A Way Forward in Uncertain Times

It has been nearly three decades since James Lovelock published a scientific premise for the Earth as a living organism. He based his work on observations that show a self-regulating zone of life call the “biosphere.” Gaia: A New Way of Viewing the Earth suggested that living communities regulate the life functions of a living planet.

Human beings are mostly unaware of how temperature, recycling, energy flow, and population are managed on Earth, yet humans affect outcomes and are affected in turn by them.

Consider what Lovelock observed about the differences in atmospheric composition among “dead” planets and a “living planet.” Planets with high concentrations of carbon dioxide in their atmosphere (Venus and Mars) are either broiling or ice blocks. They contain little or no life. Earth before the advent of life averaged about 300° C surface temperature. With the current envelope of life on Earth, the average temperature is 13° C.

Organisms evolved in oceans that began to remove carbon dioxide from the air and give off oxygen. Gradually nitrogen and oxygen replaced carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A hydrologic cycle formed and the Earth began to cool to conditions that allowed life to proliferate.

For nearly two billion years the plankton of the oceans, lakes and later trees and land plants of Earth sequestered carbon from the air incorporating it into their forms. As life evolved into more complex forms, animals – passing carbon they ingest from plants or plant eaters consumed – deposited more carbon into “sinks” as their bodies and waste were incorporated into the Earth’s crust. These accumulations of life forms, whether sinking to the bottom of the sea or dissolving into the crust of land over time, were gradually transformed into rich, black strata: oil and coal.

For a long, long time this was true. Life followed five principles of self-regulation:

§ Use of a non-polluting, unlimited energy source;
§ Recycling of matter through food webs;
§ Preservation of biodiversity in genes, kinds of creatures, habitats;
§ Fine control of populations to stay within carrying capacity;
§ Change in response to new conditions (evolution).

Then came the conscious being, the human, whose brain began to question how things worked, and whose ingenuity mimicked nature. A certain kind of wisdom grew as men and women observed nature’s ways and lived accordingly.

Things began to happen in one or two places in the world as man’s knowledge grew. Man wondered if oil or coal was combusted could it help us get things done. And as the pundits say, the rest is history.

A relatively small percent of the total human population has been putting that store of carbon back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide emissions, and the Earth’s biosphere is heating up.
For readers who understand this basic imbalance and its consequences, it is very frustrating to live beside so many fellow countrymen and women seemingly unconcerned. Recently a woman I met stated that the warming of the Earth’s surface was “going to happen anyway, and besides, man as a species is not going to be here forever.”

Isn’t that like saying, “Well I am going to die anyway so why not kill myself now?”
Statements like that tell me how little people grasp the essential reality of life: we are not here alone, nor did we arrive here alone, but we evolved in tandem with thousands of species whose lives are intricately connected to ours and that make it possible for us to have life and to have it abundantly.

Americans in particular have never been more disconnected from their biological inheritance. We talk about “nature” in the abstract even as millions of microbes cleanse our skin, digest our food, and destroy harmful invaders. And this is happening in our very own bodies! Microbes can’t “get no respect!”

We are not bad people but we are ignorant of how life works and how we are a part of it. That knowledge, once the inheritance of every young child growing up in communities across the Earth, has been lost in modern technological cultures - lost to our peril.

So, what can thoughtful people do?

On a personal level we can contemplate those five principles of ecosystems and use them as a checklist for our own lives. How can we use less of a polluting type of energy, recycle more, leave a smaller footprint, create habitat in our yards, join conservation efforts, and change our ways to meet the new challenges? Call it a program of self-regulation.

Some might challenge that suggestion asking why they should give up their comforts, or restrict their activities, when no one else seems to be doing so. That reminds me of Albert Schweitzer’s quest to find an ethical basis for living.

Here is what he thought:
As I sit here under this tree I think about how much I value my own life and wish to go on living and to have more of it. Then I look at this lofty tree with its gently swaying leaves and think, this tree must hold its own life as valuable and also want to go on living and have more of life, too. And even though it is mute, it nevertheless is no different than me in its desire to live, to grow, to flourish.

Everywhere we see this, if we stop to observe…the force of life willing itself into being and to survive upon the face of the Earth for its time. The fleeing gazelle with the swift cheetah in pursuit, the child fighting for her life in the cancer ward, bees pollinating the flowering beings that bring so much pleasure and food to humans…all to make the honey to survive, to thrive.

