Spring-ish

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For those of you who don’t live in Colorado, spring may have arrived as scheduled. But here, we’ve been sloshing through weather so un-Colorado-like that folks are struggling for analogies. It’s like living in Oregon. Or Washington. Or Michigan. Or a rain forest (although without the heat). A meteorologist on NPR said something about 5 weeks straight of rain. That’s 5 weeks of one storm after another, with only the briefest of breaks, like half a day a few times. It's mostly light rain, to be sure. Not the deluges that inundated us September before last. But enough to make us wonder whether we'll reach Colorado's legendary 300 annual days of sunshine this year.

For folks (like me) who really want to get outside—make that need to get outside—and for those who live in Colorado precisely because it’s sunny and dry, this sort of weather is miserable. But it has its good sides. For one thing, we need the moisture—a common refrain whenever it rains (or even snows) in Colorado. Some areas in the northeastern part of the state have had a year's worth of moisture in the past 5 weeks. And for farmers, this much moisture is likely welcome indeed—though maybe not for those whose fields are too wet to plant. And then there’s the gift of the rain-induced impetus to get to the gym for a long-postponed exploration of aerobics classes—necessary after a winter of sloth-hood recovering from last fall’s injuries. But the best payoff of all came yesterday when, for a brief period—maybe half an hour—the sun was out at the same time that I actually had free time to take an outdoor walk, a very rare experience of late.

It was delightful. For one thing, nature has proceeded apace with flowers galore—and an occasional mushroom (uncommon in eastern Colorado's high desert climate). A few pictures ...

The birds were glad for the sun, too, and I saw and heard lots of them—a great blue heron flying over the wetlands, flocks of swallows snatching insects, red-winged blackbirds (“squeaky gate birds”) calling from the reeds, a kingfisher hovering over the pond and then rattling to a perch in a small tree, killdeer with their frightened call taking off from the shoreline. I also got to see the results of over a year’s careful restoration of wetlands that were destroyed in the floods of September 2013. The ponds themselves, now lush with growth, and the land nearby green and flowered, dotted with newly-planted trees. 

At one spot, you could see Boulder Creek, which is currently very high from all this rain, spilling into the wetlands—exactly as planned.

 My walk ended where the path disappeared, seriously flooded by weeks of “spring,” with my only option a muddy slope alongside.

I turned back happy with my brief outing—only to see the next round of thick, dark rain clouds rolling in. Nice (lucky) timing, nice respite, nice reminder of the beauty of spring in Colorado … even a very rainy spring.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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Monumental near-miss

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Back in the day, the arrival of spring always meant a backpacking trip in southern Utah with a stalwart group of friends—right before Memorial Day to add an extra day to the trip. Southern Utah was also the destination of countless other trips spent hiking, biking, and sometimes running. And on nearly every Utah trip, we cruised through Grand Junction, stopping only for gas, and then headed west to our beloved red rock country. In the process, we blithely passed by Colorado National Monument just outside Grand Junction. Occasionally, someone suggested that we spend some time hiking there. But we always decided (to my personal delight) to go on to Utah instead. Honestly, I wanted to move on because I wanted the “real” experience that was only possible in southern Utah, the place where I had learned to love the desert—its canyons and plateaus and flowers, and its soul-baking heat. The Monument seemed like a pale approximation of what I was looking for, so I always voted in favor of heading on down the road.

This year promised to be the same story. My partner and I planned a quick trip to Capitol Reef in Utah, where I hadn't been for years, as this year's red rock “fix.” But time and circumstances conspired against that plan. So I reluctantly set it aside, and instead we plotted a short visit to Grand Junction to spend some time with friends there and check out Colorado National Monument. Folks have told me that we'd find red rock formations reminiscent of Utah, and though I was skeptical, it seemed like a worthwhile adventure. Sure enough, it turned out to be a wonderful visit—I'm regretting never having stopped there before.

We arrived in “Junction” to a rainy evening, the Monument only occasionally barely visible through the rain and fog. But we had a great dinner and long visit with our friends and made plans to explore the Monument—and, time willing, other local sites—the next day. We started out under threatening skies, but with the view of the Monument right ahead, I was quickly transported to that warm meditative place that the cliffs and colors of the Colorado Plateau always take me. 

