And to think we owe it all to *these* guys!

I think it is clear that no one is more responsible for the election of Barack Obama than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. By being clearly the Worst President and Worst Vice President Ever, they were able to do a couple of very important things. First, they woke many people up to the moral bankruptcy of the Republican party in its current formulation. As part of that, they exposed the nasty underpinnings of the whole political climate which has existed in this country, which made it OK to label people who publicly said that maybe invading Iraq wasn't such a swell idea terrorists and anti-American. It hasn't been so long since we were warned that we should "watch what we say." I think it made a lot of people wake up and say, hey, what happened to freedom? What is freedom if it is only freedom to shop at Wal-Mart, or to work at one, if you're lucky, when those are the only jobs left. Building on the work of their predecessors (Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton too), pert near destroying the economy through years of undermining the middle class and working people was their pièce de résistance, to use a fancy French expression.

If you had asked me four years ago whether I thought there was a snowball's chance in hell of a black man with an Islamic middle name being elected with margins we haven't seen for a Democrat in decades (much less being elected at all), I would have laughed and laughed at the thought. It just didn't seem very bloody likely, given all that we've seen during the Bush/Cheney regime. But here we are. It's a new day in America. And I think we must give credit where credit is due.

I don't mean to imply that John McCain and Sarah Palin had nothing to do with it; of course they did. But I think the lion's share of our thanks goes to Cheney and Bush. And I mean that in the nicest of ways. I know many of the people who do not like Bush and Cheney feel a lot of anger toward them, and I've been there too. But I think we also owe them some gratitude, because we needed someone to draw back the curtain on what's been going on for years, and they did that. Inadvertently, perhaps. But in their sorry hubris, they brought us to a point where real change, and not just cosmetic change, is possible. Is it inevitable? No. It will take a lot of work and perseverance. We can't just say, "OK, Obama's been elected, we can just relax and go home and wait for him to take care of stuff for us." It won't work that way. We must build that change from the ground up. If we want a more perfect union, and a better world, our work remains before us. This election only makes that change more possible.

Still, I cried tears of joy and relief and amazement over and over again this week. It brought to mind this scene, from Return of the King:

The battle is over, the good guys have won. The darkness has been banished, and the new king has been crowned. It's a similar moment, of joy, and relief, and hope. Yet the world outside is damaged and scarred. The job ahead is daunting. Yet we can enjoy the moment for a little while, and then we get to roll up our sleeves to start rebuilding.

My New President

I wasn't going to take anything for granted this election, although I was trying hard to be resigned, whatever the outcome, knowing that I don't always know the impact of events in the true scheme of things, and that sometimes what seems terrible is just what is needed to move things closer to better.

I had a hard time driving home tonight for the tears. Hallelujah! I didn't know if I would ever live to see this day.

Today I am so proud of America. I have always loved American ideals, but I was born during a terrible war, and my innocence about America was not long lived.

The world will never be quite the same after today. There is still much work left to do, to get us closer to what we strive to be as Americans and what we long to be as human beings. But today is like the glimmering rainbow I saw this past Saturday, the rainbow we watched from the middle of a pouring rain. It is a promise of hope, and I'm glad my son is old enough to remember this day, although he can't really fully understand what it means—for our country, and for him, as a mixed-race child.

Mr. Obama, soon it will be time to start holding your feet to the fire, to make sure you remember the people who helped bring you to this day. But right now, I'm just proud of you, and of the people of this country, who have done what many people thought could not be done.



Link:
The full slide show on the Huffington Post

Alaska Women for Obama!

This sweet little video brought a different sort of tears to my eyes.

This video brought tears to my eyes!

Sarah Palin is just a few years older than me, which means that she shared the same coming-of-age years when Reagan was threatening nuclear Armageddon and the Russians were threatening to bomb/invade etc. in any number of books and Hollywood films. So it warmed the little cockles of my heart to see this video. Enjoy!

Did I mention I love Dar Williams?

We just went to see Dar Williams in Seattle last night with Shawn Mullins. I pretty much only knew his one (as he said Dar called it) "monster" hit: "Lullaby," so it was fun to hear more of his repertoire; he's quite a good performer.

Dar had only a drummer on an African drum and a guy on keyboards, so a smaller entourage than she normally has, but they were quite good.

Her new album "Promised Land" is great; she has one song that stands out in terms of being thought-provoking, about the Milgram experiments at Yale:

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.

-The Perils of Obedience, Stanley Milgram

The song is called Buzzer, and it's about a woman who participates in these experiments and ends up with a sobering insight into herself:

Right away I knew it was like I failed a quiz
The man said, "Do you know what a fascist is?"
I said, "Yeah, it's when you do things you're not proud of
But you're scraping by taking orders from above"
I get it now, I'm the face, I'm the cause of war
We don't have to blame white-coated men anymore
When I knew it was wrong, I played it just like a game
I pressed the buzzer
I pressed the buzzer
Here's your seventy bucks, now everything's changed

I had an interesting conversation with our babysitter, a very sweet teenaged girl, yesterday, on the way home after the concert; I shared a little about this song, and she said she had been studying the Holocaust, and that she thought the people who'd done those atrocious things were just evil. And I was like, well, that's sort of the message of these experiments. How much does it take for "normal" people to follow orders and do horrific, unimaginable things?

At any rate, NPR has an interview segment up with Dar where she talks more about the new album and about this song in particular. Some of the links aren't working at the moment (coincidence, surely?) but hopefully this is just a temporary problem.

And of course, Dar being Dar, she doesn't let any of us off the hook. The song ends like this:

But tell me where are your stocks, would you do this again?
I pressed the buzzer
And tell me who made your clothes, was it children or men?
I pressed the buzzer


Links:
The Perils of Obedience, Stanley Milgram, from Harper's Magazine, 1976
Main Dar Williams page at NPR

If this doesn't do it for you...

...I don't know what will. Deregulation is a disaster; always has been, always will be. There is a reason why you need regulation: greed. Until greed goes the way of the dinosaur, we will need to watch people to make sure they follow the rules.

I don't know if Obama will have the guts to do what needs to be done to get us out of this mess, which is nothing less than to reverse the tide of wealth flowing upward. It has made the vast majority of us on earth less secure. It is not inevitable that things are this way. We can choose a different path. But it will mean some very very tough choices in the months and years ahead.

Bottom line: Don't look to the poor and middle class to fund this reconstruction. We have been being bled dry for decades. And that doesn't just mean us in the "first" world (if we can still claim membership); people in the "third" world were better off in 1960 than they are today. There are those who claim otherwise, because people in the third world use more money today than they used to. But if you didn't use to have to pay for shelter or food because you owned land that kept and fed you, you didn't have as much need for money. But I digress.

