Have you noticed the elephant in the Living Room? It is Heading Your Way. (Part II)

By having a reverence for life,

we enter into a spiritual relation with the world.

                                            ―  Albert Schweitzer

The rules of scientific investigation always require us,

when we enter the domains of conjecture,

 to adopt that hypothesis by which the greatest number of

 known facts and phenomena may be reconciled.

                                                       ―  Matthew Fontaine Maury 

Do not ignore tornado alerts.
When the sirens sound, head for safety.
Don't expect a tornado will go out of its way
to spare you.

The big question is not whether climate change is a real phenomenon or not. It is why do Americans tip-toe around the elephant in the living room? Why is it that in a country that prides itself on its educational system, are there more climate change deniers here than in many others countries?

In June 2014, Time magazine ran an article by Michael Grunwald discussing a global survey Time had done about attitudes toward energy and conservation. On almost every question asked, people in this country were least likely to believe scientific evidence regarding climate change or that anything should be done about it.

The survey reflected how beliefs (or denial) regarding climate change consequences were reflected in people’s behaviors. People in Germany, South Korea, Turkey, Brazil, and India were more likely than Americans to “turn off the lights when leaving a room or power down their computers at night and by far the least likely to walk or take public transit.” More people here were against bike lanes and carbon taxes/carbon limits and were less concerned about “polluted air, higher sea levels and almost every other problem the pollsters asked except higher gas prices.”

Two recently released major reports on climate change support the premise that we are big trouble. Meta-analysis of weather patterns and a variety of other criteria show how much trouble we are in, if nothing is done to address the issues. Grunwald reiterates this position, stating if action depends on Americans “getting outraged . . . we are in trouble.” And our children and our grandchildren are even more so 

A cursory search on the internet describes how huge amounts of money have been devoted to fostering the idea that climate change is a myth. Much of this money comes from oil and coal companies or a tangled network of organizations that funnel funds toward fostering the idea that the scientific evidence is dead wrong. And a considerable amount of those funds have been given to GOP legislators.

The reaction of many people is to shrug their shoulders, before moving to other topics. While weather extremes have been battering the county. One would think the immediacy of damage to one’s property would make it personal – from the flooding of Manhattan due to Superstorm Sandy, rising sea levels for Virginians with homes on the coast, high tide surges swamping streets in Miami Beach, extensive drought in western states to a stuck polar vortex over the center of the country this winter causing so much harsh weather. Doesn’t anyone notice and ask why is this happening?

Part of the difficulty with the data regarding climate change lies in confusing weather and long-term climate patterns. And in misunderstandings about how science works. There are few facts in science. But that not mean that we continue to learn things about the Earth and  its inhabitants. Good science does not begin with theories. It begins with collection of data, analysis of the data, and then looking for patterns that lead to hypothesis. Only the accumulation of data moves us from isolated phenomena to hypotheses and sometimes to theory.

We know the Earth is round, not flat, as earlier people believed and as later astronomers concluded from accumulated viewing the skies with ever-sophisticated telescopes. No danger of falling or sailing off the edge! Beautiful photos of Earth from space have given us precious images of this breath-taking blue marble seeming to float in the void.

We understand that gravity (or some such force) causes things to fall downward, not upward. Drop something and take note when it lands on your foot. Likewise, we have learned how photosynthesis is the powerhouse behind green growing things. It feeds us, gives us gardens for our pleasure (and a continuous crop of weeds to be removed), and forests covering huge areas.

Just as careful research on the conception of human life has taken us beyond earlier beliefs of how life is created.  Babies result from sperm penetrating an egg, not from some mysterious process. Nor as my mother-in-law said, babies come off the sheets.

Yes, climate change is not a fact – such as the roundness of the Earth, the obvious action of gravity, occurrence of green plants, or understanding where babies come from. But the data supporting the reality of climate change is overwhelming.

Hence, the question: why is climate change in this country the elephant in the living room. From my own experience, I know that it is not possible to ignore an elephant’s presence on the dirt road in front of you! Nor is an elephant likely to remain peacefully in anyone’s living room.

Is avoidance of climate change a consequence of the enormity of the problem? An elephant on the road  - who thinks it is her road – requires putting your camera down and backing up quickly. Are the effects of climate change so great that it is hard to get one’s head around the idea or a sense of not having any options? Do many people feel an overwhelming sense of helplessness and hope that humming a little tune is the best they can do, like Winnie the Pooh,?

