Category Archives: Politics and Environomics

The Shambhala Prophecy from “Coming Back to Life” by Johanna Macy

Coming to us across twelve centuries, the prophecy about the coming of the Shambhala warriors illustrates the challenges we face in the Great Turning and the strengths we can bring to it. Johanna learned in 1980 from Tibetan friends in India, who were coming to believe that this ancient prophecy referred to this very planet-time. She often recounts it in workshops, for the signs it foretold are recognizable now, signs of great danger.

These are varying interpretations of this prophecy, some portray the coming of the kingdom of shambhala as an internal event, a metaphor for one’s inner spiritual journey independent of the world around us. Others present it as an entirely external event that will unfold independent of what we may choose to do or what our participation may be in healing of our world, a third version of the prophecy was given to Johanna by her friend and teacher Choegyal Rimpoche of the Tashi Jung community in northern India.

“There comes a time when all life on Earth is in danger.  Great barbarian powers have risen. Although these powers spend their wealth in preparations to annihilate one another, they have much in common: weapons of unfathomable destructive power, and technologies that lay waste our world. In this era, when the future of sentient life hangs by the frailest of threads, the kingdom of Shambhala emerges.

You cannot go there, for it is not a place; it is not a geopolitical entity. It exists in the ears and minds of the Shambhala warriors – that is the term Choegyal used, “warriors” Nor can you recognize a Shamhbala warrior when you see her or him, for they wear no uniforms or insignia, and they carry no banners. They have no barricades on which to threaten the enemy, or behind which they can hide to rest or regroup. They do not even have any home turf. Always they must move on the terrain of the barbarians themselves.

Now the time comes when great courage – moral and physical courage – is required of the Shambhala warriors, for they must go into the very heart of the barbarian power, into the pits and pockets and citadels where the weapons are kept, to dismantle them. To dismantle weapons, in every sense of the word, they must go into the corridors of power where decisions are made.

The Shambhala warriors have the courage to do this because they know that these weapons are manomaya. They are “mind-made”. Made by the human mind, they can be unmade by the human mind. The Shambhala warriors know that the dangers threatening life on Earth are not visited upon us by any extraterrestrial power, satanic deities, or pre-ordained evil fate. They arise from our own decisions, our own lifestyles, and our own relationships.

So in this time, the Shambhala warriors go into training. When Choegyal said this Joanna asked “How do they train?” They train, he said, in the use of two weapons.  “What weapons?” And he held up his hands in the way lamas hold the ritual objects of dorje and bell in the lama dance.

The weapons are compassion and insight. Both are necessary he said.  You have to have compassion because it gives you the juice, the power, the passion to move. It means not to be afraid of the pain of the world. Then you can open to it, step forward, act.  But that weapon by itself is not enough. It can burn you out, so you need the other – you need insight into the radical interdependence of all phenomena. With the wisdom you know that it is not a battle between “good guys” and “bad guys”, because the line between good and evil runs through the landscape of every human heart.  With insight into our profound inter-relatedness – our deep ecology –you know that actions undertaken with pure intent have repercussions throughout the web of life, beyond what you can measure or discern. By itself, that insight may appear too cool, too conceptual, to sustain you and keep you moving, so you need the heat of compassion. Together these two can sustain us as agents of wholesome change. They are gifts for us to claim now in the healing of the world.

These two weapons of the Shambhala warrior represent two essential aspects of the Work that Reconnects. One is the recognition and experience of our pain for the world. The other is recognition and experience of our radical, empowering interconnectedness with all life.

The Work that Reconnects belongs to a much larger cycle of time than our fragmented attention spans, so it is very important to just keep on going. Listen to how Poet Rainer Marie Rilke puts it, in a poem in which he lets God speak:

“You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing, Embody me.
Flare up like flame and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness.  Give me your hand.”

From “Coming Back to Life” by Johanna Macy  page 60, 61, 62

https://upliftconnect.com/legend-shambhala-warriors/ 

The Great Re-set

What we have before us is the Biggest Time Out of our lifetimes! “The Great Reset” the coronavirus provides is an opportunity to look deeper into the systems that have gotten us into this mess.

