Conscientious Vandal

I made a copy of the Earth Charter. It is a meaningful enough document that I wish everyone would read and understand it. You can jump to their site by follwing the link In any effect, I copied the document and cut each section and subsection into small slips of paper. Each of the tiny slips of paper had one recommendation from the Earth Charter on them. Then, when I wanted to leave a mark, I would just glue one onto a bathroom stall, a sign post or bus stop, picnic bench, tree or table etc. Wherever people are stranded in one place for a minute or three, they can at least read up about positive steps we each can take to live in harmony with the planet. After showing a friend my idea, he branded me Conscientious Vandal. We had been joking about how odd it is to see so many breasts and penises rendered in spray pain in public spaces. Interestingly, some of the most profound words I ever read were scrawled on a wall in Milwaukee. "Death is the greatest trip of all, that's why they save it 'til last." was what it said. The older I get, the more I hope those words are true. I've had so many great trips in life, I truly hope they are topped by my exit. I remeber back when I was a young man in highschool, I had gotten a contract to help paint a mural on a local, concrete structure that held the mountain back, so it would not collapse into the street. Like a massive terrace, the three sided structure was trapezoidal, having two giant triangles on either end and a broad, more than twenty foot wide central portion. The triangular ends sort of buttressed against the weight of the hill, pushing back against gravity's pull. When you stood back even three or four blocks, looking across form th eother sid eof th evalley, you could see the giant wall. Looking back, maybe that's why I feel like I have had my fill of painting on concrete.

I tried to get a friend to help with the painting, a giant pod of whales with one whale appearing to swim right out of the wall, my friend, who has passed away now said he would not deface concrete because some craftsman made that wall, over a hundred years before and that the guy who finished the concrete had done such a great job that he could feel th epride he took in that surface. His legacy was perfect concrete and it woul dliterally last forever, if left alone. He felt that our artwork was stiull graffitti, degrading it for the sake of a fleeting moment of proving your own passing. I suppose both interpretations are valid. The local arts council had money to spend though and it kept us from getting into trouble. About a dozen people all pulled together and painted it over the course of several weeks and it certainly brightened the neighborhood. Where there had been a dingey gray slab, a pop of color and destination for people to recognize was created for not much more than the cost of the paint. I think the regional artist who designed it got a grand for his art, and for transferring it to the wall in a line drawing and the two leads they chose to guide the volunteers got 250 each and we were primarily there to paint and make sure that different areas of color, as laid out by the atists matched the original work of art. I suppose, even back then I was being a conscientious vandal.

Earth

The frost has come out of the ground...many believe that the earth is waking up, but the bio-dynamic folks see things a bit differently. For many of the deep ecologists and earth worshipers, we recognize that the Earth is most awake and alive in the depths of winter. The unmistakeable crystal clarity of a below zero (sub -16C) day is often one of the best times to see the Earth aware, awake and alive. Seeing it in this clarity, just for itself, can help us come to terms with our relationship with it. What people recognize this time of year is all the creatures that inhabit the planet having their way with it. The creatures acting upon it and making their living in or on it are masking the being that is the planet. A farm, village or town, even a single residence or park lie upon the surface of the planet, each having their own ecology, their own relationship with place, but for the Earth itself to express what it truly is, the best time to see and understand it is when the life upon it has been reduced to stasis or has been inactivated by stillness. The long nights and short days of winter are often the best time to get in touch with the land, the energies of place and the geographic identity of the land itself. Now that the frost has come out of the ground, we are looking at many things, but none of them are the foundation of life itself.

We saw the first robin eating the first worm this first week of April. As soon as they are able, the creatures begin to overwhelm the land with such a profusion of life that we often forget that the Earth itself is separate and distinct from the life upon and within it. When we act upon the planet, we may work from the neck down, but having the heart of the land in our awareness is not enough, understanding how to feed and dispose of the fundamental "waste" products of the land is not enough to harmonize with the planet either. We need to understand and develop a relationship with the head, the hopes and dreams of the land as well as the intellectual capacity and understanding the planet has with what goes on around and within it. When we begin to develop a relationship with the foundation of life, we can gain a better understanding of the whole. The natural phenomena that take place in and around us are mere reflections of the Earth but especially now, as the biological activity increases, it is easy to mistake the profusion of life that depends on the planet as the important part.

