Why not take a load off on the day after Thanksgiving, sleep in, then lounge around in your pajamas with family and friends?
Why not have a stress free no shop till you drop day this coming Friday?
Loiter in the living room listening to music, linger over leftovers, binge on favorite flicks, have a pumpkin pie party, play with your kids, spoon with your significant other, do anything but shop.
Why not?
Take some time out and chill out after all the political reality show insanity–which will probably still be ongoing when you return to the work week on Monday morning. If you need to detox this would be a good time to do it.
Tune out the non-stop advertising triggering your inner shop junkie addiction. Take another route to gift giving this season. Get creative and innovative about experiences, quality time, and engagement with those you love.
Why not give up emptying your wallet into the pockets of corporate CEOs?
Why not donate your time and/or money to a cause that you and a loved one believe in?
Why not spend the time you’d spend shopping for plastic toys actually playing with your children?
Why not invite friends over for a song and dance party as a gift?
Why not?
And if the corporate profit margins don’t cross the red line in to the black profit margin so what? What does corporate America do besides promote consumerism for its own executive gain? Oh and don’t forget that corporations pour money money money into politics for their own agendas serving only their interests. If you think they’re interested in serving your interests you’re delusional.
When you must shop, why not shop only at small, independent business struggling to compete with chain stores?
It’s all about value and values. What are yours?
One way to create positive change is to change how we spend our money–where, on what and why. Because yes money does talk–and we can direct the discourse when we make ours walk in directions of our choice.
So why not take the stress out of this Thanksgiving and take a time out from the tragic comedy aka political farce. Detox and recharge your personal batteries.
The bottom line is that no one really needs to shop at all this Friday.
Why not stay home and eat bonbons while watching all the episodes of Firefly then Serenity? Or whatever trips your stress relief trap.
Why not?
Detox. Refresh. Revive.
Oh and drink plenty of water because Water Is Life.
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What can I say? Really what is there left to say at this point? If you’ve been following events at Standing Rock there’s nothing to share because you’ve seen and heard it all via social media and alternative press–with a few blips on mainstream media when it’s convenient or a ‘filler’ report is needed or they’ve been hounded into coverage by celebrities. It’s down to the wire as to what President Obama and the Army Corps of Engineers will or will not do regarding the Dakota Access Pipelene that no one wants except Energy Transfer Partners. What can I say? What would Obama do if they wanted to run that pipe down the Mall in DC?
What can I say?
That racism still runs rampant in North Dakota just as it did when the region was part of the Dakota Territory before state-hood?
That Big Oil Companies continue to ravage the land and water without check in the United States of Corporate Owned America?
That the militarized state of the American police is on full view at Standing Rock–and mainstream media doesn’t want to touch it with a hundred yard pole and the President is steadfastly unwilling to address it?
What self-respecting journalist would NOT want to cover what’s going at Standing Rock where unarmed Water Protectors are going up against an Armed Police presence which serves only the interests of Big Oil while getting to give vent to its own home-grown racism? It’s the kind of story journalists have wet dreams about. Or they used to. Or maybe only the likes of Sinclair Lewis and Edward Morrow did. (I write that last with FULL respect for all the independent journalists doing their best on the ground at Standing Rock.)
If there were hundreds of pretty blue-eyed blondes facing off with police anywhere have no doubt the mainstream media would zero in on them like a heat seeking missile and never let go until it drank the story cup to its driest dredges. Journalists would be swarming all over those attacks with pepper spray, batons, strip searches, dog kennels, rubber bullets, grave descerations, arrests of independent journalists, violations of civil and human rights like flies on a slice of cheese on a hot summer day.
Maybe that’s what’s required–thousands of white people going toe to toe with Morton County Police aka ETP/DAPL’s security force–a police force which ironically is now at least $10 Million in debt for playing toady to the oil business (according to one local news report Morton county thinks the feds will ante up for their security efforts. Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out for them.)
Or maybe not. I think the problem runs even deeper than skin color and culture and language to core values.
That’s where the crux of the problem lies: The values of corporate mainstream media, Big Business, the President of the United (sort of) States, the Army Corps of Engineers and the dominant culture are in direct conflict, 180 opposition to the values of the Standing Rock Lakota, their Indigenous and Non-native allies and everyone else who loves the Earth –with or without humans running amok on it.
