Fear and Loathing on a Wet and Oil Spewing Memorial Day Weekend

Editors Note: I decided to crank on the news and submerge myself for a bit. This is not gonzo journalism nor is it trying to be, though fear and loathing feel very visceral on this Memorial Day Weekend.

Patriotism and global markets, the parts that make the whole, and weird visions of vehicles underwater. This is where we left off, a tad shade short of whimsical and a tad too far past irrational to quite understand anything logically. This is the age of unreason.

...a slow and silent stream,
Lethé, the River of Oblivion, rolls
Her wat'ry labyrinth... ~Milton, Paradise Lost, II

It seems we just keep hearing about this awful oil spill off of our Gulf Coast. It’s been 40 days or so now. 40 long days and it appears it won’t end or stop anytime soon. How far are you willing to go, how close to the edge do we really want to take this awful beast that we are losing our grip on. The reins slip and the slick has been let out of the geologic bag. We’re becoming saturated with talk about how another measure fails. How the anger is rising, anger focused largely close to home in the gulf with a fading radius where only some of us are really feeling it up here in Virginia, where drilling has been put on hold for now. It wasn’t close enough to the Chesapeake Bay. This time.

"We are not near the end."
~ Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano

Deepwater Horizon started drilling on February 15, 2010. They finished around April 17, the explosion happening 3 days later, killing 11 crew members. Some tried to say it was eco-sabotage, occurring on the anniversary of Earth Day, a convoluted plot of outlandish proportions. Deep sea robots tried to close the well. We hear from the Department of Interior it may take 3 months, a 90-ton containment dome capped the gusher and the hole froze from Burning ice, methane hydrates. Stuck a straw into it, spill cam pops on and who knows if it’s looping or not, all hope is put into a ‘top kill’ that works temporarily and fails while another massive wobbling 22 mile plume is found. Top hats and variations of containment domes are en route.

Let us not forget a third of the world’s dispersants purchased. Out of sight out of mind, as well as out of reach of the magical booms missing the underwater currents dragging the newly bonded oils across the seafloor and working their way to our coasts unguarded, rising up the food chain, eventually into our synergistic stews of chemical filled bodies.

As long as the claims for peaceful atomic bomb surgeons aren’t allowed as some Russians are speaking of as well as American bomb scientists.

"Paint me a cavernous waste shore
Cast in the unstilled Cyclades,
Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks
Faced by the snarled and yelping seas.
~ T.S. Eliot

Hurricane season starts on the Atlantic tomorrow, swirling fears of an oil laden storm sweeping across the coast, hurling more than frog or fish this time. Warm ocean waters and the Gulf's tendency to produce mighty storms mix for the potential makings of a nasty storm surge.

I’m wondering why there hasn’t been more of an outcry against this disaster. We’re hearing some serious claims and scary predictions about what this could do to our economy, our national security, our health, our happiness. All of which stem from our ecosystems.

“A moratorium on drilling will be the economic blow that will kill us,“ said Charlotte Randolph, President of LaFourche Parish, worried about job loss. She doesn’t want the drilling to stop. People are saying some people rely on BP for the livelihoods. I guarantee more rely on clean air and water for their lives. It’s time to rethink the status quo. It’s time to man and woman up, dig our heels in, bite the bullet, and come up with some real solutions.

How will this effect offshore drilling in the near future? Seven Greenpeace activists wrote a message to everyone in oil asking an important question. Is the Arctic next?



“I don’t know what’s making people sick, but I don’t think it’s the food.” unknown

The first workers have begun to get nose bleeds and become sick, ones working close to where the dispersants were sprayed. The plume is growing at alarming rates. And it seems we have months before it may stop. Hidden hydrocarbons beneath the surface spreading along secret routes.

I find it very strange and a little eerie, closing in on sickening, when I think about the true volume of this. And I’m glad people like James Carville, a wise southerner and political assassin, is telling it how it is. So why are we not hearing more of a fuss from the general public? The fisherman are getting riled up, but not those that they feed.

"Dis President needs to tell BP I’m your daddy…" ~ James Carville

“We need nature to be fully alive: air, food, warmth, spiritual…We live as if nature is only needed to provide extras: paper, recreation, specialty foods, a job to provide money.
~Susan Griffin, Women and Nature, 1978

The wetlands will soak up a large portion of this mess. As well as many estuarine creatures we tend to consume. There’s a lot of blame and anger going towards BP right now. Like a social magnifier they are sucking up a lot of negativity from this accident that perhaps could have been prevented with proper safeguards drilling at such depths. I hear people say, “Isn’t it just awful.” Yes.

I think we are either accepting it as something out of our control or either we’re not becoming more enraged about it because of it’s seemingly invisible grip on us all. I’ve purchased gas at BP plenty of times over the years. Does that mean this is partially my fault as much as theirs? I am feeding demand after all. I think there in lies part of this problem.

This upends questions for the public, months of gushing, hopefully molding our ethos into a more realistic view that fossil fuels are not as ‘cheap’ as they are touted to be and these externalities are as real as our current situation.

Those sort of biting ticks at the back of your mind make some people uneasy, not quite ready to accept such awful truths, and instead, making some sort of detachment from it because nobody wants to believe this is just as much our fault as BP’s because we’re not demanding something better, cleaner, or safer.

If you’re asking does America’s future depend on oil, I would say we as a nation ought to be moving away from our deadly addiction to oil. Not only because of the damage it is doing to the Gulf but we are exporting, we are borrowing a billion dollars a day in our country. Mainly from nations that don’t share our values in order to import a billion dollars of oil from nations that don’t share our values, largely, and many that are downright hostile towards us.
~Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on CNN

Lets get it straight, we will burn oil for quite some time and nothing is going to change overnight, but we need to get the ball rolling on this transition that right now is stuck in the viscous old mindsets and profit driven throes of petroleum like dinosaurs in the tar sands, immobilized and covered by the source of our downfall.

There isn’t enough clarity within our social consciousness to envision something different than our current state of affairs. Another path. Yet. Oil is so inherently involved with our daily lives from vehicles, plastics, our homes, and our food. It’s hard to look at something with disdain when we’re so carelessly and covetously covered with it.



It’s just not the emotion jarring angst and empathy that we feel when we see baby sea turtles and birds covered in the dark toxic sludge. We gulp it down in small enough concentrations that we never really feel those ill effects right away, an invisible and addictive coating that we just can’t help but feed. And let us remind ourselves where most oil comes from, financing the other side of this decadent and depraved war that many of our brave soldiers are mixed up in now.

Or other forums of massive social and energy injustice, like a large amount of Shell’s oil. Nigeria and the Niger delta have been hit with oil spills nonstop, yet we here next to nothing about it.

"With 606 oilfields, the Niger delta supplies 40% of all the crude the United States imports and is the world capital of oil pollution. Life expectancy in its rural communities, half of which have no access to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 years over the past two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their land and can scarcely believe the contrast with the steps taken by BP and the US government to try to stop the Gulf oil leak and to protect the Louisiana shoreline from pollution." ~John Vidal

Even our ‘homegrown oil’ has very large risks and reasons why it is not a safe choice. The creed is greed. It’s much more sneaky and sly that way. It’s always in the subtleties, the details, the cunning warming hand of hard capitalism that lullabies us into some hypnotic trance of continued support and unwavering complacency.

That’s why there isn’t more of a public outcry. We're hooked. Because we feel powerless. Because we drove to work or the store between hearing the latest news about the continued gush of oil at a newer and higher rate or after the next step failed. What some would say are merely efforts to buy time and show some semblance of trying. Yes, they want to close the leak, but they seem to believe it won’t happen until the release valves are drilled, sometime in August, the worst possible outcome.



We’re so connected to it. It is all of our fault, and that’s something nobody wants to swallow. But we should. Could this catastrophe be enough to spark serious change? Or will it take more? And how much will we have to spoil our surroundings before we say enough is enough and the wheels of cleaner energy get serious backing from governments and research and development gets what it should.

"More than anything else, this economic and environmental tragedy –- and it's a tragedy -– underscores the urgent need for this nation to develop clean, renewable sources of energy. Doing so will not only reduce threats to our environment, it will create a new, homegrown, American industry that can lead to countless new businesses and new jobs.

