…for them or for us?
Because they, we, are linked.
If human greed and insensitivity dooms the elephant, I confidently predict the vicious species that eliminated the pachyderm will be gone from this planet within two generations. And it’ll be a better world.

I’m not advocating that. I work every day to avert it, and feel more committed, more engaged, than I have since The Revolution in 1970. But I can see a path to failure that parallels the rising of the seas and the contamination of air and water in China. There is a way that we can kill all the elephants, harvest and carve all their ivory, and die. And there is another Way.

I have completed four spots with Mandarin subtitles. Ready for viewing in the People’s Republic now.

https://www.youtube.com/user/WhatYaGottaKnow?feature=mhee

But I have not yet found the path past the Great Firewall, and am naturally concerned about that. A contact in finance made a fulsome promise to set up those pages — inside RenRen, Youku, Baidu et al.
Nothing cooking, yet.

A graduate design class assigned to my cause at Academy of Art University will show their products later today — reportedly there are some cool logos and a few good spots. I hope some of this material can be used. More important at this instant is that hole through the Great Firewall. I’m praying that one of these students, with the right colored passport, can simply put up a page or two and the game can begin.

I’m uncertain where to turn now. I wish I could engage Fenton Communications and hand this task of creating a global shout over to the experts. Sigh. But I cannot. I have yet to find the support, or the network of mutual aid, that will blow this effort up to the needed size.

I am just beginning. I won’t rest until this is done, and the elephant wanders the forests of Cameroon and the savannahs of sub-Saharan Africa in peace and safety. I feel a Great Spirit with me and call upon It — in this season of rebirth — to give me strength and inspiration.

Because it’s not just the elephant that walks the knife edge. That is one thing I know for certain.

Got some publicity for my months of effort, cutting nine anti-poaching spots for Chinese social media sites:

http://www.marinij.com/tiburonbelvedere/ci_22801992/tiburon-man-urges-marin-residents-help-save-african

The response was pretty amazing — people from as far as England and Gabon took note of it, praised the effort, offered to help, a few sent money. I realize that money is a fair substitute for doing something — it assuages the conscience, fulfills the desire to help, and absolves you from picketing the Chinese embassy, firebombing a trinket shop with ivory in the window or calling out the Tanzanians for being corrupt eco-terrorists.

I’m following a tougher path, and want to take note of this (literal) cusp:
At this moment, I have one (possibly two) spots translated into Mandarin. But I don’t have a known method for putting the Chinese characters on the screen. The local Chinese TV station, KTSF, refuses to answer my calls concerning airing these public service announcements, and helping me finish them. I have to find the correct workflow path to completion of the spots, and quick.

Because a fellow connected in China is supposed to be setting up social sites — organization name unknown (we’ll get to that) — in the People’s Republic. I sent my passport number so that I could get a Real-ID to do this, properly overseen by the PRC government. Don’t want to joust with the Great Firewall, do we?

So — tallying up — incomplete (if approved, by the Sheldrick Trust) spots; no posting sites, yet. Ah yes, the music is pirated. I need real, and appropriate, music for the spots. Here I’m prepared to risk opprobrium for the sake of my task — but would prefer legit sound. So, work remains.

Will the sites be cleared?
Will the Mandarin find its way onto the screen?
Will the spots be seen? go viral? have impact?

In Africa, the Jangaweed fuckers who crossed the CAR to complete the slaughter of Cameroon’s elephants, made a stop in Chad to machine gun 86 elephants last weekend. 33 were pregnant females. Nice, huh? God damn this, and give me the strength to see this difficult Long March through.

I am going to get my spots online in China.
I am going to build a movement that changes minds.
I’m going to gather funds for a major documentary shot across Africa on this crime against the planet.
And I’m going to organize, arm and deploy an army of poacher-hunters who track down and eliminate the guys who did what they did in Chad last week.

So help me God.

Some thoughts about human relations with our animal brethren, and the Earth.

Let’s begin with a few ruminations about God, since it’s handy to have a divine baseline in this discussion.

