Whole Life of Marie Wilcox 1933-2021

The writer of the dictionary saved a Calif. Native language

For many years, Marie Wilcox was the guardian of the Wukchumni language, one of several Indigenous languages that were once common in Central California but have either disappeared or nearly disappeared. She was the only person for a time who could speak it fluently.

She started writing down words in Wukchumni as she remembered them in the late 1990s, scrawling on the backs of envelopes and slips of paper. Then she started typing them into an old boxy computer. Soon she was getting up early to devote her day to gathering words and working into the night.

After 20 years of labor, of hunting and pecking on her keyboard, Wilcox, who died at 87 on Sept. 25, produced a dictionary, the first known complete compendium of Wukchumni.

“The dictionary was her whole life,” Jennifer Malone, one of her daughters, said in a phone interview. “The language was dying, and she brought it back.”

In 2014, while Wilcox was still revising and editing the dictionary, filmmaker Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee made “Marie’s Dictionary,” a short documentary video about her achievement for The New York Times Opinion section, in its Op-Docs series.

When her large extended family held a party and watched the documentary together, they understood for the first time what she had been doing all those years, said Malone, who, with a handful of others, helped her mother edit and format the dictionary. Until then, she said, they had not fully appreciated her work or valued the connection between their lost language and some of their cultural traditions.

Within short order, many family members started learning Wukchumni. And other Native American tribes were inspired by her story to revitalize their own disappearing languages.

Wilcox died at a hospital in Visalia. She had been attending a birthday party for her 4-year-old great-great-grandson when she was stricken by a ruptured aorta as she was getting in a car to leave, Malone said.

There are an estimated 7,000 languages in the world today, a majority of which originated with Indigenous people. Many of these are only spoken, not written, and they have no dictionaries. Because of forced assimilation, relocation, and other factors involving Native people, most of these languages are on the verge of dying out.

Marie Desma Wilcox was born Nov. 24, 1933, on a ranch in Visalia, in the San Joaquin Valley. Her father, Alex Wilcox, was a farmhand. Her mother, Beatrice Arancis, had seven children, of which Marie was the youngest. She often referred to herself as “the end of the trail.”

Source: The New York Times

Burning Policy and Native American Use of Fire

 After working on the issue of Native American fire use and it’s relation to prescribed burning policy for nearly two decades, there are three key elements that we all really need to understand:

1. Cultural Erasure. After Euro/American society engaged in the genocide of Indigenous Peoples, it (we) paved over the carefully tended landscapes where most of these people lived. The lands that were once burned to help support the needs of hundreds of cultures are now mostly under Walmart parking lots and corporate headquarter buildings. They are not the few wildlands we have left.

2. Nature Suppression. After exploiting ancient homelands to establish our own cities, we applied colonial techniques of natural resource exploitation to every square inch of land we could reach:
- turning/burning every accessible acre into vast, non-native landscapes filled with invasive weeds and grasses to support large populations of non-native livestock, causing further damage through overgrazing.

- the eradication of oak trees via state/federal programs, and the rich understories of sage scrub that one provided habitat in oak woodlands.

- clearcutting conifer forests, followed by grazing to arrest natural recovery (replaced now by herbicides), the naked land was filled with a checkerboard of countless artificial tree farms.

- eliminating all predators (wolves, mountain lions, bears, etc.) via federal programs in national parks and elsewhere, similar to programs to eliminate Native Americans.

3. A Different World. The current landscape and climate are far removed from where Indigenous Peoples developed their rich cultures. We now have:

- highly flammable, non-native weeds now filled every area disturbed by colonial activity.

- millions of people on the landscape igniting fires at a high-frequency unknown in the natural world.

- a climate racing towards increased dryness throughout California, threatening the loss of most native plant communities in the south, and dramatically reducing areas covered by forests in the north.

Attempting to apply past land management techniques on land that no longer exists is not logical.

So what do we have today? We have the same colonial system and its apologists pursuing yet another way to exploit what is left of Nature by doing what it does best – appropriating Indigenous culture to pursue economic gain and hiding the truth through strawman arguments.

Despite the fact that we have always gotten it wrong regarding land use policy and Nature, with the exception of National Parks, our enlarged egos have convinced us this time we’ve got it right – “our landscapes are unhealthy because of past fire suppression (the strawman), but we can fix it all by doing what we say Indigenous Peoples did (cultural appropriation) – burn it!”

