dancing merrily in the new, old-fashioned way

Seasonal salutations to all our readers. Many thanks for visiting, and now Gladys the Matron Angel there in the background will play a Christmas time polka on her accordion for you.  Carols, originally, were not just meant to be belted out by a choir but also had a rhythm and a beat that one dance to.  Any respectable troupe of carollers will have a dancing fool designated.

super saturation or bit torrent

I know people near and far are unfortunately dealing with more devastating flooding, but it does come as a rather dramatic and menacing change from speculation over a white Christmas to having our little stream threatening to spill over the streets. All the heavy snows from the past week are melting fast and producing more water than the rivers and tributaries can handle, and though this is not the first or worst we’ve seen of it, it generally came in late winter and never this early.

The outlying fields then become an expansive inland sea as there’s too much water to soak up and the town’s landscape is transformed by this shimmering, temporary reflecting pool and little torrents turn before spring begins, but it all seems to be coming to soon and too frequently. It is strange to see the tolerance for the tipping point, the range that buffered imbalance, grow more and more narrow.  Improving environmental practices is always challenging because it is not just changed behaviours (good climate karma that may still not be enough to turn the tide) locally, though much evidence and hardship is a local matter—where ever local is, that makes change but rather globally, in attitude and deed, that can lessen negative effects and allow nature to heal.

cliffhanger

Loggerheads, not develop- ments or discourse regardless of tone, concerning the state of the budget and forward-policy regarding taxation and funding for prosecuting wars of all ilk in the US is diabolical in the detail and shortfalls, and despite whether trailing or leading discussion and coverage of the issue, I suppose that these particulars do not matter overmuch nor ever survive the next cycle of austerity American-style.

A polarized, frightful and fear-mongering legislature, with an array of cadet tentacles and inventive pseudopodia (ψευδοπόδια, false feet), is projecting away from any language of compromise, familiarly and characteristically stalling, a move taken from a playbook that could be transposed anywhere and for any episode, showdown that has passed recently and for the foreseeable future. Such inflexibility and laming division allows government to conveniently ignore the mandate of the people who they are supposed to represent and stoke other external pressures, like business and the markets, which always trump congressional indolence and force many hands. It is a vicious cycle of dismantling and up-building inverted, where the conventions razed or raised are the opposite of what’s in anyone’s long-term interest and more and more dulling with each passing deadline and limit.

central equatoria or space-time coordinates

We mostly take for granted the fact that we live in charted territory and that almost any route imaginable has been scouted out, the path is well-worn and clearly marked, and that the starting point and destination have fixed addresses, precise under any number of conventions, by the postal system, government and satellite telemetry. The planet’s newest nation, South Sudan, however (and with its capital Juba situated in a district called Central Equatoria, one might be excused for thinking one ought to be able to pin point whereabouts precisely), possesses a paucity of cartographical information about itself, which is a disservice to the young country in terms of understanding demographics, infrastructure and its own resources and moving forward after years of strife.

The lands of South Sudan, including geological data (albeit dated and limited) concerning where mineral and oil wealth might be found, have been mapped to a certain extent before, but since gaining independence from Northern Sudan, all records have been sequestered there and the former powers are not willing to share, possibly begrudging the break-away state success by ransoming decades old geological surveys, not to mention street maps. Students from universities in Juba and Berlin aim to stake South Sudan’s autonomy further by creating a new, advanced atlas of country and the environment, and they hope this collaboration helps the people not only better understand and describe their urban landscapes and know the value of what may lie undiscovered underneath but also understand how best to work the land (mapping in depth the crops that are grown on farms and how different seed fare) in a sustainable way and better care for the environment. Surveyors are constantly re-assessing and re-evaluating plots and parcels, and it is a base of knowledge that certainly deserves re-thinking from time to time but usually not something reinvented or made from scratch—questions of ownership of these charts and tables aside. Maybe having to literally and figuratively map one’s world is an occasion to treat those emergent features with utmost care.