Will this sauce win you any awards and get you featured on the Food Network? No. Is it quick and easy and delicious for your weekday grilling adventures? Abso-freakin’-lutely. (If you’re looking for something a little different and a bit fancier, check out my Blackberry BBQ Sauce.)

I used this on boneless pork spareribs that went on the grill, just slathered it right on and basted it with every turn. If you plan on using this on meat after it’s been cooked, my advice would be to simmer it on low for about 20 minutes to cook the tomato paste and get the flavors to melt together. It would also be great on chicken, beef, lamb, shrimp, and game meats.

I like to keep a jar of this in my fridge through the summer grilling season—a batch should last a month or so.

Quick and Easy BBQ Sauce

1 8 oz. jar/can/tube tomato paste

1 Tbsp. blackstrap molasses

1 Tbsp. pure maple syrup

1 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar

1/2 Tbsp. fish sauce

1/2 Tbsp. onion powder

1/2 Tbsp. garlic powder

2 teaspoons smoked paprika

sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

—Combine all ingredients in a bowl together. Either slather on meat as it grills or simmer in a saucepan over medium-low heat for 20 minutes to use on meat after it cooks.

Makes a little more than a cup of sauce.

But what stuck with me about her adjustment was how she gently pushed my chin back so that it wasn’t jutting out. This allows the full weight of the head to be over the vertebrae which should be over the hips which should be over the knees which should be over the feet…well, you get the idea, because alignment.

I immediately responded to Julie that I’m like that when I drive, as though sticking my neck out helps me see better or something. Bizarre. But as visual creatures, I think this is a natural thing we do. Unfortunately, natural doesn’t necessarily mean optimal.

So ever since I’ve been home, I’ve endeavored to change this tendency of mine. Maybe you could benefit from this exercise too, so I thought I’d share it here.

Your driver’s seat should be pretty straight, about one degree of lean away from upright. Sit up nice and tall. This isn’t just your neck or upper back, you should feel your entire spine stretching out of your hips. You’ll simultaneously feel your hips pressing down while your spine pulls up. Tuck your bellybutton toward your spine to protect your lower back with a more neutral spine. Your shoulders should be slightly back, allowing your chest to broaden. Now, as though someone has their finger on your chin and is pushing, shift your chin straight back, it should also be tucked slightly down. Your head shouldn’t be against the headrest behind you, but you should sense it there.

Not great driving posture.

So now that we’re all engaged and tight here in our posture, let’s relax around it. Relax anything not necessary for holding this position.

Let’s add in some breathing. Focus on sending your breath to your belly. It should expand and contract with your breath. Do this a few times before turning your key each time you get in the car and I can almost guarantee you’ll have fewer road rage incidents.

Now adjust your mirrors for this position. Ha! Now you’re stuck. Anytime you deviate from this posture, you’ll know it because your mirrors won’t line up properly unless you resume your posture. It’ll keep you honest.

Now that we’re not jutting our chins out, what do you notice? Correct answer: more peripheral vision. This is good news. In the old world when we hunted, gathered, and worried more about our safety, our peripheral vision was important. But in our hyper-tech modern worlds, we rarely use our peripheral vision and we’re losing it as a result. As we age, we can lose one to three degrees of vision over there in the margins.

But why is peripheral vision important for driving? Don’t we need to look straight ahead? Well, yes. But I argue that a relaxed and aware driver is a safer driver. You can be more defensive if you’re taking in more information. Besides, some of the most dangerous accidents are T-bones, cars hitting from the sides directly into the passenger cabin.

Notice the next time you find yourself stressing out in traffic. Chances are you’re staring straight ahead, tunnel visioned, all tensed up, and jutting your chin forward. You can re-route those stress signals by maintaining this posture, keeping your breathing full, and using your peripheral vision.

And while you’re at it, add this exercise in-between singing along to Gotye for the 11,427th time. Don’t deny it…

But now, fresh off my MovNat Costa Rica retreat and a little more than a week after the bombings at the Boston Marathon, it’s all come back to me again. But first, a little history lesson.

MovNat founder Erwan Le Corre is an astute student of history. One of MovNat’s direct predecessors (and forefather of Parkour) is Georges Hébert, who I’ve quoted in the title of this post. As a French naval officer stationed off the coast of Martinique in 1902, he witnessed a volcanic eruption that wiped out the town of St. Pierre. He and his fellow shipmen rescued some 700 people in the chaos. When Hébert returned to France, he scanned the crowds of people and came to the sad realization that very few could save themselves if they had to. In response, he developed his “Natural Method”:

The final goal of physical education is to make strong beings. In the purely physical sense, the Natural Method promotes the qualities of organic resistance, muscularity and speed, towards being able to walk, run, jump, move on all fours, to climb, to keep balance, to throw, lift, defend yourself and to swim.

Sadly, when I scan a crowd of people today, I see the same problems Hébert saw over a hundred years ago. I can only imagine his shock at how much worse it is today.

We’re even softer than we were then, especially here in the US where we’re not accustomed to bombs going off in our neighborhoods or having to fend for ourselves outdoors. Most of us don’t expect to run into trouble much, and when we do, we’re happy to outsource it to someone else, whether it’s hospital staff or emergency rescue personnel. But sometimes you’re the first responder or sometimes it’s someone you love. Sometimes, it might be yourself and you have only seconds to hoist yourself off the subway tracks before a train bears down on you.

I can think of several events where Hébert’s skills would’ve come in handy. 9/11. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, wherein one of the most famous survivors to emerge from that was a model who held onto a tree for eight hours. Any run-of-the-mill earthquake, tornado, or fire. A friend of mine’s 9-year-old daughter fell through the ice on a frozen lake, and my friend was only able to make it about 50 feet up the hill to the cabin with her daughter in her arms before tiring out.

At the retreat, we practiced a few things. We studied MovNat’s combative techniques, designed to primarily help you extricate yourself from a bad situation, like a mugging at an ATM or an attempted rape. We also worked on partner carries, a skill you might need for a friend who breaks an ankle during a hike, and water rescues. These were, in a word, humbling. As physically capable as I am, I sucked at this stuff. Thoughts of being unable to help or protect my daughter plagued me and still do. I clearly need to work on these weaknesses, and eventually I’ll need to teach them to my daughter.

Don’t worry, everything’s fine. Until it’s not.

We’d all like to think that magical skills will appear if and when needed. I highly recommend David McRaney’s book You Are Not So Smart (and blog) to learn all the various ways you’re deluding yourself, because awareness is the first step toward correcting the mistake. In particular, when it comes to emergencies, we all believe we will rise to the occasion and not only save ourselves, but become a hero and save everyone else.

