If Not Now, When? If Not Us, Who?

If I have not written about enough reasons to be suspect of remaining idle, trusting our leaders to consider our interests before making bad decisions or to re-think our positions on a variety of issues, you can bet that I will continue to do so over the coming years. There is no shortage of truth that needs to be injected into public discourse. We have been sold a bill of goods on so many issues, utterly devoid of truth or substance that if we were to go to court, we would qualify for damages.

I have been writing in this forum for several years now and plan to continue as long as possible, but the financial stress of doing so can be frustrating and disillusioning. When well-heeled idiots get up on their soap box and extoll the virtues of weaponry, or the financial bail out of dead end industries, that give cover to criminals of the highest order, it is easy to just be quiet and turn our other cheek. Somne even choose to shut their mouths and take the crap that we are led to believe. they say the you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

My writing seeks to point out some of the inalienable wrongs that have been perpetrated against human beings by our current power brokers, the uber-wealthy and the politically well-connected. The Idle No More groups that are protesting worldwide need our support. Indigenous peoples across the globe have a very serious claim to have protections for the world that we all depend on for our sustenance as well as the people who have lived here for millennea. Without getting up off the couch, there can be no change. May the coming year allow you the time to get active in making the world that we all know needs to exist be taken back from those who have controlled the tiller of the ship of state for far too long. Without us, the Earth and her people will continue the death spiral toward un-sustainability.

The Heart Box

I have had a propensity throughout my life that borders on the miraculous. Things find me. Objects. Many of these things are of little use, but others are extremely useful and frequently border on the mystical. For instance, when I lived in downtown Green Bay, the driveway used to change phase at lead\st twice during each winter, from relatively firm frozen dirt to mud and back again when it either dried out or froze thoroughly. About the same time, I discovered an old hippie commune that I spent time at when I was a child, was being torn down. They had a spring house that was getting buried under fill dirt and so I rescued enough stone slabs from the foundation to pave the driveway.

When I felt the need to make movies, a camera and editing equipment came to me.

When I was a child, we used to do scavenger hunts through the neighborhood, asking for simple things like a rubber band or paper clip. These events always found me to be the first one back with all my items, relishing my good fortune. As one finds relatively quickly, the abundance that can come with this sort of luck is both a blessing and a curse. I kept every stainless steel toaster that came my way for several years. Toaster ovens, toasters and electric rotisserie units seemed to be attracted to me and I covered a wall with them, making quirky retro art of them.

Recently, however, I'm finding that this abundance is worthless if not shared. Like with the electric appliance art, without giving it all away, these objects hold no intrinsic value. For many years, I found silverware. For over a decade before that it was rubber baby doll parts. When I first got to Green Bay, I was amazed at the number of single shoes that I would find, just laying in the street. I often wondered what event, or events led up to someone deciding to jettison just one shoe from their life on a random city street.

Two consecutive years in a row, on Memorial Day Weekend, I found sleeping bags in the same spot along the highway. And several times, while walking, I have found dollars, or fives, once even a twenty. Dumb luck you may say, but when you live a blessed life as I have you know that something larger than mere luck is at work. I have found white gold rings, which were eventually stolen from me, my own lost wedding ring (actually a friend found that one, in one of his garden beds that I had helped him till up the previous fall.) A tiny key fob with only two keys on it in a pile of rocks we had made on the shore of Lake Michigan. I have found two boats, three bikes, two guitars and countless tools, food and materials, just left to rot, blown away or otherwise left for trash. Useful things that have enriched both my life and the lives of countless others.

I do not lack much, except cash, but these things that come to me are either made immediately useful of they go into what I call the heart box. You may have a heart box yourself, but if you do not, I encourage you to start one. These things that go into one are your gifts or blessings. Things that have come to you, often unsolicited that come in abundance but only have value when given away. I'm not talking about cobbing every lighter that you ever touch so that you can have a lighter stash and give them away and the point is not to go buy a bunch of useless crap that you can give away. If you pay attention, there are things that you can share all around and nearly at every turn if you allow yourself to "see" and look for opportunities to share. I love to make wine, but if I were to drink as much as I make, not only my life would be negatively impacted, but so too the lives of those I come in contact with. Sharing my abundance allows me to do what I like to do and enrich the lives of others who in turn may not have had the resources to make their own wine.

Remember, no abundance has inherent value, until it is given away.

A Little Something For Holier Days

A Message by George Carlin:

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways ,but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete...

Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever.

Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.

Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.

Remember, to say, 'I love you' to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.

Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again.

Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

If you don't share this with anyone....Who cares?

George Carlin

Looks Good From Far, But Far From Good

Who are the people who wield the cameras? Are they all mindless schmucks? It seems that the folks who are recording the images and soundscapes that inform our collective attention are either completely devoid of morals/ethics or are entirely motivated by greed. If it isn't vitriolic, invasive or prurient, it certainly isn't chosen by the editors to see the light of day, much less the overly produced shock imagery of the media as it exists today. With a tiny sliver of humanity, those on the ground floor of media-making, the camera people alone, could wield substantial power over the media's unethical twisting of imagery that i contend is equivalent to domestic terrorism. We all know the adage, X% of all statistics are made up on the spot. The lower number you substitute for X, the more you want the listener to consider your "truthiness" in a positive light, often making the point that you would never do the making up of numbers on the fly. The higher number you substitute for X, the less viable you want your listeners to think the numbers are. My problem is that I often use existing figures from reputable sources, but the hostile, hyper-mediated culture that we exist within makes my calculations seem impossible.

For instance, who has not seen relatives scarred for life in a foreign conflict that was ill-conceived and useless, except for corporate welfare for dubious corporations? One third of families have at least one member in the military. most people who speak plainly on their return from war explain that there are no good ones and that if you are not a mental case before you go (and it helps) you will be one when you get home. Why then do we continue to hear stories that somehow our "freedom" depends on doing that to them? My own family bears several scars of war and I can tell you plainly, we are perpetrating crimes against humanity each and every time that we glorify aggression. Every single dollar that we spend on defense is perpetrating destruction, of property, of lives, of our own economic interests around the globe. Power and control issues need to be taken on wherever we find them. This is 100% about giving massive government help to economic structures that, on their own, would collapse. We are funding the powerful at the expense of the weak.

In my personal experience, the first strike close to my heart, was the loss of a neighbor's son. I saw him outside, playing basketball and hanging out, riding his bike and playing board games. He never came back from Vietnam and his parents got a flag, the one that draped his coffin. In that war, we fought against people who had brought education, sanitation and health care to the impoverished people of the region. We poisoned vast acreages, forever, sterilized fields, firebombed whole villages, etc. We also snuffed out a vibrant life and forever handicapped a family, pruning off an entire family tree. When my mother married a vet, she did not know that he was addicted to the pain meds that he associated with his deliverance from the front lines. Let me tell you, the worst thing you can do with a pedophile is to send them to a place where conscience is a liability. Closer still to home, my brother has described his whole life "like living in boot camp." My eldest daughter has married a military man as well. Since the suspension of the draft, there is less corruption down at the draft board, but the bite that the military has taken out of society continues to be disproportionately out of the fabric of the poorest classes. The more dismal you make a person's life and the less vibrant their options, the more desperate for security people become. Even playing the lottery of death or dismemberment seems worth it when you look at the imagery that we are fed on a daily basis.

To appreciate the desperation fully, you need to imagine that there is a world out here that is full to overflowing. We have so much abundance that we throw away about 40% of our food supply in these United States of America, yet people go to bed hungry every night. We spend more on health care, than any other country (18% of GDP. the next closest spends 12%) and have worse outcomes than any other developed nation. Yet, we are told by our illustrious media that health care reform will cost "more". We are asked to turn our heads and cough while insurance companies are emptying our pocketbooks. That's not scarier than Obamacare? The mileage that the right has gotten out of the threat of "death panels" is only sickening when you realize that right now, today, there are rooms where non-doctors are deciding reimbursement rates for every kind and type of procedure and what they will and will not allow people to "have". People are dying each and every day because they have been denied coverage or have gotten the wrong treatments, simply because insurance would not pay for what people really needed.

The real world America has nearly 100,000 public schools. The average school year is 180 days. Even if we had one school shooting per year, there would be a one in eight million chance that your child's school would be the site of the attack. Within that statistic lies another, if twenty out of several hundred children got killed, the chances would increase exponentially. One chance, perhaps, in one hundred million. Now, there are companies selling "bulletproof backpacks". Only three hundred dollars or so can allow parents to rest easier when they send their children into harm's way. Please, people, let's try for one moment to get our collective head out of the sand. The facts will not lie, let's try to look at them! Let's try to get a grasp of the situation. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) is lobbying the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) to classify motorcycle use as an epidemic, because of avoidable costs that are posed to our health care system by motorcyclists. Several hundred thousand people die in car crashes each year. Less than one percent of those deaths are people who were on two wheels, yet the motorcyclists are the problem. It seems that we are again having a hard time understanding the reality of our situation.

