I have just designated a new spot for yoga in the guest bedroom of my house. I pushed the bed to the side, vacuumed the floor and smudged some native Ceder and some Southwest sage. As soon as I sat down on my mat to let go of the hecticness that was buzzing in me, I felt emotional. Images of the Galapagos Island wildlife - lizards, baby sea lions, penguins, birds--flooded my vision. My friends had recently returned from a trip and had sent out photos this morning. The Galapagos are filled with life, and everywhere else on the planet, we are doing our damn best to kill it--life. I started thinking about how my yoga practice will help me through the next decades of the slaughter I see happening across the planet. The massive human-induced extinction. We can't seem to stop poisoning the bees. We have no will to stop climate change or deal with the ecosystem havoc it will wreak as animals, bugs, and microbes can no longer thrive where they have always lived. 

We are in the midst of a massive extinction-phase shit storm and it's not going to be pretty. My yoga practice makes me ask, do I try to stay calm amidst the killing fields? Do I seek love and truth and beauty and save and nurture what life on earth I can? Or do I send my full rage out into the world and see where that will lead? How does a yogi who reveres all life, deal with a culture of death? 

A former radical Ashtangi, my yoga practice lately has been sitting, breathing, meditation, light stretching. I have been feeling frantic and everything around me has seemed frantic, non-stop, and when I come to the mat lately, I have wanted calm. I have wanted to stop moving. To hold my breath. To float on the nothingness that stillness brings.To see that stillness still exists. Or maybes it's peacefulness that I am seeking. 

Maybe I see competition for no purpose all around me. Men playing their manly money games. I see foolishness in control and I simply want out. I want them to stop and I want out. But I am not a yogi who can ignore this devastating piece of the truth of our world, and so I ask again, how can my yoga practice help me be the person I need to be in the crazy world that is not made up of people seeking truth, and light and collaboration and common good and peace? 

I close my eyes. I begin to breath. I begin to cry and as the tears well up and do their thing, I realize that we are holding the torch for the future. That if we peaceful ones give up now, give in to rage and sadness, then others who need to learn how to be peaceful and loving in their life and work will be denied the teachers of the past. Hope is a living thing and we on our yoga mats, hold the torch for peace when the leaders of the world, of the corporations, of the banks, of the Maxim magazines, ruthlessly ridicule us, ruthlessly refuse to man up in the manner that Ralph Waldo Emerson described at Frank Lloyd Wright's funeral when he said, "If one would be a man, one must first be a non-conformist. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." 

I was in oil and gas country this past weekend and was surrounded by the non-manly sentiment that "at least they provide jobs." We are surrounded by people who do not care what their work results in as long as a paycheck is involved. That is different than having a job temporarily that you don't agree with while you figure out how else to organize your life and finances. But ceding your entire life to a destructive master - to destroy the water resources, to remove the mountains and oceans and destroy the natural systems--simply because you are too uncaring, or too asleep to do anything different, now that's troubling. They believe the civilized fallacy that one is dignified only if he works for the system. 

What a joke. There is far more dignity, in compassion. In curiosity. In tending life with love. 

But still, as I sit, I answer my own question. Giving in to rage and hatred makes a person crazy and I know that is not the way forward for me. The adrenalin of rage keeps many people going, but I think for me, I think not. I don't love the people I hate. I don't forgive the people destroying the planet, torturing my human and non human brothers and sisters, but there is a still place in my practice in which to hold them. A place where I know they are wrong. Where I know they must be stopped, but where I can calmly acknowledge the truth of who they are, of who I am, and for a few moments at least, do absolutely nothing about it. 

I decide to stand up. To light the sage that grew out of seeds that grew out of seeds that grew out of seeds that grew in this ground long ago, thousands of years ago, that lit up the ancient life with the unmistakable scent of the Southwest. From the soil it now burns and disappears and reminds me that all can not be seen but that life continues on - if we let it, if we nurture it. That is the job of the women. That is the job of the men. That is the job of the humans who were granted this weird power over the life of the planet, to destroy, or not to destroy.  It is no wonder that so many of us are upset that the people in power are choosing to destroy, to ridicule life. It is not the true calling of the human - the gatekeeper of life. 

