I remember in Sunday School in Mississippi (before Baptists were taken over by the fundies. I was very young) There was a story about a guy who stored grain because he knew there was a drought coming. This story impressed me. I remember I wanted to have the wisdom of that guy (even though he did other things I found questionable. Genesis 37-50 The Story of Joseph.)

I have that wisdom but I need your help. Let's use the framework of local government to take care of our future. It's there. Wise people in government have already placed the foundations for us. Quietly. No fanfare. No politics. They put it in place and waited. (Does this seem mysterious? It is, but nothing surprises me any more.)

In Will County Illinois there are people who recognize a storm is a-coming. I don't know what form "the storm" will take, or if its a continuation of a series of unrelated events, like is currently evolving.

We must prepare for our future generations. Has history taught you nothing? If you're Christian, haven't you read your Bible?

This is from the website of Carolyn Baker.
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Bill Mollison, one of the co-originators of Permaculture says that, "Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order." The intuitively forming ideal is extended families occupying their own private permaculture design with a number of these families occupying a watershed. A number of watersheds constitute a bioregion. This is a natural social/political framework in which the needs of the earth are re-presented in human society because the humans are advocating for the life and gaining survival from that life. We might call this biological democracy.

Human/earth centered, rather than object centered, this new movement promises to become the next human culture. Human social institutions tend to form around food survival systems and be resonant with the morals and purpose of those different activities to gain food; we would expect the new culture to do the same. When some or all of the seed communities make it through the apocalypse, they will be the ancestors.

Many flail about trying to save the dying beast of empire by recycling their tin cans or inventing free energy machines but it is just common sense that if we want to aid the life of our great, great grandchildren we will ignore the dying beast and put our living energies into the new way of life. read the complete article

Does this mean you get to quit recycling? No! The mores
must be well established. Does this mean we gather weapons and build compounds in a tribal-like environment? No! This is the 21st century. This is the time where we beat swords into plowshares. It is not us versus them. It is us together. We must recognize that all have the same goal; To stay alive. Even those who seem to be different than us.

Wed Oct 29, 2008 8am – Wed Oct 29 9:30am
Breakfast with Green Party Presidential Candidate Cynthia McKinney
$10 per person. The public and media are welcome.

Join Steve Alesch for Congress, Dan Kairis for State Rep. and other Green Party candidates for breakfast with Green Party Presidential Candidate Cynthia McKinney.

Egg Harbor Restaurant
175 W. Jackson, Naperville, IL 60540
http://www.eggharborcafe.com/

Rich Whitney, 2006 Green Party candidate for IL Governor will introduce the candidates.

This will also be a good opportunity to pick up your favorite candidates' yard signs and extra brochures so you can help Get Out The Vote on Nov. 4th!

Please RSVP Andy (andrewfinko@yahoo.com or 773-480-0616) if you plan to attend so we have an approximate count for the restaurant, but walk-ins are VERY welcome!

Confirmed candidates so far: (more to be added)
Cynthia McKinney for President: http://www.runcynthiarun.org/
Steve Alesch for Congress - IL-13: http://www.votesteve.org
Dan Kairis for IL State Rep. 55th District: http://rpil.org/

Turn 20th century blue-collar jobs into 21st-century green-collar
jobs.
Focus our economic strategies on growing a green economy and move Will County into the 21st Century.

I have friends who haven't broken away from the 2 party lie yet. This is from my friend DocB (Dr. Barbara Strand)"For extreme cases there is sometimes extreme magick"

Well Doc, I think the Green Party is the extreme magick you look for, but this is your e-mail I'm sharing here. :-)
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In every election since i've been old enough to vote, i've been forced to choose what i considered the lesser of two evils; there hasn't been one candidate about whom i truly felt passionately excited about. so why do i bother to vote? and why will i once again, despite SERIOUS misgivings and with a sense of impending doom, nonetheless be pulling down a lever on election day this year?

because of what it cost to give me that right. this wikipedia article relates the events leading up to the infamous torture at the occoquan workhouse in virginia (the responsibility for which goes straight to woodrow wilson attempting to squash suffragists' efforts to get the vote:).

i have been getting questions from friends wondering if a recent email is making the rounds about that night of november 15, 1917 was true; here's an article answering that if you have any doubt:

and the original article that inspired the email, from the cleveland plain dealer: (my favorite line: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.")

