I know that I put paragraphs in that post...

CHILI

The reason I have written this as an acronym, is because I want to take a different approach to several issues that you may have seen popularized by the 24-7 news cycle. Carnage, Heinousness, Ignorance, Lubriciousness, (1.offensively displaying or intended to arouse sexual desire. 2.smooth and slippery with oil or a similar substance.)& Incompleteness. These five elements are present to varying degrees in each and every "event" you will witness in the current world of "news". To jump on this particular bandwagon of momentary but rapt attention, (given willingly by tens of millions) the story has to jerk the viewer, much like a hook in the jaw of a catfish, amaze, or violently assault the viewer, flooding them with strong emotion. Nothing else will do. The weather cast has seen the increase in extreme weather events as tailor made for capturing more air time. Hover, don't expect them to say anything about the root cause of climate change, they have an oil spill to cover. "How might the 24-7 news cycle relate to chili?" Well, my approach in my writing is the polar opposite, The time that I put into my stories began when I was a child. Salient crosscurrents that most people might never find have articulated waves in my memory, and like the Polynesian boat people, I use them to help navigate the vast ocean of experience that has taken place during my first half-century. On the trail, in the old west and they probably learned from native people, dry meat was pounded with onion and herbs, then boiled to make chili. So many people forget that not that long ago, there were no refrigerators or prepackaged food, this early chili would have been watered down to make broth when times got tougher and had a few more scraps of meat when the goin' was good. It could be, with a few corn biscuits, a tasty treat after a long day in the saddle, but you wouldn't want to live on it exclusively for long. So, I'll tell ya',chilli's got a lot to do with it. I have a book, about as thick as two thumbs. Called 365 Ways To Save The Earth. I am going to attempt to eventually write commentary on each one, but I would like my readers to step up and pledge a dollar a piece so that I might raise money for planting trees, seeds, and protecting property that has come under the heavy hand of humnan-unkind. I pledge to offset some of the contamination of mind that comes from trying to wrap your head around global issues, I will try to redouble my efforts to focus locally and restore and renew the feeling that the ecological train wreck that humans are on course for is not only survivable, but worth undertaking. The January first idea is to pledge to be a conscious shopper. This plays right into the message at hand. When you "buy-in" to my "product", you can rest assured that trees will be planted, acres protected and recovered with native plants. No waste will be created, only life will be fostered. Three-hundred and sixty five dollars can plant three dozen trees. Ten times that amount can buy an acre of land. Twenty times that amount can reforest that acre with native trees. There may be times that my writing feels like I'm beating a dead horse, but remember, it is only to tenderize it for your benefit. Even a chef needs to understand that it will all be shit tomorrow. We have the chance on the front side to make decisions about whether that shit is life giving and healthy, or filled with toxic residue and devoid of nutrients. Becoming a conscious shopper means the we are aware of life-cycle costs, from pre-production to disposal and at every step in-between. Regarding my approach to ecological restoration and intellectual discourse, it is my intent to open up areas that have been long beaten down, hammered flat, avoided completely, ignored, abused, neglected, papered over, glossed over or otherwise insulated from inspection. In my experience, when you open up the fertile landscape, or the mind, air and light get in and fertility blossoms where there had been nothing before. In my heart of hearts, I have always felt that the idea proposed, the admonition to, "Think globally, act locally.", was a bit over the top. It almost feels to me that it was instigated and popularized by those who oppose ecological change, like a mental shock treatment for the brain. (this should be reminding you of CHILI, the 24/7 news cycle I mentioned at the outset.) I do not challenge anyone to think globally, because it could render them unable to see the light of change, or even catch their breath under the weight of understanding it. During the time period when this idea was popular, China was increasing car ownership at an exponential rate, burning more and more coal, turning fossil into heat and atmospheric carbon at unparalleled rates. This, in turn, crushed the idea of recycling for many because the largest population on Earth seemed to be going at cross purposes to our will. Now, China is reigning in their wanton destruction of Mother Earth and the largest nation on the planet is building efficient transportation systems to eliminate legacy emissions from their auto fleet. I have always been of the opinion that only acting locally, independent of the global scale is the only way to remain sane. When I write about any global scale issue, my focus is on how we can solve problems by local action. The reference to phenomena such as the polar vortex, Fukushima, the various Gyrae, global desertification, and climate destabilization are tangential at best, just temporary hand holds to scramble across the difficult spots. The healing comes from taking local action. I feel a little bad that I had to bring up those mega-scale effects of our current collective action. My belief is that when we all finally act as one, our leaders will have to fall in line. On my two city lots, My wife and I produce as much food as possible, we do it because not wanting to buy any more foreign substances, imported to our property, than is absolutely necessary, guides all of our choices. I am still eating honey, gifted to me by a neighbor, so to import it from even a few miles away would require at least a bike trip if not a car ride. That could harm a lot of bees. In my town, we are called a "Tree City" and from early Spring to late fall there are nectar and pollen sources. This makes urban bees particularly productive and necessary. The reason I get so hopped up and inspired about bio-char is that in a single handful, there are fourteen acres of surface area! That is the microscopic level that I want others to think locally about. We have the technology, in fact there are several technologies for making char. What we lack is the will. Building the food pyramid from the bottom up, instead of assaulting it at every level is the best way to create the change we seek to see in the world. My additions, translations and stories relating to the entries in 365 Ways To Save The Earth, may be more easily remembered or understood if you purchase the book and read along, but I will try to make limited reference to it along the way. Each "day" I will use their ideas as a jumping off point. I will frequently distill down their two or three paragraphs to a few words, or expound upon their limited discussion with deeper truths that lie beyond their trendy approach. Like the char, I hope to build a structure upon which many forms of life might thrive. I believe that our consciousness is like a sponge and the ability of our minds to "soak up" information is nearly infinite. Once ideas take hold and are borne out by experience, they take up residence and thrive, much like the organisms that colonize bio-char, making the base of the food pyramid blossom. From this more stable place, more fertile ideas inspire more and more profound action.

