Up Bear Creek / 3mar25012

Another Norwood legend passes

DARRELL ELDER … The narrow ditches on both of the state highway were jammed. But Rev. Clint Parry had but few words for his friend, Darrell, who didn’t think much of churches, “or ministers”, Parry laughed … It was no mistake that tow trucks led the funeral cortege. Darrell had pulled more than few of us out of ditches for the three decades I’ve lived in the county …  I knew Darrell was still a bit less boisterous from that cancer scare a few years back. But I’d seen him driving around. He’d stop by occasionally … Like the time he parked his pickup smack dab in the middle of a lane on the Cone Road right in front of my house and visited with me for some 45 minutes or more. Talking about local issues and roads and county policies and histories and all manner of curious stuff. He liked chatting and trading stories. A colorful character, dressed in a pair of greasy overalls, looking every bit the working class hero he was. He had his biases, and he didn’t shirk from sharing them. But he also had some good ideas – things he’d wrestle over for a while in his own mind and then surprise you with … ‘Course, when I first came to Norwood, I looked every bit the hippie I turned out to be, and that was not very high on the social totem pole in Darrell’s mind. He could look kind of gnarly, even after you got to know him. So, at first I kept my distance from his place just north of Stinking Springs and south of the county transfer station. But, eventually, a beater car tanked on me, and I tried to take it to D’s wrecking yard for salvage. But he wanted nothing to do with me, or my car. So I had to tow it to Montrose … But that was years ago, when I’d just come into the country. Before I got into office and teamed up with Commissioner Vern Ebert to get rid of building codes in the sparsely-settled West End of San Miguel County, about 15 years ago. After that, D and I had something to talk about – government interference in our lives … I have to say, I really grew to like our visits, even if I never liked some of his biases. But then, I know he didn’t really like some of my biases either. So I think we felt kind of even … Gonna miss you, D … Requiescat in pace

HISTORY CHECK … In recent times, some individuals have tried to finesse the historic spelling of Illium Valley to make it conform to the ancient Greek plains of Ilium in modern-day Turkey. But that’s not historically correct. I was reminded of this error leafing through William Henry Jackson’s Colorado (Pruett Publ., Boulder, 1975 [24975 ANAC]) compiled by William & Elizabeth Jones, while having Sunday brunch and playing ping-pong at the beautiful Two Candles Restaurant & Lounge in Norwood (their library is extensive) … On page 51, hand-lettered in a Jackson photo dating from the 1880’s [24880’s ANAC] is this caption: “Sunshine Peak from Illium Valley.”

MESH NETWORKS … Great article in March’s ScientificAmerican about the increasing centralization in the current World Wide Web through dead-end Internet Service Providers, national governments, closed loop cloud services like Facebook and Google, and how web privacy activists have devised an ingenious low-tech way to bypass government or corporate control, where each individual computer becomes a relay in the system, or a “device as infrastructure” network, as Sascha Meinrath of the New America Foundation calls it … It also has large implications for emergency management communications in case the Internet goes down. And it isn’t very expensive.

ENERGY PIG … Energy use continues to drop at Cloud Acre, along with my carbon footprint. My latest bill shows a total kilowatt hour (kWh) usage for the past 12 months of 10,580 kWh, with a monthly average of 881 kWh. That’s down from August of 25009 when my yearly total was 16,118 kWh and my monthly average was 1,343 kWh, and down from my last bill of 25011 which reflected a yearly total of 11,452 kWh and a monthly average of 954 kWh … That’s a year’s saving of 5,538 kWh – not an insignificant figure.

SUDDEN ASPEN DEATH … There have been lots of speculation on why the aspen have been suffering precipitous mortality recently, and certainly drought and global warming have to be exacerbating factors. But a paper published in the International Journal of Forest Research by Katie Haggerty of Lyons suggests a surprising connection. She links the major changes in the radio frequency  (RF) environment, particularly its anthropogenic increase in RF intensity and complexity, with SAD. “This study suggests that the RF background may have strong adverse effects on growth rate and fall anthocyanin production in aspen, and may be an underlying factor in aspen decline.”

