Seeking Input

I am currently working on a support statement that introduces people to ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc.
It needs to be brief, but clear, invitingly rational and still convey our creativity and the important work that our tours get done. This message will be the header of our sign up sheet for those who want either more information, to join us on a tour or who just want to donate to the cause. This idea is modeled after the one that we circulated with Citizens for a Better Environment decades ago, but the idea is the same. It works as both an introduction to who we are and a starting point for asking people to join us in the revolution that is not being televised. ECO-Tours has never advertised, other than putting signs out on the days of our tours and classes, but the time has come to pursue spreading the message that we are all needed to make the necessary changes to stop climate change, protect our watersheds and to produce more food closer to where people live. These necessary changes bring with them challenges, but all of us here at ECO-Tours believe that each challenge is really an opportunity.

Those familiar with the Trickster myths of native cultures will understand that although crisis usually results from every action taken by Trickster, humanity is always better off or receives some important benefits from having to deal with his shenanigans. In our culture today, asserting that individuals matter, that they have the power to change the world around them and that their efforts are worth expending in activities that they feel are "worth" doing can be a challenge, but this statement needs to be an invitation to participate in our efforts to share the work involved in building stronger communities, a more stable environment and improving environmental quality for future generations. Conveying the fact that this work is important and worthy of support is probably the most crucial part of the message, but the wording also needs to make it clear that their signature represents agreement with our goals and mission, to leave a better world in the wake of our passing. This is a first draft, but I have been thinking about how to say what needs to be said for far too long. I'm not sure what to think about the following or if it even does the things we need it to.

"We the undersigned support ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. and their ongoing program of research, education and outreach. We support their ongoing efforts to create healthy soil, plant trees, improve water quality and to encourage diverse communities where none existed before. I wish to add my name to the list of state residents who understand the need to stabilize climate, provide habitat for wildlife, plant trees, restore healthy soils and protect water quality."

If you are interested in either helping to wordsmith this statement or join us on a tour, please contact us by e-mail at tnsaladino42@ hotmail.com, write us at 1445 Porlier street, Green Bay, WI 54301 or call at (nine twenty) double eight four-triple, four. 

Blood Moon, Harvest Moon, Super Moon, Eclipse

Last night people from around the planet looked toward the sky to see a phenomenon that will not occur again for another generation or so. I remember where I was at the last lunar eclipse, about a generation ago and can only dream about the possibility of seeing the next one. Our ancient ancestors had their own mythology about the sky, the characters in it and the messages that it held for their society and the entire culture of the time. Our "scientific" approach to astronomy tells us that we are just looking at balls, racing through space. "Nothing to see here" seems to be their policy and belief. However, that did not stop billions of people from looking up last night. We are still startled to amazement at the transformation we saw, unfolding before our eyes as our closest neighbor in space drifted (or raced, depending on your perspective) through our shadow.

Our neighbor girl came outside just before the disc of the moon began to show the dent made by our planet. She is in Junior High and seemed to believe that the eclipse would occur a little each night for several weeks. Imagine her surprise when the moon changed form in real time and turned dusky red in just an hour or so! When we look to the sky, with knowledge about how vast it is, even though we may understand that each night more stars become visible as their light finally reaches us from distant parts of the universe, it still has the power to amaze and overwhelm our senses, especially if we flee the lights of the city. You see, our human-made light pollution comes between us and our heavens as surely as a chain link fence topped with razor wire comes between Syrians and their freedom.

Each day, the Universe expands, or at least our ability to see it does. The net gain in the size of the universe (because the light finally reaching our planet) is Sixteen billion, ninety-four million, seven hundred sixty-four thousand eight hundred miles. This distance radiates out in all directions and has been doing so since the beginning of time. It is funny that one of our closest neighbors in space can often get us thinking about the faraway ones as well. Here on Earth, we are experiencing the same sort of unfolding of consciousness. With ever-faster communication techniques and the digital revolution, my words can b shared as fast as the speed of light with more and more people each day. My words may never grow old and in perhaps ten thousand years they will be just as topical and wondrous as they are this day. The very nature of time has changed because as long as the ideas we find are new to us, they have the patina of new ideas. On the internet, there will never be the smell of moldy or mildewed paper. Whatever font is popular today will look the same, or be updated to please the eye of the reader with the click of their mouse.

