The New Holocaust

We have done a grave disservice to one another. We have all been complicit in the horror of our current state of affairs. Instead of standing up and telling the ruling classes that we will not stand for carcinogenic compounds being released onto the soil, into the air and water, ultimately making their way into our bodies, we have decided to participate in fundraising runs, buy rubber bracelets and to "bike for the cure". This is like going fishing but bringing no pole, no line and no hooks, just the bait. I know that I am not the only one who sees through the sham of spending billions on cancer research while simultaneously poisoning the environment.

I have dozens of friends who have passed the veil because they have been ravaged by cancer. I would guess that not one of us has been spared the heartache of losing a beloved friend or family member, perhaps a bunch of them to this disease. Is it always going to be easier to focus only on the hurt than to do anything about sparing one another from this exquisite pain?

Our species seems intent on hitting the wall. Like a fly in a speeding bullet train, about to hit an immovable object, we seem to be completely unaware that we are moving. Our entire environment is moving with laser speed into the future. We are on a collision course with destiny and after more than fifty years of rearranging the deck chairs on our sinking ship, we are no closer to plugging the gaping hole in the side of the hull than when we first began to dabble in the chemistry of death. The very first carcinogenic compound that we humans "discovered" was benzene. It is still a legal contaminant in gasoline. The earliest representation of the chemical was a serpent biting its own tail. Benzene is only one of many carcinogens that many of us are exposed to nearly daily. The irony is that when we put fuel in our automobiles, this carcinogen can be detected on our breath for up to six hours after we finish pumping our gasoline. The advent of "self-service" fuel depots came about because science could prove that service station attendants were getting lethal doses of the compound. We must each decide whether getting our own "fair" share is worth the cost.

My wife recently learned and related to me, that in the first six years that GMO(Genetically Modified Organism) crops have been authorized for use in the United States of America, emergency room visits because of food allergies have increased by 260%. It may just be the tip of the next iceberg, but we need to realize that all food worldwide is potentially GMO already. Pollen from these organisms can be carried vast distances on the wind and it has already been proven by Monsanto that organic growers have had their seed contaminated with patented genetic material.

 I once received a hefty fine because a roommate's mutt dog had been allowed to run loose, got with a show dog that belonged to a neighbor, and inseminated the bitch. My only crime was to call the dog home (Something, by the way, GMOs can never be) when I saw it run down our street. Now, I know many organic growers and they don't want their valuable seed to be contaminated by these rogue pollens, why should we protect a corporate outlaw who cannot control their pollen?

The elites that benefit from our combined suffering need to be held to task for their inhumane treatment of the rest of us, worldwide. From their nuclear debacle to the war machine, the powers that feed are parasites of our own blood, fanciful masters of those feeding the ovens of our own demise. Ont this day of souls, let the hallowed voices of those who have died from this disease speak though our combined action to stop the crazy drunken stagger into our own demise, step away from the abyss and return to a hospitable world in which we create out of the ruin of stupidity and healing the damage caused by genocide. Our entire race is in jeopardy because of the current tragectory.

I hope that it is not too soon after 9-11 to remember those days. I solemnly hoped that in the days following, when flights were canceled, that millions of "disrupted" people would realize that where they were was a pretty good place and that families and neighborhoods across the world, or at least our part of it, would be strengthened by the contact. For decades, when I saw traffic jams, I always imagined how wonderful it would be when all people to find ways to make their way through the world, without leaving "home". I have lived from the day when a handful of local markets existed within walking distance, now it is a mile (1.6Km) to the closest one, and it used to be the furthest away. During my youth, it was the largest, by far, and saved a few cents per item over the local grocers. All those pennies, after all those years, worked up some pretty good loyalty, but now the shoe is on the other foot, by driving five miles, or ten, those same savings could be had. With a mega-grocer, moving your money further from your neighborhood.

