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Category: ecology

ecology

An Unconsumed World

Published November 10, 2024 by cgerrish

unconsumed

One of the great difficulties of the first reign of terror was the degree to which it consumed all thought. For the duration of this next era of terror, my goal is to remain unconsumed.

Yesterday, I listened to three full operas: Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”, Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly”, and Wagner’s “Die Walkure”. I was not tempted to switch on cable news or check the algorithmic real-time feed to see “what was going on.” 

Instead, I employed this simple trick. I tuned in to Met Opera Radio and didn’t turn it off or switch away from it. I let it play.

This worked remarkably well in establishing an unconsumed world within the confines of my house.

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The Ethics of Feeding Wildlife

Published December 9, 2021 by cgerrish

Manatee

Animals living in the wild, is it ethical to feed them from the store of food from the human world?

How about manatees? Manatees are starving and people have started feeding them. What if we upset the ecological balance by artificially introducing manatee food into a small section of the biosphere? Could the balance ever be put right?

Before you answer, here’s a little background:

In 2016, about 8,800 manatees lived in the waters of Florida. In 2021, more than 1,000 have died. Manatees eat sea grass. The sea grass has been killed by algae blooms created by fertilizer runoff and human waste from septic systems.

The tipping point has arrived. What do we do? Can the balance ever be put right?

Manatees, Facing a Crisis, Will Get a Bit of Help: Extra Feeding

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And Yet…

Published November 7, 2021 by cgerrish

The phrase “as of yet…” captured by a machine made to capture the way light reflects from surfaces in a particular instant in the flow of time.

From Amor Towles’s novel “The Lincoln Highway.”

“The funny thing about a picture, thought Wooly, the funny thing about a picture is that while it knows everything that’s happened up until the moment it’s been taken, it knows absotively nothing about what will happen next. And yet, once the picture has been framed and hung on the wall, what you see when you look at it closely are all the things that were about to happen. All the un-things. The things that were unanticipated. And unintended. And unreversible.”

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From “Pure Act”

Published November 5, 2021 by cgerrish

From the Chapter “A Galapagos of the Spirit”

Robert Lax, Journal Entry

1970

“…what was to be kept going in life was an action: a dance, a song, an act of love. There were not ‘values’ to be remembered; there were not ‘laws’ to be remembered: there was a tone, a way, a kind of action. There were ways of doing things which people (having certain gifts) could compass. There was the wise man’s way and the fool’s way, the fiery man’s way and the slow man’s way. Naturally, the ways were not alike, but each man doing his action in his own way, was doing an action and was doing it in ‘the way’. ‘The way’ was to do it in confidence and love and truth. (And to do the thing, once decided, without hesitation).

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