...If nothing else, this disaster should serve as a wake-up call that it's time to move forward on this legislation. It's time to accelerate the competition with countries like China, who have already realized the future lies in renewable energy. And it's time to seize that future ourselves." ~President Obama at Deepwater BP Oil Spill Presidential Press Conference

Right now it seems China is much ahead of the United States in this front, and whoever gets the best foundation in clean energy technology established is going to dominate the global market within the next 50 years in that regard. Talk about national security.

"Death leaves a heartache no one can heal
Love leaves a memory no one can steal."
~ a gravestone in Ireland
VP Biden delivers remarks at Arlington National Cemetery

More than 300,000 people are buried at Arlington National Ceremony, one of the most somber places I've ever walked through. It's hard to walk through there without thinking about the blood and strife and fight that allow us the ease of life we have today. It makes me think we have a responsibility, a right to fulfill our continuance in a sane manner in honor and memory of the foundation before us. Sure we have a bloody and at times controversial history fraught with wrong doing, but at some point don’t we decide in our struggle to remain atop this clandestine version of king of the hill we ought to take the high road and try to remember what life with dignity and honor looks like amidst our perverted and warped lens of politics.

This is a solemn day, a day we remember all those that have died so we may live in the comforts of ease. Memorial Day makes me think about what so many have fought so hard to give us. Some idea of democracy, a place where hard work can get you somewhere. This isn't the land our grandparents grew up in. The sharpened teeth and claw of capitalism have bastardized democracy and our power structure into some sick choking spreading blob of wrathful facades, imperialism, and closed door deals settled over scotch and oily hands.

It is Memorial Day, a slight drizzle is falling against the backdrop of thunder and lightning, and I’m feeling like we’ve never been so unpatriotic in our hard and short history and culture. The America I knew as a child seems like a ghost. Playing in the woods and swinging on the porch in the evening watching lightning bugs come out and more stars than you can imagine. Now we’re a sprawling urban landscape of cookie cutter houses and commercialism, satellites occupying the starless city nights. Environmental catastrophes ingrained into normalcy.

I’m sure people by the millions are buying millions worth of food and goods from Wal-Mart and other branches of the People’s Republic of China Merchandise Distribution Center this Memorial Day Weekend. As opposed to going out and getting some local, American raised burgers from the farmer’s market this weekend. Along with cherries and strawberries, which are in and oh so sweet. Or maybe not sitting on some picnic cloth from thousands of miles away but grandma’s old quilt she knit with 5 other friends over laughs and memories. What is occurring in this place that became famous the world over for that old encompassing American Dream.

How did that dream of so much become ransacked by petroleum, plastic, and foreign products? I wonder what our forefathers and foremothers would say about this. The stranglehold of products over camaraderie. This falsehood of freedom. We may be privileged and have it way too easy but we lack real freedom, and that is something that has been drawing fear and loathing about our nation for some time.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me
~ Woody Guthrie

Impartial analysis of our decisions and policy falls so far from the truth our market chugs on like an ill programmed robot vacuum cleaner banging into the corner counting it's distance as progression as the wheels turn and bump and go nowhere near practical helpfulness with the sadomasochist tendencies of an abused child who snuck into a place of power with vengeance and wanderlust seared into their dark heart. Yes, some evil parasitic android with humanistic tendencies running amok across our homeland and the global market. An evil mechanical bastard child on the loose feeding on our patriotism, nepotism, and memory banks prolonging a false view of American ideals into a new and strange world suckling all it can while it can until the well of profitable ignorance is dry. Horrid. Just horrid.

“The oil companies and other giant corporations have a stranglehold on American policies and behavior, and are choking off the prospects of a viable social and economic future for working people and their families.”
~Bob Herbert

I feel more alone in my fear and loathing these days, like the feeling has subsided, a hiccup in the revolution. There are thousands of our youth and good hearted folk who are feeling the flames of change and are motivated to secure a more just and clean future, but my mind is weighed down under the viscous slop of this oil spill that is gushing ever so as these 1’s and 0’s exist in whatever electron world of the internet civilization. I am more and more worried about the lag time of apathy, topsy-turvy tipping points, and putting band aids on bullet holes.

The buffering capacity of the ocean is already reaching it’s threshold in regards to carbon sequestration, and while thousands of barrels of oil pump into our watery homeostasis regulator, millions of cars zoom down the road where the American Dream was born. It’s time to realign ourselves with a new Dream, something that doesn’t draw worry and stomach pangs about our children and the womb of tomorrow. How much will it take to show us capricious carbon wastefulness of fossil fuels is making all of us fossil fools on a trend to make us fossils.

Humanity is being shaped by the lovers of injustice, that alluring and crazed eyed magician Loren Eiseley spoke of.

“…a magician in the shape of his own collective brain, that unique and spreading force which in its manipulations will precipitate the last miracle, or like the sorcerer’s apprentice, wreak the last disaster. The possible nature of the last disaster the world of today has made all too evident: man has become a spreading blight which threatens to efface the green world that created him…the nature of the human predicament is: how nature is to be reentered; how man, the relatively unthinking and proud creator of the second world - the world of culture - may revivify and restore the first world which cherished and brought him into being.”

The nasty truths nobody wants to swallow. This oil spill is as much our fault as BP’s. Fossilized algae under extreme pressure. BP CEO Tony Hayward is feeling some of that unleashed pressure now, and we’re all bound to feel it sooner or later. The question now is to what extent. How many canaries in the coal mines and vicious smacks to our egos and grappling of reality do we need to wake up to the challenges of this new millennium.

I think about wanting to be more patriotic this year. I want to support my neck of the woods, help clean up my community, form new bonds and reconnect with my neighbors. This is a time of reflection into the iridescent sheen of our actions. I want to buy local, eat local, be local. Turn off the television and have conversations. Get my hands dirty in the garden. Walk in the woods and be in awe of what the Creator has given us. I can feel my roots run deep in the beautiful mountains and rolling Piedmont of Virginia and I’m proud of my heritage. I want to feel proud for what I leave behind whenever the time comes that I and my generation give up the ghost.

What will this oil spill teach us of our past and how will it effect our view of our future? We lost our morality factor. Righteousness exalteth a nation. Liberty in a wasteland is meaningless. It is time for reflection. It is time for a return to decency. Permaculture of the land and mind. Many sense something is wrong but our minds are too wallowed in petroleum to read into the pulsing plumes that enter our ocean, twisted war shack of our twisted short sightedness. Let us pray we regain our atavistic endeavors, our instinctual clinging, and join together to rise above our fallacies into the truth and beauty of our strange species recreating a vision of a world where freedom exists on all fronts and we no longer pollute ourselves with dominating greed and toxic dreams we buy and invest in. Not utopia, but also not a land dictated by these toxic connections to everything we do. Let us invest in common sense and tomorrow, stop pulling from future equity in some frenzied chaos of plastic conversations and sew the seeds of a green and fresh start.

For now the flow follows onward.

Strange Rumblings from the Mountaintop that Wasn't There

Editors Note: This is far from a short post, but sometimes you just got to let it roll and let it be. And in the sense of progress the department is downsizing, so there is no editing or editor anymore, we're forced to just run all articles as are.

‘It’s more than just air pollution. You gotta clean your brain.’
~Nina Simone

sweet art from NY Times awhile back

Okay, focus, relax, take a deep breath. This is going to be a long post, you may need a tall glass of wine, and this will still only be a skimming of a portion of what's going on surrounding mountain top removal (MTR) coal mining right now. And if you can get to Charleston, WV on December 7, be there!

My mind is often floating towards mountains and today is no different. But I have been thinking about the lack of mountain where recently one existed, in particular because of mountaintop removal coal mining, that hideously distasteful, disdainful, and degrading form of strip mining. One of the most destructive extractive processes we have, if you want to give it a calm name like process.

It's more like an assault, which is how many residents feel about MTR happening around them and in and around their communities. I'm not going to go into detail about the steps of what MTR is or the dozens of social injustices it causes, many people have done that already and I recommend you check out a little primer if you're unfamiliar.