A popular myth has humans “created in the image of God.” I’d like to see the Hebrew for that. I love what those capable royalists did in the King James Bible but defer to the original text wherever serious thinking is required. But let’s go with the English poetry, for now. The presumption – some might term it arrogation – is the we are the Crown of Creation, divinely modeled, and have the right to name and rule all life on the planet. I dispute every jot of that, so let’s dig deeper.

I’ve done some serious thinking about God, and did spend part of a semester at Harvard Divinity School. So allow me to say this about that:

The notion that God is something we can describe, let alone that he has a penis, a beard and two eyes, is unspeakably offensive in its idiocy and trivialization. The Native American “Wakantanka,” Great Mystery, at least points in the right direction. It claims no knowable instantiation. What human model accounts for quarks, quasars and black holes, for galaxies and oceans? Some stupidity can be ignored. This can be neither ignored nor forgiven. We do not, cannot, know or describe God. That ineffable awesome Other is at its core Unknowable, indescribable and utterly vast. We may impute to it beneficence, and there I hum along. But beyond that, we step away from the verge, hang our heads in humility and mumble apology – rather than insulting the Great Mystery and its stumbling progeny, human intelligence by making any pronouncements about It’s nature, purpose or qualities. We cannot have it in mind.

This said, let’s talk about we-who-are-supposedly-fashioned-in-It’s-image.

Humanity, homo sapiens sapiens, master of the planet, wielder of tools, owner of an opposable thumb, gifted with ceaseless fertility (til around age 40, give or take), ambitious, destructive, devious, possessed of spoken and written language, weaponry and a febrile desire to control All… (Now is that the description of a God you could love?)

This homo sapiens claims that because he (I use the pronoun consciously) can shape tools, bend the earth, grow crops and kill game, is the master of everything and superior to all. There is a leap beyond faith or reason and merits revisitation. Let’s journey thither together.

When pressed to cite, beyond the capacity to kill everything known, why this homo sapiens is to be considered the crown of creation, after the religious drivel sputters to silence and opposable thumbs rest in the pockets of the thinker, the customary response is, “But we alone can speak.” We, uniquely, laugh (this has been debunked – cf, The Exultant Ark). We contemplate the sky, the stars (as do owls). We can organize into hunting tribes (wolves). We have complex societies (elephants).
If we stop for a compassionate moment and truly open our eyes to the world of four-leggeds and wingeds, of swimming creatures and growing seed-bearing plants, we can lay down the God burden and step back from our annihilatory arrogance. And we begin to glimpse that we are one of many miracles. In our ignorance and insensitivity (literal, scientific, sensory in-sensate-ivity or incapacity to sense), we cannot hear the language of bees, the thoughts of our kittens, cogitate with the elephants, share poems with porpoises or songs with whales. In so doing, we have walled ourselves off from a far greater God than the dangling-penis-bearded-glowering-swordwielder.

The Earth itself breathes, speaks, exhales poetry.

We cannot hear the infrasonic lessons of the elephants, felt through the soles of their feet. And what do we not hear, though faintly we sense, in the souls of our dogs and cats, as they gaze into our eyes with understanding that sometimes surpasses our mothers’? What speech passes between wolves, woven into caring, loving packs that outlive any individual member? What lessons does the polar bear mother teach her cub as the latter learns to wait by the breathing hole for the seal? What murmurs of the heart do they share as they travers the ice under the aurora?
We are one blip in a vast symphony of evolutionary probes, each claiming their place in the day, their journey in spiraling purposeful transformation.

To see across the chasm – which is really just a diaphonous veil – to the soul of another animal, or even a plant, and sense its sensing of us, is the start of an entirely new journey. We move onward, beyond the self, and at least step on the road to what we call God.

Interspecies communication is a step beyond the limitations of being just human. Human isn’t God or even god-like. It’s one flicker of a divine and incomprehensibly vast flame. Turning away from this is actually and pointedly turning against God. It is profane in every sense.

I touch my cat, caress her neck as she lies supine in the sun. She closes her eyes, stretches her neck and seems to draw back her lips, registering the softness and evident affection in my touch. Which part of this transaction is unknowable? Which part is alien to human exchange?

We are now summoned to go beyond human bounds.
If the planet is to survive as an inhabitable environment, if we are to survive as a species, we need to do more than engineer our way out of the cul-de-sac of violent ignorance.
We are summoned to transform at our core.

