The Disappearance Of The Flora & The Fauna
As usual I watch TV.
Not news but documentary.
“Care and Sustenance of Nature”
Is the theme, wherein I learn
The world’s downfall is not the climate, wars or other,
But the disappearance of the flora
And the fauna.
Who knew? Not I, certainly.
With population out of hand,
We continue in our building,
Take the forests and its bounty.
Must we people mutiny?
In the forests are the flora and the fauna.
Insects, mosses, mushrooms, herbs;
All dependent on the flora.
All reliant on the fauna.
Population out of hand; swelling daily,
How to build for it more wisely?
Species dying out of hand,
We, the ostriches in sand,
Where lies duty, where lies blame?
Where lies power and restraint?
Where lies leadership, and who shall act?
I, you, we who lacked the facts?
Trump has plans to dig the Arctic.
There can be no Noah’s Ark. Bit
Rapes and drills
And why the hell do we need oil?
Will the planet turn into
A windblown, sterile, long dead ‘thing’
Hanging there somewhere in space?
Seen from out another planet, what will be its face?
Green or over-green? Impure for sure?
Caked and coated. Sun-blocked from atomic war.
Or it could be drowned by water.
What in hell can be/could be?
‘Hell on earth’ no more cliché
But Nature’s unconcerned reality.
Everything -- Thomas Chung
“Man did not weave the web of life. He is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web he does to himself.” -- Chief Seattle
Si'ahl (“Seattle”) was a si’ab (high status man) of the Dkhw'Duw'Absh (Duwamish) tribe that came into being when the "People of the Large Lake" merged with the “People of the Small Lake” as white settlers began to move into the area. Si’ahl (also known as “Stealth”) had seen George vancouver’s ships when the explored Puget Sound in 1792. The Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Langley in 1827 and Fort Nisqually (near Dupont) in 1833. French Catholic missionaries began arriving in 1839 and gave the si’ab the baptismal name “Noah” a decade later. Settlers began arriving in larger numbers in 1845, and in 1851 Luther Collins landed at the mouth of the Duwamish river and formally claimed it on 14 September 1851; 13 days later, en route to their claim, members of the Collins party met 3 of Arthur Denny’s scouts; Denny’s men claimed land on Alki Point but, after a difficult winter most of them relocated across Elliott Bay and founded Duwamps. One of the original settlers, David Swinson “Doc” Maynard, leased a vessel from Leonard Felker to transport wood to San Francisco. He became the first justice of the peace in King’s county, the area’s second lawyer, its first doctor, the government’s Indian agent, and one of the area’s major developers; among many other accomplishments he set up Mary Conklin’s brothel in Felker House; during the day she rented out unused rooms, including the ones used by the territorial court (she was known as Mother Damnable due to her ability to swear in English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Chinese). To form good relations with Si'ahl in 1852, Maynard had Duwamps “Seattle” in exchange for an annual payment to the chief as an advance against the discomfort caused to him after his death, due to the belief that the deceased were disturbed every time their name was mentioned. In 1854 Si'ahl met the territorial governor to discuss disputed lands and delivered an oration in his native Lushootseed, which someone translated into Chinook, which was then translated into English; another early developer, Henry A. Smith, took notes and, in 1887, published an enhanced version of it; in 1929 Clarence B. bagley reprinted it with some additions of his own; in the later 1960s noted translator/poet William Arrowsmith improved it by removing the Victorian influences in Smith’s version, which Ted Perry and John Stevens further adapted for “Home,” an environmentalist movie produced for the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission; in 1972 Dale Jones altered it for publication in “Environmental Action,” recasting it as a letter sent to president Franklin Pierce.
ReplyDeleteNoah's Ark (“Tevat Noaḥ” in Hebrew) was the ship which housed Noah ("rest" or "comfort") and his family and a portion of the animals from a world-engulfing flood. After being afloat for 150 days it came to rest in the “mountains of Arafat” in Turkey (traditionally Mt Mousis, the highest peak of the Armenian highland, although it was also identified as Mt. Judi in southeastern Anatolia); “Arafat” was the Assyrian Urartu, the kingdom that controlled the Lake Van region. (the largest lake in Turkey). The only other time the Hebrew word was used in the Bible was for the basket in which Moses was placed to float down the Nile; the word for the Ark of the Covenant, which carried the 10 commandments God gace Moses, was different. The account in “Genesis” resembles earlier Sumerian stories. The earliest fragmentary record of the flood (called “The Eridu Genesis” by historian Thorkild Jacobsen) was discovered in Nibru, modern Nuffar) but was composed ca. 1600 BCE; the gods decided not to save mankind from the impending disaster, but Zi-ud-sura (“life of long days") found out; the flood lasted a week until Utu (the Sun god) appeared; Zi-ud-sura created an opening in the boat, the animals disembarked, and Zi-ud-sura prostrated himself before Enlil (the god of wind, earth, and storms) and An (the sky-god), who gave him eternal life and took him to dwell in Dilmun for "preserving the animals and the seed of mankind." Zi-ud-sura of Shuruppak (“the healing place," modern Tell Fara, Iraq) was the last king of Sumer before the great deluge. A later Akkadian version identified Atra-Hasis [“exceedingly wise”] as the ark-builder. In the Akkadian epic of Gilgamesh, Enki (the god of water, knowledge, mischief, crafts, and creation) informed Utnapishtim ("he found life") that Enlil planned to send a flood to drown all life and instructed him to abandon his worldly possessions and create a giant ship, to be called The Preserver of Life, to save his relatives (and the craftspeople who constructed it), baby animals, and various grains and seeds. The boat was created in 8 days and floated on the flood for 12 days before it came to rest on Mt. Nisir (modern Pir Omar Gudrun in Iraqi Kurdistan). In the 3rd century BCE, Berossus, a priest of Bel Marduk, identified Enki as the titan Kronos and claimed that the boat landed in the "Corcyrean Mountains" of Armenia. Talmudic tractates “Sanhedrin,” “Avodah Zarah,” and “Zevahim” related that Noah tried to warn his neighbors but was ignored or mocked; in order to protect Noah, God placed lions and other ferocious animals to guard them from the wicked who tried to stop them from entering the ark; the ark itself admitted seven pairs of each clean animal and only two pairs each of unclean ones; the animals were the best of their species, and so behaved with utmost goodness and abstained from procreation, so that the number of creatures that disembarked was exactly equal to the number that embarked; Noah did not sleep during the voyage, since he had to spend all of his time caring for them. In the 3rd century St. Hippolytus of Rome wrote that male and female animals were separated by sharp stakes to prevent breeding. The Muslims adapted the story of “Safina Nūḥ” to meet their own theological needs. Nuh was sent to preach to his people to abandon idolatry and live pure lives, but when most of them refused he Was told to build a boat to save the faithful. Abd Allah ibn Abbas, a contemporary of Muhammad, wrote that Allah told Nuh to shape the boat like a bird's belly. In the 10th century Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn Masudi wrote that the voyage began at Kufa in central Iraq and circled the Kaaba before coming to rest; after the flood Allah commanded the Earth to absorb the water, and the portions which were slow in obeying received salt water in punishment and so became dry and arid, while the water which was not absorbed formed the seas.
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