AN OPEN LETTER TO THE MAYOR AND SELECTED METRO COUNCIL MEMBERS

(note:  I have sent this letter to Mayor Dean, Megan Barry, Diane Neighbors, Jerry Maynard, Emily Evans, and Jason Holleman, and I will post their replies as they come in and make this a basis for a story on my July radio show.)

Dear

We live on the northwest side of Nashville.  It gets pretty dark here at night, and when we look to the north or west we can actually see quite a few stars.  My wife and I really enjoy this.

Recently, while driving on nearby Briley Parkway, I noticed that streetlights are being installed.  I had no idea this was happening and would certainly have done my best to nip it in the bud if anybody had informed me, but the erection of the poles was the first notice I had–I had seen crews installing wire earlier, but didn’t grasp what it was for.

I am not happy about this for aesthetic reasons–it will erode our view of the stars–but it galls me for practical ones as well.  There are streetlights all along Ashland City Highway, Clarksville Pike, and White’s Creek Pike, but there is almost no traffic on these roads, and very little late night traffic on Briley Parkway, either.  At a time when the city’s budget is stretched to the breaking point, when we are considering closing Metro General Hospital and other vital services in the city’s social safety net, why are we spending who knows how much money lighting empty roads, and now, on Briley Parkway, spending even more to light yet another empty road?

Our tax bill is one of our biggest expenses–we pay more in property taxes than we spend on our electric bill over the course of a year, and I do not appreciate seeing our money wasted in this way, especially “in light” of the communication I recently received from the Mayor’s office, urging me to sign a pledge to conserve electricity, among other things.  If the city wants us to be frugal, why doesn’t it set an example instead of being profligate?

There are larger issues involved, too–the electrical generation that keeps those lights burning contributes to global warming, as well as air pollution here in Nashville ( As I understand it, the coal-burning plants that supply most of our electricity are upwind from Nashville on the Tennessee River.), and I also think we are probably very near the end of the era of private automobiles, and should not be doing things to further accommodate and encourage them.  Most people, unfortunately, are pretty ignorant of these possibilities, but I am mentioning them to you because I think you have some understanding of what’s going on.  For short-term political purposes, the economic argument will have to suffice.

So, what can be done?  Is there a way that we, as a city, can do what our parents tried to train us to do and turn the lights off when everybody leaves the room?

I have wondered if it would be possible to install some kind of motion sensors on streetlights, so they would only light up if a vehicle was approaching, but a friend tells me that the kind of lamps used for street lighting do not lend themselves to being turned off and on a lot.  As an aside, maybe the city could require or encourage motion sensors on “security lights.”  If they only came on when triggered, that would actually add to the security they offer, save a lot of electricity, and cut down the night-time glare that blinds us to the stars.

Another possibility would be to follow the same protocol with streetlights in low traffic areas that the city uses with low-demand traffic lights.  Just as these traffic lights turn into blinking caution/stop lights between 11PM and 6AM, maybe we could turn these underutilized streetlights off during those same hours.  This is a compromise for me, but it might make sense to enough people to get some traction as a proposal.  Please let me know what you think.

Sincerely yours

P.S.  Full disclosure–As you may be aware, I have a radio show and blog, and write for the Nashville Free Press. I am planning on posting your response on my blog, and possibly using it in my radio show and NFP column, so if there is anything you would like to tell me “off the record,” please indicate that clearly and I will respect your wishes.

STEPPING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

Last month, I suggested that, rather than pursue the chimeras of Maytown and the Convention Center, Nashvilleans would be better served by taking the suggestions of the” Mayor’s Green Ribbon Committee” and running with them.  Much to my delight, that’s just what Metro Councilman Jason Holleman is doing.

The step he is proposing is a no-brainer, really, and I was surprised to learn that it needs to be taken, but–get this: for the last fifty years, it has been illegal to have a community garden in Nashville .  It doesn’t matter if you own the land and it’s an open field, you can’t legally farm it in the urban services district.  And, even if you live on the property and just have a garden, it is illegal for you to sell your produce.  Gee…I thought the only produce that was illegal to sell was the kind people grow in closets…but it turns out that the criminal agricultural population is not restricted to pot growers…all the urban community gardens springing up around Nashville–and there are more and more of them–are illegal.  We are fortunate that Metro has not sent out the paddy wagons and bulldozers to round up these criminal gardeners and turn their paradises back into parking lots.

Holleman’s bill is co-sponsored by Kristine LaLonde, Emily Evans, Erik Cole, Mike Jameson, Bo Mitchell, Megan Barry, Jerry Maynard, Sandra Moore, Erica Gilmore, and Darren Jernigen. Remember those names–these are the  Metro Council members who have at least a clue about where this country is headed.  Councilman Holleman told me in an email that his proposal has attracted “questions about the details, but no negative feedback.” In other words, there’s a strong likelihood that it will pass.

One hair that the bill splits is that, while it legalizes the sale of produce grown in the city, which will allow  gardeners to support and expand their operations, it does not allow “farm stands” at gardens in residential neighborhoods.  In other words, you can’t have a stash of picked tomatoes sitting there waiting for customers.  Gardeners must take their produce elsewhere and sell it, or contract with people through consumer-supported agriculture-type arrangements.  My guess is that this barrier will increasingly, and informally, be breached.

The bill does not permit raising livestock in the city, which I think is another prohibition that will soon fall.   Currently, if you have a few rabbits, chickens, or pigeons in your backyard, you have to be able to pass them off as “pets”–but who’s going to notice where your breakfast egg comes from, or complain if one of your “pets” disappears and ends up on the dinner table?  Is this what the National Animal Identification System is intended to enforce?

“Mrs. Jones, we’re from Animal Control and we noticed that the transponder on one of your chickens went dead yesterday.  Here’s our search warrant–why don’t you just tell us: where’s the body?”  Yeah, right…

Backyard animal raising is a more complex issue, in some ways, because animals, unlike plants, sometimes make noises and create odors that are annoying to neighbors. Perhaps the way to deal with this would be to allow people to keep animals if all or most of a neighborhood is in agreement. It’s certainly worth discussing. What do you think, Metro Council members? Are you ready for the next bold step in local food security?

