“While the outrigger Hokole’a was created from fragments of sacred trees, logs, boards, custom fabric for sails, hawsers, ropes, Home is wherever she is made welcome, whichever port her crew succeeds in reaching throughout the voyage.
Bringing with them fresh supplies (gathered/donated at each port-of-call) to last them two weeks, the multi-aged crew will have to catch their own fish & other food en route. Little deviation from this routine allows them to eat fresh fruit & veg indigenous to each island on their journey circling the Pacific.
In addition to 150 indigenous islands, they will visit Japan,Taiwan, Indonesia, S.Korea,Vietnam, Guam, Burma, Borneo, Marshall Is., before return to Hawai’i.
Ocean Consciousness Teaches Environmental Awareness & Evidence of Change
A mid-16thC European, by the name of Ferdinand Magellan would enter the Pacific and the Pacific embraced him, with relatively calm weather, and so he would call it ‘Pacific’ because it was relatively peaceful. The Ocean was gentle.
“Trust me, says Master Navigator Nainoa Thompson, the Pacific is far from gentle. So we call it by another name—one from our ancestors-thousands of years old. It is Moana Kia the Great—the Ocean of the Great expanse. We embrace both names.”
Thompson an his crew of combined new recruits and old-timers will begin their arduous journey in June, after their beloved canoe is shipped to its starting port in Alaska. Then, over the next 42 weeks she will circumnavigate the Pacific, visiting 36 countries and archipelagos, 150 indigenous islands.
“If you look at a nautical map of the Earth, it is divided into political territories & exclusive economic sub-divisions, marked by lines, international borders and boundaries. The Ocean has no lines. It covers one-third of the Earth’s surface and it’s all water. That’s what we want to protect, not just for environmental reasons, but for the sake of our children and grandchildren. It’s our responsibility.”*
Thompson says he wants to sail as little as possible, to allow the crew-the younger generation-to handle the legwork in order to develop an environmental awareness of the importance of life-giving water first-hand.
“Forty-seven years ago Pianu was launched & she and her crew of 17 would pull Tahiti out of the Sea, rescue those islanders in distress.
“It’s easy to look backwards, to what has been. What we’re about today is ‘What will we look for in the next 50 years?’ Hawai’i today is part of a global civilization, a financial/media driven world where we’re uncertain whether the future is good enough for our children. What’s its Kuleana?*
*Kuleana = Hawai’ian responsibility, which comes from privilege
Thompson says where they’re going there are no lines. There are no economic sub-divisions. “It’s a myth—It’s only one ocean and we are all one people on this island-the Earth.”
Inspired by Space flight Astronauts to see Earth as Single Island
One of Capt. Thompson’s gurus was space voyager Lt. Colonel Lacy Beach who compared the sailing in the Pacific to seeing Earth from Space. In the early 1990s, he summoned Thompson to his home when he was dying to share a few thoughts with his (then) pupil.
“I can go in the craft and it can fly me out of the atmosphere into Space, so I can turn around and look down at the whole Earth because what we need to figure is how to protect this Earth – our only home.
Thompson listened.
“He was a great navigator and a great teacher. He told me ‘we can’t protect what we don’t understand’.” We need to understand the systems. And we can’t do that if we don’t care. He made me keep three promises that he couldn’t. He said: you can’t do this alone.”
“He said ‘pay attention to the new language—’Climate change. Sustainability. Hypoxia, dead zones; acidification – a lot of words we don’t know because we weren’t taught. Sail round the world, touch it; feel each place. It’s the only way you can be part of it.’
“And the last promise he made me make was to build a school for the Earth by the Earth.”
Starting from Alaska in June 2023, canoe Hokole’a’s journey—Moana Nui Akea—Great voyage for Earth of Thompson and his crew will visit 36 countries and archipelagos and at least 150 indigenous territories. As President of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, Nainoa Thompson affirms: “It’s our responsibility to connect, explore, discover.”
He admits he is already grateful for the reception he knows he and his crew will receive at each port of call. Indigenous people are always welcoming, friendly, as they understand the enormity & rigours of an ocean voyage, especially by canoe.
Thompson says the only way for the future is to build schools where the younger generation can be inspired to be part of the Earth by learning to experience her waters first-hand.
1762-85 Industrial Revolution-250yrLoom/Weaving ‘Progress’ can be Reversed
A British entrepreneur Edmund Cartwright between 1762-85 changed history by replacing hand-woven fabric, weaving looms and tapestry work by men and women (+many children) & introducing first machines capable of spinning yarn into cloth, thus creating the Industrial Revolution which has lasted so long that nobody remembers any other way.
Thompson is convinced this adaptation of human ingenuity can be reversed, but only with a change in the way our children & grandchildren are taught.
University of Hawai’i @Hilo Agrees to Change Curriculum to Offer Navigation
University CEO Dr. David Lassner of the University of Hawai’i at Hilo (Big Island, HI) has volunteered to add navigation skills and teaching Ocean canoeing to the curriculum, starting this autumn. Many Hawai’ian youngsters already have a taste for canoe group learning and have taken part in (small) canoe races at elementary level. By making ocean navigation & observation part of their degree, or even as an adjunct to sports lessons, Dr. Lassner hopes to create/inspire the next generation of navigators and provide them with the tools for a lifetime of sharing their beloved Ocean with others.
He hosted a recent press conference offered by CBS-Hawai’i to broadcast Capt. Thompson’s voyage starting June this year; and, along with others in the media with a love of ocean-going & support for Hawai’ians’ sharing/caring attitude to the importance of the Seas for the future of a healthy planet
University CEO Lassner agrees with PVS Navigator President Thompson that there are two paths. The first path is to stick to this path—the one that leads nowhere except to extinction —Science agrees and presents conclusive evidence. The second path is to change the path to one of caring and loving our island Earth. Love, he agrees with his colleague, is not an option.
“It is a way of life for Hawai’ians. We are all part of the same Ohana—one large family”
Many indigenous islanders throughout Polynesia have a similar ‘Aloha’ (loving/welcoming) attitude to their own Pacific home. And equally want to share the love with others—native & newcomers alike.
Hokulea will be in Polynesia from March to December 2024 and then make its way to New Zealand, Melanesia, and the West Pacific. With a voyage of 43,000 miles and visits to 345 ports in the bag, it will start the homeward journey.
The voyage will end in Japan, at which point the Hokule’a will be shipped back to Los Angeles and then sailed home to Hawaii.
Ancestral Navigation by the Stars: Nature Prevails, Removes Fear of Unknown
Both Lassner and Thompson have had to face inevitable “modern thinkers’ fear”; constantly being asked “Well what if…” citing a list of ailments or possible world cataclysms which might endanger the voyage. These always include World War III, death by shark-bite, nuclear weapons testing on nearby islands, another pandemic, influenza on board, running out of food. The list is endless—and representative of modern society’s attitude to any new enterprise. Fear first; trust later.
All Polynesian islanders and neighbouring seafaring countries like Japan, S.Korea and Taiwan have an intimate relationship with the ocean on their doorstep—remarkably similar to Out-Islanders of the Bahamas; Jamaica & Trinidad in the Caribbean, parts of Mexico & Guatemala in Central America, and Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, Skye and Shetland. They are the first to admit that they couldn’t live without its constantly changing temperament; that it affects their lives more than some care to admit, while watching news on TV, reading a newspaper (if they can obtain one) or going to the supermarket on a shopping spree.
Not All Doom & Gloom:Some European Countries take Responsibility for Future
After shock waves from WWII subsided in early ‘sixties, certain nations—like Germany and Japan made strong anti-war alliances, joined United Nations, promoted Peace Corps or local equivalent to make amends. Even now U.S. president Biden seems unable to unthink his war mentality, and continues to send military aid in $$millions to Ukraine on pretext of ‘helping’ them defend tank manoeuvres by Russians. The White House continues to foster fear in younger generation as an excuse for not channeling similar funds to help his own poor and needy—recent hurricane & tornado victims in disastrous Deep South. He seems unaware that Russian tank force is a seriously outdated repurposed squad of ex-WWII disused equipment which even Ukrainians laugh off. They accept U.S. aid nonetheless. Who wouldn’t?
French Frigate Shoals, above, is part of group of outlying islands in the Hawai’ian island chain (NWHI). Formed by remnant atolls around a submerged (extinct) volcano, the reef system associated with French Frigate Shoals supports the greatest variety of coral species in NWHI with forty one species of stony corals documented.
A steep-sided basalt pinnacle juts out of the water in the middle of the atoll. This is the last remnant of the original prehistoric volcano. The pinnacle was named “La Pérouse Pinnacle” after Compte de la Pérouse, who visited the atoll in 1786. In the moonlight the pinnacle so resembled a full-rigged sailing ship that it lured more than one vessel to her doom on the Shoals.
While there is still a U.S. military presence in the form of a runway atop immediate neighbor Tern Island, (formerly used as a refuelling stop en route to Midway Island, see top far right 1942 Pacific Nuclear bomb dropped by Enola Gay), the Shoals are an international refuge for Pacific Green Turtle, who lay their eggs in exposed dug-outs, above rt. while sun-basking, fishing, or travelling to mainland Hawai’i, but are devoted parents who return once the offspring hatch. The string of islets also provide refuge for the largest sub-population of endangered Hawai’ian monk seals and preservation of this atoll is critical to their survival.
Local temperatures never fall much below 79ºF in the islands, and so Hawai’ian Pacific activity continues at a frantic level, year-round. Meanwhile, there are many heroic deeds happening on shores of the ‘other’ Ocean, where temperatures are still slow to rise.
Holland aka Netherlands, severely strapped by Nazi domination in WWII, has blossomed in peace-time and is now second-largest #sustainable world nation to grow and export (organic) food. Their tulip fields are legendary; but so now are their organic farms, fed & powered by near-90% solar & wind-power energy, with distribution capability second to none-a Euro-bloc icon of sustainability.
Another-tiny-country known for sustainability is Morocco. 100% oil-dependent at the turn of the Century, now 23 years later 43% alternative.
Back in the Pacific, coastal Costa Rica is recovering from its previous bad habits.
The Central American nation had cut down over half of its forests last century. Now, with reforestation grants, and a lot of encouragement, they have restored over half the country’s trees. And their youngsters are enthused, involved in the new jungle.
Japan—while paying attention to its global impact on other nations after changing from a warlike nation to a peaceful one, is now known for slowing everything down in its overpopulated country. Whilst continuing to welcome newcomers who want to learn its ancient customs, traffic lanes have been diverted, pedestrians given right of way. Large slowing-down water boat and candlelight festivals are promoted. And all done with grace—with respect for their elders who kept traditions going, but emphasis on showing the young how to emulate such gentle cultural elegance in dress, tradition, food and other ceremonies. Japanese kimono & other costumes, tea ceremony, porcelain kiln & outdoor firing have been raised to a new level to allow the young to appreciate thousands of years of tradition. It goes without saying that Sumo Wrestling continues to play a big part in cultural exchange.
Quietly, when nobody was looking, the Pacific Diesel Company in Maui, HI began growing sunflowers on its 200-acre farm in 1998. Now, 25 years later it has opened fuel stations dockside in Honolulu and Maui to provide processed biodiesel for motorboats, biodiesel-capable cars. It recycles used oil from various outlets.
A separate purification system manufactures cooking oil for local restaurants. Mainland support was quick to fund the enterprise, as PDC, Hawai’i was first of its kind in the United States.
The company will feature in Earth Day celebrations April 22, 2023 throughout the Hawai’ian islands.
With a Little Help from His Friends…
We all extend our sincerest good wishes Bon Voyage/ Gute Reise & indigenous blessings to Navigator Thompson and crew. May fishing be abundant on lean days; and local pineapples, guava, coconut fruit & veg sustain them throughout their mammoth four-year pilgrimage. What a team!
TIME TO TEMPT HUMANS TO ACT LIKE TELOSIANS—DELVING DEEP WITHIN TO DISCOVER OUR ORIGINS AS STAR-PEOPLE
MARDI GRAS—FAT TUESDAY— IN NEW ORLEANS, THE “BIG EASY” ECHOES BRAZIL’S CAR-NA-VAL, LONDON’S NOTTING HILL CRAZIES LATER IN SEASON—ALL FOCUS ON JOY WHATEVER THE WEATHER
Mardi Gras in New Orleans, below featured floats of multiple facets of fantasy l. & far rt., with yum-yum food like NOLA specialty King Cakes pic 2, while many threw private balls 2nd rt, with individual gowns created for such a special occasion.
NOLA-‘Big Easy’ Leads World Celebrating Mardi Gras-Fat Tuesday in Joyful Parades, Happy All-Nighters & Loadsa Food despite winter weather, while Rich Nations’ Powerful Leaders’ Boast their ‘Nuke-em’ Attitude
While rain & wild winds battered the North Pacific & huge low pressure throw winter rains, bitter ice balls & heavy snowfalls at New England and cities in central United States, like Denver, Las Vegas, many cultures on both sides of the Atlantic & deep into Brazil—original Carnival country-threw caution to the winds and celebrated as if it were their last day on Earth.