Interpreting data can be tricky, but for one minute consider the consequences of a myth, so firmly held by many motorcyclists as to be considered dogma. they even make bumper stickers and t-shirts that say: "Loud Pipes Save Lives". Many, most noteworthy, Harley owners subscribe to the belief that the roar of un-muffled explosions within the motor, somehow makes them more noticeable on the highway, or in traffic. In the jurisdiction I live, if you can hear music coming from a car more than fifty feet away, it is considered a ticket-able offense. I have heard Harleys from well over five hundred feet away, but no "crime" has taken place. Add to this the flinch factor when the same idiot blows by a blue haired old woman on the highway at eighty and you have potential for disaster. The damage done to both the rider's hearing and that of those around them in traffic costs society billions per year in lost hearing alone, yet the "liberty" of the idiot dishing out the damage is considered sacrosanct. I once again call Bullshit!

When we look from afar, like Disneyland, there is definitely a complete picture being created for us to sit back and watch. However, unlike an audience who has cued up and waited in line for entry, expecting a show, we think what we see is real. We often forget that the bill of goods that we are being sold as consumers of media, has been massaged to show us only what the producers, and ultimately the shareholders of media conglomerates want us to see. Clearchannel has helped put our local theater on the ropes and continues to pummel them into submission which in turn requires that I drive hundreds of miles each week to work in a distant market, plying a craft that my family has participated in for three generations. The wealth continues to concentrate in the highest echelons of our economic system, but somehow, because I'm a member of a union, I am vilified in the media. When we come in close and get a long look deep into the eyes of the beast who controls our very discussion points and vocabulary on these and other subjects, seeing the fires stoked by greed and fed with our children's future, it is both mesmerizing and stupefying that we continue to be taken in by their lie factory. I'm sorry to those of you who tire of me saying it, but lies need to be constantly propped up, but truth stands alone. When we start to see behind the mask of media, no amount of made up statistics can take away the scars and depravity that we see underneath. Whether of not demons can be tamed remains to be seen, but their time has got to come to a swift end if we are to reclaim any part of the American dream that was worth saving.

Orders of Magnitude

In a culture where nearly one fourth of the population is functionally illiterate, it may be a tall order to expect people to begin to understand mathematics. However what has been passing for news this week requires a bit of soul searching and perhaps a deeper understanding of what has actually taken place. I want to start by saying that it is a tragedy when twenty children are gunned down. It is terrible and sad that anyone feels the need to kill off their family, teachers and students. We can rest assured that these sorts of attacks are not new and that although extremely rare, they will become more common as greater numbers of people are forced to live under greater and greater stress. This is not to say that there are probably some things we can do to help, but Lord and Lady bless those who think that any one measure would stop these sorts of attacks. Human beings have proven to be resourceful even when they are crazy.

Right off the top, I have to say that the society that we live in has serious power and control issues. In the case of the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting, we do not have power over the forces of insanity, nor can we control weapons that have made their way into the hands of unstable individuals. Many feel that their guns are tools that are for protection. I took the time to look into how guns "make us safer" and found that, in fact, gun owners are four times more likely to be killed with a firearm than unarmed individuals. Even in our relatively small town of 100,000 souls, there have been multiple events in which ostensibly "trained" gunmen (police) have unloaded multiple weapons in the heat of the moment and twenty, thirty, forty rounds later, perhaps one round hit it's mark. We have even had incidents in which innocent bystanders were killed, but the suspect who was being fired upon was barely injured. I'm hoping that we would consider the police a sort of well-organized militia but just because someone straps iron to their belt each day cannot make anyone safer when the lead starts to fly.

That said, there are over four thousand children who die each and every day because of filthy water. I do not want to sound one bit callous or unfeeling. In fact, it is the opposite. Perhaps I care too much. as the daily death toll mounts, we have to understand that these are orders of magnitude greater tragedies than the twenty odd individuals who died in this most recent shooting. One order of magnitude greater tragedy would be 260, two orders of magnitude would be 2,600. Hmmmmm, still, we are barely half of the daily death rate from dirty water. To get our minds around the numbers, perhaps we should think about the number of children who die each month from contaminated water...120,000. We could add on a third order of magnitude to the school shootings and we would be at 26,000 and the number of dead children would still be less than a quarter of the monthly death rate from an absolutely, 100% preventable cause of death.

I don't know if we will ever be able to fathom or correct the sort of self-loathing that is required to "cure" the particular sort of mental illness that leads people to kill innocent individuals. I don't know if we will ever decide as a culture that human life is worth caring for. I do know that what the news coverage has done is to terrorize us further and keep the truth of far worse crimes against humanity out of the news and off our airwaves. I also know that without perspective, the world is just an ever-changing kaleidoscope of colorful patterns, sans meaning, sans relationship to reality, sans understanding.

Negotiating the "Fiscal Cliff"

We have come to the end of a long-standing stalemate. Problems that have haunted us for many years have been put on the back burner of United States politics for years. In a massive concession to the ultra wealthy, we have put off changes in the tax code that could have raised hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars. i have used the analogy before, but it is so appropriate in helping to understand our current "crisis", that it bears repeating. Like the child who has won all the marbles, the uber-rich just want to go home, taking with them the ability of the rest of us to ever play again. The right wing political leaders in our country are standing shoulder to shoulder with the ruffians who would sacrifice the majority for the sake of their own wealth, power and prestige.

In spite of the fact that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the non-partisan office that determines the consequences of policies and legislation that congress impose on the American public, has calculated an inevitable risk of another slight recession, or a slower recovery than there would be if the "fiscal cliff" could be avoided, the longer term prospects are better if we do go over the "cliff" than if we do not. Virtually nothing has been said about this in the mainstream media. Instead, the gloom and doom stories that do make it onto our airwaves are designed to instill fear and undermine confidence in not only our elected officials, but the economy and the very fabric of our culture. The wealthiest classes, who stand to lose a tiny bit of their wealth if their taxes were to go up are screaming bloody murder about the danger that the cliff poses to our way of life. (their way of living)

There is a cost to living in a free society. The last time we pulled ourselves out of depression, tax rates were up around 90% for the most wealthy individuals. Somehow, they still found ways to ride around in chauffeur driven limousines, live high on the hog and wield their immense power in the halls of government. Currently, many of the most wealthy don't even work for their money, instead they invest in the companies of others and only take a portion of the profits through interest and dividends. these forms if income are treated completely differently than pay for work. Whereas I pay about thirty percent of my earnings in tax, the beneficiaries of this non-work related income only have to pay fifteen percent. This is even more heinous because of two compounding factors. corporate welfare that flows to corporations who then pass on increased profitability to their investors and the ability of the ultra-wealthy to spend top dollar on tax attorneys who can make sure that every loophole is exploited. Add to this the fact that  there are many tax havens for investment income, including states with no income taxes and offshore accounts that are completely invisible to the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) and you can see the perfect storm that has been brewing for decades.

Those who refuse to pay any share at all into the system that they exploit for amassing their unimaginable wealth are both traitors and thieves who pick the pockets of those least able to defend themselves. They simultaneously have their minions sweep up any scraps left after their feasting on the steaks and caviar, sucking at the marrow bones of our society and fleecing the markets for the lion's share of the wealth that our country has to offer.

If we had the power to determine the terms of the discussion, a completely different story would emerge. Instead of living under the threat of "going off the fiscal cliff", we would be able to see an end to the unfair treatment of the wealthiest classes. Those who peddle fear, hate and anger for their personal enrichment would be called our as the lazy cheats that they are, and the "benevolent" philanthropists could be seen as the exploiters that they really are. The point has been made very well by others, paying far greater attention than I, that the true philanthropists are the wait staff, the maids, nannies, the line cooks, chefs, the dry cleaners and the lowly service sector workers, the migrant workers, etc. who give their entire lives so that the wealthy can live their lives of ease.

Allowing the continued exploitation of the lowest classes for the enrichment of the wealthy must not continue. We are standing up, but the revolution is not being televised. People around the world are not willing to continue taking the shitty end of the stick. The time has come to wrest power form those who would keep us down, stop negotiating with those who make all the decisions and to force them to pay their fair share of the costs of our civil society. There are hand holds all the way down and if we are careful, attentive and thoughtful about where we want to end up, the climb down from where we find ourselves will present a welcome challenge that will serve to make us a better country. The only reason that we find ourselves in trouble today is because we have allowed the ship of state to be overtaken by pirates.

Michigan Legislates Slave State

The irony is not lost that one of the states with the most robust economic recovery and such a strong union history would come under attack by the so-called job creators. Union workers have figured so heavily in the last century of Michigan life that their impact on the state will be felt for centuries to come. Auto workers alone not only figured into the rise of Detroit, making it a name known around the world, but they also contributed to the clearing out of the city because their wages allowed them to eventually move away. When white flight took place, many of the auto workers had made enough money during their careers to "start over" in their retirement, further north, boosting local economic activity up-state. Millions of workers, spending billions of dollars created more jobs for realtors, local grocers, a host of service sector employment, boat dealerships and marinas, outdoor gear, home improvement and hardware stores, health care services, etc. Now the state has passed laws making Michigan a "right to work" state. This race to the bottom will surely undermine whatever progress has been made in the workplace as a result of organized labor.