Now, besides food production, another tightly regulated part of the American urban scene is housing, which in our economic model is privately owned, or often privately owed rather than owned.  As the economy has begun to stumble (and you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!), many people have fallen behind in their house payments or been unable to come up with their rent money and been evicted, frequently resulting, at first, in perfectly good houses standing empty.  I say “at first” because often these empty houses are broken into and stripped of anything salvageable, such as copper pipes.  They then become derelict shells that all too often get bulldozed, since we’re not yet desperate enough for building materials to take them apart stud by stud.  Soon come, soon come.

But meanwhile, the stupid logic of private property dictates that these houses must stand empty while their former occupants, already unable to afford  to keep a roof over their heads, have to seek shelter elsewhere.  Many move in with friends and relatives, which is kind of  good, since one of the things we as a culture need to relearn is how to get along with each other and share close quarters, but that’s a lesson better learned voluntarily.  Some people who are evicted don’t have family or friends who can make room for them, and become homeless.

We can contrast this peculiar behavior with what happened during the breakdown of the Soviet Union.  Since all housing was government owned, people were not made homeless due to their inability to earn money.

Or we can contrast it with the third world, where, from Sao Paulo to Calcutta, the poor scavenge together shelter from whatever they can find, and create vast cities-within-cities.  Whenever homeless people in the US start to do that, the codes department soon shows up with a bulldozer and “cleans it up.”  Property rights and appearances are still paramount in America.  They trump compassion every time.

It would be great if we could change that and allow people a little freedom to create a roof over their heads if we as a community are otherwise unable to provide them with one.  That’s a big step down the road from legalizing community gardens, and I don’t expect Councilman Holliman to propose it next month or even next year, but we are going to have to start examining all the ways in which unreasonable expectations create unsolvable problems–whether in the area of food, housing, or personal behavior–and don’t get me started on that topic!

Hopefully enough people will realize that it’s easier and more compassionate to change our expectations and relax the law than it is to try and keep a tight rein on  things and create criminals ex nihilo.  We’ve got enough real problems to deal with already.

music:  Incredible String Band, “Big Ted“

TALKING IN THEIR SLEEP

I attended the first three hours of Metro Planning Commission’s May 28th hearing on Maytown Center, but, bowing to my infirmities, didn’t attempt to stay until the very end.  My friends tell me I missed the best part, but between what I heard there, the deep background briefing I was graciously given, and what has emerged in the media, I feel well qualified to give you an update and, of course, my commentary.

The big story that emerged in the media was the highly conditional nature of the May family’s “gift” to TSU:  no Maytown, no land, no endowment.  The only money that TSU has received from the May family is $50,000 to conduct a “push poll” intended to promote Maytown to the black community, hungry for any crumbs the power structure might be willing to throw them.  Others, of course, see through the ruse,   which Rev. Joe Ingle, a white minister of the United Church of Christ, described to the Interdenominational Ministers’ Fellowship as “a bribe.”

Behind the scenes, there is the story of how it took all the pressure the Maytown foes could bring to bear to keep the Planning Comission from voting on the Maytown proposal before the hearing, and before the economic impact report was released.  “Sentence first, veredict afterwards,” as the Queen of Hearts remarked.  Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, but many of those opposing Maytown feel that the Planning Commission is cheerleading the project rather than playing its legally-prescribed neutral role.

The big news (for me) that came out of the hearing was that, although Maytown Center advocates have long trumpeted that they are building their project on only 600 acres and preserving the other 900, 4- 500 of those “preserved” acres will be available for development as “corporate headquarters campuses.”  When you subtract TSU’s 250 acres, that leaves only 2-300 acres that will actually be left undisturbed–and Metro might turn that into a golf course.  So much for preservation.

The traffic impact study revealed that Tony G’s claim that building one bridge to Maytown would suffice was, to be polite, disingenuous–if I wanted to be rude, I say he lied–two or three would be necessary, and metro or the state would need to widen every major artery in northwest Nashville  to accommodate an estimated additional 5,000 vehicles per hour during peak traffic times.  While the Mays offered to build a bridge or two, they are not talking about paying for any of that.  This will be  very expensive, not to mention destructive of neighborhoods, and it will not be popular, although those factors rarely seem to bother TDOT–but that’s another story.

Back to the hearing.

Bell’s Bend preservation advocates allowed Maytown Center supporters to speak first in the public comment portion of the hearing.  I was unaware of that strategic choice, so I found it unnerving to have person after person come up to the microphone and recite the litany of how the project would provide  good paying jobs, development, and growth.  None of these people seemed awake to the real condition the country is in.  There is not going to be a recovery.  We have maxxed out our personal and national credit cards, used up all the raw materials, and monetized everything there is to monetize.  Yet, because we have known nothing but expansion all our lives, too many believe that there is some magic way to restart the bubble economy, and think of the comforting, deluded dream we have been living in since the last big depression as if it were reality.  It is not.

The economic report came out a week after the hearing, and it was a whitewash.   It merely confirmed that, if everything happened the way Tony G. says he thinks it will, Maytown will work.  Happy thoughts and pixie dust, anyone?

Today, my wife came home from a yard sale and told me she had met a guy who has been closely involved with the May family.  He told her that Jack May, the brother who is pushing Maytown Center, is a completely unprincipled, ruthless guy who will do or say  anything to get his way–and get richer.  Such a testimonial re-enforces Maytown Center opponents’ concerns that the “sustainability” promises around Maytown will be abandoned once the project goes through.  Jack May has the do-re-mi to buy and sell Metro government, and that is probably what he is working on–all behind the scenes and under the table, of course.  Jack May cannot be ignorant of the state of our economy.  As I have said before, I think the secret agenda at Maytown is a kind of gated downtown for the uber-rich.  Maytown is not just a struggle over land use–it’s a battle in the class war.

Maytown Center opponents, like advocates of universal single-payer health care, are in the uncomfortable position of having the facts on their side but the politics against them.  We will find out at the next Planning Commission meeting,  at 4 PM on June 25 at the Metro Southeast Building, whether the Planning Commission is honest enough, and awake enough, to resist the pressure of big money and do the right thing.

music:  Incredible String Band, “Sleepers Awaken“

WHO ARE THE REAL BABY KILLERS?

Some of us were stunned and saddened last week when Dr.  George Tiller was murdered in church.  Some of us were not.

