The Mill Creek Culture, our ride.

Today, Greg and myself took a canoe trip down Mill Creek, in northwest Iowa. IT WAS AWESOME.

The day started off not promising, the sky was thundering and it was cold, raining. Fortunately by the time we launched, The weather was in our favor.

As we started off, we immediately saw nature thriving in the creek. There were geese everywhere (Greg said they were all nesting), along with many other birds as well.

The creek, still showing the results of the high banks, had knocked large sections of earth down into the water, still shooting grass up and out the sides of the large dirt mounds.

We managed to wedge our way between a few mounds of this dirt and sat atop them in the grass, looking up and down the watershed. It was the most peaceful placed I've sat in a very long time. I felt like a kid again.

We learned quickly that having a nice pack of mud on the bottom of our feet (we were shoeless) made the rocks softer to walk on.

Standing in the canoe(it was calm), I felt like I was gliding across the water, and I was. Greg spoke a lot of the Mill Creek Native American culture which lived in the area about 3000 years ago (during the time of the Greeks in Europe). The route we took, we agreed, was likely a very popular area for the natives of the area (which are long gone). Greg mentioned one farm in the area which has buckets and buckets of pottery they've found in their field. It was once a wonderful thriving culture.

Today, It was hard not to notice the tires, plastic, and pop cans lying in and along the banks of the creek. We heard engines revving and cars screaming down the highway. Civilization was just over the hill. The trees were rife with invasive species along with the fields adjacent, which are also, technically, invasive.

It did not bother us though, nature was still obviously running this show, and I think we both felt its pull.

0 comments | Comment

april 22, 2009 08:33am

Earth Day

Its a beautiful day outside. Our family is very happy to get out of the stuffy house.

Its a great day. Its Earth Day, the Official launch of extinctearth.org , and my tomato plant is making a turn for the better. He's a tough little tomato plant. Two days ago I almost uprooted him and started over, but now he's in great shape.

Its been a long 6 months getting this website off of the ground. Greg and myself are just glad that its finally out there.

There is so much more we plan to add to this website and so much feedback we want from you, yes you.

If you have any technical problems be sure to email admin@extinctearth.org. Thanks for stopping by.

0 comments | Comment

april 19, 2009 10:47am

On Promise and Peril

For one of the classes I'm taking for school I was required to read an article about the Promises and Perils of technology. Though the article was mostly about beneficial technological advances vs. tech advances which aid human destruction, I think that the whole concept could be applied to our environmental problems.

Though I doubt too many people have it on their agenda to purposefully hurt the environment, I think that many people would just as soon be ignorant of environmental issues than to face them, we are as ignorant a society as there ever has been. My moral beliefs are that ignorance is just as bad as willful action when it comes to something bad. And likewise doing something good that you don't realize your doing is equivalently good as doing something willfully.

In this context I then see our willful ignorance towards the environment as a personal attack on my beliefs. It is difficult to handle considering the hippocracy. I do realize that I pollute and cause harm to the environment, but I take comfort knowing that I am trying to do better. If you don't feel guilty about the way the environment is treated, really if you have a problem feeling guilty about anything, than you will live a sad immoral existence.

102 comments | Comment

march 18, 2009 07:32pm

The History of The United States

I had an interesting conversation with a friend tonight about the U.S.A.. I love our country and all of the privileges that it has brought us, but I think we have a dark side to us that needs to be addressed.

First off, Native Americans. We like to talk about Thanks Giving and Pilgrims and how everything was hunky dory when they came over. Well, The pilgrims were a small minority of the many different peoples who came to our country before and during its formation. Before most anyone had been here, Columbus made sure to kill off several islands worth of natives in the Mediterranean (The Spanish Inquisition was in full swing).

Later, tensions over land, culture etc seemed to repeat and repeat between European immigrants and the natives (who'd been here for more than 1000 years). Many were killed in conflicts a few hundred years before and one hundred or more years after the American Revolution. It should be noted however that many American natives died from exposure to European carried diseases for which the Immigrants were mostly immune(this was true throughout the immigration of both of the Americas).

Once we finally took over what is now the continental United States, practically by sheer force, we expanded to other areas. One example is the acquisition of the Hawaiian Islands, which was nearly completely negotiated and ordered by an American businessman(look up the story, its quite interesting).

This empire building theme started to get more advanced and instead of the burden of taking over a country the US started to leech off of inferior and less able countries. I forgot to mention earlier the unwilling enslavement of many thousands of native Africans, which were moved to the US where they were sold to the highest bidder, that's men, women, and yes children. What a disgrace.

There is a lot of good that has come out of our country, but it had to ride on the coat tails of persecution and utter hell for those who stood in our path.

I'm not trying to say America sucks or this or that. This is just the way it was. I wish we could be remembered in the future for things that are a little more positive than enslavement, bondage, and empire building.

As I always like to say. Don't take my word on any of this, figure this out for yourself. The world wide web in all of its glory has all the information you'll ever need to become an informed citizen. This all may seem like ancient history, but our grandparents grandparents lived it. We're such a young country, I hope we can make a better name for ourselves.

We say "the land of the free". What exactly did it take to get this so called freedom? Was it worth it?

0 comments | Comment