Category: Magazine

A Brief, Unauthorized history of the nra

By Jason Vest

The NRA brands anyone who doesn’t share their views as a ‘Fudd,’ a play on Bugs Bunny’s nemesis Elmer Fudd. “They get very upset at those who don’t support the right to own every kind of weapon,” says Frank Smyth. “The fact is, I’m a paradox: I’m a Fudd, because I’m comfortable with gun control; yet I own a very non-Fudd gun, the Glock-19.”

It’s not a weapon he’s ever used outside of a gun range, but if anyone’s heard their fair share of shots fired in anger in dodgy spots the world over while investigating human rights violations, arms trafficking and extremism, it would be Frank Smyth. I first met Smyth in 1997, and after just a decade into journalism, he was already the stuff of legend. Perhaps “the youngest old Central America  hand” in the late 1980s before he left El Salvador to cover the first Gulf War,  Smyth was thought by many to have been killed at the hands of Iraqi Baathist cadre after he disappeared in northern Iraq in early 1991 on assignment for CBS News radio in the waning days of the first Gulf War, Smyth had in fact been captured and hauled to Abu Ghraib, then under the grisly management of Saddam Hussein. Released after deft, behind-the-scenes international negotiations, Smyth’s subsequent account in the Village Voice of a harrowing ordeal –  including witnessing the summary execution of a colleague, and being forced to listen to the continuous torture of fellow prisoners in the infamous Iraqi prison – was justly nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Read more in the new issue of The Ryder magazine

IU’s Reopening and Bloomington’s public schools

By reopening for on-campus instruction this fall, colleges and universities are essentially sacrificing the quality and equity of K-12 education in their local communities

By Jessica Calarco

Across the country, public colleges and universities are preparing to bring students back to campus. That includes Indiana University, which is welcoming all students to return to Bloomington, though larger courses and gen-ed courses will be held online this fall. Meanwhile, in many of the towns that house colleges and universities, public K-12 schools have announced a shift to online-only instruction, at least for the start of the year. That includes the Monroe County Community School Corporation in Bloomington.

These K-12 and higher-ed decisions may seem unrelated, but there is reason to suspect that the reopening of public colleges and universities is contributing to the continued closure of K-12 schools. Read more in the new issue of The Ryder…

The Ryder’s Fiction issue

Our annual fiction issue is on the stands. Special thanks to Fiction Editor Justin Chandler who read through the many submissions we received and chose the six that we have published. “Fiction is often most celebrated when it is most individualistic,” Justin says, “presenting an experience that is unlike any other, equating privacy and originality with authenticity. If that’s the case, is fiction capable of presenting life as a collective exercise? How do you tell the story of a pandemic? Of a divided populace? Of indifferent or even malevolent elected officials? It’s a year like no other and I hope that each of these stories offers you something new—if nothing else, the pleasure of reading, the opportunity to briefly step away from the endless barrage of information and to think newly and differently about the world.”

We would be remiss if we did not also acknowledge the work of Ali Maidi, whose distinctive illustrations accompany and enhance each story.

Also in our August issue:

The Many Faces of David Ortiz Y Pino: A downtown street artist who is finding a new path. by Mason Cassady

A Brief, Unauthorized History of the NRA: If anyone knows about guns and the NRA it is Frank Smyth. He’s heard more than his fair share of shots fired in anger in dodgy spots the world over while investigating human rights violations. He’s written an unauthorized history of the NRA and he talks to Ryder editor-at-large Jason Vest

From Farm to Table-Reading: Singer-songwriter Krista Detor is bringing nine NYU theatre-grads to Bloomington, re-imaging her farm as an artist’s residency. By Kellen Sillanpaa

Talk Talk Talk: Mike Leigh’s Peterloo: The award-winning filmmaker has turned his sights on the 1813 Peterloo massacre, in which armed British troops attacked peaceful protesters. Sound like anything you’ve read about recently? By Tom Prasch

and

The Hidden Cost of IU’s Reopening: By opting for on-campus instruction this fall, colleges and universities are essentially sacrificing the quality and equity of K-12 education in their local communities. By Jessica Calarco

We are normally supported by by paid advertising but that is not the case during the pandemic. There are no paid ads in this issue. The display ads that you will see as you flip through the magazine are published at no cost to the advertiser. And while it is true that by publishing electronically we are avoiding a printing bill, we do have other monthly expenses. And so if you see an article you like, or just want to support locally produced, independent journalism please consider making a donation.

