Healing

This photo of an elderberry shoot helps to remind us that in life, tiny sprouts can lead to bigger and better things. Just as a series of tiny illnesses can lead to a bigger problem. Working to heal one another and the world around us rarely takes place in an instant, but instead flows through a series of incremental actions that evolve around the issue of health. what is good for the body also helps soothe the soul and what is food for our mental life also feeds the soul. May the blessings of abundance be upon you! Namaste'.

In our search for a new direction, we must take time to heal the wounds created by ecological damage, psychological affects and the physical trauma that has been perpetrated by both toxic, mutagenic and carcinogenic compounds and the physical assaults of all the non-food products that we ingest routinely.
Healers know that when true healing takes place it heals the practitioner as well as our clients. When wounds take place not only in our physical body, but in out hearts, minds and souls, the approaches that we need to use to start the healing process may look funny to outside observers.

In one of the major healing events of my own life, the situation entailed not wanting to let go of things I had learned in childhood. I was allowing a child, still alive inside my mind to dictate how the adult that I had become how to live. Many had tried to talk sense to me, many had tried to comfort me, but the thing that really allowed me to grow out of a bad state of health was someone allowing me to realize that the death of that headstrong child was in my best interest. No gentle suggestion, no coddling, that would certainly not have worked. Instead he said that allowing this misguided child inside to die was also an option.

I am not saying that to be good for us, medicine should taste (or feel) bad, but occasionally the trauma required to make sure we do not go down that rosy path to ill health again is not only necessary, but good for us, our families and community. It has been said that looking back at the start of a journey can be a bad omen, but in this context, all we have to go on is past experiences. We cannot say what the future will bring, but I can say without a doubt, great healing will be required. Who among us has found a stress free lifestyle? The most common effect that stress has on our bodies is to require more anti-oxidant food, more vitamin A,C &E and having a good B complex source as well can help deal with the oxidative effects of stress.

If you have been paying attention, you may have noticed that every few years a "new" source of anti-oxidants comes to the marketplace. In the old days, my maternal grandmother made elderberry wine. It was thick and sweet and loaded with anti-oxidants. Blueberries too are a great source. Acai, mangosteen, aronia, these all have many times the concentration of citrus and can reduce the damage caused by what science calls oxidative stress. It seems that every time a method for commercially producing a product based on a new "superfood" comes along, you can hardly swing a cat without hitting a few multi-level-marketers for it. The fact of the matter is that virtually every part of the planet has anti-oxidant rich plants or berries that can be eaten as part of our regular diet. I have always preferred elderberries but some like blueberries better. Both grow abundantly around here. Research what plants are available in your area that contain high levels of anti-oxidants and try them, see if you like any of them and get more of them in your diet.

Remember that shipping things in from far off lands has an ecological cost as well as an energetic cost that must be borne by the planet as a whole. If you can grow a plant or two in your own yard, it will allow you to have an important source of healing food close at hand. From the elderberry that grows in our yard, we have eaten the berries fresh, frozen, as juice, jam and we have even made wine from them like Grandma used to.

How we heal our hearts and minds gets a little tricky. Much of what ails us is the result of prior abuse or neglect and in our culture we are told that we have to respect, if not revere, our parents who, at times, had to ignore us or who may have hurt us in subtle or overt ways. Learning to forgive sounds extremely simple, but for most of us it is not as easy as it sounds. One thing that has helped me immeasurably has been to accept that each of us does the best we can with what we have. The vast majority of us do not have all of our needs met and this lack can have profound inter-generational effects. Adults in my life taught me since childhood that violence and abuse were not only justifiable, but necessary. Luckily, I was able to see the fallout in their own lives of living according to that belief and see through the sham of violence that they said was necessary.

