Africans we adore

Most people like flowers and trees. Very few like the Latin names for flowers. But I may be able to get you interested.  Stick with me. If you wanted to name a tree, you would probably go with some interesting character of the tree, right?  So a tree which smelled a bit after you cut it and which had reddish bark might be called red stinkwood. Or, if the fruit looked a bit like a plum and was found in Africa, call it African plum.

A botanist would name it after a species it appears related to.  When Gustav Mann with explorer Richard Burton found a new species in the mountains of Cameroon during our Civil War, he shipped it back to William Hooker at Kew Gardens for classification.  Hooker decided that the fruit looked similar to those in a genus called Pygeum.  The name pygeum comes from a Greek word, πυγή, “rump, buttock”, because the two lobes of the fruit resemble the human gluteus maximus muscles.

These pygeum fruits might be called callipygian if they are extremely good looking buttocks.  Or they might be called steatopygian if they are extremely big.  These are the names used to describe the hind end of humans.  The earliest known human inhabitants of the area where red stinkwood grows (the Khoi or bushmen) just happen to often be extremely steatopygian.  In fact they are so steatopygian that some were displayed like zoo animals in Europe in the 1800s. So that is why the African prune was initially classified as a species in the Pygeum genus. One can surmise that Hooker just had bottoms on his mind.

Gorillas love the fruit of Pygeum and it grows in the mid-altitude 3000-6000 mountain forests where gorillas like to hang out.

Lowveld Botanical Gardens

Pygeum africanum used to be widely dispersed in Africa—wherever there are high enough and wet enough mountains.  But the bark contains medicines which Europeans covet. European money and African corruption led to the near extinction of the species.  Today it is protected by international law and sustainable harvesting techniques have been developed.

When you strip the bark off a tree to dry, grind and sell, just leave half to two thirds of the bark in place.  This will enable the tree to continue to move water from the soil up to its leaves and so survive.  When the bark grows back in 3-5 years, you can strip off the side you left.  This is only profitable to the harvester if he can be sure the tree will be safe until he comes back in a few years to harvest the next time.  Otherwise, the sensible approach is just to strip all the bark off and maximize profits.

Since land tenure is tenuous where P. africanum grows, most harvesters just strip off all the bark and kill the tree.  Until commercial plantations are established, this is likely to continue to be the case.  Until more profit can be made by keeping the trees alive, they will be killed.

It’s similar with gorillas.  Gorillas were killed for meat and medicine until they grew so rare that people would pay huge bucks to see them.  They became worth more alive than dead.

It happens that one of the most interesting studies of Pygeum africanum relied on data from the Bwindi (“impenetrable”)) Forest in Uganda, where more than half the surviving mountain gorillas live.  Marchant and Taylor (1997) did a pollen analysis on and radiocarbon-dated two core samples from montane Mubindi Swamp in Uganda at 2,100 m (6,900 ft) altitude between mountain ridges in Bwindi Forest National Park. They found that Pygeum africanum has been in the catchment continuously since their Pollen Zone MB6.1, dated about 43,000–33,000 years ago.

If you read the article, you will find them using the name Prunus africana because botanists now believe red stinkwood is more closely related to plums and peaches than to other pygeums.  DNA studies have not yet been reported to confirm the relationship.  So until then, I will continue to use pygeum, just because I like the word.

By the way, steatopygia has not been found in gorillas or any other ape, just as a colorful tail is found in peacocks but not in woodpeckers. However, baby gorillas do look very human.

Springtime means wildflowers at Scattering Fork

Around here (the deciduous forests of the temperate latitudes), wildflowers are the first to announce Spring. Harbinger of Spring (Ereginia bulbosum) is the very first. It’s a barebones flower. Hardly any petals at all, just dots of the reproductive parts: stamen and pistil. Hence the common name “salt and pepper.”

But since it is already April, you won’t see salt and pepper at the Wildflower Day from 2-5 today, Sunday April 16 at Scattering Fork. You might spot its leaves. Even more likely, you’ll spot the distinctive “trout lily” leaves that look like spotted trout and the lovely leaves of bloodroot and the aptly named “Dentaria” leaves which look like sharp teeth. But their flowers are about all gone.

What you will see are three species of violets: yellow, purple and, my favorite, blue-eyed Mary.

You’ll be lucky if you get to Scattering Fork today, you’ll see huge colonies of blue eyed Mary. The purple and even yellow violets are more adapted to open ground, but you have to go to the deep woods to get the best.

A rival in uniqueness is wake robin (Trillium sessile). It is most often three deep purple petals which look like three hands folded in prayer. There is also a white variant, but it’s rare.

Another spring wildflower with a great name is “sweet William.” It’s genus is Phlox, but its been domesticated and turned into dozens of species you can see in gardens everywhere. The wild variety at Scattering Fork is Phlox divarcata–a lean version of the showy and plump garden varieties.

Besides the ubiquitous spring beauties, the only white flower you’ll find at Scattering Fork in early Spring is false rue anemone (Enemoim biternatum). It looks a lot like rue anemone, but always has 5 white petal-like sepals, while rue anemone always has far more.

Another white species like ground less wet than Scattering Fork, but one spectacular one you can see it on higher ground nearby: Dutchman’s britches (Dicentra cucularia). All the kids and many adults love this one. Many have related Dicentra species in their gardens. They all have distinctive flowers. This one looks like pants hanging on a clothesline.

Dutchman’s britches with a few spring beauties thrown in.

The only yellow flower at Scattering Fork this time of year is swamp buttercup (Ranunculus septentrionalis). A long name for a flower good for rubbing yellow pollen on friend’s noses.

