Mayday, Mayday...

Mayday is an internationally recognized radio word to signal distress. It's used mostly by aircraft and boats, and most of us are happily only familiar with it through TV and fiction.

Owing to the difficulty of distinguishing the letter "S" by telephone, the international distress signal "S.O.S." will give place to the words "May-day", the phonetic equivalent of "M'aidez", the French for "Help me." —"New Air Distress Signal," The Times [London], 2 Feb. 1923

I much prefer thinking of May day as the Beltane.

The May pole was a focal point of the old English village rituals. Many people would rise at the first light of dawn to go outdoors and gather flowers and branches to decorate their homes. Women traditionally would braid flowers into their hair. Men and women alike would decorate their bodies. Beltane marks the return of vitality, of passion.

This is also Labor day in most of the world.

The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions chose May 1, 1886 as the date when the eight-hour day would become standard. The unions organized a general strike in support and on the first, hundreds of thousands of workers protested and held rallies across the country.... Over 90 countries, including North Korea, celebrate International Workers’ Day on May 1. Poland also celebrates its Constitution Day on May 3, so the two dates combined result in a long weekend called Majowka.

So what is the May Day distress call for today?
"May-day", the phonetic equivalent of "M'aidez", the French for "Help me."

Well there's outbreak of WWIII between the collective west versus Russia and China.
UKRAINE WAR UPDATE with PEPE ESCOBAR and RICHARD MEDHURST

This didn't start with Ukraine. The global war has been building for years. This week we heard DoD Secretary Raytheon say the objective is to weaken Russia. He didn't add and enrich Raytheon but he should have.

https://renegadeinc.com/the-war-hawks-come-home-to-roost/
Transcript here.

Alex explains how the NYT and western media are simply lying about this war. If US citizens understood that the weapons we send are being blown up or sold on the black market and all those billions are lost (except the money that finds its way back into the pockets of our grifting politicians). Remember Hunter, Kerry's relatives, and other US political scion have been at the trough for a while in Ukraine.

Abby Martin discusses US media and puts Musk buying twitter into perspective. (18 min)

And now we can rest assured with the media since we have the ministry of truth set. Jimmy and Max look at this new minister and her partisan perspective. Will this really happen? I can't believe the rethugs will go along with this...but we'll see.

Joe Biden has announced the formation of something called the “Disinformation Governance Board,” which will operate within the Homeland Security Department as a sort of Orwellian “Ministry of Truth,” pointing out what the administration considers to be “disinformation” in the public discourse. Because who better to identify propaganda than the US government?

Latest on the Ukraine Russian war with Phil Giraldi, former CIA Case Officer and Army Intelligence Officer

This is an economic war too.
There's the collapse of fiat currencies like the USD and the rise of commodity base money.

A new monetary order is looking more and more likely as a commodities crisis feeds into inflation, according to Credit Suisse, which sees the U.S. dollar as losing the battle.
...
The current monetary regime began to "crumble" when the G7 countries seized Russia's foreign exchange reserves following its invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
...
"If you believe that the West can craft sanctions that maximize pain for Russia while minimizing financial stability risks and price stability risks in the West, you could also believe in unicorns," he said.

Pozsar sees the People's Bank of China (PBOC) playing a pivotal role here — it can sell Treasury bonds and buy Russian commodities or pursue quantitative easing (QE) to buy Russian commodities. According to the report, either of those will cause higher inflation in the West.

"This crisis is not like anything we have seen since President Nixon took the U.S. dollar off gold in 1971 – the end of the era of commodity-based money," said former Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department official and now Credit Suisse investment strategist Zoltan Pozsar. "When this crisis (and war) is over, the U.S. dollar should be much weaker and, on the flip side, the renminbi much stronger, backed by a basket of commodities."

After the war in Ukraine, money will not be the same, said Pozsar describing the history of the Bretton Woods monetary order. The investment strategist is betting on commodities, including gold.

