Monday, March 17, 2014

The Sage in the Back Bedroom


My 17-year-old son knows everything about everything, and he’s not shy about telling his mother and me that we are idiots, relics of the Dark Ages who can’t possibly have anything meaningful to say on any topic. I don’t think I was much different at his age, though time has dimmed my memory somewhat. My son’s youthful arrogance is unbridled and annoying, and I wonder how many years it will be before he realizes that his parents are not complete dunces.

The American media haven’t made it easy to follow the situation playing out in the Crimea. The major networks focus on evil Vladimir Putin and his thirst for power and empire. It appears that ethnic Russians in the Crimea want to turn away from Ukraine and join Russia, while the United States and Britain want things to remain as they are. The U.S. reserves to itself the right to invade other countries and violate international law, but we become puritanical when another nation (except Israel) decides to do the same thing. Vladimir must pull his thugs and paramilitary forces out of Crimea, stuff the genie back in the bottle…or else. Or else what? Economic and cultural sanctions from the EU, perhaps, and a hard slap on the wrist from U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, maybe another lecture from President Obama about international law…

On another subject, Syria, the west doesn’t seem particularly interested. The plight of a few million refugees and displaced persons simply isn’t as interesting as a missing passenger jet liner; the major networks spend minutes on the former and hours on the latter. Part of the problem, I suppose, is that the Syrian civil war has dragged on too long and is too confusing to explain to an audience with a short attention span and little interest in international events. The leader of the bad guys in Syria is easy enough to identify – it’s trickier to identify the good guys, what they are fighting for, and what Syria might look like if they prevail.

Weird times. Here on the Platinum Coast it’s 85 degrees, which on the one hand is wonderful – who doesn’t like warm sunshine and blue sky? But on the other hand this kind of weather this early in the year isn’t helping our drought condition, which can only be described as dire. I am already capturing gray water from the washing machine to water the plants on our deck; the other day I installed a low flow showerhead. It’s only the middle of March. We need fans in the apartment to push the overheated air around. March is supposed to be a month for mild temperatures and several days of rain.

I just finished an excellent non-fiction book, the Big Burn, by Tim Egan. It’s the story of a mammoth wildfire that scorched parts of three western states in 1910. Fine read, highly recommended. There were powerful economic interests in the United States at that time who thought turning millions of acres of federal lands into national parks was ludicrous; in the eyes of these interests, it was far better to hand the land to the highest bidder (or the most politically connected) and let the exploitation begin.

Getting back to my son…he has been accepted at the American University of Paris, France, and the lad is so enthralled by the idea of studying abroad that the $45,000 annual price tag seems more a minor nuisance than an insurmountable obstacle. Trying to tell him that debt is easy to run up and difficult to pay down is as hard as finding an honest politician in Washington D.C. The boy, bless his innocent heart, believes – against all evidence to the contrary – that gobs of money will fall softly into his young lap. I wish that were so.


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