I’ve often seen in my visioning for art and commentary that all communities across the country and the world are like links in a chain, which at some point in time might have to stand apart as single links in a 10 to 20 mile radius.  The ideas of re-localizing food supplies and finding ways to travel and provide necessary energy without furthering the financial advantage and power of corporations and the environmentally destructive nature of fossil fuels has been a goal of “sustainability” folks for decades.  However fascination with technology, addiction to luxury and convenience, the selling of an overly abundant lifestyle by corporations, media  and corrupt leadership have diverted attention, dismantled our safety nets and blocked the way to implementing common sense solutions.

Around 2014 I started substituting the word “sustainablity” with a better descriptor for our times – “Survivability”. Prior to that the grassroots community members in our region attempted in level-headed ways to draw attention to the County Disaster Preparedness manuals.  There is lots of info on what to do in fire, flood or earthquake events, but nothing about the ever-growing threats of our dependence on the grid to deliver energy, our dependence on fossil fuel to bring almost everything we need by truck, ship or plane, and nothing about how vulnerable we have become as the world gets smaller and more populated or how the global economy has eroded the stakeholder status of many people close to home.

It’s too bad that the paths diverged from solutions known to be sustainable into the controversy of climate change. Climate change and all the resulting arguments over the past 40 years has provided a foil, an excuse and a diversion from the path of solutions. It let us talk or not talk, while we ignored the mounting dangers. All the things we have in common stand out in bold relief during a pandemic.  With shock people wake up to the reality that we are very vulnerable due to our over-dependence on so many distant and now uncontrollable factors.

Toastmasters has been a learning experience for me to see my flaws and how over-focus on climate from the left has incited anger from the right.  Now coronavirus shows us just how much we are in this together and how we can open our eyes, hearts and minds to do what’s necessary and right for all of us. My friends who follow astrology say that this is the time when all things not sustainable and all things not aligned with divine presence will fall apart. Maybe that is always true . . . . what has worked for the past century and the beginning of this one was allowed only by grace and momentum and now we must find a better path forward.

I’ve been absent lately from Toastmasters; even prior to this “shutdown” my time was taken in creating a fundraiser to allow implementation of regenerative agriculture projects in our valley.  This is a path that has been made available by nature to solve many of our problems. 

Another path that is getting recognition is the tried and true message from the 1960s – “Live Simply So Others May Simply Live”. We see now how easy it can be to reduce consumption by 30% across the board. This and restoring our respect for the Rights of Nature can go a long way to solving problems.

By distancing I also see that a great deal of what is deemed “important” is unnecessary. I am witnessing how the current limitations on “doing” and “acquiring” are literally clearing the water and air. An interest in “being” is emerging with time to explore some deeper questions.  When this tailspin ends,  attention can be given to reclaiming our regional successes, inventing systems that support all citizens, and committing to local life-enhancing practices to avert future threats.  

To make good use of the Great Re-Set patience and compassion for ourselves, everyone here and across the planet is needed.  Just like the Zero Waste work we’re doing, we must temper the changes and realize we can’t go from 100 miles an hour to Zero in one minute.  Now that the brakes are on and as we slow down, let’s look for the best roads forward, and not at the past detours and disagreements that have landed us where we are today.

Catie Faryl

March 19, 2020

Opposing Senate Bill SB633 – to remove ag/seed control from Counties to State

Comments for Senate Committee regarding Senate Bill 633, Public Hearing Tuesday, March 12, 2013

The issue of Seeds is truly the debate of our time; it brings all differences of belief and opinion to common ground. Seeds represent our Sovereignty and are at the core of all economic freedom. Seeds are the true wealth given to all people, not just to a few patent holders. “Under all is the Land”* is a main theme of our democratic system therefore legislation that privatizes land, water, seed and genes or puts them under the auspices of Big Government involve great risks of undermining the biological, social and economic stability and survivability of our State and our Country.

