How to Get Respect. There is Nothing as Simple.

I won't keep you in suspense. You get respect by giving respect.

I don't think respect has ever been an issue in my life, but I have some observations that have matured through my travel experiences. I have watched a lot of different people and I see what works as a passport to an easier more gracious life.

It helps to act like a queen or king. I don't mean the stupid, spoiled, demanding, cartoon queen. I mean the comfortable, aware queen who tries to put others at their ease. I owe a lot to Alice Chamberlin who is my model. Don't let this go to your head, Alice, but the Dalai Lama is another model I look up to. You see, people like Alice and the Dalai Lama give you their attention when you are in their sights. Class, money, achievements, appearances don't seem to come into play. You feel important because you are. This sounds a little fatuous, but I am serious. Think how many people we brush past or half see or don't listen to in a busy day. The Buddhist insist the everyone you encounter in this life has karmic significance. Everyone. How do we miss this so often?

I am being treated like a queen here at TubTim Resort in Koh Samet, Thailand. When I walk into the restaurant, the waiters greet me, and run to get me pillows for the very uncomfortable seats, and remember what I like and ask me about my sleep or my swim. This sounds ordinary, but it is not. I am the only person here that I have seen this happen to regarding the pillows. Granted, I have grey hair which is a great asset here, but I also have time. I have taken the time to smile and greet (Sawadee Ka , bow) each of them. I enjoy them and am happy to see them and laugh when they burst into song and am quiet when they are watching the sea. I have watched people be demanding, angry, condescending and get what they want but they do not get respect because they don't give it. Nobody has fun. I see this all the time, everywhere. I know that my life has not one more iota of value than the next guy's. We are all in the same soup, all trying to figure out how to live and why we are here.

There are a lot of examples of people and groups trying to get respect by the use of force or power or violence. Think of the recent motorcycle gang clusterfuck in Texas, or the US and Israel in the Middle East. How is that working out? Using violence has never proved to win hearts and minds let alone respect.

In my personal life and in big geopolitical actions I do not advocate being a pushover. I advocate real strength, inside confidence. If we can walk tall and have compassion for others, they feel it and shine it back.

An Ordinary Woman's Perspective on Unsustainable Lifestyles. Oops, I Am Not Ordinary.

Let's get that out of the way. I don't really think anyone is ordinary. That word has such a flat connotation. Each and everyone of us has a remarkable, unique, amazing story. One of my great joys in life is hearing people's stories. Another is telling mine. 

So, I use the term "sustainable" in my normal discourse. Today, I got to wondering what comes to mind when I think about this concept.

My mind started jumping pretty excitedly. 

The first thing that comes to mind is one of the big guns: oil. I have mentioned this before, but I have this image of people many years from now, scratching their heads and looking at each other in complete bewilderment or actual hilarity and saying, "OK, man, so this is how they did it.  They found this stuff way under the ground in often God forsaken places and built these ugly contraptions using expensive ores from far away and pumped this ugly thick slime out of the ground and then ran pipes for God knows how far and then put the stuff on huge ugly ships which need more  of the stuff to run and then took it half way or all the way around the world and pumped it off the ships and then put it through a huge ugly chemical process and then pumped it into tanks and then pumped it into train cars and drove it for thousands of miles and then pumped it into trucks and then drove it to gas stations and then pumped it into underground tanks and then pumped it up into cars which used it to carry one or a few people to work so they could buy more of this shit to earn money to buy more of this shit. Not to mention what it takes to make the car or the WARS it has taken to keep it coming. So then we discover that we can do even more environmental damage getting energy from tar sands and fracking and the story goes on."

The guys in the future are now pissing their pants and agreeing that they never could have come up with such a stupid plan if their lives depended on it. 

When I was young and had an absolutely minimal understanding of physics, I asked a teacher whether pumping all this liquid from deep in the ground wouldn't leave a space that could cause trouble. "Don't be silly, Julie, nothing bad will come of it." I was frequently told that I have either a great or an overactive imagination, depending on whether the teacher liked my ideas or not.

Yup, that is one picture that arose.

