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First Women in HIstory Admitted to Acclaimed Deep Springs College

Deep Springs College 2018 freshman class includes first women in school history. 10 women and 5 men are admitted to first co-ed class.

For the first time in its 101 year history, Deep Springs college, a highly regarded, but remote and isolated junior college in eastern California, about 40 miles southeast of Bishop near the Nevada border,  has enrolled its first female students. Ten women and five men make up the new class of 2018. The  two-year school’s normal total enrollment is between 25 and 30 students. The large  number of incoming women was to provide at least a 1/3 voice in the student body, who have a significant role in the administration of the college, including student activities and discipline.

This is a great step for gender equality at a school that has spent the past seven years in litigation over whether or not women should be admitted, not to mention pressure from institutions and individuals close to the college for several years before that, including the Telluride Association, which granted (with low interest) the school $1.8 million in 1988 to remodel the main campus building, but with the covenant that it would have to repay the gift as a loan if women were not admitted by 2019. The school managed to beat the deadline by a year. Deep Springs College has had its fair share of problems over its long history, despite its shining reputation as one of the best collegiate prep colleges in the nation, as attested by its remarkable placement of graduates in the most acclaimed Ivy league schools such as Harvard, Yale and Brown, as well as Oxford, Stanford, Cal Tech, MIT, the University of Chicago, and many others, even though it is, by design, a school that is a cattle and hay ranch, and a dairy farm that provides a free education for its students for their hard labor in the pastures, fields and dairy barn.

In a 2006 article, the New Yorker had this to say, in addition to  apparent homosexuality problems, that “Every major change at Deep Springs has been opposed by the students,” said Christopher Breiseth, former college president. Deep Springs’ s all-male self-enclosure allows its students to feel wildly, hedonically free. The shock of returning to the world of social norms can be profound. In 1994, the college voted against coeducation, but the controversial subject has created a fissure in the school’s relationship with the Telluride Association, where women have been members for 45 years.”

Perhaps the reticent and grudgingly awaited arrival of women students at Deep Springs this summer will provide a new cooperative attitude between the school’s board and the student body and instructors, raising the already sterling reputation of the school to the stratosphere of highly regarded and most reputable of America’s institutions  of higher education.  ~llaw

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Wisdom is a Life Sentence

This photograph of the old Hotel Wisdom in the desolate and isolated town of Wisdom, Montana, reminds me in both name and verse of the old Eagles’ song “Hotel California”:
‘We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave!’Wisdom itself is like the conclusion of that old Eagles’ song. Once we begin at birth to acquire knowledge, no matter by what means, our minds are forever bound to a lifelong quest and need for more knowledge. Eventually we can try to turn off our innate curiosity, our inquisitiveness, our agendas, interests, inquiries and analyses, but we can’t because “We are programmed to receive” You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”

Sometimes over the years many of us resist the urge to learn, acquire knowledge, and find wisdom, but it does those of us who fight it no conceivable good in the long run. In fact allowing our innate curiosity to go stale is probably the worst thing we can do with our lives because it leaves us behind on the valuable scale of knowledge in a very competitive world. And once we fall behind, it is nearly impossible to catch up. So we decide to “check out”, taking the easy way out, and that involves learning from others like ourselves by word of mouth, never knowing if that new knowledge is fact or fiction, but if it seems logical or reasonable in our uneducated minds, we begin to pass it along to others we know. Some of that is what once was known as”old wives’ tales”, but now includes full-blown “conspiracy theories” or propaganda promulgated by the thousands of lies by ignorant people as important as even the president of the United States, and he knows that a minority of the population will believe his lies and follow. But his is a losing effort, because at some point his house of cards will all come tumbling down by the wind of his own hot air.

About two-thirds of America’s population are knowledgeable enough to see through this president and some even have the wisdom to rail against him and his treasonous coup attempt (with Russia and a complicit GOP-led congress) to destroy what the Democratic Republic of America has always stood for and replace it with autocratic fascistic rule where we the people have no civil, social, or even human rights

Those of us who have endorsed  the Trumpian world view have, somewhere along the way,, lost their will to learn and use the knowledge they never had, and the wisdom they never gained. giving  themselves no pause to consider or evaluate the lies, propaganda and conspiracy theories spewing forth from Trump, his administration, sympathizers, and sycophants.

Hopefully the delusional dreams of Trump’s and all his minions’ dangerous dark new world is about to go down in a blaze of glorious delight with  the midterm election on November 6th, 2018 and criminal justice shortly thereafter.  But all of you who wanted to check out will never be able to leave. ~llaw

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The Immanent Takeover of America

This, the immanent takeover of America by subversion, is precisely what I have been whining about for more than three years, and my concern has only grown since then. The validity of the upcoming mid-term election scares the hell out of me, and even if the Dems gain control of the house, it may be just a Trojan Horse. The seeds of absolute fascism have been well-planted and are being nurtured with overt aplomb while we watch with our eyes wide open. ~llaw

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John McCain’s Final Message to Trump

“We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals.”

