On Humanature

Not On Nature, not On Humans, and not On Human Nature: I am calling my column “Humanature" (hu-MA-na-ture). These columns will reflect on our interdependence with all of the earth’s materials and beings, and how our actions indeed mirror those of the so-called natural world.

The Birds and the Bees

My first success growing sunflowers, which shouldn’t be so difficult except that my sunny location has highly compacted soil, came this summer, and now their happy heads bob in the breeze outside my kitchen window. As the autumn chill approaches, I see a new bloom and step outside to get a closer look.

At first I’m not sure of what I’m seeing—the thing is the same golden brown as the small disk flowers that form the center of the sunflower. But, yes, there are the striped gold and black hairs of the honeybee’s thorax, and there are its tiny antenna, and its legs, still clinging. I wave my hand near it, but it doesn’t move. It looks just like a photo my friend Lisa just placed in a magazine—a bee on a sunflower, caught in a sunshiney moment by her macro lens, so clear it nearly jumps off the screen in 3-D. So like this bee, caught in a single moment—but presumably that bee took flight shortly afterwards. This one, immobile, unresponsive to my hand, apparently died as it searched for the last nectar of the season.

In the 1967 movie classic, The Graduate, Benjamin, Dustin Hoffman’s character, has no idea what to do with his life. In a brief sequence at a party, Mr. McGuire, a family friend, gives Benjamin advice about a successful career.

Mr. McGuire: “I want to say one word. Just one word.”

Benjamin: “Yes, sir.”

Mr. McGuire: “Are you listening?”

Benjamin: “Yes, I am.”

Mr. McGuire: “Plastics.”

I wonder if audiences at the time had the slightest inkling how prophetic that advice would be in terms of how plastics would come to dominate the world forty years later? Focusing just on plastic bags—plastic bottles would serve equally well—gives insight into this plague we have created.

Renewable Energy Pioneers

Join with me and Pancho Sanza as we take a pilgrimage along the by-ways of Garrett County in search of the towering energy redeemers that leave no footprint of carbon. Renewable energy is going to be the mantra of the near future, as it is apparent that the ever-rising cost of oil, gas, and other carbon-based fuels are going to keep our country on an inexorable path to clean, green power that never runs out.

Climate Change: The Real Threat

By Craig Etchison

Over the past few years, the Bush administration has told the country to be afraid. To be very afraid. Most especially to be afraid of terrorists and terrorism.