As we left the ground, I saw Ingrid gripping herself and closing her eyes. She hated to fly. On our flight down to Kentucky, we’d passed through a lightning storm. I was too busy tending to my nauseous seat mate to notice that she was having a near-death experience. But when we landed in Lexington, she was still shaking and pale.
And that was a regular commercial flight. It’s easier to pretend you’re protected from the world outside when you don’t have windows you can roll down. A week later we found ourselves in a four-seater Cessna at the Yeager Airport in Charleston, West Virginia. I’d never been in a small, private plane before. Under normal circumstances, if this were just a pleasure flight, I would have been almost as scared as Ingrid. But I had a video camera in my hand and a job to do.
As we pulled into a spot in the airport’s parking lot, Ingrid had pointed out a sign that said “Reserved for Massey”. I quickly put the car in reverse. Massey Coal was one of the companies responsible for what I’d be filming that day. The purpose of the flight was to get a firsthand view and footage of mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining sites. MTR is a practice in which mountaintops are literally blasted off to extract the coal seams underneath. This practice devastates the land and poses long-term hazards to local residents who must cope with its aftermath. Poisonous coal waste finds its way into drinking water and the depleted mountaintops make floods a common occurrence.
As the plane ascended, we could see the full, rolling hills surrounding Charleston. It was beautiful to see the city falling into a crevice between those hills. There is nothing that makes you appreciate land, its aggregate power, like seeing it from an airplane. Most structures made by man can be seen as what they are – transitory settlements, Lincoln logs. But mountaintop removal is different, it leaves a mark that is unmistakable even from a thousand miles up.
As we began to move south from Charleston, Ingrid was starting to relax and look out the window. Our pilot Tom White told us over the headset that we’d soon be over the first mountaintop removal site. I got my camera ready and he opened the window. I stuck my head into it and felt the hard waves of air bend around my face and run wild with my hair. I loved that feeling. I imagined how amazing it must have been to take off in an early airplane, no windshield, no enclosure, powering through the wind with your own stubborn head.
Soon the site appeared. The green hills were gone. In their place were miles of gutted land - beige, reddish and black from the coal seams. It was monstrous in size, filling my view all the way to the periphery. I tried to fix my camera on a truck I could make out traversing the pit, but the wind shook so hard, I couldn’t tell if I was actually getting it in the shot. Every so often, I’d take my eyes away from the camera and look at the site without it. I preferred looking through the camera though, it made what I was seeing seem less real.
We passed over five sites during our flight, some of which I could identify based on features I’d read about, an elementary school perched under a coal slurry dam, a private land trust surrounded on all sides by MTR. Our pilot talked to us about the coal companies and the novel he wrote on the subject of mountaintop removal. I was excited to have his testimony for our recording, he had a lot of good things to say. Later when I played the tape, I could see his mouth moving, but heard only the motor and the wind. It was a no-brainer, but then, this was my first such flight and I wouldn’t exactly say I had my wits about me. I was so super-charged with adrenaline, I forgot everything beyond the plane and the MTR sites below.
After about an hour, Tom announced we were heading back. I didn’t want to come back down. I wanted to keep going. To fly over more land, the whole United States. I liked the power this perspective gave me. It was impossible to not see the forest for the trees when you were a few thousand feet above it. From the ground, MTR can be ignored, imagined to be just a minor disruption of the land. From up here, it was clear to see that it was a massacre, one that marched in full force, carried out by invisible humans in monster machines.
Though I wanted to see more, I knew Ingrid was ready to touch ground again and our pilot had other things on his schedule than to fly us around for free. After an hour in the air, we began our descent into Charleston. I saw Ingrid clutch her arms tightly enough to leave a bruise. I was trying to hold onto the perspective I’d gained as long as I could. There were the soft green hills again, so close, like I could reach my arm out and skim their grasses with my fingertips.
And then…I heard the low, comforting roll of tires on pavement. I was surprised. Where was the bump? I’d braced myself for a rough landing. I know Ingrid had. But there had not been even a shake. I wondered if the others had noticed. I wanted to express my surprise but didn’t want to offend Tom by suggesting I’d expected anything different.
About 30 seconds of silence, Tom erupted, “Damn! I haven’t had a landing like that in 20 years.” I smiled, happy for Ingrid and for Tom. The grin stayed on Tom’s face all the way to the gate. As he helped us out of the plane, Ingrid’s happy relief made her talkative. From the tarmac I looked back at the little plane that had provided such an eye-opening trip. I was reluctant to leave it.
