History Lesson on Haiti

White House Site

From the above link:

Donate $10 to the American Red Cross – charged to your cell phone bill – by texting "HAITI" to 90999.

(Phone companies have agreed to forward 100% of proceeds to the relief effort.)

Money needed most in Haiti earthquake relief efforts

By Amy Zerba, Jacque Wilson and Christopher Dawson, CNN
January 13, 2010 7:35 p.m. EST

Agencies are asking for donations to purchase supplies for relief efforts in Haiti after Tuesday's earthquake.

(CNN) -- The next question on many people's minds after learning about the earthquake devastation in Haiti has been: How can I help? Most organizations are asking for monetary donations. They are not seeking material items, like clothes or food, or volunteers at this time.

These agencies have set up phone lines, online donation pages and even texting for individuals to contribute to their relief efforts. We've compiled a list of a few organizations who are in Haiti helping those in need.

These resources include the highest-rated charities by CharityNavigator.org, which is an independent, nonprofit organization that evaluates charity groups based on effectiveness and financial stability. These sites are vetted by CNN journalists for credibility.

For additional resources, go to Impact Your World

American Red Cross

The American Red Cross' primary focus during the initial response of an emergency is feeding, sheltering and supplying any other basic needs. To donate: Go to RedCross.org, hit donate now button at top and then International Response Fund. You also can text "Haiti" to 90999 to donate $10 to the International Response Fund. The money will go directly to relief efforts in Haiti. Or call 1-800-Red-Cross.

AmeriCares

This nonprofit disaster relief organization delivers medicine, medical supplies and aid to people in crisis around the world. To donate, call 1-800-486-HELP or go to AmeriCares.org. Donations will go toward medicine and medical supplies and for expenses for providing that medical aid.

Care

This humanitarian organization's main focus is to fight global poverty, specifically by empowering marginalized women and girls. To donate to the Haiti relief fund effort, go to Care.org or call 1-800-521-CARE. Money will go toward food, water and sanitation, shelter and emergency health response.

Direct Relief International

Direct Relief provides medical attention to those in need on an ongoing basis and in emergencies. Monetary donations go toward medical aid, supplies and equipment in Haiti. To donate, go to directrelief.org or call 805-964-4767 and 800-676-1638, or go through Google Checkout.

Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders)

The humanitarian organization delivers medical care to people caught in crisis. Donations to its Haiti relief efforts will go toward repairing the obstetrics and trauma hospitals in Haiti that were damaged in the earthquake. They also will go to transporting an additional 70 doctors and medical supplies to the island in an effort to set up makeshift emergency medical response centers. To donate, go to doctorswithoutborders.org or call 1-888-392-0392.

International Medical Corps

This emergency response agency focuses on health in emergency situations. Monetary donations go toward purchasing medical supplies, medicine and emergency kits and transporting these supplies. 1-800-481-4462 or go to imcworldwide.org

Medical Teams International

The Christian global health organization sends volunteer medical teams and supplies to those in the midst of disaster or poverty. Monetary donations will go to supporting the medical teams being sent to Haiti and to the cost of shipping the medical supplies donated by corporations. Donate by going to medicalteams.org and clicking on the "Donate Now" button, or call 1-800-959-HEAL (4325) or send a check to Medical Teams International, P.O. Box 10, Portland, OR 97207.

Mercy Corps

The organization provides humanitarian assistance and economic opportunities in the world's toughest places, specifically those dealing with poverty, conflict and instability. To donate, go to MercyCorps.org. Money will go toward immediate humanitarian needs in Haiti, which may include, food, water and temporary shelter.

Operation USA

The international relief agency provides funding for reconstruction and development aid to communities that have experienced disasters, disease and poverty. For its Haiti relief efforts, the agency plans to use donations for health care materials, water purification supplies and food supplements. To donate, go to opusa.org or call 1-800-678-7255, or mail a check to Operation USA, 3617 Hayden Ave., Suite A, Culver City, CA 90232.

Save the Children

The independent organization focuses on children in need in the U.S. globally through programs for health and nutrition, child protection and education. To donate, go to savethechildren.org and look under "latest news" for the Haiti press release, which has a link to the donation page, or call 1-800-728-3843 or 203-221-4030. Donations will go toward purchasing relief items, such as hygiene kits, family kits (pots, pans, food preparation items) and tarps.

The Salvation Army

The Salvation Army's mission is to provide food, shelter, clothing and spiritual comfort during disasters. To donate money, go to salvationarmyusa.org or call 1-800-SAL-ARMY. Make sure you designate the donation for "Haiti Earthquake." Money will go to the Salvation Army in Haiti, which will determine the country's immediate needs, including water, food, medicine and transportation.

Shelterbox

The nonprofit delivers boxes of supplies to families of up to 10 people. The boxes contain a tent and essential equipment to use while individuals are displaced or homeless. To donate, call 941-907-6036 or go to shelterbox.org.

U.S. Fund for UNICEF

The national committee for UNICEF is responsible for the organization's fundraising. UNICEF uses the money for health care, clean water, nutrition, education and emergency relief. To donate, go to Unicefusa.org or 1-800-4-UNICEF.

World Food Programme

The food assistance agency's main focus is to fight hunger worldwide. The organization is working to bring food to Haiti. To donate, go to wfp.org.

Yele Haiti

This organization, founded by Wyclef Jean, creates projects to improve the quality of education, health, environment and community development in Haiti. To donate to to its Haiti relief efforts, go to yele.org or text YELE to 501501 to donate $5.

Laura Veirs

A couple days ago, I heard this refreshing voice on NPR. A light for these gray winter days.

For a limited time, you can hear her new album "July Flame" on NPR's Music page. I recommend a listen!



Jim James of "My Morning Jacket" provides backing vocals on "I Can See Your Tracks":



Also, see OPB Music's In Studio Performances.

MMX

Welcome 2010.

It has been a nice run: nearly five years away from the corporate workplace, and all but a brief stretch with no "boss" at all (save those forces that govern us all.) But my savings are nearly exhausted. Two months' rent remain, or maybe several months' food. But not both. I've jettisoned nearly everything I can.

"Decisions" must be made. A new direction chosen. Whatever awaits, it will be interesting - and uncomfortable. And that is a good thing.

Obama Praises Copenhagen Agreement

A simple statement follows President Obama's appearance at the U.N. Climate Summit in Copenhagen. Already termed a "flop" and "failure" by many, the simple fact that 193 nations came together to address an issue (anthropogenic climate change) that, at least until the recent U.S. Administration change, had been largely regarded as "open to scientific debate", is remarkable.

Anyone who expected universal agreements and binding treaties from this single conference fails to understand the scope of the problem. This is just a first note in a long and difficult process.

But Bolivia's Evo Morales, who must be credited for illuminating the plight of indigenous peoples, rightly expressed moral indignation, labeling U.S. behavior "criminal", when Hillary Clinton announced the U.S. "pledge to contribute" to a $100 Billion international fund over the next decade to help developing nations cope with climate change. This, while we are devoting several trillions of dollars to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Related to this, a story on NPR yesterday spoke of the logistic nightmare of supporting the 30,000-troop build-up in Afghanistan. Much of the supplies will travel thousands of miles overland, by train and by truck, from the Baltic Sea to our troops in Afghanistan. Another report places the cost of delivering one gallon of gas to Helmand Province in Afghanistan at $400! Our tactical foreign policy decisions simply exacerbate the very problem we claim to be addressing.

Clearly, we still have a long way to go in realigning our priorities.

"Lighten Up"

That's the advice from Jeff. (Thanks.)

He's right. I'll try. Actually, there is considerable cause for optimism. I am encouraged by the Obama Administration's engagement in climate talks, the return to multilateralism, the EPA officially recognizing CO2 emissions as a health threat, efforts to address the perpetual crisis in health care, renewed nuclear arms reduction negotiations, signals that the economy may be recovering and imminent job growth in new alternative-energy and more. This all stands in stark contrast to the stone wall these issues faced during the Bush years.

Gullible Squared

(Letter to the Editors)

Within days of President Obama announcing a 30,000-troop increase in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Gates testified before Congress that the force could grow "in the range of about 10%." The administration is also responding to Republican pressure to back off any time constraints on this “surge”.

For nearly seven years, our focus was The War in Iraq. For that period of time, it was obvious that our leadership did not regard al Qaeda as the primary threat to America. Now – though it has been seriously weakened – al Qaeda, like the phoenix, has suddenly re-emerged, ready to strike our Homeland and that of our allies. And worse, we have apparently just discovered the Taliban has designs to take over the world!

Dwindling public support (not “victory”) is forcing us to extract ourselves from Iraq, yet a cleverly-crafted marketing campaign has resurrected the ominous threat in Afghanistan. It’s all designed to keep the war industry mobilized, and profits flowing.

Can we not see the absurdity of these lies? We are being manipulated. Pure and simple.

It’s time to raise our collective voices and resist the American war machine and the dishonest motivations of our leaders.

Tim Campion
Santa Rosa, CA

Congressman Kucinich says it much more eloquently than I

Vietnam Vet, Scholar Andrew Bacevich on Obama War Plan: “The President Has Drawn the Wrong Lessons From His Understanding of the History of War”

Republicans: Military-Industrial Mouthpiece

Since President Obama's address, I've had the opportunity to hear a half-dozen members of the "Republican Leadership" offer their critique of the President's speech. You have to admit, they speak with one voice. And it is a voice best described as that of the military-industrial complex.

To a person they criticize the setting of a date when the U.S. would begin a withdrawal from Afghanistan. And, of course, they are critical that only 30,000 troops are being committed. (No mention of all the supporting forces this will entail.)

In defense of America's freedom, they say, there is simply no price too great. If we don't defeat al Qaeda, it will again strike The Homeland and our Allies. Victory over al Qaeda must be the nation's highest priority.

Is it necessary to remind Americans that for eight years the Republican Leadership led this nation in pursuit of its "highest priority" - and that appeared to be War With Iraq? They allowed al Qaeda to slip across the border into Pakistan, and Osama bin Laden to fade into the shadows. It was a conscious choice. From this, it must be clear al Qaeda is not the threat it has been portrayed to be.

In recent decades, we've seen the military-industrial complex's increasingly brazen efforts to maintain its raison d'être, fabricating bogeymen where there are none. The motivations have been so clear that, ultimately, we must question to what degree it is complicit in engineering the "War on Terror".

Health care debate?

We could send one U.S. soldier to Afghanistan, or provide health insurance to roughly 80 American families. This is just one "opportunity cost" of our occupation of Afghanistan. (How many neighborhoods would that represent in your town?)

Imagine how many Afghans this would feed, clothe, house and educate!

Is it any wonder we are now financially - and morally bankrupt?

(The government estimates the cost of one U.S. troop in Afghanistan as $1 Million per year. Basic health care insurance is estimated at $12,000 per family.)

(Another) sad day for America

President Obama's "Way Forward" speech at West Point was the most empty rhetoric I've yet heard from our Commander-in-Chief.

His performance was utterly unconvincing. Unconvincing in its attempt to dispel the parallels with Vietnam, in portraying this as yet another campaign waged by a "coalition of the willing", painting the threat to our national security in vague broad brush strokes (employing the always-effective "mushroom cloud" imagery for good measure), expressing the naive belief that we have the resources and power to control the outcome in this region and once again displaying the unique American arrogance of presuming to dictate the fate of other nations. He presented his "solution" as if talking about a board game strategy. (Perhaps the cadets could easily relate to this.) It was pure pandering.

Everyone is talking about the various "audiences" Obama was trying to address. What the fuck is this, entertainment? Is it simply an American spectator sport? (The answer frightens me.)

The Administration of George W. Bush torpedoed this nation. Increasingly, the Obama Administration's attempt at damage control appears incompetent.

Tonight, I'm disgusted with my country and wondering "where can I go?" One consolation, however slight, is that for the past three years I have paid no Income Tax - I have avoided contributing directly to the war effort. Indeed, until we have extracted ourselves from these foreign exploits, there is little motivation to get back into the marketplace and start contributing.

Maybe I'll just join the fundamentalists in praying for Armageddon. May it arrive soon, be swift and painless. (Hmmm. Would "fire and brimstone" solve the Global Warming crisis, or only exacerbate it?)

How can the leader of an occupying nation receive the Nobel Peace Prize?

Are we living in some alternative "Looking Glass Universe"? As President Obama announces his surge of American troops in Afghanistan, raising their numbers to over 100,000 (with matching contingents of contractors and support personnel), should the Nobel Committee not balk at awarding the Peace Prize to our President? (I have written them to ask how they can in good conscience, justify such an honor.)

The down-trodden Conservatives are squealing with excitement as Obama is finally becoming a "War President" (though not "The War President" - nobody can take that distinction from George W.!)

As is necessary in times of war, the mainstream media is dutifully toeing the line, welcoming all the usual Administration spokespeople, speech writers and military consultants to explain (for the benefit of us slow-to-understand Americans) why this is the appropriate strategy.

Yet again we witness the "marketing of war and occupation" and it's enough to make one ill. Tomorrow the anti-war activists will be on the streets - trying to take back our country. (Sorry "Teabaggers", you're barking up the wrong tree.)

Were it not so tragic, the hypocrisy would be laughable. Americans threaten revolution if the government restricts their Second Amendment rights. Yet, we invade Iraq and Afghanistan, where those who resist our occupation are labeled terrorists and extremists.

What the hell are we doing, interfering in the internal affairs of these countries? Eight years ago, we (intentionally?) botched the attempt to apprehend a band of terrorists in Tora Bora, and now America owns two ravaged nations.

This is the ultimate irony: with over 40% of our treasure now invested in the military-industrial complex, America - a self-proclaimed "free nation" - is held hostage by its own "defense" economy. And we don't even recognize it.

Silly people. They actually want you to have your gun. For that matter, lots of them. It's what we do best. It's American as apple pie.

Endless war is what we do.

An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore

November 30th, 2009 3:44 AM

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so. Read more at "MichaelMoore.com".

Waste

A few days ago, I read for the first time The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien's powerful collection of short stories about the Vietnam War. I recall that Jessica had read it in school. As I sat in the "Flying Goat" coffee shop recording some notes from my reading, Jessica's friend Shannon came in and joined me during his lunch break. "Great book," he said looking down at the well-worn library copy on the table. When Shannon had to return to work, our mutual friend Chris, took his place. "Great book," he said. They too had read the book in school. It was encouraging that a glimpse of this "truth" about war had worked its way into the school curriculum.

After Chris and Shannon were gone, I opened up "Google Earth" and explored satellite images of the former war zone, including Chu Lai and the Song Tra Bong valley, the setting for O'Brien's writing.

40 years on, the remnants of massive American bases are still clearly evident; the giant air fields, port facilities and supply depots. Da Nang, Chu Lai, Cam Ranh Bay, Tan Son Nhut, Bien Hoa. Nature is slowly reclaiming some of these human-inflicted scars.

The next day, I went for a hike in Annadel Park. I often access the park via the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Trail. At the entrance, a dedication reads:

We gave you our lives.
It is for you, the living
to give our deaths meaning.
We were young. We have died. Remember us.

This time, I paused before the sign. With emotions welling up, the only words that came were "what a waste."

I will never know what it was like on the ground in Vietnam. I will never know the horror that Tim O'Brien (or my brother Jeff) experienced while fighting "the spread of Communism." Or the terror rained upon millions of innocent Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians courtesy of our "military-industrial complex".

The closest I came was as a brief participant on the margins, aboard "the Number One Gunship in the Seventh Fleet". But even there, I witnessed war's utter waste, the absolutely mindless devastation that is unleashed under the feeblest of premises. I saw the insanity that the thrill of war begets. It was exemplified by our captain's insistence that we be the last ship to fire in the Vietnam War. One minute before the ceasefire went into effect, he ordered a final salvo from our five-inch guns. I stood by in wonder. Who might die for his vainglorious distinction?

And today, pursuant to some lofty-sounding but always vaguely-defined ideal, we send our children to do the very same dirty work. Our industry and economy, now so heavily invested and complicit in the war-making - its promotion, execution and reconstruction from the rubble - fails utterly to question or doubt the source of its largess. Industry has no morals.

These days, nearly everyone can agree "The American War" in Vietnam was, for all the foreign nations involved, an ideological proxy war and misguided exploit.

Yet why, in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, is it so unclear? (How can it be that we are even debating this issue?) For anyone who really studies these wars, the parallels are astounding. The deceptions, propaganda, prejudices, corruption, covert operations and assassinations, the escalations - all born of the same greedy pursuit of resources, wealth and regional dominance. Only the technology has advanced - the sophistication (and cost) of the weapons systems we use.

Where are all the voices of those who know (because they have been there) the waste and life-long cost of war? Where are all the veterans of Vietnam and our subsequent illegal and unconscionable war-making campaigns? Why are we not keeping our children at home, in school, in honorable professions, creating instead of destroying? Have we relinquished hope of halting this juggernaut?

Feeding America's appetite for oil

Image from Wikipedia. Syncrude's Mildred Lake plant. The photographer notes: This is a picture of Syncrude's base mine. The yellow structures are the bases of pyramids made of sulphur - it is not economical for Syncrude to sell the sulphur so it stockpiles it instead. Behind that is the tailings pond, held in by what is recognized as the largest dam in the world. The extraction plant is just to the right of this photograph and most of the mine is to the left.

It’s a Dirty Business — The New Gold Rush That Is Blackening Canada’s Name

by Ben Webster
Published on Wednesday, November 4, 2009 by The Times Online/UK

A giant mechanical digger gouges out a chunk of topsoil, grass and tree stumps, extending a neat furrow that stretches into the distance. Dozens of similar furrows run parallel with the regularity of a ploughed field.

Yet no crop could grow in the pitch-black surface exposed by the machine working 1,000ft below our helicopter. This is the edge of a fast-expanding open-cast mine in the Canadian tar sands, one of the world's most polluting sources of oil.

It takes only a few minutes to fly across the 200 sq miles (520 sq km) of mines, processing plants and man-made lakes of toxic water. But Canada has so far extracted only 2 per cent of a resource that it hopes will turn it into a global energy superpower.

BP and Shell are among dozens of oil companies preparing to raise production from 1.3 million barrels a day at present to 2.5 million by 2015 and 6 million by 2030.

Canada faces a dilemma as it prepares for next month's UN climate summit in Copenhagen. It wants to present itself as environmentally responsible but also wants the profits from the tar sands, which cover an area of Alberta's natural coniferous forest larger than England.

The sands contain 174 billion barrels of proven reserves, the world's second-largest reserves after Saudi Arabia. With improved techniques, Canada hopes to extract between 315 billion and 1.7 trillion barrels.

A Co-operative Bank study calculated that, even if all other carbon dioxide emissions stopped, fully exploiting the tar sands would still tip the world into catastrophic climate change by raising global temperatures more than 2C above pre-industrial levels. Extracting each barrel of crude from the sticky mass of sand, clay and bitumen produces two to three times as much CO2 as drilling for a barrel of conventional oil. The tar sands boom faltered a year ago as the oil price fell below the $60 a barrel at which the extraction process is profitable. Now, with oil at about $80 a barrel, hundreds of fortune seekers arrive each day in Fort McMurray, the oil equivalent of a gold rush town. Read more

Two lanes are being added to the bridges from the town to the tar sands projects across the Athabasca River. The airport is planning a new terminal and oil companies have built four private runways to ferry workers to their sites directly. But the best indication of Fort McMurray's growth is the constant traffic jam. It can take an hour just to reach the highway from the suburbs that have sprung up in the hills around the town.

The average house costs C$600,000 (£340,000) , but that is well within the budget of truck drivers at the mines, who, with overtime, earn C$180,000 a year. Many workers fly in from depressed fishing towns in Newfoundland and save money by living in mobile cabins stacked four storeys high in clearings in the forest.

Jean Fournier, 64, a scaffolder working on a new processing plant, says that he has earned C$64,000 in the past four months - working 24 days on and four off. "That's three times what I could earn back home in New Brunswick. I've made enough money to build my own house and I'm retiring after six more weeks here."

He scowls when asked about Greenpeace's recent occupation of tar sands plants: "Greenpeace will make people starve by killing the economy. We all care about the environment but we need our jobs."

With winter temperatures of minus 40C, the 112,000 tar sands workers are more concerned with protecting themselves from the cold than the world from global warming. A comment article last week in the local paper, Fort McMurray Today, begins: "Where the hell is the global warming some people are so worried about?"

Syncrude, which operates one of the biggest mines, is working hard to improve its image and recently handed back its first piece of "reclaimed land" to the Canadian Government. Publicity photographs show imported bison and young trees, but when you visit you realise that this is less than half a square mile on the edge of a wasteland of mines and toxic lakes.

Syncrude no longer refers to tar sands, the name used since the 19th century, because it thinks "oil sands" sounds more positive. It describes the topsoil stripped away as "overburden" and the toxic lakes as "tailings ponds".

In April last year 1,600 ducks died after landing on an oil slick on one of Syncrude's lakes. It took a full year for the company and Alberta's environment agency to admit the scale of wildlife loss. To ward off another PR disaster, Syncrude has filled the lakes with orange scarecrows, known locally as bit-u-men.

