Redwood Community Radio--KMUD Spring FunDrive

It has been a year since I started doing volunteer shifts at KMUD as an engineer and programmer, amongst other chores. I enjoy being involved with this grassroots media effort. You can listen to KMUD (Redwood Community Radio) on the internet at www.kmud.org or if you are local you can tune in on your very own radio!

Radio is a special medium that continues to be effective and relevant even as technology for global communications advances rapidly. We are working at KMUD to raise money for the next half year of operating. Please consider joining the 'mud as a member! Go to the KMUD website and give a listen and make a secure donation.

Hopefully, as well, as the broadcasting season goes on I will have some new and unique radio to be posting here on the vozsilvestre blog. Stay tuned!

Ríos Patagónicos In the Stateside News

I am barely a week back into the stateside scene and the results of our global community labor to protect wild rivers in Patagonia are being published in major daily newspapers in the United States, this just one week after the New York Times published their opinion piece against the possibility of damming the Baker and Pascua Rivers. This is what I like to see!! Some real momentum to protect Patagonia from needless industrialization.

On Sunday, Lonely Planet writer Carolyn McCarthy was published in the Boston Globe with her article Little Seen and Untamed River Stirs Patagonia. This is a very readable travel section article with an excellent and breathtaking finish. Carolyn does a great job of capturing the International Rivers campaign and the local perceptions of the dam proposals. She accompanied us on the International Rivers sponsored delegation--and we really wanted Carolyn to come on the hike but schedules did not permit it.

With all this great press and momentum for our campaign one might wonder how many more tricks we have up our sleeves--but we have only but started the campaign. This past Monday, to add punch to the campaign media strategy, our colleague Colin Barraclough had his article published in the San Francisco Chronicle. Chile Plans to Dam Patagonia Wilderness is the title, and the read is equally impactful. Of course, as the author of this blog and one of the organizers of the Pascua Expedition Project, I am not able to hide that Colin came with us on the hike. He was a key and important element to the good style, fun, and great safety that we maintained on our expedition. I am picturing Colin now, suffering in Buenos Aires (sufrimiento!!) and poetically reliving the journey as he word smithed his story together.

Ahhhh! Patagonia!

Tomanse un buen mate mis amigos!

By the way, the photos are by Colin, from our trip to explore the wild Pascua!!

New York Times Says NO to HidroAysén!

There are a few factual errors in the piece, but the New York Times has published an op-ed piece that says NO to the construction of mega-dams on the Pascua and Baker Rivers in the Chilean Patagonia.

Take a look at their opinion page to read their Patagonia Without Dams piece. This is worth a read, and worth distributing.

This is certainly quite an exciting development! My guess is that it is the movers and shakers at NRDC who were able to get the Times editorial board on to this issue. Great work!

Hopefully ENDESA and the Matte family can get the message now, before this campaign has to heat up much more! It is also time for Michelle Bachelet to show the world who is the president in Chile, and put an end to this monumental waste of time and energy that is the HidroAysén proposal to dam the Baker and Pascua rivers.