Death of a Cool Radio Station

I used to brag to my friends outside of San Diego about radio station 94.9 - they had lots of long time local DJs who actually knew the San Diego local music scene. I mean the real San Diego music scene. Bands like Hair Theater and Crash Worship and Crawdaddy and the newer ones as well (of which I'm too old and not cool enough to know). DJs who were at the shows at Iguanas or the Che Cafe. Every morning they had a local band of the day and played a song of the local band's on the radio.

That's gone. Mike Halloran got canned or let go or who knows what a week or two ago. Today I find out they're bringing the hack loud mouth dj from 105.3 to 94.9. So now we get to listen to 13 year old boy humor in the morning - joy oh joy. And it turns out that he and his staff need to pass a drug test. What kind of bullshit is that? Why does a rock n roll DJ need to pass a drug test?

Adios 94.9. I've switched to classical for now until I can find a radio station that supports local music, plays local music and doesn't submit it's employees to drug tests. Lets be real. What's the worst thing a stoned out DJ will do? I know, play good music.

Hope is on the horizon. The great crew at Activist San Diego are trying to create a community FM Radio Station. I don't know if it will reach into the City of San Diego, but if you're interested, check out their website and let them know you support their efforts.

Global Warming And Friends

Global warming is yet one more in a long line of issues that seems to divide people into believers and naysayers. As a person who firmly believes you don't get something for nothing, burning fossil fuels is an obvious no no. How can you burn up energy in 100 years that it took untold millions of years to creating without violating the something for nothing rule? At the very least, we run out of oil and need to find other ways to live in harmony with the planet. Some people argue that American lifestyles require high carbon fuel usage - but at the end of the day that's what's killing us. We're all fat because we're living off the energy of dinosaurs from a million years ago instead of the calories we consumed today.

I don't know what the answer is other than to go forward to the past - to a world were human energy is important, people lived in self-sustaining communities and our homes aren't filled with toxic crap from China. At the end of the day, buying stuff isn't bringing me happiness, hugs are.

In the spirit of local activism and global warming, I want to take a few minutes to share some of my local heroes. Carolyn Chase and Chris Klein - the amazing duo - who live a few blocks from me and who started the huge Earth Fair that happens every year in Balboa Park. I've volunteered with Earth Fair, am saving a creek thanks to a non-profit these two amazing people started, San Diego Earth Works, and have hope that sane decentralized transportation will become a reality in San Diego thanks to Move San Diego - another group with ties to the amazing duo. If it's environmentally progressive in San Diego, this is Chris and Carolyn are your connection.

The dynamic duo is in Copenhagen at the United Nations Conference on Climate change and have put together a website to allow those of us stuck in our mundane lives to hear some of the debates between regular people like ourselves.

Thank you Chris and Carolyn for all you do. You rock.

***From an email from Chris****************

Carolyn Chase and I are in Copenhagen at the UN conference on climate change (COP15). Officially, we are registered delegates of the Sierra Club, of which we are both life members.

We puzzled over how best to make a difference at the conference. We decided to create a special website, Message to America, and post videos of other delegates speaking their "message to America." We have also posted photos, and and there is a blog of updates, quotes, special notes, etc.

The goal is to give you a better picture of the kind of world citizens who are attending the event, and how critical this issue is for much of the world. It's one thing to deal with figures and technical abstractions. It's another to listen to a woman who's island is in danger of slipping beneath the waves.

**************End email from Chris*******************

Earth Fair is Tomorrow

Tomorrow is the big Earth Fair in San Diego's Balboa Park. San Diego's Earth Fair bills itself as "The world's largest annual environmental fair and Earth Day Celebration – produced by volunteers." It's free and fun. Environmental booths, music, a kid's parade, and the unofficial mondo drum circle. This year, I'm working a booth for the Rose Creek Watershed Alliance, of which my local community group, the Friends of Rose Creek is a part. I'll be there all day long, so stop by and visit if you like. We'll be on the east end of El Prado in front of the SD Railroad Museum.

If you've never been and you're nearby come on down and celebrate Earth Month with us!

Friendship Park - Silent Vigil on April 15

Friendship Park is in the northwestern corner of Mexico and the southwestern corner of the USA. It's been a place where people from both countries could get together and picnic, talk, see family they have no other way of seeing, and connect the two sides of the San Diego/Tijuana metropolis - one ecosystem, one community, one city with a wall down the middle.

