Greater Internet Dickwad Theory

Happy New Year to My Friends and Foes at MassLive.

Blogging for the New Year

I'm taking a friend to the doctor's later on this afternoon, but I have some time now to think a bit about the experience of blogging and what I'd like to do this year.

My blog was born on April 1, 2007. In my first post, Why Today?, I said I wanted my blog to be a way for me to stay in touch with the political life of our city and how it affected poor and homeless people; I thought a new job would take me out of the mainstream. That hasn't been quite as true as I feared, but blogging has certainly helped me to keep focused.

At first I thought I had to write everything myself and it took me a while to realize I could link to great material from other blogs, websites and news sources. What a lot of great writing and organizing is taking place in the blogosphere!

When I started blogging I didn't know about the advice to find and develop a niche in the blogging world and now I'm glad I didn't. Of course I want people to read my blog; I want my blog to be relevant to our local struggles, but it's become more a reflection of who I am and what I care about than I anticipated. On the other hand, I have not yet subjected my readers to my struggles as a self-taught person to understand physics! Maybe some day.

Most of my posts have been about homelessness and poverty, with anti-racist struggles and the environment following closely behind. Animals, gardening and poetry also make appearances. What I see out of my own eyes remains more significant to me than what I read.

So: for the coming year:
-- I am happy to report that Arise for Social Justice has totally reorganized and will be opening a new office on State St. soon. I'll have plenty to write about that.
-- Homelessness, housing and poverty remain number one on my list. I hope to provide a lot more information than I have to date about struggles and successes around the world.
-- A world to live in: we still have a chance to save this planet. Everything matters: what we do personally, the choices our local elected officials make (or don't make), energy production, water use-- I could go on and on. This year I want to look at Springfield's direction. We get to call ourselves a "green city" because we are blessed with an incredible amount of green space and waterways, but we have no vision about how we could provide plenty of new jobs if we moved toward sustainability.

Time to go and appreciate the morning's new snow.

Photo: A New Leaf from Blog with a View.

Number of homeless encampments is increasing: crisis and opportunity Part One

Tent Cities: What they're like, why they're growing, and how they're a part of the burgeoning international movement for housing..

I've been tracking the growth of homeless encampments and tent cities across the country ever since 2004, when homeless people and Arise for Social Justice organized our own "Sanctuary City" in Springfield, MA. Our tent city, which came about to meet the crisis of a shelter closing, lasted six months and sheltered 70-80 people a night-- some 400+ people over the course of the encampment's lifetime.

On a disorder to order scale of one to ten, Sanctuary City ranked about 7.5. Run by homeless people themselves with training and material support from Arise and others, it was visible, political, and absolutely essential to people's wellbeing. Sanctuary City closed when the Warming Place shelter was able to reopen in November.

The intent of my research, initially, was to look for existing models of organization that could be used to help Sanctuary City residents self-manage and survive. I couldn't find much but I did find Dignity Village in Portland, OR and ShareWheel in Seattle, WA. ShareWheel had put up a page at Anitraweb.org about tent cities that was particularly helpful.

How things have changed in the last three years! Like other social issues, I know that increased reporting may account for some of my perception that tent cities are becoming more common. On the other hand, the forces that create homelessness certainly haven't diminished. In any case, there is never a day that I can't find a new mention of tent cities and encampments.
=======================================

Unless you live in a gated community, or an extremely affluent town surrounded by other affluent towns (and maybe not even then), you have people without homes sleeping rough all around you.

• Sometimes people throw up a tent or a tarp or two in public parks, riverbanks or behind abandoned stores. Survival there depends on remaining absolutely unnoticed, or noticed by only a few people who, for whatever reason, leave them alone.
• Larger, more visible communities often spring up in semi-public places-- under a bridge, in a field, in the parking lot of a deserted mall. People wind up there because they've seen or heard about it. Some people have been kicked out of a shelter while others wouldn't be caught dead in one. Mostly these encampments operate with no structure, little structure or with a set of standards that are hard to enforce.
• Other, more structured tent city communities often are started by homeless people with some political awareness or who work in conjunction with a sympathetic, organized group or church. These communities, like the recent New Orleans tent city, often have political goals as well as meeting the immediate shelter needs of their residents.

