Winter, Eugene. Missing Sunshine. Socorro Where Are You.

It Snowed last night in Eugene, Oregon. Eventful!

Here I go again, hesitating to report because I don't seem to have enough glowing wonderful hopeful things to report.
It is interesting though. Pain remains the primary impetus for choosing steps along my healing path. A friend was speaking recently of our human problem of pain relief seeking. I've worked with persons addicted to pain killers. I commented to my friend that as far as the temptation that pain killers might offer, I have little perspective because I have no experience in pain relief. Only pain. Its a true drag on my psychic and emotional energies and certainly physical energies. I'm looking into everything.
Last week I had a surgical procedure for pain relief--the celiac plexus block. I had misunderstood and expected immediate pain relief after the procedure--done under conscious sedation, with long needles that spread a nerve disolving solution at the site of the problem. Now, I've read that the procedure doesn't provide immediate relief and that the effectiveness and length of pain relief generally increases with repeated injections.
I called the pain specialist's office this morning and asked about scheduling a second procedure. I have to wait until a seven day recovery interview can be done and then on the basis of that schedule a repeat procedure if it is considered appropriate by the doctor.
Here is the link for information about the celiac plexus block.

Meanwhile. I've become interested in Medical Marijuana. Oregon has a Compassion Center that will help with doing all the necessary steps to register as a patient whose doctor has recommended smoking pot--cannabis--to relieve serious medical symptoms including severe pain, and the nausea that accompanies pain treatment and chemotherapy. My general practitioner, my doctor of nearly 30 years, has made that recommendation to me and I'm exploring it. I'm not interested in growing any "my own." I hope to find somone who will agree to be my "designated grow site". The site, my doctor, and myself, have to be registered and recorded on the registration card that I will receive as a registered user.

I've heard of problems in California with police and growers clashing. I've been told that these problems are not happening in Oregon and that when there has been a legal question it has been settled in favor of the registered medical marjuana user.

Besides these explorations, I have consulted a naturopathic doctor, ND, who specializes in 'oncology'--the medicine of treating cancer. She has me on an anti-cancer program. The recommended diet includes some fermented food--so far all I've managed is Miso; a powdered drink supplement called Nanogreens, and another containing Aribogalactins; my trusted systemic enzymes--Wobenzym; N-acetyl L carnitine to relieve th neuropathy in my hands and feet; Melatonin--in larger amount that would be used for sleep aid, because the substance itself may be an anticancer agent.

I'm also using a self hypnosis CD from the Ontario Hypnosis Center called "Healing the Body Through Mind and Spirit", and another CD by Belleruth Naparstek that uses imagery and affirmations. I haven't listened to the Nancy Hopps pain CD for a while. I will. I tend to switch from one favorite tape to another.

Some of my friends are managing to keep in touch, while others have been finding it difficult with the flu season upon us. I can't be exposed to anyone who might have an infectious sneeze or cough, so it limits us. And also I am in so much pain that I cannot get myself out of the house. I haven't even been for a walk. I am doing some exercises, though, remembered from when I had an injured knee. I do these on the living room floor and hope they are keeping me from increasing debility.

You may be able to tell that I am not feeling very hopeful. I think that if I were not in pain, and that if eating did not hurt me that I could have a more positive attitude.

Just yesterday I decided to let go of the idea of traveling to the Morgenthaler Christmas in Petaluma, California. It was a good decision. It's opening it up for me to get to have time with both Day and Arlo and their families here in Eugene. I'm delighted at that and looking forward to Arlo's and Marina's, and Rebekah's, cooking. If we can somehow include Wendy and Rock in the Holiday events it will be quite perfect. I know both of them will be engaged with their own families--kids and spouses. Anyway, I'm glad I decided to stay home.

Lets all ring down the holiday with wishes for me to be free of pain, and able to enjoy my wonderful family.

Purple Iris

Be kinder than necessary
Because everyone you meet is fighting
Some kind of battle.

The KIVA

Remember back in the 70's when the Kiva was a big warehouse down on 11th, next to a dance hall, and other good stuff. The whole foods grocery if I visualize it right was in the back right hand corner. There were books, and wines, and things--kitchen things, homesteader things, bulk foods. There was an earth shoe shop in a little loft near the front door accessed by a ladder and not tall enough to stand upright in. Remember? And down along one side there were booths and tables and folks hung out there. We ran into friends. I was living down by Cottage Grove then, and would come in with my partner Wayne, and friends from our little "back to the land" farm we called Tanager. I was the only person in our friend group to have a baby one of those years--Day, born in 1974-- in our little home made house on Blue Mountain School Road made from the recycled boards of the old Cottage Grove Hardware Store. There was a bunch of us living there then, maybe a dozen. It was eventful and full of love, work, gardening, goats, and other forms of angst. When Day was born, being the baby of a big household he was a pretty popular item. Everyone wanted to hold him, a phrase was born--"Let me hold 'im", which came out "...hold eem" and then became a nick name for a while. I remember being in the Kiva one day after Day started toddling and he was loose running around. Across the room I heard a happy shout. "It's Eem! It's the Eem beam!" Our friend Michael Forster, Magic Michael had spotted his little darling.

One day not long ago, I saw a young mom with a little kid, blond hair long enough to blow in the wind, wearing a little jean jacket with the sleeves rolled up to let out his baby hands. They were stopped on a street corner she bent over him. I felt liked I'd looked in a mirror to the past. It made me cry for those old days of hope and friendship, before the fall. When a new baby was the hope of the world, our world, the one we were envisioning and building.