This is the economic state of affairs for virtually all of us is like a cancer, the pennies, and in many cases dollars are being siphoned out of the majority of the people, being extracted from this region, this city, this county and this state with mind-bending consequence. I hear the term The Richest Third World Nation On Earth and I think it should stick. Apparently, now, some Germans bring their children to Detroit to show them what Berlin looked like after the war. We have had perpetrated every form of injustice on our people for the enrichment of a cream of the cream of the crop and they are in full scale assault mode. They have been winning the class war for generations. We have only threatened revolt while stoned, or that is what they would tell you. The peace movement of the sixties and the efforts to reign in pollution were feeble at best and the long term data indicates that we are failing to limit releases of many hazardous chemicals. Again, like cancer this robs a vital being of essential nurturing to continue to exist, and the "person" we knew wastes away, vitality stolen from a dear one.

To re-seed the tree of life, this insidious tree of death needs to be pulled up by the root, or it will re-establish and threaten us again. Part of my ritual intentions this Sabbat, will be to unleash as much fury on the Agro-bio-chemical-financial/insurance-petro-industrial/military complex as possible. I want clarity to be established about planet rape, about biocide, about the rampant costs to each and every one of us for the financial gain of others. We have been forced by unimaginable powers of wealth and deceit to build the very instruments of our own destruction/demise. Just the other day on the news, they were touting how upgrading the infrastructure around a boat-building facility there would help the company to become more productive. We taxpayers will foot the bill fore more roads, more trucks, more traffic and do it gladly for the sake of the company. In their defense, the company can afford and has awesome equipment that greatly increases the health and safety of their workers, but the down side is that they pump the fumes further away, into the surrounding neighborhoods. So people who don't work there will pay in two ways for the sake of the corporation, first in taxes to make it bigger and then breathe even dirtier air.

For my friends, this holiday season, I just want to say in the words of good friend, James Baker, of Green Bay, Wisconsin, After we have tried every key, it is time to try the skeleton key.

Lest this post be mistaken for a scary one, this is like the black spot in the white side of the yin yang symbol. If humans did not have the power to be infinitely kind, there would be no humanitarians. If we did not have infinite capacity for acceptance, we could not turn our heads from this crisis. If we did not have hope, we would have surely crashed and burned as a civilization long ago. The actions we take, knowing that these cancers are there, engulfing us as I write this, burning away at the center of a swirling vortex of our lives, our neighborhoods, our families, our cities and towns. Our activity as a species reflects whether we will ultimately vanquish, or push back the nugget of evil at our core. Likewise, in the realms of the dark side, they try to overwhelm, but can never extinguish the light.

The only way out of our current state of affairs is to create new structures upon which we can be proud to hang our hat for generations. Many communities are fighting back against the extraction model by creating power co-ops, sharing in the cost of buying their electricity into the future, today. Much like our food buying club of old, we banded together to create our own store, one day each month. Ultimately, reparations need to be made, but how can one put a price on generations of pain and suffering of thousands of millions of direct victims their families, their communities, over many generations? Our lives truly have infinite value and sacrificing a single one for profit is not acceptable. Corporations are exacting death sentences upon all of us and we must all call for them, in unison to stop.

A Closer Look at America's Top .0001%

Forbes just released their annual report on the nation's four hundred top income "earners". The average income of this group is 1.38 Billion dollars, yes that is right. The numbers confirm that they are richer than ever. To get our heads around it, perhaps it would help to divide the income of just one of these ultra rich people by the four hundred million or so people in The United States of America. Looking at the numbers this way puts it in slightly better perspective. Let us say that each one of us, every man woman and child gave three dollars and fifty cents to one of these folks, then, to keep things straight, these folks made a line four hundred deep. Each one in turn would come to the front of the line and get their $3.50 and so on. They would collectively receive $1,400 from each man woman and child in America. Now I'm not provincial enough to not understand that most of these folks are involved in a worldwide network of exploitation (sorry to all the rich folks out there, I mean earnings), but to get a better picture of how much wealth these folks control, it helps to break the numbers down to what an average person can understand. I raised four children for the last twenty years on around 20K. If you look at the cost to our household alone of these very wealthy individuals, it would be about 1/4 of our income, siphoned off to support these levels of earnings for just those 400 wealthiest individuals.

