I came across a kind of manifesto for the food revolution today, when an online search for information related to the topic led me to the Bioneers.org site.

It’s an excerpt from a plenary talk by Michael Pollan at the Bioneers 2006 Conference. The title is Beyond the Bar Code: The Local Food Revolution, and it makes sense of what has happened to our farm and food industry, and where we need to head with local food production in order to have a food secure, energy efficient, and healthy future for our country.

Skepticism rears its head frequently on the Internet, in ways we may not think about very much in our day to day lives off line, and with good reason. There’s a lot of unreliable or questionable information on the Internet. There are no editorial guidelines, no filtering process. Anyone can post anything they want. This is both good and bad. But there are also a lot of people on the Internet that say they’re skeptical when, I think, they don’t really understand what skepticism is, especially when it comes to metaphysics.

I’ve nurtured a lifelong interest in occult subjects like astrology and psychic phenomena, as well as the afterlife. I’ve read about various forms of religion and spirituality. Some might say I’m one of those “New Agers” and dismiss me as gullible.

While my interests lean in the same direction as the New Age community’s, I don’t use the label “New Age” for myself. First, because I tend to avoid labels. Second, because my interests were such long before I was aware of any identifiable New Age movement. In fact my parents first sparked my interest in metaphysics when I was a child in the sixties — and no, they weren’t hippies, or even close. Third, the New Age community is sometimes, in my opinion, too accepting and non judging, and has gained its reputation for being flaky in ratio to the number of such people it appears to take under its wings. I don’t mean by that to bash New Agers, not at all. There are many people in the New Age community that I consider my friends, favorite authors and artists, or simply people I like and admire for their tolerance and loving nature or remarkable insights. But I think more questioning is called for.

I’m happy to have no religion, and no particular label for my spirituality. I’ve been happy with that for many years. I’m a seeker, but I’m not looking for a religion. I choose to seek everywhere, not just in one grouping of writings or beliefs. And while I am seeking, I’m also always finding, so I don’t feel lost at all.

My metaphysical and spiritual leanings, even if kept entirely to myself and not shared within a religious or spiritual community, have continued to remain strong, introducing me to various religious writings, encouraging my interest in astrology, Tarot, intuition, meditation, and the afterlife. I attended lectures at the local astrological society for months, years ago. I read books on religious, mythological, spiritual, and metaphysical subjects, including several by Alice Bailey, the Bible, and a portion of the Nag Hammadi Library. I’ve studied the Tarot, both as an aid to plumbing my own psychological and spiritual depths and as a personal oracle of sorts, for nearly 20 years. I’ve kept a dream journal and that led me to discover that, just as Edgar Cayce said of everyone’s dreams, some of my dreams are precognitive. I suspect everyone is at least a little psychic.

Other dreams simply give me deeper insight into my own psyche and how I’m responding at every level to changes around me and in my life. Soon after retiring from my former career, as a technical writer-editor, and later a technical manuals distribution manager, I had a dream one night in which I always wore beige pants, and I had to crawl through a narrow transom to get where I needed to go each day. I was tired of doing that, in the dream, and on my last day I felt great relief. As I crawled through for the last time, my beige pants split at the seam to reveal that I wore paisley tights underneath.

I think of that dream as my unconscious letting go of a my old technical, cut and dried line of work and my feeling of needing to fit in there. I think that dream initiated me into my new creative path, with the freedom to pursue my more Bohemian interests without any risk of being seen by coworkers or superiors as a “kooky New Ager”. Not that they would’ve been so judgmental, but I’d always been shy of sharing my interests in metaphysics with people in that technical world. I’ve been shy in general about sharing these interests with many people at all, not just there. Nowadays, when I reveal some of my interests that I’ve kept to myself for so long, I sometimes joke to myself that my paisley tights are showing.

I believe in intuition, not as a distinct, reliable source of data, but as a whisper full of potential and possibility, because I’ve experienced it. Is that dangerous? If I believe, based on my intuition, that something is worth looking into or reading about, what is the harm in doing so? If synchronous events seem to lead me in a particular line of study, why not follow for a while?

