A Change in the Wind

Otto Heino, World's Oldest and Richest Potter, Dies at 94

All the big papers lead this evening with news of the death of the great Walter Cronkite, whom I often saw but never met...well, not as famous, but just as wonderful a man was Otto Heino, one of the many great potters who have come out of Ojai, who died today.

Otto was ninety-four, but we saw him just a month or so ago. Whenever visitors came to our little town, we would take them over to the Pottery, to marvel at Otto's astonishing pottery, and often as not they would meet the potter himself. He would talk about how he learned to glaze at very high temperatures; at how the Japanese wanted to buy his formula for the famous yellow glaze, but he wouldn't sell it, not even for a million dollars, partly because he knew he would do better selling individual pots for $20,000 yach. He boasted, frankly, that he was the world's oldest and richest potter, and added that 6000 collectors around the world expected a piece from him every year, Ask him about Beatrice Wood, from whom he bought his studio, and he would mention that he taught her how to glaze -- he had a thousand stories, and loved to tell them all. He loved visitors, loved talking, and wouldn't let you go until you heard him out. 

From someone else these brags might sound off-putting, but from Otto they were somehow disarming. Of course he told these stories in his charming little display room, surrounded by his marvelously rich, warm work, with his gardens all around, his modest but charming house, the open doors, his bright blue eyes, his grin -- you couldn't help but like the man.

Miss you, Otto.

Last December we bought from Otto an elegant decorative vase, speckled with bits of ash, made (he told us) of applewood recovered from a New England orchard that once belonged to your late brother. I'll keep this pot on the mantle, because it's beautiful and I love it, probably forever.

Otto Heino

Sarah Palin's to Run on "Drill Baby Drill" Platform

As predicted in this space a week or so ago, Sarah Palin is running for president on a pro-oil and gas development platform.

In the the next few months and years, assuming she doesn't flip out and self-destruct, she's going to become Ms. Drill Baby Drill.

Inevitably, she will ignore or mock global warming. She has no choice. Her whole career is predicated on business as usual, pollution as usual, fossil fuels now and forever, more and more, and devil take the hindmost. As she (or, more likely, her flack) wrote in the Washington Post today:

Many states have abundant coal, whose technology is continuously making it into a cleaner energy source. Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas, and every state can consider the possibility of nuclear energy.

Wow. Forget about the strangely fractured sentence construction. Just notice the pro-coal, pro-oil and gas, pro-nuke stance. She might as well call for more for more global warming right now, instead of simply pretending the problem doesn't exist, as she does by not mentioning it once in the op-ed.

Grist's editor Russ Walker put together an answer to Palin on Grist, but to yours truly, what stands out is not Palin's misleading claims. (What else is new with her?)

What stands out is her self-centered assumption that support for fossil fuel production and consumption will make her popular, as if global warming simply isn't happening.

After all, what could matter more than this?

Update: Think Progress points out that a few months ago, Palin supported cap and trade.

Denier "Science": How to Miss the Forest for the Trees

At the ever-entertaining Watts Up With That, well-known global warming skeptic Roger Pielke Sr. links to the following graph:

In a challenge to a NASA/GRL study released last week that shows a sharp decline in Arctic sea ice coverage, Pielke Sr. writes: Since 2008, the anomalies have actually decreased.

No, I'm not kidding! That's his analysis of the graph above. (Check out the link if you don't believe me.)

Is there a better example anywhere of a scientist unable to see baselines shifting?

Or, as they used to say, not able to see the forest for the trees?

Agnosticism: Sweeping the Nation

Well, maybe not the nation, but agnosticism does seem to be sweeping the Internet.

Maud Newton, a leading book blogger, a novelist, and probably something else in her spare time for money, agrees with me that agnosticism has gotten a horrifically bad rap, from atheists and believers alike, and in Book Forum writes a defense. Here's her first entry, from -- irony alert! -- the Bible:

Eccelsiastes

By far the most heretical book of the Bible, this candid, downbeat, and gorgeously poetic meditation on the seeming meaninglessness of existence—“all is vanity and a chasing after wind”—has incited controversy throughout the approximately twenty-three hundred years of its existence. The narrator, Qoheleth, advocates acceptance of fate and an absent, somewhat neglectful creator—“the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the learned, nor favor to the skillful: but time and chance happeneth to them all”—and the simple pleasures and innumerable mysteries of life.

