Photographer @joelsartore records an endangered gray woolly monkey named Prince William at Brazil’s Mantenedor da Fauna Silvestre Cariuá. High up in the treetops of cloud forests, these primates spend much of their day traveling in search of food, using their long, prehensile tails to bridge gaps between trees. Click here to see “Prince William!”
In describing climate consequences—the ones more serious than hotter summers—I feel as if I am describing top-down cascading failures. The classic example is the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, which in 2001 had collapsed, floor after floor, down to the ground—this despite the fact that all the initial damage had been confined to their upper floors. Debris from a high-level event could damage structural elements far below, with incalculable results.
Create potential energy and it can be turned into kinetic energy. “The bigger [or higher] they are, the harder they fall.”
Here is a recent opinion piece by Umair Haque, of the kind you will not usually encounter in the US’s main-stream media (though he does write for the Harvard Business Review); it captures the anticipated climate consequences better than anything I have written.
“Covid required governments to step in and provide relief to entire societies. But that’s nothing compared with the [climate and ecological] catastrophes to come. Those catastrophes won’t just cause lockdowns, they’ll render entire states and cities and regions unlivable, burning them, sinking them, turning them into deserts and swamps. Governments will have to step in, yet again. They’ll have to invest huge, huge sums to try and repair all the damage of climate and ecological catastrophe.”
You may think, as I often do, that Umair overdoes the shock value in his conclusions (he is usually writing, after all, in the style of a regretful tirade), but he precedes his pronouncements with history: you cannot say they can’t happen, as he has just reminded you that similar situations have happened multiple times before. You might disagree with how evil he paints the present-day GOP, while agreeing with him that evil is certainly the direction they are heading. –WHC
If It Feels Like Civilization is Beginning to Die a Little More Every Day, That’s Because It Is
by Umair Haque
Is it just me? I have this bad, bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. And the more I think about it, I have to be up front with the thought which keeps nagging away at me. It goes like this. Our civilisation is now entering a death spiral.
Maybe it’s just me. Or maybe you feel it, too. Let me try and explain the thoughts I’ve been having.
How do civilisations die? Why does it feel like ours is? It’s not just hundreds of millions doing TikTok dances while the planet burns. It’s not even billionaires cackling all the way to the bank at how proles have chosen self-destruction over renewal. It’s about a death spiral. An interlinked domino effect, a cascade of economic, political, social, and cultural ruin.
I can see that cascade, that domino effect, everywhere I look now. And the problem is, just like dominoes falling, once it begins, made of self-accelerating feedback effects…it’s unstoppable.
So. How will our civilisation die? Well, probably something a lot like this. The last two years of Covid, in fact, give us plenty of clues — and dire omens, too.
As climate change and ecological apocalypse bite down, huge sums of money will have to be spent to repair the damage they do. Think Covid, but on a mega-scale. Covid required governments to step in and provide relief to entire societies. But that’s nothing compared with the catastrophes to come. Those catastrophes won’t just cause lockdowns, they’ll render entire states and cities and regions unlivable, burning them, sinking them, turning them into deserts and swamps. Governments will have to step in, yet again. They’ll have to invest huge, huge sums to try and repair all the damage of climate and ecological catastrophe.
This December we have two very special events happening in Freeway Park. Both events are free, and open to the public.
Our first event is this Thursday’s Freeway Park Illuminated, the opening party for our wayfinding art installations. This event highlights seven different illuminated art installations in the park. Each piece, created and installed by local artists, has been selected to bring beauty, light, and warmth to the park during these winter months. Each piece incorporates the theme of “wayfinding”, or “finding one’s way through challenging times”. More information about the art installations can be found here.
Our second big December event is Twinkle Twinkle. We’ll be celebrating the winter holiday season with festive treats and entertainment from holiday carolers. Warm up by our bonfire, roast s’mores, sip cocoa, and enjoy the holiday lights in Seneca Plaza!
At Twinkle Twinkle we’re organizing a cookie decorating craft activity and collecting winter clothing donations, all to be donated through local organizations to community members experiencing homelessness in our city.
Additionally, we have a regular program this winter, Cozy Corner, which runs from 12pm to 2pm in Seneca Plaza on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We’re also running an ongoing winter donation drive to collect warm clothing, hygiene products, and supplies for our community members living without shelter in Seattle.
You can rsvp to all of our events on Facebook here. We hope you can join us in the park this winter. Please forward this info to any interested residents, customers, or contacts, and have a wonderful holiday season.