I never knew how much hurt they had unleashed on me, until I began to raise my own children. My own violent outbursts were but a reflection of the lies that had been taught me as a child. In time I learned to grow and adapt my behaviors, but not before modelling some pretty bed behavior for my own children. Just because no one got hurt physically, I'm sure that some scars were created by cutting remarks and my own mal-adaptive behaviors.some people claim that without a bit of hurt and pain no growth can occur, but to use this as justification for hurting others is to miss the point. We are under such pervasive assault and our injuries are so vast, that we need to both take our own healing seriously and work to heal the damaged culture that we exist within. An African proverb states that it takes a village to raise a child, but when the village gets sick it takes all of us to heal it as well.

Today Is The Day!

Perhaps by the time I'm done writing this, The five thousandth reader will have read one of my posts!
Thank-you! Thank-you, thank-you! Perhaps for those of you who return time after time, I should recreate this page and my online self to better reflect a shaman. Healing and teaching require a few basic bits of knowledge. Certain things are well beyond our ability to understand or quantify. True healing takes place well beyond any place that we can reach through drugs, massage, chemo-therapy, the most skilled scalpel or radiation alone, but with belief, trust, and feeling a resonance with the unnameable, Creator, Great Loving Father/Mother God or whatever you wish to call it, healing cannot occur. Symptoms are often easier to correct, but in so doing other damage is occurring as well that is often not worth the relief. In my world view, the whole of the pharmacopoeia is suspect because especially in the most careful organic chem lab, while extracting the magic bullet (usually from nature) the very process has effectively stripped away perhaps hundreds or thousands of other compounds that nature put with the drug, to help in your healing.

No one in their right mind would say that a car only runs on anti-freeze! There are metabolic processes that we cannot quantify in the collateral portion of all of the herbs that have been used for- "ever" to treat human conditions, but "don't say it too loudly" giant corporations might just get the urge to genetically modify our chamomile or hibiscus! Anyone who knows about biology knows that a sterile compound, devoid of fiber, starch and carbohydrates is much harder to metabolize than the same compound as part of food. It may make it into the blood, but then the liver cleans it out, burdened by the additional processing requirements. That's one of the reasons that herbs are better, they are food. I see them as a sophisticated group of plants, They have built an association with humans and we play a role as propagator of some that have medicinal and/or culinary value. By becoming a living part of our culture, they have guaranteed their existence...or have they? It seems that centuries ago, there were far more varieties of nearly every plant species than their are today.

I'm going to make up numbers that seem crazy, but are probably on the conservative side of reality. A century ago, there were over thirty types of potato grown across the US, now it is two or three making up 98% of the harvest. Carrots, onions, cabbage have all faced the same commercial drive to standardization. Things are beginning to change at the margins, a little, but for every seed saver there are perhaps several hundred gardeners who select mass produced and genetically deficient seed. variety is more than just the spice of life, it is the possibility of future life as well.

Anyway, that should be for another time...My point is that we used to have many thousands of varieties of most healing herbs, brought in from the wild into a kitchen garden perhaps or a small plot. These "wild things" were only partially domesticated and our relationship with them enhanced the lives of us and the plants. The technology, and commercial benefit, exists now to raise cardamom seed in Asia and plant it in Wisconsin the next year. In the olden days, perhaps generations of a particular plant would grow in a certain area, becoming specialized to that micro-climate. Given time, it could adapt and always has, or has not as chance would have it. This is what makes genetic diversity essential for continuation of species. My readers already know, that since age seven, I realized that Darwin had his theories completely wrong. A nineteenth century mind, perhaps looking back into the "mists of time" might see shadows that recall an earlier gilded age of order and reason, but in fact survival of the luckiest has always been the rule rather than the exception. The fittest of all can be hit by lightening or overcome by hanta virus. Mortality assures a tenuous existence whether we are necessarily "fit" or not.

