State of the Union 2016 (Scratching the Surface)

 We the people of the United States are on a course gradually unfolding that will bring upheaval and that will challenge our own and our children's survival. We are being guided by well-meaning men and women who are blind to the warnings of sustainability both Economic and Ecological.



  We have evolved a system over generations of time that's success comes at extracting, and developing our communities resources and the resources of our Ocean's and lands as if all was just an Economic Commodity. This enduring drive to create wealth, without guidelines or an overarching
basis in responsibility is gradually impoverishing us. We have developed a system that rewards the few and degrades the many.



  In the year 2016 the 'Economic Boom' of the last 6 years places us at the beginning of this year in a precarious state. Despite 6 years of 'boom' our elected Federal governance has still not found a way to balance a single budget. Despite the unease of the population the national Debt grows even as ' responsible ' leaders now talk (if they talk at all) about how they will make future generations sacrifice to pay for the irresponsibility manifest in both political parties that vie for leadership.



  If we wish to find ourselves living a life that clearly manifests opportunities, that does not degrade a community but enriches it, we have to set our aim for a different course than the one we are presently on. Genuine progress can take place, what is called progress now is merely the glamour of wealth, the shiny exterior that hides the inner lack of substance. The self-evident destruction of our environment and the fragile state of our Casino dependent Wall Street lifestyle bodes accurately of the impending future. But through hardship, loss and necessity our path of transformation will manifest more clearly. Survival through tough times will generate the structure and means to build our society on a solid and sustainable footing.



 The dependence of our Global and National economies on the buying and selling, trading of 'shares',
by all of us undermines our own wellbeing and that of our communities. The short term promise of easy money will not pay off in the long term. Have we come to the point where we can see the loss of freedom and the loss of personal well-being as we have become a country of Corporations instead of independent businesses? 'The margin must be increased, stocks must rise, shareholders demand it. ' How does your corporation do? You centralize and consolidate power and you build a ... ' buy low and sell high '.. all within the natural parameters of what you can get away with.




 There is not an instant cure, there is a thousand ways in which large scale enterprises work and many more that small scale localized businesses can do the job better. The Ecological Lessons of Life have
their social and economic side. We have to work with the way things are but we have to build a consensus and a vision to guide our transformation.



  Economic growth based on population growth is not sustainable. The population of the Earth is reaching levels that exact a major toll on on our Environment. The population has doubled in a baby boomers lifetime, to double again is a loss of freedom and quality of life for the next generations. We must now chart a course for a steady state population. Housing starts need to be removed as a benchmark of economic health, as Brave New World author, Aldous Huxley, warned this country and the world unrestrained population growth will lead to tyranny.






   Policing America has reached inhumane levels that shock all of us, Conservative or Liberal. The death of citizens by our Armed local Police forces, whether mentally ill, caught in minor crimes, or simply being held guilty by the color of their skins has got to come to an end. Every town, city, state, county, every police officer and police force needs to be held accountable. Mental Health testing needs to be a prerequisite for obtaining the honor of being a Peace Officer. The ability to disable
a human with non-lethal force is the bottom line. Any Police Officer who cannot place a bullet in someone's knee or leg is in need of a new job.


 
  Violence, the epidemic of mass killings, is a manifestation of the lack of value placed on life in an overpopulated society...  To be continued.

Wheels keep Rolling

 Just like that Bluebird. David Bowie.

 Back in San Anselmo. David Bowie. Grey January, rains expected. Rolled up to Eugene on the Amtrak met the grey and Ice. Adventure, wamth, engagement, conversations .   To a melt. With the animals of the New World a merry late Christmas...  visit to the Burns encampment wherein
I with my guitar and maybe some weed, sits down with Ammon Bundy and we ponder God and Power.. our Father's influence, how do you influence history Ammon? Listen to the people, keep listening. Lil' Denny laughed at me when I suggested we go to Burns..

 I got nothing against the Federal Government says Denny maybe ' except the excesses of Miltary might and waste' Me I'm concerned more but I offer the Tree Party to Democrats and Republicans and all from my imagination to the world.

 It was just a fantasy that visit to Burns some dream of peaceful ending. Pigs and Fishes.. you can't influence them says the IChing. Yet don't underestimate your power. You might be the grain of sand that...

 A Decentralized world where decisions happen with the people but the people are nothing without
the Natural World, the delight of witnessing Nature bring Order to Civilization. The delight in the free movement of waters, air, animals, birds and Humans, the generous gifts of life.

