Wildflower Stew

Another great song for peace:

Every morning I get up and drink my coffee by the window and watch the sun come up. Birds fly up from the trees across the way. They are mostly pigeons and grackles, city street scavengers, and I just see them in sort of an abstract way as shapes against the sky.

The only sound besides their scrawking is the occasional motor of a central air conditioning unit running downstairs behind the building. So it’s usually a squawk or a mechanical hum and that’s it for a morning concert and I kind of tune it out. But this morning as I sat there, sipping my coffee, my mind innocent from sleep, one bird flew over and I heard . . . the sound of a bird’s wings flapping - the sound of a bird’s wings flapping! It was so amazing. Flap, flap, flap, flap. No other sound. Just flap, flap, flap.

I have never from that window heard that sound - of the thousands of birds that I’ve watched fly over every morning as I have sat there for 2 1/2 years. Suddenly there was a pause in the squawk and the hum and there it was - the sound of one bird flapping . . .

What a visual - the first thing we saw was a half-sunken plane and the pitiful little stick figures of humans forlornly standing on the wings slowly sinking into the freezing river and then the ferries and tugs rushing to their side like a huddle of anxious mothers plucking them, every single one of them, from that icy death and bring them safely to shore. Not bad for an omen. Everyone was in danger, everyone was saved.

Except the geese. What were geese doing in New York in January? Now part of the post-incident discussion is about the problem of birds and planes sharing the air space. My friend, Joey Racano, an activist in California, has an interesting take on this in his blog at EarthSourceMedia, an imaginary conversation between the tower, a pilot and a flock of geese.

Another either/or question was asked this week in Chris Clarke’s blog Coyote Crossing - a fish or a tortoise. . . . “Where, exactly, is the line between a new Glen Canyon Dam on the wild river of your choice, on the one hand”, he said, and clearing 5.2 square miles of the Ivanpah Valley for the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System and relocating all the tortoises found on the site (which is a very complicated and probably fatal operation)?

Chris ends the article with: Which raises the question: why is a fish more valuable than a tortoise? Before we put our fingers on the map and say “there,” I’d like to hear an answer to that.

The only way to answer that question, in my opinion, is to find a way to look at the whole and sit down and make a plan that gives the best possible outcome for both the fish and the tortoise - and us and every other being involved.

The best example of this I have found is what has just happened in Ecuador. Ecuador has ratified a new constitution containing the “Rights of Nature” - the “right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its natural cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.” The government is now responsible for “precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of ecosystems or the permanent alteration of natural cycles.”

Can you imagine? That “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” extends to all living things, to the fish and the tortoise, the human and the goose? Think of all the activities of human development - mining, drilling, producing energy, mass transportation, corporate agribiz and on and on - airplanes! - that interfere with wild nature. What does this actually mean? The people of Ecuador are ready to take on that question.

I have been following the work of the Peter Berg and the Planet Drum Foundation since it was founded in 1973. Planet Drum developed the concept of a bioregion: “a distinct area with coherent and interconnected plant and animal communities, and natural systems, often defined by a watershed”.

Since 1998, after El Nino rains and a 7.2 earthquake destroyed a large part of the Ecuadorian coastal city of Bahia de Caraquez, Planet Drum has been there carrying out a major bioregional project to re-vegetate a city barrio as well as surrounding hillsides with native trees for erosion control against future mudslides and creating an urban “wild corridor.” They also host a Bioregional Education Program for school kids in the area. Now the people of Ecuador are the first in the world to give equal rights to the natural world, itself.

In Starhawk’s book, “The Fifth Sacred Thing,” a book about how things could be in the not-so-distant future, the animals, the birds, the fish all have their representatives at the deciding councils. Let us hear from both the fish and the tortoise, from the geese as well as the humans on the plane.

Many Gazans feel hopeless in the face of the Israeli bombardment [GALLO/GETTY]

There was an article today in the New York Times business section
about how the reporters for Al Jazeera English are the only ones with unlimited access to information from inside the Gaza Strip about the war. To see live TV coverage from Al Jazeera you can go to Lifestation

Here is a diary entry from Mohammed Ali who is an Oxfam worker in Gaza city. Oxfam is a group of non-governmental organizations founded in England after WWII that works to end poverty and injustice and is a world leader in delivering emergency relief.

Are We Not Human?
By Mohammed Ali

As the death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza continues to climb, Mohammed Ali, an advocacy and media researcher for Oxfam who lives in Gaza City, will be keeping a diary of his feelings and experiences.

