For Gabrielle Giffords and all those whose lives were ruined on January 8th, by an act of hatred...

~VICTIMS OF HATRED~

Click on image to enlarge

images from the public domain ~ collage by jim otterstrom 2010

I've been trying to come to terms with the contempt and hatred I feel seething through our society since I was a young boy.

I've also been consistently disappointed in my fellow human beings for as long as I can remember, and in myself for carrying within me seeds of that same toxicity which poisons hearts.

Is it any wonder we have so much insanity in a world where every innocence is promptly contaminated by the appalling gore of our collective misdeeds?

We are reaping the fruit of violence we have sewn into the fabric of history---even as we continue shouldering the burden of horrific destruction we still fund throughout the world, with our tax dollars, the sweat of our labor, and the lifeblood of humanity---all in disregard for every other species on earth.

Like the people in this collage, we are all victimized by hatred, fear, and ignorance, including our own.

Whatever we think of the individuals pictured here, they were all moved by the cruelty and injustice they saw around them to speak their truths, with compassion for others, and for that, each one was assassinated.

They made mistakes. After all they were only human, woven from the same imperfect cloth as the rest of us, but their common thread was compassion, and they died because of it.

We are capable of becoming so much more than we are, and each of the persons above gave us a glimpse into possibilities.

As long as I live, no matter how ugly the world becomes, I will hold love and compassion in my heart, and do my best to reach beyond the atmosphere of contempt, bitterness, fear, and hatred which permeates our times...
...even if it kills me.

~Peace & Love~

Jim Otterstrom

Gabrielle Giffords favorite quote, from her facebook page:

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, let us strive to finish the work we are in." ~ Abraham Lincoln

The Court Jester...

...overstepping the bounds

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

"His characteristic idiom suggests he is a 'natural' fool, not an artificial one, though his perceptiveness and wit show that he is far from being an idiot, however 'touched' he might be.

His folly could be regarded as the raving of a madman but was often deemed to be divinely inspired.

He holds up a mirror to make us aware of our times, mocking politicians and public figures of power and authority.

He served not simply to amuse but to criticize his masters, or mistresses, and their guests.

Jesters could also give bad news to the King that no one else would dare deliver."*

*(excerpted, edited, and out of context - from Wikipedia)

Perhaps this is my calling, Court Jester to the Evil Empire, but then again, there are so many of us...

...so many fools dancing to the tune of our masters while cautiously poking fun, as best we can, without provoking any fatal consequences.

Keep 'em laughing, keep 'em amused, but whatever you do, don't overstep the bounds...

Alas, when I get too near the edge, I can always change hats and revert to my cover as an artsy-craftsy garden gnome.

But not just yet, these are the cold dark days of winter and I'm still feeling a tad bit cranky...

;~o

(Stay tuned for 'Looking Back From The Future', Part 3)

Quote Of The Day, from Copenhagen...

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

To the United States Congress:

"You Approve billions of dollars in defense budgets. Can't you approve $200 billion to save the world?"

Lumumba D-Aping, Copenhagen Climate Summit negotiator for the G-77.

Say it like it is brother, there's no money for Peace, Love, or Health Care, but there's plenty for war and corporate bailouts!

And here's a quote from me:

"Halliburton, Leading The World In War Profiteering".

Dick Cheney's Halliburton is now a Dubai corporation, they moved there to avoid paying taxes in the U.S., the country that made them filthy stinking rich...

WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?

That question comes to mind because we are so close to Christmas, a day of reverence and worship for the world's Christians, and Capitalists (ohhh, the irony).

And, I know what he would do, he'd be crucified for his advocacy of throwing the money-changers out of the temple.

Another quote from me:

"The Earth Is Our Temple, and Today, We Are The Money-Changers".

~PEACE~

Everything Under The Sun...

Unfinished Drawing - Early 1970s

Click on drawing to enlarge - ©1974-2009 jim otterstrom

I've been spending the first week of 2009 trying to organize and de-clutter my life, starting with what I'll call the library, where the computer, my desk, our books, and the music collection reside.

There's a steel flat-file cabinet (post office surplus) in the room, where I keep a lifetime of paraphernalia, including old documents, photos, and other memorabilia associated with my odd plethora of interests (or obsessions maybe). Sixteen drawers of crap, each one 18 inches wide by 24 inches deep, and ranging in height from 2 inches to 1 foot.