 I rolled back down on the Amtrak, what a delightful ride, something about the gentle rolling and movement, the sounds, the undulating ease of cars linked together... the voices of conversations struck up from a spark. How interesting a conversation is with a stranger when it just burns easily
just gains it's own strength, goes where it will go. I had set my stuff down, my backpack, my bottle of Sierra Nevada Ale, Glenn was right by the time the train got rolling it was pretty dark. I went back down to the café to see if it was there that I had left my NY Times... '[The lady there had it. I thought someone might be back for it' she said.

 Back at my seat in the observation car an attractive young woman was now sitting next to me. I started something off with some small talk.. we both worked retail. I related a touch of my frustration with both the Corporate World and the Unions that ostensibly work for the people. 'We should have a Union..' she says, Not speaking of she and me but of her work world..

  Shortly after she gets up and leaves without much of a goodbye.

  I could tell you about the voices behind me of the young man, with long hair and beard who gets talking with an older guy, gray haired balding.. 'Klamath Falls that's where I grew up. What are you going to do there?'
   Something about working in the growing business. Medical Herbs.
   The young guy from Florida, likes Klamath Falls, Oregon, likes walking in the Park likes thinking about owning a house with a good sized yard.
   They talk on and on.. I read from my newest Novel a birthday gift from my brother...
   Roger said he is going to read Moby Dick too. We both tried to read it when we were young. As I read I cannot believe that I even tried years ago and gave up, this story melts into my brain so easy,
The guys behind me talk on and on. I read.

 'I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage: this the invisible police officer of the fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way -- he can better answer than anyone else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time
ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:

            "Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.
                      ' WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL'
                      BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN."

  Though I cannot tell why it was that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies ........
I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about perforning the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own free will and discriminating judgement.,

    And they talked on and on and the old guy says to the young guy. 'I can't believe your name is
Shannon, that's my first son's name. Here take my phone number if there is anything you ever need
maybe I can help you in Klamath Falls.'
 
   And the adventure goes on and on.

 

Dateline Oregon… Eugene

Arrived Monday via Amtrak today is Friday tomorrow return to Bay Area, home.

I am going to talk about the big events in Oregon (besides my own journey) the last few days that greeted me on Monday. On the front page of NY Times no less.
What the?!

So read the article, got a sense of the drama. Duly noted that the Bundy clan were the same people who I had read about before. From down in Nevada, a militant ranching family, who grazed a lot of cattle on Public Lands, the government found that there was so much cattle
that some areas of land were being stripped of their native vegetation etc. Basically ruining the EcoSystem at least in some places, then I believe their was an issue of paying the Feds for the use of Public Lands. Anyways the notion of returning the land to the People is high on the Bundy’s sense of mission. The people who would be getting this land would be miners, ranchers and loggers… I don’t know about nature lovers who live far away. I don’t know if we have our claim particularly recognized nor whether the Bundy’s and others feel we have any right to a claim. Then there are the Native Americans who have said Hey! This was our land.

But to set the stage for all this to frame this properly, The Bundy people maybe as much outsiders as I am and the folks back in the SF Bay Area and throughout the rest of the US looking in.

In protest of the imprisonment of two Harney County ranchers locals marched and sympathizers rallied. If I was in the neighborhood I would have definitely joined in the peaceful protest. The front page NY Times article on Monday did speak of the fact that Dwight Hammond, Jr. 73 and his son Steven 46 had peacefully turned themselves in after serving sentences for arson on BLM lands. Sentences of 4 months and 1 year respectively though I may have that wrong as now I have no internet connection and Monday’s Times is missing to refer too. Still I’ll share some local Oregon reporting.

 Sheriff Ward: ‘It takes only one unstable person person to show up with a skewed belief window to create something that can’t be taken back’

 Ward said normalcy would return overnight if the two dozen or so militants gave up their occupation of the refuge, which is about 30 miles southeast of Burns. Police have not cordoned off the refuge or taken any other steps against the occupiers, such as cutting off electricity to the compound.

  ‘It’s very much in their court on being able to walk away from this.’ he said. He called again on the militants to return to their homes and not engage in a standoff with police or “something ridiculous”

 Sheriff Ward has scheduled community meeting for Wednesday Afternoon at the Harney County Fairgrounds. He wants to confront rumours, provide information and take questions. He said people are upset about the occupation and want it over.

