This Weekend in the North Country

Jumpers at last year's Polar Bear Dip

Everyone's getting ready for another action-packed weekend in the North Country...

Crow Point Annual Fishing Derby
From 6 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 23
Crow Point, Butterfield Lake, Redwood NY
$5 Entry Fee
BYOB  
In addition to the annual fishing derby, this year's event will feature "Cheese's Hole" in memory of our dear friend Bob Cheesman. There is a $10 entry fee to fish that hole. Whoever catches the biggest fish out of Cheese's Hole will win a cash prize. A fish fry is also scheduled. Participants are encouraged to bring along any additional food.

Polar Bear Dip
Saturday, Feb. 23
Registration 9 a.m.-12 p.m.
Dipping starts at 1 p.m.
Bonnie Castle Resort, Alexandria Bay, NY
The 23rd annual Polar Bear Dip to benefit River Hospital is likely to bring in more than 200 dippers. Jumpers must be at least 18 years old and raise at least $100. Participants raised more than $55,000 for the hospital last year. The hospital plans to buy ultrasound equipment with the money.

From the Redwoods to Redwood

Arnie Nova, a technician for the Yurok Fisheries Department in Klamath, Calif., visits Better Farm this week.

This week we're being visited by a very special guest, Arnold Nova, a technician in the fisheries department of the Yurok Tribe. The Yuroks, California's largest tribe, has nearly 5,000 enrolled members and consists of all Ancestral Lands, specifically the Yurok Reservation which extends from one mile on each side from the mouth of the Klamath River and upriver for a distance of 44 miles. The Yuroks have been stewards of the Klamath River and the flora and fauna along it for thousands of years; and in recent years have been responsible for helping to shut down several dams along the river that had reduced oxygen and water flow for the salmon running along the waterway.

Klamath is a rural town situated on US Route 101 in Del Norte County, about 300 miles north of San Francisco. In addition to being the home base for many Yurok tribal offices, Klamath is nestled amidst the Redwood Forest—and is home to this iconic roadside attraction any of you who have road-tripped up the California coast have seen:

Paul Bunyan and his legendary sidekick Babe, a 35-foot blue ox. The statues stand side by side at the entrance to Redwood Forest tourist attraction Trees of Mystery.

The Yurok Tribal Fisheries Program YTFP is dedicated to understanding, managing, conserving, and restoring fish populations of the Klamath Basin for the benefit of present and future generations of Yurok People. The Yurok Tribal Fisheries Program is comprised of the following four major divisions: Harvest Management Division (engages in all aspects of fishery harvest management and monitors the Yurok fishery); Lower Klamath Division (conducts research, monitoring, and restoration of fisheries resources in the Lower Klamath River Sub-basin); Trinity River Division (research, monitoring, and restoration of Trinity River fishery resources); and, Klamath River Division (conducts research and monitoring throughout the watershed with a focus on informing water management policy).

Since meeting Arnie in 2001, I've had the pleasure of visiting him more than a half-dozen times in and around Klamath. I've protested with the Yuroks in Portland in an effort to shut down dams; accompanied the tribe on sturgeon-tracking ventures, attended tribal ceremonies, and smoked salmon on the beach where the Klamath River meets the Pacific Ocean.

Arnie and me.

This week, Arnie's traveled east to check out Better Farm and to see what the east side of the country is all about. He's been helping us cut, split, and stack wood; touring the river by ice boat; helping out with chicken care; and this weekend will be participating in an ice-fishing derby, checking out the Polar Dip in Alexandria Bay, and heading down to New York City to load up on cab rides, Manhattan pizza, and skyscrapers.

Warmest welcomes to my dear old friend! Here's some more background on the Yuroks. For further reading and to learn how you can help support Arnies mission out west, visit www.yuroktribe.org.

The Yurok Tribe

At one time, the Yuroks lived in more than 50 villages throughout our ancestral territory. The laws, health and spirituality of our people were untouched by non-Indians. Culturally, Yuroksare known as great fishermen, eelers, basket weavers, canoe-makers, storytellers, singers, dancers, healers and strong medicine people.

The Klamath-Trinity River is the lifeline of the Yuroks people because the majority of the food supply, like ney-puy (salmon), Kaa-ka (sturgeon) and kwor-ror (candlefish) are offered from these rivers. Also important to Yuroks are the foods which are offered from the ocean and inland areas such as pee-ee (mussels), chey-gel’ (seaweed), woo-mehl (acorns), puuek (deer), mey-weehl (elk),   ley-chehl (berries), and wey-yok-seep (teas). These foods are essential to the Yuroks' health, wellness, and religious ceremonies. The Yurok way was never to over harvest and to always ensure sustainability of the food supply for future generations.

   

Traditional family homes and sweathouses are made from fallen keehl (redwood trees) which are then cut into redwood boards. Before contact, it was common for every village to have several family homes and sweathouses. Today, only a small number of villages with traditional family homes and sweathouses remain intact.  Yurok traditional stories teach that the redwood trees are sacred living beings. Although Yuroks use these trees in their homes and canoes, they also respect redwood trees because they stand as guardians over sacred places.

The traditional money used by Yurok people is terk-term (dentalia shell), which is a shell harvested from the ocean. The dentalia used on necklaces are most often used in traditional ceremonies, such as the u pyue-wes (White Deerskin Dance), woo-neek-we-ley-goo (Jump Dance) and mey-lee (Brush Dance). It was standard years ago, to use dentalia to settle debts, pay dowry, and purchase large or small items needed by individuals or families. Tattoos on men’s arms measured the length of the dentalia.

EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT

Yurok did not experience non-Indian exploration until much later than other tribal groups in California and the United States. One of the first documented visits in the local area was by the Spanish in the 1500s. When Spanish explorers Don Bruno de Heceta and Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Cuadra arrived in the early 1700s, they intruded upon the people of Chue-rey village. This visit resulted in Bodega laying claim by mounting a cross at Trinidad Head.

In the early 1800s, the first American ship visited the area of Trinidad and Big Lagoon. Initially, the Americans traded furs with the coastal people. However, for unknown reasons tensions grew and the American expedition was cut short. The expeditions increased over the next few years and resulted in a dramatic decrease of furs in the area.

By 1828, the area was gaining attention because of the reports back from the American expeditions, despite the news that the local terrain was rough. The most well-known trapping expedition of this era was led by Jedediah Smith. Smith guided a team of trappers through the local area, coming down through the Yurok village of  Kep’-el, crossing over Bald Hills and eventually making their way to the villages of  O men and O men hee-puer on the coast.

Smith’s expedition, though brief, was influential to all other trappers and explorers. The reports from Smith’s expedition resulted in more trappers exploring the area and eventually leading to an increase in non-Indian settlement. 

GOLD RUSH IN YUROK COUNTRY

By 1849 settlers were quickly moving into Northern California because of the discovery of gold at Gold Bluffs and Orleans.  Yurok and settlers traded goods and Yurok assisted with transporting items via dugout canoe. However, this relationship quickly changed as more settlers moved into the area and demonstrated hostility toward Indian people. With the surge of settlers moving in the government was pressured to change laws to better protect the Yurok from loss of land and assault.

The rough terrain of the local area did not deter settlers in their pursuit of gold. They moved through the area and encountered camps of Indian people.  Hostility from both sides caused much bloodshed and loss of life.

The gold mining expeditions resulted in the destruction of villages, loss of life and a culture severely fragmented.  By the end of the gold rush era at least 75% of the Yurok people died due to massacres and disease, while other tribes in California saw a 95% loss of life. 

    

TREATY NEGOTIATIONS

While miners established camps along the Klamath and Trinity Rivers, the federal government worked toward finding a solution to the conflicts, which dramatically increased as each new settlement was established.

The government sent Indian agent Redick McKee to initiate treaty negotiations. Initially, local tribes were resistant to come together, some outright opposed meeting with the agent.  The treaties negotiated by McKee were sent to Congress, which was inundated with complaints from settlers claiming the Indians were receiving an excess of valuable land and resources.

The Congress rejected the treaties and failed to notify the tribes of this decision.

  

REVOLTS AGAINST SETTLERS
In 1855, a group of “vigilante” Indians (who were known as Red Cap Indians) initiated a revolt against settlers.

The Red Cap Indians were believed to be a mix of tribal groups who were fighting settlers.

The Red Cap War nearly brought a halt to the non-Indians settlement effort.

The government was able to suppress the Red Cap Indians and regained control over the upper Yurok Reservation.

FORMATION OF RESERVATIONS

The Federal Government established the Yurok Reservation in 1855 and immediately Yurok people were confined to the area. The Reservation was considerably smaller than the Yurok original ancestral territory. This presented a hardship for Yurok families who traditionally lived in villages along the Klamath River and northern Pacific coastline.

When Fort Terwer was established many Yurok families were relocated and forced to learn farming and the English language. In January 1862, the Fort was washed away by flood waters, along with the Indian agency at Wau-kell flat. Several Yurok people were relocated to the newly established Reservation in Smith River that same year. 

However, the Smith River Reservation was closed in July 1867. Once the Hoopa Valley Reservation was established many Yurok people were sent to live there, as were the Mad River, Eel River and Tolowa Indians. 

In the years following the opening of the Hoopa Valley Reservation, several squatters on the Yurok Reservation continued to farm and fish in the Klamath River. The government’s response was to evict squatters and use military force. Many squatters did not vacate and waited for military intervention, which was slow to come. In the interim, the squatters pursued other avenues to acquire land.

COMMERCIAL LOGGING

The Fort and Agency were built from redwood, which was an abundant resource and culturally significant to Yurok. Non-Indians pursued the timber industry and hired local Indian men to work in the up and coming mills on the Reservation. This industry went through cycles of success, and was largely dependent on the needs of the nation. At the time, logging practices were unregulated and resulted in the contamination of the Klamath River, depletion of the salmon population and destruction of Yurok village sites and sacred areas.

COMMERCIAL CANNERIES

The Yurok canneries were established near the mouth of the Klamath River beginning in 1876.

The Yurok people opposed non-Indians taking of the salmon and asserted that they did not have the right to take fish from the river because it is an inherent right of the Yurok people. 

     
WESTERN EDUCATION    

Western education was imposed on Yurok children beginning in the late 1850s at Fort Terwer and at the Agency Office at Wauk-ell. This form of education continued until the 1860s when the Fort and Agency were washed  away.

Yurok children, sent to live at the Hoopa Valley Reservation, continued to be taught by missionaries. The goal of the missionary style of teaching was to eliminate the continued use of cultural and religious teachings that Indian children’s families taught. Children were abused by missionaries for using the Yurok language and observing cultural and ceremonial traditions. 

In the late 1800s children were removed from the Reservation to Chemawa in Oregon and Sherman Institute in Riverside, California. Today, many elders look back on this period in time as a horrifying experience because they lost their connection to their families, and their culture. Many were not able to learn the Yurok language and did not participate in ceremonies for fear of violence being brought against them by non-Indians. Some elders went to great lengths to escape from the schools, traveling hundreds of miles to return home to their families. They lived with the constant fear of being caught and returned to the school. Families often hid their children when they saw government officials.

Over time the use of boarding schools declined and day schools were established on the Yurok Reservation.  Elders recall getting up early in the morning, traveling by canoe to the nearest day school and returning home late at night. The fact that they were at day schools did not eliminate the constant pressure to forget their language and culture.

Families disguised the practice of teaching traditional ways, while others succumbed to the western philosophy of education and left their traditional ways behind. Eventually, Indian children were granted permission to enroll in public schools. Although they were granted access, many faced harsh prejudice and stereotypes. These hardships plagued Indian students for generations, and are major factors in the decline of the Yurok language and traditional ways. The younger generations of Yurok who survived these eras became strong advocates (as elders) for cultural revitalization.

 
LANGUAGE REVITALIZATION

The use of the Yurok language dramatically decreased when non-Indians settled in the Yurok territory. By the early 1900s the Yurok language was near extinction. It took less than 40 years for the language to reach that level. It took another 70 years for the Yurok language to recover. When the language revitalization effort began the use of old records helped new language learners. However, it was through hearing fluent speakers that many young learners fluency level increased.

When the Yurok Tribe began to operate as a formal tribal government a language program was created. In 1996 the Yurok Tribe received assistance from the Administration for Native Americans (ANA). With the development of a Long Range Restoration Plan a survey was completed and the results showed that there were only 20 fluent speakers and 12 semi-fluent speakers of the Yurok language. After a decade of language restoration activities, the Tribe most recently documented that there are now only 11 fluent Yurok speakers, but now have 37 advanced speakers, 60 intermediate speakers and approximately 311 basic speakers. The Yurok Tribe continues to look to new approaches like the use of digital technology,  internet sites, short stories, and supplemental curriculum. The Tribe continues to increase the number of language classes taught on and off the Reservation, at local schools for young learners and at community classes.

    
TODAY

The Yurok Tribe is currently the largest Tribe in California, with more than 5,000 enrolled members. The Tribe provides numerous services to the local community and membership with its more than 200 employees. The Tribe’s major initiatives include: the Hoopa-Yurok Settlement Act, dam removal, natural resources protection, sustainable economic development enterprises and land acquisition.

MSG, Obesity, and Your Health

Processed foods containing Monosodium glutamate, also known as

sodium glutamate or MSG, is the

sodium salt

of

glutamic acid

, one of the most abundant naturally occurring

non-essential

amino acids

—and

one of the most harmful things you'll find in your diet

. It's a widespread and silent killer that’s worse for your health than alcohol, nicotine and many drugs is likely lurking in your kitchen cabinets right now.

