The Day Winter Came To Northeast Wisconsin

The storm that brought tornadoes to the South this week finally made it to our neck of the woods last night, complete with wild winds, thunder and lightening plus over a foot of snow. Our record snowfall on December 28th was more than doubled...go figure. It is not completely unusual to have a snow free Solstice (or an X-mas for that matter) however, shirtsleeve temps and green grass is very strange. I understand statistics and the difference between climate and weather, but as we are all seeing the results of the largest El Nino ever recorded, there may be a way to begin to understand that, although they are different, they are linked.

All life is sacred, all life is connected! We are one, we are stardust!

The world oceans are taking the brunt of our abuse, however we just don't see it, because it is, for the most part uninhabited. We record the finest of details about temperature, humidity, winds and weather on land and we do it in tens of thousands of locations having done so for over one hundred years. At sea, it has only been recently that we have had recording stations at fixed points and they have primarily been recording water conditions, not what is going on weather-wise. It only makes sense that with oceans covering two thirds of the planet, two thirds of the climate change would take place there as well.

I have written in the past about the loss of soils, how they have silted in many of the spawning beds that act as fish nurseries and the acidification of the world's oceans. I have also written about the gyrae that exist around the planet, the large swirling features that collect our floating plastic wastes. There are

For my part. I started my day getting the snowblower out to the road, so I could idle down to the old lady around the corner. She's the elder in my neighborhood and getting her driveway clear is the beginning of my snow day ritual. The official amount of snow is a mere thirteen to fourteen inches, but the drifting routinely piles the snow higher than the front end of the snowblower. On the way back, I got the sidewalks of two friends and an acquaintance. The X-tians seem to have a strong young buck to shovel, so I left theirs alone. By mid afternoon I was sitting on about eighty percent of the snow removal done. I wouldn't normally be so anxious to get the garden path opened up, but the compost is full. I have religiously fed the soil since arriving here over ten years ago and have built over a foot of topsoil in most of my garden beds. Nature, unaided, would take about twelve thousand years to create a foot of living soil. Bioneer, shaman, geomancer, charmaster, whatever you call me, I'm turning the tide on ecological destruction, one handful of soil at a time. for those whgo are interested to know how to do this, in a sophisticated way, using dymaxion engineering principles to enhance the soil microbial community, please reach out to me. I teach classes on how to make biochar, and honor the cornucopia that is a healthy planet.

Each one teach one was the watchword of the true hippies. Like the dandelion, each of us presents a flower each petal being liked to a seed that is the relationships of all whom we encounter, of all our known associates and the folks required to get us our food, our energy, our "way of life". Making choices that affect sustainability for seven generations is the native way, the tribal expression of something economists and sociologists call the Pareto Optimum, a desirable state in which everyone is better off and no one is worse off. It seems in today's oligarchy, Pareto was an optimist. I offer my biochar classes at reasonable rates and am also available for consulting.

Jet Set

By the time the term was recognized, the golden age of air travel had become passe, eclipsed by mundane and impersonal mass transit. What originated as something to be romantic and elite turned into a process which today is demeaning and merely a function, or series of rites designed to feign "security". This is not the only time this has occurred. My parents were around at a time when noone had televisions, but because they were some of the first to ge ton, lots of people would come to visit just to see the tee vee. Something that seemed ultra-novel and almost magical has become something we are inundated with and now almost don't recognize as the brain sucking pariah that it has become. That is why I frequently remind people that the revolution is still not being televised.

Fourteen acres per handful. Typically on an acre of healthy soil, we find as much biomass in the form of microbes as would be contained in a cow and her calf. Char holds six times it's own weight in water and acts like a nutrient sponge, holding food for plants, rather than letting it wash away.

One of the difficulties that we have is to predict what the next big thing will be. It won't look like anything we can imagine. The people who will guide what it will look like have not yet found their voices. But, in pockets, across the globe there are bioneers, embarking on sustainable communities. There are geomancers, facilitating healthy relationships between humans and the environment, shamen, healing individuals and communities, curanderras working with the divine feminine to birth an evolved human community, and charmasters, devoted to healing the microbial communities that constitute soil. Evidence can be found worldwide, co-ops, schools, farms, neighborhoods and cities are working out a new way of living, one that takes a longer view of what constitutes a healthy relationship with the planet.

We continue to loosen the bonds of oligarchs. The more we learn about them, the easier it becomes to boycott them, divest from them and sanction them. We know that healing the Earth begins under our feet, at the level of soil. The process of becoming carbon neutral will not be enough. We need to actively rebuild soils and biochar will be the easiest way to do it. Especially those who routinely hang out around the campfire, making char is simple and crucial to fixing carbon in soils.

The Jet Set didn't understand that they were blowing carbon into the high atmosphere, however, the people rebuilding soils understand that they are incorporating atmospheric carbon, through dried plant material into living, healthy soils.

Digital Cascades

I have recently begun to think of these posts as a fluid. I act as tippler, dropping a few gallons of water here and a few gallons of water there, not really fuel, but transfer mechanism for other energies which heat, pressurize, and change the water to steam, where it can do the most good and then pass on again into the watersheds of the global knowledge base.

A digital cascade is a set of processes in which one person shares with another person the very same idea and they begin to talk about and think about it. this allows for virtually instant movement of ideas and virtually endless permutations of the idea through languages, cultures and locations. These in turn are multiplied and have cohesive force throughout society, instantly and worldwide, changing the nature of our future discussions, our ideation and descriptions of the world around us.

Permutations are endless, like a giant flowering fractile, memes can be given birth, rise throughout the digital-friendly world and provide fodder for next gen thinking and filial memes that drive conversation across continents, political systems and ecotones. The concept of island culture is nothing new and at this point in our understanding of the fact that the entire Earth is under pressure from the way we choose to treat her, understanding how to not only release that pressure, but heal and soothe the natural world. It is true that if humans were erased from the planet, within a few hundred thousand years, our creations would be barely recognizable. However, if we understand what has been lost and how to build it again, it is absolutely possible to recreate Eden and allow the ugly scars across the face, the heart and breast of Mother Earth to heal.

The crucible of creation requires that too much gets crammed in, into too small a space, vibrating against and around one another, everything that went in combines, explodes into and rearranges with all else that has gotten in there as well, this, when heated, becomes a fusion, a force to be reckoned with. A completely new entity. Creation cannot be kept down, it is. When all of our words flow out as torrents, fueling the fusion of ideas across nations, across devotees, across tribes, with one sentiment, That is when evolution of our species will occur.

