Pg6=Essays and such
"Thoughts with out actions remain thoughts. Thoughts combined with actions becomes destiny. Think as big as your actions can achieve and then think big enough to allow others to join you in your cause so that your combined actions accomplish more than anyone could have ever dreamed possible." Samuel Colton American Authour 1-19-09
Self Generating Generational Transnational Global Renewable Energy Systems©
By Samuel Colton Sr. American Author
5-25-2012
Is the world ready to slow the centralization of energy generation with co-environmental pollution and ecosystem destruction? Ready to repurpose the past century of human activity that has made centralized minable refuse reuse centers near every major human habitation zone an accessable reality? Yes we are. Present “critical path” (to borrow a phrase from one of my personal heroes Mr. Bucky Fuller) trajectory would indicate that rather than continue with collective societal exploitive corporate controlling power generation we fragment the system to the individual human who lives as an un-empowered dependant energy consumer of the collective power generating system rather than as the only truly sustainable and renewable energy system generation component needed for the global energy platform end use.
What am I talking about? Easy concept! Each person for the bulk of the person’s life cycle is capable of operating an individual hand held generator or other body part electrical generator. With the ongoing miniaturization of all things electronic and the efficiencies they represent all of the human experience is capable of having a hand carry cell phone, music device and other personal connective computing device that can be regenerated electrically by a small USB type connection. Battery storage renewal can be achieved with such a small “crank” device. Combined with small scale personally transportable and positioned solar cells and you have created a humanized completely mobile electrical service system. The government is putting little emphasis on this type of technology and research choosing to captivate our society to the large scale corporate command and control power grid systems. Present global security threats are representative of the need to accelerate the fragmentation and diversification of our present power generation system to provide a less vulnerable electrical array.
LED lights can provide considerable light with amazing electrical efficiency within the bounds of personal generating device. I can carry in a small back pack at this present time a HD video camera, Camera, Satellite mapping informational device and a notebook type computer with Wi-Fi Internet connectivity. All of which are capable of being recharged by a hand crank electrical generator.
So this is the present state of a big part of my world where I can access information, communicate with others on a global bases and I am the one thing that is constant and as long as I am able to feed myself and have health enough to turn the crank I am also able to generate the electrical energy I need to run my devices. With a redistribution of wealth to bring this technology to the urban and rural masses of impoverished techno peasants with instruction from the global techno elite then as a global societal collective we can begin to bring an intellectual renaissance at this time in our planets history where more of our human race are aware of this history outside of their own oral tradition and become a change dynamic to help resolve and reconfigure mankind from our present self destructing path. One can only hope.
Now to the reader in the so called developed world of self inflicted pollution and garbage producing excess which in reality is misdirected and poorly used planetary resources that are now of such value as to spawn a “recycling” industry (as primitive and crude as it is at present) that they i.e. you and me might not be able to grasp this concept. But for our fellow human beings who live daily in a world with no car, no high energy consuming habitation who have no access to go out seeking distraction in the shopping mall and movie theater on a regular basis; for these persons having a back pack with the technology I described previously and a personal electrical generating device to be used during the many hours of the day spent walking to and from……, waiting for…. Such time spent turning the crank of the generator and enjoying radio, music, listening to informational lectures, watching on a small screen educational and entertainment video would be a treat to be enjoyed. Imagine living in the remote Andes or rural sub Sahara what would having such a device mean. What would having the ability for the each member of the family to connect to a individual family electrical storage and retrieval system mean. In a world where many are one extremist bomb plot away from grid disconnectivity what would a system of autonomous power generation mean?
So you might start to get the idea that philanthropic foundations that go about seeking solutions to human illness and suffering but doing little to resolve the human crisis of those who want what others have leads us all down a long path of conflict, resource exploitation and devastation.
Picture the millions and millions of individuals and families who could harness their own living energy and convert it into self sustaining electrical output to meet their needs augmenting the greater social corporate grid tied systems and provide energy access to knowledge and information that would allow a time continuum shift regarding their ability to self actuate and I feel we will have made a new global dynamic.
These hand held generating devices can provide direct generation to consumption outputs, be tied to small storage battery systems for delayed use and perhaps more importantly is the next concept I will present and that is the new electrical exchange credit system.
What is the self generating electrical exchange credit system or the GEECS? This is where the hand crank generator has multi phase uses to meet the users need for electrical consumption and exchange of excess consumption to an exchange modality.
