Gary Shteyngart

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/26/books/gary-shteyngart-our-country-friends.html

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/11/a-botched-circumcision-and-its-aftermath

Kill the leaf Blowers

 

Opinion

Guest Essay NYT

The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the Leaf Blowers

Oct. 25, 2021

By Margaret Renkl

Ms. Renkl is a contributing Opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South.

NASHVILLE — Into these perfect October afternoons, when light gleams on the red dogwood berries and the blue arrowwood berries and the purple beautyberries; on the last of the many-colored zinnias and the last of the yellow marigolds and the last of the white snakeroot flowers; on the shining hair of babies in strollers and the shining ponytails of young mothers and the tender, shining heads of old men walking dogs — into the midst of all this beauty, the kind of beauty that makes despair seem like only a figment of the midnight imagination, the monsters arrive.

They come in a deafening, surging swarm, blasting from lawn to lawn and filling the air with the stench of gasoline and death. I would call them mechanical locusts, descending upon every patch of gold in the neighborhood the way the grasshoppers of old would arrive, in numbers so great they darkened the sky, to lay bare a cornfield in minutes. But that comparison is unfair to locusts.

Grasshoppers belong here. Gasoline-powered leaf blowers are invaders, the most maddening of all the maddening, environment-destroying tools of the American lawn-care industry.

Nearly everything about how Americans “care” for their lawns is deadly. Pesticides prevent wildflower seeds from germinating and poison the insects that feed songbirds and other wildlife. Lawn mower blades, set too low, chop into bits the snakes and turtles and baby rabbits that can’t get away in time. Mulch, piled too deep, smothers ground-nesting bees, and often the very plants that mulch is supposed to protect, as well.

But the gasoline-powered leaf blower exists in a category of environmental hell all its own, spewing pollutants — carbon monoxide, smog-forming nitrous oxides, carcinogenic hydrocarbons — into the atmosphere at a literally breathtaking rate.

This particular environmental catastrophe is not news. A 2011 study by Edmunds found that a two-stroke gasoline-powered leaf blower spewed out more pollution than a 6,200-pound Ford F-150 SVT Raptor pickup truck. Jason Kavanagh, the engineering editor at Edmunds at the time, noted that “hydrocarbon emissions from a half-hour of yard work with the two-stroke leaf blower are about the same as a 3,900-mile drive from Texas to Alaska in a Raptor.”

The two-stroke engine found in most consumer gas-powered leaf blowers is an outmoded technology. Unlike larger, heavier engines, a two-stroke engine combines oil and gas in a single chamber, which gives the machine more power while remaining light enough to carry. That design also means that it is very loud, and that as much as a third of the fuel is spewed into the air as unburned aerosol.

How loud? “Some produce more than 100 decibels of low-frequency, wall-penetrating sound — or as much noise as a plane taking off — at levels that can cause tinnitus and hearing loss with long exposure,” Monica Cardoza wrote for Audubon Magazine this year.

In his Oct. 2 newsletter, the writer James Fallows summarized the emissions problem this way: “Using a two-stroke engine is like heating your house with an open pit fire in the living room — and chopping down your trees to keep it going, and trying to whoosh away the fetid black smoke before your children are poisoned by it.”

As Mr. Fallows’s last point suggests, what’s bad for the environment is bad for humans, too — most menacingly, of course, for the employees of landscape services, who are exposed to these dangers all day long.

The risks come not only from the noise and the chemical emissions that two-stroke engines produce, but also from the dust they stir up. “That dust can contain pollen, mold, animal feces, heavy metals and chemicals from herbicides and pesticides,” notes Sara Peach of Yale Climate Connections. All this adds up to increased risk of lung cancer, asthma, cardiovascular disease, premature birth and other life-threatening conditions.

This month, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed a new law making his the first state with plans to ban gas-powered lawn equipment along with other machines, like generators and pressure washers, that use gasoline-powered engines.

Only the Environmental Protection Agency can set emission standards. But California, owing to its unique climate and geography, which allow airborne pollutants to coalesce and linger, is the exception to this federal limitation. Other states can opt to follow California’s more stringent tailpipe emissions standards, as 12 states and the District of Columbia do. Thanks in part to those standards, the passenger vehicles on California’s roads and highways collectively produce less pollution than off-road machinery does. Think about that for a minute: Lawn-care equipment creates more pollution in California than cars do.

