Why Should I Live?

     "In the very act of asking that question, you are seeking reasons for your convictions, and so you are committed to reason as the means to discover and justify what is important to you.  And there are so many reasons to live!

     As a sentient being, you have the potential to flourish.  You can refine your faculty of reason itself by learning and debating.  You can seek explanations of the natural world through science, and insight into the human condition through the arts and humanities.  You can make the most of your capacity for pleasure and satisfaction, which allowed your ancestors to thrive and thereby allowed you to exist.  You can appreciate the beauty and richness of the natural and cultural world.  As the heir to billions of years of life perpetuating itself, you can perpetuate life in return.  You have been endowed with a sense of sympathy─the ability to like, love, respect, and show kindness─and you can enjoy the gift of mutual benevolence with friends, family, and colleagues.

     And because reason tells you that none of this is particular to you, you have the responsibility to provide to others what you expect for yourself.  You can foster the welfare of other sentient beings by enhancing life, health, knowledge, freedom, abundance, safety, beauty, and peace.  History shows that when we sympathize with others and apply our ingenuity to improving the human condition, we can make progress in doing so, and you can help to continue that progress."

-  Stephen Pinker.  Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.  Penguin Books, 2018, p. 4.  

[Dr. Pinker was asked this question "Why should I live?" by a young woman at a public lecture he was giving.]

How to Live a Good Life: Advice from Wise and Respected Persons

Gardening Information for Vancouver, Washington

It is now raining heavily in Vancouver, Washington.  The Cascades will get some heavy snow at the higher altitudes.  Temperatures in the 40's.  

The annual average rainfall (AAR) in the different places I have lived is of note for me:

1946-1967  Unincorporated East Los Angeles, Bandini Neighborhood/Varrio,
                  City of Commerce, Southern California   AAR = 15”
1948-1958  Karen grew up in Alexandria, Central Indiana   AAR = 42"
1969-1973  Biloxi, Mississippi   AAR = 65”
1973-1983  Bell Gardens, Southern California   AAR =  15”
1983-1998  Hacienda Heights, California   AAR = 15”
1998-2017  Red Bluff, Northern California   AAR = 25”
2017–         Vancouver, Southwestern Washington, Northwest USA  AAR = 42”


Vancouver, Washington, is rated as USDA Agricultural Zone 8B.

Zone 8b means that the average minimum winter temperature is 15 to 20 °F. 

Gardening Information for Vancouver, Washington:  

Understanding your gardening environment is essential to success.  What are the climate conditions in your area during a year's cycle?  What is the soil like?
What kinds of plants are grown successfully in your area?  What nurseries are nearby.  

Vancouver, Washington, USA, Zip Code: 98662

Hardiness Zone:  Zone 8a: 10F to 15F

Average First Frost:  October 21 - 31

Average Last Frost:  April 1 - 10

Koppen-Geiger Climate Zone:  Csb - Warm-Summer Mediterranean Climate

Ecoregion:  3a - Portland Vancouver Basin

Palmer Drought Index:  Extremely Moist

Average Annual Rainfall:  43.55 inches

Heat Zone Days:  Rare Over 86F 

Elevation:  171 feet above the Pacific Ocean

Soil:  

Nurseries:  Yard and Garden, Shorty's, Tsugawa in Woodland, Lowe's and Home Depot.  

General Geography: 

The Pacific Ocean and Astoria, Oregon, is 100 miles to the West from Vancouver.
The south side of the City of Vancouver is the Columbia River, and across the river is Portland, Oregon.  The Cascade range and Columbia Gorge is to the East.  Looking north: 165 miles to Seattle, 494 miles to Vancouver, Canada; 105 miles to Olympia, and 45 miles to Mt. St. Helens.  

