Hello darling and other observations about Newfoundland (6/29/2017)

It has been a while since I've written.  I have somewhat hinted at it in my last post, we were on vacation and too busy for some serious writing.  But it is time.  It was a great vacation, with great impressions; we experienced a lot and I have a lot to share.

In my previous blog I somewhat hinted at it, but we left the country and traveled to Canada; to Newfoundland to be exact.  There are so many impressions to report without making this a travelogue that I foresee that two or more postings will be on this subject.

So what are my impressions?  I really don’t know where to start, but for sure, the people in Newfoundland are among the friendliest people I have met.  That it what the title of this post implies.  Everyone is a “darling” to them, and they genuinely mean it!  The one disappointment I had was when my cellphone was stolen, but that was my own fault and it was on the trail and I suspect it was a tourist; actually I know exactly who it was.  But as they say hind sight is 20-20 and I could not have confronted him about it anyway.  It is only a phone and I am not going to let it spoil one of the best vacations I’ve had.

People here and in Newfoundland asked us: why visit Newfoundland?  The answer is not so clear cut.  We wanted to do something special for our 40^th wedding anniversary.  Looking through one of my sailing magazines I ran into an article from someone who sailed around the island and along the Labrador coast.  Photos from that article combined with photos from our daughter’s trip to Nova Scotia and a past trip to Scotland convinced us that the Canadian Maritime was in order.  Pictures of puffins, iceberg, the colorful houses in St. Johns and Gros Morne National Park did the rest.  Simple as that!

Oops, I actually meant a different iceberg, but the Iceberg berg beer made from real iceberg water was mightily tasty and went great with this outstanding seafood chowder! 

Impressions:

• At a gas station, you can fill up fill up your car first and then pay.  It took me to the last day of our 14 day visit and I was still not used to it.  What, you did not have to pre-pay or stick your credit card into the pump?  No!
• Everybody wanted to talk to you; they wanted to know where you were from, why the heck you wanted to come to Newfoundland, how long you were staying, where you had been and where you were going.
• In one of the national parks I had a fun and interesting discussion with a park ranger on empathy.  On his computer he pulled up stories on how local fishermen saved U.S. sailors from two navy ships (USS Pollux and Truxtun) that sank off the coast of Newfoundland, which he shared with me.  Yes it was a quiet morning, but he could have ignored us too.  This just sets the tone for the entire vacation: relaxed, fun, educational, and recharging.  I have never experienced this anywhere else.
• We absolutely could not find one person who supported our current president.  One was lukewarm, but his wife kept rolling her eyes.   Most people expressed how sorry they felt for us about what we had to go through during and after the elections and our choice of president.  They went even further after the shooting on the baseball field, when many actually gave us their condolences.  We tried to give ourselves a complete news blackout, but that obviously did not work.  Many people did tell us that while in previous years they vacationed in the U.S., they were now actively looking for other places to vacation and avoiding coming to the U.S. (Florida, Arizona) in winter.  This was not because of fear for terrorism, but because of the political climate.  So much for being on vacation and trying to avoid politics for two weeks.
• Newfoundland has a lot of potholes in the road, some of which can swallow a car (yes I am exaggerating).  At times it felt like I was back in Scotland, driving on the left side of the road (avoiding potholes).  We just used every part of the road that was available at the time.  Surprisingly, the sections of road through the national parks were in the best shape!
• We experienced global warming as it happened.  Predictions are that this part of the world might actually get colder as part of global warming, which might have been what we saw.  So what did we see?  In a normal year, the glaciers in Greenland calf off and pieces float down the Labrador Current and you can see them from various points in Newfoundland.  The best time to view these appears to be late May and early June.  This year, for the first time since 1974 (according to the locals) the polar ice cap broke up (global warming caused?), and the Labrador Current combined with the north winds pushed it all south against the island.  The entire north shore was covered with sea ice, with large icebergs embedded in it.  It was so bad that tourist boats could not go out, the ferry to Labrador was stopped and fishing boats were stuck at their moorings.  One fishing boat that made an attempt while we were there was actually crushed and sank.  The crew got off and needed to be pulled of a sheet of sea ice by helicopter.  But as a result when the wind was from the north, is was damn cold along the coast.
• It appears that cars and moose don’t mix.  Everywhere there are signs that if you should call a certain number when you see a moose near the road.  I guess they chase them off, turn them into moose burgers or moose sausages, or whatever they do to them, but they do not want them near the road.  We actually only saw one moose (near the road) and one bear, also near the road.  Both were in Gros Morne National Park, and no we did not call them in.

