Life seeks balance and what better time to speak of it than around the Equinox. This time, more than any other hangs in between High Sun and Low Sun. Many of us who live in temperate climates enjoy the Spring and Fall seasons best of all. Not too hot and not too cold as Goldilocks would say. This year, the balance is being perturbed in several ways. I prefer not to get too topical in this blog, focusing instead on the natural world and all it has to teach us, but the times have changed drastically enough that it seems imperative to focus on events that have been in the news, or possibly some that have not, because our future quality of life hangs in the balance as well. Unlike the changing of the seasons, which come around in a regular cycle, we are pushing the limits of rational behavior and disrupting the very fabric of our lives, often without even knowing it.
This Equinox was marked by over four hundred thousand individuals protesting ecological insanity in New York City. Climate change protesters, kudos to them, brought home the fact that changes in the way we do business, procure our energy and meet the needs of human populations around the world need to change. In fact, the next day, many of the same people walked down to Wall Street and continued to protest against the corporate elite who have stacked the deck against sanity.
In Pennsylvania, where tens of thousands are being subjected to living in a police state, there is an ongoing manhunt for a cop killer survivalist. Massive resources are being brought to bear, all for one guy. This is the state that brought fracking into the news because of the flaming tap water and the intransigence of the corporados, who still refuse to release the list of toxic chemicals that they are pumping deep into the Earth. It seems that we are so inundated with distraction techniques that one can no longer tell if a cop killer is even a threat, while the police defend those who would poison our water. No expense is being spared, they say, but a simple fly over with an infra-red camera would find their quarry in short order. We had an armed gunman kill some people at the Upper Michigan - Wisconsin border a few years ago and the perpetrator was in custody within a few hours. hiding your body heat signature is not easy. The days are turning to weeks and schools remain closed, roadblocks are still in place and the local volunteer fire department has become both communications center and drop off point for snacks, sandwiches, drinks and cookies. Friends living in that area are convinced that the police are doing their best at finding the individual. I am not convinced.
In the high plains, the fracking nightmare has mushroomed beyond comprehension, even satellite imagery sees the transformation lighting up the night sky. Parts of Texas are the same way, riddled with roads, shoulder to shoulder drill pads and nothing to show for it but tax breaks, subsidized oil and natural gas and waste. conservation is so much cheaper! This nightmare continues north across the border in Canada, where oil shale "development" has and continues to defile one of the last great open spaces on the continent. Shit gets in the water, no one takes responsibility. Toxic waste ruins watershed after watershed and no one seems to be at fault. In the minds of the exploiters, we are the ones to blame...we keep pumping the gasoline into our vehicles.
The oceanic gyrae continue to be flooded with plastic that has slipped mindlessly beyond our ability to control. a friend was telling me the other day that, "Organisms now exist that can eat plastic." but he was dumbfounded when I explained that they are not eating it in any real sense. The food they consume is attached to plastic and therefore it is becoming integrated in the food chain. This cannot be mistaken for "eating" plastic, or using it for nutrition. I can swallow plastic as well, but it will not ever become part of a nutritious diet. In the final analysis, plastic is a non-food product. Children have swallowed marbles since they were invented, but it can't make them food. Just because plastic becomes trapped inside your body certainly can't make it food.
Across the sea, in Syria, we are blowing things to smithereens again, hesitating to call it war. If anyone tried doing the same thing to out oil wells or financial institutions I think it would be called war. Even the women and children that have perished in just the first two nights of bombing have been referred to as, "Children and spouses of insurgents." how this makes their human rights any less important than out own, I will never know. Examining the list of countries that support us in our bombing missions reads like a who's who of nations that summarily deny civil rights to their people. If these are the kinds of "friends" we count among the league of nations, then I don't want to be part of this any more. Not in my name! The Saudi's after all provided refuge to those who supposedly brought down the world Trade Center on 9-11. Israel just killed many thousands of their neighbors, guaranteeing the need for an even larger military in the future. What is often forgotten by the hawks who design these actions is that every innocent killed becomes a martyr, with generations of hate that will be directed at you for your arbitrary attacks. No healing ever occurred, and nothing positive has ever been created by the firing of a single rocket or the dropping of a single bomb.