I do not begrudge them their wealth, but I do detest the fact that they unduly influence public debate, political fortunes of our representatives and I certainly will not remain silent as their agendas are pushed through the Halls of Congress, The White House, or The Courts. I certainly do not want them to receive any sort of corporate welfare or subsidization of any kind. However, many of these fortunes are subsidized greatly and the extreme reach of government virtually assures that these people are rewarded at the expense of the rest of us. It is our hard work and as they say, our blood, sweat and tears that fund this level of luxury.

My children, if they want to "make something of themselves", will go into debt for the privilege, paying interest for years, so that the wealthy can play the system for all it is worth. If my children want to purchase a home, many of these people will get richer at their expense. If I or my children do not read labels carefully and remain ever-vigilant about the products that we buy, it assures that a large part of their purchases will flow to the pocketbooks of these billionaires. We will look a little closer at the numbers, but letting this sink in for a while will help to see some of the problems, and solutions that are necessary if we want to return to being a nation for, of and by the people.

Less than 2% of these 400 individuals are self-made women. Nearly ten percent of the top four hundred are female, but the vast majority of those women inherited their wealth. Once again, looking more closely at the numbers, the vast majority are older white men. I have tried to forgive as many of the mistakes that this "class" of people have made over the years as possible, but for their continued attempts to claim that climate change is fiction, for their continued fight against living wages for the rest of us, for their rape of the planet and her people and for the insensitivity to the levels of corporate welfare flooding into their coffers, I am not ready to forgive them. It seems that most of these individuals are either blind to their own responsibility or in denial about their complicity in many of our national problems, most of the environmental destruction and the lion's share of the human tragedies that are lived with day in and day out by the rest of us.

The wealth of the heirs of the Wal-mart fortune is a good case in point. Just one of the three stores that this company has built in my home town, (that continuously skims off money to be sent to Atlanta, never to return.) has received millions of dollars in subsidies. The local tax payers paid dearly for the "opportunity" to shop there. Not only was Wal-mart given seven years of tax exemption, (what small businessperson would not love to have that opportunity?) but the facility needed an intersection that cost over one million dollars to upgrade. The creek that used to flow past the area, supporting a wide variety of wildlife is now choked with boxes and bags, shopping carts and car piddle from the giant parking lot. Our city is not huge, only around 100,000 people, but this giant corporate entity thinks that building a fourth facility right in the heart of the city would help them to capture more wealth from our residents. The public is not interested in having them, but the monied interests weigh more heavily on state and local officials than the people who have to live here.

The most vile subsidy that we give the Wal-marts of the world, at least here in Wisconsin is that the poverty wages that they pay assure that publicly financed health care and food stamps are helping to keep their wage slaves alive. Millions more dollars, not going directly to the corporation, but paid by our citizens to prop up the economically unsustainable approach of the exploiters. Then, we can add in the dozens of locally owned and operated fabric stores, food stores, clothing stores, shoe stores, pharmacies, art supply stores, appliance stores, stationary shops, hardware stores and bike shops that have gone away since they came to town and you have a rough sketch of how they gobble up our quality of life while wresting more and more income from places that cannot afford a single penny more, for less. No one seems to like to look in the mirror anymore. We are the ones who have let this exploitation occur. We are the ones who feel threatened by our own poverty and we are ultimately the ones who line up for this sort of exploitation at the hands of the oligarchs.

It is my humble opinion that we need to understand that there has always been class warfare and the truth of the matter is, as Warren Buffet (who is always at or near the top of this list) himself has said, "My class, the rich are winning."