"[The United States] is heading into a recession," says Lynette Zang, Chief Market Analyst at ITM Trading. Zang tells our Daniela Cambone, "there's no doubt in my mind that we've begun the hyperinflationary depression, that's the next step." The dollar just hit, "a 20-year high against key trading partners," however, U.S. purchasing power is continuing to diminish, she articulates. "Gold is the only financial instrument that runs no counter-party risk, and is the only asset that is truly invisible," she states. Due to the dollar losing the status of the world's reserve currency, "the [U.S.] will suffer the most.”

Pepe Escobar interviews the Eurasia Economic Union’s Sergey Glazyev, a man in the eye of our current geopolitical and geo-economic hurricane.

This was a good conversation too.
It may be worse than McCarthyism, which was defeated by its own excesses. Today’s information war against individuals and media who do not adhere to the Western-government-enforced narrative on Ukraine is part of a long history in the U.S. of officially crushing dissent. With the advances of technology for both surveillance and censorship, we might be in the most chilling atmosphere yet for thought control. Will it too be brought down by its own excesses?
As Consortium News has argued, the U.S. and NATO needed and helped facilitate the invasion of Ukraine to launch its economic war against Russia but also its information war against domestic dissent. Our guests have been targets of censorship and smears in this coordinated assault on freedom of expression: George Galloway, Chris Hedges, Scott Ritter and Jill Stein, co-hosted by Elizabeth Vos and Joe Lauria

And as my final Mayday alert...There's the existential threat of biosphere decline.

Since the formation of the Earth, there have been five mass extinction events, the most recent was 66 million years ago during the Cretaceous period, famously leading to the extinction of the dinosaurs. However, in recent decades, scientists have found reason to think we may be in the midst of a sixth mass extinction.

https://earth.org/data_visualization/the-6th-mass-extinction/
With the IUCN predicting that 99.9% of critically endangered species and 67% of endangered species may be lost within the next 100 years (IUCN, 2019), there are strong indicators for the presence of a 6th mass extinction event.

As a kid we had to clean bugs off the car windshield on the regular. Now it is rare to have to do so. That's just one example of declining insect populations.
Since the 1970s, the population of insects living on the ground declined by 98 percent, while the canopy-living species declined by 80 percent.
https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/37359/20220427/alarming-decline-in...
this works its way up the food chain/web...
Some insect-eating animals will decline as their food disappears, which has already happened to some birds, or even vanish. Water and soil quality could also be in jeopardy.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/insect-crisis-book-threats-populatio...

This is the canary in the mine.

https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back

Beltane

Beltane is an ancient Celtic fire festival and one of the eight sabbats in the Wheel of the Year. Traditionally celebrations begin on April 30th and continue though the night into May 1st. Beltane falls halfway between the Spring Equinox (Ostara) and Summer Solstice (Litha) and marks the end of spring and beginning of summer. It was a time to celebrate the arrival of the longer, lighter days ahead.

The name Beltane means 'fire of Bel', Belinos (or Belenus) being the name of the Celtic Sun God. Beltane marks the emergence of the young Sun God into manhood. Stirred by the energies at work in nature, he desires the Goddess. In folklore the masculine Sun would cover the feminine Earth and life would be renewed again. This story symbolized the fertility of the land and marked the beginning of the new growing season.

So it is obviously an important day, mid spring, half way between the Equinox and Solstice, representing the threshold from Spring to Summer.

Symbols Of Beltane
Bonfires
A widely practiced tradition of Beltane is the bonfire. All other fires are put out as people celebrate around one large bonfire. At the end of the night, everyone takes a bit of the flame to relight their own fires.

Fire
Fire is a very common symbol because during Beltane, we celebrate the abundant warmth of the sun. Light candles to symbolize your reverence for the life-giving power of the sun.

Flowers
A beautiful reminder that life is abundant and that Mother Earth will always provide what we need to survive and thrive in our lives.

Garland
Adorn yourself with a hair wreath or garland made from flowers and plants that bring you joy. This symbolizes your connection with the earth and your own inner power, sexuality and abundance.

