Bruce Melton : It Is Colder Because It Is Warming

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer


It is colder because it is warming

On a warmer planet, winter weather becomes more volatile. The extremes get more extreme.

By Bruce Melton / The Rag Blog / January 13, 2010

Global warming refers to climate, not weather. Snowpocalypses and icetastrophes are not climate, even when year after year they cover subcontinental size areas on multiple continents.

They are however, very similar to the climate that we had before the 1990s. So why do we keep having these blizzasters if we are supposed to be warming?

Even three years of snowmegeddons cannot keep our climate from warming. Even when large areas of multiple continents are involved. There is one little problem though… Blizzards, no matter how cataclysmic, are still just weather. Climate is much, much bigger than weather.

The academic world has started to unravel the clues about why we are seeing more extreme winter weather in some places, and the answers are the same as the climate models have been telling us. On a warmer planet, winter weather becomes more volatile. The extremes get more extreme. Not necessarily extremely cold, but it only has to be below freezing to snow. And the warmer it is, the more snow can fall. Warmer air holds more moisture — it is the reverse of “it is too cold to snow.”

A paper in the journal The Cryosphere Discussion (cryosphere is that part of the Earth that is covered with ice), by Mark Serreze at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder Colorado says that the Arctic has warmed 5.4 to 9 degrees F, or five to 10 times the global average of 0.9 degrees. This is just for warming relative to the 1970 to 2007 average time period. (1).

The reason that the Arctic has warmed so much more than the rest of the planet is called Arctic amplification, and the same thing is happening in high altitude mountains around the world. This “Arctic amplification” is nothing more than additional warming caused by the loss of snow and ice on a warmer planet. The scientists call it a warming feedback.

A “feedback” happens when a little bit of warming melts a little bit of ice. Ice reflects sunlight harmlessly back into space without causing warming. Sunlight striking dirt or rocks, water or vegetation, warms that object. This warming is trapped by the greenhouse effect and causes more ice to melt.

This mostly explains why the Arctic is warming so much more than the rest of the world. (The Antarctic is different because it is surrounded by ocean and has a completely different set of dynamics than the Arctic, which is surrounded by land.)

So, the Arctic is warming a lot more than the rest of the planet — how does this make winters colder? First: It has not really been earth-shattering cold. The winter temperature across the U.S. last year (2009) ranked 18th coldest out of 115 years, but for the entire year the U.S., ranked 34th warmest out of 115 years of records.

The year 2008 ranked 38th warmest of 114. and 2010 ranked 18th warmest through November. Northern Canada however had its second warmest winter ever recorded in 2009 and the combined global average temperature was the fifth warmest ever recorded. This year (2010) tied 1998 as the warmest year ever recorded. (2)

Just because it was one of the coldest winters in decades in some parts of the U.S. for the last few years does not mean it was very cold. It means that it has been warmer than normal for decades.


Beginning in the late 1970s, our climate really started to warm. The warming has only been a little more than a degree, but most of the warming comes in the winter. So we have been lulled into complacency by decades of warmer than usual temperatures, and even warmer winters. I remember in the 1960s and 70s when I was a kid, I was fascinated when arctic air invaded the northern tier of the United States and temperatures plummeted to 40 below and just hung there for weeks. That just does not happen anymore

The latest global temperature analysis from the main U.S. climate modeling agency, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, looks at the long-term running average global temperature. Using a running average smooths out the chaos of monthly weather changes. This technique plots successive averages instead of each individual record point. (3)

A running average removes a lot of the chaos in the temperature records. This is a different way of looking at the numbers that acts like a fine-tuning knob. It makes the “picture” clearer. It allows the “music” to be heard without static. That static is the chaos of weather.

In a single day, the temperature at any given spot can change as much as 40 degrees or more. In a year at any given place, the temperature can change over 100 degrees or more. This natural variability makes it difficult to see the small changes associated with climate change. But these small changes can have tremendous impacts.


Think of our atmosphere as a pot of water on the stove. After a little bit of warming, movement can be seen in the water. These are convection currents. The same thing happens in our atmosphere, only a little bit of convection can create a big thunderstorm.

The warming we have seen because of the unintended carbon dioxide enrichment of our atmosphere is less than two degrees averaged across the globe. This may only be a couple of degrees, but it is a really big deal.

The difference in global temperature between the depths of the ice ages and the warmest it has been in the last 10 million years is only about 9 degrees F. The global temperature today is within one and a half degrees of being as warm as it has been in 1.35 million years. (4) By the end of the century, the global temperature will be similar to when the dinosaurs were around and sea level was 200 feet higher. (5)

But one of the really dangerous things about climate change, published in Thresholds of Climate Change in Ecosystems, by the U.S. Geological Survey, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, under the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, in January 2009, is that just a few degrees of change is all it takes to push an ecosystem over the edge. (6)

It turns out our weather is highly sensitive to a few degrees of change as well. The Beaufort High is a semi-permanent, seasonal weather phenomenon similar to the Bermuda High or the Aleutian Low. (The Beaufort High forms over the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic, north of the border between Alaska and Northwest Territories.)

These big high or low-pressure areas form every year, and hang around for months and months. The Bermuda High is most notable in the summer and the Aleutian Low and Beaufort High in winter. They are responsible for influencing weather patterns across the Northern Hemisphere because they shape and change the path of the jet stream.

An article published in the Journal of Climate, led by a researcher from Duke University, has found that the Beaufort High has recently intensified. This is something that the models have been predicting because of planetary warming, and now it has happened. What it means for you and me is that the jet stream path has changed. The Beaufort High, because it is larger now, pushes the jet stream further south. It just so happens that it pushes it south right into central and northeastern North America. (7)

This high-pressure system has increased in size because there is more heat in the Arctic now. This heat is especially apparent in the fall and early winter, because arctic sea ice coverage has fallen so precipitously. Even when sea ice begins to regrow in the fall, the impacts of the extra heat hang around.

This extra heat hanging around is a normal seasonal temperature lag just like we see everywhere else. Maximum heating in the summer and maximum cooling in the winter are not centered on the longest or shortest day of the year. The temperature lags behind. It takes Mother Earth some time to adjust. So the big Beaufort High impacts Northern Hemisphere weather far into the winter.

The jet stream has changed and it is throwing arctic storms further south. Even though arctic temperatures have risen five to 10 times as much as the rest of globe, the Arctic blasts are still cold. And remember that pot of water we left on the stove? A warmer atmosphere is more energetic; the storms are more intense. They may not be colder, but they can make more snow because they have more energy.

Even people like me, who grew up in south Texas with citrus trees, have heard that it can be too cold to snow. This old saying reflects a simple scientific principle. As air cools, it can hold less moisture. When it gets colder, it snows less and less because there is less and less moisture in the air. But warm it up to nearer to the freezing point and the amount of snow increases.

So, the Beaufort High is kicking arctic storms further to the south because the jet stream has changed, and those storms are more energetic because it is warmer in the Arctic. We seem to be getting clobbered with cold, when in reality, the Arctic has warmed a tremendous amount. This is one of those things that makes climate change so counterintuitive.

Last month was number 310 in a row where the average global temperature was above the 20th century average. That’s 25 years and 10 months. Last winter’s NOAA Climate Extremes Index was six percent above average (nothing to write home about.) Mid-March ice coverage of the Great Lakes was at an all-time low, and North American snow cover for April was the smallest ever recorded in 2010. (8)


The relatively cooler winter in the U.S. northeast and Europe in 2005-6 has also been recreated in the climate modeling world. The climate science guys have been predicting that this would happen, but until now these predictions have not been confirmed. Using actual sea ice coverage, a study led by Vladimir Petoukhov at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, has recreated the extreme winter events of the northeastern U.S. and Europe in the winter of 2005-6. (9)

The cause is warming in the Arctic. The decrease in Arctic sea ice caused by warming is another natural phenomenon that has a feedback component. More warming means more melt of course. Water absorbs nearly 90 percent of the sun’s light and changes it into heat. Snow and ice reflect up to 90 percent of the sun’s light harmlessly back into space without it being changed into heat. (Water absorbs eight times more heat than snow and ice.)

This extra heat hangs around to continue the feedback. Summer melt then extends further into the fall; warmer ocean waters prevent thicker ice from forming and because the freeze up started later, there is less time for thicker ice to form. Warmer temperatures also cause more snow, which insulates sea ice from the cold temperatures above. The extra warmth increases high pressure over the Arctic, which increases the energy level of storms and the jet stream then pushes Arctic weather further south than normal. Clear as mud.

These scientists are calling this the “new normal.” They now say that the chance of having extreme winter weather has increased by three times because of this series of Arctic warming feedbacks. Only the winter of 2005-6 has been modeled so far, but the same conditions in the Arctic continue as the continued stormy winters in the Northeast and Europe attest.

The models also show that this change in global weather patterns in these two areas tends to disappear as sea ice melt becomes more complete. The reasoning is as yet unclear, but it likely has to do with the jet stream unbuckling, or by the time the Arctic is ice free it will be too warm for big snowstorms in areas where we normally have them.