Or is it that people observe short-sighted big businesses being in control and feel they have no voice in these company strategies and their generation of products for profits? Is people’s frustration and anger at their government’s paralysis so great that some of them join the Tea Party, which demands big government get out of people’s lives and turn control over to local and state government – a Tea Party ironically funded money-wise by the same corporations that preach climate change denial.

Is it the belief that what one individual can do is not enough to matter –even as those same people become better at recycling?  Or are some people so short-sighted that they figure they will “be long gone” before any predicted dire effects are manifest?

No facts here – just questions as to why the general public is not been galvanized to address human causes of the destruction of life as we know it.

Tornadoes and their paths of destruction are visual images for both those who experience a tornado and those of us who view the results either personally or through news media. However, most people have never encountered an elephant in the wild. They think that humans are smarter (or more powerful) than animals and they don’t recognize elephants have their own ideas about territories. - until the massive animal comes charging toward them. 

An elephant heading straight at you indeed is a sight to behold!

The Elephant in the Living Room: What Ever Have We Done (Part I)

Life is only a flicker of melted ice.

                                             ― Dejan Stojanovic 

                              from The Sun Watches the Sun

I think the worse thing you can do about a situation

is nothing.

                             ― Ice Cube

Two years ago, climate change became a reality for me. After spending time in Vladivostok, Siberia in late April, we headed north by ship to the Amchitka Peninsula. I was eager to see its fabled wild beauty.

It was not long before we began to encounter floating sheets of ice.

The ice began nudging the ship’s sides. The ship slowed, finally crawling along at approximately one knot. Passengers ran to their rooms for cameras, iPads, and cell phones. They lined the outside decks, eager to see this unexpected sight. Until as far as the eye could see, we became surrounded by floating ice.

We were out of range of GPS in this remote area, which meant the captain had to sail as sailors have for centuries. Lacking satellite images, he navigated from his experience, his eyes, and compass readings – and had no way to gauge how far the ice stretched ahead of us.

The ice floes began piling up on top of each other. I will never forget the sight of incredible beauty of the masses of ice - and the sounds of ice scraping and pressing against the ship. After hours of trying to find a way through the ice floes, the captain, out of fear for the ship’s safety, made the difficult decision to return to Japan - and seek an alternative route across the northern Pacific Ocean.

Later, we learned this ice pack had been pushed southward by fifty-mile-an-hour winds after the melting pieces broke off from the frozen sea of the high Arctic. Despite its beauty and the thrill of an unexpected adventure, it was also a dire warning. Some of the ice floes carried doomed seals, who lived only in the very far north. Their likely demise was a metaphor of the possible plight of humans cast into a bewildering and altered world.

Creative thinking has taken us to places beyond our imagination. We would still be writing letters in longhand (or scratching out messages on rock walls) and be tethered to the wall by land-line phones. No airplanes to take us from North American to Japan and beyond. Ships would not be guided by a host of technological devices and we still would be sailing the seas by the seat of our pants.

We need a massive transformation in thinking about climate change – which begins with elephants in the living room. Creative thinking can re-imagine how we produce energy, grow food, and travel from place to place in ways that counter the warming of the seas.

After all, as Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says in its 2014 Fifth Assessment Report: Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change.

Not even the heads of current energy-producing companies.

It's All About Profit

A business absolutely devoted to service will have 
only one worry about profits. 

They will be embarrassingly large.

~  Henry Ford

The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall;

The desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall;

but in charity there is no excess;

neither can angel or man come in danger by it.

~  Francis Bacon

By giving people the power to share, 

we're making the world more transparent.

~  Mark Zuckerberg

Writing is an extreme privilege but it also is a gift.

It is a gift to yourself and

it's a gift of giving a story to someone.

~  Amy Tan

Being an artist is dragging your innermost feelings out,

giving a piece of yourself 

no matter in which art form, in which medium.

~  Henry Rollins

Your voice is the wildest thing you own . . .

~  Terry Tempest Williams

Two articles in the morning paper the last cople weeks caught my eye. And I have been grumbling and mumbling to myself ever since.

The first was about burning of “excess” natural gas in the northwestern North Dakota oil fields. Sometimes the flames cause surrounding grasslands to catch fire. Excess? I suppose oil companies deem it not profitable to capture this fossil fuel, while adding even more pollution to the atmosphere.

