My No Hell Space

August 21st, 2009

Michael Brown, pastor of the Universalist Unitarian Church in Peoria has launched a new blog My No Hell Space. In just a month he has written thoughtful posts on Christianity and Universal Health Care, Walter Cronkite and the Interfaith Alliance, and Bela Fleck and the documentary film called Throw Down Your Heart, which is currently playing at the Peoria Theater at Landmark Plaza.

My No Hell Space promises to be an excellent addition to the Peoria Blogosphere. I’ve added it to my blogroll. Add it to your own.

Betting on the Rust Belt

August 20th, 2009

This summer I have been following The Archdruid Report, a blog by John Michael Greer. Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA) Greer has been blogging about the end of the Industrial Era and the coming of the Deindustrial Society. Greer is lucid when he talks about economics:

Over the last few weeks, my posts here on The Archdruid Report have tried to sketch out a way of understanding economics that doesn’t contradict the laws of physics or the evidence of history. Perhaps the central concept I’ve been developing along these lines is the sense that there is no such thing as “the” economy in any human society; there are, rather, three economies, each of which follows distinctive rules.

The primary economy, in this way of looking at things, is the natural world itself, which produces something like three-quarters of the goods and services on which human beings rely for survival. The secondary economy, which depends on the primary one, is the collocation of labor, capital plant, and resources extracted from the primary economy that produces the other quarter or so of the goods and services human beings use. The tertiary economy, finally, is the system of social processes by which the products of the first two economies are allocated to people. This can take many different forms, of which the one most familiar to us is money.

The Economics of Entropy.” July 29, 2009

For several years my friends have been disquieted by the prospect of peak oil, and I have watched The End Of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream and Richard Heinberg’s The Party’s Over: Oil, War, and the Fall of Industrial Societies. I am, however, a science fiction reader, so I just don’t get too stressed anymore by “the end of the world as we know it.” –Besides, I’ll most likely be dead before everything goes to Hell.

But seriously, I have been thinking lately, that Peoria is well situated if the oil wells do run dry. We have the Illinois River–if we don’t let it become mud flats. A fully loaded barge can carry as much cargo as a thirty-four mile convoy of semis. We do have coal. We can make soy diesel. The core of the city is walkable. We still have railroad tracks. We do have farmland. The Shoppes at Grand Prairie will most likely be abandoned, but we can probably maintain a comfortable standard of living here.

This week John Michael Greer confirms my intuition. Greer has just moved from Portland, OR to Cumberland, MD. Greer says “Cumberland is a quintessential Rust Belt town.”

Founded in the 18th century along one of the most important transport routes linking the east coast to the interior, it became by turns a canal center, a railroad hub, and a thriving industrial town where factories powered first by water and then by local coal anchored an economy lively enough to make Cumberland the second largest city in Maryland. From its red brick factories and faux-medieval county courthouse to its distinctive local beers – Queen City Brewery was the big name here until it went under in the Seventies – it’s hard to think of a detail of the old American industrial heartland that wasn’t present and accounted for.

But when Cumberland’s economy collapsed, the population dropped almost 50%.

The conventional wisdom these days holds that towns like Cumberland have a future only if they can find some way to catch the coattails of the booming (well, formerly booming) economies of the two coasts. Cumberland city boosters have done their level best to follow that lead in recent years, with tourism and the arts scene as focal points, and they’ve had modest success so far. If I’m right about the future of America and the rest of the industrial world, though, they might want to consider raising their sights a bit, because the tide of history that left Cumberland and so many towns like it high and dry may just be turning.

Cumberland is in the north Central Appalachians, not far from Amish country in Pennsylvania and just across the river from West Virginia. The big cities of the East Coast are only a few hours away by train. Greer and his wife Sara are betting:

More energy-efficient transport modalities will tend to replace less efficient ones because they, and thus the goods they ship, will be more affordable; equally, diseconomies of distance will tend to outweigh economies of scale and foster the reemergence of regional economies. Among the likely beneficiaries of these changes are the towns that thrived best in an earlier, more regional economy — those that are well served by rail and water transport, surrounded by farming regions that don’t depend on irrigation, not too far from major markets, and provided with ample and inexpensive real estate for the factories and warehouses of a downscaled and relocalizing industrial economy.

That sounds like Peoria to me. Maybe we don’t want to convert every warehouse on the riverfront to loft apartments just yet….

Creating a Blogroll

August 16th, 2009

August is half over–and this is only my second post for the month. And I haven’t done any real job hunting either. Tsk! I could make excuses about close encounters of the plumber kind and trying to downsize my life/prepare for a garage sale, but I”ll plead that I have been creating a satisfying blog roll for Witches Brew and a list of quirky links.

On the Pagan blog roll you’ll find Letters from Hardscrabble Creek, the work of Pagan scholar Chas S. Clifton. On The Archdruid Report John Michael Greer will tell you why our economy is going to Hell in a hand basket. The Wild Hunt offers Pagan news from around the world. The Minneapolis Pagan Examiner gives a glimpse of Urban Paganism. Writer and reviewer Peg Aloi has two blogs Orchards Forever and Pagan Foodies.

My Peoria blog roll includes Elaine Hopkin’s PeoriaStory. SecretServer is a revel for local foodies. The Global Warming Solutions Group tells what we can do in Peoria to preserve the environment.

“Worth Reading” is a mix of Pagan and not so mundane websites or blogs that don’t fall into the first two categories. Cultivating Life is my favorite show on the Create Network. I’ve just discovered Homegrown Evolution. It’s about urban farming in Southern California, but it looks like good reading.

I will continue adding links. If you stumble across Witches Brew from time to time, I hope you will check out my blog rolls, too.

Lammas 2009

August 2nd, 2009

This will go down as a memorable Lammas weekend. Lammas, the first of three harvest festivals celebrated July 31st, August 1st or 2nd, is one of my favorites because Lammas, for me, is Fair Season. It is a celebration of the best and the brightest. Lammas is the livestock shows, grand champion vegetables, prize-winning pies and embroidery, truck-pulls, politicians and other geeks, the Midway, lemon shake-ups and fried food on a stick.

This is the season of the Butter Cow, an icon of the Illinois State Fair for more than 80 years and the first great idol of my Pagan life. I must have been about four when I first saw it, and I try to remember to watch the annual sculpturing on the Butter Cow cam.

Lammas is also known as Lughnasa, for the Irish God Lugh, Master of Arts. Harry Potter, born July 31st (as was J.K. Rowlings) can be considered an avatar of Lugh. Lughnasa, however, was not a celebration for Lugh, but funeral games for his foster-mother, Tailtiu. Quidditch, The Tri-Wizards Tournament, and the mundane Highland Games and the Olympics are in the spirit of Lughnasa.

I spent this morning at the Fancy, Schmancy Flea Market at the Franciscan Center: an eclectic mix of artisan vendors, craft stores, a masseuse, musicians, etc. It was sunny, breezy morning on the RexPlex lawn and even if I am not particularly a morning person, it was lovely. Then I went to a private Pagan Lammas ritual.

CIPS did not put on a Lammas ritual. The people who have planned the rituals for the last year–myself included–all took a big step back this Sabbat. A few of us gathered for a quiet supper on the 1st and talked about where the group was going to go. So I was blind-sided this afternoon when I discovered that the organizers of the private ritual were forming a new group. They are wonderful, dedicated people and I wish them well, but I don’t think I am going to sign up.

I guess I am back to being a solitary.