lying low

I hate not feeling well but I guess it's best to admit it and hope for a better day tomorrow. In the past three weeks I've had two surgeries to fix the tissue around a couple of dental implants. The first one became infected making it necessary to have a second surgery once the antibiotics had done their job. It may have been too soon because now I'm swollen worse than the first time and I'm getting bored  lying on the couch wrapped up in a shawl.

Maybe Crow will come by this evening and tell me another story.

At least he's been good about sharing the brandy.

♡

I'll be back making visits soon.

crow gets sentimental

Crow here and I have news for you. Dinosaurs never really left. They’re still here. I'm still here. In a new book by my old friend Scott D. Sampson called Dinosaur Odyssey: Fossil Threads in the Web of Life is a remarkable statement right near the beginning: “Today, most experts agree that birds are the direct descendants of dinosaurs and thus are, in a very real sense, dinosaurs themselves.” Oh no, you say, birds have feathers. Of course they do. And so did dinosaurs. It’s now been shown that the crow-sized Archaeopteryx wasn’t a bird at all, but a dinosaur. Now I'm talking about my ancestors here and this is a family oriented time of year so don't laugh. I told you I've been around a long, long, loooong time but you wouldn't believe me.

Well, I just thought I'd drop in to say hello before flying back to Copenhagen. I must have a word with the Canadian Government representatives about them continuing to allow the Tar Sands to be dug up. Do you have any idea what a mess that stuff makes of my feathers? I don't even want to talk about all the rest it's messing up. Which brings me back to dinosaurs. Everybody knows the dinosaurs (except for birds) finally became extinct 65 million years ago after the K-T event but before that they were around for 170 million years. What do you think of people's chances to last a fraction of that, Mr. H. Sapiens? Besides, my great great great great (ad infinitum) grandmother was a very beautiful and charming Archaeopteryx. Just look at this picture I found of her in an old album. No wonder my ggggggggggggggggggggggg (ad infinitum) grandfather fell in love.



Now I just have time for a quick snifter before take-off. I'll be back soon and in the meantime if you're going to party don't forget what gggggggggg GD used to say to ggggggggg GM - Bend over, let me see you shake a tail feather. Hey, it worked for them and it just might work for you too.

tits - I mean the birds..

Oh dear. I was going to post a picture of a new drawing but my almost brand new Power Mac has developed what seems to be a serious problem. It tries to light up but there's nobody home. The hard drive can't be accessed and that's where all my stuff is. Oh dear. Oh well. It's mostly pictures and they can be replaced.








At least numb's computer has a few of my favorite pictures by other people like this one by Rudi Herzlmeier. He's always been an excellent portraitist of Crow's dearest relatives.

The hint seems to be that I paint. I'll be back.

*note to self - It's a MacBook Pro. Seems I still have the reliable G4 Power Book on the brain.

growing up

Crow here. As you may know I've lived in this world for a good many centuries, have seen lots of changes and met many creatures both human and not. All in all it's a lovely place and it seemed there would always be space for all of us to share. Now I'm getting worried, really worried, about how the human race seems to feel justified in taking up not only too much of the space but misusing what was given to all of us. Mountains have had their peaks cut off so coal can be scooped out; thousands of square miles of tar sands in Canada are being dug up to extract heavy oil; water is being pumped into old oil wells to keep what's left of light crude oil rising; watersheds have been paved over for shopping malls and factories; slash and burn farming is still being practiced in poor countries where the newly uncovered ground is soon infertile. I could continue with examples but it should be clear things are a mess and not just for people. My main concern has always been for all my fellow beings but for now we should consider one problem at a time.

Not just in this country, but all over the world farming is failing because of climate change, the overuse of pesticides and artificial fertilizers, water shortages and plain old worn out soil. For instance, the worst drought in 70 years has decimated northern China's winter wheat crop and the soybean harvest was down 40% in South America. Two huge hurricanes hit the US within the past five years. The world food crisis continues to expand while the demand for plant based biofuels strains agricultural land. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization there are nearly a billion undernourished people in the world and although it's getting worse there are some people who've been thinking and planning for some big changes.

A couple of years ago I was sharing a branch in a favorite banyan tree restaurant with a guy you've probably never heard of, Dickson Despommier, and we talked about soil erosion occurring from wind blowing it away during droughts or from flooding. Topsoil isn't just plain old dirt you can find anywhere. It takes the world a thousand years to make a decent foot deep batch of the stuff and using current methods developed in the 40's, it hasn't taken long to ruin lots of it. To make things even worse farms near cities have been rezoned and sold to developers. Even if you don't have wings you do know when you leave your house for a country drive you'll be lucky to find any before you run out of gas or get tired and go home.

