Sacrificed
In Apocalypse

By Mike Roselle

I am now back in Missoula where we have our new office all decked out with a used Mr. Coffee machine and a laser printer. It’s good to be back in Montana. I have a lot planned for this year. First thing, as I told Josh, I will start showing up to work regularly. Last year we had over a million and a half hits and a quarter million individual visitors to Lowbagger.org and there is still a big mess to clean up. This year we want to become your number one alternative radical ecological online magazine. We will continue to feature the best in environmental reporting opinion and writing, and when we can’t, well, you’ll always have me.

I have been on Lowbattical for the last few months. I was mostly in San Francisco and the surrounding region known as the Bay Area. Normally I cannot afford to hang out in San Francisco unless I sleep on Andre’s couch. Andre and his wife, Ferezah are having a baby, and normally you’d think that would be the worst time to suffer a house guest, but I have found that pregnant women are very tolerant of company and usually appreciate the help. Of course it helps if their husbands are worthless.

As Lowbagger has entered its third year, a few things have become very clear to me. One is that we have not been spoiled by our great success. And the other is that I will still have to keep my day job. Since I have been in the environmental movement for the last twenty five years, I have no marketable skills. This, of course, means that the only way for me to make money is to help people remodel their houses. I charge half as much per hour as an undocumented worker and I am almost half as good, and I can sleep on the couch. Indeed, many find this offer hard to refuse and are doubly grateful when the job is done.

Many of my friends in the Bay area are having children. I am amazed by their optimism. These children will grow up to see something more radical then even the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Bigger than Noah’s Flood. A world where great cities such as New Orleans’s can be wiped out in an instant, where animals that roamed the Earth for millions of years disappear, where the mountains will not have snowcaps. None of this is important to a young child, of course, and the great thing about young minds is that they take things as they are, living completely for the moment. But really, this generation is lucky in some ways. They can still catch frogs in the creek and have a reasonable expectation of a normal existence probably until they are into their twenties. Then, if Al Gore is right and we haven’t done anything, the shit will hit the fan. Twenty years old is a good age to be in a catastrophe. As it was with Noah, it will be much better to be on board the Ark than down on the beach.

When I was a young child held captive by the medieval fanatics in the Catholic Church I was told that the world would end by fire, the wicked would suffer, and that I was wicked. The fire, they explained, was the Atomic Bomb. I am glad I did not fall for that. But it goes to show that kids have always been raised in order to be sacrificed in an Apocalypse, and it’s no different, except this time its real, even if you don’t believe in it.

So I wonder if these kids will want to have children. I chose not to have children because I thought they had no conceivable function or value other than to make demands on your time and money. This constant demand for food, shelter and education makes them a bad investment when there is a good chance that they will grow up and require really expensive lawyers or councilors. And then there is the chance they’d be Republicans. I have friends who have raised their children in a school bus driving around the country. I wish my parents had thought of that. But it still does not prevent the children from becoming Republicans, and in fact may actually increase the chances.

Ever since I had a cactus die from lack of care I realized that I should not be trusted with a plant, a cat, a dog or a child for long periods of time. Yet most of my friends who have children seem unconcerned about this aspect of my character, focusing I suppose, on my character and what I have achieved in my life. I suppose most parents want to provide a good example of why you should stay in school, keep a steady job, and avoid excessive drinking and drug use. I can only hope that I am successful in providing the necessary motivation to the next generation on the proper path to follow.

I left my cell phone in a cab in Washington D.C. When I called the number someone answered in Spanish. The cab driver was Nigerian. The battery went out as we were talking. Last November, my computer started crashing. After having several friends, two geeks and a priest look at it the only thing that works now is the screen saver. I decided this was a message from God. For two months I was off line, out of reach and surviving on roots and berries. My hair grew long and shaggy and I started to mumble to myself. I was reduced to getting my information from books and going untold hours without being updated with the latest news. My many fans in China and Nigeria had no way to reach me. I couldn’t have been reached even if I had won a lottery. (Turns out I had!) My mind seemed to slow down and I was hearing voices in my head. Some of the sounds I recognized, one of them was a thought.  The last time I had had a thought, the cell phone rang and I forgot it. I wondered if this was that same thought.

I say all of this to let you know that I am back to work and I am not happy about it. We have many new projects we are working on around here and as soon as my new computer comes in the mail I will write about them. Right now I am going to Charlie’s.

Mike Roselle has reconnecting. Drop him an email at roselle@lowbagger.org.