Blooming in the Desert

Prickly Pear blooms, marching into spring

The desert is a harsh, unforgiving, relentless, sometimes cruel, environment.  The Mojave Desert is especially harsh, so when Spring comes, I take this as my time to learn from nature the most fundamental and spiritual lessons of the year:  How to be my glorious self while living in a harsh, unforgiving, relentless, sometimes cruel, place.  

I have come to realize that most likely, my roots will remain planted here for the time being, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it is a tricky thing, transplanting a plant from one environment to a complete other environment and expecting it to flourish.  Especially a full-grown plant.  Ok, yes, I know I'm not a plant, and that adaptability is what makes us humans such fabulous creatures, the envy of all living things (except ants and cockroaches, of course....I listened in on the ants making their annual trek up to my back patio the other day, and I distinctly heard their marching tune: "P-shaw! P-shaw! Eat them apricots, Raw!"  But, I think adaptability has a component to it that in my case, when thinking about relocating to Norway, was missing:  Desperation.  Real desperation.  Not intellectual desperation born of angst and frustration born of lofty idealism.  But real, life/death situation desperation.  The kind my father had during the War in Poland.  The kind my cousin had in Communist Poland after the War.  The kind that could just kill your spirit if you let it and you know that this desperation will limit your lifespan by a measurable percentage.  The kind that finally whips out the gun and blows the challenges to smitherines, like Indiana Jones blowing away the dude with the knives. But, I have a good job.  We have a little money in the bank.  We have a cadre of friends and family.  


This is my life, and I'm actually ok with it.  I'm not ok with so much of my environment (ie: my country's government, politics, corporate welfare, lack of good gun control laws, etc.), but I have managed to flourish in spite of it all.  Just like these guys:

Cholla

Apache Blossom

I confess, I don't know this one

Mexican Bird of Paradise

Palo Verde tree

Yucca

Not sure the name, but the color is stunning

Datura

Desert Marigold

Bottle Brush

Yucca

Desert Cliff Rose

Wherever we find ourselves to be, I think it's imperative to make the most of who we are, regardless of what the environment offers for our nourishment.  Hell, if plants can make a go of what the Mojave has to offer, can't I find some solace in the midst of this wasteland we call our country?  

"Oops....I Did It Again"

Norway, again, tops the list for #1 place to be a mom  (Photo from NPR website)

Multiple Choice Question:  

1.  The title of this blog refers to:

a.  A Brittany Spears song.

b.  Mitt Romney talking to himself after making another speech blunder.

c.  Teresa, trying not to poke fun at her mother country.

d.  Norway topping the list again for the best place to be a mom.

e.  All of the above.

Norway continues to outperfom so many other developed countries in the race to be the best place to live, it's beginning to make me wonder if they're doping!  And where can we get our hands on some of their dope?  You know, the stuff that makes you actually believe that paying for a country that you really want to enjoy is money well spent;  that it's good to  trust others as well as yourself to obey laws so there can be some order; that a population who is well educated and healthy is better than a population that is overweight and drug-addicted, but "free";  that gun control is actually related to the incidence of gun-related deaths.....Oh well.

I have been thinking lately that it would be nice to get some sort of movement for sanity going here in the U.S. 

But the headlines of late just make me shake my head:

Politicians gridlocked over how to pay for a decrease in interest rates on student loans:  eliminating large portions of women's health care or increased taxes on oil companies?  (Chevron's first-quarter profit rose to $6.47 billion, or $3.27 per share, from $6.21 billion, or $3.09 per share, a year earlier...that's a 4% rise).  Guess who wants which?  I think a Norwegian would just look at this stalemate in complete bafflement.  (What's a quarter of a billion $$?  About $250,000,000....that's a LOT of money...in the pockets of whom?)

Department of Interior head, Ken Salazar,  gives the go-ahead to Anadarko, a Texas oil company to drill 3,675 natural gas wells in the Southern Utah Uintah County, using the method of fracking.  Everyone is excited about this, even the Wilderness Alliance....hmmmm....all the wells are on public lands already leased by Anadarko, and many of them are to be on already established well pads.  All this, while the jury is still out on the safety of the method of fracking for removing natural gas on aquafers, etc. 

These are just two examples of oil companies given sweetheart deals to lease PUBLIC lands, and I know they are sweetheart deals, because, um....how DOES Chevron make that much profit? 

The reason Norway can afford to provide such a sweetheart deal for their inhabitants, is because they feel that people, like um, citizens, are an important part of the country and that the resources that belong to that country belong to the citizens.  Therefore, when a company decides to go about extracting these resources, yes, they should be allowed to make a profit after they pay the costs for R&D, but they should always remember that those resources are not THEIRS.  They belong to the citizens, and therefore, the citizens should share in that profit.  And here is how it is done:

"Norway's income tax on oil and gas profits has two components: A 28 percent tax on profits (the same income tax charged on all businesses in Norway), and a special 50 percent tax on profits from offshore oil and gas production, for a total tax of 78 percent. (All of Norway's oil and gas production comes from offshore federal leases.)

"It's stable, and still they earn money," said an official with the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, explaining that companies continue bidding on Norwegian oil and gas leases, despite the substantial tax bite. The profits tax is assessed on earnings in Norway, unlike Alaska which assesses its corporate income tax on a proportional share of producers' worldwide earnings." (Larry Persely, Federal Coordinator of the Alask Natural Gas Transportation Projects, September 2011).

