I Have To Laugh

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When you get up close to this sculpture, you get a true sense of what being an actual ankle-biter would be like. Those unaware of the term might be interested to know that some people call children, especially small, precocious and strong spirited ones, ankle-biters. In my estimation, this reflects almost as much ignorance toward children and making a fiberglass statue of a native chief does toward native people. How using toxic chemicals to edify and memorialize the spirit of a people our forefathers nearly wiped out, who sanctified Mother Earth, can be justified...I have always wondered.

In the end, we can bear witness to many injustices, understand the disconnect between war speak and reality. To give just a short list, we have collateral damage when we kill innocents; smart bombs are actually just as stupid as all the other bombs in that they can only be "used" to destroy; military intelligence is really just conniving, duplicity and a veiled threat or intimidation (which is the opposite of intelligent) We must look to our world to make sense of what is around us, to make our way through the turmoil, the jungle of unregulated greed and fear mongers, to negotiate the language of lies. In our search for truth, getting straight on the language we choose to speak, the ideas we use to shape our reality and the quality of our mental pallette that will be used to color and interpret the data we do receive.

When we bump up against a wall of crap, or one or another of the vestiges of The Big Lie, a lifesaving reaction is to laugh, because if you investigate further or dwell on the madness, it may well make you cry. I'm sure that on some level this echoes words that I tried to put together in a prior post, or at least tries to clarify the meaning behind them.The iconographic images that we are fed about native people are often of the stoic and unafraid "chief", the defeated alcoholic, or the wild savage, riding bareback and firing either stolen bullets or flaming arrows at a circled wagon train. Many, of my generation, have seen cigar store Indians, picked up cheap at antique stores before people began to realize that these images are "collectable" if only because they are so distasteful. These realizations and understandings of our reality have to make you laugh, or they would make us cry.

The truth is that we perpetrated genocide on the true Americans, continuing the onslaught for over five hundred years. To this day, we rape and torture the very sacred Earth that they aspired to remain one with, so in essence, we are continuing to burn, bomb and bulldoze their temple. Beyond that, the sacred creation, that which all life flows from. If we were Islamists, we would be the ones whose innocent neighbors would be wiped out for. We continue to use war like Raid, the popular insect killing aerosol poison in a can. In fact, I distinctly remember seeing people with t-shirts proclaiming that they were abut to open a can of whoop ass on anyone who crossed them. The can looked a bit like a Raid canister. They were funny, but only in that they relate to a definite reality in our day and age. We had a fellow, who was supposed to be merging onto the highway, just yesterday, become belligerent and flip us off because he did not like the fact that when he felt the need to merge, we had not gotten out of his way. Clearly, he has never been educated as to what merge actually means, but he was feeling like the injured party. This too is funny, because someone must have told him that he is always right, no matter what reality might have to say about the situation.

Another layer of hilarity is slathered on top, like decadent icing on a sinfully fluffy brownie, the probable reason that the irate driver was acting like a bully is that he was coddled in his formative years, probably because his own mother had been slapped down and made to feel inadequate by her spouse and her response was to never want to bring the pain of learning to her son. The really funny thing is that these sorts of power and control dynamics and the culture that has allowed them to continue is based on the lie that bullies, mostly rich, white, men, have the power to rule and the rest of us need to get out of their way. The funniest thing is that we continue to act as if that great big lie is true. It is even funny that now, the slaves don't need chains because there literally has become nowhere to hide.

This is also part of why the revolution will never be televised...and that is funny too, because ignoring the people and our wishes, is no longer working. Finally, after hundreds of years, the truth is out, the jig is up and the piper needs to be paid. The oligarchs want us to foot the bill for their excesses and continue to keep our heads down, shoulder to the wheel of their debts with own obligations on our backs, yet the majority see through the lies, like a dissolving doily that used to cover a relatively tiny patch of horror. The funny thing is that we are living in the most profound and uninterrupted time of peace on Earth, but the cameras keep multiplying the dwindling carnage, making up more and more ridiculous reasons to blow things up.

Meeting Adversity With Diversity

When we are lied to by the major media outlets, we are frequently given the idea of a silver bullet, a single bullet theory about how we are to meet every challenge. for instance, "If we make everyone take off their shoes, we will put a stop to those dangerous shoe bombers", or "If we test children more, we will be able to better determine what schools are failing." My readers understand that I hate using destructive analogies to describe things, because I'm pro peace, not anti war; Perhaps the very idea of a silver bullet is so contrary that the danger it holds for the planet and our species cannot be ameliorated. Of course, the oligarchs want us to think about bullets, so that is the name of the theory. My attempt here will be to deconstruct the lie and build a solid foundation for a more truthful approach to future decision-making. Rest assured, there are no silver bullets, at least being used, the whole idea of weaponry, every single new development that has been added to the equipment of war is to make weapons kill more people faster at a lower per unit cost. Making any bullet out of silver guarantees that it will never be used.

