Life Is Excellent

I cross Little Chico Creek on Park Ave. about every day across from the Sicilian Cafe (eat there; they're fantastic). I make a point of checking in with this little fifteen-foot reach of the creek as a sort of informal pulse-taking. Not only does it seem like there's more water later in the summer than there has been for a while; but when I stopped to check out the wee fishes that I'd noticed earlier in the week (what are they? Trout? Like I should know)...I also espied two fat pollywogs who looked to be in the last push of their transmogrification. Fat bullets of future froghood with burly eel-tails, they did their little future frog thing, grubbing and shimmying and generally being OK with high visibility--if I could see them from the bridge, they were Out and Proud.

And then I saw something wonderful: in the creekmuck and vegetal  dinge that flourished in this uncharacteristically warm and wet summer, I saw flicks of movement. One, two, twenty wriggling pollywogs burrowing into this sheltering furze like birds in a stand of blackberries. In that ripe moment it seemed like the creek bed was totally moving and alive with creatures engaged in the business of transformation, just under the skin of what I could see from the bridge.

I think this is unusual on a short timeline; certainly pollywogs in the creeks are a historical certitude, but what with the constant suck of water out of our hydrologic region it may be (becoming) something of a crap shoot. I also read on Big Chico Creek Watershed Alliance's home page http://www.bigchicocreek.org/that Chinook salmon were spotted in BCC near one of the campus bridges. Awesome, awesome, awesome!!

Life--it's excellent.http://www.reverbnation.com/artist/song_details/5538676

Random Dudgeon

Live and learn, and save often. Sorry, this one got eaten cause I'm too impatient to wait for the post to publish, and my long-winded tale got et.

short version: Pedophile's delight bus ad located ideally between Chico Jr. and the courthouse. Bad PSA design. Sexualizing children is not OK. I complained to Stott (ad agency). Am I crazy, or is this legit? Go look at the ad.

That's the cliff notes. Sorry, I'm never going to work directly in the blog interface again. Live and learn.

Re: learning, here's that link from yesterday, clickable. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rYGdOC2r5w&feature=player_embedded

I'll Blog Your Face Off. Really.

OK, so the Synthesis finally gave me the bum's rush; not that I didn't expect it, but that in no way diminished the sting of being told to peddle my kippers elsewhere. Who knows what a blog may bring? Even if it's only for the reading pleasure of my three Synthesis readers (Hi Mom!)...

It's just that, god, how many houses can you visit and chitchat at here in Cyberia? We've got errands to do, dishes, floors to vacuum, jobs to go underachieve at. Spouses that pop up in our field of vision from time to time, demanding sex and attention. Children that need to be nagged so they'll have something to complain to their friends about.

In that vein, i'm going to share some Rev. Billy with you. This is powerful stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rYGdOC2r5w&feature=player_embedded

Go to there. Pretty simple, really.

If I had the patience and time, I'd throw some more of my old Syn pieces up here; but honestly, I'm loath to re-read all of them, cause I hate that. I know that some of them might have been good. It's the ones I phoned in that I don't want to acknowledge. But all of that stuff belongs to yesterday anyway.

I'm going to try writing for the CN&R again, under Christine's excellent guidance. I will doubtless crow about that here (those of you that know me in the reals know that I have zero poker face and am powerless to play that kind of stuff off). But just in terms of continuity with what I began, thanks to Ryan Laine and Jake Sprecher...I think that the weekly deadline has been a huge incentive in my writing; just the idea that you're obligated to produce something every week, regardless of what doo it is, has been almost-equal-parts irritating and inspiring. I should make a commitment to a weekly blog, but self-discipline is not my strong suit.

 And thanks to all of you that keep me from succumbing to alcoholism and cynicism...I'll try to return the fave.

Final-Final

The Keystone XL pipeline. Tim DeChristopher’s sentencing date, July 26th. A salute to the California Conservation Corps. That horrendous new Russian heroin analog, “Krokodil”. The judge’s decision in the Crystal Geyser EIR case. This is just the tip of the (melting) iceberg in terms of the next column, and the next one, and the next. So many stories I had to tell you! But Green Light is over, kids, this is it. Final-final.

However, if you fancy this sort of thing and feel like you want to keep seeking out breaking news and views that depress and terrify you (more on this later), there are many other people and places that I look to for information and, yes, inspiration. Writers who shine through the shitscape: Chris Hedges, Robert Jensen, Derrick Jensen, Matt Taibbi, Joe Bageant (RIP you ornery cuss), and Naomi Klein stand out, and except for Joe, who’s dead, they write regularly and all have online get-aholds. My two big hits of bitter habit in the morning are Alternet and CommonDreams, news sites that cater to those who shun cream and sugar. Don’t forget Grist—“A Beacon In the Smog”—taking the inside temperature of dirty happenings from an environmental porthole.

And there’s people in realtime that can feed your need. I work as a consultant at the Butte Environmental Council—I just got my own card, which delights me I can’t even tell you how much—it says Education and Outreach Project Assistant. So I’m always reaching out, sometimes in highly inappropriate ways; but BEC is the go-to for environmental questions or issues in Butte County. Consider becoming a member; BEC has dollar memberships for students and a sliding scale for working stiffs. You like this place—why not root down? And we’ve got the Creek Cleanup coming up in September. Come volunteer, pull some couches out of the creek, it’s a good way to meet ‘nice people’ (read: hotties). “Oh, he’s such a nice guy, he volunteers and cares about the enviiiiiironment!” Riiiight?

AquAlliance is also an excellent place to engage and learn. Water’s their game, and they’re in it to win it. Many times Barbara Vlamis or her co-worker Jim Brobeck have been the only voice in the room saying, This is unworkable, this will kill fish, this will destroy ecosystems. How important are these people? You have no idea, kids. This county would look entirely different if not for their hard work. Their involvement is so critical, and just like BEC, they need all the help they can get, both body-wise and financially. Go to there.

Returning to that whole ‘depress and terrify’ bit: I didn’t write this column to do that. I personally find the current state of affairs depressing and terrifying, but any rational person would come to that conclusion. You can’t read a story about a train wreck that orphans and maims children and get a giggle out of it. So perhaps what writers like Bageant and Hedges and both Jensens, and maybe I, do is to process our own depression and terror through writing about the world. Because, really, people, let’s look at the facts: It’s been on since Carter put solar panels on the White House. And have we addressed the problem in any meaningful, substantial way? Well, we’ve sped up on our greased pole to hell. That’s action, right? We’re doing something. It’s the totally wrong thing. A tar sand pipeline from Canada to Texas? That’s Keystone XL. Really? Really!?

So my final-final is this: It will not be pretty. Nobody will save the day. Floods, fires, droughts, famines, martial law is what’s for dinner. Get skills, root down, do what you love. Because the world you know is on the outs . And so am I. Namaste, motherfuckers.