But the short and gist is the removal of hardwood forest and all flora, injections of bombs made of fertilizer and diesel fuel put in the ground, mountaintops blown away allowing that rubble and earth to be pushed into adjacent valleys burying headwater streams and releasing newly oxidized minerals and heavy metals from inactivity into our system, just like the coal still holding some of those nasty extras about to be washed, shipped, and burnt, leaving a compacted moonscape after 20 story draglines and heavy machinery are through. All of which heavily impact local communities. And in the greater scheme of things all of us.

I want to focus on a few facets of this beast that have been on my mind recently. In particular, false advertising, false economics, and false choices. And more than likely a few unrelated things as my mind chaotically and sinuously flows through this topic spastically firing up in my brain.

Excuse me, did you say clean coal?

A new study has just been released, and it doesn't have any sort of fancy complicated title where you wonder what they are talking about or what the point is going to be. It's entitled, "Coal's Assault on Human Health." A report from Physicians for Social Responsibility. It focuses primarily on the impacts to our respiratory, cardiovascular, and nervous systems.

Why do I get such a eerie feeling reading this report. It's a well put version of many ailments and problems I had heard of before, as well as a lot of little things about the degenerative ripples coming from coal throughout all stages of its life cycle.

James 3:6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.

This false notion, a public relations masterpiece, of clean coal is in strong need of being debunked. It's the smoothness of the way they say it that makes me shudder, they're so sure of it, speaking of it with such calm, ease, and faith. Our President is in that boat as well, and it makes one wonder sometimes how much truth and how much politicking is going on.



excerpt from a Friends of Coal coloring book going into some of our elementary schools, another to follow

I think the words clean and coal shouldn't be in the same sentence outside of sentences saying such. Of course there is coal that is cleaner than others in respect to the quality of the coal, the amount of btu's one gets, the amount of sulfur one gets, mercury, etc. Clean coal technology is a fanciful myth brought to you by the same wonderful minds that tell us gas guzzlers help the economy, global warming isn't necessarily a bad thing (if it exists), and since we‘re the “Saudi Arabia of Coal,” its our patriotic duty to burn it. The same people that tell us carbon capture and sequestration is our holy savior. They never seem to mention how IF it is ever used, it reduces the efficiency of the plant 20 to 40 percent, increasing demand heavily for more strip mining, which seems to me like it isn’t really getting to the root of the problem if we’re worried not only about carbon emissions but pollution, land degradation, toxic water, and a livable ecosystem.




Speaking of coal’s cleanliness, here’s the first part of the first paragraph from this new study by the Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Coal pollutants affect all major body organ systems and contribute to four of the five leading causes of mortality in the U.S.: heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic lower respiratory diseases. This conclusion emerges from our reassessment of the widely recognized health threats from coal. Each step of the coal lifecycle—mining, transportation, washing, combustion, and disposing of post-combustion wastes—impacts human health.

So even if flowers and fairies and chirping chickadees, which are on the decline (though I have no data about the population changes of flowers and fairies as of late, only birds), came shooting out of the smokestacks and all the carbon was wistfully and thoughtfully put underground for some unknown set of time, there is no such thing as clean coal technology.

Every step in the process is dirty. Dirty. Very much so. But let us remember, there are no flowers and fairies and chirping chickadees coming out of our smokestacks. So what about all that respiratory loving stuff? Let's go ahead and quote the last sentence of that first paragraph of this new study.

Coal combustion in particular contributes to diseases affecting large portions of the U.S. population, including asthma, lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke, compounding the major public health challenges of our time. It interferes with lung development, increases the risk of heart attacks, and compromises intellectual capacity.

So much for coal being clean. It sounds like that would put a huge burden on our health care system, another ‘externality’ of coal we fail to calculate into our energy policy. And for the sake of clarity, this is a strictly egocentric look at the moment, we’re not talking about the contamination that comes to the land and water rippling to us, something that is much harder to quantify, even though it exists, kind of like a haunting specter of yesteryear on a morphine and mercury drip.

I've seen a few comparisons of the coal industry to the tobacco industry lately, especially in re to advertising and pumping up their marketing and public relations as their negative health effects starts to back them into a corner.

Oh. It doesn't sound good for coal on any fronts. Good thing it's such a 'homegrown, cheap energy source.' How cheap does it sound to you?

And cancer, the great teacher
Has been opening schools
Downstream from every factory
Still, everywhere fools are
Squinting into microscopes
Researching cells
Trying to figure out a way
That we can all live in hell

Well, step back, look up
You'll see I'm dimming the sun
But you won't, will you?
Oh, that's a good little one
~Ani Difranco

Can we really afford to continue fooling ourselves about the cost and price of electricity as swarming amounts of information continue to collect pointing towards quite the different story? Is this blatant ignorance, apathy, greed hungry policy and regulation, a failure of democracy, or what?

Is it a problem of economics? How can our world, as far as our industrialized commerce oriented world, be governed by laws of economics that fail to consider the true costs of products or the liquidation of natural resources because it is difficult to accurately measure such pillars of our foundation. Yes it is difficult to quantify some of these functions and values of mountains, wetlands, waterways, and the atmosphere. Oftentimes things so dear to our survival, the little and big things, are next to impossible to put a price on and when one thinks about it, it makes too much sense because they are indeed priceless. That difficulty in addressing these values fails miserably as reason to ignore them in cost benefit analyses, and we are failing in not doing something about this. But there are things a stirrin', slowly.

Lamentations 1:2 She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies.

The economies of scale are skewed. Something is awry. Short term profits that plunder long term stability do little for overall well-being and health, homeland security, or general sanity. The skewed hunger and impatience of our greased and well oiled machine will make you go crazy. Plum, bonafied crazy. So don't stare at it too long, or look the beast in the eyes unless you want your circuits fried worse than Johnny 5 that one time he got turned into a bad guy. But seriously.

As Jesus said, 'there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'

The reason for all the confusion is that there are two paths of human knowledge - discriminating and non-discriminating...I deny the empty image of nature as experienced by the non-discriminating understanding. If we eradicate the false conception of nature, I believe the root of the world's disorder will disappear...Nature as grasped by scientific knowledge is a nature which has been destroyed; it is a ghost possessing a skeleton, but no soul.
~Masanobu Fukuoka

We need to work on a way of integrating new components of our world and these complicated interconnections into our decision making processes. We're like a dull heartbeat stuck in a lull, pumping but fading with just enough to keep going in some semblance of living as long as we borrow a little more from China. The system needs a strong jolt, a shock, a lightning bolt flaming whip of fresh ideas and edited playbooks traveling down the path of least resistance, just like a strong current enjoys. If we're going to continue to take and take from nature, we might as well take more biomimicry as well.

MTR - Mountain Top Removal or Morality Tax Recession. False dichotomies and mountainous lobotomies, how does it feel to be an externality?

What's up with all these disconnects? We need a binding line, where does it hide?

The snip snip of our detachment from nature detaches us from much, one of many being common sense. Perhaps it will return in atavistic fashion. Once we, as a society, become detached from nature, it makes sense to measure the health of our nation preeminently from the health of our market and not the health of our environment.

Ecclesiastes 5: 9-10 Moreover the profit of the earth is for all. The king himself is served by the field. He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity.

The detachment limits any smooth integration of the two that would inherently be present in any civilization that understood it's connection to the land. Physically, mentally, and spiritually. The detachment digs deeper into our psyche fueling further disconnect through current lifestyle norms in spiraling positive feedback fashion. If detachment pushes our interests towards more technologically oriented mediums of communication, recreation, and education, it pushes us towards more energy consuming hours on the laptop and tele and less immersion in the 'real world,' doing little to bridge the gap and more to strain the possibility of a successful operation to begin to reconnect the strings.

The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future. ~Marya Mannes

Chief Seattle's proverbial web of life is a little battered and torn, but I believe and hope it is time and a slow healing is due.

Back to the root, or rut, as we pronounce it in the country, serendipitously they both work at the moment. I believe this disconnect is further tainting our eyes, our perception, or perhaps it's just a major deficiency in vitamin A and a few B's from processed foods, but this disconnect is impeding our vision of each other.

The hard working folks that are speaking up about mountain top removal coal mining and its impacts to communities are not tree huggers out to kill miners’ jobs. First off, it's more like a few operator jobs that are at stake, jobs that could be replaced by green jobs, but just where exactly are these green jobs, they need to be made!

