The Tide is Turning…

Tags

Line 3, MDNR, MN DNR, MN PCA, MN PUC, MPCA

Today is a short one. Mostly because the time I have for writing is being consumed by the work of activism. But there was some seemingly good news on the Line 3 front last week.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources issued a joint statement on Tuesday (6/18/19) to publicly state that the schedule had changed for their permitting work for Enbridge’s proposed Line 3.

DNR’s webpage notice

While noting that they are committed to their work, they agreed that the Minnesota Court of Appeal’s decision declaring the current Line 3 Environmental Impact Statement inadequate means that they cannot release draft permits and the 401 water quality certification on July 1 as previously scheduled. They MUST wait for the additional PUC environmental analysis before the MPCA/MDNR can initiate their public comment process.

While the exact path of getting to an “adequate” Environmental Impact Statement was not made clear, and while my inquiry to the PUC revealed they do not yet have a plan from the Department of Commerce, the bottom line is that delay is good. The longer we delay, the more people will awaken to the fact that Fossil Fuels are killing the planet. We MUST TRANSITION FROM THEM NOW and continue our progress toward a clean energy economy.

My favorite paragraph in the public notice was this:

“More generally, both agencies will fully review any additional information that becomes available through the PUC’s EIS revision process, including public input to the PUC, prior to making decisions on the pending applications. Neither agency will take final action on the Line 3 Replacement license and permit applications until there is an approved EIS.”

MPCA/DNR Joint Statement on Line 3 Decision, my emphasis added

What this seems to indicate to the PUC is that their process must be robust, “including public input to the PUC”, which means that we should again have space to comment on the EIS proposed changes. We will again be able to state if We the People have determined that the supplemental information does indeed make the EIS adequate. Based on past performance, I am not sure this will be as quick or easy a process as Enbridge and their cronies keep saying in the news coverage. I’m pretty sure this one may be the delay that causes Enbridge financiers to perhaps realize their investment in Line 3 is NEVER going to pay off.

Not sure why they haven’t yet determined this. It seems clearer to me each day that the “ole boy” way of doing things, with lots of bribes and payoffs and public deception, is no longer working. There are too many of us watching, waiting to see what happens. Too many digging into the hidden memos, too many researching the science to refute the findings of the corporation, too many sending in public comments that reveal the shortcomings of the work done in collusion with corporations. We are waiting with pens poised to write to the Governor, the Attorney General, our Senators and Representatives, our Facebook Followers, our Blog Readers. Yes, the public has revitalized the idea of civic engagement. And our Young People are once again realizing the only way to make government work for you is to be in its face when it isn’t doing things that actually help YOU. The Tide is Turning.

And there are front line camps waiting too, watching the pre-construction efforts and live streaming their work to assure the public can see what is happening in “Indian Country” – largely where this work is happening now. They will show you a group of a half dozen water protectors holding protest against the Line 3 pre-work. And they will show you the law enforcement that engages them in full riot gear. The visual gives a peek into the astoundingly excessive reaction of law enforcement to citizens in this arena.

This is a war. But it is not to protect We the People. It’s to protect the Corporate interests. And you, dear Taxpayer, are supporting this work.

It’s time to speak up against our law enforcement being used against our fellow citizens who are working to prevent environmental destruction. They are protecting a future for ALL of our children. Please support the citizens standing for climate justice if you can. Click below to learn more.

Anti-colonial Land Defense, Friends of the Headwaters, Ginew, Indigenous Action Media, MN350, Northfield Against Line 3, Sierra Club North Star Chapter, Stop Line 3, and anyone you see taking a stand for our Water.

You want to be on the right side when the tide turns…

Lucky’s Funeral

Tags

Cremation, Death Ritual, Lucky 13, Pet Cremation

Well, we finally cremated the cat.

Oh, fair warning, this blog will include some bluntly worded descriptions and I will not be sugar coating the details of this story. So be prepared for reading some things that might take a moment to digest, or may disrupt digestion should you happen to be eating while reading it. Consider yourself fairly warned.

Warning! We’re giving it BEFORE the icky bits… 😉

Someone asked me why it was important to do this, now that the ground is unfrozen and we could have simply buried him. I am not sure of all the complexities behind our reasoning. In part, since he left this plane the day after Christmas, when the ground was frozen and the snow was deep, it was the initial decision. We’d planned to burn him at the Spring Equinox but the snow was still so deep and heavy, we couldn’t shovel a space around the covered fire pit to safely perform this task. And then, we had a vacation to visit family, and time for the cremation kept getting pushed out. Meanwhile, Lucky remained fine in the pump room. [Initially he’d stayed in the arctic entrance through the freezing months, where he was a catsicle. When the weather broke, we moved him to the pump room where he again, remained largely unchanged, until the very end.] I believe it was a combination of many factors but mostly, curiosity about whether we could pull it off without trouble.