But whether residents have political goals or not, I have never seen an encampment of homeless people develop solely for political purposes.
======================================

At yesterday's Arise meeting, I heard about a woman who was kicked out of the Friends of the Homeless shelter for three days because she allegedly was turning tricks behind the building. She was banned from the overnight shelter too, because that shelter is also run by the Friends. So that's it for homeless women in Springfield-- nowhere else to go, now that the Warming Place has closed. The next two closest shelters that take women are fifteen and twenty miles away and may or may not have room, and whatever you may or may not think about her behavior, being unsheltered is especially dangerous for women. If she knew any of the people tenting out last night, that's probably where she went.

Slavery now and then

Came across a review today in the Texas Observer of a new book by John Bowe, Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy. "The book focuses on fruit pickers in South Florida; Indian welders in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Asian garment workers and sex slaves in the tiny U.S. commonwealth of Saipan in the Pacific Ocean." If you think slavery is a thing of the past, check out this review and this book.

For a taste of what one person can do to right injustice, read the page on slavery in Brits at Their Best.

Feeding people and fighting stereotypes at the same time

A friend tipped me off to this great project in Lawrence, MA called Labels are for Jars. The effort raises money to feed people by sales of a tee-shirt that challenges labeling. Around here, you can get these tee-shirts at Newberry Comics, downtown Amherst.

Black people love us

The website Black People Love Us might make you squirm a bit. It's hilarious, pointed, and all too true. Check it out.

Threat to World Peace?

To be nobody but yourself

Keri Smith - check out her illustrations and blog.

38 names at today's Homeless Memorial

Cold. Old faces, new faces. 38 candles were lit and 38 names were read.

Rev. Dyson coordinated this year's memorial. It was tender and moving

A half dozen of us from Arise came down. I got to meet an Iranian man who is a frequent poster on our listserve AriseAction and we talked about peace.

I saw Kevin Noonan, the Director of the Open Pantry, and he told me that he'd found a place for the food pantry just today. It's up State St. in a building owned by Springfield Partners for Community Action, right across from Arise's old office. And our new office is only two blocks further down State St., opposite the community college.

I'm 60 years old today. I've always liked my birthdate-- first day of winter, nearly the solstice, and yet the days grow longer from here. But on the darkest night of the year, in cities across the country, we stop to remember those who have died without a home.

Boston homeless man dies of exposure

According to the Boston Globe, a homeless man was found dead last night on conservation land near the Globe office in Dorchester.

Boston started its annual homeless census last night.

Last year, the census identified 6,636 homeless men, women, and children in the city, a 4 percent increase over the previous year. The number of families who were homeless increased by 13 percent from 2005 to 2006.

All the beds at Pine St. Inn were full, and 65 people slept on the floor.

Springfield usually does a homeless census, but I haven't heard anything about it this year.

Homeless Persons Memorial Day

Remember our neighbors and friends
who have died without homes
December 21, 2007
4 p.m.
Court Square Springfield

New Orleans - it's NOT too late to make a difference

Before Katrina: 6,000 homeless people in the city. After Katrina: 12,000, some of whom have been camping across the street from City Hall. The mayor was going to kick everyone off last week, but now it's been postponed. What wasn't postponed, unfortunately, was the bulldozing of the first of four public housing projects.

The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) had joined community activists in trying for a temporary injunction. That failed, because the judge said City Council had voted to demolish the projects four years ago. The destruction of three other projects, however, may be able to be held off indefinitely. At lest 3,000 people who used to live in public housing remain scattered throughout the country.

It's not that public housing in New Orleans before Katrina was so great; it needed and deserved renovations. The N.O. Housing Authority wants to replace the public housing projects with mixed-income, mixed use developments. Sounds great in theory, but too often is just an excuse for the displacement of poor people.