THE TALKING GOURD

1-800

If you would like to come to the party, press 1

If you are already at the party, press 2

If you need to leave the party,

walk out the door.

If you are a third party candidate,

press the issues.

If you have already partied till you dropped,

hang up and try again.

-Mike Olschewsky

Nucla/Norwood

New Verse News

Monday, February 27, 2012

OBAMA'S DE-APOTHEOSIS

by Captain Barefoot

http://www.shutdownthecorporations.org/

Ain’t easy keeping the Elites from plotting
elimination. Accumulation. Spaghettification

Dense wealth stretches approaching nations
like noodles. Rolling pins it out of ‘em

like a hillbilly wrings a chicken’s neck
or a banker breaks a rancher’s back

Wall St.’s black hole, stringing us out on
 the meth of cheap mortgages. Cheap oil

Walmarts & mutually deterred nuclear voodoo
Thank competitive gravity. Market cabals

& Brahmin capital cliques. Wiping out whole
economies. On line. By drone. One shop

stupid cupid strategies of Empire, aggregated
in Alpha males. Corporate sales. The climate?

Just details … We live in an America inured
to mass Tell-a-Vision. Armed beyond reason

& our furthest shore. With a spook Pentagon
lock, load & pointed at the Planet’s head


Captain Barefoot identifies himself among the Union of Street Poets, Vincent St. John Local, Colorado Plateau, Aztlan Kuksu Brigade (Ret.), Cloud House, San Francisco, Shasta Nation, Pacific Rim.

http://www.newversenews.com/

Up Bear Creek / 23feb25012

Teasing Out the Divine

ELLE METRICK … San Miguel County’s current Poet Laureate is coming out with a wonderful new collection of poems, from Stewart Warren’s Mercury Heartlink Press in Albuquerque. She read poems last night from her book as the featured reader at the monthly Talking Gourds reading series at the Livery in Norwood … A gift to yourself this spring. Highly recommended.

POLITICAL ANGELS?… Say, I’ve been invited by the Obamas to attend a White House Conference on Conservation: Growing America’s Outdoor Heritage and Economy on March 2^nd in D.C. It sounds like a good opportunity to get at the front of the line in understanding federal initiatives and funding for tourist resort communities … But the county doesn’t have the $2500 it will cost in trip expenses. And neither do I … So I thought I’d ask if there’s a political angel out there who might be willing to finance my attendance at this conference. I’d promise to come back and report to the community at a public meeting in the Wilkinson what I’d learned. I know, it’s a long shot … But if this strikes a chord, call me today in Norwood 327-4767 or catch me at the Green Assembly at the County Meeting Room in the Miramonte Building from 6 to 7:30 p.m. tonight. The deadline to RSVP is midnight this evening.

CANNABIS INITIATIVE TWO … Michelle May is a Denver activist who is trying to get a different initiative on the ballot that would de facto legalize Cannabis use. In her proposal, judges would be legislatively prohibited from sentencing Cannabis users to jail in Colorado … If you’re interested, I have a petition that you can sign. Call me.

OPERA … Did you know the Norwood School music teacher Jeff Hemingson sings opera, and well? I didn’t. He performed for us a capella at the Livery in Norwood for the Norwood Travel Club’s delightful A Night in Italy. Jeff did a real fine basso profundo (F#) on his first piece, then ranged from Faust to La Boheme, and ended with the spiritual Old Man River, as he walked among the dinner tables … Very impressive.