An hour later we were on the freeway back to Lexington. We passed an enormous coal burning plant puffing out massive clouds of white smoke. It didn’t look ugly. It just looked like industry. What people couldn’t see was the real dirty secret. I thought about the wounds I’d seen in the earth, red and black like the blood and scabs of human flesh. Left, after reclamation, just barely concealed with nothing more than a sparse, hard grass called lespedeza. Some of the most biodiverse land in the world reduced to a barren steppe within a year. We behave like marauding barbarians, coming, plundering and essentially abandoning. But we are not invaders from another land. This is our land. It’s all we have. There is nowhere else to go.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Spirituality in the Age of the Badass
Though I have sometimes longed to be a badass, I have always known I would never make it. Maybe because I am not a good liar. To be a badass, you must keep that poker face, poker hands, poker aura. I cannot do that. If I feel something strongly, I will show it.
On July 10th, around midnight, I was blessed by the Indian guru Amma. She was appearing in a two-day event at the Manhattan Center on 34th St. A few weeks prior I’d gotten a call from an English friend who I’d not seen since 1997. We’d spent three weeks together touring around
So when Laura called to say she was coming to
From behind a hot dog cart on 34th, Laura suddenly appeared, same long, wavy brown hair a-flowing, but this time with grey hairs mixed in. Next to her walked a serious, blond angel, her daughter Anathe. We hugged and took each other in then walked inside where Laura got me a “token” – a piece of paper with a letter and number. They were on F6 and I had Z5. It reminded me of that scene in Beetlejuice when they go to the afterlife and sit next to the man with the shrunken head. I only had 30 minutes before I had to get back to work, so it looked grim. We waited and chatted while Anathe filled in blank time sheets forms with x’s and lines. About noon, we realized there was no way I’d be getting anywhere near that line. Laura asked if I could come back later, that Amma would be doing blessings all night. I had to teach a class, then direct a rehearsal for my upcoming play reading, but I promised to return at 10:30 that night. Laura procured a place-holder ticket for me that would put me at the front of the line when I returned.
I don’t know why I promised this, given that seeking a blessing from Amma was not something I had even known about prior to that day. I guess it was Laura’s earnest insistence. I felt that she wanted me to do it because she cared about me and thought it was important. I considered that I may not have a chance to see Amma again, or not for a very long time. Plus, I was about to experience the culmination of a very important project that meant a lot to me. A blessing could not hurt.
So after rehearsal at Chelsea Studios on
Laura, Anathe and I went downstairs where we paid $7.50 for a heaping plate of rice, dal, potatoes and peas, salad and yogurt sauce. Anathe was tired and contrary, lying on the ground with one hand grabbing a chair. When a lady tried to take it, she threw a fit then found a new chair upon which she curled up like a little cat. She was very tired. But Laura was committed to seeing me receive darshan – Amma’s blessing. I figured it must be something like the pleasure an old couple gets attending a wedding. It makes them remember when they were married. She wanted to see my first time to relive her own.
After dinner, we went back upstairs to check the progress of the line. They were already on H! I felt a sense of great impatience having already fallen behind. So we made our way through the floods of people to the front of the darshan line. I took a seat in one of the padded metal convention chairs. Ahead of me were many more people waiting for Amma’s embrace. As each person was hugged and sent off with a “present”, the line moved up. While we waited, screens showed Amma speaking and loudspeakers played an English translation of her words. Her messages of peace, love and gender equality infused the space. I felt a very strong energy - thick like water. Perhaps it was all the power of suggestion or perhaps Amma’s famously huge aura really was enveloping me. I began to cry for no reason in particular but that I felt opened. Many people cry, for instance, when they hear the song “Amazing Grace” or “Ave Maria”. The tune and words are like a magic key that plunges us beneath our everyday consciousness. It reunites our spirits with higher consciousness. It affirms what we know inside, that we are spiritual beings and though we may be separated in this life, we are all a part of God.
As I got to the front of the line, I felt almost like I had lost consciousness. I was simply being pulled closer and closer to the energy that now held me. I gave my bags away to a man kneeling on a little rug bedside the darshan line. But as I passed into the second to last chair, a woman asked for my token. I had let that once-precious little piece of paper drop into my large canvas bag, thinking it no longer necessary. When they asked me to go back to my bags to retrieve it, it felt like getting out of a warm pool. But I managed to find the elusive, little piece of paper and get it into the woman’s hand. I was back in line.
I watched a husband and wife clasped to Amma’s bosom. It was as though they became twins in the lap of Mama and they seemed to never want to leave. Finally, the man got reluctantly to his feet and was ushered off as I, on my knees, was pushed forward. I remember the immense warmth and softness of Amma and a kind of smiling spirit that contrasted with the tears that had flowed from me while waiting in line. She held my head in one hand and my shoulders with the other. She held her mouth close to my ear and chanted “Mi, mi, mi, mi, mi” and then, a moment, and I was lifted to my feet again, a “present” thrust into my hand and I walked off.
