Thoughts: Evolution Genetics Philosophy Wisdom
by David Jay Spyker
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Why Do We Keep Messing With Nature?
I would like to submit a hypothetical question: Why do we keep messing with nature, with genetics, it will inevitably be our downfall, won’t it? Surely, altering nature to suit our needs is a slippery slope?
While there is a great potential for disaster, I don’t believe that it will be our destruction. Instead, it will only lead to continuing chapters in our evolutionary history, and is likely the necessary method of adaptation to any challenges we create for ourselves. Mankind has been messing with Nature since more »
Reaching, Always
John Lennon said it in Imagine. Imaginative people have been saying it for centuries, millennia. Maybe enlightenment only comes to the individual, but I like to believe that an entire society is capable of achieving social peace and unity. Dream, imagine, believe; live peace, become love…
Someone has to be the brave and daring soul. Someone has to reach out first, has to be the first – wholly commit to being the one to hold out a hand regardless of the cost, and irrespective of the other’s position.
Someone has to lay down his gun first, and live for peace. It is too easy to die for a cause; it is too tempting to celebrate those who give their lives for a cause.
It is so horrifically simple to hate – to kill for a cause.
It is so much greater to live a life of compassion and respect for all.
We are not all so different that there should be hate. Not one of us has the right to kill another of us – there is no reason on this good Earth that gives us that right. We all share the same blood; when one of us spills the blood of another, it is the blood of us all.
Put aside your selfishness and greed to give your neighbor a hand. Show your fellow man that there is nothing to fear from you. Be the brave one to stand up and take that step.
Every day as we go about our lives, whether on a grand scale or in the little ways, it is a choice each of us must make: Love and peace, or hate and destruction. Every individual has the power to make a difference.
You are not alone, we stand together in love, peace, and hope.
Whatever Holiday you celebrate this season, may it be in Peace, with the ones you love.
– David Jay Spyker
Environment Politics: Environment Global Warming
by David Jay Spyker
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A Call for Environmental Solidarity
Numbers matter. All of the scientific data, and an overwhelming number of internationally respected scientists support that the threat of global warming is a real and present danger. Certain politicians and corporate magnates would deny reality for the sake of personal power and wealth. It is time to send a clear message that we, the people of this world, will no longer stand at idle and allow reality to be twisted. We will not allow our future to be sold out from beneath us.
All of the places in which I played as a child – the empty fields with their summer breezes; the cooling woods dappled with sunlight and adventure; the standing vernal pools and ponds, all a-chirp with the music of toads, birds, and insects; and the small whispering brooks, and trickling wetlands – every last one of these places has been usurped by roads and parking lots, and planted over with houses, office buildings, and businesses. These things bring vehicles, require energy, and create pollution.
Kalamazoo Nature Center, Pond Frog
The same is happening around the world to our last remaining forests and wildernesses, and to our rivers, lakes, and oceans. Greed travels arm in arm with consequence, and the two can never be separated. The consequence of our greed is shrinking glaciers and the disappearance of snow-capped mountains, and the flooding and drought that will follow. Avarice asks of us a toll of warmer ocean waters that bring dying coral reefs, diminishing fisheries, and melting polar ice; it gives us killing heat waves and emboldens hurricanes. What cost are we willing to shoulder? What cost are we willing to pass on to future generations?
Kalamazoo River from the Kalamazoo Nature Center
Removing nature from our lives, and polluting the Earth in favor of this kind of “progress” will always come at a price; a hefty bill is about to come due in the form of global warming. It is time to change the way we do everything, and every single one of us can make small, green changes in our lives that will make a difference. We can also demand that our elected leaders help us with those changes that are too big for just one person to affect. Together, we will make a difference.
Numbers matter. The numbers concerning global warming matter, and even if some of our leaders in Washington do not care much for these numbers, there is one set of numbers that will matter in Washington – the number of people who hold environmental issues as an important political issue. Each of us is a powerful, potential vote. Make it known that you will cast your vote at the polls on behalf of the environment, and for the future of all life on this tiny, blue globe. Make it known that any politician who does not actively support a greener, cooler future will not be elected to office.
Clear Skies
Written September 15, 2001
I went for a long ride on my road bike today, and one particular thing caught my attention – the sky. Something seemed odd, and at first I couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but then it hit me: it was a beautiful, clear day (a gift of a day really) and I found myself riding through an Italian Renaissance painting. There was nothing Italianate in the landscape of course, no distant mountains, no cypresses, no Roman architecture, but the color of the sky, and the quality of the light was akin to that which I have only previously seen in older paintings – Italian, or perhaps pieces from the Hudson River School era.