Last year's Headwaters speaker Winona LaDuke

HEADWATERS … I’ve long been enamored of this annual autumn conference that Western State College in Gunnison hosts. At the end of its three days, we do a Talking Gourds Circle, and people in attendance get to speak from their hearts about what’s on their mind after listening to lots of learned talking heads. Last fall Kathryn Bernier spoke so eloquently, I asked her to share with us her words in the Gourds Circle from last fall. Here they are … “I challenge you to question your values, your beliefs, and most of all your culture. This culture that is a cult we (potentially) blindly follow. And if you settle upon the same set, I congratulate you. And if you find that your entire subset of reality is unfounded…well…I challenge you to start building a culture and a community that is founded in values, beliefs, even science. I challenge you to make difficult change, to be ostracized for going against the grain and the mainstream, to agree to disagree, and to make amends. I challenge you to embrace your strengths and hold your failures tighter to learn from them. I challenge you to not partake in things you don't believe. I challenge you, just as I challenge myself, to create your own reality, and build a new culture."

Gregory's Gulch in Black Hawk

WEEKLY QUOTA … Remember old guard Republicans who cared about hunger and peace, even if they didn’t always walk the talk? … "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."  -President Dwight D. Eisenhower (April 16, 1953)

THE TALKING GOURD

Poetry Biz in 2012

Drive up to the mountains

On a February eve. Old mining town

Now refurbished with glittery casinos,

Cars, gamblers & buses. County

& its library named for a booster,

Some forgotten knucklehead

Named Gilpin. One of those

Know-it-alls who thought

"rain followed the plow."

No need to listen to John Wesley Powell.

Even then politicians bragged

About making their own reality.

So Powell got the same treatment

James Hanson got from W's White House.

But the library was homey

& I liked reading in front

Of ceramic masks. The host

Recited witty baseball poems.

No one bought a book but a woman

Handed me a very fine drawing

Of a white bearded man

Looking earnest & scholarly

& several said they enjoyed what I did.

Just an old poet trying to be

A public intellectual

In a country

Where most no longer read.

-Phil Woods

Denver

Up Bear Creek / 16feb25012

San Miguel Greens hold local meets

COUNTY ASSEMBLIES … The two major parties have for years had a very effective and democratic system for involving local party members in their pre-primary nominating deliberations – caucuses and assemblies … Minor parties in Colorado haven’t used those techniques to gather input from rank and file members registered with them. But this year the San Miguel Greens want to change that … We’re planning to hold two assemblies in San Miguel County in order to give registered Greens a time to gather and endorse candidates; select delegates to the state Green Party Convention in Carbondale, March 31, as well as the year-round State On-line Council; elect facilitators; and discuss the future of the Green Party in local, state and national politics … In Norwood, the first Green Assembly in the county will be held tonight, Thurs., Feb. 16, at 6 p.m. in the Two Candles Restaurant & Lounge … In Telluride, the second Green Assembly will be held next week, Thurs. Feb. 23, at 6 p.m. at the County Meeting Room in the Miramonte Building … All registered Greens from San Miguel, Dolores, Ouray and West Montrose counties are invited to attend (or those interested in registering Green).

Greens have adopted a Sunflower as their "mascot," with a peace sign thrown in for those of us Peaceniks.

COUNTY COMMISSIONER … I suppose after four terms and 16 years as a local elected official, some would say that it’s time for me to step down. But I must confess – I like working for the people 

Explaining to the Grand Junction Sentinel why I was walking out on Club 20

For two years, back in the mid-Eighties, I was the lone citizen representative on the Idarado Negotiating Committee that Democrat Gov. Roy Romer set up (after Linda Miller gave him a good talking-to in the Opera House) to head off a truck removal tailings solution to the Newmont subsidiary Idarado Mining Company's Superfund eco-disaster east of Telluride. What the Federal Court ordered would have destroyed our resort economy, if the Governor hadn't intervened. I remember looking around that Idarado table and realizing everyone else there was drawing a salary – state and federal regulators, staffers, state and corporate lawyers, locally elected officials ... Most of us who stumbled into Telluride understand “third jobs" ... But usually you try and do them to get paid. As a journalist I'd done a 13-part series on the complex state Superfund case against Idarado in the weekly San Miguel Journal -- a competitor start-up to the weekly Telluride Times. So, back then, I was honored to be named as Romer's citizen representative. And I felt I was instrumental in ensuring strong water quality standards and the funding of a local oversight committee at the start of the cleanup’s implementation -- to be sure things got done right (which they did, mostly thanks to the state's health and environment overseer -- the amazing Camille Price, who stayed on with us and married mi hermano Lucas of La Cocina de Luz)

