"Any" Means "Any"

From today's EEI newsletter:

Electricity Daily Analyzes Court's Decision on NSR Case

In an analysis published in today's Electricity Daily, the newsletter dissects the recent court decision to overturn the EPA's regulation on New Source Review (DEN, March 20, D.C. Appeals Court Panel Overturns New Source Review Rule).

Electricity Daily noted the decision "was written by Judge Judith W. Rogers, a Clinton appointee, and agreed to by Judges David Tatel, also a Clinton pick, and Janice Rogers Brown, a recent and controversial George W. Bush choice for the appellate court." Rogers was quoted as saying: "There is no reason the usual tools of statutory construction should not apply and hence no reason why 'any' should not mean 'any.' Indeed, EPA's interpretation would produce a 'strange' if not an 'indeterminate' result: a law intended to limit increases in air pollution would allow sources operating below applicable emission limits to increase significantly the pollution they emit without government review."

The newsletter said the court backed the arguments advanced by New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer "and a bevy of other attorneys general in the region" in opposition to a "bunch of AGs from coal states," concluding that the specificity of the Clean Air Act "is unequivocal."

Wrote the newsletter: "The act describes a modification as 'any physical change in, or change in the method of operation of, a stationary source which increases the amount of any air pollutant emitted by such source or which results in the emission of any air pollutant not previously emitted.'"

Electric Reliability Coordinating Council spokesman Scott Segal called the decision "disappointing." He was quoted as saying: "In light of the consistent actions taken in other federal circuit courts of appeal regarding the actual NSR enforcement cases, it appears that the NSR enforcement actions filed back in the late 1990s are on no firmer legal ground today than they were before NSR II was decided."

Electricity Daily, March 21.

Yahweh Without War?

Have you ever been to Omega? Omega is interesting; it's a "center for holistic studies." Located on a gorgeous site in the southern Hudson Valley, they can be so "crunch-granola, new agey, touchy-feely" that you want to smack them. But they also, year-in and year-out, run some truly interesting courses by some of the most interesting teachers.

This year, in addition to the boatload of yoga courses they've had for the past few years (ever since yoga got to be the hot new thing), they've got Cindy Sheehan, inter alia, teaching a course called "God Without War." Now, by "God", it's clear they mean Yahweh, because all the teachers are either Xian or Jewish, but let's put that to one side. The course looks interesting. It invites participants to "seek to answer this question: How can a vision of God help us create a world of love instead of hate, and a culture of peace instead of war?"

"Through stimulating discussion, reflection, prayer, and meditation, we explore the spiritual foundations of peace and justice, the current polarization in America and the world, and religious roots of our current conflict in Iraq, what belief in a God of love actually means, and actions we can each take to practice what we preach in our efforts to create a more peaceful world."

Go, Cindy!

Top Ten Signs You May Be a Fundie Whack-Job

Top Ten Signs You're a Fundamentalist Christian


10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.

9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.

8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.

7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, and trees!

6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.

5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.

4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most "tolerant" and "loving."


3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in "tongues" may be all the evidence you need to "prove" Christianity.

2 - You think sex is evil, even though your god made it pleasurable.

1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian

What Part of that Loud Buzzing Alarm and Flashing Red Light Do They Not Understand?

Abundance and diversity continue to decline all over our planet. Oh, look! Britney may be pregnant again!

People! Please! Wake the fuck up!

Seeds!

Spent yesterday making little pots out of newspaper strips. Then, this morning, I filled them with potting soil and -- my favorite part -- planted seeds. I planted almost fifty black hollyhocks with seeds I harvested last summer. Thirty dill plants, thirty mint plants, and lots of wormwood seed (too tiny to count). Also, several moonflowers and lots and lots of Bowles Black violas. Slipped them under the bright lights and, now, the magic happens.

More Sunday Akhmatova Blogging

"Why Is This Century Worse..."

1919

Why is this century worse than those others?
Maybe, because, in sadness and alarm,
It only touched the blackest of the ulcers,
But couldn't heal it in its span of time.

Else, in the West, the earthly sun endows
The roofs of cities with the morning light,
But, here, the White already marks a house,
And calls for crows, and the crows fly.


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, August, 2000
Edited by Dmitry Karshtedt, February, 2001

Sean Patrick's Natal Chart from Astrodeinst

Introduction

The report was generated with the following birth data: male, born on 17 March 2006 at 4:52 pm in Binghamton, New York.

Your sun sign is Pisces. This is the sign in which the Sun is in your birth chart. Your Ascendant, the rising sign, is in Virgo, and your Moon is in Libra.


Virgo Rising

You may be somewhat shy and not very self-assertive toward others. In fact you are a soft- spoken, neat and orderly person who is quite likable. Your only real problem may come from the fact that you are a perfectionist, and you may demand that others live up to the same high standards that you set for yourself. You are quick to point out people's flaws to them, but you should learn to be a bit more tactful.

You are quite practical, and you do not like to waste time on impractical schemes. But in making objects of one sort or another, you have excellent taste, although very reserved, and you like everything to be both graceful and practical.

You believe in work, and you feel best when you are involved in some project. This attitude will intensify as you get older.

Sun in Pisces

You are a very sensitive and emotional person who quickly picks up moods and emotions from other people and makes them part of your own. This trait makes it very easy for others to hurt your feelings. Because you have the ability to put yourself in someone else's place, you have an exceptional understanding of other people's needs. Whenever possible, you try to help others, because it makes you feel good about yourself.

Very often you like to go into your own private fantasy world and think about ideas that mean something only to you. Just don't spend so much time there that you lose track of what is happening outside in the real world.

You may be somewhat shy, because you feel you have to trust people before you can really open up to them. But even though you are shy, you do need other people, for without them you feel lonely, even in your own private world.

Sun in the Seventh House

You are at your best with another person, either working or just having a good time. You are able to adjust your own needs to someone else's so that together you make a pair that works better than either of you would separately.

You are very social, and you have learned early in life to get along with others. For this reason, you are able to help others patch up an argument, because you see both sides of the controversy.

Some people express another side of the seventh-house Sun. You may really feel like arguing and fighting with others, instead of trying to get along. Don't make a habit of it, because everyone gets tired of fighting eventually.

You should learn to be more independent. Also avoid making compromises that require you to give up something essential just to keep a friend.

Moon in Libra

You like life to be beautiful and prefer not to think about things that aren't pleasant. You are affectionate, warm and friendly, but you may overlook other people's faults that you should keep in mind. You are a peace-loving person and do not like to start fights with others.

You very much like to be with a group of friends so that you can talk and be friendly with everyone. But when there is work to be done you may try to use sweet talk to get out of work or to get someone else to do it. But people will like you anyway, not for the charm you use to get out of trouble, but for your real charms. Really you are a friendly and loving person, and you should try to develop that side of yourself.


Moon in the Second House

You have a strong need for emotional security, which is reflected by the desire to own things. But you should be careful not to attach too much importance to what you own, because you may become selfish and possessive, especially if you feel insecure and afraid.

If you feel very positive and secure, you may be generous and giving, but when you feel rash and impulsive, you tend to waste money or whatever else you have.

In relationships you form strong attachments to other people, which may make you feel possessive of them. If you are willing to run the risk of losing your friends, you will actually find it easier to keep them.

Venus in Aquarius

You are friendly with people but sometimes you find it difficult to form close relationships. You prefer friends who are somehow exciting and different.

You enjoy being popular and you work well with other people in group projects and team efforts. You understand immediately what is good for the group and can adjust your own goals to fit.

Venus in the Fifth House

You enjoy amusements and pleasant times, especially if you don't have to use a lot of physical energy. You like activities in which you can indulge your senses and feel good. As you get older, you will be unusually attracted to potential love partners. If you have artistic ability, this placement can help you express yourself artistically.

Mars in Gemini

Your energies get turned on very rapidly, and you work very quickly. You are inclined to start several projects at once and never finish any of them. If you cannot overcome this basic tendency to dabble shallowly in many activities, you will not master any skill very completely.

On the other hand, you do have a quick mind, which you enjoy using, especially to debate and argue with others in a spirit of friendly disagreement.

Try not to be so impulsive in the way you think. If you make decisions too rapidly, you will often be wrong.

Mars in the Tenth House

You want to get ahead in life, and you will work very hard to get there.

However, while you are still in the learning stage, you should be careful how you treat authority figures. You don't automatically respect all adults, because you have very high standards for others as well as for yourself.

You should probably look for a career in which you can be self-employed or else have a great deal of independent authority. This position of Mars suggests several kinds of jobs, especially those that require a lot of physical energy or hard work.

Mars Conjunct Midheaven

Very early in life, you will develop a firm determination to do everything your own way. You decide upon a course of action quite quickly, and you usually know just what you want to accomplish.

