Ishmael: Cultures in Opposition

      

     In his environmental epic, Ishmael, Daniel Quinn investigates the ailing condition of our planet through the eyes of an unlikely teacher, a gorilla named Ishmael. Snatched from his home in the wild, Ishmael observed human nature from behind bars in a zoo and then in a circus. Gifted with the unique ability to communicate through his eyes, he eventually caught the attention of a wealthy businessman who discovered his special gift and decided to take him on as a pupil. While under his care, Ishmael studied our species and developed his theories on why we’ve become so destructive to our planet. After the passing of his master, Ishmael seeks a pupil of his own to rescue mankind and the world in tow. Through his eyes, Quinn reveals  the two opposing forces of man that influence our planet, and why if we don’t change now we may never be able to.

        Ishmael breaks humanity into two antithetical groups that he deems ‘Takers’ and ‘Leavers’. Both are enacting stories that have been in place for thousands of years. The Leavers were the first group of humans, the hunter gatherers that work with nature to take only what they need, leaving the earth largely untouched so that it can maintain them in the future. Leavers, Ishmael argues, have existed for millions of years and still do today as successfully as ever. The Leavers follow a basic structure set in place by Mother Nature. But we rarely hear about the Leavers, because we live in what Ishmael refers to as a Taker society.

       Takers came about during the agricultural revolution, when man realized that he could change the earth to better sustain him. Thus emerged a society structured around the basis of “Mother Culture.” A divisive shift in attitude occurred around that time. We stopped thinking of ourselves as a part of the world, but as purveyors of it, like we were the reason that the earth exists. Ishmael says that people began to believe that “the pinnacle was reached in man. Man is the climax of the whole cosmic drama of creation. Everyone in your culture knows that the world wasn't created for jellyfish or salmon or iguanas or gorillas. It was created for man.” The Christian creation story found in Genesis supports this idea. Ishmael stresses to his pupil how it says God made man special and gave him dominion over the earth. But Genesis also offers a warning. When Adam and Eve turn their back on God, God turns His back on them, promising struggle, toil, and pain upon their race for eternity. Ishmael even suggests that this story was written by Leavers as a warning to the Takers, that if they were going to defy nature they should expect serious grievous consequences. These consequences, he argues, are what is plaguing the Earth today.

      The Taker story doesn’t only include man’s dominion over the Earth, but the idea that man is also fundamentally flawed. Prophets for hundreds of years have preached the inherent imperfection of men. What Ishmael contends is that this is only an aspect of Taker culture, and that nothing like it can be found among Leavers. Prophets have sprung up from the desperate need to understand the innate opposition with nature we seem to have come to. Ishmael claims, “There's nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world.”  He continues:

“We now have in place all the major elements of your culture's explanation of how things came to be this way. The world was given to man to turn into a paradise, but he's always screwed it up, because he's fundamentally flawed. He might be able to do something about this if he knew how he ought to live, but he doesn't and he never will, because no knowledge about that is obtainable. So, however hard man might labor to turn the world into a paradise, he's probably just going to go on screwing it up. With nothing but this wretched story to enact, it's no wonder so many of you spend your lives stoned on drugs or booze or television. It's no wonder so many of you go mad or become suicidal.”

    Ishmael, knowing a great deal about captivity, explains that we Takers are the prisoners of a system that puts us at odds with the world. “You're captives of a civilized system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live,” he states. For this reason, we cannot simply change our lives to save mankind. We must change our story. He talks about the efforts of the hippy movement of the 1960s to change our cultural system. The problem with them, he claimed is that, “they made an ingenuous and disorganized effort to escape from captivity but ultimately failed, because they were unable to find the bars of the cage.” But ultimately we were still stuck. “In the end this mythology is not deeply satisfying. The Takers are a profoundly lonely people. The world for them is enemy territory, and they live in it like an army of occupation, alienated and isolated by their extraordinary specialness,” he proclaims. What we need, is to stop the idea that the world belongs to man and proliferate the idea that man belongs to it. “That is, all sorts of creatures on this planet appear to be on the verge of attaining that self awareness and intelligence. So it's definitely not just humans that the gods are after. We were never meant to be the only players on this stage. Apparently the gods intend this planet to be a garden filled with creatures that are self aware and intelligent,” his pupil realizes.

       If man is to have any hope for survival, we must encourage diversity to flourish. We must stop our “totalitarian” rule over the earth and make room for other species to have a chance to thrive as we have. It will not be easy, but if we can change the story our culture is enacting than maybe someday, “In a billion years, whatever is around then, whoever is around then, says, "Man? Oh yes, man! What a wonderful creature he was! It was within his grasp to destroy the entire world and to trample all our futures into the dust but he saw the light before it was too late and pulled back. He pulled back and gave the rest of us our chance. He showed us all how it had to be done if the world was to go on being a garden forever. Man was the role model for us all!"

Grey: An Environmental Slam Poem

Once upon a time there was a thing called black and white,

Right and wrong,

Clear cut truths separated divisively into hemispheres of fact or fiction,

We all felt this once, the feeling that everything had  to be either concrete or non-existent,

When righteousness was so tangible we could reach out and hug it,

And it would kiss us and hold us and tuck us in to comfortable nights of sleep,

There is no such thing as comfort now.

In the days of our youths, we spent our time marveling at magic boxes that broadcasted images of lovable characters that won,

Good vanquished evil and virtue triumphed over corruption,

and we would root for the “good guy” and feel the serenity of vindication as every “happily ever after” secured us into rosy world views,

Then as we grew older, those characters began to fade,

Santa Claus and Care Bears disappeared into oblivion, and filled in with news networks and headlines,

And our rosy world view, once so filled with black and white,

Melted into a million shades of grey.

