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.