In spite of deep flooding in Gulf states, Arizona, California & Mississippi basin, unusually high temperature fluctuation in Florida, Georgia and Alabama, the Bahamas, Haiti, Cuba and the Caribbean experienced hotter-than-usual (winter) highs. New England, along with D.C. New York & Michigan froze solid.
Europeans—Britain, Scandinavia and Finland suffered deep low pressure, although this is more ‘normal’ for them, and their icy road clearance vehicles and sand-gritting lorries were out getting plenty of exercise.
Stretching farther north into Alaska, the Siberian Arctic and (presently high-profile) Ukraine, Poland and Russia their native tolerance of bitter weather seems not to deter their warlike tendencies—especially Russia & Ukraine continuing to batter each other with (borrowed) weapons, their perseverance encouraging weakling U.S. President Biden & distant N.Korea & China to promise MORE.
Through all the pain & suffering experienced by (non-warring) families in Turkey—with two recent earthquake disasters claiming 40,000 lives so far, it seems that four leaders of some of the world’s richest nations—U.S.A, Russia, China, & N.Korea have lost perspective in promising to “solve the problem” with NUCLEAR armaments, rather than by family-focused humanitarianism.
The dilemma is—for any rational everyday person-on-the-street—unfathomable.
$500 Million Funding for Nuclear-bearing Aircraft Weaponry can feed World’s Poor & Homeless Masses, with Some to Spare
Instead of moaning on about how difficult it is to “find appropriate housing” for the poor, homeless & underpaid voluntary sector-[traveling hospital staff, volunteer social workers, families in temporary vehicles/mobile campers], U.S. President Biden & Russia Head of State Putin declare war on one another—not perhaps in news bulletins, but in ‘unofficial trips to neighbor nations. With a quick speech for United Nations European members in between. U.S. President, cleverly ordered AirForce One to transport him secretly from D.C. to Germany; then commissioned an overnight sleeper to Warsaw, in order to arrive ‘fresh’ for a televised speech.
China & North Korea respond—as they don’t like to appear laggards in the nuclear ‘game’, having had their baby surveillance balloon shot down by U.S. jets over the Atlantic. They hastily gathered support from other small neighbours in the East; sprucing up their nuclear weaponry and preparing for war.
Turkey, meanwhile, languishes between, grateful for any help: money, food, vehicle response, care-givers, life-support professionals from anywhere in the world which supports their plight.
Turkey/Syria earthquakes (second occurred Monday night, February 20,2023) have created a crack in Earth’s crust 186 miles/300km long-not easy to patch up!
Animals & some stalwart hooman owners have survived 10 days or more beneath the surface of the rupture, without water or sustenance & yet were alive when rescued.
Dog & cat-owners are overjoyed at their pets’ return.
Food parcels & non-perishable donations are being accepted & distributed in shelters hastily erected to house lost individuals and families still searching for loved ones.
In Sadness there is Joy in Pain/Sorrow there is Hope—Message from Light Beings
Reminiscent of Star Trek Four: the Voyage Home, with Spock, Capt Kirk, Pavel Chekov & Scotty’s surprise appearance in their stolen Kingon ‘wessel’ complete with recyclable whale family, pic left; our brothers and sisters in the light appear as if by magic from an unknown realm to help us learn new attitudes to life and express joy, humour and gratitude instead of worry & despair.
When on Earth they keep counsel inside Mt. Shasta, pic l. my book touching on their story. They live within their own secret kingdom inside the mountain, emerging when humans summon them in need. They encourage us to find places where we feel joy-beach bottom rt. Richardson’s State Beach Park, Hilo, HI; and encourage us to plant more beautiful greenery—preferably trees, bottom l. to help our planet thrive in troubled times.
There is always Hope.
Elderly humans a generation ago conscious of maintaining a positive attitude to see them through hard times, would use this attitude in a difficult situation – loss of a loved one, misbehaving child, even the onset of age in their own bodies.
Now, with amazing timing, Light Beings of Other Worlds beyond ours—Telosians their own name for themselves— have miraculously entered our timescape with a spectacular array of pointers to guide us off the “inevitable” course we were on, and along a totally new path to-[pick one-happiness, enlightenment, Salvation (biblical), problem-solving, truth, LOVE, the answer: empowerment]!
Telosian Truth Has a Different Ring to it—or When Life Gives You Lemons, make Lemonade
When all else fails, Humans have had a habit of looking on the bright side. The New Age emphasizes this thinking by the adage ‘If Life gives you Lemons, make Lemonade.’ Telosians take this feeling even further, with a positive attitude to everything from automobile breakdown to missed rail/air connections, to burning supper on the kitchen stove. It’s all going according to Plan, i.e. don’t worry the small details, the bigger picture has a better solution in store.
Sure enough, with a firm belief of something better to come lining our pocket, a surprise solution will suddenly appear and the problem will go away.
Recent World Meditation Initiative Fire-the-Grid 2/21/23 pulled People of all Nations & Faiths together to Create a One-Mind Gathering for Thousands
Fire-the-Grid, pic below rt. uses symbols unknown to us in the ‘real world’ but which trigger a space deep inside where their shape and simplicity mean something intangible—for which we have no words.
In a religious context, the Gk.word Telos is used by many New Testament bibles to denote the physical form of a human-Jesus-as a result of INTENT by a Creator who has no physical form aka God.
Fire-the-Grid, below rt. shows us the way, even if only our subconscious mind gets the message.
Anael, early guide to making this series of “letters” mean something to our subconscious, describes them as words without a known language. She says our soul understands their message, even if our conscious mind does not.
As earthling guide sent by Telosian Light Beings, she begs us to trust that inner knowing to bring the Light forth into day.
Symbolic of an inner language we know in our hearts & rarely used parts of our subconscious mind, Fire-the-Grid shapes are familiar, but we can’t express why.
Telosian Light Beings sent out a “Wake-up Call” the night before World Meditation trial, February 19, this year. It was followed by 24 hours of psychic support 2/20-2/21, 2023, with a full hour exercising our ability to meditate tuned in on every part of the globe.
Telos Allows Change on Day-to-Day Basis, Just as Human Intentions Change
Humans gathering to share in a mind-meld (tku Spock) in the spirit of gratitude, joyful expectation and in some cases the use of prayer was enough to form one of the first events in 2023, following many years of practice after original Fire-the-Grid exercises at the end of the last century. Light Beings from a different Universe at that time helped Earthlings understand their mission on Earth was similar in belief, but different in content, from messages received by other cultures like the Maya Elders who have long expected a change—the SHIFT—from physical earthbound living to belief in the coming of the Light to end human darkness.
Humans will prepare for the coming of the Light in their own way within their own cultural limitations. The Maya, he affirms, will assist in that transition to feelings of caring and love, of friendly sharing of wealth and protection of the innocent and young families by gentle persuasion and the support of elders within their own community who already believe the change is happening.
So now, ten years after the predicted date—the Maya had known of this for at least fifty years prior—their ancient ritual gatherings at solstice and the equinoxes when the sun climbs the staircase of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan are evidence of their brothers’ faith in the Feathered Serpent Kukulkan-great god of ancient Central American race whose monuments built over one thousand years ago predict the path of the Serpent-god each year. It is he who has foreseen humanity’s impending change from dark to Light.
Kukulcan, great Feathered Serpent god of the Yucatan, pictured bottom of page rt. is known to be capable of wildly astronomical feats-like climbing the temple stairs on solar ascension on solstice and descending when our Sun declines on autumn equinox. His knowledge of the galaxies is understood to be beyond human comprehension & therefore immortal.
If Not Apocalypse, What Can We Expect?
Four minutes before Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) 11:11 a.m. February 21, 2023 converted to world time zones—East Coast U.S. five hours prior; Central CDT 6 hours, California PDT 8 hours prior; Hawai’i central Pacific a day before @ Midnight + 7minutes.
Western time zones prepared. We had practised feeling joy in the pleasure of simple things, laughing at our own childish attempts at grown-up seriousness. We were learning to release worries and doubt; we knew it was time to be counted along with those who could lay down fear & doubt; pick up the sword of true ‘reality’. To laugh, cry with joy, dance, play & be grateful for all that life has already given us—our family, friends, cats, birds, garden veg, herbs, fruit—with the expectation of more to come in the future. Even love we never thought would reach us in our rapidly advancing world.
Linguistic aside: in Indo-European terminology—study of language from its first ancient roots common to Latin, French, German, Dutch, Polish, Jewish, Flemish, even Islamic variables & to tribes along the Road to Marrakesh the word Telos denotes point of a spear, dagger or arrow. Just making a point!
Plus the knowledge that we are capable of creating anything in a world we choose. Laughter the best medicine; joy, happiness, pleasure and humour are tools of our trade.
“Find a place of comfort and calm; release all feelings of urgency, guilt or worry-anything negative which might hamper one’s mind from entering that special place within where all is light.
“Move away from FEAR conversations; move away from FEAR thoughts; TRUST in a bright and beautiful future. Hold your frequency high, so that you are part of all that moves forward. The darker the time, the more you look for the light”
They added this message the following day: “If you joined us last night/day before, bless you. There is more to come.”
Telosian Future Vision is Variable—Dependent on their own Group Mind
It is comforting to realize Telosian Light Beings are themselves subject to their own Group conclusions.
Telosians predict the “Collapse of the Fourth Field”—their name for our current world culture of war & legal battles, embezzeling, stealing, murder & rape: our unloving treatment of our fellow men & women.
Whilst conceding the Group Mind is capable of making decisions for themselves along with us, their followers, these are subject to change along the way, because Group Consciousness is constantly on the move too, changing shape/direction with each new day.
Other (S.American) cultures—like Machu Picchu, in the Peruvian Andes above Cuzco, have found unique methods of switching into non-time. as actress and Academy Award winning author, Shirley MacLaine discovered in her own search for enlightenment.
Shirley’s book ‘Out on a Limb’ charts her search in Earth’s highest mountains for ‘other’ consciousness ‘closure’.
Expectations for a Future Without Sadness/Crime or Disappointment
With our new arsenal of pleasurable thoughts, funny & satisfying life changes, expecting the unexpected—and thanking our lucky stars we are the recipients of such daily surprises, we remind ourselves to show gratitude and love to those who bring such new surprises into play.
Light Beings enjoy continuously—anything & everything that comes their way. As in their realm there is no such cataclysm as death. The physical body renews and becomes more beautiful as our genetic structure is in balance and so physically we cannot “age” after 35.
They constantly repeat—so it becomes our belief too—that we are immortal; that there is no dying in that place beyond…
Approaching another #Stargate has us reflecting on 2012. Then we thought the world as we knew it was ending.
Thoth, Ibis god of writing & learning; god of the Moon; sacred scribe
A decade later we confront ourselves again now—humans becoming superhuman—Egyptians, Assyrians, Scythians knew this would happen—we are their gods.
Ancient texts, such as (much-maligned) Hebrew/Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls, and Egyptian ‘Knowledge of Thoth’, insist that we humans are destined to become gods; that from their Zep Tepi—Dawn of Time—literally First Time—we were programmed to evolve beyond our present terrestrial form.
The Egyptian god spoke of the Star Walkers—individuals who, like Enoch, traveled beyond the Great Eye of Orion [out of the program] and returned—to walk like gods amongst men. Such evolved humans are comparable with the ‘Lords of Light’ of the Maya, Sumerian Nephilim or Anunnaki—”those who from Heaven to Earth came”—and the Tibetan Dakini—Shining Ones.
Inca portal of Amaru Muru at Hayu Marca, which is believe to give access to the world of serpent wisdom and interdimensional travel Last weekend the sun stood, as it does on both equinoxes—March 21st, September 22nd—directly overhead on earth’s equator, before making its (apparent) journey southward towards the tropic of Capricorn, where it will stand on winter solstice—S.hemisphere midsummer—on December 21st, 2012. For one day and night, everyone on planet earth experienced a twelve-hour day* and twelve-hour night, with sunrise due east and sunset due west. From now on, days in the northern hemisphere will appear dramatically shorter. If that were not enough to make the most avid outdoorsman turn inwards for consolation, the end of the British crop circle season would appear to be a done deal.
*allowance is made for sunrays appearing before ‘dawn’, giving longer daylight at some latitudes.
WHALES, NUCLEAR WESSELS AND OCEAN CLEAN-UP
ALAMEDA—Chequered History or Check-Mate?
Alameda—where they keep the Nuclear Wessels, according to Pavel Chekov, in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, 1986
With a flourish of ceremonial shovels, construction began last week on the site of the (closed) U.S. Naval Air Station, on what will become Alameda’s first major market-rate multi-family development in four decades. Alameda Point sits on the North shore of San Francisco Bay, with strategic connections to Oakland, the Sacramento River and the Bay Area.