I was really surprised by how much it reminded me of Utah. If I focused on being there, in the rocky surround, it could even feel like Utah (in the rain). I watched the cliffs rising around us through rain-splattered windows and hoped for a break in the weather so we could actually get out and walk. 

Sure enough, as we reached a major overlook with a nice trail, the rain backed off, and we took a stroll in that wonderful red dirt that (if you walk in it enough) stains your shoes and socks and marks you as a desert rat. There, we were blessed with the familiar junipers and desert wildflowers, some with raindrops. Not to mention an occasional caterpillar.

After I finally relented and quit suggesting that we walk to just one more bend in the trail, we returned to the car and headed off along the rim that marks the boundary of the plateau, overlooking Grand Junction. There were too many sights, too many overlooks to count, and I think I wore out everyone’s patience with my wish to stop everywhere, see everything. But my partner and friend were wonderfully patient, and I got to soak up a lot of desert energy—sometimes while dodging rain drops. 

At one point, near the "coke oven" rocks below, I nearly headed off down a trail that would take me from the rim to the bottom of the valley—and, presumably, back up to meet the others. But as I unbuckled my seat belt to jump out, my partner gently reminded me that I’m still trying to nurse various injuries back to good health. A long climb down a cliff might not be helpful in that regard. So I whimpered a minute and relented. Next time. Because by now, I’d decided I’d like to come back. 

As we finished the drive, we stopped at the site of the local naturalization ceremony, familiar to my Junction friend, who's an immigration attorney. Nice spot to be welcomed to the nation.

Site of the local naturalization ceremony

It kept on raining, so we decided to forgo the adventures beyond the Monument and catch lunch in Fruita (pop. ~13,000, plus lots of mountain bikers). As we drove there, my local friend told us the story of the restaurant where we’d eat. It’s a pizza place, run by two lesbians. They had been in a different location, but their landlord refused to renew their lease because they were lesbians. So the town of Fruita, the funky premier mountain biking destination near the start of the famous Kokopelli Trail, rose up in protest and found them a new place. The restaurant, the Hot Tomato, features excellent pizza made with home-made dough and assorted typical and exotic toppings. The atmosphere was some combination of laid back and abuzz—fitting, I guess for mountain bikers at the edge of world-class trails. After lunch, we headed back to Junction and took a walk along the river, hoping to see a mother owl and her baby in a nest, but they seemed to have vacated the premises since our friends saw them a few days earlier.

 

Hot Tomato restaurant, Fruita

That evening, after chilling out for a while, we had dinner with our friends again, the conversation again wandering from the profound to the humorous, crashed for the night with the rain still falling on and off. The next day, we drove home, with my red rock itch scratched for a bit and memories of a really fine couple of days. A good part of that was the especially nice time we had with our friends. And it was also about how unexpectedly satisfying the trip to Colorado National Monument had been.

I realize that I missed it all those years largely because I assumed it wasn’t the real thing, wasn’t ‘good enough’ to spend time with when Utah was just down the road. I just knew that the canyons wouldn’t be big enough, the hikes not long enough, the solitude not deep enough, the desert sun not hot enough to match Utah. But there it was—a lovely day with beautiful views, sweet flowers, and hikes yet to be taken. The lesson isn’t hard to discern: how many things do I miss, I wonder, by dismissing them as ‘not enough,’ not the ‘real thing’? When in reality, they are plenty wonderful in their own right—not as faint shadows of something else, but as their own, unique experiences.

It seems like a good time to work at being more alert and less … um … dismissive. It’s true that aging brings shifting criteria for what’s reasonable. Yet I know that there are lots of wonderful experiences left in the world that fit just fine within those limits—as long as I’m not weighing everything against the criteria of my hyper-intense, hyper-athletic youth, automatically declaring anything that's different to be automatically less.

Who knows what I might avoid missing if I keep my eyes open and my judgments packed away. It could be monumental.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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Making (air)waves

In the past several days, as I’ve been contemplating my apparent need to spice up my daily routine, I’ve been noticing cool things in my life that I seem to have been taking for granted. Things that are already there that are pretty “extraordinary” (to borrow from my last blog), but that I’ve stopped noticing because they’re so … well, there. I had an experience like this just the other day when my partner and I teamed up to do an interview for a this week's rendition of the radio program we’ve been working on for about a year and a half—“Outsources,” KGNU’s weekly prime-time LGBTQ feature show (FM 88.5, Mondays at 6:30, or anytime at kgnu.org/outsources, just in case you were wondering how you could hear it. Soon, we'll have podcasts).

