Strange Encounters

Life is full of bizarre coincidences, and below I describe one that is a few years old. It is doubtful that it has any meaning other than being something unusual that should inspire people to reexamine the events that would unfold a few weeks later – and to reexamine everything that led up to those events.

Sometime in the mid- to late 1990s I was headed for a walk in the woods that are featured here, in search of an early American road. (Most of this forest has since been cut down to make way for a subdivision.) I had to walk up the street from my aunt’s home, maybe 200 yards, and down the driveway, and past a recently constructed “farm house,” which is really just another subdivision home with more land than most. The family that lives in this house had two dogs at that time, Max and Lily. When I was parallel to the house, Max left the patio where he had been guarding the home and charged me, followed by the gentle Lily. Max growled and barked and bared his teeth inches away from me until one of the subdivision daughters came out and called Max and Lily in. I think I turned around and returned to the farm at that point.

The homeowner, X, drove by me in one of his farm vehicles later that morning as I was walking down the street and kindly stopped and asked me if Max had bitten me. No, he hadn’t, I said. But a few years later, Max bit my aunt’s neighbor, M, someone whom Max should have known well, and Max, apparently to the great sorrow of X, was put down.

And then in mid-August 2001, knowing that Max was gone, I headed out for another walk in these woods, again in search of the signs of the early American road. This time I made it into the woods. I don’t recall whether or not I found indications of the old road, as my memory of that day has been overshadowed by everything that followed in subsequent weeks.

When I emerged from the corner of the woods featured in the photograph, I immediately caught site of a large dog that was perhaps part collie. I was alarmed, but soon saw a man standing a few feet away behind the dog, and called out to the man and asked him to please hold his dog. He assured me his dog would not bite, and in fact, we got into a conversation, and he told me he was training his dog in search and rescue. He may also have told me that he had come from central Massachusetts, but perhaps X told me that. I no longer recall.

To me there was nothing unusual about that explanation. X, who is deceased, was known for sharing his land – I knew then that there was a community of people from Southeast Asia who had been displaced to the Lowell area by the turmoil in Southeast Asia who had taken up gardening, at X’s invitation, on part of his land. But the next morning, X stopped into my aunt’s kitchen to chat, and when I told him my story about my experience, he said that the dog I had encountered was a “cadaver” dog. My aunt later explained that X just had a morose sense of humor.

Yet X, who was an American Airlines employee, was probably among the first to die on the morning of September 11, 2001.

I’m not one of those people who necessarily think that terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 were an inside job because I don’t know enough. But here is what I’m pretty sure is accurate: the terrorist attacks of 9-11 allowed some very disreputable, malevolent people to expand their power and intensify an already dangerously imperialistic, undemocratic, and environmentally destructive national course.


And I don’t think it’s enough to just celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama ...


... and throw shoes at replicas of George W. Bush and consider ourselves done with the past eight years.

Because we aren’t talking about eight years. We need to start a self-examination that goes back to the Trail of Tears, the Second Removal, Polk’s War, the Spanish-American War, and right up through to the Carter Doctrine and beyond. But these topics are for future blog entries.

The Good News and the Bad News

Here's the -- tentatively -- good news:

New CEQA Guidelines Expected to Shift Transportation Priorities

Here's the bad news:

Oberstar: Mass Transit Got the Shaft to Make Room For Tax Cuts
"The reason for the reduction in overall funding -- we took money out of Amtrak ..."

Say it ain't so, Joe.

The City Chicken

This is Joni holding an egg. She and I have recently gotten to know each other through our volunteer activities -- we've been tabling across from each other at different events for a couple of years now. She is originally from Upstate New York, but she and her husband have been living in their house in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco for 35 years now. For 30 of those years, she has been keeping chickens for their eggs. She now has four chickens. She gets her chickens and organic chicken feed from a place in Half Moon Bay. I guess she drives to Half Moon Bay -- but otherwise she rides her bicycle all over the city. In this photograph, you can see the enclosure that she and her husband have created for their chickens.


Long before it was fashionable, Joni and her husband installed solar panels on the roof of their house. They also practice solar drying -- hanging their laundry on a clothesline to dry instead of using a dryer.


Much of San Francisco is considered too cold and foggy for hot weather plants such as tomatoes, peppers, and corn. But they grow all three of those food plants in their backyard garden on the sunny east side of San Francisco. Their chickens have the run of the garden, and, just like my aunt's chickens, they produce eggs with brilliant orange yolks.


