2010: Top Picks and Best Wishes

Hello World Family,
Falcon here with the annual year-end report. What did Falcon and Dove love and...well, not love? Here's the list. Let's start with the bad news:

We don't like FRACKING! We think poisoning the environment for a couple burbs of natural gas and calling it an energy strategy is an outright lie. Attempting to make it legal (notice the word attempt) is vile and disgusting. People, rise up and ban this schtuff before you can't drink your water. If you don't have water, you don't have life. By the way, nice job City of Pittsburgh for standing up to the greedy bullies...cause that's what they are. Get off the crack of fossil fuels and start investing in things that work, without creating a catastrophe. Energy is all around, harness it safely without putting workers, emergency responders and communities at such high risk. Don't make excuses. Unconventional horizontal acquisition of black shale is MORDER IN DISGUISE. It kills, and its technique will ruin whole states. Stop it.

Two, don't drink and drive. It's stupid. We want you around for 2011.

Three: Extended Stay America, Savannah, GA Midtown: get a new staff. A new manager who actually has the capability to lead would be nice. Just because most of your contracts are with traveling workers and the military is no reason not to respect the people staying in your hotel. They deserve better. Give it to them.

Four: Bullies-you suck. You always have. Stop using other people as the scapegoats for your problems. Grow up. Victims of bullying: stop giving your power away. Tell someone of authority to act and stop the abuse. If they won't listen, call the media-they are aways looking for a good story. Those on the sidelines watching the spectacle: get a moral compass and speak up.

Five: MTV- you and your producers are barking mad to put a young mother clearly distressed and beating up the father of her child on television as entertainment. You should have gotten her some help and gotten the family counseling. Very, very poor decision making. You videotaped a crime committed in front of a toddler. What were you thinking?!

Ah....yes, now-on to the goodies:
One: City of Pittsburgh-you passed a comprehensive ordinance banning fracking in the city-next the state of PA. Let's do it!

Two: All the lives saved this year by first responders! You guys and gals completely rock!!! you put yourselves out there every day. I would also like to include the K-9 units and all dogs and pets who saved lives this year. You are all made of AWESOME!

Three: Movies: The best, and we predict, award contenders/winners: THE KING'S SPEECH (Falcon's favorite movie for 2010), CARLOS (yes, it is 6 hours long, but it is worth it.)
BLACK SWAN-mighty good; BIUTIFUL-simply beautiful; THE FIGHTER-very well shot and excellently acted; THE TEMPEST-Helen Mirren doing it right-Shakespeare lovers unite!!! Julie Taymor, you are a visionary. What a cast! Must see! THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT (not The Who film) and 127 HOURS better see some Oscar buzz.

Four: Good deeds. We have seen so many this year! The latest on my mind is the number of people who stepped forward to help a little girl whose pony was shot. Her family barn also blew down in a recent storm. There was a battle from complete strangers to get her a new pony, and now there is a plan on to help build the family a barn from donated goods and volunteer sweat. We are so proud of the millions of humans who do acts of kindness everyday.

Five: The arts. There have been so many great concerts, musicals, a capella performances, dancing, painting...fantastic pieces of work!

We are grateful to have seen so many wonderful efforts this year...and blessed for surviving the trails. We are most grateful to have you:)

Happy New Year, ALL!!!
Peace,
Falcon and Dove

Principal of Astrology Proven Scientific

Mike Adams - (NaturalNews.com) Mention the word "astrology" and skeptics go into an epileptic fit. The idea that someone's personality could be imprinted at birth according to the position of the sun, moon and planets has long been derided as "quackery" by the so-called "scientific" community which resists any notion based on holistic connections between individuals and the cosmos.

According to the conventional view, your genes and your parenting determine your personality, and the position of planet Earth at the time of your birth has nothing to do with it.

Then again, conventional scientists don't believe the position of the moon has anything to do with life on Earth, either. They dismiss the wisdom that farmers have known for ages -- that planting seeds or transplanting living plants in harmony with the moon cycles results in higher crop yields. Even the seeds inside humans are strongly influenced by the moon, as menstruation cycles and moon cycles are closely synchronized (28 days, roughly).

Researchers demonstrate scientific principle of astrology

Skeptics must be further bewildered by the new research published in Nature Neuroscience and conducted at Vanderbilt University which unintentionally provides scientific support for the fundamental principle of astrology -- namely, that the position of the planets at your time of birth influences your personality.

In this study, not only did the birth month impact personality; it also resulted in measurable functional changes in the brain.

This study, conducted on mice, showed that mice born in the winter showed a "consistent slowing" of their daytime activity. They were also more susceptible to symptoms that we might call "Seasonal Affective Disorder."

The study was carried out by Professor of Biological Sciences Douglas McMahon, graduate student Chris Ciarleglio, post-doctoral fellow Karen Gamble and two additional undergraduate students, none of whom believe in astrology, apparently. They do, of course, believe in science, which is why all their study findings have been draped in the language of science even though the findings are essentially supporting principles of astrology.

"What is particularly striking about our results is the fact that the imprinting affects both the animal's behavior and the cycling of the neurons in the master biological clock in their brains," said Ciarleglio. This is one of the core principles of astrology: That the position of the planets at the time of your birth (which might be called the "season" of your birth) can actually result in changes in your brain physiology which impact lifelong behavior.

Once again, such an idea sounds preposterous to the scientifically trained, unless of course they discover it for themselves, at which point it's all suddenly very "scientific." Instead of calling it "astrology," they're now referring to it as "seasonal biology."

How to discredit real science

It all reminds me of the discovery of cold fusion in 1989 by Fleishmann and Pons, who were widely ridiculed by the arrogant hot fusion researchers who tried to destroy the credibility (and careers) of cold fusion researchers (http://www.naturalnews.com/025925_cold_fusion_Amazon_research.html). After the very idea of "cold fusion" was attacked and demolished by these arrogant scientists, it soon returned under a new name: Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR).

LENR has now been verified as true by none other than the U.S. Navy -- along with hundreds of other researchers around the world (see link above). And yet, even today, the conventional scientific community still insists cold fusion doesn't exist and cold fusion researchers are frauds.

Just as there is a solid scientific basis for LENR, there is a scientific basis for astrology, too. The relationship between the Earth, Moon and Sun naturally alter light exposure, temperature, gravitational pull and other conditions that may be sensed by living organisms. To believe in astrology, all that's really required is to grasp the basic concepts of the interrelationships between all living things. Does the position of the sun or moon influence life on Earth? Of course it does: Life as we know it wouldn't even exist without the moon tugging on Earth and preventing its rotational axis from shifting around to the point where radical changes in seasonal temperatures would make life far more challenging. (The moon, in other words, is one of the key "stabilizers" of life on planet Earth because it tends to stabilize the seasons and keep the Earth on a steady rotational plane.)