The view from the French Beach trail on Twillingate Island.  Here you can really see the sea ice and the icebergs that came down with the Labrador Current. 

For right now, these are some random impressions that have come up in my mind of my visit.  Probably not very philosophical or educational today, but fun to share.  I will do some more in the future.  One thing is for sure: go explore, experience different places, different cultures; broaden your horizon.

I’ll stop learning when I’m dead (6/13/2017)

So here I am doing one of the more stressful parts of my job: auditing the courses people submit to us as part of their recertification requirements.  I wrote about it before <here>, but when a course does not qualify, I contact them and tell them that I will be removing it from their record and that they will need to take another class.

Here is a response I received: “That is very disappointing to hear.  I will be sure not to attend any future presentations by Mr. B…”  Suffice it to say we had a big laugh about this one in our office; what a baby.  It was only one hour of the 18 hours this person needed to accumulate over 3 years.  When I teach a whole day class they get 6 hours.

But then it struck me, how sad!  These are those people that I talk about in some of my my posts (and what I hint at in the title of this post); they come to my classes, sit in the back and either constantly browse on their phone (Facebook, porn?), or have their sunglasses on so you can’t see that they are actually sleeping.  These are those people that go home after a day’s of work grab a six pack of bud light out of the fridge and plop themselves in front of the TV and pass out, even before going to bed.  Their wives (spouses) either have affairs or have gained so much weight because their sex lives have gone to hell anyway, that it does not matter anymore.  This is what a couple of six packs, ESPN, FOX news and maybe a few porn sites during my classes do for them.  Figuratively these people are already dead, but they don’t know it yet, but mentally they are, they stopped learning.

That’s what the title of this blog refers to.  A lot of people that I encounter in my profession sit through my classes but they do not want to learn.  They have no interest in being educated.  They go through the motions.  I wish that I could kick them out, deny them their certificate, but I can’t.  I mention in one of my posts, that the thought that I may educate one or two persons in a class of forty is enough.  Even here that serenity prayer that I introduced in my previous post is applicable:  “Please give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I am finishing this post on a well deserved vacation to Newfoundland.  I took this photograph of an iceberg floating off the east coast.  This is what is so important and frustrating to me: global warming, environmental issues, and the "I don't give a damn" attitude of some of my students. 

I may be a dilatant, but it is better than being ignorant.  When I went to graduate school, I did not only take courses that applied to my degree; I went berserk trying to get an education.  This was probably to my detriment, I did not graduate with a 4.0.  My class load was always too heavy, but I wanted to learn as much as I could.  That was important to me, learning!  Getting older, after a full day of work and two and a half hour total commuting I am tired when I come home.  But the least thing I can do is watch a YouTube video here or there about growing or taking care of Bonsais, which is one of my hobbies.  I am trying to learn something there.  I read when my eyes and brain can handle it.  I usually read non-fiction, I want to learn!  At home we rarely watch TV; maybe the news and a cooking or a home show so now and then, but that’s it.  This summer we’ll watch the Tour de France.

It is absolutely amazing that the country where everybody used to look up to for its education, its research and modernity is now cutting education, making fun of people who are educated and is in a race to the bottom, for the lowest common denominator.  A university education was affordable when I came to the U.S. in 1979 to study.  Now they have raised the cost of university education so high that it is out of reach of the common man.  We are creating a tremendous class system in this country between the wealthy educated upper middle class and not so wealthy lower middle class and the working class.  No wonder some talk about “the educational elite” as if it is a stigma.  No wonder we want to go back to burning coal for energy as opposed to developing high-tech means of generating energy.   

Sir Francis Bacon is commonly quoted of first saying that “Knowledge is Power.”  Bacon who lived from 1561 to 1626 is considered the father of scientific method.  For example Thomas Jefferson, himself a(n amateur) scientist, considered Bacon one of the greatest men that had ever lived.  I think it is true that knowledge is important and power.  One of the things I treasure most is learning and knowledge.  When I cannot learn I would die or be dead.  During my commute I listen to Doctor Radio on Sirius-XM, I need to learn; I often joke that by now I could sit for my medical boards and pass them, except I never dissected a cadaver.