The miners all lost their jobs to draglines and improved profit margins of machines. These organizers are interested in diversifying the economies of the coalfields. Oppressive monoeconomies are tough cookies to crumble though, and they've got razor witted plans to disrupt any organizing efforts to dismantle their empire of dust covered glamor. They specialize time to time in how to divide. How to push and coil the minds of people until folks are sure as can be all those stinkin’ tree huggers just want to kill all their jobs for the sake of some bugs. It's crazy how much we try to reduce situations sometimes, how easy it is to manipulate or womanipulate anything into something or something into nothing, and how difficult it is to have a healthy open discussion when false lines have been drawn in the sand.

It is a far cry to call someone an environmentalist because they believe in clean air, clean water, and clean land, and believe their children deserve such things. Does that make someone a tree hugger?

It's maddeningly funny how past perceptions and actions of those crazy enviro's has caused anyone who stands up for what we stand on to be cast out as a dirty tree hugger. They are thrown into this category of being anti-industry, anti-jobs, anti-growth, and even sometimes anti-American. Another puzzle piece in the successful sorcery of rotten public relations.

Some of these destructive stigma blinders prevent people from seeing the social justice side of so called tree huggers. Many are just people interested in community, empowering communities, and the health and future well-being of communities. That sounds like diversified smart growth to me, not anti-growth. And it sure as apple pie sounds patriotic to me, helping our communities, a far cry from what I would say Wal-mart, or the People's Republic of China Merchandise Distribution Center, feels like.

Patriotism is an interesting word, drawing up excitement in people's hearts and feelings of being proud about your homeland. A far cry from what blowing up our own backyard and headwater sources and poisoning our communities feels like. That's more of a sick gut wrenching madness like watching someone cut themselves repeatedly day after day, or maybe more accurately cutting chunks from themselves, it makes you shudder and it leaves scars for both parties, physical scars on the source and mental scars for letting it continue as we all watch live from our television and computer screens. The cutting and defleshing is subtle, changed in all the 1's and 0's into more digestible chunks of news updates, facebook profiles, gmail, and of course blogs.


taken from a powerful Google Earth based project that can be found on ilovemountains.org

Some of these same mind limiting stigma's that prevent us from seeing the good hearted foundation of social justice work prohibit an accurate perception of Appalachian Culture for its beauty, self reliance, diversity, and historical roots as well. The same stigma's that somehow help justify in some twisted way the collateral damage of dealing with the upheaval of their heritage, land, and communities prevent us from truly relating to this miscarriage of justice and the bloody, slurry filled ooze creeping through the flattened mountains and drinking water.

After removal of coal from a mine, threats to public health persist. When mines are abandoned, rainwater reacts with exposed rock to cause the oxidation of metal sulfide minerals. This reaction releases iron, aluminum, cadmium, and copper into the surrounding water system and can contaminate drinking water.

The release of tainted secrets whisper dirty things into us.

False choices. Would you rather have the environment or jobs? Do we really need to choose between the two? We're not returning into being hunter-gatherers and we're not transforming into soulless machines on assembly lines either. There is a middle ground, and a healthy balance is just what the good doctor ordered.

How do we bridge some of these gaps, how do we reconnect some of these strings?

Ok, this rambles a bit, but biomimicry tells me to just go with the flow and I'm feeling a tinge of want to dig deeper, and I don't want to stop. Gravity pushes us ever onward. So, if you're in the mood, let's go down the old coal rabbit hole a little deeper underground and see where we get. And yes, we are all mad here...

In the land of milk and honey and luscious bounty the mountains flung themselves across the horizon in waves and swarms of teaming life and sound and scampering whispers as the breeze sneaks across leaves and branch and whisker.

And then the big bang came, again of course, and again. The big bang of the mountaintop being blown off. And everything changed.

Let there be light. Let there be darkness. The darkness we uncover brings us the light. The darkness we uncover reveals the darkness inside ourselves. But it also burns us towards a different light, a light at the end of the tunnel that may indeed be something other than a coal truck barreling our way.

Speaking of patriotism, what is best for our country, and loving your neighbor, isn't all of these degenerative and dehabilitating toxins a direct threat to our homeland security? Today and more so tomorrow, which is a further blow to our economy in extra health care needed, people living and working at sub par levels, increase in disease, decreased land and water value, increase in remediation efforts, and the depressing message we send to our citizens that we aren't quite as advanced, civilized, or smart as we thought.

Catch 22

How do you bring job diversity into a region dominated by an oppressive monoeconomy whose true cost is nowhere near accurate through the fallacies of inadequate assessment of 'externalities' and the fact that it's subsidized by the government?

We need job options for residents of the coalfields, and we need them before, during, and after MTR is phased out. Is it realistic, feasible, or completely idyllic for mountaintop removal operators to check out of their strip sites and walk across the street and check in to a solar energy manufacturer and installer?

I'm not sure. The idea sounds crazy, it's a fantastical thought. For now it seems improbable, but not impossible, and in today's rapid pace of change maybe soon enough that idea could be a concrete reality.

The problem is getting industry there. Ironically MTR proponents run to the idea like wounded dogs run home about the fact that in the mountains it’s too steep for industry to come in, how these flat tops are necessary. It’s their justification of lack of remediation and their loop hole about not returning the mountain to its AOC, approximate original contour, like they are supposed to. There’s a jail, Wal-Mart, golf course and some other structures on some old strip mine sites, but seriously, if they’ve got all these flattened mountains for business why can’t we get some factories, textiles, and manufacturers to come in and give people jobs. I’m guessing it has something to do with the fears of the land subsiding, the problems of compacted fill, groundwater, and wells, and who knows what else.

It seems very difficult to get any new industry in the coalfield regions. How do we do it? Luckily quite a few folks with much more knowledge than me have been thinking about this for awhile. SEED , a recently new group seeming to have some potential in opening up this riddle, Appalachian Community and Economics, and probably some other organizations are focusing on this dire issue bottle necking the progression of life in the coalfields.

What are green jobs, and where are they? If they were needed anywhere it's in the coalfields. Green jobs could open up options, something people in that region aren't used to having. Coal will be used for awhile, it is true, but we still need to start the transition of doing other things, as well as the way in which we extract, burn, and dispose of coal waste which needs an upgrade and upheaval.

Is MTR contributing a mere 4% of American coal? If so...(I don't know, I've heard different figures and know strip mining makes up much more but for MTR I really would like to know)

While we will burn coal and other carbon based fuels for awhile, the transition period will be getting well underway in the upcoming decade. MTR coal mining makes up such a small percentage of the coal we burn and a disproportionately large percentage of the ill effects done to the land, ill effects that cannot be undone. Ending MTR is something that is very feasible, simple efficiencies alone are able to more than cover the demand equal to that 4%.

Reclamation, when it is actually done, which isn't that often, can help return a piece of land into something better than the barren moonscape, however it is a far cry from the diversity of the virgin mountain, no matter what. Reclamation has gotten much better but it's still one of those times when you're sort of putting a band-aid on a bullet hole. Lipstick on a corpse is probably the most famous quote, and quite a good analogy.



If MTR creates so many jobs why are there 100,000 less mining jobs than 50 years ago? Because MTR and the mechanization of the process destroy not only the land and communities but they destroy jobs. Massey and other mining companies could easily employ more miners and tighten down on deep mining safety if they really wanted to create more jobs. But it wouldn't be as profitable, so we won't see it, because when it's all said and done they aren't concerned about their workers, they're concerned about quarterly profits and projected earnings. Yes, some of these areas aren't feasible to be extracted via deep mining, but I would argue they aren't feasible through extreme forms of strip mining as well. It's nothing wrong with wanting to make a profit but they're singing on both sides of the fence spreading lies both ways.

OSM, the Office of Surface Mining, and the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, have had their sights on MTR lately and getting a lot of grief over lollygagging, rhetoric, and the trials of jumping through the hoops of the process. The dumping of mining waste and rubble into streams is perhaps the easiest and simplest atrocity they should do something about. And they want your input.

Any civilization that disregards their freshwater as a top priority in all scales of planning is destined to trouble, despair, and downfall on a long enough time line.

Our present rules and regulations are not only a falsehood of our economics and our survival but they show our shortfalls as citizens and communities to not stand up for basic human needs. It is dire and time just munches on.

Ecclesiastes 4:5 The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh.

