The Ice Road

In far northern Wisconsin there is sometimes a natural road that leads out to an island within Lake Superior. This ice road exists only a few months out of the year and is either loved or feared by the folks that live in this area. In the warmer months the several thousand summer residents that reside on the island are dependent on a ferry business to provide passage for their vehicles; during the deepest part of winters this road grants liberty from the tourists and schedules to the few hardy souls remaining on the island.

This past weekend I finally took the plunge and spanned this road for the first time with friends while we still could before the spring breakup. It was a beatiful and warm pre-spring afternoon, I had been tapping maples in the family sugarbush earlier in the morning as the sap had begun to flow. We rolled down all of the windows, just in case we needed an escape route, and laughed as the water splashed into our vehicle As we forded the above-ice creek that ran over the mainland landing. Along our journey of a few miles we veered through the slushy conditions following the occasional reused christmas tree marking the road as we passed by a weinie roast party and folks going ice fishing. As we arrive onto the island there is a release of triumphant cries while reminding ourselves that we would again be taking this journey back under the cover of darkness, assuming the road will still be open.

The ice road reminds me of the old saying that you can never cross the same river twice. It reminds me of the fact that choosing a path may not be for everyone, but if you choose to take it you will find others along the way. It reminds me that it is indeed possible to walk on water.

Redoing America

Today is the first day of a renewed America. Today I watched Barack Hussein Obama's ignauguration party as the 44th President of the United States on the tell-a-vision.

I was watching it live from a kitchen where I somtimes work, in the capital of a surviving and sovereign First American nation. I was at the distribution center for USDA Commodities Foods, in a kitchen that I had helped to renovate for their nutritional education program. This place is known as "Commods", the modern-day interpretation of food access rights in ceded territories set by treaties between Chippewa chiefs and American presidents in the 1800s. I was sitting with three Anishinaabe citizens that I have gotten to know over the past year as an AmeriCorps volunteer through organizing a youth conference/pow-wow, learning the arts of wild and industrial foods, being a part of America's only Mobile Farmer's Market, and just joking around. After the kitchen and warehouse closed for the day, I went to the border to my favorite community center on top of the ridge where I continued to watch the party in D.C. with a handful of kids and adults. We were watching for glimpses of native representatives dressed in full regalia on horseback between the marching bands and floats.

I wrote down a dream in my journal a couple years ago about being able to live off of making compost. In the past few months I have been fleshing out a modest organics processing facility to serve two rural counties and two native nations that could be financially independent within a few years. It could employ multiple people full-time year-round by making and selling topsoil, and teaching their community how to do it at home too. We would be able to reclaim tons of organics every day from landfills and the collapsing recycling industry. By saving on the public and private costs and energy impacts of current disposal practices, it can grow topsoil and sustainable jobs. Just think of what that could do for local foods. Obama could easily make this dream a reality depending on the details of his upcoming economic stimulus plan.

Enough with the economic growth, we need some economic decay to complete the cycles. Is Obama ready to wake this country up?

US Troops Deployed on Home Soils

There's a lot happening these days...

I just became aware that a brigade of US troops was deployed here on home soil on October 1st. The first deployment of its kinds since the Civil War. These troops are directly controlled by the President... not Congress.

The army's version of the story: www.armytimes.com/news/2008...d_090708w/
Another interpretation: www.salon.com/opinion/gre.../09/24/army/
CNN's report: www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/03/army.unit/

Hope my friend is OK

An activist friend of mine and several others were preemptively raided, arrested, and being charged with conspiracy to further terrorism against the Republican National Convention held in the Twin Cities. Many know him as an incredible dumpster diver, gardener and composter. Below is an excerpt from an article about the eight activists that are being charged:

www.minnpost.com/community...narchists_
First They Came For The Anarchists
By Mordecai Specktor | Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2008

My son Max was arraigned at the Ramsey County Law Enforcement Center on Wednesday, Sept. 3. He's in serious legal trouble.

In the aftermath of the Republican National Convention — and the arrests of more than 800 protesters, journalists and bystanders in the Twin Cities — Max and seven others, the alleged ringleaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee, have been charged with conspiracy to commit riot in the furtherance of terrorism.

That's right, terrorism.

...

