By Tom on 8/28/2008 7:47 PM

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I didn’t think I’d make it -- thank you. I bring a report card for the American people, for us Democrats, and for Congress. It may come as a surprise, but that cannot be helped. The United States is being destroyed. This is the work of a force as old as history that is both human and not-human, a force expressed by humans but without human conscience. It grieves me to report that against this force the land of the free has proven to be defenseless. Let me explain. The declaration of independence from England was written by businessmen, and the ensuing war was sustained by the emotional strength of one man. Following the war the South brought slaves to conquer swamps that whites would not enter, while the North nearly enslaved children in factories and tenants on land holdings. Slavery gave the south an unfair economic advantage which irritated the North so that when the West opened war became inevitable. Reconstruction of the South sought markets for the North but brought lasting...

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By Tom on 8/17/2008 10:52 AM

The  2008 Context:

China 3,897,000 sq mi    US 3,022,000 sq mi China has no oil. The US intends to have all the oil. Solomon, where are you? The stable limit of atmospheric carbon dioxide is 380 ppm. Germany has reduced emissions. The US has not. China is increasing its emissions. Meanwhile the stable limit has been reached and the world drives on the brink. The US corporation-police complex is arming with an array of new crowd control weapons. Prison incarceration is at world record heights. The Democratic convention is putting in place special measures to detain protestors. American flags are being printed on solid surfaces and embroidered into our clothing. Is the flag fireproof now? Breast cancer strikes most US families yet the only countermeasure is mammogram/surgery/chemo. There is no concerted effort on cause and prevention. Does it occur to anyone that industry is profiting by pressing upon us poisons in food, poisons in clothing, poisons in packaging, poisons in personal care?...

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By Tom on 8/17/2008 9:28 AM

From Greener Times Aug 17, 2008.  Cat on a hot tin roof is an exaggeration of this column's state of mind, but it's the right image. After reading the day's "outed truth", I want to get off. What am I supposed to do about the US sending provocoteurs to the Republic of Georgia? About America's biggest union being service workers? About the Forest Service knocking 23% off our protected forest acreage? About the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan upholding a 2006 dismissal of a claim against Saudi Arabia for providing material support to al Qaeda before the September 11 attacks? Keep track? Does the cat have a map of that roof?

Willy nilly, Jan Lundberg dropped a hint in last weeks GT: “Loss of commumity cohesion and mutual support is the fatal self-inflicted wound of the dominant culture.”

I take that to mean we don't have any culture. If we had some culture we would know which outed truths are important and which are just wrinkles on an old hat. Sending provocoteurs to a Russian neighbor...

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By Tom on 8/17/2008 9:20 AM

From "Greener Times" Aug 10, 2008. This week’s Thought is a frustrated sigh over tacit acceptance of a failed government. Attempts to get rid of it seem like, well, like towing a ship with a rowboat.

  “Making an ash breeze” was the last resort of sailing ships becalmed in the doldrums. In the eighteen hundreds trade with the orient and Australia was carried out with consummate skill by the captains of sailing ships. Speed and cargo capacity evolved rapidly under intense competition, In their heyday the “extreme clippers” could average eighteen miles an hour in a trade wind. Trade winds are easterlies angled towards the equator from north and south. At the equator there is a shifting band of nothing known as the doldrums. Ships could get stuck there for weeks, in which events a ship would put out hiserher boats and the crew would tow the ship, or at least lift the lines out of the water. The analogy between an ash breeze and attempts to get rid of this government is close, but at closer look breaks down...

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By Tom on 8/15/2008 8:04 PM

This is the story of the second life of an IBM Selectric typewriter. You young people out there possibly do not remember the machine that ended the use of typewritten character uniqueness to solve murders. I sure remember it, for IBM in its several manisfestations was practically synomonous with my career at Boeing. In the fifties for example, like the faithful to Mecca, The Boeing Company got to sending its engineers back to Endicott, NY, for training. There, IBM's cloned competence proved to be a little tiresome for the supplicants. Some weeks into one of those sessions a Boeing guy muttered "what do you do in this town if you are tired of movies and hate men?" The IBM brand of competence was indeed legendary and was announced by its dress code and the ubiquitous framed THINK. That and more aside, the Selectric, twenty pounds of swiss watch precision, was a great machine. The crisp jet black type it produced set a new standard for manuscripts. Until a week ago I had one sitting on my workbench waiting for exploratory...

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By Tom on 7/29/2008 8:29 PM

CHAPTER 1 – Transportation

Eco-Commuting is Walk-to-Work. Significant reduction of commuting car traffic will not happen as long as it is necessary to commute. What minor reductions are possible should by all means be done if only because of the logic of doing something, but the priority should be on taking the first step toward significant reduction. That step is to produce a charter for the City of Vashon-Maury. That will serve ad-hoc while I explain what I mean. Getting out of cars is to end car culture. That means undoing a hundred years of incorporation of cars into every aspect of life. That means total re-organization of employment and that’s the same as re-making society. For a bedroom island that means make a living here, or leave. By any similar line of reasoning the result is that untrammeled mobility must be terminated. The goal is a cohesive community. Such a community is able to take a responsible stand on matters of world survival. Life on Vashon-Maury presently limited by rainfall will then...

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By Tom on 7/23/2008 8:39 PM

Color is defining. It let slavers get away with dehumanizing Africans. It was Jesse Jackson’s coalition cry. Purple was Alice Walker’s metaphor for love. And it is color, bright, vibrant, color that may have jump-started the Green Party. McKinney and Clemente embody the spirit of those Americans who cannot afford to play-act in politics, those for whom the ten key values mean not choice but survival.

Americans of color could “jump-start” the Green Party because they have survived more oppression than the US police state will ever be able to visit on the comfortable.  In surviving they have become brothers and sisters. Survivors, they can teach “us” a few things.

Menwomen, we have become divided, men from women by power, men from men by money, and women from women by Hillary. Some of that is true, but the whole truth is that cars and couch potato electronics have fragmented old-fashioned towns into morsels readily digested by corporate greed. Fragmented, we have yielded control to the likes of Clear...

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By Tom on 7/23/2008 7:58 PM

All this talk about reality television makes me wonder if I believe reports that purport to be true. Reports that the US was conned into occupying Iraq, reports that homeowners have been conned into bad mortages, reports that Guantanimo’s purpose had nothing to do with countering terrorism. I hear, but do I believe? Well, today I learned of three purports so close to home I have to believe something is going on: Oregon vineyards are trying new heat-resistant grapes because the alcohol content is getting too high, the Boeing Credit Union has felt it necessary to reassure us it is financially strong, and my brother is buying a Prius. If the purports get any closer I may have to readjust my life style, practice a different breath maybe.