Please Excuse Our Difficulties

Somehow our site got hijacked. Interestingly, it was by a domain name reseller.It looks like we have finally gotten to the bottom of the problem and our site is working again. To all of our readers who were unable to access our page, I apologize. We are using the next few weeks to focus our energies on fund raising so that we can plant more trees, do more bio-char workshops and provide more tours than ever this coming summer. Thank-you all for your patience, interest and support for our work.

Please Bear With Us.

It seems that our site has been hijacked. If you are getting to read this I am happy, but for some, they get re-routed to a web domain resellers site. I did not authorize that or set it up, so I'm not sure what resolution will need to be made, but i am working diligently to recover the blog that you have come to know and love. Blessed Imbolc can be found at my other blogger site: theotherfishwrap.

Days of Future Past

In days of old, there was a distinct passage of time punctuated by such things as Indian Summer and the January Thaw. Both were, more often than now, reliable events that made winter a bit more bearable. Fall came on slow and a period of several days to a week of freezing temperatures would often occur, then relent for a few days where the temps would skyrocket (relatively) to around fifty for one last hurrah of beautiful weather, before winter clamped down around Thanksgiving (Late November). Likewise, we had the long cold stretch during the holidays that signaled the advent of Winter proper, with all that Winter brings, but then around mid-January there would be a thaw that threatened to overflow the stream banks and inundate low lying areas. Shirtsleeves were not necessarily in order, but the warmth felt wonderful.

In recent years we have been forced to alternately wonder if a January freeze were more in order, or instead of Indian Summer, we have been tempted to call it Indian Fall, nearly skipping over some of the most wonderful days of autumn to be plunged into arctic air even before the frost has fallen on the pumpkin. Likewise, there have been springs recently that seemed to last but a week, again robbing us of the delightful lengthening days and the moderate temps that we used to have as winter loosened her grip. Since my earliest days, studying ecology and meteorology, the logic behind "Global Warming" seemed to be a reach. If you have ever heated up a stone and left one room temperature then taken them outside in winter, you can feel heat escaping far more rapidly from a warm rock than a cool one. If we ever manage to raise the temperature of the entire globe, it will just radiate faster out into space. However, the destabilization of the atmosphere, that is a different story.

