by the Big Bang and offer insights into the birth of the universe itself.
What gathered attention - and laughs - was the physicists' suggestion that the universe would conspire to go back in time to stop the discovery of this very particle, the Higgs boson particle.
Ha ha. Funny stuff, that. Time travel! The universe sending agents back in time to stop the collider from working? Crazy!
The collider was fired up last winter. Before critical speed could be reached, however, an accident occurred and two of the incredibly powerful magnets melted. Millions of dollars had to be spent to repair the unit and get it ready again.
Bad luck, huh? But those kind of setbacks can be expected with something so complicated. Just bad luck.
The collider was fixed and is ready to begin operating at low power again. The ramping up to full speed is expected to take months. The deepest secrets of the workings of the universe may be ours early next year!
And then this happened:
Baguette Dropped From Bird's Beak Shuts Down The Large Hadron Collider (Really) | Popular Science.
A bird with a chunk of bread. A $9 billion hyper-complex machine created to peer into god's soul.
Reports are that the accident, which caused some parts of the collider's accelerator to badly overheat, won't delay the start up date.
But I'd carbon date that bread crumb, just in case...

Blessing our food

It has become our routine.
At my house, as we sit down to eat a meal together, we join hands and say “blessings on our meal.” When the kids were younger, the blessing was longer and more elaborate, but it has shortened as they have grown into adolescence.
Blessings on our meal.
But those four words mean a lot to me.  Even in passing, even in this brief moment, it is a recognition of the food we eat, the men and women who grow it and the ways by which it reaches us.
Years ago, I was friends with a reporter who wrote for the newspaper I edited, who was an avid hunter. Each fall, he took his bow and arrows and went into the woods in search of deer. The hunt’s appeal to him was as much about the chance to commune with nature as it was about anything else, but he was also a good hunter, and he often returned with a deer, which he used to feed his family.
He used to say he considered it an honor to be able to hunt and he always offered thanks and blessings to nature for the gift of food.
I was fresh out of college and repulsed by the notion of hunting back then. But I readily acknowledge that his relationship with food was far more honest than mine.
He was all too aware that a sacrifice had been made to deliver him that food - something I, picking items from freezers and shelves at a grocery store, never thought much about back then.
I do think about it now.
It’s why it matters that the bin full of Honeycrisp apples at Outpost carries a photo of the Barthels in Mequon and that the maple syrup comes from a friend’s family in Northern Kettle Moraine and that some of the greens on sale come from Milwaukee’s northside Growing Power.
It’s why I worry about cheap foods grown far away and transported around the globe. I read an interesting and horrifying piece in the New York Times recently about the journey taken by frozen ground meat patties sold in large warehouse stores and some fast food restaurants. The various ingredients in a single patty might come from six or seven different suppliers both within and outside of the US. Try tracking that burger to its place of origin.
I think when we can picture the path the food has taken from the ground where it was grown and harvested to our kitchens, we can’t help but feel some gratitude to the men and women who have shared in its journey and to the world which provides us this sustenance.
And, maybe, it’ll inspire us to take a bit better care of those men and women and this precious planet.

We got what we wanted.

We got what we wanted.

I think Barack Obama was elected because the American electorate was captivated by his willingness to engage his opponents in dialog and debate. What a breath of fresh air! What a change from the usual divisiveness and demagoguery so common in national politics. His election itself seemed to herald a new approach to governance, or at least a return to a more balanced, thoughtful and open-minded presidency. Surely, the members of the Nobel Peace Prize committee agreed.

So, now he is president and he is doing his thing, engaging in discussion, seeking common ground and compromise – and we are pissed. The changes many of us had sought have been slow to come, the bold promises we cheered on have been watered down and many of us are voicing impatience and frustration with the pace and direction of change.

Indeed, it is doubly challenging to seek out common ground when your opponents refuse to move; consensus can be elusive when the other side holds tight to its beliefs and crafting a shared vision can be near-impossible when your opponent keeps his eyes closed tight.

The answer, I think, for those of us now voicing impatience and frustration, is not to abandon Obama or lose faith in the promise of his administration. The answer is for us to share our vision, to keep giving voice to our hopes and dreams and beliefs. Let us hold firm to our principles, for that will make it easier for Obama to craft the valid and lasting compromises that move our country forward and realize the promise we all felt during the last election.

We got what we wanted. But he can't compromise when only one side is debating. Time to raise our voice.

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A sunrise hike memory

The little hill obscured by vegetation at the center of this photo is a kame.

The small conical hills dot the landscape of northern Kettle Moraine. They are the result of melting glaciers. As the Ice Age receded, holes formed in the surface of the glaciers and sediment was carried down through the ice by meltwater.

This particular kame is known as White Kame and is located in Dundee, in northern Kettle Moraine.

This weekend, as I drove in northern kettle Morain, I had to stop and photograph this hill.

This hill was formed thousands of years ago, in the last Ice Age, and discovered by friends and I more than thirty years ago.

Back then, I organized an annual hike on one of the first weekends of each October, called the Sunrise Hike. On the first hike (and there were many Sunrise Hikes over the years, perhaps 20 or so), we left Milwaukee at four in the morning, watched the sunrise from a hill near Mauthe Lake State Park and then, driving around looking for something to do, found this hill. On our maps, the small hill was called Gumdrop Kame. I like that better than White Kame.

It had smaller trees three decades ago. We climbed it, though we had to slog through a marsh to reach it. At the top, we enjoyed the view, opened the bottles of wine we had brought, tore off pieces of bread, whittled thin slices of cheese and apples and sat in the glorious sun.

Then someone grabbed a long rope – I think it was Dan, mostly because one might have expected to find ropes alongside the assorted tools and beer bottles and other debris which accumulated in his cars back then the way driftwood and shells settle on a beach –  and slung it over a thick, low branch on the tree that sits highest on the hill, a bit to the right of center in this photo. We fashioned a swing from the rope and then Bruce and Dan and then even the least adventurous among us took turns running off the hillside and swinging out into open air, exhilarated by life itself.

We’d hike later in the day, stomping along the Ice Age Trail, revelling in the last waning days of the summer heat.

If you remember all that, if you were there that day , then you were one of the originals. Dan, Bruce, Judy, Paula, Jayne, Jeff, Terri. Laura? Ed? Tim? Donna? Others I don’t even remember right now. If you remember all that, then you are one of the originals and you are an old son of a gun.

If you were there on that hike or on any of the ones that followed, at Mauthe Lake or the shores of Lake Michigan or wherever else we gathered to watch the sun rise on crisp October morns, then I hope the memories of those days make you smile all these years later.

For if you were one of those there that day you should know that I thought of you today - and I smiled.

And you should know, too, that I am eternally grateful that you walked along with me - if even for one bright morning years ago.

Peace.