None of this, of course, means that the position of Saturn today is going to make you win the lottery or find a new love. That's the tabloid version of astrology, not real astrology.

Don't confuse tabloid astrology with real astrology

Even astronomy has its tabloid versions, too, which are entirely non-scientific. For example, every model of our solar system that I've ever seen is a wildly inaccurate tabloid version of reality, with planet sizes ridiculously exaggerated and planet distances not depicted to scale. These silly, non-scientific solar system models imprint a kind of solar system mythology into the minds of schoolchildren and even school teachers. Virtually no one outside the communities of astrophysics and astronomy has any real grasp of the enormity of not merely our solar system, but of our galaxy and the space between neighboring galaxies.

To show a giant sun the size of a basketball, with a depiction of the Earth as a marble-sized planet three inches away is the astronomical equivalent of a gimmicky horoscope claiming you're going to win the lottery today because you were born under the sign of Pisces. Both are fictions. And both are an insult to real science.

In fact, even the whole idea that an "electron" is a piece of physical matter, made up of other "particles" is an insult to real science. The sobering truth of the matter is that "particle physics" doesn't have much to do with actual particles at all. It's all about energies that might, on occasion, vibrate in just the right way so that they momentarily appear to take on the illusion of a particle as measured by our observers -- observers who inevitably alter the outcome of the entire experiment, by the way, once again proving the interrelated nature of things in our universe, including observer and experiment.

The horoscope predictions in the Sunday paper -- as well as much of the hilarious mythology found in the modern description of an atom -- are both simplified, comic-book versions of a larger truth -- the truth that we live in a holistic universe where every bit of physical matter, every bit of energy and every conscious mind impacts the rest of the universe in subtle ways. There is no such thing as an individual who is isolated from the cosmos, because we are of the cosmos and we exist as the physical manifestations of energies that, for our lifetimes, are momentarily organized as beings.

We are made of star stuff, says Carl Sagan. He he's right: We are not only made of star stuff, we are influenced by that stuff, too. And finally, modern science is beginning to catch up to this greater truth that astrologers have known since the dawn of human existence on our tiny planet.

Learn more: http://www.NaturalNews.com/030698_astrology_scientific_basis.html

PITTSBURGH CITY COUNCIL BANS GAS DRILLING!!! South Fayette does, too!

Hello World Family,
Today, the City of Pittsburgh, lead by an ordinance drafted by Councilman Doug Shields, took the unprecedented step to ban unconventional horizontal gas drilling in the city limits of Pittsburgh, PA, becoming the first city to do so.

Citing obvious concerns about the environment, safety, and public welfare, President of Council Darlene Harris was quoted as saying that the jobs that would be brought to the region wouldn't be high paying jobs in the gas drilling industry, but " funeral homes and hospitals. Is it worth it?" she said.

Falcon and Dove would like to applaud the 9-0 decision by council, recognising the risks far outweigh the benefits. Bromides recently detected in the water from the Monongahela River that cannot be removed by current water treatment plants in the region demonstrate that concerns for public welfare are legitimate. Bromides cannot be processed with chlorine, a much more dangerous water treatment with chloramine must be used that is a huge health hazard for people with certain health predispositions. Only through a complete and total moratorium can this industry be studied in full and sensible, lucid, science with full risk analysis, including remediation can be put into place. It may well be that the risk far outweighs the benefit that only seems to help large land owners (who will eventually be the ones held liable if there are problems from gas drilling on their property), foreign investment in companies and the bottom line on the quarterly report for shareholders. The process is fraught with problems, high risk, accidents, and a lack of liability and tax compensation to the communities who need it most.

What's wrong with fracking? Well, it uses millions of gallons of fresh water, without any compensation to communities and cities. That water is NEVER replaced. The water that is recaptured from the fracking process, (about 20%) is contaminated with salts, chemicals, radioactive shale and metals, and possibly, migrating methane and gas. Well casings made with concrete can fail if not allowed to sufficiently cure. Replacing the spaces in the cracked shale with sand is insufficient to hold substrate and formations in place. We have to remember that this formation was made because it was highly pressurized on a fault line. With the legacy of old abandoned mines, current mines and land subsidence, it is foolish at best to think that this process would protect the environment and communities.

Then there is the surface risk. Water is rarely treated by the industry and is dumped in all sorts of places: rivers and streams, lakes, occasionally into abandoned mines (this has been documented) and in the winter, on roads in townships that have a general permit to dump frackwater as liquid salt! Imagine where that goes : groundwater, topsoil, runoff into sewers, yards, and underneath your automobile. This fluid is very acid and corrosive. That will compromise your vehicle, your infrastructure in your town; businesses who recycle water that work with road equipment like care washes, etc. Who issues those permits? DEP. How much frackwater is allowed on area roadways and where? Who knows? I have asked several DEP officials on many occasions, they cannot tell me how many permits and to whom they have issued. There seems to be no limit on when and where this frackwater can be used. Ah...this is bad.

Accidents: there have been way too many already. The industry has a 95% safety rating, which sounds good until you realize that one in every 150 or so wells could have big problems.

Leaks, blow outs, capture pond failure or overrun, migration of fluids and gases, etc. Our first responders in PA are mostly volunteers (80%). They are our first line of defense to protect us in the unfortunate instance of a disaster. They are not properly trained, equipped, or suited to respond to many of these well problems. Jobs that pay well are going to those from other states. The gas company will pay you $15 and hour to drive and truck and poison the air with diesel and haul frack fluids that are highly dangerous. Where's your gear? Guess what? You don't get enough. You should be in a HAZMAT suit. It you have a leak, that is exactly who will come to your rescue, guys in the suit. Let's not forget trains hauling iso-butane (we just had a leak in September in a railyard). Extremely dangerous. At this point, the gas industry is not liable: not for the spills, the hazards, the leaks, the damage to the roads, or if your water well blows up, or if gas runs into your sewer lines and blows a manhole cover off, or causes a massive subsidence in your backyard. If will never be their fault.

Pittsburgh City Council did the sensible thing. Bravo! Now if the short sighted industry that sees profit over people would begin to show just a glimmer of a conscience or a reflection, and dialog along issues of risk rather than hide behind severe misinformation (Falcon is open to a debate with Ms. Marcellus Shale Coalition anytime, but she keeps bailing out on engagements every time we get a chance for a sitdown), we the citizens of Pittsburgh and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania will be ready to listen. But we set the rules. After all, this is our land, and according to our constitution, you cannot have it or its resources without OUR permission. We did not give it.