The PPEHRC National Coordinator Cheri Honkala is calling on all of us to make sure HUD knows we are watching them. We want the existing public housing projects preserved and renovated. (Actually, we want a lot more than that, but let's start here.)

Secretary Alphonso Jackson

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
451 7th Street S.W., Washington, DC 20410
Telephone: (202) 708-1112 TTY: (202) 708-1455

(press #6 for employee directory)

HUD Inspector General Hotline for complaints:

1-800-347-3735
TDD: (202) 708-2451

The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign is a movement of organizations to which my organization, Arise for Social Justice, belongs. Four years ago we marched together in NYC at the Republican National Convention. This year, if all goes well, we'll be together again in Minneapolis, MN.

You can check out some of Cheri's day to day postings from New Orleans here.

Not easy being homeless in Springfield

I was going to put up some links from MassLive and LocalBuzz to illustrate some of the publicity homeless efforts are getting in Springfield, but for some reason, all I could find was a LocalBuzz interview with a staffperson at the Worthington St. Shelter. The other stories seem to have disappeared.

Meanwhile, over at MassLive, Springfield's "forum," homeless people continue to take a beating from those who hide behind their made-up names. Folks have really been on a roll recently, comparing homeless people to zombies, calling the folks who eat at the soup kitchen a bunch of slobs, calling them crazy, dangerous, etc...I try to remember that not every poster feels that way; the more reasonable people probably just don't bother to respond to the worst comments. Most people think that homeless people choose to be homeless, because they won't take the steps necessary to move ahead. Well, of course it's much easier to fall into a hole than it is to climb out.

Some horrendous crimes have been happening in Springfield. The one this week that just leaves me shaking my head in sorrow is the murder of a 20 year old kid delivering pizzas by a 28 year old man.What the hell. There was a picture of the man being arraigned in today's paper: a slight figure, all hunched over, looking as if he was filled with shame. Maybe that's just my wish-- that he not be some genuine psychopath unable to feel remorse but someone who will have to live with what he has done-- taken the life of another young man who was only doing his job, trying to get ahead.

I'm no sociologist and I admit I have an unabashed allegiance to the poor and working class. But I'm no romantic, either, and not one who thinks there's no role for personal responsibility in our fates.

Many years ago, before I ever knew there'd be an Arise for Social Justice in Springfield, I used to be part of a program called Decisional Training that went into the county jails and taught decision-making skills to the prisoners both in a group and one to one. We could bring in books. One of them was Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. It's been years since I read it, but Frankl used his experience in a Nazi concentration camp to question why, barring the random and systematic murders over which prisoners had no control, some people lived and some people did not survive their experience. Frankl came to the conclusion that after all other freedoms were taken away, those who refused to give up their final freedom, the freedom to decide how they were going to react, were those who survived. I am oversimplifying both Frankl and the complexities of survival in those hellholes, but the gist of holds true.

Anyway, it was a very popular book in the jail, and was passed to person after person. After that we'd bring in a copy every few months. These guys recognized something about the power in choosing.

Sometimes when I'm talking with somebody about poor or homeless people, and we go back and forth, we often wind up at the same place, with that person saying that: people choose to stay poor, or homeless, or drug-addicted. And sometimes that looks to be about as true as it can be.

But then the question I want us to ask, that we have to ask, is, how does it come to be that people are willing to settle for so little? How and when and why is the damage done?

Well, I doubt this will be one of my more-read postings, but I would certainly wish for thoughtful response.

National Language

For an interesting discussion of what should be our national language and how and why this debate has been shaped, check out There's A Pattern Here to See.

Birds can die of thirst

From Super Cool Pets:

We all want to conserve energy these days for environmental and economical reasons. That's why we love the Deluxe Solar Sipper Birdbath. It keeps the birdbath drinking water from freezing by capturing sunlight to warm an air-insulated pocket. Effective to -20 degrees, depending upon weather conditions. Your backyard birds will thank you for supplying a much needed water supply in freezing temps. And in warmer weather, the insulation helps keep the water cool. Includes simple mounting bracket and hardware for placement anywhere in your backyard or garden.