I guess what was lost, for a while, is how ongoing that task is. How it doesn't just happen by our hard work and then we get to live in it. It happens, and unhappens, and morphs, and changes, and succeeds, and fails, and births new fears,and new dreams. Some of us are still here, or here again, or left the planet for a while and will maybe be back.

Today, I called the Kiva with a special request, and guess what! Its still here, its still real, its still the heart of the downtown community, and the Kiva came through--the people came through. Because that's always all that can come through. The people. The love.

My friend Sherril Bower who is a clerk there shopped for my groceries for me--cuz I'm house bound--and my son Arlo, born a couple of years after "Eem", stopped by the store which is just blocks from his workplace, to bring me my groceries.

May the circle be unbroken. I'm just spilling over with good feeling right now.

Love to you all.

Body Size as Blessing

artist: Noora K, age 16, Finland

This morning in the tub I thought, hey, after all those years of having a large body, I finally have one that can be completely submerged in a tub full of water. No belly and boobs emerging into the air. Pretty cool. I don't recommend the weight loss method, but it is enjoyable to have a body that can completely soak in warm water without my going to the hot tubs.

What that submerged body looks like is quite another matter, unique in my well fed, always trying to lose weight life. My body is now a deeply wrinkled and creased bag of skin.

Seriously we are so screwed up about what constitutes a healthy body, so certain that thinness is preferable. I remember reading that a woman entering older age is somewhat better off carrying a little extra weight. I see now how having a bit of bod can start one out on an illness or other stress with a resource to help you get through it.

Definitely we are not talking about obesity. After years of nursing and care giving, I am very aware how difficult it is for the patient and the nurses to keep an over sized body comfortable and healthy. Everything--toileting, skin care, mobility, everything--is more difficult and may require special equipment to avoid injury to the patient and the care giver. I strongly recommend maintaining a healthy weight.

However, I am seeing the other side of this picture. During this illness and during the devastating side effects of chemotherapy my body has wasted. I now don't have an ounce of unneeded fat, but I also do not have enough muscle mass. Muscle, when it is adequate will allow me to move, walk, sit, stand, and do tasks without the pain that comes from muscle strain.

I made choices, which included miscalculations, about how to deal with it when I first realized that the chemotherapy, by contributing to demineralization of my bones, had caused compression fractures in my spine. I was in pain at the time, not only from that, in fact possibly not from that at all, but I set about immobilizing my back--resting in correct positions keeping my back straight, resting more, staying off my feet. I did do a few exercises to try to keep the muscles functional. The exercises I did were seriously not enough. I was ill and did not do them regularly. I could have, but I did not. I went often for much of every day into a drifting mindless state, and during a week I might remember to do bed exercises twice for a few minutes. Hardly adequate.

Suffering from the weakness eventually defined itself, and I recognized that I have a very big task in front of me. It got so that shuffling across the house to go to the bathroom was enough to make my back ache. Muscles I wouldn't think of were affected. My handwriting became shaky, my bladder weakened.

The good thing is this is something I can do something about. Affirming that I am healing from my disease, then the task of building my body back becomes very near the top of the list for daily activities. Working carefully I'm getting to where I can do a little "workout" and then rest. I can take a walk.

I've seldom been a disciplined person. I'm still not. This is not discipline, it is motivation, it is hope, it is intent. It's something to do, too. You may be able to imagine how boring it is to be sick. To have just about zero energy for activities, and on top of that to be plagued by the notorious "chemo brain" so that even mental activity becomes null and void.

So in my sudden maturity, suddenly having a body that shows its age after a lifetime of seeming younger than I am, there is this brand new thing. I've become a body builder.

What Has Happened

I'm back at Arlo and Marina's Eugene house. Marina has her first big, real, teaching job after graduating U of O. Its in a nice charter school in Newport, lovely Newport, on the coast. Arlo spends as much time over there as he can. Aren't they lovely!

What happened, in August, is that I got sick so bad and so fast that a moment never felt like the one I could take to talk to you all. Only those I specifically called for help knew what was going on.

It was pain. I have a great deal of respect for pain, long have had from a nursing point of view, and now its personal having experienced some of the effects of constant unrelenting pain, not only unrelenting but increasing on a daily almost hourly basis. Pain management advises getting on top of it and staying there, because playing catch up once you're out of control is a battle won only after major scrimmages.

Knowing why one is in pain helps determine the approach. One might expect a cancer patient to immediately expect and explore new tumor growth. Instead I immediately said well it probably is not that because I'm doing all these good things and have high positive expectations.

I was invested in being well and continuing to do the things that I have wanted to do. I'd written to friends and professional contacts with the information I'd be coming back to New Mexico--in September or October. I was leaving open for myself the idea that I'd return to a retreat setting for further healing. I corresponded with the New Mexico Women's Retreat--a wonderful place where women teach, learn, and share, healing and building homes, among other planet loving activities in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Unfortunately, pain and other indications of ill health led me to believe that I had some other problems that, frustratingly, I would have to deal with here and now while I am in easy contact with my long time physician, Dr. Cordes, and with others in the medical community, as well as with many of my wonderful friends, sisters and brothers and guides along the path.

Subsequently my various theories surfaced, were considered, treatment instated, and after a hopeful day or two, the repeated result: this is not working. We considered a gastric ulcer, post shingles neuralgia, liver disease, compressed discs, pain from a long time post surgical umbilical hernia. I saw a pain specialist, Martin Kloss, who agreed to advise me and my doctor though he didn't officially see me--I'm on medicare only. He was very very kind and good and suggested the compression fractures which were subsequently found on a new xray the next day.

I was on various medications specific to those possibilities, doing back exercises--passive, positional-- and wear a back brace when I could stand it.

