Dear Mom - Letters to Heaven

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Don't let Wall Street get away with a sweetheart deal on mortgage fraud. http://j.mp/qDBOIq #RebuildtheDream
Tell Chicken of the Sea (@CoSMermaid) to stop ripping up the sea with destructive fishing methods! #Tuna
Tell @EricCantor to stop holding #Irene victims hostage and fully fund disaster relief now! http://bit.ly/o3NyZG @CREDOmobile
Something is *very* wrong here: CEOs are getting paid more than their entire effin' company pays in taxes.
"Every time the cost of a barrel of oil goes up by a dollar it costs the US navy $31 million in extra fuel costs," Mabus said.
Ray Mabus, secretary of the US Navy, said he committed the navy and marine corp to produce at least half of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources by 2020 because of strategic and tactical reasons.
Where federal dollars were committed, private finance soon flowed by a factor of 10, Chu said. In Nevada, solar PV company Amonix received $5.8 million in government manufacturing tax credits but raised a further $12 million in private investment, he said. And the state would receive $560 million of economic benefit from payroll and local taxes.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Clean energy is a bright spot in the economic recovery, already creating large numbers of high quality U.S. jobs in emerging industries. Cleantech (primarily clean energy) has seen “torrid growth” from 2003 to 2010, 8.3% per year — almost double the growth rate of the overall economy during that time.

Monday, August 29, 2011

Time is not a line, but a series of now points.

Taisen Deshimaru
A year from now you may wish you had started today.

Karen Lamb
Every morning I awaken torn between the desire to save the world and the inclination to savor it.

E.B. White
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

~ Ray Bradbury
Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.
Congress isn't broken--it's fixed by special interests
Hold George W. Bush and Dick Cheney Accountable for Torture: http://ping.fm/120ds Take the @Amnesty action
We always need to reassess our assumptions and routines and look anew at our surroundings, learn and improve – Paul Burke

Friday, August 26, 2011

Allman Brothers - Seven Turns - Dickey Betts - Ghosts and Pasta

When the album Seven Turns first came out I was so damn happy. I was still in radio and had been championing the Allman Brothers Band for a decade while they were completely off the radar. Nobody cared except the hard core fans. Nobody in the main stream gave a shit. There was a whole generation of kids who didn't even know them. It was a labor of love from Beginnings to Duane's two Anthology Albums, Highway Call and Laid Back I played everything of there's I could get my hands on. I mixed them in and out of blues sets, rock sets, country sets, bluegrass sets, acoustic and electric. They're catalouge was such combined with all their individual efforts I was able to do that. It was awesome and one helluva lot of fun.

The bizarre eighties had its merits - Mark Knopfler comes to mind - right - but basically I felt pretty alone championing their music on the airwaves, tilting at wind mills, bucking the trend and the fashion. I was having a blast and being right outside of Atlantic City New Jersey having an audience as well!

First time I heard Seven Turns I was all alone in my old Victorian. It was a cool old place in an old sea side ship faring neighborhood up from the docks. They used to roll the cargo right down the street outside my window right to the ships in the old days. Bob Dylan called Levon Helm and the Band back in the 1960's while they were residing at a club across the street to join him out on tour as he went electric for the first time. There must be something about that neighborhood - magic! I swear the place was haunted.

I had many experiences while playing Native American music, and was seeing a girl who was wildly into Native culture, the great spirit and the power of the mind. Mysterious visits from old musicians in broad daylight with admonishments about loosing old friends and mates, and then who disappeared from view as I searched up the street after them.

Wild dreams of Garcia and Native American Chiefs sitting around my living room reading my transcript of Journey Home nodding with approval and this before Jerry died. Windows closing by themselves and apparitions at the foot of my bed even after waking then vanishing after I freaked and shooed them away. Astral projection dreaming unbeknown to me until I awoke my spirit falling back into my body startling and scaring the life out of me. Hooded mystics presenting themselves smiling at me I know you!

Wild, wild stuff and none of it embelished or drug induced. I was bright eyed and bushy tailed, living without television, writing, loving, and playing guitar, and trippin my balls off "without" Owsley's help.

