loving art, science and creative kids
1/26/2023 7:48:57 PM
Climate Man, a totem pole carved by Ray Losey, is a call to action. His drumming is loud and clear and must be heeded now. There is no time to waste.
DRUMMING FOR CHANGE
COP26 was the international climate conference that took place in 2021. Over 200 countries attended Its main goal was to secure global net zero by mid-century and keep a maximum of 2.7- degree Fahrenheit of warming within reach. There was a lot of excitement and agreement about the urgency of submitting stronger emissions reduction targets. Vulnerable countries, already feeling dwindling crop yields and devastating storms called for financial help from richer nations to adapt to the effects of climate change. Bu the end, 151 submitted new climate plans to slash emissions by 2020. It was the first time countries agreed to shift away from coal and fossil fuel subsidies. By the end of the conference, diplomates kept hopes alive, but just barely.
The COP27 climate summit took place last November in Sharm el-Sheikh Egypt. It was framed as a battle for survival. A key outcome was the establishment of a loss and damage fund for nations vulnerable to the climate crisis. This will help with everything from building sea walls to creating drought-resistant crops. But when it came to the move away from Fossil fuels, the summit failed miserably. Reports showing no real progress was made were bad news for our warming world. The report they released painted a bleak picture with no credible path to a 2.7 degree Fahrenheit limit. For the first time, a pavilion was devoted to children and youth, the generations that will suffer the most. The policies in place point to a temperature rise by the end of the century with catastrophic consequences for the planet.
The war in Ukraine hasn’t helped. Countries dependent on Russian oil restarted their more polluting coal-operated plants. According to a BBC report, the war has led directly to 33 million tons of greenhouse gases being emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere. Rebuilding Ukraine will cause upwards of 49 Millions of tons of carbon dioxide to be released.
No community in the United States is immune to the effects of a warming climate. If your community isn’t affected by radical weather, it is likely to become overrun with climate migrants. In my backyard, my partner and I are afraid to leave the house for an extended period of time. During the summer, we fear fire whipping through the small canyon below our house. The smoke from California, Oregon, and Washington forest fires keeps us inside during the most beautiful time of the year.
During the other nine months, we fear mudslides caused by torrential rains and windstorms from cyclones that bring down trees and power lines. In the summer, it is too hot to be outside. For forty years I’ve never needed air-condition in my home but now I do. A 150-foot tree landed on our house a few years ago, one totaled a car in the drive, and this Christmas our roof just missed getting speared through by a branch. We live seven miles from the center of Portland, in an area considered stable.
We can’t sit back doing nothing any longer. Everyone can help limit climate change. Using energy-efficient electric appliances, washing laundry with cold water, and hanging clothes to dry instead of using a dryer are a few ways to save energy at home. Stop complaining about bike lanes—we need them. Walking, biking, or taking public transport will help your health and fitness as well as our warming planet. Bundle trips to the store when using your car. We see people driving by our five and six times a day, completing one small task at a time. Eat more vegetables and less meat. Plant-based food results in fewer greenhouse emissions. Generate less waste.
The really big changes have to come from Industry. Car manufacturers have to increase the efficiency of our cars and homes. Large-scale tree plantings, donations to energy-green projects, and buying and preserving rainforests are at the top of the list. Employees should work remotely if possible and big commercial offices can be downsized. Employers can reconsider how business travel is conducted, use climate-conscious vendors for supplies and services, and donate to climate-related causes. Corporations have to be held accountable for their impact on the planet.
The push must come from peer pressure. “We’re going carbon neutral, why aren’t you?” are words that should ring from everyone’s lips. We have to challenge old values to inspire real change. I don’t know how many mega-floods caused by atmospheric rivers or fires blazing in areas of drought will have to be experienced before our nation is shaken to its core. Eventually, everyone’s insurance rates will be too high to afford. Families will have to move away from the coast, return floodplains to nature, abandon forest homes, and stop reproducing. Increasing gross domestic product is not the main factor to improve quality of life.
ONE SEED AT A TIME by Marilynne Eichinger
CLIMATE CHANGE IS THE ISSUE OF OUR TIME. Best not to look on it as horror. Plant one seed at a time and watch it blossom. This an exciting to be alive. We have a challenge ahead with limitless possibilities, so let’s tackle it full force. We are inventive, flexible and caring people. Let’s not be stupid or lazy.
