Celebrate!

Saturday, Japan is shutting down the last nuclear power generating station. Unlike the US, their licensing process includes an annual review in which public opinion is taken into account. Here, in America, we license our nuclear facilities for twenty years, often rubber stamping their permits with callous disregard for public opinion. When TMI (Three Mile Island) blew, our bucolic world in rural Pennsylvania was dosed with rad waste and the cover up continues today. Officials still claim that there was no reason to worry although massive quantities of radioactive material had been spewing from the plant for over two weeks before the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) was notified of a problem at the site. Allowing corporate interests to police themselves has not worked in Japan, nor has it worked here in the US. We just have a better handle on how to squelch public opinion. The last nuclear protest that I participated in was "overseen" by at least three dozen police from several jurisdictions. There were also intimidating and threatening gestures and actions from a handful of local residents who screamed insults and slogans that made my skin crawl. hearing of an entire nation banning together to practice true enlightened action in the face of evil and unconscionable danger makes this world citizen proud.

There is little that can be said about the ways we have chosen to do business in our neck of the woods. When the public began to understand that nuke waste is dangerous for tens of thousands of years and requires armed guards around the depots where it is stored, basically forever, the phrase "nuclear energy will be too cheap to meter." began to be bandied about. I'm not sure about you, but we still have a meter on our house. When increases in cancer were understood to be the result of being dosed with fallout, it was immediately compared to the radiation you would receive from sun tanning (which was thought to be "healthy" back then) or (for those with a desire to enter the "jet set") the amounts of radiation you would receive from taking a trans-Atlantic flight. If public opinion hovered just above fifty percent against, the next straw was added to the back of the public. Many who live in the townships that do have nuke facilities pay no property tax. Who wouldn't like that? The fact that no one will ever want to buy your house if it is in the shadow of a hazardous waste production facility, even knowing that they would pay no taxes on the property for life, makes no difference to those who have been convinced of both the need for and the safety of this insane way of making electricity.

I have readers in Japan, for them I say Bless You! Their public opinion has pushed the hand of government further toward sanity in one brief year than hundreds of thousands of protesters have done in the US in my fifty year lifetime! Even when what we warned about came true, the nuclear disarmament crowd was marginalized and the nuclear power opposition was painted as unpatriotic Communists (when that was the worst word in our political dictionary) or Socialists today. Caring about everyone as much as we care about ourselves is antithetical to capitalistic values I guess. I thought that we were a country of freedom but that our freedoms ended where they imposed on the noses of our neighbors. Not so in the case of generating electricity. We allow our freedom to flip a switch to impact hundreds of generations who have not yet been born. They will inherit the waste that has been created today with no means of paying back the bitter cost of stupidity with which we saddle them with our waste. Even as a child, I understood the odd disconnect between those who advocated for nuclear energy production and the facts. for all the touting of nuclear energy as "carbon-neutral" that claim is bogus. I have written of this before, so if you understand, jump ahead a paragraph or two. The litany of carbon-fueled activities and processes that are required to produce electricity through nukes is almost unfathomable. whether the Japanese understand it or not, they have taken a bigger step toward sustainability than they could possibly imagine.

First of all, massive amounts of fuel (carbon-based) need to be spent securing title to land that is "appropriate" for siting a facility that will be dangerous, works best near an inexhaustible source of water and requires sturdy bedrock to support the massive weight of a reactor core and the attendant containment facilities. Ideally, it would be near points of use, to keep transmission line costs down, then the construction requires hundreds of thousands of tons of limestone to be baked in kilns (also using carbon based fuel) for the cement that holds concrete together. Conventional fuels (read, carbon releasing) are pumped in to the facility in the form of backhoes, bulldozers, trucks, rock crushing and screening operations and you also need to keep the lights on in the design and drafting facilities. flying your representatives around to secure permits and lobby for leniency amongst the regulating agencies expends more jet fuel, etc. Riding herd on public opinion has a very real cost as well. Going to several dozen public hearings, putting out ad campaigns and negotiating settlements to placate local and regional opposition can require many resources and also hinge upon cheap carbon-based energy.