Here is how it will work; the device will generate electrical energy to run a device or charge a battery. Ok nothing new. The exchange comes in the form of a “discharge capacitor”. With the touch of a button the electrical energy being generated is switched to putting a charge into the discharge capacitor building up energy to its rated capacity. This energy can then be “discharged” into or onto the grid via a grid tied inner face which is located in developed areas capable of receiving such. Millions of electrical discharge capacitors putting power onto the grid can represent a significant power production capability. The system has a I.D. recognition system that identifies the device owner and builds a energy credit for the users account to be “exchanged” at a future date and time.
This individual generation system allows nearly all persons for the bulk of their life cycle to have some sense of autonomy in their daily energy generation and consumption choices. Improved hand held generator output capacity will allow efficiency gains in the use of the device and its impact on the world. Though small and incremental this forward thinking planetary restructuring of energy avaiibility, use and direction recognizes the individual’s ability as the only self renewable energy source of consequence on the planet allowing resources for society power generation to be focused on less polluting systems and placing literally in the hands of the individual the power geration they need. These mobile self generation systems will reduce the need for continued earth extraction of resources to build ever more vulnerable power grids to supply what is perceived as the never ending need for power by localizing the power at the source of the need, that being the individual.
As technology has allowed more so called idle time where by people actually have to concisely “work out” to maintain their health then all such exercise devices should be measured by a standard of how well they allow the individual to utilize this work out to create energy conversion credits. Most human mobility is in the form of walking or other means then small micro generators that can be implanted in footwear and convert the downward pressure of a person’s foot step into a electrical output that can be discharged during the day continues the harnessing the greater human electrical generating collective.
This type of manufacture for the production of these devices can be distributed across the globe spawning a new culture of technocrats in every country who manufacture, repair, replace, distribute and collect from the renewable energy source.
Where is the profit in this idea? For that entrepreneur out there become part of the manufacture and distribution network of the self renewable energy global systems applications. The competitive edge will be found in those innovating organizations that are capable of the production of units whose size, ease and plurality of uses create consumer confidence for these “IE” (Individual Electrical “systems.
I have a vision of the spin offs of this idea:
IES Depot - Sales and Service Center
IES Upload Station
IES Exchange participating Retailer (Discharge for exchange credit electrical units; every larger energy using building and company will want to purchase or exchange electrical credits for value of goods or series to augment their own electrical needs.) I can see walking up to the a candy or beverage dispensing machine and plugging in my small device and discharging energy back into the system and getting a discount credit towards my purchase. Can you see the potential? That is the question.
Why are present startup companies being ignored by the bulk of the planetary inhabitants is one of societal informational dissemination, local and distribution network support systems and capitol to establish for sufficient duration this technology application for it to become part of the daily cognitive and kinetic human activity. The need for self electrical generating system synergic cross over application that harnessing a variety of human activities such as bicycling, where one device can be linked to others via storage, retrieval and exchange of energy outputs for personal and societal gain.
This is the renewable energy revolution needed to bring us back from the solar cell, wind farm supper grid concept that is creating a false sense of energy security when the very resources needed to produce these systems are polluting the planet while at the same time not putting into the hands of planetary co habitants the destiny defining ability to govern their own energy future but rather rely trapped in the global banking and corporate system that extracts from the masses and concentrates wealth into the hands of a few.
This concept uses already understood technology and science that can be replicated in micro business manufacturing pods located and distributed by the thousands serving the millions planet wide. Each of us will find food and nourishment daily or perish. As long as we live we have the capability to tithe our time to generate our electrical energy needs.
The future is not in bigger nuclear reactors, certainly not in fossil fuel, solar energy systems present their own political, logistical and distributive drag coefficient and inability to be deployed in mass global scale. Allow each human who can generate what they need or want as a measure of work ethic and you create a new system that will define itself by how well we can work together in individual families, communities and nations.
A billion people in any linked collective who spend a ever decreasing amount of time (due to improved self generating electrical technology) can create a lot more usable energy than any environmental destroying hydro electrical project ever will and as long as they and other peoples exist so will the ability to self generate electrical power.
Personal project:
Back pack with personal electrical devices to only be charged by any number of market present hand held or other electrical generators that rely on human power to create and convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. Chronicle and document this effort for one year with video and other electronic recordable media and distribute via the Internet to others as evidentiary proof of the viability of the project for gain in critical mass.
