So Smart = So Loyal?

January 23, 2016. Donald Trump, the candidate, boasted, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, okay, and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay? It's, like, incredible.”  

        The audience at his rally in Sioux Center, Iowa laughed, perhaps enthralled by what he had said right before that: “My people are so smart!” And, he went on, “so loyal!” 

Donald Trump descends Trump Tower on an escalator to announce his candidacy for US president on 16 June 2015. Photograph: Christopher Gregory/Getty Images

It was that loyalty he was praising when he talked about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue, loyalty that in his mind showed that "his people" were "so smart." 

        And that Iowa crowd laughed. Oh, Donald, they thought, Such a master of hyperbole!

        Except he meant it.

So far as we know, he hasn’t shot anyone yet, but he has contributed to the deaths of over 195,000. And his “so smart” people apparently remain loyal.

It’s been a conundrum to me. I can almost reach an understanding of his attraction: he’s entertaining, in a rather nasty kind of way--his "jokes" tend to be at the expense of others, but he also voices the fears and frustrations many of our compatriots feel: after years of hearing how Washington doesn’t understand or care about them from cynical political operatives and their clients, this guy rides down an escalator and says he’s going to fix everything. If you bought into his characterization of how bad everything was, his presentation was superficially very appealing. 

        Among other things, he talked about the country’s need for a cheerleader, “somebody that can take the brand of the United States and make it great again,” he said. [Emphasis added.] 

So here’s my question for his supporters, now, after his almost 4 years at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, now that we’ve heard from his own mouth how he knew covid-19 was “deadly stuff” but didn't bother to devise a national plan to address it, or to even pull up the plan previously sketched out and modeled that his administration had consigned to mothballs: are you okay with this guy dissing you to a degree that endangers the lives of everyone you care about?

        Hear me out. A leader leads. That requires informing followers when there's a problem, telling them what the problem is, and what the plan is for dealing with the problem. A leader knows that to address a crisis effectively, it's necessary to get folks on board to solve it. That means trusting the citizenry to rise to the occasion, in short, recognizing that the people are smart enough to respond appropriately to the information they’re given .

Listening to the Woodward tapes, what I hear is that the president who didn’t “want to create a panic” feared doing so because, when National Security Advisor O’Brien told him the gravity of the situation, he himself panicked. He found himself in the place where he claimed that policeman in Kenosha was when he emptied 7 bullets into Jacob Blake: the president choked. 

Or worse: he thought his job was to be a cheerleader and keep everyone chipper while they were dying because, well, what can you do about a pandemic, really, until “like a miracle” it goes away?

Maybe he feared that if he galvanized the public to confront the pandemic, it  might interfere with his own interests: cause a negative stock market reaction, or demand leadership action that couldn't be easily rolled into a sound bite and tied up with a bow by Election Day. 

        To put it bluntly, it looks to me like the president  thinks the American people are too stupid to handle a serious national emergency. And since staying in office is the only value he cares about, he can just ignore the daily death toll and spreading cases and talk about other things, or blame it all on whoever comes to mind: China, Democratic mayors, Democratic governors, medical personnel who don't like him...

           In short, he keeps relying on our stupidity to let him run roughshod over our very lives. He’s been doing this now for almost 4 years, with increasingly destructive results. 

        

Election polls, Harpswell (ME) Community School
during covid-19 pandemic July 2020

        There's an election coming that allows us to prove him wrong. Aren't you tired of his manipulations, of his shape-shifting truth to benefit himself, regardless of its impact on the national interest? 

        Let's quote him one final time, yes? Let's tell him: "You're fired!"

Whose Vision?

I was sent an ad for the president’s reelection via social media by a relative recently, not, I was told, as a political statement, but just because it was a beautiful American message. You can judge for yourself: it can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRlCRalEJxY ; it’s called “The Best is Yet to Come.” It hasn’t turned up on my TV set, yet, although it looks like it was released on the internet earlier this year.

