U.S. Medical Research Tops 100 Billion/year

It may not seem like much, but imagine what could be done with an extra dollar per day multiplied by every single man, woman and child across our great nation. The biggest fallacy in this funding storm is that we will learn something important for all of these dollars. I have personally designed and carried out research that led to important discoveries, but they languished, were never published and never was funding available to allow full-time commitment to studying the important information that had implications for health, welfare and quality of life issues that will be with us for generations. If I could have tailored my research to support the multinational drug companies, or showcased the beneficial impacts of corporate greed or deception, I might have made a career of continuing research. The problem, for me, was that in seeking truth, I ran headlong into the teeth of the corporate welfare machine. Researchers who attempt to take the high road are both scoffed at and most often never funded.

In the cases that I studied, I neglected to think through who might pay for the sort of information that I gathered. If I had done so, I would have understood that my lines of inquiry posed a threat to current beliefs and understanding that command our attention and circumscribe our imagination. Great fortunes and careers can be made if researchers tailor their lines of questioning, as well as the answers they seek to the predominant approach to "science, medicine, and health" that are currently serving the ultra-wealthy. Any attempt to redefine our concept of health, (physical, mental, emotional or spiritual) welfare, security, physical reality or our relationship with the planet will not receive the attention they deserve and those who wish to carry our research on ways to live better at lower cost are deemed subversives and their research never sees the light of day. If the rich and powerful corporate welfare recipients cannot make even more money, they will have none of the truth that comes out from even the most cursory investigation. however, if there is a proprietary "cure", a silver bullet shrouded in side-effects or a patentable device, they will pour as much money as necessary into the investigation just to "make sure" that it works.

Ideas as simple as food is medicine and medicine is food cannot find a funding source because there is no money to be made by corporados on carrots, broccoli or cabbage. The lion's share of these research dollars flow to places one might expect. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, you know them, the poster children for medical research. If those who produce the commercials can find a soft spot in our armor, they can begin their work, getting us to donate to their "cause". Frequently, we see the results of our hyper concern, but the underlying truth is covered up as surely as the causes of our maladies. The Livestrong campaign, as many know, used Lance Armstrong as their organization's "face". What better person to put on your anti-cancer campaign but a survivor of testicular cancer. Old one nut was dropped as the spokesperson for their campaign after his doping fiasco came to a head last year. Lance finally admitted that he did take both banned substances (which can be carcinogenic) as well as using blood doping to win the Tour de France repeatedly. The part that the news spent the least amount of time on, however, was the fact that the Livestrong campaign spend less than five cents of every dollar they raise on cancer research and aid to those who have the disease. The elaborate heart-string pulling ads, the cute yellow bracelets and the multi-million dollar ad campaign primarily funds the PR folks, the kickbacks to sponsors, the corporate welfare whores who are the primary culprits poisoning the world. The research that shows plainly the rise in cancers and the collateral increase in carcinogenic materials in our environment are blackballed before they ever see the light of day.

Learning to ask the right questions can take a lifetime and I certainly am not the best authority on this topic, but the trends seem to be far to clear for us to ignore. The rapidly escalating occurrence of gluten intolerance, allergies of all types and mental disorders stem from a common source, but research that threatens the status quo will never make it to the trade journals, never be "taken seriously" by the monied classes and even if we were to do the hard work of proving the fallacies of business as usual, there would never be enough political will to go against those who are the major funding sources of either the research or the political campaigns of our leaders. Even benevolent and compassionate folks who seek to improve the quality of life for others buy into the failed systems of ecological destruction, scientific mayhem and dislocation that flows from the tendrils of corporate greed machines. This is why the first green revolution failed. This is why missionaries nearly always fail. This is why unequal distribution of wealth gets increasingly worse, never allocating resources fairly, never assuring that quality of life increases are not tied to ecological destruction. The way we attack problems has not changed, so expecting outcomes to change by doing more of the same is tantamount to building castles in the sand. Basing our way of life upon lies can never lead us to a better place. Confronting truth, even when it is uncomfortable is the only way forward.

My entire health-care budget is barely a dollar per day. I buy and grow my own herbs, visit a chiropractor occasionally and do my best to avoid breathing, drinking or eating anything that causes negative health impacts. I occasionally have to look at what others put in their grocery carts, what they choose to do for a living and the activities that they deem to be "fun" and wonder why more people are not dying off more quickly. Approximately 85% of what is sold at most grocery stores is what I consider to be non-food items. Pure salt, pure sugar, (or a combination of both) processed with a long list of questionable or dangerous additives, etc. The research that we all need so desperately is not the stuff that giant corporations and institutions are willing to fund, quite the opposite, it is what they are unwilling to see, unwilling to admit and vehemently opposed to seeing. I know a handful of people who grew up near or had parents who worked at the nuclear generating stations along Lake Michigan's shore. They are all battling thyroid conditions and several have had cancers, but none of them think that the radiation had anything to do with their conditions. Research into these sorts of toxic hot spots would reveal much, but the cost to industry of this sort of truth could be their undoing. I'm sure that they would have us know that there will be none of that!

