the dream life

Earth Day

I don’t remember knowing about Earth Day when I was a kid, but the first one was held in 1970, and I was born in 1969, so we’ve sort of grown up together. Thankfully, Earth Day has continued to gain attention. It’s led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species acts.
While paying attention to taking care of Mother Earth is a way of life, I think celebrations like Earth Day are great at raising awareness and focusing energy.
I love the earth and I want it to be around for my nieces and their nieces. Nature knows how to stay in balance and thrive. As humans, we need to catch up to what the planet already knows how to do and become better caretakers, and I think we are doing that. I think we are, as a people, beginning to understand that our choices have consequences and becoming more and more willing to take action that has a positive impact. We don’t have a choice, really.
Here’s a great list of things you can do to make a difference.
Here’s a great idea for exchanging stuff rather than throwing it out.
Here’s a great explanation for why it’s good to buy organic.
Here’s a great blog about environmental and animal rights issues with practical advice.
Here’s a great place to learn about your carbon footprint and how to reduce it.
Happy Earth Day, ya'll.

Make a call for Lino

Sometimes, as we move through our lives, taking action to sustain our own livelihood, working toward the safety and comfort or our loved ones, interacting with our friends and family, we hear stories; we turn on the news, we visit websites, we open newspapers and magazines and are met with stories. Sometimes the stories are so awful – so filled with heartache or injustice or sorrow that we turn away. Maybe, we feel that we are powerless to do anything to help. Maybe we feel that we don’t know where to begin – that there are too many stories. Maybe we feel that the machine of political power is rolling on without us. Maybe we just want to stay small and quiet. Maybe we don’t feel that we matter. Maybe we are afraid.
Then, sometimes, we hear a story that hits close to home, or strikes a cord deep within us that can’t be ignored. Maybe, we think, there is power in the weaving together of voices. Maybe, we think, we can’t do everything but we can do some thing. We realize that there is always hope. We realize that there is no choice but to try to make change.
Such a story is unfolding in my world this week and I am posting it here it hope that it will touch you too.
Lino Nakwa is a junior at Transylvania University and a valued citizen of the community. He is a business finance major, and he’s on the Dean's List. If you bring up his name, people only have positive things to say. If you meet him, you instantly feel his kindness. Lino is also a Sudanese refugee, and he is facing deportation. Ironically, the government has decided to reject his green card application based on the same information that got him admitted to this country in 2003 as a victim of persecution.
More than 2 million people, including Lino’s father, were killed when government troops attacked Sudanese village during the Second Sudanese Civil War. Lino was just 12 years old when he and his brother were kidnapped by the Sudan People's Liberation Army and forced to live in a training camp. After a month as a captive of the SPLA, Lino and his brother decided to flee. Though they had witnesses other boys their age murdered for trying to escape, they felt it was a risk worth taking.
They fled through the jungle for two days without food or water, knowing that if they were caught by the SPLA, they would be killed. Even after they reached Kenya safely, they were unable to find a steady source of food for two weeks.
With the help of Kenyan nuns, Lino was eventually reunited with his siblings and they were flown to Louisville.
At age 24, Lino spoke little English, but he worked to support his family while attending school. Lino raised his siblings and graduated with distinction from Jefferson Community College. (His English is now flawless).
In February, the Bureau of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services informed Lino that his petition for permanent residency had been denied because he allegedly received "military-type" training from a terrorist organization 17 years ago.
In that very letter, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security acknowledged that Lino was "forced to attend a SPLA training camp for one month"; but because the SPLA is listed as a terrorist group, Lino’s application was denied.
(It might interest you to know that the “training” Lino received was how to fight with sticks. He was never trained to use a gun.)
I joined many others on campus in writing letters, making phone calls, and attending a rally
for Lino, asking that his petition for permanent residency status be reconsidered. As one of his classmates said ina recent article, as one of his professors said today, Lino is not a terrorist, he is a victim of terror. Lino came to the U.S. seeking peace and a chance at life. It would be nothing short of tragic for him to be returned to Sudan. If Lino is returned to Sudan, his life is in great danger. I urge you to speak out on Lino's behalf.
You can read more about Lino’s story here, and find contact information for Homeland Security as well as our representatives.

Pausing to remember

I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
April 3, 1968

Today I am remembering Dr. King--his work, his legacy, his spirit--acknowledging from where it is we have come, and where it is we have yet to go. This article speaks for itself.