MSG has been used for more than 100 years to season food. During this period, extensive studies were conducted to elucidate the role, benefits and safety of MSG. At this point, international and national bodies for the safety of food additives consider MSG safe for human consumption as a flavor enhancer.

MSG is classified as

generally recognized as safe

(GRAS) by the European Union; and as a

food additive

by the U.S.

Food and Drug Administration

. Industrial food manufacturers market and use MSG as a flavor enhancer because it balances, blends, and rounds the total perception of other tastes.

MSG is added to thousands of the foods you and your family regularly eat, especially if you are like most Americans and eat the majority of your food as processed foods or in restaurants.

MSG is one of the worst  food additives on the market and is used in canned soups, crackers, meats, salad dressings, frozen dinners and  much more. It’s found in your local supermarket and restaurants, in your child’s school cafeteria and, amazingly, even in baby food and infant formula.

MSG is more than just a seasoning like salt and pepper, it actually enhances the flavor of foods, making processed meats and frozen dinners taste fresher and smell better, salad dressings more tasty, and canned foods less tinny.

While MSG’s benefits to the food industry are quite clear, this food additive could be slowly and silently doing major damage to your health.

The "MSG symptom complex" was originally termed the "

Chinese Restaurant Syndrome

" when Robert Ho Man Kwok anecdotally reported the symptoms he felt after an American-Chinese meal. Kwok suggested multiple reasons behind the symptoms, including alcohol from cooking with wine, the sodium content, or the MSG seasoning. But MSG became the focus and the symptoms have been associated with MSG ever since. The effect of wine or salt content was never studied. With the years, the list of

non-specific symptoms

has grown on

anecdotal

grounds. In normal conditions, humans have the ability to metabolize glutamate that has a very low

acute toxicity

. The oral lethal dose to 50% of subjects (LD50) is between 15 to 18 g/kg body weight in rats and mice respectively, five times greater than the

LD50

of salt (3 g/kg in rats). Therefore, the intake of MSG as a food additive and the natural level of glutamic acid in foods do not represent a toxicological concern in humans.

A report from the

Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology

(FASEB) compiled in 1995 on behalf of the

United States Food and Drug Administration

(FDA) concluded that

MSG is safe when "eaten at customary levels

and although there seems to be a subgroup of apparently healthy individuals that respond with the MSG symptom complex when exposed to 3 g of MSG in the absence of food, causality by MSG has not been established because the list of MSG Symptom complex was based on testimonial reports. This report also indicates that there is no data to support the role of glutamate in chronic and debilitating illnesses. A controlled double-blind multicenter clinical trial failed to demonstrate the relationship between MSG symptom complex and the consumption of MSG in individuals that believed to react adversely against MSG. No

statistical association

has been demonstrated, there were few responses and they were inconsistent. Symptoms were not observed when MSG was given with food.

What Exactly is MSG?

You may remember when the MSG powder called “Accent” first hit the U.S. market. Well, it was many decades prior to this, in 1908, that monosodium glutamate was invented. The inventor was Kikunae Ikeda, a Japanese man who identified the natural flavor enhancing substance of seaweed.

Taking a hint from this substance, they were able to create the man-made additive MSG, and he and a partner went on to form Ajinomoto, which is now the world’s largest producer of MSG (and interestingly also a drug manufacturer).

Chemically speaking, MSG is approximately 78 percent free glutamic acid, 21 percent sodium, and up to 1 percent contaminants.

It’s a misconception that MSG is a flavor or “meat tenderizer.” In reality, MSG has very little taste at all, yet when you eat MSG, you think the food you’re eating has more protein and tastes better. It does this by tricking your tongue, using a little-known fifth basic taste: umami.

Umami is the taste of glutamate, which is a savory flavor found in many Japanese foods, bacon and also in the toxic food additive MSG. It is because of umami that foods with MSG taste heartier, more robust and generally better to a lot of people than foods without it.

The ingredient didn’t become widespread in the United States until after World War II, when the U.S. military realized Japanese rations were much tastier than the U.S. versions because of MSG.

In 1959, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration labeled MSG as “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS), and it has remained that way ever since. Yet, it was a telling sign when just 10 years later a condition known as “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” entered the medical literature, describing the numerous side effects, from numbness to heart palpitations, that people experienced after eating MSG.

Today that syndrome is more appropriately called “MSG Symptom Complex,” which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) identifies as "short-term reactions" to MSG. More on those “reactions” to come.

Why MSG is so Dangerous

One of the best overviews of the very real dangers of MSG comes from Dr. Russell Blaylock, a board-certified neurosurgeon and author of “

Excitotoxins: The Taste that Kills

.” In it he explains that MSG is an excitotoxin, which means it overexcites your cells to the point of damage or death, causing brain damage to varying degrees—and potentially even triggering or worsening learning disabilities, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease and more.

Part of the problem also is that free glutamic acid is the same neurotransmitter that your brain, nervous system, eyes, pancreas and other organs use to initiate certain processes in your body.

Even the FDA states:

“Studies have shown that the body uses glutamate, an amino acid, as a nerve impulse transmitter in the brain and that there are glutamate-responsive tissues in other parts of the body, as well. Abnormal function of glutamate receptors has been linked with certain neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's chorea. Injections of glutamate in laboratory animals have resulted in damage to nerve cells in the brain.”

Although the FDA continues to claim that consuming MSG in food does not cause these ill effects, many other experts say otherwise. According to Dr. Blaylock, numerous glutamate receptors have been found both within your heart's electrical conduction system and the heart muscle itself. This can be damaging to your heart, and may even explain the sudden deaths sometimes seen among young athletes.

He says:

“When an excess of food-borne excitotoxins, such as MSG, hydrolyzed protein soy protein isolate and concentrate, natural flavoring, sodium caseinate and aspartate from aspartame, are consumed, these glutamate receptors are over-stimulated, producing cardiac arrhythmias.

When magnesium stores are low, as we see in athletes, the glutamate receptors are so sensitive that even low levels of these excitotoxins can result in cardiac arrhythmias and death.”

Many other adverse effects have also been linked to regular consumption of MSG, including:

• Obesity

• Eye damage

• Headaches

• Fatigue and disorientation

• Depression

Further, even the FDA admits that “short-term reactions” known as MSG Symptom Complex can occur in certain groups of people, namely those who have eaten “large doses” of MSG or those who have asthma.

According to the FDA, MSG Symptom Complex can involve symptoms such as:

• Numbness

• Burning sensation

• Tingling

• Facial pressure or tightness

• Chest pain or difficulty breathing

• Headache

• Nausea

• Rapid heartbeat

• Drowsiness

• Weakness

No one knows for sure just how many people may be “sensitive” to MSG, but studies from the 1970s suggested that 25 percent to 30 percent of the U.S. population was intolerant of MSG -- at levels then found in food. Since the use of MSG has expanded dramatically since that time, it’s been estimated that up to 40 percent of the population may be impacted.

How to Determine if MSG is in Your Food

Food manufacturers are not stupid, and they’ve caught on to the fact that people like you want to avoid eating this nasty food additive. As a result, do you think they responded by removing MSG from their products? Well, a few may have, but most of them just tried to “clean” their labels. In other words, they tried to hide the fact that MSG is an ingredient.

How do they do this? By using names that you would never associate with MSG.

You see, it’s required by the FDA that food manufacturers list the ingredient “monosodium glutamate” on food labels, but they do not have to label ingredients that contain free glutamic acid, even though it’s the main component of MSG.

There are over 40 labeled ingredients that contain glutamic acid,

but you’d never know it just from their names alone. Further, in some foods glutamic acid is formed during processing and, again, food labels give you no way of knowing for sure.  

Tips for Keeping MSG Out of Your Diet

In general, if a food is processed you can assume it contains MSG (or one of its pseudo-ingredients). So if you stick to a whole, fresh foods diet, you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll avoid this toxin.

The other place where you’ll need to watch out for MSG is in restaurants. You can ask your server which menu items are MSG-free, and request that no MSG be added to your meal, but of course the only place where you can be entirely sure of what’s added to your food is in your own kitchen.

To be on the safe side, you should also know what ingredients to watch out for on packaged foods.

Here is a list of ingredients that

ALWAYS contain MSG

:

 Autolyzed Yeast

 Calcium Caseinate

Gelatin 

 Glutamate

Glutamic Acid

Hydrolyzed Protein 

 Monopotassium Glutamate

Monosodium Glutamate 

Sodium Caseinate 

 Textured Protein

Yeast Extract

Yeast Food 

 Yeast Nutrient

These ingredients OFTEN contain MSG or create MSG during processing:

 Flavors and Flavorings

Seasonings 

Natural Flavors and Flavorings 

Natural Pork Flavoring

Natural Beef Flavoring 

 Natural Chicken Flavoring

Soy Sauce 

Soy Protein Isolate 

Soy Protein 

Bouillon 

 Stock 

Broth 

Malt Extract 

Malt Flavoring 

Barley Malt 

 Anything Enzyme Modified

Carrageenan 

Maltodextrin 

Pectin 

Enzymes 

 Protease 

Corn Starch 

Citric Acid 

Powdered Milk 

Anything Protein Fortified 

Anything Ultra-Pasteurized 

So if you do eat processed foods, please remember to be on the lookout for these many hidden names for MSG.

Choosing to be MSG-Free

Making a decision to avoid MSG in your diet as much as possible is a wise choice for nearly everyone. Admittedly, it does take a bit more planning and time in the kitchen to prepare food at home, using fresh, locally grown ingredients. But knowing that your food is pure and free of toxic additives like MSG will make it well worth it.

Plus, choosing whole foods will ultimately give you better flavor and more health value than any MSG-laden processed food you could buy at your supermarket.

How MSG affects the body

Scientists in Spain have recently concluded that MSG when given to mice increase appetite by as much as 40%.  

Here's another list of

hidden MSG sources

:

Names of ingredients that always contain processed free glutamic acid:

Glutamic acid (E 620)

2

,  Glutamate (E 620)

Monosodium glutamate (E 621)

Monopotassium glutamate (E 622)

Calcium glutamate (E 623)

Monoammonium

glutamate (E 624)

Magnesium glutamate (E 625)

Natrium

glutamate

Yeast extract

Anything

“hydrolyzed”

Any

“hydrolyzed protein”

Calcium caseinate,  Sodium caseinate

Yeast food, Yeast nutrient

Autolyzed yeast

Gelatin

Textured protein

Soy protein, soy protein concentrate

Soy protein isolate

Whey protein, whey protein concentrate

Whey protein isolate

Anything

“…protein”

Vetsin

Ajinomoto

Names of ingredients that

often

contain or produce processed free glutamic acid:

Carrageenan (E 407)

Bouillon and broth

Stock

Any

“flavors” or “flavoring”

Maltodextrin

Citric acid, Citrate (E 330)

Anything

“ultra-pasteurized”

Barley malt

Pectin (E 440)

Protease

Anything

“enzyme modified”

Anything containing

“enzymes”

Malt extract

Soy sauce

Soy sauce extract

Anything

“protein fortified”

Anything

“fermented”

Seasonings

(1) Glutamic acid found

in unadulterated

protein

does not cause adverse reactions.  To cause adverse reactions, the glutamic acid must have been

processed/manufactured

or come from protein that has been fermented.

The following are ingredients suspected of containing or creating sufficient processed free glutamic acid to serve as MSG-reaction triggers in HIGHLY SENSITIVE people:

Corn starch 

Corn syrup 

Modified food starch 

Lipolyzed

butter fat 

Dextrose

Rice syrup

Brown rice syrup 

Milk powder

Reduced fat milk (skim; 1%; 2%)  

most things

low fat or no fat 

anything

Enriched

anything

Vitamin enriched

(2) E numbers are use in Europe in place of food additive names.

The following work synergistically with MSG to enhance flavor.  If they are present for flavoring, so is MSG.

Disodium 5’-guanylate (E 627)      Disodium 5’-inosinate (E-631)     Disodium 5'-ribonucleotides (E 635)

Fish Selection for Aquaponics

We've written extensively about the aquaponics setup at Better Farm—from the budget to the science behind it to the crops we're growing. But one of the biggest (if not the biggest) components to a healthy aquaponics setup is your selection of fish. So today we're going beneath the surface to check in with our fishy friends.

Photo/Aaron Youngs

Photo/Aaron Youngs

The fish and plants you select for your aquaponic system should have similar needs as far as temperature and pH. There will always be some compromise to the needs of the fish and plants but, the closer they match, the more success you will have.

As a general rule, warm, fresh water, fish and leafy crops such as lettuce and herbs will do the best; as will your dirtiest, most durable fish (our opinion: goldfish and minnows). In a system heavily stocked with fish, you may have luck with fruiting plants such as tomatoes and peppers.

Fish regularly raised in aquaponics with good results (please note: all "edible" fish should be raised in a tank that holds at least 40 gallons of water):

• tilapia
• large mouth bass
• sunfish
• crappie
• koi
• fancy goldfish
• pacu
• various ornamental fish such as angelfish, guppies, tetras, swordfish, mollies

Other fish raised in aquaponics:

• blue gill/breem
• carp
• barramundi
• silver perch, golden perch
• yellow perch
• Tilapia
• Catfish
• Large mouth Bass

Plants that will do well in any aquaponic system:

• any leafy lettuce
• pak choi
• spinach
• arugula
• basil
• mint
• watercress
• chives
• most common house plants

Plants that have higher nutritional demands and will only do well in a heavily stocked, well established aquaponic system:

• tomatoes
• peppers
• cucumbers
• beans
• peas
• squash

At Better Farm, we wanted fish that could withstand cooler water temperatures, fish that exhibited hardiness  (longevity), and fish that would maintain a good nitrogen level for plants—all without breaking the bank. We settled on a bunch of "feeder fish" (minnows and goldfish), which were extremely inexpensive. We also picked up two koi (we bought the smallest/cheapest, which have now quadrupled in size and appetite) and a few "hand-me-down" fish (tetras, a sucker fish, and a carnival prize from two summers ago).

