When your time is up...

I try not to harp on white people problems, but I have to confess, I have felt terror and lived to tell the tale.
For years, I have driven on one of the most deadly stretches of road in the state. Yesterday I counted five times that idiots tried to wreck me and none of those drivers gave throwing the dice a second thought. Complete ineptitude and offensive driving were on full display. The culprit, perhaps was not the brainless ones piloting their cars, but whatever they were spacing out about. The time to attend to your surroundings is when you are driving! Pesky Blighters! On the way home four more stepped up to keep the threat of death alive and I thought for sure, there is some sort of idiot maximum, which I had sustained.

Untrue; today, just seven miles from my city, a lady came down the Freedom on ramp at breakneck speed, only to encounter me going perhaps five miles per hour slower than the limit, never looking, never turning her head and the passing lane was full, so I had no escape. She slammed on her brakes and was right up on my ass, before the merge lane even started to go away. If she had paid any attention, perhaps she would have noticed a car's ass end rapidly approaching, but no, probably ended up being the closest call of all ten of these events, but if you are coming into traffic, you are supposed to match their speed, that's why I go a little slower than the limit, so folks who are merging have more time to blend into traffic.
Jumping into my following distance robs everyone behind us. Please don't do it. forcing me to slow to let you jump the line is just rude! To those who jump lane to lane, to try to get ahead, we all see your ass end at the next stop light, or exit, so let's act like we are all on one team, remembering that if we all arrive alive, we can all win!

It is Only Everything We Love That is Threatened

I heard an eloquent womyn say this recently. Truly, what will it take to get us collectively up off our asses and get us to stop letting the pressure of the electrons emitted by the teevee on our retina push us back down, onto the couch? How about a couple poorly timed, fake attacks on tankers bound for Japan? While the Japanese Prime minister is visiting Iran, securing the release of a U.S
 citizen held on spy charges? When the nation is doing it's level best to be on good behavior amongst the other nations of the Earth. This is a false flag attack at the very least. Nothing to see here, except deception. When endless sabre rattling does not suffice, the war machine slowly ratchets up the pressure until something goads the public into another bloodthirsty human rights violation. We have seen these things play out far too many times.
I am running for congress, others may write letter sot the editor, or tell their friends about their favorite candidates. Still others will speak for us at public hearings and in various fora. It has been generations since we had a real organized political citizenry, perhaps it will come again. surely enough of us have had our oxen gored to enrich the oligarchs.

The beaver is one of my spirit guides. They are industrious and their work leads to a cascade of ecological benefits. Learn some of the ways to do that here. Please, drop a line or comment if you have insights that you would like to share.

Post Sabbatical

I have returned, renewed, refreshed and with clarity, but that has been more than offset by the moral injury I sustain daily watching a traitor disassemble our nation before my very eyes. The times require a complete and utter upturning and upheaval. Everywhere the fascist state intrudes into our lives, it needs to be pruned back. Everywhere racism rears its head, cut it off. I don't care if we are up against Medusa herself, get in there and start slashing. At this point, I'm not even going to care what realm you operate in. stand up, say "Hells no!" when given demeaning, life sucking, B.S. jobs, things managers would never dream of doing themselves, or that outright hurt others. Just say no takes on deeper meaning when wielded against oligarchs.

The eternal spiral unfolding as our Earth, passes through space is roughly shaped like a corkscrew. The living cycle of the last year, independent from blogging gave me a deeper understanding of being clear, no matter what your perspective. Realizing that we will never again have the same perspective is both liberating and bittersweet. Instead of being immersed in writing in a certain style, during my sabbatical, I wrote both on my book about my bicycle ride around the Great Lakes and two smaller books, about things my mother has done and my reminiscences about NYC during the years I was a frequent guest and sometime resident on island. In our minds eye, time is virtually irrelevant. Writers are often as comfortable in the moments preserved by writers of a thousand years ago as they are in this moment. Piecing together salient ideas from across the many centuries is the task of those who want to teach and enlighten. My logo can be described far easier than it is to make it so.