Canada knows, however, that the biggest long-term threat to its tar sands industry is not dead ducks but international regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. Most of the crude is exported to the United States, where several states are considering banning it because it is so carbon-intensive. America's dependence on tar sands is a sensitive issue in Washington, and Barack Obama's ambassador to Canada toured the mines last month and questioned the companies about their carbon emissions.

Alberta's latest proposal to rid tar sands of their dirty image is a C$2 billion subsidy for carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities. Shell plans to install CCS by 2015 at an upgrading plant but admits that it would reduce carbon emissions from its tar sands production by only 15-20 per cent.

Mel Knight, the energy minister for Alberta, which receives C$12 billion a year in revenue from its oil and gas industries, told The Times: "There has to be at least a hundred years of production in the oil sands and CCS will make this more palatable. My feeling is we will reach a steady state of five million barrels a day. The oil sands are critical [to] the global supply of energy. The world needs the energy and there's no alternative that we can see."

Shell plans to increase production from 155,000 barrels a day to 255,000 next year. BP is designing a plant with an initial output of 60,000 barrels a day, rising to 200,000 within a decade.

Canada has offered belatedly to cut its current CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 but wants to be forgiven for ignoring the target set at Kyoto a decade ago. Its emissions were 26 per cent above its 1990 levels by 2006: the Kyoto target was a 6 per cent cut.

Peter Lee, director of the environmental group Global Forest Watch Canada, said: "There is no place for oil sands in a low-carbon future. Canada is ignoring its global responsibility and betraying its promises.

"If we can't get it right in Canada, one of the world's richest countries, how can we expect developing countries to reduce their emissions?"
Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at Victoria University, British Columbia, and contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said: "If we burn the tar sands, we are effectively saying we don't owe anything to future generations."
Copyright 2009 Times Newspapers Ltd.

Learning from our mistakes in Vietnam

It's messy when you have to deal with unfavorable public opinion, so an all-volunteer military and extensive use of private contractors (and mercenaries) has helped remove the spotlight from our "engagements" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Today's "Democracy Now!" show reports:

Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan: Jeremy Scahill Reveals Private Military Firm Operating in Pakistan Under Covert Assassination and Kidnapping Program

In an explosive new article in The Nation magazine, investigative journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill reveals the private military firm Blackwater is part of a covert program in Pakistan that includes planning the assassination and kidnapping of Taliban and Al-Qaeda suspects. Blackwater is also said to be involved in a previously undisclosed U.S. military drone campaign that has killed scores of people inside Pakistan. The article says the program has become so secretive that top Obama administration and military officials have likely been unaware of its existence. In a Democracy Now! exclusive, Scahill joins us for his first interview since the story broke.

Essential viewing

Now available on DVD. Be sure to watch the "special features" as well.

"Take down our 'Peace-Processing-Is-Us' sign and just go home"

All my life, it seems the Israel-Palestine conflict has been in the headlines. Weary of their perpetual childish antics, I am inclined to agree with Mr. Friedman.

Call White House, Ask for Barack

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
New York Times Op-Ed Columnist
November 8, 2009

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has become a bad play. It is obvious that all the parties are just acting out the same old scenes, with the same old tired clichés — and that no one believes any of it anymore. There is no romance, no sex, no excitement, no urgency — not even a sense of importance anymore. The only thing driving the peace process today is inertia and diplomatic habit. Yes, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has left the realm of diplomacy. It is now more of a calisthenic, like weight-lifting or sit-ups, something diplomats do to stay in shape, but not because they believe anything is going to happen. And yet, as much as we, the audience, know this to be true, we can never quite abandon hope for peace in the Holy Land. It is our habit. Indeed, as I ranted about this to a Jordanian friend the other day, he said it all reminded him of an old story.

“These two guys are watching a cowboy and Indian movie. And in the opening scene, an Indian is hiding behind a rock about to ambush the handsome cowboy,” he explained. “ ‘I bet that Indian is going to kill that cowboy,’ one guy says to the other. ‘Never happen,’ his friend answers. ‘The cowboy is not going to be killed in the opening scene.’ ‘I’ll bet you $10 he gets killed,’ the guy says. ‘I’ll take that bet,’ says his friend.

“Sure enough, a few minutes later, the cowboy is killed and the friend pays the $10. After the movie is over the guy says to his friend, ‘Look, I have to give you back your $10. I’d actually seen this movie before. I knew what was going to happen.’ His friend answers: ‘No, you can keep the $10. I’d seen the movie, too. I just thought it would end differently this time.’ ”

This peace process movie is not going to end differently just because we keep playing the same reel. It is time for a radically new approach. And I mean radical. I mean something no U.S. administration has ever dared to do: Take down our “Peace-Processing-Is-Us” sign and just go home. Read more

Right now we want it more than the parties. They all have other priorities today. And by constantly injecting ourselves we’ve become their Novocain. We relieve all the political pain from the Arab and Israeli decision-makers by creating the impression in the minds of their publics that something serious is happening. “Look, the U.S. secretary of state is here. Look, she’s standing by my side. Look, I’m doing something important! Take our picture. Put it on the news. We’re on the verge of something really big and I am indispensable to it.” This enables the respective leaders to continue with their real priorities — which are all about holding power or pursuing ideological obsessions — while pretending to advance peace, without paying any political price.

Let’s just get out of the picture. Let all these leaders stand in front of their own people and tell them the truth: “My fellow citizens: Nothing is happening; nothing is going to happen. It’s just you and me and the problem we own.”

Indeed, it’s time for us to dust off James Baker’s line: “When you’re serious, give us a call: 202-456-1414. Ask for Barack. Otherwise, stay out of our lives. We have our own country to fix.”

The fact is, the only time America has been able to advance peace — post-Yom Kippur War, Camp David, post-Lebanon war, Madrid and Oslo — has been when the parties felt enough pain for different reasons that they invited our diplomacy, and we had statesmen — Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, George Shultz, James Baker and Bill Clinton — savvy enough to seize those moments.

Today, the Arabs, Israel and the Palestinians are clearly not feeling enough pain to do anything hard for peace with each other — a mood best summed up by a phrase making the rounds at the State Department: The Palestinian leadership “wants a deal with Israel without any negotiations” and Israel’s leadership “wants negotiations with the Palestinians without any deal.”

It is obvious that this Israeli government believes it can have peace with the Palestinians and keep the West Bank, this Palestinian Authority still can’t decide whether to reconcile with the Jewish state or criminalize it and this Hamas leadership would rather let Palestinians live forever in the hellish squalor that is Gaza than give up its crazy fantasy of an Islamic Republic in Palestine.

If we are still begging Israel to stop building settlements, which is so manifestly idiotic, and the Palestinians to come to negotiations, which is so manifestly in their interest, and the Saudis to just give Israel a wink, which is so manifestly pathetic, we are in the wrong place. It’s time to call a halt to this dysfunctional “peace process,” which is only damaging the Obama team’s credibility.

If the status quo is this tolerable for the parties, then I say, let them enjoy it. I just don’t want to subsidize it or anesthetize it anymore. We need to fix America. If and when they get serious, they’ll find us. And when they do, we should put a detailed U.S. plan for a two-state solution, with borders, on the table. Let’s fight about something big.

William Black offers a sobering perspective on the Wall Street bail-out

Afghanistan: "War of Necessity"?

Two Wrongs Make Another Fiasco

By FRANK RICH
Published in the New York Times: October 10, 2009

Those of us who love F. Scott Fitzgerald must acknowledge that he did get one big thing wrong. There are second acts in American lives. (Just ask Marion Barry, or William Shatner.) The real question is whether everyone deserves a second act. Perhaps the most surreal aspect of our great Afghanistan debate is the Beltway credence given to the ravings of the unrepentant blunderers who dug us into this hole in the first place.

Let’s be clear: Those who demanded that America divert its troops and treasure from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2002 and 2003 — when there was no Qaeda presence in Iraq — bear responsibility for the chaos in Afghanistan that ensued. Now they have the nerve to imperiously and tardily demand that America increase its 68,000-strong presence in Afghanistan to clean up their mess — even though the number of Qaeda insurgents there has dwindled to fewer than 100, according to the president’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones.

But why let facts get in the way? Just as these hawks insisted that Iraq was “the central front in the war on terror” when the central front was Afghanistan, so they insist that Afghanistan is the central front now that it has migrated to Pakistan. When the day comes for them to anoint Pakistan as the central front, it will be proof positive that Al Qaeda has consolidated its hold on Somalia and Yemen.

To appreciate this crowd’s spotless record of failure, consider its noisiest standard-bearer, John McCain. He made every wrong judgment call that could be made after 9/11. It’s not just that he echoed the Bush administration’s constant innuendos that Iraq collaborated with Al Qaeda’s attack on America. Or that he hyped the faulty W.M.D.
evidence to the hysterical extreme of fingering Iraq for the anthrax attacks in Washington. Or that he promised we would win the Iraq war “easily.” Or that he predicted that the Sunnis and the Shiites would “probably get along” in post-Saddam Iraq because there was “not a history of clashes” between them.

What’s more mortifying still is that McCain was just as wrong about Afghanistan and Pakistan. He routinely minimized or dismissed the growing threats in both countries over the past six years, lest they draw American resources away from his pet crusade in Iraq. Read more.

Two years after 9/11 he was claiming that we could “in the long term”
somehow “muddle through” in Afghanistan. (He now has the chutzpah to accuse President Obama of wanting to “muddle through” there.) Even after the insurgency accelerated in Afghanistan in 2005, McCain was still bragging about the “remarkable success” of that prematurely abandoned war. In 2007, some 15 months after the Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf signed a phony “truce” ceding territory on the Afghanistan border to terrorists, McCain gave Musharraf a thumb’s up.
As a presidential candidate in the summer of 2008, McCain cared so little about Afghanistan it didn’t even merit a mention among the national security planks on his campaign Web site.

He takes no responsibility for any of this. Asked by Katie Couric last week about our failures in Afghanistan, McCain spoke as if he were an innocent bystander: “I think the reason why we didn’t do a better job on Afghanistan is our attention — either rightly or wrongly — was on Iraq.” As Tonto says to the Lone Ranger, “What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?”

Along with his tribunes in Congress and the punditocracy, Wrong-Way McCain still presumes to give America its marching orders. With his Senate brethren in the Three Amigos, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, he took to The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page to assert that “we have no choice” but to go all-in on Afghanistan — rightly or wrongly, presumably — just as we had in Iraq. Why? “The U.S. walked away from Afghanistan once before, following the Soviet collapse,” they wrote.
“The result was 9/11. We must not make that mistake again.”

This shameless argument assumes — perhaps correctly — that no one in this country remembers anything. So let me provide a reminder: We already did make that mistake again when we walked away from Afghanistan to invade Iraq in 2003 — and we did so at the Three Amigos’ urging. Then, too, they promoted their strategy as a way of preventing another 9/11 — even though no one culpable for 9/11 was in Iraq. Now we’re being asked to pay for their mistake by squandering stretched American resources in yet another country where Al Qaeda has largely vanished.

To make the case, the Amigos and their fellow travelers conflate the Taliban with Al Qaeda much as they long conflated Saddam’s regime with Al Qaeda. But as Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post reported on Thursday, American intelligence officials now say that “there are few, if any, links between Taliban commanders in Afghanistan today and senior Al Qaeda members” — a far cry from the tight Taliban-bin Laden alliance of 2001.

The rhetorical sleights of hand in the hawks’ arguments don’t end there. If you listen carefully to McCain and his neocon echo chamber, you’ll notice certain tics. President Obama better make his decision by tomorrow, or Armageddon (if not mushroom clouds) will arrive. We must “win” in Afghanistan — but victory is left vaguely defined.
That’s because we will never build a functioning state in a country where there has never been one. Nor can we score a victory against the world’s dispersed, stateless terrorists by getting bogged down in a hellish landscape that contains few of them.

Most tellingly, perhaps, those clamoring for an escalation in Afghanistan avoid mentioning the name of the country’s president, Hamid Karzai, or the fraud-filled August election that conclusively delegitimized his government. To do so would require explaining why America should place its troops in alliance with a corrupt partner knee-deep in the narcotics trade. As long as Karzai and the election are airbrushed out of history, it can be disingenuously argued that nothing has changed on the ground since Obama’s inauguration and that he has no right to revise his earlier judgment that Afghanistan is a “war of necessity.”

Those demanding more combat troops for Afghanistan also avoid defining the real costs. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the war was running $2.6 billion a month in Pentagon expenses alone even before Obama added 20,000 troops this year. Surely fiscal conservatives like McCain and Graham who rant about deficits being “generational theft” have an obligation to explain what the added bill will be on an Afghanistan escalation and where the additional money will come from. But that would require them to use the dread words “sacrifice” and “higher taxes” when they want us to believe that this war, like Iraq, would be cost-free.

The real troop numbers are similarly elusive. Pre-emptively railing against the prospect of “half measures” by Obama, Lieberman asked MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell rhetorically last week whether it would be “real counterinsurgency” or “counterinsurgency light.” But the measure Lieberman endorses — Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s reported recommendation of 40,000 additional troops — is itself counterinsurgency light. In his definitive recent field manual on the subject, Gen. David Petraeus stipulates that real counterinsurgency requires 20 to 25 troops for each thousand residents. That comes out, conservatively, to 640,000 troops for Afghanistan (population, 32 million). Some 535,000 American troops couldn’t achieve a successful counterinsurgency in South Vietnam, which had half Afghanistan’s population and just over a quarter of its land area.

Lieberman suggested to Mitchell that we could train an enhanced, centralized Afghan army to fill any gaps. In how many decades? The existing Afghan “army” is small, illiterate, impoverished and as factionalized as the government. For his part, McCain likes to justify McChrystal’s number of 40,000 by imbuing it with the supposedly magical powers of the “surge” in Iraq. But it’s rewriting history to say that the “surge” brought “victory” to Iraq. What it did was stanch the catastrophic bleeding in an unnecessary war McCain had helped gin up. Lest anyone forget, we still don’t know who has “won” in Iraq.

Afghanistan is not Iraq. It is poorer, even larger and more populous, more fragmented and less historically susceptible to foreign intervention. Even if the countries were interchangeable, the wars are not. No one-size surge fits all. President Bush sent the additional troops to Iraq only after Sunni leaders in Anbar Province soured on Al Qaeda and reached out for American support. There is no equivalent “Anbar Awakening” in Afghanistan. Most Afghans “don’t feel threatened by the Taliban in their daily lives” and “aren’t asking for American protection,” reported Richard Engel of NBC News last week. After eight years of war, many see Americans as occupiers.

Returning to Santa Rosa

Reorganizing one's little life. When I returned to Santa Rosa a week ago, I resolved to never rent a storage unit again. So, contained within my 250-square-foot apartment is my life's legacy. And there's still too much stuff! I know that when it's time to leave this world, if I haven't done so, someone else will have to deal with it all. Thus the motivation.

U.S. "Silent on Israeli Nuclear Arms"

Above, a "small" artillery-fired nuclear weapon test in the Nevada desert during the 1950s.

While, in advance of upcoming negotiations, the U.S. attacks Iran's "nuclear ambitions", it remains silent on Israel's nuclear arsenal, which former President Jimmy Carter acknowledges contains between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads. Israel has threatened to attack Iran's nuclear energy facilities, which according to former weapons inspector Scott Ritter (see below) comply with all UNIAEA mandates.

The following, published by "Common Dreams" October 3, 2009 originally appeared in "Al Jazeera English".

Barack Obama, the US president, has agreed to abide by a 40-year policy of allowing Israel to keep nuclear weapons without opening them to international inspection, according to a US newspaper.

In a report on Saturday, The Washington Times quoted three unnamed sources as saying Obama had confirmed to Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, that he would maintain the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

The incident reportedly occurred when the two met at the White House in Washington DC in May.

Neither Israel's embassy in Washington, nor the White House National Security Council would comment on the claim.

Avner Cohen, an Israeli expert and author, was quoted by the paper as saying that under the deal "the United States passively [accepts] Israel's nuclear weapons status as long as Israel does not unveil publicly its capability or test a weapon".

There is no official accounting of the deal, supposedly agreed in 1969 between Richard Nixon, then US president, and Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister at the time.

'Strategic understandings'

In an interview last week with Israel's Channel 2 media company, Netanyahu spoke of his confidence that Obama's recent remarks on a world free of nuclear weapons would not apply to Israel.

"It was utterly clear from the context of the speech that he was speaking about North Korea and Iran," the Israeli leader said.

"But I want to remind you that in my first meeting with President Obama in Washington I received from him ... an itemised list of the strategic understandings that have existed for many years between Israel and the United States on that issue.

"It was not for naught that I requested, and it was not for naught that I received [that document]."

Although there is no formal record of the understanding - nor have Israeli nor American governments ever publicly acknowledged it - some documents hint at an agreement between the two nations.

In 2007, the Nixon library declassified a July 19, 1969, memo from Henry Kissinger, then national security adviser, that comes closest to articulating US policy on the issue.

That memo says "while we might ideally like to halt actual Israeli possession, what we really want at a minimum may be just to keep Israeli possession from becoming an established international fact".

© 2009 Aljazeera.net/english

Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter Warns Against “Politically Motivated Hype” on Iran Nuke Program

On the Nevada-Utah frontier, the dramatic 10,704-foot Pilot Peak stands crowned with clouds. This image reminds me of the string of volcanoes dotting the altiplano along the Bolivia-Chile frontier.

Bonneville Salt Flats on a clear day. A cold north wind was blowing about 50 or 60 mph, making it difficult to see without goggles.

A stop in East Aurora

 

At Charlie and Joanna's Holland, NY house, Cousin Kathy harvests elderberries for pie

 

Priscilla demonstrates her efficient harvesting technique

 

Priscilla checks the pH of her elderberries

 

Back in East Aurora, Kathy cooks up some steaks and dogs, while Charlie hides in the shadows

Farewell to Vermont

Randall Street landscape



Sewer replacement and repaving of Randall Street has provided "entertainment" the past couple months. I won't get to see the final result until I return - someday.



Jeff accosting his defenseless neighbor Wanda


Jeff, Wanda and "Ginger"

Vermont "experiment" concludes

All packed up, I say "good-bye" to my little cabin



Autumn colors are just beginning to come to Hampshire Hill



A taste of things to come

"Steve" at Vermont's "Stowe Maple Products" bottles up some gallon containers of his award-winning syrup.



Steve chats with customers

Reasonable advice for Progressives

The following appeared in the latest edition of the Burlington, Vermont independent newspaper "Seven Days".

Obama Nation?

Poli Psy
By Judith Levine [09.16.09]

Only days after the presidential election, I began receiving emails from the Democratic National Committee’s Organizing for America — formerly Obama for America. Several times a week, they implored me to show my support for this or that presidential initiative, and to send money. Such an email arrived a half hour after the president delivered his health care speech last week. “Judith,” it began. “I just finished laying out my plan for health reform at a joint session of Congress. Now, I’m writing directly to you because what happens next is critical — and I need your help.”

As always, I deleted it.

Death row inmates need my help, I thought. Teenagers trying to get late-term abortions need my help. Barack Obama, presidential candidate, needed my help. And on election night, when the TV maps turned blue and a text message appeared on my cellphone signed “Your friend, Barack,” I was thrilled — and proud that I had done my part.

But President Barack Obama, Leader of the fucking free world, needs my help? Dear OFA: I’ll get back to you.

Actually, he probably does. If you doubt this, go back to YouTube and watch those Republicans glaring from the well of Congress last week, their teeth (and, probably, their buttholes) clenched as the Democrats cheered.

Still, something in me recoils at the thought of supporting the president.

It’s not that I’m disillusioned. Sure, Obama has turned out to be a centrist. That’s because he was always a centrist — bohemian mother, Kenyan father and community-organizing stint notwithstanding. Whoever thought they were voting for a man of the left had not heard a word the candidate said on the campaign trail.

It’s not that I’m disappointed, either — though I am. In the last two weeks alone, the administration has moved toward escalating the war in Afghanistan. Obama failed to defend green-jobs czar Van Jones, who was pushed to resign by right-wing nuts objecting to his respectable progressive résumé. (George W. Bush never abandoned his appointees, who were far more radical than Jones, not to mention crooks and war criminals.) And then, in the health care speech, the president pledged to fund neither abortions nor medical services for undocumented immigrants.

He threw progressives, women and “aliens” overboard to keep an agenda afloat. Yuck.

But also, what else is new?

As I said, I had no illusions, so I’m not disillusioned. I’m not disappointed by a centrist, because I didn’t expect a leftist. Truth be told, I’m still pretty blown away that a left centrist — and, let’s not forget, an African American left centrist — is president at all.

My reluctance to support Barack Obama has less to do with the person he is, or even with the positions and actions he’s taken, than with this: I just don’t like presidents.

I have never lived under a president I could admire. From Eisenhower to Bush II, I have learned that part of the job description is a personal character ranging from mediocrity to monstrosity. Kennedy was no exception. In my communist family, we hung no portraits of the sainted martyr who practically took us to war against Cuba and launched the U.S. engagement in Vietnam.