Sometimes, doing this show feels more like a chore than like fun, and in my doldrums, I believe I’ve been a bit caught in that view of it. It’s not hard to get there if I focus just on the tasks it requires. Our radio station, KGNU, is scrappy, low-budget community radio, and our little team, the “Outsources Collective,” has to do everything for ourselves. Unlike Terry Gross and company, we have no station staff who will produce or run the show so that we can just chat with the guests. Nope. We, radio novices all, are responsible for every step in making a show happen. That includes coming up with ideas, discussing those with the group in our bi-weekly meetings, tracking down potential guests, developing a “script” for the show in collaboration with the guest(s), creating a “promo” to attract listeners, and then producing the actual show by recording and editing it or by hosting it live—including running the recording and/or broadcast equipment, doing all necessary editing, and being sure that it all gets to the right place for it to air at the right time. In all, each show typically represents several hours’ worth of work, so it’s no minuscule undertaking. 

But that’s just one way of looking at it—the way I’m prone to think of it when I’m feeling bored. But the other day, perhaps energized by my attention to livening up my life, I slipped into a very different perspective on this project. Instead of the show-as-chore story I just wrote above, I was hearing a different tale as we produced this show. In this version of my life as a radio show host, I marvel at the amazing circumstances that grant a handful of local LGBTQ folks—with no particular qualifications for or even prior interest in radio broadcasting—half an hour every week to explore topics that matter to the LGBTQ community and our allies and to share those explorations with whoever wants to listen. Half an hour of public broadcast time, ours to do with as we wish. Well, within reason—there are those seven words we can’t say.

Although we’ve been doing this show for a while now, we haven’t even come close to running out of topics. Over this time, we’ve had shows on topics like an “out” grade school principal, Denver and Boulder Pride celebrations, a play written by a straight man based on his gay uncle’s journals, conversion therapy, a local queer musical group, allies in middle school, LGBTQ aging, community choruses, AIDS, interviews with authors of queer-related books, dance in the queer community, a national queer activist conference, immigration issues, Grindr and other social media, a critique of same-sex marriage, future directions for PFLAG, queer philanthropy ... the list just keeps growing.

It’s a cool setup, actually—individual members of our small collective are variously interested in a variety of domains: local community agencies and organizations, the arts, social media, trans issues, LGBT history, public policy, queer psychology, local politics, diversity within the queer community, and on and on. Collectively,we’re all interested in giving voice to people and issues that folks might not hear much about otherwise, topics found outside the scope of mainstream coverage.

So I was thinking about this on Monday as we interviewed a local attorney about the recent Supreme Court hearings on same-sex marriage. Maybe surprisingly, we’ve barely mentioned marriage on the show, largely because there are already plenty of people talking about it. In fact, our one show on the topic was a critique of marriage. But the Supreme Court hearings were all over the news last week and this really is a huge case (or cases, actually) that could have profound implications for couples in Colorado. So it seemed right to give it some thoughtful—even thought-provoking, we hope—coverage.

We wanted something more nuanced and more particular than the mainstream presentations. We wanted to do a hyper-local discussion—just two members of the radio collective and a local attorney who is really smart and thoughtful about such issues—not to mention clear in her explanation of them. We got to talk, the three of us, about the comfortable but questionable certainty that the Court will rule in our favor. About our curiosity around the unexpected questions raised by Justice Kennedy and Chief Justice Roberts. About whether the “swing vote” will rest with Kennedy (as has been the case in other recent LGBT rights cases). About what sort of confusion might ensue if the court now rules that state prohibitions against same-sex marriage are constitutional—after thousands of couples married under the Circuit Court rulings saying they’re not constitutional. And especially, about what all of this means specifically to Colorado couples and their families. (If you’re curious about what we said about all these things, you can listen here.)

