Mother's Day, 2019

     You don't need to speak Spanish, or know anything at all about the life of Ofelia Barrientos Carcamo. That single word, on the coffee cup to the left, says it all: "Mama." We all know what that means, or should: children you love, who love you in return. A lifetime of joy and sacrifice. An unwillingness to let something so sweet and important go. 
     Which explains the personal items lovingly laid out and preserved, behind glass, at the Municipal Cemetery in Ushaia, Chile, the "End of the World"—that's its nickname—at the southernmost tip of South America. Ordinary things, precious only by association. A pair of spectacles. An oval portrait. 
 
    The cemetery is generally a ramshackle place, where crosses sag and graves crumble. A reminder that time does its work on the fiercest affections. 
     Many graves are still scrupulously maintained, like little rooms, and you can peek in and see personal effects, the coffins made like beds, with lace covers. As if their occupants are only sleeping, and might wake up, and need their glasses, a tradition that goes back to ancient Egypt, where the dead were buried with their personal effects close at hand, for use in the afterlife.
     Death only has meaning to the living. We love our mothers, not just because they gave us life, but they gave us the meaning that makes life bearable. A meaning that lingers long after they are gone. And long after we are gone, if we do it right, in the children we leave behind. Even at the cemetery, I couldn't help notice, that life continues, always pushing forward, with or without us. It always goes on, pushing out the dead, even as we cling to them.

Sonny and Cher

     I was blathering with a reader about birds when he mentioned something that froze my blood. He referred to a "life list," implying that I had one, since I liked to watch birds. I told him that I certainly do not have a life list and never will. One of the joys of animals in general and birds in particular is that they reflect the natural world, and what is more human than turning the observation of that world into some kind of contest, where you tally the various birds you've seen, keeping score, hoping to best your peers. Pass.
    As thrilling as it can be to spot an unfamiliar species, it also is a strain. You see something unfamiliar at the feeder. The binoculars are grabbed for. Attention is focused. Details are noted to facilitate the process of later trying to identify said bird, all the while under time pressure, because it might flit away at any moment and be gone.
    You know what's a lot less stressful? Ducks. Common as dirt mallard ducks, "the urban duck of the Chicago area" according to my "Birds of Chicago." Of course that is not a distinction particular to Chicago—mallards are among the most widespread birds in the world, and throughout history. I did a deep dive (sorry) into ducks here last spring.
     The boy duck—we've named him Sonny—has the distinctive iridescent green head of the male mallard, called drakes.  The female, whom we naturally dubbed Cher, will not only lay eggs, but later must teach her ducklings to swim: they'll drown otherwise.
    The duo have taken up residence over the past few weeks in our backyard, which floods.
     They're always there. A little shy, they can't manage the dexterity of flying up to my feeder, so they wait patiently below for the seeds that smaller birds jostle out (oh, okay, and for  the big scoopfuls of feed that I toss onto the ground for them, even though this is also a feast for squirrels). Ducks like grain, so much so that they've become agricultural pests. 
     "Mallard"—that's a curious word. The Oxford English Dictionary throws up its hands, a rare show of defeat: "of obscure origin." Though to the OED, that means they trace a first usage only back to 1330, and a paragraph of conjecture contains the priceless sentence, "The bird may under this name have figured as a personage in some lost example of the Germanic 'beast-epic.'" We'll have to save plunging into the beast-epic for another day.
     Cher is more timid—she retreats to the far margin of the yard when I show up. Sonny is almost accustomed to me to me, edging back to the food even before I've finished whatever chore took me to the backyard. There is also a third duck, another male, lurking nearby. We haven't named him yet, but probably should. "Gregg Allman" comes to mind. Too obvious? I suppose. But then, they're ducks. Obvious is kinda what they do. 

A real man needs a ‘REAL ID’ driver’s license. Doesn’t he?

     A letter arrived from the office of Jesse White, Secretary of State.
     “Congratulations!” it began. “As a safe driver, you are currently eligible to renew your driver’s license via Internet, phone or mail, and receive your new driver’s license in the mail.”
     I assumed this meant I could renew my driver’s license via internet, phone or mail, without bringing myself bodily to the license bureau, not one of life’s peak experiences. I remarked upon this to my wife.
     “Oh sure,” she replied. “You could do that. If you were the type of man who would be satisfied with an ordinary driver’s license.”
     I raised an eyebrow, interrogatively.
     But, she continued, if I want the new super duper driver’s license, the “REAL ID” as it is called — which would, under tighter Homeland Security rules, allow a real man such as myself to board a plane to Cleveland without bringing along a passport as if I were flying to Tunisia — I would still need to apply in person.
     Apply in person, I learned during the study that followed, along with a sheaf of supplemental documentation. And thus is our nation made secure.
     What sort of documentation? My passport, for starters, plus my old driver’s license or other ID showing my signature, plus two bills to prove my home address is recognized by the post office and, the cherry on top, my Social Security card. 

