REENTRY RAMBLING

Monday morning.  Snow and ice.  Cold.  The first time I've been able to get out and refill the feeders.  The big pole feeder was still about half-full.  But the others were stark raving empty. Almost a week since I've been online.  Computer SNAFUs, hard to get online, impossible to stay online once there.  I don't know if it's this ancient computer, the weather, the fates, or what.  Furthermore, I had such an overdose of Reality-based news, that it caused an emtional meltdown such that I really couldn't write anything coherent.  During this time my dear friend Tank Gurl wrote an entry called "What Pisses Me Off the Most?"  She somehow manages to get words onto the screen even when she's mad at everything.  Just go read her entry, it's all there.  And then, on the weekend, the ice and snow knocked out the phone line, and yes I still have dial-up, so I couldn't even try to get online.  Thank technology for cell phones, how else could we check to see if the Thai restaurant was open?  (It was, and we had a great meal.  Perked up the whole crappy weekend.)

So, I couldn't know until this morning that I am the deeply-honored, pleased, humbled and grateful winner of JudithHeartSong's Artsy Essay contest for the month of January.  It was lovely to read all those congratulatory comments, fine way to start a week.  I'm actually glad I didn't know until today!  I think most readers of my journals know and frequent Judi's journal - if, by any chance, you don't know her yet, it's time to get aquainted.  She's recounting the adventures, with photos, of her recent London trip. 

People like Judith are the reason I can't leave AOL, no matter how often I feel I'd like nothing better.  This journal thing has turned into a real community, and for me right now it's the most real community I have.  I have students whom I care a great deal about, I have professional associates with whom I can have conversations about our work, our plans, our goals - but here in this place where I have lived almost seven years I really don't have a community of friends.  During the political campaigns, a community of like-minded folks joined and worked and ranted together, but there is only one of those folks who has remained as an actual friend.  Perhaps that's a pretty good outcome, better than none.  But my life has never been like this, any other place, any other time.  At the beach there is a thriving gay/lesbian community, especially in the summertime, although I don't wish to give the impression I only choose to be friends with gay or lesbian people, how stupid would that be? Really, what I mean is that the beach is like a whole different place.  The political group I hung with all summer was overwhelmingly straight, but we had so many shared ideals, goals, hopes, and struggles in common.   We live in a small town well in from the beach, in an agricultural, conservative, religious, red-state atmosphere, where many of the inhabitants are elderly (well, I guess so am I now, but somehow I don't feel that way).  My neighbors have signs in their yards that say   "JESUS  The Lord Saves. To order this sign call:  and a phone number"    It's hard to identify with that.  It's hard for me to understand reducing someone you see as the Son of God Almighty, a miracle made flesh, to a yard sign.  It really is.  Or, for that matter, a bumper sticker. 

Wow.  Look at that.  What a stream of semiconsciousness spewed out there.  Okay.  I'm going to go eat lunch.  I must need essential nutrients.

HERE'S TO THE BAG LADIES, AND GENTS TOO

As a young student in France I acquired what seemed to me a very cool European thing to do:  taking multicolored string bags with me to do my grocery shopping.  The habit came home with me two years later, and became an affectation I cherished for its coolth and sophistication in dull and boring American grocery stores. Soon afterwards, however, I became very involved with the burgeoning environmental movement and realized my string bags were not only cool but environmentally friendly.  They saved at least one shopper's worth of plastic or paper bags from entering the world of over use and over littering.  Furthermore, I lived in Texas then and Whole Foods gave you a nickel refund for each bag of your own that you used. When I moved to Massachusetts and started shopping at Bread and Circus the same nickel perk for bags held true.  Now, of course, Whole Foods has taken over Bread and Circus in New England, as well as Fresh Fields here in the Mid-Atlantic.  Yes, it's the conglomerate Whole Foods - but they still do profit sharing with their employees, have great benefits, and still give a nickel back on bags you bring in to reuse. 

The original string bags from France have long since worn out, but my collection of canvas and mesh bags has grown massively.  As a teacher I attend conferences and workshops of one sort or another almost every year, and canvas bags are a favorite giveaway at those events.  I carry a set in each vehicle, one in my backpack, have miscellaneous of them here and there.  I get strange looks from some cashiers, but most of them are used to me now - and at least one major grocery chain in our area, Giant Foods, now gives a three cent rebate for using recycled or cloth bags.

For several years now several other countries, most notably Ireland, have been charging a tax on the use of plastic "carrier bags," a pretty hefty tax it is, too.  A good deal higher than the refund I get for using my canvas bags.  Europe, once my model for cool environmentally-friendly shopping behaviour, is now awash in plastic bags, endangering wildlife, clogging drains, just being as ugly as mortal sin.  I think other countries in the EU are also contemplating the bag tax.

So imagine my joy to  read on AOL news this morning that a major American city is finally doing the same sane and sensible thing.  It's that hip city by the bay, San Francisco, that is considering a municipal bag tax of up to 17 cents a bag.  It's in the initial stages of working its way through the process, and of course it may not even make it.  Still, it's a first step in the right direction.  Anyone who lives anywhere in the vicinity of a Wal-Mart knows the plastic wasteland that develops almost overnight in about a three mile radius of the store. 

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On a more personal note, I'm feeling better, though still not well enough to stand up in front of a class and emote.  The college had a two-hour opening delay, so that canceled my first class anyway.  My second class really can't afford to miss a session, but them's the breaks, I am so sorry.  And the school districts are still all closed, so no afterschool program today either. The bad news is that my darling G has been hit by this same evil bug.  She has taken such sweet care of me during the worst of my bout.  I knew she'd catch it - and last night I saw the first signs.  Right now she is a miserable lump under the covers with at least one warm furry creature keeping her company.  I like a lot of "poor baby" and cups of tea when I'm sick.  Her MO is just to curl up in a huddle and avoid all human contact.  It's somewhat frustrating, because I want to give her "poor baby" and cups of tea.  In fact, I think I'm going to go take her temperature and see if she wants a cup of tea.  No, just kidding, but I am going to go check on her.

LINKS TO RATTLE YOUR TEETH

Here are links to some things mentioned in the Moyers speech in the last entry.  I didn't have room to put them in, the "characters" gremlin wouldn't let me.  They weren't in the speech, but I have looked them up.  George Monbiot's site is one to bookmark.  I first encountered him in the leadup months before the war, and have been reading him ever since.  This column is titled "Apocalypse - Please!"   The Grist piece by Glenn Scherer is here, and a follow-up with letters from readers and a response by Scherer is here.   In his excellent blog "The Slacktivist," Fred Clark has been outlining the story of the rapture, as found in Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series.  He has two archives of interest in this regard, Left Behind, and godwatch.

BATTLEFIELD EARTH

The sun is sparkling on the field of ice that is our backyard.  Mockingbirds are darting and swooping from pyracantha to holly to spruce, the ground is covered with cardinals, juncoes, sparrows and finches eating the seeds that have fallen to the ground.  My fever is down, the bodyache is less, the cough rages on.  Schools were cancelled today, due to the icy roads, so I have another day to recover.  Not sure whether I'll be fit to go in tomorrow or not, it remains to be seen.