Newton posts this with a painting from Caravaggio, featuring "Doubting" Thomas. Not sure if Saint Thomas with the risen Savior fits her point, but it's such a great painting I'm going to follow suit:

The Writer vs. the Artist

One of Tennessee Williams' most accomplished (and least appreciated) plays is the last one he wrote, Vieux Carre. It's worth reading just to experience Williams characterize himself as a young man, living in New Orleans, encountering the human wrecks he would glorify in his immortal Streetcar.

A month or so ago Hilton Als of The New Yorker gave a Manhattan production a spectacularly insightful review. Unfortunately, The New Yorker site has taken an anti-blogger attitude that routinely excludes those of us -- even subscribers -- who would admire and link to these sort of pieces. Here's the one passage from their on-line "abstract" of the review that survived an incredibly brutal editing:

Here [the Williams character, as an old man] is called the Nightingale, and he is an openly gay quick-sketch artist, rueful and warm. He quiets the Writer’s hysterics and tries to inspire in him what Blanche Dubois called “the opposite” of death.

Intriguing, no? Wish I could quote more. Als himself quotes at length from the gorgeous play, focusing on the back-and-forth between the ruthless Nightingale and the idealistic Writer. Fascinating stuff.

And here's the playbill image from the Pearl Theater, which put it on...had I been within a hundred miles, I would have gone myself, but 3000 is a bit too far...

Weeping for What Does Not Matter

The long-winded but extra-smart Sharon Asytyk ruminates on the meaning of Michael Jackson's death:

Michael Jackson is not Michael Jackson the pop star, or Michael Jackson the boy from the silly Jackson Five, or Michael Jackson the child abuser - he’s simply an empty space of fame into which we can pour our need for saints and stories of redemption.

And of course, we have an endless sack of grief to call upon.  We are, of course, not permitted to mourn dramatically for things actually worth grieving over - it is either normal or trivial that we cannot safely fish in the water, that small frogs that I once captured and released no longer exist, that we face a world of declining resources and a great deal of conflict over those resources.  We are not permitted to grieve extravagantly or get maudlin over the fact that we pass on less to our children in every generation, or that we have a much less secure future than we once did. Instead, our grief is channeled into spectacles, into the iconic representation of all that is trivial about a generation - as the media prepared to run all Jackson, all the time, the front piece of yesterdays MSM page included the quote “New book says Jackie Kennedy may have had Torrid Affair with RFK.”  Gee, that’s relevant - let’s also bring up the trivial losses of a previous generation, into which they could pour all their fantasies.

Anything so that we don’t have to think about the world as it actually is.  Anything to wipe the death of all green shoots off the page.  Anything to harken back to less important questions than whether your kids have a future, how hot the planet will get, how poor you will be.  Anything to give us outlet for our emotions so that they may be expelled pointlessly on things that do not matter.  Anything to let us feel passion for things that are totally harmless, conveniently distracting, and, bluntly, make us dumber just for being near them. 

Weep now. Stop all the clocks.  He is dead.  He was not our North, our South, our East or West, but he’ll do in place of actual content, meaning or a moral compass.  After all, a great many things worth grieving over are truly dead, and we never even wept for them.

Unlike Sharon, I actually liked a good deal of Michael Jackson's music, but I can only agree with her that the mourning over his death (quite possibly due to prescription drug abuse) shows how pathetically confused we as a nation are about what matters for our future, and for our children's.

Sierra Water: It's Cleaner Than You Think

That's according to an ER doc and professor at UC Davis named Robert Derlet, who has been testing water at the most popular Sierra wilderness sites for years for the Wilderness Medicine Society.

Here's a study on the subject he authored a few years ago for the WMS, and here's a terrific story about his work from The Los Angeles Times, back in the good old days when they had an outdoors section.

Three take-away points: chances are good that you can drink water straight from Sierra streams and lakes without any filtration and stay healthy. The parasite giardia is not likely to harm you:

The threat is comparable to the chances of beachgoers being attacked by a shark, according to University of Cincinnati researchers who studied the danger giardia poses to backpackers, namely "an extraordinarily rare event to which the public and the press have seemingly devoted inappropriate attention."

(Derlet agrees, and in the aforementioned study points out that tests in the last few years on backpackers who did develop diarrhea in the backcountry found that giardia was not the cause. He's also skeptical that water filters, which easily clog, would successful remove giardia cysts.)