Falcon and Dove

Reusable Bags from Popular Retailers May Contain Lead

Hello World Family,
Do you have a reusable bag from Whole Foods, Walmart, Target, Winn-Dixie, etc.? If so, it may be contaminated with lead. Yes, lead!!! The more decoration on the outside of the bag, the more likely it is contaminated. Less decoration means reduced lead levels. You may wonder why there is lead in them at all...well, China has a play in this one.

Apparently, there are no regulations concerning lead paint use in bags intended for food use, and many of these bags come from China. What should you do? Don't use them.

I know...that sucks.

How was this discovered? Researchers in Tampa, FL

Put the bags away, and go back to using recycled paper bags, that can be used again.
UGH!...
Peace,
Falcon and Dove

THE PIPE: New Irish Film-See the Preview NOW!

Hello World Family,
Here is a preview of the new documentary THE PIPE, about an Irish village torn apart by natural gas found near their village and their fight against Shell Oil and their own government to preserve their way of life.

www.thisisirishfilm.ie/trailers/the-pipe

I hope we can get this important film screened in Pittsburgh. Falcon will follow up with you on this issue. The film will be released to theaters in Ireland next month.

Peace,
Falcon and Dove

The First Fifty: What a Wonderful Ride

Hello Cousins,
Yes, it has happened: Falcon has turned 50! I know, some of you will find this very hard to believe, but you know...Dove is in her twenties, so...

How does it feel?! Awesome! It is amazing to have lived half a century. It is wonderful to have lived this long; so many I have known did not make it to this age. I am honored and blessed that I have had had the opportunity.

And what a ride I have had so far! I have completed many items on my Bucket List, and some things I never dared to imagine I could do I have done. It is amazing!

What do I value the most about the ride: being healthy, happy, and surrounded by awesome people! I am not regretting any experiences, since all of them have taught me something I wouldn't have known otherwise. It is a blessing to learn, give, expand, and grow.

I have much I still would like to do, Great Spirit willing. Travel, books, food, experiences...on the list.
Greatest blessing: people to love who love me as well. Isn't that what it is all about?!

Has it been hard a times? Yes, extremely. Watching other people's pain has been the worst.

Are you writing your memoir? Yes, I am. Friends have convinced me that there has been a lot of miles there, and there are many stories worth telling. It will be my story, not anyone else's so....friends with secrets in my trust, yours is safe with me;)

Any juicy tidbits? Of course, but you will have to wait:)

Thank all of you who sent the bazillion birthday wishes! That was really, really cool. You are all very precious. Thank you so much for taking the time out to share your blessings with me. I hope to always return the favor.

Peace,
Falcon

Tom Shadyac Presents 'I Am' at the Savannah Film Festival!

Hello everyone! Dove (Areya) here! Today, I experienced Tom Shadyac's new documentary, 'I Am' at the Savannah Film Festival. I must say that everyone needs to see this film. It was moving, inspiring, and enlightening and I cannot wait to see it again when it comes out in February!

Here's a synopsis of the film: I Am is the story of a successful Hollywood director, Tom Shadyac, who experienced a life-threatening head injury, and his ensuing journey to try to answer two very basic questions: "What's wrong with our world?" and "What can we do about it?" Tom visits some of today's great minds, including authors, poets, teachers, religious leaders, and scientists searching for the fundamental endemic problem that causes other problems.

The film acknowledges the wisdom of ancient Native American and other indigenous cultures and shows how their traditions and the belief that we are all connected is now being proven today with quantum physics. This is the first documentary I have seen drawing a connection between these two subjects (something I myself and my partner, Falcon, have been doing for years) and I thanked Tom profusely when I had the pleasure and honor of meeting (and hugging!) him today. I recorded the Question and Answer session following the screening of the film and Part 1 is below for your viewing pleasure (and enlightenment). Parts 2 and 3 will be posted to YouTube in the next few hours. Enjoy!

VOTE Your Conscience, Not Your Fears

Happy Voting Day, Americans!
Let's put aside all that garbage you have seen and heard over the past few months and get down to the nitty-gritty of it all: Most of it sucks! We are in a bad situation here in the U.S. and it didn't begin overnight. Don't blame the new guys for what a legacy of irresponsibility produced. Frankly, they did all they could to prevent The Great Depression II. I know some of you may not believe this, but it could have been a whole lot worse.

Today, vote with your higher principles, even if you believe the politician you are voting for doesn't have any. You will make that person accountable because you are aware and not going to take this stuff lying down one minute more. Do not vote for someone completely incompetent because your fear has overridden your reason. There are some real underlings out there, and they are not going to rescue you or this country. Only you can do that. YOU are the superhero you have been waiting for! You still live in a country (for the moment) where your vote does count (despite what unreliable machine you may be casting your vote on). Your obligations don't end today: they begin today.

You must stay active in the political process:local to international. When you don't, you give permission to low life persons to abuse the power you have entrusted them with-plain and simple.

You don't like something, do something about it. Go to meetings, protest, and see if legal action can be taken against those who have violated your trust. ACT ON THAT!

It's time to be an adult about the political system. It is our system. This is our country. If you don't like something, it is time for you to use your constitutional rights and every legal avenue available to you to do something about it. Put the damn remote down, and the beer, and make a conscience effort to vote your highest principles...and then see to it that others do your biding. After all, an elected official is a public servant-THEY WORK FOR US!

Make them do their job. Vote your highest and best today.
Peace,
Falcon and Dove

Hado: An Alternative Energy

This post is just as important as the previous one. I got this in my email this morning. PLEASE read it all the way through. I cannot overemphasize how crucial this is. Feel free to repost it. Spread the word!

Encouragement of Hado Study

Dear Friends,

I would like to share some very important information with you. I feel two incidents which are coincidentally happening at almost the same time in the Western and Eastern part of the world (the oil spill in Gulf of Mexico and Foot and Mouth epidemic in Miyazaki, Japan) are something that the creator of nature is telling us to pay attention to.

The Gulf of Mexico of course is an issue regarding energy and the case of Miyazaki is an issue of a virus out of control. Modern science does not know how to cope with these issues and subsequently they are not yet solved. There is a growing loss of many lives in the Gulf of Mexico and already 270,000 cows and pigs have been put to death in Miyazaki, Japan. We have no idea when this will come to an end.