Those who have the money never want to work with unions. I have worked for several employers who have explicitly stated that if I ever told anyone, especially other workers, about my rate of pay, that I would be fired immediately. Time Warner Cable was one of the worst. They gave me only two pay raises during the many years that I worked for them. They had absolutely no interest in the welfare of my family. They did not care one whit that I could not afford to subscribe to their "service" on the wages that they paid. They did not care that I had to feed my family by dumpster jumping. When I found out that the only reason they had given me a raise is because federal law increased the mandatory minimum wage, I quit. My second raise took place under somewhat shady circumstances, nearly doubling my take-home pay. Forcing them into finding another worker to replace me gave me individual bargaining power that the other workers did not have. This is the opposite of trade unionism. The boss's boss was unhappy about having to pay so much, but he was in a difficult position. In my long and storied history with that company, I had sacrificed greatly for both the quality of our productions and cared for the company's equipment as if it were my own. Most workers on minimum wage have no interest in protecting the interests of the corporate overlords, or putting in the extra effort to turn mediocrity into exemplary service.

Unions, on the other hand, codify professional service. In return for decent wages, union workers know that they will be expected to provide excellent service, protect the means of production (even though it is owned by someone else) and commit to making the company, or corporation as profitable as possible. This synergy makes the boss happy because they do not have to worry about sub-par performance, subterfuge, ineptitude or monkey wrenching. Union workers can only demand increased wages or better working conditions if they commit to protecting the employers interests as well. Powerful elites have effectively changed the debate. Just as the names of other laws have no relationship to what they actually do, "right to work" legislation takes away more rights than it gives. The right to organize is undermined and the wealthy are given a huge handout in the form of unorganized workers.

If I think back to my time in television production, with Time Warner, I had to work doubly hard on many occasions because the minimum wage workers were either  too drunk, too hung over, too distracted, unaware, sick or just plain unable to do the work. People without skills or aptitude for certain jobs really don't have any bargaining power in the relationship between themselves and capital (their bosses). In my case, it would have taken more than two disinterested slackers to do the work that I was capable of and willing to do, but I am in a very tiny minority and my boss knew it. Still, when my pay doubled and the rest of the crew only made a few more cents each hour, I felt like I had betrayed them. Whether we admit it or not, none of us would have employment if we were not worth more to our employers than what they have to pay us. The disparity between what we are able to produce, and what the corporation has to pay us is, in large part, their profit margin. The only way to ask the wealthy to part with more of their profit is to give them something in return. Unions have always understood this give and take.

There are those who claim that increased wages and better working conditions will put their interests out of the discussion, but this has never been the case. There has never been any serious study that showed decreasing corporate profits resulting from improving working conditions, wages or more stringent environmental protections. In fact, when monetary considerations or better working conditions are provided, productivity of workers increases. The "right to work" only means that the ability of unions to organize will be undermined further. this is a slap in the face to those who built this country, a race to the bottom that we cannot afford and a huge subsidy of corporations paid for by the working poor. The same corporate interests that tried to buy the Presidential Election have gotten their way in Michigan and the public is outraged. The same sort of protests that continue to take place in the Wisconsin Capital are ongoing in Michigan as well. This revolution is not being televised, not for lack of interest, not for lack of ability, but because the monied interests just do not care.

The craziest thing happenned today...

I reviewed one of my posts, out of curiosity and found that my account had either been hacked or commandeered by some commercial interest bent on using my readership as an advertizing base. Either that or the people I had linked to had the sad experience of being hacked. I will try to keep my links as free from advertizing as possible and I'm working to find out what may have gone wrong to allow such activities to occur. Please forgive the crazy link, but I think that was the only post with a problem. There are many to check, so I've got my work cut out for me...

Whom Will We Serve? (part two)

I cannot adequately tell the story of part one. I was not even conceived when it took place. Beyond my lifetime, in days of old, the "world powers" had faced off and decided that mutually assured destruction would help the world to be at peace.  The dawning of the nuclear age created many mad men, the likes of which the cameras were never pointed at. We are, encouraged to not look too closely at Einstein's horror when he realized the awesome destructive power that his E=mc2 equation would unleash on humanity. The millions of people exposed to radiation, the billions of organisms obliterated from earth. Whoever the first person to imagine vaporization of the "enemy" was, woe to the rest of the planet. How others were cajoled into believing that an entire nation could remain morally superior while simultaneously threatening all of humanity on the entire planet is beyond me.

However, we are writing part two today. In my lifetime, we will either turn away from mutually assured destruction, absolutely, completely, forever, or we will continue to live under the black cloud of threat that nuclear weapons create amongst all people of the entire world. The "concerns" that terrorists world wide like to point to are the possibility that a rogue state will have nuclear capability. not the terrorists that we are told to believe in, but the "big ones". The U. S., primarily. Only a tiny few think that Iran would be stupid enough to launch nuclear warheads at their enemy. Their entire country could be obliterated within minutes if they tried that sort of thing. Those who control the vast majority of the world's nukes would not hesitate a moment to quell that sort of threat. The fact is that every country who overtly said that they would pursue the nuclear "option", has warheads within a few years. The fact that Iran made a big deal out of finally being able to refine medical grade radioactive material leads most who understand the process to realize that weapons are not being pursued by Iran.

Think, for one moment about the vast amounts of energy that must be expended to spin hundreds of centrifuges for years. Like going swimming with a millstone tied around your neck, the last thing Iran needs is a giant hole in their electric grid, sucking, sucking, sucking power day and night, for years. The "classified" nature of much of the information about nuclear weapons is a joke. I could explain with relatively precise detail, the procedure, the percentages of yield of fissionable material from high grade ore, etc. Rest assured that without massive subsidy and economy crashing investment, such undertakings are highly unlikely, especially in a country that is experiencing effective sanctions from the rest of the world. Those parties interested in keeping to the status quo have exhibited no moral character, the powerful interests that push for ever more ridiculous scenarios to be prepared for and  ever more subsidy to the pursuit of out of scale responses to non-existent threats have secured an additional 80 billion dollars for the development of a new generation of nuclear devices. The old ones, and the waste that has been created by them will burden our economy forever, but we are unwilling to face the truth of this deadly path.

In times that have the lowest violence rates calculated since the beginning of recorded history, living within the parameters of a lie needs to stop. The truth about nuclear energy and nuclear weapons needs to be understood and considered well before we succumb to the fear and lies that gobble money and spit out death. If you have a child, a grandchild, or know someone who does. Try to look them in the eye and tell them truthfully that you are willing to sacrifice them for the pursuit of "national security". We are all victims of the nuclear age. It is estimated that over 400,000 premature deaths are still occurring annually worldwide because of our nuclear heritage. We are still going to be living with this burden in thousands of years, if humans are still here. When will we stop the subsidy of the death industry and demand that our leaders protect our rights to clean air, clean water, and unadulterated soils? When? The death industry has compromised all of these. Yet we continue to do business with them through the taxes we pay. When will we learn that it is not productive to spend money on anyone's destruction? Most importantly our own!

Three Times Three

Giving thanks for our blessings must always be in our hearts. This one day event that Thanksgiving represents is nice enough, but we absolutely need to bring awareness of life's miracles to each and every day. I would like to give thanks for some of the most enlightening reading, insightful authors and crucial information for making reasoned headway into the Age of Aquarius. Although I could write pages and pages about each of these titles, I will leave it to you to make up your own mind about the information they contain.

Our Twelve Senses -How Healthy Senses Refresh the Soul by Albert Soesman

Nature's Due -Healing Our Fragmented Culture by Brian Goodwin

The Heritage Of Trees -History, Culture & Symbolism by Fred Hageneder

All three of these titles help to gain insight into the form and grace with which we may tailor our existence to the greater good of the planet, her creatures and find a more equitable path forward amongst our changing landscape. These titles are not spiritual fluff, be prepared to think deeply about grand designs and our part in them.

Understanding Water -Developments from the Work of Theodor Schwenk
by Wilkens, Jacobi & W. Schwenk

Water Element of Life  T. Schwenk & W. Schwenk

Energizing Water -Flowform Technology & the Power of Nature
by Schwuchow, Wilkes & Trousdell

As we come into the Aquarian Age, it has been said that we are to follow the water bearers. Finding our own relationship with this critical element and raising our understanding of it to a higher level can bring both respect and insight into the vital role it plays in our life as well as the life of the planet.

Sacred Geography -Geomancy: Co-creating the Earth Cosmos and

Turned Upside Down: A Workbook On Earth Changes & Personal Transformation, both by
Marco Pogacnik

Climate -Soul of the Earth by Dennis Klocek

As important as the water bearers are, the earth is ripe for a healing touch from the human inhabitants. Learn some of the basic ways to caress our planet rather than punch it. All creatures fare better when they are loved and these texts are full of ides and techniques to exist symbiotically rather than at odds with the forces that rule the natural world.

