Wandering Stars

Tonight before bedtime, my 10 and 6 year old daughters were sharing secret giggles and conversation in my eldest's bedroom. There was a secret brewing, something clandestine and powerful.

In her towel, naked from washing up, L., the eldest, says: "Mom, tonight P. told me something strange."

Busy, and wishing they would just get ready for bed after a long time of playing and procrastinating, I say "Go get dressed for bed and then tell me," without even looking at her. No mom points for me.

Dutifully she runs upstairs, youngest running behind. They talk some more and I wait.

Full of the power of announcement, they descend the stairs while L. finds a place to sit by me. L. says, "Mom, tonight P. told me something strange. She said.... She said I was starting to get breasts." They both look at me expectantly, I smile and say nothing for a second.

In that second, universes explode. Stars collide, shattering and bending matter beyond mere human comprehension. Breath is held. Eyes blink, stop, stare ahead. Look. Watch. Hope.

P. denies seeing anything. L. denies developing. Right there I drop the ball and ignore the elephant in the room: Do you want to develop breasts? I wonder what it will be like? Are you nervous?

This leads to a conversation about girls we know who have already started these changes, and about how every girl starts at a different time, how we are individuals and that's interesting. We all agree, without any mention at all of the giant elephant.

It is bed time, after all.

Right before bed, I get a giant hug from L., and I am feeling her girl body full of love, enjoying this moment that starts the transition, the wonder of a future imagined and full. I love her up, smell her, be her mom. It is my moment, and I am full of my own feelings. I start to forgive myself.

Then youngest runs over and hugs L. from behind, making her squish into me hard so I have to rebalance. It's noisy and rough and full of laughter. P. backs off momentarily and I say "P, please stop hugging L. right now." She laughs even harder, and runs into L. again, hugging us both even harder. She is balanced, holding on tight, enjoying the ruckus. L. is yelling in my ear, laughing, and I am Upset. Mad at this moment of loss, mad that I ignored the elephant in the room, mad at myself for being both of my girls and wanting only to be Mom. There is loss and it is small and hard and painful. "P!" I yell. "Stop hugging L. while she is hugging me!"

Negative Mom points.

She withdraws, quiet, head hanging. I kiss L., and get kisses while P stands alone. L. happily runs off to bed. P. starts crying. "It's the yelling," she quietly sobs. "I hate the yelling."

We are both now ignoring the elephant in the room. In one swoop, I hug her and pick her up, tell her I am sorry, and admit to acting rashly and apologize. I explain that it is hard for me to balance, that I was only hugging L., that I asked her once to stop and even after she heard me she did it again, and that I was angry. We go to her room for bedtime, and she is sullen, there is no way to undo the yelling. She looks at me, we exchange nighttime chat, and then we're quiet. She turns away from me. I lay down for a couple of minutes and see if I can step into that damage or if it is too late this time. Sleep offers convenient silence.

I was angry.

Elephants, rampaging.

My daughters make room for permanent teeth and share their bodies' secrets.

I am lucky to see the stars as they explode around me, gaining mass through distance and time.

Winter, Seeds and Homes

Today marks three weeks since my mother died. The evening of the funeral was tense and sad, and ended with a dramatic family blowout. We all survived that to endure a night full of major thunderstorms with golf ball-sized hail and tornadoes in the next county as a massive cold front moved in. 40 degrees colder, the next morning we left for home, driving into snow.

Yesterday was a big, strange, sad day for me. I found my own deep sadness creeping up on me every time I tried to think or work. My inability to quietly and easily meet other people's real needs was maddening and confusing. I was not able to partition them off until later; they were there, now, and yet I still had to parent and make dinner, still had to somehow talk politely to my children while they yelled at each other all. day. long.

In bed, late, alone, I talked to my mom. I told her all my little sadnesses. I apologized for things I wasn't really responsible for. I cried when my hands remembered carefully lifting her body as I picked her up to help her onto the toilet. I cried when I still smelled her skin.

I wear her winter coat.

This morning I cried, grieving the kind of family affection I didn't know was possible until I created it with Chris. I didn't know, and I wished I could have known. An idealized fantasy of involved grandparents, still physically able to baby sit and take children on trips to the theater, or help build a shed. I cried for all the things my children missed, and that I won't be able to give them.