I wandered down the aisle on the far side of the convention center, eyes scanning for Laura. I had a feeling like I was floating and needing something to bring me back down to earth. Suddenly, I heard Laura come up behind me. I turned and hugged her like a lost 4-year-old. I cried into her hair. I felt the coarse weave of her white gowns. She looked at me with a sense of wonder. I realized my response pleased her and I wondered if I had felt pressure to be moved. But whether or not I had, it didn’t change what I felt in that moment. I was happy to feel so open.
We walked out, reunited with Anathe, and Laura handed me a sheet listing meditation centers throughout
The next day there was an article in the New York Times about Amma. It was purely informative, cool. It described the scene at the
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Art and Inner Being
I like surprises. I like when something happens that is entirely counter to my expectation. It’s this I find comforting rather than the opposite because it reminds me I am not in control. The conscious mind is not God. And when I remember that the conscious mind is not God, I feel closer to my inner being. Gods and demons speak inside of us, directing us from the inside out. If we want to create our world, we must heed intuition first, that which precedes rational thought and connects us to the collective.
Sometimes I feel myself drawn from my center toward an action without any rational thought involved. I like this feeling. It does not scare me because I trust my inner being. I am not afraid to acknowledge its darkness, simplicity, childish affinities, chaos, jubilance or strangeness. I respect it. Where would art be without this trust? Soulless, derivative, well-meaning. It is the constant struggle of the artist to trust his or her inner being despite the opinions of the outside world and their effect on his or her ego. This is not to say the artist shouldn’t care what the public thinks about his or her execution. I believe it is very important that the artist execute his or her art in a way that the public, barring close-mindedness, can receive. But the artist cannot care what the public thinks of the message of the art. Caring about what anyone thinks of the message kills art.
Many artists decline to articulate the message of the art. This does not – even if the artist thinks it so – mean the art doesn’t have a message. It only means that the artist has chosen not to get rational thought involved in the flow of energy from unconscious being to material form.
What is most important then for an artist is not to understand his or her unconscious being but to trust it wholly. Second in importance is to learn one’s craft, to know and understand the concretes with which he or she chooses to express himself. The power of art stretches between these two poles – inner being and craft. If an artist is very purely expressing inner being, craft can be weak, yet the art still powerful. There’s even a contemporary fetish for craftless art. Perhaps it’s because the high polish of commercialism has over-saturated culture with the opposite scenario – excellent craft without expression of inner being. Artists like Daniel Johnston speak to the part of us that longs for art that expresses, with no inhibition, the extremes of that aching and exuberant inner being.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Antidepressants, With a Side of Life
“I’m depressed. I want to go on pills. Do you know a good therapist?”
She said it the way a bored teenager says, “I’m hungry, let’s get some French fries.” She made it seem like going on psychotropic drugs was as casual as making a detour to McDonald’s on the way home. There’s a comfort in casually succumbing to something that will, without much effort, dull our pain. But when what’s easy also radically alters your brain chemistry, it ought to be taken more seriously than an impulse purchase at Walgreen’s.
“Just the shampoo, ma’am?”
“Actually, gimme these cinnamon tic-tacs…and a pack of Zoloft too.”
I told her, “Don’t do it. Don’t go on drugs.” Maybe this was intrusive. She was a new acquaintance and she wasn’t talking to me, just happened to be in my earshot. Who was I to tell her not to go on drugs? I didn’t know her situation - what difficulty she might be suffering. But I did know she was financially secure, did not have to work and could pursue an acting career unfettered. She had the wherewithal to get up on stage, look good and be funny. And yes, this doesn’t mean she wasn’t hurting on the inside. There are the archetypes of the sad clown…Lenny Bruce…and the melancholy beauty Greta Garbo. But sadness alone doesn’t demand medication. Medication covers sadness as though it were an ugly stain needing a good coat of paint. But sadness, like all emotions, is actually a necessary tool. When we medicate, we dull the sharpness of that tool and in turn diminish our potential to learn and grow.
A few years ago, during the summer between my first and second year of graduate school, I found myself deeply depressed. I was living at the bottom of a dark, lonely well that even my voice couldn’t make its way out of. I thought, “If this goes on, I will look into medication.” I went to a therapist and talked about the source of my pain, a broken relationship. But I felt that she too was unable to hear my voice. I became my only friend. I would sit on my bedroom floor and hug myself while rocking back and forth. Often my mind would spiral down to self-destructive, repetitive thoughts. I’d fixate on the image of the knife I used to cut vegetables and not be able to let go. I felt weak and shaky all day long as though my world were melting and I could not keep my footing in it. One morning in bed, I lay there unable to get up. Then I asked myself, “how will I ever feel better unless I make myself feel better?” I was at rock bottom and had to make a choice. Either I would give up or I would try to make it better. I decided to try to make it better. A few months later, I felt a strange emotion - happiness.
