unrelenting ambiguity

I was walking to somewhere in my neighborhood recently, or more accurately, coming home from having walked to somewhere in my neighborhood, when I saw a curious bumper sticker.

It was an old stationwagon, one that makes me think of the 80’s, though it is more likely from the 90’s. What kind? Well, sort of blue, I’d say. The house at whose curb it is parked is an unassuming and pleasant house, with a porch on which I never see people sit. Of course in this neighborhood they’re either fantastically wealthy (they have a house, after all), or they’ve lived here for a long time. I’m guessing the latter.

The bumpersticker appears to be a campaign bumpersticker. The normal type, some name, some slogan, some year. The year is 2008, and the slogan is “why vote for a lesser evil?”

And this is an interesting thought. Are we ever completely happy with our choices when it comes to elected officials? Or potentially elected officials? I don’t think I am. I might agree with them on certain issues, and be absolutely disappointed, sometimes to the point of disgust, with their stance on other issues. I’m tired of the two-party system, and I think many people would heartily welcome the ability to vote for someone on the basis of their merit, feeling like worthy candidates had a chance, that it was up to the entire body of citizens to have a say, and all that without being told that we were “throwing away our vote.”

As if voting for the “lesser evil” isn’t doing the same, really.

And so the bumper sticker caught my eye. I wasn’t sure, at first, whether it was a joke, or just a candidate I’d never heard of. I saw reference to the name a couple weeks later, as it happens, and that question was answered for me.

But was it really a joke? If it was, it was a thought-provoking one, at least for me. And perhaps that’s the point. A dark-humored joke that’s not quite as funny as it could have been, because it hits a bit too close to home.

Well there’s always the ability to write in our candidate of choice, after all.

An odd topic, if you knew me!

Here’s what got me started – it goes back to Northern Exposure! I was telling a coworker about the Worldwide Church of Truth and Beauty that Chris, my favorite NE character, was part of. Also known as the Universal Life Church. This ended up in a conversation about marriages, specificly the performance of them. And the legality of the performance.

First, I’m clearly not the only person who starts thinking about these things! I googled and the first thing that came up was a NY Times article, Great Wedding! But was it legal?, which you might need to sign in to read. The article does a good job of discussing the issue and some of the details, and I recommend reading it if you are curious!

The path my mind was following was slightly different. Marriage is a legal contract for sure, and often has spiritual/religious connotations as well. Though clearly atheists get married also, which makes marriage’s intersection with religion a “sometimes” not “always” occurrence. In various cultures there were accepted sort of interim marriages. The handfasting in Ireland and Scotland comes to mind, of course, but also in the Western United States, when it was being settled, and not every town had a minister and there was no government to speak of, people would very often live as if they were married, and would for all intents BE married, and the ceremony would be performed the next time the minister came through town.

Currently in this country there are common law marriages in, I believe, 12 states, which require that people live together as if they were married for a certain amount of time. Colorado and Montana also have something similar, but slightly different in an interesting (to me) way: putative marriage.

In Colorado, which is typical, “Any person who has cohabited with another person to whom he is not legally marriaged in the good faith belief that he was married to that person is a putative spouse until knowledge of the fact that he is not legally married terminates his status and prevents acquisition of further rights.” Section 14-2-111, Colorado Revised Statutes.

Putative spouse status is a remedial doctrine designed to protect the reasonable expectations of someone who acts on the belief that they are married, and generally entitled a putative spouse to the rights a legal spouse would have for the period from the putative marriage until discovery that the marriage was not legal. It is possible that a person could have both a legal spouse and someone is a putative spouse^[clarify], in which case, courts are directed to do what seems appropriate in the circumstances.

Unlike a common law marriage, which is possible only when both spouses are legally eligible to marry, putative spouse status can be unilateral. For example, if a husband is married, but goes through a marriage ceremony without informing the woman with whom he goes through with the ceremony of that fact, the husband is not a putative spouse, because he knows that he has no right to marry. The wife however is a putative spouse because she in good faith believes that she is married, and has no knowledge that she is not legally married. See, e.g. Carndell v. Resley, 804 P.2d 272 (Colo. App. 1990) and Williams v. Fireman’s Fund Ins. Co., 670 P.2d 453 (Colo. App. 1983).

