Had a great weekend. But on here I'm only going to talk about the sad part.

We were driving along County 42 in Burnsville and saw a turtle in the middle of the road. We pulled over and I got out to move him out of the road. I saw that a part of his shell was broken and there was blood near him and I thought he was dead. But then I saw him move. After checking for cars, I went out and picked him up. We started driving to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in St. Paul and it seemed like he was going to make it. He was bleeding severely at first, but it seemed to stop. But then, when we were actually in sight of the center, something burst inside the poor little guy and he just gave out. His limbs and his head came all the way out of his shell and didn't retract even when I gently touched them. I could see something I thought was his liver. After looking at this site on turtle anatomy I am pretty sure that's what it was. He started bleeding again and by the time we got in to the center I think he was almost gone. They told us with injuries that severe they would probably have to euthanize. It was very sad and it made me think about a few things:

a)Were we just doing it to make ourselves feel good?
b)Did we actually help him in any way?
c)Wouldn't it be more meaningful overall to campaign for some kind of environmental regulations on road construction?

And here are my current answers:

a)No. It actually was an hour and a half cut out of time with important people. We really did it because we had a vision of saving his life and seeing him released back in to a cool wetland somewhere.

b)Maybe. Of course he would have died within ten minutes or so of us seeing him if we had not intervened. We were his only chance at living. He would have been hit by another car and mutilated. But perhaps if we had just set him down in a nearby wetland he would have healed on his own. This seems unlikely, but I worry that even though I held him in my hands and tried to have my arms act as shock absorbers, it was the jostling 40 minute car ride that caused the fatal inner pressure and grisly explosion. What seems most likely is that his death was either marginally more or marginally less uncomfortable than it would have been.

c)Maybe. However, I think of the parable of the man standing on the beach throwing washed up starfish into the ocean;

There are thousands of starfish all up and down the beach and a second man comes up to him and says, "You can't possibly save them all. You need to do something on a larger scale. In the long run what you are doing doesn't matter!" The first man answers, "It mattered to that one."

I am not a politician or even a lobbyist. I give to PETA. I always vote and vote green. I even write to my state and national legislators for some things. But I think I have accepted that I am not the person who is going to change humanity's unslakeable lust for automobile travel. Given that, what we did was a good course of action.

My newest song, Milestone Mo-tel just went up at mp3.com. (Click on the title there to go hear it.) I am excited about it. I think it's really good. I noticed my songs got 3 plays yesterday. That doesn't always happen. It makes me wonder if that was because I am posting here. If you read this and go to my site, send an e-mail to memphis@memphisevans.com, and say you went there because you saw my blog. That would be cool. I imagine this blog getting buried underneath all the thousands of others, but maybe not. Well, gotta go teach. See ya.