Ecological Food For Thought...

The Progress Of Destruction

The Heart Of The Matter

Click on image to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

A friend once sent me a link to a composite photo of the nighttime lights of North America as seen from space.

She found the photo to be very comforting in the fact that she could see the lights of all the places in America where she had friends.

But I found the photo to have a somewhat opposite effect on my emotions.

It caused a discomforting knot in my gut!

I saw the lights as countless gaping holes in the biotic communities of the continent I call home.

The more numerous, and brighter the lights, the bigger the holes in the living diversity of the natural world.

To most people, I suppose, these lights represent progress in the development of humankind.

But, to me, they dramatically illustrate the destructive imbalance between human organisms and our environments.

Where there are lights, there are buildings, shopping malls, sprawling suburbs, monstrous cities, millions of acres of roads slathered in asphalt & concrete, factories, plastic, landfills & waste management facilities, power generation plants, sewage treatment plants, schools, hospitals, prisons, machinery, automobiles, internal combustion engines, wrecking yards, toxic chemicals, pollution, oil fields, corporate headquarters & the seats of governments, police stations, courthouses, military bases and nuclear weapons facilities.

Every second of every day the exponential growth of our human creation lays waste to more of the biosphere as our species races forward in its relentless destruction of the planet.

What we're doing to planet Earth literally mirrors what insects did to the ravaged leaf above. We are eating away large bits of our habitat, but, we have no other leaf, or, in our case, planet, to migrate to when this one is stripped bare.

The results upon the victim are similar to those of a plague of locusts or a rampantly malignant cancerous growth. And, unfortunately, our victim is this magnificent place we call home, the sole source of our sustenance.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Our imaginations are simply boxed-in, blinded by the overwhelming monolithic hierarchical structure of the civilization we were born into.

But things may be changing as more and more people seem to be realizing that the way we live just doesn’t work, and doesn’t feel good either.

Life on Earth is a vast assemblage of complex organisms, but we're all evolved from one single-celled common ancestor.

We are one family,

The Family Of Earth.

And, our species lays claim to sentience, consciousness, and self-awareness.

So, as I daily witness the continuing degradation and destruction of the biosphere, the loss of diversity, of natural habitat, and the species who live here, I can’t help but sense that these holes in our biotic communities are also metaphors for holes in our hearts. For the longing in our souls and our spirit. A longing to be whole, to be complete, to be home.

And I believe that some of us are beginning to understand this, and that many more feel it subconsciously.

Yes, the future may still hold a place for humanity, for the surviving descendants of the Agricultural, Industrial, and Petroleum Ages.

The Ages of Empire and World Domination.

Once the heavy burden of this all-consuming civilization is lifted off our backs, perhaps the collective memories of our DNA, our native intuition, will help us remember that there are many ways to live.

And certainly, among those ways, there are some which are sustainable, which would allow our species to continue living, in much more realistic numbers, through ages to come.

Are the lessons we're beginning to learn about our dysfunctional relationship with our environment guiding us toward imagining and desiring a Biocentric Age?

If so, then an Age Of Biocentrism could one day become reality, a sort of natural succession, as impellingly adopted as have been the aforementioned Ages of human history which have paralleled our ever-evolving consciousness.

A definition from Wikipedia

Biocentrism (from Greek: βίος, bio, "life"; and κέντρον, kentron, "center") is a term that has several meanings but is commonly defined as the belief that all forms of life are equally valuable and humanity is not the center of existence. Biocentric positions generally advocate a focus on the well-being of all life in the consideration of ecological, political, and economic issues. Biocentrism in this sense has been contrasted to anthropocentrism, which is the belief that human beings and human society are, or should be, the central focus of existence.

~

Nighttime Lights of North America

Click on image to enlarge - courtesy of NOAA

This is not the photo my friend sent several years ago. That one had an all black background.

But you get the idea...

~

Post Script

The leaf in the image at top is from a Hollyhock that's growing near a faucet in the garden.

It caught my eye, and my imagination, for several days before I realized what it reminded me of.

I decided to scan it and was then moved to write this post.

Nature, speaking through me, I guess you might say.

I chose today for this post to participate with Sonia in her Ecological Day at her blog, Leaves Of Grass.

