Of Monkeys and Banks

In my third Feelgood Friday post I said I wanted “to go right up into the horrors of the world today and find beauty in them” but last week I really enjoyed the bunnies. Is there another recent news story that involves serious issues for the human race and cuddly animals?

Why yes, yes there is.

Deforestation! Now there’s a dire issue. Expanses of essential forest are disappearing, worsening climate change, robbing all of us of the advantageous (medical) secrets undiscovered in the verdant depths, depriving us of our natural heritage, and threatening extinction of an unknowable number of species with just as much right to exist on the planet as we do. 

You didn't know they get along?

Including...baby chimpanzees! Cute, cuddly, big-eyed and fuzzy-headed baby chimpanzees. And tigers, for crying out loud! As if we have enough of those to spare.

Videos like this one are pretty damn shocking. And it’s all for 1%er corporate profit from producing disposable packaging. Paper and pulp. Since we need more junk mail, redundant print-outs, and packaging.

But what can we really do against corporate titans? Sign a petition? Scoff! Go for it Greenpeace, but we all know banks are impervious to morality. (Unless they happen to be in Iceland, the one country with the ethical cajones to actually hold its bankers accountable.)

And yet, after less than three weeks, Santander bank decided not to continue funding the deforestation. It turns out that even a massive bank pays attention nowadays when 167,513 people sign a petition, 14,788 send emails to the CEO, hundred pick up the phone, people visit branches to speak their consciences, and the video gets shared 100,000 times. Or perhaps they’re just an abnormally human company. That’s theoretically possible.

One bank pulling their funding may not be enough to persuade a company like April to find a better way, but it sends a powerful message that perhaps rapacious business-as-usual isn’t going to be so as-usual for long.

Loving the forests of my homeland, Mt Tamalpais yesterday

Home sweet home. Cool shade, soft air, and damp earth, beside flowing water, under patient boughs, and between sagacious trunks. Jungles are great, but I never appreciated the particulars of my homeland forests until I’d seen their contrasts. In my native woods, you can see more than a few feet, you don’t drip sweat unless you earn it, and you can touch, sit, and rest as you will, pretty much unconcerned that something awful is going to bite you. Want to touch that tree as you go by? Go for it. No bullet ants, here.

I cherish my memories of tropical jungles and rainforests, but the single greatest difference between them and my spirit’s primordial stomping grounds is that after a few days in the jungle, I’m exhausted. Tired from sweat, heat, humidity, and the constant watch for venomous (or simply belligerent) beasties, as the monkey within me worries about being eaten. But when I emerge from even a few hours in a redwood forest, lordy lordy, you could build a domino castle on my equanimity.

So when a friend asked if I wanted to head up to Mount Tamalpais yesterday, just across the Golden Gate from San Francisco, the answer was clear, and my gratitude assured.

And better yet, he’s one of the more talented photographers I know, AND has a tripod he can loan me, for a certain sudden trip, which begins a week from Wednesday. Not sure I’ll use a tripod in those dancing streets, where only the cigar smoke stays the same, but it’s nice to know I have the option.

Note, I’m also editing-challenged, and suspect this Bangkok-mall-discount-laptop monitor is hardly precise, so if you have any feedback (on any aspect), y’all photographers out there, let me know. And also, I bracketed most of my exposures, but came home to remember that I ain’t got no HDR software, and this tired old hardware probably can’t manage the sophisticated editing software… Anyone know of a smallish but reliable HDR program?

(The rest of the gallery from yesterday is on the vagabondurges.com version, here.)

And finally, I’m going easy on y’all with the wordcount this week because that last one was a bit long, but I’m hoping you’ll read it (here) anyway.

Happy trails!