![Picture](/uploads/4/3/5/0/43506379/1855265.jpg?362)
The East Coast gets pounded, and here, we can only count 2015's winter rainy days in one hand. I know because our little yellow car's sunroof was smashed and kaput on Dec 25th (the story of Snowmanmaggedon later...stay tuned.), and although it took us 33 days to find the part at a Napa salvage yard, we successfully circumvented the Volkswagen dealership's "Oh, it will be twelve hundred dollars." for a piece of glass B.S. We, scarily enough, never had one rainy day in all that time or ever needed to worry about our new al fresco situation. And by the way, VW dealership, there is nothing Volk about price gouging.
Enthralled by ecology/ecological design classes at UC Berkeley when I finally went back to finish my degree in 2006, I was faced with a different curriculum at Wurster Hall, where the College of Environmental Design is housed, and transitively, the Department of Architecture. The old focus of my late teens, as a freshman in 1982, seemed to be on the beauty and integral need of balanced design, communicating with nature, all this in contrast with the importance of computer-aided-design advances, which at that point were in their infancy.
But in the new 21st Century, the College of Environmental Design now led the field much further into stewardship of nature. It made so much sense to me all of a sudden: the epiphany that if you are an architect and you dare dig and place your built concept into our communal, shared Earth, you have better have something good to say, some purpose, and a structure that will grace the environment down to how it obtains the fuel, water, and air it needs to house what or whom it needs to house.
As I dug deeper in my studies at Cal, I began my attempt to reconcile the current problems of our society, and of architecture within our society, and finally of the human condition and access to basic needs. It started as a game for myself to keep from full on despair at climate change, or political oppression, or misdistribution of money, resources. What a mess! Even enumerating a couple of the world’s problems now can put one in a sweat. So my schtick/game, Six Degrees of Overpopulation, was born. It kept me amused and out of the woes of someone learning too-much-too-soon about the Earth’s predicament from each new ecology class I took. (Do I need to pay royalties to the author of Six Degrees of Separation, John Guare? Or should I just ask Kevin Bacon to rock a little “Footloose” with me, next time we run into each other at the market? Hmmm.).
Six Degrees Of Overpopulation (SDOO) was an easy game. You take a local or global frustration, and slowly build the short ladder to the overpopulation crisis top rung. Trust me; you’ll get there easily enough. There is not enough parking downtown, and you are late to bring your wife to the obstetrician. Parking spaces; too many cars, because of too many people – ta-DA! There used to be a pretty view next to Chabot Space and Science Center up on the hillsides of Oakland that used to make you oh-so-happy to see as you drove north on Hwy 13. Gone. Ondulations of green grasses and yellow wildflowers, gone. Pathetic-looking, more that cookie-cutter, but rather aggressively monotonous housing was placed there, benefiting the developers because of their cheapness to build, and not benefiting the community at large because of their marring and wounding of a perfectly beautiful hillside. But, let's do the SDOO inventory: huge, huge, ugly development; families need affordable places to live in safety and dignity; but there are too many people to keep up with and prevent these types of sprawl moments....ding, ding, ding! "Too many people" is the phrase the game show was looking for. You can apply this to "My yellow raisins seemed a lot more expensive at the store today" or to "I am fracking sick of this war, and please why will it never end?"
The irony is that the brokenness came way before overpopulation; the soul brokenness or Humans-Earth Detachment, or whatever we want to identify it as, actually caused overpopulation.
I think I ended one-too-many term paper and essay-answer midterm/final with some version of my dear Six Degrees rant:
Mid-Term Exam - Ecological Design 105: Principles and Practice - Dept. of Architecture Spring 2007
List at least five reasons why western nations are exceeding their carrying capacity. In other words, why is our ecological footprint so large? Briefly discuss.