~LABOR DAY SALE~

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim & peggy otterstrom

Today we celebrate the labor of hard working men and women who built America into the richest most powerful nation in the world.

But many of us are also mourning the fact that most of the wealth and power created by those hard working Americans is now concentrated among a handful of the worlds greediest war-mongering multi-national corporations.

We live in profoundly difficult days for America's great experiment with Democracy. An historical moment in our history, where factories are shuttered and shipped overseas, while American jobs are pawned off to the lowest bidders in developing countries.

Not only are our livelihoods being sold out from underneath us, but our "Purple Mountains Majesty", our rivers, wetlands, deserts, coastlines, National Parks, National Monuments and Wildlife Refuges as well.

"America The Beautiful", herself, is For Sale!

Our public lands are being opened up to the very same robber-barons & private interests, who, with the pious contempt of the so-called religious right, relentlessly cheapen the fruit of American labor while maximizing the profits of a chosen few. And, who continue plundering & profiteering from the exploitation and squandering of the worlds diminishing resources, while defending and promoting a wasteful destructive economic system that is based upon unlimited growth and conspicuous consumption.

America is no longer a sovereign nation! America is a rogue corporation whose assets have been appropriated under a hostile takeover by members of its own Board Of Directors.

The assets of America Inc.---including we, the indentured middle-class servants whose labor earns ever decreasing portions of the national pie---are being divided up amongst its major stockholders, including the chief executives of such benevolent companies as Exxon-Mobil, WalMart and Halliburton.

Yes folks, everything is up for sale, including you!

So, one last time, before you're laid off, before your home is lost to foreclosure, or before our world is consumed by our consumption, let's all do our part in trying to keep the miracle of "Disaster Capitalism" afloat.

Get out there on this great National Holiday and buy stuff on the credit card.

Something from China, something from Walmart.

Something that will hasten the exportation of more American jobs.

While you're out, fill up those gas-guzzlers at your nearest Exxon-Mobil distributor. Not just the cars, but the boats, the Jet-Skis, the OHVs, and all the other toys too.

And remember, as peak oil looms over industrial civilization, Halliburton thanks you for all the billions they're making off the hard labor of American kids fighting in Iraq, sacrificing their lives & limbs, to secure more oil for fueling our absurd dead-end climate ruining lifestyles.

~Happy Labor Day~

recommended reading - The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein

God Laughs & Plays - David James Duncan

recommended viewing - Out Of Balance - Tom Jackson

'Twas In Another Lifetime...

...a world of free-spirited primal-dancing flower children

Click on photo to enlarge - © 1972 jim otterstrom

"Happiness runs in a circular motion,

Thought is like a little boat upon the sea."

Donovan Leitch

From the children's round 'Happiness Runs' on Donovans 1969 Barabajagal album.

A Dear Old Friend - Cheryl - Agoura, California 1972Click on photo to enlarge - © 1972 - jim otterstrom

Check out those sexy skin-tight hip-huggers and that chicken bone necklace!

Still lookin' fantastic Cheryl!

This was taken just about the time we were all beginning to face the fact that the '60s really were over, but some of us will never give up.

I rediscovered the negatives for the monochrome pictures below in a throwaway box sometime last year, with a bunch of other 'bad' negatives from 35 years ago that somehow never got thrown away.

Instead, they sat around in hot, or cold, leaky storage sheds & attics all these decades, gaining age and character like good vintage wine.

These particular gems were all taken with and old Zeiss Ikon camera I found in a secret compartment hidden beneath the floorboards of a little shack where I once lived in the '60s.

The camera used 2 1/4 X 2 1/4 (medium format) film and took very nice photos when it worked properly, which it rarely did. Something was amiss with the film advance mechanism so the great majority of the pictures came out as partial double exposures, like the sepia-toned photos below and the still-life at the top.

You can easily make out the double exposures in the pictures, which is why the negatives ended up in the junk box. But the passage of time has a way of making junk more valuable and now I consider these to be priceless artifacts.

The two monochrome negatives were so deteriorated from exposure to extreme elements; heat, cold, dust, dirt, abrasion and moisture, that I all I could do was smooth them out in Photoshop enough to make them legible.

The color transparencies above, of Cheryl, and the still-life of the window, were found in a different box. They didn't fare much better over the years, and also required considerable manipulation to get a usable picture. I used Photoshop brush & watercolor effects to cover scratches and age spots in the emulsion.