The July issue of the ryder magazine is on the virtual newstands

Crimes of a Native Tongue: “To become an accidental advocate on the world stage for a father who is a political prisoner – and, by extension, for your entire people as well – is no easy task for anyone in the best of circumstance,” writes Filiz Cicek in Crimes of a Native Tongue. “For IU student Jewher Ilham, a teenage girl suddenly ripped from family moorings half-a-world away, unversed in any cultures or languages beyond her own, it might have been nearly impossible.” (there’s more to read in the July/August issue of The Ryder)

K-pop in the Age of Culture Wars: Most people who spend time online, particularly on Twitter, end up running into fans of Korean popular music. K-pop fans share photos or short videos of their faves with quips like “anyway, stan LOONA,” writes CedarBough T. Saeji. “They may not sound like serious political activists, but recent events have made news-watchers consider them in a new light. They flooded iWatch Dallas, the app set up by Texas law enforcement to prosecute protesters using citizen footage. K-pop fans instead presented the Dallas police department with their own citizen footage: thousands of videos of their favorite stars. Eventually, iWatch Dallas was forced to go off line. Similar approaches rendered white nationalist hashtags useless for organizing. ARMY, fans of the group BTS’s ARMY, flexed and donated $1 million to Black Lives Matter causes in just 24 hours. And then there was Donald Trump’s Tulsa rally…. (there’s even more to read in the July/August issue of The Ryder)

That’s not all.

The Vietnam War may be five decades old but the past is never far behind in Spike Lee’s new movie. Tom Prasch reviews Da 5 Bloods.

Many a soldier has gone to war believing in a cause. Ambrose Bierce emerged from combat realizing that the enemy of man is not so much other men but war itself. Jason Vest looks at the life and times of Indiana’s poet of the battlefield.

Jim Krause visits Ecuador, Mason Cassady gallivants around Bulgaria and Jeff Mease encourages us all to mask up in the July/August issue of The Ryder magazine.

We are normally supported by by paid advertising but that is not the case during the pandemic. There are no paid ads in this issue. The display ads that you will see as you flip through the magazine are published at no cost to the advertiser. And while it is true that by publishing electronically we are avoiding a printing bill, we do have other monthly expenses. And so if you see an article you like, or just want to support locally produced, independent journalism please consider making a donation.

Why The Ryder need your support today

WHY THE RYDER NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT TODAY

Through the years, The Ryder has been generously supported by local shops and restaurants, many of them in the downtown arts district, many of them purchasing ad space simply because they wanted to support a community magazine. Their support has benefited not just the magazine, but also, indirectly, the Film Series. If you flip through the current issue of the magazine (or any of the other issues that we’ve published since the start of pandemic) you’ll see display ads for local stores, cafes and community organizations. But given the current economic environment, we have decided that it’s our turn to step up. And so all of the ads in these issues have been published at no cost to the advertisers. And while it is true that by publishing electronically we are avoiding a printing bill, we do have other monthly expenses.

Back in March, when we made the decision to publish the magazine without ad revenue, we thought the pandemic would be under control by September. Clearly, we were wrong about that. Today, with the end nowhere in sight, we are asking for your support to publish The Ryder into the spring.  Funds will be used to cover operating expenses and continue to keep paid staff employed until advertising revenue begins to steadily increase. 