It is unwise to tamper with the basic patterns established by Mother Nature. Evidence is mounting that foreshadows vast consequences if our State goes “retrograde” by supporting the trajectory of chemical and monoculture food-growing systems while the rest of the world is implementing more successful practices. France, Peru and many other countries have banned or are tightly controlling genetic modifications and breaking the addictive cycle created by dependence on fossil fuel, out of which the industrial-agricultural complex sprung at the end of the Great Depression and the beginning of World War II.

As an artist and writer who observes and illustrates trends and envisions positive solutions, I see SB 633 as counterproductive to the future of our economy and a disconnection from the rising potential, in fact the necessity, of returning to sane agriculture practices under local control.

It is difficult for me to believe multi-national seed and pesticide companies’ claims that their actions are altruistic and that they just “want to Feed the Planet” when the legacy of DDT and other petroleum-based, Big Oil-subsidiary products have been known as carcinogenic, environmentally dangerous money-makers since Rachel Carson wrote “The Silent Spring” in 1962. The use of DDT was banned in America in 1972, yet  farmers were not encouraged to taper off chemical fertilizers and sprays at that time, but were instructed and directed to use and abuse different ag-drugs.

Right now we have the opportunity to reverse the addiction to genetically modified seeds, Round Up Ready and other chemical products being used in large scale farming that actually give less yield and worse outcomes than what Nature, when respected and understood, can provide.  Let’s show some leadership and forward thinking like Vermont, a leader in wise initiatives across America, and many other States who are applying heavy restrictions on GMOs, requiring labeling and seeking bans.

Southern Oregon is known for its organic and gmo-free foods and lifestyle and the trend across the country and the world is also moving in that direction. We want to keep our State an attractive destination for tourists and new residents. (One out of six people I spoke with while canvassing had just moved to the Rogue Valley because of our relatively clean food, water, and air – their health is demanding it!)

Removing local control of these issues will have, in my opinion, significant economic impact due to more farm failures and decreased allure for tourists, not to mention the impact of limiting our ability to grow healthy foods for our region and for export. Without studying the significant repercussions of Senate Bill 633, including backlash against all exports of edible and grow-able products from America, a huge mistake may be made. We will be unable maintain a regional open pollinated seed crop, which in the future may be more valuable than gold or any other wealth.

As a parent, and someone who cares deeply about people and all sentient beings, I am not buying, serving or consuming the products in question. I’d like my future grandchildren to enjoy a healthy Rogue Valley childhood, and along with thousands of concerned citizens I will continue working to co- create the very best future for Oregon. I ask the Senate Committee to please reject Senate Bill 633.

Sincerely, Catie Faryl, Phoenix, Oregon   March 10, 2013

 

Here are some sources for more information:

U.S.A. produces 53% of GMO crops compared tiny fractions in other countries:

www.ornl.gov/sci/tech/resources

www.genomic.energy.gov

Places where GMOs have been banned:

www.organicconsumers.org/gefood/countrieswithbans.cfm

current.com/…/93975745_peru-bans-genetically-modified-foods-as-…

www.purezing.com/living/toxins/living_toxins_gmofoods.html

Information about health concerns and diseases linked to GMOs:

www.naturalnews.com

www.responsibletechnology.org

Jeffrey Smith, author of Seeds of Deception and short video summarizing it at www.articles.marcola.com

www.gmofreeworldblogspot.com

www.fridayharborholistichealth.com

http://www.fridayharborholistichealth.com

Videos related to these issues:

“Alcohol can be a Gas” – makes the connection between Big Oil, the destruction of high grade farm fuels through Prohibition and the orchestrated addiction of America to fossil fuels

“The Future of Food”

“Genetic Roulette”

“Fresh”

* Under all is the Land – from National Association of Realtors

Issues & Potential Answers for Southern Oregon from the Center for Creative Change

by Catie Faryl, Center Director, November 7, 2011

ISSUE: FOOD SECURITY

We are importing 97% of our food and other necessities to our region. Our fragile and isolated geography means even a bad freeze on the Sexton Summit (I-5 near Roseburg) and the Siskiyou Pass could leave us completely isolated and cut off for a period of weeks. Other scenarios like quarantine, cyber-attack or systems shutdown, mega weather, solar flares or seismic events could make us extremely vulnerable. In addition, our local farms have a shortage of labor, especially during spring planting season and could maximum production if there was coordination of labor needs and eligible workers. The Rogue Valley has the opportunity to explore and implement solutions that could lead other small towns in problem solving.