“I am glad George Tiller is dead”

That’s what “Reverend”  Wiley Drake, a former officer of the Southern Baptist Convention, told Fox News.  Drake said he has been praying for Tiller to  have a change of heart about abortion,but in the last year had been praying for Tiller’s death, because:

(Dr. Tiller) had obviously turned his back on God again and again and again,”

Drake called Tiller “a reprobate” and a “brutal, arrogant murderer” who “bragged on his own website how many babies he had killed.”

“Would you have rejoiced when Adolf Hitler died during the war?” Drake asked. “Or would you have said, ‘Oh that is terrible for him to be killed’? No, I would have said, ‘Amen, praise the Lord, hallelujah, I’m glad he’s dead.’”

Drake says Barack Obama is now the object of his “imprecatory prayers.”  Let me put it bluntly:  he is praying for Barack Obama to die soon.  Since Mr. Obama seems to be in excellent health, this sounds to me like a public call for the assassination of our President.  Now, I’m not a big Obama fan either, albeit for very different reasons, but that is going WAY too far.  C’mon, Homeland Security, ain’t this domestic terrorism?  But hey, he’s not a right-wing terrorist, he’s just exercising his freedoms of speech and religion…and the guy that murdered Dr. Tiller is one of the Lord’s avenging angels.  No causal connection between Drake’s hate speech and trigger man Scott Roeder.

Drake is just one example…. Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, and many other right wing pundits have been beating the drum against Dr. Tiller for years.  Coulter, commenting on other murders of abortion providers, said that you could say they had been shot,

….or, depending on your point of view, had a procedure performed on them with a rifle.

OK, let’s change our focus for a little while…mountain top removal, anyone?

In spite of their stated commitment to science over politics, the warnings of every credible climate scientist in the book, and Al Gore’s call for civil disobedience to prevent more coal plants from being built, the Obama administration appears to be ready to approve at least 42 of the 48 mountaintop removal projects currently on the EPA’s table.

The coal that will be produced from this massive environmental destruction will make a few corporate balance sheets look good, but it will release more poison into what’s left of the waters of West Virginia, where mercury levels are already dangerous for women who are or might become pregnant, and also, of course, cause the release of massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where it will eventually contribute to the deaths of millions, possibly billions, of babies–and adults–all over the world, as global warming creates a world in which the living may well envy the dead.  Kofi Annan, former UN leader who now runs the Global Humanitarian Forum, estimates that global warming is already killing 300,000 people a year, not counting the number of miscarriages due to malnutrition, which would probably swell that 300,000 by quite a bit, since about 45 million of the world’s 900 million hungry people are considered to be directly affected by climate change.  My reaction is, “only 45 million?!  They must have had to work on the numbers quite a bit to get it down to that level!”

Dr. Tiller helped women who did not want or felt incapable of raising the babies they were carrying.  The coal industry is indiscriminately slaughtering hundreds of thousands of children whose parents value them and do not want them to die. But hey, it’s totally indiscriminate–they’re killing parents and grandparents, too.  Not picking on the helpless unborn, nossir.

So, Reverend Drake, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, where are you on this issue?  If you’re really concerned about “the rights of the unborn,” maybe you should commence  “imprecatory prayers” against the coal companies and their many allies in Congress and the administration.  Or is it that “the rights of the unborn” is really just a cover, and your real agenda is the assertion of patriarchal control over womens’ bodies, and that’s why the destruction of the atmosphere and the murder of millions by the coal industry is irrelevant to you?

In the church I grew up in, we had a different name for “imprecatory prayer.”  Asking for bad things to happen to other people was called “black magic,” and needless to say, we did not recommend it.  Here we have a clear case of somebody who alleges he is a Christian practicing the dark arts….gee, just like Satan.  In my church, we all understood that if you asked for  evil to happen to someone  else, you had better be prepared for it to visit you.  So, when I consider the right-wing punditocracy and its sick, sad culture of death threats, I’m not going to wish evil on them.  They have already summoned it to themselves.  May God have mercy on their souls.

music:  Frank Zappa, “Jesus Thinks You’re a Jerk“(excerpt)

A “LET ‘EM EAT CAKE” MOMENT?

It’s old news by now, but the utter arrogance of Senator Max Baucus and the rest of the Senate Finance Committee as they had no fewer than thirteen single-payer health-care advocates arrested and removed from the room for protesting the utter arrogance of declaring single-payer health care “off the table” may have been the high water mark of corporatism in the United States.  May have been.

Two of the main foci of the debate so far have been whether to include a “public option”–an expanded version of Medicare for those unable to afford private insurance–or simply require everybody to buy private insurance, and subsidize the purchase.  That leads into the second focus, which centers on how to pay for the whole thing and how to keep costs within bounds.

There’s a lot to chew on here.  The insurance industry is rightfully afraid that a “public option” will shrink their market share, but there is widespread awareness of their greed, so they get little sympathy from the public for that.  In Congress, it’s another matter, unfortunately.   All those insurance premiums buy a lot of Senators and Representatives–like, f’rinstance, Max Baucus.  The last time Baucus ran for re-election, he faced a little-known, sacrificial Republican whom he beat handily.  Baucus, nevertheless, found it necessary to raise eleven million dollars for his campaign–about ten million of it from donors who do not live in Montana, and nearly two million  from “big health”–insurance, pharmaceutical, and health care companies. The other members of the Finance Committee, not all of whom had to run for office in 2008, collectively received over eleven million dollars from big med.  Can you say “campaign finance reform,” boys and girls?

Parenthetically, Baucus, who has received nearly five million dollars in contributions from combined finance, real estate, and insurance interests over the course of his career, was one of the Democrats who helped shoot down Obama’s proposal to give bankruptcy judges the power to lower the value of inflated  home mortgages.  With Democrats like him, who needs Republicans?  Another reason to go Green….

The first rule of politics in this country is, “don’t bite the hands that feed you,” and this scale of feed makes it obvious that we can’t trust Baucus, among others, to really reform our health care system any more than we can trust Tim Geithner to reform Wall Street.  These guys are not part of the solution, they’re part of the problem, foxes guarding the hen house–and you and I are the hens in this situation, folks.

Republicans are, of course, staunchly opposed to “the public option.”  They have declared it prima facie evidence that Obama is engineering a socialist revolution in the US.  Look, people, I really am a socialist, and I’m here to tell you, Obama ain’t one of us.  To use somewhat antiquated rhetoric:  to me, , Mr. Obama looks like a slavering lapdog of the Capitalist system–giving all that money to Wall Street, no strings attached, and you Repuglycans are calling him a socialist!!??  Truly, either your ignorance or your gall, or more likely both, know no bounds!  But, I digress….

