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Planting for the next Century
Where Should I Plant this Sapling?
They say a man plants
A tree, not for himself, but
For his descendants. Well,
I agree, and have seen
The benefits of a mulberry
Planted by a man I never met,
More than a century past.
As the sentinel starts to sag
I’ve saved a sapling from
Between its roots and would
Take the next step for my
Generation before it falls.
But where would it prosper?
I fear the weather
Will not favour the same spot
As its forefather for much longer
Than half its lifetime,
And ere it gives fullest fruits
Will stand in different clime.
So, where should I plant this sapling
In a changing world?
Where its roots can anchor the eroding soil
As farmers harvest down to the last?
On a slope so the children of this village
Can reach the lower limbs
To stain fingers and lips on
Summer afternoons, should
Any remain after rains have
Deserted the landscape?
In a ditch to take some advantage
Of rich dampness as the rest
Of fields blister in the sun?
Or on a high knoll to stay dry
While surrounding ground soaks
Under incessant thunderstorms,
Turning this aridness instead wet?
It seems a bet to hedge;
I should plant a score
From hill to shore.
Climate Breakdown: explaining it is easy when the examples abound
I’m teaching Climate Change in my first-year classes at the moment.
No matter what the topic, I always like to use examples to make things clearer to the kids – references to things in their own lives. I often refer to TV programs, movies, songs.
However, some of my references are dated – movies made before they were born, which, while classics, haven’t always been seen. In my English SL class last week, when describing the meaning of “a the height of one’s career,” I used a TV presenter, who first shot to prominence on the Spanish equivalent of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? The show was called 50 for 15, referring to 50Million Pesetas – a currency that disappeared when the kids were toddlers.
But teaching Climate Change, I was struck by the fact that I don’t have to reach back very far to come up with an example of what I mean when I talk about the changes that are happening/ could happen in the future.
For example, California – it was burning a few weeks ago; latest news out of there is a terrible mudslide. Opposite types of natural disasters in a short timeframe.
Even here in this very city, though, the oscillations are becoming ever more obvious. And rapid.
I described how Spain was experiencing a drought late last year. Reservoirs were down to 10 or 20%. On the 3rd of January, I was in a jeans and a sweater, enjoying the sunshine. I was sent a video of a snake the same week.
This poor frog was squashed by a car just outside the village that night – what the hell was a frog doing out on Jan 3?
On the 5th, it started raining, then snowing.
I posted this photo on my facebook page, joking how I’d always wanted a garden with a little river flowing through it.
It was gushing out of the gully under the rocks you can see behind the fence in this photo.
And some of it was filling the groundwater so much that I’d springs popping up in the grass.
This looks like a cowpat, but it’s actually mud pushed out of the ground by the water flow.
Pamplona was covered in snow.
The aqueduct of Noain outside Pamplona.
The reservoirs refilled past 50% in a few days.
And now it’s mild again.
So the kids get it. They understand Climate Breakdown. They can hardly not when it is staring us in the face like the barrel of a shotgun.
Question is, what can they do about it?
Because the previous generation who knew about it haven’t been able to do very much, yet.
It’s time to put warning labels on meat.
I just signed this pledge, to reduce the amount of meat I eat.
https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/meatless_day_loc/
The organisers seem to be mostly concerned about the slaughter of so many animals to feed us gluttons.
It’s true, that 56 billion animals are treated fairly shittily every year. But that’s not quite my main motivation…
I want to reduce global climate change impacts.
I watched this video from the satirical character, Jonathon Pie, the other day, about how people are upset that the British Govt don’t think animals are sentient, when of course everyone loves their dogs so much they dress them up in shiny winter jackets nowadays. He was taking the piss because most of the same people don’t give a toss about the environment or wildlife.
And he’s right.
But hey, if people stop eating meat because they can’t stomach the idea of a cute little piggy getting stuck with a knife and hearing that death squeal, well, that’s all to the good.
At this stage of the game, motivation does not matter. Only the end result.
Just like making petrol very expensive in Europe makes the emissions here not quite so fucking outlandish as in America.
So in order to save the planet’s bacon, as it were, we need to reduce meat consumption, and we can either make it expensive – like cigarettes- and/or make it unpalatable – also like cigarettes.
So how do we do the latter?
We put labels on meat that explicitly say, “Did you know that this pig (photo of cute pig) went through this (photo of bloody gutted corpse) to make this tasty ham?”
Perhaps followed by the sentence – “If you are okway with this, then go right ahead and enjoy the tasty meat…”
This will put off quite a few people.