There was a time, long, long ago, when these files were neatly organized and I could easily find whatever I might be looking for. As the years passed by though, and drawers began to overflow, stuff started getting filed randomly, wherever it would fit, until it became nearly impossible to find anything.

Among these treasures are more than 30 years of newspaper articles on the environment; on pollution and climate change, energy, transportation, population, organic and sustainable farming, native species, diversity and habitat loss, natural and man-made disasters, indigenous peoples and their fates, on urban renewal and habitat restoration, endangered species & recovery efforts, and countless other topics that I have felt the need to research.

Articles that led me to hundreds of books where I could delve deeper into what's good, or bad, or simply interesting about our culture, and about the problems we face, as I strive to understand how we got here, where we might be going, and what solutions we could pursue.

There are also articles about issues and causes I've been closely involved with, such as the Ward Valley Nuclear Waste Dump, and the Headwaters Forest Campaign, among many others, distant, and local.

I've always had a desire to write, and all this input has been fuel for my fire, but I must admit, I haven't honed my writing skills enough to meet my own expectations. My writing is still pretty clunky.

I'm only halfway through cleaning out the file cabinet but I've already found well over 100 letters I've personally written to presidents, vice-presidents, senators, congresspersons, and even The World Bank, on a huge variety of issues, from the GATT & NAFTA treaties, to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, nuclear arms reductions, renewable energy subsidies, the mountaintop mining of coal, and so much more.

This doesn't include another 100+ letters generated, in my name, by our long distance phone company, Working Assets, now CREDO.

And, of course, it also doesn't include the hundreds of online petitions and letters I've submitted in the past ten or so years

I'm exhausted just thinking about all the effort I've put into dialogue substantially ignored by my elected representatives, especially my eternal congressman, the honorable Republican, Jerry Lewis, who thanks me for my letters and then tells me why he voted in opposition to my wishes.

Still, as long as there is a centralized government, I would encourage that government to be---of the people, by the people, and for the people---so, I participate in this so-called democracy, exercising my freedom of speech, and I'll never stop speaking my mind, even if mine is not the majority opinion.

Now, to get back to the organizational task at hand, there's also drawers full of artwork by family and friends; drawings, paintings and photos, geneology documents and historical family pictures, old magazines with articles about the hot-rods & race cars my stepfather built, articles about music and musicians, magazine & newspaper articles about my family and I, collections of stamps from my decades at the post office, old posters, signs, & stickers that I've found artistically or socially relevant to my unconventional vision, and just all kinds of other garbage utterly meaningless to anyone but myself.

Yes, this stuff is clutter, but it feeds my imagination and my creativity, so it looks like I'll only be able to part with maybe 25% of it, if I'm lucky. Not very Zen of me!

I'm having fun going through it all though, reminiscing about past efforts, accomplishments, and failures, and trying to organize it all in some rational meaningful way.

The most fun in all this is rediscovering something long forgotten, some relic from the distant past, like the above drawing, started in my 20s, but never finished.

I wonder what it would've looked like completed, but then again, is anything ever done?

I've decided I rather enjoy my drawing, and my life, in their unfinished states...

We, The People...

...Have Spoken

Click on images to enlarge

Obama Collages by Charis Tsevis

Creative Commons Licensed

Something very beautiful just happened in America!

We mustered the largest voter turnout in nearly 100 years to elect the country's first African-American president by mounting a huge, truly modern, grassroots campaign funded primarily by average Americans like you and I.

An incredible 700 million dollars was raised online, mostly through small donations under $100.

From Earth Home Garden alone we raised nearly $1,000 of that total through our personal fundraising page at BarackObama.com.

It's a crying shame that this amount of money has to be spent to overcome the political influence of Corporatism but it's a reality of our times and an obviously fed-up populace rose to the occasion.

I vote in every election but I am rarely inspired by politicians and this is the first time I've done fundraising for one.

I'm proud to have been a small part of this historic moment and I truly hope Barack Obama can heal some of the mean-spiritedness which has dominated American politics and divided the country in recent decades.