If someone questions your moves, you take it very personally. You must realize that you are more than the sum of your actions and that when someone challenges your decisions, it does not mean they are challenging you personally.

This aspect indicates that when you are older you should choose a career in which you can have a great deal of independence and expend a lot of physical energy.




AstroText Youth - Short Edition
for Sean Patrick (male)
born on 17 March 2006 local time 04:52 pm
in Binghamton, NY (US) U.T. 21:52
75w55, 42n06 sid. time 04:29:39
Planetary positions
planet sign degree house motion
Sun Pisces 27°09'37 07 direct
Moon Libra 29°25'55 02 direct
Mercury Pisces 16°06'37 07 retrograde
Venus Aquarius 10°53'22 05 direct
Mars Gemini 14°41'19 10 direct
Jupiter Scorpio 18°35'31 03 retrograde
Saturn Leo 04°41'27 11 retrograde
Uranus Pisces 11°39'18 06/7 direct
Uranus is technically near the end of house 6 and is interpreted in house 7.
Neptune Aquarius 18°42'17 06 direct
Pluto Sagittarius 26°43'04 04 direct
True Node Aries 04°19'19 07 direct

House positions (Placidus)
Ascendant Virgo 12°20'26
2nd House Libra 06°24'10
3rd House Scorpio 05°34'28
Imum Coeli Sagittarius 09°06'31
5th House Capricorn 13°39'13
6th House Aquarius 15°09'20
Descendant Pisces 12°20'26
8th House Aries 06°24'10
9th House Taurus 05°34'28
Medium Coeli Gemini 09°06'31
11th House Cancer 13°39'13
12th House Leo 15°09'20
Major aspects
Sun Quincunx Moon 2°16
Sun Trine Saturn 7°32
Sun Square Pluto 0°27
Moon Square Saturn 5°16
Moon Sextile Pluto 2°43
Mercury Square Mars 1°25
Mercury Trine Jupiter 2°29
Mercury Conjunction Uranus 4°27
Mercury Opposition Ascendant 3°46
Venus Trine Mars 3°48
Venus Quincunx Ascendant 1°27
Venus Trine Medium Coeli 1°47
Mars Square Uranus 3°02
Mars Trine Neptune 4°01
Mars Square Ascendant 2°21
Mars Conjunction Medium Coeli 5°35
Jupiter Square Neptune 0°07
Saturn Sextile Medium Coeli 4°25
Uranus Opposition Ascendant 0°41
Uranus Square Medium Coeli 2°33
Numbers indicate orb (deviation from the exact aspect angle).

Bite Me, St. Patrick. You, With the Long Hair and the Golden Torque, However . . . .

St. Patrick is no friend of mine. There were never any snakes in Ireland, but the Irish pagans, like pagans almost everywhere, worshipped the snake as a symbol of both spiritual renewal and chthonic wisdom. The story that St. Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland actually tells of his attempts to drive the pagan religion from Ireland.

And yet, I love Celtic culture and celebrate the bit of it that I inherited (although my mother’s family was mostly Swedish and my father’s family were Cockneys who were originally Picts). The Celts, who, in the end, were pushed to the very edge of Europe, the boggy, rocky, windy bits that no one else wanted. Europe’s beautiful losers, they’ve been called. But you know they all had the souls of poets and the Celts honored poets more than any other culture I know. So, for me, April 17th is Celtic Heritage Day. And, I’m happy to drink to that!

National Geographic has a nice article on the Celts this month. Go watch the lovely slide show and listen to the lovely music. Happy Celtic Heritage Day!

Some Countries Have All the Luck - Part the Second

Common Dreams reports that:

Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf will address a joint session of the U.S. Congress today. This historic honor, bestowed sparingly on international dignitaries, is a fitting tribute for Africa's first democratically elected female president. But Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is not an anomaly.

The African political landscape is being reshaped by women, generating hope for the future of the continent and raising the bar for democracy worldwide.

Few Americans would guess that the country that leads the world in political gender balance is Rwanda, where women make up half of the members of parliament, a development that started in the mid-1990s. South Africa and Mozambique, also high on the list, are both countries with women composing more than 30 percent of their parliaments. This stands in stark contrast to the United States, where women make up only 15 percent of Congress

Goddess, it's embarassing to be living in a backwards country like the US. The entire article is well-worth a read. (Thanks to Prior Aelred for sending me the article!)

PS Here's a link to the text of President Johnson-Sirleaf's address. Oh, and Cheney and Hastert? Those looks on your faces? Bite me!

It Always Comes Back to Robert Graves

Here. Go read this great interview with Margaret Atwood. She's amazing.

Sacred Spaces in the Modern World -- Third in a Continuing Series

In just about two weeks, the thousands of cherry trees that surround the Tidal Basin at the foot of the Jefferson Memorial reach their peak blooming season. If you’re in, or near, or can get to Washington, D.C., you owe it to your soul to be there. This year marks the 94th year that my lovely city will celebrate the original gift of 3,000 flowering cherry trees from the people of Tokyo to the people of Washington, D.C.

As is true of so many sacred spaces, if you haven’t been, you can’t really understand what it is that makes the cherry blossoms so special. I’ve seen them under a full moon on a night so warm you wanted to find a soft spot and sleep on the blossoms all night long if only for the pleasure of waking up covered by a snow of pink/white petals. I’ve seen them in the snow, on a grey day when I flew back from a several-week long business trip to LA and had the cab driver take me straight from National Air Port to the Tidal Basin. I’ve seen them in the late afternoon, when our case finished early and my colleague and I walked the Tidal Basin -- he in a suit and tie and I in my heels and a suit -- under a perfect blue sky. I’ve seen them on a cold windy day when I met my son and daughter-in-law to take my first long walk after breaking my ankle. And, most often, I’ve seen them very early in the morning, when I get up before the sun and wander among the blossoms while the sun comes up and lovers and families spread their picnic breakfasts of bagels, mimosas, strawberries, and chocolates under the flowering trees.

Early morning is often the least crowded time: just a few joggers, one or two skaters, the breakfast picnicers, and me. But there’s one really good reason to go in the late afternoon. There is one very short half-minute that occurs at just the moment when the temperature stops holding constant and begins to drop, usually just before the sun actually sets. At that moment, the millions of cherry blossoms all give up their fragrance, a fragrance so subtle that, absent such an immense mass of blooms, you’d never notice it. When you realize that you’re smelling cherry blossoms, it’s magic and you have to stop and stand still in order to be that blessed, that privileged, the recipient of the active grace of so much pleasure.

Pat Robertson Calls Muslims Satanic

Good grief. Now, I'm sure in a day or so, he'll say he was quoted out of context or something, but that's just the salve for the mainstream. His rabid base knows that he means every word. Explain to me why a hate-filled lunatic like this, who says things that no one in polite company should countenance, is allowed to influence our national policies? Explain to me why it's ok for him to say that Muslims are satanic, but if anyone suggests that evangelical xians need to reign it in a bit, they're persecuting xians and violating their First Amendment rights? Bush cozies up to this madman every chance he gets and the Democrats are such yellow-bellied pussies that they won't hang this bell around the cat's neck.

I'll take that retirement condo in Bedlam, now, Mr. Jeffers.

I Realize This Will Come as a Shock to You

But the people who ran Enron, Bush's biggest contributor, were blatant liars. In fact, Ken (I Know Nutting!) Lay lied to Wall Street analysts. Just something to think about when Bush proposes that you put your Social Security or health care in the hands of Wall Street.

Gives New Meaning to the Expression "As Above, So Below"

DNA-style double helix found in the cosmos.

Even More Grandson Blogging

Here's what I did the last day that I was 49:


Slept late.

Worked on a brief.

Went to a full moon ritual.

Blogged about my grandson.

Got a new poem that I love from NYMary and Thers.

I'm not sure it could get any better than that.

One Week Old Grandson Blogging

I'm fifty years old as of one minute ago. I've done a lot of things in my fifty years, but the best thing I ever did was be a mom to my wonderful son. The reward is HIS wonderful son, my grandson.

The second fifty years are going to be SO much fun.

Darfur

Center for American Progress Action Fund reports that:

This week, NBC’s Today Show is airing a series of television reports on the ethnic cleansing that continues to occur in the Darfur region. Although news coverage has dwindled, the genocide in Sudan has not, and it is now spreading to endanger the lives of innocent people in neighboring Chad.

NBC journalist Ann Curry pressured network executives to send her to Chad to cover this developing crisis. Watch the videos of her first two reports, Crisis in Chad, Darfur Examined, and Women Terrorized in Darfur, and visit her blog, that includes a photo journal of her trip. Her report has also appeared on NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams.

What a Bust

Electricity deregulation certainly benefitted the folks in Houston who pushed for it. Everyone else? Not so much. Thanks, Mr. Hebert. Oh, and thanks Mr. Lott, as well. He was your boy, wasn't he?

