Category: Driving

I Loved that Car

On September 29th, an unusually heavy deluge struck New York City with many inches of rain. I was driving north on the Bronx River Parkway, a narrow thread of a throughway under significant construction and thick with traffic. I was traveling in the middle lane nose to tail ahead and behind me. As I approached an underpass, the traffic suddenly stopped, as the puddle underneath grew in size and depth as the Bronx River backed up and poured into the underpass. Five minutes later, I abandoned my car after the water rose in the car up to the bottom of my seat. My car was in a video posted in the New York Times. You may have seen the grey roof of the car, at least the last inch or two of it in the bottom left corner of the screen.

I joke that I have never made the New York Times, but my car has. The levity serves as a slight balm for the struggle to wade through the filthy flood water to the safety of the ramp, and the rest of the journey home. A month later, most of the disaster is resolved. While counting my blessings, the more important task is a backward look at the mechanisms or lack of mechanisms in place addressing climate change.

The car insurance company was swift, accurate and fair in their recompense. The tow truck driver was sympathetic and helpful with his blunt answers. In contrast, the City of New York was overwhelmed, ill-prepared, and hiding the fact that the flooding issue at this underpass is a long, ongoing problem that has never been addressed. The private companies are already updating their processes and responding with the ease of fresh experience. Government, however, is far behind, mired in the “talking phase” at the beginning before the beginning of any solution process.

Why is our government so slow to respond? Government is typically reactionary, only responding after the fact. Funding is always a contentious issue because the pot of available funds is always too small to address the needs as they are understood today. Even so, the crux of this lack of government response is the long, ongoing meddling by the fossil fuel industry at every level of government.

The approach of the fossil fuel industry is to kill any legislation and all regulation that promotes a response to climate change. Their approach is still to deny climate change. If climate change does not exist, then there is no reason for government to fund responses to the escalating crisis. As former governor Mike Huckabee said in an abrupt response to a question on the presence of climate change, “Eh, it will be gone in another year or so.”

The government response to climate change is far, far behind the needs of the day. The number of weather-related disasters per year is rising and the cost of each disaster is also escalating. Even if your house or car was not directly affected this past year, the growth in the costs of repair and replacement is causing your insurance rates to rise, and your taxes as well. Yet, the year 2023 has demonstrated we can take back both the narrative and the power to compel a better government response.

New York State has demonstrated that the fossil fuel industry push to defeat climate legislation and regulation can be stopped. Citizen action is as powerful or even more powerful than the paid lobbyists and campaign donations when such actions are applied. We have pressured legislators to vote for bills and mandates to address the changing climate, and many responded. We have thwarted attempts to remove the regulatory guardrails at city, county, and state levels of government. Our lobby visits, protests, and rallies worked.

Climate change is relentless, and it is speeding up; losing my car in a freak storm is ample proof. We are making a difference and defeating the greed of the old energy economy as the weather alarms clamor louder. Let us finish the task we set out to do, to save the Creation from the ravages of greed and unrelenting development.

Now we are confident: the goal is obtainable.

The Animals of the Serengeti

East Gate, Serengeti National Park, Tanzania

You are viewing an iconic photo that I snapped with my little point-and-shoot camera as I took a “happy stop” at the main gate at Serengeti National Park. While people come from around the world to snap pictures of the animals of the Serengeti, I was struck by the most pervasive creature of all, the human visitor. You will see humans in the back of safari vehicles from early in the day until 18:00 every evening, when the travelers are either gone from the park or corralled into their camps.

In hopes of explaining the response of the Tanzanian economy to the foreign visitors to the park, this little shop brings their experience with tourist needs into sharp focus. Looking closely at the windows from left to right, one can identify the priorities of the tourist as liquor, wine, beer, and Pringles. You may read whatever commentary you would like into those documentary facts.

The Masai have been removed from the national park and the wildlife is resurging. The Masai do not hunt wildlife and eat it (for the most part), but their cattle herds were destructive and competed with the herbivores for grasses on the endless plain. The few roads in the park are lightly maintained, remaining in kidney-crushing condition, discouraging vehicles and promising “African massages” to the few who dare to speed.

Unfortunately, climate change is having a significant impact on the Serengeti. The seasons of the region are long dry, short wet, short dry, and long wet. January is supposed to be the short dry season, yet it rained every day, confusing both flora and fauna. Zebra and wildebeests are supposed their birth their babies altogether at the end of the short dry and the beginning of the long wet. They did not know when to drop. The sex of crocodiles in the egg is determined by the outside ambient temperature. The higher the temperature, the more eggs will hatch as male. The warmer temperatures accompanying climate change has created a severe lack of females. The migration itself is under siege, an endless counterclockwise pattern of grazing across the plains. Short grass benefits the grazing animals and the long grass benefits the carnivores. The misplaced rains are making chaos of the grazing cycles.

This park is dependent upon the tourists who come with their cameras and their appetites. The tourist fees and opportunities to camp in environmentally conceived camps sustain one of the best maintained and better protected parks in East Africa. There is nothing quite like listening to cape buffalo munch grass next to your tent in the middle of night, who will remind you with a delightfully large buffalo patty just outside your tent flaps in the morning.

Someone tell me though: Is Pringles an international sensation that far-ranging tourists just cannot put down?

Philosophy of Learning – Practice Wisdom

לַעֲשׂוֹת – (to do, to make) learn by doing, practice wisdom

The imprecise world of Social Work science places a heavy emphasis on continuous reflection upon past experience. In their terminology this constant review with a supervisor of the past week’s sessions is called “practice wisdom” and it is a necessary component in the Social Work field. Every discipline and almost every job has practice wisdom, learning to do what cannot be taught in the classroom. Even the janitor learns how to wield a broom and mop to reach the tightest corners – this is practice wisdom too.

The peculiar nature of practice wisdom is that it is untestable. In the U.S.A. system of Social Work licensing, a social worker cannot advance to supervisor or higher without a Master’s Degree and a licensing test for the LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker). For many states the LCSW is taken at a computer center and it is multiple choice. Professors warn their students to take the test as close to finishing the Master’s Degree as possible. The warning is because the test only covers what is taught in school and the candidate can be easily tripped up by practice wisdom that tends to deviate from classroom study. Imagine failing a test because you know too much rather than too little.

Practice Wisdom is often described as learning by doing. This is not the haphazard method of experimenting but the application of known knowledge to confirm its soundness and to continue forward. Practice wisdom is act, review, correct, and then act again.

Long time drivers use practice wisdom when they are focused on their driving. They anticipate probable behaviors of other vehicles and even identify potential problems ahead before they approach too close. A new driver is still far too aware of pedals on the floor, three mirrors, on-going and on-coming traffic, and turn signals to be able to see some of the involved traffic patterns. By definition bad drivers do not recognize traffic patterns or usual driver behaviors, learning nothing about their own defensive driving. A good driver is not about the number of hours behind the wheel but the number of hours in the driver’s seat focused on driving.

The difference between repetition and practice wisdom is the use of focus and formal review. In the famous or infamous text “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, one of the outstanding examples is of the wealthy businessman who stayed home on Saturday nights reviewing and identifying every mistake made during the last week as a painful but necessary ritual. Dale Carnegie was describing a man who used practice wisdom to attain success in his business.

No one likes to review their mistakes. None enjoy having another examine their work, looking for weaknesses and offering suggestions of different methods that lead to better outcomes. Criticism, even constructive criticism, is uncomfortable and yet practice wisdom is the commodity we use to gain promotion, attract better clients and write better. College degrees are a great foundation but practice wisdom is the method of advancement.