Let’s bring in the new year with personal resolutions so meaningful, they will change our world. We can do this! Here is VeganReader’s top 10 list of the work we feel will have the most profound and beautiful impact on the quality of life in 2012.

1. Support the Label GMO Initiative
This is definitely #1 on our list and should be the top priority on every loving, caring, humanitarian list of resolutions for 2012. In November of 2011, the California Right To Know Genetically Engineered Food Act was submitted to California’s State Attorney General. VeganReader is 100% behind this remarkable idea.

We believe that Californians who see a ‘contains gmos’ labels on 80% of the food in the grocery stores will not buy that food (90% of Americans have stated that they want GMO labeling). We believe that other U.S. states will then demand to know why their food lacks these warning labels. And we believe that manufacturers will decide to source their ingredients from non-GMO-contaminated suppliers so that they can avoid that bad label on their products. We believe this will result in the developers of GMOs realizing that there is no money to be had in the production of GMO crops and that they will not continue to pursue an unprofitable business model.

The California Right To Know Genetically Engineered Food Act will appear on ballots in California in 2012. If you live in California, please support this act. If you live outside of the state or outside of the country, please, do anything you can to support this landmark act. At VeganReader.com, we keep current on many topics and struggles and are convinced that there is no more important issue on the entire world scene than the protection of food from GMO contamination. Please, consider becoming educated and active about this as your #1 New Year’s resolution!

2. Grow Food
From a sunny apartment balcony to a big family yard, make room for growing food. Make 2012 the year in which something that ends up on your plate started in your hand as a seed or start. Maybe you only have room for a pot of herbs or a tomato plant, or maybe you’ve got the whole organic family farm in full swing. Either way, you will experience one of the most significant and intimate acts of being alive – feeding yourself.

If you don’t have any room at all to grow any food, search the Internet to discover if there is a community garden in your town where you can volunteer a little of your time each month in exchange for a share of the harvest. This model of community gardening is becoming increasingly abundant in urban communities and provides the vital service of putting people back in touch with the food on which they depend for life.

3. Grow Your Food Organically
Respect Mother Earth’s needs by growing food without toxins. Feed yourself while protecting water, people, animals, insects, fish, soil and air. Refuse to buy pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizer when you are in control of how food is grown and be glad that, at least within your power, nothing is being done to poison life.

4. Find Farmers
Few people own enough land to grow all that they need. Use a directory like LocalHarvest.org to find the farm stands, farm markets and CSAs nearest you. Meet the people who grow food for a living and glory in the quality of what they can provide you.

Tell farmers you appreciate them in two ways: support them with your dollars and tell them verbally how glad you are they are growing food in your community. Small farms = diversity that protects us from reliance on the monoculture of corporate agribusiness and reduce the risk of mass food borne illness. Some of your happiest days in 2012 may be spent at farm stands and farm markets. Do as much shopping as you can in these venues as opposed to supermarkets.

5. Learn to Cook
Bring in the crops from the garden or the baskets from the farm stands and cook from scratch the best meals you’ll ever eat in your life! Learn to make your own daily bread – whether that’s a wheat loaf or a gluten-free corn tortilla. Master the arts of hearty soups, crisp salads, filling casseroles, stir fries, whole grains, dried beans and more! Cut out the middle man of the food processing factory and make the steps from earth to table as few and light as possible. Your palette and your planet will thank you for it!

6. Honor Indigenous Cultures
North American residents of non-Native ancestry have been intentionally kept in the dark by the public school system regarding the accurate history of the European conquest of the Americas. Thankfully, public libraries offer a solution to this woeful ignorance. If you live in the United States or Canada, your local public library should have a wonderful selection of books about Native American and First Nations history. The ancestors of today’s Indigenous Americans were the keepers of a level of knowledge about life that is unsurpassed anywhere in world history – their love of the land, love of one another and understanding of how to live is precisely what is most lacking in the modern cultures of the Americas today.

Native Peoples have survived the genocide of the 1500-1800s and many of today’s Indigenous Americans are doing tremendous works of power to preserve what is best in their cultures. Many are looking outside of tribal circles to the whole of the Earth and staging outstanding conferences to promote the rights of Mother Earth. Resolve to read up on the Law of the Rights of Mother Earth that was passed by Bolivia’s Plurinational Legislative Assembly in December 2010.

European immigrants’ most devastating mistake was in failing to ask the Native peoples of North, Central and South America to teach them how to live so that life could be different from what it was back in the polluted chaos of Europe. We can’t undo the past, but we can resolve to learn all that we can from Indigenous peoples today, wherein we will discover that their ancient ways of shaping the land, feeding people and caring for the Earth can sustain human life as they have done since time beyond recall.

7. Find A Wilderness – Or The Closest Thing To It
Spend as much time as you can in the least human-altered setting you can find. Few of us live close enough to true wilderness to be able to escape entirely from the things of man, but regional, state and national parks offer the next best thing. If there is nothing like that within reasonable distance, can you find a field somewhere, or even a vacant, unpaved lot?

Take off your shoes and feel the warmth of your planet on the soles of your feet. You may not have done this since childhood. 2012 is the right year to cut out the concrete middle man between you and your feet, for at least a few minutes. Don’t be surprised if your whole body suddenly calms down with an, “Ah, this is my home,” feeling.

Look around. What does the soil look like? Are there rocks? What plants do you see? Insects? Birds? Animals? What do you hear?

My happiest times in 2011 were spent either sitting on the ground on the family farm at eye level with grasshoppers, butterflies, dragonflies and other gorgeous visitors or out walking in the wildest lands I could find, visiting with bobcats, coyotes, muskrats, foxes, rabbits, turkeys and a host of beautiful birds. I would like every brother and sister to know these feelings of the simplest and best of Earth-bound happiness. May 2012 be wild for you!

8. Think About Animals
Many vegans take on their new non-harming lifestyle after having a good think about the feelings and needs of animals. If you are not vegan, maybe 2012 would be a good year to have a think about this, to read up on the subject and to see if it makes any sense to you. I’ve been a vegan for some 20 years now, and continue to recommend John Robbin’s Diet for a New America as the best book for people interested in this subject.

If you are already a vegan, is there something you can do in 2012 for the cows, pigs, goats, chickens, sheep, turkeys, game birds, ducks, fish, fur-farmed animals, silk worms and beetles who live in a state of enslavement? Or perhaps for the wild animals? Your non-harming lifestyle has already done a significant amount of good, but perhaps, with consideration and creativity, you will think of something more you can do for our animal brothers.

9. Abandon Unnecessary Products
Look down the aisles of the typical U.S. grocery store and you will find hundreds of products that can be cheaply and green-ly replaced with basic soap, vinegar and baking soda. Throw out the detergent, the chemical cleanser, the polish, the fragrance spray, the scented junk. We don’t need this stuff and most of it is toxic to our water, our air and our bodies.

Ladies, scrub off the cosmetics and learn to love the real you – the way the Creator made you. Your smile will be just as bright and your eyes clearer when they aren’t weighted down with totally unnecessary cosmetics. In 2011, spend that time you would have otherwise spent fussing in the mirror doing something truly honoring of your true self. Sing, play music, dance, pray, walk, read. Beauty is soul-deep.