The supposition that we are supreme, and an extension of the divine finger, will likely and soon lead us over an evolutionary cliff. It will be somewhat sad, but not truly tragic, when in a spasm of our most unlovely traits we blow ourselves off the surface of Earth, taking most living species with us. I speak here not of some creeping ecological implosion but of the other, actually more likely, explosive termination. (Picture an unfortunate exchange between Israel and Iran extending into an exchange between Russia and the US that then drags in China. Our strategic nukes remain on launch ready status, set to go in under 13 minutes.)
The alternative, which already are manifest in a variety of geomantic, feminist, and Earth-centric movements, is to acknowledge our humbler place as one part, albeit a brilliant and promising spark, in a greater picture. A responsible role in this larger mosaic calls for limits on consumption, dramatic change in waste disposal behavior, reduction in human population, control over resource consumption and transnational management of wildlife and plant species so as to responsibly husband the living legacy of the planet for future generations.

There is no alternative to this course but extermination. We may go convinced (incorrectly, as I point out) of our divinity and rectitude, but we will surely go if we hold to our current cognitive path.

We, species homo sapiens sapiens, must earn that redundant title, the thinking part, by transcending our limited conception of who we are, how we fit in here, and what that unknowable Mystery may have empowered us to do here, and beyond this planet, if we behave properly and transcend being merely human.

The kittens and elephants point the way.

The winter has been gentle, sometimes chilly for California but mellow. Plenty of rain began it, so there’s none of the customary anxiety about shortfall. We’d welcome a bit more precipitation because Miki and I plan a journey to the mountains next week, hoping to cross country ski.

Miki has settled into her commuting and working routine. I share the journey to the Valley twice a week, teaching at Cogswell College and conducting current events sessions at her facility and the JCC. I’m hoping for some more remunerative work, but am enjoying a season of unaccustomed lack of pecuniary concern. And we are paying down our last debt, even as renovations are completed on the house in Burbank. To be unafraid, while building equity and doing what ought to be more costly renovations…. it’s almost un-American!

My initial moves on the elephant anti-poaching front still lack momentum, but I’ve turned a corner. The Sheldrick Trust, headquartered in London, sent a hard drive with 330 Gigs of video of their baby elephants. Most of it showed the caregivers, so is of little use for the spots I hope to create, but there’s enough footage to do a couple of stunning ads. I’m on this. Next I need a Mandarin translator and then I need someone to help me place the first spots on Chinese social media sites. Step by step… not swiftly enough, but surely there’s motion.

I think of elephants each evening, as I enjoy the loving company of my cat. I think of wordless fusion, of the love we ought to show one another, across species boundaries, and of the care we owe the planet. We all have a role and a duty of care. I’m doing my part. Miki does hers, as she works to make the lives of elders rich and meaningful. I feel urgency, but not anxiety, as I take my steps.

I foresee a journey to Africa later this year, to expand this work, and perhaps to document the poaching crisis across a mid-band of the continent, from Cameroon through CAR and Congo, to Tanzania and Kenya. No small undertaking, but this appears to be a hole in the media landscape — and it must be filled.

Keeping each day full, grateful for health, energy and love. Profoundly grateful that north and south, the family stretches into new and rich domains — Sasha into her renovated home in Burbank, we into new challenges at work and growing comfort in our Tiburon home. A season of peace and bright prospects. Savoring every breath

Deep in the heart of the Valley (Silicon, that is), I have to note what I’ve failed to find hereabouts, to date: no consulting, no recruiting, no hookup with the finance folk. What I have found: a small amount of academic work, a possible shot at making a mobile app out of one of my math games… Not much. Most of my hundred transits across these 55 traffic-strewn miles have been about supporting Miki in her witheringly corrosive employment at an upscale elders’ residence. This is not a sustainable path, for either of us.

Further south (in Burbank), renovations on our recently purchased double residence progress. In a bit over a week, we’ll go down, review the work and seek permits for a compiant version of the renovated garage. At the moment, we’re coloring outside the municipality’s lines. I believe we can conform, and complete our upgrade of the front house close to our budget.