The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a website called Future of Arctic Sea Ice and Global Impacts. In addition to the above papers, NOAA lists the University of Washington, Japan Agency for Marine Earth Science and Technology, University of Wisconsin, Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University, University of Illinois, National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University as institutions that have published evidence showing that “warming really does make it colder.” (10)

But the list does not stop here. Winter snowmelt in the Arctic has been shown to be starting 15 days earlier and ending 30 days earlier over the past 30 years. (11) Arctic sea ice has even been shown to have been present, even in the summer season, for 14 million years; meaning that the last time the arctic was ice free in summer was 14 million years ago. (12)

Another researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center has shown us that Arctic sea ice is declining much more rapidly than the supercomputer models have predicted. Comparing real world measurements of sea ice coverage to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios and model predictions, sea ice coverage today is as low as it is projected to be, under the worst-case scenarios, in the year 2080. This is 70 years ahead of schedule. (13)

One of the biggies in climate science, however, is that a researcher at the Center for Earth Observation Science at the University of Manitoba in Canada has found that the Arctic Sea is functionally ice-free in the summer season now — today. (This was in 2009 when this paper was published.) (14)

This team of Canadian scientists, led by David Barber, whose Arctic expedition discoveries were published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, says they found a much different sea icescape in the Southern Beaufort Sea than anticipated based on their satellite ice sensors.

The satellites had shown 70 to 90 percent coverage of multi-year or thick first-year ice throughout most of the southern Beaufort Sea in the deep water of the Canada Basin. When the crew visited the area in their icebreaker, the Amundsen, what they found was heavily decayed, very small remnant multi-year and first-year flows mixed with brash and bergy bits. In other words, they found a giant Slurpee where there was supposed to have been ice that was nearly impassible to all but a few nuclear icebreakers.

This greatly surprised the team, as they cruised through the rotten ice of the Beaufort Sea at top speed (15 miles an hour.) The Amundsen was designed to break three-foot thick sea ice at a speed of three and a half miles per hour. The ice they found was so rotten that the Amundsen could break 19 to 26 feet of rotten multi-year ice at three and a half miles an hour.

When the ice sensing satellites were put into operation, these warmer conditions that we are seeing now did not exist, or it was still cold enough, year-long, to keep the ice from beginning to disintegrate like it is doing now. The ice then was as hard as integral calculus and twice as stubborn. Since then we have seen what has apparently been the crossing of a threshold in terms of Arctic sea ice melt. What the science guys and girls did not know back then, was that the rotten Slurpee ice looks very similar to the plain old hard stuff that has been there for 14 million years.

The expedition was well described in an article interviewing Barber by Reuters News Service: Barber spoke shortly after returning from an expedition that sought — and largely failed to find — a huge multi-year ice pack that should have been in the Beaufort Sea off the Canadian coastal town of Tuktoyaktuk. Instead, his icebreaker found hundreds of miles of what he called “rotten ice” — 20-inch thin layers of fresh ice covering small chunks of older ice.

“From a practical perspective, if you want to ship across the pole, you’re concerned about multi-year sea ice. You’re not concerned about this rotten stuff we were doing 15 miles per hour through. It’s easy to navigate. I would argue that we almost have a seasonally ice-free Arctic now, because multi-year sea ice is the barrier to the use and development of the Arctic,” said Barber. (15)

[Bruce Melton is a registered professional engineer, environmental researcher, trained outreach specialist, and environmental filmmaker. He has been translating and interpreting scholarly science publications for two decades. His main mission is filming and reporting on the impacts of climate changes happening now, unknown to the greater portion of society. Austin, Texas is his home. His writing and films are on his website.]

References:

(1) Arctic Amplification: How the Arctic warms so much more rapidly than the rest of the world…
Serreze, et .al., The emergence of surface based Arctic amplification, The Cryosphere Discussion, February 2009.
http://www.the-cryosphere.net/3/11/2009/tc-3-11-2009.pdf
(2) National Climatic Data Center: Average temperatures for the U.S. and the world…
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/maps.php?ts=3&year=2010&month=2&imgs[]=Nationaltrank&submitted=Submit
(3) Running average temperature… Hansen et. al., Global Surface Temperature Change, Geophysical Research Letters, December 14, 2010.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi?id=ha00510u
(4) Global Temperature is within one degree of being as warm as it has been in 1.35 million years… Hansen, et. al. Global temperature change, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, September, 2006.
http://www.pnas.org/content/103/39/14288.full
(5) By the end of the century, global the global temperature will be similar to when the dinosaurs were around and sea level was 200 feet higher…
Church et. al., Understanding Sea Level Rise and Variablility (2010), Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO).
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_pubs_sl_book.html
(6) Just a few degrees of change is all it takes to push an ecosystem over the edge… Thresholds of Climate Change in Ecosystems, U. S Climate Change Science Program, U.S. Geological Survey, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Climate Change Science Program, January 2009.
http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-2/default.php
(7) The Beaufort High… Li, et. al., Changes to the North Atlantic Subtropical High and Its Role in the Intensification of Summer Rainfall Variability in the Southeastern United States, Journal of Climate, October 2010.
Duke Press Release: http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/news/increasingly-variable-summer-rainfall-in-southeast-linked-to-climate-change
(8) 308th consecutive month above average…
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global
(9) The Winter of 2005-6 recreated by climate models… Petoukhov and Semenov, A link between reduced Barents-Kara sea ice and cold winter extremes over northern continents, Journal of Geophysical Research, November 2010.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009JD013568.shtml
(10) NOAA has a website called Future of Arctic Sea Ice and Global Impacts…
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/future/index_impacts.html#event
(11) Arctic snowmelt 15 to 30 days earlier… Tedesco, et. al., Pan Arctic terrestrial snowmelt trends, 1979 to 2008, from spaceborne passive microwave data, Geophysical Research Letters, November 2009.
http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2009/2009GL039672.shtml
(12) Arctic sea ice coverage, 14 million years…
Darby, Arctic perennial ice cover over the last 14 million years, Paleoceanography, February 2008.
http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2009/2009GL039672.shtml
(13) Arctic sea ice melt 70 years ahead of schedule… Stroeve, et. al., Arctic Sea Ice Decline Faster than Forecast, Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 34, 2007.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007…/2007GL029703.shtml
IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Technical Basis, Chapter 10 Global Climate Projections, November 2007, page 771.
(14) Arctic is essential ice-free now… Barber et. al., Perennial pack ice in the southern Beaufort Sea was not as it appeared in the summer of 2009, Geophysical Research Letters, December 2009.
http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/2009_outlook/summary_report/downloads/pan-arctic/pdf/barber-etal-2009-summary-report.pdf
(15) Barber Interview from Reuters News Service…
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE59S3LT20091029?sp=true

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Bruce Melton : It Is Colder Because It Is Warming

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer


It is colder because it is warming

Blizzards, no matter how cataclysmic, are still just weather. Climate is much, much bigger than weather.

By Bruce Melton / The Rag Blog / January 12, 2010

Global warming refers to climate, not weather. Snowpocalypses and icetastrophes are not climate, even when year after year they cover subcontinental size areas on multiple continents.

They are however, very similar to the climate that we had before the 1990s. So why do we keep having these blizzasters if we are supposed to be warming?

Even three years of snowmegeddons cannot keep our climate from warming. Even when large areas of multiple continents are involved. There is one little problem though… Blizzards, no matter how cataclysmic, are still just weather. Climate is much, much bigger than weather.

The academic world has started to unravel the clues about why we are seeing more extreme winter weather in some places, and the answers are the same as the climate models have been telling us. On a warmer planet, winter weather becomes more volatile. The extremes get more extreme. Not necessarily extremely cold, but it only has to be below freezing to snow. And the warmer it is, the more snow can fall. Warmer air holds more moisture — it is the reverse of “it is too cold to snow.”

A paper in the journal The Cryosphere Discussion (cryosphere is that part of the Earth that is covered with ice), by Mark Serreze at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder Colorado says, the Arctic has warmed 5.4 to 9 degrees F, or five to 10 times the global average of 0.9 degrees. This is just for warming relative to the 1970 to 2007 average time period. (1).

The reason that the Arctic has warmed so much more than the rest of the planet is called Arctic amplification, and the same thing is happening in high altitude mountains around the world. This “Arctic amplification” is nothing more than additional warming caused by the loss of snow and ice on a warmer planet. The scientists call it a warming feedback.

A “feedback” happens when a little bit of warming melts a little bit of ice. Ice reflects sunlight harmlessly back into space without causing warming. Sunlight striking dirt or rocks, water or vegetation, warms that object. This warming is trapped by the greenhouse effect and causes more ice to melt.

This mostly explains why the Arctic is warming so much more than the rest of the world. (The Antarctic is different because it is surrounded by ocean and has a completely different set of dynamics than the Arctic, which is surrounded by land.)

So, the Arctic is warming a lot more than the rest of the planet — how does this make winters colder? First: It has not really been earth-shattering cold. The winter temperature across the U.S. last year (2009) ranked 18th coldest out of 115 years, but for the entire year the U.S., ranked 34th warmest out of 115 years of records.

