dennis – Page 2 – Dennis C Merritt

DAnon 2 — A Hollywood Story

Who’s behind QAnon? Maybe looking at a story Hollywood loves to tell can provide the answer.

It’s a story of dark conspiracies, behind evil doings, that a brave individual, or band of individuals, uncovers and battles to overcome.

It’s not a new story. It’s Robin Hood and his Merry Men fighting the Sheriff of Nottingham, stealing from the rich (this is key point) and giving to the poor. The back story there was that the Sheriff had stolen lands from individuals, like Robin Hood, while they were away at war in the Crusades.

It’s James Bond fighting dark hidden international crime syndicates, it’s Batman and Robin against, yes more crime syndicates, it’s countless TV and movie detectives working some case only to discover there’s some powerful politicians and money interests behind the evil doings.

It’s the lovable Sully in Monsters Inc., up against the evil CEO, Waternoose, who will kidnap children to make a profit. Here’s how Hollywood (Disney in this case) pictures Waternoose:

It’s not very flattering.

Not all the movies are fiction. It’s “The Big Short” uncovering the financial institutions behind the sub-prime mortgage crisis (which, on a personal note, caused me to lose about 1/3 of my retirement funds), it’s “Erin Brockovich” taking down the PG&E utility company hiding the health risks it caused, and more recently “No Sudden Moves,” an excellent Netflix flic based on a true story of a consortium of car companies suppressing fuel efficient technology for it’s own financial gain.

These stories are so common, they are ingrained in our consciousness. We all know of the influence of money in our politics. How the military-industrial complex made all that money in Iraq (our tax dollars), how the financial companies were too big to fail in the mortgage crisis (but not the people who lost their homes), and how Congress continually protects the financial interests of the health care industry as it remains the largest cause of personal bankruptcies.

These are not well-kept secrets.

So when QAnon says there is a Deep State running our government and other institutions, it rings true. In fact, it is true if you consider that the ultra-wealthy and large corporations are the ones behind a government that does NOT work for the people. Let’s call them Big Money.

Do you see the problem? Big Money does not like Hollywood telling the story, over and over, of its corrupting influence on our institutions. It is bad PR.

Worse, it gets people to want to vote for Democrats. I’m not saying the Democrats work for the people, they are just as much bought and controlled by Big Money. It was, after all, the Democrats who failed to give us nationalized health as they catered to the world’s most profitable health-care industry.

But they do give more back to the people. The Democrats are more likely than the Republicans to raise taxes on Big Money, and put in government regulations protecting the environment, ensuring work place safety, and providing safety nets like Medicare and Social Security. All of these programs cost Big Money money.

So there’s the problem for Big Money. There is a Deep State, and it is Big Money. And people know about it because of Hollywood, and government reacts to it because of Democrats. How can poor, unfairly treated, Big Money fight back? To get Hollywood and the Democrats off its back?

QAnon. It’s absolutely brilliant. It takes that story that is so ingrained in our psyches and turns it upside down. It tells the powerless that there is a Deep State and that they can fight it.

It says there are powerful interests at work, but it’s not Big Money, it’s despicable sex offenders. And who are these sex offenders secretly controlling our institutions? Hollywood types and Democrats.

And who is going to root them out? And bring them to justice? Yup, Big Money.

It’s brilliant! The Deep State isn’t Big Money, but despicable sex offenders. And it’s not brave individuals who battle them, it’s, yes, Big Money!

The Sheriff of Nottingham is the good guy! Fighting that bandit Robin Hood (and his Merry? wink-wink men!) The Joker is the good guy, taking down the evil Batman (and what’s with him and Robin?)

Can there be any doubt that Big Money is behind QAnon? That it’s a brilliant spin to get Hollywood and the Democrats off its back? To let the Sheriff of Nottingham keep the land he stole from the people, to protect the Joker’s criminal enterprises? To bail out the big investment banks, the car companies, to protect the drug companies, to….

Consider their savior. The man who will lead QAnon’s “The Storm.”

A man who self identifies as the epitome of Big Money. The man behind the Trump Tower (which kind of looks like a Hollywood prop for an evil corporate headquarters.)

