Hammer Mill Days

You can't just look through the telescope. You have to squint really hard to see them. That's because, well, they're either really, really small or really, really far away. What are we doing now? Good question. Aside from working on yet another episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our somewhat-monthly podcast, we are trying to catch up with some of the incidental characters in the shaggy dog story of our lives. Isolated from the world as we may be here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, buried in a mountain of snow, we still have a fitful internet connection and at least one hand free. We can track down pretty much anyone on the other end of that "series of tubes" known as the Web. (Precious little else we can accomplish, at least until Spring.) For instance, what is Mitch Macaphee doing? Well ... a quick investigation using various search engines turned up next to nothing. So I guess what I said in the last paragraph is not entirely true, at least when it comes to...

The year is just getting started, and already there are too many things to write about. Let's start with the obvious. New Congress. The all-new, all-GOP controlled Congress is now in session, with old Kentucky Mitch holding the gavel in the first Republican-led Senate since 2006. You might think you could resist, even for a single moment, the impression that the GOP is a wholly-owned subsidiary of corporate America, the energy companies, and Wall Street ... but that wasn't possible even on the first day of the session. Our representatives are ready to push forward the Keystone XL pipeline, repeating all the bogus claims that this project will create jobs, jobs, jobs, make America more energy secure, and is only opposed by "environmental extremists". Sure, blow up the atmosphere on your first day. Good going, Kentucky Mitch. Charlie Hebdo. The sickening murder of 12 people in Paris by extremists has focused our media-driven culture on the issue of speech freedo...