The year 2008 ranked 38th warmest of 114. and 2010 ranked 18th warmest through November. Northern Canada however had its second warmest winter ever recorded in 2009 and the combined global average temperature was the fifth warmest ever recorded. This year (2010) tied 1998 as the warmest year ever recorded. (2)

Just because it was one of the coldest winters in decades in some parts of the U.S. for the last few years does not mean it was very cold. It means that it has been warmer than normal for decades.


Beginning in the late 1970s, our climate really started to warm. The warming has only been a little more than a degree, but most of the warming comes in the winter. So we have been lulled into complacency by decades of warmer than usual temperatures, and even warmer winters. I remember in the 1960s and 70s when I was a kid, I was fascinated when arctic air invaded the northern tier of the United States and temperatures plummeted to 40 below and just hung there for weeks. That just does not happen anymore

The latest global temperature analysis from the main U.S. climate modeling agency, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, looks at the long-term running average global temperature. Using a running average smooths out the chaos of monthly weather changes. This technique plots successive averages instead of each individual record point. (3)

A running average removes a lot of the chaos in the temperature records. This is a different way of looking at the numbers that acts like a fine-tuning knob. It makes the “picture” clearer. It allows the “music” to be heard without static. That static is the chaos of weather.

In a single day, the temperature at any given spot can change as much as 40 degrees or more. In a year at any given place, the temperature can change over 100 degrees or more. This natural variability makes it difficult to see the small changes associated with climate change. But these small changes can have tremendous impacts.


Think of our atmosphere as a pot of water on the stove. After a little bit of warming, movement can be seen in the water. These are convection currents. The same thing happens in our atmosphere, only a little bit of convection can create a big thunderstorm.

The warming we have seen because of the unintended carbon dioxide enrichment of our atmosphere is less than two degrees averaged across the globe. This may only be a couple of degrees, but it is a really big deal.

The difference in global temperature between the depths of the ice ages and the warmest it has been in the last 10 million years is only about 9 degrees F. The global temperature today is within one and a half degrees of being as warm as it has been in 1.35 million years. (4) By the end of the century, the global temperature will be similar to when the dinosaurs were around and sea level was 200 feet higher. (5)

But one of the really dangerous things about climate change, published in Thresholds of Climate Change in Ecosystems, by the U.S. Geological Survey, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, under the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, in January 2009, is that just a few degrees of change is all it takes to push an ecosystem over the edge. (6)

It turns out our weather is highly sensitive to a few degrees of change as well. The Beaufort High is a semi-permanent, seasonal weather phenomenon similar to the Bermuda High or the Aleutian Low. (The Beaufort High forms over the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic, north of the border between Alaska and Northwest Territories.)

These big high or low-pressure areas form every year, and hang around for months and months. The Bermuda High is most notable in the summer and the Aleutian Low and Beaufort High in winter. They are responsible for influencing weather patterns across the Northern Hemisphere because they shape and change the path of the jet stream.

An article published in the Journal of Climate, led by a researcher from Duke University, has found that the Beaufort High has recently intensified. This is something that the models have been predicting because of planetary warming, and now it has happened. What it means for you and me is that the jet stream path has changed. The Beaufort High, because it is larger now, pushes the jet stream further south. It just so happens that it pushes it south right into central and northeastern North America. (7)

This high-pressure system has increased in size because there is more heat in the Arctic now. This heat is especially apparent in the fall and early winter, because arctic sea ice coverage has fallen so precipitously. Even when sea ice begins to regrow in the fall, the impacts of the extra heat hang around.

This extra heat hanging around is a normal seasonal temperature lag just like we see everywhere else. Maximum heating in the summer and maximum cooling in the winter are not centered on the longest or shortest day of the year. The temperature lags behind. It takes Mother Earth some time to adjust. So the big Beaufort High impacts Northern Hemisphere weather far into the winter.

The jet stream has changed and it is throwing arctic storms further south. Even though arctic temperatures have risen five to 10 times as much as the rest of globe, the Arctic blasts are still cold. And remember that pot of water we left on the stove? A warmer atmosphere is more energetic; the storms are more intense. They may not be colder, but they can make more snow because they have more energy.

Even people like me, who grew up in south Texas with citrus trees, have heard that it can be too cold to snow. This old saying reflects a simple scientific principle. As air cools, it can hold less moisture. When it gets colder, it snows less and less because there is less and less moisture in the air. But warm it up to nearer to the freezing point and the amount of snow increases.

So, the Beaufort High is kicking arctic storms further to the south because the jet stream has changed, and those storms are more energetic because it is warmer in the Arctic. We seem to be getting clobbered with cold, when in reality, the Arctic has warmed a tremendous amount. This is one of those things that makes climate change so counterintuitive.

Last month was number 310 in a row where the average global temperature was above the 20th century average. That’s 25 years and 10 months. Last winter’s NOAA Climate Extremes Index was six percent above average (nothing to write home about.) Mid-March ice coverage of the Great Lakes was at an all-time low, and North American snow cover for April was the smallest ever recorded in 2010. (8)


The relatively cooler winter in the U.S. Northeast and Europe in 2005-6 has also been recreated in the climate modeling world. The climate science guys have been predicting that this would happen, but until now these predictions have not been confirmed. Using actual sea ice coverage, a study led by Vladimir Petoukhov at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, has recreated the extreme winter events of the northeastern U.S. and Europe in the winter of 2005-6. (9)

The cause is warming in the Arctic. The decrease in Arctic sea ice caused by warming is another natural phenomenon that has a feedback component. More warming means more melt of course. Water absorbs nearly 90 percent of the sun’s light and changes it into heat. Snow and ice reflect up to 90 percent of the sun’s light harmlessly back into space without it being changed into heat. (Water absorbs eight times more heat than snow and ice.)

This extra heat hangs around to continue the feedback. Summer melt then extends further into the fall; warmer ocean waters prevent thicker ice from forming and because the freeze up started later, there is less time for thicker ice to form. Warmer temperatures also cause more snow, which insulates sea ice from the cold temperatures above. The extra warmth increase high pressure over the Arctic, which increases the energy level of storms and the jet stream then pushes Arctic weather further south than normal. Clear as mud.

These scientists are calling this the “new normal.” They now say that the chance of having extreme winter weather has increased by three times because of this series of Arctic warming feedbacks. Only the winter of 2005-6 has been modeled so far, but the same conditions in the Arctic continue as the continued stormy winters in the Northeast and Europe attest.

The models also show that this change in global weather patterns in these two areas tends to disappear as sea ice melt becomes more complete. The reasoning is as yet unclear, but it likely has to do with the jet stream unbuckling, or by the time the Arctic is ice free it will be too warm for big snowstorms in areas where we normally have them.


The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a website called Future of Arctic Sea Ice and Global Impacts. In addition to the above papers, NOAA lists the University of Washington, Japan Agency for Marine Earth Science and Technology, University of Wisconsin, Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University, University of Illinois, National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University as institutions that have published evidence showing that “warming really does make it colder.” (10)

But the list does not stop here. Winter snowmelt in the Arctic has been shown to be starting 15 days earlier and ending 30 days earlier over the past 30 years. (11) Arctic sea ice has even been shown to have been present, even in the summer season, for 14 million years; meaning that the last time the arctic was ice free in summer was 14 million years ago. (12)

Another researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center has shown us that Arctic sea ice is declining much more rapidly than the supercomputer models have predicted. Comparing real world measurements of sea ice coverage to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios and model predictions, sea ice coverage today is as low as it is projected to be, under the worst-case scenarios, in the year 2080. This is 70 years ahead of schedule. (13)

One of the biggies in climate science however, is that a researcher at the Center for Earth Observation Science at the University of Manitoba in Canada has found that the Arctic Sea is functionally ice-free in the summer season now — today. (This was in 2009 when this paper was published.) (14)

This team of Canadian scientists, led by David Barber, whose Arctic expedition discoveries were published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, says they found a much different sea icescape in the Southern Beaufort Sea than anticipated based on their satellite ice sensors.

The satellites had shown 70 to 90 percent coverage of multi-year or thick first-year ice throughout most of the southern Beaufort Sea in the deep water of the Canada Basin. When the crew visited the area in their icebreaker the Amundsen, what they found was heavily decayed, very small remnant multi-year and first-year flows mixed with brash and bergy bits. In other words, they found a giant Slurpee where there was supposed to have been ice that was nearly impassible to all but a few nuclear icebreakers.

This greatly surprised the team, as they cruised through the rotten ice of the Beaufort Sea at top speed (15 miles an hour.) The Amundsen was designed to break three-foot thick sea ice at a speed of three and a half miles per hour. The ice they found was so rotten that the Amundsen could break 19 to 26 feet of rotten multi-year ice at three and a half miles an hour.

When the ice sensing satellites were put into operation, these warmer conditions that we are seeing now did not exist, or it was still cold enough, year-long, to keep the ice from beginning to disintegrate like it is doing now. The ice then was as hard as integral calculus and twice as stubborn. Since then we have seen what has apparently been the crossing of a threshold in terms of Arctic sea ice melt. What the science guys and girls did not know back then, was that the rotten Slurpee ice looks very similar to the plain old hard stuff that has been there for 14 million years.

