Chicken Littles Unite!

... and no, I am not referring to those delectable but sinful frozen breaded treats one buys at Food Lion... The sky is falling, everybody!

I admit it... I am grappling with how to take the news. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are indeed collapsing, and the second-biggest bank run (IndyMac) in American history happened last week. Global warming has never been so plainly obvious. Also, polls show that Americans are willing to shell out whatever it takes at the pump to drive their carbon monsters to and from work every day. Now I admire that all-American, go-get-em-tiger spirit, but what happens when the well runs dry? We can't all afford to double our expenses and keep on smiling that good ol' Roy Rogers smile!

Widespread panic isn't that bad, really. Just look on the bright side - if there's widespread panic, you might try to go to work in the morning, and you can't get through the picket lines! Hey, you get a day off, right? And what if widespread panic causes everyone to sell off all of those far-flung suburban McMansions? You'd never get a cheaper house in the country! How about the closing of all those ritzy bars when people stop spending their money on luxury goods? Does an evening at a friend's house eating a home-cooked meal, drinking Miller High Life 40's really sound that bad?

So come on, all you Chicken Littles out there! I know people hate to hear the bad news, but truly, the sky might be indeed coming down a bit. So let's all do the right thing... Time to PANIC! We owe it to ourselves! Yaaargh!!! ;)

-Lorien MacAuley

Weeds

It's been said that the internet gives a false impression of community. Here, you can find friends no matter how outlandish your thinking. Yet a common complaint of these "communities" and their members is a sense of isolation on the physical plane where they make their daily lives. There they feel like outsiders in a strange land. Inside the internet, they can finally find a compassionate ear. I suppose many things have been written on this phenomenon, but I just wanted to add another to the list. What if this was as it's intended? Not brought about by some uber-elites to keep us divided, but brought on by ourselves, as individuals of our own free will? What if, either consciously or subconsciously, we knew that our thoughts and viewpoints would go to waste if we all just assimilated into one big happy family? Then we'd just be constantly be patting each other's backs, and nothing would ever change. Far from intellectual growth in the world, we'd have intellectual stagnation. This is the wisdom of the weed, who alone spreads its seed far and wide. There they wait for just the right time, just the right place, for a new home to flourish and grow in.

Have faith in yourselves. You are what you are meant to be.

-Scott

Ye Ole Video Game

Oil’s not going to last forever. We all know that. But woe to the hapless video game addict who is left in his or her dark coven, looking expectantly at his or her plastic-encased boxes of wires that once provided so much joy, but alas, without boundless electricity have gone as dead and cold as a drowned polar bear. Video games and television take up huge chunks of Americans’ time, but these pastimes should be sent down the tube, electricity or no electricity.

We know one enterprising lad named Enrique who has found a way to cope with his post-societal-collapse boredom. Setting down his game controller and venturing outdoors one day, Enrique noticed that a small planter on his back porch was filled with (possibly West Nile Virus carrying?) mosquito larvae. Taking repose in a handy chair he discovered out there and finding a stick in the debris that had accumulated, Enrique hit his invisible ‘play’ button and began.

Five points for the big larvae, two for the small ones, Enrique began slapping the water with his handy stick. He figured that the larvae had to get to the surface in order to develop and breed, and his challenge was to (literally) single-handedly keep that from happening. The fun didn’t stop there. Two days later Enrique was the proud owner of two larvae-eating fish, several lilly pads, and a decorative water-oxygenating fountain. What’s more fun than fish in a barrel? Fish AND larvae PLUS expensive accessories in a barrel. So Enrique discovered.

Ye Ole Video Game kept Enrique enraptured for hours. Researchers at the University of Rochester have found that video games really are addictive. Just like crack cocaine, they actually fulfill deep psychological needs – achievement, autonomy, and a connection to other players. Television also provides similar feelings of connectedness, as well as a hell of a lot of distraction.

Apparently the average age kid in the US starts playing video games is age six and that kid spends 2 to 2.5 hours per week playing them through age 17 or so. Kids spend a whopping four hours of television per day.

I support people having their deep psychological needs met. Feelings of connectedness, achievement, and autonomy are beautiful things. But we should be meeting these needs the natural way – by actually getting outside and moving around (which produces just as many of those happy hormones as Mario Kart), interacting with plants and animals, and cohabitating with each other throughout the day as evolution intended. Instead, Americans are spending time shut indoors and trying to fulfill our intrinsic needs through “interacting” with pixels on a screen. Playing games outdoors and having other genuine experiences like growing a garden or playing music under a canopy of leaves are the sweet stuff that life is made of, and doesn’t even burn fossil fuels.

People like Enrique are the everyday heroes taking that indoor frown and turning it outdoor-down. He is modeling one way to entertain oneself while building up steam do bigger and better things to build a sustainable, people-centered community. Keep at it, Enrique, one larva at a time!