Manila Bay whale sculpture made entirely from plastic beach waste in Philippines, image courtesy Greenpeace
It will be familiar to vintage Star Trek fans for its connection with whales, nuclear generators and Space. Alameda has tolerated empty lot syndrome since the ‘nineties—vast spaces where appropriate development could enhance the former NAS site, but records of clean-up procedures are causing concern. The Navy contractor’s method of landfill and dumping radio-active soil and ground liquids has been questioned.
Developers for the project assure that testing and re-certification will continue, as old naval buildings and pavement are torn up to make room for the new 70-acre development, known as Site A: it will include 800 residential units, up to 600,000 square feet of commercial space and a ferry terminal that will connect to San Francisco—plus parks and open space.
According to U.S. Navy’s Environmental Coordinator for the Alameda cleanup, Cecily Sabedra:
“Tetra Tech was the contractor who performed environmental investigation and cleanup tasks throughout the former NAS Alameda, including Site A. The Navy’s internal-review safeguards and the regulatory-review process indicate Alameda data are accurate and the work completed to date at Alameda is protective of human health. Quality assurance and quality control measures, including field oversight and data review by Navy personnel and regulatory agencies, have been and continue to be in place at Alameda to verify data are representative of site conditions.”
From Cold War Seaplane Landing to Wildlife Reserve
Old Alameda Naval Air base runways for U.S. fleet flight deck and seaplane landings, now rare bird lagoon
Tetra Tech was deeply involved at another portion of the 2,800-acre Alameda Naval Air Station property, Site 2, which is deemed a toxic Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The station was an active military installation for fleet aviation activities from the 1930s to the 1990s. Former jet runways, and anchorage for Cold War sea planes and Navy submersibles can still be seen.
In Tetra Tech’s 200-page remedial action work plan, submitted to the Navy and other U.S. government agencies in 2013, Site 2 contained radium-226 and other radioactive materials. In the 1940s, workers coated instruments such as dials using a radio-luminescent paint containing the isotope. Rags and paint brushes were then discarded at the site.
Over a period of sixty years, the land had been a dumping ground for other materials like asbestos, pesticides, sandblasting grit, medical waste and tear gas agents. In ‘cleaning’ the area, Tetra Tech bulldozed in a multi-layer soil mix, to cover the old landfill.
Wilderness will Find a Way—Wildlife Move Back In
Osprey landing on rusty light-stand nest to feed young, in former Seaplane Lagoon
Site 2—owned by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs—will remain closed for the ‘foreseeable future’.
Since becoming redundant in the 1990s, Mother Nature has stepped in to reclaim such wasteland: now home to several endangered species of birds. Harbor seals have moved back into the lagoon and this is third year a pair of ospreys have nested on the old light stand at the entrance to Seaplane Lagoon.
After an impasse was reached in 2004 between the U.S. Navy and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (aka Fish & Game) for creation of a national wildlife refuge, the property was offered to the Department of Veterans Affairs (V.A.). The V.A. plans to build an outpatient clinic and columbarium on 112 acres of its land, but the other 511 acres of V.A. land will remain undeveloped. The undeveloped area is where egrets and endangered California Least Terns come to nest early April to mid-August each year.
Wild Mountain Lion Migrate Across 101
Baby cougar faces future from her den in Thousand Oaks, Santa Monica mountains
Megalopolis concerns are with a family of cougar kittens in Thousand Oaks, CA.—being monitored/tagged by National Parks Service researchers—where as grown wildcats they will have to cross Highway 101 to find new breeding grounds—the nearest wild forest being several hundred miles to the north. Cougar have had to adapt to urban sprawl before. Most famous is Parks’ Service favorite, “P-22” who crossed several freeways in Santa Monica, headed south into Los Angeles and took up residence in downtown Griffith Park.
He’s still there. What a Cool Cat.
San Francisco’s former military HQ, the Presidio, with its unparalleled view of the Golden Gate Bridge, has become a model for native plant species and habitat restoration since 1994. That year, the U.S. military machine turned its back on war and handed the land over to the National Parks Service. It subsequently created the Presidio Trust which now oversees 80% of the park. Here endangered and indigenous plant life is being nurtured back to profusion by Parks’ botanists, with a little nightly help from vole, gopher, racoon, fox and coyote. The bears left a long time ago—ages before it was a military stronghold.
Chernobyl nuclear hazard sign after April 26, 1986 explosion blanketed Europe in radio-active fog for a week
Encouragingly, wildlife in Chernobyl, a former 50,000-population density town in Ukraine within a 1,000-sq.mile forest (4300km2 Chernobyl Exclusion Zone) are moving through the irradiated landscape in droves, and showing little sign of becoming mutants. European research teams have been tracking population growth of wolves, bear, mountain lion and multiple migrating birds for over a decade, and proclaim so far no adverse genetic change.
Nuclear warning by crop circle? Latest to appear in Wiltshire field near Stonehenge, drone shot courtesy Nick Bull
Even our crop circling Alien friends seem concerned for our welfare. The latest—July 8th, 2018—depicting a nuclear device—appeared overnight in unharvested wheat in Coneybury Hill, near Stonehenge, Wiltshire. Whereas Salisbury farmers were formerly stressed over public trespass and crop trampling, they now tolerate drone fly-overs and crop circle photography has taken an upswing.
There are positive aspects to our human concern for proliferating the planet with our own waste. As we become aware of our past destructive habits, like dumping plastic in the ocean—the city of New York only stopped dumping municipal waste by barge into the Atlantic in 1992—we discover alternative methods of clean-up.
Within the last five years Woods Hole, Massachusetts marine microbiologists have recorded a reduction in marine plastic waste in world oceans.
They are convinced it is being eaten.
Leave it to the Micro-Plankton NOAA has recorded a massive 90% drop in ocean pollution statistics worldwide since 2011, declaring there is no Pacific garbage patch.
Marine bacteriologists are convinced, however, that, as plastic degrades through sunlight and the wave action of salt water into the tiniest fragments, this plastic confetti becomes the preferred diet of micro-organisms who attach to such clustered ‘reefs’ of food, extracting toxins in their digestion.
Casualty on Huntington Beach—at least he pecked his way through the bag
”Plastic-eating bacteria help explain why the amount of debris in the ocean has levelled off, despite continued pollution. But researchers don’t yet know whether their digestion produces harmless by-products, or whether it might introduce toxins into the food chain.”
Tracy Mincer, Marine Microbiologist Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
If NOAA’s “missing 90%” of microscopic plastic fragments in the oceans is being eaten—mostly by bacteria and other microbes—these little microscopic helpers will continue to eat the plastic. If we can reduce the amount of plastic going into the oceans, via our beaches, they may eventually eat it all up.
Wouldn’t that be a world initiative worth achieving?
If we continue with responsible water cleanup worldwide—as some humanitarian philanthropists are currently showing the way—we ‘oldies’ may emerge from the “Plastic Age” unscathed, sooner than our grandchildren predict.
CONTROLLING THE FLOW
California’s Water Supply Eroding under Pressure
Water trickles down massive failure in Oroville spillway February 8, 2017, causing town to be evacuated
Building a dam spillway—theoretically for excess water release in storms—can have its engineering headaches, especially when material chosen for landfill is a legacy of California’s 1849 Goldrush.
Silt built up during 19thC. gold-panning days was used in early 1960s, alongside local sandstone, to construct a backup system for California’s second-largest [electricity-generating] dam at Oroville, despite knowledge that sand and silt from river erosion takes years to settle. And preferably a series of dry years, without rain storms. When it rains, the emergency—earth sluice—is expected to handle any excess.
This year at Oroville both main spillway and emergency failed.
Dammed if we Do and Damned if we Don’t
Oroville Dam, California’s 2nd largest, overflows February 2017
Department of Water Resources has charge of maintaining an adequate water system for agriculture in the adjacent Central Valley, but it is also responsible for maintaining water aqueducts and two pipelines to supply 3.8million households in Southern California.
In addition to the bonus of the Dam’s production of hydro-electric power for the State.
But background to this important water resource reveals shaky foundations.
Despite a crucial rainstorm flood over Christmas 1964, the incomplete dam was launched by Gov.Ronald Reagan in May 1968, during a week-long festival in Oroville attended by 50,000 visitors.
Ten years later, a massive series of earthquakes hit Oroville in August 1975.
Lori Dengler, Professor Emeritus of Geology at HSU, then a graduate student at UC Berkeley, was obsessed with the seismic ‘swarm’ that shook the dam and its surrounding “surface faulting”—a cluster of fault lines—similar to Petrolia. To her, earthquake reaction came after water levels were dramatically changed.
During the winter of 1974-1975, the lake was drawn down to its lowest level since inauguration, to repair the intakes to the power plant. It was then rapidly refilled and followed by the earthquake sequence of 1975.
Cluster of seismic fault lines, with epicenter at Oroville, CA
August 1, 1975 a Mag.5.8 earthquake hit Oroville. Quakes of this size can occur anywhere in the state, so its size was no surprise. This had been a seismically quiet area, however, and those of us working in the lab noticed when seven earthquakes in the Magnitude-3 range occurred in a tight cluster near the lake. On August 1st, the seismicity ramped up—a Mag.4.7, a Mag.5.8 and 35 additional tremors in the Magnitude-3 range. Vigorous aftershocks continued with over 200 earthquakes in the magnitude-3 range recorded over the next 18 months. Then things quieted down and no earthquakes of Magnitude-3 or larger have been recorded near Oroville since 1992.
It’s not unusual for an earthquake sequence to pop up out of the blue, but the difference in Oroville was two factors linking the earthquakes to the filling of the reservoir. The first was the proximity to the lake, the location of surface faulting and the tightly clustered epicenter locations. The second factor was that the earthquakes followed an unprecedented seasonal fluctuation in lake levels.
Lori Dengler, Prof. Emeritus, Humboldt State University
Time Travel to the Tertiary
Taking a time machine back to 1975 and 1968, Oroville might never have been built
The Foothills Fault System—which includes faults like Cleveland Hills, Spenceville, Deadman, Maidu, Prairie Creek, Swain Ravine and Willows—skirts east of Folsom Lake and runs through Auburn, Placerville, El Dorado Hills and Shingle Springs. The system runs from Mariposa to Chico. The 1975 Magnitude 6.1Richter Oroville earthquake was caused by movement along the Cleveland Hills fault.
For more than a century, the Foothills were considered seismically inactive. That changed with the 1975 Oroville earthquake. The temblor did not cause much damage outside the sparsely-populated Oroville area, but it did have a major impact.
The scientific community had to reassess the large Sierra Foothills area as seismically active, according to the California Geological Survey.
Sutter Butte extinct cinder cone, foreground, overlooks valley of Sacramento River channeled, top, east to Oroville dam along Sierra Foothills Willows fault-line
“The Auburn Dam was being built at the time and for design purposes we were asked to estimate how large an earthquake the system could generate. We estimated a Magnitude-6.5 Richter, capable of displacing the dam’s foundation by about three-quarters of a foot. That sent the dam back to the drawing board. The cost multiplied over time, and the dam was never built.”
Michael Reichle, Asst. Director Dept. of Conservation
California Geological Survey
Oil and Gas Wells in Sunken Bedrock Add Instability
Data from a number of (USGS) sources indicate that the Willows fault is far more extensive and complex than previously thought and that Tertiary deposits in the Foothills are in motion. The first clue that the Willows fault branched into a multistrand fault system was provided by an analysis of seismicity of the northern valley and Sierra foothills after the Oroville earthquake. USGS (in 1978) located a number of small-magnitude earthquakes along a zone that originated near the Marathon “Capital Company No. 1” well in the Willows-Beehive Bend gas field and extended north, rather than following the northwest trend of the Willows fault. A slew of seismic events suggested that a north-trending fault splayed off from the main stem of the Willows fault and passed west of the Corning domes.
On the east side of the valley, Upper Cretaceous sandstone and shale rest uncomfortably on metamorphic and plutonic rocks of the Sierra Nevada.
These bed companions are not made any more comfortable by the instability of the great seismic rift which stretches from Mariposa (Yosemite) in the south to Chico and Cottonwood, just S of Redding, in the north. The bedrock first went through onset of marine sedimentation (W to E) in the late Mesozoic era, and through intermittent periods of uplift and subduction the sand and shale—along with their mountain bedfellows—tilted to south and west. In late Cretaceous the reverse occurred and the sand/shale deposits slid westwards—’marine regression’ (E to W).
During these upheaval and subsidence cycles, four submarine canyons developed—cut and then filled, rifting and then flooded with sediment. Where they meet, near Sutter Butte cinder cone, above, movement both east and west continues.
