You know it's GROUNDHOG DAY when newspaper weather forecasts read like articles in the Onion. The unseasonably warm winter that followed a record breaking hot summer has been declared by Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania's mascot meteorologist to be an "Early Spring". FOR NATURE. The rat.
Tag: Nature
Silly honeybee, High Fructose Corn Syrup is for kids, American humans, fat
If you'd like one reason to despise corporate honey producers, how's this? Humans come by honey because of the largess of bees. Beekeepers harvest the surplus as honeybees go about --what we've learned is their more critical responsibility for human interests-- pollinating our crops. Unfortunately it's become more profitable to milk the hives of more of the honey and leave sugar water or High Fructose Corn Syrup for the hardworking honeybees. Yes it's killing them. 27061
Ashes to ashes, dust and plastic
Photo essay by Chris Jordan: a visit to Midway Atoll, remains of albatross chicks dead by plastic.
Turning the economic corner to what?
The US media is now full of optimistic assurances to 'We, The People', that 'the economy is turning the corner' and all will be well once again as if that was ever all that much the case! Certainly it has been better though, yet today the US does not, and cannot, operate in isolation from the world downturn of Big Business. So how's it going elsewhere? Take a look at our friends the British, and you will see just how they are doing? ...and it's not so good. 8304
The Earth is a witch, men still burn her
May 24 - June 6, new moon to full moon, Wild Roots, Feral Futures has posted its location, Durango, Colorado. Check in for full directions.
Capitalism is killing off nature itself
Most people say that overpopulation is what's destroying our Planet, but in reality, it is how the world population organizes its economic activity that is responsible. In truth, most of us have no say about how the rich and powerful run their economic system, no more than the slaves of Rome could influence how the Roman Empire was run. We still live in a world run from the top down. Our large number is not the determinant part of the equation that just doesn't add up very well for long term survival. Threat to European biodiversity 'as serious as climate change.'
a heart of stone
I found this rock in Costa Rica, wet with seawater and the color of red jade, on a miles-long stretch of sand. A heart-shaped message, freed from the somber rainforest, presented to me - I think - by Cupid himself!
National Geographic is a nature pic zoo
January's National Geographic featured an article about Charles Darwin. Juxtaposed against excerpts from Darwin's diary on the Beagle, were the usual photographs of nature at its most vivid. But an image of a glacier, purporting to match Darwin's awed description, left me slack- jawed with contrary impression. We've all been treated to then and now pictograms of retreating glaciers, so the National Geographic's usual reverse illusionist, nature-isn't-vanishing-act, wasn't going to work for this pastoral scene. I'm looking straight through the glossy NATURE industry, and it's nothing but a virtual zoo. 6449
Fell not one more forest tree!
OLD GROWTH FORESTS. Sure we need lumber but we now need forests yet more. Two hundred years of industrial exploitation of the planet and now most of the forests are gone, and what remains are scraggly, sickly remnants that are not supportive of any remaining natural wildlife. Still, the slaughterhouse 'forestry' approach continues to bulldoze them down. The goal? 6254
DEAD
One in four mammals risks extinction for now, but it will be a much worse forecast 50 years from now. The problem is not too many people, but how those people we actually have organize their economic activity on Planet Earth. 5025
WaMu shares fall from $39 to $2 in one year
The Domino Theory at work! Next to fall- Washington Mutual. Nothing related to Vietnamese Communism at all, but to American capitalism itself. 4811
Waldo Canyon, Colorado
Sometimes the only thing standing between me and complete despondency is the mountain. My fellow bloggers have endless energy to tackle important issues -- homelessness, hunger, war, politics, environment, media, government, healthcare, torture, death. The list is depressing and endless. I admire them, but I am not made of steel like they are. I am more a fragile flower and, when buried under humanity's toxic waste and cut off from nature's largesse, I wither very quickly. 3248
Consumers to the very end
If you've ever watched Six Feet Under, you have a sense of what happens to the body prior to a conventional funeral and burial. If this is an indignity that you are willing to suffer, and a price tag that you are willing to bear, so be it. 2645