Rampant capitalism, greed, exploitation of the Earth’s resources without a care beyond the goddamned almighty profit margin VERSUS honoring the Earth and all other living beings it supports; a formerly perfect planet with a formerly perfect ecosystem for supporting an immense diversity of life.
It’s Death versus Life.
It’s Oil versus Water.
It’s the value system which claims Earth is a but a resource for non-stop consumption versus the value system which claims Earth is our Mother which allows us the ability to live and thrive as long as we Honor and Cherish it by living in harmony and balance with our environment and non-human relatives.
It’s the illusion of control and dominance of Nature versus graciously living in our place in the web of life.
But, hey, you probably already have thought all this out.
So–what’s next?
What will happen when ETP/DAPL lays pipe under the Missouri River? Does anyone really think an acting without a permit fine will stop them? In our more idealistic moments we like to think so in a fair game. But this is not a fair game played by nice players willing to obey a set of rules. The oil industry is not bluffing, it really is an absolutely ruthless business run by people perfectly willing to LIE endlessly about the reality of Climate Change and make no apologies for it. Exxon, Chevron, Shell–all you have to is check their histories in the Amazon, Niger Delta and in the Gulf of Mexico to get the point–if you don’t have it already. These people do NOT play fair. They do what they please–until it blows up–literally–in their faces. And even then they go right back to business as usual.
Oh wait, if the pipeline isn’t laid at Standing Rock and gets rerouted elsewhere is not the same problem still on the books for potential contamination of the soil and water?
Change is in order.
Climate Change is coming one way or another.
Ask Mother Nature what’s on her agenda. Perhaps her answer is on the winter wind so cold it hurts to breathe. Perhaps a touch of global warming would be welcome at Standing Rock, North Dakota where the cold freezes bones and ices the air it sucks from your lungs. Ask the buffalo what they prefer.
#NoDAPL
#WaterIsLife
#HonortheEarth
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Why do we not live in harmony with the Earth and each other?
When will this destruction of people and Earth cease? When all Homo sapiens are dead? Is that the answer? Our own self-destruction of one another in order to stop death and destruction? Perhaps that’s what it will take for all of us to realize we and the Earth are one. There’s more truth in “ashes to ashes” than we like to acknowledge as we play in cyberspace.
~~
Yes, I discovered this news item and dropped it here with some dark questions leaving visitors to create context themselves by following the links and watching the videos.
What we have here is a murder of another Indigenous person fighting for the right to life for his people and the planet. That’s why this death/murder is of public interest. There are people grieving for this man. His family. His friends. We talk a great deal about behaving like civilized creatures when there are many among us who are anything but civil to each other. Not everyone does want a world of peaceful coexistence. Lots of people benefit from the murder and mayhem inflicted on Indigenous and Native people–and those Non-natives who support them. (Oh, everyone has DNA that was once “native” to a particular place on the planet. Yeah, even if you’ve forgotten this point, your genes haven’t.) Profit is the name of their game. Unfortunately many of us contribute to the Profit by creating a demand for all sorts of nice things we take for granted–like clean drinking water, access to a lot of food, heat on demand, electricity, gas and all the toys that come with this package deal. Our wants often are supplied by others who cannot and do not enjoy the same. What would you do if all the “easy” things disappeared? No grocery stores with shelves full of yum yums. No gas at the pumps. No electricity 24/7. No water for every load of laundry and shower on demand. What would your life be like if someone stole your home? Hm? Oops, is that the nightmare button I’ve pushed?
Have we got context now? Hmm. I’m not sure. But this is what’s here now.
Water is life! We as Lakota people, believe that we are only as clean as our water, and as healthy as our Mother… Grandmother Earth.” – Scatter Their Own.
Scatter Their Own’s video for ‘Taste The Time’ from the forthcoming album, Don’t Fear To Tread – available January 2014 / Scatter Their Own Music. Download the EP now on iTunes here:http://bit.ly/CatchAFireEP
A teen starts a fistfight with a fellow student. Another brings alcohol to school. Another urinates on a fellow student’s locker, and a fight ensues.