This week I have been coming to a much deeper understanding of this fact and this is what I have found. We typically go though life looking at the tops of great pyramids. We use the elements which we are aware of to navigate and create meaning in our lives. To begin to grasp this idea, say one pyramid (since it is topical at this particular moment) is religion. We conceptualize or see a pope, or the Buddha, perhaps a priest or pastor. We look to education and see a teacher or principal, perhaps a school board or state superintendent of public instruction. We go to a store and see the products on the shelves. Each of these "entities" or objects is dependent on a vast support system, nearly beyond our comprehension. Tens of thousands, millions, perhaps billions of discreet relationships were required to create each and every one of these towering pyramids, but we have been trained to think that the apex is the important part.

We have been led to this belief through our own hierarchy of needs, our desire to make sense of the world around us and the predominant focus on soaring heights rather than the basis of our existence. As long as we are willing to forget the foundations and revel in the uppermost part of the structures around us, we will miss the most important part of life itself and remain unable to come to terms with relationship. Like a pyramid, the lives of the slaves who created it are every bit as important as the Pharaohs whose tombs they were built to house. The ruling class has a good laugh at the expense of the lower classes, but without them, the entire system would collapse. I believe that if we went far enough back, the construction workers who built the pyramids would have joked that the first few slaves who were crushed under the extreme weight of the building blocks would work as lubricant and make the stones move more easily, but that if too many were crushed under the blocks it would make them more difficult to move. This dehumanization sounds crass, but we are far too willing to buy into the seductive belief that what we do is justifiable and that the goals which we have, no matter how high aloft, must rest on the exploitation of resources that we rely on for us to build to ever-higher levels. Exploitation rather than relationship are the watchwords of the failed systems, be they religious, economic, political or spiritual.

The value of and sheer number of people who have been willing to sacrifice themselves to the creation of the "pyramids" that we recognize today must be taken into account if we are to see the whole more clearly. Producing grain and meat in the Desert Southwest, or upon the Great Plains has depleted the largest aquifer in North America. The Colorado River has been reduced to a salty waste discharge in Mexico that never reaches the sea. The massive debt that has led to the formation of our food system has enslaved millions of farm workers. The "belief" in god has translated into exploitation and oppression of millions of souls for the enrichment of a precious few. Even the bald eagle cannot thrive without a billion minute creatures filling their specific niche in the environment. When we look deeply into any of the systems that lead to our current state of affairs, we will be struck with the power of relationship and the Earth itself only creates a stage upon which these relationships can be played out. Change never starts at the top. We are each responsible for making new foundations if we are to grow a new system that values relationship and humanity, true peace and security depend on relationship, not the soaring peaks of power and control.

"It IS Sacred"