Shoes and Polish©
By Samuel Colton
American Author
1-22-2012
Shoes and Polish is no simple task. A pair of shoes a brush, polish and me performing something so basic yet in it can be found the ritual of life. Yes, it is found in the polishing of shoes. It’s no simple task and thank you for taking the time to ask? If you only knew what polishing shoes Is like! You see yourself, your life in your shoes when you clean and polish them. You understand something about your life’s journey through your shoes. After all they have been everywhere your feet have gone and that of course means your body, your brain and your passion with them. They get dirty in the daily walk of life with bumps and bruises, little nick’s and scars; just like the people wearing them. You do your best to put ointments on them to heal them to make them ready for another day of whatever life has in store.
There is a certain healing that takes place in your soul as you take time out to give comfort, perhaps some since of care to the vestments that take so much pain on your behalf as you traverse among the cobbled and rough patches that comprise your life.
A fresh smell and a polished look and somehow you have a renewed since of what can be as you try to compete for the very living that makes your life and all your family’s life something bearable. Such a good friend is to be found in a pair of shoes. You share more with them than any other. They are there for every moment of life. There for your daily walk, your work, your worship, your children’s weddings, your family and perhaps someday your funeral. So as I take a moment from the day to take shoe in hand with all the tools of the healer and repeat out loud; I anoint you my friends and bless you and wish for both of us that we may be found doing good for others, living for the moment and in it realize just how much we share in common with all the other shoes around us.
My family is gathered in at the end of the day, the television in one room plays MTV, VH1 or some reality show with themes too shocking for my 60’s childhood but relevant to my adulthood and my now grown children’s concept of the global neighbor- hood. In another room the television is full of the sounds of this week’s Spanish language novella with all the intrigue, twist and turns of a well written novel, but no reading required to enjoy this diversion from our real lives. Somehow the TV version of life’s tragedies and injustices makes sense to the ones we experience in our own. In another room the CD player is playing music with children’s songs for my grandson to learn with some little spider who did not learn to stay out of the water spout. He learns to read and count in two languages at the same time. He is so smart.
The house is full of chatter, room to room in English, Spanish and conversations that blend the two as one. We laugh and scream as the grandchildren run about having the kind of fun every child should know. Fun with multiple generations of supervision where grandma rules supreme and all the men provide authoritative back up when called upon to do so.
We live between two worlds here in our south west home nestled along the border of Arizona and Sonora. For us the line is a political one to be navigated between visiting family living and dead on both sides of the divide, where we cross over the best and worst of our two cultures, our people with all our indigenous rituals, superstitions cradled in colonial colloquialisms of language, origin and customs, practiced for public consumption while making fun of some of them privately because they are so who we are.
We are who we are because we have to be someone from somewhere and where we are is where it is. From our birth to our passing, we live in this soup of life full of foods, words, practices and customs. We come from homes that are proud of who we are and some who are afraid to embrace who or what “WE ARE” is. The world around us tries to define us with government developed definitions because if we can be fit in a box on a form we can then be relegated to some level of recognition for the injustices we share with nearly every human being on the planet at some time in its history. But it’s our turn at the plow or the benefits counter after sufficient humiliation to get back what our labor has provided to someone, somewhere in the system. A system that rewards us but at the same time denies that we are not from any “here” place or recognizes that our world straddles several places of origin that converge on a line with an ever growing longer fence that attempts to separate us from our families origins and accentuate our dual governance under the stars and stripes on one side and the snake grasping Eagle the other.
I pause my writing so Abuela can demand that I get the Flip video camera out so she can run back to the living room and record our dancing grandson who’s every move is to be recorded as the most precious thing ever to happen today and every day, because it is. I wish everyone could have and know a Mexican grandmothers love. I am not sure when it happened, the hispanification of our family it just did and there is nothing wrong with that.
Somewhere in my youth or perhaps my early days of young parenthood, as a husband to our Mexican Madre who is now the most wonderful grandma, or was it as I learned with my children our languages, customs and expressions. Who can ever really know when they became the “who” of the who they are.
I have a son in law and a daughter in law who are having children or who will someday have children of their own, who will continue to be who we are for generations to come. Somewhere along this journey my dreams became a mixture of English and Spanish with themes that crossed the border both physically and metaphysically. Dreams that came from my daytime reality and nurtured my most hoped for wishes and greatest fears, my children and I have our own world of what La Familia is. We are tight.