Paying it forward – with your donation of $50 or more to The Ryder, you can designate a community organization of your choice — the Community Kitchen, Middle Way House, the Animal Shelter, Bloomington Playwrights Project, the Bloomington chapter of Black Lives Matter or any other local organization — and we can reciprocate, in a small way, by offering them complimentary space in the magazine to promote their own project or fundraiser. You can make a donation through our GoFundMe page. After your donation, let us know which organization you would like to support; simply send an email to peter@theryder.com THANK YOU!

june issue of the ryder

The new issue of The Ryder magazine is on the virtual newsstands …

How can you govern a barnyard of pets in French cheese country? Wandering writer Mason Cassady felt a mix of shock, excitement and disbelief in France, Belgium and Wales.

How much do you really know about truckers, especially 21st century truckers?   They are no longer good ole boys. John Linnemeier tells us that today’s drivers hail from all over the globe and come in all colors, shapes and sizes.

It seems like we’re all living in a never-ending on deck circle, but Emily Nemens’ new novel, Cactus League, gives even non-baseball fans reason to hope during the long, long rain delay. WFHB’s Emily Jackson steps up to the plate with an insightful review.

Neal Stephenson’s stories are about outsiders, smart characters looking at their world in syncopated time and threading their way through, often making it better in the process. Rachel Duel Hertz explains that Stephenson may be our best literary companion for this pandemic’s strange gift of separation and time.

Look Who’s Talking: Danielle McClelland The outgoing Executive Director of the Buskirk-Chumley talks about the past and the future of the theater

All of this in the current issue of The Ryder magazine

Why does The Ryder need your support?

Our business model for the past 40 years has been pretty simple: the magazine would always be free and supported by advertising. That is no longer possible. Not now, and not for the foreseeable future. The local shops and restaurants that are open are in no position to lend their financial support to a local arts magazine, as much as they might like to.

Yes, as you flip through this issue of The Ryder you will see display ads for community organizations and local restaurants. But those ads are included at no charge. And while we do not have a printing bill right now, we do have other expenses.

And so if you discover one or two articles that you like and if you are in a position to make a donation, it will be gratefully appreciated. No amount is too small. You’ll be helping to support local, independent journalism.

MAKE A DONATION

let’s write a short story!

Now might be as good a time as any to dust off that short story you started when you were an undergrad. We are reading submissions from Bloomington writers for our annual summer fiction issue. What do we mean by “Bloomington writers”? We’re not really sure. A Bloomington address would help. But if you attended IU and no longer live here, that would be fine as well. Maybe you passed through town on your way to Evansville? Any connection will do, no matter how tangential.

Please put “Fiction Submission” in the subject line and send your story to editor@theryder.com

A few guidelines….

1 – Double-spaced in Word. Do not indent to indicate a new paragraph; a hard return will suffice.

2 – Word limit: 5,000 words. This is not negotiable. The 5001st word will not be considered, no matter how amazing it may be.

3 – Wear a mask and wash your hands for 20 seconds under hot water.

Send your story right away. He who hesitates is … how does that expression go? No matter. We look forward to reading your work!

Never quarantine the Past

Two new podcasts – Unspooled and 80s All Over – revisit classic American films

By Brian Stout

Rather than trafficking in nostalgia, these podcasts are taking a fresh look at the AFI Top 100 Films list and 1980s cinema.

Is Citizen Kane still the best movie ever made? The current AFI Top 100 Movies List has it in the top slot. One exciting recent podcast series is taking a critical view of the somewhat sacred ranking, and another is taking a comprehensive look at the 1980s.

On Unspooled, film critic Amy Nicholson and comedian/actor Paul Scheer take on the list one film at a time. The pairing works. Nicholson is a highly respected writer and critic with extensive film history knowledge and a modern approach, which Scheer is a successful comedian/actor and lifelong film fan who has admittedly not seen several films on the list. They provide a potent combination of historical context, production notes, bad reviews, and 21st century insights, culminating in a decision about whether or not the film should remain on the list. The podcast has also spawned a lively Facebook group.

