Evan's Earth Walk

November Rain

2006-11-13T19:31:00.000-08:00

A Return To Blogalia

Now where was I?

This summer I was busy researching for various lectures, and writing Amazine, my Mets blog, which really took off. During the World Series I helped WFAN producer Ray Martel (who reads Amazine as it turns out) pull together an historic interview with Tigers' pitcher Mickey Lolich. Ray is a great guy, we talked several times. He read my Lolich piece in Amazine and figured I was the only man in the world who knew where Lolich was. Even major league baseball doesn't know apparently. As it turns out, I did, and set up the contact. By the way, Mickey called me and said not to give out that number ever again, so I ripped it up. I will tell that whole story later on. It was an historic moment in sports journalism.

On Tuesday, October 31st, I spent the whole day creating a huge marionette puppet theater on a porch in Fishkill to scare the kids on Halloween. Over a hundred kids came to answer questions from the Talking Pumpkin and win candy, and be scared by moving objects. There was a Mets fan in a black coffin that tapped his fingers on the coffin waiting for next year. I have photos somewhere. And there was a floating pumpkin, lit from the inside, and a cloth pumpkin that rose up out of the mail box, and an old Hopi elder rocking in a rocking chair smoking a cigar. There was also a spider who lowered down and rang a bell. Some kids were so scared they ran away without getting any candy. Also a witty conversation with the minister of the church down the street on Biblical characters.

I also had a great coaching session with AB, and gave her the Magic Flute vocal score as a present.

On Wednesday, November 1st, All Saints Day, I did research on all the Global Warming news coming out of the UK, and put together some stuff.

On Thursday night, November 2nd, Day of the Dead, I created a powerpoint about Gordon Brown and the UK Green Revolution. I attended the current edition of my brainchild "Citizenship Thinktank" for the only time this year, and Dan was there. We watched a great Bill Moyers segment on sweatshops. I presented my short powerpoint on Gordon Brown and "Bush's Worst Nightmares" (7 of them, I will post later, most of it about global warming) and then the longer one on the beginnings of slavery. Dan and Dawn gave me a ride to my car.

Friday, November 3rd, again, working away at the index, getting as much of that to email offto Oklahoma as I could before Canada. I had heard some Native Americans rumoring that Bush would set off some kind of global disaster and declare martial law if the elections were going badly. Kind of a crazy idea, but I took it seriously, because they were going badly for him, and put at least some of my house in order.

Last weekend I was in Ottawa for the 93rd birthday of William Commanda, and I sang happy birthday for him (an unofficial version, naturally I wouldn't violate anyone's copyright laws) with his daughter Evelyn on stage. Over cake I showed her my letter from Chirac. She didn't see the signature and was reading it in French, and while translating, said to me, "It seems you have touched this man's heart very deeply with what you have written." Tommy said, "It's Jacques Chirac..." "Who?" "You know, the President of France. That's who wrote it."

I also attended the Water-Life Conference sponsored by Commanda's Circle of All Nations, and met some really fascinating people. Several there had organized cross country walks for raising awareness about water, one man had canoed across Canada. During the seminar, news came out that Domtar was planning to expand their damming operations on Chaudiere Falls.

I caught a cold while being detained briefly by customs people near Montreal, and it got worse over the weekend, and was particularly bad going through customs on the other end. The highlight of the trip (I am being facetious) was sitting up in a chair for three hours in the Montreal bus station being forced to listen to elevator music until dawn. I got back to Poughkeepsie on Monday and the class had a session on global warming and other current events.

Tuesday November 7th I voted early at my local church, and an old friend was working there. I went to Poughkeepsie for errands and it looked good for the dems, but I had no idea how good. I was keeping a close eye on it. I saw some middle aged Republican-looking business men walking aimlessly along the highway, I guessed at the time that they were trying to find their polling place. Now I wonder if they got advanced word of the Democratic sweep and were contemplating jumping under a truck.

I went to a friend's house to watch TV and watched the New Jersey channel and followed the Menendez election, which looked to me like evidence the Hispanic vote just jumped to the Democrats. Things really didn't start hopping til 10PM, and then it was pretty exciting. I watched the whole thing until 2 AM, or later. I was truly astounded. A great moment in history. It was a revolution with no leader, no media hype no ideology or dogma, just a sea change, a groundswell of individuals all following their intuition. This is what some political theorists (Naomi Klein) a few years ago called the leaderless cell, and predicted it would bring down Bush sooner or later. They say Hillary had alot to do with key upset races in the senate, namely Whitehouse upsetting Lincoln Chafee and Webb in Virginia, but I think it was more than that, I think it was a miracle of democracy in action. To say the system works is a little hasty, but it sounds nice on the tongue. We'll see what happens over the next two years.

I also had a very creative coaching session with budding opera star AB. I had her sing chromatic, whole tone, and diminished scales while I improvized impressionistic chords on the piano behind her notes. She sounded wonderful. We also went through Queen of the Night several times. The scales helped.

Wednesday November 8th, I taught class and led global warming discussion, which was one of the best, really eye-opening. Then a student asked what President Bush had said to the nation about this impending crisis, I said, "nothing really,except that it doesn't exist." And then I explained about the Luntz memo of 2000, and how that shifted the course of history concerning global warming. I asked if anyone wanted to watch Will Ferrell's faux interview as Bush, speaking to the nation on global warming (in the absence of any real interview by Bush) and they were very insistent on seeing. I showed it at the end after some usual technical delays, and the next professor came in during my time as he often does, and did not look amused. I thought it was totally appropriate as an ending to a very substantial class.
I asked both classes if other profs were leading them in discussions about global warming, and only one student said yes.
In the evening I coached Karioke Karen in a wonderful three hour recording session at No Parking Studios with Dean Jones as engineer. Everything went near perfect and Karen recorded five songs. The mixing still needs to be done. There were some emotionally satisfying moments for all three of us musically. K is a natural on the Supremes songs and I suggested we use Momma Told Me (Love Takes Time) as the first cut. More next week!

Thursday November 9th, took a relaxing walk in the warm sun, and then made it to the bank and the post office just in time to pay bills. Then more indexing, etc. on Native New Yorkers.

Friday November 10th, slept in to try to cure persistent flu symptoms, got to school and had great class outside, another warm day. We were on sidewalk, and it was time for me to do my chalk talk creation of Stonehenge, and was able to draw the diagram on the pavement in chalk, in alignment with the sunset as it was actually happening! That was a once in a lifetime opportunity, I suppose, and I really enjoyed it! When the sun actually went down, it got cold and so everyone wanted to come in, which was fine. I needed the black of the blackboard on the wall to show the patterns of stars on the horizon, so it worked out perfectly.

I worked on the index and powerpoint until all hours.

Saturday November 11th 2006, I went to see the Bob Dylan exhibit at the Morgan Library with a musical friend, and it was quite comprehensive. Then I went to see a revival of Theo Harder's musical "The Marriage Broker." She was there, and came in sitting behind me. When it was over she took a bow to great applause.
I hadn't seen her in a while, and I turned around to applaud her. She stared at me and said, "Evan?" And reached out to shake my hand in the middle of her composer bow. She said, "I'm so happy that you've come!" She came and sat with me and we talked music and I told her I thought the play was ingenious and so was the music. Actress Beth Holland sat in front of me. Later, the Musical Matchmaker in the musical, played by Woody Regan, told me he had actually matched her and her husband together and he played at their wedding, and that qualified him to play Cupid in this magical theater piece somewhat along the lines of Waiting For Godot, in that the entire piece involves a female usher and back up rehearsal pianist and a customer waiting for the star to arrive. The star never arrives, but the amount of fictional detail in the ruse is terribly imaginative as it unfolds. By the end, you realize that most of the people you thought were in the cast never existed.

Then it was time to get back home, very late of course.

Sunday November 12th I spent in the lab and the library, working on the Native New Yorkers index and got it down to five letters. That took most of the day. I also worked on a power point for an upcoming presentation on the native history of waterways around Manhattan, but found I did not have a copy of an earlier overlapping powerpoint, so I had to stop. I called my son and told him I had a dream where he wrote a novel that was published and it looked alot like The Fountainhead (which I'd bought him in Chicago, appropriately enough) It was a thick paperback with small pages. There was a characture of him on the back, some exaggeration, but flattering. The title was "The Wisdom of Baseball." He said in fact he was working on a novel, which I didn't know. He added that if he ever used that title, it would be years down the road. I thought it would be a good retitling for my Mythobaseballogy, the meaning of which escapes most readers.

I saw Igor and he said his Political Thought website is active again, and that Dan B was involved. We talked about Joe Lieberman and his unusual overthrow of a Democrat.

November 13th, 2006, four days until the 56th anniversary of the enthronement of the Dalai Lama, in case you were planning to celebrate it. November 17th falls on a Friday this year, I hope it is a portal for further transformation of our nation and all our people. I showed the movie Kundun to my class today, the life of the Dalai Lama, which included that fact. I had a talk with Louie McCroskey about Egypt and the civil rights movement after class. He seemed tired; basketball season is just days away.

Earlier today worked on the powerpoint on Manhattan waterways, and the pieces finally started to fall together, as I found themissing material. I gave Louie (my neighbor) a jump start, he seemed in a really good mood.

April 18th, Gaia Conspiracy Continues

2006-04-18T21:18:00.000-07:00

The Gaia Conspiracy Continues
By Evan Pritchard

Two different sets of facts are beginning to emerge in the media concerning Global Warming; one, that it is really happening, and two, that there really is a cover-up about it really happening. Of course the media plays this game where it cooperates with the cover-up until a certain point, and then it reports on those people covering it up, in a sense, reporting on its own reporting. The Washington Post, however has taken a courageous stance of late and has outed lots of closet greens.

Here is the Washington Post article on the cover-up of James Hansen. It is quite remarkable on how critical it is of the Bush administration, and with what placement. This tone has continued during this past week unabated.

Climate Researchers Feeling Heat From White House
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 6, 2006; Page A27
Scientists doing climate research for the federal government say the Bush administration has made it hard for them to speak forthrightly to the public about global warming. The result, the researchers say, is a danger that Americans are not getting the full story on how the climate is changing.
Employees and contractors working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with a U.S. Geological Survey scientist working at an NOAA lab, said in interviews that over the past year administration officials have chastised them for speaking on policy questions; removed references to global warming from their reports, news releases and conference Web sites; investigated news leaks; and sometimes urged them to stop speaking to the media altogether. Their accounts indicate that the ideological battle over climate-change research, which first came to light at NASA, is being fought in other federal science agencies as well.
These scientists -- working nationwide in research centers in such places as Princeton, N.J., and Boulder, Colo. -- say they are required to clear all media requests with administration officials, something they did not have to do until the summer of 2004. Before then, point climate researchers -- unlike staff members in the Justice or State departments, which have long-standing policies restricting access to reporters -- were relatively free to discuss their findings without strict agency oversight.
"There has been a change in how we're expected to interact with the press," said Pieter Tans, who measures greenhouse gases linked to global warming and has worked at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder for two decades. He added that although he often "ignores the rules" the administration has instituted, when it comes to his colleagues, "some people feel intimidated -- I see that."
Christopher Milly, a hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, said he had problems twice while drafting news releases on scientific papers describing how climate change would affect the nation's water supply.
Once in 2002, Milly said, Interior officials declined to issue a news release on grounds that it would cause "great problems with the department." In November 2005, they agreed to issue a release on a different climate-related paper, Milly said, but "purged key words from the releases, including 'global warming,' 'warming climate' and 'climate change.' "
Administration officials said they are following long-standing policies that were not enforced in the past. Kent Laborde, a NOAA public affairs officer who flew to Boulder last month to monitor an interview Tans did with a film crew from the BBC, said he was helping facilitate meetings between scientists and journalists.
"We've always had the policy, it just hasn't been enforced," Laborde said. "It's important that the leadership knows something is coming out in the media, because it has a huge impact. The leadership needs to know the tenor or the tone of what we expect to be printed or broadcast."
Several times, however, agency officials have tried to alter what these scientists tell the media. When Tans was helping to organize the Seventh International Carbon Dioxide Conference near Boulder last fall, his lab director told him participants could not use the term "climate change" in conference paper's titles and abstracts. Tans and others disregarded that advice.
None of the scientists said political appointees had influenced their research on climate change or disciplined them for questioning the administration. Indeed, several researchers have received bigger budgets in recent years because President Bush has focused on studying global warming rather than curbing greenhouse gases. NOAA's budget for climate research and services is now $250 million, up from $241 million in 2004.
The assertion that climate scientists are being censored first surfaced in January when James Hansen, who directs NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told the New York Times and The Washington Post that the administration sought to muzzle him after he gave a lecture in December calling for cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. (NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin issued new rules recently that make clear that its scientists are free to talk to members of the media about their scientific findings and to express personal interpretations of those findings.
Two weeks later, Hansen suggested to an audience at the New School University in New York that his counterparts at NOAA were experiencing even more severe censorship. "It seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United States," he told the crowd.

The Missing Piece

This is in addition to the Gaia coverup follies I reported on last week. There has been at least one major breaking story every day. I’m sure that its all planned that way for our entertainment. But through all this expose extravaganza, one big chunk is yet to be uncovered by the mainstream, and that is Lovelock’s new book, Revenge of Gaia. I discussed this book in my just released article in the April – May issue of NY Spirit, “Earth In Crisis” (with William Meyers) in some detail, based on reviews, and interviews, and it turns out, seems to be the only mention in print in the United States of this book.

Why do reports on ice sheets melting and glaciers vanishing and NASA administrators being tortured like Allied spies in Nazi Germany get coverage, but Revenge of Gaia does not? Why the special treatment? Because its good? In fact, that’s probably part of it….. It’s true, and the truer it is the worse it is and the greater the liability. Is just like the movie The Insider with Russell Crowe, who is probably on the phone to his agent right now saying, “I didn’t get an oscar statue for playing Jeffry Wygand (big tobacco’s leading whistle blower) . Let me do James Hansen!”

I traveled to Canada to obtain an imported copy of “Revenge of Gaia” from England, and it was expensive and was selling out. If you go on AmazonUK and pay by credit card in Sterling Pounds, it will probably come out to about $35, maybe more. It might be a good investment in the future. But by the time it arrives, the CE levels might have gone up five points.

One thing some people won’t like about the book is that it is strongly in favor of Nuclear power plants. He makes a good case, but he comes off sounding a bit biased. In fact, on Easter Sunday, Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore published an article in the Washington Post (who is breaking a lot of these stories these days) saying that he was wrong about nuclear power, and that it is the only way to replace coal based generators. I will include that article later. So that particular obstacle to the book’s acceptance is quickly dwindling, because in fact, he’s right. There have been no significant incidents involving nuclear power in the US; three mile island was a close call, but protective measures did their job. And yet no nuclear plants have been built in the US since the 1980s. This has meant trillions of dollars for the coal companies and for big oil. Coal generators also produce 36 percent of US emissions, 10% of global emissions as well. There are 600 coal fired electric plants in the US, which is 600 too many.

But that’s not why the Lovelock book is blacked out. It is a missing person because it mentions blue green algae and we aren’t supposed to know about that slimy little secret here in the US. The situation with blue green algae approaches a kind of sketchy certainty (within a huge ball park the size of the earth) one which demands specific actions which will mean less billions for oil companies and coal companies. Apparently cars are more important than people.

You see, little blue green algae don’t like cars, or at least what comes out of cars. Why do we care about a bunch of slimes? They outnumber us. And they run the planet, not us.

Carbon emissions were at about 89 ppm before the industrial revolution. They are now at about 390 ppm and rising steadily. Temperatures have risen about 2.7 degrees centigrade globally since then, (from about 56o F to about 60 o F) although people argue over this, but the temperatures are also rising steadily, some say in lock step with CE levels. This is in spite of blue green algae all over the world which has been busy trying to suck in CEs and keep the temperature down as well. According to a number of different computer models of climate dynamics, when the CEs reach 500 ppm, the temperature will reach 16o Centigrate, or about 62o F, and the blue green algae all over the world will die. This is a slight oversimplification, but that’s what the math tells us. Even with a margin of error of 10% we are still in trouble, especially if we end up on the short side of that 10%.

The algae will die mainly because the increased heat will create an ocean layer of warm water that algae can’t live in, too thick for the light to reach the algae. This will happen to varying degrees at various latitudes, in fact it is already happening. Just recently there are reports of blue green algae disappearing in the northern oceans. Just letting you know.

Running a climate without algae is like running an engine without coolant. According to the models, when the algae crashes, the temperature soars from 16C to 24C or from 62 o F to 78o F. I accidentally turned up the heating unit on the fish tank when I was a kid and left it on. When I came back a few hours later, all the fish were dead. The difference in temperature was not much different than that in Lovelocks’ computer model. I will never forget the sight of all those dead fish. I wish you could have seen them. It put me in a frame of mind to pay attention to details and to hear about warming oceans and other mayhem forty years later. That’s what will happen to the earth only worse. As the dead algae decays, it releases more methane and more carbon dioxide and that heats up the atmosphere a whole lot more. The great changes in temperature create huge wind storms around the earth, and deserts will form almost everywhere, with some rapidity. The 50% increase in hurricane activity of late has been linked to one degree rise in ocean temperatures. Imagine what 16 more degrees will do. Earth will begin to look more like the other planets in the solar system, the ones we can’t survive on either.

Another factor to consider, if you’re planning to wait out the storm, is that oceans expand considerably when heated. Some say that the ocean water has expanded 8 inches since the 1800s, so when experts say that the water volume has increased by an infinitesimal amount so far due to ice caps melting, that’s true, but misleading. If the algae goes away, we may see the water rise several feet rather quickly. And the heat will only continue to rise, as most of the things that keep planets cool get toasted in the new atmosphere, a scenario in fact just as bizarre as the different one posited in Day After Tomorrow, which took a reverse hypothesis, just so they could make a joke about Mexico.

Now Canada’s leader Harper is talking about cutting all programs to fund global warming management programs, but is leaving the bureaucrats in place with nothing to do but take home a salary. That’ll work.

This article appeared April 18th, 2006
Ottawa plan hacks green programs
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT AND MICHAEL DEN TANDT
The new Conservative government has decided to slash spending on Environment Canada programs designed to fight global warming by 80 per cent, and wants cuts of 40 per cent in the budgets devoted to climate change at other ministries, according to cabinet documents obtained by The Globe and Mail.
The documents also say that the Conservatives' campaign promise of tax breaks for transit passes would cost up to $2-billion over five years, but would result in an insignificant cut in greenhouse-gas emissions because the incentives are expected to spur only a small increase in the number of people willing to trade using cars for buses and subways.
The section of the documents on the budget cuts, written by an unidentified government official after a cabinet meeting in late March that approved the reductions, also said the Tories want to try to claw back $260-million the Liberals had pledged to the United Nations to fund its international climate-change programs.
Federal funding for wind power, considered by environmentalists to be one of the cleanest new energy sources, "is also uncertain," the documents said.
Ryan Sparrow, a spokesman for Environment Minister Rona Ambrose, refused to confirm or deny the details in the leak, and said the government hasn't finalized its decisions on climate change.
"Once there is an announcement to be made, we'll make one," Mr. Sparrow said.
The documents were obtained by the opposition Liberals and bolster previous reports that large-scale cuts have been under way in climate-change programs, such as the highly visible One Tonne Challenge, which had much of its funding abruptly axed without public announcement in late March.
The Tories have indicated that they are ambivalent about the Kyoto Protocol to fight climate change, planning to neither pull out of the treaty nor meet its emission-reduction targets.
According to the documents, the Tories have yet to develop their unique Canadian-based set of actions.
"No process has been put in place to determine next steps on climate change or to develop the new 'made in Canada' climate plan," the documents said.
The documents said that while the Tories are trying to save money by cutting the programs designed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, they won't cut government staff positions, so most of the money earmarked for climate change will be going to salaries for bureaucrats.
"Only $375-million was approved for climate spending, with most of the dollars covering staff salaries until the new government determines next steps.
"What is clear is that staff will have little to do and that they will have no budgets to spend over the next year and that more cuts are coming."
According to the documents, the programs are being eliminated to help fund tax cuts, including the GST reduction the Tories pledged during the election, and to fund the transit-pass scheme.
The global-warming programs are being eliminated even though a Treasury Board review of government spending found that the vast majority of 166 such programs run by Ottawa were considered cost effective.
The review, which was begun by the Liberals and completed last fall, found only 22 programs were ineffective. The Treasury Board information was supposed to be used to reallocate funding from programs that weren't working to those that were achieving better results.
The Liberals did not deal with the review before the election, and many federal initiatives didn't have budget allocations after March 31, the end of the government's fiscal year.
Environmentalists reacted angrily to the cuts. John Bennett, a spokesman for the Sierra Club of Canada, accused the Tories of having a "slash and burn campaign."
The documents also show that senior officials in the Environment Ministry have told the government that its proposed tax credit for transit users will have virtually no impact on greenhouse-gas emissions and only a small effect on riders.
"A wide range of data suggests that people are not very responsive to changes in transit fares," said a memo prepared for Ms. Ambrose last week by officials in the office of her deputy minister. ". . . while the ridership impacts of the tax incentives are not known with precision, analysis suggests they will be low."
The six-page memo outlines five transit tax-incentive options, ranging from a 16-per-cent tax credit for all fares, at a projected cost of $2-billion over five years, to a credit for monthly pass holders only, at $1-billion, to the same credit for high-school students only, at a cost of $90-million.
The memo makes clear that the second option is the one the government prefers. But its benefits to transit users may be nullified, the memo states, because "it could be quite easy for the transit authorities to raise their fares to absorb the benefit of the tax credit."
The Canadian Urban Transit Association has estimated that the proposed tax break would increase transit use by up to 30 per cent by 2016. But in another Environment Minister memo drafted for Ms. Ambrose, ministry officials say that, based on a 1997 Canadian study, as well as a U.S. Department of Labour survey in 2004, use can be expected to increase between 2 per cent and 4 per cent. That means the effect on emissions will be negligible, the documents show.
Moving Right Along
One thing Canada has going for it is that it is building nuclear power plants. In the past, this has been controversial among the environmentally in the know, and some have foreseen possible civil war and even revolution over this issue as the blue green threshold of death approaches. But with the miraculous Easter morning resurrection of nuclear power, with GreenPeace founder Patrick Moore playing the part of John the Baptist, in that morning’s edition of the Washington Post, it is likely that such delays and battles will probably be averted. It will however take a lot of time to tear down 600 coal plants and build 600 nuclear ones in their place, remembering of course to clean up all the nuke waste and stuff it into swimming pools afterwards.

Here is that article in full. I suggest you read the whole thing. It agrees with Lovelock on the essential issue of nuclear power, but is more even handed concerning passive sources, which is admittedly a flaw in the “Revenge” book.

Going Nuclear
A Green Makes the Case
By Patrick Moore
Sunday, April 16, 2006; Page B01
In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.
Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions -- or nearly 10 percent of global emissions -- of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.
I say that guardedly, of course, just days after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country had enriched uranium. "The nuclear technology is only for the purpose of peace and nothing else," he said. But there is widespread speculation that, even though the process is ostensibly dedicated to producing electricity, it is in fact a cover for building nuclear weapons.
And although I don't want to underestimate the very real dangers of nuclear technology in the hands of rogue states, we cannot simply ban every technology that is dangerous. That was the all-or-nothing mentality at the height of the Cold War, when anything nuclear seemed to spell doom for humanity and the environment. In 1979, Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon produced a frisson of fear with their starring roles in "The China Syndrome," a fictional evocation of nuclear disaster in which a reactor meltdown threatens a city's survival. Less than two weeks after the blockbuster film opened, a reactor core meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear power plant sent shivers of very real anguish throughout the country.
What nobody noticed at the time, though, was that Three Mile Island was in fact a success story: The concrete containment structure did just what it was designed to do -- prevent radiation from escaping into the environment. And although the reactor itself was crippled, there was no injury or death among nuclear workers or nearby residents. Three Mile Island was the only serious accident in the history of nuclear energy generation in the United States, but it was enough to scare us away from further developing the technology: There hasn't been a nuclear plant ordered up since then.
Today, there are 103 nuclear reactors quietly delivering just 20 percent of America's electricity. Eighty percent of the people living within 10 miles of these plants approve of them (that's not including the nuclear workers). Although I don't live near a nuclear plant, I am now squarely in their camp.
And I am not alone among seasoned environmental activists in changing my mind on this subject. British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory, believes that nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Stewart Brand, founder of the "Whole Earth Catalog," says the environmental movement must embrace nuclear energy to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. On occasion, such opinions have been met with excommunication from the anti-nuclear priesthood: The late British Bishop Hugh Montefiore, founder and director of Friends of the Earth, was forced to resign from the group's board after he wrote a pro-nuclear article in a church newsletter.
There are signs of a new willingness to listen, though, even among the staunchest anti-nuclear campaigners. When I attended the Kyoto climate meeting in Montreal last December, I spoke to a packed house on the question of a sustainable energy future. I argued that the only way to reduce fossil fuel emissions from electrical production is through an aggressive program of renewable energy sources (hydroelectric, geothermal heat pumps, wind, etc.) plus nuclear. The Greenpeace spokesperson was first at the mike for the question period, and I expected a tongue-lashing. Instead, he began by saying he agreed with much of what I said -- not the nuclear bit, of course, but there was a clear feeling that all options must be explored.
Here's why: Wind and solar power have their place, but because they are intermittent and unpredictable they simply can't replace big baseload plants such as coal, nuclear and hydroelectric. Natural gas, a fossil fuel, is too expensive already, and its price is too volatile to risk building big baseload plants. Given that hydroelectric resources are built pretty much to capacity, nuclear is, by elimination, the only viable substitute for coal. It's that simple.
That's not to say that there aren't real problems -- as well as various myths -- associated with nuclear energy. Each concern deserves careful consideration:
• Nuclear energy is expensive. It is in fact one of the least expensive energy sources. In 2004, the average cost of producing nuclear energy in the United States was less than two cents per kilowatt-hour, comparable with coal and hydroelectric. Advances in technology will bring the cost down further in the future.
• Nuclear plants are not safe. Although Three Mile Island was a success story, the accident at Chernobyl, 20 years ago this month, was not. But Chernobyl was an accident waiting to happen. This early model of Soviet reactor had no containment vessel, was an inherently bad design and its operators literally blew it up. The multi-agency U.N. Chernobyl Forum reported last year that 56 deaths could be directly attributed to the accident, most of those from radiation or burns suffered while fighting the fire. Tragic as those deaths were, they pale in comparison to the more than 5,000 coal-mining deaths that occur worldwide every year. No one has died of a radiation-related accident in the history of the U.S. civilian nuclear reactor program. (And although hundreds of uranium mine workers did die from radiation exposure underground in the early years of that industry, that problem was long ago corrected.) • Nuclear waste will be dangerous for thousands of years. Within 40 years, used fuel has less than one-thousandth of the radioactivity it had when it was removed from the reactor. And it is incorrect to call it waste, because 95 percent of the potential energy is still contained in the used fuel after the first cycle. Now that the United States has removed the ban on recycling used fuel, it will be possible to use that energy and to greatly reduce the amount of waste that needs treatment and disposal. Last month, Japan joined France, Britain and Russia in the nuclear-fuel-recycling business. The United States will not be far behind.
• Nuclear reactors are vulnerable to terrorist attack. The six-feet-thick reinforced concrete containment vessel protects the contents from the outside as well as the inside. And even if a jumbo jet did crash into a reactor and breach the containment, the reactor would not explode. There are many types of facilities that are far more vulnerable, including liquid natural gas plants, chemical plants and numerous political targets.
• Nuclear fuel can be diverted to make nuclear weapons. This is the most serious issue associated with nuclear energy and the most difficult to address, as the example of Iran shows. But just because nuclear technology can be put to evil purposes is not an argument to ban its use.
Over the past 20 years, one of the simplest tools -- the machete -- has been used to kill more than a million people in Africa, far more than were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings combined. What are car bombs made of? Diesel oil, fertilizer and cars. If we banned everything that can be used to kill people, we would never have harnessed fire.
The only practical approach to the issue of nuclear weapons proliferation is to put it higher on the international agenda and to use diplomacy and, where necessary, force to prevent countries or terrorists from using nuclear materials for destructive ends. And new technologies such as the reprocessing system recently introduced in Japan (in which the plutonium is never separated from the uranium) can make it much more difficult for terrorists or rogue states to use civilian materials to manufacture weapons.
The 600-plus coal-fired plants emit nearly 2 billion tons of CO2annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from about 300 million automobiles. In addition, the Clean Air Council reports that coal plants are responsible for 64 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions, 26 percent of nitrous oxides and 33 percent of mercury emissions. These pollutants are eroding the health of our environment, producing acid rain, smog, respiratory illness and mercury contamination.
Meanwhile, the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States effectively avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2emissions annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from more than 100 million automobiles. Imagine if the ratio of coal to nuclear were reversed so that only 20 percent of our electricity was generated from coal and 60 percent from nuclear. This would go a long way toward cleaning the air and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Every responsible environmentalist should support a move in that direction.
pmoore@greenspirit.com
I have yet to quote from the April 3rd issue of TIME magazine directly in these articles, but it is a must read. That was the issue in which a great number of burning stories about the new acceleration in global warming were first broken into the mainstream, presumably against some opposition from mysterious forces that had clobbered some rather hefty wanna-be green publishers. It was as impressive as the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence in that regard.

In a few days I will release the third edition of my Proposal for Addressing Climate Change. Thank you all for your continuing advice. We certainly need to do something, and there are many things we can do that will work. I am trying to find someone who will go on the record to say how many trees of what species are sufficient to create enough oxygen for one person during the leafing season. Please send me any tidbits on that. I also plan to publish some time soon a review of Revenge of Gaia.

Watch for Eliot Spitzer’s Earth Day Speech on Saturday, April 22nd, at 5 PM. He has the best record of any elected official in the US on environmental issues. He plans to talk about global warming. Let us respect his courage on this. It is still not politically safe ground to tread for a candidate, and a victory would open doors for other political leaders.

2006-04-05T13:57:00.000-07:00

MEDIA WATCH: THE GAIA CONSPIRACY
Copyright c for Earthwatch By Evan Pritchard

Last week, TIME Magazine did what no one else seemed to be able to do, to publish an article about the new accelerated pace of global warming, right under the noses of the Bush administration. The date on the cover was April 3rd, however it was already sold out in stores across the country by April 3rd, and everyone was talking about it. “Be Worried, Be Very Worried!: were the ominous words on the cover. On Monday, April 3rd, I went to see a screening of an unfinished documentary by “Blue Vinyl” director/producer (Toxic Comedy Pictures danielbeegold@earthlink.net) Daniel Gold, called “Melting Planet.” It was somewhat in the Fahreheit 911 tradition, but looking to be a little more mainstream, more folksy, and also informative. There were priceless interviews with born- again Christians, revving up to meet the Lord, clueless folks who never heard of global warming, and hard-working people like you and me, saying “I can hardly make a living; what am I supposed to do about it?” Gold also interviewed author Ross Gelbspan, who candidly told us how terrible it was to be an expert on global warming, and demonstrated his frustration by making a box out of cardboard to put his own publications into storage.

I had brought the TIME magazine article, and Gold took it and held it up to the audience four different times, quoting from memory what it said, “The debate is over..” I did the same thing with both of my Marist classes the week leading up to April 3rd. That TIME article may turn out to be one of the most important documents printed in the US since the Bill of Rights, however that is only true if anyone reads it and does something about it. Otherwise it will just get burned and add CO2 to the atmosphere.

We watched snowmakers at a ski lodge in Utah watching moths in their headlights in January, waiting in vain for 26o or lower, so they could make snow. We saw the native peoples of Shishmarif, watching the permafrost melt and begin packing for the mainland. We watched Heidi the Weather Channel expert find a way to announce back in 2004 that Global Warming was “real.” We learned that the US is producing 4 billion tons of carbon emissions a year. We watched as a “Death of Environmentalism” movement caught hold.

TIME’s article was, to say the least, timely! But Gold said that one of the most important writings on global warming was a little-known memo, that has become known as “The Luntz Memo.” It was written in 2000 by a consulting company advising the Republican re-election campaign, and it said, basically, “As long as the public doesn’t believe there is a consensus, the debate will continue.” It advised the Republican party leaders to keep attacking the uncertainty of the science involved.

This is exactly what has happened during the last six years, and with great effect. And yet, according to Gold, our majority in Washington took things one step further and had government and corporate lawyers with no background in science, rewrite Exxon-funded (and other funded) studies, removing all language that sounded certain, and inserting the uncertainty that the situation, according to the Luntz Memo, required. Then the politicians would comment on the uncertainty with a dismissive air.

Global Warming
“The scientific debate remains open. Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to scientists and other experts in the field.”
The Luntz Memo.
(page 137)

According to Gold, James Hansen had appeared before Congress with this message way back in 1988, (That was before carbon emissions had even reached 1990 levels, which the signers of the Kyoto agreement now long for nostalgically) and read from his research stating that global warming was a fact. He was treated like a “doomsday nut” and dismissed. 1991 to 1995 were consecutive record heat years. Late in 2005, he began his tirades again, and was accused of being disloyal to the President. Now his reports must pass across the President’s desk in the feared Oval Office before he can read them.

I stated that Lovelock’s book was released on February 2nd, in the UK and yet seemed to have disappeared in the US. Gold agreed, and said he has been looking for it, and asking people in the book industry, but had not heard anything at all.

Lovelock said that his book “Revenge of Gaia” would be published on February 2nd, 2006, ie: Ground Hogs’ Day because in pagan tradition, that is the day on which prognostications are made, predictions of the future. That’s the day the groundhog sees his shadow. It was also announced that the US publication by Penguin Putnam would be on March 2nd. The book was released around February 2nd in the UK to rave reviews, however the US publication never happened. In fact it is not listed in the on-line books in print, nor have any booksellers in the US been notified of its existence. Rumor has it that Basic Books will pick it up in the fall. It is currently on sale in Ottawa, Canada and consumers have described it as a “small but expensive import,” about 140 pages and $30 Canadian currency. As of this writing, I have not met anyone in the US who has seen it.

Penguin USA has the rights to publish a book by a famous author, his most important book, and a sure best seller. However, they don’t publish it. One must consider the possibility that they got stepped on, however Penguin Putnam is a giant of the publishing industry and very independent at that. They try to live up to the legacy of Ian Ballantine.
When this scenario was mentioned to an employee of Penguin Putnam, they said no one could step on this company, that it would make the New York Times. Welll……..

Andrew Revkin, top science writer for the New York Times, wrote an important article in which he talked about the melting of the ice of Greenland, and said that the rise in ocean levels was now irreversible. He said it could possibly raise the ocean 20 feet above current levels, destroying much of Florida and many of the great coastal cities of the US. This article was posted on the internet at the NY Times site as part of the “Science Section” and dated March 24th, a Friday. It apparently only appeared in one local late edition of the Times. Many of the facts and findings were the same or similar to those mentioned in Lovelock’s book. Apparently the BBC broadcast the same or similar story to Revkin.

One of the few sources to bring this information to the internet is Common Dreams. They quote from British papers on this issue, as nothing else is available. Here are some excerpts from websites regarding James Lovelock and the Gaia Theory, plus Jack Todd Thomas Lovejoy, James Hansen and others.

Here are some quotes from Lovelock

The Independent Jan 16th

“We are in a fool’s climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over, billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.” James Lovelock

“She (Gaia) has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years.” Lovelock

“Had it been known then (in the time of Charles Darwin) that life and the environment are closely coupled, Darwin would have seen that evolution involved not just the organisms, but the whole planetary surface. We might then have looked upon the Earth as if it were alive…” Lovelock

“..So what should we do? ….realize how little time is left to act; and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilization for as long as they can.” Lovelock

“We should be the heart and mind of the Earth, not its malady. So let us be brave and cease thinking of human needs and rights alone, and see that we have harmed the living earth and need to make or peace with Gaia. We must do it while we are still strong enough to negotiate, and not a broken rabble led by brutal war lords…” Lovelock

“We will do our best to survive but, sadly, I can’t see the US or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time and they are the main source of emissions. The worst will happen and survivors will have to adapt to a hell of a climate.” Lovelock.

James Lovelock is an independent environmental scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society. The Revenge of Gaia, scheduled for release Feb. 2nrd 2006 is published by Penguin. He was part of a NASA team in 1965 to look for life on other planets.

Lovejoy heads the H. John Heinz III center for Science Economics and the Environment. He is the author of Global Warming and Biological Diversity.”
Article by David Ignatius Common Dreams

“Lovejoy fears that changes in the Amazon’ ecosystem may be irreversible.” David Ignatius, Common Dreams.

He describes a snowball of drying factors that is happening, and drought is spreading.

Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker ran a three part series last spring, mentioning the shrinking of the Arcitic sea ice by 250 million acres since 1979; the first thawing of the permafrost in 120,000 years. In a recent article “butterfly lessons” she showed how these creatures are moving to new habitats.

Dr. Charles David Keeling, a Scripps marine chemist was the first to confirm the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 1957. It has risen more than 14% since that time. Scripps Oceanographic Society

It has been discovered that the ice age ended abruptly 15,000 years ago, as temperatures rose 16 degrees in less than two decades. From Scripps Oceanographic Society

QUOTABLE QUOTES REGARDING GLOBAL WARMING

“It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.” Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker

“An Antarctic ice shelf that was 200 metres thick and had a surface area of 3,250 square kilometers has broken apart in less than a month.” BBC 3/19/02

“We knew what was left (of the Larsen B ice shelf) would collapse eventually, but the speed of it is staggering.” David Vaughan, a glaciologist at Cambridge.

“Scripps scientists have discovered an 1800 year cycle of oceanic tides that appears to drive changes in earth’s climate….strong tides bring cool conditions to the sea surface..weak tides lead to less cold water mixings and warming periods on Earth. Research at Scripps has shown that Earth is currently in a period in which a natural rise in global temperature..combined with warming from the greenhouse effect will push the planet through an era of rapid global warming.” Scripps Oceanographic Society:

“James Hutton (1726-1797) the father of geology, once described Earth as a kind of superorganism.” Oceansonline.com

“We are in a fool’s climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over, billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.” James Lovelock

“She (Gaia) has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years.” Lovelock

“Climate-change scientists have been warning about the rise in temperatures reaching a “tipping point” when carbon and methane locked up in the Amazon rainforest and Arctic ice would be released into the atmosphere as the climate becomes warmer and drier.” The Scotsman Jan 17 2006

“I would agree we are committed to a certain amount of climate change already. We cannot stop what’s happening, all we can do is slow it down.” Dr. Richard Betts, Climate modeler, Devon

“I don’t think anyone could put any sort of figure on how many people will survive.” Dr. Richard Betts.

“The collapse of the Gulf Stream appears to be unlikely to happen at least in the next 100 years, but it’s theoretically possible it could happen. It’s low probability, but would have a high impact.” Dr. Richard Betts

“Lovejoy fears that changes in the Amazon’ ecosystem may be irreversible.” David Ignatius, Common Dreams.

“People will be killed by climate change in this century. I’d be reasonably confident in that statement.” Dr Myles Allen, Oxford University.

“If the Arctic was to start releasing vast amounts of methane…it wouldn’t necessarily be a planet-destroying event.” Dr. Myles Allen

“Everything he (Lovelock) is writing has to be taken very seriously. Its not just some Doomsday Prediction.” John Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change Research.

