earthfamilyalpha

The Seed Cleaner

2009-07-01T14:58:00.000-07:00

We went to see Food Inc the other night. It's really quite good.

Here's the trailor. And here's the opening of a decent review from the Boston Globe:

"As you might gather from the title, Rob Kenner’s documentary “Food, Inc.’’ is, in part, concerned with the extent to which industrial food production has replaced farming in America. It’s part activism, part school-assembly lecture.

If you’re told where most fast-food chains’ ground beef comes from, how much E. coli is in it, how much ammonia has been added to kill the E. coli, and how many illegal immigrants the meatpacking companies recruit, underpay, and leave prey to police raids, will you still want to eat that double cheeseburger?

The filmmakers are guessing no." more

But the part that got me was the part about seed and Monsanto. Monsanto has developed seeds that are "Round Up" ready and they want you to pay to plant them every year. They own it and you can only use their seed once.

And, if you don't plant or use their seed, and your neighbors do, and you end up with some of their seed in your fields, you as the farmer have to prove that you didn't use their seed. It's not exactly the kind of thing that farmers are real good at.

Ultimately, even though you are planting the same seed strain you've been planting for years, you may be pulled into court by Monsanto. Monsanto is not very happy about the way the movie portrays them. They are so unhappy, they have dedicated a lot of their web site to setting the truth straight.

Monsanto says:

In agriculture, plants and seeds with enhanced traits or genetics may be patent protected. This is true in the U.S. for plant varieties as well as biotech innovations. Monsanto is one of many seed companies that patent their innovations. Growers who purchase our patented seeds sign a Monsanto Technology/Stewardship Agreement — an agreement that specifically addresses the obligations of both the grower and Monsanto and governs the use of the harvested crop. The agreement specifically states that the grower will not save or sell the seeds from their harvest for further planting, breeding or cultivation.

In Food Inc, there is an older man call Maurice Pharr, and he has a machine that cleans seeds for replanting. Monsanto doesn't have much use for that.

Food, Inc. Fiction: Maurice Parr, a seed cleaner against whom Monsanto took legal action, claimed he settled with Monsanto because he could not afford the legal costs of going up against the company.

Monsanto Truth: Maurice Parr operates a seed cleaning business in Indiana. Mr. Parr had received many clear communications about the patent law around Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready® soybeans, and he knowingly disregarded this information. Mr. Parr confused farmers about the law regarding patents, which led to some of his customers breaking their contracts by saving seed as well. Mr. Parr did not “settle with Monsanto.”

Rather, Mr. Parr took his case to court, and the U.S. District Court in Lafayette, Indiana issued a permanent injunction against Mr. Parr prohibiting him from cleaning Roundup Ready soybeans."

However in the next paragraph, Monsanto discloses their settlement:

"Monsanto has agreed not to collect the damages awarded against Mr. Parr as long as Mr. Parr honors the terms of the court order."

And or course, Mr. Parr did not take Monsanto to court as their language implies, Monsanto WAS the plaintiff.

Mr. Parr was leaning on his HISTORICAL understanding that farmers have rights to their seeds. But in Monsanto's world, that right should just as well be gone. So they must destroy the seed cleaners.

There is something beyond evil with Monsanto's behavior.

Like the railroad tycoons of 120 years ago, or the oil tycoons of 80 years ago, they have gained a monopoly in the fields of our farmers.

And when the Seed Cleaners are gone,

Farming will be in their hands.

There is a saying about never eating your seed corn.

These folks are making it the law.

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rape seed field art courtesy of adam dabrowski art

Adopt A Tree

2009-06-10T09:30:00.000-07:00

*
Legend

There was a desert.

For a vast distance
nothing grew until, quite suddenly,
a great and very large bird
appeared.

The bird spat out a seed
which fell to sand, aching for life.

As it sunk below the surface
where we cannot see what happens,
a cry echoed from sand
to stone, from crevasse to karst,
from cave to fossil, a vibrant cry
of thirst resounded, underground,
where we can’t see what happens.

The cry criss-crossed its own
thirsty rhythm, intersected itself,
grew stronger, more urgent,
more perfectly beautiful —
a dark, brilliant necessity.

The seed stretched and broke,
sang and again sang, and again
sang it’s cry of thirst —

until deep below the surface
a flowing, jubilant,
cool, emerald answer
emerged.

It is said the thirst of Earth’s
great trees calls water
from depths which are invisible
causing springs to flow.

©Susan Bright, 2009

Susan Bright is the author of nineteen books of poetry. She is the editor of Plain View Press which since 1975 has published two-hundred-and-fifty books. Her work as a poet, publisher, activist and educator has taken her all over the United States and abroad. Her most recent book, The Layers of Our Seeing, is a collection of poetry, photographs and essays about peace done in collaboration with photographer Alan Pogue and Middle Eastern journalist, Muna Hamzeh

* Photo by Alan Pogue.

follow me on TwitterAnnouncements:

For up to date information about how you can help Save the Heritage Trees at Barton Springs:
BartonSpringsPublicProcess.com -- please take a minute to send the letters posted there, and/or one/s of your own.

Aielli Unleashed: Listen to Bill Oliver, Danny Britt, Beth Gallager, Marvin Dykhuis sing and play tree and river songs. Susan Bright reads the poem above. Bill Bunch talks about our Heritage Trees at Barton Springs.

Press Conference: Announcing an Adopt-a-Tree program for the heritage trees at Barton Springs. Thursday, 11am to noon, entrance to Barton Springs pool.

SB calling for the tree behind her to be named
the Poets' Tree --
pledging and calling for pledges of other poets to adopt
this beautiful old tree in the name of poetry.
To pledge email: sbpvp@sbcglobal.net

Action: Send a letter asking Council to strengthen, not dilute, City Code to protect Heritage trees. There will be a council briefing June 11, 2-3 pm, City Council Chambers. Bring Signs. Meetings are broadcast on municipal TV cable channel 6 and on 88.7 FM radio, starting at 1:30 p.m.

Barton Springs Heart And Soul -- New video by Brian Leonard

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Save Our Trees at Barton Springs

2009-05-13T15:24:00.000-07:00

Action Alert:
Urban Forestry Board Hearing
6:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 19
Mexican American Cultural Center, 600 River St.
Bring signs. Arrive on time to sign up to speak.

4. Environmental Board
6 p.m. Wednesday, May 20
Austin City Hall, 301 W. Second St.
Bring signs. Arrive on time to sign up to speak.

Interview with Bill Bunch --

I have been impressed with the outpouring of love
and concern people in my home town have expressed
for our heritage trees at Barton Springs and in Zilker Park —
in all our parks and throughout the city—
since, under the auspices of the BartonSprings Master Plan,
a tree report was published that calls for cutting down
28 beautiful, old trees around the Springs
and another 30 or so in the park.

I took the pic above so we can see how much shade
one of the City's new saplings provides, compared
to the old pecan directly behind it marked for cutting.

email council: Ask them to Save Our Trees

The children at Pease Elementary School, the oldest
school in town, know to save the trees and
have shared drawings with us thanks to their
art teacher Desi Burke, a regular morning swimmer.

email Parks Board: lhg@grandecom.net,
dchimenti@austin.rr.com,mvbostick@seton.org,
jfrancell@tnc.org,saramarler@sbcglobal.net,
janehrivera@austin.rr.com,mvane@gardere.com

Unfortunately, the city doesn't always, or very often even,
replace trees they cut down. This tree was cut 2 years ago.

See Twitter updates at end of post.

The children suggest we could take care of our trees.

Ya think?

email Parks Director, Sara Hensley: Sara.hensley@ci.austin.tx.us

The small, darker green tree by the steps was planted
for Beverly Sheffield ten years ago. The huge pecan
flush to the bath house (three people are standing nearby)
is marked for execution. In a hundred years Bev's tree will
have a similar canopy to the one they are planning
to cut down — this summer.

There are legends that it is the thirst
of Earth's great trees that draws water from
underground, makes springs flow.
We know they pull water from the sky
down to the aquifer.

Sign up to get SOS action alerts.

As I write Don Gardiner is conducting a tree-by-tree
learning tour of these trees, so we can learn how to
save as many of them as humanly possible.

email Environmental Board members:
marygaymaxwell@sbcglobal.net,moncadataz@sbcglobal.net,
rodahart@yahoo.com, jonbeall1@onr.com,
dbezanson@tnc.org, john@bseacd.org,
maryannneely@austin.rr.com

The tree behind our old friend tree, supported by steel poles
since I began swimming here in 1971, is starting to provide
shade to back up the old leaning pecan. It is 30 years old.

This cutting of trees, if we don't stop it, will strip
the park and pool of the beautiful tree canopy
for decades.

Why would anyone want to do that?

email members of the Forestry Board: arborworks@austintx.com, texastreecare@hotmail.com, wildewoode@grandecom.net,tgallo@wildflower.org, s.leigh@mail.utexas.edu

One argument is that the City will plant new --
really big trees. That these new ones will be safe.

Can someone explain how a new tree that can be
transported, roots wrapped in burlap, transported
in a truck, can possibly be less likely to fall down
than these old giants which have been hanging on
to the earth here for more than a hundred years?

These drawings by children are laminated. We will hole
punch and tie them with ribbons to the pink tape
around the trees the city wants to cut down,
so there will be something beautiful and hopeful —
next to the Tree Report pages the City has hung
on condemned trees, blessings from the best of us,
our children, blessings for these old souls, our heritage trees.

Add your voice to the work of creating
a tree friendly paradigm for our home town.

If you have children who love trees, laminate
their drawings and put them up next time
you're at the Springs.

Copy these links and one to earthfamilyalpha into your twitter
notes and onto your facebook pages so all your friends can help you
help us save the trees. Voices from afar are welcome —
our city loves tourists.

