Penokee Hills

When we begin to define the world around us, it is well to consider what we really need for survival versus what we need to thrive. The way many westerners approach information is to use a technique  that is akin to dissection. We see this process at work in what are called the RDA (Recommended Daily Allowances) for the variety of identified essential nutrients. We try to tease out the magic bullets within the foods we eat and the herbal medicines of native people, seeking the magic bullet that we call the active ingredient. The scientific method is excellent at refining the "most important" part of organic compounds, but in that process we diminish the importance of the host of other ingredients that are not appreciated for their nutritional value, their healing qualities or the benefits that they provide. The same can be said for ecosystems and the planetary relationships between all beings as well. It seems that when our analysis teases out a specific thread, we forget what was sifted and winnowed away and that which lent strength to the web of life, the stability that supported the abundant life cycles withing which a living could be made.

Trying to place a value on one part of the system without understanding the relationships between all aspects of the world around us is like poking around in the dark with a laser beam. The intensity of the light can wash out the detail, texture and true nature of whatever it falls upon and the surrounding dark only seems to intensify our ignorance of the fabric of life that surrounds the object of our interest. We need to begin to understand the true nature of Sacred Space. Trying to change the way we think about the world around us will not be possible if we continue to look at the world around us the way we have up until now. Each part of the whole is essential, once dissected, the organism cannot be brought back to life.

I was raised completely within a tradition, some call white, others call it that of the oppressor, the colonizers, the culture of extraction. I cannot tell you why I never bought into the basic assumptions of that culture, but perhaps I just understood deeper truths than those around me. Perhaps, when my grandfather told me, "Kid, shut yo' mouth. One day you gonna be trouble." My immediate response was to ask myself how this man, who was supposed to be the strong one in the family, could knuckle under to powerful interests who concerned themselves not with his life, but only about their own? How could I be expected to respect his teaching now that I understood that standing up for what was right would always take a back seat to trying to eke out survival under rules that even he did not believe in? I understand now that he was trying to save me from years of pain and hardship that would inevitably be caused by my raising my head or hand and being the one who would nearly always stick out as different, ask the wrong questions or point out the fallacies upon which the lies were founded, but in my young mind I knew that there were better ways, more complete understandings of the world that could only come if we asked the right kinds of questions.

How might we survive? How might we respect the life of all organisms upon which ours rest? How might we leave the planet whole and intact for future generations? How might we show our respect for our grandchildren without throwing them into the maw of capitalism and the war/ industrial machine? How might we show our respect for all beings?

This is certainly the case, and the series of questions that we need to be asking ourselves about the Penokee Hills of Northern Wisconsin. What has brought them to the fore in recent times is low grade iron ore that lies within the crystalline structure of the hills themselves. The sulfide bearing rock that holds the iron in a matrix, along with asbestos and other minerals, has sustained atop its great protuberance, a myriad of organisms that have no other place to call home. Even the people who reside in and around the Penokee Hills rely on the water holding capacity of the organisms, the millions of life forms, the complex food webs for their health and survival. There is no magic bullet in nature, all must thrive, or repercussions shake the very footings upon which life sustains itself. We cannot take away the water, we cannot poison it, we cannot dam it or pump it out without affecting the entire region negatively. We cannot remove the deer or the fish, or the mosquitoes without drastically crippling the entire food web that creates the abundance of nature that lives there now.

The destruction has begun already. Test holes have been drilled. Topsoil that took thousands of years to build up have been excavated and tossed aside, left to flow into pristine river systems. The greed of far off interests has begun to tear at the fabric of life in the Penokeees. All of this life is sacred. The humans, who have been embittered and set one against the other in the "fight" over the "resources" (sacred gifts) don't even matter to those who would despoil the land. Those who continue to squander our planet for their own enrichment have never cared about jobs, the people or the land they rape. They do not only want the magic bullet of copper or diamonds or iron ore, they seem to be interested only in their power over people and the planet control of other people's lives and changing the environment. This is what we, the people, must learn and stand against.