People who are prone to depression are often the people I most love and respect. Not because they are depressed but because of why they are depressed. They were born with and preserve within themselves great emotional sensitivity, keen perception and intuition. They’ve been carried on waves of emotion that have lifted them up very high, but later crashed them upon the shore. Because they feel so intensely, they misperceive the crash as an ending. They believe they are now stuck forever on the barren shore. “The ocean is for those others, those lucky ones, those stronger ones who are better equipped to handle its highs and lows.”
I ask people I care about not to go on medication because we need them out there in the ocean - as they are. We need their deep feeling and keen perception. If they must take drugs to get out on it again, they might as well be swimming in the kiddie pool. By taking them, they will be convinced of a certain level of impotence which leads to self-fulfilling limitation. They will not get really, deeply sad again, a feeling which is every human’s ongoing right to experience, not to run from or be ashamed of. I’ve heard people on antidepressants tell me they can’t cry anymore as though it’s a kind of victory. Whose victory?
Antidepressants help people fit into a society that demands everything be very neat and clean and consistent and up. But such a world belongs to television, not to real human life. We are here to rage and cry and scream and be wooed and be lost and hit rock bottom and be found and do it all again. By these extremities, we come to know ourselves. But by taking medication to make our day-to-day feelings “even” and “up”, we are diminishing the potential of our experiences. Those who feel each crash as lead in their bones and each bliss as fizzy water in their veins are blessed. They should not feel shame or guilt but be grateful for their potential to learn so much from life.
I understand that some extreme emotional states can be chronic and dangerous and I do not protest the use of medication for the chronically mentally ill. A schizophrenic or diagnosed bipolar is not able to live and learn through the extremity of their experience, and can hurt herself or others irreparably without medication. I protest the use of anti-depressants by those who are actually healthy, but stuck in a rut or miseducated about what is a “normal” emotional state. I believe there are so many tough things that we have the strength to pull ourselves out of. And if we save ourselves, we also gain a strength that will help us the rest of our lives.
All of society seems conspiring to get us swimming in the kiddie pool. TV and movies and antidepressant ads all try to convince us that that’s where we ought to be. But life is not lived in the kiddie pool, it is lived in the ocean. What my seeking acquaintance needs is not a pill, but courage.
Let’s buy our French fries now and again, let’s buy our tic-tacs and our trashy magazines, too. But let’s not casually swallow the sales pitch that we need pills to cope with our “difficult” emotions. If you are sad and mad at the world, scream and cry and tell people how you feel. And then tie yourself to the mast and weather the storm. Feel every lash of the wind, every frozen drop and know that you will be alive when it is over. And the world will be lucky to have such a brave and feeling one sailing undiminished in her midst.
She said it the way a bored teenager says, “I’m hungry, let’s get some French fries.” She made it seem like going on psychotropic drugs was as casual as making a detour to McDonald’s on the way home. There’s a comfort in casually succumbing to something that will, without much effort, dull our pain. But when what’s easy also radically alters your brain chemistry, it ought to be taken more seriously than an impulse purchase at Walgreen’s.
“Just the shampoo, ma’am?”
“Actually, gimme these cinnamon tic-tacs…and a pack of Zoloft too.”
I told her, “Don’t do it. Don’t go on drugs.” Maybe this was intrusive. She was a new acquaintance and she wasn’t talking to me, just happened to be in my earshot. Who was I to tell her not to go on drugs? I didn’t know her situation - what difficulty she might be suffering. But I did know she was financially secure, did not have to work and could pursue an acting career unfettered. She had the wherewithal to get up on stage, look good and be funny. And yes, this doesn’t mean she wasn’t hurting on the inside. There are the archetypes of the sad clown…Lenny Bruce…and the melancholy beauty Greta Garbo. But sadness alone doesn’t demand medication. Medication covers sadness as though it were an ugly stain needing a good coat of paint. But sadness, like all emotions, is actually a necessary tool. When we medicate, we dull the sharpness of that tool and in turn diminish our potential to learn and grow.
A few years ago, during the summer between my first and second year of graduate school, I found myself deeply depressed. I was living at the bottom of a dark, lonely well that even my voice couldn’t make its way out of. I thought, “If this goes on, I will look into medication.” I went to a therapist and talked about the source of my pain, a broken relationship. But I felt that she too was unable to hear my voice. I became my only friend. I would sit on my bedroom floor and hug myself while rocking back and forth. Often my mind would spiral down to self-destructive, repetitive thoughts. I’d fixate on the image of the knife I used to cut vegetables and not be able to let go. I felt weak and shaky all day long as though my world were melting and I could not keep my footing in it. One morning in bed, I lay there unable to get up. Then I asked myself, “how will I ever feel better unless I make myself feel better?” I was at rock bottom and had to make a choice. Either I would give up or I would try to make it better. I decided to try to make it better. A few months later, I felt a strange emotion - happiness.