But my distaste isn’t all about individuals. I have a hard time supporting the president because he is the president — or rather, President.

The President is not just a person. He is a symbol. He stands for the United States of America, a beautiful ideal corrupt in virtually every function, from its criminal “justice” system to the corporate ownership of its elected officials. The President stands for the global power of the United States, for its militarism and economic domination. The President stands for government. And, in spite of my late advocacy of a more robust welfare state, government arouses a profound skepticism in this old anarchist.

In fact, until 1980, nine years after I became eligible, I didn’t honor the presidency with so much as a ballot. “Don’t vote,” we used to say. “It only encourages them.” I had no time for encouraging them. I was in the streets discouraging them from doing most everything they wanted to do. That I personally despised practically every man behind the Oval Office desk only made this political opposition feel more cogent.

But now I vote — and, for the first time, voted for a person I fervently wanted in the Oval Office. I’m encouraging him. So the question becomes, Encourage him to do what, and how? Put another way, how can a radical support a centrist president and not sell her skeptical soul? Here are a few thoughts.

1. Be realistic. Progressives have been floundering between feeling reluctant to criticize the man they worked to elect and carping on the sidelines because he’s not the man they (naïvely) thought he would be. We didn’t get a leftist president because a leftist candidate’s chances of winning the 2008 U.S. election were about equal to my chances of winning the 2009 U.S. Open. The same centrist populace elected Congress. It goes without saying that whatever health care bill they pass will be greatly inferior to what progressives — and even the president — want. It will also be better than what we’ve got.

2. Be strategic. In spite of his rhetoric, Obama will not be the last president to deal with this mess. This bill is only the beginning. Failure to pass it could destroy the Democratic majority and, with it, the chance to continue working. We will hate portions of this bill, and must tell our representatives we won’t give up, for instance, on full access for all, including the undocumented, and on comprehensive reproductive services, including abortion. Then we should tell them to vote yes. The perfect should not be the enemy of the good.

3. Be consistent. One day I get an email from MoveOn.org exhorting me to oppose any bill without a public option in it. The next day, I’m asked to tell my representative to vote for whatever gets to the floor. This isn’t strategy; it’s Tweeting.

4. Be radical. The right has always been great at rewarding legislators for each intermediate step toward the radical ideal. At the same time, its activists remind elected officials that they won’t settle for one slice of a loaf. This persistent, uncompromising agitation has paid off in moving popular sentiment, discourse, legislation — and presidents — to the right. Progressives should similarly keep their eyes on the prize. The good should not be the enemy of the perfect.

5. I shock myself by saying it, but … support the president. One of the most endearing qualities of candidate Obama was his insistence that the campaign was about us, not him. Now, a president is not the same as a candidate; an executive is not a community organizer. The president’s job is to lead, and Obama’s collectivist spirit may be a mask for his timidity in doing so. This week, liberal pundits are kicking him for playing golf this summer while town halls burned. They wonder whether his decision to act “presidential” has come too late.

Still, leadership is nothing more than getting other people to do things. Obama’s instinctual style of leadership is the kind that does not dictate but inspires, that is more about community than command. If it’s the kind of leadership a leftist can love, that should be no surprise. He learned it from us.

If we sit on our hands now, embracing our radical marginality and rejecting everything but what is impossible to get — a single-payer system — we will not only sink the chances for a better health care system. We will also send the message that there is only one kind of leader: the “decider.” We will implicitly renounce the brand of leadership the left has been cultivating since the ’60s.

What makes following, or collaborating with, Obama easier is that this guy likes us; he knows we’re his people. In Minneapolis this weekend, the rapturous crowd cheered the loudest when he talked about the public option. He told them they were a lot more fun than Congress. The rally ended with him leading the chant “We’re Fired Up! And Ready to Go!” One woman told NPR that impetus for reform “has to come from the bottom up, not the top down.”

It has to come from both. We need President Obama’s help, and he needs ours.

Voting only encourages them. But this election seems to have discouraged us, the citizens, from holding our winner to his promises. Just as this health care bill is only the beginning of reform, voting is the beginning, not the end, of activism. By encouraging — that is, lending courage to — the president, we may actually get what we elected him for. In the process we may begin to redeem, even transform, the Presidency of the United States.

Do we have a drug for you...

During these past six months in Vermont, I've had the "opportunity" to watch more TV than at any time in the past 30 years. One striking aspect of today's television is the incredible prevalence of drug commercials. Advertisers help "promote" our addictions for the first half our life, then spend that latter half "helping" us remedy the addiction and repair its ravages. And, of course, this latter phase is where public health programs are expected to step in and assist.

In late-night "CHANTIX" commercials, I've been introduced to "Herb" (above) - a pleasant fellow. He and his wife smile happily and enjoy a sunny afternoon on the veranda, apparently unaware of the voice-over citing the following ominous cautions:

Some people have had changes in behavior, hostility, agitation, depressed mood, suicidal thoughts or actions while using CHANTIX to help them quit smoking. Some people had these symptoms when they began taking CHANTIX, and others developed them after several weeks of treatment or after stopping CHANTIX. If you, your family, or caregiver notice agitation, hostility, depression, or changes in behavior, thinking, or mood that are not typical for you, or you develop suicidal thoughts or actions, anxiety, panic, aggression, anger, mania, abnormal sensations, hallucinations, paranoia, or confusion, stop taking CHANTIX and call your doctor right away. Also tell your doctor about any history of depression or other mental health problems before taking CHANTIX, as these symptoms may worsen while taking CHANTIX.

Some people can have serious skin reactions while taking CHANTIX, some of which can become life-threatening. These can include rash, swelling, redness, and peeling of the skin. Some people can have allergic reactions to CHANTIX, some of which can be life-threatening and include: swelling of the face, mouth, and throat that can cause trouble breathing. If you have these symptoms or have a rash with peeling skin or blisters in your mouth, stop taking CHANTIX and get medical attention right away.

Rest well!

Would a moron even recognize Socialism?

(Thanks, Guy!)

Destruction of Brazilian Rainforest

Click on the above photo to view the alarming pace of rainforest destruction south of Santarem in Brazil's Amazon region. Driven by the economic forces of logging, mining, hydroelectric projects, cattle farming and sugar cane and soy bean production for ethanol, much of this clearing has occurred in just the past twenty years.

The Amazon region is often referred to as the lungs of the planet, for its carbon-capturing and oxygen production.

Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost in Suffering

Published on Monday, September 14, 2009 by The New York Times

by Charles Duhigg

Jennifer Hall-Massey knows not to drink the tap water in her home near Charleston, W.Va.

[A water sample collected from a water heater by Patty Sebok, a neighbor of Jennifer Hall-Massey. Residents say such water is typical and has destroyed toilets, dishwashers and washing machines. (Damon Winter/The New York Times)]A water sample collected from a water heater by Patty Sebok, a neighbor of Jennifer Hall-Massey. Residents say such water is typical and has destroyed toilets, dishwashers and washing machines. (Damon Winter/The New York Times)
In fact, her entire family tries to avoid any contact with the water. Her youngest son has scabs on his arms, legs and chest where the bathwater — polluted with lead, nickel and other heavy metals — caused painful rashes. Many of his brother’s teeth were capped to replace enamel that was eaten away.

Neighbors apply special lotions after showering because their skin burns. Tests show that their tap water contains arsenic, barium, lead, manganese and other chemicals at concentrations federal regulators say could contribute to cancer and damage the kidneys and nervous system.

“How can we get digital cable and Internet in our homes, but not clean water?” said Mrs. Hall-Massey, a senior accountant at one of the state’s largest banks.

She and her husband, Charles, do not live in some remote corner of Appalachia. Charleston, the state capital, is less than 17 miles from her home.

“How is this still happening today?” she asked.

When Mrs. Hall-Massey and 264 neighbors sued nine nearby coal companies, accusing them of putting dangerous waste into local water supplies, their lawyer did not have to look far for evidence. As required by state law, some of the companies had disclosed in reports to regulators that they were pumping into the ground illegal concentrations of chemicals — the same pollutants that flowed from residents’ taps.

But state regulators never fined or punished those companies for breaking those pollution laws.

This pattern is not limited to West Virginia. Almost four decades ago, Congress passed the Clean Water Act to force polluters to disclose the toxins they dump into waterways and to give regulators the power to fine or jail offenders. States have passed pollution statutes of their own. But in recent years, violations of the Clean Water Act have risen steadily across the nation, an extensive review of water pollution records by The New York Times found.

In the last five years alone, chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times. The violations range from failing to report emissions to dumping toxins at concentrations regulators say might contribute to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses.

However, the vast majority of those polluters have escaped punishment. State officials have repeatedly ignored obvious illegal dumping, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which can prosecute polluters when states fail to act, has often declined to intervene. Read more.

Because it is difficult to determine what causes diseases like cancer, it is impossible to know how many illnesses are the result of water pollution, or contaminants’ role in the health problems of specific individuals.

But concerns over these toxins are great enough that Congress and the E.P.A. regulate more than 100 pollutants through the Clean Water Act and strictly limit 91 chemicals or contaminants in tap water through the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Regulators themselves acknowledge lapses. The new E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, said in an interview that despite many successes since the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, today the nation’s water does not meet public health goals, and enforcement of water pollution laws is unacceptably low. She added that strengthening water protections is among her top priorities. State regulators say they are doing their best with insufficient resources.

The Times obtained hundreds of thousands of water pollution records through Freedom of Information Act requests to every state and the E.P.A., and compiled a national database of water pollution violations that is more comprehensive than those maintained by states or the E.P.A. (For an interactive version, which can show violations in any community, visit www.nytimes.com/toxicwaters.)

In addition, The Times interviewed more than 250 state and federal regulators, water-system managers, environmental advocates and scientists.

That research shows that an estimated one in 10 Americans have been exposed to drinking water that contains dangerous chemicals or fails to meet a federal health benchmark in other ways.

Those exposures include carcinogens in the tap water of major American cities and unsafe chemicals in drinking-water wells. Wells, which are not typically regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, are more likely to contain contaminants than municipal water systems.

Because most of today’s water pollution has no scent or taste, many people who consume dangerous chemicals do not realize it, even after they become sick, researchers say.

But an estimated 19.5 million Americans fall ill each year from drinking water contaminated with parasites, bacteria or viruses, according to a study published last year in the scientific journal Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. That figure does not include illnesses caused by other chemicals and toxins.

In the nation’s largest dairy states, like Wisconsin and California, farmers have sprayed liquefied animal feces onto fields, where it has seeped into wells, causing severe infections. Tap water in parts of the Farm Belt, including cities in Illinois, Kansas, Missouri and Indiana, has contained pesticides at concentrations that some scientists have linked to birth defects and fertility problems.

In parts of New York, Rhode Island, Ohio, California and other states where sewer systems cannot accommodate heavy rains, untreated human waste has flowed into rivers and washed onto beaches. Drinking water in parts of New Jersey, New York, Arizona and Massachusetts shows some of the highest concentrations of tetrachloroethylene, a dry cleaning solvent that has been linked to kidney damage and cancer. (Specific types of water pollution across the United States will be examined in future Times articles.)

The Times’s research also shows that last year, 40 percent of the nation’s community water systems violated the Safe Drinking Water Act at least once, according to an analysis of E.P.A. data. Those violations ranged from failing to maintain proper paperwork to allowing carcinogens into tap water. More than 23 million people received drinking water from municipal systems that violated a health-based standard.

In some cases, people got sick right away. In other situations, pollutants like chemicals, inorganic toxins and heavy metals can accumulate in the body for years or decades before they cause problems. Some of the most frequently detected contaminants have been linked to cancer, birth defects and neurological disorders.

Records analyzed by The Times indicate that the Clean Water Act has been violated more than 506,000 times since 2004, by more than 23,000 companies and other facilities, according to reports submitted by polluters themselves. Companies sometimes test what they are dumping only once a quarter, so the actual number of days when they broke the law is often far higher. And some companies illegally avoid reporting their emissions, say officials, so infractions go unrecorded.

Environmental groups say the number of Clean Water Act violations has increased significantly in the last decade. Comprehensive data go back only five years but show that the number of facilities violating the Clean Water Act grew more than 16 percent from 2004 to 2007, the most recent year with complete data.

Polluters include small companies, like gas stations, dry cleaners, shopping malls and the Friendly Acres Mobile Home Park in Laporte, Ind., which acknowledged to regulators that it had dumped human waste into a nearby river for three years.

They also include large operations, like chemical factories, power plants, sewage treatment centers and one of the biggest zinc smelters, the Horsehead Corporation of Pennsylvania, which has dumped illegal concentrations of copper, lead, zinc, chlorine and selenium into the Ohio River. Those chemicals can contribute to mental retardation and cancer.

Some violations are relatively minor. But about 60 percent of the polluters were deemed in “significant noncompliance” — meaning their violations were the most serious kind, like dumping cancer-causing chemicals or failing to measure or report when they pollute.

Finally, the Times’s research shows that fewer than 3 percent of Clean Water Act violations resulted in fines or other significant punishments by state officials. And the E.P.A. has often declined to prosecute polluters or force states to strengthen their enforcement by threatening to withhold federal money or take away powers the agency has delegated to state officials.

Neither Friendly Acres Mobile Home Park nor Horsehead, for instance, was fined for Clean Water Act violations in the last eight years. A representative of Friendly Acres declined to comment. Indiana officials say they are investigating the mobile home park. A representative of Horsehead said the company had taken steps to control pollution and was negotiating with regulators to clean up its emissions.

Numerous state and federal lawmakers said they were unaware that pollution was so widespread.

“I don’t think anyone realized how bad things have become,” said Representative James L. Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat, when told of The Times’s findings. Mr. Oberstar is chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which has jurisdiction over many water-quality issues.

“The E.P.A. and states have completely dropped the ball,” he said. “Without oversight and enforcement, companies will use our lakes and rivers as dumping grounds — and that’s exactly what is apparently going on.”

The E.P.A. administrator, Ms. Jackson, whose appointment was confirmed in January, said in an interview that she intended to strengthen enforcement of the Clean Water Act and pressure states to apply the law.

“I’ve been saying since Day One I want to work on these water issues pretty broadly across the country,” she said. On Friday, the E.P.A. said that it was reviewing dozens of coal-mining permits in West Virginia and three other states to make sure they would not violate the Clean Water Act.

After E.P.A. officials received detailed questions from The New York Times in June, Ms. Jackson sent a memo to her enforcement deputy noting that the E.P.A. is “falling short of this administration’s expectations for the effectiveness of our clean water enforcement programs. Data available to E.P.A. shows that, in many parts of the country, the level of significant noncompliance with permitting requirements is unacceptably high and the level of enforcement activity is unacceptably low.”

State officials, for their part, attribute rising pollution rates to increased workloads and dwindling resources. In 46 states, local regulators have primary responsibility for crucial aspects of the Clean Water Act. Though the number of regulated facilities has more than doubled in the last 10 years, many state enforcement budgets have remained essentially flat when adjusted for inflation. In New York, for example, the number of regulated polluters has almost doubled to 19,000 in the last decade, but the number of inspections each year has remained about the same.

But stretched resources are only part of the reason polluters escape punishment. The Times’s investigation shows that in West Virginia and other states, powerful industries have often successfully lobbied to undermine effective regulation.

State officials also argue that water pollution statistics include minor infractions, like failing to file reports, which do not pose risks to human health, and that records collected by The Times failed to examine informal enforcement methods, like sending warning letters.

“We work enormously hard inspecting our coal mines, analyzing water samples, notifying companies of violations when we detect them,” said Randy Huffman, head of West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection. “When I look at how far we’ve come in protecting the state’s waters since we took responsibility for the Clean Water Act, I think we have a lot to be proud of.”

But unchecked pollution remains a problem in many states. West Virginia offers a revealing example of why so many companies escape punishment.

One Community’s Plight

The mountains surrounding the home of Mrs. Hall-Massey’s family and West Virginia’s nearby capital have long been mined for coal. And for years, the area enjoyed clean well water.

But starting about a decade ago, awful smells began coming from local taps. The water was sometimes gray, cloudy and oily. Bathtubs and washers developed rust-colored rings that scrubbing could not remove. When Mrs. Hall-Massey’s husband installed industrial water filters, they quickly turned black. Tests showed that their water contained toxic amounts of lead, manganese, barium and other metals that can contribute to organ failure or developmental problems.

Around that time, nearby coal companies had begun pumping industrial waste into the ground.

Mining companies often wash their coal to remove impurities. The leftover liquid — a black fluid containing dissolved minerals and chemicals, known as sludge or slurry — is often disposed of in vast lagoons or through injection into abandoned mines. The liquid in those lagoons and shafts can flow through cracks in the earth into water supplies. Companies must regularly send samples of the injected liquid to labs, which provide reports that are forwarded to state regulators.

In the eight miles surrounding Mrs. Hall-Massey’s home, coal companies have injected more than 1.9 billion gallons of coal slurry and sludge into the ground since 2004, according to a review of thousands of state records. Millions more gallons have been dumped into lagoons.

These underground injections have contained chemicals at concentrations that pose serious health risks, and thousands of injections have violated state regulations and the Safe Drinking Water Act, according to reports sent to the state by companies themselves.

For instance, three coal companies — Loadout, Remington Coal and Pine Ridge, a subsidiary of Peabody Energy, one of the largest coal companies in the world — reported to state officials that 93 percent of the waste they injected near this community had illegal concentrations of chemicals including arsenic, lead, chromium, beryllium or nickel.

Sometimes those concentrations exceeded legal limits by as much as 1,000 percent. Those chemicals have been shown to contribute to cancer, organ failures and other diseases.

But those companies were never fined or punished for those illegal injections, according to state records. They were never even warned that their activities had been noticed.

Remington Coal declined to comment. A representative of Loadout’s parent said the company had assigned its permit to another company, which ceased injecting in 2006. Peabody Energy, which spun off Pine Ridge in 2007, said that some data sent to regulators was inaccurate and that the company’s actions reflected best industry practices.

West Virginia officials, when asked about these violations, said regulators had accidentally overlooked many pollution records the companies submitted until after the statute of limitations had passed, so no action was taken. They also said their studies indicated that those injections could not have affected drinking water in the area and that other injections also had no detectable effect.

State officials noted that they had cited more than 4,200 water pollution violations at mine sites around the state since 2000, as well as conducted thousands of investigations. The state has initiated research about how mining affects water quality. After receiving questions from The Times, officials announced a statewide moratorium on issuing injection permits and told some companies that regulators were investigating their injections.

“Many of the issues you are examining are several years old, and many have been addressed,” West Virginia officials wrote in a statement. The state’s pollution program “has had its share of issues,” regulators wrote. However, “it is important to note that if the close scrutiny given to our state had been given to others, it is likely that similar issues would have been found.”

More than 350 other companies and facilities in West Virginia have also violated the Clean Water Act in recent years, records show. Those infractions include releasing illegal concentrations of iron, manganese, aluminum and other chemicals into lakes and rivers.

As the water in Mrs. Hall-Massey’s community continued to worsen, residents began complaining of increased health problems. Gall bladder diseases, fertility problems, miscarriages and kidney and thyroid issues became common, according to interviews.

When Mrs. Hall-Massey’s family left on vacation, her sons’ rashes cleared up. When they returned, the rashes reappeared. Her dentist told her that chemicals appeared to be damaging her teeth and her son’s, she said. As the quality of her water worsened, Mrs. Hall-Massey’s once-healthy teeth needed many crowns. Her son brushed his teeth often, used a fluoride rinse twice a day and was not allowed to eat sweets. Even so, he continued getting cavities until the family stopped using tap water. By the time his younger brother’s teeth started coming in, the family was using bottled water to brush. He has not had dental problems.

Medical professionals in the area say residents show unusually high rates of health problems. A survey of more than 100 residents conducted by a nurse hired by Mrs. Hall-Massey’s lawyer indicated that as many as 30 percent of people in this area have had their gallbladders removed, and as many as half the residents have significant tooth enamel damage, chronic stomach problems and other illnesses. That research was confirmed through interviews with residents.

It is difficult to determine which companies, if any, are responsible for the contamination that made its way into tap water or to conclude which specific chemicals, if any, are responsible for particular health problems. Many coal companies say they did not pollute the area’s drinking water and chose injection sites that flowed away from nearby homes.

An independent study by a university researcher challenges some of those claims.

“I don’t know what else could be polluting these wells,” said Ben Stout, a biology professor at Wheeling Jesuit University who tested the water in this community and elsewhere in West Virginia. “The chemicals coming out of people’s taps are identical to the chemicals the coal companies are pumping into the ground.”

One night, Mrs. Hall-Massey’s 6-year-old son, Clay, asked to play in the tub. When he got out, his bright red rashes hurt so much he could not fall asleep. Soon, Mrs. Hall-Massey began complaining to state officials. They told her they did not know why her water was bad, she recalls, but doubted coal companies had done anything wrong. The family put their house on the market, but because of the water, buyers were not interested.

In December, Mrs. Hall-Massey and neighbors sued in county court, seeking compensation. That suit is pending. To resolve a related lawsuit filed about the same time, the community today gets regular deliveries of clean drinking water, stored in coolers or large blue barrels outside most homes. Construction began in August on a pipeline bringing fresh water to the community.

