someone on the susun weed forum asked what we believe…and i had this thought…
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ah, how to describe what i believe?

grew up italian catholic, which is a hard thing to get over. yes indeed.

but, for as long as i could remember, the animals were everthing to me. when people asked me what i wanted to be when i grew up, i said, “a horse” because i thought that we could actually be whatever we wanted to be.

anyway…by the time i was a teenager, i knew that the ol’ heaven, purgatory, hell thing was nothing but a ruse to suck us in and make us *behave* and i was having no part of it. spent the most of my life as an atheist and i’m probably still an atheist in that i don’t believe in any theology…or any one and only powerful oz.

i do believe that we have purpose and meaning in our time here. we are, as all life forms on this planet, intrinsically powerful and important and *responsible* for what is and what will be. we don’t need to live on forever in paradise to be important–to be! we need to realize that, for whatever amount of time we’re here, in whatever form we take or will possibly take in the future, that we need to BE HERE NOW (as Ram Das said) and we need to act like it matters.

as for all the rest—eh—we’ll find out soon enuf.

peace out.

from the NYTimes:

By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
Published: March 18, 2006

WASHINGTON, March 17 — A federal appeals court on Friday overturned a clean-air regulation issued by the Bush administration that would have let many power plants, refineries and factories avoid installing costly new pollution controls to help offset any increased emissions caused by repairs and replacements of equipment.

Ruling in favor of a coalition of states and environmental advocacy groups, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the “plain language” of the law required a stricter approach. The court has primary jurisdiction in challenges to federal regulations.

The ruling by a three-judge panel was the court’s second decision in less than a year in a pair of closely related cases involving the administration’s interpretations of a complex section of the Clean Air Act. Unlike its ruling last summer, when the court largely upheld the E.P.A.’s approach against challenges from industry, state governments and environmental groups, the new ruling was a defeat for the agency and for industry, and a victory for the states and their environmentalist allies.

In the earlier case, a panel including two of the three judges who ruled on Friday decided that the agency had acted reasonably in 2002, when it issued a rule changing how pollution would be measured, effectively loosening the strictures on companies making changes to their equipment and operations.

But on Friday, the court said the agency went too far in 2003 when it issued a separate new rule that opponents said would exempt most equipment changes from environmental reviews — even changes that would result in higher emissions.

With a wry footnote to Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass,” the court said that “only in a Humpty-Dumpty world” could the law be read otherwise.

“We decline such a world view,” said their unanimous decision, written by Judge Judith W. Rogers, an appointee of President Bill Clinton. Judges David Tatel, another Clinton appointee, and Janice Rogers Brown, a recent Bush appointee, joined her.
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for the rest,