A friend who has spoken eloquently about these and other issues has said that he still considers himself pro-life. It is the one thing that he learned as a Catholic that he feels on the soul level. What he points out is that to be truly pro-life, you need to support life which you do not understand or have dominion over. You cannot be pro-life if you do not extend your compassion to babies that are out of the womb. You cannot be truly pro-life if you are willing to practice genocide against people that you deem "primitive". You cannot be pro-life while purveying nothing but death in your wake. Life is a sacred gift, these hills are completely covered with abundant, sacred, life and living organisms that are gifts of the gods. Throwing the entire region into the hopper for some buggers bottom line is, in fact, raping the entire Mother Earth that we are beginning to see holds the key to our survival. Without a moment's hesitation, our Governor and State Legislature have caved in to interests that would destroy the entire region for a few millions in their pockets and the destitution, the death and poisoning of the land would remain for centuries, long after the last few pennies left behind were spent.

There is hardly an area of the planet which is not facing a similar plight, but I know that I could not live with myself if I did not stand up and raise awareness about how backward this approach is. Lying across the northern tier of counties that surround the Penokee Hills are the giant machines that crushed ore over century ago, the several generations of cars and farm implements made of iron that are now rusting in the fields of the region. In total, there are many times more iron available to be picked off the landscape than could be wrested from the proposed giant hole that the mining interests want to blast to powder and leave behind, forever tainting the largest freshwater ecosystem on the North American continent. If they truly want the magic bullet we call iron, plans need to be made to recycle what our forefathers took out of the ground rather than ruining the last bit of what they left undisturbed for the profit of men who will never step foot in Wisconsin.

This Past Moon

We have had both round one and round two with the Polar Vortex. The Jet stream has gone haywire and routinely, temperatures in Anchorage and even Barrow, above the arctic circle, have been warmer than Green Bay, Wisconsin. I remember one day reading that it would still be two weeks before sunrise in Barrow and they were twenty degrees warmer than us.

PEOPLE! Please try to understand that the radiation from Fukushima seems minute when imagined relative to the entire Pacific Ocean, but wafting ribbons of fallout are vast and dilute, that certainly can't eliminate their energy footprint. That will literally take forever. With the huge amount of radiation that has been released, it is hard to convey the worldwide effects. The particular isotopes that are from the immediate area around the disaster, especially the heaviest, settle onto plant life and are consumed, putting them on their way to the top of the food chain. The vast dust bowl, or dry lake bed (playa) that is Burning Man, black Rock City, NV. is slightly radioactive from nuclear testing during early days of the cold war. Some of this stuff never goes away. Imagine half a million years to cut the hazard in half and you have an idea of what we are up against.

Background radiation has climbed ever since Madam Curie made her discoveries and they were put to "use" through the E=mc2 enlightenment. The only reason that nuclear energy was ever made to sound appealing to the public was because they needed enriched material for bomb making. Even today, we are spreading the risk. Depleted uranium is used to make the projectile tips of armor piercing bullets and anti-tank weapons. They begin this pernicious concentration through the food chain as well, leaving a legacy of radioactive contamination wherever they fall. For peace or destructive ends, splitting the atom has grave consequences that are only beginning to be understood. If you think that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrific, the next few years we are going to see a continuing release of long-lived radiation whose impacts will be felt for millennea.

In spite of the immense sadness and hopelessness that has been engendered by this fiasco, we must go on and making plans for the coming growing season has commanded the lion's share of our time. We are still actively fund raising for some important projects, presentations and tools. First and foremost, we are working to raise money for our school/retreat center. We are ready to begin introductory bio-char classes and are working toward having a traveling show that can showcase the material and bring the knowledge about it to a wider audience. finally, we are seeking funds for a broad fork or three so that when we do get into areas that need to be reforested, we can jump start the recreation of soils that will ultimately support the trees we bring to them.

Beyond trying to stay warm and alive, there was little forward progress, although I have been working on designs for pedal power devices to help with making char powder quickly and easily, our designs for a sustainable resort/retreat center that operates as a living laboratory of sustainability continue. Whatever green energy you can share is greatly appreciated.

