Blessed Be

It Is On!

My grandson, last week, told me of all people, that one day the earth will be a cinder that will not support life and that we will have to take flight to another Earth-like planet and start ruining that planet next. I'm not sure who has taught him such utter nonsense and at first I did not even reply. My world view was challenged in a fundamental way, trying to grasp just how and why you would teach a child that. The reason that I worked for a non-profit environmental organization for over a decade, the reason I taught Bradley Method childbirth classes and the reason we home-schooled our children was because, as parents, we had hope for not only finding ways to live lightly on the planet, but because we had glimpsed the great abundance that awaits those who learn to interact with natural systems that have been established that work and create health, wealth and satisfaction without raping the planet, our bodies or our minds.

Whatever forces exist that are popularizing the ignorant notion that our whole planet is just some sort of kleenex to be used, abused and thrown away, I for one, am putting you on notice, this is not going to get any easier. Pushing the idea onto the next generation that the inevitable destruction of our entire planet is not only acceptable, but part of some sort of science fiction that we are to believe in is a crime against humanity as well as Planet Earth. I thought through my response to my grandson for several days and then took the time to tell him that it was upsetting to hear him say those things about what he assumed to be a sensible future.

I explained that if we could travel at light speed, we would need to live in space for five hundred years to make the trip to this "New Earth". Looking in the rear-view of history to imagine just how long five hundred years is, the majority of native people in the New World (they actually called North and South America that five hundred years ago) had still not seen a white person. Guns had to be loaded for each shot fired and life spans were roughly half of what they are now. Generations were still the same however, about twenty years each. That means that twenty-five consecutive generations would have to be cooped up inside a small craft, hurling through space for the entire five hundred years. Odd to imagine because we have taken more than a decade to send out out first ever probe that just recently passed beyond the outer limits of what we call our Solar System. Over 600 million dollars was spent to shoot this first unmanned probe into the Universe. Lofting even a single 200 pound person out of our solar system would be exponentially more expensive.

We have seen the results of spending one year in space. It cripples the astronaut. Gravity keeps us here for a reason and our organisms are adapted to live on Earth. Escaping the relatively tiny blue marble we call our home planet may be a wonderful pipe dream, or diversion, but 500 years in a tin can would be impossible, especially if we do not learn how to live in a self contained ecosystem that only has radiation and a few asteroids falling into it. Whatever solutions we may find to the biggest problems with space travel, they will pale in comparison to finding solutions to our humanity. Say, for instance, we do manage to travel at warp speed, cutting the trip by half or even more, would a trip of two hundred years turn out any better? What about just spending five generations in a box? Some people have said that we could be frozen and just thawed and re-animated when we arrive and that would eliminate the need for us to be living while we travel. This would eliminate the potential hazards and costs of feeding ourselves for twenty-five generations, but it would also drastically increase the useless equipment that we would have to send all that way. The microbes and creatures living in our guts and on our skin would be alien life forms wherever we went in the Universe, so we would begin our first steps on the new planet as contaminants.

I am not sure what we think would be accomplished by just changing our address in space, if we refuse to change our approach, we would need to immediately start to make plans for abandoning cinder number two when that has been desecrated as well. There are solutions to all of the ills that face us here on Planet Earth, there is food enough for everyone, we just lack efficient distribution systems and a sense of the sacred nature of the foods we consume. There are enough houses for everyone, but we defend the corporate elites that keep housing from the people who need it. There is even enough water on our planet, but again there are issues with distribution and "ownership" of this precious gift. Once we commodify the sacred, we can only destroy the life-giving properties of that which we have put a price on. Whatever forces have conspired to warp my grandson's mind, get ready to be called out, ruthlessly educated and publicly humiliated. I intend to speak truth to your power with every last ounce of strength that I can muster, every breath that I draw and every example i can provide will be brought to the table in an effort to stop the insanity that flows from desperation.

Food Grows On Water

I live just South of the range of wild rice. There is a band of Zizania that has been harvested as far back as anyone can remember, that circles the globe. It is one of the many symbiotic occurrences that speak to our relationship, not just with the land, but the waters. you see, standing rice is an amazing nutrient source and harbors many insects who can reduce the ability of the rice to seed itself. the interaction of humans with the rice beds transforms the standing rice to projectiles, a good many of which fall into the harvester's canoe, but reseeding the beds with what flies above and beyond the gunnels.

