Author Archives: skipper

How to Achieve Your Own Liberal Arts Education

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Having written recently about the demise of liberal arts in colleges, the mariner pondered ways by which each of us still could be broadly educated and “erudite.” One truly can become well versed in subjects that are part of a good liberal arts education. This free education is a gift from the Internet.

There is no subject that cannot be researched or help broaden one’s understanding. One can learn any language; become an expert about any place or period in history, any science category, mathematics, literature and poetry, biology, sociology, health and medicine, botany, geography, physics, astronomy, etc. The mariner suggests the reader try to name a subject for which there is no information on the Internet.

What the student must bring to the computer is curiosity. Curiosity is the engine that drives the education process. Ask the three “?” questions: What is happening? How does this happen? Why is it happening? Otherwise, there is no syllabus; no textbooks are required; no fees or tuition required. Just bring your curiosity. A little practice rapidly will expand your inquisitiveness. Below are a few sample websites mariner uses from time to time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=&go=Go Want to know what Bananas in Pyjamas is all about? It’s in the Wikipedia. The best definition of this website is “an encyclopedia on steroids.” The Wikipedia often shows up in search engine results. Always helpful and full of detail.

http://translate.reference.com/ This is one of the best dictionary/translator websites. The mariner typed “Where is the dog?” (German) and received “wo ist der Hund?” One can even practice as if $400 were paid for expensive language software. The website has several languages usually offered in a liberal arts curriculum.

http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-sees-unavoidable-sea-level-rise-ahead-180844156.html NASA predicts 3-foot rise in sea levels. All the larger search engines have current event screens; many have scroll bars for popular headlines. This is a good place to review once a day if the reader does not want to suffer cable news channels.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/events/the-next-america-opportunity-for-all-20150625 Video of a conference talking about how the United States can grow the middle class. Suggest viewing in segments. Key content is the breadth of the issue. The National Journal is an excellent source for those interested in ideas about culture and politics.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/05/ “The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Giving.” A fascinating article about why humans have generosity. The mariner subscribes to The Atlantic. This magazine, both online and in print, provides quality insights about many subjects.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/?no-ist Topics are diverse, covering culture, archeology, current trends, and interesting biographies. The mariner subscribes to the Smithsonian.

http://www.livescience.com/ Mentioned in an earlier post, this website covers many areas of science, including current events. Livescience.com easily covers one’s science requirement in a liberal arts curriculum.

http://americanliterature.com/ Did you know Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening in 1899? What other book did she write? How many short stories written by Kate can you name? To paraphrase Ed McMahon, everything you ever wanted to know about American literature is at this website. One can read many, many books at this website. If you are familiar with a big chunk of this site, consider yourself an English Major. The reader will have no difficulty finding similar websites for literature around the world.

http://ahs.org/ American Horticultural Society’s website. A comfortable site that ranges from gardening buffs to serious breeders of species. Every “trade,” (gardening, woodwork, welding, quilt making, etc.) has websites. There are many skill-related websites – detailed enough to fix a dripping faucet or repair an electrical outlet.

By now, the reader understands the method for educating one’s self. The important thing is to search and search again until you find something you don’t know about. One could even learn what a professional librarian does – something the State of Iowa doesn’t require of its public school “librarians.”

Ancient Mariner

Distribute Your Wealth Now!

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Yes, you. If you have the wherewithal to read the mariner’s blog, you have wealth. No one else can address the depravity, greed, ignorance, prejudice, starvation, disease, death, destruction of the biosphere, incessant war, and class abuse.

The United Methodist Church has a mission project called “Imagine No Malaria.” One can acquire a tee shirt that says, “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try spending the night with a mosquito.” This proverb is a fine challenge; it can apply to any issue around the world or around the corner. If you want to support this project, send a contribution to your local Methodist Church.

Below are other efforts that need your wealth and your health.

Habitat for Humanity. (www.habitat.org) Builds homes for the homeless. This is an organization that has immense impact on a family’s life in a very short time. HH will accept your body and a hammer as well. Check the website for information.

