|
BOOKS FOREIGN POLICY ENVIRONMENT POETRY
From COMING OUT
OF THE WOODS: THE SOLITARY LIFE OF A MAVERICK NATURALIST, Perseus Books, 2000
VIRTUE TESTED
Developers often risk their own money and the money of family and friends. If
they are risking money put up by partners, stockholders, or banks, then the
law, not to mention a bunch of nervous strangers, is always looking over
their shoulders. Michael was looking over my shoulder from the Bronx. His father and Uncle Lefty were looking over his
shoulder from Detroit.
They believed in Michael. Michael believed in me. He once wrote to me,
"I think of you as a character in a Russian novel." I was supposed
to change the world while retaining my virtue, enriching my partners, and
retreating into my own solitude. (p. 31)
A WALDEN DREAM
I had considered all this lying submerged in the stream. I might have fallen
asleep except for the gentle sucking of minnows at the air bubbles clinging
to me. Eventually the water not only cooled me but chilled me. I stood up and
walked into a spot of sunlight to dry and get dressed. I climbed the hill on
the north side in the late afternoon. I wanted to see a beech growing out of
the purple and brown rocks, dominating the hillside with its height and
spread, holding the hickory and oak at a long arm’s length. I climbed a
little higher and looked past the beech into the valley and across the creek
at the silent grove in the disk of land. Nobody had lived here before. Nobody
had plowed this ground, or grazed cows or cut these trees. I sat on a rock
above the beech tree. To live next to this tree and in this place where no
one had ever grieved over a ruined life or a lost love or the failure of
children or crops--this was the kind of place I had planned to live in ever
since I knew there were choices. (p. 14)
CUTTING A ROAD
“This is what all the loggers are using,” he said. “It will
cut all day long. It will cut your leg off.” The chain was slick with
oil. Each black tooth had a bright and sharp tip. I wrote a check, grabbed
the handle of the saw and turned toward the door feeling like an assassin who
had just bought an Uzi or Kalashnikov. As I walked out of the store, the
owner shouted after me, “Be careful.”
I was not worried about myself but about trees. I had marked the road line
across the creek and a thousand feet beyond. Like the hunter eating his kill,
I intended to execute each and every oak and hickory, holly, and loblolly
pine myself. If I were going to build a road, I would take the emotional
responsibility as well as the legal. (p. 35)
OLD GROWTH
Every day I look at the small patch of old growth in front of my house, and
no matter how dark the mood I wake up in or that I carry into dusk, that
little grove is as welcome as love. (p. 269)
GARDENS AS A CONQUEST
OF NATURE.
We can pretend a garden is harmony and cooperation, but it is as close to
pure domination as any shopping center or supermarket. It has to be. Whether
we create a garden for pleasure or for food, our gardens are the ultimate
fulfillment of those famous words in Genesis: “man shall have dominion
. . . . " In that constant contest we must wage against nature to do
things our way, every successful garden is a Victory Garden.
(p. 175)
BUILDING A ROAD.
After two weeks and a few days of work a car could turn off the paved road
and drive at fifty miles per hour into the woods. Everything was slick and
smooth. The half mile of road stopped suddenly and absurdly at a wall of oak
and hickory. I stood in that roadway, looking up and down and thinking,
"God help me, did I do this?" I was like a man returning time and
again to the scene of a hit-and-run accident. But there was no one to report
to and not even a corpse to bury. (p. 48)
TECHNOLOGY AND DEBT AS
LIBERATION.
Thoreau noted that most people lived and died as economic slaves, survived by
their children and mortgages. I agree but I also know that for most Americans
a degree of bondage to debt is freedom from slavery to toil. The washing
machine that took us three years to pay off liberated my mother from long
hours of rubbing the clothes and bed linen for five people up and down a
rippled metal washboard. (p. 107)
DYNAMITE
For my first ever explosion I had cut six feet of fuse cord to be extra sure
I had time to take cover. I told Sylvan to run across the field and tell
Jason I was about to blow the charge and for both of them to hide behind a
big tree. When I saw Jason stand up and disappear with her behind a big oak,
I struck a match and lit the fuse. The sparks flew and smoke rose in a little
ribbon. I ran to join Jason and Sylvan.
