Author: pseudoisaac

I went for a historical and sightseeing tour with a river tour company, en français. It was fun. The company has two French speakers, by coincidence. We kayaked up to the Broadway Avenue bridge and saw part of an Aquatennial event on the river. I realized that as long as I continue getting culture with the Alliance Française, and continue playing video games in French (while talking back to the game, in private, behind a locked door), I will never totally lose the language, and will be able to get by. However, I don’t want to lose any at all, and I want to improve. To lose it would be triste, dommage pour le fromage!

Some recent reading:

Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible

• I enjoyed how the author, Jerry Coyne, addresses accommodationist philosophers, scientists and theologians directly and calls them out for how they will do anything to avoid conflict with science. They are in a position of weakness and are desperate to avoid confrontation.
• He points out that many scientists depend on shrinking public budgets and must appease religious politicians and leaders to avoid getting even less for their research.
• I liked the description of theologians as “people who specialize in justifying beliefs acquired in childhood.” It jives with my own view of theology as being kind of like the study of leprechauns. He diligently cites the text of their arguments for non-overlapping “ways of knowing” and points out again and again how religious people make scientific claims of fact about the universe, and as soon as you make those factual claims, you are obligated to defend them.

Circumcision Exposed: Rethinking a Medical and Cultural Tradition

• This book is from 1998. Intactivists are waging a highly successful online battle against infant genital cutting. In addition major scientific studies and ethical papers increasingly discredit the practice. But we need more physical books on the subject, to provide the sweeping view of infant genital cutting, its cultural and tribal roots, and the way the medical reason for it changes as soon as the previous reason is discredited.
• The author, Billy Ray Boyd, offers an optimistic thought on how intactivism is neither right nor left, but has the potential to bring out the best of liberals and conservatives. They can both get behind the movement for the right reasons. Conservatives ought to be in favor of autonomy and freedom of choice and an open future for the child. And liberals ought to be in favor of removing culturally entrenched violence, and of guaranteeing every child a birth without violence.

Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto

• This one was actually pretty funny. It interspersed the outrage we should all feel (the new publicly financed Vikings stadium was prominently described) with some great humor.
• This book is very short but the author, Steve Almond, names and exposes each problematic aspect of pro football, including the racial/social, economic, medical and sexual aspects.
• Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is now a household term (or at least its acronym, CTE, is). Seeing once-fine physical specimens turn forgetful, depressed, suicidal and unpredictable in their forties and fifties will wake people up. According Almond, even Brett Favre has admitted he could’t remember attending his daughter’s soccer games.

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After working the night shift for two years I was miserable. Toward the end of that long grueling trial I was willing to take almost any job I could get, including one where I would be on call essentially all hours of the day and night. I gave serious consideration to some very undesirable positions.

During that time I also made a written resolution to myself that I would not support night work, and would never adopt the attitude, “I did it, so why can’t they?” Thus I try to avoid shopping at grocery stores late at night; I avoid late-night food deliveries and even late check-ins at parks and hotels (admittedly this is easier because I have a normal schedule now).

However, I also order from Amazon a lot, and Amazon is opening a giant order fulfillment center in the region. I saw an ad for a hiring event where they specifically sought part-time overnight positions.

So supporting night shift work is difficult to avoid! The economy is so complex, and parts of it are so invisible, that it is impossible to make fully informed, deliberate choices about what you vote for with your money. This is true for both social and environmental considerations in one’s purchases. Being deliberate, a quality I prize, is hard. A friend – retail insider – confirmed that Amazon hires part-time in order to keep costs down.

Additionally when I worked overnights I had the slight comfort that it was in healthcare that I worked and that people needed those services regardless of the hour. But Amazon is about low-wage warehouse jobs, and it is totally frivolous to demand that I get my headphones/pocket knife/coffee beans in one day instead of in three, at the expense of someone’s health, family life, and so on.

I don’t have a solution, except to acknowledge that those considerations are partly accounted for in the price of the items. If people become increasingly aware of the damage and misery of night shift work, then they will demand higher wages for it, and the cost of one-day shipping and round-the-clock service will increase, and then demand for night work will go down.