My Ohm prayer at the end of the practice today gives love and thanks to those who recognize they are the gatekeepers of life, and for the swirling forces of the march of rebirth to continue onwards forever. If only this wish could be granted, and yet I fear it will not, and I hold that fear of that reality in stillness.  

Denver Water insists that expanding the existing Gross Dam is the method of least impact because well, there's already a dam there. It's basically the Brownfields perspective. In most situations, this is good policy and I totally agree with it - but the argument in this particular case falls apart when you look at what the water will be used for. 

It will be used to perpetuate water-intensive highly impactful sprawl along the Front Range. It will be used to create a water-careless infrastructure denying us all a water-wise future. It will destroy with Elk migration and other habitat. 

This lowest impact argument is simply a facade and a farce. The project is clearly not about low impact alternatives - Draining the Upper Colorado to 20% of its natural flows is HIGH IMPACT! A corridor of sprawl along HWY 93 is HIGH IMPACT, yet DW along with the Governor and the Developers continue to push this idea because they say we "need" it. But what do they mean, we need it? No one really understands how to explain this, but I think I have figured it out, and I think it reaches far into the cultural psyche of those who feel threatened by others and who think they will never have enough. 

When you look at the numbers, which we have, it becomes clear that the "need" just doesn't add up. When you look further into modern urban water management strategies, you realize that there is even more water to be had already within the system and no more needs to be gathered to meet the actual needs of our growing State. For example, we define "need" by how much we actually use, not by how much we would use if we employed the best systems to accomplish the results we desired. This is the first clue that there is something very screwy in the system of water management. 

The point is that this creation of FALSE NEED has resulted in a SCARCITY MENTALITY which breeds competition rather than collaboration. 

If instead, we recognize that there is actually abundant water (no one says that,  right?) and enough for everyone, (I mean, look at how many farms in California and Colorado use Colorado River water! It's astonishing how MUCH water there is!) then the job becomes - not getting as much as you can get as fast as you can get it and beating the other guys out, but working together to figure out how best to allocate that water and how to employ common sense strategies to improve everyone's lives, plan for sustainable future, and use water more sensibly. 

Right now, DW has claimed a lot of water rights on this Moffat Project, so they want to exercise them. In order to do so, they need to say there's a "need" for more water capture. 

So, not only does the system create a scarcity mentality and a sense of false need, it results in competition for who can get AND USE the most water. It disincentives even the most basic basic water conservation!!!

This is childish. Denver Water, as one of the major players in the sector, should be smarter and do better. Instead, DW remains childish in perpetuating the system in this way without trying to improve it, and it has made it impossible for the water sector of Colorado (and the West) to act like adults and respond appropriately to the very serious water shortage that is killing the ecosystems of our State, and that will kill the tourism economy and eventually the entire economy itself. It is laughing in the face of sustainability and of our shared future in this State. And so, by the way, is the Governor. 

We've got to stop pretending that there is a naturally occurring water shortage that can be cured by capturing and using more water. The water shortage (like climate change) is 100% man-made and the only way to not have a water shortage is to stop using so damn (dam) much of it. 

We've got to stop pretending Rivers don't need water. We've got to stop pretending we don't have enough water to share with the Rivers.  

The people (the adults) of Colorado and across the nation and the people far down in the dry Colorado River delta are Occupying the Rivers, and demand that the players in this system stop these childish games. 

Sharing a late dinner, wine and merriment under a hand-made palm thatched roof, hosting 2-hours of solar paneled electric light per night, on a warm beach, on a tiny strip of land between two great oceans, in the middle of what is winter at home which is now several hours by plane due north, opens some sort of door into the realms of possibility that only travel to a far away land can open. You are precariously in the middle of something that normally is far beyond your grasp. Something that has been pulsing on forever, with or without you.