When Joni and her husband first moved in, there was nothing in their yard, but their neighbor had two baby plum trees, and they transplanted them to their own yard. The trees are now full-grown and producing fruit, and they have strung up a hammock between them. From other plants, they also harvest Gravenstein and Golden Delicious apples, Meyer lemons, pineapple guavas, and labor intensive gingko nuts.


The plum trees also provide something else -- wood for their wood burning stove in their kitchen. Out of concern for the dangers of releasing particulates into the air, they only burn wood when it is raining. The mosaic in back of the stove is by Joni.

Rally to Save the Market Street Bike Lane

Friday, January 16, 2009


Bicyclists gather at the intersection of Market Street and the Central Freeway in San Francisco to rally against the SF Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) plan to remove the bike lane and force bicyclists to merge with vehicle traffic.


California State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano encourages participants to throw their bike shoes at members of the MTA commission.


San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum would like there to be as many police officers enforcing traffic laws to protect bicyclists as there were police officers keeping a watchful eye on the rally.



Bicyclists Marc Salomon, Pi Ra, and Matt add to the gathering of people in support of improving the bicycle lane instead of removing it.

Grass Fed and Free Range

Cows in the mist, November 2008

Country Chickens
As part of my grandmother’s effort to live closer to the land, she got hens and roosters, began raising chickens, and started collecting their eggs and selling them to customers who wanted truly farm fresh eggs. This was at least a decade before the term “free range” became popular. Knowing full well that eggs have probably been the single most easily collected condensed source of nutrition since the dawn of humanity and our hunter/gatherer days, she also ate an egg every day, insisting that their nutritional value trumped any concerns others might have about cholesterol.

My aunt has carried on that practice, though I don’t think she has any roosters, which can be loud and vicious. The last time I visited her, she served me some eggs one morning for breakfast. Even though I have been going to the farm and consuming eggs there for years, for the first time I noticed the brilliance of the orange yolks. My aunt said that color was from the carotene in the grass and other plants that her free-range chickens are able to forage. To the left, chickens gather at the feet of members of my extended family on Thanksgiving day, 2008.

My aunt and her husband are also raising grass fed beef cattle. They now have four full-grown miniature Black Anguses and one Black Angus calf – with more on the way. My aunt studied carefully before she chose these cows (officially hers are Wyndham cows – a variation of the Black Angus), known because of the quality of their meat, their small size, and their gentle dispositions. The cattle spend nights in the basement of the barn, and then graze a section of the pasture by day. My aunt carefully cordons off different sections using an electric wire so that no part of the field is over grazed.

The cows above had been eying me warily from within the barn and would not initially come out. But the second they saw my aunt pick up a stake and move the electric wire, they emerged from the basement at a trot, eager to go at the fresh grass. (July 2008)

On Thanksgiving day 2008, my cousin's daughter and my nephew enjoy the chicken coup and fresh eggs. Below, my aunt emerges from the fenced off area that encloses the chicken coup, a place safe from coyotes, raccoons, and other predators, in July 2008.

Going Backward

A bicyclist travels down the Market Street bike lane in San Francisco at the Entrance to the Central Freeway

Transit Reform, Parking Regulation
and Emissions Reductions
PROPOSITION A, November 6, 2007

Shall the Municipal Transportation Agency be provided greater governing authority, and additional funding, and be required to develop a Climate Action Plan, and shall the City not increase the maximum number of parking spaces allowed for new private development projects unless approved by a super-majority of the Board?
_________________________________________________________________
Regulating Parking Spaces
PROPOSITION H, November 6, 2007

Shall the Planning Code be changed to increase the number of parking spaces that developers are permitted to build and ease restrictions on building new parking spaces for residential and non-residential buildings?
____________________________________________________________________

San Francisco sustainable living activists rallied around one local ballot measure and against another local ballot measure in the fall of 2007. We were for Proposition A (top) and against Proposition H (second from top). Both were transportation and land-use related measures. Proposition A has some good elements for city residents and some that were perhaps not so good upon reflection. But it was also a charter amendment, and it had a clause in it that, if the measure passed, would trump Prop. H if Prop. H passed.