Another thought that always comes is of landscapes with all the trees cut down. Fly over Honduras (American companies) some day, or Oregon, or Indonesia, or Brazil. It just isn't right.  Total deforestation changes the weather. Watch and look.

But these are the big themes that we all know and we all struggle with. How about little annoyances with big implications like when you can't get anyone to fix your plumbing or take care of granny because no one can afford to live near your Nantucket Island or your gated planet? It is happening. How about when the destitute over run your village? How about when you have police keeping hungry people away from supermarket dumpsters? This world is not sustainable.

And how sustainable is perpetual warfare? Millions(!) of refugees? Poisonous food? No food? Poisonous water? No water?  Deadly drugs? No drugs? How many people will afford medical school?

I have to go now, but my feeling is that where there is a will, there is a way and we need to pull together to change the course of this silly voyage that we have joined. We have to pull together and this is a brilliant opportunity if we can grab it.

A Boomer Packs for a Long Trip to SE Asia. What to Bring.

I am a woman of a certain age. (71). I am lucky enough to be able to 'get out of Dodge" for winters. Well, put it another way, when Dad died, I was left with enough money to travel, but not enough to survive in the USA with any dignity. I am so grateful. This being said, I have always been a gypsy, finding my bliss on the road.

Not that I didn't always hit the road whenever I could. I go to warm places, places with nice people, good beaches, inexpensive quality living. This year I am heading to Thailand, and Bali mostly with any and all side trips when the spirit moves me.

So, packing is  very easy because I am not going on survival trips or wilderness hikes.  But there are some simple guidelines that I follow, thereby streamlining the process and making decisions from past experiences and observations.

OK, Numero uno:
Never bring anything that will make you suffer if it gets lost or stolen. Years ago in the Highlands of Guatemala we would watch travelers arrive with their million dollar back packs all geared up as if they were climbing Everest. In the next weeks, (months) we would listen sympathetically over a beer as they told the story about everything getting stolen. I often had the ugly shit pack of all times and no thief, either Guatemalan or fellow traveler, would be tempted to take it home. Same goes for sunglasses, jewelry, computers, phones, but mostly the luggage. It is what you display to the world.

A young couple who had traveled everywhere and worked remotely were taking off from our hotel in Nicaragua last year. They had terrific equipment and gorgeous, expensive luggage, designed to protect all their great stuff including new binoculars, lots of great stuff. The difference monetarily between taking local buses and private taxis was enormous, like .25$ vs $40. I had a bad feeling and talked them into the taxi. On the next phase of their journey, they chose local and when they arrived at their destination, all had disappeared. I am all for going local, but I suspect that you limit your options when your stuff looks so valuable.

I could elaborate about what not to take, but your imagination can guide you. Another good reason not to take super special stuff is you might find yourself jettisoning stuff for all sorts of reasons, such as finding some very cool things and not having room for it all, luggage gets too heavy, you haven't used something in months and why the hell are you dragging it half way across the world, some villager needs it a lot more than you do. Let it go. It feels great.

That being said, I needed a new day pack this year. My real back pack days are over. I found myself swearing at my pack one time too many and pretty much gave it up. It was a super sad loss to me because I had a bit of identity wrapped up in it, and memories, lots of memories.

"Big Red" was my huge red nylon pack I got from Marlboro coupons. One trip it was full of my stuff and tons of books and school supplies for a literacy project in El Salvador. We had planned on going pretty directly to Salvador, but ended up meeting some people in the mountains of Guatemala so I had that pack. I finally had to hire kids to carry it for me between bus stops and one comical time in Lake Atitlan, two 9 year old boys and their wagon dragged that thing where every I needed to go. Our little parade embarrassed the hell out of my friend Tom.

I found just the day pack that works for me, lots of compartments, not heavy, good straps. I will also take a small suitcase on wheels and a travel purse with very strong shoulder straps. When I am in country, I often buy some kind of a string bag or plastic thing to carry stuff to the beach. I still take a money belt, probably a useless old habit, but some guest houses don't have a safe. In the old days you had to have one to carry travelers checks and return plane tickets as well as passports. My money belt was about 3 inches thick when I was in South America with my kids and had their passports and tickets and all.