People who are prone to depression are often the people I most love and respect. Not because they are depressed but because of why they are depressed. They were born with and preserve within themselves great emotional sensitivity, keen perception and intuition. They’ve been carried on waves of emotion that have lifted them up very high, but later crashed them upon the shore. Because they feel so intensely, they misperceive the crash as an ending. They believe they are now stuck forever on the barren shore. “The ocean is for those others, those lucky ones, those stronger ones who are better equipped to handle its highs and lows.”
I ask people I care about not to go on medication because we need them out there in the ocean - as they are. We need their deep feeling and keen perception. If they must take drugs to get out on it again, they might as well be swimming in the kiddie pool. By taking them, they will be convinced of a certain level of impotence which leads to self-fulfilling limitation. They will not get really, deeply sad again, a feeling which is every human’s ongoing right to experience, not to run from or be ashamed of. I’ve heard people on antidepressants tell me they can’t cry anymore as though it’s a kind of victory. Whose victory?
Antidepressants help people fit into a society that demands everything be very neat and clean and consistent and up. But such a world belongs to television, not to real human life. We are here to rage and cry and scream and be wooed and be lost and hit rock bottom and be found and do it all again. By these extremities, we come to know ourselves. But by taking medication to make our day-to-day feelings “even” and “up”, we are diminishing the potential of our experiences. Those who feel each crash as lead in their bones and each bliss as fizzy water in their veins are blessed. They should not feel shame or guilt but be grateful for their potential to learn so much from life.
I understand that some extreme emotional states can be chronic and dangerous and I do not protest the use of medication for the chronically mentally ill. A schizophrenic or diagnosed bipolar is not able to live and learn through the extremity of their experience, and can hurt herself or others irreparably without medication. I protest the use of anti-depressants by those who are actually healthy, but stuck in a rut or miseducated about what is a “normal” emotional state. I believe there are so many tough things that we have the strength to pull ourselves out of. And if we save ourselves, we also gain a strength that will help us the rest of our lives.
All of society seems conspiring to get us swimming in the kiddie pool. TV and movies and antidepressant ads all try to convince us that that’s where we ought to be. But life is not lived in the kiddie pool, it is lived in the ocean. What my seeking acquaintance needs is not a pill, but courage.
Let’s buy our French fries now and again, let’s buy our tic-tacs and our trashy magazines, too. But let’s not casually swallow the sales pitch that we need pills to cope with our “difficult” emotions. If you are sad and mad at the world, scream and cry and tell people how you feel. And then tie yourself to the mast and weather the storm. Feel every lash of the wind, every frozen drop and know that you will be alive when it is over. And the world will be lucky to have such a brave and feeling one sailing undiminished in her midst.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The Buckminster Fuller Prize
Dr. John Todd wins the first Buckminster Fuller Prize for his Plan to Renew the Land and Economy of Appalachia
Appropriate to the storytelling culture of Appalachia, Dr. John Todd began his presentation on his winning proposal for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge (http://www.bfi.org/) by spinning a yarn. He told a “Tale of the Future”. In his tale, an air traveler lands on a mountain in Appalachia to visit the region where his airplane was built. He is welcomed by a vibrant community, reforested mountains, publicly owned utilities and locally-owned land. Todd’s vision of the future Appalachia was beautiful and utopian, but he went on to show us how it was also more than just a story.
After his story, Todd slipped back to the present, showing slides of the desecrated earth of mountain top removal sites.
Then, establishing his track record, he introduced us to his work in Massachusetts, creating a series of bio-diverse water tanks that treat raw sewage. He said in contemplating the solution to treating the sewage, he had a slow-dawning Eureka moment - that nature performed miracles by having all seven kingdoms of life work together. Indeed, his inspiration bore fruit. The images of the tanks were beautiful, spilling over with life. All heavy metals were sequestered from the water and it came out 99.9% pure from the final tank.
His “eco-machines” as he calls them can treat up to 80,000 gallons of sewage a day. He took these machines to a town in South China, stitched through with a series of clogged and polluted canals that made the whole city stink. The transformation he achieved through his eco-machines was thrilling. Not only do they “eliminate” what is unsightly, they make the process beautiful by bringing life in to make it happen. It is not dangerous chemicals that clean this water, it is plants and fish and algae and bacteria.
