Si Dios Quiere

My son's maid in Central America writes a note saying when she will show up for work the following week. She ends each note with "Si Dios Quiere". And it is pretty astonishing how often God doesn't wish for her to show up. Now, God must be extremely busy arranging everyone's work schedule and everything else about billions of people's lives.

That was a little tongue in cheek, however, just as I was going to write that I am going to Nicaragua tomorrow for the winter, the thought came to me "God Willing". Is it past hauntings from other trips? Is it kind of like knocking wood? I don't know, but I have a lot of experience with things that don't work as planned. I don't fear them as I once did. But, there is always a bit of dis-ease as I launch myself into the unknown. At the same time, I get a little excited. All sorts of cool things can happen when plans get 'adjusted' by the universe.

I'll check in when I get there. Where ever 'there' turns out to be.

Combatting ADD, A Simple Place to Start

I was talking with Ron yesterday. As you know from my BLOGS he is a pediatrician. Before he discovered doctoring, he trained as a Waldorf teacher. He is also a great nature enthusiast. Where this all seems to come together today is his observation, his worry, his sadness, that the kids, the thousands of them, that he sees today, have little or no experience with the natural world. And he lives and works in New Hampshire. (not exactly the inner city).

Everyone I talk to today who is of a certain age has fond memories of their secret place behind a tree or by a stream or behind the barn where they spent time alone as children, doing important work, like making a nest, or building a little house of stones and acorns and flower petals for ??? for the fairies, the gnomes, the Borrowers, the littlest bird?

There was something about being alone (even if it was very near home) in a natural place that allowed an interaction, a transfer of energy, a heart connection to take place that seemed to leave a lasting imprint on us.

Recently, I was in California, in the East Bay, with my grand daughter at a perfectly beautiful park with gorgeous natural wood structures and a creative, imaginative layout, near an estuary, and it was boring. I feel weird saying that because it was so thoughtful and expensive. But it was adult architects who created it. It was somehow like a high class amusement park. The kids ran from the swings to the slide, down the path and then did it over again. Gerbils.

Another time that week we were at a little path that led to the water. There was nothing there except a not very gorgeous tree. We were waiting for a friend to pick us up. We sat in the dirt under the tree, watching the tide go out and I started to put some pebbles in a little circle. Then I got a few wild flowers, then some pine needles. Within minutes Bella had started to make a fairy house. She told me I could collect things on her orders "No, not that flower", "a longer piece of grass, grandma", and she was making something that she imagined on a micro scale, that my big hands and less than perfect eyes could hardly be part of. She muttered to herself, "No, they don't like the bed to be over there" as she moved things around.

When our ride came, she jumped up and glanced back and moved on. Later when we passed that spot and nature had undone all her creation, she would glance over. She had an experience that day that was hers and hers alone. I have seem kids do this on beaches, running their little legs off to get another shell or another piece of seaweed to build something that they alone have the vision of and that they alone create from nature. Fleeting? Yes. Permanent, indelible? Yes.

I think allowing our kids the time, the quiet, the peace, the lack of toys, tools, equipment would be a first step towards having them connect with themselves. And I would even go so far as to say that to comment, praise, notice these works would break up their magic. This is private stuff. I think it would be a simple first step towards healing our children.

MORE ABOUT SSSTTTRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEESSS!!!!!

From the dictionary:

Stress

Definition

Stress is defined as an organism's total response to environmental demands or pressures. When stress was first studied in the 1950s, the term was used to denote both the causes and the experienced effects of these pressures. More recently, however, the word stressor has been used for the stimulus that provokes a stress response. One recurrent disagreement among researchers concerns the definition of stress in humans. Is it primarily an external response that can be measured by changes in glandular secretions, skin reactions, and other physical functions, or is it an internal interpretation of, or reaction to, a stressor; or is it both?

Description

Stress in humans results from interactions between persons and their environment that are perceived as straining or exceeding their adaptive capacities and threatening their well-being. The element of perception indicates that human stress responses reflect differences in personality, as well as differences in physical strength or general health.

Risk factors for stress-related illnesses are a mix of personal, interpersonal, and social variables. These factors include lack or loss of control over one's physical environment, and lack or loss of social support networks. People who are dependent on others (e.g., children or the elderly) or who are socially disadvantaged (because of race, gender, educational level, or similar factors) are at greater risk of developing stress-related illnesses. Other risk factors include feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, extreme fear or anger, and cynicism or distrust of others.

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, this puts just about everyone in the world at risk. Pretty scary. But, really. I have been in the situation wherein I have gotten a bad cold or a flu. No matter that I was teaching school and 1/2 the class of darlings had horrible, snotty noses, hacking coughs and were in school because no one would baby sit a sick kid and Mom had to work, inevitably some helpful person ( a few words from no longer being my friend) would tell me I was sick because I couldn't handle stress. After I suppressed thoughts of skinning them alive, I would feel stress as my anger rose. OK, now I was stressed because of latent homicidal tendencies.

Now were these people who were hitting me while I was down radiantly healthy, happy, high achievers? Invariably not. But they did often go to every doctor and alternative healer to learn their bit of wisdom that stress can lead to illness. I am overshooting myself here to make a point.You would have to be a genius not to know that stress makes things worse and weakens you.It is physics long ahead of psychology or medicine. Picture it. Take a very strong piece of glass and drop a huge granite rock on it from a certain height. My guess is that the stress of the rock hitting the glass will shatter it. Or, take a weak little leaf on a pond and drop little rain drops of water on it and if enough land on the little leaf, boom, it sinks.

But what I was trying to get to yesterday, among other things, is what if our perception changes? What if the little leaf knows that one day it will sink? No worries. What if catching the cold I spoke of earlier was the best thing that ever happened? That sort of happened to me. When I was in bed with the flu once and my house was empty and the fever was raging, I looked around my room. (no choice). By the time the fever broke, I had decided to get rid of everything that I hadn't used in a few years, everything that was broken, everything that was stupid (the end of the railing on the deck that everyone got caught on) and so on. This in turn led me to many dramatic changes for the better in my life.

So, the point is, it is not nice, in my opinion, to guilt a sick person by telling them that on top of being sick, they have failed to handle their stress well, and, moreover, we really have no idea what the real purpose is when we get an illness. Maybe it is a gift from our 'stress'. I don't know. What do you think?

ANXIETY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!STRESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!FEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't you hate those words and even more, the thoughts behind them, and even more, the feelings they bring up? My subconscious is so finely tuned that just hearing someone say those words can start my heart rate accelerating. When someone says to me "I am so stressed out.", I feel it. I can get the fear thing going just hearing certain music on movie sound tracks. I can have my eyes shut and feel the tension right down to the center of my gut.