I hear this chatter every time another disaster or situation grabs the headlines, and—folks—it just ain’t true. According to psychology research, some 75% of us would sit in a stupor unable to move while our poor brains try to make sense of a situation that no longer resembles normalcy.

McRaney talks about this, the Normalcy Bias, in chapter 7 of his book. He gives the example of the worst air disaster in the world that took place in 1977 on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. One plane hit another while on take-off. Everyone on the take-off plane died, but there were many survivors in the plane on the ground. But then the plane caught fire. Dozens of people who had survived the impact sat stone-faced and unable to help themselves, thereby sealing their fate as the plane was consumed in flames.

This is a perfectly normal human response. Odds are, you and I would react the same way. It’s the simplest answer as to why the photographer of that man in the subway picked up his camera instead of rushing to his aid.

But not every person will react to every emergency in the same way. Two silly stories to illustrate my point. My husband and I once took a moonlit hike and came face-to-face with the raised tail end of a skunk. As I started to launch into a dissertation explaining the situation to him, my husband wrapped his arm around me, pulled me away and said, “Step. Back.” So if a skunk is threatening to douse us with noxious fumes, I’m not the rescuer of choice. However, if you have a fire, I might be. I was 7 months pregnant and trying to teach my husband how to cook on the grill since I would soon have my hands full. We had company over, so he loaded up the grill with sausages. What he didn’t know was that a) sausages cook quickly and b) they catch fire easily. He came in to tell me the grill was on fire and within about 2.3 seconds, I was outside cutting off the gas and shutting the grill. Our friend said at the time that he’d never seen a pregnant lady move so fast. My husband is an emergency physician, and I’d never seen him lose his cool, but this was not his territory.

So what can we do?

• Learn self-defense. Simple enough. Classes are widely available, and you should frequently re-take a course to keep your skills fresh and carved into your brain at the ready. Martial arts are great, but not exactly the same thing. If you can stomach it, there are videos online of street fights and road rage incidences and you can see how little time you have to actually shift the odds in your favor. All it takes is 30 seconds or less to get thrown to the ground and kicked in the head several times.
• Take a CPR course and learn other safety techniques. By sheer stats, studies have shown that CPR isn’t all that useful, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t saved lives. Having a little bit of knowledge in an emergency can mean all the difference between life and death. Consider learning some first aid and the Heimlich maneuver as well. If you’re a parent, I highly recommend you take these types of courses.
• Run scenarios in your head. This won’t be pleasant, but it’s necessary. There’s a reason elite athletes use visualization techniques—they work. They help prime the brain for action. The next time you’re in an airplane, actually identify your closest exit (keeping in mind your nearest exit may be behind you…) and consider a few different confounding factors to getting there. Maybe everyone is clogging the aisle and you need to consider jumping over how many rows of seats to get to the exit? Maybe the plane is full of smoke and you have to look for the indicator lights on the floor of the cabin? Maybe it’s a water landing and you need to know not to run for the back door, because the tail of the plane will sink first?
• Practice. Consider making this part of your weekly fitness ritual and add in a scenario to give the exercise more charge. Find a friend and practice different partner carries like the fireman carry or piggyback. If you can, practice trying to rescue someone from a pool or other body of water. Ever since the subway event, I practice climbing walls of various heights, some taller than me.

Because—I hate to break it to you—if you’re working muscles that have no function or you’re training in ways that won’t serve you when the shit hits the fan, then you’re a show pony. Don’t be a show pony. You were given a human body with inherent strength, built for purpose. Embrace that heritage and be an asset to yourself, your family, and your community. Be strong to be useful.

Think about your day. Chances are, it looks something like this: bed –> chair to eat –> sitting in your car –> your chair at a desk at work –> back to your car –> dinner table –> evening on the couch. Amiright?! If you’re someone who works on your feet all day (healthcare, restaurant, retail, etc. workers), I bet you had no idea you were so lucky. I, myself, spend way too much time on my duff at home typing stuff like this that doesn’t even pay me for the privilege of wrecking my health and my derriere.

At my recent MovNat Costa Rica retreat, I learned a lot about posture and body positioning. Luckily, I have a pretty decent deep squat which means I haven’t completely wrecked my anatomy. But it got me thinking. On my way home, as I people-watched in the San Jose Costa Rica airport, I scanned the crowds identifying all the chair sitters. Almost everyone. And I have to count my own pancake butt among them.

I understand that appearances aren’t everything, but you can, in fact, tell a lot about a person by physical markers (I talk a little about this here). For example, the modern phenomenon that is the female “muffin top”—that roll of extra flesh above the waistline—that we see poking out over today’s low-rise jeans is indeed novel to the human form. Female clothes as they were tailored in the 1950s simply wouldn’t accommodate a muffin top because that wasn’t where women put their fat, it usually deposited in typical areas like the butt and thighs. I hear you, I hear you! You’re crying about genetics. Genetics lays the blueprint for where we will carry fat, but it doesn’t determine whether or not you will actually put fat in those places. That’s all up to lifestyle choices.

Everyday, we send signals to our bodies. For example, if you were to rupture your Achilles tendon on your right leg and have surgery with several months of recovery, it would likely affect your body for the rest of your life without significant physical therapy. Your body has to accommodate the injury and those effects ripple throughout your entire body. There are many channels of communication into a human body, including but not limited to: diet, exercise, sleep, stress, sex, socialization, environmental toxins, sunshine. In turn, these signals help determine our outputs, including but not limited to: exercise, work/school performance, fertility, immune system responses, general health and wellness. Viewed through this lens, there’s no denying we are a nation of chair sitters. It’s written all over our behinds.

That looks like it might tickle…

I’ve talked about how I want a bigger butt, but it might seem like a vain pursuit without some context (even though I fully admit to the vanity of said pursuit). But why is the vanity attached to a bigger, rounder fanny? If we look to our good friend evolution, it probably has to do with sex which probably has to do with survival. Right? A set of big, round, luscious glutes sends a signal that it is used properly. That it can generate power, that the skeleton is supported and held together. That the owner of those glutes is healthy and capable. What self-respecting dude wouldn’t want his kids to have the same?

All well and good. But the studies out on sitting right now are pretty clear that merely exercising for an hour a day will not counteract the damage done. Especially since most people exercise in ways that are quad dominant and in one plane (namely forward), forgetting to exercise the poor neglected parts of our bodies that we can’t see in the mirror. This takes some conscious retraining. For the bulk of a day, we’re telling our bodies that supporting its own weight isn’t important, that the nerves, muscles, ligaments, and tendons aren’t needed. Trust me folks, they’re hearing us loud and clear.

So as I people-watched, I got a bit depressed. Not just at the state of our collective rumps, but also at the sheer futility of it all. I don’t want a life defined by sitting, but that’s what I have. I have a standing desk that I need to use more often and I need to prioritize movement somehow everyday. But even then, there’s a certain cultural trajectory with its own expectations that finds me sitting on my poor posterior more often than I’d like.

