I Guano Wish You a Merry Christmas

Hi there! You're just in time to join another Graphical History Tour through the archives of your humble scribbler's December cartoons, carefully aged in our ancient wine cellar, each evidencing floral legs with notes of winter stone leather and an earthy finish.

2015

First off, let's get into the spirit of the season with a couple of classic Christmas movies.

We watch a fair number of classic movies in this household, especially at this time of year. After a while, the plots do seem to get mixed up in my head. Did we just witness a miracle on 34th Street, or did it happen on Fifth Avenue?

One thing that I've always liked about parodying old movies like this is that I don't have to spend the usual time making separate grayscale and full-color versions for syndication. Nope, just save the grayscale version, convert it to CMYK, fill in the pink triangle, and voilá! The colorized version is already finished!

Which reminds me, I think tonight we're watching Dudley the Angel show up to help Charlie Brown find the true meaning of Christmas in Frosty, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

2005

Speaking of whom...

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, Dec. 9, 2005

Do I remember the point of the editorial this cartoon was meant to illustrate? No way. It had something to do with corporations securing "air rights" above ground level for such things as skyways connecting buildings on opposite sides of a street. 

That was the fourth-to-last cartoon of mine in the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee. At the end of the year, they decided that they didn't want to run cartoons on the editorial page any more, in favor of a weekly thumbs-up / thumbs-down listicle.

I got more appreciation from the Chicago Free Press that December, which used a cartoon of mine on the front page of their year-in-review edition.

in Chicago Free Press, December, 2005

The Chicago Free Press was a client of my cartoons for their entire run, from 1999 to 2010; this caricature of Dubya Bush was actually from a cartoon I had drawn in August, 2003.

1995

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., Dec. 21, 1995

Christmas week does generally not suit itself to cartoons about the beach hereabouts.  

The city had hired an expert from the National Water Research Institute to determine the source of  fecal coliform bacteria that had forced the city to close North Beach several times during the summer. Human feces were the prime suspect, but in December, the expert reported that preliminary studies pointed instead to gull droppings.

Dad was on the Racine Board of Health back then, and still is, so I get the inside poop on any matters related to public health here. And yes, gull droppings have been a factor in beach closings: they crap on the sand, and that stuff washes into Lake Michigan when it rains.

But human shit was also a major part of the problem. As a result, Racine extended its sewage outflow further out into the lake. The study cast much of the blame on Milwaukee's sewage system; during heavy rains, untreated sewage had to be released into the lake in order to minimize it backing up into everyone's basements.

Since then, Milwaukee's Big Tunnel project has largely addressed that particular problem. This past summer, Racine only had to close North Beach one time (but did have to issue advisories on two other occasions).

1985

I had drawn a couple Christmas issue cover cartoons for the University of Wisconsin at Parkside student newspaper by 1985, making oversized editorial cartoons for them. With the 1985 edition, I decided to make a simple, straightforward holiday greeting.

in UW-P Ranger, Somers Wis., Dec. 12, 1985

I also departed from usual by drawing exclusively in charcoal. This meant I couldn't erase anything if I didn't like it, and having to be extremely careful not to smudge the drawing. The original drawing is too large for my scanner; if I could have posted the original drawing here, you would be able to see all the blue pencil underneath the charcoal.

The medium of charcoal did not afford the Ranger editors much opportunity to add color to the drawing. This was well before PhotoShop and other quick and easy artistic tools; to add color, someone would have had to lay a halftone transfer sheet over the drawing and cut with an Exacto knife the desired shapes for each area where the color should print.

I  had created the Ranger flag that year, and every shape you see in green, I made using that same halftone cutting process. (Ignore the yellow; that's just the discoloring of 40-year-old newsprint, or however old it was when the UW-P library scanned it. I Photoshopped out the yellowing from the Peace on Earth drawing for this post, but not from the flag.)

Well, heck, why don't we go back yet another ten Decembers just for gits and shiggles?

1975

in Park Beacon, Dec. 19, 1975

That takes us all the way back to my high school days. This cartoon was something I drew to illustrate someone else's (possibly Executive Editor Joel Krein's) Twelve Days of Christmas list.

The principal surrounded by garbage, and the school nurse, by the way, were caricatures of real persons. And I'm quite sure that none of my fellow students caught the reference to a running gag in "Fibber McGee & Molly," a radio comedy that was well before our time. Before Assistant Principal McKee's time, too.

Somehow, the school administration let us get away with this cartoon. If I remember correctly, the Park Beacon had to yield to administration censorship once in the two years that I was on staff. An installment of Kevin Cacciotti's "Being Cool in School" comic strip included advice to "destroy school property," and Principal Thompson made us black the cartoon out of every copy with magic markers.

Except for the copies we saved for ourselves.

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Well, that's the Graphical History Tour for this week. Thanks for coming along, and have a Merry St. Lucy's Day!

This Week's Sneak Peek

The celebrities I grew up with are dropping like, well, old people these days.

I happened to have listened to my Tom Lehrer album the day before he died, and I have to say that his nearly 60-year-old satire still stands up pretty well. "National Brotherhood Week" mocks taking a break from prejudice and bigotry for seven days out of 365:

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Moslems,
And everybody hates the Jews. 

I memorized "Pollution" as a child:

See the halibuts and the sturgeons
Being wiped out by detergents.
Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly,
But they don't last long if they try. 

Even proto-woke folk singers came in for some zingers:

The tune don't have to be clever,
And it don't matter if you put a coupla extra syllables into a line.
It sounds more ethnic if it ain't good English,
And it don't even gotta rhyme. 

The "Vatican Rag" is absolutely hilarious:

Do whatever steps you want if
You have cleared them with the pontiff
Everybody say his own
Kyrie eleison
Doin' the Vatican Rag

And of course, who could forget "New Math," his ode to his chosen academic field?