It has been said that the more things change, the more they remain the same.  

The sky was alive for those who spent far more time outside at night than we can imagine and some cultures still believe that the heavens are populated by ancestors and great leaders of the past. It can feel pretty good to think/know that one day you will once again be with your loved ones. Today, science has proven beyond a reasonable doubt so many things that it is difficult to imagine that one day we will be transformed from stardust back into to an actual star but the idea of heaven survives.

Centuries from now, if there are people to inhabit this planet, we will still recognize the Autumnal Equinox as harvest time, we will still select the seeds we save for planting next year and we will still celebrate the abundance of the growing season and the moons will continue to speak to us about the passing of time, the wonders of the heavens and the nature of the rest of the Universe. A friend shared a comment attributed to Neil DeGrasse-Tyson in which he said that the difference between a super moon and a regular moon is like the difference between a sixteen inch pizza (40.64cm) and a sixteen point zero seven inch pizza (40.8178cm). I think his point was to minimize the difference, but the fact remains. If you like pizza, more is always better! If you like information, knowledge or stars, this is your time! What we do with it is up to us. There will always be more, that is the nature of the Universe, why not accept it?

For those who are new to this site, I write most of this blog and I also work as a shaman, guide and educator for ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc.  This Odyssey began many, many years before we incorporated. We were an informal gathering of like-minded individuals who mostly worked at citizens for a Better Environment, a now defunct not-for-profit that educated the public and represented the public's right to clean air, pure water and protection from hazardous substances that corporate welfare recipients (polluters) unleash on us in the process of making their living. This informal group of friends would meet up and take tree seedlings into denuded areas, corridors along parkways, publicly held land and parks. We also reforested private property if the owners would understand that we were not a landscaping concern, we used expert understanding of habitat, soil type degree of slope, aspect, moisture, and a range of conditions to guide our species selection and planting. Some lanowners were surprised when we told them that we could not plant climax species trees until there were thriving communities of pioneer species to provide cover so that the mature forest trees would have a fighting chance.

We treat our non-profit as a business, but the usual modus operandi by which businesses are run are not something we expect to work in a sustainable system. We want healthy trees and to get to that desired end point, we need to start with healthy soils. char allows you to help recover soil effectively and the changes can last for centuries. Truly a seven generations of benefits for a relatively small investment. We model what we do on the way nature has always worked. We build relationship through the process of finding our way in the world. If there were to be a single moment or two that exemplify our work, it would be the moment of realization that came about, speaking with a developmentally disabled friend who said, "I love trees. They make oxygen that we need to live!", or perhaps the times that birds have come to alight on tiny seedlings, just planted moments earlier. The bird, seemingly curious about the new addition to their neighborhood, performs their pre-flight checklist before flying off and drops a bit of fertilizer on the ground beneath the tree. We teach a different kind of logic about ecological reality. all of nature has integrity. Our methods put people, profit and the planet on the same scale of importance. A three-legged stool of economic relevance. Our tours are always fun and educational, but with a more important twist, the benefits of our tours last for generations. We create relationships which have the power to outlive us.

This different approach can be difficult to understand. In the early days, before we formally organized, I was doing outreach to potential landowners whose land looked perfect for planting, places that would have big impacts downstream. Property that frequently got rained out or always produced marginally, you would think that even the farmer would know that it was not worth their time to pull equipment through it. I had several farmers try to argue, "That's not a creek, that's a ditch." Thirty years later, someone else owns the land and the new landowner has started to reforest the places that we would have targeted for recovery all those years earlier. The tide can be turned, but it can only be done so through understanding and realization brought about by expanding our horizons, making friends, participating in relationships. Just like nature does it. Treat all those you spend time with as if the moments you share are sacred and you will find infinite blessings about you.