We had what turned out to be perfect conditions for this to go successfully.

Last fall before Lucky began to really deteriorate and seem like we might be losing him soon (this cat had SO MANY times in his life where we thought it was game over for him and then he’d bounce back!), we had done some wood processing. Many of the bark sections which seemed less desirable for burning in the Rocket Mass Heater were stacked in the outdoor fire pit. And, when the fire season seemed at its end, we covered the pit with a tarp knowing we might have a mid-winter fire to send Lucky off to his Valhalla.

This turned out to be a perfect place to support Lucky’s “throne”, an old wicker chair from Grandma’s set bequeathed to me, and, besides the table, the only remaining piece still in our possession. We had decided to use this piece to send him off in style and it ended up being a beautiful burn with the structure of the chair burning away, leaving the frame beautifully intact as the fire carried Lucky to his final end.

Before the ceremony, we placed his throne atop the wood pile, stuffed fire starters (toilet tissue rolls stuffed with dryer lint – upcycling is our thing!) around the base of the throne, and then added longer wood branches around the chair to draw up the flames. Then we put Lucky, in the little box in which he’d spent the last half-year, covered by his old blanket (actually an old baby blanket of Tommy’s, handmade by his Gramma) alongside his favorite toys, atop the throne. We assured that he was looking out toward the woods, as he did do often from the porch.

Then we burned sage, said prayers and remembrances and just sat for an hour or more talking about what a joy he’d been in our lives. We remembered all the hard work of hand feeding him and knew we had done much to make his life easier. We noted that his best years were probably the two and a half he spent being spoiled by Gramma Ruth who fed him soft food every day, multiple times a day, to be sure he was never hungry. We thought back to when he first arrived in our care and the way he sat behind the french doors in the office of our old house in Indiana as Kinya hissed at this newcomer. We reminisced about how he was originally Tommy’s cat (Lucky slept or hung with Tommy throughout his childhood) and then he became ours when Tom left for college. We reveled in the fact that he FINALLY became a lap cat late in life and all the snuggling that we enjoyed, especially in those last few days when he was held almost non-stop. We recalled how he would visit us at night to “tuck us into bed” before hopping down ten minutes later to yowl through the house trying to locate Kinya, who now ruffed him up on a daily, even though he was almost twice her size. We finally smiled as we thought of all the times he meowed us out of bed for his morning feeding. [Mom created this habit with her endless dedication to his every need while he lived at Gramma’s house, and he never quite outgrew it.] And we comforted ourselves thinking of the hours of sleeping three across in our big king-size bed, all of us under the covers with our heads out the top of the sheet, unless Lucky decided it was cold enough to just curl up completely undercover, soaking in our warmth between the sheets.

About 9 PM Dan thought it was time. The was still light in the sky which would help in case we had a crashing pyre. It was a daunting setup but I hoped it would go well. This was a dense fire base and we were a bit worried whether it would take off with enough ferocity to consume his body. But I’d done prayers ahead of time asking for all the help any entity available could bring to assure we sent this little man completely into bone. Let me tell you, it burned so hot, we couldn’t get closer than 5′ at times! I truly felt as if we had a surge of energy taking the fire to maximum heat.

Harn Theory YouTube Channel

As the fire took off, we continued to talk about our little friend, though we spent much time in silence simply watching the beautiful process.

One of the factors I hadn’t considered when contemplating this process was that, to get to “cremated cat”, one must pass through “roast cat”. While his body had mummified in part in the dry storage over the previous months, it still contained much moisture. It was a bit sickening, but not wholely unpleasant, to hear him sizzle as the fire burned down destroying the throne and putting his body into the fire itself. The fire as built was largely enough to consume him but as his body burned, we could see we would need to move him (used a shovel) to a hot spot in the coals that would support his final processing . We added a few more logs to the fire to assure a complete consumption and then we simply watched the fire burn down. About 11:30 PM, we headed inside and let the remaining fire burn itself to coals.

Grandma’s wicker chair carrying Lucky to Valhalla.

I will always remember seeing the frame of the chair as it was consumed with flame and how beautifully it framed our old friend. Today I remember the brilliant red of the fire, the patterns making new art forms through time. I enjoyed every moment of that fire. From the building of the pyre, the placement of Lucky’s body, the heat and glow of the burning, and even the removal of the bones from the cold fire a couple days later, it all felt like part of honoring the great gift that he was to our lives.