Recognizing this common bond to all of life around us, Schweitzer wrote, results in Reverence for Life, which he concluded is the ethical basis for living. We begin to value our own life more, to see it as a precious gift and to live it to its highest purpose. We regain the will to live.

This brings us full circle to Lovelock’s premise that the Earth itself is a living organism of which we are all functional parts. All together the whole thing works. Works, that is, as long as we follow the five basic principles that are the great roots of life on this planet.

Perhaps this time in human history is a call to return to a higher purpose in life, to realize the human’s role to consciously participate in the well-functioning of Earth’s living systems.

We are being reminded of our place in the whole pageant of life we find around us. We are called to Reverence for Life as a way of life. As individuals we can find emotional, spiritual, and practical guidance from the life we observe around us. Reconnecting, experiencing life in all its manifest forms as fellow inhabitants with which we share this beautiful planet – this life - is a way forward in an uncertain future.

References
Lovelock, James (1995). The Ages of Gaia, A Biography of Our Living Planet, New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

Schweitzer, Albert (1990). Out of My Life and Thought, An Autobiography. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

La Mar

The beaches along the western panhandle of Florida's coastline are edged by azure and tanslucent green water through which sparkling white sand can be seen clearly. On any morning the sandlerings and dowitchers, gulls and dolphins can be see there and sand crabs darting into deep round holes, silver fish roiling in the waves near the shore. There are footprints from the day before and new ones on the wet sand including mine. The ocean stretches level to the horizon where it is dark blue or sometimes black.

Out on Ft. Pickens, a civil war bunker which lies battered by Hurricane Ivan, the wildlife find refuge from the human storm. Closed after the hurricane winds ripped out the road, it is open only to hikers so that at least two miles of the barrier island of Pensacola Beach is returning to something like it might once have been before people began to change it.

Blue herons stalk the inland marshes where native cane and grasses are flourishing, whole flocks of terns, gulls, and sanderlings rest on the warm sand. Brown and cream striped jellyfish bob near the shores and dolphins frolick there.

There are still places of repose on this Earth.

The Writer's Convenant

I have established a covenant with my self, the writer.

Write everyday.

Cease writing to be published.

Accept that what I have to offer readers is worthy.

Keep writing but write by the internal keel that is at the heart of who I was at about age fourteen.

Why age fourteen?

The ideas which determine our character and life are implanted in mysterious fashion. When we are leaving childhood behind us they begin to shoot out. When we are seized by youth's enthusiansm for the good and the true, they burst into flower, and the fruit begins to set. If allof us could become what we were at age fourteen, what a different place this world would be. ~Albert Schweitzer from Out of My Life and Thought

Be well my fellow writers everywhere!

Susan

To Mr. Bush

The True American Character

Some people believe that America exists in forever spacious skies, purple mountain majesty, and the fruited plain. America is not a place. America exists within the mind.

It was an idea whose time had come.
Birthed from the loins of Liberty, it came like a bright light in the midst of human strife. It came like a gentle rain on hardened soil, loosening each grain of rock for a seed to grow. The idea that all could be free...it was present on this continent.

The American mind was here when Europeans first stepped upon these shores. As pilgrims felled trees, and the air was filled with the sharp sound of the ax and saw and the heavy scent of hardwood, Liberty gazed through dark eyes in the green of thick woods. Liberty was bronze, bedecked in eagle feathers and soft hide. Liberty was sleek, bounding in a sunlit meadow, and silk-haired diving below blue waters. Liberty was vigorous.

It set minds to dreaming.
America is a belief, a principal of life - that all beings are free and self-determined. America means harm no thing. America means respect for all life. That is what America is and what a true American lives by. To live otherwise is to diminish it.

Those who came and still come to America are changed by Liberty. For so long now, immigrants think they made America. They think they thought of her. But Liberty made them think America. It was she who changed their minds and made their thoughts go to dreaming. She was already here among the people, and the animals, and all throughout the land. A true American understands this.

Liberty whispers in the ear: Let them all be free! Take only what you need and share the rest. Glory in the abundance therein. See the sunrise and the sunset, swim the clear lakes, and eat the flesh of my fruit. Liberty is a shimmering light on the rounded lip of water spilling over stones. Liberty is the glint in the eye of a child. Her voice is the high pitched scream of a hawk soaring off its prominence. Liberty is the cry of a man to be free at last!

America is an impulse. Americans are animated by it, driven to play out its creed. America’s elixir is Liberty, and once tasted, nothing will ever satisfy the soul again.