January Average: 33F low, 46F high, 6" Rain

February Average: 35F low, 50F high, 4.99" Rain

March Average: 37F low, 56F high, 4.38" Rain

April Average:  40F low, 60F high, 3.28" Rain

May Average:  45F low, 67F high, 2.67" Rain

June Average:  50F low, 72F high, 1.88" Rain

July Average:  53F low, 79F high, .8" Rain

August Average:  57F low, 82F high, .5" Rain

September Average:  49F low, 75F high, 1.91" Rain

October Average:  42F low, 64F high, 3.41" Rain

November Average:  38F low, 52F high, 6.49" Rain

December Average:  34F low, 46F high, 6.68" Rain

Yearly Averages:  42F low, 62F high, 43.55" Rain


The Spirit of Gardening

Gardening in Red Bluff, California

Colors in the Garden: Vancouver, WA

Gardening in Vancouver, Washington

Revealing the Human Body

I have attended two of the Human Bodies Revealed exhibits.  The first exhibit was in Redding, California, at the Turtle Bay Museum, where I also conducted three introductory Qigong classes.  The second exhibit was at the OMSI museum in Portland, Oregon.  The OMSI exhibit was quite large and impressive, and well attended.  I am a supporter of more education in the medical sciences and technologies.  

Green Way Research

Ways to Improve Our Lives

Onward in America

Over, 145,000,000 million Americans voted in last Tuesdays national elections.  Joe Biden and Kamala Harris gathered 75,000,000 votes and will be inaugurated in January of 2021.  Karen and I voted for the Democrats.  

I started voting in 1967.  I have never heard any President, win or loose, say the American voting process was rigged, a fraud, or that an election was stolen.  Shame on you, Mr. Trump, for your disrespect for our democratic process.  How undignified a looser, and such a rude and contrarian President.  

One in five coronavirus patients develop mental health problems. Unfortunately, might President Trump be struggling with depression, insomnia, anxiety, aberrant thinking, etc. Hopefully, others will help him return to better health and transition to being antother ex-President. https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/longevity/525421-one-in-five-coronavirus-patients-develop-mental-illness

The real "Blue Wall": California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and likely Arizona. 105 Electoral votes, 38% of the 270 total. The popular vote from the "West Blue Wall" was significantly responsible for the 5,000,000 vote lead in the popular vote overall for President-Elect Joe Biden. The West Coast support for Biden/Harris was very strong!

From the Front Porch 2

Creating A Raised Bed Garden Over Grass

On the west side of our home, there are a few pruned shrubs near the house, then there is unwatered grass in the side lawn down to the street curb.  There are no trees or shrubs in this area of the west side lawn to block the direct sunlight all afternoon.  I wanted to convert some of this unused sunny ground into a raised bed vegetable garden for future planting.    

I started working in 9/2019, and created the raised bed you see me sitting on below.  I've been working in 11/2020 on expanding that first raised bed garden.  Thus far, I have added 52 square feet of new raised bed garden space this month.  

How?  Method?   I lay down the concrete blocks (16"x8"x8") in the pattern desired.  Then I lay cheap doubled cardboard over the grass.  On top of the cardboard I add, at various times in the year: small wood chips, leaves from our sweet gum tree, grass clippings, composted cow manure, kitchen vegetable garbage, bags of raised bed soil, back yard soil from digging, bags of vegetable and flower soil, 16-16-16 fertilizer, , etc.- in short, organic materials.  I get my blocks and bags of organic material from Ace Hardware or Lowe's in the nearby Orchards' neighborhood.

Here is how the west side raised bed garden looked in August-September 2020.  We enjoyed eating many tomatoes, squashes, peppers, zucchini, garlic, onions, and cabbages.  We also enjoyed sunflowers, nasturtiums, marigolds, and other summer annuals.  

 

September 2020

There are a few pictures below that show some of the ongoing process of creating an expanded raised garden bed in 2020-2021.  

