Hopeful Romantics – Page 15 – Social Commentary : Politics, Romance, Art, Culture, Health, Life at Large

Nature’s Way of Sorting Out the Environment

I was reading a recent article in the Los Angeles Times about how the cold spell in Florida is killing many of the nonnative animal life. Burmese Pythons and African Rock Pythons are buying the farm on a major scale. Iguanas are falling dead from trees. Nonnative fish are dying by the thousands. The Mayan cichlid, walking catfish, and spotfin spiny eel, are among the fish floating lifeless to the water’s surface.

I would take this to mean that this is nature’s way of telling these invasive animals to get the hell out of where they don’t belong. Not that they had a choice in the matter, as many were brought over on ships, or in the case of the snakes, they were former pets that were let go in the Everglades when the novelty wore off or when the hurricane deposited their former domiciles on FEMA’s statistical list of trash. Nevertheless, these animals who thrive in the warmer climes of he tropics will only thrive so long when the temperature takes a dramatic turn.

Yes, I would take this as part of nature’s way of rearranging the order of things. I have to wonder what else does nature have in store for us. We are inundated with dire predictions about global warming, which is not global warming, really, but dramatic climate change. What’s this mean? It means that not everything will warm up, but in places that are already warm, it will probably get warmer still. In the colder spots on the climate, it may get colder still.

Yet the Arctic is melting and Florida has a cold spell. Who knows what is really going on? What I do know is that things change. I have stood in places up on the high desert of Four Corners, Monument National Valley and further North. It is hard rock, bone dry. Yet in places you can still see actual dinosaur footprints in what is now rock or really hard ground. Dinosaur footprints. I kid you not. This is the legacy of an earlier time when this vast region was under water, either covered by seawater or vast marshes that prevailed for millions of years.

Things change. As a civilization that wants to believe that all things are safe and permanent, we have yet to get the memo that the planet is ever changing and in doing so is making things more or less secure at his own universal discretion. Or in reaction to the conditions we inflict upon our planet.

Suffice it to say that while some of the global changes my be cyclical, it still doesn’t mean it is a good idea to pollute the hell out of it. You can’t treat the Earth like a rental car and expect it to run smoothly. Common sense would have it that dumping poisons into our water, filling our air with toxic crap, and leaving piles of waste on our lands and in our oceans will hardly result in something positive. Common sense would say if you put poison in water then you will poison yourself when you drink the water, and poison the fish that live in that water. Who you will eat.

In short, global warming may not be a result of our human transgressions, but our human transgressions aren’t helping things either. No matter how long we care to live in denial. You do not have to tie natural cycles and human pollution together to validate the fact the planet is going through changes. Planetary cycles can still take effect, regardless of human pollution. But for sure as hell, human pollution is not going to improve the situation, any. Poison the oceans, the fresh water and the landscape, and it is still poisoned, whether there is climate change or not. Common sense should bear that out.

But, unfortunately, common sense is not so common. It took certain people hundreds if not thousands of years to realize that crapping upstream and drinking the same water downstream will result in disease. People in some spots took thousands of years to correlate sex with the making of babies. In some places on the globe, it seems it is still the case. Recognizing the existence of germs took awhile.

And then there is the money factor. There are those who are making money and those who are making more money by ignoring the obvious. It is cost effective n the short run to ignore the obvious. If you take the precautions and impose the industrial standards to eliminate or reduce pollution it will cost you bucks in the short run. This cuts into your bottom line. The bottom line in America and most countries is the major modern religion and messing with the bottom line for the sake of such minor considerations as the welfare of humanity borders on sacrilege.

Then there are the people who are allegedly in power. The legislators. What was once a somewhat responsible body of lawmakers who tried to oversee the well being of their constituents, looks more like a group of small time hustlers, working the corridors of government for their next corporate handout. With some exception, most are being paid by their keepers to assure us that all is well and that they are maintaining “our way of life.” They are paid to nod their heads and look the other way, examining their purses and the prospects of future elections, which more often than not conflicts with public interest.

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We leave a lot of things out of any argument. We do this out of convenience. While there are obscure noises about overcrowding, increased strain on an already fragile infrastructure and ecosystem, we don’t talk much about overpopulation. We fear for social and political repercussions when entertain the fact that the world has too many people. We are are overcrowded. Some of the population is undernourished. And most of the population is undereducated and hardly prepared for the next decades of the twenty-first century.

We cover this by talking about the unique quality of every human being and making Hallmark cards of our sentiment, without addressing the true dangers that overpopulation will create. We talk about global warning and claim hundred of millions will die. What we don’t do is say that if we keep flooding this planet with the crushing hordes, it will cause natural reaction. And natural reactions are often grim and consequential.