Much of our success as a species on this planet has to do with our brain development. We didn’t have brawn on our side and we certainly couldn’t outrun most of our predators, but we became smart, wily, dastardly creatures and we banded together to increase our odds. The last century has seen an exponential rise in brain usage versus physical expenditure. All of our ancestors used to cut down trees, raise barns, dig, lift, carry, and when they were done doing so for themselves, they helped their neighbors with it for fun. Now, we outsource it and pay for someone else to do it while we drive to our jobs and sit on our tushes. And the people who do perform the physical labor are devalued by our culture, getting paid less than those pushing paper and typitty-typing on a keyboard dealing in abstractions like pivot charts and supply-chain logistics. We send millions of people to college every year to sink deep into debt on the very premise that a degree will save them from the horrors of physical labor.

Hmm…not exactly the farming I had in mind.

I’m heartened a bit by the trend in farming as a viable and honorable tradition again. In my area, I see young people interning on local farms in the hopes of someday working their own plot of land. But I think it’s time we value the fruit of our labors again, to encourage the younger generations to consider physical pursuits and practical skills. Have I mentioned that plumbers make, on average, double per hour what I make as a writer? And yet, who sounds more glamorous when asked at a dinner party what they do?

But still I’m left with a problem. The reason we are a nation of sitters is because we are a nation of sitters. The only way to stop being a nation of sitters is to stop being a nation of sitters. To accomplish that, we would have to rearrange the very foundation of our lives to value movement and physical labor over the effluence of our minds. Because this hour allotted to “working out” ain’t working for me. It makes movement optional, quaint, and just another task to be ticked off the list of to-dos for the day. Folks, movement ain’t optional. It’s a serious example of Use It or Lose It.

So if that’s the case, what signal is your body sending?

The “human zoo” is a modern, global and growing phenomenon generated by the powerful combination of social conventions, technological environment, and commercial pressures.  Increasingly disconnected from the natural world and their universal biological needs, zoo humans are suffering physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Are you experiencing chronic pain? Are you overweight?  Do you often feel depressed or suffer from frequent illnesses and general lack of vitality?

These symptoms indicate that you are experiencing zoo human syndrome.  Modern society conditions us to think that this is normal and unavoidable.

At MovNat, we strongly disagree with that view.  We believe that our true nature is to be strong, healthy, happy, and free. We have designed a complete natural movement physical education and fitness system that empowers zoo humans to become strong and healthy again – to experience their true nature.

If you’re a regular reader, then you know I can rant. See here or here for examples. I’m one of those annoyingly cynical, sardonic, hyper-sensitive introverts who thinks the world is out to get me. So I fully expected to leave the safe confines of my week-long Costa Rican MovNat adventure and be so incapacitatingly irritated at everything in my path that I would be lucky to make it home in one piece.

It just didn’t happen.

Instead, as I stood in several long lines in the San Jose airport, I found myself initiating (*GASP!*) several conversations. Airports are great for people watching. After spending a week discussing healthy human bodies and being surrounded with the lusciously delicious specimens of my retreat buddies, it was easy to scan the crowds and find the few people who came close to exhibiting health. But far from feeling shut off and defensive, I felt wide open.

I asked two fit men with backpacks in front of me what they’d been up to in Costa Rica. They told me all about their spearfishing expeditions up and down the Pacific coast. They asked in kind, and I told them about MovNat and how I’d just gotten certified to teach it. One of them had been a personal trainer in the past, so we had a conversation about that.

I chatted with a young couple who had an 8-month-old daughter. I was amazed at the little one’s ability to pull herself up already, when my own daughter waited until after 18 months to walk. Without starting any of the conversation threads, the mother and I talked about breastfeeding, how kids don’t need shoes on their feet, and how much better carrying your child in a sling is than strapping them into a stroller. The little girl chewed on my brand new Costa Rica pen.

A man approached me and asked if I was Dana Perino, former White House press secretary under George W. Bush and current Fox News commentator. After seeing a photo of her, I realize it’s quite the compliment! I hated to disappoint him, but I asked if he was from Texas. I told him I grew up on the New Mexico border and would recognize that accent anywhere. He smiled and we went on to have a conversation unlike any I usually have in my little liberal hippie hamlet about taxes and conservative politics.

None of these conversations could have occurred prior to this retreat. I’ve done years and years of yoga that focused on heart opening and I got nowhere. One week of being a human thinking about humans doing human things put me in intimate contact with my own humanity.

I’m open about my judgments. It’s easy these days to look out at the sea of broken people and feel superior for solving my health problems and looking better for it too. It’s a perfectly human response.

But what I felt after MovNatting for a week was complete compassion for all of us caught up in a zoo of our own making. Because for all the ways I’ve figured out how to escape occasionally, I return again and again to the comforts, conveniences, and safety of it. I am not the off-the-grid wild woman I dream about and wish I could be. That saying about pointing one finger equals three pointing back at you? Totally true here. If I let disdain for their zoo situation take over, it would prevent me from truly understanding my own relationship with the zoo. If I don’t understand it, I can’t continue to learn how to occasionally escape it in all the ways that matter. And as a mother, I feel like this skill is one of the most important I can pass along to my daughter: the zoo is there, but we have to know how and when to use it and when to leave it behind.

On my flight home, heading west between Houston and San Francisco, we were instructed to close the shades so folks could watch a movie on the screens. At some point, it was getting dark and we were hitting some choppy air, so I wanted to peek outside and see if we were over the Rockies yet. All I could do was hold my breath at the beauty below me. Our plane was chasing the sunset and our altitude prolonged that magical moment when the sun has slipped below the horizon leaving brilliant orange that fades to yellow then light blue, blue, darker blue, twilight black, then black sprinkled with stars. Every color the sky possesses. This spectacle was reflected back to me in the shiny silver metal of one of the engines on the wing. We were indeed beginning to fly over the Rockies. In the dusk’s skewed depth perception, the snowy foothills below seemed like a vast, casually-tossed silken cloth. They gave way to the jagged young peaks hugging the ski towns of Breckenridge, Aspen, and Vail, their city lights glowing as orange as the horizon. I wanted to tell everyone on the plane to remove their headphones, open their window shades, and look! Look!

But for all I know, I may have been the only one on that plane witnessing those moments. Moments provided by a strange, historical anomaly on earth called human flight that allowed me to fly to a far-flung coastal area to reconnect with my humanity that is with me everyday whether I acknowledge it or not. May I have the peace and fortitude to keep acknowledging it.

Vic and Julie.