We touch one another and the world in profound ways. Each string in the web of life touches many others. As with most growth processes, ECO-Tours needs to adapt to several challenges that came about upon trying to scale up our char retort. We went from a five gallon (20 liters) retort to a fifty-five gallon (220 liters) one. Our current hearth was only capable of partially charring the material. We need a much larger fire, or an oven large enough to enclose the entire retort to create that much material at one time. The good news is that we now have commercial quantities to sell! Send us your garden dimensions and we can help you to either make your own char or we can mail char to you because it is ultralight and pretty fun to enrich, inoculate and colonize, you can tailor your char to your location with our unique instruction book. In our passing through the planet, we leave a wake, a trail of gasses and fumes, we consume resources, discard packaging and procreate, seek shelter from storm and strife. The concepts that we have taught from the beginning are all alive within the char. In their own way, the microbes that inhabit char are just like us, trying to make a living. By mimicry of natural processes, we can fix atmospheric carbon directly into soil, creating a diverse mix of organisms invisible to the naked eye, but not insignificant by any measure.

On an acre of typical "healthy" soil that we see in modern times, soil microbes per acre have the same amount of biomass as a full grown cow and her calf. Each handful of char has fourteen acres of surface area. You can do the math. Plants grow not by soaking up chemicals in the soil directly, their preferred foods are the waste products of microbes inhabiting the soil. healthy soil promotes healthy plants and healthy plants need less fertilizers and pesticides. These last two reasons alone are enough to convince me of char's merit!

Clown Car

We are seeing the beginning of a long process of paring down the field of Teathuglican candidates. Having been in the double digits, the large number of candidates has certainly not turned up any desirable skills, intellectual capacities, statesmen or stateswomen and certainly no diplomats.One of the dropouts was facing legal woes for breaking election laws and collusion, but that was barely discussed. The Governor of Wisconsin, who also committed election fraud and racketeering, although he has the State Attorney General and State Supreme Court in his pocket and has managed to avoid prosecution thus far.

See, I have the distinct, and perhaps odd, awareness of how elections are counted. Having been a poll worker since the eighties, I can only say that elections have become far easier to steal. Our Governor has done it three times. Anyone who was paying attention to the Republican debates, or indeed any of the electioneering that has been done by Scott Walker over the past couple years knows that he is not very smart, yet even his organization could figure out how to game the system. The evidence, for those who do not follow electoral politics very closely was evidenced by the returns on election night. I have been a long time poll watcher and know that the way votes are counted, with the smaller towns and villages posting their returns first and larger districts posting later, there has historically been a late night trend line that predominantly favors the Democrats.

In the last three elections, the trend line makes a sharp break from the way it behaved in the past. Instead of Republicans starting out well and slowly losing found, the Democrats had the opposite pattern. They usually start out doing poorly, but gain steam as urban areas begin to report later in the evening or early in the morning the day after the polls close. This has gone on for decades and is as regularly seen as elections themselves. The lead of Republicans always trickles away at the end of the night. If the trend lines cross, the Democrats win, if the Democrats cannot surpass the early lead that the Republicans build up, when rural districts report, as the urban votes come in, the Republicans tend to win.

The last three elections in Wisconsin have had the exact opposite thing happen at the end of the night. The first time I saw the trend lines reverse course, I did not understand what was going on. That was the first time that optical scan balloting was used in our district. The only way to assure that the scanning devices are not rigged is to hand-count the paper ballots.

This will not stop the illegal and immoral acts of the ruling class, but it could help us make a dent in their unequal power. There have been millions of voters who have been disenfranchised across our nation. Over the last four years, 120 cases of voter fraud have been charged and investigated. Of these about eighty have been proven to have taken place. However, hundreds of times that many people are dropped from the poll lists because of a process called caging. In the process, nondescript letters are sent to registered voters. They often are made to look like junk mail and require their contents to be returned to remain on the poll list of registered voters.  In my polling place alone, where I am the chairperson, we get several of these at every election. People I know, who have voted every election as long as I can remember will be required to re-register if they want to vote.

At the very least this is an inconvenience, but it speaks to a larger issue because occasionally the voter will be so disgusted, or too busy to go through the process again. They may have left their documents at home or just stopped by on their way to work knowing that they can be in and out in just a few minutes...why wouldn't they? After all, we pollworkers have always found their name quickly and efficiently before. For years I wondered why there were several people at every election who had been purged from poll lists, even though they had been voting for years and just recently I was informed how this works and the intention behind the dropping of names from the lists.

