Tragic Trifecta

The Rethuglican Party has run cover for a few more ingrates which we discovered this week. One, was the very same member of the House of Representatives (some have said that he was the longest serving Republican Speaker of the House)who had presided over the moralistic assaults on Bill Clinton for his sexual antics. It turns out that he was paying hush money, over 1.7 million, throughout his entire career to silence a child that he molested back when he was a High School wrestling coach. This is, for me, another one of the many "proofs" of the fallacy that sport is good for the development of well-rounded human beings. Sport, in my informed opinion is almost single-handedly responsible for injecting dozens of sexual inuendi (it is Latin spell check)into common parlance, strengthening our antiquated evolutionary development, making power and control more highly fixed in our culture. I am sure that this retards our evolution many centuries.

The second poster child is the fellow who claims divine inspiration and part of that is his child love, the cover-up, the holding of God so close, that any action is defensible to him. Does this remind you of anyone? Religious whackos. Isis is not the only agent twisting supposedly sacred texts into excuses for inhumane behavior. This was, for me, perhaps most tragic. because multiple victims of sexual assault whose family member perpetrated such heinous power and control as to crush someone you espouse to love sickens even those of us who understand that love is not capable of resulting in violence. To round out the trifecta, just when you thought it would calm down a bit.

Third, another of the three horsemen of the Apocalypse, Sheldon Adleson, owner of the Sands, indicted for racketeering and money laundering. Major donor to dozens of campaigns and massive subsidization of Rethuglican operations worldwide. We have crooks in the highest of places. My understanding is that this is not a perfect storm, taking pout the lynchpins, but rather a cursory view taken from across the ranks of these exploitative corporate outlaw supporting right wing whack jobs. These are the sorts of people who many in the right wing of our political system idolize and emulate in their daily dealings with others! I believe we are morally obligated to make a new start. Whatever we have been doing up to now has not worked.

The Revolution (Status Report)

We are making so many in roads so quickly, that trying to speak to the depth and scope of the Revolution (the one that still is not being televised) It is beyond time for us to recognize that In our food systems, our educational affairs, even our entertainment, we are getting less for more, always up charges for items that are controlled by the wealthiest of "investors". because such a large slice of the population was out of work for extended periods, it has led to an off the grid economy in which people are selling goods and services to other people, for cash, without putting tax money into the system, except when their dollars leak out of the local cash economy on goods or services that are on paper, reporting and, we hope, paying their fair share of tax. More and more people are realizing the likelihood and extent to which their dollars are being skimmed off by wealthy foreign (non-local)"investment" schemes.

The Park and ride resources are seeing more and more use, that directly takes money back from the oligarchs. Transit options, like ride shares and delivery services combine trips and drive down consumption of fossil energy resources. If you add electric delivery vehicles into the picture, the energy footprint gets cut by over half again!

More and more people understand the concept of a foodshed and how buying local can reduce ecological consequences of slaking both our thirst and hunger from more local sources. Consuming calories can be done with zero impact, other than destruction of plant material, if we are able to graze. With the awesome resource that is the internet, I was able to guide over 200 readers in one day through an ECO-Tour, exploring what sorts of outreach the Revolution is having around the planet. Our recent posts about biochar alone could be the single most important bit of information for people to have. This ancient technology has been proven with over 2,000 years of efficacy. My trials more than doubled the production from test plots compared to control. Imagine, for a moment. fifty percent less energy spent tilling the soil, if we wanted to keep production the same. We could pull back production from marginal and sensitive areas, capitalizing on acreages that were of quality, and may never again need a crop subsidy.

In addition to an ethos of ecological awareness alive and inspired within the Revolutionaries, is a growing awareness that where we live and what we put in our mouths actually creates a person of substance, a force to be reckoned with, rather than a veal-raised sheep to the slaughter. Even a bite of corporate welfare fraud food carries the burden of planet abuse and neglect. Some see this as pagan, others feel that it is a sort of science-based tough love. The true revolutionaries see through the sham of survival of the fittest, instead realizing that it has always been survival of the luckiest. The most fit specimen could be caught unaware by an errant bullet or inattentive motorist, Perhaps luck is nothing more than being in touch with the long game of Mother Earth and her creatures.