The world is weary of greed, corruption and war, and perhaps President Obama can help restore some of the goodwill America once enjoyed in the international community.

We are also facing very difficult economic times, compounded by the problems of climate change, resource depletion, and increasing social unrest all over the globe.

It's time for diplomacy, dialogue, and responsible leadership to replace blind arrogance and callous brutality on the world stage. Time to share the fruits of democracy instead of pursuing a path of world domination through corporate sponsored tyranny.

And, if Barack Obama is to be a successful president, he will need all the support we can give him.

When Barack says we will all need to "sacrifice and work together", I hope people are listening, because there are very hard times ahead.

Remember, Barack Obama is not a saint, a savior, or a magician. He's just a man. An educated thoughtful man with the eloquence to inspire people. The man we chose to help us bring change to America.

No president will be able to effectively address the unprecedented challenges we face without a well-informed participatory and vigilant citizenry lending their voices.

And, at this time also, in this world of new possibilities, we might want to carefully and consistently be re-evaluating our needs while learning to live more sustainably and leave smaller footprints.

On this day of renewed optimism, my Hope is, that, with strong and thoughtful leadership, we can now begin to realize the magnitude of the Change we need to make as a society, and as individuals, in order to meet the challenges required for building a sustainable future.

TO NEW BEGINNINGS

TO HOPE AND CHANGE

TO PEACE & LOVE

Jim & Peg

YES, WE CAN!

Click on image to enlarge - Logo © Obama '08

Modifications conceived by Peggy Otterstrom and rendered by Jim Otterstrom on Valentines Day, 2008.

~An Open Letter To Our Friends~

Dear Friends,

Many of you know Peggy and I don't usually get involved in political campaigns, but I believe this election is the most important of our lifetime.

As Americans, we have a clear choice in how we face the next several years. Very difficult years where we must deal creatively and constructively with huge challenges, including climate change, environmental degradation, growing anti-American sentiment, increasing resource scarcity, peak oil and a faltering economy.

We need new ideas, and a sense that America can cooperate with the rest of the world in addressing our very urgent problems, by some means other than unilateral pre-emptive perpetual war.

Right now we have the chance to choose a president who is honest, personable, intelligent, courageous, wise, and hopeful, a man of the people with fresh ideas. Or, we can continue onward with politics as usual and the failed policies of the status quo.

Barack Obama spoke eloquently against the War In Iraq from day one, while Hillary Clinton voted for it.

This is a needless and costly war where nearly 4,000 Americans have already lost their lives, along with countless thousands of innocent civilian Iraqi men, women, and children.

We have squandered nearly a half-trillion dollars of our hard-earned money on this war so far, enough to have rebuilt much of the deteriorating public infrastructure of the United States, our crumbling highways, bridges, levees, power grids, hospitals etc.!

America was once respected around the world as a Beacon Of Freedom, but now we are more often feared as self-serving war-mongers bent on world domination.

We need strong visionary leadership that also understands the struggles of the average person. Someone who believes in Democracy and will work to restore our credibility on the world stage with good will and diplomacy instead of threats and violence.

A lot of people have stopped believing that is even possible, but we support Barack Obama because we believe he can be that leader.

His grassroots funded campaign for the presidency is unparalleled in history and our need for an honest, fresh-thinking leader could not be more urgent.

Americans are hungry for change and Barack Obama will bring that change when he is elected.

If you still believe that ordinary people can make a difference please take a moment now, and click here to visit our Obama '08 fundraising page, to make a donation of any size, $5, $10, $25, whatever you can do.

It all adds up, and this is how Barack Obama has come so far, with support from average people like you and I.

Thank You,

Jim & Peggy Otterstrom

A few days ago Peggy asked me to design a T-shirt for her with the Obama Campaign Logo.

She wanted one created in rainbow colors over a sunburst with her own slogan, "Obama Gives Me Hope".

I took a picture of the sun and then spent a couple of hours playing in Photoshop to turn her idea into reality. The designs above, and on her T-shirt below are the results.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY HONEY,

YOU GIVE ME HOPE!