"There were all kinds of businessmen down there in their smartest suits waiting, like anyone else, for the chance to go back and talk to their legislators about this bill," said Bunting, whose Senate office door opens into the common waiting room.

"In Delaware, you know, those guys are almost like sports stars, and they were coming up or down to little Dover to talk to their legislators about how important this was," he said.

That star power overwhelmed opposition from the state's public advocate, Patricia Stowell, and the late Robert J. McMahon, the chairman of the Public Service Commission. Both warned that small power users might never see the lower rates that deregulation proponents touted.

As it turned out, competition has not developed for small consumers. Delaware homeowners now face a May 1 increase of 59 percent as electric rates frozen in 1999 rise to the level of the free market created by deregulation.

The General Assembly returns Tuesday after a six-week break with a slew of proposals on the drawing boards to address the big increase, including possible phasing of the increase and re-regulation of electricity sales.

The environment is hostile now, but back in 1999, just about everyone loved the idea of deregulation.

Sekhmet!

Archeologists have been discovering some amazing life-size statues of the Egyptian Goddess, Sekhmet who ruled over both war and healing.

Sunday Akhmatova Blogging

Believe it or not, I've only recently begun to get into Anna Akhmatova's poetry. I suspect that she simply does not translate well and I don't read Russian. There's a new biography of her that I'm dying to dip into, though. Here's a poem of hers that I do like.



Anna Akhmatova - March Elegy

I have enough treasures from the past
to last me longer than I need, or want.
You know as well as I . . . malevolent memory
won't let go of half of them:
a modest church, with its gold cupola
slightly askew; a harsh chorus
of crows; the whistle of a train;
a birch tree haggard in a field
as if it had just been sprung from jail;
a secret midnight conclave
of monumental Bible-oaks;
and a tiny rowboat that comes drifting out
of somebody's dreams, slowly foundering.
Winter has already loitered here,
lightly powdering these fields,
casting an impenetrable haze
that fills the world as far as the horizon.
I used to think that after we are gone
there's nothing, simply nothing at all.
Then who's that wandering by the porch
again and calling us by name?
Whose face is pressed against the frosted pane?
What hand out there is waving like a branch?
By way of reply, in that cobwebbed corner
a sunstruck tatter dances in the mirror.

Leningrad, 1960

We.Told.You.So

You know, to read the recent spate of articles about what a failure electricity deregulation has been, you wouldn't know that, at the time Enron and others were hyping this idea, a lot of people tried to explain that it wouldn't work. The articles always sound as if, gee, golly whiz, who'd a' thunk that deregulating an essential service for which there is an inelastic demand would have been a bad idea? Electrons simply aren't the same sort of commodity that, say, coffee beans or pork bellies or diamonds are. You can't store electrons when they're cheap and then use them when the cost goes up. They have to be produced pretty much in real time with demand, which goes up and down and can be somewhat unpredictable, given that weather can be somewhat unpredictable. Transmission lines can only carry so many electrons at a time and the farther away that you import the electrons from, the more of them that get lost as heat on the transmission lines. People can't do without electrons, nor can they substitute something else for electrons the way that one could, if necessary, substitute tea for coffee. Which is to say that there was a reason they regulated electricity back in 1935 and there's a reason that deregulating it in the 1990s made sense only if your name was Jeff Skilling.

Congratuations, Chile!

Chile inaugurated its new president: a woman, a socialist, a pediatrician, a single mom.. Some countries have all the luck.

In a country where the Roman Catholic Church wields great power, Ms. Bachelet is also openly agnostic, and when she took her oath of office she promised rather than swore to uphold the Chilean Constitution.

She also has promised a government that focuses on social equality and respect for human rights. Her immediate priorities, she indicated as a candidate, are a more just distribution of income and reform of the country's pension system, which is increasingly unpopular here.

Words I Seldom Utter

Cudos to the Washington Post for doing a respectful obituary for prominent local Wiccan Priestess Rosemary Koolman. Other than calling her a "self-proclaimed" witch, they did a decent job. I don't see them calling rabbis "self-proclaimed Jews" or priests "self-proclaimed Catholics." But, as I said, in general, a decent job. May the Goddess guard her. May she find her way to the Summerlands. May her friends and family know peace.

Electricity Deregulation -- An Idea Whose Time Has Gone

You know, when you try something and it gets exactly the opposite results of those you'd hoped for, chances are, it was a bad idea.

Exactly

From 'Good Heavens'

~ Pattiann Rogers

The common garden snail can't watch
the heavens and enumerate -- 600 young
stars in Perseus, one more hour
until full moon. It can't make lists --
pinwheel of Andromeda, comet fireball
of Tempel-Tuttle. It has never called
its slither the soft finger of night
nor its wound shell a frozen
galactic spin. Yet its boneless,
thumb-sized head is filled and totally
deaf with exactly the same tone
and timbre as the sky.

Grandson Blogging

I.Am.Just.Saying.

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that:

Venture capital funding for energy technology jumped to 4.2 percent of all venture-capital investments, according to a survey to be released today by Nth Power and Clean Edge, the Wall Street Journal reported. The funding level was up from 3.3 percent in 2004, with the bulk of that money - $917 million - going to clean energy companies.

Wrote the Journal: "Driven by growing demand for more-reliable and more-affordable alternatives to fossil fuels, which have been soaring in cost amid political volatility abroad, energy-technology as a percentage of total venture-capital investments has more than quadrupled from 1999 when it stood at just less than 1 percent, according to the survey."

Ron Pernick, co-founder and principal of Clean Edge, was quoted by the newspaper as saying: "Right now, there is sort of a perfect storm lining up behind clean energy."

Solar power firms brought in $156 million in venture-capital investments in 2005, but some contend that solar and wind power cannot be viable without government support, the newspaper reported. Industry officials have rejected that claim. By 2015, annual sales for biofuels, solar, wind, and fuel cells will more than quadruple to $167 billion, Clean Edge estimated.


Broken record time: Cleaning up the environment would be GOOD for our economy.

There Is Much Upon Which Wordsworth (Thank You, Prior!) and I Disagree. But He's Sooooooo Right That We Come Trailing Clouds of Glory.

The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes, 10
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair; 15
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound 20
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; 25
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea 30
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy 35
Shepherd-boy!

Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival, 40
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning, 45
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:— 50
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet 55
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
BBut trailing clouds of glory do we come 65
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 70
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended; 75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

The Air Medal, the Bronze Star, and the Purple Heart -- But No Pentacle

Sergeant's Space Left Blank --
Fallen Guardsman's Wiccan Faith Unrecognized
by Sean Whaley
© 2006 Las Vegas Review-Journal

Fernley, Nevada -- Thursday, March 2, 2006 -- Nevada National Guard Sgt.
Patrick Stewart gave his life for his country when the Chinook helicopter he was
in was shot down in Afghanistan in September.

But those wishing to honor Stewart, who should have his name on the memorial
wall at the Northern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Fernley, 34 miles
east of Reno, would have a difficult time doing so.

The space reserved for Stewart, right next to Chief Warrant Officer John
Flynn, his comrade from Sparks who also died in the attack as part of Operation
Enduring Freedom, is vacant.

Stewart was a follower of the Wiccan religion, which is not recognized by
the Department of Veterans Affairs for use in its cemeteries.

Stewart's widow, Roberta, said she will wait until her family's religion --
and its five-pointed star enclosed in a circle, with one point facing skyward
-- is recognized for use on memorials before Stewart's laque is installed.

"It's completely blank," Roberta Stewart said, pointing to her husband's
place on the memorial.

She said she had no idea [that] the pentacle could not be used on her husband's
memorial plaque until she had to deal with the agency after the death of her
husband.

"It's discrimination," she said. "They are discriminating against our
religion.

"I had no idea that they would decline our veterans this right that they go
to fight for," she said. "What religion we are doesn't matter. It's like
denying who my husband is."

Patrick Stewart's dog tags, which Roberta Stewart wears around her neck,
carry the word Wiccan on them to identify his religious beliefs. But she said
he was never told the Wiccan religion was not officially recognized during his
13 years of military service in different capacities.

"By they way, if you die for your country, your religion won't be
recognized, that would be nice to know," Roberta Stewart said.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and its National Cemetery
Administration prohibit graphics on government-furnished headstones or markers other
than those they have approved as "emblems of belief." More than 30 such
emblems are allowed on gravestones and makers in veterans cemeteries, from the
Christian cross to the Buddhist wheel of righteousness. A symbol exists for
atheists too.

Roberta Stewart said she has decided to make the issue a public one because
many Wiccans serve in the armed forces who might want the symbol included on
a headstone or memorial marker.

Some Wiccans are private about their religion because of the concern their
practices and beliefs might be misunderstood, she said. But Roberta Stewart
said she and her husband were strong enough to let their beliefs be known in
the community.