My relation was enthusiastic about the positive vision the ad offers of our country, she told me. But as I watched it, I found myself wondering how I’d feel if I were anything other than a white American…

I can believe that this is how the president envisions America. It’s very much a TV vision from the era of his youth (also the era of my youth, so I know whereof I speak). Lots of bits from TV shows and movies are edited into this [times are approximate], like Davy Crockett, complete with coonskin hat, riding into Washington, D.C. [0.42]. The president’s voice lists heroes (predominantly white males, with some odd exceptions: Annie Oakley appears in old film shooting a repeating rifle at a target) and tells of their carving “a nation out of the vast frontier” [0:56]. These heroes “tamed the wilderness” [1:10]  and “settled the wild west,”[1:13] they “braved the unknown.”[1:09].

A Native American might quibble with the characterization of wilderness taming. They might point out that the “unknown” could have been known if the newcomers had adopted a different approach to  the folks who already lived in the lands they'd stumbled on.  Native Americans could also debate the nation carving, given that those who lived in the unknown lands actually managed it with a light but effective touch, and in much of what’s now the United States, had a fairly long history of organized governance, even confederation among peoples.

African Americans might also find this telling less than relevant. The president’s American Story doesn’t have slavery (though it does have Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman as its token black heroes, for unspecified reasons—no MLK or Rosa Parks, mind you!).

Mexican Americans might wonder at the account of the 1836 “last stand” at the Alamo, by “Texas patriots”[0:51]—particularly given that those “patriots” were immigrants to the Mexican territory of Tejas.  Many were slave holders, and it’s not so coincidental that Texas rebelled not long after Mexico abolished slavery in 1829. Texas became the independent Republic of Texas in April 1836. Not a part of the U.S., and at the time, not interested in being a part of the U.S. Though the United States did not directly participate in the insurgency, the Texian forces, as they were then called, included numerous U.S. soldiers who returned to their U.S. military units back home in the United States after the rebellion without consequences for being AWOL.

The tacit U.S. support for the rebellion, and the later annexation by the U.S. of Texas in 1846 led to the Mexican American War, a war ignored by the ad, as well as largely ignored in mainstream U.S. history. (Lincoln made a forceful speech opposing this war  while he was in Congress—not a part of Lincoln’s legacy that the current president chooses to mention). The origins of the war are murky, as is often the case, but U.S. President Polk definitely saw it as an opportunity to fulfill the so-called “manifest destiny.” When it was over, Mexico lost most of what is now California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona, the western half of New Mexico, the western quarter of Colorado, and the southwest corner of Wyoming, along with bits of Kansas and Oklahoma.

Parenthetically, Korean Americans and Vietnamese Americans might wonder about what happened to the Korean and Vietnamese Wars--as might the veterans of those wars. There's also no mention of Jewish Americans or Arab Americans; the far east and the middle east might not exist at all....

Irish Americans might find a timeline showing 1848 - 1849, where the president’s voice says we were lifting “millions from poverty, disease, and hunger”[1:15] mildly puzzling.  The smaller print that goes by quite quickly references Irish immigrants coming to the United States, who arrived (in the thousands, not the millions) to escape the potato famine.  No mention of the discrimination Irish immigrants faced on arrival in the accolade to lifting millions out of the muck.

Into the 1850s, now, Civil War on the horizon. Except according to the president’s vision, there apparently wasn’t one—a sort of lip service is perhaps given in an image that zips quickly by of a black soldier in what may be a Union uniform holding a flag [1:00]. Nope, there was nation-building in the infrastructure sense: we “laid down the railroads” [1:25]—again, from an indigenous peoples’ perspective, this might recall land grabs, or buffalo slaughter, or relentless relocations and suppressions—and a Chinese American might wonder why their contribution to the transcontinental railroad is ignored but for a single lone frame showing the back of a worker’s head, topped by a conical hat and displaying a single long braid [1:29]. Nor is there mention of the legally imposed discrimination, once the railroad was complete, which barred Chinese laborers from entering the United States and placed restrictions on those already here. Indeed, until 1943, federal law prohibited Chinese residents from becoming American citizens.

Native Americans, in fact, might find a a strange image juxtaposition ominous: Mt. Rushmore appears [1:36] as the president is talking about “our ancestors” building “the most exceptional republic ever to exist in all of human history”; the Statue of Liberty flows by with Manhattan in the background, immediately followed at 1:40 by an image that looks like a horseman from one of the Plains tribes consumed in a dust storm as the president’s face then appears [1:43] saying “and we are making it greater than ever before.”


