Write your story (11/30/2018)

I am in the process of writing a book.  It is a professional non-fiction book, it deals with my life's experiences, my education and work.  I have used some of the materials I write about in workshops that I have given for work.  Moreover, the writing and research associated with it has made me a better teacher in my professional life.  It is a win-win situation.

The problem right now is two fold: discipline and the finale.  But let me explain. The discipline part. Having a full-time job it is difficult for me to allocate a set period each day for me to get my writing in.  Whatever or whoever I read, you always hear discipline is number one, and I agree. My writing time exists of lunch time half hours at Starbucks, afternoon and evenings when I am stuck in a motel room and not too tired from traveling or teaching, some evenings after work, and weekend afternoons when there are no “honey does.”  As you can see it has been a difficult to get a routine established.

Reading what people say about writing, it seems that having a routine is so darn important.  Some even have a ritual before they start writing. One person rights a Buddha statue every morning when he starts in the morning and lays it down when done writing that day.  It seemed that Hemingway never ended a thought at the end of the day, so that he had something he could pick up where he left off the next day and thus never have writer’s block.  Well writing for 20 miniature or so at Starbucks worked for me. I first worked for 10 minutes editing what I wrote the day or days before and than added to it for 10 more minutes.

I took this picture three years ago at my favorite Starbucks, downtown Richmond.  At least three of the gals behind the counter know me so well, that the just ask me if I want the "regular."

This picture was taken this past week.  I often enjoy sitting here, especially when the legislation is in session.   You can sit and watch Senators and Congress men  (and women) sit there and discuss things with each other and with lobbyists.  There are tourists, business folks, government employees and often medical students from VCU who are studying. 

Currently I do have writer’s block it seems. This is partially due to being close to the end and not being sure what all to include or to exclude.  I have written about the things I know most about and I am now at that point of writing about the things that I know, but I haven't dealt with for a couple of years.  It feels like pulling teeth. It is like having put off the inevitable. I had my dessert or the food I like most first and now it's time for the Brussel sprouts (I actually like them, especially with a little mustard, but you get the idea).

But enough complaining.  One thing I learned is that practice makes perfect, or at least less imperfect.  A friend of mine gave me a book (and for the heck I can't remember the name or the author) which told me that every morning when you wake up, you need to have a stream of conscious and sit down and write down words or things that come to mind, regardless whether it makes any sense.  Well, I simply don't have the time for that. During our sermon writing exercise earlier this year at our church, we actually did this at the start of each meeting. We sat down and wrote whatever came to mind for ten minutes. Some made sense, some absolutely not! However, it cleared the mind and helped with the writing process for me.

But even with this blog, I have the occasional writer’s block.  It takes a while for something to hit me. You can see that. As I write this part of my blog post on Sunday afternoon, I think back on this morning's service at our UU church, where our guest minister encouraged us to tell our story.  The more I write my blog over the years, I find that I have more personal stories waiting to be told. These stories are often pulled out of me by things that happen in real time. Like my recent post where I talk about the wildfires, and some of my albeit minor experiences.  That post had gotten long, but there was so much I left out, even my first experience as a firefighter while serving in the Dutch army and we were mobilized to fight a forest fire in Holland. Conversely, I could have told you about the time that we fought savannah fires in Uganda that threatened to burn all the forage on our farm and could starve our cattle.  I need to do that, because that was actually crazy.

You get the message.  I agree with our minister, whether it is a book, blog, or a story you tell your friends or family.  Share it! This week, I shared the "lurid" story of my family with our daughter; the ins and outs, about how screwed up they are. I hinted a bit at it in a previous post. Those stories, writing the current post, the many other posts that I write and the manuscript to my book, they are all therapeutic to me. I am sure something like that can benefit you as well when you try it.  

Come on baby, light my fire (11/21/2018)

On January 8, 2015 Donald Trump, the man soon to be our president tweeted the following:

“Who is paying for that tedious Smokey Bear commercial that is on all the time - enough already!”

The latest count (Sunday, November 18) of the ”Camp fire” is 77 people dead and 993 missing. During a visit, the president seemed to have claimed that more raking would have helped, because that is what they do in a forest rich Finland. Moreover, the president did mention that he did not think it was climate change that caused it, but that he wanted great climate, which left many who attended the meeting baffled at what he meant. I wonder if he got a whiff of some nearby pot plantations going up in smoke.

Well, as we all can imagine, the internet has been having fun with all this, but on a serious side, this is a terrible situation. I am not writing this blog post to complain about or have fun with our president; well I admit, maybe a little.

Forest fires are a serious business; as we can see they can cause the loss of life and extensive property damage. I am in no way trying to downplay the severity of what happened with the title of my blog.  The pictures and the videos on YouTube are horrific.  The problem is that wildfire is a natural element of nature and actually a vital part of nature in many cases, depending of course on the ecosystem. Forest fires are needed to open up the system, the decrease the litter or dead materials that have accumulated on the soil surface.  Our problem is that fire suppression has caused the accumulation of too much fuel which results in these destructive fires.