[T]he book that I got this problem [342 minus 173] out of wants you to do it in base eight. But don't panic! Base eight is just like base ten really— if you 're missing two fingers!
Shall we have a go at it? Hang on. ..
You can't take three from two,
Two is less than three,
So you look at the four in the eights place.

Now that's really four eights,

So you make it three eights,
Regroup, and you change an eight to eight ones
And you add 'em to the two,
And you get one-two base eight,
Which is ten base ten,
And you take away three, that's seven.
Ok?
Now instead of four in the eights place
You've got three,
'Cause you added one,

That is to say, eight, to the two,
But you can't take seven from three,
So you look at the sixty-fours —
"Sixty-four? How did sixty-four get into it?" I hear you cry.
Well, sixty-four is eight squared, don't you see?
Well, you ask a silly question, you get a silly answer!

From the three, you then use one
To make eight ones,
You add those ones to the three,

And you get one-three base eight,
Or, in other words,

In base ten you have eleven,
And you take away seven,

And seven from eleven is four!
Now go back to the sixty-fours,
You're left with two,
And you take away one from two,
And that leaves?
Now, let's not always see the same hands...
One, that's right. Whoever got one can stay after the show and clean the erasers. 

Q Toon: Don't Go Queer the Water

Presidential stalking horse Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has been under criticism recently for a number of outrageous statements he has made during the COVID-19 pandemic: alleging that the virus was somehow engineered to spare Chinese and Jews, and likening vaccination with the Holocaust.

So it is hardly surprising that he has also promulgated some highly dubious anti-LGBTQ claims.

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a history of repeatedly sharing unfounded conspiracies that man-made chemicals in the environment could be making children gay or transgender and causing the feminization of boys and masculinization of girls.

Experts dispute the claims from Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist, and told CNN’s KFile his theories that “sexual identification” and “gender confusion” among children could be from their exposure to “endocrine disruptors” found in the environment are completely unfounded.

“I want to just pursue just one question on these, you know, the other endocrine disruptors because our children now, you know, we’re seeing these impacts that people suspect are very different than in ages past about sexual identification among children and sexual confusion, gender confusion,” Kennedy said on his podcast in June last year. “These kinds of issues that are very, very controversial today.”

...

The baseless claim that chemicals – particularly in tap water – could turn people gay has gained popularity with conspiracy theorists over the years, most memorably with conservative radio host Alex Jones, who said chemicals in the water were “turning the friggin’ frogs gay.”

On numerous podcasts between March 2022 and June 2023, Kennedy has alleged that certain chemicals, particularly atrazine, are responsible for the gaying of a generation, largely based on the pesticide's effects on frogs. 

While it is certainly true that mankind has been disposing of all manner of chemicals and medications and toxic fumes into our air and water, most experts who actually know what they are talking about dismiss Kennedy's allegations that atrazine is turning kids gay and trans, delaying puberty in some and accelerating it in others. CNN interviewed  Dr. Linda Kahn, assistant professor in the departments of pediatrics and population health at New York University, who rebutted that comparing frogs to humans is an “apples and oranges thing, it’s not appropriate.” For humans, atrazine is metabolized and excreted from the body within 12 hours, she said.

What is more likely is that in societies where LGBTQ+ members are more likely to be accepted, LGBTQ+ persons are more likely to be out and open about themselves. There was no sudden increase of environmental endocrine disruptors in Weimar Germany, the court of Edward II, or the Sacred Band of Thebes.

More worrisome than Kennedy's charges themselves is the implicit message that there is something intrinsically wrong with LGBTQ+ persons.

Not to mention how this, taken together with his anti-vax hysteria and racist claims that COVID-19 was designed to target some ethnic groups and not others, makes it easier for skeptics to disregard honest environmentalists as crackpots crying wolf.

Happy Centennial, Sparky Schulz!

If you picked up a newspaper today, first of all, thanks for keeping journalism alive for another day; second, you may have noticed a lot of Peanuts references in the comics page.

Today would be the 100th birthday of Charles Schulz, Peanuts' creator.

Schulz was probably the very first inspiration sparking (wink, wink) my urge to cartoon — as he was to so many of my contemporaries. As a child, I had all the Peanuts books, including The Gospel According to Peanuts and The Parables of Peanuts — the former, autographed by its author, Robert Short. Peanuts didn't run in my local paper, but my grandparents would clip and save Peanuts from the Sheboygan Press for me every day even into my college years.

The Gospel According to Peanuts, Bantam edition, 1968, must have been my sixth Peanuts book.

So how to join in the centennial celebration of such a towering figure in our field?

Just last June, I highlighted Schulz's reference in Peanuts to a cartoon drawn by a mentor of his, Frank Wing, in the wee decades of the 20th Century. Five years ago, I celebrated April Fools' Day by featuring some of the more obscure characters he drew in Peanuts.

But for today, I decided to rummage through my own archives in search of cartoons I've drawn with a nod to Mr. Schulz.

I was a bit surprised to come up with only three.

Well, reaching back to some of my juvenalia, four. But that old, old cartoon essentially stole an idea drawn by Tony Auth and stuck Charlie Brown and a few other additions into it. It was utterly unoriginal, and I don't feel like giving that cartoon new life on the internets.

But here are the three that I don't mind bringing back today.

March, 2017

There was this caricature of Scott Pruitt, an anti-environmental activist and the Corrupt Trump Administration's first head of the Environmental Protection Agency, as Pigpen, the hopelessly filthy member of the Peanuts gang who could raise a cloud of dust ice skating.

