I bought a Canon PowerShot SD1300 IS Digital ELPH 12.1 MEGA PIXELS camera this past winter. It cost me about $140, and I've used it to take some of the pictures seen on this blog. I've been quite happy with the camera, in-so-far as the pictures are concerned (though the process of transferring the pictures to my computer is, like most things I come in contact with from the Govt. or Corp. worlds, inhumanly inefficient). Unfortunately, the camera no longer works. It won't take pictures, because the lens won't extend. Lens Error, says the screen. I've taken maybe 500 pictures with the damn thing.
This morning I tried to respond to a comment from a reader of this blog. I couldn't. On my own blog. Another reader recently told me it was a problem to post comments. I have since revamped the comment option. I hope it works. I can only hope.
What both of these issues have in common is, there is no trouble-shooting process. Not a meaningful one, anyway. Blogger.com recently deleted posts across the network, to fix something. The word from Google was, basically, 'we're on it.' A more paranoid mind might have thought it a pre-courser for a sweep by the Office of Homeland Security, or some such invasion. Those of us who blog simply had to wait, and assume the problem would be fixed. It was, evidently. Will Google fix the problem that would not allow me to comment on my own blog, that made it difficult for readers to comment? Not likely, as there is no real way for me to tell them there is problem, Google is so large. Unless this is a problem for all blogspot.com's. I assume otherwise I would have to have a personal friend within the Google inner circle, to have any hope of being heard. And really, what does Google care, unless the problem effects Google profits?
As for Canon, it's a curious business model, to build a thing poorly, and then make the remedy for problems effectively impossible, or so egregiously time consuming that any remedy isn't worth the effort. To be fair to Canon, I don't know this yet to be true, but I'm betting it will be. The question is, should I assume this will be the case with every camera I might buy from a giant corporation? With anything I buy from any Corporation? I bought a 4.0 mega pixel camera for my mother years ago, for $400. It worked. What's the point of 12 mega pixels at $140 if the camera doesn't function, or I have to buy three to find one that works longer than six months? A curious business model, but effective apparently, as Canon was 216 on Fortune Mag's 2010 list of the worlds largest companies. They do a lot more than make cameras.
My Samsung phone has never really worked like it was meant to. None of the three alarms works, and people tell me with some regularity that they tried to call, and left a message, though the phone never rang, nor did it tell me there was a message. Does Samsung care? Verizon? It is an absurdity even to ask the question.
My point with this rant is, I guess, that life in this high-tech age is basically an act of faith. Because little we are told about it, generally, is true. I have come to have more faith in my potatoes, of which I planted about 100 today, later than I might have, but they will be fine. It was the post I wanted to write, with pics; but I awoke late, because the sun wasn't shining for the tenth (or so) day in a row, one of the three phone alarms I set was going off, but it wasn't making any sound, and then I found that it wasn't a battery-charge problem with my camera, and then I spent a god-damn hour trying to comment on my own blog. I have come to feel there is a great deal more certainty in my potato patch than there is in any Corporation, or any product created by a corporation, esp. the more high tech the gadget. Properly cared for, I will plant the descendants of these eight varieties of potatoes fifty years from now; someone else, perhaps hundreds of years from now. My new fancy camera is a hunk of trash, except that it is probably full of rare Earth elements, the extraction of which is likely a great sorrow to some people, somewhere.
(Last night I dreamt about flying, waking several times and falling back asleep to practice flying. Then I dreamt about running a long distance, and then woke to ask myself why I didn't just fly? Then I dreamt about working with women, to assure the health of the Earth.)
I planted the potatoes I wanted to plant today, and then I called my father who is a veteran, and then I road my bike to the liquor store to purchase my first ever sample of mead. Bottled near here in Chisago City, MN. I bottled my own wine I made last fall, from the grapes on my sister's fence, Thursday. I have several grape cuttings partially buried in the yard. The future vineyard, though I'd have to take down at least one city tree to make 30-40 bottles a functioning reality. I need to check in with the city soon. They're after me again. I didn't ask permission to tear up part of my driveway for the orchard.
I found a patch of edible oyster mushrooms growing on a mulberry stump, when I was weeding the raspberries of menace morning glory seedlings. I cut the mulberry in the spring of 2006. I ate one mushroom, even though in my less inspired days I poured 2-cycle motor oil in holes I drilled in the stump, to kill the tree, on the advice of a Mexican I knew. It didn't work, the motor oil, as the mulberry has sprouted several new shoots this year. The oysters work well. Paul Stamets at www.fungi.com has advocated the use of oyster mushrooms in the clean up of certain waste sites, the fungi breaking down chemical bonds of hydro-carbons, etc. I didn't know it was a mulberry when I cut it. Not all mulberry are created equal, and I generally prefer the raspberries, strawberries and the asparagus that thrive in the opening created (though I know at least one female Goddess worshiping singer song-writer, who brews a fine drink from mulberry). I'm letting a different mulberry grow on a different spot on the fence, there at least until it fruits.
I'll try to take a picture of the oysters with my unreliable phone in the morning. I finished the mead (and the cookie is on the wane). I'll have to sample others, to gain perspective, at some future point. Though I'm thinking I should get some bees. For now, I'm off to the fridge, for a Magic Hat Wacko summer seasonal, from Vermont...to finish the post, and the night (I'd like to grow some hops on the garage, which I'd like to turn into a greenhouse - but that's yet only a dream).
(And Google lost the post when I tried to publish. Good thing I manually copied it. And I really wanted to add a link to Paul Stamets site, but Google won't insert it.)
*** I took pictures of the mushrooms with my phone Tuesday morning. But when I hooked my phone up to my computer, and the software app V-Cast Media Manager (Verizon), I made the crucial mistake of allowing the update. With the updated software, my computer will no longer recognize that my phone is hooked up to it, and Verizon's V-Cast Media Manager does not seem to recognize that this phone, which I am paying Verizon $80+ a month to maintain, even exists. As for Canon, I never even received an automated email response to my support email. Because, clearly, to Verizon and Canon, me and my cheap-ass gadgets don't matter.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Honest Work in Bad Weather
It was my niece's birthday party this weekend. I was on the roof setting up the tarp, just in time for the heavy rain. I heard a clap of thunder a long way off, and resolved to keep listening, when, twenty minutes later, a flash and concussion came almost simultaneously, as I literally had my hands in the gutter, cleaning them out. I nearly leapt off the roof, but as that bolt wasn't going to hit me, I figured I was safer taking the janky ladder I had made, out of 2x4's.
No one showed up the first hour after the party was supposed to have started, and my niece was distraught. But the sun came out and stayed out, just in time for the nine kids and their families who did arrive, and they all wanted to stay - even after the party, and the world, was supposed to have ended.
On the bike path near Minnehaha Falls, on my way to a job site this morning, smelling the scent of apple blossoms and lilac, I came to a sudden stop three feet from a snapping turtle, parked on the yellow line. Somebody seemed to have ridden over its tail recently, one of the saw tooth keels missing, the flesh healing but exposed. She didn't seem alarmed by me, but scanned the surroundings while I peered over the handlebars of my bike, and then continued walking, her tail swaying slowly like a snake. I took her to be a female, though I didn't check, about 60-70 years old, perhaps older. City workers arrived. They were respectful. Apparently, she's often found on the other side of the parkway, which is Minnehaha Falls Park, where all the people are. Last week, she was seen climbing into swollen Minnehaha Creek, swimming upstream. As they were contemplating what to do with her, like they might pick her up, I told them she had been on the path, that she was on her way to the creek. With that, she started walking again, plowing through the dandelions, and the City Parks workers let her be.
On my way, I thought about what to write for this blog. Ayn Rand came up. I stumbled across a copy of her Return of the Primitive recently, while I was in a book store searching for Terence Mckenna's The Archaic Revival. She is fashionable again, the great High Priestess to the cult of self interest and exploitation. It is hard to imagine a character as absurd as Ms Rand, in any age but a high tide of resource extraction and a glut of cheap and abundant fossil fuels. I read her Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in my twenties and rejected her not because I thought she was wrong necessarily, about the importance of self interest, but because she rejected any responsibility to any community, or to the Earth, and because her vision is simply mean. That she is fashionable again is no surprise, the extremes standing out in this time of epic denial, and the ascendancy of so-called conservative principles.
At the job site, I consulted with the homeowner about his maple hardwood floor, probably original to the hundred year old building, covered until recently by 50's vinyl, and also a more recent, less aesthetically pleasing layer of vinyl. We talked about the bathroom, and decided to remove the existing floor. I did the demo.
When I was contracting, remodeling houses during the most recent and rather tragic housing boom, about 50% of what I did was undoing something that never should have been done. This bathroom floor was that, par excellence. Pine floor sheathing, covered by maple hardwoods, covered by 1/2 inch plywood, covered by asbestos tiles, covered by 1/4 luan wood sheathing, covered by cheap big-box wood parquet. Five layers of wood, in a bathroom. With a layer of asbestos between the layers of plywood. The building was previously owned by a local slum lord.
I could have stopped, and had I, the homeowner, who is an honest man, would likely have hired an abatement company, and permits would be required, and a scene would be made. But I need the money, the bathroom window was open, the sliding glass door next to the bathroom was open, it was pouring rain outside, the air was heavy and dense; if there was a time to do it safely, it was then. So I ripped the floor apart, cursing the system that breeds such unscrupulousness.
What is Ms Rand's laissez-faire capitalism but the elevation and protection of the unscrupulous? Here, at least two examples (excluding the original hardwoods), of self-interest superseding anything else, and asbestos to boot. We knew the stuff to be deadly as early as the nineteen-teens, and yet here it is, at least the second example of asbestos in this house, this second applied likely at the same time as the funky kitchen vinyl, thirty or forty years after the fact. If you know what water does to wood with time, you have some idea of what tearing that floor apart was like, with rows of two inch nails every six inches - in the first layer of plywood; the second layer nailed and adhered - mindful that this house was owned by a slum lord, with the likely tenants.
Is it really better for the community that the community is not able to condemn such behavior? Is it a better society, that the tenants of such men, and the people of the community in which the house exists (which will outlast the slum lord), cannot come together and make an example of him, lynch the guy or maybe just tar and feather? Law and order indeed. Is this what law and order looks like? Smells like? Meanwhile the City tries to condemn me and my house because I don't have natural gas hooked up? Me, with my wildflowers and fruit and 3000 sq ft of garden?
As I was working, three attractive upper-middle class women came to the door asking for one of the tenants, an American Indian male about my age, who is a resident left over from the days of the slum lord. He just left the building, I told them, with an older woman and a young boy. They asked if they could leave the cookies they intended for him, if I could get them to him. I told them I was only working in the building for a short period of time, and couldn't guarantee he would get them. I wondered if they know he never takes his dogs off their heavy chains, passively torturing them, turning them insane? At no time in my life have three attractive upper-middle class women come to my door bearing cookies, and I do not torture dogs. They didn't offer me a cookie.
At least one Tornado tore through the Twin Cities metro area, while I worked. When the work was done, during a lull in the bad weather I biked to my sister's house and removed the tarp I applied yesterday. The sun is out now and it's calm and warm. Once home, I started to dismantle my temporary greenhouse, but I grew increasingly angry, thinking about the unscrupulous, the seeming backward nature of everything, how so much that is pure and beautiful is ignored or maligned, while the base and ugly is esteemed and strived relentlessly after; angry at women; angry at God and Goddess; angry at myself, because I am the only reason I am lonely, and not better than I am. This yard has been a great healing for me, and I write now looking at my new pond.
Now, I've got my own responsibilities to this house, which is 55 years older than I am, which I've let go somewhat to seed. What you won't find here is any evidence that I've done anything to it that could be a health concern or even a serious pain-in-the-ass to someone else. In fact, what I hope to do here is create a gleaming example of what is possible in a northern climate, gracefully and at minimal expense, in the name of winter comforts, energy efficiently. But that's not going to happen, demoing bathrooms, or whining about all that's rotten in the world. That's only going to happen by bold action. And clearly, the world favors bold action, even and especially when that bold action is unattached to any concern other than ones self interest - a rule which I hope to confound.
No one showed up the first hour after the party was supposed to have started, and my niece was distraught. But the sun came out and stayed out, just in time for the nine kids and their families who did arrive, and they all wanted to stay - even after the party, and the world, was supposed to have ended.
