Fish for Friday

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
(1825-1911), abolitionist,
poet, and author

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

History is bunk? "Why the GOP hates U.S. history: Inconvenient truths that freak out American conservatives." The right is losing its mind over new testing standards that aren't "patriotic" enough. Time for a history lesson! Opening paragraphs:

Conservative hero Ben Carson is worried about American teenagers joining ISIS. But it’s not because of “radical Islam.” It’s because of new high school history standards["Fox News' Ben Carson Thinks New AP U.S. History Course Will Make Students Join ISIS"].
    American’s right wing, you see, is terrified of history because it is always sentimentalizing it. Many of its arguments rely on a feeling of nostalgia for “good old days,” that appeals almost exclusively to aging whites. That means that a more accurate history, one that considers groups that are traditionally marginalized – women, people of color, Native Americans, immigrants and the poor – don’t necessarily sit that well. Their stories, the stories of the downtrodden, crush the false narrative that many conservatives like to imagine – that of a idyllic past marred by the New Deal, women’s liberation, and civil rights.

Our bees. Gone. A giant pesticide corporation wants the US government to increase the legal limit for its bee-killing pesticides by a colossal 40,000%.
    We've already lost more than half of our managed honeybee colonies, and scientists have pinpointed a major cause of the die-off. If Syngenta and its allies get their way, it could mean the complete decimation of our bees....
    Bees are diligent, unassuming creatures. They pollinate our crops, and are responsible for one out of every three bites of food we eat. It’s simple – no bees means no food for us.
    Now, the destruction of our bees has been pinned down to one class of pesticides called “neonics” – exactly the kind produced by Syngenta. They’re so harmful that these pesticides have already been banned in Europe. But rather than moving towards a ban, Syngenta wants to massively increase their use here in the US.
    Save the bees.

The 100th anniversary of the extinction of the American Passenger Pigeon will be commemorated on [the Yale] campus on Saturday, Oct. 11 with a daylong symposium and the North American premiere of a symphony to be performed by the Yale Symphony Orchestra (YSO). [Full story]

Elephants or Extinction, who are you standing with? We’re in the midst of a crisis. Illegal ivory trafficking is at its highest level in history — up by over 300 percent in the past decade! ["Illegal Ivory Trade Skyrockets — Up 300 Percent In Past Decade By Melissa Cronin," The Dodo 23 September 2014 "] At the rate we're going, African elephants may become extinct by the year 2025. The African elephant is a very important "keystone" species to its ecosystem. Some plants even need to be digested by an elephant before the seeds will germinate, including up to a third of tree species in their immediate habitat.

Right whales live on the knife's edge of extinction – after being brutally hunted by whalers in the 19th century, their numbers have never recovered. Only 450 are left in the world.
    Today they're one of the most endangered whales in the world – and with new threats like sonic booms from seismic testing that deafen and kill whales, right whales could be a few accidents away from being wiped out completely. [US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (2008 October 10). "Endangered Fish and Wildlife; Final Rule To Implement Speed Restrictions to Reduce the Threat of Ship Collisions With North Atlantic Right Whales." Federal Register, Volume 73, Number 198]
    Our government has admitted that right whales need more protections, [US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (2010 October 6). "Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Designating Critical Habitat for the Endangered North Atlantic Right Whale." Federal Register, Volume 75, Number 193] but without public pressure, they've dragged their feet on making any changes.
    Take action today [complete and send a form].

I'm fairly pessimistic, but more because I don't think our population and economy are sustainable. The political trash, and the idiots who support them, are always with us. We've usually more or less survived them, in the long run.

Something for Friday: "Mississippi Attorney General Opinion: City has no authority to ban open carry of firearms even in courtrooms." Excerpt:

We think laws exist that don’t exist. We think there are hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons in our state under Mississippi Law. The fact is, there are NO illegal weapons in our state under Mississippi Law. Fully automatic weapons and those sawed off below a certain length are illegal under federal law, but under Mississippi law, the violation is “Carrying a Concealed Weapon” under MCA 97-37-1 and the penalty for a slingshot is the same as for a firearm. Most of us are familiar with the Drinking and Driving Laws and the Open Container Laws in the State of Mississippi. If you agree with that statement, you are wrong. There are no state Drinking and Driving Laws or Open Container Laws, only Driving Under the Influence and Open Container Laws only exists as local ordinances.

