MR. HOLSINGER REGRETS, AGAIN (BUT NOT LIKE BEFORE)

The last time I suspended writing this blog, it was because I had a heart attack.  I’m pleased to report that my health these days is, overall, fine.  But this time–the dog didn’t eat my computer, no, but a fire ate most of my home.  It spared the room where I keep my computer, recording equipment, and musical instruments, but vaporized my book and music libraries, along with most of my clothing.  My wife, Cindy, got to keep most of her clothes but likewise lost the bulk of her library.  We are staying with friends until we can move back into temporary quarters (any day) get temporary electric service (manana, it seems), and start the process of rebuilding. We’ve got a crackerjack architectural team, Howard Switzer and Katey Culver, on the redesign, and my son the crackerjack carpenter ready to put ‘er up when the time comes.   Meanwhile, we are refugees, albeit high-class refugees.  We have a great place to stay, and it’s much easier to lose your stuff and keep your friends than vice-versa.  I know, because I’ve done both.

You could say, I suppose, that my feelings of foreboding helped manifest our own personal collapse, while America sails blithely (and blindly) on, and, indeed, we suspect that the fire that broke out was smoldering for a couple of days before it went critical, and if only, if only we had looked harder, we could have prevented much of the loss.  But I didn’t, and so here we are.  Hey, the Nashville Fire Department came in with an infrared heat detector and couldn’t find anything–then they thought they’d put it out, leaving major smoke and water damage but most of the house intact, at 1AM a week ago last Wednesday, and by 3 AM it was roaring back, and that’s when it ate the house and all that was in it.  IF we’d accepted the Red Cross’s offer to pay for a motel room, the whole place would have burnt down–but we chose to camp on our land, and thus were close enough to call the fire department back when we noticed the renewed blaze.

The house was a disaster before the fire–poorly insulated, bad windows, rotting sills, rotting floors in the bathroom and laundry room, only two small windows on the south side.  We’d been talking for years about tearing it down and building something saner.  We just assumed we’d give ourselves a chance to get our stuff out before we did the demo.  Ah, well…..

Here’s the gist of the radio show I’d do if I had the time and energy to put one together for early May:

The US cruises blithely on, as if it could never fail, just like the Roman Empire before it.

While the media were totally focused on Boston, pipelines leaked in Arkansas, a fertilizer plant blew up in Texas, two LNG barges exploded in Alabama, and an oil refinery caught fire in Michigan, causing far more damage, deaths, and injuries than the Boston fiasco.
But that’s big business, big American business, not a disgruntled Muslim immigrant–and on that point, I have yet to see anybody note that the guy who, way back in the 1950s, started the Muslim Brotherhood, the granddaddy of all “terrorist organizations,” which recently took power in Egypt with the US’s blessing, came to the US as a young student, prepared to admire our country, and became disgusted with our superficial, materialist values–as am I, and you, and a great many other Americans, all of us sensible (or is it cowed?) enough not to take up arms against the currently all-powerful Security State. Instead, we just cultivate patience, hunker down, and hope it falls apart soon, without too big a chunk landing on us and ours.

Meanwhile, a big chunk has landed in my lap, and it may take a couple of months or more for me to dig my way out of this one.

Jim Bement will be taking my shifts on the show as well as his own.  He’s an experienced DJ and a good talker, and I’m sure you will enjoy his shows.  You can learn more about him at:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/jim-bement-music
http://pfmentum.com/PFMCD004.html
http://pfmentum.com/PFMCD009.html
http://www.pattayamail.com/393/features.htm#hd7

music:  Talking Heads, “Burning Down the House”

Jimi Hendrix, “House Burning Down”

Kate Wolf, “Carolina Pines”  (link is to an excellent cover by “The Gordons”)

UPDATE ON THE FUTURE OF “DEEP GREEN PERSPECTIVE”

I mentioned a month or two ago that I might be suspending or repurposing this blog/radio show, and I and the other radio show hosts began an intensive process of finding new voices for the show.  Our campaign has produced some results, and the radio show will, it seems,have a couple of new hosts in the near future.  I will, for the time being, continue to contribute one show per month, and a monthly blog post or two, but I still wouldn’t mind quitting entirely, so please step up and say so if you are interested in launching a radio career!