Blessings this and every day. I have no interest in the selling of these texts, but am encouraging their messages for the sake of our species and future generations. Without enlightened beings taking responsibility for our care of the planet, we threaten the futures of all of our children. I urge everyone to read these out of love for you all. My readers are my family and I hope for you all the best today and throughout the year.

These and other excellent titles can be found at steinerbooks.org

Bio-dynamics and The Coming Age

Organic production methods, healthier diets and local food systems are a great and growing parts of the current changes sweeping across developing nations. The "green revolution" that involved massive debt being heaped upon developing nations, huge corporate welfare for equipment, seed and agricultural chemical manufacturers  has failed to improve the quality of life for the billions of people that it was supposed to lift up. Now, we face a sad fact. The "developed" nations that exported this idea of conquest of the land, subjugation of nature and monetizing all aspects of the crippling food production system have had to face the truth of what they have done.

Feeding the world with subsidized commodities has led to skyrocketing illnesses of all types and kinds. Aquifers that had been stable for millenea are depleted, surface waters no longer support life or have dried up completely and the heartbeat of the land itself has been drowned out by the whir of machinery and the thumping diesel engines that wrest the last few calories out of a toxic Earth. I have long written of the fallacy that is the "scientific" approach to agriculture. N, P & K were the holy grail of agriculture just a few short generations ago. Farmers were told that by focusing all of their attention on these macro-nutrients, they could increase harvests and profits, cover their debts and make millionaires into billionaires. now the chickens, so to speak, have come home to roost.

Like in dust bowl days, the soils have left. not so much in the vast black clouds of the last depression, but only because there was not even enough soil left to blow away. The subsoil that many farmers continue to plow are so bereft of organic matter that what blows away is no longer black. The wind carries away fine particles scoured away by the ice crystals of winter and suspends them in water with each heavy rain, choking streams, transporting the building blocks of soil to the great rivers and ultimately the oceans, never to be seen again. times are tough for the agricultural industry because the truth of the matter is out. The masks which the demonic and despotic industrialists used to hide their interests and intent have slipped away, and the public is demanding real food instead of science projects. the last thing we need is poisonous concoctions that render soil inert, our bodies unable to assimilate and the economy dependent on bankers and their extractive methods. We need to transform our food systems to be more humane, to farmers, the land they are charged with caring for and ultimately the people who consume the foods produced upon it.

Bio-dynamic agriculture is, as the term implies, full of life and always changing. There are great thing to be said about organic approaches to agriculture but if we think of it as a child rearing method, perhaps it will make more sense. Let us take two parents and two children, pair them up and imagine one parenting scheme that was based on the word no. Organic agriculture approaches the production of food like this. "No" to chemicals, "no" to pesticides, "no" to herbicides, "no" to poisons of all types. While these are all great things, they must be put into perspective, balanced with what we could do and if we were to raise a child on nothing but "no", what kind of child and what kind of adult would they become. As further foil to this limiting idea, turn your attention to the second parenting example. In this example, the parent allows their child to make up their own minds. 'If you do this, that will happen"..."I feel such and such when you say or do so and so"..."have you noticed that when you_____, it affects others like this. I realize that these techniques may not be appropriate when the child darts out into traffic, but our relationship to the land unflods over much larger periods of time than raising a child. We can have foundational learning based on this culture of no, but we must balance that with the other part of being a well-rounded person. The other approach is to say..."When this happens, that is the result." or "If you really must do such and such, this is how you can do it without the negative impacts." Bio-dynamics has remedies for your ailing soil, nourishing preparations for sick ecosystems and whole life approaches that farms need to re-establish both soil and the life that thrives when it is given a chance.

Remember when we were young. Nearly everyone can remember that creepy uncle that you didn't want to hug you, or who you would never sit upon their lap. Heck, many of us have relatives that would send us running to a closet to hide from until they were gone! the Monsantos, Cargills and Nestle's of the world are those creepy uncles. It is more important to understand that they are dangerous than it is to understand exactly why. The emperor has never had any clothes on, but we have just heard the innocent child say so, how we move forward from here will dictate whether or not we are able to survive as a species. I certainly don't want to devolve into a discussion of religion, but whatever gods or goddesses you believe in, I'm sure that they love you, I'm sure that they want you to not only survive, but to thrive. Bio-dynamics offer the last best hope for this to be the case. The Earth, Air, Fire and Water offer us infinitely more than the corporate giants want us to have. The abundance that is possible if we work with nature, rather than against it is possible only if we honor and respect the forces that are alive within us, the land and the spirit that has been oppressed by corporate forces for generations. further information about bio-dynamic agriculture can be found at my link to Sacred Agriculture.

Sacred Agriculture II

When we begin to honor life, everything changes. This morning I got to have a brief discussion about the difference between extractive agriculture, which is being practiced worldwide at an alarming scale, and bio-dynamic agriculture which is growing rapidly but still represents a minute fraction of our food system. Industrial agriculture is a culture of numbers, of subsidy, of finance and of debt. Bio-dynamics is the opposite on virtually every count. It was explained so clearly yesterday that I should be able to share it in one sentence.
What we have come to know as "organic" agriculture is like the foundation of a great pyramid. It sets a beginning point for loving the land into production.
Bio-dynamics fall into another realm altogether. Using the Demeter standards begins to codify sacred agriculture that is directed toward realization of the Earth's potential in ways that are not addressed or delineated within the "organic" model. Think of it this way...This week, one of the largest coal companies that uses a technique called mountaintop removal has said that they will discontinue this method of "harvesting" coal. This is a great step, don't misunderstand me on that point. However, finding more and better ways to not have to use the coal at all is the best step that we can take. The race to do everything we have always done, but doing it a little better only leads to a new place that is only partway to where we want to be. Put another way, imagine how long it takes to run a marathon, then recognize that to do it requires us to fly part of the way, with both feet off the ground. Then, imagine how long it would take if we went the same distance shuffling our feet.

Now don't get me wrong. For some, pushing their envelope to the point of accepting organic standards would be a massive give back to the planet and her creatures, but without going the extra mile and revering the systems upon which all life either flourishes or meets it's demise, we will continue to shuffle our feet when it is really time to fly!

For some, these words will hold no meaning, for without basic building blocks of understanding it sounds like fiction or wishful thinking, but for those who honor and respect the critters we share the planet with, even those we may not be able to see without microscopes, I'm sure you will catch my drift. All life is sacred. The naturopath knows that we are an integrated complex ecosystem. Most doctors do not. The critters in my gut, on my skin and thriving on virtually every nook and cranny on and in my body are experiencing lives of their own. the ways I choose to treat myself affect them and their environment. Approaching a balance point, where everyone is happy and my systems are not under assault is called health in my book. Dis-ease comes from out of balance forces be they nutritional, enzymatic, caused by overabundance of certain microscopic critters or perhaps even lack of certain others. Remember that 85% of bacteria is either helpful for our bodies or has no effect at all on us that we know of. Only 15% is capable of being harmful.

Just as I refuse to use anti-bacterial soaps on the principle that they kill indiscriminately, it is time for our food system to step away from eradication of all life in the quest for more commodities. Most of the land upon which our food is grown has, at most, a fraction of the life that exists on a forest floor. Bio-dynamics presents the opportunity to heal even the ecosystems that we have a hard time seeing. the infinite can live right along with us, in harmony and abundance right under our feet! but we need to learn the ways that the unseen can speak to us. Only thorough us, the land's "managers", can we hope to sow the seeds of change. The process of Sacred Agriculture actually turns the tables still further. when we literally worship the ground upon which we walk, the land can be felt managing us.

When Rudy Steiner gave his ground breaking lectures in German, back in the Twenties, the hallucination or infatuation that we are having with and about chemical approaches to farming were not fully formed. The massive subsidies and monopolies of the "green revolution" had not yet come to pass. Some relegated him to the trash bin of history before his ideas could take hold. After all, what sane person would defend the rights of microbes? Well, after seeing the poisoning of aquifers, the choking of streams that used to support life and the rampant ecologic catastrophes of doing business as usual on farms around the world. I am here to say that something has to give.

With each morsel of food that we consume, we must begin to make a choice. Do we want that food to flow from the tailpipes and smokestacks of production facilities or from the abundance of intact ecosystems? Sacred agriculture offers humanity the chance to avoid shifting wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer faceless corporations and to build a sustainable community that emulates Eden. The masks have come off corporate interests. Those who are willing to believe that the Emperor is wearing clothes are getting fewer and further between. We are rapidly coming to the end of an age. If you have questions...that is a great place to start. Students rarely learn unless they come to a place where they are able to ask the right questions and have cultivated their mind's garden to accept new seeds. Blessed Be and namaste'.
Bio-dynamic Agriculture

Terror and Treason

We have held our citizens hostage, threatened them with all manner of scary lies and subjected them to a variety of inhumane treatment at the hands of the largest banks, the insurance companies and "traditional" institutions. Those who hold the wealth have had a free ride in our economic system, dictating their own levels of taxation, their own interest rates and in some cases the standards of living that the poorer classes will have to endure.  The legal casinos that are the "markets" routinely strip wealth from the less experienced investors and shuffle the aces to the top of the deck for those with the most to lose. The "too big to fail" are deemed so for a good reason, they have been getting their way for too long to have to learn how to actually produce something of value.