In the example above, the putative wife who believed she was married could seek the property division and alimony awards that a legal spouse could have, when the putative spouse discovers that she is not legally married, but the man she believed she was married to could not seek a property division of property in the putative wife’s name or alimony from her, because he knew that they weren’t married.

So, all those different definitions of what it takes to be legally married, sometimes needing no officiates at all. Sometimes needing a church official, other times certain government officials. And then there are the online ministries where you can purchase a minister’s license (or pope’s! It is a pretty good bargain.), which is where it starts to get a little more cloudy legally. There are four states that outright do not recognize someone as a minister if they became a minister only to perform a marriage ceremony (as states the wording in connecticut) or in other places if the minister has no congregation. Well, it isn’t that hard to get a congregation, I’m sure. I never left my friend, Adrian’s, congregation, so technically I’ve been a member of his ULC congregation for over 10 years!

Still, no matter how you look at it, not all places will recognize a ULC minister as legally able to officiate a wedding.

Captains, at least according to legend, are legally able to marry people at sea, right? Well, it is a little more complicated than that, but then, isn’t it always? The important thing is that sometimes, someplaces, it is legal! And apparently just about everywhere, all it takes to perform a marriage is to be a notary. This actually makes a lot of sense to me.

Okay, so in my general thought meanderings here, I’ve come up with three general types of people who can perform marriage ceremonies:

• ministers
• captains of boats (sometimes)
• certain government officials

And this makes me think more about this institution of marriage, and why it matters who performs it.

Aside from obvious religious motivations, back in the olden days in England, it was the parish ministers or maybe curates who kept the record books for the region. Marriages were recorded in the local book, and that is what was used to prove legality or precedence or whatever needed to be proven. That goes back to when government was a loosely organized thing, where the “lord of the manor” was very often the magistrate for the region, purely by virtue of being born to the position, surely not by any training or talent. I’d bet it was because the rich lords were the ones most likely to be able to read and write the necessary records.

At least for weddings performed by the Church of England, you still need the “banns” read at three different services before the wedding. In two provinces of Canada the banns are also required to be read, and the banns, or posting public notice of the upcoming wedding, can take place of a wedding license.

In the Canadian province of Ontario, the publication of banns for three consecutive weeks remains a legal alternative to obtaining a marriage license. Two same-sex couples married this way at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto on January 14, 2001, since the province was not then issuing marriage licences to same-sex couples. The marriages were ruled valid in 2003. See Same-sex marriage in Ontario.

In the Canadian province of Québec, equivalent formalities are required for all marriages, although the statutes do not use the word “banns”. There is no requirement for a government-issued license, but a written notice must be posted at the place of the wedding for 20 days beforehand, and the officiant verifies the eligibility of the intended spouses.

Quite a tangent I’m on! It makes a lot of sense, historically, that it fell on ministers to perform the majority of weddings, and why the cross-function existed where they were able to legalize a union despite being in a religious position, rather than governmental, though a marriage is a legal contract. (Who performed their own marriages, I wonder?) Then again, when weddings were performed in those days, women were property, not individuals, and they had no rights of their own.

One of the functions the minister or curate of old would probably perform is checking, to the best of their ability, for the existence of prior and still valid marriages. Since people would go to their local churches to get married, it was also a verification that people were who they said they were.

This is all very interesting to me, but in the end, I think that since marriage is a legal contract, regardless of whether it is also a religious undertaking for the individuals involved, that them signing the contract is what should make it legal, not necessarily who is there to witness the signing. Yet it does makes sense to me that a notary has the official “power” to witness and perform a wedding ceremony, so I suppose what I really mean is that I think there should be the same requirement for anyone performing a wedding ceremony that is meant to be legally binding: they should be a notary, whether they are a minister or a ship’s captain, or your best friend who you’ve always wanted to be the one to do the ceremony for you.

A notary public is an officer who can administer oaths and statutory declarations, witness and authenticate documents and perform certain other acts depending on the jurisdiction.

So, what was the point of all that? Just something my mind got on that I turned into a long and boring post!

FightingWindmills wrote a post today about workers rights; specifically about the coalition of agricultural workers in Florida. We’ve probably all heard at least bits and pieces of this issue, which is essentially that these workers want the fast food chains to pay them a higher (aka living) wage. These workers work hard, but the fast food chains have an immense amount of power, because they are so huge and purchase such a quantity of things like tomatoes that they dictate prices more than a smaller organization could. I’m not going to look up to make sure I’m accurate, since I’m running out of time tonight for blogging, but if I remember correctly one of the other issues with the fast food chains is that some of them owned some of the farms, and thus the tomato pickers are essentially direct employees. In an economically depressed area. Another way of saying this is that the largest employer in an economically depressed area has almost complete control over the wages it will pay.

