Lessons from an old cat

Kiwi came to us as a rescue cat, taken from her mother before she was ready to be weened, we saw her at the vet still with her litter-mates. She was the only one who looked her in the eye and meowed, the others hissed. The vet said that she'd be a small cat, and she came home with us that day.

As she grew up, she imprinted on Alicia Star as the mommy cat. She tried to nurse from Alicia Star even as she was bigger than Alicia Star! Alicia was the roshi of the cat brood, indeed the roshi of 7 Myrtle Avenue. Alicia accecpted Kiwi as her pal and companion though her cat son Alex remained her favorite.

During the years at Myrtle Avenue, Kiwi grew to be a 20+lb cat who loved to eat, loved to be in the bamboo garden sleeping in the sun, and who was loyal to me through thick and thin. She wasn't the favorite, and she always wanted approval from the senior cats.

Kiwi would follow me as I walked along the railroad tracks behind the stream at Myrtle Street, lagging a bit behind Alex and Alicia Star, but always wanting to be part of the pack. While the others walked with me on the railroad rail, she'd be content to walk along the railroad ties with us. Sometimes I'd carry her across the stream, sometimes we'd "ditch her" and leave her to figure how to cross on her own. Her great girth limited her atheletic prowess and I never guessed that she'd become the 6 1/2 lb fragile being with a big heart that she is today.

As arthritus fused her lower spine, her ability to get around became more and more limited. Her colon stopped processing properly and she had some incidents where she became impacted and needed vet intervention to continue living. We started her on stool softener, lactulose drops twice a day. This worked for a while.


Then the vet discovered that her kidneys were failing. We started giving her fluids every now and then as supportive therapy. Didn't expect her to live long, but since she was still interested and such a wonderful companion, I gave her a spot on the floor and kept up her daily therapy.

It took me too long to realize that she needed a heating pad, but I bought her a big one ( large enough for Carol and Kiwi to be on it together) and set her up with an incondesent lightbulb over her for radient heat.

The wonderful vet Bill Eshthimer told me that Kiwi needed supplimental fluids via needle under the skin a few times a week. I had given fluids to cats before, and while it's important therapy, in the past it always signaled end of life approaching. I started giving Kiwi fluids, even though my technique was poor.

Unlike most cats, Kiwi allowed me to give her fluids despite my clumsyness with the needle, and patiently waited for the process to complete most times. Her docile nature served her well and I improved with practice. Dr. Bill helped me to learn sterile technique and patiently tutored me in how to insert the needle properly. As I gained in skill, the pain inflicted on the cat diminished, and it got easier to be regular.

She became incontenent, so I gave her fresh bedding twice or three times a day, washing her towels a few times a week. She had some more crises with blockages, and a stand in vet suggested a diet change that really helped her to be back on regular with her digestion.


Her inability to move around has made keeping her clean tough, but she still relates to Carol and wakes me every morning with a squak and a purrr. Kiwi wakes me every morning with her squalk-meow just before the alarm is to go off at 5am. I change her bedding, feed her and give her fluids every other morning.

The yoga of service work, the zen of practice in this tiny corner of the room has been a blessing for me. In one way, the question is should I be doing for a human instead of an "animal"? The answer that I've found is that for me this is the practice that calls me now, knowing that it won't go on indefinately, knowing that it won't end well, but taking each moment together as a gift.

So while I thought that this was a kitty hospice commitment that would last a few weeks, it's turned out to be a blessing that has continued for a couple years now. I'm so grateful for the time with her, and while it's been difficult for both of us, her good attitude and appreciation for what we do for her is both a reward and a lesson.

I used to think that you should "put down" ( kill) a cat with such limitations but when the standard is "are they in pain?" and do they still want to live?, the answer is quite different. The effort is sometimes taxing, but the reward is subtle and lesson one that only unfolds over time.

