And the answer is..., what was the question?

Lately I’ve been pondering a lot of semi-related questions that leave me more than mildly perplexed. In part they’re due to some reading I’ve been doing in an effort to help with a river restoration effort. I began to wonder about the question of “restore to what?” The first option seems to be: to the condition it was in before settlers dammed the river. Does that mean to eliminate the brown trout that have become naturalized but are not indigenous to North America? Probably not, but then how do we define what will be considered success? Clearly, restoration to the glacial period, when there was no river, isn’t appropriate.

Part of my concerns have been incited by the increasing volatility in what is or isn’t, may or may not be legal or otherwise acceptable. With the overturn of Roe v.Wade, SCOTUS has opened a pandora’s box. Who should decide which, if any, books should be banned and from whom should they be banned? On what basis should bannings be allowed. I seem to recall a past Justice saying something to the effect of “I may not be able to define pornography but I know it when I see it.” I wonder if that Justice ever read much of the Old Testament.

Scientific and Natural Area Rules

Photo by J. Harrington

As individuals, and a society comprised of individuals, it seems to me we have become too sloppy in our use of language. For contemporary evidence, please read Minnesota House bill could cost pain medication patients up to $200 a month in MinnPost with yesterday’s dateline. If it makes any sense to you, please explain it to the rest of us in the comments below.

Back when Congress previously banned “assault weapons” and “high capacity magazines,” the was lots of talk about legally defining an assault weapon. Check the Wikipedia page to see how messy it got and remains.

My point is that too often we undertake vast programs with half-vast ideas and definitions. We then spend unreasonable amounts of time debating terms, conditions and related matters about whether a cup is half empty of half full without bothering to first specify what size cup by volume and or weight. Meanwhile, real problems go unaddressed.

I’d suggest we make the spreading or creation of misinformation and disinformation a capital offense if only I could get consensus on the meaning of those terms. Perhaps one of the newfangled AI-bots will solve the problem by burying all of us in reams of gobbledygook garbage until we return to a pre-language grunt stage and climb back into the trees on the plains of Africa, if there are any trees left. Or, could we, just maybe, try being reasonable and talking to, instead of shouting at, or talking past, each other?

Meaning

Carl Dennis - 1939-

If a life needn’t be useful to be meaningful,
Then maybe a life of sunbathing on a beach
Can be thought of as meaningful for at least a few,
The few, say, who view the sun as a god
And consider basking a form of worship.

As for those devoted to partnership with a surfboard
Or a pair of ice skates or a bag of golf clubs,
Though I can’t argue their lives are useful,
I’d be reluctant to claim they have no meaning
Even if no one observes their display of mastery.

No one is listening to the librarian
I can call to mind as she practices, after work,
In her flat on Hoover Street, the viola da gamba
In the one hour of day that for her is golden.
So what if she’ll never be good enough
To give a concert people will pay to hear?

When I need to think of her with an audience,
I can imagine the ghosts of composers dead for centuries,
Pleased to hear her doing her best with their music.

And isn’t it pleasing, as we walk at dusk to our cars
Parked on Hoover Street, after a meeting
On saving a shuttered hotel from the wrecking ball,
To catch the sound of someone filling a room
We won’t be visiting with a haunting solo?

And then the gifts we receive by imagining
How down at the beach today surfers made sure
The big waves we weren’t there to appreciate
Didn’t go begging for attention.
And think of the sunlight we failed to welcome,
How others stepped forward to take it in.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.