Myself excluded, of course. I always have the actual animal in mind when I’m eating them. I’ve seen dead animals, seen animals die, had a hand in that death myself. That doesn’t make me a bad person, it just makes me a realist. It’s the folk who haven’t seen, and worse, don’t want to see, or even think about, the death that went before the packaging and purchase, who are the problem here.
It is not often their fault, though – the supermarkets and food companies have purposefully separated the nastiness from the tastiness. Who sees the butcher at work in their supermarket?
In Spain, you can still see dead rabbits, fur on, in the butcher’s counter, along with pig heads, baby pigs, chickens hanging with heads and legs on. That’s the way it should be.
But that doesn’t mean we aren’t fed a pile of shite at the same time.
This advert is running on Spanish TV at the moment. Watch it. It’s 20 seconds.
I have eaten this ham. It’s nice enough. But eff me, what the hell is that ad all about?
There’s not even a shot of the farm, never mind the pig.
Associating a cooked ham with strawberries, or mother’s milk is far from fucking natural, folks, let’s just make that clear.
Natural is seeing the animal on the farm. Natural is seeing it being butchered.
If you don’t want to see the latter, then no problem – just stay away from meat.
And we’ll all be happy – except the food companies.
The Drought Breaks
The Rains Return
The sky weeps;
Bent low,
Hills soak to refill rills.
Upon the porch, we sit still.
The rain – snow in the high ground – has finally returned to much of Spain, bringing some relief to the drought we’ve been experiencing this year.
The spring that supplies our village in the Valdorba is still flowing at a trickle, though. It will take much more rain to raise the water table and refill the reservoirs.
the spring last week above, the same spring in September below…
But everyone has been happy to see the rain, despite the need for umbrellas instead of sunglasses.
This is a photo of one of the beaches in San Sebastian, aka Donostia, taken when I was there last week.
I sat on the beach and wrote this poem.
Donostia, December 2017
On the breakwater, as tide rises,
Shielding eyes to see gleaming mountain
Snowmelt trickle by.
We shouldn’t be able to see the mountain from the beach at this time of year, for the blanket of cloud that normally shrouds the city.
But what is normal anymore?
Anyway, I wrote a few poems that afternoon. It reminded me of another poem I wrote a few weeks ago, which describes a little of why I’ve written so little recently, and posted less.
But maybe we’ll get back to normal sometime soon…
Words Come Forth
They say our words won’t be kept down;
They bubble up, under pressure, like lava
Pushing through a fissure,
Bursting forth if they can’t flow.
But instead, they are drawn
Under empty sky,
Sucked out by silence,
Pulled forth by the vacuum
Of open space,
Giving them a place to emerge
Timidly into tranquilly
Like deer from the thicket at twilight.
This is what drought looks like
This is what drought looks like.
Spain is currently going through a water crisis, with reservoirs drying up all over the country. It’s been on the news a lot this autumn.
Sometimes you see stuff on the news and you just go back to your business and you try not to think too much about it. Like you do with wars and the other stuff that our politicians mess up – the Dakota oil spill being a prime example.
But if you look around you can see local examples of things going very wrong.
Last weekend we went to Ezcaray, a small town in La Rioja that lives off tourism – especially skiing in winter. The skiing hasn’t opened yet. It might not open for very much this year, nor for very long in the future.
There is a little snow on the hills, but with the warm weather that we are still having in November, it is probably melting. Not that you can notice it downhill.
This is the river. It’s more like a dry canyon from somewhere down in the south, like Almeria, than a mountain river in the north.
When you search Ezcaray in google maps, this is the photo that pops up.
https://plus.google.com/photos/photo/100661991213780414719/6429638250127263666
It’s kind of different to the one up the top of this page. Or the following one.
We were told that this is usually a waterfall. It has a fish ladder, which you can see under the cage on the left, for all the use that can be made of it this year. There are no fish in evidence in that pool, the only drop of water visible in a hundred metres. Directly upstream it’s completely dry. Just a few drops seep through the rocks. A few hundred metres upstream we saw a few small rivulets coming through the stones. But there can be little life there – not even mayfly or caddis fly – to sustain a river ecosystem.
The local council wants to put a dam upstream, we heard. The locals are fighting to save their river. A sign hung in a village said, “Water is life, save the river Oca.” I wonder if keeping the construction at bay will be enough to save it.
The End of Fire Season… until next year?
The cranes started passing over Pamplona yesterday evening.
