About a month ago I posted this to start a new blog before I learned it would require buying software to collect spam; then I switched back to Google blogs. http://patrivercritter.wordpress.com/2013/10/20/thoughts-about-my-new-blog/
 
This is my second blog. The first one, Write 2 B Heard, was quite political, as well as a mixed bag of whatever I was thinking or reading about. Nowadays my main interest is the environment. Certainly I am no expert, but I have a bunch of friends in assorted nonprofit groups related to ecosystems on the planet where we all live.

Our own species thrives too well, despite our inclination to war with one another. Really war is one of the worst interactions that the Earth has to put up with from humans. All of that war machinery is using energy at a high price; and is sometimes put to use with a greedy need for more fuel. This is and has been the issue of the current life on our planet for at least decades if not centuries. The Industrial Age started us out with a growing addiction to fossil fuels that still exists among corporations, which are also, of course, addicted to wealth of a material sort. Now we are beginning to see hope for a more sustainable future. Passive energy systems are here and feasibly expandable.

Many of my friends have been on a path toward changing the whole dynamic of abusing the Earth for much of their personal lives. My own generation as parents, the Baby Boomers, are the ones who have had the experience of realizing our children inherited a changed Earth.

My own father served in the U.S. Army in World War II by training soldiers. He was stationed in Trinidad, offshore from Venezuela. My mother had a baby at home already by then. Both of them grew up in South St. Louis City as Lutherans, speaking German, a quite conservative culture. Yet my Dad never allowed us, later in his life when all four of us were growing up, to play with toy guns of any sort except water pistols. “Guns are not toys,” he said, while the whole neighborhood was in cowboy gear and cap-gun holsters. Water pistols in the summer made sense, when we had no air conditioning. As the only girl I was raised in the kitchen tradition by my Mom, learning her traditional German menu of meat, potato, vegetable.

Yet, somehow or another, I rebelled further to the left of center than any of them. Eventually we had moved to Union, Missouri; and we finally had a TV at home. In high school I had already become a fan of John F. Kennedy rather than Richard Nixon, opposite of where my parents and most of my school stood politically. When the assassination of JFK happened I was at the board working out a geometry proof. “Finish your work,” the stern teacher said, while I went blank.



That is over half a century ago now. Today I am retired, living without television but not without Facebook. Working first as a nurse’s aid and later as a RN, I have met individuals of all sorts living and dying in difficult circumstances. I have moved from place to place in my adult life, which has given me a broad perspective about people, cultures, and what my Dad called “values.” My diet has been vegetarian, since the West Coast, with a goal of vegan, for more than three decades. My parents are both in the hereafter now, probably chuckling at us who are still living on Earth. I love colors, light, photography, kaleidoscopes, questions and their language.



The questions I want to address on this blog are about the Whole Earth. How can we work together to establish a peaceful population of free individuals who have resources that will limit the existence of conflict? Can we together coexist in a collaborative fashion with worldwide rights of individuals, without allowing pockets of wealth to continually reassert their authority over us? Can we declare rights of other species, plants and animals? Will we be able to evolve our web of cultures into a vision of shared resources for the good of all species, all cultures, all beliefs or philosophies, opening a future of peace and stability for a generation of future peoples who need each other as members of a total world? Do we need our USA to remain the dominant military power, or can we translate ourselves into collaborative, conscious neighbors who work diplomatically for peaceful coexistence? Can our government structure resume a democratic point of view that does not distribute special privilege to wealth? Will we be able to constrain population growth on the planet to a sustainable level, so that most extant species can survive into a future? How can we restore hope to our great-great grandchildren?

The growth in the environmental groups of all sorts during recent years bodes well for our future on the planet, although some threats, such as nuclear power, could still become devastating for us all. We have never been here before; every day is a new opportunity to work our way forward.