Any big ideas about travel, foreign service, whatever, must await resolution in Burbank (we need the income) and closure on Miki’s employment down the Valley. Both should come into focus by spring.

For me, a primary task is photo archiving, memoir writing, video transferring — all of this compressing records and making them of some use to people today, and in the future. L’dor va-dor… from generation to generation…

We’ve come a far piece from Abad. We reintegrated with the US, survived the election (with some elation), now swim past the “cliff” and I am starting a hunt for a sustainable and fulfilling future. My elephant campaign needs allies, and it continues. I’m hoping that the elephant work will be core to the coming year. There was a scintilla of good news in yesterday’s paper: local militias are forming in Kenya and Namibia, hunting elephant poachers — because the locals understand there’s more at stake than a snippet of lost local fauna. This is crucial. It must be paired with reduction in demand. And that’s all about China.

China — is a tough nut to crack. I can’t even find a translator to turn my spots into Mandarin. No sign of a willing intern. What’s with this? Am I facing circled wagons and a mile high wall of resistance to anything that smacks of cultural remonstration? If so, I swear I’ll blow my trumpet and bring that wall down. But this is a tough time, a lonely time. I don’t know who my fellows in this struggle will be, and long to know.

All will be revealed in the New. And here we stand at the lip. It doesn’t read as a “cliff” of any kind. Perhaps a slight rise, with a distant vista of hills and sky. I see vastness and promise. Even as I acknowledge the loneliness of the moment, and the disappointing lack of porosity or intelligence or even spirit here in the Valley. I rise above it, from within.

Endless hyperbole will be uttered, scribbled, blogged and shouted in the days that follow this landmark election — one so rich in wonders as to mock our efforts at encapsulation: Obama re-elected; same sex marriage legalized in two states; Elizabeth Warren elected Senator; pot legalized in two states; two Tea Party pinheads unseated by Dems in two other Senatorial contests; major pro-social propositions passed in California (schools saved by Prop 30; three strikes idiocy terminated with gross prejudice). Wonders abound!

A word must be said about what was at stake: nothing short of an apocalypse for liberal aspirations, if Romney-Ryan had won and enthroned their peculiar brand of Me-ism in place of communitarian compassion at the core of Amurica. We would have become our dark doppelganger, again, reprising an even worse instantiation of the shadow of that cursed Dauphin Pretender, Bush II. May his name be cursed (and it is) across the globe and through generations.

With the dark side would have come: an end to Obamacare; a shredding of Medicare and Medicaid; cuts to Social Security; vast expansion of debt while military waste would mushroom; a promulgation to all the world that w-don’t-give-a-damn-and-are-proud-of-it; vast expansion of oil and gas exploration with concommitant diminution of environmental protections; plunder of earth, sea and sky; relaxation of financial regulation, and order of any kind in finance; cuts in government research — medical, scientific; possible extinction for the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency. Yes, I believed these perficious bastards, and the cost would have been incalculable. And, given our weakened state, fiscally, energetically, spiritually, I firmly believe this would have been the death knell to any tattered remnant of America, and its vaunted dreams. Our Chinese competitors and EU onlookers would have smirked knowingly. Ever thus, the Euros would have winked. They thought they had something special — exceptional, indeed. Exceptional greed. But watch their thrashing tail in their death throes. As for the Chinese, we’d not offer even token resistance to the next chapter in their tortured ascent with their unique blend of totalitarianism and crony capitalism. A witch’s brew from hell.

But we stepped back from that verge. And we, the people, didn’t offer just our usual sop, accompanied by a medly of disappointments. No, this time we beat back the shadow and accompanied the major chord with a series of important ancillary notes — to compose a song of freedom and hope that will ring for a generation.

Obama will now rule as the economy mends and returns to vigor. Education and research will not be starved. Women will ascend in governmental power and reproductive rights will be secured for many decades, particularly through Obama’s next couple of Supreme Court appointments. Change has come. Indeed.

No longer hostage to a first term, disabused of illusions concerning his opponents and their boundless fear-laced cynicism, our President will now engage these desperadoes while keeping the people informed not just of his moves, and his reasons, but of his vision of where we ought to go. So that a mighty tide arises that sweeps aside the remains of the Tea Party counter-reformation in the mid-term elections. And we then awaken to a true heaven of freedom and purpose, united in our quest for a more promising future.