One weekend it all came to a head. I went to stay with Tricia and Paul who said, "You go to bed and do nothing, we'll do everything. OK?" On the following Monday, I kept an appointment made weeks before to explore the possibility of repairing the umbilical hernia. I arrived at that baffled doctor's office vomiting in his waste basket and clawing the paper of the exam table. Dr. Dickinson walked in took a look and said, "...and What are we here for???" Clearly not his patients' usual presentation!

The good physician however did exactly what had to be done. He called my oncologist, who was out of town, but arranged with the Willamette Valley Cancer Center to do a new CT Scan that very afternoon. The contrast material didn't work out well for viewing inside the stomach because I was retching, but the photos were sharp and revealing: New lesions scattered down behind my sternum, one sitting on the adrenal gland, others across the waist, and one big old grapefruit hunkered in tight behind and between my liver and my stomach.

Dr. Cordes gave me the word, held my hand, waited for it to sink in, discussed the options, got me on real pain medication, got me an appointment the same day with the on call oncologist, Dr. Caton, at the Cancer Center, and sent me on my way with a healing hug.

These tumors had grown very very fast. Barely a month earlier a scan had indicated a tiny possible something-or-other that we had decided to "watch" and a further scan had been scheduled but was not yet due when all this happened. Its terrifying to see something like that in my body. But I did see it, clearly, on the films in Dr. Caton's office. And had "seen" it during a recent middle of the night melt down with my sister. Gwenda, holding me while I cried, asked me what the pain in my abdomen looked like. I said, "...it's...a...cantelope".

The short of it, and hopefully not the long of it, is that the large tumor on the liver was in a position to stop my life fairly promptly and of a very unpleasant shut down liver and subsequent necrotic liver disease. I chose not to opt for that, and the option available, the only thing known to be fast enough, is chemotherapy.

I've had the first of my second round of chemo now which consisted of weekly sessions, once a week for three weeks. I have a "break" this next week to allow my bone marrow to recover, and other damage to recover. Then I go back for another three weeks of sessions. After that the cancer doctors will do a new Scan to see how much we've been able to destroy.

Chemotherapy we know, does not only target cancer cells, the way it does identify the cells to destroy is to destroy the fastest growing cells, so that a cancer, generally growing faster than the rate it takes to maintain a healthy body organ, is targeted in a scattershot kind of way that also destroys other fast growing cells that we constantly need for renewal--nerves, heart, skin, various repair jobs, bone marrow, bone. We walk a narrow line--using a damaging toxic substance and betting on the body's system renewal mechanisms to repair the collateral damage.

That is the important bet: That my body can celebrate the removal of dead damaged material, repair and replace necessary healthy tissues, and return to its natural state of vibrant health. This is my strongly held belief.

Morgen, Day, Rose, and Rebekah

Cancer is a formidable foe. My son, Day, who is visiting me here right now, met a man on the train coming up through the Cascades. The man is living with and soldiering against cancer--he called cancer a "magnificent" enemy. Not sure of that term, but bein' as the man may be a soldier, a warrier, then probably approprieate for him. What bopped me on the head this time around was the mere fact that "my" cancer did not turn tail and run with the very first clobber with a big stick. I really thought it had. I'd turned happily to my alternative therapies and though I'm less disciplined than I ought to be I believed I was succeeding.

I'll tell you more about the alternatives I am using in another post.

Having this setback, and serious enough that I chose another go round with chemotherapy brought out in me deeply conflicted feelings. I've been sad, mostly. Disappointed. I've also felt I've been naive, and that I really did not "get" the seiousness of this disease and its lessons for me. Those lessons are beginning to come and they are good, and I still feel some unnecessary shame for being so difficult to teach. But mostly even that shame is nothing beside the depth of insight that is occurring in me.

When I am well, when I look back on this phase of illness and treatment, shining through it will be a thread of bright illumination, happiness and gratitude for the deep deep gifts that are beginning to transform my life.

What an adventure.

Summer Visits, Visitors, and Visitations

Me with two of my sons and their women--Arlo, Marina, Day, and Rebekah.
Happy Picnic Day at Joan's.

Waiting for a day I feel better, feel creative again, may be a long way off. I hope not, but I feel the urge to be in touch with all of you, to bring you up to date on my journey. Things do not look the way I expected them to. After being with my daughter in South Dakota, and having a lovely time in the Black Hills with Wendy and Rock and their kids, my grandkids--four delightful teenagers and a whip smart eight year old almost able to hold his own--I thought I would continue to feel better and better.

I began my plan to return to New Mexico, investigated a place near Sedona called New Mexico Women's Retreat, thinking to bring spirit back to body more fully. My brother visited from Seattle and we walked by the Willamette River on a day that Eugene weather showed off and made everyone believe this must be paradise. It has been a lovely summer here, really, and as we let it go and move into fall I'm not as determined to escape as I might have been. That is, not yet!

Me and my little brother Paul

The primary distraction from moving back to what I personally think is paradise, however, is a very unwelcome visitor, visitation, invasion. As yet we don't believe it is an extension of cancer, it is not being treated as such. I've not had chemotherapy since April.
But what has come is Pain. My entire middle is in pain, centered at a focal point near my spine to the right just above my waist, and extending throughout the diaphragmatic area and organs, and into my right shoulder.

My wonderful general practitioner has been unable to determine a cause, my oncologist has likewise come up with no clear idea, I've seen a pain specialist who has some ideas that might help. We're on it. But so far, Aaaaaaghghghgh!

