West Branch of the Westfield River

Cats, jobs, music, gardens

The cats broke into my room quite early this morning, bringing an end to my plans to sleep in. Maybe it's just as well. I have to finish a grant for Arise this weekend. More than anything, I'd like to be outside working in the garden, but most of that will have to wait for my next unemployment check and a solid block of time.

Last night I went up to the annual May Day event organized by Western Mass. Jobs with Justice which this year took place at the Campus Center Auditorium at UMass. Funny, I've always supported unions but never been in one!-- never any union at the places I've worked.

The speaker this year was long-time community and labor organizer Stewart Acuff. In his speech, he laid the moral and economic foundation for the Employee Free Choice Act, which strengthens the right of workers to unionize.

We gather on this May Day of 2009 at a time of great hope and great promise and a time of great challenge.

How we meet the challenges and opportunities which we face all around us will determine the near term future of our country, the quality of life for our kids and grandkids and possibly even the world.

Though some of us may have been divided in the past, we no longer have the luxury of division.
Workers, trade unionist, advocates and organizers of the poor and immigrants, environmentalists, feminists, LGBT activist, clergy and people of faith, community leaders, seekers of peace and warriors for justice, our individual destiny is bound up in our common destiny.

So we are bound by our common destiny, but we are bound even more tightly by our common values. You see, my brothers and sisters, we believers in justice and progress are bound by the fundamental thread of humanity - as old as the human species and the human spirit.

The Huffington Post has published his entire speech.

As usual, music was a big part of the celebration. Western Mass. is blessed with talent. Tom Neilson, Red Valley Fog, Verne McArthur, Jay Mankita and Jose Ayerve all performed, as well as the WMA contingent of the Raging Grannies.

I'm not on the inside of this, but it seems to be union organizing is ready to make the biggest gains in years.

11 a.m. and a quick glance out the kitchen window: I think my strawberries are flowering and I'm going to go look.

Linking to blogs about homelessness, environmental justice and Western Mass. happenings

I'm eighteen months into writing this blog and one of the resources I hope my readers take advantage of is the extensive list of links that I've compiled and try to keep updated.

The biggest list is I keep is of blogs that write about homelessness-- in particular those written by homeless and formerly homeless people themselves, although they're not that easy to find. I could put in many more links to agencies that work to end homelessness, but most of them already have a voice; still, I've added a couple that are particularly well-done-- L.A.s Homeless Blog, for example.

Some homeless blogs come and go quickly, but many writers have made a long-term commitment to their blogs. Homeless Man Speaks describes life on the streets in just a few lines of dialogue a day. Oldtimer Speaks Out is dedicated to homeless and other veterans, and is currently deep into a tutorial about house-building by Habitat for Humanity. Michael at SLO Homeless speaks with thoughtfully and experience about the struggles homeless people face and how hard it can be sometimes to get housed people to understand.

Rare and valuable are those blogs that follow the people's movements for housing around the world. Squatter City posts about the resiliance and tragedy of squatter communities in Afghanistan, Brazil and elsewhere; Save Feral Human Habitat covers tent cities, homeless activism, and saving the Canadian environment.

Unlike blogs about homelessness, environmental blogs are easy to find and there are so many good ones that my link list is more representative and more about what I find and like than it is comprehensive. Native Harvest, the home of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, promotes indigenous autonomy as well as a catalogue of products including wild rice, organic coffee and native arts. It was founded by poet and warrior Winona LaDuke. Inhabitant is about "forward design for the world we inhabit."

Last but not least I like to collect Western Mass blogs or blogs by Western Mass. authors, even when they run in a different political gamut or aren't political at all. Grace the Dog tells odd little stories loosely about journalism and the media. Exploring Western Mass blends the past and the present with exquisite photographs of our region. Springfield Intruder takes a passionate and acerbic view of Springfield's neighborhoods and politics.

Do take the time to check out the variety of visions in the blogging world today.

Graphic from the International Alliance of Inhabitants

Stop and Shop discontinuing plastic bags

I went to Stop & Shop today (never Big Y) to pick up some foodstuff for a party tonight, and I heard the cashier ask the woman ahead of me if she wanted to buy a Stop & Shop reusable bag for 99 cents.

"No, thanks," she said.

"You'll have to do it sooner or later," the elderly bagger said, "because after this month, we won't be providing them anymore."

"Will you still have a job?" I asked the bagger.

"Oh, yes, we'll all still be here," he said.

Now, I'm not sure if Stop & Shop's bags are being produced in an environmentally responsible way-- I'll find out more the next time I go-- but this is certainly a step in the right direction. Every now and then, voluntary action gets the jump on mandated regulation.

I've often thought that manufacturing shopping bags could be a great cottage industry right right here in Western Mass. It's just one of the very manyl green collar jobs that could help revitalize our region if we only had the vision and the will.

One of my daughters is getting married in June, and last year for Christmas I bought her enough bags for a two-person household from Eco-Bags. I liked the product a lot, and the prices were reasonable given that they are fair trade and environmentally manufactured, but how much nicer-- as well as more environmental-- if I had been able to buy it locally!

I wrote back in February about some of the larger issues with plastic waste-- and yes, I know it's not the only environmental change we have to make-- but it is a significant problem and I'm proud of Stiop & Shop for making a move in the right direction.

If bats are in trouble, so are we

They can live for twenty-five years and only have one baby every twelve months. They eat insects that plague humans and they help to pollinate plants. And 90% of them may have died in some places in New England this winter.

Little brown bats, Northern long-eared, Eastern pipistrelle, and the federally endangered Indiana bat are being stricken by a disease biologists are naming White Nose Syndrome, although whether it's a virus, a bacteria or a fungus is not yet clear. These species are the first infected, but biologists fear that all species of bats are vulnerable.

Sick bats were first discovered only a little more than a year ago in a cave near Albany, New York. In one cave, the population of bats plummeted from 1,300 to 38. By February, sick bats had also been found in Vermont and Massachusetts. By the middle of the month, the Boston Globe reported infected bats had been found in two caves in Western Massachusetts near Chester.

"No one has a clue what is going on," said Tom French, assistant director of the natural heritage and endangered species program of the Massachusetts Division of Fish and Wildlife, who helped find sick bats in Massachusetts."

Caves where sick bats are found are being closed to the public, not because humans are in danger but because it's not known how the disease is being spread.

This month, sick bats were discovered in caves in West Virginia.

With the stress on bees, our main pollinators, what's happening to bats is a major cause for concern.