So I'm giving you as my entry on this morning of diamond-bright light, something I've been saving.  Many of you have probably already read this speech, some of you have not.  Bruce Miller has alluded to the quote "In politics today the delusional is no longer marginal" in his journal more than once, and I had it in my sidebar for a while.  Bill Moyers has spent the latter part of his life exploring and reporting on issues that other journalists wouldn't touch with a tenfoot pole.  He has now left the PBS news magazine, NOW, to work on a book, spend time with his wife and family, enjoy his elder years as he well deserves to do.  Nonetheless, I miss him badly

Battlefield Earth

By Bill Moyers, AlterNet. Posted December 4, 2004.

"The environment is in trouble and the religious right doesn't care. It's time to act as if the future depends on us – because it does."

This week the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School presented its fourth annual Global Environment Citizen Award to Bill Moyers. In presenting the award, Meryl Streep, a member of the Center board, said, "Through resourceful, intrepid reportage and perceptive voices from the forward edge of the debate, Moyers has examined an environment under siege with the aim of engaging citizens." Following is the text of Bill Moyers' response to Ms. Streep's presentation of the award.

I accept this award on behalf of all the people behind the camera whom you never see. And for all those scientists, advocates, activists, and just plain citizens whose stories we have covered in reporting on how environmental change affects our daily lives. We journalists are simply beachcombers on the shores of other people's knowledge, other people's experience, and other people's wisdom. We tell their stories.

The journalist who truly deserves this award is my friend, Bill McKibben. He enjoys the most conspicuous place in my own pantheon of journalistic heroes for his pioneer work in writing about the environment. His bestseller "The End of Nature" carried on where Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" left off.

Writing in Mother Jones recently, Bill described how the problems we journalists routinely cover – conventional, manageable programs like budget shortfalls and pollution – may be about to convert to chaotic, unpredictable, unmanageable situations. The most unmanageable of all, he writes, could be the accelerating deterioration of the environment, creating perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is causing the melt of the artic to release so much freshwater into the North Atlantic that even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a weakening gulf stream could yield abrupt and overwhelming changes, the kind of changes that could radically alter civilizations.

That's one challenge we journalists face – how to tell such a story without coming across as Cassandras, without turning off the people we most want to understand what's happening, who must act on what they read and hear.

As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and viewers, there is an even harder challenge – to pierce the ideology that governs official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the bible is literally true – one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index. That's right – the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the 12 volumes of the left-behind series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the rest of its "biblical lands," legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious, and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed – anessential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144 – just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of god will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.

So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist, Glenn Scherer – 'the road to environmental apocalypse. Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed – even hastened – as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress before the recent election – 231 legislators in total – more since the election – are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt. The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian coalition was Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical book of Amos on the senate floor: "the days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land." he seemed to be relishing the thought.

And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations or in the motel turn some of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear some of this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same god who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?"

Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the lord will provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, America's providential history. You'll find there these words: "the secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie... that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." However, "[t]he Christian knows that the potential in god is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in god's earth... while many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that god has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people." No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that militant hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers." He turned out millions of the foot soldiers on November 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a powerful driving force in modern American politics.

I can see in the look on your faces just how had it is for the journalist to report a story like thiswith any credibility. So let me put it on a personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this world without expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I can to bring it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now, however, I think of my friend on Wall Street whom I once asked: "What do you think of the market?" "I'm optimistic," he answered. "Then why do you look so worried?" And he answered: "Because I am not sure my optimism is justified."

I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with the Eric Chivian and the Center for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect the natural environment when they realize its importance to their health and to the health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not that I don't want to believe that – it's just that I read the news and connect the dots:

I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment. This for an administration that wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and animal species and their habitats, as well as the National Environmental Policy Act that requires the government to judge beforehand if actions might damage natural resources.

That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle tailpipe inspections; and ease pollution standards for cars, sports utility vehicles and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment.

That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep certain information about environmental problems secret from the public.

That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against polluting coal-fired power plans and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal companies.

That wants to open the artic wildlife refuge to drilling and increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild land in America.

I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental Protection Agency had planned to spend nine million dollars – $2 million of it from the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council – to pay poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry were going to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study.

I read all this in the news.

I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's friends at the international policy network, which is supported by Exxon Mobile and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate change is "a myth, sea levels are not rising," scientists who believe catastrophe is possible are "an embarrassment."

I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached to it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from pesticides; language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon; a waiver of environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider pressed by developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in California.

I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer – pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; of Thomas, age 10; of Nancy, 7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, nine months. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we know now what we do." And then I am stopped short by the thought: "That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world."

And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain indignation at injustice?

What has happened to out moral imagination?

On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: 'How do you see the world?" And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly.'"

I see it feelingly.

The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free – not only to feel but to fight for the future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my desk. What we need to match the science of human health is what the ancient Israelites called "hocma" – the science of the heart... the capacity to see... to feel... and then to act... as if the future depended on you.

Believe me, it does.

Bill Moyers is the host of the weekly public affairs series NOW with Bill Moyers, which airs Friday nights on PBS.

 

ESSAY ENTRY IN ANOTHER NEIGHBORHOOD

For the first time I have participated in JudithHeartsong's artsy essay contest.  I have put my entry in my book blog, because I'd really love to get a lot more people reading that journal.  So, come on over and read my entry, and, if you have the time, stick around a while and read some more.

Still snowing like mad, by the way.  It's so beautiful.  I am bummed by feeling so bad - I want to go out and tromp through Redden Forest, find fox and raccoon and deer prints.   

MISERABLE WHINING

Still feeling entirely miserable and wretched.  I think this is a flu, really yes I do.  I haven't had flu for years, but this of course is the first year in ten years without a flu shot, and I am surrounded all day every day by people and their germs.  I think anyone who teaches should have been eligible for a flu shot, and I blame the administration for the shortage of this vaccine too.  Everything bad that ever happens, it's nice to have a universal scapegoat, huh?  It's snowing like mad outside my window here, my darling girl has gone out in it to the drugstore to get me some useless OTC medications.  What I want is morphine, because I'm allergic to codeine, and lordy lordy how I ache.  I'm only here to do my entry for JudithHeartSong's artsy fartsy essay thing, and then I'm going back on the couch forever.  Yes, Cynthia, I welcome prayers you silly goose - of course I do.  I am a skeptic, perhaps an agnostic, but I know sources of power when I meet them.  I believe your prayers would be just that.

AVE, CAESAR

This morning I was reading commentary on the Coronation Speech on various sites, and in progressive blogs, and thought an entry offering quotes from some of them would be a good thing. Of course I haven't had the time to do it today - But - I've just come from reading Bruce Miller's journal, and he has already done this very thing.  So, trek on over to Old Hickory's Weblog and read his entry.  It's a compendium of all the things you wish you were articulate enough to say.

