HELP! Mass Destruction...in the Mojave...happening now....

People PLEASE read this and SPREAD THE WORD! Only a small group of people seem to know what is going on in the Mojave Desert as I write this. A massive LAND RAPE. All in the name of "go-green" which in this case is the rhetoric of sustainability being used in a twisted way. 5-10% of the species of the Mojave Desert flora and fauna remain un-discovered and un-named.

The Ivanpah Valley, California Spirit Run - to raise awareness for this beautiful area of the Mojave Desert located near the California-Nevada stateline....and where the world's largest solar facility is currently being installed, with drastic, horrific implications for the future of the desert and its many inhabitants. Plants, animals, geologic and archaeological-cultural features, many which are not yet fully understood.


http://vimeo.com/16014476

Watch this video:
http://thesunrunner.ning.com/video/shocking-projection-of-mass
Interview with ecologist Jim Andre, Director, Granite Mountains Desert Research Center at University of California. If he seems in shock...well, he is. This has all come down so quickly, so sneakily, and so drastically that none of us involved in desert protection quite knows what to do.

This very precious region is not only barely being understood, but as a desert that attracts millions of visitors yearly from around the world for its fragility, intensity, and wisdom, not to mention beauty and allure....it is being grabbed in what is being termed by desert conservationists as the ugliest, biggest land-grab and archaeological and biological eco-destruction our country has seen since the Gold Rush in the Sierras in the 1800's.

This is NOT good and in fact is pure evil. There is no reason these massive solar and wind plants cannot be placed on land that is already "gone" or on farms anywhere in the western U.S. that are laying fallow.

The Mojave Desert is largely YOUR land. Public land. BLM land, there for all of us to use and enjoy. The BLM has made, and continues to make, dirty deals for minor ducats with corporate robber-barns, on land it is supposed to protect for generations to come. Why can't the corporations barter deals for windmill and solar - which still uses oil and gas and water for production - with private landowners?

Read this article, which I found on a private blog: it's by an environmental writer who really outlines the evils, comparing the solar-wind land grab on the California desert to the fights of the 1950's and 60's to protect Yosemite and nearby Sierra valleys from development of dams.

http://palimpsest.typepad.com/frogsandravens/2010/10/hetch-hetchy-and-glenn-canyon-all-over-again.html

The desert is my home. This hurts. It's unnecessary. Solar and wind CAN be done right. The sickening destruction of stands of virgin, old-growth Joshua trees, which are already endangered, by bulldozers -- to build the world's largest solar plant - is an irreversible decision that will ruin what can never be replaced.

Pass the word along. Let people know. GET INVOLVED. Maybe we can...change this world.
The California Desert...is YOUR backyard.

Live Desert Poetry Reading, Guerrilla Reads Magazine + Phantom Seed @ P & W Online

This is a very cool online literary journal....Guerrilla Reads....based in L.A. and extending to the California Desert

MOJAVE DESERT POETRY: live reading by Ruth @ Guerrilla Reads Online Literary Magazine....you'll have to copy/past the URL to your browser...I'm still trying to figure out how to enliven links here on my page.

http://guerrillareads.com/
Issue 15, October 19, 2010
if you don't see it on the homepage, go to the Issue 15, Oct 19 archives.

Please also view some of the other videos on the Guerrilla Reads website, especially the one just before mine, issue 14, October 12, 2010 - featuring the stellar poet-activist-humanist Juan Felipe Herrera, my friend and a huge inspiration, in a collaborative reading his great poem, Arizona Green (Manifesto #1070), in protest the passage of SB 1070. Just scroll down from where you see my humble little video.

And: check out the Phantom Seed: a magazine of California desert poetry and prose listing at Poets & Writers Magazine....I think it looks great! Issue 4 is now out. Cover photograph taken at Rock Chapel, near Christ Church Park in Yucca Valley, CA - the cross is cut=out into the bricks of the artistically-designed, small chapel. I spent a day in there a few years back, meditating and praying, desert light filtering in through the open crosses, Joshua trees and Jesus-statues in the background.


http://www.pw.org/content/phantom_seed_magazine

submissions accepted year 'round. Email to runolan@aol.com along with writer's bio.

