The cork on the upper right came from a bottle of Smoking Duck wine. The back of the label talked about how ducks like to get together and have some good wine and a fine cigar after a big day.

**********

I first contemplated the nature of a duck when Jane Williams said "If it looks like a duck ,and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a toxic waste incinerator." She was talking about that phenomenon where the Waste Management industry would never take "no" for an answer. Every time a citizens group beat a major pollution source, they would change the name and send the project around again, maybe this time getting it through while the opposition was sleeping. The following is my meditation on "Duck."

The first kind of duck that came to mind for me was the one in that old warning, "Duck when the lead starts flying." I vividly remember hearing it in the fall of 1996 from Dennis, one of the older guys at AOL. He was very good at making software run faster.

The second kind of duck is the kind in the attached message. I am just fascinated by how many ducks it represents. Thinking about it, I am reminded of a conversation I overheard in O.C. One guy said "Back in the days before intelectual property law, Disney gave the University of Oregon permission to use thier Duck on the football teams stuff." "Once the company got corporate, they tried to get the rights back, but they couldn't." "However, they did clip the wings of the marketing in a compromise." "Now, the Ducks can only use that logo in the State of Oregon."

I do think I have seen three ducks dabbling together in the creek by the trail where I run at least once.

At the Statewide Green Party meeting, Gloria Purcell frequently ends the meeting by leading us in a singing of the song that goes "Be kind to your web footed friends, for the duck you see may be somebody's mother..." This is quite apropriate for us, because the Ducks Unlimited sticker on the window of a car I walked past the other day had the flags of three nations on it, a reminder that we are all connected.

Tian Harter

Subject: Re: My favorite: How about "Door Into Summer"?

Date: Fri, 20 August 1999 04:52 PM EDT

I guess I have to read the book?

--

Michael Welborn, Capt, USAF

U of O class of 91, Go Ducks

Tian Harter <tnharter@aol.comCheese> wrote in message

news:19990819160122.05306.00001318@ng-fe1.aol.com...

> John S. wrote about Door Into Summer by R. A. Heinlein:

>

> >And it's one of the better illustrations of the "closed-loop" concept of

> >how time travel would work. No inconsistencies possible, but that doesn't

> >preclude closed loops, any more than they are precluded in your hi-fi

> >amplifier!

>

> I must agree with you there. I like the interpretation of what is possible

> in that book so much that I loaned my copy of it to a coworker while

> I was at AOL and asked her to read it. I was glad to hear she liked it. Her

> understanding of reality was one of my best "anchor points" while I was

> there.

>

> I've thought a lot about that concept of reality. I finally realized that

> the problem with old versions of religion is that they don't properly

> account for such concepts as "inter generational equity." They assume

> "as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be," without paying

> attention to the fact that what we do changes what our children get.

>

> How do you give fair opportunity to those who come after? My answer

> is to ask only reasonable things of us. For example, on 2/25/1999, the

> woman mentioned above and I drove from one end of Innovation

> Drive in Irvine, CA to the other and back in her green Miata, which at

> the time had 1740 miles on it. At the time we had just seen Waking

> Ned Divine, a reasonable "synchronizing event."

>

> Another time I went to a Boycott Shell organizing meeting in the

> oldest continuously occupied church in Orange County, CA. After

> the core of the meeting a "Mackerel Eater" found a copy of Door Into

> Summer in a box of old books and decided to take it home with him.

> I was glad to give him a testimonial on how good it was.

>

> Tian Harter

> Caution: Be careful what you ask for, you might get it.