The expedition was well described in an article interviewing Barber by Reuters News Service: Barber spoke shortly after returning from an expedition that sought — and largely failed to find — a huge multi-year ice pack that should have been in the Beaufort Sea off the Canadian coastal town of Tuktoyaktuk. Instead, his icebreaker found hundreds of miles of what he called “rotten ice” — 20-inch thin layers of fresh ice covering small chunks of older ice.

“From a practical perspective, if you want to ship across the pole, you’re concerned about multi-year sea ice. You’re not concerned about this rotten stuff we were doing 15 miles per hour through. It’s easy to navigate. I would argue that we almost have a seasonally ice-free Arctic now, because multi-year sea ice is the barrier to the use and development of the Arctic,” said Barber. (15)

[Bruce Melton is a registered professional engineer, environmental researcher, trained outreach specialist, and environmental filmmaker. He has been translating and interpreting scholarly science publications for two decades. His main mission is filming and reporting on the impacts of climate changes happening now, unknown to the greater portion of society. Austin, Texas is his home. His writing and films are on his website.]

References:

(1) Arctic Amplification: How the Arctic warms so much more rapidly than the rest of the world…
Serreze, et .al., The emergence of surface based Arctic amplification, The Cryosphere Discussion, February 2009.
http://www.the-cryosphere.net/3/11/2009/tc-3-11-2009.pdf
(2) National Climatic Data Center: Average temperatures for the U.S. and the world…
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/maps.php?ts=3&year=2010&month=2&imgs[]=Nationaltrank&submitted=Submit
(3) Running average temperature… Hansen et. al., Global Surface Temperature Change, Geophysical Research Letters, December 14, 2010.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi?id=ha00510u
(4) Global Temperature is within one degree of being as warm as it has been in 1.35 million years… Hansen, et. al. Global temperature change, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, September, 2006.
http://www.pnas.org/content/103/39/14288.full
(5) By the end of the century, global the global temperature will be similar to when the dinosaurs were around and sea level was 200 feet higher…
Church et. al., Understanding Sea Level Rise and Variablility (2010), Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO).
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_pubs_sl_book.html
(6) Just a few degrees of change is all it takes to push an ecosystem over the edge… Thresholds of Climate Change in Ecosystems, U. S Climate Change Science Program, U.S. Geological Survey, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Climate Change Science Program, January 2009.
http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-2/default.php
(7) The Beaufort High… Li, et. al., Changes to the North Atlantic Subtropical High and Its Role in the Intensification of Summer Rainfall Variability in the Southeastern United States, Journal of Climate, October 2010.
Duke Press Release: http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/news/increasingly-variable-summer-rainfall-in-southeast-linked-to-climate-change
(8) 308th consecutive month above average…
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global
(9) The Winter of 2005-6 recreated by climate models… Petoukhov and Semenov, A link between reduced Barents-Kara sea ice and cold winter extremes over northern continents, Journal of Geophysical Research, November 2010.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2009JD013568.shtml
(10) NOAA has a website called Future of Arctic Sea Ice and Global Impacts…
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/future/index_impacts.html#event
(11) Arctic snowmelt 15 to 30 days earlier… Tedesco, et. al., Pan Arctic terrestrial snowmelt trends, 1979 to 2008, from spaceborne passive microwave data, Geophysical Research Letters, November 2009.
http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2009/2009GL039672.shtml
(12) Arctic sea ice coverage, 14 million years…
Darby, Arctic perennial ice cover over the last 14 million years, Paleoceanography, February 2008.
http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2009/2009GL039672.shtml
(13) Arctic sea ice melt 70 years ahead of schedule… Stroeve, et. al., Arctic Sea Ice Decline Faster than Forecast, Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 34, 2007.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007…/2007GL029703.shtml
IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Technical Basis, Chapter 10 Global Climate Projections, November 2007, page 771.
(14) Arctic is essential ice-free now… Barber et. al., Perennial pack ice in the southern Beaufort Sea was not as it appeared in the summer of 2009, Geophysical Research Letters, December 2009.
http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/2009_outlook/summary_report/downloads/pan-arctic/pdf/barber-etal-2009-summary-report.pdf
(15) Barber Interview from Reuters News Service…
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE59S3LT20091029?sp=true

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Alyce Guynn : On the Passing of Poet Susan Bright

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Susan Bright at the Poet’s Tree, Barton Springs, Austin, Texas.

Poet, publisher, and environmental activist:
Honoring Susan Bright

By Alyce Guynn / The Rag Blog / January 12, 2011

See details about the memorial service for Susan Bright below.

When family, friends and fans of Susan Bright assemble at Barton Springs on Sunday, January 16, to honor and remember her, the crowd will likely be as varied as Susan’s life. She was widely known and well loved.

Susan Bright died December 29, 2010, at the age of 65. She is survived by her husband John Andrews and son Daryl Bright. She was a poet, author of 19 collections of poetry, founder of Plain View Press, which has published over 350 books with works by over 500 writers. She was a peace and environmental activist, educator, wife, mother, grandmother, friend, and feminist. She lived in Austin, Texas, where she was a year-round lap swimmer at Barton Springs.

Susan was much to many. Her efforts to preserve Barton Springs (a landmark three-acre spring-fed pool in Austin’s Zilker Park) led environmental activist Bill Bunch to call her the “oracle of Barton Springs.” According to Bunch, the executive director of the Save Our Springs Alliance, “She knew the springs like no one else. Her poetry will guide community efforts to save the springs for decades to come.”

To me she was a mentor, publisher, poet, but most of all a dear and generous friend. Although we had known each other peripherally during the 1970s, we became friends in the late 1990s when I enrolled in one of Susan’s workshops.

Walking into Susan’s living room was walking into a womb of creativity. She opened her house for writing workshops and poetry readings and invited the muse to make herself at home. I am among many who are indebted to Susan for encouragement and support; one among many to whom she helped give voice.

To me Susan embodied the feminine principles of strength and gentleness in one package. She could be fierce in defending people she loved, causes she felt just. And she could be just as gentle in her nurturing, generosity, caring. I picture the Tarot card, where Strength is depicted as a woman gently holding open the mouth of a lion.

Susan’s inviting me to be part of a publishing lab provided a platform from which I was able to dive deeper into my creativity. Although I had written, even performed, for years, it was Susan who convinced me that my collected work deserved to be published. And she did it. She believed in me. I am not unique as a recipient of her confidence and commitment.

We shared so much more than our writing. We shared the joys and sorrows of parenting. We shared the appreciation of beautiful jewelry, interesting tales, good food. She and John and Daryl welcomed me into their home, where I felt like a member of the family, right along with the menagerie of dogs and cats and the bird in the bathroom. They lavished me with love and acceptance, gave me practical gifts like a computer. Oh, I owe so much.

But our love and enthusiasm for writing formed the foundation of our friendship. Susan and I wrote poems for/about each other.

Swimming to Avalon
for Susan Bright

She submerges her holy temple
every day for the sake of the song
she swims long miles in cold water

This earthy mother
goddess daughter

Seeing sparkling emeralds glistening
listening to the babies’ gurgling
laughter lit up

Her daily bathing builds strong muscles
to support dry bones
builds strong friendships, sense of community
among other holy dippers swimming to Avalon
or Jerusalem, one mile at a time

Stretching to salute the sun
she hums a familiar Beatles’ tune
while she listens in waves to the orchestra
playing water
she dives into bright green deep of Barton Springs
while one, more shy, studies a pale mauve
shadow emerging from stones in the shallow end

She is healed in the honored history
steeped in the watery mystery
renewed, day and day again

Raising her poet’s voice
to sing the eternal hymn
of these revered waters

© Alyce Guynn, 2001

(first published in 2001 in a di-verse-city odyssey)

__________________________________

Goin’ down on Alyce

(for Jesse Guitar Taylor, 1951-2006,
written several years ago after a cool birthday party
for Alyce Guynn)

Upstairs, in the back room, at Threadgills
where someone, sometime before 1971
spray painted “Janis sang here” on the cement front
of an old gas station cafe, there’s a Texas
Music Museum now, a bar and a party room —
where you can buy a country turkey
dinner for Thanksgiving, or Christmas.

Alyce held her 61st birthday party there tonite
and invited her musician friends to play —
music legends like John Reed, and Jesse Guitar Taylor.
Mandy Mercier played and belted out song after
song. It was hopping and Alyce was in heaven
or thought she was —

We are proud of our musicians here, the ones who
stay up all night, work all day, fill our rooms with
virtuosity, delight our hearts, make us laugh, cry,
sing along. There are three John Reeds Butch Hancock
explained after I met one’s grandmother
in Amarillo — which one I never figured out,
and he wasn’t there tonite.

There is one Jesse Guitar Taylor, one winding complex
guitar lick that’s danced around every West Texas singer/
songwriter for 30 years. We call him Mr. Guitar. He sings
like Wolfman Jack, a deep growling sound I’m not sure
he can still hear, after years of standing next to
rock and roll speakers. But he can play —

There is one Mandy Mercier, finger picking and wailing
on the violin, deep blues voice belting out rich tones,
brilliant songs. Mandy is a friend of mine, reminding me
why we have voices and like to tap our feet. I met
her through Alyce, who was on cloud nine, having
her picture taken with her children, listening to music
with her friends, at least she thought she was.