On the bike path near Minnehaha Falls, on my way to a job site this morning, smelling the scent of apple blossoms and lilac, I came to a sudden stop three feet from a snapping turtle, parked on the yellow line. Somebody seemed to have ridden over its tail recently, one of the saw tooth keels missing, the flesh healing but exposed. She didn't seem alarmed by me, but scanned the surroundings while I peered over the handlebars of my bike, and then continued walking, her tail swaying slowly like a snake. I took her to be a female, though I didn't check, about 60-70 years old, perhaps older. City workers arrived. They were respectful. Apparently, she's often found on the other side of the parkway, which is Minnehaha Falls Park, where all the people are. Last week, she was seen climbing into swollen Minnehaha Creek, swimming upstream. As they were contemplating what to do with her, like they might pick her up, I told them she had been on the path, that she was on her way to the creek. With that, she started walking again, plowing through the dandelions, and the City Parks workers let her be.
On my way, I thought about what to write for this blog. Ayn Rand came up. I stumbled across a copy of her Return of the Primitive recently, while I was in a book store searching for Terence Mckenna's The Archaic Revival. She is fashionable again, the great High Priestess to the cult of self interest and exploitation. It is hard to imagine a character as absurd as Ms Rand, in any age but a high tide of resource extraction and a glut of cheap and abundant fossil fuels. I read her Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in my twenties and rejected her not because I thought she was wrong necessarily, about the importance of self interest, but because she rejected any responsibility to any community, or to the Earth, and because her vision is simply mean. That she is fashionable again is no surprise, the extremes standing out in this time of epic denial, and the ascendancy of so-called conservative principles.
At the job site, I consulted with the homeowner about his maple hardwood floor, probably original to the hundred year old building, covered until recently by 50's vinyl, and also a more recent, less aesthetically pleasing layer of vinyl. We talked about the bathroom, and decided to remove the existing floor. I did the demo.
When I was contracting, remodeling houses during the most recent and rather tragic housing boom, about 50% of what I did was undoing something that never should have been done. This bathroom floor was that, par excellence. Pine floor sheathing, covered by maple hardwoods, covered by 1/2 inch plywood, covered by asbestos tiles, covered by 1/4 luan wood sheathing, covered by cheap big-box wood parquet. Five layers of wood, in a bathroom. With a layer of asbestos between the layers of plywood. The building was previously owned by a local slum lord.
I could have stopped, and had I, the homeowner, who is an honest man, would likely have hired an abatement company, and permits would be required, and a scene would be made. But I need the money, the bathroom window was open, the sliding glass door next to the bathroom was open, it was pouring rain outside, the air was heavy and dense; if there was a time to do it safely, it was then. So I ripped the floor apart, cursing the system that breeds such unscrupulousness.
What is Ms Rand's laissez-faire capitalism but the elevation and protection of the unscrupulous? Here, at least two examples (excluding the original hardwoods), of self-interest superseding anything else, and asbestos to boot. We knew the stuff to be deadly as early as the nineteen-teens, and yet here it is, at least the second example of asbestos in this house, this second applied likely at the same time as the funky kitchen vinyl, thirty or forty years after the fact. If you know what water does to wood with time, you have some idea of what tearing that floor apart was like, with rows of two inch nails every six inches - in the first layer of plywood; the second layer nailed and adhered - mindful that this house was owned by a slum lord, with the likely tenants.
Is it really better for the community that the community is not able to condemn such behavior? Is it a better society, that the tenants of such men, and the people of the community in which the house exists (which will outlast the slum lord), cannot come together and make an example of him, lynch the guy or maybe just tar and feather? Law and order indeed. Is this what law and order looks like? Smells like? Meanwhile the City tries to condemn me and my house because I don't have natural gas hooked up? Me, with my wildflowers and fruit and 3000 sq ft of garden?
As I was working, three attractive upper-middle class women came to the door asking for one of the tenants, an American Indian male about my age, who is a resident left over from the days of the slum lord. He just left the building, I told them, with an older woman and a young boy. They asked if they could leave the cookies they intended for him, if I could get them to him. I told them I was only working in the building for a short period of time, and couldn't guarantee he would get them. I wondered if they know he never takes his dogs off their heavy chains, passively torturing them, turning them insane? At no time in my life have three attractive upper-middle class women come to my door bearing cookies, and I do not torture dogs. They didn't offer me a cookie.
At least one Tornado tore through the Twin Cities metro area, while I worked. When the work was done, during a lull in the bad weather I biked to my sister's house and removed the tarp I applied yesterday. The sun is out now and it's calm and warm. Once home, I started to dismantle my temporary greenhouse, but I grew increasingly angry, thinking about the unscrupulous, the seeming backward nature of everything, how so much that is pure and beautiful is ignored or maligned, while the base and ugly is esteemed and strived relentlessly after; angry at women; angry at God and Goddess; angry at myself, because I am the only reason I am lonely, and not better than I am. This yard has been a great healing for me, and I write now looking at my new pond.
Now, I've got my own responsibilities to this house, which is 55 years older than I am, which I've let go somewhat to seed. What you won't find here is any evidence that I've done anything to it that could be a health concern or even a serious pain-in-the-ass to someone else. In fact, what I hope to do here is create a gleaming example of what is possible in a northern climate, gracefully and at minimal expense, in the name of winter comforts, energy efficiently. But that's not going to happen, demoing bathrooms, or whining about all that's rotten in the world. That's only going to happen by bold action. And clearly, the world favors bold action, even and especially when that bold action is unattached to any concern other than ones self interest - a rule which I hope to confound.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Planting Week
It's planting week. I've been turning soil the last two days, bio-intensively. I'll be turning soil every day this week, about 8-10 hours a day. By Sunday, just about everything should be planted.
Spending so much time in the yard, I'm meeting more of my neighbors. Marsha is impressed by what I'm doing, but she's "about ready to pave over [her] whole yard." Ben and Angela may turn out to be friends, my age and living only a block away. Ben wants "to pick my brain" about a water garden, and home repairs. Arleen "Very much appreciates what [I'm] doing." Few people stop to talk though. There are very few questions. A few people say things like "looking great", but the most common response of course is, "that looks like a lot of work."
I don't think so. I think of it as a discipline: Practice form; Maintain a steady pace; Remember to breathe; Quiet the mind; Listen; Smile; Think clearly when thinking; Ride the wave of thought but pay attention (so as not to stab myself in the foot with the garden fork, or cut off a toe with the spade); It is a process; Don't hurry; Be present, like I was when I was a kid.
Just about everyone my sister knows is unemployed. Her partner's mother just lost her job working with troubled teenagers, in the St Paul schools (one of those oh-so important budget cuts by Congress.) It's a new reality in America, for a large portion of us, good paying jobs disappearing, the people who might have run industries now taking cozy corporate jobs and investing their money in ever larger corporations, the Fed and Wall Street and Congress indifferent to the jobs problem. There is a great deal of fear out there. My neighbor Patty the nurse says the corporate leadership of her hospital treat the nurses like peons. I told her the corporate and financial elite of this country are convinced of the righteousness of their economic model, though the country is inching toward Revolution.
I was standing on my back step this morning when I watched an unleashed pit bull walk along my sidewalk. I started to wonder if it was loose, when a big man came into view.
"You get a new water heater?"
It was a non-sensical question, as I don't know him, and I don't have natural gas hooked up at present. I replied, "No, but the city tried to condemn my house for not having natural gas hooked up."
"You get to keep it? You get to stay?"
"I do. The city let go of it when I brought up the Fourth Amendment, that part about unreasonable search and seizure."
"You one of those government haters then?"
"No, I don't hate government. I simply don't appreciate laws that make no sense."
"Yeah, well tell that to the FBI in a couple of days." With that, he was past the alley and gone.
He was the same man I wrote about last fall, I realized, who came by my house as I was returning late one night, who said I was going to have some "visitors soon". I think it gives him a thrill, terrorizing people. I'm not particularly worried about it, as my yard is full of implements to use, should this mad man or his dog attack. As I worked on the soil afterward, I thought about another neighbor who came to me recently with a mouthful of Aryan Brotherhood nonsense. He has five brothers and every single one of them is in foreclosure. And who is he blaming for America's problems? I told him my nephew is Black. That didn't prevent him from trying to recruit me to the idea that white people need to stick together, against everyone else.
Many people come by the house with little children. I tell them all they are free to pick the wild strawberries on the corner, and the black cap raspberries along the fence. Larry, who lived in my house a long time ago, stopped by. He has six kids, all of whom graduated from college. He is very proud of them. I told him about the berries. "The kids pilfer them?" I told him kids are free to pick, that I've had young kids picking as their parents watched, berry juice all over their face. He liked that. I told him to come back later this summer when there's food aplenty. Shortly after he left, I dug up another cache of garbage (probably buried before Larry's time here.)
I've decided to focus this year on saving seed. It will take some practice, and some infrastructure, to get it right. And then, should the culture crumble because of the collapse of the oil supply, or a lack of water, or runaway self-interest, I'll contact every family I know with young kids, and we will gather together to protect and plant that seed.
Here's a brief tutorial on the method I'm using to prepare the soil:
Start digging.
Remove the top twelve inches
Place leaves, wood chips in the trench (in this case, old tomato vines and leaves, as this is a tomato bed and tomatoes are both canabalistic and omnivorous).
Using a garden fork, loosen the soil and mix in the carbon material.
Rake the soil back into the trench.
Form the bed.
Plant.
Spending so much time in the yard, I'm meeting more of my neighbors. Marsha is impressed by what I'm doing, but she's "about ready to pave over [her] whole yard." Ben and Angela may turn out to be friends, my age and living only a block away. Ben wants "to pick my brain" about a water garden, and home repairs. Arleen "Very much appreciates what [I'm] doing." Few people stop to talk though. There are very few questions. A few people say things like "looking great", but the most common response of course is, "that looks like a lot of work."
I don't think so. I think of it as a discipline: Practice form; Maintain a steady pace; Remember to breathe; Quiet the mind; Listen; Smile; Think clearly when thinking; Ride the wave of thought but pay attention (so as not to stab myself in the foot with the garden fork, or cut off a toe with the spade); It is a process; Don't hurry; Be present, like I was when I was a kid.
Just about everyone my sister knows is unemployed. Her partner's mother just lost her job working with troubled teenagers, in the St Paul schools (one of those oh-so important budget cuts by Congress.) It's a new reality in America, for a large portion of us, good paying jobs disappearing, the people who might have run industries now taking cozy corporate jobs and investing their money in ever larger corporations, the Fed and Wall Street and Congress indifferent to the jobs problem. There is a great deal of fear out there. My neighbor Patty the nurse says the corporate leadership of her hospital treat the nurses like peons. I told her the corporate and financial elite of this country are convinced of the righteousness of their economic model, though the country is inching toward Revolution.
I was standing on my back step this morning when I watched an unleashed pit bull walk along my sidewalk. I started to wonder if it was loose, when a big man came into view.
"You get a new water heater?"
It was a non-sensical question, as I don't know him, and I don't have natural gas hooked up at present. I replied, "No, but the city tried to condemn my house for not having natural gas hooked up."
"You get to keep it? You get to stay?"
"I do. The city let go of it when I brought up the Fourth Amendment, that part about unreasonable search and seizure."
"You one of those government haters then?"
"No, I don't hate government. I simply don't appreciate laws that make no sense."
"Yeah, well tell that to the FBI in a couple of days." With that, he was past the alley and gone.
He was the same man I wrote about last fall, I realized, who came by my house as I was returning late one night, who said I was going to have some "visitors soon". I think it gives him a thrill, terrorizing people. I'm not particularly worried about it, as my yard is full of implements to use, should this mad man or his dog attack. As I worked on the soil afterward, I thought about another neighbor who came to me recently with a mouthful of Aryan Brotherhood nonsense. He has five brothers and every single one of them is in foreclosure. And who is he blaming for America's problems? I told him my nephew is Black. That didn't prevent him from trying to recruit me to the idea that white people need to stick together, against everyone else.
