According to an article posted yesterday to LiveScience.com, global warming is waking up groundhogs and other hibernating animals earlier and earlier. The article states:

The balmy weather could snap awake groundhogs and other hibernating animals too early this year, well before their breakfasts are ready and threatening their survival.

In addition to the problem with finding food, a groundhog who is early to rise could find himself vulnerable to predators.

Global warming is the hot topic these days. Even a year ago, the subject was mostly ignored by the mainstream media, at least here in the US, and what little was reported focused mainly on denial of the problem.

Thankfully, shift happens. In the past few months news stories on global warming and the coming climate crisis have snowballed (pun intended). Many of them are worrisome and some of them are downright scandalous. An article in the Guardian UK reports:

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world’s largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

The bribes were offered by the American Enterprise Institute, a thinktank funded by ExxonMobil with close ties to the Bush administration.

Fortunately, with the new view on global warming, stories like this no longer get swept under the carpet. The Los Angeles Times reports today that Representative Henry Waxman, the new Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is demanding that the White House hand over any relevant documents.

As an astrologer, I can’t help but think that Jupiter’s move into its own sign of Sagittarius has done much to help change public opinion on climate change. Jupiter and Sagittarius both rule the forces of nature, as well as beliefs and ethical decisions.

I also credit Al Gore who, with his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and his tireless public appearances worldwide, has led the crusade for education on global warming and environmental change. BTW, former Vice President Gore has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.

Unlike the United States, where schools are banning the showing of Mr. Gore’s documentary, calling it too controversial, the UK has announced plans to make sure that all British schools include teachings on climate change and environmental issues in their curriculum.

I wonder if Punxsatawney Phil has a passport.

Technorati Tags: groundhog, global warming, climate crisis, lobby, ExxonMobil, Bush administration, Al Gore, Nobel Peace Prize, Punxsatawney Phil, Groundhog Day

I reminded a client today that ultimately we need to be preparing for things to come, since much that we take for granted today will not be so a dozen years from now.

He goes on to say that the changes will happen whether we like them or not and suggests that we need to learn to “think in the future.” Well said, Robert!

In my own research into the changes that are coming, I’ve seen a future that doesn’t follow our current model of progress. When I mentioned some of the upcoming possibilities to my friend Candice, her reaction was, “That won’t be very convenient.”

As Pluto moves into Capricorn in late 2008 to remain there until 2024, we will be asked to replace “convenient” with “responsible.” So many of the conveniences we’ve come to rely on are, as Mr. Wilkinson so wisely points out, unsustainable. There are obvious ones that come to mind, like gas guzzling vehicles and gadgets galore that put an ever increasing strain on the electrical grid.

There there are those that are less obvious. Think about the recent problem with e-coli tainted spinach. This was not an isolated incident of carelessness. This is a real danger that can happen again, a by-product of industrialized agricultural practices, a modern convenience that we take for granted, that we think of as normal. Often, when problems like this are brought to the public’s attention, the resulting solution is not one of changing the practice, but of throwing more modern technology at it.

The NY Times this week reported that, a few years back, e-coli from cattle feces found its way into hamburger. Instead of cleaning up the source, meat processors “nuked” the meat to kill the bacteria. Still hungry for that burger?

There are other by-products from our modern conveniences that have been proven to make people sick, yet no steps have been taken to change this, nor have any serious warnings about these ill effects been issued. Common Dreams News Center carried an article originally published by the Independent UK, warning of the dangers of the electrical fields emitted by mobile phones, microwave ovens and even your hair dryer. The report stated:

The International Agency for Research on Cancer – part of the WHO and the leading international organisation on the disease – classes the smog as a “possible human carcinogen”. And Professor David Carpenter, dean of the School of Public Health at the State University of New York, told The Independent on Sunday last week that it was likely to cause up to 30 per cent of all childhood cancers. A report by the California Health Department concludes that it is also likely to cause adult leukaemia, brain cancers and possibly breast cancer and could be responsible for a 10th of all miscarriages.