The federal government has a total lack of understanding of the hardships a community faces with a wall in the middle of it.

This week President Obama will sit down to visit with President Felipe Calderon in Mexico. At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security is shutting down Friendship Park, where people from San Diego and Tijuana have visited with friends for generations. In solidarity with those being denied access to this historic venue, and in protest of DHS decision-making , which has excluded all community voices, friends of Friendship Park invite you to join a Silent Vigil on the day before the presidential meeting.

Where: Border Patrol Headquarters
2411 Boswell Rd
Chula Vista, CA 91914

When: Wednesday, April 15th, 12 noon
Friends of Friendship Park will arrive early and stay late –
join us on your lunch hour!

What to bring: Silence!
Wear white clothes. Please also bring Mexican candies as
gifts for Border Patrol.

For more information on Friendship Park and what it means to those of us in this part of the world, visit http://www.friendshippark.org.
If you can't be there on April 15, visit the website and send a message that now more than ever we need to maintain community and communications between countries.

I Don't Deserve This Moment

My entire life has been lived in the world of cultural change. As a child, I experienced the changes unfolding in the world and as an adult I've tried to move the change forward a few inches. Yet today, on the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the eve of the inauguration of our first African American, Black, Negro president, Barack Obama, I feel like I'm reaching the top of the mountain and I truly don't feel I deserve the celebration or the joy I am feeling.

Not that I haven't been harmed by racism and inequality, because I have, because we all have. Not that I haven't tried to help others understand why racism is wrong, because I have, because so many of us have. But I haven't been beaten, arrested, denied a job or prevented from being with the one I love because of the color of my skin (or my sexual orientation for that matter). Listening to our American heroes from the big like Congressman John Lewis to the 90+ year old set of African American civil rights foot soldiers talk about what this day means, makes me feel like an impostor, like I haven't suffered enough to enjoy the celebration.

And yet.... Tuesday morning I'll be watching it live on television and, no doubt, I'll be crying like a baby.

Be the change you which to see in this world.

Since when is public dissent terrorism?

For those of you who somehow missed this, in the weeks leading up to the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis last summer, people were planning to engage in peaceful assembly outside the convention center. Now I don't pretend to know all the stunts that were planned - stunts designed to draw attention to issues and causes, but if someone tries to tell me any of these people were planning on doing anything more than clog a street or two, I'd say go see your shrink.

To make a long story short, there were a lot of meetings where people discussed how they could make their voice heard in the media circus that is a political convention. Before the convention even started, eight of the organizers were arrested and charged with a host of crimes that could result in more than ten years in prision including conspiracy to riot in the 2nd degree in furtherance of terrorism, a felony which is the first ever use of Minnesota’s PATRIOT Act.

Since when is a convention more important than the constituction? Luce Guillen-Givins, Max Specktor, Nathanael Secor, Eryn Trimmer, Monica Bicking, Erik Oseland, Robert Czernik and Garrett Fitzgerald need your support.

If you are in the area on Sunday January 25th, please attend the
Defend The RNC8! Town Hall Meeting from 3 PM to 6 PM at Walker Church: 3104 16th Ave S. Minneapolis.

If you can't make the meeting, sign the petition to dismiss all the charges. What happens here is critical to the rights of all Americans to engage in civil disobedience, peaceful assembly and public dissent.

Featured Speakers on January 25 include:
*Coleen Rowley--Retired FBI agent, TIME Magazine's 2002 Person of the Year
*Phyllis Kahn--MN State Representative (DFL-59B)
*Peter Rachleff--Professor of History, Macalester College
*Michelle Gross--President, Communities United Against Police Brutality
*Meredith Aby--Anti-War Committee
*Mordecai Specktor--Publisher of American Jewish World, Father of Max Specktor

Speakers will be followed by small-group sessions and participatory discussion, with a focus on action! The event is free and open to the public. Snacks and child care will be available.

Feeding the People

I have some friends who do this very cool thing called Everybody's Kitchen. Basically they travel around the country in a school bus feeding people. From homeless people in Los Angeles, to cross-border activists on the Mexican border, they share food. Right now they are in the Louisiana Bayou feeding people. To find out what they're doing and how people are living, watch the video.