The insatiable hunger of time moves us ever forward and we must wonder if our own insatiable appetite is agreeable with our present action, methodology, and policy. It's definitely time for some changes. There's a time and rhyme for every season.

With the passage of time more explosives will shake and crumble more of some of our oldest mountains and bury some of the streams that many, many folk are downstream from. OSM says their process won't show any rule changes until at least 2011.

NWP 21, under section 404 of the Clean Water Act, has been highlighted recently as the EPA is having some public hearings about whether this permit option should continue. NWP 21 is a sort of weak, wide spanning blanket letting coal companies get around needing a public comment period, and anyways this rubber stamp was never intended for valley fills from coal mining, it was for projects with 'minimal' environmental impacts. But the beast that is NWP 21 has turned into a voracious gumming whore with no teeth, sucking life out of the land and giving a helping hand to coal companies. It's a horrid site, believe me.

There is a strong, dire need for individual permits to be required, for the impacts to waterways and public health to be looked at via meaningful evaluation, not this calm acceptance of trust or ignorance we’ve seen from the Army Corp of Engineers.

The largest MTR site’s permit has been put on hold for consideration of its size causing impacts to our waterways exceeding what is allowed. This is one of only a handful of times this power has been exercised. Again we are brought to the puzzle. Do not all the pieces also make the whole? The law of accumulation can only be diluted so far. If we are to admit the whole is bad are not all the pieces also?

I think its notable and a good step for this permit to be put on hold, for us to take a better look but all I foresee is more smaller permits if it is a hindrance to the coal industry, a tactic they already use for loopholes. But perhaps we will get some more decisive action, something with some real teeth in it. Now with the EPA, OSM, Senator Byrd, and a plethora of others showing interest as well there is starting to be some real focus on mountain top removal.

In the year of our Lord 2009 A.D. bifurcation points grow and reach new heights. While James Inhofe labeled 2009 as the Year of the Skeptic, perhaps 2010 will become the Year the Mountain Remained.

Cumulative impacts must grant warrant to change this. Dumping waste into our streams is ecocide with no concern for the future. Protecting our nation's waterways should be an utmost priority for homeland security and a basic signal that we understand water as a basic necessity of all life. After all the purpose of the Clean Water Act is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters.

Liberty in a wasteland is meaningless.

The recent hearings over the future of NWP 21 have been met with obnoxious, freedom of speech impeding busloads of miners paid by their companies to raise raucous, prevent citizens from entering the hearings, and screaming and jeering nonstop so public recorders can't hear citizens concerns about this permitting process, which then never make the record. Luckily many people submit comments via the internet or paper. Elderly women have been threatened and have had to be escorted back to their vehicles by security. It is childish, irresponsible, crazed behavior and will more than likely only intensify as this growing momentum builds against mountaintop removal coal mining. The miners are being force fed their jobs are at stake by their higher ups.

You can frame a picture a certain way, it doesn't mean its accurate or straight. Don Blankenship, famed mortician, actor, and CEO of Massey Energy is up to his normal tomfoolery and outright ethical debauchery. I'm reminded of Vivian Stockman's eloquent words comparing his company to a sociopath under the idea of a corporation being an entity, and any entity is going to have personality, however exciting, dull, or crazy and demented it is. It was at a hearing a few years ago inside the gym at Marsh Fork Elementary about another coal silo being constructed next to the school.

I have seen enough to know
That I have seen too much
Excuse me mister
Can’t you see the children dying?
You say that you can’t help them
Mister you’re not even trying…
~Ben Harper

Don Blankenship never ceases to amaze. Nor does irony. Don recently wrote a letter about China's environmental standards, making a methodical mention of children and how important it is to protect our children. He used the word children eight times in the article. Other than reaffirming everyone's worries about his concern for children, he also makes it clear that global warming is a theory, development takes precedent over environment, and he is against lax safeguards that allow heavy metals and toxic materials to leach into our intake stream. How interesting.

Maybe Don had a change of face, and maybe he will use some of his land to put up a new Marsh Fork Elementary on, or at least let them use some of his equipment to prep the site. But I do find it odd how he seems so concerned about children's safety after his blatant disregard during the on going years of talk, trouble, and sickness occurring at Marsh Fork Elementary in Sundial, WV. And just his general accounting mindset when it comes to profit margins dictating his actions when it comes to topics like sludge injections, blasting near communities, and all the other social issues related to mountaintop removal coal mining and other forms of strip mining.

“If we fail as parents, we have failed as Americans. We have failed as Americans. If we don't all stand up and take part in what’s happening in our Appalachia Mountains, we're all gonna’ suffer from this.”

"You can do without light. You can't do without that Water."

Ed Wiley’s wise words come in waves when I think about Marsh Fork and MTR.

Senator Byrd is getting more involved. He knows of the recent announcement from the Obama Administration that is planning to increase federal oversight of mining operations. He's ready to get involved. And he knows about one nasty evil of MTR very well, Marsh Fork Elementary. And it seems the School Board is Finally calling out for funds to move the kids away from being directly under 2.8 billion gallons of sludge and a coal processing plant.


photo taken from ilovemountains.org

It is still unknown whether funding will be granted to move the school, but there is a chance. Concerned citizens have been raising awareness about this issue and raising money themselves for years now. For a little background, here’s an old article I wrote during Ed Wiley’s walk from Gov. Manchin's place in Charleston, WV to Senator Byrd's office in DC, arriving the same time as an unveiling of ilovemountains.org, a great website of info and knowledge, as well as the beginning campaign of the Clean Water Protection Act, part of Lobby Week which will be happening again pretty soon.

There's a great 23 minute video about Ed's walk to Byrd's office (via the concerned citizens link). These ripples and the ripples of others took awhile, but they finally caught up. Ed is one great stand-up guy, and I'm proud to know him for the good he's brought those kids, inspired by his own granddaughter.

Yet the EPA who just released an 'environmental justice showcase' of 10 communities didn't include one community in the whole of Appalachia.

Don Blankenship has been preemptively letting us know about lay offs, blaming environmentalists, Democrats, and possibly even the bad advice of his Vedic astrologer. It's pretty low when you want to keep your profit margins at a certain level and can do it by laying off workers but you want to dig that line in the sand a little deeper by giving false motives for firing workers. He tells shareholders one thing about the security of his company, permits, and jobs, and tells his workers another.

Lamentations 3: 47-48 Fear and a snare is come upon us, desolation and destruction. Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people.

So, about all of this wealth, all these jobs the mining industry is proclaiming it creates. Why are the mining regions some of the poorest in the southeast and nation, why is unemployment higher than the national average? All the money leaves with the coal, going to the big wigs and shareholders, doing very little to nothing for local economies. At least very little to nothing positive for local economies.

You lose the things you love and you learn how important things are, you learn how to miss them. You learn what matters.

The recent secret meeting between Gov. Manchin, Blankenship, and a few other big players in the coal industry including a couple representatives show they are ready to get their 2 cents in as far as what's going on behind the scenes and they're also confused and concerned over what will be unfolding about the future of coal mining regulations.

Hm, we've got some serious mid and long term regional planning issues that are going to be one long row to how. Logistical nightmares that we better start planning and strategizing for, for homeland security, happiness, general well-being, health, sanity, and let us not forget that evasive integral factor and motivation, common sense.

Yes, it's long been said the creed is greed and we know short term profits have been governing the Big decisions for awhile, but its time for a new way of thinking and we no longer have the luxury of our inaction and the buffering capacity of time to hold the blinders of the results of our actions and means of existing, i.e. energy. We know too much to do so little. Why are all these little pieces of the puzzle not being connected? Why can we see the trees but not the forest, or the mountainside? It's time to batten the hatch and really get to the heart of this bugger. But for that we're going to have to go deep and deep and deeper still.

These are some serious questions, with even more serious implications. Amplification and bifurcation points tumult us. The ripples grow and its about time to start some more positive waves. The family friendly, PG type. None of this cheap, horrific gratuitous rape and assault and defecation we're used to. No, the future ain't what it used to be, but its still what we make it.

"I know the pieces fit, I watched them fall away." ~ Maynard James Keenan

The dots are just not connecting or adding up in our decision making process and policy. Detachment is a bad thing, at least in re our detachment from reality, ourselves, and the Earth and it is prohibiting and inhibiting many of us to connect the strings. The web of life is torn and fettered, and we have to repair it.

