We from the tropics are way ahead in the green gardening movement in the U.S.

U.S. culture has a trained obsession with lawns.  Two of us in the development of 800 houses on a former farm have resisted this toxic behaviour.  We are both from islands in the Caribbean Sea. In my case, it could be that I grew this mini-forest in front in an attempt to shield myself from the hostility, ignorance and, yes, racism of those around me.
The development of this old farm tract on the side of a hill started with smaller one story houses now valued around $70,00 to $90,00, at the bottom of the hill, then later larger houses with more two story ones and some four bedroom ones, now valued around $100,000 to $250,000 in the midway up the hill (value varies on how much "upgrading" has been done to the interior, like newer kitchens and bathrooms and whether the house is 3 or 4 or 5 bedroom - mine has no upgrades to kitchen or bathrooms and is a 3 br/1 1/2 bath valued around $100,000 even though the plot size is almost 1/2 acre - a bit larger than most not on the creek which flows through the middle. The few on the creek can have a deep lawn sloping down to the creek). Further up towards the top of the hill and into the area where the electric lines are underground, house values can vary from $180,000 to $280,000 or more.  At the very top in the most recently developed part, the houses have deep lawns in front with very long driveways and even 3 car garages.  This results in values over $300,000.
In spite of the economy being in the gutter for well over two decades, with the departure of large corporations, the few people who move into the area do so because of the low cost of housing.

But, in any event, we both were way ahead of the movement to not have lawns.
Here's some photos of my place, in different seasons, in different years, held in respect for the original inhabitants, the indigenous people chased out and murdered and cornered into reservations.

 A crucial item for gardening is a pair of trusty Wellingtons, a bit large, so I wear two long socks which also help to keep the Wellies from slipping off.

 The 2014/2015 winter - aargh.

 Another crucial item for winter:

I planted two Blue Spruce years ago when they were babies of 12 inches tall.  Now they're huge, with nests and shelter for the birdies.

Photo taken while standing at the front door. 
See how you can't really see the houses across the road, thus they can't really see me standing or sitting there.  Nice. When I first started building this forest, the man next door with no trees marched up to my front door one day in a red-faced rage, waved his arm around and said "I don't know where you're from, but we don't do things like this around here."
Maybe they should have been  for several health reasons.

The front of my house in October

The house across the road from me

The house on one side of me.  The light pole at the left edge, whose shadow falls into the center, marks the line between my place and theirs.

Here's a photo of the front yard of the other family:

and a contrast with a lawn nearby:

Musings on a train trip to St. Louis, MO

Recently, I presented a session on framing and messaging at the annual national meeting and conference of the U.S. Green Party( USGPANM) in St. Louis, MO at the University of MO-St. Louis.

The admnistration building with offices for a Dean.  This is on the South campus, which has a MetroLink stop steps away.
The North campus, an 8 minute walk away, also has a MetroLink stop and newer buildings, such as this space-ship like Student Center, with a nice food court and many student oriented offices. The pond in front as well as the stand of grasses just to its righ seem to act like some sort of water filtration device.

 

I particularly chose to go to this conference via Amtrak which, at the stop in St. Louis, connected IN THE SAME BUILDING to the local light rail (Metrolink) the stops for which also connect to the city bus system, as did this Amtrak stop. St. Louis Amtrak stop
All passengers waiting for either Amtrak, the MetroLink, the intra-city buses or the city bus system, can be seated inside in heated or air-conditioned building with ample restrooms and a small eatery which are centered in the building near passenger seating so a long hike is not needed.  Very well planned for people comfort.

Below is the MetroLink stop at the South Campus of the University of St.Louis-MO.  While it has little to no shelter from the elements, you can see it's clean and well lit at night.  The city bus system stops just to the left of the platform (where you can see a piece of the bus shelter) and just a few steps to the left of that is a parking lot, so you can sit in your car until close to the time for the bus or the Metro-Link to arrive before getting out.