Many people come by the house with little children. I tell them all they are free to pick the wild strawberries on the corner, and the black cap raspberries along the fence. Larry, who lived in my house a long time ago, stopped by. He has six kids, all of whom graduated from college. He is very proud of them. I told him about the berries. "The kids pilfer them?" I told him kids are free to pick, that I've had young kids picking as their parents watched, berry juice all over their face. He liked that. I told him to come back later this summer when there's food aplenty. Shortly after he left, I dug up another cache of garbage (probably buried before Larry's time here.)
I've decided to focus this year on saving seed. It will take some practice, and some infrastructure, to get it right. And then, should the culture crumble because of the collapse of the oil supply, or a lack of water, or runaway self-interest, I'll contact every family I know with young kids, and we will gather together to protect and plant that seed.
Here's a brief tutorial on the method I'm using to prepare the soil:
Start digging.
Remove the top twelve inches
Place leaves, wood chips in the trench (in this case, old tomato vines and leaves, as this is a tomato bed and tomatoes are both canabalistic and omnivorous).
Using a garden fork, loosen the soil and mix in the carbon material.
Rake the soil back into the trench.
Form the bed.
Plant.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Individual Sovereign
Last Saturday I met my mother for a gathering of statewide members of the Republic of Minnesota. As I mentioned in the last post, they believe that with the Act of 1871, the United States Federal Government has been operating outside the constitution, as a corporation; effectively eliminating our status as individual sovereigns within a Republic, making us corporate "citizens" within a Democracy that has descended into oligarchy. What they are doing is "re-inhabiting" the Republic at the state and federal level, by establishing grand juries and electing public officials, and declaring themselves sovereign members of the Republic.
The meeting took place in a VFW in Bloomington. There were about 75 people, in a bingo hall with a capacity of about 500 - and yet I couldn't have spit without hitting a conspiracy theory. I am generally fond of entertaining curious and far out ideas, but after awhile I found myself feeling a little like my head was about to break, such were the number, and distance these theories were flowing from. Basically, if I can distill them to their core, it goes something like this:
With the Fourteenth Amendment our Rights became "privileges", and our Federal Government was empowered to go into debt to foreign powers. With the later "surrender of the people's gold" and the creation of the Federal Reserve, an international cabal of Bankers secured control of the money supply, and now the Government, which was never meant to be anything but a surrogate of the people, extracts copious funds from the citizenry to empower corporations and International Banks, going ever deeper into debt, while mismanaging the affairs of the nation such that corruption and pollution rule. The goal being, to destroy America, because our Constitution is the one document extant in the world establishing individual sovereignty, contrary to the establishment of One World Government. Soon, the planned economic collapse of America will take place, and in the vacuum a global elite will assume full control of the World.
I wasn't taking them very seriously at first. If you think people are generally any less superstitious than they were in say, the Middle Ages, you'd be wrong. Only now instead of fairy folk, people believe in HARP, mind control and geologic manipulation, in government plans to gas whole segments of the population to quell dissent. As the meeting descended into an all too typically dull civil meeting, following the Rules of Order, I started to check out - until Governor Urdahl, responding to a question about how much time there is before the Federal Government collapses, said that "the people funding us are the same ones who will be dismantling the Fed." The whole room went silent. I'm not sure what he really meant, but it certainly was a statement filled with the gravitas of monumental imminence. I asked him about it later and all he would say was, "the people need to know."
(I also heard in the meeting that the military supports this, and will step in when it's clear that a new government is established and functioning. Also, that all governments and and law enforcement agencies, and many foreign governments have been notified, and that the legal justification is established.)
It was at that moment I realized, these people are engaged in the earnest work of saving their country. Just regular people, they are attempting, in all 50 states, to rebuild the government, not from within government, but from the ground up. With a distinct emphasis on the idea of the sovereignty of the Individual, according to the principles of our nation's founders. This is where the distinction between Republic and Democracy is important. Democracy is, as our founders understood, the rule of the mob. Nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution does the word Democracy appear. In Democracy, whatever majority is in control makes the rules, even if those rules are contrary to reason and simple sense. In a Republic, every Individual participates in governance, in grand juries or as surrogate office holders. Watching them in that VFW, it was clear, we Americans are not accustomed to the idea of governing ourselves; even among these, who are aware it is possible, who are aware it is what our founders intended for us.
Former US Representative Clyde Cleveland has put together a document called Common Sense Revisited, which speaks more clearly and in far greater detail to these points than I have. I tried to look at the website for the Republic of Minnesota, but entering the site my computer was hit with an attack unlike any I have ever seen. My computer was deluged with malicious attacks, and continued to be every time I went online thereafter, until my computer went through a lengthy and exhaustive scan, deleting more than a dozen corrupted files (which is why I was not able to maintain the publishing of a post every fourth day.) Someone doesn't want people reading what is contained there.
This Republic thing seems less a movement than a potential means to take the country back, if we want it. I'm not sure Americans really care. What would we have to bitch about if we were actually running things ourselves? We are so accustomed to government existing for government's sake, and all the entitlements it has offered us, to assuage us in its usurpation of our Rights and Duties. It's hard to imagine there being any broad scale will or desire to consider the difference between Sovereign, Indigenous power and the surrogate power of governments.
Anyway, I continue to go about establishing in myself a greater understanding of my individual sovereignty. I go about that most clearly in my yard. Every spring, a lone white tulip pops up in the middle of a mess of unforgiving black cap raspberry vines. To get close I have to go through the gateway - next to my new pond, which I'm going to spend some time in this summer, when it gets really hot.
The meeting took place in a VFW in Bloomington. There were about 75 people, in a bingo hall with a capacity of about 500 - and yet I couldn't have spit without hitting a conspiracy theory. I am generally fond of entertaining curious and far out ideas, but after awhile I found myself feeling a little like my head was about to break, such were the number, and distance these theories were flowing from. Basically, if I can distill them to their core, it goes something like this:
With the Fourteenth Amendment our Rights became "privileges", and our Federal Government was empowered to go into debt to foreign powers. With the later "surrender of the people's gold" and the creation of the Federal Reserve, an international cabal of Bankers secured control of the money supply, and now the Government, which was never meant to be anything but a surrogate of the people, extracts copious funds from the citizenry to empower corporations and International Banks, going ever deeper into debt, while mismanaging the affairs of the nation such that corruption and pollution rule. The goal being, to destroy America, because our Constitution is the one document extant in the world establishing individual sovereignty, contrary to the establishment of One World Government. Soon, the planned economic collapse of America will take place, and in the vacuum a global elite will assume full control of the World.
I wasn't taking them very seriously at first. If you think people are generally any less superstitious than they were in say, the Middle Ages, you'd be wrong. Only now instead of fairy folk, people believe in HARP, mind control and geologic manipulation, in government plans to gas whole segments of the population to quell dissent. As the meeting descended into an all too typically dull civil meeting, following the Rules of Order, I started to check out - until Governor Urdahl, responding to a question about how much time there is before the Federal Government collapses, said that "the people funding us are the same ones who will be dismantling the Fed." The whole room went silent. I'm not sure what he really meant, but it certainly was a statement filled with the gravitas of monumental imminence. I asked him about it later and all he would say was, "the people need to know."
(I also heard in the meeting that the military supports this, and will step in when it's clear that a new government is established and functioning. Also, that all governments and and law enforcement agencies, and many foreign governments have been notified, and that the legal justification is established.)
It was at that moment I realized, these people are engaged in the earnest work of saving their country. Just regular people, they are attempting, in all 50 states, to rebuild the government, not from within government, but from the ground up. With a distinct emphasis on the idea of the sovereignty of the Individual, according to the principles of our nation's founders. This is where the distinction between Republic and Democracy is important. Democracy is, as our founders understood, the rule of the mob. Nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution does the word Democracy appear. In Democracy, whatever majority is in control makes the rules, even if those rules are contrary to reason and simple sense. In a Republic, every Individual participates in governance, in grand juries or as surrogate office holders. Watching them in that VFW, it was clear, we Americans are not accustomed to the idea of governing ourselves; even among these, who are aware it is possible, who are aware it is what our founders intended for us.
Former US Representative Clyde Cleveland has put together a document called Common Sense Revisited, which speaks more clearly and in far greater detail to these points than I have. I tried to look at the website for the Republic of Minnesota, but entering the site my computer was hit with an attack unlike any I have ever seen. My computer was deluged with malicious attacks, and continued to be every time I went online thereafter, until my computer went through a lengthy and exhaustive scan, deleting more than a dozen corrupted files (which is why I was not able to maintain the publishing of a post every fourth day.) Someone doesn't want people reading what is contained there.
This Republic thing seems less a movement than a potential means to take the country back, if we want it. I'm not sure Americans really care. What would we have to bitch about if we were actually running things ourselves? We are so accustomed to government existing for government's sake, and all the entitlements it has offered us, to assuage us in its usurpation of our Rights and Duties. It's hard to imagine there being any broad scale will or desire to consider the difference between Sovereign, Indigenous power and the surrogate power of governments.
Anyway, I continue to go about establishing in myself a greater understanding of my individual sovereignty. I go about that most clearly in my yard. Every spring, a lone white tulip pops up in the middle of a mess of unforgiving black cap raspberry vines. To get close I have to go through the gateway - next to my new pond, which I'm going to spend some time in this summer, when it gets really hot.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
I Choose Love
I spent Tuesday and Wednesday making love to my yard, turning soil, building soil, planting seed. It was such a relief, knowing that the city is not going to condemn my house, and remove me from it with the police. The sun came out Tuesday morning after a long absence, and stayed out for two glorious days. I wore my iPod much of the time, singing softly to the soil as I worked, listening to the birds calling when I put the music away, sometimes answering, occasionally a call and response. Resting the afternoon of the second day, a native bee landed on my hand and groomed itself, each of its myriad hairs ridged and glistening gold; attending to the minute particulars, as Blake suggested.
As I worked I contemplated the bizarre divide separating our country, fear driving both sides further apart. Consider this quote from one of our more radically ideological politicians, Alan West, House Representative from Florida:
"The Liberal Progressive agenda is nothing more than a dishonest tyranny trying to reduce our citizens into subservient subjects of the bureaucratic nanny state."
Now lets adjust this quote a little bit:
"The Conservative Free Market agenda is nothing more than a dishonest tyranny trying to reduce our citizens into subservient subjects of Wall Street and Corporations."
Sound familiar? The fact is, both are true. If liberals had their way, we could hardly make a decision about anything important, without first asking permission from half-a-dozen government agents, who would then tell you exactly what you have no choice but to do, and exactly how to do it. If Conservatives had their way, they'd be building oil and gas derricks and 20,000+ sq/ft mansions in Yellowstone, the rich would pay no taxes and the world would be twice as polluted as it is. Either one in control and you might have to sell your soul to breath the air and drink the water. Tyranny, one way or the other.
Meanwhile, the country is about evenly divided, with a well balanced tyranny of expanding government and unaccountable corporate and financial elite. The result being, the country's finances are near collapse, and both sides are wailing at each other impotently, neither side willing to admit both sides are at fault. Each side asking the other to make all the sacrifice, and neither willing to make any. And almost no one questioning the whole idea of what America has become, which is an Empire feeding off the resources of much of the planet to maintain a standard of living that has no future.
My recommendation? I say we cut virtually all government spending but for the youngest and the oldest, and raise taxes on the richest, and then raise them a little more. Pay off the debt, and stop borrowing money. Reign in banks, outlaw insurance, and restore the right of the people to revoke corporate charters. Once revoked, make the leadership personally clean up whatever mess that resulted in the closing of the company. Redistribute land currently in service to industrial agriculture in X00 acre plots to families willing to steward the land bio-intensively.* Re-plot the cities and rebuild the buildings to take full advantage of solar heat. Rebuild America, until we no longer need fossil fuels. Remove our troops from every foreign outpost, and disband the military. Declare the harming of a child, a woman, or an elder to be a capital offense. Let women in community be the final arbiters of progress and justice. Recover the understanding that we are of the Earth.
It is inevitable anyway, likely. Though I'm not sure Americans have either the courage or the fortitude or the fore-sight to make it so, without going through a long, ugly process of collapse. We are so well trained as consumers, without regard for how the things we consume are created, or secured, or transported. We are so well blinded by ideology, many can't see the world in any way but through that poison.