"5. Overpopulation – At the heart of most every environmental problem that I can think of is the human race's abandon in multiplying. When I feel frustrated, I refer to it as a game I named: "six degrees of overpopulation." The US population has almost doubled in the last 60 years from 152 million to ±301 million. [This is a depressing midterm so far!]"
Yes, I actually wrote that side note to the professor. Weirdo student….but things like that kept me entertained, and being entertained kept me fully engaged.
SDOO was sort of naive but fulfilled the need for acknowledgment of how humans grew beyond the size of their aquarium. And you know you are in “eco-philosophical” trouble when you are sitting there watching The Matrix and you are nodding in wild agreement when the creepy computer guy character, Mr. Sunglasses and suit-'n-tie, has that well-crafted monologue/diatribe equating humans to a virus. You feel like a congregant at an old-school church: "Mmm-humm, Creepy Computer Guy, humans are not really mammals! Yesss. Like a virus? Aaamen!"
And yes, that's where Ecological Bummersville resides. And it is hard to regain your climate change composure, and motivation for hope and change, after that.
I can't say that it is wrong to have multiple children. Just because I only have one daughter, I cannot possibly have a holier-than-thou criticism of larger families. That would be ridiculous. If I look at a person, a family member, a loved niece perhaps, who is the second child in a family, or the third, or fourth.... I know I could not live without those precipice-of-beauty brown eyes that spark at the spontaneous inspirations that occur to her: “C’mon Tía, let’s paint! I have Muir Woods on the brain. We gotta paint.” That person might be the key to a positive change in all our lives – with something that will ripple forever. And she is meant to be right where she is meant to be.
And how would my life be without my dear, eleventh-of-thirteen husband? I used to joke that the Lyons kids should be labeled like fine prints of a serigraph: 1/13, 2/13, 3/13.... I know I couldn't live without any of the lucky Irish thirteen of them, and I know they change the world, with every nuance, each and every day - from their service as educators for every age group, elementary through college - to the tireless nurses, mentors of youth in the arts and television, animal advocates, counselors, political activists and community builders, one of these with a heck of a good hand for all things baked with love and ultra-delicious. And all 13 environmentally aware and sensitive and guardians against misuse of power. So we have here a quorum not a random group of 13, but a small and useful army for the things that really matter in this world, the things that change my life and your life in noticeable ways, and sometimes imperceptible ripples.
The luck is mine too. Because the 13 held me tight when my family seemed malleted at the base of our tree, and up for vivisection and burning in a pile, as in a horrific scene from a logging catastrophe shown about the Amazon Rainforest. The baker's dozen of 13 came to rescue me and mine, without ever having questions or needing a directive on just how to do so.
So comes to rest the naive Six Degrees Of Overpopulation. Because it is not the whole story.
Some days, there I still slouch, on my soapbox, one environmental class too many and back in Ecological Bummerville. It is hard to navigate between the things we can do, the things we should do, and the habits we can’t give up. For a few years now, I can't even think of having a chimney fire anymore. Cozy, romantic notions ruined. But yet, BBQs....no problem, but hopefully I try for a couple a year and not many. It’s a toughie. I guess that is the balance of consciousness and maybe not taking oneself to frothy or mopey extremes.
I should tell you, my soapbox comes with a nifty feature: it is adjustable in height.
Drive two miles to work: shave off 1-5/8” of the base.
Take a 5-minute, instead of an 18-minute shower: raise that box by 1”
Eat red meat: yikes, that will cost me 11-3/4 inches off, etc.
And, eventually we will all be standing on the bare floor with everyone else – no fancy soapbox or argument – and no amount of articulated toe footwear or stiletto shoes will differentiate any one from another, because by then the oceanic levels will have risen so much that no one will be able to remember if you once even wore shoes at all.