This is John McCain. He is a true believer, and as they say, "by their fruits, you shall know them."

Eliot Spitzer Editorial on the Mortgage Crisis, and Bush's House of Cards

I heard Thom Hartmann read part of this little article today about the mortgage crisis and I found it hard to maintain my equilibrium. I knew part of this story. I knew that a lot of people were worried about all the crazy loans and the housing bubble and this and that. I just didn't realize that Bush can add to his resume that he actually stopped the states from protecting their citizens against predatory lenders. Unbelievable. And a few days ago he stood before us like this (check out Bush, coming in at about 2:40 into the clip):



In the Spitzer article, published shortly before he was taken down in the prostitution scandal, he said this (from the Washington Post, February 14, 2008): [In the face of predatory lending] "Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye."

Using a law dating from the civil war, the Bush administration derailed efforts by many state attorneys general and several state legislatures to protect consumers from predatory lending. The article is short, but stunning. I mean, I knew the Bushies didn't do anything to help, and I knew their lax policies had helped the crisis grow. I just didn't know that they actively prevented consumer protection. It's enough to make you sick to your stomach. Is this why Spitzer was taken down?

The whole article is here:
Washington Post article by Eliot Spitzer
Project Censored article: Bush's Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer

Too Much Money in Too Few Hands

The thought that keeps coming back to me as this whole new (manufactured?) crisis unfolds, is that this is what you get when you get too much money in too few hands. The economic policies of the last thirty years have been all about a shift of wealth from many hands into few. The tax policies and trade policies of the "conservatives" have allowed us to buy cheap toys with easy credit, but have done nothing to ensure the long-term security of the middle and lower classes--quite the opposite, in fact. We've become a nation drunk on debt, where debt seems to be one of the only things we reliably know how to produce.

When you have rich people with too much damn money, all they want to do is invest it to make more money. Hence the creation of ever-more-creative "vehicles" for investment. Tech stocks stop making money? The money flows to mortgage-backed securities. Those start to tank? The money flows to commodities, like corn and oil. Where it goes doesn't really matter. The imperative is just to make more and more money. Of course, there is a need for more stringent regulation. But I think we cannot overemphasize the importance of this wealth shift and what it means for us, ordinary people, who have seen our real wealth erode as the cost of everyday needs has soared: housing, energy, food. When regular people have more money, they can pay their bills. They can pay off their loans. They might even be able to save some money, so that they have a cushion in tighter times that doesn't rely on a credit card. But the wealth shift orchestrated by the free traders and the tax avoiders has made the whole world more and more vulnerable. It's crazy.

What I would like to see in these debates about the bailout is this: You can have the money, with all these conditions (oversight, an equity stake, limits on executive compensation etc)--and... you know all those tax cuts we gave you that added more money to the huge pots of money you guys were sitting on already? We'll have them back, thank you very much. You can pay for your own bailout. For icing on the cake, we could also end that war that has continued to bleed us dry, because we just can't afford it anymore.

I got an email yesterday from Food First about the crisis that I wish I could link to, because I think it was a very powerful synopsis of the problem. But it doesn't appear to be on the internet yet except as a comment to a New York Times blog post! But you can at least see that here.

Other links:
Food First website
Article: Let Them Eat Free Markets

The Theft of the 2008 Election

The theft of the 2000 and 2004 elections has been well documented. Although it got very little attention in the corporate media, there were so many shenanigans with the vote in the last few elections as to make one's head spin, especially if one wants to believe in democracy.

I just stumbled over to Greg Palast's website the other day to see if he had any updated information about what was going on with Venezuela (because thanks to Greg, I know that when Chavez starts saying that the US is out to topple him, it isn't something that can just be dismissed out of hand, since it wouldn't be the first time).

At any rate, there are some alarming numbers there. Over a million people whose voter registrations have disappeared. The purging of huge numbers of voters from the rolls in battleground states. This is serious stuff.

They've gotten away with it before. They will try to get away with it again. All they need is a close-enough election, which it looks like they will have. Greg Palast is asking for support to get his message out into the media in the next few weeks, to see if shining a spotlight on what is going on with these states can make a difference. If you care about democracy in this country, I'd encourage you to consider throwing some $$ Greg's way.

Links:
Greg Palast talks about the theft of 2008
A good collection of links about problems in the 2004 election, and to organizations working on this issue

New Stuff In the Shop!

I have added some new items to the Lovely Flower Bright Idea Shop. The first is one I've been thinking about for a long time. Thom Hartmann likes to play the audio clip of Ronald Reagan saying, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" Well, after watching New Orleans drown in Katrina, and after watching veterans coming back from war to inadequate support, and generally watching how government under conservative rule has failed to help ordinary people much while it has helped a few rich people and corporations to grow even richer and more powerful; how the agencies filled with cronies have failed to protect us and do what they were created to do--well, all I have to say is, yes, the government can fail to deliver. But when it does, it does for a reason. And there are things we need our government to do, things we can't possibly do on our own. In my opinion, that's why we have a government to begin with--or at least, that should be the reason.

The whole conservative "You're-on-your-own-ership society" is not something that is going to work out well for most of us.

The other design is a modification to another design in the shop. I'm not thrilled with some of the Dems we have out there. But maybe if we can get solid majorities in Congress, especially in the Senate, we can make some real change happen.

Jon Stewart has a go at "Reformed Maverick" McCain

This was cute, had to share.

So I've had this dream...

...of designing bumper stickers. I had a bunch of anti-Hillary ones all over the place. In my head. On little notes. I don't hate her or anything. Just didn't want her to be president.

While I was on vacation last week, I opened up a very small shop with not-yet-so-many offerings at CafePress.

I just couldn't help myself with this one. The whole Maverick meme just gets me. What is left of my rational mind cannot understand why he is permitted to get away with it. So I offer this to the world, at the Lovely Flower Bright Idea Shop.

I'm Takin' My Country Back

I'd heard bits of this song before but Thom Hartmann played a little bit of it as bumper music last week and somehow this time it got stuck in my head long enough to look it up!

This particular version is part of a campaign to...retire Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Go, Paris!

I just had to share this, it's so precious. And timely, since McCain is spending (I imagine) oodles of money to position his "Celebrity" ad so prominently in the Olympics coverage.

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

If you haven't seen the original John McCain video and want to watch it, YouTube has it here.