More than 100 cities across the country have already passed regulations to ban or restrict gas-powered leaf blowers. For people committed to their manicured lawns, the good news is that powerful electric and battery-operated leaf blowers now exist, and they are quieter and greener and healthier than gasoline-powered blowers. Their market share is also growing rapidly; electric equipment now represents roughly 44 percent of lawn-care machinery sales.

But the trouble with leaf blowers isn’t only their pollution-spewing health consequences. It’s also the damage they do to biodiversity. Fallen leaves provide protection for overwintering insects and the egg sacs of others. Leaf blowers, whether electric or gasoline-powered, dislodge the leaf litter that is so essential to insect life — the insect life that in turn is so essential to birds and other wildlife.

The ideal fertilizer and mulch can’t be found in your local garden center. They are available at no cost in the form of a tree’s own leaves. The best thing to do with fallen leaves is to mulch them with a lawn mower if your lawn consists of entirely of unvariegated turf grass (which it should not, given that turf grass requires immense amounts of water and poison to maintain). Our yard is a mixture of grasses and clovers and wildflowers, so we can safely let our leaves lie. If a high wind carries them away, it’s hard not to wail, “Wait! I was saving those!”

And the leaves that fall across every inch of this wild half acre of suburbia are so much prettier than any unnaturally green lawn beaten into submission by stench-spewing machinery. All those golden sugar maple leaves hold onto the light, and for weeks it looks as though our whole yard is on fire, even in the rain. Who could be troubled by a blanket made of light? A blanket keeping all the little creatures safe from the cold?

Margaret Renkl, a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of the books “Graceland, at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South” and “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss.”

Dr. Edith Ubuntu Chan + Charles Eisenstein

 a friend sent me this...

https://soundcloud.com/charleseisenstein/dr-e-ubuntu-chan-e-50

more https://soundcloud.com/charleseisenstein

Rainy Day Miracle Soup

 I am always thinking about my next meal. While walking ROMEO I thought about what to make with this weeks leftovers.  Rainy day soup.

 I had 3 cups of leftover potato+carrot stock from when I pressure cooked potatoes, then I added four wonky cooked apples and four cooked carrots. They cooled off and I buzzed them with the stock in the blender. Then I added leftover mushroom stuffing (toasted pignoli nuts, fresh parsley, garlic, cream cheese + sausage) and stirred it up. It's out of this world. Oh, and a dash of chipotle sauce.

Poems

listen to the poet reading...

https://poetryarchive.org/poet/brendan-kennelly/

Brendan Kennelly’s Favourite Poetry Sayings:

“I dabbled in words and I found they were my life. ”

 – Patrick Kavanagh

“He does not write at all whose poems no-one reads.” 

– Martial

 “The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.” 

– Jean Cocteau

“Poetry is the ultimate democracy.”

 – Brendan Kennelly

“I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.”

 – A. E. Housman

Mozart Moment

This morning Mozart was on the radio when all of a sudden rap music cut in. 

Bill said, "He added that part later!" 

I laughed so hard I cried.

Fuzzy Fans

While my tea was warming I hosed off two of the fuzz covered fans using the extension hose in the bathtub. I look forward to this shortcut every year and watch the dust blow out and wash down the drain. We must wait three days to let them thoroughly dry out before they can be safely plugged in again.

John Berryman

You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that's always easiest.

John Berryman

From an Elder of the Cherokee nation:

Your medicine that you carry is your life, and your life is represented by all those things that you have said, that have been given to you and that you have given to others. It is all that you are and all you have done. Your medicine that you carry is all the things that you bundled together. These things you hold sacred in the world this is your gift to the world.

Medicine of the Cherokee: The Way of Right Relationship  by J. T. Garrett, Michael Tlanusta Garrett

May I ask what that's for?

 Great dialogue in Charlie Varrick:- 

 Varrick has just bought dynamite and detonators from a store. 

Clerk: May I ask what that's for?

          Varrick: You certainly may. 

 [walks out]

Brendan Kennelly

The Reason 

You ask me why I like the country air. I never meet you there. 

Brendan Kennelly

The Asthma-Migraine Connection

News

People who experience occasional migraine headaches may be at greater risk of developing chronic migraine headaches if they also have asthma, according to a study published online in November in the journal Headache, a publication of the American Headache Society.

