By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.

The Cycles of Life Continue

At some ideas you stand perplexed,
especially at the sight of human sins,
uncertain whether to combat it by force or by human love.
Always decide, "I will combat it with human love."
If you make up your mind about that once and for all,
you can conquer the whole world.
Loving humility is a terrible force;
it is the strongest of all things
and there is nothing like it."
-- Feodor Dostoyevsky

My mom died last month after a mercifully short fight with terminal lung cancer. And while our connection during her life was oftentimes problematic, her passing at this time of year, and because of the presence of my 17 month old son in my life, has dramatically reminded me of the cycles of life and the rhythms of nature, so easy to overlook with talk of war and crime sprees dominating our lives.

All the people of Earth have, since the dawn of time, experienced these rhythms of the planet of our birth. Those rhythms, if made a part of our lives, create an ebb and flow that can regulate the pace of our daily lives. Through the connection with the Earth that our seasonal cycles foster, we don't get caught up in the trap of our technology and current events that keeps us moving, nonstop, between events, separated from the natural world.

Early morning fog and autumn colors reflected in the Maryland's Patuxent River. (Photo by Mary Hollinger courtesy NOAA)

For at least the last 12,000 years, people all over the world have celebrated the passage of time, the journey of the Earth around the Sun, in ways that have connected their lives to the life of our planet. How might our lives be changed, our environmental problems be helped, and our ability to look beyond race or color or religious preference enhanced if we took more time to recognize the seasons and the wisdom they bring?

As the Earth in its journey around the Sun takes us toward Winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the days will get shorter and shorter. The darkness will increase until we reach the Winter Solstice in December. From there, the darkness recedes and the days lengthen.

We participants in the modern world won’t notice it – our streetlights and headlights and indoor lighting have long since dulled our notice of the differences between light and dark. But to people who are more connected to the natural world, these are powerful times. It is a time to make peace with the dark and to consider it as part of the light, not to be feared but to be embraced.

Lights of Las Vegas (Photo courtesy Seven Seas Travel)

In Winter, leaves die and nature withers, spent after giving forth her abundance of life giving foods. She must rest so that the cycle can begin again. For those who came before us and those who strive today to be part of the natural world, it is naturally a time to reflect upon death, its meaning and importance. Darkness will soon overtake the light. It is an important time of regeneration, not a time of evil.

We also let parts of ourselves die each year, leaving behind behaviors and experiences that we no longer wish to be part of our lives, our hopes, and our dreams. This year, we might want to focus on leaving behind the blindness that comes from being overloaded with images and awareness of terrible events with which we are bombarded every day.

This self imposed blindness has created an epidemic of bad decisions, faulty reasoning, and false beliefs about how things work on our world.

For example, from the 1940s until 1972 when it was banned, DDT was used for insect control all over the world. Millions of tons were used and the chemical can still be found worldwide in our lakes, streams, oceans, and soil. While it breaks down quickly when exposed to sunlight, it doesn’t break down well in soil and lasts a long time in water.

Proven to cause terrible neurological and reproductive damage and a suspected carcinogen in humans, DDT is still used worldwide even though it is illegal to use it in the United States. It is passed to infants through breastmilk.

DDT was even used to sterilize hospital instruments, spray foods, and prevent insect infestations in museum objects. Our nation’s museum employees, normally not considered at great risk, are exposed to DDT if they handle museum specimens that have been around since the 1940s.

In an effort to find out how much DDT is in our nation’s waterways, the Environmental Protection Agency began collecting fish samples in the late 1990s from hundreds of lakes and streams. In 1999, five small trout were gathered from Lake Chelan in central Washington State. They were gathered near where a creek empties into the lake that has been known to carry pesticide laden runoff over the years.

Lake Chelan, Washington (Photo courtesy National Parks Service)

The EPA found 1,481 parts per billion of DDT in the Lake Chelan fish tested. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has set a human ingestion limit of five parts per million in fish. If the problem found in those five fish is representative of fish in the rest of the lake, which is quite likely, then people who consume fish multiple times per week could approach the FDA’s limit.

What do the Washington State authorities have to say about this? The “Seattle Post-Intelligencer,” reported some of their comments on October 19, 2002.

“The number of fish sampled is extremely small and the body of water so large we don’t feel like we have enough information to issue an advisory,” said Dr. Jude Van Buren, the state Health Department’s director of environmental health assessment.

Yet the same health department issued an advisory to not eat more than one meal a week of all bottom fish because of DDT contamination in Washington’s Yakima River. The Yakima’s DDT level was measured at 840 parts per billion, less than half of what Lake Chelan trout contained.

Patricia Cirone, program manager of the EPA’s Seattle based Region 10 office, said, “All of us are thinking we should go back to that lake and test more fish.” She went on to say “I’m not surprised to find DDT. With such a tiny fish ... it makes me suspect the sample. There’s something not quite right to me.” She ended her comments by saying that based on the one test “I wouldn’t cut my trout diet down. I would eat trout.”

Their blinders are fully in place.

It will take decisive action to eliminate the blinders we have put on to ward off the truth. It will take letters to elected representatives, boycotts, protests, and changes in behaviors for all of us.

We need energy and motivation for those actions, fuel for our hearts and our souls. The celebration of seasonal cycles can be an easy and meaningful way to create the energy we all need for action.

And we need to act now.

RESOURCES

1. Now more than ever is the time to write your Congressional representatives. Tell them how you feel and what you want. You can find them at: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.asp

2. See a fact sheet on the toxic effects of DDT and its byproducts at: http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts35.asp

3. Read about the seasons at: http://www.equinox-and-solstice.com/index.asp

4. Find alternative sources for information to understand the complexity of world events. Visit:

• Peace Brigades International at: http://www.peacebrigades.org/index.asp
  
• Nuclear Age Peace Foundation at: http://www.napf.org/
  
• Perspectives from around the world on the terrorist attacks at: http://www.napf.org/terrorism/index.htm
  
• Peace News at: http://www.gn.apc.org/peacenews/
  
• War Resistors International at: http://www.wri-irg.org/en/index.htm
  
• PeaceNet at: http://www.igc.org/igc/gateway/pnindex.asp
  
• The Nonviolence Web at: http://www.nonviolence.org/.

5. Email Mary Selecky, the secretary of health for the Washington State Department of Health at: Mary.Selecky@DOH.WA.GOV and let her know how you feel. She should begin comprehensive testing of Lake Chelan – and all Washington waterways – immediately and issue a health advisory just in case. Her phone number is 360-236-4010. And while you are at it, find out who regulates DDT in your state and get them to act.

6. Contact Patricia Cirone at EPA’s Region 10 at: cirone.patricia@epa.gov and tell her they really need to accelerate their actions on DDT. And politely suggest that maybe she shouldn’t eat so much trout. You can call that office at 800-424-4EPA.

7. See your Earth anytime of the day or night.

{Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and teacher in Seattle and the author of "Healing Our World", A Journey from the Darkness Into the Light," available at: http://www.xlibris.com/HealingOurWorld.asp or your local bookstore. His new book of photographs and thoughts on interconnectedness, “Of This Earth, Reflections on Connections,” is now available. See a preview at: http://ofthisearth.org. Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions to him at: jackie@healingourworld.com and visit his website at: http://www.healingourworld.com}