Universal Sacredness of Life – Support the UDAR

Poster by Andy Beattie

Support the UDAR.  However you can. By voting. By considering.  By editing.  By signing the declaration.  By joining a local animal rights organization.  And a few international ones.  And maybe, if you’re lucky, it can be both for you.   But support it we must, in order to not die ourselves.

 

When even one species leaves the planet, the planet is changed, and so are we.  The Martha I am is, perhaps imperceptibly, changed by even one extinction. And so, because imperceptible with one, we think it will be so with two.  And three.  And three hundred.

 

At which extinction will the change be perceptible to the densest among us?  It already and certainly is among the most perceptive. I do not count myself among them.  I am aware only of the conceptual likelihood that this is so.

 

At which extinction do we acknowledge that we do not value the sacredness of life.  Where life will be a commodity to trade in for us all?  When my flesh is only so much protein on the market?

 

Now – you see, I don’t believe that that day will come. I believe that right now, we are waking up to the sacredness of life.  And that all life, if one’s own is to be truly and presently lived, is regarded with awe.  And respect.  And love.

 

Support the universal dignity of life; live in the awe of life; support the UDAR.

 

Namaste.

 

(For access to wonderful information about animal rights, thank you, Andy Beattie.)

Poster by Andy Beattie

Upper Cumberland River Cleanup Part Deux – Bring Deux

Just a short thingy letting you know, in case you don’t, that another Upper Cumberland River Cleanup is coming next Saturday, September 25, organized by master instigator Croley Forester.

Part Deux.  Bring Deux.  What if every person who participated in the last cleanup showed up with a friend this time.  That means that, instead of 80ish people cleaning up the river on September 25, we would have more than 160 people, hauling out plastic, tires, scrap metal, refrigerators, cars, stoves, tires (tires deserve a second mention), plastic, plastic (plastic deserves three) and more plastic (or four).  The plastic may not be the most dramatic pound-wise, but it’s certainly the piece de resistance in river or beach cleanups, because it is responsible for more marine animal deaths than any other single substance.

So, come.  Come walk in the headwaters just as the leaves begin to fall and swirl in little tornadoes as cars wind their way on the Harlan highways (image courtesy of Lisa Blanton Tolliver and Dinah Day FB conversation), set in the oldest terrain in the USA.  Bring your shovel (I still have my big one in the trunk if you show up empty-handed, but a small one is probably more practical), wading boots, and your big old heart.

Harlan Center; Harlan, Kentucky;  Saturday, September 25, 2010; 8:00a.m  For more information, go to Facebook, key “Harlan County River Cleanup Part II.”  And let him know that you’re coming.  With a friend.

And just in case you don’t realize what a problem plastic is, watch this video, and come play in the water with us.

Waving hundred dollar bills for revestment

Harlan from Ivy Hill web cam

No one ever knew there was coal in them mountains

Till the man from the Northeast arrived,

Waving hundred dollar bills,

Said I’ll pay you for your minerals . . .

— You’ll never leave Harlan alive, Darrell Scott

The mountains haven’t belonged to the mountain people for a long time.  Not since the coal and logging interests first waved those hundred dollar bills.  Since then, those interests just been tradin’ it back and forth.

So what of the mountains not belonging to the people?  I doubt that that offends many folk.  But it offends me.  I guess the part that bothers me the most is when people see the land, and especially the mountains, as a commodity to be bought and sold for a profit; as a repository of minerals or timber to be extracted at any “reasonable” cost; as the perfect spot for a shopping center or a new subdivision; or as a new retirement development.  Anything other than a land to be revered and preserved or even a homestead to be passed on from generation to generation.  But it also offends me that those same companies imported labor that the land could not sustain unless coal was king.

Lord knows, the mountain land, apart from the few highland meadows, isn’t worth for much as most people think of land.  Farming?  Not really.  Most of that would be in the bottom land.  And thankfully the non-mining interests have retained some of that.  Well, except for the land where we now have the shopping centers that killed the towns.

