Seven Posts Per Month

Before I knew much of anything about blogging, I asked a few people what it takes to have a successful blog. I did a bit of research and they said that regular posts would help readership. I had written a few blog posts on a different site, but that was part of a social network of pagans at paganspace.net under the name Saladman. I surmised that if most of my feedback from fellow pagans was positive, it was time for a blog that addressed the general public. I know the level of research and depth that i like to explore subjects and I also figured that just a bit less than twice per week I could come up with something to write about. After committing to seven posts per month, I found out just how difficult writing at this level can be. Rather than a mere travel log, or diary, I try to expand the reader, politically, intellectually, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Understanding that we are a complex organism whose energy comes from the Sun, reaping all of our nutrients from the mediation of other organisms leads me to several fertile areas of exploration. During this adventure, I try to post ideas and experiences that can convey a deeper understanding of the ecology of mind that we all create for ourselves.

When we till the ground of difference, planting seeds of hate and estrangement, the world can begin to look pretty hostile. If I can glean a single nugget of disaster in my writing, it is from sounding like a Henny Penny (of "The sky is falling!" fame)There is a major extinction event taking place on earth at this time and humans may succumb to our own dastardly ways, but I sincerely believe the opposite. i think that through evolutionary changes, we will come to our deeper senses and realize that the natural world has more to teach us than our "modern" sciences can ever hope to understand. That is why I have been writing so much about bio-char, land reclamation and tree planting. Bearing in mind that all physics is fractile in nature, from the deltas of rivers to the headwaters, from the formation of ice crystals to the metamorphosis of insects, the blossoming of nature is reflected in myriad ways. We are poised on the verge of a great river of change but powerful interests lack the courage to dip their toe into the torrent of change.

I have shared the fact that a single line of trees can increase crop yields up to six times their height out into the field, this information could be leading us to a future of shelterbelts, criss-crossing the landscape, at intervals of about six times their height. I have explained the way bio-char works as a condo complex for microbes that help create healthy soil, keep it from drying out and hold the necessary moisture upon which all life thrives. As long as our economic system subsidizes fossil energy inputs and shifts favor to giant multi-national corporations, the deck will remain stacked against doing the right things. Each time I write, I am sitting down to urge people everywhere to do the right things, even if the financial rewards seem small. Investing in the things that make the most difference often have no financial reward. I started writing these posts about the time that my children moved away from home. Many of the things that i implemented with them while I was raising them are reflected in my words and phrases. Even what I feel compelled to write about were commonly discussed and taught in our house, just to make sure we were sending well-rounded people out into the world as part of the next generation. The way we treat the world around us and the people around us are direct reflection of how we treat ourselves. I frequently told my children, in fact I tell all of my friends, readers and acquaintances, that I will give you 100% of me when we are together, but rest assured, when we part, I will be doing that with the next people I meet, the next projects I undertake and the next ideas that I confront. Giving in half measure is not in my wheelhouse.

There have been times when writing this much has reduced me to a blubbering idiot, crying and depressed at my limited range of language skills, bereft of any and all feelings of facility for and with language. There have been times when I feared that my words were but a hollow mirage, sure to disappear from view upon closer inspection. However, the opposite is true as well, there were times when I felt part of the great revolution that is not being televised. times when a single brief comment inspired me the same way raising three amazing children has done.I hate to ask, but I am sure that my readers will understand. How has my writing touched you? Is this the place you come to reflect, learn or escape? Please let me know what you think. I am not only curious but wanting to learn how to make a better case for investing in what really matters. Blessed Be and Namaste' Tony

Pain Can Impact Mental Function

I have been struggling with a concept that most everyone will have to confront at one point or another. What is the nature and meaning of being "responsible". Last night i had a major strssor in my physical body. A rib popped from where it belongs, basically out of joint. Anyone who has ever boned a chicken knows what bones, removed from their joints look like, but inside a living person, especially if it is like that for a while, bruising and tissue damage around the bone head takes place. Rather than make you wretch from the imagery, I am just stating this as a simple fact, to illustrate my point. I was not thinking clearly after my injury, because the pain pathways and the attendant brain function that would normally go to awareness of my surroundings, listening perhaps, or my normal language function was interrupted, or at least compromised. Several people asked me questions that seemed difficult to answer, many of them very simple questions. In my mind, all I could think about was lying down and finding the one spot I thought I might be able to sleep in. This overwhelmed my thought processes so much that I could not imagine how many jouncy spots in the road and inevitable potholes filled the streets, roads and bridges between where I work and where I live.