“Many human lives are at stake if we don’t do anything about global warming.”
John Schellnhuber

“We could cut carbon emissions by 90 per cent by 2030..just within the realms of possibility..the tipping point is probably around 2025..just last year there was a new study saying British soil has become a source of carbon. Things can happen very quickly and far sooner than we are expecting…Last year there was a big conference in Exeter and what came out of that is we have only ten years in which we can take some meaningful action.”..If we do not do anything in that (timeframe) we might as well forget about it. Once we get to a certain point with global warming, its out of our hands.” George Monbiot British environmentalist The Scotsman Jan 17th 2006

Note: Jack Todd is also called John Todd and his group is called Oceans Ark, and has built amazing “green architecture” sites all over the world. Nancy Jack Todd is his wife who is an equal partner, and is writing a book. She is editor of Annals of Earth and Vice President of Ocean Arks International. She can be reached at (508)548-8161

The Famed Hansen-NASA Censorship Article

Here is a now-famous article about James Hansen by leading science writer Andrew Revkin.

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: January 29, 2006
The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

Dr. James Hansen on Global Warming
Dr. Hansen's Recent Lectures and Papers (columbia.edu)

Dr. Goklany's Papers on Climate Change
The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.
Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. "They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public," he said.
Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the space agency, said there was no effort to silence Dr. Hansen. "That's not the way we operate here at NASA," Mr. Acosta said. "We promote openness and we speak with the facts."
He said the restrictions on Dr. Hansen applied to all National Aeronautics and Space Administration personnel. He added that government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen.
Mr. Acosta said other reasons for requiring press officers to review interview requests were to have an orderly flow of information out of a sprawling agency and to avoid surprises. "This is not about any individual or any issue like global warming," he said. "It's about coordination."
Dr. Hansen strongly disagreed with this characterization, saying such procedures had already prevented the public from fully grasping recent findings about climate change that point to risks ahead.
"Communicating with the public seems to be essential," he said, "because public concern is probably the only thing capable of overcoming the special interests that have obfuscated the topic."
Dr. Hansen, 63, a physicist who joined the space agency in 1967, directs efforts to simulate the global climate on computers at the Goddard Institute in Morningside Heights in Manhattan.
Since 1988, he has been issuing public warnings about the long-term threat from heat-trapping emissions, dominated by carbon dioxide, that are an unavoidable byproduct of burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels. He has had run-ins with politicians or their appointees in various administrations, including budget watchers in the first Bush administration and Vice President Al Gore.
In 2001, Dr. Hansen was invited twice to brief Vice President Dick Cheney and other cabinet members on climate change. White House officials were interested in his findings showing that cleaning up soot, which also warms the atmosphere, was an effective and far easier first step than curbing carbon dioxide.
He fell out of favor with the White House in 2004 after giving a speech at the University of Iowa before the presidential election, in which he complained that government climate scientists were being muzzled and said he planned to vote for Senator John Kerry.
But Dr. Hansen said that nothing in 30 years equaled the push made since early December to keep him from publicly discussing what he says are clear-cut dangers from further delay in curbing carbon dioxide.
In several interviews with The New York Times in recent days, Dr. Hansen said it would be irresponsible not to speak out, particularly because NASA's mission statement includes the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet."
He said he was particularly incensed that the directives had come through telephone conversations and not through formal channels, leaving no significant trails of documents.
Dr. Hansen's supervisor, Franco Einaudi, said there had been no official "order or pressure to say shut Jim up." But Dr. Einaudi added, "That doesn't mean I like this kind of pressure being applied."
The fresh efforts to quiet him, Dr. Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the talk, he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different planet."
The administration's policy is to use voluntary measures to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions.
After that speech and the release of data by Dr. Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr. Hansen said in interviews.
Among the restrictions, according to Dr. Hansen and an internal draft memorandum he provided to The Times, was that his supervisors could stand in for him in any news media interviews.

Here is the text of a subsequent Andrew Revkin article, dateline March 24th, New York Times, which apparently only appeared in a late local edition of the New York Times.

The Lost NEW YORK TIMES Article
of Andrew Revkin

This important article by leading science writer Andrew Revkin, was published on the New York Times webpage on March 24th which is a Friday not a Tuesday, when most science articles appear and apparently only appeared in print in a local metro late edition of the Times. Here is the article in full.

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: March 24, 2006
Within the next 100 years, the growing human influence on Earth's climate could lead to a long and irreversible rise in sea levels by eroding the planet's vast polar ice sheets, according to new observations and analysis by several teams of scientists.
One team, using computer models of climate and ice, found that by about 2100, average temperatures could be four degrees higher than today and that over the coming centuries, the oceans could rise 13 to 20 feet — conditions last seen 129,000 years ago, between the last two ice ages.
The findings, being reported today in the journal Science, are consistent with other recent studies of melting and erosion at the poles. Many experts say there are still uncertainties about timing, extent and causes.
But Jonathan T. Overpeck of the University of Arizona, a lead author of one of the studies, said the new findings made a strong case for the danger of failing to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat in a greenhouselike effect.
"If we don't like the idea of flooding out New Orleans, major portions of South Florida, and many other valued parts of the coastal U.S.," Dr. Overpeck said, "we will have to commit soon to a major effort to stop most emissions of carbon to the atmosphere."
According to the computer simulations, the global nature of the warming from greenhouse gases, which diffuse around the atmosphere, could amplify the melting around Antarctica beyond that of the last warm period, which was driven mainly by extra sunlight reaching the Northern Hemisphere.
The researchers also said that stains from dark soot drifting from power plants and vehicles could hasten melting in the Arctic by increasing the amount of solar energy absorbed by ice.
The rise in sea levels, driven by loss of ice from Greenland and West Antarctica, would occur over many centuries and be largely irreversible, but could be delayed by curbing emissions of the greenhouse gases, said Dr. Overpeck and his fellow lead author, Bette L. Otto-Bliesner of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
In a second article in Science, researchers say they have detected a rising frequency of earthquakelike rumblings in the bedrock beneath Greenland's two-mile-thick ice cap in late summer since 1993. They say there is no obvious explanation other than abrupt movements of the overlying ice caused by surface melting.
The jostling of that giant ice-cloaked island is five times more frequent in summer than in winter, and has greatly intensified since 2002, the researchers found. The data mesh with recent satellite readings showing that the ice can lurch toward the sea during the melting season.
The analysis was led by Goran Ekstrom of Harvard and Meredith Nettles of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., part of Columbia University.
H. Jay Zwally, a NASA scientist studying the polar ice sheets with satellites, said the seismic signals from ice movement were consistent with his discovery in 2002 that summer melting on the surface of Greenland's ice sheets could almost immediately spur them to shift measurably. The meltwater apparently trickles through fissures and lubricates the interface between ice and underlying rock.
"Models are important, but measurements tell the real story," Dr. Zwally said. "During the last 10 years, we have seen only about 10 percent of the greenhouse warming expected during the next 100 years, but already the polar ice sheets are responding in ways we didn't even know about only a few years ago."
In both Antarctica and Greenland, it appears that warming waters are also at work, melting the protruding tongues of ice where glaciers flow into the sea or intruding beneath ice sheets, like those in western Antarctica, that lie mostly below sea level. Both processes can cause the ice to flow more readily, scientists say.
Many experts on climate and the poles, citing evidence from past natural warm periods, agreed with the general notion that a world much warmer than today's, regardless of the cause of warming, will have higher sea levels.
But significant disagreements remain over whether recent changes in sea level and ice conditions cited in the new studies could be attributed to rising concentrations of the greenhouse gases and temperatures linked by most experts to human activities.
Sea levels have been rising for thousands of years as an aftereffect of the warming and polar melting that followed the last ice age, which ended about 10,000 years ago. Discriminating between that residual effect and any new influence from human actions remains impossible for the moment, many experts say.
Satellites and tide gauges show that seas rose about eight inches over the last century and the pace has picked up markedly since the 1990's.
Dr. Overpeck, the co-author of the paper on rising sea levels, acknowledged the uncertainties about the causes. But he said that in a world in which humans, rich and poor, increasingly clustered on coasts, the risks were great enough to justify prompt action.
"People driving big old S.U.V.'s to their favorite beach or coastal golf course," he said, should "start to think twice about what they might be doing."
END

The following article appeared on March 20th in the Washington Post. It ties in with a number of articles that were apparently squelched elsewhere.

Early Spring Disturbing Life on Northern Rivers
By Cheryl Lyn Dybas
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, March 20, 2006; Page A05
THE GLEN, N.Y. -- The winter-old river ice is creaking and groaning, shifting position. Spring has come early to the frozen upper Hudson River, and ice-out is just around the corner.
Lilliputian wildflowers will soon line the Hudson's banks. In what are known as riverside ice meadows, an ancient cycle of ice formation and melting gives rise to swamp candles, ladies'-tresses, wood lilies and other rare, diminutive flowers. In New York's Adirondack Mountains, ice that forms on the river in winter is pushed onto its banks in spring; there it scours the sloping cobble shores, keeping them free of shrubs and small trees and leaving space for wildflowers to sprout in fragile, arctic-like ice meadows.
But the future for these floral pixies, which depend on late-melting river ice, is bleak. The number of days of ice on northeastern rivers has declined significantly in recent winters, said hydrologist Glenn Hodgkins of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Maine Water Science Center in Augusta.
The trend could spell disaster for the ice meadows. It also signals trouble ahead for endangered Atlantic salmon and other fish, for wetlands plants and animals, and for Northern economies, all of which are sustained by winters with icy rivers.
If the pattern continues, say scientists, only in Currier and Ives prints will ice skaters twirl across frozen New England rivers.
"Northeastern rivers have 20 fewer days of ice cover each winter now than they did in 1936," said Hodgkins, who said the total now averages 92 days. "A lot of that decrease has occurred since the 1960s."
Hodgkins has studied 16 rivers in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. In recent years, the data show, 12 of the 16 rivers had much earlier spring ice-out dates.
"On average, ice-out dates were 11 days earlier in 2000 than in 1936," Hodgkins said. "These changes are linked to warmer temperatures in late winter and early spring."
Winter, it appears, is melting around the edges.
Research by Hodgkins and USGS scientist Robert Dudley also shows changes in early-spring stream flow across eastern North America from Minnesota to Newfoundland. Rivers are gushing with snow- and ice-melt as much as 10 to 15 days sooner than they did 50 to 90 years ago, based on USGS records.
Hodgkins and Dudley's results are scheduled to be published Tuesday in the online edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

RIVER WARMING
Since 1936, gauges in northern New England rivers have recorded a steady decline in the annual number of days of river ice, a change that threatens Atlantic salmon, wetlands plants and Northern economies.
Number of days river flows were affected by ice
River 1936 2000 Drop
Allagash 138 129 9
St. John 134 124 10
Missisquoi 123 93 30
Piscataquis 119 105 14
Fish 118 93 25
Sandy 117 104 13
Swift 107 79 28
Saco 98 81 17
Oyster 51 31 20
CORRECTION: A chart with a March 20 Science article on river ice contained an incorrect scale, making it appear that some New England rivers had fewer days of river ice than they actually did. The decrease in average annual days of river ice from 1936 to 2000 for the selected rivers is reflected in this updated chart.
SOURCE: Glenn Hodgkins, U.S. Geological Survey
WHO'S BLOGGING?
Read what bloggers are saying about this article.
• Liberal Rage (tm)
• facts and information about Flowers and Florists

So there you have it: While “Global ecological chaos” is a phenomenon that even conservative sources were admitting by the end of last year, now almost everyone is admitting to “Global Warming” as well. That is some measure of progress, very slow moving progress. I would say it was a “glacial pace,” however that term now seems to indicated great speed, not slowness.

The question is still being debated, “Has there been an organized conspiracy to squelch information about global warming here in the US?” From here, it looks like the answer is “yes,” but a fairly subtle and well-orchestrated one, based on the Luntz memo.

March Madness March 31

2006-03-31T23:06:00.000-08:00

This evening I wrote the following April Fools email and submitted it to the Onion, although it is against their policy to print it.

PRESS RELEASE: APRIL ONE, 2006

Louisiana, Texas, and Florida File Zillion Dollar Law Suit Against President Bush, Dick Cheney and Others
For Failing to Sign Kyoto Agreement, and “Negligent Failure to Curtail Global Warming In Time To Prevent Hurricane Katrina.” Other International Law Suits to Follow.

In light of recent scientific findings released in the current (April 3rd )issue of TIME magazine’s cover story “Special Report: Global Warming” (Be Worried, Be VERY Worried) by Jeffrey Kluger, the states of Louisiana, Texas, Florida, and Alabama, have now filed a law suit to recover damages from all hurricanes now seen to be caused by global warming. The article suggests there may be a link between carbon emissions and environmental disasters such as hurricanes, rising oceans, tornados, drought, and melting glaciers. The defendants listed in the suit include George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Carl Rove, Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, Texaco-Chevron, Unocal, Chevrolet, General Motors, Ford, and numerous others. The suit specifically cites Mr. Bush as the primary defendant for blocking the signing of the Kyoto Agreement by the US, a treaty signed by 141 other countries, and one which would have forced the US to reduce greenhouse gasses to 1990 levels by 2012. The suit implies that these reductions would have decreased the likelihood of such massive destructions as we saw with Katrina. The amount of damages is estimated at one zillion US dollars.

In response, Bush’s law office, Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe has issued a statement saying that “that tabloid” TIME magazine is an irresponsible, fly-by-night example of “yellow press,” that the scientific organizations quoted in the magazine article—Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, SCIENCE Journal, The Evangelical Climate Initiative, NASA, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the University of Alaska, the University of Kansas, the University of Washington, the US Forest Service, the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Britain’s National Oceanographic Center—are all “wacko environmental nuts,” and that these four “troublemaker” states are no longer part of the US as far as the Bush family is concerned. The President stated to reporters, “That’s the last time I’m gonna send my people down there to save their sorry asses when a natural disaster hits. I swear! What a bunch of ingrates, I tell ya’”

The TIME article, in fact, does make some startling and far-fetched claims, such as the existence of global warming, and the Bush family’s indignation is understandable, given that global warming has long been regarded as a myth in White House circles. “Global what? This is the first any of us down here in Crawford ever heard about it!” as Bush said recently during a White House staff baseball game, playing against the Cuban team from the World Baseball Classic, hoping to win back some degree of respect for American baseball players after their embarrassing loss in March to other countries. Bush was pitching out of a 9 to 0 deficit at the time.

“Global warming, even most skeptics have concluded, is the real deal, and human activity has been causing it,” the TIME article says. The Bush family response was precise and devastating. “Cows farting, what about cows farting? All that methane contributes to global warming. You can’t call that human activity,” said the elder George H.W. Bush from his farm,(state withheld by request of the family) in response.

According to the article, several Greenland ice sheets have doubled their rate of slide. According to Science Journal, “by the end of the century, the world could be locked into an eventual rise in sea levels as much as 20 feet.” When confronted with this quote, a certain First Lady responded, “See, why should we rebuild New Orleans? God meant for it to be destroyed anyway! They can’t sue us! We’re royalty!”

What is the basis for TIME’s spurious claim that global warming is a reality? They state that “of the 20 hottest years on record, 19 occurred in the 1980s or later,” and that NASA claims 2005 was one of the hottest years in more than a century. TIME states that “The Antarctic holds enough ice to raise sea levels more than 215 feet.” In response, George Bush answered, “But Antarctica is so far away, that water will never reach us!”

TIME also cites evidence that the snow packs in the Rockies are melting, a fraction of what they were in the 1940s, and some snowpacks have vanished entirely. The White House Press Secretary said, “There is no tourism money in snowpacks! Who cares?”

The article reveals a number of alarming theories about “tipping points,” “feedback loops” and “boobie traps” which indicate that the warming process (in the oceans and atmosphere) is increasing by leaps and bounds and is now irreversible. But how does this relate to hurricanes? TIME states, “Ocean waters have warmed by a full degree Fahrenheit since 1970, and warmer water is like rocket fuel for typhoons and hurricanes. Two studies last year found that in the past 35 years, the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has doubled while the wind speed and duration of all hurricanes has jumped 50%.”

This statement, quoted in the plaintiffs’ suit, is the only real evidence they have, and plan to call upon the authors as expert witnesses in the trial, which will be televised nationwide. The Bush lawyers have categorically denied this, and have said that there is no concrete evidence that warm water causes hurricanes. In fact, they said, “Warm water is good in a bath when you have a backache.” They plan to use Michael Creighton as their expert witness.

The plaintiffs also plan to claim that there is a connection between internal combustion and carbon emissions, and that carbon emissions are related to global warming, and that warming is related to ice melting, and that ice melting can cause ocean levels to rise, eventually flooding hundreds of coastal cities, for which they are also ready to sue. The Bush law team responded, “I hope no one is stupid enough to fall for that old trick. There is no connection between anything and anything. Next they’ll be saying we stole the election in Florida in 2000, so that Al Gore could would not apply his knowledge of the greenhouse effect and curb carbon emissions before disaster occurred, which would have hurt Halliburton and Texaco.”

To: The Onion
From: Evan Pritchard
resonancemagazine.blogspot.com
rezman7777@earthlink.net
Date: April 1st, 2006
RE: The above press release

Dear Sirs,

Please consider this “April Fools” article/press release a gift from me. Feel free to rewrite it as you see fit and publish at your earliest convenience. If you use any part of it, just let me know by email and I will pick up a copy.

Thank you

Evan Pritchard

2006-03-29T09:27:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, March 29th, 2006: After the Whirlwind
I finally find a moment to breathe and smell the blooming earth while it lasts. The TIME magazine article (which came out yesterday, written by Jeffrey Kluger) was truly remarkable; it covered a large area, in fact the whole globe, dealt with a lot of difficult scientific issues, and kept its balance. I am also sure that it was released under unimaginable resistance from a certain gas-driven gov. Rifkin, Lovelock, etc. all were repressed here in the US. It mentioned Lovelock but not his new book. And it made Time Magazine the Jeffery Wygand of environmental whistleblowing, not me and little New York Spirit magazine. As it sits now, my article follows up nicely to this one, adding the Native American perspective, and offering the beginnings of a plan, one which I will expound on afterwards I’m sure.
This past month to six weeks has been a very strange one for me. In fact, from January 27th, when I first got the email from William Meyers with an RE that read: “Can this really be the end?” I’ve been in an upsidedown world, where I seemed to be the only one who knew the sky was really falling. That was the whole impetus for my blogging, in fact, as a quicker way to reach the public. The last week has been so busy that I have not been able to type at a computer, but have kept some record on tape while I drive.
For this whole time, my article has been scheduled to come out talking about a book that, for readers throughout North America, didn’t exist, Revenge Of Gaia. It is still a missing person, but at least the concepts will now be familiar to those who may have read TIME magazine. Whether Spitzer will really use my Global Warming speech or not remains to be seen. I will have a copy of NY Spirit sent to him right away. I will also try to get TIME magazine into the hands of a lot of people, especially my students, some of whom objected when I had them e-search James Lovelock’s dilemma back in early February, when his book was released in the UK to rave reviews. They were skeptical when the book was not released on March 2nd as I predicted. Yesterday, some students in that class seemed sheepish, or apologetic towards me, just a feeling I had; and I wonder if they saw a story on TV or read TIME magazine. I’m sure I’ve sounded like an end of the world lunatic to my undergrad friends Dan B and Igor V during the last month or so, as I shook them by the metaphorical collar and raved, “Its all about global warming!! The ecosystem is collapsing!” I hope that Igor’s unfinished symphony of liberal indignitude “Right Under Our Noses” will now take more of a priority, as this story certainly was right under our noses all along. In fact, the Hopi have been telling this story in some detail for over a thousand years. I am continually recalling the tour I made with Depsimana back in the 1990s, talking about the Hopi and the global warming predictions, finding mostly scorn and resentment from listeners. The Hopi say that wehn this tipping point is crossed, that it will lead to an all out invasion of the US and global thermonuclear war, ending all life on the planet.
One thing that was interesting, Kluger used the same term “Tipping Point” that I suggested Spitzer use in the speech I sent him. (TIME: By any measure, the Earth Is At The Tipping Point.) I referred to the Hopi “Crossroads” back in 2000 in my often read poem “Extra Innings of the Gods.” (posted at Waxpoetickle.blogspot.com) and in fact, allowing that election to be stolen was indeed the crossroads that led directly to this disaster, and Al Gore, the winner./loser, is still one of the foremost experts on global warming. I know that he has been run through the gauntlet for the last six years by almost everyone, but he knew all along what the price would be. By the looks of him, I’m sure that the FBI has been pointing their tazers, lazers, mazers, and phazers at him to try to get him to leave the country. I’m glad he’s still here. My poem Extra Innings of the Gods was dedicated to him and Al Leiter, another indestructible hero.
Just imagine the pressure that caused both Penguin Putnam and the New York Times to kill or softpedal this super -story, and the courage TIME must have had to pull it together and put it on the cover. A while ago, Wildlife Relief Fund had the story of the drowning polar bears, and Ellis and I thought it was the most haunting of images, a metaphor for what is happening to the planet at large. TIME used it on the cover.

I suspect that Rove and certain people have had inside information for a long time about this ecological collapse and have been keeping it under lock and key, part of the poetic tragedy of destroying Al Gore without defeating him at the polls. Any response to a carbon problem will hurt Halliburton, and that company has been raking in billions upon billions of dollars, making hay while their fossil fueled sun shone brightly. They will now probably use the money to build shelters for themselves. Fireproof, floodproof, bombproof shelters, making a jail for themselves more confining than the hundreds they have built for federal and state corrections departments over the last five years.

I have warned many hundreds of people, maybe thousands, about global warming, mostly through workshops and small setting lectures. I usually weave it into my story about the Native American perspective on “The Earth does not belong to us.” On April 2nd, my NY Spirit article will alert maybe 300,000. In one move, TIME has alerted 100s of thousands, and given some more credibility to my three step plan to bring CE’s down to zero, which will be harder than putting a man on Mars.

EAT Your Greens

My three step plan, only suggested in the article, and only suggested in the words I drafted for Spitzer, is as follows:

1. Green Energy
2. Green Architecture
3. Green Transportation

The first step is for NY City to convert to Green EAT, (energy, architecture and transportation) so that future generations can eat. My plan is for New York City to lead by example and cut all CE’s by 50% within six years. Then we share our findings with other cities who are also trying to cut emissions. The second step is for all the major cities in the US to follow the example. The third step is multifaceted. As all the cities in the world, and all the states and rural areas as well all strive to reach 50% of current 2006 levels, New York strives to reach 50% of 1999 levels (many scientists are using this year as a benchmark in honor of George W. Bush, in other words, to erase his legacy from the face of the planet!) within 12 years, (2018) then strives to reach zero emissions in twenty-four years (2030). Other cities and countries would then have an example to copy or improve upon.

The next few days are filled with significance for me. Tomorrow, Thursday March 30th, I’ll be giving a lecture on death and dying in Native American culture at Vassar with Rick Jarow. Then I will conduct an ethics class at Marist that same day, discussing the parallels between Lovelock and Wygand of “The Insider,” among other things. Then Friday is April Fools Day, then Saturday is April 2nd, marking one month after the non-release of James Lovelock’s book, which has kept me in an upsidedown situation, and will also be the release date of the New York Spirit article. On Sunday April 3rd, is the Mets Presidential Opener at RFK in DC at noon. On April 5th, Tuesday, I begin the Buddhism section of our World Views class.

So now I must begin writing down the past, to recover from my memory and from Memorex itself, what I can of these dramatic past few days, as I and thousands of others, I’m sure, struggled to get this message out to the public.

Tuesday, March 28th, Teaching Peace: I slept well, got a call from DL just when I was planning to call Thunderbird, and she talked to me for a while, even after I said I had to go teach my class. I unpacked the car finally, and that took a while. I went to Marist and had lots of work materials with me. I graded some papers, and pretty much caught up for WV and V, and was about a minute late. I did a session with the computer projected on the screen and showed how to use the Microsoft endnotes program and then handed out the endnotes handout. I also showed them World Heritage Virtual Tour Panography, and it worked but the internet was slow at that moment, perhaps in response to all that is going on regarding global warming. I didn’t know that then. I tried to show Paris, only got Notre Dame up, then showed Karnak, and Luxor; enough to give them ideas. I encouraged them to use it in their powerpoints.

Then I completed the work we started on finding Shamanistic practices and views in Powwow Highway (now on DVD) by finding Taoistic teachings in the movie as well. I mostly asked them questions, and they were able to come up with good answers, and we pretty much were able to list these wisdom teachings on the board as they appeared in the movie. The spider scene was particularly fun, as there are so many levels to it. The spider is a symbol of unity and relationship, the web of life, and is therefore associated with peace. Buddy is thrown from the car as he tries to kill the spider and breaks his gun, a symbol of violence. In fact, my criminal justice students were quick to point out that his chances of getting Bonnie out of jail with a single .22 pistol were zero to none. We also briefly discussed Filbert taking $4000 to reimburse their spendings to rescue Bonnie. We took a vote and about five said he was wrong, and about nine said he was right, and the others were undecided. I said in Shamanic stories, instead of preaching to people all the right things to do, they show you all the right things to do in reverse, and show you what happens when you do the wrong things and live the wrong way, or sometimes show you ambiguous situations ethically, so that you are drawn to discuss them, sort of like the ending of Syriana.

I handed back the midterm tests, and they were by and large very good. Then I went into the development of myths through time. I obviously owe something to Joseph Campbell on this, but I have a wholly different approach, and use Pritchard’s Seven Phases of Cultural Development and show how stories tend to be rather different from one phase to the next. We got through the Shamanic and Taoistic phases, and were working through the Geomantic, when LA a bright student who also likes to be punctual, called “time.” I stopped immediately, as I had just put the last word in place for the first three phases. Next time, we tackle Religious and Philosophical and possibly Scientific.

I did a one hour search on Thomas Chambers, and found some information, and indeed he was the one who brought clapboard siding to the Dutch colony. He obviously had English roots. I found a William Chambers making clapboard siding in Mackinac Island Michigan in 1830, which is very early for Michigan. Chambers went to Troy in about 1643 and then founded what is now Kingston in 1652. His house was on Division Street and is now somewhere under one of the Hasbrouke houses as was his tombstone. He moved to Fox Hall which is still there, off of Albany Ave I think. Also clapboard. I was there once.
I also tracked Johanness Shepmoes with less success, from his family’s move from Manhattan to Hurley, NY in the 1600s.
Then I had a push from spirit to go south and see KH, to give back a copy of NAStories of the Sacred I had borrowed. I also know she has access to the colonial records for Chambers and Shepmoes. While I was there, Karen S called, one of my favorite music students, who quit lessons six months ago when her mother died. Although I have rarely been at the music school since then, it was the first time she had called, and was asking for lessons, that she really needed to get back to music as part of her healing process. She was able to come over in a few hours, and I had the time free. She was really thrilled, and had a good reconstructive lesson, in which I had her map out her brain using hums. Humming a low F vibrated her nose and lower lip, Low A resonated in her sinuses, C resonated in her ears, middle F resonated on the side of her head, as did the next A up. C resonated at “the horns,” the place where her antlers would be if she had any, and the high F resonated at the top, at the fontanelle. This exercise not only opened up the resonating cavities in her brain which make for better brighter sound and overtones, but also demonstrated to her that they existed and that they can be used consciously.
While waiting to teach Karen S, HK and I played a little catch outside by the church as it was a perfect spring day, and people who walked by were amazed to see this elder woman of the tribe tossing the baseball with such ease. In fact, last year there were some bumps and bruises as she relearned the skill. Spring training went well this time. In the meantime we connected with another young woman who wanted vocal lessons and right away, and she was able to come in on one hours notice, and got a good lesson in time before Karen S came over. It was during that lesson I developed the humming map of the brain, but only in rough form. When I see A again (who is 15) I will go into more detail. She has a high pure voice and a remarkable range, and can read notes.
After karen’s lesson I had some chili and taters and checked my email. There was a long email from James Audlin, author of The Circle of Life, and formerly of the Poughkeepsie Journal. He had read ALL of Native American Stories of the Sacred since Saturday, and had found about ten places concerning ancient languages which he took issue with. His quickness and facility with the nuances of these languages (mostly ancient Greek, with which he is obviously quite at home) was nothing short of impressive. I was looking at the wordings from the modern reader’s perspective, starting from where we are now, but he corrected this, and suggested a wording that would be based in the actual root word or concept and move chronologically forward. I responded to each of his suggestions positively, and will send the whole letter to Mark Ogilbee at Skylight for discussion. I’m sure every suggestion will have some effect on the second edition. I’m sure David Audlin would understand my interest in not losing the reader, or destroy the prose such as it is, by splitting hairs. Obviously these are spots that need more work. I also have a few friends who are familiar with ancient Greek and will give me some insight. I am interested, and spent a month in Greece studying art, but I always found the language both ancient and modern, very difficult. Most Greek people today can’t understand the ancient tongue, so Mr. Audlin’s expertise is rather treasured, especially as it kept coming up in Stories of the Sacred. He will be consulted on The Path We Follow, as well.

I headed out to the hermitage, and as it turned out, ended up house sitting. There on the table I found the just released Global Warming issue of TIME magazine. I had a paradoxical reaction when I saw the stranded polar bear on the cover; “Scooped! Thank GOD!” I didn’t really want to be the first with this story in print, but on the other hand, I am a journalist, and a scoop is hard to resist. Suddenly I felt credible again! And the feeling is one I would describe as…..incredible!

I read the whole article of course before going to bed, and woke up at 8 AM, ready to tackle my bloglag problem, my ethics papers and the Death and Dying stuff. It was a turning point in my life. The title on the cover, quite appropriately, was “Be Worried. Be VERY Worried.”

Monday March 27th, 2006: Flintlocks and Hollyhocks: It has been a very crazy and frustrating and rushed past month, and Sunday I was having trouble breathing or even eating. There had been a growing amount of unexplained conflict in my life, and I felt that it somehow had to do with my openness about the Global Warming story. I decided to have a vacation day, and get rested again so I could think clearly. I walked around outside and started feeling buzzy and very sick and threw up over and over again, mostly the soup, although the soup was exceptionally delicious at the time. I can’t explain what was happening, but the more I hurled my soup the better I could breathe. I went to Red Sky Blue Earth at noon and waited 45 minutes for Stella (who is Blackfoot, therefore a fellow Algonquin) in response to her phone call, and though a noon opening was posted on her door, she didn’t come and open, so I left my card. This is the part of Indian Time that can be a little frustrating, but I’m sure there was a good reason. I will try again later. I really enjoyed having an excuse to sit in the sun and relax and wait. I traveled down the Minisink Trail by car, and stopped and made some phone calls, and then as I passed the historic Bevier house in Stone Ridge, I saw a car that I was sure belonged to Melinda Terpenning, so I pulled in. I rang the bell, and met Melinda for the first time in person, although we’d talked on the phone at length and I was already hired to do a presentation later this year.
I was in a great mood on a wonderful spring day, and I examined the flintlock rifle over the fireplace and estimated Native owned, 1730, and she said that would have been likely. I saw a painting in one of the rooms and said 1910, and she said, “Yes, in fact, that’s when it was painted.” She showed me an ash splint basket and I said it was a “notassen,” a Lenape basket and explained how they made them. Some of the spints were red, and some had interesting designs on them, which I copied down. There were three keyboards there, and I helped identify a number of pictures and objects, mostly not Native. Then I took her on a walk up the old crossroads trail, the one on which the Bevier house was built, the one that used to go from the Esopus to the Rondout, and which crosses the great Minisink Trail at that spot. We walked a few hundred yards across a curious kind of natural pavement made of stone, towards the Rondout, towards Pompey’s Cave which is in an empty streambed, and which is at the Kyserike Burial Ground, the site of an old Lenape Village near the Rondout. Then we turned around and went back to the Bevier House, wondering how they managed to get water to drink in that landlocked spot. I said there would usually be a native village or at least a trading post at such as spot, but the lack of water would be a big problem. The Beviers might have dug a well, but we don’t know that. In any case, I lent her Native New Yorkers and No Word For Time, which I had with me. She said she’d send me some money some time. It was a relaxing way to spend an afternoon. Next thing I knew it was 5 PM and I called Shoshana, who is struggling with cancer these days. She had left a message that she was in the area, that she had just driven down the Minisink Trail, which means she just drove past me (noone knew I was there, this is rather unusual and almost humorous coincidence as she is from Manhattan, and has been a guest on my walking tours of the Minisink Trail) and she said she is now in Woodstock with some people I don’t know and wouldn’t give a number, but said they were on their way to Ashokan Reservoir to see the sun set. I kept driving, and went up 375 towards Woodstock to see if I could find her car somewhere in town, perhaps at the laundry, and I saw her car whizzing past me on 375. I made a (safe) U turn and went chasing after her. A car pulled in front of her, and slowed her down, and a car between us turned off, so when she got to the light on 28 I was able to pull beside her and honk my horn. She looked surprised. She pulled over into the parking lot there and said she did not see me flashing my lights or honking my horn. We decided to go to the reservoir together, as she did’nt really know the way or where to park or where to get a good western horizon, so I became the trail guide. I found us a perfect spot and I met her hosts, Morl and Llyn, two women from Wales. We watched the sunset and talked of the coming environmental demise, and they were perfectly well informed, and even were quite well educated concerning Planet X, which they said we might see behind the sun as it sunk to the west. We didn’t, but we had a great time, then Shoshana was hungry so I suggested a favorite Chinese restaurant, and we went.
I mentioned that a strange man had insisted on paying for a book with a brand new $100 and I took it, and one of the women said that there are a lot of phony $100s floating around and the bank won’t take them. One of the people we connected with said she’d take it and gave me change. She felt that some restaurant in the city would take it, and it would get lost in the big money laundry which is NY C. In fact, there was no way to know that this particular bill was phoney, I just had a bad feeling about it, as there had been a large number of assaults verbal ones, at that event.
We parted company and I went home and sleep brought an end to a perfect day.

Sunday, March 26th, 2006: Global Upset: This was a day of much running around. I never did empty the car out, and it was a good thing, because I got chances to use a lot of that stuff from the Pequot. I was very tired and slept on and off, getting things done around the house in between much needed naps. It took a lot to unwind, and never did completely accomplish that goal. I woke up and it was half past noon. I was supposed to get all these things done and arrive at the Barnes and Nobles in Danbury CT at 3 PM. Somehow I did all this, to my own amazement. Not having to load the car helped. On the way I also listened to a wonderful Mets game in which they won 7-0 with great outings by both Pedro and a man named M. They scored mostly on singles, which is a good sign. Today, Heilman was relegated to the bullpen, because Bannister pitched better. Time will tell if this was a terrible mistake. I made my various stops and connections and then arrived a few minutes early for the book signing and story telling at Barnes and Nobles. As coincidence would have it, the lowly George Mason team beat the unstoppable UConn Huskies of Danbury (and Hartford, etc) while I was there. It was the Advance Auto Parts “Shock of the Day” and it was colossal! I shared that with Richard, who is an employee at the store, and part Wappingers. This was after my event. I also bought a book Walking On Egg Shells No More about how to live with someone with Borderline Personality. It took several of us working together to find the psychology section. We went to Christmas Tree, and I bought some very salty peanuts. My tongue had already been swollen and blistered from something I ate at the Pine Hill event, but this made it worse! But it tasted good. I got Richards sister a box of purple peeps.
The event went well. I mentioned that a lot is happening right now with the environment, and that there are books and articles written on the subject but you won’t find them here at Barnes and Nobles, and its not them to blame; someone is keeping NY Times articles and books from reaching the public on this story, but its an important story. There have been some drastic changes in the course of global warming in the last two years, and all the top experts have tried to tell us, but were stopped. Later on, the community relations man John Coultier looked on the computer books in print in the US and Revenge of Gaia was nowhere to be found. A missing person.
I explained in detail about how a researcher at the National Archives found that Chief Seattle never said “The Earth does not belong to us…” and I got them all to shout it out in unison three times.
Richard and his sister had made copies of the layout of the article in New York Spirit and handed them out to each person in attendance. That was probably the most effective part of the message. I didn’t have to say that much about it. The article said it all.
I brought the Micmac Moose drum made for me by Gil Tarbox and then introduced him. He had heard about the event through the grapevine, not through Polly Midgely, and it was just coincidence he happened to be around. There was another man there who heard about it through Polly, and a black woman and her daughter who heard about it through the papers. It was not a large crowd. Apparently that was typical for this location, one of the first Barnes and Nobles. I had a long talk with John Coultier about how B and N worked and ideas on how to get the book in the stores.
Then Richard and I and his sister went out to eat at the Windmill, a local, folksy place, and it was pretty good. I had mussaka in a deep dish covered with cheese. Richard ended up picking up the tab, which was not called for, but a nice surprise. We read the sports trivia quiz off the place mat.
Richard was a maven of the magazine, and I told him about Resonance Magazine making a comeback on the internet. I should scan the humor issue and put it on line.
We split up and I went back to the hermitage, and saw one of my favorite movies ALAMO on TV with Billy Bob Thornton as David Crockett. That went on til late and I watched in the usual fascination, but also seeing a new meaning in it in light of what I knew, then I fell asleep. They had just shown King of Hearts a few days earlier, both movies broadcasting a subliminal message to pay attention, wake up, this town is about to blow up. Both inspired me to continue in my quest to tell lots of people about global warming.

Saturday, March 25th, 2006: Pine Hill Mini-Festival: I had a dream as I woke up; a new board game called Command Center, part role playing game part board game part simulation, in which you simulate being President of the United States. The game comes in a brief case, of course, and is very complex, and intellectually challenging. There was a CD Rom disc that came with it and a red phone which played out various scenarios in your ear after you “made the call.” I dreamt that President Bush played and lost.
I arrived at Pine Hill about noon, and there were already people there, setting up for the International Cultural Festival. Apparently I was right on time. David Audlin arrived at the same time. We started rehearsing music right away, even before setting up our books on the same table. It was a little confusing, plans changing along the way, but he wanted to do a show together, backing each other up, and wanted to exchange books, and he insisted we read from each other’s book. He quickly showed me a passage from his book and I said I could pretty much read without rehearsal, and he the same. I chose for him to read the Seneca Chipmunk story, as he is Iroquois, and Gordy, the guardian of the Seneca traditions was there, in his wheelchair, waiting to hear and comment on anything Seneca. James did a great job, and Gordy was pleased. I later talked to him in the lobby and asked for his comments on the Chipmunk, and he worried his face for a minute and then flashed a big smile “I LIKED it!” And told me a story of how coyote brought the light.
The passage I read from Audlin was surprising, and very poetic, “elegiac” I’d say, very much focused on the part of the circle of life called Death. I did guitar lead on two of James’ songs, and they were rather well written, a lullaby and an “argument” song with a male and female lead. We had rehearsed my song Wanna See Us Free (which tied into my one real environmental comment about waking up) and he played lead and sang on the doo doos and chorus. That was fun! The theme was “songs from dreams,” and two of his were from dreams, as was my song Wanna See Us Free. So it was the dream theme team. Speaking of dreams, I told of my Command Center game from my dream, and as I said Bush got to play, DE anticipated that Bush lost the game. That got a big laugh. It was true, and true in real life as well. I thought, as soon as everyone realizes what’s going on with the ice caps, his career will be making ice at a country club for tips.
I also played flute behind his reading and he behind mine. I did a cedar flute solo with James on keyboards, but he decided to go atonal for some reason, and as we had not rehearsed, I was caught off guard for a minute. And when James the director said Time, I asked James if I could do No Word For Goodbye, with him on lead guitar. He seemed pleased, so I sang it in the most dramatic fashion I could, and got as many people to sing along as I could. The crowd applauded wildly, so long I didn’t know what to do with my hands.

I did okay with the books, and it was a wild an chaotic day at Pine Hill, with a lot of people saying crazy things, some of which I didn’t know how to take. One of the highlights was giving Rainbow Weaver the work number of an old friend she had not seen in years, Donna Johnson. I also saw DL and chatted for a few minutes. Afterwards I had a meeting with Mary Lou at the pizza place and we discussed the possibility of a Pine Hill Music Festival in September to raise awareness about global warming. It was a day of many meetings and conversations and planning. I decided not to announce the September 16th date, as the date of the free concert, and it was a good thing, as I still have to have room to move, or back up if it won’t work.

