Category Archives: Ecotheology

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Rather Than Fight Change, Embrace It, White Nationalists!

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Yeah, we may have our differences, but what does that have to do with real-time and potential real-time friendships?!                         [ Commons Image from Stock Adobe]

 

By Dan Bodine

 

Change. And ghosts of early White Nationalism! In a few months, it’ll be 39 years ago when as a white journalist/editor I was verbally attacked by early White Nationalists — e.g., for supporting a mixed-race Housing Project in the most affluent part of Cleburne, TX. It was Hate.

The project’s clients would include African Americans and was the leadoff item on a P&Z meeting. Could there be lessons for today’s “White Nationalists”? Feel free to comment. Continue reading →

‘Dead’ Hummingbird Hawk Moth Flew Away

Ecotheology, Gardens4 Comments

"Moths are among the most diverse organisms, yet because most are nocturnal we rarely appreciate them. ... One effort to increase our knowledge about moths is National Moth Week, July 22-30, 2023" [Photo Courtesy Pixabay]

Hummingbird hawk moth (Macroglossum stellatarum) in flight, Yastrebets, Rila Mountains, Bulgaria
The top one looks more like the one I snared with the net once, although I think it's body had a lot of gray on it, too. [Image courtesy of Charles J. Sharp, sharpphotography.co.uk

 

By Dan Bodine

 

Yeah, National Moth Week is here, July 22-30. I saw a Hummingbird Hawk Moth sipping on some blooms late in the evening in the back garden a month or so back, and I cringed a bit.

Buried guilt? First time I’d seen one of these awesome critters in decades! Probably since I almost tortured one to death once! Continue reading →

New Right’s White Supremacists & Civil Rights, # 1

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Image montage using CC Flicker image

GUN-TOTING FAMILY: Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY), posted this Christmas picture of himself and six others on his Twitter account several years ago holding firearms that appear to be machine guns and semi-automatic weapons. (Photograph: @RepThomasMassie)

[Yeah, I’m feeling they’ll be a version # 2 on this topic later. Will appreciate all comments. — d.b.]

By Dan Bodine

When U.S. presidential candidate Ronald Reagan endorsed the Religious Right at a take-over-the-nation religious affairs conference 43 years ago coming up in August this year in Dallas, I actually cried on my way back home to nearby Cleburne.

I was a staff writer, editor for the local daily newspaper, and covered that 1980 Dallas national election event mostly out of curiosity.

Earlier New Right‘s news releases coming across the desk relating to merging church and state were dead on, too, it turned out — e.g., this was a beginning of another long crusade toward Authoritarianism — and I felt as a country we’d never be the same again! Continue reading →

Riding The High Seas In A Bosun’s Chair

Ecotheology2 Comments
HIGHLINING BETWEEN SHIPS AT SEA | NAVYSIGHT

Navy Highlining. [Image Steven Newbauer –https://navysight.wordpress.com/2015/05/12/highlining-between-ships-at-sea/]

 

 

 

By Dan Bodine

Reading about the U.S. Navy’s plan for “Chaplains to serve as counselors aboard all Navy destroyers by 2025″ brought back a frightening time almost 55 years ago when I rode a bosun’s chair from the aircraft carrier I was on, over to one of these “tin can” destroyers — all to fix it’s radar IFF unit.

Memorable, it was, yeah! Some of my ol’ seafaring days as a Navy electronics technician back during the Vietnam War era. Continue reading →

Salt Cedar’s “Water Theft” A ‘Code Ranger’ Case?

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Tamarisk tree in August. The genus Tamarix, tamarisk, salt cedar, taray is composed of flowering plants. Berlin, Germany. Beautiful plants. Tamarisk tree in royalty free stock photos

The Tamarisk trees — or Salt Cedars, as they’re mostly called in Far West Texas’ Big Big Country — were planted by the Corps in the early 1900s to help stop soil erosion in flooding. But in other times in the dry desert mountains, with their huge root systems, they’re also “water hogs”! This is a story of an angry neighbor wanting something done about a tree on an adjacent property he felt was “stealing” his plants’ water. [Commons Image courtesy of Dreamtimes]

By Dan Bodine

This idea of a volunteer code ranger to arbitrate disputes civilly to improve neighborhoods is too good to be true, right?

