SCENES OF A MERCY KILLING

 

        Up here on the ridge, Top of the World as it is called, we've suffered a loss. It was a mercy killing.

    There's a camaraderie up here, sharing the highest elevation between California Highway 1 and the expanding Pacific ocean. We've all kept an eye on this long time resident, worrying. Death has been stalking the slopes of the Santa Lucia Mountains.

    Drought, exacerbated by climate change, is killing our trees including our rare culture of Monterey Pine.

        Comparing the recent shot above to the 6 year old photo in the header of this post, you can see the deterioration in the regal crown of the hill, a participant in so many of the photos I've shared from up here.        

    She's been ailing, but we've all been trying to will her back to health. These trees have shallow roots, and when Pacific storms gale, they uproot, falling on houses and power lines.

    Life expectancy for the Monterey Pine is 80 to 100 years.

            I asked how old is this tree? The warden of death told me 80.

        The old double trunk Pine stands in the corner of a field, a couple of lots north our home. Someone told the property owner she was a risk, sick and dying and "trouble waiting to happen." So the warden and his crew came back to the ridge. 

        Crows have launched from and rested on these branches for decades. I've see young hawks give flight from them. California Quail have sped around its trunk. Wild turkeys have taken refuge or conducted their warfare in its underbrush. Woodpeckers have been frequent residents. Countless other species of bird have paused there. It is a tower on the ridge.

        She's been an icon of our western vista and one of the elders of the ridge. She and her aviary were here long before us, or the homes that dot the summit, a crown of rock and sandstone.

        Lana and our neighbor Lois, a birder extraordinaire, were talking about how sad it is, how that something that is supposed to be, is gone. I'm ahead of the story.

        What I can do now is show you the end of this long time Cambria dweller. 

        The wardens of it's final day were careful and professional. Their's was to remove a hazard. Ours was to pay respect, to watch to the end.

          Reader alert: what follows is a detailed look at the killing of a tree.

            

 

The manpower was augmented.

Excised limbs had no time to rest on mother earth.

They cut and trimmed higher into the old friend who must have sensed her time was running out as she created a prolific crop of cones.

The vivisection was done with precision.

The next three frames catch the fall.

The men match wits with nature, using calculations to undo what stands tall. 

The machine, the final resolution of this life, is beastfully disrespectful.

As we watched we learned more than the double tree was to die.

As limbs rained down the sky grows somber.

The wardens again play the angles like masters.

Branches that took decades to reach the sky, to offer up new generations of offspring in cones, are now merely brush to be moved.

The mercy kill is still incomplete.

There is no shortage skill on display.

Carefully the denuded co-joined trunks were topped, the lines were set and final cuts were made.

The earth shook and cast up rising clouds when at last she fell.

Even in death, the icon of the hill was formidable.

And then there was only this.

        I'm sorry for the birds and, bobcats, coyote, deer, skunk and raccoons who shared this proud old lady in seeking cover, shade or perhaps enjoying its prominent pose. Even in her decline she was lovely.

Look at what we  miss.

        There is a whole in the sky and an emptiness in our hearts. 

        There is no shortage of life to lament these days, so perhaps our sadness at the end of this tree is silly, but I think not.

        She was part our daily life, a presence, since our arrival in California. I worry she is gone before her time. 

        

        See you down the trail.

The True American Story

 

    We need to widen the lens and we need more daylight on America's original sin. Strong people own up to the truth. This might be the time.

        Confronting racial tragedy, an increasing number of Americans are warming up to the idea of reparations. In some places the process is happening.

    As the discussion unfolds we need to set the starting date beyond 1619. The 1619 Project, an ambitious undertaking by the New York Times and developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, 

    "aims to reframe the country's history by placing the consequence of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United State's national narrative."

    Movement conservatives and old fashioned white racists,  are apoplectic about the educational programs and intent of 1619. Too, they are foaming about an old academic idea, Critical Race Theory (CRT). More about CRT later. My complaint about 1619 is that it's myopic.

the first victims

    The starting date for discussions of reparations should be moved back to the late 1400's, certainly the 1600's as European colonialists and trading companies continued a genocide of indigenous people in addition to the slaving that would stain our national character and pervert our destiny. 

    To be fair, reparation analysis must encompass the formation of the American colonies and fledgling federal system of the United States when it engaged in criminal behavior, theft, fraud and murder of those who lived here.

    The kidnapping, buying and selling of Black people and the centuries of its damaging legacy must be accounted for, but our egregious national history began before that and is larger than just the abhorrent period of slavery.

    When talking about reparations, we must discuss the theft of the very land we call home and we should atone for the evil our forebears did. Native people, their culture and the consequence of their treatment must also be at the "center of our national narrative."