The service to this small being brings me joy, and wonder. How is it that our love can be sustained through such trials? This small being has such a big heart, and it's a small thing to be able to repay her for the years that she nourished my spirit, for the times that I was too harsh, for the times that I ignored her simple needs. Yet the mystery of life isn't revealed, but the benefits are unrolling as we breathe. Precious being, thanks for this morning, thanks for this day and the time with Sharon, Kiwi, Carol and Snowy.

Time to go to work to earn the money to support this tribe.

Thanks

Now that the housing bubble has burst, real estate prices are plunging, bank credit is evaporating, and the economic contraction is like a spasm, the void in our economy is acting like a shock wave.

Funding of the war hasn't been from new taxes, rather it has come from a combination of taxes on the increased economic activity revolving around the extraction of equity from the real estate that has occured during the interest rate decline of the last few years, and from shifting government resources from domestic progams into war related expenses. Because new taxes have been minimal, the resources invested in public capital like basic research,;human health; environmental protection; infrastructure renewal; NASA; consumer protection have declined.

The interaction of policy with this extraction of public capital has been particularly stupid with respect to basic research. The restrictions on visas cut the supply of intellectual talent that came to the US for study at the same time as much basic research support was cut by the federal government. This at a time when our international competitors are compeating for the brightest minds on the global stage. One result is that China and India are on the way to becomming research powerhouses. Increasing investment and encouraging research involvement by foreign graduates at US Universities and national labs is an obvious high leverage shift that should be implemented immediately.

Some applied research area's should be funded at a higher level, with my favorites being plasma physics, atmosperic research, agricultural research, species conservation, flywheel battery storage, alternative energy, bio fuels and sustainable production, energy conservation, ecosystem conservation, extending our network capital investment, research infrastructure support.

Unfortunately now that the resources are squandered and the common capital depleated, our options narrow. It's a shame to have wasted the last 17 years in the greenhouse warming cycle, but it would be criminal to squander the next 17.

I strongly support the defense of my country, and believe that the best national security policy must balance the investment in the domestic infrastructure with the funding of overseas power exercises. We must be skillful in how we strike the balance, and our national command authority could do better, must do better.
Overextending to try to right a policy ship that is listing to port and has lost headway drains our precious capital, yet there are basic military realities that we must support over the long term.

There are some simple policy choices that could vastly improve our nation and would improve our security. One of the first things we must change is our care of veterans: it is a national disgrace that veterans health care is in crises, ignores so much battle trauma. Funding childrens medical and health care is another no-brainer. Credible elections would be another, reform of our sentencing laws and practices is another. Now that much of the mechanism has been dismantled, some agencies would take time to reconstitute, so the sooner we start the better.

Such measures will reduce dispair, and improve the cohesiveness of our society. Improving our research institutions and reducing the ideological management of research could improve our economy. Improving our energy efficiency and energy distribution systems could also improve our national security.

The present administration has an ideological agenda that opposes development of public capital, favors only increased corporate capital and control. I hope that extending the war will be rethought, and more creative and realistic planners be given a voice. I hope that the administration will listen a bit more, though there isn't much basis for optimism.

Still, the connectivity and collective intelligence that emerges as the web develops is an agent of change beyond government imagination. New opportunities, and new vulnerabilities. We need to think about how to guard the freedom of the network, universal access, and so on. It needs to be codified into law or the web will loose it's extra edge in synergizing the colletive exercise of intellegence.

A quite remarkable development is occuring her in Marin county as the public access television station is forced to seek a new home Comcast stops hosting this vital public service and evicts the studio from it's long time location on Anderson Drive in San Rafael. The county joint powers authority that regulates telecommunications, Marin Telecommunications Agency, has blessed the formation of a non-profit organization that will operate Public Access television.

It's been a long public process starting with a small group of active producers who wanted to nurture public access television in Marin back in 1996 who met at Sandy Marker's home in Corte Madera to strategize. Starting from a small group of advocates who went to Marin Telecommunications Agency public meetings to speak out for Access television as an important public commons, the new town square, the group wouldn't let the cable companies and the MTA kill off public access.