There is a notion that if we consume less, we will all have to live like apes. I consider this idea deeply condescending, and also fundamentally clueless. As if by using less we will suddenly forget how to do anything, as if we will stop building, stop creating. Some might, but I won't. Being a nation of victims, of one ideology or another, most of us might, when it dawns on us that everything we have believed about the inevitability of Progress is proved to be false, when the Market we have believed to be infallible collapses, because the fuel required is no longer available in the abundance required, to allow it to flow as smoothly as it has. How many will go on blaming one villain or another, right up until the moment they die of starvation - not because of the action of any villain, but because they never gave a moment's thought to where their food comes from, abandoning the future to magical thinking, like the whole issue of limited resources will suddenly be resolved just in the nick of time, by someone, somewhere, doing something?
More and more I hear talk about the end. We know it's coming. Instead of thinking about it constructively, mostly I hear people absolve responsibility, believing in the return of a Messiah, in Divine intervention of some kind, in savior aliens, in the miracle of Technology, in Science, in the status quo - in short, in anything but taking responsibly for my own life, in relation to the Earth.
Maybe there will be an intervention. When I go to that place, I imagine Dec 12, 2012, the center of the galaxy sending out a pulse, that pulse amplified passing through the sun, this immense energy enveloping the Earth, and every human on Earth in that moment uttering a collective giggle - and suddenly ALL is revealed. I don't believe the world will end even then, should that happen. Which is why I conspire to plant fruit trees. Which is why I continue to cultivate my love affair with the Earth. I'm a naive and somewhat self-conscious lover that way, but I grow more open and more energetic, the more I listen, the more I feel.
These corporations, the banks, the Fed and this Government are all necessary to each other, and they are now in their fullest expression. The population shows no sign of awareness of it's role in the biosphere, increasing the number and distribution of poisons, draining the aquifers, melting the glaciers and ice caps. Unrelenting in our drive toward affluence, it's hard to imagine anything but the continued and increasing rush toward ecological oblivion.
I think what we will find is what we have always found to be true, which is friends and family and community. And maybe more, if we are open to it. I'm certainly finding that this existence is a good deal more mysterious than I have been lead to believe. The Earth has a great many secrets the powers-that-be would rather we not be aware of.
Friday, more loving my yard, and then a boat race with my sister, her partner and my niece and nephew, on Minnehaha creek. We each make a boat (except my nephew who is four months and just about ready to crawl), the materials limited to a health care catalog and painters tape. Whose boat floats the farthest, wins. I'm building mine remnant of a design preceding the Pharaohs, with global reach(the original, not my paper Health Care manual.) Saturday, I'm meeting my Mother. She's attending a gathering in Bloomington, of the members of the Republic. They believe that the Federal Government has been operating outside the Constitution, as a Corporation, since at least 1871; making them, ostensibly, the true Americans. Saturday evening and Sunday I'm helping a reader demo an apartment he and his wife own, for cash. A great blessing to me, and fun probably.
Basically what I'm saying is, with all the fear in the world, I choose love. (Which, if I'm honest about that, may be the scariest thing of all.)
* Joel Salatin's Polyface farm is a supreme example of farming as it should be. He's also fun. www.polyfacefarms.com
As I worked I contemplated the bizarre divide separating our country, fear driving both sides further apart. Consider this quote from one of our more radically ideological politicians, Alan West, House Representative from Florida:
"The Liberal Progressive agenda is nothing more than a dishonest tyranny trying to reduce our citizens into subservient subjects of the bureaucratic nanny state."
Now lets adjust this quote a little bit:
"The Conservative Free Market agenda is nothing more than a dishonest tyranny trying to reduce our citizens into subservient subjects of Wall Street and Corporations."
Sound familiar? The fact is, both are true. If liberals had their way, we could hardly make a decision about anything important, without first asking permission from half-a-dozen government agents, who would then tell you exactly what you have no choice but to do, and exactly how to do it. If Conservatives had their way, they'd be building oil and gas derricks and 20,000+ sq/ft mansions in Yellowstone, the rich would pay no taxes and the world would be twice as polluted as it is. Either one in control and you might have to sell your soul to breath the air and drink the water. Tyranny, one way or the other.
Meanwhile, the country is about evenly divided, with a well balanced tyranny of expanding government and unaccountable corporate and financial elite. The result being, the country's finances are near collapse, and both sides are wailing at each other impotently, neither side willing to admit both sides are at fault. Each side asking the other to make all the sacrifice, and neither willing to make any. And almost no one questioning the whole idea of what America has become, which is an Empire feeding off the resources of much of the planet to maintain a standard of living that has no future.
My recommendation? I say we cut virtually all government spending but for the youngest and the oldest, and raise taxes on the richest, and then raise them a little more. Pay off the debt, and stop borrowing money. Reign in banks, outlaw insurance, and restore the right of the people to revoke corporate charters. Once revoked, make the leadership personally clean up whatever mess that resulted in the closing of the company. Redistribute land currently in service to industrial agriculture in X00 acre plots to families willing to steward the land bio-intensively.* Re-plot the cities and rebuild the buildings to take full advantage of solar heat. Rebuild America, until we no longer need fossil fuels. Remove our troops from every foreign outpost, and disband the military. Declare the harming of a child, a woman, or an elder to be a capital offense. Let women in community be the final arbiters of progress and justice. Recover the understanding that we are of the Earth.
It is inevitable anyway, likely. Though I'm not sure Americans have either the courage or the fortitude or the fore-sight to make it so, without going through a long, ugly process of collapse. We are so well trained as consumers, without regard for how the things we consume are created, or secured, or transported. We are so well blinded by ideology, many can't see the world in any way but through that poison.
There is a notion that if we consume less, we will all have to live like apes. I consider this idea deeply condescending, and also fundamentally clueless. As if by using less we will suddenly forget how to do anything, as if we will stop building, stop creating. Some might, but I won't. Being a nation of victims, of one ideology or another, most of us might, when it dawns on us that everything we have believed about the inevitability of Progress is proved to be false, when the Market we have believed to be infallible collapses, because the fuel required is no longer available in the abundance required, to allow it to flow as smoothly as it has. How many will go on blaming one villain or another, right up until the moment they die of starvation - not because of the action of any villain, but because they never gave a moment's thought to where their food comes from, abandoning the future to magical thinking, like the whole issue of limited resources will suddenly be resolved just in the nick of time, by someone, somewhere, doing something?
More and more I hear talk about the end. We know it's coming. Instead of thinking about it constructively, mostly I hear people absolve responsibility, believing in the return of a Messiah, in Divine intervention of some kind, in savior aliens, in the miracle of Technology, in Science, in the status quo - in short, in anything but taking responsibly for my own life, in relation to the Earth.
Maybe there will be an intervention. When I go to that place, I imagine Dec 12, 2012, the center of the galaxy sending out a pulse, that pulse amplified passing through the sun, this immense energy enveloping the Earth, and every human on Earth in that moment uttering a collective giggle - and suddenly ALL is revealed. I don't believe the world will end even then, should that happen. Which is why I conspire to plant fruit trees. Which is why I continue to cultivate my love affair with the Earth. I'm a naive and somewhat self-conscious lover that way, but I grow more open and more energetic, the more I listen, the more I feel.
These corporations, the banks, the Fed and this Government are all necessary to each other, and they are now in their fullest expression. The population shows no sign of awareness of it's role in the biosphere, increasing the number and distribution of poisons, draining the aquifers, melting the glaciers and ice caps. Unrelenting in our drive toward affluence, it's hard to imagine anything but the continued and increasing rush toward ecological oblivion.
I think what we will find is what we have always found to be true, which is friends and family and community. And maybe more, if we are open to it. I'm certainly finding that this existence is a good deal more mysterious than I have been lead to believe. The Earth has a great many secrets the powers-that-be would rather we not be aware of.
Friday, more loving my yard, and then a boat race with my sister, her partner and my niece and nephew, on Minnehaha creek. We each make a boat (except my nephew who is four months and just about ready to crawl), the materials limited to a health care catalog and painters tape. Whose boat floats the farthest, wins. I'm building mine remnant of a design preceding the Pharaohs, with global reach(the original, not my paper Health Care manual.) Saturday, I'm meeting my Mother. She's attending a gathering in Bloomington, of the members of the Republic. They believe that the Federal Government has been operating outside the Constitution, as a Corporation, since at least 1871; making them, ostensibly, the true Americans. Saturday evening and Sunday I'm helping a reader demo an apartment he and his wife own, for cash. A great blessing to me, and fun probably.
Basically what I'm saying is, with all the fear in the world, I choose love. (Which, if I'm honest about that, may be the scariest thing of all.)
* Joel Salatin's Polyface farm is a supreme example of farming as it should be. He's also fun. www.polyfacefarms.com
Monday, May 2, 2011
Part III: Condemnation Resolution
I took the train downtown again Friday. I was looking for Tom, who had appeared on a local tv news piece on my situation that aired the previous night. I went to a 4th floor office of the City Utilities building, where I entered a door into a cramped, unattended lobby no bigger than a walk-in closet, with restricted access to the offices beyond. One, and then another inquired if I needed help, and both went looking for Tom. A third asked if I was being helped, and I told her jokingly that she could be the third to go in search, though she declined, laughing. Everyone was pleasant to me.
Then, as on cue, a young blonde woman appeared. She said, "No one from the city will be coming into your house any time next week."
"Does that mean that my house is not going to be condemned?" She didn't know, and I explained to her patiently that I was under the impression that my house would be condemned that day, and I couldn't leave until someone could tell me whether or not that was true. She looked stymied, as if there was nothing she could do. I reiterated. She stood there, shrugging helplessly, growing increasingly uncomfortable, as I grew increasingly perplexed.
That's when an older woman swept in through the door behind me, from the hall. Her energy was astonishingly defensive and hostile. She said in fact that my house would be condemned that day. Flustered by her aggressiveness, I asked about the codes I had broken. "You have access to the Internet, don't you?" As if this was not regulatory services and I were an idiot to think that they might actually have copies of their codes, or could make some. "Have you looked into energy assistance programs with CenterPoint," she asked, accusingly, with an energy like she was addressing some kind of illiterate grifter. "People like you," she started, "need to ask for assistance from CenterPoint to pay your bills", as I started laughing, parroting her sadly, appalled: "People like me?" She floundered helplessly, before she recovered by telling me "I'll give you until Monday midnight. After that, were coming in with the police."
What the fuck? From there I went to the office of Police Chief Tim Dolan. I asked the elder woman behind the counter, who had the polar opposite energy of the elder in Regulatory Services, if I could file a police report.
"What do you want to file a report about?" she asked.
"Well, the city is threatening to condemn my house and remove me from it with the police, because I don't have natural gas service hooked up."
She looked at me inquisitively, somewhat confused. "You want to file a report for an action that hasn't happened yet?"
"I guess. Mostly I just want to let the police know what the city will be asking of them," and I winked at her and smiled. She smiled, and gave me a list of precincts, and a phone number to call and a website address to visit, apologizing that I couldn't file the report with her.
From there I went to Sheriff Richard Stanek's office, because I wasn't sure, when Regulatory Services says they're coming in with the police, whether that means Minneapolis Police Officers or Sheriff Deputies. The elder woman behind the bullet proof glass told me in her firm, conservative tone that I needed to go to processing, in room 30.
In room 30, I talked with a deputy. He didn't know the answer to my question. "It's complicated," he said, and after a roundabout description he ended with, "civil process is different from criminal," pausing and shrugging his shoulders uncomfortably, when I looked at him like, "what?" He told me I needed to go to Regulatory Services.
"I've been there, and they haven't been very nice to me."
"I'm not surprised," he said, and replied, "I'm not sure I want to know," when I asked if he wanted to know why the city was condemning my house and threatening to remove me from it. I told him anyway. He shook his head and said he didn't know what to tell me. On the verge of shouting, I said I felt like going to the City Attorney. He said I should.
At the City Attorney's office, a kindly man behind the glass went in search of someone to help me, and Bert appeared. There was kindness in his eyes, and concern. I was half-hysterical by that point, like the whole idea of the Constitution was a farce and in my great naivete' I was just coming to recognize it. I babbled on about my situation, mindlessly trying to find where I put the damn Intent to Condemn order, until I fairly shouted, "search and seizure, what!"