Gentlemen, are you using toxins in your yard or to clean windows, cars or other possessions? Find green, eco-friendly alternatives. Pull those dandelions or learn to love them as nice accents in your lawn. Get tough on dirt with baking soda and a scrubby. Make a safe environment for yourself and your loved ones.

10. Love Life
Those who love their own selves and the people in their lives are best suited to become stewards of the precious gift of life. Love is the antidote to pollution. It is the antidote to hunger. It is the antidote to isolation, war and greed. Love is the power that can make right all of the things we feel are so wrong in the way things are going in our communities, cities, countries and on our planet. This feeling of love for life – this is the thing that empowers us to say no to wrong habits, wrong products, wrong systems and wrong ideas. It all starts with us – with each of us and our ability to live and act in love.

May your 2012 be sacred and loving!

I’ll Fly Away chronicles the trials and joys of an African-American mother who works as a housekeeper for the wealthy family of a Georgian lawyer. Like the characters in the recent acclaimed novel, The Help, the housekeeper has to navigate the complexities, heartaches and dangers of raising white children who will one day be taught to think of her race as inferior, and the series also details her first forays into activism in the Civil Rights Movement, including boycotts, voter registration and riding a Freedom Bus.

Simultaneously, the storyline of the successful lawyer depicts the gradual erosion of his confidence in the judicial system and in the overall social system of the South as he witnesses daily the total lack of justice accorded to non-white citizens. This is not dealt with in a simplistic manner. The lawyer definitely does not wake up one day free of his racist cultural teachings. The whole story is one long struggle for him towards awareness and compassion as he is confronted with lynchings and murders that parallel actual events which happened in the mid 20th century.

The reason I am writing about this public television series some twenty years after it first aired is that its conclusion left me thinking deeply about the state of racism in the United States today. In the final episode, the housekeeper returns to her old home town in the South after an absence of 30 years. She and her family had eventually had to flee Georgia when her elderly father testified in a trial resultant from the lynching of a young boy who made a remark to a white woman (a fictionalization of the 1955 murder of Emmett Till). The viewer is gratified to discover that the housekeeper has not only survived, but has become a respected author who is shown speaking to a very integrated group of modern college students.

During her visit home, she pays a call on her former employer, the lawyer, who is now an elderly man. Attentive viewers will be struck by the incredible difference in the way the old lawyer and his ex-housekeeper are now ‘allowed’ to interact with one another. Not only do they sit on the porch together, but he actually invites her out to lunch – something that would have been illegal under segregation. Not only this, the two characters embrace one another in parting, but perhaps most different of all, the author calls the lawyer by his first name. After watching an entire series in which the two characters remain rigidly within their dictated societal roles, this one small change is nothing short of phenomenal. I found this conclusion to be both sensitively portrayed and truly thought-provoking.

In the 1990s, when I first watched I’ll Fly Away and I was a much younger person, if someone had asked me what I thought the state of racism in the country might be, I probably would have responded that African-American people had finally won their way through to being able to follow their hopes, aims and dreams. At that time, the media was filled with wealthy African-American sports heroes, celebrities and fictional portrayals of families who had achieved financial success and social prominence. I was aware of the heart scalding reality of poverty and ghettos, but I think I would have felt that these were problems which the whole country felt terrible about and that most people knew that racism was not acceptable, not ‘cool’. My Scandinavian-Irish grandfather, with his categorization by race of people he had known, definitely sounded to me like a person from a long-gone era.

Thus, watching the conclusion of I’ll Fly Away in the early 1990′s would have confirmed my beliefs in how much the brave heroes of the Civil Rights Movement had succeeded in quelling racism in the country and improving life for all African Americans. I would have felt relieved and happy about this conclusion.

But watching this same show again, in 2011, left me with a very different feeling. Because now, having watched the media highlight the shockingly racist reaction of a segment of the population to the election of the country’s first African-American President, I have been made painfully aware that this land is still full of the ignorance and fear that feed this frightening beast of racial hatred. And this is something I very strongly feel that no American should ignore.

Racial hatred has played such an integral part in the story of America, it is something no American should be left in ignorance about. America was founded on the genocide of the countless races that were conveniently lumped together under the term ‘Indian’. Then there was African-American slavery. Then the kidnapping and enslavement of the Chinese. For several decades, the Irish were barred from employment and business with signs reading ‘No Irish Need Apply’, in addition to periodic discrimination against whichever wave of immigrants was newest.

Then there was segregation, and during World War II the internment of more than 7000 Asian-Americans in concentration camps where many sickened and died. These days, slavery is alive in Florida where Latino workers are held against their will to toil in the tomato fields of agribusiness, and field workers in California sleep on the ground amongst the vineyards and orchards where they work and die in exchange for low wages, no health care and no security. And in full view of the public, elected officials and high-profile media professionals have stirred up racial and religious hatred through fear tactics that paint Islam as the enemy and the United States President as a non-US citizen.

In sum, the targeting, abuse and categorization of human beings by race has been and remains a key facet of the reality of the American story, and the reaction to the election of President Barack Obama has certainly been a wake-up call for me. To my sadness and shame, it is clear to me that a number of my fellow Americans have yet to get it that it is not ‘cool’ to think of people in terms of their race.

My honest belief is that much of the evil being done at the highest levels of government and media has absolutely nothing to do with race and is, in fact, fueled by greed and desire for the acquisition of power. I believe that powerful people are intentionally inciting racial hatred by manipulating the very segments of the public who have had the least opportunities for education and success in life. I believe the instigators are doing this for political and economic reasons and that they have found that appealing to racism is effective. If they had discerned that appealing to a fear of weather was most effective, they would be using that instead, painting the President as the arbiter of rain and snow and the innocent peoples of other nations as harboring hurricanes.

That being said, it is the fact that one can still appeal to feelings of racial hatred that is the problem. People are still raising their children in an atmosphere of ignorance and fear of people who are differently hued than themselves, and only a portion of those children will have the educational and life opportunities that will empower them to become confident enough to break out of this very, very old cycle. Near the end of his life, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to the conclusion that the plight of the poor in the realm of the powerful was actually the real root of all of the woes he spent his life trying to heal, and I fully agree with this, and am sure it is true that America’s most abused and fearful citizens are probably its poorest.

So, yes, the quality of life for African-Americans, and for all Americans, was substantially improved by the successes of the Civil Rights Movement, but, in my opinion, we are still suffering badly in many parts of the country from a lack of love, a lack of opportunities and an utter lack of concern on the part of our government and institutions to help the poor uplift themselves so that they don’t fall such easy prey to manipulators who will win their attention and votes by targeting imaginary enemies on the basis of race. Reviewing our bloody and inhumane history of racial discrimination and violence since the days of the first colonies, this is a matter of absolutely serious import. Our work isn’t complete.

As for me, I am extremely thankful to be living in an era and area of diversity. I would not enjoy living in a place where everyone looks the same or has the same roots. Diversity is so much more interesting. Right now, in California, I am watching with greatest interest the re-population of the state by Indigenous and mixed Indigenous-Hispanic citizens. California is starting to look like a place of peoples of color again, cycling back to the time before the gold rush. When I hear white people around me reacting with fear, I remind them that California was long Indian Country, and then for a time part of Mexico, and that we are having the opportunity to witness the vibrant survival of Native Peoples in our own time in history. I thank the Creator that I am living side by side with Indigenous neighbors, as well as more recent arrivals from Europe, Asia and Africa. I want to learn about everybody, benefit from their wisdom and count them as friends. Our diversity is our collective strength, and our love is what makes life sacred.

