Friday Homestead Dispatch

Rambunctious Rasping Rotarians

Quote of the week:
“And that's the thing about the whole coup attempt (and we can stop being coy about this shit. Call a coup a "coup"): the people behind it weren't fucking around. They just smoked their own stash too much and believed that others in the various levels of government throughout the country would go along with the coup. Or they were riding Trump's mania like a surfboard, hoping they'd catch a sweet wave of Republican officials willing to shitcan democracy for the sake of the ego and potential criminal liability of a fake billionaire and wannabe Mussolini.” – Lee Papa, The Rude Pundit, 12/08/2021

1.
A long-time Kansas City friend of mine now makes his home in Ecuador, a country known for its beauty both in nature and architecture. It is home to Los Cedros, a protected area which includes spectacled bears (Andean bear), endangered frogs, dozens of rare orchid species and the brown-headed spider monkey, and one of the world’s rarest primates.

Los Cedros, Ecuador

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, The Constitutional Court of Ecuador, in an unprecedented case, has applied the constitutional provision on the “Rights of Nature” to safeguard the Los Cedros cloud forest from mining concessions. The court voted seven in favor, with two abstentions.

In the wake of the ruling, which was published Dec. 1, the Constitutional Court will develop a binding area of law in which the Rights of Nature, the right to a healthy environment, the right to water and environmental consultation must be respected.

Constanza Prieto Figelist, Latin American legal lead at Earth Law Center, said in a statement, “It is undoubtedly good news but the situation of the Los Cedros Protective Forest is not an isolated event in Ecuador. This is a problem of the forests throughout the country. In recent years mining concessions that overlap with protective forests have been awarded.”

Now if we could just do that with the Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals, Inc. who is now saying it plans to develop at least three open-pit mines on the ridgeline and down the west side of the range overlooking Sahuarita and Green Valley. Since 2007 the Center for Biological Diversity has fought the proposed project known as the Rosemont Mine. Read more about how this project would totally fuck up the groundwater, and endanger habitat such as the Chiricahua leopard frog, the southwestern willow flycatcher, the Huachuca water umbel, along with two species that recently earned Endangered Species protection, the northern Mexican garter snake and yellow-billed cuckoo. And the beauty of it…fuck up the beauty of it.

Madera Canyon, Southern Arizona

Last year, local filmmaker and photographer Leslie Epperson produced a beautiful new short film about Rosemont entitled Long Mountain, featuring Tohono O’odham leader Austin Nuñez and activists in our coalition speaking about the proposed mine and the special values of our beloved Santa Rita Mountains.

Here is a link to take action to save our Santa Rita Mountains.

2.
I was thinking slingshot but this looks like it’s working just fine. SpinLaunch introduces the Orbital Accelerator that is being tested in New Mexico to make it easier to launch satellites into orbit. At this stage, the accelerator being used is a smaller version for testing purposes, is about 165 feet tall, and has thus far has succeeded in flinging a test vehicle up and out of the vacuum chamber and tens of thousands of feet into the air. Didn’t I see one at Coney Island years ago?

3.
This might be a huge breakthrough in the treatment of metastatic cancer, which is the process by which cancer cells spread to other parts of the body. Another Kansas City friend posted about this on Facebook so thought it most worthy to pass along. An article in New Atlas reports that “Researchers at Princeton University working in this area have been tugging at a particular thread for more than 15 years, focusing on a single gene central to the ability of most major cancers to metastasize. They've now discovered what they describe as a ‘silver bullet’ in the form of a compound that can disable this gene in mice and human tissue, with clinical trials possibly not too far away.”

Minhong Shen, member of the Princeton team behind the new discovery, says, “Our work identified a series of chemical compounds that could significantly enhance the chemotherapy and immunotherapy response rates in metastatic breast cancer mouse models. These compounds have great therapeutic potential.”

Go, science!

4.
I don’t know about you but I see the Great Resignation as a stress reduction program in action. Not only is this happening in America, the same trend is also happening in Germany, Japan, and China. According to an article in Bloomberg, Almost half of the world’s workers are considering quitting, according to a Microsoft Corp. survey. About 4 in 10 millennial and Gen Z respondents say they’d leave their job if asked to come back to the office full time, a global survey by advisory company Qualtrics International Inc. found—more than any other generation. Some among older generations have criticized these attitudes as privileged and lazy. But the reality is that working hours have been dropping in richer countries for decades across all age brackets.

Another reason for quitting, according to an article in the Atlantic, is Leisure and hospitality workers might be saying “to hell with this” on account of Americans deciding to behave like a pack of escaped zoo animals. Call it the Great Rudeness. Airlines in the United States reported that, by June 2021, the number of unruly passengers had already broken records—doubling the previous all-time pace of orneriness. The Atlantic writer Amanda Mull has chronicled America’s epidemic of bad behavior, from Trader Joe’s tirades to a poor Cape Cod restaurant that had to close briefly in the hope that its clientele would calm down after a few days in the time-out box. Cabin-fevered and filled with rage, American customers have poured into the late-pandemic economy with abandon, like the unfurling of so many angry pinched hoses. I don’t blame thousands of servers and clerks for deciding that suffering nonstop rudeness should never be a job requirement.