Additionally, there are continuous attacks on organizations that perform voter registration drives, people living out of state and registered to vote in their new locations are still eligible to receive ballots form our state and I have had several Republicans boast that they help others who do not even live in Wisconsin, keep their voting rights, even though their friends or relatives live out of state. One of these "conservative" braggarts was even a pollworker herself! Imagine, participating in the democratic process but gaming the system to assure your own votes get counted twice as often as the average person. This is why the entire field of Teathuglicans is so out of touch with reality. They actually believe that we are at war against one another. We all know what that leads to, demonizing your enemy, underhanded tricks and the idea that all is fair. Lying, cheating and even stealing elections is permitted under these questionable moral standards.

The Republican primary may just pick the best clown. It must just be too much to ask, but having candidates that understand the issues, have ideas about the relative importance of issues and logical plans that make sense would be too much to ask. I have often wondered why we allow such morally inept and politically confused group to be taken seriously. Oddly enough, when you step back and look at the overall picture, the Teathiuglicans have made plenty of hay by demonizing anyone willing to advocate for compassion, diplomacy, humanitarian ideas or paying fair taxes for government services. The biggest players in our oligarchy are the Banksters and Wall Street's hedge fund managers, the insurance industry and their cohorts in the drug companies, and the media giants who tell us what to think. The Emperor wears no clothes however. The clown car of candidates are only there as court jesters, the real bosses remain sequestered in their lavish apartments away from public scrutiny and they are the ones pulling the strings of their political puppets. Rigging elections is just one of the techniques that the uberwealthy use to keep us as slaves to their continued power and control over our nation and the world.

Population Policy

Periodically we are reminded of our burgeoning human population. However, those who pedal fear and hate often forget to tell the whole truth about world population growth. It is true that when the turn of the second to the last last century occurred, the world population was under two billion souls and today, we are over six billion. world population nearly quadrupled between 1800 and 1900. The majority of that growth and the high rate at which the human population grew took place in the most recent fifty years. In 1970, about fifty years ago, there were roughly half as many people on Earth as there are today, but if current trends continue, it will take over 200 years to double world population again. We know many of the factors that lead people to reproduce. We also know many of the reasons people decide not to procreate. Current trends seem to indicate that the human population is becoming less likely to rush headlong into our next doubling of population and the reasons are fairly straightforward.

We have known for decades that as people, especially women, get more education, they likely will have fewer children. We have also known for decades that in many impoverished parts of the planet, children are often seen as a parent or grandparent's retirement security. As often happens in nature, the laws of diminishing returns and the tragedy of the commons have combined to force us to re-think our breeding practices.

It is tempting to think of Earth as a hostile place where all organisms are locked in some sort of battle for resources and that the rule of tooth and claw assures our brutality and thuggishness, however reality paints a different sort of picture. Darwin had it nearly right. He did miss an important part of his theory and it has had devastating effects on the way we think about many, many issues. His scientific underpinnings grew out of the knowledge base of the Georgian Era, although because he was "ahead of his time", his sensibilities were decidedly Victorian. "Survival of the fittest" seemed to make sense, in fact, in very real ways, it upheld the ideation that kings actually did have a divine right to rule. Their power, status and the control they held over the masses were "natural" characteristics, able to be "proved" by science. Just as Calvin made the association between spiritual health and financial success, survival of the fittest proved the need for utter ruthlessness in both war and economics.

As I have said for decades, Darwin would have been closer to the mark had he stated that survival of the luckiest is what allows genetic traits to be passed on. The fittest creature of the forest can still be struck by lightening, have a tree fall on them or fail in their attempt to feed. Fitness may help, but luck has more to do with things than any of us seem to realize. Darwin did not have the luxury of looking at  the whole planet simultaneously. Today, we can see, through satellite imagery, wafting clouds of aerosols, heat islands over our cities, and giant clouds of airborne dust blown off the Sahara Desert blowing all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to the Amazon Basin. If the fittest people on Earth live in the Sahel, but global climate change stops the rains, even for just a few years, their unluckiness trumps their fitness. Large predators, like the ones we share the top of the food chain with, "naturally" only secure prey on about ten percent of their strikes. nine out of ten times, the prey is just lucky enough to escape the assault.