The diversity that used to exist amongst healers of the world was as helpful and essential to helping us come through the ages. Now, our fascination with standardization and mass production is killing off, or destroying through neglect and abuse, vast categories of beneficial herbs, foods and ways of living. That is why I have made the commitment to heal through herbs. I have not seen an allopathic doctor in nearly twenty-five years. The last time I was under the care of a physician, they nearly killed me through misdiagnosis and ignorance. Having studied human health and our relationship with the plant and animal kingdoms for nearly forty years, I have learned much. However, as I stated before, the amount that I do not know is still, and always will be greater than what I have learned. I firmly assert that knowing this is perhaps the most vital part of becoming a healer. I humbly submit myself to being the servant of those who need help finding a path to health. I am always as healed as those I seek to help and thank them for the opportunity to learn and grow further along my own path to health.

As I said earlier, Thank-you for reading me! This month only, I am offering a free consultation to my readers about herbs for health. Just leave a comment before September tenth 2012, and I will spend some time on your particular health issues and let you know what I would do if I were in your moccasins! Peace, Love and Understanding!

Fear Is Not A Family Value

Homo sapiens need a wake up call. Our hearts and minds have been heavily armored and who can blame us. The news programs and networks, that have proliferated and the "reality" television shows show us the most awful images and posit the most fearful views of life for us ad nauseum. We have been terrorized by the media for so long that it seems almost naive to trust, believe in, or count on anyone else. Other than our religious and political leaders, who have the most to gain from lying to us, we can include commercial interests, murderers, thieves, crazy people and sexual predators to the list of people who may be lurking around every corner. We have been led to fear nearly every bite of food that enters our bodies and every fluid that exudes from us as well. We now are beginning to understand that our water may be dangerous, the air definitely is and the very ground that we walk upon is "filled" with bacteria and fungus that might kill us if we have contact with it.

This morning, on a local news program, I learned that a local municipality is embarking on a program that will cut down hundreds of ash trees on city property to prevent them from being killed by the emerald ash borer, an invasive insect that only feeds upon these wonderful shade trees. The fear of what might happen is being allowed to dictate to us how we will act, what we will do and how we think about our relationship to the world around us. Similar issues are played out daily in operating rooms across the US. There are probably few of us by now that have not heard of women being told that by having a mastectomy, or hysterectomy, they may be able to outlive their genetic "predisposition" to die from cancer, or that exposing their breasts to radiation might just save their lives. Fear is probably the most profitable industry to be in at present, although we are on the whole healthier and more secure than at any time in our history.

Before you let your mind wander down the slippery slope of what you have been told, we are actually living in the least violent time in history. that being said, we are all going to die. If we live long enough, it is almost certain that we will pray for a quick and painless death, but fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective, doctors will almost certainly try every trick that they have up their sleeve to extend your life, expend more and prolong your life as long as possible. Feeling that heroic measures that allow people to suffer just a few months or years longer is worth their effort. It has been over a year since my father passed away, so I'm not just saying so because I am filled with grief. after his second, and third heart surgery, the effort to rehabilitate himself was extremely painful and no amount of schedule one narcotics could touch his pain. Luckily, when he was driving under the influence of these drugs, he did not kill anyone. I'm sure that it was mostly because of quick thinking and rapid action on the part of those who saw him coming in the nick of time. The last time I rode in a car with him, he nearly took out three other cars within about a mile.

The things that we really should be spending time in fear of often go unnoticed.I have shared with many people my feeling that the true terrorists in our midst are the millions of drivers who continue to use their cell phones in the car. these people just don't know when they are going to kill. doctors too fit into that category as well because iatrogenic (doctor caused) deaths, from prescribed medications are approximately equivalent to all deaths in car accidents in our country. Some sources have documented the fact that they are even a greater number. If we are to trust one another, we need to be acting in a trustworthy manner. The almost universal rejection of responsibility in our culture has fascinated me for the better part of half a century. In the last few weeks I have been reminding myself of the fact that when we point at others, there are three fingers pointing back at us. We are encouraged to fear by the powerful interests who wish to divide us and keep us isolated amongst our neighbors.