I’m fresh off the beach—tan, relaxed, and annoyed at the fact that shoes are still necessary in my Oregon spring weather. I attended the brand spanking new week-long MovNat retreat in Costa Rica the first week of April, spending seven days with MovNat master trainer Vic Verdier and assistant instructor Julie Angel, with a cameo appearance from MovNat founder Erwan Le Corre.

Now, y’all know I love me some MovNat. I’ve talked about it before (and here) and I’ve sung its praises. So no need to retread that territory. Instead, I’m going to talk about something I haven’t seen discussed before.

This shit’s hard and you might come up against the dark night of your soul.

We’re talking seven days of non-stop physical exertion and mental energy. So here I am, up since 5am being blasted by the blazing sun on abrasive beach sand that has found its way into every crevice and orifice of my body surrounded by strangers I want to impress but I smell like a swamp rat that fell into a septic tank despite having showered at least twice that day. What’s that I hear from the trees? Oh, just some scarlet macaws laughing at me.

But alas, this is what I paid for and dreamed about for months. The month of March 2013 happened to be one of the most stressful months for me in recent memory, and the whole time I consoled myself with thoughts of MovNat on the beach in Costa Rica. And yet, I found myself with a serious case of monkey mind, of being unable to fully immerse myself in the reality around me at that moment. Even though I’d been practicing MovNat for a year-and-a-half and even though I had over ten years of mindfulness and meditation training behind me, I was failing miserably.

The thing I love about MovNat is that no matter how physically adept and accomplished you are, eventually you will find a weakness. Everyone has their reckoning. But I’d wager a guess that all of us—everyone—fails the mindfulness test with startling frequency.

Ahh…that hammock I never got to use…

There are many great reasons we have the comfortable modern lives we do. We have unprecedented control over our environments, from temperature to food, but we don’t yet understand the consequences of these decisions. That’s what ancestral health is all about, unraveling these ties that bind so that we can examine the individual threads. But I’ll argue that many of these conveniences and alterations to our environment lead to a…how to put this gently…softening in our adaptability and resilience. For example, when we were outside in the heat and high humidity, my brain refused to focus and listen, preferring instead to get grumpy and sprint for the end of the lesson so I could shower and nap in my air conditioned beach bungalow.

Folks, it wasn’t so long ago that air conditioning didn’t exist. That soft mattresses, myriad and non-seasonal food choices, cars, washing machines, anti-perspirants, chapstick, blow driers, clean water out of the tap, and ice cubes didn’t exist. A few choice comforts are lovely, to be sure, but our endless quest for comfort and convenience is turning us into a bunch of pansies. Our great-great-grandparents would be appalled.

How do I know? When I was push-pull crawling through the jungle floor all military style, mimicking a movement soldiers and hunters throughout the ages have performed, all I could think about were the fire ants and spiders I saw scampering ahead of me at eye level. I tried to console myself with how amazing the earth smelled—like pure incense. We forget, everyday, that it is a true privilege to be able to move our bodies in this way, much less voluntarily as part of a vacation.

As my treasured yoga (and life) teacher, Paige, says, “Your mind will give out long before your body.” Our minds will trick us when things are too easy and our minds will trick us when things are too hard.

That technique is great, but when’s lunch?

MovNat talks about the difference between energy direction and dispersion. This applies to mental energy as well. I noticed as the days went on and the group got more fatigued, the chatter levels rose. We all wanted to broadcast our mental state, our comfort levels, or whatever nagging injury was barking. This is mental dispersion. I found myself struggling with some unpleasant internal messages, so I did my best to sit with all the thoughts swirling around and not send them out. Physically, I was surrounded by the Pacific undulating out to the horizon, black sand meeting it, the songs of birds and waves. But inside were doubts shrouded in black fog that fought with fang and claw.

I had many successes on many days: mastering the contralateral foot-hand crawl on the beam, getting on top of the bar with a good leg swing, improving my jumps. But there were major challenges too. I may be able to get on top of a bar just dandy and I may be able to squat with the best of ‘em, but I am a complete embarrassment in combatives and MovNat’s swimming technique. These weaknesses were heart-breaking to me, because they are among the most important when the shit hits the fan. I nearly drowned poor Julie trying to practice a water rescue, and I had haunting thoughts about being unable to protect my daughter, should it be necessary, from an attacker. On the last full day, I finally had to bow out of a swimming exercise because the waves and murky waters combined to make me motion sick and uncertain of my abilities.

But everything else, I made it through. Luckily, we have this opportunity to practice, to learn to be useful, should those skills ever be required. And when you get to the other side, after the sense of relief, you feel stronger, more confident, more capable. We ran through the jungle barefoot for almost three hours, and I was so proud of my comrades who set their personal discomforts aside to help and look out for each other. Nary a word of complaint was uttered. And we were all transformed.

The tribe.

A MovNat retreat WILL be amazing, but it will be amazing only because you went beyond your comfort zone and discovered something about yourself that couldn’t be learned any other way. Trust that, give yourself over to it, show up for yourself, say “yes”, and see what happens.

I apologize for interrupting the flow here with some housekeeping. I thank you in advance for indulging me with this. I’ll not address this any further, since the energy I’m giving it just feeds it.

It doesn’t matter the source or the reasons. But somewhere on the interwebs, on a site that doesn’t allow comments for potential defense, I’m being accused of misogyny and a lack of support for diversity. Which, for anyone who actually knows me, is a laugh riot.

But this is the internet, not real life. A wide and dusty frontier where every word you say can get twisted in the arid wind until no one can interpret them anymore.

So let’s talk about misogyny. Let’s define it first, via Wikipedia:

Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Misogyny can be manifested in numerous ways, including sexual discrimination, denigration of women, violence against women, and sexual objectification of women.

None of my discussion will make sense without injecting some personal experience in here. Please know that I am bothered that it has come to this and that I also know how futile it will be to mention any of it. I fully expect excerpts of this to end up on a certain tumblr account with whole sections of context removed to serve the author’s purpose. If they do, I hope they have the courage to do so in its entirety, but if not, then so be it. It doesn’t matter to me that they understand my position. It’s important to me that I, my daughter, my readers, and potential employers looking for information about me online understand my position.

I grew up in lucky circumstances for a young, energetic little girl, the third of four children. We had lots of freedom to roam and tussle, mostly as a result of unintentional benign neglect, but looking back, it might’ve been just the thing for me. I was surrounded by capable and strong women who didn’t take shit: my mother’s mother, my mother, my aunts, friends’ mothers. My older sister too, who played football with the boys.