This Solstice

At least in Wisconsin, we are averaging forty-five degrees above normal. This in a time when we have recently changed the definition of normal and rather than averaging temperatures since record keeping began we now only average the last thirty years of data. Still, nearly fifty degrees warmer than the thirty year average is pretty good. It certainly is not feeling like midwinter. Six weeks from now, the back of winter will break and if the past few years are any indication, we can begin planting cold tolerant crops around April first (six weeks after that). It has rained almost six inches in December alone, more than double our typical December moisture. The strongest El Nino seems to be combining with a warm Gulf of Mexico to bring us Spring weather in December. Perhaps there will be a January freeze this year, rather than a January thaw.

On the darkest days of the year, it helps to reinforce the return of the light.

There is no better time to re-post information about biochar. This single resource has a proven track record and is a viable way to build soil, sequester carbon and stabilize soil moisture. It also has the power to double crop yields.

Many people worry about the "end times" or even champion them as "god's will". These people are conspiring against all of humanity. When faced with truth, we often triumph over difficult odds in spite of our limitations. It is what humans do. This is the case for climate change. Building soil by adding biochar increases the stability of life within the root zone of plants. Bacteriologic balance, provides healthy habitat for both roots and critters whose "waste" can be utilized by plants. We have the power in our hands to make char whenever we sit around a bonfire, it is cheap and easy to make, just throw some dry organic matter in a cookie tin with a few holes poked through to let flammable gasses escape and viola'! You can make char.

I have always felt that the Rainbow Warrior was alive in me. Peace and justice drive me from my soul level. By making biochar, we heal the planet from the ground up. Those people who participate in building soils are transformed in ways that are hard to quantify, but living a life that leads to the transformation of soils has profound impacts on those who do. When I was a more avid brewer, I always wanted a shirt that said, Yeast Lord. Because of the throngs of billions of generations of those lowly yet exalted strains that I shepherded and gave rise to. There may still be remnant colonies of organisms that trace their history back to my brewing days.

Certainly there are colonies in and amongst the char that I have created that owe their existence to my handiwork, perhaps hundreds of trillions of discreet microscopic organisms. The areas that I have added biochar to are still far from frozen, yet the areas in our yard that have not been treated with char are holding the little snow that has fallen, showing that billions of microscopic organisms have enough metabolism to change the surface conditions. Under the mulch, there are thriving communities that have not yet stopped for the winter. Life wants to teem, what we have done, almost without understanding, has been to systematically sicken, poison and reduce the soils of the planet to dirt. This solstice, I am pledging to redouble my efforts to teach others the important skills needed to produce char and nurture it so it can become the most amazing soil.

All of the beds that I have enriched with biochar doubled their output. Growers, please share!

Fourteen acres of surface area per handful of char. On an acre of healthy soil, the microbial community alone, has as much biomass as a cow and her calf. Not only will the char harbor and hold six times its own weight in water, the bacteria, fungi, and other microbes hold even more moisture withing their cells. I frequently describe char as being like the condo complex, the pantries and refrigerators need to be stocked, but then the whole thing is ready to be inoculated with live soil microbes from healthy soil. When they are given optimal conditions, they reproduce rapidly and form life giving, healthy soil.

Please contact me for information about classes and consulting services.

Strange Days Indeed

This solstice falls very close to midnight tonight. Not only will the Sun be at the lowest point on the horizon, but at least here in Green Bay, it will occur in the middle of the night. On this, the longest night near the time our ancestors used to call all bells. The Pacific ocean is currently warmer than we have recorded at any time since record-keeping began and the warm air has so much intensity that we, in the Upper Midwest are experiencing the warmest late fall ever. Midwinter here used to be the time when rivers turned hard, there were days on end where even the weak Sun could not raise the temperatures above zero during the days. We occasionally had temperatures far below zero. This year, we are wondering if the ground will even freeze solid.

The days have become strange in so many other ways as well, it is difficult to explain them all, or even list them. The citizens of the rest of the world, and some on our territory as well as wondering if we have collectively lost our minds. We seem to be completely delusional, running a slate of Teathuglican candidates that reflect all of the worst features of the ugly American. We have liars, cheaters, connivers, despicable hate mongers ala Hitler and both ignorant and foolhardy candidates running their mouths about things they know absolutely nothing about. In place of a fourth estate, the media and news outlets, who are wholly owned subsidiaries of the oligarchy continue to hold out the Two Minutes of Hate first mentioned by George Orwell in his futuristic novel, 1984.

Our educators are deemed "responsible" when students, calloused by abuse and neglect are unable to learn. Bullies are allowed to buy their way into seats of power, exerting more and more control over the daily lives of "free" citizens and there are never shortages of people to blame. Just pick any of the victims and lay the blame on them. We blame old people, young mothers, unions, anyone who works for the rest of us. The people who actually produce the least are even labeled "makers" while they call the rest of us "takers". Pay no attention to the fact that the elderly gave their lives to keep our way of life viable, ignore the fact that without young mothers, there would be no generation of young people willing to be abused by their bosses and while you are at it, brand those who put in an honest day of labor so that billionaires can hide fortunes in foreign banks. In addition to sowing seeds of hate throughout our society, Fascists continue to claim the immigrants are the problem, even though only a tiny fraction of us can trace our ancestry to native people. Even the fact that the world-wide recession (I still say it is a depression) has done more to curb immigration across our Southern border than anything that policing and/or militarism has accomplished.

The media giants have the power to point their cameras in any direction they choose, yet from the looks of what gets "reported", we are becoming less and less tolerant, under more and more threats and they also love to show us images of people who have lost their humanity in favor of their isolated existence, hiding in the glow of their telescreens.

Fossil carbon is almost never mentioned in popular media, nor is the solution to the build up of carbon in both the atmosphere and the world oceans. The fossil energy resources we are reaping today are like a giant solar charged battery, that took hundreds of millions of years to put by natural gas, oil and coal. We have been burning through that million year old carbon like drunken sailors since we first found it. some say that world coal reserves could last another four hundred years at the rate we are burning it, but it took millions of years to form. This is like writing checks for many thousands of dollars, every couple hours, while only adding a dollar per day to our accounts. The organic matter that took that carbon out of the air and sequestered it millions of years ago seems to not even be on our radar, or part of our awareness. We seem to have collectively forgotten basic physics. Like the fox from the folk tale, carrying a mouthful of food, we are seeing our reflection in the  still pool, but we try to snatch the food reflected in the water, leading to not only the loss of our meal, but getting cold and wet as well.

Chasing the dream has only led to our estrangement.

It seems like the popular myth/reality of the witch hunt has come back in full force. Everyone is seeking to blame someone else so fervently, so intently, that their own actions have become invisible to them. This solstice, we could all be served by allowing a bit of awareness in to our lives. The vast, vast majority of the human race is compassionate, helpful and cooperative. We know from research and experience that the easiest way to change children from loving, caring individuals into hateful tyrants and sociopaths is to abuse and neglect them, so why are we taking a path that leads to less and less good parenting and more and more stress for families? Well, our fictional belief in the "golden rule of business", screw the other guy before hew gets a chance to screw you, has become the mantra of the well to do. Since the rest of us are getting used to thinking that we are just temporarily inconvenienced billionaires,  we also think that by following the same route they did to amass their wealth, we will "make it" someday. The more desperate we become, the more we seem to cling to the lies that we have been told by those who abuse and neglect us.