A map of the world

Remember when I posted the video of the vegetable orchestra? I, along with Woody, was captivated by the concept and the sound. “Using things differently,” as they say below, thinking about things differently, living differently than usual is important to me and I love to see this sort of creative energy. I confess, though, that when I first viewed the video my knee-jerk reaction was that it seemed like a waste of food given that there are people starving all over the world. Tracy pointed out that carving instruments out of vegetables is a more ecologically sound endeavor than producing instruments the other way, and I knew that he was right.
Today, I was made aware of the vegetable orchestra website, so I checked it out and saw that they address the issue on their questions and answers page:

isn't it an ethical problem to play on vegetable instruments while elsewhere people die of starvation?
we have heard this question very often. if you are really concerned about the distribution of wealth then do something about it! read books about the real cause of hunger. change your own life and try to change politics. buy and support the right things. it is not people using vegetables differently than usual that make the world a bad place. it's all of us wanting too much. our own car, a new cellphone, a bigger house with air condition, more money...
actually our instruments cause less problems than traditional instruments, laptops, etc...
their production needs much less energy and resources and they are bio-degradable.

So, there you go. I thought it was a good answer. It’s certainly true that the real cause of hunger has nothing to do with a shortage of food and everything to do with distribution of wealth and the choices we all make everyday.
Thinking about this reminded me of a conversation that I had recently with a young woman who was tremendously poised and well-spoken. She is an environmentalist and describing how she came to her awareness about the cause she now works for, she said, “I realized that my consumption and my decisions do have impact beyond me. We have a global economy and that’s convenient because it keeps our prices down, but it’s foolhardy to pretend like there aren’t other ways that we interact with our global neighbors and one of the ways is that our consumption has a spill-over effect.”
When I was this woman’s age, there’s no way I could have put thoughts together and presented myself the way she did. I was so impressed by her and her mission and her outlook, which was overwhelmingly positive. She told me that her generation is tired of negativity, that they don’t feel the global situation is hopeless, that they’re working on an inclusive way to craft solutions.
I thought about her today as I shifted my awareness of the vegetable orchestra, and I thought about world hunger. It’s easy to get bogged down in the belief that the suffering in this world is too great, that we can’t undo the damage that has been done. It’s easy to fall victim to apathy or fear-mongering and feel paralyzed – unwilling to look head-on at the pain of others, the fallout of climate change, the line around the block at the soup kitchen, the homeless woman walking down the street, or the atrocity of human rights violations that play out on the nightly news, because we simply don’t know what to do about it.
The vegetable orchestra answer urges us to do something – change our own lives. We can, I believe, change our own lives, and thereby change the lives of others, and we can change them in small shifts, in leanings and moments. We don’t have to do everything. It’s not all or nothing. We can change the way we live in our own communities, in our own homes, in our own kitchens, and those changes will ripple out and be felt by the larger world.
We can even do something really, really small like clicking a button.

It’s a message not unlike the one I heard Mary Robinson deliver several months ago. Mary Robinson, I believe is (very much like Jimmy Carter*) a walking around breathing saint. I sat enraptured by her, not because she was the most dynamic speaker I’d ever heard, but because of her steady sure-footed compassionate work. Because she has seen the very worst the world has to offer and she has not given up. And because she is nice. She is still a nice, warm and forgiving person.
Robinson directly addressed this issue, this feeling that the problems are too great, that the things we are able to do won’t really make a difference. Begin, Robinson told us, right here. Begin in your home, in your town.
“Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his or her personality is possible,” she said.
And she quoted these remarks made by Eleanor Roosevelt (oh, how I love Eleanor Roosevelt! Remind me to tell you sometime about visiting her house) to the United Nations in March of 1953:

Where after all do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person: The neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.

Hunger is a human rights issue, whether here or in Africa or anywhere. The environment is a human rights issue. It’s all tied together, one big cosmic ball of cause and effect, and we are not, as individuals, powerless. Isn’t it good to think that we aren’t? I mean, what’s the point of thinking that we are? We have this amazing gift of free will. We have choice and each and every moment presents the opportunity to make a different one.
It’s just like the nun said to Scott Baio last night, “The best thing you can do for your child is love his mother.” What, you are thinking, in the Sam Hill does that have to do with global human rights? Well, partially, I just really liked that message. Scott Baio showed his emotional side. It was very touching. But, I’m also thinking that it does relate to what I’m trying to say here – it’s the idea that it begins at home – the change we want to see—with something really simple and enormous--Love.

*On a side note, I love this story about Jimmy Carter. Maybe not so pacifist, but so what. The Elders are my super heroes.

