Nina Munteanu's Blog, page 7

Exposing the Bully: Cliven Bundy and the Tragedy of the Commons

In the classic western 1953 movie Shane, a drifter finds himself in the midst of an ongoing conflict between the farming homesteaders and a cattle baron, wishing to seize their land. In the film Once Upon a Time in the West, the cattle baron is replaced by the railroad baron. Same deal. Same story… It hasn’t changed that much in a hundred years…The premise of cattle/land/railroad baron vs farmer/homesteader or small independent rancher is a popular one for good storytelling about the pioneers of the western frontier, and is based firmly on historical fact. The 19th century American analogues of the Monsanto and Nestle cartels and monopolies were decidedly held by these barons, many coming from oversees. Since the herds grazed on the open range and as few as a dozen cowboys could handle several thousand heads of cattle, a rancher's operating expenses were low. Many ranchers managed cattle and land for outside corporate interests. Two of the largest corporate ranches — the Anglo‐American Cattle Company (1879) and the Prairie Cattle Company (1881) — were established in England and Scotland, respectively.In the Feb 2015 issue of Harper’s Magazine, Christopher Ketcham writes that in 1885 the General Land Office reported to Congress on the worst form of monopoly in the western USA: “Cattle barons had enclosed the west forage along with scarce supplies of water in an arid landscape. They falsified titles using the signatures of cowhands and family members, employed fictitious identities to stake claims, and faked improvements on the land to appear to comply with the law.” Most private rangeland in the western states was likely obtained by various degrees of fraud, wrote Ketcham, quoting a historian in the industry. In the Johnson County War of 1892, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association hired gunmen to get rid of small operators accused of stealing cattle.These barons weren’t cowboys, writes Ketcham; although “they came to veil themselves in the cowboy mythos.” They were bankers or lawyers; they were mining, timber or railroad tycoons, whose soul interest was in making lots of money. “They dominated territorial legislatures, made governors, kept judges, juries and lawmen in their pockets. They hired gunmen to terrorize those who dared to encroach on their interests. They drove off small, cash-poor family ranchers by stampeding or rustling their herds, bankrupting them with spurious lawsuits, diverting water courses and sprints, fencing off land to monopolize the grass.”
“By the late nineteenth century, the barons had privatized the most productive grasslands and the riparian corridors, where the soil was especially rich. What remained was the less valuable dry-land forage of the public domain, which by 1918 totaled some 200 million acres spread across the eleven states of the West, and which the barons also dominated by stocking them with huge numbers of cows.”Overgrazed and under-regulated, the public rangelands spiraled into degradation; the grass diminished, topsoil eroded by rain or stolen by the wind.In 1934, Ferdinand Silcox, the chief forester of the US Forest Service, testified that unregulated grazing was “a cancer-like growth,” fated to become “a great interior desert.” That same year the Taylor Grazing Act was legislated to establish fees and a quota for grazing of government public lands. Stockmen petitioned to have the federally controlled land turned over to the state jurisdiction. The underlying agenda was “to discredit all conservation bureaus of the government, [and] to discredit conservation itself,” said historian Bernard DeVoto.“The wholesale transfer of public lands to state control may never be achieved,” writes Ketcham. “But the goal might be more subtle: to attack the value of public lands, to reduce their worth in the public eye, to diminish and defund the institutions that protect the land, and to neuter enforcement.” Ketcham reiterates DeVoto’s observation in the 1940s that “no rancher in his right mind wanted to own the public lands himself. That would entail responsibility and stewardship. Worse, it would mean paying property taxes. What ranchers have always wanted, and what extractive industries in general want, is private exploitation with costs paid by the public.”This is the moniker of the bully. Of small-minded, empty-hearted men, driven by the emptiness of greed and with no sense of connection to their world or environment. It is, in fact, the very reason we need government regulation. Cliven BundyWhat does a modern-day cattle baron look like? He looks like Cliven Bundy, notorious scoff-law cattle rancher from Bunkerville, Nevada.The rancher fancies himself a rebel hero in the form of Robin Hood, fighting for his rights against a “tyrannical” government; nothing could be further from the truth (read Ketcham’s in-depth article in the February issue of Harper’s). Firstly, the definition of a hero does not include a self-serving mean-spirited 20-year war on the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) over the destructive grazing by his cattle in the Gold Butte area—which has now taken on a terrorist quality. There’s nothing heroic about his disrespect for the land, the watershed and for people outside his own coterie. There is nothing heroic about wrongly citing the U.S. Constitution to support purposefully over-stocking and destroying sensitive habitat in the Butte. There is nothing heroic about refusing to pay a grazing fee for cattle that he will sell later for profit; a move that mimics what super-bully Nestlé is doing in watersheds around the world to sell water at great profit. Bundy and his like-minded coterie rallied against the conservationist bureau with pretentions of American rights. They did this by intimidating and terrorizing foresters and ecologists at gun-point, and carelessly destroying the land with vehicles and cattle. Rancher / Feds face-off near Bunkerville Nevada
What Bundy refuses to admit or care apparently is that grazing is now considered the chief cause of desertification in North America. Cattle are implicated in the eradication of native plants, which help balance the plains ecosystems. Studies in the area where Bundy’s cattle graze showed that the riparian areas were in the worst condition in history. Springs and streams were polluted, and cover for birds and mammals denuded. Invasive species had created monocultures of an inferior “industrialized landscape”. The sagebrush was replaced by a monoculture of cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum). “Cheat is the cattleman’s most subtly destructive legacy,” wrote Ketcham. “The BLM itself has admitted that because of the cheat infestation ‘a large part of the Great Basin lies on the brink of ecological collapse’.” Not that Bundy understands what this means or even cares.Bundy is plainly a bully and a thief, posing as a man of justice and knowledge.  His actions and words demonstrate that he knows nothing of these tenets. Bundy is just a Nestlé-wannabe, who needs a mother’s discipline for his deep lack of respect and bad manners. Unfortunately, Mother Nature’s discipline will come in the form of environmental calamity inflicted on many more than Bundy himself. This is the true tragedy of the bully.
Shame on you, Cliven Bundy.


Tragedy of the Commons:
The Tragedy of the Commons is an economic theory posited by Garrett Hardin in a 1968 article in Science. In the article he suggested that individuals will act out of self-interest, contrary to the best interests of the whole group, by depleting some common resource. The term was first used in an essay by Victorian economist William Forster Lloyd on the effects of unregulated grazing on common land.
Drawing on insights from Thomas Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Populations, written in 1798, Hardin warned that the exponential growth of the human population would soon overwhelm the world’s finite natural resources. Harden demonstrated his point with a parable of an open commons with a flock of grazing animals.
Hardin argued that individuals motivated by self-interest to maximize their wealth, will continue to add to their flocks to increase their personal wealth. Every animal added to the commons contributes to the degradation of the resources. However, the increasing use and ultimate degradation of the commons are small burdens to the individual user, relative to the gain in wealth accrued to that individual.
In Hardin’s parable, all individuals will naturally follow the same pattern until the resource is inevitably destroyed. “Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit—in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons”. Hardin concludes stating “freedom in a commons brings ruin to all”. According to Hardin, the only way to avert the tragedy of the commons is through government regulation or exclusive, private ownership of resources.