The Things We Keep

This is just short, and personal. I've been searching my garage for this quilting book I got from my grandma when she died, and so I've been going through all these boxes, some of which I haven't really looked in for years.

Since I've posted on this site about my enduring ... admiration for John Cusack, I thought I would share a page from one of the fun things I found today--a program from the free campus screening of The Sure Thing, his first big hit and the movie that cemented him in my mind as a huge talent.

McCain, Free Trade, and the Release of the FARC Captives

I heard earlier today about John McCain being in Colombia today to campaign for the adoption of the bilateral Colombia Free Trade Agreement (not to be confused with CAFTA, now CAFTA-DR, which is the Central American (+ the Dominican Republic) Free Trade Agreement).

I then heard about the liberation, courtesy of the Colombian government, of a group of people, including Ingrid Betancourt, a former presidential candidate, and a number of American Pentagon contractors.

I couldn't help but think...coincidence? Coincidence that McCain just happens to be in Colombia on the day these people are freed? And apparently, he got briefed about the action before it happened. Wow! How...presidential sounding! And it was so coincidental that he was there just in time for the rescue!

I couldn't help but be reminded of other captives, hostages that were held longer to help a new American president be elected, freed on an Inauguration Day many years ago. An American president whose administration would subsequently be involved in the trade of arms for hostages in the Iran-Contra scandal.

McCain supports the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, and has apparently (to my knowledge) never seen a Free Trade Agreement that he didn't like. Obama on the other hand has gone on record opposing the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. The current administration of Colombia wants this agreement to happen. It doesn't take a brilliant mind to surmise that they might have a vested interest in doing anything they can do to help McCain look the hero.

Colombia is one of the most dangerous countries for labor organizers--over 2500 have been killed since 2005 and although murders of union activists are apparently down under Uribe, the current President, they have been picking up lately. Between that and--dare I say?--the drugs, it's no wonder that a FTA with Colombia is so desired by the neoliberals.

Links:
McCain briefed on rescue operation in Colombia, Washington Post
Al Jazeera's report on the release of the captives
NYT article about the murder of union organizers in Colombia and the proposed FTA
The US Trade Representative's web page with links to information about trade agreements
Wikipedia entry on Iran-Contra

Just got back from War, Inc.

I was very much looking forward to the movie, and went to see it tonight in a tiny theater near the University of Washington. It was the late show, and the theater wasn't exactly packed. I felt a little sad about that. I know that it is still in the test market phase, and how it does now will impact what kind of broader distribution it gets.

It was more or less what I expected in most ways, although there were of course surprises. It was funny, but it also had a rawness, and it hit a little too close to home to be a very comfortable movie to watch. I kind of expected that--I knew the film was made to provoke thought about how the United States is operating right now in the world. But I felt a little more uncomfortable than I expected.

At any rate, it's not a masterpiece. But it's a funny film that I hope will help people to see something that may not be comfortable, but is important.

And it was pretty fun to see goody-two-shoes Hilary Duff (and I am fond of her for that, being a former goody-two-shoes myself) play the tramp-like, oversexed pop star too.

Showtimes here.

And the future means...more bondage to Big Oil?

This morning I read about Honda's new hydrogen-fueled car. It's very shiny, and if you live in parts of California, you might be able to lease one for $600 a month. Yikes! I wasn't all that thrilled to read that a tank of hydrogen would only get you about 270 miles. Now my little Civic will go about 400 miles on a tank of gasoline, and the Prius can go more than 500. So right off the bat it's not sounding like such a great deal.

I tried to find out then how much a tank of hydrogen will cost, anyhow. I couldn't find anyone who would say exactly (perhaps I just didn't look long and hard enough?), but I did find a Shell FAQ web page that said this:

How much does hydrogen cost compared to petrol at the present moment?
This is comparing apples and pears. There is no existing commercial market for hydrogen yet. However we have publicly stated that we expect a tank of hydrogen ultimately will get you as far as the same tank filled with petrol for about the same costs.

Hmm...more expensive car that has to have all sorts of high-tech features to keep it from blowing up in an accident (only another way to say lots of stuff that's going to need maintenance, in my mind)...and it's going to cost about the same as gas...and require more fill-ups than an economy car...doesn't sound like such a great deal to me yet.

I have to admit that I am cynical about the whole Hydrogen Economy thing. From what I've seen. Hydrogen is as yet expensive to produce, and although we might one day be able to plug a hydrogen generator into our rooftop solar panels, it would seem to make more sense to just plug an electric car's battery into the solar panel directly.

I think I have a tendency to believe what they said in the film Who Killed the Electric Car--that the Hydrogen Fuel Cell thing isn't the best idea, or the best technology. It's just a way to keep us coming back to them--to keep us paying them for fuel. Over and over and over again. Automobile manufacturers also have something at stake--electric cars typically require very little maintenance, and as also pointed out in that movie, car dealerships make more money from service than from car sales.

I heard the other day that 60% of Americans believe that if we could just drill more (like in ANWR), the price of gas would drop. But if the problem were just that the cost of production for oil is going up, then the oil companies wouldn't be making these huge profits. Of course if the price of oil goes up, the cost of gas will go up. But it doesn't logically follow that profits will automatically increase astronomically as a result. They don't call it Big Oil without cause--the few oil companies there are left after all the mergers and acquisitions are clearly colluding to keep the price of oil up. Given what has happened to the cost of oil since the invasion of Iraq, I am inclined to believe Greg Palast when he said that the war in Iraq wasn't about cheap access to oil--it was about controlling the supply of oil so that the price would go up. There is a reason that we have anti-trust laws on the books. Monopolies are bad for everybody except the people who run them.

As for the car thing...well, I'm still waiting for that plug-in hybrid.

Links:
A different way of looking at this development (and how I found out about it!)
Honda website--New Hydrogen-Fueled Car
Shell's FAQ site
Greg Palast about the Cost of Oil
Plug-In America

The Global Oneness Project

My husband came across this video this morning and I thought it was beautiful and thought-provoking--the project is to document with video new awakenings and new beginnings in this world in a time of transformation. During this video below, the question is asked, "What if a large percentage of us decided to do something different?" What if? What if a new world--a better world--really is possible? What if it could be right within our grasp? Who would fight to hold on to the status quo? And who would welcome its passing for a different way of being--a way that says I am You. You are me. Whatever happens to you, happens to me. What I do to you, I do to myself. As Dr. King once said so eloquently, "We are caught in an inescapable web of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." What if we knew that, not just intellectually, but from the core of our being?



What if?