But for now most residents still use polluted water to bathe, shower and wash dishes.

“A parent’s only real job is to protect our children,” Mrs. Hall-Massey said. “But where was the government when we needed them to protect us from this stuff?”

Regulators ‘Overwhelmed’

Matthew Crum, a 43-year-old lawyer, wanted to protect people like Mrs. Hall-Massey. That is why he joined West Virginia’s environmental protection agency in 2001, when it became clear that the state’s and nation’s streams and rivers were becoming more polluted.

But he said he quickly learned that good intentions could not compete with intimidating politicians and a fearful bureaucracy.

Mr. Crum grew up during a golden age of environmental activism. He was in elementary school when Congress passed the Clean Water Act of 1972 in response to environmental disasters, including a fire on the polluted Cuyahoga River in Cleveland. The act’s goal was to eliminate most water pollution by 1985 and prohibit the “discharge of toxic pollutants in toxic amounts.”

“There were a bunch of us that were raised with the example of the Clean Water Act as inspiration,” he said. “I wanted to be part of that fight.”

In the two decades after the act’s passage, the nation’s waters grew much healthier. The Cuyahoga River, West Virginia’s Kanawha River and hundreds of other beaches, streams and ponds were revitalized.

But in the late 1990s, some states’ enforcement of pollution laws began tapering off, according to regulators and environmentalists. Soon the E.P.A. started reporting that the nation’s rivers, lakes and estuaries were becoming dirtier again. Mr. Crum, after a stint in Washington with the Justice Department and the birth of his first child, joined West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection, where new leadership was committed to revitalizing the Clean Water Act.

He said his idealism was tested within two weeks, when he was called to a huge coal spill into a stream.

“I met our inspector at the spill site, and we had this really awkward conversation,” Mr. Crum recalled. “I said we should shut down the mine until everything was cleaned up. The inspector agreed, but he said if he issued that order, he was scared of getting demoted or transferred to the middle of nowhere. Everyone was terrified of doing their job.”

Mr. Crum temporarily shut the mine.

In the next two years, he shut many polluting mines until they changed their ways. His tough approach raised his profile around the state.

Mining companies, worried about attracting Mr. Crum’s attention, began improving their waste disposal practices, executives from that period said. But they also began complaining to their friends in the state’s legislature, they recalled in interviews, and started a whisper campaign accusing Mr. Crum of vendettas against particular companies — though those same executives now admit they had no evidence for those claims.

In 2003, a new director, Stephanie Timmermeyer, was nominated to run the Department of Environmental Protection. One of West Virginia’s most powerful state lawmakers, Eustace Frederick, said she would be confirmed, but only if she agreed to fire Mr. Crum, according to several people who said they witnessed the conversation.

She was given the job and soon summoned Mr. Crum to her office. He was dismissed two weeks after his second child’s birth.

Ms. Timmermeyer, who resigned in 2008, did not return calls. Mr. Frederick died last year.

Since then, hundreds of workplaces in West Virginia have violated pollution laws without paying fines. A half-dozen current and former employees, in interviews, said their enforcement efforts had been undermined by bureaucratic disorganization, a departmental preference to let polluters escape punishment if they promise to try harder, and a revolving door of regulators who leave for higher-paying jobs at the companies they once policed.

“We are outmanned and overwhelmed, and that’s exactly how industry wants us,” said one employee who requested anonymity for fear of being fired. “It’s been obvious for decades that we’re not on top of things, and coal companies have earned billions relying on that.”

In June, four environmental groups petitioned the E.P.A. to take over much of West Virginia’s handling of the Clean Water Act, citing a “nearly complete breakdown” in the state. The E.P.A. has asked state officials to respond and said it is investigating the petition.

Similar problems exist in other states, where critics say regulators have often turned a blind eye to polluters. Regulators in five other states, in interviews, said they had been pressured by industry-friendly politicians to drop continuing pollution investigations.

“Unless the E.P.A. is pushing state regulators, a culture of transgression and apathy sets in,” said William K. Reilly, who led the E.P.A. under President George H. W. Bush.

In response, many state officials defend their efforts. A spokeswoman for West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection, for instance, said that between 2006 and 2008, the number of cease-operation orders issued by regulators was 10 percent higher than during Mr. Crum’s two-year tenure.

Mr. Huffman, the department’s head, said there is no political interference with current investigations. Department officials say they continue to improve the agency’s procedures, and note that regulators have assessed $14.7 million in state fines against more than 70 mining companies since 2006.

However, that is about equal to the revenue those businesses’ parent companies collect every 10 hours, according to financial reports. (To find out about every state’s enforcement record and read comments from regulators, visit www.nytimes.com/waterdata.)

“The real test is, is our water clean?” said Mr. Huffman. “When the Clean Water Act was passed, this river that flows through our capital was very dirty. Thirty years later, it’s much cleaner because we’ve chosen priorities carefully.”

Some regulators admit that polluters have fallen through the cracks. To genuinely improve enforcement, they say, the E.P.A. needs to lead.

“If you don’t have vigorous oversight by the feds, then everything just goes limp,” said Mr. Crum. “Regulators can’t afford to have some backbone unless they know Washington or the governor’s office will back them up.”

It took Mr. Crum a while to recover from his firing. He moved to Virginia to work at the Nature Conservancy, an environmental conservation group. Today, he is in private practice and works on the occasional environmental lawsuit.

“We’re moving backwards,” he said, “and it’s heartbreaking.”

Shortcomings of the E.P.A.

The memos are marked “DO NOT DISTRIBUTE.”

They were written this year by E.P.A. staff, the culmination of a five-year investigation of states’ enforcement of federal pollution laws. And in bland, bureaucratic terms, they describe a regulatory system — at the E.P.A. and among state agencies — that in many ways simply does not work.

For years, according to one memo, federal regulators knew that more than 30 states had major problems documenting which companies were violating pollution laws. Another notes that states’ “personnel lack direction, ability or training” to levy fines large enough to deter polluters.

But often, the memos say, the E.P.A. never corrected those problems even though they were widely acknowledged. The E.P.A. “may hesitate to push the states” out of “fear of risking their relationships,” one report reads. Another notes that E.P.A. offices lack “a consistent national oversight strategy.”

Some of those memos, part of an effort known as the State Review Framework, were obtained from agency employees who asked for anonymity, and others through Freedom of Information Act requests.

Enforcement lapses were particularly bad under the administration of President George W. Bush, employees say. “For the last eight years, my hands have been tied,” said one E.P.A. official who requested anonymity for fear of retribution. “We were told to take our clean water and clean air cases, put them in a box, and lock it shut. Everyone knew polluters were getting away with murder. But these polluters are some of the biggest campaign contributors in town, so no one really cared if they were dumping poisons into streams.”

The E.P.A. administrators during the last eight years — Christine Todd Whitman, Michael O. Leavitt and Stephen L. Johnson — all declined to comment.

When President Obama chose Ms. Jackson to head the E.P.A., many environmentalists and agency employees were encouraged. During his campaign, Mr. Obama promised to “reinvigorate the drinking water standards that have been weakened under the Bush administration and update them to address new threats.” He pledged to regulate water pollution from livestock operations and push for amendments to the Clean Water Act.

But some worry those promises will not be kept. Water issues have taken a back seat to other environmental concerns, like carbon emissions.

In an interview, Ms. Jackson noted that many of the nation’s waters were healthier today than when the Clean Water Act was passed and said she intended to enforce the law more vigorously. After receiving detailed questions from The Times, she put many of the State Review Framework documents on the agency’s Web site, and ordered more disclosure of the agency’s handling of water issues, increased enforcement and revamped technology so that facilities’ environmental records are more accessible.

“Do critics have a good and valid point when they say improvements need to be made? Absolutely,” Ms. Jackson said. “But I think we need to be careful not to do that by scaring the bejesus out of people into thinking that, boy, are things horrible. What it requires is attention, and I’m going to give it that attention.”

In statements, E.P.A. officials noted that from 2006 to 2008, the agency conducted 11,000 Clean Water Act and 21,000 Safe Drinking Water Act inspections, and referred 146 cases to the Department of Justice. During the 2007 to 2008 period, officials wrote, 92 percent of the population served by community water systems received water that had no reported health-based violations.

The Times’s reporting, the statements added, “does not distinguish between significant violations and minor violations,” and “as a result, the conclusions may present an unduly alarming picture.” They wrote that “much of the country’s water quality problems are caused by discharges from nonpoint sources of pollution, such as agricultural runoff, which cannot be corrected solely through enforcement.”

Ultimately, lawmakers and environmental activists say, the best solution is for Congress to hold the E.P.A. and states accountable for their failures.

The Clean Water Act, they add, should be expanded to police other types of pollution — like farm and livestock runoff — that are largely unregulated. And they say Congress should give state agencies more resources, in the same way that federal dollars helped overhaul the nation’s sewage systems in the 1970s.

Some say changes will not occur without public outrage.

“When we started regulating water pollution in the 1970s, there was a huge public outcry because you could see raw sewage flowing into the rivers,” said William D. Ruckelshaus, who served as the first head of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Richard M. Nixon, and then again under President Ronald Reagan.

“Today the violations are much more subtle — pesticides and chemicals you can’t see or smell that are even more dangerous,” he added. “And so a lot of the public pressure on regulatory agencies has ebbed away.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

"Thank God for Glenn Beck!"

"Teabaggers" descended upon Washington this week. (I didn't really understand the Teabag Movement until I looked it up in the Urban Dictionary.)

In his role as Fox ("Not the News") commentator, Mr. Beck promoted the 9-12 demonstration in Washington. I was until now totally unaware that our nation is being stolen from under our noses by the Obama Administration. Finally, freedom-loving Americans are fed up and not going to take it any more!

In fairness, I've been to many demonstrations, and such enlightened perspectives can be found in almost any gathering of fellow Americans. This video offers still more compelling evidence that we indeed need less public education in this country.

Industrialized food chains and the abandonment of conscience

This is the result when humans no longer take responsibility for their world. Food, water, energy, communications, security and so many other fundamental human activities become corporate industrial processes, hidden from view and erased from the collective consciousness of the society "serviced". Out of sight, out of their minds, the wizards work their magic.

A visit to Walden Pond and Concord, Massachusetts

A replica of Henry David Thoreau welcomes me to a replica of Thoreau's cabin


A swimmer crosses Walden Pond


Minuteman Monument at the Old North Bridge, Concord, Massachusetts.

The inscription from Ralph Waldo Emerson reads:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flags to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

Here, on April 19, 1775, Colonists from Concord and surrounding towns faced off against British forces marching on Concord. In the first organized engagement of the Revolution, they fired on the British, sending them into retreat.

Oh, mama, can this really be the end?

I came across this photo of brother Drew Kampion (aka "Tall Bob") performing at last October's "Mr. South Whidbey Pageant".

(No photo attribution provided on the site.)

Global corporations that act like they're "local"

Aliens in your midst? The battle is heating up between "locavores" and corporate-driven "junkavores". This article was published in Burlington, Vermont's independent newspaper "Seven Days".

Local Where?

Big corporations are finding ways to sell themselves as the folks next door

By Stacy Mitchell [07.22.09]

One of the biggest banks on the planet, HSBC, has taken to calling itself “the world’s local bank.” Winn-Dixie, a 500-outlet supermarket chain, recently launched a new ad campaign under the tagline “Local flavor since 1956.” The International Council of Shopping Centers, a global consortium of mall owners and developers, is pouring millions of dollars into television ads urging people to “Shop Local” … at their nearest mall. Even Wal-Mart is getting in on the act, hanging bright green banners over some of its produce aisles that simply say, “Local.”

What’s wrong with this picture?

Hoping to capitalize on growing public enthusiasm for all things “local,” some of the world’s biggest corporations are brashly laying claim to the word.

Read more.

This new variation on corporate greenwashing — call it “local washing” — is, like the buy-local movement itself, most advanced in the context of food. Hellmann’s, the mayonnaise brand owned by the processed-food giant Unilever, is test-driving a new “Eat Real, Eat Local” initiative in Canada. The ad campaign seems aimed partly at enhancing the brand simply by associating Hellmann’s with local food. But it also makes the claim that Hellmann’s is local, because most of its ingredients come from North America.

That’s not the only industrial food company muscling in on “local.” Frito-Lay’s new television commercials use farmers as pitchmen to position the company’s potato chips as local food, while Foster Farms, one of the largest producers of poultry products in the country, is labeling packages of chicken and turkey “locally grown.”

This phenomenon has a precedent in the nationwide struggles to define “organic” and “natural.” And Vermonters in particular may see “local washing” as a new term for an old abuse of their state’s cultural cachet.

Long before consumers started identifying themselves as “localvores,” the word “Vermont” on a product’s label seemed to add an implicit guarantee of purity and craftsmanship. In 1989, the state attorney general’s office sued Mad River Traders for calling its product “Vermont all natural soda,” though it was neither manufactured in Vermont nor of local ingredients. In 2005, after several similar cases, the AG’s office adopted a six-page rule that spells out precise requirements for placing the state’s name on a food product.

At the national and international level, corporate local washing has spread well beyond food. Barnes & Noble, the world’s top seller of books, has launched a video blog site under the banner “All bookselling is local.” The site, which features “local book news” and recommendations from employees of stores in such down-home-sounding locales as Surprise, Ariz., and Wauwatosa, Wis., seems designed to disguise what Barnes & Noble is — a highly centralized corporation where decisions about which books to stock and feature are made by a handful of buyers. It presents the chain as a collection of independent-minded booksellers.

Across the country, scores of shopping malls, chambers of commerce and economic-development agencies are also appropriating the phrase “buy local” to urge consumers to patronize nearby malls and big-box stores. In March, leaders of a new buy-local campaign in Fresno, Calif., assembled in front of the Fashion Fair Mall for a kick-off press conference. Flanked by storefronts bearing brand names such as Anthropologie and The Cheesecake Factory, officials from the Economic Development Corporation of Fresno County explained that choosing to “buy local” helps the region’s economy. For anyone confused by this display, the campaign and its media partners — including Comcast and the McClatchy-owned Fresno Bee — followed the press conference with more than $250,000 worth of radio, TV and print ads that spelled it out: “Just so you know, buying local means any store in your community: mom-and-pop stores, national chains, big-box stores — you name it.”

The Real Buy-Local Movement

In one way, all this corporate local washing is good news for local-economy advocates: It represents the best empirical evidence yet that the grassroots movement for locally produced goods and independently owned businesses is having a measurable impact on the choices people make.

“Think of the millions of dollars these big companies spend on research and focus groups. They wouldn’t be doing this on a hunch,” observes Dan Cullen of the American Booksellers Association (ABA), a trade group that represents some 1700 independent bookstores. Last year the ABA launched IndieBound, an initiative that helps locally owned businesses communicate their independence and community roots. The Flying Pig Bookstore in Shelburne is but one Vermont shop that has taken advantage of IndieBound’s materials. Co-owner Josie Leavitt says she uses IndieBound’s lists of “Indie Next” books, chosen by independent booksellers throughout the country, and gift cards accepted at all members’ stores. “IndieBound encourages people to shop locally,” says Leavitt, noting the group’s mission is complementary to Vermont’s “buy local” efforts.

Signs abound that consumer preferences around the country are trending local. Locally grown food has soared in popularity. The U.S. is now home to 4385 active farmers markets; one of every three of those appeared since 2000. Tiny Vermont is home to about 73 summer markets — a handful of them new this year — and a growing number of year-round markets give consumers access to locally grown root vegetables, specialty products and crafts throughout the winter.

Nationally, food co-ops and neighborhood green-grocers are also on the rise. Driving has decreased, and data from several metropolitan regions show that houses located within walking distance of small neighborhood stores have held value better than those isolated in the suburbs, where the nearest gallon of milk might be five miles away.

More independent businesses are catching on to the inherent marketing value of being local, and are reporting a surge in customer traffic as a result. In April, for example, as Virgin Megastores prepared to shutter its last U.S. record outlet, independent music stores were mobbed for the second annual Record Store Day. A celebration that features in-store concerts and exclusive releases, the event drew hundreds of thousands of music fans across the country into the smaller stores. Record Store Day was temporarily one of the top search terms on Google, and the nationwide events collectively triggered a 16-point upswing in CD sales, according to the retail reporter Nielsen SoundScan. That trend held true at Burlington’s Pure Pop Records, a locally owned store that participated both years. “It was fantastic,” reports Assistant Manager Herb Vanderpoll. “It was the busiest non-holiday day for us. We will definitely continue to do it.”

In city after city, independent businesses are organizing and creating the beginnings of what could become a powerful counterweight to the big-business lobbies that have long dominated public policy. Local business alliances have formed in more than 130 cities or states and together count some 30,000 businesses as members.

Local First Vermont, an independent state organization, is affiliated with the national movement. According to Weston-based board member Chris Morrow, LFVT has attracted about 150 members since launching in 2005. However, the nonprofit is currently merging with Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, a partnership that “makes sense on many levels and will benefit both organizations,” Morrow says. LFVT will no longer exist as a separate legal entity, but its board will serve as a committee within VBSR to guide buy-local efforts.

Similar alliances across the U.S. are calling on consumers to choose independent businesses and local products more often when they purchase goods and services. Doing so, they say, is critical to rebuilding middle-class prosperity, averting environmental collapse and rejecting corporate uniformity.

Even in Vermont, where “small, local and independent” describes the majority of businesses, big-box retailers have taken firm hold — and indeed been welcomed — in some communities. Particularly in an economic downturn, shoppers are readily lured by the lower prices of a giant such as Wal-Mart. The problem is, such short-term thinking is not good for the community in the long run.

Even in the recession, though, buy-local initiatives appear to be giving some small businesses an edge over their chain competitors, according to a January 2009 survey of 1100 independent retailers conducted by the 35-year-old Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which has offices in Minneapolis and Washington, D.C. The survey also found that, while the Department of Commerce reported a plunge in overall retail sales of almost 10 percent over the 2008 holidays, independent retailers in cities with buy-local campaigns saw an average sales drop of just 3 percent from the previous year.

Corporations Take Note

The localization trend has not slipped the notice of corporate executives and the research firms that advise them. In its annual consumer survey, the New York-based branding firm BBMG found a notable increase in the number of people who reported that it was “very important” to them whether a product was grown or produced locally: That contingent climbed from 26 to 32 percent in the last year alone. “It’s not just a small cadre of consumers anymore,” says founding partner Mitch Baranowski.

“Food is one of the biggest gateways, but we’re seeing this idea of ‘local’ spread across other categories and sectors,” says Michelle Barry, senior vice president of the Hartman Group in Washington. A report published by Hartman last year noted, “There is a belief that you can only be local if you are a small and authentic brand. This isn’t necessarily true; big brands can use the notion of local to their advantage as well.” Barry explains: “Big companies have to be much more creative in how they articulate local … It’s a different way of thinking about local that is not quite as literal.”

One way corporations try to claim next-door-neighbor cred is to stock a token amount of locally grown produce, as Wal-Mart has done in some of its supercenters. The chain’s local-food offerings are usually limited to a few of the main commodity crops of the state in question, which sit amid a sea of industrial food and other goods shipped from the far side of the planet. Yet this modest gesture has won Wal-Mart glowing coverage in numerous daily newspapers. Few ask the salient question: Does Wal-Mart, which now captures more than one of every five dollars Americans spend on groceries, create more and better opportunities for local farmers than the grocers it replaces?

Wal-Mart, like other chains, has learned that tossing around the word “local” is a relatively inexpensive way to convey civic virtue. “It’s easier for companies to do than to improve how their employees are treated, or adopt a specific sustainability practice around their carbon footprint,” says Barry.

Redefining Local

Yet another corporate strategy is to redefine the term “local” to mean not locally owned or locally produced, but just nearby. The term is ripe for manipulation, notes the consumer-research firm Mintel, which counsels companies on how to “craft marketing messages that appeal to locally conscious consumers” — and on how to avoid “charges of ‘local washing.’” The key, Mintel says, is for companies to decide what they mean by local and to disclose that clearly.

And so corporate-oriented buy-local campaigns that define “local” as the closest Lowe’s or Gap are being rolled out in cities nationwide. Some represent desperate bids by shopping malls to survive the recession and fend off online competition. Others are the work of chambers of commerce. Still others reflect the half-baked plans of municipal officials casting about for some way to stop the hemorrhaging of sales-tax revenue.

Many of these campaigns are modeled directly on grassroots initiatives. In northern California, the Arcata Chamber of Commerce is producing “Shop Local” ads that look similar to the Humboldt County Independent Business Alliance’s “Go Local” ads, except that the former’s list includes chains. Log on to the Buy Local website created by the chamber in Chapel Hill, N.C., and you will find Wal-Mart among the listings.

“That’s what’s happening with our local chamber,” laments Claire Benedict, co-owner of both Bear Pond Books and Rivendell Books in Montpelier. “They define ‘local’ differently than the downtown merchants define it; they consider any business in central Vermont local — including JC Penney and Wal-Mart. We consider it to [mean] locally owned and run.” When the Central Vermont Chamber runs “buy-local” promotions during the holidays, Benedict says, “We don’t participate because we just don’t feel we’re on the same page.”