In our unnatural state, we humans have duplicated many of the natural phenomena without even understanding them. In some respects we have created systems according to our flawed understanding and that has led to even greater problems as our technologies increase the sphere of influence we have upon the world around us. Simultaneously, we do not understand the need for many naturally occurring relationships and are surprised when they enter into our "way of life".

It is interesting that the most appropriate ways to point out our lack of connection with the planet are often the same ones that were overlooked or misunderstood centuries ago, but there you have it. Today, the unluckiest live at or near sea level. In very short order, everything they worked so hard to establish, in some cases for many generations will be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels. Extreme fitness won't help if you need a boat to get to dry land. Living in an apartment building completely surrounded by ocean may not be a valid option. The seven hikers who perished in the recent flooding looked very fit and smoke jumpers need to be in top physical condition to even qualify for their jobs, but when a wall of fire blows over you, survival may not be an option.

We will always need to have enough new births to carry on our species, but in a world out of balance, many young people are realizing that they can either have a tenuous life without children or perhaps have no options, or at least fewer of them, if they have to care for more than just their own needs. We have tools and techniques that can double agricultural output, so technically we could double our population again without creating any more arable land. The problems we face are more of distribution. more than enough food is harvested each year to more than feed the entire population of the planet, but we lack the will to distribute that food equitably.

We are now in an age that can draw on knowledge we never had before, but that will not be enough to solve our problems. We need to also forget many of the lies we have been told about how we fit into this planet, how we are supposed to interact with the world around us and in some respects, the very nature of relationship. The words of Cat Stevens have been on my mind a lot lately. Take your time, think a lot, think of everything you've got, for you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not. Perhaps the best indicator of world population is hope. When we have hope for the future, who would not want to bring new life into the world? Perhaps our current state of affairs is self-limiting the "population bomb".

Bernie Sanders

It amuses me that the oligarchs can be so blind. It is sad that the beneficiaries of their support seem so clueless. It thrills me that we may yet preserve our "sacred" democracy and that millions of people here and around the world are following our politics more closely than ever. The messages that Bernie Sanders has been conveying have remained virtually the same for decades and that seemed utterly ridiculous when he first started saying them, because everyone knew that rich white males had the entire political system tied up neatly in their bags of tricks. The backroom deals, the lies foisted upon the American people and the rest of the world were so gaudy and brash that our politics was closer to what you might see at Disneyland or a carnival, rather than having anything to do with truth, justice or any of the things that made our country great.

We have a long history of crushing the individual in favor of the masses and the uberwealthy have known that for decades. Many allowed themselves to be mass marketed and sold a bill of goods. That is not new. Many more allowed themselves to be just ignorant enough about the political realm to not understand what was really going on, but Bernie Sanders has been standing for what is right, true and good for so long that there is no question that he is on the side of our nation and our way of life in ways that most other candidates either do not or won't understand. Bernie has seen the dark side of the current system and is not afraid to work to fix many of the most terrible problems that we face.

I live in Wisconsin. Our largest city has the dubious title of Most Segregated City in America. There are parts of Milwaukee that have been allowed to run down for over fifty years, places the police just don't go and places where no nutritious food is available for miles. Redlining, the process whereby white realtors and bankers colluded to refuse to show blacks any homes in white neighborhoods. If black families wanted to buy property in a neighborhood beyond "their limits", the house would mysteriously have an offer on it and the potential buyers could be told that the buyer was very interested and might easily get in a bidding war if they decided to put an offer on the house. Steering blacks away from the white neighborhoods was sold to other whites as a way to "protect property values", but we have seen what they have done instead.

This is what allowed a friend of mine to buy a house in one of the black neighborhoods in Milwaukee for six thousand dollars. (less than my very old used car cost.) That same home, sitting anywhere in the "white" part of the city would have been "worth" twenty times more. We frequently forget that our desires and decisions have impacts. One of those has been the "loss" of over 50% of black males into the "justice system" The last time I checked the numbers, it was 53% of the adult black male community in Milwaukee was either on paper, doing time or awaiting trial. This is not because of any particular lawlessness, but because of unequal treatment by the justice system. Bernie wants to fix that. Rich white men do not want to fix the justice system because it lets corporate thieves walk and generates millions of dollars of income for other rich white men. One of the fastest growing industries has become the private prison system. Without wasting a dime on education, healthcare or counseling, private prisons are more akin to libraries full of people, except they don't even care for their people as much as librarians care for books.

