Friends,(this was written over ten years ago, the points are still salient.)
In light of recent violence I wish to make a concerted call for peace. My gift and curse is deep insight and understanding of many difficult and unpopular issues, many of these issues revolve around energy, power and ultimately control of the entire social discourse. From energy and nuclear, industrial and military complexes. The entire old way of thinking pits everyone against everyone else in competition for "scarce" resources. This duality cannot stand, these systems need massive support. Like wet cement, they threaten to collapse by their own weight without massive subsidies, corporate welfare. (The union busting trend in America today has reduced wages and benefits and in the case of Wisconsin, undermined the most noble profession, the teachers) The malevolent practice of dividing the human race into "us" and "them" logically leads to a series of "haves" and "have nots".

"Bigger is obviously better" is the mantra of the world view that we are rapidly leaving behind. Anthropology yields clues to another approach which has been able to spawn creative and peaceful cultures. In her book The Chalice & The Blade Riane Eisler points out that with the myriad crises facing humanity, a more inclusive and caring culture needs to arise. A friend has recently said that the entire planet needs a mother, who can compassionately instill values in her people like leave things better than you found them, treat others with respect and to put us on a path toward a better life. My own twist on this idea is that we need to be true to the political system that we apropriated from the Iroquois Confederacy. We based our current system on theirs, with one fatal flaw. The Iroquois people only allowed the grandmothers to vote for their representatives. None of the BS that we are dealing with in the halls of Washington DC today would be tolerated if our elected leaders were beholden to the grandmothers. If we cannot change our system of voting, the time has come for each and every one of our representatives to run a gauntlet of grandmothers both coming to and upon leaving their offices. This would change our country overnight.

I stand for truth and justice in calling others to become the solution with me. We must join voices as one for peace and true security-not one that originates with an atomic debt to be paid by countless future generations, not one that rests on the muzzle of a gun pointed at our neighbors. It certainly cannot rest on a foundation of rubber bullets, toxic rhetoric and teargas. In the global village, riding on this fragile Spaceship Earth, we cannot rain destruction on one part of the planet without impacting quality of life worldwide. We can create a society of compassion by developing a sense of self that includes fruits of the heart, the mind, the spirit. I believe that our future cannot be assured unless we dismantle the tools of war, acknowledge our part as citizens and as a country, in the raping and pillaging of the planet. I believe as the Quakers, that if we see a wrong being perpetrated and we do nothing to stop it, we are as guilty as the perpetrators. Silence is complicity.

We are Shanti Sena. I honor the light within you.
 Peace Warrior, Saladino

Improving Lives

I recently came across a list of the lowest wage earners in the U.S.of A. and while many are relative no-brainers, or might be expected, one might be surprised by the insidious reach of non-living or slave wages being paid to many classes of worker. A giant step toward making the world a better place can be made by making sure that an honest day of work is rewarded by a living wage. sadly, there is still a slave class in our nation and we are loathe to do much about it. Millions of workers are dealt the terrible blow of being paid just enough to scrape by. We are told that this is necessary, yet those making vast profits from underpaying their laborers refuse to understand that their wealth has been made possible by exploitation and subjugation of real people, whose lives are made difficult by their lack of earning power.

Consumers can change the dynamic by spending their dollars carefully. Where we put our dollars can change the dynamics of the workplace and by not supporting certain "industries", we can eliminate this sort of exploitation in short order. The marketplace that will not tolerate underpaid workers will not continue to pay slave wages. Letting businesses know why you are not buying from them has even more impact, but the bottom line is that the ultra-wealthy will only understand the bottom line, no matter how hard we try to educate them about what is moral.

The List: (as I read it) Airport Workers, Big Box Store Employees, Casino Workers, Fast Food Workers, Grandma's Aide, Fishing Industry Workers, Truckers, Construction & Extraction (Lumber and Mining) Workers, Nail Salon Workers, Farm Workers, Housekeepers & Cleaners.