Readers, if this rings true, spread the idea, let your QAnon friends know that they’ve been had, that they’ve been tricked into fighting, not against, but FOR the very Deep State / Big Money conspiracy they fear.

DAnon Home

VacLogic+

When Fred and I agreed on a $7,000 annual license fee for ARulesXL, which is the technology underlying VacLogic, I never thought it would be forever. It always seemed to me that the industry would be much better off if CDC came up with some way to provide that service in a uniform way to all providers.

I only now have done some Googling about, and, indeed there are a number of technologies available today that do, basically, what VacLogic does, and, it appears, CDC provides information designed to directly feed into these technologies. They are all relatively recent. I enjoyed reading about them, as they deal with all the situations that VacLogic handled twenty years ago.

I always expected, as I entered my retirement, that at some point Connexin would say that there is a new technology that we’ll be using instead, this will be the last year we need a license. Or maybe even, we’ve already switched to a new technology and no longer need ARulesXL. Thank you for your service.

And then, as you can see on this Web site, I’d continue working on jazz guitar, picture books for kids, op-ed newspaper pieces, grandkids, a garden and all the other sorts of things 76 year old might get involved in.

But it turns out that’s not how an investment capital company, like Pamlico, operates. Pamlico’s management team would rather stop paying the $7,000, use the software anyway, and then pay, I’m guessing, at least 10 to 20 times that much to crush me in court when I sued.

Then make no offer to settle, and instead start work on a replacement for VacLogic. It appears, but who knows, that VacLogic+ might be just that. The same user interface, but the “intelligence” inside is implemented using one of the new technologies available.

That is, of course, exactly what they should be doing, and by using a standard technology, they’ll be compatible with other vendors. Now, this will be a new world for them, as the tremendous advantage VacLogic gave them twenty years ago, is no longer in play. But still, they’re now a player in the pediatric EHR market and VacLogic helped get them there.

So why did they have to take a year of my life, and a significant portion of my retirement funds to do it? Well the law suit continues, now looking for compensation for the year they used, in violation of Federal Copyright Law, the ARulesXL version of VacLogic without a license.

VacLogic Lawsuit

Open Source

I probably should address the open source issue. Connexin raises this as a secondary reason why they shouldn’t have to pay license fees to use ARulesXL. It’s true that I had intended to make an open source version ofARulesXL. But I never actually finished the project, which was the licensing.

Connexin’s lawyers, in their declarations, seem to imply that if I intended to make an open source version of ARulesXL, then Connexin no longer had to pay the license fee for the commercial version they were using.

Maybe non-programmers might be confused by this point, but the name of their company is Connexin Software Inc. They’re a software company. They know what open source is.

To use open source software they would have to download the source code for the software, and use it to rebuild the executable version of the program, and have a valid open source license for the use they intended to make of the software.

They never claimed to have downloaded sources, never claimed to have rebuilt executables, and never claimed to have a valid open source license (one never existed). They just waved their hands and said they shouldn’t have to pay if I were willing to offer it open source. And, of course, they had the MoU.

VacLogic Lawsuit

Business Attitudes

I most confess that probably a lot of my anger in this case has to do with my interactions with Connexin’s new employees. That is, people who joined the company after the founders, Fred and Edna Pytlak, had sold their interest and Pamlico had made a major investment.

It took two months for Connexin to schedule a meeting between myself, and some of their staff, to explain to them what the annual ARulesXL invoice was about. There were a number of people in the Zoom-like meeting (my first one) but it seems Bethany Williams was in charge. I presented a bit of the history of VacLogic and ARulesXL’s role in it.

Bethany Williams

After the explanations, Bethany Williams said she had discovered this Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) from 2003, and said it gave them the right to use the software without paying. I was surprised. I explained that I wrote it, that it didn’t, and it had nothing to do with ARulesXL.

She then said, besides, ARulesXL is Open Source. I asked if they had downloaded sources. They hadn’t, but seemed to imply that Open Source was the same as Public Domain. It isn’t. Open Source ARulesXL.