One Seed at A Time
REFERENCES:
United Nations Climate Action (2021) Together for our planet. retrieved from https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/cop26
Summary Report 6-10 November 2022 COP27. Earth Negotiations Bulletin. retrieved from https://enb.iisd.org/sharm-el-sheikh-climate-change-conference-cop27-summary
Rannard, (2022) COP27: War causing huge release of climate warming gas, claims Ukraine. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63625693
Ali. M (2022) 10 ways companies can do more to fight climate change. Hotjar, retrieved from https://www.hotjar.com/blog/ten-ways-companies-can-help-fight-climate-change/
What do you do to lower your carbon footprint? Do you care? Do share your thought on my blog site at eichingerfineart.com/blog
Art is always for sale. Contact [email protected]. Offers considered.
Climate Man by Ray Losey is a 7’ 4” tall and 19” wide cedar pole. Available for $5,800.
One Seed at A time, Mixed Media on Panel 44” x 84” metal frame.available for $ 2,900.
1/21/2023 10:24:10 PM
These Montana deer have the right idea! The land they rest on was theirs before white men settled the West. Tired of playing second fiddle to human engineering, they decided to reclaim their piece of ground. "If you can't lick "em, jine (join) 'em," Senator Watson said in an Atlantic Monthly article in 1932. If you can't outdo your rivals, you may as well cooperate with them and gain whatever advantage is possible.
Take Back Your Life!
Since Covid, I've heard more people speak of feeling lost than I ever heard before. Though the pandemic is waning, stress is going viral. People are upset by changing weather patterns and storms appearing where they never had before. The California bomb cyclone flooded streets a few blocks from my grandson and his fiancé's new house in Santa Cruz. They were among the lucky ones who only lost a few shingles. But for days the highway was closed, making it impossible for them to show up at work. My brother in Fort Meyers was not as fortunate when their home suffered a $250,000 loss from flooding.
As a Unitarian lay minister, listening to tales of woe is part of my calling. Congregants fear armed shooters and are afraid of road rage on highways. They get angry at those who speed through family neighborhoods and don't stop at stop signs. Though they no longer wear masks, they still worry about crowded spaces. They are fearful of losing their jobs after hearing that Microsoft cut their workforce by 10,000 and Amazon by 18,000. Starbucks closed 400 locations for safety reasons over the past two years and is planning more. Too many thieves are robbing their tills. Walmart put 160 plus stores on the chopping block because of theft. Homelessness continues to rise along with inflation and potholes aren't filled, causing angst to escalate. The feeling of unease permeates our bodies.
Manipulative, lying politicians add to the nation's malaise The inability of the government to solve our problems has led to distrust. Instead of compromising, people gravitate to those who want to take matters into their own hands as they do. We have become tribal like third-world countries, ready to squash those who don't think the same way. We use warrior words in fights over abortion, gay rights, the environment, social security, and more. And we sit idle while the police mow down mentally ill people and fill prisons with those self-medicating with drugs. Angst
No longer do noise restriction laws limit construction workers to start at nine and end at five. Hammers and leaf blowers can be used from early morning to sundown, seven days a week, rain or shine. The pounding makes it impossible to have a conversation on your balcony or enjoy dinner in your backyard. Except for the crows, you can't hear the birds. Angst and more angst.
The medical profession offers little help other than getting patients addicted to pills. Doctor visits of limited duration or through video conferencing end with a prescription without having been examined. Primary care physicians are quick to pass them off to specialists demanding higher copays. Angst.
A cup of brewed Starbucks coffee is $ 2.10 ($765 yr.), a Late $4.25 ($1,551 yr) plus a tip. Outrageous! It's rare to hear please and thank you from servers and impossible to find assistance in big box stores. You are on your own to find out how to fix a leaking toilet or unplug a garbage disposal without having to pay upwards of $200. Angst.
Okay! Enough. You get the point. The country has gone bonkers, but that's how it is. The question of how to keep from succumbing to despair is the big challenge of our time.
My formula is simple, don't complain, find balance, and keep dreaming. Never look back for the past is gone. Today and tomorrow are all there is. And don't worry twice. Though staying informed is important, dwelling on what might or might not happen is ludicrous. What is the sense of worrying in advance about what might happen, when you will have to live through it when it happens? The two worries are not the same.
I knew a man who wore a rubber band on his wrist that he snapped when having a depressing thought. It reminded him to think of something positive. He was particularly taken in by opinionated talking heads on newscasts. The snaps helped him remember that they are not the news and that what they think rarely matters.
Most of all, never give up hope. Our dreams are how we make sense of our lives, and hope motivates us to make our dreams come true. If you can have fun while doing so, so much the better. Laughter relieves the stress of everyday toil and being with people you enjoy, lightens your burdens.
Thinking positive thoughts and living stress-free doesn't just happen. It takes thought and determination to stay balanced. But it is the best way I know to be in control of your life.