Then I visited Raymundo, but he was late, so I slept there until 200 in a back room, comfy actually. Then we talked til dawn, and then I made it home in one piece after a very long day!

Friday, March 24th, 2006: My Name Is Whirlwind Dreamer: Saw the end of Powwow Highway. The last scene is so moving, I never know how to make a transition, so I sang three songs on the Micmac drum by Gil Tarbox. Then we made a list of shamanistic practices in the movie. We discussed the name Whirlwind Dreamer, how it, like all the other names, had a dark side and a light side, he is the one who has the visions that all seek, but he is not grounded. And even of this “kick me” name he “is not yet worthy.”
I had a one hour meeting with my one black student who needed to change her topic at the last minute for her term paper. We decided on her Cherokee side, and we looked at maps and found that her mother was from an area not only Cherokee but Overhill Cherokee, Chocktaw and other tribes.
I taught a good lesson with Vessios at their home, and realized that L needed vocal lessons today more than guitar, so we went into vocal lessons, and also got in some of the lead playing she was practicing all week. I felt there was a first glimmer of a breakthrough. She always wants hard songs. I gave her some extra time.
I went on various errands, feeling tired and confused and a little wound up, and then realized that I was supposed to call Shoshana. I thought it was her birthday. In fact it was Ellis’ birthday too, and I had forgotten to say happy birthday. I was that tired.
I ended up at the hermitage, watching King of Hearts, a movie that had a lot to say to me this time, trying to warn the crazy people about the total destruction of the planet, fighting off the Germans, and getting mixed signals from HQ. It all was appropriate for that day, and I’m sure the program manager knew that. I’d seen this kind of thing before; hidden messages in movie schedules. This one was pretty obvious. I had seen Jeremy Rifkin’s s stunning article on the internet about the ice caps and how they were melting more rapidly then we thought possible, but it apparently never made the print edition of the NY Times. That was very creepy. That was when I really started to feel like my world was upsidedown, like I was hanging by my thumbs in terms of credibility.

Thursday, March 23rd, 2006: Meeting of the Minds: This was a long day that took me from the Pequot Museum in Ledyard, CT (on the RI border) with about six different meetings, a half hour of rushed research, and then driving to Poughkeepsie, then grading a pile of papers and then conducting a 2/5 hour class, one of the more difficult ones, and then a two hour meeting of the Citizenship Thinktank Meets the Womens Spirituality Group. We watched a film documentary called The New Heroes, narrated by Robert Redford, and we applauded at the end. I got to meet a lot of interesting people and speak about the cover up on global warming to people who were really interested in learning more. One young student talked about feeling like a bug when facing problems such as global warming, and crime and world poverty. I said that was enlightenment, and a lot of great spiritual people reached that “bug” mentality. I told the story of Gandhi’s Zero Point, which I have told many times before. When he hit the dirt after being thrown from the train he was nothing, and therefore could do anything. This was a day after the “nothing” discussion in Connecticut. I went home to Saugerties soon after that, feeling a little like a bug, but a happy bug.

Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006: Night At the Pequot: This was the day of my presentation at the Pequot Research Library in their esteemed author series, whose guest list has included many immortal names; Wilma Mankiller, Joe Bruchac, M. Scott Momaday, etc. I left my place before dawn and made it to David Kahns in Rhode Island about ten AM, an hour before he had to leave for the doctors. In that time a lot happened, and I also got a good nap, surrounded by native artifacts. I wrote a new song at David Kahns in Rhode Island, and premiered it that night. Right now I call it The Ballad of Kwan No Day. It refers to and incorporates the traditional song Kwan No Day. I worked on the song for about two hours at DK’s. I also made a phone call or two. I went to the library at 4 PM and set up my books, and pulled some books to study and photocopy for the second volume of Algonquins and Estuaries, but didn’t have time to read them. The show went on right on schedule, at 7 PM, and I was in a festive mood, and ready to have fun. At the same time, I realized that most of the audience were Algonquin scholars and I needed to educate them in order to earn my pay, and I did. I sold a bunch of books, even though the audience was not huge. David Kahn recorded the whole thing on video tape and at some point I will transcribe it. When I have time. Afterwards, I answered some questions and signed a lot of books. A woman asked if there was a person’s name for “nothing.” I told her of the word for the self chan, or otchi-chan-hau-mitch-oo, which I loosely translated as “the vessel for the light which is itself just a shadow.” But I stressed that no one is nothing, that she should not think of herself as nothing then I signed her book.

Tuesday, March 21st, 2006: The Second First Day of Spring: The second first day of spring. The weather was pretty nice.

Lightning Round

2006-03-13T21:08:00.000-08:00

Tuesday March 14th, 2006; It is really early in the morning and I have piles of work left to do before I can relax and have a vacation. Later today I have to appear in front of the local magistrate for what amounts to a ticket of high velocity, however I can explain everything. I drafted a report/speech/idea sheet for Spitzer concerning global warming like I once did for Jon Edwards. The threat of GW is so strange and crazy that it is hard to propose a "solution" that doesn't sound a little out there, which is part of the problem, however I gave it my best shot. I knew I had to go to MD soon, so I had that one shot, since April 22 is coming soon, just over a month, when Spitzer gives his speech, so there was my window,and it happened to fall between midnight and dawn. I put together the one solution that seems to me to have any real credibility, which is to use green architecture and a certain amount of auto redesigning, but basically invent new machines that scrub the air and suck all the carbon in as we go about our business. My proposal was The 50% solution; that through new inventions we could reduce NYC's CE's by 50% and get other major cities to follow our lead. Of course, I think with this technology and architecture we could do better than 50%, but 50 seems like an envisionable goal for now. In fact, anything less would have no significant impact on the global picture in my opinion. The goal is to get the entire US, city by city, to adopt the new technology, so that we at least reduce the US output of CE's by 50%, which would reduce the global figures by 1/8th. Anything less than that seems futile.
My idea/speech was about five pages, based on some speculation on population times 5.5 metric tons per person per year. Bobby Jr would have some more specific stats. Part of it is a draft of a speech that Spitzer could give any time. I can only hope that Allison and Jack see the long term value of this paper as a starting point. I included the phone numbers of Makrand Bhoot, John and Nancy Todd, and Douglas Cardinal. If nothing else, it should lead to a meeting between Spitzers team and my three architects of the future. It should I hope give Spitzer some ideas as to how to position himself not as a man enforcing laws of the last century, but as a man designing a new plan for the new century, a long term vision.

Monday March 13th, Today it was quite warm. I worked on a new Mets article on team batting average and World Series odds. I only got a sketch of it done. I bought an Irish tin whistle as a birthday present for a good friend, who is not as musically inclined as we'd all like. I figured the Irish whistle is hard to play badly.
I listened to a tape I got for 50 cents at a flea market in Port Jervis, all light classics, and it was very beautiful and gave me a smile as I drove my car around. Money can buy happiness, especially if its not much money. The first to come on was Mio Babino Caro all orchestral, by Puccini, my favorite. (I use it in my screenplay Madly In Love, which has not been produced as yet) I was surprised how much I liked Trumpeters Lullaby, as the anonymous player was quite excellent.

I was looking on the internet for ideas to help Eliot Spitzer (hows that for a name dropping) with his upcoming report on global warming, and I knew he needed some celebrities to endorse his progressive policies on global warming, and I came across my old friend (I wish) Kevin Bacon, whose band I have heard several times live. It turns out he lives in New York City, his father was a city planner and his mother was a liberal activist, and he has already come out with a global warming awareness campain of his own "Six Degrees," saying that if the global temperatures rise by six degrees, which could happen, we'd all be dead. Of course he says "This isn't a game," which can be taken on two levels, since the movie he starred in Six Degrees was based on a concept game. I called Jack D. at the Spitzer HQ and he wasnt in so they put Allison on the phone and I suggested Kevin B as a point man, and she asked if I thought he was better than Bobby Jr. and I said no, but a great number two man. Bobby Jr and Eliot are so much alike, similar approach, real substance, but Kevin is very accessible and very well known with dozens of movies behind him and would reach out to a lot of people. Allison is so cool, the kind of passionate 18 hour get it done type that Sptizer talks about and that I like to work with, and she just said "I'll get on it." I said, "Talk to you soon," and we both unhooked.

I found the following stats: The average US citizen creates 5.5 metric tons of carbon emissions per year.
16.6 million people work in and around NYC every day.
16.6 is 6% of the US population of 276 million. At 5.5 tons per person. Using that theoretial per capita rate, it would also be 6% of the total US emissions. That would be about .015% of the world's annual output of carbon emissions.
My point? That if NYC were able to showcase the green architecture movement, and eliminate and also absorb most of those emissions, it would be a dramatic example to the rest of the country, and the rest of the world. If the top 12 cities in America all were able to eliminate carbons, lets say to about 40 million people, that would be over 14% in reductions.
I got a call from Sandy Levine at the Open Center, and we were able to work out the big problem within minutes, by starting the month long program earlier at the Open Center. I pulled over on the highway and we just got it done, she was so cool too. I called Tiokasin Ghosthorse first at WBAI and then at home, and left a message that Sandy wanted to work it out another way. So I need to call Louise at Ottawa and say I'm a definite for the weeklong position at the Kumik, but I was given the wrong number, so I'll email her. After that huge scheduling problem magically disappeared thanks to the new age energy of Open Center's Sandy levine, I rewrote my events schedule accoringly and sent it to Kate at Skylight.
After midnight I made the decision to change the word Mitzvah on p. xiii of Native American Stories of the Sacred to Hallakha, as the Mitzvot are part of the Hallakha, and Hallakha literally means "the path we walk," which perfectly matches the other words I am examining in that section, words from around the world which mean "the red road." I also mentioned to Mark for the first the idea of me submitting to Skylight a book on "the path" as it appears in dozens of ancient cultures.In fact this discovery put me "over the top" as far as actually sitting down and doing the book. For those who are really interested, I did a 26 part series on RFPI a few years ago called The Roots of World Religion.. similar ideas.

I got a message from Mets fan SR that she has colon cancer, a sad message. Its a scary thing, and she'll have to talk to all these surgeons, so she is in my prayers. Also I got a call from another friend whose daughter in law had a difficult delivery, but seems to be pulling through okay. KH told me of a copy of the new book by James Lovelock, but it turns out it was Ages of Gaia which is an old outdated book that was republished. To this day no one has seen the Revenge of Gaia which was due out March 2nd by Penguin.

Sunday March 12th, Watched The Men Behind the Iron Mask The story of umpires, with Brooks Robinson. I didn't get to see the end but the first part was about the real old days in baseball. Overhand pitching didn't start until around 1886, and yet by 1890 you already begin to see the great overhand pitchers making their mark.

Saturday March 11th, Called EM, one of my oldest friends, whom I've known now for 37 years, and left a happy birthday message. I thank you for being you and for being who you've been in my life all these years. Happy birthday EM Crow!

Conversations With Remarkable Elders

2006-03-11T01:25:00.000-08:00

Saturday March 11th 2006

I had a long talk with Onimeekee Benasequay, may spirit protect her, and she told me about a wonderful confrontation resolution she had witnessed between two medicine women. We will call the first one Noogami A and the second one Noogami B. A was a socially climbing elders' helper who wanted to take control of the group and manipulate everyone, perhaps to usurp the throne so to speak, of her own mentor. B was an elder, short in stature, who was more or less retired and not seeking power. A said, "Don't worry, you too are on the path. You are grrooowwing! (a pat on the head but also an obvious insult to her height.) YOu are like a bouncing little sponge! You are changing and this will be for the good. (A was trying to sound like a teacher, like B's teacher, but B wasn't having it.)
B said, "I'm over 65, (older than you) and I have learned that there is always learning, even my elders learn, and everyone is a teacher for everyone. William Commanda said that he is learning to be old. If he is still learning, then so am I, we always have to learn. If we stop learning its time to die, and I want to live a looong life!"
A closed her eyes and put her hand on her heart, her heart was opening!
B continued: "I have a life full of joy, I have people who love me, I have beautiful grandchildren, and I am happy every day of my life just to be alive. I don't need to be anyone's teacher."
Noogami A had tears in her eyes and said, "I want to reach that some day!"
That's how elders resolve conflicts.

Benase said that she passed along my advice to the woman under attack, and blessed a three foot long red ribbon and the woman slept with it tied around her waist, and did not experience the attacks. She was very happy to receive the book, and took in the other advice as well. I had suggested to Banaise that she offer to help this elder and be a friend to her, and she did, and they agreed that when Flower flew into town for teachings, she would stay with Benaise, and that Benaise would help her in all things. This was a joyous thing for everyone and they bonded as sisters on the path.

I called Bohike, and we had an unusual discussion. Someone had suggested that I take piss for spider and other insect bites, etc. and drink it. Bohike disagreed, and said that was a Karate practice that originated in Mongolia and in an autonomous region of China Yoau Ixchen, and that it was a false teaching. He said that the body has already rejected what is in the piss, and to drink it was to make the body do that work all over again. He said it is salty and its like drinking sea water which causes pain and then kills you. He says piss shuts down your liver and you have kidney failure. He said uric acid is not good to drink, but that uraic acid, as found in nettle and similar plants was really good. He said that urine is sterile when fresh, but gets contaminated over time. He said that the yellow was toxic. In other words, "Don't eat yellow snow" is a good saying. He said that the bite of a wolf spider a recluse or scorpion or black widow will get worse if you add piss to it, but piss is good for jelly fish bits, orb spiders (certain ones) sea anenomes and web weaving spiders. It can work for bee stings, but usually not worth it. It brings down the swelling quickly when it works at all, but only external. The venom basically melts you from the inside out, and piss can neutralize the chemistry in certain situations. I bet you didn't know that. Bohike q.c. is full of natural medicine wisdom, like "Dont eat yellow snow and here's why."Grapefruit juice however is great stuff. I send a prayer of blessing that I have a Bohike in my life.

Thursday March 9th, blogging through mud

2006-03-09T22:06:00.000-08:00

Thursday, March 9th, 2006; I found that my blogs for the Canada trip that had been misplaced and inserted them into the mix. I also finally received the submitted version of the NY Spirit article, and inserted that as you see March 9th earlier post. There is a lot of dark magic everywhere right now, and I'm getting a lot of distress calls for people wanting advice and help. Computers are also glitching up all the time with bizzarre results. I got a call from Little Fox and she asked advice for protection against black magic for a certain medicine woman in Canada, a full blood who is being psychically attacked by a certain woman and raped by that woman's boyfriend, or so people believe, and can't sleep at night I told Little Fox to give her a copy of From the Temple Within (one of mine) and tell her to ask it a question and open it at random. The word vervain came into my mind very clearly, so I told her to get vervain, put it in a pouch. Little Fox asked if she should make it into a tea, I said, I wasn't sure, but a little couldn't hurt. I said to get a 3 foot red ribbon to sleep with, plus a bear's tooth. Little Fox said she had the bear claw, but not the tooth. Apparently there was an elk's tooth too and I said that may be attracting trouble in this case. I said to put the shield of protection around herself at night before going to bed. I said she needed to promise the Creator that she would work on the sexual abuse issues, not now but soon. She needed to heal the past. I also suggested to Little Fox that she really help this woman, also to take 12 strands of sweet grass and make a bracelet of it for the woman. And most of all, the woman needs to rely on her pipe, and smoke it alone. Little Fox said that the elder did that too when in such troubles.
I never met the woman but spirit told me alot.
Then Bexique called and I disconnected and then asked him for advice for internet protection, and he gave me some advice and suggested tobacco of course. He agreed there were unprecedented levels of psychic attacks going on.
I called Deb M at the paper and had a very friendly conversation, she's getting alot of articles published. We agreed to have a TBA lunch meeting.
I talked to HB for the first time on phone and discussed the ceremonies and the sweat lodge.
I talked to DJ at the Pequot and straightened everything out, she sounded much happier today. Then I called Kate and went over a list of things. Apparently she did not recieve my list of events that I emailed.
I spoke to Bill Schmidtt at Inwood for a long time and set up my part in Drums along the Hudson with him. He said of all the famous speakers they'd had I was the one who had the best and most detailed information on the history of the site itself, and hired me for another job in six weeks.
I kept thinking his name aws Smith, he said his mother was a Smith; I said she might be related to Joseph Smith, he agreed it was quite possible, and we talked about the Lost Tribe of Israel theory.
I also called the Trailside Museum and spoke to Frank, and left a message for the new director Mike Gambino (who does not look Sicilian!) to talk about having my Inwood Hill show there.
I left messages for Erik Baard to set up the Rowing thing as well and went on excitedly about the Tibbet's Brook discovery on his voicemail.
I called Diane DeCello at Warwarsing bicentennial, and she wanted to know if I could provide artifacts. I said I didn't really believe in that, but asked if she knew Wendy Harris. She said "I was just talking to Wendy yesterday! Yes, she wold have local artifacts as well, for our display case. We want to place Native American STories of the Sacred in a display case along with artifacts from the area in the Ellenville Library." (Wendy helped with Native New Yorkers, one miracle connection after another!) She was really excited with my response.."Wendy will be perfect!"
There were several other phone calls and then I slept off staying up tiil 4 am writing.
There were other calls and events, a nice warm day, but one I had to miss inside to catch up with correspondence. I had a difficult decision to make regarding today's class. Our review time was snowed out and so students were twisting my arm to try to get me to cancel the midterm, but it seemed unethical for an ethics class, so I came in very firmly and laid down the law, that we have a commitment to meet the expectations of the cirriculum and to have the test at the published time. I gave a one hour review which went well, then 15 minute break and then 1.5 hour test. Some people did the test in 25 minutes.
I talked at length to a very energetic student in pre-Med and told her about the article Id just read in Harpers. I said it had lots of organic chemistry in it, which she was saying was perhaps the hardest course in the school, most students scored 30% or lower on the midterms. She said it was because the concepts are hard to grasp and that there was so much detailed pieces of information to remember.
God is very very smart by the way, and His mind is quite complex, which you will learn if you ever study biochemistry, which is how He gets things done. If we had to understand sex from a biological standpoint before having any, we'd be celibate for most of our lives, or else we'd all be really really smart by the age of 21. LOL
E knows one of my students and saved a photo of her from the Times Herald Record that was deep inside the sports section of that huge tomelike paper, and cut it out. As the test was to begin I found the clipping and gave it to the student. She said she had never seen the photo or the article about her and seemed very glad. Kresge is one of the best defensive players in women's basketball, but defensive players don't always get headlines. This was a nice tribute from a major paper.
Had a meeting with Dan Black afterwards and we discussed the article in Harpers, Out of control, an expose on the corruption in AIDS testing by Celia Farber p . 37.

THen I created a weblog for our Welsh friend Megan, who is full of happy sunshine and political science and philosophy with a smile. She is young but knows about Marxism in South America for example and I showed her my Resonancemagazine.blogspot.com site, and the article on Robert Heilbronner, the prophet of economics. Lots of great energy. Megan's blog, at megan686.blogspot.com. Im sure it will be interesting.
Igor never showed up to talk about his book ideas, but Dan and I talked about it. Igors writing is great but he has marketing problems and we are all giving him advice.
I went on MLB's front page and found that my baseball blog was selected with a little write up and ranked number 10 on selected sites. I am now officially a "long suffering Mets fan" according to MLB. That is amazing as Brooks Robinson's site is ranked number 7, and players in the World Baseball cup are blogging the tournaments from Japan Mexico, etc. and they are highly ranked.
There was another Mets site on the list but no contact info. It was a really good site too. Fasten Your Seatbelts. a blog of happyrecap.com.
I called DLP To tell him the news. He was just on his way to a late night shoot and the director was waiting. He's fixed his computer and doing film scores again, and also doing some acting and cinematography.

Is Nothing Sacred? An Interview with Evan Pritchard by New York Spirit's William Myers

2006-03-09T21:29:00.000-08:00

IS NOTHING SACRED?

EARTH IN CRISIS
An Interview With
Evan T. Pritchard

Evan T. Pritchard is of Celtic and Native American descent, raised with the environmentally conscientious Algonquin perspective by his mother and his great aunt Helen Perley—“an outspoken Mi’kmaq activist”—with the love and respect for the Mother Earth that is so common to indigenous cultures. He is the director of the Center for Algonquin Culture based in Woodstock, New York, and is professor of Native American Studies and Philosophy at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York. A musician and storyteller, he lectures frequently around the United States and Canada, and is the author of a number of books, including No Word for Time (1998) and the widely read Native New Yorkers (2001).

Earlier this year, British environmental scientist James Lovelock issued a chilling warning about global warming: “We are past the point of no return.” Made famous in the 1970s by his theory of “the biocybernetic universal system tendency,” or “Gaia Theory,” in which the earth (Gaia, from the Greek) regulates itself chemically and atmospherically to promote the ideal conditions for the evolution of life, Lovelock now believes that our negligence and abuse, combined with unforeseen factors, has essentially triggered a sequence of self-destruction that is throwing the system into reverse and will result in the extinction of most forms of life. Lovelock prophesies a future, relatively near at hand, in which spasms of climate change will reduce humanity to “a broken rabble led by brutal warlords,” competing for a dwindling area of habitable space at the planet’s north and south poles. His new book, The Revenge of Gaia, is due to be released by Penguin Putnam in March.

It seemed only natural to begin this interview with Evan Pritchard by asking him what he thought of James Lovelock’s dire prophecy.

Are there any themes in either your book or Native American culture itself that reinforce Lovelock's contention that Gaia—the life-sustaining ”Mother Earth”—is taking her revenge and eliminating us from the planet? Is there anything in your book that would counter it with some measure of hope?

I take his “revenge of Gaia” idea seriously, though I would not put it quite that way. Basically the threshold he is talking of is the same thing as the “crossroads” that are in the Hopi and Algonquin prophecies, and he's saying we've crossed it. I, of course, would like to know why now, not next year or the year after. I foresee a variety of “revenges” that can't all be caused by global warming—for example, earthquakes and tsunamis. We need to use technology to subtract from, not add to the problem. Algonquin culture has very ancient roots here in the New York area, and one key to that longevity has been flexibility and adaptation. But to say it’s too late could contribute to an attitude of resignation, as in: “It’s too late to do anything now anyway.”

One of the main reasons I wrote Native American Stories of the Sacred was to create a deeper mythopoetic background to the idea that Native Americans have tools, ideas, teachings that can help us heal the earth and adapt to changing climates. I hope that this will become the foundation of future work on this subject. The book focuses on the deep environmental teachings that are buried in all world religions by studying the culture that, perhaps more than any other, never left that teaching anywhere but right there for all to see. The multicultural connections in the book help readers to see that teaching everywhere it occurs.

These stories were created at a time when the land and the people were one, but already the elders were seeing the signs as to what happens when people treat Mother Earth with disrespect. There were already prophecies stating that treating the earth poorly would lead to the destruction of mankind, and these stories in the book were intended to help children—as well as adults—find the right balance between what they wanted and what actions should be avoided in order to prevent this terrible destruction. If we had listened to these stories all along, we wouldn’t be in this position today, and if we continue to ignore these kinds of teachings, we will make Lovelock’s predictions come true.

What happens next is up to us. Lovelock says we now can only buy time, but in the ancient stories, the animals and supernatural spirit beings (such as the raven, mouse, rabbit, and coyote) often come to the rescue of the foolish humans at the last minute to bail them out.

It’s hard to predict what will happen, but global warming will cause storms and crop failure, and most certainly lead to pestilence, famine, war, and death, “the four horsemen of the apocalypse,” not to mention disease. The pestilence is already happening, as new types of infestations and infections such as Lyme disease and Ebola virus are spreading, due to environmental causes. Perhaps the pestilence itself will be enough to drive us to rethink our position on the Kyoto Protocol and other worldwide agreements. In this way, it could be said that “animals” came to our rescue. The next is epidemic disease such as bird flu, then famine, then war with, say, China, and other countries that know full well that 25 percent of the carbon dioxide that contributed to the global warming that wiped out their crops came from the United States, which discharges 5.8 billion tons of it into the atmosphere every year.

Thousands of years ago, villages around the world stressed teachings, similar to Native American teachings today, that were designed to prevent the disintegration of the village. As different villages grew, they needed different value systems in order to hold themselves together, developing the shamanistic teachings, the Taoist teaching of The Way, the Buddhist concept of the Dharma, and various expressions of the right way to live, including the Red Road of the Native American. Now that the world is one village, if we forget those ancient values, we will collapse.

There are four or five ways the great cultures of the past have collapsed: through harm to the local environment (Sumeria, Sahara); bad foreign policy (Sumeria, Sung Dynasty, British Empire, Germany); corruption (most of them!); apathy (which usually accompanies corruption); and the mismanagement of economics (too many to name here). The teaching tales of the folk cultures and their altruistic values were in place already to try to prevent this collapse—and they worked. However, for some reason, when cultures reach a dominant position in the world, they start expanding too fast, and they collapse, thanks to these same things.

The stories in my book are full of teachings that helped Native children grow up with good values, to avoid harming the environment, to get along with neighbors, to be honest and fair, to care about life, and to be frugal in trade and consumption. It is my hope, even as climatologists are claiming that we have ruined the entire globe and cannot fix it, that enough people will remember the ancient teachings to find a way to reverse the destruction of the biosphere before it’s too late.

How likely is it that we will be able to turn around climate change and gain some measure of preventive control over the loss of species and the degradation of all forms of life? Will we ever regain some ecological balance? If not, what kind of world do you foresee?

In Lovelock’s worst-case scenario, we have less than a hundred years until there are only small groups camped out at the poles. People are shrugging their shoulders and saying, “We all die eventually.” But this scenario implies a horror of mass extinction that no human has ever witnessed before, not even at Auschwitz, in Rwanda, or anyplace else. Global warming is not a day at the beach. In the worst-case scenario, bugs will go crazy, then animals, then people. Tornadoes and hurricanes will make homes suddenly disappear. Food will become scarce, water will become tainted. People will fight each other, armies will go on the march. When Verrazzano discovered what is now New York City, he saw a terrible storm approaching and set sail on a different course, unintentionally reducing the impact that smallpox, carried unknowingly by his crew, would have. The prophecies, in their most terrible aspects, could indeed come true if we don’t change our course in the face of the storm that is already upon us. This will take some navigational skill.

I think we have just enough time to turn it around, and change the way we live now. I also foresee that even if we miss that mark, great effort will be spent to slow down the process of degradation. I foresee a great Renaissance of human culture worldwide as people realize that they might not be able to accomplish anything in fifty years hence, similar to the inspired writings of a dying man.

I think of New York’s own musical immigrant Gustav Mahler, who wrote Das Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth) and then the Ninth and Tenth symphonies, only after being diagnosed in 1907 with a fatal heart condition. He moved to New York City to conduct the New York Philharmonic and lived long enough to hear his previous symphonies played, but not the new ones. It makes me wonder if our greatest achievements as humans will only be heard thousands of years later by visitors to this planet as they sort through our remains. I think we can do better!

I support the radical junglification of New York and other cities, and I think that the “green architecture” as developed by John and Nancy Todd, the Native American architectural pioneer Douglas Cardinal, and New York’s own award-winning Makrand Bhoot (the other kind of Indian), will help us avoid this “dying man” scenario. New York should be at the forefront of this amazing movement. In fact, it has already started, with the new Bank of America building near Times Square, which is moderately “green” but on a large scale.

We have the resources, and we know how to make living buildings that do not add to but actually help alleviate pollution. However, we must overcome the technical problems of electric cars, and use even more public transportation than we do now in and around New York. The spirit of the Algonquin Landkeepers is still strong on Manhattan Island; we can find inspiration in them as to how to make this transition, to get ourselves off the dead-end road we’re speeding down and onto the Red Road again, which, as the Hopi say, leads to a world where children will be safe to grow up.

Could you comment on Lovelock's concept of Gaia—the earth as a self-perpetuating living organism—and what it shares in common with Native American philosophy? Also on what Native prophecies portend for the future?

Every Native language has a different way of referring to “Mother Earth.” They all basically mean the same thing. This word “mother” implies that we are little children, that we are from her womb, that we depend on her for our food and for wisdom as to how to live our lives—and that she loves us as a mother loves her children. All these things we attribute to the earth, the planet on which we live. It also implies that she is a living being with thoughts of her own, and a being with which, at certain sacred moments, we can talk, share, and give gifts. We can cry on her shoulder, raise our arms in defense of her, and lament for her unhappiness.

In spite of this wonderful relationship, prophecies of countless tribes and nations foretell the possibility of a day when she can no longer sustain us—that if we do not follow the old teachings, she will make certain adjustments in order to balance herself that will not be to our liking. Some elders say it will be like a dog shaking off so many fleas. The Washo stories of the Water Babies, for example, imply that the forces of nature are not to be taunted or tested, and that the earth has guardians that are so powerful that they can level whole villages with a thought.

We are not the only ones who belong to Mother Earth—there are millions of species, our brothers and sisters, in fact. If we are beating up on our brothers and sisters, we will be sent away from this beautiful home like prodigal sons and daughters. Whether it is wisdom or anger and revenge that causes a loving parent to make this decision is not for me to say, but it is done to protect the rest of the family from harm. The animals, trees, reptiles, fish, and frogs are all family to us, and yet even as they’re being born deformed we don’t change our behavior. Is it so unimaginable that a loving mother such as Gaia would spank us, or even send us out into the cold to die in order to protect the others? In the old stories, it is the other animals who find a way to reach us humans, to convince us to stop and think about what we are doing. We come from a good family. We need to listen to their advice, and it doesn’t get transmitted in words, but in nonverbal ways.

What exactly is “sacred” for the Native American? All life? The whole manifestation? Perhaps the question is, what is not?

In my use of this word “sacred,” I refer to that which is eternal, that which is beyond human improvement, that which should not be changed. I chose stories that were not sacred stories per se—not to be interpreted or changed—but those that referred to the sacred: everyday, fun stories. However, the Algonquin elders say that everywhere you stand is sacred, and every day is sacred—in fact, that all life is sacred. I also believe this, and feel that everything that lives has a place in the sacred hoop of life.

Nature is sacred in a different way—not exactly eternal, not exactly beyond human improvement. Part of our purpose is to interact with nature, to be a part of it, to “comb the mother’s hair” by collecting fallen branches for our hearth fires, to collect acorns, and to keep the deer and beaver population in balance. However, we are not to dig out or remove whole sections of the earth, or destroy any species of local plant or animal. All holes should be refilled eventually—even subway holes, in the long run.

Human life is sacred in a third way. Its sacredness lies in the four gifts that are always changing and growing: our name, which tells us of our mission in life (about which we are always learning more), our free will (which changes its mode of expression every day), our language (which we should be free to use creatively), and our peace of heart and mind (which we must regain every day).

When you speak of the Red Road teachings—or the Native American spiritual philosophy—and equate it with the Mi’kmaq “way of truth,” the Cherokee “way of good,” the Navajo “beauty way,” and in similar spiritual precepts of other cultures, beyond the Native American, what is the thematic thread that you see running through all of them?

The three levels of sacredness I just mentioned can also be found in the descriptions of the Way of the Tao, the Buddhist Dharma, the Hebrew Halakha, the Egyptian Ma’at, the Islamic Shari’a, and others. There is the way of the eternal, in other words, the Way of Heaven. There is the way of Nature, also known as the Pure Land. Thirdly, there is the Way that Humankind Should Live. All three are sacred in different ways. The same can be said of the Red Road.

What role does storytelling play in the Native American spiritual life?

Stories are the essence of mythopoetics, which is the essence of culture. The history of the human race is nothing more than a story told to a child. Stories must have conflicts between characters, good and evil must be addressed in some way—ignorance and knowledge, innocence and experience. Without story, we remember nothing. Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, all used stories to convey their teachings; it’s how children learn, and adults too. Stories are lessons in 3-D: they present objects and events without direct evaluation, and it is up to us to look at them from all sides, like a sculpture in our minds.

We learn these stories before we have the faculties to reject or censor them, and they become a part of us; they mold our values and opinions. But stories generally do have values to impart, and we have to be careful what we are teaching through them.

Do all Native American stories of the sacred have a moral or practical point to make? Which ones best express the higher concept of the right way to live? What are the major lessons to be learned from these stories?

All the stories have moral and ethical points to make. All are expressions of the Red Road teachings, only many of them are presented in the inverse, which is a very effective teaching tool. For example, one of the best ways to teach about the Ashtangikamarga, or the Eightfold Path as taught by the Buddha, is to teach of the consequences of its opposite. What if we were told a terrible lie about our friend? We would not have right understanding, and would therefore not have right thinking about him. We would then speak badly of him, and then this might lead to actions that weren’t right either. This situation could only be corrected by the Eightfold Path, more carefully followed.

Likewise, the Native American stories often show us the right way (which the Mi’kmaq call Agoolamz) in reverse, in order to show us the chain of unpleasant events that can follow, so that we can make our own decisions and not feel we’re being lectured. There are no eight steps along the Red Road, but there are four directions, corresponding with the four parts of the self—the body, the heart, the mind, and the spirit—all of which want to be in balance. All of these stories, either directly or inversely, teach respect for Mother Earth and for all beings upon it (creatures, plants, rocks), and this definitely includes human beings of all sizes and shapes and colors—including ourselves, with all our flaws.

Would you say that “The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth” expresses the essence of the right way to live? If so, could you elaborate on the implications of this statement—the consequences of not living life according to this principle, and the state the earth might be in if we did live according to this principle?

This saying was originally attributed to a certain speech by Chief Seattle. In fact, it has been said for thousands of years by elders across North America, in every language of this land. This is the message behind each of these stories, and it does indeed express the essence of the right way to live on the earth. We have minds and hearts that are connected to the earth, and spirits that live on, somewhere beyond this earth, but our bodies are of the clay and soil of this planet, and we cannot live long without respecting that fact. While we live, if we ignore or think harmful thoughts about our bodies and the connection we have with the earth, we will soon lose our hearts; we will eventually lose our minds; and when that happens, we will lose our souls. It’s that simple.

What we are seeing now is that large numbers of people are afraid to speak up in defense of Mother Earth, and it’s a strange silence. The consequences of not belonging to the earth are that the earth will no longer continue to serve us and help us. Whether this reversal will seem like “revenge” as foreseen by Lovelock in his new book, or whether it will be more of a crippling, a falling away of the beauty of the earth, remains to be seen. Our prayers will show us the way both as individuals and as a race. We can’t rely on mass communication alone to end this silence. We must communicate what we know to our friends and family.

Were the pre-Columbian Amerindian cultures living in a kind of state of grace in which this principle was widely or universally observed? Or was it as little or sporadically observed as it is now? What lesson might be learned from the destruction and subjugation of cultures living the Way by cultures dedicated to an opposing way of life?

I always make a distinction between “traditional” Natives and Native culture as a whole. The old stories are filled with characters such as “The Boy Who Got Mad at the Sun” (also known as “The Boy Who Snared the Sun”), who do not follow the traditional teachings and get into lots of trouble. We laugh at his efforts to snare the sun; meanwhile, we build dams that snare the rivers, make nuclear bombs that snare the atom, and launch ships that snare whales and dolphins. When we finally learn to snare the sun only through solar panels, we’ll have learned a traditional lesson: respect, and proper use of our resources.

Traditional teachings in Native culture about how to leave no traces on the earth are very exact, and, I think, sound a little extreme to those entranced by twenty-first-century culture, but those are the teachings. They’re getting harder and harder to live by in their pure form. I don’t always live up to them, but they’re constantly on my mind. There have always been Native Americans who felt those rules didn’t apply to them, but they are good rules to live by. We all are quasi-traditional to varying degrees, but the traditional teachings don’t change.

The first explorers were often crazy people who weren’t welcomed at home. They were welcomed here, by and large, and wore out that welcome in record time. It is that restless conquering spirit, implanted in the New World at that time, which has led to some of our problems. Enron’s motto, “Get in, get out!” which led to trillions of dollars of damage to the economy, can be traced back to the wild west, and to the conquerors of this land, like Columbus and de Soto. Environmentally speaking, where else are we going to go? The Native culture, which takes things slow, is a good balance to that. Some of those who followed the conquerors were often kind, with good intentions, and it was these salt-of-the-earth working immigrants who often intermarried with the Natives, and whose earth-minded descendants are still here today. They know that “the earth does not belong to us,” and are not the problem, regardless of ethnicity.

What do you see as the force that contributes the most to the loss of life and the decline of wisdom? What can we do to oppose it and turn it around?

As seen in the story “Co-no, The World’s Greatest Gambler,” addiction is probably the most dangerous element that nature has placed inside of us. Addiction gets worse when fed by loowaywoodee, an Algonquin word meaning “bad things in my heart.” We say that poor communication leads to confusion, confusion leads to fear, fear to anger, and anger to violence. These all are loowaywoodee. We also know that, according to “the Way of the Heron,” the Algonquin path of conflict resolution—one of the four paths to wholeness—we can find ways to resolve all conflicts through good communication skills. This will reduce the inner emotional pain that feeds addictions.

We have a lot of inner pain these days, and it leads us into further addictions to materialistic solutions, to entertainment, oil consumption, junk food, alcohol, and drugs. All of these things weaken our connection with the spirit, the true source of wisdom, of which a warm heart and clear mind can only be good servants. Addictions can cut us off from spirit, and can destroy our hearts and minds as well, not to mention the medical problems they cause. The solution is as old as the hills—it’s communication.

We need to meet lies with facts and truth. We need to say that global warming is a fact, and that there isn’t much time, even if Lovelock, Hansen, and Lovejoy and others are wrong. We need to point out that 24 to 26 percent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has its origins in the United States, that everyone but us acknowledges that, and that the underlying cause is an addiction to oil and power. One of the strongest cures for addiction is passionate devotion to something we love. Religion may not always be rational, or even wise, but it’s a powerful cure for self-destructive addictions of all kinds—sometimes a less destructive kind of addiction—and this has been the salvation of millions. If we are as passionately devoted to nature as we are to our addictions, it could really help us break the yoke of addiction to refined oil and all the other unnatural things we crave.

Native American creation stories, like those of other indigenous cultures, and like the Judeo-Christian one, for that matter, are mythical in nature. Although they teach a healthy respect for the environment and for the planet as a living entity, they are not what you would call “scientific.” Are the facts of the geological record, as well as of the evolution of species, taught to Native American schoolchildren today—and accepted as reality by the majority of Native Americans?

I concern myself mostly with preserving what we call the “traditional viewpoint.” However, I come into contact with thousands of Native Americans in the United States and Canada, so I have an idea of prevailing notions that are not traditional. The old stories are meant to pique our interest in subjects, not give us final answers. The “creation stories” are of several types, but all serve to fire up our interest in the origins of all life. Some are “fictional,” as are most of those in my book, and were only told in winter, as entertainment. They were vehicles for important ethical and moral teachings, and occasionally contained zoological facts, such as the fact that birds don’t have marrow in their wing bones (“Deer and Blue Jay”) and that the wren sounds upset before a storm (“Coyote and Wren”). Truly “sacred” stories (and there are a few woven into the book but not featured) are considered to be true by traditional families; however, we of this time have lost the secret of interpreting them. I occasionally come across clues as to how and why they are true, but it’s not my position to explain.

A huge percentage of professional Native Americans today who have advanced degrees are working in environmental or natural science, and that includes the study of evolution. Many feel obligated to be overly careful and exact in their methods of research so as to not be stereotyped as “primitive,” and end up excelling in their field. However, there are gaps in those theories, as there are with the “Bering Strait Theory,” and Natives will be the first to point them out. Schoolteachers and professors are in an especially difficult position, and will stress the areas where story and science agree—for example, the teaching that if we take care of Mother Earth, she will take care of us—the inverse of which is now very easy to see.

You deal at some length with the pervasiveness of gambling in Native cultures, and its metaphysical role as a means of determining and attaining spiritual insight and power. Is there some reason the gambling games that you describe seem to rely almost exclusively on chance—rather than psychological or intellectual skill, like playing poker or other card games involving when to wager and when to pass?