It had taken an Englishman, responding to this blog, to remind this American, that what Regulatory Services was planning to do was a clear violation of the spirit of the Fourth Amendment, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..." Bert disappeared for awhile behind the restricted access door, and returned with a guarantee that nothing would be done about the Condemnation order at least for the next week, and he gave me a number to call Monday morning, to arrange a meeting, he said, with the top three officials at Regulatory Services. I left, reminded as I always am, when I get carried away by frustration with any institution anywhere, that there are good people everywhere.
I called the number this morning and left a voicemail, in a state not at all certain, as if at any moment Harold the inspector might appear at my door with a troop of police. Laying in bed a long while after, in my room now heated by natural gas generated electricity, I thought about fossil fuels. Here the city is threatening to condemn my house, and remove me from it with the police, for not having natural gas service, while all over America and the world, we are hydro-fracturing, pumping water and sand and toxic chemicals and known carcinogens at high pressure into the Earth and aquifers, in an effort not to have the conversation in America about life after fossil fuels. We would likely be seeing the same inflation in natural gas prices as we are with oil, if we were not using this incredibly destructive technique (no matter how much we want to blame parasitic speculators, or corrupt government officials, or greedy oil executives). As the writer John Michael Greer has pointed out in a very prescient series of posts*, we might have chosen an eco-technic future in the 70's, but we chose global hegemony and conspicuous consumption instead. And now we're involved in at least four foreign wars, the great financial empire we have created is showing signs of utter dissolution, and a world of scarce resources approaches closer by the day.
A low pressure weather system has parked itself over Minnesota the past week; my vegetable starts are back inside, many taking a serious hit the last three days from the cold. It is cold in most of my house, except my bedroom. I'm almost out of money, again. I have talked with the neighbors about building a pergola over their back patio. But to do that, we will likely have to pull a permit, and have to deal with the same Regulatory Services that has lately taken the attitude toward me, that either I play by the rules however illogical, or I will be destroyed, and I worry that that job which I hoped would pay this months bills will be denied me. I received a letter Friday from the city, that I have until June 11 to repair my driveway, part of which I tore up for what I hope will be my orchard, telling me I'm only allowed to place asphalt, concrete or pavers.**
I stomped around the house awhile, unable to find the letter, raging at myself for being so unorganized, for being such an idiot to lose such an important piece of information.
I biked to the coffee shop, noticing that gas at the local station is $3.99 and 9/10ths, arriving only to find that I had forgotten the computer power cord (it's a five year old battery and holds maybe an hour's charge). I biked home, packed the power cord in my backpack, and looked for the letter again, as if it would suddenly appear by magic. Biking back to the coffee shop, I reminded myself of the importance of mindfulness, that the greatest enemy of my peace of mind is not government, or rogue agents, or amoral corporations, or angry, insulting people, but myself. All that is coming at me now is just that which I need to fulfill my purpose. I am not a victim of anything unless I make myself so. Which I do, repeatedly, until I realize again that this is all just a test, that it is all just what must be, as I have chosen to act not out of the expectations of culture, or even family or friends, but out of what I know to be true to myself, at the core of my being.
I called the number at Regulatory Services again. The woman who answered, who is the very same woman who treated me so badly on Friday, told me in a calm, open voice without defensiveness, that the city had issued an extension, that I would be receiving a letter, and that the order would not need to be addressed again until October 15. I asked her if that meant the city would not be condemning my house. She said it did.
* http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/
**
Then, as on cue, a young blonde woman appeared. She said, "No one from the city will be coming into your house any time next week."
"Does that mean that my house is not going to be condemned?" She didn't know, and I explained to her patiently that I was under the impression that my house would be condemned that day, and I couldn't leave until someone could tell me whether or not that was true. She looked stymied, as if there was nothing she could do. I reiterated. She stood there, shrugging helplessly, growing increasingly uncomfortable, as I grew increasingly perplexed.
That's when an older woman swept in through the door behind me, from the hall. Her energy was astonishingly defensive and hostile. She said in fact that my house would be condemned that day. Flustered by her aggressiveness, I asked about the codes I had broken. "You have access to the Internet, don't you?" As if this was not regulatory services and I were an idiot to think that they might actually have copies of their codes, or could make some. "Have you looked into energy assistance programs with CenterPoint," she asked, accusingly, with an energy like she was addressing some kind of illiterate grifter. "People like you," she started, "need to ask for assistance from CenterPoint to pay your bills", as I started laughing, parroting her sadly, appalled: "People like me?" She floundered helplessly, before she recovered by telling me "I'll give you until Monday midnight. After that, were coming in with the police."
What the fuck? From there I went to the office of Police Chief Tim Dolan. I asked the elder woman behind the counter, who had the polar opposite energy of the elder in Regulatory Services, if I could file a police report.
"What do you want to file a report about?" she asked.
"Well, the city is threatening to condemn my house and remove me from it with the police, because I don't have natural gas service hooked up."
She looked at me inquisitively, somewhat confused. "You want to file a report for an action that hasn't happened yet?"
"I guess. Mostly I just want to let the police know what the city will be asking of them," and I winked at her and smiled. She smiled, and gave me a list of precincts, and a phone number to call and a website address to visit, apologizing that I couldn't file the report with her.
From there I went to Sheriff Richard Stanek's office, because I wasn't sure, when Regulatory Services says they're coming in with the police, whether that means Minneapolis Police Officers or Sheriff Deputies. The elder woman behind the bullet proof glass told me in her firm, conservative tone that I needed to go to processing, in room 30.
In room 30, I talked with a deputy. He didn't know the answer to my question. "It's complicated," he said, and after a roundabout description he ended with, "civil process is different from criminal," pausing and shrugging his shoulders uncomfortably, when I looked at him like, "what?" He told me I needed to go to Regulatory Services.
"I've been there, and they haven't been very nice to me."
"I'm not surprised," he said, and replied, "I'm not sure I want to know," when I asked if he wanted to know why the city was condemning my house and threatening to remove me from it. I told him anyway. He shook his head and said he didn't know what to tell me. On the verge of shouting, I said I felt like going to the City Attorney. He said I should.
At the City Attorney's office, a kindly man behind the glass went in search of someone to help me, and Bert appeared. There was kindness in his eyes, and concern. I was half-hysterical by that point, like the whole idea of the Constitution was a farce and in my great naivete' I was just coming to recognize it. I babbled on about my situation, mindlessly trying to find where I put the damn Intent to Condemn order, until I fairly shouted, "search and seizure, what!"
It had taken an Englishman, responding to this blog, to remind this American, that what Regulatory Services was planning to do was a clear violation of the spirit of the Fourth Amendment, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..." Bert disappeared for awhile behind the restricted access door, and returned with a guarantee that nothing would be done about the Condemnation order at least for the next week, and he gave me a number to call Monday morning, to arrange a meeting, he said, with the top three officials at Regulatory Services. I left, reminded as I always am, when I get carried away by frustration with any institution anywhere, that there are good people everywhere.
I called the number this morning and left a voicemail, in a state not at all certain, as if at any moment Harold the inspector might appear at my door with a troop of police. Laying in bed a long while after, in my room now heated by natural gas generated electricity, I thought about fossil fuels. Here the city is threatening to condemn my house, and remove me from it with the police, for not having natural gas service, while all over America and the world, we are hydro-fracturing, pumping water and sand and toxic chemicals and known carcinogens at high pressure into the Earth and aquifers, in an effort not to have the conversation in America about life after fossil fuels. We would likely be seeing the same inflation in natural gas prices as we are with oil, if we were not using this incredibly destructive technique (no matter how much we want to blame parasitic speculators, or corrupt government officials, or greedy oil executives). As the writer John Michael Greer has pointed out in a very prescient series of posts*, we might have chosen an eco-technic future in the 70's, but we chose global hegemony and conspicuous consumption instead. And now we're involved in at least four foreign wars, the great financial empire we have created is showing signs of utter dissolution, and a world of scarce resources approaches closer by the day.
A low pressure weather system has parked itself over Minnesota the past week; my vegetable starts are back inside, many taking a serious hit the last three days from the cold. It is cold in most of my house, except my bedroom. I'm almost out of money, again. I have talked with the neighbors about building a pergola over their back patio. But to do that, we will likely have to pull a permit, and have to deal with the same Regulatory Services that has lately taken the attitude toward me, that either I play by the rules however illogical, or I will be destroyed, and I worry that that job which I hoped would pay this months bills will be denied me. I received a letter Friday from the city, that I have until June 11 to repair my driveway, part of which I tore up for what I hope will be my orchard, telling me I'm only allowed to place asphalt, concrete or pavers.**
I stomped around the house awhile, unable to find the letter, raging at myself for being so unorganized, for being such an idiot to lose such an important piece of information.
I biked to the coffee shop, noticing that gas at the local station is $3.99 and 9/10ths, arriving only to find that I had forgotten the computer power cord (it's a five year old battery and holds maybe an hour's charge). I biked home, packed the power cord in my backpack, and looked for the letter again, as if it would suddenly appear by magic. Biking back to the coffee shop, I reminded myself of the importance of mindfulness, that the greatest enemy of my peace of mind is not government, or rogue agents, or amoral corporations, or angry, insulting people, but myself. All that is coming at me now is just that which I need to fulfill my purpose. I am not a victim of anything unless I make myself so. Which I do, repeatedly, until I realize again that this is all just a test, that it is all just what must be, as I have chosen to act not out of the expectations of culture, or even family or friends, but out of what I know to be true to myself, at the core of my being.
I called the number at Regulatory Services again. The woman who answered, who is the very same woman who treated me so badly on Friday, told me in a calm, open voice without defensiveness, that the city had issued an extension, that I would be receiving a letter, and that the order would not need to be addressed again until October 15. I asked her if that meant the city would not be condemning my house. She said it did.
* http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/
**
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Revolution
Monday morning I took the train downtown to City Hall, and the Mayor's office. There was a bizarre episode walking into that monolithic building of red quarry stone, a woman holding the door open for me, waiting while I covered the stairs to the door. Like a besieged public servant trying to display her devotion to service, but really just breaking the bounds of normal social expectations, awkwardly. I felt weirdly obligated then to hold the door for the woman with the young son, climbing the stairs behind me, though it made her more uncomfortable than it had me.
Outside the Mayors office I paused awhile to send an email. It was a business email, somewhat important, which I sent then not because I had to, but because I found I was afraid. What could I be afraid of? It's only the Mayor's office. Thinking about it, I realized it was only a generalized fear of my government, which made me angry.
I walked into the office, and stood there awhile before I realized the young woman behind the bullet-proof glass wasn't going to help me unless I pushed the buzzer. She came to the glass, and I realized she was afraid as well. I explained my situation, as she grew increasingly uncomfortable. She offered to retrieve someone else.
I sat down, and the young woman came out from behind the glass, to fill her water bottle, on her way out. I asked her if she liked working in the mayor's office. She replied that she did, and that she had only been there a year, while everyone else had been with the mayor from the beginning. I was thinking, you've been accepted then, that's great, because I know it's no easy thing to be accepted by a tight group of people, anywhere. What came out of my mouth was, "So you've been accepted by the clique then?"
It's about the meanest thing I've said to someone, in a long time. What do I know about Mayor Rybak and his staff? He's been mayor for years, and I've heard very few vociferous complaints against him, in this time of widespread rage against government. He seems to be a good mayor, as mayors go. What did I know about this woman? Nothing. She bristled, and explained that the Mayor has a staff of eleven, while the previous Mayor had 18. 'More work for everybody,' I thought, meanly. She hustled out the door, while I floundered in my stupidity. I tried to say something nice, but I was beyond redemption.
Another woman came to the bullet-proof glass. She explained to me that the city only condemns for a lack of water service. I corrected her, she looked up my address, and confirmed that in fact, there is an Intent to Condemn order. She explained that I needed to go to the Planning Department. She gave no sign if she thought it strange that the city would condemn my house for not having natural gas service in the summer. I was quite happy to get out of there.
At the office of Planning and Inspections, I found myself talking to an attractive, intelligent blonde. It's like they saw me coming. "Oh, he's angry, send in *****." We had a pleasant conversation, though it was clear to me it was more odd to her that I could function without natural gas service, than it was that the city was condemning my house for it. She let me file an appeal, and I left the office feeling like they would recognize the absurdity of the situation, and cancel the order. I called and left a voicemail with the issuing inspector, like I was told to. When I got home I found the letter of Intent to Condemn, in the mail.