Patrick Stewart's religious preferences were made clear at his memorial
service, which was held at Rancho San Rafael Park in an oak grove. Some of those
speaking at the service talked of Stewart's beliefs and how, while they held
different views, respected him for his values. Stewart was cremated, and
his ashes have been scattered.

Roberta Stewart said those beliefs state that Wiccans must do no harm, give
to the community and worship the Earth.

"I can't see anything bad in it myself," she said.

Community support for Patrick Stewart in Fernley, where the couple bought a
home together a year ago, is strong, she said. Stewart's military colleagues
are circulating a petition in Afghanistan that supports his right to use the
symbol, she said.

She said she wants the memorial plaque at the veterans cemetery because "my
husband needs to be remembered somewhere besides in my heart."

While Roberta Stewart is frustrated by the situation, a chance exists that
her husband's memorial plaque might be in place soon, with the symbol of his
beliefs.

An application seeking recognition of the Wiccan religion, and the use of
the pentacle as an emblem of belief on memorials in veterans cemeteries, is
working its way through the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The Reverend Selene Fox, senior minister of a Wiccan group called Circle
Sanctuary, said the group filed the application for the use of the emblem with
the Department of Veterans Affairs in January by using a new administrative
process. The group filed the application with the widow of a Korean War
veteran who wanted the symbol for her husband's memorial, she said.

Efforts have been under way for a decade to win the recognition, Fox said.

Speaking by telephone from Wisconsin, Fox said the application has passed
through one level of review.

"I truly hope the approval process will come to a quick and successful
conclusion very soon," she said. "It saddens me that there is, from my
understanding from Roberta, a hole in her husband's memorial where the plaque is to go with the pentacle on it."

Officials with the Department of Veterans Affairs could not be reached for
comment on whether the application will be successful.

Fox said her group has worked to follow every detail of the application
process. The 24-page application that was submitted included information
showing that the Wiccan religion complied with every requirement the agency has
before it would consider the approval of a new emblem of belief, she said.

Roberta Stewart said she is checking with the veterans agency on a regular
basis to find out the status of the application.

The couple's daughter, age 12, wrote a letter asking for approval for the
symbol's use.

"Why won't you put my dad's religion sign on a plaque," Alexandria
Maxwell-Stewart wrote to R. James Nicholson, secretary of veterans affairs, on
February 27. "He respected you and your rules and went and fought for our country
and died for our country and this is how you treat him and his family."

Patrick Stewart, 34, and four other National Guard members died Sept. 25
when their Chinook helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade while
returning to their base for refueling. They had finished dropping off troops.

He was a Nevada native, born in Reno on October 21, 1970. He attended
Washoe County schools, graduating from Wooster High School in 1989.

He enlisted in the Army after graduation, serving in Desert Storm and in
Korea, and completed active duty in 1996. He moved to Ohio, where he and his
brother owned a construction company.

He returned to Nevada in 2001, where he met his future wife, Roberta, and
her daughter, Ali. He is survived also by his son, Raymond Stewart of Spring,
Texas.

Patrick Stewart enlisted in the Nevada Army National Guard and went to
Afghanistan with Task Force Storm in early 2005.

He was posthumously awarded the Air Medal, the Bronze Star, the Purple
Heart, the Nevada Distinguished Service Medal and the Combat Action Badge.

Roberta Stewart said she remains optimistic that the Department of Veterans
Affairs will recognize the Wiccan symbol for use in its cemeteries.

"I am going to have faith in my government to do what's right and give us
the freedoms that our soldiers have earned for us," she said. "But should they
deny it, I will be ready to stand firm on my beliefs."

She said she has held off on contacting members of the Nevada congressional
delegation about the issue to give the veterans agency time to act on its own.

"I would like to lay my husband to rest," she said. "Me and the children
would like to move on. It's been very traumatic for us. I won't let my
husband be blank on a wall for too long."

Nature Focus of Religion

Wiccans, also known as neopagans, are a loosely confederated group of
religious practitioners who also are referred to as nature religious practitioners.
Their beliefs date to before Christianity and focus on the natural world.
Many of their observances fall around specific times of the year, such as the
summer and winter solstice.

The different groups have nothing to do with Satanism or any of the cliche
images involving witches seen in some Hollywood horror movies.
Breac à linne, slat à coille is fiadh à fìreach --
mèirle às nach do ghabh gàidheal riamh nàire.

A fish from the river, a staff from the wood, and a deer from the mountain
-- thefts no Gael was ever ashamed of.

Taking It to the Streets - Part the First

Iraqi Women Make Rare Trip to the DC to Share Their Stories And Call For an
End to Violence and Occupation (description and brief BIOS below).

DC area Folks! Come out en force to welcome these courageous women. Spread
the word far and wide. LET'S SHOW OUR SOLIDARITY AND FILL THE CHURCH:

Tuesday 7 March 7-9 PM
Gold Star Moms Cindy Sheehan and Elaine Johnson
Eman Khamas, Nadje Al-Ali, Faiza Al-Araji
Medea Benjamin, Ann Wright and others?
Musical Guests: In Process, Holly Near and Emma?s Revolution
Foundry United Methodist Church
1500 16th Street NW DC (16th & P) - Dupont Circle Metro
Suggested donation $10.00 to help support the Tour
(no one turned away)

Other DC events include:
for more info: www.womensaynotowar.org

Wednesday 8 March NOON
March/Rally to Deliver global call for Peace
with 50,000 signatures
(sign and forward the call at www.womensaynotowar.org)
Start at Iraqi Embassy
and finish at the White House
NOON:1801 P streets, NW-Dupont Circle Metro

Thursday 9 March 11 AM
Iraqi Women's Briefing and Q&A
for Congress, Staff and the People
Sponsored by Out of Iraq Caucus (Room TBD)

Six Iraqi women will converge in Washington, DC to begin a speaking tour to
educate Americans about the reality in Iraq and meet with UN and US
officials to call for a peace plan to end the escalating spiral of violence.
The delegation is a diverse group, including Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish women -
some secular, some religious. All have paid a very high price for the war
and occupation of their country, and want to tell their stories to the
American people. Unfortunately, two Iraqi women whose families were killed
by US troops were denied visas to enter the US as part of the delegation.

These women are not politicians, but ordinary Iraqis who are desperate to
see an end to the violence and are taking great personal risk to come to the
US. It?s a rare opportunity to hear from Iraqis themselves, and we hope that
you will help ensure they are heard.

The delegation is promoting a Women?s Call for Peace, signed by over 50,000
women from around the world. The Call for Peace requests the withdrawal of
all foreign troops and foreign fighters from Iraq, negotiations to
reincorporate disenfranchised Iraqis, full representation of women in the
peacemaking process, and a commitment to women's equality in the post-war
Iraq. This Call is part of a Women Say No to War campaign
(http://www.womensaynotowar.org ) designed
to bring women together across borders to demand an end to the bloodshed in
Iraq.

Information about the events and
actions in DC are available at: www.womensaynotowar.org.

If You Live in Or Near DC and You're Not Going to One of These Farmers' Markets, What's Wrong with You??

FRESHFARM Markets E-News
for March 5, 2006

The Dupont Winter Market is Open!
Sundays, 10 am to 1 pm, PNC Bank parking lot.

The Pasture
~ Robert Frost

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha'n't be gone long.--You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha'n't be gone long--You come too.

We are counting down the days until spring -- just 17 more to go! This Sunday, NEXT STEP PRODUCE returns to at market. Heinz will have lots of organic produce at market including baby fennel, sweet potatoes, Swiss chard, tender salad greens, kale and arugula. Stock up and share with your neighbors! Oyster lovers have 3 more weeks of fresh oysters from Buster's Seafood -- so let the good times roll!

~ Dupont Winter Market ~
~ January 1 through March 26, 2006. ~

Market Hours: 10 am to 1 pm

~ Our Winter Market Farmers are ~
Atwaters ~ Black Rock Orchard ~ Blue Highland Dairy ~ Blue Ridge Dairy ~ Bonaparte Breads ~ Buster’s Seafood ~ Cedarbrook Farm ~ Cibola ~ Eco-Friendly Foods ~ Endless Summer Harvest ~ Farmhouse Flowers & Plants ~ FireFly ~ Gardeners’ Gourmet ~ Highfield Dairy ~ Keswick Creamery ~ Mushroom Stand ~ Next Step Produce (This Sunday) ~ Smith Meadows Farm ~ Solitude ~ Sunnyside Organic ~ Toigo Orchards ~ Twin Springs Fruit Farm

What's at Market?

Atwaters has breads, cookies, granola and soups!
Black Rock Orchard has apples, pears, cider, fruit rollups and apple butter.
Blue Highland Dairy has fresh milk (including chocolate), butter and cheeses.

Blue Ridge Dairy has feta, mozzarella (smoked and fresh), mascarpone, cow's milk yogurt (plain and honey) and creme fraiche.