When we begin to think about issues such as "responsibility", there is a quickness that we resort to in an attempt to assign responsibility "out of hand" or in hasty or brief moments that seem directed by our media stimulation campaigns. Hostility, anger and the urge to brand others with our judgements of them seem to thrive as a mix rather than any one aspect "straight up" or "head on". In fact, our responses are so convoluted that I assert most of us will never know to what extent we are crippled by our self validating awareness, our ego, our justifiable angst. Often this develops into a world view in which we think that we know what is best in every case for every other person on the planet. (The idea that what I have just written is hyperbole is just proof of that fact)how else can you explain the rush to judgement and the snap decisions about who is to blame in every case, no matter how much we have heard about it.

I have seen people react, make this rush to judgement and begin to run with the ball, before they have fully taken hold of what is going on around them, or securing the idea to which they are claiming to grasp. I hate to use football (American football)terms and analogies, but it is like turning your head to run before you make a catch. Not every injury is, perhaps, as drastic as popping out a rib, but we are each a repository of aches and pains at one point or another we will all bear these scars, but for those who hastily ascribe responsibility, this creates a difficult scenario to decipher. I left my food in the refrigerator at work, even though I knew that I wanted to take it with me. My mind grasped that I wanted to take it, but the idea of getting my backpack to my car overwhelmed my ability to think about carrying one more thing in my other hand. Even asking for help escaped my consciousness as an option for getting things to my car. The pain was indeed overwhelming. In fact, when I was asked point blank, are you okay to drive, my head swirled and again, the only thing I could think of was lying down to try to find the perfect position to make the pain go away and I said ,"Yes.", more out of desperation than any relation to fact.

Driving, while trying to keep an ice pack in position on your back is nearly impossible if you have full function and range of motion and as I had neither, it was, well, complicated to say the least. I was glad to be driving at a time when police are not yet patrolling for the after bar crowd, on a relatively deserted highway. The case could easily be made that I was irresponsible getting behind the wheel. My judgement was at least as poor as it probably had been in my most drunken state, but it was from pain. In a very important way, it was probably one of the most invisible pains and that leads me to the deeper end of this pool. Swim free with me if you will...

If we are all suffering the slings and arrows of a culture out of balance, the extractive oppression of capitalism, the soul-crushing reality of oligarchy and serfs, tiny factions of power and control freaks wielding their privilege, in decidedly harmful ways, over peaceful loving people who happen to be the majority, all of these things are causing pain! Untold amounts across the entire planet! Oppression in any form causes psychic pain at least and a great many physical, mental and emotional pain and scars as well. A great friend describes the process of the oppressor thus. They name us, claim us and tame us. This process leads to institutional racism, it leads to institutionalized class-ism, institutionalized sex-ism, every discreet oppression has roots in the same inhumanity to other humans. What would we see, realize and understand if the burden of pain were to be lifted? Who bears the ultimate responsibility for our bad choices, foggy ideation and lack of ability to focus? How can we reclaim our birthright?

There Are No Words

So many understand what we are up against, or are beginning to...
How the minority continues to keep us slaves is beyond my understanding.

Technocrats Versus History

I'm a big fan of the idea of jet packs and flying cars. That said, I'm also aware of the double edged sword that is technology of every sort. On one hand, the toothbrush may be more convenient than the root or branch of a specific type of tree. Perhaps the knowledge of which tree would give the best results was lost to time, perhaps it was troublesome because the tree no longer grew amongst the people, I'm not sure. It is said that a large part of our oral health is dependent on the microfloral community of our mouths and old timers always knew to check the mouths of livestock to gain insight into their general health and well-being. I figured that the toothbrush seems like a pretty well accepted technology, something we all pretty much use and this one item can stand in for virtually any other technology we choose because on some level, every new development of technology ushers in a series of impacts that none of us can envision before the technology gets accepted and implemented. The lowly toothbrush seems a good place to start.