Starting with Citizen Kane and randomly roaming from film to film after that, Nicholson and Scheer have discussed half of the list at this point, and their spirited conversations are available through the usual podcast outlets.

A cursory look at the list reveals a collection of mostly white, mostly male, mostly great films. It’s also very heavy on 1970s films. And white guys fighting The System. And westerns. And yes, that makes sense to a degree. It was a remarkable decade and sheer numbers suggests a male-heavy list. Also, what’s more American than a western?

But where are the women? Where are the directors of color? Horror movies? Science fiction? LGBTQ films? It’s easy to be highly critical of the selections and to point to their lack of diversity, and to say the list is an outcome of a number of factors, and that only adds relevance to the argument for re-evaluation. The list has already been updated once, and the past 30 years in particular have been marked by an increase in the diversity of voices, so it’s ripe for revision again. This century has produced many formidable potential additions, such as There Will Be Blood, Moonlight, Children of Men, Brokeback Mountain, Zero Dark Thirty, and Mad Max Fury Road to name only a few. And I’d still like to see A League of Their Own make the cut. And that there are zero films directed by women and that Spike Lee and M. Night Shyamalan are the only directors of color on the list simply must be addressed.

That’s where Amy and Paul come in.

Here are notes on three of the most intriguing episodes.

Taxi Driver. The pair discuss the film’s similarities to The Searchers and whether or not Travis is a poser. The characters Robert DeNiro and John Wayne play in their respective films are driven to save young girls who may or may not want saving. They also both harbor tenuous feelings about minorities. Scorsese is an avowed fan of John Ford’s classic, so the connection makes sense on the surface. Even more interestingly, though, is the argument about Travis’ background. On the surface, the film suggests that Travis is a veteran whose psychopathy is likely a result of the war. He wears Army gear, but never mentions a specific branch of service. His knowledge of weapons appears to suggest a civilian. He goes for the .44 Magnum, same as Dirty Harry. But his mental illness may be the most important piece to unraveling his motivation. Nicholson has made no bones about her dislike for Scorsese’s work, and she provides some interesting insights and counterpoints on the master filmmaker and one of his most widely heralded films.

A cursory look at the AFI Top 100 list reveals a collection of mostly white, mostly male, mostly great films.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The most intriguing aspect of this film is that both Nicholson’s and Scheer’s sympathies were with Nurse Ratched, who is ranked number five on the AFI Best Villains list. One of the high points of the “fight the system” movies of the 1970s, the film focuses on Jack Nicholson’s character’s efforts to disrupt the treatment within an inpatient mental health facility. A closer look shows Nicholson’s R.P. McMurphy’s supposedly heroic efforts to help the other patients undermining some sincere attempts to treat and care for people who need care. The movie goes out of its way to show that fighting the system results in a person being silenced. They decided that the film belongs on the list, but this is a great example of how even great films have problematic elements.

A Clockwork Orange. Stanley Kubrick’s controversial classic launched a spirited debate about how the horrific actions of the lead character are framed in the film and how their portrayal makes the audience complicit and may be a way of Kubrick freeing himself from judgement for making his despicable lead character look cool. One of the most intriguing points that is made is that much of the violence Alex commits is seen at a distance, but the violence inflicted upon him is seen up close and personal, manipulating the audience to feel empathy for a criminal. The first blood drawn in the film is Alex’s. He calls himself the humble narrator throughout, and the voices of the victims are silenced throughout the film. It is an intriguing set of observations on a film that’s held court as an esteemed cult classic for decades. 

The 80s All Over podcast is an even more ambitious undertaking: revisiting all the major releases of the 1980s month by month. As children of the 1980s and noted film writers, Drew McWeeny and Scott Weinberg bring a combination of personal experience and spirited banter to all of it, covering the hidden gems, the blockbusters, and the schlock and trash that graced the screens throughout the decade. It’s a good idea to listen with a notes app open, regardless of preferences, because no one has seen all of these films except McWeeny and Weinberg, and you’ll wind up with a list of titles to track down, and likely have an itch to revisit some of your own favorites from the era.