Hey Floppy and crew, in case I haven't said it before, you are my heroes.

Barack Obama's Lack of Vision

I was as thrilled as the next person that the citizens of the United States of America finally elected a president who wasn't a white male. I was also thrilled we didn't elect the "old guy" and the "prom queen,", but really Mr. Obama, what's up with supporting big agriculture after all your talk about main street? Main street is organic food. Main street is small family farms. Main street is having local sources of food and maintain food security not putting more profits into the hands of big agri-business. It's not continuing the rush to patent the very food we eat. It's not expanding the level of genetically modified food eaten by our children when we don't understand the consequences.
Take a stand today.

Thankfully I am a member of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and we are taking a stand against agri-business as the future of America's farms. Join us in taking in telling Mr. Obama know that big business as usual isn't change. Putting corporate profits over family farms isn't change.

Just say no Vilsack!

This in from the OCA:

Despite a massive public outcry, including over 20,000 emails from the Organic Consumers Association, President-Elect Obama has chosen former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack to be the next Secretary of Agriculture.

While Vilsack has promoted respectable policies with respect to restraining livestock monopolies, his overall record is one of aiding and abetting Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) or factory farms and promoting genetically engineered crops and animal cloning. Equally troubling is Vilsack's support for unsustainable industrial ethanol production, which has already caused global corn and grain prices to skyrocket, literally taking food off the table for a billion people in the developing world.

The Organic Consumers Association is calling on organic consumers and all concerned citizens to join our call to action and block Vilsack's confirmation as the next Secretary of Agriculture. Please help us reach our goal of 100,000 petition signatures against Vilsack' nomination. Sign today! Your email will be sent to your Senators and the President-Elect's office.

Sign the petition!

Day Without a Gay & Money

I'm at work today feeling guilty because I didn't call in "gay." It's not because I don't believe in it, but I have a bunch of projects going that have to be done this week and I've no other time to do them.

I wimped out. I admit it. Some of the money I make today will go to support the gay marriage movement.

Meanwhile, many people have written about the importance of recognizing the value of the GLBTQ community in our society and the impacts of a consumer boycott. That being said, the best thing I can add to the discussion is my rap on spending money.

Money is very powerful when used wisely. Every day I work hard for my money and every day I try as best I can to spend it in ways that create the world the way I want it to exist. The world I want treats everyone as equals, protects all people in the workplace, treats this planet as if it's our most valuable resource (it is), and stands up for equal rights and social justice.

99% of my grocery money is spent at People's Co-op in Ocean Beach. Fair trade, locally grown, non-GMO labels, cooperative. If they sell it, I have faith that the cows have time to play in the pasture, the earth was respected and the people paid a just wage in their communities if the product is marked as fair trade. They sell three types of bananas: Organic, Organic Fair Trade, and Commercial (what I call chemical bananas). I buy Organic Fair Trade whenever possible and support farming cooperatives in Central America. These farmers deserve what most Americans demand for themselves but fail to consider for other peoples.

I take most of my other dollars to local stores that share my values. It's easy really. I rarely shop at chains, I support my local businesses, I ask where my products came from and how were the workers treated.

Before the November election, I looked up business donors to No on Prop 8 and emailed them a thank you, letting them know I would support their business for their courage in doing the right thing. Money is speech that forces other people to walk the way you want them to. Use it wisely.

Getting involved with high level politics

I feel like I'm floundering in the dark, but I'm trying. How about the CEO of the Rodale Institute for Secretary of the USDA?

It Ain't Over 'till It's Over

The campaign of shock and awe that resulted in the passage of California's Proposition 8 (marriage inequality) was just the beginning. Over the weekend, people took to the streets to protest legalized discrimination, and for once, San Diego out protested San Franciscio -- ten to one by some accounts. Now the movement is spreading. Cities all across the United States will be holding rallies for Civil Rights on Saturday, November 15. 10:30 AM Pacific Time, 1:30 PM Eastern Time. Find a location near you at Join The Impact and just say NO to separate but equal.

