Hide and Seek

We all remember the child's game that we used to play, making one person count while the others tried to hide. Typically, we made one person close their eyes and count to one hundred, then the others would scatter, looking for places to hide. We would go to empty closets, under beds or behind curtains if we were playing indoors, or under leaf piles, behind or up trees, behind a stump or wood pile if we were playing outside. Well the game is still going on, but it is with ideas and the stakes of the game are our collective souls.

The way I see it, there are those who are all-in on a losing hand, but they control the words we use to discuss politics, religion, and even such discreet emotions as love or fidelity. The people who set up the deck are now way over extended and there are not that many cards left to play. A friend, who follows the oil and gas industry like a hawk has informed me for many moons that the extended debt burden being carried by the folks who have given us the frack boom, is far more than what led to the housing crash. Monies invested in the drill baby drill economy have soared, just like when the housing market was on the double digit increase. The trouble is, the largest producing "boom" towns that have sprung up, replete with their crime rates, bars, brothels, and drug use.

Aside: Ironically, it is often the super religious politically right advocates that think these economies represent "opportunity", because they have put their money into a bet on that future success, that everyone else seems to have had. That is how bull markets get their name, they feed on themselves like chickens in too small a pen. When the tipping point is reached, either folks have overextended and need their money back or the realization is made that everyone was delusional, and the scales tip, yielding no leverage, or value in purchasing, for anyone in the process.

There are areas experiencing busts already and the whole region will be non-producing in less time than most mortgages, certainly the one established to fund the offensive pipeline. Finally, there are people standing, to say "NO!" to big oil. Not until the pipeline company with the worst safety record of any pipeline company, got to the point of attempting to crossing a river that provides eighty million downstream residents with drinking water, did concerned citizens say, "Enough is enough!"
Now, is not the time to fold and let the oligarchs take even more money, it is far past time to step in a new direction. Fossil fuel from the frack fields takes about three BTUs of energy at the well head, to liberate five BTUs of energy. Offsite you have sand mining, washing and drying which requires more energy to be expended, then you also have any other adjuncts, chemicals, plasticizers, polymers, etc. that are created far from the frack site that must be hauled in, burning even more of the diesel fuel that is not yet out of the ground.

In essence, we are spending the lion's share of the money, "investing" in future energy by burning all (perhaps more than all) the energy we can, to get that future energy. Pissing up a rope would make as much sense. The moment the "market" understands this, investors will flee faster than they did from the housing market, but the big energy companies will be judged "too big to fail" and you know what happens next. Our tax dollars will flow to them in even larger amounts than they currently do with the corporate welfare they get, it does not matter how many lawyers and lobbyists they have to pay, they make it up on the back end anyway.

Check out where "wealth" hides, where it ebbs and flows, who cleans up on both sides of every transaction. You may not like what you see when you find it, but you will never see the terrain the same way again. When the enlightenment hits, you will want to spend as few dollars as possible anywhere, but most especially with the multi-national corporate welfare recipients whose "stars" (logos) are on the new Corporate States of America flag,  just to break the stranglehold the oligarchs have on us.

Resistance is Fertile!

Resistance is Fertile

My work involves building soils. The reason I have put so much effort into this process as I have has not been because that is where the money is, but because, it is where I can do the most good. In fact, as I have found, there is so little understanding about the difference between soil and dirt, that there may never be money in healing soils, or making them healthy, but that is not enough to get me to quit. There are more important things than money. I know that saying those words in our current culture may seem silly, naive or idealistic, but they are true. Life has very important things, like support, security, abundance and relationship. when we feel integrated with the larger whole, that in and of itself is important. We are designed to adapt to our surroundings, but a toxic environment, or one that has been stripped of resources often creates adaptations in us that validate, support and perpetrate behaviors that are not healthy, not sustainable and not able to offer anyone true security.