Speaking of advertising, corporate media have jumped on the bandwagon as well: In Vermont, the Gannett-owned Burlington Free Press recently ran a buy-local promotion, though its own company headquarters are in Virginia.

Local-first organizations generally cite a study that found that, for every $100 spent locally, $45 stays in the community. One problem with claiming chain stores as “local,” besides the patent absurdity, is that this math only works if the money is spent at a locally owned business. Shop at a chain store, and only $13 of that $100 stays in the community.

Municipalities and chambers of commerce that describe “their” chains as local do so for one reason: sales tax. Big-box money is just as welcome to cities and states as is sales-tax revenue from locally owned businesses. The idea is that shopping at Wal-Mart is fine, as long as it’s not Walmart.com.

But sales-tax-driven campaigns may do more harm than good to local economies, according to Jeff Milchen, cofounder of the American Independent Business Alliance, a national advocate based in Bozeman, Mont. “If you encourage people to shop at a big-box store that takes sales away from an independent business, you’re just funneling more dollars out of town,” he says. “Because, unlike chains, local businesses buy lots of goods and services, like accounting and printing, from other local businesses.” Moreover, notes LFVT’s Morrow, “Local business owners live here; their kids go to school here. They make decisions based on what is good for the local community. In Vermont and other states,” he adds, “chain stores might close down for reasons that have nothing to do with the community.”

The irony of trying to reverse the decline in city revenues by encouraging people to shop at the local mall is that the mall itself may be the problem. The solution may lie in the opposite direction. The City of Berkeley, for example, has managed to post a small increase in revenue at the same time many California cities are facing budget cuts and even bankruptcy. Part of the reason is that Berkeley has more or less said no to shopping malls and big chain stores and remained instead a city of locally owned businesses that primarily serve local residents. That creates a much more stable revenue base. Berkeley hasn’t benefited from the temporary boom that a new regional mall might create, but neither has it gone bust.

Will “Big Local” Triumph?

Will corporations succeed in co-opting “local” — or at least in muddling the term until it loses its meaning? Faux-local campaigns may be more transparent to residents of a small state like Vermont. But, the Hartman Group’s Barry suggests, “For many consumers, these things are not being called into question much. They say, ‘Hey, it’s my local Wal-Mart or my local Frito-Lay truck.’ It depends where you are on the continuum and how you define local, which is a term that is really up for grabs.”

The very possibility of local washing has prompted many local-business advocates to reconsider their language and favor the word “independent.” That is not yet the case in Vermont. “We use ‘locally owned and independent’ as a phrase,” says LFVT’s Morrow. “I think Vermonters understand local.”

Here, the AG’s office has continued its crusade to protect the state’s name in commerce. Nevertheless, there are a handful of insidious methods companies use to insinuate the presence of “Vermontyness” where none exists. For example, the phrase “Green Mountain” is as yet unregulated. Hence it’s legal for TW Garner Food Company of Winston-Salem, N.C., to manufacture and sell the formerly made-in-Vermont Green Mountain Gringo salsa.

Since the average consumer may not be up to date on culinary mergers and acquisitions, it’s possible for a brand — regardless of whether it uses a state’s name or nickname — to retain “local” cred long after it has stopped being produced locally. McKenzie Country Classics remains headquartered in Vermont, but the meats are made in Massachusetts.

Whatever their short-term success rate, corporate local-washing efforts may backfire to the extent that they end up raising consumers’ hackles — and their awareness. And that awareness may lend weight to the case for shifting our economy toward small-scale, local and independent commerce.

“I think people are going to recognize that these [claims] aren’t authentic,” concludes the ABA’s Cullen. “And that’s going to make the real thing all the more powerful.”

About the author:

Stacy Mitchell is a senior researcher with the New Rules Project in Minneapolis, and author of Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses (Beacon, 2006).

An insider's perspective on the healthcare debate

From today's "Democracy Now!" broadcast:

“They Dump the Sick to Satisfy Investors”: Insurance Exec Turned Whistleblower Wendell Potter Speaks Out Against Healthcare Industry


As the debate over healthcare reform intensifies on Capitol Hill, we spend the hour with a former top insurance executive who’s now exposing the industry’s dirty secrets. Wendell Potter once served as the head of corporate communications at CIGNA, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies. We speak to Potter about his own transformation from industry mouthpiece to whistleblower, the healthcare industry’s extensive PR and lobbying machine, the campaign to discredit Michael Moore’s film Sicko, and the insurance industry’s most pressing task: the fight against a public option, let alone a single-payer system.

Home away from home...

Lately, I've been spending my time at Jeff's place in Waterbury. Without water, the camp in Worcester was a little too "Walden" for my long-pampered lifestyle.

The stormy sky, and accompanying below-normal temperatures, has been a common feature since my arrival in Vermont. Even Vermonters worry this may be a year without a Summer.

A Ride Through New Hampshire's White Mountains

Jeff with his new (not nearly so inferior yellow) R1200GS. At Beaver Pond, White Mountains, New Hampshire.



Patio dining at "May Kelly's Cottage Irish Restaurant and Pub" in North Conway, New Hampshire. May's offers a homey, welcoming atmosphere and excellent Irish grub.



The entry at "May Kelly's"



The Mt. Washington Hotel - where the elite retreat from the masses - venue for the 1944 Bretton Woods Monetary Conference. 6,288-foot Mt. Washington (pictured right) holds the world record for the highest recorded surface wind. On April 12, 1934 the staff of the Mount Washington Observatory clocked winds gusting to 231 miles per hour.

Noam Chomsky on “Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours”

From today's "Democracy Now!" broadcast:



At 80 years old, Chomsky is still one of this nation's foremost intellects and a vital foil illuminating the "business as usual" mindset of our government, military and financial institutions.

Food, Inc.

Click to view the movie trailer:



Read a brief but very insightful "Newsweek" interview with Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.

Catching up with a high school buddy

The last time I saw my high school buddy Phil Faye was in 1974, I think. We met for a beer at "Sweet Fire Barbecue" in Claremont, New Hampshire. Joining us is Phil's youngest son, Nathan.



Best friends in high school, Phil went off to the Air Force Academy and a productive career in the Air Force, as I went off to UCLA, the U.S. Navy, life in a cult and the corporate world of wine.



In 1973, Phil and I crossed the U.S. on motorcycles - he on a Suzuki 550, and I on a BMW R75/5. It has been many years since he had one, but hopping on my GS, he looked quite comfortable.

Buckleys

Father and son, Tim and Jeff Buckley. Two of their most recognized songs.

The Camp

The surroundings, first looking south:



West:


Northwest:


North:


Northeast:


Some wildflowers in the small meadow out front:

These look like wild strawberries


Johnny Jump-Ups?




Don't know what this one is


And the lowly dandelion


Interior clutter




And what's living in the woods without a guitar? So, I found this beauty, a Martin HD-28, on "eBay".

New Home

At the end of March, I packed all my worldly possessions, including the motorcycle, into a small "Penske" van and moved across the country to Vermont, where my brother Jeff and I own a small parcel of land with a cabin on it. Since I am paying for this property, I decided to go and learn more about it, experience what it is to live there in the woods.



I learned that Vermont has a fifth season, "mud season". The road up Hampshire Hill was so muddy, the "Penske" van couldn't get closer than several miles from the cabin. A couple days later, I borrowed Jeff's four-wheel-drive Honda Pilot to haul in some of my possessions.

Before I could reach the "hunting camp", I had to dig a path through this icy snow bank that a plow had pushed across our trail. It took me about an hour, during which I began to appreciate what Vermonters deal with all winter long.



The "hunting camp" that Jeff and I bought a few years back. I'll be hanging out here for awhile.



The inside of our cabin - very rustic. And just slightly smaller than my last apartment.



Moose print outside the cabin



The camp consists of 19 acres of wooded land, and this cabin



Someone has tapped into our maple trees and is collecting sap for maple syrup



Wrightsville Reservoir, near my new home of Worcester, Vermont

Western Illinois to East Aurora, NY

Slept from about 10:00 last night until 7:00 this morning, awaking refreshed. I had spread the futon out completely and that made a difference. Much more comfortable! Overcast, with rain forecast later on today. In Peru, Illinois, I stopped at the “Starbuck’s” and enjoyed the brief interaction with a woman about my age. Her rough, countryish edge was all the more endearing. The ever-present “Starbuck’s” corporate soundtrack (this time classical) would drive me crazy if I had to listen to it constantly. (The commitment businesses make to providing an environment with music sometimes has unintended consequences.)

Suddenly thrust into a cold gray wintry landscape, with cracked and heaved pavement, dirty snow and prematurely rusted vehicles, I sensed a growing depression. It is beginning to hit me: "I’m really moving!" But there’s no going back. I need to take responsibility for my decision.

Back on the road, south of Chicago, I heard a wonderful speaker on the Moody Broadcasting Network: Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer. His sermon “Running to Win” condemns the “deity of mankind” and “globalism”. His voice drips with guilt-inducing judgment and contempt. It's marvelous stuff!

Forgiveness is a huge theme in Christianity. Forgiveness is essential, because we are ALL SO GUILTY!

Afterward, I heard Nancy Turner interview author Jill Savage on the subject of “moms and religion”. I had to laugh (heathen!) because it sounded just like the famous “Pete Schweddy” interview on "Saturday Night Live".

It concerns me that this mind control cult dominates the airwaves. They place conditions on “goodness” (though they claim to love all mankind). And they talk of how persecuted they are for their beliefs. (Hardly! They would persecute the non-believers - and do so throughout their broadcasts.)

The Indiana Turnpike is expensive, in more ways than one. Gas stations that hold the service area concessions charge ten to twenty cents more per gallon than stations just off the tollway.

Having enough of Christianity, I turned to NPR, which I’ve managed to receive across most of the country. They featured a story on small-scale logging in New Hampshire. The woodcutter spoke of the “transition forest”, which is unusually diverse. It made me eager to get out and see what’s on our Vermont property. He said the “mud season” puts a stop to their logging, and that it seems to be coming earlier each year.

“Fresh Air” featured an interview with Dr. Robert Martinson, author of A Life Worth Living. He discussed “end of life” issues in the hi-tech age, where the ability to keep people alive artificially may just perpetuate their suffering and be contrary to their wishes.

Through the day, the wind moved around from southeast to northeast, which seemed to indicate I was moving into the counterclockwise "curl" of a low pressure area.

Sean Hannity enlightened me. According to my buddy, the “media elite are controlling what you see and hear.” Well, I guess we all kind of suspect as much. But who's your boss Mr. Hannity? Don't you think that Mr. Murdoch would qualify as "elite"?

I couldn't resist going back to the Christian networks. Listened to Bible stories, embellished to better fit the current culture. The preachers invent little details where needed (we won't call them "untruths".) To emulate the behaviors Christians insist are the path of "righteousness", there is no need of religion, no need of a mythical higher power, no need for the promise of Heaven nor threat of Hell. It is in our nature, sillies. It is called "conscience".

By the way, I hear that West Virginia just passed legislation permitting “In God We Trust” license plates. (I had just seen one today, though I'm not sure what state it was from.) At least it doesn't say "In a Christian God we trust." (Not yet anyway.)

Suddenly ("out of the blue", but perhaps in response to the jostling from rough roads) it occurred to me – leaving the bike on the sidestand was probably not a good idea. All the rocking is bound to fatigue the metal. One of these days, it’s simply going to fall over on me. (Note for future travel!)

Crossing the northeast corner of Ohio and into Pennsylvania was a relief to the senses, as the land is covered in rich forests, and grass is beginning to grow. And just over the Pennsylvania line, the pavement turns perfectly smooth. My focus was set on Erie as a final stopping point today. I would settle into a hotel room, rest and work on notes, then leisurely move on to East Aurora once Priscilla signaled she was ready for my arrival.

I ran the fuel tank nearly empty, limping into the Erie metropolitan area. Exited the freeway and into the most ugly of human blights: the big box super centers. Miles square of asphalt, retail outlets, traffic and signals. And the intense energy that derives from this capitalist craziness. To think that they replaced the forests with this hell! Quickly refueled and moved on. Up the road, I inquired at a “Day’s Inn”. $70, $60 with AAA. The property was decrepit and neglected.

A few miles beyond, I found a brand new "Holiday Inn Express". $100 a night. It is curious that although the hotel was set high enough to have a view of Lake Erie, it was sighted (perpendicular to the shore) so that none of the rooms faced the lake. I guess this way, all rooms would have a glancing view of the lake.

I talked with the manager, a young South Asian fellow who had moved from Cleveland this past winter (and found the winter here much more harsh.) I told him I could not afford the price this time, though I was well-acquainted with their hotels. He recently attended a tasting of local wines and was impressed with the selection. He said there were 20 wineries in the area! I of course had to burst his bubble, replying that there are about 400 in the local area around Santa Rosa. A regrettable display of self-importance!

Stopped at the first New York State Thruway Service Area. Trucks are not allowed to idle their engines in the Service Area. (If they can do this here, why is this not done at other truck stops?) They offer free wi-fi, but my computer battery was dead. I was determined to find an outlet I could plug into. After fifteen minutes of searching, I was incredulous. They had done well in their campaign to prevent plug-ins and people "camping out" on the wi-fi. I could have stayed overnight in the parking area, but a look at the map showed a campground at Evangola Beach. I set out in search of the place our family had visited over 50 years ago.

Along the way, I stumbled upon a “Tim Horton’s” and stopped in for a soup, sandwich and coffee combo. I asked one of the teenagers behind the counter how to get to Evangola (within 5 miles of the restaurant) and she shrugged, indicating she had never heard of it. Fortunately, a customer gave precise directions. But the campground was still closed for the winter. So I followed U.S. 20 toward Buffalo, alert for deer crossing the dark highway. Reached East Aurora around 9:00.

It was too late to disturb Priscilla, so I drove to a public park a few blocks from her house.

***

11:00 p.m. Parked at Hamlin Park, East Aurora

A train just passed nearby, a helicopter (life flight?) earlier, and there's a surprising number of cars driving this old neighborhood. But when these sounds are absent, it is incredibly quiet. Lights burn in the grand old houses encircling the park. I am painfully aware of the noise I make pulling into the parking slot, closing the cab door, rolling open the cargo bay door. I feel I must be under the scrutiny of a dozen pairs of eyes. A couple bunnies prance around in the grass. A mild breeze is picking up – out of the south now. I’m hoping for rain to sooth me to sleep. I lie down in the back of the truck, the roll-up door partially opened to the park. I hadn’t expected to reach East Aurora today, and was very reluctant to surprise Priscilla.

Again, it's starting to sink in: "I’m actually moving."

Across the plains..and the Christian Nation

Up again at 6:00 a.m. - not a bad rest, considering the circumstances. On the road by 6:30. Though a chance of snow had been predicted, there was no trace. No snow, but the landscape is a wintry brown. Actually browns, grays, gold tones and a sprinkling of dark evergreen.

Nebraska feels more civilized than the states to the west. Maybe the grass helps, but it also feels like there is more respect for the land. The rest stops are nice – a far cry from those crude and poorly-maintained stops in Nevada. The road is in good condition and there appears virtually no litter along the interstate.

The radio continued occupying most of my attention. It was quaint to listen to two DJs on a Northeast Colorado station spend five minutes just talking about “wind”. A conversation as normal as any. They said it was a crazy year, and it echoed last night’s conversation at “McDonald’s”.

Approaching North Platte, a yellow haze hung below the stratus cloud layer. Soon I came upon the source: a huge coal-fired power plant located between I-80 and Wetland. “Clean Coal”? I always laugh when I hear that marketing-generated sanitization. Maybe the wind usually “takes care of the problem” - that tell-tale haze of sulfurous fumes - but it was not the case this morning. It would be interesting to study the relative incidence of lung disease and asthma downwind of the plant.

In North Platte, a welcome sight: “Starbuck’s”! I was going to take photos as I used Stacey’s gift card at “Starbuck’s” stores across the country, but my “take it slow” trip had succumbed to impatience. Inside the coffee shop, a couple of guys are talking about hunting ducks out on the ice. The staff is all middle-aged women, friendly and chatty. A rinse of my face at the bathroom sink feels refreshing. With coffee and a pastry, I sit thinking about the “Starbuck’s” supply chain. It’s almost invisible, which is a compliment. I’ve never seen a truck supplying them, yet each coffee shop has fresh, consistent product.

The high temperature today is predicted to be 35 in Western Nebraska, 55 in Eastern Nebraska. Suddenly, I am eager to get out where the cold and warm fronts meet - see some weather!

It’s a bit difficult writing notes as I drive. Here is one place a tape recorder would be helpful. (Assuming of course there might arise an occasion when I have something significant to say.)

Maybe I’ll take a room in the next few states? Take time to rest and clean up.

Back to the radio and the Christian Nation. Always referring to God as “he” reinforces the patriarchal order of Christianity. Woman’s proper place is as man’s servant. It is obvious to me that you don’t need God or Jesus to be good, to follow “the Golden Rule”. How, in the Christian teachings, are you supposed to “forgive yourself” while being constantly flogged as a sinner?

The Bible is taken as the literal truth, but only the New Testament, which somehow replaces the “defective” Old Testament. So the 2,000-year-old truth is relevant, while the 3,000 year-old truth is not. Even then, the preachers conveniently pick and choose their admonitions. Thou shalt not kill. (Well, in war it’s okay. Or it’s okay to kill “terrorists”.) Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. (Except we should not pay taxes to irresponsible governments.) Thou shalt not bear false witness. (But slander “the enemy” at every opportunity.) Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. (It doesn't say anything about children.)

Having personal experience with cult mentality, I recognize a regimen designed to maintain a passive, compliant, guilt-ridden, uncreative population. We called it “formatory thinking”, and little did we realize at the time we were among the most “formatory”.

When I hear interpreters of the Bible refer to minute details of Jesus’ life, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion (as if they were there,) no one ever acknowledges that it is all "hearsay". Not in the now common sense, but it was an oral tradition passed on for decades before being committed to parchment, stone or whatever medium was used. And we know how stories passed down are subject to alteration and embellishment. (Indeed, when compared to one another, the Gospels abound with important discrepancies and omissions. Why? Because it is myth.)

I listen in amusement as Sean Hannity struggles to reconcile his own contradictions over murder: abortion is murder because the fetus is “innocent”, whereas a death row inmate is not. He labels himself part of the “Conservative Underground”. What a joke. Underground? What could be more in-your-face than Fox's campaign of fear?

There is really very little variety in radio these days. Networks have been consolidated under a few large corporations. All are selling a product - nothing more. (The Fox affiliates seem to be bullish on gold right now.) It is an unfortunate use of the medium. Radio certainly could serve a higher purpose - to educate and inform. As much as any network, NPR attempts this, however, (since much of their funding has been killed by conservative campaigns) they are conducting a nationwide pledge week, so much of their content has been curtailed. In Central Nebraska, I pick up “93.5 The Hawk”. I don’t know why “classic rock” stations require these studly names, but they all seem to originate from the same dull marketing agency.

Near Grand Island, as the plains gave way to cropland, I picked up a headwind. Until now, I had enjoyed a tailwind much of the time. My general sense is that wind flows from west to east across the U.S., but obviously, there are many exceptions!

On the outskirts of Omaha came the first sighting of a “Cracker Barrel” restaurant! In celebration, I had to indulge. I wasn’t particularly hungry, but there is this thing about travel. Ordered the “Chicken Fried Chicken”, potatoes and cole slaw, along with a raspberry lemonade. Oh…I should have resisted.

Things improve as we move eastward: Iowa rest stops offer free wi-fi! Rolled across the hilly Iowa countryside and set my sights on Moline, Illinois, where I figured I’d take a room at the same “Best Western” motel and visit the same Mexican restaurant from a previous journey. After dark, I crossed the broad expanse of the Mississippi River. On the eastern banks, low-lying areas are flooded, much like southern bayous. Ramshackle homes seem just a few feet above the waterline. What a tenuous existence. In Moline, I was a bit surprised at the deteriorated conditions. The roads were bad. Found “Los Agaves” restaurant. It’s parking lot was atrocious, with potholes everywhere. Crawled through, hoping not to upset my cargo.

I ordered dinner, though again, I really wasn’t that hungry. The chicken fajitas were good, but the portion far too large – possibly enough to feed four! Unwilling to carry leftovers in the truck, I left half the meal on the plate. “Los Agaves” was not such a great idea. Having spent too much money on food today, I decided I would avoid the added expense of a room.

Considered driving on past Chicago, to avoid tomorrow morning’s rush hour traffic, but my eyes were fatiguing and judgment deteriorating, and I couldn’t trust my reflexes in the woodlands of Western Illinois, where deer might present a hazard. At a rest stop near Princeton, Illinois I turned off I-80 for the night. This facility separates the trucks from the autos by a wide grassy area, so the engine noise was less intrusive. Backed the truck to the curb, so the rear of the box would face away from the interstate. And tonight I searched out a pair of earplugs to assure a good rest.

