Insight vs Elephant in Living Room

We all know about the elephant in the living room.. I realized a couple of days ago that I've been tripping over one for nearly 2 years now. This is more than a tad embarrassing, mitakuyapi..
I design things all the time. Beadwork patterns, powwow outfits, solar heaters, ways to improve the mileage of vehicles while cutting emissions without computers, bale buildings, and on & on. More than one person has asked if my mind ever shuts down.. The answer is, probably not. I know I'm a restless sleeper.. High energy people are like that, I guess. Regardless, I am.
About 2 years ago, I doodled a design for a passive solar heater that would hang on the outside of a wall. I built some for myself, then filed it under "the 2-year plan", which means I might get to "doing something positive" with it in 2 years or so, or I might never, or somewhere in between. This was before $2 and $3 / gallon fuel, obviously.
Then about a year ago, I read an article on someone else's design for a passive solar heater that hangs on the outside of a wall, and while it felt awfully familiar, it didn't ring any loud bells for me. Until a couple of days ago, when I was looking for something else, and came across my old design doodles in my files.
Em-barr-ass-ing! No wonder the article and the design of the units seemed awfully familiar.
Not to mention - I've been racking my brain for ways to get the tiny company I founded in 2000 back in the market we had to withdraw from due to inability to meet demand for our product with the equipment we had, and insufficient money to build or buy the equipment we need to meet demand.
It has never been a matter of "need to make market" with us; it has always been a matter of "how to meet demand". Yes, lucky us on one hand, and pity us on the t'other. Funding Indn projects is not popular in the U.S, no matter what the hype says.
Please, don't say "write a grant" - I'm a good grant writer, but we've struck out repeatedly with that approach of late because we insist we plan to hire non-drinking, non-doping people with a strong bent towards other ITI (Indigenous Turtle Islanders. You call us Indns or "Natives"). Indn Preference is federally mandated and there are gobs of incentives for it, not to mention, if we don't preferentially hire our own the way majority-culture types preferentially hire whites, I believe we're kicking ourselves in the shins. That's stupid, so we try hard not to do that.
I've been out of work since early November 2007, and out of 'spare' cash since about mid-January, 2008. I've heard more ridiculous excuses for not hiring me than I can shake a stick at. My current favorite is, "we don't want to hire you because you have a college education, and our process is patented. Our belief is we must do everything we can to protect our patented process from thieves." Takoszja, I don't want to work for any company that believes 'everyone else is a thief', and that includes me..
Personally, I - like nearly everyone else - find the making of windows to be supremely boring work. I want a job, not a career, so I can pay my bills & build the equipment I need to get 'my' company - with one food product and two non-food products - back in the marketplace. Period. I could give a flying damn about stealing anything; especially something as expensive as a patent. They have an offensive - and stupid - attitude. There's a lot of that around of recent times, as we all know.
I was searching through my notebooks for an old design the other day and found my design for passive solar heaters. Bells rang, things banged, and I saw the elephant! Right there where it had always been, smack in the middle of my living room! Or in this case, my office.
I had recently figured my personal carbon footprint at an online site, and found it to be between 6,000 and 7,000 lbs. of carbon per year (compared to an average of 20,500 lbs/ year for most people in the U.S.).
The passive solar heater would not only cut that for me, but it would cut the carbon footprint of everyone who heats. Lessee, now, that's most of the country, sooner or later, isn't it? I believe it is. Up here in the northern tier states, it's 5-6 months of every year.
Now this is exciting, takoszja! For about $500, I can put together a web site, information brochure (preferably email, not paper), and manufacture and sell enough units to get my tiny little company back in the market(s)! We can support the 501c3 I also head at a level it has only dreamed about for the 35 years of its existence. We can make a Difference!
I am a Sun Dancer, therefore, a Pipe Carrier. The prayer that orients my Channunpa, and therefore, my entire life, is called the Prayer of The Four Winds. I am the woman who Dances The Four Winds. This prayer is a prayer to heal the Sacred Hoop of the world. If anything would help heal the Sacred Hoop of the world, it would be something like these passive solar heaters, which cut the carbon footprint of everyone who uses them because they cut the amount of fuel needed to heat a building - be it a house, a shop, a chicken coop, a trailer / mobile home, or an apartment.
Now all I have to do is get a job so I can put the $500 or so together & get this out there. I find this so exciting I don't feel embarrassed any more for having not seen the elephant in my living room (OK, office) for so doggoned long. All of this will happen because I doodle and I save the doodles. Pilamiyaye! Wopila tanka!, Takuskanskan.

Water in the West

Hanh mitakuyapi.

I was reading headlines in Yahoo a few minutes ago and found this gem: "Human Activity Affects Water and Dryness in West". It refers to the western part of the US, of course. If this isn't a "duh-uh" headline, I don't know what is.