We stood behind the tree waiting. Minutes passed. Nothing happened.
“Damn,” I said, “it didn’t go off and I sure
don’t want to go dig it out.”
Jason chuckled and shook his head. “I wouldn’t either,” he
said.
The day erupted in a great noise. I heard gravel and rocks falling. I waited
a few seconds and looked out. A cloud of dirt obscured the stump. Then I
heard a loud crash of something on metal. Then silence. (p. 101)
=========================================
From No Turning Back,
Basic Books 1994
PUTTING WORDS IN MOTHER NATURE’S
MOUTH. The earth is not “in the
balance.” The quality of our life and the character of our environment
is in the balance. The earth and
nature will long survive us. This is
an important distinction because environmentalists often base their actions
on what they say nature wants, needs, or prefers. In fact, it is humans who set preferences
for nature. Mother nature is mute and
environmentalists have rushed to put words in her mouth.
NATURE DOESN’T CARE. The basic assumption of this book is that
nature doesn't care--only we do, and because we care, we have made the world
an ever more livable place for ourselves by using science and technology and by
exercising our power of dominion, wherever it comes from. The exercise of this power is a natural
act. It is rational. We are doing what
every animal in creation tries to do, only we are doing it more successfully
because we have imagination and technology. A curious fact serves as a quick
measure of how great our success has been.
Almost all mammals live for about 200 million breaths and 800 million
heartbeats. A mouse uses up these measures and dies much faster than an
elephant because the lungs and the heart work fast. Large mammals live longer and their hearts
and lungs work more slowly. On average
civilized humans have exceeded our allotted breaths and heartbeats by some 50
years. Humanity's success and how to
build on it is this book's compass.
THE NOBLE SAVAGE? The first test of anyone's values is to
offer them choices. What do primitive
people do when offered guns, metal cookware, central heat and air
conditioning, movies, cameras, alcohol, cars, laboratories, cowboy boots,
Gortex parkas, snowmobiles, and electric guitars? History, no matter what the color of the
writer, records only a few rare instances when primitive people did not
choose and try to maintain a consumer life style.
BETTING ON WHAT NATURE IS. Industry, government, environmentalists,
and even churches bet a lot of prestige and money on their vision of
nature. In some ways the philosophers
of the environmental movement have functioned like the medieval church,
opposing the idea that science can discover nature's secrets or manage the
global environment. Many
environmentalists argue for a "hands off" policy on the grounds
that we can never know how nature works. Thus we can only mess it up.
SELF-INTEREST IS THE KEY. The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro
demonstrated that environmentalists still hadn't got the message. The solutions proposed in Rio
took two paths. Those most celebrated
among environmentalists, like the agreements on biodiversity and greenhouse
gases, proposed environmental protection by command rather than incentive. Consciousness raising or education was the
second solution to emerge from Rio. If governments would convince their
citizens of the seriousness of environmental problems, perhaps they would be
willing to set aside self-interest and sacrifice for the general good. Many ecologists and animal behaviorists
find it odd that environmentalists have not yet discovered that throughout
the biosphere, cooperation is sustained by self-interest. Game theorists call it tit-for-tat. It's a lesson every salesperson and
marketing department learned ages ago--happy customers keep coming back, or
if it pays to cooperate, people cooperate.
Environmentalists recognize this at a very abstract level, safe from
the dirty details. That's why they are
forever saying a sound economy depends on a sound environment.