Good food

One thing I get to do in my job that is very cool is interview people. I love hearing people tell their stories and talk about their passions. Often the topic up for discussion is something I don't know much about, but sometimes I get to interview someone about a topic for which I also have great passion, and that's the best.
This week, I got to talk to a person in the know about sustainable agriculture and eating locally.
In an interesting twist of synchronicity, a couple of my friends had just attended a sustainable food conference and I'd been hearing bits and pieces from them about Alice Waters and how wonderfully she presented this topic for discussion.
We talked about setting a sustainable table-from bamboo or 100 percent cotton placemats, to the food itself grown locally and in season, and how doing so costs more money than the alternative.
My household Sunday grocery totals at the Co-op are more than the totals we used to generate at the grocery store. I wouldn't say it's a great difference, but it's a difference. It's worth it to me. It means I don't buy a pair of pajama pants or another candle holder. Or maybe, I don't buy as much food. We are more likely to eat the food we buy at the Co-op, and therefore, not waste it. It tastes better. It sounds good, so we choose it more often rather than going out.
I love that the Co-op offers stress-free shopping. (That alone is worth so much to me.) I love that the people who work there are knowledgeable and friendly. I love loose leaf bulk tea and Great Harvest bread. I love fruits and vegetables that actually look like fruits and vegetables in naturally occurring shapes and sizes. I love big jugs of Highbridge water with pumps.
It’s perfectly all right with me to spend more of my money on food, knowing that what I’m putting into my body is not swimming with hormones, pesticides and preservatives. There’s so much strange food out there. Recently, I was all excited when I saw a bottled green tea. Then, I looked on the label and the first ingredient was high fructose corn syrup. It's gotten so that food is confusing.
Even foods labeled as organic aren’t necessary pure. During the interview, I learned that food labeled by the FDA as organic can legally contain over 30 different substances. And benign or “healthy” stuff is now being added to food, like eggs “fortified with Omega-3s”. It’s not something I used to think about at all, but it has become deeply important to me.
When my brother and I were children we often went home in the afternoons with our grandparents and stayed with them at their farm until our parents came home from work. I remember going out with my grandmother to dig potatoes and carrots, bringing them back to house to prepare for dinner.
So while I was a child of the seventies who feasted on Pop Rocks and Big Macs and trolled the grocery aisles looking for the newest fabricated concoction (oh how I begged for Google Peanut Butter), I also had an understanding of where real food came from and I still have today the sensory memory of pulling potatoes from the ground.
I’m certainly not saying that everything I eat is a product of sustainable agriculture. (Far from it.) I still make questionable and down right awful food choices all the time. (Chicken fingers are my downfall.) But, I’m migrating toward eliminating things in my diet that hold negative energy for me.
I do believe that when we ingest food, we ingest energy - the origin of the food, its preparation and how we feel about it. I think, in fact, that how we feel about our food is as important as any other factor.
Supporting local farmers and eating seasonally is social action. It’s a way that we can do something about the state of the world, and the environment.
We’re lucky here that we have several farmer’s markets and orchards. We have options and the opportunity to speak to the people who grow our food.
For me, food has become a part of my spiritual path. I’ve found that the more aware of I am of spirit, of myself, of the world and my place in it, the less willing I am to put nonfood food into my mouth.
Everyone’s way is different and I certainly don’t expect everyone to agree with me or be willing to switch over completely to a sustainable table, but for me, it’s become forefront in my consciousness and a part of my quest for greater health and a balanced life.
During the interview (which included a lot of me excitedly talking - not a great interviewing skill) the person with whom I was conversing made several book suggestions. Here they are, if you're interested:
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
What to Eat by Marion Nestle
The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Free Burma

International Bloggers Day for Burma
Send Love.
Be Love.

The Buddha’s Last Instruction

“Make of yourself a light”
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal-a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire-
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.
--Mary Oliver

U.N. International Day of Non-Violence

Red posted to show support for Burmese monks.

International Day of Non-Violence

Thank you, Marilyn.

Seeds of Peace

Freedom

“I am not going to die, I'm going home like a shooting star.”
--Sojourner Truth

Two friends and I went to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center today. It was not only the most well put together compelling beautiful museum I've ever visited, it was one of the most powerful places I've ever been.
If you live anywhere near Cincinnati, please visit the Freedom Center.
If you can't visit, explore the website.
Here are some images from our visit, which don't come close to communicating what it is that goes on there.