Tentacles of Red in a Blue Sea

Now I sit around similar tables (yes, basketweaving when I have to listen for a long time) locally, regionally and on the state and national levels. I get to represent the human and more-than-human world in political deliberations. Only these days I’m getting paid by citizens of this county to do it. I get to bring 30 years experience, living locally, to whatever issue is at hand  -- not as a trust-funder, but as a Rainbow back-to-the-lander who grows 50+ varieties of heirloom potatoes on my little acre spud patch in Norwood. 

Son Gorio helping his Dad in Cloud Acre's Spud Patch

In spite of my personal biases, my task is to treat everyone fairly – balancing the needs and majority opinions of the liberal, exurban tourism-based East End of San Miguel County with the needs and minority opinions of the conservative, frontier ag-based West End. That meant bringing Rep. John Salazar's San Juan Wilderness proposal to Norwood for a hearing on a move to include Naturita Canyon even before it became a bill, where Randall Thompson and a number of others effectively scotched the wilderness idea (which would have been a boon to some Norwood businesses as word about this new "wilderness" made it into the guidebooks). But, listening to what was heard at the hearing I held in Norwood with the Sheep Mountain Alliance, Salazar took it out of the proposal that became his bill.

Lone Cone Moon reflected in the Headwaters of Naturita Canyon

It also means not supporting the county taking a public stand against the West End Montrose uranium plant, although we've repeatedly expressed our concerns for the cumulative dust deposition impact from a uranium mining boom in this country -- that public stance is in spite of my own position as a Green and long-time anti-nuclear activist. I personally do not support nuclear. But my fight is with the Democrats, not with my West End neighbors. The Obama administration, like all those before it since World War II, supports nuclear, gives it subsidies, wants it mined within our borders. So, what right do we have as a Blue/Green county in telling a Red county not to follow the Blue President's policies in this Purple state we're in?

Having a job does help me support Mary and Sara Friedberg and our son Gorio. Plus, there are some important bennies besides a paycheck -- I get to work with a great staff throughout our county offices and shops in Telluride, Illium, Deep Creek, Wright's Mesa, Norwood, Dry Creek and Egnar, as well as complementing two of the best colleagues a county commissioner could wish for, Elaine Fischer and Joan May … In these hard times, the county is having to make difficult decisions about the size and scope of future services, as we watch our county’s balanced budget continue to shrink. Luckily, we’ve prepared well for a rainy day (bless you, Gordon Glockson). We have the cushion of a sizeable reserve, built up over the last 20 years, which we’ve begun to draw down to ease our local economy’s transition from the bull market boom of the Reagan-Clinton-Bush years to the reality of the current bear market bust … Really, I’m proud to serve in local government. On the local level I think government works. It’s government that you can talk to in the market or at the post office. A government that will return your phone calls … One of those who ran against me last time around suggested that county commissioner was meant to be a job, not a career. I respect that opinion. But I also feel that working for the people is more than just a job. It’s a way to give back to the community, to safeguard a shared vision of what society could be in this very special region, and to provide a resilient future for our children … So, I’m going to campaign again in San Miguel County’s District 3 for a fifth term. But it’s report card time in the ballot box. And it's going to be up to you, my fellow constituents, to decide whether I’m fit to serve again.