When we investigate most of the subjects that get covered by the popular press, we find that the causes and effects of these events are frequently left out of the coverage. The heroic actions of those who exhibit bravery or courage are usually not covered, nor are the actions of those who quietly persevere. These activities, quite often, don't photograph well or take place behind the scenes. My contention is that these actions and activities are far more common than we ever realize. Living is not a series of investments in insurance, or installing locks on everything that we value, nor is it the blocking out of all that threatens our way of life or ideas. In fact, the happiest people on Earth spend the least time on these sorts of activities. I have always wanted to be a preacher of sorts, but the reason is pretty much the opposite of any preachers that you might have heard speak before. I openly admit that I cannot tell you what to do. I'm not even sure that what I might say is right and i certainly don't want anyone to take any action in my name or in the "name" of the Lord or Lady, but rather because it is coming from your heart. I often write about the fictions that our minds spin for us into the illusion of truth. The ego is adept at lying to us and the weak of heart often subvert their true selves for the edification of their own deceitful egos. I am not who I think I am. Neither are you. The threats to your health and well being that you believe in do more to take you away from living your bliss than you may ever know. I apologize to those of you who may understand this already, but what speaker can resist the urge to preach to the choir from time to time.

Living our lives requires that we accept some risk. The more we hide behind layers of fear, the less we are able to see and understand the world as it truly is. There are many who reap the benefits of us shuttering our windows, living with our heads in the sand and turning our backs on those in need. We all have the power to live heroic lives, lives of infinite abundance and lives that recognize the fact that each and every human being is entitled to a life of love and realization. If each one teaches one, the process of growing into the people we want to be, rather than victims becomes much easier. We need to let go of fear if we are to have the power of love flow through us. The values that came down to us from our parents and theirs have been assaulted, attacked and undermined by the media for the better part of two generations. The threats that we face today are straw men, fabricated and propped up by those who want us to leave the churches, our government, the financial institutions and the schools available for their use as tools of oppression and they also want us to relinquish the airwaves to be used as an insidious tool for spreading fear. If we allow them to sell us a bill of goods that states that our children, their mothers, the elderly, teachers, gays, unions, pot smokers, liberals and conservatives are "the problem", then we will be sufficiently afraid of everyone and everything and we will be unable to do the things we need to do to break free of these mental shackles. We are always left to make one decision either from the depths of our hearts, or from our own tiny ego. Will we lead lives of quiet desperation or will we rise to the challenge that faces us today? I am willing to stick my neck out. Please look into how you might follow your own bliss and let me know what you find.

Saying Goodbye to What Has Not Worked in the Past.

When in the course of human events, it becomes evident that we have erred, it should be easy to change our ways and move on in light of our new awareness. The knowledge, for instance, that fly ash from coal burning power stations in the US have the same impact on public health as adding 100,000 new smokers to our population each year, might give us pause to reconsider the incredibly wasteful practices, energetically speaking, that we have become accustomed to. The insidious nature of so many ills that we face make it difficult to precisely quantify the damage that they create, or identify the populations that will most likely be affected by our dangerous behavior. No matter how difficult it may be, we must take stock of where we are if we are to take positive steps to eradicating many of the ills that now face society and individuals that we recognize as friends, neighbors and loved ones. I have been painfully aware of the impact of local business and industry practices on health since childhood because the Doctors in Green Bay identified my nearly constant bouts with strep throat as "Green Bay Throat". We lived along the river where many hundreds of tons of toxic compounds were released into the atmosphere each year and many hundreds of tons more were discharged into the river with no sewage treatment. Times have changed somewhat, but for the most part the poisoning continues, just at a lower rate. The last time I sat down with the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data, it came to four hundred tons of toxic compounds per year released within a two-mile radius of my house. This cannot be acceptable.