The men in my life were just as helpful. My father is a soft-hearted guy whose nose is always stuffed in a book and who doesn’t see people’s color, sexual orientation, circumstances, or sex—he sees people. My maternal grandfather was a rough ol’ boy with a missing front tooth who wouldn’t let me win at foot races. My two brothers always treated me as an equal, never giving me special treatment. In elementary school, I could run as fast as the fastest boy and I tied a boy in the most pull-ups. Scholastically, I was always at the top of my class, competing with another boy for educational dominance. It never occurred to me to let up on him so he could win because he was a boy.

So perhaps I can be forgiven for thinking that the world judges all of us equally. Intellectually, of course, I know this isn’t true. I realize people out there have real obstacles to overcome. I grew up in a town that openly called the other side of the tracks where the Hispanics lived “Taco Town.” My grandfather, being the old cuss he was, had no trouble throwing around names like the n-word and “wetbacks.” But he also called Ronald Reagan a “sum’bitch”, so you know, his scorn was equal-opportunity.

But for me, I just ran headlong into everything. If I encountered doubt or resistance, I went around or through. It never occurred to me that their negativity could have anything to do with me.

This is my perspective. I’ve been blessed with talents and access that help me to be successful in a world defined by white, male, Western culture. Lest anyone think this was easy, it was not, as we were poor. I’m still paying off the mound of student loans that got me through my undergraduate degree, received at the ripe old age of 28. My early twenties were spent adrift and not understanding how to navigate the world on my own. So while I had a lot of great tools in my toolbox, I didn’t enjoy playing by the rules.

Today I understand that it is the rule-followers who are able to enter the mainstream and carve out the vision of “success” that our culture promulgates. And that simple concept is going to rule out a lot of people in our society. We like to tell ourselves we have a culture founded on freedom and equal opportunity, but that is just a sweet little story we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better. Because if that’s true, then you don’t have to do anything to change it and you can blame the folks who don’t make it for their own failings.

This is a nuanced position. It is not one that fits neatly into a box. It is neither black nor white. And that’s why I get into trouble.

But back to misogyny. A lot changed for me in high school. I began to get attention from boys, which led to negative attention from lots of others. I’ll tell you one story.

You call THAT doggy-style?

In ninth grade, I was dating the boy you might call the Big Man on Campus. One day, he and two friends picked me up and we went cruising around the various backroads of our town, joy-riding and being 15. I sat in the back with BMOC and we kissed and such, but that was it. The next day at school, everyone was chilly toward me and then a few brave souls started barking at me in the hallways. I had no idea what was going on. Finally, a friend told me that BMOC claimed to have had sex with me “doggy-style.” This did not happen. Nothing remotely near this happened. I was mortified. Later that day, I was taken aside by my cheerleading sponsor and was asked if it was true. I told her it was not, but I know she didn’t believe me. I was told that my position on the squad was threatened if I continued to behave this way.

Looking back, this was the beginning of a sad downward spiral for me. The slut-shaming never stopped. I became that token girl in every high school that you hear about. I went from a happy, involved honor student to a depressed, withdrawn hermit who would go on to flunk several math classes. When I finally made it to the counselor’s office in high school for post-graduation guidance, all they would offer me were vocational school brochures, despite the fact that I routinely continued to test in the upper percentages with the valedictorian. I told them “No thank you,” because I knew I was going to blow that popsicle stand one way or another. It still amazes me that no one bothered to ask me why the downturn happened, and has inspired me to help mentor high school girls.

I will not go into detail about this, but for the record, I will state that I have experienced many, many variations of misogyny as defined by that list on Wikipedia, from minor to more. It is my belief that this is the case for nearly every woman in America today if not the entire freaking world. I need both hands and at least one foot to count the friends and family members I know who have been molested and raped. That’s not counting the ones who never mentioned it to me, so I’ll add the rest of my other foot and—oh, can I borrow one of your hands too, Melissa?

Please forgive my shoddy computer skills, but if you can, be sure and read the last line here:

To have my own daughter used against me by someone who is not yet a mother enrages me. You have no idea how nerve-wracking it is to bring a little helpless child into this world knowing damn good and well what’s ahead of her. I CANNOT PROTECT HER FROM EVERYTHING. I know this, intimately.

But I also have to trust the adaptability and strength of her human spirit. If I can do it, she can do it.

So about that misogyny.

Should I mention that months ago one of your cohorts made a comment on my blog slut-shaming me and asking how I liked it? And yet somehow that’s okay. Even if it wasn’t you, as you so love to point out, they are in your circle and you sanction it (Definition: Sanction — Give official permission or approval for). If everyone else who you love to point fingers at are guilty by association, then have the courage of your convictions to apply it to yourself.

(Hmm…”courage of your convictions”…where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, here in the comments. By a troll who appeared rapid-fire right before and after Melissa herself appeared. Two people who don’t read my blog but just happened to descend upon me that night at the exact same time. Hmm…veddy interesting, considering Melissa’s been busted before for anonymously posing as other commentators before. She must’ve figured out a way to use a different IP address or asked a friend to help.)

Let’s acknowledge that the tactics being used against me also qualify as misogyny. I’ll wear the badge if you will.

My suggestion going forward is to stop throwing names. All it does is prove that you lack imagination and skill in debate. It speaks poorly of those who raised you. If this is all you got, then…sorry?

A word is not an action. So what if someone calls us a name. Fuck ‘em. What do they know? Says more about them than it does the target. If words are what hurts you, then honey, I have some stories for you where words weren’t possible. I’m free to chat anytime.

It’s time to recognize that there are many ways to live a life. That you can’t truly know what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes. That the very thing you’re criticizing has so much complexity behind it that it would take days worth of talking about it to get at the true root of it all. Let’s all acknowledge that nothing in life on this earth is so simple that it can be understood from a comment left on a website. As I said on Twitter a few days ago, which somehow doesn’t get used on said tumblr site unless it can be twisted against me, “Cherry-picking what you choose to believe about a person is just as bad as cherry-picking your scientific data.“

For example, I’ll use a quote from the above screenshot: “There are also lots of types of feminists thru anti-porn to sex positive.” Exactly. And there are feminists who aren’t afraid of the word “cunt,” who don’t care what insults are lodged at them because in the large scheme of things they just don’t matter, who understand that life is an even playing field even if the other players don’t, who know these things because they are borne of real life experience and not the wishful idealistic thinking of keyboard feminists who pretend to speak for all feminists while throwing other feminists under the bus because their ideas don’t jive.

The whole reason I got into this fray in the first place was because I dared to suggest that there was a civilized way to air disagreements. And these players continue to prove my case that civilized isn’t something they know how to do. They employ the same tactics their imagined oppressors use, thinking that gives them power.

Well, it’s not my definition of feminism, but have at it. Just as I defended a wacky doctor’s right to say what he wants, I will defend your right to criticize me.

Just leave my daughter out of it. She’s too sweet to be your weapon.