Writer Jessica Stillman suggests that Workers aren't just looking for higher pay, more time off, or more days at home (though those things would surely help in the short term). They're actually questioning the whole meaning of the daily grind. Why do we put so much of ourselves into our careers? And are we getting a fair deal from our employers in return for all this stress and heartache? 

She advises that If you want your people to stick around you're going to have to convince them that what they're getting from signing in each day outweighs the stress, lost time, and forgone opportunities it costs them. That's always the case to some extent, but after a year of looking mortality in the face, your employees are probably considering that bargain a lot more closely than ever before. 

Workers who wanted to stay on the job were the 1,400 who have been on strike since October from Kellogg's®. They were fired. They were saying they deserve significant raises because they routinely work more than 80 hours a week, and they kept the plants running throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

Trevor Bidelman, president of BCTGM Local3G and a fourth-generation employee at the Kellogg plant in Battle Creek, said, “This is after just one year ago, we were hailed as heroes, as we worked through the pandemic, seven days a week, 16 hours a day. Now apparently, we are no longer heroes. We don’t have weekends, really. We just work seven days a week, sometimes 100 to 130 days in a row. For 28 days, the machines run, then rest three days for cleaning. They don’t even treat us as well as they do their machinery.”

Just DON’T EAT that Kellogg's® crap, folks: Keebler®, Pop-Tarts®, Eggo®, Cheez-It®, All-Bran®, Mini-Wheats®, Nutri-Grain®, Rice Krispies®, Special K®, Chips Deluxe®, Famous Amos®, Sandies®, Austin®, Club®, Murray®, Kashi®, Bear Naked®, Morningstar Farms®, Gardenburger® and Stretch Island®. Well, maybe Cheez-Its®, but THAT’S IT!

Maybe more folks should do what Siobhan Daniels, 62, decided to do; hit the road!

Thanks to New Jersey Bill for this one:

5.
On Tuesday the Senate confirmed Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus as the next U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner. Jonathan Blazer, director of border strategies for the ACLU, said, ”Now that Commissioner Magnus has been confirmed, we call upon him to bring an end to the Trump-era border policies his agency administers, which have created chaos and caused immense suffering. Commissioner Magnus should prioritize evidence-based decision making at the border. Harsh deterrence measures achieve nothing but harm to those fleeing complex and dangerous root causes far beyond our border. Commissioner Magnus must commit to overseeing the restoration of asylum at the border. He must also deliver on the Biden administration’s promise to bring transparency and accountability to an agency that has for years failed to address a culture of abuse and systemic impunity."

Perhaps there’s hope that Magnus will deal with the abundance of vigilantes, white nationalists, and anti-government militia groups that roam the Arizona desert preying on migrants. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch, Veterans on Patrol (VOP), led by Michael “Lewis Arthur” Meyer, continues to operate alongside vigilante organizations in Pima County, Arizona. The vigilante network Meyer dubbed the “border coalition” has attempted to intercept and detain migrants in the desert. A closer look at United People of America (UPA), one of the initial organizations affiliated with VOP, has revealed UPA’s attempts to recruit border volunteers from Stormfront, one of the earliest and most prominent white nationalist sites.

Hatewatch reached out to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to inquire about the policies and steps the agency might have in place to address extremists’ activities near the border. In an email, Supervisor and Public Affairs Specialist John Mennell could only state: “CBP does not endorse or support any private group or organization from taking matters into their own hands as it could have disastrous personal and public safety consequences. CBP strongly encourages concerned citizens to call the U.S. Border Patrol and/or local law enforcement authorities if they witness or suspect illegal activity. Furthermore, forced detention can also be viewed as a criminal offense and violators will be referred to local, state or federal prosecutors for potential legal action.”

When pressed for a clarification on the safety concerns CBP has with extremist groups near the border, Bronia Ashford, Chief of Tribal and Community Affairs for the Office of Intergovernmental Public Liaison, wrote in a follow-up email, “CBP encourages individuals – from hikers, hunters, humanitarians to citizen groups – to notify us of their planned activities in remote areas or locations where illegal cross-border activity occurs in southern Arizona to provide aid when needed and to avoid encounters that may lead to unnecessary investigative or defensive action on the part of Air and Marine and Border Patrol agents.”

This isn’t anything new here. Al Jazeera America reported in 2014 on a group known as Arizona Border Recon (AZBR), which draws on former military, law enforcement and private security contractors for controversial, multi-day stakeouts to observe and report activity along a stubbornly persistent drug trafficking corridor on the Arizona-Mexico border that has a history of vigilante violence. AZBR runs six to eight operations a year.

Guys playing army as this is what they were trained to do by our own government. I do know in Arivaca, Arizona (a small town close to the border) a bar I’ve played in many times has signs saying NO MILITIA ALLOWED, as do other businesses in town. I have no answers to the complexities of folks fleeing poverty and other dangerous conditions between our border and South America, but I’m pretty sure being greeted by these folks ain’t the best answer.

6.
Now to leave you with a bit of cheerful news…a new study published yesterday finds natural regrowth in tropical forests yields better results than human plantings and offers hope for climate recovery. The study suggest that it is not too late to undo the damage that humanity has done through catastrophic climate change over the last few decades. Lourens Poorter, professor in functional ecology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and lead author of the paper, says “Compared to planting new trees, it performs way better in terms of biodiversity, climate change mitigation and recovering nutrients.” Check out more info in the Guardian.

This…

And now…

I hope you share this post with others and thanks for reading!