It seems that many are finally asking the questions that I asked myself four decades ago. My sister may have summed it up best when she told me that she wanted a bumper sticker that asks simply, Whom do you serve? My first post asked that question and it continues to burn itself into my world view every single day. Every dollar we spend, every moment we squander is playing right into the hands people we may never see, or know, or want to believe that we are "serving". It turns out that this is a very deep question with such distantly removed answers that many of us can barely scratch the surface of meanings that it holds. They say, still waters run deep and this year, perhaps we all need to sit a little more still and just appreciate the moving target that is the rise of fascism in our nation. Many of us continue to serve the needs of well entrenched power brokers, but more and more are finding their way toward truth and real justice.

No security can come from staying still, although taking a breather, to get your head on straight is always helpful. The active engagement that creates change is probably the most important aspect of resistance and leads to revolutionary changes that can last for generations. I heard a story this week about a child. Not a bad child, but one exhibiting the behaviors of a bully. This child has been born into a family structure that offers him very little in the way of attention. There are basically only two phases to his existence. He is either taken along and required to have only grown-up experiences, or left to his own devices, which in his family means retreat into his computer. There are no child appropriate activities, questions, discussion or relationships for him to grow through. In many ways he has been faced with a choice, face abuse and neglect in the company of the adults in his life, or retreat into the altered state of digitally mediated experience. One cannot blame him for the cocoon of distraction in which he chooses to live, but what others are experiencing is that the young child becomes easily frustrated and lashes out at others as a result.

When actively responding to our environment becomes commonplace, we can build, create, learn and grow in ways that are not possible when working within a framework of digitally mediated sub-routines and face time with our computers. I have been writing blog posts for over seven years now and not one session at the keyboard has "created" anything that has not first been experienced in real life. Not one concept or idea was born while sitting here typing away at the keyboard. The over six hundred posts have come from actual-factual real-life experiences in which I was paying attention, sharing myself openly with the world around me and participating in a relationship with a large and sometimes scary world. don't get me wrong, life is certainly not all about abundance and security, there are serious problems that abound as well. That is why resistance becomes necessary.

Many, when confronting those of us who are active participants in the revolution that has never been televised ask the same sorts of questions. What about violence, do you see the revolution turning violent? This is because they can fathom nothing but serving their own violent slave masters. Yesterday at Standing Rock, the "police" (which many in the revolution that has not been televised call pigs) attacked peaceful protesters with water cannon, rubber bullets and sound cannons. When bullies meet frustration, they can only resort to violence. They serve the existing system of power and control tactics, belief in violence and for their limited understanding, those are the only options. On the other hand, what people who ask this question do not realize is that, "We are peaceful loving people, and we are standing, standing for our lives!". Those of us who have been walking our talk for over thirty years are astonished at the level of ignorance required for people to even ask about violence. Those who think that violence can solve problems, are in fact, the problem.

I have made conscious efforts to resist oppression by enhancing soil quality. Our ancestors handed down so much knowledge that we would be foolish to ignore it, but on a daily basis we still do forget. embedded in the phrase, and concept that a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link begs the question, where can we find a weak link in the chain of life? it is perhaps so obvious, that most people never even look, but the soil under our feet is one of the links that has been treated like dirt from the beginning. In most areas, we had reduced the fertility and health of the soil even before we knew that it was a thing. We have been so busy serving faraway interests that we neglected and abused the very land upon which our lives and health are determined. In many ways, the most revolutionary act that we can participate in is to feed our neighbors and ourselves healthy food. That requires healthy soil.

I have seen the riots, the property crimes that have been perpetrated by mobs in the past. I fully expect that there will be riots again, but they are far more likely when a team wins the Super Bowl, a Major League Pennant or a trophy. It is fairly rare that people riot because they cannot feed or house their families. There have always been agents provocateur and false flag attacks designed to make the public thing that anyone willing to stand up for their rights is a threat, but that is completely different that wanton destruction that the current powers that be are willing to perpetrate to "protect" their perceived interests. rebuilding the soils that blew away during the dust bowl days can be done, it is certainly possible. We have the tools and technologies, we even have millions of displaced workers that with a bit of education and training could recreate soil that is healthy and productive virtually anywhere on the planet, what we lack is the will. As long as we continue to serve the fossil energy interests, as long as we allow the military industrial complex to operate their destructive shell game, as long as we let the big money ride on the funding of destructive boom/bust cycles, we will have dislocation, loss and despoiled landscapes to leave future generations.