I'm feeling completely awful.  We went grocery shopping, in order to have the necessities for being Snowed In (cat food, chocolate, soup, coffee, toilet paper, these are our essentials) and somewhere in the middle of the store I started feeling like I'd been dropped out of a helicopter at high speed.  I've been coughing all day, now every bone and joint in my body is aching.  Time for jammies and hot tea, and maybe even bed. So, if I'm not around for a while, you know where I am, and think kind and healing thoughts in the general direction of coastal Delaware. 

LIKE A BIRD ON A WIRE....

Northern Mockingbird

Glorious day, sky a Texas or New Mexico blue, chilly but calm.  Just filled up all the birdfeeders, washed and refilled the birdbath, put the heater back in it.  We're expecting a real winter storm beginning tonight or tomorrow morning.  This one could really sock us in, with up to nine inches of snow.  Remember, we're not used to that much snow here - it would truly be, as they say on the Weather Channel, an Event. 

Lots of activity at the feeders, nothing exotic or exciting - except that for me all birds are exciting.  Lots of cardinals and house finches at the safflower seed, a flock of chickadees and titmice crowding around the sunflower seed, american goldfinches in their drab winter outfits at the niger.  On the ground a gang of mourning doves scarfing up whatever they can get, as well as assorted LB J's, mainly sparrows.  Haven't seen the big woodpecker lately, but the mockingbirds are chowing down on the suet blocks - as are also the squirrels.  If we get the expected snow, they'll all be grateful to have full feeders.  I need to get more suet blocks, I'm on my last one right now.  They're a great energy source for the birds that like them.

If you don't yet feed the birds, or would just like to know more about it, here's a website to get you going.  It's the best winter fun, the snow makes it even better - it's when I'm grateful for the bright red of the cardinals, it's lovely against the snow.

HAILING THE THIEF, I MEAN - CHIEF

And, for a list of corporate and individual donors who chipped in to help the Emperor get new clothes, here is the link.  It's hard to boycott everyone, goddamnit, Toyota is on the list - I've owned a long line of Toyotas, they're good cars.  I've got to go back and check, is Honda on there?  If not, that makes the next car purchasing decision easy enough. 

Later - nope, Honda is not on the list.  Okay.  I've been looking at Hondas lately anyway.  While you browse the list, make note of how many financial and/or investment corps are on there.  Then think about the next big crisis our utterly trustworthy admin says is looming and what we need to do about it.  Can you say "privatization?" 

DIES IRAE

So it's Coronation Day in this great U S of A, my friends.  And here, from American Progress Action Fund, are a few facts to warm the cockles of your heart (does anyone know what the "cockles" of a heart are, exactly?), make you just prouder 'n a peacock to be a member of this great society.  Oh, pardon me, "great society," that's a Lyndon Johnson phrase, isn't it?  Therefore Democrat-speak.  The 17 million the city of Washington is ponying up for security for this idiocy is particularly galling.  It couldn't be punishment for the overwhelming nonvote of confidence the District gave Napol....I mean,  George, could it?

January 20, 2005

by Christy Harvey, Judd Legum and Jonathan Baskin
with Nico Pitney and Mipe Okunseinde

Inauguration: Lifestyles of the Rich and Heartless

Due to $17 million worth of inaugural security – paid for by the city of Washington, D.C. – the Progress Report is unable to access its office. Never fear – it takes a lot more than that to keep us down. We put this list together for you ahead of time. Your regularly scheduled Progress Report returns tomorrow.

A look at this week's festivities by the numbers:

$40 million: Cost of Bush inaugural ball festivities, not counting security costs.

$2,000: Amount FDR spent on the inaugural in 1945…about $20,000 in today's dollars.

$20,000: Cost of yellow roses purchased for inaugural festivities by D.C.'s Ritz Carlton.

200: Number of Humvees outfitted with top-of-the-line armor for troops in Iraq that could have been purchased with the amount of money blown on the inauguration.

$10,000: Price of an inaugural package at the Fairmont Hotel, which includes a Beluga caviar and Dom Perignon reception, a chauffeured Rolls Royce and two actors posing as "faux" Secret Service agents, complete with black sunglasses and cufflink walkie-talkies.

400: Pounds of lobster provided for "inaugural feeding frenzy" at the exclusive Mandarin Oriental hotel.

3,000: Number of "Laura Bush Cowboy cookies" provided for "inaugural feeding frenzy" at the Mandarin hotel.

$1: Amount per guest President Carter spent on snacks for guests at his inaugural parties. To stick to a tight budget, he served pretzels, peanuts, crackers and cheese and had cash bars.

22 million: Number of children in regions devastated by the tsunami who could have received vaccinations and preventive health care with the amount of money spent on the inauguration.

1,160,000: Number of girls who could be sent to school for a year in Afghanistan with the amount of money lavished on the inauguration.

$15,000: The down payment to rent a fur coat paid by one gala attendee who didn't want the hassle of schlepping her own through the airport.

$200,500: Price of a room package at D.C.'s Mandarin Oriental, including presidential suite, chauffeured Mercedes limo and outfits from Neiman Marcus.

2,500: Number of U.S. troops used to stand guard as President Bush takes his oath of office

26,000: Number of Kevlar vests for U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan that could be purchased for $40 million.

$290: Bonus that could go to each American solider serving in Iraq, if inauguration funds were used for that purpose.

$6.3 million: Amount contributed by the finance and investment industry, which works out to be 25 percent of all the money collected.

$17 million: Amount of money the White House is forcing the cash-strapped city of Washington, D.C., to pony up for inauguration security.

9: Percentage of D.C. residents who voted for Bush in 2004.

66: Percentage of Americans who think this over-the-top inauguration should have been scaled back.

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LETS ORDER UP A PIZZA

From the ACLU, a little look into the future.  Go here, turn up your sound and follow along (may take a while to load).  Have you paid your dues to your local chapter this year?  Along with Barbara Boxer, they are one of the few bastions of courage and resistance left in America today.

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And here's an interesting link, from Rolling Stone via Truthout.com, an interview with Paul Krugman on the subject of Social Security.  Could it be we're hearing another story along the lines of WMD in Iraq?  Be afraid.....be very afraid? 

                            ******************************

Drinking coffee, waiting for the snow.  The possible snow.  I don't like to complain about the weather - after all, there are people in J-land, I'm sure, who live in places like Minnesota, South Dakota, Chicago, Ontario.  Yes, but they expect cold weather like this, and far worse, don't they?  I live very close to the Mason-Dixon line, southern Delaware may even technically BE The South.  So, why was it -5 degrees with the wind chill factor this morning?  My poor little birds - they're too cold to come to the feeders and chow down.  I've hacked (literally, with a hatchet) the ice out of the largest bird-bath and put in a heater, so there will be some open water for them.  It's been like this for far too many days now, everything is frozen solid.  Logs are frozen into the woodpile, I can't pry them loose.  The daffodils, the winter jasmine, the japanese quince - all were starting to Think Spring, shoots and buds.  The rhododendrons are terrified, their leaves curled into tight little rolls.  Some snow would be a relief, cover the iron-frozen ground with a soft, forgiving, blanket of moisture. 