Dimensions: 9-1/2" dia x 3-1/2" high

Birds can die of thirst

I had my first suspicions
when all of the ravens
flew north for the winter.
Everything seeded early
yet leaves clung to the trees
like it was going out of style
and squirrels cowered in the branches
instead of heading for my eaves
when the deep frost lowered.

Outside my window
life crouches against the earth
so as not to call attention.
I cannot change voices in this verse
to speak for the sparrow
chipping at the ice
not wanting to die of thirst
but I will call the answer
if one is given.

how much is a life worth?

The New York Times reported today (in the Business section) that Medicare is going to reduce its reimbursement rate for two successful cancer drugs to such a degree that hospitals will stop offering the drugs for treatment-- AND, due to federal rules, hospitals aren't allowed to administer a drug to ANY patient if they can't give it to Medicare patients.

These drugs have been incredibly successful in creating long-term remission for non-Hodgkins lymphoma patients when other treatments have failed. Medicare says hospitals are charging too much to buy and administer the drugs.

I wonder just how Medicare figured out the cost of a human life?

If the rich can't take it with them, at least they can let the rest of us know they had it!

Right after I posted this morning, I came across a Boston Globe article about Thomas R. Hudson Jr., who has just had a one million dollar mausoleum built for him in Blue Hill Cemetery in Braintee.

But enough about the rich. On the opposite end of such vainglory are natural cemeteries -- Greensprings Natural Cemetery, in New York's Finger Lakes Region, is the third such burial ground in the U.S. No embalming, biodegradable coffin, small flat headstone in a natural setting. From their site: "...in choosing how and where we are buried, aach one of us can converse, sustain and protect the earth...the earth from which, of course, we came and to which we will return."

Ecopod has pressed paper coffins; Kent Casket makes simple pine boxes. Much to think about, here. When will Massachusetts have a natural cemetery?

Millionaires need not apply

The U.S. now has 482 billionaires, meaning you can't just be a millionaire and make it on the Forbes' list of 400 richest Americans.

Guess if you have that much money, you won't think twice about buying your kid a Thomas the Tank Engine Custom Built Train at $46,950, or adding a $7,000 handbag to your wardrobe.

Meanwhile, the poverty level for a family of four remains at the stupendously low $20,294.

When regular people think about wealth, and what we'd do with it if we had it, we think we might run out of things to buy. How many cars, homes and private jets can one person actually use, anyway?

But for the rich, of course, wealth is not about things, it's about power.

Wealth is being redistributed from poorer to richer.

Between 1983 and 2004, the average wealth of the top 1 percent of households grew by 78 percent, reports Edward Wolff, professor of economics at New York University. The bottom 40 percent lost 59 percent.

In 2004, one out of six households had zero or negative net worth. Nearly one out of three households had less than $10,000 in net worth, including home equity. That's before the mortgage crisis hit. Holly Sklar, ZNet.

And we continue to fight over the crumbs, and blame people in subsidized housing and folks who receive food stamps for our struggles to survive.

Homeless blogs: checking in

The Homeless Guy, Kevin Barbieux, who blogs out of Nashville, is feeling disillusioned about Nashville's street paper, The Contributer, feeling that the paper is actually promoting an anti-homeless agenda. So he's writing the articles that he'd hoped would appear in the new paper.

David Eby is keeping an eye on homelessness and housing policy in Vancouver as the city prepares for the Olympics in Vancouver 2010 Olympics, Displacement and Homelessness blog.

Anya Peters, the Wandering Scribe in the UK, isn't living out of her car. She saw someone buy her book, Abandoned

Chris, the Homeless guy in NYC, is recovering from gall bladder surgery and still staying at a men's shelter. Slowly getting better.

A coyote, a cat and a woman in Wyoming

Check out this great blog about a woman who takes over caring for a ten day old coyote. Great photos. Daily Coyote.