Ed note: My friend and colleague, Dr.Randy Curtis, has been diagnosed with ALS of the brainstem. His speech now sounds like he may be drunk. He will face swallowing and progressive respiratory problems–how ironic for a leading critical care and palliative care physician leader and researcher. Randy has been at the forefront of palliative care training at the Cambia Palliative Care Center based at the UW and Harborview. In this article he finds himself on the “other side”–as a patient. He reflects on life lessons in this recent article.
This last weekend, likely on SaturdaySunday morning or later this week, weather permitting, they will be inserting two four more sections into the tower crane, raising the top by four eight stories. Most of the action can be seen on the level of our 26th floor observation deck, and as close as most observers ever get. They start early, about 5AM. Take hot coffee.
The order seems to be:
The wrap-around blue cage is now down about the 26th floor, above the new gray support collar. It was lifted to the top and was attached to the bottom of an existing tower section.
Then they carefully balance the horizontal crane so that nothing tilts as they loosen the bolts between the two top sections.
Then they can push up the top of the tower from below, with the cage still surrounding the ascending vertical. This stops when they have made enough room for a new two-story-tall blue tower section to be inserted through the west-facing opening in the cage. Its bottom is bolted to the section below.
The process will repeat for a second inserted section, but with using a scissor lifting mechanism (visible on the east side with its control panel).
Things can go wrong in this process, if you recall the crane that fell across Mercer Street two years ago, killing two drivers and two ironworkers. While the horizontal section is too short to touch Skyline East during ordinary operation, a tower bend at half-height could reach us if the fall line is toward the south. Hopefully, they will have the good sense to point the horizontal beam westward so the fall line would be into a parking lot.
From our everyday observation, this contractor’s safety culture seems quite good. But this will be an ironworker crew sent by the crane’s owner. The Morrow crew for the 2019 Mercer Street collapse, during similar procedures to shorten their tower crane, removed some 50 bolts (pins) in advance of need, allowing the vertical to bend in a wind gust (23 mph gusts had been reported). It was standard procedure at Morrow, the crane operator. Four people died. You’d think that would have resulted in a criminal prosecution for reckless endangerment. The city and state safety standards are, apparently, not very high when it comes to tower cranes.
It’s once again that time of year to repost this legendary Art Buchwald article, first published in the International Herald Tribune in 1952, and reprinted by the IHT on many Thanksgivings for many years, by the Washington Post in 2005 and by the New York Times in 2006. Enjoy! And Happy Thanksgiving!
Le Jour de Merci Donnant (or Le Grande Thanksgiving or Chacun à son goût on Thanksgiving)
By Art Buchwald
This confidential column was leaked to me by a high government official in the Plymouth colony on the condition that I not reveal his name.
One of our most important holidays is Thanksgiving Day, known in France as le Jour de Merci Donnant.
Le Jour de Merci Donnant was first started by a group of Pilgrims (Pélerins) who fled from l’Angleterrebefore the McCarran Act to found a colony in the New World (le Nouveau Monde) where they could shoot Indians (les Peaux-Rouges) and eat turkey (dinde) to their hearts’ content.
They landed at a place called Plymouth (now a famous voiture Américaine) in a wooden sailing ship called the Mayflower (or Fleur de Mai) in 1620. But while the Pélerins were killing the dindes, thePeaux-Rouges were killing the Pélerins, and there were several hard winters ahead for both of them. The only way the Peaux-Rouges helped the Pélerins was when they taught them to grow corn (mais). The reason they did this was because they liked corn with their Pélerins.
In 1623, after another harsh year, the Pélerins‘ crops were so good that they decided to have a celebration and give thanks because more mais was raised by the Pélerins than Pélerins were killed by Peaux-Rouges.
Every year on the Jour de Merci Donnant, parents tell their children an amusing story about the first celebration.
It concerns a brave capitaine named Miles Standish (known in France as Kilomètres Deboutish) and a young, shy lieutenant named Jean Alden. Both of them were in love with a flower of Plymouth called Priscilla Mullens (no translation). The vieux capitaine said to the jeune lieutenant :
“Go to the damsel Priscilla (allez tres vite chez Priscilla), the loveliest maiden of Plymouth (la plus jolie demoiselle de Plymouth). Say that a blunt old captain, a man not of words but of action (un vieux Fanfan la Tulipe), offers his hand and his heart, the hand and heart of a soldier. Not in these words, you know, but this, in short, is my meaning.
“I am a maker of war (je suis un fabricant de la guerre) and not a maker of phrases. You, bred as a scholar (vous, qui êtes pain comme un étudiant), can say it in elegant language, such as you read in your books of the pleadings and wooings of lovers, such as you think best adapted to win the heart of the maiden.”