Big money let their fortunes ride on Republicans in the most recent elections in the U.S. of A. They were handed their hats in spite of spending massive sums to tear down our President as well as the recovery that is underway. These billions of dollars could have had a significant effect on building the economy, but through all manner of treachery and deceit, it has evaporated back into the hands of a select few who control media. When our nations sustain repeated attacks from the wealthiest and most powerful individuals, governments seem to not notice. In fact, the most wealthy and most powerful are given massive subsidies, freedom to pollute and legal routes to exploit workers, families and those less able to defend themselves against their attacks.

The Rethuglican approach during this election cycle was to blame the poor for their lot, claim that government spending is out of control and put forward the idea that all of our problems could be solved by loosening the reigns on the most powerful forces and the top 1% who they called "job creators". Luckily, the general public kept their heads. In spite of over six billion dollars being spent, mostly by the wealthiest amongst us, truth won out. Terribly, the mass media continues to accentuate the differences amongst us, rather than informing us about where our opinions are being created. hundreds of billions of dollars are being held out of the economy by the wealthiest players, "earning" returns on investment that dwarf the average wage earner's income. Meanwhile we are told that taxing the wealthy in a progressive fashion would be a dis-incentive to work. Truly hogwash.

Wen agents act against the interests of their fellow countrymen, it is called treason. When, for instance, the Germans work to put Greeks into servitude with their extractive economic policies, this flies in the face of "economic union". The same is going on across America. bankers collect obscene profits while homes are foreclosed daily. Lives are thrown into chaos at the same time the top earners are given huge pay increases. In addition to being told that we are going to lose our jobs if we stand up for human rights, or that if we do such and such, there will be hell to pay, we are simultaneously told that we do not qualify for any help because we exhibit true and pressing need. but those great exploiters and the greediest amongst us are given more corporate welfare than ever before. It is past time to stand up for justice and get the word out about the truth behind the lies that we are force fed by the top 1%. World-wide, we must all stand together, or we will surely all hang separately.
 

Saying Goodbye

This week we have had several events that have proven the need to bid adieu to the way we were. On the one hand, the pagan high holiday, Sowen respects the thinning of the veil between this world and the Otherworld, where our ancestors reside. We have been presented with an annual opportunity to bid them well on their journeys and speak our piece directly to those who gave us life, inspired us through their deeds and who have added to our resources of strength and insight. This festival, the last of the harvest season, signals the start of lean times which need to be not only respected but revered for the lessons they hold. Many pagans consider this to be the true new year festival, time for making resolutions and for allowing our less than optimal traits to pass. Saying good bye can be practiced on many levels. We only need to look to the chakras of Eastern thought to think about the levels of goodbye that we can practice at this time.

Much has been said about the election, both before it took place and since. I do not want to bore you with even more hyperbole and hype, but this election coincides with a growing realization that we have to say goodbye to the tyranny of the rich white male, the "powers that be" and their stranglehold on both the economy and our ways of life. The abundant and giving nature of Mother Earth is being realized by more and more folks along the path to our collective future. we cannot take the path to sustainability without saying goodbye to a few things along the way. I know that in the past, I have made reference to the short story, "The Things That They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. Collectively, our culture and society have lots of things that we hold onto, not just for their utility or their eventual use, but for psychological and shamanic resons, thinking that one day they will secure a future that will be better than the one we would find if we just left those things behind.

Approaching what has been called the "Fiscal Cliff" in The United States of America, we will surely hear much rhetoric about what we cannot afford to lose. Many economists are already claiming that the disruptions and change that will occur on the first day of 2013 because of tax increases on the wealthy and incremental cuts in government programs could spur another bout with declining economic activity and lead to another dip in growth for  our weak economy. Those who have been paying attention understand that the worldwide economic collapse has been caused by listening to economists, but that certainly isn't bothering those preaching gloom and doom. I have some of the most excellent friends on Facebook and just yesterday one of them sent a link to a video that i want to share here. It points out the need to say goodbye to an entire thought experiment that we have played out for centuries in our relationship with the planet, our fellow humans and the society at large.

Look here for a short video Now, I'm not sure about moving objects with our minds, but...
The reason that I have chosen to include this video in this post is because the eternally sacred feminine energy has been discounted and overrun by our male dominated culture. this process of cutting ourselves off from half of our true nature has, for the most part, left us strangling ourselves with nowhere to go but backward. Pagans have, for ages, believed that a meeting between the Horned One and his consort has led to the spark of life that all of creation represents. We do have to say goodbye to the male domination of the planet if we are to step into the "new age". Whatever the power brokers tell us, we can rest assured that they are going to try to continue to drive their "tanks" straight over us. To effectively encircle our wagons against them, we need to reach out to whatever communities we have left, share, nurture and encircle those we care about with love, affection and care for them in ways that defy the linear approaches that have characterized the past.

Even the hardest of sciences, Physics is finding that reality is more often about relationship than direct causation. In fact, the terminology that is slowly making headway in the field revolves around charm and relationships between particles and sub-atomic matter as well. Until we look for certain things, they may not even exist, how is that for magical thinking? On the opposite end of the human endeavor, I planted six seeds, this summer and by fall, they had grown to nearly twenty feet tall and created a living roof the size of a two car garage. Miracles abound in the natural world and creation and productivity spiral ever outward influencing life and abundance in other areas that we may not expect. If we look closely, the non-linear relationships outnumber the linear ones by a huge factor. It is time to perhaps not "say goodbye" to the Cartesian Coordinate System, but to at least put it in perspective. Life is not a chart. The sooner we say goodbye to the idea that we can understand and achieve all things through linear thinking, the sooner we can take hold of the true abundant nature of our planet, her people and social structures that reflect the value of the whole over and above the parts. This week I have been fond of saying, "There are precious few buggy whip manufacturers." Perhaps in the future our economy will not revel in an endless barrage of cheap plastic crap from China, the crushing weight of our need for dirty coal and oil to move products across the surface of the planet and the exploitation of human beings and the world's "resources". In a future that more and more of us envision, the gifts that we receive directly from nature and the hands of compassionate individuals will gain importance as physical "goods" that have dominated our ideas about economic activity.

The trend toward distinguishing between wants and needs has led to a blossoming of a new cultural model, one that breaks with traditional values. We have countless examples, proof of concept, showing that "more" is, most often, not "better". The relationship between giving and hoarding is far more fluid than any mathematical "rule" can represent. This year we had a relatively tiny 4 X 8 foot bed (1.3 X 2.6 meter) devoted to tomatoes. So far the produce has been shared with half a dozen households. opening a jar of home canned salsa in the depth of winter has a value that some economists would have difficulty quantifying, but for anyone who has had homegrown tomatoes in the dead of winter knows, the infinite bliss shared in love, defies quantification. The Horned God and Mother Earth have infinite love for all creatures and finding our place involves finding a way forward that honors both. We do need both energies to thrive, but the time has come to say good bye to the idea that one has power over or controls the other. united we will find a way forward, divided against ourselves, we can only fall prey to the old ways of doing business. Just as human beings never bring a new life into existence with the intention of their child have to put up with more pain and strife than we have experienced in our own lives, god and goddess do not want each successive generation to have lives that are worse off with each successive generation. We have the power to change our lives for the better, but we must say goodbye to the childish ways that have brought us to the brink of destroying our (human) chances of survival. By taking time to cultivate a new type of soil and planting new kinds of seeds in that living organism, we can give birth to a culture that will exceed our expectations.

Elections Less Than Two Weeks Off

In the good old US of A, we are at a crossroads. There are those among us who have voted in every election since we reached the age that it is allowed and about half who never have. I have been a poll worker for over twenty years and have found that the number of people eligible to vote runs about double the number of those that are registered to vote and that the other half vote at astonishingly low levels. It may astonish the average person to know that this state of affairs used to upset me. The electoral joke is to say that only those who vote have the right to complain, but if that were true, I would only have to hear half the whining and complaining. This crossroads has been on the map since the last time that monopolies were broken up, federal regulators were put in place to oversee corporations, and many of our "safety nets" were put in place.

The FDA, (Food and Drug Administration) for instance, that got started because snake oil salesmen could still sell adulterated products, poison or just about anything for any remedy and no law existed to prevent the sellers from just not telling folks what they were buying. There was quackery beyond belief that people felt as a tax on their health and indeed their lives. People were dying from tainted food and drugs. Now, after years of trying to keep up with rapidly changing food and drug production and distribution systems, there are so many ways around their regulations, and such a massive amount of commerce that they are supposed to be overseeing, that hazardous products and conditions frequently make it past the first line of defense and we have people dying again at an even more alarming rate. Just this week, the FDA released a study that tells people that the label "organic" on produce has no effect on the nutrient content or flavor of agricultural products, in their report they also failed to take stock of the most important fact behind the organic label, it means that fewer toxic compounds are spewed into the environment to produce it.