Second, the most likely risk is the familiar bug e. coli, which can be spread, for instance, by cattle manure falling in water, but even in heavily traveled backcountry sites the numbers are reassuring. Backpackers can safely drink water straight from backcountry lakes. Derlet told the Times reporter:

Most people think the water is better from a nice, running stream because it's so fresh and churned up. But the top few inches of lake water are zapped with ultraviolet rays from the sun, which are a very powerful disinfectant.

Third, the most likely pathway to infection is by poor hygiene, and according to experts, washing your hands with alcohol hand gels after a visit to the wilderness privy is "incredibly effective" at preventing you from infecting others.

To yours truly, this fear of wild water is part of a larger fear of nature itself, and an absolute plague on American society... to help us overcome it, let me repost some beauty at Pioneer Basin from the astounding (and generous) wilderness photographer Buck Forester, a hero I have yet to meet...

Obama Frames Climate Change

The Obama administration is coming back from the G-8 meetings with no agreement from other nations -- both European and developing -- on reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases such as CO2.

This has not been clearly reported; as so often seems to happen these days, the clearest statement on a murky news situation comes not from the news pages, but from the editorial, as in this from the NYTimes:

Before the leaders gathered, their negotiators had already settled on a draft communiqué, committing to a 50 percent cut in worldwide greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The industrial countries would cut theirs by 80 percent, and the developing countries would make “significant” if unquantified cuts. But on Wednesday, things fell apart. The developing nations flatly refused to commit to the 50 percent goal by 2050.

It was not immediately clear why they balked. (My emphasis.) Some repeated an old demand: that the United States and the other industrialized nations — which bear responsibility for the buildup of greenhouse gases since the beginning of the industrial revolution — should do more and do it faster. Otherwise, the developing nations would be left with an unfair share of the burden while their economies were expanding rapidly.

What is clear is that Mr. Obama and the other leaders of the developed world have yet to come up with the right mixture of pressure and incentives to get the developing countries to commit.

The administration's cap-and-trade plan can be criticized, but I don't see how anyone who wants to see the world act to reduce the risks of climate change could argue with Obama's closing statement:

Ultimately we have a choice. We can either shape our future or we can let events shape it for us. We can fall back on the stale debates and old divisions, or we can move forward and decide to meet this challenge together. I think it's clear from our progress today which path is preferable.

Of course, that's not to say that some (such as Ted Rall) won't snipe...and memorably so:

Larry King Turns Out to be a Very Likable Guy

Had a chance to interview Larry King last week. He's doing a book tour, and so took questions for fifteen minutes from me at CNN, followed no doubt by fifteen minutes with another reporter from some other part of the country, and so on. Still, I found myself liking the guy, despite his hunger for fame and fortune. He's a good listener, and takes questions seriously, and he's funny. Here's my favorite Q&A:

When asked what people get wrong about him, the famous interviewer for a moment was stumped.

“They think I must be a pretty cool guy, but I’m not,” he said. “Food falls on me. I’m not hip. I couldn’t tell you one song on the Billboard 500. I like young people and they usually like me, but sometimes they think I’m with it. I’m not with it, I’m around it. I’m just about ready to accept the fax machine.”

Fish and Sheep Know Globe is Warming: Why Don't We?

Talk to climate change skeptics, and they will take you into the weeds of global temperature measurement, the supposedly overlooked importance of the sun, and so on. They will invariably cite the obvious fact that global temps have risen and fallen over the eons.

But they will not mention that the glaciers and plants and animals, with whom we share the planet, are responding to the rise in global temps in predictable and difficult to deny ways. In the 19th century, there were 150 glaciers in Glacier National Park; by 2030 they will be gone, according to the crazy wild-haired radicals at the Parks Service. Sheep, which have been weighed for other reasons for decades on a remote Scottish island, are shrinking due to global warming, according to a new study reported in Science. Dozens of other natural examples have been cited and photographed.

Many are in a new presentation for the US Fish and Wildlife Service by Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech (who has also written a book for Christians on the subject). She cites a study of fish habitat off Alaska by F.J. Mueter and M.A. Litzow, from 2007, which includes an excellent graph:

All this raises an inevitable question: When will those of us in Southern California be smart enough to shift our habitat?

After all if we continue down the path of uncontrolled emissions, drought in our region will look something like this:

 

Anyone else thinking we may have to move north someday before it's too late?

Arctic Ice Trends Sharply Downward: Few Notice or Care

It's frankly shocking to me how many people I encounter who still cling to the idea that the globe is not warming, despite vast scientific libraries of evidence to the contrary.

