BioEverything

microbiodiversity: It's a bug eat bug world...

2012-01-30T10:15:00.000-08:00

‎"...Waste stream managers view composting primarily as a means to divert materials from dis-
posal facilities. The environmental benefits, however, only begin here. Others are derived from use of the product. These benefits have been widely
reported in the literature - increased aeration,
improved moisture and nutrient retention, de
creased soil erosion, reduced soil surface crusting,
plant disease suppression, improved tilth, etc. In-
deed, the ability of compost to reduce pollutant
carrying runoff and leachate (primarily due to its
organic matter content) can provide surface and
ground water quality benefits...The single most important me a sure of a soil's fertility is its organic con
tent . Compost applied to di s turbed or damaged
lands can help restore both organic content and soil...."

http://infohouse.p2ric.org/ref/21/20145.pdf
Home Composter Handbook

changing weather

2012-01-14T10:09:00.000-08:00

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Changing weather

Let's talk about the weather. Scary subject, I'll admit. Used to be, back in the (good?) old days, the weather was what you talked about when you were afraid to talk about anything else with a person. Weather was a guaranteed safe subject. You could agree on it. And nobody could do anything about it. Well, that's all changed, hasn't it? Now it's like instant argument over global warming. And is some group (or groups) messing with our weather with secret advanced technology? And is all this climate change God trying to tell us something? And how are we going to cope with it?

There's always the temptation to tell yourself that we're not really at a fateful moment in Earth's history, that everything is going to pretty much stay the same. A terrible mistake.

People like to say weather is one thing you can't do anything about, so just accept it. I'm sorry, that's not true. Technological weather modification has a history going at least as far back as the U.S. military making rain in the Vietnam War. There are some (self included) who believe spiritual leaders such as indigenous American Indian medicine shamans are able to affect the weather. Seven billion humans have been accidentally changing the weather, for instance by cutting down trees.

And the wisest throughout human history have always recognized what quantum physics is now showing - that science is somehow inextricably integrated with spirituality - so what's in our hearts literally and directly helps create what is. Like a radio or tv or cordless or cell phone or wireless computer carries information, we are affecting our world more than we realize. And we can make the world much better much faster than most realize, whether by prayer or meditation or doing whatever our part is. Science is proving there is reason for faith. We don't have to have this hell on Earth our fears are helping to create. We may go extinct along with all the other species we've been killing off at an ever-increasing rate. But there is MUCH more to reality than this particular time and space. Our whole world can get better in a heartbeat once homo sapiens gets on the same page with the rest of life.

The planet is in a moment of evolution. You can say the Messiah is coming, or Christ is returning, or the Millennium thousand years peace is coming, or the life/death cycle is being transcended, or the Singularity is near, or world revolution is upon us, but it's All/One. We not only can modify the weather now, we can (and do) make earthquakes. It's time we harness our knowledge to do something a little less destructive than cause earthquakes and pollution. Let's harmonize (through prayer and meditation, but also action) peace on Earth. We've been fighting nature so long we don't realize that, just like old stories that seem like myths tell us, total harmony amongst nature has happened and can happen again. The older you get the more you realize that no matter how rotten or good things are, things'll change. We CAN stop fighting each other, nature, and ourselves.

Things ARE changing. It used to be, fall and winter around here came on slowly and stayed, then gradually gave way to spring. No more. I'm writing this January 14th. Up until yesterday's snow I have been harvesting collards and kale and French sorrel and parsley and arugula and chard (and planting garlic when the ground wasn't frozen). Everyone on Earth with their eyes open can see business as usual is over, but the economic system, by making sacred the status quo, continues to make progressive change unprofitable. We're crashing along with the rest of the ecosystem, we see we're crashing, and most of us make the mistake of thinking we're helpless. Do whatever YOUR part is.

I do my food-growing with the assumption that climate change is going into overdrive. Garlic stops growing when frozen, but continues with any warm spell. And garlic doesn't have wildlife eating it before you can. The whole plant is a wonderful medicine (especially uncooked). So, even though the normal time to plant garlic in this part of the world is October or November, I'm sticking cloves in the ground of our community gardens whenever the ground isn't frozen. With average temperature increasing (maybe rapidly) we'll maybe have garlic earlier than the former normal harvest time of May or June. So crisis is opportunity when you don't let the changes scare you. You have to make decisions and act. Garlic doesn't like too much heat.

back to our roots again

2011-12-14T09:15:00.000-08:00

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People think of the movement of the seasons from Spring to Summer to Fall to Winter as a circle which just keeps repeating, but this isn't exactly true. Oh, the seasons go round and round, alright, but every year is different. Time is a slow spiral of progress which never quite returns to the beginning. The Earth changes, we humans change, all living things change from one season to the next. We strike out on a new path each year, adapt to unexpected changes, and finish the year needing to rest and think about the results of the growing season. Every year we charge into Spring with big plans to create in our individual pieces of Earth what we think best. And each year our plans change, with or without our consent.

So one gets to spend the winter evaluating successes and failures. What are the good memories? Did I produce a good amount of quality of whatever all it was I was trying to grow? Did other people like what I grew? And how have my desires changed? What do I want to try next year?

Community gardening this year I learned a bunch of things. Everybody's different. You can no more change other people's way of seeing things than they can change yours. Variety is good, and cooperation is precious. I'm focused on making good soil and growing food, while other people are more into growing beauty and neighborliness. I'm interested in solving problems I see coming (such as human-caused climate change, steeply rising food prices, and pollution and disease hazard increases from our industrial agriculture). Many of my neighbors are more here-and-now oriented, concerned with making a living and getting along with those they come into contact with daily. I pay attention to both history and current events around the world, knowing they sooner or later will affect my part of it.

We humans are a strange bunch. Thinking ourselves helpless to change the world, we succeed by going along with any baloney that gets defined as normal. We equate normal with good. God help us if we ever get jammed up into a situation in which we actually have to think. We want to get TOLD what to think; going along with the crowd makes us feel safer. But what happens when you realize going along with the program is suicidal? What happens when you realize nobody's really any wiser than you, and you have to make some decisions on your own (and face the consequences alone)? My mother used to say, "If someone tells you to jump off a bridge, are you gonna?" Well, that's just what we're doing right now. We as a human species are stampeding over a cliff. Each of us has but a small piece of the puzzle, unable to see the whole picture. Unable to see ourselves in each other, we struggle as Earth's environment goes critical.

Is beauty the same as uniformity? The same garden felt by some as beautiful is thought by others to be ugly. I think sometimes when people say a garden is ugly or messy they're thinking not so much about their own perception but what they think others would think. Oh, you can't have plants growing up wild like that, the neighbors will think it's just a bunch of weeds. There's cultural baggage that makes us want to "civilize" everything by controlling all the life in a place. But I think that's the same fear of diversity that leads to conflict between peoples. Let Nature do it's thing, for crying in the bucket - that's what beauty is. We have to not only respect the other living things, but give them their freedom as much as possible.

There were talks in Durban, South Africa in December to try to slow down the climate change that everyone can see is happening now. But, of course, there was no agreement. So we're drifting along. Some of us know that environmental problems are coming to a head, so that the entire Earth ecosystem is in crisis.

So we're going into another winter in the Northern Hemisphere. It's a time of great change. Some of us are growing into greater relationship with other people and other species. Some of us are clinging to the past, deluding ourselves into thinking we don't need to change. Those of us who are awake know we have to change, radically, and NOW. Those steadfastly holding their eyes closed, paralyzed and blinded by fear (like stroke victims behind the wheel), need to be taken out of the drivers seat so as not to be a danger to themselves and others. Maybe by Spring 2012 we'll all be working together on this planet to deal with the mushrooming interacting crises we all are becoming enmeshed in. A new age of peace - among people and in Nature - is coming. But it's clear we're never going to get there by just going along with the program (business as usual.)

Jim McCue
St. Jim the Composter
412-421-6496
composter and biotech researcher
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2009/02/celebrate-earth.html
http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com
http://facebook.com/alllifelover
http://plentyoffish.com/member498447.htm
http://hazelwoodhomepage.com

The Beginning is Near

2011-11-14T07:16:00.000-08:00

The best sign I saw at the Occupy Pittsburgh camp said, "The Beginning is Near." It reminded me of the cartoon where two old guys are holding signs, one saying "The End is Near", the other saying "The Beginning is Near". That's the attitude we need to take at this most crucial moment in Earth's history, that we should look joyfully and participate lovingly in the new world that is being born. We all know there is plenty going on to be afraid of. And many more troubles are coming. But in order to make wise decisions to handle these problems we must be absolutely fearless. The only way to make sane decisions is to enjoy each moment. If we concentrate on what we're losing, allowing that to make us unhappy, we will be of no use to society. Keeping our eyes on the prize by focusing on all the good things happening, such as technological breakthroughs that solve these problems, is what our lives are about. We don't need another drink or a new drug to face all the terrible things going on in the world. We need to take a long deep breath, look at all the emergencies around us, and go to work on one at a time.

To overcome depression and get rid of that feeling of hopelessness that frustrates, I read the quote of Mother Teresa on my fridge: "If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will." Here's a woman who literally facilitated miracles, and enjoyed her life doing what most of us would consider hard labor. There's a sweet spot in every "impossible" problem which only shows up once you get into gear, hoping against hope, working on that problem.

What am I talking about? We are losing our ecosystem. People often accuse big businesspeople of destroying our economy, but how often do we think about the fact that our economy is based on the ecosystem? We are all a part of Earth. When we destroy plants and animals and even bugs and microbes we are threatening Nature's checks and balances and ecosystem services. The saying "All life is one" is more than some nice-sounding mystical mumbo-jumbo; it's good science, good big-picture logic. The labor slogan "An injury to one is an injury to all" can be applied to we humans' relationship to the rest of the living world too. We have for many centuries closed our hearts to life by pretending we are better than the other living things. We talk of animals, for instance, as if we ourselves were not animals. We use the world "animal" as a derogatory, in the same way as a racial epithet. If we call another human being an "animal", that means we think they are less than human, immoral. If we say someone is a vegetable, we're saying they're not moving because their brain is dead. But we ARE animals, part of Nature. And the best scientists ( and other wise people) know that plants are exquisitely sensitive, respond to human emotions, have sex and are motivated to reproduce for the future, and even have intuition.

Earth's ecosystem IS collapsing, and all 100% of us are in trouble (not just the bottom 99%). The glass half-full part of this equation is that this crisis makes us all see ourselves as in the same boat, so we can work together to fix the problems.

As children we have a feeling of connectedness to each other and to the Earth that is lost as we get older and become more "logical" and "practical". Einstein said something to the effect that our perception of seperation is an illusion. Like many things scientists say, this is hard to fathom, but it is an ecological principle that everything is connected by cause and effect. Think about it - No matter what two things you want to talk about, they are directly or indirectly connected one way or another. So that means, for instance, that when we in the U.S. wear clothes made from slave labor somewhere else in the world, we're eventually going to get bad consequences return to us from those bad decisions. What goes around comes around. It's natural to say don't worry about how working people are treated so far away in other countries. But we CAN do something about how workers are treated in other countries - and at the same time help get decent jobs back in this country - by refusing to buy clothes (or anything else for that matter) from unethical manufacturers.

We are each a part of God, the Universe. When the 99% becomes the 100%, we will all be able to work together to usher in the new age. Everybody in. Nobody out. Feed the People! The problems are solvable when we work together. We are Japan. We are Somalia. We are Chernobyl. We are Afghanistan, Pakistan, Thailand,...We are the World!

a healthy economy

2011-10-11T11:45:00.001-07:00

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There is only one thing worse than waking up to the recognition that you've been deluded all your life - NOT waking up to it. We are so used to thinking inside the box of limitations society has put on us over the years we've barely enough imagination to every now and then glimpse a bigger picture. Take cars, for instance. I remember thinking 8 or 13 mpg was okay for heavier vehicles because naturally you're gonna burn more gas if you've got more weight to move. Only as an adult researcher have I been awakened to the extremely bitter truth that the automotive industry (and our industrial society in general) has for many decades been enormously held back by moneyed interests profiting from the status quo rather than progress. Nikola Tesla, who invented alternating current, the radio, and the fluorescent light, has been erased from history by more profit-minded industrialists such as Edison and Marconi (both of whom stole from him) and Westinghouse and J.P. Morgan, who supported Tesla's work until it became clear his energy advances were going to lose him rather than make him money. The automotive industry, similar to how for instance solar was held back as competition by more established energy technologies, illegally and unfairly quashed radical advances such as Tesla's electric car and the Tucker car. And they continue to do so. The electric car is coming out of the patent archives much more slowly than necessary, because it would free us up from fossil fuels and much of the maintenance now necessary with the internal combustion engine. The big 3 automakers falsely charged Tucker in order to stop manufacture of his much better car, and then hypocritically years later used his inventions like power steering in their own cars. Ask yourself why you've never heard of Tucker or Tesla. You've been deluded, baby. Marconi didn't invent the radio, Tesla did. Wonder what else you've believed all your life isn't true?

If we want a healthy economy, it has to be honest. Ours is based on many lies. I remember how blown away I was to find out we had been lied into the Vietnam war. It took me thirty years to learn that that war was over resources and opium, not protecting the world from the Communists. We are now enmeshed in wars, again supposedly for high-minded reasons like freedom from terror, but in reality our economy is being drained to profit weapons manufacturers and drug smugglers, who play all sides of this brutal business game by selling weapons or whatever to whoever's buying and change sides depending on who they're talking to. American history is full of pretended attacks on us, when in fact unscrupulous American businesspeople were facilitating and sometimes even creating these attacks in order to get us to go to war (for THEIR gain, not for the good of the American people as a whole).

The sad fact that it takes money to make money gives the status quo an unfair advantage. It's inertia, that's all - what is at rest tends to stay at rest and what is in motion tends to keep moving. Those who lay their money on the most popular direction are betting on the status quo. The believers in the status quo figure that the majority is probably right. One who cruises out of formation is a loser, who must be crazy, lazy, stupid or something - but definitely wrong. Their favorite slapdown of someone with something new is "If that's such a great idea, why isn't everybody doing it already?" They don't see the circularity of their logic.

But what if the nonconformist happens to know something the normal people don't know, and has the courage to stand up and stand out?

The fact is, we could have a heaven on Earth if we had enough sense to not be afraid, and so allow ourselves to love and work with one another. We are literally causing our own suffering. We could have had non-polluting non-combustion motor vehicles a long time ago. And we're never going to get them with these petty little arguments over fuel standards and how many jobs are going to be lost by the enforcement of environmental regulations. In this time of great change, in which feedback effects make for quantum change, the internal combustion engine has to go, period. Coal has to go, period. The filthy tar sands extraction cannot proceed. And natural gas, being billed now as a clean (or cleaner) energy source has got to go also. It's like an addict switching to a similar drug when one's not available - you're not really accomplishing anything, just getting older. The pinhead mindset focuses on the here and now and me, and that's the definition of greed. If you ignore the pollution caused by the mining of natural gas or nuclear, they look like they're cleaner than say coal. Businesspeople are often expert at being pinheads, stay on point of how much money am I going to make while externalizing the costs quite brutally (and usually unconsciously) to others' lungs or future generations.

The change so many businesspeople fear (for all their hypocritical talk of innovation), in this historic moment of no-more-business-as-usual, is actually good for them too, but they are so blinded by their fear they can't see it and so persecute those who protest their insanity. And it is insanity. If you don't know, for instance, that there is a history of earthquakes being caused by mining and explosives, reason it out. You take something out of the ground underneath you, and you blow off an explosion under you. It's like standing on a tree branch while you're sawing it off - YOU'RE GONNA FALL! Use your head. There were people hundreds and even thousands of years ago who saw bare details of the current mess we're in. Earth used to be covered in forest; look at it now. If something is truly productive, do it, regardless of whether it makes money, and you'll find yourself linked up with others who are similarly wise. If something is not productive, don't do it even if it makes money. That's how we'll make our economy healthy.

Jim McCue
St. Jim the Composter
412-421-6496
composter and biotech researcher
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2009/02/celebrate-earth.html
http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com
http://facebook.com/alllifelover
http://plentyoffish.com/member498447.htm
http://hazelwoodhomepage.com

getting some perspective

2011-09-15T07:16:00.000-07:00

Rather than allowing ourselves to be stunned into helpless passivity at all the catastrophic news at this moment in history, let's look at interacting trends.
Facebook discussion of Earth Policy Institute video
Lester Brown: The Planet's Scarcest Resource is Time
http://youtube.com/watch?v=DXVgTD2F6ZQ&feature=relmfu

James Bailey - i cant believe that this has been out since march and hasnt gotten more exposure. Jim, i am on a ship in the pacific now. aiming to be home in the spring. next summer, i would like to organize meetings of like-minded folks to talk about setting up an intentional community somewhere outside of pittsburgh. i hope this is something you would be interested in at any level of involvement and participation.

Jim McCue - I look forward. We're in a quantum change moment of history, in which the changes are changing each other so we don't know what will happen except that it will be better if we work together for life in general.

Rosemary McMullen - Young folks are so busy growing up they don't have time to do the analysis. Lester Brown has cogent synthesis: an impressive half hour. But denial and fear of the inevitable die-off -- catastrophe model -- also keeps them in limbo -- party on, think positive, etc.

Jim McCue - I don't think we necessarily will have a massive die-off, but if we do will try to be philosophical about it (Death is but a change, there is life after life, that type of thing).

Rosemary McMullen - Die off taking place already from up front wars, drones, famine, tsunamis, or more hidden as Arundhati Roy documents in India from dam-dislocation tens of thousands starve in camps and in China big numbers killed suppressing restive groups.

Rosemary McMullen - Young people being philosophical about death? Some are doing a lot of inner work; but I think accepting death is a jewel of living long (probably many more times than once).

James Bailey - i expect a big die-off. people are made of food and there will be less food available. my goal and intention is to assist in creating a working example of another option. another way to proceed for those who do carry on. when there is collapse, folks will gravitate toward whatever gives stability. if the only option available is this hierarchical dominator system we're at the crescendo of now, this tape will just replay itself. i hope that if there are examples of partnership communities extant, folks will move toward that instead. i don't see any other way to move forward with any kind of hope for the future at all.

Jim McCue - My personal take on the 2012 singularity is that, first, since energy or the spirit precedes or creates or steps down in frequency to matter, and since at each moment we as a species may change what we're doing, and since there are positive uses for current advanced technologies now being used for competition or war, that it is still possible that we could avoid a die-off much bigger than is happening now...I in fact believe in the scientific basis of the miraculous.

Rosemary McMullen - I believe something similar. And I am working to make it happen with groups in Pgh building "working examples of other options" for food, somewhat less on water, but just at beginning phases. Transition Pgh, PGH and myriad spiritual practices are booming with this impulse. But Lester Brown says: "I don't think people realize how vulnerable we are...." US cities have only a "three-day food buffer."

James Bailey - i mostly agree with both of you. i think, though, that the city is not the place to be, though it is what i know and where i've been all my life. the impulse for me is strong to dig in in place and weather what comes the best i can there. alone, i could manage it. but not with family on tow. the city will quickly become chaotic and likely violent. the best place to be is outside the city somewhere and preferably at least minimally established by the time wholesale collapse ensues.

James Bailey - i've read and listened to a good bit of terence mckenna and i like what he has to say about 2012. like he says, i, too, am a hope freak in many ways. we've got some young children in our clan and with them in mind, i can't justiify putting our eggs in that basket, hoping that there will be a miraculous breakthrough. for my own sanity, i've got to make more concrete moves. food and water will, of course, be the primary issues. security, unfortunately, will also likely be an issue. with that aspect in mind, there are just too many ways, safety-wise, that the city can become compromised. i would like to see, envision, a free school set up along the lines of the albany free school. they have a great website. maybe a community garage. a tool and knowledge library. a community kitchen/meeting space, maybe doubled up as a schoolhouse, and of course cooperative farming.

Jim McCue - I intend to do my part in turning the great city of Pittsburgh into an intentional community with grade a farmland and international advanced tech communication to do its part in transition the world from swords to plowshares and industrial torture farming to appropriate (sometimes industrial) web of life regenerative farming, including the use of microbes in fuel and food production. As ecosystem services provided by the larger life forms like trees decline, smaller ones such as microbes become ever more important.

James Bailey - i wish you luck, Jim, and i'll be a help as i can. if i can get with folks to get my plans off the ground, we'll be tapping you for your knowledge about all things grown, if that's ok.

Rosemary McMullen - This has been just about the best conversation I have ever had on FB. Tonight I meet with some young PGH folks and will refer them here.

Jim McCue - James, I'm only a soil expert and big picture philosopher. There are huge gaps in my knowledge of food, fiber and medicine plants.

human-made miracles

2011-09-13T10:35:00.000-07:00

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I remember the miner/farmer I worked for years ago fondly saying to his daughter "You think you're pretty blame smart, don'tcha?" That's how I feel about the human species right now. As a whole we're a pretty daggone successful animal. I mean, look, we got, what, 6.8 or so (give or take maybe a coupla million) billion of us on the surface of the Earth; we're eating, burning, and crowding out many other species; we're going miles under the oceans, down into mines, and up into the sky, even as far as the Moon (though I knew another farmer that didn't believe that). Yeah, we're pretty smart alright, painted ourselves into one helluva corner this time. Thought we could control everything - the crops we grow, bugs, disease, traffic, the economy. Some of us even think we can control the weather now.

Most people are too involved with their daily lives to have the time to find out about how much in danger the whole world is in. But I ask you to take the time to watch this video conversation with Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute: http://youtube.com/watch?v=DXVgTD2F6ZQ&feature=player_embedded . If you want to call me hysterical for the opinion that we're on the edge of a catastrophe larger than anything humanity has ever seen, first be open-minded enough to sit down for a half hour and listen to this expert talk about our problems, from population to rapid climate change to pollution to poverty and war and all the other interacting changes that is making this moment in history one of Earth's most important.

What gets me up in the morning is not scaring the hell out of people about how bad things are, but the opinion that the situation is not hopeless. But things are not going to get better (in fact they're going to get much worse) if we do not wake up to the need to make very drastic changes. VERY drastic changes. We're going to have to have a change of heart, or, to put it another way, our hearts are going to have to grow bigger. We're going to have to expand each of our circle of loved ones to include all life. The Earth's ecosystem is collapsing, and we human beings have played a large part in that destruction. Now we've got to regenerate it. It's long past time to turn away from any type of violence as a strategy. We are throwing away our future by fighting, and God or Science or whatever you want to call the power in the Universe is not going to allow our (I think fear-based) destructiveness to continue forever. Our economy is falling apart. The weather is getting more violent. Some (myself included) even think there is an increase in accidentally human-caused earthquakes, whether or not there is an increase in earthquake activity in general (which some also believe).

So, by our actions, we as a species have played a part in causing this current hell on Earth, and by our actions we can each play a part in creating a heaven on Earth also. Each decision you make, think about it's consequences.

To the extent possible, stop burning things, because combustion makes carbon dioxide. Grow plants, because plants take co2 out of the atmosphere. Even one celled algae growing in a container of water in a window is using co2 and making oxygen. A simple indoor water ecosystem that doesn't need an aerator pump and doesn't require cleaning once its stabilized will help break down pollutants and please the eye. Put anacharis water plants with snails and some kind of fish like goldfish that will eat mosquito larvae in a tank in the sun. The anacharis (and algae that will appear) will provide the fish and snails oxygen, and the snails will eat the algae and so keep it from becoming overbalanced. To the extent possible, stop using gasoline, or natural gas-, coal-, or nuclear power-derived electricity. Grow as much of your own food as possible. Learn about edible weeds like lambs quarters and purslane; these things are only called weeds because we're not used to eating them, and because they come up without having to be planted.

Get with experts turning empty lots into edible food forests full of fresh organic fruits, berries, edible flowers, and herbs both medicinal and culinary.

Don't stick your head out the window and holler, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore." Lean out and sing "I LOVE y'all, ever last crazee one a yens!" That's the only way we're going to make it through these wild times - enjoying the unpredictable vulnerability of life dancing with others we don't understand. It's clear things are not going to remain the same, might as well enjoy the ride. And if you graduate to your next life (in whatever time and space and dimension and parallel universe that is) having had made this particular world a wee bit better, you can look back and feel good about it (and you'll be moving to a better life).