Riverbank Collapse on Dam Shutdown Leaves Salmon Floundering
Riverbank collapse after dam spillway shut off March 3, 2017 leaving salmon hatcheries & farmers floundering
In the Corning gas fields, analysis of well records by the Sacramento Petroleum Association (1962) showed an anticlinal fold in the area of the Corning domes, with about 121m of maximum closure on the base of the Tehama Formation in the north dome and a steeply dipping southeast-trending fault located at the north end of south Corning dome, but it did not identify a fault west of them.
California Geological Survey
With a new gap in the main spillway now stretching like a fifteen-lane freeway across the cement foundation, immediate closure of Oroville Dam was announced this week. Such a drastic move is in part attributed to safety of those displaced valley residents who have since been allowed to return to their homes and orchards.
Oakdale Heights school children release Chinook hatchlings into Feather River last fall
Salmon young and riverine residents are now without a river bed, as most of the banks have collapsed. Almond, peach orchards and fruit farms, dependent on a seasonal flow of water, were unprepared for such extreme measures, their irrigation systems now high and dry. Salmon fingerlings and immature Chinook die in stranded pools, life-expectancy zero.
Children from Oakdale Heights school, above left, releasing babies last fall into the river, expected their hatchlings to have at least a one-percent chance of survival, on their return from the ocean, are now dismayed by the zero percent outcome for the salmon after dam failure.
Governor Jerry Brown has pledged financial help for storm-affected communities, but the state of California has already unmet infrastructure costs of $187 billion, not including roads. While $2.7 billion has been approved [Prop.1, 2014] for new water storage, that doesn’t cover old dams.
Remembering the warning of seismologists Reichle and Dengler, above, against any sudden changes in water body movement—which can trigger volcanic fault movement—we await the outcome of the shutdown decision with anxiety. It’s not only the salmon spelt, rescued manually from puddles, it’s the water supply for most of the Great Valley.
2015 hottest & most active on record. Can we take it? Or will we break it?
Last December’s climate conference in Paris set a goal—agreed on by the Earth’s most powerful mid-East, West and Southern nations—to hold our combined increase in the global average temperature to two degrees Centigrade (2ºC) /Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit—above pre-industrial levels.
Now February 2016 has already reached world temperature limit, see below.
Climate-speak—no time for fairytale flowery language: do or die
If we continue at the rate we’ve been going, NASA’s climatology computer model shows dramatic swings happening in world temperature, volcanic activity, and rainfall—not in twenty years, but in two.
As the predicted temperatures rise, the same group of scientists admit that ‘model uncertainty’ grows: that means it becomes increasingly more likely that we will experience “unforeseen, often disastrous” events. Hurricane Katrina? Just a fond memory.
It’s doubtful we’ll hold the line at two degrees Centigrade, but we need to give it our best shot. With anything that exceeds that target, we’re talking about enormous changes in global precipitation and temperature patterns, huge impacts on water and food security, and significant sea level rise
NASA Goddard Climatologist P.Sellers
2015 hottest, wettest, & most active on record. Can we take it? Or will we break it? The Earth, that is.
Climate Summit—The Science View: We Submit—or Else
Reducing carbon dioxide emissions—”by 2050″ or a similar approximation is no longer acceptable. We are being asked to step up and be counted—to right some of the wrong we are/have been doing—and mend our ways.
Bite the Bullet or Die
We outgrew killing whales. Maybe now we can stop killing ancient redwood groves
‘I believe future generations will look back on 2015 as an important but not decisive year in the struggle to align politics and policy, with science. This is an incredibly hard thing to do. On the science side, there has been a steady accumulation of evidence over 15 years, that climate change is real’
Piers Sellers, NASA physicist/climatologist 1/17/16
Upper limit 2ºC or 3.6ºF
Piers is convinced that if we continue unabated on this trajectory—i.e. make promises and do nothing—we could lead ourselves into a very uncomfortable, even dangerous, place.
Climate Ceiling Reached
The hottest on record is no joke in NASA and NOAA kingdoms. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration at Goddard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration take their newest computer science statistics seriously.
Tropospheric-stratospheric effects, exaggerated in El Niño years, produce increasing warm/wet summers
In perfect (space) timing, January 17th was launch date for Jason-3, the Space people’s answer to their weather-prediction prayers.
For this beauty*, NASA and NOAA cooperated with the French space agency to get their baby strategically placed in orbit—understandably—to monitor North American shores—impacting both Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Their data will also serve wider world systems on other shores.
Jason-3 adds to a twenty-three-year satellite monitoring of global sea surface maximum height levels—a measurement with scientific, commercial and practical applications related to climate change. It is essentially a record of world currents and weather. Jason-3 data will be used for monitoring global sea level rise, researching human impacts on oceans, aiding prediction of hurricane intensity, and has marine navigation capability.
Its initial 2016 mission—is planned to last a minimum of three years.
*Sadly the Falcon-9 rocket, planned after re-entry to be recycled in the best Space Shuttle tradition, failed to land on its target—an unmanned platform in the Pacific—exploded and destroyed the platform. Oh well, another $1million down the tubes. Back to the drawing board for Vandenberg air base buffs.
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch…
After Trinity National Forest fires devastated half a county, natural regrowth has been encouraged
What can we back on Earth do?
Instead of multiple repetitive wars among ourselves, it’s been suggested we combine our intelligence for a war on emissions.
Early 2016 has been a hard year for Earth-First proponents, particularly in the Pacific NorthWest where the lungs of the planet—the Giant Redwoods, Bristlecone Pine and Douglas Fir—reside. This ‘carbon storage unit’ of age-old trees has been functioning well until quite recently. Then some of the lumber companies—instead of respecting the tradition of replant, restore, regenerate—succumbed to the old dollar bribe:
success in any industry, it seems, is measured by the bottom line of the balance sheet.
Local so-called environmentally-friendly forestry interests—some calling themselves ‘Resource’ companies—have, over a generation, acquired tens of thousands of acres of ancient trees illegally from original California settlers, and are systematically felling them in the name of ‘harvest’.
CLEAR-FELLING OUR WAY TO OBLIVION
Pictish Calgacus leads 30,000 Caledonians into battle with Romans at Mons Graupius, modern Aberdeenshire, AD83, where 10,000 Caledonians died
The Caledonian Forest in Scotland is a prime example of successive raiders, decimating or razing to the ground every living thing—in the name of war—or progress. Sadly, while we may have learned how, we seem unable to implement our new knowledge: that wildlife—especially tree forms—maintain a balance which we humans have difficulty grasping: that our life on Earth would be a devastation—a vast wilderness—if we were to continue, to run amok, clear-felling our way to oblivion.
It happened to the precursor of the Sahara Desert. Now Namibia. And it’s occurring all over Brazil. More shocking, it’s happening in our own backyard—in the midst of the most-politically-correct university community in North America. And we seem blind to the signs, the gradual erosion of what was once a flourishing planetary breathing system—healthy ancient trees.
Our attitude to forests—their vibrancy, and consequently our own continuing existence—seems faulty.
In Europe during both world wars, all participating countries felled trees to build with, and to burn—as part of the ‘war effort’.
France decimated the Alsace region and felled throughout the Loire valley, regardless of ‘aspect’—the term used in gardens of great houses, when meshing planting with a pleasant view. In Germany—while many southern forests were left untouched—e.g. Schwarzwald, Poland, Eastern bloc, northern trees suffered in an endless drive for more war fuel.
Hill of Barra, Aberdeenshire, showing rear route taken by Bruce’s troops to quell local Comyn opposition, 1308
Scotland suffered heavily. Deterred from obliterating millennium-old giant yews in their own home counties, the English pounced on (what was left of) the Caledonian Forest in Aberdeenshire, Kincardine and Forfar, and finished off what raiders had begun centuries before.
Most ‘recently’, Robert the Bruce, self-crowned king of Scots, began his march a.k.a. tree-burning at the Battle of Barra, 1308, in central Aberdeenshire and burned his army’s route thirty miles to the North Coast. The Caledonian forest—pine in particular—never recovered.
The Caledonian Forest had only just revived after Roman burning!
North Britain Conquest and Retreat
Regenerating the Caledonian Forest—author with Tacitus’ Mons Graupius in background
In November of AD83, as winter began its icy grip, Roman general Agricola pushed for one more battle in North Britain, before retiring to the comfort of Rome. It is said he took the Caledonians by surprise, but it is more likely Roman foot soldiers had more leverage on steep mountain terrain than the antiquated wooden chariots of the Picts. Rallied by the piercing cry of their battle-horn, the fearsome gold boar-headed carnyx, thirty thousand Caledonians gathered on the slopes of Bennachie. Ten thousand bodies were left dead after the battle.
In plain below Bennachie-Mons Graupius, 5thC Pictish Picardy Stone shows Caledonian lineage
Solitudinem faciunt Pacem appellant
They create a Wilderness and call it Peace—Calgacus exhorting his Caledonian tribes to battle at Mons Graupius
Tacitus could not possibly have known what Calgacus said to his troops before the battle of Mons Graupius—GRAMPIAN mountain range in Aberdeenshire—even the Chieftain’s name fails to appear in any Kinglist. Yet this one particular phrase from his speech has a genuine feel about it, as if Tacitus had heard it himself from the lips of captured Pictish warriors, and was moved to write it down. Publius Cornelius Tacitus’s job on the march was that of recording the exploits of his father-in-law, Gnaeus Julius Agricola (AD40-93), on the British campaign. They returned to Rome long before the snows took hold, leaving devastation behind.
Heartland of the Caledonian Forest—Aberdeenshire—was historically hit hardest. Unlike Westcoast Scotland, soil and climate here are receptive, rich and varied. The balmy Gulf Stream circles the Orkneys and Ultima Thule and then streams towards these ‘lowland’ hills, bringing balanced seasons to an already rich environment.
Climate, soil and people are more fertile/kindly than in rocky west coast ravines. Caledonian Scots pine, pinus sylvestris thrives. So does farming.
19thC tree-felling was kinder on California Redwoods, leaving more natural gaps for regeneration
When the Romans burned their way north, they were looking for gold. They found rebellious tribes and left them for dead, along with their forests. Robert the Bruce, in the summers of 1308-1310, burned the hunting (pine) forests of his rival for the throne, Comyn Earl of Buchan, and left nothing behind.
Two world wars finished off what was left of minimal remaining Caledonian pine stands.
Now, centuries on, Scotland’s Forestry Commission helps smallholders and landowners to replant oases of indigenous forest—pine, birch, oak and hazel—with maintenance grants to keep them sheep-and-deer-free—not an easy task in what are now (2000 years later) rich agricultural rolling meadows.
Other private agencies—like Trees for Life Scotland—have initiated their own planting programs, restoring pine, birch and aspen in deer-free ‘exclosures’, to encourage regeneration of natural understorey. Pine marten, snowy owl, crossbill, goldfinch and crested tit have all returned to such reclaimed woodland.
Biomass—Use or Abuse of Alternative Fuel
Trinidad Pier in whaler days, now a Northern Humboldt fishing village and resort
Controversially, Humboldt State University—seen by many academic institutions as a forerunner of enlightened attitude to use of technology within the natural environment—has mistakenly taken up the cudgel of biomass—as a back-door entry into the thorny climate problem. Unfortunately, their research has not been completely transparent and investigation reveals ‘substantial’ funding from forestry interests which are not impartial to the outcome of the University’s plan.
Biomass, seen as waste from a single campfire, may be relatively harmless to our atmosphere. Big business biomass, however—the University declares it will run its whole energy program on biomass fuel, instead of conventional statewide power sources—comprises woodland waste: milling detritus, forest-floor leftovers, mixed in a suitably nice cocktail of machine oil, sawdust sweepings, with an occasional drop of diesel—to go.
Local Earth-First activist group Climate Crisis Humboldt spoke in forum last week with HSU Senate, suggesting they reconsider their plan, and deliberation is underway within the hallowed halls.
The Humboldt climate group’s cry has not gone unheard. They are supported by European and international interests, embodied in Friends of the Earth, who are pushing for cancellation from the (higher—U.S.) Senate!
There is hope—if the state’s most northern university changes, the rest of California’s campuses will follow their lead. There is already considerable antipathy in the county towards the underhanded way in which funding from a local forestry giant has been offered as bait.
After it was pointed out to them that more carbon is stored by older/larger trees, than by acres of smaller young saplings, the company’s tree-felling operations have been temporarily halted by popular demand.
Global Temperatures Already Rising
Now statistics for February 2016 already show a marked upward trend, with unprecedented temperatures in both hemispheres.
February 2016 global temperatures already reached top limit
As March brings spring growth, the climate question will come up again and again. Earth Day—April 20th—celebrating John Muir‘s birthday and his “wilderness America”—is targeted by tree sitters, EarthFirsters and volunteer forest guardians in Pacific NorthWest, in their march for the trees.
Earth Mother is indeed listening to our cries this spring. And if we choose to mend our ways, she might even forgive us and bring back her beauty—or her Beast.
