“I am going to tell you a number of things, but if you really want to be a good journalist you only have to remember two words: governments lie.”
— I.F. Stone
I am up late browsing the news, in my hotel room in Madison, WI (of note, the city where The Onion was founded). I just found this article on CNN, about missing equine virus samples from an Army depot. At first I laughed, because of the irony of 1. what assholes who run the lab would leave the viruses unsecured and 2. out of black humor that this is the world we live in — a bad science fiction movie. Then I remembered the recent article about 21 dead polo horses. I have a vivid imagination but in all my life it would not have occurred to me that they picked up some virus that got loose from an Army base, until right now. Nobody official has said this out loud, yet…
Under the influence of Chiron-Neptune conjoining, we are going to see through a lot of lies. The recent revelations about torture that Steve Bergstein has been covering for us would qualify. The problem with very large, widely believed lies is that nobody wants to take them on because it’s like taking your finger out of the dyke, expecting the whole dam to burst.
This is going to go on all spring and summer. There is healing in truth, but we are going to need to keep it in context, so we can figure out what it really means. I think that one thing we can take away from the torture issue is that governments lie. For eight years we listened to Bush and Cheney tell us that there was no torture going on, even as the photographs and accounts came bubbling out of Baghdad. The real question is why we believed those lies, and I think the answer is because we thought it made us feel better about ourselves.
Ha! Maybe next lifetime JLO!
I was able to google for Indiana just fine. There are a lot of problems with established farmers having rights over other young farmers who are trying to do other types of things. My mom’s neighbor recently lost a court case where a neighboring farmer’s weed controls killed his entire effort to start a vineyard. The new seedlings (at least 10 acres) all died. The court ruled in the other farmer’s favor because he had been there longer. Maybe some of that will change over the next 10 years or so? I hope so.
I live in an area (luckily) that has no farm run-off, amid a lot of other fine eccentrics like myself.
Those California strawberries are something else JLO – they are built to last, sort of like Ford trucks – ya know? Firm and dry, they store well for easy shipment and do not deteriorate too quickly. If you add sugar you get a hint of strawberry flavor. Indiana ‘juice’ berries last for about a day at most, once off the vine. They make the finest jams and jellies.
The google for Indiana native plants and ecosystems turned up, Not Available. The wikipedia on Indiana was quite informative. I’m pretty hip to my read environment, it totally sounds sustainable! Indiana sounds like good land, within a good chunk of it’s boundaries. Perhaps winter can get a bit unsustainable, or barely sustainable(?), but there exists a time of planting and reaping, as far as my READ interpretation.
Side throw… It’s what WE do within our environments… that means anything at all. Sometimes (Uhhh, all the time!) we have to learn to adapt to our environments. The Sacramento valley, foothills region of California is straight up righteous for agriculture, but still, you have to know how to navigate 110В° and sometimes down to the 10’s. It just takes a little relaxation, breath, and a bit of awareness and planning. Trade is always the tool of societies, but, where are we and what can we do?! That seems to be the massive vibe at this point in reality. If one is able to find that point of action (reconciliation, personal, social), they can choose to operate through those levels that they consciously find themselves in, therefore activating their own core consciousness, and accessing those levels through a clear choice of awareness over programming, which in essence is the CORE OF FREEDOM!
Allright! Enough of my B.S.!!!
(I still want to smoke a bowl with you…. but I smile in my danglingness 😉
Just swingin’ through the trees!! (Good times!)
Love and peace, Beautiful’s
Jere
oh yes – doing that in Indiana – google for Indiana native plants and ecosystems. Much research here as well.
New flu strain in today’s news….hmmm…how timely. My nephew tells me that once a question is raised, the answer is already a given.
Would you consider using plant life native to your locale to rebuild ecosystem?
Also – I don’t believe it is a matter of truthfulness of any one person. the government is too mighty and big. One leader can’t possibly know what all is going on for which he will ultimately be held responsible. I’d venture to guess that most presidents have the good of the nation in their hearts, as well as the good of the poor nations. Some presidents have shown more interest in the health of the environment than others. But when you are the boss of NSA, CIA, FBI and a multitude of other police agencies as well as the 50 states and the armed services, somewhere along the line you might lose control. I’ve seen some other messages here about smoke and mirrors in the workplace. Wonder how the president feels? He has put some powerful personalities in place who are more than likely building their own empires and promoting their own agendas. It is a ‘me first’ generation in the White House, after all. I’m just saying that I do not fault the President automatically when things go awry. The only reason you can’t believe him all the time is because he can’t possibly know the whole story.
I’ve even thought that the environmental issues are behind the release of the morning after pill. High school pregnancies will probably drop to zero.