For some years the MTA board was indifferent to public access issues, then actively hostile. Several groups in the county became interested in nurturing and preserving this fragile avenue for free speach including Media Action Marin, a liberal libertarian coalition that included social justice groups and individuals interested in free speach.

The Marin Telecommunications Agency board meetings became rather contentious and eventually the board formed an advisory committee to take public input and advise the board on public access issues. This was the genisis of the Marin Access Advisory Committee eventually known by it's acronym, MAAC.

MAAC met monthly with members appointed by the MTA and developed a number of reports that defined the role of public access, and articulated a vision of how the service could benefit the community in Marin. One of the first things that MAAC did was to redefine it's mission from just Public Access television to include Educational Access Television and Government Access television ( PEG). At first, the MTA wasn't supportive of the idea that government public meetings should be made televised.

Indeed, the San Rafael City Manager at the time, Ron Gould was so hostile to public access that he threw out an MTA consultant who came to discuss putting city council meetings on tv! The county administrator who was assigned to support the MTA attended meetings of MAAC but characterized the group as a fringe group of political activists.

Reality is that the MAAC group had elements from many aspects of Marin life including Len Schlosser who represented seniors ( his show "A Time for All Ages" is still popular years after he passed on), Jerry Catigan ( Marin Special Olympics and environmentalist ), two lawyers, and some public access producers. Over time the MAAC developed the idea that public access is a vital public commons that exists as a concession to the commercial operation that uses the public right of way, a tiny slice of the bandwidth reserved for the public amidst the vast array of commercial channels.

Over time, the composition of the Marin Telecommunications Agency changed and the long time members of the board learned about public television. Despite many lost opportunities to make favorable deals with cable operators, the MAAC continued to advocate for public access and just wouldn't go away.

Persistence had it's reward, eventually the Marin Telecommunications Agency board attracted some members with telecommunications competence. Eventually the agency Exectutive Director was told to hire a consultant to help with negotiations as the board recognized that their director was not able to negotiate on his own with the big cable companies.

Once the outside experts validated a number of the points that MAAC had been advocating for years, the credibility of the advisory group solidified and the process of negotiating a cable franchise that would preserve public access was on solid ground. It still took over 5 years for the county to negotiate an agreement.

Over the years the offers from the cable companies went down in value. As the MTA fiddled around, the offers dwindled from an AT&T offer of $12 million over 10 years down to about 3Million over 1o years made by Comcast.

The national context shifted as well, and it became clear that if the MTA failed to act, changes in law could leave Marin without any public access benefits. Over time the cable companies starved the public access operation, carved out channel time for leased informercials at the expense of public time, and generally discouraged any local production.

Once the new MTA board got serious about supporting public access channels, the executive director changed his tune, brought in Tom Robinson from CBG communications and negotiated a franchise that preserves public access.

The MAAC recommended that a non-profit be established to run public access as a designated access provider (DAP) as an independent public organization funded in part by franchise fees to be a fair broker of the channel time, and to educate the public, to provide the means to produce shows and as a host to the vital public commons. Initially the idea was rejected by the executive director and the MTA board but as the executive director was edged out and replaced by a community orientated person, the idea gained credibility.

Marin now has the Marin Community Media Center, Inc. as a non-profit that will operate public access television in Marin though it is only two months old and just beginning to organize itself.
The vision of the newly formed board of directors includes traditional public access, but also video on demand, web access, community radio and media literacy. The vision for the Media Center is inclusionary, embracing the many populations in Marin County such as the seniors, hispanics, asian community, native americans, youth, arts, cultural groups and religious groups.