She then added, and this might be the key moment in all of this, that new management of Connexin had paid the annual license fees for the last four years, but that didn’t mean they needed to, and that those payments were enough. I can still hear the scorn in her voice as she said “Don’t you think you’ve been paid enough.” (Who talks to people like that in a business meeting?)

Now, Fred Pytlak thought my contribution to Office Practicum (OP), giving them a competitive advantage in handling vaccines for a pediatric office, was a critical component in the success of the company. And that it helped make OP so valuable that Pamlico wanted to invest in it. Which led to what I presume are excellent salaries being paid to Bethany and other Connexin management. And she treats me as if I’m ripping them off?

Marc Abercrombie

So the meeting ended. Marc Abercrombie then sent me an email telling me they decided the MoU gave them the right to use the software, that they weren’t going to pay for an annual license, that they were going to use the software anyway, and get this, he hoped I had a good weekend. Nice touch.

I sent him one more email, asking him to show me the license they were running ARuleXL under. He emailed me a copy of the MoU.

Stacy Kilgore

A little time passes. I’m still trying to sort this out, and Marc says I should talk to the new CFO, Stacy Kilgore, who I’m told is willing to work things out. So we talk on the phone, and I patiently explain to him rule-based technology and the history of VacLogic. He is very polite, and listens patiently to my explanation of ARulesXL and it’s role in VacLogic, and the understandings I had with Fred Pytlak. He said he had no idea who Fred was.

I suggested that they should purchase a perpetual license for ARulesXL, so that this issue doesn’t come up each year, and quoted them a figure of $28,000 for it. At which point, this individual who was going to work things out, said “that will never happen.” Now here’s what you can’t capture in a text medium, such as this one. It was how he delivered that. He scoffed as he said it.

I asked why? He said the MoU. I said “BULL SHIT!” (I hope that captures my emotion.) He was offended that I lost my temper.

40+ Years of Good Faith Business

I have never in my 40+ years in the commercial software business been treated with such scorn and disrespect. By people who I had absolutely no history with, who were meeting me for the first time, and who were profiting from my software through a past relationship with the founders of the company.

In those 40+ years (I moved from aerospace into commercial software in 1979) I’ve worked for big companies and small, dealt with customers big and small, and been involved in all aspects of the business.

I have never, in those 40+ years, ever had a hostile relationship with a customer. There were issues, negotiations, etc., but always handled in good-faith, and always in mutually satisfactory ways. Such as my dealing with Fred and Edna Pytlak, and the low prices I charged them which reflected the environment I met them in, which was running a start-up from their kitchen table in Brooklyn.

I think it’s the contrast between the relationship I had with the founders, and the new Pamlico era management that is so bothersome to me. I’ve had absolutely no experience with such a hostile business environment, and I must admit, as these blog posts might indicate, I’m struggling with it.

I did try one last time to make a reasonable offer in that meeting.

My Last Offer

There was more to that meeting. Greg Anderson said there were some issues with VacLogic. The maintenance was still done on Windows 7, and it was taking two seconds to display results on customer machines. Valid concerns.

I’m pretty sure I knew where the delay was coming from, and how to fix it. I also thought it would be easy to migrate to Windows 10. So here was my last offer to them. I would help them migrate to an Open Source version of the software, migrate it to Windows 10, and look at the two second delay. All they had to do was pay the $7,000 one year license fee for one last year.

They told me, I’m paraphrasing here, to fuck off. That the MoU meant they didn’t have to pay me anything.

The Lawsuit

So now I’m suing, working through lawyers instead of talking directly to them. I’m asking for disgorgement (I didn’t know that was a word) of profits made distributing my software for profit without a license (a violation of Federal copyright law), and for them to stop using ARulesXL without a license.

We’ve each now spent (I’m guessing maybe more for them) around $100,000+ on the lawsuit, with no end in sight. See the Trump-like strategy they’re pursuing.

VacLogic Lawsuit

Why Rules for Vaccines?

Most people, and in fact, many programmers, don’t understand why a rule-based approach is better for some application areas. Let me try to explain.

A computer does one thing at a time. It executes instructions. Usually it’s one instruction after another, but sometimes there are branching instructions. These basically say in this condition go here next, otherwise go there next.

