Wildflower Stew

We have to fight, finally, without any guarantee that we are going to win. We have waited late to get started and our adversaries are strong and we do not know how this is going to come out. If you were a betting person you might bet we were going to lose because so far that is what’s happened, but that’s not a bet you are allowed to make. The only thing that a morally awake person can do when the worst thing that ever happened is happening is try to change those odds. - Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, an international climate campaign.

I’m reading this the same day that I’m reading that Entergy, the regulated utility that operates in Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas, reported a $2.77 billion profit for the last quarter - that’s for 3 months - almost a billion a month profit! The hotter it gets, the more we crank up the air conditioners, the more money they make.

It was 20 degrees above seasonal average yesterday in central Texas - 95 degrees in Austin - in April in the middle of an extreme drought. The state is being consumed by wildfires. Entergy is making out like a bandit.

There was a brush fire on the outskirts of Austin. It got out of control in the extremely dry, windy conditions and burned a hundred acres, including several upscale homes. People were outraged. How could that happen here, in the city? They say it was started by some guy camped out in a brushy area that hadn’t been paved over and developed yet, a homeless person cooking breakfast over a campfire.

If you love this earth, if you love your children, all children, the future generations, please make this Earth Day a pledge to fight for your planet, for the redemption of the human race on this planet.

May we learn to respect all beings and respect the earth, the land and trees, the oceans and rivers, the air and clouds and rain, the frozen north and the tropical palm trees and all things that live and move and have being, all interconnected in the web of life, our life, our temple of being.

Thousands of people gather in a public square, chanting and holding signs, calling for justice. All the riches of their country are going into the pockets of a few elites. Most of the people have no share and no say in how their country is run and who gets what. Those who disagree with this arrangement are jailed, tortured or disappeared.

There was no question of fighting that system and winning so the people were controlled by fear. Until they found enough strength in numbers, in coming together for their common cause, and broke through the fear together. Look at them. They are disciplined, they are organized, they are committed to nonviolence. They are open and inclusive. Everyone gets a seat at the table. They are the Facebook, Twitter, cell phone, internet generation. They are beautiful to watch, taking back their countries from the old, oppressive regimes.

Building a new world won’t be easy. I hope their steps are true and as sound as the justice and equality they are calling for. Democracy means the people rule and these are the people.

A crash pad in Cairo, university students, sons and daughters of the elite, fiercely committed, laptops open everywhere - this is the heart of the Egyptian revolution. It reminds me of the communal households and underground publishing scenes of the 60s and 70s.

Listen to the last speaker on this video: “We broke through that wall of fear. Nobody cares about himself any more. We don’t think individually. We just think of the whole country.”

It’s a summer afternoon in the early sixties. My sister and I, in our late teens, are cruising down a wide boulevard in a North Dallas neighborhood. We see a car coming toward us and another car coming up fast hits that car from behind, hard - whomp! - crunching it’s rear end, then backs up and squeals away with a crushed grill dangling in front. There are no other cars on the road at the moment. We stop and jump out. The impact has ruptured the gas tank (this was before they fixed that little design flaw - duh) and gas was spewing out on the road. The driver, a young woman, was slumped down behind the steering wheel and looked unconscious. As my sister and I reached the edge of the pavement, preparing to rush across the street and pull her out before the gas caught fire, there seemed to be an invisible force field stopping us. It was a physical force that I couldn’t move against and I looked over at my sister and she was looking at me - what the heck is this? Then we both snapped and it was gone and we pulled the woman from the car.

I have experienced all kinds of fear in my life. Some of it justified by the immediate situation (some fear is useful, like of a hot stove or an icy road) and some of it just the deep grinding rut of fear in the mind. It seems to me that that kind of fear shrinks our lives and keeps us from shining out with compassion and sharing and love.