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Ward Valley Nuclear Waste Protest - 1998

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In the Mojave Desert, some 180 miles east of here, is a place known as Ward Valley, sacred land (isn’t all land sacred?) to the five tribes of American Indians that formed the Colorado River Native Nations Alliance. In the early 1990s Ward Valley (Silyaye Aheace) was chosen by the Bureau Of Land Management as the site for a low-level nuclear waste dump to be operated by U.S. Ecology, a waste management company. Because of Ward Valley’s close proximity to the Colorado River, a source of drinking water and irrigation for millions of people, and U.S. Ecology’s already poor track record at another waste facility, in Beatty, Nevada, that was leaking tritium into the ground, this was obviously a very bad idea.

Determined to stop the project, members of the Colorado River Native Nations Alliance set up an encampment at the site in late 1995, and had a presence of 50 to 200 activists there for the next 3 years. In 1998 the BLM attempted to close the land to the public and remove the activists. Through the efforts of the CRNNA, and the ‘Save Ward Valley Committee’, based in Needles, hundreds of environmental activists from all over the country, including our family, showed up to give their support in forming a human blockade to stop the BLM.

Peggy and I were still working for the Post Office but we rented a car for the weekend (deciding this was urgent enough to justify using a vehicle for a couple of days) and headed for Ward Valley. We had all stayed up late the night before making the 4 signs you see us holding in the newspaper photo from a 1998 issue of the 'Earth First! Journal' pictured above. Peggy, on the left, is holding the stop-sign shaped ‘STOP THE DUMP’ sign, Jamie is holding the sign with the heart-shaped cracked-earth, reading ‘BREAK MY EARTH, BREAK MY HEART’, and I don’t know who the gentleman is that borrowed Jimmy’s skull & crossbones ‘NUKE DUMPS SUCK’ sign, but Jimmy is standing directly behind him, and yes, that’s a thinner me on the right with the blood-dripping earth that reads ‘WOULD YOU RAPE YOUR MOTHER??’.

The people on the ground in front of us are Earth First! members, chained together, and blocking the driveway that the BLM would have to use to storm the encampment, and, in my mind, they are truly heroic putting their bodies so vulnerably in harms way like that.

Sometime later, when the above issue of the 'Earth First! Journal' came out, I was greatly surprised, proud, and humbled, to see a photograph of my entire family on the front lines at Ward Valley, on the opposite page of an extensive article about Julia Butterfly Hill, who was in the midst of her incredible 2-year tree-sit atop the ancient redwood, 'Luna', in The Headwaters Forest of Northern California. Our daughter Jamie, then 13, would soon write to Julia, and, as you can see above, we still have her warm, gently instructive thank you note, scribbled on recycled scrap paper from Julia's tiny platform at the top of Luna.

Although you could feel the tension building, there was no confrontation at Ward Valley that weekend, and we couldn’t stay longer because we had to go back to work, and the kids had school, so we drove back to Big Bear.

But I couldn’t get those folks in the middle of the desert, and the confrontation they faced, off my mind. So, on Monday morning, I talked with my Postmaster, who is Native American (Nez Perce), and he gave me the week off to go back and lend my support. In the absence of a car, I hitch-hiked the 45 miles to Victorville, where I caught a Greyhound Bus to Needles, and walked over to the ‘Save Ward Valley’ office, where I then caught a ride to Ward Valley in a beat up van with a bunch of jovial hispanic ‘United Farm Workers’ members whom had also come to lend their support. Many of these guys had demonstrated alongside Cesar Chavez before his death and our 22 mile ride together was a celebration of brotherhood with much camaraderie, goodwill and singing along the way.

The next week was just incredible as droves of people poured in from all over.

I was given a two-way radio, and, with another guy, assigned to overnight guard duty at the front gate half a mile from the encampment. Suddenly, there I was, midnight to sunup, on the front lines, ready to face off with the United States Government (my employers), whose lit-up fenced-in portable compound of motor homes, government cars, police cars, and tractor-trailers---full of who knows what---could be plainly seen just across the highway.

While, back in camp, so much was going on all the time. There was group training in non-violence and passive resistance, we met attorneys to contact (free of charge) if we were arrested, attended talking circles conducted by Native Elders, and participated in Native drumming, dancing, and singing.

The snake dance of the final night was my favorite, where everyone held hands and formed a long line of people who snaked randomly through the crowd to the hypnotic pulse of drums and chanting.