I'd say we were doomed if it wasn't for that one monkey wrench in the human spirit, our stubborn ingenuity, our inability to accept certain things, inalienable rights, our drive when pushed into the corner, our will to survive. I'm hungry for that ingenuity. Salivating at the mouth like one of Pavlov's dogs sitting in the middle of a glorious and repugnant minefield. What will it take for our communities to unite and rise together for freedom from the oppressive and self-mutilating chains of our own poor energy policy?

There is something happening here, and what it is, isn't all too clear. But things are moving, the wheels are in motion, we are left to ask to what end? By what means? At the moment there's so much going on about climate change and one example of point source climate change, MTR. I am thankful for that, the fact we're discussing such relevant prevalent issues.

But the distance between discussion and implementation is what concerns me. Real implementation too, not these gumming whores having no teeth. Just awful. Perhaps the hammer is finally dropping. I surely hope so, for our sake and for the kids. it's always been about the kids. No one deserves someone else’s mess, especially this kind of king hell brain buster.

Some people tell me I live in the woods too much, 'what would you know of what's really going on, in the real world.' I guess this is true, to some extent, but I do have an idea, which isn't too much less than what anyone has, and probably more than some. I enjoy the facts, but it is what or how I feel inside that I try to listen to. What feels right?

It’s harder and harder to give into these atavistic endeavors today. We, the intelligent animal, have become so brain, or pleasure center, oriented we allow little room for intuition, let alone the strange vibrations of our souls. How does all this have anything to do with the climate and mountains. It's a surefire nasty slobber knocker Catch 22. One, our detachment, and two, our need for reattachment to nature amidst the ever pressing sprawl of us, urbanization, commercialization, indoctrination, and of course, electron elation. We've got to overhaul our ways of thinking about energy, from the cradle to the grave, if we want to continue to prosper and live merrily into this new century.

William Arthur Ward once said the pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist expects it to change, and the realist adjusts the sails.

As we adjust inside this new millennium it’s clear some creatures aren't meant to survive, and MTR is surely one of those beasts.


>photo from www.ohvec.org, the best source for daily MTR related news

Committment and Remorse, what does the mirror of this media fire glow against you and I?

I stay away from sports normally, leaving that sort of talk to the professionals and analysts, but I couldn't resist this one, whether people agree or not. I hear there's a lot of negative feedback about Michael Vick's reinstatement in the NFL, and I know a lot of folk just don't care but I think its a pretty interesting cookie to crumble.

"If I can help more animals than I've hurt, then I'm doing my part," solemn words from the once lackadaisical yet bursting quarterback. Granted it took a swift kick in reality to get him there, I know what he says is true now. I think his situation is going to be a great educational tool raising awareness on a few fronts.

Since I'm at a beach house I have the unusual luxury of having cable, and my friend put Dirty Jobs on, where they are at some factory where 80,000 chickens were hatched the day of the recording, and now they're separating male and female. Hatchlings don't need food or water for 72 hours so they can be shipped all over the US stuffed in boxes, 'no problem,' as the guy teaches us.

The manufacturing and processing of animals for consumption on industrial magnitudes is degrading to the land, the water, and our own morals. I feel no qualm with eating meat, though I choose to only sink my teeth into flesh when I know where it comes from, like where the hunter killed it. Industrial sized factory farming is quite the nasty scene, demolishing small farms, unethical and cruel. Lets get it straight I don't condone his past actions and I love dogs as much as anyone and will show no shame in kissing and hugging and playing with our canine pals. I love all animals.

I wonder how many chicken, pig, cow, and soon to be tender veal calf are killed after living lives of overcrowded cages being pumped with antibiotics and hormones because there diet is unnatural and they're stuck wallowing in the mire of their own excrement. I understand dog fighting is different, but at the same time, it's really not so different, they're both disturbing.



It's a perception issue, a cultural thing. So many have dogs they love, it makes the abuse of a dog seem so evil, but McDonald's is making millions. It's a different connection. They say pigs are smarter than dogs but a lot of the same people hating on Vick have cholesterol issues from pork. So enough on all that, but anyone hating on Michael Vick should take a good hard look in the mirror because you know what the good book says, "Judge not lest you want to be judged."

It's plain as day upon hearing Michael talk now that he is remorseful for his actions, humbled by his jail time, and wants to live a better more fulfilling life with his family and friends. And he's one of the most athletic and fun to watch players to ever toss the pigskin. We've got human murderers playing who've gotten more forgiveness than Michael. Practice Christian forgiveness as Coach Tony Dungy explained in the first press conference. So give it up haters, there are more severe atrocities occurring in our atmospheres, and he's going to do more positive good now with his place in sports than many people will ever get a chance to, so let's love our brothers and sisters and as he said, this is the land of second chances, even if you only get one.

"I think everybody deserves a second chance. You know, we all have issues, we all deal with certain things, and, you know, we all have our own set of iniquities in our life and I think as long as you're willing to come back and do it the right way, and do the right things and that you're committed, then you deserve it. But you only get one shot at a second chance, and I'm conscious of that."

Wise words.

I guess I've always been partial to Michael, being a Virginia boy and a Hokie, and since I was able to watch a moment in college football history my freshman year of college at VT, his second and final season. He moved with the grace of someone playing on another level than everybody else around him, knowing how and when to turn it on and hit the angle making it appear he moves at rates unparalleled to his defenders. Anyone who makes something look that easy has got something special.

"We all use the excuse it was part of our culture, and I don't think that's an excuse. I was kind of abiding by that rule at the time."

I'm more interested in underlying sociological and cultural problems of dog fighting than one media induced martyr.



The hardest part for me now is coming to accept the tough reality that I'll have to be an Eagles fan, but a friend already 'welcomed me to the dark side' of obnoxious and raucous fans. I reluctantly join the boat, but I'm just happy to see Michael wearing a jersey back on the gridiron, where he wants to be, where he belongs, making magic out of a savage sport, showing us athletic grace and drive, the ballet of muscle and grit when everybody around you just wants to take you down and knock your block off. Stand strong and steadfast, and good luck Michael.

Reflections on Reflection, another rant with some high notes

some notes from my journal the other day...



We're back at Wing Gap for Week 2, but right now we are at Delaware Water Gap listening to jazz again at the Deer Head Inn. The grooves are coming and the blues are flowing. Exhaustion is setting in, and tomorrow I will be a rock crusher by morning and a road warrior by night traveling all the way on blasted 81 for over 7 hours to see my baby for her birthday in Blacksburg. She and dog fish head await me. She is enough and the dog is an added bonus. Nearly broke my right thumb today as Harry and I turned over a monster rock and he was one oomph ahead of me, causing the rock to pivot and crash on my thumb since I could not hold all its weight being smack downed by the unforgiving lover of gravity. It won't stop bleeding, but the nail may not be lost luckily.


A week later the nail remains, as do I, forever stuck to this body, at least for now. We are back at Twin Lakes, next to Bear Mountain in Ny. Two screech owls are talking across the water. They are conversing. Fish randomly jump up for a bug and subtly I float back and forth, up and down with undulating water on this small floating dock. Getting aligned with the rhythm. All is very calm but I can hear the road not far away in the faint distant, and these people drive like they've got places to go. Fast and aggressive.

I am losing light fast and rain is coming.

It is crew midnight, 9 pm. Me es muy tired from crushing rock and carrying rock, and I am content in my tent.

Insects sing in resonating echoes, answered rhythmically by other echoing chants. The chant of night. Forest acoustics come alive in a different way, a nocturne indeed. It is fitting for the end of our day: tired, finished, done for the time being. The nocturnal lullaby that in all its darkness is refreshing, very fitting sounds to finish the revolution's orchestra preparing us for the break of dawn. At which time the alluring aubade is born.

The answer is in front of us, it always has been, and always will, and we will continue to overlook it.



What is reflection but seeing yourself in nature, a part of it, part of this fragile ticking biological system, and realizing your place in it at that time in your existence. Seeing the truth in everything. The pieces fit. As ripples roll across a lake and slowly out of sight, clarity rolls over me like a wave of enlightenment, fulfillment, and righteousness. Nature is spiritual without a doubt, for its beauty and reflective tendencies, as well as its place as a piece, like us, of the Creator, our God.