Sign Petition to Stop Big Solar/Windmill in the California Desert

Help! Sign the petition to stop the "Gold Rush Mentality" desecration of the Colorado River Indian Intaglios, a sacred and important archaeological site located in the California Desert near Blythe, California -

http://www.petitiononline.com/savekoko/petition.html

Then, PLEASE pass this petition along to ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS, online and otherwise!! TIME IS PASSING QUICKLY - the Gold Rush is raging, the big utility companies are sealing-the-deals-with-the-state, and other, massive solar-windmill facilties are lined up to scrape and destroy the face in ugly, unwanted surgeries already scheduled to be knifed across vast tracts of the Mojave and other California deserts!!!

To be blunt: we need to act NOW!

Why is the big-solar-faciilty-in-the-desert-thing such a big deal?

There are so many things wrong with this picture - including the fact that these solar facilities take up mega-water.....as most of you know, water availability is a MAJOR problem throughout the desert, and the southwest. Not to mention that the CA desert, second in biodiversity of life - including the beloved icons of our region, the endangered Desert Tortoise and the Joshua Tree - stand to take another horrid ecologic hit & run that they may not recover from. Not to mention...who stands to profit in this LAND AND CULTURE RAPE? The big corporations - PG & E....Edison....not us, folks! Not the defenseless desert or its myriad, magical forms of animal and plant and geologic life.....

WE CAN AND MUST DO THIS BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!! Do you like the Grand Canyon? Who doesn't? Did you know that...back in the 60's, grassroots activists + the Sierra Club got together and managed to stop plans to install a series of dams in the Grand Canyon - yes, that's right, and one dam site even got drilled - and preserve this ancient and abiding place of magic and beauty for generations to come.

We, on facebook, can do this, too. We have the Internet at our fingertips, so please help those of us in the California Desert who are trying to pass the word along before it is too late!!!

Feel free to sign or not - but at least, before you make up your mind, take a moment to learn just a little bit about what is at stake with the massive solar-windmill-corporate-land grab, and what's going down faster than a "speeding bullet" in our Mojave Desert. Just so you are informed.

To learn more about the Intaglios, visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blythe_Intaglios

ACT NOW!! The California Energy Commission has already approved legislation that allows for construction - desecration - to begin at the Blythe Intalgio Site, as well as at Ivanpah, CA - the latter is planned to be the largest solar panel facility in the world and will destroy thousands of untouched acres of our sacred and necessary California Desert.

After you sign this petition, please visit the following site for information on the pending Ivanpah, CA (located near the stateline between California-Nevada) solar installation.

Information at Ivanpah, CA solar facility - note that "PG & E" and other utility conglomerates are jumping on the "investment" bandwagon...

http://sunpluggers.com/news/as-decisions-near-on-more-solar-power-plants-opponents-urge-alternatives-01020

http://californiasolarinstallation.com/archives/tag/brightsource

THERE IS AN EXCELLENT GROUP CALLED
SOLAR DONE RIGHT
who are working feverishly to put a stop to the Gold Rush on public desert lands. Contact them for more information.

http://solardoneright.org/

I plan to visit the Blythe Intaglio site very soon, within the next two weeks, and speak directly with a Colorado River area Native American elder who is intimately familiar with the stories behind the Intaglios, and learn more, which I will share with you on this blog as the stories unfold. I will also take more pictures and post on my blog soon. Keep the Faith!

Thank You!
Ruth Nolan
Mojave Desert Native.....and advocate
editor, No Place for a Puritan: the literature of California's deserts (Heyday Books, 2009)

Poetry Night in San Diego

I read on Weds, Sept 15 at Word Soup in San Diego, a terrific series hosted by my longtime poetry friend Seretta Martin (pictured at left.) Next to me is a new poetry friend, Jackleen Holton; she and I were the two featured poetesses of the evening! This inspirational poetry night also featured many amazing open microphone readers!

