Strawberries in October

This is an unaltered picture taken earlier today, October 17. I am seeing newly ripening strawberries in my garden, in mid-October, in Portland, Oregon. I can't complain, but it sure seems odd. Is it climate change? Is it something about the compost? Once again it seems I'm living in a Post-Certainty world, where I can't take for granted anything I thought I knew.

Microloan Mysteries

Microloans may be a way to help others through this mess, especially other SEHIs. I had been thinking that, and then I happened to see a random posting on a web site asking about the same idea. It's funny how seeing even just one other person with the same "crazy idea" you have can be so empowering. If one person is a castaway on a desert island, two are the beginning of a movement.

So I was going to write about it. No, I thought, talk is cheap. If I can act, that is better than writing. I went to a microloan site to sign up as a lender, maybe help out some Exiles. I don't have a huge amount of spare money right now, but I thought maybe with, say, $200 I could make a difference for someone.

Then I saw the words. Words like suspended, not accepting new applications, transition, etc.

And my first thought wasn't, oh, too bad, bummer.

My first thought was, "is this real?" Maybe this is an Outlaw Planet attack. Maybe someone out there is trying to shut down microlending. Why?

That's the price we pay to live in 2019: whatever you thought you knew yesterday might be obsolete today. Whatever you thought you could count on might not be as real as it once was. We have to live a Post-Certainty Lifestyle. That should be a T-Shirt.

I will try again.

Richard Leakey quote

Some suggest human ingenuity and technology will come up with a solution for all of our problems.

Who will technology save? The rich nations? But if Bangladesh goes underwater in the next 30 years, as it probably will as a result of the sea-level rise, you’re going to have 65 million people on the run, most of them poor, most of them poorly educated. Hell, we have a hard time dealing with half a million refugees in the world today. What then? How then? Can we sustain 7 billion people on the planet? Almost certainly not. Could there be an epidemic that could wipe out half the world’s population? Certainly yes. When will it happen? Probably soon. There are all these different questions you can raise, but we can’t give up.

-- Richard Leakey, interviewed in Willamette Week

Dinner at The Last Green Zone

I'm treating myself to dinner at The Last Green Zone, which is a bar. Most people have forgotten this, but the First Green Zone -- the one in Baghdad, the one in all the photos on the walls here -- was originally just called "The Green Zone" because it was the only one in operation. That was before so many other cities had Green Zone "franchises."

Anyway, I like the name The Last Green Zone because there are two ways to interpret it. If you're an optimist, or telling stories to gullible people like journalists, you could say the concept is that one day this bar will sit within the last Green Zone because the whole world will be one big happy Green Zone. When I tell that version, in my mind I'm always imagining dancing Ewoks.

But if you're a pessimist, or a regular customer, you could explain how one day this bar sits in the last Green Zone after all the other Green Zones have been overrun. Then the last zone shrinks to just this part of town, and then to just this block, and finally it shrinks to encompass just this one bar. That's when the name's destiny is fulfilled. I think the drinks become free at that point.

And when it becomes clear that all the good drinks are gone and ammo is running low, and resupply isn't coming, those still inside vote by at least a 2/3 majority to throw the switch. Then, well, the owner throws the switch, and that's that. The Last Green Zone makes one last bold, brilliant expansion, to cover the city once again in the form of dust.

But that could be a long way off. Could be never. Maybe the switch isn't real. I mean, of course the switch is real, I've seen it, but maybe it's not really connected to anything. You never know what's real any more, and what's only for show. The purpose of the switch might be to make people in the bar pause and reflect a little.

For now, this bar is pretty safe, and it isn't even inside any official Green Zone in the first place, which makes the concept even funnier. So I'm eating an early dinner, and drinking a Spanish coffee. The bags of coffee on the shelf have the Somali Coast Guard logo on them. There was a time when people would have laughed at that, and rolled their eyes and made air quotes when they said "Coast Guard." But hey, the pirates do find delicious coffee, and some of it makes its way here. Once you actually taste it, you start to buy into the idea that there are bigger problems these days than how the coffee supply chain works, and maybe we should start with those.

[This is a Superstruct post]

Superstruct

GEAS says "If we act now -- and act with intelligence, flexibility, foresight and creativity -- we can avoid the final threat. We may even come out of this period far stronger than we were before."

Time to act.