Then, there is the cost of fuel for the process. Naturally occurring "ore" is getting less and less available and what we have is at ever lower concentrations. Massive mining operations are required to get the raw material for fueling up a nuclear generating station. Once mined, again using carbon based energy, the ore must be crushed, refined, concentrated and transported from facility to facility to accomplish each of these critical steps. The next part requires even more energy and is called enrichment. This is what we are so mad at Iran for doing today. Massive centrifuges must be made to spin for years to extract enriched fuel for the process. These centrifuges are best energized by electricity, produced mostly from fossil fuel in our country. Finally the fuel needs to be pelletized and transported to the reactor.

When I was a child, I envisioned the entire process as similar to winding up a rubber band powered balsa wood airplane. The only difference is that the order of magnitude is much, much greater. The propeller is so much harder to spin that we scar the land as we spin it. We hemorrhage massive amounts of fuel in winding up the mechanism. We scar communities and create massive monolithic concrete structures that must eventually be disposed of as hazardous waste. Even during the period of "free flight" there are risks and costs that make the whole process seem more like a bad acid trip than I can express in mere words. I have always understood the threat from these facilities as equal to, if not greater than, the threat of nuclear weapons. Like the person driving while texting, you never know when their destructive power will be unleashed. At least with weaponry, you have to decide when and where to unleash the deadly power, accidents can happen any time, any place. Add to this the long-term consequence of producing extremely long-lived waste and you can see the whole house of cards come crumbling down.

What we were never told is that the entire charade began because we needed some of that waste to refine again, rendering even more of the landscape inhospitable for hundreds of generations, to get weapons grade material. Instead of just enjoying the "free flight" during the years of electricity generation, the whole game was to make the ultimate weapon. The gods and goddesses are smiling on the land of the rising sun. Today, tomorrow and for centuries to come we must continue to celebrate Japan's good sense and compassion. Not only for their people, but for the people of the entire planet! At their peak, the (I believe) 54 nuclear generating stations (I have also heard the number fifty) provided 1/3 of Japan's demand for electricity. In spite of this fact, the people of Japan decided to stop throwing money and their future down the rat hole of this dangerous and short-sighted form of electricity generation. The rest of the world needs to follow their lead and develop alternative and less destructive means of meeting our needs. Conservation, efficiency improvements and alternative methods of production are readily available to us all and we need to begin spinning the wheel in the directions we want to go, not backward to a time of decadent ignorance and the immorality of subsidizing dangerous and deadly industries that leave our children with unrivaled debt.

We all need to celebrate the wisdom with which Japan is pursuing sustainability. We also need to keep pressure on our own leaders to eliminate this relic of cold war thinking. No one is better off under a system that puts our nation and the rest of the planet under threat of catastrophe. Radiation from Japan is already here. Even though the government is trying to downplay the facts, we need to understand that the massive bolus of radiation that continues to leave Japan is not "less dangerous" because we are finding isotopes with short half lives. In some ways, that is indicating that the problems are far worse than we can imagine. Short half life materials, detectable over a year later indicate even greater and more concentrated plumes entering the atmosphere than we had calculated. spread the word, we have finally come full circle in the nuclear age. I personally find it somewhat ironic that the first place on earth to be decimated by nuclear attack has gone through a process that led them to fully embrace the devilish technology and then commit to ending the nuclear nightmare once and for all in just two or three short generations. This is the blink of an eye in the time span of radioactive waste and needs to be celebrated by every man woman and child on the planet!

Mayday, Mayday!

I have always liked the fact that in military and mariner parlance, the term means roughly the same thing as S.O.S. The holiday that marks the beginning of the planting season is also a time of emergence so it follows that emergency would be just a why ("y") away... The hows and whys are often the most telling parts of salient questions. My long-time readers know that the perspective from which I come is not so unique as it is universal, the terms and language for many of my themes may require a bit of a stretch at times, but with luck and hopefully a bit of skill, when the dust settles it helps to clear the air on some of the stickier issues that we confront routinely. Unlike most sources of information, I try to elaborately dissect tricky ideas and concepts, so that we may move forward with positive changes on the road to sustainability with fresh eyes. I have long recognized that we are in a dangerously overburdened boat. Our lives depend on one another, but too often we turn our backs to the basic maintenance of the ship of state. Today, we have a holiday that stretches back into the dark recesses of time and offers a spark of new life in the age of so much death, carnage and destruction.