Our home is the home of all our generations. We come and go as a fluid group of individuals who share a common bond of life’s energy met out in our cross generational, cross cultural, cross international existence. I listen to my grandson say; I love you, te amo mucho, all in the same sentence. I hear my daughter announce happily that her second little son is pooping and everyone in the room celebrates and laughs as we share in the joy of these new additions to our collective energy and communal powers. Si se puede is what we do every day as we master the bureaucracy and gain greater levels of literacy through institutions of higher learning. My youngest daughter attends college as have all here brothers and older sister. In her our hopes for the future continue. Our earning power grows along with our community connectivity in real estate, bank accounts and consumerism that tells all around us that we have arrived, that we are not going anywhere, and our cemetery plots with our buried dead shows we mean it.
We are positioned in government, private industry and recognized in other countries as individuals and as una familia. I have served as an elected official and have shown the way to my children that service to the institutions of this land is service to all of who we are and the people they represent. We have paid the price through our civic and collective family military service from my father’s generations to share in the bounty of responsibility to shape our world through participation in its processes, institutions and by observance of the law while we advocate for change through its rule.
I look around our home and see the special pots for tamales, pots for posole, the comal for the tortillas and the many ingredients that make our food something we eat every day at home; while millions go out searching for restaurants that can provide something close to, or as the sign say “authentic Mexican food”, and I guess everyone here is eating authentic at home tonight. Just like any night we want.
Don’t look for the stereo typical Latin look. We have been here “wherever here is” so long that we look like anyone from anywhere. We come in all shades of color, we are tall, fat or thin with names that show that we are at the cross roads of the south west and the rest of the world that has come through here. Our time is now and always has been. Our past has not been full of the same opportunity one to another but we have all paid the price of admission to be here and the future of this place will be found in all of who we are.
We are Chicano, Norte Americano’s, (or whatever the phrase of the day is that describes who we are so that whoever is describing us feels good about the definition. Or wants to use it to make us feel less because of it) or whatever you know us to be but to define the who and what “is” is can be so difficult in so many ways that you can just call us children of the Americas.
Don’t give us special rights, just our rights. We can do the rest like all who have come before and all who will come after, through honest, hard work protected by our constitution, the laws of our Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with justice and liberty for all who will come here to continue the unfinished work of building a nation of law and order that respects the individual while serving the greater good of the nation. A nation that continues to call to the other nations of the world, not to fear us, but to embrace what is good about us, shun what is bad in us and work with us to bring to all mankind the promises enjoyed by many but still not enjoyed by all.
Mi casa Chicano is what it is, because what it is will always be who and what we are. But in every thread of who and what we are, is the promise of who and what the United States of American is and the hope of what the world can be because of who we are! We are all Chicanos, when we share the dream of what being here in the United States of America can be for us all. USA mi tierra! USA la tierra a mis hijos! Si se puede. Say it in any language it is the same. It is the promise of America to the entire world. We are here, but our values and ideals go everywhere we do.
USA mi Tierra.
May 21 2006
Thoughts On Immigration Issue
With regards to immigration by undocumented persons Its good to see such active debate on this subject regardless of where you are on the issue. Myself I recall reading one of Abraham Lincolns essays where he rallied the American people to support the rule of law and the institutions of the Republic. That it is better to support the institutions based in our constitution through the democratic process than not. This process requires that the voices of the people be raised in a civil manner and directed through the peoples representatives who upon consideration of their will in-act such laws and legislation so as to govern the nation.
With respect to this present debate during which various proposals have been put forth through the federal government to address the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants one can only conclude that the reasoning for the guest worker act with eventual citizenship could be flawed or is the best idea ever. If the said immigrants are doing work that "Americans" will not do then granting eventual citizenship to them will make them no longer willing or eligible to perform said work. Thus the ongoing cycle for additional immigrants to replace those displaced from the labor pool of less desirable work. If the window for registering and completing citizenship is a 5 year time table, the nation will need to uptake 12 million new immigrants every five to ten years. Now as you do the math this continued exponential growth based on immigrants plus children born to immigrants will require that the nations job rate increase proportionate with the increase in new undocumented immigrants that must be cycled in to replace the vacancies in the labor pool left by the new citizens. Provided the economy can grow with the increased availability of labor to maintain the cycle of incoming job seekers and push up and out to more desirable "American" class jobs our economy should be able to maintain its share of value added production to offset gains made by countries such as China and India.