Grasshopper-eye-view of 2012 ultimate in cropcircle design: the ‘Neocube’ August 2012 Hackpen, Wiltshire groundshot courtesy Steve Alexander
Four hundred days after 12/12/12, an eerie chill in the January 2014 evening air may send shivers up our spine, telling those of us Galactic pagans who stand at the open door to soul-consciousness that it is only a breath away.
This is no false media-promised ‘stairway to the stars’; more an energetic doorway offering itself now to propel us—aware or unaware—through the next steps—together—in evolution. To some of us who have been through the mill, the Siderealview is
BRING IT ON!
Archaic Units of Time and Measure
Classically, winter solstice—northern-hemisphere style—was what Greco-Roman male-dominant culture understood. While they borrowed Arabic constellations (gleaned from antediluvian astronomical study of both celestial spheres), leaving Islamic trails in the heavens around Al Nath, Mirfak, Rigel and Betelgeuse, they superimposed Latin names on important calendrical stars like the Pleiades, Sirius, Antares (in Scorpio, ‘rival’ of Ares-Mars for its red brilliance), and on a few favored constellations like Canopus and Carina in southern skies. Otherwise they concentrated heavily on renaming the northern zodiac.
Egyptian Cubit: measure of forearm, used interchangeably with Roman foot ‘pedes’
Along with other Mediterranean cultures, they used the archaic cubit—length of the human forearm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger—the short cubit ranging from 17-18 inches.
Hackpen Metatron Cube, Cubit & NeoCube made up of spherical neodymium magnets may suggest Humanity start working seriously to produce energy from maglev technology image courtesy CMM Research
‘The Universe is not thirteen billion light years across and self-made, as believed in the Illusion. Creation is over nine hundred trillion light years across and is still just beginning.
‘To inaugurate Creation, the Holy Trinity projected the Cube and Sphere one dimension down to the thirteenth dimension as a circle, hexagon outline—also called a cube—and flattened Y factor lines. The 13th-dimensional projection is known throughout all of Creation as that called a Cubit.
‘The Cubit is also expandable according to rule into multiferous combinations called Cubist matrices. The number of possible Cubist matrices is without limit. They are the genomes of Creation.’ Revelatorium Transmission through Archangel Melchizedek
Etchilhampton Wiltshire, summer 2013: reminder of past seasons?
From 7/7/7, 8/8/8 LionsG8 through 12/12/12
Before he died on February 29th, 2009, John Burke, of BLT gave years of his life to study, along with his colleagues W.C. Levengood and Nancy P. Talbott, Dynastic Egyptians’ harnessing of energetic power in pyramid technology. See our treatise dedicated to John Burke in 2010, for an in-depth look at how his research crossed over into crop circle manifestation with similar results, more below.
“This energy force is capable of incising pictograms containing over a thousand elements with surgical precision, covering areas of up to 150,000 square feet, and with such unerring accuracy that ‘curtains’ of wheat one stalk wide are sometimes all that separate one circle from another. The perimeter walls resemble the seamless curve of a drum, and where inward-curving walls meet inside a design, the central point can be defined down to a single stalk”
John Burke, BLT
“This force has been put into crop circles through thought processes to initiate a new source of energy now being created. Certain beings are receiving preparation to understand messages projected at this time. Power is being created through intellect of the scientist, knowledge is awakened in others; some are very close to the answer: an energy machine. This energy is only partially linked to magnetism.
“Rather, it is linked to the illusion of time.
“Similar to thought-transference, wo/man will be able to change the molecular structure of things, including herself. Within the energy-pattern of the circles we are giving you this information.”
The Watchers
7/7/7 and 8/8/8 crop circles, images courtesy Steve Alexander, TemporaryTemples
In retrospect, Croppies were being prepared from around 2007—7/7/7 double CCs yin-yang + OM, 8/8/8 Eight crop circle images above, startling even the most stalwart unbelievers in their transcendant art—for what now appears regularly in our consciousness: the appearance of the miraculous in everyday life.
Biblical, Dark Age, Mediaeval and Pagan pre-Celtic consciousness was constantly prepared by belief, sacred ceremony and ritual, for revelation of the Divine within the prosaic. It is our misgotten cultural overlay which now clouds our vision of such appearances in our modern world.
But not for long.
Chualar Vineyard Year-End Crop Circle Surprise
Meanwhile, while nobody in particular was watching—all eyes in the Western World being directed to that gay commercial entity called euphemistically, the ‘festive season’—an energetic vortex surfaced in a Salinas county vineyard, twenty miles due east of Monterey Bay, California.
Rancho Chualar cropcircle December 30th, 2013, highlights the 1. 9. 2. and π 3.14159265359 ad infinitum
CCD microchip crop circle appeared within five miles of Highway-101 artery, which funnels northern traffic out of LA-LA-land towards the Redwoods. It lies close to where retired screen stars have their ‘country’ homes. This microclimate enclave where a full winter barley crop was available in late December to be etched in multiple decodable dots and numbers—to the delight of CC-geeks everywhere—is coincidentally the oldest artist colony in California; where the San Francisco Arts movement (art nouveau, art-deco, original ‘bohemians’) fled after the earthquake of 1906. Arts, music, dance theaters and open-air stages abound within twee throwback architecture of the Edwardian era. Its hinterland still has pioneer attitude, coupled with rich agricultural valleys, which John Steinbeck breathed into life.
Seasonal Swansong
Not being on the normal CC circuit, Monterey received rather scant attention from US media and local press at first, relegating the last appearance of 2013 Crop Circle season to the loony pile, Brit. equivalent of a ‘hoax circle’ (ladders + human stomping). To add to that unfortunate attitude, current landowners Scott and Debbie Anthony were suffering personal illness, ordering the formation erased without their seeing it, so all barley within its one-acre circumference has been flattened. Nevertheless its intricacies are too precise, with on-site inspection of field lay described pointedly by knowledgeable (but undercover) botanists as multi-layered in the best authentic CC tradition—so it is hard not to want to examine, dissect, reveal all it may proffer for 2014.
Full-Well Capacity
Relatively easily identifiable first off in the design is an integrated circuit etched on to a charge coupled device, CCD, pixel-latest techno-geniuses’ creation in film chip technology, usually made of silicon, forming light-sensitive elements called pixels. Each pixel can hold a maximum number of electrons, called its ‘Full Well Capacity’! This number can vary widely (10ke- to 500ke-), depending currently on pixel’s physical dimensions—bigger the pixel, more electrons it can hold. So, while capable of holding zillions of pixels, current film chips are set at 192×165 pixels. On a quantum level, camera chips holding excess electrons begin to ‘bleed’ them into neighboring chips, causing ‘blooming’.
Parable/fable for humans?: if you stimulate/feel joy, move into being in joy, you will spread it around! Are we, humans on the brink of a New Beginning, being guided through our own blooming? In our blinkered state, are we capable of flowering? And is traditional chip size no longer a parameter in electronic circuitry? Aha!
Future Speak: Techno-Talk in the Barley
Central button panel code in three precise rows of braille-type dots folded through interwoven barley was quickly identified by local symphony orchestra conductor Carl Christensen as depicting the number 192. Braille dot system enables his blind students to read and write through touch. In his opinion, the dots are in very specific order, “so perfect it’s almost like a machine did it. They are not off in any way, shape, or form.”
Three lines in braille read:
Iridium’s atomic weight is 192, half-life 73 days
192 192
B 192 1
192 192″
Simple message to the blind: awake, open eyes and see…
There are other implications, nuances in the design.
Seen as a simple clock face, aligned on 12-axis, numbers 1, 9 and 2 are repeated in descending size.
Chualar is a term from an American Indian language meaning ‘pigweed’, goosefoot, Amaranthus palmeri, a healing herb. It still grows in the canyon.
The glyph appeared overnight in barley in the strong December Quarantid meteor shower and during first onset of a solar storm which is still giving NASA, NOAAexperts and several amateur CME-X-flare-watchers heart attacks. Ongoing since mid-December 2013, in the runup to our rendezvous with the center of the Galaxy, tomorrow January 4th, 2014, it has become a major storm—red panel sidebar right. Solar storms, as we know, tend to have major influence in terrestrial weather; but add the recent extraterrestrial bombardment of comet-ISON dust, near-earth asteroid impact and now the current evening showering of our planet by the Quanantids, what more is there to see?
Chualar township is a remnant region of California’s frontier that still produces food crops commercially, but along traditional lines. Salinas Valley agriculture, known worldwide as the breadbasket of California, supplies daily fresh produce to the nation. Also famous for its Pulitzer-Prize-winning native son, John Steinbeck, author of Of Mice and Men (1937), Grapes of Wrath (1939), Cannery Row (1945), Monterey now celebrates him at the National Steinbeck Center, a $5.2 million agriculture museum featuring Salinas Valley farming and Chualar history.
The small, unincorporated Chualar canyon community was given as part of Spanish Grant legislation to Juan Malarin, but acquired by David Jack, a canny Scots émigré from Crieff, Perthshire who exploited land grant liberality in frontier times in the transfer of rancho holdings to Americans during the 1860s. Not only was he considered the wealthiest individual in the county by 1880—accruing 30,000 acres in Carmel, Pebble Beach, Pacific Grove, Del Rey Oaks, Del Monte Forest, Fort Ord, and the spectacular coastline 17-Mile Drive, but his family had become famous for an American staple: Monterey Jack cheese. Much of the original Jack settlement is now natural reserve administered by Carmel, but the Anthonys’ 2000-acre grape-production farm was Rancho Chualar in Jack’s domain.
Cerebrally connecting sacred number, cheese, fresh natural produce, a township out of time, with iridium, hardest and most indestructible of the metals, probably meteoritic? a vineyard where the Grapes of Wrath may rise in reply? and the suggestion that Wo/Mankind is set to blossom? New technology, new fabrics, concepts confronting us boldly in the maw of the Ouroboros? What a plethora of choice.
Not just braille code, but esoteric-geek computer programming code, the -Jb switch
Chualar Mexican land grant: two square leagues—50million square varas = 8,856-acres
One-Acre Chualar CC: 0.4047 hectare = 4047 square metres
One acre is defined as a strip of land 1 × 1/10 furlong, or 40 × 4 rods (660 × 66 feet) long
Back to the staples of life: cubits and feet; and a reliable food supply.
And, as many past crop circles have indicated, number and sacred geometry tend to play a central role in appearances like Chualar, c.f.Mexican crop circles in water-parched hinterland of Tlapanaloya, March 2011.
Barbury Castle 2008 Pi crop circle remained uninterpreted until 2011, image courtesy Bert Janssen
Before the foundations of the Great Pyramid were laid, men tried to ‘square the circle’, i.e. construct a square and a circle equal in area, using compass and ruler. Some of the greatest minds in history—architects, politicians, artists, musicians, philosophers, astronomers and theologians—have tried to solve this ancient riddle. Mathematicians come closest. It was termed ‘impossible’ in 1882 when Carl Lindemann showed that π is a transcendental number, cannot be calculated or written as a ratio of two other numbers. Decimal values of π are infinite, and it is not possible to construct the square root of an infinite number, therefore ‘impossible’ to square the circle with exact precision. That, however, has changed. See crop circle site of Bert Janssen who persevered in his interpretation; also work of dream expert and numerologist Joseph Mason. For in-depth look at 192×165=31680, several hours’ reading John Michell‘s amazing ‘Dimensions of Paradise’ (2001) is recommended. Simply put, numbers like 31680 resonate, resound, ring bells in our psyche.
With several alarm bells presently ringing from the Japanese side of the Pacific, the fresh natural quality of California’s breadbasket may indeed be at risk.
Synchronicities and Coincidences
It may help to look closely at some clear clues wrapped up in sacred number. Iridium, atomic weight 192-with isotopes still being discovered—Ir-element-77 in the Periodic Table, between Osmium Os-76 and Platinum Pt-78, is currently darling of specialist computer and other software developers, for its durability in extreme conditions of temperature and stress. With its near-limitless computer chip capacity, its applications are endless—e.g. space exploration, in subsea platforms, within volcanic or tectonic environments where humans cannot go.
Iridium, rarer than platinum, probably caused extinction of the dinosaurs
Iridium is the hardest known (workable) metal; marginally harder and rarer than platinum, to whose group of ‘white metals’ it belongs; element-77 on the periodic table, above. At molecular level, Iridium is a ‘paramagnetic’ mesh of tetrahedra*, and sacred octahedral-combinatory shapes, whose radioactive isotopes are still being discovered. Iridium metal, while phenomenally expensive to produce, is employed when high corrosion resistance at extreme temperatures is needed, as in high performance spark plugs, crucibles for recrystallization of semiconductors at high temperatures, and electrodes for the production of chlorine in the chloralkali process. Iridium radio-isotopes are used in some radio-isotope thermoelectric generators. Using X-ray spectroscopy, the jury is still out on whether Iridium, or its neighbor Osmium in the Table, is the densest metal known.