I don’t rely solely on intuition to tell me whether it’s safe to cross the street. That would be foolish and dangerous. I rely on my sight, hearing, and on the traffic signal if there is one. But if those things all tell me it’s safe to cross and my intuition still says it isn’t, I pause and make sure. When I’m driving, if my intuition nudges me to pay attention to a particular car, and it’s safe to do so, I fall back and keep an eye on it from a safe distance. My intuition has alerted me to dangers I needed to avoid enough times that it’s a part of my safe driver’s tool bag. I’ve had unexplainable things happen that I think saved my life, things that I can’t explain other than through some combination of intuition and, possibly, cosmic intervention — a guardian angel perhaps? Who knows. Such incidents don’t seem likely to be mere coincidences or accidents. For instance, a fleeting dust devil that my mother spotted at the side of the road once saved me from certain injury in a fire. A little voice, not physical and not mental, sometimes whispers a warning, and if I don’t heed it in my rush to get something done, invariably things go wrong and I wind up kicking myself for not listening. Listening to whom? I’m not sure. A Christian might call it the Holy Spirit. Another might call it an Angel or Spirit Guide, or the Higher Self. Perhaps it’s simply an extended sense that science isn’t yet aware of, something like what is accessed in remote viewing.

I believe there are aspects to life and reality that science can’t yet explain, but which are very likely real nonetheless.

I’m still skeptical.

How, you say? How can I call myself skeptical if I fall for that sort of thing — Tarot, astrology, and psychic phenomena?

That depends on what you understand skepticism to be.

What is skepticism? It’s not disbelief. It’s not belief. It’s not bashing every new idea that presents itself, as unproven, unfounded, or as a hoax, just because some accepted authority says so, such as the school system, the media, a leading business, a church leader, an academic, a government official, or a scientist. It’s not rejecting an idea because it doesn’t fit with one’s entrenched worldview. It’s not telling people they’re fools or gullible because their beliefs differ from one’s own. It’s not making up one’s mind about something before one has bothered to consider at least some of the evidence for and against, or considered that although the notion may not be in one’s own experience, it could very well still be true.

To put it in my own simplistic terms, I see skepticism as reserving judgment until all the facts are in. It’s acknowledging that with some ideas the facts are never all in. Skepticism is saying, “I don’t know,” and not committing oneself until one knows. It’s the ability to accept that one may never know the answers, that not all questions require a definite answer. In fact, some of the most worthwhile questions don’t have answers, at least in this lifetime.

For me skepticism means that I believe what I know to be true, as the Buddha and by some gnostic accounts the Christ taught. It means I know something is real, or true, either because there’s solid scientific evidence that’s known to me, or because I’ve experienced it for myself and have good reason to know it wasn’t just my imagination. I also merely believe some things without knowing, because they make sense to me, intellectually or emotionally or both, or which I hope are true, such as experiences relayed to me by people I trust. I allow myself to believe some things for now, with full knowledge and comfort that I may not believe them the same way later in life. I believe that my beliefs should change as I learn and grow, not stay stuck in one configuration for life.

While pondering my own take on skepticism and beliefs recently, I came across a collection of articles on the subject at a site called The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

I haven’t read them in their entirety yet. They’re actually rather plodding and academic for my taste; but if, like me, you’re interested in how skepticism differs from belief or disbelief, from cognitive dissonance or outright rejection of new ideas, these articles may interest you as well:

Ethics and Self-Deception

Contemporary Skepticism

Ancient Greek Skepticism

In an interview at Alternet titled Michael Pollan Debunks Food Myths, author Michael Pollan discusses his new book, In Defense of Food. He talks about why news of the latest scientific nutritional studies is probably not the best source for nutrition information, and how the best eating advice given to Americans in the past five decades is probably the simplest — that fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains are good for us. According to him, we’re likely best off getting back to basics.