The construction of this lie rests on another lie that has been told down through the ages. The actual wording of the lie can be expressed in several ways, but the meaning of it is pretty much the same every time. "The majority of people are simpletons", thus the need for simple solutions. Heck, if we are all just barely smart enough to tie our shoes, how the heck can we learn a bunch of different things? A perfect example of this is recycling. Since the left capitulated with the right, finding ways to centralize and destabilize the recycling market to serve the biggest players, choice and awareness by the general public have actually been reduced. Here comes the deep truth now, source separation is more than 1,000 times more efficient than co-mingled recycling. This leads to several extra handling requirements, each with an unavoidable energy requirement (read: subsidies to fossil energy generating interests) Transit to a separate separation facility, and the most offensive cost, from that facility to where it can be useful, because the first trip could have been there all along.

The co-mingled waste stream in my town is now telling people "Everything except film and foam", this assures that some film and foam will make it into the waste stream because some illiterate people can't read the word except, some won't care and oddly enough there are those out there who will purposely throw that material in because they are hoping to make recycling at all go away. None of these folks are simple, they each have executive functioning capability and sentience. Even those doing the wrong things consistently cannot be educated because their trash is by definition co-mingled. If we used source separation, the opportunity to exert corrective action on those undermining or misusing the system could be facilitated. Imagine how quickly things would change if there were opportunities for communication, not just top down directives. In my household, we have source separation for Aluminum, cast/extrusions, sheet and cans. We have steel/iron, copper and battery bins. The few smaller scale recycling facilities that I have used were always happy to see me, even if I did have smaller weights to recycle, now that regulations have crushed all but the largest players, I can see that they care less about providing a service and are much more interested in the profits.

Here is a big black hole right in the middle of the overarching scheme, big money has no interest in saving the planet, they are the industrialists of a different age, willing to sacrifice all in pursuit of dollars. The word recycling is used as a balm of the consciousness of the exploited and in no way represents an attempt to do things a better way. I use the bins, but in our household, we only put out recycling every other time or a bit less so, perhaps 8-12 times each year, however, the giant lumbering truck with the robot arm for unloading my bin rumbles by every two weeks, another subsidy to the fossil fuel and packaging industries. When following the money, it is not surprising that all the tentacles seem to be attached to the same wretched body, the greedy oligarchs.

Within the culture and society of the revolution that is not being televised, are sub cultures based on a variety of approaches to meeting the collective needs of the participant/members. I help the neighbor with his gardening technique, he shares veggies that I have elected not to grow. If my car needs brakes and I can help someone move across town, we work a non-cash deal. By serving, we always have enough. If what the oligarchs claimed were true, we could not balance a deal made up of apples and oranges, or we would viciously fight over the splitting of hairs as their lawyers are instructed to do in their dealings btw (by the way).  Doing the right thing has never been about expedience or profit margins as the rich and powerful understand them. Perhaps it is they who are ignorant.

When a mature forest is blown down, or when it burns it is perhaps the ultimate adversity for the landscape. Instead of having a continuous bulwark against storms, perhaps a hundred feet off the ground, and a proliferation of rootlets to absorb moisture and slow the flow of water, preventing it from having erosive force, everything is laid bare, for sun to sterilize and rain to pelt and wash away Soil particles take centuries to create, but only a moment of absorbing the force of rain, an they can go away, forever. Native forests in my area typically have around three hundred trees per acre. When a fire sweeps through or a tornado rips the trees away, millions of plants, whose seeds had laid dormant in the soils burst forth in a profusion of life. Trees that clone and spread appear relatively quickly and then, perhaps tens of thousands of taller pioneer species, only some of whom will survive, take their place in the mix. all of this will eventually die, creating new soil upon the formerly barren wasteland. Our approaches need to mimic nature if we are to survive.

When we try a million things to solve a problem, perhaps some will not be successful, but those that are not will at least contribute to the success of all the others. 

Many have pointed to the Myth of Increased Leisure, the anthropological truth that science continues to prove, that no "advanced" culture has more free time than "primitive" people. Every technology that members of "advanced" peoples rely on to make lives easier have secondary and tertiary impacts on the biosphere, need for repair, technologists, support services or far off expenditures of energy that negate the energy savings, no outstrip them. whereas "primitives" were able to provide themselves with food shelter and clothing working less than three hours per day. That allows all members of the culture to spend more time relaxing, thinking, playing music and enjoying life. We all know that relationships trump wealth every time, so why not make every tool and implement that we do own beautiful?