The whole crashing of the economy has coincided nicely with the realization, by many, that we are on a road to ruin as long as we do not make substantive changes to the ways business is done. Even John Adams recognized that there are only two ways to control a country, by military force or by debt. As long as we are told that there is no money for it, nothing has to change, ever. The current economic "uncertainty" is being caused by the wealthiest corporations in America holding their vast wealth out of circulation. As long as the outlook is allowed to be dictated by the 500 wealthiest corporations, nothing ever has to change. Even getting an idea of how many products and services fall under the dominion of those largest corporate entities can be difficult. What we all need to realize, however, is that without income from our spending, these corporations would have to dip into their money stash in order to keep up appearances for their stock holders. The nuclear energy industry has received hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare and yet, they are currently leaving the US taxpayers on the hook for their waste disposal which will be a very real cost for tens of thousands of years. But, hey, we all like the power that arrives with the flick of a switch, so the corporations asses are covered if we begin to complain too loudly, or even if we start asking too many questions.

So too, the Monsanto's of the world operate with relatively little regulation and a knowing wink from the government as they fleece the American Farmer and tell them that they are just not working hard enough, that's why they are failing in droves. With all the land coming on the market, look at who is buying. It is not unusual to have corporate farms as the largest land owners in any county that has arable land. a friend in New Zealand told me that anyone owning over twenty acres there has to have a part time land manager, someone with degrees in wildlife biology, forestry and hydrology. When your holdings go over 100 acres, you need a full time land manager and a conservation plan on file with local officials who can review it at any time. If we are to regain the high ground morally, ethically and spiritually, it will require us to relinquish our attitude that somehow freedom equates to doing whatever we want without responsibility or consequence. It makes me sick to think of the time we spend defending the ultra wealthy,no matter how vile their actions, yet when a small act of kindness, or heroism takes place, we often look with suspicion at the person who did the right thing, without thought of being paid back or how it might affect their "bottom line".

One thing is for sure, when you let go of the past, something good will come along to fill it's place.

The Very Good Witch

Back in the late Eighties, I was suffering from acute heavy metal poisoning. I developed what the doctors called strep throat, but whatever it really was, it was resistant to several antibiotics. Even after a 28 day course of one of the drugs they prescribed, my skin was green, I was bedridden, delirious and my death drive was beginning to overcome my will to live. Sick is way too mild a word for what was going on within me. Luckily I was living with a most beautiful lady, who even more luckily was a witch.

She used a pendulum to diagnose my condition and asked the tiny dangling mass to guide her to a remedy for what ailed me. If you have never seen a pendulum react to unseen forces, you may not believe that it is possible, but it guided her to look in the cupboard. I remember going through the kitchen shelf by shelf until she got to the spice cabinet. Then, the shelf that held a certain bottle, then the bottle itself and she produced a container of cream of tartar. It took quite a while to go through this process, but eventually she stated that I needed two and a half tablespoons, then two more before midnight. She said that in the morning I would need another tablespoon and a half, one tablespoon at lunch, and a half tablespoon at supper time.

For those unfamiliar with strep throat, getting a terrible tasting powder past your swollen gland can be difficult, but after researching what the stuff was in my college dictionary, I decided to try her prescription. By bedtime, my color had improved, by lunch, I was able to get around the house a bit and by supper my glands were reduced in size enough that I could eat solid food again. I think everyone should develop a relationship with a very good witch. It could save your life some day. I know it has saved mine, at least once.

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.

Stop Poisoning Our Medicine Chests!

I'm starting this with a thank-you to some of the women that I have borrowed heavily from to write this piece. It requires a special person to attempt to bring about change in a fifty billion dollar per year industry. Rebecca Sutton Ph.D., Jane Houlihan, Annie Leonard and Jennifer Predinger made most of my points for me, and I am just trying to keep the facts interesting for you! I encourage you to learn more to help you decide what to do about this tragic trend. First off, men use an average of 6 personal care, and or cosmetic products each day. Women use twice as many and adolescent girls over sixteen products on an average day,each containing about a dozen chemicals, 80% of which have never been tested for safety. Anything in "common use" in 1938 was grandfathered in to current legislation. "Better living through chemistry" was the watchword of the last century, but as we learn more, we find deadly culprits amongst the magic bullets that science has provided us. We need more heroes who will stand up for our right to be free from the onslaught of toxins in the environment, especially those we seek to wash and decorate our bodies with.