For anyone concerned about the financial livability of the city -- and the environmental health of the planet -- Prop. H was an over-the-top bad idea. Prop. H was promoted by Gap founder Donald Fisher (who doesn't even live in SF) and Webcor, a construction company. They wanted to remove restrictions on building garages for two reasons: 1) because residential buildings with garage spaces, in this already inflated city, rent or sell for more; and 2) because they thought commercial garages would increase the profit margins of the big chain stores and hoteliers in downtown San Francisco. But had H passed, congestion and housing costs would have increased. It didn't pass.

But A passed, and because it passed, the role of our elected members of the Board of Supervisors in a lot of transportation-related matters was minimized or eliminated. Traffic engineering and transit-related decisions are now primarily in the hands of professionals at the agency and Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) commissioners, who are not elected. In some ways, that's good -- after all, we do not want politicians dictating to scientists about the impact of greenhouse gases on the climate or how to prevent the spread of HIV.

But in this case, it's not so clear that removing the role of our elected officials is such a good idea: the San Francisco intersection of our major thoroughfare, Market Street, with on and off ramps to one of our few freeways, the Central Freeway at Octavia Street, is a nightmare for pedestrians and especially bicyclists. There is a dedicated eastbound bicycle lane on Market Street at this intersection, and it is illegal for people driving east on Market Street to turn right onto the freeway on ramp out of concern for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Nonetheless, there have been a number of collisions between eastbound bicyclists and eastbound vehicles whose drivers are making illegal right hand turns onto the freeway. In response, prior to the passage of Prop. A when our elected local representatives still had to approve every MTA traffic design decision, the MTA put up physical barriers, including a concrete island, to prevent drivers from making illegal right hand turns.

Because collisions still happen -- though at a lower rate -- the MTA is now considering removing the bicycle lane and the physical barriers, and forcing bicyclists to merge with car traffic on Market Street. Needless to say, bicyclists, including me, are not happy about this. But what recourse do we have?

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is organizing a rally at the intersection from 7:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. on the morning of Friday, January 16, and is also urging people to contact Mayor Gavin Newsom at gavin.newsom@sfgov.org, City Attorney Dennis Herrera at cityattorney@sfgov.org, and Nat Ford at Nathaniel.Ford@sfmta.com.

299 Valencia Street

The following is an item on the January 13, 2009 San Francisco Board of Supervisors agenda for anytime after 4 pm.

It's relevant because it's about a residential development at 299 Valencia in which the developer requested -- and was granted unanimously by members of the San Francisco Planning Commission -- a CU, or conditional use permit, to exceed the allowable parking.

The project at 299 Valencia is in a dense, transit-rich part of San Francisco. Our city is also governed by a "transit-first" clause in our charter. In particular, it states, "Parking policies for areas well served by public transit shall be designed to encourage travel by public transit and alternative transportation."

By right, the developer can include one parking space for every two units in the project. That's a significant improvement over the one-to-one that developers have been accustomed to. But this particular developer went to the San Francisco Planning Commission and asked to be able to provide more than the allowable .5:1 parking.

That's not good. For one thing, parking adds to the cost of residential units, driving up the cost of housing, in a city where housing prices are already inflated beyond reason. For another thing, if the developer gets his or her way, congestion will worsen, buses will slow down, and pedestrians and bicyclists will be in greater danger. And the ecological demise of the planet will accelerate. Besides, the development at 299 Valencia is part of a planning area, Market and Octavia, that has been under consideration for nine years. And while not everyone is satisfied with the final plan, community activists worked hard to reduce the amount of parking that developers would be able to include in future projects. Now that the planning process is more or less complete, to allow a developer early on in the development process to get a CU to increase the allowable parking sets a very bad precedent indeed.

But neighbors and activists have gotten busy. They have appealed the Planning Commission decision to the Board of Supervisors and plan to coalesce in the Board of Supervisors chamber on Tuesday afternoon (Room 250, City Hall, SF, CA), and testify in favor of the appeal. If all goes well tomorrow, that's where I plan to be also.