The Old Victorian was where a majority of "Journey Home" was finalized and fleshed out. So I'm cooking up a little pasta and place "Seven Turns" in the CD player.

As the music filled the entire second floor I was inspired and impressed and fired up. I thought to myself, "Gregg- Your older brother must be so proud of you," and in the next few moments as I left the kitchen dinner in hand and turned a corner.....there in the middle of my living room lay "my" older sisters fedora hat feather and all. She had been dead a decade and I clung onto her old hippie hat for life. It had a place of honor way up high on an old bookshelf that happened to also belong to her.

The Allman Brothers hadn't put out an album in a decade. She had been dead a decade. I didn't put that together until today. Believe me I had that stereo cranked many, many, many days and that hat never moved. I took it upon myself to clean up the old property even though I was just renting and trimmed bushes, did roof repairs, swept broken glass, watered and mowed the lawn and made it nice for myself - all while blasting music out the windows. That hat never moved.

I had many a jam sessions and my living room was neat as a pin - so that hat when I found it on the floor sat squarely in the middle of the room all alone on the carpet and dead center of the entire floor. Its a mystery to me - Brothers & Sisters!

I've wanted to tell this story to Gregg and Dickey for a long time. So please pass it on to them if you can and enjoy this great music, inspiring lyrics and Native American vibe - its no coincidence - there's no such thing.



Thursday, August 25, 2011

And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles

Walt Whitnam
If it weren't for the last minute, a lot of things wouldn't get done.

Michael S. Taylor
Note to right wing: “1984” was not intended as a how-to book - Alan Grayson
So, like deficit hysteria or blanket claims that every progressive program is unconstitutional, they're trying to avoid that debate by vilifying the bedrock concept behind modern government – taxing the population based on what people can afford to pay, and providing public goods that are available to all, regardless of their fortunes.
But that's a discussion conservatives don't want to have. They don't want to oppose popular programs like Medicare on mere ideological grounds.
Given that it's a defining function of the nation-state as we know it, in a country with a sane discourse, taking place among an informed populace, we'd only be debating whose redistributive policies have what effect on our political economy.
These taxes financed federal and state governments – they redistributed wealth from property owners and importers to the population as a whole. So it's a simple, indisputable fact that, like Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan, the Founding Fathers so revered by the Tea Partiers and politicians like Bachmann and Perry were very much in favor of wealth redistribution.
By 1796, 14 of the 15 states then in existence levied property taxes; Delaware also taxed any income people derived from their property.
And after the country was founded, we never stopped redistributing the wealth – while federal taxes on income came about with the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913, the government collected taxes, mostly in the form of tariffs, from the very beginning.
we've actually been redistributing the wealth since before the founding of the nation. The American colonies imposed “faculty taxes” – which combined the characteristics of income and property taxes – on their citizens.
Tell Monster.com - stop allowing discrimination against the unemployed: http://bit.ly/nsPlqi @MonsterCareers @MonsterHelp @ColorOfChange

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Tell @SenatorReid: Warren Buffett wants you to raise his taxes. http://bit.ly/qaLkMn #SuperCongress #p2
It’s the payroll tax that they want to raise — to 6.2 percent from 4.2 percent of your paycheck ... when taxes come chiefly from the middle class and the poor, all those anti-tax right-wingers have no problem raising them."
Come January, the Republicans plan to raise the taxes of anyone who earns $50,000 a year by $1,000, and anyone who makes $100,000 by $2,000 ...
"America’s presumably anti-tax party wants to raise your taxes.

Restore the Wolves, Restore the Environment, Restore the Economy


Small ranchers like the small family farmer are pushed out of business by laws that favor the big boys. Its a question of balance. Just because we have done something someway in the past and its become routine doesn't mean its the smartest thing to do long term. I'm also talking about cars that only run on gasoline (now that's one helluva monopoly devastating the economy and jeopardizing national security) and relying solely on the dirty energy sector for burning rocks to generate electricity. Eating meat. God knows I love a good prime rib. I'm not a hypocrite but just as hikers run the risk of bear attacks, and swimmers run the risk of shark attacks, ranchers run the risk of wolf attacks. Its the world we live in and we're fools not to be conscious of it....We could wipe out all the predators but they have a function to perform that we may not even fully understand yet. Its ridiculous to assume we know everything or ever will.