ECO-Tours - The Skinny

When we first started, about a dozen and a half friends who understood that for us all to have a comfortable future, some sacrifice today was necessary. We were not brutal, coarse of brash, but rather compassionate, helpful and concerned for the well-being of all creatures. Humans tend to think from a species-centric place, affording the natural world no quarter in their world view. I do not want to paint with too broad a brush, but for those who are exceptions to this world view, you know who you are. Our founder, and author of most of what you read here at The Otherfish Wrap, continues to pump his own funds into these efforts. What began as a performance art project, completely funded with his own tax returns has grown into a regional force for good that has broken through all self-imposed ideas about what might constitute a success. Our efforts have crossed any limitations and boundaries we may have envisioned into a lifelong pursuit.

The past two autumns, we have been able to plant over one million trees per year. The resulting trees are favored by birds and we fully expect this to enhance the impact as birds become agents of further change over the years! The best thing about bird bombs is that each seed packet will land wrapped in a boost of fertilizer. When our first plant-ins took place, we would show up with a hundred or two small seedlings and within a few hours, they would all be planted and watered in, then we would retire to a campfire, or picnic table, share a mostly vegetarian pot luck and have time to share our insights, hopes and dreams with one another amongst the tiny trees that would one day transform the areas that we took under our wing. Today, many of those first trees we planted are towering giants, casting shade on fields, homes, paths and hillsides that had been dessicated and lifeless just twenty years ago. Some hug the banks of streams while others are shielding the brow of hills across Northeast Wisconsin.

At this point in  our development, we are seeking a more diversified and consistent donor group. We would like to begin to keep a regular office, rather than always meeting in our living room or kitchen. We want to have space to meet in larger groups increasing our effectiveness further. We are about to begin our plant-ins in the watershed of a second Great Lake, Superior and doubling our efforts will require double the time, money and human effort and further increasing our efficiency and effectiveness. Anyone interested in our work is encouraged to contact either Tony C. Saladino, our director, through facebook or donate through our link to Paypal. We always welcome in-kind donations, as well as any opportunities to share our knowledge, skills and attitudes with curious ecotourists and further our guests' understanding of sustainability issues, permaculture and efficient use (and re-use) of resources. This blog is beginning to reach a significant number of people and if each one who reads an entry would donate just a dollar, it would allow us to plant an additional tree each and every day! To put this in perspective, an acre of temperate forest, in climax condition provides home to between 300 and 320 mature trees. We continue to transform acreage, one tree at a time, one seed at a time. One thing we have seen proven out over the years is that a single acorn holds within it the miracle of a great oak. however, if it is not planted, there is no chance of it growing, ever.

If you are planning to be in either Northeast Wisconsin, or along the Lake Superior Shore, let us know ahead of time and we will prepare a unique ecotour for you. If you want to see energy efficient homes, plant trees, or just walk amongst beautiful wild rivers and waterfalls, we can show you them. If you would rather tour an organic farm, learning how to make your own lifestyle more sustainable and pare down your carbon footprint, we can share insights into ways of going about that too. We are continuing to provide living examples of bringing together folk wisdom and natural healing and food production with modern technologies that are appropriate and scaled to provide higher quality of life at less expense. This revolution is not being televised, although there are some sources of information on the internet, the best way to learn many of these important lessons is through seeing and doing them. We always welcome guests who are serious about finding their own path to sustainability.

Come, see what we are doing and revel in the abundance of life, in step with Mother Earth.

Sex and Pizza

Are a lot alike, even if they are bad, you are probably gonna have some. A friend shared this somewhat troubling maxim with me yesterday. I am just a little afraid that the truth of the statement lies deeper than I was first willing to admit, even to my self. Having had bad pizza as well as bad sex, I can attest to the fact that indeed, I have had some of each. There were only a few times that the level of badness led to stopping the practice altogether. When we sate, it seems, the three or four main, reptilian brain functions, they can be very tenacious and hold sway over the larger, higher brain function. Why we ever developed a higher brain if we are not going to use it is for each of us to answer in our own ways. I can only offer observation and a bit of insight, perhaps in a not too garbled form, to bring you into a place along your path along which the "view" to this subject opens up and hopefully, this will allow you to achieve your potential more fully. Not, for fornicating more frequently, even if it is bad, or for that matter eating more bad pizza, but I leave my thoughts to protect you from more of either.

You may already be aware of the urges of the reptilian brain Flee/Fight, Feed, F**K (I like fornicate, it sounds cooler but some are still deluded into thinking that there is a sanctity in these matters that may only be conferred by religious authority. I am partly here to tell you that this is patently untrue!) The reason i numbered these at three or four is because the first two are actually a continuum of one urge. I am here to tell everyone, in case they ever forget, flee should be over 85% of the total. Flee to the Masonic guidelines of "Eight hours of work, Eight hours for food and rest, Eight hours for helping others." Flee to the place where you feel most self actualized and this will also help keep your mind off average, or worse pizza. What I advocate is, recognizing that there are only three, respect the fact that they each have the power to override the higher brain, stay away from bad fleeing or fights, food and fornication, end of story.
Bad fleeing is turning your head away from things that need to be fought, or at least keeping them in darkness and not dealing with them or their fallout. Bad fighting is against foes who do not matter to anyone but us or that enlist innocent blood in the process of vanquishing whatever we choose to fight. The bad food hurts not only yourself, but the planet itself. Producing wonderful, delicious food is our birthright and there is about the same amount of time available for bad food as bad beer, NONE! At last, if we do participate in far less than average sex, it runs the risk of potential problems because no sex is absolutely "safe", no matter your precautions, but it runs the risk of wasting two people's time instead of just one and if the other person is not also aware that it is bad, they might be encouraged to engage in such activity again.