I Have A Dream, But So Do The Rich

I heard a man on Wisconsin Public Radio today speaking out about the "organic" local growers. It would have been sad if he didn't really believe his dream. He spoke with such hyperbole and assurance and his words carried across the public airwaves impacting thousands in ripples, rushing out at light speed. Without objection or correction by the host, he claimed that if all the organic growers in the state put their farms to a test, they could not supply one story with enough of any type of fruit or vegetable to meet a single store's need. Like I said, it would have been funny if it were not tragic. His dream is to continue building larger and larger markets, so that some day we could have just one per county, or perhaps even less than that. Perhaps when they go back to cornering the entire market, grocers will be able to just have the one kind of lettuce again, rather than the half-dozen varieties that most stores have to carry now.
I have always had a penchant for talking to folks I meet from Russia. I always ask what the most foreign thing about America is. They inevitably mention the bread. This relates to the dream of the ultra wealthy quite well, so it is not too far a leap from my opening paragraph. In their hometown, these Russians always comment, there would be periods with no bread. When it was available, folks would stand in line to get it, even though the price was cheap, it was always good. here, they say, there is poor person bread and rich person bread and they sit side by side on the store shelves. you can pay a dollar for terrible bread, or five or more dollars for a good loaf. The dream of the ultra-wealthy has unfolded in an awful way. By eliminating as much of the cost of storage as possible, first pulverizing the grains to infinitesimally small pieces, the nutrients simply evaporate and thus even rats won't touch it. Then they dose it with preservatives and vitamins and call it good for you. The cost of packaging and transport of most bread is far higher than the cost of the ingredients. This is how profits are created in the old economic way of thinking.
Their dream is to keep things pretty much just like they are, each parasitic corporation taking just a bit from as many people as possible not only keeps them flying under the radar, but able to claim that none of us would like to do without them. Each round of government subsidy in turn leads to new avenues to increase profitability. The banks we bailed out are racking up record profits, while more than 100,000 families per month are losing their homes. Many of the folks who used to feel secure are becoming more and more desperate, but the debate is about how great it is that at least the banks are profitable. Imagine ending It's A Wonderful Life with everyone sending their bail-out money to Potter. In our way, that is exactly what we have done! Those who deemed themselves "too big to fail" have us up against a wall. they are the ones with all the cards. their dreams have become nightmares for us all.
My dream includes the good of others. I can see a future in which all the things I have learned, being made both useful and valuable to others. better yet, this dream is unfolding at this very moment. Through the process of sharing some of my knowledge, the future is changing. As I "speak", seeds are planted, or the soils of future thought are tilled. I bear the water to quench the thirsty, knowledge hungry sprouts of a new, more civil society. i am here to sat that I know of at least one organic farm that produced 100% of last winter's spinach for a store in the northernmost part of Wisconsin. I felt blessed to have a chance to eat some of it because it blew away any other spinach I have ever eaten. corporate food enterprises have become too used to assigning value to the process of filling bags with commodities that can lead to generation of money, rather than capturing their produce when it is the healthiest and bringing it to market the same day.
If we are to turn the ship of state around, wresting power from those who have become most used to it, we will all need to pull together and in unison pull away from corporate domination and push off in a new direction. My dream is a wake up call, and I bid you all a good night sleep. when you wake up, i hope it will be invigorated and refreshed for the next big step in changing bussiness as ususal and taking back our state, our nation, our world.

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.