My first foray into harvesting, I think I worked for about two days, left me happily tired, and in possession of about eighty pounds of what was soon to become more work than I had imagined, but  a great boon to the critters of my neighborhood as well. You see, that first year, the rice was under heavy attack from rice worms, a caterpillar that consumes the heart of the grain, leaving just a bit of husk. I estimated that there were tens of thousands of these worms in the eighty pounds, but since I had to dry the rice anyway, I figured that I would pick the worms out. I took my bundle of rice back to Green Bay and before I even began to unwrap the tarp, wasps were hovering around. Wouldn't you know, those "pests", who love a good insect if they can get one, carried away every last rice worm. Each time I would stir and fluff the rice, more worms would be unearthed and taken away. The wasps would hover, swoop in, and take the caterpillar-like worms off in an instant. It almost looked like an insect conveyor belt, but I paid no attention to where they were headed with them all. Pickins were good for wasps that year.

Once dried and parched, the process of roasting the whole seed, husk and all, I had about enough for just over a pound a week for the year. The hulls still needed to be removed and that was a process as well, but again, it was a slow and loving process, giving, as much as receiving, in relationship with the menomin. My favorite way to prepare it is to cook it up and add just a touch of maple and enjoy it just like that. I don't even put salt or butter on it most of the time, because the nutty grass flavor is so beautiful unadorned. I use it in casseroles, stews, venison roasted on a bed of cooked rice and vegetables is also a great way to enjoy it.

Ancient lore, passed down through the ages, recounts how the Ojibwa migrated West, looking for a place where food grew on the water. Here, or just North of here, is such a place and I would love to share what I know of the process with others who want to learn this ancient tradition.

Yesterday

I was minding my own business, acting like a tourist. While riding an open air train at the National Railroad Museum here in Green Bay. In the back side of the facility, there are things set up to look like an old Hobo village. I could not see who did it, but it sounded like a young man interrupted the tour guide, who was talking about the Depression era, specifically Hoovervilles that had popped up across the country. He challenged her use of that term. Our guide explained that many blamed Herbert Hoover for the economic collapse. The young man told her that was only her opinion and he did it quite belligerently. The train was packed and I'm sure that the young woman had been giving the tourists the same speech all summer. No one said a word to the young man about how rude he was being, or how he needed to just be quiet and learn something. Oddly, we seem to be raising a generation of people who want to practice revisionist history so badly that they seem to be offended at any turn of events, even if it took place decades ago.

Explain to people that Abraham Lincoln received slaves as a wedding gift, or that his orders led to the largest one-day massacre of native people and folks will just blink or fix their eyes on a faraway point and you can almost see their brains rejecting the information. I do not worry that this will lead to problems in the future, my concern is for the damage we are doing to our population with this rampant hostility right now, today. Those who cannot understand how we got where we are today, or process the reality that we all must deal with adequately will be willing to let others do their thinking for them in other areas as well. By many assessments, historians have put Herbert Hoover in a class with just a handful of other "bad" Presidents, but what do historians know?

This is like the current slate of Teathuglican candidates who were swept into Congress by groups of massive donors shielded from view by record-breaking donations given to Political Action Campaigns. Money talks and the government for, by and of the people have to grin and bear it. Being offended that the millionaire class has crashed the economy in the past may, in fact, be reasonable, but it was in the past. No amount of outrage, justifiable condemnation or anger will change our history. Certainly, rigorous questioning of the summer help at a tourist facility will not change the way anyone feels about Herbert Hoover. The indignant passenger was convinced that the term "Hoovervilles" was just the tour guide's opinion. Hoping that the truth would become evident to the questioner at some point seems almost as futile as trying to get them to let the tour guide do their job.

All in all, it was a great day, spent with family and a handful of good friends. Perhaps this is why the outburst was seen by me to be so contrarian. I have been on tours where the guide was obviously making things up, but that was half the fun, especially when the tourist trap was a hole in the side of a mountain near Central City, Colorado, but there it was a tour led by a bad actor who was actually making things up. That was the entertainment of the place. Back in the day, around 1973 or1974, Central City had not yet been ruined by legal gambling. The biggest tourist attraction they had at that point in time was the face painted on the barroom floor. The portrait cordoned off by a velvet rope was almost as cool as the old candy store, the fake mine tour and the $6 per night motel that only had room to walk on one side of the bed. Part of the charm was just looking around at things we had not seen before and learning a bit about the history of the area.