Help stop bad sex, bad pizza , frivolous and ineffective fights, and never run from what you have the power to change! Blessings readers and may you gain strength from these words and find ways of sharing words of pure love amongst our fellow human beings and find ways of working more magic into each moment of your existence!

How To Live On Nothing

A favorite book of my youth by this title had these first words to say, right up front in the introduction, "First steal this book." In essence that is what most folks on the internet do, they steal information, often information that was produced by at least one other person. So it is in life as well and before we go too deeply into practicing this skill, let me say that at best it is somewhat rhetorical. Nothing but air, food water...and you are off to the races down many long and slippery slopes. We must always consume some things and exchange gasses, that is part of what animates us. I think we learned in Science Class in seventh grade, that all organisms eat, excrete, exchange gasses and reproduce. So, apart from these things, which can each be entered into in ways that may or may not have either positive or negative consequences. In fact, some methods for doing each of these defining acts, can have both positive and negative consequences. However, entire books could be written about each of these matrices and those tomes are for the most part written.

As many are fond of saying, "Don't sweat the small stuff, it is all small stuff." In relation to interplanetary and galactic scale, that may be true, but within the ionosphere, on this planet, there are important forces and trends that we need to take into account for quality of life to remain constant or improve. A very dear friend from college days dropped in and taught me that "If you can play with the kids, bake bread and do dishes, you will never go homeless." this, I have found to be true. What I would like to know is why so few people know about it or are unwilling to learn these basic skills. The small stuff really matters more than we can know because an endless series of relationships passes from our simple actions through chains of causation to create the environment that we must face daily. When I buy an item made with sweatshop labor, or that has been produced with a tremendous toxic legacy or requires vast stores of energy to produce, all of the ramifications of creating that product are an accepted "cost" of making that choice. The very device I am using now may have been produced with little more than high tech slave labor, sadly I don't even know if it was. Each of us must make certain choices and we will each be responsible for our own part in making the world of tomorrow.

I cannot possibly tell anyone what to do, but certain things that I have studied led me to make certain choices that worked and I can share them with you for better or for worse, you may not want to try them, but they may spark your own creativity into finding ways to live better on less in your life that will enrich your quality of life while greatly increasing your standard of living. When I was young, a trip to the dump or a junk picking run seemed a great way to both keep things from being land filled, or when I was really young incinerated. I even graduated to dumpster jumping for food when I became an adult. Certain rules apply, especially if you do not want to get sick, but I would estimate that hundreds of thousands of meals are thrown away each day in our country alone. Many pigs in our country eat better than people in some parts of the world. Being people of privilege, you would think that we would have more of a sense of obligation toward more equitable distribution of our great wealth.

A few packets of seed can, when carefully tended, produce many bags full of food I have found packets of viable seed for as little as $.05. What is the return on that investment? sorry to do the math thing again, but it helps to illustrate that although you may not really live on nothing, that living in abundance with plenty to give away can be done for a pittance if you allocate your time appropriately. Say each bag of food weighs in at 10 pounds. With some crops it might be less, but many other crops would be more than ten pounds per grocery bag. Conservatively, there would be a bag for each seed packet, again many would be more than that but some would be fewer. So fifteen cents investment could yield three bags or thirty pounds of produce. now, overt he past year or two, groceries have gone up tremendously. what used to average less than a dollar per pound has risen, in some cases to over three! Again let us take a conservative number like two dollars per pound. $0.15 yields then, $60.00, a four-hundred fold increase in value! Having tended gardens, three packets of seed could not take more than about an hour to plant, an hour to thin, perhaps another few hours through the growing season to weed and top dress with some compost. Even if you spent a few hours watering , which would be a lot, you could assume that you were paying yourself very conservatively at a rate of 7-10 dollars per hour. Not at all shabby if all your needs are met through playing with the children, baking bread and washing up the dishes.

Living on nothing then is more about cultivating a way of life that is of service to others and rewarding to yourself. Often, when I go to work, it is more for the fun and camaraderie than for the paycheck. If I just wanted the cash, there are more regular things that I could do but I probably wouldn't enjoy them nearly as much. For a time, I kept a small notebook and when conversing, I would note things that other people liked or enjoyed, needed or were on the prowl for. Perhaps, in the days of big old TVs with their wooden stands, someone would see my fish tank displayed in the cabinet and want one. I would take on part of their desire and perhaps find one for them, noting the size aquarium they wanted to put in it. I would hear that someone wanted to start hanging their clothes out to dry and within a week I would find clothespins at a rummage sale, things like that. even providing the service of shopping for a shut in in your neighborhood can bring unfathomable joys that cannot be bought with currency. A favorite saying that I heard when I was very young, but that always stays with me is, Desire is a trap, and liberation from desire is moksha (enlightenment). Living the truth of that statement is a challenge, but one that pays great rewards.

I could go on about hundreds of other ways to conserve and collect massive rewards for minimal effort. However, I was warned against throwing out too many ideas, so as not to disorient the potential newbies. instead, if you want more ideas send a SASE and five dollars (or something of equivalent value) to me at: one, double four, five Porlier Street Green Bay, Wisconsin five, four, three-0-one. We can also make the transaction on Paypal, just use my email once you get there for the account. (tnsaladino42@hotmail.com I will return a list of 100 things that one can do to save at least five dollars each over the next year. That alone, if you practiced every one would be a payback of 100 fold, again conservatively. Where the real value accrues is in getting your life back and truly, what is the real value of that? Priceless.