Link:
Global Oneness Project

Jerry Mander talking about Indigenous Peoples' Resistance to Economic Globalization

When I first heard Jerry Mander's name, I thought maybe it was a joke. A progressive activist named Jerry Mander? Gerrymander? Sounds like a joke. However, according to Wikipedia (despite the jokes, a pretty accurate source of information about many things), it's not a pseudonym but his real name.

At any rate, I stumbled across this transcript of a speech by Jerry Mander the other day in a publication I'd never heard of called Lapis Magazine. It's about how indigenous people are threatened by our manic corporate system, and how they are fighting back. The article also includes links to the International Forum on Globalization website which looks like it's chock full of interesting stuff. Annie Leonard, who created The Story of Stuff, is apparently a board member.

Links:
Jerry Mander speech on Lapis Magazine website
International Forum on Globalization

Imagine...the rule of law

Dennis Kucinich, a man of high ideals who loves this country with all her blemishes and fights to make her better, spent some five hours reading 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush into the congressional record this week. Lies. Torture. The incarceration of children. Illegal wiretapping. If anyone has been a poster child for scofflaw presidents, surely it is George W. Bush. I say that in the nicest possible way, of course. In his shoes, I might have done the same thing. I can't really say. I don't know. I don't think I will wish to be in his shoes when he has his life review though.

At any rate, if we had the rule of law undoubtedly we would see some kind of action on this list. If the Democrats had any guts, we would see action on this list. I think it is likely it will just languish in committee, but one can hope otherwise. After all, the best way to ensure you don't repeat the past is to first try to understand it honestly.

You can find links to a pdf of the whole thing and a bunch of other goodies here:

AfterDowningStreet.org page with links

Floods and a different way of being

The floods in Iowa have been on my mind this week, as a vendor we work with in Cedar Rapids had to abandon their offices and shift work elsewhere. Last I heard earlier today, the river was still on the rise, expected to crest over 12 feet above the previous historical record. Hearing the news, I couldn't help but think of Al Gore, and his warnings. Here in Washington, I heard a rumor that we might be having the coldest June on record (and I believe it, it's felt like October). It makes you wonder, is "normal" weather a thing of the past? And it concerns me, with food prices already high, what the rest of the year is going to look like, if too many crops are destroyed, and what this might mean.

It also brought to mind this article I read in Yes! Magazine some time ago, from a 2001 edition of the magazine, about a new social movement in India. The article talked about how in addition to healing wounds brought about by poverty and the caste system, the Swadhyaya movement was also teaching people how to catch rain in special catchment ponds and use that to recharge aquifers. I think it's time to start thinking hard about how to deal with both "abnormal" rainfall patterns and drought. Now I'm no expert, but the article made me think there may be more we can do to green this garden of Earth than we might think. They don't talk about flood control in the article, but I think there might possibly be some connection there too. The article was also interesting on some other levels, but it was the water, all that water, that brought it to my mind today.

Link:
India's Silent But Singing Revolution

War, Inc. hits Seattle...and some other cities tomorrow!

As I said in my post a few weeks back, I have been a big John Cusack fan for years. And I was so excited to hear about his new movie, War, Inc., a satire about the privatization of war.

So I am thrilled that it is coming to Seattle this weekend. I'm not sure how I'm going to make it there to see it--have sort of a jam-packed traveling family kind of weekend ahead--but will make my best effort and hope others will too! How it does in this slightly broader distribution of course will impact what kind of wider distribution the film gets. So if you live in Seattle, Boston, Chicago, Berkeley, San Francisco or Austin, hope you'll do your patriotic duty and get out to see the film this weekend.

Interview on Canadian talk show, The Hour:

Links:
Showtimes (courtesy of Fandango)
War, Inc. official website
John Cusack's MySpace page (lots of fun stuff)
My previous post

Obama's choice of top economic advisor

I was very disappointed to hear David Sirota today on the Rachel Maddow show talking about Obama's pick for his top economic advisor--Jason Furman, a man who is closely linked to Robert Rubin, who helped pave the way for NAFTA and other parts of the neoliberal free trade agenda under Bill Clinton in the 1990's, and who is now chairman of Citigroup. Furman helped defend Wal-Mart after the release a few years back of the documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price and has been a globalization cheerleader.

It seems like this choice is sending exactly the wrong message. At a time when more than 70% of Republicans are saying they want a change in our trade policies--well, I think America has caught on to the fact that what helps Wall Street doesn't necessarily help Main Street--and in fact that the opposite is often true. A company lays off its workers and up goes its stock. A CEO drives a company into the ground and walks away with millions while the workers see their pensions reduced to nothing. Technology companies offshore the jobs that were supposed to replace all the manufacturing jobs we have lost to "free" trade deals.

One of the criticisms that I heard early on about Obama was that he was too closely linked to Wall Street. This appointment certainly doesn't reassure me.

This is the message I sent to the Obama campaign today:

I am deeply deeply disappointed in the choice of Jason Furman for top economic advisor to your campaign. When even 70%+ of Republicans are saying in polls that they want our trade policies changed, having a champion of Wal-Mart and someone so close to the taint of Rob Rubin as your top advisor sends the wrong message. I understand letting them be at the table--you want balance, and perspective. But such a choice begs the question--Whose side are you going to be on anyhow? I'd heard about the close ties to Wall Street. It was one of the reasons I was not an early Obama supporter. We know free trade doesn't work. We are not stupid. We need change in this country, not the same old neoliberalism that is destroying America. I hope you listen to what the people are saying. We know Wall Street is not on our side. What about you?

I hope that many others will make their voices heard as well.

Links:
Barack Obama contact page
LA Times article about the Furman appointment

Strange as This Weather Has Been

I just finished reading this engrossing novel by Ann Pancake, about a West Virginia family's experience as the world around them gets blown and washed away by mountaintop removal mining. I thought the book did a wonderful job of humanizing what people in this region are facing as Big Coal seeks to reap big profits and externalize the costs of their actions in incredible, devastating ways.

The first time I heard much about this was in a speech given by Robert Kennedy, Jr. when he came to address the Sacred Activism Conference held in Lynnwood, Washington a little over two years ago. He talked about how this practice was causing incredible devastation that was little known or understood by people outside the area, because the corporate media has by and large failed to inform the public about it.

I read more recently about how activists who went to Appalachia to help residents protest this practice, by which the whole tops of mountains are blasted off and the toxic runoff clogs streams and destroys whole ecosystems. The article talked about a man who had held out from selling his land, and how his animals had been killed and he himself was getting death threats. These activists had gone there to help, and they talked about how the police just stood by while the protesters were being threatened with bodily harm. Scary stuff.

