Le Sequoit

You Crack Open a Window, Honey, while I Throw another Log on the Fire

I have had some discussion with my little Hun about the post several back in which I may have been a little over-zealous in my denunciation of a couple from “God’s Country” (Old Style beer) and their sustainable farm, inn, energy plan, etc. I will now commit an act that William Safire tells you is a violation of the 11th rule you should be aware of when reading a column—I will throw you the knuckleball that is an uncharacteristic source—while I admit that I am guilty of the action covered by his 12th rule, not keeping one’s sights on the large target.

Properly chagrined (and I’ll decide what level is proper), I realize that my exasperation triggered during the WPR interview with the aforementioned aubergistes is more generally borne of a sense that so many well intended reformative efforts are in the large picture only distractions from the problem at hand.

I will get to my point, the environment is doomed. If Wisconsin Public Radio thinks they are doing us a service by talking about energy sufficient bed and breakfast inns in the “land of sky blue waters” (Hamm’s beer) then perhaps they should take a newspaper break, because this is what I read in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Sunday:

Companies that make products for export should continue getting help from the weak dollar, which makes U.S. products less expensive overseas. Milwaukee's Joy Global Inc., which has been shipping its mining equipment to China and Russia, is one company capitalizing on an in-demand product at a time when the value of the dollar is down.

This is part of the good news, that the local economy is somewhat buoyed by a bourgeoning demand for coal mining equipment in Russia and China. What does that tell you about the future of greenhouse gases? All you need to know. So, while the Chinese get ready to help us turn the heat up on our already overcooking planet, the right is telling us we can’t afford not go along, the left is “radicalizing” by choosing as their leader a centrist upper middle class doctor from Vermont and the people’s radio is talking windmills, we accelerate the exportation of the irony that our biggest comfort and greatest threat are one and the same, the single family home in the suburbs.

You may have noticed that I have renamed this blog. “Sprinkle Liberally” was a result of the election campaign in that I had to express my extreme displeasure with conservatives, but my self-association with liberalism as practiced hereabouts is tenuous at best. Red and blue, black and white, it seems that to Americans everything has to be a simple as a football game or a fraternity tug of war. Everyone and everything has to be labeled. Everyone has to be thoroughly and at all times in the chosen camp. We land on each issue according to the side we have chosen, rather than the other way around.

It’s not good. It’s not productive. It’s not progressive because it’s not conducive to reason. So now the blog is called “le sequoit”. Sequoit is a French approximation of an Algonquin word meaning “winding”. I don’t know (and invite correction) if this can be masculine but le sequoit means, at least to me, the winding. (as in McCartney’s “The Long and Winding Road”)

“What’s up with the French?” Bill O’Reilly (C) might ask. Well, for one thing, before Ouisconsin was American it was French, not English. For another thing, I happen to like what I know of France and the French. In addition to the obvious contributions in music, drama, art, fashion, mathematics, science, cuisine, political theory, medicine and so forth I kind of like the way their women wear their hair. And then there’s that part when they don’t like what the government is pulling so they all stay home and let the capitalists sweat out what a loss of 2% of GDP will mean if someone doesn’t act in a meaningful way like, now. I love that part.

As far as I can tell, the major crime the French have committed is living too close to the Germany that—while the US and England stood by and watched—built and turned a war machine on them. Twice. That and they get a little cranky sometimes when we get all out of shape because they don’t feel like explaining to American tourists in English that there is no parking lot for the Eiffel Tower like there is in Las Vegas.

Winding, indeed! What a mess this post is! Anyway, I apologize to serendipitous farmers everywhere and recommend they “bioneer” their own radio station. Thanks to the missus for being right and the rest of you can view me as the anti-thing of the Liberal-Conservative machine for now, whatever that might mean.

posted by sequoit @ 9:39 AM