=========================================
FOREIGN AID AND
FOREIGN POLICY
FOR POINTS ON
PRIVATIZATION
By Wallace Kaufman
1. Privatization is not yes or no like an electric switch. It is a process
with a continuum of magnitudes. Privatization for large or small enterprises
can be measured it by its position on a scale of completeness. This would
help
define what is and is not happening; what needs to happen for effective
privatization. For instance at the worst degree is nomenklatura
privatization--uncompetitive, un-advertised, poorly documented, etc. At the
best end would be an entirely open, transparent, well documented auction;
perhaps one in which workers had counseling beforehand on how to use vouchers,
evaluate the business, etc. In short, it is possible to measure the
completeness of privatization on a scale of qualities--degree of competition,
dissemination of information to all possible participants, clarity and
fullness
of documention, effort to expand the pool of participants, etc.
2. Soviet culture and communism did not kill entrepreneurship and the human
traits from which it springs. I participated in a number of studies in the
early 90s of new private entrepreneurs in manufacturing in Poland, Hungary and
the Czech and Slovak republics. There was, to our surprise, no lack of real
entrepreneurs, starting out with everything from just an idea to stolen state
equipment and buildings. Few of them were mafia or nomenklatura types because
being a criminal with no rules or a nomenklatura with no personal initiative
is
not the kind of situation that appeals to entrepreneurial people. What
entrepreneurial people needed were:
--stable laws
--low taxes (or tax incentives)
--sources of capital (partners, loans, etc)
--marketing skills
That's a very quick summary. The point is that the same people exist in Russia.
I know them. But they don't have the minimal foundations in law,
micro-economic
climate, finance, and access to materials.
3. Observers and citizens say privatization has failed in Russia
because they
do not adequately distinguish between the degrees of privatization. The
process
in Russia,
perhaps including even the recent Svyazinvest auction, has met few of
the criteria for first degree privatization. Russia above all other former
CIS
states has mucked up its emerging entrepreneurial culture by taxing them to
death, by failure to protect their investments, and by limiting and
eliminating
their access to assets being "privatized."
4. Workers from collective farms to coal mines and factories don't believ in
the profitability of their enterprises. They are very poorly prepared to make
investment decisions--whether to buy in or, if bought in, how to manage the
business. The old profsoyuz (labor union) is worthless.
In other countries like Kazakstan and Uzbekistan, we will see in the
privatization of major natural resource companies and exploitation rights,
whether there is a commitment to opening the doors for democratic
entrepreneurship or if the primary interest is to endow the central
government
with the profits and taxes it can redistribute according to ideology, family
and
friendship ties, and the nurturing of political power.
===================================
ENVIRONMENT
Peter Matthiessen: New Yorker's Blind Naturalist by Wallace Kaufman
Among the spiritual
gurus of the environmental movement writer Peter
Matthiessen comes close to being its present Thoreau. Like Thoreau he
is a good stylist and an contagiously sloppy thinker. His Jan. 7 article
in The New Yorker on Russia's
endangered Amur tiger provides his
ongoing support for the movement's notion that socialism is better for
the environment than a free market. (Matthiessen is author of At Play In
The Fields of the Lord in which evil Christian missionaries bring
destruction to mild mannered Amazon aborigines, and Snow Leopard, an
ode to the mystical wisdom of Himalayans who live short, brutish lives
in a fragile landscape their lack of technology and science has allowed
them to devastate.)
Every wilderness
tracker and naturalist knows that you can see a
thousand things and understand very little. Peter Matthiessen is so
intent on tracking the "spiritual and mythic resonance" of the Amur
tiger that he falls prey to the very forces that have pushed them to the
edge of extinction. I have lived and worked in the former Soviet Union
since 1989, most of the time in Siberia and Central Asia
and I am
disappointed that such a talented observer misinterpreted so many
important social, economic and political tracks.