The second article struck more closely to home. It was about a woman, whose work as an artist, was declared a hobby for purposes of income tax. When you are paid a wage, the amount is reported on those W-2 forms that are submitted when you file your federal and state yearly income taxes. But when you sell a product of some kind to someone else, that amount is reported on Schedule C, where any expenses related to that product can be deducted to arrive at your net income. And a product can be anything from services that are provided to actual material objects.

The catch is that for tax purposes, there is a distinction between a business and a hobby. Sounds like a simple distinction. Right? The tax definition is that a business makes a profit and a hobby does not.

If you create a start-up company as an entrepreneur, it is likely it will take several years before you generate a profit. Hence, the IRS usually gives you three years of reporting more expenses than income - before it may scrutinize your filed taxes to determine if what you are doing is nothing more than a hobby. Tell that to people who often work long hours to make their company workable that it is a hobby and you likely will get back a heated response.

Hobbies are usually something we engage in for pleasure and enjoyment – and are done in our time available after work or when we retire. I have friends whose hobbies range from hunting and woodworking to quilting and knitting. My particular passions enriching my life include gardening and traveling.

Of course, you should not be able to deduct the expenses that are incurred in your hobbies. But what happens if you sell a quilt or a piece of furniture? And what happens when you sell more and more things that you create? And decide to turn your expertise gradually into a business? For example, some of the best guides in the wilderness are people who use the experience they acquired over years of pursuing their love of the out-of-doors.

Using the distinction as to whether this is the person’s primary income or part-time work gets murky very fast. Guides often work only during the summer months and work for someone else during long winters. Suggest to someone, who waits tables or works at a drive-in as their second or third job in order to make ends meet, that they are engaged in a hobby. Watch them bristle at your assumption.

I spent over three decades as a licensed psychologist in the “business” of providing therapy to people. I reported all the income I collected from individuals or insurance companies on Schedule C. And subtracted my expenses that range from costs of maintaining an office to required continuing education. During that time in my life, I never had heard of the business or hobby distinction. My work as a private practitioner was just as much my job than if I had worked at a clinic or social service agency.

Now I am a writer, a poet, and a photographer. And the tax issues quickly get very sticky. As Poet Laureate In the first sentence of his book, The Poetry Home Repair Manuel: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets, former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser says You'll never be able to make a living writing poetry. We'd better get this money business out of the way before we go any further. Yes, fiction writers sometimes make six-figure incomes. But nonfiction writers – and poets – usually rely on day-jobs to support themselves.

Read the biographies of writers. Often their life stories are about rising at 5 am to write before heading off  “to work.”  Or read the life stories of musicians. Bach had a paying job that required him to compose volumes of music we still treasure today. But many musicians of his time needed a patron to support them while they toiled away composing and performing. Today, classical musicians, whose day-jobs might be a position in a prestigious orchestra, supplement their income by teaching students – and because they want to pass on their love of music to others.

Artists often have day-jobs in order to pay the rent or buy groceries – or a spouse or partner with enough salaried income to support both of them. While they live out their passion to experiment and create art. Photographers also struggle with the demands of commercial work that dictates to them what they are to photograph while yearning to be able to use their camera in an art form. It is rare that a photographer can follow their inner vision and earn enough to support themselves and perhaps a family.

It’s all about profit. It is not the fault of the IRS, who makes this distinction between hobby and art. They just are trying to legitimately separate hobbyists from non-salaried business people. Rather it is a reflection of our culture, which focuses on the accumulation of wealth – the more the better. It’s all about profit.

I doubt that the primary motivation of creative people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckenberg, all of whom started in their garages, was to get rich – as quickly as possible. Instead, they each were driven by curiosity and an inner drive to create something that never before had been imagined. Nor are the poets, writers, musicians, and artists I know driven by the desire to get rich.

Not only would the world be a poorer place if we reduced the “arts” to only hobbies. The world soon would grind to a halt without creative people, who follow a dream in far-ranging fields from the production of alternative sources of energy to technology to medicine and beyond.

When I closed my earlier “business” as a private practice psychologist (and I still have trouble with the concept of it being a business – thinking of it as making a profit off of people’s pain), I got a lot of patronizing comments from some people, who said that it was nice I had my little hobby of writing to keep me busy. Being a “nice person,” I never did figure out how to respond – that this profession of writing was something to which I felt called. Gardening and traveling, yes – such pleasure they give me.  

But I am motivated to write for far more than its pleasure. Having voice is a way I can give back to the world – and exercise a creative drive within me. Along with a great number of other people, my pleasure hashes become my day-job! 