Here's a MetroLink approaching the UMSL-South stop

 And about to leave the stop.

Where I live has nothing remotely like this.

To get to St. Louis I had to drive my car to the city transport center in the next county (which transport center services only that county's bus system and intra-city buses, not the Amtrak) take a bus 2 hours to Syracuse to wait to get on the once a day Amtrak to Chicago. And there wait for the connection to the Texas Eagle to get to St. Louis.

While the Metro-Link system and its being connected to the city bus system, the intra-city bus system as well as the stop for the Amtrak for that city, as well as the aiport! seems to signal public transport nirvana, all is not well.

The day after I arrived at the cmpus, since the conference was not starting until that evening, I did a walk-about as I like to do when I visit a new place.  I walked along the road edging the campus heading north, with the Metro-Link track running along to my right.  On reaching an intersection, the road going left/right (Bridge Road !) went over the tracks via a bridge into what looked like an area with shops.  I walked and walked, encoutering almost no one on this Thursday morning, except an intermittent black male coming in the opposite direction on foot, not making eye contact with me.  On my right I passed a large property with a huge lawn in front and a sign stating the presence of a convent, the buildings for which were set far back from the road.  The property was rimmed with a black chain link fence.  At one point, on the inside of the fence and close to it was a lawn sign stating "Black Lives Matter."

I continued walking in the hot sun, noticing that the businesses edging the road were Payday Loan, African-American Hair Products, Second Hand Clothing on the right.  On the left were a small bank, then a chain drug store, then a McDonald's.  I quickly crossed the road to get to the McDonald's rest room with no problem as auto traffic was very thin.  I notieced one police car parked in front of the drug store. On entering the McDonald's with me now in desperate need of a rest room, it was clear that the entire place was staffed by black folk.  Even though a female employee was using the Women's rest room, she immediately gathered up her stuff while speaking to me in a very, very friendly manner.  When I asked her how to get to a chain store which I had heard was close by, she gave me very detailed and very helpful directions.

On my leaving the McDonald's, she repeated the directions for me with even more specificity.

On my walk back to get back to the campus, still encountering only one or two people walking, with them still being only black,  I wondered about this.

The one "white" person in the area was at the wheel of a car making its way to head over the bridge over the train tracks.  Had I just entered a "black" area of St. Louis? Were the train tracks yet again a marker for the divide between the "white" area - in this case the university campus - and the "black" area.

Later on, I came across some more articles about the destruction of areas where "black" people lived, so as to build college campuses or sports stadiums or the Cross-Bronx Expressway in NYC.

I  chose to go to this conference because while we do have some challenging people like any diverse organization tends to, Greens are the best.  Green "white" males listten to Green "black" females.  That's Scott, the U.S. Green Party media coordinator, on the right, and David Doonan, Green Mayor of Greenwich, NY in the middle. We were mostly all dressed casually as the weather outside was beastly hot with very high humidity.  The cricket orchestra outside at night was the loudest I've ever heard with what seemed hundreds of crickets sawing away.  The woman on the left was one of the many videographers at the conference where press conferences and presentations were uploaded to Craig at his apartment in NYC, from which he livestreamed and later posted videos on You-Tube.

In spite of the horrendous humidity and heat, I had a really good time.

Here are some stalwart Greens piling into cars for car-pooling to Ferguson, MO for a rally and press conference to mark the police killing of Michael Brown, an 18 year old "black" male about to enter college. 

The killing (let's call it what it is - genocide) continues. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/08/08/black-and-unarmed/

The U.S. Green Party 2014 Presidential candidate, Jill Stein M.D., who's running again to be the candidate for 2016, also went to the rally and was one of the speakers.

 I left early Sunday morning, before the conference ended, mostly due to Amtrak's schedule and my limited funds for spending another night in the dorms. 

Leaving St. Louis (see the famous Arch) on the Texas EagleAmtrak heading to Chicago to wait in the horrible Union Station there for the connection to the Amtrak Lake Shore Limited eastbound so as to get back to Syracuse, NY. on Monday morning.