The whole thing is astonishing, really. What a gift to have this time set aside—the only such show in the state—for a topic that’s rarely addressed with much depth or texture in the outlets that most of us rely on for our daily dose of information. And what a privilege to be involved in it. True, the demand to create new shows sometimes feels daunting. But when I’m actually in the middle of one, like this week, it seems well worth the hassles and headaches. It even seems extraordinary.

Wait! Did I actually say, just the other day, that my life was feeling boring? 

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post.

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Hijacking the self-driving auto: A short story

Foreword

You’ve probably heard about Google’s driverless car, currently being tested on roadways around the land, and now we’re hearing about Chrysler’s roll-out of a self-driving semi—imagine seeing that in your rear-view mirror. To be totally accurate, I guess these are not driverless vehicles. It’s just that the actual “driver” is a robot of some sort, a computerized master executive that gathers relevant data and directs the vehicle appropriately. Besides, at this point, at least, there still needs to be a human “back-up” driver to take over if things don’t go as planned. This new, no-longer-futuristic technology crossed my mind as maybe a perfect analogy for my current quandary. Here's the story.

Chapter 1 

The other day, I was having lunch with a friend, and we were talking about life and aging and adventures and such—common topics for lunch with this long-time friend. As she talked about her travels in recent months and her plans for a very active summer, I had this “ah ha!” moment. I hadn’t thought about it in advance and didn’t quite understand what it meant, but I explained it to her like this: I feel like my life is in a bit of a rut. Too much sameness. Every day is just every day. Even “events” fall into predictable categories and sort of run together. I hadn’t especially noticed this, although I had felt a bit cabin feverish over the winter. But now I had a hint of what was behind this small sense of ill ease that had been floating around my mind of late—not acutely troubling, just vaguely nagging. I said to her, “I need something extraordinary in my life.” Not something monumental or extreme. Just something extra-ordinary. Something that marks a moment, a day, even a year as special, different.

So, I’ve been reflecting on that comment for several days, trying to understand what I meant and what I need to do. Slowly, but purposefully, I’m beginning to craft some ideas about what I’d like my life to hold that would feel extraordinary. Temporary adjustments, to be sure, but perhaps that’s the point—keeping my life populated with temporary extraordinary moments. Some ideas have come to mind and are slowly shaping themselves into plans. Among them, I’m eager to write more—which means doing things other than gazing at the sides of a rut, as ruts have little to offer as literary devices.

Chapter 2

Driving to the gym, I heard a short segment of a TED talk, part of a series on the theme of “identities.” The speaker said something about how important it is to be clear about your identity. That isn’t necessarily, she said, where you live or what you do for your work. It’s more about what matters to you, what you value and what principles you represent in your life. This is not a startlingly novel proposal, but given my frame of mind, her words hit home. I realized that I didn’t have a clear answer (even for myself) to her question as I heard it: Who am I in the world? If I looked at myself from the outside, what values would I see? What do I stand for? What message does my life convey to those around me? How would I describe my place, my meaning in the world?

Of course retirement plays a role in this. I’d venture to guess that this question is familiar to many retired folks, since we often can’t call on the things that used to define us—occupation, family role, position in an organization, etc. Still, there have been times in my life, before and since retirement, when an answer to that question was much clearer. But right now, it’s not. In that moment’s thought, I realized that my life has become pretty self-absorbed. It strikes me that events of the past several months may have nurtured this frame of mind—some deaths in the family that have made my mortality all too evident, my own struggles with health issues, changes in my habits (induced by routine, laziness, boredom) that have kept me inside, at home—all may have contributed to my sense of disconnection from the larger world.

So now, it seemed, my “extraordinary” task looked three-fold—and, paradoxically, more ordinary: to create extraordinary moments in the everyday, to be sure that some of those are about something bigger than myself, and to write more about it all.

Chapter 3

As it happens, just before my trip to the gym, my partner had mentioned an article she just read about changing norms regarding disability language—i.e., how people with disabilities prefer to be named. It sounds fascinating and important, a window on dramatic shifts in the world of disability and disability rights. I expressed interest, which was totally genuine, but I didn’t think much about doing anything more with it than reading it and discussing it with her. She even suggested it as a blog topic, a proposal I set aside. But after the “identity” comment, I thought about it again. The article and what I might do with it now embodied just the sort of thing I’m looking for—something out of the ordinary, something that meshes with the values I want to represent, and something to trigger write-able thoughts.