Yes, this struck me as very curious, but logical too. There are many Native American games of skill; for example, bagettaway (lacrosse) has always been a game people gambled on, and card games are popular among Native Americans today too. But yes, there seems to be a preference for games of pure chance. There are three original uses of gambling: as an oracle for foretelling the future, as a way of testing personal power, and for conflict resolution. In each case, the less the intellect can interfere with the process, the purer the result. If both parties in a conflict have equal claim to a property and equal entitlement, or equally convincing sides of a story, a game of chance would determine the winner, like drawing straws, as people still do today. Certainly, an oracle that can be manipulated by the reader is not worth much, and a game of chance that can be manipulated by skill is called “fixed,” and does not show the will of spirit but of deception.

Does the historical role of gambling in Native cultures have a direct (or even indirect) connection to the recent historical development of major profit-making with casinos? Would that metaphysical aspect of gambling still apply in the casino context?

In the book, I take a “two sides of the story” position on this difficult issue. The first side is that gambling has always been an important and even healthy part of Native American culture, and that it was used for sacred purposes. (I devote a whole chapter to this: “Wager for the World.”) The second side is that gambling, especially when taken out of a sacred context, can become highly addictive and destructive to society, as described in horrible detail in the story “Co-no, The World’s Greatest Gambler.” Some Native Americans go to these new casinos, which are all computer-driven and -controlled, hoping to gain that metaphysical experience of tilting the odds with their presence, but I don’t think it’s possible, and I think there is a danger of falling into gambling addiction anyway.

I support traditional gambling, especially as it was used in the old days, for conflict resolution; as an oracle; and to test one’s intuitive powers; and I prefer that to computer-driven casinos, some of which are better run than others. New York State has aggressively pursued Native American involvement in the building of casinos in the past ten or so years, and gains control over the tribal councils this way, and also raises money for the state budget by keeping most of the money. The upshot is, “Don’t blame Native Americans if you don’t like government-run casinos!” And I would hope that more of that money would go towards making New York City—and the world—carbon-neutral and pollution-free.

Evan T. Pritchard’s Web site:
www.algonquinculture.org

Open House, at the New York Open Center
May 12th, 8pm, Introduction to:

Four Paths to Wholeness in Algonquin Culture,
Thursday, May 25
The Path of the Shaman
Thursday, June 1
The Way of the Heron
Thursday, June 8
The Path of the Heart
Thursday, June 15
The Way of the Ethical Warrior
7:45 – 9:30pm
$80 for members; $85 for nonmembers
$22 per session
New York Open Center
83 Spring Street
212-219-2527
info@opencenter.org

March 8th, looking back to March 1st.

2006-03-08T11:02:00.000-08:00

Evan Pritchard, starting pitcher for the left wing Irish Algonquin Team.
Look out for that curve ball.
Wednesday March 8th, 2006: I took the car in (Hyundai Kingston)under warrantee and they diagnosed and replaced a spark plug for free. Meanwhile I got a chance to look through the Robert Jay ms and while sitting in the "quiet room" (a wonderful idea) I looked through it and realized a way to structure it using the ten facts of truth as an outline also the five insights and other means. They could each become chapter headings. inisde the large ms of loose leaf papers for RJ, I found a student's missing reflection papre on The Pathfinder. I called him on my cell. I read the morning paper and saw the Patriot Act had been modified by Democrats, I saw US beat Mexico 2-0, I saw that Kaz M finally got a triple. I saw that Dae Sung Koo was let go. I read how "activist.....Dana Reeves.. suddenly died of lung cancer although she does not smoke cigarettes." She had had chemo but only a few months ago, and said she was recovering. The paper said that lung cancer at her age was very unusual.. of course you know what I think....Bob Marley, another activist who came down suddenly with cancer. Dana should have smoked a few joints like Bob Marley did, to extend his life after getting cancer. Maybe she got some gift boots from ...the same person Bob Marley did just before his cancer appeared.
Terry Bradshaw was on Imus this morning, new movie, first serious role, with Cathy Bates. I went to school with a cathy bates but this one was from Tennessee.
Then I went to Joe the Chiropractic and got a long overdue adjustment, then the receptionist looked up my records and found the first record was for Sept. 1995, but I was sure I had visited with Dr Pat in 1994, so this is my 12th year with Dr. Joe and friends. However I am not among the oldest of clients, he said there were whole families who'd been with him since 1988. I said, 'And they'll continue to be the senior patients...unless..... " we both said, ..."unless they drop dead..." The receptionist was shocked. It was pretty funny. Joe really cares about his people, in fact he helped me buy my current car.
Then I went to Marist and ran into Venk Kandadai and I created a blogsite for him called WisdomofVenk which turned out great. I showed him my various blogs and part of the power point. He wrote in his profile at http://wisdomofvenk.blogspot.com that he wanted to go to Columbia. He also listed No Word For Time as a favorite book. I also showed him peopleofmanitou.blogspot.com.
I mentioned the student I thought should do a paper on Hinduism, and asked him about the temple on All Angels Hill Road, he said you turn left at (Herks?) and you see signs.
He went to tutor I went to lunch, but before I did I checked phone messages and found a troubling message from an upset DJ from the Native Ameircan Book Store, apparently there was a problem with the event of March 22.
I ckecked my emails and didn't get past the first one, from KT. I started to answer, and as I did I realized this situation was serious and saved the email message for further editing. I called DJ and left a message indicating that there had been a misunderstanding, but that I didn't know exactly what.
I also called Gordon Bailey back and left two messages about our starting a new church together in NYC.
I did finally have lunch and ran into the autistic girl mentioned earlier and we had a nice talk, the first since finals ended last year. i noticed she had put stickers all over her cell phone. I asked if she painted her walls, she said she'd like to but she wasn't that good a painter. Then she showed me that she had absolutely covered all her books with the shiny stickers. Plastered them. I thought it was very interesting. Its a way of claiming your objects as part of yourself and therefore not other. PL, another "Indigo Child" does it with paintings of flowers.

It is a fairly warm day for early March and I walked around with just the suit jacket around campus. I went back to the lab and worked on this.
I heard that my brother was hired back at a job in a plant business, being close to nature, and got a raise and a promotion. Sister Rainbow has a new puppy, who is jealous of her talking to other species. I talked to folks on cell phone standing on the edge of the Hudson at sunset with trains passing on the other side. I'm working piecemeal on various internet projects and school work. My eyes are still burning from the power point project. I explained to my Micmac mother what a power point was. She thought it was a way of arguing. Maybe it is. She said Barbara D'andrea (from NO Word For Time stories) still remembers that I was the one that formed the basis of the Red Willow Society and brought the traditional Micmacs to the US. My father read The Bob Cratchet of Shea today on the web, and really liked it, and forwarded it to Lynn. I said I was thinking of him when I wrote it, as he has always been a big fan of A Christmas Carol and Bob Cratchet.It made me happy to see that he found it without me telling him. I then told him a "readers digest of those articles is now on the front webpage for MLB, which is one of the most popular web pages in the world, and must get 10 million viewers a day. Nerds love baseball!
I see Dan black and Igor are both working the library desk at the same time. We are all supportive of Igors book and may choose to work together. An article comes out tomorrow in the Circle by Dan.
I got two lecture offers today. I am becoming superstitious of counting those chickens in my blog before they hatch, but they are both very very nice! Code word
Rowers and Drummers. One is for April 22, the day I was supposed to do the walking tour for free.
I got an email from Erik Baard formerly of the Village Voice wanting to get together.

I had lunch at the KAF today.

Tuesday March 7th, 2006: I had a late start due to the printer not working, but made good time to school so I could print out the test questions. It turns out I had skipped over one of the most important quesitons in the review session, but had to ask it anyway, so I declared a half point system on that item. We had gone over this question several times in class, but not on the day of the review. The students seemed okay with that. I handed back all papers. EW had read all the material on Dharma for her discussion project, and I got the idea that she should change the topic of her term paper from Roman to Hindu culture. She was open to the idea, in fact by coincidence she was wearing a pale orange that reminded me of modern Hindu meditation wear. I suggested she find Autobiogrpahy of a Yogi. I said Hindu culture tends to be very optimistic and positive, and that she'd been going through some hard times lately, some bad luck. (I was intuiting this)
She said she'd just been in a car accident the day before. I said "That's bad luck, I'd say!"I wanted to mark this day because I think (intuit) that something really good will come out of this for EW.
Students seemed pretty cheerful upon leaving the midterm test room.
James Smith, future NBA star, came over to talk; he said they knew that the Iona game was basically the championship; they felt they could beat St. Peters and go on from there, but knew that Iona was tough. I said there must have been some element of revenge, as Marist upset them a month ago (see beginning of this blog) He said yes there was vengeance in their hearts. James said he was from Maine, Bethel Mnt I said my family was from Old Orchard. Small world. I wondered to myself if he was Micmac. I had said to the class that Iona won the MAAC but that Marist came close.
I talked to Wally a while. He's always bringing up things about cultural history I never heard of; I don't always known what to say but I tell him its good that he does that so I'm not the only one source all the time.
I worked in the library, Dan lent me a copy of harpers monthly. I talked to Diego about sports, he went to Albany and saw the Marist game and said that the defense was overwhelmed in the second half. Two guys on Iona scored 30 points.
ALl four of my basketball students have been in the papers every day, Times Herald, NY Post sometimes, POJO every day. Cool headed Jared Jordan led the nation in assists and was elected to the all MAAC team, as was red shirt Ryan Stilphen.
I had taken the ESPN mag and decided to write up the article about David Wright now that I had a new mlb blog. It came out good. I printed it out and showed it to Diego who is a sports broadcasting major.
I ran into....can't remember, a student that used to come to Citizenship Thinktank alot. He said he'd gotten a scholarship to London to study alternative dispute resolution, and we talked about that for a while. It was weird that he got a scholarship and DLP didn't. I had a weird sense of time today, it kept whizzing by. I wanted to see Harry Potter again, but was eating dinner at school and the time just whizzed by the one showing.

Monday, March 6th, 2006 a pleasant day in retreat. I was so tired I needed tons of sleep. A friend chided me for being a bum. I said I'd planned this sleep all week, and if you say you're going to sleep ahead of time, you're not a bum. Bums don't plan ahead. That seemed like an acceptible answer.
I took a walk with Ellis and E took a picture of me in a green Mets tee shirt in front of Left Field card shop, and one or two by the river.
I worked on the computer for a while, resaving my pictures in usable formats. I went on MLB site front page and noticed the baseball blogs, and there weren't that many of them taken, and it was $5 a month, so I set one up for Amazine1, a sort of "readers digest" version. I ended up staying up til 3 AM and got tired all over again, but it was a big step forward in a way, as the traffic should be better.
There are alot of software issues on that site. I wanted to put in the photo of me and DLP at Shea that Shoshana took, so I imported the picture called Shoshanas picture, and it turned out to me an artistic photo of a girls back, a girl who apparently had no clothes on. There was nothing obscene about the picture of the girls back, but it violated MLB's strict rules, yet teh delete button did not work!!! That's why I was up all night! I suddenly knew how Lady MacBeth felt with that stain..."Out damn blogspot!!!" I kept trying to delete that artistically beautiful and tasteful but technically inappropriate photo from my photo gallery. They said all photos should be relevant to the subject of baseball. I kept looking at that lady's back and thinking, "How can I relate this to baseball?" After about an hour, it just disappeared by itself. Shoshana is very sick these days and was in teh hospital on Monday, so I think this is Gods way of keeping her in my mind so I pray for her recovery, though she is not religious in any denomination. I did put out tobacco for her on Sunday.

Sunday, March 5th, 2006, Worked hard on final touches to the hour long power point on Inwwod Hill Park. I got a message from Ray Harrel at Magic Circle Opera Co. Apparently there was a big fight over the meaning of the word Nyack and I am one of the most quoted people on this issue. Sand Hill Cherokee say there is an old Cherokee word meaning point of stones. There is also a Creek word Newyakka, which means "new Yorker." I said the first had a common Mayan/Nuatl root, and the second was simply a dialect version of New Yorker, different word. Then we talked for about two hours about everything.
I mentioned I was writing this string quartet, and he said he needed Native American songs by Native composers. I said this was a baroque flavored piece, but it was exactly as I heard it in my dream. He said any music written from a dream was Native AMerican in another way.

We took a walk and my photographer friend took picture for the new mlb baseball site, several in fact, and also for St Patricks Day.
I put on my shoes at one point and there was a sharp point in one but it went away. I just had enough time to pull together a written report for the Inwood Hill Park Rangers, 35 pp with footnotes and explanation, a text only reprint of the power point and a full reprint of the power point, plus a CD/DVD of the power point to donate to the center. It turned out to be really important, because the guy who hired me John Wells, had been temporarily transferred and would never see it otherwise, and Bill missed most of it due to a lighting crisis at the center. Apparently there had been a number of star speakers there, including the great David Oestreicher and ...John (?)Kraft, but one of the employees there said I was the most interesting. So that's when I gave him the powerpoint DVD and printout sets. This helped inspire them to hire me back for the next month's event! Well worth all the extra trouble.
Got to Inwood Hill in plenty of time and took a walk, got photos of the rock. watched a black poodle running his fuzzy ass off after a rubber ball, it was fascinating, he was radiating such bouncy energy.
Got back and found that the "computer" was a notebook laptop and was not totally up to the task of a 58 slide powerpoint with lots of animation. After a while it uploaded and after a while I could get through the slides by pushing forward and reverse, but the animation didni't work for the most part.
The talk had been announced on short notice, mostly with posters, and it was great to see all these people crawl out from under rocks and arrive from all directions on foot carrying their Evan Pritchard books under their arms to be signed. It was one of those beautiful moments where the voice of the people was heard. I have a following!
One woman said that Native New Yorkers was a sleeper, that it had finally caught on, and everyone is talking about it. She said it took people four years to just read it, tehre is so much content. I said that the paperback was coming out just in time for them to read it again.

Saturday March 4th: This was the former Inaugeration Day in Washington's time ,easy to remember for those who wish to march forth into life boldly with both eyes open. I worked all day on pulling together the power point, my first "power point movie." I was learning new tricks all the time, and added alot of animation and clips of music, some of which were funny. I also was able to watch the Independent Oscars for most of the show, then had to turn it off.
I went wtih Ellis to see a blues concert with Bobby Kyle and Darin Lewis the black upright bass player.
Bobby is a white blues singer and guitarist of the highest order, I told him he reminded me of David Clayton Thomas, and he made a sound like, wow I hope so. Both Ellis and I thought of Paul Butterfield too.
We all talked afterwards and it turns out Lewis is from Chevy Chase and is two years or less younger than me and we know alot of the same people, like David Eaton, one of Americas first black TV talk show hosts and a UU minster and friend of ML King (see photo). Small world. We had both seen Paul Butterfield and the Blues Project, and had heard of but not seen Roy Buchanan.
Before the concert I talked to Mr Smith who runs the historical society and The Columns museum, and we talked about his collection. The town is in an uproar over an issue with a monument to Tom Quick. He said it was in an undisclosed location pending the end of the fighting . I said I thought I could help. He said hed meet me next Wed and his wife would lend me a book on Francis Craft. I would tell them what I knew about the unmarked artifacts.
There was alot of great art work on auction, but the concert was a fund raiser too. They are trying to raise money to put a new roof on this ancient and historic edifice. It is one of the better community-run museums around.

We were all pretty tired after the concert, and Bobby was obviously sleep deprived. We were talking about seeing a good movie, and it turns out The Peacemaker with Geoge Clooney was on TV, and we watched that.

Friday March 3rd, 2006: I was thinking, "I really have to get to work on time, so I'll check my messages, and I wont call back unless its really imporant. As luck would have it, I got a message from Depsimanna, "Greasewood Flower Girl" of the Hopi, who was once caretaker of Dan Evehema, the eldest of the Hopi (who died in 1999) which is funny because I'd just made a duplicate of a video, a documentary in which she had starred. This is a coincidence because I hadn't spoken to her or seen the video in many many years, since before 9-11, for sure. She is very psychic. We once toured together for the Hopi, talking of the prophecies to groups of people.
We talked on the phone for 15 minutes. She is going to Holland soon. She invited me out to New Mexico for a conference, but I did not commit as of yet. She had been very ill and out of contact, and I was concerned she might no longer be with us, but she sure is! She had left California years ago and left no phone number.
I was also making an email list and wanted her on it, and so when she called she gave me her email for the list. Very small world. We talked about our friend Oanness Pritzger too.
All of us were at Belonging To Mother Earth, a massive conference with a thousand medicine men and women, organized along the lines of No Word For Time by Richard Schneider, a friend of Depsimana. Both are friends of Janet Cutting's.

I met with L and we went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. (I think this was today) L said it was cute. It made me realize that the power point project was my current test of strength and I'd better do a good job. The movie refreshed my determination. I threw myself into it later that night.

Thursday March 2nd, it was a snowy day, but it looked like we'd have school, not that bad. I mailed the Fed Ex pacakge to Paul English after looking all day for an open Fed Ex shop, very difficult ordeal to mail the original of the Medicine Wheel design to him. I did alot of errands, then called school to find that all classes were cancelled. This meant my midterm Ethics review was cancelled. That created a very strange situation. The class had broken their word to me to support Marist basketball if I let them out a little early. Most did not go! Now God was sending them their karma, erasing the review period with little snow flakes from heaven. I mailed out alot of bills while standing int he post office. I ran into my old friend Tarak Singh, and there was Major, (( call him Maha Dog, as Maha means major in sanskrit)) one of the most popular dogs in Woodstock. Tarak invited me to dinner some time. I agreed.
I also did laundry, graded papers and mailed stuff back to the Pequot.
Today was supposed to be the day that Lovelock's Revenge of Gaia was being released in the US> Guess what? Its not even on Amazon, and B and N's website has no trace of it. Its a missing person.

Wednesday, March 1st This is the day I relaunched Resonance Magazine. It was first launched in 1986, then went out of service in 1996. Now in 2006, the twentieth anniversary of my publishing company and of resonance magazine, I am relaunching it as a weblog! Or in fact a cluster of weblogs. I had a complete vision in my head today as to how it should look and be structured. It would be a blog cluster, which 12 or so permanent posting folders that would change and only hold the most recent articles on each subject. Then those would link the reader to the separate blogzines which would act both as archives and separate magazines.
I also created the blog evansearthwatch today, to go with the Magazine idea. I updated Resonancemagazine.blogspot.com on March 3rd, completing the initial stage.
A new month begins. Lots to do. Mostly, to type up notes from the last two weeks of February; sorry folks for the delay. Tomorrow is the US release of Lovelock’s book Revenge of Gaia, and also the start of the World Baseball Cup, which will distract media attention away from Lovelock. I don’t know why I didn’t get a call to play for the United Algonquian-People’s team; I was checking my voice mail, but no calls. Last night I dreamt many strange dreams, one of which was in the future, and the Bush administration would not leave, but continued making larger and larger weapons, until all the money was spent. I also dreamt about a blonde haired pianist—we were working on Believe Me (one of mine) and then when it was time to play for an important person, he went crazy. He was trying to play in the dark and with the lid closed, acting nuts. It turns out his mother had just died and he was using cocaine. There were a lot of us in this peace building community, and we found sliced up old pictures of him and his mother and were very concerned. There were deep trenches outside, and I helped people climb out of them with my hands lifting their feet. I also dreamt about trying to fix my car, or was it someone else’s? I found a ring on my finger I had never seen before! A young man came in telling the mechanics about his trip to Canada, saying he was part Algonquin, they weren’t interested.

Text to NY Spirit Article in progress

2006-02-17T12:11:00.000-08:00

UNTITLED DRAFT TO NY SPIRIT ARTICLE BY WILLIAM MEYERS as of Feb 14th, 2006

Readers: This is an earlier draft of an article posted on this blog on March 9th. It will be published on April 1st in New York Spirit, probably edited yet again. There is alot of interesting details in this version not included in the March 9th version so I will keep this posted here for a while. By the way, the March 9th is very skillfully edited by William Myers, and journalism students can learn alot by comparing the two. The loss of these details is par for the course. On line the length doesn't matter that much, but in print, it matters a great deal.

Are there any thematic resonances in your book -- i.e., Native American culture -- that would correspond to and reinforce James Lovelock's prophecy of environmental doom? Are there any that would counter it with some measure of hope?

These stories were created at a time when the land and the people were one, but already the elders were seeing the signs as to what happens when people treat mother earth with disrespect. There were already prophecies stating that treating the earth poorly would lead to the destruction of mankind, and these stories in the book were intended to help children (and adults) find the right balance between what they wanted and what actions should be avoided in order to prevent this terrible destruction. If we had listened to these stories all along, we wouldn’t be in this position as Lovelock describes today. The stories still exist. I spent a lot of time in the Library of Congress looking for the earliest transcriptions into English of the most popular stories, and most have been easily accessible for over a hundred years, but not enough people listened or understood. What happens next is up to us. Lovelock says we now can only buy time, but in the ancient stories, the animals and supernatural spirit beings (raven) often come to the rescue of the foolish humans at the last minute to bail them out. It is hard to predict what will happen, but global warming will cause crop failure, leading most certainly to war, famine, disease, and pestilence, the four horsemen of Lovelock’s apocalypse. The pestilence is already happening, as new types of infestations and infections such as Lyme’s Disease are spreading due to environmental causes. Perhaps the pestilence itself will be enough to drive us to rethink our position on the Kyoto and other worldwide agreements. In this way, it could be said that “animals” came to our rescue. But if it isn’t enough, the next is disease, such as bird flu, (brought by raven?) then famine, then war with China, and other countries that know full well that 25% of the dioxins that caused the global warming that wiped out their crops came from the United States. The Hopi prophet Massau predicted this possibility 1000 years ago, and said we need to go back to the earth.

When and where were you born, into what kind of milieu and with what ancestral heritages that would explain your devotion to the Native American spiritual path?

My mother is of Native American descent, with a mix of Scottish, and my father is a Celtic scholar, but my mother was always present, and raised us kids from an Algonquin perspective. My childhood was in the Washington, D.C. area, not such a bad place to grow up during the Kennedy administration, but an area short on Native awareness. When I was fourteen I was left with my great aunt Helen, an outspoken Mi’kmaq activist, and ended up spending part of my summers with her on her animal farm, where she raised and used herbs to heal people of the community for free. She was quite the environmentalist and back in the 60s was always recycling everything that moved, and went on TV and radio talking about the environment and I was a part of that. There were two consecutive articles about her in Reader’s Digest in the 1980s. She also painted great landscapes in oil, very original, and some are still in museums in Maine. She often told stories of her father William Mewer, a champion of the Natives of Maine at the turn of the century, a mystic and community builder whom I apparently reminded her of . Later, after her death I learned that we were also equally Wampanoag, and descendants of King Phillip, Metacomet, and therefore also of Witamu, Wamsutta, Passaconaway, and Wannalancet, that great family of Algonquin leaders. I played Wamsutta in an off-Broadway musical Queen of New England, by Phoebe Legere, the romantic lead as it were, with Phoebe’s lyrics inspired by my own book No Word For Time. I really enjoyed that experience. I like to think of myself as the Aunt Helen of New York City, but in fact, I don’t have a tenth of her knowledge.

"Native American Stories of the Sacred." What exactly is "sacred" for the native American? Isn't all life? Isn't the whole manifestation? Perhaps the question is, what is not?

In my use of this word sacred, I refer to that which is eternal, that which is beyond human improvement, that which should not be changed. I chose stories that were not sacred stories per se, not to be interpreted or changed, but those that referred to the sacred, everyday fun stories. However, the Algonquin elders say that everywhere you stand is sacred, and every day is sacred, in fact, that all life is sacred, and I also believe this, and feel that everything that lives has a place in the hoop of life.

Nature is sacred in a different way; not exactly eternal, not exactly beyond human improvement. Part of our purpose is to interact with nature, to be a part of it, to “comb the mother’s hair” by collecting fallen branches for our hearth fires, to collect acorns, and to keep the deer and beaver population in balance. However we are not to dig out or remove whole sections of the earth, or destroy any species of local plant or animal. All holes should be refilled eventually, even subway holes, in the long run.

Human life is sacred in a third way. Its sacredness lies in the four gifts which are always changing and growing; our name, which tells us of our mission in life, (of which we are always learning more) our free will, (which changes expression every day) our language, (which we should be free to use creatively) and our peace of heart and mind, (which we must re-win every day.)

These three levels of sacredness to “the way” can also be found in the descriptions of the Tao and of Dharma, and of the Islamic Shari’a; there is the way of the eternal, aka the Way of Heaven. There is the way of Nature, aka the Pure Land, and thirdly the Way that Humankind Should Live. All three are sacred in different ways.

When you speak of the Red Road teachings -- or the Native American spiritual philosophy -- and equate it with the Mi'kmaq "way of truth," the Cherokee "way of good," the Navajo "beauty way," and beyond the native American culture, The Way of the Tao, the Buddhist "dharma," the Islamic "Shari'a," along with many other examples from world cultures, what is the thematic thread that you see running through all of them? What are the essential characteristics of this universal Way that all its variants have in common?
(See and combine with above)

What role does storytelling play in the native American spiritual life? (I know you go into that in depth in the book, but a capsule summary would be good to have here.)
Stories are the essence of mythopoetics, which is the essence of culture. The history of the human race is nothing more than a story told to a child. Stories must have conflicts between characters, good and evil must be addressed in some way, ignorance and knowledge, innocence and experience. Without story, we remember nothing. Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, all used stories to convey their teachings, its how children learn, and adults too. Stories are lessons in 3-D, they present objects and events, without direct evaluation, and it is up to us to look at them from all sides, like a sculpture in our minds. We learn these stories before we have the faculties to reject or censor them and they become part of us, they mold our values and opinions. But stories generally do have values to impart, and we have to be careful what we are teaching through them. My Mi’kmaq mother often warned me about the Three Little Pigs story, that this was not a teaching tale, and that if I ever heard such a story to be very wary. In it, wolves are bad, evil in fact, and that people who live in brick houses are smarter than those who live in thatched houses or wigwams. I’ll never forget that. This is why when I look at blueprints for “green architecture” high rises, I say, “Oh, that makes sense!” I have built a number of wigwams in my day, “houses of stick,” and so far no wolves have blown them down.

Do all native American stories of the sacred have a moral or practical point to make? Are they expressions of the Red Road teachings, or only in some cases? Which ones best express this higher concept of the right way to live? What are the major lessons to be learned from these stories?

All the stories have moral and ethical points to make. All are expressions of the Red Road teachings, only many of them are presented in the inverse, a very effective teaching tool. For example, one of the best ways to teach about the Ashtangikamarga or Eightfold Path as taught by the Buddha, is to teach of the consequences of its opposite. What if we were told a terrible lie about our friend? We would not have right understanding, and would therefore not have right thinking about him. We would then speak badly of him, and then this might lead to actions that weren’t right either. This situation could only be corrected by the eightfold path, more carefully followed. Likewise, the Native American stories often show us the right way (which the Mi’kmaq call Agoolamz) in reverse in order to show us the chain of unpleasant events that can follow, so that we can make our own decisions and not feel lectured at. There are no eight steps along the Red Road, but there are four directions, corresponding with four parts of the self, the body, the heart, the mind, and the spirit, all of which want to be in balance. All of these stories, either directly or inversely, teach of respect for mother earth, and for all beings (creatures, plants, rocks) upon it great and small, and this definitely includes human beings of all sizes and shapes and colors. It also includes ourselves, with all our flaws.

Would you say that "The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth" expresses the essence of the the right way to live? If so, could you elaborate on the implications of this statement -- the consequences of not living life according to this principle, and the state the earth might be in if we did live according to this principle?

This saying was originally attributed to a certain speech by Chief Seattle, however the historian at the National Archives claims to have proven this phrase was not in the speech, but inserted later, by a newspaper. In fact, it has been said for thousands of years by elders across North America, in every language of this land, and I ask everyone to say it, so that we can make up for Seattle’s momentary oversight. This is the message behind each of these stories, and it does indeed express the essence of the right way to live on the earth. We have minds and hearts that are connected to the earth, and spirits that live on somewhere beyond this earth, but our bodies are of the clay and soil of this planet and we cannot live long without respecting that fact. While we live, if we ignore or think harmful thoughts about our bodies and the connection we have with the mother earth, we will soon lose our hearts, we will eventually lose our minds and when that happens, we will lose our souls. It’s that simple.

We have already seen individuals who lose their minds and souls by forsaking their mother earth, but it has only been a few. Some have actually lived in New York City. This number is growing, and may soon include millions. What we are seeing now is that large numbers of people are afraid to speak up in defense of mother earth, a strange silence. The consequences of not belonging to the earth are that the earth will no longer continue to serve us and help us. Whether this reversal will seem like “revenge” as foreseen by Lovelock in his new book, or whether it will be more of a crippling, a falling away of the beauty of the earth remains to be seen. Our prayers will show us the way both as individuals and as a race. We can’t rely on mass communication alone to end this silence, we must communicate what we know to our friends and family.

Were the pre-Columbian Amerindian cultures living in a kind of state of grace in which this principle was widely or universally observed? Or was it as little or sporadically observed as it is now? What lesson might be learned from the destruction and subjugation of cultures living the Way by cultures dedicated to an opposing way of life?

I always make a distinction between “Traditional” Natives and all Native Culture as a whole. The old stories are filled with characters such as “The Boy Who Got Mad at the Sun,” (aka the Boy Who Snared the Sun) who do not follow the traditional teachings and get into lots of trouble. We laugh at his efforts to snare the sun; meanwhile we build dams that snare the rivers, we make nuclear bombs and power plants that snare the atom, and launch ships that snare whales and dolphins. When we finally learn to snare the sun only through solar panels, we’ll have learned a traditional lesson. Respect and proper use of our resources.

Traditional teachings about how to leave no traces on the earth, in Native culture are very exact, and I think, sound a little extreme to those entranced by 21st century culture, but those are the teachings. They are getting harder and harder to live by in their pure form. I don’t live up to them, but they are constantly on my mind. I don’t step on ants intentionally, but I’m sure its happened, and I don’t dwell on it , because I know the spirit world is beautiful too. There have always been Native Americans who felt those rules didn’t apply to them. We all are semi-traditional to varying degrees, but the traditional teachings don’t change.

The first explorers were often crazy people who weren’t welcomed at home. (Verrazzano was an exception). They were welcomed here, by and large, and wore out that welcome in record time. It is that restless conquering spirit, implanted in the New World at that time, which has led to some of our problems. Enron’s motto, “Get in, get out!” which led to trillions of dollars of damage to the economy, can be traced back to the wild west, and to the conquerors of this land like DeSoto and Columbus. Environmentally speaking where else are we going to go? The Native culture, which takes things slow, is a good balance to that. Some of those that followed the conquerors were often kind, with good intentions, and it was these salt of the earth working immigrants who often intermarried with the Natives, and whose earth-minded descendants are still here today. They know that “the earth does not belong to us,” and are not the problem, regardless of ethnicity.

What kind of future do you foresee for our children and grandchildren? How likely is it that we will be able to turn around climate change and gain some measure of preventive control over the loss of species and the degradation of all forms of life? Will we ever regain some ecological balance? If not -- what kind of world do you foresee over the coming centuries?

I think we have time to turn it around, if we change the way we live now. I also foresee that great effort will be spent to slow the process down. I foresee a great Renaissance of human culture worldwide as people realize that they might not be able to accomplish anything in thirty years hence, similar to the inspired writings of a dying man. We think of Beethoven’s Ninth and the late quartets, which the man wrote, supposedly shaking his fist at the thunder and staving off death, and of Mozart’s Requiem, mostly for himself. But I think of New York’s own musical immigrant Gustav Mahler, who wrote Das Lied Von Der Erde (Song of the Earth) and then the 9th and 10th symphonies, only after learning in 1907 that he had a fatal blood disease, all of which were incredibly original and beautiful. He moved to New York City to conduct the New York Philharmonic, and lived long enough to hear his previous symphonies played, but not the new ones. It makes me wonder if our greatest achievements as humans will only be heard thousands of years later by visitors to this planet as they sort through our remains. I think we can do better!

I support the junglification of New York and other cities, and I think that the “green architecture” as developed by Jack Todd, the Native American architectural pioneer Douglas Cardinal, and New York’s own award winning Makrand Bhout, (the other kind of Indian) [I need to check spellings here, but don’t have time today!!!] will help us avoid this “dying man” scenario. New York should be at the forefront of this amazing movement. We have the resources, and we know how to make living buildings that do not add to, but actually help alleviate pollution. However, we must overcome the technical problems of electric cars, and use even more public transportation than we do now in and around New York. We need to think years ahead, not just punish people for using what salespeople are selling them. The spirit of the Algonquin landkeepers is still strong on Manhattan island; we can find inspiration in them as to how to make this transition, to get ourselves off the dead end road we’re speeding down, and onto the Red Road again, which, as the Hopi say, leads to a world where children will be safe to grow up.

In Lovelocks’ worst case scenario, we only have a hundred years until there are only small groups camped out on Antartica. People are shrugging their shoulders and saying, “We all die eventually.” But this scenario implies a horror of mass extinction that no human has ever witness before, not even at Auchwitz, not at Rwanda, or anyplace else. Global warming is not a day at the beach. In the worst case scenario, bugs will go crazy, then animals, then people. Tornadoes and hurricanes will make homes suddenly disappear. Food will become scarce, water will become tainted. People will fight each other, armies will go on the march. When Verrazzano discovered what is now New York City, he saw a terrible storm approaching and set sail on a different course, unintentionally reducing the impact that smallpox, carried by his crew, unaware of the danger, would have. The prophecies, in their most terrible aspects, could indeed come true if we don’t change our course in the face of the storm that is already upon us.

What do you see as the force which contributes the most to the loss of life and the decline of wisdom? What can we do to oppose it and turn it around?

As seen in the story Cono, The World’s Greatest Gambler, addiction is probably the most dangerous elements of our nature that nature has placed inside of us. Addiction gets worse when fed by loowaywoodee, an Algonquin word meaning “Bad things in my heart.” We say that poor communication leads to confusion, confusion leads to fear, fear to anger and anger to violence. These all are loowaywoodee. We also know that, according to “The Way of the Heron,” the Algonquin path of conflict resolution and one of the four paths to wholeness I teach about at New York’s Open Center each year, we can find ways to resolve all conflicts through good communication skills. This will reduce the inner emotional pain that feeds addictions. We have a lot of inner pain these days and it leads us into further addictions to materialistic solutions, to entertainment, oil consumption, junk food, alcohol and drugs. All of these things weaken our connection with the spirit which is the true source of wisdom, of which a warm heart and clear mind can only be good servants. Addictions can cut us off from spirit, and can also destroy our hearts and minds as well, not to mention the medical problems caused. In fact, we need them all working equally well together in order to walk the path of wholeness. The solution is as old as the hills, it is communication. We need to ask for help for our addictions and we help those who are lost in addiction. We need to back this up with action as well, in a loving way. Addictions cause us to lie to ourselves. We need to meet lies with facts of truth. We need to say that global warming is a fact, and that there isn’t much time, even if Lovelock, Hansen, and Lovejoy and others are wrong. We need to point out that 25% of the dioxins have their origins in the USA, and that everyone but us knows that, and that the underlying cause is an addiction to oil and power. One of the strongest cures for addiction is passionate devotion to something we love, (religion may not always be rational, or even wise, but it is a powerful cure for self-destructive addictions of all kinds; sometimes a less destructive version of the same) and this has been the salvation of millions. If we are as passionately devoted to nature as we are to our addictions, it could really help us break the yoke of addiction to refined oil and all the other unnatural things we crave.

Could you comment on Prof. James Lovelock's concept of Gaia -- the earth as a self-perpetuating living organism -- and what it shares in common with native American philosophy; also what Prof. Lovelock's most recent comments on the state of the planet portend for the future?

Every Native language has a different way of referring to “Mother Earth.” (Do you want a long list?) They all basically mean the same thing. This word mother implies that we are little children, that we are from her womb, that we depend on her for our food, and for wisdom as to how to live our lives, and that she loves us as a mother loves her children. All these things we attribute to the earth, the planet on which we live. It also implies that she is a living being with thoughts of her own, and a being with which, at certain sacred moments, we can talk to, share with, and give gifts to. We can cry on her shoulder, raise our arms in defense of her, and lament for her unhappiness. In spite of this wonderful relationship, prophecies of countless tribes and nations foretell of the possibility of a day when she can no longer sustain us, that if we do not follow the old teachings, she will make certain adjustments in order to balance herself that will not be to our liking. Some elders say it is like a dog shaking off so many fleas. The stories of the Water Babies of the Washo, for example, imply that the forces of nature are not to be taunted or tested; that the earth has guardians that are so powerful that they can level whole villages with a thought. We are not the only ones who belong to mother earth, there are millions of species, our brothers and sisters, in fact. If we are beating up on our brothers and sisters, we will be sent away from this beautiful home like prodigal sons and daughters. Whether it is wisdom or anger and revenge that cause a loving parent to make this decision is not for me to say, but it is done to protect the rest of the family from harm. The animals, trees, reptiles, fish, and frogs, are all family to us, and yet they are being born deformed and we don’t change our behavior. Is it so unimaginable that a loving mother such as Gaia would not spank us, or even send us out into the cold to die in order to protect the others? In the old stories, it is the other animals who find a way to reach us humans, to convince us to stop and think about what we are doing. We come from a good family. We need to listen to their advice, and it doesn’t come in words, but in non-verbal ways.

February 28th looking back

2006-02-16T07:06:00.000-08:00

(check this section for edits)
Tuesday February 28th, 2006, I slept in a little, but made some key phone calls, talked to David Kahn for a while, who plans to televise my talk at the Pequot Museum on the 22nd of Marsh. We talked about the war between the Pequot and the Narragansett, both the old and the recent. Then I headed for class. I talked about how stonehenges developed, and how time was invented. In the end we did a PRO CON listing for the development of agriculture, and they were very keen on the CONS, which takes cultural insight to do as we are an agricultural people still. Then in one hour I created the new blogbook Wax Poetickle, pasting in seven chapters, whole books actually, from my USB thingy. People came in so I went to my office and used the phone to straighten out complicated plans with the Pequot Museum regarding the sale of books, and made several other calls. Then I checked over blogs, and called Kate Treworgy at Skylight Paths and we talked a long time, and she told me how to access the Author Links page, and there were all the links I’d created! There are about 100 authors listed, and I seem to have the most links, but that’s partly because I am really interested in learning about the internet right now, and knew that links were important, so I dug up lots of them and created new ones. People of Manitou was already up as a link!

I met an Algonquin friend at the computer lab and read the Algonquin poetry from Take the Red Road off the Wax Poetickle screen. It was a great moment in Algonkian literature. Then went to dinner at favorite buffet and then saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for a dollar! It was 2 and a half hours long, and the audio at the theater was poor, but for a dollar I loved it. It was …magical? I thought about the challenges poo Harry had to face and realized my Inwood Hill project would be harder than I thought, my own Goblet of Fire and went back to the lab and downloaded the rest of the pictures for the powerpoints.

Talked to DLP, he’s working on writing essays for scholarships. Said he was interested in seeing my screenplay, Night at the Pissoire. I just have to write it.
I taught class on geomantic cultures. Today was the day that I first posted the blogsite Waxpoetickle, and basically made five volumes of my poetry available for free, with little ads on how to purchase the print versions. I read it out loud to E. in the computer lab.

Monday, February 27th, was driving home from Canada, and was in a bathroom stall at a Walmart along the way, and looking down under the partition I saw feet and heard a harmonica playing and it gave me a great idea for an easy to make short independent film that was minimalistic enough to win a prize. I called it Night at the Pissoire.