We cry over an earthquake in Haiti but ignore the fact that overcrowding, ignorance and the rest may well result in a pandemic, the likes of which we have never experienced. Yes, it is a pity for Haiti, but if watching a quarter million die on one small island is nearly unbearable, what will it be like when hundreds of millions, billions, start dying from previously unknown diseases? Diseases for what there will not be a cure.

So we argue out of convenience. Convenience in this case means we pick and choose the safer salient points while leaving out the dozens of considerations that may really cause us harm. We find consolation in sentiment when pressing issues loom before us. We deal in modern day superstitions and embrace the religious either in its traditional form or as some metaphysical salad bar to support whatever half baked theory we are using to confront very real global events.

I would consider that more people have died from ignorance than anything else. Ignorance has led to war, has caused us to crap upstream and drink downstream. We overpopulate out of ignorance of the consequences and how it reduces the general well being of this planet. We declare theory and conjecture as truth and fact, although we have not yet been able to gather all the relevant information. We are ignorant and proud of it.

Will all this happen? It’s probable but not certain. History is often a cruel prognosticator of what life has in store. Historically, civilizations have come and gone. Civilizations here have vanished. There is room to speculate that even on other planets what was once living is now long since dead.

But then there is the other side of the coin. Despite the cold spell in Florida, not every nonnative animal has died. the smaller pythons are surviving, as they are able to adapt by slipping into smaller rock crevices and other spots that may keep them warm enough to ride out of the cold. Only half the green iguanas have succumbed. Maybe it’s dumb iguana luck, or it is Darwin’s Laws of Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest, as it is sometimes known. Or as the more religious will inveigh, it is the hand of divine providence.

I don’t know. In the case of how and why some live and others don’t everyone has a valid opinion. As long as it remains an opinion and isn’t carved in stone as absolute fact.

What we do know is that things chance. Nothing remains the same, whether we want it to, or not. And life goes on.

Content of Author Gordon Basichis Interview with Nanci Arvizu

Last week, I announced Gordon Basichis to be Interviewed on Nanci Arvizu’s Page Readers. This was the interview about my new book, “The Guys Who Spied for China,” a roman a clef about uncovering Chinese Spy Networks in California and the United States.

The book has been receiving good reviews, with critics calling in quirky and darkly humorous. I dare say it is by no means your typical spy story. It is character based and has a unique perspective. Anyway, enough of that. For those interested here is the interview between Nanci and I.

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Author Gordon Basichis to be Interviewed on Nanci Arvizu’s Page Talk

Gordon Basichis, author and Co-Founder of the Corra Group, will be interviewed by Nanci Arivzu for her Blog Radio Show, Page Talk Readers. Arvizu is the longtime host of Page Readers and conducts live interviews with authors on any number of subjects. Listeners are invited to call and and ask questions. The interview is scheduled for Thursday, February 4th, at 9 A.M. Pacific Time.

Arvizu will be talking to Basichis about his latest book, “The Guys Who Spied for China.” The book is a roman a clef, detailing his first person experiences uncovering Chinese Espionage Networks that had been operating in the United States since after the Korean War. The initial spy network was comprised of Americans and Europeans. The story is set around the United States but mostly takes place in California and in the Santa Monica Mountains, just above Beverly Hills.

Early reviews of “The Guys Who Spied for China,” describe the book as quirky and darkly humorous. Basichis assures readers it is not your standard spy novel. “The Guys Who Spied for China,” was published by Minstrel’s Alley, an independent West Coast Publisher.

Basichis is the author of two other books, “Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story,” which details the tempestuous relationship between mistress Vicki Morgan and Department Store scion and member of Ronald Reagan’s kitchen cabinet, Alfred Bloomingdale.
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For more on “The Guys Who Spied for China,” reviews are available at Amazon.com The book is available from Kindle as well as trade paperback. For more on Corra Group, go to its website at www.corragroup.com

The True Legacy of J.D. Salinger

By now anyone with a heartbeat knows that J.D. Salinger passed on, last week. The death of the controversial author of “Catcher in the Rye” was certainly a news event, bringing out the deferential and the snarky. There were reviews and reminiscences, lengthy and brief accountings of his place in literature and his place in American and even world culture. It was in one spontaneous moment a reminder that even the pop minded, celebrity inundated America sometimes remembers its true artists and its literary lions. A nice touch for a country with a memory of its history that is equivalent to a dog.

Salinger only published four books. The first is “The Catcher” in the Rye, published in 1951. He also published “Nine Stores,” “Franny and Zooey,” and “Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenter.” This is a modest literary output but significant on so many levels. To read Salinger is in some way to follow the trajectory of the American family and with it American Culture. At once it is intensely personal. We derive an intimate knowledge of the fictional Glass family, fashioned after Salinger’s own Irish-American Heritage. But we also derive a sense of the dissolution and reformation of the American family.