Anyway, go read FightingWindmill’s post on the workers, and her own question of what can she do to make change, to support these people, to live in a way that’s more sustainable and less wasteful.

I made a really long comment on there, but the whole issue, the question, the post, it all made me think about consumption in general terms. I’m vegan, so I think about consumption A LOT. The animals I work to help are all victims of human consumption on some level. Religious sacrifice, milk, eggs, meat, entertainment, humans have found no end of “use” for these animals, who are given no choice in the matter. Humans are so driven to consume, it is scary sometimes. And at least in the U.S., we are so unbelievably wasteful. For political reasons, a huge amount of grain rots in silos in the midwest, farmers are paid to not sell these crops, and meanwhile children half a world away are starving to death. You don’t have to actually go half a world away to find children starving to death of course, but Darfur is a really huge example.

Did you know that during that horrible famine in Ethiopia in teh 80’s, they were exporting food?

Politics is at the heart of world hunger, yet sustainability is an ever increasingly important issue. The human population is ever increasing. We have to think about sustainability.

It isn’t just about food, though. It is everything we “consume”, by which I mean everything we purchase. We need to think about the “stuff”. Do we need it? If we need it, is there an environmentally friendly and sustainable alternative to the plastic junk that we’re looking at in the store? Is the wooden furniture and paper products from old growth forests? Are we conserving energy and water, are we thinking about our STUFF?

We need to. A couple links to check out:

• Diet for a Dead Planet
• Food Empowerment Project
• Food Not Lawns

But really, please go watch this video, The Story of Stuff . It is a 20 minute video that talks about, well, stuff. It is important for all of us, for all of these issues: environment, human rights, worker rights, sustainability, and on and on. It is all connected. WE are all connected.

Service annoucement of a sort: WordPress bought Gravatar a while back, and the gravatar service now works on wordpress blogs. Here’s what they say:

So we’ve enabled Gravatar support for all of WordPress.com.

What’s that mean? When you have a WordPress.com account you can have an avatar by your comment, but now if someone isn’t logged in or registered but they have a Gravatar attached to their email account that will show up by their comments too.

This isn’t just for WordPress blogs, either. Any site that has Gravatar enabled will let you take your avatar with you. All the wordpress bloggers already know this (I’d assume), and as long as they’re logged in I imagine they don’t care in any case when they’re commenting on wordpress blogs! So this is for anyone else who might be interested.

Rich, talking to that guy today about NYC restaurants has me in a serious Sacred Chow crave!

I was at the bookstore yesterday, glancing at the calendars. Mostly, I admit, because I’m getting curious about specific aspects of other people’s photography, what I think makes it speak. Calendars are not a good place to look, I concluded, with one exception. I found this calendar, Urban Trails, which is filled with pictures of and brief stories of Alley Cats. The pictures were compelling, the particular publisher only publishes on recycled paper, and I made note of the web site.

And I’m yet more impressed. I know a lot of people involved with feral cats, I often mean to get involved myself, but I never see them in my area. Some people, it sounds weird, but seriously some people must have this silent call, and stray dogs or cats find them. I’m not one of them, but I know many people who are always finding animals that need rescuing.

Anyway, I still plan at some point to help out a feral group in my area that does TNR. I don’t know what form my help will be in, but the plan is there.

So reading the associated website was fascinating, and heartening. These are people who really see these alley cats, and see them as thinking, feeling individuals. The photographer captures their heart, soul, and personality in the photographs, as well as the grim reality of their lives.

It is beautiful, really, what they do. Visually as well as the lives they save, the suffering they prevent. (They do TNR, in case anyone is wondering.)

I urge you all to check out their site, and read the stories, view the photos.

Remember these pictures with more than your minds. Remember them with your hearts and consider. . . . .

Homelessness, with all its loneliness, deprivation, hunger, illness, fear, prejudice and cruelty, is not just a human condition.

Like humans, alley cats love, explore, play to exhaustion, frolic, and even dance.

Often alley cats, like people, find themselves in situations that call for sheer guts.