Population

As with many movements, those of us who are ecologically aware find that our cadre of Earth aware individuals has grown into a very real force across the face of the planet. The groups that we have formed have been poked and prodded, provoked and infiltrated by agents provocateur,  perhaps understood better from outside the movement by those who are threatened by our success than we could ever do to others whitin our various groups and movements. Wedge issues have been created by think tanks, injected into our ranks and files have been amassed on those who sympathize or empathize with every group imaginable. Part of the ruse that has been foisted upon us is the "fact" that all environmentalists are part of a vast and shadowy sub-culture that believes in Zero Population Growth (ZPG). Again, if you are at all astute, the ZPG crowd feels that the growing population equates to or accounts for the biggest threat to our survival as a species or the continued balance of the ecosystem. In my own exploration of an eco-friendly life-style, I have only met a few individuals who were of this persuasion. Having only two children over the lifetime of any woman would, in fact, reduct our need for many resources, but that alone cannot heal the damage that has already been caused to climate, our natural resources or the bio-sphere.

It is not hard to understand why these events take place. The wealtihiest and most powerful agents want things to stay pretty much the same, without threat of change. Pitting one "extreme" group against another is the oldest trick in the book of exploiting the largest number of people for the benefit of the fewest. I want to remind my readers of just a couple examples of this sort of demonization. I first heard of MOVE because the Yippies wanted everyone to know about the police brutality and arbitrary prosecution of people who were living the revolution that will not be televised. MOVE, if you are not familiar, were folks who were attacked for being members of a group that had successfully created an inner-city, ecologically sustainable compound of sorts. They tore out their yards, and planted organic produce and grew rooftop gardens in a neighborhood of Philly (Philadelphia, PA) where even police had written off. Instead of knowing their place and being subservient to the powers that be, they stood proud in their self-sufficiency, living in ways that later became known as "off the grid". Ironically, there is a current fascination within the "Prepper"/survivalist groups that believe in end-times scenarios and apocalyptic events that will require us to be completely responsible for ourselves. The MOVE was doing that a generation or more ago.

The police showed up to "assist" the health department in presenting the MOVE members a letter about code violations. Monday, May 13th 1985, surrounded by heavy weapons, riot gear and the thin blue line of secrecy that was present within the Philadelphia police at the time, the residents of the MOVE compound were surrounded and barricaded themselves inside. It seemed to me at the time that any reasonable person would have taped the letter to their door and withdrawn. Instead, the police called in a helicopter which dropped a bomb, which the police asserted was just teargas canisters onto the fuel depot that the MOVE had for emergency fuel needs like lighting, heat and generators. During the conflagration that took out more than an entire city block, guns drawn, the police rushed the building and several MOVE folks were gunned down in cold blood by over-ambitious cops. The police that were killed had .38 cal. holes in them, but my understanding is that the MOVE folks had small caliber weapons, mostly for shooting pigeons and ill critters. As the circle of fire was drawn like a noose around the compound, some were caught in their own crossfire.

MOVE made it back in the news this week because one of their members who stood trial for murder and who was incarcerated for his "crimes" got his sentence reduced from execution down to life in prison by a recent appointee to high office. The Rethuglicans, urged on by "conservative" voices in Philadelphia have used the fake news of mayhem perpetrated by peaceful loving people as grounds for keeping a well respected person from serving the public.

Similarly, The American Indian Movement was called out for their "radicalism" in a similar series of events. With only what can be called an utter paucity of evidence, Leonard Peltier was convicted and sentenced to life imprison as part of the FBI smear campaign against native peoples who were also demanding their rights to live peacefully and without molestation in a manner that can be in harmony with nature. I seemed to many at the time that the ecological crisis identified in the mid sixties would force much needed change into the political and social spotlight, but instead we had trotted out for us a series of "radical" groups that grew ever more harsh in their rhetoric and ever more violent in their orientation. The Earth First people came under fire as did deep ecology movements across the nation. Greenpeace was demonized and the many local groups which were spawned in the wake of people moving with conscience away from total annihilation of the ecosphere for profit were also described as radical.

Earth's population has continued to rise. As "environmentalists", we have become much more savvy to the methods of our oppressors and the exploitation that they seek to wreak upon us. This whole population issue has always been a tough nut to crack because it represents a double edged sword on many different levels. First, the corporate outlaws, let us call them corporados, took the moral high ground right away. They wanted us to look at them as saviors of those less fortunate. Where was the highest concentration of  needy folks? Africa and Asia, so they concocted what was once called the green revolution. In the name of feeding the world, these mega corporations, which by today's standards were rather small, sent expensive hybrid seed to nations that faced starvation. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund spread the debt to pay for said seed. Then the agricultural chemical and fertilizer companies which the seed producers were mere subsidiaries of lined up, taking their share of the money. finally, the implement manufacturers lined up for their subsidies. Two thing then happened. First, there was no infrastructure to get food to markets and therefore no infrastructure was available to bring in fuel or spare parts for the expensive machinery. Second, the seeds could not be saved season to season which had always facilitated long-term stability amongst the native farmers. Mass starvation ensued.