A bit later, a painting flashes on the screen [2:10]. I recognized it as “The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth” (1914, Jennie Augusta Brownscombe), or rather, a piece of that painting. Bad enough that in the complete painting, shown here, the Wampanoag who enabled the Pilgrims to survive were portrayed as a few attendees, mostly in the background. But in the campaign video, they’re cropped out entirely. Just the left side is shown (pilgrims only). The painting is apparently meant simply to illustrate “the hand of Almighty God” by which we are, says the president, all made equal. There’s a certain irony, there…

Since they opted to use this painting, it’s worth taking a look at what it doesn’t depict. According to Grace Donnelly in a 2017 Fortune article cited by Charles M. Blow (NYT, Opinion: “The Horrible History of Thanksgiving,” 27 November 2019).

"The celebration in 1621 did not mark a friendly turning point and did not become an annual event. Relations between the Wampanoag and the settlers deteriorated, leading to the Pequot War. In 1637, in retaliation for the murder of a man the settlers believed the Wampanoags killed, they burned a nearby village, killing as many as 500 men, women, and children. Following the massacre, William Bradford, the Governor of Plymouth, wrote that for 'the next 100 years, every Thanksgiving Day ordained by a Governor was in honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won.'”

In short, as Blow points out succinctly, “Just 16 years after the Wampanoag shared that meal, they were massacred.” Another way of looking at it might be that one European life is worth around 500 indigenous lives. Begging the question, in today’s terms, which lives matter?

Those are just some of the president’s historical interpretations that frankly, we should all take issue with.

My point here isn’t to denigrate my flawed, beloved country.  But in order for us to continue the great American experiment of forging “a more perfect union” that began in Philadelphia in 1776, we can’t pretend that we haven’t tripped, stumbled, and even fallen along the way. We can’t dismiss the voices and perspectives of huge portions of our united peoples.

What makes us great is that when we trip, we search until we find our footing; though we may stumble, we catch ourselves and keep going; when we fall, we get ourselves up again.

What keeps us great is our diversity, our ability to learn and progress, our fundamental goodness when opportunity arises, like the outpouring of help in times of flood or sacrifice in a pandemic. When we draw on it, our diversity allows renewal through the myriad voices that join the national conversation, offering different viewpoints and creative visions. It is, as former President Barak Obama says, “messy.” But it is far more beautiful, offers far more freedom, than the lovely, distorted myth of America  envisioned by the president.

Lessons from Time Travel

Travel through Peru is a dizzying experience. It's time travel!

There are, in the highlands and mountains, the remains of human settlements that date from 8,000 BC—think about that! In the Toquepala Caves, there are seven-color paintings done by hunter-gatherers dating back to that time, sequences of the trapping and harvesting of guanacos by use of axe, lance and spear-throwers.

Peru’s Sacred Valley was settled around 800 BC. It’s a remarkable ecosystem: there are corners where crops can be grown year around, although the altitude ranges from just below 7,000 feet to almost 10,000 feet above sea level. Water is abundant from both natural watercourses and the channels and fountains devised by pre-Columbian peoples.  While most people think of the Inca as Peru’s original civilization, the Inca were actually late-comers, emerging around Cuzco during the 14th C.

Before the rise of the Inca, Cuzco seems to have been a center for the rise and fall of several cultural groups, including the Chanapata early on, and the Wari, an aggressive people that preceded the Inca. The Wari collapsed around 1100 AD, after initial success at conquest of neighboring peoples. Legend brings the Inca on to the scene. Myth attributes the founding of Cuzco to them.

The Inca were a talented society; they adopted and adapted useful elements of previous cultures, and wove together surrounding peoples into a single entity. They did this not so much through armed conquest as with diplomacy: persuasion, negotiation, alliances through marriage. Part of their strategy was the offer of stability and protection to replace costly tensions and conflict. The Inca were apparently masters of administration, for their territory ended up reaching from today’s Columbia southward deep into present-day Chile.