If you have ever heard of the merkaba, it is like a spinning three (or multi-) dimensional vortex. a sphere of energetic resonance with the all. Sublime as it may seem, I want my logo to vibrate with that energy, perhaps flashing in reversing colors, or jiggling about slightly, so they have the energy of life. The logo, corporate image is the analemma, complete with moonthly increments and a zodiacal index along the design.

Hovering over the relative "dates" (parts of the year, represented along the line of the design) would bring up other pages where one could see what type of ECO-Tours are offered, specific to that time of year, registration information and helpful information about pagan events going on at that time as well. Please, if you know of anyone who is a crack programmer, set them this challenge. If someone can make what I just described happen, I'd cut them in for a lifetime supply of biochar.

This revolt needs to focus on getting the oligarchs and their money out of politics. Our founers, above all were honorable, they based their candidacy for their position on intellect, belief that a better future could be forged, but now our tastes are told to us by the ultra wealthy. their interests are served, not ours. If minimum wage had increased like CEO salaries, it would be thirty three dollars per hour. Ideas matter. If we are to have our democracy, we have to let all ideas be heard. Cable news stations have spent more time on Biden than all the other candidates combined. How are we to hear through the noise? Biden wrote the Crime Bill, which those of us who knew about the criminal justice system said would perpetrate genocide against the black community, which it has. All the way back then, progressive voices called for police pension funds to take the hit for extra-judicial killings of innocent people, but did the powers that be ever say that out loud? Hells No!

Again, I write to tell the story about what to do, do not give up the ship. Do know that you are valid.

Strong

Rock bottom in the age of extreme resource extraction.
500 years of colonization have left us addicted to fossil fuels,
short-sighted "development" and resource wars.
where has our pursuit of the American Dream led us?
How can we begin the road to recovery?

Our water, source of all life is being threatened by a trio of new, extreme extraction processes:
Fracking, tar sands and sulfide mining.

This blog attempots to share hard-hitting, honest analysis,
entertaining and compassionate story-telling,
with graphics from Beehive Collective
and stories from around the Great Lakes.

The beaver is just doing what beavers do, however, whole ecosystems develop and thrive upon their decisions and actions. Last Summer, I walked on a ten foot tall beaver dam and saw more than a dozen species all helped by a single beaver family.

The information preceding the photo was taken pretty much wholesale from the Beehive Collective. Their works are in the public domain as part of the Creative Commons. I urge all of my readers to donate to their cause, as well as support my work at paypal. My account there is my e-mail, tnsaladino42@hotmail.com

Weak

I have been AWK Away From Keyboard for a long while. Sadly, the last stupid thing the Deceitful traitor said was something incoherent about bird memorials below wind turbines. Over one billion birds fly headlong into buildings every year, most commonly into lit buildings at night, which leads to their death. One billion, compared to between 20,000 and 500,000 Even at that high end, a half million, two thousand times as many birds die from building collisions as get killed by turbine blades. Perhaps it is time to scientifically make decisions based on facts, not whim.

Each day, I continue to share truth as it comes to me. I still cannot fathom why we don't have the ability to just vote no-confidence and get on with inviting a whole new batch of leaders to the table. These old farts who are stuck on last generation thinking need to shove off! Get organizing, challenge all seats! Make sure that the voice of the people rises to such a din as to drown out the oligarch-owned media! Remember, when planning your actions we have no need to get defensive, our position is truth. You cannot simultaneously negotiate peace, while preparing for war. Laws have been created to protect us from kings and tyrants. Money was never intended to be "speech". Corporate welfare is class warfare end of story.

I was attempting to build a sunshade for the upstairs porch, but we found a much more elegant solution. This solar panel, built in 1974 continues to produce 1/3 the annual heating budget for this two-family home. It was the first of this now-defunct brand to be fabricated from aluminum, after nearly forty years, the panels have clouded some, but this Summer, it will get new, higher tech polymer glazong that will last even longer than the fiberglass they had available in 1974. Whenever it is eighty or hotter in the panel, a fan circulates the air into the house. Literally, four moving parts. Efficiency.