One plant which has just emerged and will flower soon is mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum). Huge colonies have sprung up in the last few days from their tubers. They grow one year as single leaves. In the second year they get two leaves and a flower bud emerges from the axil where the two leaves come together. You’ll find the buds today at Scattering Fork and the flowers soon.

Buds emerging between two leafed Mayapples.

Wildflowers aren’t all you’ll find at Scattering Fork today. You might see the brown swirling flowers of paw paw on small trees. There will be lots of deer and raccoons, though you may only see tracks. If you get really lucky you might find a box turtle just emerged from hibernation. No matter what you find, you’ll be glad you came.

When healing is impossible, try transformation

To the young, a small cut is nothing. It heals up in no time. Older organisms get cuts which don’t heal. Cells within the wound work against healing. The whole area must be cut out so that the organism can heal.

We are at that stage as a nation. The nation has a deep wound which is festering. Two vociferous camps each are convinced they have the truth and their opponents are evil and must be eradicated. One of these camps has dug out a niche in our universities and from there has infected government and business. This camp is known by the acronym DEI, though DIE is more apropos since its goal is to destroy an evil nation. The legions of diversity, inclusion and equity folks do begin with one correct assumption.

Four stages of the adaptive cycle of ecologically resilient systems.

America has many flaws and has made many mistakes. We must not forget those sins and insure they never happen again. But the DIE folks take “never forget” to an entirely new level. DIE folks pick at the scabs of slavery and colonialism and regime change and won’t let them heal. They want these wounds to be wider and deeper. They encourage people to see themselves as victims, not as healers.

They are a power of destruction, similar to the Indian god Shiva. Shiva’s role is to destroy the universe in order to re-create it. But the re-creation cannot be done by Shiva or the DIE destroyers. The only thing they create is a powerful alliance of DIE trainers and administrators who feed on healthy tissue created by others. Their common goal is subversion of the present system to make all sectors of society feed the beast which is DIE. They have much in common with authoritarian zealots in many countries who have hijacked nations for their own benefit.

I saw that first hand in an organization I worked with for thirty years. For most of those years, it was a creative force, moving our agriculture and food systems toward more resilience, sustainability, diversity and opportunity. But the forces of DIE gradually seeped in from academia until the focus of all its programs was undermining all white farmers and the incurably racist agricultural institutions of America. Since the vast majority of US farmers are white and male, their overt denigration has created a less and less effective organization.

The destroyer god Shiva is countered by Vishnu, the preserver and protector. He is conservative. His counterparts in America sees the good in America and seek to preserve it. These folks have dug in their heels and revile and reject the DIE folks at every turn. They are convinced that the DIE folks are evil and must be eradicated.

But Shiva and Vishnu, destroyer and preserver are both aspects of Brahma, the creator god. In ecological resilience, preservation, destruction and creation are united in a cycle which leads to continued adaptation to disturbances. All organisms and species have periods of rapid growth, followed by maturity, which is interrupted by disruption. Then reorganization/rebirth/re-creation brings the cycle back to rapid growth.

The trimurti of Hinduism: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, three aspects of ultimate reality (Brahman).

In India today thousands of temples are devoted to Shiva and Vishnu, but only two to Brahma. Similarly in the US, we have many devoted to DIE and many devoted to conservatism, but few devoted to building a “more perfect union.”

Our nation has a wound which cannot be healed. The rift between the DIE crowd and the conservatives is too wide. And their mutual demonization insures that neither group can heal the rift.

A third force of reorganization and re-creation is needed. It will recognize the wrongs done in the name of America, but it will not vilify most of the nation as irredeemable. Instead, new institutions will be created based on the assumption of redemption. And DIE folk who vilified other races and groups must also repent in order to be a part of the redemption.

Redemption and repentance are a part of Christianity, but they are present in all religions and in the science of ecological resilience. Resilience is achieved only when past mistakes are recognized and transformation achieved which mitigates and adapts to disturbance. The DIE disturbance can be overcome only through new institutions which are more effective than DIE-infected entities.

Of course, its also possible that the DIE crowd and the conservatives will continue to demonize each other and make the wound fester and no creative new institutions arise. Then the nation continues its descent into the extinction which occurs for all non-resilient species, cultures and organizations.

We are all Ethiopians?

Twenty years ago, I realized all Northern European peoples are Ukrainian. When the ice age descended and glaciers covered most of Europe, a small section of Ukraine, now the disputed Crimea, was a place of refuge for Europeans. As the glaciers retreated, this remnant spread out over the whole continent. Later waves of migration brought genetics from other regions, but Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Scotland remain mostly descendants of people originating in what is now Ukraine. We know all this because of a unique Y chromosome. Unlike all other chromosomes, the Y does not undergo exchange of genetic material in meiosis. It remains pure and intact. And the Y chromosome which originated in Ukraine during the depths of the ice age is the same one most Northern Europeans have today. So we are all Ukrainian, in one small part at least.

Reputed human ancestor Lucy as reconstructed at Cleveland Museum by their Ethiopian director, Yohannes Haile-Selassie.

But from whence came those people living in Ukraine in the ice age? If you believe many prominent paleontologists, all members of our species came from the same place: Ethiopia. I’m back in Ethiopia now in February 2023 and the wonderful and efficient Ethiopian Airlines used that theme on a commercial played before every one of its huge collection of great movies. I heard it so many times that I decided to check out the evidence.