The quandary we have faced since then is that for economic security, many "underprivileged" people the world 'round produce far more children than they can afford to care for in the hopes that one day, they will each help the parents to live a better life by caring for them. Many "liberals" who are far more likely to be branded as "environmentalists", are now without any respectable base on which to build a movement. If they claim that Zero Population Growth is important to save the planet, they can be said to be culturally insensitive, racist or worse anti-humanitarian. If they say to the undeveloped regions of the world, "Don't do what we did. Learn from our mistakes." they can be told that they are being capricious and not letting other parts of the world enjoy the freedoms and privilege that we enjoyed during our industrialization. The table was set with falsehood before environmentalists ever got invited into dinner. The exploitation of third world countries continues today. Child slavery is rampant in every country that looks for it, human trafficking is now the largest source of illicit income on the planet, yet we cannot figure out why. People have been dehumanized by watching the other folks who sacrificed their humanity for economic security not only become disgustingly rich, but insulated from responsibility as well. Crimes against humanity are rarely prosecuted and as I believe Joseph Stalin said, "A thousand deaths are a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic." The scale of deaths attributable to Nestle', are unimaginable, but as they always claim, it is either just business or they were actually trying to help. The level of deceit is just as incomprehensible as the actions that have been taken to derail any viable political or cultural campaign for change.

The biochar science is proving to those who learn of it that twice as much food can come out of the arable land that exists on the planet. Our concern need never have been how to limit population, but how to live a better quality of life using less energy, less resources and less waste. all of these things threaten the wealthiest individuals on the planet because as we get more efficient and live better life styles, they have less and less wealth, which they equate with power and control over the rest of us. Even their claims that we want to depose them as our rulers is a bit disingenuous because the real goal is to find a way to have more people capable of getting their needs met with less effort and expense. Asking the ultra wealthy to actually do some sort of meaningful work other than exploiting their fellow humans and abusing the planet is more about their actions than themselves as people. The 1% as they have come to be known, the oligarchs and their minions seek to derail any meaningful change out of hand because they are comfortable with the current state of affairs. We must learn to see through the smoke screens that they throw up every time their authority is challenged.

Lost Another Friend Today

(This is being reprinted nearly five years after first writing, with only a tiny bit of editing because the work we are doing is still just as important as it was five years ago. Bill's enduring memory knows no time. Like the most ancient artists, Bill worked to render grace,crafted through action that reflect the art of clever living.)

A friend passed the veil today. He was an Earth Warrior before many of us were born. Continuing throughout his life to burn with the purpose and passion of a force of nature. As an Elder, he taught tirelessly about attaining a more sustainable and equitable relationship between humankind and the planet. His name, Bill Hurrle, has been attached to countless documents and decrees about the senseless nature of corporate outlaws, the shill governments that allow people to be poisoned for profit, and the rampant greed, inequality and destruction that it creates. He understood that clean air, water and healthy soil were our birthright.
Bill was one of my mentors. He helped inspire me to ride my bicycle around the Great Lakes, sharing my story and what I knew about living lightly on the planet. This trip, taken in 1987, brought a message of practicality, hope and sustainability to over ten million people living around the lakes.