PAT SWONGER … Can’t keep a good man down. It’s great to see that Pat didn’t let those behind-the-scenes Dem kingpins cut him out of the election process this year, on a technicality. He’s bounced back with a plan to forgo the party assembly process and petition directly onto the Dem primary ballot for a shot at the State House seat currently held by J. Paul Brown, a La Plata County Republican (the 59th, the district the Colorado Supreme Court pulled the Telluride Region out of) … Definitely a man of the people, I’ve worked with Pat on several key issues and have seen him do a fine job in Silverton on the town board there. He’s the kind of savvy rural politico we need in Denver -- representing all the citizens on the Western Slope, not just the ranchers and big money interests (like Brown does) … Right now he needs volunteers – particularly in Ridgway and Ouray -- to help him gather the 1000 petitions he needs to get on the Dem ballot. And consider sending a donation to Patrick Swonger for House District 59, POB 241, Silverton, CO 81433.

THE TALKING GOURD

Voices

(photo by Bob Grossman)

Outside,

Maverick Draw’s cumuli

lock horns over Lone Cone

The sky releases

little shouts of snow

Inside, first time ever

Cloud Acre's amaryllis

blooms

Photo by Gorio Osha'

two red strumpets

sassy as their golden tongues

Up Bear Creek / 9feb25012

Locals’ discount tickets for Mushroom Festival extended to end of the month

SHROOMFEST 2012 … It’s early to be thinking about a summer event, but thanks to a grant from CCAASE, the Telluride Institute is offering special local discount passes to the four-day event (Aug. 16-19) at cut-rate prices  … This year’s featured guests include the inimitable Gary Lincoff, mycologist/philosopher king; Kat Harrison, psychonaut, artist and entheogenic researcher; Professor of Mycology Tom Volk of the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse; myco-historian David Rose; raw foods guru of the San Juans, Katrina Blair; teenage mycological wunderkind Devon Enke; and dozens more … To buy local discount tickets, contact Scott Koch. For more info, check our website or visit our Facebook group, “Telluride MushroomFestival” … In addition to the Telluride Institute which runs the event and CCAASE, our sponsors include the Wilkinson Library, the Palm, the Nugget, the Telluride Watch and Alpine Lodging.

TELLU-ENVY … Durango was proud to have landed a spot on National Geographic Adventure’s “Top Ten Great Races in Amazing Places” with its Iron Horse Bicycle Classic, according to the Durango Telegraph (Feb. 2^nd issue). But the Telegraph was disappointed that Durango didn’t make NGA’s “Best AdventureTowns,” which included Telluride, Silverton and Pagosa Springs … “Telluride, our glitzier neighbor to the north … was praised for options from ‘schussing around Mountain Village’ to its bevy of summer festivals, all the while ‘Bridalveil waterfalls … thunder down in the distance’ … Curiously enough, the photo representing Telluride was shot on the Colorado Trail “in the San Juan Mountains near Telluride,’ a bit of a stretch, but then again so were the recommended $399/night accommodations.”

Isabel Allende (photo by Peter Morgan, AP)

ISABEL ALLENDE … Having read Bob Shacochis’s excellent journalistic account of the 1994 invasion of Haiti by the U.S., The Immaculate Invasion, it was telling listening to an audio-book reading of Allende’s Island Beneath the Sea about that half of the Antilles island the French called San Domingue. No better way to understand the legacy of slavery there than to read Allende’s dazzling novel – her characters like new friends and old enemies … Highly recommended.

MOUNTAIN LIVING … High and Dry is the name of the San Miguel Basin Cooperative Extension newsletter. It’s the second issue of the second volume, and it’s packed with solid information, like the opportunity to get free trees (if you’re a landowner with over two acres), or participate in a Master Gardener class, or get the latest 4-H happenings. There’s even a great clarifying chart showing the various kinds of community collaborations and what they can mean in practice … And if you’ve never met Mary Watson, then you have a treat – she’s celebrating her 30^th year with Extension at the Glockson Building in Norwood, and remains as friendly and welcoming a county employee as you’ll ever meet … Get the newsletter on-line by calling Mary at 327-4393.