We still have not given him a final resting place. I’d hoped to retain his skull but it was so very fragile in the coals and an added piece of wood broke the jaw bone from the cranial cavity. There is still a small round head – very interesting to see the insides of a cat’s structure – which I will likely leave intact after I crush the smaller bones. We will also keep a few of his spinal bones which are largely intact, as we find a small container for his final pieces. I wonder now if he will be buried with one of us or if Tommy will have any interest in retaining his old kitty on the shelf as an old man.

I am very glad we took a chance and tried this new way of sending off our friend. I believe it has prepared me for the future in a way I could not have foreseen.

In the end, I am not sure I have ever a more beautiful, perfectly burning, and entrancing fire.

I Promise To Protect

Tags

KXL, Line 3, PromiseToProtect

I promise to protect my home planet by working locally to stop fossil fuel infrastructure development and instead build a sustainable, compassionate, clean energy, local food community of humans focused on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

America has been designed to be a place for elites to thrive. From the beginning we’ve been governed by the white landowners and since then, the system has been pretty skillfully created to keep the powerful in power and the masses fighting among themselves, blaming each other for all their strife (though that is largely generated by the powerful).

We begin with the economic segregation which assures everyone stays in their place. Your circumstances in life are largely determined by the location of your birth. As it goes, the United States is better than many of the developing countries which it continues to plunder and manipulate for its own empirical “good”. But even in the U.S., where you are born determines your stress levels and available community resources. It can mean the difference between having a grocery store that sells fresh produce and quality meats and one that only provides nutritionally dead highly processed items. It determines whether you will grow up surrounded by nature or black tarred streets or high rises. It determines the level of pollution around your home. It determines whether local law enforcement looks like you or targets you. And it sets what kind of school will be available for you to develop your skills.

Though the demographics of the U.S. is changing fast, still today, the typical business owner is a 50-year-old white male. About 80% of businesses are owned by whites and about 65% of all businesses are male-owned.

~ 2017 WaPo article

When it comes to the educational system, created to populate the factories and firms of the largely white male owners, there is much diversity. Today public schools are less concerned with truly educating and more concerned with instilling belief in a hierarchical system of competition between peers while training the young to adhere to rigid rules that restrict behavior as guided by their adult overlords. [Yes, I know there are many great teachers out there who are compassionate to their students, but I would challenge anyone to provide evidence of a system that allows for outspokenness in students in our K-12 schools. Heck, sometimes it’s difficult for college students to speak out freely.] Dead are critical thinking and any idea of a salon. Instead we learn via worksheets, rote memorization, and regurgitation of facts as presented by authoritarian texts. [This rant doesn’t even give consideration to the massive addition of police to our schools and the apparent apathy regarding the safety of our students from shooters (outside of sickening drills that do nothing but terrorize our young) as that is a whole ‘nother nest of bees.]

Then we look at the economic factors that assure wages remain so low that most Americans have little time for anything but earning enough to feed, clothe, and house themselves. And yes, I mean that. Many Americans have to make decisions about whether to seek medical care or eat, buy the needed Rx or new shoes for the school year, feed the kids or feed yourself. Median income in 2017 was $77,713 – which means a max of about $5K/month. [Median figures by race: Whites – $65K Blacks – $41K, Hispanic – $50K, Asian – $81K – good to be a Crazy, Rich Asian, eh?] Many families are spending over $1K for both housing and insurance taking 40% of the funds for that alone. The remaining 60% needs to cover gasoline, electric, food, internet (or not), doctor appts & medications, phone, clothes, shoes, water, fees. And most of the costs of these things has increased far outpacing the rise in wages. [And don’t get me started about the HUGE wealth divide this has created and the resulting ramifications.]

But even when citizens DO have the smarts, the time, and the resources to stay civically involved, they are stymied by the bureaucracy of our government, not knowing who to contact for what concerns. [It’s hard enough to get the right number for the Assistant County Engineer working on the road project that just went south in front of your house… It’s not the Streets Department, it’s not the County “Shop”, no… it’s the third number you finally reach.] If one sues for recompense of sufferings, he is closed out from the costly legal system by large corporations that can afford to tie up cases until challengers go broke. Or the Corps pay off complaints rather than change business practices. And now, if you plan to speak out in protest over a pipeline, the Republican President wants to assure you face a 20-year sentence in prison.

So, through my own dumb luck to be born in the circumstances that I was, the privilege provided to me by growing up middle class in the Midwest during the late 20th century, and some bit of work and thinking of my own, I have the smarts, the time, and the resources to be a full-time activist. As such, I feel the best thing I can do for my fellow beings is try my best to save the environment ~ the basis for human habitation ~ from those out to destroy it… at least in my little corner of the planet.