8. 081420
[Public Hearing - Conditional Use Appeal for 299 Valencia Street]
Hearing of persons interested in or objecting to the decision of the Planning Commission by its Motion No. 17739 dated November 6, 2008, relating to the approval of a Conditional Use Authorization (Case No. 2006.0432CV), under Planning Code Sections 121.1, 151.1 and 303 to allow a large-lot mixed-use development providing up to 25 off-street residential parking spaces and 2 car share spaces in an NCT-3 (Moderate-Scale Neighborhood Commercial Transit District) Zoning District and a 50-X Height and Bulk District on property located at 299 Valencia Street, Lot 014 in Assessor's Block No. 3532. (Filed by Jason Henderson on behalf of the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association and subscribed by Supervisors Peskin, Ammiano, Maxwell, Daly and Mirkarimi; District 6.)
12/9/2008, CONTINUED. The President inquired as to whether any member of the public wished to address the Board. Continued January 6, 2009.
1/6/2009, CONTINUED. The president inquired as to whether any member of the public wished to address the Board. Jason Henderson, appellant Silvia Johnson Continued to January 13, 2009.

The Road to Be Taken?

Illinois, the Land of Ethanol?

It’s January 11, Barack Obama’s inauguration is a little more than a week away, and we are beginning to see how things are shaping up for his administration.

I live in San Francisco, a dense, expensive community, and think that almost all issues come down, eventually, to land use and transportation – how we develop as a city, who gets to live here based on the cost of living, and how we get from Point A to Point B. I think that’s it in a nutshell for the nation (and the world) as well – where we live and work and how we get from one place to another. And all those issues relate to energy – the energy that it takes to till the land and grow crops, the energy it takes to transport crops and other goods, the energy it takes to live in a suburb versus the energy it takes to live in a dense community, and so on.

I’m thrilled that we are getting rid of George W. Bush and his administration, but agree with my 10-year-old niece that Obama is a “mixed bag.” He is a product of the people – and their money – who got him to the White House. As such he’s being lobbied from all sides.

So how is Barack Obama approaching the issue of energy and its nexus with land use and transportation?

The only way we can tell, so far, is through his few pronouncements on the issue of energy and through his appointments.

During the last debate between Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Republican candidate John McCain, Obama differentiated himself from environmentalists by coming out in support of “clean coal,” a term widely considered an oxymoron, especially since the December 22 Tennessee Valley coal ash spill. (A friend of mine who went to Denver for the DNC reported back that “clean coal” signs had been posted all over the city.)

And his appointments?

From the West

He has nominated Steven Chu to be Secretary of Energy. Steven Chu has been the head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for some time now. A scientist/Green Party friend of mine who works at Lawrence Berkeley reacted positively to Chu’s selection, saying that at the time of Chu’s selection that he, Chu, was the only Obama nomination that he, my friend, liked so far.

So what’s good about Chu? Well for one thing, said my scientist friend, Chu rides a bicycle to work.

Wow. Anyone who rides a bicycle to work, especially someone that HIGH UP, gets beaucoup brownie points in my book. And the Wall Street Journal has sent up red warning flags about him because he is apparently on the record calling coal a nightmare, and advocating that American gas taxes be raised to the level of what European drivers pay. But he needs to proceed cautiously. He is already being courted by the coal industry.

From the Midwest

Obama has also nominated Tom Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa, to be the Secretary of Agriculture, and Ray LaHood, a moderate Republican congressman from Illinois, to be Secretary of Transportation. Well, what does the Secretary of Agriculture have to do with transportation, you ask? Ethanol, that’s what …

To many people, ethanol is just more snake oil, something that a few people can get rich of off and that will briefly extend delusions about western lifestyle – but at the expense of the soil, future generations, and current generations that depend on inexpensive corn for survival. The Organic Consumers Association, in response, has started an online petition to stop the appointment of Vilsack to the post of Secretary of Agriculture because of his support for the ethanol industry and CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations).

Ray LaHood, on the other hand, is getting praise from some Illinois bicyclists who say that he’s been a great advocate for recreational bicyclists on trails and CMAQ (the federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program). But San Francisco bicyclists naturally want to know what he thinks about bicycling on streets. LaHood also supports Amtrak, the federally run and subsidized passenger rail system, and has broken with other Republicans over funding Amtrak.

All over the country …

People want a slice of the next stimulus package pie, and in the case of transportation, there is competition between the highway and construction lobby on the one side and the advocates of public transportation and smart growth on the other side. Which way will Obama lean? If he takes seriously the warnings about global climate change, he should lean towards the advocates of public transportation and smart growth.