Because we have a 70-gallon tank, there's space to experiment with tillapia or other trout; so long as we account for the space needed by mature fish (roughly one gallon per inch of fish). Our ratio of fish-to-water-to-plants has worked swimmingly so far; stay tuned as we expand and experiment with new setups, more setups, and different fish.

Better Farm Plays Role in 'Possible' Documentary

Olivier Asselin is a freelance photographer working on a documentary film about transitioning into a more sustainable way of life. For this project, he's been seeking out people throughout New England and Eastern Canada with inspiring and interesting stories of making this transition: people who are "doing it"—and this afternoon he'll be paying a visit to Better Farm.

The “Possible” documentary film project is about telling the stories of individuals and communities who are actively engaged in creating a better, more sustainable future. It’s about showing that normal people are doing real things, things that are within the reach of all of us. The aim of this project is to debunk all of the false barriers people create for themselves when they start thinking about transitioning to a more sustainable way of life: I don’t have the money… not enough space… not enough time… I don’t know how… it will never work…

By showing real life examples, people of all ages, of different economic backgrounds, in rural or urban settings, living in all kinds of climates or settings, it will become obvious that no matter who you are, no matter where you live, you can do something.

"I'm not looking at anything specific," he says, "just a variety of ideas, solutions, initiatives—big or small—that have the ability to inspire."

While staying at Better Farm, Olivier will document how we're living our winter in a more sustainable way. Olivier will return when the weather changes to document our summer programming and see the outdoor gardens in full swing.

Olivier grew up in Canada, but spent the last seven years living and working in Africa, mainly for humanitarian and development organizations. He recently discovered permaculture, but also an impressive network of people worldwide who are already doing amazing things. "For the first time in a very long time," he says, "I’m starting to see real solutions, real alternatives. I don’t believe there’s a miracle cure to the imminent crises the world is facing, but there are things each of us can do to start adapting to tomorrow’s realities."

Learn more about Olivier's project here: www.possible.org

Apocalypse Now Fire Sermon

We occasionally use this blog to showcase the work of Better Farm and betterArts residents. Today we'd like to present a special "Apocalypse Now Fire Sermon (love)" by our very own painter/musician/writer-in-residence Mike Brown (just a day late for Valentine's Day!):

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Apocalypse Now Fire Sermon (love)

"Much stronger than fear was the desire to confront him" 

  

Genesis 3:5: "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." 

Revelation 1:17 And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: 

Thought now would be a good time for an Apocalypse now fire sermon about targeted assassination, cops killing cops, sanity, insanity, morality, fire, hatred and love. My rambling manifesto. Rambling manifestos are so hot right now. Rambling manifestos. 

Apocalypse Now Fire Sermon 

"Saigon. Shit." 

I rewatched Apocalypse Now recently and was struck the mirrors upon mirrors in the madness and the murder of it. It seemed to me to be something of a revelation of the mind of The Man. 

Now brothers and sisters when I say The Man I am not speaking of any actual man, for The Man is not an actual man and nor is he all men. He's the spirit of the worship of rivalry unto death and the madness and white nothing of rationality run amok. He hides everywhere and moves through everything, always seeking to draw boundaries for others while respecting none Himself. It's not quite that He can take any form, but He can appear to be anything because He has no honesty in His heart. He will appear in the least of creatures and the greatest among men. As the alpha in any given pack. 

And in Apocalypse Now as the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, opening with the song The End by The Doors at the beginning. 

Captain Willard, an assassin who will be sent by assassins to assassinate an assassin, doing a spirit-of-military-suicide Whiskey Siva death dance and then punching the mirror in his room and cutting his hand and bleeding. Out his window over Saigon the blades upon the helicopters spin spin spin. 

Without a mission Willard feels empty. It feels like the end of the world to him. Everything around him is drowning in blood and fire and he's supposed to just chill in his hotel room and get some r and r. But he just watches the ceiling fan turn turn turn 

Brothers and sisters I come to you as a man of peace and love but I must speak of dark things that I may warn you of them, and I feel that I must warn you here and now about one of The Man's most insidious and soulsucking drugs, the dread workahol, the mad gasoline that through us He pours onto, into himself that he may burn the more brightly and his victory engine cycle endlessly the more rapidly, from rpm to terrorhertz burn burn burn. That is why when people who seem drawn to conflict like moths to flame cry revolution I sometimes think to myself, there are already so many revolutions, endless cycling, that what we need is a drastic reduction of activity in general. We should be teaching laziness in schools can I get a witness. 

You see, brothers and sisters, to a lazy person like myself, a day dreamer and layabout, a lover of sloth, and sloths, the terrors of workahol are obvious. O dread distilled spirit, just one of many of the weird intoxicants that The Man, in order to further His purpose, has had produced by his specialists (The Man lovesspecialists) in the Big Corporate-Military Psychometaphysical Mindfuck Industrial Complex. The same guys who discovered the fearful-symmetric ring structure of benzene, a key ingredient of the napalmused in the Viet Nam war, and sent it to Kekule by way of daydream injection, in a vision of Oroboross, the ancient tail swallowing snake in whom beginning and end are one. It's real. 

So after Willard does this pretty insane death-dance in the film's opening and cuts his hand punching himself in the mirror, some military dudes show up to get him because even though he's clearly insane he's a damn good specialist in the field of covert targeted assassination. This will be the kind of mission, Willard says via voiceover, that when it's over, he'll never want another. The end of his life as a death specialist. I didn't find this kind of thing stressful when I had to do it, but I'm not like the others. 

The men sent to retrieve him throw him in the shower to sober him up and clean him off (The Man loves cleaning) and he cries out with the pain of being born into the cycle again and then he's in a helicopter thwuppathwuppathwuppathwuppathwup and he's being taken to a meeting with the brass and their lameass whitebread piano lounge music on oil-dark disk of vinyl turn turn turn, that they fortunately turn off so that we can listen to Colonel Kurtz, the rogue assassin. Our nation is a rogue assassin btw.  

The things that the brass say about Kurtz are the same things that he says about them. Accusation and counteraccusation mirror each other and bounce back and forth. You're insane no you're insane no you're a murderer no you're a murderer. This is how The Man generates energy, the back and forth of human rivalry is the pumping of a piston in a combustion chain. The Man sets men in the flesh against one another to power his Victory Engine and get them generating enough usable work and energy that He can achieve his one true and mad great goal of victory in His rivalry with the entire universe. The pride and the blindness of His essential Manthrocentrism. He catches a buzz off of the rivalries of the hivemind btw. 

So Willard is taken by helicopter to report to Brass. We find out he was involved in intelligence and counterintelligence. One of the main themes of this movie is mindless violence vs. the violence of the mind, which I've written about here (Judge Holden is perhaps the my favorite ever artistic vision of The Man.) The difference between calm, reasoned killing as Willard practices it and the panicked chaos of the younger men on the boat; or the difference between the military technology of Vietnamese villagers and the United States military industrial complex. Since Vietnam the military tech asymmetry between the United States and everyone else has become much worse and will continue to do so until it destroys itself. War is suicide. 

Brass: "Did you not work for the cia..." 

Willard: "No sir." 

Brass: "Did you assassinate a government tax collector, Quan Tre Province, 1968?" 

Willard: "Sir I am unaware of any such operation." 

[I don't really care about the specific names of the brass, they're savages. --mb] 

So they eat some dead animals as they discuss Kurtz. We see a picture of Kurtz and we hear the brass talk about him. He's completely incomprehensible to them, they think he's more insane than they are. More murderous.  

Kurtz was an overachiever. Damn near distillate of the spirit of workohol. Overachievers ruin the entire world while blaming the people who know how to chill the fuck out lol. It's insane. 

So they listen to the alleged "insane rambling" of Kurtz, they have verified that it is his voice, transmitted from Cambodia, where the US was conducting covert ops that weren't being reported on or acknowledged much internally. 

We dropped more tonnage of munitions on Cambodia than we did in all of World War Two (and blamed communism for Pol Pot) -- 2.75 million tons on Cambodia compared to 2 million tons in WW2. Asymmetries of war technology increase as power and wealth centralilze. To this day half a century later people in Cambodia still die from undetonated cluster bomb munitions that sit there in the ground. The Man fucking loves cluster bombs. 

Anyway though Kurtz was really good at killing people, but part of this was because he loved the game and sought excellence in the field more than the approval of his superiors, he loved the game and the guys who thought they were his coaches began to seem as Hollow Men to him. Stuffed shirts. So Kurtz went solo and started doing some indie stuff and the other guys in the band got all bent. This displeased the men but it pleased The Man. The Man loves purists.  

Kurtz' crime wasn't killing people per se, but doing so without topdown orders. See I'm an anarchist type and into grass roots ground up stuff and complexity theory and decentralized networks so I totally get where Kurtz is coming from here. Seems pretty cool that he disregarded the power structure of the US military. So they call him "insane." But military logic regarding sanity and insanity involves a lot of Catch 22 dynamics. So they have to assassinate the assassin. This is a case of the extrajudicial targeted assassination of an American btw. 

They eat as they listen. Eating is the how we get life from the dead btw. (Or are they.) 

Sacrificial ceremonies are meant to do the same thing. Create order and sustain and propagate life against death by way of ritual killing. War itself is an extended blood sacrifice to The Man though the priests in the temple will never admit whom it is that they serve, brothers and sisters, but is it not obvious, do we not have eyes to see? 

"We must kill them. We must incinerate them. Pig after pig. Cow after cow. Village after village. Army after army. And they call me an assassin. What do you call it when the assassins accuse the assassin? They lie. They lie, and we have to be merciful, for those who lie. Those nabombs. I hate them. I do hate them." This piece of dialogue has a fascinating Judge Holden Caulfield quality to it. Note the themes of accusation and counter-accusation, assassin and counterassassin, the mirrors and echoes of the death-dance of the time of the assassins, which recurs as the engine's pistons pump pump pump a night-morning drunk on the smell of burning napalm. The Man loves a good fire purge. 

So the brass, who are clearly insane and savages to boot, tell Willard, who is insane, that Kurtz, while one of the greatest soldiers of all time, "a humanitarian man," has "very obviously he has gone insane." They try and teach you to not color outside the lines in assassin school but every once a while the best of the best have to leave it all behind and go on a pilgrimage back to the mouth of the vortex and be pure. Go into the jungle and start a cult and do poetry and heads on sticks and stuff. We're all capable of such things because every heart has in it some measure of dark fire that can consume him in napalm and disaster if he lets The Man pour his devil snake gasoline on it. That is why we should all mellow out, in my opinion. I understand that it is not realism that I am preaching here, brothers and sisters. 

"In this war things get... confused out there," one of the brass explains. Typical managerial type condescendingly explaining the worker who excels at his craft by virtue of experience in the field. To whom dead bodies are often mere data points. The Man fucking loves dead body data points. Clearly insane. 

So having been assigned over lunch to assassinate Kurtz, Willard then sets off again on his mission up the river to "infiltrate [Kurtz'] team [cult] by whatever means available and terminate his command..." "...with extreme prejudice."  

"This mission does not exist. Nor will it ever exist."  

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. 

Then Willard is back in a chopper on the way to his next checkpoint and he reminisces over his career as an assassin. "How many people had I killed..." Then he's on the boat for the first time, though not in the river proper. We meet some of the other main characters now, the boat crew assigned to take Willard upriver to kill Kurtz. His four horsemen. "Mostly just kids. Rock n rollers with one foot in their grave." 

The names and personalities of the characters mirror the themes of the movie. Chef the theme of cooking meat and the life and death nature of food. He is not made for the sharing of enemies he is made for the sharing of bread. In tense situations he panics. When in the jungle he speaks of how the fearful symmetry of army cooking is a profanation of the craft of feeding your fellow man when discussing how the army cooks steaks. "Lance, on the forward .50s, was a famous surfer from the beaches south of LA. One look at him and you wouldn't believe he ever fired a weapon in his whole life." Lance B Johnson is a boyish surfer dude. He often has a qaulity of seeming innocent even while moving through it all, though innocent as he may sometimes be, he is also a soldier and a product of the war and The Man moves through him too. No man is so pure that he cannot be a vessel of The Man. Lance B Johnson has the same initials and almost the same name as Lyndon B Johnson. (As commander in chief Johnson increased the number of US troops in Viet Nam from ~ 15,000 to ~ 550,000 between 1963 and 1968.) We meet him and he is bathing in reflected sunlight soaking up the fire from the sky like a plant. Goin with the flow. 

Mr. Clean's name speaks to the purgation theme. When we meet him he is brushing his teeth. The purgation theme often has a sense of whitening. Mr. Clean is black but western colonial wars are acts of white supremacy. There's a tao to it that I wont't speak of here. He's from the ghetto, "some South Bronx shithole," and Willard thinks "the light and the space of Viet Nam really put the zap on his head," so we have another instance of one madman noting the madness of another within the greater context of the pervasive madness of war. 

