summer is just not my time for writing

Of course I become more and more emotional every day about the Deepwater Horizon disaster which will be ongoing all summer.

But I don't really have anything to say about it here yet beyond frustration.

Meanwhile, I have been outside constantly doing summer things, since it has been so nice since March 1st.

So my journal is where I've been posting, not here.

I still want to write an article about what bothers me about the style of news reporting now and recently.

But I am still organizing my thoughts about this, so even if I were in the mood to write here instead of be playing outside constantly, I'm not ready to anyway.

checking in again during busy outdoor time

As I said, I will "check in" here when I am too wrapped up in outdoor pursuits to write about what's been on my mind.

Since the last post, Kathy McMahon added my bio to her blog and I thanked her for that.

Meanwhile, the big story for me and everyone else has been the continuing flow of oil from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, and now it's arrival onto the marshes and beaches below where I camp in the wintertime, and where I was planning to go every winter for the rest of my life.

Will everything be dead down there from now on, in terms of both nature and also people in boats and shoreline activities?

This thought keeps going through my mind.

Being out enjoying Spring in Ohio is helpful because it keeps me from obsessing about this now, when it is too early to know.

stopping the oil leaking -depressing news from yesterday

I don't have time to write much here this Sunday morning because I am going to get out and enjoy another nice May day.

I need to, because I found out the box that was tried yesterday to funnel the Gulf of Mexico oil leak up to a boat has not worked, and this is very depressing to learn.

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I want to start writing an article about the news and how we receive it, because that has been on my mind a lot in the last few years, and because I have some ideas about this that I don't think anyone else has expressed.

Because I do so many other things, it may take me awhile to finish this.

But I will stay in touch here as I said before, to record some of my thoughts even if the main ideas I am working on aren't done yet.

a black volcano in the sea floor, and, my bio now published

In my last post, on the Fortieth Earth Day, I said I had finished my bio for this website.

It is now published as a SPECIAL PAGE to the right, The Endangered Planet and Me -a short biography.

I have also sent it to Kathy McMahon at Peak Oil Blues, asking if she will kindly add it, edited as she sees fit, to her archive of letters and stories about psychologically dealing with collapse.

I have also added a new permanant link to Peak Oil Blues, starting with that story page.

Be sure to check out the full blog by clicking HOME in the upper left.

I finished my bio on April 19th.

The next day, the Deepwater Horizon platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, just southeast of New Orleans.

For several reasons, I did not realize how serious this was until last week.

Ironically, one of the reasons was because I was busy studying the feasibility of spending every winter once I reach sixty in a solar-powered boat exploring the Gulf Coast.

If you read my online journal, you will learn that since even before Katrina I have been interested in Louisiana, and have been camping there every winter since 2006.

Now, continuing the theme that caused me to start this blog, another major environmental event is weighing heavily on me in a personal way.

But this is as big or bigger than Katrina, and it will probably change history.

I now have figured out that so much of the irony that seems to permeate these events comes directly from the mainstream denial of the context surrounding them until they happen. (What seem like bizarre coincidences are not, but are instead warnings that were there all along but were not noticed and reported until the disaster.)

Just one example in this case is the amazing blog, Sky Truth by John Amos.

Last August through November, Sky Truth was reporting about a similar rig explosion off the coast of Australia, which now seems minor compared to the nightmare now happening in the Gulf of Mexico.

And it was also reporting about a minor spill in Louisiana in early April, and just a few days before the Deepwater Horizon fire, it was talking about the folly and danger of plans to expand offshore drilling to the rest of the Gulf and to the East Coast.

People like me who follow such blogs regularly know these are not coincidences.

Warnings only seem like coincidences to people who ignore them until they come true.

finished my bio, cleaning it up

I finished the biographical writing I have been talking about since March.

I am editing it now so I should have it ready to share soon.

Meanwhile, I have found and listened to a few more excellent podcasts that directly or indirectly discuss psychological coping with collapse.

Here are two of them:

Terrence McNally podcast:

Interview: RICK HANSON, Ph.D and Author -January 5th, 2010

C-Realm Podcast:

Tools of Connection -March 24th, 2010

bio not done yet but getting closer

I have been going through a rough time, but I did manage to spend some more time today on the bio I have been talking about.

Maybe it will be done soon, unless the problems I am having persist longer than I hope.

I can't be a guide now (or yet)

As I promised, I got my energy back and want to write here again.

I have thought deeply in March about many new things and did some research.

I decided that although I have ideas and insights that will be valuable to others, my mind is still much more full of new questions than answers and summaries.

So, this blog will be of less help to others for now than I hoped.

It will be more a stream of consciousness than a regular series of conclusions.

I will be helping to sort out the threads, but I am not capable yet of helping to weave a new tapestry.

I'm glad I figured this out, because I have such a strong urge to write but I don't want to overpromise to myself or anyone else.

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I started writing my biographical story of my relationship to the environment and collapse, which I will probably add to those on Peak Oil Blues as I previously said I might.

I will give myself as much time as it takes to finish this.

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Meanwhile, I continue to be scared and deeply saddened by most events and news items, so the neccessary grief keeps being renewed.

For example, I read another new announcement of a study that found another positive feedback that is indeed happening, this one with temperate soil carbon.

And, the craziness of the denialsphere around me seems to get worse every week.

The Ohio-Indiana-Michigan tristate, where I lived thirty years ago, is the location of the first big story of right-wing crime since the collapse began.

Nine men were apparently involved. The plot to kill was foiled.

I would never have been able to imagine such a thing in the different world that area was in the late seventies compared to now.

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It is suddenly so clear that a parallel network of reporting and analyzing is now developing quickly.

This is good because those of us who reject denial and delusion need news and need communities of discussion.

But it is tragic that I and so many millions of others have so quickly and thouroughly given up on what we used to call "main stream", especially because we mean so many things -main-stream media, main-stream politics, and main-stream society.

This fragmentation into "us vs them" is what we always dreaded so much, and hoped so much we could avoid.

I've already referred to many great websites, and will always have hot links to them whenever I mention them, but I'm determined to keep my list of links to the right very short.

But I just added "Radio Ecoshock".

Please listen to this show from March 5th, which I think was excellent.