However if the incoming cycle out paces the upward mobility of the previous immigrant group then there should be a declining trend downward for the nation as a whole as industry redeploys its resources to those areas with sufficient skilled labor to perform the more technically demanding task. This redeployment may take the form of continued exportation of manufacturing jobs off shore not for low cost labor but for technically advanced workforces that are being developed without the need to retool is domestic workforce that is less diverse than ours. As more American companies retool to less skilled jobs to accommodate the continued immigrant population (that is in the cycle of acquiring sufficient systems understanding, education and language skills to complete the upward cycle to the more advanced job placement by offering lower skilled jobs with the accompanying lower wages) the economy may experience an initial decline lasting several decades. In this the role of America then reverses and we become the low cost labor pool to the world that in turn will displace the emerging economic giant represented by China and other countries.
Thus the stakes are high. Does the continued trend work and push the economy up, or does it eventually become an equalized stress where first world and third world meet to form in varying degrees a second world country in a state of decline seeking stability with its neighbors further south? Though each individual voice raised will lend its self to the debate and the shaping of the final outcome that is yet to be determined it can only be hoped that a high level of civility and calm will prevail. Though running in the streets yelling fire, fire may get a lot of attention from some it will not ring the bell in the fire house or awake the firemen to perform their duties to put out the fire. Better that much of the heated words be conveyed to your respective states elected officials who in the end will cast the deciding vote on the fate of this issue and you in turn you will cast yours to determine theirs.
In conclusion my fellow Americans might I suggest that more of you quit your present state of employment or retired disposition with no further e-mails or letters to the editor, but rather take one of these less desirable jobs so that there can be no further immigration by undocumented persons. As all the "less desirable" jobs will have been taken by "Americans".
This logic is also flawed as to do so would remove 12 million Americans from desirable employment that contributes to the greater economy and plunge their children on a downward economic trend as well, thus beginning the immediate implosion of our remaining industrial base giving way to a world wide depression the likes of which have never been seen. So the case is strong for the continued new immigrant to citizen cycle to be repeated until the other countries on the continent North and South can develop economies to reverse the immigration trend and stabilize the Americas as a geographic whole with minimal migration patterns during the coming century.
The idea of ceramics and pottery conjures in the mind of people the planet over of hands working in wet slippery clay. The image of the village potter squatting over a mound of mud shaping it into the every day items that will make life more productive and livable is an integral part of the human experience. Be it primitive peoples or modern urban dwellers ceramic products are as essential to life as water in the dessert.
From the earth came man and every living creature there in and back to it all return would be a common theme and somehow represent the communal consumption with ones self when working with that from which we originate. The sense of connection and wonder at the medium of clay to respond to the inner desire to create must somehow transcend the very master creators experience in the never-ending creation of masterpiece, one after another.
One can only imagine the multiple events of discovery in divers corners of the globe we call home as hominoids learned to shape and bake with varying degrees of success the earth they live on, depend on and remain on. The wonder that something as illusive as wet clay could be shaped into any imaginable shape and size, fired and out last its owner with a minimal amount of care transformed mankind forever. The keepers of this knowledge “the way of clay” are to be as revered as any alchemist or metallurgist. Who could know that the ancient wonder of ceramics would continue to evolve into the modern wonder that allows all other metal and chemical processes to have come into being and yes continue to this day. Ceramics are such a part of daily living we forget how many ways it is.
Examples can be found in the durable tile floors, shower walls, serving dishes, the porcelain god, bathroom and kitchen sink to name of few of the more common representations. But lurking deep within our modern industrial world ceramics can be found in some form as refractory materials in the very firing kilns used to make such products. As liners in boilers, furnaces and as bearing surfaces for high pressure pumps and wear resistance industrial surfaces where abrasion resistance is required.
Ceramic shell molding techniques allow for precision casting of metal parts that maintain tolerances of fit and finish never before achieved. This marriage of an ancient material to the modern metal alloys of recent generations has allowed the transformation of ship, rail and air transportation building. Medical devices never before thought possible are made possible due to the union of ceramics, polymers and metals.
If ceramics holds such a high place in providing for every day living as a means to safe and sanitary civilization so then it must hold a place as a required body of knowledge that every college educated person should hold some idea of and respect for. Most understood is the idea of taking a ceramics course as an introduction to this material from the artistic and utilitarian view of it as a means for producing small utensils or imaginative work pieces. Emphasis is placed on the techniques of shaping and working the material while the more exciting atomic bonds, chemical compositions and hardness potential of the base material and subsequent glaze formula and its application is best left to the more learned professor.