The Maypole
The maypole represents the God in his most masculine form. A large erect pole is inserted into the earth. This is symbolic of the relationship between the Earth Mother (the Goddess) and The Green Man Of The Forest (The God) intertwining their relationship to bring life to the earth.

This pagan holiday reminds me of the parody song...Old Time Religion
(Check the link for several funny verses)
Let us worship like the Druids
Drinking strange fermented fluids
Running naked through the woods
It's good enough for me.

I became familiar with the holiday through the Arthurian legend. In one version of the myth, on the Beltane, Arthur unbeknownst to him, mates with his sister. Their son is Mordred, who later destroys Arthur's reign and Camelot. Arthur represents the end of paganism and start of Christianity in Brittan.

The May Queen embodies purity, strength and the potential for growth. She is the personification of the energy of the earth. The Green Man represents the life that grows on earth. They cannot exist without each other.

When the Horned God (the Winter aspect of the Green Man) sees the May Queen in her Maiden form, he realises that to be with the woman he loves he will need to undergo a huge change. As they process together around the hill, he prepares to surrender his life to her. She then gives him life energy and brings him back in his new form, as the Green Man, so they can be together.

Among the various symbols of Beltane frivolity, the Maypole is probably the most well known, even to non-Pagans.

On the surface, the tall Maypole is simply a phallic symbol to reflect the fertility of the season. But it originates with the ancient Irish story of the Bile Pole. The Bile Pole was a sacred tree of life that grew up through the Earth to join the Heavens above and the Otherworld beneath.

https://www.circlesanctuary.org/index.php/celebrating-the-seasons/beltan...

Forms include pole, tree, bush, cross; communal or household; permanent or annual. * In Germany, Fir tree was cut on May Eve by young unmarried men, branches removed, decorated, put up in village square, & guarded all night until dance occurred on May Day. * In England, permanent Maypoles were erected on village greens * In some villages, there also were smaller Maypoles in the yards of households. * Maypole ribbondances, with two circles interweaving; around decorated bush/tree, clockwise circle dances.

World Labor Day

As most know, I'm a homesteader and there's plenty of labor involved in managing a small holding. So I want to celebrate the labor of homesteading today.

Old hippie Homesteader....

Dwight Streamfellow was a college junior when he bought a piece of cheap river-front land to start a homestead. He was a city boy (partly in Washington DC where his father was a senator) so he planned to learn-by-doing on how raw land in the rugged mountains of Northern California’s Six Rivers National Forest.

The property cost him only $11,000 back in 1976, but soon he had built his own home (much of it with hand tools) and was growing his own food, pumping water from the river to irrigate his garden & orchard, and powering his homestead with photovoltaic and firewood (for heat and his hot tub/bathtub).

In a state that is drying up, Streamfellow considers his large chunk of riverfront his true wealth: he’s on the South Fork of the Trinity River, the longest un-dammed river left in California. Forty-five years ago he tried harvesting the water by carrying 5 gallon buckets up the 150 feet from the river to his home. He then tried a pedal-powered pump, but the calories burned weren’t replaced by the calories created in the garden. He finally perfected a system - an electric pump that is powered by a photovoltaic array - which provides all the water he, and his tenants, need for large gardens, orchards and the five homes on this property.

Starting before the Internet, Streamfellow felt he was without an instruction manual for most of his nearly 5 decades working the land, doing everything from building roads (chipping away at granite), creating garden terraces along his steep property and building up hugelkultur beds to garden on bedrock.

Now 68 years old, Streamfellow isn’t wealthy, but he has no debt (he believes in the pay-as-you-go model) and he considers himself wealthy from what his land provides; he has four tenants (who often work the property in lieu of rent), a garden that supplies sufficient annual fruit, vegetables and potatoes, and chickens, pigs and deer for meat. "It was always my goal to be as self-sufficient as possible,” explains Streamfellow. Forty-five years after settling here he says he always has a year’s worth of food and three year’s worth of firewood: "to me that's what represents wealth– that food and the capability to heat my home".