The roots and/or branches that used to be used to brush teeth were readily available almost everywhere. Anyone, once made aware of which plants and what parts to use, could pretty much get a toothbrush wherever they needed one, as long as the plant grew there. Once used, the stick or root could be discarded and whatever food residue, spit, oral bacteriologic community or blood it has been coated with would re-unite with the living biosphere as it had for millennea. In fact, the real technological advance came when people realized that rinsing their mouth with plenty of clean water was an integral part of cleaning their teeth. Research has now been done, which will never get popularized because it is not seen to hold economic promise for industry, that plain old fresh water, plenty of it being used to rinse away debris from the brushing process is at least as effective as any other dentifrice. Just as in hand washing, the friction and rinsing with plenty of clean water are more important than using soap.

As much as one can make the claim that all these toothbrushes (or any other technology)are doing something good for us...they also have a darker side that is frequently overlooked. Mother Nature always bats last. To make the typical toothbrush of today, we need to use petrochemical residues to make the plastic handles, we need to use toxic compounds to fabricate the bristles, virtually all toothbrushes are packed individually to assure "sterility", so we need to manufacture additional waste over and above the brushes themselves. We also need to manufacture dentifrice to "help" us to utilize the technology "properly". Don't get me wrong, I continue to use the technology. I would try a jet pack or flying car as well, but the point is that many of the occult (hidden) aspects of all of our technologies are frequently overlooked. Every few months, we throw our toothbrushes out and the materials they are made of, which could be recycled if we had enough in one place at one time are thrown into landfills or dumped into the ocean, out of sight out of mind.

Internal combustion engines spewed millions of tons of lead into the air for a century before fuel manufacturers upgraded their equipment to reduce lead emissions that were a normal part of burning petrol. There continue to be acid mists that issue from our tailpipes, nitrogen oxides carbon monoxide and particulates that are proven to cause unsavory health effects and destabilize the climate. Avoiding these deleterious effects of the technology is impossible, unless we re-think the process of moving people through space, or redesign the technology to eliminate the need for fossil fuel.

The very real issues that are part of embracing new technology can never be seen or fully understood until the technology is adopted and put into common use. Imagine having to have a flying car airport at every place of business, indeed at every place people would want to go, or a jet pack hangar for storing our high tech equipment while it is not in use. I'm not sure about everyone else, but daily I see people who are unable to navigate in two dimensions. Imagine if these same people were allowed to travel in three!

History is replete with examples of new technologies bringing mayhem, unintended consequences and unexpected costs along with their conveniences. However, we imagine that life as we know it would be impossible without pressurized water, or furnaces, electricity or light bulbs. Once implemented, technocrats tell us that we cannot live without such developments. If this were true, no one could camp out, or grow food from seeds, or skinny dip. One of the funniest things I hear from time to time is the phrase "doing things the old fashioned way". In common use, we admit openly that there was an old-fashioned way, but the novelty of doing things using old technologies makes them noteworthy. I have brain tanned hides, which is far more work than tanning hides with chemicals and machinery. The difference is that with modern techniques for tanning hides, about 4/5 of the material is, or becomes throughput. That is why leather is so expensive. When brain tanning hides, in my experience, only a small fraction of the hide has to be discarded. Often the quest for more modern ways of getting things done is complicated by the inevitable bigger, better, faster mentality that seem to be the watch words of our capitalistic theories based on power and control. Making things by hand, more slowly, or with sensitivity to the world around us and the potential effects on our waste stream or the energy required to heal the damage that our labors do to the environment are overlooked. "Primitive" people the world 'round made sure to honor the spirit of their tools, often appointing them artistically with beauty, putting a bit of themselves into them. Now, if we cannot mass produce a product, it seems pointless to try.

Vulnerability

There are, as always two sides to this concept. On one side is the sort of vulnerability that is based on mutual trust, respect and compassion, the one that most long-term marriages demonstrate effectively. In our primal state, we allowed our weaknesses and sensitivities to be read by others because we were cocooned by culture, wrapped in layer upon layer of reciprocity that gave birth to the concept we now know as "Do unto others...as you would have them do unto you." This type or aspect of vulnerability is what allows me to come to you asking for money, a way to reach my goals and dreams other than exploiting you or harassing you, it is because I need to pay my bills, like most of my readers do as well. I face the same electric and gas bills that most of the computer users on the planet do. This makes me vulnerable to the possibility of a "no money" state in which freedoms and comforts might be taken away such as loss of housing, loss of food, or other vital parts of living in civil society. This sort of vulnerability speaks volumes about the fact that we are all organisms trying to find enough resources to thrive.

