Purifying

We are in the age of the Great Purification

Just as fire burns the impurities from iron, and transforms it to steel, the increased average temperature of the surface of the Earth is clearing the way for a better new age. Working together, we can make it an era of increased leisure, freedom, security, health, prosperity, and comfort for all.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. As wind, fire, storm, flood, and rising ocean lead us to more cooperative activities than, say, fracking, I expect Earth will bloom again with an abundance of plants and animals, some of which are familiar and some new. I expect warmer temperatures in Pittsburgh will allow for growing banana and papaya trees. I will be growing them again this year. Neither of these plants can tolerate freezing, but, with global warming I wonder if we'll continue to have any frosts in Pittsburgh. Maybe this year they'll be able to grow to fruiting at Everybody's Garden. Right now, I am (mostly) enjoying this cold weather.

Some scientists think our species is headed for extinction soon, and so have abandoned efforts to prevent it. This assumption - that it's too late - is itself one of the problems we face. If we don't try, we won't find out if we can. Now is the time to try to do whatever each of us thinks best for ourselves, our children and their descendants, our pets, our neighborhoods, our ecosystem, our world.

Jim McCue
composter and biotech researcher
412-880-7237
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com

Green Money

The way to survive in this time of mushrooming change is to take on a thrivalist attitude. If we allow ourselves to become afraid and so act selfishly, things will be out of our control. A survivalist amasses weapons and preserved food for what seems like the "inevitable" environmental and/or warfare-caused catastrophe. A thrivalist recognizes the truth of FDR's statement that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Though this time in history is like no other in history, some basic things remain. As always, it's the best of times and the worst of times. Unprecedented environmental destruction, viciousness, ecosystem collapse go alongside the most incredible technological progress and luxury for a relatively minute number of the 7 plus billion of us. How to make a living doing good things, things that help others and help oneself sleep with a peaceful conscience?

I don't expect any more that I'm going to do that much good in the world. I do expect we here in Western Pennsylvania, just like so many other areas in the world which are suffering from war or flooding or high winds or acid waters or polluted waters or heat or forest fires or civil unrest or government brutality or terrorism,...I expect that we also will likely suffer more. It is my belief that our decisions will have a negative or positive influence on our fate. IF we get on the same page and recognize each other as family, the quantum increase in new inventions and the new possibilities opening when we converge as one workforce will allow us to play our role in helping usher in a wonderful new world that awaits. If we don't, what my mother used to say to us boys when we broke a toy we were fighting over - "Good for ya! Serve ya right!

Things are capable at this point in history of going far more wrong than most of us have ever experienced Rather than try to keep the attention of readers not wanting to read details of some of the horrors going on right now in the world that I know of, I choose rather to nurture good things like garden. But when or if all hell breaks loose here as it has in other parts of the world in this most drastic time of transition, I'll be at least a little more at peace because I tried to tell you.

I recommend two films:
The Economics of Happiness
and
Local Futures
www.localfutures.org/ www.localfutures.org/ .

Via the School of Hard Knocks or not, we are going to learn to make our money doing things that are really worthwhile. Growing healthy food, for instance. I'm in the mood for a little argument today, I think it's necessary. So let me light into friends I've not told I think they're making money doing bad things. There should be maybe a thousandth of the the amount of added sweeteners in our food. There should be no leaf blowers. There should be no cars running on combustion. There should be almost no lawn mowing. There should be no weed whackers. There should be no additives in cigarettes. Marijuana is a food and should be eaten not smoked. Other psychedelic drugs should be available via prescription, but only after education and with guidance. I could go on.

We can live in a MUCH happier world by dropping our armor and enjoying each other's company. Do you have the courage?