World Oceans Day

World Ocean Day is a reminder that humanity's relationship with the oceans is both remarkable and problematic. 

The ocean challenges we face are really a collection of problems: overfishing, plastic pollution, coral reef decline, agricultural runoff, and climate change.

 

The encouraging part is that we already know how to improve many of these issues. Overfishing: - Establish and enforce marine protected areas. - Reduce illegal fishing. - Use better fishery management.

 

When countries enforce limits, fish populations can recover surprisingly quickly. 

 

Plastic pollution: - Most ocean plastic originates on land and enters through rivers. - Better waste management, packaging redesign, and river interception systems can dramatically reduce the flow. Stopping plastic before it reaches the ocean is far easier than removing it afterward. 

Coral reefs: - Local protections help, but long-term survival depends heavily on limiting climate change. - Scientists are experimenting with reef restoration, heat-tolerant coral strains, and assisted recovery techniques. 

Dead zones: - Agricultural runoff is a major culprit. - Improved fertilizer practices can reduce nutrient pollution while still producing food. 

 

The population question: Population growth is already slowing in much of the world. Historically, the most effective ways to stabilize population have been education, healthcare, economic security, and voluntary family planning. 

 The AI angle: AI is increasingly being used to track illegal fishing vessels, analyze satellite imagery, monitor reef health, optimize shipping routes, and model ecosystem changes. One of the best uses for artificial intelligence may be helping humanity manage the environmental problems it has created. 

 The same species that created many of these problems is also the only species capable of intentionally solving them. That is not a guarantee of success, but it is a reason not to surrender to despair. 

 Humanity should be judged by its finest achievements, not merely by the contents of the Pacific garbage patch.

Regrets

Looking back from 80 means a whole lot of history to peruse.

Veterans Day

 

DENCHFIELD RAYMOND

CAPT. US ARMY

30 NOV 1950

KIA CHOSIN RESERVOIR

We are a military family. Men in every generation back to the 1700s (and probably before) have donned the uniform of their country. Fortunately, all except one returned home safely to pass away of old age. Today is for Capt. Raymond C. Denchfield.

WHEN HELL FREEZES OVER
By Judith Knight

We've all heard
This casual remark
And thought little of it
And just as well
For whoever heard
Of a frozen hell

Well listen to me
And you will know
Of the frozen hell
Where soldiers go
I can tell you now
How it was then
When I went to hell
And back again.

It was back in fifty
You know the score
When the Thirty-first
Went off to war.
We were the Polar Bears!
We'd been around,
But we almost lost it
On that frozen ground.

It was called Chosin
That frozen place
Unhabitable I'd say
By Gods own race
But there we were
At forty below with frozen ear
And frozen toe
With weapon frozen
To the hand
Then forced to fight
For this bitter land
Out-numbered there
By the Devils brood
Fighting to death
And dying crude.

We did not bleed
For our blood was frozen
There on the battleground
We recall as Chosin
And on we went
Our numbers small
To Hagarui-ri,
As I recall.

And even in Hell
A hero's born
And we had ours
That frozen morn
When Donald Faith
Redeemed us there
But stayed behind
In the Devils lair.

Like one before
A sacrifice made
He gave his life
For those he saved
Four thousand strong
Were nevermore
Three thousand lay
On the Devils floor

And of those left
To fight again
There were but a handful
Of Faith's own men
He led us out
That day from Hell
It's sacred ground
Where our hero fell.

A rag-tag lot
Half-frozen men
Half-able but willing
To fight again
And I am one
And you may be too
We are known today
As the Chosin Few!

I Never Did Anything Twice

 

This is an attempt to leave a group of articles for my children about my life.  To start will just a few of the places lived between the ages of birth to age 20 when my daughter was born.

My parents:  Robert White & Mary Ellen Pifer White

 

Los Angeles - 1944

1945 - Oakland

Aunt Ruth and Janet

Earhart House 1946 Westchester

Hammer Field, Fresno 1948

I'll Be Back

Heads up, I'm gatting back in to the regular writing game. It's 2024 and there just might be something I want to say. In the meantime, a morning earworm.