This approach is now justifying one of the greatest threats to the natural environments we have ever faced in the West – the destruction of native habitat under the guise of fire protection. Millions of $ are now being allocated to burn, clear, log, and herbicide millions of acres of wild throughout the west, especially in California. And millions more are being promoted in a couple bills before Congress.

Personally, the scheduled destruction is overwhelming my soul. 

The land is burning because we have destroyed the climate.

The forests are burning because what natural forests once existed, few remain – they are now mostly dense, highly flammable tree farms created by corporations and facilitated by the US Forest Service.

People are dying and homes are burning because colonial financial interests have convinced nearly everyone that we need to log the forest and clear the chaparral far from nearly any community that is at actual risk – just like they justified the genocide of Indigenous Peoples, the damming of rivers, and the slaughter of predators.

Past fire suppression, dead trees, and leaves on the forest floor have nothing to do with it. But the colonial establishment, personified by the Trump administration and corporate Democrats, have sure done an excellent job convincing most everyone that it does.

To learn more about the use of fire by Native Americans, please see our webpage here:
https://californiachaparral. org/fire/native-americans/

 

To read why prescribed burns are the surest way to destroy the wild Nature we all love:
https://californiachaparral. org/threats/prescribed-fire/

 

To learn the truth about fires in forests:
https://californiachaparral. org/forest-fires/

 

For solutions Governor Newsom, the California State Legislature, the US Congress, and prescribed burning advocates refuse to properly consider and actually fund:
https://californiachaparral. org/fire/protecting-your-home/

 

Rick Halsey, Director

 California Chaparral Institute

PO Box 545
Escondido, CA 92033

www.californiachaparral.org

760-419-5760

Early Closure of Operating Nuclear Power Stations

 

The owners of the Duane Arnold single-unit nuclear power plant in Iowa have decided to permanently close the reactor early after the massive derecho that swept through much of the Midwest recently did serious wind damage to the plant.

The hurricane-force wind also knocked down the grid, causing the Fukushima-style reactor to experience an automatic SCRAM. On-site emergency diesel generators were turned on to maintain essential safety systems to prevent a catastrophic meltdown.

Duane Arnold could not compete with more economical and reliable wind energy —Iowa’s single largest source of electricity at more than 10,000 megawatts — despite being licensed until 2034. Its early closure demonstrates that it cannot compete with severe weather, either.

The closure of the plant would be a piece of great news to many who consider the potential malfunction to be significant biological and economic risks.

Iowa is a windy state and vast space to create non-nuclear and none-fossil fuel sources for electric generation. My concern specifically is directed for several old nuclear power stations in Illinois.

Many of the operating nuclear power generators in Illinois are very close to population centers. I am hoping that they will be decommissioned before their operating-license is expired.

The economic-social impacts for the closure of these nuclear power stations are significant if the alternative replacement for the power generation is not included in the early-decommissioning option.

The cost of the upgrading of many of these plants would be high and may not be economically competitive with the closure option. Modern nuclear power designs would have lower risks of substantial accidents and are smaller in size.

Germany has chosen the option of closing all of its nuclear power stations. Germany has vowed to start decommissioning every nuclear power facility by the end of 2022. Operators began shutting down the Philippsburg nuclear power plant in southern Germany as the country has begun decommissioning all 17 of its atomic energy facilities by the end of 2022.

Should the US old Nuclear Power Stations choose an early closure?

Discussion and Response to COVID-19 and prospect for survival

I hesitated to respond to questions identified in the following article "COVID-19 and prospect for survival":  But many people are asking similar questions. There are at least partial answers available. And that may (or may not) help to put things in perspective.

1. An individual who recovers from Covid-19 does have antibodies to it. That is being used now to detect and identify individuals who had the virus but had no symptoms. And some studies are now suggesting that as many as half of all infected individuals had no symptoms at all. That, and of those showing symptoms, 80% of them had mild disease. So the majority of people will recover and will have antibodies. Those antibodies will protect those individuals from reinfection. What isn't known is for how long. Immunity wears off. That's why you need booster shots for things like shingles and tetanus. So we don't know if the immunity to Covid-19 will be short lived or long term - we'll see. Maybe those individuals will need the immunizations. Maybe not.

In the meantime, because people who have recovered have antibodies, there are studies to see if their "convalescent serum" which has those antibodies in it could be transfused into sick patients to help them fight the virus. Trials are underway.

2. We do have drugs that treat (and in some cases can cure) some viruses - a lot of that research has come from studies in Hepatitis and AIDS research. And dozens of countries are currently engaged in testing many many different drugs to treat COVID-19. Recently Gilead was in the news with their antiviral drug - but there are many out there being developed. That can be done rather quickly. And that will buy us all some time. In the meantime, a vaccine will take longer - but again many countries are focused on developing a vaccine and that is also being "fast tracked"... but a vaccine is probably a year or so out...