I met with Georges Sioui today at 2:30, but took a wrong turn, got confused between Laurier and Rideau Streets, got there 15 minutes late, but I was packed and ready to return home. There was a Dutch gentleman there, husband of the professor of religion and anthropology. I said, you mean theo-anthro-pology. He agreed. They showed me a beautiful book she had written in French about shamans of the Dene. I asked him when he came over from Holland, he said 50 years ago. I said, “I just saw a movie “A Bridge Too Far,” about World War II in Holland. Do you know it? He said that his family lived through that battle! He said the whole campaign was rather foolish, but that they all survived somehow.
I was in an upbeat mood, happy to see Georges, and his friends, and unveiled my People of Manitou blogsite, starting with a picture of Georges with Steve Augustine. He thanked me, and then said I’d better note that he is not Algonquin, but Huron. He also noted that Gary Farmer was not Algonquin. I said I’d regretfully have to take him out but that his wife is Anishinabi and he often plays Algonquins.

I met his assistant, who is working on The Huron and the Algonquin paper, and I asked them all what they knew about Brownstown Michigan. Nothing, but she knew Fort Malden across the river on the Canadian side. I explained how Tecumseh had major councils there, but further research showed that the Huron kept the fire. Georges said that it was part of their oral tradition that the Huron, more sedentary and politically organized than the Algonquins would keep their fires going for them, in exchange for shamanistic services, as they felt the Algonquins were closer to the magical world than they and that their prayers were stronger.

I went through the entire book with them, and everyone was very happy, and ….the assistant said it was amazing I was giving that all away for free. I said I really believe in the cause of Algonquin recognition, and the text kept changing anyway, as people write new books, change their name, or die, and I have to put them in past tense. This was much easier. This book is my ethnic Algonquin Hall of Fame, and should be shared with anyone. If I built an actual museum, that would be different.

On the drive home I learned that the actual Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown had inducted a record 17 players from the Negro Leagues, another underappreciated ethnicity, at the same time as I had unveiled my blogbook. It was a moment that had taken a long time in coming in both regards, and a great day for baseball and Native education as well. And I suspect a lot of those black ballplayers had more than a little Native American (Cherokee for the most part) ancestory as well.

I won the golden engine award on the way home, but could not stop. I had some trouble getting gas, I guess its becoming scarce.

I called the parents of a certain baby to ask if her birth went well. The answer made me laugh. There is a certain expression in American business used to denote something with a top priority and a strongly aggressive approach, we say, "Nine AM, DAY ONE!" Well this little baby was born at 9 AM on January 1st, 2006 and she is here on this planet to change things and she means business! I had a dream this summer about her opening the hearts and minds of many people at a young age. I made an appointment with Georges Sioui and was ten minutes late. I showed him People of Manitou, for the first time, in a rough form. It was good that I rushed ahead and did this a few days ago, because I was able to demo it to Georges when I was in his office at the University Of Ottawa and other people were there as well.

Sunday, February 26th, 2006, again people were talking about a second earthquake, hit 8:30 PM the same time as the first. Again, Ottawa was at the center. We were gathered in circle at the time of the quake yesterday, but did not feel it! But everyone felt the first one on Friday which was a 4.5 on the Richter scale. Some one said it started like a truck passing on the street, then a truck going by the house, then a truck inside the house. There was a long “tail” to it, a long long after-rumble. Of course it was very dramatic, because we were there to talk about earthquakes and how prayer could help in situations where nothing else could. They said that God was helping me by illustrating my point nicely, in spite of the fact that Ottawa doesn’t usually have big earthquakes. I said this season had shown few large earthquakes so far, but a lot of little ones in places where they usually weren’t which showed that the crust was loosening up. We talked about the possibility of new hydrothermal vents opening up on the ocean floor, and agreed it was a real possibility that this is what has been happening, and a St Augustine volcano in Alaska. I stressed that it was tricky for a human to make informed prayers about these things, as some of it is very important for the earth to express herself, but that we can pray to the Creator, or pray to angels or the Landkeeper Spirits and give them a boost of energy and support to help them in their highly skilled labors. It’s a little bit like lobbying; you figure they will remember your village when it comes time to pull out all the stops. Earthquake kickback.

RTA workshop in Gatineau Quebec on Landkeepers. I was able to show People of Manitou to William Commanda and Ramola on R's computer, and I set William C up with a blog site of his own, where he will keep a diary of his rather exciting life (at ninty frigging three years old I should have such a life) in 2006.Just days ago, on the phone, William Commanda had told me about Manitouwiziwak, the name for a group of people that follow the great spirit in all things. That was the word I was looking for.

Saturday, February 25th, 2006; I had a number of delays this morning, and then the blizzard hit, all the way from Saugerties to Montreal, and had to go 40 mph the whole way. One car I saw was on its roof, another had gone straight into the woods and crashed. It was also very foggy, and at times a white out. I had to keep up a steady pace, as the meeting in Ottawa was a 7 PM. I hoped to get there at six and called ahead. The question is, what kind of shape would I be in? Just before the border crossing I checked my car and found that I had stashed away a large box full of unfinished CDs! A lot of them. This was a bad blow. This placed me in litiginous limbo because I’m supposed to declare the value of sale items and pay taxes on them, and yet I could not sell unpackaged CDs, but they were products nonetheless as they had music on them. So I decided to tell the guard at the booth, who knew me. She said she didn’t know what the ruling would be and told me to pull into parking lot one and wait.
I waited a very long time, in a howling blizzard might I add, and then the guard came and I told him the story and he said, “Why was that box there?” I said I forgot it was there. He said, “What else did you forget? Let’s take a look. I must search your car!” And he did! And I stood there in the blizzard to watch him. He took the box of CDs in to his bosses office and was in there a long time. I wondered if he was playing each CD to see if there were secret messages…there weren’t . Finally he came out and was all smiles, and handed me the box and said, “You don’t have to pay taxes, we trust you. They are….” I said, “Useless from a marketing perspective?” “Yes, but if you put the inserts in, you would sell them of course..” I said, “Yes, and I wouldn’t bring so many, and I would present a list to the guards!” We shook hands. I went to the car, and found my keys were gone. I called to him and he tossed me the keys and I was off in the blizzard. I said, “What is the weather report?” He said, “Lots more snow” I said “That’s what my day has been like!” And drove off.

The snow disappeared after Montreal and I had clear sailing and got to the workshop at 6 on the nose. The snow in Gatineau was piled very high.

Saturday, February 25th, I left in the morning, pretty late, and the snow was blinding, and I had to go 40 or less the whole way to Montreal. It was the most difficult drive so far.
I believe I wrote the diary up for this whole section, but it seems to have vanished. I don't know if I can remember all the details now. I think that's a first.

Friday, February 24th, 2006 Pathfinder papers due, lectured on Geomantic cultures throughout the world. I taught a guitar lesson after and it went really well. We set up a tape recorder and I taped blues guitar changes and called out what lead guitar scale forms to use and in what positions. I went home and slept in preparation for the trip to Canada, not feeling that well. There was a surprise blizzard and an earthquake in Ottawa!

Thursday February 23rd, 2006: 1 AM, movie finished, A Bridge Too Far, cant sleep, no messages.
I did some grading and some writing, and then went to Marist for Ethics. I showed the main part of The Insider, which is truly a great movie. There is still 20 minutes left, but it doesn't impact the students' papers that much.
I think this was the day of the great basketball matchup between Niagara and Marist, most of whom is in our ethics class. I let class out a few minutes early by unanimous vote to see the second half, and it was for me a highlight of the year. Unfortunately not all of their classmates made it all the way from Fontaine to the McCann sports arena to see All Stars Jared Jordan James Smith Ryan Stilphen et al. They must have gotten lost and ended up in McCoy's Bar and Grill instead. Amazing what a few letters can do to confuse the weakminded. I found a shuttle bus, and got on, and a little boy and his father got on after me. The boy, a priceless little sports fan, said, "Oh boy we're gonna see Jarred Jordan tonight!" I said, "Oh, are you his relatives?" thinking of the guy who sits in the back of my class and leans way back in his chair and stretches his legs. The father said, "Oh, no, that's his favorite basketball star in the world! We're big fans!" (Are they confusing Jarred with Michael, of the Wizards, who I once saw scored 53 points in the first half at MCI arena? No resemblance there!) That really made me realize what a celebrity JJ had become. I ran into Marist President Dennis Murray after the game and he was all smiles and shook my hand and said "Great to see you come out to the game, professor!" I said, "Great game, Dennis! I loved it!" They won soundly, the details of which were in all the papers, mainly the POJO. The only open seating was at ground level behind the bench, so that's where I sat. I had my long grey coat on. I tried to be inconspicuous, as I have a long history of making my students nervous when I watch them in sporting events (not my kid however), so I tried not to stare at them, but acted serious. Towards the end of the game James Smith was doing a second foul shot of two, and in the spirit of fun I couldn't resist yelling out "Get in the zone, James! Get in the zone!" referring of course to our discussion of the indescribable and ineffable principle of Tao the week before. Well, guess what? He muffed the shot! I felt bad. It was like that time with Johnny Damon where I freaked him out by chattering at him in Thai. What if it were my fault? The scorer near me said, "That was his only miss this WHOLE GAME!" Ryan Stylphen saw me and waved and smiled, and asked how I liked the game. I gave him the thumbs up, careful not to jinx the team yet again. They crushed the Purple Eagles and James had 23 points in the game, tying his career high. However if he had sunk that shot he would have set a new career record, just as if Damon had beat the Tigers in that game, the Sox would have won the pennant.

Washington’s Birthday. Scooter says I shouldn’t trust Zane Grey’s account of Washington and the Indians, he was a great storyteller. I was watching TV while in retreat and saw that the World Baseball Matches were scheduled from March 2nd to March 20th, and wondered if they were timed to keep the media from covering the Lovelock book’s USA release. (In fact the Lovelock book was simply not released in the US as planned. This is unusual for Penguin. Venk said on March 8, “What happened to free speech.” “But you did expect this to happen…” I said, “Yes, but only in a darkly cynical way!”

March 2nd is the day the Lovelock book is due to be released in the US, and a three week black out would do a lot to hinder public knowledge of the book. I thought about a blog called perhaps OneGreenEarth chronicalling the climate-related events following the February 2nd release of Lovelock’s book in England. For me, Jan. 17 was the pivotal day in my life as an environmentalist, the date William M sent me an email with the cryptic RE: Can this really be the end? I clicked the link and read lovelock’s statements, and his prognosis giving us 100 years to live as a species.

I went to bed at 2 and had an amazing dream. I was lying on my back and a big pure white bear, the Bear of the North walked up and stood over me. It seemed to be a she. It was sort of cute like a teddy bear, but realistic. It had a small silver keg around its neck. As I recall it lifted its paw to its chest and I touched the paw and if holding hands. It stayed for a while. I was afraid of the bear because it seemed to be a real bear, and real bears can attack if spooked. But I wasn’t afraid because the bear was radiating an incredible aura of love. It caused an amazing transformation within me. I wanted to give it an offering, but all I had was a book I’d written. I believe it may have been a copy of Native American Stories of the Sacred, but I’m not sure. I offered the book and the bear seemed to accept somehow. It reminded me of the white bull reindeer in Pathfinder; it might mean that I am entering the shaman’s path on a new level; perhaps I am at my peak. The other possibility is that I am nearing the end of my time.

When I woke up I was still filled with awe and love for the bear. Even in the dream I was trying to figure out the meaning, and thought of several possibilities.

Wednesday, February 22nd, I watched A Bridge Too Far, Brits and Americans stuck inside Holland completely surrounded by Jerrys and they lose big due to bad planning. Obvious reference to Iraq, but for me it also reflects some of what is happening in the green wars. Lovelock’s book is the first major offensive in the green war, and this is the enemy’s counter attack.

We went shopping today for stuff, I got a Senators hat for $5 with a big W. I said George W would understand about the Senators thing. It’s a cool hat. I also got two shirts as Im a little short here of supplies, and got materials for making a new cloth Algonquin map. I spent at least two hours on the project and got the outlines of the states and provinces down, which is one of the hard parts. There is still a long way to go.
I also got headphones for my home recording unit and had a conversation with the attendant (this was in Montague NJ) about Nine Inch Nails.

It took several trips with Scooter to replace the battery in the Nextel cell phone. We went to NJ to get one for $30, but we got home and it didn’t work, so we drove all the way back to NJ to get another one. This one worked. I spent the whole time soaking up the winter sun and reading Sorrow In Our Hearts, trying to figure out what was going on with Brownstown Michigan. A woman is blasting me on an internet site called Tripod about my mention of Brownstown in Native New Yorkers. Reading Sorrow for several hours I realized that Brownstown was a great council fire…..of the Huron! They gradually identified themselves as Wyandot. During the war of 1812, Tecumseh did have councils there, but it is hard to prove they were related to the Mohican one at Schodack as I had suggested in Native New Yorkers. Plus it was on dry land and not on an island. A few days later I talked about this with Georges Sioui, who is Huron and an expert on Huron history, and said that the Hurons maintained Algonquin council fires in exchange for shamanic ceremony, because the Huron were sedentary and more able to keep a fire, but the Algonquins as hunters and gatherers were closer to nature and the spirit world. So he said it was still possible that the fire at Brownstown was an Algonquin fire, as well as Huron.

We were supposed to go to Shohola, but could never get the battery problem straightened out. Later I found out there was a bridge from Shohola to Barryville where the old powwows were. My ex (who is Munsee) used to take me there for powwows, on top of a steep hill. There are no more powwows, but I heard the Cherokee took it over and do more traditional ceremony there. Ray knows the people.

Right in town I noticed a waterfall under a bridge near the Sunoco station on 6. We got out and explored it in the sun, which was relaxing.

I got a message from Kim, she gathered together three opera singers and they sang the water song over and over and fell in love with it and would like to do it often. I had gotten a message from Thunderbird Tuesday just before the movie New World that the ceremony was at 7 Tuesday, but the following week.

We watched Beware of Mankind for the first time. Towards the end, Joanne Shenandoah is singing Reason To Live at the Woodstock 94 Music Festival, a beautiful song sung by a great voice, performed in front of 250,000 people as part of the opening spiritual blessing ceremony.

I suddenly remembered a few days after seeing that, that the ceremony was partly my idea. Mark Lang was extremely resistant to the idea, and Betsy Stang said to me, “If you send him a very strong email at such a time and place and day, he will read it. But make it strong, and we might have a chance. I wrote him the email, and I said that the reason why Woodstock 69 went so well and acquired such fame was because Swami Satchitananda had given his blessing beforehand, and that if there was no blessing at this one, bad things might happen. I begged him to reconsider. Well, according to Betsy, that email completely turned him around and we had the ceremony, with lots of Tibetan monks and Rinpoches and me and my band of 36 Native Americans (at least half came upon my invite, the other half came with them) and other spiritual folks on stage behind Joanne Shenandoah. I didn’t know that there were going to be so many Tibetans, but later, after seeing “The Cry of the Snow Lion” I realized how very important it was. Chatting with Rinpoches about peace and contemplation, its easy not to know how horrible the Chinese persecution in Tibet really is. I have been in the vicinity of Tibet and yet I was amazed at what I saw in Cry of the Snow Lion! Horrible!

In the movie Beware of Mankind I can be clearly seen for a long time standing close behind Joanne Shenandoah on stage, just to the left of her on the screen, as if guarding her (which I guess I was) and occasionally looking left. That was funny because I’d been talking about that concert a few hours earlier in the day with the guy I bought the headphones from, and on Sunday when I showed Scooter the footage of Ilfra at my Evstock Festival the year after.

Notes from Sorrow in Our Hearts, by Allan W Eckert. I marked important pages in Ellis’ copy of Sorrow In Our Hearts with pieces of paper as follows: 590 Fort Malden and Brownstown.
P 611picture of the slab, on display in Anne Arbor MI. p. 624625 George Floyd, Grouseland and Vincennes, 630 meeting between Harrison and Tecumseh. 639 Brownstown in 1812, major gatherings. p 688 Brownstown as mainly Huron; P 694 St Josephs Island, 695 Lewis Cass, no fear 696 map of brownstown; p. 711 August 4th 1812 they came into Tecumseh’s camp at Brownstown. 712 T’;s camp close to Brownstown; p. 874 Freemont Ohio was the Wyandot village at Sandusky. Note 257 IOF Manchester Island 1 and 2 lower bend of Ohio, spot not clear. P 880 note 290 Washingtons’s secret plan to destroy the NA civilization. 881 John Adams was the one saying to Britain that our US boundaries go to the Mississippi, not the Ohio, the brits said Ohio, one of the fighting points of the revolution. No wonder NAs fought with British. Treaty of Paris 1783. note 325 “Blue Jacket (was at) the Grand Council that was at the mouth of the Detroit River.” (1788) 355 origins of Cincinatti relate to St Claire as Indian fighter. He was a member of the order. P 891 note 350; Chicago the place of onion smells. 351 Proctor at Malden; note 356 order of Constitution (Melanchton Smith) p 8983 note361 the incredible leap, use for Wawarsing story. note 433 p 906 Gen Knox quote for Washington and the Algonquins. P 920 T Jefferson note 519, Jefferson not really helpful to NA. p 921 note524 For IOF Tecumseh crossed river at Lachine, met Papineau. P 925 note 543 for NNY, Wyandot not Delaware as grandfathers.; p 933 note 568 the great slab is on display at the Milford Chandler loan in Anne Arbor, U of Michigan Museum of Anthropology.p 970 note 737 Brownstown, also T running up and down a beach on a horse. P 974 752 Matchemeneto, just mentioned by William Commanda.

Tuesday, Feb. 21st I taught her the water song and she sang it back to me and it sounded beautiful. The guy called back from Accelerated Credit and I didn’t hang up on him but explained why I called NY state about him, and what they had said in response. I explained that the gray areas of the “prepayment” situation was over my head, legally speaking, as it seems they intentionally pushed it and manipulated the situation into a very grey area. They say you don’t prepay, then you prepay by credit card on the trust that by the time they are done, it will be the day before the billing hits your credit card. And we’re talking lots of money here. In God we trust, I say.

I did a lot of unpacking packing , hanging up clothes, etc and working on downloading the emails from John Wells at Inwood Park.

Class went really well today, and all the loose ends came together and I could feel a positive feeling return to the class. Sometimes the complex art form of teaching as art gets bogged down in problems, today it was like a successful opera! Everything in harmony. I read the first verse of the Tao Te Ching, and explained that having the Tao is like being in the zone; you don’t try to analyze it too much. Some times you have a great dream and you wake up feeling magic, and that you can do anything. You’re in the zone. How long does it last? One person said 2 Minutes. I asked Wally, he said “It all depends on many factors.” Wally is so analytical some times.
So I explained the first verse this way, if you lose the Way, then all you have is integrity. If you lose integrity all you have is humaneness. If you lose humaneness all you have is righteousness. If you lose righteousness, all you have is etiquette. I tied that in with the fact that so many societies that believed in and taught the Tao eventually made rules for being in that graceful “zone” and then enforced it and punished those who didn’t follow. I said, that when a group of people fall out of “the zone” what else can you do? You can’t learn to be in the zone from a book. I said to James Smith, who was very tired from losing a close game to Old Dominion in the MAAC, I asked, “You’re involved in sports. Do you ever get into the zone?
He said yes, sometimes. Does it really work? Can you visualize those baskets? “Yes”
I said, “Have you ever experienced feeling like you were in the zone but things still didn’t work and you couldn’t score?” Yes. I said, “That happens to me once in a while too.” If you fall out of the zone, how do you get back in? You can’t, he said, it has to find you.
Then Larry who is quiet spoke up very excited. He said, “I was the quarterback on my high school football team, and I experienced the zone a lot, and it really works. When you’re in it you don’t want to get anything to throw you off.
I looked at Wally and I said, “Does the name Keltner mean anything to anyone? That was the Cubs third baseman who stopped Joe DiMaggios 54 game hitting streak. He made a surprise catch and stole a hit from DiMaggio late in a game and it broke the streak. (But DiMaggio stayed in the zone for several more weeks!)
We agreed that ball players are really superstitious trying to stay in the zone.
I said, that Wade Boggs was one of the most superstitious people who ever lived, but he batted .330 several years in a row, so it worked.
I started the class by reading from Ivan from Cossack Folk Tales. It was a rare Euro folk tale that was filled with oracles, offerings, sacrifices, spirit world travel and magical beings. They loved the story. I reminded them that they all admitted to using wishing wells, and were all shamans. I said Ivan literally offered gold coins as offerings to god, and fully believed in his prayers. I said, “How many are in business administration? Several raised their hands. I said “They don’t teach you stories like this do they?” No!
I said, “How many believe in the power of prayer?” All raised hands. I said, “So Ivan wasn’t so dumb, he was wise. If you really believe that prayer will work you would be very careful what you pray for. He had to choose between being Czar of all the Russias, or lots of money or a wonderful relationship. How many people would pray to be Czar of Russia? No one responded. What about lots of money? No one raised a hand. I said, “But we all want a wonderful relationship right?” Yes.
Near the end of class, they made internet presentations on various forms of Taoistic teaching around the world. We finished just before the end of class. Wally went ahead with Fi Rhinne, quoting Finn McCool. Lisette had Maat, as I recall.
I also had the meagus shells with me, and demonstrated. I told them to ask a question. “Is it daytime.” I rolled 5 and 2. “YYessss!” I exclaimed. It is daytime! Then kidding around I said “Is this a good and interesting class?” I got 3 and 4, but quickly cleared off the shells from the table. Someone said, “What did it say,” I said, 3 up 3 down and one standing on its end!”
I also read the anthro report on the Saami which backed up everything we said about the movie Pathfinder, and they agreed to go one minute past the end of class to hear it.
One big lucky victory: Last week L had complained ending class late on Valentines Day, to get to the stopping point in the movie, we both lost our cool. She said my watch was wrong, I said I set it to the radio every day. I researched the situation and found that I had been acquiescing to the clock in the desk and it was quite late. She exaggerated the lateness, but I was making a mistake by trusting that little clock. Today I explained the source of the problem and announced that from now on we would start on time, not by the desk clock, being careful not to make it start today, since they were in the habit of starting late, but I made it start next class. Then L’s presentation on Taoistic thought had to do with admitting mistakes, a pointed teaching which could have applied to either of us. By the time she had the floor at the end of the class, I had already resolved the problem and also admitted my part of the mistake. So by the time I had to go over the end time by one minute, I looked at L and she nodded. Very neat!!! In fact, that one minute really helped prepare them to write their papers on the Sami!

I am slowly, step by step increasing my presence on the internet. Tuesday, I was reading my 04 diary at Peacefile, and saw June 4th through July 24. My eyes dried out doing all night computer work and have had bad headaches for two days. Can’t seem to get enough water. I enrolled in world of blogs and linked my blog to everyone on that site. Many of them are “positive thinking” sites. I consider myself a positive thinker, but I deal frankly with so many grizzly subjects, I wonder if certain readers appreciate how positive my little light really is. At this point, influenced I suppose from Scooter who runs her jeep of life on a rocky road without springs or suspension and no oil, I tell it like it is, but with a smile.

I practiced the two pieces in the chapel until 4:00 then walked to the library and immediately saw Igor and I sat down. I sat and talked to him for a long time, about his book, in fact til 5:00. The cell phone went off and then the caller disconnected. As it turned out it was Ellis, cell phone died. I called back at 5:15 very confused, everything crazy. I was in the lobby from 4 to 5 with Igor, trying to pump his spirits back up about his book Right Under Our Noses. I offered to help after Robert Jay was squared away. He showed me in return how to do links and use counters.
I went to my car and had no gas, drove almost to Hess and found the envelope in the windshield, it was a note from Ellis, meet me at the movie. It was already starting time. Traffic was snarled. I found Elllis’ car in Rhinebeck on the right and parked next to it, and ran to the theater. I apparently missed 10 minutes of the film, but it wasn’t too bad. New World was very good visually, but they kept playing the theme from Elvira Madigan, which Mozart did not write for 100 years. Some of the music was a little like Philip Glass only flowing. Pretty interesting.
A lot was left out but nothing terribly inaccurate.
The guy from Alexander played John Smith, very hard to understand.
I later asked Ellis how she felt when Pocahontas gave water to the prisoner in the stockade; even during the movie I whispered “that’s you!” There is a resemblance between the actress and Ellis. There was a clear difference between the life of the Europeans and the “Naturals.” The Naturals were much more likeable, the Euros rather awful and stupid. The Evangelist was literally foaming at the mouth!

Afterwards I talked to Ellis, who said he was in the lobby between 4 and 5, waiting for me. I said that’s impossible. I have witnesses that you were not there, as Igor knows you. I asked permission to do a shamanic journey to get an answer as to why movies are such a problem.

Then we went to Mugal Raj, and had one of the finest meals of our time together. We talked with the waiter about India and Bangaladesh which is where he was from. I talked Ellis’ ear off, about everything, my various projects, about “the zone” and Tao.

I wanted very much to take E to the chapel and play the keyboard for Ellis, the new piece, but E was very reluctant, didn’t want to get home too late. I insisted, then ran out of gas, yellow warning, and suddenly was having all kinds of problems getting gas. Stations were closed and one place had two tanks that gave you 20 cents and stopped. That cost me 15 minutes, then found gas at that Hess station. We arrived later than expected to the chapel, 10:30 and it was locked, an unusual event lately. It was pretty sad, and I wondered if it had just been locked, and if the gas incident made the difference. We stayed up talking til 2 AM. There is this curse with movies and music where Ellis and I are concerned.

I have an idea of making an online scrap book, scanning all these objects at work.

Monday, February 20th, 2006: I worked a lot today on the Mets site and posted the Tigers Baseball Clinic article. Ellis remembered that Tiger Stadium was on Michigan Ave. I looked up Trumbull. I had rewritten some of the article, not too bad. I also searched all the Mets fan blog sites and made a list. Cerrone’s is the most sophisticated. I offered to supply him with Mets Yanks IQ tests, exclusive for two weeks, in exchange for a byline/link. He later responded saying he’d look at my site in a month and see if I was still up, and then would enroll me in links. Sunday night into Monday I worked on that IQ test.
I also edited and updated Algonquin Eagle Song, and posted it as a new weblog site/book, very exciting, calling it People of Manitou. Later I found that Google had discovered me for the first time as a blogger, crawling my profile. Late on Monday went through the students papers on great Algonquins and clipped the photos and bios they had found. I saved the clips on the stick, but have not had a moment to import them yet. I took a walk in the afternoon, and went into the woods and discovered Chief Awissawa’s hideout, a natural rock shelter by a stream I had never seen before. I rested beside it, and it felt good to be cold. Raymundo had always believed that Awissawa, Chief of the Renneiu and of the Family of Amorgarikakan (and the Behike of the Matouac) had a camp near that spot.

Sunday, February 19th, 2006: Hung out with E. We watched an hour of highlights from my first annual surprise 40th birthday Evan’s Little Woodstock concert. Wws very moved by it and loved Hugh Brody, not surprising. I was thinking of how to make it into a DVD. In dubbing I had cut off a lot of important stuff and figured I’d have to find the complete reel masters to continue. I don’t know where they are, but they are in beige containers from Jim Davis.
Then we ate snacks, doing laundry and errands, and went to the Saugerties diner for breakfast and I had a BBQ chicken. I read the baseball history IQ in the Post and it gave me an idea. I took her to see the Saugerties water fall at 9W, which is huge but noone knows about. E was trying to reach D who wanted her home even though the power was out. I said there’s just a little bit of sun left, lets spend ten more minutes, and we went to the beach and two swans swam up to me and she took a bunch of pictures. After she left I worked on various computer projects. I don’t remember.

Saturday, February 18th, 2006: I sang a practice concert for Ellis, went through most of the songs I planned to sing tonight. Ellis still wasn’t sure she was coming along until 3 and then she was going to go by Fishkill, and so I raced home, got there at 6, unpacked, packed, concert at 7. Showed up 6:15, Nextel worked even in Saugerties! We left immediately. Long way to Pine Hill. We got there at 7 PM and there were cars everywhere! No place to park. We tried the side door, closed! We went through the front, a good crowd gathered. There was no opening act, no introduction, I had to introduce myself. Ellis helped set up the mikes and PA and the books in the next room. To save heat they had us in the small front room. Young Eagle the Unquachaug was helpful.

The people simply waited as I tried to pull the stage equipment together.
We were up and running in about 6 minutes, and I mixed stories together with music and gave a full scale concert, lots of sing along and new original material, and then signed books at intermission, and then gave another half hour to hour concert and storytelling. Things went rather well. My voice was better than ever. I was using Ellis magic guitar, and the PA worked pretty well. Of course it would have been good to tape it, but it wasn’t possible in the time. I brought regalia I didn’t use. Great audience.

I had to ask Mary Lou for $25 for gas, but overall took in $200 on that and book sales, so it was worthwhile from the business perspective, but it was the best original song concert in a very long time, and the first time in 3 years Ellis got to hear me really sing without everything going wrong.

Also at the concert was David Carerra, but he left early on. Also I met J whom Farah had been talking about for years. Id say J is fully my height and rather large. kept clear of me, and Ellis kept J at a distance. J would like to come to the March 25th concert.

Claire Danielson came with Bob and it was his birthday, so I sang my birthday song. Then I sang Cheyenne for the first time in public, going through various keys, and it came out really well, except for one lyric pause. Ellis seemed happy. J enjoyed it too. Bob seemed to like it the best of anyone and I sort of made it a birthday offering. Later I gave him a copy of Miss Leeds catalogue, and after the event was over I autographed it and read him some of the highlights and everyone was laughing out loud, one woman could hardly breathe. It was a really fun moment, but Claire seemed to think Bob needed to get home. There was a feeling of warmth and good will there.

I also talked about the coming earth changes, but in a subtle upbeat way.

I dedicated the song No Word For Goodbye to the memory of Archie Cheechoo, who had just died of a heart attack. As I sang the song, the real relevance and timeliness of the song was more than I expected, and I started to cry, but it came out in my voice in a musical way, rather than the usual way, which isn't so great to listen to.

Young Eagle gave me a sharks tooth and a crystal and spoke to me in Unquachoag, and then gave a speech about the Unquachaog and the Algonquin history of Long Island, and praised me before all the people saying that I was chosen by the Great Spirit to carry a great burden in this world of the history and wisdom of the Algonquin people, and that I spoke the truth. He hugged me several times.

Was in Pa and almost didn't make it to Pine Hill for the big concert. There was no opening concert act, no MC, or introduction, just lots of people waiting for me to start. As we knew, James Audlin had already cancelled the appearance. It was a very cold night. Ellis took a lot of pictures ,which I will insert here eventually. I rehearsed the songs with guitar for several hours earlier in the day and was ready musically, but the logistics were not worked out right. Young Eagle spoke to me alot in Unquachoag, and said some words of praise at the microphone. The audience was super, plus Claire Danielson was there and Ellis and Claire got to meet for the first time, having heard of each other.

Here is a picture of me and Distant Eagle James Audlin at the Tibetan Center in Wappingers Falls NY.

Friday February 17th: Ellis had scheduled leg surgery but it was cancelled due to some dumb paperwork glitch. We had a full class at WV and V, read from Sami research to back up movie, people read Taoism/Dharma papers, went over rules for term papers, I read from Tao Te Ching, a highlight of the class for me.Caught up somewhat with correspondence, was online alot, found gas for 2.26 a gallon and filled up. It was very warm today so I took a walk. I worked on the quartet, now an organ solo, moving the sections around. I made a phone call and soon found myself alone in the Dutch Reformed First Methodist Episcopal Church of Fishkill, playing the piece, and then got an organ lesson, and played (parts of) the piece on the organ, bass pedals and all. It sounded just like I had hoped--like a religious meditation. I hadn't played a pipe organ in 30 years, and it was quite the experience. I prepared for Ethics class, but got stuck in traffic. I felt inspired to show The Insider today to class, the high tension ethical drama starring Russell Crowe as tobacco industry whistle blower Jeffry Wygand and Al Pacino as Lowell Bergman the producer of 60 Minutes with Mike Wallace, who was played I think by Christopher Plummer. Wygand has to decide between honoring his contract and hurting people or breaking the contract and saving lives. The students have to write a paper showing how they would have decided and why. If they chose to honor the contract they must quote Thomas Hobbes as their authority, and if they choose to break the contract they must quote John Stuart Mill.
As we began there were still six students who had not given their movie rhetoric presentations yet, and one was quite in depth and went on for a while (an A student, who wrote a long paper and did a lot of research, I certainly wasn't about to stop her!)So the movie didnt start til 7:15, but I went ahead anyway. As it turns out we couldnt' have seen the whole movie anyway, but got to a good stopping point.
One of the reasons I show this movie now, (I havent in three or four years) is because Wygand is much like today's James Hansen at NASA, who is under terrific pressure to shut up about climate change, and won't shut up. He is considered NASA's top expert in the field, and he is supposed to speak on behalf of NASA, but he goes out into the public and says he is speaking for himself and presents NASA/his research, about the dire environmental situation we are in. This morning I read the Rolling Stone article, another smash scoop by RS, on how NASA is giving up on earth as a reliable location for the human race and is betting all the marbles on Mars, which is a cold poisonous planet. My take on this is that if we can live on Mars we can live anywhere, including under the ocean. The same technology we need in New York's architecture is the same we need in Martian architecture, it needs to be that self contained in order to not add to pollution and climate change. But its alot of gas money for that commute (not that my commute to Marist doesn't take up gas money( and we need that money to survive here at home.

Friday February 17th, 2006: I got on the phone in someone else’s office, and talked to Robert Jay and he says his sale of his property in MD has been interfered with, and he has no cash flow. I agreed to do the rearranging of the structure of his rather large and complex book for four hours on credit, $100 credit. I also talked to the tour people at Metro International and said I wanted $200 to give a tour, they later called back and offered $100. Painfully, I accepted their offer for $100, knowing that I would not make much after expenses and that date would then be taken, so that if someone else came along, I’d be obliged not to take it. And then they called back and said that they wanted me to do it for free. I said “call me back some time later with $100 and I’ll be happy to do it for you.” Well it turned out that two weeks later I was offered a splendid gig in NYC for that very day. It would have been a rather awkward situation for everyone if I’d accepted the $100, or even the for free deal.

Thursday February 16th; forgotten day.

February 15th, I worked out a class assignment schedule for the whole semester for world views and values and printed it out. I went on a research trip around the Minisink Island region, for a thousand years the capitol and stronghold of the Munsee, to whom my Native New Yorkers book (coming to a paperback store near you) is dedicated. I found Milford's "The Columns" Museum, only open Wednesdays, and found several items worthy of the Smithsonian. They have the flag that Lincoln's head rested on after he was shot, authenticated, and with quite a stain of blood. And they had what looked like some really old Iroquoian regalia in fine condition from Francis Clark, who fought in the Civil War. He apparently inherited the war club and regalia from his grandfather. He claimed to have been made chief of the Brules by Spotted Tail. There was a beaded pouch and it had letters beaded in WANBLI CINA AHLAHPAYA, which they translated as Hovering Eagle. I believe wanbli means spotted eagle. They had an old flute that belonged to Judge EJ Baker and a document signed by DeWitt Clinton. There was an old poster of a town celebration honoring "Tom" Quick, although he is famous only for being a murderer, of Munsee. His father had a gristmill in town before the revolution. When his father was killed by Indians, little Tom, who had been friendly with the natives before, went on a rampage of revenge, a very famous story, but a bit grizzly.

Visited the Magagkamack cemetery in Port Jervis, one of the most colorful cemeteries in America, featuring hand hewn gravestones of people like Jake Squirrel who fought in the revolution, and other colorful characters. Some of the headstones had original poems, some simply bore initials scrawled into the stone with a knife. Some truly look all the world like Halloween lawn decorations. Magag is pumpkin and kamack is field in the Munsee language. In that dark Munsee humor heads are referred to as pumpkins, and as the bodies were in the early days simply interred without coffins, just some bark wrappings, they rise to the surface after a few seasons, skull first.
Found alot of really interesting headstones there, certainly some of the best. My favorite is that of Tunis Quick. The famous Tom Quick was born 1734 in this region (often "Tom" is in quotes) this Tunis was born 1787, over 50 years later.
Also visited the Port Jervis library historical room and found a book Tom Quick, The Indian Slayer by James E Quinlan, and a book called Along The Waywayanda Path by Donal Melville Barrell pub 1975 by T Emmett Henderson Middletown. 1975.
I may later add my notes and findings here. Alot of great info. Nice people.
In the library was a young Native American man with raven black hair down to his waist and a big hole in his jeans at the knee. He looked Wappingers to me, but I didn't feel like I should interrupt him.

Tuesday February 14th, I had class in the morning and showed the first part of Pathfinder. I gave an intro and then looked up and the screen was all the way inside the ceiling which is at least 14 feet up. I knew I couldnt reach the cord even standing on a table. Some of the students in the back giggled, and I said, "I wish Jim (the basketball player) were here!" Just then, he walked in, coming in from practice I assume, and stepped up on the table and was just able to grab the cord and hes at least a foot taller than me. He drew it down and we watched the movie. The five or ten minutes lost trying to find a way to bring the screen down meant we couldnt get to a meaningful stopping place. I gave it an extra minute or two by the clock in my desk, but we weren't close enough and I had to dismiss class at a downward point. A student was complaining about the 2 minutes and I was unhappy to break up the movie so absurdly. I now realize that the desk clock is a minute slow.
I went to the piano at school and made some changes to the string quartet score.
I worked on the Mets website, and finally finished the research piece on Mets VS Yankees comparisons, which is one of the larger pieces. I'd started it three years ago and then put it away. Its alot of work looking up all those team stats, but its a part of New York history that is almost totally unknown. Finally I had a complete comparison for all team stats between 1999 and 2005. Each season, the Mets usually have more extra base hits and stolen bases with lower ERAs than the Yankees. Mets fans realize the significance of this, as the city press (dare I honor them by calling them tabloids?) is always making unfavorable comparisons, assuming people don't know any better, and in fact they don't. I showed it to Ellis, a Yankee fan, who recommended just one or two literary touches and edits, and it was done. My purpose is not to insult the Yankees but to poke a little good natured fun at them from a Met perspective. Ellis helped me see it through the eyes of a Yankee fan. DLP says our goal in that baseball blog is to encourage fans of all types from all over the world to look favorably on the Mets and their plight in the spirit of brotherhood. Yes, we are doing that, but I still want some good Yankee jokes in there.

Feb 13th, looking back to Feb 11

2006-02-13T11:31:00.000-08:00

February 13th, Updated this blog offline. I need to really clean up my writers studio, so I can find things. I once made a tape diary of my experiences at William Commanda’s 2005 Spiritual Elders Gathering, a memorable exprience, which now is a sort of hole in my blog (I can probably find it online at help!theresaholeinmyblog.com) until I find it. Since last Friday, I keep hearing that string quartet (usually played by a huge string orchestra) in my head, and it is very calming and peaceful. I started hearing that in my dreams when I was 16, which was before I first heard Albinoni's great Adagio in A. (That's alot of A's) When I first heard that I went into a trance for an hour or two and felt transported in a kind of ecstatic religious state. Every few years the strings would come back, and lift my soul again.
This afternoon after working a while on this blog, the music got yet more intense, so I grabbed a book of blank music paper and started to write it down in pen. As I wrote I could hear all four voices clearly, and in about three hours had completed the 40 measure quartet section, in ink, without access to a piano. I had just started to learn Finale, but its not easy, and I was not proficient yet to attempt to use it as a composing tool. It was a lifetime dream fulfilled, as when I was studying composition at Catholic U and later Juilliard, I was always striving for this type of fluidity and clarity, to write four independent contrapuntal voices without using a piano, and have them come out perfect, and also beautful. When I was younger, I'd find that when I played the piece on the piano I had to change a few rhythms and notes to make it work better. I then wrote out a 160 measure version (writing out the four voices in various combinations) as a pipe organ Meditation in A minor, (but with lots of modulations) which came to 8 pages of piano staves. (I will edit it down in a few days) Then I got to a piano and played it. I found that it didn't realy need any changes after all. I played it for a fellow musician,over the phone who said it was amazing. I thought, "This is how Handel must have felt," but of course his Messiah was longer by far, but it sounded more like Bach, or more exactly like Albinoni. I felt I was in that dream the whole time, and felt like it was a gift from God, and I was very grateful and happy. That song still sings inside me. I went outside to walk and the moon was even more amazing than the night before. It was sitting on the end of my road, due east again, a bright red hazy ball sitting on the horizon. I watched it as it rose up into the sky again, going through many beautiful colors. What a truly mystical experience, looking at that vibrant color with all those strings playing in my head. I mentioned it to a friend who said that a famed french horn quartet was going to be playing, and there was a connection with a mutual friend, Ted. I thought, now that would be a miracle. To write a quartet and then hear it played three weeks later with french horn ensemble. It would sound great!