I had hoped to find an occasion to work this caricature into a fully realized cartoon, but that never came about in the less than 17 months Pruitt was in the cabinet. When he resigned in July of 2018, he was the target of at least 14 federal investigations.

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, July 5, 2005

This one from 2005 takes a Peanuts trope that long ago became a cliché in editorial cartooning. Perhaps the only other Peanuts trope we have rehashed more often is the Great Pumpkin.

Q Syndicate, January, 2014

So when I went to that particular inkwell again in 2014, I attempted to find something fresh and new to do with it.

Chris Kluwe was a punter for the Minnesota Vikings, and a vocal supporter of LGBTQ+ causes, which he claimed led to his being cut from the team. A subsequent investigation found testimony to support some of Kluwe's charges, but after getting bogged down by uncooperative witnesses, ended quietly. The Vikings settled the case by promising to donate some undisclosed monetary amount to LGBTQ+ causes.

I suppose that since I draw primarily for LGBTQ+ publications, a cartoon about young angst-ridden children isn't, well, sexy. But then, you could say that about a lot of the topics I draw about.

Oh, sure, I could easily draw cartoons in which Marcie and Peppermint Patty take their relationship to the next level. And yet that seems like cartoon blasphemy somehow, akin to drawing Snoopy with rabies, Schroeder playing bagpipes, or Charlie Brown winning the World Series.

So I didn't add to the reams of cartoons of weeping Charlie Browns and Snoopys when Schulz died very shortly after retiring the strip; the topic didn't fit either Q Syndicate's or the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee's needs that week.

Well, let's not end today's post there. 

I started this post talking about how Charles Schulz inspired me, and generations of other cartoonists, when we were youngsters. I'll leave you today with his very first published cartoon, in the nationally syndicated feature "Ripley's Believe It Or Not," when he was just fifteen years old.

"Ripley's Believe It or Not" by Robert Ripley, for King Features Syndicate, Feb. 22, 1937

"Peanuts" by Charles Schulz for United Features Syndicate, July 1, 1972

Introducing Albert Fall (Holes and All)

My Saturday History Tours usually display several editorial cartoons; but today, I'm featuring only one.

It was the only cartoon I could find on this topic.

"What's the Idea" by J. N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, Jan. 12, 1922

Today, Warren G. Harding is remembered, first and foremost, for the Teapot Dome scandal, an oil leasing scheme that only blew wide open after President Harding's premature demise. "Ding" Darling's cartoon introduces us to the man who would become the central figure in the scandal, Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall.

Putting government coal and petroleum resources under the control of Fall's Interior Department was Harding administration policy from the beginning. Harding transferred the Teapot Dome oil field in Wyoming from the purview of the Navy Department (as established during the Taft administration to ensure that the Navy would have sufficient oil reserves for its fleet) to the Interior Department by a little-noticed executive order in June of 1921.

Darling's cartoon, however, is about transferring control of Alaska's natural resources from the Department of Agriculture to the Interior Department, which required congressional action. This is 37 years before Alaska became a state; even more of the territory was under direct federal control as is still the case now. Its governor, at this point Republican Scott C. Bone, was not elected, but a presidential appointee. Neither Bone nor any of his predecessors were actually from Alaska.

Harding was wholeheartedly in favor of opening up Alaskan resources, but as you should be able to tell from Darling's cartoon, Darling's pro-environment sentiments led the Iowa-raised cartoonist to fear the consequences of handing those resources over to predatory interests.

Few in Alaskan business or political leadership shared Darling's trepidation. Wilson-appointed Former Gov. Thomas Riggs (D) wrote a column in the December 18, 1921 New York Times, advocating for local control "without the hampering apron strings of most of the 48 fussy old stepmothers in Washington": 

"I do not know where a constructive enterprise ends and a predatory interest begins, but I sincerely wish that a few more of one or the other were allowed to come into the Territory to open up great mines, build railroads, explore for oil and coal, establish paper plants and pay the taxes."

Sen. Harry S. New (R-IN), Chair of the Senate Committee on Territories, authored a bill on November 8, 1921 to provide for the transfer from Agriculture to Interior of oil and coal mining leases, national forest reservations, ranger stations and lighthouses. Testifying before Senator New's committee, Secretary Fall, previously a Senator from New Mexico, boasted that he had in fact been the one to write New's bill:

"I discussed the matter with the President. His policy toward developing Alaska and my bill for coordination was introduced in accordance with his ideals."

Testifying against the New/Fall bill's provisions to put Alaska's forests under the authority of the Interior Department, Chief U.S. Forester Col. W.B. Greeley argued that no economy would be achieved by such a move. 

Rep. Charles F. Curry (R-CA), Chair of the House Committee on Territories, put forth a House bill similar to Senator New's on December 22. By then, however, New had tabled his Senate bill, reasoning that he, Fall, and President Harding should first visit the Alaskan territory the next summer.

Harding didn't get around to making that visit until July, 1923, and died before making it back to Washington D.C.

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By the way, "Sec. Wallace" in Darling's cartoon is Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace, the father of Henry A. Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President under Franklin Roosevelt, and Progressive Party presidential nominee in 1948.

Gulf War I

It's time for the thirty-year-old thread of cartoons at this here blog to go to war with Iraq.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Wis., January 14, 1991

President George H.W. Bush gave Iraqi President Saddam Hussein an ultimatum: withdraw from Kuwait by January 15, or the international coalition Bush had been painstakingly assembling since Iraq annexed the emirate in August would attack. Hussein called Bush's bluff.

in UW-M Post, January 22, 1991

And it was no bluff.