So I gave in, and went outside to share my grief with the trees and snow. I found seeds and homes:  the things we all become and make, together.

New Year's Wishes

With the new year, a new post. I've been holding off on writing a new year's message for many reasons, not the least of which is because this blog's been on the back burner for so long. Besides the lethargy of posting history, though, I haven't really been feeling the love and hope and optimism I see people around me struggling to maintain and enjoy. But the ice is melting, even as the snow blows and falls. I am remembering how to write and speak from my heart; I am enjoying sitting at the table with my honey at night, thinking and talking without purpose or deadline. I am slowing down, hearing the hearts of my children through rage and anger and frustration, holding the door open for them while they storm through the wall, senseless. I am trying.

For all of my people out there, may 2012 be the year your heart opens wide and your arms wider.
May all the food you eat fill you and make you grow.
May all the money you exchange in the world for services and needs and warmth leave room in your pockets for cold hands or spare change.
May we all learn to listen better, love critically, and fight harder.
May everything you touch bring you joy.
May all your suffering, which I know is a lot right now, lighten your load even as it fills to overflowing.
May all your risks embolden you, and reward you with the pleasure of true intimacy.
The world is sacred, and we are all divine. Dance with me, and if you're lucky, we'll sing.

What will feed the hungry frac sand mines?

So here's the thought that's keeping me awake right now:

With all the new and proposed frac sand mines and processing plants planned in northwest Wisconsin, will the next step be a new nuclear power plant to feed this insatiable beast? This industry sucks a lot of energy to get oil out of the ground - will this be our next fight?

Nothing is planned, and I'll do whatever is in front of me when it's there, but this is an important piece of the continuing, desperate End of Empire.

Cesium is not Iodine, and it's still not safe to eat

This is a decent informative article from NaturalNews.com about radioactive cesium vs. iodine. While the tone is a little alarmist, the information is accurate.

When you hear about "radiation levels" at Fukushima, you're mostly hearing only about radioactive iodine, which decays much, much faster (i.e., days rather than years) than all the other radioactive isotopes one could measure there today. Cesium takes 30 years to decay by half. A tiny bit of radioactive cesium eaten in the body of a contaminated fish caught from the Pacific Ocean - or seaweed grown there - is infinitely more dangerous to you than a particle floating around the atmosphere.  

An illustrative example, from the link:

"A speck of radioactive dust that's one meter away from you, for example, is twice as dangerous as that same speck four meters away. But if you eat that radioactive speck (because it's part of a fishyou're consuming, for example), then suddenly it'sinside your body. So now it might only be a millimeter away from your internal tissues, meaning you've decreased the distance between you and the radiation source byone thousand times. Because if the law of the inverse square of the distance, you have now magnified the radiation intensity byone million times(because one million is the square of one thousand)."

This is the real danger of cesium and other radioactive isotopes - once you eat them, they emit radiation from inside your body, in your muscle tissue or bones or heart or wherever. 

"[Y]ou quickly become a walking radioactive dirty bombfrom the inside."

Rare Earth Minerals, Murder by Technology

The continuing tidal wave of ripping stuff out of the earth keeps on rolling. This time, under the Pacific Ocean. Rare earth minerals, tons of them, have been "discovered" by Japanese "explorers". 

"Rare earth metals have emerged as one of the most sought after resources in [the] commodities boom. Minerals present in the mud include gadolinium, lutetium, terbium and dysprosium." Some of these are used in the manufacture of those eco-friendly hybrid cars. Here is a handy image with notes about which minerals are used in the Prius, created by Lee Allison, state geologist and Director of the Arizona Geological Survey. Gadolinium is used in x-ray systems, CDs, and nuclear medicine.

The "commodities boom." Does that include frac sand? The excitement and anticipation of profits by scooping tons of mud off the ocean floor makes me sick. To what lengths will we continue our pillaging of the very body that bears us and makes us human? We are all complicit, here in the privileged West. I am sick to death of new solutions and technologies that are really assassination attempts. While we consume the death of the oceans and the forests and the ecological systems that continue to get in the way of our lifestyles, we lose more and more of our humanity.

It all seems part of the end of Empire and it's a long way down yet.