This is a huge part of why I make char. creating soil is about diversity, nothing more. Billions of stabilizing and nurturing organisms can be cultured and released into soils, transforming them forever into healthier places for life to thrive! In ancient times, craft guilds existed so that artisans could make a living providing things people used, fixing those that went awry and taking care of things other neighbors either did not know how to do, or did not have the equipment to make happen. When someone else is good at something we feel we cannot accomplish, it feels good to help make their lives better for helping us, right? I know that when I go to a cobbler, his loving care will grace my every step, reliably and I never begrudge them their price. On the other hand, there seem to be a proliferation of disposable shoe companies and I refuse to buy them for anything near retail price. I think my average throw away (brief lifespan) shoe costs six dollars. The diverse array of approaches that I choose to take, on the road to meeting adversity have left me time for writing, putting thopughts into physical form.

It is a skill that I have developed by bringing my whole kit and caboodle of experience and language to bear on, hopefully, important concerns and issues, salient to humanity across the span of time. It seems that, at times, a writer's job is to jump through various and sundry hoops in time, zig-zagging back and forth like a madman on a dodge-ball field,  picking up a few nuggets from different ages to stitch together meaning and a garment that reflects a new truth. A suit of clothes if you will that suits a new understanding, a new way of life.  Actions rest on ideas, but the ideas, if used properly lead to action. There are so many ways to flourish, to thrive, that it defies description. Each of us is left to go to that internal fire, our inspirations, to utilize that energy to get to what my DJ friends and Jazz or painting enthusiasts call flow, we need to take that energy to the forge of life, creating our own tools and expression of each of our hard works, We need to anneal or quench the aspects of ourselves not only to be hopefully functional, but to provide for others that which they cannot hope to attain by themselves, this is the key to living in harmony with one another and the planet. The art of the give-away has not been taught in any significant way for at least a generation or two.

We the people, deserve more, it is our lives that are responsible for most of the living and working and dying on the planet, why do some justify keeping us as slaves to serve their dehumanizing machines? I am more than grease for the wheels of commerce. Banking/Finance, Energy and Transportation, Insurance/Pharma and the War Machine are adversarial to humanity, to all life, to the planet and to sustainability, with every dollar you spend, consider whom is served. Reward diversity, seek out community that honors your inherent worth and value, take back your time, we each only have a limited amount of it left.

This Is What All The Hubub Is About

 Make char from organic sources Charcoal will not smell or taste at all. Pure carbon has no smell.

 Moisturize char, ideal moisture level like a damp sponge.

 Micronize the smaller the pieces, the larger their surface area.

 Mineralize I used rock dust loess (soil particles born on the winds) & herbs.

 MICROBES! Finally, sift in some finished compost.

Maturation This is the period of time it takes for the microbes to inhabit the prepared char.
Typically, I stir it at least a few times per day during warm weather, perhaps once or twice a day if it is cooler. My fastest maturation ever was about six weeks, the longest took six moons. The character of the biochar changes and the smell changes from nothing, because the carbon is absorbing all the smells, to having a rich soil like smell.

A good way to test char to see if it qualifies as biochar is to make a small box within which worms can survive, then put a cardboard barrier between the two halves, fill one with the biochar, the other with a container of worms, then remove the barrier. Let this stand overnight and see if the worms have invaded the char. If they have, it is ready to apply.

Here is the deal, this much is for free. The full class is three and a half hours and requires students to be facile with the contents of several books. Reading list upon request to tony@turnoutpac.org I charge for classes and can make a charmaster of anyone willing to learn. I am also available for consulting for people who are not sure if their systems will be effective and/or efficient.

Cock Bite

I met a new friend a few weeks ago and he appeared at once to be the responsible, intellectual, compassionate type of person that I enjoy spending time with. We spent the day together working, walking and soaking up the late summer sun. We spoke of social issues, economic ones and of course politics. When the topic of our current lying, thieving, cheating pawn of a Governor came up, I referred to him as Cockbite. Anyone who has ever zipped their genitals into their pants zipper knows the exquisite pain involved in just pinching those parts a little bit, so an actual bite would probably dwarf the pain involved by many orders of magnitude. Bob, my new found friend, had never heard that combination of words used to describe a person, but he whole-heartedly agreed with the sentiment involved.