About 2,200 miles traveled thus far – in about 48 hours. Crossing the country by motorcycle in recent years, I was increasingly eager to avoid the interstates. Driving a truck is a different matter. Extra miles and frequent stops are expensive. This ride is purely functional – get to the opposite side of the country.

Christian Nation

The sky was just beginning to grow light when I rolled open the rear door at 6:00. During the night, a big rig parked right alongside my truck, with its engine running – very annoying. Awoke to a cold, desolate landscape. It was discouraging to view man’s impact on the land. Out here, the wind-carried litter scatters across the desert. Out of the northwest, a weather front is moving in.

Out on the highway again, the radio my companion, I listened to the “Pilgrim Radio” station, which covers the West. Contemporary Christian music generally strikes me as lacking creativity. They are good imitators, but always seem a decade behind current musical trends. As I listen, I hear the Christian version of Bono, Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam, Cold Play.

In Christian fundamentalism, we have the opportunity to witness, in plain view, a cult "brainwashing" its compliant followers. (Having spent thirteen years of my life in one, the cult programming is fairly clear to me.) “Pilgrim” broadcasts to Rural America, targeting a gullible and vulnerable population. Rather than listen to that "crap", I decided to try singing (using my own god-given lack of talent.) It has been a while!

My initial impressions on this first full day of driving: Nevada seems like the “armpit of the USA”. At least along the interstate, the landscape is trashed, scarred and plundered. Mineral extraction is a huge industry in Nevada. AS I have mentioned before, it seems to be the nation's quarry. During the last couple hours of the drive into Elko, I was growing sleepy, and caught myself drifting towards the shoulder.

In Battle Mountain, I had searched for a shop featuring giant cinnamon rolls. Henry had suggested it was well worth the stop. I asked a few locals if they knew of such a place, but they didn’t. With the truck, I was not about to ride around town searching. Perhaps Henry was mistaken about the location. I moved on. In Elko, I asked a young mother, and she seemed to know exactly the place I was searching for: “Donuts ‘n Mor”. She provided detailed directions. Just inside the door, I spotted giant cinnamon rolls. But a maple and pecan-covered doughnut caught my eye. Ordered two, and a coffee. Out in the truck, I tried them. Both the coffee and doughnut were terrible! Leaving downtown in disappointment, I approached the freeway and found a shopping center with a “Starbuck’s”. I chucked the remainder of the “Donut’s ‘n Mor” stuff.

Curiously, there seems to be a home construction boom in Elko, and a new and attractive Great Basin College campus.

Continuing on my journey, I listened to more Christian radio. (Guess I was bored.) Mythology, tribalism, divisiveness, greed and power. That’s what this brand of religious fundamentalism represents. They seek to separate and divide – believers from non-believers, us and them. They speak of “the enemy”, meaning all “non-believers”. The station I tuned to is operated by “CSN International”. The preachers attack Buddhism, Islam, Mormonism, Agnosticism, etc. “There is only one way.” Their talk rings as true as a late night “infomercial”. The pseudo-authority demonstrated by the ability to quote chapter and verse from the Bible is just that - pseudo. They are merchants of mythology and false “profits”. Like all scammers, they are merely selling a product to the naive. All alternative views are excluded and condemned. Though their own Christ said “give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s,” one minister attacks the government that “raises my taxes every year.” I'm sure his non-profit organization doesn't complain about their tax exemption.

On the eastern slopes of Pilot Peak, a huge lime mine (researched later) is dismantling a mountain with remarkable efficiency. This same process is occurring all over the globe. Do any of us have the foresight to project where this all leads? (I was absolutely dumb-founded by the destruction of the Andes at Antamina, Chile.)

Seeking further entertainment, I listened to the “Sean Hannity Show”. The guy is paranoid, and instills such fear in his audience. He condemns the Obama Administration for not talking about the Constitution and rule of law in their first 75 days. He calls his movement “Conservatism in Exile”, though it hasn’t left us. (I wish it were in exile!) Its shrill voice is heard throughout the land. He rants about the rise of socialism and death of capitalism under Obama.

Eastern Nevada is much easier on the eyes. It's mountainous, with thin forests and grasses softening the harsh landscape. Crossed to Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats. Made an illegal u-turn through the median to cross over to the opposite side and visit a rest area for westbound travelers. (Out here on the Flats, a big yellow truck making a u-turn through the median is an easy target. But I was lucky.) The site provided an excellent vantage point out onto the Flats. Took some photos. Traveling along I-80 west of Salt Lake City, there is a huge coal-fired power plant (“clean coal?”) and then an enormous mine – apparently Kennecott Copper. The landscape is being rearranged on a monumental scale. The “Wasatch Front” provides a dramatically beautiful setting for SLC. The news talked of snow moving into the area today, so I was concerned about crossing the Wasatch, and the Rockies of Southern Wyoming.

Taking inventory: so far, I’ve eaten the “In-N-Out” stuff, about 5 or 6 cookies, coffee, coffee cake, bread, fireballs, and a tangerine. A junk food kind of trip. (There's something about travel that, for me, says "indulge"!)

Climbing the mountains beyond Salt Lake City, I’m amazed to see the development around Park City – custom homes cover the hillsides. Did Park City even exist when I crossed these mountains in 1970? (Back then, I crossed to the south, from Provo to Heber City, and wasn't even aware of the existence of a Park City.) In Utah, I see many police cars parked in the highway median. Across Nevada, I saw one police car (of course, it was night for 1/3 of the crossing.)

In Western Wyoming, a bitterly cold wind was blowing. A weather forecaster mentioned that Elk Mountain was the location of some difficult driving conditions, so I was apprehensive. It was still a couple hours away, and conditions were deteriorating. Near Fort Bridger, Wyoming I stopped to photograph the giant windmills, in my opinion, an ugly sight – a visual and psychological imposition that is being unquestioningly accepted across this nation (and around the planet.) It represents a "gold rush" for the developers of these monstrosities, but I have yet to see any complete environmental and economic analysis that demonstrates windmills generate more energy than their "lifecycle" consumes. (I have written to developers, asking for such information, but received no response.) California's Altamont Pass (and many others) are blighted by these wind farms, with many hulking towers no longer operational.

On a local Wyoming rock and roll station, I hear a commercial for an adult video and toy shop. Well that’s different! Drove steadily, maintaining a fairly high speed, 70 to 80, with the Cheyenne area, beyond the Rockies, as tonight's target destination. The ride across Elk Mountain summit was a harrowing one. The climb is gradual and the road fairly straight, but the wind increased dramatically. When the snow came, it produced blizzard conditions. I knew the truck’s tires were well-worn, with light tread, so things could quickly turn dangerous. I passed numerous gateways which warn “Road Closed When Flashing”. The lights were not flashing, “but shouldn’t they be?” The snow was blowing across the road between 25 and 50 mph. I was encouraged onward by a loose line of trucks up ahead. ("If they can make it...") But I briefly panicked when I could no longer see the tire ruts in the snow left by the traffic ahead. I was constantly scanning the shoulders for escape pull-outs, should that become necessary. (“If I find a pull-off, I could pass the night in the truck.”) The road leveled out, and the snow eased. I came upon an illuminated interchange. I had reached the summit of the Elk Mountain pass. On the eastern side, as I began a very gradual descent, emergency vehicles hurried westward in the opposite lanes. Maybe they were closing the highway? Once over the top, the storm quickly subsided and visibility returned. Soon, the pavement was clear and dry. Now my only concern was the cold. The overnight forecast for Cheyenne was 16 degrees. Not good for the wine I was hauling! I envisioned the wine freezing and bottles bursting. “I must keep moving, down from the Continental Divide, towards the Mississippi.”

I stopped in Cheyenne to refuel, and to try the “Sonic Drive-In”. But as I pulled out of the gas station, the lights at “Sonic” were extinguished. An insult! Damn – I was ten minutes too late. Well, there was a “Burger King” up the road. But it was the same story. They all seem to close at 10:00. Up the highway, I exited and followed signs for a “McDonald’s”, but it is nearly 5 miles from I-80! They were open. Over a chicken sandwich, fries and a soda, I chatted up the night manager. She talked of the crazy weather in Cheyenne, and said it never used to be like this. Without a doubt, she attributed the changes to global warming.

“Classic rock” radio show formats all seem the same. Well, maybe not Western Nebraska’s KSID (“The Blast”). It advertises “the best in Rock and Roll”, but as I listened, no one seemed to be minding the studio. Programming was on auto-pilot. Out of curiosity, I listened for over half an hour, and heard the same weather forecast and KSID promotion over 16 times, over 30 commercials, and not a single song. Near Sydney, I made another illegal u-turn across the median to reach a rest stop on the west-bound side of I-80. It’s cold! Here, it was forecast to reach into the low 20s. I pulled up to the end of a line of trucks. Lots of noise, so close to the interstate, and from all the trucks idling. The Wyoming roads had been pretty good, but "bouncy" and opening up the back, I was pleased to find that my cargo had not shifted from the jostling.

I made up my comfortable bed, rolled down the rear cargo door and went to sleep after 1:30. 1,125 miles driven in the past 24 hours. It seems sometimes that I do a lot of driving, but the million plus miles I have behind me are nothing compared to most of these truckers out here.

Wind farm near Fort Bridger, Wyoming

Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah

A move to the opposite shore

I was at the Santa Rosa Penske Truck Rental at 7:00 a.m. As promised, Sergio stopped by to see if I needed help, but seeing I was being tended to, went on to his job. After searching throughout the Santa Rosa area for some sort of ramp that would allow me to load my motorcycle into the moving van, I had received permission from the Penske folks to use a small platform out front of their store. Apparently the concrete platform had been used to display cars.

An older employee assigned to assist me said they had a ramp out back that might work better, and took me to have a look. An ancient concrete ramp stood out in the truck lot. It looked like it might work. Then he suggested “why don’t we just put it on a lift gate?” A brilliant idea: use the lift gate of another truck to raise the motorcycle to where I could just roll it into my van. It turned out to be very simple.

Once loaded, I parked the bike on it’s sidestand, nose into the forward bulkhead, then used a couple tie-downs to secure it to bulkhead pad eyes. Next stop, "Anchor Storage", where it took about two hours to pile everything in the truck and close out of my account. Home to clean up, then out to “Flying Goat Coffee” to hold “office hours”. Over the next few hours, Jessica joined me during her break, then the Clevelands showed up bearing gifts of homemade chocolate chip and “M&M” cookies, dried apples and candied ginger. We moved into the sun outside. Rita and Stacey arrived, and they too had gifts. Rita brought a story she had written and Stacey gave me a “Starbuck’s” gift card. I laughed, and then told her how I looked forward to “Starbuck’s” when traveling cross-country, as much of the coffee "out there" in the U.S. is terrible. Giancarlo wished me well, and said he’d like to come out and visit, once he gets another motorcycle.

As I talked with Jessica, I suddenly concluded there’s no sense in waiting around for an early departure tomorrow morning. I was all packed up and I’d rather not deal with the morning commute traffic. At home, I loaded up the cleaning supplies, and gave the apartment a final vacuuming, then told the Moritas I’d be leaving tonight. They said they were not prepared to see me go. They inspected the apartment and were amazed how little there was for them to do. They were quite emotional. They said it looked perfect and that the next resident would be “blessed”. Left about 7:15 p.m., as Henry and Charlene waved good-bye, tears in Charlene’s eyes. Sonoma County roads seem terrible, the truck amplifying all the surface defects.

My mind focused on one final meal in California's Wine Country, I arrived at “Villa Corona” in Napa a few minutes too late. The “closed” signs were posted, and the last customers leaving. So I set my sights on the uniquely West Coast “In-N-Out Burger” in Auburn. Reached there at 9:50. Only 5 diners! This is almost unheard of for this popular restaurant chain. The standard meal: burger (a "Double-Double Animal"), fries and a chocolate milk shake.

Interstate 80 over Donner Summit is in horrible condition, the right lane deeply rutted from truck traffic. I haven’t seen such bad pavement since crossing the Andes between Santiago and Mendoza. Repairs are imminent, but it is shocking to see how far the rich state of California allowed conditions to deteriorate. It is clearly hazardous.

After refueling in Sparks, Nevada, I camped about 60 miles east, around 2:00 a.m. The night sky was incredible. It has been a while since I’ve seen such a starry sky. Hopefully, Vermont will be as clear and dark. Slept in the back of the truck – a bit cramped, but with my sleeping bag spread over the futon, and a full-size pillow, it was fairly comfortable.

Charlene and Henry, my landlords in Santa Rosa

Farewell to my humble abode of the past three years

On a visit to Sonoma County's Don Clausen Fish Hatchery at Warm Springs Dam with my good friends Mike, Heather and Cooper Cleveland





Photos by Mike and Heather

My buddies Karla and Mathew at "1710 Coffee", Santa Rosa, my home-away-from-home for the past couple years

A Weekend at Morro Bay, California

Placing my life in the hands of others, I caught a ride with Sergio and Jessica in Serg's hot red truck.



Coastal Range west of Paso Robles, Morro Rock in the distance



Sergio and Jess sharing some olallieberry pie at "Linn's" in Cambria



Jess and Sergio pose beside the tiny tent in which they weathered the Storm of the Century



What's over the fence from our campsite? Morro Bay's sewage treatment plant!



THIS is my daughter!



The chefs roll up their sleeves in the kitchen



Nice doggie...



Walking the people



Pete, Cathie and Prana



Jessica, Jackie and Susan on the beach at Morro Bay



Sergio and Jessica at the "Top Dog Coffee Bar", Morro Bay



Elephant Seals at the Piedras Blancas rookery near San Simeon





Sergio and Jess, along California's Highway 1, south of Big Sur

I recently watched Peter Gabriel's "Secret World Live Tour" video. This particular song stayed with me. The above video is from a more recent tour. The 1993 tour can be viewed here. The 1993 performance has a combination of physical and emotional intensity somewhat lacking in the later performance.

(8/26/09 note: The 1993 performance video has been taken down from YouTube. In it's place, I'll offer this link to the opening sequence of that memorable concert. Hopefully it will remain available for a while.)

Jupiter's Travels

I purchased this book by Ted Simon before embarking upon my "America's Trip" in 2005. I had just enough time then to read a few excerpts that I thought relevant to my journey. Now I wish I had read the entire volume prior to my adventure.

In 1973, the 46-year-old Brit set out from London aboard a 500cc Triumph Tiger planning to circumnavigate the globe in 18 months. It took him four years. His story has inspired many others to take the plunge.

Reading Jupiter's Travels now, I appreciate Simon's candor, and the sharing of his own internal spiritual journey. As seems to be my habit lately, I've collected some excerpts here.

***

(In Kabaria, Tunisia, a young man invited Simon to stay with his family – in the ghetto. He wondered later if the young man had merely done it for the prestige of having an important guest.)

“I didn’t see how Mohamad thirsted for prestige. He got drunk on it, and how can I blame him? It’s all very well for me to go around feeling humble, but I must also be aware of the effect I am having on others. It could be potent.”

***

(In Algeria)

"'Chances are,' said one mechanic, 'if you don’t worry about it, it’ll go all the way with no bother.' I chose to worry. I took all the tools and spare parts I could carry, and half an hour later the oil fell out. Because I was prepared?

“Does it rain because you carry your umbrella, or because you don’t? It’s a personal matter depending on how you remember it. The way I write my own history it’s low on winning streaks. I never could gamble. I like to work things out in advance, but it bothers me to think of what I might have been missing. I’ve done too much hacking away against the grain of life. Without all that solemn effort, maybe, I could have gone further, faster, easier.

“Remember what my headmaster said thirty years ago, that tarstained old walrus: ‘Simon, you think too much.’”

***

“My feeling for the Sudanese was one of total admiration. Never had I met such unmotivated generosity, such a capacity for imbuing the simplest life with a touch of splendour. I had felt it straight away in Atbara. In the tea houses there it had been rare for me to pay, though I had tried. When it was time to settle I would find that someone had paid my bill and left before me. Only after I would remember the quiet greeting from a stranger on his way out. Or the proprietor would refuse my piaster. They were small amounts, but they added great value to the tea and made it rich.”

***

(Upon meeting meeting the “fuzzy-wuzzies” in Sudan)

“This is another reason why I am here; to experience (nothing less) the brotherhood of man. Imagine meeting these men in a London pub or an American diner. Impossible. They could never be there what they are here. They would be made small by the complexities, the paraphernalia that we have added to our lives, just as we are, although we have learned to pretend otherwise. I had come here to realize the full stature of man; here outside a grass hut, on a rough wooden bench, with no noise, no crowds, no appointments, no axe to grind, no secret to conceal, all the space and time in the world, and my heart as translucent as the glass of tea in my hand. The sense of affinity with these men is so strong that I would tear down every building in the West if I though it would bring us together like this. I understand why the Arab idea seems so perverse, so fanatical, so untrustworthy and self-destructive to the Western mind. It must be because the Arab puts an ultimate value on something we no longer even know exists. Integrity, in its real sense of being at one with oneself and one’s God, whoever and wherever that God may be. Without it he feels crippled.

“We Europeans sold our integrity for progress many years ago, and we have debased the word to mean merely someone who obeys the rules. A chasm of misunderstanding yawns between us. At this moment I know which side I want to stand.” Read more.

***

“…Africans themselves can see no advantage in keeping endangered species alive, unless it’s to make money out of sentimental foreigners.”

***

“At the time it seemed to me that what I wanted was to have my problem solved quickly and to get on my way. I had a boat to catch in Cape Town and the journey was still the main thing. What happened on the way, who I met, all that was incidental. I had not quite realized that the interruptions were the journey.”

***

“…a problem shared is a problem halved.”

***

“The bike also felt off balance, as usually happened when my mood was unstable, I got the impression of confusion, as though the power was not being transmitted cleanly, and my ear picked up noises and vibrations that fed my doubts. The responses were fractionally less positive, the gears less than crisp, the handling felt off, and the whole thing seemed to rumble along in a disconnected fashion, instead of being the tightly integrated machine I was used to.

“I was unwilling to believe that all this proceeded from my own mind, and tried to diagnose faults.”

***

“Nothing ever enchanted me so much as coming across wild animals. I thought often how human society has impoverished itself by driving this element out of its life. In Africa I began to see the human race, sometimes, as a cancerous growth so far out of equilibrium with its host, the earth, that it would inevitably bring about the destruction of both. Not an original thought, but it came to me repeatedly.”

***

(Inspired by his readings in Carl Jung's Memories, Dreams and Reflections)

“All through Africa I had felt growing in me the belief that what was going on around me, the weather, the sudden appearances of animals and birds, the way I was received by people along the way, was somehow connected to my own inner life. Here was a man of great experience and erudition not only discussing the subject and describing similar experiences from his own life, but actually providing a word for it which he had himself coined: “synchronicity,” meaning, for example, ‘when an inwardly perceived event is seen to have correspondence in external reality.’

“I was specially startled to read Jung’s remarks about mythology and the need of the individual to have some story or myth by which he can explain those things which reason and logic cannot account for. It seemed to me then that I had been close to the truth in thinking of my role as a ‘myth-maker,’ and not just for myself perhaps.”

***

“Try as I would to imagine a rosier future, I could see only ever-increasing numbers of people determined to seize on the resources of the earth and pervert them into greater and greater heaps of indestructible concrete and plastic ugliness…”

“And there seemed to be nothing that I or any individual could do that would make a jot of difference to the outcome, I met many who shared my pessimism, and some who felt personally insulted by it, but I never heard anyone propose a convincing alternative.

“It was my weakness to become obsessed by these gloomy abstractions. I made it my duty to save the world, and each time I failed I felt as lifeless and meaningless as the gray army of unborn billions whose future I was trying to settle.

“Again and again I had to be taught that one single life-giving act is worth more than a million speculations. Once, in Ethiopia, I was restored by nothing more than a smile.”

***

(Simon describes the many warnings he received prior to traveling in Colombia. Friends advised him to carry a gun. He declined. Thirty years later, I was subject to the same dire warnings. Colombia is one of the countries I'd love to return to.)

***

"The Pan-American Highway stretches out ahead of me, unbroken, all the way to the U.S.A., and I feel myself being swept along it, with no time, no energy, for anything more. I see the fascination of these Central American countries but can’t drive my imagination to take hold. Everything in me now cries ‘Enough. It’s time to stop. Give us a rest.’”

(I had a similar experience, on the road from Ushuaia to Buenos Aires, as I considered whether to continue on into Uruguay and Brazil, and dreaded the thought of passing through all the Central American countries once again.)

***

(In India)

“They (monkeys) seemed so close to enlightenment, as though at any present moment they might stumble over it and explode into consciousness, Their curiosity is extreme. They experiment with any unfamiliar object, a coin, a hat, a piece of paper, just as a human baby does, pulling it, rubbing it, sticking it in their ears, hitting it against other things. And nothing comes of it. To be so close, yet never to pierce the veil…

“I looked at myself in the same light, as a monkey given my life to play with, prodding it, trying to stretch it into different shapes, dropping it and picking it up again, suspecting always that it must have some use and meaning, tantalized and frustrated by it but always unable to make sense of it.”