For me, these images capture a much more hopeful & free-spirited time and place, where money didn't matter because there wasn't any. A simpler time, where life was lived for the joy of it. We had nothing in those days, but we arranged that nothing beautifully, decorating our lives with the cast-off junk of the wasteful world around us.

The distasteful world of war, racism, violence, hate, greed, consumption and competition for the almighty dollar, a world we were attempting to reject.

Our communities, and our very lives, became an experimental art form in search of love, peace, and freedom. And, for awhile, we thought the world was changing, and that we might live out those sweet idealistic lives.

We were mistaken.

To those who weren't fortunate enough to be there, this may look like poverty, but anyone who truly lived & breathed the 1960s counter-culture will recognize something in these photos, and be reminded of how very much we've lost...

...of our innocence, our joy, and our optimism.

During the 35 years since these pictures were taken, every incremental increase in the material wealth & convenience, now being enjoyed by the privileged few of our richer countries, has come at a very great cost to freedom, democracy, human rights, and the natural diversity of Earth.

Billions of human beings suffer needlessly today because of our gluttony, greed, and indifference.

And much more of the planet now resembles a pigsty than a living garden.

~We have literally sold our souls~

Cheryl's Living Room

Click on photo to enlarge - © 1972 jim otterstrom

Cheryl's daughter Olwen at the Triunfo Canyon house where they lived for several years. This is the same window in the picture above.

Click here if you haven't seen the 'Grandfather Frog Gets A Ride' photo I took in Olwens room, later on in my Nikon era.

Cheryl's Kitchen

Click on photo to enlarge - © 1972 jim otterstrom

So what went wrong with the counter-culture?

Partly, it was our own success...

We were having a hugely positive effect by influencing societal & governmental change, in forcing issues like civil-rights, the Viet Nam War, and the environment to the forefront of public debate.

Our highest values were being strongly represented by the media outlets of TV, magazines, newspapers, and most effectively, FM radio, and, we could hear our own voices resounding in many political speeches of the day.

...and partly it was the naive recklessness of being young.

We were just kids, photogenic, hedonistic, and obviously reveling in our youthful sexuality. So Hippies became the sensational media darlings of the time (somewhat like the Paris Hiltons' and Britney Spears' of today) which sent millions of kids running off to join what was being inaccurately hyped as one big naked love-in of sex & drugs.

And then there were the so-called LSD gurus, lime-light seeking publicity-whores such as Timothy Leary, who especially contributed to the circus-like atmosphere that would overshadow a once creative, democratic, and highly participatory social movement, but I believe these problems could've been overcome with time, experience, and maturity.

Social consciousness, an unabashed passion for life, thumbing our noses at convention, and courageously speaking truth to power was the initial charm of our generation, which also spawned a large back-to-the-land culture.

As the movement grew larger, so did the excesses, until we were becoming caricatures of ourselves. I began to suspect things were unraveling in other ways too, when I started seeing peace signs, gods eyes, and ankhs for sale at big chain stores. Corporate America had discovered there were $$$ to be squeezed out of Hippies after all. We were being commercialized, turned into a commodity for sale.

But, in my opinion, the final death knell of the '60s social movement, our own cultural 9/11, was the infamous Manson Family (They weren't a family---and they certainly weren't flower children---they were a gang of drug-addled thugs who preyed upon Hippies.)

Once this psychopathic ex-convict unleashed his 'family' of mental cases upon the world, the media wasted no time in portraying these depraved violent lunatics as a Hippie family.

The political/corporate establishment---who had been caught way off-guard by the strength and tenacity of our rebellious generation---was all over that like flies on shit, using fear, once again to mold the minds and emotions of the American people.

Hippies instantaneously became monsters, the terrorists of the day and our voices were silenced much like the voices of the few who would call for calm and reason in the revengeful war-mongering aftermath of 9/11.

Fear & hysteria prevailed, and within days of Manson's arrest I could feel the difference in my world.

Where just a few weeks earlier, grandmothers & little children would come up to me chatting and exchanging pleasantries, now, people I encountered in public would cringe and recoil, grabbing hold of their kids, who were sometimes asking if I was part of the Manson Family.

