My America?

We had just under 2,200 new covid-19 cases in my county last week. Brown County, Wisconsin has less than 265,000 people, so nearly two in a hundred got a completely controlable illness last week. Some of them will die. Even at only 1% death rate, 22 people will lose their lives to covid-19 simply because they got infected in the past week. Remember, the case fatality rate is closer to two percent across the entire U.S. I have so much shame and heartache about how stupid we are acting, but that will need to be worked out elsewhere. This blog is supposed to focus on positive steps we can take to chage things for the better. I know that after more than a year, we should be past this point. I'll go over it again just in case you have forgotten.DO NOT SHARE AIR! JUST DON'T DO IT! When you must be near others, mask, wash your hands frequently, do not touch your face, maintain social distance. Also, use your brain. All of our lives we have been taught that uncovered coughs and sneezes can jettison sputum up to thirty feet or more. Increase social distance around those who cough and/or sneeze that choose to remain unmasked. I would love to go into more detail about how to re-allocate the money we wasted in Afghanistan...

As we change our focus... The fact that millions of Americans love to shoot off their ignorant pie holes about how we need to love this country or leave it, one would expect them to be true patriots and work conscientiously to make our nation a place worthy of living in. There is nothing patriotic about claiming that your "freedom" is worthy of trampling on the health and safety of others. From a foundation that thinks liberty extends to hurting others, what can you build on a foundation that horrid? We can bear witness to the fact tha tthese same people claim to be victims themselves, justifying running stoplights and spewing toxic chemicals, even into our shared drinking water. This is not the nation I was taught to love. No one has the American Dream of buying a farm in the country only to turn the spigot and get shit out of the faucet, but in millions of american homes, that is what you get. How can degrading my property values by tainting my water source be allowed? Why is it not criminal to do business in ways that kill people? My America, the one I was taught to love and respect has three primary tenets, Justice, based on legislation and rights handed down from our legal cases; freedom to choose our leaders, based on the vote and as so many love to repeat, life, liberty and persuit of happiness. (falsely called "property" by some who fight to retain their greedy self-interest in an environment that requires cooperation and mutualism.) My right to make a living never absolves me of responsibility if I negatively impact my neighbor's ability and right to health, happiness or their ability to thrive. As we look outside our own niche, we need to accept and defend the rights of everyone to find the things we all claim have value. Living life requires us to be healthy. To have ultimate freedom, we must also carry the burden of absolute responsibility. To ultimately seek and have the hope of finiding happiness, we need to know that the basic needs we all have are going to be met. The dwindling but very loud minority who claim that they have the "right" to re-define reality to suit their claims rather than accepting facts and reality doomks all of us to meeting an untimely end. How will we react in the face of lies? We the people must speak truth to these power-hungry people who claim undue influence through the media, use of capital and who cling to their outlandish claims. We have the power to change, too often what we lack is the will.

Timeless Treasures

As many of my long-term readers know, rather than trying to speak only about topical issues that seem important in this moment, I try to record messages and information that will remain important for all time. That is why I have gone back into human history, further back than the development of written language, to recapture and rediscover the art and science of biochar. It is why I felt compelled to share it with my readers. My six posts from over two years ago, each one indicated by a one word title beginning with the letter "M", have taught many people the nearly lost technology that we call biochar today. If all that we are familiar with passes, there is, perhaps, one thing that could be the most important to understand, it is how to make and use this ancient material. Human ancestors thought it was important enough to share over seven thousand years ago and there are few things humans can do that make as much difference to our quality of life and health as improving the quality of our soils. Even though the majority of life on our planet is microscopic, that does not mean that it is any less important than the creatures we can see. Learning to revere that which we cannot see though, that presents a challenge for some.

I guess I never thought about it but there does seem to be a sizeable contingent that places their faith in an unseen force, but there is still no science that can prove the existence of "god". Soil microbes on the other hand can bee seen with the right equipment. We can also document such changes as biochar can make. At the application rate of just one tonne per hectare, a little less than (900 pounds per acre) we know that it doubles crop production, reduces the need for both fertilizer and irrigation by 1/3 to 1/2, protects both surface and groundwater quality and greatly expands habitat for the soil microbes that are responsible for feeding plants and ameliorating the effects of global climate destabilization. An interesting side benefit for our unusual times is that it sequesters carbon in soil, for geologic time, not just in the form of pyrolized carbon itself, but the myriad of organisms who coat the surfaces of the material which has fourteen acres of surface area in each and every handful. There are many things that have been around forever that are not just serviceable, but either reflect enduring qualities that we consider human or essential to understanding who we are and those that can give us hints about our "purpose" here on Earth. Although we often gloss over some of them, I try to tease out the salient parts for today or intricately weave them into the more topical discussions that inform the avant garde. I also try to tease out those aspects which may have value hundreds of lifetimes hence. Under our current covid-19 crisis, there are things in our past that we can remember or call to mind that can help us deal with the situation we find ourselves in now. There are also things that I come across in day-to-day life that may be of service thousands of years from now and I do not want to claim to know the difference. In a perfect world, I would be an equal opportunity chronicler. Knowing not just that history repeats, but that the human species has come up against other, similarly challenging times can often give us strength and confidence that there will be light at the end of these dark times. Just as when walking, putting one foot in front of the other is typically necessary, laying out these ideas not only allows us to get a sense of where we are, but how all of our parts are cooperating (or not) to achieve efficient locomotion. With a bit of luck, when I find things that are out of place or not working at all, it will give readers impetus to make changes necessary for confronting our issues, meeting new challenges and facing who we, sometimes unwittingly, have become. If my words help us to determine who we want to be, all the better.

Rest assured, there were people claiming the end was near since we were still lived in caves and there were people who warned against the use of fire because it was seen as a new, dangerous and seductive force among us. Today, we have the same sorts of reactions to 5G and microchipping individuals to constantly monitor their location or physical attributes. It is well to remember that as we stand on the threshold of this brave new world, there are great applications for even the scariest technologies. A friend, compelled by love and wracked with compassion, is worried to death about his wife and her health issues, so she wears a continuous blood glucose monitor that sends real time updates and alerts to his phone if she gets either too much or too little sugar in her blood. Without ever having to prick her finger, this technology aids the two of them to plan and adjust to changing conditions, just like we bring everything up from our basement every time the flood warnings sound. From one perspective, it all makes sense but from another perspective, it is very scary also. Just knowing that the closeness to a situation can change your perspective is something that I consider to be a timeless treasure.