The pre-Inca and Inca ruins in the Sacred Valley are marvels of architecture and engineering. What’s particularly impressive to me is both the longevity, the permanence of the constructions, and the not-entirely-unrelated design that worked with terrain, geology and ecology rather than trying to dominate the indomitable.

The famed ruins of Machu Picchu are a case in point. Even when discovered in 1911, some 500 years after its abandonment, the “ruins” were largely intact. Oh, the roofs, originally thatch, were gone, timbers fallen, and vegetation had managed to weaken some parts. But by and large, the buildings stood entire, the fitting of the stones so securely done—without mortar!—that the stones remained unmoved. In a land of earthquakes! Channels for water still directed the water through the citadel; terraces for support continued to shed water and provide stability.

As they do today, though the impact of thousands upon thousands of tourist feet has begun to affect the passageways and walls. Some shifts appear in the previously unmoved stones, here and there, prompting the authorities to consider limitations on access.

There’s much we could learn from the model we are told that the Inca left us. Their reliance on non-forceful means to unify disparate peoples and thereby expand trade and cultural exchange offers food for thought. War is directly destructive of human life; it also disrupts trade and wastes resources, including labor. If accommodation can be reached with one’s adversaries, then cooperation can ensue, enhancing everyone’s security. The question posed today was probably an issue even then: what is a people ready to give up for increased security, and what must be retained? Religion is often a sticking point, particularly if there are significant numbers of fundamentalists (“my way is the only TRUTH”); certain cultural values may cause stresses if infringed. But it’s worth looking for points where peoples can find common ground and starting from there, rather than trying to force an adversary into a mold it’s unprepared to fit into.

Likewise, and perhaps even more importantly, it appears that the Inca, and their predecessors, didn’t try to dominate their landscape. Instead, they learned how to work with it. Looking at waterworks today that were built thousands of years ago and still function, one is struck with the fact that maintenance is minimized if you don’t try to force a system into a place where it doesn’t naturally fit. The terraces and drainage channels in the pre-Columbian ruins of Peru remain whole; erosion hasn’t carried it all away. Even in the high country around Lake Titicaca (elevations average above 12000 ft.) where frost is frequent, the indigenous peoples figured out how to use a kind of raised bed and channel growing system that acted to modify temperatures enough to allow abundant crop production. (There’s a great description of this in an article by researcher Clark L. Ericson at https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cerickso/articles/Exped.pdf).

The indigenous peoples of the United States are actively exploring their cultural roots and the ancient knowledge that informs their cultures. Tension continues between forced domination, which is philosophically a foundation of Western European culture (See Genesis: 1-26, where god charges  mankind with to dominate all animal life and subdue plant life), and seeking commonality. To date, the urge to domination has resulted in the primacy of Western culture. There is now, however, a profound question about whether we, as a species, can survive if we continue using the old models.

Maybe it’s time to start listening to the voices of indigenous peoples who have adapted to their environments. Domination isn’t working out so well…

Wind/ice cause collapse of communication tower at Sugarloaf, Maine, 24 Feb. 2019
Photo by TDS Communications
taken from News Center ME site (NBC)

Presidential Pronouncement: Pretend Proposal

Portland Women's March 01/19/19

I didn’t hear the president’s remarks when they came fresh from his mouth. I was engaged in demonstrating in support of rights that his administration has put in jeopardy: women’s, environmental, racial equality, immigration, LBGQT+, voting… in short, all of the rights that U.S. citizens have fought for through the years and apparently must now fight for again.

I heard about the remarks, and today, as a strange series of weather wave shifts —sleet, snow, freezing rain—argue about which should dominate through wind gusts, I listened to the proposal. Now, you have to understand that I assumed that the point was ending the government shutdown.

I admit it: I thought the crisis to be addressed was the economic sledgehammer coming down on federal employees and those who depend on them, directly (like their families) and indirectly (small businesses, lenders, services…), an economic impact that will ripple out beyond those now immediately involved as time goes on. In my naiveté, I was waiting for the president to acknowledge a problem well on its way to affecting everyone in the country in one way or another and to propose its solution.

Instead, I learned that the president has suddenly discovered that the conditions his policies cause on the border have created a humanitarian crisis. This isn’t news to anyone who has been following the situation pretty much since the president was elected, but evidently it wasn’t clear to him. The other border problems he referred to are ongoing and hardly constitute a crisis; moreover, a wall won't do a lot to forestall them for multiple reasons I won't regurgitate here.