I have big fleece-lined boots, and a greatcoat that comes down to the tops of my boots (it even has a hood), mittens lined with goretex, down comforters, flannel pjs, long underwear - I'M okay.  It's the plant and bird life I worry about, and I probably shouldn't.  They've seen this before, although not since I've been living in this area.  This is the coldest weather we've had in the nearly seven years we've been here.  I always think about the homeless when winter cold sets in, wonder how/if humans without nests make it through.  Local churches are setting up shelters in parish halls, and they are filling up on these single-digit nights.   

I know it's cold everywhere, it was even unusually cold in San Antonio when I called my nephew to wish him a happy birthday on the weekend.  (The kid shares a birthday with Dr. King, and he's proud of it.)  So if you are reading this I hope you have a fire in the fireplace, an afghan over your knees, or - even better - a big cat on your lap, some warm soup in your bowl, and someone you love to keep you warm in the night.

And.....whoops!  here come the first flakes, almost on schedule.  There may be no afterschool program today, things get cancelled here if people see a snowflake.

POLAR EXPRESS

Wow!  Check this out...Giant Iceberg on the Move: Expected to Collide with Glacier.  But, this couldn't have anything to do with that scientific hoax, Global Warming, could it?  You think?  I really don't know.  It's a good thing for the penguins, anyway.  But strange things have been going on up there for the past several years, ice blockage, ice movement.  Some amazing pictures here.

IN HIS OWN WORDS

After my last entry, I received email copied below from a journal friend.  She had left me the first part of it in a comment on the entry, but sent the rest thru the mail.  I took no offense, and wanted her and everyone else to understand why I used the RFK eulogy rather than one of Dr. King's speeches.  I had thought that J-land would be full of entries with quotes from King's many and wondrous speeches, so I wanted to do something a little different, and honor two of my heroes at the same time.  Had I known that it would be hard to find quotes from Dr. King in J-land I would have done this exerpt of one of his speeches as my first, and only, commemoration.  It is the one I feel we need to hear now in this country, the one I wish I could broadcast over a loudspeaker in the heart of Washington, D.C.  If you want more, alternet.org has a great group of exerpts from King speeches here.

Kathleen's email:   This is the original comment I wanted to leave you, however, I am afraid that people will read it as a complaint about you. Regardless I want someone to know what I was thinking.

Your entry has restored some faith back in me. I was beginning to wonder why there were no entries regarding Dr. King’s birthday. I must say I am a little put out (not criticizing you) that we still cannot swallow Dr. King’s message unless it is through a white man (Kennedy). Apparently, coming from a white man makes it easier than King’s own speeches. For the most part his speeches were beautiful, truly works of art. Having to honor Dr. King through Robert Kennedy simply shows how far we still have left to go. Unfortunately, we are indeed at a standstill with the current administration, and with that, I am suffering the utmost grief.

Take care, and thank you for having courage.

            ************************************************

Dr. King's speech:

From "Beyond Vietnam," April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City.

As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men [in the ghettos] I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked – and rightly so – what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

... Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.

... Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. ... I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. ... A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

A NATION REMEMBERS

 

Robert F. Kennedy Speech on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death

April 4, 1968, Indianapolis, Indiana

I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.

In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence their evidently is that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization -- black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we've had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.

Let us dedicate to ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

IT'S IN THE WATER, BABY

In this entry, Did Jesus Wear Birkenstocks, I posted an article about the shred of hope the writer (Alexander Zaitchik) has that the Christian Right and the Environmental movement could eventually form a coalition to save the planet.  There is evidently an evangelical faction that is working for "Creation Care" (Christian-speak for environmental action).  If this is so, then what I am going to post today may present the perfect opening for this coming together of seemingly disparate groups.  This is a press release from Natural Resources Defense Council:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press contact: Dr. Jennifer Sass, Erik Olson, or Elliott Negin, 202-289-2405; Dr. Gina Solomon, NRDC San Francisco, 415-875-6100

ACADEMY SUCCUMBS TO PENTAGON-WHITE HOUSE-INDUSTRY PRESSURE, RECOMMENDS PERCHLORATE SAFETY LEVEL THAT FAILS TO PROTECT CHILDREN

NRDC Says Recommendation to Add Iodide to Prenatal Vitamins Is "Too Little, Too Late"
WASHINGTON (January 10, 2005) -- The National Academy of Sciences' (NAS) report released today, which concluded that a higher exposure level to the toxic rocket fuel ingredient perchlorate than recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency is not harmful, could threaten the health of millions of American children, said NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). The NAS report recommended a level that is about 23 times higher than the one proposed by EPA and several states.

According to documents released earlier today by the group, the NAS panel's recommendation was likely shaped by a covert campaign by the White House, Pentagon and defense contractors to twist the science and strong-arm the academy. (For more information on the campaign, click here.)

"This recommendation confirms our fear - that the White House, Pentagon and its contractors were able to unduly influence the academy," saidErik D. Olson, an NRDC senior attorney. "We've never seen such a brazen campaign to pressure the National Academy of Sciences to downplay the hazards of a chemical, but it fits the pattern of this administration manipulating science at the expense of public health."

The panel's recommendation for a level that would protect pregnant women and babies is based on one weak industry study that fed perchlorate at that level to only seven healthy adults for two weeks. "The industry study tells us nothing about effects on babies or long-term perchlorate exposure," said Dr. Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist at NRDC. "It dismissed the rest of the studies, which is beyond comprehension."

The panel also stated (on page 11 of the report) that "while studies are being conducted, the committee emphasizes the importance of ensuring that all pregnant women have adequate iodide intake and, as a first step, recommends that consideration be given to adding iodine to all prenatal vitamins."

"It's like exposing pregnant women to cigarette smoke and telling them to wear gas masks," said Dr. Gina Solomon, a physician and NRDC senior scientist. "To suggest that part of the solution for pregnant women is to take vitamins to protect their babies from perchlorate exposure is bizarre. It's too little, too late. The burden should be on polluters, not pregnant moms, to protect babies from this toxic chemical."

Even with the NAS panel's recommendation, it is still possible that EPA and states could set a drinking water standard for perchlorate at 1 parts per billion to 4 parts per billion, said Dr. Solomon. After considering total perchlorate exposure from all sources - including water, food and milk - and after adjusting for body weight of fetuses and newborns, drinking water standards for perchlorate could still wind up low.

                   ***************************
And, for more information than you may possibly want on the science and facts of the situation, here is a link to NRDC's "Backgrounder."   Here we have a situation where our government,  the current administration, is manipulating science in such a way as to endanger the health of pregnant women, fetuses and newborns.  Okay, this is a group on whose behalf we have heard a great deal of crying out on the part of Christian conservatives in recent times.  Yes, it was about abortion, because it is seen as harming life.  What would we call this?  If this isn't harming life, both of the unborn, the newly born, pregnant women - AND, everyone else -  I don't know what is.  