Grey, adjective,

An intermediate between black and white as in ashes or overcast sky,

Dull and non-descript, without character or interest,

Sunless, dreary, somber, bleak,

It has multiplied and infiltrated everything.

Grey concrete landscapes,

Grey industrial wastelands,

Grey hanging in our skies,

Flooding down our rivers,

Obscuring skylines,

And blocking out the sun.

Grey spewing from the pyres of capital gain,

Grey filling our lungs, our minds and our future,

Gushing from the mouths of our politicians,

Thickly coating our gospels in slippery falsehood.

We breath it in, drink it up, and consume it,

And because of it we are asthmatic, dehydrated and malnourished, 

And worst of all, we are complacent in being so,

Having been assured by endless hours of advertisement that grey is the new black and white,

The better truth, the clearer choice despite its obvious opacity.

Its time we woke up, because let me tell you something,

The matrix exists and we’re in it,

And our heads are being held under by the greed of people bigger than us,

Who would keep us in the dark to stuff their own pockets,

But I for one, will not succumb to grey,

I will not suffocate and drown in it, I will cease to remain silent and frozen,

I will stop letting the fear of dying make it a certainty,

I will trudge forward and find the surface,

Not accepting hopelessness,

Fighting the apathy to find answers,

Because I know that talking about the wrongs of the world isn’t enough,

We can sit around forever discussing how the world is going down in flames,

But ultimately it will change nothing and we will burn along with it,

There is no longer time for inaction,

If we are not part of the solution, we are just another faceless part of the overwhelming problem,

We must not lose faith that this evil can be vanquished,

That we can find truth again,

That the grey can again be separated into black and white,

Let us dare to be idealistic,

Dare to dream that there can progress in a world shrouded in retrogression,

Lorraine Hansbury once penned that it is easy to think of the world like “there is no progress, there is only one big circle that we all march in, around and around,

each of us with our own picture in front of us that we think is the future”

but it is important to remember that

 “it is not a circle, but merely a long line,

 as in geometry,

one that stretches into infinity,

and because we cannot see the end of it,

we can also not see how it changes.

And those that see the line, we call them idealists,

And the ones that can only see the circle,

We call them the realists,”

I’m calling for an end to “realism.”

An end to the idea that we cannot change,

Because to change the world we must first change our thinking,

Stop the cyclical pattern of hopelessness we get caught up in,

Stop the idea that we cannot overcome this,

Let’s come up with ideas no one has had yet,

Get out of this rut of human limitation,

Because dreams are bigger than we’ll ever be,

And solutions can arise out of the most unlikely of circumstances.

Let us stop moaning and groaning and focus on what we are going to do,

Action is the only solution worth taking seriously.

And the time to do so is right now,

Moving forward, overcoming,

Shaking the dust and finding the right and wrong in all the grey that has taken over,
that shall be allowed to exist no longer.

Nature Narrative: The Weasel in the Glue Trap

   It happened one June afternoon a few years ago, a weekend if I remember correctly. We were having a graduation party for my sister, Meghan, who had just finished a Business degree at the University of Washington. It was the first time many of her friends had made it out to our house, so we had spent days cleaning and decorating. During the excavation, my father stumbled upon rat droppings in our attic. Being the man of action that he is, he called Orkin.  

      The exterminator who came out was a portly gentleman in his sixties that reminded me of the four star general in bugs bunny cartoons. He had a ‘take no prisoners’ attitude and was meticulously thorough. By the end of the day, he had secured all different types of traps around the perimeter of our house. After he had finished, he was going over what he had done with my parents.  “Let’s see, we’ve got spring loaded traps in the attic and the garage, poison traps near the vents, glue traps near the garage doors…” 

       “Woah, woah, wait, what’s a glue trap?” I chimed in. Being an animal lover, I had been hovering near the conversation to ensure that if rats were going to die they would at least go as humanely as possible.

       “Glue traps? Well, they um, they uh…” he said, trying to formulate his answer to a slightly more sensitive audience. “Well sweetheart, a glue trap is a really sticky surface, and when a rat walks onto it, it gets stuck and the more it struggles to get away the more stuck it gets, so it can’t get away,”      

      Responding to the horrified expression on my face my mom adds, “Isn’t that a bit harsh? I mean, I want these things out of my house, but I don’t want to torture them.” 

      Snapping back into four star general mode he quipped,  “Well, desperate times call for desperate measures. If you want these things out, I recommend we keep the glue traps.” 

      After the Orkin man left, I begged my mom to take them out. The only comfort she could offer me was that I would understand someday when I had a house of my own. Though I sincerely doubted it, I was out of ammunition. So I let the issue go for a while and continued decorating for the party.

     The next day, we continued setting up for my sister’s party. Drinks went in the kitchen, badminton was set up outside and the ping pong table went in the garage. As I set up the garage, I couldn’t help but notice those blasted glue traps near the doors. I shook my head but continued setting up. Eventually, people start flooding in. I went upstairs and got ready as the party got started. Right as I was finishing up, I heard a scream come from the garage.

       I ran downstairs and as soon as I flung open the door to the garage I saw it; something had gotten stuck in the glue trap. Our first rat. Everyone was staring at it, looking confused.  “What is it?” asked one party- goer. As I got closer, I began to see that it wasn’t a rat at all. It was smaller and skinnier than a rat, with a much longer body. It was a light brown color with a cream colored stomach. It had a long, thick, furry tail with a black tip. In fact it looked a lot like my friend’s ferret. Oh my God, it was a weasel. But this wasn’t a fully matured weasel, this one was much too small. It was only a baby. It was thrashing wildly, trying desperately to free itself from the glue, but the more it flailed the more its little body was ensnared. I was horrified. My mom came out and looked down at the pathetic creature. “Aww, man, this is hard. Erin, let’s move it outside.”  