Update: I sent her the link to this post and a tweet to ask that she refrain from talking about my daughter on the tumblr site. In response, and I can’t quote it because it’s been deleted, she said that she didn’t know I had a daughter, but that I shouldn’t post pictures of my daughter online since I don’t know how they will be used. I told her, “Sure, sure. Expected response. Anyone’s daughter. Children ≠ Fair Collateral Damage.”

Let’s review. In a post about me and my tweeting, in which screen captures are used, and she says, “There are…lots of types of misogyny apologists, and yes, some of those are women. Some of those are people with daughters, who really should know better.” So tell me, in a post about female misogyny apologists that features my words and picture and in which I am the only female, of whose daughter are you speaking?

Which earned me a response on the tumblr that excerpted this post and just turned the screw a little tighter. Well, I wasn’t expecting a rational, reasoned discussion, and I sure wasn’t surprised.

I posted this because she has been posting about me for at least a week now. Despite the fact that I’ve never used the “C” word against her (or anyone for that matter), my name is featured on a short list of three targets of hers in Paleo and Paleo-adjacent territory. I tried to ignore it, but dragging children into this is ugly business, no matter whose children they are. I asked her to remove the mention and she has not.

She has a site that says derogatory things about people and doesn’t allow for comments so that they can defend themselves. Then when you do get a logical message through, she hides behind vague comments and sideways maneuvers so she can’t be pinned for any of it. This blog post was my only way to defend myself against some outrageous comments.

I apologize for the drama. Back to regular programming.

I’ve never had braces. My teeth aren’t perfect, but they’ve never caused me much problem either. I’ve never had a cavity. The only mouth troubles I have are sensitive teeth and receding gums, the bulk of which happened in my early 20s and haven’t worsened.

But I come from a long line of teeth grinders. You can hear my dad grinding in his sleep from down the hall. This is not an exaggeration. My sister grinds. But me? I’m a clencher. I lock my teeth down and create a vacuum in there, especially when under stress.

So, in line with my yoga and mindfulness studies, I set out to fix myself of this little problem. Yoga teaches a technique to help relax the mouth that involves creating a space between the teeth and lips, and then putting the tip of your tongue right behind the front top teeth. The mouth is a common place that we hold tension, especially when we think we’re relaxed.

And lo and behold! It worked. For a while. At some point during those years, I began chewing only on one side. I’m not sure why, but I did. I always attributed it to the sensitivity, but now I’m not so sure.

Then I had my darling daughter 3 1/2 years ago and I couldn’t maintain the mindfulness required to keep up my non-clenching. Amidst the slosh of hormones and lack of sleep, the clenching came back full throttle. My jaw was exhausted and I was beginning to show some signs of Temperomandibular Joint (TMJ) Disorder. So I went to the dentist.

And they gave me an ultra-sexy mouth guard. You know, one of those delicious acrylic-y things that are custom-molded to fit your mouth. Oh yeah. Between that and my fish oil balm for my face, my husband found me irresistible!

But then something funny happened. I just clenched on top of that thing. It didn’t help at all. But I believed it was preventing damage to my teeth from the clenching, so I kept wearing it. And for some reason that I couldn’t pin down, eating just got more difficult and more uncomfortable. I chewed on one side and it just felt like my teeth weren’t lining up properly.

And then I attended 2012′s Ancestral Health Symposium. I’ll admit it, I wasn’t expecting much from a talk titled “Craniofacial Dystrophy—Modern Melting Faces”, but what the heck? And this is a good example of how attending an event like this can completely change your life. It’s worth the 25 minutes of your time, I promise.

TEETH TOGETHER. LIPS TOGETHER. TONGUE ON THE ROOF OF YOUR MOUTH. Could it really be so simple? I quit wearing my mouth guard that very night and I’ve never looked back. “Teeth together. Lips together. Tongue on the roof of the mouth,” has become my mantra. I do this while driving, while typing, and even while sleeping, where I hook my jaw over the edge of my foam ergonomic pillow to keep my mouth together.

At first, it was difficult to get my teeth to even want to connect with each other. But with diligence and practice, they started to become reacquainted with each other. My jaw, on the right side, still pops from a ligament or some sort of connective tissue that isn’t used to the new arrangement yet, but it doesn’t hurt, and during the times I’m especially good about my exercises it happens less. So I suspect that someday it will be less of an issue or disappear completely.

It took me a while to figure out why my jaw had gotten so far off track. Then—BINGO! Another strike against yoga for me. Here’s my jaw when it’s together, as the exercise dictates:

And here’s me when I’m employing yoga technique:

You can see my facial muscles are much more slack, my jawline looks softer (not desirable as I age…), my cheekbones are less apparent, and I look like a bit of a mouth-breather. What is harder to see is that in the bottom photo, my lower jaw is actually sliding down and forward. My lower teeth start to jut out further than my top teeth. The whole posture pulls my tongue forward, causing—you guessed it—the tongue thrusting that was causing so many problems.

Sure, sure. There are aesthetic reasons for this sort of treatment. For whatever evolutionarily built-in reasons, there appear to be universally accepted traits of attractiveness, and a strong jaw, facial symmetry, and high cheekbones help serve that purpose. This is a controversial area of research, and it can infect people with a judgmental outlook on humanity or even slide into eugenics at its worst. But we shouldn’t be too quick to throw out attractiveness as a mere cultural phenomenon, since many of the traits that occur in the face are physical markers of a much deeper health issue, and thus, subject to sexual selection (read: how successful you will be in luring people to where all the magic happens). As Mew mentions in his talk, there are other implications to craniofacial dystrophy such as ear, nose, and throat complications, sleep apnea, and TMJ.

P. boisei’s massive molars

What was surprising for me about Mike Mew’s presentation were the before and afters. Granted, he works with children whose bones and muscles are more malleable than us poor adults, but that doesn’t mean we’re a lost cause. As he mentions, he’s spent the past seven years reshaping his face too. When I took undergrad anthropology courses, I learned about skull shapes throughout primate evolution. Some, like Paranthropus boisei, had massive molars twice the size of modern-day humans’ and a sagittal crest for large chewing muscle attachment. Some theorize these characteristics were due to a diet of tough nuts, seeds, and fruits, though this may be up for debate after looking at dentition wear patterns. The point being that it seems like it might take millions of years for these sort of adaptations, but in modern-day humans, changes can happen in a generation or two. And when looking at the before/after pictures, it’s hard to argue that progress can’t be made in one lifetime.