It’s obvious that if we are going to save our planet, save ourselves, that we are going to have to work together. The capitalist model of competing for resources, winners and losers, doesn’t make sense any more when 95% of the beings on the planet are losers (98%? 99?). Fear holds us back. What we can’t see when we are afraid is the joy of collective action, the buoyant lift of solidarity in action that carries us over all the barricades of fear and hesitation.

I began writing when I was 11. I was published by the time I was 14. But I didn’t find my life’s work until my first experience with a radical newspaper with a purpose (saving an aquifer and stopping a nuclear power plant and publicizing and celebrating the writers and artists and musicians among us). The joy of the collective action kept us going 12-18 hour days, 7 days a week, because that’s what it took and I felt so lucky to be there.

And I still feel lucky about my work. In a way, it’s easier now to reach a lot of people. I just sit here at my keyboard and type and post! There is goes. No trees killed, no printers ink (or bills), no gasoline used to distribute (well, computers aren’t exactly purely green). But I am alone in this room. I don’t see the people I collaborate with and I never get to walk into a cafe and see people sitting around reading my newspaper, hot off the presses.

I love it that the EarthFirst! newspaper is still on newsprint. I’m thinking about printing up the book I’m writing right now on a copy machine, binding it by hand and distributing it by just passing copies around, hand to hand. Kind of like a bucket brigade . . . pass it on.

Just wanted to pass on this poem, posted on Alice Walker’s blog.

Word reaches us

for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords
©2011 by Alice Walker

Word reaches us

that you are sleeping, sleeping.

Dismayed

we have turned to the sea.

We encounter among others

walking there

a sense of what we have lost:

the broad expanse of humanity’s

sensitivity to the oneness of itself.

Gabrielle,

while you sleep, resting your nimble

brain, we think of walking with you

in the valley

of the shadow of death; holding

you up.

We hope you can feel our grief;

our sorrow vast

like the ocean that draws us.

We know in this moment you teach us many things:

how all across the world

there is no one who deserves this fate.

We know we must bleach and sterilize our

tongues,

brighten with understanding

all our dark thoughts.

Sister, whom I never met

except in this pain that has so

wounded you

thank you for reminding us

through your suffering

and your suspenseful sleep

that we must change.

This year has been rough. I read the bad news every day. I think it’s my duty to stay informed. Sometimes I get depressed, especially when I think about my grandchildren and the world they will live in. And then I know what I must do and I get back to work, putting in the good word for the planet, for living in harmony.

So I’d like to end the year with some thank yous for the good that was done; the hard work, the passion of people who really care, the faithfulness of those who are in it for the long haul, in the joy of solidarity, with the dignity of not bowing to oppression.

Thank you Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, and everyone who worked to convene the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. Fifteen thousand people from indigenous movements and grassroots organizations, and presidents, scientists, activists and observers from 128 different countries came together after the disaster of the UN sponsored conference in Copenhagen and came up with the people’s solution to the climate crisis based on the right of Mother Earth - which is now being enacted in countries and communities all over the world.

Thank you to Captain Paul Watson and the crew of the Sea Shepherd who saved the lives of 528 whales by interventions against the Japanese whaling fleet during Operation Waltzing Matilda, cut the nets and freed 800 bluefin tuna that were endangered and were illegally caught in the Mediterranean during Operation Blue Rage and flew into no-fly zones in the Gulf of Mexico to expose negligence and lies by BP after the oil spill.

Thank you to the social change activists who write, teach, organize and take to the streets when they have to. No one wants to be beat up, tear gassed and thrown in jail but some people believe in their cause too much to back down. Social movements are alive and well even if the corporate media tries to ignore them.

Thank you to eveyone who works to make more urban gardens and farmer’s markets happen.

Thank you, Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, who recently received the Lennon Ono Grant for Peace, a biannual award presented by Yoko Ono in honor of John Lennon on his birthday. Four people received the award in 2010, along with Pollan - Filmmaker Josh Fox, the documentary producer (he wrote and directed Gasland); the writer and activist Alice Walker; and Barbara Kowalcyk, the food safety activist from Food Inc.

