Beautiful Evidence of an Ugly Predicament

https://earther.com/this-climate-visualization-belongs-in-a-damn-museum-1826307536

Climate chaos deniers hate being called climate chaos deniers because it echoes "Holocaust Deniers," the term for people who look at the Mt. Everest of evidence and testimony about the Holocaust and try to create doubt about it in order to try to wash away the moral stain of being a person not bothered by the Holocaust.

In other words, calling people who deny climate chaos equivalent to people who are Holocaust Deniers is actually pretty apt.

Of course, there's a vanishingly small chance that the deniers are "right," in the sense that there is some not-understood supernatural force at work that is a stealth climate forcing agent that somehow mimics the effects of all the well-understood climate forcing factors while not being detectable.

But the folks who cling to that notion -- that they are all brave Galileos, while  all the scientists working diligently to warn the world about perils of our present course are all closed-minded groupthink groupies persecuting the embattled Galileos -- are still deniers, because they're not doing science at that point, they're doing religion, appealing to an invisible supernatural force to explain natural phenomena.

That's why they insist so adamantly that people who recognize that humans are driving the climate off the stability cliff are part of a religious cult of "AGW" (anthropogenic global warming") -- because it's always projection with these people, about everything. See, Donald Trump, who unerringly accuses others of what he is doing.

Rally for Fairness for All Workers on May Day at the Capital

http://causaoregon.org/?lang=en

The Money Seeker (spoilers)

 As we Boomers age, there’s an increasing number of films that aim to provide succor for our pains, reassuringly telling us that we’ve still got it inside, despite the infirmities and the charming little foibles of our dotage. “Young@Heart,” the documentary about nursing home residents playing and belting out current pop hits of their grandchildrens’ generation was the best of these because, well, those folks still had it goin’ on. “The BestExotic Marigold Hotel” (first one only) wasn’t horrible, plus a great ensemble cast.

Way at the other end of the spectrum is “The Leisure Seeker” a criminal misuse of Donald Sutherland as a doddering old academic succumbing to a progressive dementia and an even greater criminal abuse of Helen Mirren as his cancer-wracked yet unweathered and gorgeous ex-Southern Belle wife who pines to show him Hemingway’s Key West home, which requires that they drive a 40-year-old rusty (plot point!) Winnebago from Wellesley to Key West, because flying Boston to Miami would not make much of a movie I guess.

It’s got the “Old people just can’t shut up” trope, run again and again. It’s got befuddled youngsters cowed into compliance with the old folks’ wishes through the sheer force of will. It's got a cancer victim who moans occasionally to presage what is only slowly revealed, where slowly means assuming that the audience is as intelligent as the average houseplant. (I found myself remembering fondly the old Carol Burnett Show, featuring a truly comic genius beauty, who would cough very softly just once whenever a sketch required that she indicate the presence of some fatal disease.) You’ve got your anxious and screechy antiques-loving middle-age son who is apparently still deeply closeted, though Helen (“Ella”) has her suspicions.

And it climaxes (ha ha!) with the miraculous Old Peen that gives Old Geezers the power to bestow healing on their cancer-ravaged septuagenarian wives, giving them the dewy afterglow and the courage to commit a murder-suicide. This proved to be a comfort in the end, as it assures that there can be no sequel.

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For the Calendar - Weds 11 April at Friends Meeting House

Interested in restoration agriculture, sustainable gardening, and local solutions?  Come join our latest free lecture to meet other like minded folk and learn more. NW Permaculture Institute Free Film and Lecture Series Held in Salem every 2nd Wednesday @ 6:30 pm At Salem Friend’s Meeting House, 490 19th Street NE (19th at Breyman) For more information: 971-218-4772, or dianedalychavez@gmail.com.

STRONGSalem's First Step: Mapping Salem

Join us next month for the second STRONGSalem meetup, where we will be further exploring our first project, mapping the net productivity (or drain) of each parcel in Salem, the tax paid by that parcel less the cost of municipal services provided to it.

We would especially welcome the artistically talented, who will be vital in helping turn the results into accessible and understandable info graphics.

At the IKE Box Fireplace Room (behind the stage area), 10 a.m. on Saturday, 5 May.
Please RSVP!

Putting Strong Towns ideas into Practice in Salem: New Meetup Group

If you want to debate or discuss the Strong Towns principles and how they might or might not work in Salem, please go to StrongTowns.org and participate there, and become a member of that group if you care to.

But if you have the vision and you want to do the work to help Salem put down all the Growth Ponzi Scheme plans and become a healthier, stronger, fiscally responsible place, join the new "MeetUp" group, called "Strong Towns: Reviving Our Native Geoconomy (STRONG)" Meetup Group.

With luck, we can come together as a group and activate -- build and execute work plans to localize Strong Towns principles and APPLY them here in Salem, with the long-term goal of having an entire city planning commission and city council who automatically know to "Do the Math" (and know HOW to do the math, and how to find the information needed) in all their decision-making.

https://www.meetup.com/Strong-Towns-Reviving-Our-Native-Geoconomy-Meetup/members/225345697/

A picture that tells 10,000 words, all of them important

https://mobile.twitter.com/RedTRaccoon/status/933032154451382274/photo/1

WORD from Sarah Silverman

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2017/nov/19/sarah-silverman-interview-jokes-i-made-15-years-ago-i-wouldnt-make-today

She is momentarily saddened. "I look at Trump and the billionaire oligarchs he surrounds himself with as addicts. I do believe they are addicted to wealth, and that wealth addiction is no different from crack addiction. It fills an empty void. They will sell their grandmothers. They're literally selling our entire country's health for more. I remember Garry Shandling saying in 2007 that when we put people in office who are addicted to money and power, we might as well be giving a bunch of cokeheads a mountain of cocaine and saying: 'Divide this equally among your people.' I see it proven true every day. And we've raised an entire generation to worship money at any cost, no matter how it's made."

Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay

Still time to Grab Some Beauty

responding to another gun massacre in a church