So, here's my question.  I know there are many journalers who are Christians, and many who are environmentalists, and many who are both.  How can we start bringing these two groups together via important issues like this?  How can Christian conservatives be made to care about the life-and-deathness of these issues.  Thoughts?  Suggestions?  Ideas?  I would join hands with anyone who wanted to try to do something to make current and future voters aware of this administration's environment-vs-bigbusiness policies.  Time to start making people ask:  How much perchlorate would Jesus allow in the water supply?
 

CARRYING THE TORCH

A message from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., one of my current absolute heroes, and a devoted champion of the environment.  To hear this man speak is to be in the presence of raw energy and passion.  He has his father's charisma, but he is using it towards a somewhat different agenda.  I'm trying to find things that can give us all some hope in the present darkness. His words, his optimism, and the fact that he's working legally for Natural Resources Defense Council and other agencies lift my spirits at least a little.  (The highlighting is mine.)

Nature: A Real Moral Value By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., AlterNet
Posted on January 11, 2005, Printed on January 12, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/20937/

As President Bush prepares his plans for a second term, he should remember that the name on the Oval Office door isn't the only thing that will stay the same. Another is America's broad, bipartisan consensus about conservation, health and environmental stewardship. The vast majority still believe in strong laws to keep our air and water clean, our families healthy and our beautiful landscapes preserved.

To protect nature is to follow a moral path, but ultimately we do it not for the sake of trees and animals, but because our environment is the infrastructure of our communities. If we want to provide our children the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment as those our parents gave us, we've got to start by protecting the air, water, wildlife, and natural treasures that connect us to our national character. Therein lie the values that define our community and make us proud to be Americans.

It's worth noting that President Bush largely avoided mentioning his environmental record during the campaign because it made him more vulnerable in the eyes of most voters. All the more reason then to be wary of his administration claiming a false mandate to continue pursuing its hostile environmental agenda.

Consider the words of EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt, who told reporters a few days after Bush's re-election that the administration's agenda has been "validated and empowered" by the voters.

A mandate on the environment? Nothing could be further from the truth.

When people were given the opportunity to vote on a purely environmental issue, as they did this year in ballot initiatives around the country, they almost always voted overwhelmingly in favor of protecting the environment.

By a more than two-to-one ratio, voters in Washington state approved a ballot initiative to prevent more waste from being dumped at the federal Hanford nuclear site, the nation's most contaminated federal facility. The decision will require cleanup of the 586-square-mile site before any additional waste is stored there. That is, if this common-sense measure survives a legal challenge by the Bush Justice Department.

In Montana, a conservative state that went for Bush, voters upheld a ban on using cyanide, a toxic chemical, in open pit mining. In Colorado, another "red" state, voters approved a requirement that utilities must generate 10 percent of their electricity from renewable sources of energy, like solar and wind. And let's not forget the revolt of ranchers, anglers and hunters – particularly out West – who expressed outrage and bitter disappointment over the Bush administration's destructive public lands policies.

While the presidential contest was not a referendum on the environment, this election clearly demonstrated that protecting our health, environment and natural heritage was, is and always will be strongly supported by the American people.

Unfortunately, this message may be muddled back inside the Beltway. Despite the rejection in Congress of some of the Bush administration's worst initiatives, including Arctic Refuge drilling and industry-friendly air pollution and energy plans, the White House still hasn't learned that it's sailing against the public tide.

All indications are that Bush's second term will proceed as the first with respect to energy, the environment and efforts to auction off our natural landscapes at fire-sale prices. And they won't wait for Inauguration Day to continue rewarding corporate polluters with special exemptions, rule changes and loosened laws.

In the face of recent rhetoric about an alleged mandate, it's clear the challenge is greater than ever. But the important thing is that the fundamental politics of the environment did not change with this election. To the contrary, the forces that have worked to protect our communities remain firmly in place.

There is strong bipartisan support for a safer, cleaner approach – particularly in the U.S. Senate and among the nation's governors. And the fight won't just be about holding the line; in fact, we will see increasing efforts to move forward on pressing problems like mercury contamination, water pollution, ocean restoration andperhaps most importantly, global warming.

As the nation moves forward in tackling our environmental challenges – and we must – it's important to remember that all faiths teach us to protect our environment. In that sense, we can consider safeguarding the water we drink, the air we breathe, the wildlife and wild places we cherish, and the natural heritage owed to our children as the most important of the moral values that reportedly weighed heavily in this year's presidential race.

© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/20937/

ARROGANCE IS THE OPPOSITE OF FAITH

Yes, the subject of what's happening in and to Christianity seems to keep surfacing in my thoughts and posting.  I've been involved in such a silly exchange of posts and comments with a journaler who became known to me only through her/his postings on one of my absolute favorite journals, MidlifeMatters.  I've given up on that exchange, going on the philosophy "So many journals, so little time."  I think that's really all that needs to be said on the whole subject.  But, while rolling around the internet, searching progressive religious sites, I came upon this good place:  Progressive Christians Uniting.  And on it I found this column, which had previously been sent to me, with no attribution, by a couple of friends.  This woman writes for a paper in Oklahoma, if you can imagine that, the Oklahoma Gazette, as well as on this Progressive Christians site.  I'm going to go back through her archives and read as many of her columns as I can find.  Without further ado, I give you Dr. Robin Myers:

Arrogance is the Opposite of Faith Released 29 December 2004
By Dr. Robin Meyers

address given by Dr. Meyers at Oklahoma University Peace Rally

November 14, 2004

As some of you know, I am minister of Mayflower Congregational Church in Oklahoma City, an Open and Affirming, Peace and Justice church in northwest Oklahoma City, and professor of Rhetoric at Oklahoma City University.

But you would most likely have encountered me on the pages of the Oklahoma Gazette, where I have been a columnist for six years, and hold the record for the most number of angry letters to the editor.

Tonight, I join ranks of those who are angry, because I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian.

We've heard a lot lately about so-called "moral values" as having swung the election to President Bush. Well, I'm a great believer in moral values, but we need to have a discussion, all over this country, about exactly what constitutes a moral value -- I mean what are we talking about?

Because we don't get to make them up as we go along, especially not if we are people of faith. We have an inherited tradition of what is right and wrong, and moral is as moral does.

Let me give you just a few of the reasons why I take issue with those in power who claim moral values are on their side:

--- When you start a war on false pretenses, and then act as if your deceptions are justified because you are doing God's will, and that your critics are either unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are some of us who have given our lives to teaching and preaching the faith who believe that this is not only not moral, but immoral.

--- When you live in a country that has established international rules for waging a just war, build the Unite d Nations on your own soil to enforce them, and then arrogantly break the very rules you set down for the rest of the world, you are doing something immoral.

--- When you claim that Jesus is the Lord of your life, and yet fail to acknowledge that your policies ignore his essential teaching, or turn them on their head (you know, Sermon on the Mount stuff like that we must never return violence for violence and that those who live by the sword will die by the sword), you are doing something immoral.

--- When you act as if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as important as the lives of American soldiers, and refuse to even count them, you are doing something immoral.

--- When you find a way to avoid combat in Vietnam, and then question the patriotism of someone who volunteered to fight, and came home a hero, you are doing something immoral.