The 2007 Marin Telecommunications Board has distinguished itself by taking this bold step, and is negotiating an agreement with the College of Marin to host the main production facility. Marin county is creating a new institution that will nurture the public commons and provide a connection space for our community institutions, organizations and individuals if it can reach out and develop public support.

For me the evolution has been gradual, sometimes imperceptible and yet very rewarding. When I started this journey it seemed impossible that Marin would every have a non-profit that would operate in the public interest supported by the Marin Telecommunications Agency and the public. Today it is a reality.

One side effect of my service on MAAC: I met my wife Sharon at a MAAC meeting!

Deliberate infliction of damage to the economy during the assertion of police powers over "illegal aliens, illegal immigrants" appears to be a policy that the Bush executive is about to implement in a series of visible events designed to make the news. It appears to be a way of using political leverage to force congress to change laws combined with authoritarian action that will feed the conservative fixation on blaming undocumented people for the woes of the day. Administration spokes people deny that the upcomming campaign against illegals in the workplace aims to influence legislation, even while stating that a change in the law is needed.

Already the precedent is set that people defined as illegal aliens won't be given the rights of a citizen, won't be treated with the care and respect that are core American values from our history. More raids, and media events and the process of desensitization erodes further the civil contract. Yet without some respect for immigration laws, the floods of refugees would swamp the countries in what Thomas Barnet calls "the core".

The present system sees billions flowing to Latin America as wages are sent back to families and home towns, money that is the best foreign aid, going where it is needed most in an efficient manner, foreign aid that is earned not charity. The money that these folks send home creates relationship with the US, and contributes indirectly to our security. Guest worker programs and better visa control would help to reduce abuses, as would an increase in State Department funding targeted at providing more field consulate visa and immigration personnel. Some complain that illegal’s only pay some taxes, and while that is true, some assert that they take less in services than they put in on average.

The recent campaign by ICE that targeted people from Latin America in raids all across the U.S. that typically hit before dawn also spit families, and disrupted our community. If the arrests had to be made, provisions to help the families should be made. They should be able to communicate with families and loved ones. To employ the detention camps, to fly folks immediately to a different region of the country away from their support networks creates a maximum impact on the community without yielding more than a marginal difference

Even the official who announced the new round of enforcement actions said that he expected that the effect would hurt industries such as health care, agriculture, hospitality. The economic effect combined with the credit crunch and the real estate devaluation are waves that will swash through our lives for years. Since the service economy is the core of our economic engine, damage here is going to hurt lots of folks.

The administration wants reform, I want reform ( though in a different direction than advocated by the "neo cons"), and this new policy initiative moves a conservative policy agenda ahead with the cynical calculation that by excessive enforcement of laws on the books the democratic congress and key republicans in congress will move to change the law as requested by the Karl Rove directed White House political operatives.

In an presidential election cycle it's hardly surprising to see moves aimed at "activating the republican base" at this stage in the campaign. Closer to the general election I expect to see a moderation that is designed to co-opt the counter reaction that will be generated by this exaggerated enforcement exercise.

Yet another cynical exercise of power from folks who are divorced from the folks who will be paying the price for this pandering to the political "base". It's time that we work our an immigration policy that brings the folks who will add to our society, and that fairly addresses immigration from Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. Our policy should grant citizenship based on things like the ability to contribute to society, the ability to join our society, and criteria that honors the family. Reforms that force more into illegal status just encourage exploitation.

Now both sides of the political spectrum must come together to pass legislation that begins the humanization of the process, that adds the resources to the agencies earmarked to improve passport, visa, and immigration services. Now both Democrats and Republicans must lead the way to reform and address the 12 million who are here now without documents, to be more efficient in catching and deporting the violent criminals, and to spend the money to do real health screening for the folks comming into the country.

Carbon offsets are controversial these days, but as our understanding of how the feedbacks work in the dyanmics of planting trees, the utility of this mechanism is clear.