Finding ways to live without air travel is relatively easy, shopping at locally owned businesses that pay a living wage is also. Once one  understands that the odds at every casino are vastly in favor of the house, staying away from them should become easier as well. If you have money to throw away, why not give it to a charity that you have researched and know to do good works. The rewards that you will receive from helping others will be far better than the occasional pay out, no matter what casino you would go to. Ending our addiction to fast food is the single most important step that we can make as a culture to improve our health, staying away from these institutions is the only way to get them to go away. These first four are easy enough to just stay away from, but I would lump in with them the nail salon workers because not one of us "needs" toxic chemicals to be applied to our nails. Beyond the cost of exploiting the workers in this industry, contaminating the air with known carcinogens provides a double whammy for the workers and those who share the dose of chemicals through contaminated air.

The second half of the list requires more thought and awareness, but the individuals staggering under the weight of our current system are caught in the same trap as those who provide for our convenience and illusion of "the good life". Home health care aides, housekeepers and cleaners fall into the realm of "domestics". These people care for either our loved ones or us directly and rather than a cheap luxury, they are providing their life force to make our own lives a little easier or possible without institutionalization. The value of these services is immense, paying a living wage to have these types of care provided seems simple, but think about the day-to-day existence of those who travel from place to place on their own dime, to work an hour or two here and an hour or two there, without being able to afford insurance, without being able to take time off to meet their own needs or who are one car break down away from losing their only source of income. Like our current educational system, these crucial workers allow us to more fully participate in the job market. The dollars that we do pay them are a direct subsidy of our own employers. They open up time which can be put to increased production, increased profits for the ultra-wealthy and often are used to placate our own conscience because we cannot make time to care for ourselves or our loved ones. Respecting these kinds of service workers and remunerating their efforts appropriately is necessary not only for them but for our own lives as well.

Try this one on...catch a fish, clean it, fillet it, bring it to the kitchen ready to cook. Then tell me why it is not worth twenty dollars per pound. Get the picture? Digging into particulars of an industry that moves and changes with the seasons is even more difficult than analyzing businesses that exist in fixed locations, but it can be done. We all know that some of the fishes are a healthy part of a balanced diet, but learning exactly which ones they are and how they come to our table can be a challenge. Eating less fish may not put the exploiters out of business, but that choice may help depleted fish stocks to stabilize. The earth's oceans are becoming dangerously devoid of many species that humans have enjoyed for generations and fish farms are often even worse for both people and the planet.

Farm workers as well deserve more, for without them, we would starve. Low wages and difficult conditions are the rule rather than the exception for these workers. When I lived in the heart of corn country, de-tasseling was the best summer job that young people could get. We would wade through cornfields pulling the tassels our of entire rows of corn, sometimes a mile long, then skip a row or two and come back across the same field, assuring that cross pollination only went one way. This was part of how things were done in the old days for genetic manipulation. Any job that pays "well" for a child, safe and secure under a parent's roof and fed three square meals again on mommy and daddy's dime is probably slave wages for someone who has a list of bills to pay and possibly children to feed as well. Knowing where our food comes from can be almost as difficult as tracing the origin and history of our fish, but we must begin to understand what foods leave a damaging legacy of exploitation in their wake. Without knowing the farmer, or taking responsibility for understanding the food system that we rely on, we are playing a dangerous trust game which often results in hardships being foisted upon others.

In our extremely mobile world, trucks handle the majority of goods that flow across the great super-slabs and city streets of our nation. It is not hard to see why the drivers of the millions of trucks that criss-cross our land would face exploitation and low-wages. Organizing drivers who are separated by both time and distance from one another is one of the reasons why they are so easily exploited. for every driver that is able to make a good living at the wheel, there are dozens who are subsidizing our way of life with their sacrifice. The advent of independent truckers has led to a downward wage spiral and as fuel costs rise (as well as the increased prices of everything from food to lodging, to clothing) their pay at the end of the day buys less and less. Again, knowing where things come from can be a great start in the process of finding our about the hardships that are foisted upon others for our "benefit". Buying local, keeping our needs simple and working to reward real people for the very real work that they do can help stem the flow of dollars to the exploiters that hold most of the marbles in this shell game of work for wages. Only one of the dozens of truckers I know are able to make ends meet by driving. The rest are desperate to find a way to make a living doing what they love. Employers know that truckers will do nearly anything for the feeling of freedom that comes from the open road stretching out ahead and it is this knowledge that allows them to drive down wages and reduce benefits.

