Blue Skies

The sky is blue. Branches darkened by the moisture and snow clotted on their skin. And bright white snow spread across every property line. Blanketing us all underneath the hush of a long over due winter.

I threw snow at Coco and otherwise drank tea and painted most of the day.

While doing this my mind wandered. Those ramblings have led me here. To this keyboard. To this window. To this hope.

It began when I was listening to a classic radio station that broadcast a very patriotic shpeal on how great a country America was and it asked and then answered via Orsen Wells, the reasons why everyone wanted to live here. It boiled down to freedom and the Bill of Rights and the American Way and was sponsored by the oil industry. Honestly, I couldn't believe the grasp the oil industry had on our country or how it used gasoline to move in and out of every loop hole our country tried to put into place, to protect the environment and each other from corruption by prohibiting the very rights the program was about. Well, that's neither here nor there.

Oil and industry and acid rain and dead zones in the gulf and in rivers and lakes are a reality we can either face or deny. But its there anyway. We need look no further than to ourselves because the reasons why things have gone so haywire boils down to ignorance. Our lack of knowledge about how our life style is effecting our environment is tough to figure out. And even with research and having a glimpse of how serious this all is, we still don't seem much closer to being able to cut through the too much information age and get quick access to how our elected officials are voting. So we vote party lines to vote for the closest extreme to what we believe our middle of the road, common sense thoughts lead us.

I don't think oil or gas or a Keystone Pipeline (which is just a start) or utility corporations and the ones that own majority shares in them are nearly as much a threat to our environment as our own ignorance.

I do think that all of the "we" versus "them" banter that goes on between political parties and those who have a controlling interest in determining which way the prevailing winds blow here are a huge waste of time and resources.

We are squandering the resources of our planet when we could be so looking at all of this as an opportune time to promote and provide for companies and individuals with the tools to create more industries that work at recycling every single by-product our industrial revolution has laid in our soil. It's oily muck spreading through every living thing that relies on water and snow and stream to give it life.

All of the grabbing in the world and denying that industries have left huge cancerous blots of pollution and devastation to our earth, in the name of energy, won't help us face the problems we need to be dealing with now.

Tons of people are out of work. People who could be applying what they know to some sort of passive energy that would help us function without destroying our planet, aren't. People who could be brain storming in Washington DC, aren't. Because too many people are getting something out of keeping us ignorant. Too many people want to squeeze the last bit of money they can out of every finite resource we have.

People could be working out how to recycle this and how to get this pollutant out of our water or ground and what it could be used for that would be constructive. Too many people don't want to face the raw truth that we don't have the time to screw around anymore.

And as long as we continue to use up our natural resources carelessly, we are feeding the very same beast that will devour us once we've been all fattened for the last act.

There are so many people who would love to have a sense of purpose and who would rather be a part of the solution than the problem. And yet those behind the Keystone Pipeline are trying to force through their proposal for this and get funding from Washington DC - that's everyone's tax dollars, so they could set this massive artery through our country. Even though we know that our ground is unstable and repairing and maintaining these pipelines is dangerous and a real concern for further destruction of our eco-system.