The next step up from Todd’s eco-machines are Agricultural-Ecological Parks. He has built one of these in Burlington, Vermont where he teaches. These Agro-Eco Parks incorporate eco-machines in their food webs. The Vermont Park currently creates twelve different foods and has already sprung four new food companies. Todd sees these Parks as the basis of a new agriculture that can be placed in the midst of an urban setting.
Building up from a network of such Agro-Eco Parks, Todd imagines creating a durable economy in Appalachia. His vision for Appalachia was the winning submission for the first ever Buckminster Fuller Prize. He describes this type of economy as ecologically-designed and carbon neutral “in a bioregional and successional framework”.
Todd envisions six stages to the process of renewing the land and communities ravaged by mountaintop removal mining:
Stage 1 - Creating world-class soils
Stage 2 - Treating Toxic Mine Waste
Stage 3 - Establishing Natural Resource Base: Forestry, Biomass, Agriculture
Stage 4 - Renewable Energy Infrastructure and Resource-Based Manufacturing
Stage 5 – Land Ownership transfer to the local stewards
Stage 6 – Development of co-operative structures among owners
He also outlined six stages of progressive leadership to guide the changes in the land and economy:
Stage 1 – NGO’s, Governments, Land Trusts,
Stage 2 – Academic and Entrepeneurs
Stage 3 – Land Holding Trusts
Stage 4 – New corporations
Stage 5 – Land Trusts become financial organizations – Land ownership is transferred to the New Land Stewards
In 2009, at a regional conference held by Appalachian Voices, Todd will be laying out the Appalachian Business and Education in a public forum. He said that he and others are currently in the process of procuring a 40-mile tract of land in Appalachia on which to begin his plan.
Todd’s plan brings technological insight and long-term planning into harmony with the miraculous powers of nature to renew itself. He realizes the importance of keeping food, energy and business local to make sure that whatever choices are made that affect the land, affect the people too. Wendell Berry, acclaimed poet and culture-keeper of Appalachia said, “What I stand for is what I stand on.” Re-connecting to the land that feeds us and provides our resources is the surest route to healing our relationship to nature and ensuring our future on earth. Todd’s plan shines a light of hope on Appalachia that is much more than a story, it is a future that we can hold on to.
Appropriate to the storytelling culture of Appalachia, Dr. John Todd began his presentation on his winning proposal for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge (http://www.bfi.org/) by spinning a yarn. He told a “Tale of the Future”. In his tale, an air traveler lands on a mountain in Appalachia to visit the region where his airplane was built. He is welcomed by a vibrant community, reforested mountains, publicly owned utilities and locally-owned land. Todd’s vision of the future Appalachia was beautiful and utopian, but he went on to show us how it was also more than just a story.
After his story, Todd slipped back to the present, showing slides of the desecrated earth of mountain top removal sites.
Then, establishing his track record, he introduced us to his work in Massachusetts, creating a series of bio-diverse water tanks that treat raw sewage. He said in contemplating the solution to treating the sewage, he had a slow-dawning Eureka moment - that nature performed miracles by having all seven kingdoms of life work together. Indeed, his inspiration bore fruit. The images of the tanks were beautiful, spilling over with life. All heavy metals were sequestered from the water and it came out 99.9% pure from the final tank.
His “eco-machines” as he calls them can treat up to 80,000 gallons of sewage a day. He took these machines to a town in South China, stitched through with a series of clogged and polluted canals that made the whole city stink. The transformation he achieved through his eco-machines was thrilling. Not only do they “eliminate” what is unsightly, they make the process beautiful by bringing life in to make it happen. It is not dangerous chemicals that clean this water, it is plants and fish and algae and bacteria.
The next step up from Todd’s eco-machines are Agricultural-Ecological Parks. He has built one of these in Burlington, Vermont where he teaches. These Agro-Eco Parks incorporate eco-machines in their food webs. The Vermont Park currently creates twelve different foods and has already sprung four new food companies. Todd sees these Parks as the basis of a new agriculture that can be placed in the midst of an urban setting.
Building up from a network of such Agro-Eco Parks, Todd imagines creating a durable economy in Appalachia. His vision for Appalachia was the winning submission for the first ever Buckminster Fuller Prize. He describes this type of economy as ecologically-designed and carbon neutral “in a bioregional and successional framework”.
Todd envisions six stages to the process of renewing the land and communities ravaged by mountaintop removal mining:
Stage 1 - Creating world-class soils
Stage 2 - Treating Toxic Mine Waste
Stage 3 - Establishing Natural Resource Base: Forestry, Biomass, Agriculture
Stage 4 - Renewable Energy Infrastructure and Resource-Based Manufacturing
Stage 5 – Land Ownership transfer to the local stewards
Stage 6 – Development of co-operative structures among owners
He also outlined six stages of progressive leadership to guide the changes in the land and economy:
Stage 1 – NGO’s, Governments, Land Trusts,
Stage 2 – Academic and Entrepeneurs
Stage 3 – Land Holding Trusts
Stage 4 – New corporations
Stage 5 – Land Trusts become financial organizations – Land ownership is transferred to the New Land Stewards
In 2009, at a regional conference held by Appalachian Voices, Todd will be laying out the Appalachian Business and Education in a public forum. He said that he and others are currently in the process of procuring a 40-mile tract of land in Appalachia on which to begin his plan.