I’d love it if all airlines were as efficient and friendly as Ethiopian is. And I’d love it if all peoples were are friendly and welcoming as the Ethiopians. But is this country the source of all humans? In one of their great museums here, they do have Lucy, a famous skeleton of any early hominid which some say is an ancestor of man. But no one contends Lucy is really human, even though she is more famous than most of us. She is even painted on many of the new cabs driving around Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa..

To find the first humans, most scientists rely on DNA and try to trace back changes in the human genome as far as they can. Two types of DNA are most useful. The Y chromosome noted above and the mitochondrial genome. Both of these do not change through recombination in meiosis. So they have remained relatively intact and pure compared to the rest of the genome which gets mixed up every time a human produces sperm or eggs. All mitochondria we have come from our mothers. Our Y chromosome comes from our fathers.

If you trace the Y and mitochondrial DNA back, there is a most recent common male and female ancestor. So all humans have a common maternal ancestor of our mitochondrial DNA (“mitochondrial Eve”), as well as a common paternal ancestor for Y-chromosome DNA (“Y-chromosome Adam”). Its fascinating that the most recent research indicates both originated around 200,000 years ago in the lands inhabited by a tribe which still exists; some living much as they did back then.

Ancestors of the San people were the Y chromosome Adam and mitochondial Eve.

Both were members of the group today known as the San–hunter-gatherers who once inhabited all of Southern and Eastern Africa. These folks were made famous in the 80s and 90s by the box-office hit movie series “The Gods Must Be Crazy.” The main character of the series was a hunter/gatherer tribesman, played by Nǃxau. The San are of short stature and have caramel skin–much lighter than most modern Africans–and the epicanthic eye folds of Oriental eyes. They speak in a “click” language, which uses as many different clicks as it does the sounds we use in English. Many of the San tribes boot out any members who marry non-San, so their genetics and culture have remained pure.

The San have always said they were the oldest people. Now science is catching up. Not only were they the source of the mitochondrial Eve and Y chromosome Adam, they were also the most populous group of humans on the planet for 150,000 years. Only about 1700 years ago did the much bigger and darker Bantu speaking farmers come from the North and take over the San territory. Many Southern and Eastern Africans today have significant San genetic heritage included South African President Nelson Mandela whose lighter skin and epicanthic eyes reflected DNA from the San.

The ancestors of today’s San people migrated North and East out of Africa into the Middle East and throughout the world. There they encountered Neanderthals and Denisovians and other species and interbred with them. After gradually changing appearance, language and culture while facing the challenges of settling the entire world, many came back to Africa.

World map of the various Y chromosome groups, all originating from the Y DNA Adam in Southwest Africa, expanding across the world.

Just as today’s Ukrainians have not the same genetics as the remnant which survived the ice age, today’s Ethiopians are genetically far removed from the original Homo sapiens. Today’s Ethiopia is dominated by peoples who arrived relatively recently from the Arabian peninsula. Perhaps including the reign of the Queen of Sheba, these people controlled both sides of the gulf of Aqaba including today’s Yemen, parts of Saudi Arabia and Djibouti and Eritrea and the highlands of present day Ethiopia.

In fact, the most common Y chromosome lineage in Africa didn’t start in Africa; it likely originated in the Middle East and was taken back to Africa by counter-migration.

So we have a common maternal ancestor of our mitochondrial DNA (“mitochondrial Eve”), as well as a common paternal ancestor for Y-chromosome DNA (“Y-chromosome Adam”). The diversity of our regular chromosomal DNA, however, shows us that these individuals were part of a large, genetically-diverse population and exchanged genes with many other populations including Neaderthals and Denisovians and likely others.

Today Europeans usually have about 2 percent of Neaderthal genes and some Asian peoples have up to 6% Denisovian DNA.

Most scientists hypothesize that Neaderthal and humans had a common ancestor long before the San and modern humans arose. Some of these left Africa and inhabited Europe and much of Asia for 500,000 years with little to no contact with the modern human/San. They developed distinct attributes including light skin and reddish hair as well as a larger brain than humans and a huge muscular body. Modern humans and Neaderthal did not cross paths until perhaps 50,000 years ago. Neanderthals went extinct in Europe around 40,000 years ago, roughly 10,000 years after first meeting Homo sapiens. This was enough time, however for plenty of mating between Neaderthals and modern humans. In modern humans, Neanderthal genes are associated with an increase in body size, lighter hair color and skin and a tendency to be a “morning person”.

While most research has assumed no Neanderthal genes in sub Saharan Africa, recent research indicates there is a small (0.01 per cent) portion of African DNA which is Neaderthal. The picture emerges is one of multiple migrations between Africa and Eurasia, with early humans making the intercontinental hop possibly several times over. When migration out of Africa hit its peak between 10,000 and 60,000 years ago, subsets of this group then trickled back into Africa in the last 20,000 years, mixing Neanderthal heritage into the continent’s human genomes. Today even one of the tribes called San which is open to out-marriage, now has some Neaderthal DNA.

So the Ethiopian Airlines slogan, “We are all Ethiopian”, is maybe a bit true, but we are all also Neaderthal and above all, San.

——–

For some fun maps, go see these of European Y DNA d

Freedom through excommunication

Being banished can be a good thing. If the group banishing you is heading into eternal hellfire. And even if they aren’t quite that bad.

Recently a very close friend was banished by a national advocacy group which he helped found and served in various leadership positions for nearly 30 years. The group has become fully woke and gone from serving farmers and rural communities to serving the woke ideology. Banning fertilizer and taking land from white farmers are now among their goals. They begin meetings by recognizing the native tribes who once inhabited the lands we now live on. Neglecting to mention the native tribes who owned the land before being massacred by the tribe the liberal elite now kow-tows to.