Bonaparte has French pastries, croissants, quiche and breads.
Buster's has oysters and fresh fish.
Cedarbrook ~ Back at market on March 12.

Cibola has pasture-raised meats (buffalo, pork, chicken, turkey, jerky) and eggs.
Eco-Friendly has pasture-raised meats (chicken, rabbit sausage, lard, lamb) and eggs.

Endless Summer Harvest has hydroponic-grown greens and herbs.
Farmhouse has cut flowers (tulips, lilies), amaryllis and paperwhites.
Firefly has goat's milk cheeses, bath salts and soaps.

Gardeners' Gourmet has white potatoes, turnips, rutabaga, spinach, cabbage, mesclun, squash and parsley.

Highfield Dairy has goat's milk cheeses (fresh chevre, feta, gouda), yogurt (cow and goat' milk), breakfast and goat cheese tarts, ice cream, sorbet, eggs and quiches.

Keswick Creamery ~ Feta, cheddar and ricotta from cows raised on pasture, also eggs and pork.

Mushroom Stand has fresh fungi including white, crimini, oyster, shiitake, woodears, maitake, portabello and home-made mushroom chili.

Next Step Produce ~ THIS SUNDAY ONLY! Stock up on fennel, sweet potatoes, tender salad greens and more! All organically grown.

Smith Meadows Farm has fresh pastas (fettucine, linguine, ravioli) and pasta sauces.
Solitude will have wool and lovely gift kits.

Sunnyside Organic has beef, turnips, radishes, green onions, spinach, Swiss chard, salad greens, arugula, beets, cider, apple butter and sauce, eggs and Asian pears.

Toigo Orchards has apples, canned peaches, honey, mustard, pasta sauce, applesauce and apple butter, and tomato salsas.
Twin Springs has apples, pears, potatoes, squash, apple butter and salsa.

** Cheese Maker Wanted **
Blue Ridge Dairy is looking for a cheese maker apprentice from mid-April through mid-September. Person would have to lift 60 pound pails routinely. Work is at the cheese plant in Leesburg, VA. The apprentice would work 30-50 hours per week. Salary is very competitive for the right person. If interested, contact Paul Stephan at 703.727.4928 or via email at blueridgedairy@msn.com.

** Mark Your Calendars **
Monday, November 6, 2006 will be our FARMLAND FEAST.
The Ritz-Carlton has invited us back to celebrate our 5th annual FEAST.
Please mark your calendar for this spectacular celebration of local foods!

Be well! See you at market!
bernie

Bernadine Prince
FRESHFARM Markets
P.O. Box 15691
Washington, DC 20003
www.freshfarmmarkets.org

New Orleans Ninth Ward

Scout Prime has a report on New Orleans that you really need to read. Fuck George Bush and Brownie and all the rest of them. They knew, they did nothing, they fucked up, and then they lied.

Why I Care About Biofuels (And Other Renewables)

Financial Planning Magazine reports that: "Higher Fuel Prices May Cause Shift to Renewable Power

The prospect of steadily rising prices for fossil fuels is prompting projections of a booming market for renewable power in coming years, Financial Planning magazine reported.

Research firm Clean Edge estimated that wind power will have a $48-billion market in 2014 and in the same year solar power will have a $39-billion market, up from a $16-billion market for all renewables in 2004.

The growth prospects are aided by falling costs for generation from renewables, with the American Solar Energy Society estimating the average price of solar power at $0.20 per kilowatt-hour, a decrease from $0.95 per kilowatt-hour in the 1980s. Ron Pernick of Clean Edge was quoted as saying: "The technology has been developing for 30 years. Some companies are offering more energy efficiency at a lower cost. You see that with solar energy, for example."

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, cleaning up the environment will provide a huge BOOST to the American economy, rather than the drag often predicted with those who have an interest coughoilcough in the status quo. Developing, building, installing, and managing renewable sources of energy will require investment, pay dividends, create jobs, and allow companies to operate more efficiently. It will have difficult-to-quantify positive impacts on health care costs and on quality-of-life in general.

Note the quotation above: "The technology has been developing for 30 years," so costs are falling. Imagine if we'd been SERIOUSLY developing renewable technology for thirty years. I heard a report yesterday on how few American students are studying math, science, and engineering. We need another national project, similar to Kennedy's push to catch up with the Russians in space, that will get American students excited about math, science, and engineering. The push to clean up the environment could do that. As with the space program, we're likely to see unexpected innovations. Now's the time.

Thriving in Difficult Times - Part the Second

It's the first of the month. Women, I'm begging you. Either do a breast self-exam today or, if you prefer to do it during a certain segment of your cycle, put a note to yourself into your calendar RIGHT NOW.

Buy a bottle of calcium supplement and keep it by your computer so you'll remember to take it.

See how easy it is?

Has the Government Been Spying on You? Find Out

This is neat. People for the American Way (PFAW) has made it incredibly easy to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to find out if the government has been spying on you.

"Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), anyone has the right to request information from the government. Last strengthened by Congress in response to the Watergate scandal, FOIA gives citizens a way to demand transparency from the Administration -- and take the government to court if necessary.

Many Americans -- especially those with family and friends abroad -- are wondering whether government agents have been listening to their phone conversations or reading their email. If you're worried this has happened to you, you can use this site to help you find out.

We can't guarantee that the Bush administration will disclose all this information in compliance with the law, but we can help you through the process. By filing a FOIA request, you will send a strong signal that American citizens believe in the rule of law and aren't afraid to stand up to the President when he violates the Constitution!"

It occurs to me that an avalanche of FOIA requests might be a good way to let the government know that Americans do not appreciate being spied on.

Thriving in Difficult Times

Go on, take someone you love out to eat. If you go to one of the linked restaurants on March 9th, "25-100% of your bill will support men, women and children facing life-challenging illnesses.

Participating restaurants will donate a portion of the day's proceeds to Food & Friends, the only organization in the Washington metropolitan region providing specialized meals and nutrition services to men, women and children facing HIV/AIDS, breast and lung cancers and the many other illnesses that grip our community."

Georgia Brown's had great Southern food, Firefly is one of my favorite lunch spots, Aquarelle is nice, and I've been wanting to try Corduroy and Blacksalt.

You have to eat anyway, you know.

Scout's in New Orleans and I Helped!

Scout Prime is blogging live from New Orleans. You go read what she says right now. Scout! Go have tea at the Ritz. And tell Janeen Garafalago to shut up and let you talk!

It's OK to Threaten Women in Abortion Clinics as Long as You're Not Trying to Steal Their Purses

In Scheidler v. National Organization for Women, Inc., 04-805 together with No. 04-1352, the Court held that the Hobbs Act only forbids acts or threats of physical violence in furtherance of a plan to engage in robbery or extortion. In Scheidler, the National Organization for Women brought claims under the Hobbs Act and RICO against organizations opposed to legal abortion, arguing that the organizations’ activities amounted to extortionate acts creating a pattern of racketeering activity. The Court, however, dismissed these arguments, stating that the text and legislative history of the Hobbs Act clearly requires actions in furtherance of a plan to engage in robbery or extortion. Justice Breyer delivered the opinion of the Court in which all other Members joined, except Justice Alito, who took no part in the consideration or decision of the cases.

This is how women's rights are destroyed. One chip at a time.

Action Item from Planned Parenthood -- Do This Now!

Urge Wal-Mart to stock EC!

Wal-Mart operates 3,837 pharmacies in the United States, and until recently, refused to stock Emergency Contraception for undisclosed "business reasons." This could all change with a recent court victory requiring Wal-Mart to stock EC in all 44 of its Massachusetts pharmacies. As a result of the lawsuit and ruling, Wal-Mart has publicly stated that it may consider stocking EC in ALL of its U.S. stores.

TAKE ACTION: Call Wal-Mart at 479-273-4000

Tell Wal-Mart to stock and dispense EC at all of its stores, nationwide!

If there is a Wal-Mart in your community, make sure you give the receptionist your name and hometown. You can also use these talking points:

Women should never have to worry about whether their valid prescriptions will be filled at any Wal-Mart store.
Prevention is the key to avoiding unintended pregnancy, and access to contraception, including emergency contraception, is sound public health policy.
The sooner emergency contraception is administered, the better it works, making timely access critically important.

Composters, Quakers, Vegans -- Why Do They Hate America???

An interesting short article in Sierra by Dashka Slater, who reports that in November, the FBI "agreed to pay $100,000 [your tax dollars at work!] and issue a letter of regret to 27-year-old Josh Connole, who was mistakenly arrested at gunpoint two years ago and held for four days on suspicion of setting fire to four Southern California Hummer dealerships, spray-painting slogans like 'SUV=Terrorism' . . . ."

