I used to admire Bill Gates . He helped make it possible for me to connect via MSN with new-found friends around the world, all from my rural home a few years back in Graceville, MN - Big Stone County . The first internet connection I had, back in 1999, was a little keyboard unit that hooked up to my television called Webtv. The world was at my fingertips; no matter if a blizzard was raging outside or my car did not start. I was connected.

Now. Bill Gates bothers me. After almost three years with Clean Water Action SD, researching the mind boggling details behind the proposed Big Stone II 600 MW coal plant, does Bill Gates know what he is doing? Does he know that his ownership just under 9% via Cascade Investment LLC in Otter Tail Power's Big Stone Plant Unit 1 and funneling of money into Big Stone II rains down mercury to poison my grandchildren and yours? Does he know that northeast South Dakota's once pristine prairie land will now be filled with DOUBLE the toxic coal combustion, cancer causing waste? If Bill Gates doesn't know where his money is going - perhaps it's time we let him know. Eight Minnesota Legislators recently wrote to Gates offering him the opportunity to see how he could align his values with his investment. In other words, asking him why is he investing in dirty coal that poisons us when he could be investing in wind and renewable energy.  Word has it that a reply is coming.

Let Bill Gates hear from you! The world needs wind and renewable energy, not more coal. Come on Bill, be the hero everyone believes in.

William H. Gates III

One Microsoft Way

Redmond WA 98052

Phone: (425) 882-8080

Cascade Investment LLC

2365 Carillon Point

Kirkland WA 98033

Phone: (425) 803-0720

If a pebble makes a ripple – what will a stone make? Worse, what will two Big Stone coal plants pumping more mercury into the air and waters around Big Stone Lake make? Most at risk are the children – mercury is a known potent neuro-toxin, but we also pay a high economic cost according to experts who reported on the Public Health and Economic Consequences of Methyl Mercury Toxicity to the Developing Brain (Environmental Health Perspectives, 2005).

On the bright side, environmentalists in Iowa are saying that it will be a lot tougher for utilities to build coal plants after a federal appeals court threw out a federal pollution-trading system that allowed excess mercury emissions at some plants.

As if one coal plant -Big Stone I- next to beautiful, trophy-walleye-producing Big Stone Lake on the Minnesota – South Dakota border is not enough. Does Otter Tail Power really think it can bring on Big Stone II without a battle? The opposition is growing locally against building more coal plants or burning more coal. Besides, we have WIND here on the Minnesota - South Dakota border (video by American Green TV ) not coal. We like our water clean - not toxic. Get the low down of what lies ahead nationally in "Stopping Coal in Its Tracks" by Ted Nace (Jan/Feb 2008 issue of Orion Magazine). The lines are being drawn. Grind coffee - not coal...

Any wonder folks up here like to head down Cuba way? Well if we're in the middle of winter...you get the point! But, lots of other reasons too. We could have a good thing going, Cuba and the Northern Plains states, tourism wise, but trade wise too. Older generation Cubans remember vividly, nostalgically, almost reverently -- what it was like to bite into a fresh, deep red, crisp apple coming from the U.S.A. Wow, the sighs they would give, wondering if ever that time would come again, open trade with the U.S. When I heard them talking about that, I thought hmmmm, we grow Apples in Minnesota...for over 24 years I could go out the farmhouse door, across the yard and pick apples by the bushel...never really thinking how special it was. If Nixon's Ping-Pong diplomacy could end in 1971 the information blockade against the People's Republic of China in place since the Communist takeover in 1949, why couldn't 'Apple Diplomacy' do the same for Cuba-U.S. relations? But just in case an improvement in diplomatic relations does not come any time soon, head to Victor's 1959 Cafe

The distance between Cuba and the United States extends far beyond the Florida Straits, at least ideologically. ‘Govies’ (government officials) on both sides want their citizens to believe that 'the other' is 'the enemy.' 'The Cuba-U.S. policy arena, dominated by men, has failed to resolve ideological differences, while Cuban women and children continue to suffer excessively under the more than half-century U.S. called 'embargo' - Cubans call blockade as voted on repeatedly in the General Assembly of the United Nations. Now that Castro has stepped down, will we see change on either side of the Florida Straits? Vaclav Havel would like to believe we could see "The Art of the Impossible." All I know is that from my first trip to Cuba in 1999 with Medaid, to the 60 days I traveled across the island the summer of 2002 with Student Project for Amity Among Nations (SPAN) what I especially recall is the camaraderie. Running a close second would be the flourishing arts and music...making you want to dance, yes! Cuban Art such as Gallery 106 and Casa Cubana, Priceless Houses by Pablo H - Proyecto Horizontal –  see “El Castigo de la vida II” (the punishment of life) (below) just waiting for outside discovery. Now if only the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets and Control would not make it so, so difficult to travel there...

photos by maryjo-s