3. An individual who has recovered from COVID-19 is not going to infect anyone else - there are currently no reports of a carrier state. However, remember that as many as half of all infected people have no symptoms - but until they develop antibodies, they are presumably capable of spreading the disease... So you could appear to be perfectly healthy and you could still be spreading COVID-19 to others.... Or you could get it from somebody who doesn't appear to be ill... You can't skip social distancing just because you feel okay or because you think someone else seems to be okay....

4. Yes COVID-19 has mutated - but not significantly... and so far at a very slow pace...

However people tend to hear and believe what they want to hear and what is convenient:

1. The original "social distancing" recommendation was to stay 6 feet apart for no more than 10 minutes. Have you seen the time limit mentioned by anyone since then? I haven't. And more recent recommendations are for 13 feet. With actual studies showing "spray" up to 27 feet. I haven't seen any revisions to the original official recommendation - I guess it isn't convenient...

2. Also, if you listened closely during the health reports, cloth face coverings are to reduce the chances that you will infect someone else - the cloth coverings do not protect you! The surgical masks and N95 masks are recommended only for health care workers and first responders - those masks do protect the wearer. But don't run out and buy masks. You also need disposable gloves. And a gown. And you need to know how to maintain a sterile field - which, unless you have medical training, you're going to mess up... So your best bet is to continue the best social distancing that you can achieve and self quarantine.... But, for my sake, wear the cloth mask if you do go out...

3. Flattening the curve. This means spreading out the cases so that the available medical and health services don't get overwhelmed all at once. However this also means that the duration of the pandemic is going to be spread out - the pandemic will last longer. And no one knows for sure if flattening the curve means fewer deaths - they may just be spread out over a longer time as well... but we hope that it means fewer deaths... we'll see...

4. Finally, no one knows how long this is going to last. Pandemics tend to go in waves. And many health officials are expecting a second wave around August. Overall the latest estimates that I've heard are that this will probably taper out over a year to a year and a half. That may mean that schools and some businesses will have to remain closed next year. I hope not - but, again, we'll see...

So be patient. Be vigilant. Continue the social distancing and self quarantine measures. Wash your hands and face. Wipe down surfaces. Etc. We'll get through this. And, if we pay attention, we'll all learn something.

Bruce J. Weimer, M.D.

COVID-19 and prospect for survival

Michael H. Momeni, PhD

I think that we don't have a road map for the future. The public reaction and the outcome for the next two years are uncertain.

In order to acquire immunity to the COVID-19, our immunological system would need the challenge, i.e. COVID-19 virus antigen. We were not born with the antibody to repel this virus. The response (or antibody‐mediated response) involves B cells that recognize antigens or pathogens that are circulating in the lymph or blood. We don't have specific inoculation for this virus. Does this mean that we all have to get exposed and survive to be immune? Does this mean that weaker people would die until a vaccine has been developed and the public would have been inoculated?

A proposed approach to nullify the body response to the COVID-19 would be an administration of anti-COVID-19 drugs. At present, such a drug does not exist or could ever be manufactured. The projected time for the development of the vaccine is reported to be a couple of years.

The native Americans paid a high price when they were exposed to old world diseases. But the stronger native Americans survived. The present generation of native Americans' biological responses to old diseases is very similar to other people. Would this also happen to all of us, all of us who live on this planet?

 I have asked myself the following questions:

1. Once an individual gets the COVID-19 and survives, would the created immunity make the individual resistant to a new infection with another mutated COVID-19? How long would the immunity continue before requiring a booster reinoculation?

2. Do we have drugs to cure any of the infections caused by any of the viral diseases? We have the vaccination to prevent infection for some of the viral diseases.  We still get cold and flu and suffer through it.  

3. Could a person infected with the COVID-19 and have survived the disease still capable to infect other people?

4. Has the COVID-19 mutated since it was discovered? Would a vaccine for an existing COVID-19 genome still function for the mutated virus?

It is not a national problem only, it is an international problem. The international effort would be needed to survive this new disease. This is not an optimistic outlook. It depresses me. I hope and wish I am wrong.

Comments

WE NEED GLOBAL UNITY IN OUR ACTION FOR THE EARTH.