D'ja see that?  78% tax?  Chevron would blow an oil-well gasket if they had to do that.  But that, my friend, is how the #1 country for funding their education, health care, and social services does it, while STILL allowing corporations like Statoil to make a decent profit. 

Americans, when will you wake up and realize that you do NOT live in a free market capitalist system? 

Norwegians! Arizona is hazardous to your health!

Alexander Dale Oen (photo by David Gray Landov)

Let me open today's post with sincere condolences to the family of this outstanding athlete who died inexplicably in his Flagstaff hotel shower after a training session.  He was training for the upcoming Olympic games in London, and had been doing remarkably well, according to his coach.   After not showing up for dinner, his roomates went up to the room to find him in the shower.  No trauma was noted, no health condition was known...and the autopsy has not yielded any new developments as to what may have been the cause.  He was only 26, and from what I hear, was a wonderful and charitable person and a dedicated athlete.  


We just never know when our time is coming, and it is at least somewhat more of a comfort when such a tragedy strikes someone who is at least truly living their dreams.  Not that it makes it less painful.  It just makes the life that is lost more "whole", if I can put it that way.  It is just plain sad.


On another bizarre note involving Arizona, we have the case of John Kristoffer Larsgard, who is now serving 7 1/2 years for accidentally going the wrong way down a one-way street, freaking out, nearly hitting some people at a festival, getting beaten in the face by an angry pedestrian, and finally coming to a stop while police drew their guns, forcing him from the car.   This all happened in September of 2011.  

John Kristoffer Larsgard, after getting hit
by a pedestrian, through his car window.

I haven't found out if the guy who hit Larsgard has been charged with assaut and battery, but so far, it does not look like it. 

Anyway, my point is how strangely different our countries are when it comes to meting out "punishment".  Here's a guy, who made a mistake, tried to get away from a crowd (which contained someone who did this to him), was driving erratically in order to make his escape (while blood was flowing from his face), only to be captured up by the local police, and somehow found guilty of a crime deserving of 30 years in prison (um, this is more than the maximum term in prison in Norway for ANY crime...Breivik excluded), but out of the kindness of Arizona's justice system, he's only going to get 7 1/2 years.  Did I mentioned he was with his visiting mother, a nurse from Oslo?  Did I mention he was a med student in Chicago?  The prosecution brought up other instances in which Mr. Larsgard had been involved in previously unseemingly bad behavior over the past couple of years, none of which involved convictions, but were used to paint a picture of some monster behind the wheel of a lethal weapon.  

Again, he was also being mobbed by apparently violent people (note: his face) who were frightened by his poor driving, so...oh yeah, "Stand your Ground" only works if it's a gun you're using, not a car.  

At any rate, my point is that in this country, we need to get a grip on what the word reasonable means.  We love the word extreme.  Extreme sports.  Extreme chili!  Extreme savings! Extreme trucks (complete with truck-nutz)!  Extreme alcoholic drinks.  Extreme energy drinks.  Extreme wrestling.  You name it, we do it with extreme!  Even our sentencing.  Extreme does not require much thought or discussion.  Just go to the end of the spectrum and there you are.  Even powerful Republicans are in fear of losing their seats because they are not extreme enough!  But the word extreme is used synonomously with standing by your convictions.  Those who do not behave in an extreme fashion must be wishy-washy and wimpy.

See what I mean?

Being reasonable means that you have to engage the deeper thought process.  You have to consider context.  C'mon, America!  Weren't you enamored by "Les Miserables?"  Show the love!  Or did you miss the point?  

So, Mr. Larsgard will spend the next 7 1/2 years of his life, "thinking about what he has done", instead of finishing med school, while his mother returns home, feeling like she has abandoned her son.  He will cost Arizona hundreds of thousands of dollars.  He will be a benefit to no-one for the next 7 1/2 years.  The fallout is pretty enormous, if you ask me.  America gets painted like a tyrannical country where armed police run rampant and extreme justice is carried out in order to mollify mobs of extremists.  


I suppose the upside of this were the many comments on any website carrying the story by folks who actually believe that indeed, this was a miscarriage of justice.  I know that Norwegians are really being dragged through the ringer of the cultural mirror they are looking through during the Breivik trial.  So much about their country and countrymen, their political system, their social system, so very much is being brought into question while their justice system tries to make sense out of that horrible tragedy and the twisted (or not?) mind that carried it out with no remorse.  Nothing, nothing is black and white.  I really don't care what it is your are talking about.  And for that, Norwegians are to be given due credit for trying to get at what is reasonable.  


It's a long, hard, painful, intellectually and morally exhausting road, but when it is over, no rock will have been unturned, and what emerges will at least have stood the test of rigorous vetting.  It is not an efficient process.  But, we know what haste makes.  


I hope Mr. Larsgard can appeal.  I wish the Norwegian government would intervene, but alas....they do not interfere in the justice systems of other countries.  And if Mr. Larsgard ends up serving the entire 7 1/2 years, I hope he can forgive us.  As an American, though, it sure gets old having to keep asking for forgiveness for our actions.