In the novel 1984, the proles were told, WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. The book was written as a warning, not an instruction manual. The truth is that no peace ever grew out of the end of a gun, nor can it be created by the elimination of the results of human effort, investment and capital, with its inherent mantra that it be done for the good of others, and for ages to come. The "work" that the death and fear merchants are summed up pretty well as Ozzie Osbourne testified in 1970, with Black Sabbath with the tune WAR PIGS! War can never be anything but mayhem and destruction. The concept of buying money on time has virtually created a race of slaves. Ask yourself, are you more free today than you would be without "interest" being paid to guys in suits who create nothing but false demand for a future that never comes. In case anyone forgets. Slavery will forever be inhumane, even if the slaveholders were to be proven benevolent. Those who keep over ninety percent of the rest of us as their pets are the ones who need to be put down, not the old ladies whose "benefits" are cut, or the child made to drink sugar water while her mom is away at her job. I am in the class that has lost the war, but continues to pick winnable battles in a corrupt and failing system. Recognizing your own wage slavery and understanding that the class war has been won for decades. I continue to write these words to help others hear/see/smell/feel/ taste/grasp  the truth.  The most ignorant thing we can do is not recognize that every single person you meet knows things you will never know. If you have not yet done so, read 1984. When the spookiness starts to become apparent, realize that we now do not need wires to be "hooked up" any more. Nor can we disappear anymore into darkness.

The only way is up and out into the light. I have resolved in this year to become more pro active, discuss what can be done to affect positive change across the planet and don't want to leave folks with a truth bomb so devastating that they know not where to go, so here I will leave a nugget of bliss that can be reproduced and shared amongst your friends, family and co-workers, even if they be unpersons (sorry for the one last 1984 reference). To lighten the mood as "Where do you find a turtle with no arms or legs?" wait a moment and answer..."Right where you left him!" May all your days reflect the honest twists and turns of phrases, the condensed meaning of a thought expressively contained in the tiniest of vessels of words. Take these brief collections of words to heart: Love is Peace, Freedom a Birthright, Awareness is Everything. It only costs our attention to invest in making the world substantially better. All we have is our brief time on the planet...how many of us have lost loved ones this year?...We know the results of tearing things and people down. Perhaps this year, we could try the opposite approach.

Gingerbread Manslaughter

The time has come, once again, to endure the commercial excesses of our materialistic culture. In our time and place, many will be having to put up with businesses trying to pull us in, attempting to tell us that their baubles and beads are something that will placate our loved ones and make up for the times we have missed being there when it could have provided comfort, or proven our love for them by simply being there. This is also the time of year that we are supposed to be celebrating the enduring qualities of family and forgiveness, feasting and fraternity. However, if the commercial interests are to survive, they need to sell us things. It is not supposed to matter that some stores collect 60% of their revenue for the year in the six weeks or so between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We are supposed to gloss over the fact that all year long, we go without so we can pack the area under the tree with presents for one night.We are also supposed to ignore the fact that the X-tian myth of three wise men visiting a manger would have turned out completely different had there been wise womyn in the story instead. The grandmothers would have brought blankets, food and compassionate care to the young family, not silver and gold or incense.

When I was preparing to write this, I thought that it would be primarily about the way families are taken down by corporate forces, perhaps not on purpose, but as a result of their attempting to survive. The more I thought about it and tried to write, the more I realized that the "reason for the season" has nothing to do with survival. It is completely about exploitation. Even asking people if they want to use cash or credit belies the thinly veiled fact that in our culture clerks and shopkeepers don't care one whit about whether you can afford to have a nice holiday or not...they are only interested in the money.

Lucky Sevens

Today, I checked my stats. So far, my humble blog has had 27,777 views. I wanted to see what sort of power four sevens times two would have and it was interesting what I found. Beyond the fact that there are seven deadly sins, lucky sevens, seven sisters and seven circles form the "seed of life". Japan boasts seven lucky gods, there are dozens of tie ins with the number seven. One of the many things that turn out to be interesting about the number seven is that in numerology, finding wisdom and sharing it with others...transformation of the gold of enlightenment through the ether and conveying it to another place, perhaps another time.

I have long believed that when authors speak across the ages and stir our present day soul, that part of the author becomes immortal. To have penned words that reverberate through history, or which as so sublime as to make future humans cry of shout out in joy, leads millions of authors on a quest into time. The likelihood that any of the many words will stir after hundreds of years remains to b seen, but with technology blossoming, more and more are willing to try. I hope that when my writings are looked at, today or ever after, they are at least cogent if not sublime.

This is a retort with way too small a fire under it.

When your true purpose, finding wisdom and sharing it, comes up out of the blue so to speak, yet has such a crescendo of causality, it has to make at least one reflect. So far, I have done a good job. I wish that each of my readers would, or could, go find a 522 page book and send me the price of that book. The work of a writer is filling in the spaces between ideas to crate a net of meaning in which to catch bigger fish. Perhaps, not sweat the small stuff.

As a digital format writer, I am not sure what it was about the half dozen or so most popular posts, but for some reason they must have been shared and caught the imaginations of those who read them. I look back from time to time and read the more popular and less popular posts and still don't know why they resonate differently. Five hundred twenty two posts at one per day would take a year and a half to read. Giving each one a week to be reflected upon, my material at this blog alone would provide ten years of reading material.

Sacred Planet

We are primarily terrestrial creatures. As much as some may love water, living in it presents a few problems for us. Not too many years back, our understanding of the world was limited to the four elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water, but as our ability to practice science improved and technologies for breaking down the world around us into component parts improved, we discovered many more elements, or building blocks from which matter derives. Now, we know of more than four classes of these building blocks of all things. Pure water, for instance is actually two things, two hydrogen atoms for every oxygen atom. Air can be made up of, or contaminated with several dozen more things. Some of us have studied chemistry to the point of thinking that we understand exactly how it works. However, the process of chemistry, dissecting and recombining materials thought to be elementary building blocks or indeed, smashing the atom completely also have an unintended purpose or consequence. The knowledge that we have developed over the last couple centuries has led many to think that the elements of old have lost much of their meaning and importance. Indeed, the four elements still hold sway, if not influence over our lives.

