Command, Control, and Compulsion

I was thinking of Derrick Jensen's book "Walking on Water," which does a really good job laying bare the effects of compulsory schooling, yesterday while sorting mail. Compulsory schooling, which almost all of us reading this has experienced and champion, prepared me for working in a command and control buisness like the USPS. One parallel between the two structures is there is very little, if any opportunity to offer feedback to change the structure. You're expected to show up, listen to authority, and do what you're told. Because look around you, there are people more than willing and happy to do what you do. Both structures are far from being democratic, and they operate on this assumption so eloquently laid out at the beginning of the 20th century by the founder of scientific management, Fredrick Winslow Taylor:

"In the past man has been first; in the future the System must be first."

Snowballs at Night

I wrote this poem this morning. There is no form to it. The only form I know and have practiced is the haiku. I've had fun with that so far. I never regret my attempts ato creating with words.

Standing under the night sky
with shoulders and toes pointed
toward the old, red barn wall.
Sophia, son and I let snowballs fly.
The boy of beginnings returns
with bats, balls, and boundless time.

Kids, Spit, and Snow Leopards

I just got done being sprayed with spit. Somehow the morning conversation between my 3 kids led into snow leopards. Sophia, my daughter of 4, is wearing a leopard print shirt. Daniel, son of 17, says it looks snow leopardish. Hayden, my son of 7, wants to know if it's "real" snow leopard. This is where I enter the conversation. I explain to him that they're rare and you'd probably never see anyone around here wearing snow leopard skins. He immediately wants to know if the President and police are putting up signs to protect them. I assure him they're being protected. It's not enough. He pulls out his snow leopard sword and proceeds to show me how he would protect them from killers by wielding his imaginary weapon and slashing and slicing it in the open space between us with full sound effects of the blade doing its job. The problem is that he's missing his two front teeth. Their job, in this instance, would be to catch the spit being forced out of his mouth from the sound effects of my son's heroic slaying of snow leopard killers. And that's why I am using my sleeve to wipe off my face. 

His head, hands, and heart are in the right place. Just would've been nice if his two front teeth were too!

Saving a Neighbor's Farm

Our family recently got involved in a campaign to help a local family save their organic farm. It's a micro-dairy that bottles the milk right their on the farm in half-gallon glass bottles, and produces other dairy products like yogurt, cheese curds, and such. They're in debt, like most farmers are, and are on the verge of being foreclosed on. It's been an uphill battle for them since 1990, and now they've decided to reach out to the community for help.

In one of our recent meetings it came up that they are sick of not only being in debt but being paid little or nothing for their labor. Then, this morning, in reading about how farming in america is being systematically destroyed I ran across this quote by an economist that predicts the country may soon just get out of the food buisness altogether. He notes:

"A golfer pays $275 to wander around on the turf at Pebble Beach for about 4 hours, and there is a waiting list to do it. How often do people pay farmers for the opportunity to wander around in their fields?" -- Quote from Bill McKibben's Deep Economy

I wish I had more to say about this besides it is utterly insane and just another indicator where we are headed as a nation, but I don't.

I am requesting, though, that if anyone out there has any organizations or individuals that we can turn to for financial support or to promote the campaign please let me know here or through private message. All suggestions and ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Vonnegut's Seeds

Sitting in silence drinking coffee with Daniel (17 yrs. old) at the kitchen table. It doesn't last long and I break it. There's a quote by Kurt Vonnegut (below) I'd like to share. In my role as an unschooling father, especially with mom out delivering mail, it's the best I've got to offer so far today. I reach to my right, swipe the smartphone screen and start reading it aloud with little or no effort. We're off to the races. It doesn't take long and Donald Trump walks into the conversation. Soon after that we're talking about uninitiated males. How they, especially young ones, will burn your city down. I make sure to add they'll burn the whole polis down. Then my son adds, "Isn't it interesting that most advertisements directed at men promote youth. If they could figure out a way for us to have a 24 hour erection they'd do it."

Thank you Mr. Vonnegut, wherever you are, for offering the seeds for a morning conversation with my son before I also head off to do mail duties.  

"'Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue,' the monograph went on. 'Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.'"

-Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, Or The Children's Crusade : A Duty-dance with Death (1969)

To Stand Or Not Stand

A few months back The American Legion declared all baseball players and coaches participating in baseball games sanctioned by TAL must stand for the national anthem at all events. If they don't they will be banned forever from baseball games sanctioned by the association. 