Northerner or Southerner?

Have fun with this little vocabulary test that will tell you how much Southern blood you have in your language.
Alphadictionary.

What is a storm?

One inch of snow is one inch of snow, it is not a storm.
Two inches of snow is two inches of snow, it is not a storm.
Four inches of snow might be a storm if it is accompanied by fierce winds otherwise it is just four inches of snow.

The hyperbole of our local meteorologists when it comes to any winter precipitation at all destroys their credibility. Do they really think we hardy New Englanders are going to be so concerned by a little snow that we'll have to stay glued to our TVs for the local forecast? No, we think it's a big joke.

Really, our winters are getting milder. I think it must be fifteen years since the winter where it snowed substantially every four or five days, and stayed cold enough for the snow to accumulate, not melt. I remember I just couldn't throw the snow high enough anymore to keep the driveway cleared.

Webster's definition of storm:

.	a disturbance of the normal condition of the atmosphere, manifesting itself by winds of unusual force or direction, often accompanied by rain, snow, hail, thunder, and lightning, or flying sand or dust.

2.	a heavy fall of rain, snow, or hail, or a violent outbreak of thunder and lightning, unaccompanied by strong winds.

Bats Revisited

My sister and her family were coming came over for Thanksgiving and I was gathering together my rarely used serving dishes. One dish I wanted-- broad at the base, narrower at the top-- was on the very top of my cupboard and I had to fetch a stepladder to take it down. I could hear something rattling inside. When I looked in, I saw a small, dessicated brown bat-- just a patch of fur and black twiggy legs and wings. So at least one of the bats that circled my house this summer didn't make it out alive.

I may never be a bat connoisseur but I was saddened to stumble upon a story about a colony of rare fruit bats almost totally wiped out by armed "sportsmen" in Cyprus. Eventually I found a site in Australia, the Tolga Bat Hospital. The pictures are from their site.

Saturday morning

Got up grumbling about my chilly apartment then grumbled some more when I had to go out in my rattletrap, slow to heat up car but about five blocks from home and three blocks from the market near my house, I saw a woman and her three children, one in a stroller, all bundled up and walking home with grocery bags. Jeez, at least I have a car, I thought.

Wild winds blew oak leaves across the road-- when I'd stop for a red light a whole cavalcade would dash from one side of the road to the other. Oaks are always the last leaves to fall. A day like today, I consider the earth's housecleaning weather.

At the traffic lights at Bay and Berkshire, I glanced over towards the old Friendly's (now a Chinese restaurant) and there was a man with a kitchen broom attempting to sweep the parking lot clear of leaves and the slender threads of snow!-- an impossible task given the wind. He'd sweep to the north and the leaves would blow in from the south.

That has to be the dumbest thing I've ever seen, I thought, but then I glanced to my left at the other car waiting for the lights and saw that it was a spanking new, cherry red hum vee-like vehicle with a price sticker in the window. No, that's the dumbest thing, I thought. The broom guy is just a working joe trying to make a few bucks. The people in the humvee are separated from reality.

A little ways down the road, a red-tailed hawk flew by me. I hope the day never comes when I don't think it's worthwhile to watch a hawk when I can. Good omen. Go home and be grateful.

It's not worth it

I've been listening to the spin the Republicans are putting on the "success" of the surge in Iraq. Violence is down and life is returning to normal. What will the Democrats do now, the neocons say, if they are proven "wrong" about Iraq?

We have no proof yet that the surge has actually been able to turn the corner in Iraq and bring about whatever it is Bush is defining as success these days, but the big question for me is, So what?

The Iraq war has now lasted longer than World War Two. Think back to the rhetoric of why we invaded and what we supposedly would accomplish in Iraq and compare it to the measures of success the Bush Administration is willing to settle for now.

It's not worth it.

Two new reports about veterans that you should know about: according to USA Today, some 20,000 U.S. troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have brain injuries that have gone unreported in the military's official tally of the wounded.

Penny Coleman's blog Flashback says that 50% of reservists and 25% of enlisted personnel are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress syndrome.

