Zombies and politics - together at last.

A lazy Sunday... responding to emails and watching Day of the Dead (the 1978 original, of course). A whiny tech-support phone call to Ben and Topher coincidentally pointed me to this:

Homecoming - "In an election year, dead veterans of the current conflict crawl out of their graves and stagger single-mindedly to voting booths so they can eject the president who sent them to fight a war sold on 'horseshit and elbow grease.'" - Village Voice. The ever zesty Slate also thinks it's brilliant.

I love America. We may louse things up on occasion, but we can always analyze it after the fact, by way of the walking dead. Irresponsible consumption: Dawn of the Dead. Racism: Night of the Living Dead (coincidental as the commentary may have been - just so happened that the best actor for the job was black). And now we've taken on hamhanded foreign policy and election fraud by way of ghoul.

In case of zombie attack, remember: Blades never need reloading.

Updates to this site just happened, but I'm pretty sure they were all behind the scenes. And hence useless to anyone who happens to check its stagnancy. Except that all external links should point to www.garrettdownen.com, or my travel journal at www.garrettdownen.com/pdf

I'll hitch a ride on another website update, though... Kyle Flubacker gave www.lenspeak.com a thorough revamp. It's short and oh-so-sweet. Quothe me, to him: "Quantity of shots: Overall, it makes me curse the lesser gods that there aren't more posted. Which means it's the perfect number." Check it.

I'm at 9,999. Wanna be special, at least in my book? The next conversation that gets going is the 10,000th to hit my gmail. Hurry, though, because I typically get a new one every four minutes these days.

Winner gets a donut.

The good part about being as engrossed in your work (and occasional play) as I am? When at a conference in Seattle this last weekend, another participant mentioned some "Michael" or another. Many of the other (non Bus Project) folks in the room chuckled, to my perplexion.

Now I read a high-profile verdict was awarded in favor of Mr. Jackson earlier today.

I'd always wished I could go back and hear nary a word about the O.J. Simpson trial as it progressed. Looks like that prayer was answered in this case.

(Despite the Wal-Mart sponsorship, I guess props are due my daily news source, NPR, for not mentioning the blasted thing.)

Is it election season again? Smells like it. I just experienced a few weekendless weeks of fourteen-plus hour days.

If I squint and concentrate, it becomes apparent that the school board races weren't the business at hand. We threw a lil' party. I'd post pictures, but why bother when the glossy magazines'll carry them next month? Either way. As long as they don't have the shots of me sucking diesel out of a bus and into a generator, I'm a happy boy.

Oh, and if you need a six-foot wide set of stampede-proof stairs on 24 hours notice, you have three options within 60 miles of Portland. I'd recommend the set you'll find in Kelso, WA. Even Fire Marshall Dave approves!

More updates after I've slept. Whatever that entails... it's been a while.

Two credits to Kyle:

• Update your bookmark or erase from memory the http://home.earthlink.thisisfartoolong.net/~stillmoreasciihere address. Kyle bestowed me with www.garrettdownen.com for my birthday. Or, as I like to type, "garrettdownen[ctrl]+[enter]".
• I could post a picture of 'Huong' here, but Slate keeps him anonymous in their cover article about him, so I will too. Kyle and I spent the good part of a day with him in Saigon a year and a half ago. (I could also show you a picture of the Agent Orange conjoined twins the article mentions, but that would be in poor taste. Best not to think about the abominations of war. Really, the way to support our troops is to buy and put a yellow magnet on your Expedition. Focus on the glory. Like the heroic assault below. That tank wasn't moving anywhere once Flubacker got through with it.)

I'm in a place where it wouldn't be prudent for me to post details about my work (not to mention the hours I keep generally preclude slacker 'tivities like this'n). As I've mentioned before, the best way to keep up with my goings-on in politics is by subscribing to our newsletter - to which I often contribute heavily. Oregon politics (the way we do it at least) is fun, and it's more pertinant than you think. Legislation here tends to show up across the country... Public beaches. Land use planning. The bottle bill. Death with Dignity.

Occasionally I step out of our offices and delve into national issues, though. Today, for instance. In an speechifying order that must have been an oversight (in a generally kick-butt and TV/radio/newspaper-coverage-getting rally), ~200 people cheered for a statewide elected official, who opened for a big-name labor leader, which then led to lil' ol' me. The occasional cheering session is cathartic. Not a bad lunch break.