The boat commander, Chief Phillips, is less of a kid than the other three horsemen and though it is Willard's mission it "sure as shit was the chief's boat." The chief is a different kind of soldier than Willard or Kurtz. He does everything by the book and seeks to follow orders and does not seek to go outside of The Law and eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. The chief speaks of taking another man upriver previously on a similar mission. But "I heard he shot himself in the head." Suicide is an important recurring theme in the film as well and in the end of the movie homicide and suicide will fuse. 

But dishonesty is part of the story is well. This suicide is not true. The chief got disinfo'd. Kurtz shot the other guy in the head with the third eye diamond and absorbed him into his cult. Only his ego and his allegiance to the US military have died. We won't meet the man, Captain Colby, until much later, though his character will be revealed by way of a message given to Willard upriver, much as Kurtz' character is revealed before we meet him by Willard's reading of the available information on him and the providence of commentary as the boat travels further and further upriver to the heart. 

Reading about Kurtz on the way up the river Willard marvels over his pedigree. "I couldn't believe they wanted this man dead.... ....He had an impressive career. Almost too impressive. I mean perfect." Overachievement and puritanism can eat people's souls. The Victory Engine runs at far too hot a heat and too great a speed, both ever increasing, with concurrent proportionate entropy increase so that as more useful work seems to be produced so too is more disorder unleashed. Brothers and sisters we have got to lay off the smell of workohol-based napalm in the morning, even if we really like it. (Don't be dogs led by the nose and see yourself backwards in the warped mirror of manmind as gods.) Brothers and sisters when I preach to you of the lazy way I am not joking though I may indeed be wry. 

"He was being groomed for one of the top spots in the corporation. General, chief of staff...." Willard's use of the word "corporation" here speaks of war as a business run by managers and technocrats. But Kurtz didn't want to be in an office, and be management, he wanted to be in the shit, the cloaca, and be labor. He is a specialist who loves his job but has become alienated from his duty as defined by his masters. Alienation of labor is a big part of the Viet Nam war. Are these men soldiers or are they errand boys sent by grocery clerks. Those nabombs. (Napalm abomb nabobs). Kurtz and Willard are both alienated specialists who know the horror and madness of wars being run by beancounters who listen to really uncool whitebread music. 

In order to make it upriver they will need to be airlifted and escorted by an air mobile unit that they meet up with at a beach just after they have invaded and taken it. The air mobile unit is commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (kill, gore), played by Robert Duvall, whose performance is off-the-charts epic. He projects alpha dog from every pore for every single second that he is on screen. In Kilgore we see something of how military love works. You love your own men and hate the enemy. Classic male pack-herd-hive behavior. Dennis Hopper will say later in a rant resonant with Hegelian (Hegel the German dialectician of manifest destiny) overtones that "Dialectic logic is there's only love and hate, you either love somebody or you hate them." That is the logic of love in this movie. A cruel demonic parody of the True Love that we must learn to see if we are to save ourselves from it before it is too late. 

When Willard arrives on the beach he is immediately being directed by a film-maker. He's not the kind of guy who likes to be filmed. The filmmaker, played by the actual director of the bigger film, Francis Ford Coppola, nice little Hamletesque funhouse metariff, tells Willard to keep moving and act natural, and Willard sees this weird dishonesty as insane. Dishonesty and propaganda are essential to the public relations aspect of modern war as business run by technocrats. Is Coppola's war journalist or documentarian in this context more or less insane than Dennis Hopper's photojournalist at Kurtz' compound down the river? From the standpoint of the corporation he is sane because he works for them and helps them lie. 

Also: tanks shooting flames. Helicopter. Huts on fire. Willard meets Kilgore and tells him what he needs as far as his mission but Kilgore is not into at first. They speak together as they walk among the bodies of slain enemies and Kilgore throws playing cards on them. These are like the calling cards of his airborn unit. Willard knows what they are. "Death cards. Lets Charlie know who did this." A signature to territorialize their ultraviolent victory. How many men in our warzones now, do you think, do that like dogs with piss instead of playing cards, and don't get their pictures taken, get caught and talked about in the news. How canine is the military mind. How much does The Man delight in the delight that his dogs show in serving Him. 

An American tells surviving villagers through a megaphone: "We are here to help you," as a local translatres for the crowd who see, I'm assuming, as we do, the honest dishonesty of this outright false propaganda. The intervention rap. Still very popular. 

Kilgore comes upon an enemy soldier dying of a gutshot and two South Vietnamese say he's thirsty but that "he can drink patty water." A lot of times you don't share your food with the enemy that you share with the people that you do share your food with. But Kilgore seems to feel something like compassion toward the dying man, or loyalty, and he gets pissed that they would deny him fresh water and he swears at them and pushes them away and barks about how "any man brave enough to lie there with his guts strapped on can drink from my canteen any day," and he goes to give the man water and appears to be doing so, but then a messenger arrives and tells Kilgore that Lance Johnson is on site and Kilgore, an avid surfer and fan of surfing, takes the canteen away and just tosses the water out as the dying man reaches after him in despair. This is so senseless and absurd and cruel. Kilgore seems to act with great conviction but then just dumps the water out into the air instead of giving it to the dying man and goes to find Lance. Kilgore is a great soldier but he has no real consciousness he's just a killing machine. But that he is a machine is what perhaps makes him sane in the eyes of the corporation even though he strikes me as quite obviously insane. But then I'm mentally ill. 

Kilgore's love of surfing, of gnarly tubes and sweet peaks, is what gets him interested in helping advance Willard's mission. The absurdity of this is terrifying. But in watching this movie and reading it, in learning to see reality from its vision, one can learn from horror and moral terror a certain clarity regarding our need to choose love. 

Kilgore talks to Lance and says it's an honor to meet him. (Kilgore is above Lance in the military hierarchy but he admires Lance as an alpha specialist in his field outside of the military.) The US Military is an honor culture, though it is the enemies of the US whom we point at and decry as illustrative of the problems of honor cultures. "Honor killings," as they call them, are committed by and in the US all the time, but they are presented in the corporate media narrative as being exclusive to foreign nonwhite nonchristian savages. 

Fire and helicopters burn turn turn. Kilgore and some other surfing afficianados in his unit talk to Lance as we see a helicopter take off in front of a destroyed church airlifting some livestock. The camera travels with it and we witness men below reciting the Lord's Prayer. This foreshadows the ceremonial sacrifice at the end and presents the socalled civilized version of that which is insane when Kurtz does it. "Thy kingdom come, they will be done." That night they cook over open flames the t-bone steaks that Kilgore explains have been airlifted in. Kilgore likes his meat "rare but not cold." 

"He wasn't a bad officer I guess," Willard says."He loved his boys..." and hated his enemies. But this love that is half hate is not True Love. 

Over barbecued meat and beer they discuss Willard's mission. Willard suggests they take a certain village that would be a good entryway to the river but Kilgore says it's "hairy," or heavily armed and defended, and expresses hesitation until another soldier informs Kilgore that the beach there is "tube city." The waves come in in two directions so twice the men can surf and the peaks are high and not too near to the shore. He also talks about how they've already lost a man there and that it's Charlie's beach. Kilgore explains to the young man that Charlie doesn't surf. 

So they mount a vicious and terrifying airstrike. They will airlift Willard's crews' boat in and take the village with helicopters, jet fighters and napalm. The soundtrack for the airstrike is Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, which they blast from the helicopters. "I use Wagner, it scares the hell out of the slopes. My boys love it." As did Hitler's. The delusional grandiosity, the pride, the horror and savagery of white supremacy and the war machine Victory Engine blast out of my television in screaming beams of bleached hate and fiery light. It's a slaughter. As time goes by perhaps more and more of the truth of just how vicious and genocidal the Vietnam War was will be revealed. 

During the heavy fighting of the airstrike after they land on the beach, when a helicopter is down on the ground to pick up an injured man and a woman runs up, she would be called a terrorist today, and throws a hat in the helicopter, and the hat has a grenade hidden in it, and the helicopter is blown up and the crew is lost, and revenge must be taken and racist rapist hate speech and bullets must be spewed, so they go after her. "She's a savage... ....Dink bitch... ...roll that right skid right up her ass." The imagery is of raping her with the landing gear of the helicopter. Passionate revenge killing up close and personal. War culture is a rape culture. 

Kilgore calls his enemies "fucking savages" but he is more savage than anyone. They slaughter more people and destroy more homes. Kilgore asks Lance about waves and about surfing. They take the beach and Kilgore tells his men to get into the water and surf ("you either surf or fight") while they have the chance. Then he calls in a napalm firebombing on the treeline to better secure the beach and the US war machine uses its advanced jet fighters to drop fire from the sky upon the jungle. 

Kilgore loves the smell of napalm in the morning. He tells Willard and Lance a story about a particularly enjoyable firebombing. "We didn't find one of them, not one stinking dink body." A fire purge. And Kilgore talks about the smell (how canine.) "Smells like... victory." He likes the smell of holocaust because he's really into winning. Or is perhaps delusional from huffing fumes from the exhaust pipe of the Victory Engine and smoking the bodies of the dead like freebase. A lunatic death addict. But the corporation doesn't consider him insane, it considers him successful. But he has no true consciousness, is blind and shallow and all he wants to do is go out with his brothers and kill his enemy. But brothers and sisters our enemies are our brothers and sisters too though it often so pains us to admit because of what we ourselves are. That is why I say choose love. 

"If that's how Kilgore fought the war, I began to wonder what they really had against Kurtz. It wasn't just insanity and murder; there was enough of that to go around for everyone." 

After that they get free of Kilgore and get back on the river and the young men smoke some sweet sweet marijuana. Willard muses that the boys miss home but that for him there is no going back. "I knew that it just didn't exist any more." Then Chef is all high and he wants to get some mangos. He is not meant to be a machinegunner he is meant to be a saucier. Chef and Willard get off the boat and head into the jungle in search of fresh fruit. Chef talks to Willard about how the military ruins meat by the mass methods it uses to cook, makes a profanation of food preparation. The fearful symmetries of things efficiently mass produced. This scene with great lighting, (the lighting is great in every scene but this one I like special), great grey greens of jungle night until a tyger bursts out of the foliage, flaming orange burning bright. 

The tyger totally freaks chef out. He's not made for this kind of life and death stuff and loses his head. They run back in the boat and talk about how you should "never get out of the boat." Unless you're going all the way like Kurtz. The men panic and fire into the jungle. Panic fire from the young men is another recurring theme and can be contrasted with the clarity of brutality practiced by Willard and eloquently commented upon by Kurtz. 

Willard begins, or continues, to realize that he identifies with and admires Kurtz. He doesn't see Kurtz as an absolute and monstrous Other the way that the suits do. I can identify with Willard and Kurtz. I like living in the country away from the jive intellectuals who think they run it and who like shitty music. I'm all: "no, you're the one who's crazy, you're the ones who are ruining everything" etc. Calling from the funhouse like Iggy and The Stooges like a streetwalkin cheetah with a heart full of napalm raw power. 

They soon come to a spot with pretty lights where they can get essentials like beer, fuel, cigarettes, ammo and sweet sweet marijuana. There's also a stadium set up there for a USO show with some rock n roll music and scantily clad dancing playmates for the boys. This is not just to entertain the troops but to generate desire and psychic energy and direct it into the war effort. That's actually what a lot of entertainment is. That is what the superbowl is. In this instance they use rock n roll music and objectified women. The casual misogyny of the men and their hostility toward that which they desire but cannot have speaks to the idea that violent aggression and sexual repression have a deep psychological relationship and that that is part of our problem, as Kurtz points out later in his remarks on war and obscenity. War destroys love. 

Kurtz is like Ahab. He speaks real truths from the depths of his socalled madness. The young men heckle the women, who are dressed up in skimpy military and cowboy-and-indian costumes, echoing one of America's fundamental and essential creation myths involving the death purge of dark "savages" by hightech white people, "good white christians" with superior weaponry, which they think makes them more civilized than those whom they invade and savagely slaughter and subjugate. 

Lance shouts out at a dancing playmate: "You fucking bitch!" with great glee. In many scenes Lance is something of an innocent, but here he becomes the voice of military misogyny. Misogyny is rampant in our current military and is a part of the insane savagery of war in general. This part troubles me in a way because Lance has a lot of good qualities, but The Man flows through everyone to some degree and even nice guys are capable of plenty of misogyny. Someone like Nick Kristof of the New York times might be a good example of a nice guy misogynist. 

Eventually the troops riot and rush the stage and the women have to be airlifted out for their own protection and the stage collapses. The order of the event breaks down. Young men cling to the helicopter as it leaves and finally fall off into the green water. It's a shitshow. Chaos follows Willard everywhere, or he follows it. The snake swallows its tail. They head back up the river. 

"Charlie didn't get much USO. He was dug in too deep or moving too fast. His idea of great R&R was cold rice and a little rat meat. He had only two ways home: death, or victory." 

Death or victory. 

"No wonder Kurtz put a weed up Command's ass." There is a lot of imagery in this movie involving shit, ass and bowels, and sodomy as domination. The river is a cloaca. But the men who run the war stay out of the shit. "The war was being run by a bunch of four star clowns who were gonna end up giving the whole circus away." 

Willard reads more about Kurtz. Much of Kurtz' character is revealed through scenes of Willard reading about him on the boat as they travel from point to point on their journey. There's a pretty cool rhythm to this aspect of the structure of the storytelling. Willard talks about Kurtz as they travel upriver between checkpoints where progressively crazier stuff happens. During this section Willard reads a letter that Kurtz wrote to his son about being officially accused of murder by the corporation. "The charges are unjustified. They are in fact, and in the circumstances of this conflict, quite completely insane." It's the accusation-counteraccusation thing again. "I'm not crazy, you're the one who's crazy," like that song by Suicidal Tendencies. Our mania for and worship of victory and rivalry is our suicidal tendency, brothers and sisters. That is why I advocate mellowing out. 

