Waiting for Mr. Good Bee

No honey there.

I used to ponder such deep questions as how long it would take a typical American to notice it if birds disappeared. This year I've really started to notice the disappearance of honey bees. I saw exactly zero at Goat Rope Farm this summer.

When I was a little kid I hated honey bees for their tendency to sting me when I accidentally stepped on them barefoot. It didn't take too long to outgrow that childhood prejudice once I learned about how useful, interesting and generally easy to get along with they were.

Honey bees have been called "angels of agriculture" for their role in pollination. Although they have seemed like a natural part of the landscape for centuries, they are not native to North America but were brought here by European settlers in the 17th century. In their absence in the wake of the bee colony collapse of the last few years, I've noticed what seem to be a lot more bumble bees.

This could be a coincidence, but I also noticed a lot more bald faced hornet's nests this year. From what I understand, they mostly eat other insects but I have read that they do some minor pollination in late summer. Given the choice, I think I'd prefer honey bees. I will watch anxiously for their return the same way I do for the return of minnows in our creek after a dry spell.

GETTING HICKY WITH IT. A television ad for Republican Senate candidate John Raese stirred up quite a bit of controversy yesterday after a casting call was released which said that actors should go for the "hicky" look.

A DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN. Several serious safety violations were found at a Massey mine in Boone County.

GO UNION. A new study suggests that labor unions improve the quality of life for members and non members.

CAN I HAVE ONE? According to the NY Times,

The earliest known relatives of dinosaurs were the size of a house cat, walked on four legs and left footprints in the quarries in Poland.

They sound really cute.

SINCE WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT, here's an item about some desert lizards with mammal-like social behavior.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Sweet revenge

We hit a seasonal milestone at Goat Rope Farm this week with the first lighting of the wood stove. As hot as this summer and fall have been, it didn't seem like that day would come.

This year, I am deriving particular gratification from throwing wood in the fire. Usually, our woodpile is collected here and there on a casual basis, but last year it got personal when some trees of ours fell on a neighbor's yard.

I have engaged in single combat with those suckers since the Christmas holidays, chainsawing, hand sawing, lifting, loading, splitting and generally making little ones out of big ones. Those trees had some really knotty parts and were hell to split. I'm pretty sure that I expended more energy on the chopping some of them than they will yield in the burning.

It is probably not an admirable personal trait to hold grudges against no-longer-animate objects, but I derive satisfaction from singling out the toughest pieces and tossing them in the stove with a farewell greeting along the order of "I've got you now, you ___________."

AIN'T WE GOT FUN. The Rev. Jim Lewis goes Gatsby in his latest edition of Notes from Under the Fig Tree. (As I mentioned before, we have a few fig trees here and it would be hard for a cat to get under them--I don't see how he does it.)

GETTING ATTENTION. The weird race to fill the late Senator Byrd's seat caught the attention of the New York Times.

UNSAFE. This Washington Post article from earlier this week looks at mine safety--or the lack of it.

WORKING ON A MYSTERY. New clues have emerged in the great honeybee die-off.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

"A ticking time bomb"

Yesterday, the US House Committee on Education and Labor held a hearing in Beckley about Massey's Upper Big Branch mine disaster. Here is Ken Ward's coverage in the Charleston Gazette.

And here is an excerpt from an earlier version of the same article:

Miners and families from the Upper Big Branch Mine on Monday described the Massey Energy operation as "a ticking time bomb," where safety problems were ignored and workers feared losing their jobs if they complained.

"I felt like I was working for the Gestapo at times," said continuous miner operator Stanley Stewart, who was on his way into Upper Big Branch when the April 5 explosion occurred.

Stewart said Massey's Performance Coal Co. repeatedly fixed airflow problems at the mine only well enough to get government inspectors to back off, so the operation could resume producing coal. Last year, Stewart said, the company stripped miners of their summer vacation when Upper Big Branch didn't meet production goals.

"I told my wife, Mindi, 'If anything happens to me, get a lawyer and sue the blankety blank out of them. That place is a ticking time bomb,'" Stewart said.