But this is imperfect. Workers are not empowered to demand higher wages like they should be. And I only did the night shift because I felt trapped. So I think if the science advances enough to demonstrate the harm of night shift work, and those harms become widely understood, then comprehensive night worker protections should be detailed in the law.

After work I thought “fuck it” and drove to Faribault. I parked at the trailhead of the Sakatah Singing Hills State Trail and biked 15 miles to Sakatah Lake State Park. I went there because I saw a public television special on the place and it looked fun, and they have an exclusive bike-in campsite.

The park is tiny but I had the place almost to myself so it seemed big enough. I sat on the dock during the enchanted sunset to dusk period and watched everything going on around me:

• an island colony of at least a thousand cormorants, herons and egrets making a cacophony
• two American white pelicans that floated across the lake unexpectedly
• orioles, green herons and occasional fireworks explosions
• a turtle that crawled out of the muck, looked around, and yawned. I did not know reptiles yawned.
• four dark sunspots that I could only see because of the haze due to the wildfires currently burning in Saskatchewan. The sun was hazy red and mild at that time of night and safe to view with binoculars, or so I assumed.

I looked it up later and confirmed there is sunspot activity now. It’s a wonder to me how a sphere of hydrogen undergoing fusion should be anything but uniform. Then again, with the huge forces at work there, why shouldn’t it be dynamic and violent? I also learned that the spots I saw were larger than earth in size.

I also found an aigrette, the fine feather of the egret’s breeding plumage. I had never seen one up close before.

I am glad: my first hammock camping/stealth camping/bikepacking adventure was a success.

On 6/8/15 I packed up my hammock, tarp, sleeping bag, and some food and headed out.

I biked to that small patch of woods on a hill over a particular highway. I had checked it out before to determine the feasibility of camping there but had not penetrated far. Getting through the buckthorn was difficult but I did not get cut up, did not get sticks in my gears and brakes, and I was reassured by how the underbrush made it unlikely anyone would follow me. The only evidence anyone had been there was a rusted spray paint can and a patch of torn up leather. Nothing recent. There was a faint trail which may have just been a deer trail, not from people.

I admit I should have practiced more and brought extra rope just in case. Thankfully there were some brief instructions in the pouch on tying up the hammock. It involved no complex knots at all, though in the future I may use better knots and better nylon cord just for a sense of security.

I brought a section of a sleeping pad I had cut out to serve as a torso pad. I didn’t use it for sleeping but I used it to sit on and read on my phone and kindle during sunset and after.

I used 75% DEET to keep the mosquitos away, of which only a couple ever bothered me. I checked frequently but found no ticks.

I used two aspen trees to tie up. I don’t think I damaged them where the rope met the trunk. Unfortunately for expediency because of the setting sun, I broke off a few small branches right above the hammock, so I could get in and out and not tear the fabric. That was not LNT, but the rest of my trip was very low-impact. I also did not burn anything. Next time, because I did not use the tarp at all, I will replace that space and weight with a camping stove and fuel and cook up some oatmeal or coffee in the morning. I can only forego a tarp if there is no chance of rain. I also must trim the tarp. And I must practice quickly mounting the tarp over the hammock using cord.

In fact, now that I have done one hammock camping trip, I must borrow that hammock camping book again. This way my learning will be pulled forward by both practice and study.

I enjoyed when a group of crows moved through the trees overhead to investigate me. In the morning I could have lingered but instead left because I had committed to picking someone up from the airport.

I’ve been watching this story develop through social media feeds of the various genital integrity groups I follow. A mother in Florida named Heather Hironimus took shelter with her four year old son to prevent him from undergoing circumcision of his penis, which the estranged father was demanding in court. Now it is up to a judge to decide whether the child will undergo a permanent, irreversible cutting ritual on his penis, which he has stated he does not want.

