Wake Them Up!

“Money is the root of all evil,” the young Armenian male bank teller said after explaining to me that he loves money.

Well, what’s not to love? I thought. As the old joke says, it’s way ahead of whatever is in second place. Well, we all know that love is the most important thing in the world and not in second place at all. But, really, when you have love and no money…? Doesn’t feel quite as first placey, somehow.

I heard about a study recently that said that most women, when questioned, chose more money a week in their checking accounts over having more sex. We've always been a more pragmatic gender.

One can buy sex. But, one can’t buy money. Gotta have it to buy it. And, as the song goes, your love doesn’t pay my bills. A male first must feather the nest with the finest to attract the finest females; I figure my young money-loving teller is figuring.

He told me he was studying to become a C.P.A. That's great, I’d said. That is a good job, always in demand in our tricky economic situation. I don’t know if he felt guilty from family influence, or a church, but it seemed he had a need, to let me know that he did know that money is bad.

I can’t imagine a parent telling a young man that wanting to earn money was evil. Maybe he attends an Orthodox church that promotes vow of poverty rhetoric. Rich man, camels, eyes of needles, and all...

Money isn’t the root of all evil, I told him. Selfishness and greed are. There is certainly nothing inherently evil about clam shells or whatever we used in our previous incarnations to pay for things. Receiving cash, clams, whatever, is just a thank you gift for your product or service.

If we lived in a less selfish society where we took care of each other and lived with a barter system, it would be better. I could give you a few dozen eggs from my free range, organically raised hens and tomatoes and zucchini and basil from my free of pesticides, organic garden for the rent. Win-win. And you are even healthier for having property to rent.

Only, it doesn’t work. We’ve grown to be too large a group. So, it’s paper, gold, silver, (copper mostly now), something concrete to hand over to say your work, service, property, is truly valued and appreciated.

If only we could get big biz to value, appreciate, and reward its workers. Instead, it’s pay as little as you can to keep your own salaries and bonuses astronomical.

What was it I heard Stephen Hemsley, the CEO of UnitedHealth, makes? I think I read $270,086.83 each month. But, I think that was before bonuses and other perks, like his retirement package. I hope he’s not covered by UnitedHealth. He earns(?) more than six times the average person’s yearly income in one month? And, again, that’s leaving out the more generous CEO perks. I heard someone say that Hemsley makes $100,000+ each hour. Wow. Now that’s greed.

Hemsley denies people’s health care needs for a living and he is richly rewarded for it. Now that is selfish. How does he sleep at night? He probably self-medicates, just as at least 46 million uninsured Americans have to do. He is evil.

And the rightwing puppets who are in the pockets of UnitedHealth Care and every other big insurance company and big pharma are, also, evil. They choose money over the welfare of the people they allege to represent, the people who voted them into their offices. The people who, out of their taxes, pay for their salaries and for their wonderful insurance coverage, are denied health care.

The screamers at the town halls who drown out the health care coverage messages, well, they're just ignorantly opposing their own best interests. They know not what they say or do. Forgive them, Jesus would say. But, I say, go out and scream over them. Yell the truth. Make them face reality. You'd be doing them a kindness. They are victims of the body snatchers. Wake them up!

Think And The World Thinks With You

Imagine there is no heaven. It’s easy. Give it a try. No hell. Except in your own mind. Above you, before you, only dreams.

You are what you think. You made your life by thinking it so. Nightmares are only in your mind. Mind as creator… Life as mirror. You thinking. Life reflecting.

You can say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not alone. You’re here. We’re all in this kitchen sink soup together. The world can live as one… We just need a wake up call. Pour the coffee into the sink…

Bastardizing John Lennon as my iPod plays.

Man. I miss that man. What the world could have been like if we’d had our great poet and activist to help guide us through these times… Composing and singing us into action against injustice. Who, old enough to remember, couldn’t just sit down and cry for that terrible day the music was murdered in prime time?

Why does the world kill genius? Why does it kill heroes, people who fight for right, justice and truth, and pave new paths for humanity to step up to higher levels of consciousness? Fear?

Why do we set people up on pedestals and then spend the rest of the time trying to knock them off? Do we try to bring them down to the level we think we occupy, so we won’t be challenged or have to strive to be better? Fear?