February 12th, Snow hits overnight, not much here, but 26 inches in Central Park and 21 in PA. I had plans of meeting a friend at the UU in Rock Tavern, but they were cancelled. I set up a portable recording studio at home and cleaned up the room a little more. My friends are sooo psychic. I don't have to call them, they call me the minute I walk in the door. I may be away for weeks, and no messages, but I walk in the door, and there's one call after another. Today was like that. We talked about the coming earth changes and global warming. Ellis and I talked of green architecture, and described to me off the internet all the ecological features of the new Bank of America building at Bryant Park. There are many! It sucks pollution, catches rainwater, collects solar energy, and probably takes a bow at the end of the day.
Meanwhile I worked on polishing the section of Evansearthwalk written in summer of 2005. Its important stuff too. If you look to the lower left of the screen you should see an entry for January and before. Eventually that will go from June 05 to the present, probably completed by the time my kid is living on Mars. I went outside and saw the full moon and it was astounding, rising on the eastern horizon. I called Ellis and said “put your coat on and go outside and look for the full moon on the eastern horizon. I’ll be back in an hour.” I went out and took an hour walk towards the moon, ending up at my favorite tree, and wrote this poem in my head.

Moon, full on the eastern shore of my horizon
Clouds like mother of pearl floating in a sea of mist
Rising powerful and lovely, the moon filled me with the desire to live
I threw sunflower seeds in the snow
Threw them downward, eastward, forward
Hoping for a sign, there in my special place.
The moon kept rising, straight up like a phoenix,
Raising the spirit of endurance within me,
As if expecting an eclipse to mark the day with fire.
The wind felt cold and good on my face,
Waking me to the moment,
Telling me to face the facts of this dying world without fear
A wind solo
Stating the haunting theme
of winter’s final movement in A minor.

I called Oannes Pritzger, my Penobscot friend down in Florida, host of Wolf Mountain Radio to thank him for sending me cassette copies of the interview we did earlier in January. It is four cassettes long, and will be divided into several broadcasts of 58 minutes.

Oannes was in the Peace Corps in Asia in 1979, and returned to Indian Island, in the Penobscot River in Maine, and someone at the campus radio station at the University of Maine in Orono, asked to interview him. After the interview he asked what was involved in having a radio show on the campus station. The answer was nothing, if you’re a student, you just sign up and do it. He fell in love with radio and never looked back. He has now been recording and broadcasting interviews for 25 years, all in service to native people and mother earth. He started out very simply, announcing births and deaths on the reservation, local news, weather…(snowsnake scores and standings? LOL) He thought of it as Wabanaki Radio. He traveled around a lot and began to wonder how he could find a way to broadcast his environmental message to the whole world. He prayed about it one day in 1992. A few days or weeks later, on March 26th of that year, he found himself at a symposium in Eugene, Oregon called Peace on the Planet: Native Wisdom, Native Rights and Mother Earth. It was there that he met up with the folks at RFPI, Radio For Peace International, and began to broadcast Wolf Mountain Radio on worldwide shortwave. It was around 1997 he was invited to broadcast from the Belonging to Mother Earth symposium in Virginia Beach, VA.
I was there, and saw Richard Schneider, the organizer of the event, walking in the lobby proudly carrying a beautiful medicine pouch. I said, “Wow, Richard, that is the most beautiful Penobscot medicine pouch I ever saw. Where did you get it?”
He said, “How do you know its Penobscot?”
I said, “The style is absolutely unmistakable. That is a very fine traditional style PENOBSCOT pouch! I’d put money on it.”
He answered, “I will introduce you to the maker. He is indeed Penobscot, and he will be extremely happy to hear that you recognized his tribe from his work! His name is Oannes Pritzger and he is broadcasting live on RFPI (Richard was/is deeply involved in the station) from the lobby as we speak. Perhaps we can arrange an interview for you.
That’s how I met Oannes, and did that interview the next day, and several more besides. I ended up being a host and interviewer for RFPI myself, and presented a 24 week series on “The Indigenous Roots of World Religion,” as part of RFPI’s University of the Air. Oannes played an advisory role in that. I was traveling that summer and was able to hear my broadcast from various locations in the US on the shortwave.
As we spoke today he had not heard about Lovelock’s book, but his environmental group at the college he works with is sponsoring a global warming lecture later this week by David Orr, a professor at Oberlin on environmental studies and green technology. I asked him to ask Orr about the methane releases, if he thought they were happening or just a theory, to what degree, etc. and if they would contribute to the warming.
One can now hear Wolf Mountain Radio for free on the internet. One way is to go to www.yatkitischee.org and follow instructions. You can also go to www.radio4all.net , there are about 60 programs, search Honoring Mother Earth Indigenous Voices, click Evan Pritchard and click play and you can hear the show we did if you have Realplayer, which most new computers do. You can also hear Oannes on RFPI, also on line.
Tonight I made my first recording on the ministudio, (Cheyenne) it was complicated. I could not figure out yet how to add tracks. I read most of the instruction book, mindboggling complexity. It had taken me two days to figure out how to turn it on, and another day to figure out how to turn it off!

Saturday, February 11th, 2006; I cleaned my room, a constant battle between priceless information and useless garbage. I pick up one piece of paper after another; “Priceless or useless?” “Priceless or useless?” It’s a hard life being a writer. Some days they’re all priceless and I get nothing done, other days they’re all useless, and I throw out what I later regret not having. Shawna called at 11 to remind me of my workshop later that day. I said of course. The bad news was, with all the threats of snow, there was little preregistration, and I had not heard from the one person on my comp list.
I rushed out to be at Mirabai Books by one, and set up as quickly as I could. Then Shawna came in at one and said, “You’re here rather early. The workshop is at two PM you know!”
Well, that was okay, I needed some time to think. Patty came in first and was telling me how her husband’s Hotchkins disease comes and goes and how she takes care of him all the time and wondered if there was a Native American story about that. I could not think of one. Then AE came in, and her father had just died, the funeral was going to be Monday and she felt that stories were the only thing that could help her. She came in feeling that maybe there was no God, no spirit world, and that all our longings for visions of the spirit world are in vain, and that there was no way to communicate with her father. She herself had seen visions in the past, but now doubted them in the intensity of her loss. I said there was always a closeness with the spirit world at times of someone’s passing, and that winter was the night of the year when the spirits were especially close. She rejected that and said, “Do you know absolutely that this is true?” I smiled and said, “No, I am not absolutely sure about anything. Visions are good as long as they are helpful, and for the most part they are about consciousness. I am speaking of traditions of my people, and it’s a fact that the ancient ones believed this way. I’m not asking you to believe.”
Later on I told several stories about how Native elders communicated through phenomenal means with their loved ones at the moment of their death. I told of Aunt Helen and the Owl and the Blind Woman, and also of Albert Lightning’s messenger, who found me in the woods of Montreal on a trip from Alberta to Nova Scotia, to tell me he had just buried Albert Lightning, (my guru’s guru as they would say in India) and only because my son took his nephew’s blue ball.
Then MG showed up, not the first time in my classes, and her departed husband was on her mind. She said she, a lifetime peace activist, was born the day Hitler came to power. What a balance. She has been dedicated to peace ever since. I had a very sore throat and could hardly talk, but kept trying, and read The Stone Canoe from Native American Stories of the Sacred, which is about death and mourning, and then asked them to tell the saga of their own lives, or at least a thread of it. Patty told a story of a woman, standing at the edge of a great cliff, and weeping. Just then a great eagle comes and flies over the abyss before her. She closes her eyes and turns into a bird and flies above the abyss. AE told a more earthly story about an outcast American girl who finds a pot of money and goes to Europe and meets wonderful people, having wonderful conversations everywhere she travels.
Then just as we were wrapping up, Sarah from Ithaca shows up. I told her our theme today was death, and asked her to share the story of how she came across No Word For Time. She said her best friend had died suddenly, and she went over to the house, and found a copy of No Word For Time and the family said she could keep it. We had a closing circle that was very wonderful, and I realized that my blogs were an attempt to make mythology out of my daily life, and I gave the url to Patty.
Then I did a short session with Sarah, the one who’d written the songs based on No Word For Time. Then Sarah sang a jazz song she’d written, a capella, and it was amazing; I could hear the chords behind it. She had a voice like Billy Holiday singing a high, soft lullaby. I had just received a letter from her that she wasn’t coming. But then this morning she had a dream of the Iroquois Peacemaker Deganawida, and she went to this place where there was a T in the road, and a bridge (log bridge) and an empty cabin. I said, “That was my house!!” She said there were these male elders in the dream and they told her to come to my workshop. (Talk about celebrity endorsement, that's probably the best PR I'll ever have!) Ithaca is four hours away, and apparently her car had just been fixed after a long time in the shop, and she knew she’d have to drive back in the snow. She sang me another song, a more bluesy song, and it too was amazing. I gave her an Unquachaug prayer book mark for her No Word For Time and signed it and the name Sarah Windsong came into my mind, so that’s how I addressed the autograph. She left. I sat in the store and rested, talking with Shawna about the new book by Lovelock, Revenge Of Gaia, and then AE walks in again, and wants to talk. So we went back to the meeting room and talked and she wanted to talk about how to protect herself from electricity and harmful electrical fields. I said, "You came to the right place." So we talked about a half hour on how to ground your own energy as well as that which comes in. She started getting very agitated, writing in her notebook, putting it away, then taking it out a minute later, putting it away. She said she was getting too wound up, and had to go away and slow down. I realized she was still in shock from the death of her father, and still had to face the funeral arrangements. Several asked if she was in pain, she said, “no, its all too surreal right now, and that’s fine.” I asked if she was going to be okay, and she said yes.
I went to the Little Bear and dined alone and had some spicy food to heal my throat and it worked. No snow at all! I went home and did more chores. I fell asleep for a long time and was wakened by a call, but I was too groggy to make business decisions. It had been a full day, but beautiful.

February 8th,
Read Mirellas wonderful new book, and wrote a blurb, just making deadline.

Lost Angels: An Alternative Approach to Autism by Mirella Zanetti-Laporte is an eye-opening guide and inspiration for those dealing with autism from the outside looking in. Written with emotionally-gripping authenticity from real-life experience with a truly challenging mother-son relationship, it stresses alternative, energetic healing solutions to dissolving some of the barriers between our world and that of the “lost angel,” including a heaping tablespoon of the most difficult medicine to come by, understanding.

Evan Pritchard, author of No Word For Time, From the Temple Within, the Fourth Book of Light, Light Workout, Secrets of Wholehearted Thinking, and Native American Stories of the Sacred.

February 10th looking back

2006-02-10T18:56:00.000-08:00

Friday, February 10th I had World Views class, but no voice. The sore throat had turned to laryngitis and was staying put. I taped the Algonquin map to the wall, and talked about some local Native American history and then students read their presentations on modern Algonquin figures, and it went well. I read from the Unquachoag Prayer at the end of class. Today was the deadline for the Global Warming article in New York Spirit, emailing back and forth with William Meyers, using tracking etc. I made alot of changes. I pretty much made the deadline. I got a msg from a scientist Donna Blackwell, Scripps Oceanic Society, saying that there does not seem to be an increase in hydrothermal venting. This is a huge relief--if true. I sent a reply asking about the hesitations in the gulf stream currents. Later I got directed to another expert for that one.

I went to Staples to pick up the web business cards for amazine1.blogspot.com and they were there, even though no one had called me. They had just arrived! They looked pretty good and I was excited. The library was closed so I went to the lab to work on the baseball site and this one, inserting some pictures. I am learning about ads for the baseball site, and about linking. I have rarely trolled the web, but now I do. It takes time but I learn about what other people are doing. I read part of an interesting novel Bear Tribe something futuristic, ties in with global warming.
I taught a long guitar lesson for LV at her house. Her father was eager to look at the Mets site but forgot the url. I taught LV at home and then fell asleep on the way to Marist. Fortunately I pulled over. I was so sleepy I had a good nap. In the dream I was swimming in a sea of music, a huge string orchestra. It was very relaxing. When I woke up I remember staring at the dashboard of the car, and still hearing the music, hearing all four voices distinctly. As I was waking up, I heard this string orchestra in my head, very slow peaceful Baroque music in ¾ time to heal me. It has been in my head ever since. I wrote it down in the car in my logbook.

Today was the deadline for the global warming article for NY Spirit, and I just made the deadline before class. Today we talked about the nature of Tao, one of my favorite subjects, but also the students read their papers on modern Algonquins, which went well and took up much of the class time.

Thursday, February 9th, 2006: I believe it was this night after class that I called DLP on the cell and he told me he might get to go to England this summer to study abroad at a very old school with lots of gargoyles. I was tempted to say, “Hogwarts?” People always used to kid him about his Harry Potter Lookalike problem. This Christmas I was buying him some Harry Potter Glasses at the Scholastic Bookstore at the publisher’s headquarters on Broadway, but turned around and put them back. I thought maybe it would not be so funny from his point of view.
One of the courses offered was Shakespeare. I said, “Do you know the Psalms?” He said, “Yes I read the Bible for literary inspiration.” I asked, “Do you have a King James edition there?” “Yes, right here.” And he opened it to Psalms. I said, “Now look at Psalm 46. Shakespeare was 46 in 1611, the year that they were finishing the King James Bible, the first English bible. The story was, everyone had high expectations of the Psalms as poetry, but the translators were having a hard time making it zingy, peppy, wowwy, cool. So they hired Shakespeare, who was known for his associations with that abomination known as theater, but who could write some smokin’ verse. So they asked him to beef up a few Psalms, and he did. But they told him not to tell anyone he had been involved, whatsoever, on penalty of death. Being an artist and proud of his work, and also knowing some of the codes Da Vinci used, he signed the 46th Psalm in code. The 46th word in from the beginning is Shake, the 46th word from the end is Spear.
So of course in a way he broke his oath. The Globe Theater mysteriously burned down within two years, and then Shakespeare himself died three or so years after that under mysterious circumstances. Of course, this is how they teach literature at Hogwarts.

Many excellent scholars have endorsed this theory, and in fact the Hebrew words are in a very different order in the Pentatuch.
DLP was skeptical and counted and found the word count off by one. I noted there is also another word inserted which has never been translated, which throws off the word count. It was, needless to say, an interesting discussion. We talked about where he could go on weekends, and I suggested Paris rather than Rome, much quicker trip. He thought of Ireland, maybe Berlin where everyone speaks English. It was a fun discussion in any case.

Wednesday, February 8th, 2006 I read all of Mirella's new book Lost Angels and created a blurb/endorsement for the back cover. (See separate entry, it is about autism) Its due out very soon. She will be selling some at Lee Carroll's next extravaganza. He is very supportive of autistic or "Indigo" people, as am I.

I had an autistic student at Marist recently and I didn't say anything, I just knew, rather high functioning and intellectually gifted 20 or 21 years old, and very clever. She would ask questions, one after another until I was blue in the face and the other students were getting very annoyed at her, so I had to say "see me after class." They were good questions; she caught places where I assumed common knowledge that for her did not exist. Afterwards one of the students was very angry. He stormed up to me, "Why do you spend so much time on her? Do you know what she is? She's a...." I cut him off, and said, "I know what she is and I know others like her, and sometimes they do very good work! But they do things in thier own way, as you see." He couldn't believe it.

The other day I saw her sitting in the student center with her "travel bear" in her lap, just staring off into space. I nodded to myself, and kept her secret. She has the green starry eyes associated with Williams' Syndrome. It is a rare syndrome that doesn't have that many obvious drawbacks and often brings with it a gift for music, but those with this syndrome have weak hearts, literally and figuratively. I must know a million people with this rare syndrome.

I went wandering around Woodstock today. Its not that large a town. Tourists come here and say, “Hmm…excuse me…is there another Woodstock?” Well in fact there’s Saugerties, Bethel, White Lake, and also there’s Phonecia and Shady, and all are part of the Woodstock archipelligo but no, this is all there is! It was a good day. I was driving and looked down at the floor and there was the tape of my WNYC interview with Leonard Lopate lying there. I hadn’t seen that in years. That live broadcast reached tens of thousands of people with the Native New Yorkers message, and sold a lot of copies. He was a tough interviewer, but we all rose to the occasion. I had been warned by another author that he can kind of sneak up on you with these hard questions, even personal questions, after all its New York, so I was prepared, and we did a little mental gymnastics, a little intellectual Sumo wrestling, but both shook hands at the end so to speak. I listened to the tape on and off as I drove during the day, and it was mostly history, and not as contentious as I remembered. But I had fond memories of the place. The studio is at Number One Center street, where the Boro President’s office is, and there was tons of security on the way in, since it was just after 9-11. I believe it was that day that I met Virginia Field, Boro President of Manhattan and gave her Native New Yorkers and a dream catcher made by a Munsee still living in the state. I offered it to all the people of New York in her care, and she accepted it gladly and said, “Thanks, we need all the help we can get!”
I went to the post office, and there was a note for a package. I picked it up and it was a package full of tapes from Oaness at Wolf Mountain Radio, tapes of our latest interview. However, it arrived with no postage and with no postage due or COD sticker on it. The new director there is very strict, and chewed out the employee who didn’t send it back or throw it away. In fact, the meter tags are often put on in haste and don’t stick too well. His wife Betty had mailed it, and I don’t think that the postal workers in Florida would have accepted it without postage, so I suspect the distain I received was orchestrated. The director sneered when she had to write out Yat Kitischee by hand in her documentation book, but hey its not an Algonquin word so what do I care?
I also received a letter from Sarah saying she wasn’t sure she was coming to the February 11 event. I got a poster from Mary Lou at Pine Hill for the upcoming event, the one James David Audlin was going to speak jointly at. I saw that she had only put my picture on the poster, not his, and I felt that wasn’t right, and I wondered if that’s one reason why he cancelled, and I wouldn’t blame him. I believe that event would have been the first for his new book. As it turns out he will have his book launching at Oblong on March 25th, which gets more traffic among book dealers, and we will try again for a co-signing later in March.
I sent Brian Wilkes (www.standingbearfoundation.org also can be reached brian@wilkesweb.net )a copy (finally) of Native American Stories of the Sacred, along with the gallery brochure from Ramapo College. Brian was extremely helpful in providing most of the Cherokee information in the book, which is all real cutting edge stuff, and authentic oral tradition. Thanks Brian!
I went to visit Shiv Mirabito at Dharmaware, but he was in India until April. Eric, a local legend in Woodstock and organizer of many great events greeted me. They said I could organize an event for NASS when Shiv gets back.
I went to Golden Notebook, a famed bookstore in Woodstock, and talked to the owner for a while. He too had never heard of Lovelocks’ new book, but knew of some other fairly new releases on the subject. He said that he had Stories of the Sacred in stock, but was not in a position to do a signing right now. He asked when Native New Yorkers was coming out again, and I was able to say within six months, soft cover revised, and that I was the distributor for the hard back as author. He had arranged a book signing and reading for me for Native New Yorkers when it came out, and made some important connections for me then. I believe it was through that event that the book ended up at the bedside of our remarkable congressman Maurice Hinchey (one of the most "green" reps in Congress). The owner said he would like to arrange a signing for the release of the new Native New Yorkers, and I agreed.
I was feeling sick, and was losing my voice. I went home and was so tired I fell asleep with the light on. I was supposed to appear in court about a traffic incident, and when I got there, the officers related to the incident had already left. The judge could see how sick I was and said he’d set up another date. That was really quite considerate. I went to a Chinese restaurant in Saugerties to have some spicy food to heal my throat (which helped). I didn’t get too close to anyone, but I wasn’t sneezing. I sat there thinking about this crazy global warming scare, wondering if it was really possible, no less irreversible. I overheard people saying that the casino really would come to Saugerties. I thought that was pretty strange, why here? I knew it would stir up anti-Indian feelings here in town, such a small town to host a casino. I had no regrets personally, as while I was writing Native American Stories of the Sacred I came upon material I’d never seen before that explained the mythical importance of gambling and also its dangers, and included both in the book. It establishes a way for informed readers to be for traditional native customs and against modern casinos at the same time. However not everyone wants to have that kind of discussion when they are fighting for their community’s integrity. But mostly I was thinking sober thoughts about Hansen, Lovelock, Lovejoy and others, about this doomsday scenario, so close that if they are right I will probably see the beginning of the end. I went outside into the parking lot to stand in the cold air and think about these heavy things, and I looked up and there was a huge ring around the moon, which was not quite full. The ring was gargantuan in size and very awe inspiring, it encompassed the full scope of my vision. Inside the ring it was clear and outside it was cloudy. It was stunning, like the mother ship in Star Man. I had only seen that once before in my life, with my ex wife Patty. It was the day we were talking about the future and possibly getting married. Then we saw that ring, and she said it meant good luck, a big yes from the universe, especially regarding rings, etc. So based on that I decided to marry her and we were happy together for ten years and yielded a beautiful son who is smarter than me and more diplomatic, and who likes the Mets and music. Out of that bond came Resonance Magazine and Resonance Publishing which is where I got the nickname REZMAN. See, you thought it had something to do with being Indian and working on reservations saving endangered languages. So to see it tonight at what my friend Madeliene L'Engle would call an "hour of darkness.." as I contemplated the fall of mankind, it seemed like an exceptionally positive sign.
Maybe those hippies in Woodstock who say the aliens will come to rescue 440,000 are right. Hey, you gotta believe!
I also got some paperwork in the mail today from the Pequot Museum, a fine group of people who use casino money in a very constructive way. I guess the timing was ironic.

Mirellas blurb

2006-02-08T11:43:00.000-08:00

February 8th,
Read Mirellas wonderful new book, and wrote a blurb, just making deadline.

Lost Angels: An Alternative Approach to Autism by Mirella Zanetti-Laporte is an eye-opening guide and inspiration for those dealing with autism from the outside looking in. Written with emotionally-gripping authenticity from real-life experience with a truly challenging mother-son relationship, it stresses alternative, energetic healing solutions to dissolving some of the barriers between our world and that of the “lost angel,” including a heaping tablespoon of the most difficult medicine to come by, understanding.

Evan Pritchard, author of No Word For Time, From the Temple Within, the Fourth Book of Light, Light Workout, Secrets of Wholehearted Thinking, and Native American Stories of the Sacred.

I got a message from Robert J indicating some interference with his computer but finally got the message through.

February 7th, recollecting back to February 1

2006-02-07T18:15:00.000-08:00

February 7th, Tuesday 2006

I overslept a bit, had a sore throat, but life moves on. Jumped out of bed and did the letter of revisions for William Meyers at NY Spirit from 10 to 10:50 then emailed them, spellings and fact checks on the Stories of the Sacred meets Global Warming feature. I also rewrote some sections. I felt it went well. I got an email from Adrian Calabrese, author of several books for Inner Traditions accepting my offer to share a pizza and catch up on business. I used to be Adrian's business consultant. Now Adrian is doing Barnes and Nobles signings like I am, and I recommended Danbury. This new book is on "getting what you want in life" which I know will sell itself. My books are on the hardest subjects in the world, some of it is about "you can't always get what you want" (to quote the superbowl star Mick Jagger) but I work them and get them off to school like so many school children. "I never turn down an offer for free pizza" was a way of getting what you want. Adrian is an intelligently conversant person, a good and effective minister whose services I have attended when I needed my own jumpstart. I helped develop and market A's "love your life seminars" series a few years ago.

I jumped in the shower and hurried out the door. It was a cold morning. I went to my shared office and met Dr Marsand for the first time. He said I should be the one to remove the computer tower from the table, and showed me the brace on his right wrist. I laughed and showed him the brace on my right wrist. I asked when he sprained his, he said a week ago. Mine was ten days ago. Weird. I sorted papers, and realized if I held on to the global warming reports I could type up highlights and share them with William for the article and use them in class. Made it to class, but it was hard to talk at first. Todays talk was about Taoism. I handed back the Iceman papers, and handed around the list of modern Algonquins and had two students hold up the big Algonquin territories map because I couldnt find the tape. I talked a little about the ancient history (pointing to the map) and how it related to the Wappingers of our region. I did not mention yet that we were sitting on Fox Point, hence the name Red Foxes. I'll save something in the tank in case I need a home run.

We did a class discussion based on reading Mary Pat Fisher's text on Taoism. Very slow responses! We outlined a few beliefs and practices, and then definitions, then in the last minutes, the various terms in various world cultures with similar meanings. Damma, Dharma, Dikaion, Ma'at, Fi Rhinne, Red Road, Mitzvot, Shari'a, etc. They all mean the right way, all are interpreted on three levels. Class went fast. I said there are alot of Mitzvots listed, I think 631. MR raised his hand and said 613. That was the right answer. I listed those listed in Native American Stories of the Sacred (NASS) words for "the way" and emphasised The Red Road as the Way of Native American culture. Every culture has a way, a Tao, and all speak of it in similar ways, but the words are different. I assigned each student to do an internet search on only one.

I reminded them of my "Enron" rant, that if one person from Marist grows up to be CEO of a new Enron, people will say "Where did they go to school," then pointed out that James Smith, their classmate, who was absent, had made national news on Sunday by shooting 27 points against first place Iona College. I said "While we were all sitting back in our chairs sipping beers and watching football, he was breaking records and making headlines in the New York Post, Daily News, and the Poughkeepsie Journal. Some day people will say, "Where is Marist College? Is that a good school? Oh yeah....James Smith! Must be good!"

Of course he wasn't there to defend himself. The fact that he was absent didn't help my point. If he were he might have been embarrassed. Jared Jordan, who was also in all the papers for a triple double, was also apparently at a game going on somewhere.

WG is coming up with lots of stuff. I had mentioned last week that archaologists started to find signs of cancer only after the introduction of corn to our area in 1000 AD. He said there had just been proof of that, that corn oil causes cancer, and produced a report in a few days. I read the report later today, it was quite conclusive and shocking.

Today WG said that Gary Cooper Gnewt Rockne, and a General Thunderchild were all Native Americans. I didn't know that.

I told the story of Jim Thorpe hitting homers in three states in one game.
I had brought Ishi Last of His Tribe in case my throat gave out, but it didnt.
I worked on the baseball website afterwards, on the class computer, and redid the intro version of the Worst Mets Game Ever Played, with an eye to graphics. I was surprised how well it worked out. I am learning new computer skills all the time, my goal for 2006. Then CT came up and sat down and we talked. She had Mozarts Requiem in her hands, but was talking with gusto about her Values in Literature course (in this room!) The Marist chorus is singing the Requiem in June at Carnagie Hall. A great conversationalist. Later I ran into her in the lunch room and she remembered my name. She said there was a Pritchard in a movie from 1957. I had never heard of the movie but asked if she had seen Dead Poets Society with Robin Williams; there is a Pritchard mentioned. In the car I checked messages, some from Ellis, and talked to DLP for a minute, told him to check the new graphics out at the baseball site. He was in the lunch room. It was sunny in the car. I got a call from Diane De Cello, at the Ellenville Library and history center, who said she was also sick today. She moved my submission deadline to Valentines Day. Does she want it delivered in person? I wonder? She sounds more interested and motivated to have me as a guest speaker for the 200th anniversary of Warwarsing's cityhood. I went to the library to work more on website stuff, and I compiled all the quotes from the students papers on global warming into a sheet for William at NY Spirit.

I ran into Igor Volsky a student of Lusky-Volsky Show radio fame, and we agreed to meet at 5:30 at the cafeteria, but both were late. Cell phones are fast becoming part of life in terms of meeting people. People used to use deep psychic powers to solve such problems. He is soon to interview David Scott Hamilton from Sierra Club about Global Warming, and I said I'd email him the list of quotes, and talked to him about the latest breaking news, of which he was not too familiar, or at least didnt speak up. He was interested in the baseball blog, to my surprise, He is Ukranian and baseball is a big blank to him.I told Diego Cuenca about the baseball site too, one of my most promising former students who wants to go into sportscasting, who is a descendant of natives from Columbia. I know he is interested in global warming too, and will tell him of this site later.

In the commuter lounge I played my piano solo September Soliloquey for the first time since last year. I need to add a section I think.

I went to a computerstall and checked out MadHatter Review, an interesting "lorn of love" column by Crazy Jane who has beige rugs in her apt. We exchanged funny emails.
At the library, I went back to the same guy who showed me how to access the Times, which is great for my baseball research, and asked him to teach me how to use the scanner, and he did. I am still having trouble uploading pictures into this site sometimes. It wasnt easy but I took notes. The painting posted on todays blog, "Young Man With Pipe," by Janet Von Jappen, was scanned today, my first scan. I ran into Dan Black, the "liberal" columnist for the school paper who jokingly said things were "out of control," but in fact had some very good news to tell. He promised to come Thursday this week to the citizens thinktank. He then showed me a typed and a hand written letter written to him by Marion Weisel! My mouth dropped. He had read "Night" by nobel prize winner Elie Weisel for the first time in my class just a few months ago, and wrote a paper for me on it, discussed it passionately in class, and then he donated to the foundation, and now Marion, Elie's wife, is asking him if he would like to work for them, perhaps go to Israel or other countries to work on social ethics issues..... she said she was very moved by his letter (which he didn't have, to show me) I felt touched by history. I had more or less met Elie Weisel years ago here at school. I showed Dan this weblog in progress and showed him it was done. I showed him Dr Mar's website that I'd created a week ago, Mar-In-Calcutta, and he said he wanted me to make one for him too, on Thursday. I'm sure it will be political. (I did set up his blogsite, and he is enjoying it immensely) Dan spent alot of time as a Marine in Iraq and has a unique and balanced perspective on global politics. By the way, I noticed that Mar had been able to update her site without my help. I was proud of my mentor and student Dr Mar for making that step into the 21st Century.

I went through the complex process of moving this website to its own site, unconnected to the exigicies of baseball. I will feel more free to express myself this way, more control over who reads it right now while I am adding and subtracting. Later on I might link the two again. Everything with computers takes time. I am learning so much and really enjoying it. This global warming thing is very strange. I need a good distraction some times so I don't get caught in the tragedy of it. Scientists are saying "sorry we goofed, we did the math wrong. Its too late!" Lovelock is so gloom and doom, and I wondered what the reaction was from the scientific community so I looked through all the students' papers for a ray of hope and they all say "We agree, relatively speaking." Even James Hansen of NASA agrees. Lovelock is saying 100 years, worst case scenario. There are other scenarios, but they are all bad. There is (almost) noone saying "Its not a problem."

I am reminded of one of my earliest songs that I wrote, or you might say channeled when I was 13, "Will I see my duty when my world comes to its doom?" I never understood that line, and have always wondered what kind of duty might one have in the face of real doom? It always seemed a paradox. I still don't know.

We dont really know if Lovelock is right, but scientists mostly agree now that we are doomed environmentally and its just a matter of time, how much time, we don't know. I hope to make it alot of time and to make it count, a global renaissance. Long ago I was encouraged by Hopi elder Thomas Beniaka, Seven Fires Wampum Belt Keeper William Commanda, and others to speak to the public about the prophecies, which warn of global warming leading to a great and final war. No one was listening then, not even the people you would expect to listen.
Later, I contracted a near fatal form of Lymes disease which the Boston Globe in 1995 said was the product specifically of global warming, and bedridden, wrote Native New Yorkers which accidentally put me, little halfbreed from Maryland, in the middle of the 9-11 soulsearching time in NY, to be a leading spokesperson for native teachings and prophies (along with Tiokasin, Barbara James Snyder, and others) in NYC, worthy or not, I was there and ready to talk and pass on those teachings, and paid dearly for it. Now this, and the article to come.

I would like to see NYC lead the way in terms of green urban architecture. People will say "If NYC can do it so can we!" The problem is scientists say we have five years to turn it all around, and it looks like we won't have help from Washington. 90 million is not going to make a dent. That's less than the Mets spend in one year. I am mentioning my friend Makrand Bhoot in the article, as he is one who really knows green architecture. Dr. Mar is going to Calcutta to help the pavement people. When she arrives she will see that millions of them are now living in green-architecture homes designed by my carousing buddy Makrand Bhoot! There are lots of twists of fate these days. I am just surfing along.

Monday Feb. 6th see separate entry.
Sunday, February 5th;see February 6th entry Multicultural Kickoff

Saturday, February 4th. I had been indoors too much, but still feeing creative at the computer. I felt my health take a turn for the better. I went to the Laundromat finally, Saturday morning on a warm day, probably the worst time of the week to try it, and it was crowded, but I persisted, cleaned out the car too, and felt I was coming to a new beginning in my life. I stood against the washer and wrote out all my bills on the top of the washing machine. There were complications. There were so many errands to run, I was spinning like the clothes in the dryers. I mailed the bills (a staggering amount, I was so generous at Christmas that my father worried about me!) and some things, including Capitol Steps new wonderful CD which I sent to DLP in Florida “Four More Years In the Bush Leagues!” and sent a copy of Resonance Magazine from 1989 (the humor issue) to outstanding Scottish fiddler Alastair Frasier. It was sent open to a 17 year old review of his hallmark CD “The Road North.” With a cover letter reminding him we’d met in mid January at Fiddlers Dream concert at SUNY. The post office was open later than before. I went home and took care of some phone banking business, and it all took til about 4 PM. I finally resolved a year long struggle with Chase Manhattan bank over an evil credit card account and closed it out. This was a spiritually significant moment. I knew I had to wait for the Super Bowl party with Rick to really celebrate it. As Martin Luther King said, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I’m free at last.” In fact Free Atlast, the pioneer woman conga drummer was playing in town at the Colony Café, that night, but I didn’t have the energy to go hear her.
I was so tired, I fell asleep for a long time. I got a call from Thunderbird, or I called her, and it turns out Bob “Big Rock” and Suzanne had showed up for the lecture in Quebec anyway, and I spoke with them on the phone. I said I’d never in all these years had to cancel a trip to be with my friends in Canada, but the weather made the difference. They didn’t know as much about it as I did, they just expect snow anyway as a part of being Canadian, like saying AY, eating ham and rooting for the Ottawa Senators. But they were about to get clobbered, and I told them so. Thunderbird says, “I have shop for the food already. I’m not have to go out now for days!”
I got a lot of calls that evening and didn’t do much writing or editing on The Awakening. It was pouring rain but there were many disruptions. I read Sarahs letter; she had set lines from No Word For Time to a song! She wrote, “It’s a feeling of relief to find your book. My friend Annie died suddenly of cancer. This book was hers and was given to me after she went to the spirit world.” I called and left a message on her voice mail to thank her for the letter.
The next day, when Rick and I were having our long talk about life and death what we wanted to accomplish as writers before it was all over and what would give us a feeling of (to quote Mick Jagger) “satisfaction,” and I mentioned this story. I said, “This woman inherited No Word For Time from her friend who died. Inherited it! THAT’S what I wanted to accomplish when I wrote it, a book that people would hand down to their children and best friends when they died.”
I got a call from Gordon Bailey, an old friend, and the only black UU minister I know in New York State. A very dynamic person with a lot of integrity.
I also got an evaluation report from work, one of the best in 7 years. I had been doing research on pitchers’ ERA in World Series competition, and I laughed because it was so similar, the lower numbers are better. I was finally in the “World Series closer zone” in terms of ERA. Another cause to celebrate.
Raymundo the Librarian called in the middle of the night from his night job thinking I’d be in Canada, and I was up working on some writing projects and we talked to about 4 AM. He said he could not find an American History magazine, that I’d have to get more info. They had run a great review of Native New Yorkers in November 2002, and its on line somewhere. I said I had called that librarian K, at his recommendation, about setting up programs, and we ended up talking for an hour, but then said, “I don’t remember meeting a K.” He said, “that was Kray! They are the same person! She will help you continue your work in spite of all this negative interference. In fact, it sounds like things are starting to go better for you.finally.” Indeed 2005 was a rough year, and January of ’06 I was sick and working too hard, so he was right. He picked up on what I was feeling. I wrote in my log book “A New Chapter in World History.” I hadn’t seen K for years. I said, “Didn’t Jason West marry her to a lesbian friend? Didn’t I read that in the paper?” “No, they threatened to haul his crazy ass to jail if he married them! So he didn’t, and they didn’t have plans otherwise. It was a statement!” Another New Paltz moment! K in my opinion is an emerging leader in the field of womens’ shamanic studies. She’s very smart and a dynamic speaker… A few days later I was talking to Gordon Bailey, a semi-retired black/Indian Unitarian minister about helping me put on RTA events in the city, and merging it with Gaiaism, and he said we needed a Jewish woman to complete the racial balance. I said I knew a Jewish lesbian who was a priest of Asatru! He said, “WOW!” "(Between the three of us that about covers all ethnicities!")

February 3rd, Friday I had my World Views class in the morning. Students asked me what my prediction was for the Super Bowl. I said “Steelers by Seven!” They seemed really happy. One cheered and said, “ARRIGHT!” As if my saying so would make it come true. But I really did feel a certainly about it. Jokingly, as I left the room to get some towels to clean all the yellow smear from the blackboards, (no white chalk for weeks!) I said, “...and you can put money on it!”

I had this sort of dream about James Smith, one of my students on the basketball team, that he should choose an African tribe such as the Ashanti to research for his paper, because we was going to play in the NBA some day, and American basketball is basically a black mans’ world. After class we had a talk, and I felt a little awkward bringing it up, but I did. He said, “I had the same idea! I want to do the Ashanti!” That was kind of surprising, but we kind of opened up about things. He said he had fouled and spent a long time on the bench, so didn’t get all his shots in. I gave him advice based on years of seeing student athletes come and go. I said you have to continually adapt, not just year to year but moment to moment. (After this conversation I realized that was an important lesson for us all, and incorporated it into the article for NY Spirit. I said that Adapt Or Die should replace Excelcior as the state motto.
Then the coach showed up in my classroom looking for him, and we talked a bit. I told him I had three of the team members in my class and was rooting for them. Apparently the coach then had a talk with James and answered his questions about how to make better rebounds. (Of course no advice I give is intended to override anything Matthew Brady says. Any guy with such a cool name must know what he’s about.) I continued to work at the computer there for a little bit. I checked MSN and the weather report for Ottawa was just horrible. I still felt sick from a long illness, and my wrist still hurt, and I had a car full of dirty laundry. I had so much to do, but kept working on the Mets website, on a hot streak, and worked on my Mets VS Yanks article and other projects. I went down to see Ray at the hotel at 2 AM but he wasn’t there at the time. This day was some astrological clashing of energies, nothing worked for me. Even the cell phone didn’t work, for several reasons.