Suggestions
How would you propose to further heal racial fear and hatred in the hearts of Americans? What do you think works? Have you watched I’ll Fly Away?. What do you feel about its hopeful conclusion, given the evidence of racism in the 21st century? Are we doing better or worse in 2011 than we were in 1990s, in terms of celebrating racial diversity?

I’d like to take a moment to strongly praise another public television show I saw as a child called Eyes on The Prize which can also be found at YouTube. This incredibly educational series was my first formal introduction to the history of the Civil Rights Movement. It filled me with sadness and horror as a child who found the idea of the indignities suffered by African Americans intolerable, and it gifted me with valuable knowledge that I have carried with me throughout life.

And, in closing, I would like to link to what I consider to be the most powerful speech of the 20th century Dr. Martin Luther King Jr On The War In Vietnam. This is a speech for the ages, and the insights provided into the roots of hatred I find to be utterly relevant today.

I hope you will share your own thoughts on racism in the United States today, and what skills, tools and aids you feel might be most effective in truly moving us all away from these disastrous failures to love.

This year, many people will attempt to explore vegan eating either for reasons of health or out of the stirrings of conscience. Perhaps a doctor has recommended they forego meat and dairy to overcome a serious illness. Perhaps they have read books or seen films that have convinced them that the meat and dairy eating habit is causing an ecological disaster while dooming the world’s poor to hunger. Or perhaps they have encountered the facts about factory farming, looked into the eyes of a loved animal and said, “Not me. No more.”

Each scenario, each choice is rooted in compassion – a force I would consider to be one of the most powerful in the life of man. In this article, I would like to share some thoughts about compassion that have occurred to me in my twenty years of vegan eating, and I welcome your comments on this important topic.

Exploring The Roots Of Compassion
Children raised by loving parents are the recipients of a deep fund of compassion. A child who has been faithfully loved by good parents through all of the small challenges of growing up understands what it is like to be around people who offer help in times of pain or controversy. This invaluable example of kindness and loyalty commutes into an understanding that it is wrong to intentionally cause pain to others. “If I wouldn’t like something bad to happen to me, no one else would like it to happen to them, either,” the compassionately-raised child learns to think.

If your adult life is rooted in a loving and relatively happy early childhood, the decision to respect the lives of others is within easy reach. You understand that you are a person of value, and this enables you to recognize that all others have their own value. You’ve heard it before that you can’t love others until you love yourself, and this is absolutely true. In knowing that your life is important and sacred, you are able to grant that the lives of all others are also imbued with sacredness and intrinsic value.

But what about the people who had tragic childhoods? What if your early experiences were filled with neglect, violence and the opposite of loving compassion? When evil has been done to you, you eventually come to a crossroad in which you have the power to decide whether to pass the pain on or let it end with you. Unloved people can either become the next actors of violence, hatred and war, or they can recognize the wrong of their sufferings and refuse to cause such pain as they’ve experienced to anybody else.

Looking at it this way, those who have been hurt most in life may have the strongest reasons for making intentional, compassionate choices, because they know just how terrible it is when love is absent. In order to make this decision, the person must recognize their own value, recognize that bad things they experienced were utterly wrong and that no one deserves to have such experiences. By reclaiming the understanding of your life as sacred and valuable, regardless of what others may have mistakenly thought of you, you are rooting yourself in the truth about you, instead of in the mistakes and misunderstandings of others. If you have been wounded, your choice not to wound others (including all animals) is a miraculous triumph of compassion.

Either path – through love to compassion, or through pain to compassion, is a solid foundation for making choices about the way we interact with all others in our life. Apart from breathing, eating is probably the most unifying and powerful activity of being alive.

Compassion, Health and The Vegan Diet
When illnesses that stem from unhealthy eating choices come to light, and health outcomes will be dictated by deciding whether or not to change the way we eat, our foundation of compassion is there to support us.

The value that we feel for ourselves and the people that love us will be our greatest strength in turning away from foods that make us sick towards new ones that will improve, reverse or correct our condition.

At VeganReader.com, we have always been adamant about refusing to bill the vegan diet as a cure for all ills. This simply is not true, and any publication that makes these claims is probably trying to sell you something. That being said, there are a number of conditions that study after study have concluded can be healed by abstaining from meat and dairy, and if you are fortunate enough to have this choice for a healthier, longer life open to you, as opposed to those people who are burdened with illnesses with no known cause or cure, then making the transition to better eating is an act of profound love. Believe that you are worth taking care of, and you can make the compassionate choice to care for yourself with better eating habits.

I must say, I am most impressed by elders whom, after a life of enjoying bacon and eggs, are willing to transition to healthier foods so that they can keep exploring the gift of life. They deserve many, many wonderful years!

If you have come to this article, at any age, as a result of a health diagnosis that can be improved or reversed by transitioning to a meat and dairy free diet, I promise you that with education, meals that may be better than any you have ever eaten before await you. For flavor, variety, nutrition and deliciousness, home-cooked vegan dishes that are based on whole, fresh, organic ingredients cannot be beat, and your dinners can pay tribute to the finest meals in the cuisines of the world from Mexican, to Italian, to Indian, Chinese, Eastern European, American Indian, African, Middle Eastern and more!

When you free yourself from the meat-and-dairy sameness of what you eat, there is so much to taste and enjoy. Change is seldom easy, but the good eating that is in store for you can make this one change very pleasant.

Compassion, Ecology and The Vegan Diet
There is a Cree American Indian quote which says:

“Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find money cannot be eaten.”

This year, many people will consider veganism because they have realized that the ecological costs of factory farm production of meat and dairy are too high. When you have to breathe air that has been polluted with the methane that is destroying the ozone layer of the planet, can’t take a drink out of any stream anywhere in the country because it is toxic with farm animal wastes, and you see those rivers where fish can no longer live because of the pollution, when you look at films of the giant belt of land that has been given over to the production of genetically modified corn for farm animal feed instead of diverse organic crops to feed hungry people…when you read one too many reports of the damage America’s meat-and-dairy habit is causing, you may go vegan in order to opt out of these terrible choices.

Your love for our beautiful planet, its people, plants and animals, its land features, forests and waters can fuel your refusal to funnel your hard earned money into a money-making system that is threatening and destroying all of these irreplaceable wonders. Man cannot make new water, new air. We’ve got to save what we were given on planet earth, and the actions ecologically-minded vegans are taking to protect Earth’s total environment are profoundly compassionate.

Looking at your fork as it travels to your mouth, you know that the organic pinto beans you have chosen are a choice for life and biodiversity and pollution reduction, whereas a bite of hamburger would have been a choice for global warming, pollution, deforestation and ruined soil. That relationship going on between your fork and you is incredibly powerful, and your love of live and value for the ecological miracle of Planet Earth makes your vegan choices compassionate on a truly global scale.

Compassion, Animals and The Vegan Diet
Anyone who has watched a toddler react to the presence of a friendly animal knows that his sense of wonder has a fantastic spontaneous, joyous quality. The little one’s eyes get big, he bounces up and down, gasps, laughs and practically falls over with joy at the experience of this exciting animal encounter. In this demonstration of wonder lies the truth about how we humans authentically feel about our relationship to non-threatening animals.