We didn't build this Earth- we didn't put it here - we have been born unto it and are guests in someone elses creation -home if you will- built by who knows who (chance, god) its an unknowable - and maybe designed that way for a reason. Its the height of arrogance to think we can willy-nilly, destroy everything in our path, our air, our water, our forests, our oceans, each other, and not destroy ourselves.


I err on the side of caution. Lets not destroy the environment that sustains us including the bees that pollinate 2/3rds of our food. We have to come to grips with man made technology and our assumptions that just because we can conceive of it that its meant to be and good for us. And we always need to reassess our assumptions and routines and look anew at our surroundings, learn and improve.


The biggest impediment to that improving is entrenched interest grappling for advantage over the public largess - whether its in the form of tax loopholes, subsidies, land, mineral rights, oil leases, and royalty payments. Just because it makes somebody money somewhere doesn't mean its the right thing to do overall. The hunting industry is a wealthy one - they don't want the elk decimated - the ranchers don't want their bottom line messed with, but the public at large deserve a fair return on our public lands and coffers and want to redirect that money into restoring the planet and our health.

Yes we want mercury out of the air, pesticides off our food, and herbicides out of our water, and the wolf back in the Rockies to cull the herds, to not mess with the original blue print so much, ending overfishing and getting genetically modified food off our grocery store shelves...it might be causing all the pancreatic cancer.


At the end of the day a healthy environment = a healthy economy = a healthy society - for everyone - not just the big boys - and if the middle class is healthy the big boys get even wealthier. How the paper elite don't understand that is mind boggling. Their greed and laser like focus on their own bottom line is missing the big picture, and the economies of scale.


From the small waterman to big pharmaceuticals we should all have a seat at the table. And leveling the playing field IS the governments job. To the extent the government has been hijacked by big agriculture, big pharma, big oil, and wall street is why the whole damn thing is currently out of whack.


Its up to us the little guys to come together and restore the balance for the environment, the economy and each other. Its our challenge, and the right thing to do. Capitalism run amok is like anything else, wolves, bears, cattle and elk - inherently self destructive. Regulations create jobs and reel in the obsessive compulsive and destructive behavior and consumption of our addictive power hungry, money grubbing addicts who can not moderate their own behavior, and bully their way to the top until someone stops them. Its in our collective best interest for that someone to be all of the rest of us. Are you with me?


Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Remember this, that very little is needed to make a happy life.

~ Marcus Aurelius

Play For Free


A lot of people still play for free I hope - personally I play parks, parties, open spaces, boardwalks, fund raisers and coffee shops - for free - most people think I'm a loony. :)

Franken & Davis got their comedic start playing for free at comedy clubs. Al's a senator now.

Playing free I suppose after the fame becomes an impossibility or highly impractical. Its up to us - the not "almost" famous - to blaze new trails. When its a labor of love anything can happen and even if it doesn't mushroom (so to speak) in the moment is where it's at.

I learn something new every time I play and if I turn on one person, spread the news about a new song or remind someone of an old song, help one child smile, ease the burden of the moment for a passerby or parent, bring a smile to anyone's face, or lighten a heart - then I'm repaid a million times over in an intangible way I have come to value much more than money.

Maybe that's the definition of a life well spent - I wouldn't assume to go that far in a self proclamation but it sure feels good to me and I enjoy the hell out of it before, during and after. The rest of it is frippery - interesting, fun exuberant and lucrative frippery, but also dangerous, potentially self deluding and destructive.

The power is in the moment. Make your little corner of the world better any way you can. If we all did that everything would be fine. Find something you love and do it - damn convention, protocol, and expectations. Break out of the malaise and turn the freakin' television off - go to a sierra club meeting, PTA, or pick up a guitar and head for the park! Do what you love!

Look what it did for Butch - well done amigo- keep up the good work.

Played whipping post on a patio the other day and made some people smile - "who did that song" - they asked - and that made me smile....