Here are events, official and communal, where
we can continue the work of creating a tree
friendly paradigm for our home town.

1. Saturday May 1 — 9:45 AM
Press Conference and Community Wide Meeting
for Save Our Trees at Barton Springs Pool
WHERE: Outside the Main Entrance to Barton Springs Pool
WHO: Nicki Bishop, ISA-Certified Arborist; Michell Brown Owner, Xanadu Nursery; Graham Rasor, Masters in Horticulture from Texas A&M University; Cheyenne Thomas - Arborist, Robin Rather-3 time former Chair of the Save Our Springs Alliance with her child, and other elementary children displaying their art work especially drawn for this event, Bill Bunch-Executive Director-Save Our Springs Alliance
WHAT: We, the citizens of Austin, call on the City of Austin to slow down the plans of the Parks and Recreation Department (PARD) to cut down 28 heritage trees at Barton Springs Pool. We are asking the City to investigate all alternative options to save these trees, as well as to consult further with local experts on their opinions and solutions to keep both citizens and the trees safe. We are not only asking the City to initiate measures to preserve the trees but also to consider a tree-friendly regime for all city parks that includes tree maintenance, planting and preventative care. We appreciate the City's concerns regarding the safety of citizens and look forward to ongoing dialogue and together finding creative solutions to raise the needed monies to ensure that all city parks retain a beautiful, natural canopy of shade from healthy, stable trees.

Click to read an independent study of the trees by ISA Certified Arborist Don Gardner.
Click to view the Tree Report commissioned by the City of Austin.
Here is their map of all the trees scheduled to be removed or pruned and monitored.

Pink and green tape has been tied around the living trees to reflect the color coding on the map which indicates which trees will be removed (pink tape) or pruned and monitored (green tape).

2. Sunday, May 17th, noon - 3
Save The Trees Activist Picnic
South gate (off Robert E Lee)
Music, poetry, letter, cell, text, emails to council and boards and commissions.
Contact: jj1305@txstate.edu.
go to "Save Barton Springs Trees" on Facebook.

3.
Urban Forestry Board Hearing
6:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 19
Mexican American Cultural Center, 600 River St.
Bring signs. Arrive on time to sign up to speak.

4. Environmental Board
6 p.m. Wednesday, May 20
Austin City Hall, 301 W. Second St.
Bring signs. Arrive on time to sign up to speak.

5. Scheduled hearing for 5/14 to amend city code to make
it harder to cut down heritge trees has been postponed.
Right now the new schedule calls for a briefing on the
proposed new ordinances on June 11 and action on June
18. Stay tuned.

email council: Ask them to Save Our Trees

©Susan Bright, 2009

Susan Bright is the author of nineteen books of poetry. She is the editor of Plain View Press which since 1975 has published two-hundred-and-fifty books. Her work as a poet, publisher, activist and educator has taken her all over the United States and abroad. Her most recent book, The Layers of Our Seeing, is a collection of poetry, photographs and essays about peace done in collaboration with photographer Alan Pogue and Middle Eastern journalist, Muna Hamzeh

Click to see Austin New Real program: Tree Friendly Paradigm featuring Susan Bright (SB), John Correy (arborist) and Pam Thompson (show host) recorded 23rd, tech by Stefan Wray.

follow me on Twitter

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Fourteen Days

2009-04-30T11:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I connected up with an old friend for a few hours in the late afternoon. He was without a car so I picked him up at the Half Price book store which he had walked to after getting his hair cut. We settled on the Alligator-whatever-it-is next to the book store as a reasonably decent place to catch up.

Jeff's been in Louisianna lately because that's where much of the movie action is these days, and he's definitely in that business. Towards the end of our chat, he said, "Did you hear that the WHO announced that there have been 7 confirmed deaths from the Swine Flu?" Jeff's a serious guy, and a former reporter, so I didn't just PooPoo his claim, but the story didn't resonate with my physician partner who I immediately called for confirmation.

Later in the evening I saw the story on one of my lefty type news services, but even then, I wondered if the story was somehow manufactured. In my mailbox this morning, confirmation of the accuracy of the lower numbers was found, thanks to the Australians.

Only 7 swine flu deaths, not 152, says WHO
Sydney Morning Herald
April 29, 2009

A member of the World Health Organisation (WHO) has dismissed claims that more than 150 people have died from swine flu, saying it has officially recorded only seven deaths around the world.

Vivienne Allan, from WHO's patient safety program, said the body had confirmed that worldwide there had been just seven deaths - all in Mexico - and 79 confirmed cases of the disease.

Unfortunately that [150-plus deaths] is incorrect information and it does happen, but that's not information that's come from the World Health Organisation," Ms Allan told ABC Radio today. "That figure is not a figure that's come from the World Health Organisation and, I repeat, the death toll is seven and they are all from Mexico."

Ms Allan said WHO had confirmed 40 cases of swine flu in the Americas, 26 in Mexico, six in Canada, two in Spain, two in Britain and three in New Zealand.

Ms Allan said it was difficult to measure how fast the virus was spreading.

She said a real concern would be if the flu virus manifested in a country where a person had had no contact with Mexico, and authorities were watching all countries for signs of that.

"There is no pattern that has emerged at this stage to be able to say that it is spreading in a particular way or it is spreading into a particular country ... the situation is continuing to evolve," she said. (more)

And even though the headline might calm your concerns a bit, another story in the Herald says:

"The Federal Government's pandemic plan, a 132-page manual issued to medics, media and the public, insists that once the world reaches phase five, Australians should stock their pantries with food and bottled water to last 14 days, check on elderly neighbours and put emergency numbers by the phone."

So, stock up, but don't panic.

The H1N1 story is not just an abstraction for me. Last Friday, two good friends and I made what was, by all standards, a very uneventful crossing to our respective homes in Mexico. Our little village is in the State of San Luis Potosi, not that far from one of the epicenters of the disease.

After a long day of driving, we ate dinner, went to bed, and woke up the next morning to find ourselves reading in the San Luis newspaper about some kind of swine flu deal. Since, we were hatching some plans to go to the desert to be with a Shaman for a couple of days, I called home, asked my Dr. partner for some advise, and headed for the sacred lands.

We remarked to ourselves as we bounced down the narrow mountain road that leads from Catorce to the altiplano below that this was a good start for a horror action movie. You know, four guys head out to the wilderness only to find upon their return that the world had changed.

Well, when we did get back, there were no bodies on the side of the road, but there was a lot of angst, and the usually large weekend crowds that flock to this magic pueblito were non existent. It was, like the pueblo fantasma above, a ghost town.

The residents had all kinds of opinions ranging from "follow the money", to blaming a giant pig farm in La Gloria , to the following email that I received from a resident of San Luis who was in one of the hot zones:

"Here in San Luis every thing under control in an indoors routine till the 6th that activities start again.The only Hospital general, is a 5th world hospital, worse than Thailand in the 80's. How could they be able to analyse, isolate the virus, and be sure what is is?

In Matehuala they say there are cases, how could they be able to know for sure what it is?

Very strange!!!!

Do you know the ulterior motifs? (sic)

When Obama was in Europe at the G20 briefing, Angela Merkel said that Mexico is ready to become the 51st star of the USA flag. That was her only comment.

Who created this big game? Secretaría de Hacienda is getting millions off dollars for the flu. The statistics say that every 10 minutes a child dies of dehydration since years and nobody says anything."

I wrote back, "There are many reasons to think many things about this event. But whatever we might think, it appears to be dangerous."

With some of the more sophisticated folks in the village, I talked about disaster capitalism and how certain forces use natural and unnatural disasters to bring about economic and civic changes that could not occur without the event. We talked about the Shock Doctrine, Naomi Kline's seminal work describing decades of disaster capitalism.

Yes, a Pandemic will be very good for some folks.

And very bad for a lot of others, like the Mexican tourist industry for example. It won't help the global economy either which arguably already has a possibly fatal case of the pig flu.

We got out of Mexico and left our little village as soon as we could. We weren't sure if the border would close, or we would be subject to quarantine, as phobic politicians began to demand that we close our borders completely. By the time we were on the road, some of our politicians were already in their fear gear even as the CDC expressed their views of its limited value.

As we made our way back, we saw our first signs of the look of Pandemic. Almost everyone on the road who was in public, such as food handlers or toll collectors, had masks and gloves. At the Casita de Cobre, there were signs and handouts. The army set up check points. We saw one ambulance that had picked up at least one sick member of one traveling family. We applied hand sanitizer everytime we paid a toll or bought gasoline.

But when we got to the American side, where passive testing had been ordered by Homeland Security, the guards had no gloves and no masks. And in true form, they spent most of their time hitting the sides of the car with that putter-looking thing trying to find drugs, and even more time than that trying to figure out if the fresh orange marmalade that was given to me in the pueblo was a permissable item. (they had already taken our Whole Food apple)

When they did ask us how we were feeling, we told them we were fine. But at the immigration stop further in, the health issue wasn't even mentioned.

Like our trip down, the trip home from Catorce was more or less uneventful.

But, instead of going back to work at work,

I'm working at home, in three days of self quarantine.

And I carry hand sanitizer everywhere.

Just because some Capitalist somewhere

is going to make a lot of money over this,

Or some world organization may greatly increase its power,

It doesn't mean it's not dangerous.

Fourteen days of food and water might be a good idea too.

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Tree Friendly Paradigm

2009-04-24T11:00:00.001-07:00

(Ignore the camera dates in yellow. I'm not a photographer and didn't have time to figure out how to turn off the wrong date on my camera. I took these photos, 4/23/09.)

See Twitter updates at end of post, ps use links within this message to ask Austin City Council, our new PARD Director, Sara Hensley, the Parks Board members and the Env. Board members to SAVE OUR TREES.

