While so many seem to focus on the Environment at the macro level, my view of late has dovetailed with a corollary People in Peril message. At the micro environment level many have started to wonder about personal climate change. Wild weather and even wilder financial markets, political uncertainty and terrorist threats, food shortages and threats to our fresh water supplies make some of us look towards preserving at a slightly more personal locale, heaven forbid the unthinkable happen.

Now some in the main stream media call this paranoia, positing fear mongers focused on Armageddon. For me, Hurricane Katrina was a wakeup call. No conspiracy theory intended here,  just plain old calculating of the facts. In times of great emergency, survival becomes personal. There simply aren’t enough “responders” to go around. Crossing your fingers doesn’t cut it in the 21st Century. You have to be your own hero/heroine.

When you can’t call on the Government, when you can’t call on outside emergency services, can you call on yourself?

Check out the American Red Cross and the American Preppers Network.

It’s not paranoia, it’s personal conservation.

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For as far back as I can remember survival was synonymous with being lost, seemingly trapped in some unimaginably foreboding and chaotic situation. Survival entailed building an emergency shelter, fending off wild animals or weather, finding food and water, administering emergency first-aid, relying on yourself when you could call no one else.  Survival was for super-humans, trapped by chance or accident, built to thrive in the face of risk.

Today, it seems a bit more probable and a good bit more personal for many Americans. Survival isn’t for the other guy. Chaos seems to be creeping ever so closer to home. Threats from wild weather, Wall Street and Washington, DC fill the news. Climate change, corporate welfare, Constitutional assaults, congressional grift and gridlock should serve, if not as a warning, then at the very least as a wakeup call.

Mother Nature or Big Brother, bad weather or bureaucrats.

Power Outages or Political Outrage.

Tornadoes or terrorists attacks.

I cannot think of a better occasion to launch BrianBrawdy.com than on a day when two of the top news stories support my point.

Wild Weather in the Big Apple.

CNN Poll: Majority says government a threat to citizens’ rights

At its core, survival and liberty are one and the same.

According to CNN, House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio said he would vote against any resolution admonishing Wilson’s breach of decorum. ”Rep. Wilson has apologized to the president, and the president accepted his apology. Last Thursday, Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi said that she believed it was time to move on and discuss health care. I couldn’t agree more, and that’s why I plan to vote ‘no’ on this resolution,” Boehner wrote in his statement.

Seems to me that Representative Wilson apologized for his inappropriate outburst. President Obama accepted his apology. Wilson says he ”would never do something like that again.”  The President then moved on when Wilson “apologized quickly and unequivocally, and I’m appreciative of that,” the President said.

One would think that a political body as distrusted and disliked by the American people as the House of Representatives would be a bit careful throwing around terms like “resolution of disapproval.” With its popularity and job performance is as low as it is, maybe they should steer clear. I’m not sure, but I suspect Kayne West is polling higher this morning than any member of the House including Nancy Pelosi.

Perhaps the House Leadership can book a Leno appearance?

You see, here’s the thing about a recent story in Science Magazine where the lead scientist in a report on climbing temperatures and the turmoil they bring to the Arctic region should give us, all of us, a wake up call.

In the Review of the article, Eric Post warns “These rapid changes may be a bellwether of changes to come at lower latitudes and have the potential to affect ecosystem services related to natural resources, food production, climate regulation, and cultural integrity. We highlight areas of ecological research that deserve priority as the Arctic continues to warm.”

Now, most will be fired up about this report lamenting the obvious assault on seals, sea ice, polar bears and additional flora and fauna. They will focus on the adverse affects on sea levels and people living along them. Through all the hoopla, many will overlook the hidden long-term impact on ALL of us. What “happens in Vegas” may very well stay in Vegas, but it isn’t true in the Tundra.

It easy to forget that our planet and its varied ecosystems are intimately interconnected at vast and ubiquitous levels. What happens in the Arctic is a Canary in our planet-wide coal mine.

Sadly, horrifically we are now learning that Jaycee Dugard was not the first victim of Phillip Garrido. For a disturbingly tragic yet fascinating report on the history of Garrido the sexual predator, see the story compiled and written by the talented Mallory Simon of CNN.

As this case further unfolds, it is nearly impossible to follow the trail and its facts without totally disgust.

Stealing people off the street, smuggling them to some seclude spot, sexually assaulting them and then shackling them in a shed?

RETURN 2 VENDOR

Roger Stephens, 61, was arrested Monday and charged with first-degree cruelty to children after allegedly slapping a crying two-year-old girl in a suburban Atlanta Walmart.

Are you kidding me?

CNN is reporting, that the child’s mother told police that her daughter was crying as they walked down one of the aisles. A stranger, later identified as Stephens allegedly told her,  ”If you don’t shut the baby up, I will shut her up for you.”

