Coming to Terms with Flawed Heros

6FPS V2#7


Editorial: Life Goes Forward


Welcome to the new issue of 6FPS.

One of my co-workers got on the group chat to apologize for missing the morning stand up because he overslept. A couple of us told him not to worry, because it was Sunday. 

We have hit that point in the Life in the Pandemic Times. 

To those of you not living in the United States, yes, we as a culture and government are as incompetent as we seem to be from the outside. It is brutal to watch people die in numbers while the President is mostly trying to convince people it's not his fault, so don't blame him. On the plus side, the polls indicate fewer and fewer are believing him, but it's important for everyone who can to make sure they get out and vote in the upcoming election. I'm not suggesting who you should vote for, but who I'm not voting for should be obvious. And sitting on the sidelines makes it one vote easier for the candidate you like least to prevail. Now is not the time to sit on the sidelines and declare it someone else's problem to fix. 

Ooops.

There was one really epic typo in last issue, which I have to admit nobody pointed out to me, and worse, I didn't see for about two weeks after publication, but once I did, my embarrassment was maximum. So even if you didn't notice it either, I'm sorry. The appropriate staffers (meaning: me) have been flogged.

Welcome to August, official dog days. Which I think in some ways is an insult to dogs. The days are getting shorter, and I can see fall on the horizon. Things here are continuing forward about as before. I'm making good progress on projects here, finishing one and the blog rework is continuing apace. If you look, you'll see a number of the pages (including the 6FPS landing page) now live on chuq.me, and I feel like I'm more or less on schedule. Which makes me happy. 

Laurie and I have been talking about vacations in the fall, but still unsure whether we'll feel safe enough to get out and do so. One option has been an AirBnB in Morro Bay, but there's a place we know in Newport Oregon that would fit the bill well as well, so there are options. A lot depends on whether things stabilize or not, and right now, we're not entirely hopeful. But we'll see.

On a positive note, due to complications caused by the pandemic we put our planning for a likely move to Poulso, WA on hold. it now looks like this has sorted itself out so we can think about moving forward again. The end result being that instead of maybe starting to look for a house to buy next spring, we're now looking at mid- to late-summer 2021. The move itself looks to me to be pretty complex, of course, and that is going to be interesting to organize, but in the next few weeks I'll be starting phase I by sticking a bunch of stuff we have and want to keep but won't be actively using into a long-term storage box that we can have delivered to us after the move to recover the contents. I'm thinking if I do one or two of these Pods before the official move, it'll make the real move easier and cheaper overall. 

But I'm also planning that it's likely we'll be in both places for a few months, which means taking ownership of the new place and then putting in basic furnishings -- beds, etc. And perhaps choosing to donate off stuff instead of moving at the end of all this. Long time before I have to make that decision. But at least the planning is moving forward again. 

Secret Wallpapers

I've released a new set of wallpapers to the secret wallpaper hangout. Set 6 (August 2020) is a mixed set of landscapes and wildlife/bird images. I hope you enjoy them. See the end of the newsletter for more details and the download links. As always, older sets are still available on the main wallpaper page available to the general public. 

Download note: Squarespace is a lot pickier about letting people right-click images to download, so I've set this up so you need to download the set as a ZIP file and unpack it to get the images. I will look at finding a way to allow download of individual images again once this site migration is complete.

And with that, on with the show!

What's New?

Most of my work has been on the blog rebuild, SCVAS projects or things I can't talk about yet. Of course. Sorry.

  • But I did finish this project, which actually set on my desk half-complete for over a month: New SCVAS Video: Santa Clara County Favorites. Video is it's own fascinating journey into complex workflows and time consuming activities, but I think it's worth it.

I do hope/expect to be more visibly productive again soon.

Coming to Terms with Flawed Heros

As we are slowly progressing through the complex issues that have been made more visible through Black Lives Matters, one of the ones going on that I find fascinating and troubling is how difficult it is for us as a culture to come to grips with the reality that many of our heroes and leaders from the past are flawed. For instance the Sierra Club is dealing with the fact that John Muir was racist -- as well as all of the very worthy things he did. Audubon's founder, John J Audubon has his own problems, as it seems his initial publication of his Birds of America work was done via some pretty blatant fraud. And a racist.

The issue of birds -- most notably the McCown's Longspur - being named after people who are famous for things we're no longer comfortable with (McCown was a notable Confederate General in the Civil War) -- having names of people has spawned a movement to reform this, centered around the idea of Bird Names for Birds. It's not just that some of these birds are named for people with reprehensible opinions and acts -- which is true -- but that the names are overwhelmingly men, and more specifically, white men. Bird Names for Birds is a growing movement to push to get birds named with bird names, not people names. This may seem like a minor thing, but think about it: naming the Longspur after McCown is in many ways similar to raising a virtual statue of him in the naming system of birds. If we're re-thinking the existence of other statues celebrating people who's beliefs we no longer think deserve memory, much less celebration, we should fix these, too. I, if it's not obvious, agree with the Bird Names for Birds group about these changes.

(Breaking News: Just as the newsletter was being finished, the AOS announced they had unanimously agreed to change the name of McCown's Longspur to Thick-Billed Longspur. But the bigger issue of eponym's and other problematic names is still un-resolved. Still, it's a start.)

Another interesting view on this movement is here at Birdwatching: A time of racial justice drives new push to rename birds

But where do we draw the lines around these issues? Does someone have to be perfect or we purge them from our society? I've seen some people suggest that. I've also seen some people suggest that since we can't practically do that, we shouldn't do anything.

Neither the "everyone has to go" crowd or the "don't start until it's perfect and complete" crowd are right; life is shades of grey, not black and white. It's nuanced, not simple. And the decisions are going to be often complex and controversial, and no, I don't have any answers here, I struggle with this, too.