With virtually all air travel suspended, there were no contrails, and the massive quantities of airline pollution that are daily pumped into the upper atmosphere over the States had finally cleared to unveil a sublime, azure masterpiece the likes of which I have never seen in person, and very likely will never behold again. It was indeed a peaceful – dare I say transcendent – experience. I find myself unable to conjure words that will carry enough weight of expression to communicate the experience. I suppose you just had to be there… Maybe you were.
Footnote addendum: An interesting article in U.S. News & World Report on May 27, 2002 titled, “Cool your jets”, cited a study presented at an American Meteorological Society conference. The study used satellite photos to “track military jet contrails as they spread within just a few hours into sheets of high cloud covering thousands of square miles”. It went on to say that another study showed how spreading contrails limit temperature extremes by dimming sunlight and trapping heat closer to the ground. During the ban on air travel more than 4000 weather stations reported a temperature range more than 1 degree Celsius wider than normal.
September 11
On September 11, 2001 and the few days after, I wrote what follows in a notebook; my thoughts simply poured onto the page in snippets with no logical chronology. In the week or so that followed the 11th, as I began to process these events, I organized these thoughts into what you now see before you. I did not have a blog at the time, and have been looking over things I have written in the past, so I have chosen to share this with you today.
September 11, 2001
This is not the world we wanted; it is not the world we planned. This is not the way we had hoped it would be; this is most certainly not the way it should be. We, collectively, have come so far; we have so far yet to travel. No, this is, without a doubt, not the way things should be.
Today two buildings collapsed.
I watched the jetliner strike the tower, an errant missile filled with precious, irreplaceable cargo. I watched it over and over. I watched the buildings fall, each in turn like weary guards crumbling with fatigue. Sleep. All day long I witnessed it over and over – a surreal event played out on a technological stage for the entire world to see. I know it happened, I saw it happen, but I do not believe it happened. It must be the stuff of modern cinematic wizardry. It is not.
Wives and husbands will not be coming home. Daughters and sons will not be coming home. Mothers and fathers will not be coming home.
Today humanity revealed its nastiest face.
The television brings me images of people celebrating in the streets of some distant land, rejoicing at the deaths of fellow human beings. It is not just adult men and women, there are children taking part in the macabre victory dance. The despicable torch of hatred is passed to the next generation.
A well-known religious leader in this country urges vengeance, revenge, and swift military retribution against those we suspect (suspect, mind you, we know nothing yet) are responsible. A religious leader… More hatred.
Today humanity revealed its most courageous face.
Men and women ran into the claws of death to snatch their fellow human beings from its cold and crushing grip. I wonder, what gave them the courage to offer of themselves so personally, so deeply? Is that something I could have done? I realize that have no idea; I am not there.
Today, I feel fear. I know it is reactionary, transitory – the empty space between heartbeats when one waits for the other shoe to drop – and it will pass soon, but for now, that is what I feel.
More than recurring terrorism, I fear the saber rattling and chest-pounding that will surely come of this. The president, the man who holds office at this moment, loves power more than anything else – more than diplomacy, more than sensibility, more than leadership, and more than the people of this country and of this world. War can give a leader power, and this man itches for power within the facade of what began an impotent presidency. Kids, each born and raised in this country, will die; kids, each born and raised somewhere in the Middle East, will die; and the cycle of hate and fear will grow like an infection until it stains the world.
We desperately need a leader who possesses the wisdom to choose a higher and nobler course despite the din of an outraged nation – a nation, which at the moment, is far too frightened and angry to think straight. Now is the time for a great leader to stand up and act by what is right, rather than by the will of a people driven to the edge. Today I fear for this country, and I fear for this world. I fear we will not have this leader.
Today we are not one country; we are one world.
This world is no longer wide; it has become so very small.
We are not they and we; we are only we.
Today, I fear we will forget this.
A Trip to the Art Institute of Chicago
On a recent trip to Chicago we spent several hours in the Art Institute viewing our favorite paintings, and seeing some wonderful, recent acquisitions. It had been a long time since our last visit there – too long, really, maybe two, perhaps three years – and it was an interesting experience. Much of the American art collection had been rearranged, and the place had that weird, alien-yet-familiar feel at first.
In The Sea by Arnold Bocklin (detail)
I say it was an interesting experience because, from my perspective, I knew I would be viewing these pieces through eyes which have been changed by personal study, and through experience as a painter over the past few years. My hope was to see new things, new techniques, and expanded artistic languages and expressions within the layers of paint that hang upon those walls. I was not disappointed.