This brings me back to the essential motivation of these Revolutionaries. I know many hundreds, so I can speak as someone who is fairly well educated on or about them. Pacifism is but one of the essential qualities. We are here in the name of making the planet safe for all people, in fact, not just all people, but every organism, safe. The waters, safe, air, safe, soils free of toxic chemical onslaught. The non-violence movement has long been at the heart of the revolution that is not being televised, simply, because it allows the status quo to paint them as ideologically naive. In fact, it is the exact opposite. The most pragmatic point of view is that the best outcomes will always be had by building, not destroying life. Creation rather than destruction.

Many of the early attempts at living sustainably were either mismanaged or misunderstood. Now, thirty years later, they are taking shape in every corner of America as well as beyond. Just the other day I was able to teach a Ugandan farmer how to utilize biochar, in turn this will unleash his possibilities for feeding more with the same amount of work, or gaining the leisure to spend half his time doing something else for his community. there will be no dollars exchanged between us, for I did not ask, only that he pay forward the revolutionary benefits that are unleashed by his increased production. Those who would rather pay, I have ways for them to support this work. there has been a maturation of the old Hippie Communes and now, travelers have hundreds of intentional communities to choose from, scattered around the U. S. and the world.

Home schooling is often spoken of with reference to the numbers of people choosing to keep their children out of state run schools because of religious concerns. The vast majority that I have known were pagans, who wanted to just do a better job than the schools could, not trump up some sort of religiously based curriculum. sure, there are some X-tian whackos that are home schooling to avoid the state possibly mentioning anything "questionable", but for many, it is just good people, trying to do the best by their children. Home birth, much the same. Both of these have had incipient growth for decades and are poised to take over resulting in amazing benefits! more revolution for those who can handle it is the step from hospital birth to home birth. cheaper, safer, healthier children. Today, "news" broke that letting the cord blood flow to babies for as little as a few minutes noticeably increased development years later. In the home birth community, letting the cord stop pulsing, at least, before cutting the umbilical cord is well-known, and more or less ritualized. There are even legions of people who advocate and practice not cutting the cord at all, letting the baby take the lead in the release of the umbus.

The microcosmic education that many are learning about their intestinal flora, coupled with increased knowledge about power and control issues lead energy right back to the revolutionary principle of non-violence as well. Health and welfare, coupled with optimized development allow us to transform planetary populations, all we need to exhibit is the will to do what we all know needs doing. as we heal ourselves, one of the first changes that takes place is that we realize how blessed we have been and seek to share our good fortune with others. This is the basis of everything from consensus decision-making to investing with long term strategies in mind rather than short term gains.

A sense of desperation is spreading through populations that have not yet heard of the revolution, or that are decrepit, and unwilling to change. The writing on the wall tells us that the time for change has come, but not the change that comes down from above, but rather the grass roots, nourishing new approaches and new outcomes.

It is important to note, the human rights issues that are beginning to be dominated by police homicides are part of the revolution. The leaders need to take advance actions to explicitly state, "Beware agents provocateur!" The powerful overlords are adept at trying to make violence look like a tool in the "Leftists" arsenal. Our arsenal is fully stocked with LOVE! The one requirement of the Revolutionaries, it that you love as aggressively as the haters hate, as aggressively as the warmongers stir up their deceitful atrocities, we have to put the same amount of energy, passion and conviction that old way thinkers put into their world view.

Make sure to tell your friends and neighbors! We truly love all people and want them all to be healthier, safe and strong. This will require further transformation of health care, integrating herbalists and naturopaths, more home birth, lots more home schooling, especially about food, flex time from our jobs, in-house childcare and better food and water in our lunchrooms. What Tesla is doing for transportation could take place in lighting, solar/wind generation and electric motor technology, but for the ability of the military industrial complex to secure themselves from competition through making some patents classified, or "secure".

500 Weekend

I have written about some of what I have learned about Memorial Day during the course of my life. I'm pretty sure that if you want, you could look back at past May postings to read more than most people will ever understand about the difference between honoring men and women who died in our wars and detesting the aristocracy who unduly enriched themselves because of that "sacrifice" that we must all bear responsibility for. Collectively, we have become delusional if we actually believe that our freedoms come, somehow, from the lives of those who died. A very weak set of presumptions would need to be made real and a blind eye would need to be turned to some very harsh truths before that fable could become based on fact.