I am recognized as "Dr. Emoto, the Water Crystal researcher" in the world, but before that I was a researcher of Hado, which is subtle energy, literally the blue print of this material world. The world of Hado was not visible, nor measurable by modern scientific technology so it was hard to be accepted even though I described it in great detail. Since I wrote the first HADO book, I have published more than 10 additional books about Hado theory from major publishers in Japan, including "The Prelude of Hado" in 1992. In these books, I actually predicted different kinds of problems that the human race would face in the future. I also wrote how we can cope with these problems. For this, we would need HADO technology. It has been 15 years since then. In the interim, my books, Hidden Messages in Water and Messages from Water became bestsellers and a lot of visionary citizens have accepted the Hadoway of thinking and Hado technology. However, government does not support the idea at all because scientists who support the government deny my theory and ignore it. I am not asking them to understand the theory and implement the technology at a governmental level right now because I know it takes time. The problems that I described in my books are happening now, so we don't have a time to wait for government and corporations to understand. So, I believe we citizens, each one of us, have to prepare ourselves because it is an urgent issue now. The preparation is not difficult or complicated it simply takes a basic understanding of what Hado is. However, you may think that it is not possible to understand the Hado principals with only images or causes, and you want to see concrete Hado effects clearly. I am writing this now for people who think in this way. Recent discoveries confirm that energy can be extracted from water and water can be made into medicines via HADO. There are 2 major innovative ideas that have now come to light!!

At the first day of the "Water and Peace" Global Forum which was held from March 20th to 22nd this year, Mr. Ryushin Omasa, the president of Japan Techno Co, gave a lecture about his technology which extracts alternative energy called Ohmasa gas from water. This alternative energy can be substituted for petroleum energy. He applies specific low frequencies to water and agitated it to chemically dissolve the water. The oxygen and the hydrogen generated a unified oxy-hydrogen in a safe format, and this oxy-hydrogen solution can create fire to weld with and energy to run a motor. They already succeeded in running a motorbike with this Ohmasa gas. See this video clip which explains the technology:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUPE0Z9V82E&feature=player_embedded

I have been waiting for this technology to become a reality for 20 years. I have known this technology was possible for many years because water is H2O, and oxygen and hydrogen are a good source of energy. And it is a good thing that such a wonderful energy source exists abundantly everywhere. I came up with the idea to take water crystal photos from water in 1994 and succeeded. I have done a number of various studies since then. The most beautiful water crystal photo that we have ever taken is a water crystal created when the words of love and gratitude were exposed to water. I published the photo in my book, Messages from Water in 1999. Furthermore, I published my hypothesis that the H of H2O represents love and the O of H2O represents gratitude in my book, Hidden Messages in Water, published in 2002 and this book became a bestseller in many countries. Since then, a lot of people have resonated with those ideas and words, and love and gratitude are more frequently used in a daily life among spiritual people around the world.

Mr. Omasa who invented this innovative technology actually has been a regular reader of my books and he asked our institute to take water crystal photos from his water "Alpha Torino water" several years ago. So I assume he naturally received my hypothesis about the mysteries of water and I believe his Hado way of thinking may have lead to his amazing discovery of which energy can be extracted from water. Perhaps he is not the only one who was inspired by my work with water crystals. There may be a lot of people like him in the world trying to create something new and good for the planet and the human race. The water created from his technology is called "Alpha Torino water". It also gets rid of viruses and microorganisms and is now available. It is also a kind ofHado medicine that I have proposed for long time. Water seems to be very effective to prevent pandemic phenomenon, which might happen in the near future and of course a virus like the Foot and Mouth Epidemic, which is already happening. However, this type of revolutionary technology could not be initiated by government or major companies in Japan because it would cause an inconvenience to certain people or companies who don’t want this technology to succeed, because it would destroy their current greed based money-making businesses. But I am certain that we need this type of technology for our planet and the people of the world, and we can spread it out, and make it known by ourselves. One way to get prepared is by studying Hado, and preparing ourselves for the year 2012 when an energetic shift will require our focused attention. We will be having the 13th Hado Instructor School in Aso city of Kumamoto in Japan from August 22nd to 26th and we will be congratulating the Fiver Colored Grand Festival at Heitate Shrine. Mr. Omasa will be there to present his technology as well. It will be a life changing event that I hope you will attend.


For the information about the school, please click the following link:

http://www.masaru-emoto.net/english/hado_instructor_event.html

With love and gratitude,

Masaru Emoto
Office Masaru Emoto, LLC

Spread the word! Thank you, and remember to always spread love and gratitude, 2 of the most powerful forces in the Universe!

Dr. Masaru Emoto's Healing Prayer For The Gulf

This post is extremely important. PLEASE read on with an open mind. If you are already familiar with Dr. Masaru Emoto's water research, you can skip the first 5 paragraphs.

Dr. Masaru Emoto has become famous for his experiments on water. A scientist from Japan, he came to some very fascinating conclusions about the nature of water. In his experiments, Emoto took many clear bottles of water and placed labels with various words on them. The words faced inwards, so that the water could 'read' the words. He then froze the water overnight. The next day, he analyzed the water molecules using a dark field microscope. What he found has forever changed many people's attitudes toward water, including mine.

Emoto found that the molecules from each bottle of the same water were strikingly different depending on what word was placed on each bottle. Positive words such as 'love', 'gratitude', 'happiness', 'earth', and 'wisdom' resulted in strong, defined, hexagonal crystal molecules. Negative words such as 'kill' and 'hate' resulted in discolored, misshapen, structurally weak crystal molecules.

He took his experiments further by showing the water photographs, having people say different things to the water a certain number of times, playing music for the water, and other methods. He even studied the effect of electromagnetic waves. All had similar effects; soothing and classical music resulted in strong crystals, heavy metal and rap music resulted in weak crystals. Positive pictures (as well as pictures of various celestial bodies) caused defined, hexagonal crystals, whereas negative images caused deformed crystals. And on and on it went.

Emoto concluded from this extensive research that thoughts, words, emotions, sounds, and actions have stronger effects than previously believed. Such things actually alter the molecular structure of water, no matter what kind of water. Since our bodies are 90-50% water (depending on your age), what we experience in our lives (sights, sounds, thoughts, and feelings) affect our bodies on a molecular level, either positive, negative, or a combination thereof. It is reasonable, therefore, to state that if the water in your body has a stronger molecular structure, your body is healthier.

There is other research out there that supports Emoto's findings. We've known for many years that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Depression have negative effects on our health. Our psychological health has a direct connection to our physical health (mind-body connection). We've also known for years that plants respond best to classical and relaxing music. It's not surprising, then, to learn that such music has positive effects on a molecular level, and not just on plants.

NOW THAT I'VE BROUGHT YOU UP TO SPEED, I would like to share a very important message that I received in my Inbox (Dove's) this morning from Dr. Masaru Emoto himself, in regard to the tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico. This has been done before in other areas of the world impacted by tragedy, with incredible results. Those areas with contaminated water were prayed for by a group of hundreds of people thinking and/or saying the same prayer. The water was tested before and after the group prayer. Immediately after the prayer, the water was clear, free of all contamination. PLEASE PASS THIS ALONG:

Dr. Masaru Emoto's Healing Prayer for the Gulf

Focusing our energies in response to the Gulf tragedy and for healing the waters and its inhabitants -

Yesterday at our spiritual center we read a letter from Dr. Masaru Emoto who many of you will recognize as the scientist from Japan who has done all the research and publications about the characteristics of water. Among other things, his research reveals that water physically responds to emotions.