All my bitching and moaning aside, learning and knowledge is not only good for you mentally.  It has been shown to slows down our mental decline in old age, helps us socially and may even help us financially.  Finally, when we are all educated, society will benefit as well, only then can we change the world for the better for all and eliminate the great divide between people.  

On Environmental Ethics (5/12/2017)

In a LinkedIn group I am a member of the question came up: “Can an environmental consultant who works for industrial companies or land developers be ethical?”  My answer was a resounding yes. 

In my classes I use an example that goes like this:

During my consultant years, I was sitting behind my desk and Mike the head of our planning group walked into my office.  “Jan, can you attend a meeting next week with a client?  We are going to show him this new sub-division we have designed for him here in Virginia Beach.”  “Sure Mike, can I see the plans, so I can prepare myself a bit?”  Mike returns to my office in a few minutes with the plan.  “Mike, I have been on the property next door, and it has a lot of wetlands.  I want to bet this property probably has wetlands, as well.  I have not done a wetland delineation for this site, shouldn’t we do one?”  “Oops ...  OK Jan, why don’t you go and take a look.”  I go out the next day with my equipment and GPS, find a lot of wetlands on the site, survey them and stick them on a map.  The next day I walk into Mikes office.  Mike goes: “Oops.  Can you make them go away?”  I say: “Sure Mike, lots of money.”  At this point light bulbs go on above the heads of the students in my class.  They are paying attention now, I teach mostly government officials and I now work for the government.  He is finally going to expose the non-ethical corrupt industry of land development that he used to be part of, here it comes, they think!  But I tell my class: “No, when you are working with wetlands, the permitting and mitigation process is time consuming and very expensive and it is better to avoid it.  But if they want to build it the way Mike wants to propose it, the process will cost a lot of money for mitigation and permitting”  That is also what I tell Mike.  And the story continues from there, there was nothing unethical in my proposal.  Mike calls the client, asks for a a for more weeks of time and redesigns the site to avoid the wetlands.

I am proud to say that I have always been ethical in the work I have done.  Often my clients have done a little bit more for the environment than the laws and regulations required they should (thanks to me).  I have tried to show them the beauty and the importance of the resources.  In one case, I found the largest water oak in Virginia on a client's property.  A photo of my client under the tree made it in the local newspaper.  You bet that oak and the surroundings was saved, whether that client was ethical or not.

Ethics is defined as the moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity.  As a study it is the discipline that deals with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation (Merriam Webster Online Dictionary).  That is a mouth full, isn’t it?  Here you get to the argument of what is is!  Or what some people think is good or bad may differ from other people.  

There is a whole branch of philosophy devoted to ethics so it is not something I can contribute to; I am just a naturalist, biologist and trainer.  But I can try to live ethical or at least as ethical as possible.  This is what ethics studies:  "What would a person do or how would she/he react under a specific circumstance?"    

But I want to get back to environmental ethics and my job.  An argument can be made that I helped my clients check that box either on an application for a permit or maybe in the back of their conscious saying: "Yes, they have done their environmental due diligence."  I am not even talking about the best thing for the environment.  Like with Mike in that example above, I may have saved a few wetlands, but that subdivision still got build, birds, snakes, and turtles lost their home, the environment was still impacted.  As a consultant with sincere love for the environment the Serenity prayer was my escape hatch:

"Please give me the SERENITY to accept the things I cannot change, the COURAGE to change the things I can and the WISDOM to know the difference!"

That Serenity prayer kept me going, I could not change the outcome, but I had the courage to make a little bit of difference.  That made me feel better.

Even in my current job; I teach people and companies to follow the laws and the regulations.  It makes me feel good, when I get back to my motel room or back home, I feel satisfied; I ticked off those boxes of being a environmental steward, good for the environment.  But does it really help what I do?  I don't know.  I have often said and written that I would feel great that on any specific day in one of my classes of 40 individuals I have 1 or 2 people either change their attitude towards nature or actually become enlightened.  That's when I feel successful.

Often this is what we in the environmental movement need to look for.  No, we cannot stop a project but we can make reduce or minimize the environmental impact of these projects.  Those are our small ethical victories, save the world one turtle at a time.