The climate connection

James Hansen, the climate scientist who heads the NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and who has been openly critical of the Bush administration’s dismissal of concerns about global climate change, recently sent a letter to Barack and Michelle Obama urging them to take action on the climate. Hansen proposes, briefly:

1) A moratorium and phase out of coal plants that do not capture and sequester carbon dioxide;

2) A flat carbon tax that is collected at the wellhead or at the point of entry to the US, with distribution of 100 percent of the dividends to the public on a per-capita basis. This tax system rewards people who use less energy and penalizes those who use more; and,

3) A research and development program for "4th Generation nuclear power.”

I’m nervous about nuclear power, but one of the participants on the Car-Free Living listserv writes the following:

Fourth GNP can “burn” waste, leaving a small volume of waste with a half-life of decades rather than thousands of years. Thus 4th GNP could help solve the nuclear waste problem, which must be dealt with in any case. Because of this, a portion of the $25B that has been collected from utilities to deal with nuclear waste justifiably could be used to develop 4th generation reactors. [Hansen] stresses that this R&D program doesn't commit us to building such reactors, but rather to develop a working prototype, so we have a workable option in case renewables cannot be scaled up quickly enough to phase out coal-powered plants. He also says that coal plants with carbon capture and sequestration is a worthwhile R&D effort; it doesn't exist yet, but a workable prototype gives us additional options, including capturing carbon emissions from biofuel plants.

I’m certain Hansen is right about the need to confront global climate change and do so immediately, but I think I lean towards environmental justice superstar Van Jones, who recently said of carbon sequestration, “It sounds painful. You take the carbon and put it in big holes in the ground, and someone will just sit on it and hope it never comes out. It turns out, there aren’t that many big holes in the ground …” He then added, “And don’t let me get started on safe nuclear …”

Apparently public transportation and smart growth went unmentioned in Hansen's letter (http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20081229_DearMichelleAndBarack.pdf), but I hope others can get the ears of the Obamas about these solutions to the climate crisis.

I took this photograph of an Illinois cornfield with silos in the background last summer from an Amtrak train, the California Zephyr, as we were traveling between Chicago and Denver. Again, the photograph only partially captures the beauty of the landscape.

Back to the Land

During this past Thanksgiving, an aunt told me that there had been a "back to the land" movement in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and that my grandmother, unhappy in her role as a mother and housewife
in the Texas community where my grandfather was teaching, caught the fever and convinced my grandfather to pick up the family, move back to New England and buy a farm.

There was nothing romantic about the reality of farm living for my grandparents or their children. They did not have a lot of money, and the farm was old and needed lots of work. It was drafty and poorly heated in the wintertime, and in the summer, a small pond would form in the back if the stream that runs through the cellar was not kept clear of debris.

Still, preserving the farm and the land around it became my grandmother's passion after my grandfather died. She was a reader and must have been very well-informed about not only the geological history of the land and the non-human life forms that thrive there, but the story of the people and the land, as well.

Products of the Land

William Bradford, in Of Plymouth Plantation, his decades-long account of the Pilgrims in New England, described the land the Pilgrims encountered as "a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men." In fact, however, the Indians of coastal New England, though decimated in population by European diseases by the time the Pilgrims arrived, had built numerous villages surrounded by cultivated fields and had burned the forests and fields elsewhere to make game hunting easier. In addition, "wild strawberries carpeted many of the burned-over glades. In the spring, 'herrings come up in such abundance into their brooks and fords to spawn that it is almost impossible to ride through without treading on them.' Huge turkeys ran in flocks of four and five hundred. Migrating ducks blotted out the sun when they rose from a pond ..."* Recent settlers would have also found abundant wood for construction and heat -- the forests in England, by this time, had been largely felled to build ships (2,500 per vessel) and to turn into charcoal to stoke furnaces.

I have never found wild strawberries growing on the farm, but blueberries, elderberries, and wild grapes are common. My grandmother gathered all of those and turned them into jams, or, in the case of the grapes, wine as well.

Every February, my grandmother also tapped the silver maples on the land for maple syrup -- a tradition that my aunt continues. It's easy to tap maple syrup -- just hammer a nail into the trunk of tree and hang an empty plastic milk carton from the nail. But the process of rendering the thin, clear sap into a dark, viscous, and flavorful syrup is time consuming and requires lots of stove-top space and ongoing heat. Above, you can see a bottle of my aunt's maple syrup (and the winter stockpile of wood in the garage, with a clearing for the trap door to the cellar through which the stream runs).

