The Wordsmith's Forge

 ... might be much worse than estimated.

 ... is not new, is more solid than ever, but people still aren't listening.

Interesting tidbits from the newsletter ...

Protecting Pollinators
Minimize or eliminate use of pesticides in your yard.  In addition to being an environmentalist, I'm also cheap and lazy, so I use pesticides only as a last resort -- for instance, dealing with Japanese beetles that nothing will eat, or killing poison ivy.  I don't make blanket applications of anything, only spot-spray.  Also I won't buy nursery plants pre-treated with pesticides; they're often labeled for neonicitinoids, and I tell vendors why I won't buy those.  If I'm buying flowers, it's usually for the pollinators.

How to Attract Fireflies
I already do most of these things, and we have plenty of fireflies. But this caught my eye:

In some cases, “we still debate what constitutes a species,” says Eric Lee-Mäder, pollinator program co-director for the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. “Are two morphologically identical fireflies with different flash patterns two species—or one species with individuals speaking different languages? If we can’t answer that, how can we know how the insects are doing?”

I am now imagining some hapless alien trying to classify humans as species, based on things like color phase and communication, without being able to tell quickly and easily whether the groups are cross-fertile.  LOL

Generally, I count species as separate if they are unable or unwilling to breed with each other.  Sometimes they are biologically compatible but different cultures make their mate-selection methods mutually exclusive.  Back when most human groups were endogamous and people traveled less, a case could've been made on those grounds that humans were different species.  Of course, a look at human genetics indicates that different species don't stop them from fucking, and occasionally there are related species that are (at least sometimes) cross-fertile.  We have subsumed the DNA of at least two or three other hominids.

Now imagine the poor aliens finding that we have wiped out all the other hominids except for the bits left inside us, like the fossilized remains of parasitic twins.  Somewhere in the galaxy, someone is probably writing us as a natural-species version of the The Blob and submitting it to a horror magazine.

This is today's freebie.


"Emergent Journeys"


The Northwest Passage was
the Holy Grail of explorers for centuries,
seeking an open-water route over
the top of North America.

In time, they discovered
that the arctic weather
locked the islands in ice.

There was no way for a ship
to get through with any reliability,
rendering it useless for trade.

But then the world began to warm,
and the ice melted, and the islands
shrugged off their white coats.

Suddenly, the Northwest Passage
glinted a thin blue beacon.

The ships began exploring again,
first a few, and then more of them.

Just as there are perishable truths --
things which used to be true
but have become false --

so too there are emergent journeys
following routes that used to be impassable
but have appeared out of the changing Earth.

* * *

Notes:

The Northwest Passage has a deadly history, but is opening up now.

Climate change and global warming have a stronger impact on the arctic area than on most other areas.

Many of the changes are bad, but not all are 100% bad.  Unless, you know, Canada declares war over everyone else trespassing in their sovereign waters.

Economy for the Common Good is an effort to make business perform better on sociological and ecological levels. While I'm not up to the intricate math of a full report and don't have employees anyhow, I do have a small business that is highly interactive and socially engaged. So let's see how that looks for PenUltimate Productions ...

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 ... is bad and getting worse.

 ... is gaining ground.

Here's a comic about the lawn craze.  Some further thoughts ...

It goes a lot farther back than postwar suburbs.  Lawns started as a status symbol among European aristocracy.

Advice to stop watering, fertilizing, mowing, etc. or to replace lawns with something else is great -- if it's legal.  In many areas it is not, and people are fined or even evicted for being unwilling or unable to keep their lawn in a manner pleasing to others. Such laws are bad for disability and bad for the environment, but those are things fewer people care about than power. Check the local level of tyranny before trying to solve lawn-related problems.

 Climate change and other factors are pushing tree species northwest.

This poem is spillover from the April 4, 2017 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from Anthony Barrette. It also fills the "Too Close" square in my 2-1-17 Love Songs card for the Valentines Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by Anthony & Shirley Barrette.

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