I wholeheartedly disagree with this. If my son, who is a 17 year old American Legion baseball player, decided not to stand for the anthem I would support him. Also, I've coached baseball from T-ball on up to the high school level. If one of my players chose not to stand I would also support them. I, on the other hand, had thought I would choose to stand as a coach. My thinking was an individual could stand for the anthem AND work towards a more democratic and civil society. In other words, I wouldn't be standing in the name of an authoritarian patriotism. But after reading this paragraph in Doug Lummis's "Radical Democracy" I wonder if the United States flag stands for an authoritarian patriotism. 

"In a democracy, it must be remembered, patriotism means the love that binds a people together, not the misplaced love of the institutions that dominate the people. Authoritarian patriotism is a resigning of one's will, right of choice, and need to understand to the authority; it's emotional base is gratitude for having been liberated from the burden of democratic responsibility. Political virtue--democratic patriotism--is the commitment to, a knowledge of, and ability to stand for the whole, and is necessary condition for democracy." -- (Pg. 37) 

Right now, the United States flag stands for an authoritarian patriotism. We would have the right to local, community self-government if it did not stand for that, but it doesn’t. The United States government protects corporations over communities and the landbase that supports and nourishes them physically, emotionally and spiritually. Standing Rock is a case in point. A local community should be able to exercise their right as self-governing people to say "no" to pipelines and other corporate harms. That’s simply not the case at this point in time. 

I don't know If I'll be standing for the anthem this upcoming baseball season. 

From Thoreau to Thoreau

This morning, in my visit to my phenology journal, I ran across this about Henry David Thoureau:

"His [Thoreau's] records of flowering times at Walden Pond -- 160 years ago -- show us that spring now begins three weeks earlier than in his day." -- Emily Stone

This passage caused me to pull "The Winged Life: The Poetic Voice of Henry David Thoreau," by Robert Bly off my shelf.

Bly writes, "In 1859 he [Thoreau] began defending John Brown in his lectures. In October of that year he announced a lecture on John Brown at the Concord Town Hall. When the Republican Town Committee and the Abolitionists both advised against it, he replied to them, 'I did not send to you for advice, but to announce that I am to speak.' When the selectmen refused to ring the bell, he rang it himself." (pg. 143)

I'm confident today, given that atmospheric C02 levels are close to 410 ppm and the consequences thereof, Thoreau would support Deep Green Resistance and other so-called radical environmental organizations.

Plans and Pocket Prairies

I started a phenology journal this morning. Daniel (17 yrs. old) bought it for me the other day up at the Cable Natural History Museum before his cross country ski meet. I returned the favor this Friday when the kids and I ventured up there (Cable, Wisconsin) while mom was off delivering mail. Now we'll both paying attention -- philosopher Jacob Needleman calls this a free gift--to Nature a bit more, atleast that's the plan anyway. I also bought Hayden (7 yrs. old) a childrens book on planting pocket prairies and Sophia (4 yrs. old) one on the night sky.

Since then I've been hearing about Hayden's plans of turning our piece of land into a prairie. It involves, cement trucks, helicopters, bridges, steel cables, rock quarring, and John Deere back hoes, to start with. Once, after close to a half hour of half listening to him, and hoping to slow him down a bit, I patted him on the head and remarked we're going to have to take this one small step at a time. And while we're at it, I added, we have to keep the collapse of industrial civilization in mind. That didn't phase him. He proceeded to beg me to grant him permission to run the familiy's Dewalt compound miter saw by himself.

What if our children are simply adults trapped in little bodies hoping much of the time to do one thing: Make a contribution.

In Time, I Find Time

Back at the turn of the century I was single, built a new house, hunted and fished a lot, and made my living as a logger and handyman. And in that time I also developed a habit: I used to visit The Ishmael Community multiple times a day. It's Daniel Quinn's official website. There you'd find, and still do I might add, close to a thousand questions he'd answered from readers, multiple essays and speeches, things for sale, recommendations, and a guestbook that he'd sometimes visited and commented on. I knew close to nothing about authors back then, and I hadn't been on the internet but a couple of months. In my world authors were up in towers and didn't interact with their readers, but here was Quinn doing the best he could do to make clear to his readers what he was saying in his books. In other words, he was a passionate teacher. So I took in as much as I could. I couldn't get enough of his teachings. I still at times find myself going back there. Oh, I forgot to mention another reason I was attracted to the community.