Pollan says:

“I’m not a Luddite; I’m not anti-science. I’m fascinated by nutritional science. But I’ve also acquired a healthy skepticism about how much and how little they know. It has only been around for about 175 years. Its history is of one overlooked nutrient after another. As I see it, nutrition science is kind of where surgery was in the year 1650, which is to say very interesting and promising, but do you really want to get on the table yet?” (read article)

Further on, Pollan mentions how the “imitation rule” was eliminated by the FDA, without going through Congress, and how what we eat has in some sense become a political statement. According to Pollan, cooking our own food from scratch may now be a subversive act:

“It’s funny to think of something as domestic as cooking and gardening as subversive, but it is. It is the beginning of taking back control from a system that would much rather do everything for you.” (read article)

A simulation called Step By Step Into A Black Hole depicts a theoretical descent into a black hole and the subsequent view of the outer universe from inside the black hole. In the first pictures we see the black hole as a bubble of darkness (scroll down) in an otherwise starlit universe. From inside, we see mostly darkness with a bubble of starlight. The two opposing views remind me of the Yin-Yang or Tai-Chi symbol, with its two sides of light and darkness, contrasted by bubbles of their opposites contained within each half (in the eye of the fish). This led me to question — and research a little more — the origins of the symbol.

I’ve always thought of Yin-Yang as a purely philosophical or even spiritual concept, one of integration, interdependence, and balance. I never thought of it having any connection to our physical universe as conceived by scientists. But according to two sites I came across today, here and here, it may originate from prehistoric observations of the Big Dipper — or the Plough, as the constellation is known in China — as it changes apparent position in the night sky through the course of a year.

If true that the symbol originated from celestial observations, then its origin is the same, an observation of the changing seasons, that we find in the western, European pagan precursors to the Neopagan Wheel of the Year, only instead of the seasonal changes observed in daylight hours or the points on the horizon where the sun or moon rises, it measures the concurrent changes in the predominant feature (in the Northern Hemisphere, at least) of the night sky. Please note that what I refer to as the Wheel of the Year, as we know it today, is a fairly recent invention used in Wicca and Neopaganism, but is based for the most part on ancient European celebrations of the seasons, including the solstices and equinoxes — which no doubt hold some connection to ancient astronomical markers such as Stonehenge and Newgrange. There are also possibly similarities in the origins and symbolism of the Native American Medicine Wheels, which would take another in-depth post to explore, though this appears to be a good resource to start with.

I only found two sites that mention the possible origin of the Yin-Yang symbol with the Big Dipper’s path, though other sites certainly hint at the possibility, and according to one Chinese Mathematical Astrology site, “The most important constellation in the heavens to the Daoist is the Plough (or Dipper).” The eight trigrams of the I-Ching Ba Gua, with their broken and unbroken lines could be perceived as gradations of light and darkness pertaining to the seasons of the year, and might be seen to correspond with the eight quarters and cross-quarters of the Wheel of the Year. They are often depicted or written of as corresponding to the elements, the four directions, or the seasons. Most sites I found have more to say about the meaning of the Yin-Yang symbol than its origin, but nearly all say it’s based on “precise observation.” Most also associate its meanings with the sun and moon as well as to the seasons. I’ve included more links below.

Where does the Yin Yang Symbol come from? (also linked above)

The Sacred Wheel of the Year as revealed through the I Ching (also linked above)

Ancient Chinese Astronomy

The tai-chi mandala: Taiji or Yin-Yang symbol

Tai Chi Symbol, Yin-Yang Emblem, Taiji Tun by Michael P. Garofalo

Tai Chi & Taoism (lists movements of the Tai Chi form that take their names from the Big Dipper or its seven stars)

Taoist Nine Star Astrology (also linked above)

the origins of Yingyang and the symbol deconstructed

Tai Chi Symbol (Gin Soon Tai Chi Chuan Federation site)

Chinese Philosophy: Yin and Yang

I-Ching (Wikipedia article)

And if you’re ready to jump traditions and do even more exploring, check out this page of a much larger resource site:

ABORIGINAL STAR KNOWLEDGE: Native American Astronomy (also linked above)

Main site: NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN RESOURCES

Certainly the symbol is more likely to have originated from a simple observation of the heavens, without the aid of a telescope, than from anyone way back when conceptualizing a black hole. But I still like my observation that a theoretical journey into a black hole resembles this ancient symbol in some regards. The universe seems to repeat its basic patterns, and the spirals of galaxies we observe at great distance with sophisticated technology find their counterparts depicted on stone walls our ancestors decorated eons ago. Even though our cultures and philosophies took many different turns through the course of time, prehistoric humans everywhere started out with similar reverence for the natural world, and based our traditions on observations of the world and heavens around us.