Three out of the four trees shown at the front
entrance will be cut down within 90 days
along with 25 other heritage trees around
Barton Springs if we don't immediately
tell Council to save our trees.

This catastrophe is the result of a Tree
Survey commissioned by PARD under
the auspices of short term funding
for the Barton Springs Master Plan.

Our pecans are just
bursting out -- verdant, green,
lovely, full of life.

email council: Ask them to Save Our Trees

Take a closer look at the front gate canopy.
Does it look dead, dangerous to you?

Yet city attorneys and insurance estimators say
we are at risk — as if public safety and trees
were not compatible. Trees clean our air, are
vertical rivers bringing water from the air
down to the soil, to the aquifer, are ecosystems
brimming with life.

This is a false dichotomy.

email Parks and Rec Board: Ask them to Save Our Trees

It's hot here -- can get to 119 degrees in the summer,
90 degrees in February. Can we afford to lose 75%
of the shade at Barton Springs -- all at once?

The Tree Report has a 12 point rating system for
"Kill". They talk about the useful life of a tree,
claiming it to be 100 years. But Pecan trees live
to be 300 - 350 years — are the State Tree of Texas.
These grassy fields alongside creeks and rivers
here are called "Pecan Bottoms." Yet the City
wants to replace these heritage trees with
other, non-native in some cases, species.

4 of the 12 "Kill" points come from proximity
to public traffic, and have zero to do with
the health of the tree.

Other kill points come as a result of a tree
being asymmetrical. Isn't that one of their
finest qualities, don't they deal with balance
issues underground where we can't see
it, clinging to earth so the part we see
can lean to light, sway with wind —
isn't that the nature of trees?

email Parks Director, Sara Hensley: Sara.hensley@ci.austin.tx.us

These Cottonwoods will both be disappeared.

When my son was four and sat one day
with me under these Cottonwoods he held
up his small hand and caught a fist full of
fluff, said —

Look Mommie, a piece of the clouds!

Two summers ago I was there when Don
Gardiner told City Staff these two trees
were healthy and didn't need to go.

But today they are in the way of a new
path the City wants to build from the
South parking lot to the water --
past two new bath houses they also
are considering building --
bonds to come at later date.

So they are now unhealthy
and must be cut down.

This path and bath house plan will also involve clearing
the woods behind the diving board.

email Environmental Board members:
marygaymaxwell@sbcglobal.net,moncadataz@sbcglobal.net,
rodahart@yahoo.com, jonbeall1@onr.com,
dbezanson@tnc.org, john@bseacd.org,
maryannneely@austin.rr.com

The two trees behind the guard stand here will be
gone, and at least one other from the top of the hill.

Anyone checked UV ratings lately?
Better get some stronger sun screen.

These trees along the pool shade the water.
Temperatures have gone up 5 degrees in the last
two years. It will be worse without trees.

And algae rises to light --
so get ready for more muck.

email council: Ask them to Save Our Trees

28 trees, more thru out the park --
are marked for execution.

35 years ago when John and I started a back yard
garden at our Zilker Neighborhood home, a pecan
volunteered in the compost bin. Today it is
12 inches in diameter -- and shades about a third
of the back yard. We've moved the garden
to the front of the house.

The trees slated to cut are about 200 years old.
It will be decades before our shade grows back.

This might indeed be a good time to plant
new trees, but not to cut down the ones
we already have.

This is the same tree as in photo above, it's in
the courtyard next to the front gate to the pool.
The small redish gravel packed around a small
hollow to collect water for the tree is basically
concrete -- packs to a hard impervious cover.

Austin organic gardening expert John Dromgoole
(Gardenville) explained on Monday night that
we need to mulch these trees, they way they
would self mulch in a forest. Let's try that
before we cut this beautiful
tree down.

email council: Ask them to Save Our Trees

This one next to the bath house used to
be home to one of the biggest bea hives
in town -- we're losing bees -- is flush
to the building. Master planners explained
two summers ago it might fall on the
building, plus they wanted to re-model
the bath house, or build a new one,
and it would be in the way.

John Corey, arborist, long time swimmer,
suggests this tree is a good candidate for
cabling -- to direct away from public pathways
any potential limb drop.

Shouldn't we try that?

What would Dobie, Beticheck and Web think?

email council: Ask them to Save Our Trees

The tree at the far side of the entrance next to the bath house
is also marked for the cut.

The source of it's ill-health may also be proximity
to a proposed renovation or construction project.

email council: Ask them to Save Our Trees

Looks like a branch or two here could be trimmed?
I guess our city figures why bother, since they
are planning to kill it?

How is it the company our City chose to do the Tree
Report is a company whose specialty is cutting down
trees? ( Davey Resource Group, a Division of The Davey Tree
Expert Company, 7627 Morro Rd. Atascadero, CA 93422 --
you see them all over town cutting down trees, removing
branches for power lines, that hang over streets, etc.)

Swimmer Ken (we don't always know last names) said
yesterday Davey made him cut down a Cottonwood
they said was hollow, but when it came down turned
out to be solid. Their Tree Report is full of errors, different
maps show different trees for cutting, etc.

We need second, third opinions —
from experts whose specialty is tree preservation,
health, making them safe for people in public places.

email council: Ask them to Save Our Trees

And this one -- an old friend. It's been double supported
since I started swimming here in 1971. At least 5 times
in my memory flood water has raged past and completely
over this old Pecan. There's a new tree behind it that
will someday take over it's sacred place above the springs.

Who among us will take the first strike at this old friend,
local icon, guardian of the Springs?

I suppose the tunnel below could cave
in from the weight. Or would that be from extensive
excavations a decade ago when the city dug up
the "beach area" to "save" the Salamanders by
digging up their habitat?

It's time for an earth friendly paradigm,
a tree friendly paradigm --

It's time for cities and towns everywhere to stop
thinking about natural resources as commodities,
as something they "own," as insurance risks
or liabilities in a lawsuit.

That way of thinking has brought us to
the verge of global climate disaster.

It's time for a tree friendly paradigm
in my home town,
on our home planet.

email council: Ask them to Save Our Trees

©Susan Bright, 2009

Susan Bright is the author of nineteen books of poetry. She is the editor of Plain View Press which since 1975 has published two-hundred-and-fifty books. Her work as a poet, publisher, activist and educator has taken her all over the United States and abroad. Her most recent book, The Layers of Our Seeing, is a collection of poetry, photographs and essays about peace done in collaboration with photographer Alan Pogue and Middle Eastern journalist, Muna Hamzeh

Click to see Austin New Real program: Tree Friendly Paradigm featuring Susan Bright (SB), John Corey (arborist) and Pam Thompson (show host) recorded 23rd, tech by Stefan Wray.

follow me on Twitter

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TBagging

2009-04-20T12:30:00.000-07:00

The always creative and constantly cartooning C. L. spent the night last night and he left this cartoon on my desk. Pretty much says it for last week's Faux arama.

And just in case you needed proof that Boehner really is dumb.

Here it is..

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Getting Somewhere

2009-04-06T15:16:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday, I once again did something that over my entire career, I have done a lot.

It goes something like this. You get in the car or plane at the break of day and you spend half of the day getting somewhere. And once you get there, after a getting out and inspecting a few things, you come right back. It's a little bit like running I guess.

Wind resource guys like myself are kind of a special breed I suppose. You have to love the land and the earth so much, that you enjoy just moving around on it. And even though you very much have a destination, it's not really where you are going.

All this means that in order to do what guys like me do, you have to be happy with where you are. Because when you do get to where you want to go, you immediately leave again. Sure, you might be back, and you might be back a lot if the project begins to develop.

I don't know if all wind guys or for that matter solar guys feel like I do, but there's something really special about transporting three or four hundred miles to look at a place, then turning around , hopefully arriving home before the end of the day.

This particular trip was a bit like time travel. Just three hundred miles north of here, it's still almost winter. The grass and the trees still look like winter. Flowers are just now beginning to bloom as spring is just now showing its remarkable splendour.

Of course, I know the site from the maps and from flying around it on Google Earth with their cool new flight simulator, but nothing beats actually being there. "Being there" is essential. Chauncey had it right.

Maybe its a product of age or simply a return to our natural condition, but I very rarely actually look forward to getting somewhere these days. That "somewhere" is more like a mirage on a long stretch of hot road. It doesn't exist.

What does exist is Now. I know that this statement is a bit trite and it certainly is overused in certain metaphysical circles; but, I also realize that "Being in the Now" is much older than Ram Das or Eckart Tolle.

When I was a child, my life was all about waiting. I would wait for my favorite TV show, the all important ball game, my date with Marsha, or to finally get my drivers licence and the car I had been saving for. I would count the tractor rows left on the field, and the cattle waiting to be squeezed and dehorned. When I became a musician, I would eagerly await the lights and excitement of the gig.

Over the last seven years, I have been writing a book called "Beyond". And the first chapter is "Doors", the door of the eternal moment to be exact. Since I finally have the cover and the chapter art, the liner notes, the manuscript itself, and all the folks and resources to get the book published, I suspect that we're getting there.

This being said, you can't confuse "being present" with being complacent.

Quite the opposite in fact.

"Being present" does not mean that we ignore the future, or that we forget the past. Electing Barack Obama is, was, and will be one of the most significant developments in redirecting our course on this earth. But, the momentum of our culture is immense.

Last Thursday, as I was chasing the Wind, George Monbiot was describing the G 20 meeting. Here is the text of the G20 communique, in compressed form.