My journey followed a similar path. We too were lucky to buy relatively inexpensive land. It has been a great joy to us both over almost four decades.

In order to homestead, you have to have a home. Building your own house is empowering too.
Learn to build and create passive housing...

On the valley floor beneath the dramatic sandstone cliffs of Bluff, Utah, emerging builders have spent over two decades erecting experimental homes with new materials like FlexCrete blocks: a Navajo Nation product created from the coal ash leftovers from power plants.

They’ve built dozens of homes testing earthen plasters, recycled plastics, shipping containers and pallets. Located at the edge of the Navajo Nation, they have also merged their investigations with traditional craft to build with owners on tribal land.

“Sweet Caroline” (2006) is round like a traditional hogan with an eastern entrance, but instead of earthen plasters, they used Flex-crete, a fly-ash (coal-burning power plant by-product) material produced in the Navajo Nation. “Benally” (2007) was constructed with “rejected road base material that matched perfectly the sand/clay/aggregate ratio necessary to make non-stabilized (no added concrete) compressed earth blocks”.

Making the central hearth the focal point (as in a traditional Navajo home) the passive solar compressed earth block walls were built to point directly from the hearth toward the four sacred mountains (fundamental to the land). The roof shading acts as a traditional “shade house”.

“Rosie Joe” (2004) incorporated “a rammed-earth Trombe wall for temperature regulation; a south-facing wall glazed with salvaged and gang-mulled windows; weathered wood; the ceiling and roof structure made entirely from recycled pallets; exterior walls of straw sandwiched by clear acrylic; interior walls clad with discarded road signs.”

Resembling a ‘terra dome‘ structure, “Little Water” (2012) continued to perfect the passive cooling and heating techniques, with 5 natural systems for “Bluff’s scorching summers and frigid winters”. These include an insulated thermal berm wall, a straw bale wall, a solar oculus for natural ventilation and cooling, a ventilated second roof, and a rocket stove.

We toured the Bluff campus with lead architects/builders Atsushi and Hiroki Yamamoto, spent a night in the “Shipshape” container home, and visited with “sweat equity” owner/builders who talked about the desire to live under the protection of the four mountains surrounding Navajo land, but wanting to fuse modern with traditional in a home.

http://www.designbuildbluff.org/
DesignBuildBLUFF is a graduate architecture program at the University of Utah focused on immersing students in hands-on cross-cultural experiences. We work in partnership with the Rural and Native communities of San Juan County in the Utah Four Corners.

We've had several conversions about gardening recently here on C99. Here's an impressive project building no dig beds on a commercial scale with four people and a little loader.

Richard Perkins is a globally recognised leader in the field of Regenerative Agriculture and is the owner of Europe’s foremost example, Ridgedale Farm, Sweden. He is the author of the widely acclaimed manual Regenerative Agriculture, regarded as one of the most comprehensive books in the literature.

His approach to no-dig market gardening and pastured poultry, as well as his integration of Holistic Management, Keyline Design and Farm-Scale Permaculture in profitable small-scale farming has influenced a whole new generation of farmers across the globe. Garnering more than 10 million views on his blog, and teaching thousands globally through his live training at the farm and online, Richard continues to inspire farmers all over the globe with his pragmatic no-nonsense approach to profitable system design.

So let me drop one more clip from Richard showing various techniques for planting out those beds.

We are home growers and have a much easier job growing our own food rather than market gardening.

The ones that amaze me are the integrated farms like Joel Salatin in Virginia and Will Harris in South Georgia. Talk about labor, these folks work plenty. There is also a place for more limited farming operations. Greg Judy is a master grazier using both cattle and sheep to harness carbon and produce happy, healthy meat.

On Easter we discussed eggs and rabbits. Joel's son has that very operation underway.

Daniel Salatin, of Polyface farms shows how one neighborhood could grow 3,000 pounds of animal protein (chicken and rabbit) out of a three car garage. Plus, 2 dozen eggs a day and enough compost for a half acre garden.

What labors are you tackling these days? Hopefully less than the labors of Hercules.