Julia Butterfly Hill and how she saved the Redwoods

 

JULIA BUTTERFLY HILL

On 28.12.2010  I wrote; ‘’I spend the afternoon watching Avatar on her very large, wall mounted TV screen. WOW………….now I know what all the fuss has been about, I was so bowled over by that film, it’s more like a religious experience than an animated film. I’m going to get the DVD and watch it over and over again.  I just loved that film, I found it moving’’

Now I think I’ve found the inspiration for the film, and if this wasn’t the original inspiration, it could easily have been.
Julia was/is an environmentalist who in 1997 climbed a huge red wood tree that is believed to be about 1500 years old and over 50 meters tall. The tree was threatened with destruction by the loggers and chainsaws of the Pacific Lumber Company. Watching Julia living in her tree, ‘who’ she called Luna, watching her climbing and walking around Luna , and hearing the way she tells her story, made me think of Avatar.  And yep I know that's a bit odd, I know Avatar is an animation, a fantasy, and Julias story is real, she is real and her struggle was real, but to me, they have a very similar 'feel'.

Julia's Story from;

http://www.circleoflife.org/inspiration/julia/

( this web site is not very well maintained and many of the pictures are missing, but the story is still there)

‘’For 738 days Julia Butterfly Hill lived in the canopy of an ancient redwood tree, called Luna, to help make the world aware of the plight of ancient forests. Julia, with the great help of steelworkers and environmentalists, successfully negotiated to permanently protect the 1,500 year-old tree and a nearly three-acre buffer zone. Her two-year vigil informed the public that only 3% of the ancient redwood forests remain and that the Headwaters Forest Agreement, brokered by state and federal agencies and Pacific Lumber/Maxxam Corporation, will not adequately protect forests and species.On December 18, 1999 Julia Butterfly Hill, then 26, came down to a world that recognized her as a heroine and powerful voice for the environment. Her courage, commitment and profound clarity in articulating a message of hope, empowerment, and love and respect for all life has inspired millions of people worldwide.’’

She has written several books about her experience
Book review from;

www.goodreads.com/book/show/7803.The_Legacy_of_Luna

The Legacy of Luna:

The Story of a Tree,

a Woman and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods

On December 18, 1999, Julia Butterfly Hill's feet touched the ground for the first time in over two years, as she descended from "Luna," a thousandyear-old redwood in Humboldt County, California. Hill had climbed 180 feet up into the tree high on a mountain on December 10, 1997, for what she thought would be a two- to three-week-long "tree-sit." The action was intended to stop Pacific Lumber, a division of the Maxxam Corporation, from the environmentally destructive process of clear-cutting the ancient redwood and the trees around it. The area immediately next to Luna had already been stripped and, because, as many believed, nothing was left to hold the soil to the mountain, a huge part of the hill had slid into the town of Stafford, wiping out many homes. Over the course of what turned into an historic civil action, Hill endured El Nino storms, helicopter harassment, a ten-day siege by company security guards, and the tremendous sorrow brought about by an old-growth forest's destruction. This story--written while she lived on a tiny platform eighteen stories off the ground--is one that only she can tell.

And of course;

 YouTube is full of video clips of her and her tree.

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Book review, Capitalism 3.0, Peter Barnes

 

BOOK REVIEW

PETER BARNES

CAPITALISM 3.0

I’ve copied this video link from a friends page, the full version lasts 50 minutes and I listened to it while doing some housework. The guys voice can get a bit tedious, but despite that I found myself being drawn into his thinking. It doesn’t matter if you agree with him or not, this seems to me like pretty original ‘ out of the box’ thinking. Not every one will have the time for this, or the inclination, but for me, it was worth it.
The video of him explaining his book

http://fora.tv/2006/10/30/Capitalism_3_0

short review of the same book

 

http://www.capitalism3.com/home

Our current version of capitalism—the corporate, globalized version 2.0—is rapidly squandering our shared inheritances. Now, Peter Barnes offers a solution: protect the commons by giving it property rights and strong institutional managers.
Barnes shows how capitalism—like a computer—is run by an operating system. Our current operating system gives too much power to profit-maximizing corporations that devour our commons and distribute most of their profit to a sliver of the population. And government—which in theory should defend our commons—is all too often a tool of those very corporations.
Barnes proposes a revised operating system—Capitalism 3.0—that protects the commons while preserving the many strengths of capitalism as we know it. His major innovation is the commons trust—a market-based entity with the power to limit use of scarce commons, charge rent, and pay dividends to everyone.
Capitalism 3.0 offers a practical alternative to our current flawed economic system. It points the way to a future in which we can retain capitalism's virtues while mitigating its vices.

The weekend Bootsale, a Knitting Doll and a Vegetable Book

The Weekend Boot Sale,

No not a Cobblers Paradise as one of my American friends once assumed, but what is known outside the UK as, amongst other things, a flea market, a trunk sale or similar. A matter of 500 yards from where I live is a playing field that every Sunday morning from April to October is used as a Boot Sale venue. And this is what I found there this week.

Who amongst my lady friends doesn’t remember this little doll?? I had one, my sisters  both had one, all my cousins and friends had one and we would all sit for hours making long thin sausages of wool which were later stitched together to make different things. Thinking about it, all my cardigans were stripy cardigans, made from left over bits of wool collected up by my Nanna and knitted together. When the cardigans were finished, the left over, left over bits were given to me to make these little sausages.  These little wooden dolls were the elite models, the common ones were made from mothers old thread bobbins and a couple of nails. Both of my grandchildren were mildly curious but when they saw what was in the box they didn’t have the faintest idea what it was for. My  stiff old fingers did manage to make a couple of sausages from wool, yes I did remember how to do it, but I don’t think the children were that impressed. Personally, I love it, I think I really bought it for me not them, AND…….it only cost me 50p, what a bargain.

A couple of tables later I found this. What a gem. A small, soft covered unassuming book packed with just about anything and every thing you would ever need to know about growing vegetables. All written in plain English and illustrated.

This book devotes two double pages to growing tomatoes. At least I think I know where I went wrong this year. Seems in this climate Tomatoes really don’t survive outside, they need green houses, more feeding, more water and more soil than I gave them. No wonder mine didn’t do very well. Never mind, I will try again next year.

In fact this little book has two pages on green house tomatoes and two pages on inj door tomatoes and what the difference is and which method you should chose

Another 50p bargain !!

A morning well spent I think and all for only £1.00... what value.