===================================
INVITATION (from Orion magazine)
SUPPER BY ZACHARIA MORGAN'S OLD SPRING BRANCH, ON THE ANCIENT CONTINENT OF
TACONIA WHERE IT IS COVERD BY MATURE BEECH, HICKORY AND OAK FOREST OF THE
SOUTHERN PIEDMONT
WHEN: ANY TIME. Every
creature in this forest where I have lived for 26 years is obsessed by two
activities--sex and eating other living things. Let us join the eating in our
own way. Surrounded as we shall be by gourmands and gluttons, I shall provide
a civilized meal. If our dinner were to show respect for the less violent
among us, I would suggest a meat dish so that we leave the gentle green
plants in peace to feed upon minerals and their own dead while you and I
should do them an honor and a favor and kill what kills. Like most readers,
however, I suspect you have more sympathy for the killers than the killed, so
I propose a compromise--mushrooms, beings that feed on both the living and
the dead..
Aperitif: Chilled gin
with local juniper berries
Appetizer: Death Dip.
My daughter Sylvan's recipe--sour cream mixed with pepper and a black funnel
shaped mushroom sometimes called Horn of Plenty, and also Trumpet of Death
(Craterellus fellax),.
Entrée: braised wild
artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus) covered with blue and brown milk mushrooms
(Lactarius indigo and corrugis), beechnuts, and herbs accompanied by stir
fried cattail asparagus, and salad of dandelion, dock and sorrel.
Wine: choice of dry
blackberry or elderberry
After-dinner drinks: Orange chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius) liqueur
While outside along
Morgan Branch hawk is hunting squirrel, snake eating fish, frog eating bugs,
owl eating mouse we shall have a fine meal. If anything separates humankind
from our wild kin in our baser activities it is that humankind produces
gourmets and the wild produces gourmands and gluttons. Vive la diference!
================================
POETRY
THE LAST PAGES OF
SLEEPING BEAUTY
Look at them
the Prince just stumbles in
chasing a wild pig.
One dry kiss and
the Princess falls for him,
the first thing she sees.
Her father lays a banquet
and a few gold coins on
the groggy peasants.
Look at this kid,
my daughter, who only asked
if I would read the story,
not why I was made,
why I am her father,
how long will she love me.
Not caring what happens
between now and morning,
ear on my heart,
she sleeps and leaves me
holding the old story.
CAROLINA WREN
Where this time?
The pair makes several tries--
My hard hat, a can of nails, window ledge
All filled with leaves.
How do they judge
Those inferior, this one prime?
It's predetermined,
I don't know how.
So too the songs--
His two notes or three notes,
And she chirrrs along.
Same songs, same positions.
Morning in and morning out
I wake to their repetition
If they watch me, no doubt
They'd see my own routines,
But neither they nor I can find
What isn't wired in my genes.
Why does this human mind
Hear video, video, video
In his operatic voice?
Or is it Figaro, Figaro, Figaro?
It's his song, but my choice.
AN ULTRALIGHT
WORDSWORTHIAN MORNING
A simple morning walk
and I’ve disturbed
The universe with every step.
Birds from cedars, pines and firs, perturbed,
Fly from their feeding. Lizards cannot sleep
And flee the crushing boot.
By Rough and Ready
Creek my walk’s the pox
My footfall echoes, vibrates like a quake.
All hear, a mighty being is awake.
Minnows dart for shade, the frogs for rocks.
For me the beauteous
morning’s calm and free
The broad sun rising in tranquility.
Then a sound like thunder everlastingly
Out of the east, out of
the sun he flies
A man with wings and motor, ultralight
A few trees high he comes, with, ahh, wings bright
Shining his pleasured way across the skies
Straight on he comes,
and louder, louder still,
chainsaws my morning’s silence, then he turns
flies west, then east again as if he will
saw the living daylight into boards.
I stop and catch him in
my spotting scope.
He leads me slower than a bird across
The sky. He has no shame. How could I hope
That on his flying throne he’d think what cost
His pleasure taxed my pleasure with. And yet
He’s just another bird trailing his noise
Across the sky. So why am I upset
And mad if his is made by eating gas,
And theirs by eating mice and fish and grass?
Yes, he disturbs my
universe as I
have done in full to others here below.
May he too, soaring in this morning’s air,
Find earth has not a thing to show more fair
Than fellow man enjoying nature’s show.
If we both think it so, then we might be
Bound each to each in noisy piety.
|