Earthtalk

                After enduring eighteen years living in a dysfunctional family under the reign of an abusive and violence-prone father, leaving home for college after graduation was like getting out of jail.   My senior year had been difficult and by the time graduation rolled around I was, for the second time in my teens, substantially depressed.  I spent the summer working at a local paper mill, performing each task assigned like a robot.  A year later I was told that my foreman had considered me the best worker he ever had come out of the local high school.  The perfect mill worker, a barely communicative zombie.

                Miraculously the fog lifted the moment I left home to attend college out of state.  Although I would be living with my brother and his wife, whose idea it had been for me to go to the college near them, I felt free.   Perhaps I felt a little too free.  By the end of my first semester I had spent all my mill earnings and flunked out with a 0.62 GPA.   My father called for my return, saying there was work available at the mill.  Desperate to avoid going back, I sought work in Sacramento but to no avail, I had to return home broke and embarrassed.

                Back in my father’s house I was now paying a punitive $70 a month room and board which, in 1962, was a good-sized chunk of my wages.  He did promise to return it all if I ever finished college.  I went back to work at the mill , settling into a job befitting a robot, a so-called roll wrap “machine” that consisted more of flesh than of metal.    It was lonely in town with all of my friends off at college.  Eventually I worried that I might be stuck in the mill like my father and grandfather were so I enrolled in two night courses offered by Oregon State University and held at the local high school.  This meant trading shifts on the nights the classes met which resulted in me working a double shift the next day and evening.   I managed to pull it off and in the end earned an A and a B which lifted my GPA back up over a 1.50 but not high enough to get into any of the state colleges I contacted.

                At the suggestion of my night school writing instructor I applied to a community college and was accepted on probation.   After two quarters and a GPA lifted to an astronomical 2.55, I was accepted into Portland State College (now University) two years after having started out at Sacramento State.  Six months later I was married. Three years later I quit school but returned after three months and a year later graduated with a respectable but not outstanding GPA but it was good enough to earn me a teaching assistantship at a college in Ohio.

                Kent State turned out to be a perfect fit for me and I flourished until the spring of 1970 when the Ohio National Guard gunned down13 students, killing four of them.  After the last ambulance passed by me I walked back to my office in a daze.  On the way I encountered two Guardsmen who stalked me  then searched my lunch bag before letting me continue.  The university was shut down just as I had begun to write my thesis.  Once faculty was allowed back on campus my advisor smuggled my data out a window to me and I was back in business.  All I wanted was to make it out and move to Boston where a teaching job awaited.

After two years of slave wages as an instructor in Boston, I headed back west to graduate school and ran into a buzz saw, a meat grinder that used graduate students as the meat.  My research went well but the coursework was up and down and the politics were deadly.  I got on the wrong side of two faculty members who succeeded in demolishing me during my oral exams.  Two years of research and my dream of earning a PhD and landing a tenure track position went up in flames.

                As a last gasp attempt, I talked my way into a nearby university just over the border in Idaho.  It was a breath of fresh air to once again be in a department that supported its graduate students instead of attacking them.  Two years later I completed my doctorate, became a father, and landed a tenure track position back at the university in Boston I had worked at earlier.  It had taken four colleges over a period of eight years for me to complete my bachelor’s degree.  My doctorate took two universities in two states over a period of five years to complete.  This may be an endurance record of some sort.  Oh, and my father never did offer to give me my rent money back.

# posted by Rockdoc @ 4:17 PM 0 comments

 How many of you have your job performance formally evaluated regularly, say three times a year, by teenagers? This is not a pretty sight and then to have the data taken seriously by supervisors makes matters even worse.  This is the life of college teachers and it works to undermine the quality of courses.  Faculty, especially those not yet tenured, are forced to cater to the fickle whims of students with customer satisfaction being more important than rigor.  Low evaluation numbers can torpedo a resume or a merit review.  Keeping them happy and entertained does wonders for evaluations scores while the quality and quantity of what is learned is rarely measured.  