Mostly, I have worked out ways to deal with this. Sometimes, such as during the worst of my dental ordeal last year, I had to call on a higher power, Ativan. But, mostly the older more conservative Higher Powers work out fine. Breathing deeply, counting breaths, meditation, prayer - - old friends which are tried and true.

But the mind, which I celebrate fully, can be my worst enemy. "What if?" Such an innocent opening for what can come after. The thing I have practiced over many years is fulling my head with something else before the fear, stress, anxiety thoughts can get a grip. Often I feel the bad thoughts coming before the thoughts form in my head. I get a tightening around my heart. Then, if I am alert, I can start a mantra or a distraction fast.

The situation in which this doesn't work is with Post Traumatic Stress, at least in its early, just emerging stages. One has to learn when the attack is coming and be prepared to combat it with everything you've got.

This is a dumb example, but also one not very heavily charged for me any more: When I had my kids at home and at college and I was earning $25,000 a year as a Waldorf School teacher, I could never keep up with the bills. I did a bunch of part time jobs as well as being a single parent, teaching full time, having a few refugee kids in my care. I did free lance editing in the wee hours of the morning. I took care of an old man a few times a week, basically, I did anything I could find to do. The bills had no notion or care for this. We spent several Christmases with the electric off. We ordered food wholesale from the health food distributor, we bought all our clothes at the $1 a bag second hand store.

Still, I got to the point at which I only opened the mail on the day after I got paid. I had a box under the mail slot. What was the point? With no health insurance for any of us, I got the Barefoot Doctor Book and we home treated almost everything. None of this was bad compared to people who have no jobs or no education or no health or no homes. I get that. What is bad is that I still get a headache when I pay bills. My hands still shake when I get a letter from the IRS. I still try never to go to the doctor because I can't figure out what Medicare will pay for.

Such a little and stupid thing and it still haunts me. I now understand the people who went through the Great Depression and ever after couldn't throw away an elastic band, or a piece of string, or an old pair of mittens. "It might come in handy some day."

And I have huge sympathy, HUGE, for people who have real Post Traumatic Stress from life altering events. They must have to work so hard to keep their minds from spinning out and their adrenalin from flipping its shit. I can't even imagine the inner work they have to do. But I can figure out that facing stuff in daylight brings the first whiff of healing. I open most of my mail now when it comes, but I still feel all wrung out after doing simple business stuff.

How Can We Pretend to Know What Kids Are Thinking?

My grand daughter had a busy day last weekend. She went to ballet class, out to lunch, did errands and so on. The big deal of the day, however, was climbing Mount Tam in Marin, California. Both her parents have spent some time and energy hiking up mountains. This was a big deal for Bella.

As this was her first climb, and because  this was unplanned, both her parents were wearing flip-flops so they parked at a high level. Bella flew up the path with intense determination. When they got to the summit, she looked around and wanted to go higher and higher. She was doing the mountain goat thing on the highest rocks. Her parents had to tell her that it was getting dangerous to hang on the cliffs.

Then she had a melt down. She was very unhappy. Her parents thought of the usual things; tired, hungry, blisters. It was none of those things. When they finally got her to calm down, she expressed her crushing disappointment. In her 4 year old mind, if she climbed to the highest peak that she could see from home, she would be on top of the world. If she was on top of the world, she would see the ROUND world., like the globe at school. She thought if she could just get to the highest boulder, this would happen.

It was a huge let down that all she could see was the Pacific Ocean, San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge and so on. Lucky for her parents that she could finally express this. Hopefully some day she can be a tourist in a space ship and get the view she hungers for.

Our Rugged Individualism Hits the Wall, again and again.

The thing about rugged individualism, and states rights is that everyone has to reinvent the wheel individually and alone, again and again.

Take for example:If you have an old person to take care of or a sick person, you have to find out about hospice, Medicare, private insurance, VA benefits, investments, the home mortgage, any secondary insurance, how to get the person to bathe your old person, the foot doctor to cut the toe nails, someone to order books for the blind, meals on wheels, the nursing home thing, the rides to the doctor and dentist the whole shit storm. Each service has its own rules. To get help, most people need to spend down their life savings. Many people don't have the resources. Even highly educated, mildly successful, very dedicated relatives can't figure out what to do. Then there is the problem that with an very old or very sick person, the needs change daily. As soon as you have figured something out, the condition changes or the needs change.

What do other countries do? I really don't know.This issue is certainly going to get worse in the US as the Baby Boomers really get old. We had a good run at changing childbirth from horrible drugged up hospital births to natural, graceful, loving experiences. But now the medical profession has pretty much grabbed that one back. But this old, sick people thing is a struggle, it would seem, that we suffer alone in each house, again and again, regardless of financial situations or apparent family resources.

Part of the problem is geography. We move. Being a plane ride away from a dear person works until that person needs us daily. We work. It is hard to get time off for the often full time care of another. Insurance, well, it is so mixed up that most genius people can't figure it out. My father, after some surgery, had home help with nursing visits and physical therapy. He mentioned one day that he was excited to go to his aerobics class. Here is the picture as we saw it. He had been going to this class for 20 something years, three times a week. The class grew old together. They were his ocial life. He had to hire a driver, aide, to take him to class. He, at that point was going to sit in the back for one class, schmooze with his friends. maybe hold some one pound weights, get a lot of news from everybody and have his guy drive him home.

Mentioning this excursion cost him all his home help. The rules were such that if you could go out, you didn't qualify for services from Medicare. So, he really paid for this hour. He paid for a long time until the next medical crisis came and the nurses came back for a bit. Now this isn't bad, it is nothing compared to what many people contend with. My parents wanted to stay at home. Home wasn't set up to have others live there until the days came when we hired 'awake overnight' angels to be with him.

When both my parents were sick, we had family, friends, volunteers, and lots of paid help just to keep them comfortable at home. It was a nightmare at times and a beautiful loving effort at times. When the money runs out or was never there, the options drop away.

My friend's mother moved herself from assisted living to a nursing home one weekend when the family wasn't around. She was tired of the struggle to be independent at all. She lived for many years, until 99, but she had family and friends who dropped by daily. It was enough for her. I have other friends  who moved parents to nursing homes after years of agonizing over it and years of patch work home care, and the parents died within days. They felt guilty. One of my biggest sadnesses is that somehow no one quite feels good about much of this process. And caregivers get isolated. Do your friends want to hear about Dad's bowel movements? Can they understand how much of the day's well being depends on taking a crap? No.