 

Going over the Mississippi River that runs by St. Louis

The ubiquitous presence of polluting industry

The almost inevitable sight of freight trains carrying perhaps oil or chemicals, etc.

What appears to be a slew of frack-sand trucks or maybe since this is corn and soy country, they might be for transporting such corporate agricultural products (now usually GMO in form).

 

A sample of the afore-mentioned large scale agriculture

and then a station stop (not a smoke break stop, if I recall correctly):

This route has several at grade crossings in the middle of a village, town or city.

Here's a view of inside a coach car on a northeast/midwest type of Amtrak train - need to pass the time somehow but I enjoy looking out or in for good photo ops: Norice that the seats and the leg room are much more civilized that you encounter on intra-city buses like Greyhound or CoachUSA or the like.

Then Pontiac, IL

 a station not in an industrial area which is often the case, but near a park and playground,

more conrnfields:

This is not the first time I've passed a derailed freight train, which, if it was on the track that Amtrak needed to use, would hold up our progress for an hour or so for the cars to be cleared off the track. WE NEED TO STOP PRIORITIZING FREIGHT RAIL TRAFFIC IF PASSENGER RAIL IS TO GET ANYWHERE NEAR THE 21ST CENTURY IN THE U.S. First step is to amend the U.S. Constitution to get rid of fiction of corporate personhood, which, as you all know, started with a railway case.

Corporate agriculture

Windmills amidst corporate agriculture

This looks to be a stop on one of the many Metra lines emanating from Chicago into its suburbs or nearby smaller cities.  Remember that I took this photo while seated on an Amtrak train heading to Chicago.

Then a baseball stadium? paid for most likely with taxpayer fundss without their informed consent, as is done all over the U.S.

And then Joliet, IL

And then aargh!!!!!!

Outcry of resistance to this toxic non-natural environment: as we get closer to Chicago:

and more resistance.  Notice the street art is on the track side of the wall which supposedly was to keep out the artists and others.

I like train travel at lot, even by Amtrak, and in spite of the delays caused by not only freight traffic, but the ocassional removal of a person from the train. Here this was somewhere between Joliet, IL and Chicago, IL.

And then after dealing with Chicago's Union Station while waiting for my connection to the Lake Shore Limited, getting on it, a sold out train, so no way to lie down curled up on two seats with the foot rests out and the backs set back to the farthest position as I have done in the past, I had to try to sleep (almost imossible) in one seat, fortunately not next to a large person but next to a moderate sized young man who from our conversation seems to work in the military and was heading back home to Utica having driven out with his wife and three young children to visit family in Wisconsin? (I don't remember).

During the daytime on Monday, I had a fairly nice chat with him as more and more people got on the train and into our car, obviously heading to NYC (from the stubs the conductor stuck over their seats). The rest rooms got more and more unpleasant so when I got off at Syracuse pretty close to on time, I was more than ready, having been standing by the exit for over an hour, with my stuff around me (backpack, food bag, roll on luggage). Got to the stop, headed for the rest room, then on checking the time noticed that the intra-city bus to my destination was waiting at the gate, joined the line, got on it for the two hour trip south, reached that city, got off, grabbed my roll-on luggage from the bay under the bus, used the rest room inside the station, then headed to where I had parked my car, got in it, drove home in the fading afternoon light, parked it in the garage, took out all the bags and hauled them in.  Noticed the bee balm had started blooming in my absence.

Then collapsed.

The fight against universal health care in the U.S. has its roots in the peculiar institution

The fight against universal health care in the U.S. has its roots in the peculiar institution
Posted: April 17, 2015 |

On the Monday in January 2015 commemorating the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Healthcare-Now emailed its subscribers a message titled “Reader’s Guide to Racial Equity in Healthcare.” The message started with the still necessary reminder that no biological basis for race exists, going on to point out that “[i]n the United States . . . segregationist politics in Congress blocked national healthcare for much of the 20th century – not, as is often claimed, the growth of employer-based insurance during WWII.” While this information is correct, nothing was said about the lingering effects of slavery on healthcare.