But now, a hundred or so years after the first greenbacks were waved, is it possible for the mining and logging interests to revest the property in the people?  If it were, how would it be done?  Maybe it’s like unscrambling an egg and just can’t be done.  Or would be just darn hard.  But just because it’s not easy doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be done.

Is it just me, or doesn’t it seem to reek of bad karma for people to have generated their own wealth on the backs of thousands of miners, and this after “taking” their land.  Or enticing people into a region which could not support that many people but for coal, and then abandoning them to that place that left them with no alternative livelihood when coal went bust.  Or, and I’m afraid that I’ll be pissing off a lot of my friends and family, then there are the lawyers who made money representing miners’ black lung cases, or the doctors who worked for the mining companies or even the hospitals.  Or the landlords who rented shacks to people who couldn’t afford to leave the mountains to make a better living when coal went down.  But meanwhile, no one was stopping the mining.  I mean, doesn’t it just seem ridiculously wrong?  So, I’m just thinking that maybe they are ready to buy back some good karma through revestment and for working to reestablish a sustainable population base.

Some ideas:

• Donation to a land trust of the land and/or mineral interests by the mining, logging, landlording companies/families.
• Endowing with those funds a foundation, which would also be the repository for the purchase prices when the people buy the land.  The Foundation would support a return to traditional mountain ways:  for mountain arts and crafts through small business loans; for sustainable energy sources for the county, including grants for personal solar and wind generation; for loans for small (size-capped) farmsteads (that is, no factory farms or chicken houses).
• County-wide covenants on land use, i.e., no uncontrolled subdivisions or highways peppered with shopping centers.  Now that’s an oxymoron — shopping “centers” that spread out for miles and killed the original shopping center, the downtown.  Hmmm.
• Cap on county population based on studies demonstrating sustainable population.

Well, I’ll stop there for now because, frankly, I don’t have any more revestment ideas this evening.  And I truly apologize to those families, including my own, who mined coal or benefited from coal in the past and whom I have offended.  I am just hoping that we can put coal away as an artifact from a bygone era that has outlived its usefulness.  Like a toy covered by lead-based paint, we’d find a new paint, wouldn’t we?  Or would we say that the lead-based paint maker provided jobs, that the harm was being exaggerated, and that our children should just stop chewing on the toys?

The companies paid little for the land when they first acquired it.  They’ve more than made their money back.  It’s time for revestment.

I’d like you to meet me

Holy crap.

I wonder how many blogs started with that interjection.  Probably a cazillion.  Which just goes to prove that I actually AM normal.   Although you may come to doubt that if you read on.

So.  This is my first blog, and my advice to you is to start lowering your expectations right off the bat.  I hope to make this a half-decent experience for us both, but that probably just means decent for me, crappy for you.  I’ll try to do better.

Just so you know what I will likely be rambling on about, here are some things I am interested in:

• Restoration of the mountains (that would be the Southern Appalachian mountains) to the people, critters and plants who lived there before logging and mining
• Mountain flora and fauna
• Celebration and investigation of things mountain – local farming, gardening, bee-keeping, chicken-raising etc; farming in narrow hollers with mule-drawn plows; basket weaving; music; historical dialects; early mountain history, including reclaiming the history of the early settler-Cherokee connection
• Clean water in the mountains again (for the first time in 80+ years?)
• Hiking the mountains
• Meeting all my cousins out of Jesse Brock
• Recording the oral histories of the natives (that would be we original mountain folk)
• Nutrition and the pitfalls of an average American diet (and why your mountain ancestors lived to be old, even though they ate butter and fatback)
• Dignity for farm animals and exposing the cruel and environmentally harmful practices of factory farming
• Life off the grid
• More clotheslines

I must confess that I am limited in the fun department.  I do tend to be serious and significant.  But maybe you can find fun in laughing at me.  It’s totally allowed.  Just be aware that it’s not a very exclusive club you’ll be joining.

So, my friends and guinea pigs, I am calling it a day because my heart is up in my throat, and I am finding it difficult to put two words together that seem to fit.  This writing stuff is a bit daunting to me.

I’ll just say, Happy New Year (Normal!  Told you!) and may all your dreams come true.