 In this same Wednesday January 6th issue of the Oregonian in a different article..

 ‘Silently Bundy approached microphones at the snow covered roadway at the refuge.

  Bundy said the group will leave only if “the community” signals that the protestors no longer are welcome. Despite the sheriff’s statements and a general sense of unease among

townspeople and ranchers alike, militant leaders said so far that they haven’t received that signal.


Thursday January 7th… The Oregonian reporter Les Zaitz

Burns —- Cowboys, mothers, retirees and dozens more from Harney County offered support Wednesday for the anti-government message offered by militants occupying a federal compound outside of town.

           But they still asked the protestors to leave.
          
           One speaker after another among the hundreds gathered for a community meeting said it was time to talk the way to a solution. When a rancher volunteered to accompany the sheriff to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, others shouted their willingness to go as well.
           
      Merlin Rupp who has lived in the county 70 years, said he also went to the refuge to see what was happening ’They ain’t hurting a damn thing down there,’ he said though he added it was time for the militants to go home.

           As the meeting wrapped up nearly two hours later, someone asked the sheriff if the militants could go without being arrested. “They are welcome to leave, and I’ll escort them out of the county’ Ward said.

     ........
 
     That’s the sheriff of Harney County, what the FBI and the Attorney General have in mind is a different story. I hope that the Feds have listened in and maybe have the ability to recognize some legitimate voices of America are mixed with the Yahoos and the Yahoos might make some points that are worthy to consider too.

          As for Dwight Hammond 73 and his son Steven who peacefully surrendered to Federal Custody. Now in a Federal Prison in California. The injustice that they are facing should fire up every American. How can you be sentenced in a court of law to a set punishment, fulfill your time and after release be ordered back? Their time served didn’t satisfy the Federal Government. Apparently and I don’t have the article or the internet connection, yet to give all the details but from what I have read and was told was that the Judge who originally sentenced them ignored Federal Mandates because he felt they were egregiously out of line with the nature of the crime. The fires set, the ‘Arson’ were started on the Hammonds own property in one case to protect, as a backfire against a threatening wildfire their own store of Winter Wheat that feeds their cattle. Some of the fire escaped their property and burned a few acres of BLM land. Apparently there is a connection between September 11, 2001 and Bush’s war on terror and I would add the Obama war on terror to the Hammond’s plight. As Federal Mandates view more and more of any crime as ‘Terrorists’ the people are in for more trouble from a Government that just has gotten so top-heavy and grassroots lost that it can make trouble for itself and us as a natural course of blundering.

     Questions: Who was the original Judge who defied the Federal Mandate charges and sentenced the Hammond’s to a light not unreasonable sentence? If the Federal government
feels Justice was not served by the Judges decision why not punish the Judge and have they done so yet? I am not advocating he be punished. I’d rather he be promoted.

  What about the burgeoning American Prison population and listening to the soft words of Ms Attorney General Loretta Lynch on CNN just a few days talking about how the Federal Government needed to rethink Prison sentencing guidelines. Hello MS Lynch? Are you there?

Have you read a little of the story here in Oregon?

    I visited a friend in Portland yesterday who wouldn’t be described as Conservative. He tells me he is OK with all the Feds do, except for the out of control Military. I wish people would question a little more what free rein we give to our ‘progressive’ Democrat administrations to carry out their foolish plans as well as Foolish Republicans.. Equal skepticism for all.

As for the militias Maybe they have already packed up this morning and are moving out. That would be my hope along with just about everybody else’s hope.

 Cheers to the American People and the people of Harney County. Freedom isn’t free. You got to stand up when it’s threatened, But Freedom to take all that you want doesn’t work either. You can’t destroy our lands and us treehuggers wherever we are, we have a voice. We want a beautiful America where there are Nature Preserves all over.

  Democracy is not over in this country and a just government of the people by the people for the people is what we have to act for live for. As a visiting environmental lawyer from Kenya told me on the way up from California on Amtrak. ‘The government is the custodian of our Natural Resources.’ ‘The government holds natural resources in trust on behalf of the people.’ The Government is us, like Sheriff Ward in Harney County we have got to do it right on behalf of the people who we serve whether they be Ranchers, Wilderness People, City People and all the wildlife systems that make this a beautiful planet to still live and thrive on.

  Hope the peaceful solution comes along soon..