Similarly, construction and extraction workers are most often the young men who think that they will be able to stay healthy and strong forever. The boom and bust cycles of these fields always attract the footloose and fancy free single, young,  mostly men. The wages seem high until you figure in the rampant drug and alcohol use, prostitution, gambling and other social costs that come with boom and bust cycles. Investigating the history of any area that has been home to these cycles will reveal a shady past rife with violence, graft, illicit activity and dissolution. We can see from space the non-stop activity around fracking sites, mines and the currently booming construction sites, where money cannot be made fast enough. What we cannot seem to fathom is what goes on when the other shoe falls. Thousands show up for hundreds of jobs and for every fortune that is made there are thousands of lives lost to injury, accident and addiction. Incarceration rates amongst those who were just trying to make a living are nearly as high as the frustration of giving your all for some other bugger's profit. There seems to be no end to the stories of folks spending their entire week's pay on a weekend-long party, only to have to live on baloney sandwiches until their next payday. This sort of exploitation is inexcusable in a world so full of abundance. This is not the least bit unbelievable or unusual considering the fact that we are subsidizing these industries with massive amounts of corporate welfare, turning our heads away when it comes to ecological damage and allowing the large corporations as well as the smaller operations to skate away with massive profits while bearing no responsibility for the damage and long term costs that they create that will last into the future.

The fact is that we cannot change all of these wrongs with one simple act. We need to begin to understand that every choice we make, whether it is shopping at a dollar store or a family-owned shop, buying gas or walking to the store, making food at home that we can take to work with us  patronizing a restaurant all have a decided affect on the planet and her people. If you were to save a nickel on a pair of shoelaces, how many years would it take to save a single dollar? Is it worth it to see your neighbors becoming more and more desperate? Years ago, there were several grocers in my neighborhood. One specialized in locally grown produce while another had an awesome meat department. A third had the inside track on cleaning supplies etc. Now, the closes grocery is over a mile away and if you want good prices the drive is five miles. Something is desperately wrong with an economic system that pits the people against one another simply based on price. The workers who bring us the way of life that we have become accustomed to must be treated fairly or we will forever be acting in silent complicity with a system that chews people up and spits the dry husks of their lives out without regret.

I, for one, will not stand for or abide by any system that raises up one class of people over another. I speak these words ad infinitum out of a sense of compassion for both the exploited and their exploiters. I want to express a knowledge and understanding that we are all one people and that the inequality we allow to divide us is for the sole benefit of people who could not care less whether we live or die is what leads to many of the problems that we must learn to face together. Silence is complicity. Action speaks louder than words. Please act. Let your heart be your guide. We have the power to make real and lasting change. Reward what is right with the world. Take great care to do what is best and share openly with everyone so that they can begin to understand that they are not alone and at war against one another for wages. There is plenty to go around if we just understand that the way it is now is not the way it has always been, nor is it inevitable that we should "value" some people, places and things more than others.

ECO Versus ECO

There has been a propensity of people, over many years who have asked about the pronunciation of the name of our not-for-profit organization, ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. (pronounced, EEECO) Not like ehco. Echo (EH-koh) has the root in the way that bats or whales navigate, yelling or yodeling up a ravine or from a ridge top, listening for an echo. Our organization is based on ecology, ECO meaning the complex webs of interaction that create our biosphere. It may seem like I am yelling into a ravine or hollow sometimes, or perhaps swinging from the rafters shouting down to the choir, from time to time but the essential qualities that I strive to make clear are those of the harmonics of our planet, the infinite webs of connection and the invisible forces and their harmonics that we can utilize to exact real and lasting change for the better.