Like flying the flag upside down, at this moment in time, we best use every tool at our disposal to reach out, plant seeds and take care to develop the relationships that will carry us through the next dark time. although many are already making plans for the summer, our attention to tiny details in this moment will unleash their power over time to enrich, enlighten and nourish us in times of lack and need later on. Obeying the messages that come from our flickering screens and digital media alone will surely take us down a photon mediated path toward isolation and neglect, but what I will try to elucidate here are some of the terms under which we can all renew our selves, drink at the crystal clear spring (Spring) and share some of the powerful forces that allow this Mayday to mark, once again, a season of hope and integration. We not only need change at this moment in time, but we need to embody change, now more than ever. The ways that we reflect such change may be as varied as our numbers, but one thing is certain, without everyone in our community becoming engaged in this renewal, tough times will face us down the road. swift thinking and rapid action alone cannot save us from the damage caused by sowing sterile seed or the wanton destruction that usurps our power. What we need to do now is reach out to one another, stitch our dreams together into a vast tapestry and find a way forward together or surely die in isolation.

This understanding has been with me a lifetime. Being brought up in a land that has so fully gulped down the myth of the cowboy, it has seemed at times as if I was the only one confronting whatever difficulties appeared on my radar. Pagan rites are not just activities, they are physical manifestations of thought experiments. Like thought experiments, they allow us to "see" beyond mere physical limitations and both find and become intimate with concepts beyond our normal awareness. Like the variety of learning styles we all have, the ritual combines food, sound, touch, sight, aromas and spiritual connections to elaborate ideas that we cannot pick up from a book. That is why we dance the Maypole. Fortunately, there are those storytellers who keep ancient tradition alive and guide us on to a new and vital time when we are supported and integrated into a greater society. Especially in times that are characterized by estrangement, neglect and isolation, these are powerful messages with great value for our time.

The ribbons that we hold, when we begin our spiral dance around the pole are not just mere strips of colored fabric, they are physical manifestations of our connection to one another and the godhead. When we do our Maypole, we call out the colors and aspects of our relationships that the ribbons represent. Anyone familiar with the chakrahs will understand the relevance of color in our spiritual being. We include no only the rainbow colors, but usually ribbons of black, white and brown as well. We also discuss envisioning our hopes, dreams and prayers for the future being woven into a wonderful wholeness as we dance and spin our way around the Maypole. Our disparate paths combine into a brilliant design and this reflects our part in community, our integration into a social order in which no one is more important than any other and amongst whom all of our talents and dreams become relevant to the whole. The pole stands as a testament to this reality until the beginning of the dark time at Halloween, then with honor and respect for all that the pole represents we put it to bed for another winter, nesting, resting and renewing our bodies for another year of growth during our next spin around the seasons. This spinning of the sacred wheel of life is a way to make not only ourselves, but the communities that we inhabit whole, vibrant and secure for the coming generations a more hospitable place where they too will be heard and carry on our traditions.

Even if you do not have a place to put up a Maypole, you can do the ritual in your mind. Even if you cannot find ten friends to help you dance, there are ways to imagine the whole process. The joy that I have found in the process of actually dancing the Maypole is that over time it helps to create connections to both the past and the future, just being in the moment with the ribbons vibrating in the wind, I find myself made whole in ways that are difficult to express. There are plenty of resources out there for folks wanting to dance the Maypole, but if you have questions about how we do it, I welcome questions. This is the time to reach out to others, in community, integrating with others and forging relationship. We are a tribe of one on Spaceship Earth, we are all crew. Let our hands unite in affirming the earth in Her abundance. Let us till and plant, as one people, the seeds of our children's success. The best way that we can honor our own ancestors is to overcome their shortcomings and burdens as well as learn the lessons of apathy that led to their exploitation and grief. Before, during or after your ritual it is well to reflect on the hymn of the worker's struggle:We Are a Gentle Angry People
We are a gentle angry people,
and we are singing, singing for our lives X2

We are justice seeking people,
and we are singing, singing for our lives X2

We are young and old together,
and we are singing, singing for our lives X2

We are a land of many colors,
and we are singing, singing for our lives X2

We are gay and straight together,
and we are singing, singing for our lives X2

We are all in this together,
and we are singing, singing for our lives X2

We are a gentle loving people
and we are singing, singing for our lives X2

The times, truly are changing. It is for us but to spin the wheel in the direction we need things to go!
 