Reflection is integral to growth, part of a balanced diet. This special time is sacred, for it is yours, and it is you in control of your life at that moment. Which brings up the concern of why is modern life cutting down so much on time for reflection. Could our large brain power be for more than being caught up in the material and intellectual culture of the fruits of our intellect? We can’t fit reflection into our schedules. That is without a doubt, insane, and sad that so many are in that boat for whatever reason: personal, victim of the system, one of the doomed generation, ignorant, frivolous, flagellate, enmity, whatever blemish puts them on that ship of fools, I feel for.

Reflection reminds me who I am. Not seeing my reflection literally, which can be mindful when its been a week, but internal reflection really reveals ourselves to ourself. We learn what we always know and sometimes, just sometimes, we even surprise ourselves. These are cherished events that increase in frequency and amplitude upon further reflection, meditation, and slow calm hikes in the woods, anywhere but preferably mountainous. Life is much too short for distress. We should demand better of ourselves and friends and family. We must push ourselves, for that is the most important part of learning about reflection and seeing a glimpse of what we have the potential to become. To push ourselves is to truly be alive, making the most of life, a raw rare thing of thoughtless beauty, the highest level and hardest to achieve.

Going beyond one's comforts teaches us to adapt, to acclimate quickly, and that my friends, is a valuable skill to have in this day and age, believe you me. It will only get more extreme, the magnitude of swift changes while we live in the hypersonic times of exponential growth while it lasts. We need thinkers, innovators, teachers, farmers, organizers, politicians, businessmen and woman, and whole communities that reflect and actually care for all of the above. We should all ask ourselves who and what do we care for? We should say, all of the above. In toto. All or nothing. Nothing is lonely, trust me.

All is a wondrous thing to see.

It is time for a change of the societal mythos. Call it evolution of self preservation, call it trendy, whatever you may it is time. Society's mindset is about to adapt to an ever changing world out of necessity. If our hypersonic rise in the last century wasn't enough to vibrate our cerebrums and frontal lobes into confusion and chaos we better get our ducks in a row and hunker down for the next wave. Anyone who has been on a rollercoaster knows this sensation when the next corkscrew approaches. Mental preparation is integral to healthy change when moving at these rates. It's too easy to become detached otherwise, as is easily apparent now in our detachment from nature and all that has branched from it as the agrarian reform and wilderness generation passed away to urban sprawl and suburbia, seemingly in a blink of time's eye, and in the process we lost so much knowledge and experience we are left little to do these days except watch television and read and write blogs.



We can be all that our dreams desire, but we must act, we must sacrifice, and we must be determined. Nothing good comes easy on this scale of things, this magnitude of mental stability, flexibility, and vulnerability to environmental cursors and energies surrounding the present spatial strata of terra firma. Feeling off of, feeling into, or connecting to nature, however you prefer to look at it at the time, it can be empowering and a catalyst for results from reflection. For some this is not possible. They are not wired this way. For others it is an extreme sensory overload. And for some it is invigorating, refreshing, and spiritual. And for many it is unfamiliar.

It is something special to feel small. To feel not insignificant, for everything is significant and nothing is random, but to feel your size in relation to creation and feeling the immensity of your surroundings itch at our atavistic yearnings, spiritual sutras, days forgotten. It is humbling and empowering.

These primordial reflections remind me I am alive.

Nature is the great reflection contrivance, the great reflector. What we see from other animals, plants, any interesting observation normally reveals something about ourselves as well. Its not egocentric but teachable moments. It’s all related, it’s biocentric. These universal themes exist at all levels in all things. Everything is interconnected. He or she who goes to the woods to learn about some species, especially for extended periods, oftentimes learns more about themselves in the end than their subject. It is the nature of nature. The nurture of nature. The never ending awe and complexity of nature, our one and only home.

These primordial reflections caress the coals of this inner fire, stirring my soul and reminding me the meaning of this transient existence. These primordial reflections remind me I am alive and that truth, love, and beauty is all we need to trust and all we need to surround our hearts with to have a worthwhile, enjoyable, and lasting life.

These primordial reflections are the flames of being, flickering and glowing, exposing and showing us glimpses of what could be. They are the fires of the mind, finally visualized as opposed to the smoldering haze of mediocrity. There is a purity present there that is a rare thing indeed, hard to grasp, hard to reach, but there nonetheless, always right in front of us, waiting to be realized, waiting to be felt.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my? That doesn't touch flailing markets, decreasing sperm quality, and cannibalistic polar bears, oh me...

Well, its Tuesday again, I had a blast in Blacksburg last weekend for the celebration and now I'm relaxing before our return to the woods as 5 hours of sweet music starts again. Grooves provided by George Penn on WUVT with a great Outkast song, Unhappy. "Might as well have fun cause your happiness is done and your goose is cooked." But I'm a rather happy fellow, just confused, and I don't gander with geese. So if you understand this conundrum let me know.

It’s a nice warm start to autumn this year. The earth is balanced, the day and night are of equal length. The time of Libra. We in the northern hemisphere begin our tilt away from the great hydrogen ball. Yet the sun is still shining strong and the nights are cooling off.

But things don’t seem very balanced all in all, especially the books. And now in the midst of our market glitch we, the US, are considering a $700 billion bailout. Now we are seeing the FBI is talking about mortgage fraud with these money piddling covetous fools. Some say we could erase our oil deficit with that bailout amount instead. Who knows.

And zoos are having green polar bear problems, DC has homeless polar bears, and the Artic has auroras of cannibalistic polar bears as things begin to become ‘slim pickins’ for sure. All the while Mrs. Palin just got called out again for another lie, this time in her attempt to get polar bears taken off of their threatened status saying their numbers are increasing. For this bold statement she won the Rubber Dodo Award in her vain effort to protect the oil industry. The tempest fails again, let us pray she does not get a chance to rise.

Maybe scientists should’ve made a word that didn’t sound so fancy, because albedo just sounds too fancy for normal people to recognize and pay attention to and too much like libido to sidetrack short attention spans, but we'll get to that.

What’s your albedo? Frankly, that’s none of your business!

Well the Artic’s albedo is high, and it is dissipating with the melting ice causing heat to absorb and not reflect, and the polar bear will be one of the first to pave the way in the newest and coolest trend, extinction, and now we’ve all heard it enough to where it effects us about as much as a couple more deaths in a war.

This tolerance to critical information is slightly foreboding and not my idea of population control. Not to be askew or amiss, for we all knew it somewhere in our minds, research finally tells us the proximity of cell phones in pockets to men’s reservoirs of reproductive genetic material reduces sperm quality. Imagine that. Next thing you know they’ll be injecting stuff in meat that will lower our structural integrity. Oh, they already do that. (If you want meat go hunt or go to a farmers market!) At least our waterways are clear and clean. Ha, they blow up mountains covering headwaters while streams closer to urban life team with pharmaceuticals and birth control pills that synergistically mix into a stew that who knows what it will do.

Our footprint is changing from a tap dance to a mosh pit with the tenacity of a swarm of drunken wall street bankers at a first come first serve backdoor deal.

Who cares about these things, they are a part of life, a necessary evil right? Kind of like tipping and Rosie O’Donnell. Yikes. No, it is time to wake up and as Zach used to say, "It's time to Take the power back."

What are these bailouts all about? Giving some corporations another shot at not being able to handle their books right that lost gambling with some risky shady unmentionables that leave their ravenous quarterly reports foaming at the mouth because their little charts didn’t continue to rocket like they used to in the good ole days, before the world got flat again. Mortgages and housing markets and all this economic filigree of insanity and abstinence and apathy of a rigid market that needs to bend. You better diversify yourself girlfriend. Crazy days.

The world doesn’t seem so crazy in the woods, that’s for sure. Only when I return to the internet and civilization I see so much crazed ridiculousness oozing out of the news and our world. What does it all mean? Is there a method to this madness, a crack in the sundial, an escape route to a better tomorrow awaiting somewhere off in the distance, hopefully around the next bend. Or is it like that spring right around the next bend the thirsty through hiker hears about yet never quite finds.