Okay, one more, just so you know I'm not fooling around. during the eighties, we began to get upset by the cost of canned beans, we ate a fair amount of them, primarily because they were reasonably priced, but the cost kept escalating. We began to buy fifty pound sacks of dry beans and cook them quickly in a large pressure cooker, to save fuel. Then we would can them in quart jars. Our accounting was that the quarts cost us about $0.25. At the time I believe that twelve ounce cans were $1.60. this was a bit more than 1/3 as much for over six times the cost. It took a few hours, but would feed us for many weeks on what we would spend for a few days of food from the store. The keys to all of these techniques are many, to think outside the box, invest in your own time, learn something and find ways to get better quality for less cost. This, in turn, usually creates opportunities to share deep connections with others by having more to share, examples of the ways your life is enriched and provide examples for others to follow on their way to their own process of living more lightly on the planet.

Burgeoning Sense of Lack Threatens Sustainability

While the aristocracy continues to extract vast sums of money and resources from the earth and her people, even those in the "richest countries in the world" are having to make due with less. Less travel means less exposure to other people and other ideas. If it were not for the internet, there would be a nearly complete collapse of awareness and understanding of the variety of cultural differences that we all live amongst. Provincial thinking only worked when we were in tiny isolated communities. Currently we are experiencing a mushrooming of information and a growing sense that we are all one big family. Our myths are entwined, our laws are overlapping and our cultural similarities far outweigh our differences. In the infinite arc of time, the changes that overtake us daily in the early twenty-first century (according to the Julian Calendar) are greater than those experienced throughout a whole lifetime just a few hundred years ago. Information storage and retrieval alone account for more change than we could have fathomed just twenty short years ago. Our imaginations have had the tethers of possibility loosened and we are able to set course on wider seas each day.

I spent a bit of time today looking at the page views for this blog over the past two years. I was amazed by two things. The numbers of page views dwarf the total numbers of copies of my old fanzine. The international readership that has found my blog too has been phenomenal. Whereas my old printed version of The Otherfish Wrap took days to produce and were limited to how far those actual pieces of paper could travel, using electronic media allow me to write more quickly, use less resources and touch the lives and intellect of far greater numbers of people as well as touching them over a larger geographic area. The rapid pace of change is like a double edged sword. The Earth seems to have been distilled. I have to appreciate and understand that my audience is larger than I can fathom, yet still appreciate each and every reader. No small task for someone who feels most at home with old way organizing techniques of hand shaking, hugging and sharing meals with those who share similar ideas, supporting them through their own unique crises and sharing a sense of abundance in the face of oppression by the power elite. By streaming electrons is discreet ways, we can relate to one another in a whole new way that years ago took weeks, months or years, in an instant.

The difficulty arises in that we can see more and more details that pertain to the lives of the aristocracy. It is strange and strikingly different from our own lives, although more and more people, of all social and political colors are beginning to see the facts about where we have come to and where we are headed. Our understanding of where we have come to and the choices that we make for the future depend on an ever expanding storehouse of data. Understanding that we can never "know it all" is at the heart of both compassion and sustainability. Honoring our limits and accepting our interdependence on an intact and integrated whole can be both humbling and enlightening. "Having it all" becomes more and more tied to letting go rather than acquisition. Getting to see how the other half lives can be disorienting because our "reality" is so dissimilar to that of the wealthy of any culture. The difficult hurdle that we need to overcome is the thinking that somehow the wealthy "have" something that is valuable. In fact, the more "well-off" frequently suffer from dislocation from their own families, often their communities, and their materialism often interferes with their appreciation of both spiritual and emotional riches that are hard to take into account in dollars (or any currency) alone.

As we have been shown more and more details of the lives of the ultra wealthy, the power brokers and the marketers of capitalism, we see many more things that we lack, understand a bit more fully how little our lives matter to the ruling class and, in some cases, dream of what we would do if we "won the lottery". What we don't seem to see enough of is what really makes for a fulfilled life. Loving, being loved, holding babies and sharing of oneself all seem to receive short shrift in out materialistic societies. Is it inevitable that we will always want what we cannot have? Or, are we capable of getting beyond this sense of lack for the sake of future generations? Frequently I am asked, "What would you do if you won the lottery?" My response is most often to give it all away. I would buy land to make parks, especially in areas that are urbanized, but in the headwaters as well, to help protect water quality. I would especially like to give it to not-for-profit organizations like ECO-Tours of Wisconsin so that their programs of reforestation and environmental education will live on after my passing. Coming from poverty and lack, perhaps, has given me a different perspective than many, but the quality of life that others can hope for and experience weighs more, in my mind, than my own freedom from want. Acquisition only inspires until the act of procurement has passed. At this magical moment, the very object of our desire changes from an inspiration to action to an eternal responsibility. A tax, if you will, that must be paid in the form of protection, maintenance and upkeep, as long as we "own" it. When I get my "dream house", it won't make me happy unless I can share it with others. When I get a sailboat, I will take people out in it to bring them pleasure, that is what I will love about it. Sustainability cannot be about competition for scant resources. No other creature is as enamored with the idea of lack as humans have proven to be. I will stand as a testament to abundance. I will make a go of it no matter how limited my resources, I will continue to try to reach out to those I love whether I have much or little. I will continue to produce as much of my own food as possible, care for whatever part of the planet I may find myself in as possible and care for and support those around me. Hopefully, leading by example will teach an enduring lesson to those around me and inspire in others a reciprocal relationship that benefits the earth, her creatures and the very systems that provide us with clean air, water, food and protection from the elements when we need it.