They were chased by the rain that came in overnight. The first in weeks.
Autumn has thus officially started.
And hopefully also this means the end of the fire season for this year.
While Ireland braced for an almost unheard of hurricane in the North Atlantic, in northern Spain and Portugal, forest fires were killing even more people than Ophelia killed.
There were dozens burning over the weekend and until Tuesday, when the rains helped to finally extinguish them.
Unlike hurricanes, though, which are terrible, and indirectly related to man’s activities, these forest fires were only wild in the sense of the untamed destruction they could wreak. They were not natural. They were man made, purposefully started, and repeatedly so.
Forest fires across Galicia, photo Diario Sur
After so many deaths, there are now questions being asked of politicians as to how these arsonists can be stopped. Spanish news has little else, other that the Catalan situation – politics and fraud, even football has been put in the background by the terrible scenes of people trying to escape burning villages only having to turn back as the roads are flanked with flames, and others park inside a motorway tunnel to wait rescue, or let the fires pass overhead.
Because these fires have been a part of summer in places like Galicia for years. As soon as the weather dries, huge tracts of forests go up there. All directly caused by humans and usually set intentionally, with a few the result of stupidity and neglect.
The people of Portugal are naturally outraged, after a summer of huge fires has been followed by an autumn death toll almost as terrible, with dozens of people claimed by the flames.
The perpetrators must be caught and jailed for their murders, but also, the politicians and police, if it is the case, must be held responsible for letting this situation get to this state. Why have these people not been caught for their previous fires? – because there’s no way these conflagrations were started by first-time arsonists.
Why do people go out of their way to set fires, driving along highways in the middle of the night with fireworks tied to helium balloons?
It’s clear they have nothing better to do, and they’re assholes of the highest calibre, but there must be some other, external, motivation for most of the fires. What is it? Why has it not been identified years ago and why has it not been removed?
There are forests that could burn just as badly and even more easily in other parts of Spain, so why are there not so many fires elsewhere? Galicia has 40% of all fires in the country, and half the area burnt every year for the last decade.
Surely the arsonists are spread out in a broader swath across the country. Or is there something about the mind-set of Galicians that makes them excessively prone to arson?
The gorse fires and heather fires we have seen in Ireland in recent years were all set intentionally for financial gain – the current agricultural subsidy system means that farmers make more money if there land is considered in use, even if it’s not.
Ultimately, stopping them will require a change in the EU farming subsidy system to allow land go fallow without farmers losing money.
Is there a financial motivation in Galicia and Portugal for setting huge fires?
According to Ecologists in Action, this is only the cause of a small proportion of the fires set.
What other factors are in play?
The use of fire for farming practices is permitted much more freely than elsewhere.
In most of Spain it is not permitted to light fires in camping and picnic areas and other recreational areas during times of fire risk. Not so in Galicia.
Vehicles are also allowed onto forest paths in Galicia during the summer, which is prohibited elsewhere.
AND they allow fireworks in village festivals during the summer, which is just asking for trouble.
But as I said, the summer is over.
The cranes, luckily, don’t stay long in Spain during their migration.
When they passed before on their way north I wrote this poem. Hopefully it will ease the depression of these fires. Watching the birds certainly lifts the spirit.
European cranes. photo wikipedia – need a better camera myself!
The Great Migration
I’ve not yet seen the Serengeti,
Nor the caribou upon the artic plains
But up above my house in the hills,
I’ve been privileged to witness
The cranes migrating, calling
Eyes aloft to observe their long
Strings streaked across the sky
Huge wing beats by the thousands,
And can’t but wonder where
Those numbers bide in other times,
(Amazed such spaces yet exist)
And where they will find abode
In other climes.
The College Election
It’s an important day in the US, and for all of us, given the way the world is heating up.
I know it’s a bad idea to dis the President if you want to get into the country, but for the secret service dudes reading this, please understand, this is an exception…
So here’s hoping it’s a happy holiday for us all, and we can see some people who went to see the musical Hamilton paid attention, and we can stop thinking about how bad things are going to be in the New Year, but instead have some hope. Here’s a couple of poems to mark the occasion.
The Clown Fools Us All
Remember when we thought this guy was a joke?
And now it seems so serious; yet still,
Even at this late stage, he could
Be red flagging us:
Showing us he’s seriously taking the piss,
Waiting for us to see it for what it is,
And pull the plug.
Mixed Blessings?
Remember when we used to say:
“Jays, we were blest with the weather today,”
As if we’d got lucky, and we didn’t worry,
Nor wonder what was coming?