 

Resistance is Fertile!, is the get down to business arm of ECO-Tours. In addition to the one square foot ECO-Tour, we offer experiential workshops that can transform acreage, double the production of container gardens, long established food plots. We sell products used to make helthy biochar and use it to enhance soils wherever you are. By uniquely tailoring your char to local conditions, you will be unleashing the power of billions of microbes to make soils healthy, resistant to drought and friable (more easily tilled) This black gold is the ecological opposite of oil, whereas oil coats and kills, the top quality char we begin with is porous and supportive of life especially after it has been treated in specific ways. In a nutshell, the instructions that come with your char are what the real value of our product is. We explain making char, mineralization, micronization, mositurization, microbes and maturation, we encourage people to find local, "organic" sources for those inputs. The instructions are the outline of our class, so further research is required to get the whole art/science involved in charmaking.

 

Each step could be researched further and the resulting char would be better for the extra study taken by the char maker. I have been making char and biochar purposefully for half a dozen years and continue to learn new tools and techniques to refine my actions and inputs, to get the best char for my efforts. The second reason that I encourage folks to take the full course, is to help students and aspiring charmasters to think about cycles of life in both microcosmic relationships and the parallel between the human organism and our societies, creating culture. To fully understand this aspect of soil building, culture affirming, and transformation can take several years, but many begin to understand the importance of the annual cycles after the first one. Even when conditions are not optimal for biologically active cultures, conditions can be made "ripe" for them. There are many inorganic relationships that are needed to precede inoculation with microbes, so they can take up residence easily and find much needed resources when they are introduced to the relatively sterile, but activated char. Since this is part art, part science, it is also important to re-experience certain parts of the training, because different needs occur during different stages of our development. Understanding that this has a microcosmic correlate as well is also part of the training. sometimes it is necessary to "put up" in times if abundance for the future use or satisfaction of needs that have not yet become immediate. 

 

In our courses, there is also intensive and extensive grappling with concepts of the give back; the art/science of which our ancestors were intimately aware of and responsive to. Tribal people living around the globe all have intact cultural rites that honor Mother Earth, we need to emulate that same santity of the planet when we seek to build soils. Charmaking is very ritualistic and both the cauldron and the empty pot figure greatly into all of these processes. often the things we add will not fully be utilized for decades, but we invest the newly made soil with it so that the creatures inhabiting those biomes will never know lack. We may only be raising healthy microbial communities, but their participation, in healthy soils equal more than a ton of biomass per acre!

The classes that ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. offer allow individuals to become caretakers of the soil, double their agricultural output, reduce the need for irrigation and sequester carbon in healthy soils, healing the planet literally from the ground up. a complete series of classes, lasting thirteen moons, three hours thirteen times over the course of the year cost only $200. Single classes are twenty bucks. The classes are taught by real people in real time each full moon at our base camp here in Green Bay, if distance is an issue, I am working through the digital realm to teach the same material through online courses. Please contact us directly in one of three ways. Call, (nine 2 zero) double eight four, triple two four or use snail mail by writing to ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. 1445 Porlier street Green Bay, WI 54301-3334 or e-mail me directly at tnsaladino42@hotmail.com.

Flotsam vs Jetsam

When aboard a sinking ship, or one that is listing dangerously, frequently the order is given to jettison all unnecessary baggage and cargo. This is a last ditch attempt to reduce the displacement, (weight) of the hull and contents by unburdening your vessel. If there can be enough thrown overboard, the craft might be able to be limped into port or otherwise salvaged. In the event that the craft does not survive afloat, the remaining material that floats on the surface after the wreck sinks is known as flotsam.

I have written on this interesting pairing of words before, but since the United States of America's recent Presidential election, perhaps it is time to revisit them. There are many, around our great nation who have been feeling, I believe inappropriately, but by design; like their lives and lifestyles are "under threat". some of this has been  pre-designed through decades of victim mentality. Back as far as Phil Donohue and early television confessional/confrontational type shows, the globe has been scoured, for deplorables whose lives had crashed because of their proclivities. We even have judgemental "cases" brought to collective attention at many times higher rates than have ever occurred in the general population. It has been said that some people were just actors who wanted a free trip to be on Montel or Jerry Springer, so they would just play the parts of immoral or unethical folks to keep the ratings up. The vast, vast majority of people are good...they are never featured on the tee vee.