Tuesday I heard nothing, so Wednesday morning I called the inspector and the Planning office, leaving voicemails. (While I made the calls I watched a white city vehicle drive by the house, turn south on the avenue, turn around half way down the block, and park in the middle of the avenue facing my house, before speeding to the intersection and turning east on the street. Lurking, seemingly.) I received two voicemails shortly after. In the first, Sandy in a very stern voice told me "this is not an appealable offense," twice, and that I would have to address the problem with Harold the inspector, who already told me he doesn't make the rules. What kind of law in America is unappealable, I thought? That sounds more like the law of kings, which is absolutism, which is tyranny. The second voicemail was from Dawn, informing me that there was a hearing May 19, but giving me no other information about the hearing. Is it for me and my case, or is it a general hearing? I still don't know.
I called the number Dawn gave me. A woman answered, and it took some time before I was able to ascertain that the woman I was talking with was in fact, neither Sandy or Dawn, but Bonnie. Bonnie could find no record of a "con", in my case. A con? Is that what this is? She used the word three times, evidently preferable to saying condemnation, though I can't imagine how. She said I needed to talk to Harold, but I informed her that I had left two voicemails with Harold and had heard nothing. She said she would be sure to have Harold call me.
He did. He told me I needed to turn the gas back on, or the city would condemn. "You realize," I said, "that the city is effectively saying it's a crime to conserve natural gas, to use the sun to heat my water instead of natural gas, and that I don't have enough money to pay my bill."
"I'm not going to get into that with you," he said, because he is only following the rules apparently no one makes, which no one can appeal, which can't be considered in the light of logic, reason or simple sense. He said he could give me until Friday to restore the service, or the city will condemn, and if I persist in the house, "the police will remove you."
Which is where it stands. If things continue as they are, I could be in jail this time next week. I've never been to jail. Perhaps it's time. I have, after all, said I do not recognize my government as legitimate. More to the point in this case, I do not recognize laws that are "unappealable." I do not recognize laws that make no logical sense. I do not acquiesce to extortion.
I spent much of yesterday sending emails to local media, and a few national outlets. No one has responded. More people have read this blog the last three days than at any time in the history of this blog, yet there has been no response but from one faithful reader, and two old friends. Reading through the last post again, I had to ask myself, who is going to support me in this? A radical anarchist gorilla gardener, in service to the Goddess, calling for revolution?
Anarchy is a word mostly used by people who don't have any idea what it actually means. In my case, it means I govern myself, and I don't need any government to tell me what's in the best interest of my "health, safety and welfare". It means I believe everyone is capable of governing themselves, though few know it, and many who think they do, govern themselves as if no one else matters.
A guy on HuffPost recently mocked me, as if I don't know the difference between Gorilla and Guerrilla. I didn't get a chance to respond that I am considerably more gorilla than guerrilla. One of the guiding principles of my life is that violent revolution has never brought us anything but a different kind to tyranny. Another is, there is more than this life, hence my service to the Goddess, though I don't claim to know any more about Her than I do about God.
I do what I feel called to do. I write what I feel called to write.
Finally, by revolution, I mean a broad evolutionary transformation in consciousness. What that looks like, I don't know, but I believe. We are better than what we have become, as a species, as a people, as a nation. Many believe we are beyond hope. I like to think we are all unique, astonishing and utterly beautiful manifestations of the spirit, divine beings, children of the earth, children of the sun, Homo sapien sapien, sacred, and so there is always hope.
I had a moment the other day, returning to my house from the Planning Department, when I felt that in that moment, I could meet my maker and not be afraid or ashamed. That feeling has passed, but I hold onto the memory, thinking about what seems to be coming from my civil government. I am an American. I love my family, friends, community, and the Earth. I am in service.
I think I'll return to the city Planning Department Friday, and see if I can figure out who makes these rules that cannot be appealed. After that, I think I'll go to the police department, and warn them what the city is going to ask of them. Though I expect to hear much the same from the police, as I've heard from the people in Planning and Inspections, which is much the same as I hear from many in public and private institutions: "I'm just doing what I've been told," and, "I don't make the rules."
But according to our founders, we do, by our consent.
Outside the Mayors office I paused awhile to send an email. It was a business email, somewhat important, which I sent then not because I had to, but because I found I was afraid. What could I be afraid of? It's only the Mayor's office. Thinking about it, I realized it was only a generalized fear of my government, which made me angry.
I walked into the office, and stood there awhile before I realized the young woman behind the bullet-proof glass wasn't going to help me unless I pushed the buzzer. She came to the glass, and I realized she was afraid as well. I explained my situation, as she grew increasingly uncomfortable. She offered to retrieve someone else.
I sat down, and the young woman came out from behind the glass, to fill her water bottle, on her way out. I asked her if she liked working in the mayor's office. She replied that she did, and that she had only been there a year, while everyone else had been with the mayor from the beginning. I was thinking, you've been accepted then, that's great, because I know it's no easy thing to be accepted by a tight group of people, anywhere. What came out of my mouth was, "So you've been accepted by the clique then?"
It's about the meanest thing I've said to someone, in a long time. What do I know about Mayor Rybak and his staff? He's been mayor for years, and I've heard very few vociferous complaints against him, in this time of widespread rage against government. He seems to be a good mayor, as mayors go. What did I know about this woman? Nothing. She bristled, and explained that the Mayor has a staff of eleven, while the previous Mayor had 18. 'More work for everybody,' I thought, meanly. She hustled out the door, while I floundered in my stupidity. I tried to say something nice, but I was beyond redemption.
Another woman came to the bullet-proof glass. She explained to me that the city only condemns for a lack of water service. I corrected her, she looked up my address, and confirmed that in fact, there is an Intent to Condemn order. She explained that I needed to go to the Planning Department. She gave no sign if she thought it strange that the city would condemn my house for not having natural gas service in the summer. I was quite happy to get out of there.
At the office of Planning and Inspections, I found myself talking to an attractive, intelligent blonde. It's like they saw me coming. "Oh, he's angry, send in *****." We had a pleasant conversation, though it was clear to me it was more odd to her that I could function without natural gas service, than it was that the city was condemning my house for it. She let me file an appeal, and I left the office feeling like they would recognize the absurdity of the situation, and cancel the order. I called and left a voicemail with the issuing inspector, like I was told to. When I got home I found the letter of Intent to Condemn, in the mail.
Tuesday I heard nothing, so Wednesday morning I called the inspector and the Planning office, leaving voicemails. (While I made the calls I watched a white city vehicle drive by the house, turn south on the avenue, turn around half way down the block, and park in the middle of the avenue facing my house, before speeding to the intersection and turning east on the street. Lurking, seemingly.) I received two voicemails shortly after. In the first, Sandy in a very stern voice told me "this is not an appealable offense," twice, and that I would have to address the problem with Harold the inspector, who already told me he doesn't make the rules. What kind of law in America is unappealable, I thought? That sounds more like the law of kings, which is absolutism, which is tyranny. The second voicemail was from Dawn, informing me that there was a hearing May 19, but giving me no other information about the hearing. Is it for me and my case, or is it a general hearing? I still don't know.
I called the number Dawn gave me. A woman answered, and it took some time before I was able to ascertain that the woman I was talking with was in fact, neither Sandy or Dawn, but Bonnie. Bonnie could find no record of a "con", in my case. A con? Is that what this is? She used the word three times, evidently preferable to saying condemnation, though I can't imagine how. She said I needed to talk to Harold, but I informed her that I had left two voicemails with Harold and had heard nothing. She said she would be sure to have Harold call me.
He did. He told me I needed to turn the gas back on, or the city would condemn. "You realize," I said, "that the city is effectively saying it's a crime to conserve natural gas, to use the sun to heat my water instead of natural gas, and that I don't have enough money to pay my bill."
"I'm not going to get into that with you," he said, because he is only following the rules apparently no one makes, which no one can appeal, which can't be considered in the light of logic, reason or simple sense. He said he could give me until Friday to restore the service, or the city will condemn, and if I persist in the house, "the police will remove you."
Which is where it stands. If things continue as they are, I could be in jail this time next week. I've never been to jail. Perhaps it's time. I have, after all, said I do not recognize my government as legitimate. More to the point in this case, I do not recognize laws that are "unappealable." I do not recognize laws that make no logical sense. I do not acquiesce to extortion.
I spent much of yesterday sending emails to local media, and a few national outlets. No one has responded. More people have read this blog the last three days than at any time in the history of this blog, yet there has been no response but from one faithful reader, and two old friends. Reading through the last post again, I had to ask myself, who is going to support me in this? A radical anarchist gorilla gardener, in service to the Goddess, calling for revolution?
Anarchy is a word mostly used by people who don't have any idea what it actually means. In my case, it means I govern myself, and I don't need any government to tell me what's in the best interest of my "health, safety and welfare". It means I believe everyone is capable of governing themselves, though few know it, and many who think they do, govern themselves as if no one else matters.
A guy on HuffPost recently mocked me, as if I don't know the difference between Gorilla and Guerrilla. I didn't get a chance to respond that I am considerably more gorilla than guerrilla. One of the guiding principles of my life is that violent revolution has never brought us anything but a different kind to tyranny. Another is, there is more than this life, hence my service to the Goddess, though I don't claim to know any more about Her than I do about God.
I do what I feel called to do. I write what I feel called to write.
Finally, by revolution, I mean a broad evolutionary transformation in consciousness. What that looks like, I don't know, but I believe. We are better than what we have become, as a species, as a people, as a nation. Many believe we are beyond hope. I like to think we are all unique, astonishing and utterly beautiful manifestations of the spirit, divine beings, children of the earth, children of the sun, Homo sapien sapien, sacred, and so there is always hope.
I had a moment the other day, returning to my house from the Planning Department, when I felt that in that moment, I could meet my maker and not be afraid or ashamed. That feeling has passed, but I hold onto the memory, thinking about what seems to be coming from my civil government. I am an American. I love my family, friends, community, and the Earth. I am in service.
I think I'll return to the city Planning Department Friday, and see if I can figure out who makes these rules that cannot be appealed. After that, I think I'll go to the police department, and warn them what the city is going to ask of them. Though I expect to hear much the same from the police, as I've heard from the people in Planning and Inspections, which is much the same as I hear from many in public and private institutions: "I'm just doing what I've been told," and, "I don't make the rules."
But according to our founders, we do, by our consent.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Intent to Condemn II
Thursday morning I was awakened by a knock at my door. Through the window I saw a white car, with the Minneapolis Inspections Department insignia in blue. Now what? I thought.
"Hello." I said, leaning out the door.
"Hi. Do you live here?"
"I do."
"I'm here to inform you that the city is going to condemn your house."
"The city is going to condemn my house? Why?"
"We were informed by CenterPoint Energy that your gas service was shut off, about a week ago."
"Yeah, it was. I don't have the money to pay the bill, and I don't need gas in the summer anyway. I'll take care of the bill in the fall, when I need the gas to heat the house."
"You have to have all your utilities hooked up."
"But I don't need gas in the summer."
"It doesn't matter. It's city code." He started to walk down the steps, returning to his car. He had given me no documentation, not a business card, not a letter. I asked him his name.
"Harold."
"Harold, how much time do I have to turn the service back on, before my house is condemned?"
"Five days." He turned and walked away, but stopped and turned back. "No, three days."
"Three days?"
"Yeah." He stood there, looking at me, without much expression. If he was uncomfortable, he was masking it well. Turning away again, he walked through my wildflowers.
"It's alright Harold," I said. "I know you don't make the rules."
"You're right, I don't," and he sat down in his government issued car and drove away.
Last week, I paid $14.75 in extraneous fees to Netspend Mastercard and NCO Financial Services, paying Xcel Energy $60 to keep my electricity on, expending three hours over two days in the effort. Tuesday, I received a letter from the city informing me that I had been charged $133, to remove brush obstructing the sidewalk last October. As I reported in a post at that time, I had been ordered to remove several black cap raspberry vines that had looped themselves over the edge of the sidewalk. I complied with that order, and I'm pretty sure I called Inspections and told them. If the charge isn't for that, the only thing I can think it would be, is the golden rod. A flower head had been tilting over the edge of the sidewalk. It was a big flowerhead, but it could have been removed by the inspector who issued the order, when he wrote it, if he had only grabbed hold, toward the base of the stem, and turned his wrist instead. Instead I presume, a crew was called to handle it.