Anyway, the Repuglycans’ “right to life” principles appear to apply to insurance companies much more strongly than they do to people who cannot afford medical care, because they are pushing for a plan that will simply, a la Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts, require people to buy private insurance, and provide some level of subsidy for those who can’t afford it out of pocket.  Everybody is being too polite to point out that requiring individuals to support bloated corporations  or face fines is fascism–the marriage of government and big business for their mutual benefit–at its very worst, so I guess I’ll have to do the dirty job of pointing it out myself:  Republicans are fascists…got it?  The sad thing is that many Dimocrats, in the “spirit of bipartisanship,” are thinking about “being reasonable” and capitulating on this, severely limiting the “public option” one way or another, essentially guaranteeing that the alarm in the hen house will only go off when the fox wants to ring it.  It’s enough to make you wish for a strong Green Party presence in Congress.  The GP has never wavered in its support for single-payer, not-for profit health care.

Since Obama’s solution to the piracy on Wall Street has been to throw money at the pirates, it’s not surprising that the knee-jerk reaction of many of our politicians in both major parties has been to try and find a way to subsidize private, for-profit insurance companies so they can offer some kind of coverage to everyone–and let’s not forget that one of the chief causes of bankruptcy and foreclosure is medical expenses–even among people who actually have insurance.

That’s where the plan to “solve” the problem by bloating the insurance business even further is running into difficulties.  There just ain’t enough loose cash left in the system to feed these vampires.  We gave it all to Wall Street and Detroit already.  Some congressmen thought maybe they could tax peoples’ health benefits and give the money to the insurance companies, but Obama campaigned against that, and he’s unlikely to do a U-turn on it.  They thought maybe they could require all employers to provide insurance, but too many people are unemployed and too many employers are already financially stressed.  So, gee, it starts looking like the only excess cash left around is…in the for-profit medical biz!  Gee whiz!  Who woulda thunk it?  So Congress is finally starting to listen to single-payer advocates, although there’s no guarantee of any results.

There certainly is plenty of fat to be cut from the illness care industry. ( Let’s quit calling it “health care,” because they don’t really care about keeping people healthy–it’s  when you’re sick and spending money on it that your contribution to the GNP skyrockets. )  As I detailed three years ago on this show, drug company profit margins are simply insane.  They take pills that cost them pennies to produce and sell them, frequently, for hundreds of times their actual production cost.  These are the people who solemnly promised us that they would shave one and a half percent off their future profit margins over the next decade.   How big of them!

Screw shaving their profits!  Big Pharma executives should shave their heads (or maybe quit shaving), give up their wealth, and walk across America on their knees in sackcloth and ashes, begging our forgiveness, and be pelted with rotten vegetables and the contents of bedpans at every opportunity.

Well, OK, maybe that’s a little extreme.  Maybe having them dump bedpans and other refuse in the proper receptacle  (a flyproof compost pile, imho) would be penance enough.  But, I’m digressing again…revenge fantasies…arrgh.

My point is that there is nearly enough slack to create a universal health care system if we take the slack out of the for-profit illness business and stress prevention and self-care.  Putting higher taxes on gasoline could contribute to this, as well as pushing more people to seek alternatives to driving.  This is one of the ways European countries have paid for their universal health care systems.

There is one other question I’d like to address while I’m talking about health care, and that is the social effects of our private, limited-access system.  It discourages small business startups, such as small farms, for example, because they rise–or fall–on the health of the entrepreneur.  One uninsured accident or illness, and your business is toast.  I cannot help but wonder if this is intentional, a way for big business to discourage outside innovation and competition.  At this time in our history, the old answers no longer make sense, and we need to do everything we can to encourage fresh thinking.  Universal health care will do that.

The various corporations who profit from illness in America, and the individuals who embody those corporations, are, in effect, vampires.   They get us in their clutches and, the sicker we get, the fatter they grow.  They are addicted to our blood, and will not give up their habit easily.  Maybe, just maybe, enough of our legislators will realize the time has come when there is no choice but to pelt the illness biz vampires with garlic and drive a stake through their collective hearts.  Maybe.

music:  William Burroughs/Bill Laswell, “Advice for Young People”

IS IT GETTING STUFFY IN HERE?

There’s been a lot of concern lately about rising carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere, but a recent study by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography raises an even more serious issue–the atmospheric oxygen level is dropping.

It hasn’t fallen by much, yet, but we are running on a narrow margin when it comes to oxygen.  Our atmosphere is about 20% oxygen, and, according to OSHA standards,

“if the oxygen level in… an environment falls below 19.5% it is oxygen deficient, putting occupants of the confined space at risk of losing consciousness and death.”

To requantify that, while our atmospheric CO2 level has risen by nearly 50% and not made enough difference to get most peoples’ attention, a drop in the atmospheric oxygen level of just 2.5% would kill us.  Long before that occurred, decreasing atmospheric oxygen would make it difficult to think clearly.  Maybe we, and other surviving species, could make a quick evolutionary adaptation to lower oxygen levels.  Maybe not.

That still might not alarm some people….”Hey, a tenth of a percent in two hundred years?  It’ll be 5,000 years before we run low!  No problem–for us, anyway!  Let’s party!”

The authors of the article that brought this phenomenon to my attention, in fact, didn’t seem too concerned about the possibility of oxygen depletion, but I was surprised by some of the things they didn’t mention–such as the fact that both our major sources of oxygen are at risk.  On land, the richly diverse, oxygen-producing rain forests of the world are being turned into cardboard boxes, toilet paper, and two-by-fours–and the ground they occupied, its natural cycle disrupted, dries up and turns into savannah, which produces only a fraction of the oxygen generated by rain forest.  At sea, the continued acidification of the ocean threatens the continued existence of microscopic sea life that produces 70-80% of the oxygen in our atmosphere.  And then there’s plastic poisoning…more on that later.

So, if we don’t end our carbon-dioxide belching ways, or if we pass a tipping point that sets runaway greenhouse conditions in motion, we really could smother ourselves, probably in a lot less than five thousand years.  Hey, all you folks making big noises about “the rights of the unborn”–how about this issue?

Now for the “DEEP green perspective” on this.