The issue of justice system reform has been around for a long, long time and Bernie has been talking about how we need to change it for decades. He has been working as a Senator to get congress to make better decisions, but frankly he has been outnumbered by the wealthy whites who either don't care, or don't think it is a problem. The majority of both Democrats and Republicans are beginning to see the light. Many of my Republican friends are saying that Bernie Sanders is the only candidate that is making any sense.

It Is Ironic

It is ironic that a rich white man was responsible for the first law that preserved  forests. Well one tree at least, the oak. Until you realize the circumstances which brought the edict about. The King, of England, banned the cutting of any oak, because he wanted to build as many ships as possible. If anyone were going to be deforesting, it would be him, to expand the empire.

When we understand the motivations behind action, we get the same relative boost in meaning as one experiences by understanding the phrase actions speak louder than words. Words are but paltry expression of mega-concepts and experiences that defy description. What I mean by transformative compared to any other human may be a completely different experience. When some people say "God bless him." when someone behaves kindly or responsibly, others might just think, "good human". The irony is that we often neglect to look past the surface meanings and claims that we run up against in our daily lives. we hear a cacophony of words, but by the actions we see around us, they don't mirror what people say.

My brother, today posted a video of a woman he has seen on his morning commute multiple times. Because he was ride sharing, he could have someone else capture the video while he gave a description of her previous behavior and she actually did the three dangerous things that he had claimed he had seen her do, almost on cue. I imagine that she thinks that the people too slow to get out of her way are in the wrong, and we let her think that. Each day on her morning commute, she drives dangerously and some others are on the watch for her. We, as a society let her tell herself and others that she is justified because her destination must obviously be more important than everyone else and their safety. Until you realize that as a woman, she has been attacked and marginalized throughout her life. She may mistake violence for love or ridicule and taunting for a show of affection. Whatever the case, the lady needs help.

We all know that our planet is being poisoned by the use of fossil energy, yet we continue to build more capacity for destroying the atmosphere. Poisoning the oceans and sterilizing the last remaining bits of healthy soil left on the continents does not prove that we are a superior race, only that we are not thinking straight. One would think that by now we would have learned from the Tragedy of the Commons. It is one of the first ecological truths understood by primitive people who had gathered together to graze animals on the same land. The marginal return rate as you add animals (or oil wells, or straws into the aquifer) goes down, not up and to make a go of it, the person making the greatest impact has their wealth subsidized by the damage done to the resources of the "others". In the case of fossil energy, that is all other life forms on planet Earth. In terms of water, the big users operate to the detriment of every other being in the watershed and if the draw down in the water table is significant, even people downwind in the airshed will be affected.

Isn't it ironic that even though the vast majority of citizens of the world know, or at least have heard about the falling oil prices, but the corporate welfare stooges who collect big money subsidies for "exploration" are continuing to try to increase production. When will they learn that WE DON'T WANT THEIR BLACK GOO! The market has crashed because we are actually learning to combine trips, shop closer to home, save the money we would have squandered in the gas tank to make our homes nicer or our yards produce a bit of food. Now, we are starting to see a more sensible approach to energy and the writing is on the wall if we would just stop subsidizing the giant energy industry, renewable sources for energy would blossom almost overnight. Heck, just the 10% fall in consumer goods produced by China reduces world oil demand significantly. !0% less cheap plastic crap from china requires 10% less dirty energy and petrochemical waste to feed their supply chain. In some ways the worldwide depression has a positive side!

Isn't it ironic that some would rather go to their graves on the wrong side of history than ever have to learn anything? How is it that we have let them amass so much power? This is why I continue to make biochar and teach others how to make it. doubling the output of arable land is the best way I know to reward people for staying on the land, loving it and reaping the benefits of a recovering ecosystem. I am available for consulting on ECO-related questions for growing your relationship with your land. Please contact me at: tnsaladino42@hotmail.com