Every dollar we spend, every hour we spend is in service to something. When we enrich the faraway billionaires, that value never comes back. When we spend within our local community, the money reverberates around enriching many layers of the same local economy. The argument that oligarchs use, that they are divinely entitled to rule, dates back to Calvinism. I think we can give up on it after 500 years of evolution. The poor are not the problem, it is the tiny scintilla of a fraction who rule with their dollars. Buying local and producing everything here shuts off the spigot of our dollars, making them and their arguments weak.

You know the drill, buy local and enrich the people you care most about, those around you. If you want tips on energy efficiency, so you can spend less on energy, retaining more of your wealth for local investment, I'll be happy to share some things I have learned. I have owned five houses, each one uses half the energy and water it did when I bought it. These benefits will last, being multiplied throughout the lifespan of each of those homes. My brother-in law is a salesman at heart and posts inspirational sayings where he can see them each day, changing them by the week so he does not treat them like wallpaper. The last time I was at his place, one of his sayings really got to me. It said that the value of our lives is not just in what we could do or amass for ourselves, but all the benefits to all the people we have helped as well. Powerful words to live by.

My Commitment To You

When I began posting to this site, I was relatively ignorant of how and why social change agents were using the blogosphere. I thought of the digital realm as a way to get information out in the post paper world, like putting newspaper articles out without having to utilize hard copy. I quit blogging at other sites that began injecting advertising into my posts without my authority. The very first time that it happened, I saw several hypertext links within my copy. When I took my mouse to the link, it took me to a corporate welfare recipient's page and the article, (or post) I was writing was speaking to the issue that these corporate entities have stacked our system against us.

You know the score. Corporados infinite power and control over our lives, we the people are left fighting over scraps. Because I am dedicated to and trying to express my deep love for human beings, not corporations, this was the most heinous slap in the face a writer could experience. When I wrote to the people who were making decisions about the hosting platform, they told me that they were only trying to monetize their site and that if users did not want to pay for their access, that they had to reach out to corporations to add their ads to content to raise money.

This might be fine for some people, but the fact that I was writing content that was clearly encouraging people to vote against with every dollar they spend in the marketplace, these same corporate giants; yet embedded in my posts were actual ads for those same non-change agents, the very people who are cleaning up on our pain, made me sick. I parted ways with that platform immediately. They might be great folks, but they certainly did not understand their part in what some refer to as "just business". I have even posted my ideas regarding those two words being used in proximity to one another. There is nothing just about business the way it is most often perpetrated against us.

Take for example the news today. We were finally told, explicitly, that the 800,000 Federal workers who went without pay for a month are just the tip of the iceberg. In addition, there are over a million more federal contract employees who will not be eligible for back pay. Their numbers are hidden. If it were blood in urine, we would call it occult blood. Just because you can't see it, does not mean it is not there. Including their losses over the more than month-long government shutdown changes the nature of and long-term pain involved in this recent treason the President has perpetrated against our nation. For decades now, contract employees have increased as a percentage of our Federal and State workforce. This has been a huge part of the right-wing takeover that dates back to Ronald Reagan. Getting these people off the government payroll precludes pension requirements, allows government to do more for less money and it also allows the spin off of managerial and executive positions within these contracted businesses, but at what cost?

Put simply, the cost is human suffering. This was brought into sharp focus during the recent shut-down. One of the many costs of putting a petulant child-mind in the Oval Office. I hesitate to use the term child-mind because it makes children sound stupid, they are not. In fact, a friend loves to tell the story of her fourth grade daughter who was involved with a mock election for President a couple years ago. Prior to the Presidential election, they had their own vote and lengthy discussions about the candidates followed their vote. Over 80% of the children voted for Hillary Clinton and when asked why, their reasons were nearly unanimous. Trump is a bully they said. He is mean and hates womyn, the elderly, handicapped and people of color they said. So, in fact the term child mind only undermines the deeply aware and staunchly compassionate sid eof children that don't exist in the man we named "President".