Happy New Year!

The local birds seem to think our yard is a good place to visit while the last bits of fire and smoke die down, and they’ve come through in flocks as well as individually. At one moment this morning they seemed to be throwing a bird party in our side yard. I stepped outside and saw four or five hummingbirds, a flock of common bushtits (which don’t normally show themselves in the open), a sparrow, something else I couldn’t identify hopping around in the bougainvillea, and a mockingbird displaying the white of its wings and singing its heart out. All this in the space of a minute while I just watched, mesmerized by their activity. We normally don’t get so many at once, though we feed hummingbirds and scrub jays regularly. I suppose some may have been displaced by the fires.

There’s still a lot of smoke in the air, but it’s great to be home. I keep wanting to post some of my thoughts and even a little critique regarding the evacuations and information channels, but it feels so good just to be home after being away for four days last week, and I’m thrilled with how much was saved. I don’t want to seem in any way critical of the people responsible for that. Suffice to say, if you’re a local government official, the more information you can feed evacuees (in as many languages as needed please, for everyone’s safety), and the faster you can get them home after the danger is past, the more willing people will be to evacuate in the future. It may seem that some people are hard cases about evacuating, but I think most who seem that way have their reasons. We have a natural homing instinct that makes it very difficult, particularly added to the stress of a disaster, to be away from one’s home, to feel that one can possibly know enough about what’s happening there. One wants to do something, and it’s difficult to relinquish control.

My husband, dog, and I were blessed to be able to stay with loving family members who put up with our stressed-out state of mind, and we were blessed again to come home and find our house still standing, in fact our entire neighborhood and downtown area untouched except by smoke. There’d been no looting — not that anyone would want my old things anyway — and the power hadn’t even gone out, so our minor fear that we’d have to restock our freezer turned out to be unfounded. Today the smoke still lingers, and the dry weather and heat keep everyone on alert, in the knowledge the fires are contained but not necessarily out. We’re cautious yet immensely grateful.

Many thanks to all our firefighters, and to all the visiting firefighters, including those from out of state and Canada, who came through to help save lives and homes, as well as to all the other officials and support people who worked so hard to ensure things went smoothly here in San Diego County.

This quote found at Perceval Press —

“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.” -Rainer Maria Rilke

— seems to blend perfectly with the current topic at Michael Prescott’s Blog, even though I wouldn’t ordinarily combine references to the two sites — and even that helps illustrate my point. Michael’s post titled, Art, this one’s for you!, explores the notion that we’re here to experience separation, and is the third or fourth place that I’ve seen Michael Talbot’s and Jane Robert’s writings mentioned in the past couple of weeks, which has led me to finally add them to my future reading list.

My question is, could it be that we’re here to learn how to love while in a separated state? The entire topic can bend one’s preconceived notions of reality. Beyond science and beyond the physical, what are we really? Is there something even beyond spirit? Why are we here?

Is unconditional love only love of the whole and an ability to find empathy in our hearts for one another? Or is it also the ability to love and appreciate one another in spite of our separateness — perhaps even because of it?

This isn’t a new concept. Perhaps I’m just seeing it differently today, from the perspective of all the divisions, conflicts, and pressures humanity is experiencing. If we can learn to love each other now, then we’re incredibly, miraculously, and perhaps infinitely capable of love.

P.S. Art, the commenter to whom Michael’s post is dedicated, added this URL to the discussion, which presents an intriguing story:

Riding the Dragon: An Unexpected Encounter

In a completely new take on foreseeing the future, scientists are using a “new technique to track changes in the extent of Arctic sea ice over the past 1,000 years.” Find the BBC News story here: Arctic muds reveal sea ice record. Scientists hope the information obtained will help reveal to what extent global warming is manmade.

“The indications are that the natural cycles of change over the past have been very rapid - but the likelihood is that we’re now seeing the effects of manmade warming on top of that.” (read article)

A report from Edward Mazria, an architect who turned to spreading information about global warming and the contribution to it by the building industry, has produced a set of images showing what he predicts some large coastal cities in the US will look like in 2030, with rising water levels due to global warming. His work is featured in an ABC news report, What Global Warming Looks Like.

Meanwhile, arctic ice melt has opened a Northwest Passage.