Students come to view the material as an object to be worked in but not truly understood. Questions of the origin of the clay body purchased in the book store, its chemical composition and related engineering data of what can be expected in terms of ability to shape, dry and fire to its maximum strength are little understood. Time and dedication to the subject are limiting factors. Our focus on the wonder of the material while neglecting the scientific principles that allows true mastery of it.
So like the ancients we learn by trial and error and rely on the classroom teacher as tribal sage for guidance in our journey of self-discovery along the way. Our results though childish give rise to desire to achieve greater and more varied learning. Seeking to repeat our successes and avoid repeats of our failures the clay becomes an analogy for life and its path to self-enlightenment. Wet clay, shaped wet clay, ever drying wet clay, dry hard clay, fired to bisque clay, glazed and stained clay, re-fired to temperatures that will destroy or make eternal the works brought about by our investment of time. Time spent in the clay, learning about it or closer to the truth, about us.
The journey continues for those who have passed from the passive learner to the eager consumer of clay as the modern wonder. Is this the sojourn of a lifetime? No, but the reason to spend a life time with hands in wet clay while squatting by the fire waiting for another miracle to emerge and save the world.
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Altering the current Path: The Future is Now!
Samuel Colton, Sr.
Prepared Remarks April 22nd 2010 Earth Day Arizona Western College, Yuma Arizona
It's a pleasure to be here with you today and to participate in this year's sustainability fair.
To discuss the current environmental path planet earth and its inhabitants are following one only need read the newspaper headlines to get a glimpse at the destructive course we are taking. Headlines on the front page shout to us about the threat of global nuclear war. Meetings on nuclear disarmament remind us that missiles are ready at the push of a button to destroy life as we know it. But no less dangerous though is the ongoing exploitation of fossilized energy reserves brought to our attention by the recent coal mine disaster and the loss of life that occurred. This type of energy comes to us but at a price. Petroleum exploration along with a variety of heavy metals combine with other polluting raw materials production that are being processed as we speak to produce all types of modern wonders but at a cost that may not be the equivalent of a nuclear war head going off in your home town but can be just a deadly .
Pollutants from bad technology once thought to be the wonder of the ages continue to plague us at all levels of the manufacturing process from extraction and harvest through the various conditioning and form transformations to the end user you and I. We turn our eyes from the mounds of industrial waste that make their way into the earth and our water supply. We contribute to this ongoing pollution without realizing that our desire for cheap gas, cheap products and our consumer life style purchasing habits determine what we are daily flushing down the toilet or the emptying of the waste can continues the cycle of accumulated industrial waste in a global eco system that is as connected as the systems in our bodies. The principle of "for every action there is a reaction" is true for all we do on our life's path as we journey through space. We are contributors to the "silent spring" or we are preservers of one filled with the joyous sound of birds.
As fellow astronauts on space ship earth we cannot destroy our life support systems and expect to continue the journey as we have for thousands of years. Human activity historically has had less consequence due to factors such as limited travel technologies which in turn reduced trade and the type there of.
But we have achieved the ability to extract and move huge amounts of materials from one place to another without fully understanding the impact of their production, life cycle or final disposition. We have achieved a rate of acceleration of chemical imbalance that is out pacing our ability to comprehend the consequences and make adjustments for them. This current path will continue to produce those waste components that will continue to increase Mercury in our water which in turn is in the sea life food chain which in turn is in us. The current path will continue to see us deplete the final energy reserves in the earth to power cars, planes, trains and ships so that we can make sure we pollute the planet globally and destroy the environment completely.
Polar Bears starving due to reduced ice packs, loss of glacial ice caps in the Andes, Acid rain, and deformed amphibians are all alarm bells for us all. Are we listening? The current path represents millions of human activities, millions of discoveries and millions of lives lived and lost that tell us that we have achieved the ability to destroy our world. Can we now achieve the ability to save it and to sustain it?
Our current path does not allow us to celebrate our intellect, to celebrate our science but rather we should weep knowing that our contributions to the current path will leave a legacy that at some point in the future no one will remember because no one will be here to remember.
If this is the current path where a value system of greed and profits is driving us off the edge to destruction clinching in our fist a hand full of money that won't buy us our health, our lives or our children a future, then altering the current path begins in the now not later. An object traveling along a certain trajectory will go from point A to B with a high rate of accuracy and predictability. However a slight deviation in the variables that established that path will be cause for change and for it to land somewhere else. We live in a world of large systems that would appear to dominate our lives and over power where we are in relation to them. We have seen that large financial systems are vulnerable to collapse; large agriculture systems are vulnerable to failure and those large food processors systems of sanitation are subject to recall.