Love kicks in the miraculous

2011-09-12T04:51:00.000-07:00

This crucial moment in Earth's history requires we do the REALLY productive things regardless of whether there's an immediate (or even ever) personal payback. Love kicks in the miraculous.

Hazelwood residents get loaves, fishes and more
http://post-gazette.com/pg/11254/1173466-53-0.stm

My father's graduation

2011-09-08T07:50:00.000-07:00

Catherine and Miles had 7 sons, no daughter. Towards the time of his passing, this son had a dream. His set ways and our rebellion...We each were only one facet of the diamond in the rough that was just emerging from the earth as it was becoming fully formed. Only then could we see we each were still one sided while he had become fully developed. He was the whole crystal. I no longer rebelled.

the sound of one wee guru laughing

2011-09-08T07:11:00.000-07:00

Sorrow and humor
Did you hear about the chimp who as she died handed her baby to the poacher? The former poacher's a park ranger now.
Break down and enjoy life fer cryin in the bucket.
"...When you laugh, you change. When you change, the whole world changes around you..."
Did you hear about the kid that laughed at the drop of the hat?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOraXSidNAM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coE4RX7Flc8
http://youtube.com/watch?v=26ScWC0N6e8
http://laughology.info/Laughology/Links.html

Campaign to embarass the arrogant ignorant.

2011-08-23T05:06:00.000-07:00

If you don't know anything about Nikola Tesla, you need to be humbly curious until you do. Let's make every day an embarrass the arrogant ignorant day.

today at the old Homestead mill site (now a mall)

2011-08-14T04:58:00.001-07:00

======
http://battleofhomesteadfoundation.org/events.php
August 14, 2011, Sunday, 1:30 p.m. "Community Gardens, Agricultural Cooperatives, and Food Politics in Our Region: Watching What We Eat."

A panel of those engaged in these projects will discuss them.
===
From
Laura Wiens lweins@unitehere.org
Organizer
Unite Here! Local 57
(703) 424-0854
Sunday, August 14th at 1:30 pm at the Pump House
Sunday farmer's market on site
...On the Panel, I have been in contact with people from Just Harvest, Landslide Farms, the Food Policy Council of Pittsburgh, and Farm Corps, and still hope to get someone from Jim Ferlo's office on board to speak...I hope that you'll be able to come, and bring friends. It should be a wonderful program, and I look forward to hearing all that's going on in the city on this front.
===
Pump House
http://riversofsteel.com/preservation/heritage-sites/battle-of-homestead
http://pumphousemarket.blogspot.com
http://battleofhomesteadfoundation.org/pumphouse.php

Food Policy Council
http://yumpittsburgh.com/?p=383

http://www.landslidecommunityfarm.org

Student Conservation Association
http://www.thesca.org/stories/pittsburgh-green-jobs-corps-gjc

http://justharvest.org/

Tavis Smiley/Cornel West Poverty Tour at Growing Power Milwaukee w/Will Allen
http://youtube.com/watch?v=u1UMHO-Tp_E&feature=youtu.be
======
"...The E.P.A. stopped monitoring fallout from Fukushima in late April 2011. Before they stopped...radioactive iodine, cesium, zeon, and uranium were measured in the U.S. at hundreds of times the legal background limit..."
"...After years of decline two large American cities, Philadelphia and Seattle have seen a %35+ rise in infant mortality rates from the months of March 2011-July http://fairewinds.com/content/dial-m-meltdown-brian-rich
======
battleofhomesteadfoundation.org/events.php
August 14, 2011, Sunday, 1:30 p.m. "Community Gardens, Agricultural Cooperatives, and Food Politics in Our Region: Watching What We Eat."

A panel of those engaged in these projects will discuss them.
======

challenge and opportunity

2011-08-11T08:21:00.000-07:00

What's your take on what's going on in the world? And how will it affect you? I think we all feel pretty much the same, but at different times. With: earthwide agricultural and environmental difficulties; jobs disappearing; warfare becoming ever more high-tech and destructive; pollution disasters like the BP Gulf spill and Fukushima meltdowns affecting everyone; and civil unrest around the world - it's increasingly clear we are one humanity (like it or not).

I say we all stop scaring each other half to death with all our negative spins on things. I'm fed up to here with beautiful people being badmouthed by other beautiful people who have forgotten their own beauty and the beauty of the world around them. Do you not see how beautiful you are? Take this as an assumption: If you can't see the beauty in a specific situation, that's because your eyes, mind and heart are not opened wide enough. If something sounds like noise to you, listen better - God, there's music there! Stop dissing each other. Stop fighting or else (and here I'm trying, contradictorily, to scare you) you're going to get nexted. Next! The planet doesn't need you; you are recyclable. What I am saying is that at this most crucial time in human history, it is vital that we grow past our old boundary definitions of what's good and bad.

Do you think it's bad to let unused places grow up in weeds? I beg to differ. If you had had the time to learn environmental science over the years and learned what I have about the troubles we have coming, you would have no problem making the call - STOP CUTTING DOWN PLANTS (except where you absolutely have to). We are all in mortal danger from the abrupt climate change upon us. It is a no-brainer to - when life-threatening problems approach - deal with the biggest problems first. It does not matter a hot hair's width in hell whether or not your lawn is mowed if you and your loved ones can't breathe, the economy's so bad you can't buy food, or your neighbors have lost their minds and are burning down our civilization.

Stop and think - Are you really going to find happiness wreaking your own local genocide on those [ants?][rats?][mice?][roaches?][pigeons?][rabbits?][moles?][bugs?][groundhogs?][weeds?][wasps?][yellow jackets?][neighbors?]? Do you really think the Earth's treasury of gifts of life are going to continue to be available to you if you declare your enemyship with other life forms, peoples, religions, countries, income brackets, skin colors, lifestyles, sexualities? We are living in a potential paradise right now. Look all around you. I can see trees, heard mourning doves (pigeons) coo-ing this morning. There are foxes around here, toads, frogs, possums, gorgeous little flying things ("bugs") complex beyond description, Nature's surprises at every turn of the head...if you let go your fears. The molds are not bad as you've been told, they're good and we need them for the fertility of the soil. We have been living under a dark false history of defining good things as evil, so that now we're beset by terrible fears all around us.

I worked at a cooperative daycare center in New York City once, and realized how all these wonderful children can each make each other even happier..., until one parent/guardian says Oh No! You can't let the kids crayon on the walls, they'll be doing that at home!...or some other no, so none of the kids can do anything because one parent or another doesn't allow their child to do that. So you end up with No don't do this NO don't do that till a kid can't do anything. And that's where we're at today. Between a rock and a hard place. Can't do this and can't do that. Is it any wonder people are going crazy? Let yourself go, and let other people go. Let your positive impulses loose. Don't hide your light.

Just about everybody has a mindset that some are more intelligent than others. I wonder. People refer to others as stupid. Everybody has a unique gift, and knows things others don't. So are you stupid just because you don't know something I do? We are all part of God, and the Universe is a living manifestation of God. Words like "stupid" are derogatory, in the same category as racial epithets. Step back from your own stupidity by refraining from calling others stupid. Maybe then we can each find our role in birthing the new age that calls from this current time of destruction.

The Legend of Johnny Appleseed

2011-07-11T08:40:00.001-07:00

======
Some of the most important people in history are barely remembered - the good they did overshadowed by the egos of those who spin our memories to their own ends. John Chapman, aka Johnny Appleseed, was a pioneer saint (or guru or holy man if you prefer different wording) who was apparently able to do things the most of us would consider impossible. He (as with the legend of St. Francis of Assisi) had a rapport with Nature so deep that he was rarely hurt in his travels through then-wild areas of this part of the country. He was so solicitous of living things he would not purposely kill a bug, and was said to even believe that plants suffered when cut so he never grafted his apple trees but always planted them by seed.

This poor traveler was so sympathetic with those he met that absolutely everyone liked him. Settlers, Indians, no matter where he went he was safe because you could feel he was friendly. I have noticed this in my reading of historical figures and analyzing my own life: if you put out a good vibe you'll, sooner or later, get good vibes in return. The American Indian medicine man Rolling Thunder also has such a rapport with Nature that he is never stung by bees as he picks herbs, and is so in synch with Nature's (or God's) will that he has demonstrated paranormal capacities such as weather control. I worked in the Lower East Side of Manhattan (a tough place years ago; President Reagan visited there and was shot at by someone from the Puerto Rican Liberation Front) but I was never hurt there. The dedicated scientist Nikola Tesla (another historical figure with seemingly miraculous powers) is still today ignored by the mainstream media -
despite his role in the invention of: alternating current; the fluorescent light bulb; radio; modern space applications; the still-suppressed wireless transmission of power, and space weaponry.

John Chapman was so generous he never had any clothes to speak of because he was all the time giving his own away. He cared so little of himself that he went barefoot nearly year round. He couldn't stand to see horses suffer, so when he saw one being poorly treated he paid for it to be put out to pasture. He would never eat until he made sure everyone else around had food, and when he did eat he was vegetarian. People thought he was crazy because he never cared too much about money. Rather than waste money on a hat he used his cooking pan as one and added a visor to it with some found material to shade his eyes from the sun. Indians thought of him as a white medicine man, as he knew how to use herbs for medicine.

John Chapman is the reason there are so many apple trees growing in our part of the world. Every fall season he would return to Western Pennsylvania and gather apple seeds that were thrown in piles near apple cider presses, then carry those seeds to plant in out of the way nooks in the woods, then later return to tend them. The young apple plants people couldn't pay for he gave away, or traded for whatever they might have to give to him that he could use.

A follower of the religious mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, Chapman served humans and other creatures every day, and - despite his voluntary extreme simplicity and poverty - must be said to have been at least as happy as everybody else.

So, in this time of great trouble and tremendous environmental destruction - with so many pressures seeming to lead to the idea that a person has to be uncaring and even vicious to get ahead in this world - it renews our faith in life to recognize it's love not money rules.
======

Let Nature be.

2011-06-10T17:02:00.000-07:00

to hazelwoodeditor@yahoo.com
for
http://hazelwoodhomepage.com
======

Letting Nature be

I'm convinced we humans (self included) haven't a clue what we're doing. Some of us talk about what happened millions and even billions of years ago (and what will happen that far into the future), while others say time is an illusion. Science makes stunning advances, such as years ago correctly predicting massive snowstorms such as the Great Blizzard of 2010 - a global warming/climate change scenario caused by our emissions of co2. But the same scientists are often unable to predict local weather events just a day ahead.

Part of me has become frustrated and frightened that what seems to be happening on Earth is not at all what I think should be happening, while another part (maybe the wiser) says things will be fine as long as we respond to any problem as a challenge to make an even better world.

There are so many different ways of seeing things; we are nowhere near agreement as to what is actually happening. I personally, for instance, see the ongoing crisis and suffering in Japan as part of a long tragic history of the health impoverishment of the whole planet by the profit-driven suppression of better alternative energy developments. But others take the fact that the leakage of pollution from Fukushima has declined indicates that the situation has been controlled safely, thus proving nuclear power's cleanness relative to the huge amount of pollution from natural gas, for instance. The cost/benefit analysis is so enormously complex - with no one able to get a good hold on the big picture.

The only thing that seems clear to me is that we going on 7 billion human inhabitants are as a whole blindly bumbling to a quite drastic near future, helplessly. But with the mushrooming progress in technology, maybe that will be a drastically better near future - if we submit every single decision we make to the question of whether this will hurt or help life as a whole.

It would be nice to just say "We're destroying life on Earth, let's stop it" and then everybody get together and stop doing all the unnecessarily destructive things we're doing. But few so far have more than an inkling at what a dramatic crossroad we've come to, let alone know what to do about it.

My personal opinion is that what should take priority in everything we do is nurturing variety and quantity of life. All life is valuable, and has it's service to provide in the ecosystem. An ancient Chinese proverb goes, "Cut a blade of grass and you shake the whole universe." We have at this moment in history to wake up to our connection with life as a whole. It's time to grow sufficient humility to Life that we make sacred every decision, down to daily judgments such as whether or not to mow the lawn.

The dead have power.

2011-05-30T14:39:00.000-07:00

From
When Smoke Ran Like Water
Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution
by Devra Davis
http//environmentalhealthtrust.org/content/when-smoke-ran-water-0
pages 190-192
...Bella Abzug...belief in immortality...skeptical...rallying the troops for NOW [National Organization for Women] at the Washington Monument...struggled with...pain...asked me, "What makes you so sure there is anything after we die?"

"Bella," I replied, "what makes you so strong in the face of such pain? What forces you to spend these days struggling with us here? Why don't you just go to Florida and play mah jong? Can it be anything other than the soulds of all those who have gone before you?"

"I'm not so sure about ALL those souls," she sighed. "But I know my mother is still very proud of me."

"We are not going to allow you to just disappear. I know I will see you again," I assured her...She nodded without argument...said she was living on fury at the time. I like to think she drew comfort from the thought that her work...would continue through the thousands whom she had reached...

...Her funeral became a celebration of her gritty determination that we no longer stand by passively and wait for science before acting to protect ourselves and our families. The young woman rabbi presiding over her funeral celebration somberrly intoned, "If heaven ever were male dominated..."...looked upward..."...we know things are changing right now." That brought down the house.

Shirley MacLaine, known for her efforts to communicate across time and space...looking straight at the coffin..."Bella, you always said you were a feminist. But I also know that you were basically a huMANist," MacLaine stressed the middle syllable.

At that moment, the microphone, which stood several feet from MacLaine and well away from any living soul, fell off its stand. The crowd gasped.

"OK,OK, Bella. I was just kidding," MacLaine replied.

excerpt
http://www.amazon.com/When-Smoke-Like-Water-Environmental/dp/0465015220/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279057329&sr=8-1#reader_0465015220

trembling

2011-05-26T05:40:00.000-07:00

Appropriate biotech: Now that the ecosystem is collapsing, struggling to overcome bitterness that we all are it looks like going to share in the consequences of all the wonderfully wise business decisions that have led to this moment in history, I need to concentrate on the positive, what we can do - move full steam with as much cooperation as we can muster, to fermentation processes. Had our society not been so profoundly unwise my impulses 30 years ago with books like Microbe Power would have led to me becoming a successful businessperson rather than what I am now - a disabled person on the dole. It is with both grim satisfaction that I see now that all those times people told me I think too much and called me Dr. Doomsday for e.g. worrying about nuclear power I was right...and deep trepidation that I look forward to this whole-system emergency enveloping the Earth. Stop trying to kill "germs" and nurture the good ones. Nurture quantity and diversity of life. I still believe that life is a miracle and a mystery, and that a new age is being born as this one dies.
======
Burgers From A Lab: The World Of In Vitro Meat
npr.org/2011/05/18/136402034/burgers-from-a-lab-the-world-of-in-vitro-meat
======
Microbe Power
http://brianjford.com/wmicpow1.htm
======
Food: The Hidden Driver Of Global Politics
http://npr.org/2011/05/18/136394365/food-shortages-the-hidden-driver-of-global-politics
======
Prince of Wales Warns Climate Crash Could Dwarf Financial Crisis
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/may2011/2011-05-24-01.html
======

We are Japan.

2011-05-20T04:22:00.000-07:00

‎"...we must also move ALL the world's governments beyond denial to focus on somehow bringing Fukushima under control...Whatever technical, scientific and material resources are available to our species, that's what needs to go there.

NOW!!! "

~Harvey Wasserman 5/20/11

http://freepress.org/columns/display/7/2011/1886

Most bugs are good

2011-05-17T04:49:00.000-07:00

‎"...Small-scale farmers teach us that food safety is not achieved through "zero tolerance" for micro-ogranisms or the "extreme hygiene" approach espoused by big corporations (pasteurisation, irradiation, sterilisation, etc.). Destroying biodiversity, including microflora and fauna, creates instability, which manifests itself in disease..."

http://commondreams.org/view/2011/05/15-2

decentralized energy

2011-05-11T08:49:00.001-07:00

The death of big power

It takes money to make money. If you've none to work with you've none to invest. This is a painful and avoided fact about our world, and it's led to an historic level of concentration of wealth. That used to not matter to those on top, but now that the consequences of all this concentration are coming home to roost, even the wealthy are starting to feel powerless.

Take nuclear power, for instance. Why would we have so many of these enormously complex, huge, unsafe plants in the world, polluting their filth all over the surface of the Earth? I think for the same reason we have these massive dirty coal and natural gas plants. They are the end result of millions of quick-and-dirty type decisions by people who had enough money to invest in holding on to it and making more. Am I an anti-capitalist? I don't know. Look at what we've got here - a potential heaven daily becoming more hellish. Doesn't that give reason for a fundamental critique of what we have been doing?

Not to belabor the pessimistic world view held by an increasing number of people, but we ARE in a world of trouble. People making short-term small-context decisions have yielded so many interrelated problems that it's getting to be difficult to even talk about them. I've been called semi-hysterical for wanting to dwell on some of the scary things going on in the world, but the fact is that those who DON'T want to discuss them are the ones making dangerously irrational decisions. Go ahead, talk about the baseball game, the price of gas here today, that new car, the potentially wonderful new developments in Hazelwood, careers for our young people, fighting crime. But if we don't get off the blame and avoidance game and admit we ALL have done things to bring us to this moment, then we're in the same category as the child that thinks that the fact that something isn't seen means it doesn't exist.

Though this may seem calculated to offend, I'm saying that if you are for nuclear power it is because you have been unconsciously avoiding the facts. From the very beginning of the industry, the moneyed interests have dominated discussion of their safety by restricting the discussion to smaller and smaller contexts. A little more subtly than, "I don't wanna hear it," but not much. Start with the big picture. They ran off a bunch of Indians because they wanted the land that had uranium under it. Sound familiar? It's in the same tradition that saw Columbus, Cortez, and other rapists from Europe coming to take over. So, after you impoverish what's left of the indigenous Americans, you give some no choice but to work for you (the only job in town) getting the uranium out of their former homeland. It's just business, that's all, and business is hard. The nuclear industry's first success (if you can call it that) was the killing of maybe a couple hundred
thousand people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war having ended, the world desiring peace threatened the nuclear industry with sudden collapse, so they decided to make lemonade out of this lemon and (rather than just shut down) build the "atoms for peace" campaign, claiming that nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter". We know that never happened, because we all have electric meters so the big utility knows how much they can bill us. And how peaceful is an industry when, as a normal part of a nuclear power plant's operation, every single one emits cancer-causing radioactivity into the environment, every day? Oh, insignificant amounts, they say (when they admit it at all). And what about the mine tailings, millions of polluted tons laying around for kids to play on and dust to kick up and blow. Hey, it's our land, we'll do what we want with it, this is America, they say. Yeah, right, it's America all right, but you'd
never know it still belongs to the Indians. They've been killed off, bought off, and scared off ever since the "beginning" of this "new world" world Columbus "discovered".

Ask yourself why the vast majority of the planet's citizens are born in debt. Can this possibly make sense? It's almost like we live in that old children's story Upside Down Town. We transport our food thousands of miles before eating it. We destroy ourselves with antibiotics rather than use natural antibiotics such as raw garlic. We transport our energy huge distances rather than make it where it's needed (distributed energy). Our leaders say one thing then do another. The Environmental Protection Agency - created to protect us from those destroying our Earth for money - has instead come to be used by the polluters to restrain the public while protecting the polluters. We elect a president to take us out of war and he get's us into more. And now - increasingly - the poor are being told there's no money so their (our) life support has to be cut. Upside down world, everywhere you look. People having a hard time
getting to work, so what to they do? Cut public transit. Hey, makes sense to me, pal...because I'm upside down myself.

So what's the right-side-up side? I mean, let's hear some good news. It's all so scary it's hard to think straight, straight up. Well...That IS the good news, the fact that things are so bad that everybody knows it. The perfect storm is the teachable moment.

We've all been dealing with increased levels of radioactivity for many decades now. Those at the wrong end of our weapons have always gotten the worst of it, from Hiroshima to the deformed infants of Iraq. And radioactivity IS a natural part of life. So something will survive, we know not what. Think I'm a little hysterical? Read up, the planet is in a much more fragile moment in history than I could portray with words. Oceans are becoming acidic and dying; forests being destroyed (such as Canadian tar sands development for U.S. gasoline) so land is no longer absorbing co2 as much; methane and co2 emissions are increasing even without our help now as permafrost melts; so many other nightmares.

We need to shut down the big power plants, not just the nuclear. Just as there's no reason to buy garlic grown hundreds to thousands of miles away, there has never been good reason to have our electricity generated many miles away and then transported to us. There has always been an unfair advantage given to those with more money, and it has led to these massive, dangerous, polluting utilities. From the jailing of Peter Zenger for exposing the corruption of vested interests to the killing of union steward Karen Silkwood for her nuclear plant safety heroism to the the halting of the great scientist Nikola Tesla's work because it threatened to take the energy business out of the hands of the giants, to the stifling of the wind and solar industry because they didn't want people getting their own power from nature rather than from them, money has talked and the rest of us walked. Well now the moneyed have to cough up some changes. We all
do.

Jim McCue
St. Jim the Composter
412-421-6496
composter and biotech researcher
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2009/02/celebrate-earth.html
http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com
http://facebook.com/alllifelover
http://plentyoffish.com/member498447.htm
http://hazelwoodhomepage.com

fire of love now

2011-04-30T06:02:00.000-07:00

The Triangle Shirt Waist Fire
http://mikestoutmusic.com

There they were, screaming from the windows;
Trapped like a herd, nowhere to go.
On the 8th and 9th floors, facing an inferno
Of heat and flames, in a living horror show.
Young women immigrants, trying to earn a living,
Brutally exploited in a place so unforgiving.
One door wass locked, the other was blocked;
The elevator crashed, the fire escape collapsed.
Choking from the smoke, unable to breathe;
The fire engines came, but the ladders didn't reach.

They started jumping, you could hear the thuds;
Sixty-two pools of mangled limbs and blood.
A hundred twenty-nine women, seventeen men,
Never see their friends or their families again.
When you don't have a union, you don't have a chance,
Death and injury will come to dance.
The ownerss, Blank and Harris, were arrested and tried,
With their money and slick lawyers, justice was denied.
But when the dead were laid to rest, a hundred-thousand came;
The New Deal was born, it was time for a change.

[Chorus]
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire was a call,
To wake up a movement, they died for us all.
For a safer workplace, an escape from poverty,
A decent living wage, a life with dignity;
'Fight for the living, mourn for the dead,'
It's time to do what Mother Jones said.
It's either race to the bottom, or take the struggle higher,
Don't let the lesson be forgotten or the shirtwaist fire,
Triangle Shirtwaist fire.

On the frontiers of the global wilderness,
At the Ha-Meem factory inside Bangladesh,
A mirror image from a century before;
No fire escape, blocked and locked doors,
Jumping from the windows of wage slavery,
Down into the sidewalks of eternity.
The causes well known, they can't be ignored,
Another callous owner like all the ones before.
Twenty-eight more who didn't have to die,
At the altars of greed just another sacrifice.

Working for the Gap, Wal-Mart and the rest,
In places like Honduras, China, Bangladesh,
For twenty cents an hour, seven days a week,
In a prison tower of a sweatshop factory;
Behind the fancy clothes and toys they want to sell ya,
There's been a hundred fires, they just don't ever tell ya.
After decades of struggle made things better than before,
They shut 'em down and move the jobs offshore.
Out of sight, out of mind they hope we never stop it,
While they wage their class war and rake in the profits.

[Chorus]
The Triangle Shirtwaist fire was a call,
For a safer workplace, an escape from poverty,
A decent living wage, a life with dignity;
Fight for the living, mourn for the dead;
It's time to do what Mother Jones said.
It's either race to the bottom, or take this battle higher;
Don't let the lesson be forgotten, of the Shirtwaist fire,
Triangle Shirtwaist fire.

A simple home-made composter

2011-04-27T06:45:00.000-07:00

Be a pro-sumer (consumer AND producer) - make yer own dang composter.

Every situation is unique...One design that interested me lately is...can't remember the name but it's something you can improvise - It's a container of whatever size and material you want with an open bottom which is set into the ground deep enough so that the larger critters like rats and woodchucks won't likely get attracted. The soil under and around the bottom of the composter serves to absorb the waste and the little critters like worms and molds and bacteria in the soil serve to distribute the nutrients to the garden area nearby. The top of this composter has a lid, so - unlike most composters which have openings on the sides to allow air to get in and smell to get out - this type is only open to the air when you open the lid. You could make one (or more for other parts of the garden) by just e.g. taking a wide piece of pipe (say at least half a foot diameter or whatever you have available) and just sticking it into the ground i'd say at least six inches.