Children’s nurseries are filled with pictures of animals, books about animals and stuffed animals. Sensitive small children will literally weep out of fondness for their favorite animals. In childhood, in the Western World, most of us get the message early that animals are a big, important deal. But then we come to our own crossroad, somewhere early in life, when we first understand that the chicken on our plate is an actual…chicken. That cute, fluffy little thing in our book of baby animals is now being served to us for dinner. To say the least, this is a confusing dichotomy to confront.

For most children, this realization will come and go and they will continue to eat however their families teach them to. But for children who grow up to be vegans, that confrontation with the facts of what they are doing has a lasting impact that they cannot forget.

Vegans who become so out of compassion for animals have never lost touch with that initial experience of wonder and love that they felt for them. They have never stopped looking at the baby chick, the little curly-tailed piggy, the soft-eyed calf with a feeling of warmth inside. The thought that these lovely fellow creatures would be tormented, tortured and killed becomes intolerable and the vegan refuses to fund this suffering with their money.

Once again, compassion is at the root of this choice. The little human being who understood Wilbur the pig’s desire not to be killed because he loved his life in Charlotte’s Web had those feelings because she loved herself and her own life. And, as an adult, she carries that with her and grants that all other beings love their lives and don’t want them taken away before their time. Value for the self commutes into value for all, and vegans who become so out of compassion for all living things are making choices that have meaningful impacts for so many beings.

Compassion For All
Don’t ever doubt that the choices of just one person make a difference. It is true that our choice to eat vegan will not save the health of every man, save the quality of all soil, water and and air, or save the life of every animal, but our activities within our own sphere count. And when others, in their own spheres, make autonomous compassionate choices, we begin to approach a sum total of real change.

This being said, I think that every discussion of the aspects of veganism should include mention of free will. If you believe, as I do, that life is a spiritual thing, then you will understand that each person is on his own path. My choices are mine – his belong to him. Many people have commented on a phenomenon of phony self-righteousness attached to veganism, and in response to this, I would suggest that vegans who set out to force change upon others are not living a life founded in compassion. Instead, their energy is stemming from anger or fear, perhaps because they are unhappy in their own lives or terribly upset about animal suffering. I can certainly understand that, but unless you are viewing your fellow human beings with compassion and granting that they have the right to choose lives that seem best to them, then you are looking blindly right past the core of veganism.

Vegans have commented honestly about their own problems with this issue here at VeganReader.com. After reading articles here, they have admitted that they feel anger towards people who don’t recognize the wrongness of animal suffering.

If you sense that this anger has convinced you that it’s up to you to convert others to your way of thinking, you are in danger of becoming a dictator. Stop. Turn inward and recognize how valuable, unique and dignified you are because you are carrying the gift of of life with you. Then, look outward again and recognize that gift shining in the minds and hearts of others – animals and people equally. Loving all beings in all forms, at all stages of thought and life…this is the work that is ahead of each of us. If you approach the work from a foundation of compassion, the work will be good.

This has just happened, and our reaction feels very raw, but we just wanted to express our sorrow.

From reading the news, it seems as if the man who caused this tragedy is being described as solo and insane, rather than being affiliated with any group. Oh, my brothers and sisters, how can we create a world that doesn’t create this type of madness in people? How can we give enough love to everyone so that a neighbor isn’t able to descend into this kind of insanity, unnoticed until he strikes out at the community in his madness? Every day, we wake up to news of violence. How can we pour enough love over every brother so that the violence ends?

When I think of those young people, enjoying their summer at a camp in so beautiful a place as Norway, so generally renowned for its peaceful people…when I think of their lives ending so horrifically because somewhere along the way, something must have gone so wrong with just one human being, all I can do is pray. Pray that my own country will stop glorifying violence in its policies and entertainments. Pray that the people in all lands will put away their weapons and their hatreds.

If the time the world’s people currently devote to hatreds could only be melted down into a sense of kinship and love, the difference in everyone’s life would be profound.

Right now, I’m praying that people who own guns are watching this terrible news and asking themselves whether they want to be a part of this pattern. I’m praying that people who make violent tv, movies and games are counting the cost. I’m praying that governments who inspire fear rather than love in their nations are dreaming of a different approach.

And most of all, I’m praying for the people of Norway who have lost so much. May they be comforted, may they be loved.

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Photo Credit: Madekla.

The land we call America is like no other. The people we call Americans encompass countless good and caring human beings. And though the past few decades have seen the American government drawing more voiced displeasure than praise from neighboring lands, countless people would still give all they have to be able to come and live here. On the world scene, you cannot best our natural beauty, our interesting history or our potential for goodness, but America was founded on a mistake of cosmic proportions and on this 4th of July weekend, I would like to take a moment to reflect on what happened and what might be done to begin righting past wrongs.

As you travel about this weekend, enjoying the pageantry of flags and fireworks, please pause to remember that where we are today, in terms of our history and accomplishments, did not start from honest beginnings. The theft of the lands, often by brutally violent means, from Native American residents makes the founding of the United States a sorrowful and shameful one. I have noticed that people who don’t want to confront this seem eager to dismiss the facts of the conquest of America as being “so long ago”. However many centuries pass, the fact that the country was taken by force at the cost of countless Indigenous lives will not change, and the benefits enjoyed by non-Native residents will continue to stem from this initial violence.

We can’t undo the past, but if we want something to truly celebrate, I believe the people of America can work towards a new understanding that is worth waving a flag for. Native Americans continue to have the lowest life expectancy, worst health and most complicated social problems of any group in the population. They have not ever really recovered, as a whole people, from what happened to them. Similarly, there are many historians and anthropologists who put forward the theory that problems plaguing the African-American population have their roots in slavery. The devastation of any culture casts a long, long shadow into the future.

No, we cannot undo the past, but this doesn’t mean we can’t make a better choice today, right now, and I believe the state of California is in a unique position to begin to recognize that we have an opportunity to dignify the Indigenous suffering that occurred here between the arrival of the Spanish and the madness of the Gold Rush. Most historians agree that no other American Indians suffered more than those of California – we have the absolute worst record when it comes to hate crimes against Indigenous people. Consider that.

Right now, the state government is planning to close 40% of California’s parks. In my view, frequent visits to open lands are one of the only activities many modern Californians participate in that connect them to the old ways of appreciation that were basic to most Indigenous Californian Peoples. If we cut everybody off from the wild lands, how can we expect them to learn sane behavior here? If all we know is asphalt, we do not really know California and will not understand how to love and protect it.

As an act of sanity, and of recognition of the theft of California, I would like the state government to approach California Indian Tribes with a plea to take over the management of the parks slated for closure. I will gladly pay taxes for this and do whatever else I can to ensure that the California Indians have whatever support they might need to keep the parks clean and safe for all people to visit.

It is an Indigenous custom to share everything, and first European visitors to this country were almost always met with an inclusive, brotherly welcome. It is my fond hope that, despite everything they have suffered, California Indians would still be willing to share the land with everyone else, provided that everyone else recognizes that the tribes have the longest knowledge and greatest understanding of how to care for the land. I believe that, in the spirit of their ancestors, modern California Indigenous Peoples, would take far better care of the parks than state agencies have done and that they would welcome everyone to come walk the land, knowing that this would create a more loving and educated whole society.

