I started my new data consulting job today, and had no computer access. What an interesting feeling. Count on postings to remain light and unpredictable this week, as I get adjusted. And they'll probably come online at night. But I'm trying to get caught up!

I'll have more to say about this topic eventually (no promises when), because it relates to my developing masters thesis. Just please cogitate on Wangari Maathai's wise words, for now. She is Kenya's Assistant Minister for Environment, Natural Resources and Wildlife, founder of Kenya's Green Belt Movement, and winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.

Mount Kenya is a World Heritage Site. The equator passes right on its top, and it has a unique habitat and heritage.

Because it is a glacier-topped mountain, it is the source of many of Kenya's rivers. Now, partly because of climate change and partly because of logging and encroachment through cultivation of crops, the glaciers are melting. Many of the rivers flowing from Mount Kenya have either dried up or become very low. Its biological diversity is threatened as the forests fall.

"What shall we do to conserve this forest?" I asked myself.

As I tried to encourage women and the African people in general to understand the need to conserve the environment, I discovered how crucial it is to return constantly to our cultural heritage. Mount Kenya used to be a holy mountain for my people, the Kikuyus. They believed that their God dwelled on the mountain and that everything good – the rains, clean drinking water – flowed from it. As long as they saw the clouds (the mountain is a very shy mountain, usually hiding behind clouds), they knew they would get rain.

And then the missionaries came. With all due respect to the missionaries (they are the ones who really taught me), in their wisdom, or lack of it, they said, "God does not dwell on Mount Kenya. God dwells in heaven."

We have been looking for heaven, but we have not found it. Men and women have gone to the moon and back and have not seen heaven. Heaven is not above us: it is right here, right now.

So the Kikuyu people were not wrong when they said that God dwelled on the mountain, because if God is omnipresent, as theology tells us, then God is on Mount Kenya too. If believing that God is on Mount Kenya is what helps people conserve their mountain, I say that's okay. If people still believed this, they would not have allowed illegal logging or clear-cutting of the forests.

Do read the rest.

It somehow seems appropriate to put these items together: the US is blocking medical aid to Falluja civilians, shooting injured insurgents at point blank range (you think the one they happened to catch on film is the only one?) and the blogger of Baghdad Burning cries "WHERE IS EVERYONE???"

Have you seen this site? Click on "gallery" for the myriad of photo postings and apologies. It's an international hit.

Word came down this weekend that new CIA director Porter Goss has been authorized to purge the CIA of anyone who appears to lack loyalty to President Bush. That should take care of the "dissenting opinion" problem. Then we had the cascade of cabinet resignations: Powell, which isn't a big surprise, along with Agriculture Secretary Veneman and Energy Secretary Spencer. Rice, God help us, appears to be replacing Powell, and a Rumsfeld resignation is just too much to hope for.

Shoot. Starting next year, I'm not gonna be able to studiously ignore William Safire anymore.

Ah ha! Exeedingly useful trivia! I occasionally get confused about Red States and Blue States (though certainly not this year) because it seemed to me that I was "red" one of the times I voted for Clinton. I chalked it up to my aging memory. But the colors really have switched!

Hey, the good people of Moving Ideas have added Left At The Altar to their progressive blogroll! So if you're just starting to visit from there, welcome! Please entertain yourself with the archives until I get my new job/school act together and start posting more predictably!