Kurtz is into war but he's also artsy and soulful. Like Ahab. Both know wrath-as-muse in the western epic tradition. On the way upriver they pass boats full of US military coming the other way. One soldier moons them as they approach what one Lieutenant will call "the asshole of the world" at the Dulong bridge. A soldier from another passing boat throws a smoke flare at their boat as a prank and it catches the canopy of the boat on fire. They catch friendly fire here you might say. Even the socalled friendlies can destroy you. The enemy is potentially everywhere. That is why power seeks absolute surveillance. Willard reads more about Kurtz' prowess as an army assassin and the details of how and why he went rogue. 

And now Willard reveals a few details of his mission to the boat chief, who would have simply done his job without seeking to know because he does things by the book. But Willard, like Kurtz, is becoming more and more disillusioned with the dishonesty of how the military operates and so volunteers the information. 

"That's Cambodia, Captain," the chief says. 

"We're not supposed to be in Cambodia but that's where I'm going." 

Soon after that WIllard reads these words from Kurtz: "In a war there are many moments for compassion and tender action. There are many moments for ruthless action - what is often called ruthless - what may in many circumstances be only clarity, seeing clearly what there is to be done and doing it, directly, quickly, awake, looking at it." Again this notion of brutality as clarity. A diamond hard crystal clarity in its fearful symmetries, the male war mind revealed further. Choose love. 

They pass a flaming helicopter in a tree. 

Now Lance dons facepaint, which is probably what I would do. He hangs out on the bow of the boat. Forward gunner. Longboard nose surfer. 

Chief asks him: "What's with all the green paint." 

"Camouflage." 

"What's that?" 

"So they can't see ya, they're everywhere chief." 

This is both paranoiac and eminently logical in the tradition of the great Kurt Godel.  Go delve that weird twinship, that fearful symmetry, the mirroring of machine logic and paranoia, in the works of Thomas Pynchon if you dare, but remember that he more than anyone is out to get you personally from his invisible headquarters behind the facepaint of The Word. 

Seeing the enemy everywhere and the hypperrational subconscious psychoid fusion of logic and paranoia are essential to the mind at war. The Man needs to be able to turn any man against any other, brothers and sisters, that he may generate human energy and skim the cream from the top. He seeks ultimately to fuse man with fire entirely and to make thermonuclear devices out of the fission and fusion of the souls of men, that the stardust may compete with the stars and defeat the universe. 

The paranoid logic of the facepaint has a light and humorous quality, but soon after that we come to another point of tension when Willard's boat comes across a local boat and the boat chief says they have to inspect it because that's what the book says. Because any civilian could be running supplies to the enemy. They're everywhere, chief. Who can even tell a civilian, terrorists hide behind civilian facepaint, like we currently accuse those whom we assassinate in Yemen, and elsewhere, of doing. 

During the boat inspection it becomes apparent to the globals that the locals are hiding something. Isn't this always the case. White people would rather be omniscient with a glance but white people can't get no satisfaction. They search the boat, and chef is nervous. Things get very tense as it becomes obvious that the people on the boat are trying to hide something. Wouldn't you? 

Fear and aggression are fused in the male human psyche much in the same way that logic and paranoia are. It's logical to expect anything from anywhere in a truly volatile conflict, to feel threatened by everything. And if you give your enemy credit for knowing what war really is, then you should expect him to be capable of anything anywhere anytime. You can't ever let your guard down. Hypervigilance is one of the main symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder among veterans and it contributes to their high rates of suicide as the suits in the corporation deem it acceptable casualty while simultaneously branding war with hypocritical "support our troops" sloganeering. 

They end up freaking out and shooting up the boat, killing civilians. Things get confusing and unstable and they attempt to stabilize it with giant guns in the American tradition. This only creates more death and confusion. 

The woman that Mr. Clean (purge it with firepower(tm)) shoots was trying to protect something and the Americans could tell that the people on the boat were hiding something but this time it is not a grenade hidden in a hat. This time it is a puppy. 

A puppy. An innocent. A creature whom one is right to seek to hide and protect from the savage ugliness of men. (Man the dog who in the savage backward mirror of his own mind sees himself as god.) But this logic of kindness is slaughtered by the logic of war. The young men fire indiscriminately, in a panic. They even fight over the puppy. Lance takes it from chef after some shoving and yelling. 

The woman that Clean shot in the back is not yet dead. Boat chief tells the men to load her into the boat so that they can get her help. He is going by the book. But Willard plays by a different book, he plays more by the book of Kurtz and Hassan I Sabbah than that of Chief Phillips, and what others perhaps see as his brutality he sees as clarity and a means to the completion of his mission, so he shoots the woman dead to eliminate any ambiguity. The mission is more important than the ostensible rules. That is how covert assassination works. And it is not merely since Willard's drunken morning that we have been living in the time of the assassins. 

Further on up the river toward the heart of it all things get darker. Willard is outraged by the dishonesty of it all and hates the lies, yet as a covert assassin he lies quite a bit, so though he hates The Man he still reflects Him. He reflects on the river via voiceover some more before their next stop at the Dulong Bridge, the last US outpost on the river. 

"Beyond it was only Kurtz." 

There are lights and noise and a firefight going on in the darkness as they approach the bridge. Chef asks Lance what he thinks and Lance says "it's beautiful," and Chef asks him why he's acting so weird and Lance explains that he has eaten some LSD that he had. As an old acid head I like some of the Lance-on-acid stuff but sadly Lance is on more than just an LSD trip and as things go on he loses his mind more and more. He's merging with his environment and the whole go-with-the-flow ego loss psychedlic thing can have disastrous consequences in a hellish war zone. 

As they arrive, young American soldiers run into the river screaming at the boat to save them. "Take me home!" They are like orphans. Panicked boys. 

Another flaming helicopter. 

The boat doesn't stop to help. One of the abandoned cries out: "You'll get what you deserve!" 

They find a lieutenant bearing information, an update on Willard's mission and mail from home for the boys on the boat. Having delivered the information the lieutenant tells Willard that he can't wait to get out of there now that he's completed his mission. He tells Willard as he flees: "You're in the asshole of the world, captain!" 

They can't leave yet though because Willard wants more information, so he goes into the heavy fire zone to search for it. Chief sends Lance with him to protect him but Lance is too starryeyed and dosed out to be a good guard dog, and Willard ends up watching over him. Lance carries the puppy in his shirt near his heart. Willard and Lance's wandering through the hellish combat zone while demented carnival music plays is one of my favorite parts of the movie. Willard is trying to find a commanding officer but cannot. This place is fatherless but full of war. (Sometimes War is the Father, as Heraclitus, the fiery one, the weeping philosopher, might have said.) The lighting in this scene is particularly good, with throbbing alternations between light and dark. Tao. Coppola's films always have exquisite lighting in general. There is no finer cinematic chiaroscurist. 

In a particularly powerful scene he asks a young man who has just killed an enemy soldier with a grenade launcher if he knows who's "in command here," and the young man says "yeah," but then walks away without specifying whom. Who is it that he refers to but does not name. 

Willard realizes then that there is no commanding officer and that he will not find the information that he is looking for. And so it's back on up that old old river again. They leave without the information and without scoring any more gasoline but Willard scores some ammo. Boat chief Phillips expresses despair here. He knows they are going beyond the book and the standard orders. Beyond the hierarchy of the US military into a place where commanding officers and boat chiefs are no longer in command. Into chaos and wilderness. Outer dark. 

Chief speaks of the neverending confusion of creation and destruction, end and beginning, of a war run by suits: "You're on your own, Captain. Still wanna go on? Like this bridge: we build it every night. Charlie blows it right back up again. Just so the generals can say the road's open. Think about it. Who cares?" 

Willard has to impose his will here: "Just get us upriver!"  

Back on the river heading up to the heart, the boys read their mail on the boat. ("Take me home!") Throughout the movie we see the contrast between young men who want to get back home to civilian life and people like Kilgore, Willard and Kurtz for whom war is home. Willard's mail from home is different than that received by the boys. The intelligence communication that he has received informs him that the last man sent to do what he did joined Kurtz instead of assassinating him. Captain Richard Colby. 

Chef receives some interesting mail here, a clipping about Charles Manson, who was often referred to as "Charlie" by his followers, the same name that the US soldiers use to refer to the Viet Cong. This speaks to the film's themes of assassination and insanity and provides another echo or reflection. The writing in the news clipping associates Manson with antiwar protestors. That is still part of the American conservative narrative of the 60's. 

"Charles Miller Manson ordered the slaughter of all in a home as a symbol of protest.. hey, that's pretty weird!" 

These words from a guy who is slaughtering people in their home, a US soldier in Vietnam. And what's more, the US military kills people at far far greater scales and more madly than Manson. Manson's crime was taking advantage of the young and lost and getting them to kill people. That's what the US military does on a scale that dwarfs anything manson could actually do. But like Kurtz Manson is a weirdo "crazy" person and so becomes an American Demon. American Demonology is a very real and understudied phenomenon. Point your finger at it and assassinate it! 

like the wise words of the wildman fisher king bald head of kurtz like the egg crowning the cloaca 

Soon after leaving the Dulong Bridge and heading back upriver the boat and crew get caught up in a very nasty firefight against unseen ("they're everywhere, chief") enemies firing from within the jungle along the riverbanks. They lose the puppy, and Mr Clean, scarcely more than a pup himself, is killed. Touching Mr Clean's body, Chief gets blood on his hands and experiences something of an anagnorosis. The true nature of Willard's mission and his complicity in Mr. Clean's death are revealed to him. He weeps. This is the beginning of the end for Chief. 

Next they travel through mist past a fire on the banks and they enter a deep fog and we hear a weird screaming coming from unseen people on the banks as the boat passes through a great white nothingness like the war state itself. Chief says they have to stop because they're blinded but Willard overrides him. Lance yells back weirdly at the weird screaming from the front of the boat, goin with the flow. 

"He was close. "He was real close," Willard says, referring to Kurtz. Soon they are attacked from the banks again, but not with guns this time, with "little toy arrows." Chef returns fire in a panic and Willard tells him to stop doing so. Willard explains to them it's a psy op, "they're just trying to scare us," but his warnings go unheeded and everyone panics. The notion of The Other being more alien and threatening than a better-armed but more recognizable opponent is involved here. Lance, being the wild and crazy guy that he is, makes a Steve Martin arrow head prop out of one of the arrows and proceeds to fire off his machine gun kind of randomly. Now even Chief picks up a gun. He has no remaining faith in Willard and thinks he's crazy. So he flips out and starts firing.  This ends up being a bad idea because he is then impaled by a spear snuck in among the nearly harmless arrows. His last words are "a spear" and with the very last of his energies, before he dies, he tries to strangle Willard. 

Lance applies facepaint to the dead chief and kisses him with his own painted face. The sunlight gleams warmly on the water. This death ritual mirrors the death rituals at the beginning and end of the movie. Lance is on the other side now, he broke on through when he ate the acid. I'm a pro so I know how these things happen. The thing is, not everybody comes back from the perimeter. 

Now Willard reveals more of the truth of his mission to Chef and Lance and is prepared to travel the rest of the way on foot and allow them to leave in the boat. You're part of a human sacrifice blood ritual that those in power use to get even more power, he says. Actually he doesn't say that, but he could have. He explains that his assignment is to kill a rogue colonel from the US Army. Chef loses his head and flips out again. But then he convinces Willard to get back in the boat so that they can all go together as Lance bathes chief in the firegolden waters and then lets him go into the river.  

"But the thing I felt the most, much stronger than fear, was the desire to confront Him." Take note, victory addicts. 

They continue upriver. Fires burn on the banks. Lance does a weird slow dance mirroring the dance of death that Willard does at the beginning and ends of the movie with positions that mirror the ancient positions of the dance of distruction of that old god who is known to appear occasionally as a pillar of fire. 

 Endl 

Endlessly spinning like the rotors of helicopters, the engines of history, the cycles of death and rebirth that we all suffer, spinning, turning, burning, dancing, fiery gyres of of the whirled whorled world, endless RPM's, more and more hertz, more and more hurts, revolutions spinning in the blind lust for winning, and that is why, brothers and sisters, when you ask me, when is the revolution going to start I ask you, when in the hell are the goddam motherfucking revolutions gonna stop? When will we awaken from the devil's dizzy daydream and learn to love like we ought? 

Now they meet bleached people. Many people standing on the river, painted white in primitive boats. Shining whiteness is their raiment that they may not be cleaned or brainwashed any further like Mark 9:3 perhaps but who could confirm such a thing. Does the American war machine seek to bleach the entire world with it's fire you betcha drill drill drill. 

The people painted white in boats part to let the boat through. They watch in silence. They are human, so they think, but are so weird as to appear thoughtless in their way. Willard tells Lance, keep your hands off the guns. He knows not to invite chaos here. 

The person who eventually speaks to them, who greets them and explains the scene, is an American photojournalist whose name we never discover, played by Dennis Hopper. We're kind of beyond names here. Contrast with the other kind of white world at the beginning of the movie with the recording devices and the identity verifications.  

Hopper tells them: "Zap em with the siren!" and they cow the locals with their hi tech psy op and stablize the region as it were. Technology is magic, to paraphrase Arthur C Clarke.  

Also: naked dead bodies hanging from trees. A master of death lives here and he speaks through the dead to all who would enter his world. 