“Migraine and asthma are disorders that involve inflammation and the activation of smooth muscle, either in blood vessels or in the airways,” says Richard Lipton, MD, director of the Montefiore Headache Center and the Edwin S. Lowe Chair in Neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York City. “Therefore, asthma-related inflammation may lead to migraine progression.”

The study, led by Vincent Martin, MD, co-director of the Headache and Facial Pain Program at the University of Cincinnati Neuroscience Institute, involved 4,500 individuals. Researchers found that those diagnosed with asthma were more than twice as likely to progress to chronic migraine compared to those without asthma.

Further, the risk of worsening migraine increases with the severity of asthma symptoms, Dr. Lipton says.

Migraine headaches are chronic when they occur in an individual 15 or more days per month. About 12 percent of the U.S. population experiences migraine headaches, according to the American Migraine Prevalence and Prevention Study (AMPP), which was directed by Dr. Lipton. Migraines are three times more common among women than men.

According to Dr. Lipton, people with asthma who experience migraine headaches should do the following:

• Manage each condition by learning to identify and avoid triggers for asthma flares and migraine headaches. “Migraine is often triggered by hormonal changes, stress, not enough sleep and a range of dietary factors,” he says.

• Talk with your doctor about preventive medications that can reduce the frequency of migraine headaches, especially if they increase to more than three or four per month. Review all prescription and over-the-counter medications, as well as vitamins and supplements, with your healthcare team, as some might conflict. For instance, people with asthma should avoid certain migraine medications, including beta blockers (such as propranolol), which can impact lung function.

https://allergyasthmanetwork.org/news/the-asthma-migraine-connection/

Exquisite Corpse

  A twittering of poets

 read...

http://www.corpse.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=361&Itemid=1#char

American Haiku by Jack Kerouac

The taste
of rain
– Why kneel?

***

The bottom of my shoes
are clean
from walking in the rain.

***

Snap your finger
stop the world –
rain falls harder.

***

After the shower
among the drenched roses
the bird thrashing in the bath.

***

Early morning gentle rain,
two big bumblebees
Humming at their work

***

Birds singing
in the dark
—Rainy dawn.

***

The rain has filled
the birdbath
Again, almost

***

Useless, useless,
the heavy rain
Driving into the sea.

***

The little worm
lowers itself from the roof
By a self shat thread

***

Nightfall,
boy smashing dandelions
with a stick.

***

frozen
in the birdbath
A leaf

***

In my medicine cabinet
the winter fly
has died of old age

***

Missing a kick
at the icebox door
It closed anyway.

https://briefpoems.wordpress.com/2017/05/29/the-taste-of-rain-american-haiku-by-jack-kerouac/

Jack Kerouac

"The American Haiku is not exactly the Japanese
Haiku. The Japanese Haiku is strictly disciplined
to seventeen syllables but since the language
structure is different I don't think American
Haikus (short three-line poems intended to be
completely packed with Void of Whole) should worry
about syllables because American speech is
something again...bursting to pop.

Above all, a Haiku must be very simple and free
of all poetic trickery and make a little picture
and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi
Pastorella."

Jack Kerouac



Early morning yellow flowers,
thinking about
the drunkards of Mexico.

No telegram today
only more leaves
fell.

Nightfall,
boy smashing dandelions
with a stick.

Holding up my
purring cat to the moon
I sighed.

Drunk as a hoot owl,
writing letters
by thunderstorm.

Empty baseball field
a robin
hops along the bench.

All day long
wearing a hat
that wasn't on my head.

Crossing the football field
coming home from work -
the lonely businessman.

After the shower
among the drenched roses
the bird thrashing in the bath.

Snap your finger
stop the world -
rain falls harder.

Nightfall,
too dark to read the page
too cold.

Following each other
my cats stop
when it thunders.

Wash hung out
by moonlight
Friday night in May.

The bottoms of my shoes
are clean
from walking in the rain.

Glow worm
sleeping on this flower -
your light's on.

(source)

Selima Hill

Paper Napkins

 Those nasty points, on such a perfect day. 

Selima Hill

Dave Troy

1/Disinformation is the operational end of a process designed to break down society and radicalize it into cultish forms. This process leads people away from truth. We can’t address this process by distributing truth; the cure for disinfo is not simply truth.

2/Instead, we need to counter the “lytic” process of breakdown with a different process that pulls people into common cause. That’s very hard to do but we know that just “distributing truth” won’t work. Truth is, rather, a goal we must arrive at.