TEK … That’s Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and Four Arrows (Don Trent Jacobs) calls for a partnership of neuroscience and TEK to find solutions facing the world today, in a lead article in The NoeticPost, a bulletin from the Institute of Noetic Sciences (V. 2, #2) … “Unlike typical Western sciences,” explains Four Arrows, “the data from Indigenous wisdom is generated from observations over long time periods in one location and is substantiated by applications to real-world living. Also, rather than attempt to be acultural and objective – a limiting if not impossible feat – Indigenous wisdom embraces a holistic subjectivity that honors authentic reflection on lived experience and relationships with others” … He cites as examples of this kind of thinking – “a non-anthropocentric worldview and realization of interconnectedness.” Four Arrows goes on to say, “…[I]n contrast to neuropsychological and anthropological inferences that human violence and competition are basic features of human nature, many Indigenous cultural histories have long revealed that healthy reciprocity and cooperation are more defining traits” … Four Arrows explores these ideas in depth in his book, recent with co-authors Jongmin Jongmin and Gregory Cajete (who attended the Headwaters conference in Gunnison several years back), Critical Neurophilosophy and Indigenous Wisdom (Sense Publ., 25009) … You can visit Four Arrows website, <www.teachingvirtues.net> … Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell wrote as an endorsement of John Perkin’s book, Shapeshifting: Techniques for Global and Personal Transformation, “Only a handful of visionaries have recognized that Indigenous wisdom can aid the transition to a sustainable world.”

WEEKLY QUOTA … “I think all the squaws were killed because they refused to go further. We took one boy into the valley, and the infants were put out of their misery, and a girl ten years of age was killed for stubbornness.” –Deposition taken from The Majority and Minority Report of the Special Joint Committee on the Mendocino Wars, California, 1860.

DOLORES COUNTY … The Dove Creek Press recently announced that Republican Rodney Johnson will run for commissioner against incumbent Ernie Williams in District 2 and current Dolores County Chair Doug Stowe will try for a second term in District 3.

 VFTS102… That’s the fastest turning star in the universe (so far). A blue giant, out in the Large Magellanic Cloud, going over a million miles an hour … As reported in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

THE TALKING GOURD

walking at two below

both questions and answers

come out as clouds

-Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Placerville

Up Bear Creek / 2feb25012

Fields of our own making, ill & well

Tom Shadyac at Mountainfilm Telluride 2010

I AM … It’s curious. I go to a county commissioner’s meeting to talk about the latest techno-whiz-bang smart meter for a smart grid that we’re forcing on all homes in the region, and then I go home to watch Tom Shadyac’s docu-polemic quest explaining how our hearts create EMF fields of quantum entanglement with all living things … It’s as if I’m Rumi trying to whirl in a bed of concrete sheets. Burdened with layer upon layer of ill-gotten goods … I’m not only sleeping with the enemy. I am the enemy. I'm the question. I'm the answer … For Dolores LaChapelle it was an avalanche that took her over the edge and broke her world apart. Then she had to figure out how to put it all back together … 

For Tom, it was up & over the Wilson Peak handlebars to bring his Hollywood dystopia crashing down to earth. To bring his Ace Ventura cleverness to its knees … And so he brings us tag-along on a cinematic semi-comic tour-de-force with various visionaries and elders. Gifting us with their wisdom. Handing us the simple rapture of our being alive. Pointing us towards love as the first bite of Tutu’s elephant. Trying, in the face of our learned swerve, to steer us away from America’s endless appetites … Stop, he says. Breathe, not the plutonium of accumulation, but the argon of interconnection … Vibrate laughter. Be free hugs. The field, not of force, but of fusion.

THE REAL ONE PERCENT … In 2007 that meant anyone in the U.S. earning over $424,000 a year – mostly doctors, it turns out. By 2009, thanks to Wall St.’s Great Recession, that statistic dropped to anyone making $344,000 a year … But apply that worldwide and you get quite a shock. Anyone making over $34,000 a year is part of the international One Percent … That applies to a good chunk of us Americans, who consider ourselves middle class. But according to Annalyn Censki of CNN Money, the world middle class earns a median income of just $1,225 a year. Is that who I am?  Imagine a world where all the military money spent to make just us safe were redirected to making us all well-fed and sheltered and friends?