Chapter 4

I came home from the gym to find a Smithsonian article about this self-driving semi. Nice analogy, I thought: I’ve been taking a ride in a self-driven vehicle that’s nicely programmed to follow the same routes, safely traversing the streets of my life without much thought from me. Safe, maybe, but being safe is not the same as being alive.

So then I wondered: It this just another version of a recurrent theme in our lives? Does everyone have these periods—you realize that you’ve gone on auto-pilot and that it’s time to grab the wheel? I bet so … or at least lots of us. I know I’ve been here before. On one occasion, I remember writing here about computer ruts, and on another, talking about making summers noteworthy—a different focus each time, but a similar point. And I expect I’ll be here again. This time around, it just took a spontaneous comment to call my attention to my own ruttedness, jerk my attention back to the road and, to stretch an analogy, the many other roads I could be traveling. Once that happened, things started to move, to shift. Now my job is to turn off the auto-pilot, stay alert, get busy driving my life, and open my eyes to the possibilities for extraordinary moments. Summer seems a perfect time to do that.

Afterword 

Stay tuned: there may be a self-driving vehicle commandeered by a genuine human traveling the streets near you, headed for something extraordinary. We could make it a caravan, if you’re so inclined.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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Flu lessons

Scene from a pre-flu walk

I’m in (what I hope will be) the last throes of a bout of stomach flu unlike any I remember. Maybe that’s just a result of how easily we forget misery—a good quality, overall. Or maybe it’s because this particular virus was especially nasty. Or maybe it’s because when you get old, everything hurts more and takes longer to recover from. I do recall a moment lying on the cool hard tile of the bathroom floor thinking, “So this is why they worry about old people dying from flu.”

I was miserable. Hot and cold—from moment to moment or, sometimes, simultaneously. Aching in ways I associate with major injuries, but without the accompanying adventurous tales. Exhausted enough that brushing my teeth (a frequent necessity) left me limp, propped against the counter. Just climbing into bed set my heart racing in my ears. Early on, I was optimistic. The … um … expulsionary aspects of the illness diminished considerably by about 18 hours or so, and I was looking forward to the impending 24-hour limit to the flu that goes by that name. But it was not to be. Five days later, I was still having residual gurgly, grumbly symptoms. And now six days in, I find myself wiped out by a short trip to the bank and the grocery store. (Ever heard of the BRAT diet? We ran out of applesauce.)

Maybe this is all normal for stomach flu and I just forgot since the last time, which was many years ago. But I have a suspicion that there’s something more to it, something having to do with the simple reality that nothing—skin, tendons, GI system—is quite as resilient after seven decades as it was earlier on. My mom used to say that the machinery just wears out. And in fact, I recently read an article saying that’s basically exactly what happens. From our teeth to our hearts, things just wear out—despite our best efforts at immortality, whether those entail diet, exercise, meditation, medicine, surgery (reconstructive or cosmetic), or denial. We were actually born as beings who age and, eventually, die. So, the notion that I’d be less resistant to a flu bug and would recover from it more slowly makes sense to me. Not happy sense, but sense.

In any case, the persistence of this particular case of flu gave me some time to reflect on what I might learn from this illness. And here are my top seven flu lessons:

