I enjoy listening to Car Talk on the weekends. Those two guys make me laugh, just with their laughing. This Saturday was no exception, I was driving to quartet rehearsal, happy to have the guys from MA keeping me company. But one of the callers said something that has been sitting sour in my memory, like an out of tune chord.

She was a biologist, calling in for advice about what SUV to purchase for her off-road biology adventures. Near the end of their conversation, they asked her what she did on these excursions. She replied, "We are documenting the decline." They asked, "the decline of what? civilization?", and she replied, "We are documenting the decline of our natural heritage." This turn of phrase - and the sadness with which she stated it - has put me into an ecological funk.

We saw the movie "The Story of the Weeping Camel" this weekend. It's a film that resembles a National Geographic photo shoot, about a family in Mongolia and how they resolve a problem with a camel that won't take care of her calf. The ritual they use to cure the camel's resistance is stunning. The sad part of the movie, to me, was to see that even in this remote outpost of the world, satellite tv, adidas logos, and motorcycles replacing the camels as modes of transport across the desert.

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