Life As Performance Art 37

Outside there is a white-crowned sparrow singing, as he does every morning. It is 5:27 am. Unfortunately one of the tenants in the building next door has just turned up his radio as well, so I have had to close the window. Something I am loath to do on a spring morning. If it hasn't changed in a few minutes I will phone staff there to complain. Or I might simply close my window for a while, much as I would prefer to feel and smell the fresh cool air of spring, but I will soon be outside, anyway. But the white-crowned sparrow is what I want to focus on. He still sings here, every morning in the spring, even though we are downtown. Even with the threat looming large of massive species extinctions, such as we haven't seen since the end of the Cretaceous (though, contrary to the assumptions of some younger people, Gentle Reader, I was not around during the Cretaceous, and I am a bit less than sixty-five million years old.) The most irresponsible journalist (if she can be called a journalist!) who writes for the Globe and Mail, Margaret Wente, has written this weekend that there is no danger of species extinctions. And all because some of the dire predictions about world hunger from thirty or forty years ago, or so, have not materialized. and this she uses as evidence for her uninformed opinions. But Ms. Wente is neither a scientist, nor is she informed. She simply spouts her half-baked opinions in order to please her right-wing backers and this style of journalism is a disgrace to a paper of the prestige and level of journalism of the Globe and Mail. At least, almost all their other writers are good. This isn't to say that things are necessarily going to pan out as expected. They could end up worse, maybe not quite so bad, but everyone who knows what they are talking about is agreed that things are going to get worse and that there is very little chance that we are going to significantly change things much, and that we are going to have to learn how to tough it out, roll with it, and find ways of helping each other survive, because, believe me, baby, this ain't gonna be no picnic. The ilk of Margaret Wente can happily stick their heads up their ass, and leave them there, for all I care, but this woman's writing is an insult to free speech and the Globe should have fired her, yesterday, if not years ago. The white-crowned sparrow is silent now and the first golden light of the new day is caressing the buildings outside. My neighbourhood seems to have turned off the radio and all is well, quiet and beautiful on this morning in May. Who could only imagine what might be waiting for us around the corner? We are so fortunate to still have such moments of beauty and tranquility to cherish. We don't know how many more there will be for us, and we will not allow the looming threats to extinguish our joy.