We might think that individually we cannot change or alter the course and that we are caught in a web so entangling that there is no way out, but in fact we are the required element to achieve course correction to the current path of destruction and alter the trajectory so that we can achieve a new path leading to sustainability for our planet and all that dwell here on.
If all that is, comes from all that has been, then all that will be will come from all that is now. Altering the current path is a NOW thing, not a too be thing.
Let me share with you some idea of how one person can alter the current path and then you choose to be one who alters the path with me.
In preparing for the many activities going on today I realized that I have been preparing for moments like this all my life. You see I grew up in a home with parents who were environmentalist before the word was held in such common usage as it is today. To this day I do not think they thought of themselves as such. My father was a young man during the depression and saw the hardship first hand of what happens when unsustainable financial and agriculture practices take hold on a nation.
My mother likewise grew up in Oklahoma at a time when economic and natural disaster compounded by a lack of understanding of the consequences associated with good environmental and agriculture farm practices lead to the dust bowl era. These were times that none who lived through them could ever forget and to the day he died my father it would seem was always preparing for the next depression, the next disaster.
These economic and natural disasters shaped my parents lives who would go on to raise a family of children who experienced firsthand the positive lessons to be learned of hard work combined with home agriculture practices that relied on partnership with the earth and the many creatures that dwell on and in it. My father lived his life working to be the best organic gardener and farmer he could be, he strove to develop those aspects of the earth he tilled so that he did not need to rely on large agrichemical corporations to provide him with the seeds or chemicals to make his harvest productive or having to purchase those seeds again if he chose to grow a seed crop for the next years garden.
My mother worked beside him to harvest and preserve those fruits and vegetables for the off season and as children we enjoyed the opportunity to learn from them by working with them. Each year we worked, we planted, we harvested and we enjoyed the bounty of our efforts. These efforts represented hundreds perhaps thousands of small task each one carried out and linked to the others to fulfill the vision our parents had of the bountiful harvest that each year represented.
Somehow in doing this there were many lessons learned. You harvest what you sow, you get because you gave, and you share what you have with others. There were spiritual lessons as well as we learned to marvel at a world where every turn taught us that there are things greater than ourselves.
My father was a man of science and spent as many hours learning as he did working. His mission was to give back to the earth as much or more for everything it gave him. His mission was to learn the relationships between the many natural events occurring in the earth, such as the nutrient exchange of plants, the benefits of the many microbes and insects and how having a balance of predator and prey would allow him to grow and harvest without resorting to chemical treatments and pesticides we have come to learn are less our friend and more foe.
My father had a value driven view of the world he lived in and the work he did to raise food for his family. He wanted the land to be free of those things that would harm his children and wanted what he grew there to be a benefit to others. How refreshing to see that the first family grows a White House garden and models the value system of my father and thousands like him.
From his example I continue to be one of those who alter the current path. My back yard has a garden; my home has several solar lighting fixtures, with others converted to compact fluorescent or LED lights. We have begun to recycle and I can be seen collecting aluminum cans and have asked my adult children to do likewise. Most days find me driving to work in my old Subaru that gets over 40 miles to the gallon of fuel.
Personally I am working to alter the current path not because it's always the lowest cost thing to do but because it's the right thing to do. I have a value system that helps me make choices and as small as they may seem to be when combined with you we will alter the current path NOW!
Our present education systems continue to compartmentalize our learning where courses are broken out into fragmented divisions where you must go from one to another in the hopes of learning any one subject and while you are at it count yourself lucky if you remember something from all those course when you are done.
This old broken model continues to demonstrate its failure as we struggle to produce enough human capitol to satisfy our health care system needs, our engineering needs our manufacturing needs, our literary or art needs. The challenges of life on planet earth has given rise to technologies such that there is a need for constant learning a an almost instant ability to adapt to change which gives rise for the need of a more fluid learning model where learners can group together for integrated studies. Studies that need to incorporate and integrate what are still being delivered as traditional English and math courses outside the chosen field of study when they should be combined with the study of computers and all the various communication and information tools they represent to learn seamlessly while studying the myriad facets of the global clean up and recalibration of our human existence.