At that time, the city was threatening to condemn my house, because they had shut off the water service I wasn't using, charging me $3100 for a new stop box.* I've been paying the consequent $360 monthly water and sewer bill, since, on threat of condemnation if I don't pay. The mortgage is up to date. This house sat empty without gas service for much of 2009 and 2010, and the city did nothing. I'm guessing this new pressure is a response from the city to the foreclosure problem, opportunity masked as civic duty. If the house is condemned, I'll be issued a $6500 vacant house fee. City Inspectors will have the run of the house, to make the list of upgrades required to lift the condemnation order; in this house, likely $10,000 - $30,000 in materials and city permits and inspection fees, and only that and not considerably more, because I'm capable of doing most of the work myself.
Not having natural gas in my house in the summer means I can't take long, luxuriously hot showers. I can still heat water on the electric stove. I can heat water in the sun, using my 2.5 gallon solar camp shower. I might even be able to construct a solar water heater with scrap I have in the garage. If I manage to do that, I could take the long, hot, luxurious showers I don't generally like to take in the summer, which are apparently necessary for my house not to be condemned. Except the water has to be heated by natural gas in my house, and not by the sun, or the natural gas that CenterPoint uses to generate electricity, apparently. I didn't have natural gas service all last summer, and my house was no threat to the public's health and welfare, nor mine. No damage of any kind was done because I did not have natural gas service, except perhaps to CenterPoint's bottom line.
Meanwhile, oil and gas companies have been pumping billions of gallons of water and sand, often laden with toxic chemicals and known carcinogens, into the earth and aquifers, in an effort to force more natural gas to the surface. Our government has not been regulating this, because the mix of water, sand, toxic chemicals and known carcinogens is considered a trade secret. Water flowing from some taps near these "fracking" wells, can be ignited - set on fire. If you set a fracking well on fire you would be jailed as a terrorist. The government of Minnesota is talking about allowing sand mining along the Mississippi river, in the southeast corner of the state, precisely for use in natural gas extraction and the poisoning of aquifers.
I read in Time magazine this week that inflation has been stabilized the last several years, due to the actions of the Federal Reserve. I saw a video of former Goldman Sachs Executive and current head of the New York Fed, William Dudley, laughing about food price inflation, because the iPad is for sale with lots of amazing features.** The Government does not consider the price of food or energy when calculating inflation, because if they did they would have to acknowledge that trickle down faith in the free-market is bullshit. I hear the way GDP is calculated is a lie too, meant to hide the fact that true economic growth has been stagnant, even declining the past three decades, because so much of GDP is the issuance and exchange of credit. Our national debt is roughly equivalent to GDP. We now seem to have a choice between a Democratic party that would spend us into oblivion with services they promise us but don't require us to pay for, and a Republican party that would end entitlements for every person, but corporations and the most fortunate plutocrats and oligarchs. Neither party questioning endless war, or the government's wars against Americans.
I haven't contacted the city yet. Monday morning, I intend to go to the Mayor's office. I will visit my council member's office. Perhaps I will leave with a feeling that my government has responded well to the absurdity of my situation. Perhaps I will be told "Sorry, there's nothing we can do." Either way, I'm inclined to call for Revolution. When life in America has achieved this level of absurdity, it's time to rebel, whatever that means. I've been contemplating a revision, an update of the founder's Declaration, their response to the tyranny of the British Crown. My response to the government that no longer functions as a surrogate of the people, but as an entity unto itself, in collusion with domestic and international conglomerates, to establish and maintain inequality among the people.
Mostly I think we Americans have abdicated our authority as sovereign men and women created equal. We have little sense of what the founders meant, when they said government derives its power from the consent of the governed. We act instead as if we derive our freedoms from government. A government that has come to exist for government's sake, acting to enshrine corporations as persons, without a charter to be revoked, both government and corporations essentially unaccountable, for actions that have contributed to the weakening of the Republic, and Americans generally.
I no longer consider my government legitimate. Curiously, my gentle but radical mother led me to information this Easter, that suggests our Federal and State governments have in effect been operating outside the Constitution, since the beginning of the Civil War. Whether or not this is true, I have begun to ask what it would mean to "alter or abolish" my nation's governments. I don't know if that is treason, but I can assure you, this American would rather die at the hand of my government, than be extorted by it.
I'm inclined to let the city condemn my house, if my request to rescind the order is denied. I will move right back in if they kick me out. If they board up my house, I will remove the boards as soon as they leave. If they take me to jail, I will go peaceably. When they let me out, I will return to my house. I will not pay a $6500 vacant house fee for a house I have no intention to vacate, that my government forces me to vacate for a reason that makes no logical sense. I will not abide by inspectors demands, to change anything in my house I see no reason to change.
I hope it doesn't come to that. It can't, can it? Probably not. But we will see.
* http://offthegridmpls.blogspot.com/2010/09/condemnation-update.html
** www.omidmalekan.com See the video, "Inflation Explained." It's fun.
"Hello." I said, leaning out the door.
"Hi. Do you live here?"
"I do."
"I'm here to inform you that the city is going to condemn your house."
"The city is going to condemn my house? Why?"
"We were informed by CenterPoint Energy that your gas service was shut off, about a week ago."
"Yeah, it was. I don't have the money to pay the bill, and I don't need gas in the summer anyway. I'll take care of the bill in the fall, when I need the gas to heat the house."
"You have to have all your utilities hooked up."
"But I don't need gas in the summer."
"It doesn't matter. It's city code." He started to walk down the steps, returning to his car. He had given me no documentation, not a business card, not a letter. I asked him his name.
"Harold."
"Harold, how much time do I have to turn the service back on, before my house is condemned?"
"Five days." He turned and walked away, but stopped and turned back. "No, three days."
"Three days?"
"Yeah." He stood there, looking at me, without much expression. If he was uncomfortable, he was masking it well. Turning away again, he walked through my wildflowers.
"It's alright Harold," I said. "I know you don't make the rules."
"You're right, I don't," and he sat down in his government issued car and drove away.
Last week, I paid $14.75 in extraneous fees to Netspend Mastercard and NCO Financial Services, paying Xcel Energy $60 to keep my electricity on, expending three hours over two days in the effort. Tuesday, I received a letter from the city informing me that I had been charged $133, to remove brush obstructing the sidewalk last October. As I reported in a post at that time, I had been ordered to remove several black cap raspberry vines that had looped themselves over the edge of the sidewalk. I complied with that order, and I'm pretty sure I called Inspections and told them. If the charge isn't for that, the only thing I can think it would be, is the golden rod. A flower head had been tilting over the edge of the sidewalk. It was a big flowerhead, but it could have been removed by the inspector who issued the order, when he wrote it, if he had only grabbed hold, toward the base of the stem, and turned his wrist instead. Instead I presume, a crew was called to handle it.
At that time, the city was threatening to condemn my house, because they had shut off the water service I wasn't using, charging me $3100 for a new stop box.* I've been paying the consequent $360 monthly water and sewer bill, since, on threat of condemnation if I don't pay. The mortgage is up to date. This house sat empty without gas service for much of 2009 and 2010, and the city did nothing. I'm guessing this new pressure is a response from the city to the foreclosure problem, opportunity masked as civic duty. If the house is condemned, I'll be issued a $6500 vacant house fee. City Inspectors will have the run of the house, to make the list of upgrades required to lift the condemnation order; in this house, likely $10,000 - $30,000 in materials and city permits and inspection fees, and only that and not considerably more, because I'm capable of doing most of the work myself.
Not having natural gas in my house in the summer means I can't take long, luxuriously hot showers. I can still heat water on the electric stove. I can heat water in the sun, using my 2.5 gallon solar camp shower. I might even be able to construct a solar water heater with scrap I have in the garage. If I manage to do that, I could take the long, hot, luxurious showers I don't generally like to take in the summer, which are apparently necessary for my house not to be condemned. Except the water has to be heated by natural gas in my house, and not by the sun, or the natural gas that CenterPoint uses to generate electricity, apparently. I didn't have natural gas service all last summer, and my house was no threat to the public's health and welfare, nor mine. No damage of any kind was done because I did not have natural gas service, except perhaps to CenterPoint's bottom line.
Meanwhile, oil and gas companies have been pumping billions of gallons of water and sand, often laden with toxic chemicals and known carcinogens, into the earth and aquifers, in an effort to force more natural gas to the surface. Our government has not been regulating this, because the mix of water, sand, toxic chemicals and known carcinogens is considered a trade secret. Water flowing from some taps near these "fracking" wells, can be ignited - set on fire. If you set a fracking well on fire you would be jailed as a terrorist. The government of Minnesota is talking about allowing sand mining along the Mississippi river, in the southeast corner of the state, precisely for use in natural gas extraction and the poisoning of aquifers.
I read in Time magazine this week that inflation has been stabilized the last several years, due to the actions of the Federal Reserve. I saw a video of former Goldman Sachs Executive and current head of the New York Fed, William Dudley, laughing about food price inflation, because the iPad is for sale with lots of amazing features.** The Government does not consider the price of food or energy when calculating inflation, because if they did they would have to acknowledge that trickle down faith in the free-market is bullshit. I hear the way GDP is calculated is a lie too, meant to hide the fact that true economic growth has been stagnant, even declining the past three decades, because so much of GDP is the issuance and exchange of credit. Our national debt is roughly equivalent to GDP. We now seem to have a choice between a Democratic party that would spend us into oblivion with services they promise us but don't require us to pay for, and a Republican party that would end entitlements for every person, but corporations and the most fortunate plutocrats and oligarchs. Neither party questioning endless war, or the government's wars against Americans.
I haven't contacted the city yet. Monday morning, I intend to go to the Mayor's office. I will visit my council member's office. Perhaps I will leave with a feeling that my government has responded well to the absurdity of my situation. Perhaps I will be told "Sorry, there's nothing we can do." Either way, I'm inclined to call for Revolution. When life in America has achieved this level of absurdity, it's time to rebel, whatever that means. I've been contemplating a revision, an update of the founder's Declaration, their response to the tyranny of the British Crown. My response to the government that no longer functions as a surrogate of the people, but as an entity unto itself, in collusion with domestic and international conglomerates, to establish and maintain inequality among the people.
Mostly I think we Americans have abdicated our authority as sovereign men and women created equal. We have little sense of what the founders meant, when they said government derives its power from the consent of the governed. We act instead as if we derive our freedoms from government. A government that has come to exist for government's sake, acting to enshrine corporations as persons, without a charter to be revoked, both government and corporations essentially unaccountable, for actions that have contributed to the weakening of the Republic, and Americans generally.
I no longer consider my government legitimate. Curiously, my gentle but radical mother led me to information this Easter, that suggests our Federal and State governments have in effect been operating outside the Constitution, since the beginning of the Civil War. Whether or not this is true, I have begun to ask what it would mean to "alter or abolish" my nation's governments. I don't know if that is treason, but I can assure you, this American would rather die at the hand of my government, than be extorted by it.
I'm inclined to let the city condemn my house, if my request to rescind the order is denied. I will move right back in if they kick me out. If they board up my house, I will remove the boards as soon as they leave. If they take me to jail, I will go peaceably. When they let me out, I will return to my house. I will not pay a $6500 vacant house fee for a house I have no intention to vacate, that my government forces me to vacate for a reason that makes no logical sense. I will not abide by inspectors demands, to change anything in my house I see no reason to change.
I hope it doesn't come to that. It can't, can it? Probably not. But we will see.
* http://offthegridmpls.blogspot.com/2010/09/condemnation-update.html
** www.omidmalekan.com See the video, "Inflation Explained." It's fun.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
The View From My Bed
April 20, 4/20, international pot day, or something like that. I moved my vegetable starts from the kitchen to the bedroom, as the bedroom is the only portion of the house heated, at the moment (notice the electric oil heater). I didn't think much about it, when the guy from CenterPoint Energy came to shut off the gas. It was about 65 degrees outside at the time. The snow has already melted, though the temp won't climb much above forty-five degrees today.