American Express finished off travelers checks for the world. They may have invented them too. I can't remember. I remember 50 years ago meeting all sorts of college friends at the American Express office in Paris collecting money orders that our parents sent to bail us out. The way they screwed up travelers checks was by not paying their vendors for months. So I might buy a skirt in Ecuador for $10 and pay with a travelers check and they shop wouldn't get paid for 3 or 4 months. No one wanted to cash them anymore. Duh. But the ATM was going to change everything. The first time we saw an ATM in Costa Rica after months in southern Mexico, Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, we thought we had died and gone to heaven. Instant money! No more standing in line in frightening banks surrounded by armed guards making you take off your sun glasses and hats (still the case in Nicaragua), no more being assaulted by the armed guard and told while he was shoving you with his gun, that you were an idiot to withdraw money without a gun of your own because you would get robbed when you left. I take 2 different debit cards when I travel and change money for local money when I need to either through the ATM or on the street. These days you have to let your bank know where you are going ahead of the trip or they mess you up. Stupid new way to put the burden on the customer.

So, passport, two ATM cards, an cheap very light weight laptop. I was using the nifty ACER, very light and super good, but this year I am taking a google Chrome Book. Very very lightweight, very cheap. Again, if it gets lost, broken or stolen, no big deal.

The phone thing is changing fast. Up to now I have put my phone on vacation for 10 a month and picked up $10 burners if I am staying anywhere for any length of time. I have used Magic Jack to make free internet calls. By next year, I understand that there will finally be good, cheap phones and world wide plans coming from Google and other sources. This is crazy, but I admit, a lot less difficult than in the days when an international phone call cost huge bucks and took half a day with the operator at the phone company and sounded like you were on Mars. Of course, that was a bit of an adventure and much more social than bitching with AT&T about some stupid plan.

So I get my luggage lined up, call the banks and patiently (!) spell the names of far away places and then double and triple check. The last person at some horrid bank wrote Nigeria instead of Nicaragua. Check out visa requirements. Hard to believe, I know, but some countries in the world really don't welcome United Statesians with open arms for long periods of time. How can this be? Our foreign policy has done nothing but benefit the whole planet.  I buy some tickets. Cheapoair has found me some amazing deals especially when I have many stops. Many countries require that you have an exit ticket out before you can enter. If I don't know when I am leaving, I buy a very cheap ticket to anywhere just to have the ticket out so I can enter. Asia Air has tickets for $35 to some places. A good place to start.

I take a Kindle. In the old days of books, I absolutely loved arriving at huts, hotels, guest houses and picking out moldy books from the trade shelves and randomly reading whatever was there. (I can't get to sleep without a bit of a read). I still do that, but I take the Kindle also. The weight thing is one reason. It is so much lighter than books. Again, Duh. And I have some serious back up books on it. The complete works of Dickens and Tolstoy and Agatha Christie. Emergency rations. This, of course stifles creativity. Once, my glasses had been stolen (I later found them and gave the person a pair of glasses to trade for my prescription) and I only had a candle at night so I took a marker and a legal pad and wrote myself big stories that I could read without glasses by candlelight. Adventure story about some kids traveling alone.

I have big feet. So, in countries where women are little, it is not easy for me to buy shoes. I take Teva Women's Mush II Flip-Flop. This is what works for me. They last pretty well. Nothing really lasts well walking on volcanic rock, but there it is. I can slip them on and off going into temples and places where you have to take your shoes off. They don't look bad if I am dressing up and they are cheap.

I pack my day pack with electronics, lots of food, one day's clothes, a bathing suit, tooth brush paper and pen, printed tickets, copy of my passport, nicotine gum, and last minute stuff, a tiny Leatherman, micro flashlight.

I have a lightweight down parka that my friend Gretchen insisted on giving me. It has been a life saver on cold planes, wicked lay overs in New York in February and strangely cold nights in places where "it never gets this cold". Thanks Gretchen. That for the plane and a pair of socks, and food. I have a pathological fear of being hungry, developed in El Salvador during the war when I experienced starvation up close and personal. Last time I went to Thailand, I was still eating my plane food two weeks after arriving.