Lurid allegations
The complaint in the case of the RNCWC 8 (shades of the Chicago 8, from another political convention brouhaha) contains lurid allegations about kidnapping Republican delegates, throwing Molotov cocktails, attacking law enforcement officers and burning tires on the freeway. The allegations are based on statements made by police plants in the group — CRIs, "confidential reliable informants."

"The charges in this case are supported only by allegations of paid confidential informants," Nestor told the reporters. "A number of the attorneys here have experience in investigations with the use of informants in political cases. We are concerned about the potential use of provocateurs, people who purposely plan and bring up discussions of violence, in order to get other people to respond and then report back that those discussions occurred. The confidential informants are paid based on the value of the information they provide. They have a clear incentive to exaggerate and lie about the information."

Nestor added that the allegations of kidnapping and violence, the "most outrageous allegations" made by the authorities — and the basis for the Aug. 30 SWAT team raids on three south Minneapolis homes — "are not supported by any evidence other than the statements of the confidential informants, they're not supported by the evidence seized."

Which brings us to the pails of urine. Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher proudly displayed 5-gallon pails of "urine" at a press conference following the raids. The anarchists ostensibly were fashioning IUDs (improvised urine devices) to use against cops and Republicans, according to the police authorities. The search warrants for the Aug. 30 SWAT team raids specified "urine and feces."

However, Nestor said that the "urine" seized was mostly "kitchen gray water" and had nothing to do with any of the defendants. Nestor also noted that "common household items" — glass bottles, rags and charcoal starter fluid, found in different locations in various houses — have repeatedly been referred to in news reports as bomb-making materials.

Warrant items not found
"We have search warrants seeking gun powder, explosive materials, Molotov cocktails, none of which were found," Nestor said. "We have the sheriff displaying a single plastic item, which he claims is a shield; as if, somehow, one shield was going to protect demonstrators from 3,500 armed riot police who have projectile tear gas weapons."

Nestor concluded that the authorities have recklessly wielded the "terrorism charge" so that any political activist involved in planning civil disobedience could be labeled as a "domestic terrorist."

Attorney Larry Leventhal told the reporters that the complaint does not allege that any of the defendants physically attacked anybody or even "broke a window."

The complaints against the eight defendants, according to Leventhal, weave "a narrative of various meetings that they claim occurred over a number of years. … We have, basically, [the authorities] saying, Here are some people, they've associated with other bad people, and those people have done bad things. If we were to accept the standard that people who associate with others who may do bad things are subject to arrest — and that certainly should not be a standard in a civilized society — but if that were the standard, there's a lot of delegates who are in the Xcel Center that have been associating with bad people who have done very bad things."

Leventhal termed the case a "political prosecution," which is characterized by people being targeted and arrested for "their thoughts, for their ideas — which may be different from the reigning political powers' — rather than for things they have done."

My American Dream

"2008 Art Theme: 'American Dream'
In 2008, leave narrow and exclusive ideologies at home and carefully consider your immediate experience. What has America achieved that you admire? What has it done or failed to do that fills you with dismay? What is laudable? What is ludicrous? Put blame aside, let humor thrive, and dare to contemplate a larger question: What can America contribute to the world?"
- burningman.com

In 2007 I went to Burning Man on a Green Man dream in barter for my participation in open source education, to tell others about a mud mix called cob. I still carry my Gift ticket stub everywhere along my path to remind myself that right here is a living dream, to sate my nomadic spirit for know that I very well could have followed another path to an American Dream known as Black Rock City right now. Last year I got two burns for the price of none, last year some would argue that the only way to make the burn greener is to stay at home, this year I did just that.

This year I have followed a different dream closer to my heart within the sovereign nation of the Anishinaabeg, where the watershed I grew up in meets the world's largest lake. This freshwater estuary is the largest and possibly most pristine remaining on Lake Superior. Just a walk away from the confluence where the sloughs thrive with manoomin at this time of year is an incredible remote beach with northern hardwood forests, Black Ash bogs, grassy campsites, traditional wigwams and a modern ceremonial roundhouse. Within sight from here lies the island where the former capitol of the Ojibwa people was seven generations ago, the extraordinary gatherings of today's students in traditional cultures during these times of the seventh fire, and not least the dreams of seven generations ahead.