Say, someone trained by the city to softly suggest to another neighbor, a yáhoo maybe, or a building owner, he/she ought to scratch their heads about yard improvements? Cuttin’ down trees, maybe? Cleaning junk outta yards? ‘Cause they’ve become an embarrassment? Or worse, hurting people?! And thereby unravel a potentially dangerous knot? Continue reading →

Christmas Eve Baracho in OJ Church

Ecotheology6 Comments

 

 

 

by Dan Bodine 

 

 Forward: 

On Christmas Eve, 1994, as a Far West Texas judge in Presidio, TX, I attended a midnight mass in a Catholic church across the Rio Grande in Ojinaga (OJ), Chihuahua, MX, that would change my life. A real-life drunk’d reached deep in me and snagged some underlying Baptist fundamentalism feelings. 

While clinging to only two short years of sobriety myself, I gripped the back of a wooden church pew to keep from getting up and grabbing this guy who’d noisily staggered in from the plaza outside, and booting him from the church. Continue reading →

If Mexico Can Boot Neoliberalism, Why Can’t U.S.?

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The first of 32 assemblies to discuss new textbooks was held this week in Veracruz.

The textbook design assembly in Veracruz, MX, this week. [Image courtesy of Mexico Daily News]

By Dan Bodine

Of course, everyone knows why! So actually this is just fluff. Mexico is a free state. In all its messiness! The United States, on the other hand, is owned by corporations in a plutocracy! Which drives neoliberalism.

Which drives both education and radical white extremism. But a plutocracy can’t boot itself! Savvy? But you wanna know what’s cutting “neoliberalism words and concepts” from school textbooks in Mexico? Continue reading →

Whiteness, Straw Man, and How Electrons Move

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There’s often a “straw man” argument behind someone’s political opposition.

        By Dan Bodine

Hee, hee! Ain’t got a bone to pick but sure got a yarn to tell! A compassionate African American assuaged my bruised ego in the Navy once when I allowed myself to feel like the dumbest kernel of corn on the cobb! So, with migrants and minorities both now under fire, you can mix your races, yes — but you can’t segregate human lightbulbs! We all shine some! Savvy?

Me, coming up with this?  Yeah, me! Even an ol’ slow country boy from Texas has learnt a thing or two about Life. Hang on; don’t go to sleep. This is really against using straw men, or the Boogeyman, in politics! Continue reading →

Salmons “Lost Cause” Has a Sequel?

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Earlier ends of salmon runs in this Northwest U.S.A. area, due to decades of dam constructions, have shut down most of the fisheries here. Meaning a loss of thousands of jobs and the rich culture that transcended it, too. With the planned removal of the deteriorating dams now, decades later, is there a chance the salmons will return? Bringing back that Life?  (Current Map Image from Wild River Fishing)

 

By Dan Bodine

Yeah, it was one of those “moments you’ll never forget!” A “grown man cryin’ in his beer!” His name was Darrell. A salesman of some sort. And an obvious recent transplant to hot, ugly Texas. During the Sunbelt Era.

He was sitting on the barstool on my left at what was then the dearly revered Flagon Lounge, just off I.H. 35 in Central Texas. Heaving heavy sobs. Continue reading →

Will Confessing Old Misdeeds Help Nation’s Racial Reconciliation?

Ecotheology2 Comments

MONTGOMERY, AL - APRIL 26: Markers display the names and locations of individuals killed by lynching at the National Memorial For Peace And Justice on April 26, 2018 in Montgomery, Alabama. The memorial is dedicated to the legacy of enslaved black people and those terrorized by lynching and Jim Crow segregation in America. Conceived by the Equal Justice Initiative, the physical environment is intended to foster reflection on America's history of racial inequality. (Photo by Bob Miller/Getty Images)

MONTGOMERY, AL: Opened in April of 2018 as part of a national healing process, these suspended markers display the names and locations of individuals killed by lynching at the National Memorial For Peace And Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. The memorial is dedicated to the legacy of enslaved African-Americans, and those terrorized by lynching and Jim Crow segregation in America. Conceived by the Equal Justice Initiative, the physical environment is intended to foster reflection on America’s history of racial inequality. AP is reporting this Memorial is now open at night — for those wishing to reflect on our nation’s past.                                                         (Photo by Bob Miller/Getty Images)

By Dan Bodine

 

First, this is an off-the-wall piece from 55 years ago (2-3 years out of high school — aka stupid years). It has nothing to do with racism, but… I’m hoping thru public admittance (finally), it can be slipped in as a moral substitute for what I feel is a national call for atonement now — for past racial injustices and generally just for bad behaviors. Kapish? Continue reading →