The 70th Summer Since
3 Nuclear Bomb Blasts!
Our local Calaveras County activism on this page, and activity in Livermore (Aug 6-9) on the other page.


Nuclear power and solar power are both high-tech strategies to conduct electricity for whatever purposes people believe are needed. Neither of these strategies to produce electrical power are handicrafts. Solar power with toxic lead batteries depends on hazardous waste during at least the next 700 years, and nuclear power creates radioactive toxic waste for at least the next 700,000 years. At the farm, we used propane-powered generators during the first three decades, with a bit of solar power during that time, and for the past decade it's been solar-powered batteries by night and straight-up solar power by day. This summer, the 70th summer since Trinity, Fat Man & Little Boy, we are struggling through an energy crisis as our solar power system of electricity has trickled into a third of its prior capacity. We expect this crisis to end soon, and to be repeated every generation (25 years) as the solar panels and/or batteries need replacing due to age and wear-n-tear. And since nuclear power is how governments create nuclear weapons-grade plutonium (the most expensive energy ever), we will stick to solar, thank-you-very-much!

It's been 10 years since our solar-electric system went into gear here, and 10 years since Unicorn & Pegasus met on the 60th anniversary of Little Boy & Fat Man (the nuclear explosions that wiped out Hiroshima & Nagasaki). Due to the misfortune of the excessive use of electricity at Earth Abides Catholic Worker Farm prematurely wiping out our electrical power, we decided that we ought to get married, legally, so as to reap the benefits Holy Mother State grants to domestic partners (medical insurance, visiting rights in hospitals, etc.) Meanwhile, another family came to visit us at the Farm, with the hope of joining the community. The Lairds stayed at the Farm House for a week, then are spending time back home in Colorado praying for clarity as to whether or not it's God's will to join the farm community for half a century, or at least 25 years.

They apparently enjoyed the isolated wilderness of Earth Abides CW Farm, and learned how to take care of the chicken chores, collecting and cleaning eggs, etc. The Laird family showed up just after i got back from my annual New Mexico pilgrimmage, where Eric & I shot a quick video at the Los Alamos (nuclear) farmers market for the 70th anniversary of the Trinity Bomb ("gadget") detonation.

And the Chearcus settled in for the Summer, thinking it's a bummer. But we were doubly pleased with the work that our volunteer Cynthia did in shooting these photos for the Farm. Thanx to Cynthia, we have nicer imagery in electrons and gelatin, because of her good work/thoughts.

On Sunday the 25th of July we said, "goodbye, dear Laird family!" See yousoon?

Tune in next season to see what/if the Laird Family decides!


A month earlier, we had gone to the Peace Camp where the Delta/Valley folks come up into these mountains to enjoy the wilderness. Here's the picture above of Mennonite Pastor Joana and Xels at about 9,000 ft near Hwy 108.

NUCLEAR FREE CALAVERAS
August Livermore activity


The inextricable link between nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants was hardly mentioned at the event we hosted locally for the beginning of Summer. The main focus was educating folks on the high dollar cost of the weapons-work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. We organized this teach-in with Marylia Kelley of TriValleyCAREs, at the Murphys library, 'cos we in the mountains and foothills of our County need to know wh'sup with those nuclear problems in Livermore and the Bay Area. This was a good start for the 70th Summer since the Trinity blast of NM.

The local paper interviewed Marylia at the event we organized. It was an important thing for the local paper to let the public know about our message of nuclear dangers, and how we can all make life less dangerous.