Every BTU of heat that we generate excites molecules. These excited molecules just want to escape, they go in every direction, but more go up than go out, because the sky is the limit so to speak. Humans have become adept at wasting energy and wherever we gather together, cities have domes of waste heat and expanded air hovering over them like invisible mountain ranges. This has been clear for decades. The reason it really never gets talked about is because even scientists don't like to admit how little they know about the phenomenon. The media thinks it is out of the realm of being understandable to the majority of people and the government is not interested in holding anyone accountable for their waste heat signature.

ECO-Village

Sustainability can be defined in a few different ways, but the idea of it is quite oxymoronic. As I have written before, in organic systems, there are frequent lapses in sustainability, however, the one key element that assures continuation of natural systems is that there is no concept in nature of waste. This week I had an interesting Facebook post come across my feed. It was about a woman who has lived for over two years now without creating any garbage. How she did it is worth reading about. Every single thing in nature, when it is no longer viable, transforms into one of three things. either food for another organism, housing for other organisms or breeding ground for other organisms. When we learn to mimic this reality, we will find ourselves participating in a sustainable system. One of the things that I have always done is reuse paper bags. I currently use them in my art because they make some of the strongest papier mache' ever and when I sculpt, it creates art that is ultimately recyclable. It is not possible in natural systems to make Kraft paper, because to make it you must boil wood chips in sulphuric acid, but by utilizing the material as efficiently as possible, I feel that the best and highest use can be made of something that has a foundation in an ecologically unsustainable world view. Healing this mind set gives us a greater chance of survival (as a species) and I have found, allows humans to more fully understand their place in the world and make peace with it.

This is not to say that humans will live forever or that the system will always remain unchanged. Quite the opposite is true. Adaptation has always led to change and development of new possibilities, new potential. When we key into the inevitable changes that occur in nature and learn to adapt to them with style and grace, many issues disappear and myriad possibilities open up for us where nothing had existed before. The folks who wish for things to remain the same or that things could go back to the way they were in less informed and/or less developed times are on the wrong track. Although there are a few things that were useful in the "good old days", the vast majority of them had unintended negative consequences that helped to create many of the problems that we are still trying to overcome today. In the ECO-Village of the future, we will have to be energy independent, food self sufficient and socially able to handle and adapt to the variability that is blamed for so much strife today. Learning to live and let live is something that we spend far too little time on in our educational systems, our religious institutions and in daily life.

One seriously difficult issue has dogged "humanity" for centuries. Why are we here? This single question has dominated human thought at least since the Greeks. As far as we can fathom, no other creature wonders or worries about this so-called "important" concept. A liberating mantra has presented itself to me recently that can be used by anyone at any time. Get ready to have another gift bestowed upon you courtesy of ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. This freebie offers the potential to change your life forever and if you use it conscientiously, it can also transform the lives of those around you. The reason that you may have never heard about this mantra before is that the entire fortune of each and every oligarch on the planet depends on you not realizing the insights that come from stepping off the hamster wheel. Back in the seventies, there was a massive marketing program devoted to TM Transcendental Meditation. They told each of their customers, (yes, you had to buy your mantra) to never, under any circumstances tell anyone your mantra. Like your native name, you were not to spread it around. I have found that the power that comes from keeping things secret is far outweighed by the clarity of mind that accompanies openness. In fact, many believe that the whole "secret mantra" thing was based on the fact that those running the business of indoctrination didn't want folks to know that everyone got one of just a few mantras.

