The water is cool now, 42° F.

I sit in my warm home, the Christmas tree lit, with various sea ornaments hung from the balsam tree. Sharks, shells, crabby crustaceans, dolphins, and even penguins swim through the fir green branches

Outside my quahogs sit in Richardson Sound, dormant now, waiting for the sun to return, to warm up the shallow waters that feed the back bay mud.

Last week I cast into a strong breeze, the waves crashing on the beach, the foam rising to my feet.

One bump, no fish. The steel skies would have embarrassed El Greco with their beauty. The breakers glowed against the gray water. No one else was on the beach. No one.

The sand pipers skittered about my feet, ignoring my presence, glomming what few calories they could on the cold edge of the sea. A loon surfaced, glanced my way, then glooped back under the gray water.

***

The quahogs are home, as they will always be. A clam might move a few feet here, a few feet there, maybe an inch or two for every year of its long, long life.

We struggle against deadlines, we eat food from fields we cannot imagine, we drive using sunlight caught millions of years ago, and we race across time chasing time.


And my clams rest in the mud, eating, growing, being, in the dark mud inches below the cold bay floor.



One day I will eat my last quahog. The great mystery, one too nebulous to discuss in polite company, is this--why is there a last one?

Have I already eaten it?

Above is the Lady Mary, a local scallop boat that sank under mysterious circumstances March 24, 2009, killing 6 scallopers, possibly hit by a passing freighter. That's me just under the bow.

The Lady Mary now rests on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, 200 feet of water over her. Scallops still appear in the market, every day. The names of the fallen fishermen will be carved in the Fisherman's Memorial, overlooking the harbor, where they will join too many others.

***

Dinner tonight helps me claw through the winter dark. Pesto made from basil picked months ago, Brussels sprouts just picked last week.

I want to live like the clam, resting in the rich muddy bottom, eating by the grace of the sea, by the Grace of God. The tide rises, the tide falls--my faith straining every few hours as the whole sea slips away, twice a day.

Like the clam, I have faith the sun will rise tomorrow, as it has, and that I will be here to see it. Unlike the clam, though, I do not have the sense to slow down with the dying light.

The pictured quahogs were harvested in November, along with the tomatoes.
Leslie took the picture of the Lady Mary in port. The other was taken by Bradley Sheard, found in The Star-Ledger

READ MORE - Quahogs in winter

Yes, I know, same old same old...I write for Leslie.
When I walk, I walk with Leslie.
When I eat, I eat with Leslie.
When I sleep, I sleep with Leslie.
When I share melomel, I share it with Leslie.

This morning I watched a couple of bees trying to suck nectar from pink cosmos flowers. The breeze was topping 25 mph. I suspect the bees were spending more calories than they were getting, but they keep trying to get to the flowers, because that's what bees do.


And now I am writing stories about the bees, because that's what humans do.

And it's all good.

***

I'm drinking peach melomel--peaches from 2009 fermented with honey made from flowers in Michigan. A few dormant yeast rest in the bottom of the bottle, poisoned by the ethanol they created.




I took a walk on the today--October beaches have more carcasses than life. The light is fading, and life fades with it. We forget this when we pal around with modern 21st century humans. Except when we don't, and make a formalized ritual out of dying. Which is OK, I guess, but I think I can manage it on my own. I hope I die under the sun, and I hope I'm alone. But we don't talk about this in polite company.

We started farming about 10,000 years ago. It's why I can sit in a permanent structure sipping wine made from cultured peaches and cultured yeast.

I get a little sad when I reflect on the culture we pretend can be sated. It cannot. I get a little sad when I think about my death, too. Contemplating either, however, reflects an ingrained narcissistic and very human attitude contrary to this life thing.

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
Without ever having felt sorry for itself.

-- D.H. Lawrence

***

I like being outside. Even when I think I won't, I always do. I have never regretted a single moment outside. And yet I teach my lambs inside.

I like walking barefoot. I am barefoot almost always, except when in school. I have rarely regretted a moment barefoot (though I have had the occasional spectacular bleed). And yet I wear shoes when I teach.

I like making bread, making beer, growing plants, singing, dancing. I have been sneaking parts of all of those into class. That I have to sneak them into the curriculum instead of trumpeting their presence in my classroom speaks to my cowardice and to my role as a government agent. It also speaks to a very weird social situation where I may talk more to a particular child than her parents.

I teach biology. It's messy. Always has been. It's wet, and chaotic, and real, and scary, and, ultimately, about death.

And life.

***

And what do I do?

I wear shoes in class.
I avoid death so I do not disturb my lambs.

But each and every one of us grows plants.
And every day, every day, I remind my students that the plants make stuff from their breath.
And in a few months, we will eat the fruit from the plants.

I do not, of course, call it communion, and would not for a whole lot of reasons.

But I will say this much. Though I have long given up on the Transubstantiation of the Host (but not the miracle of CO₂ and water to food), and though I will teach what I am hired to teach, I am closer to death than birth, and I will not lie to my students.

Ever.

You want a biology teacher? Someone who will put the logos (λέγω) of life in the classroom?

I'll do it.

A good biology course will change your child. If your child has not changed in my classroom, I've wasted her time.

The photos were taken today in North Cape May.
The cosmos were as alive as I'll ever be, and the crab as dead.

READ MORE - Melomel, cosmos, and teaching biology

I just read a fun post tweeted by dtitle, "Five amazing inventions that will doom us all!"