Earth, Air, Fire and Water are still elemental and powerful concepts, even though science has changed our perception of them. Perhaps our understanding is not as "complete" as we may think. I have been thinking about relationships since I was a child. The art and science of relationships lie in our ability  to recognize, understand that "other", interact with one another in meaningful ways and to influence one another, much like the elementary particles that make up all matter. Just because we can break down Earth, Air, Fire and Water into constituent parts and pieces, or combine these fractional portions in different ways with predictable results, this cannot stand-in for the powerful gifts that come from acknowledgment of these "four directions" and the pull they still have on us today. Often, within our own organisms and within the broader species as a whole, we learn and develop facility with different "realities" as we grow. What we thought that the world was, or how we understand it at age two is different than twenty and that is different again at sixty or one hundred. We probably think that the world has changed, even if it is just our perspective.

Child mind seems to be trendy. ("I'm not a scientist", ev'ry body likes to brag these days.") is how Todd Rundgren puts it on his recent release Global. Believing in ancient deities, praying to them in public and basing political and ideological decisions on folktales seem to be growing, not shrinking. At least that is how the people who control media are painting things. As we learn more about the ancient world, most of what we thought we knew about civilization seems to not be proven out. Why should it be? Most of what we found, we assumed to know what it meant and no matter how limited our understandings were, we had to fit them into our old ways of thinking. Thus the terms primitive and hostile. The oppressors frequently paint "others" with disdain, they are only there to name, claim, tame and shame. Raping (plundering) the planet and saddling her people with clean up costs is no way to run an empire.

I focus on language because it is the fabric that holds ideas together. The strands holding our culture together are the remnant cooperative spirit and hopoe that comes from feeling secure, part of, something larger. It is human nature. Our tribes are now capable of spreading around the globe on digital pulses. We have now identified relationships between and among atoms that hold all matter together, but we are unfamiliar with the ancient gods and goddesses who were the psychic glue holding human reality together since our species was swapping DNA with other proto-human species.

Sitting around fires, we know that they are alive. They represent one of the most primal and physical proofs of life itself. Science has now proven that metabolic activity itself liberates energy in the form of heat. Now, science proves the truth behind the old saying "the fire of life." We can even state with relative certainty that on average, humans generate between 275 and 500 BTUs per hour. Adding 200 bodies to a room is like having a whole house furnace burning the whole time. All of this energy comes from the Sun, the ultimate source of fire in our part of the Universe. In this respect, we are just an amazing biologic battery, absorbing Sun energy, (fire) in the form of plant mediated fats, carbohydrates, protein and a host of mineral and unintended human-made compounds. Just as the wood we burn is a battery for solar energy, so too are our bodies. We are not just mesmerized by fire, we are akin to it!

The Earth is the same way. Our relationship with the Earth is that we too are one. Both of us are inhabited by microbes, both of us are alternately washed with photons on a diurnal cycle. Rays from the Sun lights about half of each day and the reflected light of the moon (varying on a moonthly cycle) reflects the Sun's light, most nights. When we use terms like "He's real salt of the Earth", or we call someone down to Earth, it is more about the elemental understandings that Earth represented to us on a primal level, integrated into our DNA ages ago than any up to date soil science. However, as we learn more, there is a system-wide integrity within the communities that inhabit our planet, and in time, the knowledge we gain about relationships within soil, may help us to develop better relationships with our foods and we very quickly need to understand that our own health flows from honoring the community within the soil that we depend on for survival as well as the microbial communities that exist within and upon our bodies. When the dust bowl days took away the soil, it had taken thousands of years to accumulate, develop, evolve toward stability. That is gone, and has never been rebuilt.

It may seem odd that solar and lunar events are included in a post entitled sacred planet, or that on the other end of the size spectrum, microbes, but indeed, we are all differing harmonics of the sacred sound. There are spiritual costs of wiping out diversity in our soils. In addition to the physical disruption of the environment, there is great silencing of the songs of trillions of living creatures. In my gardens, I attempt to keep all turned soil covered to reduce the sterilizing effects of ultra-violet radiation from the Sun. Learning to cooperate instead of just disrupting nature was a great step forward in my own understanding of deep ecology. Each of us takes a different path to get to our awareness, mine came through keeping fish and utilizing their "wastes" as valuable resources for my garden beds. I grew to see cycles of energy, of nutrients and of carbon in live soils, but the last five years or so, I have been stepping up my game with the addition of biochar.

I am currently scheduling classes around the country to focus on this solution to both the climate and food crises. Biochar can more than double agricultural output, eliminating the need for pesticides and virtually all fertilizer as well. Healing soils leads to healthier plants which in turn are not easy targets for most insect pests. Addition of biochar also helps stabilize soil moisture, moderating both flood and drought. We are blessed to have this technology and no corporate entity will ever get rich from it. Our sacred traditions, birthright really,  requires us to adopt this ancient technology wherever we grow crops. Sequestering carbon needs to be a worldwide priority and biochar can help life thrive, if we learn to grow soil rather than abuse it.

Oligarch Stew

We have been fighting for the oppressed for-ever. One of the most known billionaires is Warren Buffet and he specifically says, that there is a class war and his class has been winning it for a long time now.

The oligarchs have won the class war for centuries, with a few brief and notable interludes where wealth and power were trusted in the hands of common men. The reason most Americans feel estranged from our leaders, is because they have undermined our entire culture by allowing us to be fleeced in broad daylight by corporate welfare recipients, like GE (minus 9% effective tax rate). Wal-mart has recently plummeted in "value" on the stock market, I think it is because the majority has realized that the only thing pure greed is capable of doing is destroying communities. Same for road building projects, banking, Everything the Koch brothers dabble in, Wall Street, the insurance industry and most kinds of "resource" extraction. All of these mal-adaptive behaviors cost the average person far more than they justify with even modest scrutiny. 

Financially, we are all still strapped for cash and the logical argument has always been that if we just work a little harder or a little longer, we will somehow get "ahead". Many are beginning to realize, that our efforts to thrive in the economic system that has been flooded with corruption and graft, are like spending more hours in the gambling houses. The tables are rigged for the uberwealthy and the longer we rely on their "products and services", the more of our wealth they will skim off. Perhaps our whole world economy is poised for an intervention. Instead of the saying, step away from the crack pipe, we need to strongly encourage, or command stepping away from the juggernaut gambling tables of high stakes, life and death labor decisions, When we, the 99%, walk away, the system crumble. The well-insulated billionaire class cannot fathom what we are capable of, just as we cannot imagine the depths of their depravity. We are ready to elect a Bernie sanders for President, but in our system, we need to assure that 469 new congresspeople come into office who will pledge to work with, rather than against Bernie, then we can reign in some of the wanton spending on corporate welfare.