As to wild game birds, I see few ducks on the farm, but there are plenty of geese. In the photograph to the right, my aunt had wandered off to get a stick for her dog during a walk this past summer. But her dog had his own idea. The second my aunt's back was turned, he stepped right into the water of this artificial pond -- two fields over from the farm -- in hot pursuit of fun. The Canada geese stayed in the water, swimming away from him as much as they could, and then finally took off and flew over to the next pond. In the photograph to the left, you can see a roasted goose. My hosts on December 25, back here in San Francisco, served this goose. Geese were traditionally served for Christmas dinner until replaced in popularity by domesticated turkeys, according to my Joy of Cooking. Presumably my grandfather would have hunted wild geese during his years growing up on a Maine farm and during his years on the Massachusetts farm, but I don't know.

* Everyday Life in Early America, by David Freeman Hawke, 1988, Harper & Row Publishers, New York, p. 13

Keeping Up With the Car Bailout Talk

Ok, as of today, the 2008 Winter Solstice, the auto industry is still teetering on the brink of insolvency, though lame duck President George W. Bush threw it a lifeline recently. That lifeline is a grant of $13.4 billion now, with another $4 billion to come in February if necessary. Bush is tapping the TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, more colloquially known as the bailout of Wall Street and the financial institutions, which Congress approved in October, to fund the auto industry.

Meantime, Newsweek has done a story on the link between Republican congressmen and women (especially southern ones) and the their resistance to bailing out Detroit-based auto design and manufacturing companies. What's the basis of their resistance? Why, foreign auto companies, especially Toyota, have a number of factories in southern states that employ tens of thousands of workers, NON-UNION workers, mind you ...

And yet, Toyota's sales are also down ...

Folks, are we screwed or what?

Last night I went to a winter solstice celebration (we do that kind of thing in San Francisco, a refuge for the unconventional, the pentagonal pegs among us who just do not fit into round holes and celebrate the holidays the way the rest of the world does). At one point the hostess made sure we all had unlit candles, turned off the lights, and the music, and started a lovely ritual to usher in the increasing daylight in the days, weeks, and months to come. One at a time, she invited us all to say what we wished for in the coming year. She lit her candle first and started, taking my own wish: to be able to travel nearly anywhere in the country via public transportation.

Thanks, Terry!

Her wish will not be the answer to all our economic and environmental woes. But it will certainly be a beginning.

I'm thinking now of two major, 20th century public works projects in the so-called free world that supposedly began the process of lifting nations out of periods of economic malaise -- the New Deal and the Marshall Plan. I know that president-elect Barack Obama is thinking along the lines of the New Deal now, thinking really big. But as he moves forward, I hope he brings back that campaign word of his -- change -- and starts getting the nation ready for huge changes, necessary changes in the way we live. That's because change is going to be necessary if we're going to save the planet and the principals so vital to democratic society -- transparent government, and political and artistic freedom of expression. In fact, a December 21, 2008 editorial in The Huffington Post suggests that Obama may in fact be contemplating change, planning to commit "industrial policy," though schizophrenically at best.

Coming soon: Steven Chu and Ray LaHood ...

Beavers Return

Photos:
1) The Big Pond
2) The beaver home
3) A beaver dam
4) The beaver "kitchen"
5) A paw print

Years ago the big pond in the woods was shallow and nearly dry. But that began to change in the 1980s and 1990s when beavers returned and successfully reestablished themselves, building homes and dams, and restoring the pond. Their return has been centuries in the making.

According to William Cronon, in his study of colonial New England land use practices, Changes in the Land, Native American practice, prior to the arrival of Europeans, had been to trap only as many beavers as were needed for personal use and for trade with tribes that lived south of the southern-most area of beaver habitation. But that changed when Europeans arrived. Early towns that were established along rivers such as the Connecticut (Hartford and Springfield) and Merrimack (Chelmsford) had originally been trading posts where Europeans transacted with Indian trappers – now in possession of firearms – for beaver pelts to feed the European continent where beaver caps had become a fad. Within a few decades of the founding of these trading posts, by the mid-1600s, the beaver population had been so severely decimated that the trade in beaver pelts dropped considerably. Other animals, such as turkeys, deer, elk, and bears, were also overhunted and went into decline. The drop in the deer population was so precipitous, in fact, that in 1694, Massachusetts enforced its first closed hunting season, and in 1718 it banned deer hunting for three years.