Thanks to The Daily Grail for the links.

This has been a good summer for butterflies in my little corner of the world. I’ve seen a lot more variety this year than in past years, and yesterday I sighted a Western Tiger Swallowtail in a pepper tree in the yard behind ours. It surprised me, and at first glance I thought I was seeing an oriole making like a butterfly, it was so large. I haven’t seen many swallowtails since I was a kid, and then I usually saw darker, smaller ones, maybe the Anise Swallowtail, which looks more familiar to me. I think the most common butterfly of my childhood was the Mourning Cloak, but I rarely see those now.

While I mulled over various blog topics, including the essay I planned on honeybees, my husband sent me a link to an environmental article about pollinators and the recent scares regarding disappearing bees, Are the Bees Dying off Because They’re Too Busy? The article offers a slightly different answer to the puzzle than that of GM crops, but one every bit as indicative of our artificial modern food production methods. It surmises that bee colony exhaustion, due to overuse as pollinators on factory farms, is the cause of disappearing bees. Small beekeepers who let their bees live a more natural life cycle don’t seem to have the same problems as commercial beekeepers who lease hives to one large monoculture farm after another, almost year round.

That made a nice segue into another topic I’ve planned to write about, the importance of family stories. A few weeks ago I came across a brief memoir my mom wrote of her childhood in San Diego during the Depression. When food luxuries were tough for my grandmother to come by, she would sometimes visit her father’s ranch in Potrero, just this side of the border from Tecate. She’d bring home fresh eggs and honey, and presumably milk and butter, since he also kept dairy cows. The trip took a vehicle and gasoline that were often scarce, so there were times that those trips didn’t happen as often as she would’ve liked.

The honey came from my great-grandfather’s bees. My mom recorded no details of the process, but mentioned watching her grandfather extract honey from his hives. My grandmother wrote that at one time he had “90 stands of honey bees” in his apiary. No doubt the bees kept his orchard and garden well pollinated, as well as those of his neighbors. My great-grandfather was from the Danish island of Læsø, famous for its Northern brown bees, among other things. I don’t know whether he learned about beekeeping as a boy. I know he used to herd geese, and he left home at fourteen to sail the seas for ten years, made three trips around Cape Horn, and once almost got stranded in Antwerp. I also remember Grandma telling how he’d hitch a team to a wagon and make the trip from Potrero down to the shore in San Diego, two days there, and two days back. He’d load up with kelp to use as mulch in his garden after washing the salt out. I wouldn’t be surprised if he learned that use of kelp back on his island home.

What should’ve remained a pleasant excursion into my family’s past is blighted by recent news. The tiny community of Potrero, with its valley’s quiet agricultural history (Potrero is Spanish for “pasturing place”) was once home to Kumeyaay tribes, who subsisted on acorns and game from its oak woods, and carved metates into the nearby granite hills to grind meal. Potrero’s pastoral peace remained intact even when Pancho Villa’s rebellion took place just across the border. But the valley’s serenity may be about to change.

Blackwater USA wants to build an 824 acre training facility in Potrero, called Blackwater West. People in the community, the county, and the entire state who know of this plan are horrified.

There’s already fierce debate in Illinois regarding Blackwater North, an 80-acre facility there, as well as troubling reports of its response to wrongful death suits by families of its employees who fell in Iraq.

One has to wonder what the impact would be of such a facility, near environmentally fragile oak tree stands already threatened by Sudden Oak Death, and to the golden eagles that nest there. What about the fire hazards and the noise? The quiet little communities and single outlying residences near Potrero are some of the last true countryside settings left in San Diego County. Will they soon be shaken by the sound of weapons fire and helicopters resonating off nearby granite boulders?

Blackwater in Potrero is a bad idea.

I found a couple of videos about Blackwater at YouTube (warning, these are disturbing):

Blackwater, America’s Private Army

Blackwater: Shadow Army

Here’s another video, Blackwater Invades Illinois, with Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

I’ve never found a way to enjoy the taste of soy, and goodness knows I’ve tried. I’ve only been able to bring myself to eat it in the relatively tasteless form of tofu, or as soy sauce, which I like. I’ve always wondered if soy is really as good for me as I’ve been led to believe, or if there’s something else my body is trying to tell me. In any case, the taste just doesn’t do it for me.