The accumulating material also causes other problems.  It chokes out the seedlings and small plants trying to germinate, and areas that are burned show a tremendous greening up after a fire.  In addition, fire kills some of the smaller weedy species, sick and damaged trees; it opens up the canopy, allowing the sunlight to reach the floor of the forest giving the herbaceous plants an additional  chance to proliferate.

Some forest dwelling species are actually dependent on forest fires. My favorite example is the red cockaded woodpecker in the southeastern part of the U.S. This bird needs to nest in big old pine trees in a forest. However, these forest need to be open with often a grassy understory and no small trees. The way to maintain this was through fires. In the old days, this was not a problem, but with increased habitation, folks started controlling forest fires and oaks to the detriment of the woodpecker invaded the woods. Wildfires killed the oaks seedlings and the control of fire have a region-wide negative impact on the woodpecker population.

The woodpeckers were able to thrive in one particular area. That was on the life-firing ranges of military bases in the southeast. The life artillery often would set these areas ablaze with wildfires and this was just what the birds needed. While they were not bothered a lot by the artillery (except by a direct or a nearby hit), the resulting fires would keep the ecosystem open. Nowadays, managers use fire or control burns to manage remaining habitat of or restore habitat for the red cockaded woodpecker.

When we moved into our home some 18 years ago and walked in the woods behind our home, we noticed that the area had recently burned. There were black burn marks on the bases of the trees and actually, there were two areas that it obviously was replanted in the past 5 to 10 years, which I always assumed was the result of some kind of disturbance, which could have been a very intense crown fire.

Walking through the area with the burn marks now, I cannot find them anymore. The trees have grown and new bark has covered all the burn scars. It reminds me of some of the dendrochronology (tree aging) work I did in New Mexico in the late 1980. There, on 150 year-old or even older trees we could still see exactly what year there was a fire in these woods. In addition, we could see what direction the fire came from that year. It is pretty darn cool to be able to see that, but I digress. What it shows was that even in New Mexico where it is dry, the high elevation forests (at 7 to 9000 feet or so) did have a regular fire regime, as do most ecosystems in the U.S. Albeit, the fire frequency there was much longer.

Behind my home, like most in most of the ecosystems, fire suppression reigns supreme. What is happening is that there is a tremendous amount fuel building up in these areas. This include years of leaf litter, fallen branches, twigs and whole trees that were brought down by storms. The result is that herbs have a difficult time growing, seeds cannot germinate, and if a fire happens to get started, it may get so hot and high that it could get all the way into the canopy of the trees instead of being just a ground fire. Once it hits the tree canopy, the fire can spread fast and easily. It then can jump to roofs of homes and even create its own weather. Now it is difficult to contain. This is what we are seeing in California. 

This picture shows an area with some old fallen trees.  While a fire may burn some of this, these trees will most likely not create much of an issue during a wildfire.  They are wet and rotting.  They are likely to smolder; moreover, they are important habitat for the salamanders and other creatures living in the woods behind our home.

This area on the other hand has a lot of wood laying over each other like "pick up sticks."  This is already set up as a nice camp fire.  If we ever get a wildfire through here, I am afraid it is off to the races.  You can see the homes in the background.

 Sections of the woods behind our home have a huge accumulation of debris. We have had a number of hurricanes that threw trees, folks from our neighborhood have used it as dump for their yard waste, and we have had more than 25 years of accumulation of litter. I am not sure, but I estimate that the fire frequency of our woods is somewhere between 10 and 20 years, if not more frequent. Yes, our woods are very wet, so a fire would be spotty and a burn would look like the spots on a Dalmatian, or better the areas not burned would look like the black spots on a Dalmatian. However, that is ok, it contributes to the diversity of the woods behind our home. 

One thing is for sure, we need to stop being afraid of fire, because if we do, fuel will build up and we might end up with a catastrophic fire instead. While smoky is correct, control burns are good, and forest management is important. While control burns may not have prevented the “Camp fire”, together with well-funded forest management it might have been less severe and less catastrophic. The same could be the case behind our home. The woods are divided in two sections, and the part managed by Newport News is better managed and in better shape than the part managed by the National Park Service, which is underfunded. They simply do not have enough money to do forest management. 

People on Twitter were having fun with this picture after the president's visit to the disaster area in California over the weekend.  It is what has happened and what we are also seen in our National Park; a severe lack of funding.

Therefore, my call to action is to:

1. Insist on fully funding forest and wildland management, whether that is by way of the Forest Service, the BLM, the National Park Service, or even your local state or county land/park management agency, and
2. Make fire (read: control burns) your friend!