If you want to fool with teas, the thing I'm interested in is exposing water with some nutrients (e.g. a little dirt or manure or compost) to sun and so encourage algae...Problem is mosquitoes lay eggs on the surface and within 5 days can go from larvae in the water to hatching out into the air. So either the water needs to be used before the mosquitoes hatch out or you need any kind of fish in the water that eats the eggs and larvae. An extremely simple ecosystem can be set up by having fish, snails, and anacharis (a fast growing submerged type plant). The water and muck from the bottom and any dead or live matter in the water ecosystem can both fertilize and water the garden - fertigation...And the variety of life helps to biodegrade any chemical pollutants that are in the water.

Stop by if ever you've time and are near Hazelwood for a little tour of our gardening efforts.

change for life

2011-04-11T14:13:00.000-07:00

Years ago Adelle Davis' Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit and other books had a big effect on my life. Having shaken my own good health with poor decisions - such as eating junk food (and whatever else tasted good), smoking, getting strung out on "speed" and later caffeine pills - I was ready to learn something new. Her advocacy of large doses of vitamins to promote healing, and getting away from junk food (more recently called "industrial food") to help healing was controversial (and to this day battled by the processed food manufacturers and some in the medical industry). But - in combination with my brother Tim's getting me a job on a farm in West Virginia to get me away from this bad lifestyle - this change in my diet saved my life.

Now, years later, I've found saving my own life is inextricably intertwined with saving the Earth. With this morning's weather forecast calling for strong storm w/possibly a tornado in Western Pennsylvania, rapid climate change has become here-and-now gut level rather than just a dramatic scientific concept to be argued over. What can be done? My philosophy has come to focus on the concrete rewards from a loving attitude toward all life. As wonderfully complex as the biochemistry of nutrition is, for example, a definite pattern emerges in which the health of a person is tied to the extent to which that person eats foods which are grown via a harmonious relationship with Nature and the plants and animals which we eat.

If we farm and prepare our food in competition with other life forms - such as by using pesticides, slave labor, inhumane livestock husbandry, and other viciously dishonest agribusiness practices, the money made is in the end way more than negatively offset by food which shortens life and returns the suffering back to us. Growing healthy food - and not destroying the life in it in the process of getting it to our bellies - requires that EVERYONE, not just those who feed us, must awaken to the wider web of life. I can't have healthy soil in my garden, for instance, if I have neighbors who are so afraid of insects, bats, deer, woodchucks (aka "groundhogs" or I just found out - "whistle pigs") and other rodents, spiders, bats, snakes, owls and pigeons and other birds, bacteria and fungi that they spray deadly chemicals at the mere sight of a wee grasshopper. I pretty much lost a whole growing season once because there was weedkiller that was sprayed nearby that drifted onto my garden.

So, like it or not, I and you and all life on Earth are stuck with each other. It becomes more starkly clear each day that fighting (if it works at all) only works for an individual in a limited way and not forever. It will boomerang back on you. We are in a time of great miracles and terrible destruction. Our technology can be used to establish a heaven on Earth, and probably will be because I think eventually the loving essence of our nature will get full rein of the planet's decisionmaking. But make no mistake. We are in no sense at this time at a peaceful moment of history. We have laid down much too much of our money on fear and war, and the environmental and consequent economic consequences are going to shake each and every one of us to the very soul.

We must transform our agriculture so that growing and processing food is more like lovemaking than warmaking. The sensuous smell and feel of healthy soil is because there is life in it. A third or more of it may be alive with molds, bacteria, worms, algae, diatoms, and tiny insects. The mega-industrial model for growing food tortures animals and plants with pinheaded, stubborn, stuck-on-stupid obsession with the almighty dollar. And the end-product, of course, is accidentally self-tortured people, reaping what we sow. This is good science.

With the same incredible technological advances with which we humans CAN transition to a non-combustion technology which stabilizes the daily more disturbed environment, we are at present in large part choosing to engage in ever more high-tech warfare in more and more places, with less and less reward for our habitual competition and addiction to combustion processes and centralized mega-sized super-complex corporate-owned nuclear power plants, and ever more tremendously destructive bitebacks.

I'll end this article with a challenging piece of logic for you. It is a scientific and ecological principle that everything is connected by cause and effect. So no matter what two things you're talking about there is some at least indirect connection. Well, because the Earth is affected by the changes in both place and temperature of the planet's water (much formerly frozen now in the liquid rather than solid form, and moved away from the poles and into the oceans) - ice in the Arctic and Antarctic now becoming water in warmer parts of the ecosphere), there are some of the opinion that we are seeing an increasing rate of geological change. In other words, as with Hurricane Katrina and other weather events - at least in part happening with increasing intensity in reaction to human activity) - so also the Earth itself (that we arrogantly keep trying to master) is becoming increasingly violent. So the tragedy progressing in Japan and it's worldwide consequences is in part our doing, and we can and must work together to make it better - for our own good if for no other reason.

I believe in miracles. We see them all around us, mostly without appreciating them. Let's let our gratitude and appreciation of this life - and our actions in service to all life - bring forth the new world we in our hearts long for and know is possible.

All you need is love

2011-03-11T15:20:00.000-08:00

‎
"...We have to work together and find our happiness in helping each other do the best we can to save the whole...Earth's ecosystem...the solution lies, oddly enough, in love...we're being...taught...call it God or Science or whatever you want...We're all connected...human, animal, even microbe..."

~Repower America - James McCue from Pittsburgh, PA

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3mzsFHpDYTA

Life is a miracle

2011-03-07T05:32:00.000-08:00

One of the many unrecognized saints living amongst us was Kathryn Kuhlman, whose saying "Expect a miracle!" expressed her recognition that a joyful grateful optimistic attitude brings blessings and healing. That same response must be applied to our current predicament on Earth. To many of our most well-informed, open-minded and thoughtful observers the situation looks hopeless. Feedback effects (or "tipping points") are already taking place which clearly point to catastrophic events which make it hard to even imagine our survival as a civilized species. But we need sufficient humility about our knowledge and accomplishments. We really don't, for instance, understand electricity - though we do ever more amazing things with it.

There is a spiral to life that goes out and eventually comes back. An example is the fact that "What goes around comes around" gives warning against selfish motives and faith that one's good efforts will somehow eventually pay off. This is why world dictators are finally falling, and those attempting to hijack our democracy here in the United States will also ultimately fail.

It is a scientific fact that the truth will ultimately prevail, just as certain as that more carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere will yield more rapid climate changes. One can no more successfully lie to oneself and/or others than stand in front of an oncoming train and expect not to get hit. We've been fantasizing selfishly, and that's not the same as producing a miracle by idealistic faith. The chickens are coming home to roost.

Life itself - the whole Universe - is miraculous. That's the key to solving our problems. Yes, it's scientifically well-established (though most don't know it yet) that we're going to go through hell (some are already). But we don't have to - if we change. This is where, in that great spiral returning home, science meets religion. We are falling short of the mark and must redirect our aim if we are to continue to elicit miracles such as phones, computers and planes.

I am convinced that - though no individual human knows how to stop the planetwide tragedy that is befalling all of us - we, working together as a whole with spiritual guidance, can bring to existence a concrete heaven on earth. And I am not just relying on pretty cosmic philosophies or oldtime religion faith healers. I have spent my whole life reading science, and don't regret a minute of it. But I have come to the conclusion that reality is both more complex and more flexible than we think. Countless times in all our lives, things happen that we cannot explain. The inventions, and apparently superhuman abilities, of Nikola Tesla, make the study of science a continuing experience of jaw-dropping awe. That some of his most idealistic aspirations were hindered by the financial mindsets (greed, if you will) of those around him should not be surprising. The world is full of conflict. The U.S. military budget - in large part motivated by such lower impulses more than reasonable defense - is the biggest causer of the economic mess we're in, but the mainstream media hardly allows even mention of cutting it's budget to be considered. The scientific advances of Tesla towards providing wireless transmission of power were de-funded by J.P. Morgan when he saw they threatened his investments. Much science now has been patented, and much has been classified and so little progress has been made in positive directions but much development of destructive capabilities has gone forward. Now that everyone is coming to recognize that no one is safe from the ecosystem collapse we are experiencing, it's time to bring out and apply these constructive technologies - for the benefit of all rather than of any one country or corporation.

I believe that there are many new ways of accessing the energy that is all around us (not just solar and wind). I also am guessing that, since Tesla's time, quantum leaps in weather modification make it possible that we could use the same advances that have made possible electromagnetic weapons to help stabilize the climate and heal the planet. There is a history of use of energy to help plants grow, and applications are already going mainstream of electromagnetics being used to speed bone growth. Considering the almost magical (or should I say miraculous) communication technology we have now, don't you think it possible that (all the old pessimism about the world being impossible to change aside) we may be able to get everyone on Earth on the same page to do those things we all need to re-stabilize things?

bioremediation composting

2011-03-06T11:13:00.001-08:00

This is the kind of thing that over the years has made me such a passionate advocate of composting:
http://epa.gov/osw/conserve/rrr/composting/pubs/bioremed.pdf
"... investigated the use of compost to bioremediate soils contaminated by lead
and other heavy metals at both urban and rural
sites. In Bowie, Maryland, for example, he found a
high percentage of lead in soils adjacent to houses
painted with lead-based paint. To determine the
effectiveness of compost in reducing the bioavailablility of the lead in these soils, Chaney fed both
the contaminated soils and contaminated soils
mixed with compost to laboratory rats. While both
compost and soil bound the lead, thereby reducing
its bioavailability, the compost-treated soil was
more effective than untreated soil. In fact, the rats
exhibited no toxic effects from the lead-contaminated soil mixed with compost, while rats fed the
untreated soil exhibited some toxic effects..."

We make things better enjoying ourselves.

2011-03-06T10:13:00.000-08:00

Anyone over Hazelwood way stop by and share some of my seeds. This is an approximate list, as I've given some away and planted a few peas, collards, and radishes already. If it turns out the radishes and collards freeze I have more, and I want to take into account global warming by planting this early. Call first to make sure I have the seeds you want.
http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com
Chinese kale
hot pepper
yu-tsai (Chinese rape)
Oriental spinach
asparagus
large leaf garland chrysanthemum
napa (Chinese cabbage)
edible amaranth (white leaf)
sweet peppers (open pollinated)
sugar peas (snap peas)
Chinese basil
Chinese parsley
summer squash
Brussels sprouts
turnip
leek
carrot
beet
collards
mesclun spicy mix
broccoli
Creole cole
okra
spinach
Oregon sugar pod pea
mammoth melting pea
cilantro
marigold
peas and ? (can't remember, forgot to label)
mammoth Russian sunflower
? squash family
black-seeded sunflower
catnip
Calaboa squash
papaya
pumpkin (Connecticut Field)
watermelon (melon de agua)
more ? (too hurried to label, told myself I'd remember)
lettuce (lechuga)
caraway
squash, beans, ? (unlabelled, from Jeff Newman's seed savers gift circle event)
cilantro
lemon basil
trumpet squash (will get way longer than any trumpet I ever saw)
Zucchetta Rampicante Tromboncino (from the gift circle...trombone zucchini?)
radish
potatoes
white clover (many years old - don't know if it's still viable/alive)
Italian parsley
chives
Genovese basil
pea Sugar Daddy
some undetermined types of beans from our Sam Strati's garden
wax garden bean (treated w/fungicide)
bush bean
fava (aka Scotch, horse) bean
black bean
bush blue lake bean
mung beans
field pea
soy

We po' ain't so dum.

2011-02-24T05:13:00.000-08:00

My comment to
http://fatnutritionist.com/index.php/if-only-poor-people-understood-nutrition
posted on facebook by Chatham Program Director Alice Julier:
Jim McCue wrote: I like the taste of Boost and Ensure, but they have corn syrup, right? The rate of diabetes and heart disease from sweet processed stuff is mushrooming. It's being forced to choose between the present and the future. We deliver "blizzard boxes" to Meals on Wheels recipients with emergency canned and dry foods in case of the increasingly likely event of power outages due to weather and other problems the poor are first to feel the brunt of, but we should also be delivering fresh (by fresh I mean uncooked) greens and vegetables. A healthy body can manufacture energy from starch or protein (unless I'm mistaken). The Hazelwood section of Pittsburgh no longer has a grocery store, so these issues are gut level here.

Coming down to Earth in Hazelwood

2011-02-10T12:59:00.000-08:00

The price of food is as high as it's ever been. The
government's cutting back on services. There are less
public transit buses on the road, and it costs more to get
on one. The supply - and so ease of extraction - of coal,
oil, and natural gas is declining, so their cost is going
up. More people are out of work and more are
losing their homes. Farmers are being hampered by
increasingly extreme weather events. Abrupt climate
change is (or should be) complicating every decision
we make. It's enough to discourage a person, but that
would not be appropriate. We are in a time of historic
change, but life has always been a tightrope walk.
Things can quickly get much worse or much better, depending
on what we do. We do know that if we work
together for good, things will go better than if we just sit
back and see what happens or, worse yet, react in fear,
making decisions based on a logic of desperation.

As with all winters, there's time to look back, think about
what's going on in the world, and see what we want to
change. Delivering Meals on Wheels this morning I was
struck by the new greenhouse shining in the sun at the
YMCA. Those kids'll have a jump on the
Spring; they can start a lot of plants growing inside, then
transplant them outside in the garden when it's warm
enough. That greenhouse doesn't look like
much till you know what's possible with it. Think about it -
It's 10 degrees out and the grass is green inside that
unheated structure. Think how much food we can grow!

Like all gardeners, I dream of what I'm going to do when it
warms up. And, like many, I'm a sucker for
garden seeds for sale. I've got, as always, enough
seeds to plant 40 acres but not the 40 acres. So if
anybody wants help starting a garden I'll trade you - I'll
give you seeds and/or a little compost and/or advice on how
to grow in whatever your space and situation allows, and you
bring me something organic I can compost. To me
compost is the most important thing and I feed the pile all
winter long with old cardboard, non-color waste paper, and
kitchen scraps. There's never enough compost to go around,
so I spread it thinly to give the earthworms, fungi, and
other life forms in it lots of places to
reproduce.

The health of a soil, and the plants that depend on it, is
much more a matter of the quantity and diversity of life in
an area than it is the quantity of specific nutrients.
And that goes for the quality of life in a community
too. Modern science is coming full circle - The cold
hard analytical approach is ultimately futile and makes us
hardheaded and hardhearted. So now we have
Battleground Earth - fighting each other and treating other
creatures as enemies. We can fight disease by
anti-biotics or promote health by
pro-biotics. We can fight bad bugs and
disease and varmints in the garden, or we can nurture the
web of life to keep damage down via Nature's balance.
We can fight over dwindling resources such as food, or we
can work together with each other and the rest of Nature to
produce more resources such as food.

Anticipating the need for fresher cleaner food grown closer
to home, some of the wiser of our city's leaders are rolling
with plans for cooperative operations such as community
owned grocery stores, living roofs to grow food to be
distributed right in the neighborhood, and the food buying
club to be set up here at Hazelwood Presbyterian
Church. Stop worrying by getting to work,
volunteering or supporting in some other way the
food-related activities in Hazelwood - the YMCA garden, the
food club, our food forest, and/or the Hazelwood Urban
Gardens' three gardens. And grow something
in your own space if you have access to some
land. Contrary to some attitudes, helping
others is not an activity for
suckers. Being openhearted and courageous
enough to give makes you cool, and you'll find others giving
to you.

The miraculous is all around/in us.

2011-01-30T11:11:00.000-08:00

From:
American Veda
by Philip Goldberg
page 226
...Bhagavan Das took his new friend to meed his guru. the highlights of [Richard] Alpert's encounter with Neem Karoli Baba are now part of spiritual lore: the aging sadhu who owned nothing blew the mind of the spoiled Ivy Leaguer by knowing things about him he couldn't possibly have known; the scientist fed the guileless guru a huge dose of LSD and watched incredulously as nothing happened; the ice of scientific skepticism melted in the white heat of unconditional love...

future eats

2011-01-25T05:49:00.000-08:00

From Pittsburgh Permaculture via Juliette Jones:

"...Garfield Community Farm will build a permanent BioShelter greenhouse structure to extend the growing season on the farm located in the Garfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh and to expand educational offerings at the nearby Fort Pitt Elementary School...

Heritage Seed Bank and Nursery

Blackberry Meadows Farm will establish community seed banks and nurseries for native heritage or heirloom edible plant species and stock public spaces and gardens with native edibles to raise greater public awareness..."

http://pittsburghfoundation.org/node/8732
http://sproutfund.org/spring/the-awards

Apocalypse means awakening

2011-01-21T08:50:00.000-08:00

"...The collapse of industrial civilization is a collective and individual initiation...it must be approached and appreciated...we have been infantilized by consumerism...our work now is to become adults...develop that intimate inextricable connection with Nature..."apocalypse" comes from a Latin word meaning "unveiling"...It's not an ending but an unveiling...lead to a new beginning...human race...stands...at an evolutionary threshold..."

http://youtube.com/watch?v=s01D_Bt8mto&feature=player_embedded

the conspiracy to halt progress

2011-01-19T09:06:00.000-08:00

Some rich will attempt to preserve their relative privilege by any means necessary - lieing us into wars, killing leaders, stealing elections,...The word repent doesn't have the strength it used to have. There are no bad people in the world, only good people who do destructive things. We need to awaken to what we've done before we can change. And things will keep getting worse until we're willing to change.
http://brasschecktv.com/page/1010.html
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ITaqc_NL5aQ
http://youtube.com/watch?v=qyOaJkfeY4Y&feature=related

Seeing our own self-interest

2011-01-14T12:44:00.000-08:00

My dad used to tell us stories of when he was a "guest of the Germans" in Stalag 17 prison camp during World War 2. He said the men were so hungry that if food fell to the ground they would joke "Right on the napkin!" as they snatched it up and ate it anyway. He told us the soup usually just had just a couple of old potatoes or turnips or whatever, and maybe some maggots - "Some guys couldn't eat it, and they died." When the men would plead for food from the guards, the guards would say "Nix arbeit nix essen, dumerasel!" ("No work no eat, jackass!") He said the American prisoners were treated better than the Russians there, and - though they were told they would be shot if they threw food over the fence to the Russians - they discreetly did so anyway. And he once saw Jews being marched who hardly looked alive as they had been so starved they were literally nothing but skin and bones.

Why am I talking about such an unpleasant subject? Because that is exactly where we are now. A comfortable well-fed future is not something we have coming to us. The right to food may be a human right, but it's not a given with most people in the world. And - difficult as it is to imagine - it's not assured those of us blessed to live in the most wealthy country in the world. With all the changes in the world we need to think about the basics of life, food being one of them. Think you're always going to have an income, and so will always be able to afford food? Think again. Barring a miracle, the weather's going to become more extreme. So either the bank won't always be open because of some weather event, or that automatic check won't forever be coming and on time, or (refrigeration systems being down) the food at the grocery store and/or in your fridge will be rotting, or (due to the increased difficulty growing and transporting food with all these extreme weather events) the price of food will be off the charts for you. This is the world we live in.

Without stable refrigeration, there will be the disease hazard of rotting food. Given the possibility that in an emergency we may not always be assured prompt garbage pickup, the best thing to do with that would be to bury or compost it - if you know how and are able to do it safely. Any time organic matter sits in water, that's no good. The oxygen dissolved in the water will be used up by whatever organisms are in it, then disease organisms that don't need oxygen will breed. Incorporating rotting food into the soil allows aerobic (oxygen-using) microbes to suppress disease microbes. The healthier the soil the more different kinds of healthy "bugs" (microbes) the soil has, and the healthier the people with the good sense to eat food grown locally and organically. And locally grown food may be the only food available at times.

We live in the best and the worst of times. Everything seems to be coming to a head on Earth. There are many huge problems, and they are bumping into each other. And we have an almost infinite number of solutions waiting to be applied to those problems. Take enough faith in the future to go forward with the positive ideas you have, regardless of how dire the situation looks. Part of the reason things are such a mess is that millions are discouraged and so aren't much trying to do anything positive any more.

There are a vast number of wonderful things that can be done with microbes - from food production to alternative fuels to pollution treatment to mining to others. Most of these wonderful biotech possibilities are not being implemented because a profitable way of doing them wasn't found. But we have to do some things just because they're good. The world economy is, to me, thundering one thing - DO THE RIGHT THING! Forget about the money aspect of things. It's become profitable to do so many destructive things that our pursuit of money is literally threatening human life with extinction. We have to stop making, selling, and buying unnecessary things.

Think how many things we wouldn't need if we could get along. Need something at the store? No you don't, borrow it from a neighbor. See? Estimate how many hammers are being used right now in your neighborhood. Now estimate how many hammers are in your neighborhood. I'll betcha %99.99 of them aren't being used right now, so why were they bought? Because you don't think of most of your neighbors as family. But we're all in the same boat now. The wild weather is coming, the economy is throwing people off, and we're stuck with one another. As he aged my dad mellowed, and when I noticed he said things just to make people feel good, he said "Might as well". Well, that's like what I say now - We might as well love each other because the payback's better.

Let's get personal/local

2011-01-10T09:20:00.001-08:00

Some local muckraking: I remember years ago Food Policy Commission meetings Mr. Shapiro of Giant Eagle complaining about the WalMart types eating up "little guys" like Giant Eagle...not seeing Giant Eagle's role in ridding neighborhoods of the mom and pop stores...Now Mr. Shapiro's sons turn out to be real anti-union...I'd say "bastards" but being a good hippie I believe everyone's good inside and I try to love and see the beauty of everybody. There used to be stores owned and run often by couples out of their homes on almost every other block. Now that's decentralization, that's local production, and that's resilience.

Let's live our high ideals for once.

2011-01-01T12:52:00.000-08:00

Part of the Pittsburgh neighborhood Hazelwood's former mill site is being considered for a non-research non-live vaccine manufacturing facility for protection from biological attack. Similar to when troops participate in disaster rescue, I think this could be worthwhile, and so voted with the Hazelwood Initiative an initial welcome to their interest in bringing jobs and money to the community. Let's make this a true swords to plowshares moment by keeping their feet to the fire if they do decide to manufacture here. With what microbiology knowledge I have, I have nothing per se against vaccines. There are safety issues with any biotech operation, just as with low tech bio-operations such as urban farming. The military, of course, by definition, does not disclose what it does, so whether they really want to do what they claim they want to do is a whole nother ball o wax.
======
"... On December 9, 2009, President Barack Obama issued the National
Strategy for Countering Biological Threats. It was described as a ―vision for addressing
the challenges from proliferation of biological weapons or their use by terrorists. It
highlights the beneficial nature of advances in the life sciences and their importance in
combating infectious diseases of natural, accidental, and deliberate origin. It also outlines
how the risks associated with misuse and potential consequences of a biological attack
require tailored actions to prevent biological threats.‖
The Strategy placed emphasis on the following areas: (1) Improve global access to the
life sciences to combat infectious disease regardless of its cause. (2) Establish and
reinforce norms against the misuse of the life sciences. (3) Institute a suite of coordinated
activities that collectively will help influence, identify, inhibit, and/or interdict those who
seek to misuse the life sciences.
On December 30, 2009, President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13527,
―Establishing Federal Capability for the Timely Provision of Medical Countermeasures
Following a Biological Attack.‖ ..."

Click "Click here" at:
http://kurzweilai.net/predictions/download.php
======
http://sunshine-project.org

handcuffs on the flowers

2010-12-19T06:08:00.000-08:00

A there but for the grace of God story:
About 1973, working at Mayview State Mental Hospital, one of the patients' history showed he had been married, had a house and car, had been a foreman with a construction company...then developed epilepsy...lost his job, then the car, then the house, then the wife...was drinking and was arrested trying to break into a pop machine...acted "crazy" while in jail so was sent to Mayview for observation...I went on my own to speak for him at a hearing, stopped at the "Bullpen" where inmates are kept temporarily at the courthouse till their hearings, asked the guard which judge he would go in front of...The guard asked me what I was reading and I noticed his face dropped and he quickly handed me back the book...didn't realize till later why - it was a play called And They Put Handcuffs on the Flowers.