So that's why you don't hear from me. I am so hideously under the influence of constant pain, constant, and then also under the influence of various pain medications and nerve pain medications which confuse my thoughts, and flatten my mood. I feel sometimes like I'm coasting. My digestion seems affected, so eating is difficult again. Most days I'm unable to drive. My sister Gwenda has been here with me for almost two weeks. It's been wonderful, such a help, she's done the driving, shopping, and homemaking, and supported me to do things I might not have done. And helped me get on some homeopathics that help. We're great friends too, and have had fun.

Gwenda doing healthy things in Arlo's kitchen

Last weekend we went to the Shrewsbury Faire near Corvalis, Oregon. Lots of people in Renaissance and other period clothing--garb. Amazingly good traditional food. We had some Hagis--lamb and oat, comfort food. We watched madrigal players, fencing, and real full contact jousting on horseback. Gems, jewelry--his and hers--metal work, wizardry, alchemy. It was lots of fun. I could never have done it without the "horseless carriage" that a gate person graciously offered ("m'lady"). They were renting electric carts--my first experience.

Special shout out: David and Debra, if you have a photo or two to send from your delightful presence at the Faire, I would love to have them, to display them here.

At the Faire

We made it to the Eugene Celebration Parade too. Real party animal, I am! Old news is that the end of August, I moved back to Arlo's house in West Eugene, from the sweet little room I had near Friendly Street Market. So those of you who've visited me, know where I am again, or where I'm not, depending on when you were with me!

I will need and want your visits. My sister is leaving tomorrow morning and I will miss her. Being a little bit mobility challenged is a new thing for me. I may need rides to appointments and shopping. What would be really nice, too, is to do fun things--go places, a movie, an event. I'll be working that out for myself with my network, and simultaneously hoping that the inability to walk a block will be very, very, temporary.

This is deteriorating! I'll add a few photos and let it go. Let me know if you visit the blog. Love to all. Thank you for your beingness.

Health Wealth and Beauty

I'm leaving in the wee small hours of morning day after tomorrow to fly to South Dakota. My heart races at the delight of returning to this childhood homeland.

"Health Wealth and Beauty." Where I grew up, Kadoka, was even flatter, and less green. In Kadoka there was a place where we played that was around a small muddy sometimes dry cow dam at the edge of a corn field abutting our back yard. We called it "The Trees". The town park also had about four trees, in a line. Old gnarled, gray, been there since pioneers, which come to think of it when I was a kid wasn't so far in the past. And there was another place, really wet, a swamp with an island and muskrats, off beyond the school, an anomaly in a place where trees were planted and nurtured as wind breaks along farmers fields, and where every Arbor day school let out for a tree planting ceremony. It is so amazingly different now. Families, mine included, planted trees in their yards, little whippets, and watered them faithfully. Now, fifty years later, its a different town. No longer transparent and windswept. Windy still, but the trees make such a difference! There are still places you can see through the town from one side to the other, but it used to be wherever you stood, now its maybe a particular intersection. [Pretty Quiet Around Here]

Why I'm going on about Kadoka I don't know. I'll be visiting my daughter in Rapid City. As a kid we drove the 100 miles to Rapid City to see a dentist or to buy shoes. Or to go up into the beautiful Black Hills, where my great uncle had a vacation cabin, and where eventually my family also built a cabin.

Here's a photo taken near our cabin.

Sylvan Lake is also close to the cabin.


And this, my main reason for visiting South Dakota this summer, is my daughter Wendy.

Here she is again, wearing a dress that she sewed for festival. Wendy's a seamstress.


And yet again, this time with her brother, my son, Rock, and his youngest, Mitchell Rock, in Kadoka. Rock will be visiting South Dakota this summer too. Celebrate! Cousins and grandkids, siblings, alla that!!!

I am so blessed.

Help While I Heal

That's my beautiful granddaughter Deija and her sign over my head. And that shiny object is my head after chemotherapy. I've been granted a reprieve from further chemo for the nonce, and I'm using it to see what happens when I use only the non-toxic therapies that are considered "alternative" by mainstream medicine.

Contributions to my becoming absolutely completely 100% cancer free can be made by writing a check to the Kate Waterbury Wellness Fund c/o Selco Community Credit Union, P.O. Box 7487, Eugene, Oregon, 97401.

As soon after my first chemotherapy as I had recovered sufficiently to go anywhere I got myself to the nutritional counselor recommended by my sweet wonderful Eugene friends. Besides the enzyme therapy I sought, my NTP has been treating me with bioactive frequencies that help my body detox. I learned that the chemicals in the chemotherapy IV are only actively doing what they do for x number of hours. After that, my body is sick and detoxing from the therapy.

Its important to note that I learned this characteristic of my treatment from my medical doctor. My doctor is very helpful, and responsive to my questions and concerns. The key, in terms of patient advocacy, is knowing what questions to ask!

So I am cooperating with the toxic therapy, which produced dramatic results the first time, noticeable results the second time, and less noticeable the third time. I let it do its thing, even helping it along with positive attitude, and healing imagery. I have tapes and dvd's. Good stuff. My friends have been wonderful.

Besides tapes, books, dvd's and ideas, my Eugene "team" has been here for me every treatment, bringing me soup, organic vegetables to juice, and other wonderful home cooked foods. They've brought friendship, hand-holding, distraction from my feeling punk, an arm to lean on when I was weak. They've sprung me from my room when I began to vegetate in my low energy miasma, and taken me places--out to eat, the movies, shows, "coffee"--more likely a juice bar.