10-7-18

# posted by Rockdoc @ 4:12 PM 0 comments

Dear Mrs. Eslinger and Storey,

I was greatly saddened to read about the hideous drowning of your husbands in the flood of raw sewage from a burst treatment plant tank in Gatlinburg, TN yesterday.  This event smells of incompetence and neglect on the part of the plant managers.    I am flushed with anger just thinking about poor John and Don inundated by spewing  sewage.   Whoever the turd was who placed these fine men in harm’s way should be sent to the bowels of the earth.  It really pisses me off and I am sure urine for a long period of mourning.  You must feel incredibly crappy about this and look forward to the day when shit hits the fan and justice is yours. If only we could wipe the slate clean and start over, but alas, we cannot.   This is a lot for you to digest but hopefully someday you will be able to purge your bodies of this rotten memory and move on with your lives.   

Sincerely,

Harry  Flushington

# posted by Rockdoc @ 4:10 PM 0 comments

Over the past two weeks I have spent 10 days in Providence in a very diverse neighborhood. I spent 4 or 5 hours each day sitting on a stoop while my son was moving his stuff from one apt to another in the neighborhood. My job was doorman and driver. As a result I was able to observe the rhythms of the neighborhood as each day progressed. It is an area in transition with many triple deckers divided up into apartments occupied by families and individuals of a wide variety of ethnic and racial makeup, mostly working class. The house across the street has an official police notice on the door that if they are called here again they will shut the place down. The note has been there for months. Gang-related issue, one shooting last year. Judging from the residents appearance and movements, the house to the left of this one appears to be running a call girl operation. As grim as this sounds, the street is overall peaceful and people of all persuasions tend to say hello when they walk by me on the stoop, many with dogs. This is in contrast to what I experience in Boston and Rockport. A large park is at the end of the street and fills with families and kids in a playground and young adults playing volley ball at three courts. Two female Asian teams compete at one of the courts. A farmer's market operates in the park on Thursdays. The headquarters for the Rhode Island Hells Angels is a block away from the other end of our move. A sign on a fence around their place reads "If you trespass here at night you will be found dead here in the morning." It is posted on their cycle garage which is watched over by a Pit Bull. The neighbors to my right appear to be selling drugs. Still, there are families on the street and the rhythm of the day is far calmer than one would imagine. Kids play on the sidewalk and people stroll by. Both areas of this neighborhood are vibrant and occupied by regular people for the most part, many of whom appear to be immigrants. Most middle and upper class whites in this country would avoid this neighborhood like the plague and yet here it is, a viable, blend of humanity living their lives as peaceful as they can but with a wary eye to, not the criminals, but the prospect of the gentrification that is creeping in slowly. Criminals can we dealt with or avoided but white folks with money are impossible to stop. If it continues, something of value will be lost here.

# posted by Rockdoc @ 4:08 PM 0 comments

Has the Covid-19 pandemic created pent-up desires in Americans to buy things?  Once we are again free to roam the malls will an explosion of consumption exceed even what went before?  Or, will the austerity induced by staying cooped up at home awaken in us an awareness that we can do very well with less?  Increasing materialism was a major concern among the chattering class in America during the 1950’s and 60’s. The post-WWII economic boom fueled in part by the GI Bill was in full swing and Americans were in a mood to spend.  In 1950 there were 25 million registered vehicles in America with no federal highway system on which to drive them.  The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 changed that, resulting in a system of freeways extending over 48,000 miles today. The number of registered vehicles rose to 67 million in 1958 and to over 273 million today. The number of vehicles per family rose from 0.58 in 1950 to 2.0 today. Thirty five percent of families now own three or more vehicles. 