Maybe going viral isn't the best thing for the GOP after all:

[Click to read the finer print]

Quoth, the [fish]:

If we as citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality; and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams. –Yann Martel, The Life of Pi

Part Scotland travelogue, part adventure sport documentary, 100% guts, daring and athleticism (best viewed at least at 480p quality, and crank up the volume to enjoy the atmospheric soundtrack):

    Thinking back to a day when many of us thought we were doing something nearly superhuman by riding mountain bikes down barren ski slopes in July, and thinking honestly about our ability versus our bravado, it is best for all of us that we were too old to ride before folks like Danny Macaskill showed us what riding we could have been doing. Or at least attempting to do.

Anyone who likes to drive has their favorite roads. Sometimes it's coastal roads, offering the driver that cool sea breeze, sometimes it's a winding forest road, filled with green life. Sometimes it's a hilly road, going up and down and all around. We all have our favorites. But there are some roads that just beg to be driven upon, while enjoying the view and the challenge. Here a road you should definitely check out!

Highway 1, Big Sur, California

State Route 1 (SR 1) is a major north-south state highway that runs along most of the Pacific coastline of the U.S. state of California. The highway is famous for running along some of the most beautiful coastlines in the USA, leading to its designation as an All-American Road. Highway 1 enters the Big Sur region crossing the San Carpoforo Creek just south of the Monterey County line.
    For about 90 miles (140 km) from the San Carpoforo Creek to the Carmel River, the road winds and hugs the cliffs of Big Sur, passing various coastal parks in the area. The road also briefly leaves the coast for a few miles and goes through a redwood forest in the Big Sur River valley.

Joseph Campbell on gods as metaphors:

Gods are metaphors transparent to transcendence. And my understanding of the mythological mode is that deities and even people are to be understood in this sense, as metaphors. It's a poetic understanding. It is to be understood in the same sense as Goethe's words at the end of Faust: "Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis" ("Everything transitory is but a reference"). The reference is to that which transcends all speech, all vocabularies, and all images. I think of the more prosaic style of thinking about these references as theological rather than mythological. In theology, the god is taken as a final term, a kind of supernatural fact. When the deity is not transparent, when he doesn't open up like that to the transcendent, he doesn't open up to the mystery that is the mystery of our own lives. –Joseph Campbell, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, p. 101

Possible foils for fencing with a Christian apologist (although battling the "True Believers," to slightly shift Hoffer's meaning, is best left to characters by Cervantes): "5 Reasons to Suspect Jesus Never Existed" [AlterNet]." Excerpt – opening paragraphs:

Most antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are “mythologized history.” In other words, they think that around the start of the first century a controversial Jewish rabbi named Yeshua ben Yosef gathered a following and his life and teachings provided the seed that grew into Christianity.
    At the same time, these scholars acknowledge that many Bible stories like the virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, and women at the tomb borrow and rework mythic themes that were common in the Ancient Near East, much the way that screenwriters base new movies on old familiar tropes or plot elements. In this view, a “historical Jesus” became mythologized.
    For over 200 years, a wide ranging array of theologians and historians – most of them Christian – analyzed ancient texts, both those that made it into the Bible and those that didn’t, in attempts to excavate the man behind the myth. Several current or recent bestsellers take this approach, distilling the scholarship for a popular audience. Familiar titles include Zealot by Reza Aslan and How Jesus Became God by Bart Ehrman.
    But other scholars believe that the gospel stories are actually “historicized mythology.” In this view, those ancient mythic templates are themselves the kernel. They got filled in with names, places and other real world details as early sects of Jesus worship attempted to understand and defend the devotional traditions they had received.
    The notion that Jesus never existed is a minority position. "Of course it is!," says David Fitzgerald, author of Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All.For centuries all serious scholars of Christianity were Christians themselves, and modern secular scholars lean heavily on the groundwork that they laid in collecting, preserving, and analyzing ancient texts. Even today most secular scholars come out of a religious background, and many operate by default under historical presumptions of their former faith....
    [The fourth of the 5 reasons:] The gospels, our only accounts of a historical Jesus, contradict each other.
    If you think you know the Jesus story pretty well, I suggest that you pause at this point to test yourself with the 20 question quiz at ExChristian.net....