As with human babies, alley kittens can be exquisitely beautiful or truly unsightly.

Some alley cats, as some people, must bear either physical or emotional scars for life.

When you see our pictures, allow yourselves to feel. Cats exist with us, fellow travelers in this universe. They are not an inferior species, simply one on a different plane.

And here’s one of my favorite former ferals, who adopted one of my favorite humans.

My mind churns a lot. Sometimes the effect is more like endless paging, or churning, which is a computer term when the virtual memory swaps constantly, and the computer’s processing is taken up by the VM swapping and nothing actually gets done or processed. In human terms, this would be if you were multitasking to the point that you spent all of your time looking from one task to the next, but never actually working on any of those tasks.

Sometimes my mind’s endless “on” means that I travel down the well-worn negative thought paths. I read to escape this. It helps me relax, but something I notice when I’m in a heavy fiction reading period: I live more and more in my fantasy world. I think about the novels, which isn’t a bad thing, but I live them in a way, as well as other scenarios. I avoid thinking about my life, I avoid being present in my life.

This is normal to a point, but it is balance I need to find. At what point am I just going through the day to day motions instead of living my life? At what point is living in that fantasy world simply a way to avoid facing life itself?

I will always need to escape sometimes, because that might very well be the only way for my mind to relax, take a vacation. And recharge. But the catch is that no matter how far or fast I travel in reality, dreamscapes, or fantasies, I’m still here waiting when I return. The escape isn’t real. Sometimes that’s okay. Sometimes it is frustrating.

So, conscious living. That’s probably a term that has a lot of meanings – for me, it is about living in the moment, about feeling connected to others instead of separate, alien.

It is a goal, clearly.

We did a shoulder stand today in yoga class. I don’t remember what it was called. We also did tiki something or other, aka firefly. That was hard for me – I couldn’t get my hands flat on the mat behind my heels, so I couldn’t really do it. But then we did crow, which I’m an old hand at, and so that was fun. It was a lot of upper body via hip openers (we were befuddled too, until our yoga teacher showed us!), and so it is really no surprise that there was a shoulder stand in there.

My left shoulder comes out of joint. Always has. Loose ligaments, shallow joint, I’m what the doctor called a “voluntary dislocator.” I don’t know how medical of a term that is, but what he meant is that he couldn’t get the damn thing out of joint when he was examining it, but as soon as he asked me to show him, I slipped that sucker right out of joint. And yes, the ball really is coming right out of the socket. And no, it doesn’t hurt.

Except that time I was doing too much Butterfly at swim practice, and my shoulder finally had enough and slammed in and out. I’ve always been wary of it since then.

Even Downdog can be a challenge if my shoulder is tired. I was nervous about the shoulder stand, but I pushed through that. Wait, that’s getting ahead of myself – when we started out, it was in the general position of doing downdog, but instead of tipping down on your hands, you are on your forearms. So then we sent one leg at a time up in the air, to get a feeling for it, but that never really helps me, maybe because I’m neither flexible enough nor strong enough to get the leg up very far. So finally, I took a breath and kicked up. I didn’t get very far that first time, but wow.

There is something about going upside down. We do it all the time as kids, and think nothing of it. It is so natural, so much something to not fear. And then we stop doing it, and our bodies change and it becomes scary again. Maybe we are just no longer used to falling.

I didn’t mind not getting my legs all the way up the first time I kicked up. I just was amazed at how it felt to be free for that instant. I did make it up after that – the fear was gone, the hope and joy was there. I was able to hold it fairly well once I was up as well, and I definitely was working my shoulder. It stayed in joint. I was very happy.

I was looking forward to class all week – it is the highlight of my week, and Jacob shows you pretty much how I feel afterwards, which probably tells you why I look forward to it so much.

I don’t know exactly why, but lately I’ve been thinking about a TV show that I used to watch. If you know me very well, you know this automatically dates the TV show at least 10 years. In this case, it is closer to 20, but not quite. I believe I was in high school when I watched it. Northern Exposure? Anyone remember that show?

What I liked most about the show was Chris, the radio dj, philosopher, ex-con. It seemed to me that only in a place like whereverthatwas, Alaska would an ex-con be listened to, as someone who had something to say, even if (as I learned on the show) he was no longer allowed to participate in the workings of this country.