So, our ship of state has become unstable, would it not be wise to unload the burden of this victim mentality? We are awash in trumped up rhetoric that says we are "under attack", but the real harm comes from pouring money, resources and energy into destruction. The way that we really are victims is reliant on us continuing to consume corporate media.

This blog has existed all along as a free service to humanity. The numbers of readers who ever clicked on the "donate" button has been slim, but I must point out the fact that it has been a part of this blog since day one. We stand in opposition to the corporate media, I still believe that without a functioning fourth Estate, there can be no democracy, and that is by design as well. When you pare down the ship of state to it's hull only, the keel is the direction the vessel heads. It is laid by the "laws of the land", the ethos that informs the citizenry. The essence of national or global pride, exists in this ethical framework. Because we feel buoyed along the timeline of history be the cohesion and prime rib of our vessel. The ribs are established in my nation, The U. S. of America, by the great documents, the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. They give shape to our ship of state and help us to stay true to our founders intent. The planks, which keep the water out are like the policies enacted into law and the judicial reigns on power. The executive branch, ideally is like the packing between the planks, by filling in the gaps, perhaps, they fulfill the most important role. Without the executive branch, the ship of state would founder and be useless to anyone. The President himself is in the position of a Captain, but must have their messages publicized by the media. That becomes difficult when your buffoonery and lack of intellect or cohesive plans riddle the vessel.

Additionally, the fourth estate, independent media, is like an aid to the captain, unable to make the ship do anything, unless We the People fall in and make the "commands" so. The President can lead only by bully pulpit and through inspiring the people to fund the means for change, without the news reaching the citizens, and reaching them clearly in ways they can understand, there is no one motivated to push Congress to send any bills up to the Executive. The role of the media, at the time of the founding fathers, was posted as bills or read aloud at taverns (the faceboook of their day). Today, corporate welfare recipients and the oligarchs have tailored those messages to bear almost no resemblance to reality in and around America. The massive protests and outrage of the water protectors, the 99% movement, the Rainbows, for generations before, the flood of people returning to the land all want more and better and the fourth estate that I envision will speak to the better angels of our nature. Publicize what is going right around the world. The millions of good deeds and inspirational works that take place all around us all the time...

We the People were always the captains of our own destiny, or at least crew. We just forget sometimes, or are made to feel like victims. It takes a more mature nation to understand this and to act on making necessary changes for a nation to grow up. We have been acting like a spoiled brat increasingly addicted to a dangerous substance. This has a parallel in our larger culture as well. Fossil energy is dead, science has proven the efficacy of renewable energy sources and solved the storage problem as well. One more thing to be jettisoned. If we are to keep this ship of state afloat, we will need far more cohesive ideas and concepts floated amongst the American public. We have rallied before. The tribe of people coming of age today are the baby boom of the baby boom and they are not taking shit any longer. more young people than ever are demanding change, but not the kind based on turning the clocks back fifty years. we the People are intent on stepping into better directions and as long as we do not have an inspired leader, a statesperson and a diplomat, at the helm, we will founder as a nation.

To keep things afloat, now, more than ever, we have to throw overboard as many useless parts of our lives as possible. The energy suckers, the time wasters, the unwise habits and policies that are a drain on our society. I know that i have redoubled my efforts to make the Earth more stable, more productive and more supportive of healthy life than it was before my lifetime. Many others are doing the same thing. We all need to share our expertise and experiences so that others can learn the knowledge, skills and attitudes that are required to make these same changes as well. In the early days of the ecological movement, we had teach-ins, today we can google instructions on how do do most anything!