When the president's remarks were finished, I was left perplexed and a little angry. The anger strengthened when I listened to specific parts of his comments again, just to be sure I didn’t miss what I was looking for.

First, in this nationally broadcast statement, in the midst of a government shutdown that is, among other things, on the verge of being a national security crisis (if it isn’t already), the president’s reference to it was limited, and never did he speak to or of the men and women that bear its heaviest burden. At the start of his remarks, he described his plan as providing a “path forward to end the government shutdown”; toward the end, he said his plan “immediately opens government,” and then he talked about how, “once the government is open,” his administration would take bipartisan steps toward a consultation on comprehensive immigration legislation. How this works in practice regarding the shutdown is apparently that Senator McConnell will “bring up legislation that would immediately reopen the government and incorporate President Trump’s proposal to offer temporary protections to some immigrants in exchange for $5.7 billion for his border wall,” this according to a McConnell staffer. [ Emphasis added; New York Times on line, 20 January 2019.]

Second, insisting he was being reasonable and that the Democrats had been taken over by radicals supporting open borders, the president urged acceptance of his "common sense" plan. But the only people I’ve heard talk about "open borders" are those  fixated on a border wall from sea to shining sea. The president made it sound like anyone who opposes his wall opposes any border security at all. Yet the Democratic Party platform provides "Democrats will continue to work toward comprehensive immigration reform that fixes our nation’s broken immigration system, improves border security, prioritizes enforcement so we are targeting criminals – not families, keeps families together, and strengthens our economy.” [Emphasis added.] I've heard no Democratic spokesperson refute this principle. (Interestingly, in a kind of footnote no one seems to have remarked, the president appeared to imply that the border would be more or less open for agricultural workers as he conceives border reform, saying that "lawful and regulated entry into our country will be easy and consistent" for them so "our farmers and vineyards won't be affected.")

500 year old wall, Machu Picchu

So why am I angry? Because the cynicism and political gamesmanship of this “solution” is so clear. The president’s only concession is an indication that his wall will be built at strategic locations rather than trying to follow the entire border. (How "strategic locations" are actually defined should be closely watched in the language of any relevant legislation.) Most importantly, he still insists on 5.7 billion dollars for wall construction, without further detail, before he’ll agree to sign anything that will reopen the government.

But the Senate Majority Leader bears responsibility for this situation as well. His cynicism in coupling the president’s plan with the reopening of the government in an effort to force Democrats to agree to the 5.7 billion is transparently obvious. If they don’t do so, presumably the GOP will claim (as they’ve been doing), that the Dems are obstructionist and for “open borders.” McConnell COULD just allow the spending bills both houses previously approved to go to the Senate floor for a vote, and the Senate could exercise its constitutional duty by a veto-proof vote. Even McConnell must see that the precedent of allowing a president to hold the entire country hostage through a government shutdown is unacceptable and contrary to every principal of good governance to which we supposedly adhere!

Perhaps McConnell feels that upholding his oath of office would cripple the president who, among other things, is giving him the judges he wants.  McConnell’s already managed to reshape the U.S. federal court system significantly. He should take his wins and run. It's past time for him to do his duty and reopen the government. The immigration and border security aspects of the president’s plan can then be debated, discussed, negotiated and settled--without harming federal public servants who are now being punished for choosing to serve us. Because, in case anyone's forgotten, WE--all of us, whether or not we voted for the president--are the boss of all of these people. Including the occupant of the White House.

Non-Essential: Galapagos III

The Galapagos Islands remind you that you’re a member of a nonessential species on the planet. But they also bring home the fact that the planet and its ecosystems are essential to you. We tend to stride over the earth as if we really do “have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth….” (Genesis: 1:26) And we do, in fact, have the power and the means to dominate much of the natural world, to extinguish other species, to make the earth uninhabitable for humankind.