You often see this type of flow of control represented in flow charts. Flow charts are often used in designing software.

Pricing Example

Pricing is one of the application areas that is notoriously difficult to code using conventional techniques. Consider these simplified rules for old school phone pricing:

If weekday and day time then cost is 10 cents per minute.
If weekday and night time then cost is 7 cents per minute.
If weekend and day time then cost is 6 cents per minute.
If weekend and night time then cost is 4 cents per minute.

Now, a human looking at the rules, and told whether a call was made during the week or not and during the day or not, could easily determine the cost of the call.

But a programmer, writing software to automate these rules, needs to superimpose some flow of control on them. Immediately a decision has to be made as to where to start. Does the program start by asking if it’s a weekday and then asking if it’s day or night? Or does it start by asking if it’s day or night, and then if it’s a weekend or not?

Now, it’s certainly possible to write that software, but problems arise when the rules change, and the software needs to change. Imagine if management decided to make Friday evenings the same as weekends, and holidays the same as weekends? So where do these changes get put in the program? Well it depends on those flow of control decisions.

Rule-based programming is different. For this example, a programmer using a rule language would write the rules, well, exactly as they were written. In any order, without worrying about flow of control issues.

Instead, a rule-based programming language has a component called a “reasoning engine” that takes input, such as weekday or weekend and day or night, and uses those inputs to dynamically select the rule that applies.

Vaccination Analysis and Forecasting

The problem of analyzing a child’s vaccination history, and then determining which doses of which vaccines will be required next, is one of those problems that are very difficult to code with step-by-step programming languages, but relatively easy using a rule-based approach.

Here are some of the complications. There are vaccines for the individual diseases: measles, mumps and rubella. There is a combination vaccine, MMR, that includes all three. But measles requires two doses, the others only one. So MMR is a two dose vaccine. But what if the child already had some single doses?

Those happen to also be live virus vaccines. There are rules about them as well, and you can’t give a live virus vaccine without waiting some time period, maybe a month, after other live viruses. So if a child is due for an MMR in two weeks, but had a Varicella (another live virus) a week ago, then the next MMR can only be given after three weeks.

The vaccines with 4 and 5 dose schedules get even more complex. There is a standard sequence to give the vaccines, but what if one was missing, or given at an incorrect interval? There are then modified schedules to use instead. More rules, more exceptions…

As with our beginning easy example, it’s certainly possible to write a program to handle all this, but there is so much flow of control information superimposed on the rules that it becomes near impossible to maintain. It becomes what is called, “spaghetti code” with hopelessly tangled flow of control strands.

Suppose the CDC comes out with guidelines for Covid-19 for children. Where do those rules get added? And of course there’s complexities on them as well as there are different vendors, and boosters and…

But with a rule-based approach, the new rules for Covid-19 can be simply entered as new rules. And the software is off and running.

In writing VacLogic, I used my own rule-based tools and technology. But they’re not the only ones. Programmers can find other tools to enable this application, and/or write their own reasoning engines and rule languages.

VacLogic Lawsuit

Trump-like Legal Strategy

This lawsuit has been quite an education for me. I’ve heard that Trump’s standard business strategy was to stiff his subcontractors, and then, when they sued, bury them in legal costs. I now find myself in exactly that scenario going up against the new management of Office Practicum, with its backing of the $3+ billion dollar investment company, Pamlico.

I am the individual who wrote the immunization module, VacLogic, that set them apart from other pediatric practice vendors. It is built on top of my software tool, ARulesXL, which is used to make updates to VacLogic as new vaccines, such as Covid-19, appear, and which is used to distribute VacLogic to their pediatric practice customers.

Step one of the Trump strategy: stiff the subcontractor. That’s what they did. They informed me that, despite paying an annual license fee for ARulesXL for the past ten years, they would no longer pay that annual license fee. That would be OK, except they also informed me that they would continue to use it.

Predictably, I sued, asking to be compensated for the months they distributed my software without a license, and for the court to issue an injunction forcing them to stop distributing it.

