THE ADVANTAGES OF TWITTER AND SOLAR...
Hi Jim,
A few quick thoughts in response to two of your items in the Zephyr:
I use Facebook and Twitter as portals to my energy blog http://ratecrimes.blogspot.com/ The blog expresses all the deeper thoughts, but even there I have separated them and connected them in a network of posts to both reflect the advantages of the medium and to attune them to the evolving manner of the audience’s learning and thinking. Depth can still be expressed in the medium that includes Facebook and Twitter. Whether the depth can be discovered through all the distraction is another matter.
I write on energy issues. Esthetics is a critical issue. Thank you for addressing it. One of the advantages of solar energy that I list on my blog is that it is unobtrusive. Wind, not so much.

     Best Wishes,
     Paul Symanski
     EDITOR”S NOTE: See our cover story on proposed solar      developments and their impacts on page......

      DAMN THE TORPEDOS...FULL SOLAR AHEAD!
      Dear C.C. Zephyr:
      re: solar bonanza
      You people need take the blinders off and see the desert for what it is - Solar Nirvana! What’s the beef with paving over a few hundred square miles of empty sand with industrial solar panels? So what if a couple of lizards have to relocate to a new dune? We’re talking endless power from the Big Eyeball in the Sky! And that means our Western cities can expand as far into the forsaken wastelands as they damn well please. That’s Manifest Destiny as it was meant to be.
      I say we slap solar cells on every square inch of public real estate, no matter how many detours the Sierra Club has to navigate. Think of it as the cost of freedom. And while we’re at it, a few nukes wouldn’t hurt anything. Power to the People!
      One day folks will look back and say “the desert was finally put into service for the glory of progress.” God will smile down on his sheep, happy in the knowledge that we stood up for the wise use of technology in defense of The American Dream. Nature can adapt - let the sun shine in!      
     E. Manning
     Nevada

      A FEW EXTRA THOUGHTS FROM MARTIN MURIE
      Dear Jim,
      We live in perilous times. The choices are two: protest or wait it out..One key to this malady that has overtaken the entire U.S. A is that we have this habit of qualifying nearly every statement.. We are afraid. Do we think of ourselves as so timid we shy away, like a balky mule, from Single Payer Health Plan when right-wing idiots call it “Socialist medicine”? The same itch to gain, or keep, a respectable position infects nearly every thing we do, from mowing the lawn to please the neighbors to letters to Editors.       
      Why this rush to the middle? When someone says “So-and-so but he often runs off the rails,” why do we have the itch to cover ourselves with a qualification? Why don’t we just say why we agree with so-and-so on such-and-so and leave it at that?

     “Rails” are steel guidelines laid out for us to follow. I feel like shouting for joy when someone goes off the rails. It’s like breakinmg ranks in the military, and some soldiers are doing just that. We know, as citizens of the American Empire that upright citizens are supposed to stay away from any and all fringe movements that have run off those steel guidelines..       Remember the nursery rhyme where Humpty fell off the wall and all the kings horses and all the king’s men could not put him back together again? We destroy ourselves as citizens when we flock to the middle ground, turn ourselves into fence sstraddlers or, like Humpty, find a wall to sit on. Jim Hightower says, “There’s nothing in the middle of the road except yellow stripes and dead armadilloes.” What do we gain by qualifying nearly everything we say and do? We’re trained poodles. Yes, that’s us.
      “ Pogo: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Pogo is dead wrong. Our enemies are those big, sulky “Maybes” that infest our land. Our enemies are the poodle trainers who have worked for generations to build a citizenry that, finally, stays on the rails, riding with fear on their backs.       When do we raise the windows and shout, “I’m mad as hell and not going to take it any more”? If you do raise the window and poke your head out and shout, you might as well go whole hog, take serious interest in some of the fringe writings and spoken words by those who pride themselves on honesty. No waffling, no double standards. The Zephyr is one of those intrepid defenders of the wild, now on the world wide web.       No more double standards!. Can we stand up to that? No more qualifications? Can’t we shake ourselves up and say what we really think; tell the world what we really want? If that gets us in trouble, there is lots of company out there on the fringes, company a lot more interesting than timid qualifiers.

     Martin Murie

    DEFENDS HANSJORG WYSS
      Editor,
      I would like to point out that Mr. Wyss has not been officially named as one of the indicted in the criminal case you refer to in the August/September issue. Nor do I think that his other interests, including the development of golf courses in Arizona should be held against him. He donates massive sums of money to all kinds of non-profit organizations across the country and while it is troublesome to a few that his removal of “reptilian habitat” along the fairways may kill off some rattlesnakes, I am sure that in the end, he is saving more rattlers than he is destroying.      Sincerely,
     Robert Dorgan
      Scottsdale, AZ
     EDITOR”S NOTE: Well, as long as hansjorg comes out ahead in the ‘saved vs killed’ rattler department, all is well...JS

      LIKES ZOE THE ‘ROO
      Dear Jim,
      I loved your story about Zoe the kangaroo that you “met” in Australia. I have lived in Adelaide for my entire life and have never had the kind of close-up encounter that you were fortunate enough to experience.
     In any case, I just wanted you to know that of all the kangaroo stories I have heard, yours has become my favourite.
      Cheers,
      Briona Corcic Adelaide, SA
      Australia