Three years ago at Le Grand High School, in Le Grand, CA, these students would have been immediately expelled or suspended. This year, they weren’t. They didn’t miss any classes. They made amends. They learned from their mistakes.
In 2010-2011, Principal Javier Martinez suspended 49 students and expelled six. Last year, he suspended 15 and expelled only one.
This school year, with the help of the Restorative Justice League, he’s going for double zeros.
___________________
Le Grand High School is tucked on the edge of a town so tiny it has not one traffic light. Orchards and fields
Should I bother with any preamble or not? Whatever for? Ever have an image, a thought, a random notion get caught in your mental loop and refuse to whirl off as it ought in time? If so then you’ll understand why I’m writing this in an effort to clear my brainspace of a ‘story’ embedded in the “Lost Vikings” of Greenland segment that I posted earlier in the week. I’m beginning to feel just a tad haunted by the fact that these people actually burnt a man at the stake for seducing a woman. Think about that for a moment. A man and woman decide to engage in some sexual activity and he gets burned at the stake by his fellow-men. According to the rest of the information in the segment, the woman “did not last long” after that murder. I gather she too died–but of what? By her own hand? After much sorrow and abuse by her fellow women and men? Could it have been from a broken heart? Was she married to some man whom she didn’t care for and who made her pay for her sexual indiscretion? I don’t think there’s a way of knowing any of the answers.
Yet, there is the fact that a man was burned alive. According to the written record of hundreds of years ago he “seduced” a woman. It doesn’t say he raped a woman. He s e d u c e d a woman. Who murders anyone for having sexual relations? Well, the global news is full of all sorts of told and untold stories of people killed for adultery and women suffering honor killings for being raped. All of these involve violence connected with sex in some way. In the Viking story the violence seems to come from some other part of the human thought system. Is it just condemnation? If so, how many other men and/or women would have been burned alive for seducing someone? If you think my mind is wandering into more sinister byways, you’re correct. What was really going on in that community at that point in time? When murder is justified by claiming sexual wrongdoing I begin to wonder about motives. Everyone wants motives, except our justice system which doesn’ want moral or ethical motives coming into court for people like Tim DeChristopher and Bradley/Chelsea Manning.
I’m wondering about this woman who didn’t live much longer after her seducer was roasted alive. Did she watch him burn? Can you imagine watching another human burning alive? Close your eyes and imagine that if you can: sounds, smells, sights.
Perhaps another word might be in order here–love. What happens when love comes into play? There’s no mention of “love” in the segment or the historical account. Were these just two lusty adults? Were they lovers?
Do we get jealous lovers? A triangle? A quadrangle? Forbidden relationships? Why?
Or is that taking it all too far?
What can kill a person without leaving a physical mark upon them?
What happens to a woman who watches a man die a horrible death because she and he had sexual relations — by choice and consent? Or vice versa–a man watching a woman he cares for die in such a horrific manner.
I’m thinking there were some very angry men doing the staking and torching. Perhaps some women too.
Some men in the right positions to get away with murder via their own record keeping.
Maybe this is all completely off the mark of reality.
Still–their story, complete with all the unknowables, is keeping me company. It just won’t leave.
*
Any long-term visitors to my blogcasa know I seldom write about my daily life concerns. Well, yes, there have been posts about food items like the chocolate banana tortillas –btw, at 3:17 am I discovered these are great with flaked coconut too instead of the fresh sliced fruit–and pumpkin cakes. But I generally steer far away from my mundane immediate context unless it inspires some humor that might tickle someone else’s fancy — besides my own funny bones. Today there will be a deviation from that norm. I desire a venue to vent. A full-blown rant to be honest is what I’d really like to indulge in–complete with much foot stomping and turning on the garden hose full blast. The birds and squirrels won’t mind the latter, but the neighbors might when it drowns their weird expensive ‘grass’ which needs more attention than a newborn baby with a bad case of whooping-cough. If I had a newborn to prod into whooping, I would, all night long. While wearing earplugs, of course. Get where this is going yet? Hmm? What am I miffed about? The trees. ‘My’ trees. The trees that are currently mature enough to provide enough shade that they’re cooling about a quarter acre of land so nicely that it’s ten to twenty degrees cooler in the extensive shade than it is in the direct sun on a hot day. That’s sweet relief when the temperature kicks up to 100+ degrees farenheit with humidity chugging up the oxygen. When nature is cooling your home for nothing but having the space to exist instead of the electric company, what’s the downside? Oh, well, yes, there are leaves and dead branches that fall to the ground when their time comes. In my mind this is nothing to ‘pay’ for all the benefits.
