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.