Hooray, Hooray The First Of May!

I'm always thrilled, borderline ecstatic, when May Day rolls around. Most years find us gathered around a May Pole, dancing and thrilled to be honoring the reunification of the Lord and Lady in an eternal dance that assures our survival and the fertility of the planet. Most years I take full advantage of the season to find fun and enjoy the sun. It's virtually always a great excuse for a roll in the hay, drinking fermented fluids and enjoying the company of old and new friends, family and the larger community whose members have usually sequestered themselves away during the long dark winter. It is a great time to enjoy the longer days and to sit by a fire during the cool night.
This year I have been having some somber thoughts and serious distractions from the change in season. Oddly enough, this year marked the twenty-fifth annual remembrance of the Chernobyl disaster. It is odd how we can so thoroughly forget things that change the world for both the better and the terribly worse, except on their "anniversary." In many ways we would surely melt down ourselves if we were to keep things like Chernobyl in the mind's eye for too long. Realizing the truth of what went on there and what continues to be reality for millions of suffering individuals makes it difficult to laugh, play and celebrate the season. What I knew about Chernobyl when it blew up was virtually nothing. What I have come to know since then has made me more grown up than I ever wanted to be. News and information about that place and the people of that region have continued to come to me over the years, but this year was strikingly different. I heard a first-hand account of what happened to one young girl who lived near there and how the lives of millions changed in one brief moment.
May Day celebrations were not canceled near Chernobyl after the explosion, even though a cloud of radiation covered hundreds of square miles. Men, women and children wore short sleeves and danced in the streets, staying out in the beautiful weather for hours at the annual festivals and their government knew that they would be exposed to radiation but did not want to alarm them. Cancer rates have increased exponentially since then and the cities for miles around have now been cleared of their populations. Weeks after the release of what later became known as the "black cloud", children were evacuated, leaving all the cities around there childless.What most disturbed me at the time was the utter lack of concern many seemed to have for the people. The United Nations estimates that seven million people are still living with sicknesses and diseases caused by the accident at Chernobyl twenty five years ago. Estimates of the dead are many times higher than that, although records were not kept, except for what they referred to as "liquidators", those who went in after the explosion to "clean up."
Their bodies were buried under lead shielding because they became sources of radiation by just being at the site. A few survive to this day, and are given a paltry sum of twenty dollars each month to help them pay for food. Some of the terrible consequences of that fateful day can be found at: http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/chernobyl
Be prepared for just enough truth to change you for life.
It is time that we all join together to change the direction we are headed. Allowing the nuclear age to continue only assures more accidents and more suffering at the hands of technocrats who seem to want to remain illiterate about the extent and quality of change that radiation poses for our people and our planet. By now, because of the recent events in Japan, we have more than likely heard the term half-life. This is the time period that it takes for the radioactivity in a specific element to be reduced by half. In the case of plutonium, it has a half-life of 24,000 years. If you believe in Christ, that's over ten times as long as it has been since he walked on Earth. That's how long it will take for the radiation to be reduced by half, both from Chernobyl and now, in Japan. There have been other nuclear accidents as well as mistakes that were not treated as accidents, that have resulted in the same sorts of contamination. Just a few sites where problems will outlive our memory of them are at Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Of course, Chernobyl, at Rocky Flats, in an area that has been subsumed by Denver, at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and at several sites in the Desert Southwest here in our own country. We must not forget the purposeful mayhem of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the hundreds, perhaps thousands of sites where we have released radioactive materials without regard for the local populations or showed the slightest concern for documenting our efforts to contaminate them.
It is hard to celebrate this joyous holiday when you feel so terribly that we must change or perish. It seems almost silly to rejoice in the unending fertility of nature at this wonderful celebration of spring, when you know that humanity has come so far along the path to our ultimate destruction.
Perhaps next year, or twenty five years from now, we will be looking back at this time and wondering how our leaders could have been so stupid. My feeling is that we should have done the serious business of shutting these activities down before they ever got started. Science told us what to expect. The lies that humans told about  the nuclear age were totally at odds with reality. We all need to work together to get the word out about this dangerous technology. Truth stands up to closer inspection and can stand on it's own. Lies need to be constantly propped up. Learn the truth about nuclear energy and you will never see it the same way again, I guarantee, it will help you to see through a multitude of lies that we have been told for the past fifty years.