One Person at a Time

There’s been a growing movement of churches and other mainstream groups engaging in social justice and issues of environmental protection. From the UN Summit for Religious and Spiritual Leaders to the various incarnations of the Social Forums, people of faith have been creating grassroots movements that focus on what we, the people, see as critical issues of social justice, equality, health care and protecting the earth. That’s the beauty of a right wing president who doesn’t understand the web of life or society for that matter – it forces the people to rise up and create a better world.

When Senator Obama stepped onto the world stage, he was riding the wave of thousand of activists with the dream that a better world is possible. Instead of telling people to work for him, he plugged in to swells rippling throughout our society and caught the wave to shore. A few wobbles here and there, but basically a clean ride.

But the shout out goes to all the people organizing on the ground for a future befitting the vision of the American dream. You are my heroes. And a brief word of warning. Just because we elected a Black man as president doesn’t mean we can let up on what we are doing. As Senator Obama said in Grant Park on November 4 "… you didn't do this just to win an election and I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead." So let the celebrations ring out and then let’s get back to our social forums and activist community meetings, our habitat restoration and sharing food with the hungry.

For as someone wise once said, "if the people lead, the leaders will follow." And lead we did, one step at a time, one person at a time. The only way that change is possible.

Peace out!

Tears of joy

Words are useless.
The expression on the Reverend Jesse Jasckon's face last night at Grant Park says it all.
~~ Mitakuye Oyasin!

Election Day & The Credit Crises

Today is election day and the influence of the recent credit meltdown is driving some people to vote for change.

In an ironic twist of fate, many people I spoke with this morning used their credit cards to donate to the campaign of their choice in an attempt to influence the election - myself included. It will probably take me a couple of months to pay off my donations to No on Prop 8, No on Prop 4, No on Prop D, and donations for both presidential candidates of interest to me: Cynthia McKinney and Barak Obama.

It was raining in San Diego when I went to the polls - the rain as unusual as two African American presidential candidates on the ballot. When I entered, two fabulous young people were working the area waving No on Prop 8 signs and passing out info cards. When I exited, the number had grown to 5. It's a close race, but I have hope. I have hope because in the last couple of weeks I have met so many young people putting their feet where their beliefs are. Young people standing up for equal rights. Straight, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender folks united in the quest to guarantee equal rights for all Californians.

I've been doing phone banking for the No on Prop 8 campaign and on Sunday I spoke to a young woman, R.M. Well, R.M., I'm counting on you to beat this proposition. You didn't know anything about the issues when I called, but once you found out, you promised me you would vote No on Prop 8 because you believe in equal rights for everyone. We only need one more vote than the opposition to defeat this ballot and I've put my faith in you. Don't let your children's, children's, children, me or yourself down.

Saving the world, one vote at a time.

Can't the City of San Diego Get Anything Right?

City Council has resurrected their plan to rid the city of RVs, gardeners, plumbers and the rest of us messy folks. I guess the pension mess is resolved, we now have money to pay our Liberians and repair our parks, and the streets are no longer riddled with huge holes.

From R.V.’s United For Fair Parking:

Proposed Parking Ordinance Affecting All of San Diego!

This ordinance would prohibit ALL oversize vehicles, trailers, and recreational vehicles from parking on public streets between 10 pm and 6 am, 7 days a week! An over sized vehicle is defined as being over 7 ft high OR over 22 ft long. A permit to park your RV in front of your house overnight is available (72 hour max). Each permit would cost you $3.50 and you are restricted to 24 per year.

COMMERCIAL vehicles are included in this ordinance. NO permit is being considered for them. Your plumbing vehicle, tow truck and or gardening trailer will be banned from overnight parking on city streets.

I don't know about you, but when I come home at 9 PM or 2 AM, there is no parking in front of my house. So the person with the Hummer can park in front of my house for free, while I have to have a permit. What's up with that?

This is an issue the city keeps bringing up and I've attended many of the meetings over the years. The people opposed are a cross section of our community and their reasons as different as their lives. Seems to me this ordinance is geared towards our working class communities. People with enough land around their houses to park on their own property with a $250,000 RV will not be impacted. But me with a small, but tall van living in a crowded neighborhood get regulated to death.

The next thing you know we'll have to pay to park our bicycles at the beach.

STAND UP!

Salt Water, Strong Arms and the Quest to Save the Planet

Today was the 17th Annual Paddle for Clean Water - an awesome event put together by San Diego Surfrider. The basic premise is we want clean ocean water and we're willing to paddle around the Ocean Beach Pier (about 3/4 of a mile) to make our voices heard. I'm not sure how long I've been participating, probably since the second or third paddle.