But it wasn’t until the end of the show, when the
flajitas and queso were almost gone and the iced tea
in the container marked lemonade was half full.
It was about the time the chocolate cake was replaced
by mysterious and delicious brownies. The room was
still full, old friends hanging on to the moment
and the music, when Jesse stepped over to the table
right up front where Alyce held court, and reached
to touch lightly one finger on her left hand.

And then he played. To Alyce — he bowed down,
let that old guitar wail out the most beautiful riffs
I’ve heard him do, this musician who can stop
anyone mid-step, hold our attention in a swell
of embroidered melody, which he did, for Alyce
who thought she was in heaven, honored,
knowing she was part of a new piece of Texas
music history, on her birthday. But she wasn’t
there yet.

And she didn’t care, or even know it because the
ride was wondrous, all those notes, weaving
us into a rich Alyce fabric, silky and fine —
which was about the time Jesse knelt down,
bending again sweetly, gray hair tied back,
a thinner, aging face that might end up
beautiful, odd, because Jesse has always looked
like a prize fighter. But tonight, as he knelt down to
play for Alyce, as the most delicate guitar
sounds possible laughed around us,
Jesse was a melodic angel.

And when he let go of the last exquisite note —
he reached out and again softly touched her hand.
And bowed. And turned back to the band, turned
again, spread out his arms and called out,

“We love you Alyce.”

Susan Bright
March 21, 2006
earthfamilyalpha

People talk about Susan’s brilliance. One spoke of her as a bright star that will continue to illuminate our sky. A participant from one of her writing workshops speaks of her Bright Legacy. So many of us whose lives she touched, were made a little lighter with her laughter, brighter through her radiance.

Susan’s passing is a huge loss to our community — to the world — and a deep, personal grief for me. It has been impossible to comprehend. Yet, she has left us a Bright Legacy that will live on through her words, through the poets and writers for whom she provided platforms from which to dive deeper, leap higher.

[Alyce Guynn’s poetry appears in Feeding the Crow and Deal Me In, a book of her love poems illustrated by Jesse “Guitar” Taylor. A former reporter for the Austin American-Statesman in the ‘60s, Alyce never wrote for The Rag, but read it regularly. Alyce also works as an antitrust investigator for the State of Texas.]

Other places to read about Susan Bright:

Susan Bright.

Susan Bright Memorial and Swim

The Susan Bright Memorial and Swim will be Sunday, January 16th at 11 a.m., at (and in) Barton Springs pool in Austin, Texas. It will be an open service. Afterwards, there will be a pot luck gathering in the Tree Court.

The gate on the south side will be open for free parking and the pool area has been secured for this purpose. The celebration will include an open mic for all to share their stories. The pool will be open for swimming. Please join us for this event to honor the life of Susan Bright and the gifts of words she honored and we carry forward.

You can contribute to the Susan Bright Writer’s Memorial Fund to support writers and poets in lieu of flowers or gifts. Website orders also support the press and the current writers.

— Caring Bridge

The Rag Blog

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Tom Hayden : The Right and the Shooting in Tucson

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Image from Jesse Kelly’s website (now removed). The article about Kelly’s appearance in Sierra Vista originally appeared in the Sierra Vista Herald.

Getting on target:
The Right and the shooting in Tucson

By Tom Hayden / The Rag Blog / January 12, 2010

It appears that Arizona is ground zero in a right-wing war against the democratic process.

Rep. Giffords was on Sarah Palin’s “target list” of 20 2010 incumbents, a list which featured a graphic showing the crosshairs of a gun. Giffords’ office was was one of those vandalized by the right-wing in March 2009 in a protest against national health care bill. [Judge John Roll, killed in the incident, also was subject to significant threats due to his positions on immigration.]

As recently as June 12, 2010, leaflets appeared in Giffords’ district proclaiming: “Get on Target” and help remove Gabrielle Giffords. “Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.”

Jesse Kelly is a Marine veteran, and right-wing Republican who lost to Gifford November 4, by 48.8%-47%. Kelly was strongly supported by the Tea Party.

Salon.com named Kelly the Number 1 “most terrifying candidate” in the 2010 Congressional elections. He was criticized for taking funds and support from Americans for Legal Immigration [ALIPAC], an anti-immigrant group once denounced by Sen. John McCain’s office as “white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and anti-semites.” [The Hill, campaign blog, Oct. 26, 2010]. The Anti-Defamation League shared McCain’s office view of ALIPAC.

Kelly’s campaign site favored 10,000 U.S. troops being sent to the Arizona-Mexico border “in an active enforcement mode.” Gifford supported the president’s overall immigration reform legislation.

Image from Talking Points Memo.

The anti-Gifford campaign generated a climate infected by hate and violent rhetoric. But who pulled the trigger? Little has been released about Jared Lee Loughner, but at first look he seems to fit the profile of an individual prone to far-right rhetoric. Here is an apparent excerpt from Loughner’s diary:

You don’t have to accept the federalist laws.

Nonetheless, read the United States of America’s Constitution to apprehend all of the current treasonous laws.

You’re literate, listener?

If the property owners and government officials are no longer in ownership of their land and laws from a revolution then the revolutionary’s from the revolution are in control of the land and laws.

The property owners and government officials are no longer in ownership of their land and laws from a revolution. Thus, the revolutionary’s from the revolution are in control of the land and laws.

In conclusion, reading the second United States Constitution, I can’t trust the current government because of the ratifications: The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar.

No! I won’t pay debt with a currency that’s not backed by gold and silver!

On the evidence so far, this is not a case of an “isolated psychopath.” Nor can Sarah Palin and the Tea Party excuse themselves from responsibility by expressing best wishes for Giffords’ recovery. There is a connection between the politics of vitriolic hate, symbolized by crosshairs and calls to “lock and load” or “shoot an automatic M16,” and the outcome in Tucson Saturday morning.

[Tom Hayden is a former California state senator and leader of Sixties peace, justice, and environmental movements. He currently teaches at Pitzer College in Los Angeles. His latest book is The Long Sixties. This article was also published at Progressive America Rising.]

Thanks to Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog

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Ralph Solonitz : Killer Brew!

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Political cartoon by Ralph Solonitz / The Rag Blog.

The Rag Blog / Posted January 12, 2011

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Jonah Raskin : Chickens Come Home to Roost in Arizona

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Malcolm X at Harlem rally, December 31, 1969. Photo from New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection.

On chickens coming home to roost:
Armageddon in Arizona

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / January 11, 2011

Shortly after JFK was shot and killed, Malcolm X, the Black Muslim leader, observed, “The chickens have come home to roost.” His comment did not endear him to the Kennedy family or to large swath of the American public, but Malcolm wasn’t trying to make friends or to be nice.

He wanted to tell the truth as he saw it, and he felt that those who live by the gun, whether they are presidents of the U.S.A., or street thugs, die by the gun. In his view, it was the American way. Another African American from the same era, H. Rap Brown, noted that, “Violence is as American as cherry pie.”

The shootings in Arizona show once again, after all these many years, the staying power of Malcolm X’s and Rap Brown’s words. Indeed, their words have all the force of bullets, and perhaps more, though they have caused far less violence.

Undoubtedly, much will be written about the suspect, Jared L. Loughner, and new information will emerge about him. Moreover, as we gain distance from the event, it may emerge with greater clarity, and we may have deeper insights than we now do. But reporters, columnists, and editorial writers have already piled high heated words about the incident, and, before attitudes harden, it might be helpful to float a few ideas and add them to the mix.

It seems clear from where I stand, that the suspect, Jarden L. Loughner — who allegedly shot and killed a federal judge, a nine-year old-child and others, and seriously wounded a U.S. Congresswoman — is a terrorist. That’s spelled T-E-R-R-O-R-I-S-T. What he did was terrorism — it has had the effect of frightening many citizens, though not all, of course. It has made people feel terrorized.

Loughner might be a madman and a right-wing fanatic. The picture of him that the Pima County Sheriff’s office released makes him look deranged. But his armed attack was political, overtly political. It sent a clear political message. If you support health care, as Congresswoman Giffords did, and if you care about immigrants, as Federal Judge John M. Roll did, then you are a marked man or woman.

Giffords knew that she was a marked woman. Indeed, she was targeted by the Tea Baggers for her political stance on the issues, and she knew it.

“We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list,” she said. “Crosshairs of a gunsight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize there’s consequences.” Giffords probably did not realize how accurate her words would prove to be.

If the shooter had been an Arab or a Muslim he undoubtedly would have been labeled a terrorist. If he were from Yemen, for example, politicians would by now be calling for the invasion of Yemen. Only the fact that he has a white skin and is a U.S. citizen has so far spared him the label of “terrorist” in much of the mass media.

Reporters have focused attention on the suspect’s mental state and on the gun he used. More attention ought to be focused on his political views and actions, though that will take some doing because Americans have a hard time understanding politics unless it’s an election year and Democrats are running against Republicans. Politics is about power, and ultimately power comes out of the barrel of a gun. Loughner must have known that.