SOLUTIONS:

  1. Support the creation and functioning of a Community Kitchen where glut from local farms can be served and preserved during summer and harvest seasons. Train food bank clients in food preparation and develop this labor force and system whereby farmers can access good help as needed
  2. Advocate for changes in Health Department regulations that encumber food saving goals, and work with County to allow reasonably priced and healthy food restaurants to accept Food Stamps for cooked food. Work with Growers Markets to expand on token system and develop, along with Community Kitchen site a place where growers’ produce can be sold every day at locations and times when working people can buy them.
  3. Advocate for and facilitate the boosting of food growing, food preservation and stockpiling. This is not the same as Food Banking, this is an emergency store for the public in event of any emergency situation
  4. Re-create the seed banking systems of the past.  Make sure we stock the right kinds of seeds that are open pollinated, untainted by GMOs and regionally viable.  Keep secure seed saving system for future use.

ISSUE: JOBS

This is our most urgent problem, as it is throughout the country. Fortunately we have the ability to address it more readily.

SOLUTIONS:

  1. Advocate for a 32 hour work week and removal of overtime during jobs crisis. Work to reduce legislative encumbrances and overzealous taxation that limits hiring of new employees
  2. Create direct relationship with State legislation to hire unemployed local residents in newly funded State programs, including but not limited to “new health care delivery system, “school retrofit” and any jobs related to logging and forest management
  3. Choose a few simple jobs ventures and enable capable unemployed persons begin these startups – see “Three Million Jobs in Three Months” which I prepared in 2009 (see Addressing Change chapter)
  4. Work with State of Oregon to create hybrid biofuel, alternative energies, flex fuels and landfill diversion programs.  Incubate them at Oregon Rest Stops, which become fuel stops for travelers and worksite to reprocess waste for a “home free population.”  This would protect the intellectual property and “sweat equity” of developers and innovators and give revenue to the State through taxes or direct % participation of fuels.  This is also means whereby existing fossil fuel monopolies and garbage company monopolies can be broken in favor of revenue to the State and employment for thousands of Oregonians.

ISSUE: CONNECTING CREATIVE THINKING, INNOVATORS, INVENTORS AND ENTREPRENEURS WITH VENTURE CAPITAL; SEEDING PROMISING PROJECTS WITH LOANS AND ONE TIME GIFTS

SOLUTIONS:

  1. Cultivate lenders, bankers, service organizations and anonymous donors who see the need and benefit of moving into the “New Economy” (see separate back cast vision “Report on January 1, 2045)
  2. Help inventors, thinkers and tinkers by translating their ideas into business plans, power point presentations, and budget documents that are intelligible to potential investors, political and civic leaders, and venture capitalists. Protect creative property of innovators and serve as liaisons to bring forward designs, systems and products that replace polluting, antiquated and energy-wasting technologies
  3. Through speaking engagements, films, visual displays and outbound presentations to regional clubs, organizations, non-profits, and other entities and institutions, bring information and build interest and consensus on new ways to answer society’s needs and nature’s demands and accumulate funds to advance the ideas

ISSUE: KEEPING DOLLARS CIRCULATING MULTIPLE TIMES THROUGH LOCAL ECONOMY, EDUCATING ABOUT “ACTUAL COSTS” – Triple Bottom Line Economics

SOLUTIONS:

