Macska Moksha Press

Breakfasts with the White-Tailed Sand & Seed Lovers

June 21, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Mrs. Stubbs (Ammospermophilus leucurus), eating sunflower seeds

Mrs. Stubbs, eating sunflower seeds

While in Joshua Tree, California, this Spring, we met a delightful animal whose scientific name, Ammospermophilus leucurus, literally translates as “white-tailed sand and seed lover”. Commonly known as the White-Tailed Antelope Ground Squirrel, this creature is native to the southwestern U.S.A. and Baja California, Mexico. Although they are technically squirrels, because of their small size we couldn’t help but to think of them as “chipmunks” and to call them “chippees.”

The first one who started showing up by the door when we went outside had a shorter-than-usual tail from a past injury and a plump-ish matronly shape, so we named her “Mrs. Stubbs.”
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How Green Is Your Pot? Questions for Conscientious Cannabis Consumers

April 19, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

How green is it?

It’s not news that marijuana is becoming mainstream in the U.S., and as legal restrictions loosen and social acceptance grows, the amount of marijuana being cultivated is rising rapidly. A big business is getting bigger. The cottage-days of the industry were left behind in the 1980’s and if anything holds true in the American economic system, it’s that larger scale brings lower quality and greater damage.

Conventional food agriculture is a case in point: it wreaks havoc on ecosystems, its products are unhealthy, and the farmwork itself is underpaid and dangerous. As these facts have been publicized, many people have become rightly concerned about where their food comes from. The same questions that can and should be asked about produce — Was it sprayed? Is it free of contaminants? Were the workers mistreated? — can and should be brought to bear against marijuana now.
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Ecosystems At Risk, #1: The Belly Plants of the Pebble Plains

April 18, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

A tiny geological treasure can be found in the San Bernadino Mountains of southern California: the “Pebble Plains.” Located near the famous ski town of Big Bear Lake, this 92 square-mile area exhibits a soil type found nowhere else in the world, a combination of clay and quartz fragments left behind by a glacier lake that existed during the Pleistocene Era. Over the last 10,000 years, these ingredients have been subject to repeated swelling and shrinking from the freezes at that altitude (6000-7500 feet) and the sun’s heat at that latitude (34° North), resulting in a unique composition.

Tiny botanical treasures are also found there, collectively called, “Belly Plants” because they are so small you have to get down on your belly to see them. About a dozen of these plant species are found nowhere else in the world, having evolved there in isolation, adapting to the unique soil.

Like many other ecosystems worldwide, this one is at risk from the effects of Climate Change.
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Your Money or Your Life: Can We Afford to Work for Peanuts?

March 16, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

The author, with the giant peanut of Orick, California. Photo by Nikki Hill.

In Orick, California, there is a giant wooden peanut – over twelve feet long, six feet tall and weighing nine tons – carved from a single chunk of old-growth redwood. It was sculpted by local loggers in 1978, during the Carter administration, and brought to Washington, D.C., to protest the proposed expansion of Redwood National Park. Their message: “It may be peanuts to you, but it’s jobs to us.” To the loggers’ chagrin, the peanut was ignored and the Park expanded anyway, removing 48,000 acres from the reach of their axes. Now the rough-hewn sculpture sits unceremoniously at the south end of town, steadily wearing away under the effects of vandalism and the elements. No plaque tells its story; you have to know what you’re looking for, and even what you’re looking at.
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Refugees Without Legs: How Climate Change Leaves No Room for “Invasive Species” Theory

March 14, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Common Holly (Ilex species)

In the Summer of 2012, I met a Shoshone-trained elder named Finisia Medrano. (The story of that meeting is told in “Postcard from Eastern Oregon: When Planting Food is Illegal”). She has spent decades following the routes and practices of the ancient migratory “Hoop” of the Great Basin Native Americans, harvesting and cultivating wild food seasonally. In so doing, she has safeguarded vanishing knowledge and made invaluable observations of the ecosystems in an area spanning several states. Over that time she has witnessed the undeniable effects of Climate Change.

