Science and Politics

Just as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change moves closer to consensus on global warming, the US Govt finally, sort of, acknowledges that, sure, climate change could be happening.

An article in today's Times discusses the Panel's findings and soon-to-come report, which will lay out the science behind climate change and define what this change will cause. While there is some disagreement on the panel, it centers on differences in projections of just how much the sea level will rise during the 21st century. Not if, but how much.

Points to be made in the report include:

--The Arctic Ocean could largely be devoid of sea ice during summer later in the century.

--Europe’s Mediterranean shores could become barely habitable in summers, while the Alps could shift from snowy winter destinations to summer havens from the heat.

--Growing seasons in temperate regions will expand, while droughts are likely to ravage further the semiarid regions of Africa and southern Asia.

The squabbling among the scientists, mild though it is, is focused on revising projections of sea level rises due to newer, lower estimates having left out "recent observations of instability in some ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland."

Meanwhile in the good ol US of A, we're still not totally sure that this is even happening. Our political ostriches, motivated by greed not by fear, still worry that we're being fooled by overzealous greenies bent on letting China and India surpass us as the strongest global economic players.

Since the GOP has lost control of Congress, though, change will come. Barbara Boxer is the new head of the Environment and Public Works Committee, ousting James Inhofe, moron and Republican of Oklahoma, who claimed that climate change is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. According to Inhofe, even still, "There is no convincing scientific evidence" that human activity is causing global warming... We all know the Weather Channel would like to have people afraid all the time."

I don't even think this merits comment.

But, at least the time has come for this to be up for public debate. We're not afraid of talking about it anymore which, shockingly and sadly, is a big step forward.

One of the worst things about this governmental idiocy, as I see it, is that we're missing the biggest economic opportunity to come along in recent memory. Green energy will happen. It has to. And instead of jumping out ahead of the world and developing technologies that everyone will want and need, we go after the ANWR, we buy bigger vehicles, we keep dumping money into the pockets of those we fight in the war on terror. We continue to do what we've always done.

Change will come. But is 2008 too late?

Morr Music

For all you e-music users, lovers and haters out there, some exciting news.

Morr Music, the mostly electronic and somewhat experimental label based in Berlin has arrived at some deal with e-music, and now, after a notable and annoying absence, their stuff is available for download.




This label has had a lot to do with my long-overdue acceptance of electronic music as a legitimate art form. For a long time, I was kind of an idiot. I insisted that if it's music, play it on instruments. Bleeps and bloops were exactly that: entertaining noises, but not real music.




Real music. Sheezus. Real music is whatever the creator decides it is, and whatever the listener connects with or enjoys or internalizes or is entertained by. Who the hell am I to say what real music is?




These days, I'd much rather cue up the latest record by Boards of Canada than I would the Reverend Horton Heat. Somehow, it speaks to me more.


Lali Puna, Masha Qrella, Mum, Electric President, B. Fleischmann, Ms. John Soda, Tarwater, and a whole bunch more are now cataloged on e-music and ready for your downloading pleasure. Take a listen. There's some amazing music happening at Morr.

Who's It Gonna Be?

Hillary is in.
So says this morning's Times.

In the wake of recent exploratory committee formations and outright declarations, throwing this one on the pile gives Democrats, in my opinion, a pretty damned decent set of options.

Biden, Edwards, Vilsack, Dodd, maybe Richardson, Clinton, and Obama. The depth of talent and appeal on this list could be significant. My hope is that it's so significant, and the range of views so broad, that in the aftermath of the Republican implosion, voters who traditionally sit on the other side of the aisle will pay as close attention to what these folks have to say (yes, including Clinton) as they do to their own party's meager offerings, so far made up of McCain and Giulliani, far as I know.

It looks like the race is begun. Hoo-boy.

New on the Range

The New Year is here, and the new music is flowing.

Headlines go to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, who are putting out their anxiously awaited new CD this month, Some Loud Thunder. It comes out on the 29th, I think, but I've got it. Ha ha!

Actually, you can have it, too. If you pre-order it through Insound, you get it shipped to you upon release, and in the meantime, you can download the whole thing from them. That's right--$13, you download it now, and when it comes out, they send you the actual CD. Pretty great deal.

Go ahead: http://www.insound.com/cyhsy/

I've got some comments, of course, some early opinionizing, but I'm gonna just keep it to myself and let it sink in a while before I jump any guns. So check it for yourself.

Beyond that, I've got my hands on some fairly new stuff that will be new to the show. Blood Brothers, Detachment Kit, Sparta, +/-, Love is All, and more, along with some sweet remixes from 13 & God and Four Tet.

So tune in this week, Thursday and Friday, 1pm to 3pm mountain time, on RadioBoise.

Back from Minnesota

Everything changes.

Nothing changes.

It was great being in Minnesota this past weekend. The reason for the reunion was, of course, not a happy one, as we were burying my grandmother. But even so, it was great to see everyone.