There was no "Khattam Shud military base," by the way. Khattam Shud is the villain in Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which I had recently read. It also translates as "completely finished."

in UW-M Post, January 29, 1991

Not that we could know in January that the war would be over in a matter of weeks. As Hussein and his commanders pulled their army back from the front to defend the capital (and seemed more committed to shelling Israel than hindering U.S. military advances), coalition forces prepared for a possible siege of Baghdad, urban warfare, and the prospect of heavy civilian casualties.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha, Wis., January 31, 1991

The retreating Iraqi army burned oilfields in their wake, to the alarm of environmentalists the world over. 

"Don't Look Now" was a follow-up to "Before, During and After," even though my parents may have been the only people to see both cartoons at the time.

in UW-M Post, January 31, 1991

I liked this cartoon so much I drew it twice, once for the Parkside Ranger and a week later for the UW-M Post. The second cartoon is a slight improvement over the first, in which there was only one cot; the Bushes in the later cartoon are also doing more than just standing around in their cell.

For Whom the Toon Toles

by Tom Toles in Buffalo News, September 27, 1984

Washington Post editorial cartoonist Tom Toles is closing up shop after tomorrow, so today's Sankaback Saturday is devoted largely to my personal favorites of his cartoons from before he was hired by the Post. And I have to give the Post credit for hiring a cartoonist who was so very different from his predecessor there, a Washington institution in his own right, the undisputed dean of the profession, Herbert Block.

I was instantly taken with his simplistic style and craftily pointed humor when he burst onto the scene in the early 1980's. It would be interesting to see his pre-syndication cartoons for the Buffalo Courier-Express, which folded in 1982, to get some idea of how his artistic style — so unlike the Oliphant and MacNelly clones of the day — evolved.* I assume that his style of humor, which often comes at you from unexpected directions, was evident from the beginning.

in Buffalo News, June 21, 1984

His colleagues were equally impressed. The late Jeff MacNelly wrote that he was crazy about Toles's "masterful timing and comic staging" and "graphic goofiness." Mike Peters admired his "satire in the Jonathan Swift tradition of satire." Jules Feiffer blurbed, "There exists a school of thought, led by me, that wonders why Tom Toles has not yet wan a Pulitzer Prize"; so in 1990, to nobody's surprise, he won one.

in Buffalo News, March, 1983

If I can wax pedantic for a moment, "Hunting the Hazardous Substances" illustrates the Toles approach to an idea. Many cartoonists, if they came up with this idea for the Reagan administration's attitude toward environmental protection, would have drawn the third panel as a stand-alone cartoon. The pacing established by the four-panel format sells the idea so much better than the third panel alone would. (The reference in the lower right corner to burnt EPA documents is a bonus.)

in Washington Post, November 14, 2002

Sticking with the topic of the environment, I include this one Washington Post cartoon to demonstrate how masterfully Toles tied together two separate news stories in a way that made readers wonder why they hadn't connected the two items themselves.

in Buffalo News, July, 1990

I would be remiss if I didn't include a couple cartoons about American presidents. This one about George H.W. Bush's nomination of David Souter to the Supreme Court is an excellent example of Toles carefully setting up a pay-off that comes from a completely unexpected direction. It plays off the unfair characterization of Bush being a wimp without playing into it, while still using it to make the cartoon's point.

in Buffalo News, May 14, 1993

Toles's minimalist caricatures have been instantly recognizable even when they diverge wildly from portraiture. His George W. Bush, for example, had ears sticking way up from the top of the man's head like no animal you have ever seen; but Toles drew him that way consistently and readers always knew who that figure was. He drew Obama with big ears, too, but then, so did everybody else. His Trump is appropriately grotesque.

in Buffalo News, ca. June, 1986

Since this here blog skews gay, here's Toles being gay-friendly back in 1986, when the Supreme Court ruled that Georgia's anti-sodomy laws were constitutional in Bowers v. Hardwick, a case involving the arrest of one Michael Hardwick for having consensual homosexual sex in the privacy of his own bedroom. Other cartoonists may well have had the same idea in this cartoon, I suppose, but if so, probably only drew the police officer intruding in the couple's bed. Or the judge. Or a legislator character. Toles takes the idea and keeps spinning it out well past absurdum, and the result is worthy of standing next to Justices Blackmun's and Stevens's dissents.

Finally, a Tom Toles "I Told You So" from the early days of the technology enabling you and me to have this conversation, and others to share their insights about liberals drinking children's blood in a network of tunnels linking pizza parlors around the country:

in Buffalo News, September 8, 1994

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* Update: D.D. Degg at Daily Cartoonist has dug up one of Toles's Courier-Express cartoons, and even some juvenalia.

A Blog Post for Mom

We lost my mother to cancer this week, so I haven't had time to research one of my usual Saturday history lessons for today.

I've posted a number of my dad's "Environmental Stewardship" columns on this blog; in the day, my mom also wrote columns on the environment that were printed in the state Sierra Club's Muir View (for which she asked me to draw an occasional accompanying cartoon such as the one above), or NorthCountry Journal, or the Racine Journal Times, or Lutheran Magazine. Nature was a shared concern of both my parents; they met in the canoeing club at UW-Madison in the 1950's and continued canoeing for about 50 years. They would have celebrated their 64th anniversary next month.

A church banner Mom had made for her senior citizens' group in the 1970's.

Today, I've decided to give my blog over to her. She left behind a three-ring binder of her various writings, many of which are longer than the internet has left most attention spans. There is no date on this one, which I would guess was written sometime in the mid- to late-1980's.

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Global Legislation for Wildlife

Many species occur in several countries or migrate from one country to another, passing through several countries on the way. This complicates conservation legislation.

In 1973, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, CITES, was written. It has been adopted by 80 countries since then. It tackles the widespread illicit trade in 600 threatened species of plants, fish, birds and animals. But the illegal trade will continue until consumers refuse to participate.