This is one aspect of the intersecting paths that we must choose from. Sadly, as we have seen from movies, the crossroads are a dangerous place, a desolate place and one that many would want to avoid at all costs. The reason that this is where you go to "make a deal with the Devil" is because choice always requires cleaving off those things that you decide to leave behind, to essentially kill them off. As I often mention, creation and destruction go hand in hand. We could go back, but since so much wealth has flowed into so few hands, we would all be far worse off to try to revert to our old ways of thinking, the old way of doing things,  or the old ways of thinking about them. The world has changed and we need to understand that there is no going back. when we look more closely at our past, we soon realize that the good old days are just as fictional as the worst science fiction. Nearly any time we look at throughout time, there were rich and powerful overlords exploiting others for their enrichment and heartbreaking consequences for the less wealthy and less powerful individuals whose lives were worn away in service to the flow of commerce. This should give pause to those who think that "Happy Days" was anything but a diversion. It would be nice to turn back the clock to a time when we were irresponsible young adults who didn't have rent to pay or dinner to cook, or our own clothes to wash but this is not in the cards.

The path to the left is paved with good intentions and about half of those who seek light at the end of our tunnel of worldwide economic collapse seem to think that moving to the political left will somehow spare us being hit by the train of doom that has entered the other end of the tunnel. Same can be said about those who seek a path to the right. It is becoming harder and harder to ignore the grim situation that we find ourselves in. The only problem is that to the right lie fascism and even more of a free hand for those who exploit out people and rape Mother Earth. Many on the right may have good intentions as well, but their understanding of "free market" economics and the "efficiency" of capitalism to reward good wherever it may be are completely based on five-hundred year old myths. The wealthy, who have been told for generations that they are wealthy and powerful because they are better than the rest of us are beginning to realize that the fact is that they are truly exactly the same. No genetic marker or superior intellect will ever assure your place in the global games of power and control that have resulted in millions of deaths, destroyed lives and the pathetic excuses that pass for humanitarian efforts sponsored by first world loan sharks exploiting poor young populations across the developing world. Evil people do these things for their own purposes and fall back on the centuries old lies that mimic the divine right of kings.

So, our fourth choice is to plow forward, move ahead into the gaping black, hope the train jumps the tracks before running us down and to put the pedal to the metal just a little harder. We will need to choose one of four paths soon, November, sixth will be the end point in the most recent campaign. Perhaps we will make a good choice, perhaps not. What is assured, no matter which direction we choose to go, we will never get back the value of our homes five years ago, we cannot produce our way out of expensive oil, our children will not educate themselves and if we let the spin doctors and lying power brokers get their way, we will be left with more of what we have gotten from them already. I have been called a lot of things by a lot of people, but the one thing I do not want to be called is unimportant. I'm sure it is the same for the gun-toting religious whack-jobs who think that if we just got rid of government entirely, our lives would be better off. The tea party activists who urge businesses to implement a hiring freeze as long as Obama is in office need to be brought up on charges of treason. We need to hold the lying liars' feet tot the fire on so many issues. Human rights, health care, security, the environment, women's issues, education, finance, our food system, energy, all of these areas need to be addressed. We need to look at each one and the whole bunch at once and see that the litany of ills that we are facing today have taken decades to get as far out of hand as they have become. The powerful people who have taught us to stay home on election day in droves need a wake up call. Democracy may be on the ropes, but it refuses to go down easy.

Please, try to learn as much as you can before the election and vote. It may well be the last chance we have to make a difference in the lives of the next seven generations. After the election, the real work starts. The rich and powerful have provided us with a giant sow's ear. They will always leave it to us to try to make it look like a silk purse.

Sacred Agriculture

We are running a special fund raiser to send at least a few people to this conference  Sacred Agriculture The concepts behind much of what we do here (write here and how we support our selves) are in league with our belief that the Earth itself is sacred. In addition to sharing information through our blogs, Permaculture, ECO-Ethics, Trees (on wordpress) and ECO-Tours of Wisocnsin Inc. (here and on facebook), we also use our interactions in daily life to model behavior that honors the cornucopia that nature represents when we treat "her" well. We will be sending at least one of our author/guides to this event and we urge everyone to attend this four-day event.

To donate, to help send our guides to Sacred Agriculture, the conference, go to paypal and enter our account, tnsaladino42@ hotmail. Then, give what you can because what we learn and share there will go a long way to spreading the good news about sustainability. The knowlege we gain through participation in this event will translate into more great insight into how we can effectively transition into ways of life that affirm nature and our dependence upon clean air, soil and water to fully meet our potential. As we have said, it is our birthright to have clean air, water and soil, but getting back to the "Garden of Eden" will be difficult if we wait for the large seed companies and greedy agricultural interests guide our decisions for another generation or two. It is past time for us to wake up and realize that the mega-corporate interests don't have a shred of dignity or compassion for us or the planet. The only quality that they exemplify is self-absorbed greed.

We have begun to see the change that has been afoot for generations. The "new normal" promises to continue to be exacerbated by human activities. We are left to choose between learning as quickly as possible how to be responsible crew upon Starship Earth, or find ways to handle ever more extreme drought, floods, natural disasters and the repercussions of those changes in climate that we do not yet understand fully.

Honoring the sanctity of nature is something that comes naturally to me. If I do not "give back" at least my weight in organic material to the earth each year, I feel like I'm cheating the system that supports me. Composting and aeration of soils allows billions of organisms to thrive, each one holding a bit of water in their cells, stabilizing both the local ecology and worldwide climate. I never met a leaf pile that didn't look like a gold mine of soil nutrition to me. The precious open pollinated seed that has developed a relationship with humans down through the ages is truly sacred because it feeds us well for just a tiny investment of time and consideration. To date, we have not developed a single agricultural "chemical or compound" that has the power to feed us or keep us alive. Our quality of life and perhaps the very survival of our species depends on changing our perception. The Earth was never covered with dirt. It has always been set about with living soil. Even the oceans, the largest part of our planet have been tainted with agricultural chemicals, many of which have not been used for decades, that still wreak havoc upon natural systems.

Little did we know, the "modern age" of organic chemistry would yield products that would be touted as "life-saving" but that would unleash mayhem and suffering on our population. sadly, the giant corporations who hold patents on many of the worst offenders refuse to stop production of chemicals until long after those genies are out of their bottles. We need to consider what we will say when our grandchildren ask, "Grandpa, where were you when they poisoned our water? What were you doing when they turned the air to poison?" Or, "Why did you not put your foot down when they were sterilizing the soil?" Believing that we deserve change is potentially the most radical thing we can do. Acting on that belief is not radical, indeed, it may be the only thing that can save us from the crushing power of corporate big-wigs. 

Fuel For The Fire

Hotbeds of discontent are virtually everywhere around the planet. Faraway, well heeled interests are demanding that the average man sacrifice even more for their ballooning riches. As greater and greater wealth concentrate in fewer and fewer hands, the rich, rather than appreciating where their dollars come from, demand an even greater say in government, use new tools to enhance the types and tools available to wrest subsidy from the rest of us, and more and more frequently design enabling legislation that rewards them for their exploitation of the masses. The ultra-wealthy actually believe that they are wealthy because they are good, that they deserve lop-sided rewards and have faith that as job creators, their endeavors are more important than the undertakings that the rest of us engage in. Populations everywhere on Earth have had their resources polluted, poisoned and robbed by global interests for generations. This is not new. What is new is that there are fewer and fewer voices calling the empire builders to task for their transgressions, fewer and fewer teeth in laws that protect the planet and fewer and fewer ways for the truth to get out to a worldwide audience.

I do have the luxury of speaking to thousands of people from my living room, but the five largest media conglomerates share access to the thousands of newspapers, television news stations and basically guide the public debate, defining terms and making stuff up as it suits them. In television production, we only get to edit down what the cameras have been pointed at. The images we pull from the raw "stock" are a tiny fraction of those images and what makes it to the nightly news is just a wisp of what actually went on.  This is the smoke, repeating the ideas that these images call up is a nearly infinite number of mirrors. As a cameraman, one realizes that they have huge blinders on, as an editor, you try to piece together a semblance of "reality". Like carrying water in a sieve, the technology of television is far more like painting watercolors with a broom than telling the truth.

This week, I became aware of Honey booboo, a popular cable show that had higher ratings than the first Presidential debate.  It is about a young child and her mother, on the pageant circuit, that someone had the idea of following around with a film crew, editing down their lives to provide "entertainment" for the masses. I saw about thirty seconds of the edited version and was both repulsed and confused that they would qualify as worthy of even pointing a camera at. Yesterday, I heard that this little child has become such an icon that she has the power to introduce new words to the language. specifically, "Redneconize". This is used as a substitute for recognize, but investigating further, I was astonished that it is more about reckoning than cognition. In dead reckoning, we use only what is observed to orient ourselves. Cognition requires using more than what meets the eye to make up our minds. In nautical navigation, or aviation, dead reckoning can be used to some extent, but as any of us who have tried to boat or fly without good maps, charts, or navigational aids know, taking everything we "see" at face value is the best way to get in trouble. Without a deeper understanding of the world around us, we court death.