We all know about different family's struggles. Dementia adds a whole other dimension of problems. What do we do? How do we pay for it? What is our obligation to the rest of our life? Many people find themselves in the 'sandwich' with both kids and old parents needing their love and attention. This happens a lot, I guess, because people are having children when they are older. One of my mother's grandchildren was born when my mother was 80 something. Crazy.

How can we be ourselves and lead the lives we want and get some kind of affordable, care for those who need it? I think my generation needs to do some quick thinking here and be very watchful of the problems we encountered with our elders. What do you do in other countries?? I am really asking this.

Another apology to my readers.

Many of my readers don't live in the US. To you I apologize for my US centric focus on our stupid elections. Anyone who is awake at all has gathered by now that we have a very sketchy so-called democratic so-called system here in the USofA. Every state and in some states, every town, has different rules and regulations about who can vote and when and how. Then our votes get lost in the electoral college thing. Then, if things are too fuzzy, the Supreme Court gets the final vote. There it just takes 5 votes to win the US presidency.

If that is not confusing enough, our two parties, comprising the ruling plutocracy, can decide who will be the candidates. No primary voting for Obama this time around. They can also decide who gets to show up on the debates. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate was arrested trying to enter the Presidential Debate last week. Flashback to Ralph Nader.

Then there is the funding issue. A huge embarrassing mess. Who could possibly sort this out. Funds from other countries, bribes, lobbies, pressure from corporations on their employees, non-profit churches telling their congregations how to vote. Shit, it is so deep in corruption that it makes a country like Mexico look sane regarding their elections.

But still... the sad thing is that our election games here have profound effects all over the world. I am sorry that our corruption and ignorance effects so many of you in so many countries in so many ways. Really, I am sorry and ashamed.

Vote for Obama, Oppose the Current Republican Party

DAN ELLSBERG on the 2012 Presidential Elections

It is urgently important to prevent a Republican administration under
Romney/Ryan from taking office in January 2013.

The election is now just weeks away, and I want to urge those whose
values are generally in line with mine -- progressives, especially
activists -- to make this goal one of your priorities during this
period.

An activist colleague recently said to me: "I hear you're supporting Obama."

I was startled, and took offense. "Supporting Obama? Me?!"

"I lose no opportunity publicly," I told him angrily, to identify
Obama as a tool of Wall Street, a man who's decriminalized torture and
is still complicit in it, a drone assassin, someone who's launched an
unconstitutional war, supports kidnapping and indefinite detention
without trial, and has prosecuted more whistleblowers like myself than
all previous presidents put together. "Would you call that support?"

My friend said, "But on Democracy Now you urged people in swing states
to vote for him! How could you say that? I don't live in a swing
state, but I will not and could not vote for Obama under any
circumstances."

My answer was: a Romney/Ryan administration would be no better -- no
different -- on any of the serious offenses I just mentioned or
anything else, and it would be much worse, even catastrophically
worse, on a number of other important issues: attacking Iran, Supreme
Court appointments, the economy, women's reproductive rights, health
coverage, safety net, climate change, green energy, the environment.

I told him: "I don't 'support Obama.' I oppose the current Republican
Party. This is not a contest between Barack Obama and a progressive
candidate. The voters in a handful or a dozen close-fought swing
states are going to determine whether Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are
going to wield great political power for four, maybe eight years, or
not."

As Noam Chomsky said [
http://www.zcommunications.org/the-role-of-the-executive-by-ollie-mikse
] recently, "The Republican organization today is extremely dangerous,
not just to this country, but to the world. It's worth expending some
effort to prevent their rise to power, without sowing illusions about
the Democratic alternatives."

Following that logic, he's said [
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/10/01/noam-chomsky-if-i-were-in-a-swing-state-id-vote-for-obama/
] to an interviewer what my friend heard me say to Amy Goodman: "If I
were a person in a swing state, I'd vote against Romney/Ryan, which
means voting for Obama because there is no other choice."

The election is at this moment a toss-up. That means this is one of
the uncommon occasions when we progressives -- a small minority of the
electorate -- could actually have a significant influence on the
outcome of a national election, swinging it one way or the other.

The only way for progressives and Democrats to block Romney from
office, at this date, is to persuade enough people in swing states to
vote for Obama: not stay home, or vote for someone else. And that has
to include, in those states, progressives and disillusioned liberals
who are at this moment inclined not to vote at all or to vote for a
third-party candidate (because like me they've been not just
disappointed but disgusted and enraged by much of what Obama has done
in the last four years and will probably keep doing).

They have to be persuaded to vote, and to vote in a battleground state
for Obama not anyone else, despite the terrible flaws of the less-bad
candidate, the incumbent. That's not easy. As I see it, that's
precisely the "effort" Noam is referring to as worth expending right
now to prevent the Republicans' rise to power. And it will take
progressives -- some of you reading this, I hope -- to make that
effort of persuasion effectively.

It will take someone these disheartened progressives and liberals will
listen to. Someone manifestly without illusions about the Democrats,
someone who sees what they see when they look at the president these
days: but who can also see through candidates Romney or Ryan on the
split-screen, and keep their real, disastrous policies in focus.

It's true that the differences between the major parties are not
nearly as large as they and their candidates claim, let alone what we
would want. It's even fair to use Gore Vidal's metaphor that they form
two wings ("two right wings," as some have put it) of a single party,
the Property or Plutocracy Party, or as Justin Raimondo says, the War
Party.

Still, the political reality is that there are two distinguishable
wings, and one is reliably even worse than the other, currently much
worse overall. To be in denial or to act in neglect of that reality
serves only the possibly imminent, yet presently avoidable, victory of
the worse.

The traditional third-party mantra, "There's no significant difference
between the major parties" amounts to saying: "The Republicans are no
worse, overall." And that's absurd. It constitutes shameless
apologetics for the Republicans, however unintended. It's crazily
divorced from present reality.

And it's not at all harmless to be propagating that absurd falsehood.
It has the effect of encouraging progressives even in battleground
states to refrain from voting or to vote in a close election for
someone other than Obama, and more importantly, to influence others to
act likewise.That's an effect that serves no one but the Republicans,
and ultimately the 1 percent.

It's not merely understandable, it's entirely appropriate to be
enraged at Barack Obama. As I am. He has often acted outrageously, not
merely timidly or "disappointingly." If impeachment were politically
imaginable on constitutional grounds, he's earned it (like George W.
Bush, and many of his predecessors!) It is entirely human to want to
punish him, not to "reward" him with another term or a vote that might
be taken to express trust, hope or approval.