The flip side of this state of being vulnerable is based on a long history of lies mistreatment, malfeasance and deceitfulness. It is the root of the idea that we must "Screw the competition, before they get a chance to screw you." We have all seen this in operation, if not, we either don't know what to look for or we are still living tribally and out of reach of "civilizing" forces. In that case, you would not be reading this. This form of vulnerability is far worse, because in the first case, an individual has to live with the risk of being hurt or taken advantage of when they reveal their weaknesses, their vulnerability. This second form has collateral fallout when the shit inevitably hits the fan. Remember the classic tale of A Christmas Carol. Everyone has written off Scrooge when the story opens. They all know that he is beyond saving and would have written him off completely had they not become accustomed to drawing meager wages from him to keep the dogs from their doors. This is the sort of vulnerability that requires police and armies, spy networks and weapons of all sorts.

Some of us have been pulling away from the second sort of vulnerability for decades, once burned twice shy. In fact, several nations are retreating from the Calvinistic economic world view that came into vogue five hundred years ago to prop up, and add validity to, the divine right of kings. What makes our planet the most vulnerable is this mind-set of the oligarchs that they not only have the right, but the duty to make decisions for the world's poor. As if, somehow, we are all incapable, "primitive" or less able to guide our lives than they are. I am routinely vulnerable and don't mind pointing it out, but the billionaire class hates it when we express ourselves, that is why protesters are always labeled and degraded by the uberwealthy. Every artist and creative force on the planet needs resources and without patrons, production slows and resources become depleted. The difference between the vulnerable individual and the vulnerable society is that when the individual is on the ropes and going down, lawyers make money on the paperwork and final disposition of any resources that remain intact. When the world economic system and the systems of exploitation and extraction have run their course, there is nothing left to speak of and the lawyers won't waste their time fighting over poisoned lands and the blight that is left behind.

I choose to be open and honest about my own weaknesses, the 1% never will.

I Am Not Who I Think I Am

As much as I might wish it to be, as much as I can become sentient of is only a sliver of the miracle that swirls about me. So much life is required in the form of bacteria and fungi in my intestinal flora, to help me eat my food, that they too are part of who I am. Bacteria host. I have been a yeast lord as well, during my brewing days hundreds of gallons of wort required billions of yeast colonies to be cultured and cared for. We are each a vast resource for other life and the flourishing of certain species over others. There are healthy intestinal cultures that benefit from all the things our mothers told us to eat, leafy greens and fiber, fruits, nuts and healthy fats. On the other hand, sick intestinal environments that have to cope with being well-oiled by hard oils and necrotic from too much corn sugar, gluten or just de-mineralized flours that have been enriched are just plain bad for humans. Not only do we indiscriminately kill off our own beneficial residents, but their culture has the ability to produce about 40-60% of our immune function!

So, on one level I am just stardust, animated and 85-90% water, but as organism, I become environment for a host of living creatures. Learn to love yours back to health. If your innards are ill, you will be outwardly unwell as well. Learn to cultivate healthy intestinal flora. Find out what kills it and use healthier methods for healing that do not require you to kill off the healthy bacteria as well as the unhealthy ones.

I am sure that whatever "understanding" I come to about who I am will collapse upon further inspection, each preconception about myself is but a facade, a scrim between "me", the person I call myself and the rest of the world. Emblazoned on the outside, the scrim, when lit shows them who I want them to see, but inside shines a light that is beyond even my comprehension, that makes that image disappear and surprises whatever conception of myself I have more often than not. Some of those things that would seem easy to convey, like saying I'm a husband, or a father or a shaman are limiting. Just to point out a few routes to knowing my husband aspect, The original word from which husband derives, house bound is true for me. I am bound to the house in such a way that it is my responsibility. I was handfasted to the love of my life over a year before we formalized our marriage with the clerk of courts and our whole family. Even though our handfasting was enough for us, we wanted to include the family. Frequently I am amazed that after a dozen years, I still feel the depth and breadth of our love expanding. Sometimes I surprise myself, again that person I thought I was by becoming something else as well.