He’s relieved to be kicked out of this group. As the group moved toward woke, his perspective had long been denied validity, other founders left, and he was increasingly isolated. He should have resigned much earlier, but the group had been so effective and productive for so many years. Somehow, he couldn’t just leave a group he’d devoted decades to.

Only after they banished me did he realize how constrained he had been. He was the frog in the pot of water on a hot fire. The water was getting hotter and hotter, but he stayed. Until finally the other frogs threw him out because he wasn’t praising the water temperature enough.

It reminds me of how I used to be a Democrat. And a McGovern Democrat at that. George McGovern was the one who gave Richard Nixon a landslide win in 1972. Today McGovern’s positions are almost mainstream Republican. I have friends who have remained Democrats. It’s amazing how their strong beliefs are now the opposite of their strong beliefs thirty years ago. Today’s Democrats are the Autocrats of Anarchism. They support antifa and suppression of free speech. They spend like drunken sailors and call a reckless and wasteful spending bill the Inflation Reduction Act.

The purging group used to be nonpartisan but now follows the Democrats like blind sheep. It loves the huge expenditures in the IRA, especially those labelled climate initiatives. Now he’s free. He can castigate inflation-inducing spending. He can even express doubt about wind and solar farms and most of the climate change dogma.

It’s amazing how you can stop yourself from thinking when the group you belong to allows thought only on tactics not on basic principles.

Luckily some of his less-than-woke opinions bubbled out uncontrollably and got him kicked out.

The ones which caused the most trouble were on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion or DEI. It began when he first realized DEI could easily become DIE and that DEI is a sure recipe for the death of organizations and nations. The ecological literature is replete with examples where Diversity undermines ecological resilience. Rabbits were introduced into Australia to increase wildlife diversity and caused wholesale destruction of ecoysystems. Kudzu was introduced into the United States to increase forage diversity and literally smothered entire ecosystems. Likewise, DEI is destroying businesses, institutions and nations. When a diverse workforce is more important than a competent and excellent workforce, the organization is killing itself.

He’d quit attending the mandatory anti-white “diversity” trainings at every meeting of the organization and that was bad enough. But then he posted blogs about When diversity, equity and inclusion become DIE and followed it with Universities DIE on the altar of equity. Some diversity sleuth discovered them and he was banished. Diversity of thought is not permitted in the current diversity dogma.

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned the name of the organization. No need to. It will die soon enough. All non-resilient systems do.

Sure nice of them to set others free on their way down.

Spread tons of toxic metals and concrete on your land and call it renewable?

For twenty-seven years nearly all the heat for our house has been renewable. Sun streaming through a south-facing greenhouse into our family room and a central wood stove provide all the heat we need, even on the coldest days in Southern Arkansas.

With five acres of woods, we don’t even have to haul in wood. We cut it within feet of our wood stove. Passive solar heats the house most winter days because the sun comes out here nearly every day, even in winter

Like most folks in our area, we have been bombarded by ads touting solar arrays as the answer to high electric bills. Though we don’t have much of an electric bill, we decided to check it out anyway. All the companies we contacted wanted us to let them pour concrete into our fields and set up solar arrays. We didn’t want to cover productive fields with concrete and metal trays, so they eventually acceded to putting the arrays on our barn roof. Then we started to learn more about the solar arrays they would install.

Solar array hit by 2017 hurricane in Puerto Rico

According to manufacturers, solar panels should last around 30 years before decommissioning.

Our passive solar system is still working fine after almost 30 years and it shows no reduction in efficiency. If we had a solar array, we would be needing to replace it.

When the lifespan of a solar array is over, what happens? Right now in the US, the remains go to a landfill or just hang around, covering up your land, useless. There is currently no federal standard or requirement for end-of-life management of photovoltaic panels

The solution many are looking to is recycling. Part of the problem is that solar panels are complicated to recycle. They’re made of many materials, some hazardous, and assembled with adhesives and sealants that make breaking them apart challenging.

“The longevity of these panels, the way they’re put together and how they make them make it inherently difficult to, to use a term, de-manufacture,” said Mark Robards, director of special projects for ECS Refining, one of the largest electronics recyclers in the U.S. The panels are torn apart mechanically and broken down with acids to separate out the crystalline silicon, the semiconducting material used by most photovoltaic manufacturers. Heat systems are used to burn up the adhesives that bind them to their armatures, and acidic hydro-metallurgical systems are used to separate precious metals.

Robards said nearly 75 percent of the material that gets separated out is glass, which is easy to recycle into new products but also has a very low resale value. Not only that, but what’s available to recycle is something of a moving target. As solar panel technology improves, manufacturers are slowly finding ways around using components that would have value to recyclers, such as copper and silver.

“So the underlying commodity value of these things keeps going down,” Robards said. The less value a recycler can extract, the less incentive there is to recycle.

At Forbes, Michael Shellenberger cites solar industry insiders who contend the solar industry produces vast quantities of hazardous waste, which are not being adequately dealt with.

The problem of solar panel disposal “will explode with full force in two or three decades and wreck the environment” because it “is a huge amount of waste and they are not easy to recycle.”
“The reality is that there is a problem now, and it’s only going to get larger, expanding as rapidly as the PV industry expanded 10 years ago.”
“Contrary to previous assumptions, pollutants such as lead or carcinogenic cadmium can be almost completely washed out of the fragments of solar modules over a period of several months, for example by rainwater.”