WV Governor Joe Manchin testified at the hearing as well. Here's his statement and here are parts of it that caught my eye:

You can put a price on a ton of coal, and you can put a price on every piece of machinery in a coal mine, but you cannot put a price on the life of a human being; it is priceless. West Virginia expects employers to prioritize safety ahead of everything else. A person who goes to work each morning to provide a living for themselves and their family should expect nothing less than to return home safely...

There are questions we need answered. Why did serious safety violations repeatedly occur at Upper Big Branch? Were the miners concerned about their safety? Were miners threatened or intimidated from speaking out? If state or federal regulators knew the mine was unsafe, why was it allowed to continue to operate?...

Corporate governance is another issue the state or federal government should address. No one within a corporate or business structure, from top to bottom, should be protected or untouchable under the law if the corporation or business fails to make safety a priority or fails to empower workers to make the workplace as safe as possible.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Are we there yet?

Step by step...

As a kid I used to torment adult drivers with that question on long trips. As a parent, I used to torment my kids when they were little by telling them that our still distant destination was just around the next bend.

I keep asking that question myself lately about health care reform. It has been a long strange trip, from unknown years of talking about it in the abstract to a long hard year of pushing for it in the concrete.

I guess we'll know what's up by the end of the weekend, but this item from the Washington Monthly website puts it in context:

THREADING AN IMPOSSIBLE NEEDLE.... It's probably an esoteric point, but it's worth pausing to appreciate just how ridiculously challenging it was to craft this health care reform proposal. There's a very good reason this legislation has never passed up until now, and why presidents who've tried have failed, and it goes beyond just right-wing hysterics and corporate pushback.

Think about the scope of the task -- Democrats were told they needed a health care reform bill that spends a lot of money on covering the uninsured, lowers the deficit, strengthens Medicare, helps businesses, eases government budgets, protects consumers, and controls costs, all at the same time. It would also need to earn the blessing of Congressional Budget Office, the American Medical Association, the AARP, and the nation's largest labor unions.

Democrats were also told they needed to do all of this in the face of unanimous and apoplectic Republican opposition, far-right manipulation of gullible conservative activists, and media coverage that largely ignores the substance of the bill while pretending every right-wing attack deserves attention.

Oh well...I'd hate to think we spent all this time and effort trying to do something easy.

AND HERE ARE SOME MORE REASONS to get it done.

SPEAKING OF HEALTH, this is no surprise, but the coalfield counties of southern WV have the worst in the state.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. The budget for El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia included some additional Medicaid funding for in home care for elderly people with disabilities.

YOU GO, JOE. Congratulations to Governor Manchin, who is considering vetoing a bill that would create a gun sales tax holiday during a time of serious budget problems. Manchin was quoted as saying,

I can't look at children in the eye, and struggling families in the eye, and all these people in the eye and say, "I'm sorry we couldn't help you, but, by God, if you want to buy a gun, we can really take care of you.

Don't get me wrong. There are fire sticks in the closet at Goat Rope Farm and I have been known to hunt (without a great deal of success lately, let it be noted) but this was a silly bill.

PRISONS. The population warehoused in state prisons nationwide declined in 2009 for the first time since 1972.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

DOJO KUN

Gichin Funakoshi.

The theme of this week's Goat Rope is strategy and what people who want to make the world less violent and more just can learn from the theory and history of conflict. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier entries.

El Cabrero admits to being a fan of Sun Tzu from way back. I first learned about his Art of War when I began became interested in martial arts as a child. At the time, there were no classes in my little town and we couldn't afford the tae kwon do school in a nearby city, which charged high payments and made you sign contracts. (I've always been grateful to Lady Poverty for saving me from going that route.)

So for a few years, I just read whatever I could find about it. In the process, I learned about different religions, philosophies and traditions. Eventually, we found a non-commercial dojo which taught shotokan, a strict traditional Japanese/Okinawan style. Practice sessions are a mixture of ritual and drill, part boot camp and part high church.