 If we can get rid of enough useless stuff, we may yet be able to salvage what is left that is affirming, and life supporting. If, on the other hand, we cling to that which we have been told, the lies of the oligarchs, we can only receive the wrath of the "bust" after they are done collecting the abundance of the "boom" I have written on boom and bust economies before as well and we are caught in a place between hard and harder. Most of the nation has been plowed over and is now bust. The few remaining booms are running dangerously out of steam. The next big thing is probably to get small. If we don't negotiate the next decade with deft precision, far too many pitfalls exist to avoid. There will be some flotsam from failed industries, but nearly everywhere there is waste, it is a possibility for something to arise anew, transforming that waste into abundance as well.

What Would You Do?

This week, the plaintiffs in a case that claimed that Trump University was a sham, a money-making scheme in which they were not offered education for their money, but false hope, decided to settle. Accepting half their money back. I don't know enough of the details, but the timing is critical to understanding the motivations and behavior of our future President of these United States. Getting half your money back may seem to be some consolation, but when you go into the marketplace to buy anything from a loaf of bread to a car, if it was rotten inside or would not perform as advertised, you would get all of your money back, without question.

This says far more about the defendant than about the 3500 plus lawsuits that the President-elect faces. This one suit involves about 7 thousands of individuals who collectively paid over fifty million dollars to this fake "school". Now some say that the buyer is to beware, but the courts term what the institution did was fraud and the future President and his managers faced federal racketeering charges as well. I would say that giving half the money back to make these two particular lawsuits "go away" constitutes another sort of fraud altogether.

The fact that this sort of legal "protection", being able to give your customers half their money back, when your "product" was worthless to begin with, presents a clear case for not allowing criminals to run businesses. The Attorney General of Florida, who stalled the case there against The Donald, until after the election, is now being offered a cabinet level position. This is dangerously suggestive of criminality. If you tried to craft a scheme of deception, collusion and deceitful side-stepping of laws that was more heinous, it would be hard to do. In the end, we have bad actors working in concert to get what they want at the expense of thousands of others. Perhaps tens of thousands of us will be hurt financially by these sorts of dealings. In the end, the whole nation suffers from the legal wrangling and exploitative ways of one man and his very powerful "friends".

Never mistake that this was not planned in advance, precipitated by wanton greed and/or facilitated by the cozy relationships that our future President buys outright. I would not want to step aside and allow a criminal to continue to get away with hurting people. I would not want to settle for half what I am rightfully owed. In this case, at least we are shown the true colors of this particular snake in the grass.

My wife and I recently spent $16K renovating a single apartment, but it changed the place from a rotting and disgusting mess that could have been condemned into a wonderful place that is bright, spacious, airy and beautiful.

This is what real estate "development" looks like when practiced by a person committed to the welfare of those who will shelter in their properties, one who pays a fair wage for the services they require and who has a commitment to future generations. Sadly, the system is rigged for those who would prefer just tearing down the historic buildings built by the hands of our ancestors, putting up giant structures made of imported concrete and steel by "illegal" immigrants at slave wages. There will be no multi-billion dollar ad campaign to get tenants, or side deals that enrich the developer by stealing other folks' fortunes. There will not even be any federal, state or local monies flowing in to my project. Just my own hard work and integrity, but you cannot take that to the bank, they would rather eat the steak but leave us the sizzle.

This is the same apartment from roughly the same angle just six moons later. I would like to publicly thank our plumber, Eric Vandenhuevel, Jim Havercorn, the neighborhood business called Outlaw Plaster, my brother-in-law, Peter Burns, son-in-law, Xak Melum, sister-in-law, Mary Nichols, my wife Nancy, my son, Jade, our neighbor, Dan Leiterman and the great guys at Metzler Electric for their help in moving this project toward completion. Great leaders acknowledge that their work would not be possible without those who helped with the work. We all stand on the shoulders of giants!

Honesty is telling the truth, integrity is doing so when it is not popular. When you have enough cash to buy your way out of anything, you can throw your weight around and pay off those you hurt, when you only have your reputation, you begin to understand that it takes a lifetime to build that and only a single moment can destroy it, so you really do have to hold yourself to the highest standards, not just in thought, but in action as well. This apartment and the one upstairs are now offered to anyone coming through Northeast Wisconsin through airbnb. My wife and I have made the commitment that any home in which we invest, we want to fix it up as nice as the one we live in. We will never live in a penthouse, while our customers are forced to live on half their money. We will never offer a product or service that is not worth every penny we ask in the marketplace and we will never reneg on our promises, that sort of behavior is for losers.
 