A single orchid or Amazonian parrot can fetch $5,000; a fur coat made from South American ocelots can sell for $40,000. Rhino horns are worth their weight in gold. Japan still imports huge quantities of rare wildlife products in spite of the fact that they signed the CITES treaty. Poachers have shot thousands of African elephants for their ivory, which is carved into tourist trinkets.

The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance has been signed by 34 countries. The Convention lists 279 wetland sites of 19 million hectares. Many types of waterfowl will benefit.

There are two more CITES treaties: the World Heritage Convention, and the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals.

Mom's painting of a stream behind the cabin she owned near Millville Hollow in the '00's.

Over 90% of all species that have ever lived have now disappeared. Some became extinct through natural processes. Human exploitation has increased the rate of extinction by 400%. Current estimates are that we lose one species a day now. If habitat loss continues at present rates, we can expect an annual rate of loss as high as 5,000 species per year by the year 2000 — 130 species per day.

What is the value of wild species? A few examples (who knows what we have already lost without discovering its value?): the rosy periwinkle contains a cure for childhood leukemia; armadillos are the only animal useful in the study of leprosy; manatees' slow-clotting blood aids research on hemophilia; shark species are studied for liver and cancer cures; a wild gene provides barley with immunity against disease; aspirin was developed from willow bark; wild Mexican yams contain diosgenin, a contraceptive; tomato plants' resistance to Fusarium wild was provided by a wild Peruvian tomato; sunflowers, cassava and corn also were improved by cross-breeding with wild species.

Usefulness to mankind is not the only value of wild species. Three quotations on the philosophy of "Green Ecology":

"I owe an allegiance to the planet that has made me possible, and to all the life on that planet, whether friendly or not. We have a responsibility to the hundred of billions of people who have not yet been born, who have a right to be, who deserve a world at least as beautiful as ours." — David Brower

"Eventually we may eliminate every 'competitor' for living space on the crowded Earth. When the last creature has been accounted for, we shall have made ourselves masters of all cvreation. We shall look around, and we shall see nothing but each other. Alone at last." — Norman Myers

"Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. This we know — the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth." — Chief Seattle

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Lila Berge at a FLOW (For Love of Water) event. She is wearing a t-shirt featuring a portrait I drew of naturalist John Muir; the t-shirt was sold through the Sierra Club catalog in the late 1980's.

EnviroStewardship: Leaving the Leaves

Dad's Environmental Stewardship column for the month somehow went missing from my inbox, so I had to go pick up a hard copy yesterday. We've had a thaw since he wrote this last weekend, so I can just add that he has raked up the leaves that were plowed onto his front yard. But the grass in back is still covered up.

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Back in November of last year, I suggested that procrastination in the clean-up of the yard and garden beds might be a very good thing for birds, bees, and beneficial insects. I have no way of knowing whether anybody chose to follow that suggestion, but this year, Mother Nature seems to have decided for us.

At the time I am writing this essay, it is well below freezing. The yard and garden beds are covered with several inches of snow and leaves with dead portions of plants still uncut still sticking up through the snow. Even those leaves raked into the gutter for city pick-up and composting have been plowed back onto the lawn in a couple of feet of ice and snow.

The sudden cold snap that started in October may have been hard on some birds and other creatures, but many already are benefiting from the mulch of leaves and snow. The bees and other beneficial insects have burrowed into the ground under it all and are set to hibernate. Birds are enjoying the seeds left on the dried up plants.

We might have a very late Indian Summer in which one can once again decide to rake the lawn, chop up the leaves into a better mulching, clean up the gardens... or not. Whatever one decides, one should take into consideration the other creatures with which we share this earth.

Man — and Woman — were given dominion or governance over this earth, so we should be sure that what we do for ourselves does not unnecessarily put too high a cost on the other creatures. I prefer to say we were given stewardship of the earth. All the earth is the Lord's, as the psalmist says, but He apparently needs or wants stewards to help Him run it.

To quote the ELCA Social Statement on Caring for Creation once again, "The principle of participation means they [all living things] are entitled to be heard and have their interests considered when decisions are made." Even small decisions about our yards and gardens.

—John Berge

EnviroStewardship: For the Birds

My father writes a monthly column on caring for the environment for the newsletter at his church. The following is the November column by John Berge, PhD.

Last month, I discussed the ELCA’s Social Statement, "Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope and Justice," which lists principles of solidarity, sufficiency and sustainability in very general terms. Recent information on the severe decline in the bird population of North America would suggest we are not doing a very good job in caring for the avian portion of creation. The Bible tells us that God notes the death of a single sparrow, and yet there are nearly three billion fewer birds now in North America than there were in 1970.

The tendency has been for us to look at the decline or recovery of individual species rather than the overall picture. As ecologist Hillary Young of the University of California, Santa Barbara was quoted in Science News, “Individual birds play an important role in ecosystems, including pollinating plants, dispersing seeds and controlling pests. Often it’s the common, abundant birds that keep these ecosystems ticking.”

Three major sources of this decline are generally blamed for the die off, all of which we as individuals can make a significant contribution to reducing. There are differences of opinion on the order of these three, so this list is not intended to say which is worse.

Predation by cats is certainly one of the top three — and possibly the top — that we can influence. Our pet cats do not have to be put out every night to “do their thing”; cats will quite easily adapt to a litter box. If every cat owner would make sure their cats are never outside unsupervised, we could greatly reduce this predation.

Another one of the top three is collision with windows. We used to have a few such incidences at our house every year until I put some of those self sticking decals on the windows near the bird feeders. Bird fatalities due to their seeing their reflection or a possible route to the other side dropped to zero. I am sure that most of these fatalities involve high rise buildings and migrating birds, but our experience would say that single family homes, by their sheer number, also contribute.