Many do not understand the massive tax subsidies that go to business, industry and the corporate hierarchy. I mentioned GE earlier and I will repeatedly harp on the fact that the largest subsidy we have given to GE over the years is that we gave them billions in subsidy to "grow" their company, building nuclear/electric generating facilities, knowing full well that the costs of their actions would be paid by the taxpayers as well. Over 60,000 years of "safe storage" for the waste created is a massive cost and you and I will be paying for that long after the benefits of a few electrons do their work. The nuclear facilities themselves will be dirty forever and just because you cannot see what kills you does not mean that it is not doing it. Friends of mine born virtually across the road from a local nuke facility are dead and or suffering with the human cost of nuclear energy. There will always be well-paid mouthpieces to help prop up lies, but more and more people are understanding the truth and it cannot be assailed, cannot be torn down and cannot be ignored any longer. The truth stands alone and need not be propped up by lies.

This Solstice season, let us put our houses in order, let us depend less on the filthy lucre of the oligarchs, let us starve them out as it were and when they are willing to humbly accept a place at our table, let them learn first-hand the true meaning of stone soup. Those of us who have been at the losing end of the class war have known for decades the value of barter and the sharing economy. Now it is time to revolutionize the thinking of the masses. I am fond of saying each one teach one, but this is the foundation of all great movements. 

When I first envisioned this post, it was much more about eating the rich, but what we must learn is to utilize the vast and pernicious waste, fraud and corruption that exists in the current system to redistribute resources, punish those who ignore basic rules of humanity with boycotts, divestment and sanctions. Rather than punitive measures, designed to hurt the offending individuals, groups and corporations, we need sound protections for those who rely on goods or services from the marketplace. The only way to extinguish the one dollar one vote model is to assert that we are supposed to have a one person one vote system. Democracy is new enough in the evolutionary chain of humanity that we cannot sit idly by and let it devolve further into oligarchy. By now, we are all likely to have seen the distribution of kings to serfs and the various ranks of status and privilege that existed during feudal times. what we are experiencing today mirrors that hierarchy of power and control exactly and it pains those of us who are paying attention that so few know what can be done to turn the tables and redistribute the greatest fortunes ever created in the history of humankind. 

Eat local, drink local, shelter yourself as locally as possible and make merriment locally as well. We reproduce what is important to us and if we focus on the things closest to us, the least fossil energy is used running about the place. Learn to make biochar and use it! Tell your neighbors and friends. We will need all hands on deck to survive the coming storms and we will have to all pull together or be ripped apart by the rogue waves of the die hard billionaires. They will undermine and subvert our efforts at any cost, so be brave and do not tear down one another of yourself. To do that is playing right into their hands. We all bring something special to the table, do not sacrifice it or squander it on the altar of the oligarchs, enriching them and giving them evermore power and control. Instead add your part to the Stone Soup of our new culture, the one that rewards all, not just the already well-heeled. The transformations that will occur in your life will be staggering.

There has been a revolution taking place for decades and it is rarely acknowledged. Some of the outward signs are in the slow food/farmer's market model, sharing our ecologic ethic with those who produce our food, etc. What was called living better for less, or voluntary simplicity, the home school revolution, as well as is part of that and Healing our relationship with place. All Earth is sacred.

Bird Doggin' It

Now I haint got me no bird dog, but I seen 'nuf v 'em. To know dat I ought 'pologise for doin jus' wha' day do. I fees laak ma niche is ta jus' keppa workin' da ter'tory. see whaz ou' dere, eh?

You, my readers, have been good about puttin' up with me, or taking what I attempt to do in stride, like you have been over some of the terrain before, or have grasped at certain concepts for handholds on a particularly difficult traverse. For that I am humbly grateful and honored by your continued risk, at reading each next line of my missals. When we can all become more adept and graceful when traversing life's challenges, evolution cannot help but occur. The thing to always keep in mind is that it will always be survival of the luckiest, after all, Darwin was a victim of his own privilege. The best word he had for himself was "fittest", and he could not even conceive of his own luck at being born healthy, wealthy and white. May we always be lucky.

The bird dog thing came to me while watching someone else bird dog a concept for others a few weeks ago. It seems that some sort of combined effort would have to be expended. After all, I'm a stagehand and we do things, but I was not in their department, I was just privy to their conversation.I was astonished at the patience required, to search an entire field for grouse, partridge or quail. That is how the person was searching for the light behind the eyes, those willing to invest in the territory. First, I assume he tried talking about whatever he wanted to share in terms that made perfect senses to him. like the dog, making the broadest arc, through the open grass. No one "got it". He doubled back, describing several of his terms more simply, but still, no one nodded in awareness of his meaning. I could see his dogged determination to get his point across, it was as if he were expanding his search pattern in ever smaller arcs just like the bird dog, he began to almost rolic (like a subdued frolic) to make perhaps a bit more noise or make himself seem bigger to any last holdouts among the grasses. He crossed and crisscrossed territory around and about each term, desperately seeking just a glimmer of understanding, then, zap! It was as if everyone got it from different directions and the metaphor continued to play out, because they all flew to action as if a covey was to have been scared off the Earth, all taking flight, but as one! Unlike the birds however, there was much bumping into one another as they each perceived that they would have to move to get whatever needed action was to take place.

We need to understand that no matter what background we bring to the table, we can never surmise what arcane knowledge that lies within and among the fissures of our brains, might be useful to any other soul.  Humanity is caring about the "other" enough to share a part of yourself. In some cases the things we feel most passionately about need to be chased down, scared up or simply startled into movement to be discovered by others, but what may be most profound for them might seem inconsequential to our organism.

About a week ago, I was talking with someone at great depth about biochar. since it is my passion and I assume that most people have now heard about global warming and climate change. I prefer to call it oceanic acidification, but let's not split hairs. I had mentioned that is gives us a way to sequester carbon in soil for long periods, providing benefits for centuries, perhaps millennia. I mentioned that char has fourteen acres of surface area in each handful. I told him that it holds up to six times its own weight in water...then I talked to hime for several minutes more about the many benefits, from providing habitat for soil microbes to holding nutrients for long periods of time, almost like a fertilizer sponge. We talked about how fungal hyphae who inhabit the char can double the mass of roots, aiding in healthier plants and greater mineral and both micro and macro nutrient uptake. We discussed hoe the addition of char can exponentially increase the amount of both air and water in the soils and how with regular composting, 90% of the carbon leaves the soil within four years. We even discussed the many ways carbon is often transformed and how it leaves. Additionally, I mentioned that pyrolysis, the burning of organic material without air changes it , much like firing clay and makes it have very long residence time in soil. We even talked about how the exudate of many soil microbes acts like glue to adhere adjacent soil particles together and that this in turn is one of the favorite habitat zones for fungal hyphae, which have a "soil glue" characteristic thousands of times greater than the microbe exudate alone.