It's not worth it.

Outsider Art

I've been a fan of Outsider Art and magnificent obsessions since I first heard of the Watts Towers as a kid. So I was happy to stumble upon news of these eight temples built underground near Turin, Italy. Enjoy.

No more tasers

Check out this Canadian site, No More Tasers, that keeps track of taser deaths around the world. I know tasers are supposed to reduce police injury and civilian deaths, but doesn't it seem to you that the police taser people they would be very unlikely to actually shoot?

Why not this homeless solution for Springfield?

There's lots of homeless news I will try to catch up on, but this really caught my eye-- don't know how long this link will stay live, so here's the whole story:

MOBILE HOMELESS BUS SHELTERS PLANNED IN HAWAII - Nov. 8, AP
A nonprofit group feeding the homeless has new plans for getting people off the streets — tour buses.

The group called H-5, or Hawaii Helping the Hungry Have Hope, is unveiling the first two of a fleet of mobile homeless shelters for Oahu.

Nineteen used buses have been donated to H-5 director Utu Langi by Roberts Hawaii for the project.

Langi is removing the bus seats and having the interior of each 40-foot vehicle retrofitted with eight beds in small partitioned units.

H-5 has been distributing about 6,000 meals a month around Oahu to increasing numbers of homeless.

The group plans to introduced the buses Wednesday, kickoff for the annual Walk the Talk 130-mile trek around the island to raise awareness of homelessness.

One of the buses is to travel with the walkers to introduce the mobile shelter to the homeless. Langi says he hopes to have five buses ready as shelters by mid-2008.

The buses will drive up to areas where homeless congregate and offer the shelter through other organizations that will provide bathroom facilities, since the buses are not equipped with restrooms.

"The idea is also not to burden one community or one organization too long," Langi said, adding that the buses will offer better conditions than larger shelters and will reach people who won't or can't make it to the government-sponsored shelters.

"I'm hoping to help a lot of people with this goofy idea," Langi said.

SO: the hell with building a new shelter-- the one that Friends of the Homeless plans still won't be open 24 hours -- and put the money into permanent housing and a day centre, which people really need-- a place to get out of the weather, look for work and connect with services.

I'm trying to remember what year it was that Mayor Ryan called us together and said that the new shelter would break ground in the Spring. Still waiting.

Where will the Food Pantry go?

First Church at Court Square is closing at the end of December and the congregation is disbanding, for all the same reasons so many older churches have closed. I really can't picture Court Square without First Church, established 1819, although I'm sure the building will be preserved.

Since 1977, First Church has also provided a home for the Open Pantry's Emergency Food Pantry, and hosts the Loaves and Fishes Soup Kitchen on weekends.

The Food Pantry is an essential food resource for low-income people in Springfield, providing them with a balanced meal for a few days. Last year the pantry served nearly 28,000, half of them children. A third of the households that come to the pantry have at least one working member. 10% of pantry recipients are elders.

This is going to be a rough winter for poor people. It'll cost $200 to $400 more to keep warm this season. Food prices are rising. And there's less of everything to go around.

So the Emergency Food Pantry needs a new space, affordable or donated. Any offers?

On a related note, I see that the old St. Francis Chapel on Bridge St. is going to be the overflow shelter for the Worthington St. Shelter operated by the Friends of the Homeless. Wasn't it only this past April that the Open Pantry asked for use of the same site as a home for the Warming Place shelter, about to be evicted by the city from the old York St. jail, and was denied? Why is it that the city (and Friends of the Homeless) can catch the ear of Bishop McDonnell and the Open Pantry can't?

Mars puts on a show

The planet Mars is "only" 55 million miles away from the earth right now, and won't be this close again until 2016. This Monday, Mars will be only one degree from the full moon. Make sure you take a look, either Monday night looking to the east, or early Tuesday morning looking to the west. For more info, check out NASA's site.

Is this how the government supports our troops?