What does this have to do with online advertising and the beginning of this post you may ask?  Well, I continue to research and study, not just ecological facts, sustainability, politics, social norms and the effects of oligarchy on what we see and read, I even why and how other people blog. Oddly enough, many people do it to make money, selling their content to the advertiser's dream audience. The nature of advertising in the blogosphere is unique, because these mere words and ideas are able to create deep connections. Trading on the trust and familiarity readers have for their favorite bloggers, corporate America has the ability to latch on to deep feelings in the readers, selling to them on a nearly sub-conscious level. The very real possibility exists that people will think, "If my favorite blogger likes this company or that product, perhaps I will too."

This dangerous association can sell things that would never be accepted in the marketplace if not for the familiarity we have with our sources of information.

This blog remains ad-free because I find most solutions to be beyond marketability. I don't want to get rich selling things. We all typically have more than we need already. The vast majority of my readers have food, shelter and enough to live. My goal is to help them do it more gracefully, to share information that helps lead to grace under pressure as it ratchets up in our current system. We need more truth tellers and more problem solvers, not more products. Especially now that we are seeing massive growth in the sharing economy, we also need more services and ways to help our community.

There was no attribution for this photo, so I'm not even sure who to credit for the work. Rest assured, it is here for educational purposes only. Next time you hear of a cop putting an innocent person to death, remember this image.

According to many experts who advise and teach bloggers to monetize their work, I have been doing things all wrong. My posts are too long, I don't include three three-word action points at the end and I refuse to court advertisers in an attempt to monetize this work. I may try to change, if just to look a little more like other blogs, but you can rest assured that I will never sell out my readers for a corporation that exhibits misogynistic, Calvinistic, or exploitative practices. That rules out most commercial entities. Instead, I will occasionally include my Paypal account number, asking you to send some money if and when you can. The sustainable ideas and actions that I share save me thousands of dollars a year and I encourage everyone to utilize than to increase their quality of life at lower cost. I don't expect anyone to send their entire savings to me for continuing to speak truth to power, but even ten percent of the money you save would help me to get a bit of reimbursement for  the many hours spent researching to be able to put together cogent posts.

Action plan: First, NEVER GIVE UP! We are winning many victories around the globe.
Second, BE THE CHANGE you wish to see in the world. Compassion starts with you.
Finally, APPRECIATE OTHERS. Sometimes that means giving cash or needed services to others.

If any of my posts seem valuable to you, my Paypal account is tnsaladino42@hotmail.com which is also my e-mail. If you would like to ask me a question, request a topic for my blog, or just send a note to tell me what you think or feel about any of my writing, you can help me by sharing money, thoughts or ideas, I would appreciate any or all of those things. Also, remember that if you have any questions about making the highest quality biochar possible, I charge $100 per hour for consultation services. when you understand that biochar lasts forever in soil, the value begins to become apparent.

I continue to work to keep this site ad-free and appreciate your interest/commitment to making the world a better place.

Green New Deal

Our human culture, as many have characterized it, is like a cancer growing across the planet. More than one person has claimed that the only viable solution to the human condition might be a giant meteor or other calamity. I have heard from many that they no longer like people, or that humanity is, pardon their language, fucked. I don't believe any of these positions, but do recognize the reasons some would be led to them. Some people call our current time period post-capitalist society, some prefer the term Anthropocene, the geologically significant period in which human desecration of the geophysical world will remain evident to whatever species comes next It is true that our human-made footprint will remain for many millions of years hence. however, there are even more people calling for a Green New Deal.

