Thanks for conveying my message to Helen. She invited me to call, which I look forward to tomorrow.

Ray

Great piece on Dr. Al Burke. Knew him well when he started his broadcasts in Connecticut. Have tried unsuccessfully to locate him once he left Connecticut.

I am especially interested in knowing that his daughter, Helen, is writing a bio of her father. In fact, if it is ethical, could you provide me with her address….snail-mail or e-mail? I would be very pleased to offer her some of my recollections of the times her father and I spent over numerous phone calls and visits to his (unfortunately fire destroyed) home in Cheshire.

Thank you for your brief summation of a man whom too many people never got the chance to listen to….it could have made a serious difference in our lives today.

Ray DiZefalo

Great quote from Dante on that and it is right in line with what Edmund Burke was saying in a different form. Thanks for adding that to the discussion.

Best,
Joel

Pertaining to the exact sound bite by Burke you quoted above, Dante had one along similar lines that I like:

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those, who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”

…..Bill

That’s a nice sound bite… Maybe true… I like to write allot, thought for the day and some longer…

Here are a couple of them:

“Mankind continues to war and kill, day after day. Woman and children are horrible victims of our inability to live together. Man seems more worried about fighting over what happens to him when he’s dead than living together when he’s alive. I suggest the abandonment of all organized world religions and propose an 11th commandment so named as a stipend to Christianity. “Thou shall not value the largest expectation in death more than the smallest creation of life.”

“There is a monumental public difference between inventing uniquely and a unique invention, though to the individual the feeling and process of creation is identical.”

“In the face of adversity, over engineering is always appreciated.”

That’s just a couple of them, there are a whole bunch of them, some long some short….

…..Bill

Well you sound optimistic at first but didn’t seem to end your post that way. Let me put this succinctly to you fromm some wiser people than myself: “All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is that enough good men, do nothing.” (Edmund Burke)

I don’t know… I think if you get the RE “stuff” working right, sustainability might drop out as an automatic by product. I think the normal human challenges that go along with organizations and corporations is a bigger problem in the long run, I.E. the current degradation that is occurring in the world at an accelerating rate. My situation regarding the FSEC/SRCC that you have seen posted on RE access.com in comment sections, is just one small example of the degree that things have sunk too. RE and especially solar are my passion, but I don’t have a whole lot of optimism for it or even the world, at least in the short run, (LT 200 years ahead).

…..Bill

Best,
Joel Gordes

Nice read… so many problems we have for so long..
Been at solar and RE myself since back in the late 70′s..
Now my passion is my business… so much misinformation out there even from the organizations and people who are suppose to know what they are doing… Hope this BLOG can get the numbers… good luck for all….

…..Bill

Thanks for the response on this. I appreciate it and I do hope to get into the word sustainability more as we go on and build upon input form others like yourself as well. I wanted to do that particular view of it as the opening to get everyone on the same page as to the roots of it. Then I’ll fill in some of the details which isn’t what most people think. Finally, we will eventually get into the systems thinking part of it that has developed from it BUT we really need to define that term as well as it means many different things to different people. I will expect your help on that.

Best,
Joel