The proliferation of cars, of course, is but one indicator of our runaway materialism.  Ask anyone over the age of sixty to compare what they have now to what their family had when they were children and you will be presented a long list of items.  More clothes, more food, more cars, more toys, more gadgets, and for many, more homes.  Our consumption expenditures have risen from about $1,100 annually per capita in 1947 to just over $44,000 in 2020.  What seems to be lost on most of us is that virtually every item you own comes with an environmental price tag. Most of the materials used to  construct them began life in a large hole in the ground.  Our consumption of natural resources has more than tripled over the past 40 years and is projected to more than double by 2050 if present trends continue.  We extract 25 tons of raw materials per capita, far more than other developed nations and eight times that of African nations.  Clearly, America’s rate of consumption is not sustainable. 

Probably the most over-looked natural resource required for a modern society to prosper is sand and gravel.  Without sand and gravel there is no concrete which would essentially halt construction of modern cities and highways.  Without sand there is no glass.  Sand is the most widely used natural resource after water.  As demand has exploded, sand has become an increasingly scarce resource around the world. In India, for example, “sand mafias” control the industry through illegal means including violence.  In Morocco, sand mafias invade coastal beaches and remove all the sand.  Here, sand is legally mined from stream channels and buried sand deposits, causing severe damage to ecosytems and water supplies.  Most sand today is dredged from the ocean floor, disrupting marine habitat, ocean currents, and often increasing erosion of nearby shores. 

Mining of all types is destructive by nature and a major polluter of surface and subsurface water. Our consumption of copper has doubled since 1975. Consumption of gypsum used in the manufacture of Portland cement and plaster, among other things, has nearly tripled since 1975.  This production requires massive excavations that devastate millions of acres of land, often in or near some of our most cherished landscapes.  The United States produces 16% of the world’s mining waste, most of which is piled on the ground, often in stream valleys near operating mines, where it pollutes surface and ground water for decades.

We can no longer afford to consume in ignorance.  We can no longer ignore the impact of our spending on the environment and those inhabiting it.  The day of reckoning is approaching far sooner than previously imagined, hastened by ongoing climate change.  Gone are the days of feel good environmentalism that does not address the systemic problems of government and an economy driven by rampant consumerism.  Government needs to enact and enforce strict controls on resource extraction and citizens need to pay attention and elect officials that will do so.  We need to scale back our consumption and profligate spending that requires ever-expanding exploitation of natural resources.   More is not better, it is destroying us. 

# posted by Rockdoc @ 4:03 PM 0 comments

 12-28-18

We lived on the northern Oregon coast for two years just prior to moving to Boston and saw elk frequently but I think they are even more numerous now.  I have little to no sympathy for humans when it comes to encounters with wildlife.  How many elk are killed by cars each year, and hunters?  Turnabout if fair play.  When you shrink their habitat and plant tasty flowers etc. and then get your panties in a wad when elk come into your yard and feast every morning, well boo-hoo.  The same goes for coyote paranoia out here.  Cats are tasty and the pickings are easy so stop fretting and marvel at the coyote's ability to adapt to urbanization of their habitat (and keep your cats inside at night).  We once shared a cabin with a family of skunks (they lived in the crawl  space) and learned not to annoy them and enjoyed watching them and their young climbing our woodpile on the porch.  We also shared a small cottage on the Oregon coast with skunks that learned how to open the door to the attic at the top of an exterior stairway.  Shortly after moving in we locked it to keep them out since they had been living up there for years and used one end as a toilet.

I once knew a man (now dead) who lived in Rockport and went to great lengths to keep squirrels away from his bird feeder.  He stretched a 40 foot wire between two trees and at the midpoint suspended a 5 foot line down on which was attached his precious bird feeder.  He said the squirrels still got to it so he started trapping them with Have-a-Heart traps which I thought was commendable.  When I asked him where he released them he pointed to a bucket full of water and said "in that".  I was disgusted, drowning squirrels!  That was the end of our relationship which was professional (we were in the early stages of planning a coauthored book).  We weren't seeing eye to eye on the book anyway.