People who have been convicted of felonies (and sometimes people who have been dishonorably discharged from the military; depends on the state) are not allowed to vote. This is called disenfranchisement, and it is not limited to people who have been convicted of felonies. It is anyone who is not allowed to vote, whether intentionally (laws) or unintentionally. Well, to me the “unintentionally” requires a bit of trust in humankind, which I’m lacking, so I think of it as not allowing people to vote through intimidation or indirectly through the result of certain kinds of laws. (Some argue, for example, that getting rid of the electoral college and going to a participatory democracy rather than representative would leave people in less densely populated areas with less of a voice, a form of disenfranchisement, though they would legally retain the right and ability to vote.) I’ve heard the term used more casually as well; perhaps the dismal state of politics leads to apathy, which could be considered its own form of disenfranchisement.

For some reason this is fascinating me right now. Read up on it at the Wiki for more information and sources, but some of the highlights that caught my attention:

Voters in the District of Columbia, the U.S. capital, are subject to a partial disfranchisement: they are not represented in Congress. Until the passage of the Twenty-Third Amendment in 1961, they did not get to vote in presidential elections. Prior to the District of Columbia Home Rule Act in 1973, they did not elect their own mayor.

[Deb’s exclamation: they didn’t elect their own mayor until 1973?!! Then again, Lichtenstein didn’t give women the right to vote until 1984 and Switzerland in 1971.]

An example of unintentional disfranchisement of a group of people is expounded by supporters of the U.S. Electoral College. Briefly, electoral college supporters feel that strict majority vote would disfranchise the mostly rural American West, by denying them the ability to ever influence an election due to their small numbers. This would be unintentional disfranchisement as it is an effect of the change, not a direct goal of the change in voting law.

Another example is the disfranchisement of entire groups of people, such as fathers, women, unmarried or non-custodial parents, various racial, ethnic or religious minorities depending on the country, or members of some political groups. This has led to warfare, as in the case of the American Revolutionary War (the cry “No taxation without representation” conveys this message). This is a good example of the intentional disfranchisement of a group of people (British colonists in America) by the government in Britain. Similarly, the US citizens of Puerto Rico are subjected to many U.S. laws and in the past, have been conscripted to fight in US wars, but they have no Congressional representation or vote in presidential elections. Puerto Rico residents are subject to most U.S. taxes but are generally not subject to U.S. income tax laws unless they work for the U.S. Government or fall under various other exceptions.

Minors under the voting age are also disenfranchised. While this is supported by the idea that minors lack the capacity to cast an independent vote, minors are almost always subject to taxation by state and federal governments.

(That all came from the Wiki.)

I live in the DC metro area, and one thing that becomes a very common site is the license-plates-as-activism, the vast majority of the DC plates proclaiming “Taxation Without Representation” echoing the rallying cry of the American Revolution. Amazingly (or not so much, depending on your perspective) there is a lot of resistance to giving people in DC representation. I’ve heard things like, “they can vote for the president, that’s their representation,” which shows quite a bit of ignorance as to what our representatives are meant to do for us. Regardless, Bush can’t be considered the chosen representative of the bluest area of the country! I’m frankly amazed that anyone would resist giving a population of people representation in the government. If you want to learn more, DC Vote has a lot of info, including things you can do. After all, those of us with representation in the government (i.e., living in states and commonwealths other than D.C.) are the ones who have to urge our representatives to give the folks of DC the vote. The folks of DC don’t get a vote on whether they get a vote!

But then consider Puerto Rico, with even less say in the government, as in NONE, and yet they can be conscripted to wars that “our” government decides to wage, and they also have to pay taxes. Just not income taxes. If I were living in PR, I’d be making it a point to only buy used goods, assuming that used goods had no tax. Is that true?

As far as disenfranchisement while serving sentances goes, the UK has a blanket ban, while other countries (including places we don’t think of as especially concerned with human rights issues, such as China) generally allow convicts to vote, unless disenfranchisement is part of their sentence, generally reserved for crimes against the state. (Which leaves an awful lot of room.)

And while there are a few states in the U.S. that allow convicts to vote, there are also a number of states that ban ex-cons from voting forevermore. According to Wiki, there are 10 states that permanently remove voting rights from people convicted of felonies, and you can check out a grid of all the states and their rules here: State Felon Disenfranchisement.

This brings me back to Northern Exposure, and Chris. Current laws state that in Alaska, you are allowed to vote again once you’ve completed your sentence and any probation time that you might have on top of actual incarceration. So it is probable that my memories of Chris’ musings are a bit murky after all this time, and that he was on probation, but would be allowed to vote at some future time.