It feels like no matter how close I get to pinning down who I actually am there is always a new aspect or quality that I find I never noticed before and the learning curve is steep again in learning who I truly am. Some might get complacent and stop looking at themselves so closely, but as I grew up, there were few things that remained constant, only my own company was to be counted on. So many, many mental gymnastics, so many lonely moments to fill, but I taught myself to multiply three digit numbers in my head and understood the healing power of the woods better than most. again, slivers of who I really am. Each of these could be plumbed for hours, exploring the myriad ways that I continue to blossom, always into a person who I would, or would have been be proud to know or to have as a friend, but even my old nickname, God's Exterior Decorator, as much as it says exactly who I am, it is but a tiny bit of grit on the sandpaper which I truly am.

I know myself enough to know when I am lying, especially when I'm doing it to myself and am always glad to be called out on my dramas and strife. Most of it is imagined. I even have been trying to learn who I really am regarding my politics, because I get the feeling that I am growing into a new person in that respect as well. Living in the North has always meant one thing to me, above all others, One must do many more than just one thing. Like the forest, you have to have many moods and many seasons. We are in maple syrup moon and then planting moon, and on around the year. Within the person I call me is the part that honors this time signature of life. One week I might be the groundskeeper, huntsman, jester, chef, dishwasher and steward, each at alternate turns, but the "me" doing any of those things is only hinted at by any of those terms.

As I age, I'm in my second half-century now, I learn to lay more and more traps for the part of me that is hung up on defining myself. sometimes I catch myself running a racket on myself before I even have the chance to fully formulate one. I waste less time trying and more time is left over for doing, even if that act is a state of being still. I have learned that no one really multi-tasks, we act like we do, but our attention, being finite must be constrained to doing one thing to the best of ones ability. I do, as you might expect test that limit from time to time, but am always reminded that it is always better to do just one thing.

I am not my synapses, however I am often tempted to claim that they are all that I am. The closer I get to understanding who I really am, the more drastically things seem to change. It appears that we are each a sort of prismatic fractile, a whirlwind or vortex that reflects and refracts the light of creator. How we dance with the Light, how we resolve the darkness upon which we define ourselves, the luminosity of our BE-ing is our legacy and determines the health and welfare of the entire interdependent systems that we call life on this planet, perhaps those effects resonate beyond our sun, perhaps even pour Universe. As a child, I went to many, many drug houses, but what I noticed most was that the tee-vee was always on with the sound off and usually acid rock would be blaring on the hi-fi. I always wondered how the two would be in synch. Until I heard of "Om" I had no word for the universal frequency, what science later described as the residual noise, detectable with instruments now), from the big bang. We are stardust, yet we are each so much more.

All of this up to now has been about internal conceptualizations and ideas, beyond my skin and synapses are the hundreds of thousands of discreet actions that my physical form has taken, from flirting glances to deep penetrating stares, from helping an old lady with her groceries while she opened her door to changing the tires of some stranded travelers. The, perhaps, millions of choices I have made are part of what make me who i am, but the hundreds of thousands of people i have met and spoken with, spent time relating to them, each has helped me to become who I ultimately am, who I hope to become and who I will dream and love into being with serious intent, as well as action. As the bastard translation of Aramaic, Abracadabra is meant to mean, "I speak into being" when we step into flow, all else is vanquished by the immediacy of the moment. Artists and musicians frequently describe this as time stand still or nothing else matters, but it is even more than the subjective experience of it. When I am most aligned with where I want to be, in that flow, the defined person that is spoken of as "I" is superseded by having tapped into something eternal. With luck, and I believe, a purity of purpose, perhaps more light passes through me in ways that enlighten and inform others that getting to know themselves on a deeper level is worth the time spent inspecting the dark sides of our beings.