It’s no accident that this terrorist attack took place in Arizona. Indeed, Arizona seems like the perfect or near-perfect place for an act of terrorism to take place, at least on domestic soil. Arizona politicians have been whipping up hatred for Mexicans, liberals, and Democrats. They have been lighting a fire under the citizenry, and sooner or later, given the volatile atmosphere they created, it was likely that an armed and a dangerous man would take action.

Loughner’s lawyer, Judy Clarke, who defended the Unabomber, Theodore J. Kacznski, and also the alleged Al Qaeda operative, Zacarias Moussaoui, might well point out that Loughner did not act in a vacuum. In fact, he was cooped up in a tinderbox waiting to be exploded.

Could he have chosen “better” targets? Perhaps. He chose political figures close to home and to whom he had access. Surely, his white skin and his American citizenship enabled him to get close to Congressman Gabrielle Giffords and Judge Roll without raising suspicions. Again and again, as a society, we do not seem to be alert to the white terrorists in our midst.

President Obama spoke about “grieving” and about “the tragedy.” But unless he and we do more than grieve and remain in shock, acts like the one that just took place in Arizona will take place again — sadly, shockingly, and tragically.

H. Rap Brown was insightful in what he said: Violence is as American as cherry pie. It’s as violent a place now as it was when he made his remark in the 1960s — and perhaps more so. We are a society that lives by the gun, worships the gun, and adores gunmen. We also die by the gun. Look around and there seems to be no end to the violence.

[Jonah Raskin has lived through the violence of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and now, twenty-first century. He is the author of American Scream, and For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman.

The Rag Blog

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Robert Jensen : Machines Change, Our Work Remains the Same

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Early computer. Image from Corbis-Bettmann.

The limits of internet activism:
Machines change, the work remains the same

By Robert Jensen / The Rag Blog / January 11, 2011

When I first got involved in left/radical political organizing in the 1990s, I don’t recall any of us referring to our efforts as “phone activism” or calling ourselves “fax activists.” A friend who started organizing in the early 1960s assured me that he never heard the term “mimeograph activism” in those days. We used telephones, fax machines, and mimeographs in our organizing work, but the machines didn’t define our work and we didn’t spend a lot of time arguing about the implications of using them.

Today the terms “online activism” and “internet activist” are common, as are discussions about the positive and negative effects of computer-mediated communication (CMC) on left/progressive political organizing. (See interview with Joss Hands on “Activism in a digital culture.”)

Is CMC so dramatically different, or is the left simply caught up in the larger culture’s obsession with life online? I will start with observations that likely are not controversial, and then step back to frame the question in ways that may not be widely accepted.

Two basic points:

First, CMC makes possible the distribution of information to a larger number of people at lower financial cost than previous technologies (though the ecological cost of a communication technology that creates highly toxic e-waste and consumes enormous amounts of energy may make this technology prohibitively expensive in the long run) and allows for easier and faster feedback from the recipients of that information.

Second, while the technology is too new for definitive assertions, there is a seductive quality to CMC that leads some groups and individuals to spend too much of their time and resources online, even when there’s ample reason to suspect that expense of energy isn’t productive.

Two corollary cautions:

First, political information is not political action. Being able to distribute more information more widely more quickly does not automatically lead to people acting on that information. The information must be presented in ways that lead people to believe they should act, and there must be vehicles for that action.

Second, what appears to be wasting time online is not always a waste of time. Just as we solidify bonds with people face-to-face by chatting about the mundane aspects of our lives, we sometimes do that online. Political organizing — like all of life — includes such interaction.

So, it’s true that the things we do with a computer online are often like the things we do, or did, with telephone calls, faxes, and mimeographs; the question is how to most effectively apportion our time, energy, and resources on these machines as part of a larger organizing strategy. In that sense, deciding whether to focus on an email or a door-knocking campaign is a straightforward calculation about resources and the likely outcomes of using those resources in different ways.

It’s also true that we should be more critically self-reflective about our use of computers for political organizing, lest we be seduced by how productive we imagine we are being online simply because of the speed and reach of CMC. Because an email campaign can reach more people quickly, we are tempted to believe it will lead to the more effective outcomes, though the patient work of door-knocking may yield better long-term results if it builds deeper support that endures.

As our organizing tools change rapidly, these calculations of the likely success of different tactics are not always easy to make, but they are relatively simple questions to formulate. Much more vexing are questions about the complex changes in the world in which we are organizing.

We like to say the internet has changed everything, perhaps in as dramatic a fashion as the printing press changed the act of reading. But the world of the 15th century was not changing at anything like the speed that the world is changing today. We need to think about the “everything” in which our email messages are bouncing around. We need to be clearer about the scale of the problems we face, the scope of the changes necessary to address the problems, and the time available to us for creating meaningful change. To illustrate these issues, I’ll talk about the state of the ecosphere.

Scale of the problems

For many years activists focused on “environmental problems,” offering ways that humans could adjust the way we live to cope with problems of dirty air, dirty water, and dirty land. The assumption behind those projects was that an environment consistent with long-term human flourishing was possible within existing economic, social, and political systems.

That assumption was wrong, and evidence continues to pile up that the ecosphere cannot sustain billions of people when even a fraction of them live at First-World levels. Look at any crucial measure of the health of our ecosphere — groundwater depletion, topsoil loss, chemical contamination, increased toxicity in our own bodies, the number and size of “dead zones” in the oceans, accelerating extinction of species and reduction of bio-diversity — and the news is bad and getting worse.

And we live in an oil-based world that is fast running out of oil with no viable replacement fuels. And we can’t forget global warming and climate instability. Add all that up and it’s not a pretty picture, especially when we abandon the technological fundamentalism of the culture and stop believing in fantasy quick fixes for deeply rooted problems.

Our troubles are not the result of the bad behavior within the systems in which we live but of the systems themselves. We have to go to the root and acknowledge that human attempts to control and dominate the non-human world have failed. We are destroying the planet and in the process destroying ourselves.

Scope of the changes

So, we either abandon the industrial model of development based on the concentrated energy in fossil fuels or we face a significant human die-off in a grim future that is within view. Abandoning that industrial model means a sudden shift in human living arrangements that would be unprecedented in history. We have to redefine what it means to live a good life, dramatically lowering our energy use and reducing our expectations about the material goods we consume.

That means that we not only won’t be getting a new flat-screen television, but that we won’t be amusing ourselves with new Hollywood movies and TV. It means not only that we won’t be able to buy an SUV, but that we won’t be using cars for routine personal transportation. It means a whole lot less of everything, and such changes in living arrangements are impossible within capitalism.

While capitalism is not the only unsustainable economic system in history, it is the system that structures the global economy today, and it has to be scrapped. If a transition to a sustainable economy is possible, it also means we will have to abandon the nation-state as the primary unit of political organization and find functional political systems at a much lower level.

These changes in economic, social, and political systems mean significant changes in how we understand the nature of the self, the relationship to other humans, and the human place in the larger living world. When we redefine what it means to live a good life, we will be defining what it means to be human.

Time available

No one can predict the trajectory of a full-scale ecological collapse, in part because it is complex beyond human understanding and in part because how we act in the present can affect that trajectory. But even without the capacity to predict with precision, we have to make our best guesses to guide our choices in organizing.

The best-case scenario is that we have a few decades to accomplish these changes. The worst-case scenario is that we are past the point of no return and that the systems in place will exhaust the ecosphere’s capacity to sustain human life as we know it before we can adjust.

If ecological collapse is either coming soon or already in motion, then traditional organizing strategies may be obsolete. The problem is not just that existing economic, social, and political systems are incapable of producing a more just and sustainable world, but that there isn’t time available for working out new ways of understanding our self, others, and the world. There is no reason to assume that the non-human world will wait while we slowly come to terms with all this; the ecosphere isn’t going to conform to our timetable.

Where this leaves us

Though I made no claims to special predictive powers, two things seem likely to me: (1) All human activity will become dramatically more local in the coming decades, and (2) Without coordinated global action to change course, there is little hope for the survival of human society as we know it.

When I offer such an assessment, I am routinely accused of being hysterical and apocalyptic. But I don’t feel caught up in an emotional frenzy, and I am not preaching a dramatic ending of the human presence on Earth. Instead, I’m taking seriously the available evidence and doing my best to make sense of that evidence to guide my political choices. I believe we all have a moral obligation to do that.

As a result, I have recommitted to local organizing that aims mainly to strengthen institutions and networks on the ground where I live, rooted in a belief that those local connections will be more important than ever in coming decades. At the same time, I try to maintain and extend connections to like-minded people around the world, hoping that those connections can contribute to the possibility of coordinated global action.

In short, I am trying to become more tribal and more universal at the same time, recognizing there is no guarantee that of a smooth transition or success in the long run.

In these efforts, I engage in a considerable amount of computer-mediated communication. Whenever it’s feasible, I favor direct human communication in face-to-face settings, on the assumption that local networks will be strengthened by such communication in ways that CMC cannot foster.

I also use CMC to reach out beyond the local, both to learn about global initiatives and to contribute to such initiatives. I try to take advantage of the opportunities offered by CMC without being seduced by illusions of easy organizing through the send button.