How much of the mind is genetic make up and how much formed from experience? I know fear is essential for human survival and therefore built into the brain. If we didn’t fear, we might not get out of the way of that Mack truck.

But, is fear and feelings of inadequacy mostly just learned? I mean when it’s not about survival. Can it be passed down from inadequate feeling ancestors? Or is it imprinted from bad parenting and bad experiences?

I’ve seen some very inadequate human specimens who feel far beyond their actual value. Case in point, our last administration in D.C. And I’ve seen wonderful humans totally self-denigrate and waste talents. I’ve seen beautiful individuals who apparently have no mirrors. I’ve seen very unattractive folks who also, apparently, don’t use mirrors.

Are we pavlovianly trained in youth? Is it a mind warp? Are minds telling some that they are not up to snuff due to someone's input or do genes work in there? Or are we all a mish-mash, potpourri of nature/nurture? A little of this, a little of that, and you have a tangled web of thinking guiding some minds into dark mires, and others into limelights, where others can throw rocks at them.

Due to good folks not stepping up and not such good folks thinking they must step up as a favor to all, our world is driven by the ego-driven, clueless ones who seek attention, power for their own sakes, missing the real point entirely. Thus, the shape of our world…

All priorities skewed to make the rich richer with slaves to help their selfish ends. Do the slaves need more stones? Or are they feeling too inadequate to throw them?

Where are you, John? Man. We miss you. I think we need you now more than ever. Come back! It's such a long, winding road... We just need a little truth... Please, sing us back to some semblance of sanity. Help us imagine a world with love. It's all we need.

Lost in time and space

Have not had time to write. Very frustrating. I apologize to followers, if you're still out here. It seems that followers are not alerted to new posts via email, so I don't know what being a follower means, actually. At any rate, I'll be back. In the meantime, keep thinking and here's a lovely quote on woman from Ghandi in 1930 as a place holder :-)

"To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?"

Care2 Action Alerts' Water Facts

Water Facts:

• 884 million people worldwide, (roughly 1 in 8) lack access to safe water, that's two and a half times the entire U.S. population.
• 4,000 young children are killed every day due to diarrheal diseases throughout the world, amounting to 1.5 million children each year. That's the equivalent of every professional football, baseball, basketball and hockey player dying in one day, but repeated everyday.
• 90 percent of waste water in developing countries is discharged into rivers and streams without any treatment. This is water used for bathing, cleaning and drinking.
• The average distance that women in developing countries walk to collect water per day is 4 miles and the average weight that women carry on their heads is approximately 40 pounds.
• 2.5 billion people don't have adequate sanitation facilities.
• From:
  Care2.com, Inc.
  275 Shoreline Drive, Suite 300
  Redwood City, CA 94065
  http://www.care2.com

Water Works

Water. We never really thought about it much. Did we? Why would we think about water? Water has always been big part of our lives, that we take for granted. Natural part of our world. We are the blue planet, after all.

Water represents life. It’s water that allows Earth to have biology. That would be us. Without water, we wouldn’t be. All life emerged from the oceans. From one-celled plant matter to complex multi-celled animals, such as we are. We are part and parcel of our water world.

Well, we here in Southern California do think about water, when we’re on fire, for instance, and when we’re told we’re in another drought, and that the DWP will be charging more for its use or rationing it out to us.

Our bodies remain 70% water, drought or not. In fact, we’re made up of all sorts of water based creatures. Ninety percent of our body’s cells are not even human cells. We are mostly viruses and bacteria, among other things. Don’t forget to take your probiotics today. Gotta keep those little beasts in check.

Water is even a metaphor for the mind in psychological, metaphysical, esoteric or poetic writings. It’s been a part of our mental and physical milieu from our childhood years from sliding on our bellies down a garden hose soaked plastic sheet thrown onto the lawn on those hot summer days, to doing a big cannon ball into a pool just to see how much water we can displace and how many people and how much concrete we can splash.

We never had to go without water. It flows from our faucets, hot or cold. We even have instant ice machines built into our fridges. We carry it in bottles every where we go, we swim and play in it, surf in it, take baths and long showers in it, water our lawns and gardens, and watch what doesn’t evaporate of it run down the street on its way back to the ocean.