The therapies that I began using while still receiving mainstream treatment include:
Proteolytic Enzymes
BioActive Frequency Treatments
Good Nutrition, Anti-Cancer Diet
Anti-Cancer Nutritional Supplements
Acupuncture
Digestive Enzymes
Guided Imagery
Meditation, Relaxation
Fun
Gentle Exercise
[And I'm planning to up that last one to Dance!]

What you know, if you've faced any health challenges at all, is that insurance will cover the mainstream therapies, pharmaceuticals if you're lucky, and several things that your medical doctor might recommend.

My healing activities, therapists, and supplements, are not covered by my insurance--and my income is very low. My life depends on doing everything I know how to do to continue my healing and to live cancer free. Much I can do on my own with little expense. A few important mainstays like my enzyme therapy and nutritional supplements, and the professionals who are guiding me in using these, are not without considerable cost. During the first month of my treatment I spent several hundred dollars on supportive therapy and I will continue to spend more than I can afford for a long time.

A friend of mine, taking a more pragmatic approach than I could to my situation, has strongly encouraged me to ask for help. Asking for help was one of the very first lessons--it was new and a challenge, but asking my friends and family for help and receiving their loving help and support has been beautiful. Asking for financial help is taking it to an uncomfortable level for me, but here I am, with my hat in my hand...upturned to receive your dollar gifts.

Kate Waterbury Wellness Fund
Selco Community Credit Union
P.O. Box 7487
Eugene, OR 97401

Please write your check payable to the Kate Waterbury Wellness Fund. The lovely people at Selco will know what to do with it. Thank you. I gratefully accept any little thing you can send. If you know of grander donors looking for someone to help, hey, give them that simple little address above, or tell me how to contact them. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Body Building

A blogger on 2013.net re-posted this, calling it, "a nice study of the wonderful relationship between food, foodcells, vegetables and our body and body cells. One of these messages going 'wild' on the internet..." I like it.

Clues

A sliced Carrot looks like the human eye. The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye... and yes, science now shows that carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes.

A Tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart is red and has four chambers. All of the research shows tomatoes are indeed pure heart and blood food.

Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows that grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food.

A Walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds are on the nut just like the neo-cortex. We now know that walnuts help develop over 3 dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.

Kidney Beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys.

Celery, Bok Choy, Rhubarb and more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium and these foods are 23% sodium. If you don't have enough sodium in your diet the body pulls it from the bones, making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.

Eggplant, Avocadoes and Pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female - they! look just like these organs. Today's research shows that when a woman eats 1 avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight and prevents cervical cancers.

And how profound is this? ....It takes exactly 9 months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of these foods (modern science has only studied and named about 141 of them).

Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow. Figs increase the motility of male sperm and increase the numbers of sperm, as well as to overcome male sterility.

Sweet Potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics.

Olives assist the health and function of the ovaries

Grapefruits, Oranges, and other Citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.

Onions look like the body's cells. Today's research shows that onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells. They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes.

Baghdad Fun Park

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of May 22, 2008

During America's first war on Iraq in 1991, I prophesied that one day there'd be a Disneyland in Baghdad. It was a surrealistically sardonic send-up of my native country's imperialism. But now, 17 years later, my absurd prediction is coming true. The same American company that designed the original Disneyland has announced plans to build the Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience. If workers survive bombing, looting, and sniper fire, the first part of the 50-acre amusement park will open this year. While I question whether building a monument to fun is a good idea in an actual war zone, it's an

excellent metaphor for you to apply to your personal life. Even if you can't extinguish a certain conflict that has been raging, try to introduce a spirit of play into the proceedings.--Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology

Surprisingly I can see the possible point of this undertaking. If anyone needs to just have fun, its gotta be the people in Baghdad, and other war zones world wide. What a plan!

Bringing the advise home is timely. I mentioned here earlier that my oncologist and a day later another healer both advised fun. His words, while giving me a two month conditional break from chemotherapy were, "Give you a chance to have some fun." The other advisor, a Matrix Energetics practitioner, Barbara Joy West, bowing to my past lives of traumatic social and political involvement, informed me that's all over and I need to bring sweetness into my life, have more fun. Be joyful.

It keeps coming up. What a sober sides I am. Not at all like the grinning mischievous child I remember. I feel a twinkle in my eye though, I suspect all is not lost. Take me to the circus!

Vegetables

Are discipline and asceticism the hallmarks of a necessary, life saving, change in my dietary habits? [Just try a raw foods diet for a while!] Contrast the comfort level of that cold asceticism, with childhood memories of being nurtured by mother's goulash, her tuna casserole, homemade bread and cinnamon rolls, potato salad, pancakes with butter and syrup, frosted cakes, apple brown betty, bread pudding. With the exception of a brief summer garden, our vegetables were canned and served in tiny side dishes.

My body mind demands that level of comfort. My healing program mandates learning to prepare healthy food. Not knowing how, I find my choices limited to carrot and celery sticks, blanched broccoli, baked potatoes. When I have had food prepared for me, or when I have eaten out, I've encountered truly delicious vegetables. Now I need to learn how to do that for myself, to save my life.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/health/nutrition/20well.html
In an article on how to prepare all the vegetables (for me 9 servings a day) we now know are optimal for our health and feeling good, there is a bit about fat served with vegetables. I remember my sons liking to eat salad. When I expressed delight at this, one of them quipped that it was simply an excuse to eat salad dressing. Not to worry then, this health writer reports that, "When the salsa or salad was served with fat-rich avocados or full-fat salad dressing, the diners absorbed as much as 4 times more lycopene, 7 times more lutein and 18 times the beta carotene than those who had their vegetables plain or with low-fat dressing. Fat can also improve the taste of vegetables, meaning that people will eat more of them."