Along this sacred beach live soulful stones unique to this area. Tradition says these grandfather stones are sculpted by the spirits of this beach during thunderstorms, following these storms are when they are found most abundantly. Geology says the concretion stones were born some 20,000 years ago within these red clay banks lining the shore in a host nucleus, often organic, such as a leaf, tooth, or piece of shell or fossil. Their myriad of unusual shapes and sizes are described as marbles, dinosaur eggs, cannonballs, pumpkins, peanuts, monster eyes, various animals, ripples, warts, round people, miniature planets, or extra-terrestrial debris. Whatever their origin is they are known for not wanting to leave the beach after enduring such incredible journeys to be there.

At this time last year I shared my dream with tens of thousands for an artistic experiment in community on the playa, this year I shared my dream with a gathering of less than a dozen dozen to share traditional earth based living skills on the Kitchi-Gami. My gift to this community remains the same, sharing the knowledge of making modern concretions known as a cob-creation from the soils, fibers and water of the lake itself. This past week a loving earthen oven was born along with this tradition remembered through our spirits participating intimately together.

Perhaps someday around the year 22,000 AD someone shall walk along these same shores and wonder about the cob-creations and dream about the curious forces that created these. If art is whatever I can get away with, then may I not live a better American Dream than this.

Further adventures with straw/clay

"This year Bonnaroo got its own United States post office, complete with a festival postmark, operating from a hut made of clay, straw and recycled tires." ~ The New York Times 6/16/08
blog.burningman.com/
flickr.com/photos/zeibl...605641433526/
www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article


Affordable Green Housing in Indian Country
www.affordablegreenhousing.org/
video.google.com/googleplayer.swf

Cheesehead culture

Walking through the woods helps to clear the mind. Before venturing out I dress in a few layers and throw on some blaze orange so that none of the neighbors shoot me. Today's snow is squeaky. I read the fresh snowfall and interpret the tracks and scats of rabbits, birds, squirrels and deer, and then follow myself back home before dark.

At night, going to the bars helps to meet the neighbors. The parking lot is full of trucks with dead bodies in the back. I enter the local saloon around dinnertime and walk into a sea of people fully dressed in blaze orange with serial numbers on their backs. Hunters come and go from the establishment as they refuel on burgers and beers over stories describing today's hunt and the memorable carcasses of yore. The buck board on the wall in the back is full of local names and catches. Occassionally the crowd wanders outside to see the newest buck to pull up. A couple of dogs running around inside probably breaks some health codes but nobody cares.

I haven't been hunting yet in my life, but I do help the neighbors in exchange for venison. I go over to their basement and find three dead deers hanging from the floor rafters. We skin the deer, take off the legs, and remove the back meat. The meat goes into the freezers, the skins and heads go to the back porch for storage, and the head-legs-skin-less bodies go to the back yard for the dogs to chew on. Later in the winter, after more hunting and skinning, we will get together again to butcher the legs and process the venison before distributing to family and friends.

If it weren't for the sexy orange fashions and dead bodies everywhere, life here in the northwoods could seem boring.

November 12, 2007: DNR Advises Hunters Not To Transport Firewood
November 12, 2007: More Wisconsin Hunting Accidents Involve Younger Hunters
November 13, 2007: New Steps Being Taken To Ease Tensions Between White, Hmong Hunters
November 16, 2007: Gun Deer Hunting Season Starts Saturday
November 17, 2007: Deer Hunt Opens With Good Weather Forecast
November 19, 2007: Hunter's Wayward Bullet Narrowly Misses Teen In Parked Car
November 19, 2007: DNR: Successful, Safe Start To Gun Deer Hunt
November 19, 2007: Amid Ongoing CWD Concerns, Gun Deer Hunting Season Begins
November 20, 2007: Thermal Imaging Used To Track Down Missing Hunter
November 21, 2007: Merrill Man Sells Hunting Rifles To Buy Turkeys
November 21, 2007: Illinois Man Killed While Deer Hunting In Wisconsin
November 22, 2007: Hunter Listed In Critical After Shooting Self Twice
November 26, 2007: DNR: 3 Hunters Killed, 3 More Wounded During Gun Deer Hunt
November 27, 2007: DNR: Hunters Register 343,644 Deer Over 9-Day Season