I didn’t really think the planet was dying, but if you listen to the scare stories, that is what is implied. Doesn’t it seem like NASA is hell-bent on finding a planet that sustains life, to move some people and information – just in case? It seems like our attention is being drawn to environmental issues as a diversion tactic. Some of us have been doing the organic gardening things since Rodale started the magazine, and as time goes along more and more community activities are centered around gardening, recycling, etc. A lot of people are gardening because of the fear that they won’t be able to afford groceries.
I have read some of the information on the chem-trails that are constantly being sprayed in the skies. According to one website and video, the chemtrails supposedly to help delay the death of the planet by holding in the CFCs and carbon dioxide through use of a ‘spider-web’ technology that traps the stuff. The problem is that it will also end up killing a lot of people early because of the problems it causes with breathing. We are getting skin cancer at unheard of rates, and when I was a kid, you rarely heard of anyone with asthma. The sky is never brilliant blue – there is always a slight haze, and it isn’t from the smokestacks.
Please excuse my editing scrawls at the end of my entry. I’m probably moving too fast for conditions again.
Patty, there is no way to know if current government is truthful. I sometimes feel like Mr Obama and company (implying world annointed leaders) is our “hail mary pass.” But that is leaving too much to so called leadership. I believe in asking the questions and doing the research to take personal responsiblity in the choice to consume, whether it be information or material goods.
I can tell you this, not everyone is waiting around to find out. I have attended two events and heard the words, “we cannot wait for the government.” And here’s what you can do.
I am with you on the global warming bit. The poles are shifting and I do believe it is more cyclical than what we want to admit. But I like the way the green movement is shaping up to lead the way toward sustainable solutions.
Doug Tallamy was keynote speaker at a gardening or should I say yardening event I recently attended. I bought his book, Bringing Nature Home, but if you get a chance to experience his presentation on this topic, do yourself a favor and do it. Hell, raise some money and fly him in. He’s worth it. It is something “we” all can participate in, as much or as little as “we” can give. He signed the book, “Garden like your life depended on it.” And he said, we cannot wait for government.
On Earth Day, I attended the kickoff for the Environmental Management and Business Institute (EMBI) at the local “Eco U”. Flannel shirted I sat at a table with other flannel shirts in the midst of a few hundred tabled suits. What can I say, I prefer the trenches. But I do so bow to the frog on the street called sesame. The faces are young and excited. So ready for so long.
This organization will be bringing the interactively disciplined environmental university, founded in 1969 I believe, together with the business community for sustainable economy. I was ever so pleased to see Dr Dirt (soil specialist I met in the naturalist program) present as one of the founders of this organization. I stopped in to see him a year ago to get some info on local acquifer and was interested in the crumpled wall street journal article (was making the rounds I guess) on his desk about the green hue showing up in the marketplace.
University’s tend to teach from books, and history can be good. But I remember my father’s frustration with the college grads coming into the paper company he worked. They brought their books and suggested technology long gone that was less efficient. How to explain. The young minds were directed toward the past instead of the present. Imagine the communication problems there. What a waste of potential and experience. Waste that is no longer affordable. And we can’t wait for the government.
However, the state lady lieutenant governor did speak, she attended that university. She has great faith in the creative potential of people and when I heard a government official say say creative and creativity, well then, she’s talking my language. And she is driven by another factor I believe lies in human nature, connecitivity to nature, the planet we walk upon. And the numbers, well, the numbers are improving for the green sustainable companies. And it seems like investors like to be on the winning team, you know the one with the biggest numbers. It’s a green light. It’s a go.
It was said that the excitement here is that it is starting at the bottom. There’s no more waiting.
I don’t feel a dying planet, I feel a planet changing, but teaming with life. Literally.
There is much Twice I have heardIt’s about human beings. There’s alot of us (can I at least use us in this case).We must continue to scrutinize and take responsibility in
one mandand we don’t know if current governments are truthful? Who k
Looking at the fossil record, the planet does fine – it is we who have a problem right now.
And what makes us think the current government is truthful? The whole apology tour reeked of Machiavellian sub-plots to me. How is anything the previous administration did anymore atrocious than what the current administration has already begun to undertake? It is a matter of perspective, really. If you are a fetus, you are shit out of luck.
The virus link gave me a chill, because after reading a piece in the London Times, a UK paper, I had a hunch that a virus attack would be the way the government would deal with over-population. The article said that the leading environmental advisor to the Prime Minister said that the UK population must drop by half if it is to remain sustainable. That means 30 million people must go in England alone.
One child policies and euthanasia are not very popular, but a virus is something that can be blamed on someone else.
The planet might be dying, but I for one just find the connection with carbon to be laughable. It fails to explain why the poles on Mars are melting. I’d link it more to the movement of the galaxy, but that is just me. There is carbon in everything on the planet. Now don’t get me wrong, I see nothing wrong with a little family planning, and keeping the environment clean for the future. But there are people who think there is nothing wrong with killing off half of the planet to save themselves. Twisted.