Then in the suitcase goes almost nothing. About 3 outfits, a few personal care items, a thing of Dr. Bronners peppermint soap, a few random things. This is because after I get to my destination, especially in Central America, the used clothing stores are heaven. I have found and bought clothes from Neiman Marcus with the tags still on in Mega Boutique in Granada. I have found so much fun stuff for under 3 dollars. I hate shopping but this is fun. I tend to donate this stuff to the maid or anyone who wants it when I leave and come home with just about nothing. In Southeast Asia, I buy new clothes on the street in the $2 for anything sales. I can see what blends in locally and again, it is so easy to shop when you are planning to pass it on in a month or two in any case. No pressure.

I include a small bottle of iodine, a round of CIPRO, some anti-fungal lotion and some EmergenC packets, in my medical kit. Also a few bandages, an anti-itch stick. All these things and more can be bought for pennies most anywhere. I take my glasses prescription. In Marin, CA last year, the local eye doctor wanted $350 to put my new prescription in my sun glasses frame. My eye doctor in Nicaragua did the same for $23 and apologized for it costing so much. Same proportion goes for haircuts, teeth cleaning, all that stuff.

I think this just about covers my travel planning. From a few not so pleasant experiences I have started to make a reservation for a room for the first week or at least the first few days in a new country. After that, I have the lay of the land and can choose more intelligently. It is about half and half in my experience, half times I move and half times I stay.

My goal is to be relatively sane about going places, yet to mix it up with new experiences, adventure and new people. Virtually everyone I meet is helpful and gets into the art of helping me find comfort and fun. The grey hair goes a very long way as a passport to gracious living. Also my stellar personality, I suspect.

"No One Leaves Home", Warshan Shire

NO ONE LEAVES HOME

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilet
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied
no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough
the go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off
or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hungry
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying—
leave,
run away from me now
i don’t know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here

— Warshan Shire

Shared without permission of the poet because I am grateful for such a powerful poem. Mea Culpa.

The Guns of the Oregon Shooter were Purchased Legally

According to the ATF (bureau of alcohol, tobacco, and fire arms), the weapons used by the Oregon shooter were all legally obtained. On what planet is it legal to buy and stockpile automatic weapons, handguns, assault weapons? Yup, here is the USA. I think this is insane. I am bored and astonished that with our deference to the NRA (national rifle association) we think that having a law that checks the background of people making personal arsenals with even touch the problem of gun violence in this country. It can't possibly.

And the hand wringing about mental health issues! Of course I think we should do a much better job of helping our citizens with mental health issues, and addiction issues, and abuse issues. No one could believe it more than I. At best we criminalize ill people, at worst we leave them to die of hunger and cold and starvation. But at the same time we glorify violence. We treat the assassins who murdered Bin Lauden and his family as national heroes. It looks pretty cowardly to me to shoot unarmed people in cold blood. We pay huge salaries to mercenary soldiers who torture others because we think they might be our enemies. We have people (who must have mental health issues) using drones to drop bombs in lands they can't even name or find on maps. We love violence. We call our dead army guys heroes even if they died killing unarmed children in a country where they don't even speak the language. Some of our most profitable companies are arms manufacturers and often they own our media outlets. GE.. too many examples to list. We don't call them mentally ill although they buy and sell weapons and weapons of mass destruction.

"Is the NRA the ultimate protection mafia for the military mercenaries and the arms manufacturers? Has our foreign policy come home to us in a sick way? Are our school shootings really any different from us dropping bombs from drones anywhere in the world we wish? Much of our prosperity comes from making weapons. I am sick from this. We didn't even sign the land mine treaty when so many other countries did. Why? We make them. I have to accept the fact that this is who we are. We are the largest arms manufacturer on the planet and we sell to anyone. And we don't want to stop it at home or around the world. This is clear".

We can't manage to agree on background checks! How will we ever come together  to do what country after country does and rid the citizens of deadly weapons. We are a sick joke on the world stage for our belief that overwhelming force at home and abroad is the path to peace. Peace is the path to peace. 

"No Poo" Movement catching on. Must read.

I got this note from a young friend of mine. He got me going. His note and my reply:

"Hi Jules,

I read a few days ago that daily shampooing was invented in the 60's by hair companies, and that prior to that women washed hair once a month.