3/This is why “Cambridge Analytica, but for truth” is so wrongheaded, and why the breakdown process is so diabolical. We can’t fix society any easier than we can un-stir coffee, or un-burn a fire. Fixing this requires different thinking than that which got us here.

4/Unfortunately, we will likely have to address the “breakdown” with a new, synthetic approach to rebuilding social capital and trust, from scratch. That’s doable, and I have ideas. But it will be like new growth in a forest after a fire. The old forest is, sadly, gone for good.

5/We need to turn our attention to what is being lost: social ties, social trust, social capital — choose your term, but that is the hidden thread that binds us all together and it is what has been burned away these last few years.

6/And, what about truth? An artifact of our shared reality, and now the loss of it. Raining down water on a burned forest is, well, not going to change anything. We must instead lay the groundwork to rebuilding social ties. And that may take generations.

7/Only when sufficient social fabric is re-established does truth once again have a shot at thriving. So, let’s mourn our loss and set about the work of rebuilding, while curbing the fires that still rage. And that’s a matter of shutting down the infrastructure fueling the fire.

8/We don’t look enough at the relationship between identity, in-group, and belief. They are all reflections of the same thing and you can’t alter one without altering the others. This is why injecting garbage breaks down social ties and alters belief and identity.

9/Sufficiently radicalized, people won’t recover their prior social connections, leaving them stranded on “islands of dissensus.” There is no natural pathway back from this. It’s a one way process. Throwing truth at them doesn’t restore lost social/family ties; it alienates them.

10/So we must instead find new strategies that meet people where they are and start to rebuild social connections. That’s very hard, very expensive. That’s why disinfo and social breakdown is perhaps the most effective weapon in an asymmetric hybrid war like the one we are in.

11/And to be clear: I’m not suggesting that we not assert and share truth wherever and however we can. That’s table stakes; bedrock. But it is a necessary vs. sufficient condition for dealing with the actual societal effects of disinformation.

12/People working in this field or wishing to learn more about this set of ideas are welcome to DM me for more info. I have a draft of a paper I’ve been working on that outlines this all in more detail. Thanks for the interest.

13/A corollary here is that every platform design and every intervention must be evaluated in terms of whether it harms or promotes healthy social ties, or diminishes/creates unhealthy social ties. We are not talking about this, and we should be.

Dave Troy 

@davetroy

Helping reality assert itself; anti-BS. Data + Counter-intel. Speaker. Curator,

@TEDxMidAtlantic

. Veritas vos liberabit. http://davetroy.medium.com

control can never be a means to any practical end

 “You see, control can never be a means to any practical end...It can never be a means to anything but more control...like junk..”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch 

so grey and spectral and anonymous

“I know this one pusher walks around humming a tune and everybody he passes takes it up. He is so grey and spectral and anonymous they don't see him and think it is their own mind humming the tune.”

― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch

total need

 “The face of "evil" is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: "Wouldn't you?" Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than they do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite.”

― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch

“If all pleasure is relief from tension, junk affords relief from the whole life process, in disconnecting the hypothalamus, which is the center of psychic energy and libido.”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch

his senses at the moment

“There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to impose “story” “plot” “continuity”... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an entertainer...”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch

Nathaniel Lande

Let your vision take you as far as your imagination can take you. Be true to your story. And in time, work with an editor and agent who is supportive, one that you trust and appreciate, one who will help make you better than you are.

Nathaniel Lande

they begin arriving

My work accrues sentence by sentence. After an initial phase of sitting patiently, not so patiently, struggling to locate them, to pin them down, they begin arriving, fully formed in my brain. I tend to hear them as I am drifting off to sleep. They are spoken to me, I’m not sure by whom. By myself, I know, though the source feels independent, recondite, especially at the start. The light will be turned on, a sentence or two will be hastily scribbled on a scrap of paper, carried upstairs to the manuscript in the morning. I hear sentences as I’m staring out the window, or chopping vegetables, or waiting on a subway platform alone. They are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, handed to me in no particular order, with no discernible logic. I only sense that they are part of the thing.

JHUMPA LAHIRI        

accept myself as a decidedly imperfect person

“It becomes easier for me to accept myself as a decidedly imperfect person, who by no means functions at all times in the way in which I would like to function. This must seem to some like a very strange direction in which to move. It seems to me to have value because the curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I change.”
― Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy