{"id":107,"date":"2012-03-16T15:10:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-16T15:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/2012\/03\/16\/that-letter-i-sent-to-the-editor-of-harpers-2\/"},"modified":"2012-03-16T15:10:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-16T15:10:00","slug":"that-letter-i-sent-to-the-editor-of-harpers-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/2012\/03\/that-letter-i-sent-to-the-editor-of-harpers-2\/","title":{"rendered":"That Letter I Sent to the Editor of Harper’s…"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Dies Irae <\/b><\/p>\n

I read with great enjoyment Edward Hoagland\u2019s excellent, valedictory essay on aging and his worries about the fate of nature [\u201cLast Call,\u201d May]. Like Hoagland, I believe that this earth is all the heaven we will get, and so I am mindful of the plight of the bees when I allow my harnessed kitten to have a taste of predation and kill one in the clover blossoms.<\/p>\n

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As I approach my own geezerhood, however, I assuage my worries about the degradation of our planet with faith in a larger conception of nature, one in which we humans are just a part. Our manifest flaws, of which greed and profligacy are not the least, seem to me to be part of nature\u2019s inexorable and merciless script. If we cannot save ourselves from ourselves, and we do in fact spoil our nest, then we will be the ones diminished in numbers. Isn\u2019t there relief in knowing that if this happens, we will be limited by this simple equation in our ability to cause further damage? <\/div>\n
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Nature is a larger and stronger entity than we are. If we manage to create such astonishing toxicity that we take ourselves out completely, and take with us much of Creation as we have known it, that which remains will be necessarily emergent. I am perhaps perverse in taking this as a comfort, but even if we do get our act together and conserve as much as possible of what remains of our environment, nature always retains the capacity to wipe us out regardless.<\/p>\n

Ken Beck
Rantoul, Ill.”<\/p>\n

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This is the text I sent, which Harper’s published in the July issue of 2010. They didn’t edit me. Neither did I. It was written in less than 15 minutes, just an ordinary morning’s rant. I assumed that it would never be in print. Harper’s? Come on, man. That thing goes back to Twain.<\/div>\n
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In the meanwhile, the truth of my rant becomes more and more obvious. It’s 80 degrees here in March, 2012. The mosquitoes are flitting about to the delight of that kitten, now a cat. I repost this, to riposte a piece on endangered milkweed. We are all of us endangered. And when we perish, the planet will rebound. This I believe. As a human, I’m not really looking forward to it. But I read each rant that crosses my eyeballs with this in mind.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Dies Irae  I read with great enjoyment Edward Hoagland\u2019s excellent, valedictory essay on aging and his worries about the fate of nature [\u201cLast […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ken-beck.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}