Slater explains that, "The 'evidence' that led the FBI to finger the wrong man reads like the resume of many a lanky, goateed vegetarian. At the time of his arrest, [the] solar-panel installer was living at an ecological co-op called Regan V that engages in such subversive activities as composting, graywater reclaiming, and solar electricity generating. Tipped off by a neighbor about 'suspicious' activities, government gumshoes put the house, and its members' online activities, under surveillance and sniffed out other incriminating evidence: use of electric vehicles, opposition to whaling, and criticism of fossil-fuel reliance.

Alarmed to discover that he was being followed by shadowy figures in unmarked cars, Connole called 911 and was promptly arrested. Fifty [yes, that's correct, FIFTY, as in 50!] FBI agents then descended on Regan V to ransack it and make off with residents' computers.

Connole's arrest provoked the real arsonist, William Cottrell, to write a letter to the Los Angeles Times claiming responsibility for the vandalism."

Now, you know, I wish I had a dollar for every time I've read an apologist for Bush's domestic spying claim that, "If you are not doing anything wrong, you've got nothing to fear," from having the government snoop into your business. Well Josh Connole wasn't doing anything wrong. But he had his life disrupted, his computer (and those of his housemates -- also people who'd done nothing wrong) seized, and spent 4 days in jail. The article in Sierra doesn't say, but I'm guessing he shelled out money he didn't have for a lawyer and went through a bit of emotional turmoil as well.

Now, it appears that, in this case, the FBI got a warrant, etc. So if this kind of this can happen when the government must get a warrant, and when they throw you into jail rather than GITMO, you can just imagine what can happen without the protection of a warrant or the other civil rights that disappear when you get thrown into GITMO. So the domestic spying apologists need to start qualifying what they say; it should go something like, "If you are not doing anything wrong, and you don't live near a suspicious neighbor, and the FBI is staffed by geniuses who never make a mistake, and you can afford to have your computer seized and spend four days in jail, then you have nothing to fear." Or, they should just shut the fuck up and spend about six seconds realizing that the REASON we have restrictions on what the government can do is the fact that our founding fathers realized that even innocent people sometimes wind up accused of things they didn't do.

And, WTF? FIFTY FBI agents? We can't catch Osama bin Laden or the person who mailed anthrax to US Senators, but we've got FIFTY FBI agents to run around and try to arrest some slob who burned a Hummer dealership?????

Knock Down the Gates on the Gated Communities or We Are All So Screwed

Interesting article in this month’s Sierrra, the magazine of the Sierra Club. Carl Pope, the executive director or the Sierra Club, writes in “Fuel Folly” that, “We’re better off without cheap gas.” Pope references Jared Diamond’s recent book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, noting that societal collapses often “spring from outdated notions of past abundance.” He suggests that “Greenland once had enough grass to support cattle, so Viking settlers stubbornly stuck with pasturage even when the Little Ice Age drastically cooled the climate.” Pope then argues that, “Our own folly is cheap fuel,” suggesting that American society is based upon unending supplies of cheap fuel and that, unless we realize that we no longer live in a world of cheap fuel, we’re headed for collapse. Thus, “our governing folly paralyzes us, and we continue to focus on price instead of waste and inefficiency. Last year, Congress threw billions of dollars in new subsidies at the oil industry, but gas still rose to $3 a gallon. Airlines went bankrupt. Homeowners chose between paying for heat and buying food.” His argument reminds me of the old axiom that, whoever first discovered water, we know it wasn't the fish. It also got me thinking about the Japanese, who seem to have incorporated the idea of being resource-poor into their national psyche to the same extent that Americans have incorporated the notion of unending abundance into ours. Which may explain why conserving energy is now a mania in Japan, while Americans continue to act as if our only problem is building more roads for all of our Hummers.

Pope’s article has also got me thinking more seriously about Diamond’s work. You can like Diamond -- he won a Pulitzer -- or you can dislike him. But he’s asking interesting questions. The one I love is: “What was the Easter Islander who chopped down the island’s last tree saying as he chopped it down? Was he saying, ‘What about our jobs? Do we care more for trees than for our jobs?’ Or maybe he was saying, ‘What about my private property rights? Get the big government chiefs off my back.’ Or maybe he was saying, ‘You’re predicting environmental disaster, but your environmental models are untested, we need more research before we can take action.’ Or perhaps he was saying, ‘Don’t’ worry, technology [or more statues?] will solve all our problems.’”

What I find most important about Diamond’s work is that it shows that societies don’t always pull back from the brink. Another of America’s “governing follies” may be our optimism, our notion that somehow we’ll find a way and things will work out, that we can keep on using more than our share of the Earth's resources and it will go on being ok. Sometimes, people don’t change, even in the face of evidence that they need to change and sometimes, they pay the ultimate price for it. The difference between societal collapses of the past and the environmental crisis that faces our society today is that, this time, the collapse threatens to be planet-wide. We’re all living on Easter Island now.

Diamond has a checklist of five factors that play a role in societal collapse. The first four certainly apply to us, and, I’m afraid the fifth one may, as well. It’s perhaps ironic that Diamond chooses my ancestors, the Vikings, as an example of a culture where all five factors were evident.

Check out Diamond’s factors:

1. Environmental damage, inadvertent damage to the environment through means such as deforestation, soil erosion, salinisation, over-hunting, etc.
2. Climate change, such as cooling or increased aridity.
3. The society’s relations with hostile neighbors.
4. The society’s relations with friendly neighbors and whether or not those friendly neighbors run into problems of their own (e.g., we depend upon Middle Eastern countries for oil imports; those countries are politically unstable, dependent upon a dwindling resource, are situated in an environmentally less-than-friendly location, etc.)
5. The society’s cultural response. Why do the people in the society fail to perceive or to solve the problems that would eventually cause collapse? Why are some societies able to perceive and recognize their problems while others don’t?

Discussing the fifth factor, Diamond says: ”Finally, why would people perceive problems but still not solve their own problems? A theme that emerges from Norse Greenland as well as from other places, is insulation of the decision-making elite from the consequences of their actions. That is to say, in societies where the elites do not suffer from the consequences of their decisions, but can insulate themselves, the elite are more likely to pursue their short-term interests, even though that may be bad for the long-term interests of the society, including the children of the elite themselves.” Diamond contrasts Norse Greenland (where the chiefs and bishops were isolated from the consequences of their continued insistence upon raising cattle and focusing on the trade of walrus ivory in order to build big churches even though the climate of Greenland favored sheep over beef and the walrus ivory trade became less and less profitable due to both the Little Ice Age and the re-opening of the Mediterranean which allowed Europeans access to more-desirable elephant ivory), with Holland. Holland, Diamond says, has the highest environmental awareness of any “modern counties.” He attributes this to the fact that all Dutch, rich and poor alike, depend upon the dykes.

You know, we could be screwed.

The Answer, My Friend, Is Blowing In the Wind. The Answer Is Blowing In the Wind.

Interesting article in today’s Milwaukee Journal. Discussing Bush’s visit to Wisconsin last week, the MJ notes that: ”During his talk at Johnson Controls in Milwaukee, President Bush reiterated his State of the Union pronouncement that America is addicted to oil, and that alternatives need to be pursued to help make America less vulnerable to spikes in the prices of oil and natural gas.

That's the same rationale Gov. Jim Doyle and lawmakers in Madison are using as they promote the bill that would prompt the state to increase its reliance on wind turbines and other renewable sources.

If the state measure becomes law, energy experts expect an infusion of investment in new wind power projects in Wisconsin.”

We’ve heard for too long from those with a vested interest in the status quo that protecting our environment will somehow harm the American economy. That’s bullshit. Note the magic words above: An Infusion of Investment. Building new wind power plants will also create J-O-B-S, jobs that can’t be outsourced.

Wind power’s not perfect. It kills birds, for one thing. And, it can be erratic (some days are windier than others), and it can’t be stored, so you still need other sources of power to back it up. Some people object to the aesthetics, but no power plant -- coal, gas, nuclear, or wind -- ever won a lot of architectural awards. However, wind doesn’t pollute and it doesn’t create toxic waste materials that have to be stored for more generations than we can begin to imagine. No cartel can seize control of it and hold us up over it either.

And yet, Dick Cheney is still alive. Go figure.

Octavia Butler, probably THE best SciFi writer ever, has died. May the Goddess guard her. May she find her way to the Summerlands. May her friends and family know peace.

Garden

I spent part of today ordering seeds and plants for this summer. I get a boatload of garden catalogs, and I spend most of January just going through them, dreaming, changing my mind about what to grow, longing for one of each. Over time, I've learned that I'm better off buying enough of a few things rather than one of each. By early February, I have made some decisions, and I go through the catalogs again, folding over pages. Four or five companies are likely to sell something I want, and I fold over the pages in each catalog that has, for example, ruby thyme. Then, but late February (aka NOW), I get serious. I make a chart with the names of the plants i want down the side and the names of the catalogs across the top. Then, in the proper square, I fill in the price, whether its for seeds or live plants, etc. Finally, I order. For some reason, I like to do it by hand, on the order form. Maybe because I write checks, whereas on line or by phone I'd put it on a credit card and that would provide just a little bit less of a leash for me.

