Still More From Oliver's Red Bird

After concluding that I had mined Mary Oliver's Red Bird* for all the meaning it had for me, I have come back again and again and found more. Here are three more poems that speak to me now.


Desire

So long as I am hanging on

I want to be young and noble.

I want to be bold.

So said the great buck, named Swirler,

as he stepped like a king past me

the week before he was arrow-killed.

And so said the wren in the bush

after another hard year

of love, of nest-life, of singing.

And so say I

every morning, just before sunrise,

wading the edge of the dark ocean.


One Day in August

It is time now, I said,

for the deepening and quieting of the spirit

among the flux of happenings.

Something had pestered me so much

I thought my heart would break.

I mean the mechanical part.

I went down in the afternoon

to the sea

which held me, until I grew easy.

About tomorrow, who knows anything.

Except that it will be time, again,

for the deepening and quieting of the spirit.


So Every Day

So every day

I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth

of the ideas of God,

one of which was you.


* Red Bird, Poems by Mary Oliver (2008)

Human's Cause Global Warming: A Former Skeptic Scientist

When the best scientists, including some of the few skeptics among them, study the data--and study it carefully and thoroughly--they too recognize the truth. And that was certainly true in the case of Cal-Berkeley physics Professor Richard Muller when asked to chair the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project, set up for global warming skeptics. Now he too is among the unqualified believers. The evidence is strong and persuasive. And neither wishing it were not true, nor political spin, nor self-interested business denials, can change the truth of it at all. It's what the data and analysis tell us. nbcnews.com reports:

Global warming not only is real, but "humans are almost entirely the cause," a self-described former climate change skeptic has declared. "Call me a converted skeptic," Richard A. Muller, University of California, Berkeley physics professor said in an opinion piece posted online Saturday in The New York Times.  

Muller in October released results from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project, set up for global warming skeptics, that showed that since the mid-1950s, global average temperatures over land have risen by 0.9 degrees Celsius (1.6 degrees Fahrenheit). 

In his new statement, Muller said, "Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause."  

---"Ex-climate change skeptic: Humans cause global warming," NBC News (7.29.2012) 

For a useful review of the scientific opinion on global warming and the role of humans in it--including all the major scientific bodies that have affirmed it--see this article on Wikipedia, and others cited by it: "Scientific opinion on climate change." 

Doctor Shortage Likely to Worsen With New Health Care Law

When more people have healthcare coverage, more people rightly seek the service of doctors. But we already expect a shortage of doctors, especially in less attractive areas and communitities, and it will likely take a generation to materially add to the number of practicing doctors. Doubtless, a significant expansion of nurse practitioners to address everyday medical issues and prescriptions will have to be part of the answer. What is not an acceptable answer, however, is to think that people without any preventative and basic heath care coverage should continue without it.

 RIVERSIDE, Calif. — In the Inland Empire, an economically depressed region in Southern California, President Obama’s health care law is expected to extend insurance coverage to more than 300,000 people by 2014. But coverage will not necessarily translate into care: Local health experts doubt there will be enough doctors to meet the area’s needs. There are not enough now. 

Detroit and suburban Phoenix, face similar problems. The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that in 2015 the country will have 62,900 fewer doctors than needed. And that number will more than double by 2025, as the expansion of insurance coverage and the aging of baby boomers drive up demand for care. Even without the health care law, the shortfall of doctors in 2025 would still exceed 100,000.  

[...] Many health experts in California said that while they welcomed the expansion of coverage, they expected that the state simply would not be ready for the new demand. “It’s going to be necessary to use the resources that we have smarter” in light of the doctor shortages, said Dr. Mark D. Smith, who heads the California HealthCare Foundation, a nonprofit group.  

Dr. Smith said building more walk-in clinics, allowing nurses to provide more care and encouraging doctors to work in teams would all be part of the answer. Mr. Corcoran of the California Medical Association also said the state would need to stop cutting Medicaid payment rates; instead, it needed to increase them to make seeing those patients economically feasible for doctors.  

---"Doctor shortage likely to worsen with health care law," by By Annie Lowrey and Robert Pear, The New York Times (7.28.2012)  

Link: Doctor shortage likely to worsen with health care law

Physicists Find New Particle; Looks Like the Higgs Boson!

In the 1960's, British physicist Peter Higgs theorized the existence of a new "boson" (a  subatomic particle) necessary to give other particles mass and hold all matter together. Without them, the theory says, atoms could not form and there would be no you or me or anything of mass. Now experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland have discovered a new particle that acts like it is the Higgs boson. It's a really big deal.

Click here for link to more information:
Milestone in Higgs quest: Scientists find new particle