NOT SO FREE PRESS … Once proud of its press freedoms, the U.S. has seen its worldwide ranking fall to 47^th in the world in the wake of the national Occupy movement crackdowns, according to the latest report from Reporters Without Borders,. America fell 27 points, and now lags behind Comoros and Taiwan and is on a par with  Argentina and Romania.

BILL JANKLOW … The South Dakota perennial politico, whose fast-track career as Republican Governor and Congressperson was cut short in 2003 when he killed a 55-year-old farmer on a motorcycle. His speeding vehicle ran a stoplight … Janklow and I did a little dance of sorts. Somehow, while attending the American Indian Movement’s Survival Gathering near the Black Hills in 1980, I heard rumors about the Governor’s alleged rape of a Native American babysitter. Since Janklow had made his reputation prosecuting AIM protesters at the Custer County Courthouse in 1973, there was no love lost between him and the radical Indian movement … Somehow, South Dakota media learned of the rumors about the Janklow incident and connected them to me --. I forget exactly how these 30 years later. I do remember getting phone calls wanting to quote me. And I explained that I’d only heard the rumors second-hand. It was hearsay. But still some alternative paper printed the story as I told it … It wasn’t fair to Janklow, because I hadn’t been able to verify the rumors. But I also wasn’t happy with the unfair bills Janklow had been signing into law in South Dakota, heavily weighted against Native Americans, and so I wasn’t unhappy with the story either … I was young then. Much more committed to causes without taking the time to do my own research. And yet the lingering rumor of what more than one Native person swore to me was true, and which would never be believed in Rapid City, offends me still … Goodbye, Bill Janklow – your kind won’t be missed, as we begin to heal the wounds of America’s own indigenous genocide.

Alex Lukens sketch of Art Goodtimes at Word Sharks reading in Cortez

DEWAYNE FINDLAY … According to the Dove Creek Press, the former Montezuma County Commissioner is running for office again. I liked working with DeWayne – a logger, who found a lot of areas of agreement with enviros on sustainable forest practices, and together we set up the first Tri-County South meetings with Montezuma, Dolores and San Miguel counties.

WORD SHARKS… If you’d been down in Cortez Thursday evening, Feb. 2nd, you might have seen 
David Feela and the Goodtimes scaring up poetry's word tuna, 
winter cupidity & stray groundhogs around up in Montezuma County 
at the Spruce-tree Coffeehouse.

Photo by Carl Marcus

THE TALKING GOURD

Out for a walk in the woods
An acorn falls
Inside a poem

-Carl Marcus

Wilson Mesa

Up Bear Creek / 26jan25012

U.S. (or its allies) stoop to terrorism

demonstration in Persia/Iran for Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan

KILLING SCIENTISTS … Our moral compass as a nation seems to be swinging wildly in circles. We have the spectacle of politicians loudly proclaiming themselves pro-life, while at the same time applauding the black op assassination of the fifth Iranian nuclear scientist in recent years. The story of Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, 32, made the media rounds this past week. Blown up by assassins on an Iranian street ... Roshan was a civilian, a husband and father, a scientist. His crime – working on the creation of a nuclear bomb for a country that does not have one yet. And therefore a nation vulnerable to its enemies, who do … Countries that have a nuclear capability get treated differently in the world, than those who don’t. Everyone knows that. The world isn’t democratic. It’s not one nation one vote. It’s a United Nations where the nuclear powers rule through a Security Council where one big-power veto stops any international act in its tracks … But if one of those nations who doesn’t have nukes started assassinating nuclear scientists in countries that do, imagine the outrage. Such acts would be condemned as terrorism, pure and simple … It used to be Christians upheld Christian values, and Muslims Muslim values, and Jews Jewish values. But in the race to control the world’s dwindling oil and resources, any means – regardless of whatever religious scruples one has left – justifies the end. And that end is keeping us safe, the One Percent rich and the balance of power teetering on the brink of the unthinkable.