(He goes on to describe the confidence the journey has given him, the limits to absorbing impressions and information, the almost god-like feelings, the fear of tempting the Fates by going beyond what was intended for humans.)

Confessions of an Eco-Sinner

Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff. British science journalist Fred Pearce travels the world investigating the "cradle to grave" stories of his stuff. This excellent book helps us connect the social, environmental and economic repercussions of our insatiable demand for "things" and the global supply chain that satisfies those demands. But the real story is the people who make up this chain. That's the fascinating revelation here.

Further discussions on the topic can be found in the New Scientist blog "Fred's Footprint".

Wired for War

To watch an amazing interview with P. W. Singer on the new use of robotics in warfare, click on the above photo. This is something Darwin, in his wildest dreams, could never have imagined. Soon robots will play an instrumental role in "natural selection".

The Voyage of the Beagle

From 1831 through 1836, Charles Darwin joined the crew of the H.M.S Beagle in circumnavigating the world. According to Darwin, "(t)he object of the expedition was to complete the survey of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, commenced under Captain King in 1826 to 1830, - to survey the shores of Chile, Peru, and of some islands in the Pacific - and to carry a chain of chronometrical measurements round the World."

Captain Fitz Roy expressed a desire to have a "scientific person" on board, and through some political interventions, the young Charles Darwin was subsequently provided a berth in the Captain's quarters. Darwin's mission was to study the geology and natural history of the lands they encountered on that voyage.

I was inspired by my own little journey to take up this volume, as in many places my trail intersected that of Darwin, some 170 years earlier. I am however astounded by the contrast (despite the "advancement" of civilization and growth of knowledge in the intervening years) between the observations of a 19th Century natural scientist and an "average" 21st Century observer. Darwin's powers of perception were indeed remarkable.

Darwin was a contemporary of both Thoreau and Whitman. As with Walden, I've extracted some passages from The Voyage of the Beagle, which, for me, struck a particular chord. I did not reference his more elaborate scientific analysis, which constitutes the majority of his work, rather those curious moments when the scientist, the product of a particular society and social class within that society, suddenly finds himself facing shocking new realities. The scientist's disciplined and dispassionate observations provide a fascinating, sometimes disturbing and occasionally humorous glimpse into his time.

The photo above, taken in February 2006, looks out across the Argentine city of Ushuaia and the Beagle Channel. Tierra del Fuego was one of the most savage and inhospitable places the young Darwin encountered. Today, frequented by cruise ships and boasting a modern airport, Ushuaia is a popular tourist destination.

February 12th marks the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. Among the commemorations, a replica of the Beagle will sail around the globe, following the original expedition's route.

Here, Darwin writes of his first meeting with "Fuegians":

"In the morning the Captain sent a party to communicate with the Fuegians. When we came within hail, one of the four natives who were present advanced to receive us, and began to shout most vehemently, wishing to direct us where to land. When we were on shore the party looked rather alarmed, but continued talking and making gestures with great rapidity. It was without exception the most curious and interesting spectacle I ever beheld: I could not have believed how wide was the difference between savage and civilized man: it is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal, inasmuch as in man there is a greater power of improvement. The chief spokesman was old, and appeared to be the head of the family; the three others were powerful young men, about six feet high. The women and children had been sent away. These Fuegians are a very different race from the stunted, miserable wretches farther westward; and they seem closely allied to the famous Patagonians of the Strait of Magellan. Their only garment consists of a mantle made of guanaco skin, with the wool outside: this they wear just thrown over their shoulders, leaving their persons as often exposed as covered. Their skin is of a dirty coppery-red colour."

Read further excerpts from The Voyage of the Beagle.


The Voyage of the Beagle is available on-line. Below, I have linked the chapters from which the excerpts are taken.

Chapter 5: Bahia Blanca

"The war is waged chiefly against the Indians near the Cordillera; for many of the tribes on this eastern side are fighting with Rosas. The general, however, like Lord Chesterfield, thinking that his friends may in a future day become his enemies, always places them in the front ranks, so that their numbers may be thinned."

Chapter 7: Buenos Ayres and St. Fe


"One of the best gifts of nature, in so grand a channel of communication, seems here wilfully thrown away -- a river in which ships might navigate from a temperate country, as surprisingly abundant in certain productions as destitute of others, to another possessing a tropical climate, and a soil which, according to the best of judges, M. Bonpland, is perhaps unequalled in fertility in any part of the world. How different would have been the aspect of this river if English colonists had by good fortune first sailed up the Plata! What noble towns would now have occupied its shores! Till the death of Francia, the Dictator of Paraguay, these two countries must remain distinct, as if placed on opposite sides of the globe. And when the old bloody-minded tyrant is gone to his long account, Paraguay will be torn by revolutions, violent in proportion to the previous unnatural calm. That country will have to learn, like every other South American state, that a republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour."

Chapter 10: Tierra del Fuego


"In the morning the Captain sent a party to communicate with the Fuegians. When we came within hail, one of the four natives who were present advanced to receive us, and began to shout most vehemently, wishing to direct us where to land. When we were on shore the party looked rather alarmed, but continued talking and making gestures with great rapidity. It was without exception the most curious and interesting spectacle I ever beheld: I could not have believed how wide was the difference between savage and civilized man: it is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal, inasmuch as in man there is a greater power of improvement. The chief spokesman was old, and appeared to be the head of the family; the three others were powerful young men, about six feet high. The women and children had been sent away. These Fuegians are a very different race from the stunted, miserable wretches farther westward; and they seem closely allied to the famous Patagonians of the Strait of Magellan. Their only garment consists of a mantle made of guanaco skin, with the wool outside: this they wear just thrown over their shoulders, leaving their persons as often exposed as covered. Their skin is of a dirty coppery-red colour.

"The old man had a fillet of white feathers tied round his head, which partly confined his black, coarse, and entangled hair. His face was crossed by two broad transverse bars; one, painted bright red, reached from ear to ear and included the upper lip; the other, white like chalk, extended above and parallel to the first, so that even his eyelids were thus coloured. The other two men were ornamented by streaks of black powder, made of charcoal. The party altogether closely resembled the devils which come on the stage in plays like Der Freischutz.

"Their very attitudes were abject, and the expression of their countenances distrustful, surprised, and startled. After we had presented them with some scarlet cloth, which they immediately tied round their necks, they became good friends. This was shown by the old man patting our breasts, and making a chuckling kind of noise, as people do when feeding chickens. I walked with the old man, and this demonstration of friendship was repeated several times; it was concluded by three hard slaps, which were given me on the breast and back at the same time. He then bared his bosom for me to return the compliment, which being done, he seemed highly pleased. The language of these people, according to our notions, scarcely deserves to be called articulate. Captain Cook has compared it to a man clearing his throat, but certainly no European ever cleared his throat with so many hoarse, guttural, and clicking sounds.

"They are excellent mimics: as often as we coughed or yawned, or made any odd motion, they immediately imitated us. Some of our party began to squint and look awry; but one of the young Fuegians (whose whole face was painted black, excepting a white band across his eyes) succeeded in making far more hideous grimaces. They could repeat with perfect correctness each word in any sentence we addressed them, and they remembered such words for some time. Yet we Europeans all know how difficult it is to distinguish apart the sounds in a foreign language. Which of us, for instance, could follow an American Indian through a sentence of more than three words? All savages appear to possess, to an uncommon degree, this power of mimicry. I was told, almost in the same words, of the same ludicrous habit among the Caffres; the Australians, likewise, have long been notorious for being able to imitate and describe the gait of any man, so that he may be recognized. How can this faculty be explained? is it a consequence of the more practised habits of perception and keener senses, common to all men in a savage state, as compared with those long civilized?"

(Amazing that Darwin describes his visit some 250 years after Drake and Magellan.)



"The Guasos of Chile, who correspond to the Gauchos of the Pampas, are, however, a very different set of beings. Chile is the more civilized of the two countries, and the inhabitants, in consequence, have lost much individual character. Gradations in rank are much more strongly marked: the Guaso does not by any means consider every man his equal; and I was quite surprised to find that my companions did not like to eat at the same time with myself. This feeling of inequality is a necessary consequence of the existence of an aristocracy of wealth. It is said that some few of the greater landowners possess from five to ten thousand pounds sterling per annum: an inequality of riches which I believe is not met with in any of the cattle-breeding countries eastward of the Andes. A traveler does not here meet that unbounded hospitality which refuses all payment, but yet is so kindly offered that no scruples can be raised in accepting it. Almost every house in Chile will receive you for the night, but a trifle is expected to be given in the morning; even a rich man will accept two or three shillings. The Gaucho, although he may be a cutthroat, is a gentleman; the Guaso is in few respects better, but at the same time a vulgar, ordinary fellow. The two men, although employed much in the same manner, are different in their habits and attire; and the peculiarities of each are universal in their respective countries. The Gaucho seems part of his horse, and scorns to exert himself except when on his back: the Guaso may be hired to work as a labourer in the fields. The former lives entirely on animal food; the latter almost wholly on vegetable. We do not here see the white boots, the broad drawers and scarlet chilipa; the picturesque costume of the Pampas. Here, common trousers are protected by black and green worsted leggings. The poncho, however, is common to both. The chief pride of the Guaso lies in his spurs, which are absurdly large. I measured one which was six inches in the _diameter_ of the rowel, and the rowel itself contained upwards of thirty points. The stirrups are on the same scale, each consisting of a square, carved block of wood, hollowed out, yet weighing three or four pounds. The Guaso is perhaps more expert with the lazo than the Gaucho; but, from the nature of the country, he does not know the use of the bolas".

Chapter 13: Chiloe and Chonos Island


"It is a pleasant thing to see the aborigines advanced to the same degree of civilization, however low that may be, which their white conquerors have attained."

"In most countries, forests are removed without much difficulty by the aid of fire; but in Chiloe, from the damp nature of the climate, and the sort of trees, it is necessary first to cut them down. This is a heavy drawback to the prosperity of Chiloe."

"Early on Sunday morning we reached Castro, the ancient capital of Chiloe, but now a most forlorn and deserted place. The usual quadrangular arrangement of Spanish towns could be traced, but the streets and plaza were coated with fine green turf, on which sheep were browsing. The church, which stands in the middle, is entirely built of plank, and has a picturesque and venerable appearance. The poverty of the place may be conceived from the fact, that although containing some hundreds of inhabitants, one of our party was unable anywhere to purchase either a pound of sugar or an ordinary knife. No individual possessed either a watch or a clock; and an old man, who was supposed to have a good idea of time, was employed to strike the church bell by guess."

(To Darwin, it appears station or class in society was of the utmost importance.)

"The people here live chiefly on shell-fish and potatoes. At certain seasons they catch also, in 'corrales,' or hedges under water, many fish which are left on the mud-banks as the tide falls."

Chapter 14: Chiloe and Concepcion: Great Earthquake


"During the last week I made several short excursions. One was to examine a great bed of now-existing shells, elevated 350 feet above the level of the sea: from among these shells, large forest- trees were growing. Another ride was to P. Huechucucuy. I had with me a guide who knew the country far too well; for he would pertinaciously tell me endless Indian names for every little point, rivulet, and creek. In the same manner as in Tierra del Fuego, the Indian language appears singularly well adapted for attaching names to the most trivial features of the land."

(Darwin seems to take great pride in England’s conquest of Spain and the benefits to civilization derived.)

(Darwin's description of the Great Earthquake and resulting tsunami are quite shocking. Click on the Chapter 14 link to read the story, beginning "March 4th".)

Chapter 15: Passage to the Cordillera


"March 18th. We set out for the Portillo pass. Leaving Santiago we crossed the wide burnt-up plain on which that city stands, and in the afternoon arrived at the Maypu, one of the principal rivers in Chile. The valley, at the point where it enters the first Cordillera, is bounded on each side by lofty barren mountains; and although not broad, it is very fertile. Numerous cottages were surrounded by vines, and by orchards of apple, nectarine, and peach-trees -- their boughs breaking with the weight of the beautiful ripe fruit. In the evening we passed the custom-house, where our luggage was examined. The frontier of Chile is better guarded by the Cordillera, than by the waters of the sea. There are very few valleys which lead to the central ranges, and the mountains are quite impassable in other parts by beasts of burden. The custom-house officers were very civil, which was perhaps partly owing to the passport which the President of the Republic had given me; but I must express my admiration at the natural politeness of almost every Chileno. In this instance, the contrast with the same class of men in most other countries was strongly marked. I may mention an anecdote with which I was at the time much pleased: we met near Mendoza a little and very fat negress, riding astride on a mule. She had a goitre so enormous that it was scarcely possible to avoid gazing at her for a moment; but my two companions almost instantly, by way of apology, made the common salute of the country by taking off their hats. Where would one of the lower or higher classes in Europe, have shown such feeling politeness to a poor and miserable object of a degraded race?"

"March 27th. -- We rode on to Mendoza. The country was beautifully cultivated, and resembled Chile. This neighbourhood is celebrated for its fruit; and certainly nothing could appear more flourishing than the vineyards and the orchards of figs, peaches, and olives. We bought water-melons nearly twice as large as a man's head, most deliciously cool and well-flavoured, for a halfpenny apiece; and for the value of threepence, half a wheelbarrowful of peaches. The cultivated and enclosed part of this province is very small; there is little more than that which we passed through between Luxan and the capital. The land, as in Chile, owes its fertility entirely to artificial irrigation; and it is really wonderful to observe how extraordinarily productive a barren traversia is thus rendered.

"We stayed the ensuing day in Mendoza. The prosperity of the place has much declined of late years. The inhabitants say "it is good to live in, but very bad to grow rich in." The lower orders have the lounging, reckless manners of the Gauchos of the Pampas; and their dress, riding-gear, and habits of life, are nearly the same. To my mind the town had a stupid, forlorn aspect. Neither the boasted alameda, nor the scenery, is at all comparable with that of Santiago; but to those who, coming from Buenos Ayres, have just crossed the unvaried Pampas, the gardens and orchards must appear delightful. Sir F. Head, speaking of the inhabitants, says, "They eat their dinners, and it is so very hot, they go to sleep -- and could they do better?" I quite agree with Sir F. Head: the happy doom of the Mendozinos is to eat, sleep and be idle."

(Darwin also remarked about the vineyards and winemaking in Chile.)

Chapter 16: Northern Chile and Peru

"It is impossible to be much surprised at the fear which natives and old residents, though some of them known to be men of great command of mind, so generally experience during earthquakes. I think, however, this excess of panic may be partly attributed to a want of habit in governing their fear, as it is not a feeling they are ashamed of. Indeed, the natives do not like to see a person indifferent. I heard of two Englishmen who, sleeping in the open air during a smart shock, knowing that there was no danger, did not rise. The natives cried out indignantly, 'Look at those heretics, they do not even get out of their beds!'"

"Callao is a filthy, ill-built, small seaport. The inhabitants, both here and at Lima, present every imaginable shade of mixture, between European, Negro, and Indian blood. They appear a depraved, drunken set of people. The atmosphere is loaded with foul smells, and that peculiar one, which may be perceived in almost every town within the tropics, was here very strong. The fortress, which withstood Lord Cochrane's long siege, has an imposing appearance. But the President, during our stay, sold the brass guns, and proceeded to dismantle parts of it. The reason assigned was, that he had not an officer to whom he could trust so important a charge. He himself had good reason for thinking so, as he had obtained the presidentship by rebelling while in charge of this same fortress. After we left South America, he paid the penalty in the usual manner, by being conquered, taken prisoner, and shot.

"Lima stands on a plain in a valley, formed during the gradual retreat of the sea. It is seven miles from Callao, and is elevated 500 feet above it; but from the slope being very gradual, the road appears absolutely level; so that when at Lima it is difficult to believe one has ascended even one hundred feet: Humboldt has remarked on this singularly deceptive case. Steep barren hills rise like islands from the plain, which is divided, by straight mud-walls, into large green fields. In these scarcely a tree grows excepting a few willows, and an occasional clump of bananas and of oranges. The city of Lima is now in a wretched state of decay: the streets are nearly unpaved; and heaps of filth are piled up in all directions, where the black gallinazos, tame as poultry, pick up bits of carrion. The houses have generally an upper story, built on account of the earthquakes, of plastered woodwork but some of the old ones, which are now used by several families, are immensely large, and would rival in suites of apartments the most magnificent in any place. Lima, the City of the Kings, must formerly have been a splendid town. The extraordinary number of churches gives it, even at the present day, a peculiar and striking character, especially when viewed from a short distance."

Chapter 18. Tahiti and New Zealand


"Looking at the New Zealander, one naturally compares him with the Tahitian; both belonging to the same family of mankind. The comparison, however, tells heavily against the New Zealander. He may, perhaps be superior in energy, but in every other respect his character is of a much lower order. One glance at their respective expressions, brings conviction to the mind that one is a savage, the other a civilized man. It would be vain to seek in the whole of New Zealand a person with the face and mien of the old Tahitian chief Utamme. No doubt the extraordinary manner in which tattooing is here practised, gives a disagreeable expression to their countenances. The complicated but symmetrical figures covering the whole face, puzzle and mislead an unaccustomed eye: it is moreover probable, that the deep incisions, by destroying the play of the superficial muscles, give an air of rigid inflexibility. But, besides this, there is a twinkling in the eye, which cannot indicate anything but cunning and ferocity. Their figures are tall and bulky; but not comparable in elegance with those of the working- classes in Tahiti.
But their persons and houses are filthily dirty and offensive: the idea of washing either their bodies or their clothes never seems to enter their heads. I saw a chief, who was wearing a shirt black and matted with filth, and when asked how it came to be so dirty, he replied, with surprise, 'Do not you see it is an old one?' Some of the men have shirts; but the common dress is one or two large blankets, generally black with dirt, which are thrown over their shoulders in a very inconvenient and awkward fashion. A few of the principal chiefs have decent suits of English clothes; but these are only worn on great occasions."

"On coming near one of the huts I was much amused by seeing in due form the ceremony of rubbing, or, as it ought to be called, pressing noses. The women, on our first approach, began uttering something in a most dolorous voice; they then squatted themselves down and held up their faces; my companion standing over them, one after another, placed the bridge of his nose at right angles to theirs, and commenced pressing. This lasted rather longer than a cordial shake of the hand with us, and as we vary the force of the grasp of the hand in shaking, so do they in pressing. During the process they uttered comfortable little grunts, very much in the same manner as two pigs do, when rubbing against each other. I noticed that the slave would press noses with any one he met, indifferently either before or after his master the chief. Although among the savages, the chief has absolute power of life and death over his slave, yet there is an entire absence of ceremony between them. Mr. Burchell has remarked the same thing in Southern Africa, with the rude Bachapins. Where civilization has arrived at a certain point, complex formalities soon arise between the different grades of society: thus at Tahiti all were formerly obliged to uncover themselves as low as the waist in presence of the king."

"December 30th. -- In the afternoon we stood out of the Bay of Islands, on our course to Sydney. I believe we were all glad to leave New Zealand. It is not a pleasant place. Amongst the natives there is absent that charming simplicity which is found in Tahiti; and the greater part of the English are the very refuse of society. Neither is the country itself attractive. I look back but to one bright spot, and that is Waimate, with its Christian inhabitants."

Chapter 19: Australia

"At last we anchored within Sydney Cove. We found the little basin occupied by many large ships, and surrounded by warehouses. In the evening I walked through the town, and returned full of admiration at the whole scene. It is a most magnificent testimony to the power of the British nation. Here, in a less promising country, scores of years have done many more times more than an equal number of centuries have effected in South America. My first feeling was to congratulate myself that I was born an Englishman. Upon seeing more of the town afterwards, perhaps my admiration fell a little; but yet it is a fine town. The streets are regular, broad, clean, and kept in excellent order; the houses are of a good size, and the shops well furnished. It may be faithfully compared to the large suburbs which stretch out from London and a few other great towns in England; but not even near London or Birmingham is there an appearance of such rapid growth. The number of large houses and other buildings just finished was truly surprising; nevertheless, every one complained of the high rents and difficulty in procuring a house. Coming from South America, where in the towns every man of property is known, no one thing surprised me more than not being able to ascertain at once to whom this or that carriage belonged."

"Before arriving here the three things which interested me most were -- the state of society amongst the higher classes, the condition of the convicts, and the degree of attraction sufficient to induce persons to emigrate. Of course, after so very short a visit, one's opinion is worth scarcely anything; but it is as difficult not to form some opinion, as it is to form a correct judgment. On the whole, from what I heard, more than from what I saw, I was disappointed in the state of society. The whole community is rancorously divided into parties on almost every subject. Among those who, from their station in life, ought to be the best, many live in such open profligacy that respectable people cannot associate with them. There is much jealousy between the children of the rich emancipist and the free settlers, the former being pleased to consider honest men as interlopers. The whole population, poor and rich, are bent on acquiring wealth: amongst the higher orders, wool and sheep-grazing form the constant subject of conversation. There are many serious drawbacks to the comforts of a family, the chief of which, perhaps, is being surrounded by convict servants. How thoroughly odious to every feeling, to be waited on by a man who the day before, perhaps, was flogged, from your representation, for some trifling misdemeanor. The female servants are of course, much worse: hence children learn the vilest expressions, and it is fortunate, if not equally vile ideas.