A guy by the name of Michael Time. Here was a guy that took to hitchhiking across the United States partly because of Daniel Quinn's work, and he'd post frequently on the guestbook about his adventures. I was fascinated. A guy that I presumed to be close to my age was going against how I thought a young and responsible adult like myself should be living their life. I really enjoyed his writings. Shortly after that I took to the road in my own way. I quit my job, locked up my house, pulled some money out of my bank account, and went and did whatever the hell I wanted to do. I followed my nose. Looking back I'm glad I did it. But sometimes I wish I would've been a bit more bold about it, sort of like Mr. Time.
Over the years since then I've often wondered what happened to Michael Time. Yesterday I visited Daniel Quinn's Facebook page, like I periodically do, and noticed he posted a short essay by a friend named Carl Cole. The essay (posted below) was really good. Out of everything I've read surrounding the resistance at Standing Rock this piece of writing really resonates and sticks out from all the rest. It gets to the root of the problem. After reading the essay I had to find out who this Carl Cole guy was. A google search later I learned he wrote and published a book titled: Feasting on the Breeze: A Memoir of Hitchhiking America at the Turn of the Century.

I found Michael Time.

Here is the essay by Carl Cole (aka: Michael Time):
 "If we go on as we have, with this understanding that the world was made for humans to conquer, then we will eventually conquer it. The planet will be broken, bleeding, and unrecognizable as the life-support system that made it possible for Australopithecus to evolve into Homo Hablis 2.8 million years ago. The same gently nurturing planet gave room and allowed for the evolution of the Homo genus to ancestors 400,000 years ago so similar to us we had to call them Homo Sapiens...us.

10,000 years ago, in a world that was basically a Garden of Eden, one culture in the Fertile Crescent adopted a totalitarian agricultural strategy whereby they took a piece of land, plowed under every living thing, planted only human food, denied competitors access to this food, and figuratively began eating at the gods' own tree of knowledge, deciding what deserved to live and what should die. This gave them great power as they took control of the land and resources, creating a surplus of food, a surplus of population and shrinking space for all this people and food. They began to conquer, enslave, or assimilate the cultures around them, eventually spreading into the Americas in the late 1400s.

If we continue to eat of this fruit of knowledge of good and evil then we will surely die, as a species. IF humans are living on this planet 100 years from now, it won't be because they figured out a better way to extract and ship oil, it will be because they are living in a fundamentally different way than we are now with a fundamentally different view of the world. If humans survive as a species on this planet it will be because enough of us spit out the vile fruit of knowing what's good and evil for the life of this planet. Enough of us will have changed our minds that we can no longer accept that humans are masters of this planet and more important than all the rest of the living biosphere.

We're not just fighting to stop this particular oil pipeline (Dakota Access), the fight is really against a worldview that allows for the destruction of everything we need as biological organisms in favor for the technology and mindset that allows for and condones the destruction of the planet as our greatest work.

Should those fighting for this most important cause abandon the technologies of the conquerors? Should only those who don't care about the destruction of the planet be allowed to use cars, cell phones, and computers?

Personally, I feel this battle to change the minds of those who choose to not see is of the greatest importance to the future of this planet and my children's ability to survive here. Any and all weapons we can muster in this conflict for how people view themselves and understand their place in the world should be used.

If everyone who cared more about the water we drink and the air we breathe than the oil we use to facilitate our civilized lifestyle abandoned their communication devices, this particular argument in North Dakota today would happen in the same vacuum that allowed for the genocide of this continent hundreds of years ago.

No one saw the frantic smoke signals of the past as entire societies were crushed under the boots of the not-see's. But it was certainly much easier to justify the destruction and genocide when we didn't have to hear about it." -- Carl Cole

Christmas, Cards, and Colon

Amidst the chaos, clamour, and confusion of the Christmas morning present opening process I spotted it sitting there looking lonely. Its intended owner was already tearing the wrapping paper off another carefully covered gift. With my presents unopened and sitting next to my recliner I resolved to keep my eye on it until the wrapping paper settled, but I couldn't resist. The boy that used to ride his dirtbike out of South Hills Trailer Court to Orv and Wally's Grocery Store too many times to count, clutching pocket change for a pack in a sweaty fist pressed against his handle grip, had to ask, "Hey Hayden (7 yrs. Old), can I open your pack of cards to see who you got?"

Half way through the pack I find myself excitingly reading and talking aloud about Bartolo Colon (He's 42, my age), then I notice nobody is paying attention. I go back to silently reading stats and stories.

Culture and Law

Does culture shape law? Or does law shape culture? I say both. It's not an either/or scenario. People sometimes comment and ask this important question when learning about the rights-based Community Right's organizing and lawmaking strategy: You can make all the laws you want, but how are you going to make sure they're enforced?