      The symbols painted on the stone stand above the middle fork of the Kaweah River in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. They are a legacy of the Potwisha who lived in a village near the stone. They were a subgroup of the Monache or Mono people who were there around 1350.

      A hike here roams through land also occupied by the Yokuts and the Tubatulabal people. They were 2 of the approximately 600 tribes that populated what we call North America. 

     When a lost Christopher Columbus landed in this hemisphere there were some seven to ten million people living north of the Rio Grande.

 

    Our hikes have taken us to "kitchen" areas. These are mortars where native people ground and pulverized or refined food materials. Today they make fascinating visits to history.

        In this space some months ago I suggested we set aside 25 years for a time of national reconciliation, beginning with years of establishing the full accounting of history and the airing of all grievances, through a series of hearings in every state. 

        Once the record is established, and the truth is known the nation would enter a time of discussion including deliberations of reparations. It is the view of this old reporter that is the only way we will heal and resolve our divide.

        Generations hence, knowing the full history, will be better prepared to live with truth and each other.

    

    President Biden said it perfectly:

    "Democracy is more than a form of government. It is a way of being, a way of seeing the world. Democracy means the rule of the people, the rule of the people---Not the rule of monarchs, not the rule of the moneyed, not the rule of the mighty-literally, the rule of the people." 

        It is true this experiment of government is in a fight for its life. Democracy is under threat from authoritarianism and autocracy. One of our major political parties has become an enemy of the State.

      The republican party is in the words of historian Jon Meacham "irrational." It is  without platform or principle. Republicans have displayed abuse to the democracy, a lack of honor and disgusting cowardice. The old GOP is long dead. This party is symptomatic of the rise of aggressive ignorance.

        Perhaps this is a way forward. Either the President appoints a Commission, or the House and Senate appoint Select Committees, or both options, to investigate the 1/6 insurrection. In either case, Republicans should be appointed to the Commission and/or Committee.

        At the bludgeoning of Mitch McConnell Republicans are trying cover up and ignore culpability and seriousness of the insurrection. I wish that arrogance and naked lust for power were criminal, but future generations will see him and Republicans for the deserters and Judas like apostates they are. An appointment of a few republicans could help guide a just investigation and would in the end trump the Trump cult.

        Senators Romney, Portman, Sasse, Collins, Cassidy or Murkowski would certify a non political inquiry.

    

    When Black, and Latin kids were my classmates, friends and teammates, CRT meant cathode ray tube, the vacuum tube that enabled the new wonder of television. There were racial disparities and the civil rights movement was nascent.

    By the time this class was in high school the Democrats and Republicans were debating and then voting on the historic  Civil Rights Act of 1964. It passed in the Senate 73-27, but the party break down is illuminating.

    46 Democrats voted for it-21 voted against it. (69%-31%)

    27 Republicans voted for it-6 voted against it. (82%-18%)

    The House Vote was 290-130.

    Democrats 152 to 96  (61%-39%)

    Republicans 138 to 34  (80% - 20%)

    That kind of consensus does not exist. That kind of Republican party no longer exists. Gone are the days when each party had wings of liberals and conservatives. For more than a half a century republicans have twisted themselves into a tighter and tighter knot of absolutists driven by their right wing. 

crt is the new boogie man 

    Today the conservative to right wing of politics has gone back to the 1970s and collected writings of legal scholars looking at race and the law and have bloviated those academic theories and thoughts into a monster. CRT looks at sociology and legal rulings in trying to decipher racism. It examines how white supremacy, and racism relates to power through the law and how that can be changed. Conservatives reject underlying academic notions of communication and sociology. Some  reject the idea of racism being imbedded into social custom and practice.

    When the Civil Rights bill was passed with bi-partisan support conservatives opposed it. They drew boundaries and resisted progress. Many have continued to oppose the law and the follow-up Voting Rights Act of 1965. 

    The John Lewis Voting Rights Act is blocked now by republicans. Voter suppression is a republican strategy.

    As ugly and in need of healing as is our racial and cultural quagmire today, imagine how awful it could be and how many grievances there would be if those 1964 and 1965 acts had not been passed. It took a fight then. It will take a fight again to align with the aspirations of our democratic republic. But the times are more perilous.

the work of truth

    There is no longer an honorable second party that believes in American justice and tradition. There is however a belligerency of ignorance and the insanity of a belief in a lie.

  

    Until we tell the full story, the true American story we will be condemned to live with the consequence of our lack of honor, and to suffer the fate of unrepentant thieves, liars and killers.

    81 Million citizens deposed an evil regime. It will take that and more to hold the House, build in the Senate and clean out the vipers in several statehouses. 

    We can hope that republicans can somehow find a path back to American values and purge the fascists, racists, and authoritarian anti-democracy, dictator craving and Russian manipulated puppets and lackeys they are.

    There is truth to tell and hard work to do. 

    See you down the trail.