Liberty stalks the dark places.
Liberty walks the land with sure feet and white garments that dazzle the eye. She has a voice like a bell ringing. Americans listen for her coming. Sometimes she awakens them from their sleep. Liberty stalks the dark places in peoples’ hearts and minds. She says firmly: Let them all be free!

Americans like the sight and sound of Liberty. She is their beacon of hope and great teacher. When confusion comes and when strife and conflict arise, true Americans look for Liberty. They listen for her voice across the land and through the woods. When they hear it - the bell that rings so clearly - they can go on… they can endure anything.

A true American is ever vigilant. An American dissents if Liberty is threatened. An American has a certain kind of angst when told what to think or do: call it “democratic irritability.” It is the sign of true Americans. Listen to their voices:

Is there not something worthy of perpetuation in our Indian spirit of democracy, where Earth, our mother, was free to all, and no one sought to impoverish or enslave his neighbor? ~ Ohiyesa, Santee Sioux (1858 – 1939)

Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored. ~ Susan B. Anthony, Women’s Rights Leader (1820 – 1906)

When I first decided to take a firm stand against the war in Vietnam, I was subjected to the most bitter criticism, by the press, by individuals, and even by some fellow civil rights leaders. There were those who said that I should stay in my place, that these two issues did not mix and I should stick with civil rights. Well I had only one answer for that and it was simply the fact that I have struggled too long and too hard now to get rid of segregation in public accommodations to end up at this point in my life segregating my moral concerns." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr., Civil Rights Leader (1929 – 1968)

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well…. Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. ~ David Henry Thoreau, American Dissenter (1817 – 1862)

Because we have suffered, and we are not afraid to suffer in order to survive, we are ready to give up everything - even our lives - in our struggle for justice. ~ Cesar Chavez, Leader of the Farm Workers’ Civil Rights Movement (1927 – 1993)

The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives… is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Women’s Rights Leader (1815 – 1902)

Liberty presses on the American mind.
A true American cannot be moved from his or her conviction about Liberty. No eloquent speaker, powerful force, mind-altering influence; no bribe, or set of tragic circumstances, no ideology can shake an American from the knowledge that Liberty is at the heart of America:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. ~ Declaration of Independence 1776

Liberty caused these thoughts to be written when minds were shaped by an America present long before the Europeans walked upon our shores. Liberty presses on the American mind still: Let them all be free - black, brown, red, yellow, woman, child, plant and animal! Liberty stands firm on this. True Americans understand it.

Americans believe all people should know Liberty. A true American will not participate in or support anyone or anything that would deny Liberty to another human being. Americans look across the globe with the hope of Liberty’s promise for all. A true American is generous and long-suffering for just causes. Listen:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…. ~ Declaration of Independence 1776

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it. ~ Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States (1809 – 1865)

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. ~ Thomas Paine, American Patriot (1737 – 1809)

Americans raise their flag to honor Liberty and burn their flag when Liberty is in jeopardy. Liberty for All is the creed of true Americans. They cannot be swayed. They have tasted her intoxicating liberation. No government, no religious doctrine or no person can deter true Americans from their pursuit of freedom. Liberty is their only religion, their only banner. True Americans are free to think and free to live.

Liberty whispers in their ears throughout the land. True Americans can hear her voice summoning them to act on her behalf.

This is the true American character.

by Susan Williams, Submitted to Vanity Fair in 2004

References and Permissions for Quotes
I. “Is there not something worthy of perpetuation in our Indian spirit of democracy, where Earth, our mother, was free to all, and no one sought to impoverish or enslave his neighbor?” ~ Ohiyesa (Charles Alexander Eastman)

Excerpted from 'The Wisdom of the Native Americans’ © 1999 BY Kent Nerburn. Reprinted with permission of New World Library. http://www.newworldlibrary.com/, per Marjorie Conte, Permissions Editor, in an E- mail communication, July 8, 2004.