We have recently seen the drop in protections for ecological quality that people called for in the early sixties in the United States of America, witnessed catastrophe after catastrophe rent upon the planet for nothing less than sheer greed and exploitation. Never will we return to a cultural place where world citizens shall have to echo-locate. The blindfold has come off, especially for those who have chosen to observe the stark reality instead of turning our heads away in fear shame and/or disgust. Technology has outstripped the ability of science to keep up with the destructive capacity of not only nuclear waste production, or chemical creation, storage and contamination, but the new horizons upon which billions are spent like fracking for oil and gas and the exploitation of tar sands and oil shale. The deck is stacked against sanity in all of these endeavors, but wealthy elites make their money in certain ways and they cannot afford to have their choices questioned.

We are no longer held captive by ancient maxims, subjugated without our knowledge or defined by two hundred, five-hundred or even two thousand year old strictures and definitions. We have the opportunity to understand why those rules were set, who stood to gain from them and the myriad ways that patriarchy and elitism drove the creation of our current belief system. We are entering an age of creation that has here to fore never been possible on this planet. The people who are peaceful and loving have the numbers and power to surround hate, forcing it to surrender. No longer must this just be a slogan on a banjo, the time has come for all of us, in unison, to call in the debt of centuries. Those who have criminally absconded with the wealth of nations, squandering the lives of billions, must be called out. Tried in the public eye, and be required to pay restitution for their grievous treatment of the Earth, her creatures and her people.

If we just shout that this is wrong, or that these folks should be made to pay, the sound will quickly die down and we might get some idea of where to go next, what obstructions are threatening our progress, but it is our feet on the ground, our organizing skills and our prowess as communicators that will make unity clear and by presenting a united front, speaking with one voice on these and other issues that will allow us to create real and meaningful change. I am experiencing a change in my own life and as a culture we need to grow into a new form to survive. My own life and experiences are but a microcosmic blip mimicking the grander scale. I have written on fractiles before. The relationship between realms is made plain by the phrase: "Ontogeny (the development of the individual organism) repeats phylogeny (the development of the species)." We are at a point along the developmental curve of a great spiral which has taken billions of years to come to. As this arc traces across the future, it will continue to expand exponentially. If we are to take back the birthright that we are entitled to, the power and control strategies of patriarchy and the oligarchy that flows from that belief system need to be eliminated.

Sea Change

I have been flabbergasted by the utter lack of understanding and misdirection perpetrated on unsuspecting people regarding climate change. In my own life, I have been aware and up to date about research dating back to the mid seventies about both chlorofluorocarbons and carbon in the atmosphere. The first are the class of chemicals that slowly rise into the upper atmosphere, degrading the layer of ozone which protects us from ultraviolet radiation and the second is one of the chemicals that leads to the "greenhouse effect". Scientists posited nearly fifty years ago that increasing carbon in the atmosphere would absorb and trap more radiant energy, acting like a piece of glass between our planet and the Sun. We continue to learn, through research that the interactions are far more insidious. Rather than a nice warm terrarium, stable and secure, we live under an ocean of air, invisible for the most part but no less unstable.

Great currents of wind naturally stir things up in some areas around the globe and the doldrums set in at other places, allowing eddies and fallout of tiny particles to occur. One of these great transport mechanisms  wafts fine particles of dirt and sand across the Atlantic ocean, depositing material blown up off the continent of Africa into the forests of South America. We humans alter the natural state of things by our impacts and add rising boluses of superheated air. We release chemical compounds of our making which are let loose routinely. Carcinogens, mutagens and teratogens, in deadly aerosol cocktails, expanding and stirring into this vast ocean compounds that will invade our bodies, take up residence in the food chain and outlive us.

Finally, there seems to be a rising awareness about such things. Not by the wealthy classes of people who have the most say in any potential for change, but among the 99%, who are beginning to demand change that will truly make a difference. This winter, the polar vortex, which is normally fixed over the polar region has broken loose, invading the mid latitudes of North America. We are seeing the Winter Olympics held in a region nearly devoid of snow, setting records for warmth across the arctic region and the trend line shows that more and more atmospheric instability is to be expected. Record cold, heat, winds, rain and drought are becoming more and more commonplace as the lives we lead, out of balance are having their effect on the entire ocean of air.