Mary Did You Know

Look into the face of Mary and see what the sculptor of the pieta did in 1499. Across her lap is the body of her 33 year old son, but her face is that of the teenage girl who first heard an angel announce that she was about to become an unwed mother. She had no guarantee that Joseph would marry her. She lived in a culture that severely punished anything that was considered immorality in women, yet she accepted the duty placed on her, and this is the way that duty ended with her beloved child dead in her arms not knowing yet where this road will end. There is grief on that face, but there is acceptance and trust in the future as well. Michaelangelo takes a block of hard, cold marble and makes you see the passion, glory and the ultimate end of doing one's duty no matter where it leads as a simple act of faith.

In 1972 a man by the name of LASZLO TOTH damaged the Pieta with a hammer. He was never charged with a criminal offense. On 29 January of the following year he was declared a dangerous person and was ordered confined to a mental hospital. On 9 February 1975, the Hungarian-born, Australian geologist was released from the hospital and deported from Italy as an undesirable alien. His act of madness had it's own result. The Vatican announced that the team of restorers attempting to repair the damage that Toth had inflicted on the Pieta had discovered a previously unknown secret signature of Michelangelo on the palm of the Madonna's left hand - an "M" fashioned from the skin lines reproduced in marble as another mark from the genius who brought her to life once more.

Several centuries later another great sculptor took on a similar subject. Marble was not August Rodin's favorite medium, yet he produced many famous ones such as The Kiss, The Lovers, and The Hand of God. Instead of marble he preferred the casting in bronze and one of his greatest is the Fallen Caryatid.


Years ago, Robert Heinlein used this bronze of the Caryatid in Stranger in a Strange Land to attempt to show beauty where apparently there was none. His words:

This poor little caryatid has fallen under the load. She's a good girl---look at her face. Serious, unhappy at her failure, not blaming anyone,not even the gods and still trying to shoulder her load, after she's crumpled under it.

But she's more than just good art denouncing bad art; she's a symbol for every woman who ever shouldered a load too heavy. But not alone women---this symbol means every man and woman who ever sweated out life in uncomplaining fortitude until they crumpled under their loads. It's courage...and victory. Victory in defeat, there is none higher. She didn't give up...she's still trying to lift that stone after it has crushed her...she's all the unsung heroes who couldn't make it but never quit.

So there you have two young girls, one in marble and the other in bronze trying to lift marble, who were asked to shoulder burdens way beyond their years. In the process they become examples to all of the glory that comes from simply doing what is right when it is necessary.

Happy Thanksgiving

60 Years Ago

A child was born in February of 1963. Approximately 15 years later, a teacher gave him the assignment to write about the year he was born. Since he wasn’t, as yet, confidant enough to tackle a creative exposition completely on his own, he sought his mother’s assistance. After a little enforced research, he came home with, “I have an idea”. He and his mother sat down together to do an interview and then have him write about the year plus one month from October 1962 to November 1963. Starting Out was the result.

STARTING OUT

Had she or hadn’t she? Sleeping pills, yes, but what? Thalidomide – the name haunted her and every other pregnant woman in 1962. Those babies! – Her baby? She was scared and would stay that way until next year.

El Camino Real – beautiful as only Northern California can be in the October sun. The radio blared away with the Four Seasons’ “Sherry”. They were young, a baby on the way, and happy – at least on this day. The President interrupted the music, “Today I have ordered a blockade of Cuba!” Suddenly their bright world was dark. They waited. The world waited. Six days later the Russian ships turned around and the sun came out again, but for how long?

“You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more” sounded like as good a promise as any following the November elections. Vaughn Meader had them all laughing with his satire of the Kennedy White House, “Goodnight Jackie. Goodnight Bobby. Goodnight Ethel. Do you have your bear, Teddy?”