The most heinous attacks on our civilization have come from ink spilled by Cockbite's pen. Before even coming to office, he vanquished hundreds of thousands of hours of work that had been put in by concerned citizens, business leaders and policymakers which intended to take first steps toward moving people with sustainable technology between two of the most populous parts of the state. In true "conservative" fashion, there was to be a high speed rail link between Madison and Milwaukee, turning the metro areas which they encompass into a giant well-connected metroplex. Instead, we have more deeply entrenched ourselves in the antiquated system of individuals racing in their fossil fuel powered vehicles, continuing to pay exorbitant parking fees and having to endure the carnage involved in automobile accidents. The rail line that he put an end to had a double edged effect that cuts both into the heart of our people and the environment.

Traffic deaths are up in our state, nearly doubling the death rate of just a few years ago, simply because the same Cockbite that nixed the rail line has raised the highway speed limit by ten mile per hour. On the one hand, this Teathuglican leader saddled the state with the human costs of more accidents, just to shift dollars to the oil cartel. Traveling an extra ten miles per hour on the highway uses fifteen percent more fuel. Policy leaders have got to understand basic physics, they just don't care. Cockbite seems appropriate for those who would injure those safely at an anonymous distance, far afield for the enrichment of your own cronies, but the vast majority of Americans, and Wisconsinites particularly, think that is wrong. Government, as we envision it here, in Wisconsin, is to facilitate openness and local control above all else. Draconian, one size fits all, mandates from the state have crushing consequences across the board, trickling down across the broad spectrum of society. I digress, with purpose.

Another anti-Wisconsin move was to cut half the Game Wardens and reduce the fuel allotment of the remaining natural resources enforcement officers to half. Now the administration says fewer enforcement numbers are because of reduced crime. Facts being, that avid hunters and fisherpeople refuse to buy permits for a sham natural resources department and poach at will, bringing in even less money for programs. When people generally thought that DNR was doing the best they could under restricted budgets, people got permitted because they knew that there was a chance that they would be caught exceeding limits or poaching outright. Now, there is little fear of that. 75% less anyway.

Back to obfuscation. The reason that Governor Walker wanted to change the Wisconsin Ideal, was to shift focus of the entire UW System from openness to privatization. See, here in Wisconsin, we never minded paying for education, after all, future leaders are being cultured there. We want the average Wisconsinite to be aware of as much as they can benefit from. That is why the Wisconsin Idea came under attack. The current head of our government is slimier than mucous and lower than the most debased any of us can imagine. Every fiber of his being is sham. Beyond con-artist, he is cock bite.

Moon Time

Rage against the dying of the light.

Equinox time, balance point for the year. Halfway round the sun, north to south pole, twelve twelve, bathed in light, fifty fifty, light and dark. I have been making a plan to work like a crazy person for two moons. Honoring this refusal to rage against the dying of this wonderful Summer's Sun, This season has brought many firsts, hundreds of acres of topsoil enriched, bursting forth of life and stabilization of the most important ecotone on earth soil. I have commited the next two moons to planting seeds for growth.

This first moon is nearly half way through already and by the time we go to the polls to express ourselves as voters, I should be returning to the land of the overworked, not just the insanely so. It is easy to see how billionaires are doing so much better than the rest of us, because I am several times more effective at my job today than I was back in the eighties. In fact, I hold more processing power and memory in the palm of my hand than we had in corporate offices back then as well. I am working on a get out the vote campaign and meeting hundreds of great people who have seen enough of our sham "democracy", enough; who truly understand that the current pay to play schemes do not serve anyone but the power brokers, to win an election. It is important for us to understand that staying home instead of participating in elections is capitulating to the entrenched power and control system that has developed. SILENCE IS COMPLICITY!

We have a candidate on the one hand who is more to the right (Republican) side of a political arc than Reagan, the Koch brothers withdrew support for The Donald early on and in an act of Illuminati Bingo, Former President Bush (it puts a bad taste in my mouth to say it, but , the elder) told a Kennedy that he had to vote for Hillary. Old guard and old money are nothing when compared to new power and control techniques...Oh, BTW, I stole the Illuminati Bingo thing, but theft in the open seems to be the way this old "Wild West" is going. Remember, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Politics truly does make strange bedfellows.

We have another "candidate" who is an embarrassment, an anti-hero of monstrous proportion. The facts, as I understand them are that the fortune his father amassed, were achieved at the cost of losses imposed on the estates of others. The apple has not fallen far from the tree.

We are being force fed the "Libertarian" candidate, who BTW is part of the legal pot cartel working to patent one of the most ancient weeds on the planet. And the Green Party candidate is all but ignored, just like Bernie was. Interesting that most of the policies Bernie sanders put forward are planks in the Green Platform. When money really does not want to talk, it seems there is nothing you can do about it. that's exactly what they want you to think, thus the birth of the phrase "All politicians are crooks." Any educated person would say that premise is flawed. but the masses are not educated. The right wing has guaranteed that.