If you are concerned about your health, I would send you to the most comprehensive website I have seen detailing this health threat. safecosmetics.org will help you find safe products that you can use to make your daily toilette safe and effective. I studied this subject for quite some time before I started forming an opinion, but twenty years ago when the red flags were raised, public opinion was against any reasonable regulations of toxic chemicals, especially in beauty products! Unless you did quite a bit of research yourself, guessing what products contained neurotoxins, hormone disruptors, or carcinogens was a shot in the dark. Because of heroic women like those I mentioned, we finally are beginning to understand the errors of our ways.

Only eight of the thousands of cosmetic ingredients that get rubbed onto our faces, hands, hair and bodies each day have been regulated. Even terms such as Herbal, Natural and Organic have absolutely no meaning in the industry. Adding to the insanity are little known facts that make one stare off into space as if in a dream. You may know of Herbal Essence shampoo. It's the number two brand in America, well it contains petrochemical compounds which add to our daily body burden of toxic and carcinogenic compounds. Estee' Lauder advertises that they "help in the fight against breast cancer", but their products contain chemicals that produce the disease!

Since the average American spends over 150 dollars per year on these things, it would be nice if we knew that they were not making us sick! A recent study of young women, age 14-19 found both methylparaben and propylparaben in the blood or urine of every girl tested. These women are especially vulnerable to these hormone disruptors. In their rapidly changing bodies, this is not the sort of imbalance that we should be creating in them. Sixteen chemicals were routinely found in these young women, the direct result of their cosmetics use!

Please support the legislation that is going through Congress now. Called the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010, it deserves everyone's support. If for no other reason than to guarantee the safety of our children. We all have to wash our faces, brush our teeth and wash our hair. Please learn more about the ways we are doing it now as well as the safest ways that it can be done. You will never go back to poisoned products once you know and understand their impacts on our health and welfare.

Coyote Moon

Many have heard Coyote stories. Great wisdom resides in them for all who wish to seek it. The Trickster, as he is better known, has a way of teaching us in unpleasant ways. This particular totem came to me unexpectedly last Friday evening. Fortunately, no one got hurt, except Coyote himself. His messages are still ringing in my ears. I had been struggling with an issue that most of us share. The answer came to light in unusual ways. This is often the way of Coyote, drawing one in and then absconding with one's innocence. But, HEY! How would you get someone's attention?
My grandmother used to say, "Don't hide your light under a bushel basket." It was one of those things that if I heard it once, I heard it one hundred times. Often we forget things so frequently that no matter how much folks implore us, cajole us, or admonish us, we cannot seem to understand or change. This is one of my big issues, especially when it comes to healing powers with which I have been entrusted. As a young teen I started studying vitamins, minerals, and the effects of both shortfalls and abundance in one's diet. By the time I was out of high school, I had begun to study herbal remedies, their collection, preparation and use. I also learned about how to meet one's dietary needs through combining foods to get "complete proteins". During my vegetarian phases, it has been valuable and through food I have learned a great deal about diet and culture.
For some reason, perhaps because my closest family did not share my awareness of the value of nature's cures, I always discounted my skills as healer. Now Coyote knows far more than he lets on. My struggle had come to a head last week. Someone very close to me needed spinal decompression, which I have become adept at. I have provided relief to many who have had pain, and I was thinking of offering to do the maneuver for her. Then, my negative Ego kicked in and I thought of several "reasons" not to offer. In the end, she underwent back surgery because some fool told her that he knew best and she has very deep pockets. In the end I am happy that she found help in relieving her pain, but I'm still concerned for her because there are always risks involved in surgery, and she won't go under the knife until Friday.
Coyote, my teacher, showed up to remind me that the "reality" that I had forged, the excuses, the self effacement, the negative Ego are based on lies. It truly is time to grow into the potential that Creator has entrusted to me. Each of us is uniquely suited to offer the world something special. When we choose to make up a story that limits our effectiveness, only we can be blamed for the outcome. When we express fully our talents and skills, the world is made better for ever. The old saying about education is that a mind is a terrible thing to waste, but we need to look at squandering Creator's Gifts in the same way.
I can never reclaim the opportunity that I had to make a difference in that one particular person's life, but I can encourage you to reach out to others in similar ways, no matter what skills you have, share them. nothing can make a difference like the one we can make when we humbly offer to help. Step into the Grace that is afforded to all beings, get in touch with your own truth and sense of justice and compassion. Live in the now and miracles become the rule rather than the exception. I know this to be true, but bless the Coyote for reminding me when I forget!