The third top cause is loss of habitat. We can blame farmers for planting right up to the edge of the field rather than leaving wild strips and trees along those edges, but our yards can be designed for birds or not. The robin is one of the few birds that really appreciate the large expanse of lawns, especially if we don’t kill off the worms with excessive chemicals and pesticides. Plants with seeds and fruits that the birds like, trees and shrubs for protection and nesting can improve their habitat as well as ours.

An interesting study recently showed that small, non-lethal doses of an insecticide used on seeds and nursery plants (a neonicotinoid) caused weight loss and delayed the migration of these birds by several days, enough to put them at a disadvantage in breeding and possibly out of sync with their food supply. The most  given to each bird was only one tenth of that used to coat an individual corn seed.

The effect of climate change on bird populations is still to be determined. The Audubon Society has reported that 389 North American bird species are vulnerable to extinction from climate change. So all our efforts to reduce green house gas emissions are helpful to the birds.

A speaker I heard the other night on wind power admitted that birds and bats are susceptible to collisions with rotating turbine blades. (The tips can be going over 150 miles per hour.) But his company can install a device to temporarily stop the turbines when migrating birds are detected approaching by radar. Good stewardship from an industrial giant.

EnviroStewardship: Caring for Creation

My dad writes an environmental commentary for his church's monthly newsletter. His column for October continues a discussion begun last month.

In last month’s Environmental Stewardship article, I quoted the ELCA’s Social Statement "Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope and Justice," and specifically mentioned the principles of Solidarity, Sufficiency and Sustainability. These may not be the terms you think of first when considering environmental stewardship or your position in the church, so I hope that it is worthwhile to quote that statement and discuss them further.

“The principle of solidarity means that we stand together as God’s creation.” 

We might think this refers to other churches and organizations, but the writers of the statement call for the acknowledgement of our interdependence with all creatures in all creation. We have allowed the land and its inhabitants, human and non-human, to be disenfranchised by the rich and powerful. We have allowed the environment to be degraded by greed and the desire for profits at all cost. Since we have voices that steer decisions, we must stand in solidarity with those without such voices, again both human and non-human.

“The principle of sufficiency means meeting the basic needs of all humanity and all creation.” 

Since the earth and its fullness belong to the Lord, who are we to take such a disproportionate share of what is really a huge but finite resource? Although the statement mentions all creation, we really are talking about the earth and its natural resources. We can look at it from the position of all humanity, the country or from the position of an individual, our own self.

When we clean out our closets to donate to the rummage sale, are we primarily concerned about those who have less to wear or are we making room to go out and buy more? Are the  huge and quickly filling landfills evidence of our inability to stop at sufficient? The pressures of a consumer economy are great, but should we be seeking personal fulfillment by acquisition?

“The principle of sustainability means providing an acceptable quality of life for present generations without compromising that of future generations.” 

Our heavy use of fossil fuels is not only a threat to our and future generations due to global warming, but is an example of a resource that took millions of years to make but a few generations to deplete. The rich soils of the midwest took centuries to build up but can be washed away in decades. Likewise, the great forests of this country.

The Amazon rainforest has been called the lungs of the earth and yet we see it burned for agricultural purposes … more beef for more hamburgers. This largest of all rainforests may be reaching a tipping point which will mean no recovery in our, or our grandchildren’s, lifetime or the foreseeable future.

Native Americans have used the possible effects upon the seventh generation as a guide to their individual and collective decisions. Maybe we should adopt such a policy.

These principles should be applied to us as individuals, to the businesses and organizations in which we have influence, and to the church as a community.

At one point in the social statement, it is written, “Neither economic growth that ignores environmental cost nor conservation of nature that ignores human cost is sustainable. Both will result in injustice and, eventually, environmental degradation.”

I believe the former is the greater concern, but I am neither poor, voiceless, powerless or discriminated against.

—John Berge

EnviroStewardship: ELCA Speaks

My dad writes a monthly "Environmental Stewardship" column for the newsletter of his church and any other congregations that care to pick it up. I've been posting it here except on the rare occasion when his column is very specific to his own congregation. Here's Dad's column for September:

The recent Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), held in our northern suburb, Milwaukee, is a reminder that our congregation is a member of a much larger organization. The ELCA adopts policies and Social Statements by which we operate along with the Bible, the Creeds and Confessions of the Reformation. These statements and policies don’t always filter down to the people in the pews (or those who are ... less frequently there).

One of the first Social Statements adopted by the newly merged ELCA was entitled “Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope, and Justice.” This was adopted by more than a two-thirds majority back on August 28, 1993 by the Churchwide Assembly in Kansas City, Missouri. Obviously there have been many changes in how we care for or consider that creation in the ensuing years, and there have been other related resolutions passed in subsequent Assemblies, such as the Social Statement “Genetics, Faith and Responsibility” adopted at the 2011 Churchwide Assembly at which I was a delegate. A portion of this Statement reads:

“This vocation (innovative stewards of creation) within God’s creation means humans should not claim for themselves authority to make decisions based solely on human interests. They should consider both the integrity of the other participants in the community of life and their tasks before God. The human vocation as innovative stewards must be guided by the goal to respect and promote the earth’s abundance for the sake of the community of life.
“As one expression of human stewardship, this church affirms science and technology as appropriate means to order and imagine, nurture and invent.” (Emphasis added)

There also was adopted at the same Assembly a resolution strongly opposing any action of the church that would contribute to the extinction of any living species.

But to get back to the 1993 Social Statement: a paragraph in the Prologue states, “We of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America are deeply concerned about the environment, locally and globally, as members of this church and as members of society. Even as we join the political, economics and scientific discussion, we know care for the earth is a profoundly spiritual matter.”