"We seem to have lost contact with the earlier, more profound functions of art, which have always had to do with personal and collective empowerment, personal growth, communion with this world, and the search for what lies beneath and above this world."
- Peter London, No More Second Hand Art, 1989 

For me, this gardening project involves my personal empowerment: gets me moving, keeps me physically active, provides for regularly scheduled enjoyable work assignments, and allows me to create something useful pretty much on my own.  Family members help a little and we all share in the beauty and productive output of the new raised bed garden.  I always have personal growth in my knowledge and appreciation by doing, by refining my planning skills, by using good judgments to balance means and ends, and in creating something beautiful.  Gardening generally brings people into closer communion with fundamental aspects of our world- a communion of touch with the soil and the spirits of the seasons.  Here I searched beneath the new fertile soil; and, from above, maximum sunlight.  Here I searched with my own hands and body by nurturing fertile soils; integrated with a few aspects of the scope of the mind of gardening language and gardening tradition far above me.  

"Nothing is more completely the child of art than a garden."
- Sir Walter Scott

Gardening and Art

The Spirit of Gardening

From the Front Porch 1

I plan to start two series of posts about our home gardening experiences in Vancouver, Washington.  We moved here in July of 2017 from a rural home south of Red Bluff, California.  We have maintained gardening activities in all the homes we have lived for over five decades.  

The first series will be titled "From the Front Porch."  Posts in the series will be numbered.

The second series will be titled "From the Back Porch."  Posts in the series will be numbered.  

My Spirit of Gardening website has been online since 2000.  

Karen and I gardened on five acres of land 
south of rural Red Bluff, California from 1998-2017

We maintain a large sweet gum tree (Liquidambar styraciflua), in our current 2020 front yard.  It was pruned a little last spring by Clark County road crews before the street was repaved this past summer.  We enjoy this lovely large deciduous tree.  Its autumn colors are quite spectacular.  

Remember to ...

 

George Carlin (1937-2008) was an American comedian and social critic who became popular in the 1970's and 1980's.  His second wife died early in 2008, and George followed her, dying in July 2008 of heart failure.  He did is last comedy routine in Las Vegas a week before he died.  

Here is one short essay by George Carlin:  

"The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.

Remember to spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever.

Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.

Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.

Remember, to say, 'I love you' to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.

Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again.

Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

And always remember, life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by those moments that take our breath away.

George Carlin

Entheogenic Use of Cannabis

 

Here is an excerpt from a longer article titled "The Entheogenic Use of Cannabis," from Wikipedia, 2020.  The agricultural history of marihuana growing and its uses all around the world is succinctly covered in the article.    

"Cannabis has served as an entheogen—a chemical substance used as an entheogen—a chemical substance used in religious or spiritual contexts^[1]—in the Indian subcontinent since the Vedic period dating back to approximately 1500 BCE, but perhaps as far back as 2000 BCE. Cannabis has been used by shamanic and pagan cultures to ponder deeply religious and philosophical subjects related to their tribe or society, to achieve a form of enlightenment, to unravel unknown facts and realms of the human mind and subconscious, and also as an aphrodisiac during rituals or orgies.^[2] There are several references in Greek mythology to a powerful drug that eliminated anguish and sorrow. Herodotus wrote about early ceremonial practices by the Scythians, thought to have occurred from the 5th to 2nd century BCE. Itinerant Hindu saints have used it in the Indian subcontinent for centuries.^[3] Over the last few decades hundreds of archaeological and anthropological items of evidence have come out of Mexican, Mayan and Aztec cultures that suggest cannabis, along with magic mushrooms (psilocybin), peyote (mescaline) and other psychoactive plants were used in cultural shamanic and religious rituals.^[2] Mexican-Indian communities occasionally use cannabis in religious ceremonies by leaving bundles of it on church altars to be consumed by the attendees.^[4]" 

Here was an October 2020 Facebook Post of mine:

I favor the Federal decriminalization of marihuana. In the State of Washington, since 2012, marihuana farms are prospering, tax revenues are growing from pot sales, investors in commodities are benefitting, law enforcement can focus on more important matters, people have more access to new CBD products, tourists are attracted to our state, and some folks can just enjoy a pleasant puff now and then purchased at a local pot shop. The Federal marihuana laws are unnecessary, costly, unjust, and out of date. I don’t smoke or drink now, but others can now purchase and use marihuana in Washington without being treated as a criminal. Many Democrats, Independents, and Libertarians support the Federal descheduling of cannabis.

https://potguide.com/washington/marijuana-laws/