Salvation Army. (www.salvationarmyusa.org) “ONE MISSION: Into the world of the hurting, broken, lonely, dispossessed and lost, reaching them in love by all means.” Contribute goods and cash. SA also helps those in disaster zones and ignores national boundaries. Check local phonebook for free pick up; donate cash on the website.

Religious Institution. Visit your institution or search for that institution’s website to find a magnitude of mission projects for people in need around the world.

World Wildlife Fund. (www.worldwildlife.org) “The group’s mission is to stop the degradation of the planet’s natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature. Currently, much of its work focuses on the conservation of three biomes that contain most of the world’s biodiversity: oceans and coasts, forests, and freshwater ecosystems. Among other issues, it is also concerned with endangered species, pollution and climate change.” Visit website for gifts and donations.

Food and Water Watch. (www.foodandwaterwatch.org) “Food & Water Watch works to ensure the food, water and fish we consume is safe, accessible and sustainably produced. So we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of where their food comes from, keep clean, affordable, public tap water flowing freely to our homes, protect the environmental quality of oceans, force government to do its job protecting citizens, and educate about the importance of keeping the global commons — our shared resources — under public control.”

The mariner is a member of FWW. He feels there is a need to protect shared resources by keeping resource administration in the public sector where profit is less of a threat to our health and access to critical resources is not denied for any reason. FWW is an advocacy organization that responds to federal, state and local legislation that may be detrimental to the wellbeing of citizens.

Local charities. In your search engine, type “charities near me” to find organizations supporting every sort of need from homeless to abject poor to neighborhood cleanup to slum restoration to medical need to foster children services, even to homeless pets. There is no shortage of need for your wealth and your health.

Add to this list your commitment to improve local government by becoming active in local issues and participating in the primary and voting process.

The mariner has provided a short sample of ways by which the reader can become engaged in improving the world. One does not have to wait for an election.

Ancient Mariner

It is Time

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For the first time in many, many years across republican and democratic administrations, the US Presidential elections are poised for real change. There are so many broken processes, vacant ethics, criminal negligence, and greed that the mariner will not bother going into detail. Every reader, both democrat and republican, has their own list of grievances.

What is different this year is the state of Federal and State governments. Governance is in complete disarray. Following is the set of opportunities that exist for the 2016 election:

Whoever is elected in the states may well have an opportunity to draw new boundaries for congressional districts in 2020. If state legislatures have an infusion of democrats and independents, perhaps the intense abuse of districts to assure conservative voter majorities can be curtailed. Many other voter options are in play as well: modernization of state and Federal laws for who can vote, how they can vote and where they can vote; God be praised if congressional redistricting is removed from party influence.

If your Federal representatives have a seat on the science and technology committees, retrieve their voting records and consider their records carefully voting for the candidate that does not defy scientific indicators. If your federal representatives have seats on agricultural committees, consider their records in a similar manner. The same is true for infrastructure, banking, ways and means and commerce. Today, there is an organized republican resistance to any new rules, regulations or budget allocations that change the status quo for fossil fuels, energy, utility grids, environment, economy, taxes to reduce debt, minimum wage Social Security and Welfare, insurance fees, and health costs.

How the reader addresses these issues is to make every conceivable effort to participate in local politics – especially, ESPECIALLY attend your caucus or primary voting process. The reader’s vote and opinion are significant and will trickle up the ballot all the way to voting for President in November. In Iowa, one isn’t necessarily aware where the caucus will be held; location is minimally advertised to dissuade the riff-raff. However, it is easy to learn the location; one must make a small extra effort to know. More than any recent election, raising your participation a notch or two for this election season can pay off.

In recent posts, the mariner has focused on the fabric of our nation. That fabric is frayed, even missing for many citizens. The mariner has mentioned the nature of chaos – that there is no reason or foresight in chaos. But chaos can be brought under control if enough citizens insist on moral and statesmanlike leadership in the society. As a citizen, it is our time. It is beyond our time. Do your duty to heal your culture.

Ancient Mariner

21st Century – The Age of Chaos

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Dear friend Robert.

