Posted on by Jo Gent · 1 Comment

Fetid, Tepid, and Infested

The Great Salt Lake is Great in that it’s huge, and even huger prehistorically, when it spanned the Eastern half of current-day Utah. It’s also really flat, covered with tiny flies, and stinky due to one of its other two aquatic lifeforms, anerobic bacteria. Brine shrimp round out the water fauna trio.

Interpretive signs, and there are lots, point out that brine shrimp and brine flies draw migrating birds in their multitudes, and I imagine those might be nice to see, especially while wearing breathing apparatus. Boats offer to take visitors on a trip where one can float effortlessly, so my husband decided to try that from the shore, but ended up just wading, because it was “not really deep enough and kind of gross.”

The word “gross” had occurred to me before he brought it up. Approaching the shore, one crosses a beach composed of oolitic “sand,” which comes not from rocks but from biomass, and I just described the local bio types sourcing mass. It’s unpleasant on three counts: color, odor, and texture. Following that is deep black mud, which engulfed my husband’s legs halfway up his calves.

I noticed five interpretive signs I had missed outside the visitor center, and they turned out to be about the large copper mine just over the highway. GSL is a no-exit terminus for water and its associated mineral load, which is not just salt; the world’s largest open-pit copper mine/manmade excavation are here. Plus several smaller ones. So we can add tailings and mine sludge to the local attractions list.

To complete that list of amenities, I will mention wasps, spiders, heavy machinery, pelting sun with no shade escapes, and 30-square foot gravel lots for RVs. No plants? Well, maybe some scrub. I don’t really remember any.

Speaking of plants, the mountains here and in most of Nevada look to be made of dirt or rock and are mostly bare of trees, but can be quite majestic nonetheless, at least the ones that aren’t being used for industrial purposes. However, the wonderland of geo-sculpted formations and canyons that comprise four of Utah’s five national parks, as well as its fabulous ski resorts, are not near here. Maybe we’ll see some on the way out tomorrow.

Posted on by Jo Gent · 1 Comment

Knowledge v. Learning

Knowing was a barrier which prevented learning. -Frank Herbert

As anyone debugging a computer program who has ever skipped over a routine they “know” is working can attest, knowledge can impede insight. Knowledge is a stone, a wall, a fallback position, an opt-repeated aphorism, a discussion-ender, an assertion of superiority, a casual rebuke to the curious. Learning is a river, a tide, a question, a detailed observation, a discussion-starter, an admission of ignorance, an invitation to the curious.

This intro leads me to a bifurcation, as I feel equally able to confirm or dispute this assertion, the curse of the former debater. I started writing with the expectation of confirmation so I will continue, though I admit that knowledge has some use in our world, used as a guide rather than a bludgeon, though I personally prefer lore.

Everyone today knows raw milk is dangerous to consume. That’s because raw milk was demonized to the public over doctors’ objections after industry was able to monetize homogenized and pasteurized milk in the 1920s. Milk is a natural substance that evolved to help baby animals grow–as opposed to nut milk, which is an oxymoron–and any human mom who has gone to the trouble of expressing her milk would never waste that effort by blending or microwaving it. This knowledge has nearly eliminated access to this therapeutic substance a century later, and led to a deluge of unnecessary “lactose-intolerance.”

Everyone knows that wild turkeys are quite dumb and really do drown by holding their mouths open in rain. Yet they are actually quite smart, as described by a variety of sources ranging from bamboozled hunters in North America during the 18th century to police reports of a wild turkey gang systematically terrorizing Brookline, Massachusetts in the 2000s. This type of knowledge, the assumption of human superiority over wild animals of all kinds, continues to prevent us from understanding numerous interconnections between us and wild animals, such as sharing of disease vectors.

In a recent poll, over 60% of Americans, almost everyone, were found to believe, or know, that crime is a huge problem in our country, though only 17% believe it is a problem for them locally. Statistics suggest that the gap may be due to media influence rather than reality. This knowledge leads to a fearful populace and to wasting community resources solving non-existent problems.

Everyone knows homelessness is caused by drug use, laziness, illegal immigration, lawlessness, and financial downturns. Those factors may contribute to anecdotal cases, but homelessness as a phenomenon is definitely caused by two few homes. It simply does not exist where there are plenty of homes. This knowledge guarantees we will never solve it.