Humans have been seriously exploiting the planet’s oil and coal deposits for only about two hundred years, and in that  time we have used up about half the available crude oil and most of the best-quality coal, and have begun digging into “tar sands” in Canada and Venezuela, and “lignite” coal in a variety of locations.   Tar sands would have become good quality oil in another few million years, just as lignite, in the natural geological evolution of the planet, would eventually have become anthracite coal. What’s the hurry here?

Both coal and oil  were created when massive amounts of living matter, mostly plants, were buried and compressed for millions of years.  At our current rates of consumption, we probably have enough oil and coal left in the ground for another hundred years or so of our current lifestyle, or maybe a little longer, since as they become rarer, their prices will rise and inhibit consumption.   That will leave a gap of millions of years with effectively no available oil or coal on the planet–for all intents and purposes, they will be gone forever, which is too bad, because they are very useful, and the eight-hundred pound gorilla in the room where we predict our future  is that solar power, wind power, and biofuels, for all they can do, cannot replace the many functions coal and oil serve in our culture.  In fact, they are all, to some extent, dependent on a continuing supply of “conventional” fuels for their manufacture and deployment.  Oops!

It seems that, until recently, it didn’t occur to anyone that we might run out of petroleum and coal, with the result that we, like not-so-Wiley Coyote, have run off a cliff without noticing, and are about to fall a long way, with a very painful landing awaiting us.

Moreover, by burning so much oil and coal all at once, we have done serious damage to the web of life on this planet.  It’s the only planet we have to live on, y’know?

If we were the only species at risk from our own behavior, I would say we were suicidal.  But, since we have decimated or eliminated so many other species on the planet, I classify our behavior as not just suicidal, but murderously sociopathic.

If we had the intelligence with which we like to credit ourselves, we would have realized long ago, when the first coal mines played out and the first oil wells went dry, that there are only limited quantities of these marvelous hydrocarbons available, and rationed them out carefully like the precious substances they are, stretching our coal and petroleum supplies to last for thousands, not hundreds, of years, sparing damage to our environment, and allowing us plenty of time for careful research and transition out of our dependency on these irreplaceable gifts.

But no, we have not done that.  We have exploited limited resources that took millions of years to create and burned them senselessly or turned them into stupid plastic crap that made a few people materially wealthy for a very few years and now will impoverish and sicken our children and what descendants they can manage to conceive for untold generations to come.  Again, I have to ask, “where are all the ‘Right to Life’ people on this issue?”  and I have to wonder what makes us think we are “Homo sapiens,” “the wise human”?  Has our behavior really been so “wise”?  Give me a break!

music:  Talking Heads, “Air“

WILL I EVER GET OUT OF WONDERLAND?

“Who cares for you?” said Alice (She had grown to her full size by this time.) “you’re nothing but a pack of cards!”

At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her: she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and tried to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon her face.

`Wake up, Alice dear!’ said her sister; `Why, what a long sleep you’ve had!’

`Oh, I’ve had such a curious dream!’ said Alice…

from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, pps. 123-4

I often wish I would wake from this curious, diseased dream, and find my eyesight restored, my pulse and blood pressure always boringly normal, my ability to function on six hours’ sleep given back to me, my memory as good as it used to be, and the raft of prescription medicines and supplements that I am taking disappeared from my medicine shelf–or, at least in the case of the supplements, diminished to what a healthy person would use to stay healthy.

Alas, dreaming is my only respite from awareness of my condition.  In my sleep I don’t even have the tinnitus and deafness that used to be my worst medical complaint, and so it seems that the only waking that will dispel the physical suffering that is, in some measure, my constant companion, will be waking out of this life into whatever comes after it.

The pack of cards that harasses me is a constant stream of bills for medical services; so far, my debt is growing faster than am paying it down.  This notion of medical debt seems bizarre to me.  I am recovering from a heart attack and a stroke. and any doctor worth his or her medical degree would tell me to avoid stress; but it’s hard not to feel stressed about my deepening debts, especially now, with the economy tanking and the ranks of the unemployed swelling.  On a homestead like ours, I always feel like I’ve got something better to do than go beat the bushes for a job, but money is still a concern.

And so, in spite of my best efforts (or, to be Buddhist about it, non-efforts) to maintain my equanimity, sometimes my heart rate soars and plunges, and my blood pressure along with it, and I find myself wondering once again if I am taking my  final roller-coaster ride.  So far, none of these episodes has lasted long enough to land me back at that painfully expensive emergency room, but just when I think I’m out of the woods and going to be just fine, I get another reminder that I am not a young man any more and that I am now, thanks to my stroke, as pharmaceutically dependent as any junkie.   If things ever get to the point that I can’t get warfarin any more, I will just have to eat lots of raw garlic, smoke lots of weed, drink gingko tea, and stay calm.  That regimen might work as well as coumadin in preventing strokes, but frankly I am not enthusiastic about the possibility that I will eventually be a human guinea pig for such an experiment.

Unlike what Alice found in Wonderland, the doctors I have dealt with (other than the humorless chap at the clinic) have not been a pack of nut jobs.  The cardiologists I see are a couple of enthusiastic, open-minded young women, one from Africa and the other from the Middle East.  They appreciate having a patient who is eager to be proactive, and greeted my desire to avoid statin drugs with tolerance, if not perhaps total understanding, and readily prescribed niacin for me as an alternative.  (I should explain that I have remarkably high cholesterol readings for a vegan.  I attribute it to, first, stress from my congestive heart failure, and second, inactivity.  We’ll discover in June if renewed activity, getting over CHF, and taking lots of niacin have lowered my cholesterol levels.)  (I have to wonder if eating a lot of unfermented soy products and large quantities of leafy green vegetables acted to disrupt my thyroid function, which can lead to heart irregularity.)

I regard statin drugs with a great deal of suspicion,  Our bodies have good reasons for making cholesterol, some of which involve facilitating brain and muscle function, and the huge amount of money that statin drugs generate for their manufacturers makes me wonder if its serious drawbacks will soon be exposed in the same way that medical frauds like Vioxx and hormone replacement therapy turned out to be far more harmful than helpful.

This points to one of the main reasons we need to reform our entirehealth care paradigm. Private companies are out to make a profit, and only secondarily to serve the public good.  Only when the first purpose of medical research is service and healing, and profits and shareholders are removed from the equation,  will we have a truly unbiased medical system.  There is no profit for private corporations in prevention, nor in herbal medicines people can grow for themselves, and these modalities will not get a fair hearing in our current medical paradigm.