II. “Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored.” ~ Susan B. Anthony

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/anthony/sentencing.html%20Retrieved%20on%20July%208
Retrieved on July 8, 2004 Public Domain (Trial Record in the Case of United States vs. Susan B. Anthony on the Charge of Illegal Voting, June 17-18, 1873)

III. “When I first decided to take a firm stand against the war in Vietnam, I was subjected to the most bitter criticism, by the press, by individuals, and even by some fellow civil rights leaders. There were those who said that I should stay in my place, that these two issues did not mix and I should stick with civil rights. Well I had only one answer for that and it was simply the fact that I have struggled too long and too hard now to get rid of segregation in public accommodations to end up at this point in my life segregating my moral concerns." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

From the speech “Domestic Impact of the War in America” given in November 1967 to the National Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace.
http://www.aavw.org/special_features/speeches_speech_king03.html Retrieved July 6, 2004

IV. “No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well…. Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.” ~ David Henry Thoreau

From: Paul, Sherman (Ed.). (1960). Walden and Civil Disobedience. Riverside Editions A14. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. p 223. Permission to quote: July 8, 2004 E-mail communication from Monika Konwinska, Subsidiary Rights Assistant, Houghton Mifflin Company: Public Domain

V. “Because we have suffered, and we are not afraid to suffer in order to survive, we are ready to give up everything - even our lives - in our struggle for justice.” ~ Cesar Chavez

http://www.sfsu.edu/~cecipp/cesar_chavez/cesarquotes.htm%20Retrieved%20July%203
Retrieved on July 3, 2004 Public Domain

VI. “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” ~ Thomas Paine

http://www.quotationspage.com/search.php3?Author=Thomas+Paine&file=other. Retrieved on July 3, 2004 Public Domain

VII. “The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton from “The Solitude of Self”

http://www.pbs.org/stantonanthony/resources/index.html
Retrieved on July 5, 2004 Public Domain

VIII. “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln in a Letter to Henry L. Pierce, April 6, 1859.
http://www.nps.gov/liho/slavery/al14.htm%20Retrieved%20on%20July%207Retrieved on July 7, 2004 Public Domain

Scene

"The museum sat low and snug in the gentle curve of the desert and its tan adobe walls and rock paths formed an extension of the sandy floor and surrounding mountains. Sunk in a sea of saguaros, the museum’s presence was subtle like the land, the only change at its boundaries marked by the rock outlines that formed outdoor exhibits for mountain lions and coyotes, and by a forest of little trees, lacey and green, and plump cacti in every shape and size.

At night in the moon tide the big brown bats swooped over its lush vegetation drinking with long tongues from the huge white saguaro blossoms, carrying sticky pollen from saguaro top to saguaro top, and some scooped up insects hovering over the beaver pond. Bobcats and coyotes hunted there too for rats and mice and snakes that roamed the museum grounds under the cool moon light. The rattlesnake and sidewinders plied the earth across the valley’s confines drawn by the warmth of breathing little bodies gathering seed. Swift and silent their belly scales seamlessly rowed them forward over rocky paths where they ruled the nighttime’s smaller kingdoms.

But at daybreak the night stalkers disappeared, confined to subterranean caves to rest through the heat of the day. The cactus wren, hummingbird, and human took their place in the sun tide of the desert sea."

Local Theater

Saturday night I attended a local performance of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men at the Beowolfe Alley Theater in downtown Tucson. I was reminded of Steinbeck's comment that writing should uplift the human heart. His play gives voice to the worst and the best of humanity in difficult economic and cultural conditions. http://www.steinbeck.org/MainFrame.html The local actors were superb.

Steinbeck wrote Of Mice and Men as a play-novelette (a form in which the play can be read like a novel, and the novel can be read as a play). He was not happy with it. That at least gives a novice writer like me a sense of hope.

With my own writing I often get lost in the writing. I start with a clear idea. As I go into the writing the whole idea becomes muddy as I go into it. Characters don't behave. They go off and do their own thing. Point at hand: last summer I drafted a novel about climate change in the Southwest. It was plot driven right from the start because I did not know much about character development. I had no less than twenty characters and the whole book was something like "and then this happened."

Now I am engaged in the arduous task of redrafting the story-in fact, just about throwing the first draft to the wind and starting over.

It's scarry because I wade into the story and then sink in a guagmire of writing starts and stops, bad writing altogether, and it feels like I have lost the purpose of writing it in the first place. Being an impatient kind of person, I am willing to only go so far into the agony of creation.

When does a writer know what is a false start? When should one start over, when file it away for posterity? Supposedly writers possess an intuitive sense, but I have never been intuitive about anything. I am one of those people that has to "go there" then try to make sense of it and hopefully understand where to go from there.

I look to my mentor, Margaret Atwood: Many of the things I've written have begun, and indeed have continued, against my better judgment. Okay, at least I am in good company.