Independence and liberty from long ago despots is something worth celebrating, hundreds of years later, but we cannot pride ourselves on justice while holding fast to stolen lands without making even the slightest effort to acknowledge that a major mistake was made so long ago. The Native Californians are still here, still our neighbors, and still dealing with the fallout of long ago actions. California can ask them to take back some of the land, if they would like to, and tend to it in their own ways.

As I see it, this action could start something new, and this good action today would also ripple out into the future, leading to good and just outcomes for future Californians, and future Americans.

I have no idea if tribes like the Yuroks, Pomos, Karoks, Miwoks, Cahuillas, Ohlones or others would be interested in such a plan, but I feel very strongly that they should at least be asked. What do you think?

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Photo Credit

I had given up on pasta. Since that initial diagnosis of gluten and soy sensitivity, I’ve tried every organic gluten free, soy free pasta available at my local markets and the results were so dismal that I finally threw up my hands and said, “Pasta is just out.”

Don’t ever doubt that miracles do happen, because I’ve surely experienced one this week, sitting down with low hopes to a dish of a gluten free pasta brand that just debuted at my local natural foods store.

The pasta is greyish out of the box, and I was surprised to see it turn so pale once cooked. Looks almost like…well, pasta. I take a bite. Gosh, it isn’t grainy. I take two, three bites. Where’s the weird aftertaste? I don’t taste one. Hey, this tastes kind of good. Twirl, twirl, munch, munch. Hey…with my sauce…this tastes really pretty good! I’ll be darned. I’m eating pasta!

I have to wonder if the fact that this product is made in Italy has something to do with this pasta being as close to semolina/wheat pasta in texture and taste as any I’ve ever tried. Apparently, Jovial makes ‘regular’ pasta, too. They know what they are doing, clearly. I’ve got a fanciful picture in my mind of master Italian noodle makers tasting the products of the competition and shouting curses in dismay. What Jovial has done is to divine a recipe that avoids so many of the errors you’ll find in other brands, the errors that have likely turned many gluten free diners permanently off pasta. If this is you and you’re willing to give a plate of spaghetti one more try, I think you’re going to be very pleasantly surprised.

My Take On Other Gluten Free Pasta Brands
I, for one, didn’t ever want to try a rice-based pasta again after eating Tinkyada. Some people swear by it, but for me, the grainy texture was not palatable and the overall flavor reminded me of soap.

We gave Mrs. Leeper’s corn-based pasta several chances to win us over, but it was either like glue or like pick-up-sticks and the aftertaste was reminiscent of the plastic it’s packaged in. It wasn’t as bad as Tinkyada’s, but it wasn’t good enough for me to keep serving.

With a loving nod to the wonderful crops of South America, I was all ready to embrace the quinoa pasta produced by Ancient Harvest. But it tasted like fungus and cardboard, and I ate exactly three bites of it before pushing my plate away.

I’ve never tried the DeBoles pastas that I came across because they either weren’t organic or they contained an ingredient I’m allergic to. There was another brand that had eggs in it – not for vegans. I know there were others, but I don’t remember them and if I did, I feel I can safely forget the sensory mementos of their yucky tastes and textures now that I’ve found that happy brand: Jovial!

I realize this post sounds like I’ve been hired to do PR for this company. I give you my word, this is coming straight from my gleeful heart and happy stomach and I couldn’t wait to write this to share some very good news with pasta lovers who have had to part with something they love for lack of palatable options.

Is It As Good As Semolina Pasta?
Wish I could say yes, but I remember all too well the delight of freshly made wheat pasta and this definitely can’t compare. Fresh pasta is pretty much always going to be superior in every way to the dried product. Can Jovial’s gluten free pasta compare to a dried wheat-based pasta? If I could give a mathematical equation, I would say that this pasta is about 80% as good as a good dried wheat pasta. 80% is pretty amazing when I consider that if I applied this same equation to any other gf pasta I’d be saying it was about 0%-40% as good as wheat pasta. To put it another way, I’d call Jovial’s noodles at least twice as good as anybody else’s on the gluten free scene.

What Did We Make For Dinner Tonight?
The above photo, taken just moments ago, was of the two pastas I served for dinner…yes, I was excited enough to make two pastas. One is sauced with a fresh tomato puree loaded with sauteed crooknecks, spinach, mushrooms and herbs. The other is crowned with a quick pesto made of our spinach and parsley combined with pine nuts, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper. Both dishes were very tasty – the pesto was particularly peppy. The pasta itself is the gluten free cappellini, wonderfully thin, limber and toothsome. I’ve got a box of fusilli in the pantry, too, and I am dreaming of pasta salad…

Frequent readers know that we keep packaged product spending to a very bare minimum here, but when you are raised on noodles, knowing you can’t ever have them again is quite sad. For all my efforts to make everything I possibly can from scratch, I have not been able to come to grips with homemade gluten free pasta and, for now, will have to leave that to whomever the genius was that put this on my plate. Nutritionally, pasta is not a powerhouse food and this brown rice-based pasta stacks up pretty equivalently with non-enriched wheat pasta. It’s got 5 grams of protein, 43 of carbohydrates and a little iron in it.

It’s not something I have ever eaten frequently, preferring to go for whole grains in their purest form most of the time. Good old organic long grain brown rice will continue to take pride of place in terms of what we buy at the store and serve in our home, and I can talk polenta with your mamma mia, but how nice it is to know that when I want to get out the red-checked tablecloth and have an Italian feast of summer vegetables and rich tomato-based sauces, the pasta will no longer be absent. In short, it’s a treat I’m really thankful for and I hope this news will brighten your week in the kitchen and at the table.

If you try Jovial gluten free pasta, I’d love to know if it’s hit you like a revelation as it has me. Disagree? Ready to defend another gluten free pasta brand with all your heart? Your comments, and stories of your struggles with nice and nasty noodles, are welcome, too!

Yesterday, we blogged about the peaceful protest Native American Peoples and their friends are holding at Glen Cove, California, in an effort to protect a very sacred burial site from desecration. The City of Vallejo has plans to turn the ancient site into a park with parking lot, restrooms and paved trails, and for more than a week now a spiritual encampment has been set up at the cove to protect the remains of the Indigenous peoples who have lain buried there for 3500 years.

My aim in yesterday’s article was to give an overview of the spiritual value of this site and the development which threatens it. I touched only briefly on one facet of the planned park which I feel is deserving of an article of its own, and that is the city’s plans to saturate the area with a toxic herbicide known as Garlon 4.

If you are new to understanding herbicide toxicity, the first place you need to start is by looking at the legal Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for the product. Here is the MSDS for Garlon 4. It’s a long document, definitely worth your time reading if you live in the Glen Cove area. Here are what I see as the most salient points in the data sheet:

- Garlon 4 is listed as a ‘marine pollutant’. The city of Vallejo’s plan is, of course, to spray this right there at the waterside. It is reprehensible to introduce a marine pollutant into a marine ecosystem, poisoning the water and all things that live in it. The MSDS specific warns people to keep this product away from ‘soil, ditches, sewers, waterways and/or groundwater’. Considering that the city of Vallejo plans to spray this on the ‘soil’ and right at the ‘waterway’, contamination is guaranteed.

