earth day (b)

Posted on April 13, 2014 by Cynthia G.

“Brightest New Mexico. In the vivid light each rock and tree and cloud and mountain existed with a kind of force and clarity that seemed not natural but supernatural.”

So does Fire on the Mountain begin with Billy’s view of this rugged land, this “country of dreams.” Billy’s mother has no love for the ranch, but for Billy, like his grandfather, the place is in his DNA. Billy’s barely accustomed to the rhythms of his long awaited vacation when the summer turns sour. One of Vogelin’s horses has gone missing. They later find him dead under mysterious conditions high up along the mountain trail. Vogelin’s suspicions about the identity of the perpetrator are confirmed when the Air Force lawyer arrives soon after. The U.S. government wants Vogelin’s land since it sits . . .READ MORE HERE

earth day (a)

Posted on April 11, 2014 by Cynthia G.

Earth Day 2014 is right around the corner. . .and as as you might guess, we have something to say about it. Herewith, the first installment of our tree-hugging, dirt-adoring, planet-loving perspectives.

Have you ever loved something so much that you would die for it? John Vogelin, Billy’s grandfather does. Fire on the Mountain depicts Vogelin’s struggle to preserve his New Mexico ranch as told through the eyes of his grandson, Billy, who lives each school year in the city, high on the expectation of returning to his grandfather’s ranch for a summer of living the cowboy life. READ THE REST

four stars

Posted on April 6, 2014 by Cynthia G.

OIL IN WATER

Pam Lazos

Chapter Eighty-One

Gil coughed and opened his mouth, pushing with his tongue. His eyes flew open and he found his face pressed against Max’s coat, a mouthful of the course bristly stuff, dry as cotton, poking at the insides of his cheeks. He coughed and spit the hair out, whacking at it with his unencumbered hand. The bushy mane turned, like a giant rock rolling away from the cave’s opening, and yawned. Max lay on his back, paws in the air, and whined, waiting for Gil to rub his belly. Gil grabbed his water bottle from the night stand, took a big swig and swished it around in his mouth.

“Yuck.” He sat cross-legged next to Max, adjusted his sling, then began to rub in slow, deliberate circles with his good hand, putting them both in a trance. Max moaned in ecstacy, scratching the air one front paw at a time until Gil stopped in mid-stroke.

“Oh my God.” Gil looked at Max. “I had a dream, Max. I had a dream.” Gil got up on his knees and bounced. “I had a dream, Maxie. A dream!” Gil stood up on the bed and began jumping up and down, then dancing in a strange, cohesive rhythm, singing all the while. “I had a dream. I had a dream.” He danced and sang and twirled, “I had a dream. I had a dream,” until his foot accidentally landed on the discarded water bottle and he toppled to the floor. He stuck the landing. Max stared over the side of the bed after him. For a moment Gil looked at him with wide-eyes before bursting into peals of laughter.

“I gotta tell Kori and Avery.” He leaped up and in two giant, awkward strides, he was at the door. “C’‘mon, Max. Let’s go.”

➣➣➣

Hart sat on the couch with his laptop and a cup of coffee. Avery sat at the other end reading the Sunday Inquirer . Kori and Jack snuggled together on the recliner. They could hear Aunt Stella, whistling in the kitchen while she made breakfast.

“I still can’t believe it’s a week already,” Avery said.

“Can we not talk about it please?” Hart asked. “I’m better if I just don’t think about it.” Hart sighed. Had Bicky, in a single and unlikely courageous act, not saved Gil from probable extinction at the hand of a man whom Hart had at one time considered to be his close friend and ally, things would be vastly different right now. For the past week, Hart had struggled to redefine his relationships with both men, but the matter was too close, the parameters too large, so he filed it under the category of Life’s Mysteries and Conundrums, the kind that need time and space for disentanglement. Kori’s yelp roused Hart from his reverie.

“Aaaah, your feet are cold,” she said. Jack rubbed his bare feet against Kori’s calf. After a few seconds of squirming, she wrapped both her legs around them.