1. The stomach flu is not simply about your stomach and the anatomically connected parts (although all of that is most definitely involved!). It’s also about your energy, your balance, your headache, your focus, your mental clarity, your sense of composure, your patience, and your tolerance for humiliation, as well as your shoulders, hips, knees, elbows, ankles, and jaw. 
2. Even though the major symptoms may wane in a day or so, genuine, heavy-duty, industrial-grade stomach flu does not relinquish its hold so easily. At least not in all cases. Whether it moves along to find another host or settles in for a longer visit may depend on many things—initial health status, diet, age, fatigue, immune status, etc. But I’d say it’s not wise to make major international travel plans for day 2. 
3. Given lessons 1 and 2, I shall never again dismiss or trivialize another’s report of being “taken out,” “bowled over,” “flattened”—pick a metaphor—by the flu. I’ve sometimes pooh-poohed folks’ reports of their flu misery, thinking to myself, “Yeah, I know the flu is a bummer. But you still could show up (or help or call or finish ... whatever), because you said you would.” No more. Tell me you have the flu, and I’ll give you a full week’s grace before I even start to get cranky.
4. The flu is a great equalizer. At least I’ll assume it is for the purposes of this lesson. I have never heard of any demographic group—defined by race/ethnicity, income, religion, geography, sex/gender—who do not get flu. Not that I’ve done a careful study of this. But this is a good lesson regardless: If any moment brings us all to our knees in abject misery, pleading for nothing but relief, it’s a hearty dose of stomach flu. How can I not empathize with anyone when I picture them in that position? OK, so this is still a lesson in process … there are admittedly a few people for whom I don’t feel great empathy, even in the throes, so to speak. I still think it’s a good thought.
5. The flu is harder to deal with when you’re old. Certain of the requisite symptom-management positions are more difficult to assume, to sustain, and to recover from. Even sleeping positions are unduly complicated. Take, as a random example, me. I couldn’t lie on my left side because of a still-tender hip from a (not-so-recent) injury. I can’t lie on my stomach because of (a) bad knees and (b) a bad neck. I couldn’t lie on my right side, because that’s significantly more troublesome for upper GI issues (this is stomach flu, after all). And I can’t lie on my back because it hurts. Plus, I wake myself snoring. Now, all of those are somewhat issues any time, but add the exhaustion of flu, which begs for 24 hours in bed, and you have a sure recipe for misery. Everything aches. All the time. And lying down becomes as painful as not (well, almost). Old people should all be issued temporary, agile and resilient bodies for use during the flu.
6. Whether or not individual older people get hit harder by the flu by virtue of their age, we’ve all been told that we do, and that alone can make it more difficult. During those exhausted but profoundly relaxing, cool moments on the bathroom floor, I considered the possibility that the comfort of the moment could be a bad sign. “Is this a sign of dehydration?” I wondered. “Or hypothermia (see “mental clarity” above)? Should I be calling a doctor? After all, flu is more dangerous for old people!” So if you’re old, you should read up a bit on flu before you get it (Mayoclinic.org and WdbMD.com are good). If you love someone old, be alert to the actual risks, but also to the (often unnecessary) fears. 
7. And the final lesson: Stomach flu is largely avoidable. This may not seem like a particularly clever insight, and I certainly “knew” it before. Still, I have to admit that I have not been faithful about singing “Happy Birthday” to myself or reciting the complete alphabet as I wash my hands with soap and hot running water after every single trip to the bathroom and before every single meal or snack. I could have gotten this flu bug through my own laziness. Or because someone else wasn’t sufficiently generous with her/his own self-directed birthday greetings. Also I could pass it on the same way. This is one lesson I “knew” before, and I just learned it again, big time. 

So those are my top seven my flu lessons. Today, I’m feeling better, and I plan for tomorrow to be better yet. I’ll celebrate by washing my hands frequently and thoroughly while singing the birthday song and/or the alphabet song (more fun than the recited version).

And I hope I’ll have no follow-up remedial lessons to share.

From another pre-flu walk. I wondered why on earth a neighbor had chosen a full wall of windows facing NW.
Had they no interest in energy conservation? I turned around and saw that this would be their view. Priorities.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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Things great and small

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Just click on the title “Things great and small.”

As you likely know, Resonance Women’s Chorus, home to my major volunteer gig these days, just finished up the season with its marvelous concert on climate change. After being immersed in this earth-ish topic for months, it’s been fun to find myself stretched through other layers of reality by a handful of articles I've encountered—outward to this incomprehensibly vast cosmos of ours and inward to microscopic realms that touch on our very identity. Not trivial matters, but definitely fun.

(Before I get all wonky, check out these gorgeous roses I spotted on a walk the other day. If nothing else, they're testimony to two happy facts: it's spring and I'm out walking again. Hooray!)

So, as a hint of this perspective stretching I mentioned, I offer these few tidbits for your consideration. 