Why vote Trump?
It’s obvious from my novels and poems, and my blog posts, that I’m a bleeding heart liberal ecologist.
At the same time, many of my readers will have voted for Trump this last week, and I have no wish to offend them – bleeding heart liberals hate offending anyone.
However, I have to admit I wish they ‘d waited this one out – held their noses and let the other candidate have these four years, despite her obvious flaws.
Anyone who loves animals, wildlife and the natural world just can’t accept a president who claims climate change is a Chinese hoax…. the world doesn’t have four years to fuck around with – the eight of George Bush and the congressional blockade of Obama have been bad enough, thanks very much. If that was the only reason for letting Clinton have her way, it was enough.
That didn’t happen, though, and I see why Hillary was so disagreeable to so many voters.
As Jonathon Pie so eloquently said in this video, we need to talk to those who disagree with us politically so we can find out the best way forward for us all.
I’m still confused about some things, though.
So if anyone can politely enlighten me, without ending up blocking me on social media (seriously) I’d be grateful.
For anyone who’s ever watched American Wrestling, you know that it’s all fake, and Trump was so clearly using that playbook for all his campaign. He was rousing the crowd to hate his opponent, but after a few pretend punches, they went out for beers together, counting the box-office take.
Whether or not you think he should be able to say the things he said (and I think many things, like mocking a disabled person should have sent him off the field straight away, no question) we have to ask ourselves if he really meant them.
The one about pussy grabbing is an exception – he said that before he wanted to run for President and had no reason to try shock people, and many women have come forward to say he did just that (and there’s him up in court for some nasty shit next month).
That said, does anyone believe that someone who has such a low opinion of non-drop-dead-gorgeous women really gives a shit if they have to get an abortion or not?
Whether or not you think Trump believes Mexicans are all rapists etc., do you really think a man who uses illegal labour himself is going to build a wall to keep them out? He and his buddies in industries like food processing make too much money.
Did you really think Trump was really going to “lock her up?” She was at his wedding for Christ’s sake! We know that’s bullshit now – he’s been singing her praises since winning and she’s thinking about working with him.
Do you really think that Trump will change the tax codes that Hillary never did – those ones that help out him and his billionaire friends? I agree that she should have done more, if she was really the liberal she claims to be, but Trump is hardly the kind of guy who shoots his own kneecap. He’ll double-down on keeping the rich rich. Otherwise his billionaire friends won’t want to play golf with him.
Do you think Trump is going to throw the dross out of Washington politics? He’s going to ask for their help to run things – since he’s obviously got no clue himself. He already said he wants Obama to help him. Rather than drain the swamp, he’s going to have swimming lessons.
For the sake of many people I know, who are minorities Trump also denigrated, I hope the nasty things he’s said about them were also bullshit. Since they’re powerless, though, he doesn’t really have to back-track there like he does with Clinton, politicians and the rich.
And I hope those of his voters who aren’t racist and xenophobic make clear to the ones who are ( and I don’t think anyone can deny there is a good whack of them) that his election doesn’t give them free reign to persecute their fellow Americans just because they don’t like the kind of America we have today and will have in the future.
Misgivings
An Absence in Abundance
Lavender lays sideways under the weight of wind and blossom
But the bees clinging to the swaying stalks are few and far between.
An exuberance of blooms festoon the garden; from geraniums to clover,
But the butterflies are almost all white. Where is the abundance?
The humming profusion we should see before us?
The insects are ever scarcer on the farm – apart from houseflies –
And sparrows are ousting the house martins.
Those looking closely can see the cracks and give voice
To our misgivings that something’s got to give.
Harbingers
Praying for an Early Spring
Sitting in shirt sleeves
This late January afternoon,
Lettuce sprouts in greenhouse,
Bumblebees in almond blooms;
Annuals keep flowering and
Geraniums haven’t faded.
Newts and salamanders swim in pools
Wondering, too, if it isn’t too soon
Despite the lack of ice and instead
Should still slumber.
And though we’d love to see some snow,
It would be safer to let winter go
Unannounced, unpronounced, this year,
For fear it will freeze the very things
That would bring life to the spring.
This photo is from the week before, but one snowfall does not a winter make: the geraniums are still as colourful, the snow melted mostly that day, the sunny sky remained. The lettuces were fine; there are cheap strawberries in the supermarkets already. Unfortunately my phone camera didn’t work when I was trying to take a snap of the almond blossoms or the amphibians…