Everything is wrong with this case:

– The idiotic rationale of the father (“I just think it’s the normal thing to do” is what he said)

– The all too common effort to hurt the child in order to hurt the ex-partner

– The fact that it is playing out in court, and the inconceivability of this ever being debated if it were a girl whose genitals were to be cut

– The fact that the child is over four now, and that if he were to be circumcised now, he would remember every detail, including whatever forced restraints were used on him, and what his penis looked like before and after it was altered

I have never really shitted a fuck about issues that fall in the broad “mommy lit” genre (such as debates over parenting methods that play out endlessly in the news media). But this male genital cutting gets me so upset. I sometimes avoid Facebook because my feed is full of horrific stories of the latest boys to die from the ritual (I will not call it a “procedure,” even if it is done by a cut-happy doctor) and of statistics on adverse outcomes. Millions of babies undergoing genital cutting because of tribal custom, superstition, and an anti-masturbation campaign from the 1800s, is outrageous and disgusting to me. I get upset, then I think about it all day, and then I regret the powerlessness of my own disgust and outrage.

But the truly powerless ones are the infants strapped down and cut and altered, never to be intact again.

If anyone thinks I am strident in my atheism, and wonders why, I will ask if you want to see my penis, for I will gladly show you: I bear the physical scars of my parents’ religion, and of the dominant religion of the culture I happened to be born into. Although I could fully reject these dark superstitions as I came into reason (between the ages of 8 and 18), I can never, ever be physically intact.

However I will resist the urge to wallow. There is hope:

– Many more people nowadays are aware of female genital cutting, and are rightly outraged by it. They will compare their opposition to this practice to their silence and equivocation on male genital cutting, and they will reconsider.

– There is a crowdfunding effort to start a foreskin regeneration company using stem cells to allow individuals to regain an intact penis, potentially with some semblance of the original vasculature and innervation

– There are devoted amateurs online who have developed tools to stretch the skin of the penis into something resembling an intact foreskin. I am impressed with their ingenuity, their desire to share their techniques, and with their spirit of rebuilding what was lost.

– Male genital cutting is declining in our country and 80% of the world’s men are intact.

I believe the methods of restoration will be perfected enough for me myself to eventually sign up. I treasure the hope that within 20 years infant male genital cutting will be completely outlawed in the USA. And we will shake our heads at what we deem an era of hypocrisy, blindness and ethical confusion.

– I moved to Saint Paul. It won’t be that bad. The people here are pretty much the same: legs, teeth, hair. Seeing the sunset over the river is surprisingly unfamiliar to me since I’ve lived on the other side my whole life.

– During the move I purged unused and lightly used items. I am proud of myself because I discarded things based on legitimate criteria I had established in advance instead of just personal attachment:

• Is the thing damaged, stained or frayed (thermoses, clothes, shoes)
• Is it a duplicate (sleeping bags and pillows)
• Is it old, heavy, cumbersome and easily replaced (textbooks, a lamp, cookery, three bookshelves and a coffee table)
• Is it consumable and can it be used during the move to protect other things (tin foil, baggies, old clothes as padding, etc.)
• Can it be entrusted to the solicitude of willing neighbors (two large spider plants, another coffee table, and a Sansevieria)

Now everything I own can fit in a Toyota Corolla, with ample space and comfort for my select houseplants.

And I look at all the empty space I now have and see opportunity to be deliberate. Not just to scavenge junk from alleys, but to consider light, air and greenery as I furnish the new apartment.

– A security guard asked if I was "in the service." I said "No, but I play a lot of Call of Duty!" Not sure he liked that. It’s the results of my vein-embiggening exercise regimen that attracts attention, mostly from other dudes.

– I am reading "Ultralight Backpackin’ Tips." It’s one of those highly practical books, loaded with information, that is also laced with the philosophy and worldview of the author. I have my new hammock and am ready to go.

But even this statement does not meet the standards set forth in the book which I’ll make a concerted effort to internalize. Paring down to sub-25 lb means thinking in terms of "systems." To sleep safe and warm I should only carry my "sleep system," not specific items I may have deemed essential without examining them. When it’s hot enough I may choose to sleep in a bivy sack on the ground with no hammock at all.

A colleague said that her very young daughter thought she only had a butt-crack but no butt-hole. She could see her butt-crack but she had no reason to think anything was in there.

All the more evidence that children are "little scientists!" And that they have a healthy, inborn skepticism as well. Essentially, her attitude toward whatever was on her backside was "I’ll believe it when I see it."

In other news I found a dead northern flicker (yellow-shafted variety) a few feet from a glassy University of Minnesota building, the Ted Mann Concert Hall. The building is a wall of glass right next to a wooded corridor overlooking the river. There are absolutely no bird-friendly measures there, not even cheap stickers on the glass.