Regardless, the Wiki agrees with the rest of my recollections of Chris:

Chris is perhaps Cicely‘s most poetic soul, given to reading Walt Whitman, Carl Jung, and Maurice Sendak on the air. Studying philosophy has given him a generally calm demeanor, but he has his limits. His boss, Maurice Minnifield tried adopting him with disastrous results when Maurice became a little too controlling; after one particularly frustrating afternoon with Maurice, Chris politely told his boss to shove it and stormed off to get a drink.

Chris is also Cicely‘s only clergyman, ordained in the “Worldwide Church of Truth and Beauty” when he answered an advertisement in Rolling Stone; as such he once took Shelly Tambo‘s confession, divorced her from her high school sweetheart and married her to Holling Vincoeur, as well as marrying Adam and Eve.

Chris is self-taught in physics, which he loves to discuss. In the episode, “The Graduate,” Chris completes his correspondence course in English literature by defending his Master’s thesis.

I’d completely missed the “Worldwide Church of Truth and Beauty” part of his persona, though I recognize the church under it’s more common name of the Universal Life Church. I joined a friend’s congregation in college, amused by his $5 minister certificate. “For $10 I could have been a pope!”my college friend was fond of saying. I do remember Chris’ many discussions on physics though, and how much it impressed me!

Weekend Snapshot again!

My weekends very often have the same routine – the sanctuary on Saturdays and yoga on Sundays – but the events that make up my routine are never themselves routine, and so I continue to enjoy them week after week.

This weekend at the sanctuary the peacock, Edward, was in a very male kind of mood! He was constantly displaying, which is not his usual behavior at all. There are unfortunately no peahens for him to show off to, and so he was reduced to displaying for the chickens, who did not seem at all impressed!

In fact, one of the roosters (himself a gorgeous fellow) crowed while Edward was showing off. He ignored the humans, who were very impressed with his display! You can see from these different pictures and different angles how the feathers can look quite bland or extremely eye-catching, depending on how the light is hitting them. It was quite overcast on Saturday, so despite his best efforts, Edwards feathers really weren’t shown at their best!

And since most people have probably seen pictures of peacocks in full display from the front, but not the back, I thought I’d show both. It is funny – as colorful as they are from the front, they wear quite somber colors in the back!

Peacocks and those “eyes” in their tail feathers have fascinated humans for a really long time. If you’re interested in learning the Greek mythology version of how Peacocks and their feathers came to be, read about Zeus’ seduction of Io!

My awareness of current nuclear issues started at the ani concerts I went to in November – a NIRS rep gave a quick talk on why we should all call our congress people and senators to urge them to remove the loan guarantee for nuclear reactors from the energy bill. There are many reasons to be against nuclear energy, here is a quick list for you:

1. It is not safe; despite improvements, nuclear reactors come with a very real and very deadly risk.
2. It is not clean; no country in the world has solved the “waste” problem, and all reactors emit radiation. This country continually tries to hide the problem by burying the extremely dirty (in that radioactive sense) waste byproduct on the land of native americans. This is one example of environmental racism.
3. It is incredibly expensive, AND the only way the reactors can be built is with taxpayer money.
4. We have better, cheaper, faster, safer, cleaner options: solar and wind, to name two.
5. In a country that has been targeted in the not-so-distant past by terrorism and which has no reason to expect the danger of more attacks to diminish, is it not the height of insanity to build the very first new reactor 30 miles from the nation’s capital?

Solar is cheaper, so is wind. Both could provide more than enough power, both could be put in place far far faster than the 10 or so years it would take to build a nuclear reactor. Both are cheaper and safer, and both are a hell of a lot less deadly to the earth and its inhabitants.

Here’s the email I got today:

Fellow Green Energy Advocates:

We have won a great victory, but now face a critical last-ditch
fight.

Thanks in part to your efforts, the Congressional leadership has
removed proposed loan guarantees from the Energy Bill. Spearheaded
by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid, we took a great step forward for a
green-powered future.

But now $25 billion in loan guarantees for new reactors, plus $2
billion for uranium enrichment, have been introduced into the
Omnibus Appropriations Bill. It will take all our renewed
energies to get them removed, as we did from the Energy Bill.

