It's not a fair world...

Never will be.
Fair.
It's not a complaint.
It's a fact.
Some bugs only live 48 hours.
If they had a brain to think about it they would have the potential to fall into the trap of victim mentality.

Some people are born with defects.
Some have a smart parent, and a dumb parent, and they unfortunately got the dumb parent genes.
Some think one can inherit the genes of alcoholism.
And others believe that a person can be born edified by God from the day of their entrance into the world.
Some are born into a wealthy bloodline.
While others are born into despair and famine.
On and on we can go...........with the unfairness of life.


But there is a miracle in the fact that our heart keeps beating when we sleep.
There is a miracle in the fact that we all have the ability to create.
We all have the ability to express thoughts and ideas.

There is a miracle in the fact that we as humans can even comprehend these things.
It is that same 'miracle of thought' that allows us to 'question our existence'.
And if you start questioning you run the risk of labeling yourself as a victim.

But we are all a scientific miracle.

The sun comes up----the moon goes down-----and some scientists say that if this process was even .25 of an inch out of whack we would all perish.

It's a delicate balance.
So some things do need to break down, work inefficiently, and change.

Change is inevitable.
And because of this inevitable change there will always be cause and effect.

It's spring.
Plants make flowers to attract bees and hummingbirds.
They don't question their existence?

Everything around the yard is literally exploding with colors---and of course green.
The yard needs mowed twice a week.
The plants don't stop and complain about the mower....the grass just keeps growing.

The salmon are running.
The bald eagles are hunting in the bay in front of the house.
The salmon don't slap their tails in disgust of the fact that they are being hunted by birds. They just keep pushing to the spawning grounds up the river.

Migrations of bright colored goldfinch birds, doves, and chickadees are swarming the yard.
My cat jumped from the bushes yesterday and snatched one from the bird feeder.
The remaining birds didn't write a letter to the local newspaper demanding cat control.
The birds simply keep coming back to the feeders.

In some ways they are blessed that they DON'T reason their own existence.
Or maybe they are even more fortunate than we know and they are smart enough to know that questioning is a complete waste of time?

The ocean is dark with the color of algae blooms which are the primary source of food for millions of fish.

A few days ago I watched nice waves peel into shore with that algae in the face of the waves.
A surfer turned to me and complained------very boldly.

"I drove all the way here from Portland to find shit in the water" he said.

I refrained.


My surfboard has fresh wax rubbed on it from a couple of fun sessions with friends.
The winds are starting to blow from the northwest----ushering in spring with freshness.

We ate clams yesterday which we dug from our beach.
We also ate sockeye salmon from last falls run.
And even some lasagna with deer meat from a deer literally captured in the back yard.


Life may not be fair.
But in the end it is balanced.
Just gotta learn to fit into the grooves we were cut out for.


The very fact that you can read this on a computer is testament to the miracle of your own sight.

So get out there and go find some good views.

Progress is regress?

In the summer of 1991 issue of the Amicus Journal, the publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an artilcle appeared called "The Reinvention of the Americal Frontier".
It's two authors described rural adaptations such as farming and logging as "extractive" industries, and sought to develop a "kinder and gentler frontier" by replacing them with retirement communities and tourism, viewed as non-extractive and therefore morally correct adaptations.

Rural areas are usually characterized by traditional adaptations based on, in their view, renewable resources.
The shift in terminology from such words as fishing, farming, and logging to "extractive industries" carries a negative moral weight, which in turn justifies the turning over of resources to the "morally superior non extractive" users.

The latent function of such thinking, however, is colonialist in nature.

It is a classic case, the hinterland is no longer permitted to export it's raw materials, its wealth, to urban areas for processing as it could in previous eras. Rather, rural sources of income in the form of trees, fish, and land are transformed into a means of recreation for tourists.

Is there not a distrubing echo here of how the original frontier was created, by means of a land grab from the aboriginal inhabitants of North America?

Must frontier creation always involve a wrestling away of resources from one owner/user by another?

What are the social consequences of such decisions?

In this 'wrestling away of frontier land' is it also necessary that these "morally superior" people consistently degrade the value of the natural resource workers by pointing out the workers lower wage --as compared to most urban dwellers?
Just because one can afford to buy expensive 'green' clothing made from recycled goods does not mean that the natural resource worker in his rugged and worn clothing should be labeled a 'bad person'.

This type of thinking promotes the argument that those of 'lower lifestyle' deserve to have the land wrestled away from them.

It is as if the tourists on the upper deck of the Titanic are saying to those below that their opinion is of no worth due to their lack of income.
And it is not often noted that many of these natural resource workers do not need but half the income of an urban dweller in order to live a very healthy, natural, nutritious lifestyle. The abundance of natural resource in such areas guarantees that the hearty natural resource worker will alway have a freezer full of fish, clams, elk and deer. Thier homes heated by wood they gather in nearby woods or washed up on the beach.

I was born and raised in the rural areas of Oregon.
Most of my life I have been on the coast and learned to love the rugged beauty of the salted air.
I have lived elsewhere up and down the coast including San Diego and Santa Barbara.
It is there that I have seen the land be taken from the resource workers and what has developed because of it.
The bulldozers are hungry and they seem to keep getting bigger as they are fed more.

In San Diego, for example, the entire agricultural district of Chula Vista was 'written off' and is lost due to the fact that the developers needed the water to fill the bathtubs and jacuzzis of new home projects.

The farmers were simply told they could no longer use the water.
And literally overnight the farms closed their 100 year old barn doors forever.

I truly hope our societies fascination with the 'green' movement also includes some respect for those people who work in nature.
Natural resource workers are some of the most fulfilled and happy individuals left in our digitized, overprocessed, genetically modified, ammonia washed fast food hamburger fed nation.
The idea of taking a young child out to show him or her how to gather fish, food, or grain seems so distant in our culture.
The average family farm used to feed 6 to 8 families.
The average farm now feeds around 100,000 families.
And you can buy a hamburger with all the fixings for a dollar-----how scary.

Efficiency is not always productive.
And progress can be regress.