Bill was also instrumental in the creation and sustenance of the MREA (Midwest Renewable Energy Association) This year, they are hosting the twenty-fifth annual Energy Fair in Custer Wisconsin, showcasing energy efficient technology, and providing workshops on hundreds of practical applications that each of us can use to gain energy independence. This event takes place on the weekend that falls closest to the summer solstice each year. Bill, like this event was one-of-a-kind. His topical writings and contributions to the "environmental movement" will be greatly missed, although a library of his works is in the making. His humility and grace were touchstones for many over the years, and losing his inspired focus will ripple through the community, the region, state of Wisconsin, the US, and reach across the Great Waters of the planet. He realized his soul purpose as water bearer long before I realized my own.
Amongst his many, great achievements, one of his most recent was the creation of a zero net energy home near Green Bay, Wisconsin. People familiar with our climate will appreciate what an awesome accomplishment that is! In winter, we only get about eight hours of sun if we are lucky, which makes our nights twice as long as the days! His remarkable place remains toasty even after several cloudy days, under extreme conditions. Eco-tours of Wisconsin has been blessed with the opportunity to help provide tours to see the home and to plant the denuded landscape and help rehabilitate forest on the land.
In tribute to this staunch defender of the earth, ECO-Tours of Wisconsin will be hosting several special events at his former home, and continuing the process of reforesting part of his family's property. He was an early volunteer, even before ECO-Tours was formally organized, and through his participation planted many hundreds of native trees with us.

Please heed our call to support continued planting on the property that he so quietly protected by simply doing the right thing there, creating a home that would not burden, but uplift the planet and her people. His last request was to "make this place a genetic bank, use it as a playground and laboratory for permaculture." We are continuing to build toward sustainability there, both with food production, native plants and trees, as well as occasional tours and classes. Donations toward his memorial garden can be sent to: ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. 1445 Porlier street, Green Bay, WI 54301-3334
or use our Paypal account: tnsaladino42@hotmail.com

Thank-you!

Vital Needs

Welcome to the "New Year". Many Earth religions found that the return of the light (the Sun) was as good a time as any to renew their own commitments, to take hopeful steps toward new beginnings and to secure their homes from the cold moons between themselves and the coming Spring. Renewing ties to our community, kicking out dead wood and coming to terms with what has worked as well as what has not was also a big part of the rites that many native tribes practiced during the long nights and lengthening days that signaled both the coming of Spring and living off the stores of the previous harvest season. We (our species) may have, for the most part, beaten back the specter of the coming starving moons, but the rituals that we practice during this time are fundamentally still a response to ecological conditions and the very slow warming of the planet upon which we live.

I could delineate the nutrients and the need for water that our human organisms depend on to maintain our lives, but there are other sources for that sort of information. What my focus is on is the quality and types of water and nutrients that we can secure from the world around us. We have had a recent brush with catastrophic conditions over the last few years. The iodine that is, of course, a vital nutrient in our bodies has been replaced, to varying extents with radioactive iodine 131. In the weeks and months following the Fukushima Diachi melt downs and explosions, a plume of radioactive isotopes too numerous to list here erupted into our atmosphere, the ocean and the food chain upon which we all depend. Few were ready or willing to take iodine supplementation because the governments of countries around the planet played down the risk associated with the largest nuclear disaster in human history.

I could go on about the continuing releases from these facilities, but focusing on the many levels of both stupidity and deceit associated with the disaster serves little purpose but to incapacitate people who are needed to make positive changes in the world around them. each and every one of us are needed in this time of global crisis and catastrophe. Billions of people have been exposed to increased levels of radioactive isotopes. My own country, The United States of America in their infinite wisdom upped the acceptable dose of radiation that they consider "safe" even though science has proven that there is no acceptable level of exposure to radiation. Any exposure can have negative consequences, that is part of the reason that the "ozone hole" was of such great concern. Many of our vital needs are still in our blind spot because science has not kept pace with our technologies.

I could list a series of technologies whose damaging effects were completely unknown until it was too late, but that is not the thrust of my message. In light of the fact that we are on the cusp of major changes all around the planet, I would rather speak of what has worked, how to meet needs that have been long ignored and how to understand the difference between needs and wants. Only the basics are truly needed. All organisms need a few essential things. We need to eat, excrete, exchange gasses and reproduce. We need shelter, food, air, water and shelter from the elements. Ironically, all of these basic needs have had technologies applied to them that have unintended consequences and many of these unintended consequences are working at cross purposes to our survival, not only as individuals but as a species.

Our food shed has been contaminated in many (if not most) parts of the world. In an effort to use science to create the first "green revolution", we pumped billions of tons of petro-chemically derived fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides all around the globe. The corporate outlaws who made billions from the poisoning of our planet are still among today's fortune five hundred corporations. We do need food, but not at the cost of contaminating the land upon which our crops grow. Not only is it possible to live and remain vital on a diet of organic produce, but it may be our best chance at survival as well. Food is not supposed to make us complacent and sick. Good food feeds and nourishes us in ways that contribute to our life force, enhance our vitality and inspire us to achieve great things.

