Saturday, January 16, 2016

I'm Seeking a Creative Opportunity by Noon on Sunday

Hello everybody, I am booked into Berkeley, California's Piedmont House travel hostel until Sunday January 17, 2016 I am able to go to the SFO airport and fly to either the New York City~Washington D.C. region to participate in more frontline radical environmental-peace and justice activities.  

Or, I could consider any other worthwhile situation.  

Or, I could continue drinking "Trouble Coffee" at San Francisco's Ocean Beach, watching the eternal witness watch thoughts, which just float on past continuously.

Feel free to contact me at CraigStehr@inbox.com, or telephone 510-849-4800 and chat it up with the outstanding staff who maintain Berkeley's most significant bohemian residence, and leave me a message for room Lucky 13.  But you better hurry, because in addition to my guest reservation being up in 38 1/2 hours, the travel hostel is up for sale.  Hey, nobody here actually knows what is going to happen in the next five minutes!

Friday, January 15, 2016

Abbot Lau Defines "Wu Wei" Precisely

In conversation with Abbot Lau at The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talmage, California, I asked him if the Daoist term "Wu Wei" had a more coherent English translation than "doing nothing".  

Understanding that the practice is to not follow the impulses of the ego, or mind, and instead allow the Dao (spiritual absolute, God, divine essence, etcetera) to use the body and mind as its instrument for carrying out the higher will, Abbot Lau said to me: "A better English translation of "Wu Wei" is 'non-interference'.  If anybody comes here doing nothing, they will be shown out!"

Craig Louis Stehr
EMAIL: CraigStehr@inbox.com
January 15, 2016

This just in...Environmental justice leaders to converge on all EPA regional headquarters Jan. 19, challenge Obama’s “Clean Power Plan"

The environmental justice leaders of the Climate Justice Alliance will organize peaceful public actions in all 10 EPA headquarters across the country on January 19, 2016. 


This mass movement for clean energy and local, living economies offers praise, criticism, and a different path forward as the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan moves into its implementation phase this year.

Is Anything Rad Happening on the East Coast Anymore?

Warmest spiritual greetings, 
Am sitting here at a computer at the Berkeley Public Library, enjoying kind of a balmy day following a light rain.  Might go again to walk the length of Ocean Beach, but I don't need it.  

Not really interested in hanging out in a hardcore bar in the Mission neighborhood either.
I have given money to the Piedmont House travel hostel, and am chillin' in room Lucky 13 until January 17th  

 I can afford to go to the SFO airport and get on an airplane, and like, go somewhere and be active in a radically environmental manner.  I could also be somewhere participating in related peace and justice activities, since now we all know that you cannot really separate the ecology from the society; I mean, not really.

     You may contact me at this email address: CraigStehr@inbox.com, or telephone Piedmont House at 510-849-4800 and chat it up with all of the cool people there who keep the hostel hummin'.  And please leave a message for me, which will help to determine precisely what I can do next to contribute.  Like, it would be just insane to wait for spring.  

What's wrong with now?  After all, the politicians aren't taking the winter season off.
  
While anticipating tonight's Powerball drawing, I lots of time to read emails.  So go ahead and send me one.  Considering the fact that nothing is happening of any critical nature on the eastern seaboard right now, and like, the president said last night that everything is basically fine, go ahead and send me an email message.  I'll answer it.  And then we can all be active again in support of Mother Earth, and we can be for one another, and love all, and be enlightened, and drop these bodies and minds and go up.  

Aren't you just superstoked? Let's go!!

Craig Louis Stehr
January 13, 2016
EMAIL: CraigStehr@inbox.com

Into the Mystic

Thanks to everyone for your emails, and to Jesse Schultz for his invitation to camp with he, Pepper, and the cat outside of the Washington D.C. beltway.

     Am still at Berkeley's Piedmont House until noon Sunday the 17th and have no plan at all beyond that.  Spent this morning at the Kabuki Spa in San Francisco's Japantown, watching six pounds of water go down the drain, and later in the day wandered around the Mission in a serene condition, before returning to the east bay.  Went to sleep at  8:30pm because I don't have anything else to do.  Awoke at midnight and am presently on the travel hostel's guest computer.

     Watching random thoughts all the time, not identifying with the body nor the mind, enjoying the annual free trip around the sun, casting aside the irrelevance of postmodernism, unconcerned with the idiocy of the political primaries, lost track of the world economy weeks ago, have no reason to pay attention to the weather, abandoning the stupidity of conventional behaviour, (never really wanting to be an automaton-with-skin anyway), awaiting the new issue of the Earth First! Journal, I wish you insight beyond the point of no return.

Craig Louis Stehr
January 12th, 2016

Consider this

"The greatest Yoga is the sinking of the self into unity with the Absolute, by denying the separate, and asserting the One."
~Swami Krishnananda
http://www.sivanandaonline.org

It's 3 A.M. in Berkeley, California.


DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR REVOLUTIONARY ECO-MAGICAL MOJO IS?


Climate Action in 2016: ARE YOU READY?!

This may be written by another person Jerome Wagner​​​​..

We are one hundred years past the inception of our knowledge about atmospheric warming (Arrhenius, 1896, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect ). We are one generation past early Congressional testimony claiming observable effects of actual warming (Hansen, 1988, http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/24/us/global-warming-has-begun-expert-tells-senate.html?pagewanted=all ). We are a decade past Al Gore's release of "An Inconvenient Truth" (2006, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inconvenient_Truth ). Several months ago, we learned that fossil-fuel giant Exxon-Mobil actively "poisoned the well" of public discourse relative to climate change (November 2015, http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/11/05/exxon-mobil-under-investigation-for-climate-change-denial ).