Anyhow, the book was well worth reading; the real story is devastating.

There are a number of organizations working hard on this issue--here are links to a few of them:

Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition
Stop Mountaintop Removal
Mountain Justice Summer

Ann Pancake also has a blog with more information about the book and the issue:

Ann Pancake's Blog

Food for Thought

For some number of years, Thich Naht Hanh has been a kind of hero of mine. His book, The Raft is Not the Shore--composed of transcripts of a series of conversations in the 1974 in Paris between Thich Naht Hanh and Father Daniel Berrigan--is one of the best things I have read about how to be a spiritual person who takes action in the world.

I had looked into going to a retreat with Thich Naht Hanh last year and I was curious if they would be holding any more retreats with him this year, and so I ended up at the Deer Park Monastery's website and I found this letter, which I read tonight. It was from last fall, so it's not exactly new but ...it was new to me. At any rate, the letter talks about what was going on in Burma with the uprising of the monks there, and about global warming.

In the letter, he tells a story attributed to the Buddha, about a couple who sets off across the desert with their young son, and they get lost. Realizing that they will all die if they have no food, they kill their son and eat him bit by bit. He compares our failure to eat mindfully to the situation of this couple, eating their son.

It's a gruesome analogy, but worth some thought. In the letter, he makes the case that eating "vegetarian" (but really meaning "vegan") is one of the best things that we can do to help save the Earth, and he makes a compelling case. It's kind of staggering to realize how many crops are grown just to feed animals. That it takes 25,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat.

I am not a vegetarian. I try to be careful about the kind of meat I eat, but I can't say I always am. I love eggs. The thought of giving up eggs makes me feel...well, suffice it to say I would probably miss eggs and milk more than meat. I don't think I'm ready to give them up--but I'm willing to consider cutting back. In the letter, he talked about abstaining from meat (and eggs, and dairy) for 4 days, or 10 days, or a 15 days a month. I'm not quite ready to make that commitment yet, but it's got me to thinking.

Link:
Thich Naht Hanh October 2007 letter
The Raft is Not the Shore (on Amazon.com)

One World Everybody Eats

I heard recently about a restaurant in Salt Lake City where they serve fresh, organic food--to all comers. There are no prices, and no set menu--the chefs serve up what they feel like serving, based on what is available, and you pay what you think the meal is worth. And if you can't afford to pay with money, you can pay with volunteer hours. If you can't afford to pay at all, you can eat a complimentary meal of dal (an Indian lentil dish) and rice.

Volunteering in the restaurant, you can get training and experience you can take with you in seeking employment.

Not content to do good just in her part of the world, Denise Cerreta, owner of the Salt Lake City restaurant, is helping the model spread elsewhere with her One World Everybody Eats Foundation.

Whenever I think about the bad stuff in the world, I have to think about people who are doing amazing stuff like this. This is a radical idea in our world, where access to food--much less nutritious, good food--is not considered a right, but a privilege.

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the US is a party (yes, it's true, we really signed on to this, and it supposedly has the force of international law), says this:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

And yet...hunger persists, even in the United States. And even where people are fed, often the food is low-quality, and many of the health problems experienced disproportionately by the poor in this country, like obesity, and Type II diabetes, can be explained by a nutrient-poor diet--not enough fresh food, too much processed white flour. Pasta. Ramen. Food bank food tends to be of low-quality--and many food banks now are struggling to keep food on their shelves because of the economic downturn and the rising cost of food.

I have never worked in the food industry. I don't like to cook much and try to avoid it whenever possible. I struggle to feed my child food that he will eat that is healthy, and don't always succeed (sometimes it's just easier to feed him something--anything--that he will eat). But I feel a kind of envy for people who have enough guts to do stuff like this that has the potential to have a huge impact on a community--and beyond.

Links:
One World Everybody Eats website
NPR - Hunger in America
Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

I suppose that today I should be talking about Hillary's speech or at least something that has to do with peace and justice or something. But today what is on my mind is the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

I'm taking guitar lessons and was looking around on the internet to see if I could find some song to work on next, and somehow I ended up at this website that had a bunch of folk songs, including Gordon Lightfoot's famous song by this title.

Now, I've known this song. I actually got to see Gordon Lightfoot perform it last year in concert. I don't actually own it though; my only album of his is Gord's Gold (volume one--I guess it is on volume two). I went to YouTube to see if I could find the song, and found a number of postings.

I sort of had the idea that it was based on a real story, but didn't ever think too much about it. For some reason I thought it happened a long, long time ago. So I was sort of shocked to see that it happened in 1975, when I would have been eight years old. Probably not old enough to have thought much about it, but old enough to have heard.

Somehow, I don't know why, it makes the whole thing feel very different to me, and it's on my mind today. They were carrying a full load of taconite, a source of iron ore, destined for a mill outside of Detroit when the storm came and the Edmund Fitzgerald capsized.

It makes me think of all the people who have died and continue to die trying to make a living; certainly nothing new but also a problem that modernization has failed to solve. Regulation has helped lower the death rate for workers, but still an average of about 15 workers die on the job every day in America, and cutbacks in regulatory agencies have meant heightened hazards at work. Now, shipping has always had its hazards and I don't mean to imply necessarily that any government regulation could have saved the Fitzgerald; it just makes me think. I have always been pretty safe at work, I think (except maybe for the summer they were tarring the roof. That was terrible!) But I know that's not true for many, many people.

I thought this was a beautiful tribute to the men who died on the Edmund Fitzgerald that cold November day in 1975:



Links:
Article about the SS Edmund Fitzgerald on Wikipedia
Article on OMB Watch website about cutbacks in the OSHA budget

The Goodness of Humanity

I was listening to this CD today of a gathering I attended on New Year's, with a--well, let's just say non-traditional kind of teacher. One of the things that stood out to me today on the recording was when he said that when we cut ourselves off from another, when we fail to see the human hands that support us in the things that we touch, in the food that we eat, in the things that we buy, that it is our own humanity that is damaged. That when we let ourselves not care about them and the quality of their lives, we hurt ourselves.

I read an article some time ago, about a program where kids were given recycled computers in exchange for tutoring other kids. The author wrote a book (which I have not read), but it has a catchy title. "No More Throwaway People."

Part of a Van Jones speech used that same expression in the Awakening the Dreamer symposium I went to last week. The following is similar (if not the same) as what he said in the video clip I saw:

This country is 5 percent of the world's population. We produce 25 percent of the greenhouse gas pollution and we have 25 percent of the world's prisoners. Most of those prisoners are low-income people of color locked up for committing nonviolent crimes including drug offenses.