  1. Encourage trades and re-gifting and through displays, lectures, demonstrations and development of model projects would increase understanding of complimentary currency systems that help people stretch their dollars by using local skills in trade and in use of exchange, time bank and other systems
  2. Help the Growers Markets, Artisan Markets, local small farms and restaurants to launch a complimentary currency system using food trades as the basis and let tokens,credits, on line point systems, and/or other means of “monetary markers” to spread this system gradually through the region
  3. Work to promote “Move your Money” in order to reduce the impact of huge banks, their policies, fees and susceptibility to costs associated with fluctuation of national and international markets and unscrupulous dealings at high levels of power. Educate the public about risks of certain investments, create watchdog group to limit fraud, bad lending practices, and scams. Have speakers and workshops about safe local investing, Slow Money, and why everyone should have a small stash of silver or gold in their “rainy day” or preparedness kit.
  4. Educate elected officials, business leaders, decision makers and people of influence on new ways to look at “the bottom line”. This means making them comfortable with evaluating what things “actually” cost – transporting cheaper products from far away because they are “cheap” might not be true – local products may be superior and have less  effective cost – and the biggest concept to convey here is WHAT IS ACTUAL COST TO ENVIRONMENT AND JOBS”
  5. Working with women regarding “Smart, Healthy and Environmentally Friendly” purchasing choices (women buy 80% of what is sold)

ISSUE: HEAT, FUEL and FIRE PREVENTION

SOLUTIONS:

  1. Renew understanding of careful husbandry of our forests. We live in a forest region where more use could be made of forest undergrowth as a source of heat, fuel, biomass, and non-food based ethanol. Create awareness of new forest management practices that use manual labor and consideration of tree types for best survivability (see Dr. Peter Kolb’s presentation on German and Montana Forest Management models). Wood as heat source has less polluting effect than natural gas; wood particulates fall back to Earth with rain since they do not travel into the outer atmosphere
  2. Foundation speaks for regional forestry jobs and supports and finds funds to increase the work, and new jobs, of groups like Rogue Valley Fuel Committee, Lomakatsi Reforestration, horse logging and manual work in forests, Headwaters, tribal work at Jackson Wellsprings, Red Earth Descendants, and other groups and programs
  3. Link with Builders Associations, contractors and inventors to make use of small timber, sawdust and viable building materials to create enclosures and fences to protect domestic farm animals from predators on rural/ag interface, to create deer fences to safeguard food supplies and to convert commercial properties for use as food storage units, new food processing plants, and for use in repairing railroad tracks all over the State of Oregon and beyond

ISSUE: COMMUNICATIONS AND EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS

SOLUTIONS:

  1. Centralize emergency response by incorporating WebSpirit’s Community Online Response with City’s Disaster Preparedness Team. House community system and staff in Center
  2. Provide education on personal preparedness; create and sell or disperse minimal preparedness supplies (potential revenue stream). Advocate for the retention of as many manual and mechanical systems as possible, thereby maintaining a back-up plan in case computer technology fails. Even a brief lapse could prove disasterous, since almost all machinery and systems are now depended on computer technology.  Trade people in skills necessary to conducting essential services without dependence on communications and information through internet and similar technology.  Support radio waves, postal service and neighborhood support systems.
  3. Partner with KSKQ, Ashland Resource Center, Ashland Free Press and other community and on line calendars to maximize dissemination of information and to build strong communication systems that have a least one communication option available regardless of any worst case scenario. Work as advocates to streamline not lose the U.S. Postal Service, which is perhaps only vestige of communication where all people can be reached and accounted for.
  4. Communications Center – overflow for KSKQ Radio and a collaboration with our Community Radio’s have started a weekly community newspaper with partners like Jobs with Justice, Phronesis, Peace House, Ashland Free Press, etc. Also possibly move the antique letter press I saved (in storage now) to set up our own letter press where we can do print our own hand bills, print the weekly newspaper, run hand printed posters, political poetry and social justice pieces, invitations, posters, etc. and do demonstrations of the early printing technology, while training and preparing to create manual printed communications should it ever become necessary. (potential membership & revenue stream)

ISSUE: CONSERVATION, CREATIVE REUSE AND LANDFILL DIVERSION, SMARTER & BIODEGRADABLE PACKAGING

SOLUTIONS:

