its all about me	this is the end of this escarpment finger behind my airstream. About 125 feet to the floor.
ancient coral, everywhere around me. I've collected a few whiter pieces for friends.	lost cities museum - I have 30 good pictures coming soon. I'll create a page for it and for the petroglpyhs from Valley of Fire.

Monday, April 23, 2007 6:25 AM
It's a new week! I'm in Overton, NV at a free spot in a wild live preserve. Really its a hunting reserve for shooting quail and water fowl. There are even signs directing the walker to "blinds." I suspect that is not the same as my faux wood blinds, which I love, thank you Kim!
I'm off to the Lost Cities Museum this morning. I love looking at and collecting information about the people who actually lived here in the past, living intimately with local resources and within the constraints of food, water, climate, and then, to see what they created in response to those.

I've been reading several Yahoo groups and there is a somewhat heated discussion on one. The crux of the issue is whether to build wind power generation in a big way, which will require and enormous amount of oil to produce the equipment, the installations, and to create, say, a hundred years of support for the technology, OR, to conserve oil to last a long as we can, and forget alternative energy sources. Investing deeply into solar or wind has a buzz phrase now, its called "building out."
Archdruid reports has talked about how the availability of oil will look to us as a consumer as the supply decreases. It goes in waves of contraction. First gas, heating fuel, natural gas, and coal become more expensive as there is less. That makes people and businesses do the "tighten up", conserving, eliminating, and even shutting down some energy uses. This tighten up allows supply to overwhelm demand and the prices drop. Historically, in the 1980's they dropped lower than the rise. This convinces people and businesses that they were "fooled" and they begin planning expansions of power use and go back to wondering when the next bigger humvee might be available. This overwhelms the ever decreasing supplies of oil, natural gas, and coal and the whole things starts again, but in an ever constricting de-industrialization.
These waves of contraction make it very difficult to get people behind "building out" a massive new technology, country wide, world wide, while there is still the cheap energy to do it.
So this is the fight that has been going on in the "running on empty" yahoo group, with combatants signing in from Canada, New Zealand, France, and the USA. Today one of the pro "build out" guys had this to say and it seems on target for me. It is not as simple as bad Empire and good natural people. I admit to being part of the simplistic naive group who sees that to move people you must make all issues dualistic. Either or, yes or no, action or no action, spend or don't spend, and yes I do think that humans are born free and everywhere are in chains. If we stare too long and too deep at the problems we face, if we accept and admit that the problems were designed by us, installed by us, and maintained by us - our expectations - the only way through the coming energy use up is to change MY expectations. I have done that. I want you to change yours too because you are my friends and I wish you to survive the coming de-industrialization. But you knew that! But he gives me, and maybe you, something to think about here:

Whether or not I am naive in believing there is a group of assumptions and standard actions (memes), let me call them capitalism, resource eating, or Empire, I do think that even if we created them, and certainly we did, do and maintain them as well by wishing to be part of them, it is true that modern society is in a very deep rut in the road and getting out of this rut will be more or less traumatic. I BELIEVE that we will NOT get out of the rut, that as a civilization we will drive it as far as mother nature allows and then natural laws that we are only dimly aware of will ring the bell, and our time on the stage will wind down. I see no reason to think that as a group we will change anything.
As I drive around the country in my airstream, and observer and participant in the demise of the energy rich civilization that is eating our future, I see that people have a tremendous mass, a momentum of belief that is right this way, should be this way, will always be this way. Science, history, and common sense say, "What the fuck are you nuts?" But I don't think anything will derail this juggernaut as group.

HOWEVER I do believe we as individuals and small groups can adapt. I don't think we will every say that we will be prosperous in the Empire sense, but I do think we will be happier, more involved, needed and important to each other. I am looking forward to a rebirth of personal character, strength, real need of affection and love of each other, because this society is a very sterile place to try to grow connection. So do what you love, love who you will and can, and make connections locally. Food, resources, locally, locally. Enough for now.

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