Even so, tourists came and after traveling so far to get there, the last thing they did is question the tour guides about things that made no difference in the long run. One interesting thing that I do remember from the old hotel tour in Central City back then is that in spite of their name, silver was king in Colorado. The tour guide mentioned that the locals paved the streets with silver ingots the only time a sitting President came to town. When the President came to town, he arrived passed out drunk, and he stayed drunk enough that he had to be put in his carriage to leave. For all the work the locals did to show their pride and commitment to silver mining and for all their desire to keep silver demand high, U.S. Grant didn't even see the silver street. True or not, it is a good story.

My mother always said, it is better to keep your mouth shut and let others think you are an idiot than to open your mouth and prove them right!

Vital Needs-Interference

All life needs certain things, food/energy, water, space and security. They need a place to feed, to feel safe, and to fornicate, otherwise, their kind die out. These are what are known as vital needs. Interference are those ecological limits, situations, ethics  that present impediments to fulfilling vital needs. Many of the problems that we face are because vital needs are undermined and resources needed for the fulfillment of those vital needs are being withdrawn, withheld or damaged for the profit and sustenance of an elite, so thoroughly in control as to be nearly invisible. The "needs" of these elites are unfathomable to the rest of us, because these tiny fraction of humanity dominate so much of the resource use. For instance, take transit. There are those who commute by helicopter, burning hundreds of times the amount of fuel that the average commuter does. The "Jet Set" as they used to be called are dominating the energy use characteristics of all of us, because their draw down on reserves per mile traveled is the greatest. The waves and gyrations caused in the wake of unfathomable amounts of wealth is usually the only physical evidence of their ethereal yet powerful hand. I write often of how control of our vocabulary limits our ability to discuss issues with the precision necessary to solve and disarm threats to our peace and security. This is just one of the reasons that oligarchies and their crippling grip on our planet are so devastating.

We are sold bills of goods at every turn and although we have been made aware of the concept of "buyer beware" for thousands of years. What we forget is that even when we accept language, if it flawed, we will never get what we bargained for in the transaction. Security is a good word to start with. The monied interests and the ones who have stacked the deck in their favor for hundreds of generations say that it is the result of a police force, and killing. They have a version of reality that allows them to envision security as flowing from the end of a gun. The vast majority define security as having more to do with peace and less to do with defending commercial interests of the vast empires that drive warfare around the globe.

The planet has more than enough of everything we need to meet all of the needs of humanity, but the majority of our wealth and productivity is owned by the banks, the insurance companies, Wall street or your local stock and bond exchange. It is owned increasingly by energy companies, media magnates, mega-churches and associations of those who believe that their version of "events" and "circumstances" are more cogent and astute than the rest of us and that they should and deserve to be in charge of ever-more power and influence. It is not possible for them to admit that they are driving the entire planet down a road to ruin, to do that they would have to admit that other people, other ideas and other realities are operating beyond their perception. The funniest thing is that they are thoroughly convinced that we need them, that they are vital to our existence, but in reality, they are the greatest threat to our survival.

What Are The Odds?

I began an Odyssey years ago, with my son. We canoed down the Wisconsin River for two weeks and passed from below the dam at Castle Rock Flowage, all the way to the Mississippi River at Wyalusing State Park. With a few notable exceptions, and occasional forays into the river towns or wayside rests, we traversed the whole way in a relatively direct route downstream. Much to my chagrin, I made bad choices several times along the way, as navigator and ended up in shallow, leech infested backwaters because I thought there was enough current on the inside of a particular bend in the river to float our boat. Indeed, I probably dragged the canoe about five miles overall. Let that be a lesson to anyone who thinks that there are shortcuts in life. This is lesson number one. If you have never pulled a fully laden canoe through leech infested water, I cannot explain how much this lesson is worth.

As all good tours do, ours got named. Not by a band or promoter as often happens in the entertainment world, not by a conscious choice that we made, but by circumstance and oblivion. We tried several chosen or given names, but the trip has changed both of our lives forever and there is a name for that.

I wish to serve the people of Northeast Wisconsin's District 8. Saladino 4 District 8 is my facebook page for the campaign. I use just three words to sum up the campaign, Honesty, Integrity, Principles. My slogan is "Write-in votes are hardest to steal." Please let anyone you know, across northeast Wisconsin that I am running to serve them, much the way I have chosen to serve the planet, her people and the soils which support nearly all life.