Monday, August 22, 2011

Friday, August 19, 2011

Think on This...
First big job is to conquer self! Know the ideal. Do apply it in self. Learn to live with self and you'll learn to live with others. People are not different from yourself. They have ideas also and they may be just as near right as self. But there is an ideal way. How? Living with others.

Reading 5392-1
Our life is what our thoughts make it.

~ Marcus Aurelius Antonius
What is a billion dollars? Suppose you make the average annual salary in the U.S. of $44,410. It would take you 22,517 years to earn a billion dollars. (Assuming you paid no taxes. Like Billionaires.)
The coun­try had higher taxes be­tween 1980 and 2000 and nearly 40 mil­lion jobs were added.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

A sketch has charm because of its truth -- not because it is unfinished.

~ Charles Hawthorne
Tell @SenatorReid: Warren Buffett wants you to raise his taxes. http://bit.ly/mZ9Lvo #SuperCongress #p2
Warren Buffett thinks the super-rich should pay a lot more in taxes. I agree. Do you? http://bit.ly/oya8PR #StandWithWarren

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Life delights in life.

~ William Blake
Tell the super committee: make big oil and other polluters pay! http://bit.ly/pKbZVd via @foe_us
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”
Each pollution exemption simply transfers the cost, harm and risk from someone whose responsibility it belongs to some other industry, person, town or city. It may disappear off of big agriculture's ledgers but it reappears onto the local municipalities in the form of lost revenue, tourism, trade and tax base.
Factories, cities and farms dispose of their waste for "free" into our waterways. Downstream municipalities are forced to find other water supply, condemned oyster grounds, depleted fishing, lost tourism - "they" picked up the tab for the alleged "free" dumping.
The Chesapeake Bay's Crabbing industry lost 4,500 jobs between 1998 and 2006. A healthy environment = a healthy economy.
Diseases and poor water quality have decimated the Bay's native oyster population, a loss to the economies of Virginia and Maryland estimated at more than $4 Billion. NOT ACCEPTABLE!
The number of Chesapeake Bay watermen declined from 14,000 to 1,500 between 1993 and 2009. thousands have sold their boats and gear because they can no longer earn a living. NOT ACCEPTABLE!
"In 1929, an estimated 50% of those 65 and up relied entirely on relatives and friends for support. For those older than 75, the figure jumps to 57%. Social Security has allowed many today's seniors to live independently in retirement. In fact, only 6.5% of seniors in 2007 lived with their children."

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Why's @MonsterWW threatening @usaction & refusing to end ads that discriminate against unemployed workers? Find out http://bit.ly/qxXvJh #p2
Firms are cutting jobs because there is not enough final demand. But cutting jobs reduces labor income, increases inequality, and reduces final demand.
OF COURSE corporations are people. People Magazine has been reporting on Justin Bieber 's on again/off again thing with ConocoPhillips for MONTHS.
"We need to stop measuring our economy by profits and executive compensation...and start measuring it by how many families can stand securely in the middle class" Elizabeth Warren
"We need to rebuild our economy family-by-family and block-by-block..." Elizabeth Warren

Monday, August 15, 2011

Let your mind wander.

Alfred Hair
For, while selflessness is the law, to belittle self is a form of selfishness and not selfless.

Reading 2803-2
What we play is life.

~ Louis Armstrong
The best music... is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.

~ Bruce Springsteen

Thursday, August 11, 2011

What we play is life.

~ Louis Armstrong
Austerity Leads To Anarchy
Help protect scientists from political intereference http://j.mp/q6koAQ #NOAA
A tiny fee of a twentieth of 1% on each Wall Street trade could raise tens of billions of dollars annually with little impact on actual investment.
Remove the cap on the Social Security, so that upper-income people pay into Social Security, just like the rest of us.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.

~ Mortimer J. Adler
We came up short of our goal in Wisconsin last night. We came close, losing one election by only 2,200 votes (4 percent). Feel pumped after taking two seats in red territory, and pulling off only the 14th and 15th successful recalls of state legislators in American history.
For it was not into my ear you whispered but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.-Judy Garland

Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Help pressure #Syria to return the abducted and stop the bloodshed: http://bit.ly/r7JLTI #p2 #MiddleEast
The facts remain:

* We face mammoth state and federal budget cuts in large part because we have failed to sufficiently tax millionaires and prevent aggressive tax avoidance by multinational companies.
* Sensible and responsible revenue proposals could raise trillions of dollars from those who have benefited the most and have the greatest capacity to pay.
* Polls show the majority of the American public supports increasing taxes.