But rage is not generally conducive to clear thinking. And it often
gets worked out against innocent victims, as would be the case here
domestically, if refusals to vote for him resulted in Romney's taking
key battleground states that decide the outcome of this election.

To punish Obama in this particular way, on Election Day -- by
depriving him of votes in swing states and hence of office in favor of
Romney and Ryan -- would punish most of all the poor and marginal in
society, and workers and middle class as well: not only in the U.S.
but worldwide in terms of the economy (I believe the Republicans could
still convert this recession to a Great Depression), the environment
and climate change. It could well lead to war with Iran (which Obama
has been creditably resisting, against pressure from within his own
party). And it would spell, via Supreme Court appointments, the end of
Roe v. Wade and of the occasional five to four decisions in favor of
the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The reelection of Barack Obama, in itself, is not going to bring
serious progressive change, end militarism and empire, or restore the
Constitution and the rule of law. That's for us and the rest of the
people to bring about after this election and in the rest of our lives
-- through organizing, building movements and agitating.

In the eight to twelve close-fought states -- especially Florida,
Ohio, and Virginia, but also Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New
Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin -- for
any progressive to encourage fellow progressives and others in those
states to vote for a third-party candidate is, I would say, to be
complicit in facilitating the election of Romney and Ryan, with all
its consequences.

To think of that as urging people in swing states to "vote their
conscience" is, I believe, dangerously misleading advice. I would say
to a progressive that if your conscience tells you on Election Day to
vote for someone other than Obama in a battleground state, you need a
second opinion. Your conscience is giving you bad counsel.

I often quote a line by Thoreau that had great impact for me: "Cast
your whole vote: not a strip of paper merely, but your whole
influence." He was referring, in that essay, to civil disobedience, or
as he titled it himself, "Resistance to Civil Authority."

It still means that to me. But this is a year when for people who
think like me -- and who, unlike me, live in battleground states --
casting a strip of paper is also important. Using your whole influence
this month to get others to do that, to best effect, is even more
important.

That means for progressives in the next couple of weeks -- in addition
to the rallies, demonstrations, petitions, lobbying (largely against
policies or prospective policies of President Obama, including
austerity budgeting next month), movement-building and civil
disobedience that are needed all year round and every year -- using
one's voice and one's e-mails and op-eds and social media to encourage
citizens in swing states to vote against a Romney victory by voting
for the only real alternative, Barack Obama.

Daniel Ellsberg is a former State and Defense Department official who
has been arrested for acts of non-violent civil disobedience over
eighty times, initially for copying and releasing the top secret
Pentagon Papers, for which he faced 115 years in prison. Living in a
non-swing state, he does not intend to vote for President Obama.

WHY WE DON'T TAKE CARE OF OUR VETS

I have a theory about this. I think it has something to do with shame. If you are ashamed of something, you try to sweep it under the rug. You try to distance yourself from your shameful deed. I am talking about us, not the Vets.

We would have to bury ourselves in the sand not to know that the men and women coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan are pretty messed up. You would have to have your head in the sand not to know how poorly they are treated, how inadequate their medical, psychological, economic, educational services are. They are terrible, from everything I read and hear.

We don't care. I am sure that some of the problem is economic. Taking good care of our people would add a tremendous cost to the wars which are already breaking our home town economies. But, I think it is much deeper than that. It is very hard to be all excited about returning troops when half or more of the country doesn't think we should be making these wars. It is even harder when no one can explain to us why we are creating these wars.

It is very hard to be unashamed of our country when we hear, very occasionally, how many civilians have been killed or maimed or poisoned and we had it from the mouth of President Bush that the army of Iraq was defeated in a few days. I believe that. Who have we been fighting for all these years? Well, it must be the Iraqi people don't like to be occupied by another country. Gosh. I don't think the Vietnamese liked us putting in a puppet government and occupying South Vietnam either. And many of us at home were horrified, as well as shamed by what we did daily there.

The soldiers returning from Vietnam often didn't get a respectful or heroic welcome. Many are still homeless and ravaged 40 something years later. I have seen pictures of the welcome that WW1 and WW2 soldiers got at the end of those wars. We knew what we were fighting for. We were eternally grateful to them for their service, their sacrifice. We educated them, gave them good benefits, welcomed them back into the workplace. We grieved with them about men lost. There was something there to be proud about.

They had experienced all the horrors of war. Many were shell shocked. But most recovered and recovered quickly. What is going on now?

When Veterans for Peace was founded, I joined. I never join anything. I loved those guys. They had been warriors and somewhere on their journey they had an epiphany and became warriors for peace. They were among the healthiest group of Vets I could imagine. They had regrets and nightmares about their wars, but they put them into action working to prevent more wars. I really do love them. They are spiritual teachers.

Every book I read about occupying armies paint the same kind of picture. They have to do horrific things to keep the occupied people subservient, then they leave. It just doesn't work out. I have a lot of sympathy for our military. To join today without the draft, either they had to buy a bag of shit from the politicians or they had to been desperate in their personal lives. In any case, no one deserves to be trained to kill, be in traumatic situations and return home to take the blame for doing what they were trained and commanded to do.

If we want to be proud of our military, we need to be proud of what they are asked to do. The whole situation stinks of shame. I am sad about that.

Library2go

Imagine this! I got to tell one of my tech savvy kids about something they can do . I am always behind the times, finding out about stuff when it is old hat to the rest of the world. My son implied that some people might not know about Library2go. It is probably because they aren't library patrons to start with. I am a library lover. But I am also away from libraries a lot.

Here's the deal. If you have a Kindle and you have a library card, you can borrow books for free from your library on the Kindle. The way my local library has it set up, you go to the local library website, chose books you want (my library lets you take six at a time), click on "put in my cart" then you put in your library card number and get to choose 1,2,or3 weeks. Then it shoots you to Amazon and you clink on "borrow from library" and they download it onto your Kindle.

The libraries have limited numbers of each title, just as they do with paper books. The first title I requested was 'out'. At ten that night, I got a message on my phone saying that it was ready. And down it came onto my Kindle. When the 1 week or whatever you pick has expired, the book just vanishes from your Kindle. You don't have to press anything to return it.

My next challenge is going to be the lend a book to a friend thing on the Kindle. I understand it works about the same. One thing I have found hard about the Kindle is not being able to pass books around as I have always done. I assume this feature came because a few million other readers had the same experience. Read away!

I am going to apply for Nicaraguan citizenship.

I awoke the other morning knowing this. I have heard that the process is tedious. Everything bureaucratic is, in my book. I can hold dual citizenship. I think there will soon come a day when other countries will welcome a visitor from Nica much more than one from the USA, at least any country where US is using drones. So, I am going to do this process this winter and be extremely grateful that there still are countries who welcome me as a citizen.