Shotokan was founded by Gichin Funakoshi, an Okinawan schoolteacher, scholar, and calligrapher (Shoto was his pen name, and kan means school). A sickly child, he studied from the leading masters of his day and was a pioneer in introducing the Okinawan art to Japan and ultimately the world. His writings and example have probably influenced my moral and spiritual development (such as it is) as much as the Bible and the church I sometimes attend. Probably more.

In one of his earlier manuals, he wrote the following:

Deep within the shadows of human culture lurk seeds of destruction, just as rain and thunder follow in the wake of fair weather. History is the story of the rise and fall of nations. Change is the order of heaven and earth; the sword and pen are as inseparable as the two wheels of a cart. Thus, a man must encompass both fields if he is to be considered a man of accomplishment. If he is overly complacent, trusting that fair weather will last forever, he will one day be caught off guard by terrible floods and storms. So it is essential for all of us to prepare each day for any unexpected emergency.

Funakoshi drilled his students in ethics and courtesy as much as physical techniques. The result combined strong inhibitions against the use of force with a fierce, linear, all-out fighting style.

His master text, Karate-Do Kyohan, contains a section of maxims for the trainee which includes quotes from Sun Tzu as well as Confucian and Buddhist sources. They are quoted without attribution since it was presumed that readers would know the source.

Here are two well known ones. They are pretty basic but if you only keep two from Sun Tzu, they'd be a good choice:

For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the highest skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the highest skill.

In other words, the ultimate level of skill in understanding conflict or strife is to accomplish what you need to without it. Understood metaphorically, it also means one should use the least possible energy and do the least possible harm in responding to situations.

Funakoshi also quoted Sun Tzu on the importance of knowledge:

Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.

When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal.

If ignorant of both your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.

In other words, understanding one's own capacities and limitations as well as those of one's opponent can help one anticipate developments and/or take advantage of openings in a given situation or avoid engagement altogether. Those two sayings taken together are pretty good advice for the most peace loving people, whether they are trying to effect some change or just deal with the ordinary collisions of life.

CITIES FIGHT BACK. Here's an interesting item from Business Week about how some cities are dealing with home foreclosures. It seems that many banks abandon homes after they force out the former owners for not being able to keep up with payments. The abandoned housing causes all kinds of problems. Some cities are taking banks to court to force them to keep up the property, demolish it or otherwise take some responsibility for the mess they created.

THE DIETARY DIVIDE reflects the economic one. The rich get organic and the poor get diabetes.

MASSEY IN COURT. Here's the latest on Massey Energy's most recent legal battle.

STATE OF THE STATE. Here's the text of Gov. Manchin's speech.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

FROM JESUS TO CONSTANTINE

Caption: It's a long way from Jesus to Constantine. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

While lots of people are gearing up for the traditional holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus, El Cabrero has been musing about the birth of Christianity, a topic I find endlessly interesting.

Historians often distinguish between the religion of Jesus and the religion about Jesus. According to the earliest sources, the religion of Jesus consisted of his proclaiming and to a degree enacting enacting the Kingdom of God. The religion about Jesus arose in the time immediately after his crucifixion in Jerusalem around the year 30. I'm not saying the two were incompatible or inconsistent with each other, just different.

Whatever really happened, it is historically indisputable that some of his early followers claimed to experience him as a living reality after the death on the cross. Initially, the community of believers was tiny, although it grew steadily throughout the Mediterranean world despite sporadic persecutions.

Historian Bart Ehrman, who produced From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity for The Teaching Company, estimates that the number of believers grew from 20-100 people in the year 30 to 5-7 percent of the total population of the Roman Empire--around 3 to 4 million out of a total of 56 million--by the time of Constantine (circa 272-337).

Massive conversions are not necessary to account for this growth. The increase described above could have happened if Christians increased their membership by 40 percent per decade or 4 percent a year, about the rate that the Mormon church has grown. This could have simply involved the slow conversion of friends, family members, and social networks.

Major conversions did not occur until the Emperor Constantine's conversion around the year 312 (although he did not undergo baptism until he was on his deathbed). Around 313, he and co-emperor Licinius agreed to a policy of toleration for all religions, including Christianity. Once the religion gained imperial favor, many more conversions followed. By the end of the fourth century, around half of the empire's residents were Christians.