In Salinger’s intimacy, we find a universal world, a changing sequence of family life that has left us somewhat bewildered in the 21st century. We see how in “Catcher,” the questioning of the system. the realization that even the more exalted visions of success and supremacy are artificial, or “phony,” as protagonist Holden Caulfield, pronounces throughout the book. We see in the complete published work the splintering of the family, with its doubts and second thoughts, idiosyncrasies, and its conflicting impulses to survive or destroy itself as the characters hang on for dear life or take leave of themselves.

This was America of the fifties and sixties. Holden Caulfield is maybe dated now to some extent. He, like the protest movements that grew out of the fifties and sixties, is maybe a an inglorious monument to a slice of modern history. He is quaint in his evaluations of society, as the system he faces has in its ongoing metamorphosis worked to co-opt us all. His cause, which was personal cause, aimless and misdirected rebellion, may now be seen as no cause at all. In a world where mood elevators, the Prozacs and Zolofts relieve us from actually realizing the dreadful impact of meaningless and often nonsensical social behavior, we tend to bury our inner Holden Caulfied’s. We bury them where they can’t rise up, ask questions. Start trouble.

Nevertheless, Caulfield lives on. For Salinger, like Bob Dylan and a number of others cannot merely be judged by their artistic creations. They must also be regarded for the impact they had on society itself. Millions have read “The Catcher in the Rye.” We know it is not a story rife with sex and celebrity, gratuitous violence, and all the other elements that drive the train of pop consciousness these days. It is a story of perceptions and idea, told with with and humor.

Yet “The Catcher in the Rye,” was banned from schools and libraries around the countries. The usual reactionary pundits held up this slim fictional volume as emblematic of the moral and social decay. It was, after all, an attack against artifice and shallow values. It was a perception of society that gave vision to ourselves in a way we were horrified to recognize. Rather than examine its point of view, like all things different, it was judged subversive and shouted down.

But millions of us read it. And millions of us found our heads turned and our thinking changed. We no longer put as much faith in our institutions. We no longer accepted our society and its social mores without question. What was fed to us and to be accepted on face value was questioned, criticized, and ultimately rebelled against. “The Catcher in the Rye” was the seed, the first implant that rewired the nation. From that seed, there came social disruption. Society though still manacled to lockstep ideology and systems not of our making, had still felt the impact of changes in its sexual values, civil rights, and our outlook to those that hired us, those who governed us, and the wars they committed to on our behalf.
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“The Catcher in the Rye,” was more than a book. It was a de facto instruction manual for how to see things outside the institutional perspective. I should add here that there are good stories and then there is good literature. While good stories, the big, sweeping blockbusters, must by their nature be story driven, this is not necessarily the case with good literature. With a good blockbuster, you must start at the beginning and finish at the end. A page turner. The same may hold true for good literature. But there is a difference.

With good literature, or I should say a test of good literature, is to be able to start anywhere in the book and moving forward or backward glean insights and understanding from what is written on the pages. You can turn to the middle and not care, really, how the book was started and how it will end. In good literature, wherever you start, you can read something that will move you in some way, that will turn your head around. This is the case with Salinger’s works. Start anywhere and there is something to gain.

As for Salinger himself, he stands in vivid defiance of our modern, celebrity saturated times. He at first may have wanted his fame and attention, but soon tired of it to retreat to his ninety-odd acres in New Hampshire. He was famous for being a recluse, which while not altogether new is remarkably edifying in a world where the desperate want to be publicly vaunted for some insipid act. It may be fleeting fame, but it is fame. Having eight kids and once and you are the OctoMom, gracing the tabloids and the six o’ clock news. Make some outrageous claim in defiance of all things scientific, and your are considered Presidential material. Have sex with the right person, and you get to tell your story and write a book.

Yet here was Salinger who backed away from it all. The presumption was that he had stopped writing. This apparently is not the case. While he may have engaged in what we call eccentric behavior, Jerry Salinger, still lived a long and fulfilling life. He was able to explore metaphysics, homeopathy, and other pursuits that would have given cause to deem him an oddity, had he been under the social microscope. He came and went, had people for dinner, had sex with people of his choosing, mostly out of the public view. He engaged in his intellectual pursuits outside the public eye, so people couldn’t judge him or hash out their half baked theories on what he was up to. Although, even when they lacked a clue as to what he was up to, theories bubbled like farts to the media surface every now and then.

Salinger was a living example, melding as best he could his real life with his written word. Maybe we will see more of those words in time as some of the alleged books and stories he had been writing all these years emerge in the public light. If they do, a lot of people will have a lot to say. And we will be forced to listen to theories, conjecture from the pompous and mindless to fill up the air time. To be fair, more knowledgeable souls will chime in with their thoughts, and from them their may be nuggets worth pocketing. Or not.

But all of it in the end means little or nothing, compared what the author has ultimately put on paper. As for Jerry Salinger, whatever he had to say about this human condition, we can be grateful, he has said it already.