Mostly what you see are tomato and peppers. There are eggplant, various brassica, hollyhock, heavenly blue morning glory, moon flower and cardinal vine, and Nicotiana sylvestris, a South American tobacco plant with an extraordinary scent in the evenings and at night. The latter don't seem to want to germinate, though. I haven't really been able to recreate jungle like conditions (the white-boy that I am without a real greenhouse). The Cannabis seeds didn't take either. I'm not surprised; twelve seeds from a plant I grew in my yard last year, right outside that window, which I can only imagine was an unsuccessful attempt by that female plant to pollinate itself.
When I took the pictures this morning I was listening to public radio. Apparently, a significant number of Americans are against raising the national debt limit, something like 70%. Clearly, Obama's debt speech didn't carry; his numbers are down. Even as everywhere there is news that American corporations are continuing to hire more in other nations than they are here in America, even as the people who lead those corporations are calling for greater tax cuts. Obama essentially called for a shared sacrifice, but America didn't really hear it. It seems we have come to a watershed moment.
Not raising the debt ceiling, by all accounts, is a kind of financial apocalypse. Norm Ornstein, comparing shutting down the government to a "really bad stomach ache," called breaching the debt ceiling "a heart attack." Which can be survived, obviously, but not something you want to court, necessarily. Plenty do, but it doesn't seem like good national policy. Throwing the international bond market into upheaval, on the heels of the deepest recession in eighty years, doesn't seem like a great idea to me, but ok. I think we don't really have any conception of how bad it could get, so far removed so many of us are from hunger, from real need, but alright.
I think our desire not to raise the debt ceiling, at the same time we want to pay less taxes, wanting not to cut any of the major government programs, is grounded in naivete', stemming from our hyper-individuality, and our conception of household finances compared to that required to maintain civilization. It seems like a good idea to refuse to extend the ability of Government to spend more money than it currently spends, until one gets into the consequences, which will certainly not entail job creators creating jobs. More likely it will mean less jobs all-around, as a fortressing affect begins to take place around CEOs and their interests. There's hardly any conception of the greater good left, evident in the momentum across the nation to roll back environmental protections, in the lack of much of any conversation about what kind of country we would like to have, what kind of people we would like to be.
It seems like a better plan, to raise the debt ceiling, and then give ourselves a time-line to resolve our spending and tax issues. I highly doubt we are going to resolve the issue by mid-May. Or, we can not raise the ceiling, default, and then commence to blaming each other, as the global economy goes into free fall. Maybe that's what we need? It's not like the way we live is sustainable. Maybe it's time for collapse? Maybe it's time for us to question everything we believe? The world is currently ruled by men who believe in a God who sanctions violence, or in a neo-darwinian social order that justifies whatever they do, or in both. We don't seem to be questioning the market ethic that allows us to pollute recklessly, to destroy the ecological balance on which everything depends. We seem only to care about maintaining whatever standard of living we have grown accustomed to, without any disruption in whatever social progress we have come to expect. Which is understandable, but not recommended.
I've long known the global economy would collapse in my lifetime. I've even longed for it. Now that we seem to be on the cusp, I'm not so sure. Part of me thinks, "Hell, bring it on," the part of me that knows I'll be fine whatever happens. Mostly, I'm thinking about the children I know, and their families. Some of whom the vegetables in those trays are destined for. All of whom I care about very much.
In the short term I hope it warms up. I'm happy to have the company in my bedroom, but as vibrant and beautiful as these heirloom tomatoes are, they're tomatoes.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Musing
Bitter cold today, snow on the ground in the morning and a stiff, relentless wind. I'm caved up in my room with the electric space heater, though I spent the morning antiquing at the state fairgrounds, with my friends Keith and Steve. I wandered around the tightly packed Grandstand, thinking for a while that I just don't care that much about things. That was, until I came across a booth with Kuan Yin in a striking pose, Siddhartha in the lotus position, several other curious figures impressively postured, three exceptionally well done African masks, one from Ivory Coast, and a first-century Roman Legion arrowhead. That last put me there, for a moment. Later I came across a remarkably well balanced Penobscot war club made from a root, a fearsome weapon, which I could make for nothing but an afternoon outside, which was offered to me for $700. In that same booth I nearly knocked over a not so authentic cradleboard, picking up a hatchet.
Knives, and toy and real guns, all over the place. Keith was pawing through the antique toy handguns in one booth, and the old man who owned the booth worked himself up to the point that he accused Keith afterward of stealing one of a set of replica six-gun revolvers, cap guns. When I asked his partner about it, a woman with the grayest eyes I have ever seen, she said, "This place hasn't been bad, but we were just in Chicago, and oh my god..." I noticed that wherever guns or knives were sold, the booth owners were the most suspicious, the least open and friendly. I don't think they were suspicious of people using the weapons, moreso of people stealing them. In fact, the mood wasn't very friendly generally, but that may be because it was so damn cold and breezy in that concrete, unheated indoor space.
At least half the vendors opted for the cheaper freedom of the outside venue, which would have been great, last weekend when it was sixty-five and sunny. We asked one guy about his lawn art, but he didn't seem to care about the price any more than he cared about where the art came from. Steve was lucky, finding his twentieth copy of a 1970's Six-Million Dollar Man board game, a Bionic Woman board game, a Milwaukee Brewers mug (for the woman he has some interest in) and a Mattell electronic soccer game from the early eighties, still in the box. These things remind him of what seems to have been a happy childhood, with a good father who sometimes took him to baseball card shows at the Thunderbird Motel, out by the old Met Stadium (where the retail vortex of the Americas, Mall of America, is now), before baseball cards were mass produced, and trading in memorabilia became a viable living for many people, and the price of everything soared.
My veggie starts are inside, in their trays in the kitchen; the temporary greenhouse I built for them isn't much good when it's forty degrees and windy. It has held up well though, which I wasn't sure it would, as the sides are covered by one-mil poly. It was all I had, and I was sure it would rip out with a wind, but it's been windy several days and nights and it hasn't. It has stayed about 85 degrees inside, on sunny days the last two weeks, which have been many, and the tomato starts doubled in size one warm day last week. They are practically dormant now.
Knives, and toy and real guns, all over the place. Keith was pawing through the antique toy handguns in one booth, and the old man who owned the booth worked himself up to the point that he accused Keith afterward of stealing one of a set of replica six-gun revolvers, cap guns. When I asked his partner about it, a woman with the grayest eyes I have ever seen, she said, "This place hasn't been bad, but we were just in Chicago, and oh my god..." I noticed that wherever guns or knives were sold, the booth owners were the most suspicious, the least open and friendly. I don't think they were suspicious of people using the weapons, moreso of people stealing them. In fact, the mood wasn't very friendly generally, but that may be because it was so damn cold and breezy in that concrete, unheated indoor space.
At least half the vendors opted for the cheaper freedom of the outside venue, which would have been great, last weekend when it was sixty-five and sunny. We asked one guy about his lawn art, but he didn't seem to care about the price any more than he cared about where the art came from. Steve was lucky, finding his twentieth copy of a 1970's Six-Million Dollar Man board game, a Bionic Woman board game, a Milwaukee Brewers mug (for the woman he has some interest in) and a Mattell electronic soccer game from the early eighties, still in the box. These things remind him of what seems to have been a happy childhood, with a good father who sometimes took him to baseball card shows at the Thunderbird Motel, out by the old Met Stadium (where the retail vortex of the Americas, Mall of America, is now), before baseball cards were mass produced, and trading in memorabilia became a viable living for many people, and the price of everything soared.
My veggie starts are inside, in their trays in the kitchen; the temporary greenhouse I built for them isn't much good when it's forty degrees and windy. It has held up well though, which I wasn't sure it would, as the sides are covered by one-mil poly. It was all I had, and I was sure it would rip out with a wind, but it's been windy several days and nights and it hasn't. It has stayed about 85 degrees inside, on sunny days the last two weeks, which have been many, and the tomato starts doubled in size one warm day last week. They are practically dormant now.
I was at my sisters the other day, where I was fortunate to watch a PBS companion piece to Michael Pollan's book, The Botany of Desire. Four short histories, on the apple, the tulip, the potato, and Cannabis sativa; it's one of the more enjoyable books I've read in recent years. Watching the film, I was struck once again by modern potato production, and the monocultures favored by the industrial method. Monocultures, which are exquisitely vulnerable, which our food supply is almost entirely dependent upon. Thinking about the children sleeping in the house at the time, I couldn't help but be reminded how entirely unprepared we are for the collapse of the potato, corn or soybean crop, and how my nation at this point seems more concerned about giving tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans than it cares about feeding people.
There is a debate going on in America related to the debt, about lowering Health Care costs. The single greatest cost-cutting option, being the one that we will not even consider. Namely, ending agricultural subsidies, and especially those to the likes of Cargill, one of the most secretive, largest privately held companies in America, its headquarters near here in a Minneapolis suburb. Cargill's profit has soared to almost ridiculous heights this last year, in large part due to tens of billions of dollars of government subsidies for corn and soybeans, and directly to Cargill. We are not ever likely to cut those subsidies: one, because they're incredibly lucrative for big agri-business; two, because cheap corn keeps people fat and sickly and mal-content, which is incredibly lucrative for the Health Care industry; and three, because cutting subsidies would raise prices for nearly all processed food in America, and that is the one thing the people are most likely to revolt about. So we will likely continue monocultural industrial agriculture, with the use of vast amounts of poisons, and the dramatic soil loss inherent to it, until monocultural industrial agriculture crashes, and famine ensues. Even then, I wonder if our government will cut weapons spending.
Yesterday I tried to pay my electric bill online. I was at the coffee shop, and I had forgotten to bring my phone. This was after I put $38 on my Netspend Master card, which cost me $3.95, which pissed me off because I put $28 on the card earlier this week, for the internet, which also cost me $3.95. I use a Netspend Mastercard because I can't have a checking or savings account because US Bank charged my $800 on $80 of overdrafts, and sold the debt to a creditor. Xcel energy uses a financial services company, NCO, for its online bill pay service. I assumed I would be able to access my account with my address, or my phone number, and the last four digits of my social security number (what will happen to our social security number when they gut social security?), but I needed my account number, which was in the same place as my phone. It was suggested, condescendingly, on the NCO website, that "if you don't have your Xcel Energy account number available, please try back when you do." I'm sorry, I thought, if I'm being irresponsible. I only wanted to pay my ****ing bill!
Back home, where I didn't really want to be because it was 50 degrees in my house because I let the gas bill lapse, I called Xcel. I was informed that the minimum payment, which I had been told, earlier this week, would be $52.xx, was in fact $53.xx, which, with the $2 Netspend Mastercard transaction fee, and the $4.85 NCO financial services convenience fee that I didn't know about, would be more than the $56 and change I had on the Netspend Mastercard. Thankfully, Xcel is not going to shut off my electrical, as long as I pay $60, plus the $2 and $4.85 fees, on Monday. I hope to make a few dollars this weekend helping Keith with a fence in his backyard.
Rudolf Steiner suggests that this situation I'm confronted with is related to a lesson I'm meant to learn in this life, which I chose, or was chosen for me, in the time between this and my last life. I have no question, I have brought this on myself, with the choices I have made in this life. I tend to think of this world as a wonderful and beautiful and mysterious place, and yet nearly every time I have to deal with corporate or government institutional energy, I want to tear the world to pieces. Everything is backward, upside down, where even the ending of a corporate subsidy is deemed a tax increase; when we are laying off teachers and giving 0% interest loans and tax cuts and outright free cash to the wealthiest among us; when we rage at each other about $38 billion in reductions to services for the poor, while the $78 billion in suggested military cuts by the Secretary of Defense are completely ignored; when we act as if people are better people, the more material and financial wealth they gather and horde.
I think about the little boy I was, growing up on the shore of a lake, across the road from a woods, down the road from a creek where I hunted frogs and snakes and turtles, mostly alone. How that little boy has become a man, living in the city alone, with a big garden, plans to gather much food, plans to build greenhouses and cisterns and plant fruit trees, hanging on to this life by pocket change, by the good grace of family, friends and neighbors, and faith, that this is a spiritual life, and another life will follow this.
What lesson are we to learn, hanging on as we are by our monocultures, by our faith in industrial processes and an economic model entirely contrary to nature, our faith in men like sky gods, to lead us, to treat us well?
What lesson are we to learn, hanging on as we are by our monocultures, by our faith in industrial processes and an economic model entirely contrary to nature, our faith in men like sky gods, to lead us, to treat us well?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)