Under Emperor Theodosius I, orthodox or catholic Christianity became the state religion and pagan practices were banned.

It seems to me that the alliance of church with empire was a major and unfortunate turning point. When religion and state merge, the result usually isn't better government--it's worse religion.

FORESTS AND TREES will play a major role in any successful effort to address climate change, according to this Time article.

VETERANS' ISSUES. Here's a link to the Washington Post's ongoing series on returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.

RECONCILIATION? It looks like a truce is in effect between Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship and WV Governor Joe Manchin. I think I liked it better the other way.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO CONSERVATISM is the theme of this op-ed of mine from yesterday's Gazette-Mail.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

GRACEFULLY STRUCK, PLUS MINE SAFETY AND WORKERS' RIGHTS

El Cabrero has been on a theological jag this week, with a special focus on the work of the great 20th century Protestant theologian Paul Tillich. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier posts.

To recap briefly, Tillich had a way of bringing new meaning to old religious terms that have accumulated a lot of baggage over the centuries (without sacrificing the old meanings). Yesterday's post looked at his ideas of sin and grace as discussed in his sermon "You are accepted" from the book The Shaking of the Foundations.

For him, sin is a state before it is an act. Specifically, it is a state of separation which is the fate of all people. It is something that inevitably happens to us but also something to which we contribute by our own actions. By separation, he meant our alienation or estrangement from other people, from nature, from ourselves, and from the Ground of Being (which many folks call "God").

This would also apply to

the attitude of social groups within nations towards each other,and the attitude of nations themselves towards other nations. The walls of distance, in time and space, have been removed by technical progress; but the walls of estrangement between heart and heart have been incredibly strengthened.

But if sin or separation is a pervasive reality, it isn't the only one. There is also the reality that can sometimes be experienced when separation is overcome. His word for that is grace:

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: "You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!" If that happens to us, we experience grace After such an experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. In that moment, grace conquers sin, and reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. And nothing is demanded of this experience, no religious or moral or intellectual presupposition, nothing but acceptance.

In the light of this grace we perceive the power of grace in our relation to others and to ourselves. We experience the grace of being able to look frankly into the eyes of another, the miraculous grace of reunion of life with life. We experience the grace of understanding each other's words. We understand not merely the literal meaning of the words, but also that which lies behind them, even when they are harsh or angry. For even then there is a longing to break through the walls of separation. We experience the grace of being able to accept the life of another, even if it be hostile and harmful to us, for, through grace, we know that it belongs to the same Ground to which we belong, and by which we have been accepted. We experience the grace which is able to overcome the tragic separation of the sexes, of the generations, of the nations, of the races, and even the utter strangeness between man and nature. Sometimes grace appears in all these separations to reunite us with those to whom we belong. For life belong to life.

And in the light of this grace we perceive the power of grace in our relation to ourselves. We experience moments in which we accept ourselves, because we feel that we have been accepted by that which is greater than we. If only more such moments were given to us! For it is such moments that make us love our life, that make us accept ourselves, not in our goodness and self- complacency, but in our certainty of the eternal meaning of our life. We cannot force ourselves to accept ourselves. We cannot compel anyone to accept himself. But sometimes it happens that we receive the power to say "yes" to ourselves, that peace enters into us and makes us whole, that self-hate and self-contempt disappear, and that our self is reunited with itself. Then we can say that grace has come upon us.

Official Goat Rope verdict on Tillich: dude was pretty good. Too bad he didn't know how to break up his paragraphs...

WAY TO GO, JOE! Thanks and congratulations to WV Governor Joe Manchin for signing on to a letter to the U.S. Senate in support of the Employee Free Choice Act. This bill, which passed the House this spring, would allow workers to join unions by signing cards authorizing representation. It would also increase penalties for employers who illegally attempt to punish or intimidate workers trying to organize. The letter is here.

A LITTLE WIN FOR MINE SAFETY. From today's Gazette,

A Boone County man won a $2 million jury verdict in a wrongful termination lawsuit against a Massey Energy Co. subsidiary Thursday.