Here's the latest example, from data compiled by NASA and ICESAT:

For more, see NASA's story New NASA Satellite Survey Reveals Dramatic Arctic Sea Ice Thinning

Two take-away points from the chart above. One, the red indicates multi-year ice; two, the blue reveals thin seasonal ice, which will return in the winters...but has little of the density or the staying power of what has been lost. In the words of Ron Kwok, writing for the GRL:

The total area covered by the thicker, older "multi-year" ice that
has survived one or more summers shrank by 42 percent.

Which raises the question: What will it take to convince doubters? The loss of Miami?

(Sorry.)

Palin to Run on Oil Development Platform in 2012

Really. Outside of her flaming display of hurt feelings, it's about the only thing that makes any kind of sense in her resignation "statement" (if we are so generous as to characterize it in that way).

(You'll have to ignore the eccentric capitalization and odd verb choices; clearly, Palin without a speechwriter is like Bush on steroids -- all the malapropisms, but none of the focus.)

We aggressively and responsibly develop our resources because they were created to be used to better our world... to HELP people... and we protect the environment and Alaskans (the resource owners) foremost with our policies.

Here's some of the things we've done:

We created a petroleum integrity office to oversee safe development. We held the line FOR Alaskans on Point Thomson - and finally for the first time in decades - they're drilling for oil and gas.

We have AGIA, the gasline project - a massive bi-partisan victory (the vote was 58 to 1!) - also succeeding as intended - protecting Alaskans as our clean natural gas will flow to energize us, and America, through a competitive, pro-private sector project. This is the largest private sector energy project, ever. THIS is energy independence.

And ACES - another bipartisan effort - is working as intended and industry is publicly acknowledging its success. Our new oil and gas "clear and equitable formula" is so Alaskans will no longer be taken advantage of. ACES incentivizes NEW exploration and development and JOBS that were previously not going to happen with a monopolized North Slope oil basin.

In other words, Palin's most noteworthy accomplishments as a governor, according to Palin herself,  all relate to oil and natural gas development.

Logically, one can only conclude that this will be her platform for a national run. "Drill, Baby, Drill II."

And then she concludes:

In the words of General MacArthur said, "We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction."

Wow. Steve Brodner takes a look at this craziness and makes the suddenly obvious connection to another flaming narcissist:

Karl Malden: The Greatest Mitch Ever Rests in Peace

News just in that Karl Malden, who is apparently remembered by most people for some dumb TV show and advertisement, has died.

For yours truly he will always be Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire, perhaps the best work of fiction ever produced by an American. He won an Academy Award for the movie role, and deservedly so. One does wonder in retrospect how Marlo Brando didn't win for the same movie, but such is the Academy.

The hokey-sounding but still striking-looking trailer from l951 plays below...

DDT: The Chemical Disaster That Won't Go Away

Not all herbicides and pesticides concentrate in the ecosystem, but some do, and among the prime offenders is DDT, which (contrary to right-wing propaganda) is still a problem in the United States today, decades after the corporation that made it in Southern California stopped manufacturing it.

In a first-rate story from a week ago in the Ventura County Star, Zeke Barlow explains:

Although the company that made DDT stopped dumping it into the Pacific Ocean off the Palos Verdes peninsula more than 38 years ago, the chemical is still damaging the ecosystem today and will continue to do so for decades.

The DDT dumping grounds is more than 70 miles south of Ventura County, but the long hand of the chemical is still felt in birds swimming off our shores. DDT exposure causes egg shells to become so thin that they crack during incubation.

The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing a series of remediations off the Palos Verdes peninsula that could help reduce the amount of DDT in the ecosystem by dumping thousands of tons of sand on top of the contaminated area. It could reduce the amount of DDT that creeps into the food chain.

But even if the $36.6 million project is approved and deemed a success, it doesn’t mean DDT will be out of the ecosystem.

“We are hoping to see an acceleration in recovery, but we are still talking decades,” said Carmen White, project manager with the EPA. “The idea that it could take a long time is disheartening, but it’s a reality.”

Need more evidence of DDT's harm? Here's a study compiling evidence gathered by researchers around the world. The bottom line?

The recent literature shows a growing body of evidence that exposure to DDT and its breakdown product DDE may be associated with adverse health outcomes such as breast cancer, diabetes, decreased semen quality, spontaneous abortion, and impaired neurodevelopment in children.

Yikes.