The Galapagos have been conveying the true relationship of nature to humans and vice versa since they were discovered in 1535. Bishop Berlanga reported their inhospitable characteristics so far as human beings were concerned. In the 16th C., what made land desirable were first mineral riches—gold, silver, copper—followed by indigenous populations to provide labor to exploit the riches or to work agricultural land, in the case that mineral riches weren’t available. (And of course, to bring into the Christian fold as part of the ongoing crusade to prepare for the second coming…but I digress.)

When humans stopped by—as did the occasional merchant ship, pirate and later, whaler—they did so to take on water and provision with such meat as could be hunted or carried. Fur seals and sperm whales were the attraction to being in the vicinity. No one worried much about conserving stocks for the needs of the next ship, much less future generations. Case in point: the whaling ship Essex, of Herman Melville fame, put into Floreana in 1820 to pick up some tortoises to augment its food supply. Whether as amusement or to facilitate the hunt, the crew set the island on fire. In doing so, they managed to almost entirely eradicate the tortoises on the island.

Whalers and fur sealers ransacked the archipelago. According to the Galapagos Conservancy, “Sperm whale, fur seal, and giant tortoise populations declined precipitously during the 19th century. By 1890, the Galapagos Fur Seal was considered commercially extinct.… Between 1784 and 1860, whalers took more than 100,000 tortoises from the islands…. The California Academy of Science 1905-06 expedition found that tortoises were very scarce on Española and Fernandina; by 1974, Pinta was added to the list of islands where tortoises could not be found. ”

Fish market, Pto. Ayora, Santa Cruz

By the time of the California Academy studies, settlement of the islands was making headway.  Added to the environmental pressure caused by species depletion through hunting came habitat destruction due to human activities.

Floreana was settled first, in the 1830s.  Domestic livestock was brought in to support the colony and highland forests were cut for pasture and cropland. When the colony ultimately failed, it left behind a devastated landscape no longer fit to sustain Floreana’s native wildlife.

But the scientific interest in the archipelago aroused by Charles Darwin’s visit in 1835 continued to seep out into the world, even as small groups of people emigrated from the mainland to find a life harvesting tortoise oil, or salt, or fish. In 1959, Ecuador created a national park to protect the archipelago, expanded by a marine reserve added in 1998. The protected area was further extended with a marine sanctuary decreed in 2016. Conservation and protection were enhanced by designation of the archipelago as a World Heritage Site in 1979; the archipelago and its immense marine reserve are considered  a unique “living museum and showcase of evolution” by UNESCO.

The Ecuadoran National Park Service has worked with the Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) since the beginning in 1959, thanks to an agreement with the Ecuador’s Government. The CDF’S Darwin Research Center has a mandate to pursue and maintain collaborations with government agencies by providing scientific knowledge and technical assistance to promote and secure conservation of Galapagos.

UNESCO raised a warning flag in 2007, when tourism development and immigration pressures were threatening the islands, by including the archipelago on its list of World Heritage in Danger. It was a warning that Ecuador heeded, to the extent that in 2010, the Galapagos were removed from the endangered list. Strict rules govern tourist visits to the islands; fishing is stringently regulated; and research efforts have incorporated sustainability of human activity into investigations—in other words, research into how humankind might live in balance with the natural world.

All of which is to say that the Galapagos experience offers a model of how our species might redefine its approach to, and place in, the world on which we live. It’s actually an old model, since most indigenous peoples have used it for eons. It recognizes that in order for us to survive, we have to contribute to and protect the survival of the rest of the natural world.

We humans are arguably ecologically unnecessary. Think about that for a moment. So far as ecosystems go, we seem to have a place only as a top predator, which is one of the least important positions on the web of life. If we all disappeared tomorrow, the worst that could happen to the rest of creation would be that our leftover garbage would get in its way for a time… Certainly the Galapagos Islands got along without us quite nicely until 1535; currents and winds brought life to the islands against incredible odds, and it thrived and reformed and worked out a unique ecosystem. We are privileged today to walk through it, to catch a glimpse of what an existence devoid of humankind might look like… to recognize, in all humility, our proper place in the scheme of things.

[For anyone interested in the work of the Charles Darwin Research Center and Foundation, check out https://www.darwinfoundation.org/en/; this is the English language link.]

Power of Change: Galapagos II

Among the many things that the Galapagos Islands have to show us is the magic and the miracle of our planet, its power to shape and form, its power of change. We forget the power of our earth at our peril.