- Garlon 4 will be used to kill those plants scientists have deemed to be non-native. On a spiritual level, it is ironic that local governments, chiefly made up of newcomers to the Americas, feel justified in overriding the claims and needs of Native Americans while dealing out death to non-native plants. The Native Americans currently occupying Glen Cove have stated unequivocally that they feel all plants that have rooted at the burial ground should be respected and protected, regardless of origin, and this spiritual approach to the ecosystem affirms life instead of destroying in. On a scientific level, anything that ends in the syllable ‘cide’ (as in pesticide, herbicide, fungicide and rodenticide…or homocide and suicide) means death. Spraying death to plants means spraying death all around humans, too. Cell death in humans and plants is practically identical, so what we do to plants, we also do to ourselves on a smaller scale.

- Garlon 4′s ingredients have been found to cause birth defects and tumors in animal studies and are confirmed carcinogens (cause cancer). This knowledge is of absolute importance to all residents whose homes line this cove and it is listed right there in the Material Safety Data Sheet.

- Finally, for those living along the cove or for the protesters camping there, here is direct language from the MSDS about inhaling this herbicide:

“Aspiration into the lungs may occur during ingestion or vomiting, causing lung damage or even death due to chemical pneumonia”.

So, yes, exposure to Garlon 4 can be fatal to human begins.

Why, then, do public officials speak of such chemical products as safe? Basically, they are depending on your ignorance to get away with statements like this. They have either been lied to by chemical companies or agencies who spray chemicals, or they are receiving financial benefits in some way by contracting with chemical companies. These agencies are depending on you not reading the Material Safety Data Sheets for the products that are constantly being sprayed on public parks, roadsides, parking lots, schools and agricultural fields. And, unfortunately, major newspapers frequently reprint these vague claims of ‘safety’ of herbicides without doing their own homework first.

My best hope here is that everyone living in Vallejo will take 5 minutes to read the Material Safety Data Sheet for Garlon 4, so that they are not being duped. You definitely do not need to be exposed to the carcinogenic components of Garlon 4, and the very idea of creating a public park that is saturated with this known toxic substance is repugnant and ridiculous. Will you really want to take your dog for a walk, your children for a stroll or have a picnic in the middle of a toxic wasteland?

To the good people currently camping at Glen Cove, I want to close with this important message: should you see the chemical applicators appear at the cove with hand or backpack spraying tools, please understand the risk you are taking by remaining in the area. Definitely read the safety sheet, and remember that herbicides are always most toxic to children, elders and people who are already in poor health.

The MSDS recommends that people applying this herbicide wear protective glasses and suits. It is doubtful that the city of Vallejo will provide such equipment to the protesters or all of the families living in the houses along Glen Cove. If you breathe this herbicide, or it gets in your eyes or on your skin, you need to get to a hospital immediately.

Whether residents of Vallejo stand in solidarity with the protection of Glen Cove for its spiritual importance or not, every single person living in the area should be able to see the wisdom of preventing their own exposure to these proposed herbicide applications. Who doesn’t know someone battling cancer these days? This is something that everyone should know and care about, and I would urge you to consider what you can do to educate yourself about herbicide use in Glen Cove and the Bay Area at large and to see what you can do to prevent this chronic and totally unnecessary exposure to toxic harms.

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Photo Credit, in part: ProtectGlenCove.org

California has a chance to do something really right. If you live in California and went through the public school system, chances are slim that you were taught that historians now consider our state to have, perhaps, the very worst record in the nation when it comes to past treatment of original Indigenous Peoples. What happened here in the 1800s, scholars now say, was worse than Wounded Knee in South Dakota, worse than the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado, the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo in New Mexico or the deadly pursuit of the Nez Perce from Oregon to Montana.

Since the arrival of the first non-Natives in the state, California Indigenous peoples have been betrayed, abused, enslaved, pursued, hounded and corralled onto reservations. Most chillingly, the slaughter of Native Americans was actually financed by the government here, who found plenty of vigilante-type thugs amongst prospectors and interlopers who took money in exchange for massacres. The end result of this violence was that the Indigenous populations who had managed to survive the Spanish/Mexican occupation were then reduced by an estimated 90% over the course of a few decades. This is the story of ‘sunny’ and ‘golden’ California that is still not being properly taught to residents, leaving too many people with a deficit of wisdom when it comes to understanding the things that Native Americans are organizing and working for today.

We have a perfect example of the lack of education and resultant poor decision making going on right now in Northern California, in a place called Glen Cove in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can read about this issue in depth at ProtectGlenCove.org, but here, I will summarize my understanding of what is taking place and how you can help California to make a much needed right move.

Glen Cove (Sogorea Te in the local Ohlone language) has been a sacred site and burial place for resident Native Americans since at least 1500 BC. There are hundreds of people buried there by the waterside. Imagine a large and important cemetery you have visited where your family going back many generations has received an honorable burial, and you have a good picture of Glen Cove. Glen Cove also contains some of the last ancient shell mounds left in the Bay Area. Most have been demolished in the name of city planning and development. This site continues to be of great spiritual importance to California Indigenous Peoples today.

Unfortunately, the city of Vallejo and the Greater Vallejo Recreation District have laid plans to turn the burial grounds at Glen Cove into a public park, complete with parking lot, restrooms and picnic tables. The plan includes re-grading the earth and installing paved trails. This will involve much digging, of course. The final insult is that the plan includes intensive applications of toxic herbicides for years to come, and this last point should be of significant concern to all Californians who have yet to recover from the LBAM spray disaster.

All of this is absolutely being deemed a desecration of the burial grounds, and representatives of the local Ohlone, Miwok and Pomo tribes are organizing with tribes, groups and citizens across the country to deliver the message that this is a sacred burial ground – not a park.

I want to take this opportunity to voice my unqualified protest of the park proposal, and my deeply felt support of the need to protect Glen Cove from any type of development now or in the future.

As a Californian of mixed Indigenous/European ancestry, I feel that listening to the needs of California Indians is the only way this state’s residents can begin to make peace with a disturbing and dark past. All our people can act for the good of all, and this means honoring the sacred spaces and spiritual devotions of every member of the whole community. When all are equally valued, we will have achieved peace. As a citizen, I feel that elected officials and city councils should always take account of Indigenous visions and plans first, before one more acre of land is developed here for general use. And, as a blogger, I don’t think there’s anything better I can do today than to promote awareness of what is happening in Glen Cove in hopes that you, my caring reader, will feel a call to help protect this sacred burial ground in any way you can.

Here is the page on the ProtectGlenCove.org site listing the various ways in which you can aid this important and humane work, whether this be through writing letters, making phone calls, publicizing the issue locally or giving monetary support. The organizers behind the movement to protect the cove are generously inviting all people to come visit the spiritual encampment and spend a few hours or days there, and ongoing events are planned.

Every day, each of us has the privilege of making decisions. What will we do today, where will we bestow our time, our thought, our care? As I see it, here is a chance for every Californian to make a decision for good, for the downfall of racism, the strengthening of human ties and the honoring of human life both past and present. I believe that if enough of us speak up in solidarity for the protection of Glen Cove, the park plan will be abandoned. The Californians of the 1800s made their decisions, and it is my sincere hope that we feel no sympathy for such evil choices today. We have the opportunity to choose differently.

