BITCHING IN HEAVEN

This post has been percolating quite a while and has been puddling on the surface of my consciousness since contracting an unreasonable case of hope from the Obama election. Of course, if it were reasonable, hope wouldn’t he needed, but backsliding from promises made the morning after a party is too chronic a human trait I’m all too familiar with to think it reasonable that all those dedicated faces gazing up at the new super star might not lose some of their zeal once the political realities begin to tarnish the brand new day. My usual approach to people who mistake me for the Wailing Wall is, “Aren’t you glad this is heaven…” To which their shocked affront at such casual dismissal of self inflicted woes urges the continuance, “…in hell you wouldn’t get to bitch.”

One might say I must believe in heaven because I certainly can bitch. Sobeit. It’s just a handy term for an extreme I picked up from the Christians. What I rail most against is the result of individual abdication of personal responsibility to lying servants in the form of a fear mongering, bean counter government and settling for a throw away life style. I had felt good about getting out of the throw away life style part by moving to these woods, raising my own food, buying nothing from the stuff factories. Turns out the encroachment of awareness about government skullduggery is not so easily avoided, especially if I take the internet into the woods with me just to find out what my city friends are ranting about when they come to visit. I’ve got Democracy Now!, Keith Olberman, Rachel Maddow, Daily Show, Colbert Report, and Bill Maher on my tool bar along with the Bank and the Weather. Otherwise, I am here in the woods whittlin’ and gardenin’, you betcha.

Gardenin'

and

whittlin'

Somehow, Barack Obama has broken through my lifelong distain for politics and my insistence on not voting for the lesser of evils or that there was no two parties, only two heads on the single minded snake of sheep herder. Democracy Now keeps my head out of the clouds about the realities of the people with whom the president-elect is surrounding himself, but I saw something, felt something that remains a strong resonance to the idea that the politics of everyone involved in his governance will be changed by the simple act of turning their efforts toward a more gentle kindness and respect for each other and the entire planet.

I feel the same naïve hope that kept me on through an engineering degree with the purpose of bringing quality to products until I met with the indisputable wall of the profit of half-assed disposable quantity directing all manufacturing. Earlier, in my post, Silver Linings, I mentioned the opportunities to retool the auto industry through the leverage of the bail out package they are asking for. I just had a brainstorm, like many others that have passed through many other minds working on the problems we’ve made for ourselves, that the auto retooling, redesign, repurposing should take into consideration a 45 mile stretch of road in Idaho that is experimentally coated in solar cell material that generates power efficiently enough to power the entire world’s requirements if used only on the surface of all the interstates in the US. One of the main objectives of the new administration is to address infrastructure, repair road surfaces and bridges!! The biggest problem they are having in Idaho is durability under the conditions of traffic. Any guesses where this is going?

Jim finishes breakfast and the morning’s headlines on the monitor, kisses Amber on the way out the door, turns on the key to his air car that has recharged to full overnight and now disengages from the electrical power link. He backs out silently with only the crunch of gravel under the tires betraying his presence along the streets and country road he takes to his reconstruction site. Today Jim isn’t going to the job, he’s going up to Dallas for a project meeting with the managers of other sections of the country’s highway refurbishing endeavor. As he drives onto I-35, one of the first completed stretches of the new interstate system he switches the power from the air compression tank diving the pneumatic motor to electric power from the solar cell highway driving the fans that lift, move and control the car when the skirt drops below the folded wheels.

With the amount of road surfaces, parking lots and roof tops that could be covered it would seem quantity in cooperative unity can result in quality treatment of the planet and our own little addictions to cars in the bargin.
There’s also the idea of replacing another oil dependent industry, the plastic bottle industry with the 100% recyclable, biodegradable paper bottle developed by a company called Brandimage. I looked at their website and they seem to be the kind of people who put flowers and birdies in Exxon ads, but you can’t fault a good idea for the jerk-offs that came up with it. This is such a major improvement in oil dependence and litter production it must become at least an interim measure until people learn to carry their own cup and trust the pourers.

Yeah. I think things are looking up.