Now, however, with the current increase in the depth of the water, other wildlife has come. For a few years during the 1990s, Great Blue Herons built huge nests in the branches of dead trees that stuck out of the pond, and when I was wandering through the woods this past summer, a White-Tailed Deer and I encountered each other, not 30 feet apart. The deer, a doe, was still as a statue for a moment, and then she turned in a flash and bounded through the trees, to where I don’t know. These woods are small, just a few acres, but I suspect that deer, coyotes, mink, fisher cats, weasels, and other creatures are right around me every time I walk through them.

In fact, I have heard coyotes at night, my aunt has seen fisher cats, and my uncle stumbled upon a nesting mother turkey and her newly hatched young when he was out haying this past summer. I also took a photograph of my foot next to a large paw print in the woods, not far from where the deer and I had an encountered each other. Perhaps a black bear print – as a mother bear and her two cubs had been sited near these woods not too long ago.

Cronon discusses the decline in numbers of animals in a chapter called “Commodities of the Hunt.” It’s in the middle of his book. In other chapters, he goes on to discuss the felling of the forests and fencing of the land. His last chapter is called “The Wilderness Should Turn a Mart.” In this chapter, he starts to confront the contradiction in sustainable living and capitalism, and concludes that “the colonists’ economic relations of production were ecologically self-destructive.”

Our current relations to production are probably also self-destructive – but humankind has been able to artificially extend the human population carrying capacity of the planet, probably temporarily, through fossil fuel inputs into the soil, among other means. It's nice to imagine that the farm that my aunt and uncle are now working can become a role model for more sustainable living, but I'm not sure that's possible unless massive numbers of people voluntarily agree to change the way they are living on the planet -- and to accept declines in their standards of living.

The Ongoing Saga of the Auto Bailout

Yesterday the House of Representatives approved a $14 billion bailout of the domestic auto industry, largely along party lines. The original bill had some good stuff in it, especially a provision that would prevent the auto makers from suing states that have passed laws to limit greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles. It also had some kind of unrelated rider that had to do with the original $700 billion bank bailout that was passed earlier in the fall ("As an amendment to the auto rescue plan, the House approved a measure that would require banks receiving assistance from the Treasury’s $700 billion economic stabilization program to detail new lending activity each quarter." -- The New York Times. See story here.)

But the part about the lawsuits got struck as a part of a compromise, and then the whole thing got trounced today by Senate Republicans.

And thus nothing has changed. The issue remains one of Democrats versus Republicans and some other stuff, or something like this: Democrats support maintaining a suicidal way of life/industry, but they disguise the issue as one about jobs; Republicans support union busting disguised as industry restructuring.

In the meantime, the sales of hybrid vehicles are plunging along with gasoline prices, and that is not good for the planet or any of the life on the planet.

People do need jobs and people also need benefits. But the kinds of jobs we have and the way we become entitled to benefits need to change.

Tim Redmond, the editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, suggests that now is the moment for a public works project on the lines of the New Deal, except MUCH bigger. The New Deal, was a drop in the bucket compared to what was needed during the Depression -- we all learned that in history classes when we got to World War II and realized how absolutely effective our collective efforts (in the form of government) could be at pulling the nation out of economic malaise. This current nationwide, from-coast-to-coast, public works project needs to start with a comprehensive study to determine the best ways to produce and distribute healthy food, create truly livable communities, and transport people and goods -- with less energy. And if it is determined that certain sectors of our economy need to be bailed out -- for example, our public transportation sectors -- then by all means, let's bail them out.

Changes in the Land

My grandparents left Texas in 1950 and bought a farm in New England where both of them had centuries old roots. We know that the farmhouse and barn, built in a marshy wetland, were started before the American Revolution and completed afterwards.

My grandfather died in 1978. At that time, other farm families that had been in the area for generations could no longer farm profitably or chose to sell out and make what money they could by selling to developers. My grandmother, however, a biologist by training and naturalist by practice, decided to take advantage of state law and turn her land into a conservation trust. She did this in cooperation with other local farmers, and by the time she passed away in 1997, she had put the land into a conservation easement that would exist in perpetuity.

The photograph on the left is of one nearby subdivision within walking distance of the farm. The photograph on the right is of the path through the woods that Eagle Scouts created sometime in the 1990s after the conservation trust had been created.