*explanation insert for followers of star tetrahedron, merkabah, octahedral geometry in crop design:
Star Tetrahedra: octahedron over stellated octahedron, the only full facetting of the cube, allowing upflow and downflow. Created from our original eight cells, the Star Tetrahedron is both our potential and a record of our experiences; balance of male and female, heaven and earth: all that is in a 3D world.
In accepting both polarities, embracing both, understanding we have those polarities within ourselves— knowing that without both we are out of balance—are first teachings of ‘Star Tetrahedron Consciousness’. It teaches balance of yin/yang through embracing both, inside and outside ourselves.
This does not mean giving up identity or silently condoning inhumane action. We are asked to embrace ourselves even more because we understand we are made up of masculine and feminine energies, creative and destructive.
We all have left and right hemispheres. In balance we use both. When we embrace both, we are one with the third dimension, capable of awareness, and embodiment that leads us into oneness or unity consciousness, and into the fifth (and higher) dimension(s). It is a balance of all without forgoing the uniqueness of each.
Star Tetrahedron Consciousness, courtesy Drunvalo Melchizedek
Back to Iridium: Given its rare molecular structure, its meteoritic state, applications in computer technology, previously the realm of the silicon chip, may be about to change.
From an extra-terrestrial point of view—with humanity’s oversoul—or the combined consciousness of the CC-community clearly demanding closure for the 2013 season, this may be seen as us giving ourselves a technological memory-jog. Industry has known, despite prohibitive cost, and apparent scarcity of Iridium deposits, that the metal’s near-imperishable mechanical and tensile strength makes it a miracle material in extreme conditions of modern human technology. On a camera chip, it flows and blooms according to capacity requirements, acting like the solid state equivalent of a wave, bringing new technology to screen environments and lightning-fast applications.
Yucatan peninsula’s subaquamarine Chicxulub crater, made by largest meteorite to hit Earth, may conceal Iridium-192
Its scarcity on Earth is almost certainly due to the fact that it is an alien: arriving here on the back of the behemoth meteorite which crashed into Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico 66 million years ago, causing the extinction of the dinosaurs. The metal has been found nowhere else on earth, except within meteoritic crash sites. Geologists suggest, however, that given its high melting point, residual Iridium may exist in deeper seams beneath the Chicxulub crater, or elsewhere in places of high seismic activity, where volcanic heat may have melted the metal (heat-resistant to 2246ºC). So all is not yet lost!
It is therefore no coincidence that remaining member of the BLT team, Nancy Talbott, whose groundbreaking research of the 1993 Cherhill crop circle laced with an iron glaze of fused particles of apparent meteoritic origin will speak in symposium in June 2014 on meteorite elements in crop circle design. She gives the subject credibility.
… And for the True Geeks among us
Yet another interpretation of the central box of code is that it is pure computer programming: the -Jb switch, -R switch, beloved of html-creators, surrounding the number 192. As a dilettante, Siderealview continues to maintain supreme ignorance over such supergeekness, but it is safe to say the youth of the planet will understand the message loud and clear.
Musically, it is worth noting that 192hz is G on piano keyboard, and its toning resonance used in subliminal cure of stress, meditational facilitation and—apparently—in increasing functionality of sound systems, below. Recent research relates ancient geometry, astronomy and sacred sites to musical ratio. The international standard of tuning is currently 440Hz = A [J.S. Bach/Nazi influence]. When corrected, the other octaves display ancient Gematrian sacred numbers relative to astronomy, sacred geometry, the Bible and the Bhagavad-gita along with exact longitude and latitude connections to pyramids and other sacred sites, see compassionate use of music in detailed but accurate historical context, Brendan Bombaci’s erudite Cymatics:Dash-of-music-an-inch-of-Sun, sidebar right.
Pure Sound is an area dear to our heart, and how we absorb extreme poles of light spectra continue to puzzle our greatest minds. Carl Sagan, before he died, was mystified how light could become a noise. Our generation has learned that the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum–from radio waves through microwaves, infra-red, visible light, ultra-violet light, to x-rays and gamma rays–are all massless particles (photons) of the universal energy known as electromagnetic radiation, or simply Light. Light waves are fluctuations of electric and magnetic energy through space, usually expressed (by humans) in wavelength or frequency.
Electromagnetic spectrum from radio to light
In my years of experience in voicing systems, I’ve found that a system must have a flat-to-slightly-elevated response curve in the critical region from approximately 192Hz to 384Hz. It could be slightly elevated. This range is from one-half octave below middle-C (256 Hz) to one-half octave above; between approximately 192Hz and 384Hz is one musical octave in width.
When a speaker (or electronic component or cable) seems to be lean in this area, the sound will usually prove to be boring musically. Amazingly, components thatare lean in this area are often admiringly described as highly resolved, precise, articulate, etc. My description? BORING…
When this region is flattened, or elevated by a very slight amount, the music is infinitely more involving. Strings have more body. Brass has more weight, and a more burnished tone.
Orchestral music will have a balance (and subjective power response) more akin to live sound in a concert hall. Vocals will have much more palpable presence. The sound will be lusher. Guitars will ring out with a beauty that touches your soul.
Jim Smith, self-professed Woofer-tweaker
There is one more cosmic trigger.
Braille, Morse Code and π-Pixie-pixel Dust
Chualar conundrum: Braille-192+hieroglyphic-17+Morse-ISON+isotope divided by infinite π = July 2014?
Much controversy, anguish and tromping/denial of access has weighed down the 2013 crop season; Britain’s most heroic formations were ploughed under—within hours; no specific paranoia cited, but large operations worldwide are no longer as open to human traffic as they were in the 1990s.
For this reason, Rancho Chualar’s owners’ unfortunate malady resulted in sudden reversal of opinion: maybe it’s “genuine”, after all. Perhaps those believers out there aren’t so loony. Ooo, Cosmic Math Class in the Human Oversoul department: now, everyone gets to decode the message. Media circus arrived late to the party.
Remember Crabwood, 2002?
Beware the bearers of FALSE gifts and their BROKEN PROMISES. Much PAIN but still time. (damaged word). There is GOOD out there. We OPpose DECEPTION. conduit closing (bell sound)
Again, that deeply resonant bell—
Messages coming thick and fast
Just in time for our meeting with Source.
Dark Rift: Return to the Cosmic Birth Canal
Each year, by Cosmic design, northern nights grow longer in prelude to our annual rendezvous with Galactic Center—that dark patch in the Milky Way—when the Sun, including us microscopic specks of energy clinging on to the plane of the ecliptic, all nine planets of our system as one, align one more time with our Motherboard-birth canal, the Creator-energy-vortex. The middle of our Milky Way Galaxy is wide open this year on January 4th. The portal remains open—our consciousness being assisted by the ‘blooming’ of its closest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy crashing into us at imperceptible speed— before the sun spirals away one more time; in the past we should all probably have headed off for another year of peripatetic searching through infinite realms of (imaginary) space.
But this year we are being held momentarily, prompted—our consciousness feels it. Our bodies are more aware, our psyche primed. We are being reminded.
Our own Galaxy merging with Andromeda; note ‘blooming’ along our edges 🙂
Which brings us full circle to the gentle message from above that alpha, beta and theta waves increase human capacity to expand, imagine, transform; and that our DNA is waiting patiently while we decide whether to join in the parade or not.
One more time, we are being prompted, asked to join the dance; getting a message from our own (inner) Sense to wake up, appreciate the phenomenal gifts provided by our Earth, along with exponentially more potential in our intellect, when used in true alignment: mind, body, spirit. Shall we join minds and bloom? Even that would start us on the road to Ascension: body would only follow.
Rare lightning storm over Chile’s VLT array (very large telescope) at 8,500ft Cerro Paranal, Atacama desert
Solstice, they say, should be a time of stillness. Ancient civilizations—however primitive our society views them—were aware of the sun’s influence on their lives and its ability apparently to ‘stand still’ twice each year, when it reaches its greatest distance from the celestial equator. Now, in the Enlightened Aquarian Age, we hold festival over winter to celebrate that time of change. What do we do in summer? Go on vacation? Study crop circles? Some continue to work right through this special time, not realizing our connection to its ancient traditions, rooted in the earth.
Party Time!
Some cultures continue to make offerings, like the Ayamara in Peru. English do Maypole dance, Cornish have their Green Man bonfires, Nevada its Burning Man Festival, August 26-September 2nd this year, and California its music. So perhaps the consciousness behind celebrating in the fields is not totally lost to urbanites, if we can drink in the stillness offered by nature and make an effort to incorporate calm communion with the Earth in our everyday lives.
Classical civilization certainly knew how to do that—and party. And if they didn’t have gods of their own to offer obeisance and reverence to, they imported others. Saturnalia was known throughout the Roman world as the epitome of winter revelry, debauchery, excess, as the only time the old rigid god Saturn let down his hair. Equally, in summertime, they pulled out all the stops, liberally borrowing gods and goddesses from other cultures as themes suited.
Cybele adopted as Mother-protectrix of Rome’s ‘city and fields’ wore the Phrygian helmet-crown of warrior goddess
Cybele, right, the original pre-classical (Bronze Age, c.8thC BC) Indo-European Earth Mother warrior goddess from Phrygia-Anatolia, Turkey—symbol of fertility, earth’s swelling summer cornucopia of growth and abundance—was converted for her ‘psychic powers’ to take a place in the Greek and Roman pantheon. The Sybil who issued prophetic knowledge, like the Delphic Oracle, was her Roman adaptation. She was guardian of Rome. Her Egyptian equivalent was revered as Earth Mother figure Hathor; but the later Greeks, succumbing to male-dominant cultural needs, altered her concept of ‘love’ to one embodied by Aphrodite—losing the earth connection.
The Earth Mother of prehistoric cultures—whose neolithic carved dolls date to pre-Ice Age Europe—survives in vestigial worship of Inca Pachamama in Bolivia, but had turned volte-face in the Aegean by the time of the Trojan wars, when male physical prowess and warlike behavior on all fronts were supreme in Greek eyes. It is curious to note that hero of the Trojan wars, Paris, embodying male physical beauty, pure in mind, focused in war and manly pursuits like discus and javelin dexterity, was an imported ‘alien'(suppressed culture) superhero who wore the prehistoric Phrygian helmet (like Cybele), denoting his more ancient origins. The Roman army dedicated its legions’ souls to the care of Mithras—another import from Phrygia, complete with godly war-helmet.
Where the primeval mother-warrior had battled time and the elements for the good of the Earth, bringing fruits in season, male culture—in taking over the role of earth-caretaker—may have gone a little overboard on the warrior front.
The locked grid for Solstice June 21st 2013 9pm EST, progressed chart, courtesy Astrotheme
In astrological circles this solstitial time is seen as one of huge change—in context of life, personal vision, and clearing away old debris, solstitial chart by Astrotheme, left.
Astronomically, NASA/NOAA’s solstitial prediction for ‘few’ aurorae over the midsummer period, includes a mention by the space agency of meteor showers, Eta Delphinids, M-class solar flares ongoing, with resulting storms hitting earth through June and July. Earth’s magnetosphere activity is listed as ‘unsettled’ during this period, see changes sidebar right. We are, after all, midway through solar maximum, 2013.
Somewhere between the two star camps there appears in the northern sky one of our least-known yet most massive constellations, only visible in summer: Ophiuchus. Both astro sides agree: this giant (dim) group of stars stretching from the head of Scorpio across Libra and Virgo, to touch the (upside-down) head of Hercules at zenith, brings into the summer sky images—and concepts from the ancient mind—most appropriate to this silly season. Because of the cosmic quirk of precession of the equinoxes—earth’s ‘wobble’ on its axis bringing it successively through each of the zodiac signs, backwards—we in the Aquarian Age in Earth’s subtropical, tropical and temperate zones are seeing—many for the first time—two gigantic constellations which were familiar to the Ancients, who anthropomorphized them as expressions of their own conflicting ideals.
backwards thru Zodiac~~ Aquarius: water-bearer, far-sighted visionary, troubled by burdens—symbol of the Age
Capricorn: seagoat, god of cardinal order, old (outworn? Saturnian) mechanisms, consistently appears at midsummer full moon to put cat among pigeons…
Sagittarius: archer, ruled by Jupiter: Jovian happy-spirited lover of nature, trying to hold balance between the above and…
Scorpio: scorpion, fixed water=ice symbolic of birth, death and rebirth, transfiguration; overcoming impediments, its sting-in-tail never allows others to relax
enter~~ Ophiuchus, serpent bearer holding both ends of constellation Serpens in his hands: Serpens Cauda, tail in his right; Serpens Caput, head in his left.