Hopper's performance in this movie is amazing. He's a raving cult follower journalist nutjob much like Thomas Friedman and David Brooks of the New York times.  

"It's alright, it's alright, it's all been approved!" he says. He means by Kurtz. From here on in everything is being run by Kurtz. He is orchestrating his own death. War is suicide, brothers and sisters, and it is in some way, some terrible way, mankind's most true and most false religion. Always remember that Kurtz is actually less murderously insane than the president. Do you not underrstand how Barack Obama put Osama Bin Laden's head on a stick as a vulgar display of power meant to control you, you fucking savages? 

LOL 

Now we have Willard and Hopper doing intelligence-counterintelligence.  

"Who are you?" Willard asks him. 

"Who are you?" nameless asks back like a mirror echo, laughing. 

"Who are all these people?" Willard asks.  

This all reminds me of the song Who? by the Brian Jonestown Massacre for some reason. 

"They think you've come to take him away, I hope that isn't true..." 

"Take who away?" 

"Him! Colonel Kurtz. These are all his children, man...  ...Hell man out here we're all his children." 

Themes here of power and identity and of the power dynamics of knowing vs being known, seeing vs being seen, speaking vs listening.  

"Could we talk to Colonel Kurtz?" 

"Hey man, you don't talk to the Colonel, you listen to him." 

Hopper's raving is very inspired. Oracular fire. Or insanity. Whatevs. Eyes burned clean by the word of his great white god. Reflecting the fire of Kurtz. Both men fugitive from the land of false profits. Burning and turning in the vertiginous vortex of the engine or heart that pumps the bloody machine of a human history whose head writer is war. A hollow man. A golem, a Moloch. 

Nameless Hopper wants to follow Willard and take pictures. Then tells Willard about how the other day Kurtz wanted to kill him for taking his picture. Echoes of punching the mirror that holds you. Power seeks to see and not be seen. 

Willard then comes face to face with Captain Colby, the previous assassin sent by the establishment assassins to assassinate the rogue assassin who ended up getting lost in the funhouse and joining Kurtz. Colby wears facepaint and has some blood on his hands. When Willard says his name to him, he says nothing in response, just stares. Willard sees something of himself and of Kurtz in Colby. A mindlessness of hollow mirror men maybe. Also: severed heads on sticks. 

"The heads, you're looking at the heads." 

Brothers and sisters I'm going to ask you now because I want to know: are heads on sticks and dead bodies hanging from trees a more vulgar display of power as a means to more power than Kilgore's Die Valkyrie rampage, or the bombing of Cambodia as ordered by the highest-up? Or does it just seem so frighteningly otherly because not properly industrialized and western? Or is it the true madness of industrialized western war laid bare? Is all war not an elaborate suicide ritual practiced by a mad cult in the name of an insane false god? 

They can't get to Kurtz right away, he's in the jungle, "with his people," and so Willard and Chef head back to the boat to wait with Lance. Lance does wear facepaint and do the dance of death but he is a different expression of the energies of it all than Kurtz and Willard, though they all express those same energies. Different facets of a multifarious reflection. The Man can appear through any man. Through any human, any animal, any plant, any rock or drop of water. Any least atom. He's everywhere. That is why I wear facepaint. 

Chef cannot handle this scene, he is terrified by the "pagan idolatry" of it all, so he stays in the boat when Willard goes back into the jungle, bringing Lance this time. Willard gives Chef the command codes to call in an airstrike and purge it all with fire if he does not return to the boat by a certain time. Willard can kill with his bare hands but also with his mind, his knowledge, his information. The priveleged information he has, the names so to speak, the command codes for an airstrike to burn everything unto nothingness with fire from the sky if he is unable to do the job by hand. Though of course Kurtz knows things too, and he knows this, he knows the paranoid-logical truth of the facepaint: they're everywhere. 

So Willard and Lance walk into the jungle. There are dead bodies all around them. 

"If I was still alive it was because He wanted me that way." 

Kurtz is in power here. He is destiny. For Willard anyway. Because that thing that moves through Kurtz also flows through Willard and seeks to smash them together and see what fires result. The Man clapping two hands together. The Man has more hands than Kali.  

And we see many many hands as Kurtz' people swarm Willard, chanting... he submits. Lance too submits and joins the cult immediately. Just goin with the flow. Willard is captured by a chanting, seemingly undead swarm of humanity. Pretty sure most politicians feel like that's what voters are. 

They take Willard (hands bound behind him) to Kurtz' chambers in a temple atop the compound. It smells "like slow death.... ...malaria... nightmares. This was the end of the river alright." 

Now we will finally meet Kurtz in the flesh. His there, shrouded in darkness, and rises into the light. He asks Willard where he is from. Knowledge of another's identity is a form of power. Kurtz finds out where Willard was born. Willard says he is from Ohio and Kurtz asks him how far from the Ohio River, Kurtz is into rivers. He speaks to Willard of riding a boat on the Ohio River and witnessing a heavenly flower plantation. "Heaven on earth in the form of gardenias." Guy likes plants and jungles. And is cool with plantations. 

Then he asks Willard: "Have you ever considered any real freedoms?" As opposed to the fake freedoms pedaled as brands by the military industrial complex. "The corporation." 

"Freedom from the opinions of others, even from yourself?" Mystical assassin poet of consciousness speaking of ego loss here. Reminiscent of the legendary phrase allegedly (true or untrue) uttered by Hassan I Sabbah, old man of the mountain, godfather of hash eaters and master assassins: "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." Or maybe it was Karl Rove who said that. Or Barack Obama. They all say it in their way. We all do I guess. 

Kurtz performs ablutions upon himself as they speak. Willard confesses his mission here like a layman to a heretic warrior priest, apostate of state violence, the assassin poet Kurtz. They discuss the justifications of Willard's mission. The assertion by the brass that Kurtz' methods are unsound. 

Kurtz: "Are my methods unsound?" 

Willard: "I don't see any method at all, sir." (Notice that Willard addresses Kurtz as "sir," as a higher-up. Also here we have echoes of Hamlet in the question of madness and method.) 

Kurtz: "Are you an assassin?" 

Willard: "I'm a soldier." 

Kurtz: "You're neither. You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill."  

Once again Kurtz shows insight into the madness of a war run by technocrats. He's more of a warrior poet than a warrior manager. There's a difference. Of course, compared to someone like myself they're all murderous wackos though i'm not sure they're crazier than I am to be honest.  

Then he has Willard confined to a bamboo cage. Kurtz uses torture techniques to bend Willard to his will that are horrifying, terrifying, but no less so than the acts of the US torture program in the wake of 911. Abu Graib and Gitmo are perhaps two high profile examples but the US had and still has black (hearted) sites in countries all over the world where it seeks to break people's souls as a means of getting something out of them. Occasionally information, but very often something closer to violent revenge. Kurtz seems more insane because he doesn't outsource everything. The technocrats prefer that their methods be invisible. They lie about what war is and from the standpoint of a visionary warrior assassin this is very dishonorable. Maybe this is just because I'm evil, brothers and sisters, oh I am as evil as it gets and don't you ever forget it, but I can understand how Kurtz and Willard feel. Alienation of labor was a big problem in the Vietnam war. Fragging is a big part of this war's legacy.  

But though he is holding him captive without basic necessities, Kurtz "likes" Willard, and has "got something in mind" for him, as nameless Hopper tells Willard while feeding him water from a ladle. Willard is being prepared for his part in a suicide death-dance ritual that is all human war in microcosm. This death dance at the end will mirror the dance at the beginning (riverrun) where Willard punches the mirror, or The Man, or himself, or all three turn turn turn. The same song, The End, by The Doors, will be used. 

Nameless Hopper explains to Willard that: "The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad."  

He's referring to both Kurtz and The Man here. The madness of the maniac funhouse of the war mind, reflecting perfectly but reflecting what. And he explains cryptically: "I'm not gonna help you, you're gonna help him, man." Which is to say Willard will play an essential part in Kurtz' ceremonial suicide. As he sought to destroy his own reflection in the mirror in the beginning death dance so now will he seek to destroy Kurtz whom he has come to mirror the more the nearer he gets to him. As Hopper rants, nameless people scream madly from the jungle. "When it dies, he dies...." And nameless Hopper tells him, I am not going to be the one to tell the story (even if a journalist), you are. And Willard will. Tell your stories, brothers and sisters, the hard ones if you can, that we as a species may finally learn love! 

LOVE! 

Then we cut to Chef. "Almost eight hours..." he says. That is the deadline for whether or not he calls in the airstrike to purge it all with fire. He tries to tell himself he's dreaming. He establishes radio contact with "Almighty," the codeword for their radio contact and command center, and they speak back to him, but there is a cut before we see whether or not he gives them the strike codes, he may have just been establishing radio contact... 

And then we see a pair of feet walking through the mud. Kurtz among the torches in the darkness and the pouring rain and the mud. The cloaca. 

Willard looks up from his cage, his face now painted over with mud, (so they can't see you... they're everywhere), and he sees Kurtz, who also has facepaint, camouflage, mirror mirror burning dark. Kurtz then places Chef's severed head into Willard's lap and Willard begins to struggle and scream, and then begins to weep. Kurtz is breaking him. An historical example of when we as a nation did this kind of thing to our own citizens would be Project MK Ultra. This is part of what they call "military intelligence." Men with clear minds whose souls are mad using domestic civilians as lab rats for the purposes of figuring out how to program people that they may more effectively serve the corporation. 

Time keeps happening as is its wont. The next morning Willard is brought back to Kurtz' chambers in the temple and they give him water and rice. These are classic shock doctrine torture zombification programming tactics that people use to make other people into mirrors of their own dark desires. Kurtz is reading a poem... "We are the hollow men..." and nameless Hopper does some pretty classic ranting and raving. This is where he explains the "dialectic logic" of the film and of war. "You either love someone or you hate them." We love our own but viciously hate those whom we think are the bad guys. We think of our own as civilized and The Other as savage, though all are capable of the same good and evil at any time. Do you remember George W Bush after 911 and the rhetoric of his declaration of "The War on Terror" that is in itself a Terror of The Man. "Either you are with us or you are with The Terrorists." The Man loves Terror because it allows him to draw strong lines in a web around the world.  

Kurtz will express this all as oracle and conduit in his final speech. These are the hollow men, lost in the great white nothing of the madness and heat of the human Victory Engine. Who stared into the abyss until it ate them inside. 

  

Hopper realizes the end is near now and flees. We watch a slow camera pan shot of a giant stone head, an idol in the jungle that resembles Kurtz. Willard stays with Kurtz for days. He speaks now as if no longer being held captive. "Not under guard, I was free, but he knew I wasn't going anywhere." He knew more about what I was going to do than I did." How much of this is Stockholm Syndrome writ in the programming language of severed heads. Kurtz' method seems clear to me. 

Kurtz is a darkly insightful man and has seen into the heart of war. He has  "seen horrors, horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that, but you have no right to judge me. 

"It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror! Horror has a face, and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. 

"I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us. He was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember I … I … I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. 

"And then I realized, like I was shot! Like I was shot with a diamond … a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God, the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men, trained cadres — these men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love — but they had the strength, the strength to do that. 

"If I had ten divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgment. Without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us. 

"I worry that my son might not understand what I've tried to be. And if I were to be killed, Willard, I would want someone to go to my home and tell my son everything – everything I did, everything you saw – because there's nothing that I detest more than the stench of lies. And if you understand me, Willard, you will do this for me." 

This speech reflects all the themes of the movie and of this sermon, brothers and sisters. Of the murderous funhouse of human war. The Man loves the murderous funhouse of human war. 

And after this speech, this great and terrifying fire sermon of the assassin poet-mystic, it is time for the ritual proper to begin. 

There is music and dancing outside down beneath the temple as the sacrificial livestock is brought out among the people in the rain. Campfires, torches, mud. Water and fire are both creative and destructive elements. Lance is wearing the facepaint of the Kurtz cult now, goin with the flow, playing with some children whose innocence he still reflects somehow in the midst of all this bloodmud. This place that seems like a savage hell to the white western mind. 

Cut back to the boat. The corporation is trying to get in touch with the boat but there is no answer. Willard: "Everybody wanted me to do it, him most of all." War is an elaborate suicide ritual. It is a slaughter of souls. "I felt like he was up there, waiting for me to take the pain away. 

Not unrelated to this is the fact that a kid at the Army base by my house, Fort Drum, killed himself while on duty recently. Nor unrelated is the story of my own life and the house I live in now. This was my Uncle Steve's house and I helped him die when he chose to. I was holding his hand when his heart stopped. There was great horror, terror, in this experience, but there was also real love, and writing of it makes me weep and shake, but brothers and sisters if there is one thing that I can tell you now of the truth revealed to me in the experience, the real revelation or apocalypse of it, it is that the horror is not my friend or my enemy, it did not give me clarity but only pain and confusion, but The Love taught me, or reminded me, of great truths beyond thought, because every human soul is reflected in every other, and it is Love that is Truth and can give us hope of saving ourselves from ourselves if we choose it, but that True Love can be more terrifying than anything because it requires seeing through all the confusion, all the napalm and the lies, all the facepaint and white nothingness. And the message of this movie for me is that we must love or we will be engulfed by soullessness and suicide and incinerate ourselves in the hell on earth that we have wrought. Or maybe I'm crazy too. It's a mad world. 