Aquisition as Ethos

Our culture, in these United States, has become one in which commercials and jingles have their own special power over our thoughts and actions. Some people go so far as to watch the Super Bowl, "...for the commercials...". If I were to say, "Where Quality is Job One!", "Have it Your Way!" or "_____ Adds Life!" I might have to explain to a few what Corporation I was hawking, but most of us know it in our cells. Even logos reach into our subconscious and have literally changed us. The filing cabinets of our brain create relationships between these audio-visual messages and the territories that they use to get our attention. Sellers know that they have to sell you on more than just product, they sell experiences. Any product not promising more than it is worth won't stand a chance in competitive markets. Even knowing this intellectually can't save one from the onslaught. Hitting the primary emotional centers, images we see, hear and think about tell us that products being advertised will make us secure, healthy, rich, happy, vital well-adjusted and well-liked. Who wouldn't want that after all, it's just good sales. Being better than someone who doesn't have the product is just a spin off from the original theme. Even when the main competitor isn't mentioned directly, the implication is that those who make that choice are "square" or at least misguided. Even writing this passage is bringing on torrents of associations, we have been inculcated with. The most peculiar catch phrase that has stayed with me and will never be far from my awareness is "Hush Puppies aren't such a fancy shoe, or a phony shoe, they're just Dumb!" It was probably the shortest-lived ad campaign ever, but the images were great! It was from the time that the Japanese were kicking us with quality the first time, Probably, early seventies. Two Japanese guys in lab coats were inspecting the shoes with calipers and scientific instruments. After deliberation, they looked at one another, and the camera, in astonishment and declared, "We can make them better, but we can't make them dumber!" I still see the Hush Puppy logo and get a charge out of it. I even look at their shoes, even when I'm not shoe shopping, not caring whether or not they are my size, I just feel good looking at them. Multiply this effect by billions of people, thousands of advertisers, and in some cases, hundreds of purchases each day, and you begin to see a pattern being established. My intent in bringing this phenomenon up is to plea for it's opposite. Making decisions on the basis of value, (which I define as life-affirming) rather than the spurious intent of some executive in a far off corporate office, whose salary is determined by his ability to sell us thin promises. As you might expect, I see this as life-denying. Let's try a concrete example: Confronted with natural thirst, we need water to live. Do not succumb to the opinion that you should have sugar-laced brown liquid to make you anything. You are, endowed by your creator with a propensity to slake your thirst, that alone is a great gift. Sanctify that by giving your body the most pure water that you can find. One caveat, I do not want anyone to drink Distilled or Reverse Osmosis water exclusively. The first because mineral supplementation is required, and the energy footprint skyrockets and the second, because it is extremely wasteful, flushing many gallons of water away for the tiny fraction used. This one decision has greater effect on your ability to be healthy, secure, rich, etc. than any sugar water you can find! The choice of fresh and pure water will profoundly change a whole series of other choices that will come along. What we call into our lives has great resonating impacts that ripple out across the landscape. Again, staying with the drinking water example. Carrying a re-use-able vessel that sates our thirst over longer periods can have it's own, often unseen effects. The energy used creating a stainless steel container is equivalent to the energy in about 2000 plastic bottles! Associated with the steel or aluminum, are impacts like mining, refining, transport, etc. The plastic on the other hand has the specter of oil in it's past, can leach chemicals into our drink, and present special disposal problems. Even when recycled, there are transport costs and energy requirements that follow from our decision. When burned, plastics release toxic compounds. We can follow the fate of each and every item that we use if we take a bit of time to think about it. Pre-cycling is probably the surest way to make an impact on lives around the world in a positive way. This is making choices on the level of where they come from, what they do, and where they go in the end. My own water container will get recycled when it is no good any more, but I can't see how it could fail in my lifetime. I suppose that I could leave it sealed and full in freezing temperatures, but I guard against those things conspiring against it, and it should last indefinitely. I'm not encouraging everyone to go back to animal bladders, just to take the time to think about yourself as deserving of the recognition that you are good and whole already, without the packaging du jours, the "swoosh" of Nike, the Lightening Bolt of sports drinks, or the red of Coke, red,white and blue of Pepsi, or any of the tools of psychological bondage that are proffered up by corporations that try to make us buy anything! There is an annual Buy Nothing Day, I urge you to make that day today! It can have an incredibly liberating feeling to not buy anything for just one day. Instead, use the time you would waste shopping researching the best choices that you can make when you put your next dollars into the marketplace.

It's Official!

Even with this week's Bullish announcement of the sale the largest transportation company in America, by famously shrewd investor, Warren Buffett, we could not bully our way out of the statistics of our spasming economy. The psychological threshold to a full scale Depression has been passed. 10.2% unemployment has been a reality in many parts of the country for quite some time, but the nationwide average crossed into this crippling territory for the first time in twenty-six years thanks to continuing fallout from the "Reagan Revolution" which promised a rosy future for everyone as more and more wealth concentrating in the top echelons of income would "trickle down" creating good jobs and security. The slash and burn approach to governmental agencies like the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), DHSS (Department of Health and Social Services), FDA (Food and Drug Administration), DATCAP (Department of Agriculture Trade and Consumer Protection) as well as a veritable alphabet soup of other agencies has led to less and less oversight, less and less protection, and ultimately less and less healthy and wealthy lives for the middle class and the poorest among us. The rise in incomes for the top ten percent of United states citizens have come from the systematic exploitation of the bottom ninety percent among us. These real losses have hit the poorest the hardest as you might imagine.

