Leap Day

One of the first things children learn in school and at home as they are growing up is to follow the rules. Rules help children to stay safe, be fair, learn and get along. Rules invite children to respect truth and honesty, to listen, and to take care of things. When children don't follow the rules it can impact other children, parents and their teachers negatively. Children aren't independent beings, they depend upon others for guidance and sustenance and need rules to control their behavior. It is important that they learn quickly how to follow them.

Now consider that adults and children on the other hand do have options regarding rules. If they choose not to follow the rules chaos may very well be the result. Adults understand that we follow rules to coordinate ourselves with others so that everyone has basic expectations regarding interactions. But what can we learn from children?

Most adults think there are only two ways to go about rules(law), you either follow them or you don't. But children have a third way which is to ask “WHY” before they agree to blindly follow. Parents and teachers spend years explaining and reinforcing “WHY” particular rules are important. It takes a lot of work to get all children to obey the rules and toe the line.

Today we are bombarded from both sides of the political spectrum by those that either want to “level the playing field” or have everyone lie down and accept that “life isn't fair.” The “life isn't fair” group says trust business, don't regulate them, let them use free speech and money to create laws that gut environmental protection, depress wages, close down the postal service, gut public education(we don't need an educated population), let our infrastructure rot and make access to non emergency health care a right only the wealthy can afford.

The left calls the media a conservative mouthpiece while the right says its controlled by liberals. Well both groups are wrong. The media's sole purpose is to trumpet the corporate mantra that business is right and all others are wrong. The corporate media is involved in hiding all the harm corporations have caused all over the world. We need look no further than this island to see the damage corporations have done to the south shore. To see the red mud and hulks of their machinery rotting away under the rising sun now that they have drained all they can.

As George Monibot has said “The corporate press is involved in a naked attempt to rebuild the nation around the demands of business” and not the population. For instance having a postal service was written into the constitution so the population could have reasonable access to the national debate without business skewing the discussion towards their interests alone. Today we are losing that communication portal under the push to privatize. Some may say the internet is replacing it but please remember that the internet is not a substitute for free speech as long as we pay private portals that try to exert control over what passes through or how you gain access to material or even the speed at which your connection delivers it.

Rules and ideology replace thought. Rules and ideology are comfortable but they won't help you make progress for yourself or the community. Rules and ideology work when change is slow but today we see change banging at our doors. We have to create an environment on this island and in the nation as a whole that at least attempts some leveling. People and business need to be regulated, no one group should hold sway over the other. No amount of power and money should allow corporations to walk away from their responsibilities to the communities they impact.

Today is a leap day, an out of the ordinary day, a day to think differently....so like the children above do...start asking WHY we should lie down and accept another rotting hulk on the south shore just because life isn't fair.

St. Croix Ag Fair 2012

St. Croix celebrated its 41 annual Agricultural Fair this past President's weekend. Its always been one of my favorite activities of the year and i partook 2 out of the 3 days it was on. i think the reason i enjoy it so much is the food is always fabulous; how could it not be when everyone is competing to win first prize in their specialties.

All sorts of different bands showed up to grace the stages, you had steel pans playing by the duck pond, reggae, quelbe and Heritage Dancers performing on the big stage and smaller bands and performers doing their magic on the third stage. You'd see people you hadn't seen in ages bopping along to the music or sitting in the prepared chairs under the tents seat dancing.

Schmoozing at the fair becomes an art form if you have come with a friend or relative. Time slows down as you get reacquainted with those you haven't seen in ages and it can be your turn to wait while your partner chats or their turn to wait while you chat. It can take hours to get from one end of the fair to the other. Most everyone is happy as the kids and grownups have booths tending to their needs. When you get tired a trip over to the yellow tables under the mango trees will get you out of the sun and give you a chance to rest your bones and eat some food.

i have never been at the fair when the line for Armstrong's ice cream doesn't stretch out both sides of the van and inside the food building more lines await as you salivate over the delicious smells; trying to make your mind up how many things you will try this year can be daunting. i always like to cruise all the booths looking at the ribbons before i decide where to eat. More time for chatting is always available as you wait for the ladies so colorfully dressed to dish out your food.

Over at the west end of the fair produce and plant vendors are set up waiting to sell you this seasons crops. More lines and more chatting as you wend your way up and down the aisles trying to find that plant that will fit perfectly in the empty spot waiting at home. Schools display their projects and ribbons grace the winners booths. Parents and past parents check their kids schools to see how they did.