       She picked up one corner of the trap and moved it out onto the grass in the front yard. As soon as we got it outside, the party-goers went back to playing pong and having fun. Some little girls from the neighborhood were playing outside. I called them over to come see it. “Wow! It’s so cute!”, they exclaimed. Then one of them looked very serious and asked,  “Are you gonna be able to get it out?” 

      Uh oh. “Yes, don’t worry, it’s going to be fine,” I said without thinking. My mother looked up at me as they ran off and said, “You shouldn’t have called them over here. They shouldn’t see a creature like this. There is no way we’re going to be able to get it out.” Then reality hit.

      “No way at all?” I asked. 

      “No, I think its best that we just leave it out here and let nature take its course.” Silence.

      No, I thought, there had to be something we could do. So I went inside, grabbed a pair of gloves and came back out with a flat headed screw driver. I tried to wedge it under the weasel in such a way that would give it enough leverage to become unstuck. But this glue trap was something else. Imagine the stickiest, gooiest, most unforgiving substance you’ve ever encountered and triple it. This stuff wasn’t letting go. The more I tried to get the screwdriver underneath it, the more I realized how stuck this poor little guy was. Time for plan B. 

     I went in the house, grabbed some vegetable oil and ran back to the weasel. He wasn't going be pried off, but what if we could make him so slippery that the glue would let go. I tried to unstick him with the oil until finally my dad came outside and told me it was time to let it go and to just let him pass in peace. 

     He moved it to an area of the yard where we couldn’t see it, but I just started crying. Not seeing it wasn’t going to change the fact that it was dying. Then I had a stroke of brilliance. What was I doing? I’d watched enough animal cop shows to know that when you have an injured wild animal, you call someone who can do something about it. Not knowing where to start, I ran inside and called our vet.

   “Alpine Animal Hospital, how can I help you?” came the voice on the other end of the line.

    “Yeah, Hi, my name is Erin Roberts, our dogs Maddie and Indie are patients down there, well, I have kind of a weird call for you. My parents called an exterminator that came out and set glue traps in our garage and a baby weasel managed to get into one of them.”

  “A baby weasel? Wow, that’s not something you hear everyday, well you’re in luck. There is a hospital in Bellevue that will take wildlife, let me give you their number…”

    “Thank you!” Great, there was hope! I grabbed a sticky note, jotted the number down then called them as quick as I could.

     “Aerowood Animal Hospital, what is the nature of your emergency?”

     “Yeah, Hi, my name is Erin Roberts, got an unusual call for you…” I explained the situation.

     “A baby weasel? Well I’ll be darned, bring it in, we’ll see what we can do.”

     Yes! This thing didn’t have to die! At least not like this. Even if they weren't able to save him, at least they could humanely euthanize him. I skipped triumphantly out to my father, still crouching next to the trap.

    “Dad! I just called the vet’s office! They told us to take it in!”

     He didn’t look up, he just said, “No, Erin, you don’t take a weasel to the vet.” 

     I groaned aloud. I told him about the animal cops shows and the special hospital in Bellevue. He continued to look down at the weasel. It took several minutes of convincing, but he finally agreed to take the weasel in to make me feel better. 

     So next came the tricky part. How were we going to transport this thing? We couldn’t just hold it, we might get bitten. The trap wouldn’t fit in an old mouse cage. So I ran inside and told my mom, and asked her if there was any way we could get it there safely. She thought for a minute, then went to the closet under the stairs. After a great deal of digging, she produced a small cat carrier. She suggested we put a few folded towels in and tried to brace the trap in such a way that it wouldn’t slide around. It wasn’t too long of a drive to Bellevue, probably about twenty minutes, but it was long enough, and hilly enough for concern.

       Then there was the matter of calming the animal enough to withstand the shock of transport. It looked like he had dislocated some of his joints struggling to get free. By this point there was a serious risk of him dying from stress or exhaustion. We tried to give him some water out of an eye dropper, which he seemed to accept just fine, and that calmed him down a bit. Then we slowly picked him up and placed him in the cat carrier. With him safely in the crate, we could finally get on our way. We loaded it into the trunk, started the car and we were off.      

    Then something hit us. We’d always been near the little guy outside, we never realized how much he stunk. And boy did he ever reek. It was an overpowering odor that was slightly skunky, and smelled like a urinated-on pile of animal feces and rotting vegetation. We tried not to roll down the windows, afraid we’d scare him to death. Miraculously, we lasted about ten minutes, until we couldn’t take it anymore and rolled down the windows slightly. It helped, but the stench was still enough to make me nauseas and give me a terrible headache by the time we arrived at the animal hospital. 

    My dad and I practically fell out of the car, gasping for fresh air. After we had composed ourselves, we got the crate out of the car and realized that we didn’t know which door we should use. Like most animal hospitals, this one had two entrances: one for cats, and one for dogs. Nowhere did we see a “small woodland rodents” entrance, so we settled on the cat one. 

    When we got inside, I told the lady behind the desk that we were the people with the weasel.

     “Oh yes! We’ve all been expecting you, I can’t believe you caught a baby weasel! Let me go tell the vet.” 

     Everyone in the waiting room glanced into the cage, trying to act disinterested. I set the cage on my lap so I could get a good look at him. The poor thing looked exhausted. His struggling had subsided into a malaise of slight twitches. His beautiful fluffy tail was now entwined in the glue. His tiny limbs were painfully twisted about in all directions. His little eyes were beginning to close slightly, and his breathing was labored and heavy.

    “Don’t worry little dude, we’re going to get you out of there soon,” I reassured.  

    About that time, the vet’s assistant came out into the lobby and announced “Alright, we’re ready for the… weasel? Is it really a weasel?” 

     I lifted up the cage so that she could see inside.