Fear and hatred became palpable, you could almost taste it, like Arab-Americans (or followers of Islam anywhere) certainly must since September of 2001.

There's no limit to the societal damage and hateful destructiveness that can be perpretrated upon the world, simply by making sure people are very afraid...

Ironically, the prototypical flower child troubadour, Donovan, released his Barabajagal album (top photo) on August 11th of 1969, just 5 days before the Manson gang was arrested for their horrific murderous rampage.

It would be Donovans last highly popular album. The vibe had changed, the feeling was gone.

PEACE & LOVE went out of style.

A generations message of Universal Love was recast into one of Universal Fear.

'Tricky Dick' Nixon was the newly elected President, Alvin Tofflers 'Future Shock' was about to be published, and the world was on its way to where it is now.

"What became of the changes we waited for love to bring?
Were they only the fitful dreams of some greater awakening?"
Jackson Browne

From 'The Pretender'

(c) 1976 SWALLOW TURN MUSIC

As long as I'm quoting Jackson Browne, here's one of my all time favorite songs, a sort of requiem for the '60s...

Before The Deluge

Some of them were dreamers

And some of them were fools

Who were making plans and thinking of the future

With the energy of the innocent

They were gathering the tools

They would need to make their journey back to nature

While the sand slipped through the opening

And their hands reached for the golden ring

With their hearts they turned to each other's hearts for refuge

In the troubled years that came before the deluge

Some of them knew pleasure

And some of them knew pain

And for some of them it was only the moment that mattered

And on the brave and crazy wings of youth

They went flying around in the rain

And their feathers, once so fine, grew torn and tattered

And in the end they traded their tired wings

For the resignation that living brings

And exchanged love's bright and fragile glow

For the glitter and the rouge

And in the moment they were swept before the deluge

Now let the music keep our spirits high

And let the buildings keep our children dry

Let creation reveal it's secrets by and by

By and by--

When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky

Some of them were angry

At the way the earth was abused

By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power

And they struggled to protect her from them

Only to be confused

By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour

And when the sand was gone and the time arrived

In the naked dawn

Only a few survived

And in attempts to understand a thing, so simple and so huge

Believed that they were meant to live, after the deluge

Now let the music keep our spirits high

And let the buildings keep our children dry

Let creation reveal it's secrets by and by

By and by--

When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky

Jackson Browne

(c) 1974 SWALLOW TURN MUSIC

Postscript-

I am currently reading Naomi Kleins 'The Shock Doctrine - The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism'.

And last night we watched the DVD 'Ralph Nader - An Unreasonable Man'

Very good stuff for those of you who might be wondering 'whatever became of Democracy'?

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world.

The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.

Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

George Bernard Shaw - 1903

JOE BAGEANT TELLS IT LIKE IT IS!

EARTH HOME GARDEN'S

'BOOK OF THE YEAR'

Click on covers to enlarge - © 2007 Joseph L. Bageant/Crown Publishers

I know, the year isn't over yet, and we've read a bunch of good books at Earth Home Garden in the past 7+ months, including Jared Diamond's Collapse, The Humboldt Current by Aaron Sachs, and Limits to Growth, The 30‑Year Update by Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers and Dennis Meadows. But I'm willing to claim that no other book I read during the remainder of the year will resonate with me like Joe Bageant's Deer Hunting With Jesus.

Articulately profane, gut-wrenchingly honest, and frighteningly well-informed, Deer Hunting With Jesus paints a profoundly vivid portrait of what's become of America and the promise of Democracy, revealing in great detail the tragic consequences of blind faith, of a mis-informed semi-literate right-wing conservative working class, and the arrogant self-defeating intellectual elitism of the so-called liberal left. Joe tells his potentially depressing story with deep affection and generous humor.

If Deer Hunting With Jesus doesn't hit home with you, you're living in a different America than I am.

Five Things You Don't Know About Me........ A Belated MeMe!

©1970 by Ron Mesaros & Playboy - Click on photo to enlarge

I was tagged for the '5 things meme' awhile back by Claire at the Clairesgarden blog and I've finally obliged.

So, here's 5 things you don't know about me...

