#satanic mills

[ufarquhar-blog]

Wealth creation occurring at Yallourn power station.

[arminiuzz]

Jerusalem

And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold: Bring me my arrows of desire: Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire.

I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land.

William Blake’s fight with The Industrial Revolution: He uses spiritual weapons ("arrows of desire" and the Prophet Elia's "chariot of fire") against the dark Satanic Mills of Liverpool and Manchester. I am not sure if they are effectieve, but they are impressive, in my honest opinion. I remembered these lines while biking through England's green and pleasant land, first of all by the song of Emmerson, Lake and Palmer.

[hyperwave]

[asakiyume]

Black Liquor

Now there's an evocative phrase. Black liquor. What could it be? Do you imagine a mountain still? Or a byproduct of drug manufacture? Maybe just molasses?

black liquor: image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Maybe many of you know--but I didn't, until last night.

It is a byproduct, yes, but not of drug manufacture: of paper manufacture. After trees are felled and ground into chips, they are then soaked in chemicals and cooked in order to digest (the technical term) them. At the end of the process, you have pulp for creating paper over here, and black liquor over here.1 This black liquor is a toxic soup of carbon, oxygen, sodium, and sulfur that paper mills used to just dump in rivers. Then they took to burning it. The fellow I was talking to about it grew up in Maine and can recall the smell of the burning black liquor--sulfurous, he said, and acrid. Nothing else like it, he said. Then the mills realized that rather than just burning it off, they could use it to help power their operations--though first they needed to concentrate it.

photo source

This gets done in boilers. But you have to keep these boilers clean. They tend to get gummed up with tarry stuff. And then what do you suppose happens? They explode.  The guy I was talking to has to go up and talk to the folks at the plant that suffered the explosion and find out what protocols weren't followed and teach the proper way to maintain the boiler. Life is sometimes so real, so intense--and when you least expect it, like when you're walking out to the parking lot after a dullish community meeting. You get into conversation with someone, and suddenly: so real, so intense. 1Not before the production of another evocatively named byproduct: tall oil (from the Swedish word tallolja ("pine oil"). In addition to the Wikipedia article linked to in this note, I also drew on the Wikipedia article on black liquor and this pdf by Magnus Marklund on how black liquor recovery works for information. (It's housed on the website of a Swedish nonprofit that's focused on energy research.)

[whatthefoxknows]

From the Daily Mail's coverage of today's Olympics Opening Ceremony: "A spectacular aerial view of the 'Satanic Mills' in Danny Boyle's take on the Industrial Revolution"

[idacold]

Boise State Students discover the “first-eco” movements prevalent within the English Romanticism Literary period in the Simplot Ballroom.

Written for, Me on May 2, 2012. 

The Boise State Arts and Humanities Institute completed their three part lecture series “Interdisciplinary Explorations-The Idea of Nature Public Lecture Series,” with Kevin Hutching’s presenting; “Romanticism, Blake, and the Politics of Nature.” 

From 6 to 7pm Aug. 30, Hutchinson’s presentation reviewed in delicate grace, the “first-eco” movements prevalent within the English Romanticism Literary period; including paranoid schizophrenic ecologist-William Blake and with poise, the politics of preserving nature as life. 

Hutchinson is also the Research Chair of the Literature, Culture and Environmental Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia. His lecture, included three live renditions of Blake’s ecologically-based songs. In between of which, he explained how the first ecological movements expressed their discontent with, “killing of green things that were in the way.” Hutchison’s voice only cracked once, infecting the audience with a nugget of humility.

Politics is a distinctly human activity, we often think of nature as something that exists apart from the political realm, Hutchings said. However, in an era of revolutionary turmoil, William Blake, who championed “England’s green and pleasant land” against industrialism’s “dark Satanic mills,” understood better than any other romantic poet that nature was subject to myriad political uses. By showing how cultural institutions invoke nature to “naturalize” their authority, Blake reveals that nature can be thoroughly political—The Update reports.

It was interesting to hear ecologist from centuries ago discus the dark implications of capitalism. Writers such as Blake, express the importance of considering ecology as “political” movement and not just as an un-popular green philosophy. Blake believed that man belonged to nature and not nature belonging to man. He argued against the “Satanic Mills,” destroying the English country side during the Romantics-areas industrial revolution. During this time period, and todays, trees are considered “green objects that simply get in the way of man.” It is important for ideals like these to be addressed, because if we don’t, the globe will ruin the opportunity to create a sustainable future viable for later generations.

Written May 6th, 2012

-Thanks again for reading, Bryce Dunham-Zemberi