Anyway, Dickson came up with an idea that might eventually become a solution to feeding city people where, in 30 years or so, most people will live. It's called vertical farming, which doesn't mean growing cabbages on top of lamp posts (although I wouldn't mind flying by for a nice juicy cabbage), but actually building high rise farms in cities. Now that sounds pretty fine to me and even though there would be complications it certainly sounds not only doable but in the long run cost effective for everybody. No more huge transport costs for one thing, jobs, fresh food produced very locally even in the biggest cities and tall greenhouses would not only be beautiful but could be liveable. There are some nice pictures here.

It's a big topic and one that deserves some thought and discussion but if even the land now devoted to growing strawberries and vegetables could be returned to growing trees and grass then I know my fellow non-human creatures would once again have a chance to thrive. There's nothing better than a forest to help rid ourselves of all the extra carbon that's heating the place up faster than you can make thermometers. Why not take advantage of the growing mechanisms developed by the indoor marijuana entrepreneurs?

As we enjoyed another glass of brandy and watched the sun set over the suburbs of Detroit, Dickson mused, "For the first time in human existence, farming won't have to rely on soil types. You'll be able to build a farm in the middle of the desert or on the tundra. You'll put it wherever you want and people will live there as a result. You don't need a lot of water for hydroponic farming."



In the meanwhile, how about a little retrofitting of the now bankrupt sky-rise banks? I can think of a few people we could use as compost starters.

(Note - No obscenely wealthy bankers, humans or animals are part of hydroponic farming methods. That was just my little joke. Now I'll have a tumbler of Bailey's Irish Cream before climbing up to the sleeping perch.)

ready to Crow

I flew by to discuss recent developments with Susan but she's not here - probably out buying hummingbird food or staring at her color wheel, waiting for inspiration. She gets like that sometimes but it's okay. One of her pets is here to keep me company and meanwhile I'll talk to you if you have a moment. I've been doing some long distance traveling and need a break.

Where was I? Well, since things are a bit difficult in the US these days I thought I'd scout out a few other places just to see if there's anyplace 300 million people can go until the political, social and economic problems resolve. There are already 7 or more millions of ex-patriot US citizens living in other countries. Many of the younger ones have headed south of the southern border to places like Panama and Costa Rica for fun, adventure and entrepreneurial exploits. If Susan wants to see hummingbirds that's really the place to go but if Americans are leaving the United States, Canada is certainly one of the most convenient places for interim relocation. It may be a little chilly at times, but it’s right across the border and most Canadians speak English. Many of the major issues that divide people and political parties in the U.S. seem resolved in Canada. They have a lower crime rate, universal health care, and reportedly better education. Their medical doctors can dispense marijuana and they officially recognize same-sex marriages. On top of all that, the rest of the world isn’t mad at them.

Things have reached the point in this country that one of the best economic indicators is the 'pizza index' - the skyrocketing price of 'recession-proof' foods: pizza, hot dogs, bagels and beer. The major presidential candidates grumble about each other and just how fast or slow the US military can tiptoe out of Iraq while still leaving the oil giants, six huge permanent bases and the world's biggest 'embassy' in place but they don't talk about the fact the economy as a whole is collapsing. Individuals need help but we all need change. Is this just another market mistake, the latest bubble gone bust in a volatile business cycle? Can we solve all this with an Alka-Seltzer-like infusion of new taxes or regulations? I don't think so. We're talking big time crony capitalism here and not party politics.

If you're not quite ready to immigrate (which would probably only encourage the jerks who got you into this mess), I heard about the Fifth Party candidacy of Divajood and Nunley and stopped by to talk over the issues with my old friend David Korten who had some advice for those hoping to establish a progressive democracy. He says that the best way to start would be to envision the following changes:

1. Instruments of war to health care and environmental rejuvenation.
2. Automobiles to public transportation.
3. Suburban sprawl to compact communities and the reclamation of forest
and agricultural land.
4. Advertising to education.
5. Financial speculation to local entrepreneurship.

'There is significant evidence that for all the apparent differences, most all the world's people want the same thing: happy healthy children, families, communities, and natural systems. Properly understood, the imperative creates an unprecedented opportunity to unleash long suppressed potentials of the human consciousness to bring forth the world for which humans have long shared a deep yearning.'

Remember, humans are Pleistocene people with a 600,000 year history of being nomads. My people know because we were there with you when walked, ran, danced and rode through mighty, mysterious forests and endless grasslands. You sailed the seas in reed and wooden boats long before steel hulls and engines were invented. Wars were fought killing untold numbers of my people as well as yours but your inventiveness should provide the evidence that minds and hearts can evolve beyond destruction to something better for all of us.

