Early Potatoes

One of the vegetables that I am going to plant next week at my farm is potatoes. I love to grow them because home-grown potatoes taste so good. Also, potatoes produce a lot of calories in a small amount of space.

Barbara Damrosch is a very good gardener who writes a column for the Washington Post. She has a post about getting an early start with potatoes by "chitting," or helping the potatoes to sprout indoors before you plant them out in the garden. I am going to try this next week.

Letter on civil disobedience at coal plant

This is an open letter from Bill McKibben and Wendell Berry, two long-time environmental activists, about the necessity of civil disobedience around the issue of climate change. A nonviolent protest will occur at a coal plant near Washington, DC, on Monday.

Dear Friends,

There are moments in a nation’s–and a planet’s–history when it may be necessary for some to break the law in order to bear witness to an evil, bring it to wider attention, and push for its correction. We think such a time has arrived, and we are writing to say that we hope some of you will join us in Washington D.C. on Monday March 2 in order to take part in a civil act of civil disobedience outside a coal-fired power plant near Capitol Hill.

We will be there to make several points:

• Coal-fired power is driving climate change. Our foremost climatologist, NASA’s James Hansen, has demonstrated that our only hope of getting our atmosphere back to a safe level–below 350 parts per million co2–lies in stopping the use of coal to generate electricity.
• Even if climate change were not the urgent crisis that it is, we would still be burning our fossil fuels too fast, wasting too much energy and releasing too much poison into the air and water. We would still need to slow down, and to restore thrift to its old place as an economic virtue.
• Coal is filthy at its source. Much of the coal used in this country comes from West Virginia and Kentucky, where companies engage in “mountaintop removal” to get at the stuff; they leave behind a leveled wasteland, and impoverished human communities. No technology better exemplifies the out-of-control relationship between humans and the rest of creation.
• Coal smoke makes children sick. Asthma rates in urban areas near coal-fired power plants are high. Air pollution from burning coal is harmful to the health of grown-ups too, and to the health of everything that breathes, including forests.

The industry claim that there is something called “clean coal” is, put simply, a lie. But it’s a lie told with tens of millions of dollars, which we do not have. We have our bodies, and we are willing to use them to make our point. We don’t come to such a step lightly. We have written and testified and organized politically to make this point for many years, and while in recent months there has been real progress against new coal-fired power plants, the daily business of providing half our electricity from coal continues unabated. It’s time to make clear that we can’t safely run this planet on coal at all. So we feel the time has come to do more–we hear President Barack Obama’s call for a movement for change that continues past election day, and we hear Nobel Laureate Al Gore’s call for creative non-violence outside coal plants. As part of the international negotiations now underway on global warming, our nation will be asking China, India, and others to limit their use of coal in the future to help save the planet’s atmosphere. This is a hard thing to ask, because it’s their cheapest fuel. Part of our witness in March will be to say that we’re willing to make some sacrifices ourselves, even if it’s only a trip to the jail.

With any luck, this will be the largest such protest yet, large enough that it may provide a real spark. If you want to participate with us, you need to go through a short course of non-violence training. This will be, to the extent it depends on us, an entirely peaceful demonstration, carried out in a spirit of hope and not rancor. We will be there in our dress clothes, and ask the same of you. There will be young people, people from faith communities, people from the coal fields of Appalachia, and from the neighborhoods in Washington that get to breathe the smoke from the plant.

We will cross the legal boundary of the power plant, and we expect to be arrested. After that we have no certainty what will happen, but lawyers and such will be on hand. Our goal is not to shut the plant down for the day–it is but one of many, and anyway its operation for a day is not the point. The worldwide daily reliance on coal is the danger; this is one small step to raise awareness of that ruinous habit and hence help to break it.

Needless to say, we’re not handling the logistics of this day. All the credit goes to a variety of groups, especially EnergyAction (which is bringing thousands of young people to Washington that weekend), Greenpeace, the Ruckus Society, and the Rainforest Action Network. A website at that latter organization is serving as a temporary organizing hub: http://ran.org/ get_involved/ powershift_and_mass_civil_disobedience_updates/ . If you go there, you will find a place to leave your name so that we’ll know you want to join us.

Thank you.

It's about time

People who have lived on Brangus Lane for a long time have seen the effects of climate change on our community: falling water tables and drought. Creeks that used to run all winter long now sometimes don't run at all in the winter, much less in the summer. Bear Creek itself is often very low and hasn't flooded out of its banks in years. Maple trees are having trouble surviving, particularly red maples.

One would think, considering the seriousness of drought and falling water tables, that there would be a mass movement to stop global climate change. But such a movement has not really been very visible. Activists like James Hansen have commented on the fact that we have not seen people protesting the building of coal plants, for example, or mass demonstrations in favor of legislation to limit carbon emissions.

But finally it is happening this weekend in Washington: a mass protest in Washington, DC. You can read about it here.

On Brangus Lane

Tomorrow I am flying from Houston to Nashville, and by the late afternoon I will be on Brangus Lane again! Hurray! Brangus Lane is my home in the Upper Cumberland bioregion of Tennessee, near Cookeville. It is a small, close-knit, rural community.

At the Nashville Airport, beginning March 5 or 6, you will be able to see fifteen photogravures about Brangus Lane that I made in 2002 through 2005.

You can see this series here.