Musings of a Local Foodie

This week, I was so sick that we had to pay a relative to brave the lush garden beds to bring in a tiny fraction of this year's harvest. He discovered a couple dozen acorn squash, spread over two beds and three walkways, five pounds of red potatoes, a gallon or so of green beans, a giant box of beets and a gallon or two of carrots, a quart of elderberries, various and sundry greens and a flat of super juicy tomatoes. I'm guessing that most of the food came from seeds that we paid no more than five dollars for. The squash alone would have cost more than that at the local market. As much as I would like to say that I was born with farmer blood, the opposite is probably closer to the truth. My wife and I spent less than three days total on the garden this year, most of it pulling waist height weeds and harvesting peas, turnips, broccoli, and various herbs. If I had been healthy I might not have wanted to brave the garden because of the "mosquito problem". The last sixty days brought nearly twenty inches of rain. The last storm alone dropped seven and 1/4 inches on our "neck of the woods". The local meteorologists say that it only rained about three inches,(2.87 to be exact)but that was at the airport on the opposite side of town.
As the local mosquito population has risen, the urge to be out in the garden has decreased, so things were pretty much on their own until this week. We finally got a mosquito control system that we just love. Garlic oil concentrate. We mix up a gallon or two in our sprayer and dose the yard and garden, making it possible to actually get in there and do things. There used to be a veritable cloud of the little blood suckers no matter where you went in the yard and garden, but after two applications in as many days, they seem to be staying away.
I'm just amazed that with no more than a passing interest, the annual removal of mulch and the planting of some tiny seeds, even with virtually no weeding, the earth can be so incredibly productive. I have garlic, a few leeks for seed, two kinds of potatoes, several varieties of tomatoes and a dozen other food crops, all burgeoning from a space not much larger than out kitchen. The acorn squash, perhaps, is the most impressive. It is a rouge survivor of the last winter's compost pile. From that one tiny seed came tendrils that wind up and over the pea trellis, two garden beds and if we had not gotten out there this week, it might just have engulfed the other half of the garden. We've gotten at least a dozen squash plants so far and the vines are still covered with blossoms. Who needs to fret about a percentage or two in the stock, or real estate market when a single discarded seed can come back and feed you through the coming winter? I have access to several garden beds across the street, as well as those in my own back yard, but the simple truth is that I am too lazy to walk the two hundred feet back and forth to those garden beds.
My asparagus tastes as good as that which I can harvest from the plot at our rental, but the whole bed is closer than even the first plant across the street. I could grow a lot more tomatoes if I pressed even a single bed into service over there, but the delicious red fruits taste better when they come from less than fifty feet from my kitchen door, decidedly better than if they were from over two hundred feet away. I would love to have a bit more dirt close at hand and under my authority, but for now, I'm doing my best just to keep up with the harvest as it is. Do I really want more when I can barely handle the surplus that exists already? I would love to write more, but my responsibilities to the harvest are calling.

Corporate Ethics: Oxymoron

It troubles most people when they begin to realize that Capitalism is a belief in capital. People, families and basic human needs have absolutely no bearing on the theory and practice of business as we have inherited it. Those considerations have been foisted on the non-profit sector and government by design. As a trained educator, I wish that we would return to a system of educating our children that emulates the earliest history of the craft in America. In the early days, group of families would join together and pay the wages of a trusted teacher, charging them with the responsibility of conveying vital skills to their offspring. The biggest reason that schools as we know them are still with us is the benefits they hold for corporate interests. What we have devolved to is unworkable, except for employers. With the children away from home all day, the mothers (for it is still usually the mothers who provide care for their children)are available to the labor market. This "service" is not nearly as much about education, as providing labor today as well as a well-trained workforce for tomorrow that can get to work in a timely fashion, accept meaningless tasks without question, act civilized, line up, patiently await their turn and jump through myriad hoops before being rewarded. Capital dictates these things, or at least it has up until now. We are beginning to see cracks in the monolithic structure of our capitalist system.

Many who advocate change are quick to hide behind the fig leaf of saying that capital is good "in it's place", that profit must remain part of our culture or that "Money is not the root of all evil, lust for money is the real problem." However, capital, the sources of it and methods for securing it have grown so corrupt, that it has become difficult to justify the entire system. Would an ethical person allow their neighbor to go homeless? Would they steal money from a young family knowing that it might force their children to go hungry? Would an ethical person give someone a drug if they knew that with it came the very real possibility of death or other injury? These are all too common occurrences in our daily lives under Capitalism.