Phantom Seed 4 Reading @ Palm Springs Museum

Blow Torch (or: desert diaspora v_02)

what it's like
to not feel safe
because the fire rages around all of us
destroying some lives entirely
and inexplicably sparing other homes

it's koran-burning talk on TV
in the basement of Riverside Medical Center,
waiting for an x-ray and huddled with held-back tears
I can't read the script, can't hear the words
then the doctor says: lungs clear.

this is the world of many homeless
this is where the old orange grove once was
next to the make believe river which is dry
until you get close enough to the hidden heart
mid-cottonwood, mini-cauliflower cosmology
water-cycle-breath
mountains to valley to sea

we stopped it up
by tearing it apart

the Bible, the Koran,
they both
came from a desert
just like this
Noah's Ark, I remember
getting those little plastic
animals at the Arco Gas Station
in Rialto on Foothill Boulevard

it's unpredictable, the planners will say
we have to make it safe
we don't want floods
we do want suburban homes

I believe you have asthma, my lass.
that's why your chest has been hurting so badly
that's why your upper back feels like it's burning sometimes.
that's why you cough and wheeze until you cry.

walgreens for an asthma inhaler.
then Bristol Farms on Country Club, Palm Desert,
samples of erotica

dams don't always work
earthquake version 9.0 about to erupt
and southern California's inland coastal valleys
are pockmarked with false lakes
cement waterways
never enough
to put out the drought
to combat fire season
some of us live closer
to the source
and feel its loss
while others yet don't
and how they yet mock

something about the desert
too much dust, not enough trees
too much emptiness of the interior
plastered with remembered and remodeled facelifts.
Grass - lear jet backwash across
Whitewater Wash
an empty face of sand
imprisoned between
miles of gold courses
narrowing its neck (remove double chins)

it always happens to someone else
because they asked for it
because of how they built their life
what did they expect?
love-making on the worst night of fire season
the last time the life-shred Santa Anas swallowed
chunks of Malibu, the San Fernando Valley
you brought this on
it is all your fault

it was gray too soon in the I.E.
but burning blue and white out here, as always,
and so I diamond shop for dinner, a cartier of the mouth,
lacking soul food:

lemongrass linguine + mushroom medley + cauliflower-red pepper
+ stir fry + grilled salmon salad + expensive gouda cheese
+ eggplant hummus +
one recyclable plastic fork (a new thing)

swallowing
is what we all do,
let's just speak the truth

it's downtown Riverside, la tablita on university by the front window
hugging friends who randomly stop by, chili_relleno and no bread
darkness vaporizes
I drive home on the 91-215-60-10-cook street loop
for the 492n'd time (somewhere around there)

and you'd always drive my car, it was all good
something about 2 am and broken bridges
being retrofitted for e-q standards
gets a little old,
as if I would be the one
to be on that bridge
the instant the big one hits (again)

it's the pool guy banging on the slider, just wanted to say thanks
for moving the trash cans that were in my way in the side yard where I come in
and the weather is suddenly so cool...........weightless..........

it's the fleece cougar blanket, two fleece jackets, one orange pashmina and
a pricey cotton sweater for creative writing at noon: the classroom is COLD
I offer what warmth I can to my students, and they take me up on it

don't worry
we can save ourselves
200 cans of organic soup
29 boxes of shotgun ammo
a new gate more securely locked
restraining order against the stalker
two big dogs and camping supplies
I know how to backpack for months
I've done it before
life on the streets
in the woods
freeze-dry food, instant oats
we don't need much to survive

it's not Tarah texting/her 2nd week in Minnesota
with new in-laws I don't know
others. numbers I don't know who's behind them.
"what ru doing 2day"
"I love you"
"yr my hero"
"can you call me I need to talk"
"full tilt boogie"
"come over!"
"where u at?"
"do you have flyers for your next event?"
"I want my fam to know ur my still my friend"

it's the small hairbrush
it's Brindle and Shasta shedding fur
it's my new do-it-yourself-haircut that everyone seems to love
it's paying off the American Express bill
and slicing the cheese extra thin
it's curling up in the back bedroom on the new bed I bought 6 months ago
in a blanket and crying myself back to sleep at dawn
it's paperwork I can't get through
it's dishes I can't understand
it's waking up to peace + bird-songs by the window:

