Happy New Year! A Better Way?

Happy New Year! A Better Way?

Wow. New Year's Eve already. Time to look back, for a moment, before stepping forward into our new life in 2008.

As I've only been around since October, that makes things a little easier for me. But the pretty much universally-agreed-to calendar year has twelve months. That seems like a lot. But people are busy; they need time to get things done. Hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries. (Beyond "centuries" the reptile brain that both Polar Bears and Humans evolved from, gets unable-to-comprehend, stopped.)

Getting things done and made, I've learned, is what people, for better and for worse, have been evolved to do. Time. Now there's an interest of mine I need to add to my interests lists on my blog profile.

Now, on New Year's Eve, as we are poised to dip our toe into the eighth year of the first decade of this new 21st-century, could it be timely for Homo Sapiens to ask themselves this question: is there a better way?

Just for fun - with this being the new year and all, a time for new understandings - we looked up the definition of Homo Sapiens. Here is what it said: man, woman, human being; the scientific name for the only living species of the genus Homo. Wow. That's special.

Now with me being a Polar Bear, Ursus maritimus, I'm one of several species of Ursus or bears. But Sapiens are the only living species of the genus Homo. Hey man, wow. That makes you dudes, human beings, a one-of-a-kind unique species in your genus: Homo. But I suppose everybody knows that. So what? Well, you've gotta remember I'm a working Polar Bear, just doing my job, trying to figure things out.

So next we looked up sapient. It means wise, sagacious, full of knowledge, discerning. Sagacious? Now that, according to Websters New World Dictionary of the American Language means: keenly perceptive or discerning, shrewd, farsighted in judgment. Discerning, now how about that? Discern: to separate (a thing) mentally from another or others; recognize; make out clearly.

Now, don't you think that having those extra bells and whistles should separate people, Homo Sapiens, out from the rest of us beasts, wouldn't you think? Making you human folks sagacious, that is discerning and farsighted-in-judgment enough, to change and to demand change from our elected leaders, as in: there must be a better way!

Truly yours,

Polar Bear Witness
P.P.S. Please share the bear! www.polarbearwitness.blogspot.com

Reptile Brain

Reptile Brain

If Reptile Brain sounds like it would make a good name for a rock 'n' roll band, I would certainly agree, it is. In fact, there is a band in Madison called Reptile Palace Orchestra and they are, actually, quite good. They've been around for a number of years, I understand, and, maybe, if they named their band as a comment on human civilization - please forgive me if I offend anyone - perhaps they were prescient.

Prescient is a big word for a Polar Bear. But Monona was reading the New York Times Book Review earlier today, and that's where the word came up. The dictionary says it means: knowledge of things before they happen or come into being.

Speaking of reptiles crawling along, you may wonder where my bear brain is going with this. And where does this handsome couple fit in? Meet my new best friend, Raj. And his wife Tora.

We met Raj last week at the Atwood Community Center where he gave a presentation titled What You Can Do About Global Warming on a cold and snowy night. Even so, we wondered what - for an event that was well-advertised in the newspaper weeks ahead and held in a community of more than 250,000 people - the turn out of seven people meant? There was a gentleman from the power company, a gentleman from the Sierra Club, and three other gentlemen, including our friend, Michael Paul, and one of who we talked to after Raj's presentation, Ric.

Raj is a disciple of Al Gore and something called The Climate Change Project. theclimateproject.org Earlier this year Raj spent a few weeks attending the project's Nashville boot camp, so to speak, where he and others learned how to be foot soldiers, as it were, to spread the word of Gore, as presented in his book and movie, An Inconvenient Truth. The essence of the book, the movie and Raj's talk is basically: that billions of humans out there driving cars fueled by gas and heating homes and buildings with coal is overloading Earth's atmosphere with the consequence of way-too-much heating - our fair, and now-suffering planet - up.

Raj pointed to three things as major challenges to civilization that have contributed to global warming and that may have a role in determining our future fate: world population explosion, the fossil-fueled, rapid industrial/technical revolution, and our own way of thinking. In closing, Raj made this observation: "It's difficult to make these changes, to wrap our heads around these issues of human survival." And he posed this question to his audience of seven: "What's the disconnect?"

As the small audience broke up, Ric told me he had read that it was embedded in the behavior of our early human ancestors to harvest food, like shellfish, where-ever it could be found, and then, once the food was gone, these early humans would leave behind the emptied stocks, the despoiled shells and move on. Ric suggested that, perhaps, it was some primal behavior that had us, as a species, despoiling our place-on-Earth by burning the candle of CO2-emitting-fossil-fuel at both ends, polluting the fragile atmosphere we need to raise crops, drink water and to breathe, as though we could just, simply, pick up and move on.

Monona nodded her agreement and speculated: "Perhaps, as a species, we are kind of "frozen" within the limitations of our still-evolving reptile brains."

Truly yours,
~Polar Bear Witness
PS: Stay tuned to read more about this topic in our next blog: (Monona's Theory of the) Reptile Brain, Part Two

What We Can Do. Y Not?