This stuff is terribly fun, people. If you're working a job that doesn't take your community forward, try the alternative (if only in your spare time). I've some ideas about how to go about it, if you're stumped.

Traveling's a muse matched only by an entrancing woman. And the outcome's less crummy / unreadable. Below: thoughts from a trip journal.



1000 miles, then I find I've climbed to the pinnacle of a 100-ft rock tower. With weeks of pre-work, delegation, and a voluminous contingency email to my coworkers, I snuck away from the Bus Project for nine days. From working my butt off in Oregon politics to working my butt off in the Southeastern Utah desert. I need a vacation.

Moab. It's like living in a roadrunner cartoon. I said that even before I saw the roadrunner. The Utah setting explains the Polygamy Porter, but why waste words on state-limited 6.4 proof beer when I could wax poetic about the scenery.

Actually, no need. I adopted Mark's D70 for much of the week, meaning I have a picture or two hundred.

---

I pride myself on being a safe person - one who has an almost actuarial sense of risk. There are those who might doubt this, given my tendency to scuba dive, rock climb, cliff jump, hitchhike, hop aboard moving boxcars, motorcycle, wakeboard, travel to Cambodia, ski, and canvass for progressive candidates in the militantly mindless suburban hell of Gresham. Fact is that these are each safe, given care and a touch of finesse.

My risk radar works, as evidenced by the eviscerating fear I experienced when mountain biking this morning. In rock climbing, for instance, if you experience speed for more than a protected 15-foot tumble, you've already done something pretty terribly wrong. Biking, as I remembered when careening down 40-degree geological strata on the practice loop at Slickrock, is intended to have some velocity. Namely, a lot.

I let Mark and Paul pull ahead, despite protestations. I paraphrase:

Paul: C'mon, you goofy American, we're in the same boat.
Garrett: Paul, do you have health insurance?
Mark: Well, do you think I have any?
Garrett: Mark, have you biked off-road since the Santa Claus trails?

The Santa Claus trails have had a subdevelopment on top of them for eight years now. They headed off together. I waited ten minutes, then headed the same way.

It wasn't that I didn't want to hit the world's most famous bike trail - just that I might want to walk much of it. All sixteen gorgeous (emphasis on the "gorge") miles went down in the next four hours. I conveniently didn't find the loopbacks.

An extra three liters of water and it would've been the perfect ride. Though the dehydration-induced hallucinations were kinda fun. The terrain's as beautiful as one can imagine, and I've a healthy imagination. Like the time I imagined what would've (literally) gone through my head had I been bouncing on my front tire a lil' longer, or with the rear wheel past vertical. Endos = bad.

That culminating Snickers Hazelnut was the finest I'd ever et. Once more, hats off to Sasha.

---

Milford Sound and the Olympics have a competitor. Devil's Garden, aside from its famous arches, is comprised of distinct monolithic wind-and-rain-swept red ridges. Most of these ribs tally hundreds of meters long. From a vista you see a haphazardly ordered texture, but viewed up close and isometrically, each ridge appears an oil-tanker-sized locomotive hauling its seamless ruddy cargo to points far south.

The Primitive Trail avoids any company. Ancient thorny juniper surround - like the rock, molded by a wind patient beyond any Mr. Miyagi.

I'm a slower hiker than I used to be. Not less capable - I'm more fit than ever - but slower. This four hour trail will take me all day, and not just because I get away from the known. I get away from others when I can, but mainly I get away to myself.

And I packed six liters of water today.

I'm using a Louis L'Amour truism in a Louis L'Amour setting: the desert's alive. Between the cactus, hares, craws, scrub, prairie dogs, and red plants that look tasty but I'm quite sure aren't, it feels like a friendly, arid family. Makes me want to curl up under a shady snag for a couple-hour nap. 'Cept I'd decimate decades of cryptobiotic crust when I lie down, and'd have to brush rattlers off my chest and scorpions out of my boots when I wake up.

---

Years after shutting down Mediamoth Video Team, I now make my debut as an impromptu wedding videographer / photographer. Ran into some acquaintances from the rock gym in Portland. One'd gotten her minister's license, and two of the others'd gotten sick of planning for their September wedding. So they'd trucked out to Arches National Park, to get married in a setting more stunning than any church except for that wooden one downtown. With the curves.

Happy marriage, Gorman and Carrie. You chose a good spot. Hope a few of those shots turned out.