For a time, we called it "Our Wisconsin River Trip", which it was to some extent, because we had not made it, that was the name of the "plan". What we knew to expect and what to bring to make all aspects of life on the river efficient and comfortable as we could. We wanted at least enough shelter to stay dry, at least enough food to not be hungry, and  enough creature comforts and diversions that when we did go ashore, or just wanted to float with the current, we would have things to do. Little did we know then that whatever plan our trip had, that was just a tiny part of what we had in store for us.

We called it "Vacation" for a while, but after the first few miles of paddling, we realized that it would be hard work. We certainly wanted to be able to tell the people we met along the way or the folks when we got home as much about the trip as succinctly as possible..."Castle Rock dam to the Mississippi" might work for some people, but our name had to be more relevant, more descriptive of what it was all about. After our return, the scrapbook got titled Whacky Westward Wager, but this is not the whole story. These things never are.

Ultimately, as we traversed the miles, we kept hearing ourselves repeat the mantra, "What are the odds?" It seemed that inexplicably, we became the vortecies, on a macro level to the micro-swirls made by our paddles in the great stream, ocean bound. We felt cohesive, but passed through the environment in a whirl, of images, scents and relationships with the world around us which harmonized with the cyclic flow of the water. The macro beyond our perception kept binging things into our vortex of experience that amazed and astounded us. In one place, we pulled over to a boat launch and dock to eat our lunch and an old fellow looked at the fishing poles and said, you ain't gonna catch nothing with a rig like that. Those are for fishing in lakes. Then, he proceeded to rig our poles for free and he gave us some tackle, but he told us worms worked best. this old friend we had not met before that day was hesitant at first to take the apple we offered, until he saw that we had a whole bag. When we got on the water and settled into the boat, we said in unison, "What are the odds?"

We had, in two weeks, no less than several dozen instances when one or the other of us would remark, what are the odds? There were a few times we said it in unison, in fact, each is a story all its own. We had a few things that those words could have been said about, but were left unsaid, or "spoken" between us with a silent flicker of recognition. If we were in a jovial mood, we would often shout, or if on land, we would jump up and click our heels and emit the response 100%! Once, we got fine art, given to us by a nun, what the heck are the chances? 100%! We could not find a place to camp, someone would offer to take us home to their place and have our tent in their yard. "Our kids would love to camp out in the yard tonight." and it would be decided. The chances of nearly all of our meetings seemed so tiny as to be almost imperceptible, but there you would have it, ice cream in the woods on a hundred degree day, or a fish that, once breaking the surface of the river, flails in just the right way to get himself off your hook.


One particular portage was noteworthy because we left a sleeping bag behind. We were in danger of being caught in tight quarters with a giant tour boat near Wisconsin Dells and did not do inventory before shoving off. Lesson number two, always do the "idiot check". What is the value of wasting half a day of time that could have been spent on the water? We spent half a day getting back to the portage after we noticed it gone and by then, it had grown legs and went home with someone who needed it more that we. Dejectedly, we began to hitch-hike back downriver to the canoe, where we had stashed our gear, and the guy who gave us a ride back downriver gave us his car blanket and a ride all the way to the place we left our gear. What are the odds? You guessed it. Time and time again, we would land in advantageous circumstances and the people around us would behave graciously, magnanimously and almost magically.

Because I like to keep things topical, this is not just some old story about the odds being 100% way back when I was on this transformative journey. We are constantly journeying, going down the river of time and sometimes, when you leave something behind it is not worth going back for. sometimes the gifts that going back bring your way make it worth the effort. When we begin to make choices that make sense, rather than ones based on a belief in scarcity and lack, we will make the right connections, meet the right people and develop the most important relationships along our way. The inexplicable nature of Bernie Sanders, or for that matter, back when Barack Obama got elected, the will of millions of good people everywhere is creating a resounding glow over virtually all of the people of our great nation, indeed, the planet. Understand that what we hear about and read in the popular media will always be gut wrenching, that is how the media outlets know that they will not "lose" us. They would rather we be swirled about it the toxic mix that they brew up that that we align ourselves with our communities, ask deeper questions, or imbibe of the flow of grace that transcends what they have on offer.

In my heart of hearts, I truly wish that the oligarchs would have an Ebeneezer Scrooge kind of night and that they would emerge from that journey cleansed and of conscience, but that seems to be not in the offing. deeper still, in my soul, I feel the abundance and grace of the world we would create if we took it back from the counting houses, the Wall Street raiders, the corporados and those whose holdings are tax free somewhere else in the world. Darwin said that "survival of the fittest" is the rule, but I have seen far too many proofs of the fact that it is actually survival of the luckiest and it looks as if the oligarchs luck is running out.