One day many years ago (back in the early nineties), I was surfing in Pacific Beach and when I exited the water this man handed me a flyer and asked me to participate in the upcoming paddle. I tried to explain to him that I suck as a surfer, catching a wave seems as much luck as anything, and no one needed me cluttering up the surf.

He was undetered. His mission: increase female participation in the event. For those who don't remember, there weren't too many women surfing back then and I guess even fewer participating in the paddle. We spoke for a while and I told him I would think about it. For reasons I can't fathom, I went that year and paddled out in a crowd of people hooting and hollering and drumming on their boards to let the world know that clean water is our birth right and we're here to be loud and proud. I got goosebumps from the collective energy and the unity between a group, which normally flies solo, joining arms for the future.

To this day I still do the paddle and I'm still friends with Tom. Only this year, the water is full of women. Two year old girls riding on their daddy's boards, grandma's and retirees laughing and gliding through the water with the love of the ocean shining in their eyes. Young women paddling up a storm and Moms paddling alongside their children. It's hard and I love it. As long as I can paddle around the OB Pier with six hundred or one thousand people, who are tired of pollution, then I know I'm alive. I'll be sore tomorrow, but for tonight if you missed the twelve foot wooden boards from the fifties, the beautiful tattoos, or the smiles on so many faces, you missed out on what community feels like.

Barak Obama on the Environment

I want to throw up. American politics suck. The candidate of the people is Cynthia McKinney - the green woman running for president. She's my candidate of choice and the candidate who espouses "Leave the oil in the soil." Now you, I and the lamppost on the corner know, she won't be living in the White House anytime soon. The power money political machine has this country too tightly harnessed for a progressive candidate. I'll be voting for Cynthia because quite frankly, I want a woman president, I want a progressive president, and I want a president who understands that our future won't come from clinging to our destructive childish ways of living, but from exploring new options and letting that good old American ingenuity run with new energy, extreme sonservation and revamped manufacturing processes. We can't compete with Asia playing old games, but we're damn good at inventing new games.

So what does this have to do with Barak and the environment? I don't claim to know what's in the man's heart, but based on what's being said out there on the campaign trail, Mr. Obama now supports drilling for oil (wars in the Middle East), extraction of clean coal (destruction of communities and black lung disease) and nuclear power (able to destroy entire regions in a single bound). WHAT THE FUCK! I thought we, as a country, were starting to realize that energy conservation and renewable energy were the ways to provide security for the American people.

So in spite of my initial excitement at Mr. Obama's nomination by the Democratic party, I guess the song remains the same, big money wins, and the United States is going to continue it's downward spiral. Are there any job openings for a database administrator in Chile?

YES! Magazine and What I Want To Be When I Grow Up

YES Magazine's tag line is "Supporting you in building a just and sustainable world" and when the latest issue arrives in my mail box I inhale the stories of the rebirth of Students for a Democratic Society, a female president in Chile, autonomous social movements in Argentina, the real scoop on energy usage, and the solutions to the health care crises in this country and I want to be one of the heroes between the covers of the 100% recycled, post-consumer waste, process chlorine-free paper, example of journalism that digs deep and uncovers the peaceful but dramatic social movements taking place under the radar of mainstream media.

As I read, I look for career opportunities that would allow me to pay my mother's caregiving bills while blending my skills in communication with my desire to be one of the people creating a future that respects the planet and the creatures who scurry across her belly. I analyze the careers people have created in their quest to save the planet and each other and try to figure out where I fit in while putting in forty hours a week in the computer trenches as a database administrator.

Once upon a time I had a quote over my desk that talked about the future as something not found, but created, the roads to it are built by those taking the journey and the journey changing both the traveler and the destination and believe it to be true. As Robert Frost said all those years ago, "I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."

My zig zag journey from the streets of San Francisco to the mission of restoring the native habitat in my ten foot by fifteen foot front yard leaves me middle aged and plodding through the woods, creating a path and dragging a hundred and twenty pound weight behind me. I tramp through the jungle looking for paths between trees and tigers and wonder how I ended up in the this part of the jungle and why. Some days I am weary and I sit down and contemplate finding the energy to climb over one more rock, traverse one more mountain range or swim across another river.