SWIRL … Kris Holstrom’s great re-branding of her long-time visionary Tomten Farms non-profit translates as the Southwest Institute for Resilience. Although it’s been around at least since this past summer, SWIRL had a great coming out party of sorts at the Steaming Bean last weekend – a scrumptious Bee’s Knees benefit banquet with speeches and entertainment. I was delighted to meet my Norwood neighbors who run Laid Back Beef, and catch up with old CSA friends Tony and Barclay Daranyi of Indian Ridge Bakery and Farm … For more info SWIRL, contact Daniel Aragon at 970-519-1265 or <southwestresilience@gmail.com>

CONFESSIONS OF AN ENERGY PIG … Over the years, I realized I had a problem. My Cloud Acre bungalow had multiple heating issues, in spite of the insulation I’d put into the roof when I bought the place in the Eighties … There was a wood stove in the living room, which could heat most of the house, except for the distant kitchen pantry. But wood stoves are a lot of work to keep fired and fueled. And with the advent of kids, I’d migrated my office and studio out to a separated garage, and started heating it with electricity alone … And then there was the detached well house that couldn’t freeze -- not only for pumps and pipes, but because of my wine cellar and winter hoard of home-grown heirloom potatoes. Plus, Mary’s electric hot tub sat juicing in the yard … For Sept. of 2008 (25008 ANAC) we’d racked up 1,719 Kilowatt hours (kWh), using SMPA to heat three buildings, with just an occasional fire in the main house when convenient … January of 25009 our winter usage peaked at 3,004 kWh … Mary made a life change decision and found her own place that summer (when our bill ran $35 to $50, and I started living on my own, with weekend and summer visits from my youngest son) … By January of 25010, I’d worked to reduce the energy use at Cloud Acre to 1,822 kWh (a little less than half from the previous year). Nevertheless, February 25010 peaked at 2,278 kWh. I was seeing declining totals, but my coldest month peak usage was still way high … By October 25010 it was down from 1,719 kWh for the month from the year before to a mere 230 kWh. By October 25011 it had climbed slightly to 324 kWh – but was still a fraction of usage two years earlier … Good News: From back in August of 25009 when my monthly average usage had been 1,343 kWh and my yearly total was 16,118 kWh, my last bill of 25011 showed a monthly average of 954 kWh and a yearly total of 11,452 kWh. Through various energy-saving measures and increased use of my wood stove, I’ve been able to save almost 5,000 kWh a year … Okay, maybe I’m not such an energy pig after all, given the drafty, barely insulated, ramshackle home I live in. But I’d like to see my SMPA bill keep dropping, if I can keep conserving energy.

RESOLVE TO BE READY … Preparedness is reasonably assessing future risk, and taking reasonable present precautions. Never hurts to have a little food in the pantry for emergencies … Jenn Dinsmore of the Sheriff’s Office is working to get people ready as we move into difficult times, whatever calendar you subscribe to. The chances of a major disaster seem to be increasing as tensions with Iran heat up and the earth’s tightly-knit biosystems start to unravel. We’re heading into the political season, and government on multiple levels could see big changes as well … If you have questions about emergency preparedness in these changing times, call Jenn at 970-728-9546 or visit <www.sanmiguelcounty.org/preparedness> or <ready.gov>

THE TALKING GOURD

Electromagnetic

Hypersensitivity

Jean burst an aorta

trying to warn us

of its effects on our organs

But as Steen himself said

“If I didn’t have it,

I’d be on the other side”

He’d think like some do

sensitives were faking it, or

indulging their imaginations

McRedeye sez

“Did you hear the latest

scientific news?”

Researchers have manipulated

the tiniest electromagnetic

frequencies

on the body of a minnow

to create, god-like

eyes anywhere

fins

flipper

or forehead