Todd’s plan brings technological insight and long-term planning into harmony with the miraculous powers of nature to renew itself. He realizes the importance of keeping food, energy and business local to make sure that whatever choices are made that affect the land, affect the people too. Wendell Berry, acclaimed poet and culture-keeper of Appalachia said, “What I stand for is what I stand on.” Re-connecting to the land that feeds us and provides our resources is the surest route to healing our relationship to nature and ensuring our future on earth. Todd’s plan shines a light of hope on Appalachia that is much more than a story, it is a future that we can hold on to.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Getting Over the Joke
Remember that time between 1995 and 2008 when these funny guys kept making the most black, but hilarious jokes about the f*cked-up state of our world and we just couldn’t stop laughing? And, like, each one was funnier than the next because things kept getting more f*cked up and we couldn’t catch our breath to save our lives. And how at first the laughter was all we could do to keep from crying and then later how we just got so used to laughing that it started to seem normal and we forgot that the shittiness used to make us want to cry….
Well that time is over.
Thank you Onion Newspaper. Thank you, John Stewart. Thank you, Stephen Colbert. Your satire has now awakened probably everyone in America capable of realizing it to the fact that the state of politics in our nation, our world, even, is one of the below:
A) Insane
B) Corrupt
C) Idiotic
D) Evil
Now everyone smart enough to “get it” can be proud of getting the joke. We all get the joke. WE GET THE JOKE. We get the joke. We get the joke. We get it. We get it. We get it.
Satire serves a purpose. It reveals to a distracted or misled populace the hypocrisy of its leaders. This is an important thing in a democracy because satire is not an end in and of itself. It serves to inspire informed action. To laugh at the hypocrisy is not the end goal of satire. If it were the end goal of satire, then satire would want to make sure there was lots of hypocrisy going around so that it could stay in business, right? Satire’s end purpose, like the end purpose of a teacher or a therapist is to not be needed.
Satire goes like this: 1) Hypocrisy is revealed 2) People act on new awareness 3) Hypocrisy is diminished. Satire does not go like this: 1) Hypocrisy is revealed 2) People laugh 3) People and satirists wait for more hypocrisy so they can laugh again. Unfortunately, the latter sequence is how it’s been going for the past 15 or so years.
John Stewart’s show works like a pressure valve. He allows smart, liberal people like himself to release a portion of the frustration they feel about American politics by giving them a good laugh. We watch, we get to shake our heads, feel smart cause we got the joke and be in on the coffee talk at work the next day. John Stewart and the Onion and Stephen Colbert have actually become more important to their viewers/readers than the politics they report on. They’ve milked political corruption for entertainment value and in the process achieved an incredible switcheroo in the consciousness of many Americans. Politics becomes the raw material for the end goal: satire. Just as a therapist may have an angry child beat up on a plastic doll, so clips of our leaders on these shows become dolls: stupid, inanimate targets for our aggression. We see them beaten up on and we feel better. We do not act.
George Bush is not a doll. He is a real person and he is running our real country. Unlike, a doll, he is behind the deaths of 4,000 Americans and many more Iraqis. Unlike a doll, he is pushing for oil drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve. Unlike a doll, he has appointed Supreme Court Judges who will be in power until they die. Unlike a doll, he has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol. Unlike a doll, he has installed an education initiative that is suppressing the creativity of teachers and students alike. Unlike a doll, he is allowing the destruction of the Appalachian Mountains. Unlike a doll, he is infringing on the Bill of Rights.
If you are a voting American citizen, it is time to stop laughing. Global warming, war, poor education, privatization of health care, the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay…funny? And I ask that question, the ridiculousness of over-seriousness full in my head, yet warring with myself to stay sober. There are things that are not funny. I want to have children one day. There’s nothing funny to me about being afraid to do so. The fact that we have sat on our couches and laughed at these things for so long is hard to believe. Maybe there was laughing gas in the air, maybe we were just scared. To everything, there is a season. Now is the season for sobriety and action.
Despite what inspirational election campaigns may suggest, no leader is going to “save” America without the public asking for it. If we continue to be idle, decisions will be made based on what is best for those who are speaking up which right now are the corporations. It would be great if what was best for the corporations was also best for the people. But in the past decade, it’s been borne out that that is too often not the case.