This year, I'm growing the standard herbs, although many of these will come back from last year: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, Thyme, Woad, Mint (chocolate, peppermint, and spearmint), Sweet Woodruff, Wormwood, Nasturtium and Marigold, Lime Balm, Dill, Basil, and Rue.

I'll grow coleus, which I love, but which are annuals and, thus, expensive, around the tree in my front yard and, along w/ black elepahant ears (this year, I WILL be successful!) in containers near my driveway. I'll grow white foxglove and black hollyhocks (planted from last year's seed; they're biennials) in the front cottage garden along with deep purple Grandpa Ott's morning glories, white moonflowers, and white datura.

For my backyard woodland garden, I've indulged in some jack-in-the pulpit bulbs, absolutely gorgeous and very witchy, but quite dear. I'm hoping the bulbs will make more bulbs and, if I buy a few every year, in a few years, I'll have a lovely bed of them. I bought several kinds of violas, Bowles Black and Psychydelic Spring, which I planted once before and they didn't do too well, so this is their last chance!

I wanted to buy about a hundred lilly of the valley bulbs for the woodland garden, too, but decided I'd have to wait another year to afford those.

Lots of what's already planted will come back. I have two yellow daffodills about to pop and hundreds more just behind. I have black iris ready to go and pink peonies. I'm hoping the black calla lillies that I planted last year and got a few blooms from survived our draught last summer. I have astilibes (white) and day lillies (orange -- they were planted by the people who lived here before me), and tons of hosta, and some helibore I keep threatening to pull out but haven't yet since they come so early. There are a few stray crocus, from the people before me, and some black dianthus I planted in a container that I hope will bloom this year.

I'd have liked some ferns in the side yard, but will have to wait a year or two and, in a perfect world, I'd have liked a few more lilac bushes. But I have two and they're covered with hard little buds, and I can buy more blooms at the farmers' market, so I'll wait until after I tear the whole yard up in a few years and hire a landscaper.

What are you growing? What are you longing to grow? What have you given up on growing? I've been in love with gardening since I read The Secret Garden as a child. How did you fall in love with putting seeds in the earth?

What's Worse Than Eating Your Seed Grain?

This terrifies me. A big part of my retirement plan is to have my home completely paid off by the time I retire.

Also scary is the fact that Americans aren't saving enough for retirement. Social Security may be almost all that many people have. Why DO we keep buying crap we don't need?

Sacred Spaces in the Modern World -- Second in a Continuing Series

I’ve blogged before about the need for Sacred Space and, in particular, the need to find Sacred Spaces in urban areas, which is where most modern Pagans live. My friend Renee, aka the Greatest Cook in the Entire Universe, and my incredibly creative friend Kathy have introduced me to a form of Sacred Space that is springing up throughout urban areas -- the labyrinth.

Labyrinths have become popular again, after falling into obscurity for hundreds of years. Interestingly, they appeal to both Xians and Pagans, although many, but not all, of the labyrinths I’ve seen are in Xian churches (well, to be fair, Xians tend to have churches, while Pagans -- not so much). Renee tends a labyrinth at the local UU church. Our circle has walked an outdoor labyrinth at a Protestant church in Bethesda. The National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. has a monthly labyrinth walk that I keep meaning to get to. Kathy showed me a charming outdoor labyrinth hidden in a garden behind the local HIV/AIDS clinic; it’s there for patients and their families to walk.

What is it about labyrinths that creates Sacred Space? They provide a place for meditative walking. They require enough attention (at least for my deficient right brain!) that the monkey mind shuts down. They remind the participant that the way in and the way out are often the same and that twists and turns are part of the journey. But, like all Sacred Spaces, there’s something undefinable that makes labyrinths sacred space.

Labyrinths are great for urban areas as they can fit into a small area -- either inside or outside (or even online!). The ones at the National Cathedral and the local UU church are painted on canvas and can be rolled up and put away.

Have you ever walked a labyrinth? Would you?

Even If We're Just Dancing in the Dark

Lately, I've been incredibly impressed by the blogging NTodd's been doing. It's creative. It's emotional. It's real. It's raw. And, it's revelatory. That's why it's creative, emotional, real, and raw. His recent podcasts will be examples, I think, when they get around to studying podcasting as an artform, of creative and non-derivative (of, for example, radio) podcasts.

I'm amazed, because NTodd and I have fairly similar Myers-Briggs profiles. And they both start with "I" for introvert. One of the things I enjoy about communicating over the internet is the ability to share only as much as I want. To dart behind the curtain any time I choose. To edit myself before presenting myself to the world.

So, when people ask me, as they have recently in e-mails, what my daily spiritual practice looks like, for example, I tend to want to retreat, move to generalities, obfuscate. I'm a nobody, in the Emily Dickinson sense. Why would anyone care what I do? Mostly what I do is do it wrong. And, yet, lately, part of what I'm working on is what I refer to as "inhabiting my life." By that, I think I mean pretty much the same thing that Ram Dass meant when he urged people to "Be Here Now." (Goddess, I am old.) By that, I mean, living in the real moment and not in either the future where I really WILL have gotten things together, (I once heard Christine Northrop talk about how in the he 1980s we all though that, if we could just get the right daytimer or Filofax, we'd really get it all together and it elicited one of those "Oh YES!" responses from me.) or in the past when I completely fucked it up. So, living in the present, here's my attempt to describe my spiritual practice.

Katrina Messenger once looked me dead in the eye and said that if you are not writing down your dreams, you are inhibiting your spiritual growth. So, even though, when I finally admit that I'm awake, I'm usually an hour or so behind where I'd like to be, I take a few minutes to jot down a few evocative phrases so that I'll be able to recall my dreams. Then, I'm off. I generally look up and gasp for air at about noon. Whatever I'm eating, and it can be lobster at the Palm with an interviewee or it can be a scoop of tuna salad and an banana at my desk, I try to stop and thank the dead fish and the dead fruit and vegetables, and the dead tea leaves for giving me life. And, then, I'm off. Somewhere in there, I try to walk on the treadmill, or do ecstatic dance, or, if I'm very lucky, swim. That's part of my spiritual practice. I don't enjoy it, generally, but I do it. My body IS the tool I use to do magic. I need to take care of my tools. I often work 10, 12, 14 hour days. By the time I drag myself home and feed the cat, I'm tired. And hungry. And wishing I'd gotten more done.

And there are times when my spiritual practice, and I am dead serious about this, is to go to sleep. We are, as T. Thorn Coyle has noted, embodied consciousness. We either take care of our bodies, or we don't. But to have a spiritual practice, I have to have a body. And, as I've learned the hard way from night school and the first years of practicing law, I need sleep.

But, if I can stay awake, I sit down, breathe slowly, and ground. Starhawk describes grounding in The Spiral Dance, and, for me, it is the basis of a spiritual practice. When I ground, it's specific. I see specific roots spreading from my orange and yellow chakras into the specific hummusy ground of my yard. I see my roots pulling up specific energy from my Mother, the Earth, and spreading throughout my specific body. I see any cancer cells being recognized by my immune system and destroyed, I see my right brain, which I often underuse, being filled with light. I see the light from the moon flowing through my violet chakara and blending with the energy from the Earth. This can take me a long time and a great deal of concentration.

At this point, I often call the quarters: "Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Come be with me, I'm your daughter." I call Center and I call the Goddess(es), generally Hecate and, recently, Cerridwen. I do an exercise from T. Thorn Coyle's book, Evolutionary Witchcraft, that ends in what she refers to as "feeding the sacred dove," and then, I do some magic.

Lately, I do some magic designed to protect my son, daughter-in-law, and grandchild during the birth. I've adapted a prayer of St. Patrick (that mothefucker), one that Madeline L'Engle, one of my favorite authors, used. It starts, "In Columbia, at this sacred hour . . . " All the rest, the incense, the altar, the athame, the herbs and stones, and sacred flames are just ways to involve my entire being, subconscious, consciousness, and Higher Self in the process, to seduce my entire being into whatever my left brain has decided is needed.

Then, I thank the Goddess(es) and the quarters and go take a bath, blog, read a book, throw in laundry, mow the lawn, sleep.

It's not much. But tonight, and for the next 29 nights, I'm doing it in complete darkness. We'll see if it makes a difference. Tonight, I went to the dark after about a half an hour of ecstatic dance. I found it lovely, peaceful, deep. I realized that, although I've found a place that's very dark, it's still noisy. i can hear my sump pump. I can hear my furncace. I can hear my monkey mind, just below the surface.