Why wait for the future, though? We already have all kinds of technological doo-dads that have doomed humanity (if not humans):

(Runners-up: Automobiles, telephones, and the incandescent lamp. And record players (recommended by John Spencer).)


Number Five: Television (and other forms of e-media)

Very few folks control television, and very few appreciate how this medium has altered our minds. Democracy depends on discourse, and folks who spend hours a day "consuming" visions produced by very wealthy people with very narrow objectives effectively remove themselves as true citizens (though they can, alas, still vote).

Democracy is essentially dead in the States, and hasn't flourished in most parts of the world anyway, so as influential as televison is, I relegated it to fifth place here.




Number Four: The Haber Process

Prometheus gave us fire, Fritz Haber gave us nitrogen fixation. We were now one with the gods.

Before the Haber process, only bacteria and bolts of lightning made nitrogen available for life. Without nitrogen, we have no proteins, no nucleic acids. Haber gave humans control of the nitrogen cycle. We are gods now, able to make ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen.

We no longer had to rely on poop for fertilizer. Our huge human population depends on fertilizer made possible by the Haber process. Ammonia can also be used to make lots of explosives.

Why is this on the list (aside from my innnate hatred of golf courses)? Haber's process created industrialized agriculture. We disconnected ourselves from the mystery (or so we think), and now believe we can continue to grow food relentlessly, without thought.

Haber helped trigger the Green Revolution. In the end, it will only mean that many more carcasses to burn when our fossil fuels are depleted, and artificial fertilizers become too expensive for all but the elite.

Fritz Haber also developed chlorine gas for use in warfare, and personally oversaw its use in France.




Number Three: The written word

Yep, I use them. I read, I write, I even (*gasp*) blog. I'm a hypocrite.

Words are abstract. They freeze moments. Our collective oral memory evolves through generations, tailoring the needs of the clan with the needs of the community. The written word changes all this.

NONE of any of the rest of this list happens with oral tradition alone. The written Bible does not happen, nor the written Koran. Old conflicts dissolve with time in the oral tradition. The written word keeps grudges alive forever.

In my best moments, words disappear.

I'm OK with burning books, as long as we burn all of them.




Number Two: Computers

We can now process thought faster than we can think. Every one of you reading this post can be traced. Databases record your keystrokes. There is no longer privacy for anyone committed to living the 21st century life.

I'd like to pick my nose and maybe even savor the results without anyone knowing. (That was allegorical, folks.)

Computers allow telecommunications, allow nuclear weaponry, allow large hadron colliders, allow genomic typing, allow pretty much every foray into risky high tech hi-jinks without an iota of thought.

OK, they allow Zelda, too, so it's almost a wash.





And number one:
Nuclear weapons

We got 'em, lots of them. So does Russia, and China. The Brits. The cozy buddies India and Pakistan. Did I mention France? France!?

Well that's OK, no rogues states, eh. (Ooops...almost forgot. NORTH KOREA!)

Maybe Israel. And soon, perhaps, Iran.

But it's OK, we all love each other, and would never use them, right?







Yoshihiro, the baby died 11 days later.
Tanaka Kio, the mother, lived until December 9, 2006.

Their story, our story, is here.

Television pic from https://ishcmcwiki.wikispaces.com, via CC 3.0
Fritz is from wikipedia
The open Bible is from wikipedia, too
Univac via Georgia Gwinnett College
Yoshihiro and Tanaka's photo was taken by Yamahata Yosuke.

Am I serious about this list?
Yes.

I'd love to hear your opinions....

READ MORE - Five inventions that have doomed humanity

The morning glories stay in bloom all day--the sun too low to coax them to close. A few bursts of flowers— nicotianas, wild aster, and marigolds beckon the slow, more-bumbly-than-ever bees. The ground is cool and wet, and occasionally mud squishes up between my toes.

The tomatoes are gone. I pulled them up today, skeletal remains still hanging on their stakes as though crucified and forgotten. The basil plants, usually the first to go, stand defiant among the rust-rotted tomatoes. Too much rain this season.

A mason jar with green-tinged rainwater emerges from the bean patch, the receding leaves ratting out a watery universe of euglenas and parameciums and copepods, spontaneously generated.

When the garden looks dead, and I no longer believe life is possible, I will peek through a microscope and watch the tumbling exuberance. But not yet--let the critters toss and tumble until November, when I need to see the show.

The grapes explode in my mouth. Most huddle shriveled on the vine, scrotal remnants. Some taste like beaujolais, some need to be spat out. The ground is stained with purple bird shit, the reminders of last week's drunken choir.

When I was younger, the October garden frightened me. Honeysuckle buds that would never open, basil flowers beckoning bees that were too chilled to care saddened me. When I was younger, I suspected I was immortal... the garden whispered otherwise.

No longer. Winter is coming. My winter is coming. The irrational bloom of an annual, a flash of a fuschia the night before its last frost, makes no sense to a seedling in May. In May, the seedling has work to do--grow and flower, seduce the bee, make seeds.

Mid-October, too late to seduce the bees, to make new seeds.
Never too late to flower. A single red zinnia glows in the low October sunlight.

Leslie and I have been together 31 years. Gray hairs no longer surprise us, and we are past making any more seedlings. The leaves are changing colors.

Still, in the faintly warm light of the setting October sun, she glows. It's not winter yet. I am not ready for winter. I am starting to love autumn, though.

This was written a few years ago. Last weekend I found a tiny snow pea pod, and gave it to her. She told me it was delicious. I believe her.

READ MORE - Late October