Lowest Crime Rate in Forty Years

All "traditional" types of crime are on the wane. Things we think of when the word crime is mentioned, murder, rape, assault, theft and property crimes have not been this low since the sixties. I don't think that we can attribute this to the fact that all the criminals have been jailed. Quite the contrary, people who have perpetrated crimes against me have never even been arrested. Oddly enough, the crimes that I have been victimized by have subjected me to ridicule from police, disbelief, or at least they have given the police a good laugh. Questioning victims as if they were perpetrators makes one wonder if cops just get off on dealing with "bad guys", or if they just get so used to dealing with criminals, that it makes them treat everyone with disdain. If we look to a larger picture, it only makes sense that as people learn to survive on less, and the economic outlook for so many continues a downward slide, there would be higher levels of desperation and propensity to steal and rob. Not so, I guess, we see crime rates falling in all areas, and for all crimes according to the FBI.

The petty sorts of crimes that hurt just one victim at a time have been replaced by crimes that hurt us all. Corporate outlaws who absorb billions in tax money and continue to make bad business decisions top my list of evil deed doers, but we seem to be at a loss for what to do with these bad boys. Law enforcement has been trained to look for footprints in the snow, leading away from crime scenes, finger prints and physical evidence that ties perpetrators to crime scenes. Now, there is even the ability to "search" the net for traces of illicit activity. Even though we have sophisticated ways of finding ordinary criminals, there is a definite lag between what is actually taking place and our response to it. If a company can be classified as "too big to fail", they can lay off thousands, pay their figurehead leader millions, and take our tax money with impunity. This double standard allows the rich to undermine our democracy in a most unsettling way. In response to these heinous crimes, it seems that some police agencies have redoubled their efforts to prosecute people who have engaged in victimless crime, growing marijuana, or God forbid, smoking it. It is confusing to see the attention we pay to trivia, while letting gross abuse of power and theft on a grand scale pass unnoticed. Profiling Muslims has become "defensible", but corporate outlaws are overlooked because we all "want to be like them", rich.

Back in the seventies, there was a pay disparity between the top CEOs and the average workers of 44-1. This meant that it would take working stiffs an average of forty-four years to earn as much as the top person in their company would make in one year. This was basically a person's entire working career, to equal one person's pay for a single year! The reasoning behind this was that top earners were smarter, better educated, under more stress, and responsible for bigger decisions that would make or break their corporation. Even though forty-four times smarter sounds impossible, forty-four times as educated sounds illogical, forty-four times more stress seems improbable and forty-four times more responsible ignores the fact that "average"workers are the ones that actually make products or provide services for which the company is needed in the first place.

Today, this pay disparity has climbed to 360-1. This means that what the average wage earner makes in a year is made in less than a single day by top "wage" earners. To equal the pay of a CEO today, a "family" of workers would require eight generations of toil to "earn" the equivalent of a single year of effort by these super-humanly smart, ultra-educated, incredibly stressed out, and uniquely responsible individuals who are "top dogs" in the largest companies the world has ever seen. Even as their corporations crumble, it is said that they deserve their unreasonable compensation. At some point, will we see through this charade? How long will we allow this insanity to continue? Is screwing a billion people okay if we only steal a penny from each person? How about a dime? A dollar? What if we force them into bankruptcy? Will we ever classify wage slavery as slavery and outlaw it? Why do we continue to look the other way? How can we support a system of all men being created equal but yet reimburse some as if they are 360 people? In this age of technological advances, we must develop our awareness, our culture, and our laws to keep pace with the lightning speed of injustice.