--- When you ignore the fundamental teachings of the gospel, which says that the way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical test, by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us so the strong will get stronger and the weak will get weaker, you are doing something immoral.

--- When you wink at the torture of prisoners, and deprive so-called "enemy combatants" of the rules of the Geneva convention, which your own country helped to establish and insists that other countries follow, you are doing something immoral.

--- When you claim that the world can be divided up into the good guys and the evil doers, slice up your own nation into those who are with you, or with the terrorists -- and then launch a war which enriches your own friends and seizes control of the oil to which we are addicted, instead of helping us to kick the habit, you are doing something immoral.

--- When you fail to veto a single spending bill, but ask us to pay for a war with no exit strategy and no end in sight, creating an enormous deficit that hangs like a great millstone around the necks of our children, you are doing something immoral.

--- When you cause most of the rest of the world to hate a country that was once the most loved country in the world, and act like it doesn't matter what others think of us, only what God thinks of you, you have done something immoral.

--- When you use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out record numbers of evangelical voters, and use the Constitution as a tool of discrimination, you are doing something immoral.

--- When you favor the death penalty, and yet claim to be a follower of Jesus, who said an eye for an eye was the old way, not the way of the kingdom, you are doing something immoral.

--- When you dismantle countless environmental laws designed to protect the earth which is God's gift to us all, so that the corporations that bought you and paid for your favors will make higher profits while our children breathe dirty air and live in a toxic world, you have done something immoral. The earth belongs to the Lord, not Halliburton.

--- When you claim that our God is bigger than their God, and that our killing is righteous, while theirs is evil, we have begun to resemble the enemy we claim to be fighting, and that is immoral. We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.

--- When you tell people that you intend to run and govern as a "compassionate conservative," using the word which is the essence of all religious faith-compassion, and then show no compassion for anyone who disagrees with you, and no patience with those who cry to you for help, you are doing something immoral.

--- When you talk about Jesus constantly, who was a healer of the sick, but do nothing to make sure that anyone who is sick can go to see a doctor, even if she doesn't have a penny in her pocket, you are doing something immoral.

--- When you put judges on the bench who are racist, and will set women back a hundred years, and when you surround yourself with preachers who say gays ought to be killed, you are doing something immoral.

I'm tired of people thinking that because I'm a Christian, I must be a supporter of President Bush, or that because I favor civil rights and gay rights I must not be a person of faith. I'm tired of people saying that I can't support the troops but oppose the war -- I heard that when I was your age, when the Vietnam war was raging. We knew that that war was wrong, and you know that this war is wrong -- the only question is how many people are going to die before these make-believe Christians are removed from power?

This country is bankrupt. The war is morally bankrupt. The claim of this administration to be Christian is bankrupt. And the only people who can turn things around are people like you -- young people who are just beginning to wake up to what is happening to them.It's your country to take back. It's your faith to take back. It's your future to take back.

Don't be afraid to speak out. Don't back down when your friends begin to tell you that the cause is righteous and that the flag should be wrapped around the cross, while the rest of us keep our mouths shut. Real Christians take chances for peace. So do real Jews, and real Muslims, and real Hindus, and real Buddhists -- so do all the faith traditions of the world at their heart believe one thing: life is precious. Every human being is precious. Arrogance is the opposite of faith. Greed is the opposite of charity. And believing that one has never made a mistake is the mark of a deluded man, not a man of faith.

And war -- war is the greatest failure of the human race -- and thus the greatest failure of faith. There's an old rock and roll song, whose lyrics say it all: "War, what is it good for?" And what is the dream of the prophets? That we should study war no more, that we should beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Who would Jesus bomb, indeed? How many wars does it take to know that too many people have died? What if they gave a war and nobody came? May be one day we will find out.

Time to march again my friends. Time to commit acts of civil disobedience. Time to sing, and to pray, and refuse to participate in the madness. My generation finallystopped a tragic war. You can too!

MORITURI TE SALUTANT

Which means "Those who are about to die salute you."  The gladiators' salute to Caesar, originally.  Fortunately, I won't have to face any pronged weapons or fierce animals in the arena tomorrow, just my first classes of the new semester.  And I have some really much too big classes.  There is talk of splitting some of them up, somehow. 

So it's the end of staying up late reading and hot tubbing, sleeping late, watching movies, birding, having the time to cook wonderful meals, generally living in the style to which I long to become accustomed.  But today was a lovely farewell to vacation - late sleeping, watching the yard full of feeder birds (including a hairy woodpecker, which I have not seen before in the yard), going for a long walk, cooking a fabulous dinner, reading, watching some silly TV  (okay -  Desperate Housewives, I admit it.  We're hooked.  We're also hooked on Arrested Development, but it wasn't on tonight), putting the old bones in the hot tub as the clouds that hung about all day began to break up and the stars appeared in the oak branches above us.  And now I'll be going to bed entirely too late.  Soon I'll get into the swing of a weekly routine, these are just a last few minutes of denial. 

Our winter jasmine is in full bloom and the daffodils by the kitchen steps have come a full five or six inches out of the ground.  It's been so mild lately, I wonder what the new few weeks will bring.  Even the japanese quince is budding.  Will we all have a nasty surprise before too long?  I'm going to take my cue from Vixen, however, and try not to worry about it.  Peace, from everyone under this roof.
 

DID JESUS WEAR BIRKENSTOCKS?

See that little tag line up there under the name of my journal?  The quote from Douglas Adams?  What it means is I fell off the horse I was riding all during the months leading up to the election, and now I'm just not sure what horse I'm riding, or how to get back on it when I find it.  Yes, the environment remains my main concern.  However, the religious tenor of this country has become another of my great concerns.  I'm currently fascinated by a "discussion" going on between two journals about what it means to be a Christian.  I intend to post more on this exchange later, when I am less confused and busy (in the year 2025, maybe?).  It is my belief that concern for the environment and concern for God's creation (as I should think Christians, as well as other monotheists, would see it) would quite naturally (pardon the pun) go hand in hand.  But they haven't seemed to, at least there has not been a cross-concern for these issues evident in the Christian element that is most vocal today.  The one to which our President professes allegiance.  What is variously called:  the religious right, the Christian right, the Christians fundamentalists, evangelicals, etc.  

Today, to my amazement, I came upon an article that addresses these two issues.  Entitled "Did Jesus Wear Birkenstocks?" it gives a a tiny glimmer of hope for a joining of forces between the pro-life Christian evangelical right and the "secular and left-leaning environmentalist groups."  A Herculean task, to be sure. I'm posting the essay here, but it might be easier to read via the link. 

DID JESUS WEAR BIRKENSTOCKS?
By: Alexander Zaitchik, New York Press

Its always a learning experience with the Christian Right. Visit the websites of the movement's leading organizations and you'll find out about problems you didn't know you had, threats you didn't know the country faced.