Every Generation - Egypt, Syria and London



Every generation the status quo no matter what country has to relearn the same old lessons: - people want freedom of expression and not power. Have your money, have your title, have your ego, mansions and yachts but make sure the middle class is prosperous, free to criticize and address wrongs that cut into your bottom line - like polluting the drinking water, overfishing, poisoning our food with pesticides, poisoning our air with mercury, and making life lousy for the people whose labor you rely on.

In short fair and equitable = peaceful. We don't want to be boss but we are the types who are disgusted by poverty, sweatshops and the pollution that gives our loved ones cancer and we outnumber you and your armies. Please take note, clean up your acts and realize repression is like squeezing a balloon- sooner or later it pops- see Egypt, Syria, and London for current examples.

Take Action USA


Forty-three percent of likely voters, a plurality, believe the Tea Party has made things worse for the country
A Rasmussen survey finds that nearly 30 percent of Americans view Tea Party activists as "terrorists"

Monday, August 08, 2011

Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a breeze, a moment's glance—it is little that makes the best happiness.

~ Friedrich W. Nietzsche
Exuberance is beauty.

~ William Blake
Stunning Statistics of the Week:

* 22: The number of companies represented on the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) “private enterprise board” in 2010
* $38 million: The amount that board members spent on state politics during the 2009-2010 election cycle
* 2,000: The number of state legislators that are currently members of ALEC
* 180: The number of ALEC’s model bills that are enacted in at least one state every year
Tell @BarackObama: Don't say 'game over' for the #climate. Stop the Keystone XL #tarsands pipeline: http://bit.ly/pnc1mC @CREDOMobile

Friday, August 05, 2011

Urge Sen. Reid and Rep. Pelosi to only appoint Dems to Super Congress who will stand strong against GOP hostage-taking: http://bit.ly/onXzXZ
Nordstrom has a waiting list for a Chanel sequined tweed coat with a $9,010 price. Neiman Marcus has sold out in almost every size of Christian Louboutin 'Bianca' platform pumps, at $775 a pair. Mercedes-Benz said it sold more cars last month in the United States than it had in any July in five years."

Thursday, August 04, 2011

To be of use to the world is the only way to be happy.

~ Hans Christian Andersen
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
n 2009, a team of French scientists published a study in the International Journal of Biological Sciences that raised red flags, then quietly disappeared off media radar screens. The researchers fed three varieties of genetically modified corn to rats. What they found was that the normal detoxing organs (kidney and liver) could not filter the toxins out of the corn.

Read more: http://ping.fm/n0RZV
Tell Sec. Vilsack and @BarackObama: Protect family farmers from unfair practices by Big Ag http://bit.ly/pbPHeP @CREDOMobile

Vanishing of the Bees - Movie Review


This is a must watch documentary narrated by Ellen Page. Its very well done and moves along quickly. It's more inspirational than I thought it would be and its concise. It gives a tremendous insight into modern agriculture, monoculture and the formation of the pesticide industry. Colony Collapse Disorder is an international problem and we learn how it was recognized and dealt with in some fashion over in Europe, Italy, and France. Billions of bees have vanished into thin air and they are a linchpin in our diet and pollinate many of the fruits, nuts and vegetables that we take for granted. If you want avocado and almonds we have to have the honey bee.

Our fuzzy little hero!



Empty hives and no dead bees. Thriving hives that lay decimate in a matter of weeks. Holocaust like destruction. At the root of the problem is a governmental agency who relies on the industry its regulating to provide scientific data. An agency who errs on the side of profit not precaution.

A fascinating array of honest characters and scientist who are on the front line to protect our food supply and an up close look at not only bees and how they pollinate, live and co-habitat but an inside look at some of the questionable practices of commercial bee farming.