Rumor has it that the power and  range of the station will soon be expanded to include all of metro Nashville.

AS DOMA GOES, SO GOES THE DEA?

music:  Greg Brown, “Spring Wind“

String Cheese Incident “Land’s End“

Same-sex marriage and marijuana use have a lot in common.

Thirty years ago, both were viewed by the American mainstream as beyond the pale, off the table, over the top fringe behaviors that would never see the legal light of day.  But here we are, with nationwide full legal equality for gays trembling on the brink of reality, and marijuana legal for all in two states and those with a medical need in eighteen states.  That’s little more than a third of the states, but they happen to hold about half the population of the country.

At the state level, same-sex marriage is actually somewhat behind legal/medical marijuana, with only 9 states recognizing it, and many states specifically prohibiting it.  On the other hand, there is no such halfway step as “medical marriage.”

It’s hard to tell how the Supreme Court is going to rule on the same-sex marriage cases before it this year.  First of all, six of the judges are Catholic a faith that rejects homosexuality in theory, while some Catholics, of course, practice it.  Still, many of the questions the Supremes asked when they heard the DOMA and Prop. 8 cases.  seem to indicate a more open-minded view of sexual orientation than their pontiff might approve.

CLASH OF THE TITANS

Those of us who recognize the many grave dangers that fracking poses to our environment and social fabric have often felt that we were in a real David vs. Goliath  struggle, but without the benefit of the sling that enabled David to topple the giant.  Recent developments indicate that we may have not one,but two Goliaths entering the fray on our side.

Our two unlikely champions are the insurance providers and the mortgage bankers.

Here’s how Nationwide Mutual Insurance put it in an internal memo:

“After months of research and discussion, we have determined that the exposures presented by hydraulic fracturing are too great to ignore. Risks involved with hydraulic fracturing are now prohibited for General Liability, Commercial Auto, Motor Truck Cargo, Auto Physical Damage and Public Auto (insurance) coverage.”

This applies to

….landowners who lease land for shale gas drilling and contractors involved in fracking operations, including those who haul water to and from drill sites; pipe and lumber haulers; and operators of bulldozers, dump trucks and other vehicles used in drill site preparation.

Other insurers are growing increasingly uncomfortable with the difficulty of calculating potential damages from fracking, and, while insurance for gas and oil companies is still available, the cost is rising.

FRACK WHORES, FASCISTS, AND FOOLS

Mothers of Invention: Brown Shoes Don’t Make It

Mothers of Invention:  Thirteen (from “You Can’t Say That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 6–not available on the net, sorry!)

Mothers of Invention:  Jesus Thinks You’re a Jerk (from “Broadway the Hard Way,” ditto)

As I promised a couple of weeks ago, I did indeed turn out for the anti-fracking demonstration, and the accompanying hearing, at Legislative Plaza, last Friday.  The best thing I can say about it is that it was great to see old friends and new, young faces.  It’s good to feel that this movement is being passed on, even if that’s accompanied by the distinct sensation that it’s being pissed on, as well.

The hearing was definitely a pisser.  Numerous people called the fracking decision into question on all the obvious grounds–conflict of interest, failure to take into account the value of an unspoiled natural environment, and the dubiousness of the alleged benefits that fracking brings to communities.  Channel 5, bless their hearts, did a background investigation that uncovered the fact that making money, not doing studies, is UT’s primary motivation in opening their forest research center to fracking.  It won’t be much good for forestry studies after the frackers are done with it!  Some members of the State Building Commission even raised the all-important question, “what happens if we get a few years into this and discover that it’s a really bad idea?”

“Trust us,” UT’s representative said, just what BP’s people said when they started deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, just like what Exxon’s representatives said before the Exxon Valdez ran aground, just what Shell said when they attempted to moor an offshore drilling rig in the Arctic Ocean last year.