“Puff the Magic Dragon” welcomed a baby boy into the world on February 21, 1963. His mother counted fingers and toes in time to the music. He was beautiful, perfect, loved. She was politically aware and terribly liberal, but at this moment, it didn’t matter that the South was in an uproar over integration or that the Supreme Court had reaffirmed the right of peaceful assembly. Christopher Alan was here and safe. Let the world take care of itself. She had bigger responsibilities.

The baby went to the movies right along with mommy and daddy. An infant-seat made seeing “The Birds” and “Lawrence of Arabia” easy. And to think it wasn’t that long ago that she thought Hula Hoops were the greatest invention ever!

Divorce was becoming the great American pastime. She was just one more casualty that May. There were lots of casualties – her kind and the “advisors” in Viet Nam. It was a time of commitment and she was supposed to care about the Green Berets, care about the Peace Corps, care about LSD and Timothy Leary, care about so much, but there just wasn’t time. Being a single working mother took all of her hours. Given her choice of trends to lead, this wouldn’t have been it. She and Tony Bennett had both left their hearts in San Francisco. Rod McKuen might think that love had been good to him. She disagreed. Oh well, McDonalds sold 15-cent hamburgers. At least she didn’t have to cook.

JFK was a Berliner at the wall, and Camelot was in full swing. Pope John XXIII died; the world mourned a good man. Fanny Hill fought its way through obscenity trials, while Bob Dylan led the war protesters with “Blowin’ in the Wind”. Martin Luther King had a dream near the Washington Monument – too late for Medgar Evers murdered the previous June and not in time for the four young girls bombed to death in church the following September. The US/USSR hotline was installed, and the “red phone” became a symbol of the unthinkable. Could anything else happen in this crazy year?

Los Angeles baseball fans were in heaven, and Kofax and Drysdale were patron saints! A four game sweep of the World Series had the city pretending it was New Year’s Eve, as confetti and champagne rained down on the heroes! Those beautiful no-hitter bums!

Her child was ten months old now, but for three days he slept almost constantly as if he understood that this was no time for a baby to cry. The tears fell uncontrollably from much older eyes. The drums of November marked a national tragedy. “Where were you when you heard?” would become the question a generation could answer. Kennedy dead and two days later his accused assassin died “live” on TV. On the television: the flag, the riderless horse, and the constant pictures of a nation stunned by grief. She hovered over the sleeping infant, her tears dropping on the blond curls. What have we done to you? What will become of you? Was there any hope left for the world or this new person? They would have to wait and see – together.


For those curious as to “then what happened”, Christopher is now 60. He retired from the U.S. Army and now lives and works in the state of Washington. He is divorced with one son. His parents remarried only to divorce again seven years later (another story). He has a sister and two beautiful nieces.

His mother is a retired writer and editor and is still happily single. As with most of the country, she is no longer a sixties liberal and has settled somewhere around fanatically moderate: Social issues left, fiscal issues right with more than enough exceptions in between to give anyone political schizophrenia, but drifting left again due to the horror that is Donald Trump.

“Courageous Peace in a Time Of Great Change”

Dona Nobis Pacem 2021

"It isn't enough to talk about peace.
One must believe in it.
And it isn't enough to believe in it.
One must work at it."

Eleanor Roosevelt

 Squeezing Out a Memory 

Reprint of an old blog article

Mother and one aunt lived in Los Angeles, one aunt in Fowler, two aunts in Fresno, and the last of the six Pifer girls in Chowchilla: A sisterhood chain down Old Highway 99. Their children (the cousins) migrated up and down that road every summer almost at will to mix and match, occasionally by bus or train, but usually by car driven at speeds unheard of today except by cars being chased by police while TV station helicopters whirr overhead.

Going north, you climbed up the grade from LA to Gorman and then started the long twist of the grapevine hitting the great drop above Bakersfield where it was pedal to the metal on an empty road, only slowing down for the tinier three block main streets equipped with stop signs and cruising through Bakersfield to look at the bridge that it recently took Buck Owens to save.