In 1833 the English economist William Forster Lloyd published a pamphlet that included an example of herders sharing a common parcel of land on which they are each entitled to let their cows graze. In English villages, shepherds had sometimes grazed their sheep in common areas, and sheep ate grass more severely than cows. He suggested that overgrazing could result because for each additional sheep, a herder could receive benefits, while the group shared damage to the commons. If all herders made this individually rational economic decision, the common could be depleted or even destroyed, to the detriment of all.


Nina Munteanu  is an ecologist and internationally published author of novels, short stories and essays. She coaches writers and teaches writing at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For more about Nina’s coaching & workshops visit  www.ninamunteanu.me . Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca  for more about her writing.

Interstellar: Is Love the God Particle?

Miller's planet with Gargantua in backgroundCritical reception for Christopher Nolan's science fiction blockbuster movie Interstellar was widely mixed. Reviews ranged from being dazzled and awestruck to thinking it utterly ridiculous and silly. Much of the range in opinion had in fact to do with the hard science: hard science that Nolan insisted he get right by hiring theoretical physicist Kip Thorne to best approximate what a black hole and a wormhole will look like and behave. Science so good that it generated a discovery worthy of reporting in a scientific journal (see below). The forums and chats that debated the last half-hour of the movie and its significance were entertaining, if not informative. Interstellar also generated a spate of vitriolic, accusing the film as propaganda for American colonialism (see a few examples below). I first watched it in an IMAX theatre (the only way to see such an epic—it was filmed The Endeavour enters the wormholeusing 70mm Imax film, after all), which helped achieve its grandness. Since I was five, I've always wanted to be an astronaut. And I've always been a sucker for good space adventure—especially well-researched, realistic depictions defined by a good story. And that is exactly what Interstellar is. And so much more…I'll admit openly that this film swept me up like a giant wave. I sat humbled yet exalted as I journeyed to some magnificent alien worlds: deep space; a powerful spherical wormhole; vast shallow waters between mile-high waves of a tidally locked planet; skimming beneath ice-clouds of a barren ice-planet; and falling—literally—into a black hole. All to the recursive echoes of a mesmerizing score by Hans Zimmer. While I was openly moved during the film, its aftertaste caught me unawares and impressed me the most about Nolan's talent for subtle paradox. I realized that the journey—and deep space—felt inexplicably vast and intimate at the same time. Gargantua Black Hole with Miller's planet in foregroundThe research by Thorne and Nolan's visual team generated a scientific discovery. To accurately portray a black hole in the film, Thorne produced a new set of equations to guide the special effects team’s rendering software. Black holes apparently spin at nearly the speed of light, dragging bits of the universe along with it. Based on the notion that it was once a star that collapsed into a singularity, the hole forms a glowing ring that orbits around a spheroidal maelstrom of light, which curves over the top and under the bottom simultaneously. The team then discovered that “warping space around the black hole also warps the accretion disk,” explained Paul Franklin, senior supervisor of Double Negative (the visual experts). “So, rather than looking like Saturn’s rings around a black sphere, the light creates this extraordinary halo.” Thorne confirmed that they had correctly modeled a phenomenon inherent in the math he’d supplied and intends to publish several articles in scientific journals, based on these findings.Canadian science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer defines good science fiction as: the literature of change; it’s about something “large” (world-important), arises from a scientific premise; and is generally pro-science. Interstellar achieves all of these criteria, particularly the latter. Cooper and Murph discuss Murphy's LawThe movie begins in the near-future on a post-climate change Earth, plagued by dust storms and failing crops in a society reverted to parochial superstition. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), once a NASA pilot and now a farmer, laments: “We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.”In a scene reminiscent of present day schools removing cursive writing from the curriculum or the controversy of teaching evolution (e.g., in favor of creationism), Cooper’s daughter’s teacher, Ms. Kelly, informs him at a parent-teacher meeting that the history textbooks have been rewritten to make known the “truth” about the moon landing: “I believe [the moon landing] was a brilliant piece of propaganda,” attests Ms. Kelly, “that the Soviets bankrupted themselves pouring resources into rockets and other useless machines…And if we don’t want to repeat the excess and wastefulness of the 20th Century, then we need to teach our kids about this planet, not tales of leaving it.” Murph (grown up) trying to solve gravity equationThe danger of turning away from scientific exploration—particularly space exploration—in times of great social and economic insecurity is a theme that runs deep in the film. Not only are scientists and engineers portrayed as whole individuals, both smart and compassionate, but they are also marginalized in a future world looking more to blame than to fix. “We didn’t run out of planes and television sets,” the principal of the school tells Cooper. “We ran out of food.”When a gravitational anomaly leads Cooper and his daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy) to a secret NASA base in the middle of nowhere, an old colleague, Professor Brand (Michael Caine), recruits him to pilot the interstellar Endeavor, NASA’s “Noah’s Ark”, into the far reaches of outer space to repopulate the human race. NASA has turned covert due to public pressure against “irrelevant or politically unfeasible” spending. After showing Cooper how their last corn crops will eventually fail like the okra and wheat before them, Brand answers Cooper’s question of, “So, how do you plan on saving the world?” with: “We’re not meant to save the world…We’re meant to leave it.” Cooper rejoins: “I’ve got kids.” To which Brand answers: “Then go save them.”Unbeknownst to us—and to Cooper, who leaves his precious children behind on Earth for what turns into a one-way mission—the intention is to literally leave the rest of humanity behind. You see, Cooper’s ship—headed toward one of three potentially habitable worlds beyond a wormhole near Saturn—contains the seeds of humanity and other life that the four astronauts aboard are meant to distribute and nurture. Cooper and Brand’s daughter, Amelia (Anne Hathaway), one of the other three astronauts onboard, both believe that the real ark sits back on Earth in the form of a huge spaceship—awaiting Brand’s solution to the gravity issue. Brand knows, but keeps to himself, that the solution is insolvable and sends his intrepid crew off, knowing that Cooper will never see his young son and daughter again.While Nolan admits to some iconic comparisons with Kubrick’s 2001; A Space Odyssey, Interstellar actually shares much more with the film Contact (in which Kip Thorne and McConoughey also participated). Contact also centered on a ground-breaking scientist daughter who misses her lost father. Mark Kermode, in a Guardian review also saw the relationship:

“In both movies, it is these daughters who detect the first stirrings of an “alien” encounter: Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) identifying recurrent sequences in the white noise of interstellar radiation in Contact; Murph (very affectingly played in her younger years by Mackenzie Foy) spying Morse code in poltergeist disturbances in Interstellar. From such discoveries are missions launched, voyaging across time and space at the apparent instruction of a superior intelligence offering cryptic hands across the universe. Intergalactic portals are breached, timescales bifurcated, science and faith reconciled. Crucially, for all their astro-maths exposition, the constant in both stories is neither time, space, nor gravity, but love. More than once I was reminded of Contact’s Ellie striking the outer limits of the universe and breathlessly declaring: ‘They should have sent a poet.’”