All old codgers remember the days… We remember the innocence of youngness. We remember how Grandma washed clothes with a scrub board, Dad cleaned the furnace and Mom ran the wringer washer. We remember in our young years walking innocently through many wooded areas searching for adventure, critters and newly discovered creeks where no child can roam today without parents. We remember food rationing, gasoline rationing, and blackout drills during the big war. We remember music and culture as it was then. We remember school days, friends, and dreaming about the future. The days were filled innocently with rocket launches, thousands of comic books, the Poor Soul, and Enoch Pratt Library. We remember afternoons spent downtown at the Laugh Movie and eating at Read’s and Neddick’s. These memories will never disappear. Our growing years are locked in our memory forever. Even more, we old codgers are our memories!

Thinking back that far, we cannot deny that today is quite different. But until the Viet Nam War and Ronald Reagan, middle-American culture sustained the nation. The culture was firm enough to sustain context as each generation and every worldly change came along. Things changed but they changed without threatening the basic character of the nation.

As the mariner writes posts for “The Blog of the Ancient Mariner,” he reflects on change in a culture which no longer sustains a stable national gestalt. For most readers, the mariner points out substantive shifts in the world that are not typically the fodder of daily awareness. Sadly, because there is no common core in society, change is helter-skelter, e.g, tossing out liberal arts under the pressure of a slipping economy and an oligarchic, every man for himself, philosophy of life; tossing the baby out with the bath. There is no plan for the future. Consequently, change is more an experience of “progress” with a large wake of trashed values. Chaos is existential: live for today; who knows what tomorrow may bring?

The mariner has confessed many times that he is an incarnation of the Old Testament prophet Amos who railed against the laxity of reverence to God and the slipping morals of society. No one liked him either. The mariner also confesses that he is an incarnation of Chicken Little, a child’s avatar for angst. Apologies for the compound effect of being a raging goat herder and a squawking chicken.

You make a valid point that the mariner is quick to judge but does not offer tasks and solutions for his readers. He will make amends. One must note that chaos often doesn’t have solutions. In the midst of global warming, population growth, keeping the Earth sound as well as safe and historic shifts in political power and economy, solutions are hard to come by. The only advice the mariner can offer is to vote wisely, vote spiritually, and vote for the return of stewardship and compassion. Also, do not waste food or water, support those institutions and charities you believe are important to manage change. No matter how ragged and abused, US democracy still works. The people have the power to reign in chaos.

Ancient Mariner

Liberal Arts – A Lost Art

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MOUNT PLEASANT, IA. — Melodies seeped through doors and floated down the hallways last week inside Old Main, the grand, three-story home to Iowa Wesleyan College’s music department.

Despite renovations and fire, this 160-year-old building — the second oldest on campus — has retained its beautiful, historic wrinkles. So the music made here beneath a tiny gold dome isn’t trapped within modern, acoustically sealed studios.

Old Main exhales the sound of its aspiring virtuosos into the world at large.

It’s an apt metaphor for how Iowa Wesleyan music graduates in turn have educated generations of music students around southeast Iowa and beyond.

And it helps demonstrate why beloved Old Main has been a symbol at the epicenter of this college’s financial crisis.

Iowa Wesleyan President Steve Titus announced last month that half the college’s major programs (16 of 32, including music education) would close as the college sheds jobs: 22 of 52 faculty and 23 of 78 staff, for a projected $3 million savings.

Sociology, history, pre-law, studio art, philosophy of religion and communication are among the other programs to be scrapped.

Titus and the board of trustees — which voted unanimous approval — more or less have been able to sell the plan with another statistic: Only 52 students out of about 600 at the United Methodist Church-affiliated school (less than 9 percent) are enrolled in the majors to be cut. And 17 of those students will graduate this year. Popular programs such as business administration, education and nursing will forge ahead. [Kyle Munson, Des Moines Register, Feb 16 2014]

 

What draws liberal arts to the forefront of the mariner’s mind is Fareed Zakaria’s latest book, In Defense of a Liberal Education. Zakaria is one of mariner’s favorite authors. His books are lucid, insightful and easy to read. Zakaria says  liberal arts education is more important than technical training or job-based education. He writes:

“Engineering is a great profession, but key value-added skills you will also need are creativity, lateral thinking, design, communication, storytelling, and, more than anything, the ability to continually learn and enjoy learning – precisely the gifts of a liberal education.”

