Love in the Real World

So... welcome to CorvallisGadfly.com.   I've thought at length about a good beginning for this blog.  Try this as a tone-setter:

"A very confused elephant in South Africa's Pilanesberg Game Reserve passionately mistook a Volkswagen Passat for a female pachyderm, giving two tourists inside the ride of their life.  The amorous bull, known in the park as Amarula, "started to rub himself against the car, breaking the wing mirrors and cracking the windows," said Irishman John Somer.  It was only after the car had been flipped over and shoved wheels up into the bushes that the elephant seemed to realize his jumbo-sized mistake.  Amarula then chased a photographer who had been snapping photos of the intimate encounter before eventually wandering off into the bush.  Somer and his female passenger were mainly unharmed by their terrifying taste of elephant ardor.  Park officials said Amarula is one of the largest bull elephants in the reserve and had been in musth, a period when a rush of hormones had made it aggressive and compelled to mate. {From Earthweek: A Diary of the Planet, by Steve Newman, distributed by Universal Uclick}.

I thank Steve for his heads-up reporting, and for setting the perfect tone for CorvallisGadfly.com.  Anyone else ever wake up after having had the elephant-humping-the-family-

car dream? Anyway, the world is a beautiful place.  It's all good.  Well, maybe I should qualify that.  Mostly, it's good.  But it's also a bit confusing at times.  I admit to being very confused by much of what is happening these days.  I'm not alone, I think.  Like, wars that don't end.  And denial of anthropogenic climate change.  What's that about? But then there's our world... the beauty of crocuses and daffodils, the sunbreaks in the Oregon sky, the delightful sounds made by a couple of 9-month-old humans (who are known collectively as 'our grandchildren' when joined by their older siblings).  We attempt an accounting of our blessings.  And fail, every time.  Just too many. I dedicate this blog... what I hope will be an ongoing record of our lives and activities... to those grandchildren.  My hope is that we can pass on to them an Earth that is friendly to their hopes and dreams... that they will struggle as we do to make an accounting of their blessings. To keep life interesting, I'll enclose  a letter I wrote this morning to our Corvallis City Council.  This is the gadfly side of my life.   It's a pretty lonely life, being a gadfly.   Hardly any positive feedback.  This letter shows why.