Dream Summer, Acrylic painting on canvas. 24” x 20” Shipped to your haouse in the Continental USA for #390. For information contact me at [email protected].
It is fun to hear from you. Please comment below.
1/14/2023 10:48:59 AM
Over 20 Percent of the general Population suffers from mental illness. Could one of these women be afflicted?
Mental Health Conundrum
In the 1960s, I was part of a Lexington, Massachusetts research project to train volunteers to help empty state mental health facilities. After nine months of training, our group of twelve was assigned patients. Our mission was to reintroduce them to the world. The forty-year-old woman in my charge had been in a locked ward for most of her life. Her mother resided in the same hospital.
State mental hospitals were horrible places where inmates had no rights. Their dormitories were overcrowded, attendants poorly trained, and the grounds were a fenced-in prison. I saw one woman nearly catatonic after having a lobotomy. The ward my patient was confined to held severely ill people. One wall was lined with women staring into space while tied to their chairs. Two others were talking to the wall as they turned in circles. While waiting to meet my patient, a woman wandered into the nurse's station and started choking me. It took several nurses to ply her hands from my neck.
The situation I found myself in, started as a response to prison conditions in the mid-1800s where psychotic inmates were "chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience." After witnessing these deplorable conditions, Dorothea Dix of Massachusetts lobbied for states to create asylums. By 1955, half a million people were in state-run psychiatric facilities. They were set up to be safe, therapeutic places where people could live productive lives. Many put patients to work in small-scale agricultural farms, others had laundries or bakeries. By the mid-1980s the number had dropped to 100,000 and incarcerations grew.
By the 1950s, Mental health professionals were lobbying to abandon the hospitals and treat patients at community mental health centers instead. They believed that erratic behavior could be controlled by medications making it possible for mentally ill people to lead normal lives. Unfortunately, that is not what happened.
More patients moved in and the facilities outgrew their capacity. Staffing became even more critical during WWII when doctors and nurses were drafted. It wasn't long before these hospitals resembled the earlier prisons.
In 1954, FDA approval was given to the antipsychotic drug known as Thorazine. It introduced the idea that mental illness could be cured with medication and state mental institutions were no longer needed. President John F. Kennedy sighed a law in 1963 to replace custodial mental institutions with community health centers. Medicate, created in 1965 accelerated the shift by not paying for inpatient care.
What happened is that few mental-health centers were built and Thorazine, the miracle drug, had serious side effects. Research shows that a simple drug can't cure conditions like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Those who benefited, often couldn't manage their medications. Community-based care turned out to be a failure.
Mental health crises today are usually dealt with by law enforcement. These officers are poorly trained to deal with such emergencies, and the laws intended to protect civil liberties made it easy to arrest disturbed people but difficult to hospitalize them against their will. According to a Washington Post database, nearly half the people in jail and more than a third in prisons are diagnosed with a mental illness. One-quarter of fatal police shootings involve a person with mental illness. Suicide among this population is high, and care is inadequate for incarcerated prisoners. The mental hospitals of the past and the prisons of the present are shockingly similar.
The shift from hospital to prison created other differences. State hospital patients were primarily composed of men and women middle-aged or older. Today's incarcerated patients are largely young, male, and not white. These numbers grew along with the 1972 to 2009 War on Drugs where the prison population grew 700 percent. Many mentally ill people self-medicate with illegal drugs, making them especially vulnerable to incarceration.
In Oregon, a judge recently called for the release of 100 patients from our overcrowded state hospital. At the same time, there are calls in the community for new treatment facilities to separate the mentally ill from the prison population. Throughout the nation, Crisis Intervention Teams are being formed to respond to psychiatric calls, yet there is no evidence that a few hours of instruction will overcome use-of-force practices.
Other alternatives to prison are being tried. Over 300 mental-health courts oversee people who agree to treatment, medicine, and regular check-ins with a judge. But without a real system of mental health care, it remains likely that more people will enter the criminal justice system. Forty percent of the homeless suffer from mental health issues.
Overall, twenty percent of the population suffers from mental health issues. How to help is a conundrum. Do we let them wander through life without hope or do we step to the plate and change the way their treatment is handled? Mental conditions are complex and require a personalized approach, but imagine how much better our communities would be if this problem was tackled straight on. Right now, we lack an effective system of mental care.
There continues to be a demand for good residential treatment facilities. My hope is that the mental help system will be rebuilt with compassion and that services will be within reach of the general public, not confined to the wealthy. There are wonderful private facilities that serve as an example of the kind of programs that should be available to all.