We cannot stop development and that is not what my job is about.  We just need to make sure that it is done sustainable, responsibly and according to the laws and regulations.  Here my colleague Don and I are inspecting a building site.  We did not find much wrong here.

And we march on (4/24/2017)

And so the Nation marched for science, scientists, science funding and last but not least for Earth Day.  Yes, we marched as well.  No, we did not go to Washington DC this time but we marched in Norfolk.  Our very lame excuse was that the march ended up at the O’Conner’s microbrewery, which brews some of my favorite beer, like I needed an excuse to visit their tasting room again. 

Marching down Granby Street in Norfolk in the name of Science, Curiosity and Earth Day!

Get-together after the march at O'Connors microbrewery

Whatever my excuse was guys, marching and letting our voices heard was important, and maybe showing up in Norfolk was more important than doing so in DC.  Here we could show that the concern was nationwide, as it should be.  The concern is even more urgent so close to the Chesapeake Bay.  Science should not be a partisan thing; neither should be a concern for mother earth, or as I have called it in a previous post: our Blue Marble.  What concerns me is all this talk about future generations when we talk about saddling future generations up with economic debt, but very few want to address the fact that we are saddling future generations up with environmental debt. 

As I mentioned in previous posts these discussions are not new.  Malthus (1798) predicted that we would have to deal with over population and the resulting man-caused disasters (see my previous post about that <here>).  Others claimed it is our world and we can do with it what we want.  Western man’s dominion of nature is as old the bible itself.  But it was Francis Bacon (1561-1626) who articulated this when he claimed that we needed to use science and technology to reclaim our “dominion over creation”; something we had lost when Adam and Eve were "kicked" out of the Garden of Eden.  As I wrote in a May 11, 2016 blog post, John Locke took this a few steps further, and asserts that nature itself has no intrinsic value, but that nature only gains value when we work it.  

This is completely contrary to some of the work I did some 20 years ago which was called "natural resources damage assessment" or NRDA.  One of the questions asked in NRDA is about what the enjoyment of nature is worth to you (the public) personally.  It was particular important in cases like oil spills.  The question became how much enjoyment did that take away from you, because you could not spend time on that beach, or fish?  This goes into the equation to calculate the amount of fines that are being assessed to companies that damage the environment like BP when the had the spill in the Gulf.  If we would follow John Locke's logic the ocean may not be worth anything, or for that matter neither would the Chesapeake Bay.  Or maybe since we are mining it we have dominion over it and we can pollute it to our heart's content.

I think this strange logic is still out there, 500 years later.  Or is it 2000 years later?  Some people still think we can do to the earth what ever we want.  They think we own it.  There is still this thought that any problem can eventually be solved by science, a somewhat Baconeque point of view.  

Instead of seeing nature as a subordinate or worthless, we should have a sense of awe and wonder over nature, and a belief that we humans are part of it.  This is why we were marching this past Saturday, not only to solve these issues by science but to understand the issues (and maybe help with a solution).  By understanding them we maybe able to avoid worsening some of them or avoid starting new ones.  

On a final note, what encouraged my wife and I the most was that during our walk, some of the walkers were actually picking up garbage and eventually deposited the garbage in a dumpster that the found on our route.  They were actually cleaning up the environment as we walked, leaving the world a better place.

Speeches before the start of the march in Norfolk, just an interesting juxtaposition showing that science is apolitical

How do you live your life? (4/12/2017)

I have been following a blogger with the name of Mark Mason for a while. He is a self-proclaimed thinker, writer and life enthusiast. His latest post hit home; he titled it “Life is a Video Game--These are the Cheat Codes.” While Mark drops a lot of F-bombs in his article(s), more than I have ever dropped in my entire blogging career, it still got me thinking.

Mark tells us that in his opinion our life as a video game has 5 difficulty levels:

• Level 1 – Find food; find a bed to sleep in at night
• Level 2 – Know you’re not going to die
• Level 3 – Find your people
• Level 4 – Do something that’s important and valuable to both yourself and others
• Level 5 – Create a legacy

No, I am not dead yet.  But who the hell am I and am I really doing something that is important and valuable to myself and others, or am I creating a legacy?   (Actually, I took this selfie by accident after biking on the New River Trail, but I kind of like it).

