Community Currency - 11/10/11

Guest: Ruth Nolan

Have you ever been to the desert or spent time in it? For those who know it well, the desert is filled with stories, alive, ecologically and multiculturally rich, comprised of diverse landscapes. The desert is not immune to predatory corporations, the military, to those wishing to hide or bury toxic wastes, dangerous chemicals or nuclear waste, prospectors for more than gold or silver ore.

Ruth Nolan, M.A., is a native of the Mojave Desert and Associate Professor of English at the College of the Desert near Palm Springs, California. She is also a poet, writer, and book editor/publisher, former BLM-California Desert District firefighter, and has extensively hiked, traveled, and embraced the essence of her desert homeland. She has been crusading to raise awareness and protect sacred sites, dense ecologic flora/fauna zones, endangered species, in particular the desert tortoise, and the people who live and breathe in the desert. Their lives are threatened by the federal government's renewable energy policy, the false characterization of the Californian deserts as big, open "wastelands...." the mentality behind thinking that chunks of the desert can be chopped up and allotted to multi-thousand acre sites.

Ruth Nolan is editor of the new anthology, No Place for a Puritan: the literature of California’s deserts, published by Heyday Books. She was awarded a Joshua Tree National Park Affiliate Writers Residency for 2008-09, and collaborated on a film about the park with the UCR/California Museum of Photography. Her poetry has appeared in many literary publications, including Inlandia: a Literary Journey Through Southern California’s Inland Empire, Poemeleon, Askew, Pacific Review, Epicenter, Mosaic, Southern California Haiku Journal, and San Diego Poetry Annual. She co-edits Phantom Seed, a bi-annual literary magazine dedicated to the nuances of the California desert, and is advisor to the College of the Desert literary/visual arts magazine, Solstice. Her poetry collections include Wild Wash Road (1996) and Dry Waterfall (2008.) She lectures and speaks widely on desert literature and related topics, such as desert conservation and California Indian culture.

She believes that the paradigm/thinking needs to shift from "destroying more pristine land" towards "subsidizing more localized renewable energy for homeowners, businesses, communities, public institutions on already-reclaimed land" in order to "go green." She recognizes the problem with the enormous gifts to corporate "investors," who have already taken money, failed to deliver, and are now bankrupt, i.e., Solyndra.

She's concerned that the "whole" desert, is at risk by the many proposed solar/wind projects on public BLM land. We need to re-evaluate the desert as a rare and precious resource, an important wilderness area, a thriving life zone of people, plants, animals, archaeology, culture, history, one that needs to be savored and protected, not exploited by a for-profit renewable energy that is based on a "somewhere-else" mentality, "out of mind" disconnect, as the nation pursues a shift towards renewable energy.

She will also speak about the unheralded, little known, promising efforts being made by various organizations, such as Solar Done Right and the Renewable Energy Alliance.

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