My answer usually is that depends on the values of our culture. Here is an example, let's say you form a citizen majority and make a law giving a local river rights. If the majority of the people in the culture don't value the health and self-determination of the river the laws will mean nothing. It will eventually be killed or survive until this insane culture kills itself.

So I recommend to those concerned about the dance of law and culture my favorite two booklets available on the subject. They're the best tools that I know of to change both. Here are two quotes from them that I think offer us a good vision.

From On Community Civil Disobedience: "We can choose to be hospice workers to dying planet--seeking to ease its transition--or we can choose to be mid-wives to a different system waiting to be born." (pg. 49)

From The Book of the Damned: "Every creature born in the biological of the earth belongs to that community. Nothing lives in isolation from the rest; nothing can live in isolation from the rest. Nothing lives only in itself, needing nothing from the community. Nothing lives only for itself, owing nothing to the community. Nothing is untouchable or untouched." (Daniel Quinn, pg. 23)

Family Past and Present

This morning the kitchen table family conversation shifted to pre-colonial contact tribal life compared to our current way of life, which is a heavy dose of liberalism and focus on the individual. It didn't take long and I headed over to the bookshelf to consult a dead guy. I grabbed "In Search of the Primitive." I knew Stanley Diamond had something to contribute to the conversation. I open it up to a quote that I find interesting and potentially useful when looking into our tribal past.

"In the white way of doing things, the family is not so important. The police and soldiers take care of protecting you, the courts give you justice, the Post Office carries messages for you, the school teaches you. Everything is taken care of, even your children, if you should die, but with us the family must do all that. Without the family, we are nothing, and in the old days before white people came, the family was given first consideration by anyone who was about to do anything at all. That is why we got along. With us the family was everything. Now it is nothing. We are getting like the white people, and it is bad for the old people. We had no old people's home like you. The old people were important. They were wise. Your old people must be fools." -- Words from a Pomo Indian, pg. 145)

Outposts in our Heads

I find myself in one-on-one face-to-face conversations about the Enbridge pipeline expansion more often lately. One comes to mind from my son's baseball game a few weeks back. I get done explaining all of the horrors to the guy about the project. There's no place for him to go rationally except to say, "I'm against it. Sign me up!"

But he finds a way around it. "I used fossil fuels to get here," he says "so what can I say?" A long silence. We exchange parting remarks, then he moves on to talk with other community members and get as far away from me as possible. I wonder if I smell funny. Maybe have a booger hanging from my nose. Show signs of lepresy.

Here's what I wish I would've said after his paralyzing proclamation of powerlessness: "Who cares if you used fossil fuels to get here. You didn't set this system up. You didn't make us totally dependent on fossil fuels. Why do you need to take responsibility for what is not yours? Just because you drive a car that gives them right to bury this thing under every major watershed in Wisconsin and Washburn County? What about the right to our health, safety, and welfare? What about our inherent and inalieble right to self-government that's been granted to us in every major governing document?"

They have outposts in our heads.

Cell Phones and Science Fiction

News from home: This morning my teenage son openly wonders, "Isn't there a rare metal in cell phones?" I proceed to pick up my smartphone and google "rare earth metals in cell phones". We find an article put out by PBS (Public Broadcasting System) titled: "Where to Find Rare Earth Elements." I then take the liberty to read it aloud. I get about three-quarters of the way through and come across this paragraph about those in power's (I had written "our" here) insatiable appetite and search for rare earths:

"Many countries, including the U.S., Australia, India, Brazil, Vietnam, and Russia, are looking for new deposits of their own. Japanese scientists found large amounts of rare earth elements in mud at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and similar studies have shown they’re also in mud in Jamaica. In the far future, we could even turn to the Moon, which is unusually rich in rare earths."

He stops me, and with wide-eyed disgust says, "My god, it's like a horrible science fiction novel come true."

Monday on County Road M

The kids and I moved a dead fox snake (Elaphe vulpina) yesterday. It was lying dead on County Road. M where the south fork of the Bean Brook flows under. My grandpa, while we were driving to a logging job one day, told me when he was a kid there used to be a lot more that would cross and die there. This particular snake now rests in the forest facing west covered with grass. At least until the crows that were picking at it on the road find it.

While moving it five Washburn County dump trucks passed by. Four going south and one going north. I didn't notice which way they were going loaded and vice versa. I did notice that I felt uncomfortable. Why? I had three school aged children moving a roadkill during school hours on a Monday morning. This time of day and week fathers are suppose to be at work providing for their families and kids are suppose to be in school.

Oh well, not this father on this Monday morning. There's room for both ways of being, at least in my book.




　

　

Will There Be Whippoorwills?