I sat through nearly nine of the twelve hours of testimony that was given yesterday to a subcommittee of Wisconsin State Legislators whose task is to pass mining legislation that has been written by, for the very first time in state history, the regulated industry. An entity that goes by the name of GTAC had a representative there to speak as well, but virtually nothing he had to say made any sense to those who know the history of mining in the state. I have participated in several rounds of public comments, working through the legislative process to help craft regulations and assisting in educating the public about the nature of trying to mine in sensitive areas and the headwaters of river systems that we all hold in common as citizens. What was just as stunning now as it was thirty years ago, when I began my own involvement in environmental issues, was the absolute disconnect between those who believe in their dominion over nature and those who realize that we are integral to the ecology of Mother Earth. The outright lies, about the nature of the geology, the proposed changes to wetlands protection, the air and water quality that mining would affect, the number of jobs that a mine would "create" and the impacts on local communities were bad enough. Serious questions arise about the validity of any position taken by the corporation, (GTAC) because they have already acted in ways that would normally be prosecuted.
It is an crime to tell someone that if they do what you want them to, something good will happen and if you do not do what they want, bad things will happen. When they ask for money, that is called extortion, organized crime is often prosecuted for engaging in this type of crime. Racketeering is enlisting enough people as to control a market. I see no reason why enlisting the government to help steal from the public should be any different from using any other group of organized criminals to do so. What will be stolen, in this case is two-fold. First off, by having a mining company re-write the laws, the company has already stolen our democratic process. The sham of only allowing twelve hours of testimony to be heard from the public, hundreds of miles from where the mine would operate, with only two business days warning has also stolen rights that belong to the public and have been well-established by time-honored practices that have served us well since Wisconsin has been organized as a state. The second thing that has been stolen from the people of Wisconsin are the laws that have sought to protect the environment from mining interests, who leave social distortion, cultural mayhem and environmental destruction in their wake. This assault on state law also renders useless, the hundreds of thousands of hours spent crafting the laws than now partially protect state resources like clean air and water.
I am writing in parlance that the average person might understand, but the deepest assault is a bit more esoteric. First, the history buffs and folks enamored by the "good old days" spoke about the need to recover the boom times that mining provided the north woods. What these people forget is that instead of prostrating themselves to set dynamite in warrens of tunnels, or shoveling the ore into carts, the way mining used to take place, modern mining allows a single guy in a truck to cart away more pulverized rock powder in a minute than a whole community used to be able to produce in a day. Forgetting the fact that the geology that led to mining certain parts of our state was the exact same geology that led to the end of mining, did not seem to be enough, the supporters also had to parrot back the same ignorant statements that they rest their arguments upon. One supporter hastened to say that the town of "Wakefield gets it's water from the (now-closed) Montreal mine". This may be true but has absolutely nothing to do with the proposed mine that lies under sulfide bearing rock that will be blasted to powder, creating acid mine drainage in the next watershed over.
The people who clung to the "jobs" issue failed to mention that the problems that they have always had with shrinking population is that the first extraction was the forest itself, then the mineral wealth under their feet. They do not understand that the low-grade ore that is left is just that. One person "in favor of the mine", bemoaned the "fact" that their children will all have to move away if they want to get jobs and another said that six homes on one lake alone had been foreclosed on and were now sitting empty. Hmmmm, sounds like a vacation retreat center about to happen, but that would require a bit of investment and commitment to finding creative ways of making a living. There are many flourishing vacation rental businesses across the north...One wondered if their children just wanted to get away from the land of not much to do. One fellow who, as I recall, was a school board chairman, said that if just six families would move into their school district it would help the school to hang on in spite of dwindling enrollment and plummeting state aid. Keep in mind that these same voices doubted the integrity of the science behind the opposition to the mine and the sentiment that most folks spoke out about that was we need to take our time and protect the environment, rather than bowing to corporate power and promises.
This is the second round for this law, even though it was reintroduced this session as AB 1 and SB 1, none of the prior testimony, which ran 348 against environmental destruction to 24 in favor of mine development, will be allowed to be considered in the new fight spear-headed by governor scott Walker, to reduce the effectiveness of Wisconsin state law.
Two particular interactions during the hearing yesterday were most telling, one was the question, late in the day by the committee chair. "Why is this issue more important in Ashland County than in Iron County?" Iron county is not even in the watershed that would be affected by acid mine drainage. 2/3 of the proposed mine and all of the acid mine drainage would be in Ashland County. To date, there has not been a single public hearing on this issue there. Secondly, and perhaps most sadly, was the representative who spoke against changing the current laws. You would think that someone who wants to protect the state would have a better grasp on the situation. They said that the wild rice which grows in the floodplain of the Bad River is "almost sacred" to native people. Luckily, there were folks close by who chimed in, "It IS Sacred!" Several times during the hearing, the relationship between the sanctity of the land and sacred rites and/or objects came out. Just the sheer amount of TNT that would be used to blast the rock to the consistency of talcum powder would unleash a toxic legacy that would last beyond seven generations. I am sorry if I misquote Mike Wiggins, but he said something like, Imagine wiping the Vatican from the face of the earth, that is what the headwaters of our reservation are to us.
Several times, it was brought to light that the rights of native populations were guaranteed by a government much older than that of the State of Wisconsin. The treaties entered into by their nations and the nation of the United States of America explicitly state that there is a responsibility of the federal government to assure protection of the resources upon which their culture, their nation, and their subsistence way of life depend. Because of these treaties, the relationship between the people and their land may not be taken for granted, cannot be infringed and certainly by this understanding, must not be ruined by releasing toxic substances into the air or water of one nation by negligence or design by the other. The air, the water, the earth, rock and the intact ecosystem upon which life thrives is sacred. This needs to be made clear to the temporary custodians of our state. Our interest is in protecting this land forever.