opinions . . .

do they matter?

maybe, maybe not.

the End of the Line

Maria and I went and saw this film tonight . . . it needs to be seen by as many other people as it can.

The issue of over-fishing does not get the light of day and I think it is a big enough issue that it should be getting some very serious attention paid to it. It is not just because I love the oceans, it is not just because the creatures of the sea are some of the most spectacular creatures on the planet, it is also because I love humanity.

If we continue to over fish a huge food source for the planet will have been squandered, and only so that the rich can get richer by breaking the rules and ruining things for the honest fisherman. I do not have an issue with local fisherman who are trying to earn a living, what I do have a problem with is the huge fishing conglomerates that are draining the ocean of fish and making it even harder for those local fishermen to make a living.

Fishing does not need to stop, but it does need to be controlled. And there are things that we can do to help as well. The film does a much better job of explaining these things than I do, so please go and see it. It is playing now through Thursday at the Lagoon theater in Uptown.

Here are a few things from the film that infuriate me and just prove that the human race tends to be wasteful and reckless.

The majority of the fish caught is called "by-catch". That means that these fish are unwanted and so are allowed to die aboard the ship and tossed back into the ocean.

Fish "farming" actually kills more fish than it produces. Live fish are caught and ground up into fish meal to feed the fish in these "farms". The fish in the pens only grow in size, they do not reproduce. There is nothing produced using these methods, more is just being used.

Trolling is a method of fishing by which a net is weighted and drug along the bottom of the sea. Entire eco-systems are destroyed using this method of fishing. To use an image from the book, imagine if we were to do that in the African plains, if a net was drug through that land and lions, elephants, and everything else was destroyed. There would be an outcry, no lament is made for the beauty of the oceans.

Please see it. Read the book by Charles Clover. Visit http://endoftheline.com/film/.

Thank you.

Please check this out, it's important *Shark Related*

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&vid=a8545898-cf74-4476-b09d-66f0293d464b

words that I need to live by

"Both the Conservatives and the progressives seem to me to be full of the same kind of intolerance, arrogance, empty-headedness, and to be dominated by different kinds of conformism: in either case the dread of being left out of their reference group."

Thomas Merton
July 3, 1968

" How true it is that the great obligation of the Christian, especially now, is to prove himself a disciple of Christ by hating no one, that is to say, by condemning no one, rejecting no one. And how true that the impatience that fumes at others and damns them (especially whole classes, races, nations) is a sign of the weakness that is still unliberated, still not tracked by the Blood of Christ, and is still a stranger to the Cross."

Thomas Merton
July 22, 1963

if you don't believe in ghosts or santa claus here is your proof

If we are ever going to have peace again, we will have to hate war for some better reasons than that we fear to lose our houses, or our refrigerators, or our cars, or our legs, or our lives. If we are ever to get peace, we have got to desire something more than reefers and anesthetics - but that is all we seem to want: anything to avoid the pain.

It is terrifying that the world doesn't wake up to this irony: that at a time when all our desire is nothing but to have pleasant sensations and avoid painful sensations, there should be almost more pain and suffering and brutality and horror, and more helplessness to do anything about it, than there ever was before!

-Thomas Merton- June 25th, 1940

shoes on the road

when i see shoes on the road it disturbs me.

it isn't that someone threw out a pair of shoes, or that someone lost a pair of shoes.

it makes me think that there was some sort of accident there and that someone died,

and all that was left was their shoes.