I have heard of the giant turtles that float through the oceans, that once mature, return to the beaches of their birth time and again to lay their own eggs. I have seen little creek turtles in the northwest US. I have seen turtles sunning themselves on rocks in dank lakes in the mid-west. But these giant ocean turtles, I have only seen photos of, and like a sunset or a mountain vista, photos have limited impact. They do not make your heart swell a million times over, they hide the real perspective, you remain separate from the life the turtle is leading.

But when, on a warm dry season night in Nicaragua, you take a short walk with new friends along an undeveloped beach and you see the tire track looking footprints of a mother Tortuga and you follow them to where a giant beast of a turtle is methodically digging a hole, your lives have become intertwined. Do you quietly wait until she is finished with her age old work of making babies and then steal the eggs, or leave that to an egg hunter who will find them later that night and sell the supposed aphrodisiac at Managua’s market? Do you go back to your lodge and tell the night watchman who will dig them up himself and place the eggs in the turtle sanctuary, to be protected and birthed and returned to sea later? One of our group said, “I wouldn’t get in the way of a local and his food.”

But isn’t man’s progress, man’s population boom coupled with man’s idea that we can take it all, take every egg, itself getting in the way of the local’s food? Isn’t the mere fact of all of us eating everything and leaving no seeds for tomorrow, getting in the way of tomorrow’s food supply? Of tomorrow’s perpetual life?

Days later, on another beach, another turtle sanctuary, I spoke in attempted Spanish with my surf instructor’s father, Saol, who was charged with overseeing the fenced in turtle sanctuary, the newly hatched turtles, and with organizing the eager tourists to help set them on the beach to waddle into the ocean, back into their home.

Hundreds of little baby turtles learning to swim in little coolers awaiting the ocean. Many of these little creatures will be eaten once alone in the vast Pacific, but here, at least, they had a chance to hatch, they were protected from theft and sure death on the night their mother placed them into the flipper dug hole on Hermosa beach. 

The way the tourists gently and lovingly shepherded the infants across the playa and into the ocean, standing around, with protection and hope in their hearts. Back home, we say we “shepherd water” from the great Colorado into reservoirs for developers, industry and poisonous agriculture to use and waste. This is a despicable use of the term stolen to sound as if the developers are godly and the water needs us. The Church uses the term too and for similar overwrought purposes. The water shepherd, the god shepherd, has greed and power and money and control in his heart. But with these little turtles, who only are alive because they were protected, there was only love in the hearts of the shepherds – the real meaning, the life giving meaning, of the word. The true value of the human being showed on this day.  

This was an agrarian birth. Humans, taking on the responsibility of protecting little baby turtles, of trying, at least on this little strip of beach, to do the right thing, to not take and destroy, but to nurture and set free the continued web of life. This, caring for perpetual life, is the work of the backyard agrarians the world over. It is the work of humans at this vital point in history. It is our job. It is our only job. To give life, not just to our own children, but to all of creation. 

There comes a time in the middle of every winter - the seed catalogues start showing up in the mailbox, the days start getting longer - when every gardener has had it with bland grocery store produce. It's still too early to start your seeds for transplanting outside, but you are just dying for a garden fresh salad... I decided to beat the winter blues this year by starting an indoor salad garden. 

It's simple. Just use a flower pot or find a bin that is a few inches deep, poke holes in it, fill with planting mix and plant your seeds. I chose a mixed variety that contains kale, spinach and various lettuce greens. Find a sunny window or a use good quality florescent lights. Keep moist and you'll be eating home-grown salads in just a couple of weeks. Remember, greens like cool weather so don't set up your salad garden next to the wood stove. It's better to find a cooler area of the house. My cement floored storage room great. 

Junk food should be illegal. Drugs are. Driving too fast is. Alcohol is limited to use by adults. People still break these laws, but if they get caught, they’re in trouble. The government tells us when certain things are too dangerous and the government prohibits us from doing them, or it at least places limits on dangerous activities. The government doesn’t always get it right (marijuana), but it tries.