We can no longer deny that there is classism (even though spell check doesn't think so) in our culture. The poor among us are many many more times as likely to be incarcerated. As we see every day, the wealthy thieves, get off with a slap on the wrist, or perhaps a huge bonus for picking our collective pockets, while someone who tries to escape the brutal truth of their lives at the bottom of the income "ladder" ends up with years of prison for their victimless crime. Remember the "Roaring Twenties"? Wealth was siphoned off by "organized crime" through providing folks illegal goods. The same thing is going on now with huge drug cartels that do not respect international borders. When we look to the law to put them out of business, their buying power provides clout with governmental agencies that are charged with enforcing the law. Corruption is not only a foreign problem. It is alive and well in the heartland. Simultaneously, large subsidies and corporate welfare is paid for by all ofr us, but benefits only a tiny fraction of the population. In some cases we end up worse off for the expenditure of public funds for dubious purposes.

The economic terror that has been unleashed on the world is directly attributable to large cash flows that defy oversight by any governmental agency. This has to stop. Just having huge cash reserves, enough to hide in foreign banks or a stash as gold somewhere, should not give someone the air of propriety. As long as we worship dollars, we will tend to forget the value of humanity, truth or justice. Building communities that are supportive and sustainable is not yet rewarded. Without funding the necessary changes we are only demonstrating continued reliance on un- sustainable extractive economic structures. When food co-ops can form and get money as easily as a new superstore, we will send the message that there is a way to get healthy food for less money. When priorities change, it will be evidenced by the way we think about health, safety and wealth. We need to rethink what our needs are so that we can get a handle on our wants. There will be a much deeper sense of security when our basic needs can be met at lower cost.

My own situation, as a professional had improved through educating myself and keeping myself in demand. Just in the past five years, I have had to learn to live on less than half of the income to which I had become accustomed. This, at a time that prices, for most things, continued to rise. Many of the things that I thought I had worked my way up to have been taken away. Just as I was climbing out of poverty, the rules changed. Health insurance, travel, vacations of any type, gifts for the giving, etc. have all gone the way of the dinosaur in my life. The moral anguish of not being able to give one's children the things they need to thrive creates desperation in most folks. Even those who are still "making it" in this economy have had to curtail their spending on extras. What we find now is that there are less and less dollars available to flow around in the economy.

Many of us started talking about these issues as far back as the eighties. Each dollar spent in the local economy tends to circulate ten to twenty times, rewarding our neighbors and enriching our local, sustainable community. If we spend our dollars at places owned or managed by far off corporations, the money tends to fly away, never to return. The same is true of our children. If they feel that they have to move away to achieve their dreams, they most-likely will never return to enrich our neighborhoods. In my time, I was called names for what I knew to be true, perhaps by the time my grandchildren become adults, the tide will have shifted and the truth will be self-evident to our decision-makers as well as the general public.

The good that can come of this economic downturn lies in our ability to learn and grow. Knowing that what worked in the past will no longer be helpful to us and being willing to ask ourselves hard questions like: Where do we go from here? These are the new realities with which we must grapple. These are the challenges of our age. If we think positively about ten percent unemployment, we might see our way to a new place in which those ten percent went out into the world to help others, start new initiatives that build community and help take care of our children. With modest amounts of investment we could allow new businesses and new approaches to old problems to arise that would surpass our wildest dreams of what could be.
Imagine, having all of our needs met at a fraction of the cost. It is possible through time tested and readily available structures. Co-operatives for food, transit and housing are already on the rise. The local food movement has unleashed a new breed of local economies, based on food for people and profit. What begins the process of change is changing our ideas. Then we need to make the sacrifices needed to reorient our lives. This frees us up, to have the latitude to re-envision a new social and economic order that will be sustainable for the next seven generations.

Peace be with you! Blessed Be! and Namaste', your humble servant, tcs