What ties those two stats together is an underlying ethic of disposability. We still have a society where we think we have throwaway stuff and throwaway people. We don't believe that's true.

We can only throw people away if we don't acknowledge them as people. People can only hurt others insofar as they can see those people are separate from themselves.

One of the other things on the CD was about how we tend to think of ourselves as individuals first, and people second, but that this way of thinking is wrongheaded. This came up in Stumbling on Happiness, too, the recent bestseller by the Daniel Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard. He said that we are really very alike as people; that we don't always recognize that, but we are. The things that comprise our individuality tend to get magnified and blown out of proportion.

Do you remember growing up and learning about all the terrible things that people had done to one another? And continue to do? How hard it was to believe? How it felt so wrong, so terrible? (I hope it wasn't just me that felt that way!) The Holocaust. World Wars. Murder. Rape. Nuclear weapons. What if it was so hard to believe because those things are not a true part of human nature? I know it's hard to believe, based on the record. But what if that were true? What if it's true that the only reason we have all those things is because we have allowed ourselves to believe that other people are not people as we are? And that if we change how we see--if enough of us change how we see (he said the magic number was 13%, believing a different way)--that we can change how things are?

What if?

Links:
Yes! Magazine article: Unleashing our Hidden Wealth
Complete Van Jones transcript
Stumbling on Happiness website
Carol and Carruch

Dreaming of a world where every child is welcomed

As the cost of food rises, more and more people are facing the stark reality of being unable to pay for food, or being unable to pay for enough food. In this world we have made, it is money that decides more and more who eats and who does not. This is a heavy and complex topic, that I am going to postpone droning on about for another day.

However, I read this quotation last year in the Summer Edition of Yes! Magazine and it keeps percolating up in my mind:

Perhaps one day the world, our world, won't be upside down, and then any newborn human being will be welcome. Saying, "Welcome. Come. Come in. Enter. The entire earth will be your kingdom. Your legs will be your passport, valid forever."

-Eduardo Galeano

Yes, we have to think about population issues. The burden that we place upon this Earth. But I can't help but long for a world in which we've achieved enough balance, and achieved enough wisdom, that this will be the welcoming call to all human children.

An Interesting Theory About Why Hillary's Stuck it Out

My mom sent me a link to Kent Nerburn's blog today. He'd posted something someone he knew had passed along in response to a blog entry he'd written about why he thought Hillary should bow out of the race. The guy said something like this--that Hillary was selflessly staying in the race because she knew what no one can say--that America isn't ready for a black man in the White House, and that his candidacy is doomed. Lovely Hillary, this isn't about her, oh, no. It's because she knows she is the Democratic Party's only hope of defeating John McCain come November.

Maybe this is true. I've had my doubts about this myself; I suspected Big Media only allowed his candidacy to progress because they either thought that a) there was no way he could win, or b) they could buy/control/sink him if he did. I mean, look at what they did to Dennis Kucinich. Made sure no one could hear him so that they could perpetuate the myth that he's a crazy guy. Or to John Edwards, mocking his $400 haircuts and saying that because he's a rich guy he must just be pretending he cares about poor people!

But I hope that what I sense is true...that Obama is bigger than the man himself. Not that he's not a great guy and all that. But I think the movement behind Obama has much more to do with a desire for real change in Washington--a hunger for a politics that calls us to live up to the best in ourselves, for the good of us all. He's tapped into an energy that is much bigger than he is.

One man will not be the solution to all that ails us. But as we've seen in the last 7+ years, it does matter who is President. I for one am hoping for brighter days ahead.

Link:
Kent Nerburn's blog

That Could Have Gone Better...

I don't blame Hillary for not wanting to give up. OK, well, maybe I do, a little. The handwriting has been on the wall for a while now, as most of us could see. I was afraid that she might try to take this all the way to the convention. I felt hopeful this morning when I heard that Bill was saying he wouldn't be campaigning much longer and that a memo had gone out to campaign staff letting them know the campaign was being shut down. I had some hopes that Hillary would be gracious. Try to do something to make up for the fact that she had said stuff like that John McCain was more capable of leading the country than Barack Obama. And to think he might have to take her on as a running mate? Yikes!

I tried to find a copy of her speech tonight, to no avail. All I could find was commentary. But it seemed that the messages were clear--"I won more votes than he did. I won the critical swing states. Read between the lines, people--I am the winningest candidate! Me! Me!" Sigh.

I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything better, given the way she's run this campaign. I found it disheartening to peruse her website, to see the comments that her supporters were posting. Things along the line of, "But she won the popular vote! How can they steal this from us?" And "Barack cheated by taking those delegates in Michigan!" And..."She hasn't given up, we're going all the way to Denver, baby!" Double sigh.

Perhaps this process will be educational for some people, that some of them will finally learn how presidential candidates are selected. I imagine many will be angry, or at least disgruntled. In my opinion, the party holds way too much sway. I'd like to see a nationwide primary. Heck, I'd like to do away with the primary system entirely and just do instant runoff voting. But the fact of the matter is that under the current system, the parties get to decide the rules, and the states get to decide if they will caucus or have primaries (or both, as we did here in Washington State). That's the way it is. And even if you don't like it, in my opinion, you should respect the rules enough to at least abide by your own pledges. But perhaps that is too much to ask. Or at least too much to ask of some people.

At any rate--Hillary? You gave it a go. Some even think you did a good job of it. Obama wasn't my first pick either, but I think it's clear that we Americans (and yes, think people in caucus-going states should count too!) have spoken. I hope that you'll redeem yourself soon. Perhaps you are hoping for a McCain victory so you can give it another go in 2012. I hope that isn't so. But so far--I'm still waiting for the evidence that you will do the work you need to do, to throw your support behind the Democratic candidate you have pledged to support at the end of the day...or will that be just another empty pledge?

The Coolness of Local Cooling

Local Cooling is a tiny little utility that is free to download and use; it has customizable settings for saving energy on your computer. I heard about Local Cooling some time ago, but didn't install it because...OK, well, because of my impatience. I have an old computer that I use with my son and we pretty much run it most of the time, for two reasons--one, because of not wanting to shut down the browser windows we have open, and two, because the computer is a slug and takes forever to start up. But I got a new used computer recently which is much faster, so I decided to give it a go. On the new computer. Because you have to start somewhere, right?

Local Cooling will shut down your monitor, spin down your disks, and even turn your computer off after a predetermined time of inactivity. You can choose predetermined settings based on how much energy you want to save, and you can also tweak the settings to make them work better for you.