Solar panels often contain lead, cadmium, and other toxic chemicals that cannot be removed without breaking apart the entire panel. “Approximately 90% of most PV modules are made up of glass,” notes San Jose State environmental studies professor Dustin Mulvaney. “However, this glass often cannot be recycled as float glass due to impurities. Common problematic impurities in glass include plastics, lead, cadmium and antimony.”

Researchers with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) undertook a study for U.S. solar-owning utilities to plan for end-of-life and concluded that solar panel “disposal in “regular landfills [is] not recommended in case modules break and toxic materials leach into the soil” and so “disposal is potentially a major issue.”

The fact that cadmium can be washed out of solar modules by rainwater is increasingly a concern for local environmentalists like the Concerned Citizens of Fawn Lake in Virginia, where a 6,350 acre solar farm to partly power Microsoft data centers is being proposed.

“We estimate there are 100,000 pounds of cadmium contained in the 1.8 million panels,” Sean Fogarty of the group told me. “Leaching from broken panels damaged during natural events — hail storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. — and at decommissioning is a big concern.”  

There is real-world precedent for this concern. A tornado in 2015 broke 200,000 solar modules at southern California solar farm Desert Sunlight.

Recycling costs more than the economic value of the materials recovered, which is why most solar panels end up in landfills. “The absence of valuable metals/materials produces economic losses,” wrote a team of scientists in the International Journal of Photoenergy in their study of solar panel recycling last year, Chinese and Japanese experts agree. “If a recycling plant carries out every step by the book,” a Chinese expert told The South China Morning Post, “their products can end up being more expensive than new raw materials.”

Toshiba Environmental Solutions told Nikkei Asian Review last year that, “Low demand for scrap and the high cost of employing workers to disassemble the aluminum frames and other components will make it difficult to create a profitable business”

The attitude of some solar recyclers in China appears to feed this concern. “A sales manager of a solar power recycling company,” the South China Morning News reported, “believes there could be a way to dispose of China’s solar junk, nonetheless.”

“We can sell them to Middle East… Our customers there make it very clear that they don’t want perfect or brand new panels. They just want them cheap… There, there is lots of land to install a large amount of panels to make up for their low performance. Everyone is happy with the result.”

In other words, there are firms that may advertise themselves as “solar panel recyclers” but instead sell panels to a secondary markets in nations with less developed waste disposal systems. In the past, communities living near electronic waste dumps in Ghana, Nigeria, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India have been primary e-waste destinations.

According to a 2015 United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report, somewhere between 60 and 90 percent of electronic waste is illegally traded and dumped in poor nations. Writes UNEP:

[T]housands of tonnes of e-waste are falsely declared as second-hand goods and exported from developed to developing countries, including waste batteries falsely described as plastic or mixed metal scrap, and cathode ray tubes and computer monitors declared as metal scrap.

Unlike other forms of imported e-waste, used solar panels can enter nations legally before eventually entering e-waste streams. As the United Nation Environment Program notes, “loopholes in the current Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directives allow the export of e-waste from developed to developing countries (70% of the collected WEEE ends up in unreported and largely unknown destinations).”

Maybe the solar industry will solve the recycling problem, but even if it does, the land the arrays sit on is still polluted and dotted with concrete and metals.

I’m happy with my passive solar and wood stove, no solar arrays for me.

Indigenous Day! Remembering extinct megafauna.

There are no indigenous people to the US.  The first people to come from Asia wiped out the huge indigenous animals which then roamed the continent. Yet some unhappy people don’t want anyone to celebrate the immigrant known as Columbus.  They want an “Indigenous Peoples Day.”  They want us to celebrate the people who wiped out these beautiful animals.  I say celebrate Columbus Day by getting out and exploring the little Nature we have left.  It’s  the best time of the year to be outside in most of the US.  No mosquitoes, cool temperatures, low humidity.

City councils of many US cities don’t have enough to do.  These politicians do have time to grease the squeaky wheel, though.  And the vast Know-Nothing-but-indignant-about-everything crowd is squeaking, “indigenous, indigenous!!!”

St. Paul, Albuquerque and a growing slew of other ignorant city councils have declared today Indigenous Peoples Day instead of Columbus Day.  I do like indigenous people, they strewed around a lot of arrowheads for me to find.  I found a prehistoric knife sharpener on my last trip to Meadowcreek.

I’m not sure which indigenous peoples I should celebrate today, though. The first humans to leave any calling cards on the North American continent migrated from Asia.  Called paleoindians or Clovis people they hunted to extinction the mastodon, mammoth, horse, tapir, ground sloth, giant bison, giant beaver, giant tortoise, American lion, short-faced bear, and saber-toothed tiger. Over-hunting caused the mass extinction of these animals as the Ice Age ended. More than thirty species of large animals became extinct. By about 10,500 years ago, megafauna no longer roamed North America.

So, if these city councils were less ignorant, I’m sure they would not want to glorify the paleoindians because they wiped out some species that we all would like to see.  Kinda like the Africans of today are wiping out the rhinos and all the other big species that the Chinese want for some revolting practice.

The paleoindians were in turn wiped out by the more advanced Hopewell people.  The Hopewell people knew how to garden a little (so they could stay healthier than the Clovis people when game got scarce due to over-hunting) and they made captivating mound art.  On my way to visit the Worstell Building in Athens, Ohio, I stopped at the Serpent Mound.  Any modern artist would be extremely cocky if he had produced this 1330 foot long earth sculpture.  It’s impossible to describe it, but look at this drawing of it and you get a feel for it.  If you’re ever on the road between Cincinnati and Athens, Ohio, you gotta stop and see it.