Apparently there is a movement called 'no poo', which is sort of pushing the idea its the hair care products that make our hair unattractive. rinse daily with water, Sodium bicarbonate for washing every few weeks, and apple cider vinegar for conditioner after washing with the sodium bicarbonate.

Apparently there is like a month of 'adjustment' where you are gross greasy mess, then the hair stabilizes.

What do you remember from your youth on this topic?"

You can probably anticipate what I will say. There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you think about it, there are so many things that need to be examined. Everything we put in or on our bodies has a consequence. I don't think that plastics were developed until WW 11. Now we expose everything to plastics. We put our food in plastic bags, our clothes (fleece) are pure plastic, we eat and drink from plastic, almost all store food comes in plastic, sheets and pillows are made from plastic, all your sports gear is plastic. The chemical soups we drench ourselves in all have negative consequences. All. Most pharmaceuticals have awful side effects. Two of the five major medicines Mom took in the last years of her life have been removed because they caused heart attacks. She died of a heart attack. Somehow, the Mad Men of the sixties were so much more successful than we can ever imagine and in reality there is no one protecting us. The FDA and so forth have allowed endless damaging and destructive drugs and cosmetics and food stuffs to pollute our selves. There is nothing that doesn't have an down side. 

Both my mother and father were shocked when their kids started taking showers everyday. They grew up washing and shining shoes on Saturday night. Old farm traditions. My Dad used a bar soap for shampoo his whole life. He had beautiful hair. Mom used to have her hair washed and set once a week at the hairdresser.

We old hippies used Dr. Bronners (

Peppermint Liquid Soap - 32 oz

 ) for almost everything. toothpaste, shampoo, body wash, laundry. Then started coming the naturals and we used them. In Nica the poor people use a drop of bar soap and a lot of brushing. In many places people use coconut oil and a lot of brushing. In India, people use oil and have gorgeous hair. The Amerindians and Eskimos used bear fat or other available oils. You see, it is a bad idea to dry out your hair and then have to put products to counter the dryness. That is a fact. And each product has a soup of chemicals and additives and fake color and dangerous scents. Bad. Every scent in your laundry is some nasty chemical. People used to hang out laundry to dry and it smelled so fresh. Now chemical places like DuPont and Monsanto use nasty shit to emulate that nice smell. I get a headache when I am in the detergent section of a market. If I told that to a doctor, I would get a chemical prescription to counteract the headache.

Many of the things we do without examining them are not only stupid, but destructive. Fluoride in the drinking water, no proof that it helps with teeth. Very expensive and lots of side effects. An aspirin a day for your heart-same thing. Who started that ad campaign? Non dairy sour cream has something like 70 chemicals in it. Hair care is a good place to start. Get a good brush to stimulate your natural oils (maybe a non plastic brush) and go from there.

A good idea is to look to the past before TV ads and before Monsanto and before supermarket chains. People did a lot of body care with baking soda. Great for stomach stuff, odors,cleaning. Vinegar was used for everything..cleaning, fighting infections, washing windows and on and on. Epsom salts were used for a million things. Salt was used for teeth brushing and gum health and gargle. You get my drift.This doesn't even take into consideration herbs, and spices and natural healing and ancient traditions..acupuncture, massage, and so forth. I have seen a comfrey compress take down swelling in front of my eyes.

I am slightly amused that a person who only has a half inch of hair is looking at this issue, but I am happy to have you thinking along these lines. All the people I know in your generation are very concerned about researching the best products to buy for their needs. The next step would be to study the best non-products. I am not against the use of anything commercial, you know that, but if use of one thing is creating the need for the next thing and the next thing, the spiral gets more and more away from the simple things that have worked forever. 

p.s., The frequent chemical shampooing may also have created the need for the massive hair coloring industry in the US which almost always uses cancer producing ingredients. My grandmother B. died with no grey in her hair.

This is more than you wanted, I am sure, but a good way to think about things is "what did people used to do, what do poor people do and how much shit do I want to use on a regular basis?" The natural cosmetic and food industry has offered a lot of substitutes for the worst shit, but the mentality is the same..what do I let them sell me?