DE-VO De-evolution, Idiocracy And The "Debate"

What we are seeing today are the combined effects resulting from the last gasp of an antiquated worldview. Those who cling to the theory that men, especially rich white men are uniquely suited to rule over the rest of us are feeling that the end of an era is nigh. Death is never easy to deal with, especially for those left behind, but when we clean out some of the hidden crap amassed through generations of living under the falsehood, we may be surprised by what we find. As with any one person, the trinkets and security blankets that the old guard held onto will strike some as useless and others as the height of frivolity. we may never know what was so enamoring about the idiosyncratic collections, the hoarding instincts of those who have remained in charge for centuries have led to some pretty strange collections. Perhaps what will be required is a giant estate sale, but the question then becomes who will buy all this shit?

A report came out last week that reading scores amongst students in the United States are at a forty year low. Students, on average have not been this illiterate since the seventies! Looking back, one can directly attribute this decline to Reagan and his cronies who claimed to believe that if we just got government out of the way of the wealthiest classes that their table scraps would fall down like manna from heaven to enrich the impoverished. Hidden beneath this overtly stated belief was the underlying principles of Calvinism. I know that i speak about this topic far too often, but that is because it drives so much of our politics and culture today. Even the poor themselves believe that they are at fault for their own poverty. Calvin believed that the poor and disenfranchised deserved their station in life because of their own depravity and the fact that they had turned their back on God. Isn't is convenient to blame the victim? The Republicans in the United States of America, have continued to use this belief as their fall back response whenever they have been asked about their "compassionate conservatism" which, in fact, is neither. They have implied it when they wreak a war on drugs, or poverty against minorities while the biggest criminals as well as the morally bankrupt are given a free hand to exploit others and ingratiate themselves at the expense of others. To keep a population ignorant was the first step in Reagan's plan to keep the rich white men in charge in spite of the demographic changes that have been changing the make-up of our population.

By getting more and more people to have to endure greater and greater financial stress, the wealthiest among us are able to have a free hand in their quest to soak up any and all capital, leaving the vast majority with less than they have ever had before. Take my own situation as an example. I currently "own" two homes (in fact I own the debt that looms over my head for another twenty-five years) both are worth about half of what I owe. The "value" crashed with the economy, but my interest is high and by the time I'm through, I will have spent over half a million dollars for the privilege of ownership. Additionally, there are taxes to pay and insurance that is designed to cover the bank's ass if there should be an "act of god" or an accident that damages my property. It should not be assumed that anyone knew the risk of home ownership ten years ago. Everyone who had lived through the last depression has pretty much passed away, or they are old enough as to no longer be taken seriously by the rest of us. This is also the result of our de-evolution. Intact cultures that have the wherewithal to sustain themselves over time revere their elders, honor them and realize that their experiences stretch out over enough time to create a bridge across generations. They are important enough to humanity that they are supposed to be treated as a valued resource. instead, our youth oriented culture would rather infatuate itself with anorexic women and teen idols. The old guard are adept at shape shifting and utilizing smoke and mirrors to distract us, cover their tracks and lead us down a primrose path to our own destruction.

The dramatic rise in a variety of diseases point to a less and less habitable world. Science agrees that is the case, but trying to pin down the poisoners is more difficult than trying to get the rich to pay their fair share for the right to exploit us. My own experience back in the sixties, being told by a doctor that I had "Green Bay Throat" convinced me that intelligent, wealthy men were scared to death of the powers that be. I asked the doctor to write that down. He refused, knowing that I might make a public case over the diagnosis. The toxic cocktail that I breathed each and every day had me in the hospital several to half a dozen times each year. I was one of the costs of our rampant industrialization and lack of meaningful regulation on polluters. The city, in their infinite wisdom did everything in their power to reward said companies to expand and gave them tax free use of our shared resources allowing them to contaminate them and me to dangerous levels. The state was no help either. They too supported the "rights" of corporations to poison the citizens of the state, contaminate the water that I would eventually drink and play in. They even counted the economic activity as a public good in spite of the fact that millions pay the health care costs of the poisoning. The same thing is continuing to happen today. I have moved more than a mile further from the source of much of the contamination and one of the industries has been shuttered, although they left millions of tons of contaminated soil in place that will be hazardous forever. Now, I'm a mile closer to two other industries that routinely spew different toxic compounds into the local air. The biggest difference in real terms is that the prevailing winds usually carry the toxic plume from the closest industries away from our house, but the source that we are a mile further from still floats past, it is just a bit more dilute.

In addition to point sources and fugitive emissions from manufacturing, there are also massive coal piles just over a mile away from my house. When we lived directly across the river from them, there was nearly always a coating of black dust on everything, most likely on our lung tissue as well. Now that we have moved the extra mile further away, we don't see the black dust as much, but this summer, after sweeping the back patio, we got a huge wind event during which coal and coal dust came this far in giant clouds. when I went back outside, after the wind subsided, I found a chunk of coal, just sitting where I had swept earlier in the day. When my trash ends up in the wrong place, it is called littering and I am liable to be fined. When industry lets their shit blow away, it is called economic activity and is entered on the positive side of our ledger books.

What we saw this week that was called a debate was anything but. Debate requires stating positions and giving rationale and arguments that support those positions. Neither candidate seemed to elucidate any hard and fast position. The sickening lack of factual data to support the positions that they hinted at was the most striking thing that stuck in my mind. The speakers were heavy on platitudes, catch phrases and personal attacks, but the issues were mostly window dressing designed to pull at our heart strings rather than inform us about the motivations and direction that these two men were planning on taking our country. The Green candidate for President, Jill Stein, was arrested just trying to enter the campus on which the debate was to be held. She was treated like a criminal even though she is running to serve our country, doing her patriotic duty, representing the vast majority of our interests in clean air and water. The Brownshirts who arrested her were doing the bidding of the ultra-wealthy. Just as our "military interests" serve the wealthiest amongst us through the disproportionate bloodshed of the children who hail from families on the lowest rungs of the "economic ladder".

Not a word was spoken at the "debates" about ecological integrity, climate change or health effects that we all pay for that are caused by the industrialists who our tax policies subsidize. Luckily, many of us are beginning to realize the hollow shell of capitalism is breaking down. The utter emptiness of positions taken by the ultra-wealthy are becoming clear to more and more people each and every day. It is natural and normal to fear the end of an era, but in our time we are poised on the verge of creating something better with which to replace the patriarchal, abusive and greed inspired bigotry, hatred and fear that we have allowed to fester for generations. The time has come for us to look for ways to bring our deeds in line with our words. We say that each of us is of value, yet we poison our neighbors by flicking the switches in our homes or tromping on the gas pedal. We say that anyone can become President, but they really have to have a cock. We say that through education we can achieve our highest calling, yet we refuse to listen to scientists who have devoted their lives to searching for the truth. Instead of debate, we are fed the corporate line, encouraged to bicker amongst ourselves about meaningless "issues" and to top it off we are expected to be happy with a steadily declining quality of life that requires more and more dollars in a contracting economy. We need more people to wake up to the fact that the most powerful classes have been lying to us about everything for generations. Asking them to change will not work. Voting for one millionaire instead of another has not helped. What we need is more ways to free ourselves from the grasp of the greedy, a bit of relief from the long arm of the corporations that reach intro our pockets seemingly with every purchase and some time to rest and recuperate from their relentless assault. Our families need time to heal, our bodies need clean air and fresh water to recuperate and our neighborhoods need the people to come back instead of running away from one another to try to make ends meet.

Don't expect the wealthy to give up their stranglehold on us easily. If we want anything better, we will have to fight for it. Those who have lied to us to pad their own wallets actually believe that we deserve nothing and are happy to make sure that is what we get. We need to stand up with one voice and say no to corporate domination, corporate welfare and inequality under the law that leads to the enrichment of the powerful at the expense of the majority of our population.

Blessed Be from the Deer Park Temple

Looking out from an auspicious spot, we often have an overwhelming level of conviction. It seems to come from embracing a wider perception. When the horizon retreats behind hill after hill, of which you have a commanding view, it would be odd if one did not feel a sense of both awareness of and participation in ones' surroundings. The Deer Park Temple near Madison, Wisconsin is one of these auspicious places. Serene and tranquil, nearly surrounded by nature, the wild is invigorating to visitors and the views of the countryside are amazing. Oddly enough, my brother and sister-in-law drive past this place twice every day on their way to work and back, but had never entered the driveway. It took me being with them, and being intent on visiting, that got them to stop. I saw the Wisconsin Public Television special about the building of the Deer Park Temple and have always wanted to go. This is a truly special place and is worth putting on your list of things to see when in or around the Madison area.