The Oxfam organization revealed in 2016 that the 1% richest people on Earth possess more wealth than the other 99% taken together. Yet, this 1% possesses not solely the wealth but they also control Humankind path and right now these guys are taking the human species towards the precipice. These guys like Trump, Bolsonaro but also the Oil Industries which controls incredible amounts of money (enough to brainwash a lot of people through Public Relation action) and this while their business is to sell the poison that is killing our common Mother the Earth. In 1968, the Stanford Research Institute warned the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the U.S. government, that if nothing was done our global CO2 emissions would generate a cataclysmic upheaval in the 21st century. Not only nothing was done and these guys kept hidden the information, but on the top of that, both the API and the U.S. government spent billions of dollars in a worldwide campaign denying a manmade Global Warming was underway. And in 1997, the U.S. government based on this lie its refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. After the very shy attempt of Obama which was much under IPCC requirements, the Oil Masters decided it was too much and they hired Trump who, thanks to Cambridge Analytica was elected President of the United States and resumed the Oil Industry program denying a manmade Global Warming is underway. But Trump is not alone even though his position as President of the leading country renders his betrayal of the human race very dangerous. The 1% of Humankind which controls the situation, or some mere 75 million people, roughly does not suffer from Global Warming, at least not yet, and they see their personal material interest and comfort first. This is why the grassroots movement that supports Nature must rapidly grow and become an overwhelming tsunami that will neutralize these guys. Indeed, we will succeed ONLY if we break the fragmentation, potentially conflictual; our frontiers represent and behave as ONE, UNIQUE, PEOPLE, no matter our nationality, religion or other differences. The Global Warming and the 6th Mass Extinction of LIFE on Earth, both plagues we have generated and continue feeding, can be controlled ONLY if humans put their divisions aside and work side by side as one body and under the guidance of the IPCC scientists who are the ones among us who know the best.

I think that symbolically people who want to have the “Earth Nationality” should be able to get it. Their passport would be delivered by the United Nations and would work everywhere. Indeed, we must displace our nationalism from a little portion of the Earth to the whole Earth because it is our divisions that are destroying the only and common HOME we have to survive in the universe. Our planet, the Earth is worth this change and our survival as a species is also worth this change. A new era is waiting for us don’t be afraid of the change. “All things must pass,” said George Harrison a forgotten prophet. So, let’s leave this obsolete system that destroyed the Earth. Yes, if the system has turned toxic to LIFE then let’s not fanatically cling to it, LIFE is more important than the system by which we pretend about living. A huge revolution or better said, a huge re-evolution is awaiting for us and it is truly thrilling guys! What I propose here may seem crazy to some people enclosed into their thought-identity like in a straitjacket, and addicted to their habits like to a powerful drug, but what is truly crazy is to remain arms folded why we are systematically destroying our world and endangering our own survival.

Posted on Facebook by

Yima (Ali) Pahlavi

September 14, 2019

SANDAG’s traffic solutions:Congested 15/215 Highway

We have a long way to go before we ever could solve the problem of regional transportation. Yes, I need to use my car to travel within my town and some of the towns in Temecula vicinity.  But, to travel to the airports either in Los Angels, San Diego or for leisure, I would best be served using a rapid electric commuter train.  We have had fully congested highway 15/215 now, but with a massive population expansion within the region, we would need more access to faster commuter transportation. We are really hemmed in with our highway 15/2015 with no other options at this time.

San Diego is attempting to develop a solution.  I have attached a copy of an article published on May 12, 2019, describing a positive approach to solve the highway congestion problem.

Please read it and let me know what you think.

Michael H. Momeni

SANDAG’s traffic solutions novel but contested

Congestion pricing, train corridors would shelve highway expansions

By Joshua Emerson Smith

New details of a controversial plan to prioritize rail over widening freeways are starting to emerge — from laying hundreds of miles of high-speed commuter rail to charging drivers to use many of the most congested freeways

Officials with the San Diego Association of Governments told the Union-Tribune last week that the agency plans to run trains along highway corridors that travel as fast as 100 miles an hour. The most current plan calls for no further expansion of the trolley system, which goes only about 35 miles an hour on average.

At the same time, SANDAG plans to roll out so-called congestion pricing on those stretches of freeway, which would charge drivers a fluctuating toll based on traffic conditions.

Experts say this ambitious, multibillion-dollar the proposal could be the first of its kind in the country.

“We know about toll roads, and we know about commuter rail, but to combine them all at once would potentially be a new model,” said Ethan Elkind, a transportation expert who directs the climate program at the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at UC Berkeley School of Law.