The thing I like best about it is that I tend to keep a lot of browser windows open and since it forces my computer to shut down with inactivity, Firefox remembers where I was and asks me if I want to restore the browser windows. Very handy.

It also tells you how much electricity you've saved, and the rough equivalents in number of trees and gallons of oil. To see those numbers ticking up is pretty motivating. Now I just need to figure out how to use it with the slug in a way that won't make us crazy!

Link:
Local Cooling website

The Story of Stuff

One of the items featured in yesterday's symposium was The Story of Stuff, a 20-minute video by Annie Leonard, which discusses, with the aid of stick-figure animation, the life cycle of stuff in our current paradigm. Most of it I kind of knew, but it was something to see the whole thing presented so starkly and succinctly. My mother's significant other for years railed on about the insanity of our system which champions "throughput"--I knew what he meant, in a vague sort of way, but I think that this video shows it brilliantly. This system, which is basically a ravening maw, razing the earth and leaving destruction in its wake, represents at the very least shortsightedness, if not madness, on a finite planet.

Today I went to both Toys'R'Us and Target, and used my plastic to buy stuff at each. My son had a birthday party to go to; I had a few things to pick up. After the symposium, I couldn't help but be a little sickened by all the stuff I saw today. All the gleaming stuff in pretty packages. The stuff I saw people buying. Nothing to let us know the true cost of any of those things. It bothered me, but it didn't stop me from buying; I didn't stop my son. We try to be "careful" with what we buy...but we had a birthday party to go to, and there are some expectations to meet.

I guess what that means is that there is still a lot of work to be done. That I still have a lot of work to do.

The first part of the movie:

A video response by Mendocino High School Students:


Link:
The Story of Stuff official website -- watch the video, get the DVD, find out how to host a viewing party, and more...

Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream

Today I went to see the Pachamama Alliance symposium, Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream. I'd been wanting to go for some time, so was happy that things came together for me to go today.

Basically we were taken on a journey--to see the trajectory of human interaction with the Earth-- and given a chance to express how we feel at this moment when so many of us know we are headed into dangerous, treacherous waters, facing decisions which will impact the future of most life on Earth. It was very emotional, and I felt a lot of grief.

The journey didn't stop there, however--we were shown how many people are standing up, how many things are being done; whether it will be enough of course is anybody's guess--but surely if we do nothing we know that we won't like to see what happens.

One of the quotations shared was this, a favorite of mine from another life:

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

-George Bernard Shaw

I knew much of this stuff going into it; many of the speakers were familiar and the information wasn't really new for the most part. What was powerful for me was to connect with other human beings and share a experience that encouraged me to push myself more and be less afraid about stepping out to do what I can.

Links:

Awakening the Dreamer Symposium Information
Pachamama Alliance website
For The Grandchildren website

Memorial Day thoughts...

To my knowledge, no one in my family has ever died in the military, although some have served. So for me, Memorial Day has mostly just been a long weekend. The start of the summer. But here we are, five years into this war/occupation, with no end in sight, and I think it's worth it to take some time to ponder the costs of war, most of which are borne disproportionately by a few.

I posted this a couple of years ago for Memorial Day, and I think it's worth revisiting. Ian Rhett wrote this song, accompanied by a video that was released for Memorial Day 2006, in honor of his then 19-year-old sister who was serving in the Marine Corps in Iraq. I watched it again a couple of days ago, and found it undiminished in its impact.

His first video, "(Didn't Know I Was) Unamerican," is also worth watching in the context of this day, I think--it speaks to the liberty that the founders of our country were seeking, and which our military is ostensibly there to protect.

War Inc. and John Cusack on Thom Hartmann's Radio Show

I heard John Cusack yesterday on the Thom Hartmann show, speaking about his new movie, War Inc. He was talking about how difficult it had been to get support for the movie, which is a satirical look at the outsourcing of war. How the corporate media had basically only started to talk about the movie when the buzz was building to a certain point elsewhere, and how reviews in the corporate press had been for the most part lukewarm or outright critical. He reminded me that there was a time, not so very long ago, when we were being openly warned to watch what we say--that in essence, we needed to destroy democracy in order to save it.

Now, I have been a fan of John Cusack since I saw him in The Sure Thing my freshman year of college, and I have admired much--not all, but much--of his work.

I think this movie brings out into the open what has not had enough discussion here at home--what the implications are of outsourcing military functions. We have seen some of what KBR and Blackwater have done in Iraq, but I don't think that there is probably enough awareness of what this has meant in real terms.

So I'm hoping it will make it out of LA and New York into wider distribution; it looks like it will be funny as well as thought-provoking.



You can download Thom Hartmann's May 23 interview with John Cusack here (in the second hour):

KPOJ Thom Hartmann Podcast Page

Justice, or Mercy?

I just finished reading Philippa Gregory's book "A Respectable Trade," and it's given me pause to think more about the structure of this world, of my world, and what has brought us to where we are. In large part it was the slave trade, and then later colonization, and then after that economic hegemony, that allowed the massive accumulation of wealth in what we now call the developed world.

I named this blog "The Long Arc," out of the hope and faith that the world would and could become more just. I have resonated with the bumper stickers that say "If you want peace, work for justice." I like the word Justice. It conjures up images of right triumphing over wrong, of good triumphing over evil. I believe that a more just world is what I want. I see all the unfairness, all the inequity, and I think that life would be better here on earth if things were more just.

But sometimes I see how I benefit, how I've benefited my whole life, from injustice. I haven't liked the possibility that things I buy are made in sweatshops, I haven't liked the fact that my food in all probability has been harvested by people who are little better than slaves, who have little power and few choices. I try to do what I can. But I am part of this system, and I wouldn't know how to extricate myself fully even if I could.

Sometimes now when I think about what you might call the karmic burden of my life as an American consumer, I fear full justice. As the American Empire quavers on what might be its last legs, and I think about how far we could fall and what it all might mean for being able to maintain what I've come to think of as quality of life for my family, for my child, it is hard to not feel fear. What if the chickens we've set loose in the world come home to roost? I think of what we've done to Iraq. What we've helped be done to people in countless nations on this earth to maintain our cheap access to oil and other resources. I think of the thousands of Iraqi women in exile who are working as prostitutes to make the money they need to live. I want life to be better for those people, for all people. But I'm not sure if I really want justice, full justice.