Ophiuchus: Ὀφιοῦχος “Serpent-bearer”, serpent-wielding handler of snakes, transitioned from his ancient image of enlightened Man wrestling-with-conscience through medieval image of unbridled male sexual power, to Georgian image of protective fatherly person-of-age and wisdom and healing, to Victorian preoccupation with—mostly male—medical profession—caduceus, or *thyrsus a symbol of healing derived from a rod (bamboo, fennel, or the male member) wrapped in a vine, ivy or flower garlands.
Unusually, both ‘scientific’ and ‘psychic’ astros agree, constellation Ophiuchus will dominate the July 2013 sky, rising higher than it has in the last two thousand years. Some extreme astrologers have suggested rearranging the traditional/tropical zodiac, to make room for another constellation (because his feet actually stand on the ecliptic, between Scorpio and Sagittarius). Current western astrology, however, is a convention developed from zodiac signs visible in Roman/Greek skies, using attributes associated with cultural gods/seasons/beliefs of that time, and these which would lose meaning if arbitrarily rearranged.
As Ophiuchus makes its first appearance since the “EndTimes of 2012″—brighter and more dominant than at any time in human memory—there may be another message for us in its new guise.
Greco-Roman god Priapus, rescued fresco from Pompeii c.AD79, Archaeological Museum of Naples
PRIAPOS was the rustic god of the Ancient world, responsible through his unbridled fertility for the bounty of the vegetable garden. Later stylized as a dwarfish entity with a huge penis, which symbolized garden fertility, originally his head was crowned with a peaked Phrygian cap, belying his origin as a god, native to the Hellespont, ancient Phrygia. His cult was introduced into Greece and Italy, where his mythology was reinterpreted in Greek terms. Greeks naturally named him a son of one of their phallic gods: either Hermes/Mercury or, more often Dionysos. His mother was Aphrodite. They were accompanied by satyrs Orthanes and Tykhon.
Priapos/Priapus was honored by Greeks, Romans, Mysians, Hittites, Egyptians (their Apis, bull of fertility) as protector of sheep, goats, bees, the vine and of all garden produce. In formative cultures, the phallus was the ancient emblem of creation. It represented gods Bacchus, Priapus, Hermaphroditus, Hercules, Shiva, Osiris, Baal and Asher, who were all Phallic deities. Roman Priapus, a stylized symbol of Rome’s mastery of the then world, had odes written to him and poems pinned on patio phalluses in gardens of aristocratic ladies who wished to keep their arboreal spirits potent.
The most famous extant depiction of Priapus is the Pompeiian fresco, above. He is crowned with peaked Phrygian cap, shown weighing his enormous member on a set of scales against the produce of the fields. He wears Phrygian war-boots, and has a Bacchic, cone-tipped thyrsus* resting by his side.
Photo of Pompeiian fresco, courtesy Andargor
Burning Man annual late summer festival in Black Rock Nevada desert
In festive summer frolics, Priapus was depicted accompanied by garden nymphs, dyads and maenads, each waving a flower-wreathed *thyrsus—a wand made from fennel or bamboo, with a pierced pine-cone at its tip, which nymphs used as mini-phalluses to poke at the unitiated or to ward off satyrs and unwanted suitors.
In Celtic mythology he is the god of spring, Greenman, vestigial Druid prince-king-god who invoked fertility for his land through dance in sacred groves where tree and nature-spirits dwell.
Primitive statues of the god were traditionally set up in vegetable plots to promote fertility, with the added benefit of functioning as a type of scarecrow for scaring away birds. But when garden gnomes became a late 19thC fashion, their priapic member was eliminated in the mass-produced version, as Victorian sensibilities dictated that such garden gnomes NOT display their ‘private parts’, in case ladies in passing carriages should succumb to the ‘vapors’ and require medical assistance.
Priapic Preoccupation in Crop Circles
Victorian humor aside, Priapos was genuinely revered as patron of the garden, guardian of growth for all crops, and it is a relief to see this multi-faceted countryside god showing his (at least symbolic) head above ground—as a sign of bounty to come?—in the first two-phase crop circle appearance at Stanton St Bernard, Wiltshire, June 21st.
Solstitial crop circles have traditionally sent some of the clearest messages as the theme of a season; it is tempting to believe that the paucity of designs in Wiltshire—twelve during June; British total for season—is one of those. Meanwhile, crop circle anticipation remains high: manfully upheld by the Italian contingent, as the fields of Rome, Tuscany and northern Italy have had a relatively ‘normal’ growing season—that in itself may suggest we show a little deference to our classical heritage.
Stanton St Bernard dual-phase phallic crop circle points to ancestral Milk Hill, photo courtesy Paul Jacobs
So it is riveting to see that the season’s first ‘complex’ symbol should appear right on schedule—over solstice—in the Wiltshire ‘hub‘, in the same fields which created all the uproar last year, see Siderealview archives.
*Seen as a thyrsus, (typically, English has no translation for a wand wreathed in flowers sporting a bristle like a dildo), its pinecone-like business end pointed straight at Milk Hill—representative of ancient Earth Mother-milk-and-honey-bounty—the first meaningful crop circle of the season may once more be pulling at us with multiple strands. Targeting the Mother hill (the highest in Wiltshire) goes partway to awakening dormant English respect for ancient ways. By incorporating the dildo-pinecone in a sword- (or thyrsus-like) javelin cut straight through the barley and aimed at Milk Hill’s symbol of male strength—the horse riding the Mother—this crop design rekindles memories of pineal gland/third eye crop formations of summer 2011.
Messages then were that we/’Society’ release our male left-brain stranglehold on our fragile 21stC world, allow the female intuitive right-brain heart-centered side to come out of dormancy and express more freely. And that the pleasure zone: endorphins, melatonin and the pineal gland, function together as a means to synthesize and synchronize this new awareness in us humans by connecting our mind-body-spirit back to our terrestrial home.
Now, in post-Omega-Point reflection through a slow growing season, we are reminded to temper our left hemisphere destruction of habitat, and instead to devote time to more reverent and respectful treatment of our earthly environment.
To add to this summer madness, Ophiuchus rises to full stature in the northern July night, unseen until now in such grandeur by 21stC eyes. He stands diametrically opposite Orion, filling the southern arc of the night sky, his feet astride the ecliptic, between Sagittarius and Scorpio, his head grazed by the upside-down head of Hercules at zenith. Grasping with both hands he wields the Serpent: Serpens Caput in his left; Serpens Cauda in his right, the dual twisting constellation locked between his outstretched legs, as if caught in flagrante delicto, not a god, but a man wrestling his (inner and) outer demons.
Summer’s greatest blessing is that we northerners can relax, feel warm, surrounded by earth’s cornucopia of beauty, vegetative growth at its height—lulled into enjoying the brief season without thought to winter, responsibility, cold… the grasshopper and ant scenario. Or, with American Independence Day July 4th just around the corner, could consciousness of the ‘Silly Season’ already be taking hold? Celebrate now for tomorrow we die? Te morituri salutamus!
Following Britain’s ‘wettest’ June, and peering out—through continuing rainclouds and drizzle—with five days to go until mid-July, St. Swithun’s Day, traditionally a day which sets the weather pattern in stone, I may be forgiven if I entice you for a moment into a little fantasy dreamed over the last month, bathed in a field of energy beneath the electromagnetic landscape of Wiltshire. I hope, at least, that its fantasy theme will enhance your day, and bring an improvement to the 2012 (rainy) season; I hope at best to add a little flavour to the amazing range of crop circle symbols—cereal waveforms as messages—which have struggled in punishing weather conditions, but appear to flourish in the Wiltshire grain basket.
This little crop circle story is brought to you by courtesy of~~~the Alien Mother.
Alien Mama makes a Nest
Mother Alien, swims up from the depths of the electromagnetic aquifer, crop circle at Milk Hill, Alton Barnes, June 25th, 2012
Mother Alien appeared first, June 25th, 2012 below Milk Hill White Horse, as if swimming up from the electromagnetic depths of the aquifer to greet her three wayward children, spawned earlier in the month at Woodborough Hill.
Her impact lasted only a few days, before an audience of stunned onlookers—admiring her sacred geometrical simplicity and sense of dimension portrayed as a 2D image in a cornfield, as viewed from above—when another image, less exquisitely formed, arrived at Boreham Wood, marginally north of the expected CC-hub, July 5th—smiling.
Throughout a wet June, fewer than usual crop imprints had occurred, and so when July opened, not only with a dry sunny day, but also three geometrically-inspired designs in sacred Avebury heartland, which radiates outwards from the Sacred Triangle—Avebury-Silbury Hill-Kennet—there was cheering in the ranks: a dimensional cube at Chilcomb Down, Hampshire; the stunningly-crafted flower-of-life motif within a pyramid (dimensions imagined) at Avebury, above, were joined on July 1st by a star-tetrahedron [20-sided merkabah] at Wanborough-Liddington. For good measure, a fourth cropcircle formed the same day in Telford Shropshire, to surround that endangered forest in cropcircle energy.
But in the Wiltshire heartland, it seems, the Alien Mother had surfaced and had major plans.
Alien sci-fi movies influenced a generation—giving Alien Mother a familiar feel
The Alien Mother motif, as a symbol for the energy of the Earth—but, in popular consciousness, clearly identified with the creature in an impressive Sigourney Weaverrepertoire—was indeed seen as a serpent or dragon force by ancient peoples. Wessex was no exception. Peoples here were so aware of dragon energy that they erected megalithic monuments to trap it, harness it, redirect it and also worship/honour it. It was believed that the movement of the sun also affected the strength of this force, see Rollright Stones and the Dragon Project. Then for centuries, the British Isles succumbed to industrial ‘thinking’, with few believers left in this ancient energy and its power; but Science is turning matters around again, with increasing knowledge of the heliosphere, earth’s magnetosphere, dimensional physics, and the discovery of the Higgs-Boson ‘God particle’ last week. So Mother E/A chose a good time to return.
AlienMother=EarthMother:not so alien, but we humans have difficulty seeing her as ‘real’; curls up at Picked Hill, July 9th.
Remembering that the appearance of the Mother E/A was heralded by three tadpole hatchlings at Woodborough Hill one month ago on June 9th, my feeling is she has been here before—Milk Hill design of July 2010, below right—and it is my fancy that she is here to stay—even has developments up her sleeve~~~
Less fluid, more stilted version of serpent head of July 25, 2010 at Milk Hill
Humans are fascinated by symbols, code; messages from an ‘other’ culture is therefore like a box of magic tricks: we have to decypher, to decode, to understand.
There is one significant crop circle message that has eluded interpretation: the triple-stage ‘astrolabe’ of Milk Hill, below, with its planetary orbits and intricate coded tail that formed over three nights during solstice week, 2009, to the astonishment of Kornkreis-followers. Another, more stilted, less flowing serpentine formation appeared, also at Milk Hill, on July 25th, 2010.
Now three years after the astrolabe, are we seeing our alien mother’s metamorphosis as a message?—a physical extension of a dimensional vibration—that we are still grasping to comprehend: emanating from the same electromagnetic subsoil and rock that produced the White Horse, and capable of manifesting specific ground forces into the human timeframe, perhaps even telling us she was gestating…
Let the story unfold…
Mother Alien emerges from the Astrolabe, which presaged her birth; Milk Hill motifs, left, Astrolabe, solstice week, June 21-29, 2009; right, emerging ‘dragon energy’ June 25, 2012 in adjacent field
She appeared right after solstice, on June 25th 2012, in the adjacent field, as if the energy of Milk Hill—in folk memory a white horse, symbol of power—stored up for three years—was now bursting out. Her tail lines up west, the direction back to the astrolabe ‘ghost’, from which she came—but her head is turned south, in the direction she is headed: towards her babies—and ultimately to her nest at Picked Hill.
A white horse in prehistoric cultures was symbolic of the power/life-force, and ancient Britons were, like their Greek, Persian and Indian counterparts, reverent of this supernatural power which was deeply manifested within the earth. It is amusing to think that our 21st Century technology is only just recognizing these powerful surges and currents.
Is it beyond our everyday reach to believe that this force might have intelligence?
Stukeley’s 18thC engraving of Avebury’s ‘serpent’ energetic spiral: spinning out from the powerful stone circle at the centre of Wiltshire’s electromagnetic aquifer
If crop circles are made by hoaxers, then they should stop doing it, because they are breaking the law and damaging the food supply. If they are made by UFO aliens, they shouldn’t give us the dates of our trips to Mars and names of men from the Titanic era – famous, clever, but now forgotten. If some are transcendental, the power behind it should realize that our culture is now willing to accept transcendental happenings. If they are indeed transcendental, then society will have to make a big adjustment in the years ahead. Gerald S Hawkins
She makes her nest on the same latitude as her hatchlings of June 9th: July 9th crop circle at Picked Hill, within half a mile of Woodborough CC; photo courtesy Andrew Lewis
While Mother Alien lurked in the ethers, unmanifested, her three tadpole offspring braved the physical world and surfaced in the grain of Woodborough, June 9th. She arrived herself June 25th, below Milk Hill; turning south, as if acknowledging their presence. On the same day an ill-formed (incomplete/embryo?) single tadpole appeared nearby at Knoll Down, Beckhampton. Next came the ?possibly-hoaxed smiling alien caterpillar, July 5th at Boreham Wood, Lockeridge; it seems somehow not as beautiful, nor as purposeful as Mother E/A—but it too had a precursor in the embryo serpent spiral CC of nearby Honey Street, June 26th last year.
