I'm sure many of you have already heard of this, but thought I'd post it anyway, as dying bees is a perfect example of how fragile our world actually is. Bees are huge providers for humanity, yikes.
peace,
d
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/05/29/missing_bees/index.html

Here we go with the podcasts.. #1 of many. You can check out my new You Tube channel by clicking HERE!
Also, the new HTML windpathfilms.com is on it's way... soon.
peace,
d

Saturday, May 26, 2007
Location: The Hay Lease, Piikani Reservation, Alberta

Being out here, I have absolutely no desire to engage with the technology of my laptop. A place like this pulls you home into yourself. It allows you to honestly leave the outside world and find that connection to who you are. It pushes you into that place of being. It gives you a tremendous amount of space to just breathe.

And listen.

I’ve been really bouncing around the past little while, eager to get moving, but still waiting on some meetings/interviews. There’s no doubt about it now, I’ve found another home here at the foot of the southern Rockies, this place where the flatlands have come to meet the mountains.

I forget what I was going to write about.

Today I spent the whole day walking. Walking to get closer to the large herds of wild horses that speckle the enormous landscape. I walk, I think, I walk, I listen, I walk, I breath, I walk.

It’s pretty amazing to come up on a herd of a hundred or so horses. They stand in the grass grazing, sentinels resting a little further out from the herd. They are the first to see/smell you. They watch me as I stop. I try to relax and I try not to want from them. I think they sense my eagerness and my desire to capture them on film. Please… just stand.

As I slowly set up my camera and tripod, the large sentinels come galloping at me for a closer look, circling me to arrive downwind, stopping to stand, breathing. Questioning me: who are you?

After a few moments they retreat back to the herd, at which time the rest of the herd thunders away into the distance. I’m left alone in the grass.

I walk.

It’s not always like this. Sometimes when the light and air are just right, they relax. Sometimes they let you get fairly close to them. Sometimes they feel unthreatened and curious, the entire herd circling you closely until they come to rest and eat nearby. I’ve found much depends on the size of the herd. The larger the herd, the more likely they are to be spooked by a human presence.

Man, I love horses. You haven’t lived until you’ve had a herd of a hundred or so horses gallop around you. As they circle, the ground rumbles, the air vibrates, and your heart is still. I feel the medicine from these animals. I feel we lost so much when we left the horse for the automobile. We lost a relationship, we lost a connection, we lost independence, we lost medicine, and in these, we began to lose ourselves.

peace,
d

This is the original Mike Judd video I made.. up on you Tube now.

Living in the van again.. been shooting lots of images.. heading out to Hay Lease on Peigan Reservation this evening.. going to make some podcasts for the new site and for my new You Tube channel.
All is good, except this morning I awoke in a van burried in snow. May 24th.
peace,
d

Back out in the van, living on the road. Here are some images from last weeks cattle drive taking some cows out across the Reserve to the community pasture known as the Hay Lease.

I've spent a lot of time over the past few months on horseback, and I have to say it's the only way to travel. I joked with someone the other day about ditching my van and riding all the way to Panama. Unfortunately, like all of us, I'm stuck on fossil fuels, but I'm sure my riding skills will come in handy as I travel southwards.

Just wanted to post these pics, have lots to say, but busy filming today.
k peace,
d

This is one of the things that bothers me about the world today. The debate is never about how to reduce our footprint, clean up our environment, or take a serious look at what we're doing to our world... Instead we're looking at ways to prop up a completely unsustainable living standard and use technology to make everything OK. Well in my opinion it's far from ok, and although I welcome new technology and clean(er) energy, I think we should be talking about how to change, NOT about how to maintain the status quo for the next few hundred years.

Interesting article all the same.. the only part that really bothers me is, compressed toxic liquids ready for underground storage. Sounds great at first glace, but the IMPROTANT questions become: How much toxic liquid are we talking about, let's say, over a ten year period? What technology will be used for storage? What is the half-life of these toxic materials? Is the storage technology dependent upon a technological society for longterm maintenance? What is the longterm lifespan (geological timeframe) of such technologies, industries, and societies? What will happen when new technology becomes available, or after some economic hiccup or collapse that leaves the project no longer economically viable? Who will be responsible then? Will our good intentions be leaving future generations with a largescale undergound environmental distaster to clean up? Just some questions we may want to ask, before we start standing up in support of "clean" coal.

