THE VOTE

[Todd Newberry]

If you want an e-mail nightmare, try this: try returning from a week away
and having the *entire* TAXACOM overpopulation thread awaiting you.  I
suppose it was getting tiresome, trickling in, but I am printing it out to
read over in one sitting tomorrow.  Had I voted, I would have voted NAY to
ending it (having been spared it all week), and I hope remnants are yet to
come in, vote or no, that develop some of the side-issues that surfaced
and sank too fast.

I think it was Anne Lamotte who wrote that Chicken Little was right, the
sky *has* fallen, and now we have to figure out how to help one another.
Michael Ivie's description of the wreckage in Madagascar does that, maybe
by putting a human face on what we usually hear about only impersonally.
In any mess as devilishly complex as human overpopulation, it helps, I
think, to read about how some of us have come to terms, as we try to come
to terms ourselves with our predicament and as we try to place ourselves
in it in any meaningful way.  The D-key is there for people who have
sorted it out; for the rest of us, the exchange is (IMHO) significant,
appropriate, and valuable.

Todd Newberry
Santa Cruz CAL
taxa at cats.ucsc.edu