On writing, sharing and the natural gas boom

It is a sun-filled, windy Saturday in Yellow Spring, Ohio. I thought today I would check out a blog that my friend Peter started up some time ago. Entries were few and far between, but rich and thoughtful. Small islands of reflection in the restless open waters and cold wind of living today. Here, in the written word, we come inside, knock snow and mud off our boots to savor warmth together and rejuvenate each other. Writing is an act of sharing, a kind of careful giving to the present and future. Literature.

Through this "citizen literature", we are attempting to understand each other and the difficult world into which we were born.

Peter's brother wrote this November 3...

my brother, Jake, on fracking

Its a dream of mine, as futile as it may be, that we, as members of a community, a nation and a planet could approach an issue as important as hydraulic fracturing with even a hint of rational thought. Unfortunately for our area, the fortunes our mailboxes seem to be turning up daily easily rival any notions of stewardship.  What little hope that remains vanishes when pooling statutes are considered. The reality is, our lands will be used. Just as fortunes were made with coal decades ago, fortunes will be made again with no less devastation. The rape of this resource is easy as we are continually faced with the financial hardships of our area. It is all too easy to accept this winning ticket. Sadly, the boom will come and go. Towns will fill and empty just as quickly. And ultimately, the boom in jobs will not be felt. Ask any local hospitality worker, the accents fueling our towns are not our own. Nor will be the jobs. The only thing we stand to gain is environmental ruin. Oh and lots of money. I cannot fault anyone’s decisions. Turning down a jackpot is not an easy or, dare I say, prudent thing to do. These mistakes were made long ago. Luckily, there are those of us who dream about tomorrow.


Well put, my friend. It is a dangerous wire we walk. Our civilization is built upon finite resources, yet many do not understand the ways in which they are being depleted. Even then, many people today, young and old,  have gone to the public spaces to question the myths of the growth economy, quantity (GDP) over quality of life (parks, clean water, human-scale communities). The Occupy Movement spread quickly across the world. European leaders meeting in Davos, Switzerland begin to rethink the future of capitalism. The diy and new localism movements gain more and more frequent coverage in popular media. The growing divide between the old and new worldviews, combine with dire economic conditions, suggest that a period of deep civic unrest and upheaval is fast approaching. Sadly, wars are often won by those who have the greatest resources, not the greatest values. Big industries and their lobbyists, grown corpulent with earnings from the depletion of the common’s resources, turn that wealth against us. And lo, history repeats itself. Only this time the monarchs compete for loyalty with the carrot of jobs and where a different robe. But we are getting smarter, slowly, but we must make better investments in education, not only for our children but for those now in their 20s and 30s. As a society, we must commitment to a life of learning. Not an easy task.

Information revolution: waves finally reaching a distant shore

I've been enjoying blogs a lot more lately. Thanks to Kathleen Soler,  I've discovered  RSSOwl, the news feed reader. Underneath it all, I've always been a typical backwards Louisianian, despite my education and travel record. I had written off social media and the technologies associated with it long ago. Now, a whole new world of information and opportunity has opened up to me. Where before I was a bit overwhelmed by the daunting task of foraging for information and hunting down important news bits in the sprawled out megatropolis of the interwebs, I now visit a customized supermarket of articles, lined up in clean, neatly organized aisles and stamped with their production date right next to the headline.  This means that information can be consumed faster, more selectively.

As many of my friends and family know, I am a very hungry person. Not just for food but information. But just because its available and free doesn't mean you should put it in your body. I had this epiphany the other day after a very timely article from NPR. In this report, Clay Johnson speaks about his concept of the information diet, which recognizes that some information is healthier than others and recommends consuming information low on the 'information food chain' and sticking close to sources. While not always practical, his message is a strong one that could be aimed at any number of generations. Highly processed news is bad. I generally reject mainstream news and political commentary. But I have been watching  The Daily Show and The Colbert Report a lot lately. So much for my New Year's resolutions. It may not be the most thorough or unbiased news coverage but the shows tap into (and liberate, at least momentarily) some deeply troubling existential feelings about democracy in United States today. Our most visible representatives (who in a certain light have a responsibility as public educators and liaisons between the public and legal realm) are insincere, immoral and manipulative. Our economy is collapsing, gas prices rise. So the Stewart-Colbert snack is somewhat of a comfort food.

One of my favorite leisure reading blogs is Ohio naturalist Jim McCormac's Birds and Biodiversity. His colorful language and encyclopedic knowledge of eastern flora and fauna are first rate.  I've had a chance to meet him twice now. The first time, I was at the Ohio Vernal Pool Partnership Workshop as we stood around one of these ephemeral wetlands filled with snow melt, our voices muffled by the high peeps and clicks of hundred of spring peepers and chorus frogs. He pointed his massive camera to snap macros of spotted salamanders migrating across the foot path. He talked quickly and asked lots of questions to our guide, dipping for fairy shrimp out of the teeming water. I met him again at Camp Kern's 101 Environmental Education Conference where he gave a presentation on the Olentangy River. I've admired him for some time and I recommend his writing.

Another good blog is Renewing the Commons. This blog is by Conor Stedman, a Field Naturalist at the University of Vermont, whom I also met while visiting UVM as a prospective graduate student. His focus  on regenerative agriculture, community spaces and host of over eco-social and conservation topics is very eye-opening. The man is extremely intelligent and not the least bit naive about what it will take to solve the problems of future. His blog is perhaps a good entry point into what I think of as the New England "Place movement", going strong since the days of Robert Frost and now boasting a number of fascinating, progressive enterprises.

But the blog list could go on and on and I don't want to overwhelm you. I'm getting tired too, so I'll try to wrap this up. What I'm finding is that I had not fully comprehended the implication of the the information age and how it has been affecting (positively) the collective knowledge and research of the new generation. It is not coincidence that stories of a new era are popping up in large publications across the country. The mycelium runs deep and wide; a cultural revolution has been at work. In the wake of political disillusionment, economic collapse, blatant corporate and political abuses and extreme resource degradation, the reintegration of sustainable land use practices and the rebuilding of traditional knowledge and folkways is becoming more possible. Strangely enough, technology has been one of the few tools able to empower the many (dare I say 99%?) who have otherwise felt powerless against the titanic momentum of big money and big politics. It is in the peer-to-peer environment of the web that the new journalists are born onto the scene. And though they may not talk as loud as those in old media, they espouse many powerful and equally viable narratives about what are civilization might become. The New England School has much to offer like Center for Whole Communities, PLACE, CO-SEED and  Vermont Family Forests. I've got my reading and research cut out for me if I ever want to learn anything from them.   I will try to share small miracles as I discover them. But in leaving, what do you think? I can find very few if any blogs in Louisiana that report on natural history, local conservation issues, local research. Even as Baton Rouge Progressive Network brings community voices on the airwaves via the hopeful Community Radio, our digital supermarket for locally grown, organic information is still in its infancy. This doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't activity down on the ground. The discussion most people are having, focuses on the large, political issues; confrontation and taking down the big polluters or the bad developers. But there is a lack of biodiversity information that may reflect on our failure to combine valuable resources and their powerful role in the sustainability movement. It also means that there is less probability of cross pollination between the many groups. I used to feel that Louisiana is a dead zone and--in certain densely populated, overly developed areas-- a cultural sink. The 225Magazine helped me to think otherwise, but it is time that we get a few more citizen reporters on the ground. Consider it local, organically grown information.