An interesting case to ponder: George Washington, father of our country and much revered by most of us, in fact did own slaves, although by all reports he treated them well and ordered them freed after Martha's death in his will. I've seen a couple of people suggest he should be treated as Robert E. Lee is now being treated, but it's hard to tell if they're serious or trolling. In fact, his views on Slavery changed as he grew older and he became much more negative about it -- because people do change over time. To me, this is a case where we clearly need to recognize and discuss his flaws -- but in context with his other acts.

The Civil War leaders now having statues removed are a different factor. Most of those statues aren't particularly historic, but fairly recent constructs, put up as much to recognize and promote the Jim Crow laws and intimidate blacks and to celebrate the Civil War, which, in case you hadn't noticed, the South lost, but has built this faux history of that celebrates it as a way to continue indoctrinating white supremacy into its culture. So I have no problem seeing these items celebrating a toxic culture removed.

America as a culture doesn't do well with complexity and nuance. It much prefers easy absolutes in black and white, which I think most of us realize is not how life really is.

There are other characters of history undergoing scrutiny, not just Civil War personalities. Christopher Columbus, noted as discoverer of America, also was one of those that started slavery in America. Father Serra, of the California Missions, did similar things to the native first nations. They are important figures in our history, but in both positive and problematic ways. The big problem is that until recently, the problems were mostly ignored or minimized, because heroes need to be, well, heroes.

Now, we have to come to terms with flawed heroes, and that's not going to be easy. But we can't allow things to regress and go back to only talking about the good parts, because we need to understand and recognize the complexity of these people, not turn them into cartoon charicatures of themselves. We have to grapple with all of these problems in our past as part of how we will come to terms with, solve, and move forward from them.

The thing I worry about is we'll tire of this being a hard, complex and slow (in the case of some problems, generational) set of problems to solve, and I worry that we'll end up like we did after the civil war, when fatigue over reconstruction set in and the north more or less declared victory and left, leaving the south without slavery directly, but with the ability to build out the Jim Crow laws that effectively marginalized non-whites for generations, until the 1960's Civil Rights era got going and started pushing it back.

What we're seeing today in some ways is that after the 1960's we hit that fatigue point again and let things slide, and some parts of the culture have been trying to push back in it -- culminating in the Trump presidency, and his overt white supremest acts and views. I knew he'd be an incompetent president, but I didn't think he'd be George Wallace, but effectively that's what he's become.

I'm hoping that with the upcoming election, and end is put to all of this and with Black Lives Matter as a catalyst, we start moving all of this forward again. And yes, this is my one reminder this issue that the most critical thing you can do if you live in the states and are qualified is vote in the upcoming election. Standing on the sidelines only helps the people you like least get elected. Don't pretend it's someone else's problem. It's everyone's problem.

Photos: Bandon Lighthouse

One of my projects in the last month was doing a new take on my photography area on my web site, and revamping and moving my portfolios and other photo collections.

The new area is ready to look at here:

  • https://www.chuq.me/photography

and I've love to know what you think. I'll soon by shutting down my old SmugMug site and this will be my new, single place to look for my photography writing and images. (I will note that as of this issue, the writing bits are still a work in progress, but the landing page and images are all reprocessed and built out)

For Your Consideration

Photography

Birds and Birding

Health and Fitness

  • There's Now an Artificial Cartilage Gel Strong Enough to Work in Knees: this is interesting news to me, given the state of my knees. I've already let my Ortho doc know if they ever get involved in a trial, I'm their guinea pig.

  • New Scientific Paper Published: Caspian Terns Saved, Rehabilitated, and Released by International Bird Rescue Are Surviving and Breeding! A really tough problem, solved by the International Bird Rescue team (give them money)

Technology Nerdery

Fun Stuff

The Pandemic and Black Lives Matter

I wrote a book!

Download Now!



I'm thrilled to announce the results of a secret project I've been working on the last few weeks. I've written a book. The title is "... And the Geese Exploded" which if you read my blog was the title of a piece I wrote about this year's trip to Merced National Wildlife Refuge, and it was the thing that made me realize I needed to write this book.

This book is available for free -- no strings attached, not even an email address. The download is in PDF, which is easily readable on most computers and tablets (and it looks awesome on my iPad in the Books app, if I do say so myself), and also exists as a hardcover printed copy, but only one copy of it exists, I have it, and no, you can't buy it. But the ebook version is all yours to enjoy.

The book is a combination of a series of short essays about my birding life, how I feel so deeply for birdwatching, and some of the aspects of being a birdwatcher that mean so much to me. It also includes over 100 of my favorite photos that I've taken over the last decade here in the greater Bay Area, out in the central valley wildlife refuges, and here in the western coastal states in the U.S.

Interested? Head over to the download page where you can find out more about the book and how it came to be, and to grab a copy for your enjoyment. If you know of someone you think might enjoy this book, please share this with them, and pass this along through your social channels to help reach others that might want to have a copy.

See you Soon!

And with that, I'll see you in Jult with the next issue. I'd love feedback on this, what you like, what you want more of, what you want less of. And if you have something interesting you think I might want to talk about, please pass it along.Until then, take care, and have fun.

Chuq

About 6FPS and Chuq

6FPS (Six Frames Per Second) is a newsletter of interesting things and commentary from Chuq Von Rospach (chuqui@mac.com).

Coming out monthly on the 2nd Monday of the month, I will place in your inbox a few things I hope will inform and delight you. There is too much mediocre, forgettable stuff attacking your eyeballs every day you're online; this is my little way to help you cut through the noise to some interesting things you might otherwise not find.

Copyright © 2020 Chuq Von Rospach, All rights reserved.