Susan

On the Isle of Saucy Romance Writers

Last month I discovered a whole world unknown to me in the island of romance writers, a tropical place with white sands, lime green and hot pink libations and steaming bedrooms. The man in your bed might also be a vampire, descended from a Greek god and the woman whispering in your ear may hold a dark secret.

This professional group of writers (https://www.rwanational.org/eweb/StartPage.aspx) is very serious about their craft. Genres include chicklit, paranormal (time travel), historical romance, speculative fiction and some science fiction. I learned how to structure my first novel using a story board: inciting events for the heroine and hero, turning points that build suspence and keep readers reading, the black moment when the heroine or hero come to some realization and then the quick resolution. It is a kind of contract with the reader of romance novels. Readers in these subgenres expect certain things to happen.

My first novel is not a romance novel. However, I believe there is much to be learned from this group of writers. At a recent workshop with the local chapter, the group used my heroine and hero to explore how the two personalities should interact. A book they used is one I have read but forgotten about: The Complete Writer's Guide to Heroes and Heroines by Cowden, LaFever, and Viders. Sixteen archetypes are explored. After describing male and female archetypes, the authors then show how these personality types engage with each other.

At this point in the rewriting of my first novel, I need to decide whether to throw out the first draft and start over using a more structured plot sequence, or allow the book to be what it is: a series of scenes along a 100 year time line with characters who may or may not interact but who each represent a sector of Tucson's population that grapples or flees from the crisis caused by global warming and climate change.

One thing for sure, if I keep stalling, it will become a historical novel!

Susan

Where did April go?

This month slipped away in a flurry of editing and writing new chapters for my first novel. Recently I submitted three chapters to Ashley Grayson of Ashley Grayson Literary Agency. The novel tells a story about this region-the Sonoran Desert and American Southwest-during a water crisis. Speculative fiction (2010-2100), it posits what would happen if Tucson ran out of water. How would that crisis unfold? Who would be the most or least resilient? How would governments be able to respond?

I discovered a very interesting thing while editing this month: the real character of my novel is the Colorado River. The last sixteen years of my life have been spent near the river. For most of that time I had the privilege of working closely with native people, ranchers and farmers for whom the river is part of their psyche and livelihood. Now as a Tucsonan, my drinking water-which for the city's history has came from groundwater exclusively-is now mixing in the river's water after channeling it through a 306-mile-long canal across the Arizona deserts.

Go to www.desertscribe.com and click on Featured Writing for a taste of the story.

Susan

Writing No Matter What

Writing in spite of all that seeks to erode that sacred time and space is a feat. To write requires a mental fortress be put up in the face of storms, salesmen of all sorts hawking somebody else's passion, bright sun shining days that lure the soul to play and even against the writer herself - so willing to give in to self-doubt or procrastination, the evil twins.

It makes me think of Saint Teresa of Avila. She wrote an amazing account of the journey of her soul in search of the ultimate truth. (Well, isn't that why we write?) In Interior Castles St. Teresa described seven rooms within the castle of the soul, each a kind of stage where the soul gets to know itself, a layer of interfering thoughts peeled away to a shiny new surface...tender, potent.

Guarding the fortress of time and space is a similar process for a writer who with ferocity, ever alert to threats, sets out to prob his heart and to sing his song. Therefore writers aquire quirks. "No thank you, I will be writing all day on Saturday" is a statement not well received by the world out there. Yet everyone depends on the writer doing just that: waging a kind of war with the exterior flotsam of things, voices, paper, emails, god-awful news and edgy relationships. The dog that needs to go out. The phone that rings. The taxes that....

I write because writing clarifies my feelings and organizes my universe and on one golden hued day I sometimes even write something someone else might want to read. But regardless, I write anyway.

Susan

Hemmingway's Compound Sentence

I am learning that a writer reads.

Revisiting Hemmingway this month I was impressed again with the clean language and his use of the compound sentence. Here is a good example from Islands in the Stream, Chapter 1:

"The house was built on the highest part of the narrow tongue of land between the harbor and the open sea. It had lasted through three hurricanes and it was built solid as a ship. It was shaded by tall coconut palms that were bent by the trade wind and on the ocean side you could walk out of the door and down the bluff across the white sand and into the Gulf Stream."

To me his writing emanates from very organized thinking, first this fact, then this one and then the logical one after that so the reader follows naturally and easily along with the storyteller.