Latest news is that City of Vallejo workers have come out this week to survey the site for the installation of a fence, flags and spray paint in hand. There is little time to be lost, it seems, and I’m asking all readers to ask themselves if they can lend a hand in whatever way. Please, visit the site we’ve linked to, and see what you can do.

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Photo Credit: Dospaz

There are some human beings to whom you wish the Universe could grant two lifetimes’ worth of days to live, because of their unique gifts that have made the world a better place. Jack Horkeheimer, Director Emeritus of the Miami Museum of Science and Space Transit Planetarium, was one of those people, and it is with tremendous sadness that I learned of his passing on August 20, 2010.

Since the 1970s, Jack Horkheimer’s 1 and 5 minute public television spots, Star Hustler/Star Gazer, have been watched with interest and fondness by millions of Americans who were privileged to learn about the fascinating pursuit of naked eye astronomy from this brilliant and friendly man. Each week, we were treated to a short lesson of what to look for in the night sky, be it a constellation with an exciting history, an especially visible planet or a beautiful seasonal moon.

I first saw Star Hustler/Star Gazer over 20 years ago, and like many people, I was immediately captivated by the celestial-sounding theme song, ‘Arabesque #1′ by Claude Debussy performed by Isao Tomita, the low-budget starry graphics through which the host would float and fly, landing on a ring of Saturn to chat with you, and most especially, by Jack Horkheimer’s funny, personable approach. As a very small child, I was often taken outside to look at the night sky by my father, and finding this television show as a teenager felt immediately comfortable and familiar. Later on, I even purchased two of his video tapes so that I could have the enjoyment of tuning into this friendly show whenever I needed a little brightening up. I sometimes dreamed about being able to travel to the planetarium in Florida, to get to learn from him in person, but it didn’t really matter; even without ever meeting, he somehow he felt like my friend. I imagine many people felt this way. It was simply a pleasure to learn from Jack and the knowledge he so generously shared broadened and enriched my comprehension of our place in the cosmos.

As an adult, there have been so many times in my life when I have wished that all my fellow humans could study astronomy; the humility gained from learning about our own smallness in the grand scheme of things is a good lesson for a species that too often errs on the side of our conception of our own importance. Watching a unique show like Star Gazer, aimed at the lay person and filled with such a warm invitation to go outside at night and contemplate the heavens, could be a form of therapy from which Western man could derive such benefit.

My sense of wonder and reflection has always been switched on high in those hours of my own life when I’ve been looking through a telescope or talking about space with family, friends and acquaintances whom I’ve met at observatories. Star gazing folks are often some of the most interesting, intelligent and thoughtful people you could ever hope to know. In my eyes, Jack Horkheimer’s eagerness to share his knowledge about astronomy typifies the kind of joyful back-and-forth that I’ve experienced with others, under the roofs of planetariums or dark glittering skies, drinking hot chocolate at a frosty two-in-the-morning while seeking nebulae. Everyone becomes a friend, connected by our awe at what we perceive in the great Universe. I wish that all people could experience what I have. It’s truly special.

There’s a psalm in the Old Testament of the Bible which reads:

The heavens declare the glory of God,
The vault of heaven proclaims his handiwork.

To me, those lines sum up the wonder we can feel about the place we mortals inhabit. Looking at skies filled with stars, planets, constellations, objects, and mysteries, something calls us to marvel at all of creation, and if we spent more time, as a species, marveling, we would have far less time to make enemies any plan wars. Ours would be a much better world.

I suppose its that wistful longing for global friendship that made me cry when I heard that Jack Horkheimer had died. His theme song and images of him suddenly filled my mind. I could hear his deep-belly chuckle and just see him smiling as he turned to go tripping along that beam of light before disappearing into the cosmos. Some part of me feels bereft, cheated that Jack only got 72 years here – so brief a time for a such a fine storyteller to be given. And how frustrating, how mortal that his life was claimed by a nothing more than a respiratory illness, according to the news. The hurt part of me feels his life should have been spared so that he could keep on sharing his simple, much-needed message. It’s hard to bear the thought that the astronomical years will continue to cycle by but that no new episodes of Star Gazer will ever be made now. No more Jack to interpret the sky for future generations of potential star gazers. And the loss to his family and his professional colleagues must be so deeply felt. It’s really hard to say goodbye.

But some other part of me feels glad for Jack. I have to believe that he is now receiving the answers to all of the astronomical questions which filled his life with wonder and purpose. Now Jack knows the number of the galaxies in the Universe, the count of the stars. He can truly walk along the Miky Way, delighting in all he is seeing. When I look at it this way, I can scarcely conceive of the happiness he must be having now.

I remember an episode of Star Gazer in which Jack talked about an older friend who had inspired him to start looking at the stars. When she passed on, he felt sad, but consoled himself with a memento of her in the sky – the constellation Cassiopeia which is shaped like a ‘W’ and reminded him of the last name of his friend Bea Williams. Whenever he saw that constellation, he remembered her with affection and gratitude. Perhaps there is something out there on the star map that I can pick to remind me of Jack. Perhaps the curvy tail of Scorpius – it looks rather like a ‘J’ and Jack frequently said it was his favorite summer constellation . But even without signs in the sky, I won’t ever forget this special man and the good things he gave to my life and I will sorely miss him. And I promise, Jack, I will do what you asked and always remember to keep looking up.

I’ve created this small piece of artwork and am writing this essay during the time that is known in the Christian calender as The Three Hours of Good Friday. These hours symbolize the time Jesus of Nazareth hung on the cross before dying. As the historians and scholars of that time, some 2000 years ago, recorded in the compilation of texts that were to become known in later times as The Bible, a carpenter’s son was given a sentence of capital punishment for disturbing the peace and preaching radical ideas to the poor and rich alike. This man, whose real name was likely something like Yeshua, was executed in the gruesome manner of his times, and this moment in history is still remembered today on the Friday before Easter. It is a time for prayer, mourning and quiet reflection. It is a time with potential to bring a space of peace into our world.

This year, my own thoughts have turned toward the group of people whom have historically been termed The Poor. In thousands of languages, hundreds of nations, there have always been The Poor. What do you see in your mind when you think of poor people? Outstretched hands? Hungry faces? Tattered clothing? Perhaps your mind conjures up a glimpse of famine-stricken villages in Africa, crowded cities in India, ghettos in Los Angeles. The truth is, poor people cannot be encapsulated in a single image of a single people or place, because the poor are the majority and always have been. If you could hold the globe in your hand and give it a spin, you would see that all parts of the planet are peopled mostly with individuals living without enough or with just barely enough in the way of food, shelter and clothing to sustain life with reasonable adequacy. In other words, if you are living in a situation of poverty or near-poverty, you are the norm.

What Does Poverty Look Like?
There are many different ways of being poor. In the few rural, warm regions of the planet where people need very little in the way of shelter and clothing to survive, poverty tends to surround the issue of food. The few people who have been able to maintain a hunting and gathering lifestyle face hunger when game is scarce or inclement weather destroys a season of fruits or vegetation. In industrialized regions of the world, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, poverty has a different look. Being cut off from the ability to hunt, gather or farm because all land is privately owned, and being unable to access money can mean both starvation and homelessness. Homelessness is a serious issue in Northern areas because lack of appropriate clothing and shelter can mean freezing to death in winter.