Forgiveness anyone? (11/10/2018)

Having to drive for four hours in the afternoon you eventually hit that spot when the news on NPR starts repeating itself. I forgot to download a podcast, so there was nothing better to do than to hit the browse button on the car radio. Not being interested in sport, and music putting you to sleep, I end up listening to talk radio stations as I mention before in this blog. At time I hit an AM Religious Station that are so plentiful of in the western part of our state. I often linger at these stations and as a Unitarian Universalist, but somehow raised in a religious community by non-religious parents, I love to listen to what dogma they are spouting this time. This is mostly for entertainment purposes and partially for education. However, this time, the discussion got my interest. The part about God lost my interest; but thank God that came at the end. 

The talk was about forgiveness. There were no Bible parables or whatever, but just a fairly good and frank discussion. I am not sure if I remember all of it, but it came down to the concept that we need to be able to forgive for society to function at its best. Even better, on a personal level, that forgiveness is good for your own mental and even physical health.

Clinical research seems to support that forgiveness is good for your mental and physical health. It seems that forgiveness is good for your coronary (hearth or vascular) health, the immune system and overall stress. Amazing isn’t it?

This discussion on forgiveness hit home on so many levels. After the past weeks where we have been through a mid-term election; all the racially charged crap about caravans that were ready to invade us, but all the sudden evaporated after the elections; a bomber being arrested; a number of murderous shooters: one of two African Americans in Louisville, regretfully somewhat ignored, the killing at the synagogue in Pittsburgh, and most recently at a western bar in California. We desperately need a lot of empathy and maybe even some forgiveness. Empathy for the victims and their family. Forgiveness of some of those anti-Semites and gun tooters who saw the national reaction after what happened and saw light. Forgiveness for those who gave lip service to the demagogue leader of our country who told us after what happened in Charlottesville that neo-Nazi anit-Semites were nice people too, or maybe that some of the people who opposed the Nazis were evil. Forgiveness for others who have hate in their hearts and now understand that this is going to threaten humanity as we know it.

The radio program hit me on a personal level, as well. The inability to forgive seems to be a genetic affliction that plagues my family; both on my mother’s and my father’s side. It goes back for generations and it is not only in my direct family and siblings, but it also plagues the brothers of my father and my mother and their direct family. It is absolutely amazing. On a personal level, I have tried to make my siblings aware of this fact and proposed to them to bury the ax; I made my overtures, but to no avail (an interesting side note, none of the siblings talk with each other). I have told them we are repeating the mistakes of our parents (but then, history repeats itself); that we have a chance to break with family “tradition.” I have been laughed at, ridiculed, belittled, gotten angry responses, and been blamed. It was affecting my physical and mental health, and my marriage. So, I have decided that they don’t exist any longer; I no longer have siblings in my mind. It does not mean that I have not forgiven them in my heart, but as I’ll explain later forgiving does not mean forgetting or reconciling. I am not saying that the relation can never be “born again,” but it for right now it would need to come from them; I am done from my side.

So yes, as you can see, the talk got me thinking. What exactly is forgiveness? Doing some research, I found that it is very easy to confuse forgiveness with terms or words like: condoning, excusing, forgetting, pardoning, and reconciling. Forgiving is when you let go of the negative emotion, feelings or attitude, including vengefulness, combined with your ability to wish your offender well, regardless the offense or the emotions it brings up in you. The person that was offended might be justifiably offended but he or she has evolved and grown past it. So, forgiving does not mean reconciling and being friends again, it just means no longer being bothered by what ever happened and going on in life. As the saying in my mother language says: “you are trying not make your heart a killing zone (or a murder pit).”

Being close to a Buddhist, I looked in to what they said about forgiveness or the lack of it. In Buddhism the lack of forgiveness causes havoc in one’s mental well-being. Feelings of ill-will seem to have lasting effect on one’s karma. It seems that resentment and hatred or the lack of forgiveness forces us to be reborn around this issue of pain and we will never be able to move on in generations (lives) to come. Doesn’t that sound familiar, history repeating itself? At least in both branches of my family it does.

Try to forgive in your life and see the end of the trail of hate, resentment and vengefulness.  It is bad for your health and general well-being!  

It is just interesting to see how a religious program on an AM radio station got me thinking and my relationship with my siblings; the relationship of my parents with their siblings; my uncles with each other and with my parent; and my cousins with their siblings (from different branches of the family and different uncles). I have forgiven them all, but again, reconciliation is a different thing. However, at least I am trying my best to maintain a relationship with my cousins, nephews and nieces, regardless of what my brother and sister think or say about me; and that is heartfelt. Hopefully we can do that as a society as well, stay civil and talk, regardless what and who we are as a society, what our political or social believes are, and how desperately our political leaders are trying to divide us.