Past Karma or Future Karma?

My friend Jane asked me the other day what was the long-lived attraction I had for Central America. She noted that other friends we have in our white North American circle have a life-long attraction to black friends, travel in Africa, and others are drawn again and again to Asia and so on.

This question made me think. I remembered that my teacher John Gardner had asked me if I thought I had a strong past life among the Mayans. I thought about it a bit and had to say "No, I don't feel that." I had had feelings of familiarity in France and Greece. I 'knew' I had lived in India. I answered John that I thought the Mayans I knew were leading me into the future, rather than echoing something from my past. But that was after I had spent a good deal of time in Central America.

One one very obvious level, it was practical. It was nearby. It was mostly inexpensive. Spanish was a language I could easily understand. (I had studied Latin and French for many years.) My country was very involved in our various evil doings down there. On the other side, I didn't have any attraction to Spanish or Spanish history or art or music. That has changed over the years, but that was the way it was.

I was certainly attracted to the  Cuban revolution and that handsome Che Guevara. Who wasn't?

My first two attempts to visit CAmerica were thwarted. When I was ready to go on the Venceremos Brigade , a pregnancy interrupted my plans. When I was going to study at Ivan Illich's school in Mexico, an outbreak of equine encephalitis had us turn back at the border. Years later, when I had three kids and had just gotten a divorce and lived way in the woods in New Hampshire, I was bitten by the bug again.

I had no money, as usual. But in the cabin we bought there was a beautiful Steinway piano. Not a grand...I don't know what the one size down was called. Frances and Fredrick Day had built the cabin in the late twenties or early thirties. Fredrick was a play writer from Greenwich Village who was a founder of the off-Broadway theater, Provincetown Playhouse. In those days, New Hampshire was a very long way from New York City. Frances told me that cars were so few that they sometimes didn't pass more than 6 cars on the whole trip. They built this woodsy cabin with the help of the boat builder Hereshoff. The Days were great yachtsmen as well as artists.

The cabin was built around living trees which lived on when we bought the place. Fritz Day felt he would need a piano to write his musicals. He commissioned some guys to transport the piano to the house before construction was finished so that he could build around it. Frances later told me that the guys bringing the piano arrived in a state of near nervous breakdown because they had never been in the country. When the so-called driveway ended and they had to carry the Steinway over a stone bridge over the quarry pond they thought their lives were over.

This brings us to Mexico. The Days had used the cabin two or three weeks a year for over 50 years. They had built other such magic hide-a-ways on the islands of Maine. So, not only was the piano installed before the house was finished, but it had sort of survived 50 years of scorching heat and freezing cold in an uninsulated, unheated cabin. It was hopelessly degraded. At the time, 1986, it would have cost me $35,000 to have it fixed. It would have been worth a great deal repaired, but it still would be in that cabin, so I sold it to a guy who loved and fixed pianos for $4,000. I decided that it was finally our chance to get out of Dodge.

I had heard a marvelous violinist, can't spell his name...Miija Progognick play. He never recorded. I heard that he was going to do a world tour and play at sacred sites. Chartres cathedral, Egyptian Pyramids, Monte Alban, Oaxaca, Mexico!!! I took some of the piano money and bought tickets for my three kids and myself. It was a great starting idea. Hear the concert!

That is how my love affair with Central America began in earnest. Like any love affair, it has brought me some of my greatest joys, (Cuba, Guatemala) and some of my greatest heartbreak (El Salvador). About the karmic implications, past or future, I will explore them another day. When people ask me why Mexico, I have to say, "Well, there was this piano."

How Do You Know Whether an Action is "Right"?

How do sense your moral compass? Where is your conscience when you need it? How do you get objectivity when making a decision?

As usual, I can only speak from my personal experience and I am so fallible. However, I have some thoughts and experiences that relate to these questions.

The first step is to find the place in yourself that gives you peace. It works much better to find this before a major crisis so that it is familiar and you know how to get there. I compare it to getting your muscles ready for an athletic event. You start out slowly and build up your strength.

This place is accessed by whatever route works for you. If I came home from school and my mother was standing at the ironing board in her work clothes, I knew she had something she needed to sort out before she could go on with the rest of her day. "Ironing is my meditation." she used to say. My Aunt Claire went to church and lit a candle when she needed 'a moment'. I like to meditate, but sometimes I "ask for guidance". I think to a large degree it is all the same. I have friends who go sit by a river or a favorite tree. Nature is a wonderful ally.

Now, you go to this place of peace and then you put your question into inner words and then you wait. Usually the wait isn't very long. The spiritual worlds have a very different time sense than ordinary time. If an answer comes, good. If it doesn't come, it will. Let it go and go about your life. I have had the experience that if you ask, with good intentions, you will get an answer. Your job is to get out of the way.

Then you check the answer. Your solution might come as inner words, as a picture, as a scene, as a nudge. You first check your answer by feeling your body. Does it make you have a knot in your stomach? Do you feel anxious? That kind of thing. If so, that could be your best friend, your conscience telling you that this inspiration isn't coming from your highest self. You can also run a check against any high religious teachings. No real guidance would ever run opposite to "Thou shall not kill" for instance.

Asking for guidance and getting it will fine tune your intuition and make you trust the best in yourself more and more. Everything you need is already within you.

Namaste

ADD, KARMA, CAMINO, WALDORF, CHILDBIRTH, OBAMA

Anything I write on these topics seems to gather the most readers. I am trying to sort out a commonality. One link I see is that all these subjects get a lot more interesting if we approach them from a spiritual perspective. This perspective is obvious except perhaps in the discussions of ADD and Obama.

If we take karma as a foundation, which I do, then kids are born to exactly the right parents and place and circumstances that they need to meet in this incarnation. And if karma makes sense then it is hand and hand with re-incarnation. If Obama sounded Lincolnesque in his speech "On Race and Religion", then perhaps being the first black president of the USA is really huge for the spiritual destiny of this country. Countries have karma also. We may have moved pretty far away from the ideas of brotherhood that the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia articulated. I don't generally 'see' karmic connections, but somehow I feel that no matter how he has performed, Obama did give us a hit of hope and working together and a moment of that old 'can do' stuff we used to take pride in. Yayaya.