Then, out of the blue, he said "Six times it's weight in water?" as if that was the most amazing thing about it. I continue to offer classes in making the stuff. Be forewarned, it is both art and science and to get good at making it, you will need to be willing to practice the art and understand the science. I will not relent until this material is understood. I pledge to keep bird-doggin' it as long as it takes. Keep in mind that to drive 5,000 miles (nearly 8,050 km) blasts almost two tons (1.8 tonnes) of carbon into the atmosphere. It would cost thousands of dollars to offset that by adding biochar to soil.This amount of biochar would only cover a bit less than an acre at "optimal" rates of 1kilo (2.2 lbs.) per cubic meter of soil (approximately one cubic yard). Those two tons of char however would hold twelve tons of moisture even before the soil microbes held their share and before any other soil biology, including plant roots would take their share. Building soils is the only valid way that I have seen, proven to me without any doubt that would be better to use for carbon sequestration.

The fact that no one is going to get rich making it is the only reason you have not heard more about this fascinating technology. My fees for teaching are to cover the years I have put in researching techniques for making and using char and I remain passionate about learning more. One thing the bird dog never seems to notice are the dandelion seeds that they kick up while on the prowl. The tiny seeds of our experience can lead to whole villages of activity if we use the right words, or enough that everyone catches the meaning. Beware, as we all jump to act, not to run one another down!

Hello, it is still me...

Since I, Tony Saladino, was a child, I have sought ways to reconcile man and his environment. I studied widely, Anthropology, Physics, Meteorology, Geology and Limnology, among others. By immersing myself in nature, I learned things not in books.

As a young man, I often hiked along the Appalachian Trail, spent my time biking, caving, watching wildlife and wandering the mountains of Eastern Pa. One project I undertook was rebuilding a half-acre beaver pond that was on the side of my favorite mountain. The beaver had been gone a long while, after a summer of work I appreciated how much work it was! I made films about the seasons and the streams that cascaded down the hills near home. My summer job in college was working at a large camp outside Philly, after several years, I had taken hundreds of center city kids to the wild back forty for what I called “hobo cooking” and “temporary shelter” classes. Showing them how to live in nature with style, not going hungry or cold.

I worked for Citizens for a Better Environment after college. Research for that job let me study more about the Great Lakes and learn more about the environmental catastrophes we have created around their shores. This in turn led, to my 1987 bicycle ride around all five Great Lakes. During that trip I talked with thousands of people in person and tens of thousands more by newspaper, radio and television about ways to live more lightly on Mother Earth and how to minimize the impacts we all have on finite resources and the planet as a whole.  Returning to Wisconsin, I spent time as “Nature Guy” for the City of Green Bay Park and Recreation Department, again teaching children about our interdependence on the world around us. More and more people today are beginning to learn that our future and quality of life are intimately tied to that of the world around us.

Please forgive my long introduction; I’m sure many of my friends don’t know my whole story. Since my return to Green Bay from college in 1985, I have been planting trees across Northeast Wisconsin. At first, my only funding was my own tax returns, and after a hiatus of a dozen years or so, raising some of the best children around, my wife Nancy and I started ECO-Tours of Wisconsin, inc. a not-for-profit organization that operates with donations we raise for the purpose of planting native trees and providing fun tours with environmental and educational focus. Our ECO-Tours have planted over fifteen thousand trees to date. We are ready to purchase property in the watershed of Green Bay that we can use as a nursery for our trees, a retreat center, teaching facility, and community supported agriculture (CSA) farm. The land we plan to reclaim was a former gravel pit, and we will reestablish a native forest on this denuded property.

Our reforestation efforts have restored over fifty acres so far. We have planted on several dozen sites across Northeast Wisconsin, mostly in the Fox and East River Watersheds. We are now poised to purchase land on which we will introduce ecotourists to our work in a single location where they will see forty restored acres in one place. Our donations are from people like you, people interested in taking a tour, investing in something worth being proud of, people who enjoy nature and want there to be more of it, and those who see the value of more diversity in our local environment. You may want to give a legacy gift so that we can preserve land that will never be developed, or just want a child to have a chance to take a free tour with us. Planting a single tree can be a profound experience. We plant forests. Whatever donation you are inspired to give will assist us in bringing our efforts to a wider audience. ECO-Tours is for me the culmination of my life’s work. We ask for funding for this project now, to secure the farm by spring.

This Earth house design would make an excellent living space with adjacent work spaces.

We appreciate your assistance and urge you to give as much as you can. We have done much with limited funds, and your assistance reinvigorates the process. Four years from now we can easily cover another fifty acres with native trees, with your help.

Appreciatively, Tony C. Saladino-Director,

Our entire board, and future guests thank you as well. 

Visit us at: ecotoursofwisconsin.org or call: (920) 884-2224
find us through facebook or e-mail tnsaladino42@hotmail.com

Donate at Paypal, our account number there is the same as e-mail or send to: 1445 Porlier street, Green Bay, Wisconsin 54301

Doublespeak

I believe that it was 1984, when we had our 1984 Party. Each guest had to do the same ritual that Winston does in the book. To get the place ready, we boiled cabbage all day to make it smell like the book describes and we rolled a pack or two of cigarettes between our palms to loosen the tobacco. We made specialty packaging for the cigarettes and bottles of gin. "V" for victory was the largest letter on the packs. We set up a television at an angle so as to be viewable from nearly the whole apartment and the guests would have to find the place where the telescreen could not be seen to perform the rest of the rite.

We would explain, or read from the book as they took a cigarette carefully from the pack, keeping the open side up to avoid losing the tobacco and they were to drink some gin in the same spot before they could join the reverie. It was a winning series of events, helping us to visualize ourselves in Winston's shoes.

Little did I know that just a generation later, my daughter would be having her own 1984 party, but for real at her technical school. Not just as a diversion for creatives away from home and living on their own for the first time in their lives. No, her teacher has deemed her "too risque'" for her adult classmates. She is studying media, production arts and visual communication, but if she wants to show any more of her creations to the class, she will be required to submit them for approval beforehand to the teacher. Mind you, the material was PG rated, and used images available on broadcast tee vee, but she interspersed them and added commentary that called into question the morality of large corporate empires to degrade women, foist aggression on males and basically present a misogynistic ethos over our culture in the hopes of using the angst created for both sexes to sell product, influence culture and set back womyn's rights three or more decades.

The Universities and Technical Colleges, at least in America are suffering under the assumption that difficult questions, especially ones that might make someone uncomfortable, are to be avoided rather than discussed. The oligarchs routinely threaten to stop donating to large and small institutions alike if their sensibilities are threatened by educational research, discussion or critique taking place in the classroom and now, even on social media. I have seen it myself. The firm hand of censorship slowly strangling creativity, taking the "rough edges" off hard questions and turning critical eyes into vacant stares. I will include the original messages between my daughter and I here so that I will not color your perception more than I have to in order to get the message across clearly.