"We, the Leaders of the Group of Twenty, will use every cent we don't possess to rescue corporate capitalism from its contradictions and set the world economy back onto the path of unsustainable growth. We have already spent trillions of dollars of your money on bailing out the banks, so that they can be returned to their proper functions of fleecing the poor and wrecking the Earth's living systems. Now we're going to spend another $1.1 trillion. (clip)

Oh - and we nearly forgot. We must do something about the environment. We don't have any definite plans as yet, but we'll think of something in due course." (clip)

This suggests to me that our leaders have learnt nothing from the financial crisis. It was caused by allowing powerful agents (the banks) to exploit a common resource (the global economy) without proper control or regulation. Governments deployed a form of magical thinking: that the boom would go on forever, that a bunch of predatory psychopaths would regulate themselves, that profits, dividends and share prices could grow indefinitely even though they bore no relation to actual value.

They treat the environmental crisis the same way. Climate breakdown, peak oil and resource depletion will all dwarf the current financial crisis, in both financial and humanitarian terms."

Once our leaders, and their followers

discontinue their belief in infinite growth on a finite planet,

and they toss out the "magical thinking" that such tomfoolery demands,

We'll be Getting Somewhere.

But they're not there Now.

And we can't wait.

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art courtesy of Charlie Tomorrow

Obama Knows

2009-03-26T08:19:00.000-07:00

If you haven't noticed, the stock market has made quite a rally in the last 2 weeks. The Dow bottomed just under 6500 and today it's heading to 8000. That means that the Dow has gone from being valued at close to 45 cents on the dollar just 2 weeks ago, to over 55 cents on the dollar today.

For Obama's sake, and for the sake of all the rest of us who have mothers with retirement plans, we can only hope that the bottom has been reached and we can now begin to see the equity market rebuild itself. Sure Citibank is still trading under $3.00 and General Electric is barely over $10.00. Given that Citi was at 30.00 a year ago, and GE was close to 40.00, the fall of these once mighty stocks is dramatic.

General Motors is up over $3.00 today, certainly better that the 1.27 it hit early this month, but miles away from the $25.00 it traded at last March. Bank of America is trading around $7.00, well off of the $42.00 price it fetched last March.

Yes, the carnage on Wall Street looks like a medieval war scene. Giants have fallen. And even though a lot of folks, really really rich folks have been, and to some degree still are sitting on the sidelines waiting to buy the bottom, there are legions of folks who have left their shirts, pants, and panties in that dark canyon of capitalist excess.

When I hear Obama speak of returning to growth and building the economy, I can't help but feel a little empathy for him. He's a smart guy. He knows well that we must change.

And he even says it when he speaks of moving to a sustainable economy.

But what is a sustainable economy?

This piece from the Oil Drum says it pretty well.

Toward a New Sustainable Economy
Robert Costanza [University of Vermont, USA]

The current financial meltdown is the result of under-regulated markets built on an ideology of free market capitalism and unlimited economic growth. The fundamental problem is that the underlying assumptions of this ideology are not consistent with what we now know about the real state of the world.

The financial world is, in essence, a set of markers for goods, services, and risks in the real world and when those markers are allowed to deviate too far from reality, “adjustments” must ultimately follow and crisis and panic can ensue. To solve this and future financial crisis requires that we reconnect the markers with reality.

What are our real assets and how valuable are they? To do this requires both a new vision of what the economy is and what it is for, proper and comprehensive accounting of real assets, and new institutions that use the market in its proper role of servant rather than master.

The mainstream vision of the economy is based on a number of assumptions that were created during a period when the world was still relatively empty of humans and their built infrastructure. In this “empty world” context, built capital was the limiting factor, while natural capital and social capital were abundant.

It made sense, in that context, not to worry too much about environmental and social “externalities” since they could be assumed to be relatively small and ultimately solvable.

It made sense to focus on the growth of the market economy, as measured by GDP, as a primary means to improve human welfare.

It made sense, in that context, to think of the economy as only marketed goods and services and to think of the goal as increasing the amount of these goods and services produced and consumed.

But the world has changed dramatically.

We now live in a world relatively full of humans and their built capital infrastructure. In this new context, we have to first remember that the goal of the economy is to sustainably improve human well-being and quality of life.

We have to remember that material consumption and GDP are merely means to that end, not ends in themselves. We have to recognize, as both ancient wisdom and new psychological research tell us, that material consumption beyond real need can actually reduce well-being.

We have to better understand what really does contribute to sustainable human well-being, and recognize the substantial contributions of natural and social capital, which are now the limiting factors in many countries.

We have to be able to distinguish between real poverty in terms of low quality of life, and merely low monetary income. Ultimately we have to create a new model of the economy and development that acknowledges this new full world context and vision. (clip)

The role of government also needs to be reinvented. In addition to government’s role in regulating and policing the private market economy, it has a significant role to play in expanding the “commons sector”, that can propertize and manage non-marketed natural and social capital assets. It also has a major role as facilitator of societal development of a shared vision of what a sustainable and desirable future would look like. (clip)

The long term solution to the financial crisis is therefore to move beyond the "growth at all costs" economic model to a model that recognizes the real costs and benefits of growth.

We can break our addiction to fossil fuels, over-consumption, and the current economic model and create a more sustainable and desirable future that focuses on quality of life rather than merely quantity of consumption.

It will not be easy; it will require a new vision, new measures, and new institutions.

It will require a redesign of our entire society.

It will require a New Economy.

And I don't doubt that Obama knows.

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art courtesy of Gretchen Michaels

Store It

2009-03-19T08:17:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, while I was doing a lot of regulatory work at our State's Public Utility Commission, I was chatting with a former commissioner and now lobbyist. "You know what you folks need, you need an an affordable battry" she said.

That kind of talk always wrinkled me wrong.

I would argue that Solar and Wind, although intermittant in their production patterns, were quite predictable, every bit as predictable as the electric load itself, and besides, why should renewables be held to the higher standard of being a complete electrical system on their own anyway? Base load plants need intermediate plants and peaking plants. Moreover, even though they have value because they run all the time, that is also their weakness.

We can't use our nuclear plant to balance our renewable energy base. But you can use intermediate and peaking generators for that purpose. (You can back down coal plants too if you want)

I would argue that natural gas is our "battry" and a dang good one at that. And for large penetrations of renewables of up to 50%, the existing electric utility fleet should work just fine to balance and match the somewhat variable (but predictable) base renewable supply with the highly variable, and somewhat predictable load.

And therefore, Madame Commissioner, us folks don't need a battry.

But what about large penetrations of renewables, where we go beyond the use of carbon altogether?

Well, we need a battry.

Not a battery in the usual sense, we need a solid state device that stores energy as effectively as a flash drive stores information. It needs to charge in seconds and it needs to be efficient. And, it needs to last a really long time, capable of tens of thousands of charge discharge cycles.

There has been a lot of good news on this front lately. For example, researchers at MIT have invented a lithium ion battery that recharges ultra-quickly, opening the possibility of charging an electric car in the amount of time it now takes to fill up a gas guzzler.

Even last decade's favored technology, nickel metal hydride, is dramatically improving.

And every week it seems, some lab somewhere is making steady steps in developing ultracaps and nanocapacitors that will some day make the photonic energy web a reality. Initial results show that MIT's nanopores "can store 100 times more energy than previous devices of its kind. Ultimately, such devices could store surges of energy from renewable sources, like wind, and feed that energy to the electrical grid when needed.

They could also power electric cars that recharge in the amount of time that it takes to fill a gas tank, instead of the six to eight hours that it takes them to recharge today."

These are all significant developments. But what about something truly advanced, something that can really change the landscape?

Like a magnetic spin battery.

Spin Battery:
Physicist Develops Battery Using New Source Of Energy
ScienceDaily
Mar. 12, 2009

Researchers at the University of Miami and at the Universities of Tokyo and Tohoku, Japan, have been able to prove the existence of a "spin battery," a battery that is "charged" by applying a large magnetic field to nano-magnets in a device called a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ).

The new technology is a step towards the creation of computer hard drives with no moving parts, which would be much faster, less expensive and use less energy than current ones. In the future, the new battery could be developed to power cars.

The study is published in the journal Nature.

The device created by University of Miami Physicist Stewart E. Barnes, of the College of Arts and Sciences and his collaborators can store energy in magnets rather than through chemical reactions. Like a winding up toy car, the spin battery is "wound up" by applying a large magnetic field -- no chemistry involved. The device is potentially better than anything found so far, said Barnes.

"We had anticipated the effect, but the device produced a voltage over a hundred times too big and for tens of minutes, rather than for milliseconds as we had expected," Barnes said.

"That this was counterintuitive is what lead to our theoretical understanding of what was really going on."

The secret behind this technology is the use of nano-magnets to induce an electromotive force. (clip)

"The possibilities are endless", Barnes said.

Indeed they are.

Once we realize our true condition, and the power of the enlightened mind, humankind can end its dependence on the dead life forms that we presently use to power our days. We can move to an economy and world where we are no longer mining the earth, but harvesting the light that surrounds us.

And we will store it.

And the hundred year oil war

Will End.

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Doing It

2009-03-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

In my work, I'm pretty much at ground zero when it comes to developing renewables. I seek out wind leases, look for good solar land, commission transmission studies, look at new and developing solar manufacturing processes, and I help with communications if the need arises.

Most recently, the latter has been the case.

As I told someone last week, we (the Utility) are building the largest solar plant in the United States, perhaps the fourth largest in the World (this week), and it's beginning to feel like it.

Austin is a pretty cool city. We own our own utility and it is well known as a progressive utility. We have the nation's most successful green pricing program, we have a great green building department, and our energy efficiency division has given us more than a coal plants worth of savings over the years. And, we are looking to achieve another coal plants worth of efficiency in our present planning horizon.

The City Council of Austin is a good one. Our Mayor talks of the importance of meeting the challenge of climate change, and he has even taken Al Gore's training, thus enabling him to do the Inconvenient Truth presentation with all those great slides and pictures.

Several years ago, in the spirit of moving towards meeting the challenges that face us all, Council gave the Utility some marching orders with some targets for overall renewable percentages, and some hard targets for solar.