In the end, underground storage of toxic liquids sounds far too much like sweeping our problems under the rug.

peace,
d

Canada should seize challenge of clean coal
Neil Reynolds
Wednesday, May 16, 2007

OTTAWA - In basic ways, Alex Fassbender's breakthrough in clean-coal
technology retains James Watt's methodology from the 18th century. You
pulverize coal into particles as fine as talcum powder, then burn it in a
furnace surrounded by pipes filled with water. You direct the steam into
turbines that spin to produce electricity. In other basic ways, though, it
is very different. For one thing, there's no smokestack.

Mr. Fassbender is the American engineer whose invention - as tested last
year in the federal government's energy labs in Ottawa - delivered clean
electricity at a lower cost than the inventor himself had expected.
Code-named TIPS (Thermo-energy Integrated Power System), the technology
strips coal of its pollutants and captures its carbon emissions in power
plants a 10th the size of conventional plants.

In his assessment of the technology, federal research scientist Bruce
Clements described it as potentially the most competitive source of
electricity - in cents per kilowatt-hour - in the world. A TIPS-based demo
plant, he calculated, could produce zero-pollution, carbon-captured
electricity for 8 cents a kilowatt-hour. In regular commercial operation,
the cost would fall significantly. (The 2006 retail cost of electricity in
Ontario ranged from a subsidized 5.8 cents per kilowatt-hour to 9.7 cents;
the 2006 national average retail cost in the United States was 9.8 cents
U.S.). By these calculations, the world's most abundant fossil fuel could
supply clean, green electricity at the world's most economical prices.

Mr. Fassbender says the downsizing of power plants would enable them to fit
comfortably into large cities, close to consumers - any place served by a
railway line for the delivery of coal. "A conventional 500-megawatt plant
has to be built in the hinterland," he says. "You lose 4 per cent of your
electricity from the transmission lines." With an urban coal-fired plant,
the captured greenhouse gases would be moved to storage sites either as a
compressed liquid or as a compressed gas.

Indeed, everything in the TIPS process is compressed. You begin with a
separate tank that fits alongside the furnace. You fill this tank with
atmospheric air and put it under pressure -- 1,250 pounds per square inch.
You separate the oxygen in the air from the nitrogen, and direct pure oxygen
to the furnace to drive the combustion. Then you burn the coal under
pressure -- again, 1,250 psi. You subject the steam itself to higher
pressures -- from 2,500 psi to 3,700 psi. At the end of the combustion
cycle, you have nothing left in the furnace except ash, used commercially in
the making of concrete.

You capture the pollutants (sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, mercury,
particulate matter) from the hot exhaust fumes that exit the furnace. When
you pass these fumes through a condensing heat exchanger, you get very hot
water. At 400 degrees Fahrenheit, this water becomes a significant energy
source all on its own. "This is what the [high] pressure buys you," Mr.
Fassbender says. "It means that the pressure pays for itself."

When the exhaust fumes release the water, they release the pollutants, which
are easily separated and packaged for commercial use. You direct some of the
carbon dioxide back to the furnace to exploit the residual energy in it. You
cool the rest - still under high pressure -- to 87 degrees Fahrenheit, at
which point it turns into a compressed liquid, ready for underground
storage.

Clean-coal furnaces have existed in various forms for a decade or more, some
more effective than others. In primitive form, chemical "scrubbers" captured
pollutants as they vented from smokestacks. In advanced form, the furnace
converts the coal into a synthetic gas from which pollutants are extracted
before they reach the chimney. IGCC (Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle)
plants, though, do not capture CO{-2} emissions. "They can be made to
capture CO{-2} emissions," Mr. Fassbender says, "only by turning them into
chemical factories." And they are expensive to build, costly to operate.

Canada and the United States have coal reserves that will last for hundreds
of years.

Coal is thus an inherently sustainable, relatively inexpensive source of
primary energy. The TIPS technology remains theoretical. It needs a
real-life test. As a research partner, Canada is well placed to fund the
demo TIPS plant - and help to rescue for future generations the most
democratic of the fossil fuels.

nreynolds@xplornet.com

© The Globe and Mail

I'm not really into hurting cute little calves, but before you send your cows out to the community pasture, you have to make sure you know who they belong to. Branding is one of the times when everyone comes out to lend a helping hand, a community event. I'm not so sure how I feel about the branding process, I feel for those little guys. Although a few hours after we finished, those calves were acting like nothing had even happened, they handle the pain quite well, since I think if I were branded, I'd be crying for days.

