Enough!

The Museum of Science and Industry 

We the people wanted power for industrial creation,

So we harnessed a river to move some gears to grind the flour.

Harmless.

In some places, it was donkeys or horses, gravity, or steam.

Power, energy, fire. 
Harmless.

Life was so hard...cleaning clothes, cooking and preserving food,

Heating homes in cold places. So, "lesser" humans did the work.

Hard work, horrible, hard work and hurt, for free, ...no place for me,

No place for me up there.

Set her free and help her babies, more than three…babies, babies, harmless, like me. Make more power. More babies, more food, more houses, more clothing, more time...got to keep it all going.

Harmless.

Not just light to light the darkness, now there are waves repeating, repeating all day long. Refrigerator, stove, cable cars, plug me in!! Harmless.

Hospitals, fire department, telephones, help us, help us, help us.

More survive, more for longer, healthier lives, harmless, harmless, harmless.

Where fire smoke choked the air, now smog, heat, and acid rain,

beautiful sunsets, airplane rides, exotic foods, and Internet brides.

If we could choose, we'd do it again, and again.

See more, feel more, live more, know more.

More for me, and those like me. Chemical madness.

More drugs, less bugs, less hugs.

Harmless.

Demand progress, supply and demand, and curiosity.   

Magnets, static, angry wind.

All God's power, made by men.

Marie Curie, her night light rocks

So long before a cancer cure, fission fusion essence of life,

A cell divides, divided cells, bombing pieces, into peace,

You are she, and they, and it. Life is here and now it's gone.

Gone gone, gone beyond, beyond the beyond,

in the refuge of the Walrus.  All of us together,

Splitting, and splicing new life to save a life.

Save so many lives. More lives saved.

More.

Harmless.

Whale oil, Moby Dick, matching might, for light. More light.

Perfume, a story about smelling good. Your smell, we stole your smell! Your oil, your fat for that. Only for that. Oil, precious oil, miracle of oil, Divine holy oil. Holy war, blood for oil.

Her blood's not blood, but rotting life deep below. 

Carbon carbon everywhere,

Breathing out this breath of life, and in and out,

Through this damn respirator, close to death,

Plugged in to life support.

Even brain death cannot bring me closer to heaven.

Kerosene oil, coal from the depths, alchemical joules.    

My blue ridge mountains take me home to light the sacrificial flame

of our resistance.  

In the wilderness, we are tempted to return again and again to shop and carry, swagger and sparkle, just to make a buck. Walk on the wild side, walk on by, my curious heart lookin' for love in all the wrong places.

Big city delight, up all night, a life on stage, on the screens,

and glossy pages. Got a job, money, a friend, a flat, even an exotic cat.

Anything money can buy, anything, everything, my heart's desire. Harmless. Harmless desire.

Make enough to meet demand. We supply, we demand.

So much light, it fills the sky, where pop stars live on Mars,

Making food from synthetic dreams that feed on fear, trail of tears.

Oceans of tears. Twenty years of tears,

A holy war beckons end of times, a revelation born in the desert

Under starry starry night.

So beautiful. So calm and bright.

Silent silence on the right and silence on the left.

Somewhere in the middle is a place where heaven and Earth collide at the speed of light. Stop time, stop in time, step in time with Shiva's dance, across the universe, and on and on. I love you.

I love you so much, my beautiful child. My beautiful harmless child.  

This is a poem I "downloaded" all at once from divine inspiration while I followed my 7 and 9 year old children through the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.  It was, in part, an answer to questions that arose over a period of time following growing awareness around the causes of earthquakes in Kansas and Oklahoma in the United States.  My mother lives in Harper County, Kansas, just over the southern border from Oklahoma.  The folks who live in the county, on the whole, have not experienced the extreme consequences of the economic depression of the last 10 years due to the discovery and use of modern oil and natural gas fracturing methods, including new disposal methods for the high saline water produced when deep oil areas like the Mississippian Play are drilled.

This is a meter at Folsom Dam that told the engineer when
to turn on the next generator to produce the right kind of power
to run refrigerators and motors rather than just lights.   

The rest of my family lives in Northern California, the state capitol of Sacramento and the home of one of the first hydro electric dam projects in the country.  In its antiquated form, it has been kept as a historical site.

As I attempted to explain the concept of energy to my children, we couldn't miss the opportunity to explore the origins of power.  

Seeing as how power seems to be the heart of our American culture in so many ways, this was a tangible explanation of our present condition.  How can we explain to our children the choices we have made over time to increase our dependence on oil and electricity as a symbol of prosperity.  

My eventual response was to sit quietly with all that I know and feel about power and to ask the question, "How will we live now?".

Learn more:  Hydro Power and Power: An Indigenous Rights Perspective 
                      Solar Energy for Kids (In India!)  (Youtube Film)