I see it, feel it, believe it. And I have to say I’m delighted not to have to disown my country. Because, had it embraced the shadow, I was ready to secure a passport of a different color. Which, in Ryan-Rand fasion might have covered me. But who am I?

I am because we are.

And we are magnificent in this new dawning. Let’s not be fooled by hope or momentary self-satisfaction. There’s much to be done, and the resistance will be fierce.

But money did not carry the day — anywhere in these United States. Citizens United turned out to be a great way to burn money witout impact. And there will be recourse in places where money was disbursed improperly.

We have risen. Now let us walk the walk.

One morning last winter I awoke in India and announced to Miki, “I have to work on saving the elephants!” I don’t know how I got that message, I have no idea what frequency I tuned into in my sleep — but there it was. I thought about this often during the remainder of our time in Ahmedabad and committed myself to taking action on return to the US.

I started poking around American wildlife conservation organizations, made some calls to their DC headquarters, left messages, sent some emails. Nothing happened. No one called, no one wrote.

About a month ago, the New York Times published a first page headline piece that read like something out of the National Enquirer: “Frenzy of Elephant Slaughter” it began. It ignited something close to panic, so great was my sense of the urgent need to act to stop this mindless murder. The worst people in the world — the Lord’s Resistance Army — are buying arms by selling ivory from poached elephants to Chinese organized crime gangs. The people in China presumably don’t know (and perhaps don’t care about) the provenance of this plunder. Decimation of one species is helping propel some of the worst criminals on Earth.

Then National Geographic published a cover story, “Blood Ivory.” It estimated that 25,000 elephants were slain for their tusks this past year.

Two weeks ago, the Wildlife Conservation Network held its national conference and expo in San Francisco. I’ve attended hundreds of conferences over the years; I’ve paid for none. I happily paid to attend this. A colleague in social media, the manager of public relations for the San Francisco Symphony, joined me.

Ian Douglas-Hamilton, world authority on elephants, was a keynote speaker. There were sessions and exhibits about many other endangered creatures, including rhinos and carnivores like the cheetah (who run afoul of herdsmen). But the elephants were the cynosure, and certainly the focus of my attention.

I’m feeling my way toward being useful here. My gut is to create a social media campaign that uses punch, viral video spots to reach the Chinese middle class with the message: “You’re turning elephants into chopsticks. Stop.” As some new billboards from WildAid proclaim, “When the buying stops, the dying stops.”

I put together a simple demo spot, using some baby elephant footage on YouTube.

I happened to have, by purest “chance,” an annual report from the David Sheldrick Trust, subject of several ’60 Minutes’ reports on their efforts to save orphaned baby elephants. They do major work in Africa, are acknowledged as the thought leaders in saving the species. I reached out to them through their US office, got referred to their London headquarters, and have just learned that they are willing to partner with me on this social media campaign. I’m hoping to secure footage from them — they say they have quite a pile — and use it to make the spots.

So there’s a key part of my road ahead. In India, I realized that most NGOs (and nonprofits) have precious little insight into how to weave together SEO, Facebook, YouTube and other community-building tools into a coherent strategy that achieves stated outcomes. I have at least a theory of how to do that, now know some people who are expert in it (Frank Carroll in Canada; Jon Leland on my hill in Tiburon). Now I’m going to gather my network, produce some hard-hitting spots, and go for it!

Importantly, I also hope to tie in Fenton Communications, who are incredibly savvy about creating movements. What i seek here is no less than a movement, a cerebral shift that makes it unthinkable and indeed shameful to kill a beautiful, huge and intelligent creature to pilfer its front incisors to sell through a gang to an illegal Chinese shop. It’s quite disgusting.

And part of me hopes the Chinese resist. Some part of me — the mad warrior — wants to demonstrate what I can, and will, do if they are foolish enough to offer even token resistance.

I will come in peace and respect, not seeking to shock, only to inform and uplift. If they stand in the way, or put up walls to the message, I’m going to use my contacts to shut down Chinese imports to West Coast ports. That will get the appropriate level of attention. And it would be, in so many ways, a pleasure.