“Refugees without legs:” this is the phrase Finisia uses to describe the status of many species of native plants which were traditional staple foods for indigenous Americans that are now threatened in their current ecosystems by the effects of Climate Change. Temperature extremes, atypical rainfall patterns, and disturbances in seasonal patterns are all taking a tangible toll, disrupting cycles of sprout, flower, seed and root growth which had been stable for millenia. And at a rate that is fast and getting faster. Finisia insists that if these plants are going to survive – as viable species and as food sources – that they will need to be relocated to different areas, further north and/or to higher elevations, and that people will need to do the relocating. We, humans, have made them refugees, and we, humans, must be their legs so they can flee. The speed of Climate Change has already outpaced the ability of plants to migrate on their own as they might have in response to previous, more gradual shifts.

“Refugees without Legs”: This phrase, and its implicit call to action, has been rattling around in my head since I first heard Finisia use it. Indeed, humans have induced Climate Change, and I agree that with that culpability comes responsibility. Creatures are suffering who had no role in the destruction we are wreaking. If we are going to attempt to mitigate the change that has already occurred and try to prevent further change – as daunting as these tasks are – then what we must change first is our own minds; we need to adopt new ideas and practices, and discard those that have become irrelevant and counter-productive. One such idea and practice that we must now reject is that of so-called “Invasive Species.”

My Favorite Mesopredator -or- Never Trust Anyone Who Doesn’t Like Cats

March 14, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

“The way to get on with a cat is to treat it as an equal – or even better, as the superior it knows itself to be.” (Elizabeth Peters, Egyptologist and mystery writer)

Hanging out in the straw, the picture of "cute." All kittens become cats. Enjoy them every moment at this age.

Hanging out in some straw, the picture of “cute”

The worship of cats by the ancient Egyptians is well-known. It has been surmised that this deification occurred because cats saved the Egyptians from starvation. The Nile River valley was amazingly fertile due to annual flooding so food could be grown in great abundance, but the granaries were infested by rodents. Enter the cat, hunter of rat. When the people of the Pharaohs befriended Felis sylvestris lybica, their days of belt-tightening were over. Now there was enough to go around the whole year. Hence the literal elevation of cats onto pedestals. This cultural reverence was carried down to the individual level: when an Egyptian household’s feline died, the whole family would shave off their eyebrows. Their tragedy was thus announced publicly and without shame to friends and neighbors in a fashion that was undeniably (pause) in-your-face.

Fast-forward a few thousand years and the cat’s worthiness was no longer as appreciated: During the Dark Ages in Europe the Church somehow got it into its head that cats were of the devil and needed to be eradicated. Perhaps bounties were offered; whatever the motivation, many people took up this ridiculous crusade (is there any other kind?), and cats were decimated. What happened next? Rats bred unchecked and spread The Plague, killing at least a third of the population of Europe. This is why cats look so smug to this day. “Not so fast,” they seem to be saying in response to any treatment that is less-than-deifying. “Remember what happened last time? We do…”
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Postcard From Eastern Oregon: When planting food is illegal

March 14, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

[Originally published on Energy Bulletin, September 2012]
This Spring my farming partners and I found ourselves landless. For the past eight years, we had been actively exploring a variety of forms and practices of small-scale agriculture and restoration, including bicycle-based urban farming, CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), plant-breeding and seed-saving, staple crops (grains, legumes and oilseeds) and the cultivation and processing of medicinal herbs (no, not pot). Last year I wrote an article, “Who Will Feed The People?”, discussing the challenges to small-scale agriculture in the United States, such as lack of equipment, knowledge, financial resources, and markets; the polluted wasteland left behind by conventional farming; increasingly volatile and unpredictable weather patterns brought by Climate Change; and, last but not least, the social barriers: people of the U.S. are by and large uninterested in significant changes to the socio-economic status quo, and resist cutting edge projects. It was the social factor — which can and did embody a profound hostility to Truth — that brought down our own farming efforts, at least for now.