Billions of us making small changes can have a miraculous effect on the world around us. In fact, it already has. Live water, like that which flows from artesian wells is full of life force. Water pumped out of the earth with electricity is somewhat less energized with vital life giving forces. In fact, the energy shed that produces the electricity for water pumping could essentially destroy forests, if it came from coal burning power generating stations, it could come from nuclear sources that create dangerous waste that will remain dangerous for tens of thousands of years and even if we utilize state of the art renewable energy sources, those technologies come with a series of ecological impacts that we frequently ignore, calling them externalities. Looking a little closer at the water resource, perhaps you remember the old way of getting this vital fluid. In our yard, we used to have a hand pump. Even that tool had to be made in a giant steel mill, which pumped carbon and a host of toxic compounds into the air, but the operation of that pump only put our arms to work, pulling at the well head like a mouth on a straw. Returning to this "old way" would at least get us to realize that the quality and vital nature of water under our feet depends on how we act here at the surface of the Earth.

There is a difference between survival rations and what we require to thrive. Our wants have little to do with either. 

Time?

A memorable paving expert once said, "Blacktop lasts about twenty to thirty years, concrete is forever." Last weekend I was involved in a project in which the truth of this statement was brought home to me immediately and exquisitely. My brother has been working to restore an old Victorian home, adding modern amenities and fixing a series of stupid changes wrought by former owners. For his birthday, I volunteered a weekend to come down and help remove an old concrete stoop. First off, it was poured in place, right up against the wood of the house. At about half the size of a car, it created a dead space behind that had rotted away part of the building. It also made for a cold inaccessible area that could not be insulated, creating a very cold and drafty entrance area inside the back door.

What has this to do with ECO-Tours? Well, if we are to survive, we must finally turn the corner on old-way thinking. Old ways no longer work. The changing of the seasons brings us an annual chance to reassess, prioritize and reflect on what is working and what is not. Concrete seems a good place to start. Centuries have passed since we discovered that the baking of limestone would make it chemically reactive, capable of changing phase from liquid to solid. I'm not sure if it is still true today, but two decades ago, there were some developing countries who were spending over half of their energy budget annually on simply baking limestone.Making cement for concrete.

In the case of my brother's stoop, there was, or seemed to be no good use for the rubble. To remove this liability from along side his home, we spent more than three days, blasting it with both sledge and jack hammers, making chunks small enough to cart away. Their ultimate destination was a landfill and by my closest estimate, we produced several tons of waste destroying the edifice. Concrete may be forever, but only if it is in a place that makes sense and only if it is properly prepped, mixed and finished. (which the stoop was not) There are techniques that could have crushed the rubble to the size of useful aggregate that would reduce the need for hauling it away and reducing the materials that would need to be brought in if we were to pour new concrete, but alas, only large projects benefit from that sort of expensive equipment.

now, there will be a small pocket or layer of stone in the landfill, perhaps forever. The massive amount of energy burned half a century ago, perhaps even longer ago than that, will have been squandered for naught, and the three days of labor required to make things a step closer to right will be left out of history books. The joy that will blossom from the new deck and entryway that will be created in place of the giant concrete stairway will of course be enjoyed, but for generations hence, the effort that brought about that possibility will remain invisible. Rather than feeling ambivalent about this and instead of feeling sad about the waste of time that throwing our bodies and several kilowatts of energy at the monolithic stoop, I feel liberated. Almost like a force of nature, free to express myself through ages.

The ripples and waves that we sent, back into the history of his home, the community and that spot on the Earth will only be eclipsed by the ripples we sent forward into the future. The work we did will stop the back entry to his house from rotting away, perhaps saving tens of thousands of dollars for future residents. The benefit of having a warm entryway, rather than a cold one although subtle has nearly infinite value for those who have to put their shoes on out there in winter, perhaps for hundreds of years into the future. The love we expressed for one another in our cooperative effort has bound us together in ways that are hard to quantify and the joy of releasing the building from the ugly albatross around the back door is priceless.

The costs of expediency are often paid over the course of generations. Developing a time signature of life that honors both past and future may be the only way to preserve the human race from self-destruction. Please take time to think about this before making your New Year's Resolutions.