But this year there was a gaping hole in the plant building. The section Hovensa usually takes over to display its contribution to the island was empty. It was strange passing it and not seeing Hovensa workers handing out goodies to hoards of kids after they had passed some test they had to do first. i think this was my first real physical indication that they are on the way out. i have to say it was sad not to see them there.

Back outside the animals did their thing. The cows, pigs, goats, rabbits, chickens, birds and turtles waited in their pens or cages to be gawked at by adults and children alike. No one can pass them by and not see something to touch their heart. In the petting area the looks on children's faces when they picked up a rabbit or stroked a chick was enough to make my day.

i ate, schmoozed, watched and strolled and can't wait to do it again next year.

See ya next week.

Mardi Croix...Don't Worry

“Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body and what you are to wear. Surely life is more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky, they do not sow or reap or gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they are? Can any of you, however much you worry, add one single cubit to your span of life.”

And why worry about clothing? Think of the flowers growing in the fields; they never have to work or spin; yet I assure you that not even Solomon in all his royal robes was clothed like one of these. Now if that is how God clothes the wild flowers growing in the field which are there today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will he not much more look after you, you who have so little faith?

So do not worry; do not say, "What are we to eat? What are we to drink? What are we to wear?" It is the gentiles who set their hearts on all these things. Your heavenly Father knows you need them all. Set your hearts on his kingdom first, and on God's saving justice, and all these other things will be given you as well.
So do not worry about tomorrow: tomorrow will take care of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Matthew 6:25

If you have ever read the Catholic Bible or the New King James Matthew's piece in Chapter 6 about worrying is a real gem. i've read both and they differ in the final line in ways that has me, a lapsed Catholic, preferring the Catholic version which is above.

Attending Catholic school made it mandatory that we read and understand the bible. Religion class was an integral part of growing up and did more to induce the use of the words “WHY” or “WHERE IS THE PROOF FOR THAT” by myself than any other class i've ever had to sit through. i drove the nuns nuts with my unending questions. i was never one to just sit back, absorb, and believe. i questioned incessantly, still do, i drive people nuts with my questions.

But i do think that section of Matthew's about not worrying took hold. Either i was born without the worry gene, which i doubt, or i took it to heart at a very young age, for to me worrying is a complete waste of time. It solves nothing.

i think most of us understand that worrying can cause illness. When you constantly think about what could happen it can interfere with your appetite, your relationships and your job performance. It can cause high anxiety and panic attacks, it can result in sleepless nights and a lot of distress. In some excessive forms, worrying can cause physical ailments like:

• difficulty swallowing
• dizziness
• dry mouth
• fast heartbeat
• fatigue
• headaches
• inability to concentrate
• irritability
• muscle aches
• muscle tension
• nausea
• nervous energy
• rapid breathing
• shortness of breath
• sweating
• trembling and twitching
  

• suppression of the immune system
• digestive disorders
• muscle tension
• short-term memory loss
• premature coronary artery disease
• heart attack
  

Those are a lot of symptoms that a chronic worrier has to contend with. Luckily there are simple methods to tamp down the worry gene. Meditation, giving up caffeine, relaxing, having a strong social network, exercising, worrying for only 15 minutes a day, wearing a rubber band and snapping it whenever you catch yourself worrying and recognizing that you are a worrier.

So like Matthew said in the last line: “Do not worry about tomorrow: tomorrow will take care of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Wake Up

I'm not religious but this is beautiful

Meteor Blade writes at the Daily Kos and i picked up this quirky little story he wrote to explain that President Obama has not made the recession worse.

"Okay. Let's say a guy has steered a car off the road and is speeding down a steep embankment at 90 mph, headed for a precipice. Let's say the guy opens the door, leaps out and rolls away from the car toward a memoirs publisher standing nearby. Just as that happens, another guy manages to leap into the driver's seat and immediately starts trying to turn the car away from the precipice. The car begins to slow and its trajectory shifts, but it's still headed downward, and for quite a while it's all the new driver can do to keep it on the ledge below which lies a very big crack-up.
Meanwhile, some radio-amplified bystanders are shouting, "Over the cliff! Over the cliff! Hope he doesn't make it!" because they don't approve of the way the new driver got into the car in the first place or the route they have surmised he plans to take. They call upon other bystanders to do whatever they can to block the new route from being picked. And those bystanders start shouting: "Get your foot off the brake! Let go of the steering wheel. The car will turn by itself!" And they roll rocks in the way of a change in direction.
Despite this, the driver begins to make headway and the car works its way off the ledge and starts back up the hill. At which point Mitt Romney shouts from the rooftop counting room of one of his nearby vacation homes that the new driver has failed to stop the car in its tracks and get it back on the road as quickly as an expert like he would have done. He claims the driver is still not steering the way a real driver would, that, in fact, the car would have not been in danger at all if he himself had leaped into the driver's seat instead of the guy who did."