Here’s quotes from some of the emails Channel 5 uncovered:

O COME ALL YE FAITHFUL

I have been writing this blog and doing this radio show now for nearly eight years.  I have devoted about a quarter of my time to it every month, and many things around our homestead have not happened because I have been keeping faith with this blog, my radio program, and the Green Party of Tennessee.

More on the Green Party in a little bit.  My blog has had, according to WordPress, nearly 47,000 visitors in these eight years, but, on the other hand, my spam protector tells me that it has protected me from 36,000 spam posts, meaning, as I understand it, that only about a quarter of my readers are actually on site to read, with the balance–that’s fifteen out of an average of twenty a day–only here to peddle fake Viagra, knockoff watches and handbags, and other detritus of our consumer-driven culture.  I don’t understand where the payoff for these people comes from.  Nobody I know takes them seriously.  It would certainly save a lot of human and electric energy, not to mention bandwidth, if such nonsense could be eliminated.   But I digress, as I so often do.  One thought leads to another, in an endless stream.

Here’s the point.  I have spent about as much time as I can trying to wake people and point out to them that the building is burning, and they/we need to either fight the fire or get out of the building, or both.  It’s time for me to quit talking about taking action, and actually take action myself.  Not to follow my instincts on this would be co-dependent, I think.  I have been there, and done that, and don’t care to dwell there any more.

So, I am looking for someone else in the Nashville area who would like to do this show–I’ve had a few nibbles, but no firm bites yet.  John and Beth can’t do it all themselves, and would like to cut back on their involvement as well.  If nobody wants to take it from our hands, “The Green Hour” will slip into the dustbin of radio history.  I am thinking that I may repurpose the “Deep Green Perspective” blog as an autobiography, since I think my whole life has been lived, in effect, from a “deep green perspective,” and I’d like to tell my story while I still remember most of it.  Anyway, if you’d like to play radio host, get in touch.

THE VICTIM LIKED IT

A guest post by Derrick Jensen

Published in the March/April 2013 issue of Orion magazine

OCTOBER 2012 was the 323rd consecutive month for which the global temperature was above average. The odds of this happening randomly are literally astronomical: one in ten to the hundredth power. For comparison, there are ten to the eightieth power atoms in the known universe. So if all the atoms in the universe were white, except one was green, your odds of reaching blindly into a bag of all the atoms in the universe and picking out the green one would be greater than that of having 323 consecutive months of above-average temperatures were global warming not happening.

A sane person might think that in the face of this, and with life on earth at stake, the debate over whether global warming is happening would have ended. A sane person might think that in the face of melting glaciers and melting ice caps, we would be desperately discussing how to stop it. A sane person might think that after Hurricane Sandy ripped into New York City (the center of the universe, according to some), the denial would be over.

But this sane person would be wrong. In December of 2012, former head of the EPA and White House “Climate Czar” Carol Browner said, “A majority in our House of Representatives appears to not even think the problem is real. It’s sort of stunning to me because I’ve never seen the breadth of scientific consensus on an environmental issue like there is on this.” The next speaker at the event, a conference about the Clean Air Act, was Joe Barton, chairman emeritus of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce who currently sits on the Environment and the Economy subcommittee. As if to prove her point, he stated that atmospheric carbon can’t be dangerous because it’s “a necessity of life.” In fact, he noted, he was exhaling carbon as he spoke! Q.E.D. Besides, he said, greenhouses are good things: “There’s a reason that you build things called greenhouses, and that’s to help things grow.”

It would be easy enough to laugh at his stupidity if he weren’t in a position of power and using that position to help kill what remains of the planet. It would be easy enough to just label his denial “stunning” and move on. But his denial is part of a larger pattern, and articulating patterns is the first step toward changing them….

Reprinted with permission.  You can read the rest of this article here.

music:  Jennifer Berezan, “The Whole World Is Burning“

Eliza Gilkyson w/John Doe, “Chimes of Freedom“