Biomass my ass!

What have we done to this land? In the never-ending quest for riches and material gain , humanity seems set on destroying the natural world and replacing it with a life-sized diorama of stage props, visually sanitized, always regimented and totally lacking in soul. Of course, all these theme-park worlds need energy to keep them functioning and the monstrous appetite for that energy has resulted in countless miles of deserts and lifeless moonscapes where once there were mountains, streams and forests alive with nature.

Now, to add to our apocryphal vision of the future, along side of gutted hills, dammed and polluted rivers, and horizons shrouded in a chemical haze, we have the latest "answer" to our energy crisis raising the specter of horizons filled with vast clear-cuts. Industrial-scale biomass, in which either garbage, construction and demolition debris, or whole forests are incinerated to produce electricity, is the new panacea. It can also be described as the new "coal" or the new "nukes, in terms of both its associated problems and the growing resistance to them. Classified as "renewable energy" by pliant politicians serving corporate interests, large-scale biomass is about as renewable as my misspent youth. Given the amounts of CO2 these biomass facilities will pump into the atmosphere, it's ludicrous to classify them as "carbon-neutral", but that's exactly what developers and their hirelings in government are advertising.

With respect to clear-cut forests being tossed into the biomass furnace, perhaps less healthy and ecologically sound new growth will return in 50, 80 or 100 years, but during that prolonged period the critically needed carbon sequestration of the full-grown forest will not be available. Are we not PLANTING trees to deal with the climate crisis??

As for the incineration of trash and construction or demolition debris being "renewable", define your terms! We can always make new trash and trashy new structures, that's for sure, but if recent history is any guide, most all those things are made with dangerous toxins that will be passed on to your neighborhood in the incineration process. You have more than enough reason to be concerned.

So, industrial-scale biomass does address the energy crisis in the sense that the energy crisis represents the destruction of the planet upon which you live. Or, to put it more bluntly: biomass my ass!

24 - Reprehension

Some of the Bush regime's chickens may be coming home to roost, but Hollywood could well be providing the fox that guards the hen house of public opinion. Of course, I'm referring to the new season of Torture is Us: "24 - Redemption", the television series that made torture acceptable to so many minds in the U.S. I'm not sure how many times it needs to be said in order for the obvious to sink in, but the ancient and despicable practice of waterboarding really IS torture (as opposed to "enhanced interrogation") and it really IS illegal. Ramming prisoner's heads into walls and a long list of similar atrocities are classified as torture as well. These are things "24"'s Jack Bauer has been "entertaining" audiences with for years now. What's wrong in this picture? Need you ask??

Now, in its' eternal wisdom, Hollywood is once again trying to cash-in on the next new thing; in this case collective guilt and shame for allowing this nation to slip quite a few notches below what's believed to be civilization. Truth be known, the lesser elements in the USA have always tortured. Cops, prison guards, criminals, abusive parents. But in terms of the military and federal law enforcement, the nation has always prided itself on a sort of righteous image of being above such vile practices.....until the likes of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush took the reins of power. With the onset of the post-9/11 security hysteria that swept the nation, Hollywood gave us "24" nearly 24/7 (recall that most mainstream TV news organizations are now arms of the entertainment industry). The corporate news media has been dancing around the terminology of torture for years now, perhaps hoping the whole thing would go away. This is merely justification or obfuscation dressed-up as news reporting. "24 - Redemption" apparently is more of the same.

It seems Jack Bauer will remain the true grit all-American hero trying to do the "right thing" with all his right stuff. In the series Bauer will be called before congress to explain his illegal tactics (that, in truth, are also immoral and that do not work in the real world) and it appears he will be given the Ollie North mantle of the beleaguered warrior going over the line to "defend America" against (your villain here). Least we forget: Ollie North was not only a far-right ideologue posing as righteous patriot, but also a crook. Television viewers watched Jack Bauer torture bad guys for years. Probably the vast majority of them thought that was OK. It wasn't. Jack Bauer represents a truly bad precedent: illegal, immoral and ineffective action dressed-up as patriotism. Bauer is so Bush era. It's time for change.

brother

the wheel in your hand
across this fertile land
so many songs you've sung
so many hours ground down
lenses scoping out the action
the reactions, surprised
parties averted gazes and
the twelve steps to nowhere.
vice grip pliers held that
wheel in place, a two-tone
bus with us half grown
steering our way, off to
the highway, the long, long
winding road home, the stolen flag
a bartender's gift, like a
splash in the plaza fountain
without all that fame to
distract us, to grab the wheel
coming loose in our hands.
 
 
 
 

bridge to nowhere

you're my own personal bridge
to     no    where
you collect people like stamps
the initial fascination before
closing the book, to return to
whenever, like social networking

done alone

in the privacy of your home,
another thumbnail, perfectly
preserved, among others, so
diverse, on your B-list, out
there in the wilderness, on
the path where snakes mate,
making you uneasy, too raw,
too close/this bridge leads
me to think i should turn
back. where are you
taking me    today?
 
 
 
 

Passages we have known

we thought we ought to have hope
or hopelessness would have won
the ballots stacked against us
the chains, all those chains linking
us to some strange history
a real page turner, a mystery
so many of us without a clue
so many graves, so many shoulders.
the chains fall away but
the cost is heavy.

Eight years without a President

Finally, we have a President after eight years of unelected, disastrous leadership from a political party whose ranks are, for the most part, filled with white neo-conservatives. This writer has not spoken the word "president" in those eight long years. Now I can. What a relief. The fact that The President is half black and half white is however, an even greater relief, especially for a recovering racist such as myself.

It seems like we've come full circle. The Middle Passage has led to that immaculate passage going into the Oval Office, the one Barack Obama will walk through in a White House built by black slaves; the house that was home to more than a few slave owning white presidents. His wife, Michelle, descended from slaves, will walk through that same passage; will live in that same house. So will their children.

Now, one day after the national holiday recognizing Martin Luther King and the struggle for civil rights, the nation's first African-American gets sworn into the highest office in the land. Soon, the first African-American Attorney General and the first African-American EPA Administrator in the nation will take office. All this and more, two-hundred and thirty three years after the words "all men are created equal" gave birth to this nation.

There's more. The President's mother was white, his father, black. The President was a senator from Illinois, the Land of Lincoln. The President quotes Lincoln, FDR, JFK and he just traveled to Washington for his inauguration as the 44th President of these United States in a parlor car on a train, just as Lincoln did. On a recent evening Obama took his family to the Lincoln Memorial to pay homage. Now, hundreds of thousands gather by that memorial for three days of celebration, jubilation, in the very place where Dr. King led the March on Washington in 1963 and revealed a dream "that (his) four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

The content of Barack Obama's character looks pretty good so far (though I take issue with some of his positions on the issues). I look forward to saying that often about his character in the future. I look forward to saying President Obama, often as well.

O eight thanks

while we're giving thanks
be glad if no one's shooting
at you, in the desert or
from the blind, a platform
dressed in camo or blood
red, the last color we saw
has changed, pray for that
give thanks out of the blue
just in time we hope
to save the planet and
what's left of tattered
documents penned by hand
long before social networking
was done alone, thanks
for broken banks and an
opening for what's real:
your warm embrace, words that
smooth the edges of this page
a family at the table with
little to argue, forgiving
thanks.