References:
Torrey, F.( 2013) Ronald Reagan’s shameful legacy: Violence, the homeless, mental illness. retrieved from https://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ronald_reagans_shameful_legacy_violence_the_homeless_mental_illness/
Lyons, R. (1984) How Release of Mental Patients Began. New York Times. retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-patients-began.html
. Roth,A. (2021) THE truth About Deinstitutionalization. The Atlantic. retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/05/truth-about-deinstitutionalization/618986/
Sheppard Pratt website. Care and Service that change lives. retrieved from https://www.sheppardpratt.org/care-services/
Do you have a friend or family member suffering from a mental disease? Do comment on my blog site at www.eichingerfineart.com/blog
Art is always for sale. The Three Sirens is a 36" by 12" acrylic painting on a wide canvas. Available for $495 including shipping in the continental US. Purchase on my website or contact me at [email protected]
Books by Marilynne Eichinger are available in bookstores and online in paperback and ebook formats. To purchase with ease, you can go to AMAZON
1/7/2023 11:21:46 AM
Eastern Oregon Contemplative
Traveling east from Portland reminds me that nothing stays the same. Seasons change along with the landscape. The city gives way to fields and the cliffs turn into mountains. As I ride east, I question my preference for open quiet spaces as opposed to high-rise apartments, shops, museums, and honking cars. Where should I live the rest of my life? I'm bothered by housing encroaching on nature and homeless tents cluttering city streets. Swimming through the thorny issues of the century is not easy.
Today's Educated Person
Happy New Year Folks! I am sorry not to have wished you good tidings last week, but I've been in bed with the flu. Gratuitously, it gave me time to think.
The Times They Are A-Changin' were words written by Bob Dylan in a song released in 1964. The first and third stanzas follow:
1.
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin'
And you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin
3.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin'
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'
There is a lot of wisdom in Dylan's lyrics. He warns that parents who don't keep up with the times should get out of the way of their children. He tells prophets not to speak too soon, for the losers of today may be winners in the future.
With this in mind, how does one stay abreast of change as we age? As we continue to learn, will we evolve with the times so that we don't become dinosaurs? In an epoch where information is available at the click of a button, one might imagine it would be easy. Unfortunately, the click can lead to misinformation or partial truths that must be sorted through. More than ever, we are required to be actively involved in the learning process. The information we read or listen to has to be sifted through filters before it becomes meaningful. People like you and me may have the skills but lack the fortitude to examine our personal attitudes and values before passing judgment on what is new. It is a way to stay motivated and open to change so we won't wallow in the past.
Most of my readers are lifelong learners. If they miraculously returned to high school, their teachers would help them adapt to a life of change by showing them how to explore connections along with factual information. Today's educators see the physical, emotional, and intellectual well-being of their students as important factors in the search for meaningful relationships with others, ideas, and the environment. They view the education process as an ecosystem composed of complex parts that impact one another.
It begins with having a positive sense of identity that is connected to the land, language, cultures, and values before exploring the impact of technology and the environment on the future. Self-understanding provides context as research and information are evaluated. It empowers the student to examine how they fit into the new world order.
Change in the political climate, brain research, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence won't make sense if you can't understand how it will affect you. and your family. Adaptation requires thinking outside the box. It may mean reevaluating social justice issues and innovative technologies to see if they are in line with your values and perceptions. If they aren't, you will find yourself under a great deal of stress until you change your thinking or move to a community more compatible with your beliefs. Society will not return to the way it was when you were a child. Those who can't change to meet the present are burdened. Their complaints add stress to their days.
My way through turmoil is to embrace the notion of continuous self-exploration. I have values that I hold sacrosanct and use to evaluate the new world order. When they conflict, I shift my thinking a bit left or right and become involved with like-minded people who want change that will work for a burgeoning population with shifting needs due to climate change. An educated person is challenged to return balance to his or her thoughts while living out his or her days. Doing so is like undertaking a jigsaw puzzle. It is fun if there aren't too many pieces to overwhelm you.
Do share your thoughts on my blogsite below.
Art is always for sale. Contact me at [email protected]
Eastern Oregon Contemplative/ 21"by 25" framed acrylic painting/ $485 shipped free in the continental U.S.
References:
The Times They Are A-Changin' I The Official Bob Dylan Site. retrieved from https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/times-they-are-changin/
ECE website, Reasons for Change. Education, Culture and Employment. retrieved from https://www.ece.gov.nt.ca/en/services/renouveau-en-education-aux-tno/reasons-change
Teaching for Change website. retrieved from https://www.teachingforchange.org/about/what-we-do