Great fun, especially for me, because a big Native American woman I had befriended (who spent most of her days preparing & serving food to the throngs from the hot kitchen tent) came running out of the kitchen grinning and yelling "where is that guy with the long white beard? I've been waiting all week to dance the snake dance with him". Spotting me, she grabbed my hand and pulled me into the snaking chain of people weaving wildly through the camp, it made my day!

Through blind luck, or providence perhaps, my tent was pitched right next to the tent of 1998 Green Party candidate for California Governor, Dan Hamburg, who spent a good part of his time at Ward Valley washing dishes (and not one minute of it campaigning), while his wife, Carrie, helped out in the kitchen (I never would've known he was running for Governor if someone else hadn't told me). Dan is a former U.S. Congressman from California’s 1st District. After being elected in 1992 he authored the Headwaters Forest Act (an old-growth Redwood Forest protection initiative), which was overwhelmingly approved by the House of Representatives (because of backlash from the logging community, he lost his re-election bid in 1994). Dan and I had a mutual friend, photographer Doug Thron, whose powerful 'Headwaters Forest' slideshow presentation was an inspiration for Dan's 'Headwaters Forest Act'. Doug had tirelessly presented his slideshow in dozens of cities across America, and, I met him during one of those presentations at a bookstore in Santa Monica, where an old friend of mine, the late Randy California, of the '60s band, 'Spirit', opened the evening for Doug with a solo acoustic performance of his classic hit song, 'Nature's Way'. Doug's slideshow was a devastating indictment of the Pacific Lumber Company's destructive practices, and I asked Doug if he'd be interested in bringing it to a Sierra Club meeting in Big Bear, which he generously did just a few weeks later. So, Dan and I shared some good stories & conversation, and I came to believe that, if Washington was populated with leaders of his caliber, America would truly be a country to be proud of. However, as a politically aware recent insider, Dan didn’t see much hope for any real governmental reform under our present two-party system. At Ward Valley he simply set a great example in humility & volunteerism, and I was soon washing dishes right alongside him.

On my second day at Ward Valley, I had an adrenalin-charged little adventure when a group of Earth Firsters!, who I was assisting in the dismantling of a large canvas tent, enlisted me to drive their decrepit old flatbed truck full of subversive activist equipment---chains, pipes, bolt-cutters, lock-down devices (and all sorts of other associated paraphernalia of Monkeywrenching), back to their "safe house" in Needles (the Native Council had requested that no man-made devices be used in our blockade, so the Earth Firsters! respectully dismantled that part of their action). I suspected that their regular driver may have had warrants for his arrest because of previous actions he'd been involved in, or maybe they were just testing me as a possible recruit.

So, off I went, bouncing across the desert with my newfound EF brothers & sisters, wanting to raise my fist in the air and shout "NO COMPROMISE IN THE DEFENSE OF MOTHER EARTH"! To my surprise (and my relief), a few relatively uneventful hours later, we were back at camp, and not in the Needles City Jail.

By the time my weeklong stay was over, the BLM had backed off its threats, and the immediate crisis was averted. I caught a bus back to Victorville, and hitch-hiked home to Big Bear.

I was deeply moved by the instant community of caring and involved activists I had been part of. In a matter of days we had become family and I went home with one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. But, the battle was not over, so I kept in close contact with the Save Ward Valley Committee, donating a little money and offering my services if they were needed again, until, on April 2, 1999, victory was declared. The Ward Valley Waste Dump project was defeated.

If you haven’t been involved in something like this, you don’t know what you’re missing. The entire week I felt completely whole in knowing I was in exactly the right place.

Artist's Peace Tower War Protest - 1966

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Click on above article and fully enlarge to read text
















Click on photo to enlarge

I recently found a 40 year-old black & white snapshot of my first assemblage piece, constructed for the 1966 Artist’s Peace Tower in Hollywood, California. The Peace Tower was an early Viet Nam War protest 'happening' installed in a vacant lot on Sunset Boulevard. With overwhelming support, from well-known artists all over the world, the tower drew large crowds who came to view the 418 anti-war themed works. Susan Sontag spoke at the opening ceremony.

