Beltane and the Shadow Mountain Moon

Friday gratefuls: Mark in Bangkok. Mary in Melbourne. Diane in San Francisco. Me here on Shadow Mountain. My son and Seoah in Songtan. The gathered, sacred community of Congregation Beth Evergreen. The cloud of witnesses: Kate, Jon, Leslie, Rene, Kep, Rigel, Gertie, Vega and all the others. Mom and Dad. The torah of this world. Friends like the Ancient Brothers.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Awakening

One brief shining: So if you’re not woke, you’re asleep, right, a thing a lot of those on the right aspire to not by using pills, but by using denial, obfuscation, disinformation and then proposing sleep as a superior state of being, when the real results are fever dream nightmares of immigrants clambering over sacred white people dwellings, of Blacks cheating sacred white people out of jobs-by using education, of sacred white people losing their rung on the social ladder and falling, falling, falling.

Yes. I can’t avoid it. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. 34 times. Guilty. Each count with up to four years of prison time. Felonious Trump. My new name for the king of sleaze, the baron of white supremacy, the duke of bad faith. I know it’s inappropriate to gloat. This is not gloating. This is clear-eyed appreciation for the rule of law, those 12 jurors tried and true, the legal system not only at work, but finishing a job before the election.

Our first felon President. Something that never occurred to me. I mean, Nixon, sure. But what an anomaly. Iran-Contra. OK. That was something, too. Even so. We got to see the final act of one of our nation’s dismal encounters with Felonious Trump. Ah.

I know. Appeals. That pesky election where an unfathomable number of our fellow citizens don’t care about the conviction of Felonious. Where, living as we are in the Upside-Down in this Stranger Things political era, the conviction enhances their loyalty, makes them even more sure of their orange bewigged demon saint who wears ties too long and suits too big. I know. Yet somewhere in this Yankee Doodle Dandy land there must be enough of us to just say no to Felonious. Has to be. Right?

Just a moment: Colorado is in the news yet again. Not, this time, for legalizing marijuana or hallucinogenics, but for not building highways: Colorado’s Bold New Approach to Highways — Not Building Them. NYT, May 31, 2024. That’s right. Colorado will not widen I-25, a sea of congestion at most hours of the day and early evening. Why? Induced demand. A phenomenon widely understood since the 1960’s according to this article. The build it and they will come movie about freeways always filling up to their maximum capacity, often much sooner than predicted. Turns out induced demand increases air pollution. How bout that?

So. If we want to reach climate goals in the area of transportation we need to get drivers off the highways, not induce them to drive on them more often and in greater numbers. That means public transportation and strategic placement of housing near jobs. We’re on it here in the Centennial State. But. Hey, if you want to ski here, hike here, raft here, come on out!