Now I'm off to see if I can find something decent to eat around here and I don't mean hummingbird nectar either. Yuck.

(artwork by Rudi Herzlmeier)

i do like to be beside the seaside

I'm a bit worried about Crow who may be more depressed about George Carlin than I could have guessed. He came by late this afternoon wearing another of his bizarre disguises to tell me he was off on what could be an extended hiatus. When I asked him if he had any pithy political or financial analyses for our continuing edification he offered the following cryptic statement:

"An empire is synonymous with centralized hierarchical power structures in which influence is restricted to an economically privileged class retaining its advantage through a judicious use of oppression and skilled manipulation of both the society's information dissemination systems and its lesser power structures. It's all about dominance. Empires are not about efficient use of resources and the spread of happiness; corruption and favoritism are endemic to the system."

While I was understandably shocked by his erudition, I was even more surprised when he went on to say, "If you think politicians give a rusty fuck about you and your hopes for the future.. there's a really nice bridge in New York I'd be willing to sell you for the small price of a super size bag of premium birdseed."

See what I mean? Oh well, perhaps he wasn't feeling so bad after all since he circled back to say one last thing, "Remember, empires fall."

Keep the faith in each other.

something's fishy

Crow here with another report from the perch in susan's kitchen. Since it's Friday and she's a bit of a traditionalist I just got reminded of a weird story.

For two years, Larry West's company trucked fuel directly from Mississippi River barges to convenience stores between Houston and Corpus Christi, Texas. He didn't pay a penny in tax, claiming he was distributing "petroleum distillates,'' not gasoline.

The judge didn't buy it and now Mr. West is in jail.

"With the price of fuel going up and people getting more desperate for it, everything we've been finding since the mafia days, we're going to see that again,'' says a motor-fuels tax associate who represents state revenue agencies in Washington.

It could be argued Mr West is just trying to make a moderately dishonest living but he has nothing on the real criminals our society tolerates. I'm talking about the corporate types who have a charming facade but are basically socially inadequate sharks whose real place in life is mugging pensioners by jumping out of the commercial equivalent of dark alleys. Never get beholden to people like that because they will piss on you and then charge you irrigation fees.

My friend James Howard Kunstler says it better so I'll just paraphrase his excellent Alternet article which you can read if you want:

Personally, my theory has been that the specter of peak oil pretty clearly implies the inability of industrial economies to continue producing real wealth in the customary way. In the face of this, either consciously or at a more mystical level, the worker bees in banking recognize that, in order to maintain their villas in the Hamptons, money has to be loaned into existence some other way (than in the service of industrial productivity).

We've tried just about everything. There was the so-called service economy, an attempt to replace manufacturing with hamburger sales. Then there was the information economy, in which work would be replaced with knowing about stuff. Then there was the tech thing, which was about bringing internet companies that existed only on the back of cocktail napkins to the initial public offering stage of capitalization -- which allowed a few hundred or so 30-year-old smoothies to retire to vineyards in the Napa Valley while hundreds of thousands of retirees lost half the value of their investment portfolios. Then there was the housing boom, which was all about the creation of more suburban sprawl under the theory that houses (or "homes," in the jargon of the Realtors) represent an obvious sort of wealth, and therefore that using houses as collateral would allow humongous sums of money to be loaned into existence -- along with massive fees for structuring the loans into bundles of bond-like thingies.

This has all failed now because the racket went too far. Every possible candidate for a snookering got snookered.The important part of this is that the money is gone. What makes matters truly eerie is that the "bubble" in suburban houses has occurred at exactly the moment in history when the chief enabling resource for suburban life -- oil -- has entered its scarcity stage.

















Certainly the political fallout of all this will be awesome. But it's not about politics, really. It's about the entire society's inability to form a workable new consensus of reality.

taking a break

Spring is springing, the flowers are flowering, the trees are treeing and susan is off susanning.. whatever that is.





Crow here. Trying out another disguise and hoping one of these hot chicks will get a little broody with yours truly.








We'll be back.
Keep smiling and you'll look like me :-)

where it's gone

Crow here. You'll have to excuse my little nephew Wrendall but he's had a bit of a shock recently and was only able to describe the essentials of what he'd learned before having to return to the nest. His parents are now stuffing his little beak with worms, insects and other goodies until he recovers.

It seems Wrendall, who is a fine little fellow and a credit to investigatory intentions of the highest order, tried to swallow something larger than his crop could accomodate. As you'll recall, we've been discussing financial shenanigans and currency manipulation in recent weeks. My young nephew decided to see if he could find where on earth the money that's disappeared from your bank accounts, home values and general purchasing power has actually gone. Well, it makes sense that if it exists (which is something I still wonder about but will leave for now) and if you once had it and now don't, it must be somewhere.