Our research has focused on the land masses because we live most of our lives upon them, but the more deeply we look at the oceans, the more cause we have for alarm. Carbon seems to be warming the oceans far faster than the atmosphere, leading to increased melting in polar regions, changes in ocean currents and new shipping lanes opening across the arctic region. Even the chemistry of the oceans is changing, but because our baseline data is sketchy at best, it is hard to establish good data on the speed and nature of the change. Human beings have fished out over 90% of many of the most prized fish in the seas, eradicated 90% of the forest cover in North America and Europe and 90% of the wetlands have been drained and filled as well. Growing awareness has led us to make changes in the past, but none as deep and sweeping as what is needed now to avert increasing catastrophic events like we have seen in Australia, California, Indonesia, Europe, and both the Gulf and Atlantic Coast. We know that the forests of the land are in desperate need of a more stable climate and that they need to be protected from invasive species, but the oceans are under assault as well. The Great Barrier Reef is being transected by development and it seems that nearly every day we hear of another oil spill, pipeline rupture or chemical spill.

It is time to stop letting these stories wash over us, draining away our ability to care or do something about it. We must double down in our quest to find a rout to sustainability. Not the kind that business has co-opted and used to placate the consumer, but the real kind that can produce goods and services without negative consequences for the planet and her people. Jung hypothesized that there had to be a suicide gene, just as powerful as the survival gene, without this, we would be like all other creatures and not overburden our resources for the sake of always having "more" wealth, power and status. Perhaps if we understood that each and everything we consume has an origin, a life before it comes to us and a final result once used up, we would be less likely to abuse and neglect the systems that make our lives possible.

Desperate Attempt To Stop Real and Meaningful Change

Just as the drowning man will clutch at anything, even to the point of drowning potential rescuers, powerful elites, that have run our country for generations, are happily tearing at the very core of democracy. Pitting us against one another only assures that we will lose economic strength, devolve into ruffians, become cheerleaders for hatred and lose sight of the essential place that democratic thought has in equitable distribution of wealth, power and resources. More and more people are opting out of tax-paying jobs, some out of necessity, others because of a moral obligation. Many cannot, in good conscience, support a government that kills innocent people, invades foreign countries and uses demagoguery to influence world affairs.

Some detest the use of tax dollars to subsidize corporate desperadoes whose greed has gotten the best of them (and us). There are even some who want to be sure that "withholdings" from their pay do not further subsidize the addiction that we have to foreign oil,corporate greed or the many shell games that wrest our birthright of clean air, soil and water from us whilst profiting handsomely on the destruction of the planet, destabilization of global climate and destruction of civil society. More people have died at the hands of police in america than have been killed by "terrorists" in the past several years. Fortunes have been made by those who are able to exploit the public coffers. Those who do not want or need fortunes have been systematically pushed to the back of the line.

Privatization of welfare and prisons, monopolization of the airwaves and the two recent bail-outs of the insurance, banking, real estate and securities markets are perfect examples of wasteful spending to benefit a select few. We occasionally hear the ravings of a libertarian calling for "free markets" but we are all seeing the results of looking the other way at the wrong times and letting those who determine our tastes also benefit from our choices.

Owners of radio stations now play what they have invested in, they also own record companies and management firms for their stable of "product", to sell tickets to add to their coffers and then overfill their pockets through t-shirt sales and sell the whole bloody thing to their subsidiary corporate interests whose coupons are printed on the back of ticket stubs. We have been degraded by the process of having to pay for commercials and therefore present ourselves as fodder for the corporate reaping machine.