This is America. It’s our god-given right to waste water along with every other precious natural resource we have. We are the home of Disneyland. Are we not? We’ve chosen to live in Fantasy Land. And don’t mess with people’s fantasies, either, unless maybe you’re Irish and enjoy a good fight.

I made the mistake of watching Flow: For Love of Water the other night on the Sundance Channel. Never watch murder thrillers, horror films or peek into stark reality late at night. Not if you want Mr. Sandman peacefully whisking you off to dream land. This documentary is all three of the above genres. Better to remain a mushroom. You know the joke.

But, life really is a sausage factory. You go peeking through those sausage factory windows late at night, and buh-bye sleep, peace in your neighborhood, and maybe some friends, mates, or family members who quickly tire of hearing you scream at and rail against injustice. Or maybe they simply fear that finger gun you’re aiming at the TV and pulling the trigger on at talking water privatization company CEO heads.

Not that I hadn’t heard about water privatization. Who hasn’t heard about that? But, it’s just words until you’ve seen it or lived it. I haven’t lived it, still living here in Disneyland. But, being a fairly empathetic creature, (I guess the Republicans wouldn’t allow me to be a Supreme Court judge), I was horrified and outraged watching people in poor countries suffer and thirst to death at the hands of rich corporations who are privatizing their water to make more money.

The corporations then sell the water back to them from a little spicket up the path, hill or wherever they have to march with their pots to get water for cooking, drinking, washing, etc. Only here’s their catch 22. The poor people in those regions can’t afford their tapped water.

So, they drink the same polluted water they bathe and wash clothes in, perform their rituals in, and the same water corporations flush their toxic by-products into. And then they die painfully from water borne illnesses.

Why is this allowed to happen? This is not Monopoly. They are not buying Water Works. Why does business and greed trump survival of humans? Why are they allowed to treat a third world country like it’s their private treasure trove and trash bin? Why and how does greed completely erase one’s conscience? And where is the outrage? Why don’t we see this on national news shows?

Would these CEOs, who have no apparent empathy, be the Republicans first choice for judges? Do we need to do with them what local judges have done with slumlords? Do we sentence these conscience-challenged CEOs to mandatory living as the natives do without water they can afford?

I think that might be one answer to unconsciousness and cruelty. Write your President, your Senator, your Congressman, your Representatives, your TV news networks, newspapers, or anyone who would or should care and/or be able to affect laws. Demand they hold these people accountable.

Water boarding or water withholding are both torture. Those who support water boarding should be made to try it out. Come on Sean Insanity, put your courage where your mouth is. Go for it. We’re awaiting your pronouncement that water boarding is no big deal, that you were able to do it while standing on your head.

And those who withhold water from other human beings who cannot afford their fees, should have to live as those people do, sans clean water. These people need object lessons. They need to experience for themselves what they find fair to do to others. They’re probably the first ones to say they are Christians. Well, I say, do unto yourselves…

Water is life itself. Humans can make it maybe weeks or months without food, but one day without water, watch out.

So, come on, all you water bottling CEOs taking advantage of powerless poor people everywhere there is water you want to tap, man up. Go a day without it yourselves. Just one day. Let us know what a difference one day can make.

Now I have to go take a shower, fill my water bottle for the road, and get my car washed before I go to the restaurant where I will order a refreshing free, glass of water with ice.

Nut toppings

I feel I should clear up a minor misunderstanding in my last post. Post the last posting, I discovered that my friend’s immediate, and seemingly, flippant response to the question of understanding men, was not as it sounded to my ears and, probably, to your eyes. He doesn’t do flippant, he said.

Turns out he was being thoughtful, (in his own inimitable way). Who would know? When I philosophize, I wax. When he philosophizes, he apparently sets it to short and seemingly nonsensical musical ditties.

“One banana, two banana, three banana, four,” was much more of a relevant and considered response, than face value would lead one to suspect. Despite outward appearances, it held no supercilious nor silly intent.

He was simply quoting lyrics from the theme song of an old Hanna-Barbera TV show, The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, which expressed his feeling about alleged differences between the sexes.

The underlying meaning of the lyrics, my friend inferred, is that all the characters, no matter how different, strange, or annoying they may appear to be, are simply facets of one being. A “split” banana personality, so to speak.