One of these targets was 15 MW of solar by 2007.

We didn't make that.

Even with one of the most aggressive solar rebate programs in the country, in which the Utility buys down the cost of your rooftop solar system by 4.50 a watt, we have barely amassed 2 MWs with the program.

So, we decided to be sure to make the next Council goal, (30 MWs by 2010) by placing a 30 MW PV plant on land that we own, and is inside our control area. (so there are no transmission issues).

After putting out the RFP, our purchasing folks sifted through the bids and they selected a San Francisco developer who was bidding Chinese product. The price we got, given the location and solar insolation available at that location was pretty good, at least as far as solar goes.

So, the Utility took the project to Council.

Now, even though Austin is sometimes called the People's Republic of Austin, it still has more than its fair share of big energy users. And even though they would like to project an image of clean and green, they also care about their bottom lines, especially in a time where bottom lines are looking redder and weirder.

And even though the cost of this plant was about 60 cents per month per residential customer, the costs to the big customers, the really big customers, looked like real money.

Consequently, just a day before the Council was to move on this issue, a Councilmember announced on TV that he was going to ask for a delay. And he got it. Since the bid price had a time certain on it, that delay could only go so far, so the plant approval was pushed back for several more weeks.

Now, the thing that captured my attention was the public dialogue.

We had several activists and activists organizations who were there to support the project and of course, we had the company who won the bid speaking favorably. But, then we had the Building Owners Management Association, some big chip makers, the big hospitals, and some computer makers opposing the plant.

We even had certain parts of the Renewable energy crowd opposing the project because the panels were Chinese, or because it wasn't on rooftops, and thus, it was just another Utility attempt to frustrate distributed generation.

And of course, we had nut balls. One insisted that we must go nuclear, even to the point of jumping out of his seat seconds before the final vote, and stepping to the podium to address the Council one more time just to assure everyone that if there was any doubt that he was off his rocker, those doubts can now be tossed.

In the end, the largest solar plant in the United States was approved last Thursday. The big guys got a victory with a last minute motion by a councilmember who is running for Mayor requiring that the energy of the plant be marketed on some kind of green tarif. The big guys also got a new planning venue that will be added to the two other citizen commissions that have planning jurisdiction over the Utility.

But the point is this, the plant WAS approved, even in these uncertain times,

Because of the one thing that is certain.

Humankind must quit thinking as if everything is still OK.

It is not.

Methane is rising.

Seas are rising even faster than expected,

and they are becoming more acidic.

The climate change time bomb is ticking,

with scientists predicting a six degree C rise in temperature,

all the while worrying if we can survive a 2 degree rise.

We all need to boldly deal with the challenge of Climate Change

And we cannot and should not postpone a moment longer.

My town has shown its mettle.

We are doing it.

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Willful Deception

2009-02-28T14:54:00.000-08:00

When I was young, and George Will was too, I used to think that even though he was a conservative R, Will was a special kind of thinker, more like the Father of the Conservative movement, William F Buckley.

For it was George Will who once said that here in the US, we privatize profits and socialize losses. We might conclude that this kind of honesty must reside in a man of integrity and enlightened intellect.

Apparently it does not.

George Will is willfully deceiving the American public about Climate Change, and his credentials as a thoughtful and considerate observer of Public Affairs are now not just in question, they have been drowned in his sea spittle of misrepresentation and literary guile.

This issue of course is his two recent opinion pieces in the Washington Post on Climate Change; however, Will has been saying lazy stuff about climate change for many years.

I can imagine Will himself speaking to his own behavior:(if it were not Will)

Will: One of the most important freedoms we have in this country and one of the most important freedoms for any functioning democracy is the right of the people to speak their mind. It is essential.

However, suppose a fire starts in a theater in one of the dressing rooms, and the manager of the theater comes from behind the curtain and appears before the audience to inform them that, it fact, there is a fire in the back; and, even though there is no smoke in the theater at this moment, there surely will be soon, so please begin now to calmly remove yourselves from this building.

And suppose that a well respected Theater goer stands up and tells one and all, that he has been to this theater hundreds of times and never before has there been a need to head for the exits due to some rumor of fire.

Moreover, this well respected citizen further urges everyone to stay in their seats and to demand that the play resume, and this hoax perpetrated by the officials in charge of the theater be revealed as some play for publicity or monetary gain.

And there in disbelief, the manager of the hall watches as this well educated, well regarded patron of the arts convinces the crowd to not only not leave, they begin to demand that the play resume.

The manager screams to his patrons, "Believe me, I know of what I speak, this man speaks only from his mind, not with his senses."

Yet, the crowd remains, still demanding that the show resume.

Moments later, a dark curl of smoke glides up to the fine chandelier, and within moments the maroon velvet curtain on the back stage entrance suddenly burst into flame.

"Fire" yells the well dressed woman in row B. In moments, there is panic as the room fills with smoke, and evening dresses are soon trampled as the exits are overrun.

In such a situation, Will would eloquently argue, the Rights of the uninformed, overly confident citizen to speak his mind in the face of overwhelming evidence presented by the professionals in the field are abridged by the nature of the danger and the urgent need to act immediately to prevent unnecessary death and suffering.

Will would argue that the uninformed rube who endangered his fellow citizens should be held accountable for the deaths that ensued from his improper and uninformed behavior.

He would argue that such an individual should be put on trial for such nonsense... not only in the name of justice, but more importantly, in the cause of providing useful guidance to those who might consider repeating such behavior.

And in this case, he would be absolutely right.

Willful deception in a time of public endangerment

Is not just wrong,

it's a crime.

And Will should be fired.

"There's nothing like a good public hanging to focus the mind. "
Somebody

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The Joint Session

2009-02-25T15:19:00.000-08:00

I'm not so sure that Fat Tuesday was the right context for the President's speech before the joint session of Congress last night, but the first day of Lent probably is. I missed the speech because a favorite Aunt was in town ,and even though she is going to be 80 soon, we still managed to walk the town and check out the energy on the street after dinner. And, as you might imagine, there was a lot.

Here's what Obama had to say about energy:

"the budget I submit will invest in the three areas that are absolutely critical to our economic future: energy, health care, and education.

It begins with energy.

We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century. And yet, it is China that has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient. We invented solar technology, but we’ve fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in producing it. New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea.

Well I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders – and I know you don’t either. It is time for America to lead again.

Thanks to our recovery plan, we will double this nation’s supply of renewable energy in the next three years.

We have also made the largest investment in basic research funding in American history – an investment that will spur not only new discoveries in energy, but breakthroughs in medicine, science, and technology.

We will soon lay down thousands of miles of power lines that can carry new energy to cities and towns across this country. And we will put Americans to work making our homes and buildings more efficient so that we can save billions of dollars on our energy bills.

But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy.

So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. And to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America." more

Except for asking for a carbon tax or fee, there is little here that I don't agree with. And if all the carbon emission caps are auctioned, and not given away to industry, (which seems to be gaining support) a market based trading system can act very much like a tax or a fee on the emission of carbon into the biosphere.

Later this afternoon, a fellow colleague asked me if I had watched the speech last night. I told him I had not. And then he offered what a joy it is to have a President that you can enjoy listening to, who is articulate, and who is smart.

Knowing my pal as I do, I suspect he watched from his own joint session.

Here's the full speech from White House. gov.

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The Love of Green

2009-02-18T13:23:00.000-08:00

You've got to hand it to the Rs. They have discipline and they have focus. They love their money, and they don't mind telling a little story every now and then if it helps get the point over. Take the bowtie wearing baseball loving conservative George Will. His editorial on climage change in the Washington Post this week is a good example.

The column is mostly opinion, and the two facts he uses to bolster his opinion aren't bad. Unfortunately, they aren't true.

According to TPM, both of Will's major "data points" fall apart after a moment's scrutiny. Here's the first:

"According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979."

But within hours of Will's column appearing, the ACRC had posted the following statement on its website:

"We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979. This decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined."

As for Will's second claim, he writes:

"According to the World Meteorological Organization, there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade."

Yet, The WMO writes:

The long-term upward trend of global warming, mostly driven by greenhouse gas emissions, is continuing. Global temperatures in 2008 are expected to be above the long-term average. The decade from 1998 to 2007 has been the warmest on record."

Another big story telling R has now changed his tune:

Greenspan says recession will be 'longest and deepest' since '30s
Jeremy Gantz
Tuesday February 17, 2009

Eight months after he predicted the worst was over and the threat of recession receding, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said the current global recession will "surely be the longest and deepest" since the 1930s.

And, in comments to the Financial Times, he said he backed bank nationalization: "It may be necessary to temporarily nationalize some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring," he said. "I understand that once in a hundred years this is what you do." Nationalizations would "allow the government to transfer toxic assets to a bad bank without the problem of how to price them." clip

"I see no alternative to a set of heightened federal regulatory rules for banks and other financial institutions," Greenspan said in a Tuesday evening speech to the Economic Club of New York, Reuters reported. He said he was "deeply dismayed" to realize in mid-2007 that the premise that firms were enlightened enough to monitor their own risks had "failed." more

Meanwhile another storytelling R has her own money issues:

Palin must pay income taxes on thousands taken for expense money

It's not just Obama administration nominees who have tax issues."Gov. Sarah Palin must pay income taxes on thousands of dollars in expense money she received while living at her Wasilla home, under a new determination by state officials," the Anchorage Daily News reports.The paper adds, "The governor's office wouldn't say this week how much she owes in back taxes for meal money, or whether she intends to continue to receive the per diem allowance. As of December, she was still charging the state for meals and incidentals."

All of these folks have one thing in common.

Their love of green energy.

And it's not the green energy that will ultimately rebuild

our world and the new economy we must envision.

