Meanwhile, I want to thank you for joining the almost 300 web sites that link to my various sites. Thanks to people like you, without a penny spent on advertising our 200+ pages are being viewed over 666,000 times a year.

There has never been a more important time to stand up against the development of more dirty coal. New coal plants that are built will operate for approximately 50-60 years, adding carbon dioxide, mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and other small particulates to the air we breathe. In addition, coal plants use massive amounts of water – an average 1,500 MW plant uses 10 million gallons per day – that the arid West simply cannot afford to lose. New technologies have eliminated the need for new coal plants, and it is possible to meet the energy needs of the West through energy efficiency measures, renewable energy and, if absolutely necessary, new coal technologies like IGCC with carbon capture.

Stand up and show the utilities that you do not want or need a new coal fired power plant.

Here are five things you can do:

1. Submit comments to the BIA and tell the agency what you think about proposed Desert Rock coal-fired power plant (Must arrive by August 20th).
2. Encourage your friends, neighbors and family to write a letter too.
3. Attend a public hearing and bring two people with you. The more people that attend the meeting the stronger the message will be to the BIA that New Mexicans don¢t want Sithe’s dirty coal plant.
4. Write a letter to the editor of your local paper, a blog, or a list-serve expressing your concern about the proposed Desert Rock coal plant.
5. Demand national legislation that would move the entire country away from coal.

Check out http://www.sanjuancitizens.org/air/desertrock.shtml to get the schedule for the public hearings and find out more information about Desert Rock. Protect the air we breathe and the earth we depend on by making your voice heard!

The increase in CEO’s salaries over the past 20 years compared to the average worker, and especially compared to the minimum wage worker, should be criminal…should be regulated.

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice.
Meister Eckhart

Gratitude goes beyond the “mine and thine” and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.
Henri Nouwen

The phrase “…all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy” especially resonates with me right now.

“…By Vicki Kemper
Source: Los Angeles Times | Date: April 2, 2004

WASHINGTON: ” House Republicans on Thursday shut down an inquiry by Democrats into whether the Bush administration acted illegally or inappropriately last year when it withheld from Congress its estimates of the true cost of the Medicare prescription drug bill.

At issue are allegations that then-Medicare Administrator Thomas A. Scully threatened to fire his top actuary if he gave lawmakers his analyses showing the costs would be much higher than administration officials were saying publicly….”