Right now, most of us have the predominantly angry emotion when we consider what is happening in the Gulf. And while certainly we are justified in that emotion, we may be of greater assistance to our planet and its life forms, if we sincerely, powerfully and humbly pray the prayer that Dr Emoto, himself, has proposed.

"I send the energy of love and gratitude to the water and all the living creatures in the Gulf of Mexico and its surroundings.

To the whales, dolphins, pelicans, fish, shellfish, plankton, coral, algae, and all living creatures . . . I am sorry.

Please forgive me.

Thank you.

I love you. "

We are passing this request to people who we believe might be willing to participate in this prayer, to set an intention of love and healing that is so large, so overwhelming that we can perform a miracle in the Gulf of Mexico.

We are not powerless. We are powerful. Our united energy, speaking this prayer daily...multiple times daily....can literally shift the balance of destruction that is happening.

We don't have to know how.......we just have to recognize that the power of love is greater than any power active in the Universe today.

Please join us in oft repeating this healing prayer of of Dr. Emoto's.

And feel free to copy and paste this to send it around the planet.

Let's take charge, and do our own clean up!

Never underestimate the power of the human consciousness. Please pass it on... :)

Pitch in for Areya's Senior Film!

Areya (Dove) is entering her Senior year at Savannah College of Art and Design and preproduction is in full swing on her Senior Film, 'Life Path'! Everything she has learned at film school has led up to this. Any contribution you can make to this short film is greatly appreciated! As extra incentive, anyone who donates $25 or more will receive a Funder credit in the film! Anyone who donates $100 or more will receive a Funder credit in the film, and a FREE ticket to see 'Life Path' and many other senior films at the SCAD Senior Showcase at the 2011 Savannah Film Festival in October, 2011!

What People Are Saying About Life Path!

“Very well written”

“I love the story!!”

“I could not put it down”

“beautifully written”

“I loved the script!!!”

“I feel a strong connection to the characters”

“Very original and very unique and I enjoyed it”

“both female characters are strongly written”

“It’s very unique”

Synopsis

‘Life Path’ is a spiritual film about reincarnation. Fia remembers her previous life. In that life, she died at the age of 8, which her father was partially to blame for. After having dreams about her own death, Fia joins a group called Life Path, whose members all recall at least one previous life and try to help with one another’s past life issues. With the support of fellow member Aleta, Fia seeks to find her old father so that they can both heal. Meanwhile, Aleta has a story of her own…

Over the years, interest in reincarnation has risen rapidly. To many cultures in the east, reincarnation is nothing new and is accepted without question. It is a topic that is not often addressed in films, much less treated with an entire story written around it. This film will have a very mysterious and spiritual feel throughout. It doesn’t bother with the whole ‘Is reincarnation real or not?’ issue. We go right into it with the assumption that the soul has continuity and is capable of remembering multiple lifetimes. Many stories can be written based on such an assumption, and this is one of them.

TARGET SHOOTING DATES: OCTOBER 15, 16, & 17, 22, 23, & 24 AND 29, 2010

Will be filmed entirely in Savannah, Georgia and nearby Skidaway Island area.

LENGTH OF FILM: 12 Minutes

SHOOTING FORMAT: Canon 7D – 1080p High Definition Video

'Life Path' will be submitted to hundreds of film festivals worldwide! Let’s all come together and create a film everyone will remember!

For more information, go to www.LifePathFilm.com!

Please Chip In through PayPal below! THANK YOU!!!

www.AreyaSimmons.com

COLLEGE FUNDING CRUNCH TIME: What to do Right Now!

Hello World Family,
As June 30 approaches, millions trying to qualify for grant money and scholarships begin to realize there may be a gap to attending their First Choice university. BEFORE YOU GIVE UP, and decide to go to a runner up because it's cheaper, try these last minute, but extremely effective tactics:

First, get yourself on FASTWEB.COM right now, and check and see what scholarships you are eligible for. It is NOT too late! There's a ton of stuff out there that is easy to do and can get you a few quick bucks! DO IT! you have nothing to lose.

Second, talk to your First Choice University's Admissions Counselor and then Financial Aid office right away. Find out if there is anything additional that you are eligible for and see if they will give you some MERIT MONEY (think discount). Also, if you are an athlete, and may not be playing the NCAA sports, but maybe a club sport, see if the school offers some money for athletes in that particular interest. You never know until you ask.

Did you belong to a specific club in high school, see if there is a scholarship for your interest in college. Are yo a sci-fi fan, there may be a scholarship out there for your area of interest at your school. Find out! Don't let pride get in the way.

Third: Does your family belong to any special civic or ethnic organizations? The Rotary Club, a social club, NAACP, Urban League, etc. all have scholarships. Ask about applying. Deadlines have not passed; you still have time. Go for it!

Fourth: Parents, are you throwing your graduate a party? Are you attending a party of a high school graduate? Here's a clue about what you can get them for a gift:

MONEY!!!!!!

Look, if ten relatives and friends give that young student $100, that's $1,000 right there! Don't buy them plaques, pens, and expensive athletic shoes, give them their gap funding. you will be the biggest super hero ever in helping a student meet that gap. Next year, they may have that gap filled after they prove themselves academically on the college level. In the mean time, they have to get there. They have earned the honor of attending college, DO NOT LET THOSE DREAMS DIE!

Give...and give generously to the grad!

There are various need-based scholarships offered at universities. Here is a secret: many private schools have more support for financially struggling students than public schools. Don't be afraid to ask. There is no loss of pride here. Hold your head up high. Parents: you have helped your student get to this point. Students: you have worked hard and deserve to follow your passions where you will do your best job.

AS A LAST RESORT:
Get those loans, public and private. Borrow as little as possible, because you will have to pay it back. You cannot discharge these debts in even bankruptcy, so only borrow what you need, but use it wisely, and make your investment work for you.

Falcon has a book coming out later this year, called : THE PARENT'S GUIDE TO DEBT-FREE COLLEGE: Get in, Stay in, Graduate Debt-Free

We will let you know when the book is available to the public. It will be very reasonably priced so that you can afford to get it. Save this advice because this is a sample of some of the helpful information you will find. The book will be great for those with young children, middle school aged, and of course, high school age.

The important thing to remember World Family:
Start saving early for college. Keep it in the parent's name, rather than the child.

Good luck, families.
Congratulations to the graduating Class of 2010!