“God, I love you,” Jack said, nuzzling Kori’s neck. “I come to you with cold feet and you embrace them.” He hugged her to him and whispered in her ear, “I really love you.”

“I love you, too,” Kori whispered back.

“No, I mean I really love you,” Jack said. “Really, really love you.”

Kori poked Jack in the ribs and he grabbed both her hands. She squirmed free just as Gil came running down the stairs, Max barking in his wake.

“I had a dream,” he said, jumping up and down. “I had a dream.” He stopped in the center of the room and did a little jig. Max jumped around Gil’s feet, barking until Gil picked him up by the front paws and danced with him.

Hart stared at Gil and Max, a smile gracing his lips. Drawn by the commotion, Aunt Stella waddled into the room.

“What was it?” Kori asked, sidling up next to Gil. Used to the last week’s worth of uber-mothering, Gil stopped his little dance and raised his face to Kori so she could feel his forehead with her chin. “No fever,” she said and shrugged.

“He’s alive,” Gil said. Robbie’s alive.”

Aunt Stella covered her mouth and folded into an armchair. Kori yelped as if she’d been poked and dropped to her knees. “Tell me.”

Avery joined Kori on the floor and Gil sat down next to them, wrapping his good arm around Max’s neck to keep him still.

“He’s someplace with a lot of water.”

“Water? Iraq’s a desert,” Jack said.

Gil shrugged and ran his closed lips back and forth over his teeth. He looked at Jack.

“Ssshhhh,” Kori said to Jack. “More,” she said to Gil.

“Well, there was a desert in the background, but there was so much water everywhere that I’m just not sure.” He scratched at Max’s ears and drifted off, back toward the dream.

“More,” said Kori.

“Robbie was wearing a robe and one of those head thingees,” Gil said, rubbing Max’s wide side. “And the people traveled by boat. Well, really by these little canoes. And they used poles instead of paddles to move the canoe through the water.”

“Interesting,” Hart said. He assessed Gil with his brilliant hazel eyes before typing something into the computer.

“More,” Kori said. Her eyes didn’t leave Gil’s face.

Gil thought for a moment, his mouth animated, his eyes and nose scrunched in concentration. “Oh yeah. He was digging a hole. He was using a little shovel and this long cylindrical thingee that was open at the top and bottom and some of the sides.”

“An auger?” Jack asked. Gil shrugged. Aunt Stella sat, fanning herself with a dishtowel.

“Got it,” Hart said. “Is this what you saw?” He turned the laptop’s screen toward Gil who jumped up and ran over to look at it.

“That’s it! That’s it!” Gil said.

“Where is that?” Avery asked. Everyone leaned in to peer at the screen.

“That, is the Fertile Crescent,” Hart said. “It’s in southern Iraq. And if you believe the bible, this is where civilization got its first leg up.”

“Wow,” Gil said.

“Are you sure that’s where he is?” Kori asked.

Gil nodded. “Looks exactly like it.”

“So how do we find him?” Kori asked.

“Depends. He might not want to be found,” Jack said. “He’s supposed to be dead, remember?”

“Which means…” Kori said.

“…that he faked his own death,” Avery finished.

“He doesn’t want to see us anymore,” Kori said, a crack in her voice.

“No. It’s not like that. He’ll come back,” Gil said. “When he’s done.” Gil nodded his head with enthusiasm.

Kori gave Hart a look which he interpreted as a need for deliverance.

“I’ll put feelers out,” Hart said. “See what I can come up with. I do have some contacts in Iraq….”

“Is that safe?” Jack asked.

“I’ll be discreet,” Hart said. He looked to Kori. “Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, hugging him so hard he yelped. She ran over to Aunt Stella whose eyes appeared to be leaking then floated back to her spot on the recliner.

Avery grabbed Gil by the shoulders and looked into his eyes. “You sure?” Gil nodded assent. Avery pulled Gil to his chest and let out a long, haggard breath.

“Of course he’s sure. He’s a visionary,” Hart said, smiling. “Okay,” Hart said. “Now — Gil. You feeling up to a little work?” He patted the seat next to him.