The best place to start is the summer of 1984 episodes, where they reminisce about watching The Karate Kid, Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Sixteen Candles, among others. They dive into their stories of how these movies affected them then and now, and analyze and they’re not afraid to call out some of the gauche characterizations of marginalized groups and the casual attitude about victimization of women in these films that are often remembered as essentially harmless.

Both McWeeny and Weinberg praise The Karate Kid for its ending, in light of how many contemporary films draw out endings and run times. Ghostbusters is canon for virtually every child of the 1980s, and they relay some very interesting details about the movie’s troubled production. They also talk about how Temple of Doom and Gremlins pushed the limits of the PG rating and provided a flashpoint for creating the PG-13 rating.

Sixteen Candles is a classic in many ways, but it also features an appalling characterization of a foreign exchange student and a plot point where the popular, cool crush object provides the geeky boy with keys to a Rolls Royce and his drunk girlfriend. These unsettling elements are at odds with an essentially sweet story about a teenage girl coming of age. 

Lists are easy targets. They rarely satisfy and mostly spark conversations about what’s missing. Rather than just nitpicking choices, Unspooled remains fixed upon evaluating the somewhat sacred AFI Top 100 List, attempting to address the redundancies to make room for more modern choices. 80s All Over is a more personal account, a decade-long slice of two lifetimes of moviegoing. Both offer dynamic, challenging, and entertaining evaluations of American film, which really is best understood through the convergence of personal taste and cinema history.

Ryder magazine: april 2020

The Ryder <peter@theryder.com>AttachmentsThu, Apr 9, 12:31 AM (1 day ago)

The new issue of The Ryder is on the stands–well, not literally. This is our first issue to be published electronically. We considered publishing a print edition, but where would we distribute it?  Our April issue contains a number of entertaining and informative stories, but before we tell you about them, we have to talk about something else, something that makes us cringe when we think about it.
The Ryder has always been distributed free, with our expenses covered (hopefully) by advertising. There is no paid advertising in this issue.  Yes, when you flip through the magazine you will see ads, for not-for-profits hosting virtual fundraisers and local restaurants offering curbside service. Those ads are published at no cost to the advertiser, for all of the obvious reasons. Our biggest expense each month is our printing bill. But while there is no printing bill this month, we do have other expenses.
And so if you discover one or two articles that you like and if you are  in a position to make a donation, it will be gratefully appreciated. If you are not so inclined, you might instead consider purchasing a Ryder Film Series gift card. With either, you’ll be helping to support local, independent journalism.

MAKE A DONATION PURCHASE A GIFT CARD

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the good stuff….In the 1990s, Linda Poteat was a waitress at the Irish Lion. Today, she is a policy director at the United Nations, battling pandemics around the world. Contributing editor Jason Vest conducts an enlightening interview. “If you’re a right-wing person in a state like South Carolina,” Linda explains, “seeing an elite Hollywood liberal telling people to stay at home and wash their hands isn’t going to work.”

For three years in the early 90s, Bart Everson was one half of J&B on the Rocks, a weekly television show broadcast on BCAT that was years ahead of its time. Bart explains, “We began production with no expectation of success, with hardly a thought for the future. We slapped a camera on a tripod and sat under a bare bulb in a rough-hewn basement, our rambling dialog punctuated by liberal doses of liquor. Each week we recorded a new installment; each week our faces and voices appeared in living rooms around the city, through the miracle (or curse) of cable television. We quickly found the limits of legality, and soon after that we found an audience. The camera came off the tripod, and we escaped from the basement, as the scope of our production and our circle of friends expanded. The streets of Bloomington became our set, and the people of the city became our cast. There was no script, and no budget either.”  Twenty-five years ago, on April 18th, 1995, Rox became the first television show anywhere, to be broadcast on the internet. Time magazine was all set to do a cover story and then…well, you’ll have to read the article.