If I think of the ADD kids from the perspective of who they really are, I see a lot of them as warm, loving, interested in everything, bouncy, full of it, easily bored, let's get on with it, be more interesting, hands on, kids. I wonder sometimes if a lot of them are coming into this life with more than the adults they come to. Are they smarter, more fun, wanting to feel, touch, hear, see everything? Are the adults and the schools too excruciatingly slow and dull for them? Have they come to lead us into the future and finding that we can't handle them. We are too busy, too over-loaded, too uptight? (I am not talking here about the seriously troubled kids, but rather the millions who are getting drugs rather than fresh air, junk food rather than fruits and veggies, handouts rather than teaching).

I can say with confidence that the makeup of a Waldorf class is a karmic constellation. So I should remember this applies not just to Waldorf schools. We are in the Waldorf class, or walking the Camino, or loving or hating Obama, or taking drugs for ADD or not, or having a natural childbirth because of the perfect working of our karma. Now let us think how we can improve of personal and national and family karma for the future and work consciously toward making less suffering for ourselves and others.

Quite an Article in the New York Times re: ADD

http://nyti.ms/QaNRSx

This article pretty much comes to all the same conclusions that Ron Schneebaum and I tried to convey when we used to  give talks and counseling against the overuse of drugs to treat ADD and actually the falsehood that it was an actual diagnosis. We also saw clearly that the more affluent parents at the time were actively pushing for the drugs to give their kids and edge grade-wise. Now that the poorer kids parents have caught on to the game, it sounds like the overuse is even more widespread.

What makes me especially sad is that the solution to the 'problem' isn't better school, more creativity in education, more support for parents, more exercise and creativity for the children. It is "Well, we might as well give them the drugs." It seems like a cop out by the adults in the world. I know there are a lot of problems and a lot of kids are messed up. But, I still think that as a nation that wishes to be the best, we should give our children the best of everything that we possibly can. That does not mean to me either "Well, the schools suck, we'll lay off more teachers and cut the arts and the physical education, recess, music and give the kids drugs to help them perform better."

My daughter has homeless kid(s) in the class in Portland, Oregon that she teaches. Pretty hard for that child to get good grades. Maybe some Ritalin would help her. I am being sarcastic, but I think we need to do the right thing for our children. great schools, good homes, good healthy food. We might spend our money far better than giving them Class 11 drugs starting at age 2!

This makes me sad. It makes me sad when the parents of very well to do kids in very good schools petition for 'speed' to get their kids an edge on the college game. We read today about anxiety disorders , and other stress related problems among the high performing kids. Take a little Ritalin and see what it does to your sleep, your appetite, your stress. It is pretty predictable.

Among all the other sad outcomes of this situation is the dependence on drugs to fix everything. Just not right in my playbook.

What the Hell!

Can the old teach the young? I mean what can the old teach the young? Three times in the past few weeks young women have told me and a few of my friends that they really enjoy spending time with us. They find us amusing. We do like to laugh. They find us intelligent. (Thank you) They find us interesting. One dear young daughter of a friend suggested we do a little show of our conversations and post it.

"Who would watch it?" G. asked. "Someone", I replied. With six billion people out there-someone. The question I came home with is a question I have had when my oldest daughter has said it is hard to get into substantive matters in discussions with her friends."Why?" I don't get it. They are educated, well traveled, well read. What's holding things up. I mean my friends and I have always been witty and fascinating.

I think there is a bit of a "what the hell?" that comes with being older. I will ask anyone anything. I will tell almost anyone what I think. Maybe younger people are more wary of putting themselves 'out there', opening themselves to being wrong, or right. I don't know. I have never had a shy gene in me. I like to say provocative things sometimes. My friends and I trust ourselves with each other.

I don't know if this is hitting on the heart of the matter. We do have a pool of experiences that we draw on in our conversations. But I don't remember enjoying listening to my parents and their friends yak when I was young. Tonite we went from Rosie and Sophia Grace on Ellen to Hurricane Katrina to childbirth to eyebrows, each of us weighing in with observations, peeves, horror, laughter. That was five minutes at dinner tonite. Isn't that what people talk about?

I am deeply pleased that we old farts have retained some little edge. I hope, in our small way that we can encourage people to have confidence in who they are and put it out there, to have passion behind the things they believe in and to buck trends if they are stupid. You go girls!

Sponge Update

I am doing really well. I have had almost no relapses. I am proud of myself.
Maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks.
I'll try not to fall into the overconfident pitfalls.

My Medical Tourism Story of the Day

So, I met this friend of a friend this afternoon who had no insurance in the USA and was kind of retired because his knee was so bad he couldn't do construction anymore. He limped along with a leg brace and often crutches. He finally went to a doctor here in Oregon and was told that he needed a MRI ($1,600) and probably surgery- unknown enormous price.

He didn't have the money. He was going to have the process done in Costa Rica for about 1/3 of the price here, but expensive accommodations and after care. He happened to go to Nicaragua to visit a friend. In Granada, Nicaragua, he decided to see Dr. Blanco, a favorite of both locals and internationals. Dr. Blanco gave him a physical and checked out his knee. Dr. Blanco was educated in the USA and went to medical school in Cuba. He said an MRI would run about $300 in Nica, but first why don't they try something simple. He gave the friend some mild steroid pills and said to try them for a few weeks and see how things went. They worked. Three weeks of pills, a bill under fifty dollars and it has been two years now of no knee pain.

Dr. Blanco couldn't understand why a doctor here wouldn't at least try the simplest treatment first. I am befuddled myself.

I Surrender

"I surrender" How hard can these words be to say? In my experience, very hard.

Last night at Satsang with Lisa Schumacher, she read her poetry and spoke about the moment in her life when her searching ended. Her heart opened, broke open, and she was no longer searching for God, for answers, for love, for success, for the truth. She fell to the floor crying when her heart burst and then felt the incoming of Love, of Grace of the experience that she had everything she could have ever been looking for, all the time, right now, and forever in an abundance she could never have imagined.

Her joy, her generosity of spirit, her beauty, her gifts she gives all the time are effortless. She is nobody and she is everybody. She is a teacher.

And she gives credit to the moment she surrendered. I have to think about this. When I hear the saying "Let Go and Let God" from the twelve step programs as I have spoken about before, I don't see it go all the way. I often see it as a "Well, there is nothing more I can do in this situation." kind of giving up. But if it is a total surrender, then there is no problem, no need to give up. You are UP.

In a meditation group I belonged to for many years, we often sang a Protestant hymn, "Be Still and Know that I am God". I sang along. It was pretty. There were some musical people in the group who made beautiful harmonies. I thought it was a kind of dull joyless hymn, being spoken to by a patriarchal God. Then one meeting when I was singing along, I heard to words for the first time. "Be still and know that I am God". I suddenly had the experience of non-separation. I got pretty high. I don't count this as an act of surrender like Lisa's experience, but it was somethinng for me.