That night Fresh Air on National Public Radio (NPR) aired an interview with Eric Foner, history professor at Columbia University, about his new book Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad. Professor Foner pointed out that the U.S. Constitution itself has a Fugitive Slave clause, although vaguely worded. Even so, by 1850, several U.S. states, mostly in the south, not satisfied with this, had passed Fugitive Slave laws. The federal Fugitive Slave law of 1850 was intended to prevent the South from seceding but it had the opposite effect. According to Foner, while slaves or even free black people were brutally captured in some northern states to be sent back south into slavery, other states, like New York, refused to enforce the law vigorously. Still, at this time, NY was a very dangerous place for free black people as shown in the movie “12 Years a Slave,” based on an actual memoir. Southern states saw non-enforcement or lax enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law as the North violating federal law and therefore, an example of northern untrustworthiness. This was one of the important factors leading to the U.S. Civil War.
Foner commented that the U.S. Constitution was deeply flawed from the beginning. When the Constitution was ratified, slaves were 20% of the population but not included in “We the People.” For Foner, this omission is “a flaw in the DNA” of this country, which demands a “com[ing] to terms with how deeply slavery is embedded in the country’s history.” Noticeably, the written “highlights” for this interview that you’ll find on the NPR website, omit this part of Foner’s interview. (See the seminal article “Structural Racism and American Democracy” published in 2001 by the late Columbia University Prof. Manning Marable, for more on race and omission in the history of black oppression in the US.)
I go to some length to relate these points, because it’s clear that the slow development of universal health care in the US stems from a cultural inability to honestly face the 500 years of slavery, mistreatment, torture, physical and mental abuse, theft, disrespect, and murder of America’s black denizens, forcibly brought to this   “land of the free and home of the brave.” The cause is not just the persistence of the form of ignorance we call racism, but in the historical fact of slavery itself as experienced in the U.S.
The majority of so-called informed people in the U.S., including medical providers and medical researchers, are found lacking when it comes to the illusion of race. They show their ignorance in their misguided and dangerous obsession with
finding racially focused genetic reasons for such complex ailments as cardio-vascular disease (CVD), high blood pressure, and diabetes. This obsession waned (somewhat) during the mapping of the human genome, but has roared back into mainstream medicine to the detriment of the health of all, and not just so-called “people of color.” Medical researchers still debate the merits of black “salt hypersensitivity,” using research conflating “non-white” with “black.” For these researchers “black” means persons with ancestors who experienced the Middle Passage. The black US population, however, is extremely diverse. More than a few came to the US after the American slave trade ended (officially outlawed in 1808) and many others have no African ancestors. Furthermore, as should be clear, not all “non-whites” are black!
Simultaneously, from time to time, Republican and several Democratic members of the U.S. Congress, seek to weaken or eliminate Social Security Disability, Social Security in general, Medicaid, and Medicare. If you take a careful look at the application forms and processes for SS Disability and Medicaid, you quickly come to the conclusion that the system’s focus is on rooting out any possibility that the person applying for such aid is not “faking it,” malingering, or lying so as to avoid working.
People receiving SS Disability do not “work” at a job. People on Medicare mostly do not “work” at a job. People receiving Medicaid are receiving funds from the government to pay for their health care or at least the premiums so that they do not become a public health hazard. All of these people are either not in the workforce mostly and/or are receiving funds without working for it at the time of receipt. This sticks in the craw of a culture of people who firmly believe that the main, if not only sole purpose of people living in the U.S., unless very wealthy, is to do wage work, and preferably hard physical labor, for the benefit of the capitalist system and capitalists.
U.S. style capitalism is built on slavery. We hear variously that the U.S. does not have universal single payer health care because it’s too expensive. If the US is so broke then how can it afford war after war, or massive tax breaks for the Waltons and Walmarts? (Read the books of the openly Republican David Cay Johnston on this point, such as Free Lunch.) If you call yourself a liberal and believe that the lack of universal health care “can’t be helped” or that universal healthcare failed thanks to the intense lobbying efforts of medical device makers and the pharmaceutical companies, then you are shying away from the reality: non-unionized working class and even lower middle class jobs in the U.S. operates a lot like slavery. Those in power want to expand this profitable slave labor economy, which free and equitably distributed healthcare would undermine.
Generally speaking, the perception of the wealthy class towards everyone else is that the latter are akin to slaves, that it’s OK for workers to have their wages stolen from them, their health stolen from them, that they are to be worked into an early grave, that even one’s health has to be embedded in capitalism through the intimate participation of for-profit corporations, as the health of enslaved Africans was embedded in the plantation system. This attitude is rooted in slavery.
To break this mindset, we need to fully face the lingering psychological and socio-cultural effects of slavery. A nation-wide Truth and Reconciliation-type process which includes seriously addressing the several long-standing calls for reparations, might be a start to changing the racist DNA of which Prof. Foner spoke. More of us need to be talking about this, day after day, rallying in the streets with relevant signs, songs and chants, use all the tools at hand including social media and old school lobbying, towards building a massive movement calling for a real end to slavery of the mind.