Then I read about tree sitting in South Central Los Angeles, interfaith movements of environmental activists and the purpling of America in the latest issue, grab a hold of a tree and pull myself up and get back to writing and tree planting and caring for another generation while I figure out who I want to be when I grow up.

Denver is Light Years Away From San Diego

The Democratic National Convention is being held later this month in Denver and I'm stuck on the sidelines while the activist community is gearing up to protest the farce. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a member of the Green Party.

The Democrats masquerade as the party of the people and the people are going to be on hand in Denver to let the Democrats know what we mean by "for the people." From free food to childcare, this time around the focus is on creating an alternative future as well as disrupting the old power structures.

From Recreate 68 and Disrupt Denver to the clandestine insurgent rebel clown army the people's voice is gearing up to be seen and heard. And I'm stuck in San Diego with a new job in corporate America and a wheelchair bound mother who was born to a life a privilege and squandered her life.

My daily mind is filled with questions like how can I say I want to create a positive future for all if I throw away a human being? How can I create a positive future, when the past has me shackled? I know that most traditional cultures hold their elders in high esteem, but how does that play out when modern medicine interferes and the percentage of the population who can't go to the bathroom by themselves grows? How much can you give to the elders without taking away from the children? What about elders who have no wisdom to pass down either because they don't think or because they're too disabled too think?

It's not PC to question the sanctity of human life, but western medicine has blurred the line between life and death and now we have armies of half dead walking around and western medicine says "see you later" leaving families to stagger under the weight of the walking (or wheelchair rolling) dead. Our ability to keep parts of the human body funcationing has gone beyond our understanding of life. Now if all those doctors had to grapple daily with lifting dead weight from the bed to the wheelchair or getting woken up in the middle of the night for nine years to change a diaper, maybe there would be some level of understanding. But as long as the consequences of western medicine are divested from their so called "healing" actions, the science of keeping a heart beating will have nothing to do with living.

So I send some money to Recreate 68 in Denver to help with legal fees or food or whatever people on the ground need to spend money on when challenging the power structure of the United States. I read Indy Media and send my energy to my brothers and sisters who can be there to create the future I want for all of us.

Sitting here behind my computer, my heart breaks over the irony of life. I, who see the farce in creating a life in computers, am stuck behind one watching from afar. If you're able to make Denver, go, participate, feel the power that comes from changing the world when holding hands with new friends and old comrades. You won't regret it. I'll be doing laundry, changing diapers, washing dishes in San Diego and shedding a few tears about being stuck in isolation while you are creating the world we want.

Let's take back our future. Peace!

April aka Overwhelm Your Local Environmental Activist Month

So April is drawing to an end thankfully. I used to really love April. All the flowers. The cool ocean breezes. The promise of warm ocean water and nights of fog.

Since forming the Friends of Rose Creek I've renamed April to "kill you local environmental activist month" (I left kill out of the post title as it seemed to easy to take it literally). San Diego Earth Fair is behind us. Great day. Lots of people stopped by our booth eager to learn about Rose Creek and our vision for the future. It was a twelve hour day for me not to mention the eight hours of preparation time over the prior two days. The last two hours at the fair I was doing squats in hiking boots and picking up cigarette butts, beer bottles and scraps of plastic.

Saturday is the Creek to Bay Cleanup - yet another massive day. We have a 40 yard roll off dumpster coming and hopefully 75 + volunteers to fill it in under three hours. Plus raffle prizes to give away, an ice cream social to plan. So I'm out humping for volunteers, trying to find people whose idea of an awesome Saturday morning is hauling sofas, tires and spray paint cans out of the creek. Logistics on this are huge and I haven't tracked my time.

There's trees that need to be watered weekly and a host of events I had to say no to because there is only so much a middle aged worn out woman can do. So I ask everyone, why does it have to happen in April? I know April 22 is Earth Day and having earth related events is cool. But what about March? Don't we love the earth in March? Or November or May?

I secretly suspect it is a plot to kill off environmental activists - maybe give us a heart attack or a nervous break down or leave us babbling in the corner. With the new greening of America, I would hope that loving the earth is an twelve month affair, but so far, the only real change I've seen is in corporate advertising. Go figure.