...................it's another day and I am now taking asthma medication
maybe I'll be able to breathe this afternoon
and write the gratitude list:
I am grateful for sunrise
I am grateful for the dark water
I am grateful for the dogs
I am grateful, um, to have a job
I am grateful for the bullet holes, I can believe, I think,
that they offer light after all

there's no children to worry about
..........pictures of lost parents
on the milk cartons...............

you are free! Free at last!
..........to do what, to reach for
what missing fingers you once had......

sort of like my lungs
wanting to feel at one
with the rest of my entirety
stomach, breasts, and heart
but lacking a windpipe

I'll make up for that
the other organs are there,
the negatives demonstrate that
I just need to remember
to reach for the suck-plunge inhaler
invite oxygen, even though
it causes rust

I make up for gambling
by going to extra church

I make up for not reading
by burning books

I make up for God
by making the sign of the cross
when I drive by highway accident sites
offering the crude wooden cross

it's 9.11 tomorrow and I imagine emergencies,
books burning and the hole left deep in mid-city ground,
invisible catch-all
with no words
printable
for this

one step away from empty brain,
empty book,
9.11 of the soul
something to sedate us all for
body memory
one part
many wholes

bellow: does it mean: below
or
to blow
or reach for the hose
fire of breath
dead center
has new meaning for me now
Buddha
taking arrows between the eyes,
He approves

Ruth Archives

A little archiving for my files and hopefully for your viewing and listening pleasure...and so I don't forget.

April, 2010: My Western Wilderness Conference, 2010, UC Berkeley presentation. Featuring the California Desert and some of my desert poetry as stars: Panel moderated by Malcolm Margolin and featuring Kenneth Brower, Tim Palmer, and Kimi Kodani Hill. Film excerpt by my friend Cyrus Emerson who works at Blackstone Audio.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=471563005080&subj=559231276

September, 2008: Interview with poets Ruth Nolan + Juan Felipe Herrera, KCET Arts Block, SoCal. Interviewed by poet Ching-In Chen.

http://www.kcet.org/socal/podcasts/artsblock-live/ruth-nolan-and-juan-felipe-herrera.html

Another goody-item for my blog grab bag

Here is a link to the 2008 Joshua Tree Photo Shoot sponsored by UCR-CMP and Sweeney Gallery....and a writeup of my role in the film I wrote and read poetry for (I just found this writeup....I'll post the entire project description in a separate blog posting)

Escape to Reality: 24 hrs @ 24 fps

Once a rough cut of images was assembled, we approached the author of Phantom Seed, poet Ruth Nolan to add her vision of Joshua Tree. Ruth, a resident of Palm Desert, became excited about the video project and set about writing and narrating Joshua Tree Imprimatur (excerpted below). She also recorded footsteps walking and running through Joshua Tree, a place she had spent many days and nights growing up. While Mabel Luhan's memoirs, featured in sub-title form are the voice of Escape to Reality, it is Ruth Nolan's words that are its soul. She paints a picture of the desert that is complex, ironic, mysterious, and beautiful.

The film clip is at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gowJF2HLNYY

Joshua Tree Imprimatur (excerpt)

In Joshua Tree
In the land that crowns its needled glories with sand
In the desert made of pavement fallen from the Milky Way
In the desert made of deep holes, carved by grinding stones
In the desert made of gashed canyons, cut straight through stone
In the desert made of walking rain that the eye can far-off see
In the desert made of fan tree palms
In the desert made of cold
In the desert made of Blinding mirage
In the desert made of light so old it whispers like grooved bones
Where the woolly mammoth and rattlesnake cross time and home,
Oceans of time rising and receding, land quaking in their paths
Where the granite batholiths arch their backs
where the red-tailed hawks vault their hunting songs
by Ruth Nolan


AND HERE IS....

The upcoming California Legacy Project, Nature Dreaming. Sponsored by Santa Clara University & the National Endowment for the Arts - in progress, and I'm one of the invited humanities scholars from the state who will be part of the project:

http://californialegacy.org/radio_productions/Nature_Dreaming/