With that drop came the heat in an age when auto air conditioning was high speeds and open windows. When the heat became too great we started looking for them. The great orange blobs dotting the landscape and the howls would start: Stop, please stop .... oh please, please, please.

In the searing summer heat of the San Joaquin, those orange blobs had an elixer of such heavenly proportions as to make children weep when without halting one faded in the rear view mirror. When you stopped there was the flimsy wooden Mammoth Orange with a window. It meant shade, a glass filled with ice and fresh squeezed juice from oranges that had been on the trees just that morning. In the blazing sun and rural valley dust, it was the most remarkable drink ever served with just the right acid bite to quench thirst.

It is over fifty years later now. But every once in a while you will see one of the giant oranges dusted and boarded up. Only a few still exist, and almost too late there is a move to preserve the few that remain in museums, while a couple are still trying to stay open for business, just in case you find yourself in Chowchilla or heading over Pacheco Pass to Los Banos.

To this day, when I order a breakfast juice or a champagne Mimosa for breakfast or brunch, I judge the quality of a restaurant by one question, "Is your orange juice fresh squeezed?"



Welcome to 2021

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet
For days of auld lang syne

We twa hae run about the braes
And pu’d the gowans fine
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit
Sin days of auld lang syne

We twa hae paidl’d i’ the burn
Frae morning sun till dine
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin days of auld lang syne

For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet
For days of auld lang syne

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp
And surely I’ll be mine
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere
And gie’s a hand o’ thine
And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught
For auld lang syne

For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne

For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne

Annual Tribute

 California Dreaming

Counting Down

89 more days of Trump on the wall 89 more days of Trump In a fit of rage Tear off a page 88 more days of Trump on the wall

Bye Bye Facebook

I have officially left Facebook and will shortly start blogging again. In the meantime, feel free to leave a comment below. I can also be found on Twitter at jessied44. See you around.

Dance Dance Dance

Meditation Before Kaddish

Given the recent events and actions by someone filled with hate, it seems appropriate to present the words of love to counteract the evil. 

Epitaph

by Merrit Malloy

meditations before kaddish

1.

When I die give what’s left of me away
to children and old men that wait to die.
And if you need to cry,
cry for your brother walking the street beside you.
And when you need me, put your arms around anyone
and give them what you need to give me.

I want to leave you something,
something better than words or sounds.
Look for me in the people I’ve known or loved,
and if you cannot give me away,
at least let me live in your eyes and not in your mind.

You can love me best by letting hands touch hands,
and by letting go of children that need to be free.
Love doesn’t die, people do.
So, when all that’s left of me is love,
give me away.

Dona Nobis Pacem: Another Year Another Globe:

In 2006 Mimi Lennox, mistress of Bloggingham Castle started a little project.  For one day, bloggers who followed her would speak with one voice:  Dona Nobis Pacem.  They would post globes with that simple message.  What started as a hope nine years ago has now spread to more than 200 countries and it can take days to visit even a percentage of all the people seeking just one goal in our time:  GRANT US PEACE

Above is this year's globe and below just a couple of others I've done including a major favorite:  Bear 339 & The Bear A Tones who were created both for a song of peace and a hope for all the endangered animals on the planet.

Cassandra Grousing

A fake fortune teller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved .  Robert Heinlein

For those who don't know the story, Cassandra was a Trojan princess given the gift of prophecy by Apollo and then cursed by him with not being believed when she rejected his advances.  She was the one who said, "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts" as a warning not to take in the great horse left behind at the gates of Troy.

This story is the result of how she felt about people not listening:


CASSANDRA GROUSING

by Jamie White

Don't you dare ask me, "What am I thinking?".  That's all I need right now, another test.  What am I thinking?  What am I thinking?  If you don't know, why in the hell should I?  I can tell you what direction we are heading because of the way you think, but specific words - forget it, Turkey!  (Turkey:  North American bird consumed on Thanksgiving.  North America:  A place some when from now.  Thanksgiving:  Oh never mind.  It will get here eventually.).