From the inception of the United States, the keystone that differentiates it from all other countries is that it provides a liberal arts education. This emphasis on broad knowledge and thinking skills produces a nation known for its free thinking, creative, and even futuristic society. The edge the nation holds among nations is the ability of its workforce to capture the latest ideas, to innovate new solutions, and to sustain a free-thinking culture – until now.

The failure of small liberal arts colleges is a bellwether. The small liberal arts college is most vulnerable to financial issues. One cannot blame students for seeking job-enhancing education. For forty years, the nation has been losing jobs for a shrinking middle class, computerization, manufacturing moves to less expensive labor markets and, since 2005, the American economy. In addition, larger institutions have the ability to compete in a dollar race with other institutions because they have large trust funds, government subsidy and a formidable advantage over small colleges in tuition from thousands of students – a tuition that inflates beyond inflation every year.

It may be a romantic notion. Perhaps it’s time to move on to dollar-efficient training of students for jobs that do not require wisdom or creativity. Fareed quotes William Bennett while Bennett was interviewing North Carolina’s Patrick McCrory:

“How many PhDs in philosophy do I need to subsidize?” Bennett asked – a sentiment to which McCrory enthusiastically agreed. (Ironically, Bennett himself has a PhD in philosophy, which appears to have trained him well for his multiple careers in government, media, nonprofits, and the private sector.)

As liberal arts education declines, so will the free thinking element of US democracy. Disappearance of liberal arts is indeed the bellwether behind a significant number of news headlines today. Exclusive boundaries are growing stronger around increasingly narrow minded groups. One example is the creationist battle in Texas for dominance in history books. Because the Texas School Board orders so many books, publishers tend to appease the board even though the history books are bought across the country. Another example is Congress, where virtually nothing creative or inventive occurs – only ideological bickering and blockading of each group’s legislation. This close-minded attitude has been creeping into mainstream society for decades and becomes more established as jobs, income, and pragmatism become the cause for education.

Our national jewel, free thinking and problem solving wisdom, will evaporate. We will be as any other nation that constrains individual discovery to promote fiscal efficiency and nationalistic objectives.

Liberal arts remain a conundrum for the United States. Without the wise insight proffered by a liberal arts education, where will we find those leaders who will sustain a liberal arts education?

Ancient Mariner

Abortion

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The mariner lives with a number of neighbors who advocate every aspect of the abortion issue from “no abortion under any circumstance” to “no one owns my body but me.” As he visits with one neighbor or the other, he must remember to whom he is talking regarding their conservative/liberal stance on any number of social issues.

The fetus is emerging as a viable living being about which more and more can be determined before birth; medicine is on the verge of applying gene therapy for certain genetic deficiencies. The increasing ability to interact with the fetus reinforces the pro-life idea that the fetus is indeed a living being. The pro-choice side believes that no one has the right to impose physical use of a female’s body against her will. It may be that violating a woman’s use of her own body is tantamount to torture or slavery. In recent decades, the use of birth control devices and pharmaceuticals has become more acceptable than in the past but religious advocates and pro-lifers still cast a wary eye lest conception occurs first. The use of contraceptives eases the situation of women who choose not to be pregnant. A significant majority of unexpected pregnancies occur in situations where contraceptives are not considered necessary, e.g., younger girls or older women presumed not to be fecund, rape of any kind, ignorance, or negligence.

It is the treatment of unexpected pregnancies that is an issue all its own. Hard line pro-lifers refuse any interpretation other than carrying the fetus to full term. Less adamant but still pro-life, some may allow abortions for the mother’s life, rape or, for a few pro-lifers, extreme deformity or incest. At first glance, the reader may think that the definition of exceptions may offer a better opportunity for negotiation; this is unlikely. Pro-lifers will claim that any exception can be stretched. In the gay marriage debate, it was popular to suggest that humans could legally marry a plethora of non-human animals and even non-living objects. Pro-choice advocates will raise social and economic arguments, e.g., “Who will pay for raising unwanted or unaffordable babies?” “Must a woman carry a fetus she does not want?” A recent case where a stepfather raped his 10-year-old stepdaughter is a classic example of social circumstances. A pro-life friend of the mariner would not consider any solution except full term delivery citing the fetus was innocent and had standard human rights to exist. Many who have less extreme views on both sides wrestle with the future impact of the heinous event versus abortion of the fetus. The mariner was asked, “Do two wrongs make a right?” Definitions of right and wrong are sorely overlooked. The oblique question shows that a logical foundation for debate is missing.