Implementing such a plan may require more human cooperation and more humanitarian effort than has ever been amassed or wielded during any prior period of human history. This may not even seem possible to a population privileged enough that they have never had to accept responsibility for anything. Especially for the ruling class, the oligarchs who currently run our governments, every element of the Green New Deal sounds like naive pipe dreams or utter lunacy. Interestingly enough, it is perhaps the most pragmatic policy to come down the pike since the last New Deal, FDR's (Franklin Delano Roosevelt's) groundbreaking suite of legislation that codified such systems as Unemployment Compensation, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. There was a veritable alphabet soup of new agencies and departments under this legislation that not only employed those deemed unemployable by the richest men among us, but that led to transformative changes the likes of which our nation had never seen before and sadly, have never seen since. However, both logic and a broad perspective informed the New Deal and the same is true for the Green New Deal.

Spending an afternoon planting trees, our hands helped to transform this plot from a wind swept, inhospitable hilltop to a rich bio-diverse haven for people and wildlife. In the Green New Deal, a little goes a long way. Love always wins over fear.

Another great document that helps set ground rules for exactly what is needed at this time is the Earth Charter. (earthcharter.org) The real insane, naive pipe dream is the one harbored by the wealthiest men on the planet. The one that leads them to believe that they are better suited to run things than the rest of us. Right now, in early 2019, there are twenty-six men who own as much wealth as half the population. Income and wealth disparity is exponentially greater now than at any prior time in human history. Ironically, the impoverished are often more hospitable to strangers than those who can afford to feed everyone, but decide not to. In her groundbreaking and terrifying work, Diet for a Small Planet, Francis Moore Lappe' dug deep, long before the age of computers to find in 1970 that 1/7 of the entire human population was at risk for starvation. That number has stayed the same to the present day. In spite of the massive wealth poured into technology, food science, refrigeration, and transportation systems, heck the entire Green Revolution that brought western food production techniques to the impoverished around the globe, we still have about 1/7 of the world at risk of starvation. as we have all come to understand, insanity is trying the same thing over and over but expecting a different outcome. what we need are qualitative changes that have not been tried yet.

Those who have read my blog closely understand that in my opinion, each and every problem can be distilled down to the essential question, will we love? or will we fear? We have only ever been able to choose one. Albert Einstein wrote, "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." 
 The two are mutually exclusive. The same is true of love and fear. At this juncture, we are faced with the chance, as every preceding generation has been, to let go of our fear. Hoping for a meteor or praying for Armageddon are definitely on the fear side of the decision-making chart. When we list the good things and bad things that might come about because of any decision, we typically choose the side of that chart, or decision tree where the good outcomes outweigh the bad ones. However, "just business" and business as usual both present our human population with more bad outcomes than good results, so why do we continue to tell people who are hurting that they need to suck it up and stop complaining? In a word, Calvinism, the idea that mostly brown people, but also poor people from around the world make bad decisions and that their poverty is their own fault; punishment for being immoral. We may know that this is a lie, but the wealthy, who own our media continue to tell us the same lie and it is hard to find someone who is not contaminated with the idea.

We need to accept the fact that basic human rights include debt-free healthcare and education access to healthy air and water, as well as healthy soil upon which to grow our food. Until we get those things straight, we will continue to subsidize the richest men on the planet. Until we admit that each and every human being deserves food, shelter, community and love, we will continue to inappropriately value those with more cash at their disposal. Until we stop the commodification of people through "human resource" departments and meaningless "service" jobs that only serve the ultra-wealthy, we are doomed to keep making the same mistakes. One tragic symptom of our failure is that the average student debt in the U.S. of A. is $37,172.00 that represents a twenty thousand dollar increase in just the last thirteen years. My first home cost less than that. Thirty-five years ago, my total student debt was $1,050. Even so, the money grubbing loan sharks who were flocking around education at the time were quick to add their interest and penalties for late payments, thinking not of how the educated make better decisions or the good to our society that could come from the education, just what it would be able to purchase once they got their hands on my money. The story has been the same for generations, but we can tell a different story is we choose to.