In fact, the sole justification for taxes, the constitutional basis for taxes, the provision that imbues the government with the right to take our money is that provision that gives the government the right to tax and spend for the general welfare. The Constitutional text is this:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States...

It is believed, to the very core of our national heartbeat, that a government may tax and spend to protect the public. Providing for the common defense is part of providing for the general welfare. If it is taxing but not using those funds to protect the public, then it is overstepping its rights and treading unfairly on the rights of the people.  This clause by its nature requires government to work for the people and prevents the government or any of its officials, from using taxes to consolidate wealth and power; from becoming dictators and taking taxpayer money for their own personal bacchanalia.

But that’s just what it is doing. The government has not only failed to outlaw the highly toxic, disease-causing junk foods that most families now eat on a frequent and regular basis, it subsidizes their very existence! It has helped consolidate power in the junk food industry—from the chemical-GMO drug pushers like Monsanto to the huge factory farming behemoths like Purdue, to junk food processors like Kraft and worldwide distributors and price fixers like ADM. 

The junk food system starts by destroying the health of farmers, the soil, rivers and ecosystems by pumping massive amounts of poisons into these systems. It then goes on to produce outrageously wasteful and toxic single use packaging for the purpose of then selling disease causing “foods” to the American public.

Junk food is the next Tobacco—but bigger. These companies are knowingly peddling products for human consumption that have been clearly and overwhelmingly proven to cause obesity, heart disease, diabetes, early onset type 2 diabetes, ADD, ADHD, migraines, indigestion, cancer, asthma, addiction, malnutrition and many more deadly diseases. They sell these products using cute cartoons just like Tobacco did. They bombard the public space with advertisements claiming their products are healthy and part of a healthy lifestyle just like Tobacco did.  

If junk food is not made illegal, it should at least come with HUGE warning signs just like Tobacco does.

I propose we delve deeper into these issue and to look more closely at how a lawsuit of this magnitude would work. What the various causes of action are, who would be named defendants and for what. The time is right and the science is in. Americans are getting sicker every year and that’s not fair because they are being lied to by their “food” companies and by their government. It's not a matter of personal choice as the junk food purveyors would have you believe. It's a matter of deception. Massive, deadly deception. Before another decade goes by of this kind of mass poisoning, it’s time to look at our options and stop this madness.

All of those Farm Bill subsidies that go to big chemical farmers are making it unacceptably difficult for small, organic, community-based farmers and other agriculturalists to make it. Luckily, these types of farmers, ranchers, school programs and backyard agrarians have received growing support from people in need of good food. The movement is slowly gaining steam. Certain segments of people are taking back their health, supporting local sustainable agriculture from backyard gardens to larger-scale operations. They are rejuvenating pollinator populations, increasing soil health, protecting water resources, and reducing the diseases discussed above. But it is happening far too slowly. The money must move differently.

That’s why the question: How can the law be used, legislatively and through litigation, on local, state and national levels, to change our food system? Today’s youth are on a collision course with a lifetime of suffering from a death-focused food system. Their fate is like no other generation’s before them. Now we decide, is it sealed, or can we still save them? Can the law still save them? All the well-meaning health food eaters in the country can’t do it alone. The food law of this country must be on the side of the people. 


image credit: Junk Food For Life 

Maybe we should ask—maybe we should change that social norm of detached politeness and learn to care for each other better. We are taught to ignore our  intuition, our base knowledge about the truth of what we observe and see and feel around us. We are taught to mind our own business. I’m not convinced that’s working for us as a society. I’m not convinced of that anymore. 

I think we need each other. I think when times are hard, when times are good and grand, and when someone is struggling--we need to not forsake each other. We need to not mind our own business. We need, instead, to ask “are you ok, man-- really. Are you ok--It seems to me you are not ok. What can I do?“ 

We lost Michigan Mike this week, and so many others, so many other weeks. Maybe it’s just someone’s time to go. Maybe there’s nothing anyone can do. Maybe life really is just too much, or too cruel, or not the right thing for some people. But maybe not. Maybe we all, the living, the not suicidal, maybe if we had just taken some time, maybe we could have saved them, some of them. Maybe life could have turned around. …Maybe not. But I think we should try. I think we should all be ok with trying a little harder. Inserting ourselves into someone’s life a little better. 