“Sure,” Gil said, and flopped down on the couch.

Hart smiled and gave Gil a brief hug, avoiding the sling. Gil, startled by the gesture, sat very still for a moment before awkwardly patting Hart on the back.

“I give you four stars,” Gil said, looking pleased with himself.

“Who? Hart?” Jack asked. “Why does he get four stars?”

Gil looked at Hart with complete admiration in his eyes. “He just does. And if he moves in with us for good, I’ll give him four and a half.”

Hart cleared his throat, blinked his eyes and stared at the screen, suddenly at a loss for words. Gil leaned against him on the pretense of following Hart’s gaze.

“Okay,” Gil said, “show me what you got.”

love your mother

Posted on March 29, 2014 by Cynthia G.

For the last week, we excerpted ourselves, from our First Blush files. Why, you may well ask? Because we have so much to say about our home planet, and we love her too much to let her languish while we stand idly by. Read more here — and join the revolution.

There are sonnets and sonatas that our Mother has not written yet, complex plant life that She has not yet evolved to produce, future medicines found in the leaves of Her favorite plants that She has not yet decided to share. Should we wipe this all out before we see what She has in store for us? As we evolve, She evolves, not one without the other, but both in tandem for we are part of Nature and that is its essence, a lyrical dance where She and We constantly reveal ourselves to ourselves. Why would we ever want to stop the dance of so much possibility?

coming up for air

Posted on March 27, 2014 by Cynthia G.

Close your eyes. Take a deep, slow breath. Feel your lungs swell with air. Notice how your chest expands gently and as you exhale, sense the relaxation of your body. Your lungs pump oxygen into the bloodstream, which flows faithfully throughout the body and when that sweet rush of oxygen reaches the brain, you are instantly calmer, more relaxed. Most days, we don’t think about the breath. And still, a breath, consciously observed, has the power to regulate the temperature of the body. It brings clarity of the mind. It releases tension, It quiets the ego. Some would even say that it is not you or me doing the breathing, but the act of taking in and releasing air, is God breathing Us.

THE WOOD FOR THE TREES (2)

Some of the oldest living organisms on earth are trees. Giant sequoias, for example, can live as long as 2,500 years while some bristlecone pines can live up to 5,000 years. The numbers vary, but let’s just say for simplicity’s sake that a mature tree, i.e., older than a mid-range teenager, consumes about 48 lbs of CO2/yr. (Some accounts are much higher for you skeptics.) The key to this is mature since a prepubescent tree simply doesn’t carry its weight. It’s simple math. CO2 in, oxygen out, but cut 18 million acres off the face of the earth and the numbers skew, the math gets wonky. Saplings start out perky enough, sucking in a bit of CO2, letting out a bit of oxygen, a tree’s waste product (who said it wasn’t a symbiotic world), but it’s not until the tree reaches 100 or 125 that it really hits its stride, exhaling wads of the life-giving stuff each year, chowing down on carbon dioxide like it was candy. The fact is, older trees outperform younger trees by an incredibly wide margin and the older the tree, the more CO2 it can take in because this is one instance where size does matter. So while it’s all cool and hip to plant a tree every time you cut one down, don’t expect the payoff to be that meaningful for awhile. (Please don’t read this and have your take away message be that we shouldn’t be planting trees. We absolutely should and must be, but keep in mind the delayed rate of return.)

Only about half of the world’s tropical forests are still standing. While trees as a whole give the world a great big oxygen boost, the destruction of the same trees to make way for crops — think slash and burn of swaths — doesn’t just deprive us of that oxygen, but contributes to greenhouse gasses because: a) we’re burning them, and b) they’re releasing the carbon they were holding. All tolled, it’s somewhere in the range of a 12-17% carbon increase. Something else trees do is hold water in their roots and then slowly release it into the atmosphere, contributing to the amount of water vapor in the air much like your houseplants release moisture into your home during the dry winter. Amazingly, in the Amazon Basin, about half of the water in the ecosystem is held within the plant life. Without trees, we have deserts.