It is amazing how much a painter can learn about another artist and his techniques by studying his work up close. As I learn more, I come to see more information twinkling in a masterpiece, and the more I see, the more I learn. I find myself wondering what I will see and understand after another decade or two of study and painting.
On this visit, I was paying particular attention to the various representations of water in the American landscapes, and in the more classical realistic works. There was something I sought, and I think that perhaps I found it, but only time at the easel will reveal what fruits will be borne of the experience. I am hoping for a rich harvest.
Remember to visit often the things you love, lest your soul starve, and your heart wither.
~David Jay Spyker
Synthetic Gecko
That’s what they are calling it – “Synthetic Gecko”. The minuscule fibers that line a gecko’s paw pads actually interact with surfaces on a molecular level. This is what allows a gecko to hang upside-down on a sheet of glass. According to the BBC, researchers have developed a polymer sheet that has a surface covered with millions of microscopic hairs, which allow it to act on the same molecular principles employed by the gecko. They claim that a one meter square of the substance could hold a car to a ceiling. That is something I would like to see, though I still wouldn’t stand beneath it.
Throughout our existence, mankind has been inspired by nature when it comes to invention. After all, nature did it first. We are all products of the natural world. We derive wondrous medicines and materials from the natural world. All manner of science is inspired by animals and plants, and their natural processes. Aside from its providing us the basic necessities of life, which is no small thing in its own right, we owe a considerable debt to the ecosystem in which we live for everything else it has given us.
It has been said by millions of people around the globe – I am sure billions of times – but I will say it here again too because it doesn’t seem to be getting through to some of the most influential people. It is long past the time that we begin to better respect our interconnected world environment, and to repair the damage we have done.
We are finally beginning to understand the ultimately complex workings of Gaia; there is so much ahead of us, and so much to do to ensure that we never discover it is too late for us – before we have taken the last of it, and the only kind of gecko we have left is synthetic.
Imago
[Homines Partus]
Spring came with awakening, came with innocence and joy
Spring came with fascination and desire to deploy
Summer came with restlessness and curiousity
Summer came with longing for the things we could not be
Take me to the forest, take me to the trees
Take me anywhere as long as you take me
Take me to the ocean, take me to the sea
Take me to the Breathe and BE
Autumn came with knowledge, came with ego came with pride
Autumn came with shamefulness for the things we could not hide
Winter came with anger and a bitter taste of fate
Winter came with fear for the things we could not escape
Take me to the forest, take me to the trees
Take me anywhere as long as you take me
Take me to the ocean, take me to the sea
Take me to the Breathe and BE
Teach me of the forest, teach me of the trees
Teach me anything as long as you teach me
Teach me of the ocean, teach me of the sea
Teach me of the Breathe and BE
See me! I am the one creation
Hear me! I am all the love that came from Animae
Know me! I am the incarnation
Fear me! I am all the power held by Animae
Me!
Give me of the forest, give me of the trees
Give me anything as long as it’s for me
Give me of the ocean, give me of the sea
Give me of the Breathe and BE
Give me all the forests, give me all the trees
Give me everything as long as it’s for free
Give me all the oceans, give me all the seas
Give me all the breathing BE
~ Pain of Salvation, from the album titled “BE”
KIA Artbreak Slide Presentation
I will be giving a brief presentation at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 for the KIA’s Artbreak series. It will begin 12:15, and should run approximately twenty minutes. The slides will feature a selection of paintings from 1995 through 2005 as I give my thoughts on each piece.
A Brief Thought on Artistic Community
Recent events in my own life have reminded me of the importance of community between artists. It is all too easy to become insular, isolated, when living as an artist. Our work requires hours of solitary action, observation, and thought, but without creative interaction – between artists, and also between artists and the world at large – there is indeed a certain void in our lives.
“Flow” Wins Award
"Flow", 2006, Acrylics on Canvas, 20" x 24", by David Jay Spyker
David Jay Spyker has been awarded The Martin Maddox Prize for Imaginative Realist Painting at the Kalamazoo Area Show for “Flow”, a painting in acrylics on canvas. The prize is named after the artist Martin Maddox – who was a friend of Mr. Spyker – and it has been awarded at the show each year since Maddox’s death in 1997. Martin Maddox was known for the emotive, evocative, and imaginative style of his figurative paintings in oils and pastels.
The Kalamazoo Area Show is an annual regional art competition held at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. This year’s installment runs from July 1 – August 26, 2006; the show drew 718 entries (a record number), of which only 158 were accepted for exhibition by juror Tim Lowly. It is a very strong show this year, and is well worth the visit.