Progressive Wednesday

“Here kitty, kitty…”

When I was a kid, we had a calico cat named Mr. Munchkin. I’m serious. My sister and I named him despite protests from our parents, such as: “This cat is a girl kitty” and “No, really. This is a girl cat.” Even at the time (I was 11, my sister 8), we apparently felt that many traditional gender roles and terminology needed to go the way of the Model T. To appease them, we called her Munch.

Munch was an indoor cat, but on occasion we’d let her outside in the summer, leaving the back storm door open a crack so she could scuttle back inside on a whim. So, one Sunday, my mother, father, sister, grandmother, and I sat on the back porch, chowing down on burgers and coleslaw, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed Munch slowly stalking toward a row of arborvitaes. She often did this, hiding as low as she could in the grass, her brown, tan, black, and white coat poorly diguised against the green; since cats ain’t colorblind, she might have been just plain dumb or overwhelmed by instinct. The creeping continued for a couple of minutes as she made her way.

As those conifers exploded with a small flock of blackbirds, she did her best feline interpretation of Florence Griffith-Joyner sprinting back toward the house. The look on her face said: “What the &%$! were those? Why, big thing who fills my food dish, didn’t you tell me about those?” And who could blame her: the closest she’d come to a bird was the catnipped toys she got stoned on. Of course, instead of running through the opening in the doorway, she ran right into the door. I’m not sure I ever loved her more.

20 years later, I still adore cats, though I’m not one of those cat people. So I’m intensely interested in organizations and projects that protect and assist our feline friends. Sure the ASPCA rocks. While a bit gungho and too angry for our liking, PETA’s at least got good and helpful intentions. But I’m quite concerned about cat overpopulation (hey, Bob Barker’s got the right idea), and the organization Operation Catnip is right up the progressive alley.

This outfit performs “trap-neuter-return” with feral cats. By doing this, they reduce cat overpopulation, which is bad for the animals and the environment, since these cats lack natural preditors, and helps the overall heath of cat communities (called colonies). An additional benefit is that university vet clinics are used for the neutering and administration of vaccinations, thus giving vet students an opportunity to work with living animals (as opposed to, you know, just dead ones) that don’t belong to anyone. If you’d like, you can make a small donations here, and help cats, cities, and students. If you can’t afford to, we understand. Just knowing more about organizations like this one is part of progressivism.

Photo c/o Dana Instanbul.

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Drop a dime, save a maple

I’m willing to wager, dollars to donuts, that you’ve heard of the Do Not Call Registry. And if you’ve heard of it, I’m also betting you’ve signed up. If you haven’t, do it, baby. You want telemarketers to leave you alone? This free government service is for you.

So that’ll take care of that thing that rings, waking the cat sleeping on your lap, who, as he or she leaps away suddenly terrified, only scratches the hell out of your leg if you’re lucky.

What about junk mail, those Wal-Mart fliers and grocery coupons, a googolplex of new credit card offers and one too many Publisher’s Clearinghouse promises of riches? Well, we may have stumbled on an answer.

Green Dimes is a service that gets your name and address off junk mail lists. You read that right: no more junk mail. By stopping the annoyance that is a mailbox full of useless crap, you in turn save, quite literally, forests full of trees. There is a hitch, though: it costs you one dime each day. That’s it: 365 FDR heads. (Sorry, I made it sounds a hell of a lot more morbid than it is.) That’s 36 smackers a year. That’s six trips to fast-food joints (and, c’mon, we all know we should at least cut back our McMeals by at least six each year).

But Green Dimes (you can read more about Green Dimes and similar services in this Newsweek article) is more than a junk-mail prevention service: they’re true conservationists. In association with Trees for the Future, Green Dimes “[sponsors] tree planting on behalf of [its] members.”

So let’s break this down old school:

1. Save some trees.
2. Plant some trees.
3. Spend next to nothing.
4. Stop getting junkmail.

Another fantastic service is 41 Pounds, which does almost the same thing as Green Dimes, except half of their profits go to nonprofit organizations. An additional benefit of 41 Pounds is that they promise to keep 80% to 95% of your bulk mail away for 5 years.

Whichever one you go with, go with one: your mailbox will thank you. (Please note: your mailbox is an inanimate object and will not in fact thank you; we’re not all-out looney, okay?)

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The Grand Canyon, only grander

I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon; I’ve only seen it from a jet, streaming overhead at some ridiculous speed. Nonetheless, I remember being in awe. No, it was more than awe. It was so beautiful my reaction was like forgetting, for a moment, who I was. I’m determined, one of these days, to make my way back there, to hike to the bottom and camp out under stars, each slightly higher from that lower ground.

And then I read this article on NationalGeographic.com, and let’s just say that the urgency for a real trip has magnified:

Members of a Native American group based in a remote part of Arizona are hoping to entice more tourists by inviting visitors to step off the edge of the Grand Canyon. The 1,500-member Hualapai tribe announced last week that the Skywalk– ”a giant, 30-million-dollar steel-and-glass walkway– ”will open to the public in March 2007.

The Skywalk will jut out 70 feet (21 meters) from the canyon rim, allowing tourists to go for a stroll with nothing between their feet and the Colorado River– ”4,000 feet (1,220 meters) below– ”except for four inches (ten centimeters) of glass.

The Hualapai, or “People of the Tall Pines,” are working with the Las Vegas, Nevada-based Destination Grand Canyon to market the Skywalk and draw in valuable tourist dollars.

As the article indicates, the Skywalk (you can find construction photos here) is linked up with casino tourism (something we find fairly repressive most of the time) and some of the tribal leaders are rightfully concerned that the development will damage sacred ground and graves (something we are also concerned about). Collectively though, this Native nation is allowing the Skywalk to be built, and, well, I’m going to go. I’m going to go and not gamble a dime. I’m going to go and stare down into the gorge below. And I’m going to respect this world of ours even more.

* Photograph courtesy of Destination Grand Canyon (click to enlarge)

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“Living fossil” lived

In “Pretty Damned Good News for Nature News”, there’s this:

A species of shark rarely seen alive because its natural habitat is 600 meters (2,000 ft) or more under the sea was captured on film by staff at a Japanese marine park this week.

… Marine park staff caught the 1.6 meter (5 ft) long creature, which they identified as a female frilled shark, sometimes referred to as a “living fossil” because it is a primitive species that has changed little since prehistoric times.

The severely ill animal was captured, but “the shark died a few hours after being caught.” But (and this is a Sir-Mix-A-Lot-sized but) at least these somewhat ugly suckers are still kicking and screaming (or swimming and… well, I don’t know what sound sharks make). The platypus, the llama, the manatee, and now this ridiculously wonderful creation. A divine high five to Whomever made this thing possible — it boggles the imagination, I tell you, and not this kind of Boggle neither. It’s glorious, really.

You can learn more about Chlamydoselachus anguineus here, or you can take a gander at a photo for yourself, or you can watch some footage below:

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