(Written by me for publication in The People's Press under the pen name of Dorian Grayson)

https://thepeoplespress.wordpress.com/2015/04/17/the-fight-against-universal-health-care-in-the-u-s-has-its-roots-in-the-peculiar-institution/

The back story to U.S. cultural denial of global warming

Hour long speech on the U.S. cultural denial of global warming. I changed the word usage of "American" to "U.S. cultural" as the use of "America" to describe just one country on the entire continent named after Amerigo Vespucci, a usage that infuriates citizens in Central American and South American countries.  The U.S. is the only country on the planet to my knowledge that is confused about its name and has multiple names: U.S., U.S.A., America, the States, and maybe more.  Perhaps reflective of the confusion and delusion of U.S. culture about SO many issues, such as race, the lack of genetic markers for race, refusal to truly face the multi-generational fallout from the holocaust of the enslavement of Africans and the mass murder and displacement of Turtle Island's indigenous peoples, as a start.  I bring up this point here as the speaker is a major intellectual and thus should know better. Click on the link below to get to the video and go all the way to the end for some important points she makes about the politics behind the denial.

The back story on U.S. cultural denial of global warming

OK. No photos of trucks this time. Just info.  Thursday night, four bright red trucks like pickups but dirty from the challenging weather in these parts at this time, pulled into the parking lot for the new motel in Apalachin, NY on Rte. 434 just off the Apalachin exit off Rte. 17.  Most likely they had come down PA Ave., from PA, bringing frack waste on their tires, then turned right onto Rte. 434 then to the motel, beside the Blue Dolphin Restaurant. Gone Friday morning. 
Saw them again on subsequent nights. 

Review of The Price of Thirst: Global Water Inequality and the Coming Chaos. By Karen Piper. Minneapolis. University of Minnesota Press. 2014.

The Price of Thirst:  Global Water Inequality and the Coming Chaos. By Karen Piper. Minneapolis. University of Minnesota Press. 2014.

Karen Piper's new book should be on the short list of anyone concerned about the important crises affecting what's needed for life to continue on the "water planet." Piper writes beautifully, making her book easy to read quickly without the reader losing sight of the important details she reveals.  Her style crosses genres as she weaves from a journalistic stance to an ethnographic stance.

Her background in post-colonial studies serves her well as she travels from region to region across the globe.  Thus she is able to see and grasp the larger histories and implications of the conversations she has with people living without water or seeing their sources of water taken away or blocked from access, usually all for the sake of the bottom line of a corporation often working with a government that has put aside its responsibility for the needs of a country's citizens.