Nearby have been found some giant skeletons in burial mounds.  These are similar to skeletons found from the eastern Mediterranean, mainland Europe, and the British Isles. These folks appear to have shared an identical material culture, a religion of constructing burial mounds for the dead and solar temples to track the movement of the sun.

According to the folks who investigated the site on a high point in Highland County, Ohio, these graves were made of large limestone slabs, two and a half to three feet in length and a foot wide. These were set on edge about a foot apart. Similar slabs covered the graves. A single one somewhat larger was at the head and another at the foot. The top of the grave was two feet below the present surface.

Some think these were the Nephilim mentioned in the Bible.  That seems pretty far-fetched to me, but if the Nephilim are the “indigenous peoples” the city councils are honoring, then I’d be all for it.

Maybe, though, the city councils mean to honor the tribe which wiped out the Hopewell.  I could see the politically correct honoring this culture (called the Mississippian).  This tribe invaded from Mexico, kinda similar to today, with an extremely resilient agricultural system. They grew corn, beans, squash, sunflowers and gourds.  They kept turkeys and dogs for feather coats and food.

Or maybe the city councils meant the tribes from the Plains who learned how to ride the horses they stole from the Spanish and used their new skills to conquer the more civilized folks who had previously invaded from Mexico.

I guess I just know too much about “indigenous peoples” (who are all related to ancient Asians and not really indigenous at all) for my own good.  It just makes it really hard to figure out why the city councils are honoring these blood-thirsty sun worshippers over some blood-thirsty Christians.  They were both pretty horrible to modern, politically correct sensibilities.

It must be some kind of self-hatred since most of these city council folk are white people.  Either that or they just  don’t like Italians like Christopher Columbus.

Champion of Woke

He was an ambitious young man.  He’d grown up with few creature comforts.  Not because his parents couldn’t afford them, but because they didn’t think it was good to spoil children. Since he was 8, his job was to help the dairymaid milk the goats every morning.  His parents were both busy professionals, so they often left him on the farm in the care of the dairy maid all day.

the house where the boy grew up

Their tasks were to milk the goats, turn the milk into cheese, package the cheese and sell it at farmer’s markets and to anyone who ordered online.  So he did have internet access, but he lost one smart phone when it got doused with his sweat when he was milking.  That loss took a week’s profits in goat cheese to replace.  The he dropped the replacement phone into a vat of whey and lost another week’s profit.  So he limited himself to perusing the internet only when all the work was done for the day.

He was homeschooled with a group of kids who lived near enough that they could all get together two to three times a week.  Most of the work was online, though.  His parents supplemented his online studies with stories from their fascinating travels when they were home.

He also learned a lot from the milk maid about practical aspects of life.  Not just cheese and milking, but how to make the best Ethiopian coffee and composting and how to understand goats so they didn’t destroy the trees which provided their most valuable forage. 

When he turned 18, he had accumulated quite a few skills, but not among them was how to deal with city people.  He trusted everyone since everyone he had ever interacted with deserved his trust. He left the mountain farm and enrolled in the same state university that his father had matriculated at.  He joined a special program which matched American students with students from overseas.  His roommate was a white South African.  They got along fine, but seldom ate together in the cafeteria of the dorm.

The boy was having trouble paying for everything since his parents had decided he needed to cover all the costs of his education himself.  He found out he could get out of his meals contract with the university by pleading health reasons.  After that, he cooked his meals in his room.  Mostly canned soup heated up in a cheap little pot with a heating element in the bottom and day old bread.

As part of his financial aid package, he was in a work/study program working for a history professor entering data on immigration to St. Louis by Germans in the late 1800s. That job and some grants and scholarships enabled him to stay afloat.  He hitchhiked home every other weekend to get some meat, fresh vegetables and see the dairy maid and his parents.

His father had taken the very first women’s studies class when he was at the same university back in the early 1970s.  The women in the class took a vote and let him stay if he behaved.  He got an A.  In his father’s time taking a women’s studies course was on the breaking edge of what became wokedom later on.  But things had moved a lot more woke since then.

Now it was all about pronouns and transphobia and what Indian tribe had occupied the land before the evil white colonizers came and the privilege of people with skin the shade of the boy’s.  He learned to be obsequious when forced to speak and quiet most of the time.  He did speak out once about the American Indians because he had been collecting Indian artifacts since he was a small boy.  He knew that several different tribes and three entirely different ethnic groups had occupied the land where he grew up since successive waves of Asians colonized America..

When his freshman history professor insisted that the land of the University should be given back to the tribe which inhabited it when the Europeans came, the boy spoke up about how those Osage Indians had taken the land from the peaceful, agricultural tribe, the Caddo, who had lived there for a thousand years before the Osage adopted horseback riding on wild horses escaped from early Spanish explorers.  With the horses, they could conduct lightning raids against which the Caddo had no defense.

Many villages were totally ransacked by the Osage, who collected Caddo children’s fingers as mementos of every battle.  After a few years, the countryside was littered with destroyed villages, some with a few survivors trying to plant crops to survive.  If a village revived itself, the Osage rode back to pillage and rape again.

The professor was shocked at the effrontery of the country boy and questioned his research qualifications.  The rest of the class joined in in shouting down the boy.  The boy learned to be quiet from then on. He learned that the route to success was to figure out the beliefs of the most woke and then echo them but never try to take the lead in anything since that was just not permitted for a white boy.  He was ambitious and he wanted success. And the only way to success in the social sciences is to be woke.