Getting our city back in gear

2010-12-13T09:23:00.000-08:00

Optimism has its purpose, but we should not be using it to intoxicate ourselves into inaction. We Pittsburghers stand, along with the rest of the world, on the edge of a possible fall into unimaginable levels of difficulty. Other parts of the world are already inundated by problems. We here are still treading water (and complaining mightily), but it's quite clear that if we keep making the same mistakes we'll continue "progressing" until we get to a time in which it will be too late for us.

I have been increasingly disturbed, not only with worsening environmental reports, but also with what seems to me to be irrationally optimistic spins on things. Take the reaction to my monthly Hazelwood Homepage articles, for instance. Every time I mention some huge problem such as the Earthwide extinction rate or - something I just read yesterday - a study that concludes that the Canadian forests are now emitting more carbon dioxide than they are absorbing, I couple that bad news with something that gives me hope. I'll refer, say, to the promise in the quantum leaps we humans are taking in communication and other technology. Appropriately using the latest in science can yield a peaceful, happy planet. But I'm beginning to wonder if I've been talking about the good things too much. People have been saying they like my articles but don't mention the terrible problems we should all be working on. I'm spending so much time pussyfooting around
people's fears I barely get anything important written before the article's done. So here's some naked truth (in my opinion, of course). Let's enjoy working on these things together:

There's not going to be any economic recovery until we re-orient our lives from war and other conflict to love. If we don't things are shortly going to get much worse.

Burning anything causes carbon dioxide, which is already part of the cause of abrupt climate change. The rose-colored glasses people are wearing who say "not in our lifetimes" are an obstruction to their vision. Stop fantasizing and wake up; we all need to have clear heads to help each other deal with these problems. People who have their heads in the sand are a danger not only to themselves but to us all.

Burning wood or other biomass (anything that was or is alive) is "renewable", but not ideal. Trees and other plants absorb co2, but give it off when they rot or burn, so they are "carbon neutral" but not "carbon negative", which is what we really need. An example of a carbon negative technology would be using co2 to grow a type of algae that produces hydrogen that can be harvested to feed fuel cells, which can provide energy without burning anything.

Far from pessimistic climate scientists exaggerating the extent of the weather problems upon us, they have been pulling their punches. Nobody wants to either say or hear bad news, so they have been trying to be optimistic. The fact is we - every single one of us human beings - are in trouble. The only difference between the massive suffering in other parts of the world (going on almost unreported in our happy-happy self-intoxicating news) and us is that it hasn't hit us yet. If you're able to read this you're one of the luckier ones - at the moment.

What should we do? Stop burning anything to the extent that you can. To the extent we have to use fossil fuels, they should not be from coal or tar sands gasoline. Natural gas is cleaner than coal. The coal industry has to be shut down, period. Pittsburgh, which has been called "the Paris of the Appalachia's", and which has a history so deeply tied up with coal, needs to use it's fantastic research and industrial base to pioneer the world's transformation to new energies - Now! We don't have much time. Our ability to work together is going to be even more severely tried than it has been. We are proud of our ability to get along and work peacefully with such a diversity of people. Now we're going to have to step it up in the storm of changes coming.

That's right, I said stop burning anything. Stop buying cars until they cough up all the patents they've shelved over the years that could build truly clean electric cars dependent on green electricity. I'm talking about the only power we average citizens have at this point - the power of the pocket book. Stop buying their crap. I don't mean to be confrontational or blaming. Most of my readers and most employees of the corporations that make these cars don't know that the vehicles on the road today are able to be made a hundred times better.

If we want to get the country working again, we're going to need some structural change. No more planned obsolescence. It should be made a crime to manufacture anything purposely to fall apart so that it has to be replaced quickly. No more corporate personhood. The companies should work for us, not us work for the companies. No food stamps should be allowed to be spent to buy junk food. This was a corruption of federal law that corporate lobbyists made to encourage purchase of their unhealthy processed "food". Stop mowing your lawns and stop cutting down trees unless you absolutely have to. Stop labeling certain plants and animals as bad. Nurture biocontrols like more foxes and hawks and cats and snakes to keep "vermin" in check. Get off the industrial monoculture agricultural machine which muscles out decentralized diversified traditional growers both rural and urban.

Accept that we have drastic times coming, including the need for heroic large scale technological attempts to rebalance the climate (commonly known as "geoengineering"). We humans mucked up the ecosystem and now we're going to have to try to fix it.

And we may not succeed. The dinosaurs were surely not the first creatures God or Evolution or whatever you want to call it created, and we homo sapiens are not likely to be the last. Recognizing our mortality, we need to more deeply enjoy each moment, working together for life.

a farmer's work is never did

2010-11-17T12:02:00.000-08:00

Garden Growings

Well, it's been a helluva growing season here in Hazelwood, though - to be exact - things are still growing and being harvested. A row of Hazelwood's signature hazelnut trees are planted at the Pittsburgh Food Forests' first permaculture site on Second Avenue near Hazelwood Avenue. Fig trees - originally from ones Sam Strati brought from Italy - are now at my garden near his on Langhorn, and at restauranteur/urban farming activist Alex Bodnar's home. They are still needing covered up for the winter. I suppose they still long for the warmer Calabria southern Italy of their ancestors. Alex says his "were really kicking out" this year, Sam's did well, and mine (despite my impatiently jumping the gun and uncovering them too early this spring so they got damaged by a later frost) did well too. We're going to be transplanting some babies from Sam's to the Hazelwood Food Forest and Hazelwood Urban Gardens Flowers Avenue Garden one of these cool fall
days. A good number of fruit and nut trees have been planted at the Hazelwood Food Forest, along with edible berries and perennial plants both medicinal and culinary. Chuck Christen, a couple of American Legion vets from a rural area, and many others worked together to build good strong sheds at both the food forest and the Flowers Ave garden. Jerusalem artichoke, also known as sunchoke, did very well at Ladora and Lytle, so we're spreading it to Flowers and the Food Forest. It's a daisy-like flower (actually in the sunflower family) which gives kind of a crinkly potato like root which is said to be good for regularizing blood sugar level and fetches $5.99/lb on the organic food market. People are still asking the question about the HUG garden at the corner of West Elizabeth and Lytle Streets: Who gets the produce that we grow there? And the answer is always, "Everybody. This is everybody's garden." In fact I've nominated that garden to be call Everybody's Garden. Of course we can always use more help growing as well as harvesting...

The YMCA's urban farming efforts are progressing well also. Their greenhouse is up. There are three compost bins built from forklift pallets and a tool shed. The garden there did wonderfully this year, with staff and children both bubbling with excitement at their new skills. There is a planting of the native Pawpaw fruit tree, an expanded garden area being prepared for next year,and berry bushes. They are building a playpump there, to take rainwater fourteen feet up from the roof. The children will be working by playing. They seesaw back and forth on the seesaw, and the water goes to the garden. Neat, huh? This is an appropriate technology invention originally conceived for parts of the world in which there is little of the infrastructure most of us in the United States expect. Appropriate tech can be high or low tech.

For next spring we're planting lots of garlic, as that is one thing that has proven so popular it's been difficult to keep it from being picked before it's full grown...We have two kinds of garlic planted - The kind you buy in the store, donated by Stan's Market in the strip, and a variety Sam Strati grows which he says keeps better after it's harvested. Don't pick the garlic until it's ready, about June. Ladora Way Urban Farm, Hazelwood's first community food garden, is producing almost unnoticed except for a few neighbors. There are permanent plantings of some herb and food plants there, the soil is good and getting better as compost and manure are added, and each year has new surprises. This last spring, neighborhood kids and adults were startled at a strawberry crop so ornery it produced a bumper crop with no care whatsoever. People went down the alley with empty plastic bags and came back with bags of first strawberry as they came into season, then greens...and beans, and onions and radishes and tomatoes and endive and escarole and...well, the potato crop at Lytle didn't do so good; after all, we had only had time to add manure to sand (it was an empty lot from an apt building torn down in which the basement was filled with bricks and then sand) and a little compost. But St. Stephen's is donating leaves, neighbors are donating leaves and grass clippings and kitchen scraps, so next year the potato area will have better soil. And we're using the bricks for garden borders and pathway. And we built a barbecue pit at Lytle with some of the bricks.

We need a paradigm shift in our neighborhood (actually we need it all over the world). We need what some call "buy-in from the community" in regards to locally grown food. As long as you phrase it right for each particular person, everybody is on board with community food gardens. But few give it enough priority to actually do some serious work at it. Unfortunately, I'm afraid the economic and environmental changes coming will - in no uncertain terms - deliver enough suffering to allow many more people to see that we can't continue to rely on big agriculture to feed us. We need an educational quantum leap to learn how to grow our own food in a big way. The drastic food price increases, the contaminated food incidents, and the loss of our neighborhood's last grocery store are ominous warnings that we need to change our priorities.

Feedback from my last month's article's "I love the bugs, so leave them the hell alone": Mick says you can get rid of the spiders in your basement with monkeyballs because they don't like the smell of them. And Ted's mom remarked that "hell" is a cuss word.

Every day is dramatic for me, even if I don't leave the neighborhood. I watch, read and think about the implications of things going on in the world for my little patch of Earth. Russia turned back their export ships full of wheat because their heat wave made it so they no longer had a surplus to sell. If you can grow quality food, do so. It's bound to pay off as there are going to be ever more abrupt climate change shifts such as this last summer's heat coming. Asia got it's highest temp since they started recording - 129 degrees Fahrenheit. Downtown Los Angeles got to 113 one day last summer, and my brother Mike says a a couple of years ago it got to 115 in his L.A. neighborhood. We need the best of low and high tech appropriate technology to get through the societal changes coming now. If we can see our way clear to working together, old and new appropriate technologies (including the absolutely amazing progress in communications tech
evidenced by such things as cell phones equipped with internet) can save the day. And, like locally grown food, a food co-op - a cooperatively owned and run community grocery store - is a no-brainer, obviously both needed and possible here. Let's do it.

We hereby free.

2010-11-15T04:57:00.000-08:00

Advances in research in conservation/efficiency, solar, geothermal, wind, so many non-combustion new technologies it's staggering (and my understanding of them so limited), distributed energy, new strategies for generation, storage and transport...to talk about energy shortage is wrong by definition. All matter is energy. It's the same mindset that keeps one being shocked from letting go of the connection. Have you ever been shocked electrically and found that your muscles tighten so that you almost can't let go? When I was a kid the vacuum cleaner had a short so if you weren't careful you got shocked. One of my older brothers purposely shocked me with it, beside the times vacuuming I got shocked. It was hard letting go of the vacuum but you just had to let go. That's how it is with central nervous system addiction, and that's how it is with addiction to combustion as an energy source. Tesla's claim to have the ability to deliver energy through earth atmosphere resonance was defunded when they I think Morgan realized - similar to later with solar - you'd have a hard time making money with it. Countless advances are on hold because of this same status quo impulse. When in grade school I read scientists' said of a possible miracle drug - dmso. Naturally occurring, cheap fermentation process from paper mill waste, not patentable, should be in every medicine cabinet...Legal as a solvent now but makers are not allowed to claim anything medical other than for interstitial cystitis...Guess why this advance has yet to be made.

Money on the brain is a disease.

2010-10-26T08:35:00.000-07:00

St John Hunt, son of Watergate Hunt, who (if my memory is correct) received death confession from his dad re involvement in JFK's killing, (again, if my memory serves me) played a part in keeping the computer election stealers from again stealing the national presidential election by exposing the plot. I don't mean to be pejorative, but the "rats" jumped the burning ship, and so we still don't have it in common knowledge that our election machines are hackable.

Save ya seeds

2010-10-26T05:52:00.000-07:00

Seed Swap and Seed Saving Discussion
Oct28Thu 6:30 PM
Jewish Community Center 5738 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh
"Please enter the building from the garage entrance or Darlington street and sign in at the desks. We will be in Room 202 the Goldstein Lounge."
Who's hosting? Jeff Newman and Katrina...
swapping seeds and sharing our collective knowledge about seed saving. Bring any seeds you have to share...Even if you don't have any seeds to share please feel free to come and learn about seed saving. Some people might even be kind enough to give away seeds instead of swapping...
Katrina: People coming to this Meetup should bring some little baggies, envelopes or some other container to take their seeds home in. Just a heads up. See you all soon! :)
Jeff Newman: My heirloom bush beans are ready! I let the plants dry out and I have a ton of seeds to swap.

We need a sense of history

2010-10-18T06:50:00.000-07:00

We can change

For all our talk and action about going green, for the most part we're still on the fossil fuel path to extinction, basically the same path the dinosaurs took. But that doesn't mean the situation's hopeless. Wonderful new inventions are coming online and can be used to help us get to the new age of power generation via respect for Nature and new understanding of our role in Creation. Yes, it's not going to be the same in a lot ways, but we'll actually feel even more at home with the changes to come because we've already strayed far from the home we come from. What am I talking about? No less than the ideal Earth we each secretly desire. No, we don't know its details, but it does exist in the future IF we are willing to work for it. A world without all those things that plague us now - war, competition, fear, pain, confusion, disease, trouble. A better life awaits close by, only needing all to agree to love.

I know that sounds whacky. I've been called daft before, but I've been right before. Do you know there have been people worried about the ozone layer since the Sixties? They were ridiculed for being, "out in the ozone," as if there was no such thing as the ozone layer and anybody who talked about it had a string loose in the cabeza if you know what I mean. But it turned out there really was an ozone layer, and it's really important for life on Earth, and we humans are still doing things that damage it.

I think life has meaning and we can learn. Things are always slowly getting better, though it sure doesn't show sometimes. Sometimes the improvement is just "spiritual" - an attitude adjustment that doesn't immediately show up in behavior. That's where I think we are today. We're developing a whole new ethic towards the Earth, each other, and all life. As the ecosystem collapses, we see we need life forms we either didn't even know existed or thought of as problems.

Actually, I'm trying to convince that we NEED to change, not just that we can. Some of the best scientists are struggling with what I guess you could call a controlled state of panic. Trained to look at not only the effects but also the causes of things, they increasingly concur that the planet is going in a direction of loss of what we define as life, both human and all the other species. The patterns and relationships between living things are in flux. No matter where you look you can see historic change. If you're young or have failing memory you won't notice, but life just isn't the same any more. Now I'm not trying to wallow in regrets and nostalgia for the past. I just want to point out a few things some of us have either forgotten or are too young to remember because we weren't alive when these things were.

It used to be that winter came slowly in this part of the world, and gradually. Living in West Virginia about thirty years ago, I remember an older man telling me the snow would just gradually start building up and stay throughout the winter and then gradually melt in the spring. I remember viewing a lecture on C-Span twenty some years ago a fellow in frustration trying to explain to his audience that global warming didn't just involve a seemingly minute average temperature increase on the surface of the Earth, but also involved more rapid temperature changes. "If you have your head in the oven and your feet in the freezer, your mean [average] temp doesn't mean a damn thing", he said. We are not living in the same world any more.

Author/activist Bill McKibben has coined a new word - Eaarth - to bring us to understand that things will never be the same. He purposely misspells the word Earth to emphasize things are not the same. His book is called Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. His website is http://billmckibben.com. I don't recommend reading him unless you have, as I do, a really positive attitude. I believe in miracles, both scientific and spiritual, and think we can pull this one (the fix all life is currently in) out of a hat so to speak. But I agree with him that it doesn't look good, at all. To the extent we are able to unite in transitioning to new technology which regenerates the ecosystem and rebalances Nature - and using our amazing and mushrooming capacity for communication - we will be able to salvage the good and preserve it for a new age and even better Earth. But it's going to take going outside of ourselves, with the inevitable risk and vulnerability of falling in love with all life rather than just our own.

We'll either open our doors to strangers or the changes will blow them open - our choice. The doors will open regardless.

The first step to learning is to be unafraid to admit you don't know something. The problems we're facing today force us to go back to the drawing board and figure out where we went wrong. If you're afraid of all bugs, for instance, maybe you need to check yourself. What drove you to designate this wonderful category of life as evil? Stop killing the bugs. Their part in Nature is just as important as yours. Stop buying into the fear hypotheses that have us going to war with others and even ourselves in vain attempt to destroy evil that isn't really there. Yes, terrible suffering has existed - caused by our acting in fear. We play a role in the creation of our enemies by our expecting them to BE enemies and acting on those expectations. Peace is only possible through love, and I love the BUGS SO LEAVE THEM THE HELL ALONE!

We oughta be fuckin ashamed

2010-10-12T12:08:00.001-07:00

October 11, 2010
FROM: Charles Kernaghan
RE: Imprisoned Bangladeshi Labor Leader Freed Mr. Montu Ghosh, an important progressive trade union leader and lawyer in Bangladesh was released an hour ago on bail, after having spent 73 days in prison. Mr. Ghosh, who is 62 years old, was arrested after organizing large demonstrations in support of the garment workers demand for a 35-cent-an-hour minimum wage. For years, the minimum wage has stood at just 11 ½ cents an hour, leaving Bangladesh’s 3.5 million garment workers—80 percent of whom are women—trapped in abject misery. When the garment workers made the very modest demand for a 35-cent-an-hour wage, the multinational apparel companies blocked it. The companies told the workers they will not pay more than 21 cents an hour. This may be the largest women’s social justice struggle in the history of the world. Thanks everyone. Your solidarity worked!
http://nlcnet.org

Pittsburgh growing

2010-10-04T08:00:00.000-07:00

A facebook conversation about sports:

..."Pittsburgh's a lonely town when you're the only football hater around...." (Sung to the tune of Beach Boys song "New York's a lonely town when you're the only surfer boy around......them's dangerous words ;-)...Gonna go watch dem Stillers now..... duhhh...football is the religion with the most followers...all that passion that could be diverted to cuddling, growing things, care for the worlds and each others well-being!...Just men (usually) playing with their balls (so what's new)...you are so right..what a terrible waste...in so many ways...not always..but perhaps all too often...Why didn't you drink the kool aid at the pep rally?12 hours ago ..Out in the woods with the electric kool aid...My former wife supported WAR: Women who Hate Rugby...it is almost "sinful" to speak these words in Pittsburgh...I have worried in the past about repercussions from saying these words aloud, here, where even my spiritual/artist/female housemate is downstairs screaming and cheering...but years of going to political demonstrations, smiling at the FBI camera dudes, experiencing the criminal justice system, friending dangerous people on FB has given me the courage to speak up on this, most undeservably sacred topic...my popularity, however, has plummeted...I feel the same way, sigh. i wear the jersey and pretend and wait for openings in conversation to drop crumbs of reality.. thats all they can handle at a time at this point anyway. Football isnt any fun any more for me...you wear the jersey?? What are you so afraid of? Oh yeah, being ostracized, I forgot. We must start a movement! Seriously, this town is so depressing when the Steelers play, there is no where to go to hide from it, and don't try to watch news for days (all year, really)... they have jersey day at work, i just started, i am very weird and trying to fit in. its not working anyway...Many in this culture have been brain washed into caring deeply about something that has no real consequence in our day to day life. The game reinforces the notion of competition and the war mentality while robbing people of real interaction that may actually matter...Steelers football is very tribal. we get colors and songs and a reason to get drunk and yell at people wearing different colors singing different songs, especially if its cleveland or baltimore. The men get to have fist fights up and down carson and vent their frustration and get to act macho and manly and everthing around it is commercialized and profiting off of the stupidity, like doritos doesnt make browns chips in ohio and pepsi doesnt care who wins the game stupid. Its a really nice jersey, and palamalu was my favorite, its just not the same anymore. football is only entertainment when your asleep...its just like ancient rome, there are slaves and gladiators, and both are nothing to the emperor...what you just said, and also above posts about wasted time, diverted good energy, misplaced enthusiasm...that is all so true, and a real symptom of our society's ills. The misplaced monetary energy is also huge, and the corruption of that, via gambling, steroid use, makes it all so sceptical anyway. Mobsters are all over those outcomes. And then the crumpled broken bodies...and they start breaking up as small children to aspire to billiondollar macho fame. Uh-oh, you got me started. I was just going to complain about feeling like a "lonely surfer boy" but underneath I am like a volcano of complaint about this industry and its cheerleaders...my mom gave it to me for christmas...The money that goes into diverting our attention into sports when I am certain the arts would enrich our lives in much more meaningful and beneficial ways is scary. It is truly about control...You do not want a society of free thinkers able to think abstractly and question the world and entertain themselves without a commercial exchange and rules.......They want us sitting, watching, and consuming...we cross-posted and I hadn't yet read your comments about tribalism, slaves and gladiators, but you are so right about that aspect of it too. Like street gangs, I kind of understand the historic aspect of the identification, group mentality, colors...our society too quickly became unmoored from earlier clannish, familial, geographic ties...and this vacuum opened up and is now being filled with junk..... the men running things know 3000% more psychology than the average joe. its like stomping on kittens easy for them and hilarious on top of that. I read some where that it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a sick society. what a mad house carnival we are living in...your popularity may have plummeted with some, but it went up with others. I'm with you, got an article for the Hazelwood Homepage (I write a regular column) cut by the exec dir because i said the same type of thing. We're wasting precious time w/sports in a world being destroyed as the new age yearns to be. Didn't catch what you meant by "... Mobsters are all over those outcomes. And then the crumpled broken bodies...and they start breaking up as small children to aspire to billiondollar macho fame..."

Union hero graduates

2010-09-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

From Charlie McCollester:
======
Dear Battle of Homestead Foundation Friends,

Many of you know that our beloved friend, Russell Gibbons, a founder of the BHF and of the Pennsylvania Labor History Society, died last week. His funeral was yesterday, Tuesday, September 28th. I am sending along the obituary Charles McCollester wrote for use by the newspapers and others. If anyone wishes to send his or her condolences to Charlotte Gibbons, Russ's wife, and his family, please send a card or letter to the following address:

Ms. Charlotte Gibbons and family
207 Grandview Drive South
Pittsburgh, PA 15215

For those who wish, contributions may be made in Russ's name to:

Just Harvest
1618 Terminal Way
Pittsburgh, PA 15219

RUSSELL GIBBONS

Russ Gibbons died in Pittsburgh the early morning of Friday September 24, 2010. Born in Hamburg, NY, he worked summers in a local steel mill and joined the United Steelworkers in 1949. He graduated in liberal arts from Ohio Northern University and became a journalist and editor of the Orchard Park Press from 1956-59. He developed a close friendship with Joe Molony, New York State steelworker union director and through his help was hired by the United Steel Workers of America in 1965 and moved to Pittsburgh. He became the editor of /Steelabor/ and was Director of Communications for the union from 1978 to 1987 when he retired. A devoted family man, he married Louise Samulski in 1957. They had two children, Mark and Faith. After the death of his first wife, he married Charlotte Ziringer in 1972. They had two children together, Kim and Ryan.

Gibbons was a devout social justice Catholic, a member of St. Scholastica parish in Fox Chapel. He often wrote on labor and politics for liberal Catholic journals including /Commonweal, /the/ National Catholic Reporter, /and/ /the/ Catholic Worker, /was published in /The Nation/ and other periodicals. He was a friend and admirer of Monsignor Charles Owen Rice, Father Gary Dorsey and Father Jack O’Malley. His friendship with Joe Maloney and commitment to Catholic social justice ideals led him to get the USW to establish “The Joe Molony Lecture Series” at the University of Notre Dame “ to expose Notre Dame students to leaders from the labor and progressive community. “

A man of many causes and passionate commitments, Russ became the executive director of the Frederick Cook Society in 1993 and created /Polar Priorities/ as its annual Journal. The society championed the cause of Frederick Cook as the true discoverer of the North Pole over the claims of Admiral Peary. He also edited /Chiropractic Age, a/ publication of the Association for the History of Chiropractic, which documented the struggle of chiropractic to be recognized as legitimate practice by the medical school establishment.