The doctor I see most often is the guy who adjusts my warfarin levels, which need to get checked every couple of weeks to a month.  He is, I suspect, more tolerant than enthusiastic about my interest in herbal medicine, as he occasionally lets out little things like “studies have shown ginkgo isn’t really effective, anyway, so you shouldn’t be upset about not being able to use it with warfarin.”  That, as far as I can tell, is a half-truth; ginkgo has been found to be effective for some things and not for others, but often the slant of the mainstream medical press is to discredit herbal or vitamin-based remedies.  They can’t be patented, so there’s no money in them, y’know?

One example of this is that research discrediting vitamin E has all been done with Alpha-tocopherol vitamin E only, while nutritionists are touting mixed-tocopherol vitamin E.

Another is the fact that the amount of resveratrol present in a glass of wine is not enough, when isolated, to have any effect on health–but when that amount of resveratrol is combined with the other chemicals present in wine, a synergistic effect takes place that results in health benefits.  Thus the “French paradox”:  the French diet is high in fats and other substances that should result in a much higher rate of heart disease than actually occurs in France.  Western science, with its take-the-watch-apart-and-see-how-it-works approach, just doesn’t get it, and I doubt if my warfarin guy will either, so I don’t argue with him very much.  We’re likely to have a long relationship, and I want to keep it friendly.

I have been through a major life transition since last August.  I am no longer the oldest young man around; I’m now on the young edge of being an old man.  I do my best to get to bed early, tend to feel like leaving social events no later than ten PM, and think frequently about when I need to take  my next medications.   I take my blood pressure twice a day, and listen to my heart with a stethoscope daily.  I wonder if I will ever see the New Mexico back country again, or take the communion of Santo Daime or the Native American Church, or take part in a sweat lodge or even enter a sauna.  I have been made painfully aware of my own mortality, and nothing can make me forget the ghost (my own) that stands at my side.  I take responsibility for diet and lifestyle decisions I made. and emotional habits I allowed to continue,  that may have helped rob me of my good health, but I also know that this probably wouldn’t have happened to me in a society with a saner health care system.  I know my time and strength are limited, and I know I had better make the best use of them I can.

music:  Kate Wolf, “Unfinished Life“

AS IF THERE WILL BE NO DELUGE…

A number of bits of local news and commentary have come to my attention lately:  Mayor Dean’s “State of the City” address, the report of the Green Ribbon Committee for a Sustainable Nashville, news that the “reform” of Tennessee’s waste management policies is not only a shambles but a sham, and the renewed push for construction of Maytown Center, along with the howls of misguided (or intentionally misleading) protest that accompanied my characterization of its neo-feudal potential last month.

Hizzoner the Mayor used his moment in the spotlight to push for a new Nashville Convention Center, a sort of “build it and they will come,” Hail Mary pass proposal that has been so thoroughly excoriated by the Nashville Scene that I hardly need to go into detail here, except to answer their “what are they smoking?” question with, “must be crack, ’cause any self-respecting pot smoker would see through this welfare-for-developers proposal in a minute.”  I would also add that anybody who thinks any kind of tourism is going to make a comeback is inhaling the wrong kind of smoke.  The only big influx that I see in Nashville’s, or America’s, future, is Chinese and various Middle Easterners coming to repossess whatever they can in consideration of America’s unrepayable debt to them.  The “T” in “T-bills” is gonna stand for “toilet paper,” boys and girls.  Can you say “Confederate money”?

And, speaking of smoking crack, I have to repeat and re-emphasize that anyone who thinks Maytown Center is going to be good for Nashville is still living in the delusionary world of the Bush era.  Growth is over.  If it is built, Maytown will either rapidly turn into a ghost town or suck the air out of the rest of the city and become a gated version of downtown, so the upper crust doesn’t have to cross paths with the homeless.

We would be much better off using the energy that the city’s movers and shakers are putting into these mirages to fast-track and expand some of the proposals in the Green Ribbon Committee’s report, which is at least well-intentioned, if woefully under-ambitious.  I feel bad about having to say that.  I know some of the people on the Committee, and I trust their good will. I went to one of their public meetings, and I think the document they have produced is radical and edgy–for 1975.  At this point, it is too little, too late.    Can we create a sustainable local economy that will support our current population?  Can we produce enough hoes and digging forks for everybody to turn up the ground it will take to keep ourselves in potatoes, let alone manufacture  our own shoes and clothing? Ain’t none of that happening here in Nashvegas any more, — how many weavers and cobblers are there in this town?  We sold our industrial capacity to the Chinese for a mess of profit, and we are about to find out that money is nothing but funny-looking paper once everybody agrees it’s worthless.

The landfill proposals that so outrage my friends at BURNT (Bring Urban Recycling to Nashville Today) are another head-shaker, another high-stakes poker game, played with a marked deck, in the tilting first-class lounge of the Titanic.  Of course, as James Howard Kunstler points out in World Made By Hand, all the recyclables we stick in landfills now are a kind of savings account that we will be able to mine in coming decades, when we will be out of natural resources and the ability to acquire them through commerce, and will have nothing better to do than dig up old city dumps, straighten bent nails, melt down and recast plastic and metal, and treasure the one or two chemists in our city who figure out how to make matches from local materials–because all those disposable lighters we take for granted are gonna be a thing of the past in the future, folks.  Do I have to remind you that you are going to have to cook with a wood fire, unless you’re lucky enough to have a solar cooker and a sunny day? And where will you be gathering your firewood?

Oh, and speaking of rigged poker games on the Titanic, our newly-Republican legislature is attempting to make sure that we don’t switch to optical-scan voting machines in time for the next election, presumably so they can rig it more easily, since they are doing such a patently bad job of running the state that they know they won’t be able to win an honest election…not that the Dims would be much better, it’s just a question of who controls what’s left of the state’s treasury.   Well, OK…the Dims would be doing nothing instead of forbidding local living wage laws, allowing people to carry guns everywhere and restricting abortion rights. “Respect for human life”? HELLO?