He had an amazing memory.  By taking copious notes and then rewriting and adding to the notes each evening, he had a complete transcript of each class.  Before each test he then memorized everything each professor had spake and then regurgitated it at exam time.  The procedure worked and he took more and more courses every semester.  After two years he had already completed all the sociology course requirements.  He switched his major to psychology and completed all that major’s requirements in a third year and also the University’s 120 total credit hours.  So he graduated in three years.

The psychology department desperately needed a few extra graduate students in the spring of his third year in order to retain a grant.  One professor realized that the boy could easily meet the graduate school entrance requirements, even though he hurt their diversity, inclusion and equity goals.  Since he was well-known as the uncrowned Champion of Woke in the psychology department, had grown his hair down the middle of his back and often went barefoot, the selection committee decided to overlook his skin color. Also, the need for warm bodies and quick helped overcome the diversity issues and in a couple of weeks he had a research fellowship which came with a stipend to live on and began in the fall of the fourth year since he had left the mountain farm.

His plan before the fellowship was offered had been to get a job mowing lawns and doing maintenance while taking courses outside psych and soc, but the offer of the fellowship and a nice office were too good to pass up.  So, he became a psychology graduate student.

As a graduate student on fellowship he was only required to take about half the number of classes he had taken most semesters as an undergraduate. And he didn’t need to work at all.  So he had lots of time on his hands.  Time to study topics woke social science considered verboten.

Over his years in the social sciences, he had internalized all the woke beliefs including a deep mistrust of all genetics.  He had gradually come to an unexpressed belief that apes and humans only differed in upbringing. If you raised an ape like a human, he would become a human.  Environment was everything.  This seemed to be the logical conclusion of the woke psychologists.

Then the boy stumbled upon studies which did try to raise apes as humans and just got apes who were misfits. It was the beginning of the end for the Woke Champion. The hard data just directly contradicted the assumptions of woke social sciences.

He’d also accumulated a set of unexamined assumptions which everyone in his classes believed and would never question. The United States is a horrible country and always has been. White people can’t dance. Blacks have more fun. If a black committed a crime, it was because he’d been mistreated as a child. The boy didn’t recognize that many of these assumptions required that genetics have value.

Then the boy discovered some forbidden literature knows as sociobiology.  And sociobiology put out the flame of wokedom forever for the Champion of Woke. The woke hate the author Edmund Wilson, because he was a prominent biologist with unassailable credentials who showed the power of genetics in shaping all species behavior. The woke called him racist because if genetics is powerful, then that might open up the possibility of racial differences in intelligence and aggressiveness/crime. It might mean that more blacks are in jail because they are innately more aggressive and commit more crimes.

Two biologists taught the Sociobiology course for a couple of semesters until it was cancelled by an outraged faculty. The young boy was lucky enough to catch it.

The young boy was born again. His ambition now was not to memorize his professors’ every utterance and regurgitate each of them at test time. Now he was focused on learning everything he could about Nature and genetics. He began enrolling in all biology classes. The psychology faculty was aghast and tried to reel him back in, but one prof who knew him best defended him as exploring a diversity of ideas. So he was permitted to keep his fellowship, and not take any courses in psychology.

The time came for the boy to schedule his comprehensive exam to prove he had knowledge sufficient in psychology to enable him to be granted a Ph. D. He decided to have it in the early fall so that he could spend all summer studying for it.

Walking to the library on the first day of summer to begin his months of study, he noticed how beautiful the trees were and how lush was the foliage and he began thinking about his bucolic summers back on the farm far from any town, much less any dusty library. An epiphany spread through him and the final nail was hammered into the coffin of the Champion of Woke.

He passed by the steps to the library and continued to the other side of campus where he discovered the department which dealt with growing crops: Agronomy. He entered the department office and asked if they needed any help working in the field that summer. He filed out an application and left. When he came home, his roommate told him Agronomy had called and he has a job.

So he reported for work the next morning as a field hand. He found out hardly anyone was woke in the Agriculture College. The administrators gave lip service to the concepts, but no one really believed in all the woke nonsense. His years a prisoner of the woke ideology were over.

The foremost proponent of the kingdom of Woke is becoming apostate.

Unlearning all his silly assumptions.

You can do the same.

Become a fool that you may become wise.

Ol’ Joe can be revived by young country girl

Once, our beloved country had an aged Prime Minister whose handlers dosed him with lotsa drugs to give him the right shine in public. One was a drug which eliminates shame and remorse over any words or actions one might use. This drug’s effects were magnified by the fact PM Joe (or BM Joe as the late night comedians liked to call him since he once soiled his pants in an audience with the Queen) was fairly shameless and lacking in remorse naturally.

The PM’s handlers used his compliance to push through more and more outrageous spending bills to enrich their loyal lapdogs while furthering their destructive ideologies. One of these lapdog organizations was the National Union for Agricultural Regeneracy. A staff member at that organization had become a senior policy aide to the PM. This staff member, however, grew increasingly disenchanted with the spending and the inflation it was causing. So he decided to take action.

The aide had once had an affair with a cute young girl who had a strange upbringing in the coastal swamps. Her mother had died and her father left her alone in a cabin in the swamp where she stayed alive by fishing and gathering herbs. She was scorned by the local community. The girl lived in isolation, except for the proprietor of a country store. The girl was a keen observer of wildlife and became a self-taught painter of the wild animals where she lived. Her shop keeper friend gathered some of her paintings together and showed them to the local museum director who showed them to a publisher friend. The girl then began making a good income from illustrating books and her own books of paintings.

