Trigger Warning!
This world is a fucked-up, traumatizing, and hateful place. I live in this world, and so my words, experiences, and thoughts are birthed from within it. Further, it should come to no surprise that this blog will detail many of these fucked-up things in graphic detail. Fortunately, resilience is what I do, and I try my hardest to ferment inspiration from the darkest parts of my life. It's time to confront, it's time to resist, and of course... it's time to win.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

I was going to post a few quotes from this amazing interview, but I realized I would be block quoting the whole article. This is a good interview for any activist, feminist, radical, or environmentalist. So check it out

Friday, May 29, 2009

wetland / whatland

I met a lonely beaver the other day.
She was swimming in a small stream.
Maybe it could even be considered a creek.
But there was a fence that locked her in on all sides.
Some signs read mitigated wetland.
I don't know what that means, and I don't think she does either.
Maybe she is better locked in that patch of few trees and some shrubbery.
Because she would be even more saddened to see what has happened to the rest of her home.
Before progress moved in, it was a beautiful forest, but now it's ugly parking lots.
There is a Wal-Mart on one end and a K-Mart on the other, competing.
All the while, she's trapped in the middle.
But I guess competition is a part of nature.
I guess it's all natural.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Stool Pigeon: someone acting as an informer or decoy for the police...

Martha, the earth's last known Passenger Pigeon, died on September 1, 1914, during the beginning of the Great World War. I don't think she was willing to see another war. She had just finished her own war. One in which she had lost badly. The war on the natural world and her was one that was centuries old. It was a dirty war.

A single flock of Passenger Pigeons migrating could stretch one mile wide by three miles long and could contain two billion birds. They called the extensive forests of North America their home. They would establish colonies covering hundreds of miles in these forests. With hundreds of nests in a single tree, they communally took care of each others young.

Then came the white plague. In hopes of supplying themselves with an abundant source of agriculture fertilizer, and cheap meat for their slaves, servants, and the urban poor, whites begun the commercial hunting of Passenger Pigeons in the early 1800's. Boxcars filled to the brim on steel rail lines, became the pigeons new migratory passages. At the same time, hunters not only killed Passenger Pigeons in increasingly larger numbers, but settlers also deforested the dense forest canopies that they refused to live without. Unlike their closest surviving cousins, the Mourning Dove, they refused to domesticate to the ever expanding cities and farms. Refusing the way of their Mourning cousins they took their communal forest life head on with civilization, and ultimately like everything else to challenge civilization before, they were slaughtered.

Hunters would spend five months at a time, killing 50,000 birds a day, from a single nesting. They would get the birds drunk on alcohol soaked grains, while setting fires to the trees the pigeons called home. One technique stands out above the rest. An imprisoned pigeon would be fastened alive to a circular stool attached to the end of a long pole. Her eyes were then sewn shut with the finest silk thread to keep her disoriented. Blinded and Bound, at the end of the pole, she would be raised and lowered. Her frantic movement would attract other pigeons flying above, and they would make an inquiring decent, not knowing it would be their last. Hunters would then shoot and net the entrapped birds. The ones caught up in the net faced their death when a hunter would crush their heads between his forefinger and thumb. This was afterglow, just business.

After the last Passenger Pigeon died, from the culmination of acts perpetrated by whites, none of which where short of ecocide. Humans continue to triumph over “evil” in two bloody World Wars, all while further dominating the land in service to their own holy and righteous production. This of course, is not a story about one lonely bird named Martha. This is the story of great men. This is the accounts of our grandfathers, great grandfathers, and their fathers before. This is his story.

But there is another story being told. It's told in whispers. It's told from dance. It's a story a mother sings while nursing her young child. It's told by weeds, fighting to take back the grain fields that were once grand forests. It's a story of a people who learned to live communally from their old friends, the Passenger Pigeons. It's a story told from people who refuse to live apart from forests. They too, will eventually die from this ecocide called civilization. All that will be left, will be some distant cousins. Us, the mourning human. And we will walk, surrounded by towering concrete, pecking at food scraps, ever mourning. As generations pass, memories will weaken, but we will always mourn that something from out past. We just might not be able to name it.



a side note. Martha, the pigeon was named after Martha Washington. Yes, the same Martha Washington that was married to good ol' George Washington... talk about offensive

The national park formerly known as...

Glacier National Park is a magnificent area in Montana. Bordering the continuing natural landscape in Canada, this area played host to the Salish, Flathead, Shoshone, Cheyenne, and Blackfeet Tribes. The imperialist explorers, gentlier known as Lewis and Clark, traveled within miles of the modern boundaries and recorded accounts of the area, detailing it's natural bounty. The glaciers that the park was named after, numbered over 150 in the mid 1800's. In 2005, scientists put the number of remaining glaciers to 27 and melting. To make this travesty furthermore a tragedy, most scientists agree the 27 remaining glaciers will be completely disappeared from the park by 2030.

The only question remaining is; will they continue to call this area that is so sincerely affected by climate change, Glacier National Park even though the glaciers will be long gone?

This is the curse of a culture who turns ancient glaciers into sediment pools, in just a few generations. A culture that turns millions of dinosaurs into obscure statistical profits, for just a few wealthy and privileged. A culture who is cursed by its fundamental foundations. Foundations that seem to be ever receding. Foundations that are melting to the heated rhythm of hellish five o'clock traffic jams and lightning-fast-food value menus. Foundations valuing menus over glaciers.

"boy, it's hot out today! can I get that super sized with fries and a coke. extra ice please."



for more information read Collapse by Jared Diamond or Wiki: Glacier National Parks

so after a year of searching, reading, and writing, I believe it will be worthwhile to make a more asserted effort on this blog.

please feel free to comment on anything written within these entries of dissent, reflection, and personal development.

without comments, I won't have much to base off which directions I need to explore.