The writer Aldous Huxley said facts don’t cease to exist simply because we ignore them. About 18 million acres of forest are lost each year to logging for firewood, or pulp and paper, for raising beef cattle, and for growing cash rich crops such as soy, palm oil, and coffee, the latter three of which leave behind poor soil conditions since none of their root systems holds the ground well. All of this results in increased erosion, flooding and a decline in local water quality due to runoff. It takes about 2,000 gallons of water to raise a single pound of beef plus acres of cleared forests to make way for pastureland. Beef is neither ecologically nor agriculturally efficient, and too much is bad for your heart, so why are we eating so much? (Notice I didn’t say “it”, but “much.”) Should we continue cutting down old growth forests to make amazingly beautiful furniture, continue to eat large quantities of beef, continue to grow crops such as soy or palm oil (not the good fat, BTW) to use in our unending supply of processed foods, shampoos (sodium laureth sulfate and stearic acid are derived from palm oil), and cleaning products, continue to log forests for paper, and sadly, firewood, or should we check ourselves and stop living in what is probably the most unsustainable manner since the ruling class of ancient Rome, unless you’re a Kardashian or had a hand in constructing just about anything in Dubai. Shall we ignore the facts?

Approximately 70% of the world’s species, plants and animals alike, live in forests. What happens to those species when the forests are all gone. I think it’s more than speculation to say they’ll go the way of the dinosaur and man as a species will be right behind them. Where I live in Central Pennsylvania, the richest unirrigated farmland in the country is being plowed under for brand new, upper-end housing developments. We all need a place to live, yes, but couldn’t it be a revitalized brownfield instead of the rich, fertile farmland that gave my part of the world its acclaim? I wonder about all the critters living in and around the edges of those farm fields, in the small patches of woods, in the little nooks and crannies and burrows. Where will those little guys go when the tractors arrive? It’s not like they can call a realtor and get a trade-in on read the rest here

out on a limb

Posted on March 26, 2014 by Cynthia G.

We love our stories, don’t we? It’s how our small brains are wired. We love stores around a campfire, we love stories before bed. It’s no coincidence that our stories at this time of year are about Nature. Gaia. The seeming return of life from the slumbering earth. As it turns out, we have quite a bit to say about our namesake, Queen of the Dead, Mrs. Hellfire, Persephone Herself. As a collective culture, we haven’t treated her very well, and there may be repercussions. Aretha said it best: give the girl a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

THE WOOD FOR THE TREES

In 1995, while still a wide-eyed environmental attorney, I took a meandering road trip through the magnificence of the Pacific Northwest. One evening at a local bar in Forks, Washington (the filming locale of the Twilight series), I found myself embroiled in a discussion, regarding the vicissitudes of logging with one of the locals, a lumberman who was just as passionate about the need for harvesting timber as I was about the need for the preservation of forests, particularly old growth ones. He repeatedly asked me, as if therein lied the answer to the Gordian knot we were trying to unravel, whether I liked my toilet paper one-ply or two-ply.

“Until you’re ready to have that conversation,” he said, “there’s really nothing to say.”

I remember being incensed that I couldn’t get this guy to see that what he was defending could wipe out years, perhaps decades of potential human existence on this planet. He refused to consider the possibility that trees act as the planet’s lungs and their removal jeopardized our oxygen supply just for a few more rolls of toilet paper. So while I saw his point, I didn’t see the need to wipe out whole forests to make it.