I find this story almost impossible to believe, but apparently The U.S. Government is asking wounded soldiers to return their signing bonuses, because they are unable to serve out their commitments! So you can lose an arm or a leg and be in debt to the government! You can read more at the Carpetbagger Report.

Where are the crows?

Stepped outside my office today to have a smoke; I swear I heard one crow say to another, "Come on! Come on!"

Once when I was camping at Nickerson's with my kids, it was very early in the morning, I was still asleep in my tent, and I heard a voice shout, "Ma! Ma!"
"What? What?" I said, disgruntled. But when nobody answered, and I poked my head out of the tent, I saw only a crow, sitting on the picnic table.

Maybe it's because my path to and from work has changed, but so far this fall I haven't seen the endless waves of crows headed to their roost at twilight. After the crows' conversation this afternoon, I was remembering the invasion of Springfield College ten years ago by approximately 12,000 crows! At the time, it caused a great commotion, and the college was setting off noise cannons, placing artifical owls, etc., to drive them away.

Just for the hell of it, I called up Springfield College and asked the young man who answered the phone if there were still flocks of crows (to be correct, a murder of crows) hanging out at the college. There was a long pause (What kind of wierdo is this? I could hear him thinking) and then he said, "Actually, I don't think I've ever seen a crow on campus."

"OK, thanks a lot," I said, knowing it absolutely could not be true that every single crow had abandoned academia. But I guess they're not a problem anymore.

His response reminded me of my favorite story about Krishnamurti. Krishnamurti was being driven through the Indian countryside by two of his disciples. The disciples, sitting in the front seat, were having an hours-long and quite heated discussion about the nature of awareness. Finally one of the disciples turned around to Krishnamurti.

"What do you think awareness is, Master?"
"I think awareness is knowing when you've run over a goat," Krishamurti answered.

What it said and what I saw

What it said: Violence in Iraq last week dipped to its lowest point for any week since January of 2006; but that news came as 22 people were killed in attacks today nationwide.

What I saw: but that came as news to the 22 people killed in attacks today nationwide

Coyotes and fishers and moose (Oh my)

Stan Freeman at the Springfield Republican wrote an interesting story this week about how our Eastern coyotes are actually a genetic blend of Western coyote and Eastern wolf!

Wildlife has been returning to Massachusetts in a big way. I remember a few years ago, as I was driving up Bay St., I saw a magnificent, fully antlered deer standing just behind the wrought iron fence at Oak Grove Cemetery. I called the groundskeeper when I got to work and he was well aware of the buck and was making his own calls to various state agencies for guidance.

Fishers are back, too. The largest member of the weasel family, their reputation as cat killers is probably well-deserved. I lived in Maine for about five years in the early 70's, where fishers had an almost mythical character. I saw one once, streaking across a back road at twilight. My hair stood on end. They were reintroduced in Massachusetts in the 1950's by the logging industry because they are one of the porcupine's only predators.

Thanks to the reforestation of Massachusetts, even moose are returning.. We now have a population of about 1,000 established in just 25 years, according to Stephen DeStephano, research professor at UMass, Amherst.

I've often thought about how amazing it is that Massachusetts is more forested now than a hundred years ago. Our forests started their road to recovery during the Gold Rush of 1849 and took another step forward during the Civil War, when many returning soldiers abandoned farming entirely. Then, in the 1930's, Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) put 10,000 men and boys to work in our forests. You can read more about Massachusett's history of forest conservation at MA's Department of Conservation and Recreation. Why don't we do something like this again?

One sad note in this picture is that the increase in forest cover equals the decline in local agricultural production. But that's another story.

Graphic from David Foster; 'Wildlands and Woodlands: A Vision for the Forests of Massachusetts" Harvard Forest, Harvard University, 2006/

Send Bush a copy of the Constitution

You can send President Bush a copy of the U.S. Constitution (just to remind him), courtesy of the Center for Constitutional Rights, just by clicking here:

Expand the Mass Bottle Bill

Here's what's not covered by our current Massachusetts Bottle Bill:
- Carbonated and non-carbonated water, including flavored and non-flavored filtered water, mineral water and purified waters;
- Carbonated and noncarbonated fruit juices and drinks;
- Carbonated and noncarbonated vegetable juices and drinks;
- Ready-to-drink coffee and tea beverages;
- Sports drinks
Encourage Massachusetts legislators to support a new bottle bill, H3356 by going to MassPirg's website.