    “Oh my word, it’s a baby weasel. Well I’ll be darned. Alright, we’ll take him back now.”  

     She opened the crate and gently lifted the trap out.

     “Aw man, he’s really stuck in there isn’t he? Well, we’ll see what we can do.”

     I sat back down next to my father, who was looking slightly dejected. “You know they’re probably going to have to put him to sleep, right?” He asked.

    “I know, but I’m hoping there will be something they can do for him.”

   Then we waited. And waited. And waited, for what seemed like forever, but in reality was probably around fifteen minutes. Then the vet tech emerged from the back room, I stood up and I said, “did you get him?” 

    She triumphantly held up the empty glue trap, still littered with pieces of fur from the weasel. “Yep, we got ‘im! We sedated him and then we used a razor blade to shave off the fur that was connecting him to the glue. Got him out of it pretty quick. Then we washed him thoroughly and put him in with the other wildlife. He should be coming to in about half an hour.” 

     Success. Victory. Sweet, sweet victory. Then came the next hurdle.

     “So now what happens to him?” I asked. 

      “Well,” she said, “we work with a non-profit wildlife sanctuary up in Everett that takes in injured wildlife and rehabilitates them for release back into the wild. Hopefully in a few days we will be able to transport him up there where he can be evaluated, put with others of his kind and eventually released. He’s got a good shot, it looked like he hadn’t done too much damage to himself trying to get out.”     

      Thank God. I turned and looked at my father, who looked absolutely shocked that they were able to dislodge him.

      “I think this belongs to you?” The vet tech asked, offering the trap to my dad.  He looked sheepish, and put the trap back into the crate.

    “I really wish you wouldn’t use these things. They’re downright cruel. At least spring loaded traps kill quickly, these ones just torture the poor critters to death. You’re lucky you caught that little guy in time, if he’d been there a few hours more, he’d be a goner for sure. I hope you learned something from this experience. We get wildlife stuck in these traps all the time,” she explained. 

     “Yeah, well, we didn’t really fully agree with putting them in. I think we’ll remove them,” my dad said, looking embarrassed. “Awesome! Great to hear it! Now, we don’t require that people pay for emergency services provided to wildlife, but we do recommend a donation to the non-profit sanctuary where he’ll be going.” 

     My dad donated a marginal sum to the organization and we left, victoriously.

    “See dad? I told you they could help!” I said. 

    “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. I didn’t even know these kinds of organizations existed. Good thing you watch too much Animal Planet,” he said as we climbed back into the car. 

    We rolled down the windows all the way home to get the stench out of the car. When we finally pulled back up to the house, I ran into the garage and proudly held up the empty trap. My sister and her friends all cheered. My parents collected the rest of the glue traps from around the garage and threw them away.

    I accomplished a lot that day. I not only saved a baby weasel, but I was able to educate my family and friends about what to do with injured wildlife. I was also able to convince my parents to use only humane methods of pest control around our house. But more than that, it was one of the first times I was able to directly intervene in a desperate situation and be successful. I learned that my efforts could actually mean something, that I could change something horrible into something hopeful. It gave me motivation to try and change other, bigger things. It was one of the first times I really felt like I could make a difference. Maybe I couldn't save the entire world, but I could save that little weasel, and sometimes thats just enough.

Nature Narrative: The Weasel in the Glue Trap (Very rough draft)

    It happened one June afternoon a few years ago, a weekend if I remember correctly. We were having a graduation party for my sister, Meghan, who had just finished a Business degree at the University of Washington. It was the first time many of her friends had been out to the house, so we had spent days cleaning and decorating. During the excavation, my father stumbled upon rat droppings in our attic. Being the man of action that he is, he called some exterminators to come out to our house and place traps. The exterminator who came out was a portly gentleman in his sixties that reminded me of the four star generals in bugs bunny cartoons. He had a ‘take no prisoners’ attitude and was meticulously thorough. By the end of the day, he had secured all different types of traps around the perimeter of our house. After he had finished, he was going over what he had done with my parents.  “Let’s see, we’ve got spring loaded traps in the attic and the garage, poison traps near the vents, glue traps near the garage doors…” “Woah, woah, wait, what’s a glue trap?” I chimed in. Being an animal lover, I had been hovering near the conversation to ensure that if rats were going to die they would at least go as humanely as possible. “Glue traps? Well, they um, they uh…” he said, trying to formulate his answer to a slightly more sensitive audience. “Well sweetheart, a glue trap is a really sticky surface, and when a rat walks onto it, it gets stuck and the more it struggles to get away the more stuck it gets, so it can’t get away,” Responding to the horrified expression on my face my mom adds, “Isn’t that a bit harsh? I mean, I want these things out of my house, but I don’t want to torture them.” Snapping back into four star general mode he quipped,  “Well, desperate times call for desperate measures. If you want these things out, I recommend we keep the glue traps.” After the Orkin man left, I begged my mom to take them out. The only comfort she could offer me was that I would understand someday when I had a house of my own. Though I sincerely doubted it, I was out of ammunition. So I let the issue go for a while and continued decorating for the party.