The very concept of ethics presupposes it's opposite. This duality is part of our veil of tears, to be sure, but to truly understand the morally decrepit basis of the current system, one need not look further than the driveway. Two generations ago, virtually every block or two one could find a market. Merchants were supported by several dozen families,(sometimes fewer)who knew that they could count on that store keeper to give them the best available quality for the most reasonable price. Many people, my relative included, made it through The Depression by growing vegetable gardens and sharing their surplus produce with the grocer for consideration when buying more pricey items, like milk, meat or cheese. This same trust existed with the shoe salesman, the bike dealer, doctor, pharmacist, the garage and the clothing store owner. People were the driving force behind the economy. (pun intended) Now, most folks hop in the car, driving all around town to try to find the best deals. My father-in-law will clip coupons for things at three different stores then spend money and time going from place to place, trying to get ahead by playing one supplier against another! With loyalty like that, how could a grocer develop a relationship with your customers? Now that we have the scan-able cards for "loyal" customers, the data collected about our purchases, which allows us to be marketed to in new and better ways can be another profit center and way to exploit us.

How can we expect corporations to see past this mind-set when we refuse to do so ourselves? Often, we forget that we are supporting, one way or another, this system that we cannot fathom. If we try to divorce ourselves from it, we find it in other areas of our lives. Years ago, we could all walk to the grocery store, now the closest one to where I live, two miles from city center, is over a mile away. There had been several groceries closer, but one by one they went out of business, driven out by the deep pockets of larger chain stores who claim to have better selection, but always with a price. Capitalism only gives us something when something of greater value is taken away. The green space that used to exist for children to play in, or the clean water and flood control provided by undeveloped land mean nothing to the Capitalist. "How cheaply can we get it?" and "How big a mark up will the market support?" are the only considerations of corporate decision makers.

Luckily, there is a growing movement that is asking what is really important? Truly considering the needs of others. Interestingly enough, these are the same people who have been willing to do without for themselves to make life a little sweeter for others. People who have been willing to get out of their comfort zone and actually learn from others, and folks who just want to share the bounty of their lives with others. We are blessed to have them among us. When J.F.K. said: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." It would have been nice if Corporate America would have listened half as much as the Peace Corps Volunteers, the War Resisters, the Ecologists and the social change people did. It is past time to reign in the excesses of the ultra-wealthy, put the kibosh on the dehumanizing effects of capital, and begin to realize that the corruption caused by our current system is as absolute as the corruption that comes with absolute power.

Earthday at 40

I remember my parents not allowing me to attend the first Earthday. They said it was part of the conspiracy to placate the masses and distract the public from what was really going on. The river in our backyard was a colloidal suspension, (like mixing milk and orange juice, but it was green) After forty years, dredging toxic compounds that accumulated all those years ago has begun. The fish are still not safe to eat, nor the waters to swim. I have seen a vast improvement in the look, but not the smell of our river. As a child I wondered how large must the Great Lakes be, to be able to handle the incredible volume of toxic waste that flowed past our door.

In 1987, I got a chance to ride bicycle around all five Great Lakes and all I can say is that they are not very big! Even now the water that we drink contains prescription drugs. We didn't even know about the possibility of these contaminants being able to "make it" into the environment back then. I was able to get the message of sustainability , though we called it living better for less back then, to about ten million people. Six million on a single day through CBC radio during a morning commute. Cheap and simple ways to "Go Green" like substituting baking soda for chlorine tainted cleansers, combining trips, carpooling or bicycling rather than firing up the old fossil fuel burner unnecessarily. Back then, a family could save about seven thousand dollars per year by going from two cars down to one.

The air when I was a child was terrible, and is no better today, in spite of effectively cutting new lead emissions, sulfur dioxide and dry cleaning compounds many other contaminants have increased. We did score a noteworthy victory when the local electric generating station wanted to raise their smoke stack to "protect local air quality". Public interest groups said in court that the air farther away should not be negatively impacted to keep our air cleaner, so the stack raising project was put on hold. The courts interpreted the clean air act rules to mean that pollution should be reduced, not just diluted and to this day, the stack remains unfinished.

Burning of fossil fuels has increased exponentially at times in the last forty years. Each time we increase mileage standards, we increase the fleet size to offset any ecological gains. Infrastructure improvements have created millions more miles upon which people can now drive. Current government incentives go to larger and larger interests who more and more people drive farther to patronize.

Soils are still under attack. Mega-farm agribusiness is not concerned at all about naturally stable and ecologically diverse micro-climates. Drive through any agricultural land and you will see the stark reality that nearly every farmer has sterilized the soils and tilled wet and /or erosion prone areas to the point of having only dirt where a complex relationship of organisms once existed.

I truly hope that in forty more years my children won't say "Things are as bad as they ever were." At least when the first Earthday happened, there were still old timers who had not given up the old ways of farming that respected the earth, understood stewardship and at least rotated crops and left fallow land that "needed a rest." Farmers are under such pressure today that they can't possibly do what is best for their land. It would cost billions to reestablish hedgerows, intersperse forest cover to protect the fields from the ravages of wind and extremes of hot and cold as well as wet and dry.

We have had forty years to make a difference, but have mostly chosen to look the other way. If you are a child reading this, hold your parents to a higher standard. If nothing changes, protest like we did against the Vietnam War. If you are adults, hold your elected officials to the task of cleaning up the mess, stabilizing the cities and allowing local areas to support themselves. No one is served when the cities collapse. Before the next Wal-mart is subsidized, we need to make sure the urban core has decent food, water, shelter and air. If that means mass transit, so be it. If that means high speed rail, lets step up. We are living in a country whose people were told that the Erie Canal was just a pipe dream, The Mississippi could not be tamed, that they would never be able to lay railroad track over the Rockies, that a Trans-Atlantic cable was impossible, and other things that could have limited us, or what we could do. If anyone can reclaim a mutually beneficial relationship with Earth, it only makes sense that it should be us.