Ward representation and the School Committee

Ward representation's impact on the City Council has gotten the most attention so far, but big changes are in store for the School Committee, also.

Victor Davila emailed me the other day to ask what would happen in the 2009 elections to the School Committee, which, up until this the last election, has had staggered, four year terms. Would only those seats up for re-election become ward seats? Or would all the seats that were going to become ward seats happen at the same timje? I told him that was a good question, and I'd have to find out.

The more I thought about it, though, it did seem to me that all seats would have to transition to ward seats at the same time. I checked in with the city's attorney, Ed Pakula, and sure enough, that's what he and Mayor Ryan were envisioning.

Photo from the Springfield School Dept. website
That means that Thomas Ashe, Antoinette Pepe and Chris Collins will only be serving two year terms. I wonder if they realized that that would be the case if they were elected AND ward representation passed?

In 2009, we will be electing the entire School Committee, two-at large and four ward seats, meaning an end to staggered terms. If it seems important to restore them, it will have to be some with separate legislation.

Just to remind folks what they voted for, School Committee seats will represent wards One and Three, Four and Five, Six and Seven and Two and Eight, PLUS two at-large.

In the eye of the beholder

Check out this great cartoon site, Birds and Moon. You can have your favorite cartoon printed on a tee-shirt and more...

Sign this petition in support of homeless campers

Real Change newspaper in Seattle, WA is asking for a show of support for homeless campers. At least 2,000 people a night are "sleeping rough" in King County. They need help in getting housing and services. Instead, the police break up encampments and destroy people's personal belongings.

Extensive protocols for responsible campsite outreach and clearance exist. They include on-going human services outreach to homeless campers, assistance in accessing emergency services, and provision of long-term housing. The City of Seattle has done none of these things.

Have fun and do good at the same time

25,000 people, most of them children, die of hunger or hunger-related causes every day. YOU can make a difference by playing a vocabulary game at FreeRice. For every word you get right, 10 grains of rice are donated through the U.N. to the places and people that need it the most. Try it, you'll like it!

I won't miss Commissioner Flynn

Seems like it's all over but for the official announcement-- Springfield's Police Commissioner Flynn will be leaving Springfield less than halfway through his five-year contract for the greener pastures of Wilwaukee. Good riddance, as far as I'm concerned.

My beefs with Flynn are minor compared to his impact-- or lack thereof-- on our community. The last thing we need is another dose of cynicism.

Is violent crime really down in Springfield? You couldn't prove it by me, and nobody knows what figures to believe.

From Flynn's very first day in Springfield, he made it clear that he was going to focus on "quality of life" issues, changing the "perception" of downtown Springfield from dangerous to less dangerous. Part of changing the perception was driving out homeless people. What good has it done?

My civil libertarian friends won't agree with me, but I thought that placing cameras in strategic places downtown and elsewhere was a good idea. People are less likely to commit a crime if they think they can be easily identified and caught! Whatever happened to that initiative, does anyone know?

Maybe the best thing Flynn did was to create a Civilian Review Board. However, I was just on the Springfield Police Department website, and couldn't find any mention of the board.

The faster our city can move on from Flynn, the better.

Homeless man who helped catch killer meets widow

He put himself in harm's way to keep the attention of a man who had just shot and killed a Broward deputy until the man could be captured. You can read more at the Florida Sun-Sentinel.

New bill would help homeless veterans

Sen Charles Schumer, D-NY, represents a state where more than 21,000 homeless veterans live. $225 million of his bill would go to expanding housing for veterans. Read more at NY1 News.

There's a real story behind this unstaged photo

Check out Daily Mail to find out.