---

You rarely feel more like a cowboy than when smack dap in the middle of a 25-mile hike through Canyonlands. Especially if that middle coincides with lunch on the top of a boulder square in the middle of Chesler Park. Untold miles of confusing, dry desert canyons lead - if you follow the cairns - to this one-mile diameter oasis. The real cowboys used to graze their stock here. I just cock my hat back in deference.

---

There is nothing more attractive than this scenery. Except for a solitary young woman trekking through this scenery, SLR around her neck. Climbing gear is a plus, but the camera is key.

---

Paul, Mark and I've impressed folks all week with our feat of cramming three six-foot-plus guys, their mountain biking, climbing, hiking, and camping gear inside a modestly sized SUV. Turns out that, in a freak side effect of leaning on the bike forks next to you in the back seat, it's the perfect nap-nook. Maybe it's the front suspensions being all gentle-like.

---

This trek's given me the opportunity to bust out some of my old vagabonding gear. I'd forgotten just how amazing a shirt Ex Officio slaps together. The latest synthetic textile tech and ventilation systems make for the coolest uppergarment ever.

Except that's a lie. On the toastiest of days, I break out the farmer's shirt I picked up for 100 baht ($2.50) from a back-alley merchant in Indochina. In the sun, it's like wearing negative shirt. They've been doing it right over there for hunnerds of years.

And I get the pleasure of folks asking me where the Renaissance Faire is to be found.

---

My mind's been off politics enough this week that it was Mark who noticed that mountain biking and hiking trails are shown in blue on maps, whereas 4x4 / dirt bike paths are red. In case you're not sure which one's yours, just check your party registration.

---

Meals snagged when stopping through tourist towns are about 40% too expensive. That said, an impressive amount of milage can be culled from a $10.99 pizza/salad/soup buffet. Turns out that a beer-cheese soup at night makes for power-packed 5.10b pitches the next morn.

---

Turns out I was in the backcountry, craving eggs benedict, at about the same time the new pope was choosing his name. And it's been said I don't got religion. Harumph.

---

Another coincidence - we hiked 15 miles through technical desert canyon country just before hopping in the car, stealing some showers, and setting off for the 15-hour drive home. We're in the Gorge now, two hours outside Stumptown... at a rate to get us the 1000 miles in a speedy 14 hours. This makes the 15 mile/15 hour coincidence more tenuous, but I'm still taking the chance to brag about our pace.

And we didn't even get any tickets on the way back. Thank you, Idaho State Troopers.

As I was reminded below, it wasn't just Nixon who harbored papal aspirations. We in the Concert Choir at Vanderbilt thought recent convert to Catholicism and Tennessee good ol' boy J.R. "Captain Bubba" Sielbeck oughta have a crack at waving the scepter.

Top Ten J.R. for Pope 2001 Campaign Slogans

10. Making *sure* he won't procreate.

9. Two words: Supercharged Popemobile

8. How well can *your* ex communicate?

7. Now there's an excuse for the hat hair.

6. Replacing bread and wine with chips and cheese dip.

5. ... because Popes don't wear yamikas.

4. Got Mary?

3. ... because necking may be a sin, but *rednecking* sure ain't.

2. Drive-through confession's been due for a long while now.

1. He's Transubstanterrific!


This also serves as the first time I offered campaign support. Also, in my defense, "Got ___?" gags were only mostly not at all funny in 2001, versus the negative funny that they rate now.

"I would have made a good pope."
- Richard Nixon

Got back from my trip one year ago today. Showed up with a tan and without a responsibility.

One year later, I boast nine keys in my pocket - each to a different onus, each one a necessary burden. Fortunately, all those responsibilities inspire smiles as I think through them.

Transience is nice. But you can build a damn good stationary life. Much harder to keep that tan, though.

Today was a lousy day because I bruised my finger twisting the bloody Bus pin pin into a makeshift bridge for the battery compartment of my megaphone.

Today was a great day because I fixed my megaphone, allowing one of the busloads of people trekking to the state capitol to introduce themselves to each other, and thereby justifying my EE degree.

Today was a lousy day because it's terribly dry out, and that makes my fingers uncomfortably dry.

Today was a great day because it was again t-shirt weather in February. (Don't tell the Californians. We have enough of them up here already.) The 2,500 people we helped organize on the steps of the capitol seemed to appreciate the sunshine too.

Today was a lousy day because I hurt my fingers removing duct tape that was holding coalition partners' banners to our bus.

Today was a great day because our rally likely changed the legislature's funding levels for our starved schools - to the order of 400 million dollars. And one of our coalition partners bought me a rather tasty meal.