Baloney.

President Obama has not made the recession worse, if anything he has stopped the freefall and reversed  course. You can believe that or not depending upon your ideology but the facts and Moody's back him up on this: 

“For example, we estimate that, without the government’s response, GDP in 2010 would be about 11.5% lower, payroll employment would be less by some 8½ million jobs, and the nation would now be experiencing deflation”

Here's another one for you...human induced climate change. There are loads of people out there that have been mislead by think tanks and so called scientists that have been bought and paid for by energy companies to create doubt

Why is it that 98% of the climate scientists that actually do the research world wide are in agreement with anthropogenic global warming? They speak with one voice which is highly unusual in the scientific community. There is no controversy, I'll repeat that, there is no controversy the data from all over the world indicates human induced climate change is a reality.

“Oreskes and Conway revealed from memos leaked to the press that in April 1998 the right-wing Marshall Institute, SEPP (Fred Seitz’s lobby that aids tobacco companies and polluters), and ExxonMobil, met in secret at the American Petroleum Institute’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. There they planned a $20 million campaign to get “respected scientists” to cast doubt on climate change, get major PR efforts going, and lobby Congress that global warming isn’t real and is not a threat. “

Why do you suppose they did that....MONEY...LOTS AND LOTS OF IT. They could care less what happens to the world for they will have enough money to survive any calamity.

Last week i talked about demonizing. This week i want to ask all of you to stop accepting what you are being fed without being skeptical about the motives of those trying to convince you to believe things that really go against your best interests. Think about the tobacco industry when they said smoking didn't cause cancer...well now you know it does. Those that spread doubt do it because it is about the MONEY.

Human induced climate change is real. It will affect your family in ways not yet imagined. If you want the same world you grew up in for your kids and grandkids...WAKE UP. Go to www.realclimate.org and learn what real climate scientists think.

See you next week.

I am others

Hibiscus Show

i have friends who are my polar opposite. We disagree about many things but find common ground in our pursuit of healthy living. We share time together and remain committed to participating in activities that we each view as mutually beneficial to our overall health.

All of us give back to the community in our own ways, all of us are hard workers and committed to our families. We all believe in our nation and want it to continue to be a guiding light for others but we see governments place in our lives through different lenses.

Squid

Why we disagree on how to move the nation forward continues to baffle me because at our base we are really extremely similar. We all want the same things and yet the road to get there is opposed to each other.

i've been reading a book called “The Anatomy of Peace” by the Arbinger Institute. They use as an example families dealing with young adults that have become drug addicts to show how all conflict is the same.

Can you see the Flounder?

One of the most salient sentences i read was one directed at a parent who maintained that he was right during a particular exercise. The moderator asked him if he had ever met anyone who thought he was wrong. Just think about that anytime you are in conflict with another person, have you ever considered that you could be wrong?

No conflict can ever be solved if both parties think they are right. The moderator used this to explain to parents that our way of being towards others might be at the heart of the conflict. Sometimes we just keep perpetuating the problem, we go around and around and provoke the very behaviors we want to eliminate because we can't change how we relate.

Round the island race

We all tend to demonize those we disagree with, we lump them into categories and dehumanize them. i do it myself. If you say the word Republican to me i lump them all into a group of angry, greedy, self indulgent, war mongering, climate denying bigoted people. But the reality of my real Republican friends doesn't compute. They are none of those things so am i wrong to think those thoughts?

Are they wrong to think of Democrats as wimps, takers, socialists, communists, judicial activists and baby killers. i think so. That is why we have to humanize all of us. Stop making demons out of the other party. If we want our country to move forward we have to first find a way out of our internal wars that poison most of the political discourse.

When Decartes stated Cognito ergo sum...I think therefore I am, Martin Heidegger hundreds of years later pondered it and asked where the language necessary to make that statement came from. Of course we all know the language came from others. When you think about this deeply you have to realize that being in the world with others is fundamental because we couldn't acquire language without others. We can't live without others.

In order to understand our nation we have to view each and every person as an individual as a real person who may contribute to our well being. Don't demonize anyone. Look at everyone you encounter over the next week. Look at them all carefully, notice them, really really notice them, notice what they are doing for a living, notice how you are interacting with them, even if they are in the cars ahead of you or behind you, they are all interacting with you. And remember we may be individuals but we are in the world with others.