For most, the word "occult" is scary and fills them with trepidation. It just means hidden. Never be afraid of who you though you were. More importantly, don't be afraid to unmask yourself to/for yourself, whoever emerges will be stronger and more aware afterward. Catching yourself lying to yourself, or running games on your perception need to always be questioned and inspected carefully. chances are they have been created for someone you grew out of long ago. A wise person once led me through the difficult journey of describing myself to myself and along the way he would point out the sign posts, like "How long do you want to feel that way?" or "Do you want to think like that?" He asked me "How long do you want to have that dragging you down?" and "How long do you want to live like that?" Each and every thing that we think, comes from somewhere and what I am saying is that to really look into those things, that led you to define things in certain ways, events that twisted your vision or were mis-heard, are not, in fact, you. They may help define you for some purposes or others, but they van never touch who you really are, who I really am or who any of us are. The only thing that I can truly say for sure about who I am is perhaps the least important thing of all. That when I die, I will feed a miraculous web of life in addition to leaving a legacy of love amongst the people.

47 Acts of Treason

We live at a difficult time. I understand that. What I do not understand is the willingness of people and the media to overlook the 47 Republican Senators who are undermining the President of the United States of America. Going over the head of the President to attempt to threaten Iran is treason. Simply put, the powers of the President have been delineated and include the ability to negotiate treaties and agreements with foreign nations. Whatever led nearly half of that Senate to take negotiations into their own hands with regard to Iran, as well as whatever led the speaker of the House of Representatives to invite Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to our Congressional leaders, in direct violation of the laws of our land, these treasonous acts were designed to elicit attention through morally bankrupt and illegal acts against the United States of America, world peace and security and the destabilization of world affairs. In my understanding, the punishment for treason is death, yet there has not even been a call for removing these thugs and traitors from office. As a group of people who have taken an oath to uphold and defend the laws of our United States, one would expect better behavior. We live in a Brave New World that has trusted hooligans with running Congress, that has allowed corporate lawyers to take the majority in the Supreme Court and that allows the fourth estate to turn a blind eye to their corruption and lawlessness.

I do not care if the majority of Americans want to continue to backslide, but as I continue to talk about these issues and ask questions of people I meet, I do not believe that is the case. The silent majority is frustrated and feels cut out of discussions at every step. We have voiced our dissatisfaction with gerrymandering, changing political boundaries for the purpose of securing seats in future elections. Our protests and concerns went unheeded. We worked for over two decades to get high speed rail in Wisconsin and the current leadership eliminated the possibility of that with the swipe of a pen held by just one man. We protested for months and now years over the continued privatization of education and the busting of teachers unions and now all unions have been assaulted by rule and deed. In half the states, it is illegal to require workers to pay for their representation in the workplace. It seems that the public is being cut out of the democratic process by a death from a thousand cuts. The illegal actions of a tiny number of people have had massive and long-lasting effects on the majority and it may take decades to undo the things that have come about as a result of our new crop of "Representatives" and "Senators".

Junior representatives are supposed to learn the ropes in their first few years in Congress, but these new guys are doing the opposite. If they are unable to drive policy (which legally they are not allowed to do)they just step outside the law. If their ideas and proposals are outside the realm of reason, they just claim Biblical prerogative. When people look forward to Armageddon as a final solution, they need to be understood to be psychopaths hell bent on destroying the planet and her people, not held up as our nation's leaders. Many are claiming that to prosecute the 47 Senators would ruin the Democratic party, but I feel that the opposite is true.

The reason that only 49% of Americans usually turn out to vote is because for decades we have been told that there is no difference between the two majority parties, that "they" (our political leaders)are all "crooks". We have written hundreds of thousands of letters to our political leaders that have been "answered" with form letters that prove to us that our original letters were not even read, much less understood. more and more questions go unanswered. more and more of our ideas are overlooked and more and more of our money flows to corporate welfare whores. All of these things are taking place at the same time that our rights to representation and routes for having input into the political process are being eroded or confiscated by those who are securely out of reach for the people who are supposedly the most important part of our nation.