February 2nd, Thursday: This morning, famed author Bill Mann called me for the first time and we talked for the first time. He is a friend of Steven Sora’s, so I had high expectations and was not disappointed, and guy really dedicated to pure research. He offered to send me two of his books as a gift. We talked for an hour about the history of masonry. Interesting guy. I also mentioned my father’s Egypt book, and he said he had some math and geometry background. I worked five hours on the Robert J manuscript, and started to get somewhere, but ran out of time. 5000 words to go. Robert's philosophy of consciousness is one of the few that is in line with modern quantum mechanics, and I think years from now will be considered very much on target and even prophetic. Info on his work can be had by writing PO Box 8, Clio Alabama.
I taught my ethics class, another great meeting, where we went over 25 reasons to honor a verbal commitment, ten things that can go wrong to force you to break the agreement, or at least tempt you, and how to do a cost to benefit ratio chart in such cases. I told the story of how I went to Daytona to meet a flight and found that the plane was arriving in Orlando. One of my students said he’d had the same exact experience once. Then we did an hour with workshopping responses to unfair rhetoric. Then I assigned the movie project. After class I met with Dr. Mar and no one else showed up for the meeting, so I created a blogsite for her at blogspot.com, and she was thrilled. It is called mar-in-calcutta.blogspot.com.
I sent a brief email to friend William Spaulding in Detroit to look at the baseball website. I posted a story dedicated to him. I got home very late.

February 1stWednesday, I worked on the baseball site into February, but the meter at the site was on California time so it logged in as January.
Sally Dennison called to tell me that it was official, that Council Oak was republishing both No Word For Time and Native New Yorkers, and soon. I talked to the accountant (Laura Wood?) about reading the royalty statement, and we were confused. Then Sally called and said the reason for the confusion is that the royalty statement they sent was the one that was returned. I got a call from Paul Zachos to tell me that he was giving me the beautiful first edition of 1492 that he had sent, by Charles Mann. (No relation to Bill apparently) The same day I got an email from an author named Bill Mann. I told him to call. He was a friend of Steven Sora, a most trusted compatriot. Were the two authors related? Guess who forgot to ask.
Today I worked on the Mets blogsite amazine1.blogspot.com. I was working on the world series pitching article, and came across the Mickey Lolich material, and wrote an article about that. Then I saw the entry in Total Baseball about Mets announcer Fran Healy and his stats, and his father and great uncle, and dropped everything to do a story on that. I also worked on the Yanks/Mets article, but held that up. And also inserted lots of pictures, really getting a handle on how to do blogs. My father told me how to say You Gotta Believe in Latin and German, and Thunderbird told me how to say it in French.
I enjoy writing for the new Mets baseball magazine, because I can write what I want without worrying about politics; Its like writing poetry for me, and I felt highly inspired that night, writing at great speed, as facts fit together matched to passionate prose for the game. I went into the Sunflower store today and saw an old man with an old Mets hat on and asked him how long he’d been a fan. “From the beginning!” He said. He said, “I was there on October 3rd, 1951.” I paused and was getting there, when he said, “Bobby Thompson’s home run!” I said, “Remember, “Gimme Branca?” “Yeah Ralph Branca!” His name was Lefty Lee and he agreed to be interviewed for my Amazine! That was a coup. I also saw network TV host Joel Cohen from FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, see website!) in the same store and said hello, and wanted to ask him to come to Marist to speak to our Citizenship Watch class, but thought it premature. He said hello back and smiled and left with his groceries. I worked some more on Robert J’s stuff and on the poetics of baseball. My father and mother read through the site and said it was very literary and well written. That made my day.

Opening Multicultural Kickoff

2006-02-07T18:05:00.000-08:00

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 06, 2006
opening multicultural kickoff
Maydalain (How are you!) From Evan Pritchard...

2/06/2006
This is my new tasteful 2006 fan site (LOL) Evan's Earth Walk. My publishers, Skylight Paths Publishing of Woodstock VT, Resonance Magazine of Woodstock, NY and Council Oak Books of Tulsa, OK, have asked me to post blogs about my whereabouts and Native American/Multicultural/Environmental activities to help plug my books, and other products/creations/causes. Plus Kate Treworgy at Skylight plans to link this site to a new links page at the Skylight site to spread the word about the new book Native American Stories of the Sacred. She said it would be a few weeks! Better get it ready in time for Kate!

I will also link you to other websites as we go along, and tell you about the great literary journalistic and musical achievements of my friends, most of whom are talented Native Americans or descendants thereof like myself. (Am I talented? That's what they told me when I was five and I swallowed the bait!) Of course I also work with lots of great people, coworkers, students, fellow authors, literary blood brothers etc who are just plain wonderful and are doing good work on the planet while they are passing through. I will certainly build them up on this website, because who they are inspires me to be who I am, to be myself.

For those who are unfamiliar with my "earthwalk," I am a Mi'kmaq/Wampanoag and Celtic person, a descendant of Metacomet's family of the Wampanoag, which includes Witamu, Wamsutta, Passaconnaway, and Wannalancet (all pretty much within two generations) and of "King" John Julian of the Mi'kmaq who created 19 Mi'kmaq reservations around 1776 to preserve some of our land in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. In that mix are the Acadian French Mi'kmaq, direct descendants of Philip D'Entrement-Muse whose son married Mi'kmaq Marie (?) Pictou to establish the ethnicity now called Acadian. The Mi'kmaq side of that family became the Moose family (a Mi'kmaq word) and my mother is a Moose (spelled Muse, then changed to Mewer) I was named Chipmunk (Abachbahametch) by an elder of the tribe, but many people now call me Sunheart, including Algonquin/Anishinabe elder William Commanda, who adopted me as his grandson and assistant, (with deference due to Charlie Commanda who is his blood relative grandson!) to help him with his work with A Circle of All Nations, A Culture of Peace.

This diary will not just be about Native American Stories of the Sacred, (NASS) or about Native American culture, though, but about everything I see around me that I want to remember. The "miracles" (a natural phenomenon, an expression of the Creator who is in everything) in my life involve everyone and sometimes some of the more mundane earthly aspects, as it should be. I will even comments sometimes on the media and daily news and sports events which touch everyone's lives, and something you and I have in common.

I have been meaning to do this for years, and now finally I'm here. My own daily blog. "Will Pritchard manage to keep the streak going, day after day? Well, in 35 years of trying to keep a diary, he has never gotten through an entire year without missing a day or stopping altogether." HOw's that for a stat?

The thing about this kind of blog is that the date imprinted on the blog entry will seldom if ever match the date of the events. It takes a while to process all the info and get around to blogging. SO what I'm going to do is write in the date that different events happened, and let historians sort it out....

My horoscope for today, Monday 02 06 06 Virgo, New You Needs to Reflect... "Reflection is necessary in order to move you into the the great new self you are becoming."

For the last two weeks I have been making Ground Hogs Day predictions, prophecies about the future, one of which has been "Steelers by Seven!!!" which in an otherwise spiritual context gets alot of laughs. Only the joke was on me, because the Steelers won and almost ended up with a margin of seven, however due to a few referee calls, it ended up being an 11 point spread, 21 to 10.

Sports is big in my life today. Not only do I have a new Mets blogzine at amazine1.blogspot.com, but I have four basketball stars in my classes at Marist, and I am pulling for them this year. (I teach Philosophy, Ethics and World Views and Values, plus occasionally Native American Studies...No favoritism on grades, these people are public figures and need to be smart and well versed with no skeletons in the closet!) Friday, I had a long talk with James Smith, a 6'7" sophmore. He said he planned to play in Italy or maybe Germany for a while. I told the story of how I was rescued in Bari Italy by an Italian basketball player in a VW, and how he showed me around town.
I offered him consolation about the upset loss to St. Peters the night before, a heartbreaking one point loss. I noted that his point average per game (listed in the paper) was 11.2, that it wasn't bad. I asked him how he felt about it, and he said he knows he can do alot better. He said he had a foul called on him early and so wasn't able to score because he was on the bench. I felt he was open to advice. I said that I'd had a lot of sports stars in my classes over the years and the most important thing in pro sports is to adapt to change, not just every year, but every few minutes. I said, "In the middle of a game, if the referees change the foul rules, you change, and fast. Don't think about what is right or wrong about it, just adapt. If an umpire changes the strike zone in the middle of a game, you have to change, you can't argue strikes."

I asked him if he were going to watch the super bowl (I said Steelers by 7) he said he had a game against Iona college, (a top team that advertises on WFAN, my favorite station.) I said good luck, and remember what I said.

Today's headline in the Po Jo, (Poughkeepsie Journal) not only said basically Steelers by 11, the other headline next to it read Marist Men Shock Iona! Smith Scores 27 in Victory!

I was soooo glad to see that after our chat. The story said that Smith got 24 points in the first half! There was even a photo of James. Another of my students Jared Jordan, had a near triple double and the Red Foxes won 87-81. The Foxes are 14-7 overall and two games out of first. Smith was quoted, crediting Brady with some rebound advice that improved his game. "It was an important game against the number one team in the league." He had eight rebounds and 5-of7 three pointers.
There was a photo of Jared Jordan on 3C.

Another one of my students, a sophmore named Ryan Stilphen, made a three pointer as the shot clock was expiring that gave Marist an 81-77 edge. Jordan made two baskets in the final minute. In the same paper, there was a story featuring my student Alisa Kresge, who led Marist Womens defense in victory against Fairfield Stags 59-48. There was a coach on the other team Maureen Magarity, who used to be with Marist, and knew some of the strategies, so they had to change their defense in order to win. Alisa led that change in the second half, guarding the leading scorer and had four steals and several saved plays. "Kresge was everywhere!" She had already learned about adaptation. It was the first time I had four of my students mentioned in one newspaper.

I ran into Venk Kandadi here at school, who did not see the Super Bowl but thought of me when he saw the score. I showed him Rick Jarow's new book Tales for the Dying The Death narrative of the Bhagavata Purana, and Venk, who is Hindu, was very interested in Rick Jarows work and wants to study with him, so I will connect them. He wanted to buy the book too. I showed him the sanskrit inscription Rick wrote to me in the front page of Alchemy of Abundance, and could only read a few words but it was a nice moment. (He said his father could rea d it) Venk is going into community health, his sister is a doctor.
He says that a new golden cross section superhighway in India will add many new cars to the planet, as will a new highway in china, adding to global warming concerns.
He says Marist Mens needs to work more as a team. I can certainly work that message into my ethics class.
By the way< I don't intend to discuss here personal academic issues of these or any other students. But sports is what makes Marist tick, and these are the guys with that weight on their shoulders. I want to support what they do. Venk is a former student soon to graduate who has a bright future and is, like me, interested in everything. He brings me inside news from across the sea which the US papers dont' provide, and he is very interested in things Native American, and "gets it" in surprising ways. Today he said, "Theres no way to sum up Native culture, no way to complete that study.." I said,"I don't have a problem with that! Just like Hindu religion, its really a culture, it was meant to be lived, not studied." He agreed. He held up Ricks book and said, you could write books forever about Hindu religion and never get to the end, just like the Native American. I said, "Yes, I enjoy that about both!"

Sunday February 5th: This was a very big day for me in many ways. I was not even supposed to be in this country, I was supposed to be in Ottawa, but a huge storm hit the entire region, especially in the Adirondacks, where I would have been driving, 100s of miles without people. MSN has the best online weather, and it sounded like this for the Plattsburg/Ottawa region: Warm weather snow melting heavy rain for two days, severe flooding. Flash deep freeze leading to skating rink, then two days of heavy snow, maybe 2 feet, then 50 mile an hour winds on Monday. "Just put skids on my car and tie it to a moose. I'll get there eventually!"
Of course I'd never cancelled a February trip to see Thunderbird and Ojigwano (William Commanda) before, (see photo of William C with friend Nelson Mendella) but I was having second thoughts. There were two signs from the spirit world as warnings. On Thursday night I had created a blogsite for Dr Mar Peter Roul (one of Marist's most famed professors, my former chair/boss) called Mar-in-Calcutta. I put it up on the big screen so she could see what I was doing. For ten seconds the weather channel accidentally came on TV, and I heard "Big huge storm about to hit Canada's capitol city of Ott......" and then it clicked off. Earlier in the day I passed through the toll booth and the weather was clear and warm, but the NO UNNECESSARY TRAVEL magnetic sign had been put in a prominent place by accident and it stood out. I kept thinking about what that meant, it kept buggin me. I was determined to go to Ottawa, ironically to give talks about global warming and chaotic weather (a native perspective). My health did not rally and my wrist did not heal (I have a stick shift) and so there were issues about going into bad weather.

It was quite a productive day (finally!) In the morning, I wrote (from scratch) a three part proposal to Urban Rangers for an upcoming workshop, and emailed it. The event is on March 5th, a month away. Then I had to work on this big article for NY Spirit magazine about how Stories of the Sacred ties in with the new revelations from James Lovelock about Global Warming. William Meyers at Columbia U Press sent me pages of questions to answer, and they were hard. I spent four hours on them at least and just let my thoughts and feeling pour out onto the e-page and then emailed him about 2 PM. I had disconnected the phone because I needed total concentration and the deadline was soon, today in fact. We talked for a little while. He had just gone over the entire tape he made of my first NY NASS talk from the Open Center event in November. he said the timing of my call was precipitious. I told him I had a third important deadline today and then had to meet with Rick Jarow to watch the Super Bowl as part of a 12 year tradition. I was leaving him in the lurch re editing, but he said "That sounds like an important connection." Very gracious for a guy under pressure. He was not familiar with Rick Jarow and I filled him in re Tales for the Dying, The Alchemy of Abundance, The Anti Career Handbook, Creating the Work You Love, In Search of the Sacred. I suggested he do a story on him.
Then I had 3 hours in which to finish Robert J.s book The Awakening. I finished the last line of editing at 5:30 hoping to get to Ricks by 6:30, but emailing and reading emails and showering and shaving, it was 6:10 by the time I left. I heard the first quarter on the radio, not too eventful, and arrived at Ricks at the start of the second quarter. Even though Matt Hasselback had been hit twice by lightning and therfore at least a candidate for shamanic training, we both were pulling for the Steelers and the remarkable young Ben Rothlisberger, (who looks alot like Rick!!!) and it was am amazing game for both teams. Rick had wanted to be a pro basketball player and played in some important games, and looks at sports now as pros tend to do, very gritty business.
During the Rolling Stones lukewarm performance we talked about our writing careers and our philosophical turns, and also during the second half, quite an interesting mix. It wasn't as mixed as...."And the Mahabharata makes the point clearly ....wow look at that tackle!...that the purpose of life is...aww that call was wrong......beyond our understanding, and that......15 yards! Where do they get these refs......in the end things just are......2 time outs left.....as they are, unknowable and unknown as is all eter.....interception! WAAAA!@&#*((%)nity, in the ultimate view! What's the score?" ...but it came close at times.

That was how I'd characterize at least some of the conversation, but we followed each other's dialogue, except in one moment, Rick was about to say something of major importance about his Heart of the Wheel teachings about the twelve aspects of life and keeping our heart connection in the center of all that lila, and just then there was an amazing play. "Do not be distracted, Oh Arjuna!" it says in the Mahabharata, but I found that I was, and did not hear what he said about the ninth turn of the wheel, corresponding to my own sign Virgo. I humbly asked him to repeat what he said. He looked at me. I think he saw it as a sign he was not finished with developing the ninth turn of the wheel. I said, "That was a great play. I was distracted, just for a moment. Could you please repeat?" And then he did and went on, a merciful moment. How many Sanskrit teachers would permit such lack of concentration? It was not like me to do that. Perhaps I'm too old for this game!
Rick and I plan to team up to do a multicultural workshop on death and dying at vassar on the 30th of March.

We stayed up late, talking about our lives as a whole, and about the global warming crisis, which he does not resonate with, as he is something of an optimist. he likes things he can do something about. He has been reading Conquest of America, and had alot of questions. He like William Meyers asks hard questions. We both had amazing girlfriends in High School, amazing singular romances that didnt work out, and both turned to religion in solace. He went to India to the Himalayas and I went to the Rockies to live in a tent and fast and pray to the Creator. We never knew we had this in common and called ourselves brothers, and promised to keep more in touch this year. He said that before he died there were three or even more books he wanted to write, one on The heart of the Wheel, one on Laxmi, which makes sense, the Goddess of Abundance. But there was one in particular that would take his whole life, a translation of the Mahaduta the Cloud Covered Being. That's the one he really needed to write. He had been talking about the Power of Place and how that was dying in America. I said I was working on a four volume series that i needed to finish before I go, that was more or less about the power of place in Algonquin culture and how it affects America. His ears perked up and mentioned I should read books by Algier Hiss' son! That was a surprise.

It was one of the best games, and with just me and him talking it was a more profound experience. Our twefth anniversary as a team. I gave him Stories of the Sacred which he had blurbed very nicely. I wrote "To Rick Jarow, on the 12th anniversary of the Columbia University symposium that led to No Word For Time, and which exchanged my old life for the one that I was meant to live." He said that his wife was taking a course at Empire State and that she already had a copy of Native American Stories of the Sacred because it was required reading for her class!!!! =That was the first I heard of it.
She came home during the 4th quarter with Mieka (5) and we chatted, she looked happy. Things are going pretty well over there. Rick had had a brush with death earlier this year soon after Tales for the Dying was pubd, and it made him value watching his kids grow up even more.

He said that SUNY Publishing is so prestigious that they give no advances and do not pay any royalties on teh first 1000 copies! Yet he got tenured at Vassar the minute the book came out so for him it was worth it. I would not be so interested but at least for once SUNY is honest about not paying people.

There was much more to our conversations during that 5 hour conversation. I showed him the new Mets website so he could see how great blogging had become and he was interested, although a Yankee fan, which is not an issue. We both agreed the Mets need another great starting pitcher.

We talked about how the internet was going to be big this year, how the Ipod was even bigger but totally beyond us old folks. He said that Macs would now have Intel, and that the interaction between Apple and IBM could change everything.

He said that if the fates were good to both of us as authors that we need to do something good for humanity and the Hudson Valley, we need to have a return of Resonance Magazine. That was a nice thought, and a compliment I wasn't expecting. I had published Resonance for seven years but then postage went up and a divorce got in the way. I'd forgotten about it. I said we could do it now on the internet. He wasn't sure about that. He mentioned a Korean guy with a new publishing company. Everything will fall together, trust in the powers.
posted by evan pritchard

February 06, 2006: So many things happened today so fast I'm not sure what hit me, but it was good. I got an email from a write Curt Hoffman inquiring about colonials wrecking sacred Native American sites, and thought I'd written about that. In fact, I haven't, and don't know of any concrete examples where it happened suddenly and while they were in use. It usually happens slowly and painfully.
My old friend Karen G called, but I have yet to call her back.

Ray called to say that after our conversation about the deep history of the Hudson Valley, he agreed with me, that the Waoranecks must have been the more elite group as opposed to the Warranawongkongs who were further inland, mainly on the argument that the Waoronecks had waterfront property and the Warranawongkongs did not. New Paltz, on the Wallkill, was a huge and prosperous center for t he Warranawongkongs for centurires. Dr. Joe Diamond has dug thousands of yard cube excavations and once told me that he has never found an empty yard of soil without lots of artifacts. And yet the Waoranecks must have been even greater at one time, as the movement and migration was definitely northward from Canarsie.
I got a funny email from Deb Medenbach at the Times-Herald Record. I had asked if she knew that February was the time of the Roman festivals of Fornicalia, the honoring of the god Fornax, and the god of corn. Always the historian, she wrote "Lets hear it for Numa Pompilius who invented this wildest of giggle-able names over the best baked cornbread.... Really, I never heard of it before today!" She obviously had done her homework. An article in the making? Maybe? I had given her a free copy of No Word For Time on Sunday January 29th. Today she said she'd already finished it and wanted to hand it on to two others who requested to read it.

I spent some time on the phone trying to get cable installed so that I can do more website and blog design from home, but Time Warner kept me waiting for 25 minutes and then said that Earthlink were a bunch of liars. I don't think so.
I got home and right away Sandy Levine, the program director for the New York Open Center called me and we set up this year's Four Paths to Wholeness in Algonqiun Culture seminars. There will be an open house freebie on May 12th at 8 PM, followed by workshops on May 25 June 1, June 8 and June 15.

Then Mary Lou called to say that James David Audlin, who shared with me the article space in the Times Herald Record in which the February 18th event was announced, had called to cancel his end of the event without explanation! She strongly requested that I keep my end of the bargain and come anyway. I thought of rescheduling Canada for that weekend, but she said she'd already advertised and after all that press... well I agreed. I said James must have had a medical appointment or something.
He rescheduled for March 25th and apparently invited me to share that date also and to sell books, so I guess I get two for the price of one. That's the day before the Danbury signing at 3 at Barnes and Nobles. Then the gig at Vassar on Death and Dying in ALgonquin culture (they cut a hole in the coffin so the spirit can get out)

My open house at the Open Center is on June 12th right after my last final. 8 PM. Then on four consecutive Thursdays I do workshops at the Open Center, May 25, June1, June 8, and June 15. All are at 7:45. We do one "path" each day. All are part of the Red Road. Sandy and I have been working together so long, it took only a short time to work out all the details.

I returned UU Minister Gordon Bailey's call next, and invited him to the open house and one workshop as my guest. I hope he will want to head up some of the new RTA initiatives and Gaiaism projects.

The Open Center workshops run right into my week at the Iskotau lodge, run by the energetic Pauline Brook, a Mohawk elder. I will be elder in residence for one week as guest of the state (well it will be in a confined state but that didn't come out right) I mean, guest of Her Majesty the Queen! That starts on June 19th. On that Wednesday, June 21st I will be assisting grandfather William Commanda with the Summer Solstice gathering on Victoria Island. He is now 92, and in need of more assistance from more people. He often asks me to speak in his place, especially at Victoria Island, at the foot of Parliament, but on native owned land.

Then on June 26th, I can take a breath, but then its time to travel with DLP. This year I'd like to follow the Mets and report about it on our blog. Some years we do spiritual pilgrimmages, which we could cover on this site, but who knows, maybe we'll do both. Most stadiums are built on top of sacred ALgonquin sites by the way, or right next to them. SO we could do the two for one tour.

Makrand Bhoot is the founder of Architecture for Humanity and a Meetup organization for architects. I am plugging him in the article. Green architecture is something big and radical and splashy we can do to feel better about the environment which is a first step. John Todd's work really inspired me as to possibilities I never imagined. He is like Raven in the Raven Brings the Light story, he thinks big and outside the box.

I also googled Gaiaism, which I saw online; this is I believe a church, as well as a movement. I have always forseen this happening, Gaiaism as a world religion in the times of prophecy. They say that name is "taken" but I haven't seen any real web presence for the group other than meetups. I would like to see RTA Roads to Awareness merge with them or form an alliance. I was talking to Reverend Gordon Bailey today about this, and he had similar ideas and had already gotten together a short list of people interested in a new way of approaching "church" but could not find a space in NYC. I said we would work together. I invited him to the Open Center as my guest for one of the "Four Paths To Wholeness" workshops. He agreed.

I found that Makrand had submitted a "green" design for the new World Trade Center, and was a finalist. On the same day I read that the rebuilding based on the plans of the guy who won are going bankrupt. Good time to start everything over.

| 5:42 AM | 0 comments

Preblogger diary: January 2006 and Before

2006-02-07T17:46:00.000-08:00

Evan’s Earth Walk January

January 31st, Tuesday; I taught World Views and Values, but forgot to mention Ground Hogs Day. . I realized that the students were confused as to what the course objectives were, and so I took an extra class to go over that in detail, and they seemed much reassured. I did not show the film on the Tyrolean Ice Man but asked them to do internet research first.
The fan letter from Sarah Holmes was written on the 23rd, postmarked today from Tulsa, and arrived on February 2nd. Today I worked on the Mets VS Yanks article, and several others until late.
January 29th, Sunday I awoke with the sun and saw it was 7:30. I saw my shadow. I fell back to sleep and when I woke up I had overslept it was past 9:00 and lots to do. I rushed out at 9:30 and drove as fast as the law would allow and made good time. I made one wrong turn just to crank up the excitement, and got to the Rock Tavern Unitarian Church just as things were cranking up.
When I got there, Ellis was there in the car waiting to help me, a big surprise which I fully expected. I really needed help with the boxes, no time to spare. Just then the reporter for the THR, Deb Medenbach, walked up, looking beaming and radiant like the Imbolch sunrise. She was there to help too. I had promised her a copy of No Word For Time. There was a lot of preparation to do for the service. I was supposed to rehearse with the pianist! Hollis …was a good pianist with a good feel for reggae, and going through it twice was good enough. I made sure the guitar was in tune with the piano.

I had lunch with Ellis afterwards and just talked. It was raining pretty steadily. I went home and slept and then got up at 3 or so, and worked on the Mets literary baseball website. I worked on the LoDuca vs Piazza article.

January 28th, Saturday Ellis and I went to buy a microphone and I played mandolin for some people and got a mike for 15. We went to a flea market and bought all kinds of dollar stuff. The sun was incredibly warm. I was very tired after all that shopping and took a nap. I worked on the recording device again but couldn’t get it to work. We had agreed that I would leave at 7 PM so that I would make it to the Larsen’s in time. I had to do a lot of final packing of bags and left at 7:15, a dramatic departure. At the mountain pass on 84 I pulled over and did a tobacco ceremony asking spirit what to do, and to stop me if I was going in the wrong direction. There was no comment.

I was the main event at an all night Imbolch Vigil at authors Robin and Steven Larsen’s house, I did two one hour “sets” before the fireplace, mostly as the 11,000 year old man, answering questions from the audience (of about 30) telling stories from NASS and asking people where they were born, so that I could regale them with stories about their place of birth. There were several from Pittsburgh, so I told stories about that. One woman said she was from Nebraska, (where they have Jackalopes) so I told the story of the Deer and the Rabbit. I said, “So you see deer in the woods around here with antlers, but no rabbits with antlers. So the deer won the contest…but sometimes in Nebraska, you see rabbits with antlers.” The woman played right along with me and commented on the many jackalopes seen mounted on walls throughout Nebraska, and only there. Someone said, “So how did rabbits in Nebraska get their horns?” I answered right back,”The rabbits in Nebraska demanded a recount.”
As I finished and walked away, I heard Robin say “Bless you Evan, thank you!”
At 330 Steve finally did his reading from memory of the Cremation of Sam McGee. And then it was time for me to go.
At four or so I caught a ride with the couple that had given me the recording of the Sami Yoiking, and I stayed in their attic, just down the road. The woman is a great artist of Goddesses and a friend of Susan S Bolet.

January 27th, Friday; I taught my World Views and Values course in the morningAfter class I went to teach Lauren, my guitar student, at her home. She’s a big Hendrix fan, and I taught her the baseline to Hey Joe, which is one of the best. She showed me a new recording device that had just been invented and let me listen in. It was the best I ever heard. She said she got it at Alto. I went to visit my accompanyist and discussed it, and then decided to go to Alto and buy one similar. Ten minutes before closing I looked at it, but changed my mind. In the parking lot, I kept thinking this is what I’ve been waiting for my whole life, a perfect recording device. I went in again but they had closed. They opened the register and sold me the device. I went to the hermitage and brought the device to try to figure it out. It was very difficult to understand. Some day I hope to record all my Algonquin language books onto it, and some talking books as well.

January 26th, Thursday, I taught my Ethics course today, after doing afew errands, and working on the new Robert J book, The Awakening. Sometimes I think it is the greatest challenge I have ever faced as a writer. I called Greg Moses on a whim and we talked for a long time. He really liked my Miss Leeds Catalogue Website. I told him I thought of him when making up Cat’s Critique of Purina, and he laughed for a long time.
On my way to class, walking to class from my parking spot at Fontaine, I tripped on the tricky cement curb and came down hard on my right wrist and left knee. I cut my left knee open and it was bleeding, but my right wrist was badly banged up and started to swell and bruise. The wrist continues to hurt a week later.
My advanced ethics class at Marist went very well. They came in very skeptical, and left looking very happy. It was a breakthrough for me in preparing my ideas for my upcoming book “Meeting of the Minds.” I got everyone to agree on a series of points or agreements about ethics that were self-evident. There were twelve syllogistic points that built one on top of the other, which I represented on the board with bricks, making a ziggurat on the board. The points were:
1. We all have different missions in life (we proved this by polling each person)
2. If all missions are different, we must each have the sovereign freedom to pursue that mission. To be controlled is to have that mission taken away.
3. Free will is therefore good.
4. Our right to free will extends only to the point where it does not infringe on others’ free will, which would not be logical.
5. All men seek peace, and do not want war and chaos in their life. This is another limit of free will.
6. We therefore make agreements and promises with others, giving up specific aspects of our freedom in exchange for a known and measurable benefit.
7. Agreements must follow the guidelines for written contracts, and must have the four components, 2 or more parties; clear parameters, fair consideration, and responsibilities and repercussions.
8. It is wrong and unethical to make an agreement and then not keep it.
9. In a “Gyge’s Ring” situation, if we are “invisible” to the law, we will probably feel we can break the agreement without punishment, and try to cheat.
10. Most people, given a Gyge’s ring, would be corrupted by it eventually.
11. By our definition, ethics concerns outer observable actions, while morals concerns inner states, which are invisible to others, but which can be deduced over time through our actions.
12. Therefore, we must be morally good so that we would still keep our agreements with friends and with society even if we had “Gyge’s ring.” This is why we must study and understand the reasoning behind ethics and morals.
We had a citizenship thinktank meeting with Dan Black and Dr. Mar, but just us showed up. We talked about what to do to get the group started, like it was a year or two ago.
I started working on blogspot after that. I googled a website on blogs and it looked like blogspot or blogger, was the most successful site. I called Ellis who said I should call the security guards and file a report about my wrist, which was in a lot of pain and I did. I took a guard to the site and complained about the badly designed curb. I said that I had been a mountainclimber in the Alps, Himalayas, and Rockies, and that I had only falled twice and both times were on this same curb, and that both times I was badly injured. It was interesting that a certain person I keep telling people is using black magic was very angry at me at that moment for something that wasn’t my fault. It makes you go HMMM.

January 25th, Wednesday; Today the long awaited article came out in the Times Herald Record about me and James David Audlin. I was at the hermitage and not feeling too energetic when Ellis Fox called and said the article was great. I went late to the Citgo and all the THR were sold out. I got worried and went around town to find more. I got seven from Turkey Hill, and then three more at the grocery. It looked great. I think I got a dozen. I decided to stay at the hermitage and emailed 10 people and called some more about the article. When I saw it I was psyched. It really looked good, and the THR is the fourth largest paper in New York State, and everyone knows what the first three are.

I decided to call cultural centers in the THR area and ask them to look at the article and hire me for events in the coming year. I was surprised how many gigs I booked in one day, four for sure! I talked with John Wells, a director for Inwood Park Nature Center, a friend of Steven Larsens, and he wanted to hire me, for March 3rd? I called Diane DeCiello at Ellenville Library and she was going to call to hire me for the 200th Anniversary of Warwarsing, but hesitated. She basically hired me on the spot since I called, to make a long story short. She’s a good person to work for, and answered my message promptly. Now I have to write up a proposal and all, it will be fun. Then I called the Outdoor Ed Center at Ashokan Field Campus. They said they were closed for the summer, but to call in June and book a gig for September. Then I called this mysterious number scrawled on my calendar for the day and it was a librarian and friend of Ray’s called Kr and we talked for an hour. We started to set up ideas for library programs in Chester. I also talked to Thunderbird in Canada about details about our upcoming pair of workshops on Landkeepers. I called several others about the article. In the evening, at the request of Kate Treworgy, my publicists down at Skylight Paths, I did a fairly complete listing of all the links on the web that mentioned Stories of the Sacred, and found at least 25, plus 15 others that mentioned Native New Yorkers, still fairly current. There were an amazing number of sites I had never seen before, and it really put me in a much better mood, as the news was all favorable. Most of the 25 NASS (Native American Stories of the Sacred) sites I had never seen before. The highlight of the day was a partial rave review in the American History Magazine about Native New Yorkers from November 2002. Ellis asked what was I doing then that I didn’t know about that. I was having a tough time with harassment of various political kinds, what I call “interference.” No one told me about the review, which had two highly quotable bits of praise, amid what I considered mild and reasonable criticism. The writer felt obligated to comment on my references to Lenape’s keen interest in psychic phenomenon, for praising the environmental sagacity of traditional natives, and for my criticism of New York City’s scarcity of wildlife and birds, compared to the 1600s. I can take criticism like that any day, and I think my fans will know why I said them.

EVANSEARTHWALK 1 A Diary from Summer of 05

This past Thursday, (Feb. 9th) I found this first attempt to keep an “Evansearthwalk” diary, on my hard drive. It was written down while I was busy actually editing Native American Stories of the Sacred with ace Skylight editor Mark Ogilbee this past summer. And what a summer it was, traveling with my rambunctious teenage son DLP, having adventures, giving lectures and workshops, going to baseball games of all kinds, from whiffleball to major league ball, and stopping every few days to answer difficult questions from Mark. Through the aid of cell phones and emails, we kept the project on schedule through thick and thin. There were lots of dips and doodles in the editing process, which is a saga in itself, but unflappable Mark never got angry, well only once, but that was on the last day when the superbeing named Tenkashila threw us a fastball, and we had our mini-cuban-missile-crisis, but cooler heads prevailed. In fact Mark really negotiated several resolutions that worked for everyone and the book ended up about 24 hours behind schedule.

Sunday, July 17th, 2005: DLP and I went to the Mets game in Queens from PA in the rain. We parked on the other side of the 7 train and ate the food that we had packed, making the back of the car a sort of picnic table. We scalped for tickets behind home plate from this family, we got a slight discount because we waited until just before game time. We sat next to them, and they were nice people. We had a great view of the strike zone. There was one rain interruption, but we were just under the roof. Pedro was great. After the game we drove back to my place upstate.

Monday, July 18th, 2005: We were trying to make plans as to what to do today and Tuesday, as we had several options and only so much money, but could basically do whatever we wanted. It was then that DLP PhD started to develop his soon to be famous Lameness Equation. I got into it, and we discussed it as two philosophers might discuss Calvin’s predetermination versus Aquinas’ free will. We disagreed on certain aspects of the equation but agreed as to the basic idea.
Lameness is the product of an equation where F is Fun, R is Risk, $ is money spent (in my formula divided by people involved). In other words Fun is ranked on a scale between one and five, Risk is the sum of the number of risks involved. If $ is $100, divided by 4 people, then $ is $25. As the number of risks should not exceed the amount of fun on a scale of 1 through 5, R over F should be less than 1. Therefore, L should not be over 25. This formula applies to dates, blind dates, organization trips, field trips, day trips, and outings. If you’re putting yourself at a big risk and spending a lot of money for a limited amount of fun, then the lameness factor goes above 25, and the more it goes above 25, the more lameness one perceives and experiences in the event. This came up yesterday, when we wanted to see the Mets game, which was a hundred miles and several bridge tolls and parking fees away, but it was raining. If we spend $40 to get there and plus $10 in parking, ($50) plus $50 for scalped tickets, and five hours each way driving (and a high risk of taking a wrong turn and getting stuck in traffic and missing the game) and then it was rained out before the fifth inning, the lameness factor would be very high. If they had a terrible game to boot, the F factor would be 3 or less, the R factor would be 5, and the product would be L = 5/3 x $100 Lameness factor would be 166. That was a very high L factor, and we were worried it might turn out to be a really lame outing.

We decided to go anyway, and we had a great time. Wonderful seats, good company, great game, the Mets won, and it was a bonding experience…as they say on the ads, “Priceless.”

I called my Mi’kmaq friend Helen B and DLP and I said we would make our way over to her house in Woodstock. I met and talked to some tourists from North Carolina, who said I was the only one who gave them the time of day, then DLP had a pizza, and I mailed off the new batch of edits to Skylight Paths, right on schedule. Each pass seems to leave the 307 pages covered with red markings. I was working hard. It was not the last time. I handed it over to the guy at Post Express and he said it was not the first time he’d mailed a package from Woodstock NY to Woodstock, VT. And commented how beautiful that town was, but that Woodstock, Illinois was not very nice looking at all. He was the second to comment that Woostock VT has some of the most expensive real estate in New England. He said the mountains were like the Alps there.
I got gas and did some other errands, and we got to Helen’s house an hour later. We ended up all piling into my car and going to Dragon Buffet, and then to The Book Stop book store where they let you sit and read. We were very tired, so we all sat and read in those comfortable chairs. It’s a great bookstore. It started to rain. Then I checked my messages, and there was an urgent sounding message from First Light, the Washo Woman, and it sounded like there were some major revisions needed. I wondered how much more revising I had strength for.
We made it to Helen’s, and we put our feet in the water of the river in her back yard. The sky opened up and the rain pounded on her skylight windows. I knew then First Light wanted to talk about the Water Babies. Apparently they weren’t happy with how I’d written up the interview with First Light. Here was lots of water everywhere lashing the walls and windows of the house, and here was water making paths across the skylight in the roof…skylight paths, angry water spirits, I got the message. Rewrite the Water Babies section! They are the ones who bring water. I asked DLP if he thought there was a connection. He double-took (if that’s a word) and chuckled and then looked serious. “You’d better check it out Dad! Those are certainly skylight paths and that’s some angry water!”
I would need to have a long talk on the phone with First Light and then would need to meet her for dinner in NYC (my offering of thanks) and go over the changes. When the storm subsided, I dropped DLP off at Colony for the all night poetry readings, which was at the top of his list and mine. I put my name on the list and wrote “bump me until I get back.” Phil Levine, of Chronogram fame , was running the poetry reading, and was glad to see me. He was the same one who played on the opposing team in our great “Field of Dreams” softball game last Sunday. I raced home and got on the phone with First Light, and we burned through rewrites (based on her follow-up research and meditations on what we had said before), and we both started to get exhausted, and it was 10:30. After FL and I disconnected, mostly satisfied with the results of our powwow, I got a message, left earlier that evening that the all night poetry jam had run out of literary steam earlier than expected, and DLP needed a ride. The doors had closed and he was left outside in the cold without a jacket. I figured there was no way to call him so I just jumped in the car and went to town to look for him.

I raced back to Colony and picked him up, slightly shivering but not too cold. We went to Dietz Stadium Diner in Kingston, NY to hang out all night and have an all night snack and read the paper and talk about baseball and celebrate our boys night out.We got back to Saugerties at about 3 AM.

Tuesday, July 19th, 2005: There was a musical event in New Paltz we had been invited to sing and participate in. But now I was confronted with a situation where I clearly needed to meet with the Washo elder and make sure everything was okay with the book. There were many things that First Light told me that had not been in print before, as far as we knew, and she was a major contributor to the book. We had to get into NYC via a long path. We placed the car in our friend’s driveway in Queens, rested and showered for a half hour, and then got on the bus, which came quickly. We went into town tried Rays Pizza and looked out at the pedestrians, and found the restaurant where we were to meet First Light. The place was called Jackson Hole, a real western style place. I guess First Light is a real western style girl, living in this big eastern city and working at a very difficult job in the medical profession, and doing quite well.
We ordered our burgers, I had a Texas burger, and then she arrived, and we mostly chatted and told stories, but then we went over the last story, about the Ang, the Monster Bird, and she discussed it with me, gave me a photocopy of a version of the story, then handed me some hand written notes on how she would do the story, and then we parted. She said that having discussed all of this, we should use the name First Light, rather than “an anonymous Washo elder of great importance.” I took that as a “go.”