Willard arises out of the dark waters of the river in facepaint. "Even the jungle wanted him dead. And that's who he really took his orders from anyway." He makes his way up to the temple, stalking through shadows with a machete as Lance washes the sacrificial beast with blood. What does it mean to be washed unto whiteness in blood I wonder. Kurtz is talking into a microphone, broadcasting, when Willard arrives. "We train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write 'fuck' on their airplanes because it's obscene!" The music accelerates as down under the temple they slaughter the beast. Willard hacks Kurtz to death with his machete in Kurtz' chambers above. As above so below. The rivalry between a man and himself is the rivalry between two men is the rivalry between all men. Choose love. Choose mercy. Choose forgiveness. 

Kurtz' last words are: "The horror. The horror." 

Choose love. 

After Kurtz' death there is a great quiet. "The rest indeed is silence" as Cormac Mccarthy said in Suttree. The question of to be or not to be echoes through the ages. We ask ourselves in mirrors again and again. After killing Kurtz Willard looks into his notebooks. Scrawled over some of the writing, in bigger letters: "Drop the bomb, exterminate them all!" Is this a message from Kurtz to Willard to call in an airstrike and drop fire on his cult? Echoes and reflections of the death-mystic madness of the reverend Jim Jones.  

Choose love. 

Having killed Kurtz Willard has the option of replacing him. He comes out of Kurtz' quarters and the cult kneels down before him. He eyes them suspiciously from behind his facepaint. 

He throws down his weapon and they part for him and drop their own weapons as he has done. He finds Lance among them and he takes him by the hand and they leave together on the boat. Lance is insane now but for me still retains some glimmer of innocence. As if he is mad in his mind but his soul is clear. Voices seek them through the radio. Willard does not respond. He has washed his facepaint away. They head back down the river, going home. 

Echoes of Kurtz whispering horror in the darkness and the rain as the movie ends and the credits roll. 

The End. 

Choose love. 

Brothers and Sisters. 

LOVE! 

  

Bank the Farm: Let it Snow!

Originally posted at Mother Earth News

Bank The Farm: Let it Snow!

2/13/2013 3:01:51 PM

By Nicole Caldwell

Tags: green living, energy efficiency, insulation, home improvement

Northern New York has finally been enjoying a “real winter” of snowfalls up to three feet at a clip. It's made for great shoveling adventures: driveways, decks, igloo and snowman construction. But actually packing that snow against your house (called “banking”) can help to insulate it all winter long (or, at least until it thaws!).

Unless you live in a real wintry tundra where there's no thaw until March, banking your home will probably have to be done after every heavy snowfall. But even if you pick just one wall of your house, the benefits are great — especially if your home is prone to winter drafts. Before home insulation was a widespread practice, many farmers lined their foundations with hay or straw bales to accomplished the same thing as snow-banking.

Understanding the key principles of home insulation is a must for anyone trying to do a better job of keeping the heat inside. Insulation works by slowing down heat movement through building materials. Heat will always move to a colder source. In the winter, insulation keeps heat in. In summer, insulation keeps heat out. The result in both climates is energy saved by keeping the air conditioner or heat source from operating as often.

Insulation is measured by its R-value, which allows you to calculate how much heat will move through a certain wall area depending on the temperature difference between the indoor and the outdoor air. The R-value of insulation is a measure of thermal resistance, expressed as the thickness of the material divided by the thermal conductivity. The higher the number, the better the insulation's effectiveness.

To bank your house, you'll want to have enough snow to make at least two-foot mounds along the outside walls. For every inch of snow, you gain an R-value of 1 or more. Most older homes are still outfitted with R-11 insulation on their walls; newer homes often have wall insulation with R-13 or higher. Banking your house will provide you with several additional R-value degrees on the walls — saving you significant dollars on energy costs or insulation-replacement costs).

Grab a snow shovel (or several—many hands make light work), and mound up snow two feet or higher along the sides of the building. Some people find it's easier to pack snow against their house by using a sheet of plywood (4x6 or 4x8) held vertically two feet away from the outside wall of the house and a pole that is strong enough to support the wooden sheet. Start at the corner of the house and pack snow between the plywood and house, moving the plywood and pole along as you fill in the gap.

This is especially effective when you can bury the foundation—stone being a conductor of heat—in snow. It also seals whatever tiny cracks allow cold to enter.

Decking or stairs may prevent banking at certain locations of your house; but wherever you can, bank. You are guaranteed to feel the difference. 

Inspiration Station: Solar Electric Tractor

Electric cars have two major downsides. One is battery weight; the other is range.

Neither, of course, applies to an electric tractor.

Weight is an advantage for a tractor because the tractor gets extra traction. In fact, most diesel and gasoline tractors have weight added. Range isn't a problem for a tractor because it rarely travels very far away from the charging station. 

Above is a video of Steve Heckeroth's Solar Electric Tractor model 12 as featured on Permies.com. We even get a quick tour of the solar part!

School Seedling Program Partnership Enters Second Year

Better Farm is entering its second year of a partnership with the Department of Environmental Conservation's School Seedling Program, which seeks to encourage young people to learn about the natural world and the value of trees in it.

We will invite local youngsters this spring to join us for a morning of planting 50 white spruce seedlings on our property, our mission being to provide visitors to Better Farm with the knowledge of how beneficial trees are to the environment.

Most of us recognize the beauty of trees and their many other values. Trees provide food and shelter for wildlife and prevent loss of soil (erosion). They help protect our streams and lakes by stabilizing soil and using nutrients that would otherwise wash into waterways. Trees help moderate temperature and muffle noise. They even help improve air quality by absorbing some airborne compounds that could be harmful to us, and by giving off oxygen.

When students plant tree seedlings, they can see for themselves the structure of trees, learn what they need and how they grow. Teachers can use the planting process to discuss the benefits trees provide, while including many subjects that their classes are studying. As seedlings mature, the young trees can be a continuing, personalized way of relating what they've learned in books to visible, living examples.

Better Farm's

interns

will provide ongoing care to the young trees throughout their development.

Stay tuned for our planting date! In the meantime, learn more about this program by

clicking here.

Guide to Urban Farming in New York

While the bulk of our focus is admittedly on backyard gardeners and amateur farmers in rural settings, much of the training we provide at Better Farm is for people who live in settings classically considered less-than-ideal for DIY-ing your survival. Rainwater catchment systems appropriate for the 'burbs, vertical gardens, and green city living are just some of the topics we've broached in the past—so you can imagine our delight when we discovered the brandy-new "

Urban Guide to Farming in New York State

" recently released by the Cornell Small Farms Program.

The

105-page resource

guide

is designed to inform urban farmers

on a myriad of topics, including tips for advocating for urban agriculture, engaging communities, dealing with contaminated soils, intensive growing techniques, urban composting, site security, urban livestock, direct marking options, accepting food stamps, grant and financial opportunities, and many more!  Also included is an appendix listing services and resources available from several urban farming organizations throughout New York State.

Whether you’re looking to grow food on your rooftop, keep chickens in your backyard, learn more about hydroponics or start an urban CSA, the "Guide to URBAN Farming in NYS" will provide or direct you to the information you need to know.

Download the entire

Guide to Urban Farming in NYS here

(PDF).

The Guide is available as a free download [PDF]

or you may view individual fact sheets 

online (good for dial-up or band-width restricted users). Check it out at  

http://nebeginningfarmers.org/publications

. For more small farm news and events, visit 

www.smallfarms.cornell.edu

.  For beginning farmer assistance, visit 

www.nebeginningfarmers.org

.

EFT Tapping Therapy

from

EFT Alive

What is EFT?

EFT stands for

Emotional Freedom Techniques

is a form of

counseling intervention

that draws on various theories of

alternative medicine

including

acupuncture

,

neuro-linguistic programming

,

energy medicine

, and

Thought Field Therapy

. During an EFT session, the client will focus on a specific issue while tapping on "

end points of the body's energy meridians

".

How EFT Tapping Therapy Works

EFT is based on one fundamental premise:

"The cause of all negative emotions and beliefs is a disturbance in our body's energy system."

D

isturbances in the Body's Energy System

The energy system referred to above is the same energy system that is used in acupuncture. Acupuncture talks about there being 14 energy pathways in our bodies called

energy meridians

. All of our negative emotions, like anxiety, hurt, anger, shame and so on, are due to a disturbance in one or more of these energy meridians. These energy disturbances are linked to memories of painful events. It is not the memory itself that is painful. Rather, when we think of the memory, the associated energy disturbance gets activated, which then causes the negative, painful emotions.

EFT Works by Clearing the Energy Disturbances

EFT works by intentionally activating an energy disturbance by thinking about a painful memory or just feeling your feelings. While the energy disturbance is activated, you tap with your fingertips on a set of 10 easily learned acupuncture points in order to clear out the energy disturbance in the affected meridians. As the disturbance gets cleared through the tapping, you will experience your negative emotions actually drain away. When the energy disturbance has been completely cleared, your negative emotions will be gone. You can then think about the memory with no painful emotional reaction! Problems in your life that resulted from the original experience will clear up as well.

It's Important to Stay Focused on the Problem While Tapping

It is essential that the energy disturbance remains activated the whole time you are tapping in order to completely clear it. Therefore, you have to keep your attention focused on the negative feelings while tapping until they are gone. Getting distracted or thinking about two things at once can interfere with EFT working.

The EFT Tapping Procedure

Now that we have a basic understanding of how EFT works, we can learn how to do the actual tapping procedure.

The Ten EFT Tapping Points

This diagram shows you the 10 points that we will use to clear all energy disturbances with EFT. The ten points address all 14 meridians due to the fact that some of the points are located at the intersection of two meridians. Since we are tapping on all meridians when we do EFT, we don't have to worry about which meridians have the disturbance in them. We are tapping on all of the meridians anyway.

See the tapping points diagram. The names of the points starting at the top of the head and going down the body are:

• top of head • beginning of eyebrow • side of eye • under eye

• under nose • chin • collar bone • under arm • inside wrist

• karate chop

How to Tap on the Points

1. Top of head:

2. Use all your fingers to "pat" the top of your head so that you don't have to worry about the exact location of the point.

1. All the facial points:

2. Use two fingers on each point for the same reason.

1. Collar bone point:

2. The collar bone points are located just below the "knobs" at the end of each collar bone. Use a flat fist just below your neck, where a man would knot his tie, to get one or both of the collar bone points.

1. Under arm point:

2. This point in located on the side of your body a few inches below your armpit. On a man it is level with the nipple. On a woman it is located in the middle of her bra band. Use all four fingers running up and down on the side of your body to tap on this point.

1. Inside Wrist point:

2. Notice the crease between your wrist and your hand on the inside of your wrist. The wrist point is located three finger widths below the crease. Use your whole hand to pat this point.

1. Karate chop point:

2. The last point on the pinky side of your hand is called the "karate chop" point because it is the place on your hand you would hit if you did a karate chop. You can tap this point any way that you like.

Note: For the points that are located on both sides of your body, it does not matter which side you use. It's also okay to switch sides while tapping or use both sides simultaneously. It will work any way that you do it. EFT is very forgiving that way.

The tapping on each point should be rapid little "thunks." I say little thunks because you should tap hard enough to feel some percussion during each tap but not hard enough that you will begin to feel tender after a lot of tapping. You only need to tap each point around 4 to 6 times, though more is not a problem. You won't need to count taps because you will be saying a phrase at each point (see below). Just tap rapidly while saying the phrase, and that will be enough taps.

The EFT Tapping Procedure — The "EFT Basic Recipe"

1. Select the problem that you would like to address with EFT

2. Most of our current emotional problems are due to painful experiences we had growing up. Therefore, the most effective way to really heal current problems in your life is to apply EFT to the painful memories that are the source of those problems. In addition, it is also possible to apply EFT to relieve in-the-moment difficult emotions (e.g., anxiety, anger, sadness), food and substance cravings, physical pain in the body and many other problems.

1. The EFT "Reminder Phrase"

2. Come up with a short phrase used to refer to the memory or problem, the more specific the better. We call this the "reminder" phrase because we will use it during the tapping process to stay focused on the memory or current problem. The way to create a reminder phrase for a memory is to give the memory a title, like the title of a movie. (For more information on creating effective reminder phrases, see the last sections, Picking Good Reminder Tapping Phrases and Using EFT to Heal Painful Memories, at the bottom of this page.)

4. Examples:

6. a. My best friend moved away and I was alone (title of memory).

7. b. I'm afraid of flying.

8. c. I have a buring pain in my left shoulder.

9. d. I'm craving ice cream.

10. e. I'm furious at Jan for going behind my back.

1. Rate the Pain or Intensity Level

2. Assess on a 0 to 10 scale how painful the memory is or how intense the emotion or pain is, where 0 is no intensity at all and 10 is the maximum intensity you can imagine. It is not important that this number be totally accurate. It will only be used to generally track our progress, so don't worry about being exact.

1. Perform the Set-up Affirmation

2. You do the set-up affirmation by saying a self-acceptance affirmation three times while tapping on the karate chop point. The self-acceptance affirmation has the following form:

4. "Even though ______________, I deeply and profoundly accept myself."

6. The blank is filled in with the reminder phrase that you came up with in step 2.

8. For example: "Even though I'm craving ice cream, I deeply and profoundly accept myself."

1. The EFT Tapping Sequence

2. Perform two passes through all ten points:

3. Say the reminder phrase while quickly tapping on each point. You will say the reminder phrase once per point. This is just the reminder phrase without the "even though" and "I deeply and profoundly accept myself."

5. It is important to stay focused on the memory or feelings while tapping on all of the points. When you have done all ten points, you have completed one pass through the points. Repeat this for a second pass.