Step two: bury them in legal costs. They countered with a variety of irrelevant arguments that are also right out of the Trump playbook.

The arguments repeat a big lie, over and over, saying that a 2003 Memorandum of Understanding, that has absolutely nothing to do with ARulesXL, is a license for them to use the software forever, without paying.

Change of Venue

But they also made sure none of those arguments will get heard anytime soon because they moved for a change of venue.

My daughter went to law school, and she told me one of the situations they studied was the hypothetical case where your client gets a DUI, and he was drunk as a skunk when it happened. Step one — move for a change of venue.

It is amazing how much it is costing in legal fees to deal with the change of venue motion, and how it delays the court proceedings so that the judge doesn’t rule on the injunction and they merrily continue to use and profit from my software.

I would recommend anyone studying at the Trump school of law study this case.

A Small Example

Let me give you a little blow-by-blow up to this point, showing exactly how they work on gumming up the works.

The judge decides to rule on venue, before looking at anything else. That makes sense. To that end he gives us a couple of months to gather documents from them that demonstrate they can be sued in Massachusetts.

OK, so we start that process, issuing interrogatories to that effect. There is a court ordered deadline for them to produce the documents.

But they don’t produce any. Instead, on the last day of the deadline, they come up with a list of objections as to why they won’t answer any of the requests for documents.

Let me bore you with the incredible details of this procedure. Its mind-boggling in its absurdity, and yet, awesome in its effectiveness of making it impractical for an individual to get justice in a court of law against a well funded company.

The objections are all legalese boiler plate. Some are objections to definitions of words. For example, since the judge asked us to gather information, we asked them to “identify” customers in Massachusetts. Simple? No.

They objected to the word “identify.” Now, understand, that my lawyer had already actually defined “identify.” Here was our definition:

9. The terms “identify,” “identity,” and “identification” with respect to a person that is not an individual mean to state its: full name, legal form, date of organization, state of incorporation or organization or other business or license authority, present or last known address and telephone number, and the identity of its chief executive officer, partners, owners, or persons in equivalent positions.

Here was their objection (and the same as all their other objections):

Connexin’s Objection to Definition #9:

Defendant objects to this definition as it is broader than that allowed by Local Rule 26.5. Defendant further objects on the grounds that it is overly broad, vague, ambiguous, lacking in specificity, confusing, calls for legal conclusions, asserts further terms that are not readily defined, and render the interrogatories and/or document requests in which it is used overly broad, confusing, ambiguous, and lacking in specificity. Defendant further objects to the definition to the extent it seeks to impose an obligation on Defendant to provide information or documents that are not within Defendant’s possession, custody and/or control. Defendant further objects to the extent the definition purports to seek information and/or documents that are protected by the attorney-client privilege, work product doctrine or any other applicable privilege. Defendant also objects to this definition to the extent it seeks the production of irrelevant information and/or documents and/or information and documents not proportional to the needs of the case. Defendant objects to the definition to the extent it impermissibly attempts to alter the plain meaning of the interrogatories and/or document requests in which it is used and impose duties not required under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Local Rules for the District of Massachusetts, any applicable Standing Orders or Court Orders, and/or any other applicable rules and/or law.

My lawyer had to answer this, explain why it was absurd, and justify our definition and ask them to agree to it. Time and expense incurred.

They likewise filed the exact same boiler plate objection about the terms:

defendant
AmziLogic, LLC (are they kidding? it’s the name of my company defined as such)
concerning
communication
date
describe
document
identify (in two other contexts than the one above)
person
relationship
reseller
customer

And then they object to each interrogatory, such as “identify your customers” with different boiler plate, complaining, among other things, that “your” is not clearly defined.

They stopped paying license fees on July 1, 2021, and now, over a year later my lawyer is busy responding to all this minutia, running up my legal bills, just to answer the question of venue. Meanwhile, Connexin continued to distribute and profit from the sale of my software between July 2021 and June 2022.

Litigation Funding

What’s amazing is that this scenario, of a large company effectively stealing intellectual property from a small entity, and burying it in legal costs when they sue, is so common that an entire field of investment has grown up around it.