Letting those who have led us down a path toward inequality, have a say in resolving the problems they have created, is like letting a fox into the hen house. This is commonly the way our government deals with important issues. In Wisconsin, when "public utilities" got caught stealing 64 million dollars from residential rate payers, the utilities themselves got to decide how to spend the court ordered forfeiture. Letting insurance companies, drug companies, hospitals and health care providers tell us what they want in a "health care bill" guarantees that their interests get priority while the general public continues to get fleeced. Similarly, when the banks and some insurance companies had gotten into trouble, playing the odds with borrowed money, we gave their terrible managers a get out of jail free card. Many were able to leave their crippled companies with severance packages that exceed the lifetime earnings of 90% of all Americans. I think that bad managers should be punished. Perhaps, if they had to bear responsibility for their stupidity, lack of judgment, larcenous ways, illegal gambling with money that belongs to others, or misrepresentation that only benefits themselves, their illegal and immoral actions would cease. Lying, cheating and stealing are bad, no matter who has done them. People who are worth billions should not be exempt from laws that govern the rest of us. As happy as I am that the crime rate has plummeted, I think that we need to look for injustice wherever it occurs.

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.

CYA Disease Care System CYA

The past few months have seen tremendous change in the "health care" system. By the increasing advertising I am seeing, you would think that there are no problems at all! Never mind the fact that drug companies have increased prices by over ten percent since the first of the year. Never mind the flap over better recommendations designed to save patients the stigma and stress of false positives for breast cancer. Ignore, if you can the huge increase in ads for drugs that have been proven useless in reducing heart attack and stroke. Just try to ignore the increased advertising for affordable insurance. Oh, by the way, try not to pay any attention to the rapidly increasing waistline of over half of all Americans! Like a patient who rallies just before the death rattle kicks in, the entire system is putting a good face on their horrific record, afraid that their days are numbered.

I live in a city of 100,000 people. To the numbers in perspective: Three cities this size are eliminated, or at least their population is wiped out each year through the authorized (but inappropriate) use of prescription drugs. The illegal use of these controlled substances is the fastest growing type of recreational drug use in our country today.

Prevention of disease costs less than ten percent of the treatments designed to help patients after they become sick, but the funding isn't there for that! We are breeding a race of sick folks so that people will still have jobs treating us. This is a modern example of putting the cart before the horse. I'm pretty sure that the rise in cancer and allergies are related to environmental degradation, but this aside, we have no interest in finding out because these thoughts make us uncomfortable. What makes me uncomfortable is the fact that when I moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin, the doctors who "treated" me looked in my mouth and said, "Yep, he's got Green Bay Throat." They would say it in the office, but when we asked them to tell the newspaper, or at least write it down on some sort of document, they would wrinkle up their face and ask if we were crazy. These gatekeepers of "health" outright refused to go after the polluters of our air. They made enough money to move out of the valley, into the fresher air of the country.

Pardon me if I'm calling out folks who we were trained to respect, but there is fault enough to go around. Drug company representatives lie, stretch the truth, and claim statistically insignificant risks of their products. When your relative is the one dying, it won't matter if it is statistically insignificant. I have spoken with enough people who know, these corporate outlaws are protected, even encouraged by our government, no matter what they tell us. Even the insurers are to be questioned. Why do we allow them to make bets on our health? How can they be allowed to cut us off for making claims? If I were to make a bet and lose, I'm pretty sure that I would have to pay. Most questions have easy answers, this issue isn't much different. People who have a vested interest in business as usual will tell you that many of these problems are difficult to solve and "too complex" for you to understand, but don't believe it. If something looks like a red herring, smells like fish, and lurks beneath the reflective surface, avoiding the light of day, there is a good bet that it is a red herring. Shady characters hate the light of day, and people looking at them. Lets turn the lights on this decrepit system, expose the charlatans and get on with funding for prevention.