So, a summary that likely isn’t controversial: These days almost all left/radical organizers will communicate online, but the social justice and ecological sustainability at the heart of left/radical politics isn’t going to be achieved online.

It’s tempting to leave the discussion at that level, but the questions about scale/scope/time aren’t addressed by that easy summary. With a larger focus, the trouble with CMC — with all the time and effort it takes to learn new programs, keep up with the constant changes on the internet, think about the role of the virtual world in real-world politics — is that it keeps us stuck in the past.

That may seem paradoxical; we’re used to talking about the people who don’t embrace computers as being the ones stuck in the past. After all, isn’t the internet the key to the future? Not if the future is going to be defined by less energy and less advanced technology.

If the changes outlined above are an unavoidable part of our future, then we would be well advised to start weaning ourselves from the high-energy/high-technology world, not only in our personal lives but in our organizing as well. That doesn’t mean immediately abandoning all the gadgets we use, but rather always realizing that our efforts to make the most effective use of the gadgets in the short term shouldn’t crowd out the long-term planning for a dramatically different world.

That different world may well impose changes on us before we have been able to face them ourselves. Novelist/poet/critic Wendell Berry captures this when he writes, “We are going to have to learn to give up things that we have learned (in only a few years, after all) to ‘need.’ I am not an optimist; I am afraid that I won’t live long enough to escape my bondage to the machines.”

The task is daunting, but it is our task nonetheless. Berry is not optimistic about the future, but he concludes with our charge:

“Nevertheless, on every day left to me I will search my mind and circumstances for the means of escape. And I am not without hope. I knew a man who, in the age of chainsaws, went right on cutting his wood with a handsaw and an axe. He was a healthier and a saner man than I am. I shall let his memory trouble my thoughts.”[1]

When we lack answers to difficult questions — or even a way to imagine finding answers — it’s easy to put the questions aside. Better, I think, to let the questions continually disturb us.

Every time I touch the keyboard of my laptop to write an essay that will be posted on a web site, which I will send to editors via email, my thoughts are troubled.

[Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin, and one of the partners in the community center “5604 Manor.” He is the author of All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, (Soft Skull Press, 2009) and Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); Jensen is also co-producer of the documentary film Abe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing, which chronicles the life and philosophy of the longtime radical activist. Robert Jensen can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu. This article also appears at the New Left Project.]

[1] Wendell Berry, What Are People For? (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990), p. 196.

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Posted on January 11, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

At The Rag Blog, we asked some of our old-school colleagues to share with us their unique experiences and adventures in the political and cultural movements of the radical Sixties, and Ray Reece obliges in spades! Ray combines the story of his baptism by fire into the anti-war movement with his introduction to a “passionate reverence for living things.”

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Posted on January 11, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer


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Patricia Vonne Headlines Jan. 23 Rag Blog Benefit Bash

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Graphic by James Retherford / Hot Digital Dog Design / The Rag Blog.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.

Latina rocker Patricia Vonne
headlines Rag Blog benefit at Jovita’s

What: Rag Blog Benefit
Who: Latina rocker Patricia Vonne and singer-songwriter Gina Chavez
Where: Jovita’s, 1617 South First Street, Austin, Texas
When: Sunday, Jan. 23, 2010, 6:30-10 p.m.
How much: $10 recommended donation

The Rag Blog and Rag Radio present acclaimed Latina rocker Patricia Vonne and folk-rock singer-songwriter Gina Chavez at Jovita’s, 1617 South First Street, Austin, Texas, on Sunday, Jan. 23, from 6:30-10 p.m. Suggested donation is $10. Jovita’s full bar and restaurant menu will be available.

The event benefits the New Journalism Project, inc., a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation that publishes The Rag Blog, an influential Austin-based progressive internet newsmagazine with roots in Austin’s legendary 60s underground newspaper, The Rag.

Rag Radio is a public affairs program hosted by Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer that airs on KOOP 91.7 FM, Austin’s community radio station, every Friday from 2-3 p.m. and streams live on the internet.

Patricia Vonne and Gina Chavez will by Thorne Dreyer’s guests on Rag Radio, Friday, Jan. 21. The show will include live performance.

Patricia Vonne is a Latin-roots rocker and song stylist. The Times of London called Vonne, who has toured Europe 19 times, “a hot-blooded mix of Latin Rhythm and rollicking bar-room rock,” and the Austin Chronicle said she “is quickly taking her place among Texas’ musical treasures.”

Vonne’s song “La Huerta de San Vicente” won the grand prize in the Latin division at the 2009 John Lennon Songwriting Contest, and her “Mujeres Desaparecidas” is featured on the Amnesty International website. Vonne is the sister of famed Austin filmmaker Robert Rodriguez.

Gina Chavez is an indie folk-rock singer-songwriter whose style has been called a cross between Sheryl Crow and Selena. Chavez is also an activist who established Austin 4 El Salvador, a college scholarship fund for girls from a gang-dominated suburb of San Salvador where Chavez spends time working in the community.

Those unable to attend can still help out with a much-needed contribution to the New Journalism Project. Please go here to donate through PayPal, or send a check to the New Journalism Project, inc, P.O. Box 126442, Austin, Texas 78761-6442.

For more information, contact Thorne Dreyer at tdreyer@austin.rr.com, or Alice Embree at alice@nuevoanden.com.

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Marc Estrin : Infiltrations

Posted on January 11, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Skulker by R. Crumb.

INFILTRATIONS

By Marc Estrin / The Rag Blog / January 11, 2011

Last week, I wrote about what I consider politically unearned infiltrations supporting rampant consumerism. I will not sing Hallelujah in the mall.

Infiltrations, however, do have real potential for thought-provoking events.

When I was in theater grad school in the 60s, everybody was all hot for Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty, in which the audience was made to shit in its pants, and paradoxically for Brecht’s teaching plays which asked the audience to think cooly and carefully about society’s givens. We young directors were concerned with breaking down barriers between audience and actors — new kinds of staging, new kinds of scripts.

But for me, the prior problem was one of “audience” itself — that there should be people who buy (usually high-priced) tickets, sit comfortably in chairs, applaud, then go out for a meal or a drink to socialize, and perhaps, perhaps, “discuss the play.”

Too compartmentalized, too boxed in, too unengaged with reality.

So I gathered a group interested in practicing Infiltrations — theater pieces which would not be perceived as such, but which would just be reported at home as “something interesting that happened to me today.”

Here are two such Infiltrations to give you an idea of what we were up to, one in an emporium, and one in a smaller store. Next week I will discuss the ethics involved.

Cost Plus and American imperialism

Cost Plus is a mammoth import store on the San Francisco waterfront which caters to tourists and Bay Area bobos by supplying them with hand-wrought goods from around the world — from inexpensive mass-produced trinkets to costly one-of-a-kind curiosities. It is self-help, with no sales personnel on the floor. We began to wonder about the flow of goods that went through the store, and after getting some information from one of the buyers we came up with the following piece.

Five of us, looking as straight as possible, dispersed throughout the store as customer aides. We approach people who were inspecting possible purchases. A typical dialog went like this:

US: may I help you?

CUSTOMER, generally unsuspicious: No, thank you.

US, waiting a bit, watching over customer’s shoulder: Isn’t it amazing how we can bring you such an intricately carved box for only $4.99?

CUSTOMER: Why, yes it is.

US: Do you know how we can do it?

CUSTOMER: No.

US: Well, the man who carves this box — he’s very good at it, he can do two a day — gets 25¢ a day for his work.

CUSTOMER: Oh?

US: Yes. You see, there’s a lot of famine and disease in India, and he has to work for whatever he can get.

CUSTOMER: Oh.

US: He has no choice.

CUSTOMER: Uh-huh.

US: And since we control the world economy, more or less, we can decide on the right price.

Silence.

Yes, and you have to realize that what you pay includes the markup for the buyer, the warehouse, the shipper, the import duty, and our own small overhead — so it’s really an incredible bargain.

Thoughtful, non-hostile silence. This was usually a turning point: either the customer began reacting to what we were saying or else we carried it further.

I think it’s right — don’t you — that we in this country should be able to benefit from people’s work around the world? After all, we give them a market. They’d starve without it. And we can have these really nice things. I mean Americans work really hard, right? We have to put up with so much — like the war and everything — we deserve these kind of beautiful things.

People who work hard should be rewarded. Don’t you think so? And the natives? They’re hard workers too, but I mean 25¢ a day is a lot for them, right? Did you know that although we’re only 6% of the world’s population, we consume 60% of its natural resources? That just shows — we’re sort of 10 times ahead of everybody else because were willing to work hard and bring home the bacon.

Etc., etc. Eventually these customers drifted away with an embarrassed “Thank you.” But none of them bought the items they had been looking at.

After an agreed upon two hours, we all met outside the store to trade stories. We were never caught, and the customers, too, would have their stories to tell.

City Lights Ripoff

Lawrence Ferlinghetti started the City Lights Bookstore on $500 in the early 50s; it has since become one of the most complete paperback shops in the Bay Area. The store has been busted several times for selling radical or obscene material, and has an open door policy toward its customers: the police are never called.