Something is terribly wrong in our nation when the ideas of the few override the health, welfare and safety of the many. Execution is not something I take lightly. In virtually every case I oppose the state taking the lives of human beings to "teach" them that killing is "bad". However, acts of treason are given special weight because they have the power to result in mass killing and potentially the death of our entire nation. As my regular readers know and understand, I will never advocate the violent overthrow of our nation, nor do I believe that the death penalty is acceptable for the vast majority of crimes. I am a pacifist. However, when war comes to our doorstep, we must be willing to meet it with whatever tools are available to us. Treason in the halls of congress needs to be dealt with immediately and with enough harshness that future generations will understand the need for following the laws of our nation and acting responsibly with the fate of our nation in their hands. we entrust our leaders with great power, but for this trust, we must demand commensurate responsibility.

Proving A Negative

Impossible, right? In our current world view, we have pigeon-holed so much of what we "know" and accept as fact, that we can look right through reality, like a vague gauze. For instance, most hear the term "free energy" and they immediately think of nuclear power, possibly even fusion energy, but the potential of that becoming real requires decades of energy being used in mining, spent refining ores and transporting more and more concentrated elements, (using fossil energy at every step)as well as the waste stream from each phase in the process. I have said before that nuclear energy is more akin to stretching a rubber band for later release than you might casually expect. The old adage that nuclear energy would be "too cheap to meter" was arrived at when we needed the waste from nuclear power generating stations to make bombs. After you have the power to destroy the planet several times over, and you reduce federal money available to build, maintain and sequester the wastes from these facilities, the cost of production per Megawatt grows. The cost of nukes is now far more expensive than wind energy.

So many unenlightened people are getting hours and hours of media attention...some, seem to live in the spotlight, whilst spouting absurdities. I remember when they used to take raving lunatics to the county farm for a rest, now they put them in the nation's living rooms during prime time. Questioning the President and commander in chief's credentials as an American or his religious leanings seem to have become a sport amongst conservatives. Pish posh, I say and what sort of close-minded people do we allow on tee vee? The other thing about media coverage, that is suspicious, is that there seem to be experts on every single, outlandish thing, that happens. Really? There are "experts" in horse vehicle collisions? Or in which animals usually die first in barn fires? Or, whether your dog likes sweet or savory? It blows my mind that there are now professionals who can explain serial killers and serial rapists and other offensive personality types with precision, but none of them are employed at the gates of any factory or workplace. All the people studying outrageous things get the attention but in most places only 51% of people wash their hands when they leave the toilet. We really need to get it together people and evolve. I'm guilty of making mistakes as often as anyone, but at least I try to learn from them. I cannot prove that an asteroid won't hit my location, but that would be futile. All I can hope is that no matter what President Obama believes, or where he is from that he will decide in favor of life on the planet. I don't want a leader that embraces the idea of Armageddon as a final solution to the problems with the planet.

One cannot prove that a terrorist attack will not happen. Anywhere or any time. Oddly enough, that seems to be the message. however, when we study more carefully, what we are being told is scary and dangerous is ,in fact, less likely to occur today than yesterday and so on. Many more threats have been thwarted than ever were planned before only because agents provocateur are most often used, by authorities. They have gone undercover numerous times, but found buffoons and big-mouthed rabble, but often provided either means or opportunity to entrap guileless fools into following through on some hair brained stunt to get them into trouble.

The powers that have run the world for the past dozen or so hundred years have not done very well for us. They may have done well for themselves, but as we tire of their endless absorption of our wealth, we must also commit to spending as little as possible that could allow them any quarter. What the vacuous minority who guides public opinion believes is that their backs are against the wall and as victims, they are allowed to lash out at everything they feel has put them in that position. The fact that all manner of evil has already been perpetrated in their name age upon age, for over 500 years. These are easily proven by objective means. The air, the water, even soil health have been adversely impacted by the oppressors, the racists, the white devils who have brought their baggage to nearly every shore on the planet. The negative effects of Idiocracy, of the corporate-driven economy, of the colonizers have all conspired to tear at the souls of the native people, or vanquished them utterly. These negative effects are plain and what we do with the devaluation of all that is sacred and how we change our perspectives to achieve sustainability is perhaps the next big thing. The difference between this next big thing and all that have come before, is that it will be a billion small steps, not a massive change overnight, but incremental changes multiplied infinitely.

Those who try to distract our attention with using the fact that you can't prove a negative need to be tried on charges of either treason or standing in the way of social progress. As heinous as I feel about limiting any sort of speech, spouting lies on publicly owned air waves has to be illegal!