After discussing the effects of various preparation methods--raw, steaming, boiling, pressure cooking, and even microwaving--the conclusion is that vegetables are best prepared in a variety of ways. "Boiling carrots, for instance, significantly increased measurable carotenoid levels, but resulted in the complete loss of polyphenols compared with raw carrots." So, some carrot sticks, and some cooked with the roast.

The image I'm after is not the ascetic:But the vibrant:

Change You Deserve

Best Belly Laugh Of The Day award!

“...their failed policies have messed up the world to such an inhuman extent that many Americans now live their daily lives in a state of free-floating panic and paralyzing anxiety.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/12/gops-new-slogan-already-b_n_101376.html
Jason Linkins writes in The Huffington Post:

"What the GOP doesn't seem to realize, because they are idiots, is that "the change you deserve" is the registered advertising slogan of Effexor XR, a drug that many of you might have started taking as a result of all the...you know -- terrorism. (Hat tip to Bluestem for catching this gem.)

Effexor, also known as Venlafaxine, is approved for the treatment "of depression, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and panic disorder in adults." Its common side effects are very much in keeping with the world the House Republicans have striven to build: nausea, apathy, constipation, fatigue, vertigo, sexual dysfunction, sweating, memory loss, and - and I swear I am not making this up - "electric shock-like sensations also called 'brain zaps.'"

Its less common side effects are equally awesome in their appropriateness.

And when the Food And Drug Administration reviewed the ad copy that included the tagline, "The change you deserve," it took issue with Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, which manufactures Effexor, saying that the company made "unsubstantiated superiority claims." Sounds like the GOP have picked an ironically accurate tagline for their efforts!"

Special News Link: http://www.mindfreedom.org/

Saturday, yesterday, I was downtown at the Ken Kesey plaza to participate/play with my mind freedom, mad pride group of friends. You might catch a glimpse of me here, worshiping the giant pill. How funny, the proximity of these two stories!

Brave New Films

"Pay Attention"--Aldous Huxley

Whose Issues?

“We can’t let the Democrats take our issues. We can’t let them pretend to be conservatives and co-opt the middle and win these elections. We have to get the attention of our incumbents and candidates and make sure they understand this.” -- Robert M. Duncan, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, in a New York Times article published May 15, 2008.

But they are conservatives Mr. Duncan.

Have you seen the Political Compass? http://www.politicalcompass.org/usprimaries2008

and http://upword.blogspot.com/2006/11/left-or-right-liberal-and-conservative.html

All of our candidates with the exception of Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich on the Left and Mike Gravel on the Right fall in the Right leaning Authoritarian (North East) quadrant of the compass. Heroes like Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Ghandi, and the Dalai Lama, are solidly in the South West quadrant.

And anyway, “our issues”? Humanity has issues. This country has issues. We, the people, have issues. The ways the powerful have been addressing our issues has been disastrous to all but the very wealthiest, and now, the wrongdoing is beginning to catch up to the bottom ranks of the wealthy and powerful.

I never did believe in “trickle down”. Guess what guys! The problems of the poorest of the poor have been moving up as in a capillary tube affecting the ranks of humanity that have felt safely above things like homelessness and hunger, and loss of dignity. The blood stream of America is feeling the illness of our economic and environmental policies--policies that favor the corporation over Mother Earth. How long did the greedy extractors of resources think this could go on?

Its OK though. We got your back, people. It turns out that in this country at least we still have control of our own back yards. We can grow uncorrupted food and eat well. We can collect, store, and use clean water. We have the social freedom to gather together and share these skills. We can object and occasionally have an impact when our air is polluted and our children suffer from asthma. We are so much better off still than those whose homelands, gardens, water, and voice have been taken from them by our and other corrupt governments.

This good life however is going to begin more and more to engage the work of our own hands, the person to person networking, local economy, and community cooperation that we been leaving to “activists”. The rest of us are going to have to get involved, open our eyes and find out what's going on. Where will your food come from, where will your prescription medications come from, where will your clean water come from, where will you get medical care, when we can no longer do business as usual with trucking and shipping, and big corporate processing of everything that comes into our homes?

My granddaughter Deija posted this link on her blog. Its simply powerful. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-_LBXWMCAM

Real Danger

The I Ching, Book of Changes, answering my question about my own right action and right involvement with my community, gave me some good thoughtful advise about following my own true nature and enthusiasm, then, through changing lines, arrived at this rather ominous statement:

"The situation is one of real Danger, caused by and manifested in the affairs of man."

I have been unable to imagine how I personally could be in any real danger, the most dangerous activity I'm involved in on a daily basis is crossing the street to the mailbox.
"Hello-o" a friend of mine laughed when I told her this. She didn't have to elaborate, I had already been reading up about the invasive little process going on in my body and with the new information feeling rather sobered.

My reading and research are leading me to believe that I can not be as smugly confident of my survival as I have at times expressed. The disease that has manifested in my body has causes rooted deep in our common western lifestyle and in our management of our planet's resources.


We desire safety, shelter, comfort, and readily available food. Our standards for these necessities have risen to a level that makes mere supplying of our needs appear to be poverty. Real poverty results however not only in the absence of the things we need, but in the supplanting of good food and adequate shelter with fake look-a-likes, and in the manipulation of our need for safety to control our responses to the misappropriation of resources that we require for our survival and dignity.