The first Earth Day took place 50 years ago, on April 22nd, 1970 and Ryder contributing editor Pennfield Jensen was there. Not only was he there, but he helped to organize it. “Earth Day has become an icon for earth awareness,” Penn writes. “But Earth Day 2020 shows only too well how miserably we, as environmentalists, have failed.”
There’s more in this issue. Mason Cassady writes about Beekeeping in Poland, Charlotte Zietlow discusses the challenges of County Government, WFIU introduces a podcast about Ernie Pyle and West Coast Bureau Chief Jason Vest writes about quarantine-life in a coastal town in northern California. “I am not one to romanticize small-town life,” Jason writes. He does not. 

Earth day

Some Notes on its Origin with a View to the Future

By Pennfield Jensen

[editor’s note: Pennfield Jensen is a recovering environmentalist and until now he has been a frequent contributor to The Ryder.]

Earth Day 2020. Fifty years gone by, and the next fifty trending badly. I hate to say it, but I feel today exactly as I felt when John McConnell launched Earth Day at my conference back in 1969. Let me explain.

The venue was the first UNESCO “Man and The Environment” conference, a three-day affair, November 23-25, held at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. It was set as a  precursor to the Main Event of the same name to be held three years later in Stockholm. I call it “my” conference but that’s a stretch. The organizer was Huey Johnson, at that time the director of the Western Region of The Nature Conservancy.  I was his de facto assistant. As gofer-in-chief, my task was managing the Sargasso of minutiae any conference of that magnitude entails. For example, John McConnell.

John was not on the roster of conference speakers. He wanted to be, desperately, and badgered me whenever he could find me, which was often, begging to find him a time slot somewhere, anywhere, but the schedule had been set in stone and I had no control over it. That said, no one had any serious objection to him being there. And “there” he was, bounding around pestering anyone who would listen to his idea of an Earth Day. He found supporters, and why not? Eventually he found the ear of Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, an avowed environmentalist. The very next year, 1970, Earth Day happened. San Francisco Mayor Joe Alioto sanctioned it; New York Mayor John Lindsay sanctioned it. Millions of people took to the streets around the country and around the world. A movement had gathered force. Yes!

Then something else happened. In early 1972 John came by my office. By virtue of a side trip co-founding Earth Times magazine under the tutelage of Jann Wenner and the editors at Rolling Stone, I had founded Clear Creek, “The Environmental Viewpoint.” In 1972 we were going strong, having played a significant role in getting unleaded gasoline legislation passed, and were now gearing up for the ’72 Stockholm conference.

The Creek offices were on the top floor of the old Reynolds Tobacco Building at One South Park, a seedy corner of San Francisco. These days it is one of the hippest neighborhoods in San Francisco. In those days we shared our environs with crack addicts, gang conflicts, and marginal businesses. The corner office window was graced by a bullet hole the size of a golf ball. The building had bronze Indian heads under the eaves of the roof and a large LSMFT logo in the lobby (“Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco.”) We got to step on it every day. We were a team of researchers, writers and artists. An amazing watershed of bright, wonderful people.

John McConnell was ever and always the kind of person whose strength of personality and honest enthusiasm was contagious and fun. But on this day he was distraught, and he was seeking our help. Specifically, he wanted editorial backing in his dispute over the “illegal” appropriation of Earth Day by senator Nelson and his aide Denis Hayes as “their” idea. We listened sympathetically. But we had no dog in John’s fight.

As journalist-environmentalists, our goal was to raise consciousness for environmental awareness as an ethic, not just a once-a-year event, then ho-hum back to business as usual. Earth Day seemed to trivialize that larger vision and to diminish the urgency of a much-needed environmental ethos. Second, there was Denis Hayes. Harvard educated and charismatic, Denis had been hand-picked by Senator Nelson to head up Earth Day as an international operation. All apologies to John McConnell, but case closed. John had been inspired in the Sixties by a ‘great idea,’ but frankly, I did not think, nor do I today that Earth Day was any one person’s idea. Earth Day is one of those inevitable ideas, like Stonehenge and the autumn equinox; its time had come and it belonged to everybody.