     The next day, we continued setting up for my sister’s party. Drinks went in the kitchen, badminton was set up outside and the ping pong table went in the garage. As I set up the garage, I couldn’t help but notice those blasted glue traps near the doors. I shook my head but continued setting up. Eventually, people start flooding in. I went upstairs and got ready as the party got started. Right as I was finishing up, I heard a scream come from the garage. I ran downstairs and as soon as I flung open the door to the garage I saw it; something had gotten stuck in the glue trap. Our first rat. Everyone was staring at it, looking confused.  “What is it?” asked one party- goer. As I got closer, I began to see that it wasn’t a rat at all. It was smaller and skinnier than a rat, with a much longer body. It was a light brown color with a cream colored stomach. It had a long, thick, furry tail with a black tip. In fact it looked a lot like my friend’s ferret. Oh my God, it was a weasel. But this wasn’t a fully matured weasel, this one was much too small. It was only a baby. It was thrashing wildly, trying desperately to free itself from the glue, but the more it flailed the more its little body was ensnared. I was horrified. My mom came out and looked down at the pathetic creature. “Aww, man, this is hard, Erin, let’s move it outside.”  She picked up one corner of the trap and moved it out onto the grass in the front yard. As soon as we got it outside, the party-goers went back to playing pong and having fun. Some little girls from the neighborhood were playing outside. I called them over to come see it. “Wow! It’s so cute!”, they exclaimed. Then one of them looked very serious and asked,  “Are you gonna be able to get it out?” Uh oh. “Yes, don’t worry, it’s going to be fine,” I said without thinking. My mother looked up at me as they ran off and said, “You shouldn’t have called them over here. They shouldn’t see something when its like this. There is no way we’re going to be able to get it out.” Then reality hit. “No way at all?” I asked. “No, I think its best that we just leave it out here and let nature take its course.” Silence.

    No, I thought, there had to be something we could do. So I went inside, grabbed a pair of gloves and came back out with a flat headed screw driver. I tried to wedge it under the weasel in such a way that would give it enough leverage to become unstuck. But this glue trap was something else. Imagine the stickiest, gooiest, most unforgiving substance you’ve ever encountered and triple it. This stuff wasn’t letting go. The more I tried to get the screwdriver underneath it, the more I realized how stuck this poor little guy was. I kept trying with the screw driver for another half hour, until finally my dad came back outside and told me it was time to let it go and to just let it pass in peace. He moved it to an area of the yard where we couldn’t see it, but I just started crying. Not seeing it wasn’t going to change the fact that it was dying. Then I had a stroke of brilliance. What was I doing? I’d watched enough animal cop shows to know that when you have an injured wild animal, you call someone who can do something about it. Not knowing where to start, I ran inside and called our vet.

   “Alpine Animal Hospital, how can I help you?” came the voice on the other end of the line. “Yeah, Hi, my name is Erin Roberts, our dogs Maddie and Indie are patients down there, well, I have kind of a weird call for you. My parents called an exterminator that came out and set glue traps in our garage and a baby weasel managed to get into one of them.”

  “A baby weasel? Wow, that’s not something you hear everyday, well you’re lucky. There is a hospital in Bellevue that will take wildlife, let me give you their number…”

    “Thank you!” Great, there was hope! I grabbed a sticky note, jotted the number down then called them as quick as I could.

     “Aerowood Animal Hospital, what is the nature of your emergency?”

  “Yeah, Hi, my name is Erin Roberts, got an unusual call for you…” I explained the situation.

   “A baby weasel? Well I’ll be darned, bring it in, we’ll see what we can do.”

  Yes! This thing didn’t have to die! At least not like this. If it came down to them not being able to save it, at least they could euthanize it humanely. I skipped triumphantly out to my father, still crouching next to the trap. “Dad! I just called the vet’s office! They told us to take it in!” He didn’t look up, he just said, “No, Erin, you don’t take a weasel to the vet.” I groaned aloud. I told him about the animal cops shows and the special hospital in Bellevue. He continued to look down at the weasel. It took several minutes of convincing, but he finally agreed to take the weasel in to make me feel better. So next came the tricky part. How were we going to transport this thing? We couldn’t just hold it, we might get bitten. The trap wouldn’t fit in an old mouse cage. So I ran inside and told my mom, and asked her if there was any way we could get it there safely. She thought for a minute, then went to the closet under the stairs. After a great deal of digging, she produced a small cat carrier we had around from my old cat. She suggested we put a few folded towels in and tried to brace the trap in such a way that it wouldn’t slide around. It wasn’t too long of a drive to Bellevue, probably about twenty minutes, but it was long enough, and hilly enough for concern. Then there was the matter of calming the animal enough to withstand the shock of transport. By this point, it looked like it had dislocated some of its joints struggling to get free, there was a serious risk of it dying from stress or exhaustion. We tried to give it some water out of an eye dropper, which it seemed to accept just fine, and that calmed it a bit. Then we slowly picked it up and placed it in the cat carrier. With it safely in the crate, we could finally get on our way. We loaded it into the trunk, started the car and we were off.            Then something hit us. We’d always been near the little guy outside, but the sudden introduction of an enclosed space made us realize how much he stunk, and boy did he ever reek. It was an overpowering odor that was slightly skunky, and smelled like a urinated-on pile of animal feces and rotting vegetation. We tried not to roll down the windows, afraid we’d scare him to death. Miraculously, we lasted about ten minutes, until we couldn’t take it anymore and rolled down the windows slightly. It helped, but the stench was still enough to make me nauseas and give me a terrible headache by the time we arrived at the animal hospital. My dad and I practically fell out of the car, gasping for fresh air. After we had composed ourselves, we got the crate out of the car and realized that we didn’t know which door we should use. Like most animal hospitals, this one had two entrances: one for cats, and one for dogs. Nowhere did we see a “small woodland rodents” entrance, so we settled on the cat one. When we got inside, I told the lady behind the desk that we were the people with the weasel. “Oh yes! We’ve all been expecting you, I can’t believe you caught a baby weasel! Let me go tell the vet.” Everyone in the waiting room glanced into the cage, trying to act disinterested. I set the cage on my lap so I could get a good look at him. The poor thing looked exhausted. His struggling had subsided into a malaise of slight twitches. His beautiful fluffy tail was now entwined in the glue. His tiny limbs were painfully twisted about in all directions. His little eyes were beginning to close slightly, and his breathing was labored and heavy. “Don’t worry little dude, we’re going to get you out of there soon,” I reassured.  About that time, the vet’s assistant came out into the lobby and announced “Alright, we’re ready for the… weasel? Is it really a weasel?”  I lifted up the cage so that she could see inside. “Oh my word, it’s a baby weasel. Well I’ll be darned. Alright, we’ll take him back now.”  She opened the crate and gently lifted the trap out. “Aw man, he’s really stuck in there isn’t he? Well, we’ll see what we can do.” I sat back down next to my father, who was looking slightly dejected. “You know they’re probably going to have to put him to sleep, right?” He asked. “I know, but I’m hoping there will be something they can do for him.”