PH ***ing the Man

I do not abide being called names, so there are few that I put on others. A comment or two have come about because I do not like to give up when faced with a ruling class of exploiters and oppressors, willing to extract all that is good from whatever "resource" they feel like exploiting that day. We must each attempt to delineate in our own way, how much we will be constrained by "the man". When I was a child, my Grandpa, who was a baker for a large corporate concern, was a staunch union man and worked hard to assure that workers there could make a respectable wage in relatively good/safe conditions. I found out that the workers had absolutely no say in the process that was used to make the bread. (bean counters did all of that.) I knew that we would never buy or eat that 'poor person's bread', as my family called it. According to Grandma, "The ingredients list alone proved that you shouldn't be eating it." Grandpa felt that getting as much as possible from those bastards was as good as you could "get". He probably didn't hear about the man until he was so indebted to corporate welfare whores to even know how or why.

This is what zero emission vehicles look like. When grid tied, they sport tiny emission footprints from faraway generating stations. Their massive efficiency coefficient reduces even faraway emissions massively relative to traditional fossil fuel powered vehicles.

This is the amount of solar panels required to fuel just one of the vehicles pictured above. Note that the hot water panels, not used for the car, are the four that are propped up and facing true South. Photovoltaic cells only need light.

Even as a child, I could see that there was a sense of resignation that the highest status he could achieve, would be to allow his labors to be capitalized upon by others, people so wealthy, to not have ever known want. Later in life, I began to understand that he was on the same rung of the economic ladder as the people George Bailey, from It's a Wonderful Life, was fighting for. Grandpa had fought hard and managed to get to the top side of his rung, perhaps, but certainly not one higher. I asked about his product one day, "Why are they allowed to call it Holsum, if it is actually bad for you?" His response has come back to me repeatedly over the years. He said, "Kid, watch you mouth, someday you're gonna' be trouble." He had drawn a line across his experience and underlined it, the worker's job was, is and will forever be, servitude. I'm sure that somewhere in his formative years he heard that the grass that stands the tallest gets cut down most, or something to that effect. blending in always made the best sense. In his time, it was admirable that he helped fight for reasonable subsistence wages. He waged another fight against the man in the marketplace.

Only in a lifetime have I come to know my own limits...where I am ready to accept complicity. I rationalize that by putting myself in servitude intermittently, thoughtfully and by choice, makes me less of a wage slave, less of a corporate tool, but to this day, if I look critically at the situation, I'm just a skilled caterer of sorts, serving up hollow distractions. The man is well served by providing bread and circuses. I am part of the machine that makes entertainment. To put book ends on what I learned from my grandpa, the last time I saw him alive, he said, "Always pay your dues to the stagehand union, I got paid better there than any other job. I do participate in the economy (have a vocation) to support my non-profit activities (avocation). It is a powerfully humbling experience to be the Director of an organization that has planted millions of tree seeds and many tens of thousands of actual tree seedlings. The few times that I get to be a stagehand with a powerful and culturally important show are few, yet more than 100 nights each year I am pumping out my own labor for others to achieve their dreams.

The reason I used the PH to start the dirty word, in the title is because it takes a certain amount of savvy, to begin to deconstruct "the man" of lore. I been down wit' all 'dat for decades...I'm not shittin' anyone when I say that we are all victims of a world-wide crime. Not just against humanity, but each and every critter on the face of Gaia, (Mother Earth, Starship Earth, or whatever you want to call this planet.) every resource is being squandered for the survival of corporate welfare whores who are considered too big to fail. Pay no attention that over 90 % of all bacteria, fungi and viruses found in healthy soil have been exterminated through the use of petro-chemically derived, toxic compounds. Ignore for a moment that water, worldwide has become undrinkable, vast aquifers and massive oil and gas fields have been depleted yet we sink wells deeper every day.And leave blank the image in your mind of the largest ocean on the planet,  radio-logically (illogically, if you ask me) contaminated.