Dancing in the dark. Wherever you go, there you are. Are you ever alone in the dark? On purpose?

The Ability to Change Consciousness at Will??

T. Thorn Coyle has a brilliant post today about the nature of magic and what magic is, and isn't, good for. She opens with an amazing quote I've never seen before:

"Many Buddhist teachers have described compassion as the ability to react freely and accurately in any situation. Being nice or feeling sorry for someone may be called for, but so may being fierce and unyielding. When sweetness is applied indiscriminately, it is seen as 'idiot compassion.'" - Issan Dorsey

She goes on to discuss her reaction to a question she received recently when speaking at a conference: "Someone asked a question along the lines of, "how about social justice? How can our magic affect that?" I believe the first words out of my mouth were: "Go work in a soup kitchen." I went on to talk about how magic changes us from the inside out and we need to patch the ozone layer in ourselves before working magic to patch the ozone layer in the sky. And that we need to do other work for that one in the sky. I don't recall exactly what I said - I was running on too little sleep. Later, a woman chased me down in the hallway to ask about my response. We talked a bit about what magic can do, and I said it could change our consciousness, for one, and then she said "But, can magic clean the air?" I looked at her and said "No. We need to get our shit together."

I was fierce. And it feels better to be affirming, despite the fact that those around me say that being fierce is good.

In retrospect, I wish the first words out of my mouth in both cases had been "What do you mean by magic?" Because the picture I had, from the way both questions were couched, was a group of people holding hands and visualizing global human rights or clean air. And that can be a powerful step in creating an image to work toward, but it also frustrates me because too often that is the only step people take. And it doesn't change carbon dioxide into oxygen, like planting trees and reducing toxic emissions. And when it is the only step taken it becomes not magic, but a salve to make us feel better, and feel like we've done our part. Sometimes we step too quickly to magic to try to affect things outside ourselves when we haven't done enough basic work to affect our insides, nor enough work just doing basic, physical activity. It can, in some cases, become a route of avoidance, like doing ritual by yourself to heal a friendship in lieu of hashing things out with your friend. When I was a baby Witch of 17, I got some great magical advice: "The best spell to do when you need a job is to fill out an application and drop it off.""

I agree completely. But then Ms. Coyle says something I'm not sure that I do agree with: "And unless our insides truly change, change will never come about outside. We'll just keep slapping bandages on gaping wounds." I wonder if that's correct. At first, it sounds completely logical. But change in the outside world can eventually change what's going on inside us, as well. For example, when women first pushed our way into the workforce, scared, unsure of ourselves, feeling a bit guilty for "taking" a job "away" from "a man," men didn't like it. But today, inner attitudes have changed in many ways. Not only do women feel much more entitled to be in the world of work, men today are, more than their fathers and grandfathers, accepting of that. They've changed inside. And other things -- how work gets done, how children get cared for, how involved men are as parents -- have changed too. I don't mean we live in Nirvana, yet, by any stretch. But people's attitudes have changed. Young people, and I include Ms. Coyle in that group, grew up with completely different ideas about race than did my generation. That's largely due to an external change -- they went to school together.

At any rate, something else to think about. Ms. Coyle's brilliant and worth being added to your daily list of places to check in.

Where Are All the American Chestnut Trees?

Once upon a time, there were four billion American chestnut trees. Not so long ago, the American chestnut was one of the most important trees of forests from Maine south to Florida, from the Piedmont west to the Ohio valley. In the heart of its range only a few generations ago, a count of trees would have turned up one chestnut for every four oaks, birches, maples and other hardwoods. Many of the dry ridgetops of the central Appalachians were so thoroughly crowded with chestnut that, in early summer, when their canopies were filled with creamy-white flowers, the mountains appeared snow-capped.


And the trees could be giants. In virgin forests throughout their range, mature chestnuts averaged up to five feet in diameter and up to one hundred feet tall. Many specimens of eight to ten feet in diameter were recorded, and there were rumors of trees bigger still.

Native wildlife from birds to bears, squirrels to deer, depended on the tree's abundant crops of nutritious nuts. And chestnut was a central part of eastern rural economies. As winter came on, attics were often stacked to the rafters with flour bags full of the glossy, dark brown nuts. Springhouses and smokehouses were hung with hams and other products from livestock that had fattened on the harvest gleanings. And what wasn't consumed was sold.

Then came the blight. First discovered in 1904 in New York City, the blight - an Asian fungus to which our native chestnuts had very little resistance - spread quickly. In its wake it left only dead and dying stems. By 1950, except for the shrubby root sprouts the species continually produces (and which also quickly become infected), the keystone species on some nine million acres of eastern forests had disappeared.

The American Chestnut Foundation is devoted to bringing chestnut trees back to America. Goddess knows, we need more trees. Trees make the air we breathe. It's that simple.

I love the work the ACF is doing. In one way, it's this hopeless, romantic cause. And, in another way, it's one of the best uses of science there is.

Can you help them out? They need money, but they also need people to grow chestnut seedlings and report their results. They also catalog trees that have survived the blight. If you think you've found one; let them know!

Darkness

One of the principles that attracted me to Wicca was its equal emphasis on darkness and light. We're coming to the end of the "dark half" of the year, but I'm still thinking about darkness. I'm thinking about how darkness seems to harbor and nourish our fears and about how exploring the dark can help us to thrive.

As someone who's had her first bout of breast cancer, I'm always interested in research related to preventing breast cancer. Some very interesting research indicates that women who aren't able to sleep in darkness are more likely to contract breast cancer than are women who sleep in the dark.

Lately, I've been thinking about how almost no one in our society is ever, literally, in the dark. No, I don't mean that the Bush administration doesn't "treat us like mushrooms, feeding us shit and keeping us in the dark." I mean, how often are you literally in a place with no light? Even at night, when you turn off your light to go to sleep, there's a lot of light. From the street. From your clock-radio. From your computer. From the tv. Even when turned "off" these devices glow; telling us the time, the amount of battery juice left, the fact that a movie is being tivoed.

In my old apartment, I couldn't even see the stars, I was so close to the city. Here, in my little cottage, I can see the stars, but it's still not that dark. My sweet neighbor across the street has these huge bright outdoor lamps that shine even through the pulled blinds in my bedroom. The electric heater I put in my bedroom to avoid paying huge natural gas bills this winter glows to tell me the room temp and that it's on. Even when I turn my clock-radio to the wall, there's a glow.

So, tonight, I went looking for the darkest place in my house. My half-bath in the finished basement, which has only a tiny window to my backyard is the darkest place I could find. I can't see my hand in front of my face there. It's tiny, but it's where I'm going to do my daily practice for the next thrity days. Just to see what i can learn from the dark.

Where is your dark place? Have you ever seen the stars way out in the country away from the lights of any city? Do you ever seek out the dark? When? What for? Are you afraid of the dark? How does the darkness help us thrive?

My Reality TV Show

One of the many ways in which I'm weird is that I almost never watch tv. I mean this literally. Months can go by and I don't turn the tv set on. Especially when there's no new Sopranos. I watch a clip or two on Crooks & Liars, but, generally, I just don't have time.

And I have to admit that I think I'd genuinely prefer having a root canal to watching what Americans are pleased to call "reality tv" shows. I've read enough to understand the idea behind Survivor. I once made myself watch a reality tv show that was on SciFi, called, I think, Weird, Weird House, because one of the participants was a Wiccan who's managed to turn herself into a minor celeb and I wanted to see if I thought she was helping or hurting -- was she showing that lots of normal folks practice Wicca or was she making it seem weirder than it really is? In the end, the show had so little to do with Wicca, that I really couldn't decide.

But I've come to realize that this form of narrative -- the "reality" tv storyline -- is a narrative that lots of Americans do understand and are willing to follow. I'm the weird one out on this. (But, honest, I'd rather have a root canal. Two root canals.) And I've been wondering if there are worthwhile ways to use this narrative format.

A few weeks ago, there was a bit of a dust-up when some tv stations refused to show a reality tv show that asked neighbors to consider several possible new neighbors and the gay (male) couple won (i.e., was selected to move into the neighborhood). The xian right was up in arms over the notion that people might actually accept gay neighbors. (Duh! Are they that stupid? EVERYONE knows a gay couple will improve property values. It's happened all over Capitol Hill!)

So, I got to thinking, there should be a reality tv show that follows some women through their abortions. And, it should be graphic. If we can show plastic surgery on tv, we can show abortion. People should get used to seeing it. They should see what a simple procedure it is and how quickly women recover from it. I guess at the end, some judges could vote on who moved on with her life the best or whatever, just as there's some reality tv show that's always on in my gym where judges vote on the person who lost the most weight that week or whatever. People should see that women have abortions for lots of reasons, that the women who have abortions are pretty normal folks, that the doctors who do abortions are kind, caring healers.

I don't like this narrative form. But maybe there's a way to use it.