Perspective

Lying in a field of sweet grass, gentle summer breezes on your face, the sky above almost endless, filled with the sort of bilious, white puffy clouds children spend hours imagining the shapes of our world in.
Slowly rise into that sky turning to look at where you lay.

Higher now, the earth's curvature, the sky almost black, the horizon's blue brilliance lifting towards the stars as the Earth spins on its axis.

Climb ever higher, the immensity of this planet revealing itself to you. Watch as the curved horizon climbs towards the stars as the earth spins and hurdles through space on its 60,000-mph journey around a sun a million times its size.
And in an instant - a hushed, ancient forest. Your hands on the bark of a 1000-year-old giant redwood. Still, majestic, magical. Its trunk more than twice the breadth of your outstretched arms, reaching skyward, a thousand years, dwarfing you. The bark thick, comforting. Moss wet and gently dripping. Branches far above you quiet in their almost timeless observations. It has been so for a very long time. Long before you were born, and all during your life, here was this tree. Through all the drama, hardship and joy, here was this tree. In all this immensity – here was this tree.

The War on Wars

I get tired of listening to the pundits and politicians talk about the 'war' on drugs, the 'war' on terrorism. How exactly do you wage war on a brick of cocaine? It's ridiculous. Drug abuse is a people problem not a drug problem that will only be fixed when the reasons behind the demand for drugs are resolved. And terrorism is a methodology, and those who enact it - terrorists - are everywhere. It only takes one person - how can you wage conventional war on that? Both terrorism and drug abuse result - at least in part - as a result of an isolating, dehumanizing world, made worse by poor policy decisions. So what do we do to fix it? For one we stop grandstanding and we start dealing in reality and address the root causes that contribute to these problems and then develop strategies to deal with them. It is time to address our problems from a reality base and not from one of grandstanding and disingenuous nonsense. And to pay for it we divert monies we currently spend waging 'war' on bricks of cocaine and entire countries and instead spend it on fixing the real problems. The total defense spending for this year will be between $880 billion and $1.03 trillion. If you count one dollar a second, 24 hours a day, it would take you 32,000 years to just count that much money. The 2009 U.S. military budget was nearly as much as the rest of the world's defense spending combined - nearly as much as the entire rest of the worlds defense spending combined - and is over nine times larger than the military budget of China. Waste, fraud, power struggles, and greed in the military-industrial complex suck billions of dollars away from our youth, our security, our infrastructure, our future. It greatly adds to the suffering and anguish of billions of people worldwide, and it does not make us safer - on the contrary. It is time to seriously scrutinize the military-industrial complex, address its waste, fraud and abuses, assess our true defense needs and then redirect unneeded funds to programs that will truly bring hope to our youth, security at home and lasting peace.If we diverted 1/10th what we spend on our military to our schools and social programs we could give our children more opportunity and a fair start in life that would go a long way to curtailing drug abuse. If we did that worldwide we'd go a long way to solving terrorism. If we spent the money we spend waging unnecessary war,  and instead spent it on programs designed to stimulate economic growth and opportunity for the average person on the street - worldwide - we'd be perceived as less a target of rage and more the shining light we hold ourselves up to be.

Of molecules, light and exotica

If chlorophyll absorbed green light the world would be shades of black.

A Journey Through Time

The blue is our galaxy in microwave. The mottled background is the microwave remnants of the Big Bang - the beginning of time. Most of the blue light began its journey to us 200,000 years ago - the mottled orange 13.7 billion years ago. You are looking at our galaxy as it was 200,000 years ago, draped against the universe as it appeared moments after it began 13.7 billion years ago. Click on the image for a blow up.

Letter Not Published

Not Published October 2007 (Should have been)

When discussing deaths in Iraq our elected officials and the media talk almost exclusively about US deaths - Iraqi death not usually considered. Sadly, most in this country hold American life as more important and frankly don’t want to know about Iraqi deaths. But a study published in the prestigious medical journal, the Lancet, in July of 2006, estimated excess Iraqi civilian deaths due to the war at that time to be 654,965 – numbers difficult to ignore even by the most bigoted amongst us. Terrorists are twisted hateful souls. The reasons people evolve into terrorists are probably many and complex. But how does allowing the rest of the world to feel we do not consider their lives or even their innocent children’s lives important, help? Hundreds of thousands of innocent souls have died as a result of what we as a country have put into motion in Iraq. You can’t kill all the terrorists, hatred only creates more hatred, and violence only spurs more violence. Ultimately our only real choice is to work to end the root causes of terrorism – and that begins by learning to respect all of human life as our own. Only then can we find peace.