In September of 1985, I was sleeping in an apartment in Mexico City when the rumbling of an especially large truck going by on the periferico woke me up. Except it took way too long to pass… I rolled out of bed and braced in a doorframe in the realization that what was shaking the building was an earthquake. Innocent as I was, when it stopped I went on with my usual routine. Earthquakes weren’t all that unusual, though this one had seemed awfully long-lived. It wasn’t until I got out onto Avenida Reforma, a block away on the far side of the ring road, that I saw the damage that 3 - 4 minutes of earth movement wreaked: frontless buildings displayed the interiors of offices and apartments; partially collapsed structures dotted the avenue… I caught a cab for my downtown appointment, still disoriented as to how to proceed.

The cabbie and I traveled down Reforma. As the damage along the avenue got worse and worse, we gradually realized how our reality had shifted. When we reached the area I was going, the office where I was supposed to be wasn’t there any more:  a mountain of rubble piled on the ground was all that was left of the structure. Across the street, the remains of a hotel burned. I considered asking the cabbie to turn around, just as he told me he needed to drop me; he needed to get to his neighborhood to find out how his family had fared.

Simply, in less than 5 minutes, the entire cityscape had changed irrevocably; some 5000 lives had ended, or were ending in darkness, under tons of concrete. No one who was there remained unscarred. Too many had forgotten, or ignored, the physical limits the planet imposes, the physical demands it makes. It is never in stasis, it is ever altering.

The Galapagos Islands offer a graphic laboratory of this characteristic of our planet. They're geologically quite young, created by overheated magma meeting the Nazca plate. As the plate drags itself across the hot spot, the extra heat melts the crust, causing volcanoes to emerge from the ocean, seemingly out of nowhere. The volcanoes erupt to form islands.

Sitting some 600 miles out to sea from Ecuador, they remained unsettled for much of the period after they were officially—and inadvertently—discovered by the Dominican friar, Fray Tomás de Berlanga, Bishop of Panama, in early 1535. His account describes the giant tortoises and cacti, the inhospitable terrain, and the difficulty of finding water, hardly an inviting prospect for homesteading.

The early Spaniards reportedly called the islands Las Encantadas, the Enchanted (or perhaps, Cursed) Isles, because strong changeable currents made them seem to shift location. Or maybe, because volcanic eruption and uplift changed their forms, suggesting something other than what had been seen before.

This activity is no less present today than it was in the past. There should be no particular surprise at smoke appearing from the top of the volcano on Fernandina, youngest of the islands.  A volcanic burp, so to speak: a little ash rolled out, and a light plume of vapor rose into the sky. The Galapagos Conservancy reports that as recently as 1968, there was an explosive eruption that collapsed the caldera of Fernandina’s La Cumbre Volcano, causing it to fall  approximately 350 m.

Nearby Isabela Island is a conjunction of six shield volcanoes that shape its land mass into a form that from above looks much like a seahorse. At Urbina Bay, in 1954, 6 km. of coral reef was raised up 5 m [15 feet] by volcanic action, stranding coral heads above sea level. The new coastline was more than a km away from where it had been. There is little left of the coral heads, which have deteriorated from exposure to the air, but here and there, some small shell reminds you that you’re standing on what was 15 feet under the ocean within your lifetime! This creation of new land, emerging in a very short period from where wave and wind had reigned, serves as an exclamation point on our approach to the natural world even more than volcanic eruption or earthquake.

The earth has its own dynamic. It is absolutely indifferent to human kind. In our arrogance and ignorance, we are capable to destroying ecosystems and elements that we need to survive. But the planet will go on, with or without us. Change happens, whether or not we wish it. The sea floor may rise, or the oceans may rise; neither is remotely affected by whether the occurrence is favorable or unfavorable to our species.

Indeed, species come and go. The Galapagos remind us that we are, in the end, just one of many species. Our success and survival aren’t foreordained. And the planet doesn't care whether we're here or not....