One of my favorite Shakespearean quotes comes from The Merchant of Venice, a play that has come under fire for its anti-Semitic overtones. I've read a lot of Shakespeare, and forgotten most of what I've read, but these lines have always resonated:

The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
’T is mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s,
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

I believe that working for justice is a necessity--to always look to see the connections between what I do and how it affects others in this world. I believe that at our core we are an inseparable One, and that my life should reflect that reality. In a body, when all is working well, the cells work together synergistically for the good of the one body.

When I think of this karmic burden I bear, that we bear, I feel bad. But I know that guilt comes cheap, and if I only feel bad, like a penance paid for a wrong, that it does nothing to right the wrong. The only thing that I believe matters in the end is how those feelings of guilt translate into right action. I will work for justice, in the ways I can, but I will hope for mercy.

Does anyone else feel like they are running out of time?

I haven't posted for a while. I've had my reasons. The perennial lack of time thing. Feeling like whatever I might say has already been said, so what is the point, that sort of thing.

In the last few years I've been struggling to find a way to live in this world at this time, a time of deep uncertainty--to do what I need to do to come to grips with the enormity of the challenges of this time of being human on this earth, while still keeping myself in the here and now, where things are really OK--for me, at any rate. It seems like this has been a recurrent theme of the messengers in my life--the "be here now" thing. I'm trying to do that. I get that, that the reality of life isn't what I see, that my human brain probably can't comprehend it--that there is more to life than I see on the surface. But I also know that we're going down a treacherous path--as a nation, as a planet. We have no plan, as Americans, for the future. We hope it will turn out OK. But we have no plan for sustainability, and haven't been able to come to grips with what living unsustainably does to us at a very deep level. We know it can't go on forever. We just want to hope the party lasts long enough for us, and maybe for our children, if we can think that far ahead. I think most of us just try not to think about it too much.

I was reading an article last week in Conscious Choice, a free magazine about town, about a new phenomenon--"Eco anxiety." A term for the people who are freaking out about the state of things. Out of worry about the state of the Earth, of its ability to sustain us over the long haul. About the toxins in the air, the water, the things we live near every day. I think that even for those who don't allow those thoughts to creep too close--perhaps because just getting through today is struggle enough, and there isn't time or room enough to think too much about tomorrow--that on some deep level, it affects us all. I don't think it's an accident that depression is so common in America. There is a deep imbalance in this world, and it is not hard to see. We've been taught that we have to look out for ourselves, because no one else will do it, and yet there is no real safety that doesn't come from deep community.

I have been feeling like time is running out, winding down. My response has mostly been to try not to think about it. To make excuses and to wish and hope a time will come when I'll have the extra time to do the things to make my life align more with what I feel at my core that it should be. I think it's a kind of denial, springing from a grief and fear that I just do not want to feel.

So I can shut it out, try to hold it at bay. Or I can bring it close, and let it propel me to take steps in the direction that calls me. It's the choice I have at any moment. It usually feels easier to push it off, to put it off until another day. There is always so much to do, after all. Damn kitchen just never seems to get clean. But I don't think it's what I came here to do.

I don't know what the answer is, but I think the first answer is to do what I can to try to resist the impulse to not do the things I want to do because I feel like there is no time to do them, because I can see so clearly how that story will end, and that it would be easy to run out a whole life that way. To take steps--even if they are baby steps--to reclaim the time, to do what I can to make it matter, while I have it. While I have this day.

Link:

Conscious Choice article about Eco Anxiety

Brought home some worms today...

They were 'spensive! Yikes! I bought 3 pints at the garden store and they were almost $9 a pint!

At any rate, I ordered a worm bin last week, off of Amazon.com, from a Washington company called "Worm Paradise". Or at least, that is their seller name on Amazon. They were very quick and I like the thing so far--more like a worm condo than a bin. I liked it because it had stackable trays and a spigot at the bottom to drain the "tea". I'm in a townhouse and don't have a lot of freedom to garden, but I was feeling sad about all the lovely veggie scraps and that we throw away and thought it would be fun to have a worm bin. My roomie long ago set one up in our small kitchen in our 5th floor apartment--just a plastic bin, really, with some dirt and worms. But I've never done this on my own so I'm quite excited to see how the little buggers do.

The garden store was quite cramped today, so the gardening bug is in the air. We had snow not so many weeks ago, but I think there is hope now that spring has finally sprung here in the Northwest. Hallelujah!

Link:
Worm Paradise seller's page at Amazon.com

On education and recognizing our shared humanity

I read an article some time ago in Yes! Magazine called "Universal Education" by John Taylor Gatto, who during his teaching career was named NYC Teacher of the Year and New York State Teacher of the Year for his work in New York public schools. He had a number of memorable things in the article, but two quotes stood out for me.

One was from the privately funded Rockefeller General Education Board:

In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk.

We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply.

The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.

From the article:

Another insider of modern schooling, H.H. Goddard, chair of psychology at Princeton, said in 1920 that government schooling is “the perfect organization of the hive.” He wrote that standardized testing would cause the lower classes to face their biological inferiority (sort of like wearing a public dunce cap), which would discourage their reproduction.

Wow! The foundations of universal education in America--not about helping children fulfill their potential as human beings, but about molding people into grateful workers. Standardized testing--not about helping us all measure up, but about helping us know how undeserving most of us are for the good things in life.

I'm not entirely sure how we break out of this trap we're all in, that tells us that we more or less get what we deserve, regardless of what the social structures are that surround us. As for me, I want to start by doing my best to see all the human beings around me--to see them, to acknowledge them as part of my tribe. It isn't always easy. It's much easier to just dismiss some people as evil or bad, selfish, or stupid. But I think that this is an essential part of the problem, and it is so pernicious it rarely fails to affect any of us. We blame the selfish and evil Republicans. They blame the godless bleeding heart liberals. We blame the rich. They blame the poor. But if I see you, and I acknowledge you as someone who shares a beating human heart just like mine, then I can't exploit you, and neither can I just write you off as evil and bad and utterly unlike myself. We all fail. We mostly get back up. We try to love. We don't always know how. Even as I'm writing this, I'm using "us" and "them". But I think we need to find our way to "we" to get to a world that really works. Maybe even to keep a world in which human beings can live.

I read somewhere recently about our "fragile" planet. Our planet is not fragile. It was in many ways better off without us and it will be OK long after we're gone. We need to save an Earth that is inhabitable for us. And I think we'll need to pull together to do that. As for me, I will start by opening my eyes to see those around me, to recognize the people I see in all their wonderful and varied humanity--whether they think like I do or not. I don't know if it will do too much. I doubt it will change the whole world. But it will change me. And maybe that's all we really get to do, anyhow. If nothing else, it's a start.

Link:
Universal Education by John Taylor Gatto