Field Journal #3 - 12 Jul 2008
by Anthony Marr
founder of HOPE
lead campaigner of GEO
“road warrior” of CARE-1, CARE-2, CARE-3, CARE-4, CARE-5 & CARE-6
I’m still in Missoula, staying at Anja’s place. But the tar sands
have not been left to the back of my mind. What I saw from the air and
on the ground, in the latter case also smelled, will never leave the
fore-front of my mind for as long as I care for this Earth.
When I entered the UBC back in 1966, I put myself into the pre-med
program, but I’m not destined to be a healer, at least on the bodily
level. I was so squeamish and weak-stomached that I could not tolerate
even the sight of the color photographs of skin diseases and almost all
internal ailments exposed to view, let alone the real thing. Meanwhile,
I did an IQ test, and deemed myself fit material for physics, and
switched over to pure science. Why physics? Well, since my childhood
I’ve been wondering what I was. I mean, I asked myself as a child, “What
am I?” The notion that I was a human being and sitting at the pinnacle
of all creation just didn’t make sense me. In secondary school, under
the Irish Jesuits, my quest for meaning and purpose was formalized in
the Catholic format. For example: Question: What is your purpose in
life? Answer: To glorify God, and to get my soul into Heaven. I almost
volunteered myself for the priesthood, until I found out, and not from
the Church, about the Inquisition, where, in the Middle Ages, millions
of people were burnt at the stake, and at that after prolonged and
hideous torture, for basically the freedom of thought and speech and
non-violent action. I was shot out of the Church as if by a canon
propelled by my revulsion. So, what does that leave me? Physics. I
wanted to know what I was made of, physically, and most basically, on
the subatomic level. Spiritually, I’d just have to pray, basically to
myself, and nonetheless arrived back at that I was a healer at heart.
So, by a series of seemingly random events spanning the ensuing
decades, I found myself, on July 1, 2008, in the co-pilot’s seat of a
Cessna 172 chartered from McMurray Aviation for 1.5 hours, looking down
upon the gaping wounds and oozing sores on the face of my beloved Mother
Earth, I found confirmation for the name of the organization I founded
in 1999 – Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE).
Perhaps due to that dark landscape haunting my vision on my drive
from Fort McMurray back to Edmonton, I had a near miss that could have
ended the tour right there and then, not to mention the lives of Taina
and myself. I value the life of Taina highly, but place my own life way
below that of Mother Earth, which explains why I mentioned the tour
first. To me, the tour means the life of Mother Earth herself. If the
tour fails, Mother Earth herself may fail. The tour is tough going, even
with the able help and generous backing of Dr. Peter Carter, Julie
Johnston, Taina, Nan Love, Rebecca Monaghan, Charlotte Templeton,
Dominique Landis, Lane Ferrante, Janice Kobi, Doris Lynn, Lois Baum,
Natalie Jarnstad, among others. If I do not believe that our mission can
save Mother Earth, I’d just as well go to another planet. Anyway,
Highway 63 is a two lane highway, namely one lane in each direction,
which means that if you want to pass somebody, you always have to take a
risk. And, as you may well guess, many of the vehicles were 18-wheelers.
So, at one point, I initiated action on passing an 18-wheeler, when, not
until I was halfway past it before I saw that in front of it was a small
pick-up truck that the 18-wheeler was in process of tailgating. This
totally screwed up my calculations. Oncoming was another 18-wheeler,
which all of a sudden looked lethally close. As soon as Taina saw the
pick-up truck, she said, “Yikes!” I forgot what I said, but remember
doing a quick calculation on whether I should jam on my brakes and
retreat behind the 18-wheeler I had half-passed, or going for it. The
pick-up truck was being tailgated by the 18-wheeler anyway, so it
couldn’t slow down to let me in even if it wanted to. My foot chose to
press on the gas pedal, and my car issued a growl and shot forward and
slipped in front the pickup truck with a very slim margin to spare.
After we resumed cruising, I asked Taina if her heart rate had risen.
She said, “Nope, I trust the driver, and yours?” I said, “Nope, I trust
my car. By the way, did I say anything when you said ‘Yikes’?” She said,
“Yeah, you said, ‘Yep’.” Not one of the famous last words, haha.
Back to Missoula, as I mentioned in the last entry, I was invited by
the Independent to go to their office for an interview, which happened
2:15-3:00 pm on Thursday. I brought with me my laptop, and showed the
editor Skylar Browning the photos of thawing permafrost on the spot. He
had no problem grasping the seriousness of the situation, but being a
new editor (as of June this year), he might have wanted to stick by the
book, and said that he needed a local “hook” to run the story. I asked
Browning back, “What if WW3 breaks out, but it hasn’t bombed Missoula
yet, do you still need a local hook to run the story?” He said, “Yes,
and the hook would be maybe a Missoula man fighting the war somewhere.”
So I took my fall-back position and told him that I gave a presentation
to Footloose, Anja’s Missoula-based anti-trapping group – not exactly a
lie, since Anja was Footloose – whom Local activist Jerry Black calls
Miss Footloose Montana) and I had spoken about global warming to her.
