DOLPHINARIA AND COASTS

I look to art as a model for dealing with our planetary mess. You have various elements in art, and they are assembled in any given art project. There is line, shape, color, etc. Picking out a single element -- or a part of a part of a single element, like, say, bearing down on a single shape within a painting--misses the point of the project, which is unity of all the "elements". I have great misgivings about these so called elements of art, but looking at them provides some clues: Line

Shape

Form

Space

Texture

Value

Color

Staving off a disgusting dolphin pen aligns well with coastal management. Coasts undoubtedly encompass the elements of line, shape, form and space, but quite possibly the other art elements as well. You get from the dolphinarium issue to coastal management--and to line!--quite easily. And from that you get to space quite easily. And the discipline whereby you manage line and space is planning. If you leave comprehensive planning out of the equation, we can only spin around in circles of confusion. So, SDB could be the booster rocket to get us into orbit where we can see the entire coast as a single, defining thread within an island's spacial tapestry. But don't mind me; I'm obviously quite challenged myself to get my mind around all of this. Maybe there are people out there who can help get to the required sense of unity where we assemble all the sustainability issues together holistically or synthetically. Or systematically. I don't know. It's hard to figure this out.