The air, the sea and the earth in Gaza City are now occupied by the Israeli military. They occupy Gazans’ minds, nerves and ears too.

In a bid to stop my children twitching, jerking, trembling and waking at every sound of an attack during their few hours of sleep and their many waking hours, I put cotton wool in their ears - it has not worked.

I wonder what damage is being done to my children’s tiny hearts. Theirs are not as big as mine, they can cope less with the stress that is being put on them.

We ran out of fuel for our generator, which meant that we were confined to a small room filled with eleven people, with little light for three days.

We have not had water either; our well can only pump water if it has electricity which most of the Gaza Strip has been denied since this nightmare started.

Unlike many other families, we were fortunate yesterday to find 20 litres of benzene to power our generator. No fuel has come in since the onset of this attack on Gaza so we had to pay seven times its usual price.

We have one day’s worth of food left and the nappies I bought two weeks ago are nearly gone. They are not good quality as little has been able to enter this strip of land since the blockade was imposed on us 18 months ago. Bad quality nappies mean unpleasant leakages, and for the last few days the little ones have had to be bathed in freezing cold water.

My sister who was with us the last time I wrote decided to return home in spite of our protests. She feared that with food reserves running out we might have to eat one meal a day rather than the two we have been having of late. At home she has a little food left, enough to keep her and her family going for a while longer.

We are now 11, huddled together in my parents’ dining room. My brother and I and our families moved there, thinking that the first floor may be the safest option.

There is a saying in Arabic which says “death in a group is a mercy”. I guess if we die together maybe, just maybe, we will feel less of the pain than in doing so alone.

I have had 8 hours sleep since the beginning of this conflict; we can hear attacks almost every minute.

I think to myself, if one of us is injured or needs medical attention what will happen? Ambulances are finding it difficult to reach civilians, roads are blocked by rubble, Israeli forces in their path - you could bleed to death.

Even if they did get to us, maybe we would be bombed on our way to the hospital. If we did reach the hospital there might not be enough room to treat us - there is little medication or equipment or any electricity to fuel the life-saving equipment. We would not even be able to get out of Gaza for the life-saving treatment we needed.

Hospitals are now running on back-up generators making life even more difficult for the doctors who are trying to cope with the influx of the injured. If fuel runs out for the generators, those on life-saving equipment will perish.

I heard a woman calling into a radio station today - ambulance services could not reach her and I guess she thought the radio station might be able to do something. She was wailing down the phone “our home is on fire, my children are dying, help me”. I do not know what happened to her and her children - I do not want to imagine.

I spend much of my time thinking that this could be the last hour of my existence.

As I try to fall asleep, I hear on the radio the numbers of people who have died rising by the hour. I wonder if tomorrow morning, I will be part of that body count, part of the next breaking news.

I will be just another number to all those watching the death and destruction in Gaza or maybe the fact that I work for Oxfam will mean that I will be a name and not just a number. I might be talked about for a minute and moments later forgotten, like all those other people who have had their lives taken away from them.

I am not afraid of dying - I know that one day we all must die. But not like this, not sitting idly in my home with my children in my arms waiting for our lives to be taken away. I am disgusted by this injustice.

What is the international community waiting for - to see even more dismembered people and families erased before they act? Time is ticking by and the numbers of dead and injured are increasing. What are they waiting for?

What is happening is against humanity, are we not human?

Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin

I was going over the issues I’ve been following this last year, checking to see what progress, if any, we have made. The Sea Shepherd is out there again, keeping the illegal Japanese whaling boats away from the protected whales in the Australian Antarctic Territory. Animal Planet is onboard filming this year.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault has opened. Seeds from all over the world have been placed in three caverns carved into the permafrost on an island just 500 miles from the North Pole for safekeeping. Norway has provided the funding for the project and developed it in collaboration with the Global Crop Diversity Trust.

The activists with the Buffalo Field Campaign are still in the field - in 20 below zero temperatures - out everyday on skis keeping watch over the last remaining herd of wild bison in this country.

In March of this year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced approximately 3.9 million acres of federal old-growth forest will remain protected as murrelet habitat “This reversal, coupled with a recent court decision throwing out a timber industry attempt to take the murrelet off the endangered species list, should end the timber industry’s profit-driven and illegal attack on the coastal forests that murrelets need to survive,” said Kristen Boyles, an attorney with Earthjustice.