Many, and I empathize, are disillusioned, but we must not rest until everyone has heard the good news, Bernie Sanders supporting candidates are running for many seats in Congress. We still have time for everyone to find out who theirs are! Congress needs to be taken out of the hands of Tea Party obstructionists and the true seat of power needs to come from ranks of the vast majority of Americans,  those who care about women, children and the elders. Without these people being allowed to achieve their full potential we either spit in the face of our past, and the sacrifices the elders have made so we can live in such luxury, or we shit in the face of the future, by raising future generations to be inept. Standardization and testing are the two worst words ever introduced into the teaching profession. Noone is teaching the children that the news is as much manufactured as any consumer item, that the fear and hate they are designed to engender is a commodity to those who want to control you.

Pardon the awkward segue...

On the other hand, my new job allows me to play in the digi-realm through the Apple portal. Thus making me feel like a five year old "baby", discovering for the first time, that they have fingers and that they collide more often than they work as "team", that in time, they can be used to express our wishes, even achieve things through their use. It is with great difficulty that I am having to learn new behaviors, but on different equipment. Most important newbie lesson, tapping harder when you get frustrated does no one any good. Second most important, double click the icon button to view all open programs. Jeesh is that nifty!

Well, because I have worked so many hours, it has given me time to think, as Mercury goes direct and with Gods and Goddesses speed, let us embark on new projects, establish new connections and re-commit to the things that are working in our lives already. As the snail carries the burden of it's former self, so do we. Keep your transitions in line with your passions and values, take only a moral compass on your quest and use the coming dark times to really mine your soul for the riches buried there.
 

This Week in Wisconsin

We have had the worst criminality in our statehouse ever, just during the past half dozen years. The first step in this process began when the results of the first election our current Governor, Scott Walker stood for were tampered with. Oddly enough, the John Doe proceedings that were meant to get to the bottom of that issue were stopped by Walker appointees in the justice department. Even before the governor took office, he was plotting ways to spend wildly on corporate donors and stifle any real positive changes that we the people of Wisconsin had worked for through the generations. One of the things I worked my whole life on was to reestablish the rail service between Green Bay and Milwaukee. I have written every Governor since the mid eighties to request that they help with this much needed transportation link. On day one of his taking office, the current leader of our state killed the legislation that would have re-established the first leg of rapid transit here in Wisconsin. It would not have connected the million people between Green Bay and Fond du Lac with Milwaukee, but rather the quarter of a million or so Madison residents and Milwaukee. One of the busiest and most deadly highways in the state runs between Green Bay and Milwaukee, but the highway that connects Madison and Milwaukee is not far behind.

Also, since the state was already under contract for buying the rail cars and motive force (engines), we were liable for the lion's share of the price, without ever having the equipment delivered or the rails to run the trains on. In other words, we didn't save any money. In fact, we lost jobs and made it far more expensive to continue driving point to point on the most congested roadway in the state.
I can continue to delve into the transportation issue, but believe me, most people in the state of Wisconsin have heard more than enough about this terrible governor and his screwing the pooch on this and other issues. With the cuts in education, social services, health care and the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), there are less and less reasons to drive and without increasing wages, there are fewer and fewer compelling reasons to go out for a drive. This impacts revenue generated by gas tax. as even a child can understand, if your highway funding budget is based on gas tax, less driving will leave even less money available for infrastructure improvements.

When we add in a healthy dose of not wanting the black President to shine, we saw hundreds of "shovel ready" projects denied funding because in some demented myopic vision of Teathuglican logic, denying federal monies earmarked for infrastructure improvements and regular maintenance is living too large. Now, we have delays in the highway construction budget that will keep roads unfinished for at least two more winters. Just what road crews want, having to shovel ice and snow out of the unfinished holes left because the state has run out of money for even projects that had been budgeted for more than six years ago! Meanwhile, perhaps to mitigate the anger and hostility over the lack of transit funding, governor Walker unilaterally raised the speed limit to seventy miles per hour on several hundred miles of highways across our state, increasing traffic deaths by nearly thirty percent. more than an extra one hundred people will die each year because of his terrible highway speed and funding decisions.