First, the microscopic: 

The first set of articles I read had to do with the relatively recent development of a new technique in the field of genetics. Not long ago, two geneticists developed a technique called CRISPR-Cas9, which gives scientists the ability to remove and add genetic material at will, altering an organism's genome—sperm, eggs, embryos—in a way that will be passed on to future generations. Here’s a video explaining it, if you're curious. The technique has already been used in rats, monkeys, and a few other species. Folks are pretty certain that it would work in humans. Genetic manipulation that is limited to non-germ cells (e.g., in GMO foods, gene therapy) already raises some ethical concerns. But this is about changes that will be transmitted to subsequent generations. Still unknown are how precise such changes can be (might I clip too much, insert too little?), how specific (what if I alter surrounding genes in the process?), and what the side effects might be (will eliminating, say, a gene that predisposes allergies also damage part of the natural immune response?).  

Aside from these technical issues, CRISPR raises huge ethical concerns—even theological ones. It could have great benefits in curing diseases, preventing birth defects, and so on. But it could also be used in questionable ways, like to engineer offspring sex, physical characteristics, intelligence, etc. Recently, a number of people working in the field called for a moratorium on this research in humans until these issues can be addressed. In the words of one scientist, “It raises the most fundamental of issues about how we are going to view our humanity in the future and whether we are going to take the dramatic step of modifying our own germline and in a sense take control of our genetic destiny.” Another comments, “I personally think we are just not smart enough—and won’t be for a very long time—to feel comfortable about the consequences of changing heredity, even in a single individual.”

Yet, just the other day I saw an article about scientists who had attempted to perform this research in human embryos. The experiment failed in most cases—the embryos died or the DNA was not altered as planned. In other cases, the results were as feared: in some, the DNA interrupted the process, resulting in some changed and some unchanged DNA. In other cases, non-target segments of the DNA were altered, a phenomenon some have called “collateral damage.” So the experiment basically confirmed that the scientists who had issued the warning were right. Still, this research also highlighted the possibility—even the high likelihood—that others will try again.

The questions this raises are just mind-boggling. What is identity? What does “I” mean if my DNA, the “building block” of my distinctive genetic makeup can be altered? And what does it mean to be a human being if the core features of human existence might be subject to alteration? If these techniques get perfected, who decides what traits are worthy of continuing and which are not? It is impossible not to hear the echo of early 20th century programs of eugenics in these questions.

But in a different microscopic domain, another story seems to bring good news: I wrote here before about scientists’ conclusion that viruses make up over 8% of our DNA. These viruses are evolutionary hitchhikers, organisms that infected our long-ago ancestors and that gradually became incorporated into our very genes. Now, that’s mind stretching enough by itself—nearly 1/10 of our DNA consists of viruses! But even more astounding is what these viruses do for us. In that earlier post, I noted that they may be responsible for the evolution of the placenta (the placenta! We’re talking here about the very beginning of our individual selves). And now, last week, I also learned that some such viruses—endogenous retroviruses—may “come alive” during the earliest stages of embryonic development. Retroviruses are not usually our friends—think HIV—but in this case, these endogenous retroviruses may actually serve to immunize the embryo against other viruses. 

Now, this is good news, but it still challenges any simplistic notions we might hold about ourselves as individual, self-contained, unitary beings. Just think about it … microscopic viruses—viruses!—stow-aways from pre-human history may be responsible for the placenta that supported our individual prenatal life and for our immunity to viruses that might otherwise have done us in. So don't you wonder wonder, where does the “I” in this process end and the “they” begin?

To leap from the microscopic to the telescopic ...

Two other recent stories escorted me back into my recurrent fascination with the cosmic. This past week was the 25^th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble telescope, which, as you likely know, has rewritten our understanding of the universe—and illustrated the book. The Internet was full of Hubble photo gems this week. In case you missed them, I’ll paste in a few, and you can click here for more and here for even more.  

                                                                                  

Hubble had some struggles from its earliest days (I’m tempted to say it was star crossed, but that seems too easy), with a microscopic flaw in the mirror that caused blurry views of even nearby objects. But with some clever fixes over the years by astronauts turned telescope experts, Hubble has taught us more about the cosmos than we ever knew there was to learn. As you may know from previous posts, I’m a totally amateur but enthusiastic observer of things astrophysical, so I’ve been paying attention to Hubble’s discoveries for years. This anniversary provided a delightful visual memoir of Hubble’s life so far, and I’m hoping for more.

