Deep Green is Not the Same as Dark Green... Gushing Oil Blues

A prominent theologian recently wrote a book detailing the green movement as a religion, which he calls "dark green religion." Another who conflates ecology with religion because she grew up in a forest with a father who was both fundamentalist Christian and a forest ranger says that both fundamentalist Christianity and the Green Movement have in common a dearth of humor. She asks if anyone has ever heard of stand-up comedy performed by the proponent of either.

Well, I have also never heard of stand-up comedy about the Holocaust, slavery, child abuse, rape, or mass murder. I have not heard a whole lot of stand-up about war, which generally along with greed and the corrupt usurpation of land and power practiced by nearly all nations and peoples throughout history, is widely glorified and celebrated.

I am deeply green. This is not a religion for me, although I do hold life as sacred. I am aware every day of my duty toward preservation of the planet, including our atmosphere and our oceans. As such I do not drive. I happily walk, ride a bicycle and public transportation everywhere I go. I proudly state for all to hear that I have brought no child into this world to exponentially increase my carbon foot-print in perpetuity. I do not use heaters or air-conditioners, or excess electricity (I keep all plugged into power strips which I regularly turn off when not in use), and I use CFL bulbs. If I owned the place where I live I would go solar. I have not eaten meat, neither chicken or fish, for almost two thirds of my life. I get my Omega 3 fatty acids from Flax Seed Oil. I never fly in a plane.

I deeply mourn for the Gulf of Mexico off of four states, and who knows how much by the time this finally ends, who's coastlines and wetlands will be devastated by the gushing British Petroleum rig sunk more than a mile deep into the waters where perpetual oil bleeds from a major artery without end until it is capped (???), or until our earth is a suffocated, poisoned, dried up little wrinkled raison of a planet forever doomed by threat from nuclear annihilation from the dual catastrophic hazard of both weaponry and energy.

Originally the piece photographed and presented here was made in compassion for the child victims of the Catholic Church. It is part of an installation presented at ProArts Gallery in Oakland, California in which I exhibited over two hundred artworks detailing my feelings about human on human cruelty, called Insomnia (Awakening). It is now time for humanity to awaken from it's long slumber with dreams attending of money, lust, and power; there is still hope that we can save ourselves yet. I recommend knowing how you truly feel and allowing yourself to feel it, for starters. I am talking about deep greening of yourself.

Earth Days

As the Icelandic volcano Eyjafijallajokull spews ash across Europe, Mother Earth complains to humanity with the barest tip of the Iceberg that is her power and wrath. Her rage at unthinking, uncaring, ignorant humanity is a just, deafening, blinding, inferno. "Ground the damn planes now and forever!"...seemingly she shrieks. We can all have empathy for a planet besieged by one species--- humanity--- which having the capacity to know better, is concerned only with puny self. It is time to begin to think, and think carefully, and think again about the cruelty of bringing new ones into this world. The new ones are innocent, just as Mother Earth herself is innocent. They are undeserving of what greater and greater havoc will be turned by her on the glut of greed and ego that is the ever unthinking and exponential human birth rate.

I do not call for a complete halt, but this is a call to each individual to assess for her or himself the true need for another vulnerable little one added to the mess we have collectively brought down upon our world. This is a cry out to think about how casually we fly in machines that spew millions of tons of carbon dioxide into our friendly skies. Think also of the killing machines we drive which are costing us our atmosphere and killing more people each year than Cancer or heart decease. Automobiles have killed many times the amount of those killed in the hundred or so years since their invention than have all the wars fought by soldiers in the entire history of the U.S.A.

1000 deaths, 240,000 auto accidents caused by driver cellphone use in 2002

1,187,037 Americans killed in wars 1775-1998 3,159,489 Americans died in U.S. Highway accidents 1900-1998 

I urge everyone on the planet to re-think their dietary needs and realize once and for all that they do not need meat, it's a very bad habit learned in childhood; it is a habit easily broken. Simply learn to appreciate delicious vegetarian and vegan food. Learn the virtue of good whole local food, food from close to it's source. Support your local Farmer's Market! Grow your own food!

In honor of Earth Day, I urge you to throw out your air-conditioners, jettison your addiction to electrical, gas, and wood heat; learn to dress in layers, move your body to stay warm, open your windows, open and change your minds, before it is too late.

You've been told before and in defense of Mother Earth I'll say it again: use CFL bulbs, turn off lights not in use, plug electronics into power strips then shut them down when not in use (for the day when you leave the home, for the night when you go to sleep), then turn off the power strip. It's easy, it gives you the wonderful feeling that comes with doing what's right, and multiplied by billions, it will make a huge difference.

Let us all put an end to the individual use of pesticides, herbicides, and huge corporate agribusiness. Pressure corporations and congress to come up with solutions to the crisis of global warming and ocean acidification now. The time of worship of the almighty dollar has passed. It is time now to embrace again the ecological philosophies of ancient indigenous cultures worldwide, especially those we stole this land we call America from, the American Indian (they laugh at us for calling them Native Americans---they never called this land America, and all of us born here are native Americans).