I am not a 'textbook' environmentalist and I know my showers could be 4 minutes instead of 5, and that I could bike and walk instead of drive, but it is good to remember that I am someone's Earth Roommate. If a man in Oakland litters a cigarette butt onto the indifferent, concrete sidewalk flanking Lake Merritt, he is in essence screwing over Señor Mallard and his friend the snowy egret westward in the Bay, who now have to deal with arsenic. They are called butts, people! You are throwing butts around. The slang for them in Perú is "puchos" - which has always sounded like and symbolized a curse word to me. So let's stop “pucho-ing” our surroundings to death. Then there is the mega-star hotel in Miami that keeps lobbies at 64 degrees on a perfectly fine 72-degree day, and so is actually screwing over a family in Mumbai that has been waiting for rain for weeks. Resources are finite, and they are all globally interrelated.
My worst fear and somewhat obvious prediction is that it will be water and not petroleum/"fossil fuel" shortages that will do us in.
"Concern about our planet" is a somewhat erroneous notion. We should say we are worried about the human species, or our children. What is happening now is Earth's well-laid-out and clear eviction notice to humans. Because without concerted, global effort, the equation will be simple: natural resources and the infrastructure to protect them - oceans, fresh and potable water, air - will be tainted and compromised, our species will not be able to sustain itself, until it reaches final demise. Then the Earth will reboot after control-alt-deleting our unappreciative asses, and return to unimaginable glory.
Or we will NOT perish. I love these "Or NOT!" moments when you realize that the outcome is fully in your control. So, let’s not despair. Don’t judge others, but do educate kindly, and let’s keep informing ourselves profusely. Do take the climate situation VERY seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously. We've got this!
I sit in front of my architecture professor, Rosa, at a little high-sheened wood slab table inside Café Strada asking her, “Will the full knowledge of climate changes cripple us (Environmental Design students) into depression? Or can we stay hopeful?” Her message, too, is to stay informed, continue seeking education, and take action at any level that one can. She gives me “hope for hope:” that is, to fully trust that our generations will rise to solve the frightening conflict that faces us, and their zeal will not be extinguished.
And then I see it clearly:
Human ability to hold on to and replenish hope is our renewable energy source.
Today's selection below is some reading materials and the famous video:
The Matrix Creepy Computer Guys explains it all....
Enthralled by ecology/ecological design classes at UC Berkeley when I finally went back to finish my degree in 2006, I was faced with a different curriculum at Wurster Hall, where the College of Environmental Design is housed, and transitively, the Department of Architecture. The old focus of my late teens, as a freshman in 1982, seemed to be on the beauty and integral need of balanced design, communicating with nature, all this in contrast with the importance of computer-aided-design advances, which at that point were in their infancy.
But in the new 21st Century, the College of Environmental Design now led the field much further into stewardship of nature. It made so much sense to me all of a sudden: the epiphany that if you are an architect and you dare dig and place your built concept into our communal, shared Earth, you have better have something good to say, some purpose, and a structure that will grace the environment down to how it obtains the fuel, water, and air it needs to house what or whom it needs to house.
As I dug deeper in my studies at Cal, I began my attempt to reconcile the current problems of our society, and of architecture within our society, and finally of the human condition and access to basic needs. It started as a game for myself to keep from full on despair at climate change, or political oppression, or misdistribution of money, resources. What a mess! Even enumerating a couple of the world’s problems now can put one in a sweat. So my schtick/game, Six Degrees of Overpopulation, was born. It kept me amused and out of the woes of someone learning too-much-too-soon about the Earth’s predicament from each new ecology class I took. (Do I need to pay royalties to the author of Six Degrees of Separation, John Guare? Or should I just ask Kevin Bacon to rock a little “Footloose” with me, next time we run into each other at the market? Hmmm.).