Russ’s central passion was the preservation of labor history and the promotion of public education about the struggles and sacrifices of those who fought to raise the living, health and safety standards of workers. A founder of the Pennsylvania Labor History Society, organized in 1973 to commemorate the Lattimer Massacre of 22 immigrant coal miners in the anthracite region of eastern Pennsylvania, he helped guide the organization toward a statewide mission. Elected vice-president of the society at its 1974 founding meeting, he later served as president, but most notably he edited and wrote much of the society’s annual publication. /Pennsylvania Labor History Notes /(1974 -l 1996) became the /Pennsylvania Labor History Society Journal/ (1997-2009), the name change reflecting its expansion in size and content including stunning color covers over the past decade. He worked closely with the Society’s officers: Rosemary Trump (SEIU), president, and George Pinkey (USW), vice-president. Penn State’s retired anthracite historian Harold Aurand and former Bethlehem Steel pipefitter George Pinkey were with him when he collapsed after the Altoona Blair-Bedford Labor Council dinner commemorating the 1922 Railroad Shopmen’s Strike centered in Altoona. Regrettably he missed the Society’s tour of the extraordinary series of bronze markers erected by the former coal mining town of Lilly. Russ’s last Journal celebrated Lilly as a stellar example of a working-class community that understands and appreciates the significance of its own history. As Russ was being treated by the EMT men, he wanted to know if they were union.

Mention of brochures and journals begs a description of the extraordinary twenty year relationship between Russ Gibbons and the Steel Valley Printers a union cooperative print shop run by Mike Stout with Lloyd Cunningham and Greg Mowry. Russ at the peak of his post-USW retirement in the 90s and 2,000s was editing a good half-dozen magazines and journals with passion and professionalism, besides churning out dozens of brochures and flyers for various non-profit fundraisers like Just Harvest and the Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. Mike Stout who was the last elected Head Grievanceman at the Homestead Steel Works until it was closed in 1986 says: “When it came to dislocated workers, Russ walked the walk, he didn’t just talk the talk.” His print shop in the old building by the High Level “Homestead Grays” Bridge, across from the 1941 Steel Workers Organizing Committee’s tribute to the unionists of 1892, in a crowded, frenetic, sweaty workplace that became Russ’s home away from home, his office. He donated a poster of /Norma Ray/ for the wall and the classic “Is your bathroom breeding Bolsheviks?” poster for its restroom. He went up to the print shop every Wednesday after our communal breakfast bringing work, new revisions and old deadlines. He remained a /working /journalist to the end.

When the mills were closing, the various groups in the Mon Valley were looked upon by some union officials as something that they didn’t control and therefore something they didn’t like. Gibbons was the first steelworker union official to join the Tri-State Conference on Steel board in 1984 where he built bridges that led to the alliance between the activists and the union under Lynn Williams during the struggle to stop the destruction of the /Dorothy Six/ blast furnace in Duquesne PA. Russ loved the United Steel Workers, the institution itself, revered the legacy of Phil Murray, loved the workers of Homestead and beyond, then and now. He was chosen by the USW to coordinate the union’s 50^th anniversary commemoration in 1986. On hearing of his death, former USW president Lynn Williams remarked: “Everything Russ did in his life was motivated by loyalty and devotion to the cause of organized labor.” Ed Ayoub, former Chief Economist of the Union and close friend of 30 years, said that his dedication to the trade union movement and to the USW, made Russ “an innovator in journalistic truth and ethics about labor’s role in society.”

Russ Gibbons was a founding member, instructor and key promoter of the Phillip Murray Institute of Labor Studies at the Community College of Allegheny County working closely with its director, Lou Pappalardo, Norm Koehler, Leo Bigley, T.J. McGarvey and others to create and sustain the Labor Studies program. With the strong interest and support of Commissioner Tom Forester, it provided two decades of training and education on history, negotiations, workplace safety and health from the 1970s to the 1990s for union leadership and activists. Russ never stopped learning and contributing. In the past year he became a docent - leading tours of St. Nicholas Church in Millvale. He had long promoted the importance of its magnificent Maxo Vanka murals for labor and immigrant history.

In 1992, Gibbons spearheaded the commemoration of the centennial of the 1892 Homestead Strike. His efforts led to the erection of three state historical markers: at the grave sites of six of the unionists, the Bost Building union headquarters, and the Pump House battle site. A prolific proposer of state historical markers, he authored proposals for the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (Grant Street); the founding convention of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (on the North Side near Martin Luther King School); the 1919 Steel Strike (in front of the steelworkers hall in Braddock); the marker to Francis Perkins in front of the former Post Office in Homestead; and the Morewood massacre sign near Scottdale, where Frick’s deputies shot down eleven striking coke workers in 1891, the year prior to the battle of Homestead.

Out of the 1992 commemoration, Russ fostered the idea of a foundation to promote education and interpretation around the history and actuality of the labor movement at the Pump House, the central battleground at the 1892 Homestead battle. He was a tireless organizer of events and produced a yearly newsletter for the Foundation. In 2006, eschewing what he called “the Papa Doc Syndrome” of leaders who become presidents of organizations for life, he asked Charles McCollester to become the foundation president. He then focused on the establishment of the USW-supported Bernie Kleiman Lecture held each July around the strike date. Up until a couple of weeks ago, Russ could be found at the table Eat ‘N Park Homestead with the “Pump House Gang” of activist scholars: Rosemary Trump, Joel Woller, Steffi Domike, Joel Sabadasz Jim Hohman, Dave and Marlena Demarest, Millie and Bill Beik, Mike and Stephanie Stout, Joe and Delsa White, Peter Oresick, Peter Gilmore and Bill Yund, with Russ venting his spleen at the effrontery of the rich and the disgraceful compromises of politicians who claim to be the workers’ friends. Then he’d say: “I’m heading over to the Print Shop. What do we need to get done?”

Hail fellow workman! Death has no dominion!

Charles McCollester
======

Gearing up for change

2010-09-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

How can I contribute what I can with what I have? Well, I'll just go bring these rotting peaches and cantaloupe rinds from the Meals-on-Wheels kitchen to compost at the Hazelwood Urban Garden on Lytle. And every Wednesday I help close the farmstand and compost biodegradables like veggie waste and cardboard from there. And tomorrow I'll help finish building the shed at the Flowers Avenue community garden. And next week some chemistry and biology majors from Carlow are coming to help site and build a composter (larger than the usual home composters), and I'll help with that. And I'm just now writing about these things - not to crow but to do my part and get my readers (if I have any) to get more into serious gear to help regenerate the Earth.

If you don't know that we humans have an effect on the environment and so can make things worse or better by our actions, then I've no use talking to you, you're lost. You won't be able to see until you get your head up out your...out the sand. If you think the problems are too big to make it of any use to try, you need to see that the only way to be happy is to try. Do your part, that's all. Just do your part and you'll sleep better at night. Don't worry about whether or not your little part is going to make a difference, just do it. Do it for yourself, to maintain your sanity. Keep trying - regardless of how hopeless the world looks - just to maintain your self-respect, or to regain your self-respect if you've already given up and stopped trying. Try just so you'll look good in others' eyes, you'll look like a hero. Try just because it feels good to try. Try because then you won't feel guilty for not trying. Get up each day and do the
best you can (even if you fail) because you'll get to heaven that much faster (We're all going there eventually). Try because your brain secretes chemicals that make you feel good when you get up and move. Get up and do something positive, because if you don't you'll vegg out and eventually do something stupid.

They got rid of the 56U bus to Oakland. And they're intending to get rid of the 56 McKeesport in January. Did I get depressed when I found out? No. I got scared, because I recognized this as one more detail in a historic pattern which has been making a fewer people richer and an even greater majority ever closer to stark poverty. Then I got mad, because there are among us many who are so thoughtless as to not see that the road we're taking is leading straight to massive suffering. We MUST see each other as family and act accordingly or none of us is going to make it. Of the 25,000 plus vehicles per day that go up an down 2nd Ave, the vast majority of them have empty seats. Just think of the causes and consequences of that. We're pissing out greenhouse gases faster than ever while the Earth's ecosystem is warning us to cut our emissions. It's like a car which hasn't even applied the brakes yet - and is in fact speeding up - approaching a
collision which will be hard not to interpret as tragic.
One more time, we don't need more cars, we need much more efficient public transit. Call your politicians and tell them it's curtains for them if they don't make better decision.

Is anybody taking the "recycle" and "recyclable" and "Please recycle" printed on cardboard to heart? I'm looking for a site or sites to compost cardboard and other organic wastes in larger amounts than is possible in those backyard composters that are popular. If you have a place, an idea, or would like to participate in any way, please get hold of me.
======
Jim McCue
St. Jim the Composter
412-421-6496
composter and biotech researcher
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2009/02/celebrate-earth.html
http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com
http://facebook.com/alllifelover
http://plentyoffish.com/member498447.htm
http://hazelwoodhomepage.com

Big guy goes

2010-08-18T09:13:00.001-07:00

Richard LeGrande, tough genius who traveled the world with and without PanAm for thirty years, co-founder of Hill House Computer Lab, President Allegheny County Transit Council, elder Hazelwood Presbyterian Church,founder of Shipofzion.org transportation service for the poor and disabled and elderly to take the place of PAT transit cuts, mentor who helped me in recovery, with more hats than I yet after all these years have been privy to, a successful bad-ass who in his later years was referred to by someone in the mayor's office as a living saint, has passed,...but he's still here. I think he's probably doing what he said he was considering - setting up an offshore internet service provider so he could say what the fuck he wanted.

Dangers Ahead

2010-08-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

There are so many problems in our environment developing I don't know where to start. Were I a doom and gloomer I'd not want to talk about Earth changes that we humans experience as problems. But, convinced of the basic Goodness of the Universe, I can enjoy thinking about (and find solutions to) problems that scare many too much for them to be openminded.

Let's try a cause and effect sequence to get a glimpse at what may be going on with the planet. Your guess is as good as mine; I'm just telling you what I think based on my research. I think we're in a moment of history of quantum change - the changes are changing the changes. You can't just say for instance that our burning things is making carbon dioxide. I mean, well, you CAN say that, but if you want to be really scientific you have to refer to the fact that everything - absolutely everything - is connected by cause and effect. Like a circle. If someone asks, "Where's the beginning of the circle?", what do you say? There is no beginning or end of it; it's connected to itself. Well, it's the same way with the Universe. That's why scientists refer to a "butterfly effect" in which two seemingly distant things can somehow affect each other - a butterfly flapping its wings and a rainstorm in some other part of the world, for instance. But let's try a cause and effect sequence where effects are obvious:

We burn stuff. That yields carbon dioxide. Some of the co2 gets in the ocean and makes carbonic acid. The carbonic acid makes the calcium carbonate shells of some sea life more water soluble. They stop reproducing. The price of clams and lobsters goes up because there's less of them. We get hungry because we like to eat sea animals with shells like clams and lobsters. We get cranky when we're hungry so we start fighting over food. Next thing you know we're dying of hunger and war.

Sound melodramatic? Well, there's always an alternative scenario for any cause-and-effect sequence because we can always make different decisions. But this type of thing is already happening - we're just so enmeshed in it we can't step back and see the big picture. Take Darfur, for instance. Those of us at all interested in the news have noticed there are brutal wars going on, in far off places like Africa for instance. Well, among other things, that hell on Earth going on in Darfur is about what we call global warming, as vegetation and water have been diminishing there. And there are literally millions of similar situations going on in the world right now, while we're too wrapped up in our own lives to take much notice. Pittsburgh is blessed with water, so we haven't had global warming affect water availability here. But our desire to use and make money from coal and natural gas is polluting our water.

But let's get back to ocean acidification. I use calcium carbonate in the form of dolomitic limestone in gardening. Now we can't very well lime the ocean to "sweeten" our co2-caused acidity, so what are we going to do?

I'll tell you what we're going to do, and this is something we're going to do whether we like it or not. We're going to vastly decrease the amount of combustion we humans engage in. And how can I say this with such confidence? Because a chain of causes and effects is going to stop us. Either we will transition to non-combustion processes - stop burning things for energy - or we will die off as a species and that will stop us. That simple. No drama, just fact.

Every school child should know the name and some of the accomplishments of Nikola Tesla, who worked here in Pittsburgh for a while. His work to develop non-combustion energy was quashed by some of the same people who made huge amounts of money from some of his other inventions. It IS possible to get energy without either burning fossil fuels or nuclear power, and if we as a species are to survive we need to develop our technology in this direction.

The problem at this stage of history - the end of an age and the beginning of a new age - is not a shortage of solutions. The problem is that we are afraid to change. But we HAVE to change. There are feedback loops in the cause-and-effect changes that are causing greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide to MUSHROOM in their rates of increase - independently of what we do. So we not only have to stop producing greenhouse gases, we have to re-stabilize the climate system by for instance vastly increasing the number of algae and larger plants we can get growing to offset these feedbacks. Usually people say that climate scientists are exaggerating the negative in their warnings. But in this case it's the opposite. They're soft-pedaling how bad it is. Nobody, myself included, wants the bad news. But the bad news is here. It's become even worse than most climate scientists expected, and is happening much faster. This is quantum
change, in which the changes are affecting each other. As those Pittsburghers who don't have their heads in the sand noticed, the Great Blizzard of 2010 was part of a pattern of weather changes that is going on NOW, not going to happen some time down the line to our children and grandchildren.

Baba Israel and me about 1974

2010-08-09T04:41:00.000-07:00

Welcoming the New Industrial Revolution

2010-06-14T08:57:00.000-07:00

======
It's clear major change is due for our world. The Earth is crying out for humans to make different decisions. Rather than sound like a doomsday prophet mentioning some of the drastic problems developing (and interacting with each other), I'd like to make some suggestions I think would make things better. We each have different priorities; submit your own suggestions for healing our troubled world to Hazelwood Homepage by emailing hazelwoodeditor@yahoo.com or by calling (412) 421-7234. Here are some of mine (I'll save the most controversial for another time):

We've got to stop processing food so much. Peanuts, for instance, start out a wonderfully wholesome food - but after hydrogenation, roasting, addition of sugar or corn syrup, and sitting on the shelf for God knows how long, become more of a medical nightmare than a staple food.

Time after time, decisions made by commercial interests have resulted in consumption of "foods" which barely rate that label. Throughout the history of human consumption of wheat and other grains, the grain seed was eaten some time after harvesting without further processing other than perhaps grinding and baking. Since (before refrigeration) the seed would not keep once ground (killed), baking and eating followed not long after grinding. This was all subverted when processors removed most of the nutrients and added chemical preservatives - thereby eliminating the need for refrigeration by producing a substance which would not get moldy. That "white bread", now "fortified" with vitamins to be able to be claimed to have at least some nutritional value - and dyed to make it look more like the whole grain it no longer is - is what the majority of Americans now eat, unaware that REAL bread requires either refrigeration or almost immediate consumption to avoid it getting moldy.

That the planet's richest nation is by no measure the healthiest calls to us to go back to basics. Grow the food locally as much as possible. Grow it without the chemicals Nature managed to do without before we "wise" ones started messing with things. Have a bakery in every home, or on every corner, and in every institution - a REAL bakery, one that grinds the wheat, rye, and other grain seeds just before baking and selling or serving the bread made from it.

We need a revolution in this country, but not a violent one. We need a new industrial model, one which motivates the long-term enhancement of Earth rather than it's short-term consumption. The privatization of everything from the gene pool to the water must be reversed. The redlining of parts of the Earth as not good places for business investment is a short-term money-making strategy which ultimately shuts down the world economy - causing bankruptcy in the long run. Planned obsolescence is unethical and should be illegal. Industries should not be allowed to externalize the costs of their decisions in the form of pollution. A company in the new world to come will no more be able to put pollutant-filled smoke in it's neighbors' lungs than a hired killer has to put a bullet in someone.

Similar to the American Indian belief that the land belongs to the Great Spirit, good science yields the conclusion that all life is connected. New details each day of ecological relationships breaking down bring home the tragic impact of some new ecosystem service faltering - clean water, moderation of weather, pollination of our crops, new and resurgent diseases, loss of agricultural stability, loss of fish habitat, flooding events and droughts. We're losing our families - the frogs, the bats, honeybees and many other beautiful pollinating insects...In the end we're losing ourselves.

We shouldn't want to go back to the old days. Technology is so advanced at this stage that, should we make the appropriate decisions (the most loving ones) we could literally establish a Heaven on Earth. Failure to recognize all life as one will shortly likely consign most our particular species to history. This is the time referred to in Hopi prophecy as the Great Purification.

And we've got to share. We've got to work together to grow food, process it, distribute it, and return the organic waste to the soil. As a part of this re-establishing the local food web of life, the community-owned grocery store (food co-op) is a good concept requiring cooperation among a really wide group of people, and has to have an attitude of neighborliness to get off the ground. Just as with locally-grown natural food, world events are driving an increasingly cooperative society, and the Hazelwood Community Grocery is something we all need to get behind.
======

We stand together or we fall apart

2010-05-13T10:12:00.000-07:00

======
Welcoming the New Industrial Revolution

I can just see friends taking these words the wrong way.
Some say go back to the old days, others
DON'T go back. That's the last
thing we need here in Hazelwood is more industry to pollute
and then leave. Go back to the good old days
when there were three grocery stores, a shoe store, and
thirteen barber shops on
Second Avenue. Don't go back to the bad old
days when the smoke was so thick you could hardly see the
other side of the river and the bosses treated you like you
was... We don't need no damn industry; we need air and
new lungs to breathe. Revolution? Oh, yeah, we ain't
been hurt enough by everything else. Just leave
us alone...

Like passengers on a ferry at turbulent sea, we can be like the children - who turn the rocking boat into rollicking fun - or their parents turning green in their seats trying to hold on to their sliding possessions.

We are at the dawn
of a new age, like it or not. We don't have the choice
to stay the same or go back - these are not in the list of
options. Moment by moment, we each on Earth at this time
are called to choose between love and fear. At a faster
and faster pace, new challenges arrive. Blindly battle for
what seems a smaller and smaller share of the pie and you
will see and participate in greater and greater conflict and
destruction. Accept each new surprise as a wonderful
chance to make things better and you'll find even better
possibilities than you had hoped for. Nature is a Great
Machine which constantly churns out incredible new designs
for life; we just need to step away from the old pollution
machine way of looking.

It's a law: Let yourself become discouraged and afraid and
you'll find yourself in an ever-tightening nightmare of
problems due to lack of money, competition over things, and
a world that is just falling apart by the hour. But
share with your neighbors your worries and you find they
have the same. Next thing you know the problems start to work
themselves out. No, you still don't have the scratch to
pay for that whatever it is you need. But somebody else
lends you theirs, or you don't really need it, or things
will work out in some unexpected way. Pittsburgh
healer Kathryn Kuhlman used to say, "Expect a
miracle!" Now I know that comes off sounding like
hokey-gokey stuff, but that IS the way the world works.
You get what you ask for, and if you don't have enough faith
in the future to work for something better than the present
you're not going to get a better world.

We can have a world without oil. We can have a world
without the incredibly destructive Marcellus shale hydro-fracking for natural gas, or tar
sands mining for gasoline. We can have a West Virginia
that is "Almost Heaven" (just like their advertisements say) and a Pittsburgh that grows
healthier and wealthier - without having to destroy lush
mountains full of beautiful people, plants,
and animals - to get the coal. The fear that
there is a shortage of energy, or of natural resources for
that matter, is a self-induced nightmare humankind is called
now to awake from. From day one we've had enough, from
cars that didn't need gasoline to electricity that doesn't
require combustion either. But no, someone with a gimme
mindset always had to get in the way of progress by stifling
solutions. It reminds you of the Garden of Eden story,
how we drew a line between ourselves and God and so got kicked
out of Heaven. Fight over it, nobody gets it, just like
my mother said.

Faced with whole Earth ecosystem emergency - such as the oil leak
in the Gulf of Mexico - it's time to let go of all of this
fear of new ideas. Humans are reproducing a mile
a minute. We're fighting over diminishing wild fish
stocks. Species after species (including
our own) are coming down with crippling diseases exacerbated
by unprecedented weather.

Winston Churchill foresaw a time when there would be no
need to grow whole animals for livestock, that we would be
much more efficient and humane growing only the cells of the
parts of the animals that we actually eat (not the bones, for instance ). Biotechnology now has
that capacity - to grow protein and other nutrients with
single-cell microorganisms just like we make yogurt and
cheese and bread and beer. Let's get to it in
Pittsburgh. We don't have much time before the
environmental and economic changes make us helpless.

The revolution towards decentralizing production - such as with locally grown food - is such an obvious trend by now it needs no defending. All I have to do is compare that
tired months old garlic grown in China and shipped all the
way here with my fresh garlic and chives grown here right
below the tracks in the Riverside section of Hazelwood.
Give me a holler at 421-6496 and I'll show you food the way
it looks before it becomes what yens city slickers RECOGNIZE
as food on the market shelves. Farmers may be broke but
they DON'T go hungry. There are parts of food plants
which are perfectly edible, but which our coddled and manipulated
consumers have been brainwashed not to recognize; these
parts the food growers harvest for themselves or return to
the soil.

There are wild foods more nutritious than the stuff
you buy. These foods don't even need planted; they come
up as "weeds". I especially want to turn people on to
lambs quarters, which is like spinach. It's 40% protein,
doesn't get bothered by bugs, and grows as tall as a small Christmas
tree during the course of the season to provide a continuing
crop. Read up on it if you don't trust me, then take a
walk on the wild side and cook some
up. It's delicious.

The problems on our plates now are bigger than any in
modern history. Tried and true methods don't make it any
more. We have to be creative. We have to be
efficient with what we have. We have to improvise when
we don't have what we need. We can't assume either a
stable environment or government. And we can't waste
time placing blame. We stand together or fall apart.
======

Marcellus shale/natural gas

2010-05-11T06:05:00.000-07:00

This ain't natural:

"Can you do this with your tap water?"...a
man holding a lighter to his running tap water. The man jumps back as
the water, including the water collected in the sink, ignites into a
ball of flame..."

+

...water that can be lit on fire right out of the sink, chronically ill
residents of drilling areas from disparate locations in the US all with
the same mysterious symptoms, huge pools of toxic waste that kill cattle
and vegetation, well blowouts and huge gas explosions consistently
covered up by state and federal regulatory agencies...

+

http://gaslandthemovie.com

http://sungazette.com/page/content.detail/id/543083.html?nav=5011

http://gaslandthemovie.com/GASLANDPRESSRELEASE.pdf
GASLAND
gaslandthemovie.com
When filmmaker Josh Fox discovers that Natural Gas drilling is coming to his area—the Catskillls/Poconos region of Upstate New York and Pennsylvania, he sets off on a 24 state journey to uncover the deep consequences of the United States’ natural gas drilling boom. ...

Let Life do it.

2010-04-19T10:58:00.000-07:00

======

Enjoying life by letting Nature help

Recognizing that we are a part of the Earth rather than apart from it allows us to draw on the enormous creativity that the living world displays. From butterflies that can smell nectar from a great distance to elephants who communicate at frequencies we can't hear, the planet is full of the old wisdom of creatures just as alive as we humans. Our best science has always taken a page from other forms of life.

Think we humans are smart? Mosquitoes seem to have invented needles before us. Nature invented the engine too, as any child can see in the beating wings of a bug, or the hunting skills of the rotifers under a microscope (They whip up a tiny whirlpool to suck up nearby food). We just learned how to fly not too long ago, but this is a skill birds and insects seem to have had from the get-go. When was the last time YOU walked on a wall or ceiling? Got a pollution problem? Microbes are being stress-bred to not only withstand specific chemicals but use them as food.
The lowly earthworm provides disease suppression via encouraging microbiological diversity. Ever felt teased by a fly? Geez, they're fast - they fly circles around us, literally.

I don't know how we humans got so confused along the way, but life really doesn't have to be as hard as we make it by our fear-caused emotions. Take greed, for instance. The more you tell a fearful person supplies are limited of something or other, the more that person will hoard - not realizing that ultimately it's our greed that destroys economies and long term wealth. Life does have its limitations, but we make things far worse by fighting over things rather than sharing each others' know-how to work out problems. Think what our economy would be like without the huge expenditure for military and police. There have been times in history that were peaceful, when people didn't feel the need to fight.

And there are times and places in which nature is more peaceful. Just as in an honest democracy people get along by respecting all different types of people and ways of looking at things, a healthy ecosystem thrives by diversity. Wiser garden managers produce more quality and quantity by allowing nature to work together. Take grass clippings, for instance. Now, if I had my druthers humankind would un-invent the lawn mower and the chemicals used to make battle with those plants people have decided are "weeds". But, if others persist in this vain war with nature in the yard, at least the grass clippings can be used to feed a more productive community of life somewhere else. I used to brag that, whereas other people slaved over their lawns to keep them mowed, I had thousands of earthworms working for me - eating those grass clippings and other stuff and turning them into plant food for tomatoes, spinach, onions, and whatever.

