Good Morning Sun!
The sun is beautiful after the snow.
Sun Over Vineyard, After Snow
Sun on Base of Madrone, After Snow
Sun in Madrone, After Snow
Smell This
Emgold announced in a March 4, 2010 press release that it is offering its creditors the “opportunity” to convert debt Emgold owes them into Emgold stocks, which have continued to fall in price (from 35 cents/share Canadian just after consolidation in December to 25 cents today) …
Read full story here.
Benefit Concert for Woolman and the Peace Center
BENEFIT CONCERT
for
and
Peace and Justice Center of Nevada County
ABOUT EMMA’S REVOLUTION
With hauntingly beautiful harmonies and powerful acoustic instrumentals that deliver the energy and strength of their convictions, emma’s revolution writes songs that become traditions. “Peace, Salaam, Shalom” is sung around the world and has been called the “anthem of the anti-war movement.” Their song, “If I Give Your Name”won Grand Prize in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest and their music has been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and Pacifica’s “Democracy Now!”
emma’s revolution has traveled around the world from Canada, Chile, Korea, Scotland, England, Israel/Palestine, Nicaragua and Cuba and throughout the US spreading their message of peace and justice. As a duo, they’ve performed at hundreds of peace and justice events over the last eight years and over a 30 year period, Pat’s numbers reach into the thousands. In the spirit of Emma Goldman’s famous attribution, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution,” emma’s revolution brings their uprising of truth, hope and a dash of healthy irreverence to concerts and peace & justice events around the world.
Their CD “roots, rock & revolution” has been called “inspiring, gutsy & rockin’!” emma’s revolution is also currently touring in support of their new CD “We Came To Sing!”, a collaborative with the legendary activist singer Holly Near.
Submitted to Sierra Voices by Kathy Runyan, Advancement Director, The Woolman Semester.
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Editor’s Addition:
Here are a couple of beautiful examples of their work that I found by searching YouTube:
First, Pat Humphries and Sandy O perform “Drivin’ 5 to the Polls:”
And finally, this treat: A simple and moving rendition of Pat Humphries’ song, “Swimming to the Other Side,” sung by the G-E-T Middle School 8th Grades (with lyrics attached below):
ARTIST: Pat Humphries
TITLE: Swimming to the Other Side
Lyrics
{Refrain}
We are living 'neath the great Big Dipper
We are washed by the very same rain
We are swimming in the stream together
Some in power and some in pain
We can worship this ground we walk on
Cherishing the beings that we live beside
Loving spirits will live forever
We're all swimming to the other side
I am alone, and I am searching
Hungering for answers in my time
I am balanced at the brink of wisdom
I'm impatient to receive a sign
I move forward with my senses open
Imperfection, it be my crime
In humility I will listen
We're all swimming to the other side
{Refrain}
On this journey through thoughts and feelings
Binding intuition, my head, my heart
I am gathering the tools together
I'm preparing to do my part
All of those who have come before me
Band together and be my guide
Loving lessons that I will follow
We're all swimming to the other side
{Refrain}
When we get there we'll discover
All of the gifts we've been given to share
Have been with us since life's beginning
And we never noticed they were there
We can balance at the brink of wisdom
Never recognizing that we've arrived
Loving spirits will live together
We're all swimming to the other side
{Refrain}
Good Argument for Socialized Medicine
How do the countries of the rest of the industrialized world manage to provide health care for all of their citizens for 9 or 10 percent of GDP while the United States spent 17.3 percent of GDP in 2009, and is on track — even with the current proposals under consideration — to reach as much as one-third of GDP by 2050?
The answer, as Robert Kuttner explains, is “universal, socialized insurance.”
Apparently, in the rest of the “club of affluent countries” (excluding the US), national policy embodies the wisdom that an unregulated market is moderately efficient at producing profits but not at producing a fair distribution of social goods.
Kuttner explains:
In all of the debates about health care reform, one of the stubborn realities is that neither the Obama plan, nor any of the Republican alternatives, will seriously alter the trajectory of relentless cost-escalation in health care. If you look at the Administration’s own projections of federal deficits in the next decade and after 2020, virtually all of the alarming growth in deficit spending is Medicare and Medicaid.
… The consensus among the usual policy experts is that there is no good solution. The march of technology and demography will just continue to raise health costs.
But you can reach that conclusion only by ignoring how the rest of the club of affluent countries manages to insure everyone for 9 or 10 percent of GDP, and have a healthier and longer-lived population, to boot. They do it, of course, through universal, socialized insurance.
… The Canadians do it with a single payer system for the insurance part, but physicians are private. The Brits have an integrated National Health Service. The Germans achieve near-universal coverage through a system of nonprofit health insurance plans.
What every other nation has in common is that they have taken the commercialism out of their health systems. As a consequence, they can direct health spending to areas of medical need rather than letting the market direct health dollars to areas of greatest profit. And with everyone covered, they can use highly cost-effective strategies for prevention, wellness, and public health. That’s how you cover everyone for ten percent of GDP.
Kuttner has become uncharacteristically pessimistic. He feels that Obama has pretty much blown his best chance to succeed at health care reform.
Read the full article here: “The Cure That Dares Not Speak Its Name.”
Fascinating Water Talk at Wolf Creek Alliance
Nick Wilcox of NID addressed a full house at the monthly meeting this evening of the Wolf Creek Community Alliance. Nick, a water scientist and former member of the California Water Resources Control Board, gave his rapt audience a high-level overview — full of interesting anecdotes and packed with information — of water issues in California.
He began by describing California’s ten hydrologic regions, which all drain into the Delta (originally a freshwater marsh). He described the extraordinary history of engineering projects that led to the fragile, levee-encircled Delta we have today (fifteen feet below sea-level in some places).
“The Department of Water Resources has understood for a long time that the worst case scenario for the Delta is a significant earthquake centered there, which could collapse all the levees at once.”
“In five minutes,” he said, “the city of Los Angeles could lose its entire water supply.” He couldn’t venture a guess for how long.
For this reason, and others, he suggests that the Peripheral Canal would probably be a good idea.
He opposes the $11+ billion Water Bond on the November ballot, and he repeated the phrase I first heard from him at A.P.P.L.E.’s recent water presentation: “In California, water runs uphill toward money.”
Nick loves his subject, and he could have gone on for hours. He is so engaging that his audience could probably have also listened to and questioned him for hours.
Take heart, those of you who have not yet heard Nick Wilcox: He is one of the featured presenters on March 6th at the Nevada City Methodist Church for the conference, “Water: Sacred and Profaned.”