Gradually the town began to warm up to the girl and the girl began to get involved in an environmental advocacy group, Southern Union for Eco-regeneration. Eventually she even went to a national conference on the topic, where she met the fellow who was now the PM’s aide. They had a torrid affair, but she cut it off when she learned he was married. They remained friends since both liked to write letters and enjoyed hearing about the other’s adventures.

The aide knew how much the PM liked young girls, and hatched a plan. The PM was visiting the coastal state where the girl lived and the aide managed to get the girl and the PM together. They hit it off and the PM began taking weekends visiting her in the coastal swamps. The area was so isolated, it was easy for his security to just leave the two alone as she gradually won his heart. The aide convinced his handlers that the little dalliance was good for the PM’s health. And his health did seem to improve, though his handlers kept his meds on high for every public event.

He finally decided he was going to leave his wife (just as he had left his first wife for their babysitter Jill) and his position and enjoy the rest of his life with his new love in bucolic peace and rural quiet. Without telling any of his staff or the girl, he interrupted a public event broadcast nation-wide to announce his plans. Then, he resumed reading his speech from the teleprompter. He took no questions, as was his wont, and traveled straight to the girl’s shack in the swamps to tell her of his decision.

She immediately told him his plan would not work and he should go back to his wife. After hours of entreating, he finally realized she would not relent and headed back to the capitol where the buzz was deafening. The papers and cable news could talk of nothing else. The cabal controlling the PM had ostracized the aide, but could do nothing with the swirling scandal except convince the PM to retract his previous comments and pledge to go back to his wife. The PM obediently read the speech they prepared, but the controversy did not stop, mainly because the PM had officially resigned and the Vice-PM was more than happy to take over.

Then ensued a pitched battle between the PM’s staff and the Vice PM which lasted months and eventually tore their party apart, causing their cataclysmic defeat in all elections afterward and the eventual dissolution of the party.

The girl’s community rallied behind her and did their best to keep the press at bay. Some members of the press hired boats and tried to find her cabin, but got lost and gave up. Eventually they tired of living in an isolated rural community trying to find a swamp girl and went back to the city to chronicle the destruction of the PM’s party.

Swamp politician destroyed by swamp girl

Once, our beloved country had an aged Prime Minister whose handlers dosed him with lotsa drugs to give him the right shine in public. One was a drug which eliminates shame and remorse over any words or actions one might use. This drug’s effects were magnified by the fact PM Joe (or BM Joe as the late night comedians liked to call him since he once shit his pants in an audience with the Queen) was fairly shameless and lacking in remorse naturally.

The PM’s handlers used his compliance to push through more and more outrageous spending bills to enrich their loyal lapdogs while furthering their destructive ideologies. One of these lapdog organizations was the National Union for Agricultural Regeneracy. A staff member at that organization had become a senior policy aide to the PM. This staff member, however, grew increasingly disenchanted with the spending and the inflation it was causing. So he decided to take action.

The aide had once had an affair with a cute young girl who had a strange upbringing in the coastal swamps. Her mother had died and her father left her alone in a cabin in the swamp where she stayed alive by fishing and gathering herbs. She was scorned by the local community. The girl lived in isolation, except for the proprietor of a country store. The girl was a keen observer of wildlife and became a self-taught painter of the wild animals where she lived. Her shop keeper friend gathered some of her paintings together and showed them to the local museum director who showed them to a publisher friend. The girl then began making a good income from illustrating books and her own books of paintings.

Gradually the town began to warm up to the girl and the girl began to get involved in an environmental advocacy group, Southern Union for Eco-regeneration. Eventually she even went to a national conference on the topic, where she met the fellow who was now the PM’s aide. They had a torrid affair, but she cut it off when she learned he was married. They remained friends since both liked to write letters and enjoyed hearing about the other’s adventures.

The aide knew how much the PM liked young girls, and hatched a plan. The PM was visiting the coastal state where the girl lived and the aide managed to get the girl and the PM together. They hit it off and the PM began taking weekends visiting her in the coastal swamps. The area was so isolated, it was easy for his security to just leave the two alone as she gradually won his heart. The aide convinced his handlers that the little dalliance was good for the PM’s health. And his health did seem to improve, though his handlers kept his meds on high for every public event.

He finally decided he was going to leave his wife and his position and enjoy the rest of his life with his new love in bucolic peace and rural quiet. Without telling any of his staff or the girl, he interrupted a public event broadcast nation-wide to announce his plans. Then, he resumed reading his speech from the teleprompter. He took no questions, as was his wont, and traveled straight to the girl’s shack in the swamps to tell her of his decision.

She immediately told him his plan would not work and he should go back to his wife. After hours of entreating, he finally realized she would not relent and headed back to the capitol where the buzz was deafening. The papers and cable news could talk of nothing else. The cabal controlling the PM had ostracized the aide, but could do nothing with the swirling scandal except convince the PM to retract his previous comments and pledge to go back to his wife. The PM obediently read the speech they prepared, but the controversy did not stop, mainly because the PM had officially resigned and the Vice-PM was more than happy to take over.

Then ensued a pitched battle between the PM’s staff and the Vice PM which lasted months and eventually tore their party apart, causing their cataclysmic defeat in all elections afterward and the eventual dissolution of the party.

The girl’s community rallied behind her and did their best to keep the press at bay. Some members of the press hired boats and tried to find her cabin, but got lost and gave up. Eventually they tired of living in an isolated rural community trying to find a swamp girl and went back to the city to chronicle the destruction of the PM’s party.

This vignette is the beginning of a great movie. Want to buy the rights? Leave email in comments.