We keep getting more and more legislation that only serves his largest donors and none of the ideas are coming from the general public. just the increased fuel use on the roads with the higher speed limits are shifting 15-20% more revenue to fossil fuel producers, at a time when we need to be cutting back fossil energy use, not increasing it! When documents surface that prove collusion and nepotism or outright breaking of election law, the current Governor seals or steals the documents, using the very justices that he has appointed over the years. He has gone as far as writing shielding legislation that prevents the governor from being the "subject" of a John Doe investigation. Those who know how John Doe proceedings are supposed to happen, they do not have a specific person that is being investigated. They are designed to be fact finding investigations so that enough information can be amassed to understand whether crimes were committed at all and only after they clarify what actually happened, specific charges are recommended to the district Attorney in the jurisdiction where any crimes were committed.

Governor Walker is the only person I have ever heard of who retained council and had a defense fund even before the John doe probes were started. Normally you wait for a subpoena and then go to testify (as a witness) because there is no fear of prosecution. John Doe investigations are not court cases, so they are not charging anyone or even suspecting them, until after they have heard all of the testimony.  Yes, I did use the plural. Here in Wisconsin, we refer to them as John Doe I and John Doe II. The first was to find out whether state election laws were violated by the Scott Walker campaign before he was elected Governor and lo and behold, they found that there were and that not only were his taxpayer funded offices used to coordinate his campaign, but workers in his offices were instructed to use hours paid for by the taxpayers to campaign for their boss (the current Governor). There have even been reports from the company that installed servers in the offices, again, to run the illegal campaigning that was done at taxpayer expense, with the full knowledge and at the behest of future Governor, Scott Walker.

As all good organized criminals know, it is always best to have a fall guy picked out ahead of time and this he did. even though he instructed his people to break the law, for some reason the half dozen people serving jail time seem to have refused to say exactly who coordinated the activities for the sake of winning the first election. The second john doe investigation found that in order to win the governor's recall election, he took massive campaign contributions from corporate donors in exchange for legislation that shielded them from prosecution and eliminated important routes through the courts for getting satisfaction when people are hurt or injured by the abuses and neglect of corporations. This entire sham government that we live under today is bent on removing any and all corporate responsibility and making the poorest people of all, the general public who are now voiceless in our state pay for the damages themselves.

this is all coming to a head at the same time that Wells Fargo is using low level employees to take the fall for another multi-billion dollar robbery that has been perpetrated upon the American people. welcome to the land of the free to lie, cheat and steal, as long as you buy the appropriate politicians.

New Tack

I am shifting gears this election season. Instead of running a continued campaign for Congress, I will be throwing my efforts into campaigning to get out the vote generally. My PayPal account and Gofund.me account are both congressrepairteam. however, the money raised in these accounts will go toward the purchase of a Campaign Bus. this bus will take the message of my candidacy across the 8th district in Wisconsin during 2017 and 2018. I hope that over the next two years I can build even more excitement and interest in my platform, which is based on many of the proposals put forth by both senator Bernie sanders and Jill Stein of the Green Party.

If you know of people who desire information or assistance learning how to make and use biochar, or if you know of people who would like to reforest and heal soils or enhance wildlife habitat, please take the time to put them in touch with us, or us in touch with them. I am a stand for Mother Earth, her creatures, and her people. i also speak with clear voice, as do the native peoples of the planet for the waters which are the first medicine, without which we only have a few days to live.

Blessed Be! Thank-you for your consideration.

Changing Direction

Dearest friends, relatives, supporters and followers. I have been all in during this election cycle, heart and soul running for the sake of the planet and the opportunity to represent the people of Wisconsin's 8th District. By now, you have all seen the map, whether you live in Menominee Nation or Marinette, Mukwa ro Maple Valley, or anywhere in-between; Athelstane to Armstrong Creek, Wyoming to Wrightstown, Even if you are from the biggest towns, Green Bay, or Appleton, I will represent you, not corporations. This election cycle, I am taking a conscious tack, change in direction, with my work for progressive change. My own campaign cannot even pay enough to let me canvass full time, but another avenue will do just that and help energize the great non-voting majority. The things I have learned from this campaign are priceless. Thank-you all for your ideas and personal interactions with me. Thank -you in advance to the hundreds and thousands more people I have yet to meet and learn from. I know more deeply than ever that my political representation will be for the vast, vast majority of voters, but a campaign that is not well-organized or run by a team of devoted supporters is bound to fail. In light of this, I want all my followers to think about what they can afford to put into my campaign over the next two years. Hosting candidate forums, meet the candidate parties, pot luck and other events, charmaking classes, eco-tours for tree planting, etc. not only allow me to get my name out, but link my face to the name and my name, by association to platform, policies and principles that I stand for. I have been able to talk to thousands this time around, I need to increase that by one hundred fold over the next two years. Ideas welcome! Early in 2017, I will host a get-together for those who want to join the team for 2018.
Respectfully and appreciatively, Tony C. "Saladman" Saladino

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What's New In Northeast Wisconsin

This link will take you to my gofund.me/congressrepairteam page.Campaign Bus
The peole of norhteast Wisconsin are ready for change, fundamental change that only new representation in congress can achieve. If my readers would share this information with as many people as possible, there is a good chance of getting the bus painted and on the road within very short order. 

