Happy Christmas!

Enjoy my playlist of Christmas videos via YouTube. There are 23 in the list, about an hour and a half of a holiday spirit uplift. Or, just pick and chose a video using the arrows to skim through the list.

... and a Happy New Year to all!

Hopefully I'll be more diligent and forthcoming with posts in 2009.

Optimistic Urgency

African Proverb:

If you want to go quickly,
go alone.
If you want to go far,
go together.

How do we go far, quickly, when facing a global change in climate conditions?

This is the question raised by Al Gore in his new presentation just posted at the TED website and embedded here below.

The We Campaign, a grassroots organization is addressing this very issue. I present the following letter they provide:

Dear Friend,

Global climate warming is an urgent, but solvable problem. That’s why I’ve joined the We Campaign, a powerful nonpartisan movement of concerned citizens that was founded by Nobel Prize Laureate and former Vice President Al Gore. We're already a million strong -- and growing each day.

Will you join, too? Visit this site to learn more and add your voice: http://www.wecansolveit.org/.


The We Campaign is working to ensure that elected leaders make the climate crisis a priority. Visit: http://www.wecansolveit.org/. Here, you can learn about solutions to global climate warming, take action steps and even find events happening in your community. Although it’s not too late, global climate warming is very serious and there is no time to lose. So please don’t wait any longer to get involved – sign up today: http://www.wecansolveit.org/.

Together, we can solve the climate crisis.

But we must find a sense of urgency.

I wonder why is this not a top issue in the presidential campaign here in the U.S. (the world's largest polluter)?

Science has made it's statement with the UN IPCC report. The Alliance for Climate Protection is working with the We Campaign. Why haven't U.S. presidential candidates agreed to participate in a larger Science Debate 2008? This debate needs a national forum/audience/movement and leadership.

Is there a pattern emerging from this post and the last three posts? I hope so.

A More Perfect Union

Back on March 18, 2008, "We The People" were presented with a speech by U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate Barack Obama at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It may not win your allegiance, but it spoke in a profound and presidential manner of the fundamental issues facing our country and the example we should be "in Order to form a more perfect Union" under The Constitution.

I wonder why it took the mass media and American politics to inspire a discussion of a common sense of purpose for the U.S. Presidential campaign agenda. Senator Obama exemplified it best when he said,

I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one.

I wonder why ...