The bird looked like it had broken its neck just like the warbler I found next to another UMN building last fall. These people should know better.

The weather is fantastic. Saturday and today I walked for hours and hopped on and off Nice Ride bikes and light rail cars because I couldn’t soak up enough daylight. Whenever I thought it was time to head home I looked up and realized the sun was still high in the sky and there were still fields and nooks and vistas I hadn’t stopped at before.

This weekend I did not go camping because there was big boy stuff to take care of at home. But there’s a lot of nature to observe in the city: the buds are popping out. A red-winged blackbird was calling atop a sign above a freeway (I have never seen this before). The crayfish are crawling about in the river.

Observing nature whether afield or in the city I discern major destructive events as well as dramatic growth.

This attunes me to my own transformation. It encourages me to take the long view and to love and revere this whole process as if I was watching the grand project of life itself.

Not watching, but captaining, determining the thing. And sitting there by the river in spring is the perfect time to reassert the exact direction I want to go in, and decide who is to be my crew.

I have found my new go-to state park. Other parks with secluded campsites are within an hour of Minneapolis (Lake Maria, Afton and Wild River), but I decided I was perfectly willing to drive 1.5 hours to check this place out, and I was rewarded.

I set out on that fine Saturday morning in mid-March because I knew I would not have another such opportunity. (Sure enough, snow and freezing temps are on the way today.)

Under the odd conditions of this spring the landscape of the park appeared alien. The prairies were soggy and brown and speckled with thin stands of spruce that seemed black by contrast. The landscape looked quick-thawed. It looked uncertain and transitional and lacked the hints of green that might otherwise have lent it a vernal cast. The hike took me through mixed broadleaf and coniferous woods that were utterly silent and devoid of visible wildlife. (The animals were wise not to come out of their burrows just yet.)

But as I learned later, the thawed ground is now ideally receptive to absorbing the coming snowmelt and rain, which might have run off if the frost had persisted. One good soak and this spring will explode.

The only problem was the reservation system. In the un-staffed part of the year (which is most of the year), there is no way to know whether your backpack site is occupied until you get there. I hiked five miles, laden with gear, to find that the site I paid for was occupied.

Nice dudes though. They said they had fished all day but got nothing. Plus I had mentally prepared myself for having to find another place to camp. And with the lengthening days (the sun sets at 7:27!) I had plenty of daylight. I even had time to sit by Bear Creek and contemplate life, the universe and the granola I was eating. I watched huge chunks of ice dislodge themselves in the fast-moving water and in turn knock into other chunks of ice, and float away together.

I did see three immature ruffed grouse on my way out of the park. They froze, stupidly thinking that made them invisible. This behavior is in keeping with their programming (if I may call it that), which has made them a successful species. My own programming makes me find secluded spots in the woods where I might get hypothermia or choke to death on some granola.

A special place. Always a nice hike. The bald eagles appear to be nesting already. Coyote and turkey tracks are all around. You can even reconstruct events in the animals’ lives: I saw how two coyotes trotted alongside each other until they split up in the middle of an open fen.

While walking I thought about a little vignette I recorded from summer: I was at Nokomis on a Sunday morning and a kid (a little large for his stroller) said to his parents, "Ah, the sun feels so nice! I even don’t wanna go to church! I don’t wanna go to church!"

Good for you, kid! That’s where it all begins! Rejecting religious beliefs sometimes starts with love of sunshine, plants and animals.

My own awakening began when my innocent childlike mind compared, however unconsciously, the love of nature with the drab, rote rituals of church services and the absurd stories I heard in Sunday school. Frogs, stars, and birds were so much more compelling than fairy tales.

My parents were complicit when they let me read books of my choosing during the service. I almost always selected dinosaur books. And the dinosaurs on those pages appeared, even to a little kid, so much more real than the illustrations of Jesus’s magic tricks.

So, good luck to that little kid! Maybe if he is vocal and persistent enough, his family will stop going to church and develop a new Sunday morning ritual. Here are some ideas:

– a picnic
– a hike
– a day trip
– a visit to relatives
– a visit to a zoo or new museum
– a long walk
– a canoe or kayak trip
– a morning of reading and games by the fireplace

Anything but church !