I would rather talk about solutions. Just as the solution to pollution is not dilution, the solution to the prevailing rhetoric is not to beat around the bush or single out one tentacle to lop off at a time, They always grow back. We cannot blunt the force with which we have been inculcated with lies. The only viable resolution to our crash course with destiny is to completely circumvent the aberrant logic loop that has been created for us. Education is always a component to social change movements. Asking incisive questions, understanding what it means to think, being able to see, not only the forest and the trees, but the underlying terrain, the vital biomes that exist between and amongst all of them, that is the perspective we need to move out of the days of death, destruction and mayhem, perpetrated by power and control freaks on the vast majority of the global population, into a new awareness of the sanctity of the planet as a whole.

This is my treatise for a new paganism. As much as I hate isms, we all struggle to believe in something, that which we cannot understand or explain is an eternal placeholder for our existence. Even if you believe in nothing, that is something. How might we make changes that qualitatively change, for the better, our relationship with the planet? How might we make changes that qualitatively change, for the better, our relationship with other human beings and indeed all the creatures of the planet? What steps can we take toward true security, stability and sustainability. Rather than starting from a truth or consequences point of view, which nearly everyone seems to be preoccupied with, the new paganism needs to arise from some things that are not false, are not imposed upon us, but rather that spring from us. Truly, from our most attuned selves.

This 500 Weekend, remember that we all have the right to be leaders of the pack, each of us has an inkling of truth, built in, right down to our bones. The most therapeutic way to find it is to settle down, touching nature in some way. Let your heart be still amongst the rocks and trees, listen to their whispers and feel the commitment that they bring to existence. Be one with them, learn how to reflect that grounded self-expression in human form. When we begin to realize ourselves as one amongst many, moving in tandem or in cadres of like-motivate folks, can be the most sublime reward. Beyond imagination lies a toolkit for a new Earth at the heart of this trove of wonder are millions of gems like these...organizations dedicated to providing fresh water to every human being on the planet, "ordinary citizens" who turn up to clean the beaches after oil spills, unconcerned about not having the "right" protective gear, humans willing to train service dogs who were once in shelters, individuals committed to ending the nuclear insanity, peace protesters, human rights supporters, educators who tech classes on anger management and the power and control wheel and it includes accepting the true fact that human beings and all other organisms on the planet are entitled to the same sanctity with which we need to feel for the planet.

Turning left at over 200 Mph. is not only possible, but necessary! Love, promote peace and educate tirelessly about the new paganism as aggressively as war mongers hawk death, destruction and mayhem. Today, I for one, honor the dead by recommitting myself to the overthrow of those who would consecrate our "freedoms" (the freedoms for our corporate welfare whores to destroy the planet and her people)with the blood of another generation. I pledge myself to peace each year on this holy weekend, during which we memorialize our war dead unafraid to tell the truth about their sacrifice and unabashed in my concern that not another death is allowed to occur in defense of corporate tyranny.

Religions Of The Moment

We have begun down a slippery slope, embarking into conditions never before present, it only seems right that our world view should keep pace with our misadventures. One of my favorite new religions (of which I am a reluctant co-founder)is one that sets as a premise that we are entering into the Lettucene Epoch, which will be characterized by wilt. Amongst "followers" (although that word is wrong, these people are leaders)of this religion hold all vegetables as their gods and goddesses. Lettuce is exalted amongst the plant kingdom and hold the Black Seeded Simpson as their most exalted deity. Some of the basic tenets of these vegetable-arians are that lettuce will only be denied those who would not sanctify it; There will always be more; They hold to a variety of "Better Left Unsaid"s, several of which revolve around eggplant, and Honor thy Mother, thy father and thy vegetable, to name a few. If someone feels the need to mediate between me and my sanctification of plants, I cannot abide their interference.

I am fed up with predominant assumptions that individuals have a world view based on two thousand year old lies, or folk tales. The expedience of getting us to accept arbitrary interpretations of texts that were formulated to exert social control over illiterate populations is undeniable. By catching people on the tenterhooks of religion, a taught, progressively more rigid tension comes over them. They are held firmly, in a state of suspended animation and expectation out of step with reality. The passion that we have for defending our beliefs, no matter what they seem to be, seems inexhaustible. Since the recording of "civilization" these passions have been fuel for most of our wars, a great deal of art and what poses stiffly as history. I posit a new religion, even more world warping than revising history to include the hundreds of millions of survivors of those who lost their lives in war, the true histories of towns with no men and families with no father.