 One of the easiest ways to assure that you are not part of a problem is to become part of the solution. As we dive in to our new National Health Care Plan, we need to be sure that the most wealthy among us are not the ones who will benefit most from the new legislation. However, the way the law is written, that is exactly what it will do. The fact that corporate entities are allowed to weigh in heavily on any and all legislation that might effect them has led to a situation where we are opposed at every turn, leading to business as usual for the most abusive players in our capitalistic system. Money, in and of itself, has no value. People with more of it have no inherent wisdom or compassion based on their net worth. Too often, our politicians forget that they are there to serve the public, not the guys in suits who seek to guide legislation. I encourage everyone to demand that our rights be protected. My life savings was tied up in my home. Now that I am closing in on fifty years of age, I have been robbed of my retirement. There are no government programs to help me. I owe more than my home is worth. I was not greedy, all I expected to get was the 4% that real estate normally gains. In two years, I lost over thirty percent! Slavery was supposedly outlawed, but I now have to work straight through to my death, the only beneficiary of my labor will be the bank. Why is there money to bail them out and nothing for me? Fat cats never want to go on a diet, unless it involves champagne and caviar. I am reminded of the classic IWW (International Workers of the World) slogan: A Capitalist's HEART is in his pocketbook. He holds a CLUB over you, so he can wear DIAMONDS. Give him a SPADE so he can earn an honest day's wage!When formulating your unique view of the world, please, ask yourself, Who is making these claims and why? These two questions will help you to sort out the lies and deception that find their way into the news, entertainment, and politics in America, indeed the world. For a tiny slice of reality, look into just one corporation, Live Nation. when you learn about the many tentacles they have, and whose pockets they pick, the level of control they exert on entertainment, and people's lives, you will begin to understand why the corporate elite try to couch the debates we all hear in terms like "freedom", not control, "free trade", not monopolies, and "liberty", not oppression. If you study Monsanto, the same ruthless capitalization of another industry will be revealed. Corporation by corporation we need to find out the truth of whom we are supporting. If "the people" really did get what they want from their government, they may not be able to handle it. Absolute freedom demands absolute responsibility. We may never get a chance to find out. As long as there are agents of corpulent corporate fecundity at the helm, "We, The People" will support them "off the profits they've made on our dreams." Unless we wake up and wrest the ship of state from the wealthy pirates steering us toward destruction.

With This New Moon

With this new moon, I have begun a new quest. I intend to wrest from myself, as if from a crucible, insight. I will look deeper into my community, the neighborhood and new contacts, to determine what unique characteristics among them will become my next mentor, the next muse. Instinct tells me that in spite of all the harsh vibe that I spew on corporate welfare whores, I know that their souls are deeply wounded. Rather than the way Maria sings it in Sound of Music, somewhere in their youth or childhood, something terrible happened. Either they were abused or neglected, I don't really care which. Either way, they are behaving in a most obnoxious manner and must be brought to heal. A beautiful friend that I met with yesterday and I came up with the idea of creating protests of grandmothers, who would file in two rows along the path their legislators had to walk to get to their offices and chambers. As I have written in the past, the Iroquois Confederacy, which was used as a model for America's "new" government, had a single thing that was different, only grandmothers could vote. Let me tell you, by the time a woman has children who are also having children, they know who the hotheads of the tribe are, they know which among them has been crippled by greed, or the ones who are true diplomats, respectful of the group and even those with enough humility to make the best choices for everyone, into seven generations.

I want to develop, or at least invoke the deep knowing of the grandmothers, and to do that I will have to lay aside the urge to "be right" all the time. Those who have been killing the planet, reaping the windfall profits of both subsidy and leaving their poison legacy, are very, very sick indeed. Rather than my ire, they need a remedial course in humanity. We have stacked the cards in favor of the wrong people for so long that they have become addicted to their own power, sucking up, much as Ziggy Stardust did "into their mind"(s). Drunk on power, defended by Calvinistic beliefs that the have-nones deserve it because they are immoral wretches, undeserving even of pity. In reality, they, themselves are the ones who need to be pitied. The very supposition that one person should be paid billions whilst others scrape to make poverty wage is absurd. No one man is "worth" the wages of thousands. It just must no be allowed to stand.

All politicians should be elected by the grandmothers, war would end, provisioning for war would end, schools would be properly funded and when people got hurt, they would be cared for, not imprisoned by debt, or shackled to ill health by subsidized mock food. I know that having a broader perspective has given me a much deeper understanding of my environment, now that I am a grandfather myself, I need to find the best ways to relay what I have learned to others, sharing a bit of insight if possible before I go. With this new moon, I commit myself to more fully reflect the grandpama that I am becoming.