- Lacy MacAuley

Declaring Independence from Oil on July Fourth

What did you do on Independence Day? In between bouts of dancing at festivals and shows, I celebrated our nation’s birthday by participating in a special “Declare Independence from Oil” critical mass bicycle ride.

As myself and the fifty other riders in colorful costumes wove our ways through the city, we sang songs of true independence from oil. We cycled past throngs of parade-goers bedecked in their aggressively patriotic primary colors, and exiting this nexus, we went on through inner-city neighborhoods where homemade street firework displays were the norm. Our two-wheeled group broke along through the socioeconomic levels of the city, shifting gears to climb the hills toward the higher and hard-life side of town, bringing our music with us. And the whole time we were mostly met with smiles, claps, and cheers. Yesterday, it seemed that our nation is ripe for an end to dependence on oil.

Oil is fighting a losing battle against conservation and alternative energy, for one crucial reason: It’s a limited resource. Some experts like Andrew Simms say we’re burning through it about a million times faster than Mother Nature put it in the earth. Most scientists agree that the party’s over: We’re at the end of our supply of easy access to the stuff. We’ve been leaning on the pedal, accelerating hard toward a cliff known as peak oil, beyond which we’re going to be weaning ourselves off the stuff hard and fast. And the whole time we’ve been emitting greenhouse gases worse than Rush Limbaugh off his meds after a Fourth of July chili-eating contest.

Life after the oil crash (www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net) will be smoother, easier, and sweeter. And it will just make more sense. Kids will get more fresh air. Communities will be safer. We will get our hands dirty by growing things and being around real animals. And each of us will find the artist within ourselves. Wondering how all of this will happen? Wait, read, plan, and see.

Yesterday I rode my bicycle through the city to remember these things and remind others, and fifty other free spirits rode with me, people who believe that a better world is not only possible, but is just around the corner – after we declare independence from oil. It was a wonderful day.

At least I had a better Independence Day than oil-man President Bush, who was enthusiastically heckled as he gave a speech. In this lame-duck year, the party’s over for him, too.

- Lacy MacAuley

West Nile Virus Hype and this "when will it be over" Tomato Scare

Recently, a team of "experts" from the health department stormed through our tranquil little community garden, giving me a citation, along with about half the other gardeners. What was our crime? Watering cans! They cautioned us, of course, about the dreaded, feared, massively awful, seriously harmful scourge-of-death known as West Nile Virus - it surprised me that they were going after community gardeners, who tend a small 15x15 plot and keep track of things like their watering cans, which are, needless to say, routinely dumped out onto the plants. I thought I should perhaps become more informed on this serious matter called West Nile Virus.

So I got on the Web and took a look at the facts. As it turns out, of the less than 4,000 Americans a year who are infected, less than 1% develop serious symptoms from West Nile. If the patient is already battling other diseases/illnesses, or is extremely elderly, those in the 1% are at risk of death. However, only 20% of those infected even show any symptoms, and if you're healthy already, you can be pretty sure you're fine.

In researching this, I was alarmed to read that the CDC advises citizens to even consider staying indoors to avoid West Nile. Americans do not need to be told to have a more sedentary lifestyle! Citizens are also poisoning water sources with Deet or other hamful agents, just to kill the mosquitoes (which by the way are an important link in the food chain). Since when is a one-in-a-million chance of death such a deterrent to Americans? Is this more important than clean water to drink and swim in? For comparison's sake: by driving rather than walking/biking outdoors, more than 40,000 people die each year in car accidents in the U.S. The figures speak for themselves.

This hype reminded me of the big "tomato scare" in the media now. Let's look for a moment at salmonella - they call it an "epidemic," but not a single person has died this year. The disease involves diarrhea, fever, and cramping - same as any bad food poisoning (or if you've travelled in Latin America, akin to a mild case of "Montezuma's Revenge!"). And there is a huge public scare over this "outbreak" of salmonella - sure, it's an unpleasant illness, but it is truly unbelievable that all of a sudden we're worried that tomatoes or other vegetables are unsafe. Try a McDonald's meal for unsafe - it's 100% guaranteed that having an unhealthy lifestyle, eating McDonald's meals and other fast food, will lead to heart disease, the #1 cause of death in the United States, killing roughly 2,000 Americans a day. After they're done working around the clock to find the salmonella-infected tomatoes, maybe the FDA can focus on that one next!

(...and the burning question is of course, if it takes so many federal agents to find out where our tomatoes come from, how do we expect the average citizen to be informed on where their food comes from???)

It just doesn't seem like these punishments fit the crime - if we truly care about keeping healthy and staying alive, we are barking up the wrong tree worrying about West Nile or salmonella. If we spent less time worrying about obscure illnesses and more time on our lifestyle choices, we'd be a healthier, happier America.

I propose society focuses our collective time and attention on things that really matter, and work on those issues that affect the greatest good: promoting fresh air and exercise, clean water, eating your vegetables, and keeping our ecosystem intact... and leave my watering can alone!

-Lorien