Or perhaps nobody.

In Indianapolis the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day is scheduled to be held on Saturday April 25th at Military Park. An array of 122 exhibitors, a beer garden and photo ops with various corporate mascots such as Roundup-Redi Kilowatt are planned. Should be fun.  Bloomington hopes to cheer on our lonely blue marble beginning at 1 PM at Switchyard Park on Saturday April 18th.  So we’ll have at least two weekends’ worth of sudsy gaiety and ominous warnings to look forward to. I had personally hoped to print up bumper stickers that read “I [Heart] Earth Day,” and organize volunteers to stick them on the windshields of every SUV they could find (which is every other vehicle I see) until Steve Cotter, a Bloomington Earth Day organizer, put the kybosh on it by saying “great idea, Penn—until someone gets shot.” Right.

Earth Day has become an icon for ‘earth awareness.’ That’s a good thing. My problem with Earth Day 2020 is that it shows only too well how miserably we, as environmentalists, have failed. The unchecked global rapaciousness that has pushed global warming past the tipping point of no return has created an irreversible fate for “Man and His Environment.” The 2015 Paris Accord to curtail global warming by controlling greenhouse gas emissions, was signed by every UN participant save Turkey and Iran. An end-game of sorts for the initial UNESCO conference in 1972, the Accord offered hope. It still does, even though Trump pulled the U.S. out of it and China never acknowledged it. That leaves the others to set the bar while the two largest polluters on the planet party hearty in open and arrogant defiance of irrefutable truth.

The science is good. What it tells us is not. We have failed to curb greenhouse gas emissions. We have failed to curb population growth. We have set in motion the demise of ecologies world-wide. Ultimately, we face a perfect storm of impending catastrophes that will be both as unavoidable as they will be horrific. Take pollinators as a random example. Thinking bees? And the global devastation they are undergoing? Their fate pales in comparison to the vast numbers of non-industrial insects, birds, and mammals that pollinate the grasses, flowers, and fruit trees on which we depend. Think ocean ecosystems coping with increased heat, acidity, and micro plastics, the “blanching” of the great coral reefs worldwide and the myriad creatures lost thereby. And of course melting glaciers, hellish droughts, damning floods. The consequences reach far beyond a few litigious millionaires whose oceanfront villas get swept away by rising tides. Sorry, but good riddance to what shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

The contingent sad truth is that there are no viable technological solutions to global warming, overpopulation, or the loss of ecosystems. A lot of attention is paid to solar power, wind power, tide power and sustainable growth. Those alternatives may slow the march to oblivion, here and there, but they won’t stop it. I think of the rage of Australian bush fires, and of the Wuhan coronavirus that as I write is wiping away trillions of dollars of global wealth and shuttering borders around the world. I don’t see these as once-in-a-hundred-years anomalies; they are the advance guards, nasty harbingers of what’s to come.

When tens of millions of people face bitter famine, convulsive war, and imminent death, their desperation will crush all hope. I hate writing this, but it is what terrifies me the most: losing the basic humanism that, up until now, has guided mankind through all of its darkest days. What happens when we turn against each other to save ourselves?

On the nominal Earth Day 2020, April 22nd, approximately 1,000 children will be born in the United States. Around 360,000 children will be born world-wide during those 24 hours.

Looking fifty years on down the road to Earth Day, 2070, I can’t imagine what those grown-up children will think of us.

And that’s tragic because never has any species achieved such a profound understanding of this incredible world which we inhabit, and of the universe in which we play such a small and insignificant part, yet only we it seems have the ability to comprehend. The wondrous truths that have been brought to light stagger the imagination. We cannot in a lifetime begin to appreciate it all. But we should try. We should work to “see” the world as it truly is. And we should teach others to do the same, otherwise we turn the lights out on life.

–Pennfield Jensen

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