What’s really crazy is that I expected the exercise to INCREASE my clenching, and that hasn’t happened. It’s actually reduced it. How is that possible? I’m no scientist, but Mew talks about how these days our food is all soft and mushy. Americans consume an insane amount of liquid that isn’t water—juice, smoothies, sodas. We love things like mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese, dishes that require very little chewing effort. Much of what we do in the kitchen and to our food supply is in the service of making it easy to break food down or provide us with the nutrients for less effort. We breed produce to be more palatable (apples are sweeter and less fibrous these days, for example) and meat animals to be more tender (it shouldn’t be so easy to cut meat with the edge of a fork). We buy all sorts of kitchen gadgets to chop, tenderize, purée, and mix. Our jaws are simply not getting the exercise they’re used to.

Therefore, I propose that my tongue thrusting and aggressive clenching was an adaptation or response to the new jaw posturing, and that maintaining good jaw, teeth, and tongue posture tells my brain that all is well. There is information being sent along nervous system channels to properly align everything, which tells everything else to get in line and function properly. For example, my husband tells me that our teeth relate to each other and that when one falls out, others above or around it may fall out too. Everyday, we send signals to ourselves and we reap the repercussions, both good and bad. But there are absolutely signals we have control over, and it’s important to empower ourselves with that message. If you’re suffering from something health related, it really pays to do your research. Once you’re into this whole ancestral health business, seek out doctors and practitioners (also here) that understand evolution and apply those principles to their practice.

Please don’t rip out my permanent teeth.

Some of you out there may have children staring down the barrel of orthodontic interventions. I can’t recommend finding an orthotropic practitioner enough. Many conventional treatments are short-sighted and don’t address the underlying cause, and can cause problems of their own. For example, removing teeth to make room to straighten the other teeth can lead to disruption in facial shape. This seems especially crazy when you consider that Weston A. Price saw plenty of folks with straight, perfect teeth who had their wisdom teeth in AND still had room in the back. Many people get into orthotropic treatment to straighten teeth, but they end up having all sorts of nagging problems resolved like neck pain, headaches, and sinus problems. I’m finding it difficult to find a comprehensive list of practitioners, but found this one. For my part, it looks like I have a few options in the region for my daughter, but most will require a several hours drive. I think it’s worth it. I have no knowledge about this particular guy or his worthiness as a physician, but he has a very informational website if you’d like to learn more. And he invokes Weston A. Price, so he can’t be all bad.

If we’ve learned anything from our dietary adventures in Paleo, it’s that conventional wisdom can often be harmful, conventional treatments can mask or make symptoms worse, and sometimes the answers are more elegantly simple than they’re made out to be. It appears to be the case with orthodontics and facial development too.

So what can you do in the meantime? If you have breathing problems that force you to breathe through your mouth, TMJ disorder, or sleep apnea, work with a healthcare professional to resolve those. Eat tougher, more challenging foods like raw veggies (carrots and celery for example), jerky, and nuts.

And. TEETH TOGETHER. LIPS TOGETHER. TONGUE ON THE ROOF OF YOUR MOUTH.

But oh so tasty and full of beneficial fats and nutrients. It makes a wonderful light lunch with a salad or feel free to top it with shredded chicken, pork, or some shrimp. Cubes of avocado would also be nice. The flavors borrow from SE Asia with coconut, ginger, and cilantro whirled into every spoonful. It’s almost medicinal when you’re not feeling well.

And it’s so bloody simple, I’m almost embarrassed to call this a recipe! But it was too good not to share.

Creamy Tomato Coconut Soup

1 Tbsp. coconut oil

1 small onion, diced

1 large carrot, peeled and diced

1 1-inch section ginger, peeled and grated

3 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 cup cilantro, packed

1 28-oz. jar/box/can of diced tomatoes

1 14-oz. can coconut milk

sea salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste

1) Melt coconut oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add onion and carrot, sauté until softened. Sprinkle a little sea salt over the veggies, then add ginger and garlic, stirring until fragrant, about 1 minute.

2) Transfer onion mixture to a blender or food processor. Add cilantro, tomatoes, and coconut milk. Puree until smooth.

3) Pour soup back into pot and heat gently over medium heat for 20 minutes or until heated through, stirring occasionally. Season to taste with S&P. Serve! Told you it was bloody simple.

Serves 4.

This will be the first in a series that will outline my thinking about the modern environmental movement, which is one I have come to view with deep suspicion and as yet another symptom of humankind’s unfortunate short-sightedness. To head off any salvos at Strawman Pass, let me say that at the root of it all, I believe that we have to conduct ourselves on this planet as we see fit. We need ethics and a belief framework, otherwise the psychological noise of daily life is too much to bear.

But the current “green” marketing efforts currently underway divorce us from any real solutions. We look to technology, to innovation, to something new and shiny that will deliver us from our evils, all in an effort to maintain the levels of comfort and control over our lives we’ve come to expect. It is, in fact, those expectations (most fewer than 100 years old!) that cause the very degradation around us that we all decry as evil. We’re all a part of it by virtue of being alive. No, your Prius isn’t helping jack squat. To this end, I can’t recommend enough the bittersweet, soul-crushing beauty of Dark Mountain‘s Manifesto.

I’ll let the American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, science historian, and writer Stephen Jay Gould sum up my feelings on this, because he did so brilliantly:

[N]ature is so massively indifferent to us and our suffering. Perhaps this indifference, this majesty of years in uncaring billions (before we made a belated appearance), marks her true glory…she exists neither for nor because of us, and possesses a staying power that all our nuclear arsenals cannot threaten…We should be so powerful! Nothing within our power can come close to conditions and catastrophes that the earth has often passed through and beyond…We certainly cannot wipe out bacteria…I doubt that we can wreak much permanent havoc upon insects…[b]ut we can surely eliminate our fragile selves—and our well-buffered earth might then breathe a metaphorical sigh of relief at the ultimate failure of an interesting but dangerous experiment in consciousness…[H]uman brainpower, for reasons quite unrelated to its evolutionary origin, has the damnedest capacity to discover the most fascinating things, and think the most peculiar thoughts. So why not keep this interesting experiment around, at least for another planetary second or two?

—————————————————————————-

Now HERE’S an invasive species.

We’ve all seen the headlines about invasive species: Monster Goldfish Found in Lake Tahoe, Lionfish: Invasive Species Devastating Reefs, Invasion of the Giant Pythons. We love to talk about this and make regulations around it, such as forcing people to clean their boats and seaplanes in order to prevent introducing invasive species elsewhere.

Oh, and don’t forget the acetaminophen-laced mice to be dropped on Guam to kill their brown tree snake problem. Hmm…how did those brown tree snakes get there anyway? The best guess is cargo from US ships or planes, since the US tramples all over the island for military purposes. But they’re not suggesting that we cool our imperialism, they’d rather drop dead mice out of helicopters in order to hypothetically prevent the snakes from somehow invading Hawaii. Why are we more concerned about Hawaii? “The National Wildlife Research Center estimates that a Hawaiian brown tree snake infestation would inflict $593 million to $2.14 billion in economic damages each year, including widespread power outages and a significant decrease in tourism.” Oh, I see. But wait, won’t the acetaminophen be harmful to bird populations? “Scientists claim that most of the birds have already been wiped out by the snakes anyway.” Carry on then!