A healthy garden or farm, rather than try to grow just one kind of plant, rather encourages a wide variety of plants and animals as part of the web of life. This strategy - diversifying your portfolio, if you will - is more likely to pay off one way or another than just putting all your eggs in one basket by for instance planting all corn or all one kind of tomato. If larcenous neighbors or stealthy wildlife decimate one or two types of crop, a day or so of regrowth in a diverse planting provides healing via regrowth of some other plant or plants that weren't hit. An encouragement of a soil with plenty of life - molds, bacteria, earthworms and other little critters - yields well-fed plants which are more resistant to disease, tolerant of mechanical damage, more tasty and nutritious to eat. To me it's evidence of the good science behind spiritual principles - Serve life in general and life will serve you.

We consumers have been victims of many hoaxes, but one of the biggest is that store-bought synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are necessary to grow plants. In fact, the opposite is true. Though application of synthetic nutrients and pesticides sometimes increases initial growth, in the long run the acidification of the soil and the decline in the community of life at soil level results in declines of safety, nutritional content, and quantity of garden produce. As nightmare after nightmare of industrial agriculture delivers toxics and disease across borders, the tried and true old ways of using manures and composts and rock dusts and organic amendments such as seaweed highlight the more humane agriculture of the past.

When some wild animal or person tramples your tomatoes or eats your corn, not to worry - there's plenty other stuff growing. Biocontrol succeeds by encouraging more life - such as ladybugs to eat other bugs - rather than making war on whatever species are bugging you. Just as violence on an individual or national level includes collateral damage and is self-defeating, taking pot shots with pesticides at "enemy" species ends up hurting the hurter. Bottom line, be as welcoming of all life in your garden as much as you find possible, and it will be more productive and safe for you, a refuge of peace in a seriously crazy world.

All animals, from bugs to humans - as part of the web of life - produce both their own bodies and their own manures as substrate for the growth of new life. In a sane and healthy society most organic waste would be returned to the soil rather than either flushed to the ocean via the sewage system or incinerated or landfilled. Until we get the message we've made some wrong turns in our "civilized" modern world, nature is going to keep on delivering some hard lessons. If we treasure and love those plants and creatures around us, our enjoyment of life will pay off by the creation of a more peaceful world. If we continue to wildly destroy so much of nature's community - out of the false fear-based logic that we have to fight for everything we get - this will continue to result in an ever more harsh environment - the end product will be our own extinction as a species.

It all comes down to one thing. Love everything that lives. Love is natural, easy, and the most scientific thing to do. Nurturing an ecosystem with a quantity and diversity of life may take longer, but one way or another the community of life will pay you back.

======
Jim McCue
St. Jim the Composter
412-421-6496
composter and biotech researcher
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2009/02/celebrate-earth.html
http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com
http://facebook.com/alllifelover
http://plentyoffish.com/member498447.htm
http://hazelwoodhomepage.com

Forward to New Eden

2010-03-12T14:32:00.000-08:00

======
If we can't learn the easy way...

When I was a kid I thought the word "stubborn" always went with the word "Irish". Lately, though, I'm starting to think we humans are a pretty stubborn bunch as a whole. We keep fighting, for instance, despite clear evidence that both sides lose in every conflict - nobody wins. A thousand different signs have given us warning to stop polluting, yet we continue to stay stuck-on-stupid. We know we're supposed to try to love one another, but we do the easier rather than the right thing. And you can be sure every time we start something good - which inevitably involves change - there's going to be a backlash out of ignorance and fear of the change.

So now we sit at a moment in history absolutely unique, called by events to act together for the good of all, and what do we do? We do the same type of things we've always done. We sit on our asses and argue about the problems - as if our own individual angles and wording were central to the reality of them. Well, how do you define it? Is this a moral problem, as Al Gore thinks? Is it a technological problem that can be solved by research. Is it a problem at all? Maybe it's all of the above! Maybe there is a good reason the planet's in this mess, and it has nothing to do with any one part of it or blaming any one.

Maybe this is the moment in this planet's history when our job is to recognize that all life is one. Maybe it's time to grow up as a species.

In the 1970's I lived and worked with a mining/farming family in West Virginia. The mother would sometimes startle me by saying to one of her children, "Quit yer piddledickin' around and..." do whatever task we were doddling at. Well, that's the way I feel like talking to people today. What needs to be said or done to awaken people to the need to get in to gear to deal with the earthwide emergency that is coming? Should I holler, should I cuss, should I be rude, should I point out all the terrible outcomes possible if we don't get together?

I have no desire to scare people to death. I have no desire to be correct in concluding that we are going into a time of terrible difficulty. I wish I were wrong, but I doubt it. The signs are clearly visible, to those unafraid to open their eyes. We just went through a blizzard and we can't predict the next environmental difficulty coming to our part of the world. But one thing is sure - If we work together it will go better.

My mother raised seven sons. I remember her so often saying, "Fight over it, nobody gets it". And she was right. Either she would take the toy - acting as Moral Umpire - or we would end up breaking it - sort of poetic justice for our not getting along. "Serves ya right!" she'd say, when one of us caught karma for being greedy or mean or whatever via a skinned knee or some other tragedy.

And that's what I'm going to say when some of our stubbornness gets it's inevitable comeuppance. Serves us right for being selfish and greedy, just like Mommy said. It's a hard way to learn, but it's learning nevertheless. Notice I said OUR stubbornness. I admit I've been just as stubborn as everybody else.

I don't look forward to the difficult lessons coming which would have been easier had we been more open-minded and open-hearted. But the past is the past, and severe climate change is inevitable now, in my opinion. I do have faith in a Loving God or a Benign Universe or however you want to put it, and I am not so arrogant as to think I know the future - especially since the future is always flexible as the result of changed opinions, attitudes, and decisions of billions of people. But I do have something to say to the part of each of us which just can't seem to get in gear to make changes for the better:

WAKE UP! NOW!

Stop mowing lawns, we need all the plant growth we can get. Bring your biodegradables to the nearest composter to be returned to the soil. Stop buying fake food and start growing your own. Stop doing fake things like pretending you're hip, green, environmentally evolved and morally superior. Get to work doing REALLY useful things, not just rolling with your current way of making a living. Or maybe I should say, yes, the ways we're doing things now are useful, but there are more useful alternatives coming. The old way really is dying, and we're not going back.

Grand new building projects for economic development are not going to happen. We're going to be hard put just to stay alive. The economy is NEVER going to be the same, the Mon-Fayette Expressway is never going to be built, you are NOT going to have a quiet retirement, your grandchildren are NOT going to lead comfortable and long lives, you can forget about that new car, and you'd better pay attention to the one you have because it's going to be the last. All just my opinions, of course.

Remember your loved ones still need you regardless of the lowered expectations for the future. If you've the deepened appreciation for life that happens when you realize it's not forever, that awakens a deeper joy at each moment of our fragile lives. It really is scientific that this time and space are but threshold to even better. Wake up tomorrow refreshed, we have many changes to go through. Enjoy.
======

None so blind as those who WILL not to see

2010-02-28T07:39:00.001-08:00

"...warmer global temperatures have been increasing the
rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more
moisture into the atmosphere — thus causing heavier downfalls of both
rain and snow..."

~Al Gore

http://blog.algore.com/2010/02/we_cant_wish_away_climate_chan.html

They move to a higher frequency.

2010-02-18T11:59:00.000-08:00

Joann Evansgardner and Gerry Gardner
======
Joann and Gerry helped people who didn't know them and often didn't know they were being helped by them. Pittsburgh would be more polluted were it not for them. From the time she was in grade school and saw how girls were tracked in different directions than boys and resolved to fight it, Joann consistently, faithfully, doggedly, and (usually) quietly worked for a better neighborhood and world. I saw tears of frustration come to her eyes at the memory of her childhood frustration at the way things were. I remember her bringing up "the Hazelwood lung" (a reference to the fact that medical personnel could easily recognize residents living close to the mill by their chest x-rays). I remember how she and Gerry and Sam Strati and others went door to door in that smoky neighborhood to detail disease rates to nudge the Health Department and get support for our eventually successful campaign to stop the building of a new mill on the site of the old. I saw, at meetings at their home, high walls full of files recording battles for women's rights, minority rights, environmental justice and protection. I remember the CHOC (Citizens Helping Our Community) meetings which were so intense sometimes they were a little scary- real democracy, with deeply felt opinions. I remember her liaison with GASP (Group Against Smog and Pollution) and his work with Sierra Club. I remember Gerry's quiet but devastatingly scientific rebuttals of authorities' status quo decisions, and I remember how time after time Joann would contradict from the audience speakers' statements. No one got away with vague generalities; she cut things to the chase. Decisions were being made that had important consequences, and we knew it. Now the smoke has cleared and we can see the woody hillsides across the river. And I remember how Joann envied fellow activist Billy Bellas's beller, how when he got up to speak you couldn't help but
hear him.
======

water on the move

2010-02-14T10:55:00.000-08:00

March GreenWay article
to hazelwoodeditor@yahoo.com
for hazelwoodhomepage.com
======
Understanding climate change

Scientists have often oversimplified in order to summarize findings they present to the public. An honest desire to convey important facts quickly - so that people can make good real-time decisions - has resulted in a willingness to label specific dramatic aspects of the world as if they were separate from other less obviously dramatic ones. Two examples are acid rain and global warming. The recognition that air pollution was destroying the life in our lakes, streams, forests, and farms - along with our lungs and other things - led to the emphasis on dramatic aspects of air pollution such as that here in the heart of acid rain country the rain has been as acidic as vinegar. That acidity was not the only aspect of air pollution that was a problem was ignored. It's the same now with global warming. Climate change involves not only an increase in average temperature earthwide. It also involves increasing variability in temperatures, wind speeds, and rainfall or snowfall amounts. So to constrict the discussion to "global warming" rather than the more wide angle "climate change" or "environmental change" is to restrict our understanding of what is going on.

It's an old trick, unconscious or not, of a mind inclined to win an argument to set boundaries on a discussion so that one might win the argument. Cheerleaders for "clean nuclear power" conveniently omit, for instance, routine emissions of radioactivity from power plants from their calculations. Operators of the coke mill thought of pollution as an external cost which didn't involve them. "That's irrelevant" is oft heard in shareholder meetings when pollution and community effects of a corporation's activities are brought up.

So those who don't want to hear the call to action implied by the fact that the climate change we have been a part of causing is reaching apocalyptic proportions - and which we can be a part of managing - are quick to discount any connections between the average global temperatures and such specific events such as Hurricane Katrina and the Great Blizzard of 2010. But the fact is that there is more heat energy and consequently more water vapor in the atmosphere now, and there has been an increase in hurricane strength and for instance what are called "lake effect" type snows such as when huge amounts of water is evaporated from the Great Lakes and dumped nearby as massive snows.

Since I am also convinced that we are at the dawn of a new age, as well as in a period of terrible destruction, I remain optimistic. To the extent we humans lovingly work together as family - doing our part to engage the miraculous new communications, energy, and food production technologies being developed in service of life - we will be able to transition to this new Earth civilization without suffering.
======

Change now, fer cryin in the bucket.

2010-01-16T10:28:00.000-08:00

February GreenWay article
to hazelwoodeditor@yahoo.com
for hazelwoodhomepage.com
======

Celebrating Our Place

In the Living Theatre performance Paradise Now, actors engage by actually going out and touching audience members, saying "Holy hand," "Holy forehead," "Holy wristwatch," or whatever - to evoke the sacred that is everywhere. We humans have become so disassociated from life that we rarely feel the beauty that's all around us. We have psychological blinders on - fears and automatic negative thoughts that obscure the positive. Think of all the times someone has made you unhappy by sharing their negative way of looking at things. I remember I absolutely loved Marilyn Monroe, Barbara Streisand, and Bette Midler - until somebody said something ugly about them.

How many ugly things have been said about Hazelwood. How many times has its reputation as a poor or unsafe neighborhood been a self-fulfilling prophecy? We so often see what we expect and act on it.

Back when our economy was more than treading water, people would take vacations and move out to the suburbs - as if those places were better than here. Now - as vacations become unaffordable, human-caused environmental degradation becomes Earthwide, and there are fewer pleasant and affordable suburbs to go to - the desire to leave has become a desire to come back to the cities. We humans are getting new eyes, re-beautifying our cities and finally recognizing the wonderful things that never left them. Even the animals and plants are coming back.

Yes, the mill shutting down was a tragedy from which we're still recovering. Yes, it was great to have everybody able to work working and getting paid. But, since none of us was alive before industrialization, let's do some historical research.

The American Indians were not savages, they were as a whole deeply spiritual people, cooperating in humble recognition that they didn't own the Earth. We each are a part of Nature or Earth Mother or the Great Spirit or God or Allah or whatever you want to call the Creator. And our countries and farms and gardens are no more able to be secured than it's possible ultimately to stop birds and bugs and bacteria and "bad" people from crossing borders in or out. So our North American ancestors were actually wiser than us, having no concept of ownership. When people share they don't have to waste a majority of their resources on security.

If we allow ourselves to fall for the myth that the planet is going to hell in a handbasket, that's what's going to happen. We can do our part to make Heaven a place on Earth by starting with Hazelwood. We can't individually feed all the people in the world, but we can help those in our sphere of influence, one loving act at a time.

"If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one."
~ Mother Teresa.

Stay tuned for the first step in the establishment of a community grocery in Hazelwood. We're going to organize a food buying club to save money buying in bulk.

And gear up for what promises to be one hell of a growing season. In response to terrible problems developing in the world, urban farming (including farm animals) is being encouraged by changes in city policy, with health department supervision. No noisy roosters will be allowed, but expect more poultry and other farm animals will be your neighbors - even if you don't choose to have any yourself. As a food security measure, these agricultural zoning changes are being put into place to encourage all of us to grow more of our own food. Huge weather and other environmental difficulties are developing on Earth which are making it harder and harder to feed the world's people.
======

Plant a plentiful future, with seed mudball bombs.

2009-12-26T08:59:00.000-08:00

The revolutionary's peace bomb - Throw this at your nearest derelict property or corporate or military enclave
http://www.guerrillagardener.it/hello-world
======
http://sustainablecitiescollective.com/Home/26883
...the Europe heat event of 2003 caused more than 35,000 deaths...
======
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com

We're part of nature.

2009-12-21T03:12:00.000-08:00

Re "naturally caused," humans beings are part of nature, so it's schizy to use this language of did we cause global warming or did "Nature." If people understood that co2 holds in heat, the argument as to its source is unnecessary. The most important concept is that everything is connected by cause and effect.

This too shall pass.

2009-12-19T05:25:00.000-08:00

Define yourself as happy? Unhappy? Next!
======
People in the United States have become enraptured with (enslaved by, addicted to) the illusion that it can't happen here.

9/29/9
oxfam.ca/news-and-publications/pressroom/press-releases/oxfam-launches-16-5m-appeal-for-east-africa

"...failed rains have left more than 23 million...facing severe hunger...Oxfam’s East Africa director Paul Smith Lomas...blamed climate change for the persistent five-year drought...."

Enlivening your land

2009-12-14T16:12:00.000-08:00

Jim McCue to hazelwoodeditor@yahoo.com
for
http://hazelwoodhomepage.com

======

Want a garden? Make soil.

Among the many changes going on at this point in history is the loss of
topsoil. There is little chance nowadays to buy really healthy
topsoil. You can approach it by buying peat, or letting manure or mushroom
manure break ...down. You can buy compost, if you can afford it, and
apply it to your dirt; that will lead toward turning dirt into living
soil. But the best thing to do is learn what makes good soil. That
way you can have more of it.

Our culture is so materialistic that most of us think that a good soil
will have such and such amounts of certain nutrients. But while
quantities of nutrients are important, the real heart of healthy soil
is that it is alive. Alive? Soil? Yes, alive.

A healthy patch of land
will have such a vast quantity and diversity of life (most too small to
see) that you could almost call it a civilization.

The various parts acted out by the plants, animals and microbes in
this great drama are what make a soil productive. For instance, if a
plant doesn't have certain fungi and bacteria on and/or in its roots,
it can't absorb nutrients. Some of these nutrients are in the soil,
but some are actually made by the bacteria. Enormously powerful
enzymes are created by living things, and these help chemical reactions
that result in the absorption of nutrients into the plants. If you
have bare dirt with little living in it or on it, seeds may sprout but
they won't thrive.

So many people nowadays say they don't have a green thumb. Their
hands are not the problem. It's that they've never seen real soil.
You can't plant in dirt that's dead and expect life to come out of it.
Start with inoculating your soil with whatever life forms you have.
Encourage the bugs we've too often been brainwashed into thinking are
ugly. Every living thing through the course of its life helps to
change bare dirt to fertile soil - by feeding, breathing, excreting,
digging, dying, and eventually rotting away as it becomes food for
other life forms. Want a fish farm? Start with a worm farm. Feed
those little things with any organic matter you can scrounge up.

Anything that was or is alive is organic and can contribute to the
community of life at the soil level.

Start feeding one animal, like an earthworm, and the next thing you
know you'll be attracting other animals - like birds, who like to eat
them. This is where it gets dicey, as we all know certain animals,
plants, and bugs we don't want. Although returning organic material
to the earth is at the heart of soil building - and absolutely
necessary if we are to survive the ocean and earth ecosystem collapse
currently taking place - the nurturing of life will if not managed
properly allow overbalances of unwanted life forms. Rats,
mosquitoes, snakes, groundhogs, raccoons, deer, foxes, and flies are
all part of nature, but must be kept in check by their natural
predators.

The most important basic of creating a healthy soil is to know that
most microbes, from a human point of view, are either directly or
indirectly beneficial. Contrary to the popular view that all "germs"
are bad (encouraged by chemical sellers that equate sterile with
clean), the vast majority of molds and bacteria are functioning parts
of our world (including in our digestive systems) and serve to produce
our food (and even synthesize nutrients in our digestive tracts -
"probiotics").

Just as through fear we have come to have prejudices against different
people, we also have learned a lot of fears of natural things that are
not true. Animals in and of themselves are not bad; it's the diseases
they can carry. It's a long established scientific fact that, just
as in a diverse ecosystem the hawks and the snakes keep each other in
check, predator/prey relationships and competition in the microscopic
world at soil level actually suppress disease because of the variety of
life in a healthy soil.

Take an organic waste like unpainted cardboard or plain brown paper,
soak it in water, and you have the beginning of an ecosystem.
Cardboard and paper are made from trees (an increasingly precious
resource at this point in history) and are mostly carbon. Add the
water and you've got food and water for some simple life forms. Place
your wet cardboard or paper somewhere in contact with the dirt and the
next thing you'll see is worms and bugs and mold multiplying on it.
Put a seed on top and cover with some more dirt and you've got a start.
Next thing you know you'll have a hungry crew of cardboard and paper
eaters - from "potato bugs" to "hundred leggers" and you'll have to go
get them some more food.

======

Jim McCue

appropriatebiotech@yahoo.com

http://bioeverything.blogspot.com

http://facebook.com/alllifelover

Bagpipes playing in my heart

2009-11-13T04:45:00.001-08:00

It's the

Coming of the Greens

Grow plants - trees, algae, whatever, just as long as it's green.

======
http://sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/0407-possible_fix_for_global_warming.htm
======
http://sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11 /091111083055.htm
"...recommends slowing...the “green loss effect” through the planting of millions of trees in urbanized areas and through the protection and regeneration of global forests outside of urbanized regions. Forested areas provide the combined benefits of directly cooling
the atmosphere and of absorbing greenhouse gases, leading to additional cooling. Green architecture in cities, including green roofs and more highly reflective construction materials, would further contribute to a
slowing of warming rates. Stone envisions local and state governments taking the lead in addressing the land use drivers of climate change, while the federal government takes the lead in implementing carbon
reduction initiatives..."
======

Kickstart the Economy with Green

Some say we're recovering from the Wall Street crash. They're wrong. The environmental changes coming are so drastic they will make impossible any return to the "good old days" when the rich got richer and the poor got poorer and the rest of nature just got the hell out of the way or died. This time we human beings - all of us - are in for a tough ride. We never did succeed in subjugating nature, and the Earth itself is starting to make the point by giving us the challenge of our lives.

Take ozone layer thinning, for instance. We deluded ourselves into thinking we had that problem about licked by banning certain chemicals. And it was getting better. But keeping the heat in the lower atmosphere makes the upper atmosphere colder, and ozone-destroying chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere are faster at colder temperatures. So the greenhouse effect is making the ozone layer thinning problem worse also.

How many economists have, do you think, factored into their predictions the interaction between the ozone layer thinning and the greenhouse effect? The economic effects of World War 1 and the 1929 stock market crash and World War 2 and the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion and the 9/11 attacks and the Katrina hurricane and so many other disasters were all unexpected by people thinking inside the box of the financial markets. But they were all predictable had people not planted their own heads so firmly in the sand. When we put on our tunnel vision glasses by defining ourselves as separate from each other, and so fight with increasingly advanced tools, bigger tragedies can be expected. Throughout our history as a species, a moment's pause from our relatively little battles would have shown that we're steadily losing the war as a whole. The Earth's ecosystem is collapsing. We're challenged by historic
bigger-than-ever catastrophes. And - because we keep thinking inside the box in so many ways - we still keep going the same way.

The only way we have a chance to save our own, our loved ones, and our children's lives and futures is by working together to reverse course as fast as we can. What am I talking about? Stop mowing lawns. Refuse to buy another car built to run on anything other than biofuel or electricity. Stop filling landfills and waterways and (ultimately) oceans with pet, livestock and human organic waste. Stop manufacturing plastic and make bioplastic instead. Put white collar criminals - such as those pushing new and even more dangerous weaponry - into incarceration to stop them from hurting more people and other life forms. Start manufacturing composting toilets. Stop chopping down trees. Stop trimming trees unless you absolutely have to. Stop buying fertilizers, pesticides, and lawn mowers. Let those plants grow, wherever they grow, and stop calling the unexpected ones weeds. We need all the plant growth we can nurture to suck up the excess carbon
dioxide in the planet's atmosphere. And we need to stop putting more carbon dioxide and other pollutants there. We don't need the bloody nice and neat lawns; let them grow back to woodsy areas. Stop killing animals except when you absolutely have to. Each and every plant and animal on Earth has a reason for being and a contribution it can make to the ecosystem as a whole. Encourage a variety of life forms to keep each other in check so that one species such as the salmonella or cockroach or bedbug or rat doesn't become overbalanced. Make our elected representatives encourage energy conservation and wind and solar, and make them stop subsidizing dirty coal and other fossil fuels, and dirty and unsafe nuclear. We are in a world of trouble at this point in history, and what Wall Street is doing at the moment hardly matters. The markets won't work at all if we get the superdroughts and superstorms and massive heat waves and forest fires and
famines and epidemics that are coming if we continue treating our fellow life forms - plant and animals - as just things to be used.

We each can (need) to go full steam ahead to grow as much plant life as possible - to absorb the excess co2. And our economic development decisionmakers need to encourage biological processes that use carbon dioxide to produce food and fuel.

Oh, and happy holidays. Worse comes to worse, even if we do go ahead and extinct ourselves along with all the other species we've been killing off, the Universe is even bigger than the Earth and we haven't figured how to destroy that...yet.
======

Come and get me, Copper!

2009-11-05T04:22:00.000-08:00

I drink raw milk (sold illegally on the underground market)

grist.org/article/2009-11-03-i-drink-raw-milk-sold-illegally-on-the-underground-market

...Isn't it curious that at this juncture in our culture's evolution, we collectively believe Twinkies, Lucky Charms, and Coca-Cola are safe foods, but compost-grown tomatoes and raw milk are not? With legislation moving through Congress..

...the industrial food system is... demonizing, criminalizing, and marginalizing the integrity food movement...

Love is magic. Work it.

