Almost There

Almost there in so many ways.

I finished off the semester and the 4.0 still holds.  Woo-hoo!  Where was this conscientiousness during my previous college attempts?  I guess some of us just mature slower than others.  Just 9 hours to go and I’ll be done.  Almost there.

We are back to third world conditions in the kitchen.  A couple of guys from Stardust industries came on Wednesday and tore out the old kitchen – Stardust is a non-profit corporation that resells used building materials and uses the proceeds to upgrade the houses of the low-income population to reasonable living standards.  They will tear out your old kitchen for free if you donate the materials.  It’s a great way to get a service, help someone out, and keep your stuff out of the landfill.

We bought new cabinets from Ikea and they are sitting in the dining room waiting on the floor to go in and the electric to be moved.  The kitchen is the last room in the house we are remodeling.  We’re almost there.

I am still working my “one with the earth” epiphany.  I’m looking at some alternative spiritualities that match my new worldview a little better.  I’ve not made any sort of leap yet.  I’m in that thin place between paradigms and I’m in no rush to move out.  I can’t let go of my recent realization though and return to comfortable surroundings.  My mind has been expanded and it won’t return to its former shape.  It kind of sucks while at the same time being ridiculously exhilarating.  I’m waiting for the suckiness and the exhilaration both to subside a little before I take the next step.  It’s funny, the less time I have left on this planet the more I realize how important it is to go slowly.  Life… it’s irony.  Maybe I’m almost there.

Earth

My last post was a little vague, a little short, but it had a great title.  I feel I should explain.  Well, that’s not it exactly, I want to expound, to work out some thoughts.  No, I want to sort through a confluence of ideas.

I posted a link to a short video clip that shows how ribosomes make protein, maybe I should say assemble protein.  The video describes the ribosome as a little machine but that’s not exactly true.  I can understand the metaphor because the ribosome takes chemicals and assembles them into a chain of protein.  It looks like something you would see in a factory.  But what’s really going on is a chemical reaction.  It’s just fascinating.  I first saw the video in a biology class way back in 2005.  It amazed me but mostly just sat in the back of my mind.

Many years before I saw the video I read a book (I can’t remember the title) about a scientist who gets a weird message and travels to some exotic mountain country – Tibet maybe? – where he encounters a computer made of aquariums, plants, and an old terminal.  The earth speaks to him through this computer.  She takes the name Gaia and explains that everything is connected to everything else.  It was of course a fiction based on James Lovelock’s Gaia theory.  It made me wonder if the Earth is complex enough to be conscious.  I wondered if maybe that consciousness was so broad or so diffused that we couldn’t comprehend it.  Then I decided that although the Earth probably does regulate itself, much like a giant chemical reaction, it probably doesn’t really KNOW that it’s regulating itself, which would be my definition of consciousness.

Then in the midst of my re-submersion in Christianity I began not to doubt but to think that something about the direction of the belief system was not quite right.  Not bad or even wrong (I don’t think there’s any benefit to arguing whether Christ rose from the dead or not, what matters is the meaning behind the teaching) just misdirected.  I began to think it takes us too far out of the Earth, or off the Earth, however one would say it.  There’s not enough emphasis on the ground, too much in the air. Maybe that’s due to the inevitable evolution of the religion, I don’t know.

Then one day I had a stray thought about how babies are made and it all kind of came together.  When I say “how babies are made” I don’t mean how babies are made.  I mean where the mass that makes up our bodies comes from.  I pictured a sperm and an egg and how minuscule, microscopic actually, they are and how fast they grow.  Now since mass is neither created nor destroyed, just like energy, it has to come from somewhere.  That’s where the ribosomes come in.  Ribosomes take microscopic pieces of matter and join them together to create protein.  Literally they build our bodies out of matter.  That matter comes from the food we eat.  It doesn’t spontaneously appear.  The food we eat, whether it’s vegetable or animal, comes from the soil.  We are literally assembled out of Earth and animated by the energy of the sun.

Then it struck me.

The Earth is conscious.  Because we are conscious and we are literally the Earth.  I don’t know exactly what to do with that epiphany yet but I’m working on it.

Losing My Religion

This little video has fundamentally changed the way I think.  It’s a real-time animation of a ribosome making a protein.

Rough Week

It’s been a bit touchy around the home place this past week.  We started the laundry room remodel (which is the next to last room remaining) and finally finished it today.  The pantry is inside the laundry room and has been missing a door since we moved in.  So we added one. We put down new flooring and painted the walls and the cabinets.  We also painted the closet doors from the rest of the house.  It’s been quite a beehive of activity.  Now it’s just the kitchen to go.  We’re ordering cabinets from Ikea this week so we can catch their 20% off sale and save about $900.  

And I’ve been a real jerk to my husband this week too.  There’s a reason but that reason is not him.  

On a brighter note, there’s only two more weeks in this session of school and then I’m off for the summer.  So friggin’ fantastic!  Nine hours next semester and I’m done.

Visiting The Writing Group Again

Got a note the other day asking if I wanted to revisit a writing group I attended briefly.  So this Wednesday I will be at the YMCA hobnobbing with the people who produce my favorite drug – the written word.  I can’t wait.

Human After All

Finally admitted to weariness and dropped a class.  Well, more like postponed it until next semester.  I was trying to decipher the instructor’s requirements and realized I had missed a discussion post already, which was really no big deal as it only counted for one point but that coupled with some really unrealistic expectations pushed me over the edge.  Or maybe made me realize just how tired I am?  Either way, I popped over to the academic calendar and saw that tomorrow is the last day to drop with a 100% refund of tuition, so I did.  And it feels GREAT!  Hahaha.  That means 12 hours this semester instead of 15, and 9 hours next semester instead of 6.

I Have Hope Again

No, not about school, or work, or even the sequester.  I have hope for the future of the human race.

That’s right, the human race.  Big words I know but I’ve been feeling big despair since I read that one of the last thing James Lovelock (the originator of the Gaia theory) said was it’s too late for humans.  I basically agreed with him up until a few minutes ago.  I’ve been laboring under the belief that climate change had passed the tipping point, or soon would, and that we (we being the human race) would not have to guts to give up our cars and fossil fuels in time to stop it.  It’s really been disheartening.

But I recently watched a few Youtube videos.

What?

Yes.

I suggest that you watch them too.  I’m linking to them in order of (my definition of) importance.

Allan Savory

Seth Itzkan

Article with embedded video

Here’s the long and short of it, if we manage the world’s grasslands like nature does (whack me in the head, what???) the build up of soil over one generation would sequester enough carbon to return us to pre-industrial levels… AND feed the same amount or more people!

Quick fact, nearly half of all the corn and soybeans grown in the United States goes to feed cattle in feedlots.  If we converted just the land that is now being used for that percentage of crops into permanent pasture it would support the same amount of cattle, eliminate the need for the amount of natural gas supplied fertilizer, reduce the number of diesel machines, reduce the need for that diesel, reduce the river pollution from bovine fecal run off, and reduce the carbon in the atmosphere through soil buildup.

We’ve been looking to technology when we should have been looking to Nature.  NATURE!

I fully intend to become a Holistic Management and Planned Grazing zealot.  Zealot I say!  I hope that you can put up with it.  I hope even more that you will visit the links and tell everyone that you possibly can.

Turns out it’s not too late, we were just wrong… again.