Interstellar received widely mixed reviews, described as anything from sublime to ridiculous. Its American-centric presentation generated some criticism (e.g., NASA acting alone without any international help; all American actors; American flags erected on settled colonies). Some even vilified the film as “a dangerous fantasy of US colonialism”. Journalist Abraham Riesman raises valid issues to do with human-centric expansionism in Interstellar :

“Coop and his coterie make one assumption that the movie never questions: Humanity (which, for all we ever see, is white, English-speaking America with a couple of black friends and one British guy) deserves to go to the stars and will suffocate if it's confined to its current environs. That logic was, of course, one of the main justifications for most imperial expansions since the dawn of the 1800s. No one stops to ask whether this civilization (which, in the movie, appears to have murdered its home planet through human-caused climate change, though, for some reason nobody talks about that) needs to make some fundamental changes in its approach to social construction and resource use. Indeed, when we see the bright new future on Cooper Station, it's all baseball and manicured lawns. Perhaps more important, no one questions whether human expansion will kill off the new planets' current residents. Sure, we're told that the planets are uninhabited ... but uninhabited by what? Carbon-based humanoid life forms? What if we immediately kill off whatever fragile ecosystems we find once we take off our helmets and exhale our Earthly germs? Of course, I'm reading too much into a movie that isn't even implying any of the messages I'm inferring, but that's the problem right there: No one's even asking the questions, and for humans, that kind of attitude usually leads to bad answers.”

What saves Interstellar from skidding into 20th Century pseudo-jingoistic expansionism with undertones of patriarchal rationalism, is its subversive theme. And because of it, the movie transcends into artistic commentary. Amelia Brand sees an anomaly in the shipI speak of love. Love embodied by two of the main characters—both women: Cooper’s daughter, Murph, and his shipmate, Amelia Brand. Love that is irrational. Love that is unscientific. Love that is inexplicable. And love that is all powerful. Inviolate. Eternal. And, I believe, our salvation.Aspects of “imperialist expansionism” and “patriarchal rationalism” interplay through Cooper, who embodies both in his “cowboy” science. It is love that propels his evolution to transcend them. In Cooper, we see the constant tension between rationality of science and the “irrational” faith of love. Related to this, Cooper must continually choose between the personal and the whole in defining his humanity and ultimately his hard choices. First with his daughter and her “ghost”, then with Amelia Brand in their mission to another galaxy. Miller's planetAfter a botched mission, Amelia appears to abandon the very tenets of hard science to ask the defining question: “Maybe we’ve spent too long trying to figure all this out with theory. Love is the one thing that transcends time and space.” She describes love as a cosmic force, a kind of empathic drive that provides the very basis for humanity’s survival: a link to our wholeness as living beings within a breathing multi-dimensional universe. When Cooper challenges Amelia’s unscientific notions, she responds with, “Love isn’t something we invented. It’s observable, powerful … Maybe it’s evidence, some artifact of higher dimensions that we can’t consciously perceive.” Repeating, almost word for word, what Cooper said to his father about choosing his interstellar mission, Amelia admits, “yes, the tiniest possibility [of seeing Wolf again] excites me. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.” To which Cooper answers just as his father did: “Honestly…it might.” TARS AI saves Amelia from the giant waveAmelia nails it when she, in turn, challenges Cooper: if the second choice turns out bad, they will have enough fuel to do only one of two things: go on to the third planet in hopes of distributing the seeds of humanity OR go back home to his children and the end of the world. Which will he choose? It’s interesting what he does end up choosing: he chooses love. Love drives him to do impossible feats, like dock his shuttle with a damaged and recklessly spinning Endeavor:

CASE: That’s impossibleCOOPER: No, it’s necessary

Love for Murph drives Cooper into the black hole … and out of it. Love directs him to Mann's planetthat precise quantum moment where his love for Murph transcends into love for all humanity: to save the world. This is the secret. The secret Mann in his intellectualized definition of what it means to be human could not touch. The window for connection to the whole is through a single tiny grasp of it. The glimpse into Eternity is through the lens of Love. I am reminded of a quote in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas: “What is any ocean but a multitude of drops?” In Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, Itzhak Stern quotes the Talmud: “Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.” Amelia BrandSo what is love, then? Is it gravity? Does it communicate through the God particle in the fractal fabric of the Higgs field? What other phenomenon grows from nothing? What other phenomenon is not lessened but in fact grows by giving it away? What other phenomenon provides the very weight and structure—the meaning—of our existence? What other phenomenon is like a whisper in a crowded room, yet creates the most beautiful symphony? Is it that simple?If gravity is a plane of existence, a fifth dimension that can exist across space-time, is a black hole simply a doorway? Like death? Is love the fuel of evolution, lifting us up into a higher state?Catholic theologian Peter Kreeft shares: “…Gravity is love on a material level. In fact, [gravity] has two movements: one is towards union, back to the center, the big bang, the past by gravity. And the other is to give itself out to all other beings, out into the future, the expanding universe, by energy and by entropy, which is energy giving itself out to the empty places.”What struck me the most about Interstellar was how it simultaneously evoked my Cooper enters the black holebreathless awe in the vast universe’s existentialist grandeur with a personal connection and incredible intimacy. Interstellar was soul-nourishing, dream-engaging; and its recursive themes called of “home”.
Definitions:Wormhole: Officially known as an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, a wormhole is a hypothetical topological feature of spacetime that would fundamentally be a shortcut through spacetime.God Particle: Also known as the Higgs boson or Higgs particle, the God particle is believed to be the subatomic particle that gives everything mass. Without it, nothing would have weight or even structure. The Higg boson is an elementary particle with no spin, electric charge or colour charge. It is considered the smallest possible quantum excitation of the Higgs field that unlike the more familiar electromagnetic field cannot be “turned off”; instead it takes a non-zero constant value almost everywhere.Higgs Field: In two papers published in 1964, Peter Higgs posited that particles obtain mass by interacting with a mysterious invisible energy force field that permeates the universe: the Higgs field. It is the stuff of stars, planets, trees, buildings and animals. Without mass, electrons, protons and neutrons wouldn’t stick together to make atoms; atoms wouldn’t make molecules and molecules wouldn’t make us. The presence of the Higgs field explains why some fundamental particles have mass while the symmetries (laws of nature) controlling their interactions should require them to be massless, and why the weak force has a much shorter range than the electromagnetic force.


Nina Munteanu  is an ecologist and internationally published author of novels, short stories and essays. She coaches writers and teaches writing at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For more about Nina’s coaching & workshops visit  www.ninamunteanu.me . Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca  for more about her writing.