As depressing as this scenario is, unfortunately “invasive” species don’t exist. It’s a human construct. If we’re going to go there, then every mention of a human shall henceforth be termed “invasive”, since we refused to be boxed into Africa and emerged some 125,000 or so years ago. Seriously: “Teresa Sanderson, an invasive Homo sapiens sapiens, of Terre Haute found an intruder in her kitchen at 3am last night.”

Okay, okay. That’s silly. But at the very least, the term “invasive species” should be limited to mean a species that has been introduced due to human intervention, and the moral projection associated with it should be left out. Why? Because you cannot call yourself a serious student of evolution if you consider invasive species a “threat” to anything.

So a species was artificially moved to a different location and it thrives. Yay. This does not account for all the species that were also moved but did not take hold because they didn’t find the new location favorable. But that doesn’t make for a sensational headline, does it?: “Four Formerly Invasive Species No Longer Considered Invasive After They Fail to Thrive in New Environment.” That’s more of an Onion headline.

Let’s say that a species does set up house somewhere and it wipes out the majority of life there. If given enough time—time that we humans are terrible at calculating and anticipating—some interesting things might happen. Perhaps another species will discover a taste for the new resident. Because it’s an abundant food source, it could lead to the success of that new-found predator. Or perhaps, given a lot of time, segments of the initial population move elsewhere or become isolated, leading to whole new species that bloom into a new era of life diversity. Don’t believe me? Check out the Permian event.

How else can you deprogram yourself from the farce that is “invasive species”?

1. Stop seeing the earth as distinct regions and territories. The earth is one big bioregion. It does not acknowledge our arbitrary lines, fences, and understandings. This is the very thinking that gets us into trouble, because we can’t possibly fathom how a little bit of pollution could be so bad. We don’t understand the downstream effects. We think if we can pollute just certain parts of the world, the others will remain pristine. We know this isn’t true, but it’s difficult to prove in any tangible way. It may have once been true when the world population stood at 250,000 and we were still so intimately connected to our surroundings that we would have to move if we sullied or abused any one location beyond carrying capacity. But today, we get huge, swirling masses of floating plastic in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific. In terms of invasive species, did you know that dust carries microbes over from China all the time? This must be stopped! *facepalm* Folks, birds and butterflies and caribou migrate. They carry things with them from place to place on their fur, in their poop, in their bodies. There has never been a perfect, unchanging ecosystem. Ever. Just try to stop ocean currents, the jet stream, and meteorite strikes. Humans are merely another vehicle, albeit a particularly malignant and reckless one, for this constant change.
2. Think in geologic time. Before Earth had seven continents (another arbitrary designation), it had one—Pangaea. It was all the same thing, and truly still is. While populations have evolved in that time to be distinct species, there is no reason it can’t all intermingle and compete for resources again. Extinctions happened before humans and they will happen again with and without humans. A lifetime of 80 years on this planet isn’t even half a blink of an eye in geologic time and is a poor perspective from which to judge what the earth needs. Time is for humans, not nature. The small spot of earth we all inhabit right now, no matter how much you love it and the way it looks right now, has not always been this way and it will not always be this way. The area where I grew up was once under a vast sea millions of years ago.
3. Stop seeing some species as “good” and others as “bad”. This one always gives me a chuckle. We’ve heard a lot lately about bird numbers being decimated by domestic cats. We’ve conveniently forgotten that cats have been used for centuries to help control mouse and rat populations on farms, on ships, and in cities. So they’re “good” when they’re useful to us, but “bad” when we decide they aren’t being sensitive enough to the needs of birds we like? That is some funny monkey thinking right there. Besides, have we forgotten our Darwin 101? The birds that outwit the cats will go on to have smarter offspring. If cats wish to continue catching birds, they’ll have to step up their game too. Or they may decide it’s too much effort and start leaving birds alone to go for mice instead. Which will lead to an uptick in bird populations and we’ll all complain that there’s too much bird poop on everything and the birds must be stopped! *facepalm* Besides, nature doesn’t care which ones you find palatable and which ones you don’t.
4. 

   Dear baby elephant, sorry we’re so stupid.

   Understand that while some species will disappear, and that is very sad, other species do just fine in our presence. Using our bird example above, let’s say that all the black-capped vireos and marbled murrelets vanish. Oh no! No more birds! Wrong. Many species actually benefit from the presence of humans and others are figuring out ways to adapt to their changing surroundings. Just in my backyard, I can tell you the jay populations are doing just dandy. Crows do pretty darn good for themselves. Mallards love our parks and golf courses. Peregrine falcons have adapted to nest on skyscrapers (in lieu of the usual cliff faces) and feast on pigeons, who also appear to enjoy the company of humans. Even if we lose all the more “exotic” species of birds, the future world will be populated with these and more, and from that narrowing could come an explosion of diversity again as populations migrate and diversify. It has happened before and it will happen again. This future landscape will also potentially be populated with the descendants of raccoons, deer, squirrels, and rats. Don’t get me wrong, I think the disappearance of the Siberian tiger and the rhino is depressing and I intensely despise humankind’s role in all of it, but life will continue on even if we don’t see it as favorable or desirable.

In general, as long as we put up artificial definitions and preferences, it cannot be said that we truly and deeply appreciate life in all its messy, chaotic glory. Trust the trajectory. It is not for us to lord over it and control it. Be amazed, be amused, be utterly in awe of it all. But the short-sighted urge to “protect” and “save” privileges the species we find desirable and damns the ones we don’t. The inevitable conclusion to the Savior of the Animal Kingdom route is that we will put all the rhinos and elephants in a zoo when what is really required is habitat conservancy, which would require a massive reduction in human population to stop impinging on those places in the first place. So what’s your brilliant solution to that one?

And here is where I remind my dear readers that we must all conduct ourselves in such a way so we can all sleep soundly at night. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that because you recycle you are somehow virtuous and correct. Once that obstacle is in your mind, you cannot grasp the bigger picture and you will do more harm than good in the name of self-righteousness.

We, humans, are the only invasive species. Your Priuses pollute waterways full of fish, all the paper and wood in our lives came from trees that housed birds, and when our houses were built they destroyed animal habitats. Accept it. Unless you are able to unplug and live in a handmade mud hut off the grid (and even then…), it’s time to accept that we are part of this great cycle of creation and destruction that was set in motion eons ago before our species even existed. Be a good student of evolution and trust it in all its mystery.