Additionally, poverty in industrialized nations like The United States carries with it an onus of shame and despair because capitalist societies place value only on productive individuals, and the image of ‘a good life’ that is promoted in countries like ours is not simply one of having enough to eat and wear and a warm place to live. The acquisition of possessions far beyond basic needs is promoted as the difference between happiness and misery, and in certain cases, owning possessions like cars is essential in many areas of the country where towns have been laid out so that stores, doctors, places of worship and other important resources are located beyond the walking distance of many individuals.

In the Western World, it may be more psychologically stressful to be poor because all media and societal norms so heavily promote ideals of wealth that are beyond the reach of the majority. Only with credit cards can most people in the United States even hope to purchase a home. We can’t actually afford this basic of life, because the derangement of our system has decided to make housing prices beyond the reach of most hard working people in modern times. Any adult person who cannot claim a place to live is definitely, to my mind, living in genuine poverty.

Changing Times In Our Country
You don’t need this article to inform you of what is going on in the United States right now – the massive unemployment, lost housing, crumbling schools and public services, hunger and want. This nation is in terrible shape, and that’s really the bottom line. Two adult men in my own family, both of them skilled, able, caring people are now unemployed and desperately looking for work. Chances are, you or someone close to you is facing poverty right now and facing all of the fears that go with it. How can this be happening to us, to me, you are asking.

I come from a poor family, and have continued to live in what is deemed relative poverty as an adult. Like you, perhaps, I don’t own anything of high monetary value. I don’t own a home. I don’t have health insurance. My clothes are few. Making a big splash of money spending means buying a new book – but mostly, I go to the library. I wanted to buy my husband a new desk this year for his birthday, to replace the one he has which is falling apart, but which is totally necessary to the work he does at a computer to earn a living. I looked for the least expensive desk I could find. When we paid the bills, we found we couldn’t afford this gift. Instead, we had to promise each other that when our ship comes in (yes, we’re still waiting by the shore for that) we will get that desk for him. He needs new glasses first. There have been times when our cupboards had just enough food in them for one last meager meal while we waited for money to come. This was certainly a good inspiration to begin farming as a security against hunger, but even with the blessed inputs of the food we can grow, we are living from month to month, scraping to get by, deeply in debt for medical expenses due to my poor health and not yet seeing a way to reach out for more security or more distance between our family and poverty.

If my story sounds at all like yours, please take a moment for reflection with me.

When You Are Poor
When you are poor, you are not being singled out of humanity for some un-heard of, unspeakable affliction. You are in the majority. You are experiencing what most of the world’s people experience, and what most of the world’s people have experienced since the creation of the structure we call ‘civilization’. Civilization is often spoken of in glowing terms, but for most people, it means that many are poor and many work far more than they should have to in order to survive so that a few individuals at the top of the structure can live a life of ease. Unless you come from a long tradition of wealth, your people have likely always been poor and the experience of your ancestors is very similar to yours in terms of not knowing where tomorrow’s bread will come from. The thing we call ‘civilization’ has been very good for the rich, but not so sustaining for the rest of society.

It’s interesting to think about the fact that Western scholars generally won’t refer to Northern Native American societies as ‘civilizations’. Yes, the Incas, the Aztecs, the Mayans to the south with their complex class structures and vast cities…those are civilizations, but not the Hidatsa, the Lakota, the Haudenosaunee of the North. In some ways, as a woman of mixed Native/European blood, I have found this to be somewhat patronizing, but there’s a kernel of truth as well.

When Sitting Bull first saw caucasian towns and cities, he marveled at the fact that white people could know how to amass such wealth, but be so backward about distributing it amongst their people. When Crazy Horse’s people faced hunger after the invasion, he simply wouldn’t eat because he couldn’t stand to do this while others in his tribe didn’t have enough. The ethics of the majority of American Indian tribes dictated that the role of men, of chiefs, of respected people was to ensure that all of the people were fed, clothed and sheltered. In other words, they were the exact opposite of the kings, prime ministers, presidents and dictators who lead lives of extreme wealth whilst the people they are meant to govern or serve go without. So, in some sense, it’s true that societies like those of the Native Americans were not civilizations. They had a very different idea of justice and happiness.

When you are poor, it gives you interesting insights into the way your own society functions. You see the outcomes of a moral code that is satisfied with some people having more than they need while others don’t have enough. You see the huge weight of people that hangs at the bottom of the balance of capitalism, making capitalism possible. You may look around, and start to better understand the company you are in.

When you are poor, you stand in solidarity with Cesar Chavez and his workers’ movement, demanding justice for the impoverished and abused laborers who made possible the ease of American life in the mid-20th century. You stand in solidarity with Marin Luther King Jr. who, at the moment of his assassination, was organizing a poor peoples movement that would non-violently storm the gates of Washington D.C. to demand an audience with the rich and mighty. You stand in solidarity with Mother Theresa, Saint Francis, Dorothy Day and others who dedicated their lives to working amongst the poor. You stand in solidarity with a small, humble man named Mohandas K. Gandhi who organized the poor of India so successfully that they changed their whole nation’s own government and destiny. When you are poor, you stand in solidarity with that young Jewish man, Jesus, who was born into poverty and who spent his life amongst the poor, the outcast and the forgotten. Perhaps it sounds more romantic to be on an intimate footing with King Louis XVI, Rockefeller and Bill Gates, but really, I think you are in better company when you are standing with the poor.

First and Last
“The last will be first, and the first, last.” This is a quote from the part of the Bible which is called The Gospel According To Matthew. By the time this collection of writing was penned, apparently about a century after the death of Jesus, a long tradition of beliefs about humility, service and the place of the poor already existed. Both ancient Jewish and Christian writings repeatedly refer to this concept of the lowest and the least having the greater ultimate honor than the rich and powerful. Whether you follow one of the major world religions, a smaller or personal set of spiritual beliefs or have no real settled faith at all, it may interest you to know that for thousands of years, deep thinkers have thought of the poor in a rather special way.

I think this is an especially good idea for modern Americans to reflect on just now, when more and more of us are coming to grips with the specter of poverty. Sometimes, I feel frightened when I look at my family’s financial situation and I often feel depressed when I reckon that two hard-working adults like my husband and myself, approaching the age of forty, do not see any hope of ever being able to get a little home for ourselves in the land where we live. We feel poorer than the birds who have their nests, the bears who have their dens. But then I remember…then I get a sense of the company I am in. I get a sense of all of these men and women around the globe who are sharing my exact same concerns and feelings. Somewhere in Nepal, there is a young man who feels just like I do. Somewhere in Poland, there is an old woman who feels just as I do. Somewhere in Ecuador, there is a family who feels like mine does, standing in a doorway, looking out at our few stalks of corn and hoping that good weather and good luck will put food on the table for all of us.

One of the most paralyzing things about fear is that we often feel alone in it. We feel ourselves singled out, spotlighted, isolated in our troubles. When it comes to being poor, how good it is to suddenly realize how utterly not alone we are. We may be in trouble, we may be in need, but we are the world’s people. We are what’s really happening for the most part on the Earth. We are typical and normal.

Like you, I will keep working to find whatever way I can to see that my family is as well-cared for as it can be. Like you, I long for release from the stress and worry of lack. But while I’m here, while you’re here, facing this, know that we are together in this. Be encouraged.