No, their Green is the color of money.

And in these days when our global community life is threatened,

their mantra is moronic.

And their species is specious.

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cartoon courtesy of R.J. Matson and Crooks and Liars

Jubilation

2009-02-16T14:30:00.000-08:00

I heard Cyril sing this at the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar in a few years ago when he played there with Tribe 13. Jay knew at least one of the guys in the band, Papa Mali, and gave him several of our New Orleans books to give to Cyril. Later Cyril came to our booth and we talked for a time – he was fascinated by our icons and picked an Ethiopian Cross, which he wears much of the time, along with other sacred pieces he finds or that find him. Yesterday, at the airport in Chicago, we talked briefly. I told him he would love the Asian Exhibit at the Institute of Art. I’ve been listening to his music today. Amazing! The refrain above – I want my money back! struck me deeply when I first heard it. “You send my money to Iraq! I want my money back!” Yesterday he wore a big Obama button on the back of his leather cap.

Jubilation

There is a strawberry, red, jubilant, a burst of sweet summer sunlight, ripe, like the ones Mother grew in our backyard up the bluff from Lake Michigan, a few miles from the Wisconsin border of Illinois, in America, in the nineteen fifties. I want it, really want it, even though I know it won’t, can’t, could never be as good as the ones we grew back then, mixed with sugar and pectin, left out in summer sunlight to cook. It is necessary to buy what we have forgotten how to make, or grow. The strawberry today is huge, covered with chocolate, skewered on a stick — complicated but irresistible now that Mother is gone, the house on Longview Street gone, along with the back yard garden. I pull out my debit card. I can’t buy the strawberry I want, the one Mother grew in the flower bed we thinned out every spring to make room for a new crop. So I buy this new, complicated one — bulging with union busting, undocumented worker abuse, juicy with chemical inducements, fortified by bank loans, foreign investment and farm subsidies, coated with chocolate, cheap labor, drug wars, bad government and empire. I pull out my debit card, swipe it, punch in the pin number that unlocks my money. The strawberry is mine. Or is it? If the bank came after it, would I have to give it up? Could I give them just the skewer? Or part of the chocolate? And once they got their piece, where would it go? To Chinese investors in the bank, as collateral for a dead car loan in Cleveland, or Tokyo? Would I have to give them the whole thing — red fruit, tiny dots, seeds spots, the green ruffle? How long before it perished, poof, was absolutely gone — like everything attached to money, tossed into the black hole of funny accounting, fractals of annuities, hedge funds, halls of mirrors reflecting images of value where none has been for years, the rasping appetite of the giant that devours anything, even itself, even my strawberry. How angry would it make me that they disappeared my money, my strawberry, my delectable, complicated strawberry? Mad enough to vote? Mad enough to start a garden of my own, in my front yard, remember how to grow things, how to make compost? Mad enough to float another theory, another way of living in the world, without money, with real strawberries that are delicious but not complex. When I moved to Austin in the seventies, there was a women’s band called Jubilation. They were a radical, feminist band and named themselves after an economic theory — the idea was to forgive the colossal debt owed to the United States, to Europe by governments in Africa, for instance, who paid more for debt service than schools for their children, than health care, infrastructure, countries held in indenture for the cost of planting cash crops that left the country before people at home were fed — strawberries that, poof! disappeared the instant debt infected the food chain. Jubilation. Think about it. What if we just zeroed it out. Zero times any number equals zero. What if we disappeared the debt instead of the strawberry?

©Susan Bright, 2009

Susan Bright is the author of nineteen books of poetry. She is the editor of Plain View Press which since 1975 has published two-hundred-and-fifty books. Her work as a poet, publisher, activist and educator has taken her all over the United States and abroad. Her most recent book, The Layers of Our Seeing, is a collection of poetry, photographs and essays about peace done in collaboration with photographer Alan Pogue and Middle Eastern journalist, Muna Hamzeh

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Our Place in Space

2009-02-12T16:26:00.000-08:00

As the House and Senate come to an agreement on their respective stimulus plans, and Obama prepares to get his signing pen out, it's instructive to at least consider the possibility that our economy is not just faltering, it is dead.

Everything has a life, bugs live a few days, dogs are lucky to live a dozen years, and humans get to live 7 dog lives if they are lucky. Larger living systems, like nations and civilizations live much longer , sometimes a thousand years, but they do die. Rome lived for 600 or 700 hundred years, depending on how you figure it, and the Egyptian world lasted four times longer than that.

So, it should be no surprise that an economy could actually pass away.

Thanks to friend and reader JG, here's part of a piece by James Howard Kunstler that begins to make the point:

"Venturing out each day into this land of strip malls, freeways, office parks, and McHousing pods, one can't help but be impressed at how America looks the same as it did a few years ago, while seemingly overnight we have become another country.

All the old mechanisms that enabled our way of life are broken, especially endless revolving credit, at every level, from household to business to the banks to the US Treasury.Peak energy has combined with the diminishing returns of over-investments in complexity to pull the "kill switch" on our vaunted "way of life" -- the set of arrangements that we won't apologize for or negotiate.

So, the big question before the nation is: do we try to re-start the whole smoking, creaking hopeless, futureless machine?

Or do we start behaving differently?

The attempted re-start of revolving debt consumerism is an exercise in futility. We've reached the limit of being able to create additional debt at any level without causing further damage, additional distortions, and new perversities of economy (and of society, too).

We can't raise credit card ceilings for people with no ability to make monthly payments. We can't promote more mortgages for people with no income. We can't crank up a home-building industry with our massive inventory of unsold, and over-priced houses built in the wrong places. We can't ramp back up the blue light special shopping fiesta. We can't return to the heyday of Happy Motoring, no matter how many bridges we fix or how many additional ring highways we build around our already-overblown and over-sprawled metroplexes.

Mostly, we can't return to the now-complete "growth" cycle of "economic expansion." clip

If this nation wants to survive without an intense political convulsion, there's a lot we can do, but none of it is being voiced in any corner of Washington at this time.

We have to get off of petro-agriculture and grow our food locally, at a smaller scale, with more people working on it and fewer machines. This is an enormous project, which implies change in everything from property allocation to farming methods to new social relations.

But if we don't focus on it right away, a lot of Americans will end up starving, and rather soon. We have to rebuild the railroad system in the US, and electrify it, and make it every bit as good as the system we once had that was the envy of the world. (clip)

The political theater of the moment in Washington is not focused on any of this, but on the illusion that we can find new ways of keeping the old ways going.

Kunstler finishes with this:

Nobody in either party -- including supposed independents such as Bernie Sanders or John McCain, not to mention President Obama -- has a position for directing public resources and effort at any of the things I mentioned above: future food security, future travel-and-transport security, or the future security of livable, walkable dwelling places based on local networks of economic interdependency.

This striking poverty of imagination may lead to change that will tear the nation to pieces."

Curiously, Kunstler is showing his own poverty of imagination here. He fails to forward imagine what we can do, and must do to face the critical issues that are before us. And he fails to imagine a humankind that can quickly leap well beyond its present embodiment.

If the world economy and the capitalist model is truly on the way to the coroner, we'll all know soon enough.

Funerals have their value.

They force you to move on

in ways you never imagined.

And we will move on towards a new model,

with our advanced tools of communication,

with a richness of imagination,

and a refined knowledge of ourselves,

in our place in space.

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VOOM and pop

2009-02-09T21:09:00.000-08:00

We spent part of the weekend with our cartoonist friend Charlie Loving, deep in the Texas Hill Country. He and his wife Ray live just outside of Deer Corn a few miles from Falling Rock. Here's a sample of some of his recent editorial cartoon work. I particularly like the editorial content of the last one. The difference between "VOOM" and "pop" says in two words what so many of us feel and so many reporters fail to report.

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By the way, it did rain a little today.

I wish it would rain

2009-02-06T11:38:00.000-08:00

We've had a really nice winter. It's gets a little cold for a few days, then it warms right up. The nights are nice and cool, and the days are practically perfect. Only problem is...no rain. We're getting drier and drier here in Central Texas. In fact we are officially in extreme drought right now. And we're not the only ones.

Here's a China story from the WSJ.

China Battles Worsening Drought
Wall Street Journal
By SHAI OSTER

BEIJING -- China's leaders ordered emergency measures to battle one of the country's worst droughts in decades, which is threatening to damage nearly a fifth of China's wheat harvest and millions of livestock.

Underscoring the government's concern, Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao ordered the State Council, China's equivalent of a cabinet, to make "all-out efforts to combat the severe drought," the official Xinhua news agency reported Thursday. (clip)

China often battles droughts in its parched north, but meteorologists say the current one is, in some areas, the worst since 1951. It has left 3.7 million people across eight provinces facing water shortages and has damaged 9.3 million hectares of farmland, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, cited by state-run media. clip

The affected area is primarily in central and eastern China, covering the country's breadbasket where much of the winter wheat crop is raised. The area also includes the region surrounding Beijing, the capital, which hasn't had precipitation in more than 100 days. In all, 1.85 million livestock are short of water. more

And then there is Australia

This drought may never break
Sydney Morning Herald
Richard Macey

IT MAY be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent, one of the nation's most senior weather experts warned yesterday.

"Perhaps we should call it our new climate," said the Bureau of Meteorology's head of climate analysis, David Jones.

He was speaking after the release of statistics showing that last year was the hottest on record in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and the ACT.

NSW's mean temperature was 1.13 degrees above average. "That is a very substantial anomaly," Dr Jones said. "It's equivalent to moving NSW 150 kilometres closer to the equator."
It was the 11th year in a row NSW and the Murray-Darling Basin had experienced above normal temperatures. Sydney's nights were its warmest since records were first kept 149 years ago.