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Between summits

     When I set about to write a book on failure, I wanted to include something about people who got close to their goal yet still missed it. I settled on Mount Everest, because I knew climbers had gotten very near the top of the mountain, within a few hundred feet, yet never attained the summit. 
     Or did, and died on the way back.
     In researching the chapter, I read a lot of books about Everest. And I learned something about mountain climbing: you aren't on the top long. Those who made it to the summit of Everest typically spent 15 minutes, a half hour tops, enjoying the view. Then it was time to hurry back down so as not to die.
     Which meant months of assembling money and equipment and expedition teams, and weeks of slogging through Nepal and setting up base camps. Then days of tortuous effort, up the mountain. All for a few minutes of literal peak experience. Then down you go.
     This seemed valuable for non-mountaineers to keep in mind. You look forward to a certain event—say a big trip somewhere, oh-for-instance South America. And you spend months getting ready. Then a brief time actually on the trip.
     Before you know it, you're back, walking the dog, making dinner, doing your job. Which, even if it is a very cool job—for instance, exploring things that interest you and you feel are important and writing about them in a major metropolitan newspaper so that other people can think about them and maybe feel they are important too—is still a job that must be worked at, and is not as exciting as, oh, watching a glacier collapse. 
     And you scan the horizon, and there's ... more of the same. 
     Which can be, yes, dispiriting, until you remind yourself that peak experiences wouldn't be very peak if they happened all the time. Then they'd become routine, no matter how great they were. 
     Climbing is a skill, as is reaching the peak. But so is waiting, and planning, and trying, and being patient and, often, disappointed. Jiggling the handle of one door, then another, then another, waiting for one to open. One experience is lauded and sought, the other ignored and derided. But they are inexorably linked. Without being really good at waiting, you never reach that mountaintop. One requires the other. Worth bearing in mind.

Facebook boots Farrakhan, but who does he harm? Himself, mostly

Florence Baptistery ceiling

     Honestly? I was sorry that Facebook banned Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan from its global social media platform for his steady patter of anti-Semitic nonsense, which is old as the hills, common as dirt, and lodged, in larger or smaller shards, in the hearts of half the people in the world. Maybe more.
     Not that his twisted worldview isn't harmful. It is. The harm is real. But like most bigotry, like most self-administered poison, it is destructive primarily to the possessor; the career of Farrakhan is ample proof.
     He yearned to shine on a larger stage, to be taken seriously and touch the hearts of millions, and came close at times. But like any addict, either because he was feeling too good or too bad, he celebrated his successes and mourned his setbacks with another heady hit of hatred while good people, revolted, looked away.
     Generally. Some folks like junkies. Find them thrilling, romantic, fun. While Farrakhan's flock of die-hard faithful is small, he is largely tolerated, certainly not denounced, among a larger group of supposedly-decent observers because raging against whites in general and Jews in particular provides them with a low-rent naughty pleasure, a kind of catharsis. They never pause to realize they are doing the exact same thing — diminishing the humanity of a group they don't know based on laughable fiction — that they find so offensive when directed toward themselves. It's not a unique shame — all humans are prone to this, alas — but nothing to be proud of, either.
     When I worked at the Wheaton Daily Journal, a third of a century ago, conservative Christians in that town engaged in a strategy I called "wallpapering the world." They would seek out what they objected to and try to cover it up so they didn't have to look at it, whether Playboys tucked behind the counter at the local 7-Eleven or the College of DuPage performing "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All for You."

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"All global warming predictions are computer based monkey business"

     I laid out the letter below and then went to meet a friend for lunch at Taco Diablo, one of my favorite eateries in Evanston.  Walking to my car, I noticed this mural by Shawn Bullen along the 'L' line, just south of Davis Street. I assumed it had to be brand new—I'm on that stretch of street fairly frequently. 
     No, put up in 2017; I just never noticed it before.
     Typical. There's a lot of that going around. Thinking about how I missed it, it occurred to me that the Internet favors the ugly, the crazed, the extreme. Human nature perhaps. We see, and remark upon, the hostile, menacing stuff—the echo of natural selection, some vestigial protective trait, no doubt—and tend to overlook the beautiful.
     So I thought I would pair these images—which certainly speak to our precious natural world—as a balm, with the letter, which is actually not as crazed as it first seems. Climate scientists I spoke to on my trip were also concerned that they can come off as too extreme, too shrill, predicting disasters that don't come to be, or not for 100 years. Of course they don't have the sneering tone of this letter, the aggressive dismissal of anything that one does not already believe.
    We live in an age of contempt. Why argue when you can condemn? Why educate yourself when you can just express the venom that condemned you to a lifetime of ignorance in the first place? That's a whole lot easier. Yesterday's column on climate change of course was automatically rejected by the people who might benefit from it most. I think this letter can serve to represent them all. Notice how he rejects science in favor of something an old woman told him. I refrained from altering it in any way.

