The weekend was an orgy of hedonistic southern California pleasure:  expensive coffee in the sun; a bike ride along the nine-mile beach; sandcastles besides the incoming waves; wonder at the ski kites that dominate Belmont Shores; and then to San Pedro harbor where we took off on my daughter’s 28-ft long Westsail.  I first saw this yacht six years ago sitting high and dry on a dusty back lot east of Palm Springs.  Years later and many hours and dollars of work, it now floats proud in the slip, a brilliant blue hull with red trim.  We pottered about Los Angeles harbor, engrossed by the big ships and the tankers and the hoards of small boats that ply the calm waters inside the breakwater.  We too stayed behind the protection of the breakwater, for beyond the waves were crashing on the rocks and there was news of coast guard action to help sailors in distress.  The wind was blowing hard, very hard, all up and down the coast.   And the conversation turned to the way the inland desert is heating up and sucking in cool air from the ocean causing the very winds we enjoy and/or fear.  

With a bit of drink, the conversation soon becomes on of those silly arguments about the truth, reality, and causes of global warming.  Now, I confess, much ashamed, that I cannot get worked up about global warming.  Here is why.  The theory is that the great Anasazi civilizations of New Mexico collapsed after 400 years because of climate change and environmental despoliation.  And maybe they did, and if they had not, I would not be here now enjoying the pleasures of the sun, surf, sand, and sailing. 

Now you could say that is a most immoral way to think.  And I reply:  I was taught that the collapse of the Roman Empire, was due to moral decay.  Now it appears to be the result of a great plague that swept with rats along the trade routes from southern China, through the Mediterranean and as far as England and Ireland.  Around 400 AD, this plague came out of Africa along the trade routes, caused so much death in southern China that the northern Chinese, who are a very different people, were able to invade and take over the southern kingdoms. 

Then the plague moved on to kill large percentages of the population of the Roman empire, leaving them unable to resist the southward movement of the Germanic tribes.  In England, the western part of the country was so depopulated that the Angle Saxons were able to move in from Denmark virtually unchallenged and bring the language that we know as old English.

For 600 years the Anglo Saxons ruled all England only to be overtaken in 1066 by the Normans, who spoke French, and changed Anglo Saxon so much that now we speak a language that is as much romance as Germanic—I had fun with this fact as I tried to get the boys to learn words from the French: bovine, avine, feline, canine, equine as equivalents of the Anglo Saxon words cow, bird, cat, dog, and horse. I did this by teaching them as swear words the following: bovine feces (bull shit), etc. They loved swearing, not realizing they were learning some fun new words that reflect a brutal takeover of a society by invaders.

My point as we sailed back along the harbor in warm, windy sun, is that humans do change things, can change things, and are changed by things.  I will worry about all that in the new week; but not today–maybe tomorrow.