Back to the way you think.  Most of the time you don't, which explains the mess we're in.  What mess?  This one, dummy.  Uh, no, the one that will be.  But really, it is now - to me.  About the mess we're in.  You know how you hate to make decisions that might hurt someone's feelings, and you hate to hurt pretty ladies most of all?  Right?  Of course I'm right.  I'm always right.  So being the dolt that you are, you get sucked into judging a beauty contest.  You've never judged a contest, you say.  You will - trust me.

Boy did you get rooked - will be rooked.  You took a bribe, ran off with the little roundheeled bitch, and now we have those hundred ships in the harbor.  No ships in the harbor?  Look later, they'll be there.  Just because the blind poet upped the number, doesn't mean the ones that are there aren't dangerous.  I shouldn't knock the author.  Not everyone could turn a cheating wife into an heroic epic.  It was a good book even with the exaggerations.  You've read it of course - no of course you haven't.  Note for shopping list:  Buy Ajax cleanser, packet of Trojans.  When am I?

So here we are in this clear and present danger (clear and present to me).  Why do you bother asking questions when you don't believe a word I say?  Go search some entrails!  Now there's depth for you.  When you're done, we can all make blood pies!  How in the hell did I get this job anyway?  I'll tell you how.  I made a mistake.  I repeated something I heard, only the person hadn't said it yet.  Victimized by a fast thinking slow talker!  It's a wonder I don't give up talking altogether the way everyone used to sit around waiting for me to say something meaningful.  If I said, "Tell the piper to stuff a mute in it!"  Someone else would say, "I was just thinking the music was too loud."  Then everyone was on the bandwagon with, "She's done it again; she's done it again."  Like hell I had.  THE MUSIC WAS TOO LOUD!  Of such things are reputations made.


Not that I wasn't talented you understand, but I pretty much stuck to the common place - she's jealous, he's angry, he's vindictive etc.  so my prediction rate was unusually high.  Nothing you couldn't get from a good course in body language (has that been invented yet?) - no, well someone will get around to it.  Don't fold your arms that way.  I have all the rejection I can handle right now.

Back to the subject.  I had this talent before that buttinsky masquerading as a god got into the act.  I mean I was giving feminine intuition a good name.  There was always the problem of seeing something first and then waiting for the dum dums to catch up.  Now that can really put a dent in an oracle's good humor.  But, it wasn't anything I couldn't handle what with all the glory when they found out I had been right all along.  That's something else the reporter of these events will get wrong.  Didn't his editor ever tell him to check his facts?  I had the gift before that womanizing creep of an immortal stepped in with his indelicate proposition.  Just because I told him to take a hike - after all, he wasn't going to be a god long enough for me to worship him - he gets all ticked off.  Now I might as well talk to the walls!  What makes you think you're an improvement on a wall?

So, as I was saying.  I have this little mental quirk that everyone wants, but no one understands.  Note to myself:  Check and see if those guys at Duke have made any progress.  Here I am on my little extrasensory soapbox with no one paying any attention, waiting for my palace to go up in smoke.  What's that old joke?  If it weren't for the honor, I would rather walk!  That one hasn't been told yet?  If you haven't heard it, stick around a few thousand years.

By the way, would someone call the fire department?  Call:  Alexander Graham Bell, where are you when I need you?  Fire Department:  Read my lips, ef-eye-are-ee Department - people in red suits who put out fires.  You understand "fire"?  I'm glad to know we've invented that.  What fire?  The one we're having next month, dodo.  That's which one.  I wonder if there's time to fly to Paris instead of trying to talk to him.

Idiots!  I'm surrounded by idiots!  The arms shipment from the US will not (repeat WILL NOT) arrive in time.  And to think, I used to like horses.

--The End of Then and Beginning of Now--

Happy Thanksgiving