It's true that forests sequester co2 and alter the weather, but now we know that a tree planted in the tropics does more to cool the earth than a tree planted in a temperate zone. Work with Global Climate Models at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory uncovered some of the complex dynamics that occur as forest cover fluxuates.

Much more research is needed into the ways that shifts in forest affect climate dynamics. Livermore has studied how water in mountains changes from this epoch as the precipitation comes in shorter, perhaps more intense, more liquid form as climate changes evolve. In california for example the snow pack will be gone in summer, glaciers gone, and that will of course affect streams and the rivers below.
Clearly then the forests will also be affected in a major way. We need more resources here, as our models are not much used yet to explore the ways that our offset programs can achieve maximum leverage.

This means that we need an effective mechanism to ensure that the tree planting is efficient and effectively established in the right areas. So we must learn how to operate real carbon offset programs. How to prevent and catch fraud, a way to make a viable economic system. This will not only create jobs, it can be a weapon against desertification. It can help our watersheds.

I say this in the context of a belief that we need to make every effort to reduce emissions and improve energy efficiency, offsets must not absolve the purchaser of the duty to work to reduce emissions. I recognize that some changes will take time and carbon offsets could create a stabilizing and conserving effect on the climate.

The agenda now includes developing effective communications that will convey the importance of building honest, scientifically valid systems providing carbon offsets. The science and understanding of why one forest is better for the climate than another must become common knowledge.

Bruce Bagnoli

Suvival notes :

These desperate times call for desperate measures, we must keep the carbon in the atmosphere below 450 ppm according to Dr. Hansen, to avoid the "run away" feedbacks that may make our planet so hot that our descendents will suffer for hundreds of years, and our civilization will be the cause of the worst extinction event since the astroid hit 230 million years ago!

In his latest scientific post : Implications of "peak oil" for atmospheric CO2 and climate by P.A. Kharecha, J.E. Hansen (NASA GISS and Columbia Univ. Earth Institute)our dilema is explained at some length.

The action that we must take is really quite simple : We must work with China and the emerging Asian economies to build Coal fired power plants that sequester the CO2 produced or die.

Simple, yet a profound challenge as until now it has been everyone for themselves and the "market" will sort it out. Since the "market" is an artificial construct, it needs to be changed to fit our current situation, and this can be done if we value both the current environment and our future generations.

THe problem is that there is no real technology that is up to the challenge since we dabble in this vital technology but haven't committed to commercialization of sequestration.

The action needed is to engage with the Chinese as if our lives depend on it ( they do) and immediately begin to produce electric cars for their market, immediately begin to build nuclear power plants on an industrial scale in China to meet their need while we develop the technology for sequestration on a global scale. China won't do this without economic help from the rest of the world, and we must also do this whereever economic growth would attract a new coal fired plant.

The United States should immediately devote a significant resource stream to developing the sequestration techonology and retrofit our many coal plants as a first step, a technology development program, and a leadership act.

Without dealing with the issue of Coal, we risk raising the CO2 beyond the 450 ppm level, and that's a point where the feedback loop will rapidly get out of control.

Hansen and Kharecha don't discuss what happens when the feedback loop goes non-linear but the scenarios we've all seen on the media for global warming understate the reality. Once the co2 gets to a certain ( we don't know precisely where this is) level, then other sources of carbon release kick in like the release of trapped methane hydrates, forest die back, Amazon desert feedback, and the rest. The increase in temprature would be huge, and while the earth may have feedback mechanisms that will compensate, we won't live long enough to find out. The feedback that may balance warming above the 450 ppm level might take the form of an ice age, something that's limited us before. Indeed during the last ice age there may have been only 10,000 humans in Europe and New York may have been covered in a glacier. Either way, it's ugly for civilization and avoidable.

The big message is that if we act now, we can avoid the big desert, the oven. Only if we act together as intellegent beings will we be spared. We don't have to look to the sky for an astroid threatening us, as our threat is already on the horizon and it's only avoidable if we act now.