About those benefits. Hmm. Me, the human gets a nice cool abode from the tree shade. The birds seem to enjoy nesting, roosting and courting among the trees. The robins eat a lot of bugs. We’ve had owls, woodpeckers, and squirrels make their homes in the trees as they’ve grown over the years. Most of the trees are volunteers. Like the Mulberry tree that first appeared compliments of some bird or other critter’s digestive tract. Noticing the leaves and realizing it was indeed a fruit bearing tree, I managed to fence it off from the lawn (not) mowing junkie among my legal relatives. Some habits never die–bah. The same for the Black Walnut trees, the Maple trees, and the Elms. The two Poplars I planted were small ‘gifts.’ A Weeping Willow was a cutting present from an old fellow down the street. A small Pine tree came from some odd fast food place’s Arbor Day alliance. Over time the fescue has been replaced by a variety of local native plants including wild strawberries, dandelions (you can eat all of this plant except for the seeds–it’s packed with nutrition to the max), lamb’s quarter and clover that the bees adored, when there were bees around to adore it. Bees are scare this summer.
Take note that this abode was chosen in part for the quarter acre space it provided for a rescued puppy with grew to be considerably LARGER than anyone expected–part bird dog and part St. Bernard (vet’s best guess)-. She needed room to run and she got it. There were only four trees on the property when we arrived. They provided little relief from the summer sun. Now there are over thirty trees which allow the squirrels nesting in them to traverse upstairs from this yard to several others via the upstairs tree branch highway.
Now, while all this shade is not conducive to growing veggies or lovely flowers that thrive in sunshine–it has plenty to offer in its own way. I rather like the tiny forest around this silly little house. So does the local wildlife. Most of the humans nearby have no issues with it.
But–apparently my extremely neat minded neighbors do not appreciate the shade that cools part of their home for nada effort on their part. The other morning I awoke to the sound of chainsaws gleefully working their way upwards on the south side of one of the large Elms. Tree cutters don’t come cheap here. Take note that the city tree trimmers had just last week worked their way up and down the street dealing with any limbs that might prove dangerous to the electrical wires. They left the Elms in the front yard ALONE because they posed no hazards to wires or passing vehicles. There were no dead limbs lurking in wait to assault passersby. No one parks on this street. Yet, my neighbors apparently live in dire fear of said limbs clobbering their car –which is usually parked inside a garage. Hence the reason they hired some tree-cutters to do a little trimming. Hmm. Interesting monetary output from people who complained bitterly when the yearly education tax was increased to the point of adding an extra one hundred dollars to their bill. Supporting schools pisses them off, but cutting trees for much more than one hundred dollars is something they’ll willingly dish out cash for. I’m at a loss to comprehend this logic.
Now, I would understand this outlay IF the trees were posing any sort of hazard to anyone’s health and well-being, if they were diseased, dead, rotting, or head hazards when walking under them. But we’re talking head clearance, healthy and tree rot free trees here, folks.
So when aforementioned chainsaws disrupted my morning, the tree cutters and I had a little meet and greet. They were oddly sheepish for hired hands. They were extremely subdued for guys who’d been told it was all a-okay to chop away as they pleased by the folks who’d paid them. They ceased and desisted when I pointed out that they were now cutting branches well above any height required for even the trash trucks to clear while they made their way down the street. We did not argue. No, not the tree-cutters and I. Nor did my neighbor when I greeted him. He just glared. Oops, did I catch you red-handed at something naughty? I must have because the chainsaws went away pretty damn fast with just me and my cup of green tea putting in an unwanted appearance in my dandelion farm under the Elms.
Comments? Questions? Funny Stories? All are welcome.
I feel so much better. Time for a chocolate-coconut whole wheat tortilla taco and maybe some fresh black coffee. Hmm. Yep. I think so. I’ll going to enjoy them outside in the shade while watching the resident sparrows take their afternoon baths in between sunflower seed snacks.