I, on the other hand, have no reason to keep information that has the power to transform your life and the culture as a whole for the better, secret. One day, my giving will pay back, but I am not going to enrich myself at your expense, so here goes. This meditation can be done wherever you are, whatever you are doing and it requires nothing more than mental discipline. If you see "X" or "Y" or "Z", practice telling yourself "X" has no meaning except what I give it. "Y" has no meaning except what I give it. "Z" has no meaning, except what I give it. For some real world examples just keep your eyes open and remind yourself...This hand has no meaning, except what I give it. The view outside the window has no meaning, except what I give it, the book that I am reading has no meaning except what I give it, etc. This has several complimentary actions on our world view. First and foremost, the message is that even we have no meaning, except what we give ourselves. This liberates us from defining our "selves" in ways we always have. When we begin to understand that our human mind has the power to assign values, traits and characteristics that seem relevant at the time, we can reassign or remove those burdens, replace them with uplifting ideas or tweak our perception in ways that assign different meanings to all that we experience, even our sense of "self".

When we learn that whatever we perceive or value only has that value because our perceptions and preoccupations are acting on the idea of it in our mind, it liberates us from having to understand the "Why?" question. Our minds will fight and squirm to tell us that some of our perceptions are true, but even then, this "truth" has no value except what I give it. Defining all of these things serves to tell us that the world around us has meaning. It is just one trick that the mind plays on us. In an ECO-Village, the value of each and every object, person, creature and resource gains meanings that cannot be expressed until one confronts them in the unique ways that flow from having this changed perspective. Water becomes a temporary status of the greater water cycle. The energy that gets used and created is part of a cycle as well. The carbon that cycles through the biological systems is a temporary status of something much longer-lived. Again, the meanings of all of these things is recognized as malleable and that it changes based on what we each bring to the perception of it, but ultimately, it is not for us to assign values and meanings to each and everything we perceive. Understanding that we are meaning making machines and can do nothing other than assign value to our environment can liberate us from limiting ideas of what is going on around us.

ECO-Villages require us to participate in something else that has no value, but what we give it. The actual adaptation that organisms in nature have always done. If you would like to invest in our ECO-Village, we will continue to welcome your participation.

Preparing for the Twelveth Night

I read a little about the Twelveth Night this morning, trying to find out more about the twelve days of X-mas. It was interesting to find that the celebrations have been around a lot longer than the song suggests. Saturnalia lasted 'til mid-moon after Winter Solstice, which could put it as late as mid month in January, but around January fifth. Give of take a week or two. Oddly enough, we often re-create the customs of our ancestors either knowingly or unknowingly, because it is part of our genetic code. Let the revelry continue, at least until January Fifth, the Twelveth Night.

In ancient times, a cake would be baked and in it would be hidden a bean, coin or nut. Whoever should get he piece of cake with the foreign object would become lord of the feast. I guess this is a great reason to have your cake first. The holiday celebrations stretched out to fill the long dark nights of winter  and served as both distraction and community building as we would annually pass the mantle of host throughout the tribe. So much more could be achieved if we were only to recognize this ancient human art of reciprocation.

The art of the give-away comes up routinely in my writing because it is so fundamental to pour humanity. Every intact tribal culture exhibited this aspect and as each one has lost touch with their roots, it is supplanted with issues of power and control, abuse and neglect, patriarchy and "rule of law". Codified systems of "justified retribution", crime and punishment and property "rights"
 have led to far more savage abuses than they have ameliorated. Perhaps by selecting random folks to fill in for our leaders, to rewrite the "laws" if even for one night, could lead us out of our very bleak situation.

Of course, the cast of characters for any respectable Twelveth Night festival also include the queen of court, the jester and a slate of advisers, viziers and the courtiers. Perhaps seeing the silliness of the retinue helps offset how seriously we take our rulers during the rest of the year.  It is only the third day of X-mas, so we have nearly ten days to plan out Twelveth Night festivities. May yours be fun and full of hilarity! In my reading, it made it seem like this celebration is growing in popularity. Bonfires and revelry  are retaking their place amongst the people and that can only be a good thing.