When I seek spiritual guidance to untie knots that I have created, when I seek answers in that still quiet space, I get a taste of this experience. I hear words and solutions that don't come from logic or my ordinary brain. I think Lisa has moved into the sacred space where everything in her life comes from this space. She is a Teacher.

New Good Karma, If You Want Something Give it Away

This is my best shot at a rebuttal to survivalists. I sometimes have arguments in my head on subjects I think it would be fruitless to discuss with real people. It can be the method I use to sort out my thoughts. This discussion is a continuation of an inside my head conversation. The good thing is that I am always right and always win the debate. But many subjects bear examination, in my humble opinion.

All the great spiritual teachers tell us to "Love your neighbor as thyself", "Do unto others", "what goes around, comes around", You know all the precepts. Doesn't it make the only sense there can be? If you are violent, violence finds you. If you are critical, you think everyone is criticizing you. If you are stingy, you never have enough. If you cheat, you get cheated. I think we can all find stories of this from our own lives. I don't mean to imply that you, dear reader are imperfect, but if you can't find an example in your life, look around you.

So, I know people who are survivalists. I do live in rural Oregon where they still burn crosses on the lawns of so called 'mixed marriages'. It is hard to understand how the symbol of Christ's crucifixion can be the sign of racial hatred and intolerance. But for Klaners, it is. Or is it Kluxers? We have Montana Militia types here. I know they also exist in big cities. I have met one.

So, the idea, as I understand it, is that for a survivalist, you prepare for the big crisis. The big crisis could be a natural disaster, or it could be a revolution, it could be an attack by those Communist Cubans with all their modern weapons. Whatever it is, the survivalist has stored all the food and medicine and water and booze or whatever he might need for a long duration. But then, in that picture, he, being the only smart or prepared one must have lots of guns and ammunition to protect his shit. He must learn how to kill accurately. He must have some kind of a bunker where he can keep his stuff and himself if Hannibal or the Great Earthquake comes.

This kind of thinking leads to a serious paranoia. Everybody kind of becomes the enemy. Survivalists in cities have all kinds of surveillance devices. In the woods, they booby trap their properties. Really. I mean it. This is happening. And I am not talking about a good old hunting rifle or a little purse handgun. I am referring to arsenals of heavy duty weapons.

So, the first logic is that those pesky Cubans who are trying to take over our democracy don't have more than a 1950s inner tube from which to launch their invasion. So, it ain't happening. That, of course, is an absurd example, but you hear this kind of talk. It is not reasonable. Then there is the matter of the natural disaster that has everyone running around killing and robbing each other. In Hurricane Katrina, it looked to me like it was the powers that be who were doing the killing and mal treating the public and putting people at risk. Who the hell cares in a situation like that if people take the bottled water from Walmart to give it to the thirsty? Any survivalist in the Eighth Ward would have lost all their provisions and the bunker would have been flooded, in any case.

But my real question is who is truly more likely to survive, the person who is sharing and caring for others or the person who is ready to kill their neighbor to protect their Dinty Moore Stew?

My guess is that healing others, sharing, half killing yourself to relieve the suffering of others gives you a much higher survival probability than its opposite. You will have two allies that can not be discounted. The good gods and Karma. And if you are going to die anyways wouldn't you rather kick the bucket doing an act of loving kindness than having a shoot out with a starving person? Hasn't history played out over and over that there has often been some kind of magical protection for people of good will in desperate circumstances?

If you are hungry, feed someone. If you are poor, give away the shirt on your back. If you are lonesome, keep someone company. We are taught this because it works. You create the Karma for good to come back to you. Try it in little ways and build the muscles to do it in larger ways. Then you have prepared in a real way for the future.

"Two things That Have Outgrown Their Usefulness

I was listening to Democracy Now! yesterday when Amy Goodman interviewed a wonderful professor. This beautiful woman is a poet and teaches Literature. She was the woman that Virginia Tech turned to when they needed someone to speak at the convocation after the horrific shooting they had experienced, In her interview with Amy, she said that she felt that there were two things that had outlived their usefulness; cars and guns.

One the gun front, it is pretty much self evident. Few people hunt anymore to ensure the survival of their families or to protect themselves from predatory animals. In fact to call hunting a 'sport' when the guns used are nearly weapons of mass destruction is a joke. But for me, I have never had any truck with guns. So, I don't have to do much soul searching on that account.

But the car thing has gotten interesting to me. I told you before that this is my experimental year of living in the middle of nowhere and trying life without a car. I gave myself a stipulation that if it turned out that my personal experiment was causing a heavy burden on my friends and family, I could not judge it successful. It also would not be a success if I spent more money or energy not having a car than having one.

I am almost hitting the one year mark and have made a lot of discoveries. The main discovery is that lots of people are thinking like me. Another discovery is that other countries, are miles ahead of us. Not a surprise I suppose because other countries don't have the $ or the will to engage in wars all over the world to support their oil addiction so have been creating mass transit for a very long time.

When my children were at the Pine Hill Waldorf School in Wilton, NH and we lived in the country in a cantonment with other Waldorf families and faculty, we all had for shit cars (old VW vans, mainly, that were always failing us (or us them). We actually had a neighborhood meeting to see if we could carpool with horse and carriages. Somehow we never got that together. (We did Christmas Carole with horses and sleigh and some neighbors collected Maple sap with horses and sledges. Ah, the good old days.) That was the last time I tried to think of a way to lead my sort of modern life without using cars.

What I am talking about mostly isn't a problem for people who live in cities in the USA with the exception of LA. Most cities have some fairly decent public transportation. Love San Francisco and New York although having been underground in New York when there was a fire on the train in front was pretty scary. But I have had the same thing happen on the road. I live in a small town with a larger small town nearby and no city for five hours by road in any direction.

The trains are no help here. I have taken them. They take too long, cost too much and leave us in the middle of nowhere. The greyhound bus takes 13 hours to do a five hour ride and leaves you off here at 1:30 AM and costs a lot. Shawn's Ride Share, a shuttle that goes to San Francisco is great. He is dependable, reasonably priced, clean, but only makes two trips a week. Going north is Craig's list share/ride, share/gas. That works for me because I am flexible. My last share changed the day three times. But, it was easy and comfortable.

I have friends who offer their cars when they are away or when they are stuck at work for long days. Car rentals are out to lunch in the rural areas. They are very expensive, very inconvenient, add on extra insurance when you don't own a car and you might as well buy a car. BUT, new things are popping up all over. In San Francisco there is a listing of over a thousand people who will rent you their car for as little as five dollars an hour if you need to do heavy errands or get to some place where public transport doesn't work. I am sure this will be happening all over soon. It is easy and hassle free and makes sense of someone owning a car that sits around all week.