  1. All Interstate rest stops develop Landfill Diversion Centers adjacent to their sites.  These become the backbone of a national program whereby useable objects are repurposed by a transient labor force.  This would resemble the Worldwide Agricultural Work system known as WOOFRs where people can travel from farm to farm, working and being housed and fed for brief stays while paying their way by laboring. Rest Stops also become filling stations for vehicles using alternative fuel sources and the incubation of these fuel sources by the State is rewarded by a tax or % of profits system.
  2. Having Landfill Diversion Centers near cities would mean less reclaimable items would end up a City dumps.  This system would create jobs and also salvage of valuable metals, plastics, and serviceable items; our country would be reclaiming these “already mined” resources instead of shipping them off to developing countries who take those resources for free, re-process them, then sell them back to America as imports, and sometimes toxic ones at that.
  3. Creative Re-Use Depots can be in abandoned or under-utilized commercial spaces.  People drop off things that are reusable and the public can purchase them in order to support new jobs at these sites. Also this is a valuable resource center for non profits, cash-strapped schools and other public entities to acquire free supplies. This can also become a “re-gifting” center or Abundance Fair project that links year round to welfare agencies, churches and other agencies and groups addressing economic equity.
  4. Sponsor contests and competitions where inventors and innovators come up with new packaging that reduces waste and plastics in the environment. Offer substantial cash prizes for winning concepts and products. Give awards to companies producing environmentally friendly products and under-right coupon programs to get customers to try/switch to better choices.
  5. Plan and prepare a “Harvesting the Sea” recycling program to deal with islands of refuse floating on the oceans, and new threat of refuse coming from Japan’s earthquake and tsunami.  Build platforms and train workers on barges to collect and organize refuse for processing items.  This is a “treasure hunt” on the seas, with tons of valuable metals, chemicals, electronics, cars, appliances, wood, in a floating waste dump twice the State of Texas, coming to America’s West Coast.  This is the biggest job generator we have coming straight to our vulnerable coastline.  Let’s get ready and use this as a way to jumpstart jobs and the economy. Check out new Japanese inventor’s system for making fuel out of garbage!
  6. In “Exburbs” like our area (towns financially suffering in rural and resource-rich regions) support the development of non-food ethanol projects, which would additionally stabilize the farming sector who could grow already sold crops of sorghum and other climate-appropriate crops for non-food based ethanol.

ISSUE: WATER, WATER CATCHMENT, TALENT AND MEDFORD IRRIGATION DISTRICTS, RIPARIAN WATER AND POTABLE WATER – BEST USES and Regional Water Project

SOLUTIONS:

  1. Help every city in Jackson County create a Water Commission as part of their City Government.
  2. Support City of Phoenix in developing, during Urban Renewal process, a water study that considers future water needs of agriculture, industry, recreation and population uses
  3. Build water cisterns, water catchment systems, and extend access to irrigation district water for use in outdoor common areas, for use in yards of homes on TID and MID and those with prior water rights.  Make use of outdoor water for firefighting purposes as well as industrial, agricultural and landscape uses.
  4. Educate the public on relaxed legislation regarding “gray water” and advocate for and help facilitate the implementation of gray water systems in all structures in the region. As legislation allows, implement gray water systems and water catchment.

ISSUE: LAND USE, REAL ESTATE REUSE

SOLUTIONS:

  1. Advocacy and lobbying at County and State level for legislative changes that support better resource use and development in our region
  2. Influence and work support for National Grange to be revitalized
  3. Strategize and working with National and Local Board of Realtors to invent and broker future property uses
  4. Change banking legislation so that agriculture uses are considered “highest and best use” over residential and commercial development in our region
  5. Actively support all “homesteading” programs and work with Board of Realtors to reclaim abandoned and blighted properties to be re-commissioned for low income, teen and homeless housing.

ISSUE: Preparing to ACCOMMODATE A HOME-FREE, MOBILE SOCIETY

SOLUTIONS:

  1. All Interstate Rest Stops add Landfill Diversion Centers where Home Free can work and stay for brief  periods before travelling on to next site.  These sites would include showers and services for transients
  2. Small towns and cities form informal labor pools by having a “clearinghouse” for unemployed and travelers who want work.  This would entail a process where an agency would get to know these Individuals and make an assessment of their appropriateness for day work.  There would be a known system or place where workers would gather and be employed for the day by those needing help There would be go betweens (agencies like the Center, Peace House, the Homeless Task Force) who act as representatives of benefactors who want to make micro loans to help the unemployed.

