Friday, June 28, 2013

A memorial to 50,000 lost bees

You read it right.  A memorial to dead bees. 
Fifty thousand bumblebees will be honored at a memorial Sunday in the same shopping center parking lot southwest of the Portland, Oregon, where most of the insects died earlier this month. 
Rozzell Medina, of Portland, said on a Facebook page that the event will "memorialize these fallen lifeforms and talk about the plight of the bees and their importance to life on Earth," The Oregonian reported.
... 
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation has upped its estimate of the bee kill to 50,000. Spokesman Scott Black calls that a very conservative number.
While I understand the importance of bees to our ecosystem and indeed, to all human life, I wonder just what kind of person might be mad enough to hold a memorial service for them. 
While earning his Master's degree in Educational Leadership and Policy with a focus on Leadership for Sustainability Education, Rozzell is the Coordinator and Committee Chair of Chiron Studies. He is also Co-Director of Public Social University. When he is not exploring the possibilities of reinventing and reinvigorating education and community, Rozzell is usually painting, drawing, playing music, writing letters and postcards, gardening, or riding his bicycle.
This kind of weird crusaderesque behavior will undoubtedly catch the eye of the Captain.  It takes a special kind of crazy to decide that the thing to do is to gather in a parking lot and mourn the passing of the poor bees.  I love how there is a "society for the conservation" of invertibrates.  Reminds me of the skit by George Carlin.

2 comments:

  1. Liberals can't even mourn the right kind of bee. Seriously, bumblebees are largely useless in my limited farming experience. Honey bees will help pollinate your fruit trees and produce actual value. Bumblebees are too fat to do much but spread flowers.

    Kindred spirits?

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    1. Apparently they are pretty good for tomatoes, but otherwise you're basically right. They are wild flower pollinators.

      http://www.clemson.edu/extension/beekeepers/factsheets/bumble_bees_as_pollinators.html

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