And the California Supreme Court threw out a plan that had given protection of endangered species to a logging company, Pacific Lumber Co. who finally sold out to Humboldt Redwood Co. (HRC). The management of HRC met with the dedicated activists who have put their lives on the line for years and assured them that old growth groves on HRC land will be permanently protected. This video from North Coast EarthFirst! shows what was involved in protecting these trees, this habitat and the marbled murrelet.

The Wild Sky Wilderness bill protecting a 106,000-acre Wilderness in the heart of the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state passed the U.S. Senate with both Democratic and Republican Senators giving unanimous approval much to my heart’s delight and I’m sure the delight of the black bears, bald eagles, mountain goats, wolverines, cougars and spotted owls who live there.

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Ike continues to remain unresolved on the Texas Gulf Coast. They are still trying to figure out how to get rid of the debris and many people are still waiting for FEMA trailers. Those living in tents faced snowfall last week! The number of residents has declined from 57,000 to about 40,000 and there has been a 30 percent reduction in school enrollment. Another community devastated as we move on to the next crisis.

I try to give this some perspective by drawing the lines between what my grandmother told me about the hurricane of 1900 in Galveston and what is happening now, between what my great grandmother said the first time she saw a car and how the wisdom of her comments is coming back around.

I think about the craziness out there - Israel and the Palestinians, Pakistan and India, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan - and I know that there are ordinary people there, like many of us here, who just want the violence to stop.

And I consider this - the Internet was originally developed for use by the US military and now it is the greatest tool we have to transform the energy of conflict and domination into one of peace and justice.

I want to thank Susie over at Suburban Guerrilla for turning me on to this writer, Brian Kaller, who lives in rural Ireland . . . here’s an excerpt:

We live a strange life, those of us who follow closely the breaking of the world. We look at our kitchens and offices and bus stops and see products of petroleum-powered machines on the other side of the world, transported here in petroleum engines. We flick past the mainstream media every morning and go straight to BBC Science, the Oil Drum and Energy Bulletin, scroll through the allied blogs and listen to podcasts on the bus – all while working regular jobs, paying mortgages and caring for children and elderly, each week filled with the burning usual.

In my case, I am also a father, and I want my daughter to have a decent life in a strange time. I am in my 30s now, but I knew five of my great-grandparents, all born in the 19th century, and my daughter, if she is lucky, may live to see the 22nd. Her life might span humanity’s most important decades, and before she is even an adult, the world could grow much more difficult – energy shortages, food shortages, economic collapses and a Malthusian crush. I want her to be able to realize what is happening, and not to be bewildered by a domino line of solitary unthinkables –you can’t drink the water here, the power went out, it’s not safe there anymore.

You can read the rest of this post and more of his observations at Restoring Mayberry Kaller, who is a former newspaper reporter and managing editor, now lives in County Kildare, Ireland, helping prepare local villages for peak oil and other challenges.

Myself, I have eleven grandchildren and one great grandson and I think about these things in long time lines, too. My great grandmother told me about seeing a car for the first time. When I asked her what she thought, she said, “I thought it was a bad idea. It would scare the horses.”

Sunday, December 7th, 2008
The New Press will be hosting a memorial celebration of the life and work of Studs Terkel, who died on October 31st at the age of 96, on Sunday, December 7th at 4:00 pm in The Great Hall of Cooper Union.

Participants will include:

Jimmy Breslin (Pulitzer Prize-winning Newsday columnist and author)
Steve Earle and Allison Moorer (musicians);
Laura Flanders (host of GritTV and RadioNation and New York Times bestselling author)
Sydney Lewis (long-time friend and collaborator);
Walter Mosley (best-selling author)
Victor Navasky (publisher emeritus of The Nation and Director of the George Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism at Columbia Journalism);
Andre Schiffrin (founding director of The New Press and Studs’ editor and publisher);
Dan Terkell (son of the late Ida and Studs Terkel);
Katrina vanden Heuvel (editor and publisher of The Nation);
Gary Younge (columnist and feature writer for The Guardian);
Howard Zinn (historian, activist, and prize-winning author of A People’s History of the United States)

Co-sponsored by The Nation and The Indypendent.

The event will be open to the public and free of charge.

Location: The Great Hall of Cooper Union, 7 East 7th Street at Third Avenue, New York City (map)
Time: 4:00 pm-6:00 pm