Each of us must finally realize, we are in this together, it is not only about my ego, my money, my power, nor is it about yours. It is about a sustainable future for the planet's suffocating atmosphere and oceans and it is about the survival of our and all other species.

All of us together are one eco-system, mutually dependent on us all for everything. Do you care enough about your child to care for her the way she deserves? Do you care enough to not bring him into this world?

I am proud to say I have never brought a child into this world, I am proud that I have been a vegetarian for nearly two thirds of my life, I have not turned on a heater in years, never have I owned an air-conditioner, I never fly, I have never owned a car or driven one, after the license to drive one that I obtained long ago. I walk, ride a bicycle, and public transportation everywhere I go.

I am happier and healthier for facing the truth, I am proud of doing all I can individually and bringing pressure to bear on collective humanity, including the biggest and the most powerful. We are all David against Goliath, if only we are willing.

A Reminder of the Beauty of Life...

...In the form of a few simple gifts from the Earth: Turquoise, Aquamarine, Beryl, Carnelian, Garnet, Amethyst, Fluorite, Moonstone, Quartz, and more. It is interesting that coincident with the economic downturn, I came to realize with sadness that this was yet another gift not given of Earth's own free will. Excavation, wounding of the Earth, the destruction that is mining is involved. I slowed way down, production of these jewels has all but come to a halt. Now, photography of them has become the thing for me, still not ecologically pure, sadly, yet a nearly harmless pursuit of the joy I take in any creative endeavor. I continue to weigh what I give, what I take, and where I am closest to my ideal of ecology, the areas of greatest neutrality.

Moon Uprising/ First appeared on website Spark 6 Writers and artists responding to one another, inspired by a photo by Meggi Raeder (and then distorted and revamped by me), link on right

A treatise on the most frightening and destructive creature on Earth.


How frightening the creature who beheads ancient noble Tree. Once so tall and proud, she existed for a thousand or more years. She had housed Squirrel and Bird, Rabbit and Centipede; Jerusalem Cricket had made his cozy little home in her. Through the ages she had stretched her mighty yet graceful arms outward to embrace Sun, Cloud and especially Moon. She had never discriminated: she welcomed all to her embrace. She was after all, an emissary of Mother Earth, her roots were deep in her mother, her head was perennially in the stars. She proudly gazed upon Ocean, His sound and smell were treasured by her in her seemingly eternal stance.

Oh, she had wept to see the damage done by mighty Volcano, even as she had gloried in his beauty. Understandably she, the rooted one, had yearned to run away from Thunder; instinctively she knew what terrifying Lightening might render. Tree nearly shrank at the thought. But no, nothing could stop her growth through the centuries, for she was a maximalist creature, a grower of trunk, branches, twigs, and leaves.

What Tree loved most to gaze upon at night was Moon. Ever changing, growing, shrinking, hiding Moon, who believed, just as Tree did, in her own immortality. Moon sometimes hid from Tree, out of respect. She felt she knew that she had much more reason than Tree to believe that she herself would live forever. After all, she was many miles away in outer space, far from the selfishly destructive and acquisitive creature who came to call itself … Humanity.

Moon shuddered through the ages at the ever exponentially reproducing, inventing, grabbing, acquisitive and greedy animal, the one who believed that it was all for him. He believed that Earth was his. He believed that he could destroy and take and have and eat and warp and hurt and rape and pillage and burn to his endless pleasure, for all he believed and still believes is that Earth is his; for his ego knows no bounds. The Hubris of this creature, Moon has always known, is boundless.

Tree never knew what hit her; how she lost all, save her roots still able to feel Earth, still able to give life. All she knew was that one day they came to cut off her branchy, leafy, twiggy head, arms, branches, body, trunk. She was cut off at the ankle, after so many centuries had passed. Then the abused boy had set fire to the forest and millions of acres of what they call California burned to the ground. Bird, Squirrel, Rabbit, Butterfly, Centipede, Jerusalem Cricket, flower, all other Trees everywhere for miles around, The horror…the horror. It could have been prevented by knowledge of Inventing Human, of what it meant to strip Earth of her ancient fossil fuels; thereby depleting Environment, and poisoning Air with carbon dioxide, greenhouse gasses, global warming. Parents caring for and loving their children, rather than warping them through neglect and abuse into the pyromaniacal state could have prevented it.

What Earth, Tree, Ocean, Air, and most tragically Moon did not realize, until it was too late for Moon, was that Human knew he had destroyed Earth, Tree, Ocean, and Air. In his insatiably greedy quest for more, he had in early October 2009 shot missiles at twice the speed of a bullet into Moon, hoping to find water, hoping to colonize. Human was looking for a way to leave his nearly ruined home on Earth, hoping to find a new home on Moon, Mars, somewhere out in the infinite, pure, pristine reaches of ancient omniscient outer space.

Wounded Moon righteously, hissingly hopes… he… will… fail.

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