With sadness and anger, we put our tools and seeds in storage, found foster homes for our perennial medicinals, and raised traveling cash by selling our home (a school bus) and an old but reliable Volvo. After tearfully parting with our beloved farm cat, two of us hit the road in an old pickup to see what we could see.

This journey took us to Eastern Oregon to seek out Finisia Medrano, a.k.a. “Tranny Granny”, a Shoshone-trained elder who knows the ways of “The Hoop”, an ancient tradition of food gathering and cultivation that sustained the Native Americans and the land in good health for thousands of years until being violently disrupted by the European Invasion. The Hoop is not dead but, as we were to see, is severely threatened.
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RIP: Fugz the Farmcat, 2010-2012

March 14, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Fugz, with Tulsi Basil harvest

This piece was originally posted at Daggawalla Seeds & Herbs, 1/7/13.

On December 27, 2012, Fugz the Farmcat was hit by a car and died. From the appearance of his injuries, it seems that cause of death was head-trauma, so he likely died very quickly, if not instantly. He was slightly over two and a half years old and was initially survived by at least 12 progeny. However, his son, Oscar de la Rentoes, followed his father in death the very next day, 20+ miles away, in Portland.

Nikki & I were both devastated, and felt very very sad. Fugz was a dear companion to both of us and had been with us at our new home for only six days when this happened. This was the first time we were able to live in the same place with him for a year. During that whole time, for most of 2012, we were focused on finding a place to settle and farm where we could live with him again. In a society as alienating and lonely as ours, there are few humans who can be as true in their loving as a cat, and Fugz was an especially loving cat. When we took him to the vet this summer, the doctor asked if we had bottle-weaned him — we didn’t — because his demeanor was so mellow.

Who Will Feed the People? Obstacles to Small-Scale Agriculture in the USA

March 14, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

The author with a high-wheel cultivator

“In the future, more people will have to grow their own food” has become a truism among pundits and observers who are paying attention to the changing state of western industrial civilization, and of the U.S. in particular. Declining energy resources, ecological degradation, and global financial disolution are a few of the trends that are and will be impacting agriculture-as-we-know-it, and forcing agriculture-as-it-will-be.

That chemical-based farming is a failing experiment has been well-documented elsewhere; numerous books and articles have explored declining soil fertility, chemically-resistant weeds and pests, the tainting and depletion of irrigation water, the shrinking diversity of seeds, the dangers of genetically modified crops, and the plummeting nutritional value of fruit, vegetables, and grains. I will not reiterate these issues here, except through examples that address my points, which concern the future of agriculture.

The “need” for a smaller-scale, non-chemical-based agriculture is clear. So are the attributes that it must have. This agriculture will be regionally-based, because the means for shipping produce around the world will no longer be profitable. This agriculture will be based more on animal power (two-legged and four-legged), because machines will be few, and the fuel for them too expensive or unavailable. This agriculture will focus on soil-building rather than chemicals, because the chemicals are sourced from the same raw materials that make the fuel. This agriculture will break with monocropping over hundreds of acres and instead utilize small parcels intercropped. And, this agriculture will have to involve much more than 2% of the population, even if that population is in decline.

I must mention that, in my opinion, the forces at work in the world today — energy, ecology, economics — are of such a large scale and their inertia so powerful that we are being coy when we say we “need” to switch to a smaller-scale, non-chemical agriculture. I suspect that we “will be” making that switch, like it or not, planned or not. No need to rally for the ball that was tossed in the air to come back down. It’s on its way, like all things that go up. But the transition — the beginning of which we are living to see right now — is a very tricky one, to say the least!
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101 Photos of Cats I Have Loved

March 7, 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Me & Sylvio: On the day we found him and his litter-mates. We were fast friends.

“Time spent with a cat is never wasted.”
(Colette, French novelist)

It is only fitting that the first post on this website should be dedicated to cats. I personally befriended each and every one of the cats and kittens pictured in this gallery. A few I met only once, others I knew for years. Some have since died. All were a joy.

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