I want to be on the North Amerian continent. I love the land there. It is home.

I have only been on 4 continents in my life, and as much as ilove and feel kinship and history in Europe and Israel, and I was only in Afria once briefly as a child, I feel a sense of home on Turtle Island, so that’s where I’m going.

I saw this great article, “Urban farming takes root in Detroit”...check it out.

Here is a sample of what I have read about in the last week. At the bottom is a section of visions from other sources.

• Stabbings in London occurring so frequently that now teachers, nurses, and other frontline workers will all be provided with kevlar vests.
• Increase in the amount of rats, wasps, squirrels, in British towns.
• Less auto traffic in the US.
• A batch of teenage pregnancies in Massachusetts. School administrator fabricates a “pregnancy pact” to explain away lack of access to birth control.
• Election violence and fraud in Africa.
• Food riots in Africa.
• Natural disasters in China and the United States.
• Ongoing war in Iraq.
• Tensions mounting between the US and Israel on the one side and Iran on the other.
• US and UK “leaders” ignore constituents disagreement with war and torture policies.
• Arctic ice almost gone.
• Polar bears losing habitat. When one escapes south to Iceland it is shot.
• Overwhelming evidence of corruption and law breaking points directly to the US chief executive, US Congress turns a blind eye while citizens cry out for justice.
• Drought in Spain.
• Drought in California.
• Drought in Georgia.
• Drought in Australia.
• Fires in California. Big Sur burns.
• Hostages freed in Central America.
• Torture survivors sue UK government.
• US maintains concentration camp at Guantamo Bay despite numerous SCOTUS and lower court rulings that it is operating illegaly.
• US maintains prison ships on the move.
• US maintains prison camps in eastern Europe.
• US moving forward on installation of missile silos in Eastern Europe.
• Olymbics about to begin in China. The Free Tibet movement has established their cause as part of the theme of these games.
• US government officials helped shape oild deals with US companies, friends of the president no less, for Iraqi oil.
• Local developers in Maryland received sweetheart deals on public lands from their friend, a county executive.
• Rainbow Family members arrested by Forest Service. A Crowd of Rainbows surrounds the arresting officers. Officers use teargas and rubber bullets.
• Psychologists at the VA are told by superiors not to diagnosis Iraq war veterans with PTSD or PTSS because treatment is too costly.
• In Texas deliberate measures are taken to inter a “white” woman receiving a public burial in the “white” section of the local cemetary.
• A french company announces the compressed air car for sale in the US in 2010.
• Notorious racist Senator Jesse Helms died.
• Presidential candidate Barack Obama positions himself further to the right by backpeddling on Iraq war pullout and by supporting new FISA bill which effectively increases surveillance on Americans and excuses illegal surveillance conducted by the White House and prominent telecommunications companies.
• The Kinneret Sea, also called the Sea of Gallilee, Israel’s source of water, is drying up.
• Denver Archdiocese pays out over $5 million ro survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of catholic priests.
• US uses interrogation and torture techniques learned from Chinese military handbook.
• A 15th Century scuplture. poorly secured above a door at the Metropolitan Museum in NY, fell and shattered.
• The Pentagon, regular producer of quantities of toxic chemical waste, refuses to clean up their toxic waste.
• A young woman “supermodel” jumped off her apartment balcony and killed herself.
• The SCOTUS reduced to a negligible amount the punitive damages assessed against Exxon and awarded to Alaskans as a result of the drunken crash of the Exxon Valdez which resulted in an historic oil spill, massive pollution, loss of wildlife, and long term environmental damage. Damages were reduced to less that 5% of one current quarter’s profits.
• Evidence points to US officials involved with black market sales of nuclear weapons. 6 US warheads “accidentally” lost track of and moved from one location to another, eventually recovered. Story buried.

I’ve also seen visions of another sort.

• The old world of dinosaurs, goblins, earth spirits in late stages of giving way to the modern mechanical patriarchal. The vision was of one world crumbling as another rises, and as this other one rises to it’s pinnacle and starts to collapse, rising from below remnants of the old world combining with parts of the new to create something new yet again. This has happened before, and it will happen again, and we are in it now.
• I’ve seen visions of US small towns getting old and crumbling, and in some of them groups of people who learn how to navigate climate changes and collapse in infrastructure, creating new thriving communities.

Here is the link to an article I just finished writing.

Watching the modern film Beowulf and reading some of it again gives rise to these thoughts.

The story symbolizes the death of the old, the dragon, and yet the survival of the old world in the mother, and the rise of the modern patriarchal mechanized sterilized world, but not without a cost to that new world, for it is born out of violence and the gradual disconnection from the spirits of Earth and the rise of monotheism.

This made me think about Permaculture, and some of the language I have used about "return to sustainability" and other such references to bringing back elements of the past. I see, now, more clearly that the work is to integrate the modern with the ancient, not to return to anything, and not to leave everything behind.

I'm sure this is not a unique idea, but it feels like an "aha!" to me. Working with an underlying principle of bringing together the truly ancient and more recent with the skills of the present we should be able to create something that really works!