And thank you, Alice Walker, who seems to always find the loving compassionate words needed just when it seems the darkest.

Thank you also, Joe Bageant, for your great humor (latest book: Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir) and your heart of gold.

Thanks to everyone who rushed to help when the oil spill devastated the Gulf of Mexico, the people and the critters who live along it’s shores and to those who hang in for the long haul. This story isn’t over yet.

And thanks to Lloyd Doggett, my congressman, who stands up for progressive causes and doesn’t waver even in the toxic, good-ol-boy atmosphere of texas politics. It’s so amazing to have a representative who really represents me.

There’s so much more that happened - near and far. Thank you every one who did their part, whatever it was, to help us all live in harmony with the natural world - and with each other. For who are we except children of this earth, our home?

My wish for the next year is for us to remember that we’re family and that this planet, this little blue pearl in the vastness of space, is our home.

I just looked at the weather forecast for Christmas Eve here in Austin. Thunderstorms? On Christmas Eve? Cold, rain (snow, maybe?) and thunderstorm? It’s getting pretty strange. It was 85 here yesterday - 20 degrees above normal for this time of year.

Well, it’s not like I’ve never seen wierd weather before. I remember standing in the parking lot of the Puget Consumer’s Coop in Seattle, Washington in 1978 with about 20 other people, all of us standing there with our mouths hanging open staring at the sky. There was a double rainbow, the sun was shining, and it was snowing AND there was a big thunderstorm going on, rolling clouds and flashes of lightning and booms of thunder.

That was 32 years ago and now here I am, back in Texas again and Mother Nature’s still messin’ with me and I’m still lovin’ it. Who knows what’s coming next?

The journey goes on . . . . drumming with the grandmothers, speaking up for the koalas, sharing the good news of family farms and magic pear trees, and folk songs and electric cars and plenty of birds - “us nature mystics got to stick together” (Edward Abbey) - Wildflower Stew - enjoy the view!

Joyful solstice to all . . . swan . . .

(photo taken out my bedroom window)

I live in an urban apartment and I have a little balcony outside my living room
windows where people walk by. There is room by the railing for plants. I have
some small pots and two big ones. In one is a beautiful little pear tree and in
the other a grapevine. This summer the grapevine fell in love with the pear tree
and no matter how hard I tried to coax it to go along the railing it was
determined to entwine itself around the delicate limbs of the pear tree,
sometimes, I suspect, even at night while I slept to avoid my prying fingers.

Finally I gave up and let them have their fling. By August the pear tree was
looking quite bedraggled, what you could see of it beneath all those grape
leaves. Then some weird creepy creature started attacking the grape leaves and
leaving them tattered and brown. I knew if I cut the grapevine it would come
back from the roots next year even stronger. Otherwise the infestation would
probably spread and take out my little balcony garden.

So I heartlessly whacked the grapevine off at the base and then my helper and I
carefully disentangled it from the pear tree. The pear tree really looked ragged
but I could tell it was glad to be free.

A couple of weeks later I was out on my balcony and I saw something that blew my
mind. The pear tree had a blossom on it. In fact it had several blossoms and a
few new leaves. This just does not happen this time of year, not in Texas -
never. I have lived here most of my life and been very aware of the habits of
fruit trees and, believe me, this is unheard of.

Well, I didn’t say anything, I just watched. It’s been two weeks now and every
day more blossoms come out. The tree looks like a combination of the end of a
hard summer and the beginning of spring.

I took away the suffocating grapevine and the tree gave me a second blooming. I
am so grateful. This is what it feels like to be blessed by a pear tree!

@C.C.Lockwood

I just want to pass this on from Alice Walker’s blog. This is the non-sensationalized news from Haiti:

Alice Walker’s Blog
Today, January 22, 2010, 5 hours ago

With love from Port au Prince,
Sasha