According to the peak oil documentary, The End of Suburbia, subdivisions such as the one on the left are going to be the slums of the future as they are energy intensive and unsustainable. However, my uncle, a retired biologist who now works the farm with one of my mother's sisters, is the first to admit that the farm, as it is currently run, is not sustainable either.

Do I Detect Collusion?

We all know about the CEOs of the Big Three auto companies flying on their corporate jets to Washington, DC to beg Congress for a bailout of $25 billion. Congress sent them back empty-handed. So what did they do next? They came back (driving hybrid cars) with a plan and asked for more -- now they want $34 billion!

I object. For one thing, it seems to me that the three companies are colluding, which strikes me as bordering on a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890) and other laws that outlaw conspiracies in restraint of trade. Second, they messed up.

Here's a link to a New York Times editorial with a list of recommendations:

... For starters, [Congress] must demand that the three companies’ top executives resign. Only new management can enforce the deep cultural change needed to overhaul the industry. And, it must impose real, enforceable environmental rules. The European Union is aiming for a fleetwide fuel-economy of 50 miles per gallon in 2015. In the United States, Congress last year enacted a target of 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

Experts say that Detroit’s automakers could achieve 43 m.p.g. by then even without technological breakthroughs. If the companies were willing to make smaller cars, they could achieve 50 m.p.g. Congress could consider demanding that Detroit simply phase out S.U.V.’s and vans by a certain date. ...

But I hardly think this New York Times editorial is going far enough. The auto companies have failed to adjust to realities of peak oil, global climate change, war for oil, and habitat destruction. They have failed to start producing more environmentally sound products (like buses and bikes). Any "bailout" plan should actually be part of a much larger plan -- a New Deal for Economic Recovery and the Environmental Health of the Planet -- that addresses the destructiveness of our current way of life. Such a plan would include revenue for the construction of affordable and appealing housing in whole, livable communities near transit, complete with parks, schools, retail, services, community gardens, and jobs. It would also include funds for nearby farmers to cultivate homegrown healthy produce. (Sorry, small farmers just can't do this on their own right now -- the competition from big agribusiness is too fierce.)

And the term "bailout"? Personally, I agree with the calls for the nationalization of the transportation industry at the same time that we nationalize the health care industry and move to a single payer system (hey, if you want to maintain your own, private health insurance, no one will stop you).

Here's Democracy Now! coverage of the bailout matter from December 5, 2008.

Here's a Common Dreams story on bailing out of the fossil fuel economy from December 3, 2008.

How do we give people incentives to stop driving and get on board with the changes that are necessary? Here's an idea from a Sierra Club activist: tax everyone at the gas pump steeply (like 10 percent for starters and then go up) and then give everyone (even people who do not have cars) something like a $600 annual rebate. This rewards people for not driving.

Summer 2008 -- a New England Farm

Re-Localization?

For many decades, this farm was a dairy farm. By the time the farm came into my mother's family, there may have been on average 20 dairy cows -- Holsteins, Jerseys, and Guernseys, among other types -- named after the places where they had originally been bred. Every morning, they would gather at a fence across the street and wait for my grandfather -- who had been born and raised on a farm in Maine -- to escort them into the back of the long end of the barn. Once inside each cow would dutifully take her place at her designated stall. My grandfather fed and milked the cows and then transferred the milk into large steel casks that were lowered into a cooler in the milk room. (The milk room is the small, stone addition to the right of the original red barn.) A distributor would pick up the milk and take it to a local dairy processor.

Running this farm was a very labor intensive venture for my grandfather and the rest of the family. I don't know if my grandfather ever hired helpers, but I doubt that he ever took a vacation during the nearly 20 years that it was an active farm. In the late 1960s, he sold the cows -- I remember when some of them were being herded onto a truck taken away -- and went back to his first profession, teaching.

Richard Heinberg, among others, has suggested that in response to peak oil (the end of cheap petroleum upon which our way of life now depends), that food production will hopefully go through a process of decentralization and re-localization. In his November 2008 MuseLetter, he addresses the issue of food and farming.

This farm is on typically rocky New England soil, and I don't know too much about its history prior to the arrival of my mother's family in 1950. I doubt that it was ever self-sustaining, but if current practices are any indication, the people who farmed it over the years probably brought it close to a self-sustaining operation -- with the help of neighbors.

I also do not know about its future, and whether or not it will be a center for the re-localization of food production, as these are matters that are not under my control.