Nukefree.org is committed to this effort, and we are calling on
you to continue your support for a safe-energy future. Please
take a moment to call your Senators and Representatives, and to
also call the offices of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell,
House Minority Leader John Boehner, Senate Appropriations
Committee Chair Robert Byrd, House Appropriations Committee Chair
David Obey, as well as Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi
and tell them to remove the $25 billion in nuclear loan guarantees
from the Omnibus Appropriations Bill.

To contact Senators, phone the Senate switchboard and they will
connect you: (202) 224-3121.
To contact Representatives, contact the House switchboard at
(202) 225-3121.

We know it’s the weekend, but MESSAGES ON VOICE MAIL at
Congressional offices do get counted, as do FAXES. And if you can
call or FAX again Monday morning, that would be great. The final
vote may not come until Tuesday. Here’s the basic message:

Dear Representative/Senator _________,

I’m writing to urge you to remove the $25 billion in nuclear loan
guarantees from the Omnibus Appropriations Bill currently under
consideration.

Nuclear reactors have 50 years of proven failure behind them, and
we see no reason to build more. They are expensive, dangerous
and environmentally destructive. They cannot get their own
private liability insurance, cannot solve their nuclear waste
problem, and cannot attract private investment without federal
guarantees. They offer no solution to the climate crisis, and
have been surpassed in every way by the revolution in renewables
and efficiency.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Name
City, State

* * * * * * * * *
LEADERSHIP PHONE AND FAX NUMBERS:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
Phone (202) 224-2541
Fax (202) 224-2499

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH/8th)
Phone (202) 225-6205
Fax (202) 225-5117

Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Robert Byrd (D-WV)
Phone (202) 224-3954
Fax (202) 228-0002

House Appropriations Committee Chair David Obey (D-WI/7th)
Phone (202) 225-3365
Fax (202) 225-3240

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)
Phone (202) 224-3542
Fax (202) 224-7327

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA/8th)
Phone (202) 225-4965
Fax (202) 225-4188

For further background, please see the article “Will Congress
Plunge Us (Again) into the Nuke Power Abyss?” written by our
site’s editor, Harvey Wasserman: http://nukefree.org/node/124

Please help us complete a victory that must be won.

Thank you,
NukeFree.org

I hope you’ll take the time to read and call your senator. It needs to be done this weekend and Monday, the vote is imminent. The issue is important, and it impacts all of our wallets, as well as the world we would like to continue living in. This impacts other countries – if we can push solar and wind as more effective and cheaper than nuclear, don’t you think that would be a great lever to use to convince other countries to end their push for nuclear power? A technology we know leads to nuclear weapons. World peace through solar energy? Why not.

And to make this the longest freaking post ever, here’s the lyrics to a great ani difranco song, “The Glory of the Atom”, for which I can not find a music link, but that’s okay, it is the lyrics I want you to hear/read:

the glory of the atom
begs a reverent word
the primary design
of the whole universe
the smallest unit of matter
let us bow our heads
at the magnificent consciousness
incarnate there

the smallest unit of matter
with its orbiting electrons
echoing off the solar system
like a hawk in the hills at dawn
the smallest unit of matter
uniting bird and rock and tree
and you and me

oh holy is the atom
the truly intelligent design
to which all of evolution
is graciously aligned
the one single structure
to which everything distills
the air, the wood smoke there, and the hills

you leave me here surrounded
by everything that’s real
far outside the boundaries
of the digitized ordeal
leave me here awake
leave me here to heal

human beings are a cross
between monkeys and ants
you can see us from your spaceship
melting the polar ice caps with our arrogance
summon a congress of angels
dressed in riot gear
we’ve got a serious problem down here

i have a great great uncle
who worked on the atomic bomb
he got a nobel prize in physics
and a place in this song
and i bet there were no windows
and no women in the room
when they applied themselves to the pure
science of doom

messin’ with the atom
is the highest form of blasphemy
whether you making weapons
or simple electricity
someone fashion me a pulpit
i have been called to engage
with the maniacal heretics
of the nuclear age

let the religious get religion
let the consumers get a clue
let the scientists get perspective
let the activists get their due
let industry get a conscience
let the earth inherit the meek
let the divinity of nature speak

oh the glory of the atom
deserves a reverent word
the primary design
of the whole universe
lets us sing its praises
let us bow our heads in prayer
at the magnificent consciousness
incarnate there