New Years Wishes

Less Noise Please

We have made life difficult, precarious and sometimes deadly for the other 
occupants of planet earth.

I think we need to draw up some guidelines limiting our behavior that will 
benefit the natural order and save beings that are getting killed by destructive 
human activities.

Here are a few simple ideas to consider for future prosperity;

Ban all air traffic during migrations and mating seasons. You have no idea 
how much that would mean to the billions of life forms we inadvertently kill 
by filling the air with noisy machines and pollution. Animals, microbes and insects 
cannot hear the mating calls that will help them keep their species alive. 
Nor can they hear predators approaching or listen for food coming their way 
if they are a predator.

In fact, we should halt all construction, mountain top removal, clear cutting, 
development construction and industry during the seasons of spring and fall. 
When people discover how pleasant life can be when they can actually hear 
nature's soundtrack, we may realize how many things we don’t need to do anymore.

I am writing tonight’s blogpost with flu-brain. It is interesting how a fever can 
cause gaps in ones thinking processes. Little things that don’t get completed, 
yet the timeline keeps moving along.

Today I headed out to check the mail only to discover that I had put on shoes 
without socks. I got back to where my shoes were and saw my socks sitting there 
right next to my chair. So I grabbed a sock, put in on and put my shoe back on. 
This time, I was almost to the door when I discovered I had only put on one sock.

Eventually I got the mail.

At the time, I think my temperature was only 100.8. It doesn’t take much of 
a fever to unbalance our precisely organized minds. I wonder if I discussed this 
topic in 1979. That time when I had the Hong Kong flu and lost hearing in my 
right ear for a couple of months?

There were no blogs back then, but we did have a choice between Sony 
Betamax or VHS that year. (you might enjoy reading about how American 
corporations flooded the market with VHS and pushed Betamax out of the country. 
Just look it up on google. There are hundreds of articles and other documentation 
about the videotape war)

But I digress. Noise pollution is a real threat to life on earth as are the activities 
that create the noises. Like strip mining or road building. I wrote a song in 1970 
while camping at 9,800 feet in the Sierras. It was titled, “You Can’t Escape The 
Jet Plane”. One airliner or a single jet fighter plane would erase 5 or 10 minutes 
of natural soundscape. It would take another 20 or 30 minutes before the natural 
symphony was synchronized and harmonious.

What did our ancestors do when they saw the place teaming with life and  
abundance? They killed and ate the low hanging species to extinction.

If we don’t put the brakes on our appetites soon, we will have destroyed the 
only planet that will have us.

Happy New Year