On the Eagle Forum homepage, for instance, you can read about the urgent need for a renewed U.S. military presence at the Panama Canal. The Family Resource Council site alerts visitors to the evil new line of Planned Parenthood Christmas cards. Or download the Christian Coalition for the latest on Congressman Todd Akin's efforts to stop lower federal courtjudges from holding hearings on the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. If you happen to be curious about how to protect the sanctity of marriage between man and woman, these sites offer a one-click shortcut to informational-pamphlet heaven.

But try to find any mention of the melting ice caps or the planet's quickening extinction rate, and ye shall seek in vain. In the world of the Christian Right, concern for the environment is still an atheistic socialist plot to bankrupt godly American industry; it has no place in the fight for the health and soul of the nation. Given that the Christian Right is foundational to the current Republican coalition, this isn't surprising. The party of George W. Bush is now preparing a devastating blitzkrieg against what remains of the regulatory controls clamped on industry in the last century. Today's GOP likes to toss around the name Teddy Roosevelt, but it has no use for the party philosophy expressed by T.R. when he declared, "[S]hort of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendents than it is for us"

With everyone focused on a few spots on the Supreme Court, over a third of the Environmental Protection Agency's staff will become eligible for retirement during the next four years. Future Bush appointees will dismantle the agency from the inside while a Republican Congress hacks away from the outside, teamwork that could very well result in the disappearance of the EPA as we know it by 2008. If this happens, there will simply be nothing left to save; the rebuilding will have to begin from scratch.

The party will pursue this scorched-earth policy as if there were a mandate behind it. As former EPA head Mike Leavitt recently told the UK's Independent, "The election was a validation of the philosophy and the agenda." Bush and Cheney were smart enough not to discuss this agenda in their campaign speeches, but it's known to include fiercer attacks on such landmark legislation as the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act, the prying open of protected lands to mining and drilling – in the new Senate, the ANWR fight is all but lost – and the weakening or elimination of mandatory emission controls on a range of pollutants. On climate change, the administration will ignore even the tepid action recently recommended by the bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy. In short, the agenda is radical and sweeping, with the last four years offering an aftertaste of what's in store. Giventhe impact this will have on millions of American families and upon creation itself, you might expect at least a few words of concern from influential pro-family Christian Right groups like Eagle Forum.

And you'd be right. The Eagle Forum correspondent at this month's UN Climate Change Conference in Buenos Aires, Cathie Adams, did indeed post a report expressing concern about climate change. Her worry? That delegates will again "conjure up a man-caused global warming theory" to force "developed countries [to] fill the coffers of corrupt Third World governments."

The Christian Coalition also has an environmental platform. In fact, one of the group's nine official areas of concern is protecting young people from pollution – "the pollution of pornography," that is.

Wondering where the environment might fit into the Christian Right's constellation of moral obsessions, I called the Christian Coalition's Florida headquarters. Since the state has taken a biblical battering of extreme storms and droughts over the last few years, and since worse is predicted as ocean temperatures continue to rise, I thought the Christian Coalition Florida office might be ahead of the curve on the issue, at least compared to the mothership in Washington.

I asked Bill Stephens, executive director for the Sunshine State, what he thought about the fact that some Christians feel a religious duty to protect the environment. He didn't seem to understand the question, so I rephrased it. Could he imagine one day including the environment among the Christian Coalition's current stable of issues?

After a long pause, Stephens emitted a verbal shrug. "To be honest, I've never really thought about it," he said.

Then he told me to call Washington, and hung up the phone.

But Stephens doesnt speak for all conservative Christians. His lack of awareness is actually rarer than you might think.

This October, the board of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), representing 51 denominations encompassing 30 million American evangelical Christians, unanimously approved a document entitled "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility." The declaration calls for public engagement in a range of issues, prominent among them "Creation Care" – Christian-speak for environmental activism.

The document states: "We affirm that God-given dominion is a sacred responsibility to steward the earth and not a license to abuse the creation of which we are a part. We are not owners of creation, but its stewards, summoned by God to 'watch over and care for it' (Gen. 2:15)."

Richard Cizik, the NAE's vice president for government affairs, says the purpose of the document is to "educate evangelicals that our public policy concerns go beyond a few high profile social issues like abortion."

Cizik is a self-described conservative evangelical, both pro-life and in favor of a federal marriage amendment. In this he reflects the broad membership of the NAE, the largest evangelical umbrella group in the country. Representing 60 percent of the nation's estimated 50 million evangelical Christians, Cizik thinks the NAE is in a position to send a shot across the bow of a Republican establishment that assumes evangelical support for its entire platform – so long as it includes homilies to faith, heterosexuality and family.

"Care for the created order is indeed one hallmark of evangelicalism," he says. "If we outline a policy that says that climate change is real, and that it poses a sincere threat to the earth, then you can no longer say, 'This is just hokum,' if you're an evangelical and you want to be with the leadership."

Among the leaders who have signed onto the NAE document are representatives of the most conservative strains in American Christianity. These include Vincent Synan, dean of the Divinity School of Regent University – where Pat Robertson is Chancellor – and Ted Haggard, the fundamentalist pastor and president of the NAE. Both men and the denominations they represent believe in the literal word of the Bible. So do many of the millions of readers of Christianity Today magazine, which has begun to feature regular reports on the environment.

It remains to be seen what impact developments such the NAE initiative will have on politically powerful Christian Right groups, but there are signs pointing toward stronger grassroots evangelical support for protecting the environment than is generally assumed. A poll conducted this year by the Ray C. Bliss Institute at the University of Akron found that more than half of self-identified evangelicals agreed with the statement, "Strict rules to protect the environment are necessary even if they cost jobs or result in higher prices." Only one-third disagreed outright.

When it comes to the regulation of industry, a majority of evangelical Christians appears to side with Ted Kennedy over George W. Bush.

The man working hardest to expand this majority is Rev. Jim Ball. The executive director of the Evangelical Environmental Network and organizer of the "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign, Ball has been working to raise environmental consciousness in the evangelical community since the early 1990s. In 1994, he issued an "Evangelical Declaration on the Care of Creation." A precursor to this year's NAE document, it describes environmental activism as a Christian duty and has since been endorsed by nearly 500 evangelical leaders and counting.

This past July, Rev. Ball gathered evangelical pastors to a weekend conference at Chesapeake Bay, VA. Among the speakers was Sir John Houghton, a leading climatologist on the United Nations Panel on Climate Change and vocal proponent of action to reduce carbon emissions. Houghton is also an outspoken British evangelical Christian. The conference concluded with attendees committing to the goal of forging an official evangelical consensus on climate change within the next year. Among the signatories is Barrett Duke of the ultraconservative Southern Baptist Convention – the second-largest evangelical group in the country, with 16 million members.

"In dismissing environmental activism, many Christians are just going along with what their allies are telling them," says Ball. "They haven't really taken a serious look at issues like climate change. But when they hear people like Sir Houghton, who can talk to them as a brother and a scientist, they think, 'We'll if a brother is saying it, there's gotta be something to this.'"

As for the common perception that fundamentalist Christians aren't concerned with the Here-and-Now and never will be because of a theological belief in imminent Rapture, Ball claims this is not an insurmountable problem. Despite a general distrust of science found in this population – including a firm disbelief in the theories of Charles Darwin – he is confident that the gospel can be greened even among hardcore fundamentalist Christians.