Here’s an interesting article on the possible health risks of eating a lot of soy:

The Dark Side of Soy

Just some thoughts I’ve had while in the middle of reading a book titled, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality. It was written by Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Fourteeenth Dalai Lama, recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize and religious and temporal leader of the Tibetan people. It’s not the first book of his that I’ve read, but it may be the most difficult.

In this book the Dalai Lama explores parallels (and differences) between science and his religion, Buddhism. I particularly like how this religious leader is willing to adjust his beliefs according to what science has proven, rather than trying to twist science to fit his beliefs. At the same time he recognizes that science can’t tell us everything, and that one’s personal experience, observation, and intelligence are valid to take into account when determining what to believe. This book is deep, abstract, conceptual, and difficult reading for me because I have trouble wrapping my mind around concepts like relativity and superstring theory. Give me good old gravity. That I understand. Sort of.

It’s good reading, though, and especially good for me, in my non-scientific but more creative and spiritual nature. It gives me more of a handle on what science and belief have in common, as well as that overlapping territory in between and beyond, which we’re sometimes reluctant to face if we let our minds get too set in one pattern of thinking. I refer to the unknown, and our ability or inability to find peace with the fact that so much is still unknown. As knowledge changes, we must in all honesty be willing to take on the new known, adjust the old known, and change our view of possibility, just the way we change clothes with the seasons. It does no more good to believe faithfully in something disproved than to believe that because my coat kept me safe and warm in winter it’s a good idea to wear it on the hottest day of the year. This book is also careful to point out that just because something isn’t proven, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Disproof and lack of proof are two different things.

I’m also reminded by the implications of this book, of a documentary about Alaskan fisheries that was part of the Nature series on PBS. The closure of pollock fisheries several years ago was intended to protect the environment. Later, scientists came to realize that the herring declined even more rapidly once pollock was protected. Herring was found to be a more important source of critical nutrients for marine life than was previously known — a better source than pollock, which constituted a veritable junk food in comparison. Endangered Steller sea lions were forced to fall back even more on pollock once it began to repopulate, while still hungering for their necessary herring.

Even well intentioned science can be a kind of religion, where people (not scientists perhaps, but people) hold too fast to discoveries and continue to defend them, when a wider-angle view is needed, or it’s time to move forward because more is known. When we combine with that the intransigence of government that causes regulations to lag behind each new discovery, we can see that clinging to any beliefs, scientific or religious, can have disastrous effects. One must wonder, for instance, about future effects of genetically modified crops, and the fact that there may soon be only one company supplying most farmers in the world with their seed — much of that genetically modified. How many people’s quality of life could be salvaged by stem-cell research? By more research into natural alternatives to pharmaceutical drugs or surgery? If we can be wrong about sea lions, pollock, and herring, what else might science be wrong about, or simply not yet know? What might religion be wrong about that’s holding its followers, and possibly whole cultures and governments, back? Are bio-fuels better for the environment than fossil fuels, or do they harm the environment just as much in their production, and at the same time threaten world food supplies and distract us from finding or developing more viable energy solutions? What good is knowing how to do something if one doesn’t also know when or if it should be done?

I’ve rambled on. The main lesson I’ve gotten so far from this book is that no source of knowledge or wisdom is sacrosanct, that there are few known absolute truths, and that flexibility and a healthy skepticism are necessary in all areas of study. It’s important to believe that we can do better, that we can know more, that we can think for ourselves, that we can take better care of the planet and each other. It’s also important along the way to acknowledge our limits and exercise humility regarding what we don’t know. What we don’t know may be the biggest vacuum in the universe.

Another passion of mine besides poetry is clouds, and recently I discovered a web site dedicated solely to clouds. The Cloud Appreciation Society has published a book titled The Cloudspotter’s Guide, which I’ve added to my growing wish list, and while looking for their book at Amazon.com I came across Recognize, which if the cover photo is any indication should be breathtaking.

I don’t know all the scientific names of clouds, and I’m not a very skilled photographer. I can’t even apparently be bothered to find a better location to shoot from than straight through the power lines. But when armed with my digital camera and faced with a spectacular sky, sometimes I just start turning knobs and pushing buttons and get lucky. (One of these days I should read the instruction manual—that’s sure to improve my luck.)

