Looking through a dormant coin collection I discovered a surprise. While I very seldom add to the collection or for that matter even look at it, it is decidedly pre-decimilazation British monarchs. Imagine my excitement when I discovered a Wellington half penny. What caught my eye was the date — 1816.
Unclear Cuts: My Quixotic Quest to Chronicle the Labors of a “Working” Forest
I wonder how often the “generals” of forest-product corporations visit the clearcuts and view the devastation for themselves. And if they do, do they perceive their surroundings as the wreckage of an ecosystem or as a lawn that has been mowed, as easily regrown as grass?
Valentine for Flipper
One of the most important cultural centers in the ancient world was founded by a dolphin. According to a Homeric Hymn, the creature jumped aboard a ship sailing from Crete and commanded the mariners to build a sanctuary at Delphi. The animal was said to be a manifestation of the Greek god Apollo. Apollo Delphinios.
Haggis, Rabbie Burns and related musings
Burns was a man of the soil and a loyal and often visionary populist, disdainful of the upper and especially royalty-fawning classes which he observed caustically in many poems and prose-writings, and the church with it’s ever-shifting double standards of what was holy and what was not and came from peasant stock but was educated by his fairly benign –for the times- landowner factor who took an interest in his precocious intelligence. [Read More]
Surfing Pop Culture: Who Wants the Truth?
Does it even matter anymore that light sabers aren’t real? Or that Lance Armstrong used drugs to win races? Or that Manti Te’o’s dead girlfriend never existed? Or that faith, as the filmed LIFE OF PI suggests, needn’t be based on truth to be valid?
Arming educators is a bad idea
As an educator who teaches in a rural school district, I find the call for arming teachers and administrators following the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut both wrongheaded and counterproductive. Schools are supposed to be places of peaceful learning. I can’t imagine what it would be like to teach knowing that I or my colleague had a loaded pistol in the desk.
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The Evolution of a Personal Code of Ethics or What Will You Leave Behind Stevie-Dean?
It seems to me in light of the current culture and politics of America that perhaps it is time for me, and maybe others, to actually examine their own ethics and how we live our lives prior to condemning others for the way they lead theirs. Perhaps if we work harder to become our better selves then our communities and our country can evolve into better versions of themselves as well. [Read More]
The Blight of Consumerist America
When I drive by this area, I’m struck by how incredibly similar it looks to almost every other suburban location I’ve been to in the entire country – paved, beige, and offering the same products. Proponents of the developments point to “job creation” and “affordable merchandise” as the logic behind their construction. I point to something slightly less tangible: cultural and economic death. [Read more]
Evergreen Testament
Suddenly I feel like I’m standing on sacred ground. My sense of kinship with the place expands in the company of cedars, some large enough to barely get my arms around. I press my palms against the taut skin of their trunks. I revel in the scent of sprigs picked up from earth their kind have nourished for lifetimes.
The Fundamental Constant Root
Way back when I was in high school, while most students went out and played after lunch, I sat in a classroom and did math problems with the Math Team. Yes, geek I was, and still am. Even then, I was gearing up for a life in academia (I now work at Clatsop Community College). Here, for the first time, I am reprinting the beginnings of a major paper that could have gone on to shake the very foundations of mathematics, science and engineering.
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