As all the various antics listed above indicate, either both parties are clueless about the scope of what we’re in for in this country, or they are figuring the best way to survive is to cut as many people out of the loop as possible.  If national politics are any guide, I would say the Repuglyicans are trying to cut as many of us out of the loop as they can (leaving more goodies for themselves), and the Dim-ocrats are simply clueless.  In this state, most seem to think the best strategy is to try and be as conservative as the Repugs, but since they lack the intense commitment to self-aggrandizement that characterizes so many Repugs, they end up coming across as clueless namby-pambys, which is one reason (besides ignorance and its bastard child, racism) they have been fluffing so many elections lately–like, it wasn’t just that Harold Ford is black, it’s that he’s barely to the left of Bob Corker. Not only is Harold no Jesse Jackson, he’s not even a Barack Obama.

Let me make something clear here–I  am as threatened as anyone by the future I foresee.  Western civilization as we know it needs to end for the planetary ecosystem (including humans) to continue, and I, an aging man with health problems, may not survive the change.  With that in mind, I want to make that transition as smooth as I can, so I am living as simply as I can, and supporting organizations that I believe will help cushion our descent, like our local bioregional council and the Tennessee Green Party.  As long as we have a functioning statewide political system (and I am not going to hazard a guess on how long that may be), we need to take advantage of it and use the framework of the Green Party to raise real issues:  local sustainability, resource conservation, universal access to health care, economic justice, and grass-roots democracy, to name the first few broad headings that come to mind.  There is SO much to do, and we’re  running the Green Party of Tennessee with a skeleton crew–so come on aboard, there’s plenty of room.

music:  Eliza Gilkyson, “Unsustainable“

WHEN THE SOLUTION IS OFF THE TABLE

Barack Obama’s left-liberal and self-styled radical supporters are having to contort themselves ever more bizarrely in order to maintain their faith in Barack the Hero.  One writer recently claimed that Barack’s strategy in hiring such champions of the establishment as Tim Geithner, Tom Vilsack, etc., is “give ‘em enough rope and they’ll hang themselves”–that there is simply too much momentum behind the failed policies so enthusiastically followed by these insiders to stop them in their tracks–we have to let them play out until it’s obvious to everyone that continuing to subsidize the Washington/Wall Street magicians who made this mess is just going to sink us deeper.

Excuse me, guys,that’s wishful thinking.  Just about everybody in the world knows who the crooks and thieves are, and what they did, and what ought to be done to them by way of justice, but the US still has the biggest military in the world and the jet fuel to make it work, and as long as we have that gun pointed at their heads and as long as our creditors think there’s a prayer of getting some kind of payback on their US investments, the rest of the world will continue to be polite to us, until we’re too drowned in our own juices to put up a fight, and then the fun will begin.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration continues to favor the rich and screw the poor, on just about every issue you can name.

At the recent “health care summit” at the White House, the most popular opinion–that we need single-payer, not-for-profit, “Medicare for everyone,” was only included, at a token level, at the last minute, due to popular outcry.  As with the bank mess, the government’s emphasis continues to be on ensuring the continued existence of a private, for-profit system and its governing elite than on insuring Americans.  Single payer health care is off the table.

The recent “stimulus bill” spent money on rebuilding roads, but largely neglected mass transit and intercity railroads,  in the face of the fact that all three American automakers are on the verge of failure.  Who is going to be able to afford a new car in the future?  Who are we trying to kid here?  The obvious solution to the Detroit dilemma would have been for them to start building rail passenger vehicles instead of cars, but nooo….that was off the table.

The question of legalizing marijuana as a way out of the “War on Drugs” has repeatedly been thrown in Obama’s face, and he just smiles and rolls his eyes and dismisses “the online audience,”  when it was the  same “online audience” who gave him his big break.  Well, considering that those folks backed a candidate who is now basically telling them to go BLEEP themselves, maybe marijuana use wasn’t all that good for their powers of discernment…but hey, I never trusted the guy.  Like old Cheech and Chong movies, some of the people who love the herb the most can give it a bad name…but I digress..anyway, marijuana legalisation is off the table.

Of course, withdrawing US forces from the Afghani quagmire (and using all the money we’re burning there for domestic needs)  is off the table.

And, speaking of war, there’s the war crimes issue…we now know why Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid always said impeaching Bush and Cheney was “off the table”:  the leading Democrats were complicit in the torture, the illegality of our invasion of Iraq in the first place, and the fabrication of evidence that “justified” it, and so any investigation of the Cheney/Bush junta would inevitably point back to them.  We hung Japanese soldiers who waterboarded Americans, and we hung Nazis commanders and commoners for giving orders and “only following orders,” but when Americans do that (to dark-skinned people, by the way), we may crucify a few low-level soldiers, but their superiors will go free or get a slap on the wrist, or, as Apologist-General, excuse me, I mean Attorney General, Holder said, possible disciplinary action from their Bar Associations.  War crimes trials, smoking gun or no, are off the table.

And you can bet that if we’re not going to prosecute our war criminals, we’re not going to be prosecuting our financial criminals.   Making Wall Street pay for screwing us, instead of paying them to keep doing it?  Off the table.

So, if every solution dictated by common sense, or common decency, is “off the table,” what’s ON the table?

Just as “In nomine Patrii, Filii, et Spiritus Sanctus” was the mantra of state-sanctioned religion in ages past, so “continued economic growth” is the mantra of our current state religion, Radical Fundamental Economic Materialism.  Lots of right-wing nutjobs like to claim that Obama studied at some madrassa somewhere, all the while ignoring the reality that the University of Chicago, where he did study, is an American madrassa that sheltered the dangerous religious fanatic Milton Friedman, whose fundamentalist preachments have inspired thousands of Neo-Cons and Neo-Liberals to implement policies that have cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives, and ruined millions more.   These guys make the Taliban look small-time, know what I mean?

Now, Obama is no neo-con, but he is definitely showing himself to be a neo-liberal, and as such–I wish it wasn’t the case–as  out-of-touch and unfit to govern as his late, much more obviously inept predecessor.  We cannot have “continued economic growth” on this finite, resource-limited planet.  We could have parceled out our oil for really necessary, important stuff, and had it for thousands of years, meanwhile avoiding all the pollution we have caused by burning it so fast, but no, we (or rather, our supposedly responsible “Captains of Industry”) chose to use it up as quickly as possible.  “Maximum profits now, to hell with later,” has been our motto for the last couple of hundred years, and now it is later, and the maximum profits are over, and what are we going to do?