We have been lucky to have people looking out for us through the last forty years, but the lack of effective action to reign in the destruction of our planet has been staggering. Our efforts need to be more than redoubled. Effective action is much more than fair-trade coffee and reuse-able shopping bags. It lies in a complex matrix of relationships with one another, with community and with resources. As we learned as children about the water cycle, we need to look at the cycles of capital, of energy, of nutrients and of all the gifts that the natural world provides each discreet location. The give back needs to be reintegrated into our daily lives. That is what enriches community and raises our quality of life while reducing costs.

Communal Living: As Many Ways As People

I have lived in many communities (communes). Some folks I have lived with were closer, with relationships more defined. Other family groupings were less defined and some had even more loose associations, only sharing a philosophy, food, sex, a house, house parties or our cars, etc.
Being based on a Sicilian patriarch, our family had a communal meal every Sunday. Everyone was expected to help with whatever father (my grandfather) needed. When the garage became inadequate, all the sons fell in and worked togehter to move it and build the structure anew. When the bathroom needed to be modernized, the same thing went on. Everyone pitched in to help one another. Half a dozen men could be called on in a pinch, and their wives would fall in with their cooking cauldrons and rolling pins. Ravioli feeds entailed covering every flat surface in the entire home with little pillows of deliciousness. We ate to overfull and usually each family would receive a Tupperware container that would allow us a second meal at home. Work, food, blood and love bonded us together. Our rituals were established long before and were never questioned or revised.

It did not feel odd to move away into other communes, even when the ties were not familial, but rather social in nature. First we lived in a two family house where two divorced women and their four children lived. Whoever made it home first would be mom to all four kids. Meals were often shared, and we frequently divided the little that each mom could bring in. Even as children we would routinely play games that revolved around caring for our neighbor's children, learning first hand the concept of: mi casa es su casa. Even though we were broke, we never suffered from want.

Eventually spending time with my mother's family I found that mere familial relationships cannot guarantee success when living together. We shared homes, child care and food here as well, but not everyone gave of themselves willingly. I was suddenly aware of the "values" of power and control, but as I was unfamiliar with them, I always questioned the sanity of the whole situation. Even though I was loved in that setting, I could not help but feel like a chained dog. It confused me that people that I loved could be so childish. Sharing, to some of them, seemed to be a dirty word.

The hippy commune was weird but fun. We got a huge Victorian place and shared it by floors. Four families, one in the attic, one on the second level, a third on the ground floor and yet another in the basement. Food sharing went on a bit less, but entertainment sharing was almost constant. A house full of outsiders grows close in a hurry as a matter of self preservation. Luckily we had a mechanic among us, for everyone drove old cars. Several mom-like folks could handle whatever the children could create as far as chaos. Friends of friends and relatives from each of the families would come and go at will, taking or leaving children or groceries as needed. A couple
of arguments were worth mentioning. Once, as two of the residents were arguing loudly, one said, "I'm leaving...Wait a second, I can't leave I don't have any gas, you got gas?" Just as often, a fight would end up as a food fight across the kitchen table, however we were all so hungry, we didn't actually throw edible food, just the hard raisins from an old box of Raisin Bran.

When I got into Middle School and continuing through High School I began to see, and live in ashrams from different kinds of yogic disciplines. They were inevitably organized socially as communes. Shared resources allowed everyone to live a higher standard of living at lower cost and using less resources. One of the best things about larger groups is that everyone has distinct and varied expertise. More things are going on and rather than everyone doing everything there can be some specialization. The advertising guy makes the posters, the chef cooks, the teachers watch the children, etc. Splitting up the responsibilities are only limited by the creativity and commitment of those involved.

One of the coolest organizational things we did was at an ashram with thirty residents. Each day we would have two folks be responsible for our evening meal, and two people responsible for clean up. That required each individual to cook twice per month, once as lead, once as helper. By putting in two days per month on clean up crew, that left each of us free from cooking for three and a half weeks each month. The only problem that I saw was that you had to be willing to eat everyone else's food. One guy always made the same thing, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. His side dish was inevitably Green Beans with Campbell's cheese soup sauce. Some people really couldn't cook at all. We quickly made it a point to pair them with folks who actually could!

Another thing that we often did was to give families a little more privacy, having them share a room or suite. Single men slept in shared rooms with their own bathroom and similarly, the young ladies shared several larger rooms, again with their own bathrooms.

For a few years, our commune was made up of several houses, bound together by a band. Each of the heads of the households was a member of the same band. Economically, we all feasted together and experienced lean times together as well. All was not perfect, but there were carefully delineated rules of conduct and association that were in play. Spelling out details of such things as dating, spending limits and ownership of items purchased by the group saved much animosity when the inevitable end came. We all loved and helped one another, as much as we could. There was never a question that we all wanted one another to achieve success.

