Poem, for Wendell Berry

In our recent lives

We've seen so many times

When we've allowed things to be trashed.

Selling off pieces of our birthrights

Of earth's gifts, and the dignity of men and women, institutions

That once served the good.

We've watched, so often dumbstruck

As brutality reigned

Lies masqueraded as truths.

Mr. Berry, far senior to me

Holds his tongue no longer

Lets his words enact the moment.

Read on, see truth unvarnished

He's tired of waiting

Prods my consciousness awake.

                             

                                             wpm; 4-17-19

Now, read the poem "Questionnaire", by Wendell Berry, at:

 https://reflections.yale.edu/article/money-and-morals-after-crash/questionnaire

up-ending science, and news from montane glaciers

Two pieces of scientific work and the journalism linked to them are worthy of your attention:

EPA Science Panel Considering Guidelines That Up-end Basic Air Pollution Science

"Several members of a powerful science panel for the Environmental Protection Agency expressed doubt at a hearing Thursday about the long-established scientific consensus that air pollution can cause premature death."

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/28/707166015/epa-science-panel-considering-guidelines-that-upend-basic-air-pollution-science

In another discipline, we have had some information concerning melting montane glaciers and how they contribute to sea-level rise, but a new study takes a deeper view into "how much - and how quickly they're melting":

Photo by Wikim. Commons: Frankeman

Melting glaciers contribute a third of sea-level rise

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/world-mountain-glaciers-melting-sea-level-rise/

See the paper being discussed, in Nature:

Global glacier mass changes and their contributions to sea-level rise from 1961 to 2016
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1071-0