2009-11-02T07:13:00.000-08:00

From:

The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants
by Jane S. Smith
janessmith.com

page 262
...in 1924, Swami Paramahansa Yogananda...called on Burbank in Santa Rosa several times. Over twenty years later, he would dedicate..."Autobiography of a Yogi," to "Luther Burbank, an American Saint," and devote an entire chapter ("A Saint Amid the Roses") to their discussions of the spirit that flowed through the universe. According to the yogi, Burbank told him "the secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love." Yogananda also said Burbank confided he could heal the sick and communicate with the dead...David Fairchild, the USDA plant explorer...declared himself nonplussed when Burbank told him that he, his mother, and his sister all shared powers of clairvoyance...mystic seekers like Yogananda were happy to endorse Burbank's vision of universal harmony...

page 193
From
The Training of the Human Plant

..."Every child," Burbank wrote, "should have mud pies, grasshoppers, water-bugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud-turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb, brooks to wade in, waterlilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hayfields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries and hornets; and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best of his education"...

The "authorities" claim to be wise

2009-10-19T05:02:00.000-07:00

From Phyllis Georgic, homeopath:
My DAD hallucinated after a recent FLU VACCINE
Thu Oct 15, 2009
On October 2, 2009, my dad (age 84 years) was given a flu shot against his better judgement as the assistance of the the MDs at the VA Hospital here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He explained that he was not interested in a flu shot because when he was injected with one in the NAVY during WWII he had hallucinations from it. They told him that was not going to happen this time and that he needed it to protected him from the flu because of his feeble state of health due to his severe heart condition of extreme blockage of his heart.

So he allowed them to give him the shot and within hours afterward he became tired with body aches as though he had the flu and her began to hallucinate about various things. He thought there was a tractor in the field in front of his house knocking down trees. And he was yelling at my Mother telling her that "she was going to pay for the nasty stuff she was doing to him" when my sister just came to take her to the hospital for her blood work. Something about "put away the dishes now, look at all the people who are coming in".. meaning the house. He thought there were crowds of visitors arriving at his home and he did not feel that the place was presentable. He was telling my mother that she was lazy in not cleaning for the guests.

So my sisters forced him to go to the hospital where they did all sorts of tests thinking that he had overdosed on a pain medication that they had prescribed for him. After a three day stay at the hospital they did not find an reason for his behavior.

For those two or three days he was there is was seeing multiple doctors around his bed and large crowds of people everywhere. He claimed that there were ducks all over his hospital room and he was claiming to be giving a young boy sections of orange, which the child refused to take and then he said the child was running away from him thinking that he was the devil.

When I was called about this through my daughter-in-law (because my sisters do not wish to speak to me about any vaccine or medication screw up with my parents due to my stand on allopathic medicine I immediately called my Mother who was upset to the point of despair. "I don't know what to do. Should I just give up or what"? was her plaintive cry to me. She explained about the vaccine and what my father was telling the doctors about the vaccine. She claimed that she did not wish to take the vaccine herself and would refuse it when they attempted to push it on her. My mother was telling me that when my father explained this to my sisters they were telling him that he probably had a UTI recommending that he drink lots of water. "I have been drinking water. This is because of the FLU SHOT. I will get over it. Just leave me alone", he retorted.

When I called my sister to ask about this conversation, she insisted that my parents are just confused and really don't know what they are talking about. "Daddy was having Mummy give him his meds and she probably gave him the METHADONE that Daddy doesn't like to take that was prescribed for his back pain. He is saying that his back is painful but not that much and he is refusing to give the Nurses any more urine because they screwed up where the last samples were sent doing TWO Urine cultures looking for a UTI.. They want to look for narcotics and think that the Methadone is the reason. Daddy has a UTI, I am sure", my youngest sister insisted.

I got this story out of my father on Tuesday, October 12th when I called and spoke directly to him. He seems to be fine now yet insistent that this was a pattern of old that happened to him when he was younger and he was frustrated because the MDs refused to believe him or acknowledge that the vaccine was the culprit. He knows what I feel about vaccines and he scoffs at me over my understanding about vaccines and their dangers. He had takes any opportunity to ridicule me about my "beliefs". I had to remind him about the "heart attack" that I had in 1976 when I was 24 years old due to the the Swine Flu vaccine. He was speechless after I mentioned that and said, "Well here's your mother", and handed the phone off to her when I trying to get back his attention wanting to speak with him further. Then I heard my mother say something to him like, "she is just going on about the vaccines and how bad they are and why won't we listen". She nervously chuckled and then spoke to me, telling me that she was not going to get the vaccine herself. I hope that she is telling me the truth.

My daughter-in law just called asking me about co workers at her place of employment who are getting the vaccine asking me how susceptible she and my grand daughter would be to them breathing and working around her to the Swine Flu. I am pleased that my children are able to understand these issues and are aware of the panic associated with our latest "pandemic" mongering by the authorities...

Please refer to the email that I sent out about Dealing with all strains of the flu with HOMEOPATHY. I am sending it as an attachment to this piece as well.. Please pass it around to those you love,... Just delete it if you have saved it from a few days ago when I sent it out the first time... It is a great piece. I worked on it for your benefit... Please use it...

Love, Blessings and Peace all,

Phyllis 1.724.887.4001 or 1.412.708.2167

It's Karma time; celebrate the Earth, and work (and struggle).

2009-10-14T06:25:00.000-07:00

Rather than say "We're fucked!" as some scientists are saying privately, we each need to concentrate on doing what we can, as best we can. Do the work you enjoy - that's what you'll be good at. And leave your fears about what you can't do to God or Love or the Universe or whatever your way is of describing this incredibly beautiful living All that we're a part of.

grist.org/article/2009-10-13-a-scary-new-climate-study-will-have-you-saying-oh-shit

...study says the United States must cut emissions 100 percent by 2020—in other words, quit carbon entirely within 10 years...

Terrorism 101

2009-10-14T06:03:00.000-07:00

Fearmongering - causing fear to make money

The '76 swine flu scare is one of so many examples of how we have been terrorized into becoming afraid of everything - of each other, of plants and animals, of bugs, of sex, of life itself, even of ours...elves and our own shadows. They had us scared bats carried disease, so we killed them off (hired companies to do so); now, as the bats decline we treasure them for their bug-eating capacity...We're scared to death of bugs, so we kill them off, so now the bees and other crop-pollinators are declining so it's harder to grow food...Such frightened suckers we've so often been...

page 112
"...Testament to the force of germ theory to awaken innate anxieties about nature, the 1918 flu remains exhibit A when people seek to frighten us about potential virus-borne catastrophe today. Evidence came in the form of the swine flu affair, a 1976 federal campaign to immunize every American against a strain of flu that was, supposedly, identical to the 1918 strain. The effort ended, after only 45 million Americans had been immunized, because of a near-complete absence of cases of the illness caused by the supposedly recrudescent flu strain and the possibility that the immunization induced an ascending paralysis called Guillain-Barre syndrome in hundreds of vaccine recipients. The U.S. government paid out nearly $93 million in legal settlements and lost judgments to claimants who said they had been injured by the vaccine..."
http://philipalcabes.com

KEEP THE LIBRARIES OPEN

2009-10-12T08:41:00.000-07:00

to hazelwoodeditor@yahoo.com
for hazelwoodhomepage.com
======
Just about everyone in Pittsburgh with ears knows there are 5 libraries closing. Nearly everyone who thinks about it is angry. What do we the wiser thinking people do with all the energy of this anger?

When there was a decision to build another coke plant in Hazelwood, the fear and anger slowly grew to become almost unmanageable. Veterans of the controversy share strong emotions still remembering it. People called each other some very uncivil names, and it at times came near to violence. When you're dealing with your child having emergency visits to the hospital at pollution incidents (when the old mill was running), or not being able to afford higher education for that child because you're an out-of-work steelworker, you're dealing with life and death issues. We managed that energy by knocking on doors, gathering disease and mortality statistics of those living closest to the pollution, demanding the Health Deparment see us as more than numbers, organizing and attending meetings, talking, demonstrating, and - at times - hollering it out, because hollering is better than no communication at all. It was an exercise in democracy I'm grateful for having had. We learned we are a community, with common concerns. And we learned that corporations can be extremely powerful, brutally uncaring, and dishonest.

By coming to respect each other, we forged a new relationship with the city, county and state governments. We became stakeholders by refusing to just accept every decision that comes down the pike. We have to display that same power now by refusing to allow Hazelwood to go one day without a library. The government's not going to save us; we're going to have to do it ourselves.

Our schools are closed. We no longer have a grocery store. Who would want to invest here now ? How dare they the distant deciders presume to make wise decisions for us. Don't they see the children with skinny legs, asthma inhalers, diabetes and heart problems? No wonder they don't want to get out of their cars as they hurry down Second Avenue - they're afraid they might learn something. God, these children are so beautiful despite their problems. Where do you think they're going to go if they can't go to the library?

Just as with the closing of our library, the decision to build another coke oven in Hazelwood was "a done deal" most felt helpless to resist. They, the money people, were going to build it, and the politicians were rolling with it - until we got a little crazy. We spoke (and hollered) out of turn when authorities said things we knew weren't true.

Suited corporate representatives lost our respect when we realized they were being deceptive about the amount of pollution expected from the new mill. Now someone is "telling tall tales" (as President Obama so diplomatically puts it), to say there's no money to keep these little branch libraries open, all the while big building projects are sprouting all over town to service the entertainment "needs" of those who can afford more than the simple food, shelter, clothing, and education that some of us are struggling with. Rather than call them liars, let's just say they fail to notice the discrepancies.

Public anger is on the rise. We have so much to deal with already. It's like that brief footage we've all seen of the young black protester being jacked up against the wall who fights back. It's like when the Redcoats started losing the War of Independence. It's like when development up Centre Avenue got stopped at what is now called Freedom Corner - by people saying no further, you're not going past here, we're not going to let you, PERIOD. It's when you realize you've nothing to lose because the money mad are going to take everything you have left if you let them.

How can anyone be so focused on money as to decide to close working libraries in financially stressed neighborhoods?

When the library at Alexandria burned, people lost track of the fact that past civilizations - in many ways more advanced than our present one - destroyed themselves.

Just as gardeners know that plants miniaturize themselves if not given enough room, we have to a great extent lost our memories and stopped considering the future. It's so difficult to plan when you live day-to-day in a state of conflict - budgets and businesses collapsing, homes being taken from people, more and more weapons being manufactured and bought, I could go on and on. We need to consider that, as referred to in the Bible and other spiritual traditions, the planet has seen catastrophe before caused by human conflict. We need to learn of that quiet warning from the past.

Do not shut down the centers of communication.

======

Jim McCue
composter and biotech researcher
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com
http://facebook.com/alllifelover

"STOP FIGHTING, OR ELSE!" - ~God

2009-10-05T07:54:00.000-07:00

Please read the following vis-a-vis the fact that humanity now has electromagnetic weapons. Nikola Tesla was said to have had his papers confiscated at death by the U.S. secret service. Part of the back story of the history of censorship is that the classification (and making it proprietary information) of technology that is able to be used for either destructive or constructive purposes - "dual-use" - has resulted in a public for the most part ignorant even of the name of one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. And he lived and worked right here in Pittsburgh. Also notice the description of the being nowadays referred to as Gaia.
======
From:
Atlantis: the Eighth Continent
by Charles Berlitz 1984

page208

...The desruction of Earth recounted in the old legends of the world may have been a direct result of focusing and harnessing the magnetic energy of the Earth, almost as though the Earth itself, like a vast sentient entity, had shaken off the man-made forces that were channeling and restraining its natural ones. Something similar to this rejection has occurred in modern times when earthquakes have persistently struck areas where atomic wastes have been buried or when underground nuclear explosions seem to have triggered almost simultaneous earthquakes hundreds of miles distant.

In modern times the idea of a usable electromagnetic grid spread over the surface of the Earth has been considered not only by science fiction writers but also by some scientists. Nikola Tesla, the genius who invented alternating current and who gave his name to the tesla coil, may have been following a similar line of investigation in his experiments with electricity without wires and the relationship between harmonic sound and power. In the course of his experiments with electronics and harmonics in his Manhattan laboratory, Tesla attracted such violent lightning and thunder storms in his immediate vicinity that local residents demanded that the police stop these unsettling experiments. On another occasion harmonic vibrations that he had apparently engendered shook the whole neighborhood like an earthquake. (This same eminent researcher once stated that the attainment of a proper harmonic frequency could destroy the Earth.)...

One is reminded of legends...in the distant past the axis of the Earth had changed...resulting...catastrophes...In a world in which science, as it advances, is constantly changing its concepts of space, matter, force, and even time, we should not deny the possibility that at some time in the past discoveries were made that will be made again in the future. As Einstein observed, time may be curved, and the events in time and time itself may come together again - a seeming impossibility, although no more illogical or unexplainable than time itself. In our day we may be witnessing the completion of this cosmic circle...
======
Re the Great Flood mentioned in the Bible:
atlantisonline.smfforfree2.com/index.php?action=printpage;topic=651.0

no sugar in my lemonade, please

2009-09-23T06:44:00.000-07:00

Put people to work in the new economy:

http://cleantech.com/news/4775/cuts-blade-vestas-isle-wight
Vestas Wind Systems is cancelling plans to retool a U.K. factory...citing tough economic market conditions...

We Must Remake Our Civilization to Survive on a Volatile Earth

2009-09-20T06:54:00.001-07:00

"...The Earth as a whole, the geat metabolism, has survived because
diverse species...insurance...alternative ways to keep the system going
in the face of change...tiny plankton...ehux...helps maintain the
planetary metabolism..helps maintain the heat balance of the planet..."

~Dianne Dumanoski, from

The End of the Long Summer

Why We Must Remake Our Civilization to Survive on a Volatile Earth

http://diannedumanoski.com

the heart of the big picture

2009-09-15T05:41:00.000-07:00

======
The whole world has to change direction, NOW. If you're not working to heal Earth, you're not working.
======
"My heart breaks for city kids with their shields in the form of attitudes,
apathy and disrespect. It's gotta be tough carrying all that armor."
~Juliette Jones
pittsburghfoodforests.blogspot.com

======
safeco2.org
"...Earth's biodiversity dropped 30% in 35 years...If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted...CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm..."
======
From:

The End of the Long Summer:
Why we must remake our civilization to survive on a volatile Earth

by Dianne Dumanoski 2009

scribd.com/doc/17355895/The-End-of-the-Long-Summer-by-Dianne-Dumanoski-Scribd-Excerpt

"...Accelerating climate change signals a far deeper problem - the growing human burden on ALL of the fundamental planetary processes that together make up a single, self-regulating Earth......"
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Soil, Earth's belly

2009-09-14T07:14:00.001-07:00

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The Real Dirt on Farmer John
angelicorganics.com/ao/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=179&Itemid=307
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Think greenhouses.

2009-09-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

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Let's build greenhouses

Unlike many waiting helplessly for the powers-that-be to save them, some of us are in gear and working to make things better, regardless of whether we're being paid. At a time of instability, the thing to do is not to become paralyzed with fear. It's to do what you can - the best you can - whatever you're good at (that's what you enjoy the most). If we panic and stop trying to provide useful goods and services to each other, with the reasoning that it's no use, then we become part of the problem.

I want greenhouses in Hazelwood, and we could be making greenhouses for others. Both of these are moneymakers as long as we have a functioning economy. If the economy fails and we have a depression, we'd still have the greenhouses.

A greenhouse can be used to grow food when you can't afford to buy it. It's a season-extender. Growing plants use carbon dioxide, something we've got way too much of. Greenhouses can lessen our addiction to the corporate bottom lines that has such insane effects as people growing garlic in China to ship all the way here when we could be growing our own.

We can build greenhouses, with or without money.

Don't say "You can't do that" when somebody tells you, for example, that we can do without coal and it's pollution.

Farmer Darrell Frey
http://bioshelter.com
http://sustainabledesign.net
turned chemically ill farmland into paradisical productive ecosystem like it was before we modern humans started messing with it. He pioneered the use of composting indoors to warm his greenhouse, and high co2 levels from composting can help plants grow better.

A greenhouse can be a way to lessen pollution, whether from carbon dioxide or from other pollutants made growing food far away and shipping it here. To the extent we grow our own, we're saving life on Earth from the abrupt climate change that looks to me like it's going to become unbelievably bad.

But how can we do things without money? When inflation went through the roof in pre-WW2 Spain, the cooperative spirit that arose actually had things running MORE efficiently for awhile. Everybody, realizing the common emergency, worked together. People helped each other without the intermediary of a functioning money system. They called it anarchism.

Don't like bad news? Either grow up or move to another planet. We have plenty of bad news here on Earth, and your fear-caused ignorance is part of the cause of it. Here's some bad news for you, and you need to handle it:

The interactions between environmental changes such as global warming is making all systems unstable. An example is the relationship between the greenhouse effect and ozone layer thinning - two trends which are normally considered apart. Ozone layer thinning happens in the upper atmosphere because it's cold up there. Well, the greenhouse effect, because it keeps heat near the surface of the Earth - in the lower atmosphere - is actually making it even colder in the upper atmosphere. So the chemical reactions that thin the ozone layer are speeded up by the colder temperatures there. What a nightmare! We've got to stop almost all burning - coal, gas, oil, biofuel, whatever. And even that won't stop the increased levels of greenhouse gases from for instance carbon dioxide and methane being emitted by formerly frozen areas. Some feedback effects are good, such as increased photosynthesis in some areas of land and sea due to increased co2 availability and warmer temperatures; but the overall loss of stability bodes massive stress for all species. So we must go back to basics and back to the drawing board with doing what we can, high-tech or low, to deal with changes.

So my strategy is to do what I can to grow food. If I see some clear material available I want it for "greenhousing." A polyethylene tarp over my teeny garden (about thirty by thirty foot) would protect from some of the wild weather we all have in store. I could maybe grow some food nearly year round. A farmer's work is never done. You can compost year-round. Anyone involved with REAL farming knows that if you intend to get the most out of your land, you never put it "to bed for the winter." Let nature do that. When it's too cold to grow, you have to stop growing. I always get a kick out of people who shut down their gardens and even pull up their tomato plant as early as September, regardless of the weather and regardless of whether the plants are still producing. Duh, did you notice reality wasn't working the way your mind expected it to? Sorry to be rude, but I've had it up to here with people spreading can'ts around. Oh, you can't compost meat products for the garden, you can't use manure in the city, you can't grow enough food to make it worthwhile, you can't fight city hall, you can't make a car that doesn't run on gasoline, solar power isn't feasible this far north, there's not enough wind around here for cheap wind power, geothermal isn't viable in this area, and on and on and et cetera. Oh, and they say it takes months for waste biomass to compost. Au contraire! It depends on the situation. They say some pollutants persist in a soil for years - another false assumption. Given the proper circumstances, such as a bioreactor with the right circumstances - the right amount of water, the right temp, the right amount of oxygen, mixing, the right species of microbe - biomass and the pollutants in it can degrade in days rather than years.

The fact is we could have Heaven on Earth instead of what we have, because we're too busy competing to remember the most easy, natural thing - love.
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We need the good bugs.

2009-09-06T07:30:00.000-07:00

From

International Union of Soil Sciences
iuss.org

...The roots of most plants are colonized by symbiotic fungi to form mycorrhiza, which play a critical role in the capture of nutrients from the soil and therefore in plant nutrition...

gittin the right bugz

2009-09-06T05:04:00.000-07:00

http://loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=09-P13-00036&segmentID=6
...one of the hardest things...to recognize is the idiocy of flush toilets...a lot of water...spread disease...require a huge amount of energy. Here in California a fifth of the energy in the state goes towards treating and lifting and moving and warming water...adopt their approach to water...give it the kind of value that they do...composting toilets..turn our human waste into an asset...the lesson from the Bushmen...
~James Workman
Heart of Dryness:
How the last Bushmen can help us endure the coming age of permanent drought
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http://loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=09-P13-00036&segmentID=7
west nile virus...through exposure, birds and humans may be developing a natural immunity...

The Garden was a Farm

2009-09-04T09:34:00.000-07:00

From:

A Reenchanted World:
The quest for a new kinship with Nature

jameswilliamgibson.com
page 252

...Moreover, enchantment gives mythic resonance to the great difficulties facing grand-scale environmental restoration...In Genesis, for example...God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to "cultivate and care for it"...

"By Love our Souls are married and solder'd to the creatures and it is our Duty like God to be united to them all."

~Thomas Traherne

Oy, another G20 event

2009-09-03T08:53:00.000-07:00

From
avaaz.org/en

...more than 100,000 Avaaz members...consider signing up to host a local climate wake-up call event on the 21st. These will be quick, politically powerful, and a lot of fun. Our goal is to organise thousands of wake-up events (or "flashmobs") in public places all over the world...stop climate catastrophe and unleash a new green economy this year...

It's not just about global warming.

2009-09-02T08:10:00.000-07:00

It's not just about global warming: causes and effects connect everything. Warming and ozone depletion are interacting.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=40042&src=eoa-nnews

...Ozone depletion...cools the stratosphere...the Antarctic stratosphere has cooled...changes the dynamics between the stratosphere and lower layers of the atmosphere and strengthens Antarctica's already fierce winds...
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4/1/2004
http://thenation.com/doc/20040419/graeber
...Some police officials have become notorious among activists for their Gothic imaginations. Timoney, the former Philadelphia police chief who took over Miami's department before last fall's protests, is fond of peppering his press conferences with stories of activists caught planning to release poisonous snakes and reptiles among the citizenry, officers hospitalized because of acid attacks and activists assaulting his troops with a variety of bodily fluids. Such charges invariably make splashy headlines at the time, only to be later exposed as false or fade away for lack of evidence. Timoney has also become notorious for brutal tactics: In Miami his men opened fire on activists with an array of wooden, rubber and plastic bullets, tazer guns, concussion grenades and a variety of chemical weapons.Despite calls from groups ranging from the United Steelworkers to Amnesty International for an investigation, Timoney continues to be hired as a security consultant for major protests and appears on television frequently as an expert on protest movements.

Probably one of the police's purposes is simply to rally the troops. As commanders discovered in Seattle, police often feel a little uncomfortable about orders to conduct a baton charge against a group of unarmed 16-year-old girls. A deeper reason, though, may have been a perceived need to address a crisis in public perception. To the frustration of high-level officials who were finding their meetings regularly ruined by acts of civil disobedience, the American public largely refused to see the global justice movement as a menace to society. True, the media tried to create hysteria over a few broken windows, but to surprisingly little effect. The question then became, What would it take to cast protesters in the role of the villain? The answer appears to have been a calculated campaign of symbolic warfare: Remove the images of colorful floats and puppets; replace them with images of bombs and hydrochloric acid. And if it has worked--which seems to be the case, considering the public's relative indifference to police destruction of protest art and banners in Philadelphia, or to the extraordinary pre-emptive violence in Miami--it is because on matters of public security, it rarely occurs to most Americans that so many of the officials charged with protecting them could be intentionally, systematically lying.
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2009-08-27T08:02:00.000-07:00

"Don't waste yer waste."
~Jim McCue
founder, first and only official member
International Garbage Pickers Union (IGPU)

Waste Picker Rights

Garbage Pickers of the world unite; stand up and make friends with your common enemies!

Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives
http://no-burn.org/article.php?list=type&type=95
...waste picker rights is an important part of... environmental justice and zero waste...

Let's make the G20 summit a love fest.

2009-08-25T05:54:00.000-07:00

People who hate rich people are not going to be the only troublemakers in town for the G20:

http://sfbayview.com/2009/lynching-of-cynthia-mckinney-urged-by-‘journalist’-trained-and-paid-by-fbi

...worked for the FBI from 2002 to 2007 as an ‘agent provocateur’..taught by the agency ‘what he could say that wouldn’t be crossing the line.’”...
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http://freedomconference2009.com/G20-3.php
...Our fundamental disagreement with the G20 is that while it purports to further free market policies, the actual policies produced represent a massive and costly centralization of power...
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We hereby free..Now Gawd help us!