Where do the tycoons and CEO's go once they've grabbed as much as they can for themselves? Have you heard of Dubai? I'm sure you have but it's truly outrageous what's going on there and very little news reaches us. After all, it's not our business in any sense of the word's meaning.

"50 skyscrapers rise above the desert city, where thousands of cranes work on $200 billion of real estate projects, according to HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe's largest bank. Sprawling to the right are the palace, gardens and stables of the emirate's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al- Maktoum, his wives and children.

"In a ditch near the Giorgio Armani-designed hotel, construction worker Omkar Singh leans on a shovel and wipes sweat from his brow. Singh, 24, went into debt to pay 60,000 rupees ($1,500) -- more than six months of earnings, including overtime -- to an agent to get to Dubai from India. The agent promised eight-hour workdays. Singh says he works at least 10-hour shifts, six days a week. ``I was taken for a ride,'' he says."

The amount and type of construction designed and implemented for the wealthy and built by men like Omkar who has a home and a faraway family to feed is one of the main places your money has gone. Like thousands of others from poorer nations, his passport has been confiscated until he's completed the contract he signed. This is the essence of what's happening in this tiny desert principality on the Straits of Hormuz (as well as in Saudi Arabia itself). There are entire buildings that rotate so everyone gets a changing view; an underwater hotel is being built so you can sleep with the fishes in a real and not mafia metaphorical sense; islands in the shapes of palm trees have beautiful houses and marinas for those who can afford to pay. Under construction and already finished are more islands designed in the configuration of world land masses - I think David Beckham bought England.

The world's tallest building, the Dubai Burj (Tower), at 2300 feet will be ready for occupation next year. It will be 160 stories tall compared to NY's former World Trade Center at 110 stories each.

Millionaires are welcome to live in the country (but not to become citizens) so long as they don't run out of money. You can see why the average tycoon might want to make sure he has more than enough in order to keep on affording the accommodations and entertainments in perpetuity.

The thing that really shook up my little friend Wrendall, though, was hearing that Prince al-Walid bin Talal who owns London's Savoy Hotel is planning an even bigger skyscraper in Saudi Arabia. On a clear day the view from the top will take in the Middle East, North Africa and the Indian Ocean if you have a head for heights. It will be 1 mile high - so tall that helicopters will have to do the major lifting of materials and workers. Sounds scary and that's what's done in poor little Wrendall for the moment. Maybe the rest of you should be happy that your money is being spent on something so impressive as another giant dildo - because you are getting screwed. Me? I'm off to find some worms for my nephew.

portrait of self

No, it's not a self portrait but a painting by one of my favorite artists - Rudi Hurzlmeier - who is German and not very well known in this country. Well, that doesn't come as a surprise in a place where most highschool students can't find Germany on a map. Anyway, he has a very wry vision and I thought I'd share my favorite of his paintings - which doesn't look exactly like me but it's close.

I took the plunge last night and ordered a flatbed scanner from Amazon after thinking about it for a couple of weeks. Like most everybody these days I have a lot of photographs so I thought with the devices allowing very high definition scans at much lower cost than professional places, why not get one and see what I can dig out of the albums and the old slide and photo suitcase? Some of them are pictures of paintings done more than ten years ago, and either sold or given away long ago, so it will be fun seeing what can be scavenged from the Kodachrome slides. It seems strange now remembering just how painstaking it was setting up the lights, the gray scale cards and balancing my 35mm camera on stacks of books because I couldn't afford a tripod.

The other thing I checked out was the Adobe Illustrator CS3. Well, you know Amazon.. If you like that, maybe you'd like this too. I actually wasted an hour thinking about it (truly, not for the first time) but it's just not for me since it's really all about advertising - cold and far too technical. I like hands-on art. I just do. I think sitting there with the piece of paper or canvas or whatever medium, is what artists are for. In fact, I believe art is sacred. It may not be quite as ancient as music but wasn't far behind. Cave paintings in Europe and Africa are understood to be 40,000 years old. Many more have been found in Australia and the Americas and all of them relate to our human tendency to celebrate the Divine Other - God, Life, Source, Infinity, Noumenon.. whatever the most fitting word seems to be. The essence is creative engagement with that which can't be described in words. Then again, it was really the churches that first got involved in art as advertising since midieval people couldn't read. Uh, oh.. that's the beginning of another very complex issue and one I'm not going get involved in at the moment.

Anyhow, maybe there'll be some scanned photos up here soon. Maybe I'll do a little cartooning and scan them. Who knows what will happen next? Goodness knows, I'll need to entertain myself during another loong election year and maybe I can be a bit entertaining up here too. Wish me luck.