She also added subsequently to me, and I to Skylar, that the wolverine,
which is a trapped animal, needs snow covered dens to give birth to
young. He said these might work, and that he might call up Dr. Steve
Running (see entry#2) and ask him a couple of questions about my RUNAWAY
global warming HAS BEGUN! claim. So, there might be a story next
Wednesday, or there might not. I also checked out the Missoulian, whose
editor also said that it was an important issue, but needing a local
angle for a story. The fallback position on this is to recontact them
when local activists bury their time capsule. Well, you win some, you
lose some; can’t win them all. And, as I say to the HOPE-GEO team, we
work on percentages. If for every 10 attempts we get 5, that’s 5
successes, not 5 failures. So for every failed attempt, we move one
closer to the next success. I guess here’s proof that I’m the
cup-half-full kind of guy.
By Anja’s intervention, I got to meet two man also on Thursday, Steve
Woodruff, Deputy Director, Northern Rockies branch of Western Progress (www.westernprogress.org).
It is not a sharply focused group, and Woodruff, according to Anja, is a
hunter, but he is pro-environment where global warming is concerned, and
has testified in Congress. We might consider inducting his group into
our Coalition to Abolish the Tar Sands (CATS).
The other person I met was David Merrill, Executive Director of
Global Warming Solution (www.globalwarmingsolution.org). They had
thought of the same problem of how to build a global green fund, but has
advanced a different solution – for the UN to impose a half-percent tax
on all foreign currency exchange. This might be even easier to achieve
(or should I say: less difficult) than ours, though it would not
simultaneous achieve a step in global disarmament as ours would. I ran
this by Peter while on the phone; he said both should proceed, and I
concur.
One person I contacted yesterday was Lynn Wolff of the Dakota
Resource Council at Fargo, North Dakota. He and I had a phone
conversation back in April or May. Their problem was, and still is, the
tar sands’ southern pipeline going right through North Dakota and South
Dakota on its way south to Texas. At this point, the pipeline has
by-and-large been laid in ND, but not yet SD, and they still intend to
stop it. Upon hearing that I had over-flown and actually visited the tar
sands, he became even keener than before, and offered to organize a mini
tour for me to cover the cities of Billings (MT), Miles City (MT),
Dickenson (ND), Bismarck (ND), Jamestown (ND), Fargo City (ND) and Cedar
Rapids (IA). This I will have to execute Monday through Wednesday,
because my first talk in Wisconsin is on August 17, Thursday. He and I
talked again twice today. The second time, I told him about the Animal
Rights Conference and my profile in it. I said that 1,000 people will
attend that conference, and I intend to transform the movement with my
11 speeches, particularly my 12 minute Sunday evening plenary speech
titled “Act Globally” shared with only the famous Jewish author Richard
Schwartz (a great honor), and that stopping the ND/SD pipeline and the
BC pipeline is of enormous importance in the global warming scheme of
things. I said, “Trust me, I will do my best to make it happen.” He was
driving, and asked me to email him the link to the AR2008 Conference
site. We agreed to talk again tomorrow.
Well, so far on this tour, timing has not been my strong suit. While
I was in Calgary, my media was pre-empted by the infamous Calgary
Stampede, and it looks like my August 19th presentation in Madison,
Wisconsin will be pre-empted by the famous Dalai Lama. Too late to
change it now. Our dear Madison friend Lynn Pauly could not change the
date again, so, whether I give a talk or not, I will attend the Dalai
Lama’s talk, and make sure the RUNAWAY global warming by methane and the
global Green Fund message gets out, if not by him then by me. The silver
lining is that the audience will be huge for my 3-minute speech during
the question period at the end of the Dalai Lama’s speech. If no
question period, I will speak up anyway.
Over the last days in Missoula, I spent almost all my wakeful hours
on the internet and the phone. I did have dinner with my dear friend
Dave Taylor, his spouse Jerry and Anja on Thursday evening. Otherwise,
all Anja could do was to drag me out on nature walks an hour a day. She
has two dogs, one looking like a wolf, named Jasper, and one looking
like a fox, named Annie. They barked at me for the obligatory initial 10
seconds upon my first arrival (when Anja was not home), but after that,
it was all tail-wagging and lying-next-to. Jasper slept in my room two
nights, and comes when I call. Annie is a little aloof, but trustingly
eats out of my hands (with Anja’s permission of course). In one walk, we
encountered a Vietnam vet named Dennis West with two half-Husky-type
dogs, one black, one white. He showed us the front view of an advancing
grizzly bear taken at close quarters (within 10’) with his cell phone,
and told us that he was saved by his two dog right after taking that
picture, that the white dog leapt on to the back of the bear, and when
the bear stood up, she hung on, while the black one bit the bear in its
groin area, causing it to flee. “My ex told me it’s my dog or her, and
guess which I chose,” he said. Yes indeed, if anyone said something like
that to me, whether or not I loved the dogs, I would chosen them.
While walking by a swift-flowing river yesterday, I received a call
phone call from Charlotte, telling me that she had rented a storage
space near the conference hotel for the 1300 books I’ll be asking
Lightning Source to ship for conference. She has constant physical
pains, and a family to raise as a single parent, and yet, is putting out
energy galore, as do Nan and Rebecca and Lane and Janice. I am so bless,
as is Mother Earth in these small yet profound ways.
Today, Julie sent me a copy of the 6-pane brochure she’s been working
on over the last three days. Looked excellent. I made a couple of
changes, and she finalized it.
This evening, I will write media releases to my immediate
destinations in MD, ND/SD and IA.
More later.
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Care Tour 6
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