2015: Year of the Sheep (Ram)

Starting February 19th 2015, we enter the Year of the Sheep (Ram) on the Chinese calendar. More specifically it is the Yin (female) Green Wood Sheep (as with last year’s Horse).The Chinese Year uses the cycle of 60 Stem-Branch counting systems; the Green Wood Sheep is the 32nd Stem-Branch in the cycle. This is because the Stem-Branch Calendar is connected to the Five Element theory. Chinese calendars use the Stem-Branch system to count the days, months and years. There are 10 Stems and 12 Branches in the system. Stems are named by the Yin-Yang of Five Elements (Metal, Water, Wood, Fire and Earth). Branches reflect the various totem animals such as the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig.Those born in the years 1907, 1919, 1931, 1943, 1955, 1967, 1979, 1991, 2003, and 2015 celebrate the Year of the Sheep, Ram or Goat. The Sheep (Goat) is a Yin energy and symbol of peace, harmonious co-existence and tranquility. The sheep also represents gentleness and compassion, two qualities one must attain to reflect the former qualities. Astrologers agree that the sheep year will be a good year to heal from the chaos of 2014’s Horse year (my year. Woohoo! What a ride! I experienced a great deal of motion and upheaval, sometimes at break-neck speed; all of which cleared away cobwebs and encouraged me to learn). 2015 will nurture cooperation in faith and a belief that good will prevail.
The creative Sheep personality embodies warmth, wealth, and beauty, and this, suggest astrologers, will be reflected in 2015, a year, says astrologer Susan Levitt of Astrology.com, whose energy will cultivate “intimacy, family and close friendships.” Develop a gentle heart, open to love and acceptance on all levels, she adds.

“I Depend” 

I am Nature's special child. 

I trust and am rewarded by trust. 

Fortune smiles upon my countenance. 

All things blossom in the gentleness of my love. 

I strive to find beauty in all I behold. 

I am fair of face and full of grace.

Dall sheep of northwestern CanadaThe Sheep's motto, "I depend" can be interpreted by knowing the animal. Sheep are independent but also very gregarious. They flock (or herd) like many animals of prey (e.g., birds, fish, ungulates, etc.) and derive much of their strength through cooperative social behaviour (e.g., lowering chances of predation). Like the animal, the sheep sign is social and functions best with feedback and support from others. The zodiac Sheep epitomizes the dependency of Yin and Yang: dark and light, night and day, moon and sun. As these energies depend on each other for existence, we depend on their balance for harmony, which is the natural inclination of the Sheep. In Sheep years we can make great progress with assistance of family, friends, colleagues or community. 2015 is a year to build bridges and knock down walls. Dall ram
The Sheep is a symbol for the arts, reflected in creativity and the cultivation of beauty. In this renaissance year, the arts will flourish in all forms including visual art, literature, textile, theater, video, culinary arts, comedy, music and dance.Writers work mostly in solitude and isolation. We ensconce ourselves, often in some woebegone corner, accompanied only by the muse of our imagination and—if we’re lucky—a warm beverage. Yet, to be a successful writer and be published, we have a great need to nurture cooperative associations; with editors, publishers, marketers, researchers, mentors and colleagues who can help us with our projects. So, we welcome the Year of the Sheep… It will be a good year, a good time … Dall sheep of northwestern CanadaA time to slow the galloping charge of our vision quest … A time to slow and embrace the warmth of reflection. To integrate, cooperate, and collaborate. To cultivate faith in our humanity and, sheep-like, listen to our intuition and go with the flow. Then just sit back and watch it unfold. As it should.Wishing you the very best this wonderful year.Happy New Year!








Nina Munteanu  is an ecologist and internationally published author of novels, short stories and essays. She coaches writers and teaches writing at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For more about Nina’s coaching & workshops visit  www.ninamunteanu.me . Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca  for more about her writing.

The Christmas Truce of WWI—A Moment of Great Disobedience

On Christmas Eve of 1914—a hundred years ago this month and in the midst of brutal trench warfare—a moment of peace broke out on the Western Front. It was a great moment of disobedience.Cold, weary and homesick Christian soldiers on both sides of the infamous No Man’s Land of the Western Front, recognized their common humanity, dropped their guns and fraternized with their “enemy”. They had all hoped desperately that this miserable trench war would end soon but now knew they would not be home for Christmas like they had naively believed (and had been led to believe by the press). It was a moment of sudden clarity and tender mercy by those who also knew that they would likely never go home. It was five months after the Great War had broken out; a war fated to last another four brutal years, in which fifteen million civilian and military men and women would be killed. Considered one of the deadliest conflicts in history, WWI had significant global effects, effects that still ripple through it to this day. Consequences include the Bolshevik Revolution, the Great Depression, World War II, the Holocaust, development of the atom bomb, the Cold War and the collapse of European colonialism.  As many as 100,000 of the million troops (10%), stationed along the 500 mile Western Front in World War I, mutually and spontaneously stopped fighting for at least 24 to 36 hours (from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day). Isolated instances of local truces occurred as early as December 11, and continued sporadically until New Year’s Day and into early January 1915.
As Christmas neared, the soldiers on both sides of the trenches “sensed the stupidity of killing someone that was just like them and who had never done them any harm,” writes Gary G. Kohls of Global Research. “Many of the men that experienced the moment knew that something deeply profound had happened: a spiritual experience of mutual respect and love that epitomized their mutual Christian upbringing – and they refused to fight and kill when the war was ordered to re-start.” They disobeyed their orders that forbade them to lay down their weapons and fraternize with the enemy: an enemy—the soldier in the trench across from them—who in some ways more shared their lot than their own officers and politicians.On Christmas Eve 1914, German troops ceased fire in the region of Ypres, Belgium and Saint-Yvon. They decorated the area around their trenches, just 30 to 300 yards from the British, French, or Belgian trenches. The Germans decorated Christmas trees and sang Christmas carols. The British responded with carols of their own. The two sides then shouted Christmas greetings to each other. Eventually, soldiers ventured out of their trenches into No Man's Land; they shook hands with their “enemy”, shared smokes, food and wine and sang with each other. Souvenirs such as buttons and hats were exchanged. The artillery in the region fell silent. Joint services were held. In many places along the front, the truce lasted through Christmas night, continuing until New Year’s Day. Troops from all sides took advantage to bury their dead, lying all over the battlefields; there were even reports of joint burial services and of soccer games played between the Germans and British.Despite general’s strict orders against any kind of fraternization with the enemy, at least 115 fighting units among British, German, French and Belgian soldiers participated in the spontaneous truce. Future nature writer Henry Williamson, then a nineteen-year-old private in the London Rifle Brigade, wrote to his mother on Boxing Day:

"Dear Mother, I am writing from the trenches. It is 11 o'clock in the morning. Beside me is a coke fire, opposite me a 'dug-out' (wet) with straw in it. The ground is sloppy in the actual trench, but frozen elsewhere. In my mouth is a pipe presented by the Princess Mary. In the pipe is tobacco. Of course, you say. But wait. In the pipe is German tobacco. Haha, you say, from a prisoner or found in a captured trench. Oh dear, no! From a German soldier. Yes a live German soldier from his own trench. Yesterday the British & Germans met & shook hands in the Ground between the trenches, & exchanged souvenirs, & shook hands. Yes, all day Xmas day, & as I write. Marvelous, isn't it?"