The Statement calls for Justice through Participation, Solidarity, Sufficiency, and Sustainability. Such statements might be considered weak on specifics, but that is what I have tried to add in these essays over the past ten years. In the Commitments section, the Statement states:

“As members of this church, we commit ourselves to personal life styles that contribute to the health of the environment.
“As congregations and other expressions of the Church, we will seek to incorporate the principles of sufficiency and sustainability in our life … We will undertake environmental audits and follow through with checkups to ensure our continued commitment.” 

Other commitments are a little longer, but well worth reading. To read the texts of these and other Social Statements of the ELCA, go to elca.org/socialstatements.

—John Berge

EnviroStewardship: The Buds and the Bees

Almost in time for Fathers' Day, here's my dad's column for the monthly newsletter at his church.

To bees and other pollinators, a well-manicured, well-fertilized, weed-free, frequently mowed lawn is a desert … a food desert, with nothing to eat or survive on. It may look nice to us, but not to these pollinators. Remember that most butterflies are pollinators and are worth the price of any extra efforts.

The local paper recently printed an article on “bee lawns” that suggested blending low growing perennials with slow-growing grasses such as the fescue Festuca brevipila. Good luck in finding that to replace your Kentucky bluegrass!

The perennials they suggested to mix into your lawn included: white clover, dandelions (beware the neighbors), creeping thyme, daisies and lamium. Finding plants under three inches at the garden store may be a problem.

In a way, I have been doing this for years with a front lawn full of the native Spring Beauties (Claytonia virginica). These are shade tolerant, early bloomers so that by not fertilizing I can put off mowing until after they have gone to seed. They are there for the early pollinators in the first of May, and I would recommend them for any other environmental stewards that have the patience and the shade.

But I even more heartily recommend reducing and defining the limits of your lawn with areas of native, flowering ground covers that may be available to the pollinators all spring, summer and fall, depending on the perennials that you plant. They don’t have to be restricted to under three inches or mowing tolerant such as dandelions, as is the case in bee lawns.

The two most common ground covers for these purposes are pachysandra and periwinkle. They are not native to our area, although they grow very well in our area. Also, they flower for only a short time in the spring. During that time, they are very popular with the bees.

I recently came across a list of 11 pollinator-friendly ground covers, several of which (the shade tolerant ones) I have in my yard and can recommend them: Big Leaf Aster (Aster macrophyllus), Mistflower (Eupatorium coelestinum), Goat’s Beard (Aruncus vulgaris), Obedient plant (Physostegia virgiana), Purple Poppy Mallow (Calliirhoe involluorata), Canadian Wild Ginger (Acarum canadense), Wild Strawberry, Rose Coreopsis, Vanilla Sweet Grass and Wild Geranium (Geraniium maculatum). For more details  and descriptions, check the June electronic newsletter of Wisconsin Pollinators.

This essay has wound up with more details than the reader might want and it is not readily apparent how this relates to the church and its people. When I was a voting member at the Churchwide Assembly in Orlando, Florida, we passed a resolution calling on all of the congregations of the ELCA to protect all living species. Doing what we can to protect the bees and other pollinators from starving due to our choices and practices is not only good environmental stewardship, but responds favorably to that resolution.

EnviroStewardship: Just One Word. Polyethyleneterephalates

It's that time of the month again! Here's the column my dad, John Berge, writes on environmental stewardship for his church's monthly newsletter.

Plastics have been much in the news over recent years, generally in a negative way. Huge areas of the oceans are covered with waste plastics. Canada rightfully complains of the plastic trash washed down from the Great Lakes through “their” St. Lawrence River. New plastic bottles are being made from recycled plastics picked up on the resort beaches of Mexico. Micro-plastic beads from cosmetic products are washed into the lakes and eaten by fish which in turn are eaten by us, where they may or may not get past the lining of our intestines.

But first some definitions: Plastic, as an adjective, describes a material that can be molded or shaped into a desired form. Plastics, as a noun, refers to synthetic (man-made) polymers (long chains of the same small monomers, or groups of atoms) such as polyethylene, polyethyleneterephalate, polystyrene, or polyvinyl chloride. These are molded or extruded to form such varied products as automobile parts, toothbrush handles, vanes on wind turbines, communion cups, fibers, films and the ubiquitous, obnoxious, single-use bottles and bags polluting the environment.

Before I go any further, I must confess to being one of those people who helped push plastics onto the scene. Years ago, I worked in a huge nylon plant and was one of the first dozen technical people on the development of Dacron® (that polysyllabic plastic above); you may be wearing one or the other of these synthetic “plastic” fibers or walking on them in your home or office. I also did some research on the fibers that are used in bullet-proof vests protecting our police and armed forces. My doctoral research was on the dynamic mechanical properties of long side-chain methacrylate polymers (non-commercialized plastics). I did turn down a job offer to do research on the manufacture of plastic bags, but that was for other reasons.

For convenience and sanitation, our church lines its waste baskets and bins with single-use plastic bags, including the bin for the recycling of the single-use polystyrene communion cups. These bags do get a second usage in our kitchen waste basket. I have recently picked up some “Compostable Kitchen Bags” for the recycling bin, but they only claim “100% certified compostable … in municipal or commercial compost facilities.” I have faith that they will also compost eventually in the landfill after our two usages.

I also have faith that, after this and earlier discussions in these essays, our congregation and every member will try their best to differentiate in their purchase, use and disposal practices between single-use plastic items and those products which in the long run are beneficial because of their light weight, long-term stability and other properties.

Reusable items such as tote bags for groceries and refillable water or coffee containers are much preferable to single-use items, even if you are careful to recycle the latter. Lighter weight plastics allow for larger wind turbine blades and thus can provide more renewable energy; they also yield lighter, more fuel-efficient automobiles. Even foamed plastics around our homes can improve insulation and reduce energy needs. Replacing lead pipes with PVC can protect our children and improve our health.