I believe that people get as much freedom as they ask for. I think Americans do want freedom, but we’ve gotten lazy about it. The comfort of our wealth has softened us into complacency. A Russian friend of mine and I were playing card games one time. I had a great hand and felt sure I would win. Toward the end, after it was too late, I realized he was cheating and I was going to lose. He smiled and said, “Don’t think that just because you’re winning, your opponent isn’t cheating.” Maybe it was our naivete that had us Americans laughing for so long. Like, it was so unbelievable that we could be losing, we had to laugh – surely it wouldn’t last. People often laugh as a means of denial in response to shock. But shock dissipates and reality remains. There are forces dragging this country into a bad place and it’s time to take action to pull it back up.
Well that time is over.
Thank you Onion Newspaper. Thank you, John Stewart. Thank you, Stephen Colbert. Your satire has now awakened probably everyone in America capable of realizing it to the fact that the state of politics in our nation, our world, even, is one of the below:
A) Insane
B) Corrupt
C) Idiotic
D) Evil
Now everyone smart enough to “get it” can be proud of getting the joke. We all get the joke. WE GET THE JOKE. We get the joke. We get the joke. We get it. We get it. We get it.
Satire serves a purpose. It reveals to a distracted or misled populace the hypocrisy of its leaders. This is an important thing in a democracy because satire is not an end in and of itself. It serves to inspire informed action. To laugh at the hypocrisy is not the end goal of satire. If it were the end goal of satire, then satire would want to make sure there was lots of hypocrisy going around so that it could stay in business, right? Satire’s end purpose, like the end purpose of a teacher or a therapist is to not be needed.
Satire goes like this: 1) Hypocrisy is revealed 2) People act on new awareness 3) Hypocrisy is diminished. Satire does not go like this: 1) Hypocrisy is revealed 2) People laugh 3) People and satirists wait for more hypocrisy so they can laugh again. Unfortunately, the latter sequence is how it’s been going for the past 15 or so years.
John Stewart’s show works like a pressure valve. He allows smart, liberal people like himself to release a portion of the frustration they feel about American politics by giving them a good laugh. We watch, we get to shake our heads, feel smart cause we got the joke and be in on the coffee talk at work the next day. John Stewart and the Onion and Stephen Colbert have actually become more important to their viewers/readers than the politics they report on. They’ve milked political corruption for entertainment value and in the process achieved an incredible switcheroo in the consciousness of many Americans. Politics becomes the raw material for the end goal: satire. Just as a therapist may have an angry child beat up on a plastic doll, so clips of our leaders on these shows become dolls: stupid, inanimate targets for our aggression. We see them beaten up on and we feel better. We do not act.
George Bush is not a doll. He is a real person and he is running our real country. Unlike, a doll, he is behind the deaths of 4,000 Americans and many more Iraqis. Unlike a doll, he is pushing for oil drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve. Unlike a doll, he has appointed Supreme Court Judges who will be in power until they die. Unlike a doll, he has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol. Unlike a doll, he has installed an education initiative that is suppressing the creativity of teachers and students alike. Unlike a doll, he is allowing the destruction of the Appalachian Mountains. Unlike a doll, he is infringing on the Bill of Rights.
If you are a voting American citizen, it is time to stop laughing. Global warming, war, poor education, privatization of health care, the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay…funny? And I ask that question, the ridiculousness of over-seriousness full in my head, yet warring with myself to stay sober. There are things that are not funny. I want to have children one day. There’s nothing funny to me about being afraid to do so. The fact that we have sat on our couches and laughed at these things for so long is hard to believe. Maybe there was laughing gas in the air, maybe we were just scared. To everything, there is a season. Now is the season for sobriety and action.
Despite what inspirational election campaigns may suggest, no leader is going to “save” America without the public asking for it. If we continue to be idle, decisions will be made based on what is best for those who are speaking up which right now are the corporations. It would be great if what was best for the corporations was also best for the people. But in the past decade, it’s been borne out that that is too often not the case.
I believe that people get as much freedom as they ask for. I think Americans do want freedom, but we’ve gotten lazy about it. The comfort of our wealth has softened us into complacency. A Russian friend of mine and I were playing card games one time. I had a great hand and felt sure I would win. Toward the end, after it was too late, I realized he was cheating and I was going to lose. He smiled and said, “Don’t think that just because you’re winning, your opponent isn’t cheating.” Maybe it was our naivete that had us Americans laughing for so long. Like, it was so unbelievable that we could be losing, we had to laugh – surely it wouldn’t last. People often laugh as a means of denial in response to shock. But shock dissipates and reality remains. There are forces dragging this country into a bad place and it’s time to take action to pull it back up.
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