I have studied weather my whole life, any one can do better than a professional weather caster! I live in Palos Hills, home of ‘moraine valley’ carved out by glaciers 20,000 years ago, prior to us being here. No green house gasses by us yet. And yes, the glaciers receded back up north all by themselves, no help from us. I asked a 90 year old lady on vacation in Florida, if the ocean level has ever changed over the years, the beach line. Nope. Hmmm? Almost all you weather climate change dooms day people are very confused over global warming, and natural climate changes, that happen through out time, due to the wobble of the earth and our earth moving around. Dust bowl in mid west during 1800, lasted 50 years, no cars yet just cows farting! Climate change. Ice is forming still, new ice all over the artics, a lot of it. You see the ice falling into the oceans, global warming? A natural phenomenon. You did not see global warming. You can’t even write on paper how much water covers the earth, billions and trillions of gallons, 10 miles deep in the Atlantic trench. All the global warming predictions are computer based monkey business. There are far more scientists who debunk global warming that believe it. Look it up. It’s simply, weather changes. It will get warmer, and it will get colder by natural causes and us, a bitty. (Moraine Valley, natural ice age) who caused it, no body, we weren’t here. One natural volcano dumps more junk into the atmosphere than we can do in a lifetime. Now here comes the science for fools! The earth is alive and takes care of itself unless we don’t nuke it first (far worse fate to worry about). Hurricanes, typhoon, tornado, floods, torrential rainstorms, lightning, wind storms, waves, sand storms, the sun, hmmmm, all the ways our earth cleans itself up, all by itself. It keeps up well. Look at the car you drive after it rains next time, what are all the spots all over it, where did they come from, the earths washing machine on duty! Acid rain too. Don’t worry Neil, the earth is just fine! We get 6 hurricanes one year and crap our pants, oh they are so strong, and the next year we get two and forget? It gets so hot here, and we have the coldest winter on record in the Midwest, oh! There used to be tropic weather up in the arctic millions of years ago, fossils prove it oh my! How could that be? Let nature do its job, it is and will. The earth is 80% water, we only live on 20% of the land, most of earth is barren (deserts, jungles, wasteland). We are a pimple on the earth. I will re write you in 12 years when we all die as Cortez claims, probably an idol of yours,another mis informed taco waitress with a dangerous venu. Be careful those icebergs don’t float into your yard. Don hall

Global warming easy to believe happening before your eyes

Asia Glacier, Chile, April 6, 2019

     Nearly 400 billion tons of ice break away from the world's glaciers every year, one symptom of the earth warming due to humanity pouring pollutants into the atmosphere.
     Or so scientists say. I can't vouch for the entire figure. But I can attest to 1,000 tons or so of glacier loss, the ice mass that broke off the Asia Glacier in Southern Chile on April 6.
     I am certain of that because I was standing uncomfortably close when it happened and saw it: a wide swath of the blue ice face, maybe 150 feet top to bottom and 50 feet across, explode away in a cloud of ice crystals.
     "Up! Up! Quickly!" cried a scientist off the Resolute, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society vessel that had brought us to the Southern Patagonian Ice Field.
     I turned and, as suggested by informed scientific opinion, ran for my life, scrambling back up the slick, steep rocky outcropping.
     It's surprising how even the most cynical fellow can instantly follow the advice of climate science under certain circumstances. It helped that I also saw the big swell of gelid water, studded with chunks of ice the size of refrigerators, push away from the collapsed mass of glacier, rolling directly toward us, fast.
     We had all been observing the glacier from the relative safety of a promontory. Arriving an hour earlier from the ship by Zodiac boat, a sturdy black inflatable craft, as part of a two-week expedition up the Chilean coast, we gingerly worked our way up the stone face and found comfortable vantage points.
     I had been talking with Ian Goodwin, a climatologist from Australia, who explained that symptoms of climate change in the more temperate regions of the world can be less pronounced than at the pole.
     "Down here in Patagonia, and the Antarctic peninsula, Southern Australia, South Africa, these are the areas where climate change is being amplified, at the Southern ends of the Tropics," he said. "We might be seeing something less than a degree in the equatorial regions, but down here we're seeing 2 1/2, 3 degrees of warming and major shifts...the changes we're seeing here, these are massive retreats."

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Climatologist Ian Goodwin before the Asia Glacier, April 6, 2019