One Bully Or Another

Millions have said it, hundreds of millions know it, billions around the world feel the pain caused by it. Our systems of government have been broken. The oligarchs install the people who best suit their needs. In my lifetime I have seen the results of letting this continue. The breathtaking paucity of ideas expressed by the two major candidates for President of the United States of America breaks the hearts of virtually everyone who has been paying even a shred of attention to their antics over the past two years or so. We are seeing the seething hate of folks who think they are discriminated against by the current system morph into hate for "minorities", who collectively make up the majority of the population. We are also seeing those who have been abused by the system the most being bullied into supporting a candidate who has applauded every step of their trail of tears, not as a compassionate supporter, but as a cheerleader for business as usual (in other words, greed, racketeering exploitation and continuous exploitation at the hands of the uberwealthy). Is it any wonder that the average United States citizen just wants the electoral process to be over?

Is it really a choice when you must choose between a corrupt and merciless political pawn, seeking to be Queen and an avowed racist, sexist and former billionaire who has squandered his fortune destroying the lives and fortunes of countless people? The majority think not, however, according to the oligarch-owned media, these are the choices which confront us. Their minions and "believers" tell us that the other choices are futile "throw away" votes, worth less than an old tissue. Some even claim, with a sense of self-righteous authority, that a vote for a candidate that you actually believe would make a good President, or that represents the only viable option for saving human life on the planet, will be a vote for the person we dislike more. Those who are buying the big lie are convinced that this is the best we can do. I have voted for people who lost elections before and that rhetoric does not scare me. I know, in every fiber of my being, that if I had voted for the lesser of the two evils more than once, I could not live with myself. When we make mistakes, we must learn to live with ourselves. Part of the act of self-forgiveness involves making sure we never make that mistake again. Learning from the mistakes we make is part of the healing process.

My mother used to teach me that bullies do not care one whit about their prey. The actions of every bully, down through the ages has been about their own feelings of inadequacy, their own feelings that have grown out of a sense of lack of love, their own belief that they have to "prove" their worth by their attacks on others. I believe that I have posted the Power and Control wheel before, but to give this post some visual content, here we go again:
Once you understand these terrible processes, once you have felt the sting of them perpetrated upon you, once you understand that the only reason those who use these tools of oppression continue to use them is because our culture inculcates the values upon which they are based, only then can one realize the depth of depravity that gave rise to them in the first place. The psychological point of view from which these actions grow is the abused and neglected child that lives within all of us.

I have had many people argue, claiming "My parents loved me.", "I had the best parents, they never raised a finger toward us." or "In my family, we always knew that we were loved." Some have even claimed that, "Some people are just born psychopaths." Science has proven otherwise. all children are born compassionate, concerned for the welfare of others, cooperative and gregarious. One of the best proofs of this comes when a baby cries in the supermarket and all the other children turn to look. They actually care about that child that they don't even know. We were all like that once and only through experiencing our own abuses and neglect at the hands of those who raise us do we become callous and/or annoyed by the cries of people who are hurting. I have seen abusive doctors, lawyers, teachers, soldiers, politicians and religious leaders reduced to blubbering snot-nosed children when they uncover the deepest roots of their own belief that "tough love" is a thing, that abusing others and trampling others rights to be supported and affirmed are less than their own. The justification we use is simple enough once we learn to see it. It goes like this. I felt hurt by people who loved me, so the act of hurting others is actually an expression of love for them. However, when we learn to read the messages that lie beyond the kaleidoscopic lens of the power and control wheel, we see that continuing this abuse, generation on generation can only create more pain and suffering.

Please share this post with as many people as you know in the U.S.of A. We have the largest tool of oppression on the planet, the U.S. military and we are allowing them to export hate around the globe. If for no other reason than to stop the bombing, going on right now across seven nations illegally, we must turn our backs on these practices and call out the power and control exhibited all around us, every day. I have said it before, but I will end with it again, "We are peaceful, loving people and we are voting, voting for our lives!"