The Oil Crisis in a Nutshell: We're Driving Toward Disaster.

Wake Up, America. We're Driving Toward Disaster. - washingtonpost.com

If you have heard about "peak oil" and aren't quite clear on its meaning, or have a sneaking suspicion that the high gas prices are here to stay, read this editorial. Here's a sneak peak:

"The public, and especially the mainstream media, misunderstands the "peak oil" story. It's not about running out of oil. It's about the instabilities that will shake the complex systems of daily life as soon as the global demand for oil exceeds the global supply. These systems can be listed concisely:

The way we produce food

The way we conduct commerce and trade

The way we travel

The way we occupy the land

The way we acquire and spend capital

And there are others: governance, health care, education and more.

As the world passes the all-time oil production high and watches as the price of a barrel of oil busts another record, as it did last week, these systems will run into trouble. Instability in one sector will bleed into another. Shocks to the oil markets will hurt trucking, which will slow commerce and food distribution, manufacturing and the tourist industry in a chain of cascading effects."

The Scent of Spring.

I've missed Spring.

Since 1997, I've spent Spring in the desert, where cactus blooms are usually in February or March, and not necessarily fragrant or prolific. Last year I spent Spring in New Orleans. Since it's green down there year-round, the Magnolia trees were really the only things that I noticed blooming. And they were so lovely. But Spring here...my god.

Now that I am once again living in a deciduous climate, I am so enjoying the lushness of it all...the overwhelming smells of the flowers and flowering bushes, and of cut grass. Spring in Kentucky is a full-nasal assault, from allergies to flowers. There could be no doubt that the seasons have changed.

Spring was SO long in coming this year. Winter lingered until mid-May. It was dreadful, gray, cool, and rainy; the lack of sun brought me an unexpected bout of the blues until last week sometime.

Spring. Finally.

There are several rose bushes in front of my new office building, and when I go in and out I stop and smell them. On bike rides I will fondle and sniff peonies, roses, daisies, and tall uncut bluegrass if I am at a stopping point. The plants are very sensual in the literal sense of the word.

The desert has its own little surprises; I miss its simplicity and cleanliness. Here, I'm overcome by the beauty and the scents of all the different flowers and by the very large hardwood trees, which finally got leaves about two weeks ago.

We've been walking in the woods over the last two days as a little break at the end of the day. The variety of song birds singing, caught up in the thrall of the season, lift my spirits, too. I even heard an owl hooting yesterday on the walk. Of course the bugs have made a good effort, too. Ticks are an unpleasant issue that we never had to deal with in Utah, and that is a drag. I will have to dig my bug spray out of storage.

It was a good holiday weekend. Now, if I could just bottle up all this fondness for the moment and carry it with me into the rest of the week...

Ron Paul

Ron Paul in Kentucky

I saw Ron Paul today, listened to him speak, and I shook his hand with a throng of autograph-seekers and well-wishers.

I had to hope that Ron Paul would be more ahead in the delegate count to matter to the media, but since the media doesn't really work for the people anymore, of course we don't hear that Ron Paul is actually still running. It's just him and John McCain now, and they couldn't be more different. And Dr. Paul is not, to my knowledge, invited to the GOP Convention in Minnesota this September.

Yesterday on Hardball, Chris Matthews wanted to know what, if anything, could be done to fix the GOP. Tucker Carlson was uncharacteristically stoic in his assessment that in time, history will prove that congress spent too much money and President Bush allowed it...and the party should run, not walk, away from his legacy. I was waiting for Tucker to pile on, saying that the Ron Paul Revolution was a step in the right direction, and perhaps one of the best ways for the GOP to redefine itself.

But no. No such talk from Tucker, surprisingly. I had so expected him to say something like that, some kind of "tough love" talk about the GOP needing to have a bigger tent.

From my view, the GOP needs to jettison the NeoCons and the Religious Right, and that would be a good start. But they won't. The war profiteers are having too good of a decade to allow a Republican house-cleaning.

*sigh*

Hey dude, where's my party?

Oh yeah. One more thing. Ron Paul's book will be NUMBER ONE on the NY Times Bestseller list next week. AND his followers will be in Minnesota with or without an invitation, party-crashing the Grand Old Party.

It was great to hear Ron Paul, great to see him, and great to shake his hand standing next to a little kid that had FIVE of his books, waiting for him to sign them.

It is exciting to be in a state where, politically on a national level, things are still up in the air! In Utah, there never was any struggle, it was always Red-publican so nobody ever came to Utah or bought TV commercials. It is FUN to be in the thick of a hotly-contested primary state! I mingled with a crowd that came to see Obama on Monday; they were all energized, happy, and calm as they exited the convention center. John McCain was here yesterday at the NRA convention, and Bill Clinton was lurking on Thursday, stopping the motorcade to donate $20 to the Bullitt County Firefighters Fund as volunteers stood dumbfounded at the intersection where they were working.

But seeing Ron Paul was the best.

New Work.

So I have a new job. I haven't told too many people about how it's going, because I've only been there a month. So I've decided to make a "pros" and "cons" list to better describe my new position by contrasting certain things about the respective offices:

Old job: Cubicle in a skyscraper with no view, florescent light.
New job: Large desk with a second story view of downtown from large windows that let in lots of sunlight. The room was probably a bedroom when the house was built, which was in the 1830s.

Old job: Prototypical office, replete with drama, gossip, and that one bitch that would give me dirty looks when I wished her a good morning in the halls.
New Job: Old town house rehabilitated for use as an office with really interesting architectural details, and five other co-workers, all of whom are friendly and professional.

Old job's boss: "Well, we can't do this because (attorney X) might not like it so we have to do this instead, and it's a drag, but that's the way we have to do it because people might complain--well at least this group of people will complain, but most of them will be fine--but we DO need to take the complainers into account because they're sort of important, so we can't say no (I know they're unreasonable, but they are the BOSS, for gosh's sake!), and you want to do what instead? Oh that makes too much sense. So just forget about it."
New job's boss: There's a deadline in a couple of weeks, so just make it happen...oh yeah, well, we'll talk next week. Great."

I have to say that the environment and the expectations of work are almost 180 degrees opposite from my first corporate comeback job, which was much shorter-lived than I had expected or planned for...but looking at a list of the work which my new firm has been involved in makes me so, so proud of the new job. I wish I could give more details but I cannot really, except to say that they've helped save America's most precious places, the institutions--no, icons--of our built environment for a long, long time, working hand-in-hand with the federal, city and state governments, and institutions of higher learning. The breadth of the portfolio is staggering and literally makes my heart swell with pride every time I look through it.

I pray to do well learning my new trade, and I pray for continuing in the work with the coming harder economy.