Love, Critically

Recently I was having a little vacation with old friends, some of whom had never met my partner and husband, C. When asked to describe him I was kind of dumbfounded; we've been together for almost twenty years, where the heck do I begin? I tried by saying he's kind of tall, a little geeky, interesting... and then it just all seemed inadequate. That conversation mercifully didn't go anywhere, but it left me feeling kind of dumb.

What I meant to say was this:
That C. has heart. That everything he does is important, and with his whole self. That he is funny and attentive and loving and tolerant and flexible when I need him to be, inflexible when it's important. That he is an amazing parent, and I love how he loves me. His heart is as big as our world needs right now, and I'm glad I share it with him. He's persuasive when he wants to be, and a great person to have around when you're trying to reframe something important. He lets you remember the things that are essential and sacred, including my own peace and spiritual connection. He's not intimidated or afraid of gay or anything else. Thank god. That he's a radical thinker, a devoted partner, and an inspiring lover. That I am a better person in his shadow, and that he casts no shadow under my Sun. We are, as someone said long ago, a matching pair. I'll never be bored.

That should cover it.

1000 Acres

According to a reliable source, there are plans for 140 frac sand mines in northwest Wisconsin right now, with some as large as 1000 acres.


1,000 acres.


These are plans to strip the land of its hills full of sand, add chemicals and water, and leave the wreckage of our water and air to all of us who have to live here, with untold and unchecked profit for a few. I am astonished and very, very pissed.  A banker wrote in an open letter recently: "Eventually the sand mine will return to farmland, and, 50 years from now, no one will remember that there had once been a hill where the flat, fertile farm now lies." It's all nostalgia to him; progress is the real value, and all of us emotional environmentalists are out to harm the community with our misplaced and unpatriotic outrage.


So what do we care about those unprofitable hills anyway? We're just a bunch of emotional wackos who don't want to buck up and provide the country with this valuable and necessary resource. 


Unless of course, we are just people who have educated ourselves about frac sand, mining, and processing plants and the permanent divisions they create in community and safety, and sincerely want to protect our children and all our descendants from this latest end-of-empire devastation. Not any of us stand to make any money from frac sand and all it entails, and none of us think any profit should be made off of the suffering of others. 


Duh.


This is a good time to remind you check the Hay River Frac Watch for updates.

Vaccines, another look

There are a lot of articles and opinion pieces out there questioning the safety of vaccinations. Most of them go right for the aborted fetus/genetically modified/population control conspiracy stuff right at the get go. But this article rocks my world by managing to avoid all conspiracy theories and focus on the science. The author doesn't provide alternatives to vaccination, but the thorough description and analogy of what vaccines do in the body to the immune system is really good. It's a bit long, but worth the read - especially if you've never considered the whole spectrum of vaccination's effects in the body.

Vaccines as "Cluster Bombs"

The Cost of Information

Tonight the owner of the sale and lease of land being negotiated with the mining corporation will be hosting an informational meeting to discuss local ramifications and who knows what else. Isn't it interesting that the owner - not the mining company - is being so helpful to the corporation? What a sweet gesture of compliance and sharing she has shown to the Company. What a helper! What a community member!

I may be pissed, but it's true; the mining companies don't need to do PR when the locals will take - and generate - all the heat for them.

In 5 years, when the landowner has been screwed by they mining company (a very common thing, evidently), I wonder what kind of regrets won't be discussed in an informational meeting. When the wells dry up, and the air is filled with carcinogenic particulate that gives my children and the children attending school in town asthma and increased risk for lung cancer, what kind of info meeting will she be hosting? When the trucks have wrecked the county roads and cracked the foundations of old farmhouses and killed dogs and cats and many other mammals haplessly crossing roads that used to be deserted, what kind of info meeting will we attend then? When the relatively toxic farming practices used to monocrop GM corn and soy are exchanged for hundreds of known carcinogens leaching into the groundwater after the sand processing plant is finished, and we are all drinking unknown and untested chemicals in our water, what kind of info meeting will be hosted then? And when all the farming families and folks I know don't move because we can't afford to, and we have to work outside in a toxic stew to grow our food, what kind of info meeting will I be attending?