Watching the old wooden oak floor, even in its current condition, being cut up for firewood, was painful, but at the time Sarge had not been able to come up with a strong enough reason to not yank the narrow floor boards out of the abandoned house that could trump the general thinking of the Watch and the other men. Yet it had been easy to get their attention about how to safely and carefully collect the copper wiring, pipes, window glass and other items that could be used immediately for making minor house repairs.
At first he hadn’t been too sure about Anton’s ideas for organizing a group scavenging effort in order to get whatever they could use for extending the walkway from the abandoned house and then exploring what might be used to meet other minor needs. But after a few minutes in the midst of the men who quickly started gathering at Anton’s home after watching the unfamiliar white man lay out the two by ten boards over the snow in order to get to Anton’s door without a major struggle through the snow, he realized just how very accurate Anton’s thinking was regarding their need for positive mental and physical outlets. He definitely couldn’t argue with Anton’s reasoning that no matter what legal consequences might arise regarding the assault on the long vacant building, those were far more preferable to risk and deal with than the domestic violence that often erupted from people being cooped up under the current conditions for far too long. What had started out for Sarge as simply a visit to learn what was being reported on the television regarding all things local had set in motion a rather large group effort in the immediate area.
Much later in the afternoon, he’d followed Anton back to the two-story building where he and Esther lived on the first floor and an elderly Italian couple, the Ranolis, occupied the second. Early in the morning he’d seen Lily outside and sent his things to her via Mrs. Cho who had been watching the attack on the abandoned house next to hers and offering gleeful, though generally unintelligible verbal support, from her porch. Since then he’d glimpsed her several times making her way over the still growing walkway to and from other residences carrying boxes and bags.
Now he found himself in a large square room where large sheets of paper which appeared to be the flip sides of discarded blueprints covered most of the wall space. While Anton was occupied with a group of teenage boys, Sarge, being the avid reader he was, couldn’t help but start reading the various lists, charts and copious notes written on the huge hand drawn map of the neighborhood that covered one entire wall. It didn’t take him long to realize that this was the information hub not only for the Neighborhood Watch, but for several other groups dealing with everything from food to medical needs among the local residents. There was even a long list of contact information for every city official and local politician accompanied by extremely candid notes about who was worth calling and who was not and why. Only when he turned around to glance back at another list while mentally connecting it with what he was currently exploring and discovered Anton standing alone in the presently quiet and empty hall watching him, only then did he think that he might have crossed a boundary he hadn’t noticed but ought to have seen right away.
Hoping he hadn’t burned the brand new personal bridge that had been built during the long day of unexpected shared labor, Sarge stood still, returned Anton’s curious look and waited patiently for the other man to speak his mind. Anton maintained his silence until Esther suddenly appeared to whisper with him for a few moments then just as suddenly disappeared. Anton glanced briefly in the direction Esther had gone and shook his head. He walked into the room and looked around the walls. Standing a few feet from Sarge, he said, “All this some crazy shit, ain’t it?”
Sarge looked around the room as Anton had. “I don’t think I’m reading you right, Anton. I sure don’t want to read you wrong. So I have to ask, in what sense is all this ‘crazy’? I have to ask because from where I’m standing it reads pretty damn sane to me.”
Anton carefully looked Sarge up and down, clearly trying to make up his mind about something. When he had made his decision he spoke quietly. “What’s crazy is that if we don’t do all this ourselves, we all be living in hell. Ain’t no one give a damn if we do or not. Except us. What’s crazy is that if we don’t keep flying under certain radars, there be some shut us down right quick cuz we ain’t doin’ things their way. Cuz we ain’t under their thumbs. You reading me right now, Big Man?”
“Yeah, I read that thumb action crazy like the back of my hand.”
Anton nodded. “Had a feelin’ in my bones you might. Now let’s catch some potluck.”
Much thanks to MisBehaved Woman for introducing me to “Closer to the Edge” by Rising Appalachia, filmed by Chad Hess who posted it on YouTube. There’s no snow, but the sentiments are the same. Enjoy. You too can visit MisBehaved Woman at http://misbehavedwoman.wordpress.com/
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