 

The Tea, Pot and Toast Party of Southern Oregon

They say “politics make strange bedfellows” and this is definitely true in Southern Oregon! The Tea, Pot and Toast Party is where the far right and the far left meet the middle! It’s about time!

What do these groups all have in common? First off, they all need to eat! But while one group is hoisting tea and hope overboard, and another is clipping bud and awaiting society’s collapse, the middle class is sitting and pondering a plate of burnt toast.

Burnt Toast of a 76 year old Vet who sees on TV that Congress is about to remove every scrap of his income. Burnt Toast of the 27 year old artist who says he doesn’t pay much attention to anything. Burnt Toast of the 18 year old college freshman who reports “we’re all socialists anyway, we don’t care” and shows me his text book about Communism. Burnt Toast of the 35 year old single mother of two who just found out funding was pulled and she can’t complete her nursing degree. Burnt Toast of the former Realtor and multiple clients immobilized by foreclosure, depression and powerlessness. Burnt Toast of the sick woman can’t afford medical services. The hard, scorched crust of the restaurant owner who can’t sell enough pizza to pay his rent. Burnt Toast of the businessman who 
can’t find a loan to continue or expand. Burnt Toast of all who invested and saved and saw their hard earned money disappear in a financial meltdown orchestrated by Wall Street. There’s so much Burnt Toast around that we must consider it our “Daily Bread,” even with tea or pot to ease its going down!

The polarizing issues being advanced by the greedy few are just excuses and the means to get the right, left and middle to “eat toast and die”! Don’t fool yourself into thinking it matters if we “don’t ask, don’t tell”, whether we believe marijuana should be legal or not, whether you’re Code Pink, Green Man, Rainbow Coalition, a Knight of Zion or of some other stripe. These are our costumes, our banners, “gang colors” that the power elite have grasped onto and are now manipulating. Just as they divided and conquered people in the ghetto prior to Civil Rights, and even since, these are the ways they get average citizens from the right, the left and/or the middle to fight against each other, while they steal from all of us! Even those staid or well-heeled individuals sitting on fancy or shaky fences, don’t you know these elitist dogs will dig a hole and bury you like bones along with everything and everyone else they’ve taken off the table?

We must look beyond the polarizing issues to the true sources of solutions. Bringing to justice those who stole and went unpunished must be addressed for the “Re-set” this society and the world needs. We must restore morality, integrity and consequence in order to move ahead. Also we must recognize how our common ground of jobs, food, water and healthy use and distribution of resources should be our common cause, and not let side issues blind us from 95% of the agenda we share. This is supposed to be the Post racial, Post sexist, Post elitist, Post greed AGE. We are the Tea, Pot and Toast Party and we shall reclaim a sense of fair play and restore the American Dream, where those who work hard can gain a degree of safety from want. If we don’t undo this political polarity and protect our daily bread in common, we’ll all be Toast!

Three Million Jobs

This is a free small book of 14 job program ideas that I wrote right after the inauguration in response to President Obama’s statement that we need to create 3 million jobs in 3 months. My approach is a lot more “from the bottom up” that the recent stimulus package. I hope the stimulus works, but am still sending this out to anyone who might want to implement some ideas that can start with very little financial investment and begin organizing work that addresses peak oil, water,
land, etc. To help with the general public learning about the “sustainability” movement, I will be
interviewing experts on my radio show “Mother Nature Says Clean Up Your Room” on our local
non profit radio station, KSKQ 94.9 FM. It airs Thursdays at 1 pm. You can also access it anytime on your computer on KSKQ.org, look in archives. I’m hoping my new column with the
same title will be available through the Ashland Daily Tidings soon.

In Ashland we are already working on “Stone Soup” gleaned food restaurant (Susan Powell (Global Pantry/Sustainable Meals), Pamela Joy (Food and Friends), myself and others, and KSKQ is considering using Addressing Change as an ongoing fundraiser.

Please feel free to print this document and/or send it to any representatives,
non-profits, or individuals who might need or read. See you all at the Food Security Conference
next weekend at the Bellview Grange. For information on the conference visit
www.sustainablewellness.com