And then, just today, I came across a short story about another recent Hubble-fueled finding: out there in the universe, there are “runaway galaxies,” and with Hubble's help, we’re starting to understand them. Scientists have known for some time about runaway “rogue” planets, which have either been ejected from their orbits around stars or somehow never belonged to a star system. They’ve also suggested the existence of runaway galaxies that are moving so fast they sail free from the “local cluster” of galaxies whose gravity generally holds galaxies together in a group. And now Hubble has spotted a runaway galaxy and tracked its trajectory as it veers away from its orbit and heads off into … somewhere. I love that the universe is so unruly.

So, I find this stuff fascinating in its own right. But this week, with my thoughts shifting from the issue of climate change—which is global, but local, in the planetary sense—to matters larger and smaller, I realized that both directions of my drift these recent days—the microscopic and cosmic—raise very similar questions: Who are we? What counts as human if much of our substance is actually other organisms? Who do we become  if we alter the genome that defines who we "naturally" are? Where is our place in a universe whose early beginnings over 13 billion years ago is just now coming into sight and whose extent, some would argue, is infinite? And that remains stubbornly errant.

If I drift back from the vast, cosmic question to this smallish, ordinary planet, I wonder at our arrogance to think we matter at all. If I move the other way, to the microscopic, I wonder if we realize how tentative and ephemeral our existence is. Either way, I'm struck by the astonishing improbability of it all. Which cycles me back to earlier musings on this very question, shared here many blogs ago.

I float in these dilemmas for a while, and then go about my business as if none of these questions mattered, as if they hadn't come to mind. Until they do again.

I wonder what that means. 

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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Sea Change

In a couple of weeks, Resonance Women’s Chorus, the chorus with which I volunteer and about which I’ve often written, will present their spring concert. It’s been fun to hear the music come together and come to life over the past several months, so I’m looking forward to hearing it as a package, all polished up for show. My enthusiasm about this particular concert is heightened by the topic and by conversations among chorus members about its meaning. The theme, to oversimplify for the moment, is climate change. But that term doesn’t begin to describe the intent of the programming or the scope of the music. It’s not, as you might expect, a lesson about how we’ve all failed to tend to the planet. And it’s not, as you might also imagine, a lesson in what we should all be doing to prevent or accommodate to it. It's actually something else entirely.

So I want to talk about this concert and how I understand it—knowing full well that other folks will find other meanings in it. I offer this as a teaser, hoping you’ll come experience it for yourself and see what meaning you craft from it.

First, let me share the publicity about the concert to give you an idea of what I’m talking about here.

         

The concert is called “Sea Change: Love Song for a Warming Planet.” The text on the poster describes it as “… an exploration in sound and song of the emotional experience of living with climate change. It's an attempt to simply be with the 'not knowing' that underlies all of our wonderings and fears about the Earth's future and our own. Sea Change is a concert about nature, beauty, love, loss, and the extraordinary experience of being here now.”

Far from what you might expect, this concert seems to me like an invitation to become aware, to be open to the almost unimaginable experience of being witness to changes that surely signal a change in—and might signal an end to—human experience as we know it. To be aware of the sheer delight of this earth and, at the very same time, of the trembling forecasts for its future. The feeling that comes with knowing that we are responsible, each of us, for this situation, even as we stubbornly, unmindfully fail to change our ways of being. The consciousness of being in denial, yet of being terrified for future generations. Of simultaneously taking warm delight in a melody, a caress, or a cloud and sensing its impermanence. It’s about experiencing deep, gut-level fear and also breath-stopping amazement at the profound peace that remains to be found in nature. It’s about all of those or none of them or something else. But it’s not a predictable climate change program.

The concert promises a rich collection of beautiful, evocative music—evocative of a range of emotions including those I’ve mentioned and others. Everyone there, performer and listener, will likely find something different in it. At minimum, it’s an hour and a half of wonderful music. I can’t imagine that anyone would leave without being touched in some way. I know I have been, and I’ve only heard the rehearsals. So far.

I invite you to come if you can. Three opportunities: April 11, 12, and 18. For more information and to order tickets, visit the Resonance website at www.resonancechorus.org and click on “Performances.”