7. The combination of the Set-up Affirmation and two passes through all of the points is considered the EFT Basic Recipe.

1. Reassess the Pain/Intensity Level

2. Reassess the pain level of the memory on a scale of 0 to 10. If the tapping is working, your pain level should come down around 1 - 3 points per basic recipe. It may come down even more.

1. Perform Another EFT Basic Recipe Until Done

2. Repeat steps 4 through 6 to apply another EFT basic recipe to the memory or painful emotions. However, if your pain level came down at all, then we change the wording of the set-up affirmation and reminder phrase a little bit to acknowledge the progress that has been made.

4. The set-up affirmation becomes:

6. "Even though I still have some _____________, I deeply and completely accept myself."

8. The reminder phrase becomes:

10. "Remaining _______________"

You keep applying the EFT Basic Recipe to your painful memory or emotions until the pain level, including all of the associated emotions, goes down to zero. At this point, that memory will be completely healed or your in the moment emotions relieved.

Using this minimal version of EFT, you will tend have a 40 - 50% success rate. There is more to learn about EFT in order to get much better success rates (mine is over 97% at this time). If the tapping process doesn't work for you after several tries, please read my article,

What to Do When EFT Doesn't Seem To Work

,

which can help you get better results.

Where can you go from here?

If you would like tips on how to use EFT, sign up for my Tapping Tips For Your Success Newsletter below. These are short and sweet newsletters with practical, easy-to-digest ways to use EFT to enhance your life.

DIY Underground Greenhouse

Walipini construction information provided by Benson Agriculture and Food Institute at Brigham Young University, 2002. Download the full instructions here.

The Walipini (underground or pit greenhouse) in this bulletin is designed specifically for the area of La Paz, Bolivia. However, the principles explained in the bulletin make it possible to build the Walipini in a wide variety of other geographic and climatic conditions. The word ‟Walipini” comes from the Aymara Indian language of this area of the world and means ‟place of warmth”. The Walipini utilizes nature’s resources to provide a warm, stable, well-lit environment for year-round vegetable production. Locating the growing area 6’- 8’ underground and capturing and storing daytime solar radiation are the most important principles in building a successful Walipini.

I. How the Walipini Works

The Walipini, in simplest terms, is a rectangular hole in the ground 6 ‛ to 8’ deep covered by plastic sheeting. The longest area of the rectangle faces the winter sun -- to the north in the Southern Hemisphere and to the south in the Northern Hemisphere. A thick wall of rammed earth at the back of the building and a much lower wall at the front provide the needed angle for the plastic sheet roof. This roof seals the hole, provides an insulating airspace between the two layers of plastic (a sheet on the top and another on the bottom of the roof/poles) and allows the suns rays to penetrate creating a warm, stable environment for plant growth.

The Earth’s Natural Heat: Why dig in?

The earth’s center is a molten core of magma which heats the entire sphere. At approximately 4’ from the surface this heating process becomes apparent as the temperature on most of the planet at 4’ deep stays between 50 and 60º F. When the temperature above ground is cold, say 10º F with a cold wind, the soil temperature at 4’ deep in the earth will be at least fifty degrees in most places. By digging the Walipini into the ground, the tremendous flywheel of stable temperature called the ‟thermal constant” is tapped. Thus, the additional heat needed from the sun’s rays as they pass through the plastic and provide interior heat is much less in the Walipini than in the above ground greenhouse. Example: An underground temperature of 50º requires heating the Walipini’s interior only 30º to reach an ambient temperature of 80º. An above ground temperature of 10º requires heating a greenhouse 70º for an ambient temperature of 80º.

More Free Energy: The Sun

Energy and light from the sun enter the Walipini through the plastic covered roof and are reflected and absorbed throughout the underground structure. By using translucent material, plastic instead of glass, plant growth is improved as certain rays of the light spectrum that inhibit plant growth are filtered out. The sun’s rays provide both heat and light needed by plants. Heat is not only immediately provided as the light enters and heats the air, but heat is also stored as the mass of the entire building absorbs heat from the sun’s rays.

Heat Storage: Mass and the Flywheel Effect

As mass, (earth, stone, water -- dense matter) comes in contact with sunlight, it absorbs and stores heat. The more dense the mass (water is more dense than rock and rock is more dense than soil) the more energy can be stored in a given area. Mass of a darker color such as flat brown, green or black absorbs heat best. Light colors, such as white, reflect heat best. As the earthen walls of the Walipini absorb this heat they charge with heat much like a battery charges with electricity. This storing of the heat in the mass of the soil is often referred to as the ‟flywheel effect”, with the flywheel being charged in the day (storing heat/energy) and spinning down or discharging at night as heat/energy flows from the earthen walls out of the greenhouse up through the plastic glazing to the colder night air. The amount of heat stored in the mass is a critical factor in keeping crops from being frost bitten or frozen during the coldest nights of the winter. These critical nights are usually encountered around the time of the winter equinox (June 21 in the Southern Hemisphere and December 21 in the Northern Hemisphere). The Walipini is usually designed to absorb more of the sun’s rays/heat during the three coldest months of the winter than during any other time of the year. The key here is to have enough energy stored in the mass so that on the coldest nights, the plants are not damaged. In general, nighttime temperatures should not be allowed to drop below 45º. This minimum temperature is also dependent upon the types of crops being grown, as some are hardier than others and may require colder nighttime temperatures. An easy way to increase the mass is to put a few 55 gallon drums filled with water and painted flat black along the back wall of the Walipini. Some growing space will be lost, but the heated water will greatly enhance mass heat/energy storage and will provide preheated water for plant irrigation. Preheated water reduces plant shock, thus, assisting plant growth.

Cutting Down Heat Loss: Insulation

A double layer of plastic sheeting (glazing) should be used on the roof. This provides a form of insulation and slows down the escaping of heat during the nighttime. This sealed dead-air space between the plastic sheeting should be between 3/4” to 4” thick. Poles used to span the roof that are 3.5” to 4” in diameter provide the indicated thickness of dead air space when plastic sheeting is affixed to the outside and the inside of the roof’s structure. The inside sheeting also keeps the inside humidity from penetrating and rotting the wooden poles spanning the roof.

All above-ground walls should be bermed with as much soil as possible. This provides some extra mass, but provides much more insulation against above-ground cold temperature, winds and moisture penetration.

When nighttime temperatures are continuously well below freezing, insulated shutters made from foam insulation board or canvas sheets filled with straw or grass can be placed over the glazing. This requires more work and storage, and in many environments is unnecessary, such as is the case in the area of La Paz, Bolivia.

II. Location of the Walipini: 

The Danger of Water Penetration

Water penetration of the walls and/or floor of the Walipini is destructive. If water seeps through the walls, they will collapse. If water comes up through the floor, it will adversely affect plant growth and promote plant disease. Dig the Walipini in an area where its bottom is at least 5’ above the water table. When all of the above ground walls are bermed, a layer of water-proof clay, such as bentonite, or plastic sheeting, should be buried approximately 6” to 1’ under the berm surface. It should be slanted so that the water drains away from the Walipini to the drainage ditches. In some cases where the soil has a low permeability rate, the clay or plastic may not be necessary. Be sure to dig a shallow drainage ditch around the perimeter of the Walipini which leads run off water well away from the structure.

Digging into the Hillside

Walipinis can be dug into a hillside providing the soil is stable and not under downward pressure. Since the Walipini has no footing or foundation, a wall in unstable soil or under pressure will eventually collapse.

Size and Cost Considerations

The primary considerations in designing the Walipini are cost and year-round food production for the family. The minimum recommended size is 8’ x 12’. However, generally speaking, the larger the Walipini, the more cost effective per square foot the construction will be. A minimum of 94 sq. ft. of growing space per person is recommended for a year-round vegetable supply. Thus, for a family of seven people a 12’ x 66’ area = 792 sq. ft. Less 16% for access = 665 sq. ft. of growing space divided by 7 people = 94 sq. ft. per person in the La Paz model. Keeping the size of the Walipini manageable and its cost as low as possible are important design considerations.

The Walipini is designed to keep costs as low as possible using the following: 1) Free labor -- the builder’s and that of friend’s and neighbor’s; 2) Only unlined, inclined, interior earthen walls; 3) Traditional concrete footings and foundations are excluded because they are unnecessary, when the perimeter of the building is protected from water penetration; 4) Plastic ultraviolet (UV) protective sheeting on the top and underside of the roof instead of glass or corrugated fiberglass panels; 5) The most economical, durable materials found thus far for spanning the roof are 4” eucalyptus poles or PVC pipe; 6) The top soil from the dig is used at the bottom for the planting soil; 7) The rest of the soil from the dig is used for the rammed earth walls, berms and adobes; 8) Stones and any gravel from the dig are used in the planting area drainage system and sump-wells; and 9) Used materials are utilized where possible and practical such as used, cleaned 55 gallon oil drums, used doors, etc. It is assumed that only some of the materials will have a monetary cost and that labor will have none. The cost of materials will vary from location to location and will also vary according to what is available free of cost. Materials for the current La Paz models (20’ x 74’) are $250 to $300.

Water Collection Heating/Irrigation System

This system collects runoff from the roof at the front of the roof in a galvanized metal or PVC rain gutter. From the gutter water flows through a pipe into the 55-gallon barrel/drum system used for irrigation and mass heat storage.

Each of the barrels is connected by overflow piping at the top with the overflow pipe at the last barrel exiting at ground level under the back berm to the perimeter drainage ditch.

In case of a down-pour or continuous excessive rain, it would be wise to have a T pipe/valve at the bottom of the gutter so that the runoff can be diverted to an outside perimeter ditch instead of moving down to the already full barrel system. How much run off the system can handle in a given period of time will depend upon the size of the gutter and the diameter of the pipe used. The larger the diameter, the more volume of water can be handled. As previously indicated, this system provides not only preheated irrigation water, but a dense solar mass (water) in which additional heat is stored for the cold winter nights.

IV. Building the Walipini

Tool List

Hammers, shovels, picks, saws, wheelbarrows, crowbar, forms for rammed earth compaction (two 2 ‟ x 12” x 6’ planks held together by 2” x 4” or metal rods or many other type of forms can be made), 100’ and 25’ measuring tapes ( If 100’ tape is not available, measure out and mark 100’ of string or rope), levels, clear hose for corner leveling, cutting knives, hose, nozzle, hand compactors, adobe forms, drill, bits, stakes, nylon string, etc.

Materials List for a 20' x 74' Walipini

Water

20 -- 4” x 16’ poles or PVC pipes to span the roof

3 -- 3’ x 6’ hinged doors (one is for the 3’ x 5’ vent cover)

3 -- 3’ x 5’ door frames ( 2 if rear wall vent is not used)

2 -- 3’ x 6’ door lintels

1 -- 6’ x 3’ vent lintel or roof frame for vent, if used

1700 sq.’ of 200 micron agrofilm (polyethylene UV plastic)

640’ of 1” wood stripping to secure plastic sheeting to the poles

Shovels, tractor or ox drawn fresno plow to dig hole

30 cubic. yds. of gravel for the floor drainage system

1 cubic yds of gravel or stone to fill the 2 drain sumps

233 cubic yds of soil will come from the excavation

22 cubic yds of top soil for planting (8” x 66’ x 12’)

94 cubic yds. for the rammed earth walls

This will leave a remainder of 109 cubic yds. for wall berms.

2700 sq’ of plastic sheeting to bury for drainage, if needed

74 ‛ of drain gutter for the lower end of roof

100’ of overthrow/drain pipe from gutter through barrel system to perimeter drainage ditch

Nails

116 8” x 4” x 12” adobes for the perimeter to seal plastic roof edge

Interest piqued?

Click here

for the full instruction with illustrations:

Better Farm to Host Students from Abroad This Summer

As part of its 2013 programming,

Better Farm is partnering with Cultural Homestay International to host two college students from abroad on the Better Farm campus May through September while they work at Bonnie Castle in Alexandria Bay.

Cultural Homestay International is a non-profit educational organization founded in 1980 to promote international understanding and goodwill through people-to-people exchanges. The belief of CHI's founders was this: The best way to build bridges of friendship and trust among people is to experience directly each others' customs, languages and values. To live, study or work together leads to a transformational experience of acceptance and genuine affection.

To that end, Better Farm will house two college students from May through Labor Day while they work in Alexandria Bay at Bonnie Castle. The students, who are studying hospitality overseas, will be part of the more than 250,000 students and young adults from over 100 countries who have participated in CHI's program in the last 30 years.

CHI Work and Travel program offers overseas university students the opportunity to intimately experience work, life and culture in the U.S. during their summer holiday period. Overseas participants are sponsored by CHI, enabling them to legally work in the U.S. up to four months.

It offers U.S. employers the ability to acquire extra staff to cover busy seasonal positions in peak travel areas of the United States. Typical positions include ride operators, lifeguards, food & beverage, housekeeping, cashiers and many others.

Students work during seasons spring, summer and winter as part of their 4-month J1 visa.  This program is administered by U.S. Department of State; CHI is a designated program sponsor.

Start working with CHI today. Becoming a member of the CHI community is simple and easy. Follow the links on the left menu for more information on how to become a host business, partner or participant of the Work and Travel Cultural Exchange program.

CHI is designated by the

United States Department of State

as a J-1 visa sponsor, and is a proud member of the

Council on Standards for International Educational Travel

(CSIET),

World Youth Student Educational Travel Confederation

(WYSE Travel Confederation),

WYSE Work Abroad

,

International Au Pair Association

(IAPA) and The

Alliance for International Educational & Cultural Exchange

.