Health Care and The Post Office

I worked for the post office yesterday. While I was sorting mail a few of us got into a dicussion about universal health care. One of the guys said "but you realize we're going to have to pay for that." This takes me back to an excerpt out of a blog post I read before going to work.

"It is utterly ridiculous that any adult cannot figure out the obvious inequity of this nation and American capitalism, where an elite one percent of the people grab 45% of the national pie. Such a conditioned stupidity and powerlessness makes you want to cry for your country." Joe Bageant

The top 1% of the income bracket can pay for it.

When are we going to start talking about the wealth gap in America?

Letter to the Editor 7/20/09

I wrote a letter to our local newspaper's editor this week.

Honesty

It was refreshing to read "Oil Prices Rising and as Supply Falls", by Dave Thomas from The Ashland Daily Press last week. It was especially refreshing to read this line at the end of his article: "As Oil prices climb higher, let's hope we find a third mode to address the challenges ahead. A good place to start would be to re-localize our food and energy production and scale down our community size to stay within local carrying capacity. It will happen anyway--through responsible planning, personal change, and careful transition, or through complaceny, panic, and crisis."

He's right, our civilization is collapsing. Of course, looking back at the history of civilizations in the past all of them eventually do. The question is: what are we going to do about it? Mr. Thomas's letter clearly and honestly states the issues that we have to address if we want this collapse to be less painful than others have been in the past. I'm glad he wrote it. I hope to see more like it printed in The Spooner Advocate.

If I could find the link to the article that I responded to I'd post it.

It was nice to see issues like: human overpopulation, carrying capacity, Peak Oil, local economies, and food production addressed in our local newspaper. Although I was hoping the author would've mentioned civilization. Those problems he talked about that need to be addressed are all symptoms of civilization, for the most part.

Grunting

I'm interested in writing and writers. It all started with Daniel Quinn's Ishmael. Before reading Ishmael I could have cared less about writing and writers. I read one book before the age of 25, and that was Night, by Elie Wiesel.

The past year or so I've been following Micheal Perry. He's a writer from Wisconsin. Lives about 2 hours to the south of me in a little town called New Auburn. He's been writing for about 20 years now and has a few books published.

Every writer has a process. Micheal says his process is a lot like grunting. He just puts it all down and then organizes and edits and organizes and edits until it looks good.

I like that idea and that's what I've been doing lately. Not nearly enough of it though. It's probably a combination of thinking I don't have anything important to say, lack of grammatical and technical writing skills, and putting myself out there.

I enjoy it when I do it though.

Weaving

Just some notes here. Lately I've been reading various works by Vine Deloria. He's wise. Take this quote for example:

Now, every society needs educated people, but the primary responsibility of educated people must be to bring wisdom back into the community and make it available to others. Because of hierarchies, European thinkers have not performed their proper social function. Instead, science and philosophy have taken the path already taken by Western religion and mystified themselves. The people who occupy the top positions in science, religion, and politics have one thing in common: they are responsible for creating a technical language incomprehensible to the rest of us, so that we will cede to them our right and responsibility to think. They, in turn, formulate a set of beautiful lies that lull us to sleep and distract us from our troubles, eventually depriving us of all rights - including, increasingly, the right to a livable world.

This takes me back to this excerpt out the Story of B:

"Animism looks for truth in the universe, not in books, revelations, and authorities. Science is the same. Though animism and science read the universe in different ways, both have complete confidence in its truthfulness." Pg. 136

Daniel Quinn goes on to explain how animism finds truth in the universe in a language that most people can understand. He has brought "wisdom back into the community and made it available to others." I'm really glad that he took the time to do this. He is wise too.

How's that for simplicity?

MP3 Recording of Jensen Interview

Someone on a message board that I belong to listened to the interview and recorded it. You can contact them at panopticsort[at]gmail[dot]com to receive a link where you can download the mp3 to it. Don't worry I asked them for permission to do this so they won't be surprised to hear from you.

Good Interview

For those interested the interview on WOJB went well with Derrick. So well they are seriously considering having him on atleast once a month to continue the conversation.

I can't help but think about these words by Daniel Quinn when it comes to Derrick's work, "Derrick Jensen sees as clearly as I do the disastrous impact the Taker Thunderbolt is having on our planet."

In my community there is a lot of confusion when it comes to understanding the disastrous impact Takers are having on the planet. It's a relief to have Derrick on our local radio station helping us understand this. Now all that WOJB needs to do is set up a monthly conversation with Daniel Quinn and this community member will be a happy camper.

Derrick Jensen and WOJB

I'm excited. I recently found out that Derrick Jensen will be a guest on our local radio station. I've been waiting awhile. I first suggested they have him on about five years ago now. I'm glad there were others that did the same, usually it takes more than one person's suggestion (like the show host's good friend) to make something like this happen.

I talked to the show host for a few minutes this morning. He was excited about the interview. He mentioned that he's agreed with Derrick's premises privately for a couple of years now. He also mentioned the conversation that was going on over at Orion's website concerning Derrick's article titled World at Gunpoint in the magazine's May/June issue. He said it would be great to have that conversation continued on his show. He hopes to have many local and internet listeners calling in.


Here is the description of the show:

Monday, July 6
At 10:00AM CDST Derrick Jensen will talk about his book What We Leave Behind on WOJB-88.9FM Reserve, Wisconsin with the station's Public Affairs Director Eric Schubring. The live broadcast will be available to internet listeners at www.wojb.org. Listeners will be invited to join the conversation at 800-776-3689 or 715-634-2100.

WOJB-88.9FM broadcasts from the Lac Courte Orielles (pronounced La-Coo-Dah-Ray) Ojibwa Reservation in northwest Wisconsin. The 100-thousand watt radio station was established in 1982 and remains the only Native American owned and operated radio station east of the Mississippi. Beginning with its first broadcasts WOJB has been recognized as a source for information on peace, justice, environment and equity issues as well as an eclectic mix of music.