Throughout college I was always part of a commune. The art world, like hippies has a vested interest in sharing both liabilities and resources. Sticking together allows outsiders to find a bit of calm and security. I shared ideas, time, rooms, beds, girlfriends, boyfriends, liquor, cars, skills and green energy with many non-blood brothers and sisters as a matter of course. The few folks that I met along the way who decided to take unfair advantage of this openness were few. They confound me to this day. I still do not understand those who would screw over those they say that they care about. More often than not we would find ourselves sharing more intimately and fully than we thought ourselves capable of. It is often surprising how resilient and compassionate the human spirit can be. Sticking together through tough times seems to be part of our DNA.

I urge everyone to at least give living with others a try. Share as much as you feel comfortable sharing at first, then see what happens. I know that it isn't for everyone, but for those who can handle it, the rewards are great and the cost is only that you be willing to redefine your own limitations. We all know that there are people we couldn't stand for a minute. Don't try living with them! Make sure that if you want something out of the experience, let others know right away. No one likes to have things sprung on them after the fact. Be open honest and giving and it will pretty much take care of itself. We are a species that does best in community. Live like you mean it and others will be anxious to help. A long-time friend once said, "Do dishes, care for the kids and bake bread and you will always have a place to stay." As far as I know this rule is still in effect.

Health Care vs. Disease Care

I have been trying to decode the mystifying Health Care System since I was a child. At age seven I was diagnosed, behind closed doors, as having "Green Bay Throat". My Mother, being ignorant, asked what could be done about it. The doctor said, "Move away from here." Back then there were still a number of practical souls working in the field of medicine. He would tell us in private that the he and his colleagues knew that the chemical soup we were breathing day in and day out had the effect of depleting my immune system and that there was no way to counter the damage that pollutants were doing to my body. We asked if he would document this Green Bay Throat, but he refused. Citing the fact that he would never work again if he stood up to speak the truth in a town run by the paper mills.

I know now that virtually everyone looked the other way regarding the use of air and the water as dumping grounds for all kinds of hazardous material. The practice still takes place, although we have reigned in some of the most obvious and easily reduced waste streams. Now we face the insidious onslaught of chemicals that are harder than ever to clean up or avoid. Doctors still tell us precious little about the effects of prescription medication, lawn "care" chemicals and agricultural waste in our drinking water, the hazardous compounds created by chlorination of water, or the over four hundred toxic chemicals routinely found in the air we breathe in most major cities. We have not stopped looking the other way. This in turn leads to hazards to our health, well being and ability to lead lives that are characterized by optimum health. We spend more on health "care", as a percentage of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) than any nation, but our outcomes for this spending are way down the list. Last I heard, we rank 47th in most major indicators for health. Oddly enough, with all the talk about Health Care Reform, why are we not asking why people in 46 countries are healthier while we continue to spend wildly and get so little in return?

The most recent flap, characterized by the right-leaning tax and spend Republicans as "Why are you taking away our mammograms? This is the beginning of Health Care rationing!" Is pathetic. I know that we live in a time of serious mathematical illiteracy, but I will try to keep this simple. Average cost of a mammogram in the US is 1,000 to 6,000 dollars. Why this should be, having a six-fold variation in price for the same procedure sounds criminal, is about as clear as the x-rays themselves. If mammograms are performed on 1,900 women between forty and fifty years of age, annually for four years, it would save one life. That would be a cost of between 64 million and 384 million to save one life. Of these tests, 60% show false positives, scaring the bejeusus out of the majority of the women, adding undue stress to their lives and leading to biopsies that incur even higher costs, risk infection and a higher percentage of false negatives because they are performed much more rarely. The math on that is a bit complicated, so I will spare you that. Keep in mind the key part, to save one life!

1,140 women would be told that there was something to be concerned about on the x-ray. When actually only one would be at risk from the disease! Yet why would the doctors not mention any of the preventative steps we should all be taking to win the fight against Cancer? The over four hundred man-made chemicals that I mentioned earlier have all been implicated in genetic damage and/or Cancer. We know more about prevention than the medical establishment is telling us. To truly reform our inefficient system, we need to start with the easiest things first. Cleaning up our act with regard to poisons in the environment would be logical. Of course, it may cause some people to do things they don't want to do. It may require people to get out of certain polluting industries or devise new ways of doing things that have made them fortunes. In the future many things will change. If we are to live healthier lives, some sacrifice will be required. Business as usual has a proven track record and it is uglier the deeper you look.

When I was a child, I lost both of my grandmothers to cancer. Back then, the doctors claimed that they would decode the disease and win the battle with it scientifically. Now it has become chic to "walk for cancer", wear pink, ride for a cure, etc. Yet we still allow BPH (Brominated Phenolic Compounds) to line our canned goods cans, leach out of baby bottles, and nipples, and come in contact with our food and water. We know that they are implicated in causing Cancer! Chlorinated Organic Compounds, created when we chlorinate water, mimic Dioxin (an ingredient in Agent Orange) and PCB (Polychlorinated Biphenols). I continue to lose friends and family to Cancer. They are dying at younger and younger ages. Living proof that we are not only at a loss for winning the fight against Cancer, but pointing out the pressing need to stem the flow of toxic compounds into our bodies. At what hazard do we refuse to see the writing on the wall? Cancer is not cute. I don't think the billions spent thus far on cancer research has yielded satisfactory results. The simplest way to beat cancer is still being overlooked and my sense is that as long as doctors are in charge, they will continue to turn away from the facts regarding prevention.