This documentary will surprise you. But more than just stun you with the chemical warfare industry now working in our food industry (Monsanto made agent orange for Vietnam, Bayer made mustard gas for World War I) it will lift your spirits and renew your faith in mankind.

Five big stars informative, entertaining and heart warming.

The Vanishing of the Bees Trailer
Community Supported Agriculture also offers the convenience of home delivered seasonal fresh produce. These locally grown foods are the freshest available and also reduce the carbon footprint.
Buying organic fruits and vegetables brings health and vitality to the dinner tables. To find great prices on organic food try your local farmers market.
By far the most powerful way we can help the honeybee is by voting with our forks. The decisions we make about what to eat and what not to eat can shape modern agriculture and bring us back into harmony with the natural systems of life.

Abortion, Abortion, Abortion - Anti American and Anti-Choice


It's easy not to be afraid of life when you have money. Heck you don't even need an education when you have money. You can have as many babies as you want out of wedlock when you have money. You can quit your job as governor when you have a lot of money, you can party and have kids and pay for their care and not have a job when you have a lot of money. You can learn how to dance and go on television for months on end when you have money, and someone else can change the diapers.

The point is having a baby and raising a baby are two vastly different things. Planning a family responsibly requires a few building blocks to be in place BEFORE pregnancy. One an education:

It's a statistical fact that people with college degrees out earn by far high school only degrees. In other words you have to have a way to put the bread on the table. Two: a partner who is ready willing and able to participate fully, and three the maturity to know - game over - you are now a parent, not a teenager, not a rock star, not a druggie, not a cool chick, not up late, not a model, not an actor, not a princes, not a single, not a best friend, you are a parent and realize raising a child is a full time- life time job - that requires patience, discipline and sense of humor, and it doesn't end when they turn 18.


Raising a healthy, happy, well adjusted child is just as important, and essential as making a conscious decision that the time is not right if you are stupid enough to get pregnant. Abortion gives people a chance to get it right. Its better for the eventual child, society and the now ready parent.


What's the purpose here - to reproduce for the sake of reproducing, or to raise a family of educated, smart, well adjusted human beings? And for the record carrying a child in your body for every minute of nine months and then having it whisked away not even allowed to touch each other is a life long haunt to both the mother and child - as if the nine month gestation period wasn't enormously, dramatically important and significant.

Promoting irresponsible behavior and tra,la,la your pregnant as some sort of magical, special talent and land of tooth fairies, unicorns and Disney world, and not dealing with the realities of pregnancy, the life long ramifications, the immediate demands is doing society as a whole a huuuuggggeeee dis-service.

Educating our twelve year old's about sex, birth control and the enormous financial and physical resources and responsibilities not only to themselves,and the child but to society as well is where the conversation should be and there would be fewer abortions.

Maybe the issue would even be solved. But who's purposes would that serve? The church or the politicians? These days whats the difference?

Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Rather than stay in town and end a partial FAA shutdown, Congress is letting the invisible hand of the market land your plane

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Solar World Round Up - 08/02/11


Why can't we love each other? I mean seriously do not the people of the world see that we are all just human beings with the same nominal wants and desires of peace, happiness, and fulfillment? Unfortunately each society has its criminal element and criminals dressed up as statesmen and holy leaders and businessmen the ruthless right is what I call them. Their fulfillment is misplaced and misguided. Worse yet they think they are right (or at least say so) and what they really are is ruthless, beyond petty selfishness and greed. They are maxed out on seeing just how much they can get away with and how much they can control and how much they can steal. Rupert Murdoch is their poster boy thank you Australia and in the States we have a whole host of characters I'm familiar with from Dick Cheney to Eric Cantor, the Koch Brothers and Pat Robertson. Billy Graham was a first class charlatan.


The ruthless right the minority overlords, the shot callers, deal makers, and sheep herders of the me first crowd are the minority and they leave out 98% of the worlds population. And you know what we don't have to listen to them. We don't have to buy their bullshit or their products. We can quite literally ignore them and we don't have to sell out to them.

Thankfully there are entrepreneurs, inventors, philosophers, artists and a whole world full of people that just vibrate righteousness and goodness. They are out there and yes accused by the minority ruthless right and their media conglomerates of being "out there". So the character assassination continues. The messenger is relentlessly ridiculed like Al Gore, Ralph Nadar and Bernie Sanders but the message continues.