A Short History Lesson on the Privilege of Voting
"And You Think it's a Pain to Vote"
By Connie Schultz
PLAIN DEALER COLUMNIST
(Originally published Thursday, February 19, 2004)

The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic."

They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cell mate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the "Night of Terror"on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

So, refresh my memory.

Some women won't vote this year because--why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie "Iron Jawed Angels."It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. "One thought kept coming back to me as watched that movie,"she said. "What would those women think of the way I use--or don't use--my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn."The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her "all over again."

HBO will run the movie periodically before releasing it on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."

You've done all the things you're supposed to do. But still you're falling behind on your bills. You are not alone.
It's time to put people first and our country right side up. Vote for your grandchildren.
This is NOT your grandparents politics. This is not your politics. This is your grandchildren's politics and if we're going to get them on board we cannot use old tired techniques that work only for a limited audience. Our "family" is out of money. They cannot breathe without an inhaler and they can't afford the inhaler. It is imperative that we build a political movement that puts into public policy the 10 key values of the Green Party of the United States.

Babs thinks I'm overreacting. "Things will get better" she says. She's going about business as usual, though she is a little more cautious than usual in spending.
On the other hand, I went to the 2008 Green Party Nominating Convention in Chicago. I met people who think like I do, most woke up a long time ago - 20 years ago for one woman I met. These folks are way ahead of me in preparation and some have even been able to help their communities
to prepare.

I'm only one person. Ya'll don't realize there is no hero on a white horse riding in. I know that Obama is not on a white horse. You know that too.

I am a nurse. I work in critical care. My patients are now the 40 to 60 year olds who have of their perceived necessity been putting off the doctor's appointments, not taking the meds for a few years now ... because the mcmansion mortgage is due, the SUV needed gas, the kids needed to have their sport of the year membership dues paid . . . it'll get better? Not for these folks.

What I'm seeing is reflection of our values as a country. A country that allows criminals to run the government and business. A country that pays sports players more money than scientists or nurses.

It is time to change our
values.What I'm working for is only a hail mary pass, but I'm a nurse.

What are you working for?

Jason Wallace is running for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 11th District of Illinois. 10K08 is Jason's voluntary ten thousand dollar spending cap for the general election in November.

Calvin and Hobbes quote (thanks Mr. Miller)

"I'M SIGNIFICANT!"...screamed the dust speck.

Kinda how I felt today when Rich Miller added me as a friend on Facebook, then I became afraid when I saw that Peter LaBarbara is also a friend.
Oh well. Reckon that's what makes it a horse race.

This is a simple enough question to ask. Maybe it's simple enough for the corporate politicians. A Question for All.

Do I think there's a snowball's chance in hell for a third party to become president? No. Am I still going to work for it to happen? You bet! "Why?" you ask. Well even if you don't ask or even care let me tell you. I am doing it for those who are not born yet.

While we were sleeping. While we were amassing our fortunes saving for college funds or working our butts off so that the kids could go to college, or we could retire comfortably. While we were debating politics (or not) and voting (or not). While we were doing other things that were higher on our priority list, policy makers got more and more money from corporations until our country turned from an ideal of "for the people" into one of "for the corporations". And now, "we the people" are fodder for the military/industrial complex that is the country we live in. The country where some people are proudly tattooing corporate symbols onto their body. The country where the only way the poorest of the poor can provide the barest of basics for their families is to become part of the military corporation.

This is my way of fighting back. Right now the laws (at least, still in Illinois) allow other parties to try to get politicians elected. Right now it's possible to win elections locally. Right now I can work to elect a politician who gets money for campaigning only from "we the people."