This was a special sunset last January when the clouds became streamers of burnished gold:

The following cloud seemed to come to life and dominate the sky one afternoon last February like a great fluffy beast:

Closer up you can see how it reached a furred arm for the telephone pole:

I sometimes wish the telephone pole wasn’t there when I’m taking sunset photos, but then where would the crows sit to do their bobbing mating dance? Where would the mockingbird do whirly-gigs in the air, flashing the white bands of its wings? Where would the red-tailed hawk perch to survey the hillside while every other bird falls into breathless, waiting silence? The cloud didn’t snatch up the pole and run away with it after all, so at least the birds are happy.

This fiery sunset in November 2004 made me want to run for my watercolors, but using the camera was quicker:

While not a cloud picture, this was another stroke of luck, taken when our dog treed this little guy in the palm tree in our back yard. He patiently waited for me to snap a couple of shots, preferring the camera to the dog’s barking. He peered first from one side of the tree, then the other. Finally we went our peaceful ways, except the dog, who returned grudgingly indoors, thinking humans don’t know how to have fun. He grumbled for a while, but got over it.

There’s a quality of light just after a rain, when the sun first shines through gray and turns every green thing several shades brighter. The birds are subdued, but sound hopeful. The light sparkles in drops of water suspended on pine needles. It dims, then grows, in a pulsing kind of dance, from gray to green to gray again. Cars take on a different sound, driving a little faster, tires stirring up the water as it drains away.

It’s a liminal time, like dusk or dawn, or the beginning or end of the world. We stand inside the metamorphosis. Wet to dry, dry to wet. A moment suspended in time. Peace, for just a second, while the future resolves itself and prepares to unfold. More rain? Or not? Then a patch of blue appears.

You simply must go to Beyond the Fields We Know and look at
December’s Full Moon of Long Nights. Kerrdelune has worked magic. It’s even better there than in my real sky.

It’s amazing when you look more closely at your own back yard, how the place you consider ordinary can suddenly appear exotic and new. When we lived in a suburb of San Diego, my husband and I used to examine every insect, every bird, every weed we encountered in our yard. Once we saw what we thought was an earthworm, and on closer inspection it turned out to be a kind of salamander, with tiny legs and a face—all packaged up to seem to be an earthworm. What trick of adaptation caused it to take that form I’ll never know.

Seeing that reminded me to always look a little closer, to never assume I know any place, even my own back yard, as well as I could.

Ever heard of global dimming? Here are some links worth reading:

Contrails And The Dark Side

Dim Sun

Why the Sun seems to be ‘dimming’

Global Warming Could Mean Less Sunshine

One of the most interesting facts about solar dimming/global warming is that an important observation was made when all commercial flights over the US stopped during the days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That pause in flights allowed scientists an opportunity to observe what happened to weather patterns without the contrails from so many aircraft in the atmosphere. I first learned of global dimming in a documentary that aired on PBS’s Nova. Here’s their transcript:

Dimming the Sun

Another documentary aired on UK television last year:

Global Dimming

Here’s a new link to the haunting video Turtleheart Cove shared a couple weeks ago, of the Wild Horses of Newbury. I was told this is a newer link that will work when the other one doesn’t, but I couldn’t get it to work, so here’s the older one too: Wild Horses of Newbury.

The issue of whether it really was an ivory-billed woodpecker that was video-taped back in April 2005 has heated up, with some experts concluding that the bird in the video was a pileated woodpecker after all, and that the ivory-billed is indeed extinct. Still, some searchers say they’ve heard the distinctive knock of the ivory-billed, and Arkies aren’t discouraged. The search goes on. Scroll down, at this article, for some image comparisons.

In a world where artificial and chemically processed products are too often valued over natural, it’s important to celebrate the heroes of biodiversity and environmentally friendly farming and manufacturing.

One of my heroes of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is Sally Vreseis Fox, president of Natural Cotton Colours, Inc. Sally developed a naturally occurring colored cotton, once considered an annoying genetic throwback by modern American cotton farmers, into commercially useful, naturally colored and organically grown cotton fiber.
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