No Time Like The Present

Pre-sent. Each and every moment up to now has led to this very moment, now this one, etc. The struggles of past generations to survive in the face of genocide, starvation, disease and crippling conditions has assured that we each have, locked in our DNA the keys to survival and the ability to thrive. I write often about the nature of power and control, how it leads to abuse and neglect, and how that can lead to intergenerational abuses and handicaps, but within that context, we each need to become adults at some point and transcend the horrible past conditions, the abject poverty in which the vast majority of our human species has lived under. Poverty of spirit, poverty of the physical realm and poverty of information to base decisions upon. five hundred years ago, or even just one generation back, there were those whose best idea of a way forward was to slap down any new ideas that might erupt, punish and shame those who stepped out of "proven" ways of behavior which were dictated by, typically, the upper classes of days gone by.

Our genetic memory continues to flow through time, but the best chance we have for shaping the future is this very second. The changes and improvements we make in our outlook, perspective and the "status quo" shape the future as surely as our ancestral family tree all the way back to Africa has.

The humanitarian urge that all human being are born with were beaten out of them as part of their training. judging people by color, class or general appearance has a long history among our species, however, the longer we study human beings, the more we realize that any limitations we project onto others are most likely ours as well. There is a well known psychological process known as projection. Of course, no one likes to think about it, because it is like a mirror reflecting our own inner and often subconscious world. When I was a young man, there was a practice I first read about in a magic book, in which you stand before a mirror in very low light. Sometimes the viewer would light a candle on the far side of the room so that the light would flicker and wane, creating moving shadows on your face, allowing you to "see" different aspects of yourself in the half-light. The darker sides of yourself were supposed to become visible during the exercise, but in fact, the seed of the idea is what probably spawned the "visions" that could be seen. for some, the frightening and horrible visage of a demon or hideous creature would make itself "seen". The way projection works is that the things that are difficult to see in ourselves can make themselves seen in others easily. You don't need a mirror, you don't need to dim the lights or search amongst shadows. Like a film projector, or a cell phone being projected through a magnifying lens onto the wall, we can see the apparitions alive and given form in the guise of "others".

We can see this exhibited daily in and around us ad infinitum. Yesterday, President Bill Clinton made some comment about what a criminal The Donald is. His namesake foundation pockets 85% of the millions they receive from foreign governments for favors, yet someone else is the criminal. The treasonous SOB sold the equity that had been built up over generations to fund Wall Street executives resulting in the financial crisis and housing crash that we still have not seen the end of. Billionaires are doing better than ever, yet We the People are as poor as ever. This is why i take a long view of my own failings. I really want to get to the bottom of the deeper questions and the hidden meanings of my own words. I see greed, but there is part of me that wants to get something for nothing as well. Instead of picking other people's pockets, or fleecing them in the stock market, I plant seeds. These tiny packets of genetic information are designed to pay back at exponential rates, which is quite a bit like getting something for nothing. I practice, for the most part, no till horticulture, pushing seeds into soft Earth that i have made over the years out of the hard packed clay that i found in my yard when I bought this place more than a decade ago. I try to forgive the faraway bankers that take the majority of my income for they do not understand the fact that we have more than we can use all around us.

Just three weeks ago, my wife cam to me with a couple handfuls of potatoes that were beginning to sprout in the refrigerator. I figured they were a total loss for food, but she encouraged me to plant them into parched soil.
"They seem to want to grow" she said.
I took them and placed them in beds that had not produced much this season and were going over to weeds. I got a few handfuls of peas from the handful of seeds that i had spread, but I was not willing to weed and water the beds which were just built this summer. The soil had been compacted, abused and when I first started the bed, I had to first remove buckets and buckets of trash and contaminants from the area, so I didn't have much hope for serious production in year one. The only real changes to the abused and neglected soil I have made so far is to add a bit of compost and In each two by two foot section (there are six) I added a different amount of biochar, to experiment with different application rates.The peas, that I planted earlier this summer responded as expected. Those whose soil had more biochar added did better, produced more peas per pod and tasted decidedly sweeter. That soil, although still very damaged held more moisture and the plants were more resistant to drying out between water applications. Making things even more difficult for the plants was the fact that we did not have the water barrels for rainwater collection hooked up until a few weeks ago, so the potatoes planted in the same place will have much more regular levels of soil moisture.