"There is absolutely no debate that Australia is warming," said Dr Jones. "It is very easy to see … it is happening before our eyes." more

And California certainly has it's water issues:

Water watchers cast a wary eye
Sacremento Bee
By Matt Weiser

Water experts are having a hard time finding the right words to describe what lies ahead, after recording a dismally dry January in California.

"Scary," "grim," and possible "conservation mandates" are offered up.

Yet it's easy for the experts to sound out a clear warning: This may become, simply, the worst drought California has ever seen.

"Our worst fears appear to be materializing," said Wendy Martin, drought coordinator at the state Department of Water Resources. "It's going to be a huge challenge."

The bottom line, water officials said, is that right now, everyone must start using less water. The public can expect higher water bills and fines if they don't, because the alternative is a real water shortage – one that is threatening tens of thousands of Valley jobs.

"It's pretty scary," said Tim Quinn, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies, who has more than three decades in the water-supply business. "The public needs to tighten their belts. You have to rearrange all the molecules in your brain to think about using water differently." more

We're going to have to rearrange all the molecules in our brains about a lot of things. As the economy, the climate, and our belief systems continue to fall all around us, we are going to have to totally rethink our ideas about full employment, competition, and consumption. And we're going to have cooperate with other, and with the world.

Right now everyone in Washington is talking about how we stimulate the economy to get consumption up again. Ironically, Americans are actually saving for a change.

What we really need is less consumption and more efficiency.

But not just electrical efficiency, or MPG efficiency. We need to think about our overall economic system efficiency. We need more teletransportation, more virtual conferencing, and more locally grown food.

Our little city has been somewhat immune from the problems we see else where.

That's getting ready to end.

Oh I wish it would rain.
The Temptations

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Babies Know

2009-02-03T00:00:00.000-08:00

AND -----

Here's something you can do for our children and grandchildren with MoveOn —

This was sent to us by California poet, Lauren Rusk. Author of Pictures In the Firestorm. Thanks!

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Labels: advanced tech, climate change

Children know too

2009-02-02T23:11:00.000-08:00

Thanks to DS for this:

Good, Bad, the Ugly

2009-02-02T07:45:00.000-08:00

I've always been nervous about lighting laws. You know, ones that require us all to use compact florescents or even one that makes incandescents unavailable. First of all, I like low watt incandescents and the quality of light they give. Furthermore, a super well insulated house can pretty much be warmed quite efficiently simply with bright incandescent spot lights that flood the inside walls.

Moreover, CFCs rarely last as long as the manufacturers claim. Perhaps more importantly, CFC's have all kinds of waste problems which make them less than an idea solution to reducing our lighting loads.

Here's a good story you may have missed last week in the Telegraph that confirms to me why we need to exercise caution when it comes to light bulb legislation. (these are actually LED's):

Scientists invent £2 energy saving lightbulb that last for 60 years
The Telegraph
By Louise Gray
29 Jan 2009

A £2 energy-saving lightbulb that lasts for 60 years has been developed by scientists at Cambridge University.

The researchers have designed a bulb that is three times more energy efficient than today's best offer and can cut lighting bills by 75 per cent.

The bulbs are made using Gallium Nitride (GaN), a man-made substance used in LEDs (light emitting diodes). It is routinely used in bike lights, mobile phones and camera flashes.

The bulbs are 12 times more efficient that conventional tungsten bulbs and three times more efficient than compact fluorescent "energy efficient" bulbs.

They can burn for 100,000 hours and they illuminate instantly and can be dimmed, unlike energy efficient bulbs. (more)

And here is 2008’s top 10 climate stories from Joe Romm's Climate Progress.

"What events, actions, and findings had the most positive or negative impact on the likelihood that the nation and the world will act in time to avoid catastrophic warming?"

Clearly the most positive is the election of Obama/ Biden:

Obama: “The science is beyond dispute… Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response.”

Why Biden is such an important pick for those who care about the climate

As far as bad stories go, I guess its a tie between:

Conservatives go all in on climate denial and delay.

While the grim implications of the science and observational data discussed above have become painfully obvious to everyone else, conservatives simply refuse to accept reality. For instance, even though a very warm 2008 makes this the hottest decade in recorded history by far — and even though 2008 was about 0.1°C warmer than the decade of the 1990s as a whole (even with a La-Niña-fueled cool winter) for some deniers, “2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved.” Seriously.

and,

Gas Pains.

As NOAA reported, levels of methane rose sharply in 2007 for the first time since 1998. Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, especially over the near term. And the tundra has as much carbon locked away in it as the atmosphere contains today. Scientific analysis suggests the rise in 2007 methane levels came from Arctic wetlands. The tundra melting is probably the most worrisome of all the climate-carbon-cycle amplifying feedbacks — and it could easily take us to the unmitigated catastrophe of 1000 ppm.

But by far the Ugliest story out there right now is the new improved back yard nuclear generator that has been making the rounds, thanks to Sandia and Toshiba. Toshiba is truly talking about making their 4 S available. Here's a a description from Atomic Insights:

As currently envisioned, the Toshiba 4S (Super Safe, Small and Simple) nuclear power system would be able to supply about 10 MW of electrical power for 30 years without any new fuel. It could be transported in modules by barge and installed in a building measuring 22 meters by 16 meters by 11 meters with an excavation for the reactor core and primary cooling system of about 30 meters deep. (Nishi Feb 2005)

Compared to the alternatives, the small nuclear plant would almost disappear into the background and would have little effect on the environment. Depending on a variety of assumptions, the cost for power could range as low as 6 cents per kilowatt hour. Unfortunately, there are scenarios where the cost per kilowatt hour could approach infinity."

When I first read about this new nuclear technology that was safe, was buried, and required no maintainance or security, I was a bit more than sceptical. After researching it last week, I now see it as a something close to lunacy.

The reason this little closet sized core is supposedly so safe is due to a nifty design which gives the system a "negative temperature coefficient of reactivity". Simply put, that means that an increase in core temperature will cause a decrease in core power. If the temperature increases too much, the core will shut down. Therefore, it can be buried safely 100 feet below the ground right?

All the rest of the plant is a straightforward steam turbine with all the piping and controls of any small steam turbine. And the building that houses all of this is not a farm shed, it is 70 by 50 by 30 feet. It is not some kind of new nuclear battery as some have reported. It's basically the same technology that is used in our nuclear submarine fleet.

Sandia Labs is also in the technology by licencing a company called Hyperion. And according to them, their technology is Safe...the most controlled and regulated type of power on the planet, Affordable....the cheapest in terms of dollars & environmental impact and Reliable....Available 24 /7 rain or shine, windy or calm, and it will someday power the world.

A really smart investor type asked me about this technology last week and I told him I had noticed the stories that had come out of Sandia, but I wasn't even sure exactly how they worked, since there were claims of no moving parts. He seemed excited about the potential of Toshiba and Hyperion getting into the business.

My boss asked me a few days later if I was following these developments.

So now I have.

And man,

it is ugly.

Better to stick with the good,

before the bad comes.

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Brunch with Mr. B

2009-01-29T09:17:00.000-08:00

It's been a good while since my dinner with W. My guess is he'll be plenty available soon enough at that faux French coffee shop there at Prestwood Center trying to get donations for his little library if you want to chat with him.

Of course, "W" didn't do a thing I told him to do, he was too concerned with being validated by Cheney to seriously think about the troubles he was facing. Of course, when we visited back in 05, he had a brutal military occupation that wasn't going so well, but the economy was still pretty much running on kill, thanks to those geniuses on Wall Street who were trading each others credit default swaps like 9 year olds trade baseball cards. Sure, they have value, but only if everyone agrees that they are worth something. Otherwise, its the proverbial house of cards.

Well, you can imagine my surprise when I got a text message from a certain Blackberry in DC last week.

"Oz, NSA says you're in town, brunch?"

We met at that dumpy diner/bar there at 14th and G.

"So what do you think?"

"It's freaking amazing", I said

"How's the new digs"?

"I liked my little apartment better."

"I guess since its a Federal Building, you can't smoke in it?"

"These executive orders are pretty handy for stuff like that."

"How about Michelle?"

"I'm still working on that."

"Well, we've all got to stop smoking anyway."

"That's what I wanted to chat with you about. Now that I've made all these promises to move away from smoke, how the hell are we going to do it?"

"We'll, I don't have to tell you it's really hard to stop smoking. We humans have been doing it for about a half a million years. It's not the kind of thing you just go cold turkey on... or a heck of lot more than turkeys are going to grow cold.

Speaking of that, W really left you a big warm one didn't he."

"Everywhere I turn, there's a pile of dookey to the ceilings. Towards the end, he must have been blowing and going, the whole place was a wreck."

"So what are you going to do?"

"What do you think? Everything I can. What do you think?"

"Al's got it mostly right, there is a climate for change, and as he says, we must begin an emergency rescue of human civilization from the imminent and rapidly growing threat posed by the climate crisis. But he's too straight, and not nearly radical enough. Plus, he's telling everyone that our current resource binge and economic system can continue.

First though, you've got to talk to the people straight,"

"They're not ready."

"I know, but in a few months, you need to start breaking it to them slowly."

"What about our energy plan and this unified photonic energy web business you keep harping about?"

"Listen, you've got some really smart guys around you and I think I like Chu, but here's the overall plan as I see it."

I wrote my seven point plan down on the back of the napkin.

Barack looked at it and his left eye closed a little. "Man, this is going to be a challenge. Can we do this?"

"If anyone can pull it off, you can. Besides, we don't have any choice. If you want the kids to have any kind of chance at all when they're our age, we've got to begin the change now. Change got you elected. Go on and dance with her now, or you might not get a chance to dance with her after the break"

He put the napkin in his inside coat pocket and backed his chair from the table.

"What about the "R"s?"

"They're on their way to becoming Whigs."