Published Letters to Editor

Published April 6, 2010
Modern warfare is Un-American
For most of us, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have had little to no impact on our lives. Two wars ongoing with little price to pay for the vast majority of Americans. How is this possible? Easy. Avoid the draft by forcing National Guard men and women into five, six, seven tours of duty, essentially ruining their lives and minds. Then make up any deficit in numbers of "warm bodies" needed on the ground with for-profit civilians.
War fought by an small increasingly isolated and abused group of men and women in the military, backed by a for-profit industry whose employees earn five to 10 times as much while their bosses rake in billions in profit of taxpayer dollars. Oh how noble this modern warfare has become. If we're going to engage in war, it's got to hurt -- all of us. Anything short of that is corrupt and un-American.

Published November 26, 2009
What's the goal?
The health care "reform" bills shaping up in Congress seem to offer little in the way of true reform. Rather, they appear to be a boondoggle for the health insurance industry -- mandating another 31 million customers without addressing waste, greed and lack of focus on health.Whereas extending coverage to another 31 million people and reducing denials and caps of coverage is a good thing, current legislation appears to do little to address waste and skyrocketing cost. And where is the emphasis on preventative care? Isn't the point of health care to prolong healthy lives as much as possible? And to do that don't we need to make it efficient, affordable and focused in part on ways to keep people healthy before they get ill? Ultimately we're talking about human lives and suffering here. How did we get to a point where profit and greed play such a role in our health?

Published August 21, 2009
Public Option
As a clinician, I deal daily with a broken health care system. We've all dealt with a broken system for decades now.The heart of our present system is profit. The solution, while complex in detail, is almost embarrassingly simple. Get profit concerns out of health care coverage. Or at least provide a strong public option that forces the focus on health and not profit. Anything less is not true health care reform. Almost every major Western country in the world already knows this. No meaningful change will be enacted if there is no public option. Millions of Americans will continue to suffer.

Published Sept 25, 2008
Multi-tasking part of job

It's unclear to me why John McCain wanted to postpone the first presidential debate. Apparently he can't help "fix" the economy and debate an opponent at the same time. Does this mean he wouldn't be able to deal with a hurricane while waging unprovoked war?A president needs to be able to multi-task, and do it very effectively. Surely the man can take a few hours tonight and discuss his take on recent events with his opponent in the form of a debate and still have time to help with the economy.The American people deserve to hear more from both candidates during this crisis -- not less.

Published Friday, February 15, 2008 
Congress is on the ball
Roger Clemens is suspected of using performance-enhancing drugs while playing baseball and Congress leaps into action, holding public hearings.George W. Bush and Dick Cheney deliberately lead us into an unprovoked war for reasons as phony as Adolf Hitler's excuses for invading Poland, and no one bats an eye. Bill Clinton lies about an extramarital affair, and Congress leaps into action -- impeaching him.Bush and Cheney order the illegal wiretapping of thousands of U.S. citizens -- before 9/11, and Congress not only doesn't act, but it is about to grant retroactive immunity to the phone companies that abetted them in these crimes. Let's not even talk of illegal renditions, suspension of habeas corpus, the deliberate outing of a covert CIA agent in an act of political revenge, or the shady practice of granting unbidded contracts worth billions to companies the administration has ties to. No, let's not even bring these things up. After all, we've got baseball players to investigate.

CHARLIE PHILLIPS Southwest Portland

Published June 2007
Chose Milk

A gallon of gasoline is now more expensive than a gallon of milk.
A gallon of milk has enough calories to fuel your body for 2 days.
In that time you could – tell your family you love them. You could comfort someone in pain. You could meet your soul mate. Paint a masterpiece. Outline the world’s next greatest novel. Kiss your child goodnight – twice. Dream magical dreams. Save a life.With a gallon of gasoline you could – drive an average car less than 30 miles – adding pollution to contribute to global warming that may destroy your children’s future.Chose milk, use the energy to walk, and be there in a better world in your child’s future.