Good Morning.
My Friday blog generated far more interest than any of my previous posts. The response to my discussion of the current situation in the White House was several times the normal rate.
Many bloggers kick out advice about travel, cooking, golf, fashion, ghost hunting, or whatever. My intent was to talk about nothing in particular and everything in general, stuff that binds us at least loosely together rather than tears us apart. There's been too much of that lately but regular old peace and quiet is apparently quite boring. I have always been a mouthy,
roller-coaster sort of person and it's time to get back on track, so to speak. Please feel free to disagree with anything I say but let's keep it thoughtful and civil.
I begin by sharing my displeasure that the president has chosen to remove the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. These accords were signed by virtually every country in the world because they decided it was time to do something about saving the planet. I have no idea whether the president believes in climate change or not because he seems to change his mind about every issue and likes to cause an inordinate amount of upheaval, often to deflect attention from the chaos he just created about something else. This is not comforting when he has the nuclear codes and apparently doesn't respect or listen to the intelligence community.
As for some environmental business close to where I live, I throw out the possibility that building the Keystone Pipeline may not be such a great idea. The first problem is that the oil coming out of Canada has to be refined before it can be pumped through the pipe. This entails kicking a lot of garbage into the air, exactly what the signatories to the Paris Agreement want the world to stop doing, although their particular concern is the emission of greenhouse gasses. Garbage is garbage as far as I'm concerned, and I don't want to breathe any of it. The next problem is that the pipe will go under the Missouri River and it's not a matter of if it will leak but when. This means a magnificent natural resource, a drinking water supply, and irrigation for a whole bunch of farmers will be contaminated. I like what farmers do. They feed people.
The Native American community feels strongly about its sacred lands. There is some discussion about where those lands and the pipe actually intersect but there's a larger issue. The Indians are the original environmentalists. They're much more in tune with nature in all of its forms than other people and they don't want anyone messing with it. I used to manage an Artists in Residence program where talented individuals went into the schools and worked with kids for a week, a month, or even a year. One of the best artists, a poet, spent a lot of time on the reservations and always brought back samples of his students' work. He got second graders writing poetry, but there was a difference in what the Native American kids had to say compared to other children. Example: if asked to describe a thunderstorm, every kid you can think of would write about how it looked and sounded, but the Indian kid would also write about how it smelled.
The president needs to quit spending every weekend at one of his resorts and go hang out on the res for awhile.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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