Wish me luck. And cross your fingers I can stay out of jail.

“The Ends Of The World” by Peter Brannen

Tags

NTHE, Peter Brannen

OK, so you’ll note that this title doesn’t include “Book Review” as I have not read this book. What I did do was attend a free lecture by Peter Brennen on May 20th provided by the Geological Society of Minnesota at the U of MN and I found it to be quite interesting. Peter is a great storyteller and his explanation of the previous five mass extinction events in our planet’s history was enlightening. While he is a journalist, it was obvious that he understands this subject matter in great detail and he was able to put things into words that are digestable by laymen, though the room was full of many schooled geologists.

ABOUT THE ENDS OF THE WORLD

Five times in earth’s history the majority of animal life has been wiped out in geologically brief catastrophes. With the discovery in 1980 that an asteroid played a role in one of these doomsdays–the death of the dinosaurs–scientists became confident that they had found a killer that might explain each of the mass extinctions. But in the past three decades, as geologists, paleontologists and geochemists have scoured the earth investigating these other Armageddons, they have found little evidence for devastating asteroid impacts in the rocks. Instead they have found the signatures of extreme climate and ocean changes, and–in the worst mass extinction of all time–a global warming worst-case-scenario, driven by huge injections of carbon dioxide spewing from apocalyptic volcanoes. The Ends of the World explores these discoveries and surveys deep time through a combination of interviews with the world’s top paleontologists and geologists, as well as road trips to the most important crime scenes in the planet’s history. It also illustrates how these five major mass extinctions both gave rise to our modern world while providing a terrifying window into our possible future.

(from Peter’s website)

I imagine his book is full of detailed scientific analysis explaining these events and perhaps even looking at the topic of his lecture to us which questioned whether we are currently in the sixth mass extinction. I was disappointed to hear him say that he does not think so…

There were several good questions asked and I was not recognized by the moderator but I asked my question afterward – jumping to be the first one to groupie our speaker, as usual. 😀

I mentioned to Peter that Dan & I were currently listening to O.E. Wilson’s Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life (we were about halfway through at the time). The book’s premise is that half the Earth should remain in wilderness, untouched by humans, to retain the needed biodiversity the planet requires to remain sustainable. I asked Peter if there was any evidence in the fossil record to indicate that a decrease in biodiversity led to these mass extinctions and he noted that there was! He also freely admitted that there are feedback loops that we are not likely anticipating. However, when I asked him, with a conspiratorial wink, how long he gives human life, he said, “Six thousand years.” I was shocked. Perhaps geology suggests such a timeframe. Or perhaps he became so immersed in the geology that he ignores the impacts coming on more clearly each day that humans are rapidly using the even more rapidly shrinking available carbon budget. I personally give us about 80 years at most, but more likely 40. Perhaps a few of us will survive longer but I’m not sure it will be an enjoyable existence.

Maybe this is a shock to you. Perhaps you violently disagree. I would love to see discussion on this topic. The more I see, the more it seems it will take a miracle, a giant cooperative effort to turn our ship, in order for humans to save ourselves from Near-Term Human Extinction (NTHE). I just don’t see it happening.

What I do see (and oft times DO myself) is a lot of humans continuing to live as they always have, reproducing without much thought to overpopulation, consuming without much thought to the consequences.

The work of Edward Burtynsky, along with Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier, might be of interest along the lines of considering whether humans have already or are on the verge of creating the sixth mass extinction. The photos at this link are disturbing. You can also check out the work of the Anthropocene Working Group who recently released their report on this topic.

Their argument is that humans have become the single most defining force on the planet and that the evidence for this is overwhelming.

~ Burtynsky on the Anthropocene Working Group

There is a Harvard class on this topic this fall. The syllabus is full of interesting things to investigate further and links to docs and videos you might find interesting. [Thanks to Dan for this link!]

For those of you who need a happy ending (as I felt Peter did at his talk… frustrating me as I feel the sugar coating time is over), here are some humans I learned about recently who have been demonstrating good community life since 1982. The Working Centre operates by a few principles which I found really interesting in Joe Mancini’s presentation at the recent CAN SEE conference:

• Work as Gift
• Living Simply
• Serving Others
• Rejecting Status
• Building Community
• Creating Community Tools

They also have a book that explains their work. Or you can take a virtual tour.

The Working Centre’s main projects give people access to tools to create their own work combined with continuous ways of learning and co-operating. The Working Centre organizes its projects into six areas; the Job Search Resource Centre, St. John’s Kitchen, Community Tools, Access to Technology, Affordable Supportive Housing and the Waterloo School for Community Development.

From the About Us page at their website