Voters would likely need to approve multiple tax increases to fund the transit expansion. The first test will come in 2020 when the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System expects to put a sales-tax increase on the ballot. SANDAG would then likely follow up with its own tax measure.

North and East County officials desperate for traffic relief in the near term have balked at the costly new vision, which would take decades and likely require plowing through the property, as well as building underground and elevated sections of a rail line.

However, what has most rankled politicians from Oceanside to Santee to El Cajon is that SANDAG’s leadership has simultaneously called for indefinitely shelving more than a dozen long-planned freeway expansions. Those projects — outlined in the 2004 voter-approved half-cent sales tax known as Transnet — include many sought-after projects, such as adding express lanes to state routes 78 and 52, and widening state routes 67 and 56.

County Supervisors Kris-tin Gaspar and Jim Des-mond, who both sit on SANDAG’s board of 21 elected officials from around the region, have led the charge to preserve the highway projects.

“The vision that’s been presented to the board is a mass transit vision only,” Gaspar said. “People are trying to make this a roads-versus-transit debate. I’m looking for a balanced transportation plan for our future.”

Desmond echoed that sentiment and said that the proposed transit projects will not materialize fast enough to accommodate new housing and population growth.

“This technology is not going to happen within the next 10 years, or 15 or 20,” he said. “In the meantime, we still have housing needs.”

On Thursday, Desmond and other elected officials joined local talk radio host Carl DeMaio to announce a campaign to shame “road raiding politicians” on the SANDAG board. DeMaio, the former San Diego City Council member who spearheaded the failed attempt last year to overturn the state’s newly enacted gas tax, also threatened a recall campaign aimed at lawmakers who support nixing the highway projects.

San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and Chula Vista Mayor Mary Salas have been the most high-profile supporters of SANDAG’s transportation vision. However, neither politician has said much publicly on the topic since those opposed to shelving the road projects kicked off their campaign two weeks ago.

Faulconer and Salas declined multiple interview requests by the Union-Tribune for this story.

Faulconer’s office released this statement: “Mayor Faulconer is committed to working with his fellow SANDAG board members on the regional transportation plan as the San Diego region is at its best when we stand together. His top priority is creating a complete transportation system that delivers options for residents and businesses in every part of the county.”

The chief architect of the new vision, SANDAG Executive Director Hasan Ikhrata, has said his approach is the only way to get people to and from their jobs in a timely fashion.

He has argued that adding new lanes will only end in more gridlock as new drivers pile onto widened thoroughfares. Traffic engineers often refer to this predicament as induced demand.

“I’m a planner and engineer,” Ikhrata said. “I’ve spent 30 years of my life in this business. Adding one lane in each direction does not work. Period. It will just make things worse.”

Most transportation experts agree that expanding freeways does little to solve traffic congestion, although many point out that adding rail is no panacea, either.

“Rail is not really suited to reduce traffic congestion,” said Elkind of UC Berkeley. “It’s designed as an alternative to traffic congestion and is a way to accommodate new growth in a region without contributing to air pollution.”

However, implementing congestion pricing to, in part, help pay for transit operations can improve road conditions, according to experts.

“The only proven way to reduce traffic is congestion pricing, but that has been politically unpopular” in the United States, said Martin Wachs, a professor emeritus at UCLA’s department of urban planning. “It’s been done 30 or 40 places around the world, and it actually increases the capacity of the highway.”

The tolling scheme has encouraged drivers, especially those with more flexible schedules, to stay off target roads during peak times in places such as Singapore, Stockholm and London. New York City is developing such a plan for lower Manhattan, and Los Angeles is considering the approach.

While rail will not solve San Diego’s traffic woes, it can help the region meet state-mandated reductions in greenhouse gases from cars and trucks, Wachs said. “Transit enables higher density development and reduces vehicle miles traveled in relation to the population, whereas highways are associated with more dispersed growth.”

Ikhrata said he will ask the SANDAG board to amend the Transnet ordinance this fall to include new rail projects so the agency can start funding the environmental review process. Actual construction could not start until voters approve a tax increase or the agency secures another source of funding.

SANDAG officals have said the agency doesn’t have enough money to complete all the road projects it already has planned.

The agency is strapped for cash because of declining sales tax revenues and skyrocketing construction costs. More than $30 billion in upgrades to major highway and transit projects are still slated for completion through 2048, and officials estimate the region will be roughly $10 billion short.

sduniontribune.com

Sunday April 5, 2019

https://enewspaper.sandiegouniontribune.com/desktop/sdut/default.aspx?pubid=ee84df93-f3c1-463c-a82f-1ab095a198ca