We are all bananas. Aren't we?

If we weren’t already crazy, living in this world would drive us there. Short drive for most. To me, this planet feels like one big holding psych-ward tank of sorts. We’re all in this Mulligan stew together.

I think if we weren't a little nuts, we'd be feeling very out of sorts here. As the Far Side joke, where a man is lying on the therapist's couch while the therapist in the foreground is noting on his pad, "Just plain nuts," says it well.

There are just various kinds of nuts topping the bananas in the split. No phallusies intended. It's all one big get your just desserts kinda world.

So, my friend was apparently saying with his response, female, male, schmale… Who cares? It’s all the same. Two sides, one coin.

He doesn’t go along with broad-stroking summaries of anything. He wants specifics. Engineer brain? He’s an exacting, detail guy. I’m a big picture girl.

I know he hates when I quote the latest brain research to prove males and females are organically different and, therefore, view things and think differently. Roll of his eyes, or often outright contradiction, is what I get when I voice my latest studies, experiments and theories I've read or surmised.

He wants not to hear generic statements that men think or do this and women think or do that. He says, no. You do that. All women do not do that. Or, I do this. All men don’t do this. Or maybe he just wants to feel unique and unable to be summed up by someone's theory that's meant to cover everyone of his sex. If he is a puppet, he holds the strings.

Now, I don’t know about you. But, I would say,case in point to that. Men and women are different, different halves of one brain or not. He seems to be the left half. I’m the right. I think men get mentally mired in minute material matters, and miss the over-all meanings. They analyze components of a thing? We analyze the thing?

That's probably why they seem better at creating and fixing individual machines, but not as good at the juggling acts women perform daily to keep the overall machine running. So, I’m back on that one-track male mind theory.

I think genetically and training wise, women are more finely tuned into what is going on around them in order to keep everything running smoothly and safely for the family, while also foraging for dinner and keeping the home fires burning.

This to free up the men to sit around those fires with their buddies, popping their Buds, and swapping their tales of all those fancy/schmancy tails that got away, barely.

Two Bananas

Does anyone understand men? Anyone? Hands? Anyone?

Most women I know throw up their hands at this question, but not in order to answer it. More in baffled surrender. It even seems the older we get, the more we realize, we haven’t a clue. They boggle our minds.

Do men understand men? Do men understand themselves?

I find communication with one is often as allusive or nearly as impossible a task as a cat trying to catch a moving laser light toy. Are they just deeply mysterious characters, concerned with too many of life's important issues to be bothered with mundane matters? Or do we read too much into their silences, ducks and dodges?

I think we women over-think probably nearly everything. So, yeah, we probably assign to them all kinds of complicated stuff which they are never even considering. They probably just want us to stop talking, so they can focus their one track minds on a game, or some mechanical problem in their heads, or to go to sleep perchance to dream of some heroic deeds, or to figure out how to get laid.

What’s the latest study about the percentage of time men spend thinking about sex in a day? Something like every three seconds? I wonder what’s in their minds the other two seconds.

A dear male friend just called. He is a very mechanically and mathematically minded and very kind soul, with his female side quite well developed. He's a good teacher. He can easily and succinctly explain String or M theory to me, (though not what M stands for), and make it seem simple.

He's a computer wizard. The guy can fix any broken thing I hand him. Within minutes he fixed the juicer that had bellied up from my smashing too many carrots in at one time. He rewired his own kitchen. Fixes his own car. He’s a voracious reader of complicated sciences and and philosophies. A film maker. A photographer. Pretty good artist. A musician who plays many instruments. A composer. He’s a good carpenter. He even sews and irons. More than this woman is willing to do. If I can't spray the wrinkles out with water, I'll wear something else. He swears he cooks, too. Haven’t seen that one.

I think this sensitive, aware, well-read, brilliant minded, and talented Renaissance kinda guy should be able to explain the way men think and feel to me. So, I asked him if he understands men.

Yes, he said. He does.

I waited.

I pushed further. So?

He responded. And I quote verbatim, “One banana, two banana, three banana, four.”

Well, there you have it, simplified from the mind of masters... It seems they do have multiple track minds, after all. And that was a banana in his pocket, maybe four.

I think I have to go cook dinner now.