The Europeans I have met on ride shares use a website "Rome2Rio" which will help you get from almost anywhere to anywhere.

In Boston, years ago, getting to New York was a bit of a catch 22, especially if I was going alone. Gas, parking, tolls were prohibitive. After 9/11, airplanes took too long. The buses were awful. Then came the Chinatown Bus and the Harvard Law School Bus. More genius. The Harvard Law School bus cost $10 and went from Cambridge to the Harvard Club in mid-town Manhattan whenever it filled up, which was frequently. The Chinatown buses go from Chinatown, Boston to Chinatown, New York for $10 whenever they fill up which usually only takes minutes. No reservations, pay the driver cash. Easy.

In college and high school I hitch hiked. I had good and bad experiences. A good one was when we were picked up hitching to Wellesley, MA and the limo of the Everley Brothers ( a very popular singing group then) picked us up. A bad one was when we got in a terrible accident in California with a drunk ride when we were going to the Summer of Love with flowers in our hair and ended up in the winter of hospitals for Patrick. I am contemplating hitch hiking again. I think the grey hair might give me a pass even with some cops as it has become illegal on so many roads.

Other hitching from the past that was very easy was hitching private planes at small airports.And hitching yachts in remote places. The yachts are easy still. Sailors, loving their quiet life are often desperate for company. But remember you will be stuck on a boat with that person which often isn't worth the trouble. Private planes are more uptight now because of increased regulations and the whole scene has become very corporate. Now you sort of need a friend with a plane.

This is a long ramble, but I am enjoying my new/old experiment. If you have some easy, fun, cheap ways of getting around, please let us know.

I'm Going Back to Nicaragua

When I made this decision, I was really wanting to go to Southeast Asia. I have friends in Vietnam and Thailand. But, at the same time, I was a bit tired of traveling, well, just plain tired. My thinking went something like this: I loved being in Nica last winter. Much of my schedule was dictated by my extensive dental work so there are many people and places I want to see this year. I loved the people. I was warm, not hot, every day. The cultural, social, and political experiences were rich and rewarding. It was affordable. It was beautiful. I had simple fresh food every day. I have scoped out the scene and it will be easy. I can use an easy year. I am going.

Now, I am getting excited. By next month for sure, si Dios quiere.  When I lived in New England, February was for a long time my bad month. That was when you understood the term "cabin fever."
Many years we were literally shut in our home due to blizzards, or washed out roads, illness, that kind of shit. Then one year we started to tap the maple trees and make maple syrup. It was such a gorgeous activity even with our little tiny operation. We made plenty of mistakes, the first of which was having the steam from cooking down the sap remove our wallpaper and make everything sticky. We moved the operation outside. We also burned a few batches. The last minutes require attention. But the fun of running with the kids from tree to tree, checking the buckets! And the most wonderful taste of the first cool sap at the beginning of the season. Loved that. Suddenly I loved February. Once tuned in you could practically see the tree branches turn color when the first run of sap came. Life was kind of still hidden, but you could feel it everywhere.

Having made friends with February, and overcome what we called "The Februaries", I fell out with November. To me, even the most beautiful spots in New England look bleak and dull in November. I was smothered by the impending doom of winter coming. I don't even like Thanksgiving. I mean I like giving thanks, don't get me wrong, but I thought the holiday was dumb. Mom was a lousy cook, and I was a vegetarian. And I dislike football. Bummer. Bleak, ominous, cold, dull November. Oregon isn't as cold, but I still can't get behind it. So, with great joy, I am heading back to the sunshine of Central America this November. It wouldn't be fair for me to stay here and be forced to complain all the time and you be forced to listen.

My Russians Are Back

Writing a BLOG is a new experience for me. I have written before, well, almost all of my life. For the past 15 years I have mostly enjoyed telling stories. I learned this pleasure from being a Waldorf teacher. We teach through stories. As a teacher you can enchant, you can instruct, you can mystify and generate interest, and you can certainly entertain. Much of good teaching is being a showman. If you, through stories, make something vivid, it lives forever in the memory of the kids. They can give you back the story the next day with more detail than you gave when you told it the first time.

I remember being observed for teaching instruction by James Putherer in my third grade class. I was telling the story of Joan of Arc. My God, how I loved her story. I had re-read biographies of her. I had a million times the info I could give third graders in a 40 minute story. Thus armed, I put myself in the times of Joan of Arc and started telling her story in the first person. The class was with me. It didn't take much description for them to be back in time, feeling and seeing her courage and deeds.

Then I made a side comment, an editorial comment, and I lost the class for a few heartbeats. I saw it happen, couldn't help myself. I, of course, needed to show my wit. Mr. Putherer's comment in my observation conference was that I was a very good story teller but that I had to overcome my urge to insert myself into the story. That was a very important writing lesson for me. (Like the 'sponge problem', still learning.)

The other important lesson I spoke of many months ago in this blog. I talked about the incredible editing process at Readers Digest when they took twenty two pages of my writing and turned it into 3,000 words..but never lost a word of mine, and never lost my tone, flavor, style. The first thing the editor told me was that I had to "kill my babies". I was shocked at this expression and he explained that the things I thought were cute and clever might be for me, but not for the audience of 5,000,000 that the Digest was going out to. The story was the thing. It was a very important writing lesson, very much in line with the Waldorf comment.

But for the past years I have wanted to share my thoughts and stories but couldn't quite 'get' who would listen. I didn't want to write articles anymore. I couldn't see how a book would hold together because I couldn't picture the audience. Last winter when I had some nice quiet time in Nicaragua, I ran across an old pile of notes on scrap paper with my son's instructions on how to start a blog. "What the hell", I thought. I started writing and found that I was really having fun and it didn't matter who I was writing for. I was just writing and enjoying it. Then, getting feedback, mostly on facebook, I started to get an idea of my readership.

Then came the Russians. For months 12 Russians read everyday. I started to picture my very real, but also completely imaginary Russians. Then one week - no Russian readers! Had I been offensive? Had the internet gone down in Russia? Was it a national vacation? I was kind of devastated. Then they came back, just as mysteriously as they had disappeared. That was months ago. This same thing happened last week and today they are back. I can't believe how attached I have become. (No pressure intended). We have a relationship in my mind. I have this with many of you in my mind. I don't know who you are. I don't know how you found me. I do know that I sometimes see your faces in my mind's eye when I write and also get feelings of satisfaction when I know my story entertained rf got you thinking.

Thank you and God Bless!