Going local

Recently I caught a glimpse of myself as I was leaving to work. My wrinkled brown pants looked like billowing boat sails (I don’t iron. I own an iron for sewing and to press Tracy’s shirts before weddings and funerals. Even then, I do a half-assed job), my shirt was untucked (I don’t tuck), there were water stains on my shoes, my hair was dirty and pulled back in a messy pony tail (not sexy messy, messy messy).
I was not a vision of loveliness.
It’s been bothering me for a while that in the onward march of daily goings on, I have allowed myself to get sort of blurry. This always happens to a certain degree when my weight goes above a particular number. It’s as if I think I can hide behind yards of nondescript fabric or as if the extra pounds somehow make me unworthy of adornment.
Lately, I’ve bought clothes that are acceptable to wear to work, clothes that are “eh,” and that’s fine. But it isn’t fun. And it isn’t really me. Lately, I’ve been looking in the mirror only to see a pale approximation of myself. Perhaps, I’ve been thinking, with the evolutions and changes and journey of life, my personal style changed but instead of going with it, I just dropped the old and switched into neutral.
Maybe this all sounds silly and shallow, but I decided to revamp myself and I decided not to wait until I lose x amount of pounds. I decided to look like me now. For the past couple of months, every time I’ve had the urge to numb out with a stroll through Target, I didn’t do it. I decided to take the money I would have spent in drips and drabs on things that didn’t thrill me, save it up, and go somewhere great.
Yesterday was my day. I went on a lunchtime shopping spree at Isle of You.


Lucy is my stylist now. She found things for me that I probably wouldn’t have tried on on my own, thinking I would look like a sausage, but because she thought I could do it, I tried them. And I didn’t look like a sausage. I looked like me.
I bought three outfits. Three complete outfits that make me feel great when I put them on. Not acceptable, or all right. Great.
Maybe spending money on clothing with the singular purpose of looking hot sounds a wee bit self-indulgent, but I don’t feel guilty about it. For me, shopping at Isle of You wasn’t just a fun, colorful, warm experience, it was shopping with Lori, someone I love and admire.
It was living an authentic life and putting my money where my mouth is.
I feel crushed by the development that is gobbling our farmland and our history. I feel heartsick that, as a city, we don’t utilize our beautiful quirky downtown as much as we could. Shopping locally means being part of a community and supporting the people who live here and I want to be a part of community. I want to like where I live and the way to do that is to go to the places I like.
I want to shop where there is heart and personality and uniqueness and when I shop I want the shop itself to be a place I want to be.
I want independent business owners to thrive here and they can’t if we don’t support them.
Over the past year Tracy and I have been conscious about where we buy our food (mostly the co-op) and Woody's (For the Love of Dogs) and where we eat when we eat out (mostly Alfalfa). Local food is just better - healthier and tastier, and I want to carry that attitude into the rest of my life, as well. As part of my revamp, I’m making it a goal to buy as much as possible from local businesses. It doesn't mean spending more money. It means rearranging the way I spend money.
I don’t bring home a large paycheck, and I’ve long shopped at discount places for the same reason everyone does - more bang for my buck. Perhaps shopping locally means slightly higher price tags, but the money saved by shopping at large chain discount stores is only saved in the short-run. Shopping locally feeds the local economy which, in turn, feeds me as a member of that economy. Plus, cheap doesn’t equal value. If I buy a pair of cheap shoes, I’m going to get a couple of seasons of uncomfortable wear out of them. If I buy a pair of shoes at John’s, I’m going to lay down a nice chunk of change, but I’m going to wear the shoes, in comfort, forever.
Plus, when we look at the price of an object, we must consider the price the earth is paying and the price our country is paying, and the world at large.
I didn’t feel the nag of guilt at Isle of You that I feel when I give my money to large corporations with shady business practices, and what I get in return when I keep my money where my heart is, is far greater in quality and energy. Besides, I got a top on sale yesterday that cost less than it would have anywhere. When you touch it, it feels like butter and it actually fits me.
You know I’m a woman who likes her Target pajamas and Old Navy flip-flops. Life is about balance, but for me, there’s a shift going on in my heart, a lining up of what I believe and what I practice.
And it’s really super exciting.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Part of my activities for Martin Luther King Day this year was a unity celebration where my friend Tiffany beautifully read a history of Dr. King

and the director of a praise in motion team at a local church performed “It’s Over Now”

and an African drum corps from the Westend Empowerment Project drummed

and danced.

African drumming and dancing is, to me, one of the most pure, connected experiences imaginable. This group was particularly great and powerful. I had to choke back sobs the whole time, but I could have sat there watching and listening and feeling that rhythm move through me forever.
It was a small gathering and I wished more people had come to feel the energy in that room and sing, as we did all sing, in commemoration of Dr. King, but I was glad that those of us there were there, singing.
As much as ever, I think that we need to turn to his words, remember his message, honor him by truly taking in to our hearts what he taught with his life.

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. -Martin Luther King Jr.