The cost of civilization and colonization is not information. It is destruction and risk and suffering. Only human-scale community will endure because only we can ask the questions that remind everyone else of our shared humanity and the connections to our individual webs of life and living. I'm rooting for life, but in the mean time I'm fighting as best I can against destruction.

Hay River Frac Watch web site

There is now a very informative web site so you can follow the frac sand mining that is set to devastate the land base here in my neck of western Wisconsin: Hay River Frac Watch.

I understand that beside the developments planned 3 miles northeast of my home there are a total of 9 mining companies eager to make a profit off of our sand. Unfortunately all this is targeted to help fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, a toxic process used in the US to suck natural gas out of the earth a mile underground. Unfortunately, I suspect this is a relative flash in the pan: 5-10 years of ecological wrecking and human greed and then lots of people grieving for our past.

A group of thoughtful, smart community members are working to stop it here. We can beat the mining companies, but we have to be united and work fast. Stay connected, learn more, speak out!

Who Needs Leaders?

I firmly believe it's all going to get worse before it gets better. I believe that as the profiteers desperately move through our earth's body to make more and more money for fewer and fewer people, that those of us outside the cities will suffer. But I do believe radical change is possible; I don't believe that destruction is inevitable; I don't believe we have to lose our humanity in defense of our land base; I also don't believe the lack of humanity in the actions of a few mining or nuclear energy companies mean we are doomed to desperate living (no, not John Waters-style, you smart asses).


In a recent article in the Economist of all places (Who Needs Leaders?), I read this quote:


"THE earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident that struck Japan three months ago have revealed something important about the country: a seam of strength and composure in the bedrock of society that has surprised even the Japanese themselves. Not only has this resilience helped the hundreds of thousands suffering from the loss of families, homes and livelihoods to cope with their suffering, despite the self-absorbed dithering of their national politicians in Tokyo. By reminding Japan of the hidden depths of its local communities, especially compared with the shallowness of central government, it has also provided a sense of how Japan could emerge stronger from the crisis, ending years of economic drift."


Depth of local communities. Shallowness of central government. 


Isn't it true?

Japanese elders offer to help clean up Fukushima

Even though it is little reported in the US news media, the meltdowns at Fukushima's nuclear power plants continue to deteriorate. There is much, much work to do; each unit must still be cooled and contained, and the kilometers around Fukushima will remain contaminated for a very long time. Work demands workers. Who will volunteer, under full consent, to help clean up this corporate and governmental disaster?


A group of elders has stepped forward to offer their services. 


The complete negligence and greed of TEPCO and the disinformation of the IAEA and the Japanese government has doomed not only the land and environment of Japan and its people to dramatic increases in cancer and death and toxic food and economic devastation. It will now also lose cherished grandparents to nuclear power.


"Kazuko Sasaki, 69, the co-founder of the group, says she has a number of personal reasons why she wants to work at the plant. 'My generation, the old generation, promoted the nuclear plants. If we don't take responsibility, who will?'"


In the face of Ms. Sasaki's responsibility, I ask again: Where are the designers, builders, and owners of these nuclear power plants? Why are those who are truly responsible not volunteering their time to clean soil, dump water, and fix leaks? As always, the failure of a few to experience real connection with the land base and their communities cost the lives and well-being of many. What can we learn, here? Who is next?

Once you get a taste for power...

Surveillance - it's never been just a Republican thing. They just get the credit for starting it all. And Obama and his minions are right behind it.

Salon article summarizing recent troubling developments.

Can I Get a Witness?

I've been caught in the whirl of Spring this year, and my blog has suffered for it. The growing things call me - plants, dirt, weeds, children - all pressing me with their needs and love. All are givers, all take something in return. I give myself as freely as I can; in return I get the chance to understand the absolute "yes" of plants and the in- and inter-dependence of children.

In addition to growing things, there is still the possibility of this frac sand mine 3 miles from our house and right next door to our friends' house, and Fukushima now has officially-confirmed meltdowns in three of the four reactors and insane radiation levels in the ocean, and my children had chickenpox, and my partner is busy someplace else with his 20-year-old band, and there are the frogs and the robins and the aphids and all the rain. The world as we know it is forever changed, as far as I can tell. For me, it is a feeling of irrevocabilty, of the newest political trends toward control and fascism, of a radioactive planet, of contaminated food, soil, air, and breast milk, forever. That despite the actions of a few that affect the whole, including non-human life, there can still be poetry and delicious transgression and radical actions and humor that create real human relations without dogma - be it religion, pacifism, abuse, or science.