German artillery officer Mr Rickner described celebrating with French soldiers.

“I remember very well Christmas, I remember the Christmas Day when the German and the French soldiers left their trenches, went to the barbed wire between them with champagne and cigarettes in their hands and had feelings of fraternization and shouted they wanted to finish the war …”

The Christmas Truce of 1914 came close to ending the futile and brutal trench war; but it didn’t…Eco-psychologists and cultural historians argue that human archetypes rooted in mutual respect, empathy, and cooperation are crucial to our species survival and evolution. Around 5,500 years ago, small Neolithic villages burgeoned into larger urban “civilizations,” and a new organizational idea emerged, says Bruce Wilson of Popular Resistance:

“What cultural historian Lewis Mumford calls a megamachine, comprised totally of human partsforced to work together to perform tasks on a colossal scale never before imagined. Civilization saw the creation of bureaucracies directed by a power complex of an authority figure (a king) with scribes and messengers, which organized labor machines (masses of workers) to construct pyramids, irrigation systems, and huge grain storage systems among other structures, all enforced by a military. Its features were centralization of power, separation of people into classes, lifetime division of forced labor and slavery, arbitrary inequality of wealth and privilege, and military power and war… We have been stuck for three hundred generations in a model requiring massive obedience to large vertical power complexes.”

Etienne de la Boetie (1553), founder of modern philosophy in France, tells us that massive civil obedience is required to enable vertical authority structures to prevail, whether in the form of monarchial succession, dictatorship, or democratic selections. Autonomous freedom once enjoyed by peoples in pre-civilization tribal groups have given way to the controlling ideologies of authority structures. These de la Boetie described as oppressive “domination hierarchies” where private property and male subjugation of women prevail, by force if necessary. The emergence of vertical authority structures, the rule of kings and nobles, ripped people from historical patterns of living in small tribal groups (Theodore Roszak, Mary E. Gomes, and Allen D. Kanner, 1995). Along with forced stratification, the separation of people from their intimate connections with the earth produced deep insecurity, fear, and trauma to the psyche. Ecopyschologists suggest that such fragmentation led to an ecological unconscious. The 1914 Christmas Truce was a heroic act of disobedience by men, who—recognizing a common belief and trust—refused their orders to fight each other on Christmas Eve and laid down their arms to “fraternize” with their enemy.

“The 1914 Christmas Truce of one hundred years ago was an extraordinary example of how wars can only continue if soldiers agree to fight,” says Bruce Wilson of Popular Resistance:

“It needs to be honored and celebrated, even if it was only a flash of a moment in time. It represents the potential of human disobedience to insane policies. As German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht proclaimed, General, your tank is a powerful vehicle. It smashes down forests, and crushes a Hundred men. But it has one defect: it needs a driver. If commoners refused en masse to drive the tank of war, the leaders would be left to fight their own battles. They would be brief.”

References:Lewis Mumford, Lewis. 1967. Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 186.de la Boetie, Etienne. 1553. The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, trans. Harry Kurz (ca. 1553; Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1997), 46, 58–60; Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 45–58, 104–6.
Roszak, Theodore, Mary E. Gomes, and Allen D. Kanner, (eds.). 1995. Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth Healing the Mind. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

10 Things A Planet Needs to Make it Habitable

artist rendition of Kepler 186fUsing the latest Kepler telescope, scientists have recently discovered close to 140 Earth-like planets among thousands of exotic exoplanets in the galaxy. They claim that many more could harbor the right conditions for life. Astrophysicist Natalie Batalha, mission scientist for the Kepplar Space telescope (NASA Ames Research Centre as part of the NASA Discovery Program): “to determine the fraction of stars in our galaxy that harbor potentially habitable Earth-size planets.”… The one common ingredient that makes a planet habitable, Batalha tells us, is the need for liquid water. They are looking for planets “with rocky services where water could pool, that are receiving the right amount of energy from the star where the water wouldn’t be locked up in a frozen state because the planet is too cold, nor would it be evaporated away because it’s too hot. We call it the Goldilocks Zone where liquid water can exist.”
Exoplanet Kepler 186f, located 490 light-years from Earth and nicknamed Earth’s cousin was discovered by the Kepler telescope earlier this year. Orbiting star Kepler 186, it is the first validated Earth-like planet to orbit a distant star in its habitable zone. It could support oceans and alien life.  I’m an ecologist and, like my mother who is a master baker, I love to create ecosystems from scratch. So the research to world-build has been a fun part of writing my science fiction novels to date.

The duology Darwin’s Paradox and Angel of Chaos, are set on Earth in 2095 in a climate-changed Greater Toronto Area (now called Icaria-5); Icaria-5 is an enclosed community, nested in a wild heathland, abandoned by a fearful society governed by a Technocratic government of ecologists. 

The Splintered Universe Trilogy explores several potentially habitable worlds that I researched through NASA files.  Each world portrayed in the three books is a realizable and habitable world—OK, in some cases with the help of a little bio-geo alteration by the Eosian race…

Most of the places I researched and used for our intrepid hero, galactic detective Rhea Hawke of the Splintered Universe Trilogy, appeared on NASA’s Terrestrial Planet Finder top 100 list:

Iota Horologii:Neon City is Rhea Hawke’s hometown and where the main precinct of the Galactic Guardian force, for which she works, is headquartered. It’s on Iota Hor-2, which orbits Iota Horologii b (a Jupitor-like gas giant) in the Iota Horologii system (a Class G0Vp, yellow-orange main sequence dwarf star. The moon was tidally influenced by the jovian giant: it had an atmosphere in danger of being periodically sucked away, and an eccentric orbit that swung from a tropical summer to a Siberian winter. That was bio-geo altered by the Eosians. The Horologium Constellation is located near Taurus and Orion. Iota Horologii became one of the top 100 target stars for NASA’s Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF). 

70 Virginis:Rhea visits Virgil City on the moon Virgil 9, orbiting 70 Virginis b (Goldilocks), a jovian planet. The star is a G4V class yellow-orange main sequence dwarf. Virgil city suffers from periodic intense heat and drought to long nights of intense flooding. The natives, an amoeba-like colony have adapted to these severe conditions. 

47 Ursae Majoris: Rhea first visits Pyramid City on 47 Ursae Majoris b (47 Uma b), a volcanic  planet called Horus by its bird-like inhabitants. She then visits Paradise City on Uma 1, an icy moon that orbits the planet and used as a spiritual retreat by the Schiss, a Gnostic religious sect. 47 Ursae Majoris is a solar analog, yellow dwarf star that is listed as one of the top 100 target stars in NASA’s TPF. 

Pleiades Nabula: this open star cluster in the Taurus Constellation is the home for the planet Eos, where the Eosians, who run the Galactic Guardian force come from.