Peace,
Falcon and Dove

Rally and March for Jordan Miles 12 Noon Today

Hello Pittsburgh Family!
It will rain later today, but it will be fine this morning. It's a great time to rally for a wonderful young man at noon at Freedom Corner in The Hill District. Jordan is a resilent young man: honor student, college bound from CAPA. He was walking from his grandmother's home to his house one evening when he was brutally attacked by three men who turned out to be undercover police officers who thought Jordan was a drug dealer. All charges against Jordan were wisely dismissed, but the officers want the DA to refile. Why ? Probably pride. It certainly doesn't have anything to so with justice.

Come out today and walk with Jordan and let him know that it's still legal for a young African American man to walk home at night in the US. He should be able to make that walk anywhere, regardless of where he lives, without fear or immediate suspicion.
Peace, Jordan. Have a great time at college. We are very proud of you!

Falcon and Dove

GASLAND: Documentary Film Screening in Pittsburgh June 5

Hello Cousins,
Well, Falcon and Dove are together again back in The Burgh for the summer break, and we have to let you know about this startling film that is showing on Saturday, June 5 at the Byham Theatre in downtown at 6pm.

GASLAND is a strong documentary by director Josh Fox showing the process and some of the hazards associated with unconventional horizontal gas well in PA for Marcellus Shale extraction. June 5 is United Nations World Environment Day, and Pittsburgh is the North American host city. This is an important film for our region, but also for our world.

Falcon has seen portions of this film. It is well shot, and goes for first person accounts. No re-creations or set-ups that I have seen.

In town? Come check it out. Also, look and see if the film is screening in your area in the near future. Your future, and your quality of life may depend on you being informed, and proactive.

Peace,
Falcon and Dove

Arizona's Anti-Immigrant Law: Its Impact and the Pennsylvania Connection

Hello World Family,
THis event is for those in the greater Pittsburgh region, but its issues should concern us all:

Arizona's Anti-Immigrant Law: Its Impact and the Pennsylvania Connection
Monday, May 17, 2010
7:00pm - 8:30pm
Friends Meeting House
4836 Ellsworth Ave. (at Neville) in Oakland

Arizona’s new law is a watershed moment for its blatant disregard for
America’s most fundamental values of fairness and equality.

This unconstitutional law encourages racial profiling and betrays
American values. It puts Arizona completely out of step with American
values, undermines public safety, erodes trust between Latinos and law
enforcement, and essentially turns Arizona into a police state.

The law makes all of its Latino residents, and other presumed
immigrants, potential criminal suspects. It's implementation means is
that to avoid arrest, citizens will effectively have to carry “their
papers” at all times.

With state Representative Daryl Metcalfe’s announcement that he
intends to introduce similar legislation in Pennsylvania, it is
absolutely critical to understand what this law means for civil
liberties and how we can work to ensure this doesn't happen in our
state.


Presentations by:

VIC WALCZAK
ACLU-PA Legal Director and lead attorney in challenging
Hazelton, PA’s anti-immigrant law

DAVID HARRIS
University of Pittsburgh Law Professor, ACLU-PA Pittsburgh Board
Member and Nationally-Recognized Racial Profiling Expert

Panel Discussion with:

CHRISTINA POWERS
Pennsylvania Immigrant Resource Center (PIRC) Board Member and former
Staff Attorney with the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project
in AZ

JACKIE MARTINEZ
Immigration Attorney and member of the Pittsburgh Interfaith
Impact Network (PIIN) Racial Profiling Task Force

SISTER JANICE VANDERNECK
Sisters of St. Joseph and member of the PATH to Justice committee of
the Religious Sisters of Greater Pittsburgh

SAFDAR KHWAJA
Council on American-Islamic Relations, Pittsburgh Chapter

For more information, call: 412-681-7736, email: info@aclupgh.org or
visit www.aclupa.org/pittsburgh. To get the latest updates on the
legal challenge to repeal SB1070, visit:
www.aclu.org/immigrants-rights.

Also, please help us get the word out on Facebook – here’s a link to
the event page:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=123476074334365&ref=mf

Dear Mr. Rooney: Ben Must Go

An Open Letter to the Rooney Family and The Pittsburgh Steelers:

Dear Mr. Rooney,
The mother and daughter team known as Falcon and Dove, born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA ask you to consider our following thoughts:

First, we applaud your caution and restraint during the period of heightened examination of the Steelers organization, and of a couple of players in particular. You have not escalated the media circus, and we appreciate that.

Secondly, we would like to mention that we recognize that this has been a difficult time, an we know that you have struggled with decisions concerning some of our most prominent and successful players, and some off the field behavior that has called their conduct into question. In the matter of Ben Roethlisberger, we humbly ask that you let him go from this franchise to pursue his career elsewhere. We understand that there are contract considerations, and we respect whatever solution you deem fit working in tandem with others to come to an equitable outcome, but for the sake of the Pittsburgh Steelers organization, Ben must move on.

Our reasons are: we simply do not trust this man to do the job he is in this city to do. We do not trust his moral code, and more alarmlingly, he seems to be able to cajole other men to become co-conspirators in his breech of conduct; whether in covert or overt acts, or by simple measures of denial-this is most disturbing.

The kind of leadership we expect of members of the Pittsburgh Steelers is high. We do not believe that Ben has exhibited an full understanding of that fact, and he seems more interested in being able to lie and deny, whether it is underaged coeds that he is buying drinks for, (apparently to take advantage of them), or to media, he shows a complete disregard for the high standards of this organization. He doesn't belong here.

We feel that he can make a better start elsewhere, learn from his mistakes, and hopefully, get help for what is apparently a compulsive and vile dysfunction.

Charlie Batch is a fine football player, and a good quarterback. He could be a great quarterback if given the chance. We know that during the draft, you and the organization will recruit players of high caliber and moral conduct, who understand what is expected of them. It is more important to have a great team of character that can win Super Bowls than a team of low conduct with a good win-loss record.

Thank you for your continued leadership.
Sincerely,
Falcon and Dove

Wilma Mankiller, former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, passes

Hello World Family,
From our Cherokee Nation:

Wilma Mankiller, former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, passed away this morning. Mankiller served 12 years in elective office at the Cherokee Nation, the first two as Deputy Principal Chief followed by 10 years as Principal Chief. She retired from public office in 1995. Among her many honors, Mankiller was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Clinton.

"Our personal and national hearts are heavy with sorrow and sadness with the passing this morning of Wilma Mankiller," said Chad Smith, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. "We feel overwhelmed and lost when we realize she has left us but we should reflect on what legacy she leaves us. We are better people and a stronger tribal nation because her example of Cherokee leadership, statesmanship, humility, grace, determination and decisiveness. When we become disheartened, we will be inspired by remembering how Wilma proceeded undaunted through so many trials and tribulations.