One core belief of Radical Fundamentalist Economic Materialism that bears examination is its firm commitment to “compound interest,” a notion that assumes that we will always be wealthier in the future than we have been in the past.  This is turning out to be as illusory as the notion that Muslim martyrs will have twenty virgins waiting for them in Paradise….okay, we don’t know that that’s a false promise, nobody’s reported back from Paradise to confirm or deny…hey, maybe they’re too busy with all those virgins….but you get my drift.

All the obscure financial devices that have lately blown up in our faces have been attempts by devotees of Radical Fundamentalist etc. to get around the fact that there are limits to growth.  They could succeed no more than the nineteenth century’s dreams of ascending to the moon in a hot-air balloon.  The small-scale parallel to these big “financial instruments” is the idea that we can somehow get Americans to borrow money and be” consumers” again, and that will “get our economy moving again.”  It ain’t gonna happen, folks.  If it did, it would just screw up the US’s balance of payments, the world oil market, and the environment even further.

So, that’s what’s “on the table.”  In  a word, “baloney.”  Continued support for the wealthy, continued repression of the poor and open-minded (hence the refusal to fix our crazy drug laws), and continuing to keep America’s gun held to the rest of the world’s head.  What’s to do?

It’s time, and past time, to kick over the table and take the lunatic’s gun away.  Not in the sense of staging a violent revolution, which is an impossible, romantic dream in a culture as vast and complex as ours, but by carefully, quietly moving from the ground up to create local networks, elect sensible local officials, and then move on to the state and national levels.  There is still time to do this, but, like every other resource on the planet, that time is running out.  We had better seize the day.

music:  Grateful Dead, “New Speedway Boogie“

OF “SEXTING” AND PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT

“Sexting” is, in one sense, just the latest titillating diversion offered by the mainstream media.    ABC news labels it a “dangerous new teen trend.”  Prosecutors, eager to “protect public morality,” have jumped into the fray, indicting 14-year old girls on child pornography charges–for taking pictures of themselves, naked or sometimes in “training bras” and panties,  and sharing them with their friends–they’re not selling them, folks, come on!  Show a little humor and common sense about silly kids!  A teenager who sent out pictures of herself in a two-piece bathing suit was indicted along with her more revealing friends, because the prosecutor found her pose “suggestive,” conveniently ignoring the participation of his own perception in this finding.

The ACLU, bless its heart, has gone to bat for some of these poor kids and their parents, but others have been easier to intimidate and not so lucky.  Teenagers are being labeled “sex offenders,” or forced into “re-education programs.”  On which side of the Iron Curtain did we last hear that phrase?  Can you say, “sex crimes,” boys and girls?

I don’t understand why teenagers’ willingness to trade in nude or suggestive pictures of themselves should come as a shock to anyone.  AsWE mammals, we are “sexually mature” from about the age of 13 on, and especially at this young age are driven more by hormonal urges than by the wisdom that only comes with experience and maturity.  Unless we find a way to genetically modify ourselves and delay an interest in sexuality until children reach “the legal age,” this will continue to be the case, just as it always has been.  Kids have always played truth or dare; the only difference is that, with widespread (pardon the punf digital photography, it’s easier to make–and share–a record of one’s daring behavior.  Hey, sharing pictures is a whole lot “safer” than actually playing show-me-yours-and-I’ll-show-you-mine face to face.

The prosecutors and District Attorneys are right about one thing:  there is child abuse going on here, but they are the ones abusing these children.  The children are just being human.  Often enough, the pictures they have taken simply mimic images they have seen in the mainstream media.  Are the prosecutors going to bust Victoria’s Secret for putting the kids up to it?

Perhaps the strategy behind this prosecutorial misconduct is to intimidate these kids and their friends into toeing some religion-dictated moral line to ensure that a certain, very straightlaced standard is maintained, but I have a feeling this strategy will backfire.  For one thing, we’re not supposed to use the law to enforce religious doctrine–granted, that’s widely ignored.  From the  kids’ point of view, these “authority figures” are humiliating them and making assholes of themselves, and the next generation will remember that and carry it  into their adult lives.  Sooner or later, these kids and their friends will be responsible adult voters, and you can bet they will remember how they were treated and how it felt and, other than the few who succumb to brainwashing, they will want to make sure that ITnever happens to their kids.  (Assuming, of course, that our political system continues more or less as is for another generation or so–well, let’s assume that, OK?)

One thing that this kind of prosecutorial misconduct reveals is the faulty, adversarial nature of our so-called “justice” system.  Like the many death row inmates who have been exonerated by DNA evidence, these kids have been railroaded by a system geared to “fight crime” that uses only very blunt instruments to do so, and that tends to reward prosecutors for convictions, whether they are justified or not.  Sure, the Florida boy who responded to an argument with his girlfriend by emailing nude pictures of her to her entire family was a jerk, but labeling him a sex offender seems to me to be an entirely inappropriate response.  A saner way to deal with children and families who feel violated by sexting would be through victim-offender reconciliation programs, which operate in many locales, including here in Nashville, and look at the question of what the offender can do to make it up to the victim, which generally does not involve jail time  In many of these “sexting” situations,  the “offenders” and the “victims” are the same person, and the question becomes, “is this really a ‘crime’?”

As I said above, I think a lot of what kids are doing is echoing the sexualized society they are growing up in, and this is an issue we need to address, too, but not by prohibiting sexually charged images.  Besides, sexual charge is very much in the eye of the beholder, MR. PROSECUTOR.

I see our cultural obsession with sex at two levels:  the first is that, because reproduction is a drive basic to our mammalian nature, flaunting images  of studly guys and willing women with wide hips and large mammary glands is a very good way to get peoples’ attention if you’re trying to sell a product.  The other, deeper level, is that the promise of intimacy implied by these images is so compelling to us  because we feel its lack so severely so much of the time.  All this public display of sexuality is balanced, in a weird way, bywidespread inner feelings of alienation and isolation, as the economic matrix that drives  our country shunts us further and further from both real, meaningful human interaction and satisfying, meaningful work experiences. That’s the real solution to the real problem.  Concern over “sexting” is just a symptom.

If we manage to turn this around voluntarily, so much the better for us, and coming generations. In a saner society, neither we nor our children would be neuroticized into an unhealthy preoccupation with sex.  If collapse overtakes us before we correct our unbalanced eroticism, we will go back to being far too busy to indulge in it, and nobody will have cell phones, digital cameras, or the internet  anyway.  I’m voting for the gentler path.

music:  Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention:  “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It”

Leonard Cohen, “Story of Isaac”