   Then we waited. And waited. And waited, for what seemed like forever, but in reality was probably around fifteen minutes. Then the vet tech emerged from the back room, I stood up and I said, “did you get him?” She triumphantly held up the empty glue trap, still littered with pieces of fur from the weasel. “Yep, we got ‘im! We sedated him and then we used a razor blade to shave off the fur that was connecting him to the glue. Got him out of it pretty quick. Then we washed him thoroughly and put him in with out other wildlife. He should be coming to in about half an hour.” Success. Victory. Sweet, sweet victory. Then came the next hurdle, “so now what happens to him?”

“Well,” she said, “we work with a non-profit wildlife sanctuary up in Everett that takes in injured wildlife and rehabilitates it for release back into the wild. Hopefully in a few days we will be able to transport him up there where he can be evaluated, put with others of his kind and eventually released. He’s got a good shot, it looked like he hadn’t done too much damage to himself trying to get out.” Thank God. I turned and looked at my father, who looked absolutely shocked that they were able to dislodge him. “I think this belongs to you?” The vet tech asked, offering the trap to my dad.  He looked sheepish, and put the trap back into the crate.

    “I really wish you wouldn’t use these things. They’re downright cruel. At least spring loaded traps kill quickly, these ones just torture the poor critters to death. You’re lucky you caught that little guy in time, if he’d been there a few hours more, he’d be a goner for sure. I hope you learned something from this experience. We get wildlife stuck in these traps all the time,” she explained. “Yeah, well, we didn’t really fully agree with putting them in. I think we’ll remove them,” my dad said, looking embarrassed. “Awesome! Great to hear it! Now, we don’t require that people pay for emergency services provided to wildlife, but we do recommend a donation to the non-profit sanctuary where he’ll be going.”  My dad donated a marginal sum to the organization and we left, victoriously.

    “See dad? I told you they could help!” I said. “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. I didn’t even know these kinds of organizations existed. Good thing you watch too much Animal Planet,” he said as we climbed back into the car. We rolled down the windows all the way home to get the stench out of the car. When we finally pulled back up to the house, I ran into the garage and proudly held up the empty trap. My sister and her friends all cheered. My parents collected the rest of the glue traps from around the garage and threw them away.

    I had impacted a lot that day. I not only saved a baby weasel, but I was able to educate my family and friends about what to do with injured wildlife. I was also able to help convince my parents that only humane methods of pest control should be used around our house. It was an overall very successful experience. 

Doublespeak vs Doublespeak: An Inconvenient Truth and Policy Peril (Final)

No matter which direction you approach the topic of global warming from, you will always be met with strong feelings and heated arguments. And why wouldn't you, such a universal and troubling issue is bound to generate opposition and controversy. But when examining the issue in a documentary, one would hope that a producer would strive to emphasize the facts above their own agenda. But as the liberal "Inconvenient Truth" and conservative "Policy Peril" demonstrate, facts can be easily manipulated to match the opinions of their intended audiences. They achieve this maneuver through the cunning use of doublespeak, a form of language or imagery intended to misinform or mislead someone into believing a specific opinion or idea. They both claim to be the absolute truth, but both are riddled with distorted facts, deceiving figures, and misrepresented data. Nowhere is this more evident than in their blatant use of visual manipulation.

     Visual manipulation has been around since the 1960 presidential debate. It the first in history to be broadcast on both television and radio. Those who listened on the radio thought Nixon clearly won the debate, but those watching on television believed the handsome and charismatic Kennedy had.  It was the first time our nation ever witnessed the power images have in controlling the psyche. Despite the fact that people might have believed what Nixon was saying more, his disheveled and nervous appearance led them to put their faith in his more attractive opponent. Marketers jumped on the phenomenon, and the age of image driven propaganda was born. The producers of "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Policy Peril" understood this, and harnessed the power of misleading images to win minds for their respective causes. 

     In "An Inconvenient Truth", Al Gore explains that glaciers are receding at an alarming rate. To demonstrate, he shows two pictures of the glacier on Mount Kilimanjaro. One photo is from decades ago and the other is a more recent photo that shows a greatly reduced mass of ice. It convincingly proves his point that the ice is melting at a faster rate than ever before. Or does it? What the former Vice President fails to mention is what time of year the pictures were taken. It is a normal planetary cycle for glaciers to recede during warmer months, but Mr. Gore intentionally leaves the dates out to make the audience believe the ice was receding faster than it really was. 

       In "Policy Peril", the little known minority enunciates its legitimacy by showing a number of expert witnesses they have in their court. But in the rapid succession of flashing pictures, the audience doesn't notice that many witnesses' images are shown more than one time, making the number of experts appear greater than it actually is. In one instance, their key expert, who speaks for about 75% of the film, actually changes location and costume to make him look like he is another witness entirely. The average audience member might miss the likeness and mistake him for another expert, making them believe that the global warming opposition has one more expert on their side than they really do. 