There is a way to turn back the carbon clock. Sequestration. I live near the 45th paralell. Around here, wood is considered a renewable resource. There is an abundant supply and transport costs are relatively low. Through gassification, about half of the fuel value of the wood is driven off as carbon-less energy. This process, called gassification, yields what has been come to be known as "syn-gas". (synthetic, carbon neutral natural gas.) Burning the wood without air also yields char, a powerful source of pure carbon in the micro-structural shape of literally billions of tubules, perfect for biological activity. In our own gardens, we have increased yields using char by over 60%. Side by side tests that we have been doing for the last few years are so amazing that I see no reason to deprive any soil this kickstarter for life! In addition to helping to rebuild living soil, the char helps with water holding capacity as well. Carbon sequestration and biological rehabilitation combined? Yes! The most mind boggling fact about char is that in one handful, there are over fourteen acres of surface area. Most of us will never own that much territory, but we can enrich many times that much land by adding char to our magic bags of tricks. We need every oar in the water, get busy transforming the planet people.

Pass this information far and wide. If you would like more information on char, please request an ECO-Tour on just that subject. We would be happy to introduce you to a better understanding of how to make, inoculate and integrate this priceless black gold into your gardens, lawn or fields. This is all part of the change that is going to have to happen, nearly overnight, if we are to leave a liveable planet for future generations. The writing is on the wall. Understanding the man is easier today than at any time in human history. Whom do you serve takes on meaning when you see that the military industrial complex has subsumed healthcare, insurance and banking to such a large extent that we are often serving multiple heads of the same great beast. Feeding the beast, even the tiniest morsel requires some soul sacrifice. Had I understood this fully, I'm sure that I would have never signed my first mortgage papers. My ecology is deep, some call it deep green, but it is vibrant as all colors under the Sun. The deep and abiding love that I have for the planet is reflected in all of my activities. The man has placed himself at odds with the health of the planet and it is my right to depose him from power. My choices make the fight possible and envisioning a victory makes hope possible.

It may sound strange, but at least in my country today, we all seem to be delusional enough to think that we can fight the man into parity, while still shackled to the great behemoth. In fact, the great and powerful beast that has sterilized the soils, tainted the air and turned rivers to sewers seeks to put a good face on it. We have seen in recent history several billion dollar ad campaigns telling us that BP is "Beyond Petroleum" and how they have made the Gulf of Mexico better than it had been before their disaster. Having had one bite too many of contaminated Gulf shrimp, I'm thinking not. We keep seeing amazing things about how technology can be brought to bear in reducing storm damage from super hurricanes. It is not said aloud, but the implication is that there is little we can do to stop hurling past any reasonable limits. Technology and science are not the same thing, they bounce back and forth as if they are two spastic inmates shackled by long tethers. They always have and will always dance this chaotic way. We learn, often too late that what we were able to do should not have been done, what seemed reasonable at the time was for the worst. Often the greatest new technologies are proven later by science to be the worst possible thing we could have pursued. Thinking that new technology could hope to save us from the current dominion of the oligarchy, or the effects of climate change is naive.

I am far too sick to my stomach over Fukushima to say "We told you so", but we did. It could have mattered twenty, nay, thirty years ago. Today, we are looking at our own, and very real, radioactive nightmare, as if it is still in black and white, or worse, just a news story about somewhere far away. Nothing on this planet is very far away when you are radioactive fallout, are we completely fooled? Trying to fight the man, without understanding that the current system can no longer support itself seems daunting. The corporate welfare state needs our blood, our treasure, our complicity, otherwise it is on the wrong end of the gangplank and we are in full mutiny. It is hard to prod the beast off that gangplank if we nail our tongue to the gunnels. Worse still, would be to shackle ourselves to the dying corpse of "the man" as he goes to the depths. We hear snippets about divestment, but some are all in with the man.

Don't think for a second that the billionaires playing the markets will ever share a penny of their wealth with you.That just isn't happening. Let me go back to that bit about Grandpa and the marketplace. He always was a chiseler. He worked hard for every dollar and was hard put to spend even a dime recklessly. He knew that once spent, dollars tended to flow away from his town and into the hands of ever bigger guys. Yesterday, I did Grandpa proud. I went to a local lumber yard, paid a little extra, but saved more than a gallon of gas, plus having to drive to two different places for the best price. We must slash at the belly of the great beast that has us in its maw. Only when the entrails flow free will we see the value of what the man has taken as his share all of these years. Abundance is available, but it begins from the grass roots, or the interactions of the soil organisms that make them possible, all the way, up.