I spoke to Ed Warner last night, a board member of the Sand County Foundation that has great heart and works in Zimbabwe. The Foundation has expanded from being caretaker of The Leopold Memorial Reserve — 1500 acres of cooperatively mananged private land– to advising the managers of hundreds of thousands of acres of land in several countries. The Foundation works with private landholders to improve the quality of their lands through science, ethics, and incentives. Warner is a geologist,...

Update:read here too, a brief but arresting post by Dr. Omed’s Tent Show Revival about George Carlin as Philosopher/ Shaman. George Carlin who many in the old counter-culture remember for his discourse on ‘dirty words,’ and other anti-parental and anti-establishment topics, passed away from heart failure today in Los Angeles. The contretemps about his “Seven Dirty Words” piece, and whether the Pacifica NY radio station he performed these on ought be fined, went all...

A critical key for the future viability of blogging and the future viability of the msm, that most bloggers and quite a few in the msm already understand, is the strong symbiotic relationship developed, and which continues to develop rapidly and creatively, between certain of the msm and the blogosphere… A symbiosis is wherein two or more hosts are nourished by and from one another, reciprocally, complementarily, so that all thrive even the more. And such is all around us to see. When I drove...

Since the 24/7 news cycle is no longer, and it’s now a minute to minute news cycle, matters of end-game negotiation or denouement that used to take months, sometimes seem to occur within moments too. This is an update to an earlier story at TMV yesterday which ran Robert Cox’s understanding of the legal facts behind the contretemps between Associated Press and Drudge Retort. For those interested in process as much as content, the AP and the Drudge Retort have made peace. For now. The...

Maybe like me, you grew up in a small hometown that now looks like Brigadoon, coming back to life every hundred years or so, but otherwise somehow remains the same, the same, the same: different faces, different names, but the familiar ‘types’ still exist back home. My hometown was a village of 600 souls. It is still at 600 from lack of opportunity, lack of land, but also and mostly, because the people there like it that way. Maybe your hometown, or your neighborhood, or your block,...

This is a must read, in depth article about the not well publicized facts behind AP’s go-round with the Drudge ReTort, by the venerable Robert Cox of The Media Bloggers Association… which is, according to their website, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to promoting, protecting and educating its members; supporting the development of “blogging” or “citizen journalism” as a distinct form of media; and helping to extend the power of the press, with all the rights...

The Soul is a River, The River Has a Soul As a child, I was taken to Hoover dam, one of the wonders of the world, they said, and in a way it was, a testament to the workers who risked their lives to build a concrete moat complete with castlettes to hold the Mother water back, and all the life she once nourished, and all that once laid increase into her womb. I stood on the hydroelectric dam, atop the concrete spillway. I felt the machine-drone of the deep turbines underneath trying to say something...

In a post called Associated Press, Please Dont Fall on Your Sword… the last letter of the three initials of the music company associated with Bertelsmann were accidently typed as I instead of G. The music arm of Bertelsmann publishing is BMG, not BMI. At TMV, we correct copy if need be, in as timely a way as possible given we all have day jobs, and often more than one. I could blame it on the late hour… my writing this at 3:30 am in the morning the night before and posting this piece...

It is just my two cents worth, but after sitting for ten years and still on The Author’s Guild Board, and the Advisory Board of the National Writer’s Union– and I only mention this because I have seen so many cases of what appears to constitute and what appears not to constitute proper usage of the ‘fair use’ clause in copyright… this is why I say, given the outcome of the many cases I’ve seen… it ought be enough to give respect to the AP (Associated...

It has dawned slowly on big publishing companies like HarperCollins, Bertelsmann (which owns BMG and bought into Napster with 80M,) Penguin, and other of the few conglomerates that run big publishing nowadays that the internet and the flow of info is not a threat, but a huge opportunity. It has come so slowly to their awareness that the buggy whip business model is over, the the age of the combusion engine is past too. That there is an open ore field right within their reach; the internet, those...

You might remember my reports on the monk’s, nun’s and Burmese people’s protests in September of last year, how my contacts in Yangon (Rangoon) dried up within days as cpu’s were confiscated, cell phones smashed, communications wires cut, and various deeply good souls arrested, many children, men, women beaten, many murdered by Than Shwe’s evil orders. It was agony and remains so, not to know the fates of those specific contacts/blogger/photographers who were bravely...