Some people are sweet and kind and gentle, too gentle for this nastiness. For this hard cruel life. But we are civilized now. We humans…have come so far. Life is still hard and cruel, but as a community, as humans who are doing ok, perhaps we should do a little better for those who aren’t… Perhaps we could start asking, and really mean it: “Are you ok?” 

I find funerals to be extraordinary. Like a really good yoga class – on steroids. And acid. Death is commanding. Captivating. Shedding the layers of culture, of epoch, of fashion. Of time, and appointments that no longer need to be met. You become human, when a loved one dies. Just a simple human being, full of love and loss. You become part of the mourning family of friends. History surfaces. The stories of the Angel’s life, the fire that burned, are shared. The puzzle pieces begin to join as the people who cared come together. As they mourn together.  As they remember because it is the duty of the living, the compulsion of the living, to remember. 

I lived through the Information Age. Make no mistake, we are now living in the post Post-Information Age, and it's not pretty.

The Information Age began more or less with the printing press, and took root  as wealth and our ability to share information globally grew and as television provided nonstop news and documentary, and then skyrocketed to its Apex as the Internet became a way of life across the world. The Information Age has finally ended with the outright assault on Democracy and free speech, the re-consolidation of power in the very few, the Corporate coup of the United States government, and the overwhelming denial  of scientific validity on all fronts of power and societal organization. 

Humans finally had something to do with their big unwieldy brains. They had access to information with which to fill them and occupy their thoughts. The epoch search for truth and light and understanding and expertise was within reach. It was first and foremost the Democratization of information, and then the widespread dissemination of information that created the Information Age - That, and the natural human instinct to learn ever more. The masses could learn things for themselves. Doctors were held to a higher standard because patients came in prepared with information. Professors had competition. Traditional news outlets were no longer the only eyes and ears of the world.  

The bar - could have been raised. But instead, the frenzy for real knowledge is over. The major traditional news outlets began providing embedded, dumbed down news like substances, just like the big food companies now only provide toxic, dumbed down food like substances that make it hard for people to think clearly. They rebuffed any semblance of investigative, in depth, thoughtful, thought provoking reporting and instead started publishing corporate-government propaganda. Instead of hard hitting reporting, they touted only patriotism - allegiance to the corporate coup. 

On other fronts, a book burning resurgence became the knew anti-knowledge frenzy with the Bible again reigning Supreme. The Internet came under attack and the powerful elite decided that it should no longer be Free or Democratic, that rather, the people should not have open access to the information contained there. Corporations began paying people to spew vitriolic hatred towards anyone who sought knowledge (the liberal educated class, climate scientists, the EPA). The Feudal Lords and the Serfs have resurfaced. The New American Serf does not seek knowledge or enlightenment but only wants a wealthy Lord to give him a job. The Serf will then claim total allegiance to the Corporate Lord and through religious training has been conditioned to not question authority. This is the new America and the new American. 

The Entrepreneurial Class, the Investigative Class, the Intellectual Class, the Eco Class that hopes we will become smart enough to stop poisoning and destroying the Planet, are not counted in government job creation strategies that favor welfare for the Corporate Feudal Lords instead. The Corporate-Government takes our taxes and gives them right back to the big guns. That - is Feudalism. 

The class that still seeks information and rightness and self-made freedom is poo-pooed, is vilified, is hated in America now. Because this is the class that questions, that does not fall into line, but that actually holds the hope for a future where corporations don't control the government, the water supplies, the jobs, the environment, the educational institutions, the Internet. 

The assault on the Information Age is pathetic. It ignores that we are all in this together and that all humans have inherent dignity, a right to small business and a right to a clean environment. We are falling into a Post-Information Age Dark Ages, and given the massiveness of the power structure making it happen, this one will be a lot harder to come out of. 

Read More on the New Dark Age:
The American Thinker, Is a New Dark Age at Hand?