It’s called litigation funding. There are so many of these cases that could easily be won, if the plaintiff had enough money, that there are companies that have now sprung up who invest in exactly this sort of suit. They provide the funding for the lawsuit in exchange for a good payout if there is a favorable outcome.

VacLogic Lawsuit

Office Practicum and Anti-Vaxers

This is purely an opinion piece.

I have a general mistrust of our health care industry. I don’t question the technology, the amazing things that can be done. Rather, I am disturbed that profit seems to be as much of a motive behind it as a desire to help people.

Here’s an example. I recently went for an eye exam, and the place I went to had multiple check out counters. It, as I said on seeing it, “reeked of health care business.” I wound up learning a little bit about that particular practice.

They were in the business of providing cataract surgery. There were actually turf battles in the town when they opened, fighting with the local hospital. It turns out cataract surgery is a lucrative business and this place had a reputation for performing the surgery on people that had no need. For example, one man with perfect 20/20 vision in his other eye, was told that he should have the surgery in both eyes because that’s what a lot of people do.

Do you see the problem? The thing is, cataract surgery is a wonderful thing. People who need it, and get it, sing the praises of being able to see clearly again. But if you go into that place, and they tell you you need cataract surgery, do you believe them?

Office Practicum’s Web site is a sales tool to spread the message of their software to pediatric offices looking for practice management software. This is as it should be. But, if you read through it, you’ll find that almost all of the benefits sited for the vaccine management capability that VacLogic provides are related to increased profitability.

Here is the first paragraph on the Web site, their elevator pitch if you would.

Just below that is a circle with classic benefit feature marketing. Here is the benefit advertised for the feature at the top of the circle, represented by a dollar sign.

First in the circle to follow is their vaccine capability (which is implemented with VacLogic).

Imagine a young mother bringing her new born infant into a pediatric office, and learning of all the vaccines they want to give to her child. Imagine now that that office gives off the vibe of an organization trying to “reach (its) financial goals” and “improve (its) vaccine cash flow.”

Might she not trust them?

In all fairness, managing vaccine inventory is a huge problem for a pediatric office, as that is, I believe, their biggest expense after personnel. VacLogic allows them to make accurate forecasts of upcoming vaccinations needed for each child, and schedule visits and manage inventory accordingly.

There is good news on the OP Web site. Even though the OP Web site emphasizes the financial benefits of accurate vaccine analysis and forecast, the pediatricians talking in their video testimonials emphasize, instead, how glad they are to be able to ensure that their patients get the vaccinations they need when they need them.

Abortion, Ireland, Citizens’ Assembly

I never liked Roe v. Wade.

It never seemed right to me that nine, politically appointed, individuals should decide the law of the land on a topic like abortion. That should have been Congress’ job, to meet and deliberate, weigh all sides of the issue, and come up with good law that reflects the will of the people, the people they represent.

But no, that’s not what politicians do. Instead they try to make an issue like abortion divisive. They want us to be in Pro-Life or Pro-Choice camps, and get mad at each other.

Those very labels completely cloud the issue. We have a word, “fetus,” which we use because there is nothing else like it. The Pro-Life people want us to think a fetus is just the same as a new born infant, who we all agree has a right to live. The Pro-Choice people want us to think the fetus is just like a blemish every woman has a right to remove from her body with elective surgery.

But the truth is, it’s not an either or situation. I don’t think even the most adamant Pro-Choice person thinks an eight month pregnancy should be aborted. Nor are there many Pro-Lifers, except the hard core, who think a morning after pill is a bad idea.

Instead, it’s a question of where you draw the line. Even the Texas law says abortion is OK in the first six weeks, and Roe v. Wade said states could ban abortion in the third trimester. Most of the people in the country kind of agree abortion should be legal in some situations and not in others.

As I said, Congress doesn’t deliberate on issues like this. But there is a better way, and it was done in Ireland, and it worked.

Like here, abortion was a volatile issue in Ireland, with demonstrators and politicians doing the sorts of things they do here. As an alternative to that, a Citizens’ Assembly (CA) was convened to study the abortion issue and make recommendations on what abortion law should be in Ireland. The CA was made up of around a hundred people drawn from all walks of life who got together to listen and discuss the different sides of the issue, and make a recommendation on what the law of the land should be.

