"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?

I Want to be Jung Again.

So, Ariel is at it again. Dreaming. When Ariel was a child, we lived way in the country of New Hampshire. My kids went to Pine Hill Waldorf School. It was a bit of a commute in our VW bus, not because it was far away, but because the dirt roads and the hilly territory were often a challenge. I mean that. Another challenge was getting the kids ready and out in the morning. And part of that particular challenge was that Ariel meticulously recounted her dreams from the night before.

I mean meticulously. I mean every detail and corrections and going back if she missed a bit. We were truly interested. I didn't dream that much and certainly didn't recall that much. Somehow we knew it was special, yet we had to get on with the day. So, while making lunches and finding mittens and racing around, we tried to pay attention.

But my attention was not worth much because I didn't have any framework for knowing what her dreams meant. I still don't have much. She, however has learned a lot about her dreams. She is still leading an extremely rich life during her sleep. At one point when she was in college, her dreams were disturbing. Seriously disturbing. We found her a Jungian dream annalist to see. It didn't help that his offices were in an old Gothic former mental hospital. Let us add ghosts to the dreams. Ariel had always been sensitive to ghosts and spirits around. This building was right out of a horror movie. Even I could practically hear the screams of the suffering inmates.

I think he was a big help to her, that guy. And now, many years later, I find myself listening to her dreams and we are both hoping to gain some insight.

In my sketchy and positively minimal understanding about dreams and from my own personal experience, I have gleaned a few tidbits. I discount dreams as 'livery' or 'kitchen nightmares' if I have eaten a lot of cheese or chocolate right before bedtime. (same goes for booze, I assume) They don't usually offer any deep insights into my unconscious.

It is an interesting Jungian perspective to look at every person in your dream as yourself; the baby, the brat, the goddess, the farmer. It is also interesting for me to separate dreams into types I recognize. I do have the 'liver" dreams, but I also have recurrent dreams and prophetic dreams.

It is not hard to recognize the recurrent dreams, duh, they reoccur. I had two that kept coming back during the 21 years I was married and stopped dead when we split up. One was a kind of Andrew Wyeth scene on a small farm on the Maine coast. I was in the field next to the house. A strong breeze was blowing. I was hanging things on the clothesline. The 'things' were clam shells. They were blowing and rattling in the breeze. That's it. Year after year, I saw this scene in my dream. I need you Dr. Jung. And when it was over, it never returned.

The other dream I had during those years, I think of as a past life dream. I was a beautiful, dark skinned young woman in India. I assume that I was Muslim. I was with a bunch of people on the street, mostly very young people, men and women. We were yelling and screaming and throwing rocks at a handsome upper caste young man riding through the countryside on an elephant. He was so high above us (super elephant?) that our noise and protests could hardly reach him. We were the angry peasant rabble and he was not.
Gets confusing if I think I was all the characters. Never did figure that one out and then it was gone.

There was this dream which I think of a prophetic one. It was a one off, but it was in super vivid color and clear sound. The kids and I were living in the magical cabin in Temple, New Hampshire. It was the one with the mile long dirt driveway built on a little quarry pond. The one built around two pine trees that grew through the roof. I had gotten divorced and it was untenable to stay there. I used to say that the house had all of the luxuries and little or none of the necessities. We had a six foot fabulous bath tub, but the pump often didn't work. We had a giant stone fireplace, but no heat. I had to sell and move to somewhere where I could work and take care of my kids.

The house sale proved to be one of those nightmares. We had 33 acres, but no legal road access. It was an oasis and on and on. Buyers came and sales fell through. I was getting pretty desperate. A fabulous buyer came along and then had a heart attack right before the sale. Blah, blah.

In the dream there was a pirate ship, very old, very decayed, very rustic, very romantic (just like the house). There was a swash buckling buccaneer up on the mast yelling cheers and threats to the wind as the decayed ship was being chased by many other ships. A storm was raging. The ships timbers were groaning. The crew was trembling and wanted to cave in and stop the chase. The chasing ships had herded the pirate into a situation in which he was headed at full sail towards the shore. Doom was certain not matter what. Everyone was screaming. Then the ship hit shore and the storm stopped, the sun came out. The other ships disappeared. Everyone was safe.

Thank you, Jesus. I awoke having no fear about the house sale. The sale took a good while and more drama ensued and then, just as in the dream, it all was done, everyone was fine, and life moved on.

In that dream I know I was every character. I have a lot of swash buckle, but I have a lot of fear and trembling also. I look forward to hearing more of Ariel's dreams and her wisdom about what they are telling her.

Bohemian Nomad" Sounds better than "Homeless Grandma".

At least to me, it does. The thing is that I have a kind of mortal dread of owning things and I tend to get high as a kite when I am setting off on a new adventure. That being said, I have become part of a far flung community of similar folks. We 'Bohemian Nomads' are all ages, from all over the planet, and my gang tends to have very specific types of destinations. We want warm. We want want inexpensive. We want beauty. We want strong local culture and flavor. We wand a simple life style. We want an absolute minimum of hassles for a good life.

We do not get freaked out when the internet doesn't work for a day. We do not get upset if the electricity goes off. We have time to hang out a lot. Everyone has his/her  own set of interests. We often see each other when it happens, more by accident than by plan.

I know that there are countless subcultures that function this way. This is the one I have fallen into. Surprisingly, more and more young people are becoming long term nomads. One Australian couple I met had worked tech jobs in London 70 hours a week for a few years. When they realized they hadn't seen the sun in 2 years and were drinking gallons of coffee by day and too much booze at night, they ht the road. I met them after they had been traveling for 2 years and they were fit and healthy and happy and planned to go home someday and maybe buy a house. They had learned several languages, learned lots of skills, worked for orphans, rescued animals and so on. They owned nothing.

Some folks do remote work while they travel. Some get a pension, the usual spread. Well, as I firm up my plans for this winter (I mean I purchase a few tickets, and make myself aware of what visa limits I have in which country), I have heard from some of my fellow nomads.  I am meeting friends from the US in Bangkok on their way home from China. I am meeting a Brit friend in Bangkok also. She is on her way to Vietnam for a spell, and figuring out where to rent in Nicaragua for the rest of the year. I will see some inspiring nomads in Bali. She is from Argentina, he from Scotland. It is kind of coming together this week. Each of us made our plans separately and now find we are on the same path.

I tend to go somewhere, establish a routine, (coffee shop, church or temple, news source, favorite restaurant, SWIMMIMG POOL) and then wander from there. People have been doing this forever and everywhere, and I am pretty new at the game.

Most of the older nomads have a foothold at home, that is to say they have a home and a car and a change of clothes. Many are tired of being maintenance people for their homes and are selling. Others are getting over wandering and looking for something at home that gives them comfort and freedom. I am still not ready to land anywhere partly, to be honest, because I am so sanguine about what I like and partly because if I had a permanent home in the US, I don't see how I could afford to wander.

Happy today and, God willing, happy tomorrow.

Who are these refugees?

They are God's children, like you and I. That sounds too facile. They are Everyman. Also too facile. One thing I do know is that every refugee inside their country or leaving their country is driven by some unbearable situation. Whether it is war or famine or oppression or disaster, leaving is a terrible and wrenching decision. Our birthplaces smell right, the water tastes right, the land and seasons are familiar. And moreover, leaving family and friends is terrible. No one takes the decision easily. It is a gut wrenching decision.

And things have to be so bad, that staying just is not an option. Period.

And when we see them coming, they are at their worst. They have been traumatized, often starved, have watched their home situation get worse and worse. Then they travel, often with no food or water, often being brutalized in transit, often bringing nothing, often experiencing more losses as they flee. So many refugees look like shit when they find their destination. And they smell bad sometimes. And they are disoriented and often arrive where a different language is spoken.

You all know this. But what we should remember, I think, is three fold. They may have a fabulous education and be wonderful human beings. They might be simple souls. But they will be forever grateful for a bit of love and help. And above all, they want to go home when things get better in their country of origin.

A lot of things confuse this. There may be no home to go back to. They might fall in love and start a family where they land. There might be a death sentence if they go back. Lots of things. But my experience with the young refugees who lived in my home over the years was that they really appreciated being given an education. They really appreciated being welcomed. They really wanted to be free from the strife they were fleeing. They wanted to reach their highest potential. They were like my ancestors when they came here, hungry, tired, and ready to work for the chance at life.

I find them, as a group, inspiring. Recovering from trauma is daunting. Starting over, especially with no language skills is really daunting. Walking into the great unknown is daunting. I look to refugees past and present for inspiration, for strength, for hope.

They are not going to take a big chunk of your piece of the pie. They are going to add more to it. If we and other countries treat refugees honorably, we will be working toward creating peace on earth.

Veni Vidi Vici/ The Pope's Miraculous Visit to the United Nations

I am so spaced out or maybe the correct words are 'spaced in'. I just watched Pope Francis' speech at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. So many words and moments are rushing through my mind. So much peace in my heart. Mr. Gandhi was often heard to say that for every weapon made, there would be a more powerful one made to top it, but the most powerful weapon that could ever be used is love. I think I saw that in action today.

Speaking truth to power, the Pope quietly, lovingly, crushed any and every argument that could possibly be used for the unspeakable acts and words of violence that are happening today. Truth, compassion and love are not soft, compromising, weak acts. They are the most powerful forces that are available  to the human spirit. White Eagle said, "Everything is spirit. That is all we need to know and spirit is triumphant over matter."

Amen.

Inspired people give something of their grace and power to everyone they encounter. Anyone who has ever been in the presence of such individuals has experienced this. They transmit heart to heart. I felt that through the computer recording of Pope Francis today. I have felt that in person (in the company of thousands of others) when I was gifted to be near the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandala, Pir ilayat Inayat Khan, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Chief John Pretty on Top.

The thing that always strikes me the most is that the most powerful people I have encountered are the least self striving and the least egoistical. That or Zen or was it Christian or was it Islam thing of losing yourself to find yourself. And it is risky business. Christ, King, Gandhi, the list can go on and on, lost their lives to speak their truth. But they live on because they fused their hearts with many.

And I like it a lot that Francis could be living the life of luxury that his office affords, but is taking the opportunity his office affords to be a voice for the voiceless. Maybe this will remind all of us that Jesus spoke truths 2,000 years ago that are needed more than ever today.

Live Local: Building Community One Paw Paw Tree at a Time.

I had a vague memory of tasting Paw Paw fruit when we lived in Indiana for a bit. I thought it was too uniformly sweet for my taste, and truth be told, I didn't like the texture much. (a lot like banana)

About 10 years ago, my daughter Ariel planted two Paw Paw trees in her backyard in Portland, Oregon, USA. (I need to say USA because a great many people who read my blog are from many other countries)
The trees offer great shade because of the soft wide leaves allow mottled sunlight to come through.  Each year, the trees have borne more fruit. This year was a bumper crop. No shit, the fruit is clomping to the ground as I sit in the yard.

So, it is kind of a novelty fruit for us, not being southerners and I can't say my feelings have changed much, but something else has happened. The last few years Ariel gave away some to neighbors who were interested. It turns out that they made a kind of brandy from the fruit. They brought her a bottle. Nice. This year they also brought someone from a local brewery to collect huge baskets of the fruit. They are experimenting with making hard cider from the Paw Paws. Amazing and they promise to show up with some bottles when they are ready. And yesterday an other neighbor who took some, brought us Paw Paw pie.

I just like this whole progression. Although she lives in a city, Ariel has made a neighborhood that reminds me of real rural life. Yes, she has good crops of strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and pears this year. But she has a family that is happy to eat all those fruits. The Paw Paws have brought a different gift.

Are Oregon, USA and Switzerland First Cousins?

Trying to think of places where I have heard the least spontaneous laughter. I think these two locations win the prize. I am not being critical, mind you, just making a very personal observation. And, obviously, there are many, many, places that I have never visited.

I think it is a spiritual issue. In most towns in Massachusetts, for instance, the banter and gab in line at Dunkin Doughnuts is irresistible. Everyone gets swept up in it. Nothing is sacred, nothing is off limits. The immigrant nationalities all have each other's number. In Oregon, man, coffee is serious stuff, as is everything one ingests or purchases and subjects like what brand of socks to buy your toddler can keep people intense all night. Don't even mention sports. Or politics or religion or health or relationships or did I mention socks?

I am not saying that these subjects aren't passionately important to East Coasters, and maybe they are seriously sacred (The Red Sox, for instance.) but there is a lot of self-deprecating humor even about sacred things. And deprecating about non-self also.

I was at a comedy film in Ashland, Oregon once and was "shushed" when I laughed. That's really bad. It was some British comedy and it was really funny and I was painfully out of place when I laughed. Comedy apparently is not supposed to be funny. Not in Oregon.

I have worried that I just don't get the funny here. But I would have caught on by now by taking cues from others. Life is serious business and My Life is very serious, indeed.

Thinking about Switzerland, I did hear noises there that resemble laughter. One farmer saying to another "Your cows look good." "Ya, ya. ha, ha." I don't think the "Ha,ha" counts as laughter. It was more like a continuation of the "Ya, ya". Same when someone complemented a neighbor or her clean stoop. "Ha, ha." doesn't count for me.

So this business of sacred and non-sacred. My personal impulse is that sacred stuff is a bit bigger than our little egos. Therefore, it is fair game. But when the little me is the sacred thing, then almost anything can affront it, so we all must tread carefully. i fear I am clutching at straws here. I am, actually. But then I think of some bridges in Switzerland decorated with many depictions of 'Death". Maybe it was to ward off the Plague, but it is sobering in any case, It makes me wonder.

So, my conclusion is that some new guru must start doing laughter workshops. Laughter is good for us. It is the out breath at its best. Life is serious, but it is fully of humor, especially irony. Mine anyway. Actually, almost anything is funny. Toes, for example. Pretty weird. Politics. Religion. Animals. Human resemblance to certain animals. Don't get me going.

Brilliant Idea for Today. Presidential Candidates Must Pass a Few Tests

I am not really a fan of testing. I like Waldorf education where the notion scarcely comes up until the higher grades. But today while taking my walk, I started to remember presidents who had no college degree. Then I started to remember highly ignorant presidents who had college degrees. How about Mitt Rommeny who has very fancy degrees and states that the world is only 6,000 years old. Wow. And Presidents who never had a passport because "we have everything here in the USA. Who needs another country?" George 11.

Then I thought about candidates such as Sarah Palin who did not know that South Africa is a sovereign country, not just southern Africa. Then I started thinking that a person needs a college degree to teach first grade. You need a college degree for almost any job, and if a college degree doesn't mean you have an education, there should be a way.

I think it is time to give rigorous tests to anyone who wishes to be a candidate. I think a world geography test is in order. I think a US History test is in order as well as ...say, the history of the Middle East. I think a fundamental human anatomy and how the body works is important. (For those "you can't get pregnant in a rape" kind of men. I think a test on the fundamental principles of world religions might be in order. I would like to see an understanding of the constitution test. You get my drift.

Then, if the candidates can pass the test, I would like to see a buzzer that shuts off their participation in the debates the minute they give out false information. Like, every time they say "We are the richest nation in the world." Just not true. I know this could get fuzzy when they say stupid stuff like "We would have won the Vietnam War if we had stayed the course." That is just a pandering opinion. But full out lies presented as facts, time to put an end to that.

Maybe one or two foreign languages should be in the test. We are probably the only country on the planet that has presidents who only speak their native tongue.

I would be happy to provide my input to any tests. I do think it might possibly clear the field of candidates who are too ignorant to be president or who are using ignorance to gain approval. Another brilliant idea from Julie!

Take a Shit Job Once in a While. Develop Compassion for the 99%.

The dunce

His former Harvard Business School professor recalls George W. Bush not just as a terrible student but as spoiled, loutish and a pathological liar.

MARY JACOBY

"For 25 years, Yoshi Tsurumi, one of George W. Bush’s professors at Harvard Business School, was content with his green-card status as a permanent legal resident of the United States. But Bush’s ascension to the presidency in 2001 prompted the Japanese native to secure his American citizenship. The reason: to be able to speak out with the full authority of citizenship about why he believes Bush lacks the character and intellect to lead the world’s oldest and most powerful democracy.

“I don’t remember all the students in detail unless I’m prompted by something,” Tsurumi said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “But I always remember two types of students. One is the very excellent student, the type as a professor you feel honored to be working with. Someone with strong social values, compassion and intellect — the very rare person you never forget. And then you remember students like George Bush, those who are totally the opposite.”

The future president was one of 85 first-year MBA students in Tsurumi’s macroeconomic policies and international business class in the fall of 1973 and spring of 1974. Tsurumi was a visiting associate professor at Harvard Business School from January 1972 to August 1976; today, he is a professor of international business at Baruch College in New York.

Trading as usual on his father’s connections, Bush entered Harvard in 1973 for a two-year program. He’d just come off what George H.W. Bush had once called his eldest son’s “nomadic years” — partying, drifting from job to job, working on political campaigns in Florida and Alabama and, most famously, apparently not showing up for duty in the Alabama National Guard.

Harvard Business School’s rigorous teaching methods, in which the professor interacts aggressively with students, and students are encouraged to challenge each other sharply, offered important insights into Bush, Tsurumi said. In observing students’ in-class performances, “you develop pretty good ideas about what are their weaknesses and strengths in terms of thinking, analysis, their prejudices, their backgrounds and other things that students reveal,” he said.

Bush, by contrast, “was totally the opposite of Chris Cox,” Tsurumi said. “He showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that. Students jumped on him; I challenged him.” When asked to explain a particular comment, said Tsurumi, Bush would respond, “Oh, I never said that.” A White House spokeswoman did not return a phone call seeking comment.

In 1973, as the oil and energy crisis raged, Tsurumi led a discussion on whether government should assist retirees and other people on fixed incomes with heating costs. Bush, he recalled, “made this ridiculous statement and when I asked him to explain, he said, ‘The government doesn’t have to help poor people — because they are lazy.’ I said, ‘Well, could you explain that assumption?’ Not only could he not explain it, he started backtracking on it, saying, ‘No, I didn’t say that.'”

Bush once sneered at Tsurumi for showing the film “The Grapes of Wrath,” based on John Steinbeck’s novel of the Depression. “We were in a discussion of the New Deal, and he called Franklin Roosevelt’s policies ‘socialism.’ He denounced labor unions, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Medicare, Social Security, you name it. He denounced the civil rights movement as socialism. To him, socialism and communism were the same thing. And when challenged to explain his prejudice, he could not defend his argument, either ideologically, polemically or academically.”

Students who challenged and embarrassed Bush in class would then become the subject of a whispering campaign by him, Tsurumi said. “In class, he couldn’t challenge them. But after class, he sometimes came up to me in the hallway and started bad-mouthing those students who had challenged him. He would complain that someone was drinking too much. It was innuendo and lies. So that’s how I knew, behind his smile and his smirk, that he was a very insecure, cunning and vengeful guy.”

Many of Tsurumi’s students came from well-connected or wealthy families, but good manners prevented them from boasting about it, the professor said. But Bush seemed unabashed about the connections that had brought him to Harvard. “The other children of the rich and famous were at least well bred to the point of realizing universal values and standards of behavior,” Tsurumi said. But Bush sometimes came late to class and often sat in the back row of the theater-like classroom, wearing a bomber jacket from the Texas Air National Guard and spitting chewing tobacco into a cup."

It is very nice that students today in the USA are often required to do some volunteer work in the community. I think, however, that getting a job, a working class job would bring much more understanding of what the world is like for most people and lead to a much stronger social conscience than giving charity or "do-good" deeds. This story about Bush is hopefully extreme, but sadly quite prevalent.

In the course of my life, I have had several eye opening jobs. In the late 60's, I was hungry and took a sweatshop job in nowhere Pennsylvania. I worked in a Hathaway shirt sweatshop sewing the left dart on a size ten white blouse for 8 hours a day. (now, of course the sweatshops are in lovely far away places like Ghana and Indonesia) We had two 10 minute potty breaks and a half hour lunch at our machine. One certain days there were speed-ups when an order had to go out. They were brutal. I never once saw the whole blouse.

I was privileged because this wasn't going to be my life; it was a stop over band aid. By a half hour into the routine, I was stiff, then my back hurt, then my eyes hurt, then I was bored to death, deciding to get drunk or scream or shoot myself. By afternoon I was a robot with no thoughts or feelings.

The woman next to me had sat at the same machine for 14 years. She was kind. Lucky for me because she helped me a lot. The thing is that I still, fifty years later get dizzy when I go into a Dollar Store or see Disney products and think that every single piece of crap that we buy has a human in much worse circumstances giving their life and their health to make these products.

I tried to help with the coffee harvest in the Guatemalan Highlands during the 'troubles' and I gave up after 1 1/2 hours. The high producing workers were getting 70 cents a day. 

I have bar tended at a bar where I was issued a gun (which I declined) because it was so rough. I have been a waitress and a chambermaid. This is all nothing to me. I had an education, health, guts, gumption, freedom. But the reason I am telling you this is that even with a good home and food to go home to, these experiences were some of the most educational of my life.

In El Salvador, I experienced hunger, real hunger, for the first time in my life. I left when I was done, but the villagers I knew couldn't leave. I hate hunger.  I guess what is one my mind today is that it doesn't matter what school we go to, but I hope all of us can get enough real life education to never be George Bush sneering at "Grapes of Wrath" and never feel superior to anyone. I don't think I could ever find the courage or strength to carry on in many of the circumstances I have witnessed.

The Birth that Changed the World

So, I do tend to hyperbole. That being said, during the late sixties,  there was an exciting thing happening. If something was happening to one of us, it was simultaneously happening to many. There are so many examples of this, I will give a typical one.

I was listening to the radio in my tiny house in Drain fucking Oregon. Richard Nixon was giving his lying speech saying we were not bombing in Cambodia or Laos. I had no other media outlet than my sometimes radio. The more I listened, the angrier I got. By the end of his talk, I had packed up my kid, gotten into my sort of car and was driving 30 or so miles to Eugene, Oregon where there was a large university. U. of O. As I drove into Eugene, thousands of people were gathering, coming from all directions. By the end of that week, colleges all across the country were shut down because of student protests. Shut down, not disrupted. All over the country and in fact also in many other countries.

This was not planned and communicated and organized. It was a monumental change that arose individually and collectively at the same moment.

This same thing was happening regarding childbirth at the same time. I was giving birth as the changes were happening. I was lucky. I was Julie Pierce, but I was also millions of other women.

I went to one prenatal sometime in Long Island. I don't remember much except that I had no insurance and the very fancy doctor told me some pretty strange things with a tone of absolute authority. He was the best, which meant that he was giving me the bull shit of the day.

He told me that I should not gain more than 15 pounds. I was skinny, that seemed strange. He said to drink alcohol because if I was relaxed, it would be good for the baby. Likewise, go ahead and smoke. When questioned about his, he said that the "Placental barrier would strain out any toxins so they wouldn't reach the baby. " He was the authority.

His nurse described the birthing process to me. I would go to the hospital, be given an enema, shaved, put in stirrups, and given some good drugs. Patrick could be in the waiting room and so on.

I didn't know much, but I had heard of Dr. Lamaz in Paris and heard enough nightmare birth stories that I decided that I wasn't coming back to him. I now know that I was being offered the worst treatment because I was in this expensive location. Doctors were minor gods there.

The home birth movement was starting to make news. All I got was that the drugs they gave were not good for the baby, that what was the norm in the USA was horrifying people in other countries, that anyone telling me to only gain 15 pounds was somehow ignorant and that what I had heard of natural childbirth sounded saner.

This was the summer of the moon landing and also of Woodstock. So science and technology were huge and the counter force was also huge. I was stuck in the middle. We borrowed a TV to watch the moon landing. We had dug clams and made gin and tonics as we went in and out of the waves. we thought it was really a funny show and speculated that we could have produced the movie for under $50. Woodstock we had to miss because Patrick was finishing his Masters degree that August.

When P. finished his degree, he wanted to move to Oregon because his parents were there and his father was ill. We flew out (9 months pregnant, but skinny as a rail) and P. had decided to teach school. I think school was starting the same day we arrived out West. P. went to the Department of Education with his weeks old Masters in Fine Arts with a focus on education and they had two openings for which he qualified. They were both in extremely undesirable locations according to the person he spoke with. One location was at the end of a long country road, the other had a road which drove through it. That was the one P. chose. Drain, Oregon.

The next day we were moving there. There was so shocking to me that I still remember my feelings. Drain was a barely surviving logging town. There was not an adult male without something missing. Like an arm or a hand or a leg or a foot. Logging was bad business. There was not a tree as far as the eye could see which wasn't far because it was in a hollow, like a - drain. There was a filthy, polluting wigwam burner in the center of the lumber yard. The 'store' was the size of a kitchen. There were bars everywhere. Cowboy bars.

One day, some cowboys (loggers with gun racks on their rigs) stepped out of one of those bars and shot over our heads, I had never seem a gun before!, and told us filthy hippies to get out of town. Funny, we were kind of dressed in LLBean and were pretty preppy because of P."s job. I began writing letters to friends to send us books, fast. One kind friend sent two big boxes with the complete works of Charles Dickens. Saved my life, she did.

So, 10 days later, I had the baby. I missed the baby shower that the teachers and parents of Patrick's class had put together. They were so grateful to have a teacher! Really. They gave us a house to live in. There was no such thing as a rental there. When I came home after the birth, I had further culture shock to find that some of the baby shower presents were fresh caught elk and deer meant. So much for frilly dresses and blankets. When I learned about the rugged economic conditions of the Drainians, I learned to respect their ability to hold their lives together, but I was deep into culture shock when my labor began in earnest.

We went to the hospital in Cottage Grove. I may or may not have had a prenatal there. I can't remember. When I got to the hospital, a tiny country hospital in a very depressed area, the nurses were so excited by me. The reason was that I was excited and wanted this baby. Apparently, most of the time, at that time, the women they delivered were sad or depressed to be having another kid.

They did not let Patrick in the room with me. I did have an epidural. They didn't have me do any of the other routine. When I went to my room afterward, I had a 16 year old roomie named Mare-Lee who was the first illiterate person I had ever met. Her mother brought in an electric fryer and made us fried shrimp that afternoon. Loved it all.

So, this is not at all a bad birth story, but it was the moment when I knew that I would never participate again in the routine that the professionals created. I learned about home births and I trained in midwifery and attended many home births. The thing is, that all over the country, women were, at the very same moment, making the same determination to effect monumental changes in the practice of medicine as it relates to women's health and childbirth. So many of us came to the same place at the same moment in time. And the medical text books changed fast.

There were good and bad aspects to the hippie days, but I still am filled with awe and wonder when I think of the telepathy that many of us had at the time. No matter how isolated we were and how pathetic our means of communication were, we often moved as one. El pueblo unido hamas sera vincido.

How to Know... NOW: The simple, direct, immediate guide to meditation and spiritual guidance. Kindle Edition by Julie Pierce

How to Know... NOW: The simple, direct, immediate guide to meditation and spiritual guidance. Kindle Edition

by Julie Pierce

I am one of those not so very rare people who need to be hit over the head with a sledge hammer, not once, not twice, but more times than I would like to think.

I wrote this little book years ago after coming back from an amazingly rich and traumatic time in El Salvador. I wrote in in a shabby notebook, sitting on my friend's deck in Marblehead, MA, USA. I felt a compulsion to write it, as if I had no say in the matter. When I was finished, in a short time as it is a short book on a subject I had spent a lot of time with, I put the writing in a box with a pile of other stuff and forgot about it. The compulsion was over. I had done it.

Months (years) later I had a very disturbing dream. I dreamed that I had a baby whom I put in a cold room and shut the door. When I looked in the room, the baby was standing in her crib, with nothing on but a wet diaper, looking pale, skinny, and cold. I awoke very much shaken. I was a great mother who prided myself on keeping my kids dressed in natural fabrics, fed organic foods, warm and surrounded by nature and beauty. I was disturbed by this dream, couldn't shake it.

I went to visit my friend and mentor, John Gardner. He listened thoughtfully and made a suggestion that never would have occurred to me. He suggested that when I was falling asleep that night, I ask the dream (?) what the baby represented. (John, in his youth, had met with Carl Jung and had read his works on dreams.) That night, without much expectation, I did so. 

The dream started out the same with my opening the door to the room with the baby. Everything was the same including the chill and the greyness only this time the baby had a glaringly white tee shirt on. On the front of the tee shirt in big bold black letters were the words your book. I awoke with a start and for a bit I couldn't remember where I had put the little manuscript.

John had a good laugh about how easy it was to solve the mystery. My friend Ron took me under his wings and helped (made) me bring the book to print. It was so much fun to enjoy the stories of readers finding real help from How. I gave some talks, enjoyed the community that came from meeting people who resonated with my words, then I drifted into the next things in my life.

Right now, I am writing a new book, Julie stories, about living a simple but often extravagant life outside the normal economies...sort of from preppy hippie to bohemian nomad. As I was first thinking about my new book and trying to sort the thousands of crazy experiences my life has manifested, I pondered how to generate some buzz. Same frigging thing only less dramatic! I awoke at 3 AM from a deep sleep and heard the words "Your Book". Oh ya, back in the drawer of history. Being the wonder that she is, my Friend Randie had it up for sale on Amazon Kindle the next day.

I hope you read it. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you tell others about it, and I hope you are not so put off by the God stuff as my friend Charlie is. If you have been reading my blog, you know that I love all gods and Gods in pretty much equal measure.

Kudos to the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement.

I do understand that a great number of things can change in an election cycle, but the popularity of Trump and Sanders at this point in time is kind of a seismic shift. Kudos to the Tea Party and to the Occupy movement, I think.

Many people in both parties seem to be resonating with the gritty integrity of these two candidates. They don't appear to be beholding to 'the parties'. The Republicans seem to be excited that racism and greed can finally be out in the open. Sanders Democrats are excited that a candidate is not hedging on traditional biases, and probably hitting every point of the Occupy demands. People in both ( Why this stupid two party system? I will never understand. We deserve 10 parties at least.) parties want the gloves off.

I felt resentment that Hillary was the anointed candidate. I know republicans who felt the same about the Jeb campaign. I registered as a Democrat so I could vote in the primaries. (How stupid is that necessity?), but the opening salvos of the Hillary launch felt like, "OK folks, you may have your own thoughts about war and Monsanto and WalMart, but we have calculated things and have chosen the only candidate who can win. I didn't sign up for that. Sanders is at least interesting.

It looks the same in the Trump campaign. There may be other candidates who will court the Latino votes, who know how to change their message depending on their audience but this guy has the white man bully factor that resonated over the prepackaged image consultants voices.

I do understand that anything can change. We could get attacked and then Sanders could look wrong. Trump could have some fine Sarah Palin moments that would freak out the most ardent supporters. Anything is possible and probable. But it is fun to see candidates being themselves and to see the scrambling going on on both sides with the consultants having some real challenges.

I do have feelings that the primary side show can't eradicate. The sad thing to me is that our country is so divided. President Lincoln had some strong thoughts on this subject and the resulting Civil War was tragic. I hope it doesn't come to that in my lifetime. We seem to have no uniting idea of what it means to be a citizen of the USA.

Letter to My Niece as She Starts College.

Thinking about you and wanting to share some thoughts:

Yea! You did it. You got into a super fine school and have arrived there.You have gone from a nice middle class school in Manchester-by-the-Sea (yes, it really is hyphenated) with a homogeneous white student body to a truly international urban school. Big transition, I am sure. You must be so excited to meet peers from everywhere on the planet, some astonishingly rich and some without a cent, some speaking a bunch of languages, some struggling with English. It was my hunger to meet people from all over that motivated me to go away to school. Nothing wrong with the hood but I wanted more.

The real task now is to get and education. This sounds like any convocation speech, but here it is. 'Educate' means to draw forth. I take that to mean to bring up who you are. To do this, I think you need to get a little more of that "fuck you" attitude I spoke with you about this past summer. You will get a lot more out of college if you take courses that challenge you, try things that are outside you safe zone, take classes in which you do not agree with the teacher, stop thinking about grades. (You are not going to fail, in fact, take it from me, it is a challenge to fail a college course. The schools don't want bad statistics. Go to class and turn in the work on time and you already have a 'C'.)

What the current getting into college prepares you for is following and conforming. That really has little to do with education. Some of the most productive classes I ever took were those in which I strongly disagreed with the ideas I was being fed. I read twice as much in order to be able to defend myself. I often learned (ugh) that sometimes a professor actually knew more than I and I had something to learn.

I sort of liken that to the blessings of growing up Catholic (or any strong religion). I had something to rebel against when I started thinking for myself, which propelled me to studies of many religions and history and social trends and politics. You get my drift.

So, lighten up, jump in and have fun. If you are taking creative writing - be creative. Push away your programming about what the teacher will like. That's not being creative, that being a robot. This is your education.

If you are going to drop a class or flunk a class, do it for a good reason like it meets too early on Monday morning, not because it challenges you. I had a math class once where I flunked every test and quiz but I kept going because I needed the credit. Right before the final, a friend was explaining it to me and the lights went on. I got a 'A' on the final. The prof called me into his office to ascertain whether I had someone else take the test for me and when he realized that I did, he gave me an "A' for the whole course. All he wanted was for me to learn.

One time, I was taking a course that included "The Illiad". It was not that interesting to me at the time, and I had dragged my feet. The final came and the question for the three hour final was "What is the theme of the Illiad?" People started writing like crazy, filling page after page. I sat there a few minutes and remembered starting to read the book ten times. The first line in the book was "The theme of the Illiad is the wrath of Achilles". I wrote that and handed in my blue book. I got an "A+". The thing is that I went back and read the book and understood it and will never forget it. I got a bit of education.

So, you probably know all of this already because you are a sensitive, smart girl. Just saying I am thinking of you and thinking about what it is all about. Education.

p.s. I regret not studying Physics because I love it now and was afraid of it in school and it is a difficult self- education subject.

Go Iceland!

The incredibly generous response from tiny Iceland to the refugee crisis in Europe blew me away. Come. We will feed you and educate you and share our homes with you. I am writing from the USA where we punish and treat refugees to horrors we make in their countries and then endless nightmares when they come to us.

I think that even hedonistic, greedy people like Donald Trump still suffer from left over Puritanism. If you are rich, it is because you are better, more righteous, really, you deserve more. Puritanism has seeped deeply into our sins. It can be seen as the root cause of racism and the holocausts, the prison culture, the scourge of poverty. We rule because God wants it this way because the rest of you are sinners.

Man, that is a tough one. Then comes a little, cold, country like Iceland and develops a civilized country with ubiquitous wealth and what the fuck! they want to share it. How does that happen? Is it possible that we could learn a lesson from Iceland or even Cuba or even Christ that the people who need the best food and the best education and the best services are the ones with nothing. Could we change the nasty Puritan heritage into an idea that prosperity and well being for everyone is better for everyone?

It would be hard, but it could be wonderful. I, for one, would be happier.

Drones. Nukes. Assault Rifles. The weapons we make are the instruments of our own destruction.

The weapons we make are the instruments of our own destruction. How could this possibly not be true?

If you think about this, isn't it true? Firstly, take this point simply in the thought realm. If I think thoughts of fear or self-scorn or inadequacy, doesn't that amp up my chances of failure? I think so. If I think thoughts of criticism or hatred, I am instantly in a discordant frame of mind where these thoughts can fill me with feelings and in the worst case, lead me to action.

As the world's primo arms dealer, the USA has also become the country most afflicted by gun violence and, the country which is the world's leading terrorist state. Can many of us even name 1/2 the countries in which we are interfering militarily either overtly or covertly? Can we even find half these places on a map? I can't.

When we bemoan the loss of jobs and our declining standard of living are we at the same time able to be proud that in many conflicts in the world, both sides are armed by the 'Made in the USA" arms? Do dead people even give a shit? 

Whether you use the word 'karma' or not, doesn't it make sense that we will reap what we sow? Doesn't it make sense that soon we won't have enough days in the year to commemorate all the anniversaries of tragic shootings in our country?

"How can we sleep at night?" I ask myself. Then I think of how many of us need pills to sleep at night and pills to cope with life and pills to numb us and I wonder. Are we fully into our own destruction and not seeing it yet? I have no answers today, but I can think of a lot of ways we could direct our energies, like feeding people and educating ourselves.

In so many ways, I don't know who I am. Iran.

Once I might have said "I am an independent woman."

Now, I wonder "Who is this I?"

Is it my body, spirit, soul, mind?

Take any piece away and am I not "I"?

Not so sure, anymore.

Also not sure about being separate from anyone else or everyone else. I do feel suffering when I think about children (especially) being hungry. I cry for others suffering. I jump for joy when good things happen. I worry about being a random bunch of atoms randomly interacting with other random atoms. I have watched many births, some deaths. What is the body thing about? I have experienced losing my spirit, betraying my soul, mini bouts of insanity. Or were those the moments of breaking through to ultimate reality?

When we took drug in the sixties, many of us were trying to reach the outer limits, to have a mystical experience. Some did. Sometimes we just got more fucked up, more lost. Most recovered.

The "am" part, I can't even fathom.Am I stuck in samsara? Am I here for a reason? Do I have a great purpose? Did I accomplish it at a young age and the rest of my life is just hanging out? In moments of clarity it all feels perfect. I do know that I endlessly meet the people I am supposed to meet. I think every encounter is important. Is that my mind just playing games?

I assume that all my readers have been here before and beieve me, it is not my first time.

About the "independent" part, what can I say. It matters little that I raised my kids and supported us for a lot of years. It matters little that I bought the house and car and all that stuff and fixed it all and kept the show on the road. I am 100% dependent 100% of the time. I never even got any good at growing my own veggies. I tried making everything from scratch in the good old hippie days. I even spun silk to make wicks for beeswax candles. But, oh ya, the bees and the silk worms...even the fruits and the veggies, does it all come down to the bees?

My ideas of independent were fully based on where I was born and what generation and who my parents were and my education and economic status. Even my ideas of independence were dependent. I rest my case.

About the "woman" part. I have noticed that for many people, age wipes out a lot of gender distinctions. I am speaking energetically. I often don't get any different vibe from seeing two old guys talking than I get from seeing two old ladies interacting. Sometime in old couples, I look twice to check which is the man and which is the woman. What's that about? Probably hormone levels. Can't say.

A lot of my "I" is about likes and dislikes. I like warm weather. I don't like meat. I like dogs and cats. I don't like rats and snakes.I don't like wars. I don't like oppression or repression. I like a good story but I don't like being lied to by my government. I like fine china and I don't like mugs for my coffee. (a lot of silent suffering caused by this). And none of this matters a drop when things get "real" like at births and deaths and meeting love and confronting hurt.

For the most part, my happiest moments are when I am doing something useful for others. Shrinks can have fun with that, but I think my deal is that is when I forget myself for a bit and in doing so, connect with the non-I, I am more real. Meditation in action.

Train your kids to respect their elders, with any luck you will be in that position one day.

I have a lot of confusion about being older. I, myself, have a groaning, sinking feeling when I get behind a large group of grey haired tourists coming on a bus from the cruise ship. Oh God, this is going to be slow. Why do thy travel when they can hardly walk? Then, if I get talking to one of the old dears, I often find that they have had extraordinary lives and are still really interesting. But because they are clumped together, it is hard to get to who they are.

One thing that I have experienced is that when I travel, I am offered help everywhere I turn. Young guys, even gang bangers help me hoist my bags. People take my arm and help me cross streets, (Think Bangkok during rush hour, I need help or maybe courage.) If I am lost, a small crowd sometimes gathers to get me going in the right direction. If I am hot and sweaty, I am offered a glass of water.I am asked again and again how my life is. I always get a seat. Always.

In the USA, my experience is often different. Not always.Texas guys pull their weight, often with remarks like,"Please Mam, let me assist you. My mother would shoot me if I wasn't kind to a woman in distress." I can accept that. In a rough neighborhood in Richmond, CA the African American kids opened doors for me, carried my shopping bags. Turns out that a lot of them had been raised by grandmothers who deserved and demanded respect. I'll take that.

But, on a Bolt bus filled with college kids in Seattle, I had to ask for help getting a bag in the compartment and I got laughed at by the college kids and then helped by a French woman. I really have little pride, but I was sorry for those kids. I am sorry for the isolation that is their lot in life. To be fair, I don't think it is an unwillingness to step up. I think it is an obliviousness to others who aren't in their circle.

If it is a form of egocentric behavior, it could be retrained. There was a day when everyone threw trash out the windows of their cars in the United States. Most have been trained not to do so anymore. There is always hope.

I think more and more young people from our country need to travel. Getting out of your comfort zone is a brilliant way to learn about yourself. If we are ignorant about ourselves, we can't not be ignorant about our society and the world. And as the good Buddhists tell us, ignorance is one of the great causes of suffering. Amen.

The Joy in Watching Kids Fail.

When I was teaching second grade in a Waldorf School in Massachusetts, I had a very small class of very bright students. Often we had extra time towards the end of the day, in part because they we so quick about things like room cleanup and other things I had scheduled.

We had two very special ways we filled this time. One was that I told "The Boys Story". This was an epic story with a cast of thousands that I made up as I told it. Basically it was an adventure story about some English boys who's clubhouse on the river had torn apart in a flood and the  boys and Sarah, a friend, were washed away on a bit of flooring that held together.

I think ultimately that we had more than 200 episodes. Epic. This, however, inspired the great failure: the raft. When we went for walks during the school ay, we first had to cross a small stream. Often this became the whole adventure. Have you ever witnessed how much kids like to create dams? How much conversation and consultation and energy and co-operation can go into making a three foot dam on a tiny stream? Amazing, really.

But some days we actually got across the stream and all her temptations and went through "the deep dark forest". So named by the kids who got very serious and vigilant while going through this stand of cedars. They looked out for gnomes and fairies and tried to leave no footprints. (We had had lessons in tracking by Richie, a Tom Brown tracker).

When we arrived at our secret place (a little beach that was popular, but not during school hours) the class decided to make a raft to get to a small island. This became a project which endured for months. Hammers and nails and rope and hinges and colorful cloth and all sorts of stuff started to come in their lunch boxes. They told their parents that we were making a construction project. Each time they worked on it, they had to clean the beach and hide their work. It was important to them that this be a great surprise.

I watched as they foraged for wood and supplies. They actually found a wealth of wood from drowned treas and rotted old buildings. Yup. Everything they used on the raft was pretty much rotten. It was their project. It was their ingenuity and their activity. It got bigger and bigger. They finally brought some wheels from an old carriage to help them move it.

As it came near completion, they decorated it with Water color! flags and drawings, pieces of finger knitting, a few balloons. Then they invited their parents for the launch. "Oh shit" I thought. But, it was their pride. We marched proudly over the stream and through the deep dark forest. The class dragged out their opus and put in in the shallow water and got on it. And it sank.

And they laughed. And soon the parents laughed except for one dad who wanted to rush out and buy them a raft. Te kids didn't miss a beat. All they way back to school they conferred like highly paid consultants and figured out that they couldn't use rotten wood next time, that maybe they could cut small trees of branches and maybe they could find some inner tubes to put under it.

I loved the whole experience. To this day, they can probably all teach the art of raft making. They learned by doing. They failed and no one felt badly. We had a great time. Who ever got the idea that failure was bad for kids?

All Time Winner: Dumbest Remark This Week!

In the USA, this is a momentous challenge. I mean sifting through so many dumb remarks, and ugly remarks, and mean racist remarks, it is hard work. But the thing is that from my sketchy Buddhist training and my good Catholic girl upbringing, I know that the wrath of karma will be upon me if I get down and dirty. So, I will be pedantic.

The comment that has so brought me to the brink comes frequently when I comment about disliking so much of US foreign policy. I have this strange notion that war doesn't bring peace, that killing doesn't win hearts and minds, that invading and conquering doesn't seem to work very well for anyone involved. "So, if you don't like what we are doing, why don't you get the hell out of here? Love it or leave it."

Yes, well, there are a few problems with this rational solution to dissent, probably obvious to anyone with a few functioning brain cells. 

Before I talk about certain core ideas of a a democracy, I might mention that there is probably no country in the world that would say, "Come on in, Jules. We welcome 72 year old American refugees without much money." In fact, loads of other countries have stiff immigration policies. Since only 30% of US citizens have passports, what other countries do or do not do is as mysterious to many as the Second Coming. Opinions abound and yet...

That is certainly one problem with "Love it or leave it.", the other is this idea about our supposedly God given right to freedom of speech. ( a lowly right next to the right to protect your toaster oven with a assault rifle) and the even stranger idea that it is the job of someone who lives in a democracy to be educated and have thoughts and ideas about what is being done in our name with our money. I consider it to be a serious responsibility.

I know there are a lot of folks who wish the Civil War had never been fought and good old slavery still existed. I know there are plenty of people who wish we were still killing those Vietnamese who put our freedom in so much danger. One way or another we still manage to make slavery happen (the millions of prisoners working in jails for $.20 an hour for Mastercard and Visa) and we still make imperial wars (too many to count right now) and I still have the idea that speaking out against injustice and torture and indiscriminate use of torture and terror is my duty as a citizen.

And so, back at you, to those who don't like something about our crazy country (the President, for instance), is "Love it or leave it" really your best shot?

The rush to the bottom. Just get out of our way!

It occurs to me that we could benefit hugely from a department to examine how other countries are doing things better than the USA. I am a natural born heretic, I know. But I see a trend that perhaps could use some tweaking one of these days.

I see, for instance, that for a couple of hundred years of European presence in the country, we were pretty singly focused on killing Native Peoples and animals while great cultures around the world were having their Renaissance and creating the great cathedrals of Europe. While we were eating squirrels and wearing deer like cave men, the finest silks ever made were being produced in China. While to Ottoman Empire was cultivating science, we were intentionally spreading smallpox and fitting up slave ships.

I do admit that we always seem to have excelled at killing and environmental destruction with some competition in the past from, say, the Spanish and the English and Genghis Khan. It is a hard competition to qualify because so many creative efforts were utilized. We liked scalping, tar and feathering, lynching, We liked individual enterprise, such as paying anyone to kill Indians, to catch Africans, to slaughter buffalo. We especially specialized in Puritan righteousness which gave a full guarantee that God was behind us. We made our own version of the Inquisition.

My stumping point this morning is this question of how we have come to believe that we are the only act in the world and we are the best at everything and how it is unAmerican to look to successes and innovations from other countries to find solutions that work for our problems.

I guess that pretty much all empires rule by self inflicted Divine Right.We do. We have the Divine Right to invade anyplace on earth to further our needs. We have the right to pollute anywhere, to kill anyone. But what we don't seem to have is the right to say that another country is doing a lot better in medical care than we are or even making better strides with renewable energy or keeping Monsanto from invading their food chain. This causes big trouble. What if, for instance, Iran had a handle on the homeless problem? Could we send a delegation to study and adopt their solutions? Not on your life. What if South Africa has a simple, pure and working voting system such as one person, one vote? Could we emulate that? Are you fucking crazy? We have created the most archaic, most expensive, most surely cumbersome hodge podge of a voting mess that could be imagined, but we know we are the best and some even "know" we are the only democracy.

This is the stuff of decline of empires. The rush to the bottom. The head in the sand. The writing on the wall. And the line that we hear that we can't afford education, feeding our people, housing anyone, well, it is abundantly clear that we have enough. We chose to spend our treasure on incarcerating millions, on insane military invasions, on guns. This is our choice. We, obviously have enough money. How else could we spend trillions of dollars fucking up other countries?

I think we desperately need a department of open minded souls investigating how other people do things right and bringing the safe, sane, reasonable solutions home to us, no matter where they come from. We are not God. The rest of the world sees this. It is time for us to get with it.

And actually, from personal experience, it is a great relief to finally stop pretending to be God. A very great relief.

The human body is just like money.

My body is so much like my finances. If something is wrong, it is hard to focus on anything else. For the billion and a half people living today on $1 a day, every minute of every day must be fully focused on survival, on somehow getting that dollar. How can anyone have time to do anything else?

I just watched "Living on a Dollar" a film made in Guatemala by 4 college friends who challenged themselves to living in a little Mayan village in the Ishil Triangle. Great documentary, but the limitations of the experiment are obvious. They were healthy, educated, could quit at any time and go home. In fact, if they hadn't eaten at all for two weeks, they would have survived.

During the war in Guatemala, I went with a team of health workers to a mountainous town in the same region as the film. The area had been devastated by the scorched earth policy of the US supported military. Many were dead and many were in exile. But we had heard that there was a very sick family and we went to see if we could bring some help. We packed up a lot of antibiotics and parasite medicine and hoped it wasn't TB. The villagers were not safe to come to the clinics and get treatment in those years.

We climbed the steep volcano and found a few scattered houses. (dirt floors, cane walls, thatched roofs) Someone pointed the way to the sick family. We got there and things were clearly bad. The mother had been menstruating for months without stopping. She had an awful cough as did everyone in the family. We had a doc and a translator. The family only spoke Quiche.

The first order of business was that they had to be hospitable. Somehow, the doc and the translator got out of this situation. I was left. The family found their cup on a window ledge. it was a filthy dirty old plastic cup. They got water from a trough built in the stream where they bathed and watched the ducks swim. The man washed his hands and then filled the cup with the same water. There were no options. Then they warmed the water, put some coffee in it and added some chilies and some chocolate that had straw in it. Then all gathered around to watch my pleasure.

I was praying my head off. "Dear God, You know I came to help here. I am a good person, in spite of a few issues. Please don't let this coffee be the cause of my death." I drank.

I never got sick. Thank you Almighty Wonder. It turned out that we were dealing with bronchitis, not TB. More thanks. The next issue was that we needed a teaspoon to show them how much antibiotic to take. There didn't seem to be a spoon in the village. One of the health workers mentioned that she had some coke bottle caps and a cap held a half teaspoon.

Everybody got treated especially the mom. Later a water team went up and put in a spigot. This was poverty. This poverty was the direct result of a campaign of genocide which disrupted a stunning simple balance that had been working for many hundreds of years.

We went down the mountain with many thoughts racing through our minds. "How can they be nice to us when we caused their troubles?" "I hope that coffee doesn't kill me." "I couldn't last a week in those conditions."

And that was the real truth. I couldn't last a week in those conditions or for that matter, probably any of the really poor conditions in the world. When a person is that poor everyday is a full blown battle.

I think it is the same deal with illness.

Being sick obviously isn't about money, although their are obvious advantages to the level and quality of health care that money can buy. But my point is that if you are really sick, whether in a hospital or on a dirt floor, you have little or no time for anything else. The world shrinks to survival. "Can something stop the pain?" "Can I pee, poop?" "Can I have water?" "I need to sleep." Sadly, even those of us who have never seen or experienced dire poverty have been with someone dying of cancer. If you don't have some degree of health you are in a small universe...your body.

I think of my mother saying "You'll get your reward in heaven." Could this be the same idea as "You are burning through some bad shit karma?" I don't know, but I do know that when suffering, whether from poverty or from illness, reaches a certain level, you have to have some hope to keep going.