One argument the mariner will cast aside as irrelevant is the case where a fetus was considered for abortion but in the end was not aborted. “This person grew up to be [insert a wonderful leader].” Had the fetus been aborted, some other wonderful leader would play the role. This argument is both hypothetical and unpredictable.

That the abortion issue is irreconcilable is a shame. There is prejudice on both sides that has nothing in common with the opposite side. Then there is the law, which is inadequate to mediate differences. Abortion or no abortion is an intimate event. Yet, it is important to many people as a prerequisite to deciding church versus state issues, growing population, personal and government expense, medical and insurance policies, and class privilege.

Eventually, it may be that a legal procedure will be developed that assures the best interest of the fetus before abortions can be authorized. Such a procedure will require endless haggling over the wording but it moves the debate away from the “all or nothing” standoff between pro-life and pro-choice; it also lessens the tendency to mix church and state. In the end abortion, like euthanasia, will become a case-by-case court issue – or if one can afford it, a discreet arrangement.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Keeping Up with the World

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Some readers may be interested in why the world is the way it is today. For example, the Atlantic magazine has a truly insightful article about ISIS, its driving principles and interpretation of the Quran. See:

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

For a thorough, apolitical review of all aspects of global warming, population and impact on the biosphere, Live Science is an excellent source not only for global warming but a full rainbow of scientific insights about the world today. See:

http://www.livescience.com/topics/global-warming/

In order to produce both volume and profit in livestock corporations, animal abuse is rampant – including human animals. See:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=john+oliver+chicken+farmers&FORM=VIRE1#view=detail&mid=FB1EA7E99500750DC9B2FB1EA7E99500750DC9B2

A few books are benchmark publications that bring to light the subtle phenomena that shape our lives. For example, a book everyone should retrieve from a library is The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert. It is an entertaining read recounting Kolbert’s travels around the world with scientists and researchers. She discusses how viruses and bacteria are carried around the world affecting everything from frogs to bats. The book focuses on human activity that destroys the biosphere. There is an alarming account of the huge number of extinctions that have occurred since 1900 and what that means to human survival.

The Road to Character, a new book by David Brooks, PBS commentator, is an introspective review of his life by comparing the lives of others against his own life. Brooks discusses foibles and successes and how others overcame their shortcomings to become people of high character.

Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, written by Doris Kearns Goodwin, was published in 1977 but is a tour de force of Johnson’s personal and public life. Many today can recall (and observe) the cultural shift engineered by Ronald Reagan. Fewer remember the “guns and butter” policies of Johnson. Johnson launched the greatest cultural shift since FDR – including the Civil Rights Act. Goodwin was an intimate friend to whom LBJ revealed his inner struggles and his aspirations. Good for a summer long read.

Zealot: The life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, by Reza Asland, is a fascinating study of the time of Jesus – without focusing on the Christian ramifications of Jesus. It is a sociological look into that time; it provides a fresh perspective by which to understand Jesus and his role as a proselytizer and as a zealot. Reza Asland is a world renowned expert on world religions and has published several important works. For what it’s worth, Fox News vehemently denounced this book and assassinated the character of Asland.

 

Communication moves a lot faster today than even a couple of decades ago. Within minutes, we know about beheadings in Iraq, or a tsunami in Japan, or a volcanic eruption in Peru, or a giant explosion in China, or denying funds for America’s infrastructure and the jobs it would provide, or the disappearance of the Monarch butterfly. We know more about what is happening in real time. The added responsibility is to know why these events are happening. One can no longer speak blindly from old prejudices and unfounded privilege. Every day is a day at school maintaining our education about what is really happening and, knowing why, make the right decision to improve the plight of our real-time world.