Six Degrees Of Overpopulation (SDOO) was an easy game. You take a local or global frustration, and slowly build the short ladder to the overpopulation crisis top rung. Trust me; you’ll get there easily enough. There is not enough parking downtown, and you are late to bring your wife to the obstetrician. Parking spaces; too many cars, because of too many people – ta-DA! There used to be a pretty view next to Chabot Space and Science Center up on the hillsides of Oakland that used to make you oh-so-happy to see as you drove north on Hwy 13. Gone. Ondulations of green grasses and yellow wildflowers, gone. Pathetic-looking, more that cookie-cutter, but rather aggressively monotonous housing was placed there, benefiting the developers because of their cheapness to build, and not benefiting the community at large because of their marring and wounding of a perfectly beautiful hillside. But, let's do the SDOO inventory: huge, huge, ugly development; families need affordable places to live in safety and dignity; but there are too many people to keep up with and prevent these types of sprawl moments....ding, ding, ding! "Too many people" is the phrase the game show was looking for. You can apply this to "My yellow raisins seemed a lot more expensive at the store today" or to "I am fracking sick of this war, and please why will it never end?"
The irony is that the brokenness came way before overpopulation; the soul brokenness or Humans-Earth Detachment, or whatever we want to identify it as, actually caused overpopulation.
I think I ended one-too-many term paper and essay-answer midterm/final with some version of my dear Six Degrees rant:
Mid-Term Exam - Ecological Design 105: Principles and Practice - Dept. of Architecture Spring 2007
List at least five reasons why western nations are exceeding their carrying capacity. In other words, why is our ecological footprint so large? Briefly discuss.
"5. Overpopulation – At the heart of most every environmental problem that I can think of is the human race's abandon in multiplying. When I feel frustrated, I refer to it as a game I named: "six degrees of overpopulation." The US population has almost doubled in the last 60 years from 152 million to ±301 million. [This is a depressing midterm so far!]"
Yes, I actually wrote that side note to the professor. Weirdo student….but things like that kept me entertained, and being entertained kept me fully engaged.
SDOO was sort of naive but fulfilled the need for acknowledgment of how humans grew beyond the size of their aquarium. And you know you are in “eco-philosophical” trouble when you are sitting there watching The Matrix and you are nodding in wild agreement when the creepy computer guy character, Mr. Sunglasses and suit-'n-tie, has that well-crafted monologue/diatribe equating humans to a virus. You feel like a congregant at an old-school church: "Mmm-humm, Creepy Computer Guy, humans are not really mammals! Yesss. Like a virus? Aaamen!"
And yes, that's where Ecological Bummersville resides. And it is hard to regain your climate change composure, and motivation for hope and change, after that.
I can't say that it is wrong to have multiple children. Just because I only have one daughter, I cannot possibly have a holier-than-thou criticism of larger families. That would be ridiculous. If I look at a person, a family member, a loved niece perhaps, who is the second child in a family, or the third, or fourth.... I know I could not live without those precipice-of-beauty brown eyes that spark at the spontaneous inspirations that occur to her: “C’mon Tía, let’s paint! I have Muir Woods on the brain. We gotta paint.” That person might be the key to a positive change in all our lives – with something that will ripple forever. And she is meant to be right where she is meant to be.
And how would my life be without my dear, eleventh-of-thirteen husband? I used to joke that the Lyons kids should be labeled like fine prints of a serigraph: 1/13, 2/13, 3/13.... I know I couldn't live without any of the lucky Irish thirteen of them, and I know they change the world, with every nuance, each and every day - from their service as educators for every age group, elementary through college - to the tireless nurses, mentors of youth in the arts and television, animal advocates, counselors, political activists and community builders, one of these with a heck of a good hand for all things baked with love and ultra-delicious. And all 13 environmentally aware and sensitive and guardians against misuse of power. So we have here a quorum not a random group of 13, but a small and useful army for the things that really matter in this world, the things that change my life and your life in noticeable ways, and sometimes imperceptible ripples.
The luck is mine too. Because the 13 held me tight when my family seemed malleted at the base of our tree, and up for vivisection and burning in a pile, as in a horrific scene from a logging catastrophe shown about the Amazon Rainforest. The baker's dozen of 13 came to rescue me and mine, without ever having questions or needing a directive on just how to do so.