Why can't we love each other, cooperate with each other and live on this Earth sustainably and in harmony? Why not? Because a lot of people are still earning money the old fashion mean way by exploiting our natural resources (people, plants and animals) for their own gain, focusing on short term gratification and building an economy based on the word disposable. As if their individual actions don't count and are somehow disconnected to the reality at large. Poor math skills.


However, there is a huge segment of well meaning, profit second people first visionaries who are slowly pushing mankind out of his drunken fossil fuel stupor, commodity exploitation, and exclusively selfishly beneficial exploits into a new direction. The status quo can't get out of the way fast enough.


This is your Summer Solar World Round Up 2011:

Brookings report notes dynamic job growth in solar industries
"Sizing the Clean Economy" also reports that US solar thermal jobs have grown at an average annual rate of 18.4% since 2001, with PV jobs growing 10.7% annually since 2005. "Though modest in size, the clean economy employs more workers than the fossil ...

Bringing Power to the People—by Plugging Into the Sahara
"Where there are few people, there is lots of renewable energy," says Franz Trieb, a German engineer who conducted initial studies to explore the plan's potential. DESERTEC would place dozens of concentrated solar thermal power plants in uninhabited ...

EnviroMission Announces Plans For Massive Solar Tower
Solar thermal power uses both sunlight and mirrors to heat water. The idea of a solar tower is a unique and innovative idea that EnviroMission actually owns the rights to. EnviroMission's solar tower will essentially collect energy from the sun in a ...

21st-Century, Stable, Thermal Energy Storage
It is for this reason that heat storage tanks in residential solar thermal systems contain water. This is also why “thermal mass” in passive solar homes is made from large tubes of water. Stone and masonry are the next common materials at about half ...

Direct Steam Generation: Increasing temperatures is crucial for CSP
By CSP Today | 2011-08-01 09:23:36.0 As the CSP industry moves forward into an era of large-scale development in the United States the ability to reach higher operational temperatures to improve the efficiency of solar thermal power production is at ...

Sun-Less Solar Cells Could Make Energy From Anything Hot
Thermal PV tech has been around ages, and works the same way as the solar variation: Incoming radiation excites the atoms in its semiconductor structure, which then push electrons out--generating current. And much as is the case for solar PV cells, ...

Solar power to save Henderson County money
In February, the county engineering department received a $71000 stimulus grant to install a solar thermal hot water system for the jail, and last week county commissioners voted to award the project to SolTherm, an Asheville-based clean energy ...

OMVS: Solar Energy Boom Creates Ideal Environment for Commercializing ...
... great American industry," and a recent article from Bloomberg New Energy Finance noted that new investment in clean energy rose 22 percent in 2010 to $41.7 billion in the second quarter following a jump in funding for solar thermal power plants. ...

Solar Heat Sent Back To German 'Grid'
But now the German power and gas company E.ON says it has come up with a way for customers who produce heat using solar thermal systems to send heat itself back to the utility. What's more, the customers still owns the heat fed into E.ON's public Hanse ...

Clean Energy Receives $42 Billion in Investment for Q2
The clean energy sector attracted $41.7 billion in new investment in the second quarter of 2011. Increased spending on solar thermal power plants and strong venture capital (VC) and private equity funding pushed investment 27% higher than the previous ...

Monday, August 01, 2011

Amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work.

Chuck Close
Power is the ability to do good things for others.

~ Brooke Astor
Who thinks that they can kill time without injuring eternity?

Henry David Thoreau
President Obama announced the outline of new clean car standards, which will require cars and light trucks to meet the equivalent of a 54.5 miles per gallon fleetwide average by 2025
According to the World Health Organization, approximately 90% of the dioxins entering the human body come from dairy products and meat.
Gov. Walker has moved to shut down DMV offices in Democratic-leaning areas around the state to make it even harder for those voters to obtain that ID.
It's our "high" holy week - wave that flag - break out the tapes and celebrate - leave it to Jerry to have nine days in a week! Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia (August 1, 1942 – August 9, 1995)