I was brought up in the Christian faith until work took me away for a couple of weeks, and when I had to face a kangaroo court on my return, I did a complete about face and now question the logic behind all religions.

I've never been able to fathom how people form beliefs. Reason rarely seems to enter the process. True in many areas, not just religion.

One of the people I read everyday: Corey Robin on October 1, 2014, "Why I’m always on the internet…," quoting his friend Peter von Ziegesar:

Typically in the past the public intellectual, on the model of Susan Sontag, for example, or Norman Mailer, or Gore Vidal, lived in New York and published in esoteric journals, such as The New York Review of Books, or The Nation, and occasionally appeared on the Tonight Show. A friend of mine, Corey Robin, a professor at Brooklyn College who has written several books and fits the role of public intellectual perfectly, in my opinion, told me recently that he originally moved to New York City hoping to discover just such a vibrant pool of committed intellectuals to join and was disappointed when he couldn’t find it. It wasn’t until he started blogging and created his own website that he found that group of individuals he’d been looking for—on the Internet.

Practicing Armenian, I decided to write this poem for practice. The first words written in Armenian were from the proverbs of the Bible. I like the proverbs, so here's a poem called "Wisdom's Road":

իմաստւթյան ծանապարհը Wisdom’s Road
շատ ծանապարհներ Many roads
շատ տարիներ Many years
այնքան ւրախւթյւն So much joy
շատ արցւնքները Many tears

ժանանակն է որ ընկերների հետ Time for friends
ժանանակն է որ աշխատանքի Time for work

ժամանակն է գնալ ձկնորսւթյան Time to go fishing
մի նավակ ձեր հայրիկ in a boat with your Dad
երբ մենք բռնել մեծ ձւկ When we caught a big fish
ես տեսա որ նա ւրախ I knew he was glad

սիրել առանց վզրջի Love without end
վյանք առանց սահմաննզրի Life without limits
մի պահ սիրո է հավերժւթյւն A moment of love is eternity
փնտրւմ դւրս պատւհանը looking out the window
նայւմ երկնքի ամպերի looking at the clouds of heaven
փնտրւմ իմաստւթ յամբ searching for the wisdom
մի երկրւմ որի չւնի վերջ of a land that has no end

How times have changed. An under-age-18 male high school student has a threesome with two female teachers – one of whom is fairly hot, if the mugshot photo is legit – and people are worried about his being traumatized by the experience? "Louisiana Teachers Shelley Dufresne, Rachel Respess Charged In Student Sex Abuse Case." Seriously? As politically incorrect as it will be to say it, are we really supposed to believe this male student was somehow emotionally or physically injured by what seems to have been a VERY long night with two women? In the comments under the article, one wit perhaps best states the typical male perspective on the matter: "The victim was treated at a local hospital... for injuries to his wrist after a plethora of high fives from classmates."
    Of course, where the guy could be permanently harmed is he now has an unreal expectation of what sex will be like the rest of his life. Can you imagine the emotional trauma and potential depression of knowing you are only 17 and your sex life from there on will be downhill and one sad anticlimax after another? (Sorry, just HAD to fit in the pun.)

Limerick-inspired verse of the week:

Two female teachers and a boy – they sported!
They played all night, they on and on cavorted.
    Though their tryst came out
    there's not any doubt
that many such nights are never reported.

Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean