I Would Never Have a Home, Part 1

Mr. Edmunds, founder of Emerson College, Sussex, England once told me that I would never have a home because I would always be at home everywhere. I was a little pissed off when he said that. It was at my exit interview. He was a little disappointed in me. "I thought you would have come around by now." he said. "What the fuck are you talking about?" I said.

Very productive conversation, by and large. I had had a horrible/wonderful year at Emerson. I felt too confined by England. Although Sussex is extremely beautiful, everything was too small for me. In the stores, they sold raisins in tiny little bags, for instance. I had been living in Oregon where you bought meat by the half cow, grains by the fifty pound bag, milk by the gallon. In Sussex, it took ten stores to get enough food for breakfast...the greengrocer, the dairy, the tea store and so on. Now this is how I love to shop. I hate big stores, but then I was in culture shock.

Actually it was a bad set up from the beginning. Patrick wanted to further his study of Anthroposophy. We had an almost two year old daughter. Emerson College wrote back when Patrick applied that it would probably be best if Patrick came and left me and Ariel in Oregon. The school didn't really want the bother of families. Well, this didn't fly with us or, as it turned out, with many other people. The year was 1972 or there about. In the USA we were coming down from raging hippie, antiwar protests, the health food revolution, and were collectively looking for something more, something spiritual, not produced by LSD and dope.

We had a plan for the summer before. We were going to go to Mexico and live in Cuernivaca with our dear friend Lee Perron and study with Ivan Illich. We would drive down in our 1966 Volkswagen Beattle and fly to England from Mexico.We took our little orange tent and our wok and headed down the west coast. We camped out each night on a different fabulous beach. I was sublimely happy. Everything was easy, beautiful, sunny (after 2 winters in Oregon!). I was very excited about the Mexico gig. P. was excited about the England thing.

When we got to the Mexico boarder ran into big trouble. There was a terrible epidemic of Equine Encephalitis and dead animals were floating down the rio Grande river. The boarder people told us that adult people were not getting very ill but that babies and little children were dying from this. We had little Ariel. Lee was already set up in Cuernivaca and waiting for us. We hung out at the boarder trying to figure out the risks. We read that eating beans with their vitamin B was a good preventative for mosquito bits. Finally, I couldn't do it. We turned around and went back to Oregon.

Where Psychology Fails

I guess it is no surprise that the birth of psychiatry was co-incidental with the darkest moments of materialism this planet has known. It would have to be no surprise that most of the responsibility of a shrink these days is to prescribe medications. Does this reduce the whole human soul and spirit to chemicals? I think of people who have have died on the table and seen the tunnel of light and had a life review and then returned to the land of the living to be told that it was just  moment of lack of oxygen to the brain or some other physical manifestation.

How can we say we are intent on therapeutic work and then reduce probably the most revealing moment of a person's experience to a petri dish reaction? The soul wants to be honored. The spirit is eternal. If we could get all the chemicals perfect would we all be radiantly happy? Maybe. Maybe not. One of my bones to pick is that when Dr. Freud and Dr. Jung started they were working with profoundly ill patients. Now, a twenty two year old junior writer at a magazine designed to sell furniture can give advice about the how to make your life better and millions of people will read it and probably expect it to work. What are we thinking?

In The Soul's Code, James Hillman talks about the acorn that we are born with which will find a way to become the oak tree that we are meant to be. He sites case after case where people entirely change what would logically be their destiny in order to blossom.  His terrific work as a post-Jungian psychiatrist, in my mind, makes a great argument for spending more time exploring the reality of  karma, rather than whether we got what we needed from our parents when we were kids. I am going to think about this more. It seems to me that if nature and nurture form us, we need to think more about what 'nature' really means and how we find ourselves in the 'nurture' situations we do.

OK, FREAKING OUT AGAIN.

I was watching some of the first episodes of Portlandia the other day. I am after all in Portland. I kind of didn't get it at first, thinking it was too cartoon like. Then I realized it was emphasizing exactly the Portland signature characteristics that I myself would point out. For instance, are the people here really ugly or do they just present themselves in the worst possible clothes and hair cuts and heavy metal mixed with pink fluff? But then I recall that I haven't been to London or Berlin or any remotely hip places for a long while.

Portland and Ashland are the only places I have ever been where clerks and other customers will approach you in the market and tell you to put that bread back, "Don't buy it!" because it has wheat gluten in it. I get lectures all the time. People in stores don't want to sell you things they don't like. They don't want to sell you things they really like. Go figure..

Then we must take into account the pathological lack of humor about anything and everything. I get lectures on tolerance from lesbian vegans. I should support gay marriage (I do!) and should never carry a leather pocketbook. (I do!)  I get confused. I support Waldorf Education. (Yes!) but I also support free public education. (Yes!) But I dislike the Pledge of Allegiance and I don't like how   US History is portrayed in public education. How really can you talk about post slavery US without using the word "Apartheid"? All these issues and a million more are shoved in your face as daily fare in Portland. God forbid you should laugh at an issue or even mock yourself for straddling the fence on such an important issue as free dog health insurance. You see the problem?

Truth be told I am comfortable in this milieu. But I was extremely uncomfortable in another Portland scene the other day. My ride share (How else do you travel to Portland?) told me I might get a good price on a new computer at COSTCO. So Heather (dear family friend and house share with my daughter- temporarily) and A. and I went to COSTCO. I saw in a moment that there were no computers that interested me, but then they were off to find real bargains in goat cheese and organic olive oil. It was too hot in the car, even with the air conditioning on. I went and sat at the outside fast food court with a couple of hundred people. The special of the day was a foot long hot dog with a quart of soda for $1.50. A couple of hundred extremely fat people were enjoying the treat. Once again the fat was not what got to me. What got to me were the sad faces. SAD SAD SAD. And the pained walks. And the number of walkers being used by relatively young people.

It was like a vision of hell. Later that day I was buying cigarettes at another low rent store and the man who was selling them to me flipped my dollars like a dealer in Reno. Which he had been. He said he couldn't work there because it was too immoral taking the $ all day and all night of the addicts, and watching them kill themselves slowly. He didn't seem to get the irony of selling me cigarettes and others quarts of soda. Complicated town, this Portland.

Old Friends/New Friends

The thing about old friends, for better or for worse, is that you don't have to start over. You have a real history that is common ground. At my reunion it was amazing to see people who knew my parents and my brothers and sisters. After I got divorced, after 20 years of marriage, and moved to Marblehead, MA, my new friends had never known me married. It was weird. They would say things about their husband, or whomever, and then imply that I couldn't understand because I was single. In almost every case I had been married a lot longer than they had, but they hadn't known me then.

Certain experiences, of course, make the bonds stronger. If people go through a disaster together, if they go through a rigorous training together, if they were children together, then there are ties that don't fade with time.

But then I look at my ex-husband and wonder. Did I ever know him at all? I had an idea of him that was one way. I think I created him in my mind and lived out a kind of fantasy of who he was. When I see him now, I don't know him. This is not a good thing or a bad thing. It just is what is happening. It is possible that the blinders that I wore have gone away. It is possible that we have changed. 


Do we really change as we grow older or do we just become more who we always were? The only group I ever officially joined in my life was the Veterans for Peace. I loved these guys because they had all been through a real transformation. They changed from government puppet warriors to warriors of peace. But there is the rub. They were still warriors They had changed their deepest values (or maybe discovered them) but they approached the business of peace making with the approach of a military campaign. They are a strong and effective force in the world. They accepted me. I told them I fought the Vietnam War on the streets of America not in South East Asia. True, but my experience was flippant and light weight.  My contribution to our group was my experience with nonviolent action which was something.


So , what part of us changes and what part becomes more of the same..slightly more exaggerated each year? I always had a mystical bent. Several childhood memories come to mind. I remember being dressed in white and walking in a procession led by nuns in celebration of the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I can still feel how I felt almost overwhelmed with the beauty of the flowers and the simple songs and the adoration we shared One time about the age of twelve, I sat in Christ the King Church in Worcester, MA and stared at one of the Stations of the Cross, waiting for my empathy of Christ's suffering to bring me to the "bliss". At that time I got a little depressed when I didn't turn into a  saint immediately. I went home and started reading The Lives of the Saints. I couldn't picture my life unfolding without eating for thirty years or bleeding from the stigmata until I died from lack of blood. Somehow my mystical inclinations have developed along different lines. But the impulses were there as long as I can remember. 


Some parts of us change. Sometimes we can shed shit we have picked up along our path, sometimes it is our downfall. I have less and less credence to give to the nurture piece of "Nature vs Nurture" and more and more inclination to go all the way with  Karma. Everything has a cause and everything has an effect, Amen.

Kids On a SummerAfternoon

I am listening to seven kids who have been playing vampire in the back yard for hours. They are from the immediate neighborhood. It is likely that they would hardly know each other if they weren't neighbors, they are all so different from each other. The game started out with some face paint and video cameras. They were filming a movie. But the game soon got so active that the cameras were forgotten and the costumes got more extravagant. What I love to see is how they each have found a role they are comfortable with. They each seem to be the master of certain talents and the others step back and let it flow. Well, flow isn't exactly the right word. It is galloping. Hour after hour.

There has been no fighting, no bullying, no disagreements. I can't think of how much work it would be if adults would be trying to make this happen. It really says something about letting the kids have some real freedom in a safe place. It is amazing to me how creative they are, and how they are delivering all their speech in character, in a rehearsed manner.They keep one of the more sanguine boys together by reminding him to focus. Imagine! The youngest is 6 and the oldest 11. Both boys and girls.

It is so refreshing that they have the time (no lessons), that they aren't hanging around waiting to be entertained, that they have found everything they need without bugging the adults. To me, it is the essence of kids summer. Gracias a Dios.

YOU CAN'T KNOW THE RESULTS OF YOUR ACTIONS

I see those bumper stickers about "random acts of kindness" and they make me think about the butterfly who flaps his wings in Brazil and causes a big wind in Canada. (or something like that). Who knows what the effects of our actions are?

A short time before my mother died, I was helping her get from the car to the house. It was a long slow struggle. The beautiful beach and islands were our backdrop, but we were looking down to take the slow painful steps down the walkway. I was pretty much holding her up. It turned out that there were no more walks into the house. The next time she traveled that path it was in an ambulance coming home to meet the hospice people.

But that day, she paused (we paused) and she said, "Well, here you are helping me navigate just like you did when you were ten." I looked into her eyes and asked what she meant. She said that there was a winter when she had had a late miscarriage and she was so depressed that she could hardly get out of bed. Apparently at that time, I got the house going in the morning, opened the curtains, started breakfast and encouraged her to come downstairs. Her memory was that I was her bridge back to healing. I remember none of it except some vague picture of her lying on the couch. My mother never was lying around, so it must have been big. She carried that gratitude all those years. Who knew?

Years later, one of my daughters sort of did the same thing. We had a lovely downstairs neighbor who was going through a very difficult time. Upstairs we were in those crazy years when we had foster kids and friends of kids and stranded kids and sometimes runaway kids in and out of the house at all hours of the day and night. I was always apologetic to M. who had to hear the herd of elephants over her head. Her memory is quite different. Her memory is that many times A. went downstairs and insisted that she join us for food and blend into the crowd and that was a very big deal in her recovery. Who knew?

A Buddhist teacher in Marin told me that he was reacting against the fact that he didn't see a strong tradition among the upper middle class Buddhists in the USA of helping the disadvantaged. He went for a while among the homeless. He learned a lot. Of course they had tremendous needs, but one of the most powerful things he learned was that when they became homeless they lost their individuality in that they were perceived as "the homeless." They told them that it meant a great deal to them if people asked their names and told them their name. How hard is that? I try to remember every time and watch the faces light up. One small act of being conscious.

I think that we can do many small acts of kindness everyday and flap away with those butterfly wings. Who knows?

How Obama Could Get My Vote

Right now, I won't even read about the stupid election activities in the USA. I don't give a rat's ass about how much money this or that party is spending on ugly ads, or on horses. What would get my interest would be some serious talk about what Obama might really be able to accomplish and what he needs to do it. I could get interested if he would come out and say exactly what states he needs what senators and congressmen in and what they could accomplish if we could mobilize and get the people elected. I am not talking about how we can get a democrat instead of an evil republican. I am speaking about very specific stuff with a clear plan of exactly what needs to happen to accomplish what. Right now it is all about who is the better choice between personalities. Obama doesn't let us know what he stands for. And when he can't follow through on an initiative, he blames the congress. It is simply not interesting. And it is obviously disingenuous.

In the conversations I hear he has pretty much lost his base. It feels like a choice between two republicans. There are a lot of us who would actively campaign for the person we thought Obama was in the last election. Unless he gets real, it is too boring to think about.

I saw Chris Hedges on the Bill Moyer show the other night. He has covered war- torn countries all over the planet. He has just written a book about the worst poverty locations in the USA. He looked shell shocked, almost speechless about what he experienced in this country.He looked and spoke as if he was more traumatized by what he saw at Pine Ridge Reservation and Camden, New Jersey than he was in Bosnia or Congo during the worst parts of their wars.

It would certainly inspire a lot of people if a presidential candidate went full force into an issue like the specific problem of dire poverty in the USA and had a plan and told us what he needs from all of us to attack the problem. I know we could accomplish amazing things if we had a little action outline and a little drop of hope that we could get one huge issue off the table and move on from there.

Reculer pour mieux sauter, or something like that..

Watching the arrival of what seem to me sensible running shoes makes me think again about the need for us to think things over and discover what works and what doesn't work. Bare feet work the best for running, I would think. I mentioned before the African runner in long ago Olympics who ran bare footed and ran like a deer. Her feet didn't appear to touch the ground. She looked like she was floating over the solid earth.

Then there were the guys carrying 200 pound loads up the volcanoes in Guatemala. They wore flip flops and had no trouble with their feet. Then along would come German hikers with million dollar equipment and spend each night tending to blisters and foot rot. Hum... Makes you think.

I never could use a running shoe with the heal higher than the toes, so I missed 40 years of Nike high design sneakers. I also noticed that all my running friends had big calves and I really liked my thin ones (even when I was a fatty). Many also had injuries. Have you seen the stories of the runners in Copper Canyon, Mexico who run for days barefoot? And fast? Or the reports of Native Americans who ran in deerskin for a thousand miles?

So now for real money you can buy some running shoes that are designed to work like bare feet and Nike and its ilk owe no "We goofed" for the millions of people they bamboozled into painful and damaging shoes.

I think it is a great time to examine everything that had been sold to us as newer and better and scientific and modern. I suspect that we will find lots of places where the more simple, more old fashioned, more natural path is also more satisfying and more wholesome. Why did anyone ever bring themselves to think that a plastic baby bottle made of God knows what in God knows where and shipped all around the globe could possibly be better than a glass one? How did anyone ever become convinced that a prepackaged, cheap milk product like substance mixed with water of dubious quality and sometimes dangerous quality could be an improvement over breast milk?

What is turning in to a real treat these days? Something like corn or tomatoes grown in your own garden and picked warm from the sun and eaten right then. To me, that is better than a $300 restaurant meal. Unless that is what the restaurant offers.

I am not at this time, wanting to homestead. I am not wanting to eat nothing but rotten potatoes like my Irish ancestors had to do, but I am for examining what we have been sold as our "needs" and our rights. Have you ever been to a bake sale and bought packaged brownies or cake thinking it was homemade? And tasted that awful after taste? I remember when cake mixes came out in the early Betty Crocker days. It was certainly a thrill that every cake you made with a package looked great. It was. But they didn't seem to have much substance. You ended up eating a much bigger piece to get the hit you used to get from a homemade cake. And a mix offers almost as much work as making the real thing.

I, of course, went in the opposite direction during the hippie years. I ground my own whole wheat flour with a hand grinder. I went to the farm to get real cream for the whipped cream frosting. I packed the cake with ground seeds and nuts. I made fifty pound birthday cakes that tasted like old bread. My son once told me that he would be so happy if we could have one of those cakes from Carvel for his birthday (an ice cream cake) because he didn't think his friends would go for the brown ones I made. He always was a diplomat.

Years later when my friend Shelly was curing her tumor with macrobiotics and she was getting sicker and thinner, her daughter and I made her a carrot cake that we swore was from a pure macrobiotic recipe. We lied. Shelly ate almost the whole cake which had pounds of carrots and walnuts in it but also a dozen eggs, a half pound of butter, a ton of maple syrup. Sometimes you just have to do the right thing.

So we have known about "backing up to better leap forward - Reculer pour mieux sauter" forever, but need to do it in a more balanced way. I don't need to bake nasty hundred pound bricks, but I also don't need to believe that a fake something is better than a real something. Also if the best runners I have ever seen are almost bare foot or bare foot, why would I believe a company that has gotten rich exploiting workers all over the world, that they are making the best product that you have to have?

Finding the Heartbeat

I was in the doctor's office in Ashland, Oregon a few years ago to have some pesky skin things removed. Interesting term, pre-cancer. Isn't every cell pre-cancer when you think about it?  I took a deep breath before the nurse took my blood pressure. She looked me straight in the eye and said with great sincerity, "Neither your breathing nor anything else can affect your blood pressure." I thought that she was joking, but could see no sign of that in her expression. "Wow" I thought, "She has never heard what the yogis can do. "

Then came the doctor, and he actually asked me how I was doing. My limited (thank God) experience with doctors has often been that they look at the presenting problem and nothing else. I found myself complaining (moi!) about feeling low. He asked me a bunch of questions and stopped fussing and looked at me and told me that I had just given the classic 100% description of Seasonal Affective Disorder. It had been a long an rainy winter, slightly unusual in southern Oregon.

He started in about taking vitamin D supplements, getting a lamp thing, maybe taking antidepressants. I cut him off with "Why the hell would I do that. I am going to buy a ticket and go to the sun." I couldn't see any reason to adjust to conditions that were making me ill when I had the freedom to let go of those conditions.

But I left thinking about blood pressure and heart beats.My whole life people (total strangers in fact) have lectured me about using too much salt. I tend to have very low blood pressure. I crave salt. I never felt like a sinner for using it, or licking cow licks, for that matter. My friend Ron now tells me that the science is now saying that salt doesn't affect your blood pressure, that that concept was an old wives tale that somehow got fixed without examination. I don't take either view too seriously because science seems to change all the time.

Remember ulcers? Remember all those poor souls who had to eat no spicy foods, no roughage, had to eat mashed potatoes and drink milk all the time because the entire medical profession said that was how you treated ulcers? And you got blamed for having ulcers because they were caused by stress and it meant you couldn't handle your life. Now, thirty years later, ulcers are cause by a virus or bacteria or something and you just take a prescription and are all fixed up. A grain of salt. Or, in my case, a fistful of salt.

But to get back to the old ticker. When I was doing some African Drumming with my friend Mamadou Diop, he said that one of the reasons the drumming was so healing was that the stable beat, the background beat that everything riffs off is the human heart beat. That is why drummers can go on for days. That is why, when things are out of control in a village, the healers start up drumming. That is how many things, especially psychological, can be healed by drums.

This got me thinking about what music I like. My tastes are pretty eclectic but what I really like, what music I really go back to has something I always called "human" in it. It is a relation to my heart beat. It is the same thing that in meditation you experience by following the breath. In doing so you tend to get to the most relaxed easy breathing rhythm that you can find. Then, miracles happen. Troubles wane and you feel better.

I know that I can change most everything in my body by getting in a good rhythm. Like most things, I just have to remember to do so when life starts to go too fast or too slow.

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

I have been avoiding much of the news lately. I was pretty removed from it all last winter. I still watch Democracy Now! when I can. At least on that broadcast I don't have to listen to talking heads ranting at each other about the stupid social issues that are dragged  up time and again to distract us from the real issues.

I think anyone anywhere in this country could probably point out the real issues in a heart beat. Like the fact that our country has slipped in shameful ways that could be fixed. Like the fact that it would appear to many of us and most of the world that our God is money. Our motivation is greed/power and even in those departments we aren't doing as well as we used to.

I have the impression that our country is run by a duopoly. The same corporations often give equal money to both shell parties to assure their comfort no matter who wins.  Do we ever bother to examine how other democracies work? Or how other countries have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps?  Maybe we could figure out how to get out of wars we can't afford. Maybe we could wonder whether all our military expenditures have made this country any safer.

I am not a Republican  or a Democrat. Neither represents what they claim to.  Neither has leadership. And it isn't even good spectacle any more. The stakes are too high. The human suffering being caused by our Roman Gladiators is too great. Shouldn't there be some fun, some hope, some inspiration, some generosity to be spread around for all the billions of dollars being spent on one lousy election cycle? Why do we bother to listen to promises that can never, will never be delivered?

One thing that the sixties generation had in spades was good radar for lies. When Richard Nixon lied to us saying that the Vietnam War was not also in Cambodia or Laos, a collective, "He's lying." went up all over the country. Now, when the President or the candidates lie, we hardly bother to shrug. It is what they are paid to do. It is what our university professors are paid to do, it is what our bankers are paid to do, it is what our medical researchers are paid to do.

I don't even thin we are getting our money's worth in regard to the best democracy money can buy. I want a free election, otherwise it is a waste of breath.

Last Time-Grammar Lesson

I can't help but thinking that we would all sound a lot more intelligent if we changed a few bad grammar habits that are rampant these days.

One of the biggest offenders in the USA is lay - lie. Lay means to put something down. "I will lay this book on the table." Simple. Lie is the act of getting down. "Every day I tell my dog (or grandmother) to go lie down." "When I lie down for a while, I feel better."

Many of us learned the children's prayer "Now I lay me down to sleep..." That is correct English for obvious reasons, but thrown in to confuse you. Disregard.

I can't see how this is difficult, I guess hearing words used incorrectly over and over again makes for confusion. If you are one of the dreadful sinners, try some self-correcting. It is easy.

The other cardinal sin most frequently heard is the old "between you and I" or "He gave it to Paul and I". Subjective/Objective. I could give you the grammar lesson, but I will tell you a short cut. Cut out the other person in your mind. Would you ever say "He gave it to I"? That is in fact what is happening. No! You would never say that because it is the wrong case. The subjective can't be used as an object of a preposition.

Here is a partial list of prepositions:

• aboard
• about
• above
• across
• after
• against
• along
• amid
• among
• anti
• around
• as
• at

• before
• behind
• below
• beneath
• beside
• besides
• between
• beyond
• but
• by

• concerning
• considering

• despite
• down
• during

• except
• excepting
• excluding

• following
• for
• from

• in
• inside
• into

• like

• minus

• near

• of
• off
• on
• onto
• opposite
• outside
• over

• past
• per
• plus

• regarding
• round

• save
• since

• than
• through
• to
• toward
• towards

• under
• underneath
• unlike
• until
• up
• upon

• versus
• via

• with
• within
• without....
• Yesterday I spoke from my heart. Today I am speaking from my high horse. My mother was a grammar Nazi and I guess I have some genetic something from her. Hasta Pronto.

Heavy Heart

Formerly, I wrote a post about all the adjectives I use to describe friends; good friend, best friend, old friend, sweet friend, sort of friend, and so on. Today I am thinking about the words I use to describe my heart. I have a heavy heart today. Some days I have a broken heart or am light-hearted, or have a singing heart or a pounding heart or an anxious heart or a full heart or a bursting heart.

If these were literal states, I would probably be under a lot of heavy medication. (The average person my age in the USA takes 8-12 big time meds per day.) But maybe these emotions that I feel in my heart ARE somehow taken on as physical aberrations. Norman Cousins, in his book "Anatomy of an Illness" talks about the day he was getting on a plane to deliver yet another lecture and he turned to his wife and said "My heart is no longer in this." Soon after he had his first huge heart attack. He didn't have the heart for his work any more. Really. And he cured his problem with laughter and became a medical school lecturer on the subject. Know any good jokes?

When I was getting divorced, long long ago and far far away, I felt like I had a broken heart. It literally felt physically broken. It hurt. When I get stage fright, my heart flutters. I never do get checked out in the middle of this emotional moments. Why would I? But I start to wonder how the old body can keep bouncing back to homeostasis. I am certain that one can die of a broken heart. I am not sure you really could explode if you were very excited. Doesn't it feel that way sometimes?

When I saw my dear grand daughter Bella after 7 months of not seeing her we both were almost overcome by how much joy, relief, love we felt. Full heart. Does too much blood actually stay in your heart when you get that feeling?

Today my heart is heavy. I already said that. When I went for a walk this afternoon, I felt like I was carrying a bag of bricks on my chest. I think the bag is the sadness I am feeling. Someone I love is suffering greatly right now, and I can't think of a thing I can do to help relieve her suffering. I try to send joyful light-filled thoughts to her, but I gotta get the bricks off my chest first.

THE CANCER QUESTION

I don't know about you and your friends, but one subject that eventually comes up with people of a certain age is "What route would you take if you found out you had cancer?"

Sadly we have too many examples of other people to look back upon and contemplate. As Gretchen says , "It would certainly depend on what kind of cancer it is." Yes, but. We really can not know. For me it would depend on the outlook, where I was living, who was around, how much money I had. We have all heard about people who had dire diagnoses and drank carrot juice and got better. We know the friends who went on the medical trip all the way and had terrible deaths. We also know the carrot juice person who dies and then everyone says they should have had chemo. And the chemo person who died and then people said the chemo killed them. They should have eaten raw foods and shot up Iscador. Then there are the people who blame the person...too many negative thoughts, too much butter, salt, sugar, depleted uranium. As if.

I guess my point is how the hell can we judge others? If we don't know the karma of another person, if we don't know their deepest strengths and their worst fears. If we haven't walked in their shoes, who are we to judge? Of course, some choices look a lot harder than others, but that is true about anyone we look at. Think about relationships. Think about love. (Hello Burt!)

People chose the strangest people to love. Strong women chose men who suppress them or hurt them or put them down. Men chose women who boss them and dominate them and treat them like children. I mean smart men. I mean smart women. How can we look and judge what the plan is for others' lives?

At Emerson College in Sussex, England one of the teachers of Anthroposophy talked about nuns and monks as people enjoying a "sleeping incarnation." I took offense at this. I think it reflected some middle class middle European world view that work in the world was good and a life of contemplation was nothing. Maybe that was envy. Maybe he was stupid. But, for some, a life of contemplation could be torture, or it could be escape ,or it could be bliss.

And a horrible, to my eyes, lover in someone's life could be just the challenge they need to grow or to learn compassion or to erase some old shit karma. The same with their cancer, the same with any choice that we can't understand. I think pop psychology has sold us a fake idea that we can all be happy all the time if we can adjust our medications properly. We really have to do the work of finding contentment and judgement from others doesn't support this . I am going to try and listen to my own voice today.

JUST ONE THING

Julie,

Do you remember...regarding the bread project? You and I had a conversation and I talked about the power in just doing one thing...well.  Instead of starting a restaurant and doing  lots of things, just make bread. Instead, in your home, trying to be good at everything ( like homemakers who excel at many activities---but go unrecognized) , just focus on one thing. bread, or pies, or whatever, but, just one.  If you can't be all things for your kids, just do one thing that will be good--that they will remember. Try making your own bread.

Then, you, the doer, went back to Oregon and started doing "just one thing" . And, so the bread project came about. Maybe you remember it differently. But, I remember this. : )

What other "just one things" shall we do?

Love,

Joan

Joan, I do remember this and I had a flicker of the memory when I was writing the blog and then I couldn't remember. Thanks so much for sending this. You really were the first little light on this adventure.

One of the Bread Kids went to midwifery school. Another went to Cuba to study agriculture. One went to China to study acupuncture. One teaches organic farming at an alternative high school...and on and on.

Ralph Waldo Emerson; "It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself."

The "just one thing" that I have been thinking about lately and it will take a miracle to show me how to do anything about it is that I think that we shoud have free broadband access everywhere and for everyone in this country. Many countries have already implemented this. The lack of this widens the divide between the haves and the have nots. For anyone to compete in this world today, they need access. Now.

PAX PANIS - PEACE OF BREAD (Part 6)

The first night in Todos Santos, with the kids all enrolled in home stays and Spanish classes I had warned them not to drink or drug. A gift from heaven came in the form of a man who was in the one room jail cell for the night. This room with its thatched roof was dead in the center of town, across from the church and at the bus stop. This man, high on something, screamed bloody murder all night. His screams of agony were heard by everyone. They actually weren't torturing him or even touching him, but the fear of God was planted in the kids.

At the end of the school weeks we headed out for our destination. We made our way to San Lucas Toliman on the banks of  Lake Attilan. We were met by the mayor. That was good news. He told us that the women we had planned the project with had been killed. Bad news. He introduced us to some of the still living moral leaders in the area. One had a fantastic herb garden and was heading a group that was trying to buy back, inch by inch, the land that had been stolen from them. They were taking the coffee production organic.

They had only one place where we could stay. It was a very large room with a nice breeze and lots of beds. One slight problem was that the cousin of the owner had recently died and the coffin with the body in it had to stay in the room with us until a week passed and certain Mayan ceremonies could begin. OK

We had a bunch of discussions with the locals and the gang decided that we would build a recycling center. There was no way of dealing with trash in this ancient village. Until very recently there had been no trash. Then came plastic and paper and all the modern shit.

We were offered a piece of land way up near the top of the volcano. We got a bunch of locals to help and dug a huge pit up there and started constructing a rebar and concrete structure that would have a palm roof to keep the rain out. Then some guys started using an old pick up to bring up the trash and dump it. Then the kids started a big tomato patch to make money to pay for the gas for the truck. Then we started sorting through the garbage, looking for anything that we could recycle or reuse. I thought cutting rebar with a sledge hammer was hard. I thought shoveling cement was hard. But nothing compares to sorting garbage in a pit at the top of a volcano. We managed o get a few pairs of gloves from some kind person who made a trip to a store. We found horses hoofs, then stillborn animals, then razor blades, all sorts of great stuff.

The dead body was gone. The house lost its water supply. We bathed in thee lake. We got new clothes from the truck that came with Ropas Americana..donated clothes from the USA. We ate well. We had a ton of help from the townspeople. We did it. I carved a stone sculpture that was put at the entryway to the site. We played in softball games. I initiated a spitting contest. We were done.

I kept hearing a lot of buzz that the town was planing a farewell event. I told the kids that we had to make a gift to give back as we were not good enough in Spanish to match the speechifying that was bound to come. We decided to do a play. We decided on a very condensed version of The Wizard of Oz. We spent a day collecting props and arguing about who played whom. One of the kids came back with a nine inch chicken on a leach. It was Todo the dog, OK. That night much of the town came out to a big bonfire.

The mayor and other important people made speeches that we mostly couldn't understand. Then with great fanfare they gave us beautiful documents hand printed with gold seals all over them. Someone had had to go to the Capital to have these made. They certified that we were experts and generous activists in garbage. Our diplomas. I almost started to laugh hysterically because I was so tired, but I managed a gracious thank you.

Turns out that this project continued on and became a model for many towns, so many, in fact, that they had to appoint someone to give tours and show people how to emulate it. Who knew?

PAX PANIS - PEACE OF BREAD (Part 5)

The Unitarian Church offered us their little kitchen with one little stove, but we felt that everyone was pretty fully committed doing flood relief and everything was so very disrupted that it wouldn't fly. Also, a lot of our recipients were getting a lot of aid and attention because of the flood. We turned in different directions.

Right before the flood, we had gone to a United Farm Workers protest rally in Watsonville, CA. About 30,000 people showed up to support the workers asking Monsanto to put porto potties in the field, to stop spraying while the workers were picking, and to provide drinking water. It was really inspiring. Jesse Jackson gave a  talk saying that it was the end of the 1990s and couldn't the corporations make their huge profits, the workers get fair conditions and wages and the produce be healthy for all. What an astonishing concept.  The music, the food, the hopes of the workers got us all fired up. Monsanto's response was to plow the crop under and put everyone out of work.

Our next big thing was the Guatemala project. I had worked on a few great projects in Guatemala during their war. I loved the people I met there. The Indigenous population was the second largest in the world after the Aborigines in Australia. I had experienced a lot of magic and healing among them. I deplored the US backed genocide and our role in trying to ruin these people.

The war was officially over, but we had employed a Vietnam inspired scorched earth policy. 230,000 had been killed and countless thousands had fled to refugee camps in Mexico, Honduras and the US. In these fleeings, they had lost their communities and were among people of different languages. Often the first people to be assassinated were the leaders, the healers, the teachers, the clergy. They came back to nothing. The bread kids wanted to help.

Some of the kids collected organic seeds. Millions of them. We prepared to go. Our contact with the people we were going to work with dropped off, but we knew where to look for them. I invited Heather Meyer, a young friend from Marblehead, MA to come along. She spoke Spanish and had a good head on her shoulders. I needed an allay even if she was still in High School. I have no memory of  how we got the $ to do this. The kids sold some stuff, herbal wreaths, the clothes on their backs. People gave. A local doctor came and gave me fists full of CIPRO. He said to use them liberally in case of pneumonia, bullet wounds, amoebas, until we could get help. OK.

I told the kids that if any one got stopped anywhere for drugs of any kind I would not know them. I would not help them. I would walk right on through customs and not hear their cries for help. And I was not interested in any of their raps about legalizing marijuana or peyote cults or how the corporations were behind all the drug wars. They got the message. I also told them that we did not want to stand out. We were doing this for other people, that we wanted to be under the radar.

So we gathered together one fine morning to be driven by Saint Winn to San Francisco to spend the night and get a plane from there. I should have known. They came that morning in full regalia. Several had died their dreads green. More tats, more shit hanging off their noses, hair, ears, eyelids than ever. Inconspicuous.

We arrived in Antigua, Guatemala very late at night. The next morning we went by local bus to near our destination. There is absolutely no way we went under the radar. We couldn't move without attracting a huge following of people staring. At one point someone came right out and asked us "What are you?" I, answered "Payasos sin Fronteras." That worked. We got hugs and lovin' from all around. Everyone in those villages knew Doctors Without Borders. Everyone knew Veterinarians Without Borders. I just called us "Clowns Without Borders." The name stuck. It somehow explained our crazy looks.

That night we didn't make contact with our project. We all ended up sleeping in the same room. Oh my God!  So there was this awful smell coming from one of the beds. Well, most of them smelled pretty bad (no products) but this was awful. I asked what that was. No one said anything. So I frigging sniffed around until I came to Emily. "What is that smell?" Well, it turned out that E. had had a nipple pierced in honor of the trip and it was badly infected. And she starts giving me this bullshit about how she has been treating it with some kind of tincture and she is sure that it will get better and we have been traveling for three days and are about to take a 12 hour bus ride to NOWHERE to do our project and already we are in a place with no sanitation and there are 12 of us.

I was pretty calm as I told her she was going to start that minute on the marvelous CIPRO or I was going to take her to the airport in the morning and put her on a plane for home. She wasn't buying it. Antibiotics are bad for you and all that jazz she told me. I stood firm praying that the CIPRO would be enough to help her. The other kids who all agreed with her about the nightmare of antibiotics were convinced that I meant what I said and persuaded her to take the medicine. She still smelled awful.

We headed out in the morning for Todos Santos a village near the Chiapas border where we would do Spanish School for a few weeks. Mas manana,

PAAX PANIS - PEACE OF BREAD (Part 4)

Our work connected us with so many people. R. kept putting articles in the paper about us with great pictures. The outreach with the loaves brought us into contact with people in need and with people who could help them. We even ended up being a place where people donated food for the dogs of homeless men.

The kids had started to plan a project in Guatemala. We were going to make a school building for some teachers who wanted to work with surviving children of the genocide of the Mayan Indians. Getting passports was a big problem. It is not easy when you are a kid who has been arrested for Timber Protests. It is really not easy when you are hiding from your parents. It is not easy when you are homeless. It is not easy when you have no money. But some good souls helped them. Some lawyers and doctors and supporters came through. About 11 were planning on going. 

Our band of workers was building trust and becoming a well oiled machine.  Christmas came and on one cold Saturday while the bread was rising I was sick of their talk about what a rip off Christmas was and how fucked up and commercial it was. I asked them to light a fire outside and I had a present to give them. I sat them down and told them a Christmas story from Alan Howard's book "Nativity Stories". At first they were uncomfortable. Then they were entranced. Then they were sad. It seemed that most of these tough street wise teens had never had anyone tell them a story. The rest of the afternoon was very holy.

Things took a harsh turn on the night before New Years Eve. My own kids had been visiting and had been at the baking. They all had left by that morning. The weather turned hot. It was about 70 degrees. It began to pour. The snow in the mountains, already considerable, melted. The trees in the watershed had been cut back with the bread kids protesting to no avail and the great Ashland flood began.

The Great Ashland Flood of 1997 devastated the town. The access roads to the highways were cut off. Houses fell off the hills. The whole downtown was flooded. No water. No electric. No plumbing. No more pizza ovens, no more bread pans, no more supplies. No way to get to our people even if we could have cooked bread. The whole hot springs area was deemed unsafe even to go near because of chemical contaminants that had been washed down. About 2 weeks after the flood, I went to the area with the fire department and they made us wear protective clothing.

Everyone helped everyone during the flood. I really liked this town at that moment.  But for the bread kids it was a big ending and many beginnings. Mas manana.

PAX PANIS - PEACE OF BREAD (Part 3)

My friend Richard Moeschl worked for the local newspaper, he had a little TV show, he had a radio show at the college. He started to get the word out. More and more people came to help with the bread making. Stuff like big cookie sheets started to turn up. So we started to make creative loaves, braided, different shapes, bread sticks. Supplies kept coming. Amazing expensive organic supplies. Like 50 pound bags of walnuts and raisins, and big things of oil. Amazing.

The hot springs kitchen was ours. The good vibes were well received by the owners. We baked on Saturdays. Our list of needy started to grow. The bread kids as they became known were starting to become social workers and ministers. When they found a hungry homeless pregnant girl under the bridge, they got her to medical and other help. People told them their stories. Old people loved them because they took time to talk and listen.

More stuff came in the autumn. Boxes of squash, bags of herbs, boxes of apples. We started making herb breads, and cinnamon rolls and got very creative. Meanwhile, since only a few of the kids were in school, I decided to offer a course. After much discussion I started a course on Latin American politics using some of the great classic movies like Romero. I never had better students. We met at O.'s house for the videos. She was a high school kid with a younger sister who's parents were in jail for selling drugs. The school didn't know this and she and her sibling were doing great on their own. (I said they were amazing kids). We had long discussions about everything on Saturdays when the bread was rising and rising again.

All sorts of people dropped by to help. Some of the people whom we gave the bread to helped us. Everyone was attracted by this tribe who judged no one and treated everyone, regardless of their abilities, equally and with respect.

One episode that was nearly fatal to the project involved us getting a grant. We applied for a little grant from the Carpenter Foundation. The kids had to pick some people to go present the project to the board of trustees. They outdid themselves with dressing up. More dreads, more nose rings, more shit hanging off their belts. I went along, although I wasn't necessary. I kind of wanted to mother hen the deal. The kids would have none of that. No leaders. All equal. The people in the boardroom hopefully didn't hear the heated conversation in the hall when the guys almost bailed because they had strong feeling about "begging for $ from people who probably made it by ripping off their customers and treating their workers like shit."

This was going to be good. We went in. The person who spoke up was an angry kid. His father had died from exposure to chemicals at a plant he worked at. Mrs. Carpenter was nice and started the ball rolling by asking what population our project was going to serve. D. stood up and said, "Mam, we all respect, we aren't racist, we aren't sexist, we aren't ageist, we aren't discriminating of anyone for any reason, so to peg it down to a group would imply that some other group wasn't such a priority. I won't answer that question."

I looked around the room and knew he had nailed the grant. The rest was small talk. The reason we suddenly needed money was that an admirer of the project had given us her husband's car when he died. A bright yellow Chrysler. We had to register it, put gas in it and so on. We had also been given an antique ambulance ,Cadillac and the kids were going to take supplies to Wounded Knee for an action there.

The money helped but it caused trouble. No one could agree on who or what deserved it more. If we bought stuff would out donors give up? So, they decided that we were happier never to apply for money again.

But our fame was spreading.

PAX PANIS - PEACE OF BREAD (Part 2)

Somehow there was an unstated agreement that we wanted to do something together. We went on with the food talk. They really did become very animated and were pretty easily steered away from going to the mile long index of all the horrors of corporate food. They decided that we could make bread. This with almost none of them ever having done so. They liked the idea of bread.  At this point my education began. There was to be no selling of bread. They were anti- money. If we made bread we would give it away.

I liked this. It was simple. (It later turned our to be very practical. We would have had to have lots of conditions imposed on us if we were to sell anything. Then the kids came up with the name of the project. Pax Panis. Who knew they knew Latin? As I said, they knew a lot. So the question of to whom to give the bread came up. One quiet kid in the corner who wouldn't say her name (some of the kids were running away from abusive families or foster parents) answered this question, "To people in need of nourishment." Wow! I liked that. It was much broader and fairer than I could have thought of. Nourishment included psychological, spiritual as well as physical.

I didn't know then how much nourishment we would all get from this project.

The next thing I learned from this band of anarchists was that we were absolutely leaderless and all equal and that no attempt at leadership was going to wash. This, even though some were clearly more organized and practical than others. OK. I was interested in the process.

Then, of course, came the practical, how do we do this? Everyone agreed to go out and see what they could come up with for resources. We would get together soon. Report back from the big world. We had not made a list of our people. We had no phone #s. Ruth knew most of these kids. Her son Tyler was one of the kids. So, out into their Ashland went this intrepid band of tattooed, dread locked, scruffy, idealistic kids.

I talked to everyone I knew. Richard and Joanne had a copy of the Tassahara Bread Book, the bible of good bread making. We found some supplies around the house that we could use. The kids went to the stores and co-op and got pledges of donations of organic whole wheat flour, oil, maple syrup, yeast...all the stuff we needed. Veege, I think, talked to a group of doctors who had bought the hot springs on the outside of town and they very hesitatingly offered that we could use the old pizza ovens in the kitchen there one time, see how it goes.

None of us had a car. We decided that we needed to have a party to announce our founding. We borrowed the church basement in the Unitarian Church. The kids begged, borrowed and  -----  the stuff to make food for the party. The people at the spa where I worked almost all came, along with some wonderful clients. I had a moment of nerves when no one was around and nothing seemed to be happening an hour before the event. But, the wonder of these kids became apparent when everything pulled together and a great party happened and we collected volunteers to drive and to help and to give stuff.  The kids gave amazing talks about our project. We were launched.

The kids knew a lot of homeless people including women and children living under the bridge (shame on us). People from the church gave us some names and addresses of shut-ins, we heard of some very needy people. We had our beginning list.

It was some funny day when we made our first bread. We picked the most basic recipe. We made one rule and one rule only. No one could bring drugs or booze to the bread making. We never had to enforce that rule. Total respect. I made a little rule myself. Lots and lots of hand washing. With soap. It mostly worked although one boy was busted later on when he was picking hot peppers for some spicy bread, then went to pee and then came running in with his penis aflame from the chillies.  They brought every supply we needed. We used old coffee cans to bake in, our friends with cars came and drove the bread kids around to deliver the warm bread and everyone came back with heartwarming stories about the tears they brought to people's eyes when they gave them these beautiful loaves.

Little did we know that this was really only the beginning of a project that would get national attention.

PAX PANIS-PEACE OF BREAD ( Part 1)

My memory. Each of us would have a very different perspective on this story.

I had moved to Ashland, Oregon because I was under the mistaken idea that winters would be easier here than in New England. Also, all my kids had migrated to the West Coast (of USA) and I was under the mistaken illusion that I would be nearer them. In actuality it took longer to drive to San Francisco than to fly from Boston...same for Seattle and Portland. But I was not mistaken in the fact that I had some wonderful friends in Ashland and friends are really important.

I hadn't 'found myself' in Ashland. I had taken a few hopelessly dumb jobs and volunteered to work at the Peace House. The Peace House was a quiet place (sic) started, I think, by some good Quakers. It was situated right next to the college campus. I thought I might connect with some young folks and we might get some action. There were no young people evident. The volunteer job they gave me was to stuff envelopes with the news letter. After a few hours of doing so and gazing yearningly at the college, I made a snotty statement that a monkey could stuff envelopes - there must be something more active I could do.

I got to talking with Ruth who worked there. I asked her about young people and what they were up to. She said that they didn't have any interest from the college kids, but that a bunch of local kids were all out of town at a timber protest. I perked up. President Clinton had signed some kind of salvage rider that allowed the timber companies to take what they could from VIRGIN FOREST, giving them 90 days to do so. A great and ultimately successful (no trees out) protest was going on at that very moment.

I said that I had to see this and had to meet the kids. We took a long ride and a long walk to get to the VIRGIN FOREST! It was so utterly beautiful, overwhelming, grand, breath-taking, I couldn't believe it. There was a pretty huge encampment there. The protesters had to live there for the 90 days. They had gardens, food kitchens, shelters, the whole thing. The day we went, the kids had made cement barrel barricades on the logging roads and had handcuffed themselves to them. It was a very dangerous situation. The loggers were for the most part armed. The police were on the side of the loggers. Fortunately there was media there or who knows what would have come down. It remained a peaceful protest. The kids were frequently arrested (which was to have consequences later on). I liked the scene and I liked the kids.

Back in town I got a job I loved working at a new spa in town (also to have consequences later on - good ones). When the ninety days were over, the kids drifted back to town. I talked to Ruth and she said they were pretty depressed: with the high energy mission over, life was feeling flat. Also many were homeless and jobless from having been up in the woods for so long. I suggested we get together.

I never really knew how things happened with this gang. No one had a phone. Many had no homes and were camping in the hills. But a whole bunch of them came to Ruth's house to get together. Many were vegan. Most had multiple piercings. Lots of ambient odors (they didn't believe in the use of 'products'. Read - soap, shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste et cetera.)

They started in with general chatter about all the things they hated; corporations, pesticides, war, police, corporations, corporations, school, people ripping you off, fast foods, meat, corporations. They were very knowledgeable. They were pretty hurt by life experience. They were very far outside the system. Clearly.

"OK. I get it." I said. "Now tell me what do you like or love?" A half minute's silence and they said "Food, healthy organic, vegan, food." With those words we started a truly kick-ass project.

Lose Weight Fast

There are several unpleasant ways to lose weight fast. The worst, I think, is cancer.  A pretty terrible runner up is  the broken heart diet. Before the bad teeth diet comes the "Julie Pierce lose weight fast simple kit diet".

This kit will sent your an ounce of water from any random well in El Salvador, or perhaps India. The other offering in the kit is a nice package with 20 CIPRO tablets. The idea is that you drink the water, get sick as a dog with amoebas or other flavors of dysentery and when you have lost all the weight you want, you take the CIPRO or FLAGYL and get better.  You don't mind the dieting phase very much because you are too sick to eat in any case.

Almost two years ago I was in the Houston Airport, USA returning from Nicaragua. I had a painfully long layover, maybe 5 or 6 hours. I, of course, had a book, and I also had the company of my son. No matter, I was in one of those airport fogs, sort of staring at the people walking by. The airport was extremely crowded and thousands of people walked by. Mostly they were well dressed. Mostly they were in a well functioning machine. There was no drama at the airport that day. But mostly they were all huge.

I don't mean round, or chunky, or heavy, or soft or all those medium states. I mean huge. Huge babies, huge old folks, huge teenagers and huge all the rest.

I got to thinking that I, myself, was not huge, but I was definitely big. I was bigger than I had ever been. I thought about this and realized that I was just on the edge of the "I don't give a shit" moment when I could head for really big, or huge. I had gotten to the place wherein if I had a cookie, I might as well have a few. If I cracked a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, what was left seemed like too little to put back in the freezer, so I might as well eat the whole pint. My weight was up there. The 'normal' range in the official medical charts was looking silly. Who on earth weighs 125 at 5feet 5 1/2 inches? Not many of my friends.

My epiphany was that every single one of those really fat people walking by me must have had some moment when they kind of gave up. When it seemed like not such a bad idea to eat the whole big bag of chips and those tiny little bags looked silly.

I freaked out.

There I was at that moment. my freak out gave me a clarity that gave me the whatever to lose 45 or something pounds over the next year and a half. Painlessly. I have no discipline about watching over all my calories or changing my diet so I decided to just eat less and amp up my exercise. I eat health foods, by and large. I eat organic. I have been a vegetarian for 35 years. But however good my food is. I was eating too much. I love talking walks, so I lengthened my walks and added swimming on a more regular basis.

I don't know by what grace of God I was in that Houston Airport. I do know that my time was up and I was on the verge of needing to resort to the El Salvador kit. I guess I will do anything to avoid pain.

picture of John Gardner

Remembering John Fentress Gardner

Today I am thinking of John F. Gardner, my teacher, my friend, the most intelligent man I have ever known. (apologies to Noam Chomsky and my godfather, John Kelleher, both men of towering genius.) Today it is 100 years since John was born.

John Gardner wrote many of his thoughts in his books and articles. But sitting with him time and again (sitting at his feet) he blew my mind by the way in which he connected everything. He always gave me a tighter, broader, deeper outlook into any subject we touched upon.

I often asked him about his life and childhood. When I first met him, he appeared patrician, handsome, athletic, very well connected. I knew he had had a good education, but his growing up stories were anything but conventional. My recollections are somewhat fuzzy so, don't hold me to the fact, but rather to the impression. Here are some stories that bring this man to life.

His father, Jack Gardner, was a union instigator. The family moved from mining camp to logging camp where his father would drum up support for unionizing until all hell broke loose and the marshals came and in the ensuing ruckus, strikes, walk outs, beatings, the family would move on to another camp. John had happy childhood memories of eating beans in mess halls with gnarly hoards of men. And skiing in Colorado. No school that he remembered. There were a bunch of kids (5?).

Then when John was 14 or so, he was sent to Princeton to get some education. The memory he shared of Princeton was that he was way too young, way too outdoorsy, and got headaches from the lectures. So he retired to his room with Moby Dick for however long he stayed there. Melville became a major influence in his life along with Emerson and Whitman. Years later he wrote a book about these three men called American Heralds of the Spirit.

Then came a time when he accompanied his mother to Europe with at least one baby and her other children. His mother was having a nervous breakdown and they went from hotel to hotel in Switzerland and other countries (?) finding restful and healthy places for her until something would go wrong and they would flee. Sounds a little like the mining camps.

Somewhere in this continuum, John read some works by Jung. He decided he had to study with this man and took a long train ride accompanied by some bottles of wine and rushed to Jung's house to announce that he would be his student. Jung asked him in and they talked. Jung said he didn't think he was what John was seeking. He sent John along to Dornach to look at the work of Rudolf Steiner. Jung was right. This was the fit.

The story didn't slow down for another 70 years. I am so happy we met. I am so happy I found a teacher and a friend.

OK, Thinking about Match.Com

My friend Jimmy just joined "match.com" and has decided that he is completely shallow because he looks at pictures of the women who check him out and rejects them one after another because of their looks. So far, he hasn't dated anyone.

My friend R.S. has dated bunches and he is interested to a certain degree in many of them. He loves to hear people's biographies. Is he less shallow, or is he just using these dates for some kind of entertainment? Is it shallow to start out by looks alone? Perhaps not. I mean we are all attracted to different types. Some women like tall skinny guys. Some like big teddy bear types. Others like compact men. Is it possible that this modern way of connecting is just as intuitive and valid as falling for someone across the room?

If we have a karmic connection with someone can we feel it through the computer? When I got married, and a few of my old boyfriends came to my wedding, my mother remarked that they all looked alike and they all looked like P., the one I married. I looked over the men of my life and son of a gun! they were generic. Tall, melancholic, intellectual. Was my going out with those other guys just an exercise  in honing my intuition until I encountered that one I had destiny with?

So, perhaps the dating game has always been shallow.

Many years later, I had a glimpse of a past life with P. I don't know whether it is true or not, but I felt that we had a past together in India and we had great conflict and the picture I got was that I was peasant rabble and he was a Brahmin. I think that I was upset and fiercely fighting about something (Muslin vs Hindu?) and that I injured him. Looking back on our meeting, how could it not have been electric if we had such a powerful, painful past?

Can this take place on "match.com"?  I'm sure it can. And I'm sure I would not have the patience to hang out on a computer until I felt the vibe, then set up a meet and then find out. I also have some kind of old fashioned notion that one meets the people we are supposed to meet.

I love asking people who hook up how they met. Often you get such wonderful answers as "I knocked on the wrong door at his dorm." "I spilled coffee by accident on him at Starbucks." "She was standing in front of me in line at the market." Could these accidents possibly be accidents?