That was a mouthful, and there's more of that rant where that came from. Essentially though, what I'm on about today is that if I'm going to overcome dangers through correct behavior my actions start right here in my kitchen. I've learned a lot about eating right, and I have recently gone off plan big time feeding my rampant want for sweets. To correct my response to that "hunger" I want to eat lots of good fresh organic safely produced food. Coupled with my consciousness about community action I have this to share:

Eat Here Now is an event happening in Eugene, Oregon, on Saturday May 17th. First Methodist Church, by the old library 6:30-9 Eugene Permaculture Guild event.
When you go to that site you'll find a calendar of related events. Show up and begin to help yourself to life saving food and planet saving knowledge.

We do live in a situation of real Danger. Correct behavior, acting with integrity and confidence overcomes these dangers within our own circle of influence and protects us. Besides it just feels good.

Feed Your Soul

Work Spaces

What why when and where of work holds a lifelong fascination for me. I've experienced work satisfaction, though not in a sustained way. To create that sustained satisfaction in productive daily activity would be a blessing, a sunshine in my life. I see others who seem to live in this state of grace, and many many more who clearly do not. Please send me your ideas on work. What is the most important work to be done today? Who's doing it? Can we help? Would it be fun?

Some more questions about work. Should it be work that is somehow 'true to one's nature'? Should it be work that one's community values enough to pay a living wage for? What if it is not both? Clearly work must be done that is just work, just cleaning up the mess, just maintaining the structure. What is the one most important quality or function of work?

Photo at left, by the way, is Gypsy Rose Lee, at work on her memoirs. I love it.

Sweetness

Two wise health and wellness persons have told me in the past two days to , "have fun"--"bring some sweetness into your life". Even my oncologist spoke of giving me a chance to "have some fun". That I've not yet thought how to do that speaks to the necessity of reminding me.
The world's a pretty serious place, the decisions to be made in our local and national elections are very serious, addressing wrongs done to other nations--including especially those within our borders, is very sobering.
Watching documentaries, even historical movie dramas, make me shudder, make me cry. I want to do something, but what? And how am I to do that while having fun? The realization that came to me the other day while glancing at the "devastation as usual" newspaper headlines might be a starting place. I wondered, "What would be printed here if we were all happy and at peace, tending our gardens and our homes, exchanging our labor and goods in a neighborly and humane way, raising out children, enjoying the earth?" I realized that there would be nothing printed there. We are accustomed to a steady diet of greed, conflict, disharmony, desperation...and the global and environmental results of those ways of life. A world without such headlines to print...try to imagine...the magnitude of change that would create such a world.
Do something? I'm being told to do something--something fun, something sweet, to bring joy into my life. OK. I'm open to it. For starters I baked a Cypress Point Carrot Cake for my son Arlo's birthday, the first one I've made in decades. This evening he and Marina and Deija will be here for supper. That's sweet. That will be fun.

Cinco de Mayo = Arlo's Birthday

Journey of Souls

My current circumstances--the life and death health challenge of "cancer"--prompted me to reflect on what I've been doing here on Earth. If I take my incarnation seriously, particularly if I regard it in the light of being one in a series of lives on Earth that I have considered and chosen during my time in "heaven" between lives, there arises a pathway of remembrances and unveiling's of, at least, who I have been in this lifetime. Also I see possibilities of some of the more obvious close connections I have had. Perhaps I'll go into that at a later time, for now I just enjoy the new understanding of some very wonderful things that my life has held.

When I first knew of this diagnosis I looked into myself for the answers to "why did I manifest this possible fatal disease in my body?" "Am I done with this life?" "Am I that tired of it, that frustrated?" "Have I failed darkly at fulfilling the possibilities of who I am?" At times in my fairly recent past I have had some of these thoughts consciously, I've gone through dark periods of believing exactly that--that I had failed, let slip away opportunities to do some big wonderful thing in this life time.

My friends, and teachers, on this journey with me, have reminded me that this life is not about "doing," that it is simply about "being." Odd, at times I have been given the feedback that simply being with me has been good for someone, helpful, a blessing. I didn't take that with a lot of ego. At times I found it frustrating, because I was searching for what I should be doing, and one of the requirements was that I be doing something that would support me financially as well as be a blessing to others. I've gotten quite hung up in my life, in my entire life it sometimes seems, trying to solve this dilemma without giving up certain qualities that I hang on to. I want time in my life for reflection, I want freedom to go away, visit, be other geographical places, spend time with my children (always, since they were babies and still now!) I held out for jobs that would give me some of this, jobs that I hoped would leave me time for creativity and for community involvement...if not actually be the vehicle for those pleasures.

This is all looking different to me now. My perspective has changed. With meditation, prayer, reflection, music, reading, visions of my life have been flowing through me, remembrances of who I have been at times in my life. Great wonderful blessings are coming to me. For example there is a time in my life that I have sometimes wished to have continued, have wished I could have back, have considered 'the best years of my life.' When that time of my life comes back to me now, in clear, clear, images, I realize that it never ended--it didn't start and then stop--it is still part of my life, as if it always was and always will be. The "bad" things that happened during that time are almost amusing, or are intensely interesting, just part of it all.

In terms of being who I am, who I came here to be, I see that I am who I am. I'm no longer unhappy with it, I no longer feel I failed. I'm aware of many recent years of a sort of black out, a not actively engaging with life, a drifting which I sometimes think of as weariness and sometimes think of as laziness. My diagnosis has held up a mirror to me, asking, "Oh yes? You think you're tired of it all? You think you're done? Well here's the door, want to go through it? Want to bail?"

Quite suddenly, given that opportunity, I don't even see it as being a door, I have no sense that I'm anywhere near going through it. I'm still here. I'm being lifted out of any disappointments in which I've been wallowing. I'm curious what lies ahead. I'm curious what the next manifestation of me being me eternally is going to be during the time I have left on Earth.