I have been designing on a set of assumptions throughout my entire life. These sets of data regard the rising and setting of the sun, the seasons and ironically, the forms of this temple fit quite well into the template that I worked up. The ratios of south facing overhang and portico could have been designed by my hand. The biggest difference is that I envisioned glazing over the southward aperture and this design is open. Perhaps if there were a weather curtain of sorts that would only be used during inclement weather or after nightfall, it would become more active solar. The intricate beauty of this design is both timeless and cutting edge. Both massive and spare, ornate and simple in equal measure. Again, at this location, the words of Ram Dass rang true in my mind's ear. first he gave us a source of reference by using Ha Fiz's poem. The fish trap exists because of the fish, once you have gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. "Words," Ram Dass continued, "exist because of meaning, once you have the meaning, you can forget the words. Where is the man who has forgotten words, so that I might have a word with him?" Being a young child I had every instinct to throw my hand in the air, (I had been trained well in school.) and run to him just to be in his presence. (I was still a bit wild at heart in the bi-centennial year 1976). Instead some overwhelming pressure to conform kept me from doing either. Instead I sat quietly by my mother's side, not wanting to call attention to one of the few females in the room and wondered why many of the adult men in the audience had nervous giggles and childlike behavior at the remark . Later I surmised that they had been completely unaware of either of these concepts and that they certainly were not sure what they would have to say in the off chance that they did begin to make sense of meaning not requiring words. The whole point seemed to be painfully missed by most there because the truth of the matter is that we just need to BE and it will all happen. Ram Dass claimed that we need to be together, but as my chronic readers will understand, the world has been subjected to the shrink wrap of the internet. Light speed communication exempts us from the need to be proximal. Be the person who makes you the happiest and you will soon find liberation from the lies that bind you to dysfunction. This may sound "finger pointy" but I acknowledge that It goes for me too, I'm guilty, but don't harp on it, continue to punish myself for these digressions and I try not to keep the ruse alive when I notice it.

When we find ourselves in a place...ready to move on, but stymied by our ego, it is well to remember the wise words of my friend Jim Baker, "When every key has failed, it is a good thing there's still the skeleton key." There are times that courting the angel of death is not only good for us, but essential. We all get wrapped up in our fictitious sense of ourselves, some even believe the lies to be true, but the only thing that can allow us to take that one step beyond what we were able to perceive or to do before, is to release the power that the lies have over us to create something in the way of relationship with the world around us. I have personally "executed" at least one "me" that needed to leave this plane of existence, so I can speak with authority that the lies we tell ourselves must die if we are to live.

Wise men and women have said for hundreds of generations that on our deathbed we will never pine for the pennies we squandered, or remember a single transaction made with greedy desire or deceit in our hearts. We will remember the days filled with the happy faces of the people we have loved, the warmth of our brethren and the tears of joy that we have shared in the warmth of one an others company that will make those last moments tolerable. Would it not be best if we would all live a little closer to the angel of death if for nothing else but to feel these sentiments more acutely and more urgently?

We are struggling under a cacophony of lies and deceptions that threaten to rear the world apart at the seams. Surely, there are those among us who have the quiet awareness of time and perception on their side. Can we not take one brief moment to allow ourselves to listen? Simple things, BEing, hearth, home, place. These are all that matter. The economic crash has brought millions of families closer together if only because they cannot afford to live apart. It has reduced travel and allowed a renewed connection to the land that is unprecedented in history. more people returned to the land to farm last year in America than in any year ever, in our history. Things are looking up, let's just hope that those young families will take the time to BE, first and foremost and from there, I have great confidence that they will do the right things as well as leaving the wrong things undone!

Dispatch From The Edge

Half the day yesterday was one of our first shots of winter, just a seeping mass really, but the massive bolus of arctic air brought temperatures which were to go below freezing for the first time. The Earth is still alive and some plants continue to hold on, out of stubbornness, or the luck of a coincidental upwelling of warm moist air. We lost forty degrees Fahrenheit (Twenty C), during the course of an afternoon and night. When the climate is tempered by one of the greatest lakes, that's a big deal. Some of my favorite places, one long day bicycle ride North are fifty per cent water, holding vast reserves of heat much longer than dry areas. Edge is the mystical area that is defined by changeability and flux. In so many ways we are all engaged in riding flux waves between edges, most just have not been defined or delineated yet. This alone is worth it's own post, but I digress.

I have heard the term stress line, roughly girdling the planet along the 45th parallel, used to describe an area where industriousness is not an option. If you are not putting something by at every possible opportunity, you won't make it 'til Spring. Here there is a portion of the curve of the surface that has, or used to have smaller farms, "Fortys", roughly one quarter mile by one quarter mile (402.3m X402.3m) were common and if you had eighty or 160, that was grand. just a short distance north, or at higher elevations, land parcels become larger and farms up to several hundred acres are not only common, but the rule. Beyond this it is forest only and not much is made of agriculture. The combination of soils, or lack of them and growing season create waves and pockets of atmosphere that either favor a farmer or undermine productivity, as small parcels in the North have failed, neighbors bought them out increasing their holdings. Remember, in the North, range and feed in the winter is the rule. This edge is breaking down as more land is put into grass fed meat production. Buying cattle that do not need to be overwintered allow land to survive without grazing pressure, perhaps even without the impacts of hay harvesting equipment.

The edge that I ride may be different than the farmer making decisions about how best to "use" their land, but a giant cadre of individual land owners are realizing that smaller scale and more sustainable practices can save money, reduce fuel and other off farm costs, hone away inputs of chemicals and water/energy, thus increasing profitability. The word culture, in agriculture is a testament to the difficulty that exists in bringing change. Many agricultural sector forces, like Monsanto or Cargill, banks and government agents, sway practices in the direction of doing, mostly what has always been done. The edge right now is occupied by those who take their responsibility to future generations seriously, creating a sacred space for food production, sustainably managed with miniscule inputs of petro-chemically derived inputs. The true steward of land protects the integrity of as many acres as possible, and one look at the way most farmers treat the living organism that supports all life on the planet, tells even the casual observer that they can't tell the difference between soil and dirt.

My garden will remain productive, long after the areas outside my fence have ceased, just because there is so much going on there, so many millions of organisms each full of water and metabolizing. Because my tiny little house sidles up next to a park, what surrounds me is mostly estuary, about 120 acres (48.56ha) lying in a corridor through which water flows both ways. This year, the water is so low, that we are entering new territory. Vast mudflats will be exposed and frozen in a different manner than they are used to for perhaps the first time ever.The edge has shifted so far in this one aspect that the outcome or magnitude of change cannot be calculated. When submerged, mud freezes and thaws very slowly and perhaps only changes phase, from frozen to thawed two times each winter. When exposed, there is the possibility of freezing and thawing daily. This spells the end for many organisms and when they die off, a clean up crew will be fed, perhaps overfed, peak and die off as well, cascading effects will follow. Organisms dependent  on the stability of the environment will either move on or face hunger.

The relative stability of edge, even though it is by definition, the flux between two or more ecotones is necessary to develop species dependent on that specific habitat. The watershed of the Great Lakes is relatively small compared to the size of the lakes themselves, when drought reduces the creeks, streams and rivers to a relative trickle, appropriate habitat often swings wildly, not even allowing migration time for the organisms best suited to inhabit it. The new normal is dislocation and inability to thrive at best. Inevitably, death awaits. This is why, rather than vast monocultures, sustainable approaches favor diversity. Nature never has a sole interest in "mind" God/dess, or whatever you call it designs for exponential increases until climax is achieved. It is most difficult to imagine the concept of climax lasting for hundreds, or perhaps tens of thousands of years, but for a forest, this is the rule, not the exception. What we have done to the face of the Earth is an aberration, facilitated by using up fossil fuels that took millions of years to produce in just 150 years.

When we first looked back at Earth from space, the Great Wall of China was the only man-made object that could be distinguished. That entire edifice was created with human power. Now we have several structures that dwarf both mass and square area disturbance visible from beyond the ecosphere. These newer structures and scars are made possible by burning vast quantities of diesel fuel, and reducing nearly infinitely the amount of brain that has to be trained to do the work. It took over a century after the advent of "modern mining" technology for ecologists to realize that if we stockpile soil at a higher elevation than the mine, covering the scars made later will be easier and at least create the possibility of reclamation. For all of time before that, we just threw soil downhill to choke the streams and leave the site forever.

Our knowledge has increased, but the people who do mountaintop removal just don't care. The line that we are left to follow lies between two regions. One side leads to continued exploitation and despotism, rampant raping of the Mother Earth and listening to her eternal voice and ability to bring forth life with two major differences from the approach of the colonizing exploiters. The earth first creates no waste, all is part of a great redistribution of wealth, of minerals, of nutrients, of oxygen and aerosols that increase health, life and vitality. Second, it is progressively enriching even the most remote areas, making the appearance, strength and interactions between organisms ever more stable and diverse. An exploiter always looks to bigger and better ways of getting something, nature gives everything away, knowing full well that it will be returned many-fold.

Whatever we can do to tip the scales in favor of stability, must be done. It may not be enough to save our species, but if we are lucky, we may be left with a somewhat inhabitable environment. With what we have learned, we can surely see that spewing toxic compounds into the air is not helping anything. The future may require more change in a shorter time than we can fathom, but our development through the ages only proves that this is what we should expect. We must begin to take stock of our environment in ways that may not be easy to calculate or record. Native populations the world over recognize the sacred nature of the environment and it is high time we all learn to see where we are more clearly.