Other systems Rhea visits include: HD 177830, HD 168443, HD 70642, HD 222582, HD 28185, 55 Cancri, Gliese 876, Fomalhaut, and the M103 star cluster.
Ten Criteria for Habitable WorldsHere are ten criteria identified by NASA scientists for a habitable planet:1. Habitable Goldilocks NeighbourhoodThe habitable zone (HZ) is the distance from a star where an Earth-like planet can maintain liquid water on its surface and Earth-like life. The habitable zone is not the same as “planetary habitability”. While planetary habitability describes the planetary conditions needed to maintain carbon-based life, the habitable zone describes the stellar conditions required to maintain carbon-based life.A ” Goldilocks planet ” is a planet that falls within a star’s habitable zone, and the name is often specifically used for planets close to the size of Earth. The name comes from the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, in which the little girl, Goldilocks, rules out extreme choices (large or small, hot or cold, etc.), In the same way, a planet following the Goldilocks Principle is one that is neither too close nor too far from a star to rule out liquid water on its surface and life (as humans understand it). Scientists describe areas they think are less suited to life than others:globular cluster in the midst of immense star densities with excessive radiation and gravitational disturbance.near an active gamma ray source.near the galactic center where a supermassive black hole is believed to lie (e.g., Gargantua in Interstellar)

2. Less Alterations in Luminosity of its Star
Changes in luminosity are common to all stars, but the severity of the fluctuations ranges broadly. A small number of variable stars experience sudden and intense increases in luminosity, making them poor candidates for hosting life-bearing planets. Life adapted to a specific temperature range would likely not survive great and variable temperature fluctuations. Upswings in luminosity create massive doses of gamma ray and X-ray radiation. Atmospheres mitigate such effects; however, planets orbiting variables may be periodically stripped of their atmosphere by the high-frequency energy buffeting them.
3. High Metallicity of its Star
A star’s metallicity results from the proportion of its matter made up of chemical elements other than hydrogen and helium. Since stars that make up most of the visible matter in the universe, are composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, astronomers use the blanket term “metal” to describe all other elements collectively. A low amount of metal hugely decreases the probability that planets of sufficient mass favorable for life would have formed. 4. Good JupitersThese are gas giant planets, like our Jupiter, that orbit their stars in circular orbits far enough away from the habitable zone to not disturb it but close enough to “protect” terrestrial planets in closer orbit in two critical ways:

they help stabilize the orbits, and climates, of the inner planets.they keep the inner solar system relatively free of comets and asteroids that could cause devastating impacts. Jupiter orbits the Sun at about five times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. This is the rough distance we should expect to find good Jupiters elsewhere. Jupiter’s “caretaker” role was illustrated in 1994 when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted the giant; had Jovian gravity not captured the comet, it could have entered the inner solar system.

5. More MassLow-mass planets are poor candidates for life for two reasons:lesser gravity makes atmosphere retention difficult. Molecules are more likely to reach escape velocity and be lost to space when buffeted by solar wind or stirred by collision.smaller planets have smaller diameters and higher surface-to-volume ratios than  larger planets. They will lose the energy left over from their formation too quickly, lacking the volcanoes, earthquakes and tectonic activity that supplies the surface with life-sustaining material and the atmosphere with temperature moderators like carbon dioxide. Plate tectonics recycle important chemicals and minerals; they also foster bio-diversity through continent creation and increased environmental complexity and help create the convective cells necessary to generate a magnetic field.
A larger mass will more likely retain a molten core as a heat engine, driving the diverse geology of the surface. A larger planet is also more likely to have a large iron core with a magnetic field to protect the planet from stellar wind and cosmic radiation.6. Less Eccentric OrbitOrbital eccentricity is the difference between a planet’s farthest and closest approach to its parent star divided by the sum of that distances. This ratio describes the shape of the elliptical orbit. The greater the eccentricity, the greater the temperature fluctuation on a planet’s surface. When the fluctuations overlap both the freezing point and boiling point of the planet’s main biotic solvent (e.g., water on Earth), life is severely compromised. The more complex the organism, the greater the temperature sensitivity. The Earth’s orbit is almost wholly circular, with an eccentricity of less than 0.02.7. Axial TiltA planet’s movement around its rotational axis must also meet certain criteria for life to evolve. If little or no axial tilt (or obliquity) exists relative to the perpendicular of the ecliptic, seasons will not occur and a main stimulant to biospheric dynamism will disappear. Alternatively, if a planet is radically tilted, seasons will be extreme and make it more difficult for a biosphere to achieve homeostasis.8. Biomass & Long-Term Orbiting BodiesThe four elements most vital for life on Earth—carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen—are also the most common chemically reactive elements in the universe. Simple biogenic compounds, such as amino acids, were found in meteorites and in the interstellar medium. These four elements together comprise over 96% of Earth’s collective biomass. Carbon has an unparalleled ability to bond with itself and to form a massive array of intricate and varied structures, making it an ideal material for the complex mechanisms that form living cells. Hydrogen and oxygen (in the form of water) are the solvent in which biological processes take place and where the first reactions occurred that led to life’s emergence on Earth. The energy released in the formation of powerful covalent bonds between carbon and oxygen, available through oxidizing organic compounds, is the fuel of all complex life-forms on Earth. Although these four “life elements” appear to be readily available elsewhere, a habitable system likely also requires a supply of long-term orbiting bodies to seed inner planets. Without comets there is a possibility that life as we know it would not exist on Earth.9. MicroenvironmentOnly a tiny portion of a planet needs to support life to make it habitable. The discovery of life in extreme conditions has complicated definitions of habitability, but also generated a lot of excitement in greatly broadening the known range of conditions under which life can persist. For example, a planet whose solar conditions would generally prohibit an atmosphere from forming, might nurture one within a deep shadowed rift or volcanic cave. Similarly, craterous terrain might offer a refuge for primitive life.10. Different Metabolism MechanismSome scientists hypothesize that lifeforms evolving around a different metabolic mechanism may have arisen. In Evolving the Alien, biologist Jack Cohen and mathematician Ian Stewart suggest that Earth-like planets may be very rare, but that non-carbon-based complex life could emerge in other environments. The most frequently mentioned alternative to carbon is silicon-based life, while ammonia is sometimes suggested as an alternative solvent to water.
An April 17th article on Space.com identifies 10 exoplanets that could host alien life. They include:Kepler 186fGliese 581gGliese 667CcKepler 22bHD 40307gHD 85512bTau Ceti eGliese 163cGliese 581dTau Ceti f


None were planets that I’d chosen. But that’s just 10 so far in a host of many more to come; it’s only a matter of time.



Nina Munteanu  is an ecologist and internationally published author of novels, short stories and essays. She coaches writers and teaches writing at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For more about Nina’s coaching & workshops visit  www.ninamunteanu.me . Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca  for more about her writing.