Although Jean was fit to be tied (convenable à être emballé), friendship prevailed over love and he went to his duty. But instead of using elegant language, he blurted out his mission. Priscilla was muted with amazement and sorrow (rendue muette par l’étonnement et las tristesse).
At length she exclaimed, interrupting the ominous silence: “If the great captain of Plymouth is so very eager to wed me, why does he not come himself and take the trouble to woo me?” (Où est-il, le vieux Kilomètres? Pourquoi ne vient-il pas aupres de moi pour tenter sa chance?)
Jean said that Kilomètres Deboutish was very busy and didn’t have time for those things. He staggered on, telling what a wonderful husband Kilomètres would make. Finally Priscilla arched her eyebrows and said in a tremulous voice, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, Jean?” (Chacun à son goût.)
And so, on the fourth Thursday in November, American families sit down at a large table brimming with tasty dishes and, for the only time during the year, eat better than the French do.
No one can deny that le Jour de Merci Donnant is a grande fête and no matter how well fed American families are, they never forget to give thanks to Kilomètres Deboutish, who made this great day possible.
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When it comes to Thanksgiving favorites, research shows Americans rank cranberry sauce squarely in the middle between all-stars like turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing, and less popular dishes like turnips and tofu.
This still translates to more than 67 million cans of Ocean Spray’s jellied cranberry sauce sold each year between Thanksgiving and Christmas. (Ocean Spray dominates the market with roughly 70% share.)
If you’re among the 76% of American consumers who have purchased cranberry sauce for the holidays, per Ocean Spray, you may have noticed you have to flip the can over to open it. For years, I’ve wondered why. This year, I finally got to the bottom of it.
One whole log
A spokesperson for Ocean Spray told me this is no accident. The cans are intentionally filled and labeled with the rounded edge on the top and the sharper edge on the bottom because “there’s an air bubble vacuum on the rounded side, which makes it easier to get the sauce out in one whole log” after the can is flipped.
You read it here first: “Head space” remains at the top of the can as the sauce gels, which is vital to easily removing it later.
“The consumer then can swipe the edge of the can with a knife to break the vacuum and the log will slide out,” the spokesperson added.
The sauce gels thanks in part to cranberries’ natural pectin, a polymer that helps “glue the plant cells together,” as noted in this explainer on the science behind cranberry sauce.
“When cranberries are cooked, their pectin polymers tangle and interact, forming a net that traps dissolved sugar molecules so they can’t flow,” Scientific American explained.
In fact, pectin is commonly used as a thickener to set jams and jellies of all kinds. It’s also why cranberry sauce jiggles—and why it might otherwise be hard to get out of a can in one fell swoop.
An Elementary School Teacher had twenty-six students in her class. She presented each child in her classroom the 1st half of a well-known proverb and asked them to come up with the remainder of the proverb. It’s hard to believe these were actually done by first graders. Their insight may surprise you. While reading, keep in mind that these are first-graders, 6-year-olds, because the last one is a classic!
An Ellensburg doctor removed her mask as she entered a small medical exam room in October and began signing a COVID-19 vaccine exemption form for a first-time patient, without asking a single question about her medical history.
The only way most workers who were opposed to being vaccinated against COVID-19 could potentially keep their jobs was to seek a religious or medical exemption before the Oct. 18 deadline. But such medical exemptions required documentation from a licensed physician, like Dr. Anna Elperin.
“Patient Taylor Mirfendereski due to a medical condition is exempt from getting the COVID-19 Vaccination,” wrote Elperin, a doctor of osteopathic medicine and the owner of the functional medicine clinic, Awake Health, in Ellensburg.
Credit: Awake Health / KINGA letter, signed by Dr. Anna Elperin on Oct. 11, 2021, exempts an undercover journalist from getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
The patient, undercover KING 5 investigative reporter Taylor Mirfendereski who visited Elperin’s Kittitas County office on Oct. 11, does not have a medical condition that precludes her from getting the COVID vaccine.
But Elperin never asked Mirfendereski if that were true. And she wrote her the exemption.
For a $150 cash fee, Elperin filled out and signed her name on three separate exemption forms that excused the undercover reporter from following local and state COVID mask and vaccine mandates because of doctor’s orders.
Dr. Esty is a psychotherapist and the author of “Eightysomethings: A Practical Guide to Letting Go, Aging Well and Finding Unexpected Happiness.”
Another Covid winter looms, but this moment of the pandemic feels hopeful. At age 87, I’m becoming reacquainted with the social life I had put on pause for many months. I’m going out to restaurants and museums, attending church and visiting my grandchildren who live in a neighboring town. I’ve always seen myself as a risk-taker and an optimist. But every day as I venture out, there’s a drumbeat in mind, a constant accompaniment: “Is this too risky for me?”