2009-08-24T08:34:00.000-07:00

"I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants."
~Al Gore
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From Ken Ward
jpgreenhouse.org
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ken_ward
The time is now: Climate civil disobedience. Sign up.
BeyondTalk.net
I pledge to engage in non-violent civil disobedience and risk arrest in order to get our leaders to make the right climate-change choices.
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My comment:
I tremble deeply. As an activist in support of the concept of civil disobedience, I think it a possibility I will be arrested here in Pittsburgh as a pre-emptive preventive arrest as protests, civil disobedience, and direct action are planned for the G20 Summit next month. I do not expect to engage in civil disobedience, and think it may be too wide a general concept which may include many things I would not do. I hope to have an enjoyable, loving safe September - and the same for all those living and visiting Pittsburgh.
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methane feedback effect
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2009/05/methane-bubbling-up-through-tundra.html
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Bubbles of warming, beneath the ice
by Margot Roosevelt 2/20/9
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-na-global-warming22-2009feb22,0,646220.story
+
video clip Frozen Heat: a global warming threat from the Arctic
narrated by Katey Walter, University of Alaska
alaska.edu/uaf/cem/ine/walter
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They shall turn their swords into ploughshares.

2009-08-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

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Life takes hold of the world's government and business.

From:
"Anne Feeney"
A

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SEPTEMBER 2009 - Anne Feeney's Fellow Travelers' Advisory - VOLUME 5, #6

IN THIS ISSUE:

IMMEDIATE DESTINATIONS

LABOR DAY & AFL-CIO COMES TO PITTSBURGH!
COME TO PITTSBURGH FOR THE G-20!
SING OUT FOR SINGLE PAYER FINANCIAL REPORT

FAMILY NEWS/BIRTHDAYS

THE TOUR

§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§

IMMEDIATE DESTINATIONS:

PEORIA, IL

PITTSBURGH

CHICAGO

MIDWEST TOUR IN OCTOBER WITH DAVID ROVICS!

details for these shows appear below and continuously update at http://annefeeney.com/calendar.html

This newsletter appears with photos and live links at http://fellow-travelers-advisory.blogspot.com/

CDs and digital downloads (including single songs!) now available at http://cdbaby.com/all/unionmaid

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LABOR DAY

Monday September 7th is Labor Day in the United States. The rest of the world honors labor on May 1st. But we do things differently from the rest of the world. Like our corporate-controlled health care system, we observe a corporate-controlled Labor Day weekend filled with shopportunities and blowout back-to-school sales. And both our health and the health of the labor movement suffer as a result. Very little goes on in the way of remembering the sacrifices and victories of the labor movement in the United States. Unfortunately, many of the Labor Day Parades held around the country are little more than excuses to have a picnic & get loaded.

I'm so excited to be welcoming the AFL-CIO to Pittsburgh for its national convention. My friend Rich Trumka will assume the responsibility of leading labor through the difficult times ahead. In a movement that celebrates great oratory - with fantastically inspiring speakers like Cecil Roberts, RoseAnn DeMoro and Leo Gerard - Rich Trumka stands alone. Millions of workers across the country have been encouraged, inspired and ennobled by his words. He will be a great spokesperson for labor. And God knows we need one. But we need a lot more than talk. We need bold leadership. This Labor Day I want to talk about the workers at Vincent Bach in Elkhart, Indiana.

Elkhart, Indiana is the brass instrument capital of North America. If you or anyone you know ever played a tuba, trumpet, trombone or horn it was almost certainly made at Vincent Bach in Elkhart. Generations of students and professionals alike have played these quality instruments. Big band leaders regularly stopped by to visit (and jam with) their colleagues at Vincent Bach. Eventually the predominantly musician board of directors was replaced by profiteers and bean counters and the company sold several times. In 2006 the company posted a $63 million profit.

So it was quite a shock to the workers when the company came to the table demanding dramatic pay cuts, concessions, and the end of many work rules that made working at Vincent Bach a career instead of a job. Many of these workers are second and third generation employees. Many had decades of service to the company when the ultimatum was presented. The 230 member of UAW 394 voted to strike on April 1, 2006.

The company outsourced much of its production to China. They brought scabs into the plant. The strikers couldn't imagine how the company could afford to train scabs to make these instruments... but the Republican governor of Indiana appropriated almost $50,000 of tax dollars from the so-called "Skills Enhancement Fund" specifically to subsidize the training of the scabs, as part of a $1.1 million dollar package of taxpayer subsidies to this profitable union-busting corporate bad neighbor. The company engaged in multiple unfair labor practices, which the union filed charges on, but these take years to be adjudicated by the understaffed National Labor Relations Board.

In the meantime, the workers walked the picket line, and took their story to the community and to other unions. As the strike dragged on, those who could find other jobs and/or relocate did so. The remaining 130 workers were consigned to subsisting on $200 a week strike benefits. They were mostly folks with 20 or more years of service at Vincent Bach. Employment prospects at their age were slim to none. They hung tough, confident that the Labor Board would side with them and they would get their jobs back. Their options were limited by a number of factors. Unemployment in Elkhart is among the highest in the nation. There were no other jobs, and with real estate values tanking, moving wasn't a good option either.

On November 7, 2007 the scabs (no doubt at the company's behest) called for an election to decertify the United Auto Workers union. On Thursday, July 30th, 2009 an understaffed NLRB panel decertified the union, ending the strike. Part of the reason the union lost the election is because desperate strikers who liquidated their 401 (k) plans to survive during the strike were ruled inelegible to vote in the election! After 40 months of faithfully staffing the picket line, the loyal 130 workers of Vincent Bach/Conn Selmer have no union, no jobs, no benefits, and no recourse. That is just wrong.

$63 million dollars should have been enough profit for Vincent Bach. I believe that if Vincent Bach were locally owned, it undoubtedly would have been enough profit. Vincent Bach's profits didn't stay in Elkhart, or Indiana, and probably not even in the United States. The people making money from the work done in Elkhart don't give a rat's ass about Elkhart, Indiana - they don't give a rat's ass about anyone but themselves. We need to regulate corporate acqusitions more closely to stop this "race to the bottom."

The Vincent Bach plant is still operating, but the jobs there are no longer living wage jobs. Over 100 good workers left Elkhart during the strike... stranding elders, depleting the tax base, driving down property values as they sold quickly to relocate. The overburdened taxpayers of Elkhart will face more cuts to social services, more deterioration of the infrastructure, increased demand for social services. And Vincent Bach pays absolutely nothing in reparations for the damage they have done to this community. This kind of tragedy has been played out countless thousands of times in the United States. I've been an eyewitness to a lot of it. It's got to stop.

This Labor Day, we must commit ourselves to standing up for good, living wage jobs in this country, and around the world. We must rein in these greedy multinational corporations that ruthlessly shift capital around the globe (often with taxpayer subsidies), pillaging the planet and exploiting the poorest, weakest and most desperate among us. We can, and must, do better. Our parents and grandparents missed meals, risked (and sometimes sacrificed) their lives to bring us an 8 hour day, vacations, paid sick days, pensions, seniority, safety regulations, grievance procedures and the right to organize. These past few decades we have been spendthrift children - squandering this sacred inheritance in the name of cooperation, flexibility and teamwork. We must do better. This legacy, and what we can add to it, belongs to future generations.

(This Labor Day message is gratefully offered in tribute to the sacrifices and devotion of the members of UAW 394 - especially Don Wagner, Deneen Siegler, Ron Czarnecki... and the workers of Boilermakers 484, AFSCME 3494, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, United American Nurses, the Charleston Five, UE Republic Workers, UAW 174 at Hercules Drawn Steel, Local 459 OPEIU Nurses, AK Strikers, Delphi workers, Staley workers, Frontier Casino Strikers, and millions more who have struggled against this monstrous corporate greed.)

And a Labor Day salute to Kay Tillow, Jerry Tucker, David Newby, Shelley Kessler, Paul Bigman, Jeff Crosby, Turner Wright, Dave Johnson, John David, Rosemary Trump, Amy Newell, Ron Kaminkow, Barb Ingalls, Brian McWilliams, Angaza Laughinghouse, Karen Newman, Barbara Byrd, Dexter Arnold, Laura Griffin, Stan Swart, Mike Matejka, Amy Niehouse, David Elsila, Charlie McCollester, Rose Feurer, Nathanette Mayo, Judy Ancel, Robin Alexander, Henry Nicholas, Nick Molnar, Betsy Pernotto, Larry Daves, Ed Sadlowski (the elder and the younger!) and Julius Margolin (safe journey, dear comrade) for your tireless work for working people.

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COME TO PITTSBURGH FOR THE G-20!!

Looks like the first amendment isn't repealed in Pittsburgh after all!

Pittsburgh will be a very happening place in the month of September. Beginning with the pre-AFL-CIO conferences on the 10th and running through the G-20 (September 24th & 25th) there will be lots of action - teach-ins, demonstrations, marches, concerts, direct action and more.

Thanks to a grant from the Hen Foundation, I'll be presenting some cultural activities ... Look for the Coop D'Etat logo.

http://www.g20media.org/sectors is a great list of the activities planned in my hometown. Come join us!
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Work!

2009-08-23T04:22:00.001-07:00

Work isn't really productive unless you're doing what you really enjoy.

Enjoy!

"We need 50 million people growing food in backyards, side yards, on rooftops. That would finally transform high food prices, and change poor and unhealthy diets into healthy ones.“
~Will Allen
growingpower.org

bulletin.aarp.org/yourworld/reinventing/articles/an_urban_farmer_dreams.html

whitehousefarmer.com

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We're addicted to chemicals in our food.
freshthemovie.com

Come plant love.

2009-08-22T06:18:00.000-07:00

All life is one. We ARE the world. The All/One is one of the names of God.
http://pittsburghfoodforests.blogspot.com
http://permaearth.org
..The more functional connections a system has, the more sustainable it becomes..
http://edibleforestgardens.com
..mimic forest ecosystem structure and function, but grow food, fuel, fiber, fodder, fertilizer, "farmaceuticals," and fun..sea change..learn to live within our energetic means..rebuild ecosystems..to support our children and grandchildren..
phillyorchards.org
http://phigblog.com/2008/09/21/the-philadelphia-orchard-project
http://inthewake.org

Don't make waste in the first place.

2009-08-21T04:42:00.000-07:00

MAKE PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE ILLEGAL.
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"...Corporations make a profit because you make more money by selling things that shortly thereafter become garbage...you have to stop the industries that manufacture the waste in the first place..."
~Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay, What We Leave Behind
gogreenarticlesblog.com/4639/leaving-us-behind
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Come together

2009-08-19T05:34:00.000-07:00

Next month's G20/Peoples Summit can flower a new labor movement. We are filled with hope for the union of all life.

Paraphrase of Edwin Markham's

Outwitted

They imagined lines to shut us out,
heretics, rebels, things to flout
But Love and us had the wit to win -
We made a circle that included them.

en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edwin_Markham

goodreads.com/author/quotes/179023.Edwin_Markham

Pittsburgh knocks a homer

2009-08-17T11:00:00.001-07:00

to hazelwoodeditor@yahoo.com
for hazelwoodhomepage.com
======
Pitttsburgh Knocks a Homer

Pittsburgh has always been at the forefront of the world's great changes. We were one of the first cities to industrialize. Some of the first oil and nuclear power developments occurred in this area. I grew up hearing the statement (correct or not) that "Pittsburgh is the most polluted city in the world." Many of the labor struggles that got safer workplaces, more decent pay, and limits on corporate abuse of both citizens and environment happened here.

We were the first city to clean up our pollution - resulting in a renaissance, and a technical/expertise base which places us in a position to profit from helping the world transition to the new clean technology economy now.

We have a pivotal role in providing for the rest of the world the ability to recover from the environmental devastation and concomitant economic collapse which now threatens the survival of all life on this planet.. We in Pittsburgh were "ahead" of many in other places in having had to learn to adapt to severe economic decline. And we are now leading with green solutions which recognize environmental common sense innovations as money makers.

That this city was chosen to host a summit of the wealthiest nations should have been no surprise. I need only look out my window at the green forested mountainside across the river to see what we've accomplished. It's visible now because the last steel mill in the city proper has shut down. There was too much smoke while the Hazelwood Coke Works was running to get but a hazy gray glimpse of that mountainside every now and then. The governor, the mayor, and the head of the city council were on board to build another mill after that one was torn down, but most Hazelwood residents were against it, so it didn't get built. Citizens also - along with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection - prevented the development of a mountaintop-removal lumbering/mining/race track/resort complex that would have pretty much destroyed that beautiful mountainside ecosystem called Hays Woods. It is the most forested section of the city proper.

We have now a city that is on average poor, but beautiful and technologically advanced. We are already providing an example to the world of how to survive great change. We can head towards stabilizing ourselves economically and environmentally by helping provide the world with the means to regenerate the Earth's ecosystem.

We must almost entirely transition from fossil fuels, move to primarily locally grown food, avoid false climate solutions such as nuclear power, regenerate the world's failing biological diversity, and apply the most advanced appropriate technologies to help with this huge change.

And it isn't going to be easy. Just as residents of Hazelwood had to fight to slow down the pollution that was shortening our lives and those of our children, an epic struggle is taking place in the world between those who see that the entire Earth ecosystem (including all humans) is in jeopardy and those who don't . This month Pittsburgh takes center stage with the International Coal Conference, the G20 Summit, and the Peoples Summit. We're near the end of the game and a good future is not promised. We have to act in service to life for a better future.
======
For a critique of building new nuclear power plants, go to
http://blog.cleanenergy.org
======
How do we appreciate and enjoy the present while working for a better future?

Stopping to smell the roses, and reminiscing about the past, aren't wasteful expenses of precious time. By recognizing what we have now - and where it came from - we can create a future which, by holding precious the best of the past, includes its essence and ensures that the future will be even better.

That time only moves forward, never back, should make us eager to create an even better future. We take the wonderful things we've had, expand on them in our imaginations, and confidently act on our hopes to bring forth something good that can't yet be seen or felt in its exact details.

When we first were starting this neighborhood newspaper, John Tokarski came up with the name "Hazelwood Homepage". Most of the original group working on the paper weren't immediately impressed, but I liked it right away. It's a double entendre - combining the welcoming word "home" with the hip reference to an internet webpage. Like the front door of a library, the homepage beckons to so much more inside. Now, years later, we are at the same crossroads - calling Hazelwood our home and yet recognizing the Earth calls us to a much bigger one.
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G20 rumors

2009-08-16T07:01:00.000-07:00

Here's about that rumor that local protesters are saving up sht to throw at the police:
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2009/08/fear-of-good-change.html .
Relax...They're RECYCLING it. I'm betting the rumor started when someone accidentally or purposely misinterpreted the fact that Landslide Community Farm www.landslidecommmunityfarm.org composts (for two years to make pathogen-free) humanure.

Love is money in the long run.

2009-08-16T05:08:00.000-07:00

Love, not money, makes the world go round. Will we choose love or fear?
======
Circa 1980 Cuban/American bumper sticker:

Cuando oppression es ley, revolution es orden.

When oppression is law, revolution is in order.

======
Now read this written about Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist during the 2000 election theft:
+
Just Our Bill
by Dennis Roddy 12/2/0
post-gazette.com/columnists/20001202roddy.asp
+
======

fear of good change

2009-08-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

Oh, my God, I talked about saving money rather than spending it. Will the defenders of the status quo ever forgive me?
======
As to the nasty rumor that local protesters are saving their human waste to throw at the police...They're RECYCLING it. One wonders how willful the ignorance being spread is, and by who.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8021506.stm
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The Revolution is Love

2009-08-12T06:19:00.000-07:00

======

"...in the revolution
we will execute
only the system
with a new way
of being alive..."

~Steve Ben Israel, Nonviolent Executions
blacklistedjournalist.com/column95k3.html
======
Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government
by Joel S. Hirschorn
delusionaldemocracy.com
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"One who says it can't be done shouldn't interrupt one doing it."
~Chinese proverb
danaherbert.blogspot.com/2008/05/village-interviews-steve-ben-israel.html
======

Geez, who are the bad guys here?

2009-08-11T06:45:00.000-07:00

I like my movies in black and white, good guys and bad guys...
======
"We may he privileged to witness the collapse of an entire civilization."
Malcolm Muggeridge
======
Father Jack O'Malley warned the Labor and Religion Coalition of Western Pennsylvania regarding G20 agents provocateurs.
======
greenisthenewred.com/blog/green-scare
..FBI..paid..“Anna,” to pose as an activist: she provided the group with bomb-making recipes; at times financed their transportation, food and housing; strung along McDavid, who had the hopes of a romantic relationship; and poked and prodded the group into action...
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The old order is destroying itself.

2009-08-11T06:36:00.000-07:00

Smashing the state is so out of it; the state is already wrecked. The monster is moving on only inertia now.
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http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2008/11/how-to-steal-another-election-death-of.html

Produce more of what you consume.

2009-08-10T05:18:00.000-07:00

We have become addicted to slavery so that we may eat cheap imported food.
Be a prosumer (producer/consumer) - produce what you consume.
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johnperkins.org
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globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14658
..Chiquita..and..CIA..toppled Guatemala’s democratically-elected president..Arbenz in 1954 and..ITT, Henry Kissinger, and the CIA had brought down Chile’s..Allende in 1973.. Haiti’s president Jean-Bertrand Aristide..ousted by the CIA in 2004 because he proposed a minimum wage increase...
Now Honduras...
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dreamchange.org

Sing "The party's ovah!"

2009-08-09T08:21:00.000-07:00

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"...The game is over...and the Fed is highly responsible for doing this by bailing out their buddies with cheap money over and over again..."
~Gerald Celente, December 2007
trendsresearch.com
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Entering the Greatest Depression in History
More Bubbles Waiting to Burst
By Andrew Gavin Marshall 8/7/9
globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14680
..Celente..“The biggest financial bubble in history is being inflated in plain sight..
However destructive the effects of these busts on employment, savings and productivity, the Free Market Capitalist framework was left intact..
But when the 'Bailout Bubble' explodes, the system goes with it..Phantom dollars, printed out of thin air, backed by nothing..and producing next to nothing..when the "Bailout Bubble" pops, neither the President nor the Federal Reserve will have the fiscal fixes or monetary policies available to inflate another..Given the pattern of governments to parlay egregious failures into mega-failures, the classic trend they follow, when all else fails, is to take their nation to war..a major war could follow.”
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Biological diversity suppresses but does not eliminate disease.

2009-08-08T08:32:00.000-07:00

National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service
attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/lateblight.html
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Sustainable Management of Soil-Borne Plant Diseases
attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/summaries/soilborne.html
Soil-borne diseases result from a reduction of biodiversity of soil organisms. Restoring beneficial organisms that attack, repel, or otherwise antagonize disease-causing pathogens will render a soil disease-suppressive. Plants growing in disease-suppressive soil resist diseases much better than in soils low in biological diversity. Beneficial organisms can be added directly, or the soil environment made more favorable for them through use of compost and other organic amendments. Compost quality determines its effectiveness at suppressing soil-borne plant diseases...
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Love versus the chaos machine

2009-08-07T04:05:00.001-07:00

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We must get in gear to save Earth now.

"..we're in worse trouble than we understand..a little changes around the edges won't help.." ~Bill McKibben

Re:

What We Leave Behind
by Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay

feministe.us/blog/archives/2009/06/30/leaving-us-behind

...antibiotics..kill plants and soil life...

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Welcome the Peoples' Summit and G20
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"A year from now, what are the desired changes...you know, a year from now, somebody gets out of jail, what differences..."

Will the elite be welcome at the Peoples' Summit? Will the poor be welcomed at the G20 Summit?
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"The superconscious law of success is put into operation through man's prayers and by his understanding of the Lord's omnipotence. Do not stop your conscious efforts or rely wholly on your own natural abilities, but ask divine aid in all you do."
~Paramahansa Yogananda, "Scientific Healing Affirmations"
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"...I started to notice the cattle, the mining, the clear cutting...and then I noticed the footprints of the campers and backpackers. Then I started to notice that some of the places I had taken students to in previous years were depleted of the very plants I showed them. Then I started to notice the current footprints of the two dozen people I was showing herbs to. Now I find I am starting to notice MY footprints."
~Michael Moore, from The EcoHerbalist's Fieldbook, by Gregory Tilford
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"La Revolution commence avec moi meme." The Revolution begins with myself.
'68 Paris graffiti, as recounted by Steve Ben Israel
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palaborhistory.org
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My notes from 3 Rivers Climate Convergence mtng/conference call 8/5/9 at East End Food Co-op.
Jim McCue, composter and biotech researcher appropriatebiotech@yahoo.com
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Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture PASAfarming.org
mass civil disobedience Tuesday?
"g-infinity project"
Arundhati Roy
The Age of Stupid film
"climate justice photo exhibit"
"tents for workshops"
"natural gas development devastating communities"
"Women's Tent City Initiative"
Center for Coalfield Justice
Green Party
Sierra Club
Earth First
Landslide Community Farm
avaaz.org
Student Environmental Action Coalition
"full coal cycle"
Bioneers.org
"Four Directions Network"
"Coal Country" film
g20media.org
Melwood Screening Room
"Ferlo Point State Park steelworkers collaboration"
"Malik Rahim coming" Common Ground Relief commongroundrelief.org
z-mag
"3 Rivers Climate Coalition"
West Coast Climate Convergence "...Shell...oil development in the U.S...."
Global Campaign for Climate Action
"...flashmob action on the 21st..."
resistg20.org
PeoplesSummit.com "...speakers, panels, and workshops...
organic gardening/urban farming workshop/forum "huge transition we have to make...need for - and health hazards of improper - composting"
"intalling composting toilets"
actforclimatejustice.org/g20
Bail Out the People bailoutpeople.org
indypgh.org
g6billion.org
Women's Coalition francineporter@aol.com 9/20-25 Tent City Feeder march for 9/25 permitted march
"environmental refugees"
trying to get overnight permit for 2 camps at Point Park
concert
rally
thomasmertoncenter.org
+
"Points of Unity" -
...people exist within ecosystems...traditional ecological knowledge...often exists in a holistic culture that integrates the physical and spiritual...We reject the false solutions to imminent ecological collapse, such as carbon (cap and trade) markets, clean coal, industrial biofuels, and nuclear power...cessation of production of all toxins, hazardous wastes and radioactive materials...detoxification and the containment at the point of production...life-sustaining economic practices...equal partners at every level of decision-making...right of all workers to a safe and healthy work environment, without being forced to choose between an unsafe livelihood and unemployment...re-imagine/restore...clean up and rebuild our cities and rural areas in balance with nature...fair access for all to the full range of resources...Bali Principles...EJ principles..."
+
"...direct action..."
"Action Factory"
organizepittsburgh.org
facebook page
3riversconvergence.org
Labor and Religion Coalition of Western Pennsylvania
Mon Valley Unemployed Committee
Joseph Stiglitz, Institute for Policy Studies
Anti-Flag
USW unconfirmed march in planning
Pittsburgh United
International Pace,Justice, & Empowerment Summit
"contingents and feeder marches"
International Coal Conference David Lawrence same week
"...historic tour of Pittsburgh radically historic sites..."
"people based coverage of"
Seeds of Peace
"Greenpeace tents...solar-powered bus"
g20 working dinner at Phipps "...why they moved to a glass building..."
Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project 20 hour medic training
"...contingents and feeder marches..."
studentpowerinthefaceofempire.wordpress.com
longwall mining...
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From Ceci Wheeler:
--- On Wed, 8/5/09, __ceciw. wrote:
From: __ceciw.
Subject: from pittsburgh
To: openairwaves@yahoo.com
Date: Wednesday, August 5, 2009, 10:29 PM

Hi, all,
i'm organizing an event in the south side on september. If you're a
resident of it and can help, send me a note and i'll give you more
details. Those whom I already reached out, meetings are still on mondays
at the same location.
Thank you.
ceci
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Jim McCue
composter and biotech researcher

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Communities for a Better Environment (California)
cbecal.org
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Global Hunger
A Faith Leaders’ Summit at the Pittsburgh G20 Meetings
http://bread.org/learn/global-hunger-issues/faith-leaders-summit.html
...recovery must include the 1 billion people who now live in extreme poverty...commitment made by the G8 in July to develop a global food security initiative...G-8 pledged $20 Billion, primarily invested in agriculture, to combat hunger in developing countries...Bread for the World, in cooperation with the Alliance to End Hunger and partner organizations, is planning to host a Faith Leaders Summit for prayer and public witness in Pittsburgh on the morning of September 23, the eve of the G20 meetings.

We would like to hold a Faith Leaders Forum (by conference call) in the weeks leading up to the G20 Summit, including a briefing on the issues and consultation on our messaging.

We are also planning to seek opportunities for a conversation with participants in U.S. delegation to the Summit.
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