Or perhaps the most stark and non-prejudicial of all, instead of worshiping end times, as many of the dead religions do, let's talk science. Perhaps we will call this one the scigeon, or religience. We already know that the Earth will cease to exist one day as the sun supernovas out to beyond our orbit. Let's start there and work back...Do you want to go to the light now? or later? That would get a few things straight right from the get go. All this hate, this negative ego, this pablam and distraction, why do we tolerate it? We have been experiencing a new enlightenment even at the time our test scores are falling. We have a cadre of idiots and assholes that have swept to power that hold the very government that they control in contempt. Any discussion of "beliefs" must include the concept that if we are not part of the solution, we are part of the problem. not to be preachy or hypocritical, but I must briefly be both...

Whether your thing is greed, plastic, hate, petro-chemical based food shed, judgement, fossil energy, pointing fingers, water gluttony, addictions of any sort or if you are just feeling too stressed to live in community, you don't have to believe in anything to make better choices, to teach others, spread the good word, one day the sun will explode and come out to greet us right here. With a bit of luck, we will still be here and some young whipper snapper will have invented a way to ride the shock wave of that explosion to propel us toward another middle aged star, containing another blue marble of mostly water to reside upon. Until then, we are always afforded the opportunity to step into the light, walk in grace, or whatever you like to call it. Do the right thing, be in the moment, balanced, grounded, harmonious and vital. It is our birhtright, why not use it? If you have to, get mushy, tell people, "I was moved to..." don't say by the Lord, I guess, if you want you could tell them that it was by the Lady, that would at least raise a few eyebrows. Whatever you do, learn and teach as much as possible about the revolution that is not being televised. Sustainability, growing food and power, and loving the Earth back to health!

The High Points Of The Week

Bernie Sanders announced his run for the Presidency of these United States.
Elon musk of Tesla Corporation introduced the first home scale, purpose built battery.
Granddaughter Belle Grace of Crown Point did a chalk portrait of me on our driveway.

I could write an entire essay on any one of these, but for now, I will just let the joy of each one sink in, savor it and picture the great possibilities that await us if we all keep telling one another about the good news that surrounds us, instead of the latest boondoggle created just to inspire fear and hate.

My money is on the dark horse this election cycle, because our collective disillusionment with the status quo has become so strong. We have let big money and the good old boy's club have at it long enough, they have a proven track record and will continue in the exact same direction regardless of how we try to nudge, cajole and regulate them.

Smartgrid technology, and the billion dollar boondoggle that those associated technologies represent, will become irrelevant when we each have 10Kwh of energy just hanging on the wall in our homes, or added to our battery packs on our electric cars. This part of the revolution is not being televised either.

As for my grand, her reliance on schema faces is just a way of having a stand in for what she feels is most important anyway and she depicted our spirits divinely! The creativity and desire to make and do will carry the next generations further than we could ever imagine, if we just let their ideas stand, we will really have something! Next generation efficient motors have been side tracked into military application only development has ceased on so many fronts because the military industrial complex has finite ideas about how they need to be employed.

As we continue to learn the score and more and more of us are seeing the directions that we need to be going, the governments and individuals making decisions to keep things the same are being held in greater and greater contempt. whoever finally capitalizes on latent unrest will sweep elections, wherever they are, handily.

Another Cop Killer

I write frequently about things that are true versus what we are told. The media has been telling us for years that there are people whom they call cop killers. I know that there are a few, in fact, we had a fellow ram his car into a squad car,killing two officers right here in Green Bay. It was terrible, the story about it was not completely clear, but as tragic as it was, there have been far more police in our area that have taken up arms against innocent victims. Cops, that also happen to be killers. Disregarding the incidents where killer cops shot into crowds, discharged weapons "accidentally", or the occasional "domestic" killings that leave their "loved ones" dead, the two incidents that I will write about here are cold blooded killings, perpetrated by those who refer to themselves as the "thin blue line" between civilization and anarchy.