For all the young people here today as a nation we lag in the number of college educated adults and lag in the number of persons with adequate science, technology, engineering and math skills to meet the challenges of the future. In a world where systems integration and technology allow us to access the globe why do we continue to educate in the old factory style where our system is designed to move students like a package from one course to another and hope they remember some of what they learned along the way.
Today's global challenges which are felt in every community demand that we retool our learning institutions into learning problem solving work group incubators where faculty from multiple disciplines interacts simultaneously with students in a teaching/learning model. This model will draw on teachers and experts who will work in these learning groups and pursue real world challenges and allow the students to gain valuable experience as they work to create solutions through education so that their transition from institutions of learning to institutions of industry is a natural and expected occurrence.
The only truly renewable resource on this planet is our youth who will learn today while shaping tomorrow.
Arizona Western College continues along a path that has shaped the lives of the students who have studied here and our college has embarked on a new journey to learn how to harness the origin of all energy on the planet the sun; this through the study of solar electrical and thermal technologies. Students will have an opportunity for learning via multiple tracts. One will focus on the engineering of solar energy systems and the other on the application, installation and maintenance of these engineered systems. Both will create new opportunities for commercial and domestic energy consumers while altering the current path away from fossil fuels.
This new array of solar learning opportunities will not be at the expense of existing programs but rather compliment and rely on them. Integration of solar technology is finding its way into the traditional technologies we all rely on. Be it solar powered automobiles, our lap top computer having a solar battery charger or the construction industry working to build solar powered homes and office structures that are energy self sufficient.
Our community college, our community will become the center for this altered path where the learning of "green" construction and manufacturing techniques will create places for all types of learned professionals to work from to solve the ecological challenges that are still here to be faced.
We cannot wait for the reformation we must become the change agents of it and reject the notion of doing business as usual as we continue the move to a value driven culture that puts the environment and people first; a value driven culture where any good business plan embraces the profitability of contributing to a better more sustainable future. We are able to connect via the Internet, cell phones and other emerging technologies in a way that allows the professors and students at AWC to learn from the professors of MIT.
I invite all of you to alter your personal path and make choices at home and work that will allow us to begin to be part of the millions of course alterations that will make the future a place where there is room for us all to live and find happiness for having done so. To join Arizona Western College as we move forward as leaders for a sustainable future through higher education.
Thank you.
Farewell Al ©
By Samuel Colton Sr
12/27/13
Al: You were someone to know and bigger than life in your mountain man outfit when our family first laid eyes on you. Our family loved to see you at the rendezvous and you always had your little ferret along to entertain the kids. Time passed us all by, but one thing was always the same; Al never met a stranger and would always help one out if he did. You loved your kids and in time your grandchildren. I cant think of a time you did not talk about them, always told them you loved them and always cared about them. I always like that about you. Its not every day you get to meet an artist, poet, mountain man, hot rod car enthusiast and when we met you we met all of your many characters and came to love each one. We did not know what a "Taco Feast" was, let alone go to one; but once we shared in one at your house we adopted the practice and now it is an annual tradition in all of our extended family. Who would think that our little ones would delight so much in being "chosen" to be the prince or princess of the family "Taco Feast"? Or that you pick up a couple crowns from BK and redecorate them for the "Taco Feast" night. Al you gave us so many little gifts that became big ones. I always looked forward to our visits on our way through the Metro and you always knew where a good breakfast or lunch could be found and it always seemed like you owned every place we went to. We never got around to going to the big Prescott Rodeo together but we talked about it enough I almost think we did. But we sure had a lot of fun that year at the big western art show in Scottsdale. Best damn lunch I ever had was off the back of one of those chuck wagons with my then little girl Tina along. What a great weekend and I would have never known to go with out you talking me out of Yuma to go to it. I don't know who had the collector bug the worst, you with collecting all those nut cracker dolls or me and my collecting of "tea pots" but we sure had a lot of fun dragging all the thrift stores in town looking for some of both. Jr and me will be stopping by one last time on your birthday to celebrate your life and for having known a friend like you. Treffle sends his condolences and I am sure you know that. You cant chose your family but you can chose your friends. Thanks for choosing us. You know you always had the better tin teepee and I expect the good Lord will make sure you are well taken care of in the world that is so close to ours that its hard for us to realize that you will always be near. I'll think of you often so that I can feel your presence and your good humor. Lets end not with a good by, but rather "until we meet again". Su amigo Samuel Colton Sr. Colton's of Yuma Arizona