Kate

PS: Some of these reflections have been facilitated by my reading Journey Of Souls; Case Studies Of Life Between Lives, by Michael Newton, Ph.D.

Earth, Air, Fire, & Water

Returning from Socorro to Eugene

In 1973 I lived briefly in a house on Cross Street across from Chef Francisco, near the switching yard, where the great behemoths of train engines sang their unknowable questions and answers, their giant greetings, into the night. It was a house shared with my son Rock, my daughter Wendy, my partner Wayne, his daughter Sandy, and our friends Pam and Mark, while we prepared to move onto a piece of unimproved land near Cottage Grove. We'd come from Santa Barbara, California. I read Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion to familiarize myself with this new land, the Northwest.

Our farm was a miracle--the work of our hands and our hearts--an expression of love. We lived there 5 years in a home we built from materials gleaned from the demolition of the old Cottage Grove Hardware Store, on a foundation of pilings that had been railroad ties. We cleared brush and scrub, grew an acre of garden, ground wheat berries purchased from a neighbor, raised goats and chickens, ate from the bounty these all produced, and sweetened our food with feed grade molasses from Lane County Feed and Seed on 5th Street in Eugene. Others who lived with us, a dozen of us for a while, found us through the Eugene Youth Hostel, or just heard about us--we put out the word. Despite the craziness that occurs among randomly gathered humans, the years on our farm were some of the happiest of my life.

Over the three decades that followed my arrival in Oregon, I lived here most of the time, returning to Eugene when the farmhouse was burned down by an angry drug addicted man. And again when the beautiful house we rebuilt there was also burned (as promised incidentally.)

After a short sojourn in California a few years later, and then three years back in South Dakota with my family of origin, I came back to Oregon with my three young sons and a promise to stay while they grew up. We landed then on land southwest of Dillard on Rice Creek Road, later living in Dillard, and then in Roseburg, during the last year of my youngest son Andy's life. When he died, of cancer, I left Roseburg and came to Eugene to the U of O, with the intent of going beyond my RN, to become a clinical psychologist.

That goal was never reached and my life just went on, in typical single mom style, inadequate income, inadequate social life, inadequate expressions of my arts and skills, until I got fed up and disoriented and just wanted out from under the trees--dripping rain during the major part of the year, and pollen during another significant period of months. There were moments of course, visits to the coast with Day and Arlo, Shumba, contra dancing, Healing Touch, getting my bus, writing a newsletter back to y'all from our bus trip across the country, the spirit group and our visits to Edison Chiloquin's land, celebrating this and that, dancing in the street, hugs from friends. Still, I had to go, I had to get away.

I thought about going back to South Dakota, yearning for open sky and sunshine, but my dreams showed me places that had to be in the canyon lands of New Mexico and I felt myself drawn there. I explored several towns, worked as a traveling nurse in Gallup, visited friends in Arizona, didn't really wanna come back but got called back to a good job and had not really figured out how I would support myself in a new place.

Eventually in a period of work stress exhaustion I stopped working, went on Social Security, and started living with various grown kids. Day, in Parrishville, New York. Rock in Winchester, Virginia. I had got back together with my bus--the Purple Bus--and had an idea that I'd get it back on the road and it would take me to New Mexico. Progress toward that end was made, the bus has a new paint job, and work has been done on the brakes and the engine. But it wasn't fast enough for me. I wanted to go to New Mexico.

I just took off and drove there once, summer of 2006, and blew up the little car I had before I arrived in Albuquerque. I stayed in Albuquerque 3 months and loved it actually but never got to where I could actually afford it, didn't seriously look for work, then did look for work and found it but sabotaged my efforts by making a false move to Carlsbad, New Mexico to pursue a relationship with a man I didn't know--I was there less than a week before I was on my way back to (you guessed it--Eugene!) Hey its not my fault. Two of my sons were going to be here during that winter, and there was a big annual gathering with their father (Wayne)'s family in California and I decided to be part of that whole scene. So I was in Eugene again, and even worked, taught a little class at Pioneer College. I did really enjoy being with my sons and my daughter in law and my grandchildren. It was nice. But the contrast of that winter of 2006 after leaving southern New Mexico...Oh my god! In April of that year I started back to New Mexico, but was sidetracked by the suggestion that the bus might be ready to go, and I landed in Virginia again instead. I spent about four months in Virginia growing increasingly dissatisfied in the steam heat of that summer, and then got wise and did what had to be done.


[Click photo to enlarge]

With divine guidance and the encouragement of friends I took the necessary steps--visited the town I chose from my research--visited twice and found both a job and place to live. I moved to Socorro, New Mexico, last October--October, 2007. My work was with a State of New Mexico program to prevent tobacco use, and encourage cessation. Based in a small office at Socorro Mental Health, my work took me also to the village of Magdalena--26 miles up the mountain, and out to the Alamo Navajo Reservation, another half hour beyond Magdalena, and also out to a community center of almost entirely Spanish speaking people--Veguita. Besides planning and in-office counseling for people trying to quit smoking, my work involved education and resource tables at community events like fairs, rodeos, and sports; participation in community meetings--health coalitions, mayor's anti-drug force, and such; and participation in statewide organizational and educational meetings. Having work that involved out of office events and networking was much to my liking.

I like the size of Socorro too, liked walking to the library and the grocery store and seeing the same people. There's a university there too--New Mexico Tech. The town is mostly dusty and dirty and full of tumbleweeds. Lots could be done with native and sustainable plantings and gardening. I expected to do that sort of thing and spread the idea. But got no chance to more than just begin making friends and getting involved with my new town before I faced this latest challenge.

(to be continued...)