Once, City Lights was ripped off for $8,000 worth of books and went that much in the hole. This seemed to me like a typical example of Movement bullshit — brothers undoing each other in the name of “liberation” or conflicting ideologies — so we decided to explore our own and the customers’ attitudes toward ripping off City Lights.

During rehearsal, the group rejected playing “roles” in favor of exploring each member’s own position. We lined up pretty heavily for the legitimacy of ripping-off. I was one of the few spokesmen against. But the balance worked out in performance, since most of the customers at least started off by defending the store.

The piece took an hour to an hour and a half to develop (we did it three times) and was done with the cooperation of the management and, as it turned out, at their expense. It’s hard to record the complexities and meanderings of the performances, but the salient points are as follows:

Beat 1

One of us, previously agreed, steals a book, and hides it in his pants. Very quietly, a young woman (one of us) goes up to him and says she doesn’t think he ought to do that here. His very quiet response is “Mind your own business, lady.” Totally private so far.

Beat 2

The woman retreats but keeps her eye on the guy. Some minutes later, he attempts to stash another book, and the exchange begins again, just as quietly. This time the guy is a little more pissed off, and the exchange ends with a little louder than necessary “Fuck off!” For the first time, real customers are aware of tension somewhere in the store.

Beat 3

I wander over and ask the woman what’s happening. She reluctantly and quietly informs me that some guy is trying to rip off books. I approach him very quietly and ask him why doesn’t he do that at Doubleday’s or Brentano’s. He begins to get uneasy and tries to terminate our encounter as quickly as possible, until another one of us, overhearing, supports the thief by asking me,

“Hey, what are you, a cop or something? Let the guy do his thing.”

Beat 4

By now it’s apparent to the thief that things aren’t working out as planned. But on the other hand, he has support, so he doesn’t split. For the first time I chastise the thief publicly.

“Hey man, look, why don’t you go down to Doubleday’s and rip off the book if you need it? Why rip off your brothers?”

“Brothers, my ass! This place is the fucking pig establishment.”

This is the first theme to be taken up — it generally called up a lot of customer support for the store. Other topics for discussion we planted among the 10 to 20 customers are:

  1. Who are brothers; who is the enemy?
  2. Are there alternatives to a retail book store?
  3. Are “liberals” like Ferlinghetti and City Lights just greasing the capitalist machine?

Our group, more vocal now than at first, pushes the balance way over to the thief’s side. This helps justify his sticking around. He’s not an outlaw but is acting within the mores of the local population — and this brings an emotional response from the customers. Each time, someone offers to buy him the book or take up a collection. We follow their trips wherever they go.

Beat 5

1 get more and more pissed off with what I consider poor analysis. I station myself on the steps so I can be heard by everyone, wait for a lull, and say to the thief,

“All right, that’s all.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not taking those books.”

“Oh yeah? Why not?”

“’Cause I’m going upstairs with you and tell Shig [the guy at the desk] you’ve got them.”

A new uproar! Even the customers don’t like it. (There are a few who come over to quietly tell me they agree with me and think I should do it, but no one defends my action publicly.) I am accused of being a pig, of laying my trip on other people, of exceeding my rights.

“What is this, the second grade, you’re gonna tell the teacher?”

I argue briefly that when this man rips off City Lights, he’s ripping me off (I need the store), and that I intend to defend myself. From that time on, I am generally silent, stubbornly waiting for the thief’s exit.

Beat 6

One of us calls for a “rip-in,” and tries to get customers to liberate books together. So far, only our own group has done this publicly, although it’s hard to tell what walks out when we do.

Beat 7

Confrontation at the desk. The first time we did it the day clerk got completely flustered. He had been told what was happening and was asked to act in any way he wanted. He couldn’t get it together, and three people walked out with books. That evening we confronted Shig who, with some kind of invisible karate approach, retrieved two books. A third was grabbed by a customer at the door.

The next night we had a big argument at the desk. Shig surprised us by saying, “Take the books,” and several people did so — to a lot of customers’ anger. Shig just felt that that was his prerogative. That really set off some of the people who had been defending the store for the last hour downstairs.

We still haven’t resolved for ourselves the implications of our positions and actions. We know the piece is credible and sets a lot of people thinking and talking (and stealing?). But when someone in our group presented me with the complete Beethoven string quartets as a present, I had to send Shig a check before I could enjoy it.

[Marc Estrin is a writer, activist, and cellist, living in Burlington, Vermont. His novels, Insect Dreams, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Golem Song, and The Lamentations of Julius Marantz have won critical acclaim. His memoir, Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer) won a 2004 theater book of the year award. He is currently working on a novel about the dead Tchaikovsky.]

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Glenn W. Smith : Gabrielle Giffords and The Blood of Eden

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Jackson Pollock’s The Deep. Oil and enamel on Canvas (1953).

The Blood of Eden:
Our escalating political violence

By Glenn W. Smith / The Rag Blog / January 9, 2011

I caught sight of my reflection
I caught it in the window
I saw the darkness in my heart
I saw the signs of my undoing
They had been there from the start

So many American bodies are sprayed with blood, their own, their lover’s, their mother’s and father’s, their brother’s and sister’s. Oh we are so certain of our innocence, but we are a nation tattooed in crimson, eyes to belly, with Jackson Pollock’s “The Deep.”

We called it a New World then carved a Trail of Tears for those who knew it to be ancient: the Choctaw, the Cherokee, the Seminole. And now we walk that Trail ourselves, lost and tormented, crying for Gabrielle Giffords, U.S. Judge John Roll, and the other victims of the Tucson shootings.

The “Rawhide Orator,” Choctaw Chief George Washington Harkins, in 1831 wrote to the American people before leaving for the Trail of Tears:

I could cheerfully hope, that those of another age and generation may not feel the effects of those oppressive measures that have been so illiberally dealt out to us; and that peace and happiness may be their reward.

A cheerful hope, and one unfulfilled, as the ghosts of dead immigrants whisper to us from the Arizona desert.

Within a few short hours of Saturday’s shootings, pundits and politicians were decrying the violent political rhetoric and symbolism that feeds the fires of hell. The conversations could have — and should have — taken place long before Saturday. They all knew what was coming.

And the darkness still has work to do
The knotted chord’s untying
The heated and the holy
Oh they’re sitting there on high
So secure with everything they’re buying

Just Friday I did an interview with Thorne Dreyer of Texas’ The Rag Blog and Austin’s KOOP-FM in which I warned again of our escalating political violence and compared our era to the years preceding the Civil War. Gods, I should have prayed hard to be wrong.

Gabrielle, you are named for the angel who foretold the coming of eternal peace. In your remarkable March 2010 MSNBC interview following the vandalism of your office, you saw a different future:

They really do need to realize that their rhetoric and firing people up and even things for example where on Sarah Palin’s targeted list… the way she has it depicted, it has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that they have to realize there are consequences to that action.

What haunts us is not a momentary collapse of good manners. We have spoken often here about the loss of sociality in the public sphere. It is a fact that many in power have very consciously promoted hatred and violence. I suppose they meant it poetically. They will all plead innocence now and wear modest garlands of grace about them. It’s a thin disguise.

My grip is surely slipping
I think I’ve lost my hold
Yes I think I’ve lost my hold
I cannot get insurance any more
They don’t take credit, only gold
Is that a dagger or a crucifix I see
You hold so tightly in your hand
And all the while the distance grows between you and me
I do not understand

We are a polarized people, and violence races like a water snake through the river of our history. We are attracted to those who kill for their prejudices or beliefs. But as John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards discovered in The Searchers, such is the path to the death of the soul.

And it does not need to be this way. Our greatness lies less in violent victories than in moments of democratic transcendence, from the Bill of Rights to women’s suffrage. We are linked to one another, like it or not. When one falls to the bloody ground, so will the other.

This is not a game. It is a great struggle for human freedom and peace, and we can no longer tolerate the cowardly murderers who stir the beasts in us for a few gold coins. Pilate’s hands, they may be reminded, have not yet been washed.

At my request you take me in
In that tenderness I am floating away
No certainty, nothing to rely on
Holding still for a moment
What a moment this is
Oh for a moment of forgetting
A moment of bliss
Oh…

As it happens, as the shots were fired in Tuscon we were safe and unaware in our home, holding still in a moment of forgetting and bliss, as the song says. And I’m reminded that we must make of love not a refuge from the world but the world itself, and that will be the end of forgetting.

I can hear the distant thunder
Of a million unheard souls
Of a million unheard souls
Watch each one reach for creature comfort
For the filling of their holes

One another to hold — that is all we are given in this life, and I mean that with a fierceness that ought to set the violent to wondering. And we’ll hold them tenderly, too, because if we’re to love we must acknowledge and extinguish the fear that can twist the hearts of those who very briefly share this place with us.

In the blood of Eden we have done everything we can
In the blood of Eden, so we end as we began
With the man in the woman and the woman in the man
It was all for the union, oh the union of the woman, the woman and the man

[Austin’s Glenn W. Smith, according to Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas, is a “legendary political consultant and all-around good guy.” His excellent blog on politics and culture is DogCanyon, This article was also posted at Firedoglake and DogCanyon.

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