There are few things that speak to you like the towering majesty of an old growth forest. The slant and dapple of the light through the leaves, the song of the birds as they alight and fly, the flash of movement caught in the periphery as nature rearranges Herself, the heady smell of peat moss, representing life and death rolled into one. The bottom of peat moss decays to form peat deposits even as the top continues to grow which is basically how Mama Nature rolls, using the nutrients of the dead and decaying to fuel Her rebirth and regeneration, resulting in, ta-da, Spring, or as a microcosm, every dawning day. Take Persephone, the newly crowned Queen of the Dead, sleeping this whole long, lonely winter underground with her uncle cum husband (gross), Hades. Hades stole Persephone from the earth topside on a technicality and Demeter, her sweet mama and the Goddess of Agriculture was so disconsolate, she refused to let another thing grow until Persephone was returned to her. Such is a mother’s love — fierce, unpretentious, unwavering — just like our collective Mother is with her children, that is until we disrespect her and she turns on us like the Titan Cronus, known to the Romans as Saturn, who ate each of his sons when they were born so none could fulfill the prophesy to overthrow him. Coincidence? I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

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fire + water

Quote

Posted on March 9, 2014 by Cynthia G.

Let’s do a time check. Persephone is trapped underground with Hades, thanks to her bad dad, Zeus. It could be that Seph is throwing Skadi around like she means it because she’s had enough. Meanwhile, Kali is getting her party started; making chaos and burning down crops. Athena’s itching for a fight. . .and guess what? It’s ladies’ night, and we have a front row seat.

Are we having climate change fun yet? here’s what we know for sure:

The instability of the climate means rapid changes unlike anything history has demonstrated. Wildfires, heat waves, polar vortexes, flash floods, and droughts are just some of the lovely surprises that climate change has in store for us. It’s all about balance, sustainability, inconsistent consistency, the latter which is what normal weather is like — fickle, but not spiteful. Here in PA, just the extra snow days alone have drained local snow removal coffers. Imagine getting hit with monster, successive storms. Think Katrina and Hurricane Sandy, back-to-back. Who’s going to clean up the mess, rebuild, pay for the damage?

It will take a firm commitment. If we threw more than a few bucks at green infrastructure and got some big thinkers and visionaries working on long-range solutions, maybe we could gain some ground. Instead we’re shrinking funds for alternative technologies – the fusion budget has been cut so the U.S. is no longer the world leader in that regard – even as we continue to provide corporate welfare to Big Oil and Gas. Do the oil companies really need that extra money when they are already turning record profits? I wonder, could I get a tax break if I drilled a hole in my back yard and said I was looking to strike oil?

We can’t win this one, kids. Really. After all the damage, hurricanes, typhoons, tsunamis, and 50 degree evenings in July, we’ve still got people ~~saying~~ screaming that climate change is bad science. The Earth was here before and she’ll be here long after we’re gone. We all know the truth. It’s time for an intervention. We can help Mother Nature deal with her issues, by dealing with ourselves. We are her issues. The government is not going to save us. Neither are the aliens, in case you were holding out hope, or even just wondering. The only ones who can save us are us, but not until most of us get our collective heads out of our b… I mean, the sand. It’s time to do what we do best as a country — solve problems, innovate, lead so others might follow. The payoff, as if saving the planet and ourselves wasn’t enough, is that there’s a heck of a lot of money to be made in green technology, but first we need to cure our CCD.

Read the Rest here

kali calling

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Cynthia G.

Kali called; she wants her Gaia back. She’ll do what it takes, so strap on your Teflon pantyhose honey. Even if we stop abusing the planet now, she’s already warmed up and the punch she’s packing is gonna be a gobsmacker. Here are a few fun facts about changing weather patterns that might just be relevant:

Fact: While global temperature has increased about 1.4% over the last millennium, we are currently heading toward an unthinkable rise of between 2 and 12 degrees by the year 2100.

Fact: An increase of 2 degrees F will result in a 5-15% crop reduction; 3-10% increase in rainfall during heavy rainfall events (increasing flooding risk); a 5-10% decrease in stream flow in some river basins; and a 200-400% increase in wildfires.

Fact: Experiencing extra snowy winters doesn’t mean climate change isn’t real. Rather, the increased water vapor in the atmosphere results in increased precipitation, a Catch 22.

Fact: In the last millennium and a half, global sea level has risen about 9 inches and is expected to rise 1.5 to 3 feet by 2100. The increase in sea level will force coastal dwellers from their homes, maybe permanently, and if that happens, what the heck will it do to Manhattan?

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