Years ago, she and her husband Charlie Soap showed the world what Cherokee people can do when given the chance, when they organized the self-help water line in the Bell community. She said Cherokees in that community learned that it was their choice, their lives, their community and their future. Her gift to us is the lesson that our lives and future are for us to decide. We can carry on that Cherokee legacy by teaching our children that lesson. Please keep Wilma’s family, especially her husband Charlie and her daughters, Gina and Felicia, in your prayers."

Mankiller requested that any gifts in her honor be made as donations to One Fire Development Corporation, a non-profit dedicated to advancing Native American communities though economic development, and to valuing the wisdom that exists within each of the diverse tribal communities around the world.

Tax deductible donations can be made at www.wilmamankiller.com as well as www.onefiredevelopment.org.

The mailing address for One Fire Development Corporation is 1220 Southmore Houston, TX 77004. Her memorial service will be Saturday at 11a.m. at the Cherokee Nation Cultural Grounds in Tahlequah.

May your journey be bright. Your suffering on this plane is done.
Our prayers are with you and your family, and all our relations.
Peace,
Falcon and Dove

Marcellus Shale Well Drilling is Highway to Hades for Pennsylvania

World Family,
This may look like a post for Pennsylvanians, but actually it is for 23 U.S. states, and anyone who cares about environmental responsibility and natural resources. For years, Falcon has been talking about alternate energy and global environmental responsibility. Many would think that natural gas (nat gas) would be a part of that formula: after all, it has less emissions than coal for sure, and is domestically available. Local is good, right?

Well, traditional gas wells have their problems, and it certainly isn’t as simple as the industry would like you to believe; but the recent explosion in unconventional well extraction, aka horizontal well drilling popular to extract gas in the Marcellus Shale…well, that has millions of problems, and it starts with the millions of gallons of water that it takes to perform the extraction.

Each frac of each well takes about a million gallons of water to operate. This is not the last ditch effort before a well goes dry employed in the past since the turn of the 20th century to get that last bit of gas out; this is going 5,000-10,000 feet below the surface of the earth, making a hairpin turn and then blasting water (called hydrofracking) to break up the shale and release the gas. The cracks are filled with sand. There can be up to ten fracs per well. This year alone, there are nearly 5, 200 permits under consideration for the commonwealth!

You may wonder, World Family, where the water comes from. Here is one of the biggest problems (I did mention millions of problems). The water is simply taken from streams, ponds, creeks, and rivers (which brings up an interesting fact: water is a resource that belongs to everyone in this state, not a government entity who has permission to give it away en masse), hauled away in trucks, and used, and then when it is filled with frac water (a combination of a litany of highly toxic chemicals and Total Dissolved Solids -TDS- a fancy term for heavy duty salt, four times saltier than the water in the ocean) and deposited back into rivers, streams, and ponds. Of course, all of the water isn’t recovered, less than half in most places, depending on topography. In Pennsylvania, the soil and sedimentary layers, along with quartz, limestone, oh, and radium (yes, Marcellus Shale contains radioactive radium) make the landscape hard to predict, and even harder to recover frac fluids. If one recovers 50% of the frac waters, that is impressive. The rest of that water stays in the ground…and permeates. Where it goes is obvious, even to the scientifically challenged, but oil and gas companies will tell you that there is ‘insufficient evidence’ that the fluids migrate. So have you ever seen totally contained fluids in soil? Me either, it moves, that is kind of the point. So, groundwater is impacted, and so are aquifers…to think that they won’t be or can’t be is idiotic.

Here is what I can tell you. Falcon works in risk assessment. Once upon a time, I did consulting work for the Department of Energy. I can tell you a LOT about how to remediate things out of water: organics, chemicals, TNT, even radionuclides, but it is very, very hard to remove that which is contaminated underground, and it is very difficult to improve the quality of water that is not only TDS contaminated, but also highly acid, like fracwater can be.

That is what happened to Dunkirk Creek in the late August-September of 2009. Someone dumped a lot of fracwater into the creek and killed everything: 155 species, gone. In just 20 days, it was a dead zone, except for a very interesting algae, not indigenous to the region, that gave away the very equipment from Texas that was used to dump the contaminated water. The pH was extremely low. Need a comparison. Take a can of soda (pH of around 2.0) and pour it into your bathtub water. Wanna get in? No? Well, neither does anything else. I am not even talking about the HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) that is probably in that can of soda as well.

Which brings up another problem I have not heard discussed anywhere except in my nearly 4 times a week lectures and workshops in various places around PA, NY, WV, and OH: what about everything else in the water? What happens when those chemicals used in fracwater (of which we have no list or concentrations because the oil and gas industry doesn’t have to tell us) combine with some other things in our water, like…xenobiotics (fancy word for pharma drugs that people like to dump down their toilets when they are out of date, or just used and expelled in the usual fashion, if you know what I mean), HFCS, or a variety of other substances? What happens? Who is responsible for remediation and clean-up? What happens when animals and humans ingest this combo-water? We don’t know. And here is something even scarier…
No one and nothing. Yes, you understood me correctly. Well, here is the starting point. You can get angry at the person or family that allowed the drilling on their land that is effecting your drinking water miles away, and you may want to sue them, but they don’t have any real money-they were paid junk by the gas companies. That $100,000 that looked so good to them at the beginning won’t cover squat as they and their children and their animals get sick, or the frac pond in their backyard overflows during a slow moving rainstorm, runs into their neighbors yards and contaminates everyone’s sewer and wells. Don’t look at the oil and gas companies: they are exempt. That was a gift from the Bush Administration back in 2005.

You can get mad at your municipality for not remediating the water, but they don’t even know what’s there (unless someone’s running water from their faucet catches on fire-then, they might have a clue that there is at least natural gas leaking into the system, but maybe not anything else. Yes, that has happened, and continues to happen). The municipality is responsible to the sewer authority (here in Allegheny County, it is ALCOSAN) to clean up anything they know about…but how do they know? No one is required to tell. The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP in PA) can only do so much because the laws are not in place to protect the resources, but you would think that we a name like the Department of Environmental Protection, they would certainly do more than they do…which in this issue, is frankly, no offense, not much. They are trying to change regulations, but not fast enough. Permits are being issued with language clearly stating that water will be transported out of the various basins that are protected (a clear violation of Commerce laws), but no one is halting permits on the basis of those indications. Since the water of the commonwealth belongs to the people, and the water is being used without the people’s permission, then who is responsible?

Right now, no one and nothing…not unless the people begin to make their elected officials, and those who are appointed to do various jobs involving environmental responsibility live up to their mission statement. Does it feel like a horror movie yet? It does to me. It is a waking nightmare for millions of people, and we can’t wake up from it.