      But in both films, the most unapologetic form of visual manipulation comes in confusing and poorly labeled data. In "An Inconvenient Truth" I counted six times that graphs were shown with unlabeled axes. In some cases, the graphs didn't even have axes at all. In "Policy Peril", I counted another four instances where graphs were either mislabeled or not labeled at all.  By not providing values for their axes, they are able to misrepresent the data as much as they want. A simple change in units can make a set of numbers go from looking like they increase gradually to appearing as though they increase exponentially in a very short time frame. They intentionally left out labels to  misinform, so that people would only notice the dramatic slopes of the lines and not the values they represent. If that information were present, it might bring one to a different conclusion. You can imagine how this would be dangerous when discussing an event with such global impact. 

     Regardless of the way they go about presenting them, what their arguments ultimately come down to are a set of values that differ between the two sides. The central theme of "An Inconvenient Truth" lies around nature, and how it should be valued above almost everything else. Their message is "we must save the planet in order to save ourselves." All of their information centers around nature as the most important thing in the world, and how the health of nature is directly linked to the future of mankind. The makers of "Policy Peril" feel that mankind itself is more important than anything else. Their message lies in the future of mankind's prosperity, valuing human life and economic progress over planetary conditions. Sort of the "as long as we can adapt to a warming world, we shouldn't worry about fixing it" argument. They are two equally valid points that both parties justifiably believe to be the absolute truth. 

         This difference in value structure is a vital part of human nature. It lies at the core of the essence of what makes us individuals. And it is necessary in a world governed by half-truths and misconceptions. So despite the inherent fallacies  and doublespeak in their arguments, no matter how much we personally disagree with them, we must respect their point of view. What we can criticize is the convoluted way they dupe their audiences and present their opinions as facts. 

Doublespeak vs Doublespeak: An Inconvenient Truth and Policy Peril

      No matter which direction you approach the topic of global warming from, you will always be met with strong feelings and heated arguments. And why wouldn't you, such a universal and troubling issue is bound to generate opposition and controversy. But when examining the issue in a documentary, one would assume that a producer would strive to emphasize the facts above their own agenda. But as the liberal "Inconvenient Truth" and conservative "Policy Peril" demonstrate, facts can be easily manipulated to match the opinions of their intended audiences. They achieve this maneuver through the cunning use of doublespeak, a form of language or imagery intended to misinform or mislead someone into believing a specific opinion or idea. They both claim to be the absolute truth, but both are riddled with distorted facts, deceiving figures, and misrepresented data.

     The 1960 presidential debate was the first in history to be broadcast on both television and radio. Those who listened on the radio thought Nixon clearly won the debate, but those watching on television believed the handsome and charismatic Kennedy had.  It was the first time our nation ever witnessed the power images have in controlling the psyche. Despite the fact that people might have believed what Nixon was saying more, his disheveled and nervous appearance led them to put their faith in his more attractive opponent. Marketers jumped on the phenomenon, and the age of image driven propaganda was born. The producers of "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Policy Peril" understood this, and harnessed the power of misleading images to win minds for their respective causes. 

     In "An Inconvenient Truth", Al Gore explains that glaciers are receding at an alarming rate. To demonstrate, he shows two pictures of glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro and in Glacier National Park. One photo is from decades ago and the other is a more recent photo that shows a greatly reduced mass of ice. It convincingly proves his point that the ice is melting at a faster rate than ever before. Or does it? What the former Vice President fails to mention is what time of year the pictures were taken. It is a normal planetary cycle for glaciers to recede during warmer months, but Mr. Gore intentionally leaves the dates out to make the audience believe the ice was receding faster than it really was. 

       In "Policy Peril", the little known minority enunciates its legitimacy by showing a number of expert witnesses they have in their court. But in the rapid succession of flashing pictures, the audience doesn't notice that many witnesses' images are shown more than one time, making the number of experts appear greater than it actually is. In one instance, their key expert, who speaks for about 75% of the film, actually changes location and costume to make him look like he is another witness entirely. The average audience member might miss the likeness and mistake him for another expert, making them believe that the global warming opposition has one more expert on their side than they really do. 

      But in both films, the most unapologetic form of visual manipulation comes in confusing and poorly labeled data. In "An Inconvenient Truth" I counted six times that graphs were shown with unlabeled axes. In some cases, the graphs didn't even have axes at all. In "Policy Peril", I counted another four instances where graphs were either mislabeled or not labeled at all.  By not providing values for their axes, they are able to misrepresent the data as much as they want. A simple change in units can make a set of numbers go from looking like they increase gradually to appearing as though they increase exponentially in a very short time frame. They intentionally left out labels to  misinform, so that people would only notice the dramatic slopes of the lines and not the values they represent. If that information were present, it might bring one to a different conclusion. You can imagine how this would be dangerous when discussing an event with such global impact. 

     Regardless of the way they go about presenting them, what their arguments ultimately come down to are a set of values that differ between the two sides. The central theme of "An Inconvenient Truth" lies around nature, and how it should be valued above almost everything else. Their message is "we must save the planet in order to save ourselves." All of their information centers around nature as the most important thing in the world, and how the health of nature is directly linked to the future of mankind. The makers of "Policy Peril" feel that mankind itself is more important than anything else. Their message lies in the future of mankind's prosperity, valuing human life and economic progress over planetary conditions. Sort of the "as long as we can adapt to a warming world, we shouldn't worry about fixing it" argument. They are two equally valid points that both parties justifiably believe to be the absolute truth. 

         This difference in value structure is a vital part of human nature. It lies at the core of the essence of what makes us individuals. And it is necessary in a world governed by half-truths and misconceptions. So despite the inherent fallacies  and doublespeak in their arguments, no matter how much we personally disagree with them, we must respect their point of view. What we can criticize is the convoluted way they dupe their audiences and present their opinions as facts. 