First it was New York State signing into law a sales tax on all internet purchases arriving in New York, no matter where manufactured, where the point of purchase, what state lines the item had to cross. 8+% on every item. Starting this month, June 2008. Affiliate business across the country say they will lose as the cap for having to keep paper for Uncle New York is set by the guys up at Albany at 10k… the little guy in other words gets to mule the New York’s plow blade. Now carrier...

(I’d prepared this article earlier to run during the day today, but in no way wanted to put a clang in the middle of the news and memoriums about the passing of Tim Russert. I hope it is alright to post it now overnight as the shocks of the day begin to recede a little. This piece was meant to commemorate bright moments that most often occur in the most mundane ways between fathers and sons.) When I was a little girl, my dad used a rough brush and a heavy porcelain mug to lather up, and then...

There’s nothing equal. Not supposed to happen this way. The children bury their parents, dont they? No parent ought to have to bury their child. That’s what we humans think of as the natural order. But sometimes, it’s just not meant to be. This is a picture of Big Russ, Tim’s dad whom he wrote a book about, Big Russ and Me. On the left is Tim’s son Luke, who just graduated from Boston College. Often people say they don’t know what to say to those in mourning...

(Update Below in the CODA, re cause of death. An autopsy has been performed.) Tim Russert, died of an apparent heart attack at age 58. He passed away at his office. Author of Big Russ and Me, about his one of a kind father, Russert also has a son Luke, who just graduated from Boston College this week. His son hosts the XM radio show 60/20 Sports with James Carville. Tim Russert was a lawyer, and a journalist who inherited the hosting of Meet the Press from the venerably David Brinkley. Mr. Russert...

“He was the meaning of joy,” said John Nordmeyer, an uncle. There are a bunch of middle aged men across the nation who tonight sit quietly in their living rooms. The TV set might be off. They didn’t want to eat much tonight. Many are at their laptops now, silently tap tap tapping out messages to reach out to others. To try to find some, something. Words would help. But, maybe accurate words would actually hurt. When my husband heard the news at work, he’d immediately sent me an...

I love this picture. You know guys like these, dont you? Yeah, take that! And that! Me, warrior deep fryer. Get food for family. Argh. There are guys like this all over the world. Thank goodness.

The River Time Machine Split bamboo was enough once, no fancy graphite anything. ‘Whipping the water’ beautifully… was not yet ‘a casting-arm arc’ plotted with computer precision Away from clattering cities, it was just one soul standing in the water… Where did the ability to swing the line so gently left to right, come from? How did pulling the rod tip back slow find its knack in a man? And now, where does letting loose the line Find its way into men who have been trained to...

Fathers, as well as brothers, grandfathers, uncles, best friends, neighbor guy down the road, strangers out of nowhere… all can count as good, sometimes nearly beatific fathers sometimes. Perhaps because no man, no woman, can fit the perfection of the archetypal father or mother, perhaps because there are sometimes too many errors and omissions in parenting without maliciously meaning to, perhaps because some one didn’t see, couldn’t see, because some one ignored or betrayed or...

Some time back I wrote about one of the female ministers of Africa, telling of her new social policy exhorting people to go back to growing their own gardens to help feed all families locally… tribal groups had gotten dependent on trucked in food, and between the cost of that kind of food and the falling off of local agriculture, many people were beginning to starve. Similar DEEP shortages of ability to pay and lack of availible nourishing food have DEFINITELY come to the United States. In...

My doctorate is in the study of group behavior, tribal and ethnic, racial and corporate, amongst others. I wrote protocol for following how groups come apart and come back together again. It’s time-tested these many years later. I witnessed it again when I covered the Libertarian National Convention last week. There, ‘the coming together after heavy battle’ began to meld like six creeks flowing into one river. This occurred after the only one still standing after it was all over was former...

“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we Love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” Jalaluddin Rumi, 13th Century Islamic mystic and poet

The Brazilian government says this picture, taken from an airplane deep over the rain forest, is of a tribal group that has never had contact with the ‘outside world.” Aside from most of us today who got whiplashed between trying to cover the left, right and middle Obama pundits and watching the Democratic delegates acting like they might be at a Condominium HomeOwners Board meeting what with all the face-making, voice raising, booing, cheering, having to be reminded to act like adult...

Just so you can see a fuller picture. (hat tip to Roland S. Martin www.rolandsmartin.com CNN Contributor) Obama resignation letter from Trinity May 30, 2008 Dear. Rev. Moss: We are writing to make official our decision to end our memebership at Trinity. We make this decision with sadness. Trinity was where I found Christ, where we were married and where our children were baptized. We have many friends among the 8,000 congregants who attend there and we are proud of the extraordinary good works the...