Hey, but it’s all worth it, right? We get energy independence! Not so fast. Many of those oil and gas companies touting American presence are increasingly being acquisitioned by foreign interests. The same BS that happened in oil will happen in gas-it already is. And about those jobs…the industry itself says it will only make 25-27,000 in the next 5 years…that is in the entire state! Wow…isn’t that like the population of a Pittsburgh neighborhood? We could employ 5 times that in alternative energy, and those would be union jobs, with good training, good pay, and we would still be able to drink the water!

There has been one other thing (like these aren’t enough to worry about) that has concerned me, and when I have brought it up in lecture, sometimes I get a strange look. Today, however, my email box was full with people who heard the same thing I did: that there was an earthquake in WV. Yes, this region is actually capable of having earthquakes, but hadn’t for a real, real long time. I have been concerned that based on the soil’s constitution, the number of holes already in PA (like Swiss cheese) and the combinations of other types of fossil fuel acquisition, along with ground gases (methane, radon, gas leaks, and a partridge in a pear tree) that we could have major upsets to groundwater, seismic activity, and even underground explosions if the proverbial ‘perfect storm’ of wrong conditions came together.

Here’s my question for the oil and gas industry: has anyone ever calculated the actual cost of what it takes to do horizontal well drilling? The answer would be no. No one included the cost to resources, to agriculture, to forestry, to hunting, to fishing, to quality of life. It’s time that those concerns were made part of the equation. I know, that may be uncomfortable for some, but it must be done. Water is our sacred currency. It is the key to life. I am not willing to sacrifice my state and 22 other states of this country to become a dead zone so someone else can make a dollar. It is not acceptable. It is not negotiable.

Is the industry truly aware of the risks? Most of them probably aren’t, but some are aware enough to have sold their acres of mineral rights to other companies (we will call them suckers) to remove themselves from the liability and possible inglorious lawsuits yet to come when large waterways are impacted and the drinking water of millions becomes effected. That could happen as early as this summer, 2010. Dominion sold their land because they didn’t want the liability-they are happy providing the lines for transport. Consol bought it, thinking it will all be okay. Hmmm…

So, what are the options? What are the solutions? Well, first of all, there needs to be a moratorium on all additional permits. Let me say it plainly:

STOP ALL NEW PERMITS INVOLVING HORIZONTAL WELL DRILLING AND HYDROFRACKING!

Pennsylvania will be enough of a guinea pig and its natural wildlife and pristine streams subject to lab rat techniques while this issue is examined by the DEP and now, EPA. Yes, it is time to let scientists, not activists, lobbyists, or corporations look at the science and risk involved in this process. They must be objective, lucid scientists whose soul has not been bought by the devil (like one geologist told me, “ it’s a fine practice, just don’t ask me about the water”-yeah, right). There can be plenty of looking over each other’s shoulder; an improved system of checks and balances is desired.

Can this type of drilling be done safely? Well, at the turn of the 20th century, no one thought so. That deep extraction has serious implications, especially with chemicals that have huge health impacts. Can well linings be made securely enough, and wells allowed to cure long enough to be safe, not prematurely used causing cracks? Maybe, but that doesn’t stop the migration of contaminated water left in the soil. Can this process be done without those chemicals? Probably, but not as effectively. Even the remediation plants in the state can’t keep up with the amount of contaminated water, and even if you have a phytoremediation site (3 pools with various beds of indigenous substrate designed to remediate what we know is there: TDS, heavy metals, etc.) for every municipality in the commonwealth, there is no telling what happens when all of these chemicals meet each other in the open river, or meet xenobiotics, or for that matter, the pH problem. Taking water and replacing that water with contaminated water and thinking nothing will go wrong is ridiculously foolish.
It already has. It will continue until several steps are taken.

One: All chemicals (including the proprietary ones) must be identified in concentration and frequency to the DEP and EPA. No one can treat the water if they don’t know what’s really in it.

Two: Algae could become our friend in bioremediation to correct pH, but we can’t do that without more research. That we just don’t have yet. Only one percent of the world’s algae has been researched for bioremediation that could also allow the algae to be used as biofuels, in certain instances (obviously, heavy metals must be attenuated or incineration employed, and that is probably still not a comfortable place for most people to be).

Three: More regulation (duh) needs to be in place BEFORE this process continues. My personal opinion is that other techniques and other fuel sources be introduced to companies that just can’t get out to the fossil fuel mind. There are other areas that they could employ that would make more money with less risk: biofuels (that are not food), sites that could be natural bioremediations and those plantings used for biofuels, since they would be inert if they were phytodegradators (ok, I know…too much science now, but I want to present solutions so that you know there are other options out there), and that has a trifecta: cleans up the mess, remediates the air, reduces carbon footprint. Yes! Employs more people, for less risk, improves the bottom line for the company, and makes for happy shareholders: by shareholders I mean those that hold those pieces of paper, and those that swim, fly, walk on two legs and four, because we are all ‘share holders’. We all have a stake in what happens to our resources.

Everyone: stand up. Put down the remote, and start to pay attention to what is happening to your resources. Maybe you can’t get your head around climate change. Can you get your head around the fact that it is time to make your politicians (public servants, remind them of that), your corporations, and your community work more effectively for you? Get selfish! These are your resources we are talking about! New York residents-are you ready to have horizontal well drilling effect the drinking water of 16 million people? Are you willing to risk that future-not 30 years away, but more like three-to a process that we clearly know doesn’t have enough regulation, and all the severance taxes in the world won’t save if there is even a small catastrophe?

ACTION: Write the EPA and let them know you support their investigation of this process, and you want vociferous attention paid to how this industry impacts your community, your state, and your planet.

This is my last post in my position as chair of my nationally recognized non-profit, who has a history of fighting for environmental issues. My last day is March 31. I will still belong to the organization, but I will not be a Water Chair who must defend the organizations’ decision to say that this kind of drilling is fine as a bridge fuel. It isn’t. It is the highway to Hades. I cannot and will not defend that position to anyone. Many, many people have told me they think that this group has lost its focus, and forgotten its origins of protecting wildlife, conservation, exploration, and sustainability. I would agree. They have decided to make one type of fossil fuel very evil (and it has its problems, believe me) in favor for another that has just as many drawbacks when ALL of the risk is added up. I got tired of people asking me if this organization had lost their minds. I am a scientist before an activist, and I am a sister of the earth before I am anything else.

My people go back centuries in these, the oldest mountains on earth. I know these rivers and streams, as did my grandmothers and grandfathers before me. I want this land, these hills, valley, and streams to be beautiful for my grandchildren’s grandchildren. I will defend them. There is no compromise of one devastating environmental practice over another devastating environmental practice. If they both suck, they both suck. Let’s do something that doesn’t suck. We have the technology, and we have the ability to start today.
This water is NOT FOR SALE, AND YOU CANNOT TAKE IT FOR FREE.

Let’s begin…so that we and all that we love can continue.

Peace,
Falcon