Ancient Mariner

The Great Barrier of Nationalism

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In the last post, Today is Earth Overshoot Day, the mariner wrote of global issues that are ignored by governments around the world. Water and minerals have reached an end game and face inadequacy during this century. Food is both abused by waste and unavailable to millions because of political obstruction. Ecosystems of all kinds are wantonly destroyed to increase profit. One-third of the Gulf of Mexico is a dead sea because of the toxicity flowing off the Mississippi River. 90% of Monarch butterflies have disappeared. Coral reefs around the world are dying. Coral is the bottom of the food chain; without coral whole species of fish and mammals will disappear. Much of Micronesia will vanish beneath the sea in 50 years. Although we know deforestation of great forests is not good for our atmosphere, yet the clearing continues.

The mariner knows he sounds like Chicken Little but the ramifications of not caring about our planet or ourselves already are measurable. While there is a futile attempt by multiple nations to limit Carbon Dioxide, that effort miserably falls short of functional change, let alone actually modifying global circumstances. Still, governments feign ignorance about global warming and converting to alternative energy now and deny passing legislation to prevent profit taking at the expense of everyone’s biosphere.

Why is each nation so reticent to join with others to avoid terminal catastrophes for humanity? The answer is nationalism. The twenty-first century presents issues that can only be solved if the world politic changes its priorities. These priorities are not nation-sensitive. The type of government does not matter be it communist, socialist, capitalist, authoritarian, monarchy or tribal. In every case, the wellbeing of the nation, its economy, its culture, and its advantage among nations, are the first priority.

The one new nation that has evolved without nationalist priorities is corporations. Focused on profit as a first and last cause, corporations glean unfathomable amounts of cash and assets from the world economy. This cash is used to grow and acquire more assets or it is parked in long term investment. Corporate profit is sufficient to take serious steps toward global rejuvenation but does not for the sake of profit. If the sums stored away by corporations were taxed for the benefit of global issues, relatively simple issues like fossil fuels could be bought outright – diminishing the pressures against Earth’s biosphere in short order. Although the solution is simple, the process is tangled in worldwide nationalism – nations who benefit from their corporate contributors.

Operating largely outside the jurisdiction of nations, corporations are in effect today’s pirates – not roaming the seas but roaming the Internet that allows rapid reorganization and fast-dollar marketing and to move to nations that are more amenable and enable larger profits. The Trans-Pacific Partnership in Congress right now will make participating corporations virtually impervious to nation-based human rights and labor law. Corporate payoffs to legislators and kings are huge and difficult to resist.

To a small degree, one can understand greed as a goal. Certainly, it is personally rewarding. On the other hand, fairness is a tangible factor. If one makes a mess in a friend’s home, one pays the price of cleaning the mess rather than leaving it for the friend. Somehow, governments have forgotten fairness. Some of this forgetfulness can be attributed to outdated government concepts. The founding fathers of the United States left fairness to the individual so that there can be freedom for all, freedom to pursue happiness, etc. This liberated the new country from the abuses of colonialism but it provided no structure for fairness. If one could pick a single issue why the US and State governments are broken, one would have to say the governments don’t enforce fairness – hence the ease with which the US has become an oligarchy and allows the fast-buck, under-taxed marketplace.

Humanity has been unfair to Mother Earth. All of human history has been an expansion of skimming Earth’s riches but not cleaning human mess, not restoring or respecting what Earth has given toward our arrogant sense of success. Not only has humanity been thoughtless, humanity has been wanton. Without Earth, there would have been no success; without Earth now, there will be no humanity tomorrow. A respected ecologist has put the end 600 years from now.

Ancient Mariner

Today is Earth Overshoot Day

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Many may not know this term. It is the day of the year that humanity requires more of the Earth’s resources than Earth can provide for that year. In 2015 that day fell on August 14. From now until December 31, humanity is borrowing against future years. An example is the use of aquifers – water stored deep in the Earth. We are rapidly draining aquifers dry. What will happen when we have drained all the water? It took hundreds of thousands of years to create aquifers; humanity is draining them dry within 200 years. The chart below shows that earlier each year, humanity consumes more than the Earth can provide:

The latest population projection shows that by 2100, 85 years from now, the number of humans will grow from 7 billion+ to 12 billion+. That number is approaching double today’s population. Ecological resources are a global issue. It is larger than one nation, or the many international coalitions. It affects every nation on every continent. Every day the world dickers with economic and military wars, and ignores bellwether changes like global warming and creating dead seas that used to provide large quantities of life, global issues loom closer. Solving global issues will require every nation’s participation and will take decades to accomplish.