Rocky Allen Burns, 55, of Madison, sued Independence Coal Co. in May 2006, alleging that his firing in October 2005 was the result of his reporting safety problems at the Justice No. 1 mine to the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

There's more here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

WHY DO WE WEAR RED SUSPENDERS?

Caption: Admit it, you want to ride it.

The guiding thread through this week's Goat Rope is a fond look back at El Cabrero's short and inglorious adventures in the local volunteer fire department. Many other topics will be covered.

If this is your first visit, please scroll down to earlier entries.

After completing various kinds of training came actual practice in the real world. I’ll never forget the first time I responded to a call that was announced over our pagers as a possible structure fire, a fortunately fairly rare animal.

The call came in the middle of the night and I was half asleep, very nervous, and very green. It was intimidating to think that some people’s lives and most beloved possessions were at risk and I could screw it up.

I remember trying to pull on the pants of my turnout gear, a process somewhat hindered by the presence of my suspenders (and, yes, they are red and they do in fact hold up our pants) between my legs. I made a quick note to self that this was not a good idea and managed not to repeat it.

The call turned out to be a downed power line instead of a house fire. This was a welcome letdown, although power line calls are about as popular with firefighters as mosquitoes or ticks.

Although I live so far out in the country that the engines usually rolled by the time I found my shoes, I was able to run a fair number of calls over the next few years, experiencing a range of situations such as, floods, brush fires, floods, auto accidents, medical calls, dangerous conditions, floods, and the occasional structure fire.

Did I mention floods? We get lots of floods.

Although I am most emphatically not God’s gift to firefighting, I learned that mechanical idiocy is not necessarily a hindrance. To paraphrase John Milton, they also serve who only have all thumbs. I found that in any emergency, there is usually stuff to carry, traffic to stop, or hoses to roll while the mechanically apt take care of other business.

Probably the most dangerous duty I did was working at some of our bingo fundraisers. People where I live take bingo pretty seriously, plus the air was smokier than most forest fires. The scariest, aside from a savage nocturnal box turtle attack on a mountain during a brush fire (which gave me my 1000 yard stare), was writing and trying to manage federal grants.

The best call of all was providing fire protection for female demolition derby drivers at our county fair. It was an honor and a privilege to be of service to the finest flower of Appalachian womanhood, although the women in question could probably have walked through fire unscathed and punched their way out of any car wreck.

At the time, I kept saying, "Take me now, Jesus! It don't get no better than this!"

BAD FIREFIGHTING. I was taking fire service classes during the Bush administration's disastrous buildup to the unnecessary war in Iraq. I remember thinking at the time that this response to the post 9/11 world was like pouring gasoline on a structure fire filled with flammable toxic and hazardous materials.

Here's what the Red Cross has to say about the situation there today. Sample:

GENEVA, Switzerland (AP) -- The situation for civilians in Iraq is "ever-worsening," even though security in some places has improved as a result of stepped-up efforts by U.S.-led multinational forces, the international Red Cross said Wednesday.

It is difficult to determine the numbers of people killed in shootings, bombings and military operations, but the overall picture of what is happening the country has been steadily deteriorating, with numbers of refugees swelling, medical staff fleeing and other problems growing, a key official said.

Meanwhile, the Defense Department yesterday extended the tours of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

NEW FIG TREE NOTES. The latest edition of Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree is available. This one contains reflections on illness, cancer, mortality, healing, faith and all that kind of thing.

PUBLIC INVESTMENTS. Here's a good item by Max B. Sawicky in TomPaine.com about why public investments in research and infrastructure matter in helping the economy grow, a fact that seems to be lost on the Bush administration.

MEET AND CONSULT. WV Gov. Joe Manchin announced yesterday a new pilot plan to give state employees in three agencies more of a voice on the job. According to Phil Kabler in the Charleston Gazette,

Meet and consult committees will be set up in the Department of Administration’s Purchasing and General Services divisions, the Division of Highways, and the Regional Jail Authority.

Committee members will make recommendations on personnel issues and other policies to their department’s cabinet secretary, who in turn will send evaluations of the recommendations on to the governor’s office.

This is a positive step for WV's public employees.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED