Friday Homestead Dispatch
Éire go brách—Ireland to the end of time.
“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses
1.
I could drone on about the Black Sea mishap, that could easily trigger another World War, but I’ll leave that to others (see kittens below)…
2.
Us leftie Wokeabout liberal types have voiced concern over the massive Willow oil project in Alaska approved this week by the Biden administration. It’s our job, right? The upside of the deal made for the Willow site is that Conoco will relinquish its rights to approximately 68,000 acres of its existing leases in the NPR-A, including approximately 60,000 acres in the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area. A win? The downside is the project will include up to 199 oil and gas wells on three separate sites, two wells to inject waste water, pipelines, a new gravel mine and roads and other infrastructure being built in the Alaska wilderness. Willow is expected to eventually produce up to 180,000 barrels a day of oil and around 280 million tons a year of greenhouse gases over its expected 30-year lifetime — the equivalent of 2 coal-burning power plants every year.
On the coughing up of some protections against drilling in the Arctic Ocean and elsewhere in the National Petroleum Reserve mentioned above, Rebecca Solnit chimed in, this is like saying, “We’re going to kill your mother but we’re sending guards to protect your grandmother.” It doesn’t make your mom less dead. With climate you’re dealing with physics and math before you’re dealing with morality. All the carbon and methane emissions count, and they need to decrease rapidly in this decade. As Bill McKibben likes to say, you can’t bargain with physics.
Kristen Miller, executive director for Alaska Wilderness, said “This has to stop. There’s no version of this project that doesn’t open the door to 30 years of climate-threatening greenhouse gas emissions.”
On the other hand, mouthpieces from the Heartland Institute, an American conservative and libertarian public policy think tank known for its rejection of both the scientific consensus on climate change and the negative health impacts of smoking, don’t think Biden went far enough and, in the deal made with Conoco, big oil gets the short stick.
James Taylor, not the peace-loving FireandRain dude, but the climate denying, Koch-backed hack from the Heartland Institute said “If the goal of the Biden administration is to destroy American energy production at all costs, Biden’s decision to gut the Willow Project was a resounding success. If, however, the goal of American energy policy is to protect the American and global energy markets from increasing Iranian, Venezuelan, Saudi Arabian, Russian, and Chinese dominance, Biden’s newest action is complete suicide.”
Stay tuned for more fossil fuel madness across the globe…meanwhile, here are some kittens.
3.
As a way to fight the fossil fuel madness there’s a movement beginning to take shape for car-free community development across the country, according to Bloomberg News. In Tempe, a new community called Culdesac Tempe is prioritizing biking, walking, and transit over cars and parking. They are touting it as the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the US (located at 2025 E Apache Blvd, Tempe, AZ 85281). Charlotte, North Carolina and Houston, Texas are also getting on board. One salient point the articles make is that without the infrastructure for vehicles it will make renting or buying more affordable. The only down side for me would be building a contraption for my bicycle to haul my drums to a gig…
4.
How is it that a District Judge in Amarillo, Texas has the power to take mifepristone, an abortion pill, off the market in all 50 states? According to the New York Times, The lawsuit was filed against the F.D.A. by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a coalition of anti-abortion groups, and four anti-abortion doctors. It seeks to overturn the approval nearly 23 years ago of mifepristone — the first pill in the two-drug medication abortion regimen — and to prevent the second drug in the regimen, misoprostol, which is used for several medical conditions, from being used for abortion. Stay tuned for a ruling and certain appeals.
Meanwhile North Dakota’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision to block a ban on abortions in the state, and said the state Constitution protects abortion rights in some situations. In a majority opinion, the ruling said that judge was within his rights but added that the state Constitution protects “the right to enjoy and defend life and a right to pursue and obtain safety,” which includes the right of a pregnant woman to “obtain an abortion to preserve her life or her health.”
5.
Don’t tell anyone but Tucson got written up yesterday in Time as one of the World’s Greatest Places 2023. Not only was Don Guerra, a James Beard Award winning baker, mentioned but Borderlands Brewing Company got quite the plug. The courtyard of the original Borderlands is where we still, after eight years, hold church every Sunday afternoon.
6.
Here are a couple new works. The first one will be shipped soon, along with three others, to the BoxHeart Gallery in Pittsburgh, PA.
Worms, Nebraska, Mixed Media, 20 x 11 x 5, 2023
This next one is of a series that I’m entering to appear in a show in an L.A. gallery later this spring.
Las Vegas Folded Camp, Mixed Media, 12 x 11.5 x 2, 2023
And now…
An addendum to your story on the Willow Project is that Alaska R's, including our entire congressional delegation, strongly support and lobbied Biden for approval of the project. What is little known is that given Alaska's arcane and indefensible oil tax laws, Conoco Philips will actually receive more than $1 billion in tax credits on EXISTING oil fields in Alaska resulting in no revenue accruing to the state for about 10 years during development of Willow. On another note, Carol and I be in Tucson at the end of March. Hope to see the Morpholinos. We have reservations!