All well and good in theory you might say, but can it work for real? Yes it did. People with wildly differing initial opinions, came together on a middle ground recommendation. How did it become law you might ask? Well the Irish legislature decided to put the CA’s recommendations up to a national referendum, and the people voted, and it easily passed, and those recommendations, from a demographically diverse group of citizens, without a financial or political stake, became law. Law that, according to various surveys, closely matches public opinion.

In a way, this was quite freeing for the politicians, no longer having to worry about taking a stand one way or the other, of offending some voters at the expense of others, no longer having to frame such a complex issue with sound bites for their base.

I highly recommend Googling “When Citizens Assemble” on YouTube to learn about that particular CA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjpuDk9_BWI The video was shot before the final ending resolution became law. And to further research democracywithoutelections.org, sortitionfoundation.org, and helena.org to learn more about how CAs are being used today for other issues around the globe. This is actually happening, it can be done. It’s not pie in the sky.

Instead of people gathering and protesting with Pro-Life and Pro-Choice signs, I’d love to see them gather to demand a Citizens’ Assembly be convened to write the law of the land, and not nine, politically appointed, individuals.

Forest and Trees

Pat Hynes, on the anniversary of Hiroshima, wrote an op-ed piece in the Greenfield Recorder about work to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and looked to the way a forest of trees cooperates as a model for human behavior.

In that same issue of the Recorder was an article about a couple with a prominent BLM sign that keeps getting defaced. Previous issues had articles about John Turner’s massacre of a Native American village as people wonder if Turner’s Falls is really such a good name for that local town.

This is the op-ed piece I wrote referring to all that.

I share Pat Hynes’s horror at the current state of global nuclear arsenals. I also share her wonder at the ways the trees in the forest communicate. I mean even the tomato plants in my garden are talking to each other for their mutual benefit by sending chemical messages through the soil.

But I think the forests also illustrate the real problem with nuclear proliferation. Those amazing technologies employed by the trees to help each other is also used to wage war amongst the different species. The evergreens and the deciduous trees are fighting for control of the forest, just as my tomatoes are battling the weeds for my garden. The forest pines have no problem using their needles to create a soil inhospitable to oaks.

The lush variety and wonder of our local woods has come about due to a balance of power, as each species uses its own weapons and networks to compete with the others.

In much the same ways different cultures have both lived and fought through human history. In much the same way the nuclear powers co-exist today. But, as Pat Hynes points out, it really has gone too far, it really is very scary.

Let’s go back to the Japanese and Americans in WW II. Comparing us to trees, the question then is, were we just common members of the same species who should work for a common good? Or members of different species who see each other as threats?

Clearly at that time we saw each other as threats and used our technologies accordingly. Them at Pearl Harbor, us at Hiroshima.

Clearly if we want to save the planet as being fit for human habitation we need to do the equivalent of having oaks and pines agree to work together. This will not be easy.

The problem with Japan and America at the end of WW II is we didn’t understand each other. A Japanese friend of mine once recommended a book to better understand Japanese culture and thinking. It was called the “Chrysanthemum and the Sword” by Ruth Benedict. The book itself is interesting and informative, but what I found even more interesting is how it came to be written.

It was written by an anthropologist who was hired by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1946. We really were looking for answers, for clues to understand the “them.” Did it work?

Well I believe it did, for it shaped the thinking of American – Japanese relations after the war. Unlike my father who witnessed the death and destruction in the Pacific caused by the clash of our nations, I only knew a World where the Japanese were our friends. It’s actually hard for me to imagine the Japan that my father knew.

I believe it is this sort of cross-cultural understanding that will be vital in curing our global ills.

I just finished reading “Mayflower” by Nathaniel Philbrick. It is all about understanding the cultural clashes between the Puritans and the Native Americans. And just as Pat Hynes points out about WW II days, there were those then that understood and tried to reach less deadly solutions to the conflicts. But the majority simply didn’t understand, or even care to understand. The atrocities of King Phillip’s War, on both sides, were the result of that. What John Turner did to the Native Americans at what is now Turner’s Falls was exactly the same as what we did at Hiroshima. And for the exact same reasons.