News from home: We sit down to the dinner table last night. May's full moon rising above the tree tops in the eastern horizon. We say thank you for the pork chops and the rest of the food we're about to eat. And Daniel (16 yrs. old) asks if anyone has heard a whippoorwill yet. None of us have. 10 minutes later we hear the whippoorwill's song through the screen of the storm door.

This morning, while everyone else is sound asleep, I open up the book titled, Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save The Planet for inspiration. Here's how chapter 6 starts: "What is at stake? Whippoorwills, the female so loyal to her young she won't leave her nest unless stepped on, the male piping his mating song of pure liturgy. They are 97 percent gone from the eastern range." (Pg. 239)

I want my children to grow up hearing the song of the whippoorwill. This is why I support a Deep Green Resistance and Direct Democracy.

Let's Not Prepare Our Children For Extinction

Back to blogging again. I usually just post my short writings on Facebook. Simply because I have such terrible internet service out here in rural Wisconsin that it's a pain to download what I write onto blogger. Here is what I've been up to today.

News from home: I was talking with a friend yesterday. She is also involved in the Community Right's Movement. She mentioned that she is reading The Invisibility of Success, by Daniel Quinn. So I sat down this morning and read a few essays out of it. I personally think Quinn's work should be a teaching tool in the CR movement. Anyway, this paragraph out of Preparing our Children for Extinction really spoke to me:

"We absolutely must stop sending our children out to save the world armed with the undermining belief that humans are inherently toxic. Because if they truly believe this, then they will truly be prepared for extinction. We must be on guard against teaching our children--even by indirection--that the very best thing that can happen to the world is the extinction of the human race." (Pg. 89)

I agree with this profound statement. I have since I read it well over a decade ago. Once our children are convinced WE are humanity they go from a world full of possibilities to a world of scarcity. Their souls are blighted. The world is no longer sacred. And they end up wishing away their time awaiting their entry into heaven.

Million Dollar Bill

Yesterday, I pulled up to one of last mailboxes on the mail-route and there was a man that looked to be in his early seventies standing there. As I was getting the car positioned I noticed him reach into his back pocket, pull out a wallet, open it up and retrieve a bill. I got the window rolled down, he greeted me warmly and handed me a one million dollar bill. "Here is a million dollars," he said "for delivering my mail today. On the back is some important words about the go...spel." I told him thank you and I'd be sure to read it. Here is what it said:

"The million dollar question: Will you go to Heaven when you die? Here's a quick test. Have you ever told a lie, stolen anything, or used God's name in vain? Jesus said, 'Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already commited adultery with her in his heart.' Have you looked with lust? Will you be guilty on Judgement Day? If you have done those things, God sees you as a lying, thieving blasphemous, adulterer at heart. The Bible warns that if you are guilty you will end up in Hell. That's not God's will.

"He sent His Son to suffer and die on the cross for you. You broke God's law, but Jesus paid your fine. That means He can legally dismiss your case. He can commute your death sentence: 'For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.' Then Jesus rose from the dead and defeated death. Please, repent (turn from sin) today and trust in Jesus alone, and God will grant you the gift of everlasting life. Then read your Bible daily and obey it."

The next time he tries to hand me some fake money I'm going to tell him that I've joined the William Blake Cult, and we've married Heaven and Hell. Then I'm going to quote Blake:

"Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps."-- William Blake

I've grown to despise sin-based theology.

Green Mama and The Angel of Fire

This morning I decided to put down my reading on Community Rights and pick up a book on The Soul. I Pulled Thomas Moore's "Original Self" off from the shelf and wasn't disappointed.

"What would it be like, I wonder, if we were born in some dramatic spiritual way. Say the soul like a sheet of silky gauze fell down from the heavens in a soft flutter? Would that be preferable to the birth of a human being at the fork in the legs amid blood, excrement, and waters? I don't think so, because we are given life by the green mama as well as the angel of fire, and the green mama doesn't think much about what she does. She loves and gives birth and then takes back to herself everything she has birthed." (Pg. 82)

I think it's interesting that me mentioned the green mama and the angel of fire in the same sentence.

Imagining Local Democracy

In a truly democratic society We The People don't sit around and hope for the Federal and State levels of government to deliver any kind of meaningful change, or for corporations to magically transform themselves into socially respsonsible corporate citizens. We also don't sit around and hope for economic markets to do this or that to decide our community's fate. We get busy at the local level and assert our right to local self-governance. That means We The People get to decide what we want and don't want in our communities, and this is done at the ballot box and by making local laws. It's a democratic race to the top not a fascist fall to the bottom.