So comes to rest the naive Six Degrees Of Overpopulation. Because it is not the whole story.
Some days, there I still slouch, on my soapbox, one environmental class too many and back in Ecological Bummerville. It is hard to navigate between the things we can do, the things we should do, and the habits we can’t give up. For a few years now, I can't even think of having a chimney fire anymore. Cozy, romantic notions ruined. But yet, BBQs....no problem, but hopefully I try for a couple a year and not many. It’s a toughie. I guess that is the balance of consciousness and maybe not taking oneself to frothy or mopey extremes.
I should tell you, my soapbox comes with a nifty feature: it is adjustable in height.
Drive two miles to work: shave off 1-5/8” of the base.
Take a 5-minute, instead of an 18-minute shower: raise that box by 1”
Eat red meat: yikes, that will cost me 11-3/4 inches off, etc.
And, eventually we will all be standing on the bare floor with everyone else – no fancy soapbox or argument – and no amount of articulated toe footwear or stiletto shoes will differentiate any one from another, because by then the oceanic levels will have risen so much that no one will be able to remember if you once even wore shoes at all.
I am not a 'textbook' environmentalist and I know my showers could be 4 minutes instead of 5, and that I could bike and walk instead of drive, but it is good to remember that I am someone's Earth Roommate. If a man in Oakland litters a cigarette butt onto the indifferent, concrete sidewalk flanking Lake Merritt, he is in essence screwing over Señor Mallard and his friend the snowy egret westward in the Bay, who now have to deal with arsenic. They are called butts, people! You are throwing butts around. The slang for them in Perú is "puchos" - which has always sounded like and symbolized a curse word to me. So let's stop “pucho-ing” our surroundings to death. Then there is the mega-star hotel in Miami that keeps lobbies at 64 degrees on a perfectly fine 72-degree day, and so is actually screwing over a family in Mumbai that has been waiting for rain for weeks. Resources are finite, and they are all globally interrelated.
My worst fear and somewhat obvious prediction is that it will be water and not petroleum/"fossil fuel" shortages that will do us in.
"Concern about our planet" is a somewhat erroneous notion. We should say we are worried about the human species, or our children. What is happening now is Earth's well-laid-out and clear eviction notice to humans. Because without concerted, global effort, the equation will be simple: natural resources and the infrastructure to protect them - oceans, fresh and potable water, air - will be tainted and compromised, our species will not be able to sustain itself, until it reaches final demise. Then the Earth will reboot after control-alt-deleting our unappreciative asses, and return to unimaginable glory.
Or we will NOT perish. I love these "Or NOT!" moments when you realize that the outcome is fully in your control. So, let’s not despair. Don’t judge others, but do educate kindly, and let’s keep informing ourselves profusely. Do take the climate situation VERY seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously. We've got this!
I sit in front of my architecture professor, Rosa, at a little high-sheened wood slab table inside Café Strada asking her, “Will the full knowledge of climate changes cripple us (Environmental Design students) into depression? Or can we stay hopeful?” Her message, too, is to stay informed, continue seeking education, and take action at any level that one can. She gives me “hope for hope:” that is, to fully trust that our generations will rise to solve the frightening conflict that faces us, and their zeal will not be extinguished.
And then I see it clearly:
Human ability to hold on to and replenish hope is our renewable energy source.
Today's selection below is some reading materials and the famous video:
The Matrix Creepy Computer Guys explains it all....
Save The Bay
https://www.savesfbay.org/secure/cigbutthotspots
The Matrix Monologue (Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOi6v5DD_1M
Cigarette butts and the Environment
http://www.legacyforhealth.org/our-issues/cigarettes-and-the-environment
https://www.savesfbay.org/secure/cigbutthotspots
The Matrix Monologue (Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOi6v5DD_1M
Cigarette butts and the Environment
http://www.legacyforhealth.org/our-issues/cigarettes-and-the-environment