We got ourselves into a heck of a jam, a long row to hoe, a real humdinger of a flimflammer. And now we get yet another canary in the coalmine as the State of the World's Birds just released their newest study stating biodiversity is dropping in another installment of what is becoming overwhelming documentation that we are negatively altering all levels of this planet and we need to reassess the situation.

With the rise of colony collapse as well we now have a whole new can of worms to open up when we look our young children in the eyes and tell them about ‘the birds and the bees.’ “Well Jimmy, your little Elmo doll came a looong way, all the way from China, that place we borrow money from, but your doll used a lot of oil to get here and coal to power the sweatshop factory, as with the cartoon show we have you watching here learning about McDonalds through product integration and Teletubbie tolerance so your mother and I can have a minute to decompress from our slightly stressful and unfulfilling jobs two hours away. And all that oil and coal and cell phone signals and radio towers is confusing the bees and poisoning ecosystems killing off the pretty birds like the ones in that book you love so much. Yes the one with Charlie the cardinal. Well Jimmy, they’re disappearing, with a bunch of other animals. I’m sorry son, but this is why you need to know about the birds and the bees, because they make babies, and uh, mommy and I made you too the same way, but you can’t, because…well, there’s just too many durn people. We just can’t take anymore. So no sexing for you ok?! Maybe this cell phone will help, keep it on at all times, you just never know…Ok…”

Little Jimmy will never be the same. Nor will anyone. It’s a strange time to be alive, young or old, but especially for the young ones being thrown into an ultra speed dog eat dog culture of instant gratification where multitasking texting and typing while trading stocks is the new milking the cow and the old bald coke riddled used car salesman fad has given way to the metro sexual aderol addled ipod listening constant facebook updater look. But we’ve got machines milking cows now and mediocrity for conversation. Little Jimmy should be worried. Little Jimmy should invest in wind and solar. The times they are a changing. And as an old baseball catcher once said, ‘the future ain’t what it used to be.’

But it can still be what we make it. And as always, tomorrow is only a dream away.




Power to the people. It's time to get this peaceful revolution underway in a very serious way. Things are too crazy not to.

"There is Something happening in America"

I know its time for me to get back into the woods for sure now, since I’m sitting here thinking about politics.

The Democratic National Convention finally really got going after a slow build up, outside of Ted Kennedy’s speech which I enjoyed. I don’t know much about the VP nominee, but I like what I heard earlier at the Convention. Clinton and Biden both had great speeches.

Change is brought from the bottom up. That’s what Obama said. I agree.

All this political puppetry and theatre is finally going to get somewhere maybe.

But as the convention continued I kept thinking about the ghost of Hunter S Thompson roaming around the halls there in Denver. I’m sure he was there in spirit. Slick Willy gave a helluva speech earlier. All the facts were touching , but it is always the intangible that stands out. The parts of his oration that really gave it meaning, really connected me as a listener and I’m sure many others, included his mentioning of Hunter’s favorite topic: the American Dream.


Hunter's visceral hatred for Nixon and everything that was wrong with our country hit a nerve for many Americans, and his questions about the Fear that was running this country was so dead on in so many instances that I sometimes wish people hadn't become so obsessed with his excessive character and listened to his worried words more. His predominant theme through most of his work was with the Death of the American Dream, and it is still something I think about often.




He knew what was going on before many people did and it scared him. He always stayed close to politics, a self proclaimed political junkie ever since he wrote Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail in 1972 when George McGovern lost to the greed head swindler Nixon.




He also got me into writing as I became familiar with his work. The Collegiate Times had no time for my thoughts of Gonzo Journalism but he still lit a fire under me I will never forget. Long live Gonzo.



But back to Slick Willy and the Dream, first the past president stated,

The American Dream is under siege at home, and America's leadership in the world has been weakened. Middle-class and low-income Americans are hurting, with incomes declining, job losses, poverty, and inequality rising, mortgage foreclosures and credit card debt increasing, health care coverage disappearing, and a very big spike in the cost of food, utilities, and gasoline.
And our position in the world has been weakened by too much unilateralism and too little cooperation...
(APPLAUSE)
... by a perilous dependence on imported oil, by a refusal to lead on global warming, by a growing indebtedness and a dependence on foreign lenders, by a severely burdened military, by a backsliding on global nonproliferation and arms control agreements, and by a failure to consistently use the power of diplomacy, from the Middle East to Africa to Latin America to Central and Eastern Europe.
(APPLAUSE)
Clearly, the job of the next president is to rebuild the American Dream and to restore American leadership in the world.

Clearly.

Intense words. They felt genuine as he stood up there, either the sign of a good politician or a good man speaking, or just maybe both.

Biden teamed up on the theme adding, “The American Dream seems like its slowly slipping away.”

But for the big kicker Mr. Clinton called The Big O’s life ‘a 21st century incarnation of the old-fashioned American Dream.’

Deep. Nice.

He continued...

His achievements are proof of our continuing progress toward the more perfect union of our founders' dreams. The values of freedom and equal opportunity, which have given him his historic chance, will drive him as president to give all Americans -- regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability -- their chance to build a decent life and to show our humanity, as well as our strengths, to the world.

They really worked the American Dream. It is time for the rebirth of that dream. Many folk said sometime between the end of the 60’s and now we witnessed the death of the American Dream. We did, countless times, all over the place.

What is life but the ever shifting balance and struggle between the birth and death of dreams.

But now we have a concentrated chance of redefining that dream and manifesting it back into reality in the midst of this dire mire where we so desperately need a new kite to fly. New ideas. Change. Will Barack be our new kite flying in the clouds, leaving us squinting into the sky dreaming and smiling like happy barefoot children.

I don’t know about that, but he does seem eerily like some astronomical avatar of hope.



Obama is not going to solve our problems, but he is allowing many people to look at things in a different light, a light of hope. Obama is just a normal man, one who believes in the power of the people. The power of communities united.

2012 is not a date for the end of the world, it is a projected date for the end of an age. Perhaps the age of unreason will dwindle into this flickering candle of one last chance. We’ve about ran out of chances of shifting the societal mythos that is digging us into an ecocidal grave, lets hope we can get it right this time. Perhaps this is the great shift on the balance beam of homeostasis. Can you feel it in your bones, the barely present tingling of a better tomorrow?

This election is interesting because these themes are so emotional and real. People’s hopes and dreams. I suppose they always talk about it, but something is different this time. It doesn’t feel so phony.

Joe Biden declared about Barack’s heart:

I watched how he touched people, how he inspired them, and I realized he has tapped into the oldest American belief of all: We don't have to accept a situation we cannot bear.
We have the power to change it. That's Barack Obama, and that's what he will do for this country. He'll change it.

Let us hope so.

Let’s help him do it.

And since this has been a quote frenzy post, I had to add some scribbling I found from long ago about now and that ethereal dream.

The start of the 21st century is beginning to look like a bad Orwellian novel, or possibly an incredible miscarriage of justice and freedom from the bowels of the American Dream. But in the midst of all of this there is also a great wave of hope and passion building towards ideals founded in being stewards of this beautiful country and world we all share. How did we get so detached?

Above all is the concern of the seeds we sow for our children. The reaping of this intergenerational issue is one of dire importance, one we can be proud of if we decide to step up and do the thing we do best: use our drive, care, and ingenuity to rise above our fallacies thereby ensuring our continuance in the face of great odds. Lets not be that ship that drifts aimlessly until it sinks, let us navigate the unruly waters to the destination we all truly feel deep in our bones and heart, one where our offspring and those yet to be born won’t look us in the eye asking why we did nothing, but one where they sincerely thank us for caring about more than our comfortable lives, one where we earnestly care for theirs.


picture from RollingStone


Its been a few more days now, Barack gave his speech, which was awesome, and McCain surprised us all with the picking of his running mate. Not the boring ole predictable man anymore eh? An interesting move and I don’t know if it will help or hurt him.

Obama kept the American Dream theme going, but I guess for the sake of him being a piece of that dream he called it the American Promise.

Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land - enough!  This moment - this election - is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive.

Then later…

But I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring.  What the nay-sayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me.  It's been about you.

For eighteen long months, you have stood up, one by one, and said enough to the politics of the past.  You understand that in this election, the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result.  You have shown what history teaches us - that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington.  Change comes to Washington.  Change happens because the American people demand it - because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.

America, this is one of those moments.