My Christmas wish

Many classic Christmas cards have a scene like this on the front. A peaceful countryside showing us the beauty of God's world leading us to be thankful for our many blessings

There are those who want to change our rural landscape. Corporate interests who feed on the economic misfortune of those in rural America, promising financial gains at little or no cost.

They like to promise a lot. Money. That you'll be able to use your land for farming still. That they'll clean up after themselves.

What they don't tell you is what the process entails.

Huge drill sites where millions of gallons of water, sand and toxic chemicals will be injected into the ground under high pressure. Roads built across your property to allow access for trucks to travel in and out constantly. Lagoons to handle the toxic waste water that comes back out (some of it stays in the ground following fracture lines into the ground water.
Noise 24/7 from drill rigs, compressor buildings, truck traffic, etc. Drill sites flooded with high intensity light disturbing the silent night.
They don't tell you that these rigs can be built anywhere on your property that they want to put them - including in your front yard.



They don't tell you they have intentions to decimate your entire region with thousands of these drill pads.




Please keep New York State a beautiful place to live.
A healthy place for us to raise our children and to grow healthy, safe food for your table.




Visit Shaleshock.org for more information and to find ways you can help. Write Gov. Paterson, your state Senator, Assembly person, Congress person and US Senator and ask them to ban drilling in the Marcellus shale.

Not Blind but Still I Cannot See

In "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" Annie Dillard cites "Space and Sight" by Marius von Senden. When safe cataract surgery was developed groups of doctors traveled the country performing the operation and giving people the gift of sight for the first time in their lives.
These doctors often kept notes on their patients experience of distance and depth both before and after the surgery. These people had to learn about sight as we did as infants and have long since forgotten. Infants cannot communicate their discoveries to us so we are left to guess what they are "seeing".
Patients had a difficult time with the perception of depth and distance. It was difficult for them to understand that the world took up space beyond their visual world. The idea that some thing could be behind another object was novel.
I think of a baby learning about it's hands. They often hit themselves in the face multiple times, then cry in outrage at the self-inflicted pain. I always thought that they were learning that the hand they saw was their own. It seems they also could be learning how far away that visible hand is.
The child I babysit is learning about Mom being away in stages. First he realized that when he saw me it meant Mom was going away. Then he learned that that the kitchen is where she disappeared. Now he knows that she will come back from there too.
Is it possible that some people cannot grasp the concept that we must keep our planet healthy because they lack a type of depth perception? They cannot see ahead to where their actions lead. They cannot see that their loved ones will be in that distant world. Perhaps their depth perception is so low that they cannot feel compassion or empathy.

They are not blind but still they cannot see.

Fencing in the Who's

A few years ago I started asking why the government wanted us all to move to the city? All the TV shows are about folks living in big cities or the suburbs surrounding them. Kids and young people apparently all hate the country life and want to live in Manhattan or L.A. Family life is supposedly boring at best and unbearable most of the time. Have you noticed how many movies, books, TV shows are about avoiding or wanting to avoid the family on the holidays or vacation? Why is that?

Because people are easier to manage when they are herded into large groups. Does that sound odd to you? Doesn't that cause chaos and upset? Aren't crowds dangerous? Yes in some ways they are. But herded into disparate groups and continually stirred so that strong cohesive groups such as communities and families are difficult to form, keeps a people ill at ease. Give them fake news programs to keep them fearful and add in TV shows and Facebook to distract them, and you have a populace that goes to the slaughter willingly.

Think about movies you've seen about cattle being driven across the prairie or sheep being herded into pens. The trick is to keep them moving. Don't rile them to the point that they stampede. Don't make them so fearful they forget to eat or drink. Just keep them moving so they will go where you want them to and won't form a group that will turn around a face you off or go back home.

Put little fabrications (lies) out there that make people believe you have their best interests at heart or that they will profit somehow. This is like trying to get a horse or a few pigs back into a pen. You go out with a bucket with a little grain in the bottom or maybe even just a few stones to make it sound like something inviting. Keep just enough ahead of them so they don't figure out the pail is empty, and they will follow you back into captivity.

Of course some folks have to stay behind to do the dirty work of production for industries that are taking some natural resources for profit, while destroying other resources we will need long term. Ideally these will be immigrant populations that will be happy for low paying, benefit lacking jobs, and easily cowed by threats from immigration officials - even if they are legal immigrants. If not that then the "statistically insignificant" rural population. Keep this population poor and struggling to hold together the fabric of their communities.

Is there a reason that communities of faith feel under attack? Why does most media portray religious people as stupid or out of date or superstitious? Because faith communities have in the past been well springs of action to make change - think Martin Luther King.

I'm working with a group fighting gas companies who want to extract natural gas from shale formations. The leases may bring financial relief to rural landowners if they were able and had the foresight to negotiate good leases. The public awareness of the problems inherent in this process lag the leases by about 10 years. Media coverage of the problems caused by this type of drilling out west is almost non-existent (though we ALL heard about Brittany's panties). Knowledge of the process by local lawyers was negligible at the time we were being pressured to sign up.

Our politicians are often still pressing this as a good thing for our economy (especially if the Gas Co's contribute to their campaigns). The best success so far is to get people fired up about drinking water. Drilling in the NYC watershed is now questionable because of the millions of people who depend on those reservoirs. I have even heard concerns around the watershed for cities like Syracuse. Wait a minute! In rural NYS w have wells. Our small municipalities have wells. They are drilling in OUR WATERSHED! My drinking water is as important as your drinking water. The air I breathe is as important as yours. The crops and livestock you and I eat will be grown (if that's still possible) on this land with this water. What happens here is important to all of us.

Sometimes I feel like a Who from the Horton story.
We just need everyone in Whoville to yell at the same time.
Just one more voice to make us heard through the fog.