In the end we branded about ninety head and have since sent them out to the Hay Lease; where they're free to eat green grass, roam wild, and live a life the rest of the cows on earth can only dream of.

peace,
d

1) Morris Little Wolf
2) Morris Roping Calves
3) Drag Em In
4) Adam Crowshoe
5) Ouch!
6) The Next Generation

I'm sitting here with a Blackfoot gentleman who is telling me, if I leave, I'll be missing everything that is important, everything that I came here for, becuase now is when things begin. I'm being told if I leave now, I might as well throw all my film in the garbage.

Geesh.

I'm not one to be told what to do, but I know to leave is to leave things I could be learning. I feel the signs have presented themselves and I feel it's time to go, but the counter argument is equally compelling. This is just an example of the road I'm on.

The biggest thing is, if I don't leave, I may not feel the need to come back in a few years. And I think I could use some time to digest what I've already learned while here. Everything in it's own time, baby steps ;-)

peace,d

As I get set to head back out on the road.. all the things I've yet to capture come rushing towards me. Yesterday I headed out into the Hay Lease to capture some HDV footage. Once out there, I realized the only way I'm going to capture what I need is by camp out there for a few days.

Upon returning home from my eight hour horseback ride, I asked Morris if he thought this was ok. He gave me hints on where to camp. I think I'll head out there this coming weekend, once I'm back to life in the van. Every day I get closer to leaving my new home at the Little Wolf Ranch, everyday the prospect of leaving is harder to grasp.

Although the wind was torturing for a filmmaker, and although the light wasn't ideal, here are a few pics from the day.

peace,
d

I just talked to my boyz at ProtonMedia and the new HTML version of my site is almost set to go up online. It should be fresh and clean with new pics and podcasts from the journey thus far. We'll be proofing it Monday and I estimate it should be up sometime later on next week.

peace,
d

Excerpts from: The Despotism of the Image, byDmitry Orlov

The ostensible goal of this Web site, and the small but enthusiastic community that surrounds it, is to change the culture. We all recognize that the contemporary mainstream culture of over-consumption and unbridled growth is toxic on every level -- physical, emotional, and cultural -- and is accelerating on a collision course with resource depletion, climate disruption, and environmental devastation. We all want to jump off in time, or, perhaps lacking the necessary courage, to find ourselves lucky enough to be thrown clear.

What this means in reality is anything but clear, and the best that most of us manage is some small display of personal virtue -- recycling plastic packaging, bicycling instead of driving, taking the train instead of flying, growing a bit of our own food, eating organic, using energy-efficient light bulbs, investing in renewable energy, and so forth. These are the tokens by which we recognize each other. How such personal virtues are defined is a matter of personal taste: some consider driving a hybrid car sufficient, while others prefer eliminating cars from their lives altogether. Some seemingly necessary steps, such as learning to live without oil-based plastics and other synthetic materials, seem beyond all of us.

It seems to be something of an article of faith that if we all did enough of such things, whatever they may be, then the problem, whatever it happens to be, and however we choose to define it, would in due course be solved, and civilized life would go on just like before. Just yesterday, in company, light after-dinner conversation happened to breeze past the topic of energy, and how the British were lucky to discover coal just as timber was running out, and were then lucky enough to discover oil and natural gas before the coal ran out. And now that they have all but run out of oil and natural gas, "there will be enough renewables to power it all!" was the swift retort. To those of us who have the right technical background, and understand the physical quantities involved, this claim is preposterous, but I knew better than to object.