This shows how angry I get when people, especially the oligarchs, mess with me or my family!

My daughter who is in Technical College just mentioned that she was told to "tone it down" in class today; apparently Sage is too racy for adults. She showed a short video pointing out how certain advertisers were sexist in their ads. Now, she has been told that if she wants to show anything in class, she has to have prior approval of the teacher. My response was first disgust and my written response follows.
This is where one has to remain a stand for truth in the teeth of power. EEEEEK! What sort of "insty-ruction" are they sanctioning? Are not my tax dollars spent on their very institution? You are expressing my ideas, not just your own. We are simpatico. He (the teacher) probably is not even aware of the fact that the tip of his penis was cut off just after being born and that is why he does not want to be bothered with concepts about the self image of more than half the population. I am appalled and horrified that in an educational setting, for adults, as you point out, one cannot bring up such deep and meaningful ideas without first getting "approval". It is difficult to speak truth to power, but going forward, know that you are completely right and a valuable asset to the development of your fellow classmates. 

The discussions that have followed this event have been stark and brutal. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, if you look closely,  examples of scholarship being cut off because funders got squeamish about the results. Tenure offered and revoked, programs discontinued, arts being eviscerated from Universities because their stories were too real. Heck, scientists have been let go or pushed out because their findings were too clear. My own research, which led me to coin the term heat islands back in 1987 was deemed unworthy of even discussion, until my professor stole my work as his own a few years later. Of course he couched it is much softer terms and actually never drew my final conclusions that these heat islands also affect climate, destabilizing the atmosphere from ground level on up to the stratosphere. Not only was my work deemed trivial, but the message has been shut out of academic discussion.

The powers that be are adept at guiding the direction of civil discourse and the public can no longer stand for being told what to think. The time has come for each one of us to teach another and to lay out the foundations of a civil society that supports all of us in our special systems of inquiry, our unique interpretations of what we feel we are seeing, hearing and finding out about, and we need to feel that there is enough tolerance and support for us to take tentative steps toward understanding, no matter who it makes look bad. Often, it is through expression of new ideas that other humans feel that they are not alone in thinking this way and that there are new truths that lay beyond our ability to discuss. When we need to develop new terms and new understandings, the best places to do it are among others who are at the forefront of learning and the cross pollination of ideas is as important to our evolution as any genetic tampering.  

7.000 Oaks

One of my heroes has always been Joseph Beuys This fall, ECO-tours of Wisconsin will be planting seven thousand acorns in Fonferek Glen County Park, in the headwaters of the East River Watershed. This area in turn feeds the Fox River near the mouth and Green Bay, Lake Michigan and points east including Lake Huron, the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, Detroit River, Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence Seaway downstream to the Atlantic Ocean. Rather than planting each one in relationship to stellae, as Joseph Beuys did, ours will just be planted in an appropriate soil and microclimate that favors oaks.

We ask that people who read this, appreciate our work and wish for it to continue help fund us either by sending donations to our ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. Paypal account: tnsaladino42@hotmail.com
or by snail mail to 1445 Porlier street, Green Bay, WI 54301 U.S.A. We are a small local not-for profit, and the work we do has worldwide implications, as we offer classes in making and using biochar, reforestation, habitat restoration, composting and water conservation measures.

Joseph Beuys has helped re-define our relationship to the planet, Eco-Tours continues to do the same.

REVOLUTION #9

The election of Barack was revolutionary in many ways. The only reason such a stink was raised about the ACA is that there needed to be a thick smoke screen between the American people and the idea of single payer. When one points out that the VA is essentially socialized medicine, most of the "small government" supporters understand that if we all fell under the "pre-paid" healthcare system that most developed nations enjoy, the govie could negotiate prices down for all forms of medical care, including prevention, nutrition programs, exercise programs and drugs. The oligarchs love a system in which they can double costs while providing nothing. Like we have now. I do not want to focus on a single issue, like health care, even though it is a crucial one, because there are dozens of issues just like this. 

We need elections and we have the opportunity to install 469 congress people at the 2016 election. If we secure those seats, change will be inevitable. Many people are trying to shut the door on people voting in a variety of ways. We can make the system come to heel through an active, informed and participating public. The network news will not aid us in any way, that is why they talk about "violent revolutions" in history books and paint groups like #occupy with such ugly terms as reactionary, violent and meddlesome. Find out who your local Bernie Sanders supporters are, or who the Jill Stein supporters are, and elect them to Congress. Take back the state houses and if each one teaches one, we can easily lick the problem without a single hand being raised in violence. This revolution needs to be in the realm of ideas. The problem with revolutionary thinking generally is that it is relatively uninspired. Trying to repeat what has not worked in the past is sure to end in disaster and more of what has come before. Why do you think the oligarchs focus virtually all of their energy telling us about the violent revolutions in the past? Because none of them did much good in the long run. Revolutions of thought and behavior have always trumped those that were just excuses for inciting violence. The system of government that we have is only flawed because people see how much dirty money is used to buy our votes. This leads to a defeatist attitude that leads to pessimism and this, in turn has led to a situation in which participation in politics (voting) is abysmal. When the vast majority actually show up to vote, the will of the people cannot be denied.

We have seen close elections stolen in the past and this does not help, but a landslide is much harder to cover up. We are long past time for change, but the news will never admit that the cronies of their owners and the entire ruling elite has based their investments in a system designed to exploit and extract their vast wealth from any and all sources, without end and without prejudice. The natural order of life is the diametric opposite. Healing our many woulds requires a new paradigm in which we consider first the planet, then her people (creatures) and finally profit. This is the three legged stool upon which any possible livable future depends. The triple goddess, (Maiden Mother Crone) multiplied by this triad equals nine. I have always understood that without the creative crucible, the womb of generation, no life can exist. Plowing through civilization with male-domination and aggressive raping of the planet has not worked, nor can it. 

Power For The Oppressed

We live in what has become known as the victim culture. I originally thought that the title of this post needed to be something about bullying, or being the person who absorbs the blows of a bully. Why we can't take the bats and balls and just go home is a function of us not actually owning anything of value. The bats and balls all belong to the bullies. The "American Dream" has always been to own a house, have a spot you could call your own and time to enjoy them. Like a car repair shop that says, on a prominently displayed placard, "YOU CAN HAVE IT DONE WELL, FAST OR CHEAP...PICK TWO!" In America, these days, you are lucky to get one! those houses we all tried owning had their value cut nearly in half, while rich white guys walked off with our lost value. That land you thought you owned, well, they want to build a school, hotel or bypass and it happens to be in the way. And, that retirement you were counting on is being revoked or put into the stock market where it could be lost...didn't you read the fine print? at least the mechanic is going to try to give you the best of all three, the oligarchs have proven that on all three aspects we get the dirty end of the stick.