Making good on his promise, just a few minutes he held the girl and smacked her across her face four or five times.

I don’t even know what to type next. A total stranger repeatedly smacks a two-year-old girl for crying? What?

He has been charged with first-degree cruelty to children; someone please tell me this is a felony.

The Associated Press is reporting that the Pastor’s body was “put into unnatural pose.”

Though there are some “promising leads” there are no suspects in this brutal murder, according to Police.

Obviously, and understandably, pastors and parishioners in the area are terrified. Regardless of the ultimate motive, terrorizing the local population is a part of the killer(s) plan.

Just how low can we go on the new-human-low scale?

Manjushri Carol Daniels.

“What other animal retires?” Michael Roberts asks. “If a lion retires today, tomorrow morning he becomes his brother’s breakfast.”

This is a great read about entrepreneurial brothers Michael and Steven Roberts.

That their story falls, not under the CNN banner of Bold or Brilliant or Brave or Best in America, but Black in America, is fairly sad.

I couldn’t care less about the color of their skin, only their courage, character and commitment to thrive.

Technically, forbidden trees or dwindling trees, either way you look at it, we were evicted and subsequently began to figure on our own feet. From that point forward, our brains and minds reasoned on the run. We think at our best when our feet and hands get dirty.

“What other animal retires?” Michael Roberts is quoted on CNN. “If a lion retires today, tomorrow morning he becomes his brother’s breakfast.”

DNA is designed for deployment and discovery.

Exploration is just another word for Evolution.

Do you find it at all interesting that the first two pages of a Google search for Dwindling Habitats contained references to Rhinos, Polar Bears, Grizzly Bears, Bats, Scrub Jays, Tigers, Lions, Mountain Lions, Frogs, Owls, Grouse and even mice, yet no mentions of humans losing their habitat; not a single reference.

The habitats, jungles, forests, savannahs, mountains, the dynamic circumstances that our distant cousins faced, the natural surroundings that forged who we are, are dwindling fast. No longer do we search for food under the constant threat of becoming food. Instead of hunting for dinner we head to the grocery store, we needn’t chop wood because we have electric heat, why bother walking into a pharmacist’s counter to get your prescription medications for high blood pressure and cholesterol when you can just sit and hit the drive-up window? Finding water is easy, we just turn on the faucet!

The ubiquitous challenge and constant change that crafted us, one step at a time, is replaced with the status quo of comfort zones and its contraptions of convenience. We no longer scamper and scavenge and have long since forgotten how to fend for ourselves, in the wilderness abroad or within our very own minds. Our innate abilities to rally against unimaginable odds, lay dormant, withered and weakened. Without jungles to negotiate, hungry predators to protect against, mountains to climb and rivers to cross, our body and mind is slowly changing, atrophying actually.

We are at an evolutionary junction and it is up to each of us, individually, to choose our path through the fork in the road.

In the challenges that currently face us all, our best bet is to fall back on our inner-ability to struggle, survive and thrive. Our modern day  jungles, and the predators that prowell them, are made of sidewalks, business suits, briefcases and congressional bills. These forests are full of those prowling for prey.

A friend on FaceBook yesterday reminded me of the quote. “It is the North Wind that made the Vikings.” It instantly made me think of Frederick Douglas, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress” and most certainly of John Page’s question to Thomas Jefferson at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. “Do you not think an Angel rides in the Whirlwind and directs this Storm?”

Thankfully, the skills and logic needed to survive and thrive are buried within each of us; they’ve been there since we started The Walk.

First, “Telescopes to show universe soon after Big Bang” highlights the hunt for “The time when the lights went on in the universe. There was no light before that time,” said Daniel Fabricant, associate director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. This is a detailed report from CNN about future telescopes that can look back in time.

The second story, ”Building block of life found on comet” is as interesting as it is straight forward. “The amino acid glycine, a fundamental building block of proteins, has been found in a comet for the first time, bolstering the theory that raw ingredients of life arrived on Earth from outer space” according to the article’s author, Steve Gorman from Reuters.

“The latest findings add credence to the notion that extraterrestrial objects such as meteorites and comets may have seeded ancient Earth, and other planets, with the raw materials of life that formed elsewhere in the cosmos.”

As we look deeper into outer space, farther back in time, what if we discover “life” is a universal concept? What if we discover Extraterrestrial Glycine and the Garden of Eden are somehow connected? What if Deity and dirt are one in the same? What if we discover our universe populated with neighbors and those neighbors are our cousins?  Will knowing someone else exists change who we believe we are?

As we create telescopes to reach deeper into outer space what will we discover about the depths of inner space?