"With most of these folks, it takes me about two minutes to punch a huge hole in [the Rapture] argument," says Ball. "I explain that the Biblical understanding of afterlife is not a disembodied existence. Revelations literally says the city comes down, not that we go up. I also say, 'Well, you takecareof your body, don't you?' It doesn't take that much to win people over. If it's just some eschatological or future-oriented thinking [prejudicing them], that's handled pretty quickly."

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to converting evangelicals to the environmental cause is cultural. Convincing pro-life evangelicals to join forces with secular and left-leaning environmentalist groups will require overcoming a deep-rooted prejudice that associates environmentalism with paganism, pantheism and the Counterculture and New Left revolts of the 1960s – all Godzilla-sized bogeymen in the evangelical worldview. (It's worth noting here that the distrust is mutual.)

"It's true some evangelicals are leery," admits Ball. "We have to work through the idea that the environment is just a liberal issue. But there's not as much resistance there as one might think. If done right, minds can be changed and people can be brought on board." Richard Cizik of the NAE adds that even this prejudice is not as pronounced as it once was. "There is a younger generation coming up," he says. "There is a transitional leadership, and the stereotype is simply not true."

One way to bridge the gulf is to relate environmental issues to primary evangelical concerns. Ball's latest project is a campaign drawing attention to the effects of mercury emissions, regulations on which have been eliminated under Bush.

"The evangelical community is very concerned about the unborn, [but] is just starting to understand the impact that mercury has on the unborn child," says Ball. "If we can help them understand that this is a dangerous neurotoxin, and most dangerous to the unborn, then I think we'll see a real significant movement on that issue. Any kind of pollution that hurts the unborn, children, families and the poor – this is contrary to loving your neighbor, which is at the center of ethical teaching."

If a slowly expanding majority of evangelical Christians in this country supports the regulation of industry to protect the environment, and if there is no clear Biblical injunction against doing so, why are the most vehement anti-environmentalists in American politics consistently found among the Christian Right?

What Jim Ball calls the "brownwashing" of the Bible is largely the work of the same secular powers that seek expanded Pentagon budgets, private retirement accounts and sweeping tax cuts. Corporate agendas dipped in Scripture are still corporate agendas. While to some extent fundamentalist theology is useful in packaging such views, the easy embrace of the environment among the evangelical rank and file indicates that industry is the dominant player in shaping the Christian Right worldview on the question – not religion.

Former Reagan interior secretary James Watt is generally held up as a prime example of religious fanaticism leading to hostility toward the environment. Famous for proclaiming, "After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back," Watt is considered the godfather of today's anti-regulation fundamentalists. But Watt, from the mining state of Wyoming, had deep ties to extraction industries before he found Jesus in the rings of old-growth tree-stumps. Then as now, it is profit – not Psalms – that best explains the anti-environment ethos of the Christian Right. Watt may have genuinely believed in the Second Coming, but his views on environmental protection were most deeply rooted in his past leadership of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce natural resources section, as well as the Mountain States Legal Foundation, the mining and timber industry association he founded in 1976.

Today's Christian Right leaders enjoy similarly strong ties to industry. In the online environmental magazine Grist, Glenn Scherer reports that James Inhofe, the clownish anti-regulation evangelical who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has received almost $600,000 from the fossil-fuel industry and utility firms in the last five years. That Inhofe has stronger views about the evils of regulating industry than the average evangelical should come as no surprise. Scherer also notes that among members of Congress in 2003 who received the highest approval ratings from Christian Right advocacy groups, most received flunking grades from the League of Conservation Voters. But the conclusion Scherer draws from this is that conservative Christianity is the driving force, with industry influence playing a secondary and complementary role.

A better explanation for this synchronicity between God and chainsaw is found in Michael Lind's pithy description of the current Republican Party coalition: "A Frankenstein operation [has] stitched the bodiless head of Northeastern neoconservativism onto the headless body of Southern fundamentalism." Though incomplete, the image explains the rough flow of ideas in today's Republican Party. Southern evangelicals set the social agenda at the grassroots level, while secular forces in the north (and west) set the economic and foreign policy agendas. These policies are then fed back to the religious base through industry-subsidized Christian Right leaders in Congress and the media, who reinforce the idea that pollution controls are part of the same godless liberal plot that wants gay porn and home-abortion kits distributed in public high-schools.

That this carefully maintained association could be threatened by an environmental awakening among "the base" makes some in the Republican Party's opinion-making apparatus nervous. In response to the work of people like Jim Ball, the market-oriented Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship was formed to express concern about "a growing chorus of voices [that] has been attempting to redefine traditional Judeo-Christian teachings on stewardship, and ultimately, our duties as responsible human beings." The group warns against "passionbased on a romantic view of nature, a misguided distrust of science and technology, and an intense focus on problems that are highly speculative" At times, the language is indistinguishable from that used by industry groups like the Global Climate Coalition.

Other idea mills working to keep a biblical sheen on anti-green politics are the National Center for Public Policy Research and the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, both of which publish papers warning against the lure of "creation care." In one such article, Samuel Casey Carter decries the "swarm of seemingly mainstream Protestant organizations conjur[ing] support for their activist programs through specious readings of disconnected biblical texts." The truth is, writes Carter, "the whole of nature has been delivered over to man for him to use as he sees fit. Man is not simply the head of the natural order, rather, that order was made for him."

Or for the National Association of Manufacturers, as the case may be.

In beginning its belated recognition of the moral, religious and public health dimensions of protecting the environment, the evangelical community is following in the footsteps of the other branches of Christianity. The World Council of Churches, mostly mainstream Protestant, has long asserted its belief in "a moral responsibility to respect the rights of future generations; and to conserve and work for the integrity of creation." The Orthodox Churches have gone further, creating a day in the Ecclesiastical Calendar (Sept.1) asa sort of Christian Earth Day. The annual holiday has given rise to hundreds of local initiatives, from soil-reclamation projects in Russia to preservation programs in the Greek islands. The Roman Catholic Church has established Commissions on Justice, Peace and the Safeguarding of Creation in dioceses around the world, while America's Roman Catholic bishops have declared fighting climate change a "moral duty" and called for immediate action.

Even if the Republican Party's religious base does begin to make noise over issues like mercury emissions and climate change, this anger is unlikely to overshadow their satisfaction with the party's positions on the cultural issues closer to the average evangelical's heart. "I can see environmental issues in the top five [evangelical concerns]," says Rev. Ball. "But it will never be as paramount as, say, abortion, because evangelical Christianity has a very strong focus on the individual."

Still, a split on the issue within the party's base could slow or complicate current GOP efforts to roll environmental law back to the 19th century. It may be a slim hope, but it could be a while before another one comes along, and these days you take what you can get. Who knows? If enough evangelicals start praying for it, George W. Bush just might fall off his horse on the way to Tehran and emerge as the greatest environmental president in the history of the United States. Just don't go looking for green prayer scripts on the website of the Presidential Prayer Team. Not yet anyway.