1. I bet you didn't know that I once posed topless for Playboy Magazine!

Yup, that's me on the far right, at 24 years old, with a group of Topanga residents who were hired by photographer Ron Mesaros to pose for this photo which illustrated a November 1970 Playboy Magazine article, 'West Of Eden', about Hippie Communes (I believe we were paid 20 or 25 dollars apiece which was good money in those days when you consider I was making $2.50 an hour doing odd jobs here & there).

I had previously participated in a few communes, but this group wasn't part of a commune, we were just hired randomly for the photo.

Playboy actually sold a large-sized wall poster version of this picture, and, even years later, people I didn't know would approach me, out of the blue, to say they had the poster hanging on their wall.

Today, almost 37 years later, there are rainbow colored retro posters being sold on eBay, titled MORNING STAR COMMUNE, which use this same photo cut out in a heart shape. Who woulda' thunk it?

The picture posted above was tweaked in Photoshop to smooth out the halftone color process printing dots.

2. I'll also bet that most of you don't know I was married once before.

Yup, and that's my first wife, Julie (3rd from the right), holding a child that actually belonged to the naked couple in the foreground. Julie and I were together for several years but she ran off with her Karate instructor a few months after we got married. The photo was taken in Topanga Canyon sometime in 1970. The guy on the far left is Bruce, and the girl standing next to me is Gail, but I don't remember the other people's names.

3. Around this same time I was also hired by a fashion designer to dance with a group of Hippie types on Art Linkletter's House Party TV show.

The dancing was a complete disaster and the designer's career probably ended with that show. We were all wearing this person's latest "gypsy styled" creations (I was stylin' in a long-sleeved leather pullover shirt with rawhide lacing & wide-bell-bottom paisley print pants---NICE!!!) and trying to dance in a wild, beat-heavy Hippie groove, to sleepy Lawrence Welk style orchestra music. One of the female models actually cried her way through the whole absurd ordeal. I earned every penny of $100 for this pitiful gig but was too embarrassed to even watch the episode when it aired.

4. My biological father was a diabetic who drank himself to death (at 36 years of age) when I was 15, just a couple of years after he and my mother divorced.

My mother re-married when I was 14 but my stepfather didn't adjust very well to having a house full of rowdy divorcee's kids (4 of us at first, then 5 after his own daughter was born to my mom), so he took to locking us out of the house while they were at work all day. Consequently, during my life as a 'latch-key kid', between the ages of 14 and 18, I pretty much raised myself on the streets, in the company of the other hoodlums from my neighborhood.

5. When I was 17 years old I was arrested for robbing a dry-cleaning shop of $17 and spent 3 months in the old Juvenile Hall in downtown Los Angeles.

The headline in the paper read, "Daring Teenage Bandits Rob Dry Cleaner In Broad Daylight" (there were two of us). The old woman who worked there claimed that we got off with a couple of hundred dollars (she must've had some money hidden that she kept for herself, so we weren't the only crooks taking someone to the cleaners that day). She was also an artist who drew very good likenesses of us for the police, along with a description of our car (which had been parked around the corner on a different street). So, a few weeks later, the police staked out our school and blocked the gate as we were leaving. We were then handcuffed to the fence as school was letting out for all of our friends and classmates to gawk at.

Fortunately for me, after staying out of trouble between then and my 21st birthday, I had my juvenile police record legally expunged, through the courts, or I never would've been able to work for the Post Office.

I consider myself very lucky because, at the time, my life could've continued down the wrong path so easily. But I decided to leave my old neighborhood, and my old gang of hoodlum friends behind, and set out for the 'beatnik' lifestyle of 1964's Greenwich Village in New York City.

There, I discovered more creative ways of getting into trouble, but I managed to stay out of jail long enough to grow up a little bit.

Well, there you have it, 5 things you didn't know about me (and probably didn't want to know) involving my adolescent transition from angry young felon to beatnik-hippie-flowerchild-fashion/photography model. Of course, this was all prior to my glamorous 30 year career as a postman.

~But the picture is from the glory days, when I honestly believed my generation was changing the world in ways that would yield a brighter, more sustainable future. Way back then, I was known around Topanga as "Beautiful Jim", a nickname given to me by a local hair-stylist who admired my thick wavy locks, even though she never got to cut or style them. Much to my chagrin the name stuck to me for years, and even today there's one person, Janet, the model in my 1977 20th Century Crucifixion photo, who still calls me that.

What a long strange trip it's been!

;~)