Response to roof gardens piece

Heartening to see a news piece that encourages new business buildings to have plantable roofs. Imagine a time when many rooftops became gardens or meadows, especially on commercial and institutional buildings. The sprawling hospital complexes within most cities would be a good place to extend rooftop gardening to bring air-cleaning, relief, solace and perhaps even help in healing the stressed spirits of the ailing, their families and their medical professionals. We need to seek and welcome any thing we can do to increase the greenness of the earth we have assaulted so much with the environmental destruction labeled "progress."

Androcles writes to the Post & the Times

This to the Washington Post:


Ceci Connolly's piece on health care reform was a betrayal to those who are seriously considering this critical issue and also a betrayal to the ethics of journalism. The Post endorsed that betrayal by placing the piece so prominently. Health care is too important for subjective or biased reporting. Yelling, headline grabbing and skewed journalism betrays the public and makes it harder for our nation to grow into an adult state where honest discussion can flourish and re-enforce the ideal of citizen participation. Thank you.

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This to the New York Tms:

In her report on the Chicago police reunion Monica Davey wrote: "But for other retired officers, this was a chance at last to correct history, at least quietly, among one another..."

This sentence needed to have read something like: "at last to give their version of history..." or "at last to try to correct history according to their versions..." The declarative writing used in the Davey sentence assumes or even affirms that the officers have the ability or the right to "correct history." It's sloppy syntax which ends up giving a personal and questionable opinion. We may discuss, reflect, remember, insist. No single group or person can correct history. Where was the editor?

Michael Jackson

I can't stand to read the cacophony of commentary... so I'm not.
I'm weary of the formula. First we adore, then we mock and joke, then we weep, revise, backtrack and cavil when they die.

"Hunting" is not hunting

Aerial killing of wolves in Alaska is a kind of warfare. The word used to describe it is an affront. "Hunting" by sophisticated aircraft using assault weapons is not "hunting" -- it is massacre and mass murder. It bears no resemblance to a lone human who may kill an animal on the ground for food.

In some instances the consciousness of humanity has evolved beyond random mass killing and destruction of the "other" life on the earth. We need more realization that such destruction cannot occur without consequences for humanity and for all of life.

Is this kind of massacre what America really wants to give as an example to other nations, particularly in the "third" world where enlightened leaders and thinkers work to persuade "native" peoples to nurture wildlife as part of a program of economic development through eco-tourism?

At this point the "government" of Alaska encourages and rewards the massacre of wolves in any fashion. When will the citizens there realize that they do not have to blindly obey the government when it says "kill?" The wildlife of all the lands of America and the earth are our co-inhabitants of the globe. They are part of the sacred richness of the world along with all peoples and their descendants. Humankind is the apex predator species of the planet - yes. Yet it is not given to us to conduct large scale massacre of other species. No religious texts promote it. The principles of life and the web of life speak softly to say: No.

The vast organism which is earth itself has been illustrating the consequences of human destruction. Wolf murderers and those who support and encourage them are as out of step as would be Neanderthals who might appear among us.