The first incident, I have written about before, but it affects me every day. In fact, just yesterday, I was struck dumb and nearly rendered stock still by the mere appearance of an Appleton city police car. Even without an officer present, the vehicle had the power to scare me. I had done nothing wrong or illegal, but felt the blood drain out of me because I realized that the officers who kill look just like those who obey and uphold the law. I know just a bit too much about one particular Appleton police officer and as humans often say, guilt by association is a very real thing. It does not matter if it makes little sense to paint all officers with the same brush. In reality, we conjoin information to try to make sense of the world around us. The officer that I know the most about is one who stalked, plotted and carried out the murder of the mother of a friend of mine's child. My friend's life has been changed irreparably, possibly forever. We hear in the news media about "suicide by cop" and frequently the idea is used as an excuse for police using deadly force against people with mental illness. When the police turn their weapons on innocent people, it needs to be called homicide by cop. It is for courts to decide about the mental competency of the killers. Psychopaths, whether in uniform or not, need to be taken care of by mental health professionals, shamen or others who can, hopefully, prevent this sort of attack on innocent victims.

Most recently, just this week, a jilted lover, who is (or, more properly, was) a police officer decided to shoot a happy family, perhaps by inference, I can say that his thought process was that if he couldn't be happy, he didn't want anyone else to be happy either. After shooting an innocent family, walking through the park, he shot himself, so the thoughts he had may never be known or understood. Not that this would protect anyone from the searing pain of losing their loved ones, it could never bring those children's parents back to wholeness and it certainly could not justify the actions of a murderer. The whole story about the current murder is not completely clear, but even after the trial that led to the conviction of the officer from my first story, the details were never made public. At this point, the word is that the officer involved in this weeks murder, had his service weapon taken for mental health reasons in the past. That did not stop him from gunning down five people. A father, a mother, their oldest daughter and their other two children will now bear the cost of this police officer's bad decisions.

Those who advocate for free and open access to weapons often use the phrase "Guns don't kill people." One third of the way through 2015, over 111 people have been killed by cops right here in America. Not all have been black but the numbers of victims of these killer cops have been disproportionately black. How we define our humanity must not include a free pass for law enforcement officers to behave as badly as criminals, nor should we overlook the growing problems that are taking center stage in our modern world. Perhaps everyone is more uneasy with the current state of affairs, perhaps people are feeling more frustrated, more alienated and less secure, but we must not let this undermine our ability to do what is right. I will try to make every effort to not judge police based on the actions of a few bad apples and the couple officers that I do know seem level headed enough to be trustworthy, but knowing that killers also put on the uniform every day will continue to be a source of concern. No population needs to be ruled by fear and my concern is that we are losing sight of that.

ALL LIVES MATTER is not undermining the black lives matter movement, it is a call for humanity. We are all one. It is high time we started acting like it.

Mayday Blessings

Understanding the familiar refrain: Hooray, hooray the first of May, outdoor screwing begins today! Is just one way that we can begin to understand the depth of excitement that Spring brings. Dancing the Maypole, frolicking newborns of virtually every species and the first flush of flowers and greenery are transforming the landscape as well as all that lives upon it.

We saw some beautiful trees budding yesterday that rivaled the peak colors of fall in their beauty, not that they were brighter or more colorful, but because our eyes have seen so much white and beige, their subtle pastel reds and purples mixed with the greys and blacks of the tree trunks holds the promise of the coming growing People living before refrigeration, back when food had not yet been canned or kept under reliable refrigeration or when even keeping dry food safely sequestered from rodents, this was the time of year that pottage (later that word transformed to porridge)alone could feed the people. When we see the reality that the Spring bud time signaled an end to the starving times, and the flush of life and return to health was even more worthy of celebration, perhaps, than today.

I believe the opposite. The depths of winter that we are coming out of has been an epoch of hard times and deprivation. The civilization of the plant has been extorted, oppressed, enslaved and colonized by an ultra-elite crowd. Power and control will not make them show their hand, nor will violence or lashing out. These are all things that they are expert at and their resources to bring overwhelming force to the table comes from their nearly infinite wealth. The blessing that I confer to you this Mayday is to be aware of the fact that our revolution is not being televised. There is a rebirth underway that has been five hundred, no; over one thousand winters in the making. However we are in the quickening phase of our enlightenment.