At first, re-meeting folks and saying overdue hellos and catching up, it seemed I'd lost track of so much. That everything and everyone had changed drastically since the last time I'd visited this part of the country.

But as the weekend wore on, the years fell away, the growth and movement and change breaking ahead of the onrush of memory and familiarity. We'd all grown apart and lived our lives and turned into different people, the sums of all our vast experiences, but at the same time we were still those kids who got together a couple times a year for nothing but fun.

I got to go ice fishing, and I got to sit and talk to people I don't get to sit and talk to enough. The hospitality, the company, everything, fit like a glove.

You may not be able to stay there, but you CAN go home, if only for a little while.

Grandma Myrtle

On Sunday, January 7th, Myrtle Kleaver passed away. She was my grandmother, my mom's mom.



She'd been battling health problems for some time, moving from assisted living to rehab and back again ever since she left her Minnesota home to get care in Alabama. She was 91.

I remember her as smart, funny, and tough in a no-BS sort of way. She was to me the prototype Minnesota Scandanavian matron, working hard every day in her garden and in her house, cooking old-timey northerner food, shoveling snow, knitting and crocheting blankets that I still lie under on the couch most nights.

To me she is a collection of sounds and smells as well as a steadfast image. Her big old musty house in Waverly, MN, the blankets that still carry the million smells of her home, the creaking of the tight spiral staircase going up to her attic, the quaver in her voice as she puzzled through an explanation ("er, um-a-num"), the lilt of her laugh when you were lucky enough to get her going. She had pointy-ended eyeglasses, of course, and her eyes behind them twinkled, as all good grandmother eyes should.



As kids, visits to her house as a kid were wonderful vacations. We'd roll down the three-tiered hill in her yard over and over, climbing back up the cinder block stairs each time to run over and do it again. They were just up the hill from a lake, and days would melt by in the sprints to and from the water. We'd swim, ski, fish, and swim some more, taking breaks only when we had to run up the hill for food or bed.

Her husband, Ray Kleaver, died when I was a senior in college, 1991. I remember that I took it hard. I was in finals, and I had no money, and I couldn't get back to Minnesota for the funeral. I don't know that I've ever forgiven myself for that.

And I find that now, this many years later, even after the trials she's gone through for months into years, even knowing that her health has been failing and that this end was a matter of how much time, this is very hard to bear. It hits me at weird times, mostly when I'm alone and thinking of something else entirely. The feeling rushes in like floodwater and fills my head, and before I know it I'm a sore-throated, weepy mess.

This Friday I'll fly out from home in Boise to Minneapolis, where I and my brother John will get a car and head to Buffalo to my Aunt Kris and Uncle Milt's house. We offered to get a room, but it seems more right to pile in on relatives' couches and floors, just like we always did. It seems like forever since I've been there.

We grow up and move and build lives and before you know it, we're all older, we're spread far and wide, and we begin the ritual of seeing each other only for weddings and funerals. It's a shame, but it's a process old as the family itself.

But, for this weekend, we'll gather together to remember Myrtle Kleaver. She was my grandmother, and she was a wonderful person. She is missed.

Master of the Blues

No, I ain't gone Lightnin Hopkins. I'm talking blue runs, as in skiing, as in kickass alpine at Targhee.

First off: I suck at skiing. I started the learning process at age 36, which means I was already brittle and frightened. You want to start skiing when you're fearless and made of rubber, sometime between ages 3 and 20.

But, after learning on ice in the dark up at Bogus, I persisted in this sport whose appeal entirely escaped me, largely because part of my deal included a pass for the following season. So, I went again and again and by the end of the year I was hooked.

Now this, my second full year of alpine action, I am finally seeing some progress. I can point myself downhill, keep my body squared, keep my weight on the balls of my feet, and generally maintain control.

I've skied a few black runs at Bogus (Wildcat, War Eagle, Paradise), and this past weekend at Targhee, out in Driggs, I attacked all the blue runs I could get my feet on and came out smiling like a maniac. The blues there are as steep or more so than the blacks at Bogus, so I like my changes heading back up to the local hill.

I've got some killer cameraphone photos I'm trying to post here, but they're not going through, so that'll have to wait. Know that the view from the top of Targhee of the Tetons in full sunny winter glory is pretty friggin amazing.

I love this skiing business.

This Is the New Year

Funny thing is, I do feel different. Ready to go. To start again.

To be better.

Resolutions are such a cliche it's not even worth discussing them, really. But in a way, what better time to make grand and sweeping changes than the beginning of the New Year.

I've got mine. Rather than go into the details, I'll just say that in 2007 I will work hard to become the person I would like to be. To make my self-image match my words and actions. To spend my time and money and love and energy in more appropriate ways.

It involves many things, and it will not be easy, but I'm more ready than I've ever been. It's time.