There were so many changes that it would soon paint the pages red like an etching printed in red ink. There were a lot but they were all very good, well thought out. She had to leave. It was about 15 minutes later than planned, which isn’t bad considering all the changes. She tells wonderful stories and remains completely immersed in her culture even while holding down a senior position in a stressful doctor’s office in Midtown Manhattan. Much later, DLP and I saw a movie at the Museum of the American Indian in Washington, A Thousand Roads, in which a Mohawk stock broker holds onto her traditions while working on Wall Street in Manhattan, a delicate balance, and I wish First Light could have seen it.
Then we had to run from there eastward across town to try to meet Shoshana at Central Park in a concert by the New York Philharmonic. We ran fast, but the weather was very heavy humidity. My heart was not so strong as DLP’s, nor were my lungs. We first came across a pay concert by Elvis Costello. DLP was thrilled, one of his favorite groups, and we stood outside the seating zone and listened for free. Then we asked a guard which way to the Philharmonic, and she said we had a long way to go. We ran and ran through the park, and finally came to the All-Dvorak concert, having missed only one part of a movement of the Dvorak cello concerto, with Lynn Harrell as the soloist. I believe Lynn is part Cherokee.
There were big loud speakers, but there were barricades everywhere, so we couldn’t get to the front where Shoshana was. We had ground cover with us, but the grass was so thick and lush that it was more comfortable to lay right on the grass. Standing on a ball field we could hear really well, but lying surrounded by people talking, we couldn’t hear as well. DLP was very interested and asked a lot of questions. He is a good musician with a quick ear, and we have done many paid singing gigs, where he had to learn new tunes quickly, but I have 40 years experience, so we make a good duo. It was a nice experience to share. The finale was of course the New World Symphony, a solo guitar arrangement of which is on my guitar CD, Contemplations, as the last selection, and which is a great piece to end on, which is just what the Philharmonic did. We grabbed a program on the way out, and read about Dvorak, and then looked for Shoshana among those exiting. And then we went to that same Deli where we had watched the Mets, but it was closed. It was very hot. We sat on one of my favorite stoops, on the corner of Columbus and 72nd, and ate and drank and watched people pass and read the Times. DLP loves to sit on a stoop and read the Times, and this was a good chance, as I needed the rest. We got on the subway and made it back to Queens where we played the piano and watched TV.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005: We were in Queens, getting a slow start. I checked messages and got a call from the Open Center to come and pick up $100 and the remaining books. We blasted out of there, and made it in good time. There were three of the long-time employees there, and all were glad to see me, and be introduced to DLP. I introduced [….] as the Voice of the Open Center (she does the voiceover for the answering machine) Dianne as the face of the Open Center, (she’s the receptionist) and Amanda as the heart of the Open Center, as she is always smiling and helping everything to occur. They all gave us a very warm welcome. Mariella, the book store maven of the Open Center, or should I say its resident scholar, came up and gave me the books that didn’t sell, not many really, and then we booked. DLP was very strongly drawn down Crosby street, because it looked like a movie set, and wouldn’t be refused, so we did, and found the Housing Networks Used Bookstore and Café. Their slogan is Fighting AIDS one book at a time. Amy Sohn wrote “Housing Works is the Studio 54 of the Lit scene.” The address is 126 Crosby Street, NY 10012 (212)3343324. I found the video Roger and Me for a dollar and gave it to DLP. We found the masterpiece novel Confederacy of Dunces for $7 and I implored DLP, who is not big on fiction, to read it. He resisted getting involved with a reading project, as he was so busy with a video contest. I said, “Open it anywhere and read!” I said that the trick of writing a good work of fiction is for the reader to be able to open to any sentence and be grabbed by it. With Confederacy of Dunces it worked and he was hooked. I got a lemonade, then checked my messages. It was there while drinking my lemonade and looking through some of their amazing LP collection, that I got Mark’s grave message on the cell phone. Stewart had made the decision just now, painful for us all, but very necessary, to shorten the book by two signatures. I listened to the message and reached my hand behind me to find support in the walls. It was the literary equivalent of a cancer diagnosis, but in this case not malignant if surgery goes well. Then I leaned forward over a bin of LPs as I continued to listen to the long, carefully worded message from Mark Ogilbee. Mark should be a minister, he is so good at delivering bad news in a healing and comforting way. Just a harmless little surgery and everything will be great. I listened to it twice, as interested in his delivery as in what he said. As a long time editor and journalism guy myself, I knew what it was to tell a writer their work was to be cut in half, but probably never said it as nicely as Mark. In fact, the book had become really long and was not fitting into the annotation format, and so a lot of paper was being wasted in a way that was not going to be pleasurable for the reader. As it turned out, the cuts needed were not as substantial as it first appeared, thanks to Maura Shaw Tantillo’s skill and understanding of the material. But at that moment, it looked like surgery could easily turn into amputation.
I explained to DLP that this was a real “Hollywood” moment, and that someday when he was a really successful screen writer and director, this would probably happen to him. Someone high up in top brass at Warner Brothers would decide his movie was too long and cut it down to 1 hour and 56 minutes. I said, “They cut my movie!” He said, “What movie?” I was glad I could joke about it. In fact, I knew that it needed more tightening, less repetition. A literary tummy tuck or two. There were a lot of blank pages because of the complex format. Multiplied times 6000, a lot of trees would have died in vain. I braced myself over and over. It would be okay. I called back and asked that Maura be the revision editor, as this book was originally her vision, and as she saw the original draft and knew the material. At one point, Maura and I had gone through the manuscript and I had pointed out the paragraphs that were like trees I wanted to save. We put yellow ribbons around certain paragraphs in our mind. Now there was much more in the book, and there would be more issues.

We looked at the time and then ran for Shea Stadium to meet our party. We ran into Ken Gales (WBAI radio personality, Eco Logic, and many other shows. He is also an expert on comic books) and his wife Mercy Van Vlack on the way to our appointed meeting place. We were handed a baseball quiz handout by Jews for Jesus, and later stumped the great Trivia Buff Ken Gales with it. We met Shoshana and got good seats for $12 each. Mets won 7-4, beating the Los Angeles Dodgers. The game was a lot of fun, partly because Ken and Mercy had so many stories. In between innings, Mercy, who doesn’t go to a lot of live games, asked what the grounds crew were doing with the dirt on the field. I played a practical joke and pulled her leg, with a “true” story. My Mi’kmaq mother used to go to games, but stopped going, because she was mad. Why? Because those gardeners were trying so hart to plant those flowers on the mound and at the batters’ box, and even between the bases, but as soon as they were finished raking, out would come those mean bullies with their big cleats, stamping all over the flower beds. So she marched out of the stadium (which was RFK in another era) and never came back. Mercy paused for a moment, not sure if I was pulling her leg, or if my mother were pulling mine, or whether it was true. Then she decided to get mad too, but was she pulling my leg too? This was the same Mi’kmaq mother who, when playing Monopoly, would buy up one property from each color in order to block development. She was tired of all those tacky red and green hotels going up, cutting down all those trees, adding to global warming. So since you need to have all the properties in one color to put up a hotel, she was very effective in stepping in and stopping those hotels from rising up out of the dust. A born environmentalist. I told that story too, as the game continued.
We didn’t keep score, but I think Glavine was pitching for the Mets. After the game, we found Shoshana’s car, which people call “The Bluesmobile,” and it was illegally parked off Roosevelt St, and there was a ticket. She dropped off DLP, Ken and Mercy at a pizza place, then illegally parked again. We met them at the pizza place, but then I commented that getting a second ticket the same day makes it hard to dispute the first one. So she went back and moved her car again. It is very hard to park in NYC that day. She dropped Ken and Mercy off at the subway and then drove DLP and I to Queens. We listened to Steve Somers on WFAN, a real treat. His sophisticated, philosophical style of sports humor is one of the main inspirations for the later Metsfan site that DLP are working on amazine1.blogspot.com. Needless to say, the night owls flew across a moonlit sky and landed rather late in the nest.

Thursday, July 21st, 2005: Today, DLP and I had a special appointment with destiny—or not. We were supposed to go to Princeton and reveal the secrets of Velikofskyball to Science. We had an appointment with Brenda, and with Dr. Robert Jahn and his crew, of PEAR, and our goal was to go over and reword a paragraph in Stories of the Sacred about throwing dice and probability, quoting him, and also get former pitching star Robert Jahn to play Velikofsky with us.
We listened to Amy Goodman, then left Queens about 10, and Elyssa, Dr. Jahn’s secretary told us to take 278 through Staten Island, to take the Verrazzano, but when we got there, it was $9.00 to trip trap across Mike Blumberg’s bridge. We hit a lot of traffic; I quipped that we got more of our money’s worth, $9.00 for an hour is a better deal than $9.00 for ten minutes.
We missed the turn and went down Harrison street, and called Brenda on a cell phone for further directions. Even so we had to call several more times. Finally we found the little parking lot and went in.
On the inside office there was a saying written on a blackboard covered with Einstein-like equations. Navajo saying: When you put a thing in order, give it a name and you are all in accord, it becomes.” I grabbed that and wove it into the book during the next pass of edits. We talked to Brenda (who is Native American, but doesn’t know which tribe) about how we were following the Mets games for fun, and she told us how she has a gift for influencing baseball games, and told us a story about how she was sitting in the Detroit Tigers box with the owner and he was hoping for a miracle from a first at-bat from a young rookie to help his team. She prayed for the player and he had an excellent game. I asked who and she said, “Kirk somebody..” “Kirk Gibson?” I exclaimed. “Yeah, that’s the guy.” “I wrote two chapters about him in my baseball homerun book!” I exclaimed. That was certainly good luck.
She put in good thoughts for the Mets who were pitching Kaz Ishii, one of baseball’s worst, against Peavey of the Padres, one of baseball’s best. We would soon see how strong her baseball medicine was.
Brenda called Bob Jahn to tell him that we were there. The great Einstein of modern-day Princeton, Bob Jahn, walked in wearing an Angels hat, which was funny because the Angels were hosting the Yankees today and Mets fans don’t generally like Yankees, so it was a clever way of showing friendship.
We deliberated for some time over where to eat, like lawyers arguing over a merger, and then went out to Charley Browns for lunch because I wanted a salad bar. In the short time we were in the car, our only access to a radio, driving down the block, with the radio tuned to 660 WFAN, the Mets scored seven times and won the game 12-0. It was perhaps their most amazing rally of the season, and it happened so fast we got to hear almost all of it while driving to the nearest restaurant. We were cheering out loud and waving at Brenda. We looked at each other: “Her baseball medicine is strong!”
Brenda is an expert on probability theory and knows how to make the improbable happen. The odds against this kind of rally at that moment in time were a million to one.

Bob Jahn sat next to me at the table and I asked about his career. I was surprised to find he was the father of archaeo-accoustics, among other things. I had heard about the Caves of Lasccaux having caves that echoed at certain frequencies, but apparently he was the one who studied the acoustics at New Grange. He said that at many of these sites, the walls resonate with 110 hertz. I said, “That’s a low A!” Bob said, yes. He said that they were made to resonate with male voices. I said I’d read that cave paintings were generallyl in the most echoing areas, sometimes deep inside the earth, so it was presumed that chanting was done while viewing the painting.

Then he said that he was the pioneer in the field of plasma propulsion physics. I said,”Even if NASA hasn’t used plasma propulsion, you inspired about 300 science fiction writers.” He said, “Yeah, I know what you mean. But, actually, they are using my plasma propulsion on the Mars expedition.” I’m glad he is living long enough to see its success. Good science, like good writing, has its share of orphan projects.

After a big lunch at Charley Brown’s, we were guided to a nearby park, where there was a field of grass. It was extremely hot, and yet there was one strip of shade at the edge of the large field, and so we had little choice. DLP and I demonstrated Velikofskyball to Dr. Jahn, and to Brenda, and then he joined in. V’ball is a game where two players, each with a baseball of their own, stand about 100 feet or more apart and try to throw the balls at each other so that they collide in midair like planets in Velikofsky’s mad theories, bounce off, and come back to the glove of the person who threw it. The team earns a point for a sideways nick, two for one going sideways, three for one person catching, and four for both catching. He got a one pointer, but did not play very long as it was a very hot day, though we were in the shade. It took him a while to get used to the crosshanded catching that is part of the Velikofsky technique, but he enjoyed it very much. What is so fascinating about it is not the skill involved, although there is a lot, but the fact that no amount of skill alone can accomplish even a point. There must be some psychic connection between the players, and they must be able to tap into deliberately. Those players who are related or very gifted can accumulate a lot of points, whereas those who are not, don’t score anything.
Soon, we all needed a rest. Especially me. In fact I was at my worst for some reason. Sitting in the shade, Dr Jahn then drew a diagram for DLP and I on a piece of paper showing how when two particles collide in an atomic collider, whether they click and pass each other or collide and bounce back, it is impossible from the human perspective to tell, because the energy is the same. Velikofsky was a good illustration of that. DLP said, “But at that moment, can’t we tell if they are impacting or not?” Dr. Jahn said, somewhat myseriously, like Dr. Emmett Brown from DLP’s favorite movie Back to the Future: “In Quantum mechanics, there is no moment!” An unforgettable commentary on Velikofskyball by one of Quantum physics’ greatest lights. It made me realize that for Dr. Jahn, V’ball is a laboratory for Quantum mechanics, where our every thought influences the collision of atomic particles. Wow, what a great moment in mythobaseballogical history.

Brenda kept score at my request. I had never played Velikofskyball in front of a scorer before, in order to develop some statistical understanding of what was happening, but it had a terrible effect on my playing. DLP could tell right away. I said it felt like somatic interference. We did not score very highly. When we were just warming up we scored a 3 in 10 tries (.333 average) and then after Bob played, we scored pretty high, but while we were the focus of attention, nothing happened.

We went back to the office, and they had just got a feature in WIRED, who themselves were featured the same week in the NY Times, and so queries were coming in. One was from the Sun of Palm Beach. I said, “That’s not the South Florida Sun, that’s the tabloid you get while waiting in line at the grocers.” I said you can’t really trust a tabloid to tell the story straight. They weren’t sure, but in the end, decided it didn’t matter, and sent pictures and approved the story. As we left, we got a call back from CNN confirming the Sun was the tabloid and not the local paper. Elyssa’s picture would be the one that would stand next to JLO for a week, and I shook her hand and said it was great getting to know a future sex symbol.

Friday, July 22nd, 2005: DLP and I got some rest, I spent two hours on the phone, one with Mark Ogilbee, and one with outgoing PR exec Shelly Angers. I told Mark about our adventures in probability at Princeton, and he said that, as coincidence would have it, he went to Princeton Theological Seminary, a Presbyterian school that was on the campus, not far from the quad where we were.
Always interested in picking people’s brains about theology, I asked him if the doctrine of salvation was different in Presbyterian than Methodist, and he didn’t claim to know, but said, insightfully, that in Presbyterian theology, those who are chosen for salvation before birth will have what they call an [irrepressible attraction] to the Lord.. Then we burned through 12 important queries from the editors, and I answered them like Nomar in his prime handling 12 fielders choices on 12 pitches. Shelly and I talked about the Red Sox for a long time and then got down to business. I asked if Johnny Damon was Native American. She said that his mother was Thai, and that as far as she knew, he wasn’t native at all. I was surprised, and started trying to figure out a way to prove her right.
In August, with DLP back in Florida, I got my chance. A friend and old Tigers fan, Bill Spaulding, took me and friends out to the new Tigers Stadium CoAmerica Park, and we got nearly front row seats behind the Tigers dugout on a day when they were playing the first place Boston Red Sox, defending World Champions. Guess who led off the game for the visiting team? Johnny Damon, and batting left, so that we were facing each other, easily within shouting distance. I realized my one chance to determine the truth, a test that would change the course of Native American studies.
If Johnny had stayed on the Red Sox, I wouldn’t tell this story, but now that he’s a Yankee and cut his hair off, giving up his power, it doesn’t matter. I started calling out to him in Thai, in a funny sort of tone of voice, very formal and polite. “Han sabaidee leur?” (How are you feeling today, sir?)
His head jerked up and he stared at me as the pitcher was ready to pitch. “Strike one!”
“Sabai dee, kop!” I yelled, (I am feeling very well, thank you!) and he started to laugh out loud, still staring at me in disbelief.
You know ball players can’t wave at fans, but he did this sort of magical wave of his hand over the plate, which in ballplayer means, “I hear you.” He stared at me again, turning his head. He was asking himself, “Is he Thai? He doesn’t look Thai! How does he know my mother is Thai!”
“Strike TWO!” Yelled the ump, as the pitch from the Tigers whizzed by.
“Mai sabai?” I called out. (Are you not feeling well, my friend?) Then he was really staring at me, with a twisted expression on his face, laughing and puzzling. He nodded, then looked at the pitcher. He HAD to hit this one. He swung weakly, and knicked it and it rambled across the grass towards the second baseman, an easy out to lead off the game.
That set the tone, and the Red Sox were routed by the Tigers’ next to last place team. In the end the joke was on me. The Red Sox tied the Yankees at the end of the year for first, and the pennant was given to the Yankees for some dumb reason, because they had won the “season series,” whatever the heck that means. If the Red Sox had won that day, they would have won the pennant, if you’re into “what ifs” that’s a huge one. And because of that detail, the Red Sox did not make enough money to keep Johnny and so he joined the Yankees. Well, of course, that’s all speculation, just to make a good story, and in fact any game that year between the Sox and Yanks could have gone either way. But Johnny kept staring at me during his second and third at bat, and it started to make me self-conscious. My unwarned friend Bill had no idea what was going on. He leaned over and said, “I can’t believe you got such a reaction from Damon! You really shook him up. What the heck are you saying?”
“Oh, nothing! Just polite conversation…in Thai!”
“Why?”
“To find out if he is Thai or Native American…”
“I guess he’s Thai.”
The people in front of us were real Tigers fans and were amused. It turns out they knew Al Kaline and a number of other players, so we talked baseball.
Anyway, that was what came out of my conversation with Shelly Angers.
Then went to see the Raymondskill Falls site, on the old Minisink-Wyoming Trail and we waded in the water in the upper falls, and found a crayfish. I realized that the news of the Chinese hwang unpegging from the US dollar must have reached Wall Street on Wednesday afternoon, the same time as I heard from Mark Ogilbee at Skylight Paths that the book was going to be shortened. We went to the little cave, and then the lower falls. Then we went along the part of the Wyoming Minisink Trail which was still in its original state, and followed it to the banks opposite Minisink Island, and waded in the Delaware. The water was very warm, but we found cold springs of water coming up from the mud. There were a lot of very small fish there as well. Then we went to Milford Beach and walked around. Then we went to the seafood restaurant and had some excellent “New England style” food.

Saturday, July 23rd DLP and I got to view the video clips we took in Quebec City with the borrowed digital camera. Although mostly designed for stills, these new cameras to take nice short vid clips. We got a late start in PA, but went to Falcon Ridge, New York for one of the best annual folk music concerts in the world. We missed some good sets that morning, mainly we missed Jay Mantika’s first and only complete set, but caught Susan Webber’s show for kids. Then we went to the dance tent and DLP danced the Makarena with me, showing me the moves, and then got Ellis to dance a little bit. Everyone had fun. The band “Gandalf” was very good, playing fun music to dance to in all styles. The pianist played one song like a tango that was based on chopsticks. I caught the similarity and danced with my fingers doing the moves of chopsticks on an “air piano” in pantomime. The pianist started staring at me and laughing, and was so surprised that he actually missed a beat. Sorry about that. Another Johnny Damon! (only that was later)
Then we went back to the family tent to hear Jay Mantika. I walked up and introduced myself and he recognized me and smiled. I asked if he had a new Cd and he said yes, several, and he said “Go to the merchandising tent, and find a man named Rick. Tell him that the secret code word is Rocket Jay Squirrel (this wasn’t it, or nearly as intriguing, but I can’t give the secret name away), and that you want to swap one of your Cd s for one of mine. Tell him Jay sent you.” I agreed.
He had a guest band playing with him including Pearly Gates, an older woman who did amazing trumpet solos just using her mouth, and Mark Dan, a bass player, plus a guy name Mike and a girl who played fiddle whose last name was Mike. It was a great set, and I heard “Dogs are Watching Us,” “Visitors from Outer Space,” and other great new songs. His girl Tracy was there. I walked up afterwards and talked to all the players, and we exchanged info.
Later, Ellis and I went to the tent; it took three tries, but finally I met with Rick.
We heard a great set by a young wunderkind named Susan Warner from Iowa, and her song about them making a movie about her life was unforgettable and funny. She sat while she performed, with both guitar and piano, and had a great voice. Dar Williams came on afterwards and we felt she did not have nearly the musical talent or presence of this 22 year old Susan Warner. But Dar Williams is incredibly popular and everyone knew her songs to sing along, which was great, and Dar had a lot to say about politics and current events that was welcomed by the audience.
I got info on two radio stations, WFUV and one other, for possible book interviews later.I was thinking about this blog idea while listening to the music, and thought of “Spirit is Everywhere,” which didn’t quite work, and “Evan’s Earthwalk,” which did sort of work. I enjoyed sitting in the sun, eating snacks, listening to great music that was so topical, and also thinking how I was going to change the world with this crazy blog, making a movie, of sorts, about my life. Thanks Susan Warner!
We saw Paul and Storm, who had a Beatles-like sound, pop poet Chris Chandler, Susan Warner, Tracy Grammer, Lowen and Navarro, Crooked Still, Dar Williams, Eddie from Ohio (Eddie himself was absent) and Railroad Earth. All of which are recommended.
We were dressed for hot weather, but as night fell it started to get cool. Some time during Crooked Still the temperature dropped again. Then as Dar Williams began there was a cold wind from our right, and I realized we were in trouble. I grabbed the flashlight and walked back to the car. It was further away than I remembered. I got the sleeping bag and brought it back, missing four songs or so, but by that time Ellis was shivering and DLP was cold as well, so it was the right move. We were comfortable under the sleeping bag, but the ground was cold. DLP found a black leather jacket for $8 and it kept him warm. When we left, we got up quickly to get to the bathroom and accidentally left the flashlight behind. We returned to look for it, and it was gone. We listened to our new CDs as we drove back to Saugerties.

Sunday, July 24th 2005, Listened for the first time to Vance Gilbert’s CD album One through Fourteen. Great vocals, but less guitar than usual. I bought it at the Falcon Ridge Festival. I first saw him live at Clearwater Festival, and was truly amazed at what he could do both with the solo guitar and voice at the same time. I doubt anyone alive today can equal it. His songs such as “Christine,” and the a capella “Am I Shepherd or Sheep?”are among the most unforgettable songs ever penned. I first heard “Christine” live at Clearwater some years ago and you could have knocked me over with a feather. Later I ran into him walking around in the booths, and got to talk to him. I have been a fan every since. But I think you have to hear him live to fully appreciate what a one man orchestra and chorus he is.
Got in at 2 AM, all slept late, DLP in cabin. He went for sandwiches while I worked on Algonquin gathering info. Then DLP and I played some our best Velikofsky, and revised the point system, so that catches count as extra points. We had 2 pts in 11 catches, 2 pts in 3, 1 pt in 5 catches 1 pt in 13 and 3 pts in 6 catches. When Ellis was watching and keeping score we got 2 pts in 5 catches and 2 pts in 6 catches, but then we choked. It seems to be hard to be “in the zone” when someone else is watching and keeping score. That takes practice.
We listened to the pregame show and then it was time to leave, but the transistor radio didn’t work well in the car. Mets 2 Dodgers O. We listened for the first time to Jay Mankita’s new CD Dogs Are Watching Us, and also to the tribute album for Lucie Bennex ((check name). Both were good. She says, “Strike me down with your electric sword!” (Apparently they did, as she is now dead.)
We watched the last half of the game on TV in PA, 6 to 0, a big win for the Mets. I began the evansearthwalk blog at about 4 pm after the game, based on mental notes I’d been taking for a week.
DLP and I went out for a long walk and as a way to sharpen our memories, we tried to reconstruct the last four years of Mets batting lineups in our minds, to make up for the time we were apart when he was living in Florida.
Then we played Velikofsky in the yard, we had dinner and I treated for icecream, at the local ice cream shop and then watched Michael Moore’s Roger and Me, which movieguy DLP had never seen. He liked the way the pieces were edited together.
Today, Betsy Stang sent out an email saying that William Commanda was in the hospital with a heart attack. I received it on Monday morning. I had a shaken, sad feeling that I have never had before when hearing about William’s various bouts with death. This is so close to the gathering.

Monday, July 25th, 2005: I slept in at the Crazy Horse Ranch and then read a lot from a book called Bill Stern’s Favorite Baseball Stories. I checked messages and read about William Commanda’s heart attack on the internet. It was very upsetting. I couldn’t reach anyone on the phone. Today was the day I had set aside to plan and organize the Algonquin Leadership Conference for Maniwaki next month, but couldn’t. As it turns out, it was soon cancelled due to William’s health situation. I let DLP sleep in and made some prayers. We got in the car and drove to MD. I knew that the drive would help me put things in perspective. As it was beastly hot, and my coolant wasn’t up to snuff, we decided to take the western route, 84 to 83 to 81 through Harrisburg. After deciding that, it also occurred to me that just west of that route I had a cousin Mary who was a professor of film, and that DLP and she should meet. I called but got no answer. Then DLP said “Let’s go to Grandma’s Restaurant in Frackville,” great idea for anyone who has ever been hungry. So we did. It was great.
One way to find it is to follow the signs for the Dutch Kitchen, which is a knockoff of Grandmas, but then don’t go there, turn right and go a couple blocks, drive real slow and look for the giant grandma on your right, down at the end of a parking lot. We had a lot of food for dirt cheap, and nice service. It’s an old fashioned Americana place like no other, where you are likely to hear some Piedmont accents. We talked during the whole ride and over dinner about the definition of ethnicity and what an American ethnicity might be. He made some good points I had not considered before. I have generally taken the stance that there is no American culture or ethnicity other than Native American, and he said that any development of ethnic identity that happened “in America” after an ethnicity moves to America or hybridizes here, that part is American ethnicity. It doesn’t have to relate to Native Americans. I questioned if such a culture would have developed a context in which nonverbal communication could be clearly understood, such as you find in most long-lasting ethnicities, and he hadn’t considered that. We agreed that most ethnicities try to establish some sort of nationhood or state in order to preserve their culture and values and inherent political system, and that America contained many of these, or contained communities connected to such states, although those states usually exist outside America’s borders.
We also talked about regional accents, such as “country” accents, and I said that most of them in America derived from either Tidewater accents, Piedmont accents, or Appalachian accents. I was able to state a case that by coincidence of history, there was a connection between accent and altitude! At least when it comes to “country” accents.
Most Tidewater accents stayed in the tidewater regions of the mid Atlantic, as there are no other similar geographies further inland, but that the Piedmont accent spread throughout the Piedmont Plateau, and then to the foothills on the other side of the Appalachians. I also made a case that the Appalachian accent also spread to similar mountainous regions of the US, including the Ozarks, the Smokies, and Alleghenies. We also noted that musical styles somewhat coincided with accent regions. Texas was a mix of many “country” accents with a few twists of its own. I called Mary, from Frackville, and accurately estimated that we could be there in an hour, at seven PM. She said she had to meet with someone but could be back by eight. So we drove to Shamokin, an area rich with Munsee history, and saw a men’s softball game in progress. We were rat thur sittin’ on them bleachers and enjoyin’ some of the purtiest Piedmont accents to be heard anywheres! The number three became thuray, and the g was entirely missing from ING endin’s for most of the team. We were smack dab in the middle of the heart of the of the Piedmont Dialectical Region alright! Dang!
We watched for a half hour then I took some slide photos of the Shamokin River, plus an unusual foot bridge that was basically a long pipe across the river with hand cables, and then we arrived at Mary’s town at about 8:15.
We had a great time at Mary’s, playing baseball with her five year old son. Although the field was the size of a small back yard and we just had a whiffle ball and bat, I did the play by play as if it was Fenway Park. We did one game with the current Red Sox lineup, then I switched to the Red Sox’ 1969 lineup, then we went back to 1949. Mary’s son didn’t know the difference except it was Red Sox, but Mary and her husband Larry were chuckling as they are old time Sox fans.
Then we went inside and there were some guitars and so we had a big jam session that went on for a while. Then later other people dropped by to listen, some interesting folks, at it was quite the party. We got into a discussion about screenplays, as Mary teaches the art and DLP is majoring in cinema in college, and then Larry and I talked about the new book Native American Stories of the Sacred. Larry is a professor like me, teaching literature and linguistics, etc. and used to be involved in a Jewish Literature Bookstore and knew Skylight Paths publisher Stewart Maitlin when he was much younger, starting out with Jewish Lights, the parent company and basically gave him two thumbs up and it made me glad, or more glad, that I’d chosen to get on board with Skylight. There were a number of coincidental connections between Larry and I, other than the fact that he married my number one cousin.

Soon, there were lots of people of all ages in the living room, and having a great time, but it got to be late, and we still had to get from Selinsgrove to Greenbelt. So we jumped back in the car and headed for home away from home. We got in really, really, really late. But there’s no word for time at my house.

Tuesday, July 26th, 2005: I got on the phone after sleeping in a while, and eventually found that William Commanda was in moderate condition. It was the worst heart problem of his life, and so all are very concerned. But he wasn’t in critical care any more and did not need heart surgery. However the Leadership Conference I was going to help host was definitely cancelled. The status of the Spiritual Elders Gathering was good, there were no cancellations; the mood was “wait and see.”
Wednesday, July 27th, 2005: DLP and I play sandlot ball. We talked a lot about movies. We worked on a scene based on a memorable incident from his childhood when I was coaching him. He was missing a lot of grounders at short, and I walked over and took the glove from his hand and said, “You’re not keeping your eye on the ball. You expect the glove to catch the ball for you. It won’t! Now field those grounders without a glove. You’ll see everything differently. I promise!” DLP was about 7 years old, and that was a turning point for him. He found that he played grounders better without the glove, because he kept his eye on the ball. He later played Little League for a mini-Mets team in Florida called the Cubs and got into a championship, and later went to Mets baseball summer camp. Here he was, 18 and rusty, and he was still missing a few. I went over and said I was going to take the glove away, and then we both said, ”What a great movie scene that would be, only it would be a rookie on a big league ball club.” We acted it out, with a different flavor, a Vince-Lombardi-meets-baseball flavor in fact, and it was great. Wished we coulda filmed it. At the end, DLP says “now throw the glove at me hard and say, ‘So now use that glove like a ballplayer’s supposed to!” I did, and we had a good laugh.

Thursday, July 28th, 2006: I worked more on editing Stories of the Sacred.
Friday, July 29th, 2006 Didn’t keep notes. We went to see a movie.
Saturday, July 30th, DLP got a morning flight back to Florida, and our trip for the summer was over.

Sunday, July 31st, no notes.
Monday, August 1st: no notes
Tuesday, August 2nd, Today was the day the first typesetting of Native American Stories of the Sacred was due back at Skylight Paths. As I recall I made this deadline. There was always so much to do.
Wednesday, August 3rd. I headed for Canada to attend the Spiritual Elders Gathering. It was a long drive and I rested at the Thunderbird Motel.
Thursday, August 4th, 2005; Reached Maniwaki by nightfall. There was so much to do, so many people to talk to.
Friday, August 5th, 2005: An important day in my life. I spoke at the elder’s gathering about the prophecies. Grandfather Turtle (who is featured in No Word For Time) showed up unexpectedly at the Elders Gathering with his wife-to-be, S.B. a Mi’kmaq relative of mine and friend of my sisters’. I introduced him to William Commanda, although they had met briefly, probably twenty years ago, at a gathering with Albert Lightning. William was obviously not in top shape, considering his recent heart problem, but it went well.
I was late for the sunrise pipe ceremony due to several complications, but though I brought a pipe it was so crowded there was no way to get inside the circle and find a place to sit down on the ground with the other pipe carriers, so I just watched. There was a woman on the other side of the circle who kept drawing my attention, as there was this great aura of white light around her in every direction, but I didn’t speak to her.William Commanda could not do ceremony today, so the legendary Dominiq Rankin had volunteered to step in that morning and lead. He is a good leader and gives everyone space. I was too late to find that space however.
I was able to get into a sweat lodge later that evening. With guy from west Vancouver. He used Scott as his helper. It was a long sweat. A girls whole family died, and she had come into the sweat for healing. The elder did not hesitate but knew exactly what to do. It was one of the longer sweats, and most of the types of ceremony was not that familiar to me, I think he referred to it as a horse lodge.

Saturday, August 6th, 2005: Peter asked guy from the United States to lead, he was Mi'kaq as I am, and he led but didn’t know, kept asking how we did things on this reserve, which was respectful. Grandmother masrguerita kept talking.
I gave an oration, part in Micmac part in English, and the pipe leader was surprised, hearing my Micmac. Again there was the spirit woman across the way.
Later I ran into her and talked. I felt an angelic presence around her. It was the woman who had just made a film, about William. I mentioned there were spirit beings all around her in great numbers, and she patted her belly and said that she was expecting, and introduced me to her husband, "Joseph." They told me that the baby would be due around Christmas, and that it was a very special child. I was taken out of my body and given a vision of this and could hardly speak. It was too much to describe or take in, but I shook their hands and said it was a great honor for me to meet them. I was off in a dream world for several hours afterwards, and it brought tears to my eyes. My feet could not find the ground, my heart was in heaven and I was happy, surrounded by friends and adopted family.

Later that day, I gave teachings under blue tent, discussing the future of algonquini people (at 1:30)but didfint I invited Watie and Larry McDermott to discuss "Algonquin Culture, It's Past and its future for rrps and all how to establish a definition of algonquin culture, what it is as=nd is bit to insure pres of apg cuyl I didn’t talk, guy wanted to take picture, I refused. Danced under arbor sat
I saw Omar our local Midewiwin subchief, and I asked why he wasn't there at the morning pipe ceremony. Apparently, noone gave him tobacco. I didn't have any on me, but asked him to teach me about leading the pipe ceremony. I had seen Lee in the circle take over the ceremony to talk about the details of his personal life, without sharing his prayers as well, I had felt that one should always pray when holding the pipe or in ceremony and wanted his wisdom on this. He said I would have to learn to lead the pipe, and do the pipe ceremony by trial and error.
Leonardo was there to translate, and to Leonardo he said don’t be afraid; you need to learn to lead the pipe too. These were to be prophetic words from Omar's lips. This is not unusual for Omar.
We got a teaaching about the pipe from Omar. He said "you know how to do it." Then we asked William Commanda. He said, "Every time you hold the pipe you should pray, and when you lead the pipe ceremony, your main responsibility is to pray for the people. If there are many in the circle, they cannot all speak, you must speak for them and pray to the Creator.

That night I had a dream that the baby girl was a prophet and that she was now four years old in the dream, and I was taking her to all the major capitols of the world as her body guard and lecture manager. She was speaking to huge audiences at length, speaking great wisdom beyond her years or mine, and the crowds were going wild. She was speaking about the future and about the dangers facing mankind, and what to do. It was an amazing dream, and I remembered having great concern and love for this child who was not my own. Five months later, when the news came out of England that Lovelock had given the human race 100 years, and that the earth changes were happening rapidly, that dream came back to me. This must be what she was talking about to all those people. Her voice was like a melody.

Sunday, August 7th, 2005: I had been told many years ago by Rick Jarow, that according to my astrology, my 49th year would be rather momentous and I was destined around that time to make an impression on the course of history. At the beginning of my 49th year was the Algonquin Leadership Conference. THis was the end of that 49th year. This Elder’s Gathering was one I would never forget. This Sunday was one of the most important days of my life, and this morning's ceremony was truly inspirational for me. I have seen over the years that one of the true marks of the Algonquin elder or wisdom keeper is the ability to be a peacemaker, to solve conflicts. They come up unexpectedly and with surprising and unfamiliar elements.

Amid some strife on the reservation over ceremony, I was asked to lead the sunrise pipe ceremony. Peter set the water vessel in front of me and Peter a man of incredibly few words, said, "You're doin the pipe!" It was a great honor, but I also saw a great danger. There was a “water ceremony” faction, led by women, and a “pipe ceremony” faction, led by men, and I wanted to find a way to do both at the same time. With a few people, we could do the pipe and then the water, or visa versa, but with so many hundreds of people, throngs of people wanting to partake in the Algonquin sacriments, it was impossible to do them back to back, but the water and fire had to be in balance. I asked others for advice but no one would offer any. They weren't supposed to be mixed. And I had to work out a solution by sunrise, which was imminent. There was a bright light in the east, and it was getting brighter. God's clock was ticking. I went over to Leonardo William, who was sitting in the sunrise spot, and asked him to help me work out a new protocol between the men and women.

Later, I ran into the parents of the “angel” girl, and told them some of what I’d seen. They said they’d seen a lot of miraculous things since X became pregnant. The woman said that she’d left France and traveled all over the world looking for a man who would be a good father to this child, and it took years but she finally found him in Montreal. And the child is on the way. I asked him if he was part Algonquin, and he said he probably was. And I asked her if she was related by descent to the royal houses of France, such as the Bourbon, and she said yes. Then I said that they must reread Nostradamus’ prophecies, as he said that the great being (second coming?) would be born in the Province (note the I not E, so he is not speaking of Provence, France, but of the Province of Quebec, which didn’t exist then!) and that this child would be descended from the house of the Bourbon. Then I said that in Revelations the mother of the holy child of the 21st century escapes the urban centers and goes to the wilderness to protect her child. We were in wilderness now. I said, “where is there more wilderness in North America than in Quebec?” I did not say it was conclusive, but that there seemed to be a possibility something special was happening, and offered them a copy of Paths of Light Paths of Darkness and exchanged contact info. This book, which I wrote in 2003 and early 2004 talks about the Algonquin prophecies and how they dovetail with Nostradamus and John and all seem open to the possibility of an Algonquin-born second coming. And the Hopi prophecies say it will be a woman who will lead them. So here is the possibility that all four prophecies could link together.

In the evening, my friends and I danced at the closing giveaway ceremony dance, and I met some new people.

Monday, August 8th; Today was the date we had set aside for the Algonquin Leadership Meeting, but due to William’s health, it was cancelled. We found ourselves back in Gatineau, and just rested from an incredible few days.

Tuesday, August 9th: A week or two earlier, I had gotten a call from Council Oak books to call this book store called Hoss’s’ Country Corners about a signing event. I called, and it turns out the store was at Long Lake near Tupper Lake, basically in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the Adirondack Park Region, on August 9th, at 5 PM, and it turned out that it just so happened that I would be passing through that remote corner of the universe at that very hour. They offered free food, so I took it. It was quite an experience. I arrived from Ottawa just at 5, and was directed towards a picnic spot, where we had free food, consisting of burgers and such. We were then directed towards free ice cream at the Hoss’ Country Corners Ice Cream Shop, which was good, and I talked to other authors. Then I went back to the red and white striped canopy and found my table with copies of Native New Yorkers on it, and proceeded to sign books at quite a clip, enjoying conversations with many other authors, all of whom had also written about New York State. It was fun. Native New Yorkers sold very well, and I cleared most of the table. I ended up buying a book on Native Americans in the Adirondacks, which was a little expensive. I chatted with this lovely older woman for a while, and said it was a nice event. The woman shook my hand and said, “Thanks a bunch! I’m Hoss!” That was a surprise! Hoss’ Country Corners is actually about eight or so different buildings on all sides of an important intersection, selling all different kinds of things. It was quite an enterprise!
I went inside the shop and bought a few items. I saw they had a large number of Michael Caduto’s books for sale. Just that day I’d gotten a call from Mark saying that a wonderful blurb (for NASS) from Michael Caduto had just come in via email. Then I headed home, sad that such a wonderfilled trip was ending.

August 13th MCI powwow in DC. It was during this powwow that I learned that the lime green day glo regalia, produced by a single company, was sweeping the powwow circuit and driving out traditional outfits, as they looked too dull by comparison. I later used this image in my writing for Ramapo College’s gallery portfolio write up, for the photos of Lauren Piperno.

August 14th We went to the Museum of the American Indian on the mall, and saw the movie and everything else. It was fun. It was designed by my friend Douglas Cardinal, an Anishinabi elder, and he worked on it for years, but the Bush people stripped him of all credit and started claiming that he didn't finish it. They gave credit to some guy Davey Jones (a pseudonym?) But the outside was clearly his work, very natural. And he was pretty angry about it at one point, but calmed down. Douglas is an inspirational figure to the Green Architecture movement. During this visit all that was farthest from my mind, and I was wondering why I kept runing into architects, when I lost interest in that in college. When I was workign on the global warming article in February, it became clear in a vision that architects were the answer to saving the planet; city office buildingand apartments etc museums, were the only things with enough surface space to soak in and transform all the carbon pollution! And Douglas was part of that solution.