Chapter Eight, the greatest fishing description I have ever read, includes this: "The boy's brown back was arched, the rod bent, the line moved slowly on the surface, and a quarter of a mile below the great fish was swimming."

Which also reminds me that we are most powerful as writers when we write about what we know. Hemmingway was a great sport fisherman. He lived in Cuba and knew the Gulf Waters very well. Old Man and the Sea is a testament to Hemmingway's many years on the sea and his love of the people of the sea.

In this photo, Hemmingway has netted a tuna off the Bimini Islands, the place where his main character, Thomas Hudson, lives and paints in Islands in the Stream.

Reread Hemmingway to learn the art of unvarnished language and the power of a good story, well told.

Write well and happily my friends! ~Susan

Truth or Consequences

These times require us to write the truth. Following the International Panel on Climate Change summary report (www.ipcc.org) there can be no doubt that global warming is altering the climate of Earth, and what will happen is in good part predictable. Literally thousands of scientists from countries across the world contributed to this latest analysis of changing landscapes, living communities in the oceans, forests and polar regions.

The fact that heads turned only briefly to listen to a unified cry from ecologists, from people who ARE paying attention, leaves me more concerned than ever. To lessen the impacts on the living communities on Earth takes massive, coordinated action on the scale of the U.S. when it called upon the nation to support WWII. This time we must call on ourselves to curb our own war upon nature, a war most do not understand or even acknowledge.

As individuals we can do much, starting with our own habits and our inborn ingenuity. There are three major areas on which we can make a difference: 1. driving; home energy use; citizen action. Simply carpooling using public transportation or not driving can save thousands of tons of hydrocarbons from the atmosphere each year per person. By turning down the heat and putting on a sweater, replacing bulbs with compact flourescents and using appliances infrequently (hang your clothes out if you live in the west) you can also help significantly. By far, however, citizens need to push local, state and U.S. govenments to get off their arses and chance policies, invest in alternative energy research, and lead, lead, lead business and citizens to act together.

All these efforts will save you money, but it is really about saving life...yours, mine and all the biota that support the gift of human life on this once beautiful planet. While we go about our daily business as usual, the gorgeous coral reefs are dissolving away from warming of the ocean and human pollution; the ice caps are melting and much of the biodiversity of our once fruited plain is vanishing in the path of unrelenting human development.

“The U.S. emits more greenhouse gasses than any other nation on earth – fully 25 percent – yet we Americans are just 4 percent of the global population. The United States cannot sit on the sidelines any longer. It must take immediate action to establish meaningful and binding limits on CO2 emissions and rejoin international negotiations to secure a long-term solution.” ~ President of the World Wildlife Fund.

There is still time to use our brilliant engineers and designers to create sustainable landscapes and cities, to restore and protect food production, to generate copious energy from renewable sources...but there is not much time. We must act. We must. Or we will surely perish from this Earth in not too many generations, many of whom - our descendents - will eke out a final existence not worth living.

Susan

To learn how you can prepare: fohttp://www.organicconsumers.org:80/articles/article_4407.cfm

To learn what Tucsonans are doing about sustainability:
www.sustainabletucson.org

A writer's life

The morning you get up and find no greater joy than staying in your pajamas, cup of java in hand, a journal and ink pen and write for three or four hours straight, getting up to pee, get more coffee, get back in bed or under a comforter...you know you have arrived at the helm of the writer's ship and you've hitched a ride on the subconscious stream that feeds the writer's fingers. It is exhilarating and thrilling and amazingly the writing is good. It is real and it is so surprising what comes up from some fount of experience, of living and loving, grieving and searching.

By accident I discovered Diana Gabaldon's The Fiery Cross, a historical romp of such magnitude, wisdom and exploration of human love and human struggle that I have been glued to a little cassette player I actually bought for $14 to play cassettes in my home. (My only player has been in my 1995 Ford.) No author that I have read integrates history, human imperfection and human courage, medical science, and U.S. and Scottish history...but that is not all that is there. No, there is a subconscious stream that flows through Gibaldon's brain onto the page that comes like a strong river flow with no perturbances.

Go to her website to stand at the helm of her ship: http://www.dianagabaldon.com/

I am discovering the connection to an ocean of consciousness where wisdom, characters, and historical information flow from the cauldron of human experience spaning the ages from the first conscious beings to the present. It is not an individual contribution, but the contribution of the ages and the writer is nothing but a willing conduit.

Mystifying. And a part of this writer's life.

All the best,

Susan