In Time and Place: Galapagos I

Galapagos naturalist guides refer often to the Galapagos archipelago as “paradise.” This evokes the biblical garden, where, we are led to imagine, all was harmony. Except, of course, for the one prohibition, and the snake that tempted Eve to ignore the prohibition. Leaving aside for a moment all questions pertaining to the presence of that snake (which would involve a digression of major proportions!), let’s look at the tree of knowledge.

It seems particularly apropos that a tree grows in the Galapagos island paradise—elsewhere as well, but that’s another story—called the “poison apple tree” (manchineel or manzanilla de la muerte, little apple of death). It produces a little green apple-like fruit. The tree looks unremarkable, with rounded green leaves. However, you are warned to touch no part of it, not leaf, not branch, not fruit. The naturalists accord it great respect; in the highland mist, a guide steered us away from its deceptively attractive cover against falling drizzle. The mist could collect traces of the poisonous sap, he said, and carry it to fall on our susceptible human skin… It offers no harm to the non-human species that may alight in its branches or feed on its fruit.

If you think about that tree in that environment, it's a fairly clear case where, if you defy the prohibition, consequences will be swift and painful, and possibly, lethal.

Otherwise, the islands’ flora and fauna are mostly benign, with few exceptions. There is a venomous Galapagos Black Widow spider. According to the Galapagos Conservation Trust, there’s no record of a human being bitten, but the spider “is probably best avoided.” (It’s endemic to the archipelago, but there’s little information on line about it. The Galapagos Archipelago is home to 150 known spider species, 60% of which are found nowhere else. The Black Widow is the only one mentioned as possibly being harmful to humans.)

A different threat is the Darwin’s Goliath Centipede. It can be as large as 43 cm and is likely the most feared animal in the islands. It’s a nocturnal hunter, withdrawing into arid zone cracks and crevices during the day.  Insects, lizards and even small birds are its prey, taken by a poisonous bite from a large pair of jaws. Galapagos hawks, night herons and mockingbirds hunt it, in turn. The Conservancy says that its bite isn’t lethal to humans "but is very painful.”

Finally, there are the two species of Galapagos Scorpions. Both are relatively common but “neither has a particularly serious sting for humans.” They hunt at night, preying on other invertebrates which they seize in their claws and sting to death.

That’s it. The four snake species are dangerous for hatchling marine iguanas, but not for humans. They have a mild venom that helps to disable their prey so they can apply the constriction which is their primary weapon. (For an exciting illustration of this particular survival struggle, checking out  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv9hn4IGofM is worthwhile!)

All of which suggests that the locals’ characterization of the islands as paradise—or at least, a paradise—may not be too far off.  Especially if you replace “harmony,” with its romantic connotations, with the word “balance,” a more neutral concept.

A week in the archipelago isn’t nearly sufficient to claim knowledge of them; it’s no more than a taste, a passing whiff, a glimpse. But as the characteristic sands of each island’s shore endure your passing footstep for the moment they must, the rhythm of the place gradually takes hold. Sea lion pups frolic on the rocks, waiting for their mothers to come in from hunting off shore; little ones may come sniff at you, nudge a walking stick or a leg. Frigate birds, both Great and Magnificent, engage in courting, breeding, nesting, brooding, feeding young… and dying.

Once mature, there isn’t much to harm the denizens of the Galapagos in the way of natural predators. But every fledgling or immature creature won’t make it to maturity. Beside the trail on North Seymor, a young frigate bird lay motionless on its side. It was alive, but showed no interest in passing feet. For whatever reason, its survival was unlikely, lying there, though no vultures or gulls would finish it off. The crabs might come for its flesh, once it began to fester after death, but it might just slowly dry out and disintegrate in sun and wind. After the group moved on, it lifted its head and gazed around. It didn’t seem to be resisting its condition, just taking a last look before it again dropped its head to the ground and went on with its dying.

Live and let live; die and let die. All things in their time and place. Some hatchling iguanas make it to the rocks; others feed the snakes that converge to try to feed on them. Some frigates grow to breed; some die, unable to manage their great wings for effective flight. The gift of the Galapagos isn’t swimming with sea lions, or approaching tortoises to view their somehow grumpy faces up close and personal. It’s seeing how our world could be, if we allowed nature to take its course without harvesting more than we need, without poisoning the land and water we share with other creatures.

The islands are, in fact, an intimation of Paradise.