Today was a lousy day because I hurt my finger popping off a rough hold at the Boulder Joust at Stoneworks.

Today was a great day because I eventually redpointed that route, and won me a Trango Cinch autolocking belay device.

Basically, just ignore the what the fingers say. Life's a peach.

It's Friday night at 9, and I'm at the office. Fortunately Sarah Masterson is too, and apparently she's bored. So she just sent me a poem, crafted by, as she claims, her inner fourth-grader. Thank you, Sarah... and now you have a published inner fourth-grader.

To make our bus move faster and faster
We need a hard-working, Bus Project task master
He's always smiling, never frownen
Watch out world here's [insert my name here]

One of the problems of updating this poor thing so rarely is the prolonged prominence of time-pertinent pop culture postings. When I mentioned the Killers below, they barely registered outside of Vegas. Now they're the baseline for other retro-vival rock groups. (Though that crown should, in a just world, sit atop the Dandy Warhols collectively deserving head.)

So the next link will get stale fast, as the meme's already tipping:
Google Maps. This is to Mapquest what Gmail is to AOL's craptastic mail client. At Toto's party, the ever-aware Topher mentioned that it's now live. And that the tool does little unadvertised things like point out free wireless access points around town.

A post-snowshoeing craving set my fingers on a quest for the as-of-yet unfound restaurant to replace Nashville's Samurai Sushi in my heart. "97293 sushi" mapped every raw fish joint on the east side, along with a clean interface, cute lil' flags, and links to restaurant reviews. Cafe K Sushi stood out from the crowd, and it now claims a new regular.

The tool's pretty as peaches. Even the cartographically boring bits of town, like our old office location there.

Old, I say? Yup, the Bus Project's moving. Beautiful, isn't it? So's the view. Not bad for an upstart lil' nonprofit, eh? This is what happens when moderate business people realize that the grassroots progressive movement looks out for their interests better than the neocons.

An update on my life in the month-point-five since I've put anything here: been workin'. If you're curious re: what I'm up to (or, better yet, how to wrestle this state and the rest of the union out of right wing control), get on the list. I have a pretty heavy hand in the chuckley newsletter we send out each week.

Just a lil' recap: since turning the state Senate, my lil' nonprofit's put on Third Thursday socio-politi-drinking sessions, launched PolitiCorps (a youth immersion program), lobbied for stable school funding, restructured, orchestrated our move, and spearheaded oodles o' nuggets that wouldn't be prudent for me to post here yet.

So I'm perpetually slammed. It may be newsletter or nothing for a while.

...Though I won't mention through that medium that I just saw movie #1200: Le Déclin de l'empire américain. No, it wasn't a French response to the current wacko administration. It was a 1986 French-Canadian (partial) response to the almost-as-wacko administration we had at the time. Recommended for those who've already been taught the birds/bees.

I've felt guilty devoting what tiny reading time I can scrape together to something completely unrelated to politics, nonprofit startups, volunteerism and social theory. George Lakoff and volumes like What's the Matter With Kansas? cause me to shrink away and immediately think about something else. Like those kooky jokes in Laffy Taffies. I just shoulda been sucking those pertinent books dry, but they had to wait. Instead, for the last months, I've eeked through a random historical text... about the 1883 Krakatoa eruption off the coast of Sumatra, and its deadly tsunamis. 120-foot waves, versus the 40-foot ones this last Sunday, if you can imagine. That one only (if only's the word) killed ~30,000 people. Let's just hope the numbers from this one slow their upward march.

A custom-knit scarf. Board game expansions. Clay poker chip set with gun-metal carrying case. Another Lord of the Rings extended edition. Floppy stretchy frisbee thingy. And a Heritage Foundation calendar.

Yup, it's been a good Christmas. And I was home with the whole family. It was a great Christmas.

One present in particular hearkened back to last year's Festivus south of the equator: the box of Snickers Hazelnut snagged from New Zealand's eBay and shipped across the Pacific for me. As long as the box remains populated, I'm a good guy to suck up to.

A costume:

- T-shirt weather at the coast this last weekend. Had to keep checking my watch to make sure it was December. Life's frickin' grand.

A crunch:

- A seventy-summin contractor backed into (and slightly over) my parked motorcycle today. Led to a pleasant half-hour jaunt to his office, conversations galore, and learning that he did the framing of the Bus building thirty years ago. Pleasant guy. We've got each others' cards, and I ended up with some cash to help me fix up the 'hawk.