Saint Lucia’s Day Blessed Me with Light

I paint not by sight but by faith. Faith gives you sight—Amos Ferguson


Saint LuciaDo you believe in miracles?
On this day, some twenty-odd years ago, after over 12 hours of hard labour, I rejoiced in God’s miracle of creation.  I gave birth to a beautiful son. A soul of brilliant light. My son was born on Saint Lucia’s Day, named after St. Lucy of Syracuse—the saint of light. A day celebrated as a National Day on the tiny island of Saint Lucia in the Caribbean, named after its patron saint, St. Lucy. While I was laboring all night in a Vancouver hospital, the island of Saint Lucia gleamed in the brilliance of the National Festival of Lights and Renewal.
Saint Lucia is one of the earliest Christian martyrs. She was brutally killed by the Romans in 304 AD because of her religious beliefs, refusing to consecrate her marriage to a pagan. Lucia (which literally means light; lux, lucis) secretly brought food to the persecuted Catholics in Rome, who lived in hiding in the catacombs under the city. She wore candles on her head to liberate both hands so she could carry more. You can read more about the story here.
St. Lucia’s Day is a festival of lights primarily celebrated in Sweden, Norway and the Swedish-speaking areas of Finland on December 13thin honour of St. Lucia. The day is celebrated by choosing a girl to dress in a white dress with a crown of candles on her head as part of a carol-singing procession. The girl’s crown is made of Lingonberry branches, which are evergreen and symbolize new life in winter.
The festival marks the beginning of the Christmas season in Scandinavia and brings hope and light during the darkest time of the years. Scandinavian families celebrate the day with coffee and baked goods such as saffron bread (lussekatter) and ginger biscuits (pepparkakor).
In earlier times, when this festivity coincided with the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, huge bonfires were constructed to scare off evil spirits and alter the course of the sun. Since the calendar reforms, her feast day became a festival of light. Celebrated most commonly in Scandinavia (with its long dark winters), Saint Lucia’s Day is a major feast day. The Italians also ostensibly celebrate this day, but emphasize a different aspect of her story. The devotions to light predate Christian times with pagan midwinter elements, centered on the annual struggle between light and darkness.
So, on this day, twelve days before Christmas and eight days before the shortest day of the year (the Winter Solstice), I celebrate my miracle.  The miracle of light, but also of chiaroscuro, where light and dark play to create enlightenment. Because, just as you cannot have “up” without “down”, you cannot have light without dark.
“At the place of darkest dark, the light in contrast is the most noticeable,” Marianne Hieb, author of Inner Journeying Through Art-Journaling (2005) tells us. She tells us that it is in the places of greatest contrast … “grace is waiting there for you.”
When my son was born, I was born too. So was my art. I was already creating. I had written some    My little boy...short stories and had published a few articles. But it wasn’t until my son was born that my creativity exploded. Became galvanized. Achieved meaning. Just as light helps define texture and form, my son helped me define my balance, movement, rhythm, contrast, emphasis, pattern and unity.

Marianne Hieb tells us that these are the very principles of design. Like the fabric of a fine tapestry, they hold aspects of creativity together and define our art.  Just as they define us.
...grows upBalance: you find balance when you first walk, ride a bike, skate and ski. In art, balance refers to the distribution of visual weights. It is the visual equilibrium of the elements that comprise the entire image. Symmetrical balance is achieved when elements or sections of equal quality mirror each other. An example of asymmetrical balance with unequal elements would be a painting where one small intense color can balance a grouping of less intense and larger things. This provides excellent metaphor in journal representations and life-journeys. Think of the balances between irregular and simple shapes, intense and subdued colors. Think color, shape, size, texture, value when creating balance or showing the opposite. Balance can indicate movement and can also radiate out from a single point of focus.
Movement: A balance of movement and stillness exists in all works of art, in dance, in music, in painting, sculpture and literature. Says Hieb, “Shapes and colors move the eye most easily through the work. Lines provide visual passage or linkage. Your eyes follow the edges of darkness or edges of light. Visual movement leads your seeing through the work, to a point of focus.” Horizontal, vertical and diagonal are the three main types of visual movement. Horizontal movement usually conveys a calm or restful sense. If you use vertical movement, you may be expressing a feeling of firmness or stability or even growing. Diagonal movement often reflects action and swiftness.
Rhythm: Rhythm is the repetition of visual movement of color, shapes, lines, values, forms, spaces and textures. Movement and rhythm work together, says Hieb. Rhythms are present in all natural things and can be regular, irregular, staccato and progressive. Rhythm has the power of uniting and energizing images and themes, through implied connection and relationship.
Contrast:contrast is delivered through color, texture, and shape. Contrast creates visual excitement, drama. Says Hieb, “at the place of darkest dark, the light in contrast is the most noticeable … [in] the places of greatest contrast … grace is waiting there for you.” Contrast can exist in many forms: smooth vs. rough; light vs. dark; dry vs. wet; playful vs. dour; anger vs. forgiveness — just to name a few. Contrast is drama. It is a place of potential conflict, tension, and great enlightenment.
Emphasis:  Emphasis creates focus. You can emphasize color, shapes, direction or other art elements to achieve dominance, says Hieb. Given that each of these elements is significance with the psyche, what elements you chose to emphasize in your drawing or selection of art can give you additional insight to what was important to you or affecting you at the time. For instance, colors can reflect mood: red emphasizes and reflects passion or danger; green reflects nature and healing; orange is fun and warm; blue is cool and calming, etc. Shapes can be very symbolic. Researchers have shown that angular shapes are less apt to elevate feelings of comfort and well being then circular shapes, which engender feelings of safety, unity and harmony. Squares can reflect conformity and equality; triangles can suggest self-discovery and revelation; spirals can express creativity, and so on.
Pattern: A pattern is basically a recognizable series of elements. For instance, you experience patterns of activities and behavior. Patterns are the planned or random repetitions that occur in nature and in your life. They increase visual excitement. Patterns that occur in nature exhibit unique and exquisite beauty. Pattern — in shape, color, texture — can relate to one’s history, personal experiences, and choices. They can similarly reveal our reactions, reflections and feelings.
Proud Mom...Unity: the use of a dominant color scheme or overall surface treatment creates a strong sense of unity. Unity provides the cohesive quality that makes an artwork feel complete and finished, says Hieb. “A subjective sense of oneness is the felt experience of the principle of unity,” she adds. Unity is achieved through the harmonious integration of the previous elements I named. What unity looks like will be unique to each individual and to their stage in their life journey.

Happy Birthday, Son. You are my light. 
My miracle.

References:
Hieb, Marianne. 2005. Inner Journeying Through Art-Journaling. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London. 176pp.
Munteanu, Nina. 2013. The Journal Writer: Finding Your Voice . Pixl Press, Vancouver, British Columbia. 172pp.