I'm here to tell you that if you abide by a few simple rules, reclaiming your life from the oligarchs is not only possible, but bears a cornucopia of adventure, possibility and promise. I would like to stand on the shoulders of giants, as usual, and rely on the work of others to define BDS society, or culture if you will, this culture stands for human beings and against oligarchs. Truth over lies. Commitment to and investment in what lasts, not merely expedient whims of the wealthy. Boycott, Divest, Sanction are what the acronym stands for. It is tough love for the oligarchs.

Boycotting materials, products and attitudes that are supported either by Wall Street investment firms, trust babies or bastions of industry has a double benefit all by itself. It does not put money into their hands directly and it handicaps their ability to stay flush. To make the punishment appropriate, the costs of their ceaseless advertising should be taxed, rather than exempted from taxable income. After all, it is a tax on our time to have to sit through their commercials. Anything with your name emblazoned on it can come directly off the top of income for tax purposes, even if these things are your NASCAR diversions. The commercials propping up the market for their often dangerous, useless, overpriced or frivolous products cause exploitation and damage over large areas for nothing more than a tiny bauble. Companies are actually lined up to sell pens with your company name on them because they know that even the little guys can be enticed to "invest" in pens with their names on them. "You can write that off." means someone else will carry you.

Divestment is something that seems a bit harder to accomplish, but this route has even greater impacts, on some levels, than mere boycotts (which are essential) This is where the hollowing out of a corporation takes place. Like aborting a fetus, divestment hollows out the womb of deceit that spawned the corporation in the first place. Confidence. The elixir of life for a corporation, is confidence in the scams that they are running. Investment is a resource without which corporados cannot thrive. This confidence game is how many not for profit organizations can pay their CEOs millions and actually serve with a teaspoon what their mission implies, whilst gobbling up wealth like gluttons in the board room. Demanding enough control over retirement funds, workplace giving and investments to avoid contributing to actions that you are opposed to are crucial to our success. If you belong to a union, cooperative or investment group, demand a say in where your funds flow.

Sanctioning corporations requires us to be swift and diligent about holding corporate outlaws to at least the same unreasonable standards set for black men under the war on drugs. Cultural genocide does need to occur, but it is the sub-culture of oppression, the current systems that relegate individuals to the whims of the very few. We can calculate what will be required to re-build the soils that have been lost or poisoned by the few corporate giants who produce the tractors, seed and chemicals, then let them split the bill in whatever way they deem fair. It is harder to put a price on terrorizing innocent citizens and pushing prohibition so hard that it creates generations of fatherless households. The true costs of the actions taken by a tiny few should no longer have to be paid by those who can least afford it.

Regenerative agriculture is a process of building soils, rather than poisoning them. Friends who run an organic lawn care service said that they took grass clippings form clients that had used toxic lawn care chemicals and composted them separately from their organic clippings. It took seven years to get that compost down to a no detect level for the poisons. After the third year of annual testing, when they were still finding toxic residue, they told clients that if they did not avoid using chemicals. Their company would require them to dispose of their own clippings. When composting, nearly 90% of the weight of the compost is water. A minuscule fraction are minerals, more on these later, and about 10% remains in the soil after four years, mostly as carbon, but in a degradable form, so it continues to lessen over time. Unless...If that carbon gets super-heated, to a glow, in the absence of oxygen, it bakes much like clay particles do at a much higher temperature. this resulting char, is pyrolized carbon and thus treated, can stay in soils for thousands of years providing microscopic structure upon which soil microorganisms can make their living. Even fungal hyphae, the predominant organism in humus, thrive when even small amounts of char are added to soil. Char was known in virtually every "primitive" culture. It is substantially different than wood ash, because the white ash from burned char is white and is the source for lye, that is so harsh that it can saponify oils. black char is created when there is not enough oxygen for the carbon to burn. The resulting material is Ph neutral, adsorbs six times it's own weight in water and provides fourteen acres of surface area per handful (approximately half a cup (100cc) has fourteen acres (5ha) of surface area! Routinely blow your mind abut this from time to time.

I heard an interesting way of thinking about microorganisms in the soil. If you could weigh all the microbes upon one acre of what we call "healthy soil" (Remember, the standard for that has been drastically changed on our continent in just the last hundred years) it would be about the mass of a cow and her calf.  Now, if there were to be habitat for fourteen more cows and fourteen more calves...you see where I'm going with this? Not only can the char itself hold six times it's weight in water, but when it becomes alive with organisms whose waste products feed the roots of plants can increase exponentially and each and every one of their cells is filled with water! This is the natural state that we eliminated with mechanized agriculture just when we were on the cusp of understanding it. Agricultural research was in full blossom just before WWII, but as soon as giant corporations got in the game, they steered us away from science and good sense approaches to growing healthier crops to avoid the use of chemicals. Even in entomology, there was good evidence to believe that insects are almost like nature's clean up crew, feasting on ill or sickly plants, drawn by vibrations, not aromas of stressed plants. The means of production has been wrested from our control and so too the limits of our understanding and imagination have been constrained by the oligarchs. What is the approprite fine that could be levied for sterilizing soils and the annual waste of petroleum used to unhinge our soils, allowing them to literally blow away?

We can feed more people and do it with less harmful effects by learning what the ancients knew about building soils. Science tells me that in my climate, soils "grow" at the rate of about one inch per thousand years. I have proven that the rate can be increased by more than tenfold with proper husbandry of soil organisms, and by using resources that are easily available if you are just willing to rake your neighbor's yard to get his leaves in the fall, composting lawn clip[pings and utilizing your uncooked and grease free food scraps. Innovative programs are sprouting up everywhere you look, nearly any town of any size has thriving farmer's markets and opportunities to facilitate regeneration, I have devoted the rest of my life tot he task of teaching about bio-char, regenerative agriculture and feeding people, the planet and our own pocketbooks, but the oligarchs will not make a cent on this direction. perhaps we need to have a bit of compassion. They were probably abused and/or neglected as children. Those who have chosen to believe the lies must not be allowed to degrade the planet for the rest of us!


Rest assured, without massive public support for a just, and livable future, those who hold the aces will never relent. Our power must be taken, regardless of the gyrations of those criminals who sacrificed our planet for their enrichment. Nothing short of these three things in combination, along with restorative agriculture, can stop our planet from being turned into a cinder. Ask the hard questions, ask for each and every decision you make each day, how will this help people? how will this help the planet? and, who will it profit? If you like your answers, go ahead and do it. some helpful apps exist like "Buycott" and for personal care products, you can find the most ecologically benign ones at Environmental Working Group's website. Investigate your foodshed, you might be surprised.