Heroic, Historic, Flawed

You have probably heard of John Muir.   According to Wikipedia, His letters, essays, and books describing his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada, have been read by millions. His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park, and his example has served as an inspiration for the preservation of many other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he co-founded, is a prominent American conservation organization. In his later life, Muir devoted most of his time to the preservation of the Western forests. As part of the campaign to make Yosemite a national park, Muir published two landmark articles on wilderness preservation in The Century Magazine, “The Treasures of the Yosemite” and “Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park”; this helped support the push for U.S. Congress to pass a bill in 1890 establishing Yosemite National Park.^[6] The spiritual quality and enthusiasm toward nature expressed in his writings has inspired readers, including presidents and congressmen, to take action to help preserve large nature areas.

Civics Lesson

Who remembers Civics? It is the study of the rights and duties of citizenship.

On the news site, The Hill, today I found an article by John Bowden titled Activists say California city removed ‘Black Lives Matter’ street painting after request for ‘MAGA 2020’ mural.   The BLM sign was painted with the approval of the Redwood City officials who last week decided to quietly remove the yellow-painted words “Black Lives Matter” from Redwood City’s Broadway, a stretch of boulevard leading through the city’s downtown area.  The activists responsible for the painting of the BLM sign complained that it was removed because someone else had filed a request to post a pro-Trump sign.

Springtime

It is seventy degrees outside here in South Jordan, Utah. The sky is blue, all the more so because the shelter-in-place (such as it is) has reduced traffic giving us smog free days. (Did you know that Salt Lake City has a smog problem ? It is nestled in a valley between mountains, just as Los Angeles is and is therefore subject to smog being trapped under inversion layers. I find it ironic that we moved to a new city and a new state, only to still have smog and earthquakes. Yes, we have had several of those since we’ve been here. This has been what they call an aside. Now, back to our regular programming,) It has been over 45 years since I’ve lived where there is a real winter, hence a real spring. I am enjoying watching the trees sprout spring-green leaves and the daffodils spring from the earth in profusion. The dead looking plans our association planted around are house are actually showing signs of life. Inspired, I decided I should begin putting out some flower pots and bowls to join in the fun, so off I went to Home Depot. Yikes!! No parking places and a line to get in a block long. And nary a mask in sight, except for mine.

What to Believe

You’ve probably noticed by now that (1) the news and social media are dominated by the COVID-19 crisis right now and (2) that you can find virtually any prediction on it’s significance, from conspiracy to world-wide disaster. With our media more partisan than ever and driven by readership numbers and internet clicks, it is hard to find the truth about any issue. It is made harder by the fact that as a species we are all prone to some degree of confirmation bias, that nearly unconscious tendency to pay attention to items that support what we believe. With COVID-19, we are deluged with information. Unable to read it all, we are forced to pick and choose making confirmation bias even easier. If have no preformed opinions about the crisis, confirmation bias will lead you to articles that support your world view … optimists will find more hopeful information, pessimists will find worst case scenarios. If you started reading this piece to see what you I think should believe, I’m going to disappoint you, I’m going to make some suggestions as to how to arrive at an informed opinion, with a minimum of confirmation bias. I think if you do that you’ll arrive at an opinion that not only will bear scrutiny but doesn’t scare the crap out of you or make you blow the whole thing off. Here are my suggestions:

Me, Dad and Socialism

It was 1956.   The Presidential election was coming up with Dwight Eisenhower the Republican candidate and Adlai Stevenson the Democratic candidate.   Our civic minded eighth grade teacher decided to teach us a little about the issues by having our own Presidential Debate, with a number of students arguing each side.   I was chosen to represent Eisenhower.  I was clueless.   I don’t ever remember politics being discussed in our home, although from occasional comments I gathered that my Mom leaned Democratic and my Dad leaned Republican.  Perhaps that was why there were no discussions.  Hoping to find a winning argument for my side, I asked my Dad for an issue that I could use against Stevenson.   Now, I don’t remember his exact words but I’ll paraphrase what he said.   You should bring up Social Security, Bud.   Social Security is just plain socialism and that’s the first step toward communism.   Now, I didn’t know a thing about socialism but thinking my Dad had given me the silver bullet for our debate, I used it as my main point.   Nobody cared.  Except for the teacher who looked at me as if I’d suddenly grown horns.

Veterans Day 2018

I have never served in the U.S. military.   In the late sixties, when young men my age were staring the draft in the eye … with horrible images of the Vietnam War staring back at us from our TVs every night … I was working for a defense company that designed equipment for the Navy’s submarines, at that time considered a major deterrent against attack by Russian submarines.   I filed for a deferment with the support of my employer who was willing to state that my work was critical to national security and … four months later … I received a letter stating that my request had been denied.  I was officially draftable.  Recently married and not wanting to spend two years of my life in the jungles of Vietnam, I applied and was accepted to the Air Force Officer Candidate School.  A few days before I was ready to accept my commission, I got a second letter saying my deferment had been granted.

Confirmation Bias? Try This

It is becoming virtually impossible for me to make it through the news in the morning.  Believe it or not, it is not because I am disturbed by repeated national tragedies … although it certainly would be good to have a respite from natural disasters, mass shootings and political infighting.   Nor is it because an inordinate percentage of the news concerns what some celebrity or athlete says or does.  It is not even because the mainstream press offers a decidedly liberal-sided view of most issues.   It is because, more and more, I see that no one is listening to any other viewpoint than their own, so that every new story devolves into a discussion of whose fault it is … and, of course, until we figure that out, we will do nothing to remedy the situation because, you see, only one side’s solution can possibly work.  If you read my last post, Biased … Again, you know that the culprit is Confirmation Bias, that nasty tendency of or species to find evidence that supports what we believe and believe nothing else.

PC

After years (and years) of working in the defense industry, I have an aversion to acronyms.   But aversion or not, I can’t avoid them, in spite of their annoying habit of standing for more than one thing.   In my men’s groups there are several guys who talk about HP.  They mean their Higher Power but I can’t help but smile and think Hewlett Packard.  I usually tell them I’m a Dell guy.  It won’t surprise you then that the acronym PC brings to mind Personal Computer which both dates me and certifies me as a techie.   But what I’m talking about here is political correctness.

Stars for President

There is a scene in the film Back to the Future that I think of often lately.  In it, Marty McFly, after traveling to the past in a time machine invented by Doc Brown, is trying to convince a much younger Doc that he is indeed from the future by knowing the president of the United States in the future.

The scene is actually funnier here in 2018 than it was in 1985 given the propensity of show business types to decide that, based on their vast experience in the make believe world of show business, they should bring their questionable talents to government.   If that sentence doesn’t give you a hint how I feel about the trend, then go back and read it again.

Dogs … Everywhere

This post started out as a curmudgeonly rant by my alter ego, Older Eyes.  But here on Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog, we like our rants to be (a) funny and (b) not too controversial.  It ended up neither.   It therefore will reside on my other blog, Both Sides Now.   If you would like to read both sides of the growing trend of allowing dogs everywhere …and can comment respectfully … you can find it here.   On the other hand, if you might find such a post hard to take, I invite you to enjoy this picture of Older Eyes with his most animal-loving friend’s dog as evidence that, while he is a cat lover, he likes dogs, too.  Just not Dogs … Everywhere.