Doublespeak vs Doublespeak: An Inconvenient Truth and Policy Peril (Very Rough Draft)

      No matter which direction you approach the topic of global warming from, you will always be met with strong feelings and heated arguments. And why wouldn't you, such a universal and troubling issue is bound to generate opposition and controversy. But when examining the issue in a documentary, one would think that a producer would strive to emphasize facts above their own agenda. But as the liberal "Inconvenient Truth" and conservative "Policy Peril" demonstrate, facts can be easily manipulated to match the opinions of their intended audiences. They achieve this maneuver through the cunning use of doublespeak, a form of language or imagery intended to misinform or mislead someone into believing a specific opinion or idea. They both claim to be the absolute truth, but both are riddled with distorted facts, deceiving figures, and and misrepresented data.

     The 1960 presidential debate was the first in history to be broadcast on both television and radio. Those who listened on the radio thought Nixon clearly won the debate, but those watching on television believed the handsome and charismatic Kennedy had.  It was the first time our nation ever witnessed the power images have in controlling the psyche. Despite the fact that people might have believed what Nixon was saying more, his disheveled and nervous appearance led them to put their faith in his more attractive opponent. Marketers jumped on the phenomenon, and the age of image driven propaganda was born. The producers of "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Policy Peril" understood this, and harnessed the power of misleading images to win minds for their respective causes. 

     In "An Inconvenient Truth", Al Gore explains that glaciers are receding at an alarming rate. He shows two pictures from glaciers around the world, one from decades ago, and then another more recent photo that shows a greatly reduced mass of ice. It convincingly proves his point that the ice is melting at a faster rate than ever before. Or does it? What the former Vice President fails to mention is what time of year the pictures were taken. It is a normal planetary cycle for glaciers to recede during warmer months, but Mr. Gore intentionally leaves the dates out to make the audience believe the ice was receding faster than it was in reality. 

       In "Policy Peril", the little known cause gives legitimacy to its case by showing a number of expert witnesses in their court. But in the rapid succession of flashing pictures, the audience doesn't notice that many witnesses' images are shown more than one time, making the number of experts appear greater than it actually is. In one instance, their key expert, who speaks for about 75% of the film, actually changes location and costume to make him look like he is another witness entirely. The average audience member might miss the likeness and mistake him for another expert, making them believe they have one more expert on their side than they really do. Pretty sneaky. 

      But in both films, the most unapologetic form of visual manipulation comes in confusing and poorly labeled data. In "An Inconvenient Truth" I counted six times that graphs were shown with unlabeled axes. In some cases, the graphs didn't even have axes at all. In "Policy Peril", I counted a further four instances where graphs were either mislabeled or not labeled at all.  By not providing values for their axes, they are able to misrepresent the data as much as they wanted. A simple change in units can make a set of numbers go from looking like they increase gradually to appearing as though they increase exponentially in a very short time frame. They left out the labels to intentionally misinform, so that people only notice the dramatic slopes of the lines and not the values they represent. If that information were present, it might bring one to a different conclusion. You can imagine how this would be dangerous when discussing an event with a global impact. 

     Whatever the way they go about presenting them, what their arguments ultimately come down to are a set of values that differ between the two sides. The central theme of "An Inconvenient Truth" lies around nature, and how it should be valued above almost everything else. Their message is "we must save the planet in order to save ourselves." Their information all centers around nature as the most important thing in the world, and how the health of nature is directly linked to the future of mankind. The makers of "Policy Peril" feel that mankind itself is more important than anything else. Their message lies in the future of mankind's prosperity, valuing human life and economic progress over planetary conditions. Sort of the "as long as we can adapt to a warming world, we shouldn't worry about fixing it" argument. They are two equally valid points that both parties justifiably believe to be the absolute truth. A difference in value structure is a vital part of human nature. It is at the core of the essence of what makes us individuals. And it is necessary in a world governed by half-truths and misconceptions. So despite the inherent fallacies  and doublespeak in their arguments, and no matter how much we personally disagree with them, we must respect their point of view. 

My Personal Black Swan Event

      As an eight year old growing up in Vermont, playing in the woods was a way of life. So when I got bit by a tick, I didn't even notice, so much so that I don't even remember it. It wouldn't be until eleven years later huddled in a wheelchair in a doctor's office that I even knew it happened. That was the day I was diagnosed with Lyme disease, a particularly punishing disease that attacks organs, nerves, and fibrous tissues. It had taken eleven years, countless doctors, dozens of trips to the emergency room, one hospitalization, and coming within months of death for someone to finally make the connection between my symptoms and my time on the east coast. It had been five years since that initial bite that I even noticed feeling ill. I didn't think much of it, but that sick feeling that began as a nuisance would soon change my life completely. Those good grades I had always gotten started declining, the sports I'd always loved playing became history, and the faith adults had always had in me flew out the window. Over the course of just a few years I was forced to change high schools three times. I had to alter my plans of becoming a doctor. But more importantly, I was put on a path that would ultimately lead to discovering my abilities onstage and my passion for the performing arts. Coincidentally, my Lyme would also save me from a path that would have jeopardized it all. After high school I went to a conservative university that was kind of chosen for me for a major that was wrong for what I wanted to do with my life. While I was there my illness became progressively harder to ignore until I found myself sleeping twenty two hours a day and unable to keep food down. Concerned for my immediate safety, my parents flew me home. I left everything there and never looked back. After being diagnosed with Lyme, I spent a year at home in intensive recovery. Slowly I moved from a bed to a wheelchair, where I stayed until finally getting on my feet earlier this year. But the time that I had to lie around and think empowered me to do what I really wanted originally: to go to school for musical theatre. And I owe everything, both the heart wrenching pain of defeat and the incredible vindictive accomplishment of success to an insect no bigger than the head of a pin. Which just goes to show, one tiny thing can change the world entirely.