Humans have become a cancer in the biosphere, with their gross over-population over the past several decades. US humans consume more than any other humans on the planet, per capita, but every human contributes to this dire situation we have suddenly 'discovered'. New babies are no longer 'wonderful'. What each person does does matter. Hugely and with growing impact as time passes without population reduction of humans, along with everyone making heroic efforts to turn this juggernaut around to the degree that can be done, now. There is a 'time of no return'.. and we're just about on top of it.

Given that every blessed thing in the biosphere is limited, this is hardly a surprise, yet humans - especially in the 'advanced countries - continue to deny reality and ask, "is this real?" If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, smells like a duck, and has manure like a duck's , I'd say it's about a 100% chance it's a duck. So, "yes, takoszja, this situation is real, and it is really dire, to boot." And there is no way to duck it. We. must. fix. it.

Gadjillion years ago when I was a child, I started hollering that humans were over-populating the earth; that we ITI People would be fighting for our water while the washichu in the big cities were stealing it and squandering it on things like golf course grass and "lawns" before I got old.

My teachers told me to be quiet. Bigots tried to beat me quiet. I got expelled from school for refusing to be quiet about this. It's simple common sense, after all. Obvious to all but the dedicatedly blind or stupid..

Suddenly, we have 'discovered' global warming and that human activity 'affects' the amount of water available to us all on this planet, not just in the US "west". Wow!

This isn't quantum physics, takoszja, although quantum physics studies the limitedness and limits of every physical aspect of life on our Holy Mother, the Earth..

This shouldn't even be 'news'. It is intuitively obvious, physically obvious, and depressingly obvious. Only a culture predicated on selfishness, greed, and brat behavior would call this news.

The question is, what are all you adults out there going to do about it, right now, so there is a tomorrow for the majority of species who share the beauty and bounty of our Holy Mother, the Earth, with us? A world without species other than humans will be not only pretty dull, it will be sterile, and in short order, lifeless except for those hardy survivor species that can survive the coming disasters. And they are coming.

As The Woman Who Dances The Four Winds, I ask everyone,"What have you done, today, to help heal the Sacred Hoop of the Earth, of which you, too, are a part?"

It's up to every one of us, including you. You are each part of the solution -- or part of the problem. There is no avoiding this fact or the repercussions of it. This is logic - not 'news'.

Calling you Gear heads - Who is Jonathon Goodwin?

I will read almost anything that isn't pornographic or which proselytizes for Christianity, so recently I picked up a copy of the November 2007 issue of "Fast Company". The cover story is about Jonathon Goodwin, a motorhead from Wichita, KS. If you can't find a copy, put a comment with your email & I'll send a set of scans. I've been reading this article until I nearly have it memorized and it makes me so excited, I nearly drool.
Jonathon Goodwin has figured out a way to use off-the-shelf parts in new arrangements to get amazing mileage out of engines - especially big ones and diesel - while increasing their power output and radically decreasing their emissions. Intellectually speaking, this is a man after my own heart.
Like many other people, I've always known that the solution to the oil problem - & now, to the global warming problem - is tons simpler than the automakers & the oil companies would like us to believe. Unlike many people, I have the training and experience to know, rather than simply to guess at this. Unfortunately, I haven't had the money & tools to tinker and see what resulted when I had the time. A problem lots of women, ITI, and minorities have, it seems. It costs the world greatly, this waste of creativity, and it will so long as the majority culture's predominant attitude is one of "massas and slaves". That attitude is anti-environment, anti-people, and just plain disrespectful. Maybe blogs such as this one will redirect that. We can hope.
Regardless - Even with training, skills, and knowledge, most of us are just too busy scratching for a living & slaving to hold the ITI / Indian world together in the face of continuing assaults by the majority culture. Luckily, not everyone is in this position, and I'm so0o thankful for that. Jonathon Goodwin is one such.
I first got involved with diesel engines about 4 years ago. The diesel engine is easier to reconfigure (tinker with) than the gasoline engine, was originally designed to run on peanut and other vegetable oils, and puts out more usable power per unit of displacement. In case you hadn't already figured it out, I'm a wrench-wench. Hmm - OK, a granny wrench-wench.
Age is just a number; it doesn't matter how long you've walked the earth or hung around the fort; it matters what you did while you were walking. Joan of Arc, Crazy Horse, and others from every culture prove that. I've always been a 'whiz kid', and I expect to be one until I die.
Regardless - if enough people put their heads together we should be able to come up with simple, workable ways to help him put his discoveries together in a form that large numbers of people can put to work in their own vehicles, and so make a really valuable contribution to a whole list of problems confronting oil use and global warming.
Duwahleh! Now there's a really radical and useful thought!