As a young  boy living in rural Oregon, I owned BB guns and pellet guns and eventually a 22 and a shotgun.  I slaughtered wildlife until I was about 16 when a robin I had shot died a slow and agonizing death while I watched helplessly, out of BB's.  I could see the pain and terror in its eyes as it struggled while blood bumped from the hole in its chest.  Made me sob and I quit shooting birds and other small animals.  Stopped hunting ducks and pheasants not long after that but kept my shotgun right up to my second year of graduate school at Kent State.   A day or two after the killings on campus I took my shotgun and axe out back with plans to cut it up but Maggie stopped me for fear it would upset the neighbors.  I sold it to the guy who rented upstairs in the farmhouse we lived in. He was a gun freak and paranoid and was in the National Guard and I saw him on campus during the shootings, but he was not in the group doing the slaughter. He was thrilled to get the gun and gave me almost double ($25) what I asked for it ($15).  He gave the gun to his nephew.  I sort of wish I had chopped it up instead.

# posted by Rockdoc @ 3:38 PM 0 comments

                                                         America, the Legend

Since 2016 I have been increasingly surprised at how much influence America has around the world.  The words of our president have a far greater impact internationally than I suspected.  His actions and words are being parroted around the globe by wannabe and existing demagogues who no longer fear retribution from America for their heinous acts, from murder to undermining elections.  Our allies shudder in amazement while our enemies take advantage. This is a deeper influence than our economic, military, and cultural wingspan suggests.  

How deep our influence reaches was brought into sharp focus for me on a visit to South Africa for a geologic conference in 2001.  While touring KwaZulu-Natal the group passed through mostly rural areas with scattered villages and a few sizeable towns.  When we made stops along a road to view the local geology, if a village were near, children nearly always assembled near by, curious about what all these foreigners were doing.  At one stop, a large group of children had gathered about 30 meters away from our vans.  On an impulse I opened my window and extended my myself out while raising both arms high, and shouted "U.S.A.!"  Immediately the kids began screaming and laughing and jumping up and down shouting back "U.S.A!"  I was surprised at their enthusiastic response and wondered if it would be the same for another country so I did it again but yelled "China!" this time.  They stood silent and motionless,  looking at me with confused expressions.  So I tried "Italy!"  Same lack of response.  This was stunning, tangible proof that America means something more to the world than military and economic dominance.  

Our international standing has always rested on the proverbial 3-legged stool of money, military might, and moral rectitude.  Remove one leg and the stool tumbles.  Two of the legs, money and military might, are secure for the time being, but the third leg is being attacked from within by persons who are sworn to uphold it.  The Constitution is the embodiment of our moral rectitude and is looked upon around the globe as the single strongest buttress of truth and freedom.  Born during World War II, my formative years were lived during the heady times of American growth to world dominance and the belief in our rightful position as the beacon of light and moral goodness.  

I believed in that goodness right up until we entered the Vietnam War under false pretenses, a lie generated in the Gulf of Tonkin.  Trust in our government was, for me, finally obliterated by the murder of four students at Kent State by government forces in 1970.  Watergate added a final touch and that the perpetrators were brought to justice was only a temporary balm for our wounded morality.  Upending the elected government of Chile in 1973 and the Iran-Contra debacle further cemented my distrust.   Then there was the weapons of mass destruction lies that propelled us into the Iraq War that led directly to the destabalization of the entire Middle East and the rise of  Al-qaeda and ISIS.   And yet, somehow, though shaken, the widespread belief that we were the chosen ones, the city on the hill, prevailed.  the election of our first black president served as proof of our overriding goodness and the world rejoiced in amazement.  We again, seemingly had surged upward to occupy our rightful place as the world's moral compass.