That is what got me wondering, “at what level am I?”  This is exactly why this article hit home.  But first, I somehow agree with Mark’s assessment of these levels.  There may be small steps in between, or detours, but when you look at it, these are important levels.

Most of us have no problem reaching Level 1; although walking through downtown Richmond and seeing some of the beggars and in the morning, or when I see this guy sleep in the doorway of this abandoned building.  At that point you just can’t escape the feeling that even some people can’t reach that level for one reason or another.  It is sad that we have no safety net for them and we can't even help them to the next level.  Some people argue that they don't want help, and who knows, some may not.

Level 2 is where things may start breaking down already; many people and particular kids in the inner city are not sure if they are going to survive to make it to the next day or to adulthood.  There is so little future for them and maybe this is why they will join gangs and don’t give a shit about life.  They somehow try to cheat this Level and go to Level 3 and try to find their people in gangs and groups, but actually these groups will most likely drop them like a hot potato (and kill them) when they become a liability or when they are no longer needed.  Not really true friends.  But then what do you do when you have no future or really never think you will be able to attain Levels 2, 3, 4 or 5 in your lifetime?  This is why the “Black lives matter” movement is so important, that should give them more hope and more genuine support you need to get to Level 3.

Last week when I was teaching, there were these four guys who were horsing around with each other.  It was so much fun to see them joke with each other like what appeared to be true friendship.  I fed on that and it made my teaching fun.  They obviously reached Level 3.  But there are also so many fake friends; it reminds me of the “Sopranos” where friends were expandable and you could easily fit them for concrete shoes.  Good, true friendship is hard to find, and from what I understand we guys have a more difficult time with it than women do.  However, it really is that Level 3 where a lot of people get stuck, in my eyes; they never get past that level. 

Even here at work, you see that too many people can never get past Level 2 or maybe Level 3.  They seem to come to work and go through the motions; play the social butterfly; try to please everyone; write reports for reporting sake; worry about writing a good report or looking good to their superior; kiss up; play the politics; you name it.  But in the end the only reason they do it is maybe to be accepted; noticed; fill in something they are missing in their private life or maybe when they grew up; be the boss’s favorite and hopefully get that promotion and a raise.  In the end they think they are doing this for themselves, but at what satisfaction?  In my eyes they compromise their entire lives away and are not genuine to themselves and to others.  They go through the motions in life, make fake friends, and make sure that they don’t miss that bus in the evening to take them home where they can veg out and watch TV or play video games in order to block out the miserable life they lead at work.  When push comes to shove, they have not done anything valuable for themselves, for their friends, for society or the community at large; although they keep trying to convince themselves that they did.  Many people live a life of denial. As Joni Mitchell once sang, they could have been more.

But even in the classes that I teach.  Granted, all these people have to take my classes to get recertified.  However, I make them as fun and interesting as I can, and I get a lot of reviews that tell me I am doing a good job at that.  But I also have a lot of people who sit in the back of the class and as I think about it: just browse porn site on their phones, and don’t pay attention to me what so ever.  They go through the motions because their supervisors tell them they have to take these classes.  They have no ambition to ever make it to Level 5 and maybe not even Level 4.

As Mark writes, Level 5 is making sure that your life mattered when you are dead.

At the end of his blog Mark writes the following (and this is a direct quote):

Good luck Player One. Remember, the game of Life is designed to be complex and confusing. The difficulty is not winning, but knowing what winning itself means. Because that’s the real challenge: deciding what our own life is worth and then having the courage to go out and live it.

I have tried to live my life to the fullest. When we were younger, my wife and I were out there in development work living and working in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, sometimes at difficult circumstances (at gunpoint and under floods as I have described in previous posts). We were taking risks and putting ourselves out there; we were already living in Level 4. Even now, every time I teach, I have decided that I have a successful day and leave a legacy when I am able to truly educate, enlighten and motivate one or two persons in the class of 30 to 40 people that day. For the rest, I am trying to fight for what I believe in, write that book and live a good life. Don't worry, I am not trying to show off, there are times that we all digress and there are times that I only live in Level 1 or 2.  But at least at times I have been up there and it sure feels nice up there.

So again, at what Level am I?  I really don't know, but I'll do my darnest to reach Level 5.  What Level are you and at what level will you be by the time you die?