Sigh, it goes on and on. Robert McNamara, a main architect of the Viet Nam War, later went to North Vietnam to try to better understand his counterpart there. Guess what? There was a big misunderstanding. We didn’t understand that it really was just a civil war in a small country. They didn’t understand why giant America cared so much about their small civil war. They didn’t grasp the weight of the Cold War on our psyche.

We were worried about nuclear Armageddon and saw Viet Nam as part of that. I grew up practicing hiding under my Long Island desk in case a nuke was dropped on NYC, which seemed a real possibility at the time.

Can we learn to understand each other on a global scale? Bringing it closer to home, can the left-leaning people of Massachusetts learn to understand why the right-leaning people hate us so? Can the owners of the BLM sign in Orange understand the person who keeps defacing it?

La Noche de las Tortugas

The Night of the Turtles

I got to spend another week in Cancun getting more work done at (product placements coming) Cancun Dental Specialists. I stayed at the Flamingo Resort hotel which is right across the street. The dental work was good, as was the resort, but that’s not what this is about.

Walking along the beach one day I saw some strange tracks.

With a groove down the middle between two scalloped rows…

I wondered what could have made them. They all connected the sea and deep, freshly dug, depressions, three or four feet in diameter.

And then I thought — Sea Turtles!

A woman with excellent English and a French? accent came out from a condo on the beach where I was standing. She saw me taking pictures and came out and explained.

It was turtles. They come out at night and lay their eggs which then take weeks before they hatch. But there’s a problem. Frigate birds, which I loved watching fly, were hanging out just waiting for baby turtles to eat.

Hmmm, is that why I saw so many when I first arrived?

They have a six to seven foot wing span..

So, she and her husband would wait for the turtles to hatch and gather them up and hold them until dark, when it was safe to let them in the ocean.

There were also conservationists who would ride up and down the beach on ATVs and collect the eggs and put them in nurseries. There was one at the Flamingo hotel.

Each with a sign documenting the date the egg was collected, so they would know when they would hatch.

She said they saw turtles at any time of night, after sunset, before sunrise and in the middle of the night.

So I decided to go and look. The first night I went out after dark. I saw nothing. The next night it rained. The following night I woke up at 2 AM and thought, I’m going to look for turtles.

I walked one way down the beach, seeing some fresh tracks but no turtles. I turned around and headed back, with a half moon hanging over the ocean. As I was walking, I saw a small light down by the water. A flashlight of a person? Too dim. Some phosphorescence? Too regular. Maybe moonlight reflecting off the back of a turtle???

Maybe you can’t see the small circle of light below the moon light, but I could.

I approached and in the dark, saw a big old turtle crawl from the water’s edge over the sea weed. I watched as it lumbered along. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, and rest. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, and rest.

I wanted to watch the whole drama unfold, but really? This turtle was moving sooo slow. OK, OK, I have nothing else to do. I didn’t want to use a light because in the 1960s movie Mondo Cane they said artificial light confused the turtles.

But I couldn’t help myself and took one flash photo. I was behind and the turtle was making its way up that steep mini-cliff that ran along the beach. It didn’t seem to mind.

The iPhone takes surprisingly good night time photos. Well, still dark, but here you see the turtle digging its nest, throwing up sand.

And crawling away, the white on the left of the nest is the underbelly of the turtle.

Compare to the photo above, you can see the turtle has moved further away.

And then it returned to the ocean. I tried to capture the turtle wading into the sea in the moonlight, but you can’t see the turtle in any of them. Here though is some glint of moonlight off the turtles back as it approached the sea. The same lighting that first drew my attention.

The next day I wanted to go back and see the nest of the turtle I had watched. On the way I saw this evidence of another turtle’s work, covering resort beach chairs in sand as a result. Yes, there were nests all in and about the resort’s chairs.

Beach chairs covered by another sea turtle’s nest building.

Here then are the photos of the track and nest from the night before.