Meanwhile, Pacific Islanders are contemplating relocation ( http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/01/pacific-islands-climate-change ), the Greenland ice sheet is melting at an above-average rate ("Melt extent in Greenland was above average in 2015," http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/ , accessed January 2, 2016),
the impacts of drought continue to spread in California (December 30, 2015; http://www.cbsnews.com/news/carnegie-institution-for-science-study-almost-1-billion-california-trees-impacted-by-drought/ ), and extreme weather events batter communities around the world with increasing ferocity and frequency (e.g., UK floods, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/31/uk-floods-your-photos-and-stories).

A reasonable person might have expected world leaders to react to all this with determined resolve when they met three weeks ago in Paris at COP21: targeting a near-term end to pervasive fossil fuel use; providing financial assistance to those countries most impacted thus far and to those most needing enhanced energy supplies); establishing firm commitments from developed nations as to what they'd do to mitigate the problem...

The Paris Agreement represents a modicum of success. As a high school team project, it might have garnered a C- against a rubric premised on low expectations. Clearly "not meeting requirements" when considered from the perspective of our grandchildren and their children; nor in the context of other lifeforms on the Planet.
_____________

Civil society had both the first and the last words in Paris. Referring to the attached photos: Prior to the opening of the COP, the shoes of virtual marchers challenged officials to take serious measure of the impending catastrophes and Climate Guardians soberly vigiled. As the Agreement was being signed on December 12, "last words" were symbolized and spoken: the danger zones - symbolized by red lines - are already starkly and ominously in view; lives are already being claimed. One group positioned at the base of the Eiffel Tower echoed "The leaders have said 'F*** You.'" Adjacent the "Wall for Peace," demonstrators chanted, "One, Two, Three Degrees - It's a Crime Against Humanity" and speakers articulated our promise to continue work on behalf of climate justice and climate action.

The contributions offered by developed and other countries point us towards no less than about 3°C of average temperature rise - this, when nations had agreed to work towards less than 2°C.

We shouldn't have let the negotiators leave town with such a paltry conclusion...
______________

Our leaders did not accomplish enough in Paris. 

All people of the Earth remain in grave danger.

Let's focus the heat of our concern and anger on those and other leaders and on the projects rampant in our country which only serve to aggravate the climate crisis. 

In northern NJ, targets include the Legislature (e.g., re-instate partnership in RGGI), oil bomb trains, the Pilgrim oil pipeline, the PennEast natural gas pipeline, the CPV natural gas power plant in Wawayanda NY, Spectra's Algonquin natural gas pipeline expansion, the natural gas storage project at Seneca Lake NY, and the Cove Point LNG export project in Maryland. [True, this listing is far from complete. And, regrettably, new projects are being announced monthly.]

Events are planned for the first half of 2016 to underscore concern, amplify the message that more action is needed, and to demonstrate the resolve of this movement.
______________

Contact me on this thread or directly by phone (607-348-5773) to hook into upcoming events and ongoing efforts.

Sincerely, Jerome Wagner

Saturday, January 2, 2016

I'd Like to Ritually Shove Postmodernism's Head Up Its Insane Ass!

I am sitting here at a computer at Berkeley, California's Piedmont House travel hostel, sending out networking messages to realize a group solidarity situation on the New York City to Washington D.C. materialistic power strip.  I want to be there performing spiritual rituals and doing direct action for the purpose of shoving postmodernism's head up its insane ass! 


 I am very unhappy about the idiocy of the current political primaries, in which a lunatic Republican and a visionless time's-up Democrat are the only candidates allowed to debate on national television, with other worthy candidates, (such as from the Green Party), not being allowed to participate.

I think that social life here in postmodern America is spiritually pointless, that the average citizen doesn't fundamentally know what is going on, and that the consumerist pop culture is slowly going mad.

I am ready to leave here and proceed to the New York City--Washington D.C. power strip as soon as possible.  I am accepting cooperation to go somewhere upon arrival, because what else would I do to get active again there?

Where the hell am I supposed to live...in a tree in winter?  Where is the solidarity, and why did Occupy ever stop functioning on the east coast?  Fair weather radicalism is worse than stupid!

You may contact me at CraigStehr@inbox.com

Friday, January 1, 2016

Happy, Happy, Happy

New Year's Eve greetings my fellow Americans, Although I see no magic particularly in regard to the date of December 31st, I have nevertheless brought in a box of chocolates for the Piedmont House travel hostel in Berkeley. I look forward to taking rest at the relatively early hour of 10 pm but for the rest of the region, the BART train will run until 3AM.
    
I have not received any offers of solidarity on the east coast to return there, after continuously sending out messages stating that I am eager to get on an air plane, have some money, don't give a hoot about the annual winter weather, and am uncertain what to do about this.  

I don't think that a "fair weather radicalism" is going to work for me; since that would imply that there is not really any serious problem.  Indeed, I am not getting any favorable responses to return to the NYC-D.C. power strip for more front line activity against the insane idiocy which we have been collectively protesting against for around 50 years, for some of us, so I sit here tonight in front of the travel hostel computer, wondering just what I am going to do.

If you agree that this is insufferably stupid, go ahead and contact me.  I need to give the travel hostel two more weeks worth of money on Sunday if I wish to be here longer.  But then, I do not have any reason to be here any longer at all.  Maybe I just don't relate to postmodernism.

Happy New Year, Craig Louis Stehr

Craig Louis Stehr
EMAIL: CraigStehr@inbox.com