Good environmental stewardship requires some forethought before plastic items are purchased, disposed or recycled.

EnviroStewardship Extra!

Dean Romano of Outdoor Wild interviewed my Dad during a recent EcoFest event at Gateway Technical College in Kenosha, posting at his YouTube channel here:

They discussed renewable energy, carbon-free cars, reusing and redesigning plastic containers, and a whole host of other environmental issues.

Exxon Valdez 30 Years On

Spillback Saturday takes a break from the century-old stuff this week to note the 30-year anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, so I can steal my own cartoons instead of those of a bunch of dead guys.

UW-Parkside Ranger, April 6, 1989

On March 24, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound after leaving Valdez, Alaska. The resulting oil spill was, at the time, the second worst in U.S. history (the 1910 Lakeview Gusher, the subsequent 2010 Deepwater Horizon blow-out, and continuing Taylor Oil spill were/are several times worse).

It was also only the second time gas prices rose above the $1.009/gallon mark in my area — this time to stay. Even accounting for inflation, the gas prices in my cartoon are quaint by today's standard: that $1.059/gallon price for regular would be the equivalent of about $2.16 today. The price up the street from my house hit $2.949/gallon earlier this week.

The price of gas, however, is only a superficial measure of the disaster. Well over 10 million gallons of oil spread over 2,600 square miles in the first couple of weeks, ultimately coating 1,300 miles of coastline. In terms of damage to wildlife, the Exxon Valdez spill is estimated to have killed 250,000 seabirds, 3,000 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, up to 22 orcas, and countless salmon, herring, and other fish.

UW-Milwaukee Post, April 13, 1989

Alyeska Pipeline Service Company had promised Alaskans that their expert seamen would find smooth sailing with "an absence of substantial navigation hazards." Even in the "highly unlikely" event of a major spill, Alyeska predicted that it could be brought under control in a few hours.

In fact, the ship's captain, reportedly less than sober, steered the Exxon Valdez a mile and a half off course, then put the ship on autopilot and left the bridge. The ship's underwater radar system was malfunctioning. By the time a third mate saw the ship heading for well-marked shoals, it was too late to steer away.

It took Exxon three days to ready equipment to spray chemical dispersant on the spill (and for the state of Alaska to okay its use). By day five, a thick gooey coating had congealed on the surface of the slick, rendering the dispersant nearly useless and gumming up equipment trying to skim the oil off the water. The company, and citizen volunteers, spent months cleaning the water, the beaches, the wildlife and even the trees of oil. Even so, only 10% of the spill was cleaned up, leaving the other 90% for Mother Nature to handle.

If there was one bright moment when fortune smiled, it was that Captain Hazelwood's initial efforts to budge the Exxon Valdez off the shoals failed. Had he been successful, the ship probably would have sunk with all hands.

UW-Milwaukee Post, April 25, 1989

Of course, Donald Joffrey Trump's executive order this week allowing oil companies to completely disregard any and all environmental considerations and pipe-baby-pipe with impunity is "highly unlikely" to be any cause for concern whatsoever.

Environmental Stewardship: One More Time

Last month, I explained that the new pastor at my father's church decided to change the title of Dad's column in their newsletter from "Environmental Stewardship" to "Care of God's Creation." As this month's column shows, Dad is getting a bit frustrated.

I was hesitant to post this column, expecting his pastor to suggest he rethink it. But he forwarded to me an email from her that indicates that she is letting him go ahead with this, and let the chips fall, or not, where they may.

For ten years these columns or essays (I’m never sure which they are) appeared under the heading Environmental Stewardship. For the last six months they have been titled Care of God’s Creation. I haven’t heard a single comment about this change from any member of the congregation other than staff. Does this mean that nobody noticed or that the two phrases have no different connotation?

I can’t remember from whom I may have borrowed the phrase Environmental Stewardship, but for me the Stewardship part was from a paraphrase of the first creation story in Genesis 1:26 in which “dominion” was interpreted as “stewardship.”

The notes in the NRSV, the Lutheran Study Bible, state, “Having dominion is understood as care-giving, not exploitation.” In many other parts of the Bible, stewards are persons who act for the landowners and rulers, often in their absence, and are responsible for keeping things running right. Lutherans are very knowledgeable about stewardship of our money, our time and our talents. Here, I use it to mean stewardship of the air, water, soil, flora and fauna, habitat and everything that is connoted by the environment. It certainly was meant to include Care of all this.

On the other hand, and it may seem petty or limiting, I raise the question whether God’s Creation includes all the ways we have messed up the environment. I accept that God somehow created the entire universe, surely not quite in the ways described in Genesis and probably not by pushing the button for the Big Bang. I also accept the Genesis evaluation that “God saw that it was good.”

What I find very hard to accept is that God created the pollution and mess that we see around us and has been so vividly portrayed in the recent UN report, the sixth Global Environment Outlook. I believe that Environmental Stewards should take Care of God’s Creation and the mess that industrial homo sapiens have made of that creation.

Apparently nobody else worries or cares about the title; the important thing is whether anybody has adopted any of the changes in their lives suggested over the past ten plus years in these essays. If not, then there is no point in taking up this space in the newsletter. The ideas and suggestions are seldom, if ever, mine, but I hope I have brought them to you in a different, interesting and compelling fashion and from a Christian layman’s perspective.

For months, I have had no feedback from any member of the congregation, so I have no way of knowing whether anyone has made changes in their environmental awareness and thoughts, their plans or actions stemming from these essays. You can generally find me standing around during the Sunday coffee fellowship and I would love to hear from you. Or you can email me here.