Although there was more to his farewell statement, this part  seems to be intended solely for Trump without mentioning his name, but Trump will probably say that McCain’s statement was not directed at him because he is the one bringing the people together. But, regardless, he will ignore the message. ~llaw

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R.I.P. JOHN McCAIN

Cathedral Rock near Senator McCain’s ranch in Sedona, Arizona

Senator McCain was a brave military officer and just as brave as a United States Senator, one of few during his career where he served our country for thirty-six years. He not only had the courage to take on his GOP contemporaries, but also often reach across the aisle to work with Democrats on important critical legislation. America could use more men like John McCain. ~llaw

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Could it be that Mueller is After Them All?

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The Most Vital Aspects of Sustaining Human Life

A friend asked me a while back if there was anything more important than politics, money, corporations, religion, and philosophy concerning the fate of our future on the planet. This was my response: “There are three things–respect for science and the feminine way, and hope like hell for help from above.”

There are many apolitical and economically frugal things we can do to improve all of our lives, both individually and collectively, but the most important issue right now and on into the foreseeable future is to reverse our environmental relationship with Mother Earth before it is too late for politics, religion, money, or anything else to matter.

The summer months in the northern hemisphere over he last five years (2014–2018) comprise the five warmest June through August global temperatures recorded in scientific history, and the entire 2018 year was globally the fourth warmest ever, only cooler than the three previous years. We know that the cause is because of human activity despite what climate change deniers and conspiracy theorists (like our president, his administration and sycophants) would like you to believe.

We are fouling our own nests here on earth, not to mention the natural sanctuaries andrefuges of our innocent victimized fauna and flora. We are on the verge of making our planet uninhabitable. Why and how are we doing this? The answer is simple. We have lost touch with our once natural affinityto respect and love our Mother Earth, long forsaken in exchange for insatiable greed and unsustainable personal comfort. We have given virtually nothing back to her, failing to recognize her for all that she has given us to prosper and thrive. But our constant abuse of her for the sake of  human consumption, coupled with our growing lack of thought, appreciation, or consideration for the critical balance between humanity and nature, has resulted in her rebellion, not because she is vengeful or unwilling to help, but because she is ill, infected by viral hordes of human parasites, so she has no choice but to fight back against us in order to survive.  Yet the wealthy tycoons, the arroghant politicians, the behemoth corporations and their minions pay no attention except to ignore, refute, hide, or destroy the scientific warnings, evidence, and data..

As global warming continues to heat up, mainly from carbon emissions, we are faced with growing pollution of air, water, and soil (even the ocean has become a contaminated waste dump), rapidly rising sea levels, wild atmospheric conditions including more severe droughts, tornadoes, hurricanes, forest fires, freakishly intense any-season storms, and unbreatheable air. And all this is happening at a rate almost exponential from climate change models of just a decade or two ago. No longer can we  afford to ignore or deny climate change or global warming r, yet the Trump administration is feverishly rolling back environmental regulations, deleting EPA, NOAA, and NASA historical records, and purging scientific data from government records, libraries and websites.

If we are to survive as a species here on earth–and not take down millions of other species right along with us–our most important mission, bar none, is to reclaim that old natural affinity of respect and love for Mother Earth and hold her in the highest esteem because she is the only one who ultimately provides us with a home that allows us to continue to exist and even thrive on her soil. But if we continue rebukng, procrastinating and ignnoring her modest expectations, we–according to  our most recent scientific evidence–face extinction in the imminent future. We are already feeling the effects, and science is telling us that global warming may be irreversible in less than a decade. Keep in mind that this planet is the only home we have and we cannot survive Mother Nature’s wrath if we continue to despoil her–unless we are  somehow awakened, blessed with a highly unlikely epiphany of some kind– or maybe even a tough-love intervention by a wiser life form from somewhere else in the universe. What are the odds? ~llaw (updated 05/10/2019)

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Nuclear Deterrence or Nuclear Disarmament?

 The attached opinion article offers well-considered food for thought on the question of nuclear deterrence or nuclear disarmament, something that I will explore in depth on this website as time goes by.

In a truly sophisticated civilized world there would be no question that disarmament is the only choice, but we have a world full of governmental leaders who are full of megalomaniacal hubris who cheat and lie behind the scenes of public discourse, so it would seem that true disarmament could never be achieved.

But by the same argument, how much faith can we have in deterrence when we already have a world with nuclear missiles pointed and poised to fire at each other? ~llaw

The attached article was written by Matthew Bunn, who is a professor of practice at Harvard Kennedy School and is co-principal investigator for the Project on Managing the Atom at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.