My contribution, an untitled assemblage (top photo), was made mostly of scrap cardboard, paper towel tubes, toilet paper tubes, a couple of Kleenex boxes, two burnt out camera flash bulbs, some molded styrofoam packing material, a tray from a box of chocolates, and an old piece of chain with a hook on the end. It also included a weird sort of starfish shaped plastic wig from a monster figure included with and old Revell 'Big Daddy Roth' 1/25 scale car model kit (The Gasser) from the early ‘60s (something left over from my model-building early teens). This was all glued to a piece of approximately 2X2 foot plywood (the size requested by the tower committee), but I think mine was shy a couple of inches, top to bottom, because it was the only piece of plywood I could find lying around. Everything was scrap, all I bought was glue and paint.

The piece was supposed to suggest a scorched earth scenario, with the constructions of man, and the surrounding fields, laid to waste after some nuclear calamity. The entire assemblage was painted a lovely flat black except for one spark of hope, a fluorescent green chain (anything left alive would be glowing, of course), which symbolized the eternal chain of life that might, hopefully one day, regenerate a diverse living world. Otherwise, the piece was bleak, even the sun had gone black.

The large collapsed round tubes were meant to depict a destroyed city, and the linear cardboard strips above and to the right were the farm fields. The plastic wig (lower left) from the model kit was supposed to symbolize some melted core of something or other, and the sun is sending out black rays from one of the places where the chain is anchored. You can barely make out the fried flash-bulbs above the top of the chain, and below the hook.

Not very pretty or hopeful art, but we were at war, and I had grown up under a constant cloud of nuclear uncertainty, so I think it was appropriate for the time & place, and sadly, maybe even more so for our time & place today.

The old b&w photo was taken with a ‘50s Kodak Brownie, and shot in my buddy Charlie Melton’s mother’s house, where I constructed the piece. The assemblage was hanging on their living room wall, above the T.V. set, and the wallpaper was so bright that the flash over-exposed that part of the picture. So, in the touched-up photo above, I blacked out the background in Photoshop and rendered the scan of the faded 3 1/2 x 5 print with some brush tools to bring out form and detail, then colorized the chain to very near it’s actual color. The resolution is poor, but the original piece is long gone, and it’s nice to have even a rough likeness of it after all these years.

Above, I've attached a 2003 retrospective article, 'A Tower Of Peace On Sunset Boulevard', from the magazine Arthur (middle photo), which includes a picture of the 1966 tower, where I’ve red-circled a work that I’m sure is mine because when I brought the assemblage to the tower, the surrounding fence was already covered, so mine was one of the first pieces to actually hang from the sculpture. Eventually the tower was completely covered in scores of hanging artworks. At the closing of the protest, when I went down to pick up my assemblage, one of the organizers said he really liked the piece and wanted to include it with selected works they were planning on sending on a world tour. Of course I was excited to have my little cardboard piece selected, and agreed, but I don’t know if the tour ever happened, or what became of the assemblage.

Many respected, successful, and quite famous artists contributed works to the tower and I’m very honored to have been among them.

Much drama, including violence & police action, surrounded the Peace Tower event when overzealous patriotic hecklers, some of them veterans, became confrontational and tried to damage the installation, which resulted in the tower being shut down by the landowner just a few months after it opened. It was kind of a prelude to the reactionary violence that would mark Viet Nam War protests for years to come.

This year, the Whitney Museum in NYC commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Peace Tower by having the sculptor (Mark di Suvero) who conceived the original tower build a replica, and soliciting 200 artists to submit works for it. You can view the 2006 version of the Peace Tower, and the art that was created for it, by clicking HERE. I also posted the photo of the assemblage to the Whitney's 2006 Virtual Peace Tower page.

The bottom photo shows the 1966 and 2006 towers side by side.

Hopefully, I haven’t bored you too much with my---more than you ever needed to know---description of this old high-schoolish pile of cardboard & glue, as if it were somehow important today. But, I was just a kid then, and like I said yesterday, I'm proud that I’ve been consistantly speaking out in peaceful dissent, and trying to effect change, since my teens. It’s a big part of who I am and why Earth Home Garden came to be.

I'm still that kid, at heart, and the possibility of great change is everpresent, as are the wonders of Nature. Hope is much more powerful than despair...