Each of the six chapters of this book take us from California in the U.S. to Chile to South Africa to India to Egypt to Iraq.  Piper spent seven years pursuing this investigation, interviewing people who take different stances on the issue of water, whether they're for privatization or not, whether they view water as a "good" and therefore a commodity and therefore appropriate for being put up for sale to the highest bidder, put on a stock market in its own right separately from corporations that do the extraction from aquifers and the bottling, versus those who view water as a "right" or in the commons or a manifestation of the holy and thus should never be put up for sale.

Carefully referenced with sometimes startling photos, not the least of which is the one "gracing" the book's cover, the editing is well done. 

Piper collects yet more evidence, on the ground literally, to add to the proof for those who subscribe to this being a time for people to turn their backs on capitalism as it has been practiced since the start of the Industrial Revolution. But she is never dogmatic and never drowns the reader in numbers or statistics.  Other books, articles, and reports have provided readers with massive amounts of numeric data.  Piper's appeal is to the heart and to the importance of individual personal experience.  This is one of the many ways that makes this book differ from others such as Maude Barlow and Naomi Klein writing in this burgeoning field of works about global crises.  Piper's approach is more like that of Vandana Shiva in taking the stance that the political is personal and all politics are local. Piper's meeting with Vimla Bahuguna, to whom she dedicates the book, literally and figuratively centers the book.

Allied to the issue of access to water for drinking, cooking, bathing, washing, food production, etc. is, of course, the equally pressing problem of water pollution.  While water pollution is not the focus of her work as her center of attention is on global inequality in access to clean water, the issue of water pollution intertwines with the crisis of global water inequality.  Pollution has occurred and continues to occur where the local residents tend to be poor and powerless as in many of the places Piper visited, away from the interest of Western media and thus the residents of wealthy countries in Europe and the U.S.  Piper chooses to begin with a visit to a site in the U.S. and ends with a visit to a site in a country which the U.S. recently invaded and occupied.  These placements could form the basis for another extensive discussion. Piper hints but is never strident.

This book is appropriate for a very wide audience, including community book reads and discussions as well as undergraduate and graduate courses in Sustainability, Environmental Studies, Post-colonial Studies, English, Sociology, Philosophy, and especially courses with an interdisciplinary orientation. 

Reviewed by Cecile A. Lawrence.  Independent Scholar  and UNOH-VC faculty. Due to be published in an issue of American Studies 2015. 

So Denver CO people have organized and gotten public re fighting fracking.
Don't frack Denver urges immediate moratorium on fracking

Here's the new train station in Denver, possibly built with taxes from fracking

 and a possible cracker plant (cracking natural gas to create plastic) just outside Denver.  Lots of resulting air and ground pollution, doubtless.

What looks like a Schlumberger (because of the shade of blue) truck parked at the curb on a street running on the west side of the Endicott Library, just a few blocks south of the site on North Street where "cleaning" of the IBM chemical pollution plume cleanup continues. A couple days ago.

On the watering of cattle

A while back, I had an online discussion about the care of cattle labeled as free-range or grass-fed or organic, who were being readied for the production of meat or dairy.  In a recent visit to Colorado and Utah, I experienced how those labels for the cattle are different from open-range, but in a way the treatment is the same.  Open range cattle is what you find on federal lands, i.e. public lands, managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in vast areas in Colorado and Utah and the like.
The cattle are owned by private ranchers who pay a modest fee for allowing their cattle to graze on large areas of such land.  These animals are not usually fenced in and are able to roam onto the road on which you are driving and they have the RIGHT OF WAY.
Where I came upon them, there were few signs of water in the form of a pond, or lake or stream, much less a river.  Most of the land was dry scrub and/or desert.
What I found out is that just like cattle on private land, described in previous posts, the owners will transport water to their animals intermittently.Voila! Learning this also solved the concern about cattle on a grass fed farm where there was no sign of water. This, of course, makes a lot of sense as hauling the water out to the cattle rather than leaving a tank of water to evaporate or be turned over or some other problem is much more efficient and caring of a precious resource like water, especially in a desert area.