I finished my decaf and he slugged down his orange juice.

The Service called in for his super low profile transportation.

It's not as nice as my Townie though.

.
We fist bumped and hugged.

We had forgotten to eat.

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Rocketman

2009-01-27T09:34:00.000-08:00

As the euphoria of last week gives way into the day to day running and returning of the government to the people, for the people, and by the people, it's good to wake up each morning to the daily announcements of reversals and outright abrogations of previous administration policy.

And even though the so called stimulus bill doesn't have a massive high speed rail project or some other truly bold move towards real change, it's appropriate for us to appreciate what is in the bill.

Thanks to the Huffington Post, here's the executive summary section on renewables and science:

"Clean, Efficient, American Energy:

To put people back to work today and reduce our dependence on foreign oil tomorrow, we will strengthen efforts directed at doubling renewable energy production and renovate public buildings to make them more energy efficient.

· $32 billion to transform the nation's energy transmission, distribution, and production systems by allowing for a smarter and better grid and focusing investment in renewable technology.

· $16 billion to repair public housing and make key energy efficiency retrofits.

· $6 billion to weatherize modest-income homes.

Transform our Economy with Science and Technology:

We need to put scientists to work looking for the next great discovery, creating jobs in cutting-edge-technologies, and making smart investments that will help businesses in every community succeed in a global economy. For every dollar invested in broadband the economy sees a ten-fold return on that investment.

· $10 billion for science facilities, research, and instrumentation.

.
· $6 billion to expand broadband internet access so businesses in rural and other underserved areas can link up to the global economy." more

In my judgment, That "next great discovery" needs to be really inexpensive photon to electron inks and processes, and a really good supercapacitor. Fortunately, these kind of cutting edge technologies are way beyond discovery, they are in development.

Here's one from the AP last week:

Piloting Silicon-Ink Solar Cell Production
Associated Press
January 23, 2009

HOHENSTEIN-ERNSTTHAL, GERMANY - The installation of a 10 MW silicon-ink based solar cell pilot production line has been completed by Roth & Rau AG and Innovalight.

The pilot line combines the qualities and cost benefits of crystal silicon wafer technology with silicon-ink processing technology to produce low cost, high performance solar cells.

“The potential to lower costs by combining Innovalight’s silicon-ink platform and conventional silicon solar cell technology is very impressive”, says Dr. Dietmar Roth, Chief Executive Officer at Roth & Rau AG. “Combining the strength of Roth & Rau’s manufacturing expertise and Innovalight’s silicon nanotechnology has enormous potential in the marketplace.” more

And here's a continuation of MIT's work on nanotube supercapacitor storage from Technology Review:

Nanotube Superbatteries
Dense films of carbon nanotubes store large amounts of energy.
By Katherine Bourzac

Researchers at MIT have made pure, dense, thin films of carbon nanotubes that show promise as electrodes for higher-capacity batteries and supercapacitors. Dispensing with the additives previously used to hold such films together improved their electrical properties, including the ability to carry and store a large amount of charge.

Carbon nanotubes can carry and store more charge than other forms of carbon, in part because their nanoscale structure gives them a very large surface area. But conventional methods for making them into films leave significant gaps between individual nanotubes or require binding materials to hold them together. Both approaches reduce the films' conductivity--the ability to convey charge--and capacitance--the ability to store it.

The MIT group, led by chemical-engineering professor Paula Hammond and mechanical-engineering professor Yang Shao-Horn, made the new nanotube films using a technique called layer-by-layer assembly. " more

Like the President said yesterday, We can solve these problems, because we created them. But as Einstein said, "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

That goes for our problems with the economy, with our energy supplies, with climate change, and in our need to foster world community and peace.

Each step we take towards a Unified Global Photonic Energy Web with large scale capacitance leads us all to that giant leap of humankind that we must make.

For we cannot make it across this precipice in tiny steps.
.
Like a Rocketman

We must learn to fly.

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Travels with Charlie and Lex

2009-01-25T15:29:00.000-08:00

Here's the finished piece.

Abe was Smiling

2009-01-24T10:28:00.000-08:00

It's been a couple of days since we got back from DC and four days since we walked from our Hotel on 11th and H to the North Gate just west of the Capitol, only to find a wall of people and our entrance for silver ticket holders totally locked down.

And in these days, I've not only been able to reflect on that day, but I found my sense of this truly remarkable event honed down as I distill the experience for my friends and family.

Yes, little did we know that after walking that mile and a half in 20 degree temperatures, our day would be full of a great many more miles. First, we decided to get to the South Silver Ticket entrance by walking under the mall on the closed down interstate route. It was a bit strange with the occasional blaring and blasting of police and security personal speeding their way through us, but it was efficient.

We were told by volunteers to turn right on third street as we exited the tunnel, and to go through the security tent there. As we got there, it was clear that things were not moving along very well. By now, it's getting well into the morning, perhaps 10:30. We wait in a super tight mass of humanity and inch our way forward.

As the clock reached 11:00, we had only made our way forward by 20 feet or so. And we still had perhaps a 50 yards to go. It was then that I made the decision to grab the kids and head west. We weaved and bobbed in and out of each public entrance following various lines and flows of folks trying to get to the Mall. Each time the line flowing in would be overtaken by the line flowing out.

"It's packed", they would say.

We kept at it, finally finding a seam in a porta-potty line where we could get to the high ground in front of the Smithsonian Castle. As we worked our way towards the Washington Monument, we got our first views of the enormous crowd. The sound quality was good, and even with the acute angle, we could even see a little bit on the jumbo tron ahead.

I looked at my watch. It was almost noon. And after three hours of walking, and waiting, and retracing our steps, we had found our place.

We heard Biden take the oath, then we listened as the beautiful notes of YO YO and Pearlman drifted and rebounded down the jumbo-tron strewed Mall.

Then the big moment came and we listened as Obama took the oath of office as given to him by the Chief Justice. It sounded a little weird, but with all the echoes, it was hard to tell what had happened. But it didn't matter. As the words "So help me God, and "congratulations Mr. President" were heard, one of the most beautiful cries of joy and relief was released into the cold clear Washington air. Many if not most were crying.

We had made it.

My 8 1/2 year old grandson, and Charlie, the ten year old son of a good friend, and myself had braved the crowds, the packed hotels, the overbooked airlines, and our circuitous trip to Philly and a next day train ride to DC to actually hear and be present at the Inauguration of Barack Obama.

But what I find myself talking about is the people... all those other people who braved even more difficult odds to come to be part of this history. What I tell folks is how high everyone was. Everyone I met became a friend, whether being mashed like Sardines in a line that's not moving, or in the hotel lobby.

Everyone was joyous.

We all knew why we were there. And we were all happy to the core to be exactly where we were.

But not only was the crowd joyous, it was beautiful. In those 3 days leading up the Balls on Tuesday night, I saw folks, tens of thousands of folks, looking like they had just hopped out of a style magazine. Tall proud women in well tailored suits with Obama tiger Wood look-a-likes and dignified Morgan Freemans everywhere. It was like the Academy Awards without the red carpet and that funny lady with the foul mouth..

But what I saw and felt in the fullness of things was much deeper and much more powerful.

I felt and saw a race of people who had been elevated to the tops of human culture and power. No longer were they just in a class of their own as athletes, as singers, as entertainers in general, and in so many other pursuits, these folks now had a President.

And it is a beautiful thing.

Not only is Barack Obama one of the smartest presidents this county has ever elected, he is one of the classiest.

And that class, and his ascencion,

has not just elevated a whole people,

it has made us all higher,

and it might even make us whole.

As we left the Mall that day from the far west side,

I looked at the Lincoln Monument,

And I swear, sitting there in his chair,

for that brief shining moment,

Abe was smiling.

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My good camera was out of power, so I took this with my phone

The Day Was the Poem

2009-01-21T08:34:00.000-08:00

Air and Simple Gifts is a classical quartet by American composer John Williams composed for the January 20, 2009, inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States.

The Day Was The Poem

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be –
Shaker Song “Simple Gifts”

On an estatic, cold January day, two million people,
and the world witnessed Barack Obama become president
of the United States of America, words, songs, public text —
a choreography of hope.

“. . . we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”

“Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.”

“. . . we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

This president, who sent me an email right before the Iowa
speech saying, simply — “Turn on your television,”
orchestrates media, image, music, icon, tableau,
public document, history —

the way an artist uses line or color, brush stroke, dream, idea,
rhythm, to create images able to change hearts and minds,
heal the world —

Aretha Franklin, Yo-Yo Ma, Senators, everybody.
America parades down Constitution Avenue—
parkas and warm hats, all of us,

high school, college marching bands, drill teams, flags,
horse brigades, gymnasts — one startling afternoon
in January, golden light.

A tall, brilliant man walking down the street,
a brilliant woman walking beside him.

To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.
O happy day.

©Susan Bright, 2009

Susan Bright is the author of nineteen books of poetry. She is the editor of Plain View Press which since 1975 has published one-hundred-and-fifty books. Her work as a poet, publisher, activist and educator has taken her all over the United States and abroad. Her most recent book, The Layers of Our Seeing, is a collection of poetry, photographs and essays about peace done in collaboration with photographer Alan Pogue and Middle Eastern journalist, Muna Hamzeh.

* You can read the text of Barack Obama's Inaugural Speech here.

*Here is the Inaugural Poem, by Elizabeth Alexander, posted by
Poets & Writers.

Praise Song for the Day
A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration

by Elizabeth Alexander

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other’s
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning
a hole in a uniform, patching a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere,
with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark
the will of some one and then others, who said
I need to see what’s on the other side.

I know there’s something better down the road.
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices
they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

Copyright © 2009 by Elizabeth Alexander. All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota. A chapbook edition of Praise Song for the Day will be published on February 6, 2009.

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