Do I have hope? No. We lost our country. The stolen federal elections proved it to me. Will I try to keep hope alive? Yes.

Who knew I was such a patriot.

Things that be bugs.

I am holding onto hope for our local politicians; Those Joliet law-makers who fiercely care about bringing and keeping the best in Joliet. Those in the Will County government who are doing what they can to attract business to develop Will County.

I don't have the same hope for our country though there's glimmer of hope for our state.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDHHryeBGZE

Now about the water

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/16/5264/

I've been putting information here in support of my opinion on the state of affairs about pollution. People more learned than me share in my opinion. People more learned than me also share an opinion that it's a bunch of baloney; humans are not the cause of global warming. This can also be supported but you'll have to look for that documentation. Recognize though that the nay-sayers are not saying there's no global warming. They're just saying that humans are not causing it.

What the guy in the video (November 7 post) helped me to see is that it makes more sense to take action that results in having enough clean air, water, food than it does in doing nothing. The mere consequence of increased population vying for resources calls for wisdom of action no matter what is causing planetary changes.

If I don't take right action who will do it for me?

May you find your thread in the fabric.

The Green Party

(Not the Democratic Party. Not the Republican Party)

Why Green Party?

Andrea Schafer-Quintanar

The November 10, 2007 Will County Green Party meeting
included a presentation by Jofrey Quintanar,
Licensed, Professional Architect. (LEED Accredited).

picture by dave@minilop.net

"Developments in Green Architecture
and a review of The Sugar Creek Administration Building"

Suggestions:
A magazine called Eco-Structure.
A book, "Your Green Home" by Alex Wilson.

Links

greensource construction.com

usgbc.org/

buildingreen.com

AIA.org/

I really like this. -----> Part 1. (Berrigan On The Failure of The PeaceMakers)
Roy Bourgeois steadfastly maintains that one of the Berrigan Boys actually said this while they (the Boys) were awaiting sentencing after getting caught pouring sugar into The Emperor's gas tank: The Angel of the Lord asked him, "Suppose that ten thousand, fifty thousand, one hundred thousand American and European war resisters came unarmed from America to the border between Iran and Iraq, fasted there, prayed, and marched right in. In sum, they risked their lives, with one thing in mind: to bring sanity, an alternative, to a mad situation. Suppose they hung in, refused to go away, and placed their bodies where their mouths were, and inserted themselves as human shields between the Iraqi and Iranian people and the full force and might of the American military and the international coalition sent to pulverize those lands and peoples into dust?" "WAIT a minute," he said. "Suppose they failed? Suppose they were carpet bombed, or strafed, or machine gunned, or rounded up and carted off to concentration camps? Then what?" The Angel responded by breaking into song and jig: "Everybody want to go to heaven, nobody want to die..." He (Bourgeois says Berrigan) continued: "...We have assumed the name of peacemakers but we have been unwilling to pay any significant price for peace. "We want peace with half a heart and half a life and half a will. The war continues because the waging of war is total but the waging of peace is partial. "I think of the good, decent, peace loving people I have known by the thousands and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm in the direction of their loved ones, in the direction of their comforts, their homes, their security, their incomes, their futures, their plans -- that five year plan of studies, the ten-year plan of professional status, that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise. "'Of course, let us have the peace,' we cry, 'but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties.' "And because we must encompass this and protect that and because at all costs -- at all costs -- our hopes must march on schedule, and because it is unheard of that in the name of peace a sword should fall, disjoining that fine and cunning web that our lives have woven, because it is unheard of that good men and women should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost -- because of this we cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace. There is no peace because there are no peacemakers." "Peacemaking is hard. Almost as hard as war."
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I admire Bob a lot. It is said that if you want to know what a person believes you simply observe what the person does. I know one thing, Bob believes in no more war. This was his talk to a group of citizens (Will County Green Party (wcgp.org) and Potluck Democracy) who had gathered at the train station in Joliet on their way to the October 27, 2007 peace rallies (the Chicago and the Homewood rally).