On a more imminent topic, the United States and most of the temperate climate nations will be affected by the strongest El Nino since 1950 – the first year records were kept. Southern California likely will get the rain it needs, albeit via heavy storms and flooding; Northern California and the top tiers of states all the way to the great lakes will be drier and warmer through the winter; the Upper Mississippi Valley and the Ohio Valley will have drier weather, perhaps even drought-like. The South, coast to coast, will have much wetter weather again via large storms. A second jet stream will come from Alaska and pass over the Great lakes into New England and the Middle Atlantic states.

The degree to which this strong El Nino will disrupt agriculture or cause flooding is still unknown but NOAA advises “above average” changes to our weather patterns. A tip to how much above average is in the name given by the cable weather channel: Godzilla El Nino. Crudely bilingual but a tip. If one remembers 1997-1998, El Nino produced snowstorms in New England that fell in feet per hour, rainstorms across the South that fell in inches per hour. Iowa and Missouri flip-flopped from very cold to very warm to very cold again.

Many planetary events have heightened profiles. In the mariner’s opinion, global warming is an indirect cause of stronger weather patterns and may, along with a weakening magnetic field, exacerbate plate tectonic activity. Because of the Sun’s cycle, scientists predict a small ice age in mid-century. Times they are a-changing!

Where will we put another 5 billion people? Not on islands or seashores – they will be underwater.

Ancient Mariner

The Candidates for Nomination

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The mariner is watching the early campaign for President with dissatisfaction more than anything else. The press is chasing easy news with Donald Trump. There is little substantive interpretation of what all this folderol means and no one seems to know how republican candidates respond to democratic intentions. So far, the republicans simply are bickering among themselves. It is true that the republicans are stretched across a broad spectrum of conservative ideology; real primaries likely will not unify easily behind one candidate – except perhaps the empty mind of Donald who, at least, speaks what he really feels. The mariner thinks Donald’s popularity is due to the phenomenon of honesty and lack of beholding to lobbies and money. Certainly, an aphrodisiac or perhaps a long needed rain falling on a drought-stricken voter desert.

In the long run, however, Donald is a deal-making pragmatist at best and an impulsive decision maker who will not fare well in international affairs. The mariner often is reminded of Cesar Chaves.

On the democratic side, the contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders seems to mirror the ideological struggle on the republican side. As far right as candidates like Rubio and Scott are, Bernie is to the far left. It would be a fascinating measure of the state of our culture if Bernie actually wins the nomination to run against a bona fide republican nominee. It also would be scary.

Almost unmentioned are old school republicans and democrats sitting in the midst of new ideological intensity. By the way, Hillary is one of the old schoolers. First, old schoolers are survivors; second pragmatists; and third hide behind the mundane party line. Ideology isn’t really their game. Just give them their paycheck and campaign funds. Bernie’s original intention, the mariner believes, is to keep Hillary as far left as possible but he has been surprisingly resilient and is approaching Hillary’s poll numbers.

The scariest combination is Donald versus Bernie – bullying versus intellect. Intellect has never fared well in the history of the United States. Considering Donald versus Hillary, Donald is likely to lose. His alienation of special subgroups will be his downfall – especially against the first woman President; women are not joining Donald with enough numbers to win. Then there are “the” blacks and “the” Hispanics.

This week, the mariner has begun to hear a speculative press. The fun of catering to empty assassinations by Donald is wearing thin. Further, the republican party is trying desperately to undermine him. Finally, the primary season will come into play despite the meddling of Fox News. Again, Donald’s style will threaten local activists and his results will diminish. The mariner hopes the real conservative will be identified early enough to speculate how well Hillary or Bernie will match the conservative candidate.

Ancient Mariner