These so-called conveniences, in many cases, are not convenient at all. A few weeks back I went to Office Max to get some supplies. The checkout line was long, not because the store was crowded, but because the credit card terminal was not working properly. Unless one was paying cash, the checkout process required 4 extra steps to force the machine to accept the payment. At the end of my transaction, the flustered cashier apologized for the delay. “That’s okay,” I told her. “This is the future we’ve been waiting for since we were children.”

When I think of the problems that plague our modern conveniences I am reminded of a book I read about a dozen years ago called In the Absence of the Sacred. Author Jerry Mander wrote that technology is not inherently good or even just plain neutral. He argued that we need to have real debate about the economic, social and environmental costs of any technology before it is adopted. He made the case that only one segment of society is currently making the decisions on whether a technology should be adopted, and that segment is the corporate one. He wrote that in 1992 and it has only gotten worse as the criteria for adoption has narrowed to one factor, the bottom line.

Last week, Ken at Prospero’s Books pointed to an interview with David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous. In the interview, Abram points out that, culturally, westerners have lost their relationship with their senses, that we spend all of our time in our heads. We depend on our computers and gadgets to guide us. With a GPS system in every car, we no longer need to know how to navigate by the stars. With the answer to every question posted on the internet, we no longer have to rely on our own wits.

I was talking with a wise friend and a fellow healer recently about how, when we were growing up, we were taught not to eat berries off of bushes, and god(dess) forbid, don’t eat a mushroom that you picked yourself – you might die on the spot. Food was only safe if it came in little plastic wrapped packages at the A&P.

Luckily some of us have gotten over those beliefs. A week ago my husband headed out to Mount Hood and came home with 4 pounds of wild chanterelles. On the way back home, he stopped in our suburban Portland neighborhood and picked figs, chestnuts, walnuts and apples.

I believe that one of the changes we will be asked to make in the near future is in the way we grow and gather our food. When we visited my aunt in upper, upstate New York, she pointed to the “Salad Train,” a literal train that brings their produce across the country from California. Apparently this is how much of the US gets its food.

While I love being able to buy olive oil from Italy and lobster from Maine and chocolate from Belgium, I think we are going to have to depend more on locally available products. Here in the Pacific Northwest we are blessed by the local bounty and an already burgeoning movement to buy locally grown foods.

My husband and I have gone on wild food walks, together and separately. I feel confident that, if something were to prevent the delivery of food to our local supermarket, that we know enough to survive, at least for a while, on what we can forage very close to home.

I’ve also taken classes in making medicines from plants, and while I’m not a pro, I can brew up a mean cough syrup and turn a few roots into tincture. As more and more organisms become resistant to our modern medicines, a movement is already in place to return to ancient and traditional treatments. Wired News reported recently on a group of physicians who are using honey to treat infections and wounds. Like the research on the dangers of EMFs, this is mostly taking place outside the US, but I expect that, as the havoc created by over-administration of antibiotics reaches crisis level, there will be a clamoring for more alternative therapies.

Of late I’ve had this very strong desire to get my hands on an old fashioned foot pedal driven sewing machine, one that doesn’t use electricity. I can’t tell you where that desire is coming from, only that it is compelling. I believe that in the not too distant future, we will be forced to be discriminating in how we use our daily power rations.

My husband and I have also been re-learning how to identify the stars and constellations.

Even if these skills turn out to be less than useful in the future, which somehow I doubt, the simple rewards of the sensual connection back to the earth below us and the cosmos above us are more than enough. We are reminded to be more in touch with each other, with our bodies, with our hearts.

In his article on the coming changes, Robert Wilkinson tells us:

Open to your future! You are on a journey. Where are you going? You can choose what that looks like, and how it will unfold, through using your gift of imagination.

My third eye viewer tells me that the future has a lot in common with the simpler, saner past.

Mr. Wilkinson concludes by saying:

As we move through these irrational and uncertain times, if we keep our hearts and minds open to the magic of magnetic attraction, we will find our community and learn a better way to live on this Earth in the future, long after the current mess passes away into the sands of time.