Woodborough tadpoles, a half mile distant from M.Alien’s nest
Then, lo and behold, on July 9th, as if with foresight seen by her previous Milk Hill incarnation, the great Mother E/A finds a place to curl up and nest at Picked Hill; this beautifully crafted crop circle lies within half-a-mile of her tadpole swimmers; and is coincidentally on exactly the same latitude parallel as they are: map ref. Woodborough hill SU117611 ; Picked hill SU126611.
It is no wonder the crop circle crowd are no longer clamouring for symbols. The energy is unfolding before their eyes.
A miracle happens whenever some other unseen world intersects with our own
C.S. Lewis ‘Miracles’ (1949)
When in 1969 New Age antiquarian and ‘conservative anarchist’ John Michell (1933-2009) proposed in ‘A View over Atlantis’ that sacred sites were connected by invisible lines of energy, his theories were challenged by the establishment.
“This forcefield may actually be invisible to those whose previous knowledge tells them it cannot exist”, he said famously. Now, such electromagnetic fields are measured; while plasma physics and electric Universe theory—as well as Higgs-boson—are catching up and proving him right, after all.
“I am passionate that this knowledge—of sacred gematrial and numerological relationship between man and temple—should be public, not secret, so that it may not be lost to mankind. For it is the heritage of every man and woman—their spiritual birthright.” Israel Regardie
A devoté of occultist Regardie, Michell considered himself the (20thC) Merlin, who having lost faith in traditional belief, rediscovered it in the Earth: and through the writing of the pragmatic Watkins (Old Straight Track of ‘ley lines’ fame), Gerald Hawkins (who Decoded Stonehenge, 1965, 1973) and Alexander Thom—whose 1967 survey of British megalithic sites established the megalithic yard as a prehistoric standard of measurement. He was a firm believer in the St Michael alignment, a succession of ancient monuments which run from the tip of Cornwall to the Norfolk coast. Michell was delighted when Don Robins’ Dragon Project at Rollright confirmed that this subterranean forcefield did seem to be enhanced and revved up by the appearance of sunlight—at dawn and dusk, particularly—believing as he did that ‘invoking the Sun’ was a crucial sacred ritual performed by our Ancestors, which we have forgotten how to employ.
Hence, John Michell might say, the dreary British summer of 2012.
Curling cozily next to her offspring, Mother Alien awaits her awakening by the Sun
During the British summer soak, however, Solar proton storms have been bombarding Earth—with class M and X-flares a constant in the last ten days—playing havoc with internet connections and manmade electronic equipment; see NOAA solar & geomagnetospheric indicator, sidebar right; but it seems the electromagnetic field—particularly in Wiltshire—is thriving. The dragon lady is lying in wait, anticipating perhaps the return of the sun, to show us more miracles from her unseen and previously unimagined realm of the limestone aquifers under the sacred soil.
MobyDuck on his world cruise: 28,800 plastic toys circling the globe
They’re turning up everywhere: surprising delighted beachcombers from the shores of the Outer Hebrides to the sands of Malibu. It’s the Rubber Ducky Armada, with the world as their bathtub.
In January 1992 a Hong Kong container ship caught in a cyclone tossed two rows of containers overboard. One broke open and released 28,800 plastic bath toys into the Pacific at a point where the 45th parallel meets the International Date Line 44.7°N, 178.1°E. A score years later, beachcombers are still picking up the four toy varieties on the Pacific rim: (not just) yellow duckies, (but also), green frogs, red beaver and blue turtles.
Bleached in transit: plastic duckies/frogs/turtles retrieved by the Seattle beachcomber project
About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch’s oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white
Samuel T Coleridge
Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Twenty years on, these little critters are still appearing on beaches — and not just round the Pacific. They’re on the move: now they can be found stranded on the shore from the Hebrides in Scotland, to Hawaii, to Nantucket, to Sitka, Alaska, where a record number of 111 toys beached within the first decade. Scientists have in the meantime succeeding in mapping a working route through the world’s oceans by tracking the movement of the rest of these little floaters. Some have even been cut by Inuit fishermen out of the Arctic ice.
Through Arctic ice, duckies head south to meet the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic
Both Seattle oceanographer, Dr Curtis Ebbesmeyer, and world traveler and author Donovan Hohn are using their route as a cautionary tale. This ‘duck-current’ navigates the Bering Strait, Arctic ice and the Greenland Gap, falling into the north Atlantic where it drifts south (cold) past New York, scoops up tropical warm from the Bermuda Triangle and returns north as the Gulf Stream to the North of Scotland. Sound romantic? Perhaps, yet the cautionary tale told by these ocean biologists to alert the rest of us, sitting in our comfort zone, is that our wasteful habits are now so thoughtless that they potentially threaten all lifeforms — including our own.
“I took to heart something said by Beth Flint, a wildlife biologist I spoke to in Hawaii, who said, ‘Be careful. As striking as the images of plastics are, there are more invisible impacts that demand attention.'”
‘Plastics, I think, are useful in this measure because we can’t see greenhouse gases that are absorbed by the oceans, and you can’t see PCBs, DDT, or agricultural runoff. So, plastics act as a bellwether’ Donovan Hohn, author Moby Duck: 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea, British release February 23rd
“I think it’s all about incongruity. These tiny Friendly Floatees are the epitome of childhood, an icon of bathtime. To think of them bobbing out there on the harsh, vast, wild ocean is funny; it seems like a joke.”
But it’s not.
Currents carry drifters around the Subpolar Gyre in 3years, around the Subtropical Gyre in 6years. Flotsam can circulate in the Garbage Patch for half a century
I have blogged before about the North Pacific Gyre (Feb.2010) and its astonishing ability to collect and entrap more plastic scum than plankton in its famous ‘Garbage Patch’. It is a deathground for any remaining wildlife foolhardy enough to enter it. It’s the size of Texas. And growing.
‘I don’t think we’ll ever find all the toys,” says Dr Curtis Ebbermeyer, whose enthusiastic beachcombing enterprise specializes in the Pacific Northwest. ‘But we’ve discovered invaluable information about the nature of the (N.Pacific) Gyre.’ He described finding three (Spanish) glass fishing floats, c.1960, which had done eight circuits. In a 1950s experiment Canadian oceanographers threw 33,869 message-in-bottles (MIBs) in 12-oz brown glass beer bottles into the Gulf of Alaska.
Albatross chick on Midway Island --neighbor to Garbage Patch-- died of starvation: fed by parent birds till it choked; photo courtesy Chris Jordan & The Guardian
PNW oceanographer Ebbesmeyer says: “So far we’re aware of about 3%. The story pleases and fascinates people, but what it shows is something terrible — awful.”
British adventurer and explorer David de Rothschild focused attention on the proliferation of plastic in the vortex of the Gyre by sailing his 60-ft plastic catamaran, Plastiki, made from 12,500 recycled plastic bottles, through the Garbage Patch between San Francisco and Sydney in summer 2010.
Hohn has also travelled the world’s oceans — by steamer, container ship, icebreaker and ferry — to follow the routes taken by the duckies. What he found was something less than a fairy story.
“Most worrying are the increased levels of plastic compared with plankton in the ocean. It enters the sea via waterways all over the world. Fishing gear, plastic bags come down rivers and streams. It gets eaten by sea birds, fish and whales. Nothing can digest it.”
Over time it breaks down into particles that spread through the water column like liquid dust that travels all round the world. Scientists have issued recent warnings that the oceans’ ‘plastic level’ has significantly increased.
Trapped in Arctic ice, toys are then released to continue their journey when the ice melts
“Plastic is landing on our shores by the ton. There is measurable impact on marine mammals that get entangled, as well as sea turtles and birds that eat the stuff. Once this poison reaches the food chain it is a worry for human beings. We are putting plastic on the dinner plates of our grandchildren.” Donovan Hohn, author/researcher, February 2012
Combined with the Seattle beachcomber finds and the Canadian MIB results, scientists now have a new working model of earth’s ocean currents. They see submarine storms not as rivers; more as ocean-weather. The forecast’s not looking good.
‘There is no doubt that plastic is creeping into the food chain. That is a definite reality. We’ve got to get past this “out-of-sight out-of-mind” mentality.’
‘That’s what the ducks teach us.’ Curtis Ebbesmeyer
“It’s a story that’s wonderful-awful,” he says. “Trash travels all round the planet through the ocean; we know that. People think they throw stuff away. There is no away. It’s all in the ocean.”
The very deep did rot: O God!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea. Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner
We're all in the same bathtub...
Part of me feels I should apologize for the ferocity of this article: compared with my usual Siderealview, where the material is often immanent, this one also has urgency. I am aware, too, that I am laying this story at the door of the already enlightened: the huge majority who shop/drop plastic bags are unlikely to bend an ear to this blog. But occasionally it doesn’t hurt to press a point.
Some of us live in the expectation that our next car will be rechargeable; our next vegetable seed purchase or market stall fruit will NOT be pesticide-sprayed or triple-plastic wrapped; our electricity bill used to help upgrade the supplier’s power source to solar/windpower. But we also live in the reality that few of our friends live ‘off-the-grid’, except in rare locations.
Some of us have even taken the proactive route in questioning suppliers on their integrity.*
Ancient Mariner's shipmates made him wear the dead albatross round his neck in penance for their change of fortune
Or we might, as Coleridge felt when he wrote his supernatural Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 1796, see the sharp decline in numbers of albatross as our fault. We might, like the old man, feel we should hang our heads in shame, wear a virtual albatross around our necks until the curse is lifted. After all, it’s not our fault big business is so careless about what it dumps at sea.
But, just as Coleridge’s audience believed that to wear the carcasse of the dead bird was justified for his killing the omen of good fortune, that Regency/Victorian patriarchal view still lingers in our attitude to pollution: so long as we do a minimum recycle, somebody else will pay the price for world pollution.
After all, what can a single person do? Is it realistic to expect the combustion engine to become a dinosaur overnight?
Eco-warrior, sailor and philanthropist, David de Rothschild navigated 'Plastiki' via Heyerdahl's 'Kontiki' route through the Pacific plastic Trash Vortex, in 2010
“What I hope that the Plastiki does and what we stand for is not about vilifying people, pointing fingers or just articulating problems. We are about challenging that thinking.” David de Rothschild, eco-explorer Plastiki crew-member
In all honesty, bar another Pacific meltdown, how many of us will stop using plastic tomorrow? How many of us will refuse to shop in supermarkets until they stop plastic proliferation?
But how else shall we bring about a change in what is already an urgent situation?
Remarkably there are some brave souls out there. de Rothschild is presently putting his not inconsiderable fortune and Plastiki weight behind a British initiative to have plastic bags banned in British supermarkets.
Since Devon residents of Modbury voted in 2007 to make their town plastic-free, fifty more towns and villages in Britain have joined the anti-plastic bandwagon.
Ocean Defenders campaign, with Greenpeace, created this graphic display on a NPacific Gyre island, words in golfballs
It is sometimes difficult for our American bros/sisters to comprehend how, for a small island (Britain in total: England, Wales, Scotland and N.Ireland together equal the approximate area of Oregon), British bureaucracy moves so slowly. The familiar US supermarket checkout adage ‘paper or plastic?’ has no meaning in the British Isles because supermarkets here never conceived that alternative checkout wraps such as recyclable paper from sustainable forests might actually give them a better image. One chain* actually pursued outdated reasoning that their “customers didn’t want that” (paper alternative). Unlike progressive states such as New Mexico, Massachusetts, Arizona, Oregon and California, Britain has almost no awareness of the multiple friendly uses of cotton, corn, rafia and hemp. ‘Alternatives’ offered for sale as ‘recyclable’ shopping bags by some chains have plastic constituents.
Eurozone parliamentary intiatives are underway to ‘reduce’ plastic consumption (sic) by 2025 or 2030. But by then, at the rate Time is speeding up, it may be too late. It may already be too late for the albatross, the blue whale, the dolphin and the Green Turtle.
View from the Stars: whichever way you look at it, we are present in Sidereal time, Space is our growth medium, and stardust and water our constituent particles. When electromagnetically charged, our solar-powered circuitry is capable of Creating Anything We Choose.
It is essentially a record of world currents and weather. Jason-3 data will be used for monitoring global sea level rise, researching human impacts on oceans, aiding prediction of hurricane intensity, and has marine navigation capability. 
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