Blowing Bubbles at the Centre of our Galaxy

Fermi Bubbles of our Milky WayIn Outer Diverse , the first book of the space thriller trilogy The Splintered Universe, Detective Rhea Hawke travels through the dangers “breathing” galaxies and dark matter in her quest for justice:

When I’d joined up as an Enforcer, the Guardians gave me my own starship, a rare ray-class retro Earth/alien design that no one else wanted. It didn’t matter to me. Benny was mine. Thanks to Benny’s plasma shields, we’d weathered treacherous ionic storms, gamma-ray bursts, and the high-velocity clouds of the breathing galaxy. We jacked the Magellanic Stream and travelled to the farthest arms of the spiral galaxy, surfing scalar fields into thrilling particle stream shortcuts. We’d even slingshot our way around the black hole in the galactic core using its immense gravitational field and high-energy emissions. I’d witnessed many galactic wonders like the terrifying beauty of nebulas: tangled filaments of dust and ionized gas that poured out in jets and waves from the stellar corpse of a neutron star. Pulsing electromagnetic energy, the shock wave of material flung from the supernova created a spectacular lightshow that shredded anything in its path, drawing me into breathless wonder …

The stuff of science fiction isn’t always fiction. Was Rhea Hawke talking about the Fermi Bubbles? Gigantic gamma-ray “bubbles”, stretching thousands of light-years north and south from the galactic centre of the Milky Way…

About four years ago, NASA revealed an incredible structure discovered by astronomers at their Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Spanning 50,000 light-years and extending north and south of the Milky Way’s centre like a giant infinity symbol, the gargantuan gamma ray bubbles—now called the Fermi Bubbles—are speculated to be the remnants of an eruption from a supersized black hole at the centre of our galaxy. 
“The outlines of the bubbles are quite sharp, and the bubbles themselves glow in nearly uniform gamma rays over their colossal surfaces, like two 30,000-light-year-tall incandescent bulbs screwed into the center of the galaxy,” Stanford scientists and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory reported in an April 2014 paper in The Astrophysical Journal. Their size is another puzzle. The farthest reaches of the Fermi bubbles contain some of the highest energy gamma rays, but there's no discernable cause for them that far from the galaxy. Another difference from other galactic bubbles is that the parts of the bubbles closest to the galactic plane shine in microwaves as well as gamma rays, but at about two-thirds of the way out, the microwaves fade out and only gamma rays are detectable.
“Gamma rays are the bad boys of the electromagnetic spectrum—the highest energy light in the universe,” says Bob Berman of the Almanac Weekly. “Because of this, they do not reliably reflect off objects the way that visible light does. Rather, they are penetrating. Such photons drill through bodies at the speed of light, damaging chromosomes all along the way.” The hour-glass shaped structure spans more than half of the visible sky, from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Grus, and it may be millions of years old.
Doug Finkbeiner and his team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass discovered the bubbles by processing publicly available data from Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT). The LAT is the most sensitive and highest-resolution gamma-ray detector ever launched.
The bubble emissions have a well-defined shape and are much more energetic than the gamma-ray fog seen elsewhere in the Milky Way, suggesting that it was formed from a large and rapid energy release - the source of which remains a mystery.
“Fortunately, few gamma rays reach us here at Earth’s surface,” Berman continues. “Stars A giant "burp" from a black hole...?usually don’t emit them, and in any case our atmosphere blocks them. The only gamma rays flying near Earth have come from distant violent events like supernovae. This is why a dense gamma-ray swarm at our own galaxy’s center is so puzzling. It’s the unmistakable sign of extreme violence. And yet, these days, the Milky Way’s core is about as energetic as a steamy Florida lunchtime.”
What Blew the Bubbles?
NASA speculates that the bubbles could have been created by huge jets of accelerated matter blasting out from the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Or they may have formed as gas outflows from a burst of star formation, perhaps the one that created the massive star clusters in the Milky Way's center several million years ago.
"In other galaxies, we see that starbursts can drive enormous gas outflows," said David Spergel, a scientist at Princeton University in New Jersey.  "Whatever the energy source behind these huge bubbles may be, it is connected to many deep questions in astrophysics."
Berman asks, “Might these be the long-sought signs of dark matter? Could dark matter be meeting its opposite entity (whatever that is) in total annihilation, the way that matter and antimatter do?” As Fermi research team leader Douglas Bookbeiner put it, “This just confuses everything.” Except the science fiction writers (smug grin).

For more information about Fermi, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/fermi




Nina Munteanu  is an ecologist and internationally published author of novels, short stories and essays. She coaches writers and teaches writing at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For more about Nina’s coaching & workshops visit  www.ninamunteanu.me . Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca  for more about her writing.

Ursula K Le Guin Receives Lifetime Achievement Award at NBA

Neil Gaiman presents lifetime achievement award to Ursula K. Le Guin at 2014 National Book Awards from National Book Foundation on Vimeo.

Ursula K. Le Guin first told her audience that she wanted to share her award with her fellow-fantasy and science fiction writers, who have for so long watched "the beautiful awards" like the one she'd just received, go to the "so-called realists". She then went on to say:

"I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries--the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art...The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art...We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings... Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art--the art of words. I've had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don't want to watch American literature get sold down the river... The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom."

Fly Like an Eagle Anthology

I just received my copies of Fly Like an Eagle today. I’m delighted, humbled and so impressed. Delighted that my article on “The First Snow” appears in it; humbled that mine is one of over twenty impressive real life stories of hope and inspiration from all over the world; and impressed with the stunning design, both inside and cover. Bravo, Gary!

The anthology was compiled by Gary Doi with splendid inspirational artwork by celebrated artist Roy Henry Vickers. Design and layout was impeccably attended to, with each piece showcased in a unique way, relevant to its topic.
“An eagle can reach great heights,” Doi shares in the preamble, “by soaring on thermals and then gliding long distances using the smallest amount of energy to rise above circumstances. To soar.”
Fly Like an Eagleis a collection of short stories—real life experiences—that are deeply personal, and spawn moments of reflection. “They probe the eternal question: what gives you hope?” says Doi. Stories express endurance, triumph, accomplishment and purpose. Stories span all walks of life and place. A sixty year old grandmother struggling with weight issues describes her first time competing in a grueling triathlon. A young teacher reflects on how a major surgery changed her perspective on life. A librarian describes how greater access to books is helping vulnerable children in Guatemala.

“The inspirational stories offer something very precious in today’s world—a gift of hope.”—Kevin Van Tighem, biologist, author and former superintendent of Banff National Park

Book proceeds benefit SORCO, a rescue and rehab and release facility in the Okanagan for injured raptors such as eagles, hawks and owls. Each year this non-profit organization helps dozens of sick and injured raptors that were hit by vehicles, poisoned, or found starving.


Think: donating to a worthwhile cause. Think: sending a Christmas present of Hope and Inspiration. Think: purchasing a copy.You can purchase copies of Fly Like an Eagle for $15.04 on Amazon.com or Fly Like an Eagle for £12.30 on Amazon.co.uk

Book Launch of The Literary Connection Volume I in Mississauga

The Literary Connection (Volume 1; IOWI), an Anthology of prose, & poetry, artwork and photography is launching on Sunday, November 23rd at 3-5 pm at the River Grove Community Centre (5800 River Grove Ave., Mississauga, Ontario).

The event is Free and will serve refreshments

Please RSVP with numbers attending to: cheryl.xavier@sympatico.ca