It's a beautiful morning and time for some praise, even though this is the most grim, most alienated summer I've ever known. (Humans seem to be intent on throwing away everything that's good, oblivious to the losses, while they play with their digital toys. I feel like the character John, in Brave New World, not captivated like all the others by the easy fun and escape. I learned in June that gigantic dams destroying hundreds of square miles of rain forest in the Amazon basin are proposed, to provide electricity for growing Brazilian cities. And that's just one assault on Nature among so many!)

 

Anyway, first, praise for the morning, to borrow Cat Steven's phrase. It's like being on vacation up at a Minnesota lake now, right here in the heart of Des Moines. Despite massive human-caused damage, the planet is still capable of providing us with amazing beauty.

 

Praise for the tomatoes I picked this morning from my chemical-free, compost-fed, backyard garden. It's a great year for tomatoes. I fervently wish I could plant on more than 0.013 of an acre of bountiful Iowa land.

 

An excellent recent letter to the editor, Jim Redmond. I was not aware of the effect on Native American tribes of the huge dams on the Missouri River. Sorry for the delay in praise for your letter.

 

Apology accepted, Donna, but your comments were not a waste of time. We should be constantly working on messaging. I thought my phrase, "Genetic engineering is genetic damage, deliberately inflicted," would get people's attention on the Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) issue but so far it hasn't. (I haven't really done much to publicize that concept, I admit.)

 

You wrote:

Maybe you'd like some help with better messaging of the hazards of GMO's as well?

 

You may have been ironic in saying that, but I am taking it seriously. Please do post here any suggestions you have.

 

The failure to stop the spread of GMOs into the environment is beyond tragic--it's like a slow-moving nuclear war. It's leading to a world where Nature is gone, extirpated: replaced by engineered life forms. All of us working on the issue need all the help we can get.

 

Neila, this should be a discussion on the Iowa Topics list, because if this is not an Iowa Topic, then what is? Iowa is probably the most genetically engineered place in the world. As to giving our enemies information they should not see, I'm not really worried about Monsanto or DuPont infiltrating this list. After all, If we can't discuss matters of substance on this list, we might as well shut it down.

 

I will try to post some writing I have done, from as far back as 1996, on the genetic engineering issue.

 

More praise;

We as Iowans should all be happy that Donna is on the national Sierra Club board. There are a number of projects involving the national Club that she might be willing to help us with. Imagine if the 1.4 million members of Sierra Club could be motivated to save the irreplaceable, world-class resources that are right here in Iowa. To stop the cancer of urban sprawl that's destroying our farmland, for example.  But there needs to be a way to communicate to those 1.4 million what we volunteers on the ground see as goals, as well as what staff see as goals. More about this soon, I hope.

 

Tom