Then the election of Donald Trump in 2016 blew this myth to pieces.  The world looked on in disbelief and amazement as our elected leader and his cohort undermined long held international agreements with allies and cozied up to dictatorial leaders.  It was as though your beloved aunt had suddenly gone crazy.  His lies and divisive rhetoric now serve as a model for demagogues globally.  The third leg of morality on which our country has stood for generations is being severely weakened.  The midterm election next week can slow the decline and the 2020 election may halt it but the damage will live on.  Repairs will be difficult and time-consuming and hopefully will make us a better  country than ever before, perhaps even a true beacon of truth and freedom.  

# posted by Rockdoc @ 3:32 PM 0 comments

I just read that 5 were killed and 6 wounded in a shooting at a Pentecostal church in Pretoria at 3 in the morning.  They arrested 40 people and suspect it was a feud between two factions in the church.  Why were people in the church at 3 AM?  Why were they even in a church during the pandemic?

# posted by Rockdoc @ 4:16 PM 0 comments

The last legal public hanging in North Dakota occurred in March, 1903 at the town of Bottineau.  The jury deliberated for an hour and fifteen minutes before finding the defendant guilty of murdering Thomas Walsh in his sleep because he wanted his horse.  He stole 3 of Walsh's horses afterward.  The murderer was 30 years old, married, and a father of several children.  He spent his last days praying and in the end said he was redeemed and ready for the "great adventure".  A large crowd had gathered for the execution. One account describes how a priest held a crucifix to the murderer's lips while the latter kissed it.  “The black cap was pulled down, the signal given.  Sheriff Gardner pulled the lever and the trap door dropped. He went down like a shot. His neck was broken, the report being plainly heard." 

So ended the life of my great great uncle, one William Robert Ross (aka Willie or Billy Bob). Ross feared that, if not hanged, he would return to his old criminal ways.  What was gained by executing Billy Bob, a man who claimed to fear living and was ready for death?  At least in those days there were no appeals, no long, expensive years on death row.  For such a cold-blooded murderer it seems that life in prison would have been a more appropriate punishment.  Our blood-lust and cult of revenge has deep roots.  Collectively, we are a mean-spirited people that committed genocide against Native Americans, lynched black men by the hundreds, are unwilling to give up our guns, and too damned willing to go to war.  We have yet to become fully civilized. 

The original death penalty for Boston bomber, Anzor Tsarnaev, was evidence of our desire to exact revenge, no matter what the costs. Wouldn’t life in prison for Tsarnaev have been substantial enough of a punishment? In fact, his sentence was thrown out in July, 2020 and reduced to life in prison. We are high on the list of countries that execute criminals, a distinction we share with China, Iran, Somalia, and Saudi Arabia.  As the wealthiest, most powerful, and, supposedly, most civilized country in history, is this the cohort with which we wish to be associated? 

It took a series of videos showing police murdering and beating black men for no good reason to awaken white America to what has been going on for decades.  The Black Lives Matter movement is amazing and just may make some real changes.  The fact that demonstrations have been continuous for about three months now is a good sign as is the widespread participation by whites.  Violence provoked at demonstrations by a small minority, however, is garnering all the media attention which does not bode well for the future of BLM.  The violence provides Trump with an excuse to crack down and pretend to be the law and order man. 

# posted by Rockdoc @ 4:08 PM 0 comments

LETTERS   Boston Sunday GLobe  August 2 2020

Wary eyes cast toward returning college students

The residents of Boston are rightfully concerned about the pending influx of college students this fall (“A wave of worry as college students begin annual influx while virus flares,” Page A1, July 26). The plans local colleges are making and the measures they are taking are commendable but doomed to fail. As a 42-year veteran of teaching college students in Boston, I can attest to the fact that many will not follow the rules. For proof, one need only look to the images of beaches, bars, and restaurants crowded with young people this summer.

By forging ahead into the unknown, colleges are putting us all at risk. Offering only online courses is the only safe approach. Colleges need to explain exactly why they are choosing preserving their bottom lines over the safety of students, faculty, staff, and the public.

# posted by Rockdoc @ 3:50 PM 0 comments