The balance to all of these events and activities is that more and more people are learning to live on less. Greater and greater numbers each day are coming to realize the fallacy of business as usual. Each and every opportunity to share our sanity, our ideas and our commitment to change must be taken. Healing a world so full of sick ideas may seem daunting, but we have one another and the facts are on the side of right, not might. Love is the foil to all of this hate. I speak out at this time because of my own beliefs that our species is worth saving. There is no planet "B".
This Equinox was marked by over four hundred thousand individuals protesting ecological insanity in New York City. Climate change protesters, kudos to them, brought home the fact that changes in the way we do business, procure our energy and meet the needs of human populations around the world need to change. In fact, the next day, many of the same people walked down to Wall Street and continued to protest against the corporate elite who have stacked the deck against sanity.
In Pennsylvania, where tens of thousands are being subjected to living in a police state, there is an ongoing manhunt for a cop killer survivalist. Massive resources are being brought to bear, all for one guy. This is the state that brought fracking into the news because of the flaming tap water and the intransigence of the corporados, who still refuse to release the list of toxic chemicals that they are pumping deep into the Earth. It seems that we are so inundated with distraction techniques that one can no longer tell if a cop killer is even a threat, while the police defend those who would poison our water. No expense is being spared, they say, but a simple fly over with an infra-red camera would find their quarry in short order. We had an armed gunman kill some people at the Upper Michigan - Wisconsin border a few years ago and the perpetrator was in custody within a few hours. hiding your body heat signature is not easy. The days are turning to weeks and schools remain closed, roadblocks are still in place and the local volunteer fire department has become both communications center and drop off point for snacks, sandwiches, drinks and cookies. Friends living in that area are convinced that the police are doing their best at finding the individual. I am not convinced.
In the high plains, the fracking nightmare has mushroomed beyond comprehension, even satellite imagery sees the transformation lighting up the night sky. Parts of Texas are the same way, riddled with roads, shoulder to shoulder drill pads and nothing to show for it but tax breaks, subsidized oil and natural gas and waste. conservation is so much cheaper! This nightmare continues north across the border in Canada, where oil shale "development" has and continues to defile one of the last great open spaces on the continent. Shit gets in the water, no one takes responsibility. Toxic waste ruins watershed after watershed and no one seems to be at fault. In the minds of the exploiters, we are the ones to blame...we keep pumping the gasoline into our vehicles.
The oceanic gyrae continue to be flooded with plastic that has slipped mindlessly beyond our ability to control. a friend was telling me the other day that, "Organisms now exist that can eat plastic." but he was dumbfounded when I explained that they are not eating it in any real sense. The food they consume is attached to plastic and therefore it is becoming integrated in the food chain. This cannot be mistaken for "eating" plastic, or using it for nutrition. I can swallow plastic as well, but it will not ever become part of a nutritious diet. In the final analysis, plastic is a non-food product. Children have swallowed marbles since they were invented, but it can't make them food. Just because plastic becomes trapped inside your body certainly can't make it food.
Across the sea, in Syria, we are blowing things to smithereens again, hesitating to call it war. If anyone tried doing the same thing to out oil wells or financial institutions I think it would be called war. Even the women and children that have perished in just the first two nights of bombing have been referred to as, "Children and spouses of insurgents." how this makes their human rights any less important than out own, I will never know. Examining the list of countries that support us in our bombing missions reads like a who's who of nations that summarily deny civil rights to their people. If these are the kinds of "friends" we count among the league of nations, then I don't want to be part of this any more. Not in my name! The Saudi's after all provided refuge to those who supposedly brought down the world Trade Center on 9-11. Israel just killed many thousands of their neighbors, guaranteeing the need for an even larger military in the future. What is often forgotten by the hawks who design these actions is that every innocent killed becomes a martyr, with generations of hate that will be directed at you for your arbitrary attacks. No healing ever occurred, and nothing positive has ever been created by the firing of a single rocket or the dropping of a single bomb.
The balance to all of these events and activities is that more and more people are learning to live on less. Greater and greater numbers each day are coming to realize the fallacy of business as usual. Each and every opportunity to share our sanity, our ideas and our commitment to change must be taken. Healing a world so full of sick ideas may seem daunting, but we have one another and the facts are on the side of right, not might. Love is the foil to all of this hate. I speak out at this time because of my own beliefs that our species is worth saving. There is no planet "B".
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