You see, I realize that it is a requirement of this culture that we all project an image of unbounded optimism and faith in our technological prowess. Anything less is automatically labeled as defeatist, fatalistic, and lacking in imagination. What is meant by this word is not the active work of the intellect, mind you, but the passive, voluntary acceptance of a set of common imaginings, or images. The most important images comprising this artificial reality, the ones at the core of this realm of enforced fiction, are the ones that, on the surface at least, have to do with personal dignity and physical comfort.
...
It is possible to erect a virtual mountain of rational, logical, quantifiable arguments against cars and in favor of bicycles. A most amusing line of analysis involves computing their relative effective average speeds. First, compute the total cost of ownership of a car, including purchase price, financing costs, maintenance costs, registration, tolls, traffic tickets, and so forth. Now, include all external costs: road construction and maintenance, damage to health caused by air and water pollution, loss of productivity due to death and maiming in auto accidents, associated legal costs, and, of course, military budgets needed to equip the armed forces to fight for and defend the oil.

Now, take the drivers' average income and hours worked, and find out how many hours of labor it takes to cover all of these costs. Add to that the actual time spent driving. Now take the number of vehicle miles traveled, and divide it by the total number of hours spent both driving and earning enough money to pay for cars. Rather than give you the answers, I encourage you to do your own homework, but I can tell you that the end result of this exercise is always the same: the bicycle is faster than the car, and, depending on one's assumptions, driving is slower than walking.
...
It is a common misconception that the main function of a suburban home is to provide shelter, when it is quite obviously and clearly to provide parking. In a car-dependent society, access is controlled by limiting and controlling one's ability to park. Public parking is always limited and often not available, and semi-public parking -- at stores, malls, office parks, and other private institutions -- is limited to those who have money to spend or otherwise have some business to transact there. While the car confers freedom of movement, it is the freedom to move, via public roadways, between places where one is not free but must fulfill some specific social function, be it working, shopping, or some other socially sanctioned activity. Even if you wish to escape the oppressive strictures of society for a while, and spend time in a wilderness area, you will find that, in a car-dependent society, even wilderness keeps business hours, and closes its parking lots shortly before dark.

In short, the only freedom the car confers is the freedom to drive to and from between places where you are not free, and the only true exception to this rule is your own driveway.
...
Contemporary mainstream culture of over-consumption and unbridled growth, which we would so much like to change, to save ourselves, or to save the planet, or a little of each, is not now, and was never a rational proposition. It is the realization of dark, irrational, self-destructive urges, which were programmed into us through some evolutionary accident, and which are now, and for a short time longer, being given their fullest expression by the availability of cheap and abundant energy.

Appeals to rationality or good sense are futile, because the motive force is a set of indelible, immutable images, which are imprinted on simple minds and at an early age. These images are easy to ridicule, and although ridicule can be powerful, its effectiveness is restricted to those few who have the capacity to understand it. Voltaire was quite thorough in his treatment of the Catholic church, and yet these priests are still with us today, blessing things indiscriminately and fondling altar-boys, because the average churchgoer never had any use for Voltaire.

A much more promising approach is to create new images, of great seductive power, and still simple enough to leave a deep impression on a simple mind. This is the stuff of dangerous politics and revolutionary change: a path rife with unintended consequences, and certainly one to avoid. All that remains is the possibility of an individual effort to free yourself from the despotism of the image.

As for the rest of the consumers who are sold on the images of death, dignity, and comfort, we can be sure that the free market will meet their demand. Those with deep pockets will receive a truly luxurious death that may include a personal museum of transportation and library set amid formal gardens, while those at the opposite end will only be able to afford death in a brown paper bag, but is that not the essence of consumer choice? We should hope that their culture of death dies with them, and, being numerous and diverse, we should hope that this happens long before our species becomes an endangered one.

© Copyright 2007 Dmitry Orlov, All Rights Reserved.

Had a sweat last night. In it I made the commitment to get moving again after a sweat next Wednesday. It's a really hard process to tear myself away from this place, away from my Blackfoot family, away from the horses, and away from the land. But that's my journey, this process of letting go is what it's all about. And I've made the commitment to myself to not feel sad in the face of the loss, but to feel happy in the wake of what I've been given. This place has helped me with my personal healing, this place has helped me learn and grow, and this place is a part of me now.

It's raining outside, a real downpour, since the other day when we drove the cattle out to the community pasture there's been a quiet and somber feeling in the air. For me it's a feeling of leaving, a feeling of moving on, and a feeling of coming to terms with What IS.

peace,
d
Pics from my camera that I gave Clair while out riding. I forgot to put it back on auto focus, but hte pics still speak volumns of where I am.