"On the other hand, the capital of a person, without any trouble on his part, produces him treble interest to what it will in England; and with care he is sure to grow rich. The luxuries of life are in abundance, and very little dearer than in England, and most articles of food are cheaper. The climate is splendid, and perfectly healthy; but to my mind its charms are lost by the uninviting aspect of the country. Settlers possess a great advantage in finding their sons of service when very young. At the age of from sixteen to twenty, they frequently take charge of distant farming stations. This, however, must happen at the expense of their boys associating entirely with convict servants. I am not aware that the tone of society has assumed any peculiar character; but with such habits, and without intellectual pursuits, it can hardly fail to deteriorate. My opinion is such, that nothing but rather sharp necessity should compel me to emigrate.

"The rapid prosperity and future prospects of this colony are to me, not understanding these subjects, very puzzling. The two main exports are wool and whale-oil, and to both of these productions there is a limit. The country is totally unfit for canals, therefore there is a not very distant point, beyond which the land-carriage of wool will not repay the expense of shearing and tending sheep. Pasture everywhere is so thin that settlers have already pushed far into the interior: moreover, the country further inland becomes extremely poor. Agriculture, on account of the droughts, can never succeed on an extended scale: therefore, so far as I can see, Australia must ultimately depend upon being the centre of commerce for the southern hemisphere, and perhaps on her future manufactories. Possessing coal, she always has the moving power at hand. From the habitable country extending along the coast, and from her English extraction, she is sure to be a maritime nation. I formerly imagined that Australia would rise to be as grand and powerful a country as North America, but now it appears to me that such future grandeur is rather problematical.

"With respect to the state of the convicts, I had still fewer opportunities of judging than on other points. The first question is, whether their condition is at all one of punishment: no one will maintain that it is a very severe one. This, however, I suppose, is of little consequence as long as it continues to be an object of dread to criminals at home. The corporeal wants of the convicts are tolerably well supplied: their prospect of future liberty and comfort is not distant, and, after good conduct, certain. A 'ticket of leave,' which, as long as a man keeps clear of suspicion as well as of crime, makes him free within a certain district, is given upon good conduct, after years proportional to the length of the sentence; yet with all this, and overlooking the previous imprisonment and wretched passage out, I believe the years of assignment are passed away with discontent and unhappiness. As an intelligent man remarked to me, the convicts know no pleasure beyond sensuality, and in this they are not gratified. The enormous bribe which Government possesses in offering free pardons, together with the deep horror of the secluded penal settlements, destroys confidence between the convicts, and so prevents crime. As to a sense of shame, such a feeling does not appear to be known, and of this I witnessed some very singular proofs. Though it is a curious fact, I was universally told that the character of the convict population is one of arrant cowardice: not unfrequently some become desperate, and quite indifferent as to life, yet a plan requiring cool or continued courage is seldom put into execution. The worst feature in the whole case is, that although there exists what may be called a legal reform, and comparatively little is committed which the law can touch, yet that any moral reform should take place appears to be quite out of the question. I was assured by well-informed people, that a man who should try to improve, could not while living with other assigned servants; -- his life would be one of intolerable misery and persecution. Nor must the contamination of the convict-ships and prisons, both here and in England, be forgotten. On the whole, as a place of punishment, the object is scarcely gained; as a real system of reform it has failed, as perhaps would every other plan; but as a means of making men outwardly honest, -- of converting vagabonds, most useless in one hemisphere, into active citizens of another, and thus giving birth to a new and splendid country -- a grand centre of civilization -- it has succeeded to a degree perhaps unparalleled in history."

"Farewell, Australia! you are a rising child, and doubtless some day will reign a great princess in the South: but you are too great and ambitious for affection, yet not great enough for respect. I leave your shores without sorrow or regret."

Chapter 21: Mauritius to England


"The various races of men walking in the streets afford the most interesting spectacle in Port Louis. Convicts from India are banished here for life; at present there are about 800, and they are employed in various public works. Before seeing these people, I had no idea that the inhabitants of India were such noble-looking figures. Their skin is extremely dark, and many of the older men had large mustaches and beards of a snow-white colour; this, together with the fire of their expression, gave them quite an imposing aspect. The greater number had been banished for murder and the worst crimes; others for causes which can scarcely be considered as moral faults, such as for not obeying, from superstitious motives, the English laws. These men are generally quiet and well-conducted; from their outward conduct, their cleanliness, and faithful observance of their strange religious rites, it was impossible to look at them with the same eyes as on our wretched convicts in New South Wales."

"I must here commemorate what happened for the first time during our nearly five years' wandering, namely, having met with a want of politeness. I was refused in a sullen manner at two different houses, and obtained with difficulty from a third, permission to pass through their gardens to an uncultivated hill, for the purpose of viewing the country. I feel glad that this happened in the land of the Brazilians, for I bear them no good will -- a land also of slavery, and therefore of moral debasement. A Spaniard would have felt ashamed at the very thought of refusing such a request, or of behaving to a stranger with rudeness."

"On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil. I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that this was the case in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have stayed in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a little boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having handed me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his master's eye. These latter cruelties were witnessed by me in a Spanish colony, in which it has always been said, that slaves are better treated than by the Portuguese, English, or other European nations. I have seen at Rio de Janeiro a powerful negro afraid to ward off a blow directed, as he thought, at his face. I was present when a kind-hearted man was on the point of separating forever the men, women, and little children of a large number of families who had long lived together. I will not even allude to the many heart-sickening atrocities which I authentically heard of; -- nor would I have mentioned the above revolting details, had I not met with several people, so blinded by the constitutional gaiety of the negro as to speak of slavery as a tolerable evil. Such people have generally visited at the houses of the upper classes, where the domestic slaves are usually well treated, and they have not, like myself, lived amongst the lower classes. Such inquirers will ask slaves about their condition; they forget that the slave must indeed be dull, who does not calculate on the chance of his answer reaching his master's ears.

"It is argued that self-interest will prevent excessive cruelty; as if self-interest protected our domestic animals, which are far less likely than degraded slaves, to stir up the rage of their savage masters. It is an argument long since protested against with noble feeling, and strikingly exemplified, by the ever-illustrious Humboldt. It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the thumb-screw be defended in one land, by showing that men in another land suffered from some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the slave owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children -- those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own -- being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty: but it is a consolation to reflect, that we at least have made a greater sacrifice, than ever made by any nation, to expiate our sin."

Cat Power

Also see this performance of "Lived in Bars" from Jools Holland.

"Song to Bobby (Dylan)":



I particularly enjoy Jim White's drumming.

Walden

Perhaps in reaction to this "age of information's" artificial urgency, I've enjoyed a retreat into the pages of Henry David Thoreau's Walden.

In these days of cell phones, iPhones and Blackberries; e-mailing, streaming, blogging, RSS feeds and texting; MySpace, Facebook, Skype and Twitter; as news, information and "social networking" is ever more insistently "pushed" into our lives, rather than "pulled" at our leisure, and when it can now, almost inescapably, invade every moment of the day, it is natural to lose capacity for reflection, introspection and even thought. As cognitive capacities are reached, something must yield. It is becoming all too clear what we have forsaken in our insatiable craving to "be connected".

And so it has been refreshing to look back 150 years or so, to a less complicated time, to one man (a "Nineteenth Century Simplifier") and his effort to simplify his cluttered life, and perhaps get at the more fundamental questions we all share.

The following are some excerpts from Walden that were, for me, particularly noteworthy. For reference, I have linked to the chapters in an on-line resource, The Thoreau Reader.

From "Chapter 2. Where I lived, and What I Lived For"

"The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air — to a higher life than we fell asleep from; and thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove itself to be good, no less than the light. That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way. After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul of man, or its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries again what noble life it can make. All memorable events, I should say, transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas say, "All intelligences awake with the morning." Poetry and art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date from such an hour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children of Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness, they would have performed something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?"

"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done."

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.'"

From "Chapter 5. Solitude"

"With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes."

"I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can "see the folks," and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate himself for his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and "the blues"; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.

"Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. Consider the girls in a factory — never alone, hardly in their dreams. It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him."

From "Chapter 6. Visitors"

"I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up. It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another. Many of our houses, both public and private, with their almost innumerable apartments, their huge halls and their cellars for the storage of wines and other munitions of peace, appear to be extravagantly large for their inhabitants. They are so vast and magnificent that the latter seem to be only vermin which infest them. I am surprised when the herald blows his summons before some Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House, to see come creeping out over the piazza for all inhabitants a ridiculous mouse, which soon again slinks into some hole in the pavement.

"One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words. You want room for your thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or two before they make their port. The bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plow out again through the side of his head. Also, our sentences wanted room to unfold and form their columns in the interval. Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them. I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the opposite side. In my house we were so near that we could not begin to hear—we could not speak low enough to be heard; as when you throw two stones into calm water so near that they break each other's undulations. If we are merely loquacious and loud talkers, then we can afford to stand very near together, cheek by jowl, and feel each other's breath; but if we speak reservedly and thoughtfully, we want to be farther apart, that all animal heat and moisture may have a chance to evaporate. If we would enjoy the most intimate society with that in each of us which is without, or above, being spoken to, we must not only be silent, but commonly so far apart bodily that we cannot possibly hear each other's voice in any case. Referred to this standard, speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout. As the conversation began to assume a loftier and grander tone, we gradually shoved our chairs farther apart till they touched the wall in opposite corners, and then commonly there was not room enough."

"But the intellectual and what is called spiritual man in him were slumbering as in an infant. He had been instructed only in that innocent and ineffectual way in which the Catholic priests teach the aborigines, by which the pupil is never educated to the degree of consciousness, but only to the degree of trust and reverence, and a child is not made a man, but kept a child."

The following two footnotes are from the Yale University Press 150th Anniversary Edition of Walden, edited by Jeffrey S. Kramer. The page number is noted.

P. 163 (after a visit to the dentist in 1851, Thoreau wrote):

"By taking the ether the other day I was convinced how far asunder a man could be separated from his senses. You are told that it will make you unconscious, but no one can imagine what it is to be unconscious – how far removed from the state of consciousness and all that we call “this world” – untilhe has experienced it. The value of the experiment is that it does give you experience of an interval as between one life and another, - a greater space than you ever travelled. You area sane mind without organs, - groping for organs, - which if it did not soon recover its old senses would get new ones. You expand like a seed in the ground. You exist in your roots, like a tree in the winter. If you have an inclination to travel, take the ether; you go beyond the furthest star."

P. 164 (from Ralph Waldo Emerson's journal concerning Thoreau:)

“It is curious that Thoreau goes to a house to say with little preface what he has just read or observed, delivers it in lump, is quite inattentive to any comment or thought which any of the company offer on the matter, nay, is merely interrupted by it, &, when he has finished his report, departs with precipitation.”

From "Chapter 8. The Village"

"One afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when I went to the village to get a shoe from the cobbler's, I was seized and put into jail, because, as I have elsewhere related, I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the State which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle, at the door of its senate-house. I had gone down to the woods for other purposes. But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run "amok" against society; but I preferred that society should run "amok" against me, it being the desperate party. However, I was released the next day, obtained my mended shoe, and returned to the woods in season to get my dinner of huckleberries on Fair Haven Hill. I was never molested by any person but those who represented the State. I had no lock nor bolt but for the desk which held my papers, not even a nail to put over my latch or windows. I never fastened my door night or day, though I was to be absent several days; not even when the next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine. And yet my house was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of soldiers. The tired rambler could rest and warm himself by my fire, the literary amuse himself with the few books on my table, or the curious, by opening my closet door, see what was left of my dinner, and what prospect I had of a supper. Yet, though many people of every class came this way to the pond, I suffered no serious inconvenience from these sources, and I never missed anything but one small book, a volume of Homer, which perhaps was improperly gilded, and this I trust a soldier of our camp has found by this time. I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough. The Pope's Homers would soon get properly distributed."

From "Chapter 10. The Baker Farm"

"Men come tamely home at night only from the next field or street, where their household echoes haunt, and their life pines because it breathes its own breath over again; their shadows, morning and evening, reach farther than their daily steps. We should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day, with new experience and character.",

From "Chapter 11. Higher Laws"

"Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater's heaven. I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes? I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also. But to tell the truth, I find myself at present somewhat less particular in these respects. I carry less religion to the table, ask no blessing; not because I am wiser than I was, but, I am obliged to confess, because, however much it is to be regretted, with years I have grown more coarse and indifferent. Perhaps these questions are entertained only in youth, as most believe of poetry. My practice is "nowhere," my opinion is here."

"We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure. The other day I picked up the lower jaw of a hog, with white and sound teeth and tusks, which suggested that there was an animal health and vigor distinct from the spiritual. This creature succeeded by other means than temperance and purity. "That in which men differ from brute beasts," says Mencius, "is a thing very inconsiderable; the common herd lose it very soon; superior men preserve it carefully." Who knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to purity? If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I would go to seek him forthwith. "A command over our passions, and over the external senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be indispensable in the mind's approximation to God." Yet the spirit can for the time pervade and control every member and function of the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established. Perhaps there is none but has cause for shame on account of the inferior and brutish nature to which he is allied. I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace.—

How happy's he who hath due place assigned
To his beasts and disafforested his mind!
. . . . . . .

Can use this horse, goat, wolf, and ev'ry beast,
And is not ass himself to all the rest!
Else man not only is the herd of swine,
But he's those devils too which did incline
Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse.

"All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity. When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another. If you would be chaste, you must be temperate. What is chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is. We speak conformably to the rumor which we have heard. From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality. In the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. An unclean person is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued. If you would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome. What avails it that you are Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely.

"I hesitate to say these things, but it is not because of the subject — I care not how obscene my words are — but because I cannot speak of them without betraying my impurity. We discourse freely without shame of one form of sensuality, and are silent about another. We are so degraded that we cannot speak simply of the necessary functions of human nature. In earlier ages, in some countries, every function was reverently spoken of and regulated by law. Nothing was too trivial for the Hindoo lawgiver, however offensive it may be to modern taste. He teaches how to eat, drink, cohabit, void excrement and urine, and the like, elevating what is mean, and does not falsely excuse himself by calling these things trifles.

"Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them."

From "Chapter 13. House Warming"

"I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without gingerbread work, which shall still consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over one's head — useful to keep off rain and snow, where the king and queen posts stand out to receive your homage, when you have done reverence to the prostrate Saturn (7) of an older dynasty on stepping over the sill; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the roof; where some may live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got into when you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping; where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg, that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, storehouse, and garret; where you can see so necessary a thing, as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and the oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments; where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trap-door, when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without stamping. A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there — in solitary confinement. Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you. I am aware that I have been on many a man's premises, and might have been legally ordered off, but I am not aware that I have been in many men's houses. I might visit in my old clothes a king and queen who lived simply in such a house as I have described, if I were going their way; but backing out of a modern palace will be all that I shall desire to learn, if ever I am caught in one."

From "Chapter 18. Conclusion"

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty, nor weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

"However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town's poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. Maybe they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society. If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me. The philosopher said: "From an army of three divisions one can take away its general, and put it in disorder; from the man the most abject and vulgar one cannot take away his thought." Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us, "and lo! creation widens to our view." We are often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of Croesus, our aims must still be the same, and our means essentially the same. Moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You are defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul."

Hike to Bald Mountain

View east across Napa Valley toward the Sierra



North-northwest with Mount St. Helena in the right background



South, looking over the town of Sonoma, San Pablo Bay to San Francisco beneath the clouds



Looking west across the Santa Rosa Plain, the Pacific lies just beyond the distant hills



Clouds hanging over Sonoma Mountain

Music to my ears

I don't know about you, but I thoroughly enjoy hearing the words "President Obama".

"At Last"

Barack and Michelle Obama's "First Dance" at the Neighborhood Ball. Beyoncé sings the Etta James cover "At Last".

(This will probably not remain on YouTube for long before ABC removes it, but for now, enjoy.)

Day One - Welcome a Real Uniter

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans. Read more.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort - even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

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. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

“Let it be told to the future world…that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive…that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it].“

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

The Return of Triangulation

by Norman Solomon

Published on Monday, January 19, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

The mosaic of Barack Obama's cabinet picks and top White House staff gives us an overview of what the new president sees as political symmetry for his administration. While it's too early to gauge specific policies of the Obama presidency, it's not too soon to understand that "triangulation" is back.

In the 1990s, Bill Clinton was adept at placing himself midway between the base of his own party and Republican leaders. As he triangulated from the Oval Office -- often polarizing with liberal Democrats on such issues as "free trade," deregulation, "welfare reform" and military spending -- Clinton did well for himself. But not for his party.

During Clinton's presidency, with his repeated accommodations to corporate agendas, a progressive base became frustrated and demobilized. Democrats lost majorities in the House and Senate after just two years and didn't get them back. Along Pennsylvania Avenue, numerous left-leaning causes fell by the wayside -- victims of a Democratic president's too-clever-by-half triangulation.

Now, looking at Obama's choices for key posts, many progressive activists who went all-out for months to get him elected are disappointed. The foreign-policy team, dominated by strong backers of the Iraq invasion, hardly seems oriented toward implementing Obama's 2008 campaign pledge to "end the mindset that got us into war." On the domestic side, big-business ties and Wall Street sensibilities are most of the baseline. Overall, it's hard to argue that the glass is half full when so much is missing. Read more.

The progressives who remain eager to project their worldviews onto Obama are at high risk for hazy credulity. Such projection is a chronic hazard of Obamania. Biographer David Mendell aptly describes Obama as "an exceptionally gifted politician who, throughout his life, has been able to make people of wildly divergent vantage points see in him exactly what they want to see."

But in the long run, an unduly lofty pedestal sets the stage for a fall from grace. Illusions make disillusionment possible.

There's little point in progressives' faulting Obama because so much of their vital work remains undone at the grassroots. A longtime Chicago-based activist on the left, Carl Davidson, made the point well when he wrote after the November election that "one is not likely to win at the top what one has not consolidated and won at the base."

By the same token, we should recognize that Obama's campaign victories (beginning with the Iowa caucuses) were possible only because of the painstaking work by antiwar activists and other progressive advocates in prior years. To make further progress possible, in electoral arenas and in national policies, the country must be moved anew -- from the bottom up.

As his administration gets underway, disappointed progressives shouldn't blame Barack Obama for their own projection or naivete. He is a highly pragmatic leader who seeks and occupies the center of political gravity. Those who don't like where he's standing will need to move the center in their direction.

Obama has often said that his presidential quest isn't about him nearly as much as it is about us -- the people yearning for real change and willing to work for it. If there's ever a time to take Obama up on his word, this is it.

Crucial issues must be reframed. The national healthcare reform debate, for instance, still lacks the clarity to distinguish between guaranteeing healthcare for all and mandating loophole-ridden insurance coverage for all. With the exception of Rep. John Conyers' single-payer bill to provide "enhanced Medicare" for everyone in the United States, each major congressional proposal keeps the for-profit insurance industry at the core of the country's medical-care system.

As for foreign policy, the paradigm of a "war on terror," more than seven years on, remains nearly sacrosanct. Among its most stultifying effects is the widely held assumption that many more U.S. troops should go to Afghanistan. Rhetoric to the contrary, Obama's policy focus appears to be fixated on finding a military solution for an Afghan conflict that cannot be resolved by military means. The escalation is set for a centrist disaster.

During his race for the White House, ironically, Obama was fond of quoting Martin Luther King Jr. about "the fierce urgency of now." But King uttered the phrase in the same speech (on April 4, 1967) that spoke of "a society gone mad on war," condemned "my own government" as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" and declared: "Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now."

Barack Obama never promised progressives a rose garden. His campaign inspired tens of millions of Americans, raised the level of public discourse and ousted the right wing from the White House. And he has pledged to encourage civic engagement and respectful debate. The rest is up to us.

Norman Solomon, a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, was an elected Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention. He is the author of "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death [1]." Video of his recent interview on C-SPAN, including discussion of Obama and the war in Afghanistan, is posted here [2].

At the Lincoln Memorial today: "This Land is Your Land"

(The video of today's concert has been removed from "YouTube" and is now only available through HBO.)

Among the memorable performances, Woodie Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land":

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me.

(Chorus)

In the squares of the city, by the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I saw my people.
As they stood hungry, I stood there whistling,
This land was made for you and me.

A great high wall there tried to stop me
A great big sign there said "private property"
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

(Chorus)

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

(Chorus)

(Thanks, Drew!)

Out of Austin - Shearwater

I first heard this interesting band a few days ago on the soundtrack for the film In Search of a Midnight Kiss. Among others, the song My Good Deed is featured on the movie soundtrack.

Shearwater seems to have been influenced by another Southwest band - Calexico - featured here playing "Quattro (World Drifts In)", one of my favorite songs from this band:

"8 Years in 8 Minutes" - The Bush Legacy in Keith Olbermann's Words

Contrast this with the White House Whitewash posted January 4th (below.)

Hopefully, after Tuesday, we'll hear fewer of Olbermann's (and Bill O'Reilly, Rachel Maddow, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter's) strident and self-righteous rants. Well, we can hope...