But if the risk of getting sick with Covid-19 is holding me back, there’s something even stronger drawing me out: the fear of not making the most of my remaining time, my “one wild and precious life,” as the poet Mary Oliver described it.
Life expectancy is just six years at my age. I want to spend my remaining time traveling, going to parties with friends and seeing all my far-flung grandchildren. I’m overjoyed that my retirement community has reopened. The dining room serves meals again, and I’ve joined both a dance and a tai chi class. I want to enjoy it all now. Time speeds up as you age. One 90-year-old friend put it this way: “What do I have to lose?” Those of us in our 80s and older are used to having death for a neighbor.
That’s not to say I’m living without fear. Though I’m confident that my triple shots of the vaccine will protect me, I’m not the same person I was before the pandemic. You feel vulnerable when you’re repeatedly reminded that people age 65 and older are at a higher risk of dying from Covid-19 and that the risk increases with age. I have some fear of crowds and large gatherings, and I’m reluctant to touch other people. The pain and suffering of the world are with me in a way they never were before, and I am now all too aware that what we take for granted as normal can change in an instant. But I am ready to move forward.
While Covid-19’s toll has been felt by everyone, pandemic living for people in our 80s was different. Yes, our risk of getting sick or dying from Covid was far greater. But nonetheless, I was able to keep my equanimity. People my age are resilient; after all, we were children during World War II.
Because the pandemic forced me and my peers to be so sheltered, daily life became, ironically, stress-free and, for some of us, boring. In March 2020 my boyfriend and I were told that we could not keep going back and forth between our two retirement-community apartments. We decided in a few minutes that he would move in with me. That hasty decision meant we lived pleasantly together through the long months of quarantine, reading books and playing word games. I wrote on my blog about aging, and I spoke to my psychotherapy clients over Zoom. Dinner was delivered to our door.
It was not the same for my adult children or many of my therapy clients, most of whom are in their 40s, 50s and 60s. Their stress levels were extraordinary. Some took precautions to the extreme and disinfected their groceries. One of my clients, who was working a full-time job while managing her children’s schooling from home, told me she could “sleep for three years.”
Many of my younger clients seem very cautious about returning to more normal living. They tell me they are taking it slow. Often, it’s much slower than us elders. One client in her 40s told me that she’s “really looking forward to going to a restaurant and eating inside.” (I have already been to six or seven restaurants.) Until very recently, whenever we visited my son and daughter-in-law, they had us sit in chairs in their driveway. In my book clubs and writers’ group, it is some of the younger women who don’t want to meet in person.
Some adult children of 80-somethings have become bossy and even tyrannical in their concern over their parents’ safety. My friend was told by her two grown children that she could not leave her house under any circumstances. Her children shopped for her food and took her to the doctor. But she was starved for human companionship and became resentful. After many decades of living, we know with absolute certainty that relationships and enjoying time with the people we love are what matter the most in life.
Living into your 80s was not very common until relatively recently. But today, people my age are doing all sorts of things — hiking the Appalachian Trail, falling in love, writing poetry for the first time or helping to resettle Afghan refugees. Being in your 80s doesn’t mean you have to focus on survival. It is a time to enjoy a full life. And that’s what I’m ready to do.
At Friday’s (November 19, 2021) Civic Engagement Meeting there was a brief discussion about redistricting, and there appeared to be some interest in the possibility of inviting Brady Walkinshaw, a member of the State Redistricting Commission to join us in January for a discussion of the process, and possibly why the Commission was unable to meet its statutory deadline. For those of you who may have forgotten your high school civics course, following the decennial census, Congressional seats are reallocated to reflect population changes. Each state and its subordinate jurisdictions (cities and counties) are also obligated to assess, and when appropriate, change boundary lines for Congressional, Legislative and City and County district seats. The method of conducting this process varies by state. Washington State uses a Citizens Commission to perform this task, in other states the matter is left to the State Legislature. The Washington State Redistricting Commission was unable to reach agreement by the required deadline, and the matter has now been referred to the Washington State Supreme Court. King County and the City of Seattle each have their own redistricting commissions who are engaged in their own redistricting process. If you are interested in further information you may find what you’re looking for at the following websites: Washington State Commission: https://www.redistricting.wa.gov King County Commission: https://kingcounty.gov/independent/districting.aspx City of Seattle Commission: http://www.seattle.gov/redistricting NOTE: If you have specific questions you would like addressed if we are able to bring a speaker to the community, please forward them to jimsanders1947@gmail.com.