I repeat, well said.

Technorati Tags: astrology, changes, future, technology, past

I’ve lived through many earthquakes myself, including the 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta quake that interrupted the 1989 San Francisco World Series Game. In 2000 I left “earthquake country” and moved north. In February of 2001, having lived in Portland for about a year, I was mildy surprised to feel a small quake, though I recongized the experience right away. I later learned that it was centered near Olympia, Washington.

More surprising to me than the quake itself was the reaction of the people working in the downtown office buildings here in Portland. They did what you are never supposed to do when there’s an earthquake; they left the buildings and stood in the street.

If you live or work in California, you’ve been through earthquake drills. Your house is bolted to its foundation. You don’t have any brick buildings in your neighborhood. Here in the Pacific Northwest, earthquake preparedness just doesn’t seem to be a priority. Considering how many volcanoes are here, many active, it should be more of a concern.

Here, then, are Leslie’s handy dandy hints for what to do in an earthquake:

1. If you are indoors, stay indoors. Move away from windows and anything that can fall on you, like a chandelier or bookcase. If you can, get under a sturdy desk or table. If that’s not possible, stand in a doorway.
2. If you are in an office building, don’t use the elevators. (During the Loma Prieta quake my best friend was working as a building manager in a downtown high rise. She spent the 12 hours following the quake working to get several people out of elevators that were stuck between floors.)
3. If you are outdoors, get as far away as possible from electrical wires, trees and buildings. Stay close to the ground until the shaking stops. If you are driving, pull over as soon as it’s safe. Do not cross bridges or enter tunnels.
4. When the shaking stops it may be necessary to turn off gas and water lines. If you don’t know where they are, after the quake is not the time to find out.

These things may seem like common sense, but I find that very few of my NW friends think about them. With all the earth changes that are occuring, we in the Pacific Northwest can no longer afford to be casual about the possibility of a major earthquake happening here.

Technorati Tags: Hawaii, earthquake, earthquake preparedness

A small high-tech firm in Dublin accidently discovered a way to generate clean and unlimited energy using magnets.

The Guardian UK reported:

Sean McCarthy says that no one was more sceptical than he when Steorn, his small hi-tech firm in Dublin, hit upon a way of generating clean, free and constant energy from the interaction of magnetic fields. ‘It wasn’t so much a Eureka moment as a get-back-in-there-and-check-your-instruments moment, although in far more colourful language,’ said McCarthy.

Of course, the left-brained scientific community has scoffed at this claim, trying to write it off as a marketing stunt. You see, Steorn’s discovery goes against the dominant paradigm. The laws of physics state that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only change form.

But not everyone is entirely convinced that those laws can’t be broken. In an interview, Martin Fleischmann, a retired cold-fusion scientist, states:

“I am actually a conventional scientist,” he says, “but I do accept that the existing [quantum electro-dynamic] paradigm is not adequate. If what these men are saying turns out to be true, that would be proof that the paradigm was inadequate and we would have to come up with some new theory…”

He goes on to say that he doesn’t have confidence in the study. But, in response to an ad placed by Steorn in The Economist, more than 3000 scientists have applied to test Steorn’s theory.

I am not a scientist, but when I listen to the Still, Small Voice, what I hear is that Steorn is not actually yanking the world’s collective chain. What I believe is that they received a transmission from the future, that this technology has arrived before its time because of the dire state of our planet. With hope, this ahead-of-its-time technological breakthrough will be received with open arms. That’s what the optimist in me desires.

But part of me is a pessimist and I fear that the good that can come from this discovery will be thwarted by the naysayers and the folks who are more concerned with profit than preserving the earth’s bounty. Remember, Galileo went to prison for claiming that the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around. I hope this part of me is wrong. Time will tell.

If you want to know how it all turns out, you can sign up on Steorn’s home page to receive an email detailing the results of the trials. I, for one, can’t wait to hear.