And to top it all off, I have an idea.

I want to publish a blog of local nature writing: mundane, beatific, transcendent, holy, joyful, scared, funny, thoughtful writing. Whatever people are thinking and feeling. Because right now all of us are fighting really hard for our ways of life - some of us more than others - and it seems like the right time to share a little reflection of what it is that we see when we look into the mirror of right outside the door. I believe that women's voices are especially important right now, that we have a relationship with and responsibility to wild life that is precious and maybe sacred. I want to help share this kind of writing here in my neck of Wisconsin, and hope people might want to read it. And there are tons of interesting people with interesting observations and thoughts about the world up in here. What do you think? Please share your comments. This is still in the brainstorm stage, and I am trying to gauge interest and possibilities.

Kodama/tree spirit in the film Princess Mononoke

Frac Sand Mining

There is a raging hot issue in my neck of the woods that is pissing me off and making me work hard to figure out what I can do to stop it: a frac sand mine is proposed a couple of miles from my house in western Wisconsin. I will post more about this in the future, but it's hard to find time with it being Spring and planting season and cooking our meals and cleaning up our meals and housework and parenting duties and all that. And I don't even farm! I have a relative life of luxury.

I will share here many of the questions and ideas that come to me that I may not have other opportunities to express, which will hopefully help me organize myself and kick some corporate ass. And as you might expect, it won't always be pretty, because I refuse to accept our community being treated as a place that most of the world considers a valuable resource for the rest of the population, so the US can continue our swift plummet into the deep abyss of the end of Empire - and all that entails.

Fukushima Updates

Finally, TEPCO can no longer deny the level of radioactive destruction in its Fukushima plants.

Unit #1 has a confirmed meltdown of its core, #4 is about to collapse, and #2 is leaking radioactive water like a sieve.

Arnie Gunderson has a great new video update you should watch.

Dr. Helen Caldicott posts truly wonderful and up-to-date information on her facebook page. She is not only very knowledgeable, but works tirelessly to educate whoever will listen about the many false claims to the relative safety of nuclear power from a physician's and activist's perspective. She is awesome, go find her page on facebook now. Just open up a new tab and go do it if you care to learn about nuclear power throughout the world.

Giant tents will cover the reactors! Presumably to reduce steam and atmospheric releases. And like Chris pointed out, it will also shield cameras quite well. The only good news in that article is that there will be no limit set on the liabilities Tepco will have to pay.

The risk of another explosion, in #1, is still possible. Since there is a confirmed meltdown there, an explosion would be bad, right?

Since radiation from Fukushima probably never really ended, the rain is not as safe as we might want to believe. Cesium is still high around the reactors; when will Japan's ground water and oceans be safe enough to support life without also causing cancers? Why will the US not learn from Japan?

Dust in the Wind

The latest update from Fairewinds Associates hosts an interview with scientist and researcher Marco Kaltofen explaining why radioactive particles, which were pushed into the atmosphere from the Fukushima explosion(s), will continue to affect the health of people in Japan and the United States for a long time.

Hint: it's not just because it's in your food or water.

Commitment, Sacrifice, Justice, and Power

"Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are:  one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.  May God bless you.  And may God bless the United States of America."

The United States has killed Osama bin Laden. President Obama, in his announcement last night, [the link is to the transcript] told us everything we should be feeling about this recent assassination: justice, safety, unity, and the blessings of God on our amazingly powerful country.


I couldn't care less about this kind of patriotism. 


I want to to see justice served, but to all the species the industrialized United States (and other countries) has killed in its mission to expand without end.


I want to see justice served to all the descendants of freed slaves, the end of oppression, the end of discrimination.


I want to see the justice of traditional lands returned without question to the north american tribes from which they were stolen in bloodshed.


I want to see justice served to the residents of and workers in this country who have been fed pollution so toxic their babies die and their children develop leukemia, including genetic pollution controlled by corporations whose end goal is to control our food and water from seed to table.