The material that I put in the ground as potato starts was so close to looking like compost that I was not sure they would even be able to get plants going from the little potatoes. One even had the tell tale smell of rot that led me to throw it into the compost, but the twenty or so small bundles of genetic information had put out root hairs at just the right time. Even though the soil was like dust for the first week or so after they were planted, I watered them twice a week to try to get them to grow. now, this week, there has been a change in the weather with fall rains beginning. This weekend, we are supposed to get perfect temperatures and the moisture of the past week has led to dozens of little sprouts. When any organism comes through harsh conditions and manages to thrive, it looks to the casual observer as if a miracle has taken place, but this is the way of the world. Seeds can lie dormant for years in the soil and then, the right conditions present themselves and they begin to grow.

Culturally the same thing is possible. The ideas and influences that led the hippies to advocate for peace and the meaningful work that could be found in organic agriculture, the arts, humanities and in cooperative living arrangements were antithetical to the greedy self interest of prior generations, but now, the elders have had those experiences and the odd people out are the ones who strive to get ahead of everyone else at all costs. The latent longing for self-actualization and giving back to our community and the wider world is no longer thought of as "communistic" but deep green and ethical, except from the perspective of the oligarchs. The media outlets that have been purchased by the wealthiest class are loathe to admit that their time has come and the old-way systems that gave rise to their billions is coming to a close. Exploitation and extraction economies can only lead to desolation and waste. Mining regions worldwide often look alike, because when they go bust, deep depressions are the rule. There is now a Renaissance taking place in locations as diverse as L.A. and Detroit, Dayton and Atlanta, Milwaukee and St.Louis. The seeds of change were planted, now they are starting to grow.

Many of our cities have experienced out migration. Over the past few years I have seen dozens of moving vans taking families and their belongings away from my town. The city is actually emptying out as people find the grass to be greener elsewhere. Our current far right wing Governor has shifted so many jobs away from our state as to defy counting. Each cut in jobs trickles down to the shoe stores, the markets and even the retirement homes. Schools are seeing their enrollment drop and the tax base is shriveling up too. Economic shortfalls continue to negatively impact the government services that led to a higher standard of living for everyone. The cost of living increases combined with stagnant or falling wages puts undue stress on more and more people over time.  however, these pressures are pushing the majority in the right direction. Those struggling with how to stay afloat in difficult economic times often start buying more food locally, spending less time in their cars, planting gardens, etc. When I moved here over ten years ago, we were the only people on our block with a garden, now nearly everyone grows at least a patch of a few veggies.

Even my friends who rent are looking for garden patches in the yard that have been grown organically. If they can't find that, they look for large pots or containers to fill with dirt, so they can at least grow some of their own food. Those who are involved with building community, helping their neighbors and raising the next generation to value peace and true security are no longer branded as "dirty hippies" or "flower power" Pollyannas, they are seen as elders with their feet firmly planted on the ground. Again, except by the media outlets who are very slowly coming to understand that just ignoring the majority will not make them go away. One of the last bastions of old way thinking to fall will be the concept that all politicians are crooks. To this end I am still running for Congress. Again, no time like the present. I have started a Go Fund Me site to raise funds for a tour bus that will bear the name of the campaign Saladino 4 District 8, which many will remember covers most of Northeast Wisconsin. The time has come to grow, change and reward those who have been walking the talk for the last thirty years. Those who know me and understand where I am coming from also realize that there is no buying me, no way to get me to support corporate welfare, no way that I would be swayed by the uberwealthy or their lobbyists. I promise to do what I can to change things for the better and would like each and every one of my readers to do the same. We certainly deserve the opportunity to try.

Fall 2016

Begin in earnest

Taking back our nation from a group of thugs

So violent has been their assault on the people

Mere words cannot describe

They have tied up all our money in webs of deceit

Leaving us to fend for ourselves

They have stolen our property and devalued what is left

They tell us we are doing well

Our children go to school to be tested, not to learn

And we are told we need more testing

The ramshackle cities and the failing infrastructure be damned

We have plenty of money

For corporate welfare

We have gone to the polls and let our wishes be known

But are told who we will get

To lead us

Those more amenable to “just business” failed paradigm

Unjust as it is

Outrage has no place

They say we are the greatest nation on Earth

 Power

To rain death upon innocents

Shut up 

Get in line

 Take what you get

 Be happy they say

The oligarchs need your money

It is time to take our lives back

Our revolution will never be televised

Turn off your tee vee