Entry #2,541
Supposedly, today will be a little cooler than yesterday. Here in Providence, the temperature reached about 87F. That was Outside. Inside the House, the temperature reached 86F and stayed there for several hours after sunset.
Yesterday, I wrote 1,459 words on "Tidal Forces." I wrote one of the few intentionally frightening scenes I've ever written. I realized, as I began it, that I meant it to be frightening, and I didn't shy away from my intent. This story will be included in Sirenia Digest #55. I think it has a sort of Theodore Sturgeon meets Shirley Jackson feel, but I might be mistaken.
Please have a look at the current eBay auctions. Some stuff we've not auctioned in a while, including a copy of Trilobite: The Writing of Threshold, which I don't think we've auctioned in years. Thanks.
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Yesterday was Litha, Summer Solstice, but we did not go to the sea. I simply could not bring myself to do it. The continuing BP/Deepwater Horizon disaster has made me increasingly reluctant to face the sea. And yesterday, it came down to a story about BP stopping boats that had been dispatched to rescue Kemp's Ridley sea turtles from the oil, about the boats being turned away by BP, who then set the oil ablaze, knowingly burning turtles alive. My anger and guilt and sorrow has surpassed my ability to articulate these emotions. Yesterday, at first I thought we would go to Moonstone beach and spend the evening cleaning plastic debris off the beach. But then I thought about the gasoline we'd have to use to go there and back, forty-five minutes or so each way. Could we possibly pick up enough plastic to justify the gallons of gasoline we'd burn to get there, the CO2 and other emissions, the oil? In my head, I went round and round and round. So we stayed home. There's no way not to be complicit in the present worldwide "petrocalamities," from the Gulf of Mexico to the Niger Delta. Every time I flip a light switch, or brush my teeth, or go to the market, I am a part of the problem. Sitting here writing this blog entry on a computer composed primarily of petroleum byproducts, a computer that was shipped to the store where I bought it using gasoline and oil and diesel (and I drove to the store), a computer run on electricity generated (at least in part) by the burning of fossil fuels, blogging while I sit in a mostly plastic chair...I am part of the problem. And the only way out of the problem, in truth, the thing that no one wants to believe, is to bring about a world with drastically fewer people. To stop having babies. But that's not going to happen, not ever by choice- because we are greedy and lazy, selfish and ignorant -until the compounded actions of humanity and limitations of the biosphere force it to happen.
The US uses more oil than any other nation on earth, something like 20 million barrels per day, with China lagging a distant second with about 7 million barrels per day.
And, for me, it all comes down to sea turtles being burned alive.
Yesterday, I wrote 1,459 words on "Tidal Forces." I wrote one of the few intentionally frightening scenes I've ever written. I realized, as I began it, that I meant it to be frightening, and I didn't shy away from my intent. This story will be included in Sirenia Digest #55. I think it has a sort of Theodore Sturgeon meets Shirley Jackson feel, but I might be mistaken.
Please have a look at the current eBay auctions. Some stuff we've not auctioned in a while, including a copy of Trilobite: The Writing of Threshold, which I don't think we've auctioned in years. Thanks.
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Yesterday was Litha, Summer Solstice, but we did not go to the sea. I simply could not bring myself to do it. The continuing BP/Deepwater Horizon disaster has made me increasingly reluctant to face the sea. And yesterday, it came down to a story about BP stopping boats that had been dispatched to rescue Kemp's Ridley sea turtles from the oil, about the boats being turned away by BP, who then set the oil ablaze, knowingly burning turtles alive. My anger and guilt and sorrow has surpassed my ability to articulate these emotions. Yesterday, at first I thought we would go to Moonstone beach and spend the evening cleaning plastic debris off the beach. But then I thought about the gasoline we'd have to use to go there and back, forty-five minutes or so each way. Could we possibly pick up enough plastic to justify the gallons of gasoline we'd burn to get there, the CO2 and other emissions, the oil? In my head, I went round and round and round. So we stayed home. There's no way not to be complicit in the present worldwide "petrocalamities," from the Gulf of Mexico to the Niger Delta. Every time I flip a light switch, or brush my teeth, or go to the market, I am a part of the problem. Sitting here writing this blog entry on a computer composed primarily of petroleum byproducts, a computer that was shipped to the store where I bought it using gasoline and oil and diesel (and I drove to the store), a computer run on electricity generated (at least in part) by the burning of fossil fuels, blogging while I sit in a mostly plastic chair...I am part of the problem. And the only way out of the problem, in truth, the thing that no one wants to believe, is to bring about a world with drastically fewer people. To stop having babies. But that's not going to happen, not ever by choice- because we are greedy and lazy, selfish and ignorant -until the compounded actions of humanity and limitations of the biosphere force it to happen.
The US uses more oil than any other nation on earth, something like 20 million barrels per day, with China lagging a distant second with about 7 million barrels per day.
And, for me, it all comes down to sea turtles being burned alive.