I want to see the justice of actual persons living actual lives free from harm, with the right to organize their communities for the benefit and compassion of all, not just the elected or the wealthy.


I want to see the free reign of love, true pervy blinking teary meaty down-and-dirty swishy and boring love, waving its pink handkerchief at me as I tie up my boots and tickle the beard of my manly man.


I want justice for all the indigenous populations around the globe whose lands have been stolen and handed to the oil and mining corporations, leaving nothing but unsafe jobs, a depleted and toxic land base, and no legal voice with which to demand justice.


I want justice served for the water - all the rivers, lakes, streams, springs, ponds, bogs and oceans.


I could go on.


Obama's closing words made me check my calendar: was it 2011 or 2001? Who was sitting in the comfy White House chair, Bush or Obama? Really, when the president continues to claim that "we" are powerful and wealthy and somehow special enough to be blessed by an all-powerful sky god (at the exclusion of all other gods, or any god), and that somehow this relationship has anything to do with  celebrating the death of a wealthy psychopath hunkering in Pakistan, and that our right is to continue hunting whomever "we" like however the president sees fit, I have to disagree.


"...America can do whatever we set our mind to.  That is the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place."


Perseverance does not mean we are all blessed by God; commitment does not mean we are somehow deserving of special dispensations from the holy of holies; rather, the words of a man in power ruling one of the poorest, most incarcerated, corrupt and unhealthiest industrialized nations in the world ring everywhere but true. That is the "story of our history." 


As the United States continues to build and protect the pipeline in Afghanistan and bombs Libya, as Scott Walker sits in the governor's office in Madison, as electric companies rub their hands anticipating renewing nuclear power plants in many states around the country, as residents of Japan hope they will be able find safe food and water for their elders and families for the next 100 years, I would ask you: Do you feel safer?


My observations are not meant to be merely cynical, but rather an attempt to prompt the inspired to  actions and thoughts full of light and water, the kind of things that grow sharp minds and clever actions. Sparkly words full of empty praise for the brave dead do not compel warm feelings toward my land base or my neighbor (I refuse to call it my "country"). 


Guess I'll have to take a walk and listen a little bit to the frogs for that.

Frogs-to-be

Iodine 131 found in AZ Milk

Apparently, recent tests of milk samples in Arizona have detected higher concentrations of radioactive Iodine 131. As usual, residents of Arizona are told not to worry, that these levels are far below the FDA's threshold of action. This test did not include information about any other radioactive isotopes.

The FDA's allowable level of all (total dose in a sample) radioactive isotopes in drinking water is higher than the EPA's; it allows for 1 theoretical cancer death in 4,400 people. Who will it be? Someone's 10 year old daughter? A beloved elder? A breastfeeding mother of 2 children? A man who grows food for his neighbors?

Officially, radioactive iodine is regularly dismissed as a threat because of its relatively short half-life outside of the body; it takes about 40 days to decay to almost nothing. But this is not necessarily how it acts inside the body. It takes much longer to be completely excreted, and it does its damage effectively before it can be excreted. Take the time to read all the answers on that link - it's very informative.

Milk is tested by the EPA in samples from grocery stores. This milk is not necessarily milk from cows who live in the state tested - where do the cows that produced that milk in Arizona live and eat? Because those cows may not be eating grass, what is the source of their radioactive contamination? Their feed? Their water?

The assumption that our food is safe because we don't know or because the EPA and FDA say so is not enough for me. Do not assume you will be informed if there is actual risk and danger, especially if you have small growing children whose bodies rapidly grow bones and muscle. Actual risk from radiation, as determined by the EPA and FDA, is very tolerant. As members of a world saturated with radiation from accidents, disasters, medical waste, nuclear power waste, and other sources, it is horrible to me that any dose is considered acceptable when the evidence shows any exposure at any level is not safe. As I've said before, radiation accumulates in the body with every dose. We are all, at this point, exposed to everything at levels we'll never be informed about accurately.

Do the research, don't take my word for it.

Since I can't escape what's in the air, I continue to grow my food, forage locally, and buy my dairy and produce as locally as I can; avoid the worst and hope for the best. I will continue my deep love affair with the wild things and offer myself to the impartial love that is survival and community; I will continue to recklessly believe that the risks of being alive are as powerful as the risks of making life.