What We Can Do. Y Not?
Madison East Side YMCA

November 26, 2007

Speaking of the Sierra Club, last night at the Y we met Patty.

She asked us if global warming had something to do with us being there. Patty told us that she re-uses the rinse water when she does her laundry. "With a family of five, we probably save thousands of gallons of water every year."

"And you know," Patty continued, "when they put in new exercise equipment here, I wondered why they didn't buy the kind of equipment that could power the lights."

"And the chlorine they use in the pool is a carcinogen. Salt water," she said, "which people use in both public and private pools for environmental and health reasons, would be a much better choice."

Based on my Polar experience, I certainly agree.

When we asked Patty if she worked for an environmental agency, she told us:
"No, but I'm a lifetime member of the Sierra Club. And every month in their newsletter they suggest ideas for reducing global warming, what we can do."

Truly,
~Polar Bear Witness
P.S. Please share the bear! www.polarbearwitness.blogspot.com

Take The Heat

Take The Heat

November 18, 2007

They say, "if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen."

And the other day we heard a voice on the radio say: "Hillary says she likes it in the kitchen."

Now that's something on which we can agree. Eating fresh food, in the kitchen or al fresco outdoors, with others or on my own, is one of my favorite things to do!

However, when Monona went into the sauna after swimming, I chose to stand outside beside the door.

Why anyone would want to go into a hot, dark box, then just sit there and bake, I just don't get. But humans are a strange species, as I'm continuing to learn.

The weather is getting colder now here in Madison, Wisconsin. This week it's supposed to get down to freezing temperature, which feels more like home to me.

I just hope people remember: the higher they set the heat in their homes and offices now, the more CO2 goes up the chimney, out into the atmosphere, and the hotter our already overheated Earth will get. Recent reports that scientific global warming projections have been way conservative means that our Earth could become an uninhabitable Mars-like frying pan soon, rather than years or decades away.

With Thanksgiving coming up this week, we are all thinking of what we are grateful for. I am really grateful for my nice fur coat. And the colder it gets, the more comfortable I feel.

What would make me extremely grateful this Thanksgiving would be if some brilliant engineering team - surely at UW-Madison and elsewhere in Wisconsin we've got a few - would come up with a way for us to all convert to solar energy for heating in winter and cooling in summer. And while they're at it, they would come up with a way for cars to run on solar too! Monona told me that many students do some of the most creative work of their semester while digesting turkey.

So there you have it, Polar Bear Witness' holiday gift request: All I want this season is a solar car, a solar car, a solar car! All I want this season is a solar car and a solar home/office heating & cooling system too! Please?

Sleigh bells ring, are ya listenin'? In the lane solar's glistenin' . . . it's a beautiful sight, we're happy tonight, snoozin' in our solar-heated home!

Truly yours,
~Polar Bear Witness
P.S. Please share the bear! www.polarbearwitness.blogspot.com

Caring and Bearing

Caring and Bearing

Caring. Awww.

You know? It rhymes with "bear."

Care and Bear.

Care and Polar Bear?

Caring and Bearing.

Bearing. Bearing Up.

Caring. Carrying.

Carrying capacity.

Truly,
~Bear Witness
P.S. Please share the bear! www.polarbearwitness.blogspot.com

Honesty

Honesty.

Now that sounds like another really good word.

Again, with regard to Polar Bears, what do you suppose it means?

Truly yours,
Polar Bear Witness

R-e-s-p-e-c-t

All I'm asking for is
a little r-e-s-p-e-c-t.

Do you know what it means to me?

Re-re-re-respect!

Just a little bit?

~P. B. Witness

Responsibility

Another thing I liked about the pool at the Y was the big words.

Responsibility.

With regard to Polar Bears, what do you suppose that means?

Truly yours,
Polar Bear Witness

No Diving?

October 21, 2007

No Diving? Am I a Polar Bear or what?

While I can't say much for the chlorine fumes, I did enjoy lap swimming at the East Side Y.

~PB Witness

The First Time

Saturday Morning, October 13, 2007
Cafe Soleil
Madison, Wisconsin

It was the first time I had been in a cafe before. Pretty nice.

We slipped in, almost unnoticed, although I got a smile from the lady behind the counter, when she saw me she said, "Polar Bear!" Wow, I thought, she knows my name.

And, when we arrived at our table, the guy across the way gave us an appreciative smile. We smiled back.

A lot of talk and coffee drinking goes on in this place. And they call out the different types. We got "double espresso" and they just sang out "soy latte" now.

At this place, "Cafe Soleil" it's called, they have a big banner at the entrance that says all the food they serve here is organic. They buy from local farmers, use compact fluorescents to light the place and recycle all the paper. This is good.

The guy in front of us in line brought his own coffee thermos. This is even better, I think.

Well, the two hard-boiled eggs were good and the double-espresso is doing its job too.

Time to move along and get some fruits and veggies at the market. A nice, big McIntosh apple would taste real good.

Truly yours,
Polar Bear Witness