“a rapid energetic often improvised verbal outpouring”Merriam Webster
I chose this title this morning (Thurs, 3/7), because while sitting on the cushion, one more time, I really didn’t want to write a story for this week’s dose. I had nothing I felt compelled to share. I even got annoyed with myself for thinking I’m under some invisible obligation to post one of these puppies every damn week.
While drinking my coffee, I started the usual, by checking emails and then looking at the news. Keep in mind, I really was thinking I’ll just bag it this week and no one will really give a shit. I saw a story and then another one, each time emailing it to myself, my luddite way of saving them. I repeated this same, stupid pattern a grand total of four times.
Sitting there, I thought of the idea of riffing. What would happen if I took these four stories, printed them out and then shuffled them into some kind of order? As you can imagine, it is impossible to avoid repeating myself, but this actually represented a first for me, at least I think so.
I got to the office and printed them out, still avoiding looking at them, holding on to them like an unshuffled deck of cards. I found the definition for “riff”, which is the above quote and it was easy to find a photo to amplify the words. In the midst of this, I decided this was going to become my story.
I got home and did my evening Ruck, which you’ll have to Google, if you don’t know what it is, something I have spoken about before. I just took out the stories, spread them on the couch, quickly read them and put them in an order that would be my word melody for the riff you are about to hear.
Within the past few months, I discovered an incredible site, called The Conversation. It is a daily collection of disparate stories, written primarily by academicians, experts in the field they are writing about. I considerate it apolitical and first and foremost, informative. It is a story about the damage being done by “dark” fishing vessels. It is about boats turning off their location devices, going after already threatened species like sea lions, sharks and leatherback turtles, etc. Boats are required to use AIS, Automatic Identification Systems, an invaluable mapping tool for conservationists. Risks to endangered species increase by nearly 30%.
The whole idea of honesty in this world is a joke on us. We make our assumptions based on the information we have on hand and there are these invisible worlds that make matters even worse than we ca imagine. While I am not going to riff on AI, that is what really bothers me about it. There is this naive assumption we are going to behave and do what we are told.
In kind of keeping with the theme, up next is “ Opinion: I’m a climate scientist. If you knew what I know, you’d be terrified, too” He goes on for a number of pages, but I love this quote at the beginning of his analysis. “If the fracturing of our once stable climate doesn’t terrify you, then you don’t fully understand it.” The guy is Bill McGuire and he has solid credentials. I found this on CNN.
I am not sure exactly when it happened, but science got a bad name, partially deserved, because many of them capitulated to commercial pressure and money. Look no further than the buried studies on the dangers of tobacco and gas and oil. On top of that, we now have idiots, who think intelligence is a sign of stupidity.
We’re changing the tempo of this word tome, with another tune. I got a quote from Cindy McCain, Executive Director of the UN’s World Food Program. “The people of Sudan are facing what the WFP has deemed the “world’s largest hunger crisis.” Warring forces in the country have killed thousands and displaced millions, and the instability has led to nine in 10 people there facing “emergency levels of hunger.”
When you bother to take the time to listen to the global dialogue, do you hear anyone talking about Sudan? Do hear anyone talking about the monumental crisis in Haiti, where gangs have pretty much taken over the entire country.
We are being smothered with stories about Gaza and Ukraine, both criminal enterprises, punishing innocent people, because of their geopolitical geography. We have an entire fucken world in crisis, whether it be climate, hunger or insane violence. We are all being mainlined by trivia and it is killing all of us, if not physically, then spiritually.
My last of the four, kind of keeps the above alive. A new study on Stone Age Europeans is showing that farmer-settler groups brutally wiped out nomadic hunter-gathers thousands of year ago, reported by Science Alert.
An international research team conducted a thorough DNA analysis of human remains spanning more than 7,300 years in southern Scandinavia, covering periods between the Middle Stone Age and Early Bronze Age, which both showed a declinein hunger-gatherer life style and the rise of farming life. According to study author, Anne Birgitte Nielsen, “This transition has previously been presented as peaceful. However, our study indicates the opposite. In addition to violent death, it is likely that new pathogens from livestock finished off the many gatherers.”
How can we be shocked with where we’re at, anywhere you want to look? I guess that’s the fun thing about riffing. You seemingly let it all hang out and you can end up in a place of intelligible harmony and that’s my word song.
In the true nature of the riff, this is written in one sitting and I wouldn’t think to change a single world, minus a typo or stupid grammar. I began today with no song to share and look what I found? Like anything, you are entitled to think it sucks, something you briefly put up with, before moving on to stuff that is agreeable and attracts your attention.
I am singing about the world we live in and not the world we imagine. I am looking for a chorus and just you’re reading this, makes you part of it.
Thank you for singing a long. It’s a tough melody to follow, but it is the truth.