A quirk:

- Strange habit around the Bus office: Calling people exclusively by full name. Comes from juggling many hundreds of volunteers. Even when referring to the person they're dating, Bus staff members likely (within our lil' realm) refer to them as Firstname Lastname.

A comic:

- Another mention of Lucas. Because he sends me things I like. Like this strip.

A quote:

- Bill Moyers, from his recent acceptance of Harvard Medical School's Global Environment Citizen Award:

One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in Congress.

For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts. Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, 'after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.'

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the bible is literally true - one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate.

In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index. That's right - the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the twelve volumes of the left-behind series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the rest of its 'biblical lands,' legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious, and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations where four angels 'which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man.' A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed - an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144-just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of god will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.

So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist, Glenn Scherer - 'the road to environmental apocalypse.' Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed - even hastened - as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress before the recent election - 231 legislators in total - more since the election - are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt.

The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian coalition was Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical book of Amos on the senate floor: "the days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land.' he seemed to be relishing the thought. And why not? There's a constituency for it.

A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations or in the motel turn some of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear some of this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same god who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?"

Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the lord will provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, America's providential history. You'll find there these words: "the secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie...that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece.' however, "[t]he Christian knows that the potential in god is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in god's earth......while many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that god has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people." No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that militant hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers." He turned out millions of the foot soldiers on November 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a powerful driving force in modern American politics.

I can see in the look on your faces just how bad it is for the journalist to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me put it on a personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this world without expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I can to bring it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now, however, I think of my friend on Wall Street whom I once asked: "What do you think of the market?" "I'm optimistic," he answered. "Then why do you look so worried?" And he answered: "Because I am not sure my optimism is justified."

I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with the Eric Chivian and the Center for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect the natural environment when they realize its importance to their health and to the health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not that I don't want to believe that - it's just that I read the news and connect the dots: I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment. This for an administration that wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and animal species and their habitats, as well as the National Environmental Policy Act that requires the government to judge beforehand if actions might damage natural resources. That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle tailpipe inspections; and ease pollution standards for cars, sports utility vehicles and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment.

That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep certain information about environmental problems secret from the public. That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against polluting coal-fired power plans and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal companies. That wants to open the artic wildlife refuge to drilling and increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild land in America. I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental Protection Agency had planned to spend nine million dollars - $2 million of it from the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council - to pay poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry were going to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the
study.

I read all this in the news. I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's friends at the international policy network, which is supported by ExxonMobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate change is 'a myth, sea levels are not rising, scientists who believe catastrophe is possible are 'an embarrassment.'

I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached to it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from pesticides; language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon; a waiver of environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider pressed by developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in California.

I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; of Thomas, age 10; of Nancy, 7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, nine months. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, 'Father, forgive us, for we know now what we do.' And then I am stopped short by the thought: 'That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world.' And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain indignation at injustice? What has happened to out moral imagination?

On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?" And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly."

I see it feelingly. The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free - not only to feel but to fight for the future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my desk. What we need to match the science of human health is what the ancient Israelites called 'hocma' - the science of the heart.....the capacity to see....to feel....and then to act...as if the future depended on you.

Believe me, it does.

Gradually, Western life sucked me back in. Coming back from the traveling, I walked around for a time without much in the way of shoes. I'm now quite well shod. Started wearing my watch again. I write in journals less (despite the four posts tonight). Got employed. Then employed better. Then employed better. Just fell into the fanciest new job title yet. Leisurely flipping through the favorable abode rental market. Might even buy a couple Christmas presents. Heck, I'm a consumer again.

Still, some distinct changes remain from the traipsing around I did. Perhaps most notably, I'm still a happy vagabond. Comfortable anywhere. As long as I sport my glasses or a thimble of contact solution, the homebody part of me's dead. Sleeping's easy. All I need's my car. Or a friend's place. And the best sleep I've ever had was on the back Bus office couch near the end of the election cycle. The physical manifestation of making the best of anything that hits you.

I'll sort the 11,000 pictures from that trip. I may not be going on another one for a year or three, but that doesn't mean I can't reap the lessons, smirk at the memories, and start plotting the next intentional meandering. There's a steaming plate of fun to have here in the meantime. And I've been digging in. Apologies for the lack of posts over the last month, folks. I'll do better. Maybe.