Let’s hope that’s not necessary.

Now comes time to practice what I know about video and social. For truly the greater good.

The Shuttle Endeavor made its very last flight through the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday. I stood on the Headlands, almost even with the top of the north tower of the bridge, less than a quarter mile from the cables holding up the main part of the bridge. It was, in every sense, a closeup.

And roaring down the Bay, coming low over Alcatraz, came the specialized 747 that can carry the Shuttle on its back. It couldn’t have been more than a thousand feet above the water.

It came straight on from my vantage point, and it was an unforgettable sight. Then it appeared to turn slightly as it passed through the “uprights” of the Golden Gate towers, its mighty cargo secured atop, and headed West out the Gate, into the realm of memory and spirit.

As I watched the mighty jet and its historic cargo turn slowly south, my feelings moved from thrill to poignancy. It wasn’t a sentimental “USA! USA!” moment, at all.

I felt a certain sadness, watching so many pieces of technological history soaring into the past. Maybe a part of what I was feeling was nostalgia for something I’ll never see: the next chapter of American manned spacefaring.

I’m not one who wishes to stop the clock of destiny just so I can see the next piece of the movie. It’s OK that this is the end of what I’ll know. And more, the Shuttle, though grand, was a massive kludge, too clever by half, a monument to Newtonian physics precisely as we begin exploring new ways to transit space, perhaps new ways to confront gravity and navigate time.

I think we may be a couple of centuries — if we survive and continue to develop as a species — from finding entirely new ways to leap across gulfs of space-time. For now, all we have are giant puddles of volatile chemicals that we light and ride the resulting controlled explosion to “conquer” gravity. We need to learn how to dance with, and beyond, it. That magic eludes our grasp — and it was that sorrowful awareness that colored my vision of the disappearing 747 with Shuttle atop.

The package of plane and spaceship had just transited the Golden Gate, itself just past its 75th birthday. All were old, if still functional, tools. All were heading for the barn, in one sense or another. And we were left to gaze in wonder and gratitude, in inspiration and puzzlement at what had been done and what yet remains to be. Unknowable, that future. But a summons to us and those who will follow — “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

You say that we got nothin’
for which to make amends
I gotta say you have it wrong –
there’s a list that never ends:

Let’s say we’re sorry to Iran
for messing with their folk.
We overthrew their president,
put their people in a yoke.

Say sorry to Vietnam
‘cause we blew it all to bits.
Killed our own sons in the bargain
Agent Orange mocked our wits.

We’re sorry for Guatemala where we
overthrew their brand new cat.
Couldn’t let them grab the bananas
United Fruit would have none of that.

Sorry to the Cherokee
the Seminole, the Sioux.
Sorry we killed your children,
stole your land and made you blue.

We apologize to Chile,
didn’t mean to ruin your day.
Didn’t plan to torture kids,
just had to zap Allende.

We’re sorry to the Russians
though we thank them for their loss.
Yeah, we invaded your north
when the Revolution was a coin toss.

Sorry to the Chinese
whose rivers we did run.
Sorry to the Dominicans,
Nicaraguans too got the gun.

We’re sorry for the sideshow
that nuked half of Cambodia.
We apologize to Africa
for racism and xenophobia.

We have to say we’re sorry
that we took six million slaves.
We sold their kids and whipped their ass
Then put em in sharecropper caves.

We have to say, Excuse us,
to the millions who are dead
Because we had to build the railroads
dig for gold, for silver, for lead.

We’re sorry for our nukes -
we just felt so very scared.
Sorry we poisoned the planet
some might not have dared.

So really, what’s with Sorry?
We did nothin’ that earns the word.
We’re Amurica, and proud of it,
though maybe our emblem should be a turd.

We crapped upon the natives,
hid behind our shores;
We welcomed and enslaved the new folk
Still make the newbies whores.

We raped the earth that blessed us
We kicked the weak folks’ ass
We stood astride the planet
Europe and Asia gave us a pass

Now we have to face it –
We’ve done a little wrong.
The time has come to pay up
And it’s gonna take more than a song.