Mystery of the Missing Airplane

                               Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth

                                 with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been,

                                       and there you will always long to return.

                                                   ~  Leonardo da Vinci  

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

                                                        ~  Henry David Thoreau

   

I read somewhere that flying is like throwing your soul

into the heavens and racing to catch it as it falls.

                                              ~  Linda Howard     

All journeys eventually end in the same place, home.

                                           ~ Chris Geiger

As I write this essay, the Malaysian airplane is still missing. It is as though some hand reached down and plucked it from the earth. Every day, like millions of other people around the world, I’ve followed the news of the search. How can a Boeing 777 simply disappear?

Seeing jet liners lowering or increasing their altitude near our international airport brings back memories of the first time I flew. I had recently finished grad school and had just gotten a good job. I never imagined my life could be so different from having been brought up to be a stay-at-home wife. Now I had a profession, a nice paycheck, and opportunities beyond my imagination - in addition to children and a loving husband. It was like having your cake and eating it too.

The job meant working one week every month in Denver or Montana during the academic year. It gave me the experience of flying off with colleagues and leaving my husband and children to fend for themselves.

I remember that first trip as though it was just yesterday. However, it wasn’t long before I lost the initial thrill. Flying became simply a means to travel large distances quickly.

I close my eyes and can feel the excitement of that first time. Entering the plane from the gate. Seeing seats stretched down its long fuselage. Finding my seat. Of course, I claimed a window seat – even though I wasn’t about to tell my colleagues that I’d never been in a plane before.

The plane waddled down the runway to position itself for takeoff. The pilot revved the engines and we lifted off. I felt my body pressed back into the seat. Watched the city become a child’s layout for model trains, a pretend miniature city with tiny cars moving down ribbons of freeways.

And then we were above the clouds. All I could see was their white fluff below me. Right there - my life changed forever in the miracle of this heavy jet plane that flew with the ease and grace of an eagle.

Before-planes, my travel had been limited to where we could drive our car. Now I was able to even escape the bounds of my country. Over the years, I flew to foreign destinations that only had been dream-places that I’d read about in books. Every time a plane delivered me, I learned new things about different geographies and different cultures. Like ever person who has flown, I have a memory-bank of experiences of flying. Like women who tell each other their stories of childbirth, people who fly on planes tell each other their flying stories.

My grandparents took buses and trains – and before them it was covered wagons heading west – or long weeks crossing the sea from the old country to a new one. My parents never traveled anywhere. I was determined my children would have a different set of stories to tell. And opportunities I never thought I could have.

Now all of us live in a rapidly changing world. One new unimaginable invention after another. Sometimes we so quickly become accustomed to changes that we forget what our lives were like before these advances. And perhaps assimilating changes so quickly that we can’t remember life without them is our way to not be overwhelmed by changes that come at us at a faster and faster pace.

This past month was the twenty-fifth birthday of the internet. Can any of us remember life before the internet? Or do we just sit down to a keyboard - or poke a few buttons, use a smart phone or iPad to instantly connect with the world beyond us?

Now texting is the latest thing (and Twitter and Skype and  . . .) and tomorrow it will be some new way to communicate. My grandchildren discretely tell me email is passé – while I still love my email. Without computers, my lovely car would not be able to leave its garage. I pay for dinner with a credit card, pay my bills online, and order books that are deposited on my front steps. And there is nothing worse than a computer that suddenly refuses to function properly.

I cannot imagine a world without airplanes. As much as I love being on the open seas in a ship, a plane connects the world for me as never before.

We grumble about too small seats in planes, TSA inspections, and all the other ways flying has changed since that day I walked down a ramp for my first plane trip. Remember the havoc this long winter over the thousands of cancelled flights due to weather conditions? Whole parts of the country literally shut down as planes were grounded. Flights people had taken for granted when they booked a trip somewhere.

Ought we be more resourceful and not so dependent on these “modern inventions” or on people in other countries? However, time only flows ahead – not backwards (except when we set our clocks back one hour every autumn). And we cross time zones when we fly somewhere – and days if we cross the international dateline – so quickly that often we don’t know what time it is and our bodies protest mightily.

The word global takes on new meanings everyday. Could we actually live without the Brits, the French, the Chinese, the Middle East, varied South American and African nations? And the Russians?

Why would we want to? Those sleek high-tech planes have shrunk our globe in ways the Wright brothers could never have thought possible.